Horror Castle (1963)

HORROR CASTLE (1963)
aka La vergine di Norimberga
Article 2990 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-15-2009
Posting Date: 10-21-2009
Directed by Antonio Margheriti
Featuring Rossana Podesta, Georges Riviere, Christopher Lee
Country: Italy

A woman is brought to the ancestral home of her new husband, only to discover that there is a horrible family secret. Is it possible that the ghost of a family ancestor who practiced horrible tortures is active?

There are some problems with this Italian horror movie; the musical score is often either overbearing or inappropriate, and much of the running time is dedicated to trotting out some tired Italian horror movie cliches. However, this one has some real pluses; the backstory is quite original, and there’s a wonderful make-up job on display in the last half-hour of the movie. However, what makes it memorable is that it really delivers some strong horror jolts; the opening sequence is memorable, as is the first view of the hooded figure’s face. The real kicker, though, is a sequence involving rats in the middle of the movie that will definitely stick with you; it’s perhaps the most shocking moment in Italian horror cinema of the period. Though it’s not as good as Margheriti’s CASTLE OF BLOOD, it’s still a worthy shocker in its own right.

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High Plains Drifter (1973)

HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973)
Article 2989 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-14-2009
Posting Date: 10-20-2009
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Featuring Clint Eastwood, Verna Bloom, Marianna Hill
Country: USA

Fearing the arrival of three released criminals who were framed by them, the townspeople of Lago hire the services of a gunslinger who has wandered into the town. But the gunslinger has a secret agenda of his own. And furthermore, he’s no stranger to the town and its cowardly inhabitants…

Most attempts at horror westerns feel forced, as if the horror elements were grafted onto the western landscape and expected to live and breathe in a sort of artificial gravity. Not so this one. It works because it finds that crucial point where a western plot and a horror plot can intersect; really, it’s only a small step for revenge from this side of the grave to move over into revenge from beyond the grave. It also helps that Clint Eastwood has played men with no names in westerns before; it’s a bit of his western tradition, and it lends itself to a horror interpretation that also works well. Add to that the wicked gallows humor that permeates the story, and that the revenge is two-fold; not only do perpetrators of a murder need to be punished, but so do the cowardly townspeople who refused to help. What drives the plot is that the punishment must be different for these groups of people, and the elaborate way in which the townspeople must pay their penance is one of the compelling elements of the story. It’s also really nice to see midget Billy Curtis in a substantial and pivotal role here as one of the few townspeople who doesn’t become the target of the gunslinger’s wrath. And, of course, it’s really enjoyable to get a chance to cover a Clint Eastwood movie for this series in which he plays something other than a cameo role in a fifties science fiction movie.

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Exorcism (1975)

EXORCISM (1975)
aka Exorcismo
Article 2988 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-13-2009
Posting Date: 10-19-2009
Directed by Juan Bosch
Featuring Paul Naschy, Maria Perschy, Maria Kosty
Country: Spain

A woman gets possessed after taking part in a Satanic ceremony. A priest tries to exorcise her.

I’ve seen enough imitations of THE EXORCIST now to know what to expect from them. And I’ve seen enough Paul Naschy movies to know what to expect from them as well. In either case, the expectations are not high. So when I say this Paul Naschy rip-off of THE EXORCIST doesn’t live up to my expectations, I’m not saying I expected it to be as good as its model, but that it didn’t even meet the low expectations I went in with. Quite frankly, the first three-quarters of the movie are a muddled bore; it’s almost as if it doesn’t even want to be a horror movie, but a mystery, and not a good one at that. Oh, it throws in some nude cavorting at the Satanic mass, but for the most part, it’s talk, and not very interesting talk. The possession only really begins in the last reel, and that pretty much unfolds as you’d expect, though that’s not to say it’s effective. I can appreciate that the movie was trying to be low-key (which is something you don’t expect in a Paul Naschy film), but it ends up merely dull.

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Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965)

HERCULES AND THE PRINCESS OF TROY (1965)
TV-Movie
Article 2987 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-12-2009
Posting Date: 10-18-2009
Directed by Albert Band
Featuring Gordon Scott, Paul Stevens, Mart Hulswit
Country: Italy / USA

Hercules agrees to free Troy from a curse that requires the residents to sacrifice its maidens to a sea monster. However, he soon discovers that there are some Trojans who don’t want the curse lifted…

Those who can’t stand the bad dubbing and think sword-and-sandal movies are way too long may find this one more to their liking; since it was originally intended as a pilot for a TV series, it runs only 47 minutes, and the cast consists entirely of English-speaking actors. Gordon Scott had already appeared in a number of these types of movies in Italy, as well as having played Tarzan for several movies prior to that. The cast also features another veteran of sword-and-sandal films; that’s Gordon Mitchell as the pirate captain. All in all, it’s pretty much what you’d expect for a TV-series attempt at the genre, and the monster is one of the better ones out there for these movies. I suspect the idea of a Hercules TV-series would have flown better a few years earlier; by this time, the genre had burned itself out through an excess of product, and the trend was turning towards James Bond imitations. Besides, given the repetitive nature of the movies of the genre, I wonder if a series could have come up with a fresh plot for each episode, or fallen into formula (with, say, an evil queen every other week). We’ll leave Diogenes to figure out that question.

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Guru, the Mad Monk (1970)

GURU, THE MAD MONK (1970)
Article 2986 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-11-2009
Posting Date: 10-17-2009
Directed by Andy Milligan
Featuring Neil Flanagan, Jaqueline Webb, Judith Israel
Country: USA

A monk maintains a church on a small island used for the execution and punishment of criminals. The monk uses grave-robbing to supplement his income, keeps a hunchback as an assistant, and has a blood-drinking mistress who feeds on wanderers.

I’ve gone over Andy Milligan’s flaws before; the uneven acting, the bad sound, the unconvincing attempts at period trappings, cheap gore effects, lousy photography and the bad editing are all here. Nevertheless, this is one of Milligan’s better movies. At least part of this reason is that Neil Flanagan is a fairly decent actor, and he does what he can with the role of Father Guru, especially during a scene where his split personality comes out in a conversation with a mirror. Another reason is its short length; though it does get a bit confusing in the final reel, it isn’t long enough to lapse into complete incoherence, and you don’t end up wondering what just happened when the movie ends. Granted, I’ve only seen a cut 56-version of the movie; the longer version runs 62 minutes. It’s not good, by any means, but right now I do give it the award as the most watchable of Milligan’s movies.

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The Deadly Dust (1978)

THE DEADLY DUST (1978)
aka Spider-Man Strikes Back TV-Movie
Article 2985 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-10-2009
Posting Date: 10-16-2009
Directed by Ron Satlof
Featuring Nicholas Hammond, Robert F. Simon, Chip Fields
Country: USA

When some plutonium is stolen from a college lab by some college students, Spider-Man becomes a suspect of the robbery. However, when the students build an atomic bomb from the plutonium, it falls into the hands of a criminal organization. Can Spider-Man prove his innocence and retrieve the plutonium?

It’s nice to be able to follow up the pilot of “The Amazing Spider-Man” with the movie culled from the first two episodes of the series. I see they made a few changes to improve things a little; the character of Captain Barbera has been toned down considerably, and the actor playing J. Jonah Jameson has been replaced by Robert F. Simon, who plays it a lot closer to the Jameson I remember. It throws in a female reporter who is trying to get an interview with Spider-Man, but this does little more than give Peter Parker a few more complications and a hint of romance, neither of which really helps matters much. The story is rather weak, but it does get away a little from the rather tiresome wall-crawling that filled up much of the running time of the pilot. It looks like Robert Alda’s character was being primed to be a regular villain (especially as he escapes at the end of the movie), but it looks as if it was his only appearance in the series. At any rate, this is probably the last time I will touch upon the series, as I appear to have seen all of the episodes that were converted into movies from it.

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Spider-Man (1977)

SPIDER-MAN (1977)
TV-Movie
aka The Amazing Spider-Man
Article 2984 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-9-2009
Posting Date: 10-15-1009
Directed by E.W. Swackhamer
Featuring Nicholas Hammond, David White, Michael Pataki
Country: USA

After being bitten by a radioactive spider, a college student / photographer develops super powers. He uses them to do battle with an evil man who has developed a method of mind control.

I think some TV-series were launched with the hope that they would eventually kick in and find a home with the TV viewing audience even if the pilot wasn’t promising, and I suspect that was the hope when they decided to make “The Amazing Spider-Man”. I don’t think it was on the strength of this rather weak pilot. About the best thing I can say about this one is that the special effects are quite passable for a TV-series, and I do like the fact that Spider-Man here actually does seem like an spider at times as he scurries up and down the walls. What it lacks is compelling characters; Nicholas Hammond is quite bland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man, and David White never really gets into the spirit of J. Jonah Jameson, a role that could potentially have been a lot of fun. In fact, Michael Pataki’s Captain Barbera character seems to have more of a J. Jonah Jameson feel than Jameson himself; unfortunately, he chews the scenery overmuch, is given the worst dialogue of the movie, and is saddled with a comic relief sidekick. Like most super-hero TV shows of the era, it dispensed with the super-villains they faced in the comics in favor of more conventional action-adventure-TV-type villains, which I suspect was due to the fact that super-villains would have blown out the special effects budget. It’s watchable, I suppose, but hardly encouraging. Nonetheless, it did make it to a series, though not one that lasted very long.

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The Great Race (1965)

THE GREAT RACE (1965)
Article 2983 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-9-2009
Posting Date: 10-14-2009
Directed by Blake Edwards
Featuring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
Country: USA

At the turn of the century, a noted daredevil decides to hold a great automobile race from New York to Paris. However, his arch-rival, the nefarious Professor Fate, seeks to win the race by the foulest means possible.

I was a little surprised to see this childhood favorite of mine enter my hunt list, as I didn’t feel it fell within the bounds of the genres that I was covering, but it looks as if some of Professor Fate’s inventions do push the movie into marginal science fiction. I loved this one as a kid; in fact, I remember seeking out SOME LIKE IT HOT because it featured the same stars, though I ended up being very disappointed by that one (at that time, I must add). Still, knowing that this movie fell into that dubious category of “sixties epic comedies” made me dread a little watching it again as an adult. No, it’s not quite as much fun as I remember it; the laughs seem more than a little obvious nowadays, and, having seen the range of Jack Lemmon’s acting over the years, I have to admit that seeing him as such a stereotyped villain as Professor Fate left me feeling a little embarrassed. Yet, I think the movie more or less holds up, at least partially because the movie keeps itself focused and refuses to succumb to the excesses of, say, IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD. And it’s got a good cast, which includes, along with those listed above, Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn, George Macready, Larry Storch, Vivian Vance and Arthur O’Connell. Of course, it’s too long, and it’s really tempting to suggest they should have cut the whole “Prisoner of Zenda” sequence that dominates the second half of the movie. But I don’t have the heart, because on this viewing, truth to tell, I found it my favorite part of the movie; not only does it feature one of the funniest pie fights I’ve ever seen and perhaps the most memorable screen role for Ross Martin, but it also has the best comic performance in the movie – by Jack Lemmon, here stealing the movie from everyone (including himself) in a second role as the crown prince of Potsdorf. And the movie does have a nice sense of old time cinema and mellerdrammers, and even features a “follow the bouncing ball” sing-along. Still, for a movie that dedicates itself to Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy, I can’t help but wish the movie did a little better job at tapping into the comic genius of those two greats than it does. Still, I’m glad it held up for me.

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Godzilla vs Gigan (1972)

GODZILLA VS GIGAN (1972)
aka Chikyu kogeki meirei: Gojira tai Gaigan, Godzilla on Monster Island
Article 2982 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-7-2009
Posting Date: 10-13-2009
Directed by Jun Fukuda
Featuring Hiroshi Ishikawa, Yuriko Hishimi, Minoru Takashima
Country: Japan

A monster designer goes to work for a theme park, but his bosses turn out to have an agenda; they’re space aliens who plan to take over the earth with the help of two monsters, King Ghidorah and Gigan. Fortunately, Godzilla and Angilus are there to save the day…

If I were to choose the weakest of the Godzilla movies, this one would be close to the top of the list. Back when I covered DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, I expressed disappointment that they basically recycled the space aliens theme from MONSTER ZERO. This would turn out to be the most tired theme of the series, and here it is again, with the aliens being cockroaches in human form. The script is muddled and ridiculous, the special effects are at their nadir (the early shots of Gigan and Ghidorah are particularly bad, looking like they were no more than immobile toys), the English dubbing is extremely poor, and the movie is full of stock footage from earlier and better entries from the series. This is also the movie that made the mistake of giving Godzilla and Angilus human dialogue during a couple of the scenes, a poor idea even if they had anything of interest to say, which they don’t (incidentally, I have a collection of trailers from the Japanese editions of the movies, and it looks like in that version, they had dialogue balloons, which is certainly a more amusing idea). Much as I love the Godzilla movies, I find this one hard to sit through, though its follow-up, GODZILLA VS MEGALON, is just as bad. I consider this movie the nadir of the series.

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All the Colors of the Dark (1972)

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1972)
aka Demons of the Dead, Tutti i colori del buio
Article 2981 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-6-2009
Posting Date: 10-11-2009
Directed by Sergio Martino
Featuring George Hilton, Edwige Fenech, Ivan Rassimov
Country: Italy / Spain

After she loses her child in a car accident, a woman finds herself being stalked by a blue-eyed man. Is it just her imagination brought on by the trauma, or is she in real danger? Will a psychiatrist be able to help her, or will taking part in a ritual with a Satanic cult help her?

If there’s anything this movie made me realize, it’s that I really loathe movies in which a troubled woman spends practically the whole movie on the verge of a nervous breakdown because she is being continually terrorized. This is especially true when the movie never bothers to establish her as a real three-dimensional character; she’s just someone to be terrorized, and that’s all the movie is interested in doing. I know these movies are supposed to be really scary, but I don’t end up scared – I end up annoyed, and the fact that this Italian giallo is chock-full of bizarre stylistic touches, surreal dream sequences, and “is it real or a dream” themes doesn’t alleviate my annoyance; if anything, it just makes me aware that the director is pulling the manipulative strings. Granted, movies are a manipulative medium, but the best movies are ones that make you want to be manipulated, and this one doesn’t do that for me. At least the ending is good, though it really doesn’t hold up to close inspection when considering the movie as a whole. Nevertheless, I do feel the need to point out that my reaction to this movie may be based on a personal quirk. If you don’t share that quirk, and are fond of giallos, this one may be for you; it is supposed to be one of Sergio Martino’s better movies. Use your own discretion on this one.

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