THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1936 (1935)
Article 3153 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-30-2010
Posting Date: 4-2-2010
Directed by Norman Taurog
Featuring Jack Oakie, George Burns, Gracie Allen
Country: USA
What it is: Hollywood hodgepodge

A two-bit radio producer tries to deal with his creditors by stealing an amazing invention called a Radio Eye. However, he ends up kidnapped by a countess who has fallen in love with him. Can he use the invention to save himself?

This was part of a series of movies made during the thirties; they featured an assortment of musical numbers, comedy bits, and even dramatic scenes featuring popular stars of the day. The primary purpose of the invention in question (which is something of a combination between a TV set and a radio transmitter) is to provide a conduit for the various acts while the producer is trapped on an island. The plot is pretty negligible (as you might expect), so your enjoyment of this one will hinge on how you feel about the various acts, which include Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson and the comedy team Willie West and McGinty, among others. For me, the movie is stolen by Gracie Allen, who can’t open her mouth without saying something that will make me laugh; her trying to send a recipe over the airwaves is a highlight of the movie.

BLACK MAGIC RITES AND THE SECRET ORGIES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY (1973)
aka Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel trecento, The Reincarnation of Isabel
Article 3085 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-27-2009
Posting Date: 1-24-2010
Directed by Renato Polselli
Featuring Mickey Hargitay, Rita Calderoni, Raul Lovecchio
Country: Italy
What it is: One man’s overheated sexual fantasy with vampires, witches, possession and premature burial thrown into the mix

Many years ago, a witch had a stake driven through her heart and was lightly singed at the stake. Dracula became a vampire in order to reincarnate her. Many years later, a bunch of people move to a castle. Black masses are held. Things happen…

One of the subtitles near the end of the movie says “Don’t try to understand it.” They should have had that line at the beginning of the movie. I watched it in Italian with English subtitles, but if you have any hope of taking this movie seriously, you’d better watch it without subtitles; it will make no sense, of course, but then, it didn’t with the subtitles either. Scenes seem to occur at random, and writer/director Renato Polselli is addicted to editing; unfortunately, the more he edits, the sillier and more confused it becomes. The dialogue is often ludicrous, the special effects are mostly horrible; are those bats or hummingbirds that pop up sporadically throughout the movie? and couldn’t they find even one real snake for the snake pit sequence? The witch-burning sequence is also pretty bad; after stripping her naked, they place a stake with a heart on it on her chest (yes, I know the stake is supposed to have gone through her chest and that’s supposed to be her own heart, but that’s the level of the effects), and then light a fire that doesn’t seem to get within five feet of her body. The movie also contains the single most annoying actress I’ve seen in years, Stefania Fassio. Oh, and did I mention there’s lots of nudity?

If Ed Wood ever directed an Italian Eurotrash movie, this would be the result.

BEGEGNUNG IM ALL (1963)
aka Mechte navstrechu, A Dream Come True
Article 3066 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-29-2009
Posting Date: 1-5-2009
Directed by Mikhail Karzhukov and Otar Koberidze
Featuring Larisa Gordeichik, Boris Borisenko, Otar Koberidze
Country: Soviet Union
What it is: Russian space epic

Aliens from another planet decide to visit Earth when they hear a transmission of a song from there. However, their spaceship crashes on one of the moons of Mars. It is up to a mission from Earth to rescue the visitors.

One of my sources claims that this movie is a sequel to PLANETA BUR, but I’m not sure if that is correct. However, it is the movie from which footage was culled for QUEEN OF BLOOD. However, I can’t really compare the two movies. For one thing, QUEEN OF BLOOD mostly just picked off some of the special effects footage and built a whole new movie around them. Furthermore, since my print of this movie has no English subtitles, and the copy I found was in German, I’m in no position to analyze the plot; the plot description above is based on what other sources say about the movie, and I’m not sure I would have been able to figure even that much from what I saw. I can say this much, though; in terms of the visual science fiction eye candy, the movie really delivers; just from the visual standpoint, it’s a real treat. It’s a shame that this is the only way I can see some of these movies, but I guess that’s the price of completism.

BRAIN SMASHER… A LOVE STORY (1993)
Article 3030 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-24-2009
Posting Date: 11-30-2009
Directed by Albert Pyun
Featuring Andrew Dice Clay, Teri Hatcher, Yuji Okumoto
Country: USA

A bouncer known as Brain Smasher helps a supermodel who is being chased by masked Chinese martial artists who are trying to get their hands on a magic flower that will give them Ultimate Power.

Andrew Dice Clay was a comedian from the late eighties/early nineties. I never saw his act, though I highly doubt it would have appealed to me, so I can’t compare how well this action comedy captures his style. I will say this much though; most of the humor in this movie revolves around three things; first, the hero is called Brain Smasher because he beats people up; second, everybody finds the story of flower-seeking masked Chinese martial artists loose in Portland, Oregon hard to believe, and thirdly, the Chinese martial artists take exception to being called ninjas. This covers about ninety percent of the humor in the movie, and if you’re doubled over in laughter, you’ll probably like this one just fine. If, like me, you’re still waiting to feel the urge to giggle, you’d be better off enjoying it as an action movie, in which case it’s just dumb silliness and tired cliches. The fantastic content is the magic flower, and though it’s tempting to call it a Gizmo Maguffin, it’s not really a gizmo, so let’s call it a Floral Maguffin. I wouldn’t wait to find out what Ultimate Power it wields; the movie never delivers on that concept, so the fantastic content is truly questionable. Let’s face it; there’s just not much here worth paying attention to.

THE BOOGEYMAN (1980)
Article 2976 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2009
Posting Date: 10-7-2009
Directed by Ulli Lommel
Featuring Suzanna Love, Ron James, John Carradine
Country: USA

Two children, a boy and a girl, kill their mother’s lover. As adults, they are plagued by memories of the experience. The girl visits the house where the murder took place, and discovers the lover’s spirit in a mirror. She breaks the mirror and releases the spirit, unleashing a reign of terror.

I’ve not heard good things about Ulli Lommel’s directorial career after TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES, and if this movie is any indication, I’m not surprised. The fact that the story doesn’t make much sense (it’s kind of a hodgepodge of slasher movies and rip-offs of THE OMEN and THE EXORCIST) isn’t necessarily fatal; the fact that the shock moments fall flat combined with the lifeless direction is. It’s pretty bad when the shock moments that are supposed to make you jump don’t even make you blink. It also doesn’t help that the murder scenes are more likely to inspire chortles than chills. John Carradine is on hand, and though he’s got a bigger role here than he did DEMON SEED (aka SATAN’S MISTRESS, not the Julie Christie movie), he’s still so divorced from the action that he might not have even been in the movie. And this is supposed to be one of the better of Lommel’s later horrors; if so, I definitely see some stinkers ahead.

THE BILLION DOLLAR THREAT (1979)
TV-Movie
Article 2961 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-16-2009
Posting Date: 9-22-2009
Directed by Barry Shear
Featuring Dale Robinette, Ralph Bellamy, Keenan Wynn
Country: USA

A government agent is sent to Utah to investigate reports of UFOs.

Apparently, the continued financial success of the James Bond franchise in the late seventies inspired some attempts to resurrect the spy genre for TV; this pilot was one of those attempts. With its rating of 3.9 on IMDB, I can only conclude that it is not a popular favorite, but I have to say that it does about as good a job as I’d expect a TV-Movie/series pilot in emulating a James Bond movie. Perhaps the problem is that it emulates it a little too well; the movie never takes on a life of its own and remains at all times an example of ersatz low-budget Bond. Still, I found it enjoyable enough in this regard, and the cast (which includes Ralph Bellamy, Keenan Wynn and Patrick Macnee) do help to make it fun. Furthermore, some of the location footage is quite beautiful. Take it for what it is, and you could do worse.

BLOOD RELATIVES (1978)
aka Les liens de sang
Article 2960 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-15-2009
Posting Date: 9-21-2009
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Featuring Donald Sutherland, Aude Landry, Lisa Langlois
Country: Canada / France

When a young woman is murdered in an alley, her cousin, the only person who witnessed the crime, turns up at the police station bloody from knife wounds. She offers a description of the assailant, but then changes her story by accusing her own brother of the crime. The detective on the case hopes to learn the truth of the matter by reading the diary of the murdered girl… if he can find it.

This is not a horror movie; its horror content is mostly due to the savage murder that starts the plot rolling. The biggest clue to what this movie was going to be like comes early on, when the credits mention that it is based on a novel by Ed McBain, a mystery writer who specializes in police procedurals. And indeed, that’s what it is; we follow the investigation of the crime as the police finger several suspects, hunt down clues, interview people, and try to piece the puzzle together. The surrounding details and the final solution turn out to be very dark indeed; I suspect that the movie’s R rating is more for the nature of the plot elements (which include incest and child molestation) than for the actual murder details, which are nowhere near as bloody as they could have been. I was able to figure out who the murderer was going to be, but that didn’t destroy my pleasure with the movie, because it gave me a chance afterward to explore the various plot details and figure out why certain events happened when they did; for one thing, you’ll figure out exactly why the witness changed her story when she did. The cast is quite good, though Donald Pleasence is particularly memorable in a cameo as one of the suspects.

BLOOD VOYAGE (1976)
Article 2944 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-30-2009
Posting Date: 9-5-2009
Directed by Frank Mitchell
Featuring Warren Farlow, John Hart, Douglas Hume
Country: USA

Passengers on a yacht bound for Hawaii are being killed off one by one by an unknown assailant. Who can it be?

This is one of those movies I’ve decided to call “listclearers”, because, from my own self-referential point of view, they exist primarily so I can then remove them from my hunt list. Another way to put it is this way; in its own low-budget bottom-half-of-the-drive-in-double-bill way, it manages to adequately achieve competence. It manages to fill its 78 minute running time without ever becoming stultifying or engaging; it remains distracting (though not unpleasantly so) throughout. This is, or course, damning with faint praise, but, beyond the novelty value that it takes place on a yacht, this is by-the-numbers stuff. It’s one of those movies where you watch a scene and immediately know why it exists (“This scene is to make us suspect the cook is the murderer.” “This is one of the murder scenes.” “This scene is designed to get some nudity into the picture.”). It’s watchable, but only in the sense that it’s more interesting than watching paint dry. I bet one week from now I’ll have forgotten this movie ever existed.

BOG (1983)
Article 2928 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-14-2009
Posting Date: 8-20-1009
Directed by Don Keeslar
Featuring Gloria DeHaven, Aldo Ray, Marshall Thompson
Country: USA

A monster has been awakened from the local lake, and it’s searching for human females so it can breed.

This cheap and rather goofy movie is like a throwback to the cheapies from the fifties and sixties; at one time or another, I found myself comparing it to ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, DESTINATION INNER SPACE and BRIDE OF THE MONSTER. The monster is a hoot, and the cast of familiar old-timers (Gloria DeHaven, Aldo Ray, Marshall Thompson and Leo Gordon) just adds to the quaintness of the whole affair. The dialogue is often hilarious; my favorite line is “We’ll get the fire department. They’ve got hoses. They’ll spray anything. ” It also has a ludicrous script and truly amateurish editing. It’s also shot in Wisconsin, which, to horror movie fans, could be called Bill Rebane country, but I find this one a lot more cuddly than any of Rebane’s movies. All in all, this is one of the more entertaining stinkers I’ve seen.

BLOOD BATH (1976)
Article 2927 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-14-2009
Posting Date: 8-19-2009
Directed by Joel M. Reed
Featuring Harve Presnell, Jack Somack, Curt Dawson
Country: USA

The cast of a horror film tell each other scary stories one night. In the first, a hit man has a job go awry. In the second, a man tries to get rid of his wife with a coin that grants wishes. In the third, a ghost decides to haunt the man who was responsible for his death. In the fourth, a martial arts expert must face a final challenge when he betrays his promise not to use his powers for money. In the wraparound story, it turns out the director of the horror film has a secret of his own…

Director Joel Reed is primarily famous for having given us BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, a paean to the exploitation, torture and murder of women that is as mean-spirited as it is incompetent. I feel sorry for any fans of that movie searching this one out in the hopes of getting more of the same; its PG rating should be warning enough that this is going to be mild stuff indeed. It’s no where near as nasty, it’s not one-tenth as misogynistic, and it’s even somewhat more competent. It’s not “bloodless” as some people claim; there’s a little blood, but you’d probably find more in your average Hammer horror movie. It’s worst problem is that it’s rather tired and uninspired. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me, though, was that I actually thought one of the stories was pretty good; the story about the ghost of the black man who decides to haunt the skinflint who caused his death (a series of circumstances brought about by the skinflint repossessing the ghost’s car) is actually amusing enough that I wish the presentation was better. This story even has one of the better twist endings here; the rest of them are rather obvious.