DELIRIUM (1979)
Article 2047 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-22-2006
Posting Date: 3-21-2007
Directed by Peter Maris
Featuring Turk Cekovsky, Nick Panouzis, Terry TenBroek

A psycho-killer is on the loose, and detectives are trying to catch him. Meanwhile, criminals who have escaped justice are found hanged, and evidence indicates it was suicide, though in truth, they were murdered by a vigilante group. Are these incidents related?

Probably the best thing about this movie is its central premise; a psycho killer is hired by a vigilante group. While watching this movie, I found my mind playing around with the possible ways you could handle the story, especially in terms of how you would handle certain characters to make the story plausible. I wish the makers of the movie had bothered asking these questions; instead, we get a compendium of cop/action and psycho-killer cliches (the psycho killer is both a disturbed Vietnam vet AND impotent – the cop investigating the case has a romance with one of the witnesses – witness decides to do her own investigation instead of waiting for the police) and stupid characters (vigilantes take extra care in making their punishments look like suicide but take none of that care when knocking off their people in their own group – hitchhiker victim of psycho, despite knowing that she’s been picked up by an obviously disturbed man, uses her opportunity to get away from him to follow him down to the river, go skinny-dipping in front of him, and taunts him for not taking off his clothes and joining her – witness decide to do her own investigation instead of waiting for the police – wait, did you just hear an echo?). For all that, the movie is watchable in its own low-budget way, but I really got tired of the Vietnam flashbacks after a while.

DEBORAH (1974)
aka UN FIOCCO NERO PER DEBORAH
Article 2046 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-21-2006
Posting Date: 3-20-2007
Directed by Marcello Andrei
Featuring Bradford Dillman, Marina Malfatti, Gig Young

A sterile woman’s obsession with having a child results in her development of psychic powers. After she witnesses an auto accident, she develops a hysterical pregnancy and begins meeting with the woman who was in the accident. However, things may not be what they seem…

This horror / drama (an oddball little variation of ROSEMARY’S BABY without Satanism, a similarity that is further underscored by Marina Malfatti’s Mia-Farrow-like hairstyle) shows a bit of promise, and could have been an interesting movie. Unfortunately, substandard dubbing, unlikable and shrill characters, an overbearing and wrong-headed musical soundtrack, and stylistic misfires (occasionally it comes across as third-rate De Palma) all conspire to make the very watching of the movie a real chore, and this short-circuits the movie’s effectiveness. Still, there’s at least one good twist near the end, as well as one that is pretty obvious, but when all is said and done, this would have worked better as a thirty-minute episode of “The Twilight Zone”.

THE DEATHHEAD VIRGIN (1974)
Article 2045 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-20-2006
Posting Date: 3-19-2007
Directed by Norman Foster
Featuring Jock Gaynor, Larry Ward, Diane McBain

When a treasure hunter releases a skeleton from a sunken ship, he unleashes a curse that turns him into a murderer and puts his fellow treasure hunter at risk for his life.

This movie has a lame monster (a naked woman wearing a mask), indifferent direction and acting, and an air of cheapness about the production. But if you’re a bit on the patient side and enjoy somewhat offbeat plots (as I do), this one may work well enough for you. It’s one of those movies where you’re never sure where it’s going, and this is especially true about three quarters of the way through, when you think it’s almost finished, but then turns out to have a couple more twists in the works. The Philippine locations also give the movie a nice flavor, though this is really unlike most of the Filipino horror movies I’ve seen. It worked for me, but your mileage may vary.

DAUGHTER OF THE MIND (1969)
Article 2043 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-18-2006
Posting Date: 3-17-2007
Directed by Walter Grauman
Featuring Don Murray, Ray Milland, Gene Tierney

When a professor begins seeing visions of his deceased daughter, he calls in a parapsychologist to help him figure it out.

This movie starts out as a fairly ordinary but mildly interesting ghost story, but twenty minutes into the movie, the ghost tells the professor that she won’t come back if he continues the work he’s doing, and we discover that he’s been (unbeknownst to him) working for the military. At this point, the sense that the movie is going to move out of the realm of the supernatural becomes overpowering. The movie goes on for about another fifty minutes before it drops the other shoe, but it’s a credit to the filmmakers that this part of the movie is quite interesting anyways. It does three things very well; it plays up the mystery of whether the events are supernatural or not; it tries to figure out how certain events were faked (if they were indeed faked), and it sets up a tense dramatic situation by putting the parapsychologist under a tough timeline by which he must either prove the events in question were faked, or betray either his friend or his country. Once the other shoe drops, the rest of the movie is pretty conventional, and even if it moves away from the supernatural, it does move into the realm of science fiction a little. Overall, not a bad little movie, but once it’s all over, you’ll be spotting quite a few of the plot holes. Still, this one works more than it doesn’t.

DARK DREAMS (1971)
Article 2042 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-17-2006
Posting Date: 3-16-2007
Directed by Robert Guermontes
Featuring Harry Reems, Tina Russell, Arlana Blue

Two newlyweds have a flat tire while on their way to their honeymoon. They stop at a house for help, unaware that the old woman is a witch. She drugs their tea, and then…well, it is an adult film.

When I decided that I was going to be as comprehensive as I could be with this Movie of the Day project, I knew that the day would come when I was going to encounter that area where fantastic cinema meets adult cinema. My main wish is that that day hadn’t blindsided me; the guide that lists this movie makes it sound little more than a dullish witch-and-coven movie, and makes no mention of its primary focus. Still, it didn’t take me long to figure out once I started seeing scenes that even the most explicit movies I’d seen for this series to date had left to the imagination. Well, be that as it may, here we are, so let’s deal with it.

As far as the fantastic content of this movie goes, I’m not the least bit surprised that what content there is exists merely as a springboard for the movie’s other concerns, so if you’re hoping to learn something about witches and covens, look elsewhere. It also goes without saying that the movie is not the least bit scary. On its own terms, I will only say that it makes more creative use of sound than I would have expected in a movie of this ilk. Other than that, the movie is pretty much what you’d expect.

Let’s move on to the next movie, shall we?

DEADLY HARVEST (1977)
Article 2031 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-6-2006
Posting Date: 3-5-2007
Directed by Timothy Bond
Featuring Clint Walker, Nehemiah Persoff, Geraint Wyn Davies

When changing weather patterns and poor governmental management result in a worldwide famine, the government covers up the crisis by instituting deceptive rationing and martial law. Farmers soon find themselves under siege from desperate men who want their food.

There are plenty of flaws in this Canadian science fiction doomsday feature; the acting is highly variable, though Nehemiah Persoff comes off best as a black market food dealer. The score is also uneven; it will be movingly sublime one moment and annoyingly intrusive the next. It’s also a little on the obvious side and given to blatant manipulation on occasion. However, the basic premise is interesting, and the story (which weaves together four basic groups of people; a farm family trying to feed and protect themselves, and a city family trying to acquire food, a group of black market food rustlers, and a protection group which offers their services to local farmers for food) is sturdy enough. It’s also interesting to consider thematically how it compares with other survivalist/end-of-the-world scenarios; there are certain similarities here with PANIC IN YEAR ZERO and ON THE BEACH. The underlying theme is a common one to these types of movies; just where does a conventional morality fit in these violent and brutal times? As a result, the movie holds the interest despite the flaws. The movie also features an early performance by Kim Cattrall.

DARK RIDE (1978)
aka KILLER’S DELIGHT
Article 2025 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-30-2006
Posting Date: 2-27-2007
Directed by Jeremy Hoenack
Featuring John Karlen, James Luisi, Martin Speer

A serial killer is targeting hitchhikers and patrons of a swimming pool. A cop tries to track down the killer.

This movie was based on the Ted Bundy murders of the late seventies. Given the events in the picture, I’m assuming that it’s a highly fictionalized telling of the story. The emphasis here is not on the killer, but on the investigation of the crime. Parts of the movie are interesting enough; in particular, I like the attempt to trap the killer in the last part of the movie. However, it’s full of cliches and the direction is singularly uninspired; despite the nudity and the violence, it looks and feels like a TV movie most of the time. The cop who has trouble with his superiors, has a wise-cracking buddy, and who plays by his own rules is certainly a cliche. The middle section of the movie gets rather repetitive as well. The movie isn’t awful, but it never really comes to life, either.

DOS FANTASMAS Y UNA MUCHACHA (1959)
aka TWO GHOSTS AND A GIRL
Article 2007 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 9-12-2006
Posting Date: 2-9-2007
Directed by Rogelio A. Gonzalez
Featuring German Valdes, Manuel ‘Loco’ Valdes, Ana Luisa Peluffo

At the turn of the century, two gentleman have a duel in a theater over a musical performer and end up killing each other. Their ghosts remain to haunt the theater. Years later, they encounter a beautiful woman who appears to be a descendant of the performer, and have to save her from bank robbers.

When the main title of my review is left in the native language of its country of origin, that is usually a sign that I’ve had to watch the movie in its undubbed and unsubtitled state. This, being largely slapstick comedy, suffers very little from this handicap; you can tell from the facial expressions and body language what is going on most of the time. It’s all pretty silly, and at times the manic visual humor rises to HELLZAPOPPIN’ levels, especially a bizarre musical number which features a nonstop barrage of ethnic stereotypes to a very familiar novelty tune. The split-screen special effects are a bit primitive, but I have to admit that the cast is game, and everyone involved seems to be having a good time. Horror fans should also keep their eyes open for a short sequence in which a woman is attacked by the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and the Frankenstein Monster (and maybe Dracula – I started to lose track) all at once, but it turns out they’re just actors in a movie. It’s all rather charming in its way, and if you’ve never tried watching a foreign movie without subtitles or dubbing, this would be a good one to start with.

DEATH ON THE FOURPOSTER (1964)
aka DELITTO ALLO SPECCHIO, SEXY PARTY
Article 1980 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-16-2006
Posting Date: 1-13-2007
Directed by Jean Jospivici and Ambrogio Molteni
Featuring John Drew Barrymore, Gloria Milland, Joe Atlanta

Several people gather together for a party at a castle. They hold a seance. A murder is predicted. A murder happens.

Personally, I’m a little reluctant to be harsh to this movie; my copy of the movie is in pretty bad condition and kept freezing up on me, and how can you really give a movie a fair shake when that happens? Still, what I did get out of this movie is that it is your basic “old dark house” thriller, with suspicious servants, seances, murders, secret passages, etc. About the biggest thing new that it adds to the recipe is an obsession with sex; part of the plot revolves around a pregnancy, and much of footage in the movie consists of women stripping down to their underwear. This latter element no doubt holds a great interest for many people, and I will admit that the emphasis on sex goes a long way towards holding your interest in the movie until the plot gets going at about the halfway mark. Still, the movie was a bit too ordinary in terms of plot to really make it anything special; for me, it was a clear case of “been there, done that”. Still, without a decent viewing, it is impossible to judge whether the pace and / or the ambiance was up to snuff, and these aspects could make a great deal of difference in my enjoyment of the final product. So I’m going to write this one off as something of a question mark, though not a particularly promising one at this point.

DALEKS’ INVASION EARTH: 2150 A.D. (1966)
aka INVASION EARTH: 2150 A.D.
Article 1967 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-4-2006
Posting Date: 12-31-2006
Directed by Gordon Flemyng
Featuring Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, Ray Brooks

A doctor, his granddaughter, and two fellow travelers end up in Earth’s future, where the world has been taken over by deadly robot-like creatures known as Daleks.

Much as I admire Cushing’s work, there are a small handful of his performances that don’t really work for me, and, coincidentally or not, they occur usually when he’s playing charming elderly eccentrics; this movie is one of them. Oddly enough, I think he would have made an excellent Doctor, had he been allowed to develop a character that could have been modified to play to his strengths, as is usually done for the actors who’ve portrayed him in the TV series (for those who don’t know what I”m talking about, this movie is an adaptation of a series of episodes from the British TV series “Doctor Who”), but with his performance here, I never really get the sense that Cushing “becomes” the character, but rather that he’s just “playing” the character.

Actually, this probably doesn’t matter much; I’ve heard that the movie adaptations of the series made during the sixties were not really designed for “Doctor Who” fans per se, but rather to fans of his arch nemeses, the Daleks. The fact that the movies are not really part of the canon (the character was never called “Dr. Who” in the TV series, though he is here, and the first movie establishes him as a resident of the earth, whereas he would turn out to be an alien in the series) probably didn’t make much of a difference to them. In fact, I would imagine that the movies were great fun for fans of the series; it must have been wonderful to see some of these early stories in full color (and the use of color here is excellent) and with a relatively high budget. Still, it does suffer somewhat from the fact that the story was written as a serial, and in the attempt to keep everything in the serial, it ends up rendering the story rushed and confusing at times. Still, the Daleks are always a lot of fun, and they’re portrayed just as they were in the TV series. All in all, it’s a mixed bag, but it could have been a lot worse.