Month: February 2021

One Dark Night (1982)

ONE DARK NIGHT (1982)
Article 5404 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-25-2017
Directed by Tom Mcloughlin
Featuring Meg Tilly, Melissa Newman, Robin Evans
Country: USA
What it is: Scares in a mausoleum

A girl seeking to join a club called “The Sisters” undergoes an initiation rite where she must spend the night alone in a mausoleum. She is unaware that it is the new resting place for a strange psychic vampire who may not be quite dead…

After the antics of the flesh-eating zombies in the last film I saw, it’s rather hard to get many shivers from the zombies in this one, whose primary feats of horror are to look gross and invade your personal space. Of course, they’re not the primary horror attraction here when you have a psychic vampire who shoots blue lightning out of his eyes. And, if you watch this movie in its entirety, you’ll get a chance to meet these creatures, but be prepared for a long slog; this is one of those movies that is eighty percent buildup for a not-quite-satisfying twenty percent delivery of the goods. It’s also one of those movies where the special guest star (Adam West) plays the least important person in the story. This one could prove to be an adequate time-killer on a slow night, but I doubt you’ll remember much about it in a few days… except, perhaps, that a toothbrush plays the part of the most annoying personal prop in the movie.

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Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980)
aka Night of the Zombies, Virus
Article 5403 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-24-2017
Directed by Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso
Featuring Margit Evelyn Newton, Franco Garofalo, Selan Karay
Country: Italy / Spain
What it is: Italian zombie flick

A chemical plant in New Guinea begins leaking a chemical that causes the dead to turn into cannibalistic zombies. Four commandos team up with two reporters to reach the plant.

A commando carrying two guns is searching the cellar of a house that may be infested with cannibalistic zombies that can only be dispatched by a shot through the head. He finds a wardrobe full of clothes. What does he do? He puts down both of his guns, puts on a tutu and top hat, and does an impromptu song and dance throughout the cellar. It was at this point of the movie that I took a quantum leap in my loss of any desire for the survival of the human race (or, at least of the human race as portrayed in this movie).

For Italian zombie gore fans, this movie must seem like a treat; it starts the zombie action early and keeps a steady stream of it going throughout the whole of it, getting a little ghastlier each time. It’s almost as relentless in its having characters act with jaw-dropping stupidity; outside of the example listed above, the commandos (who find out early on that the zombies can only be defeated by a bullet through the head) insist on taking endless body shots at the rampaging zombies, and while waiting for an elevator to descend and the door to open, they all turn away from it so the zombies inside can take them by surprise. The movie throws in a bit of the jungle cannibal genre and peppers itself with stock footage of animals to fill the running time. I’m not a gorehound, so I spent most of the movie just shaking my head in disbelief. And with as much gore as it has, I have no doubt this film probably has a cult following.

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Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: zettai zetsumei (1967)

KOKUSAI HIMITSU KEISATSU: ZETTAI ZETSUMEI (1967)
aka The Killing Bottle
Article 5402 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-23-2017
Directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
Featuring Tatsuya Mihashi, Nick Adams, Makoto Sato
Country: Japan / USA
What it is: Spy antics

Two agents of the International Secret Police must prevent a crime organization from assassinating the President of Buddabai and his General.

This movie almost ended up on my “ones that got away” list, but I found a copy just before it was about to fall into it. From what I gather, it was the fifth in a series of movies about the International Secret Police; I believe one of the movies in the series provided the footage for Woody Allen’s WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY? This was the third movie Nick Adams made in Japan during the sixties, and is the most obscure of the three. The fantastic content consists of the title method of assassination, a bottle of killer foam that expands and suffocates anyone in an enclosed space, though I think there might be a robot/cyborg involved in the mix as well. From the music and other clues, it appears to be comic in tone. I can’t say a whole lot about it because my copy is in Japanese without English subtitles, but it has a few interesting scenes, such as the one where a woman fends off attackers by using long-playing records as missile weapons. I did make one other observation; after all the jokes I’ve heard over the years over how badly Japanese movies were dubbed into English, it appears the reverse was true as well – the Japanese dubbing of Nick Adams doesn’t always follow the movement of his mouth, and there is a noticeable shift in background noise in some scenes when one person stops talking and another begins.

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Madhouse (1974)

MADHOUSE (1974)
Article 5401 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-22-2017
Directed by Jim Clark
Featuring Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry
Country: UK / USA
What it is: Horror

A horror star who played a character named “Dr. Death” becomes convinced that the character has taken over his life and that he is committing murders.

This was Vincent Price’s follow-up to the two Dr. Phibes movies and THEATER OF BLOOD, so he had some tough acts to follow. I do have to admit that it makes a lot of sense to have him play an actor who specializes in horror films who may be “living” the part he played. It’s also fun to pepper the movie with clips from some of his earlier parts, although they’re used too often and for too long here. I just wish they had fashioned a coherent script for the idea; the one on hand is muddled, confusing and awkward. It’s also a huge disappointment as a mystery; it doesn’t take a brilliant leap of deduction to figure that Price’s character isn’t the true culprit, and I was able to spot the true culprit before the second murder. I think the movie may have been trying for a certain unsettling surreal quality, but much of it feels jarring and abrupt; it feels like one of those movies that isn’t playing by the usual set of rules, but it fails to establish which rules it IS playing by. I emerged from the movie more puzzled than intrigued. As it is, I feel there was some real promise lost in the muddle. However, it does have one great comic line about rigor mortis.

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Love at First Bite (1979)

LOVE AT FIRST BITE (1979)
Article 5400 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-21-2017
Directed by Stan Dragoti
Featuring George Hamilton, Susan Saint James, Richard Benjamin
Country: USA
What it is: Vampire comedy

After being thrown out of his castle in Transylvania, Dracula travels to New York City to meet a model with whom he’s fallen in love, unaware that her therapist and current lover is a descendant of Van Helsing.

This may not be a great horror comedy, but it’s a good one. In fact, I’m surprised it works as well as it does, but much of the credit goes to George Hamilton (whose performance as Dracula is smooth and assured) and Susan Saint James (who adds some nice touches to her characterization). Neither of these performers overacts (which could have been a great temptation for the character of Dracula in particular), and it’s their work that keeps the movie on the even keel it needs to be for the humor to work. Even the slightly hammier performance by Arte Johnson as Renfield works well; only Richard Benjamin’s performance as the therapist seems overly broad. This is one of those movies that could have very easily gone off the rails if a sense of desperation had crept in, but that never happens. It could have used a few more solid laughs, and it runs out of steam towards the end, but it manages to avoid being annoying. I even like it enough that I won’t dock it for having a scene in a disco, though it helps that the song is well chosen and the dancing is fun.

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The Ice Pirates (1984)

THE ICE PIRATES (1984)
Article 5399 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-19-2017
Directed by Stewart Raffill
Featuring Robert Urich, Mary Crosby, Michael D. Roberts
Country: USA
What it is: Comic space opera

In the future where water is the most valuable commodity, a group of space pirates are captured by the empire that controls ice, but rescued by a princess who wishes to secure their help to find her missing father.

Right off the bat you’ll be able to tell that this was inspired by the Star Wars movies, and that it plans to take a comic approach to the story. It’s got a likable cast of familiar faces (Robert Urich, Angelica Huston, John Matuszak and Ron Perlman), and it lopes along well enough for the first twenty minutes or so. But then the fact that the characters aren’t particularly well-developed and that the story is somewhat muddled start to take their toll, and the humor starts to miss a lot more often than it hits. There’s a disappointing cameo from John Carradine, lots of mildly amusing robots, a running joke inspired by ALIEN that falls flat, and I’m still wondering if that was Angelo Rossitto I saw for a moment (there’s no credit for him on IMDB). Reportedly, Max von Sydow makes a cameo appearance, but when and where I can’t say. The ending final battle in which characters keep warping through time and aging rapidly is clever in concept, confusing and strange in execution. By the time the movie ended, I was just glad it was all over; it was one of those movies that showed some promise before careening out of control.

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Hercules (1983)

HERCULES (1983)
Article 5398 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-18-2017
Directed by Luigi Cozzi
Featuring Lou Ferrigno, Brad Harris, Sybil Danning
Country: Italy / USA
What it is: Sham Sword and Sandal

Hercules must save Cassiopea from being sacrificed in the kingdom of Thera.

Lou (Incredible Hulk) Ferrigno may have been the draw in this movie, Sybil Danning may have provided the cheesecake, but my attention was drawn to the name of Brad Harris, whose presence was the movie’s nod to the sword and sandal movies of the sixties; Harris played Hercules in THE FURY OF HERCULES. I was initially excited about seeing this, especially when I realized that it was directed by an Italian film director under an anglicized name (Luigi Cozzi as Lewis Coates); it seemed to me that it would be a revival of those movies from twenty years earlier. So how had twenty years treated the genre? The first thing I noticed is that it was goofier and cornier. The special effects were more modern, though not necessarily any less cheesy. There’s more female flesh on display. Then, during a scene in which we see a classic sword-and-sandal battle, it occurred to me that it was stock footage from one of those earlier movies. This was when the depression began to hit me, and it only grew as the movie went on. Where were the crowds of extras? The battle scenes? Those wonderful locations? This movie felt puny, claustrophobic, setbound, and lacking in the human element that pervaded those earlier movies. There’s some campy fun to be had; I was especially amused by the sequence where we learn how the constellation of Ursa Major came about. But overall, I felt the magic was gone. This wasn’t a revival of the sword and sandal genre; it was a death knell. No, those older movies weren’t classics, but they had more soul than this.

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Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)
Article 5397 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-17-2017
Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace
Featuring Tom Atkins, Stacey Nelkin, Dan O’Herlihy
Country: USA
What it is: Something different

When a terrified man is brutally murdered in a hospital, a doctor and the victim’s daughter try to find out what led up to the murder. There investigation takes them to the town of Santa Mira, where a Halloween mask company named Silver Shamrock has a dreadful secret…

Original director Joe Dante wanted to do something different for the series, and hired Nigel Kneale to write the script. When Tommy Lee Wallace took over as director, he and producer John Carpenter rewrote the script to simplify the story and add more violence and gore. When Nigel Kneale saw the movie, he was appalled and sued to have his name removed from the credits. I don’t blame him. In its completed form, you can still find elements that remind one of Kneale’s other work, but the murder scenes often seem gratuitous and unnecessarily brutal, and they bring the real story to a dead halt. Personally, I’d like to see an adaptation of the original script (which was reportedly comic in tone), but given that this movie didn’t do well at the box office, it’s probably not going to happen. Yet, from what I gather, the novelization of the movie did marvelously well; I wonder if it was based on the original Nigel Kneale screenplay. In its present form, I found it interesting at times, but badly flawed and sometimes rather stupid. However, if there’s one thing I’ll really remember about this movie, it’s the Silver Shamrock commercials; these may be some of the most annoying ads ever made.

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Ramar and the Savage Challenges (1953)

RAMAR AND THE SAVAGE CHALLENGES (1953)
aka Ramar and the Seven Challenges
Article 5396 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-16-2017
Directed by Sam Newfield and Spencer Gordon Bennet
Featuring Jon Hall, Ray Montgomery, Nick Stewart
Country: USA
What it is: Jungle antics

Ramar, white medicine man of the jungle, has to deal with an ambitious witch doctor, a conniving oil company agent, an explorer with a secret, a woman who may be a were-leopard, and the ever-encroaching danger of stock footage.

A handful of TV-movies were made out of episodes of the TV series “Ramar of the Jungle”. This one was cobbled together from the episodes “Savage Challenge”, “Thunder Over Sangoland”, “Dark Justice”, and “Lady of the Leopards”. I also have to admit at the outset here that I haven’t actually SEEN this TV-Movie; I merely tried to emulate the experience by watching the four separate TV episodes. In other words, I cheated, but it’s not the first time and won’t be the last. The whole jungle genre remains marginal for the most part in terms of fantastic content, but at least the fourth of these episodes has a fantastic premise involving a white woman who is kept in a cage in the jungle because it is believed she turns into a leopard during the full moon, which makes this belong to the genre at least as much as SHE-WOLF OF LONDON. There’s a few other touches of fantasy and science fiction here, though they’re very light. The series itself is only so-so, but it has its moments. One thing I noted is that the movie ran 87 minutes, while the four episode would have clocked in at about 104, which means seventeen minutes were trimmed. I’m guessing this could have been easily done by the removal of beginning and ending credits, as well as time-filling plot-stopping moments of stock footage, a regular feature of this series. And though the show is politically incorrect by today’s standards, it does make a stab towards making the natives human rather than merely savages.

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Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974)

GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA (1974)
aka Godzilla vs. the Cosmic Monster, Gojira tai Mekagojira
Article 5395 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-15-2017
Directed by Jun Fukuda
Featuring Maasaki Daimon, Kazuma Aoyama, Reiko Tajima
Country: Japan
What it is: Kaiju

An ancient prophecy predicts that a monster would arise to destroy the world, but two monsters would come to the rescue of the Earth. The destroyer turns out to be a robot version of Godzilla, while the savior monsters are King Seesar and the real Godzilla.

If I’m not mistaken, this title should complete my reviews Toho’s kaiju output from the fifties to the seventies. This was the second to the last of that run of the Godzilla series, and for what it’s worth, it’s an improvement over the previous two installments of the series (GODZILLA VS MEGALON and GODZILLA ON MONSTER ISLAND). However, this is not due to the tired old story, where, for the fifth or sixth time space aliens use giant monsters (or, in this case, a giant robot) to destroy the Earth. Rather, it’s because it marks the debut of one of Toho’s most memorable creations; Mechagodzilla is their most impressive creation since Ghidorah, and proves to be one of Godzilla’s most dangerous foes. The same cannot be said for the forgettable King Seesar (I don’t know if the spelling is correct; I’ve seen it spelled several different ways); this floppy-eared puppy-dog monster gets a lot of hype in the movie, but once he appears, he feels unnecessary. I wish I could have seen the movie in a nice subtitled version, but all I’ve got available is an old VHS (poorly) dubbed pan and scan version. The aliens this time turn into apes when they die, and the movie is a bit on the bloodier side than many of the other Godzilla movies. Our hero can also turn himself into a giant magnet in this one, which is one of his more improbable powers.

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