BLUE SUNSHINE (1976)
Article 3321 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-1-2010
Posting Date: 9-17-2010
Directed by Jeff Lieberman
Featuring Zalman King, Deborah Winters, Mark Goddard
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction thriller

A man who accidentally kills a friend who went on a murderous rampage finds himself on the run from the police who believe he is guilty of all the murders. The fugitive stumbles across a thread that connects the murders to a rampage committed by a policeman. What is it that is causing people to lose their hair and go insane? What does this have to do with the phrase “blue sunshine”? And how is a local congressional candidate involved?

I suspect that a real close examination of the plot will reveal a number of holes. Furthermore, the story is overreliant on coincidence, and the lead character practically goes out of his way to make mistakes that will make him look like the guilty party. But director Jeff Lieberman (who also gave us the killer worm movie SQUIRM) has a way of sucking you into the story, getting you interested in the characters, and can occasionally set up some very clever suspense moments; I was on the edge of my seat during the operation sequence in particular. I very much admire the way the movie disperses the credits between three separate scenarios, one involving a doctor, the second involving a babysitter, and the third involving a policeman; these three scenarios seem unrelated except for the fact that all the characters in question seem to be very stressed out. The movie is fictional, though the ending crawl has fooled a few people into thinking that this is based on a true story. Lieberman pulls very good performances from a cast of mostly unknowns; the only one I recognized immediately was Alice Ghostley, though Ray Young did seem a little familiar; it turns out he played Mango in BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE.

BLACKENSTEIN (1972)
Article 3320 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-31-2010
Posting Date: 9-16-2010
Directed by William A. Levey
Featuring John Hart, Ivory Stone, Joe De Sue
Country: USA
What it is: Really bad horror blaxploitation

A woman scientist’s boyfriend loses all his limbs in the Vietnam war. She encourages him to see her old instructor (and present employer), Dr. Stein, who is experimenting with DNA. However, a jealous assistant hoodwinks the treatment, turning the boyfriend into a homicidal monster.

There’s one decent performance in the movie, and there are some nice arty shots, but that about covers it for all the positive things I’ve found in this one. I’d heard this movie was bad, but even I was surprised at how bad it was in certain ways. I knew the monster’s makeup was ludicrous (I’d seen stills), so I wasn’t surprised by that. What surprised me was its other problems. For one, the movie is threadbare in so many departments; the script is barely there, the characters are almost all woefully underdeveloped, the pacing is turgid, the dialogue is awful, and the only good thing about the special effects (the use of Strickfadden’s lab machinery) is compromised by the fact that it looks utterly out of place in this context. The one good performance is from Bob Brophy, but he’s playing a character so hateful that you’re glad he only has two scenes. Perhaps the most surprising thing about this movie is how singularly unfunky it is; outside of the stand-up comedian (who was most likely making up his own dialogue), every black character in this movie could have been changed to a white character and not a single line of dialogue would have needed to change. The tagline for this movie was “To Stop This Mutha Takes One Bad Brutha” and it’s funkier than the whole movie. This one is just pathetic.

BEYOND THE DOOR (1974)
Article 3319 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-30-2010
Posting Date: 9-15-2010
Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Robert Barrett
Featuring Juliet Mills, Gabriele Lavia, Richard Johnson
Country: Italy / USA
What it is: EXORCIST ripoff

A pregnant woman is possessed by the devil.

To its credit, this movie does not attempt a completely blatant ripoff of its source inspiration. The basic story line is really quite different; for example, there really isn’t even an exorcist character in the movie. Nor does it appear to slather on layers of sex like some of the other imitations I’ve seen have, but then, one must remember that I’ve watched only the 99 minute US version of the movie and not the one that is ten minutes longer. Instead, our story line takes a bit of plot line from ROSEMARY’S BABY, but throws in a rather different backstory, with the possessed woman once having had a relationship with a Satanist who is now in desperate straits in trying to grab a few extra years of life before being dragged to damnation. Quite frankly, this is a potentially interesting story line. Unfortunately, the movie is just not scary at all, the story line goes out of control into some pretty silly side issues, such as the little boy’s invisible friend and the demonic dolls. And, of course, once the possession is in full swing, the effects do little more than borrow from THE EXORCIST, only with the result being much cheesier and far less effective. It’s a shame that this is perhaps the best known of the ripoffs of THE EXORCIST; it’s probably the worst of the ones I’ve seen. It has two supposed sequels, but they appear to be sequels in name only, and have nothing really in common with this movie.

THE BED SITTING ROOM (1969)
Article 3318 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-29-2010
Posting Date: 9-14-2010
Directed by Richard Lester
Featuring Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook
Country: UK
What it is: Absurdist post-apocalypse satire

It’s after the apocalypse. Various survivors wander amidst the rubble. Some characters mutate. The police warn everyone to keep moving.

If Richard Lester wanted to make a stranger movie than HOW I WON THE WAR, he succeeded here. It’s so pervasively absurdist that it’s nearly impossible to pin down a precise meaning. It is, however, sporadically amusing enough to hold the attention. Various mutations occur; an old woman turns into a cupboard, a British lord turns into a bed sitting room, a police sergeant turns into a dog and an old man turns into a parrot. Familiar faces abound; Rita Tushingham is the 17-months pregnant daughter wandering around with her family, Ralph Richardson seeks help for his mutation, Spike Milligan cracks jokes and delivers pies to the face, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore drive around warning everyone to keep moving, and Marty Feldman (his first movie) plays a nurse. Running gags abound; everyone has trouble saying the word “bomb”, and the national anthem has been changed to “God Save Mrs. Ethel Shroake”, apparently the next in line to the throne. I can’t say it really all comes together in any coherent way, so how much you get out of it depends on your tolerance for strange British comedy. It even has a happy ending… I think.

BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS (1971)
Article 3317 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-28-2010
Posting Date: 9-13-2010
Directed by Robert Stevenson
Featuring Angela Lansbury, David Tomlinson, Roddy McDowall
Country: USA
What it is: Musical fantasy

During World War II, an apprentice witch (who has agreed to lodge and care for three children who have been sent away from London to escape the bombing) finds her mail-order course in magic has been discontinued due to the war. She seeks out the instructor only to discover he is a charlatan who got the spells he sent her from an old book. They find the old book, but it is missing the final pages, so she begins on a search for the rest of it…

I went into this movie with the expectation of it being a not-bad attempt by Disney to repeat the success of MARY POPPINS, and that’s pretty much what I got out of it. Oh, the story is very different, but the basic production strategy is the same; once again we have a substitute mom with magical powers taking on the care of some children, and leading them on a series of magical adventures. Angela Lansbury and David Tomlinson more or less substitute for Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, they both have English settings, and there is a sequence where we have live action and animation combined. The dance sequences here aren’t near as amazing as the ones in MARY POPPINS, but given that we have much older leads here, that’s not surprising, and the underwater dance has a certain magic to it. None of the songs are as memorable as the best ones from MARY POPPINS, though “The Beautiful Briny Sea” was originally intended for that movie. The movie is good, but not great; the cast is appealing (Angela Lansbury is very likable especially), but there’s something of a hangdog air about the proceedings, and the sense of magic that moves through MARY POPPINS is much more sporadic here. Still, one wonders what it would have been like had things happened differently; apparently, much of the development for this film took place during the development of MARY POPPINS because for a while, rights issues threatened to make the P.L. Travers novel unavailable to Disney. Had things not cleared up, this movie might well have been made in its place.

On a side note, you’ll notice that Roddy McDowall is listed third, and that’s where he is listed in the credits; yet, his role is so abbreviated that you might well forget that he’s in it altogether (incidentally, I saw the 117 minute version rather than the fully restored 139 minute version). I do think that it’s a bit of a shame that the child actors who have much more substantial roles are placed so much lower on the credits.

BAFFLED! (1973)
TV-Movie
Article 3316 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-27-2010
Posting Date: 9-12-2010
Directed by Philip Leacock
Featuring Leonard Nimoy, Susan Hampshire, Rachel Roberts
Country: UK/USA
What it is: Psychic mystery movie, failed TV pilot style

A race car driver discovers he has psychic visions. He teams up with a female reporter who is an expert on psychic phenomena to try to prevent a crime in an English manor house.

You know, you can just tell sometimes by watching the opening credits sequence of a TV-Movie if they were planning to make a series out of it, and this is one example. I’m not really surprised that this one failed to make the grade. It’s not so much the story itself; though in some ways the story is obvious, in others it does have a few surprises up its sleeve. No, the problem is either in the dialogue and/or the casting. The dialogue is overripe, artificial, and rather annoying. Still, there’s part of me that suspects that it might have gotten by had another actor been in the lead role. Make no mistake; I think Leonard Nimoy is a fine actor, but the role he’s playing demands the qualities of airy lightness and casual charm, and though Nimoy tries his best, he never really feels natural or comfortable in the role, and in a series this would have become dreadfully apparent. In the end, the movie feels contrived and forced, despite certain good moments.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)
aka Silent Night, Evil Night
Article 3296 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-7-2010
Posting Date: 8-23-2010
Directed by Bob Clark
Featuring Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder
Country: Canada
What it is: Prototypical slasher film

Members of a sorority are being killed off one by one by a mysterious obscene phone caller.

Director Bob Clark had a very interesting career which largely began with a trio of horror films during the early seventies. This is one of his best, a prototype of the slasher film that would become popular in the wake of HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH, though this taut and suspenseful movie may be better than either of them or their spawn. The characters are three-dimensional and well acted here; one feels and cares about them because they don’t act like the usual slasher fodder. Granted, certain plot twists have now become cliches, and there is at least one moment in the movie where one character acts with a certain amount of stupidity, but at least you can understand that her motivation may be concern about her sorority sisters. The final twist isn’t extremely original, but it’s handled with such panache that you’ll like it anyway. And I always admire a horror movie that knows how to use silence rather than shrillness for its scares.

THE BLOODY JUDGE (1970)
aka Il trono di fuoco, Night of the Blood Monster
Article 3295 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2010
Posting Date: 8-22-2010
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Christopher Lee, Maria Schell, Leo Genn
Country: Liechtenstein / Italy / Spain / West Germany
What it is: Witch-hunting drama

The brutal Lord Chancellor of England, Judge Jeffries, deals with witches and rebels during his reign.

At one point, someone tells the title character that it might be worth his while to witness the executions he hands out, which I think is a rather fitting comment given the rumor that Christopher Lee had completed all of his scenes and was not around to see the gruesome torture scenes that were added to the movie. In fact, the scene where he makes love to a young woman may not feature him at all; all we see is of his character in that scene is a hand, which could well belong to anyone. Still, Lee considered his role in this one to be one of his finest performances, and he’s right; his character is extremely well drawn, and Lee does an exemplary job with it. Given that the director was Jesus Franco and the producer was Harry Alan Towers, I expected the worst going into this, but it’s one of those cases where Franco was given a decent budget to work with, and he makes wise use of it. Though I wouldn’t call it a great movie (it gets rather dull on occasion), it’s definitely one of Franco’s better efforts, and it even rises above being just another knockoff of WITCHFINDER GENERAL; the movie finds its own voice and doesn’t merely echo the earlier movie. Yes, there’s some added sleaze, but that’s pretty much what you would expect from Franco at this time, wouldn’t you?

THE BIRTH OF THE ROBOT (1936)
Animated short
Article 3271 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-3-2010
Posting Date: 7-28-2010
Directed by Len Lye
No voice cast
Country: UK
What it is: Surreal puppet-style animation

Venus uses her music to turn a man who died in the desert to a robot to run the world.

No plot description really seems to be adequate to describe this surreal industrial short made by Shell Oil. The basic upshot of the short is that in ancient days, the world was turned by hand, but in these modern times, we need a robot to turn the world, and that robot will need lubrication. In between we get same strange scenes of a man driving an anthropomorphic car over the pyramids. The man and the car get caught in a storm, have hallucinations, and die. Then a rain of oil turns the skeleton of the man into a robot. You’ll be scratching your head for most of it, but, if you’re like me, you’ll enjoy it all the same. I found this one on YouTube; hopefully, it will still be there when I finally publish this one.

BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR (1972)
Article 3270 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-2-3010
Posting Date: 7-28-2010
Directed by Al Adamson
Featuring John Carradine, Kent Taylor, Tommy Kirk
Country: USA
What it is: A mess

A zombie is killing off people. Police investigate. It all has to do with a mad scientist and a psychotic jewel robber.

Anybody watching this movie for the first time will probably end up scratching his head over the confused mess, so, for here’s my handy-dandy guide to making sense of the movie –

Dave’s Handy-Dandy BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR guide.

This movie essentially went through three different stages, which we will call Movie 1, Movie 2 and Movie 3. In order to have any chance of following this, you need to know which movie you’re watching at any particular moment. The following clues should help you keep track of this.

MOVIE 1: This was originally shot as PSYCHO-A-GO-GO, which I’ve already covered for my project. This movie is more of a heist movie than anything else; it involves a jewel robbery in which the stolen booty is accidentally left in a truck being used by a suburban family. The criminals, one of which is a sadistic psychotic, terrorize the family in the hope of recovering the jewels. The only fantastic element here is the slight horror element of the sadist. If the section you are watching involves the search for the stolen jewels by a vicious sadist, you’re watching movie 1. There are no name stars in this movie.

MOVIE 2: This movie attempts to give a backstory to Movie 1. In it, we discover that the reason the one jewel robber is so sadistic is that he was the subject of a brain experiment designed to fix the damage he underwent on his stint in Vietnam; however, the experiment went awry, leaving him a sadistic psycho. John Carradine is the scientist who performed the experiment on the psycho. If John Carradine is in the scene, you’re watching movie 2. The only shared character between the two movies so far is the sadistic psycho played by Roy Morton.

MOVIE 3: In a sense, this movie is a sequel to Movies 1 and 2. In it, another mad scientist (played by Kent Taylor) who is the father of the sadistic psycho, has created a method of turning people into killer zombies. Infuriated over the death of his son, he swears revenge on the daughter of the scientist who initially experimented on the psycho; the daughter is played by Regina Carrol. Meanwhile, cops investigate, including one played by Tommy Kirk. This movie shares no characters with the other two movies. If the footage involves a zombie missing an eye, Tommy Kirk, Regina Carrol or Kent Taylor, you’re watching movie 3.

That’s everything you need to figure out what the hell is going on in this one. Not that it makes this awful piece of tripe any better, but at least it gives you something to occupy your mind while watching it. The only enjoyment I ever got from watching the movie was trying to figure the plot out, and I had to watch it several times to get that much out of it. Now, with the above guide, you can figure it out in one sitting. Or skip it altogether.