Souls for Sale (1962)

SOULS FOR SALE (1962)
aka Confessions of an Opium Eater
Article 3340 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-21-2010
Posting Date: 10-6-2010
Directed by Albert Zugsmith
Featuring Vincent Price, Linda Ho, Richard Loo
Country: USA
What it is: Exploitation melodrama

An adventurer goes to Chinatown and becomes entangled in a slavery racket.

No, it’s not a horror movie, but between some of the macabre imagery and the whole fever-dream style of the movie, it has enough atmosphere that it doesn’t matter that much. The plot doesn’t make much sense, but that hardly matters either; the rush of strange characters, odd images, and surreal action gives the movie a momentum all its own. I’ve encountered director Albert Zugsmith before with SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE and THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ADAM AND EVE, and though both of those were pretty weird, they didn’t prepare me for this. Let’s face it; any movie where a score by Albert Glasser is one of the subtler touches is a movie to be reckoned with. The most memorable character is a Chinese midget played by Yvonne Moray; she steals every scene she’s in, which isn’t an easy thing when you’re working with Vincent Price. Some people describe it as being “so bad it’s good”, but I think this one transcends any ordinary scale of quality; it just is. Angelo Rossitto plays a newsboy near the beginning, and that’s just another odd touch in a movie swimming with them.

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Dominique (1978)

DOMINIQUE (1978)
aka Dominique is Dead
Article 3339 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-19-2010
Posting Date: 10-5-2010
Directed by Michael Anderson
Featuring Cliff Robertson, Jean Simmons, Jenny Agutter
Country: UK
What it is: Revenge from beyond the grave…or is it?

A rich woman with frayed nerves believes her husband is trying to drive her crazy. Nonetheless, her loneliness and isolation get the best of her and she commits suicide. However, the shoe is on the other foot now, and the husband begins to see visions of his dead wife come back to haunt him…

The movie opens with a GASLIGHT-style scenario, and though I usually don’t care for this type of story, I like it here, largely because Jean Simmons doesn’t play up the fear as much as the frustration of knowing she’s being manipulated and the sadness of knowing that she is alone and has no one to turn to. Still, the GASLIGHT plot points are only a setup for the rest of the movie. The movie is underplayed, going for quiet chills rather than big scares, and I like that. Unfortunately, the movie never overcomes its major problem, and that is that it’s a little too obvious what is really going on, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of brain work to figure who is responsible. Furthermore, the husband himself is particularly dim in handling his situation; if I had encountered the piano playing itself as he did, I most assuredly know what I’d investigate if I suspected someone was trying to scare me. The most unexpected plot twist comes about two-thirds of the way in after the exhumation of a grave; I became really curious why an unexpected character was flipping out, but even then it didn’t take me too long to figure out what was behind that as well. Ultimately, the movie is a mixed bag; it’s half empty and half full, and how much you enjoy it depends on which half you concentrate on.

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The Seducers (1977)

THE SEDUCERS (1977)
aka Death Game
Article 3338 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-18-2010
Posting Date: 10-4-2010
Directed by Peter S. Traynor
Featuring Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp, Seymour Cassel
Country: USA
What it is: Psycho thriller

A successful businessman allows two lost women to come in out of a storm and use the phone. They seduce him, but then refuse to leave, and start playing mind games with him. He finally gets rid of them, but they won’t be gotten rid of that easily…

If I had to give an award for the most annoying movie I’ve seen for this whole series, this one would be the prime contender. It’s an exploitation-heavy psycho thriller, and the second half of the movie consists of little more than having the two insane women terrorize the captive man in any number of ways. What makes the movie almost unwatchable isn’t how scary these women are; it’s how annoying they are. Their lousy manners, constant giggling, bizarre and pretentious attitudes, and infantile behavior all come together not to make you feel the suspense of being terrorized by psychos but the grating twitchiness of having to supervise the world’s most obnoxious slumber party, where all the girls have had way too much sugar and just won’t go to sleep. Combine this with the decidedly freaky musical choices of the score, the overabundance of editing, and an aspiration towards inappropriate artiness that often renders individual scenes unintelligible, and you have a movie that wears out its welcome long before it’s over. Well, at least the ending is different, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t find it stupid. For exploitation fans who think nudity redeems everything only.

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Death at Love House (1976)

DEATH AT LOVE HOUSE (1976)
TV-Movie
Article 3337 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-17-2010
Posting Date: 10-3-2010
Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
Featuring Robert Wagner, Kate Jackson, Sylvia Sidney
Country: USA
What it is: TV-movie ghost story

A writer and his pregnant wife move into the mansion of a deceased Hollywood actress who had an affair with the writer’s father. Mysterious things begin happening. Could the actress be haunting the mansion?

There’s a couple of decent ideas in the basic story here, but a weak script, indifferent direction, and an overfamiliar approach to the story all conspire to make this one mediocre at best. I don’t know how often I’ve seen the basic scenario here; husband and wife move into new home, husband begins acting distant, detached and hostile, wife feels neglected, frightened and in danger of her life… really, you need something pretty striking to add to this mix to make this scenario compelling, and the movie never comes up with anything to do the trick. A few cameos from Joan Blondell, John Carradine and Dorothy Lamour add to the interest level a little, but the movie fails to follow up on some of its more interesting details, such as the stuffed cat that may keep reappearing as a living cat. In short, this is largely a tepid, uninspired TV-movie offering.

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The Day of the Dolphin (1973)

THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN (1973)
Article 3336 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-16-2010
Posting Date: 10-2-2010
Directed by Mike Nichols
Featuring George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere, Paul Sorvino
Country: USA
What it is: Science fiction thriller/drama

A scientist has learned to teach a dolphin how to talk, and is trying to keep the discovery a secret to keep his test subject from becoming the sensation of a media circus. Unfortunately, he encounters resistance from a nosy writer who blackmails his way onto the island where the experiments are conducted, and also from the company who is financing the experiments. Little does he know that he has even more to worry about…

You know, I try to keep my plot descriptions from giving away too much of the story, but sometimes I feel that it’s a lost cause, especially when every other plot description I’ve encountered of the movie and the actual tagline used in the advertising give away a plot point that doesn’t appear until eighty percent of the movie is over. Granted, I understand the logic of giving away that plot point; the advertising people have to try to sell the movie in the way they think will bring in the most viewers, and emphasizing the thriller aspects of this movie no doubt seemed like the best way to go about it. Still, I can imagine that early viewers, drawn by he advertising, might find the movie wastes an awful lot of time before it gets down to the meat of the story, and word of mouth would probably suffice to keep the movie from being a hit; it was a box office failure. But then, the thriller aspect of the story isn’t really the heart of the matter here; what really seems to matter to the makers of the film is the emotional bond that results between the scientist and the dolphin, and the thriller aspects of the story largely exist to drive the central characters into making some very difficult decisions concerning their relationships. Watch it for the thrills and you’ll be disappointed. Watch it for the emotional resonance and you’ll find it a lot more powerful. Good performances from George C. Scott, Paul Sorvino and Fritz Weaver help the movie quite a bit.

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Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973)
aka La tumba de la isla maldita
Article 3335 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-15-2010
Posting Date: 10-1-2010
Directed by Julio Salvador and Ray Danton
Featuring Andrew Prine, Patty Shepard and Mark Damon
Country: USA / Spain
What it is: Vampire flick

A man visits an island to bury his archaeologist father whose body is trapped beneath an ancient tomb. In order to retrieve his father’s body, he removes the seal of the tomb and releases a vampire who has been trapped inside for 700 years.

One of the alternate titles of this movie is HANNAH, QUEEN OF THE VAMPIRES, which makes for a handy title if you want to have an Andrew Prine double feature along with SIMON, KING OF THE WITCHES. I’ve heard tell that this movie had new footage added for its American release, but I’ve also heard that it had footage cut for the Spanish release. I’ve also heard that it’s in color, but my copy happens to be in black and white for some reason. The movie has a poor reputation, and I can understand that; it’s occasionally campy, often slow, and the structure is rather confusing at times. Yet, I was rather taken with it; the atmosphere was nice, it has some interesting story touches, the location footage from Turkey is interesting, and the final battle with the vampire is striking to say the least. No, it’s not a great movie, but I thought it worked well enough.

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Criminally Insane (1975)

CRIMINALLY INSANE (1975)
Article 3334 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-14-2010
Posting Date: 9-30-2010
Directed by Nick Millard
Featuring Priscilla Alden, Michael Flood, Jane Lambert
Country: USA
What it is: Serial killer movie

An overweight woman named Ethel with rage issues is released from a hospital to the care of her grandmother. When the grandmother tries to follow the doctor’s instructions to force Ethel to lose weight, Ethel flips out and kills her. She then finds herself having to continue her murderous rampage in order to keep herself fed and cover up the crimes.

I’ve encountered Nick Millard before as the director and writer of the extreme-low-budget SATAN’S BLACK WEDDING. This may be his most famous movie; at least it was famous enough that he felt compelled to make a sequel. It’s awful, but also fascinating; the concept of using gluttony as motivation for a serial killer is tasteless but also darkly comic, and the white-trash characters (Ethel’s sister is a nymphomaniac/prostitute who brings men into the home every night and makes out with her abusive regular lover in front of her sister) give the movie an interesting context in which the story works. It’s also complicated by the fact that Ethel is simply none too bright, and her inability to figure out how to dispose of the growing pile of bodies combined with her sloppiness will prove her undoing. The special effects are atrocious, and it makes some ill-advised stabs at artiness, but these just add somewhat to the fascination. It’s like some freaky cross between REPULSION and CANNIBAL MAN, and the ending twist has the air of inevitability given the setup, though I do have to admit that I had suspicions the story would eventually go in that direction. I have to admit that, as awful as it is, the movie more or less works, and I’ve seen plenty of much bigger-budgeted movies that don’t.

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The Cremators (1972)

THE CREMATORS (1972)
Article 3333 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-13-2010
Posting Date: 9-29-2010
Directed by Harry Essex
Featuring Maria De Aragon, Marvin Howard, Eric Allison
Country: USA
What it is: Alien invasion movie

People are being incinerated by a giant rolling ball of fire from outer space. A scientist tries to figure out what is going on.

The only name I recognized from the opening credits was for the original music; it’s none other than Bert I. Gordon favorite Albert Glasser. His music attempts to instill suspense and terror by blaring at you, and it’s not unlike having someone grab you by the shoulders and shake you while screaming “Be Scared! Be Scared!”, and your reaction is much the same; no fear, but a great amount of annoyance. But at least he’s out there trying to generate excitement when everyone else in the movie seems to be sleepwalking; the movie is unfocused, torpid, muddled, confusing and dull. It has a handful of nice effects (the wind blowing away the ashes of the incinerated people, the glowing rocks, the fireball rising from the water) which are then overused to the point where they too become boring. The movie was directed by Harry Essex, who worked on the scripts for IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, but this is much more similar to his previous directorial effort, OCTAMAN; in fact, it was probably the worst movie he ever worked on. Forgettable.

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Countess Dracula (1975)

COUNTESS DRACULA (1975)
Article 3332 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-12-2010
Posting Date: 9-28-2010
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Featuring Ingrid Pitt, Nigel Green, Sandor Eles
Country: UK
What it is: Hammer’s version of the Countess Bathory story

When an aging countess discovers that the blood of a chambermaid restores her youth, she has her own daughter kidnapped and proceeds to impersonate her, and she romances a young horseman. But she discovers that the youth she has regained is temporary, and so she must kill again…

This movie seems to be mostly famous as a vehicle for the beautiful Ingrid Pitt, and that is perhaps what it should be remembered for; it’s pretty difficult to take your eyes off of her or her costumes. Beyond that, I like the period flavor of the movie as well as the fact that it addresses the theme of class distinction at least marginally. Beyond these elements, though, I find this one of Hammer’s most forgettable movies, more interested in palace intrigue and soap opera than in horror. The plot is pretty predictable; I was in particular not surprised to discover who the final sacrifice victim was going to be. I’d have to rank this overall as one of Hammer’s most disappointing movies.

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Bug (1975)

BUG (1975)
Article 3331 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 8-11-2010
Posting Date: 9-27-2010
Directed by Jeannot Szwarc
Featuring Bradford Dillman, Joanna Miles and Richard Gililand
Country: USA
What it is: Killer bug movie

A small community is hit by an earthquake which opens a fissure from which emerge insects capable of lighting fires. A scientist from a local college investigates their nature.

This was William Castle’s last movie, though he did not direct; he produced and helped with the script. The movie doesn’t have a very high reputation, and I suspect that’s because the movie starts off in one direction and ends up going in another. The first half of the movie sets up the usual killer bug scenario, and at certain points it looks like it’s going to explore just how this community is effected by the arrival of the bugs in an interesting way. However, once it has been established that the insects in question carry the seeds of their own destruction (they are sluggish and unable to breed due to having come from an environment from much greater pressure), the movie veers off in a different direction when the scientist, driven to madness by the death of his wife at the hands (or is it legs) of the insects, becomes inexplicably obsessed with finding a solution to the insects’s breeding problem. The problem here is that you spend the last half of the movie watching the scientist behaving with truly reckless stupidity. Throw in some bizarre PHASE IV style plot elements (Ken Middleham served as insect director on both movies, as well as THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE), and a somewhat head-scratching ending with possible mystical overtones, and you end up with a movie that strains credibility. Still, I like that the movie pays a little more attention to details about the insects, which I suspect is from the original source novel; I also hear that the source novel doesn’t end at the same point as the movie does. Apparently, William Castle’s intended gimmick was to have it seem as if the bugs had invaded the theater, but I’m glad that he passed on the idea; I’m sure it would have backfired.

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