THE CHILDREN (1980)
Article 2756 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-23-2008
Posting Date: 2-28-2009
Directed by Max Kalmanowicz
Featuring Martin Shakar, Gil Rogers, Gale Garnett
Country: USA

A leak at a nuclear power plant causes children to become zombies with the abiliy to kill with a touch.

I like the first twenty minutes of this variation of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD best. At this point, the sense of mystery is quite strong (a school bus is left running on the side of the road with the driver and children nowhere in sight) and the movie introduces several interesting small-town characters, and these two things caught my attention. Unfortunately, the first actual attack struck me as more comic than scary, and from this moment onward the movie’s effectiveness went down the tubes. For me, the worst problem was that no one seemed to put any thought in the inner reality of the monsters; they just kill because they’re monsters (whereas Romero’s zombies killed out of hunger, for example), and when they stand around with their arms outstretched, it just seems like the director told them to “act like monsters”. No explanation is given why only children are affected, why it takes one child a while to turn into a zombie whereas for the others it must have been almost instantaneous, etc. – quite frankly, it looks like it was being made up while it was written. Oh, it has its moments before it’s all over, but I didn’t find it anywhere near as scary as it wanted to be. And the protracted final twist after the rest of the movie is over both obvious and tiresome.

CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH (1968)
aka Im Schloss der blutigen Begierde
Article 2755 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 11-22-2008
Posting Date: 2-27-2009
Directed by Adrian Hoven
Featuring Janine Reynaud, Howard Vernon, Michel Lemoine
Country: West Germany

Several guests of Baron Brack find themselves in the castle of the Earl of Saxon, a madman intent on reviving his daughter and finding her rapist/murderer.

Ten thoughts on CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH.

1) Advance warning on this movie had me prepared for a certain degree of nastiness. However, no advance warning prepared for me for just how silly it was. Caveat emptor.

2) There’s really not much creeping flesh in this castle (though, admittedly, I’m not sure just what “creeping flesh” is supposed to be”). The more accurate alternate title, CASTLE OF BLOODY LUST, is, however, quite accurate.

3) Let’s handle the lust first. This movie features two rape scenes, one consenting sex scene, and some of the stupidest erotic flirting I’ve ever seen; the scene where the woman tries to tempt the Baron by erotically nibbling a chicken leg and lusciously licking the bone while the rest of the cast looks at each other is enough to have you doubled over in pain or in giggles.

4) Speaking of “looking at each other”, I suspect Adrian Hoven has a weakness for actors that can act with their eyes; the movie is full of scenes of people giving meaningful glares and eye-shifting. Unfortunately, the utter lack of subtlety in these scenes (as well as everywhere else in the movie) undercuts whatever effectiveness they might have had.

5) Now, let’s get to the blood. Let me just sum this up by concocting a quote that I imagine may have been said by the director during the making of this movie – “Look, I bought all this stock footage of open-heart surgery, and I’m damn well going to use it all!”

6) You know, I would try to cut this movie some slack since it’s dubbed, because the incredibly bad poetic dialogue about life, love and death could be just bad translation. But there’s something about it all that makes me suspect that it’s not much better in its original language, and, given the exploitation nature of the rest of the movie, it’s incredibly out of place. But then, the story is supposedly inspired by King Lear and came from Jesus Franco.

7) Director Adrian Hoven is mostly known as an actor. The only other movie he’s directed that I’ve seen is the softcore MAIDENQUEST, aka THE LONG SWIFT SWORD OF SIEGFRIED. Why am I not surprised?

8) Note to the man responsible for the score – Symphonic or Jazz – make up your mind.

9) Note to director – modern day or period piece – make up your mind.

10) Oh, by the way, I like the knocker. No, I don’t mean Janine Reynaud’s (she’s got two of them, anyway), but the one on the door.

CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION (1967)
TV-Movie
Article 2710 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-4-2008
Posting Date: 1-13-2009
Directed by Larry Buchanan
Featuring Les Tremayne, Pat Delaney, Aron Kincaid
Country: USA

A hypnotist takes his assistant back into a former life and predicts murders by a monster from the beginning of time.

Of the four AIP scripts that were sent to Larry Buchanan to be remade in the late sixties, I would pick THE SHE CREATURE as the weakest of the bunch; I considered the script muddled and unconvincing, and, if I liked anything about the movie, it was Paul Blaisdell’s monster suit. The other scripts had their moments, and since Buchanan’s remakes left goodly portions of the original scripts intact, there still remained a few good (if recycled) elements in his other remakes. This does not bode well for this one; I doubted that anything would be done to fix the problems with the script (and they weren’t), and I was confident that whatever monster suit was devised was going to be much less interesting than the Blaisdell suit (and such was the case). Still, I think this movie does have one improvement over the original; I like Les Tremayne a lot more in the role of the hypnotist than I liked Chester Morris, and he’s easily one of the best actors Larry Buchanan had to work with in any of these movies. Still, he’s fighting a lonely battle; the rest of the cast is third-rate, the pacing and the camerawork are both atrocious, and I think this may be the weakest of Buchanan’s AIP remakes.

CASTLE OF EVIL (1966)
Article 2707 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-1-2008
Posting Date: 1-10-2009
Directed by Francis D. Lyon
Featuring Scott Brady, Virginia Mayo, David Brian
Country: USA

A group of people gather at the castle of an inventor who has made them heirs to his fortune. However, when they arrive, the inventor is dead, and it is discovered that the heirs will only get the money when they discover which one of them was responsible for the accident that burned his face. As it turns out, the inventor left behind a robot replica of himself intent on killing all of them off.

This movie has a poor reputation, but I actually was hoping that I could defend the movie a little; despite its flaws, I liked the way the script effortlessly merges the “old dark house” movies with the “mad scientist” movies, even if the mad scientist is dead at the top of the movie. I also think the script is passable and the acting is good. Unfortunately, the movie falls flat; the dull direction fails to generate the necessary suspense at the appropriate moments, and the movie ends up trudging from one tired scene to another, and the lack of energy becomes draining. An abrupt and rather disappointing ending further weakens things. In the end, I can’t really defend it too much; it just gets too dull to be much fun, though it didn’t have to be that way.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1910)
Article 2691 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-1-2008
Posting Date: 12-25-2008
Directed by J. Searle Dawley, Charles Kent and Ashley Miller
Featuring Marc McDermott, Charles Ogle, William Bechtel
Country: USA

Miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve who teach him the meaning of Christmas.

Usually I judge versions of Dickens’s classic by gauging how well they tell the story of Ebenezer’s life, for much of the real heart and soul of the story comes out here. But what if you’ve only got ten minutes to tell the story? Well, you’re going to have to settle for story highlights, but at least this version does a good job of supplying those. I quite like the way that the visits of the the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future manage to tell their respective stories without leaving Scrooge’s bedroom, thanks to some clever use of double exposure. Of course, one of the appeals of this movie to horror fans is that it contains one of the few other extant performances of Charles Ogle, who is best known for having played the Frankenstein monster in the Edison version of the story; here he plays Bob Cratchit, and you can easily recognize him, as his face is quite distinctive. Granted, this version is no substitute for a full-length version of the story, but it does its job well enough.

THE COLD-BLOODED BEAST (1971)
aka Slaughter Hotel, La Bestia uccide a sangue freddo, Asylum Erotica
Article 2649 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-7-2008
Posting Date: 11-13-2008
Directed by Fernando Di Leo
Featuring Klaus Kinski, Margaret Lee, Rosalba Neri
Country: Italy

Women at a luxurious mental clinic are being murdered by a psycho.

Some mental clinic; it’s in a luxurious mansion laden with easily accessible offensive weapons (axe, crossbow, sword, etc), and even has a working iron maiden in the lobby for anyone to use. Of course, one of the patients is a nymphomaniac (who gets an inordinate amount of screen time), but there’s a lesbian nurse and her favorite patient as well, and a woman with sudden homicidal cravings, too. The movie tries to be stylish, but since every scene goes on too long (especially the scenes in which it tries to establish mood and suspense) it just becomes dull. If there’s a real plot here, it’s given short shrift so they can have the requisite scenes of sex and nudity. I wouldn’t doubt that there’s probably a subtext to all of this, but I find little more here than a compendium of its own excesses. It comes across like a cross between DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, any given slasher film, and a foreign soft-core porno movie.

THE CHARLATAN (1929)
Article 2633 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-20-2008
Posting Date: 10-28-2008
Directed by George Melford
Featuring Holmes Herbert, Margaret Livingston, Rockliffe Fellowes
Country: USA

A one-time circus performer disguises himself as a spiritualist in order to track down his wife, who ran off with another man and took his daughter with her. When he finds her, he plans to get his daughter back and get revenge.

This one is basically your “old dark house” horror mystery movie, though it does lack some of the more common elements of that type of movie. This one seems a cut above most of the others, though, and I think this is largely due to an excellent performance by Holmes Herbert as the former husband turned spiritualist; despite the fact that he may be the villain of the piece, he somehow makes us feel for him and his situation. It’s amazing that I’ve probably seen this actor almost two dozen times in various movies for this series (including a whole slew of Universal and Sherlock Holmes movies), but it’s only here that I noticed how good an actor he was. This movie was apparently shot with a sound sequence, but my print was entirely silent. Director George Melford is probably best known among horror fans for having helmed the Spanish language version of the 1931 DRACULA. All in all, this is one of the better movies of its particular subgenre.

THE COLOR OF LOVE (1975)
aka Lord Shango
Article 2595 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 5-13-2008
Posting Date: 9-20-208
Directed by Ray Marsh
Featuring Marlene Clark, Lawrence Cook, Wally Taylor
Country: USA

The baptism of the daughter of an unwed mother is interrupted by her boyfriend attempting to prevent the ceremony. In the resulting struggle, the boyfriend is drowned, though it is not sure whether it was intentional or accidental. When the daughter runs away, the mother turns her back on the church and turns to a voodoo cult to get her daughter back. But there are prices to pay…

I had the worst time coming up with a decent plot description for this movie with an all-black cast, because it was difficult to come up with one that gave a real feel for what this movie is like. Anyone going into this hoping for the usual blaxploitation horror movie will emerge frustrated and feel cheated. If, however, you go in expecting a complex, almost Lewtonian horror movie in which the lines between good and evil aren’t quite as clearly defined as they usually are, you’ll be better prepared. It’s more of a drama with subtle horror elements than a full-blown horror movie, and the movie features at least one great performance; as the drummer-turned-drinker who serves as a commentator on the action, Lawrence Cook is fascinating and complex. The movie does a fascinating job of using music to set off the traditional Christian culture with the voodoo culture, and I suspect that devout Christians will not find this one to their liking. Myself, I found it offbeat, subtle, intelligent and compelling, but it will definitely not be to everyone’s taste.

CHILDREN OF THE FULL MOON/VISITOR FROM THE GRAVE (1980)
Article 2554 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-2-2008
Posting Date: 8-9-2008
Directed by Tom Clegg and Peter Sasdy
Featuring Christopher Cazenove, Celia Gregory, Diana Dors
Country: UK

Two tales of terror; in the first, a young couple find themselves stranded at an isolated manor that is menaced by a werewolf; in the second, a woman kills an attempted rapist and is then haunted by his vengeful spirit.

Sometimes I don’t know if I’m stretching the rules or not; the John Stanley book lists the first title, which is an episode of the TV series “Hammer House of Horror”, and mentions that it was released on a tape hosted by Elvira that also includes another episode, “Visitor from the Grave”. Whether the two episodes were edited together to appear to be a single feature, I don’t know, and I was unable to locate the tape release in question. So, to emulate the experience, I watched the two episodes back to back from the recent “Hammer House of Horrors” series release, and experienced them that way. If I’m stretching the rules here…well, that’s my prerogative.

From these two episodes, I get the sense that the TV show was pretty ordinary; neither episode did much for me. Still, when I do a ratings comparison on IMDB, I notice that these two episodes hover near the bottom of the list, so I should probably reserve judgment. The first episode manages to dredge up a couple of twists to the werewolf myths, but it doesn’t really save it from being rather predictable; nor do I understand why the husband was left alive and allowed to return home half-way through the story; wouldn’t it have been a lot safer for the werewolves to finish him off on the spot? Still, it’s better than the other episode; the minute I noticed that the “wife” (I’m not sure the couple were married, hence the quotes) was a rich basket-case given to hysterics and the “husband” was a bit of an insensitive jerk, I knew (and didn’t care for) exactly where it was going, and sure enough, I was right, and the addition of a second twist at the end only made it dumber.

Once again, I don’t appear to have caught the show at its best. Maybe other episodes will give me a better impression of this series.

COUNT DRACULA (1970)
aka Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht, Les Nuits de Dracula
Article 2530 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 3-8-2008
Posting Date: 7-16-2008
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Klaus Kinski
Country: Spain/West Germany/Italy/Liechtenstein

Dracula moves from Transylvania to London, and terrorizes Londoners.

This is often trotted forth as the truest cinematic version of the Bram Stoker novel, and there’s no reason to doubt the assertion. Most of the changes make sense in terms of keeping the movie to a manageable length; the combination of two of Lucy’s suitors into one is the most noticeable. I do miss my favorite part of the story (the voyage to England aboard the ship), but I can understand why it’s gone. Franco keeps his excesses in check here and manages to deliver a moody, coherent movie. Still, I find it detached and uninvolving; Franco’s style does make me feel like I’m watching the story from a distance, and this does little to build anything in the way of suspense. The characters only come across as interesting when I find the actors themselves familiar and interesting; consequently, the three most familiar names in the three most familiar roles (Christopher Lee as Dracula, Herbert Lom as Van Helsing and Klaus Kinski as Renfield) emerge as the most memorable characters. Even at that, I’m still a little disappointed; Kinski does little more than act silently crazy in a cell, which he does well, but which is only mildly interesting, and there’s never a really good face-off between Van Helsing and Dracula; in fact, omitting Van Helsing from the final scenes of the movie is just a plain question mark to me. All in all, this is an acceptable movie (both as a Franco movie and as an adaptation of the novel), but not a particularly great one on either level.