Day of the Animals (1977)

DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1977)
Article 3610 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-18-2011
Posting Date: 7-3-2011
Directed by William Girdler
Featuring Christopher George, Leslie Nielsen, Lynda Day George
Country: USA
What it is: Nature runs amok

A group of vacationers takes a hike in the mountains, unaware of the fact that the depleted ozone layer has started to make the animals act hostile.

Director William Girdler had previously given us the JAWS-ripoff GRIZZLY; here he returns once again to the killer animals theme, this time widening the range somewhat to include birds, bears, wolves, dogs, snakes, rats, etc. It doesn’t seem to be borrowing from any one movie in particular; there’s a bit of FROGS, a bit of THE BIRDS, a bit of WILLARD. If anything, it owes more of its structure to the Disaster Movie genre. The movie is fairly predictable and seems to be written to order, but I will give it a little credit for at least venturing into the possibility that the same madness that infected the animals might also infect the humans, but it really doesn’t go far with the idea, nor does it ever really ask why the animals don’t become more vicious to each other rather than just to humans. The ending has the air of the movie trying to have it both ways. All in all, it’s uninspired but mildly entertaining.

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Koko Kills Time (1927)

KOKO KILLS TIME (1927)
aka Koko in 1999

Article 3609 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-17-2011
Posting Date: 7-2-2011
Directed by Dave Fleischer
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: “Out of the Inkwell” cartoon

Koko is chased into the future by an irate Father Time. There he has to cope with advanced technology.

Koko the Clown was a regular character in the “Out of the Inkwell” series by Dave Fleischer; they combined animation with live action, usually with a scenario in which the animated character (Koko) has to match wits with his animator. I wonder if Warner Brothers’ classic cartoon DUCK AMUCK owes anything to this concept. This isn’t the best I’ve seen of the series, but it’s amusing enough; Koko mostly has to contend with the “helping hands” in a barber shop, and then, thanks to his putting money in a device supposed to make predictions for his love life, he finds himself suddenly married with two children. The high point is probably at the beginning; the series always had some fun with the initial drawing of Koko, and this one is no exception. It’s an interesting excursion to the days of silent animation.

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Clash of the Titans (1981)

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981)
Article 3608 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-16-2011
Posting Date: 7-1-2011
Directed by Desmond Davis
Featuring Laurence Olivier, Claire Bloom, Maggie Smith
Country: USA
What it is: Harryhausen mythological epic

In order to fulfill his destiny by marrying the princess Andromeda, Perseus must face a number of dangers, including the deformed Calibos, the gorgon Medusa, and the Kraken.

Given that this was the last film of special effects giant Ray Harryhausen, it’s hard to watch this film and not feel a little sad at how the growth of special effects technology had reached the point where Harryhausen’s talents were no longer needed. And, despite the fact that the movie has its flaws (an occasionally clumsy script, some dull stretches, most of the big names in the cast are wasted), it’s also hard not to enjoy it; whatever problems it had, it was still an improvement over SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER. The movie’s high point is Perseus’s battle with Medusa; it’s easily the scariest scene in any Harryhausen movie, and it’s a bit of a shame that it isn’t the climax of the whole movie. There are times when it tips its hat to STAR WARS; the ending sequence involving constellations seems designed to get the movie to end in outer space, and Bubo the Owl seems like it’s supposed to be this movie’s R2D2; I am grateful that Bubo is no more annoying and tiresome than he is. I’m a little disappointed in some of the gratuitous nudity in a movie that’s otherwise a good family film, but I do like that Calibos is not a totally unsympathetic villain. All in all, there’s good points and bad points, but the fact that it marks the end of an era makes it rather special.

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Cathy’s Curse (1977)

CATHY’S CURSE (1977)
aka Cauchemares

Article 3607 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-15-2011
Posting Date: 6-30-2011
Directed by Eddy Matalon
Featuring Alan Scarfe, Beverly Murray, Randi Allen
Country: France / Canada
What it is: A denizen of its own little world

A man moves into his dead father’s home with his wife and daughter. The daughter finds a doll that belonged to her aunt, and gets possessed by the aunt’s spirit. Strange things happen.

I’m mystified as to what effect this strange little movie that hovers in a no-man’s-land somewhere between THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN and CARRIE is trying for. If it’s horror, it missed the mark; however, if it’s head-scratching befuddlement, it succeeds all too well. Oh, it has the trappings of a horror film, all right, but it gets lost somewhere in a labyrinth of confused writing, direction, acting and editing. Scenes follow scenes without continuity, rhyme or reason, people react (or don’t react, as the case may be) in the oddest ways to strange, supernatural events, and if the ghost of the aunt has any real consistent agenda, it’s lost in the muddle. Watching this movie is like listening to someone tell a long, rambling anecdote that you keep listening to in the hope that it has a point, only to discover it’s nothing but one long non sequitur. It’s watchable in its way, but don’t try to think about it too much; it will only give you a headache.

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Blood Freak (1972)

BLOOD FREAK (1972)
Article 3606 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-14-2011
Posting Date: 6-29-2011
Directed by Brad F. Ginter and Steve Hawkes
Featuring Steve Hawkes, Dana Cullivan, Heather Hughes
Country: USA
What it is: Christian anti-drug cautionary gore film

A biker takes a job as a food tester at a poultry farm where they have been using experimental drugs. This, combined with his own drug habit, causes him to turn into a blood-drinking turkey monster.

Imagine, if you will, that Herschell Gordon Lewis became a born-again Christian, and decided to use his skills as a gore movie director to make a horror-film update of REEFER MADNESS. I’d heard about this movie for years, and when I got a copy, I held off watching it until it popped up on my hunt list, so I could handle it properly. It’s cheap, amateurish, quite awful, demented, but not quite the laugh riot of some of my favorite bad movies. The only time it gets truly offensive is when it decides to slaughter a turkey onscreen for shock effect. It has one of those endings that will make you want to throw something at your TV screen, but, given the type of movie it is, I’m not surprised it ended the way it does. Still, there are a couple of side comments I want to make about this one. For one, I admire at least that the movie doesn’t restrict its drug criticism to just the illegal variety; after all, the experimental drugs used on the turkeys also shoulder part of the blame. And, if you bear the above comment in mind, then the scene where the movie’s chain-smoking narrator breaks into a coughing fit is not near as impenetrable as some of the comments I’ve heard make it out to be, especially if you’re actually paying attention to what he’s saying.

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The Beast Must Die (1974)

THE BEAST MUST DIE (1974)
Article 3605 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-13-2011
Posting Date: 6-28-2011
Directed by Paul Annett
Featuring Calvin Lockhart, Peter Cushing, Marlene Clark
Country: UK
What it is: Werewolf mystery

A millionaire invites several people over to his estate for the weekend, one of which he believes to be a werewolf, though he’s not sure which one. His aim: to hunt and catch the werewolf.

For the second day in a row, I’m watching an Amicus movie featuring Peter Cushing, and, like the framing story in ASYLUM, this one also revolves around the mystery of trying to pick out a specific person from among a group of people. It’s kind of a cross between THE WOLF MAN, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and an old dark house mystery, with a William Castle-like gimmick thrown in for good measure. In general, Amicus’s anthologies were superior to their non-anthologies, and this one is fairly weak in spots; the pacing is a bit turgid at times, and for those of you hoping to pick out clues as to who the werewolf is, all I can say is that the movie doesn’t really give you any good clues and when the “werewolf break” comes, you’ll just have to make a wild guess. There are some decent twists at the end, and the cast (which also includes Charles Gray and Anton Diffring) give it their best shot, but for the most part, this is fairly ordinary.

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Asylum (1972)

ASYLUM (1972)
Article 3604 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-12-2011
Posting Date: 6-27-2011
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
Featuring Peter Cushing, Britt Ekland, Herbert Lom
Country: UK
What it is: Anthology horror

A psychiatrist who has come to an asylum to apply for a job is given a test; he is to interview the patients and figure out which one is actually the former director of the asylum.

This is the Amicus horror anthology that I was the most curious about, largely because it’s the only one I remember seeing ads for on TV. The first story is a “revenge of the dead” story which, though a bit on the obvious side, does have the advantage of taking the “crawling hand” horror gimmick to the next level. The second, which features Barry Morse and Peter Cushing, is the most offbeat; it’s about a down-on-his-luck tailor who is hired to make a suit from a mysterious material, and it’s easily the least predictable of the bunch. The third, which features Charlotte Rampling and Britt Ekland, is about a troubled woman and her friend named Lucy; this one works better if you don’t figure out the twist, but I was able to pick up the clues in the story. The fourth story (which features Herbert Lom and Patrick Magee) is tied to the framing story; it’s a bit perfunctory, but it does have some memorable moments and contains the scene that stuck in my mind from the original ads. Then there’s a final twist to the whole thing as well. All in all, it’s not bad; it’s more consistent than some of the other Amicus anthologies, but I’m afraid it doesn’t have a story that matches the high points of some of the other anthologies; for example, there’s nothing here that has the impact of the story about the Poe collector in TORTURE GARDEN.

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The Screaming Woman (1972)

THE SCREAMING WOMAN (1972)
TV-Movie

Article 3603 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-11-2011
Posting Date: 6-26-2011
Directed by Jack Smight
Featuring Olivia de Havilland, Ed Nelson, Laraine Stephens
Country: USA
What it is: Thriller

A rich but possibly mentally unstable old woman discovers that a woman has been buried alive in the ruins of an old smokehouse on her property. Her attempts to get help to save the woman are met with disbelief in her mental capacities, and time is running out for the buried woman…

It’s been years since I read the Ray Bradbury short story on which this movie was based, but the entry in John Stanley’s “Creature Feature Movie Guide Strikes Again” reminded me that in the original story, the person who discovered the burial was not an old woman but a child. It would have been more interesting had the movie retained this approach; after all, I think the fear of not being believed because you were just a kid is more universal than not being believed because you’re a mentally unstable rich woman, but I suspect the latter route lent itself to more standard TV-Movie dramatic approaches, which was no doubt a factor. Still, that doesn’t mean that the movie doesn’t more or less work; it does, in fact, work well enough. Still, it could have been better. There’s a few false moments here and there; in particular, the old woman’s reaction to her discovery of the burial (she runs through the woods screaming nonstop) is way too overwrought and melodramatic to be convincing. I would also have liked the movie better if it had featured less of either the old woman’s daughter-in-law and the buried woman’s husband’s lover (two pushy and unlikable characters who add little to the story) and spent some time developing the character of the buried woman; after all, it’s her life that is really on the line here, and she’s treated as little more than a plot device. It’s not near as suspenseful as it could have been.

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Revenge in the House of Usher (1982)

REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER (1982)
Article 3602 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-10-2011
Posting Date: 6-25-2011
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Howard Vernon, Antonio Mayans, Lina Romay
Country: Spain / France
What it is: Franco film

A former student visits the home of the ailing Dr. Usher, who has been trying to revive his daughter with blood transplants from unwilling female donors.

During the opening credits of this movie, I had to put the image on hold so I could write down exactly what I saw, so I could reproduce it for this review. Here is the credit as it appears in the movie

Based on the novel “The Fall of house of Usher” by Edgard Allan Poe

The utter sloppiness of this credit certainly shows that someone didn’t give a flying fudgesicle stick about this movie. But then, the movie doesn’t inspire it. Now I’ve had a fairly good time of it lately in my encounters with Jess Franco films; most of the ones I’ve seen recently have been his better efforts. This one is not; it’s Franco at his least inspired. It takes very little out of the Poe story; the only real elements in common are the name of Usher, the fact that someone comes to visit him, and that the house collapses when the main character dies; apart from that, it’s just Franco going to the Dr. Orloff well one more time, and this movie even recycles about fifteen minutes of footage from the first Orloff movie. It has those stylistic touches I associate with Franco at his worst, lots of shots of scenery, lots of shots of people standing around looking at things, etc. One thing I noticed in particular is that whenever a character is lying down, he likes to get close-ups of the character’s face from an angle that emphasizes his nostrils; this made me wonder if Franco had gotten confused about the old saying that “the eyes are the window to the soul” and had mentally substituted “nose” for “eyes”. Or maybe he just likes nostrils. At any rate, I found the experience of watching a bad Franco film no different than usual; I just let the movie wash over me until it’s over and then realize that I didn’t feel a single emotion during the whole thing, not even a twinge of fear. This one is not recommended.

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Paranoia (1969)

PARANOIA (1969)
aka Orgasmo

Article 3601 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 6-9-2011
Posting Date: 6-24-2011
Directed by Umberto Lenzi
Featuring Carroll Baker, Lou Castel, Colette Descombes
Country: Italy / France
What it is: Giallo

A rich widow moves to Europe and gets into an affair with a down-on-his-luck man. However, the man has a sister… and the two of them are not quite sane…

For the record, I will give the movie some points for keeping under wraps just what kind of story it is, so a number of the twists in the second half of the movie do actually come as surprises. Unfortunately, for the most part it’s one of those movies that’s about an unhappy, fragile woman being tormented, which is a concept I’ve never enjoyed all that much. Furthermore, it’s one of those movies where all of the characters are unpleasant and unlikable (including the tormented woman), and so I find myself spending a lot of time just wishing the movie would finish up and be done with it. It’s not near as sexy as the alternate title would lead you to believe, but it wasn’t really until the seventies that movies like this would get really permissive. And I could really do without the deus ex machina ending. In short, it’s passable and has its moments, but I didn’t find it particularly enjoyable.

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