Wicked, Wicked (1973)

WICKED, WICKED (1973)
Article 3630 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-8-2011
Posting Date: 7-23-2011
Directed by Richard L. Bare
Featuring David Bailey, Tiffany Bolling, Randolph Roberts
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho killer movie with a gimmick

A handyman at a hotel has been killing blondes and hiding their bodies, but the hotel detective begins to suspect there is something afoot, and begins to investigate.

To some extent, I’m lumping this movie in with DEAFULA and INCUBUS, though not due to any plot similarities; rather, all three movies feature extensive movie-wide “gimmicks” that more or less take over the films. I use the quotes because in some ways I don’t like the use of that word in this context; the central concepts (a movie shot in sign language, a movie shot in Esperanto, and a movie filmed almost entirely in split-screen) go beyond mere gimmickry. The split-screen process here (known as Duo-Vision) is interesting and occasionally effective; for example, it gives us much of the psycho’s backstory without ever bringing the movie to a halt, and there are moments where it’s really fascinating to see how one character reacts to what another character is doing while being able to see both of them. But there is one drawback with the split-screen approach; it’s not really an easy technique for a viewer to appreciate, as it requires a constant shifting of attention that can be rather tiring over the length of a movie. Furthermore, there are some real script problems; the attempts to establish parallels between this story and that of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA come across as very forced, and when it tries to lighten things up a little and become a “fun” horror movie, the effect is jarring and weird, especially towards the end of the movie. In the end, you have a movie that deserves some credit for trying something different, but it doesn’t really work overall. Incidentally, the movie is not entirely in split-screen, but its full-screen moments are extremely short and usually well thought out, so they end up underscoring the action well.

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The Ultimate Warrior (1975)

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (1975)
Article 3629 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2011
Posting Date: 7-22-2011
Directed by Robert Clouse
Featuring Yul Brynner, Max von Sydow, Joanna Miles
Country: USA
What it is: After the apocalypse thriller

After a plague destroys most vegetation and animal life on Earth, the baron of a makeshift fortress in New York City recruits a fighting man ostensibly to help protect its residents from attacks by a well-organized gang of thugs. However, the baron has an ulterior motive; he wants the fighter to take a scientist’s new vegetable seed strain that is resistant to the plague out of the fortress to an island where the vegetation can thrive.

I quite like this “after the apocalypse” thriller that was made before they became fashionable, if for no other reason that it is quite different from how such movies would later turn out. Furthermore, I really like the performances of Yul Brynner, Max von Sydow and William Smith as the fighter, the baron, and the gang leader respectively. However, the movie has some problems that keep me from liking it more; it’s a little too dry and dull, the characters seem a little too well-dressed to make one feel it’s after the apocalypse, and there really aren’t very many sympathetic characters; I’m particularly disappointed at how the residents of the fortress are little better than the gang members. Still, there are good moments, and one very effective visual moment involving a reflection in a window.

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Trick or Treats (1982)

TRICK OR TREATS (1982)
Article 3628 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2011
Posting Date: 7-21-2011
Directed by Gary Graver
Featuring Jacqueline Giroux, Peter Jason, Chris Graver
Country: USA
What it is: Horror comedy

On Halloween, an aspiring actress takes a babysitting job for a child hooked on magic and practical jokes. However, the former husband of the child’s mother has escaped from an insane asylum and is headed for the house intent on revenge.

On the surface, the movie seems like a rip-off of HALLOWEEN, but, to its credit, it only borrows the bare bones of that movie and comes up with its own approach to the story. It is, in fact, much more of a comedy than a horror movie. That’s not to say it works; in fact, the movie is a disaster. It’s both too broad to be taken seriously and too blandly tame to be funny, the psycho is too much of a chatterbox to be scary, the familiar names in the cast (David Carradine, Carrie Snodgress, Paul Bartel) are all wasted, the succession of practical jokes that makes up the first hour of the movie is tiresome, the pacing wouldn’t challenge a snail, and the overall effect is that of muted awkwardness. The most jaw-dropping credit is seeing the name of Orson Welles as a magic consultant; apparently, director Graver and Welles were good friends. Still, this may well be one of the worst movies Welles was ever associated with.

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Torture Dungeon (1970)

TORTURE DUNGEON (1970)
Article 3627 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-5-2011
Posting Date: 7-20-2011
Directed by Andy Milligan
Featuring Gerald Jacuzzo, Susan Cassidy, Patricia Dillon
Country: USA
What it is: Andy Milligan film

The evil Duke of Norwich plans to seize the throne by killing all of those who stand in his way.

Yes, it’s Andy Milligan again, and, as always, I find myself more than a bit surprised by the good things in his movies rather than the bad things. For one thing, he’s one of the few bad directors who has a talent for casting good actors; the performances throughout this movie are pretty good, though because he draws his actors from the theatre, they occasionally go over the top in ways that would work on stage but not in a movie. The problems, as usual, are in the confused script, the confused editing, and the jerky camerawork. Still, I will say one thing about this movie; it didn’t quite raise in me the same level of itchiness I get when watching most of his other movies, and that’s meant as a compliment. In fact, I’m even beginning to understand a little why he has his supporters.

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Superbug Goes Wild (1971)

SUPERBUG GOES WILD (1971)
aka Superbug – The Wild One, Ein Kafer geht aufs Ganze

Article 3626 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-4-2011
Posting Date: 7-19-2011
Directed by Rudolf Zehetgruber
Featuring Rudolf Zehetgruber, Gerd Duwner, Kathrin Oginski
Country: West Germany / Switzerland
What it is: Herbie the Love Bug ripoff

An adventurer comes by a yellow Volkswagen with a mind of its own, and decides to drive it as a service car to a hovercraft in a rally through Africa in order to make money to save a down-on-its-luck medical clinic.

Sometimes trying to match up a movie listed in a reference book with its matching listing on IMDB, and then finding a copy of the movie itself can be a maddening process. The John Stanley guide lists the title as SUPERBUG-THE WILD ONE, which matches on IMDB to EIN KAFER AUF EXTRATOUR, the third in the series. However, the plot description says that most of the action takes place in Switzerland, whereas the plot description in the Stanley guide says most of the story takes place in Africa. After searching around a bit, I established that the African Superbug movie was actually EIN KAFER GEHT AUFS GANZE, the first in the series, though the Stanley guide says it’s one of the later ones. I found a copy of the movie called SUPERBUG GOES WILD, which, fortunately, turned out to be the correct movie. So now that I’ve finally been able to match things up, on with the review.

For the record, Superbug is a German rip-off of Herbie, the Love Bug; Superbug is actually named Dudu, and someone claims this is the word for “bug” in whichever African country this takes place in. Throughout the movie, the main character keeps referring to his car as the “love bug”, to further heighten the sense of rip-off. As for the movie itself, it is horrible; there’s not a funny scene in the movie, there’s no sense of a real race being run at any time, and the female doctor keeps showing up in every location, which really leaves us wondering just what route this race is taking. Dudu’s powers seem to consist of occasionally having eyes, saying “Jumbo Jumbo” on occasion, and transforming itself into a toy car so it can do 180 degree turns. Its vaunted abilities rarely come into play during the action. I’ve been curious about the Superbug movies for some time, but if this movie is any indication, they’re a truly dismal lot. Fortunately, there’s only three more I’ll have to see.

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Summer of Secrets (1976)

SUMMER OF SECRETS (1976)
Article 3625 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-3-2011
Posting Date: 7-18-2011
Directed by Jim Sharman
Featuring Arthur Dignam, Rufus Collins, Nell Campbell
Country: Australia
What it is: A strange experiment

A young couple arrive at a deserted beach house, but their solitude is shattered when they are spied on by the assistant of an eccentric scientist who lives nearby. The woman is kidnapped by the assistant, and the young man must confront the scientist to find out why…

The first two-thirds of the movie is almost impenetrable; we know something is going on and we’re given plenty of little plot hints to deal with (the scientist is obsessed with his dead wife, the assistant is almost painfully paranoid, the scientist is having the assistant shoot movies about his memories), but since we’re never given the threads that pull these things together, you end up antsily waiting for it all to make sense with the possible fear that it never will. It’s not until we get a major revelation two-thirds of the way through the movie that it starts coming together, and I can say that the situation is rather interesting indeed. However, one question remains – is it interesting enough to compensate for the willful eccentricity of the first two-thirds of the movie? Sadly, I have to say “not quite”, and this is especially apparent when you hit the end of the movie, and you realize the story never quite hits the level of emotional resonance that it needed to really make it work; the earlier part of the movie is so off-putting that it distances you too much from the characters. Furthermore, certain parts of the movie never do quite mesh; in retrospect, much of the behavior of the assistant never makes any sense. I wouldn’t doubt that the movie has a bit of a cult following; after all, it was directed by the same guy who gave us THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, and there is enough here that I can see how someone might be really taken with the movie. Nevertheless, I think this is one movie that could have been a lot better if it hadn’t been trying so hard to be difficult.

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Sexy Cat (1973)

SEXY CAT (1973)
Article 3624 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-2-2011
Posting Date: 7-17-2011
Directed by Julio Perez Tabernero
Featuring German Cobos, Lone Fleming, Monika Kolpek
Country: Spain
What it is: Serial killer movie

“Sexy Cat” is a popular comic strip about a woman who takes sadistic pleasure in murdering her enemies. An artist claiming to be the true creator of the strip hires a detective to find the necessary proof. The artist then becomes the first in a series of killings of people involved with the strip or with a TV show adaptation, and the detective must help the police to find the killer, who is using the same methods of murder as the character in the comic strip.

I really wasn’t expecting much from this one going into it, but it turned out to be a surprisingly entertaining horror mystery. The murders are rather gruesome and bloody (and the on-screen killing of a snake with a machete won’t endear it to animal lovers), and the mystery aspect is rather fun. It also has a sense of humor, especially in the scenes where the detective has to deal with a somewhat befuddled police inspector. Giallo fans may be disappointed, as the movie has little in the way of stylistic touches, but once I picked out the person who I suspected was guilty of the crimes, I found the movie really held my interest if for no other reason than to see if I was right. All in all, this was not bad for a cheap little Spanish production.

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The Fantastic Journey (1977)

THE FANTASTIC JOURNEY (1977)
aka Vortex

Article 3623 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-1-2011
Posting Date: 7-16-2011
Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen
Featuring Jared Martin, Carl Franklin, Ike Eisenmann
Country: USA
What it is: Pilot episode of the TV series of the same name

When a boat passes into the Bermuda Triangle, its passengers find themselves stranded in a strange world in which they can pass through different time continuums.

I was a little confused by the listing of this in John Stanley’s “Creature Features Movie Guide Strikes Again”; I was unable to establish whether it was indeed a movie and not just an episode of a TV series. Finally, I decided check out the series pilot. Despite having the episode name listed on IMDB as “Vortex”, it’s longer than the sixty minute running time that it’s listed as having, and the credit sequence looks a lot more like a movie than a TV series; furthermore, it never uses the title “Vortex”, and just calls itself by the title I have listed above. I remember having seen an episode of the short-lived series, and the biggest question I had during the credits of this was “Where is Roddy McDowall’s name?” It turns out McDowall did not become a member of the series until it actually became a series; he is absent in the pilot. In fact, it looks like quite a few changes were made from the pilot to the series. The movie ends on a cliffhanger, and I suspect these sequences were added after the rest of it was made; it looks like they were preparing to get rid of about half of the cast. It’s just as well as far as I concerned; there’s no one in the pilot that has the star power of Roddy, and the hysterical screaming woman is taken out of the mix.

All in all, I found the pilot fairly so-so, though I do like the central idea; most of the plot involves some rather uninteresting sixteenth-century pirates. My guess is that the series was bought with the idea of making a few changes to make it more viable. Since I had to buy the whole series to get the pilot, I’ll probably check them out, though I won’t be covering them here. Since the series was so short-lived, I suspect it never really developed into anything special.

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Glen and Randa (1971)

GLEN AND RANDA (1971)
Article 3622 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-30-2011
Posting Date: 7-15-2011
Directed by Jim McBride
Featuring Steve Curry, Shelley Plimpton, Woody Chambliss
Country: USA
What it is: Post-apocalyptic art film

It’s forty years after the apocalypse. Two young people leave their colony of scavengers to search for a city called Metropolis, which they heard about from a comic book.

This movie opens with two naked young people in the woods finding a car in a tree. This is the kind of beginning that always intrigues me, and I found myself pulled into this slow and melancholy post-apocalyptic film. It’s perhaps the movie that most gives me the sense that it really does take place after a great disaster has nearly depopulated the world. The characters seem barely alive, lost and mostly purposeless. Only Glen seems really driven, but his quest is impossible and foolhardy. The movie is an art-film; there’s no real narrative drive, and much of what happens unfolds in discrete setpieces bookended by blackouts. It’s not for everyone; in fact, it may be for very few people indeed, since its rating of 3.0 on IMDB indicates that a lot of people don’t like the movie at all. Yet, I find some of the setpieces and moments indelible; the scene of Glen and the fisherman staring at the sunset, the scene where Randa recklessly squanders most of the matches they carry, and, my favorite moment, the scene where Glen and Randa climb a mountain only to find another mountain on the other side. To my eyes, the ending is nearly perfect. If it works for you, you might find it haunting, as I did. If not, this will be a waste of your time.

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Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III (1982)
Article 3621 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-29-2011
Posting Date: 7-14-2011
Directed by Steve Miner
Featuring Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage
Country: USA
What it is: A FRIDAY THE 13TH movie

Teens enter Jason’s domain and die.

Before I started this project, if anyone had told me I would end up willingly watching all of the FRIDAY THE 13TH movies, I would have thought they were crazy. I’m even more surprised that I have something nice to say about them, which is that in their own bare-bones way, they probably delivered what fans of this type of movie expected, and I’ve seen enough slasher films now to know that a lot of them don’t even accomplish that. What sets this one apart? Well, it was filmed in 3-D, and this is the one where Jason finally dons his trademark hockey mask. Beyond that, I don’t have anything more to say than that one really feels the malaise starting to set in here. And for all the gore, once it’s over, it’s over, and if anything keeps you awake during the night, it’s more likely to be from eating too much popcorn. And now it’s only a matter of time before I hit the next in the series, which I believe is the one they pretended was going to be the last one.

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