THE DEVIL’S PLAYTHING (1973)
aka Veil of Blood, Der Fluch der schwarzen Schwestern
Article 4583 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 7-18-2014
Directed by Joseph W. Sarno
Featuring Nadia Henkowa, Anke Syring, Ulrike Butz
Country: Sweden / Switzerland / West Germany
What it is: Vampire sexploitation

Several guests arrive at a castle that used to house a lesbian vampire who was executed four hundred years ago. However, the residents of the castle are engaged on having the vampire manifest herself in the body of another so she can seek vengeance on the descendants of those that executed her… and the guests are those descendants.

With a movie like this, you end up asking yourself this question; is it a horror movie with sex, or is it sexploitation with horror? Given that the director is Joseph W. Sarno, it’s obviously the latter. I saw the 85 minute version, which apparently cuts out eighteen minutes of orgies and sex, so I suspect that this shorter version is for people who are more interested in watching it for its horror elements. Still, even in this form, it’s primarily sexploitation, and it’s more interesting on that level than it is as a horror movie. On the latter level, it’s pretty dull; it’s mostly people slowly walking around with vacant expressions on their faces talking in heavy accents; there’s little suspense or tension, and though it may be trying to rely on mood, there’s little variation on that mood to make it interesting. I’m afraid I had little use for this one.

THE DEVIL’S ASSISTANT (1917)
Article 4561 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-13-2014
Directed by Harry A. Pollard
Featuring Margarita Fischer, Monroe Salisbury, Kathleen Kirkham
Country: USA
What it is: Melodrama with horror overtones

A doctor loses the woman he loves to another man, and becomes bitter and heartless. When he is called in to treat that same woman later in life, he administers a drug to her designed to bend her to his will so he can seduce her.

This silent film originally was originally five reels long, but all that appears to be left of it is a cut-down two reel version, but the story does seem to be intact, though it definitely feels like a rushed version of a longer story. It’s primarily a melodrama, though it could be argued that the drug in question may push it into the realm of science fiction. Still, the primary fantastic content is that the movie contains visions of hell in it. There’s a couple of early ones involving the doctor, but the main sequence happens near the end when one of the characters is on the verge of death, and she dreams that she is being dragged into the underworld; there are visions of devils, Cerberus, and Charon ferrying the woman across the Styx. These scenes look pretty striking; I wish the print I saw was in better condition, but I’m really grateful it exists at all in any condition. In terms of its story, it’s really hard to get a feel for how it works overall when you’re watching a rushed version of it, but it’s the hellish visions that are definitely the highlight.

DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE (1979)
Article 4559 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-11-2014
Directed by Joseph Ellison
Featuring Dan Grimaldi, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho killer

When a disturbed young man discovers that his abusive mother has died, he takes revenge on her by doing all the things she wouldn’t let him do, and by setting fire to her corpse. When her spirit still haunts him, he begins stalking women, luring them into his house, and setting them on fire.

If there’s a major difference between what I call “psycho killer” movies and slasher films, it’s that the latter generally are focused on the mayhem caused by the killer with little concern about the killer’s motivation, while the former are a lot more interested in why the killer does what he does. That’s definitely the case with this one; when you get right down to it, the killer is the only major character in the story, and the movie remains focused on him and his actions throughout. In fact, those drawn to the movie by the promises of violence may well be disappointed by this one; except for one sequence that graphically shows his method of murder, the other killings all happen off screen. Though this might have resulted in a more interesting movie, the trouble here is that the character isn’t really complex enough to sustain that much focus; even at a fairly short 82 minutes, we have lots of retreading the same ground, and there are some scenes that seem only intended to stretch out the running time (such as the scene where the killer goes to a haberdashery to buy clothes suitable for a disco). There is the occasional interesting scene (such as the one in the disco where a woman who tries to draw him into a dance inadvertently causes him to flash back to past abuse), and the movie is certainly competently directed, but it never rises above the obvious.

DEADLY GAMES (1982)
Article 4556 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-7-2014
Directed by Scott Mansfield
Featuring Alexandra Morgan, Jo Ann Harris, Sam Groom
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho killer

A woman returns to her home town when her sister is killed by a maniac, and she decides to stay in her sister’s house while she is there. She befriends two men, but one of them may be her sister’s killer…

I use the phrase “psycho killer” in my description to differentiate certain movies from slasher films, which are generally playing a different type of game than the one this one is playing. Still, I have to confess that I’m not quite sure what game this one IS playing; though it does seem to be trying for suspense, there’s no real consistency to this approach, and it even seems to be trying for romantic comedy at times. The thriller aspects of the movie are nothing special (especially when you discover the killer’s motivation), but the real problem I have with the movie is when it tries to be something else. In particular, the lead female character is supposed to be a cute and lovable kook, but she ends up being a self-consciously annoying, and rather than being charmed by her antics, I end up feeling awkward and uncomfortable. The movie also tends to wander from scene to scene; there are moments where I feel that the movie was edited in random order. In the end, I just don’t think this one works.

DARK ENEMY (1984)
Article 4553 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 6-4-2014
Directed by Colin Finbow
Featuring David Haig, Douglas Storm, Martin Laing
Country: UK
What it is: After the apocalypse… for children

It’s after the apocalypse. There is a small society of valley people which consists mostly of children because adults come down with a sickness that kills them. When the current leader decides to pick his successor, one of the candidates sent out on the ordeal is a young boy with psychic powers, and he makes a great discovery…

This was made by a company called Children’s Film Unit, and the cast is made up mostly of children. I gather the movie is intended for children, and I suppose that if you saw it as one, it might have some impact on you. However, as an adult, you’ll probably see mostly a compendium of cliches and obvious moralizing. Furthermore, you might notice that the movie is lacking in energy, not much fun, and actually rather dreary and depressing. In fact, the most interesting thing about it is that the cast is mostly made up of children, and many scenes feel improvised and spontaneous rather than scripted. So there are items of interest here. Nevertheless, if you chose to skip this one, you probably aren’t missing much.

DOKTOR FAUSTUS (1982)
Article 4549 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-31-2014
Directed by Franz Seitz
Featuring Jon Finch, Andre Heller, Hanns Zischler
Country: West Germany
What it is: Literary adaptation

A composer makes a pact with the devil so that he can find inspiration to develop new forms of music that are not an imitation of what has already been produced. However, his agreement requires him to forgo love, and this price may be too high to pay…

One theme for which I’ve had no shortage in my foray through fantastic cinema is that of the Faust variation, so the idea of sitting through another one that ran nearly three hours hardly filled me with excitement. This one is definitely more of interest to fans of literary drama than to lovers of the fantastic; it plays out primarily as a drama, and there’s not much in the way of special effects. For a while, it looks like there may be no fantastic content at all and that the deal with the devil will be purely metaphorical; however, the devil finally shows up in a more explicit sense, and a definite deal is made. The movie is based on a novel by Thomas Mann, and though I haven’t read it, I’ve read THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN by him, so I have a bit of a feeling for his work. One thing I remembered about him was discussed in Clifton Fadiman’s “The Lifetime Reading Plan”, which talks about the exhaustive detail of his work and how it makes him such an interesting writer. It’s his willingness to fill in the background detail that may explain why it takes so long for the movie to get around to the actual deal with the devil; the movie is close to the halfway point before this happens, and that puts it well past an hour into the movie. Furthermore, it’s not until certain events occur in the final third of the movie that things really start taking form. In the end I really liked the movie and found it quite thoughtful, but I do think it’s more for those with a literary bent, and I suspect that it doesn’t quite do full justice to the novel.

DELUSION (1981)
aka The House Where Death Lives
Article 4526 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-6-2014
Directed by Alan Beattie
Featuring Patricia Pearcy, David Hayward, John Dukakis
Country: USA
What it is: Psychokiller movie

A nurse takes on a job of caring for crippled old man in his house. At about the same time, the old man’s grandson, both of whose parents have died recently, also comes to stay with him. Then the murders start happening…

This may be one of the most laid-back psycho-killer style horror movies I’ve seen. I think I see what it’s trying to do; it’s going for quiet, eerie horror rather than loud, overbearing horror, and though that’s a tough trick to pull off, the movie almost does it. The key word there is “almost”; the problem is that the movie gets so laid-back on occasion that it becomes more sleep-inducing than suspenseful. The plot does try to give us a couple of neat twists, but that doesn’t quite work either; for one thing, it’s built on one of the more common horror setups in which one character carries all the weight of the suspicion, and since you never see the murderer, you know it’s a red herring, and another is that the big surprise at the end isn’t really that big a surprise, as I had begun to anticipate it. Still, it is nice to see Joseph Cotten in a fairly decent role here as the crippled old man, and he gives his character some nice dimension. Ultimately, the movie is a nice try, but it misses the mark.

DEATHMOON (1978)
aka Death Moon
TV-Movie
Article 4525 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-5-2014
Directed by Bruce Kessler
Featuring Robert Foxworth, Joe Penny, Barbara Trentham
Country: USA / UK
What it is: Horror in Hawaii

An overworked businessman suffering from bad dreams he can’t remember is ordered to take a vacation. He goes to Hawaii, where an ancestor of his was a missionary who offended the natives by interfering with a tribal ceremony. Has he inherited the curse they laid on his ancestor?

When my primary complaint about a movie is that you can’t see anything in the night scenes, I find myself wondering whether or not they were shot that darkly for some reason, or whether my print of the movie is simply not very good. I do know that I can see the daylight scenes just fine. Now I’m not talking about scenes where the action is somewhat obscured by the darkness; I’m talking about scenes where you’ll see a couple of pinpricks of lights that may be eyes, or scenes where you strain your eyes trying to see if there’s anything at all on the screen. I will say this much; when the scenes are this dark, they’re no fun at all, and that’s especially true for horror movies where much of the key action occurs at nights. In a movie like this, I will find myself suspecting that the reason it’s so dark is to cover up the fact that the werewolf makeup is really lame; I know you never get a good look at him here. Granted, the rest of the movie is no great shakes, either; character-wise, there’s something dull about a man who’s a werewolf who hasn’t the slightest suspicion that he is, the investigation isn’t particularly engaging, and most of the movie seems more interested in the man’s romance with a fellow vacationer and location footage of Kaua’i, where this was filmed. You know, sometimes I get the feeling that certain movies exist primarily for the travelogue footage. Lovers of Hawaiian footage will probably like this one more than horror fans.

DARK OF THE NIGHT (1986)
aka Mr. Wrong
Article 4524 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 5-4-2014
Directed by Gaylene Preston
Featuring Heather Bolton, David Letch, Perry Piercy
Country: New Zealand
What it is: Haunted car thriller

A woman buys a used Jaguar to take on a trip. When she picks up a man and woman who were hitchhiking, the woman disappears from the back seat and the man claims not to have seen her. She discovers that the woman was a previous owner of the car, and that she was murdered in it. She comes to believe that the car is haunted.

I like the basic story the movie tells, and I like the decidedly non-Hollywood feel of this one; it’s one of those movies where the actors in the cast all look like ordinary people rather than Hollywood stars. However, one of the problems with the feature film form is that in order for them to be really salable, they need to be of at least a certain length, and there are certain stories that would work best with a much shorter running time. I’m afraid that’s the case here; despite the efforts made to keep this one interesting, a certain degree of dullness seeps in, especially during the middle section of the movie. The movie is sometimes compared to CHRISTINE, but the resemblance is pretty much on the surface; this one is playing a somewhat different game. The ending is, however, quite satisfying.

THE DEVIL (1921)
Article 4515 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-25-2014
Directed by James Young
Featuring George Arliss, Sylvia Breamer, Lucy Cotton
Country: USA
What it is: Drama

A seemingly kindly and philanthropic doctor meddles in the lives of a businessmen, an artist, and the women they both love.

The opening scenes in this movie imply that the title should be taken metaphorically; the “devil” is a false friend who seeks to undo the happiness you have. If the movie remained true to that metaphorical definition, it might still be an interesting movie, but it wouldn’t qualify for the genres which I’m covering. However, when you see the title character reacting with horror to a cross-carrying monk at a costume party, you get your first clue that maybe the title isn’t quite as metaphorical as it seems. This movie was the cinematic debut of actor George Arliss, and he is very memorable as the evil Dr. Muller. What I like best about his performance is that his appearance and demeanor are almost comic, which makes it understandable why it takes so long for the characters to see through his machinations. It’s a good if not great movie, and it’s nice to see it after all these years; it ended up on my “ones that got away” list, from which I can now rescue it, thanks to it showing up on YouTube.