131-3. Ninja Death I, II, & III

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131-3. Ninja Death I, II, & III (1987)
Director: Joseph Kuo
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

The story of Tiger, a brothel owner who’s the target of a ninja clan.

Happy New Year everyone. As a last-minute gift, here’s a triple-feature for you to enjoy over the holiday weekend that I can’t properly describe.

I really can’t and you can Google the movie for the technical reasons why. You can also just click on the title above which will take you to the IMDB page for the first part of the trilogy. I say “first part” because parts 2 & 3 don’t have pages. Other essays about this series wonder if it’s actually one movie, three movies, or something that was never finished or intended for distribution. Just to be clear about how much this trilogy makes me wonder if it’s an actual film, there are no credits—opening or closing—on any of these, each movie ends at a relatively random point, and the dubbing changes from American to British English 2/3rds of the way through the first movie only to switch back at the start of the second. I don’t know what this is as an industrial product.

All of that’s before we even get to the film (trilogy, movies?) itself which is completely bonkers. In the first five minutes, three men are protecting a woman with a baby from a horde of ninjas. The ninja master shows up, plucks out the eyes of one man, kicks another across the field, and the third runs away with the child only after the mother stabs herself in the stomach. Then we cut to a red background where various martial artists are demonstrating their styles and facing off against each other. I think this is supposed to be the opening credit sequence since the martial artists are the main characters and the sequence plays at the start of each of the three parts, but there are no credits. There’s never an official title card. Thereis never even any text on screen.

Cut to, as we come to learn, 18 years later. Tiger is the owner of a brothel trying to convince people to come in. This, naturally, allows for easy gratuitous nudity that is curiously limited to only this first portion of the movie. The second and third parts, while having sex scenes, avoid these kinds of full-frontal displays. A competing brothel, offering the “Japanese style,” opens nearby, but it’s actually run by Sakura and Fujiko, sister and brother who are ninja servants of the Grandmaster trying to get Tiger’s clothes off to see if his chest has a plum blossom tattoo marking him as the baby from the beginning.

Just typing that is making me go, “What is this movie?”

Tiger’s master (just called “Master”) is the head of the beggars and, once he learns about the new brothel, starts Tiger on an aggressive training regimen. The training montage is the strangest thing I think I’ve seen in these kung-fu movies: Tiger is suspended by ropes, forced to drink vinegar, and then poked all over his body by Master. Tiger then breaks his bonds, basically hulks out, and the beggars beat him with sticks. Later, Master spits snake blood on Tiger’s bruises and then hits them again with a stick. All of that’s just for starters.

The villain of the film is the ninja Grandmaster who controls a masked fighter, Devil Mask, by playing a flute which drives Devil Mask into a murderous rage. That’s really all you need to know about that.

None of this makes a lick of sense. There’s an extended flashback where Master is explaining ninjas to Tiger (don’t you remember when you had the ninja talk with your folks?) that has an extended sex scene in the middle of it. There’s even a homophobic running gag where Fujiko keeps trying to get Tiger’s shirt off to check for the tattoo leading Tiger to insist “no backdoor!”

Master instructs Tiger to find a blind fortuneteller, which Tiger puts no effort into, but stumbles across anyway when he gets into a fight with Fujiko on the street. The blind fortuneteller tells Tiger he’ll be protected by the plum blossom.

That night, Sakura breaks into Tiger’s room and sees the plum blossom tattoo on his chest. Normally it’s hidden, by which I mean “normally it isn’t there and inexplicably is right now and only right now,” so Sakura has sex with him since she’s pledged to be the servant of the plum blossom (?). Afterwards, he flees the room and goes in search of Master.

Meanwhile, the ninja attack the homeless encampment and the brothel, killing everyone except Master and Tiger. Master, it turns out, is a ninja himself and is trying to infiltrate someplace, but faces off against Devil Mask. Master tears Devil Mask’s sleeve revealing a plum blossom tattoo which makes Master realize he’s Devil Mask’s brother. The grandmaster uses his flute to force Devil Mask to attack Master and Master flees. Fujiko finds him, reveals that he actually works for Tiger’s mother, the princess, who hadn’t actually died, and that he’s seeking Tiger out because he’s an heir to the Japanese throne and instrumental to the princess taking revenge upon the grandmaster.

You get all that? Don’t worry. If you missed it, they’ll repeat it again at the beginning of parts 2 and 3, but using different language what actually implies other interpretations.

This is basically where part one ends. Tiger gets the backstory from Master about what led to the opening scene: Master is the man who fled with the child, the child was Tiger, Tiger’s father is Devil Mask, and the man who had his eyes plucked out is the blind fortuneteller. The Grandmaster is the man who, for inexplicable reasons, raised the three of them after massacring their town. Part two starts with exactly that scene again, Master tells Tiger not to fight Devil Mask, and then hits himself in the head to commit suicide to prevent Tiger and Fujiko from wasting time and energy helping him.

Then nothing of consequence happens for the rest of the trilogy. That seems glib, but all the craziness is in part one. Parts two and three focus on Tiger needing to train to face off against the grandmaster and nothing happens before the final battle. The one event that would be significant in any other movie happens in part two. Tiger is ambushed by ninja, jumps over a waterfall, and is helped by a young woman and her grandfather. Tiger’s feverish and delusional from ninja poison and, in his delirium, mistakes the young woman for Sakura and rapes her. Grandfather accepts Tiger’s explanation that he didn’t know what he was doing, but will only give him the antidote if he promises to marry the woman. Tiger agrees, but leaves immediately thereafter, promising in a note that he’ll return if he doesn’t die, but then ninja show up at the house and kill the grandfather and the young woman anyway.

Tiger never even mentions them again!

This isn’t a trilogy, this is one maybe three-hour movie that’s been cut into three parts. I just don’t know what the intended distribution platform was, though. Each part is 83/84 minutes which suggests they were intended for television broadcast, but there’s so much nudity and profanity in the first part that I can’t imagine they were hoping to have this on TV. But if it was intended for the home video market, you’d cut it into two maybe 100 minute parts and release them that way. Where did this thing come from?

Hopefully it’s obvious that this is garbage, but it’s fun garbage. The first part has so much absurd content and has the dubbing switch on top of that (which leads to my favorite delivery of the word “motherfucker” ever) that you can’t help by laugh. It’s an absurd delight. Parts two and three, while less energetic, are still filled with campy terribleness. Part two features Devil Mask tearing someone’s head off with his bare hands and then pulling someone else’s heart out and part three features a monologue by Tiger that has all the drama, pathos, and virtuosity of Dramabug.

Seeing as there’s no copyright information whatsoever, I’m guessing this is public domain and have uploaded all three parts to archive.org. You can enjoy it for yourself, but make sure you’re not alone. My goodness, it’s hilarious and absurd, but mind-melting if you’re trying to manage it solo.

129. Silent Night, Bloody Night and 130. Snowbeast

Once again, I can't get the essays up in time, but here are the films: a special solstice/holiday PD double-feature. Happy solstice to all of you as well as a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy Kwanzaa, and happy holidays in general. This is the season of long, dark nights and it can be easy to accept the lie that you are alone. You are not alone and I hope you're doing well at this time of year.

2018 EDIT: Hello future person! Obviously, these posts haven't been written in the two years since I watched the movies so it's probably no surprise for me to say now that they will not be written. Both movies are in the public domain and available on the Internet Archvie with me having personally added the MPEG-2 of Snowbeast. You can watch them and make up your own mind. In the meantime, please enjoy the other 342 reviews in the Misery Mill.

129. Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)
Director: Theodore Gershuny
Writers: Theodore Gershuny, Jeffrey Konvitz and Ira Teller from a story by Jeffrey Konvitz and Ira Teller
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org, Widescreen, Uncut


130. Snowbeast (1977)
Director: Herb Wallerstein
Writer: Joseph Stefano
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In
Watch: archive.org

127. The Giant of Metropolis and 128. The Legend of Bigfoot

Jump to The Legend of Bigfoot (1975)

127. The Giant of Metropolis (1961)
Director: Umberto Scarpelli
Writers: Sabatino Ciuffini, Ambrogio Molteni, Oreste Palella, Emimmo Salvi, and Gino Stafford. Additional dialogue by Umberto Scarpelli
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: archive.org

Obro travels to the scientifically advanced, but overly-proud capital of Atlantis carrying warnings of ill omens, but the leader Yoh-tar rebukes him and continues his project to overcome death.

A sword & sandal movie meets Star Trek and thus an odd duck. Strongman Obro is on a quest to Atlantis’ ultra-advanced capital, Metropolis, to deliver a prophecy of doom if the leader Yoh-tar doesn’t abandon his prideful pursuit of science over faith. Obro is immediately captured and pretty much becomes incidental to the film.

This isn’t uncommon to sword & sandal movies. In fact, one of the better qualities of these movies is the mixture of plots: the hero’s on a quest, the sidekick has their own adventure, and the villain gets plenty of screentime to explore their own tale. This, though, focuses almost entirely on Yoh-tar and his machinations. Obro is sidelined right at the start and is referred to more than he’s actually present. It’s sort of like a Hercules movie without Hercules.

But the homo-eroticism of sword & sandal movies is in full effect, as well! Yoh-tar is obsessed with Obro because Obro survived the death tornadoes Yoh-tar sent to kill the messengers. That means Obro’s body is of unique quality and Yoh-tar wants to test it to see if it’ll be a fitting vessel for the brains of his father and son.

Oh yeah. Part of Yoh-tar’s evil plan is to make his son live forever. More on that later.

So Obro faces various tests: he has a sweaty grappling contest with a large hairy man, has to fight a gang of five small men who attack him by covering him in hickeys, and finally is tortured by Yoh-tar by having to flex in a spotlight. You don’t have to dig for subtext here.

Meanwhile, Yoh-tar’s scientists—the people who’s information and genius have made Atlantis the sci-fi anomaly that it is—are telling Yoh-tar that there are strange cosmic events occurring as well as unusual activities at the Earth’s core that are threatening the city. Yoh-tar ignores them and tells them to keep working on the project to make his son immortal.

That’s Yoh-tar’s big plan: make his son live forever. The whole thing would work better as a plot point if Yoh-tar were either a bit more evil—he’s experimenting on his son to perfect the process for himself—or more devoted—he’s willing to sacrifice his city for love of his son. The movie doesn’t commit to either side, though, instead favoring the weaker trope of being blinded from faith by science.

I'm not projecting, that’s actually a line from the movie: “He’s not evil, he’s only blinded by science.” I’m always confused by plots that insist that empiricists are blind to what the world actually is. They’re empiricists—they base their decisions upon what’s observable. Consistently in these stories, and this movie’s no exception, their downfall comes because they, for sake of the plot, abandon their empiricism and then are destroyed by the results. Yoh-tar, who puts all his faith in science and the information it produces, is told by his scientists that disaster is coming and they need to evacuate. Instead of paying attention to their findings—the thing that’s made him an affront to God and thus needing to be taken down a peg—he ignores them and claims their doubts are all the fault of Obro’s “terrorism.”

Jesus, this is a vision of Trump’s America. The climax actually features a mob shouting “down with science.”

As you’d expect from the genre, the movie ends with the disaster destroying the city, but Obro, his love interest, and Yoh-tar’s son escape to form a new family. It’s not a terrible picture and it’s certainly interesting to see Flash Gordon-style sci-fi mixed with a Hercules-style sword & sandal flick, but the logic of the piece is pretty hard to pin down. That may be unsurprising considering it has six screenwriters—there isn’t a central logic to be pinned down. The movie is enjoyable in its silliness, though, and immediately open to camp pleasures. As a bonus, it’s in the public domain and I’ve added an MPEG2 to archive.org. It’s a middling recommend for a Saturday afternoon or beer & pretzel evening of riffing. Not very compelling beyond that.


128. The Legend of Bigfoot (1975)
Director: Harry Winer
Writers: Harry Winer and Paula Labrot
From: Drive-In; Chilling
Watch: archive.org

Documentary/pseudo-documentary by Ivan Marx about his years hunting for evidence of Bigfoot--including footage of the creature itself.

There’s little I can saw about the movie beyond the quick blurb. It’s mostly nature footage, and not bad nature footage, shot during the 1950’s and 60’s by hunter/tracker Ivan Marx. When it’s focused on his time as a tracker and naturalist making a life for himself in the national parks, it’s pretty interesting. I won’t say I was above chuckling when he said he’d built a home for himself called “Bear Ranch” (I’m sure there’s a leather bar in Montana with the same name), but it was neat seeing his wife taking care of the animals who lived on the ranch with them and how they lived in general. Likewise, Marx talking about the job that initially got him interested in Bigfoot is more compelling than the cryptozoology rabbithole he ends up going down.

Marx is sent to Kodiak, AK to hunt down a bear that local farmers say has been killing their cattle. When he arrives, the farmers tell him it’s not a bear, but Bigfoot. Marx figures out that the cows have actually been eating waterlogged grass that’s causing them to die. The rational explanation is the more interesting and, frankly, surprising one. Had the movie followed that path of noting stories people were telling about Bigfoot and then presenting the reality, I’d have been more involved, but that wouldn’t have sold nearly as well.

So Marx starts noting all the times he hears about Bigfoot and then he sees the creature himself and even gets footage of it! It’s hilariously bad footage of someone in a full-body fursuit, but, sure, it’s Bigfoot. Marx notes that his footage was stolen by scientists who then profited from it by touring it around the country and making fun of him. I’d suggest hints of ICP and “scientists are liars,” but it’s something I’ve seen every time I look into the cryptozoological/paranormal/conspiracy community: people who've spent years studying the subject being discusses and then fail to be convinced by bad evidence are the truly ignorant.

Anyway, Marx continues to search for Bigfoot, following every lead he can until he manages to get footage of a Bigfoot family. It’s whatever. The movie’s done well-enough as a collection of nature footage including a dramatic scene of squirrels reacting to one of their own getting stunned by a car, but its argument isn’t compelling unless you already believe. There’s fun to be had, though. It’s riffable, yes, but probably more useful as raw material to be cut together in some other project. The film’s in the public domain and I’ve added an MPEG2 to archive.org. There’s also an extended special edition here with ten additional minutes.

If you’re into cryptids, this is a seminal doc. If you want some nice nature footage to cut into something else, this is a pretty good resource. Apart from that, it’s a touch dull.

125. Crypt of the Living Dead and 126. 984: Prisoner of the Future

Jump to 984: Prisoner of the Future (1982)

125. Crypt of the Living Dead aka Hannah, Queen of the Vampires aka La tumba de la isla maldita (1973)
Directors: Julio Salvador, Ray Danton
Writers: Julio Salvador from a story by Ricardo Ferrer. US version: Lou Shaw from a story by Lois Gibson
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

A man traveling to a remote island town to bury his father is tricked into unsealing the tomb of a vampire.

Open on a mad monk giving a soliloquy to, what we learn, is the vampire that’ll start massacring the town later, and a constipated-looking Brit walking through an abandoned church at night with his gun drawn. Why he has a gun or what he fears, I could not tell you, but he’s quickly spooked by a hermit, falls through a hole into a crypt, and is killed by the monk. The monk and hermit then position the body under the sarcophagus in the tomb and knock the legs out so it crushes the man.

The man’s son, Chris, comes to the island to bury his father and is picked up by Peter, the very man who murdered his father. Turns out Chris’ father was an archeologist investigating old cults on the island and Peter was helping him by making connections with the superstitious townspeople. When Peter shows Chris the tomb and the body, Chris decides to have the sarcophagus opened to see what his dad was looking for.

Yada yada, Chris meets Peter’s sister, Mary, who’s the town’s English teacher and they fall in love because it’s 1973 and you have to work nudity in somehow. They open the sarcophagus, Hannah, the vampire queen (not to be confused with Marceline) is revealed, and each night wanders the village killing people. Chris is initially skeptical, but, for some reason changes his mind and seeks to reseal the crypt. Peter has beaten him to it, though, by sabotaging the equipment and preventing Hannah from getting locked in again.

The inevitable showdown arrives: Peter ties Mary up in the crypt as a sacrifice to Hannah promising that they’ll both live forever as Hannah’s servants. Chris arrives, they fight, Peter gets stabbed in the leg and while Chris and Mary are escaping, Hannah eats Chris and then he’s staked by the townspeople. Hannah and Chris end up fighting on a clifftop where she gets set on fire, falls over the cliff, and, still not dead, gets staked. This part was legitimately funny.

In the end, Chris buries his father, leaves the island with Mary, and two little kids, seen earlier in the film being told not to play in the graveyard, go off to a corner to be creepy and it’s implied that Hannah lives on in the little girl.

This is a Spanish/American co-production and when you have two directors and four writers working on two different versions of a film, you’re guaranteed a bit of a mish-mash. This is a film that really wants to be gothic and serious, but comes off as a low-grade Paul Naschy wannabe. It’s just so slow. Peter being a betrayer setting up the whole thing is an interesting element—I won’t say “twist” because the movie doesn’t try to keep it a secret—but it’s never used to much effect. He never seems to be scheming and, when he’s dressed in his robes as a servant of Hannah, he seems like a different character. I wondered if I was confusing two similar-looking characters. That may be a translation issue. Maybe in the Spanish version he’s explicitly possessed and so is actually two personalities.

On top of that, Hannah’s not a villain. She’s the big bad, but gets no lines, has no real presence, and doesn’t come across as the threat. It’s like the movie forgot to have a bad guy—Peter’s too small and achieves his goals to early. Releasing Hannah should be a big third act moment, but it happens relatively early so Hannah has to be the threat. Only she doesn’t talk or engage with anyone. So what’s the point?

Clearly, I was disappointed. Ultimately, nothing about the movie grabbed me even though there are opportunities for riffing. I’m not sure if it’s PD. It looks like it has a valid copyright notice, but may not have been renewed or I may be misreading it. Because I can’t say, I’m not adding an MPEG to archive.org. There are, though, three versions there at present if you want to see it. I’ve linked to the “uncut color” version. Mine, and the other two, are black and white, although they appear to be three minutes longer than the “uncut” version. Mysteries abound, just not in this film.



126. 984: Prisoner of the Future aka The Tomorrow Man(1982)
Director: Tibor Takács
Writers: Peter Chapman and Stephen Zoller
From: Sci-Fi Invasion

In a dystopian future, a former corporate leader is subjected to psychological torture to force him to admit to crimes against the state.

We open with Tom Weston (not Winston), the titular Prisoner 984 (not 1984), being browbeaten in voiceover and told to confess to his criminal affiliations. Then his robot guards throw him into his cell where he pulls out the secret journal he’s been keeping just outside the view of the guards and

19-984, but not 1984, nope, new thing.

It’s 1984. I mean, they don’t want you to think this is 1984 cause that’d be cheap, awful, and hacky, but it’s 1984. Certainly they’re trying to invoke visions of the dystopian classic by naming the prisoner Weston (not Winston) and “984,” but in their defense, the movie was initially titled The Tomorrow Man. In fact, that’s how it’s listed in the end credits.

And the movie never rises above its heavily-cribbed-from source material. Rather than any broader view of the dystopian society that 1984 offered, this is exclusively Room 101 and the tortures and manipulations that went on there. So 984 is tortured—physically and psychologically—and then taken to speak to the Warden who wants him to confess to some unspecified crime.

We do get occasional flashbacks to the run-up to 984’s confinement and they’re pretty hilarious. At its core, this is a weird little piece of 80’s yuppie propaganda that presents the horrible threat of a liberal being elected and making corporations pay their fair share of taxes.

Yes, this is Wal-Mart’s nightmare vision of a Sanders’ presidency.

The flashbacks reveal Weston’s life before the election: he does vague business on a computer which makes him lots of money, he has an affair with a random woman that climbs into his car, he sneers at the ignorance of the “blue” shirts that support the liberal candidate, and he stays silent as his friend invites him into a conspiracy of other business owners who have obtained suitcase nukes to use in terrorist attacks to disrupt the president.

Remember, the liberals are the Nazi villains here, not the smug businessmen plotting nuclear terrorist attacks if they have to pay taxes.

That’s our hero: a co-conspirator in a nuclear attack on his own country. Suffice it say he doesn’t come across as sympathetic by the end as the producers intend.

So he resists the will of the Warden because Weston is a strong businessman right out of an Ayn Rand novel and can’t be broken by weak liberalism. This goes on for a decade. The one surviving guard finally lets Weston go, but Weston finds he can’t escape the facility. Instead he learns the entire place was built for him and houses a massive computer system that both monitors everything he does and created the voices of the other prisoners he was talking to. It’s like a reverse Truman Show. He returns to his cell, manages to climb to the one window, and finally sees the outside world:

A lifeless post-nuclear landscape created by his friends’ plot. The good guys, remember. The good guys nuked the world the avoid EPA regulations.

He dies while looking out the window at the world he made, laughing in madness and despair. Our hero.

This one is real stupid, and a little fun for that very fact. The conservatism of the film is pretty clear and you can feel that sense of indoctrination at work. The producers really wanted to vilify those who opposed the Reagan/Thatcher regimes and those regimes attendant authoritarianism. Typical politics—accuse your opponent of exactly what you do. While it’s a little dry in terms of content, it’s not completely unwatchable. The director also did The Gate, which I haven’t seen, but have heard good things (RedLetterMedia’s Re:View), so there is some competence at work. And the movie’s so campy, so riffable, because it’s so serious. The liberal gets elected and there’s an immediate fascist crackdown on yuppies which forces them to all become nuclear terrorists. That’s Reefer Madness-level stupid.

The movie’s not PD, but it’s not hard to find either. I can’t give it a full recommend, but there are ways to enjoy it. So get some friends and some beers and see what Paul Ryan’s nightmares look like.

123. Hands of a Stranger and 124. House of the Living Dead

Jump to House of the Living Dead (1974)

123. Hands of a Stranger (1962)
Director: Newt Arnold
Writer: Newt Arnold
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

A concert pianist loses his hands in a car accident, but has new hands transplanted from an unknown man. As he tries to heal, he finds himself slowly heading down the path of madness.

This is one of the early movies to explore the tropes of the “bad body,” most ably parodied in The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror IX” segment, “Hell Toupée.” There, Homer gets a scalp transplant from Snake and ends up being possessed. Here, that threat is raised, but doesn’t quite manifest.

We open with a man getting gunned down in the street. Who he is or why he’s targeted is never made clear, but his hands won’t quit. Even after getting shot, they climb up the lamppost and won’t let go. All the surgeons trying to save his life and even the cop assigned to the case note how strong his hands are. Despite their best efforts, though, he dies.

Meanwhile, across town, piano virtuoso Vernon Paris is finishing his most important concert to date. He takes a cab to the afterparty, but there’s an accident while the driver is trying to show Vernon a picture of his kid. Vernon ends up at the same hospital as the first victim, but his hands are completely destroyed. The head surgeon, Dr. Gil, decides to attempt a radical hand transplant.

The surgery’s a success, they wait a long time before telling Vernon what happened, and he’s outraged once he learns the truth. His hands work as well as can be expected, but he’s no longer the brilliant pianist he once was (almost as though he hasn’t moved his hands for 8 weeks and still needs to undergo physical therapy. Oh wait, that’s literally his situation).

Things proceed. The doctor and Vernon’s sister start falling in love, Vernon visits people he knew before the accident and people he blames for the accident, accidentally killing people both times. The doctor and sister try to convince him to accept his situation—namely that he’s healing and will be able to play again if he’s patient—and he instead accepts a sociopathic desire to kill. He takes out the two doctors who assisted Dr. Gil and then tries to kill Gil at the concert hall where he played his final show. As he’s choking the doctor, the cop who’s been checking in with Gil throughout the movie pops up out of nowhere and shoots Vernon in the back.

All in all, the movie’s pretty all right, not great, but not terrible either. It walks that fine line of being appreciable on its own merits and on purely camp grounds. The movie has the elements of a thriller, but is played like a melodrama with every actor giving broad performances and shouting out exclamatory dialogue about! how! they! feel! It’s delicious.

As I said, though, it stands on its own merits as well. The movie is tightly plotted, manages to keep all characters present, and is pretty well-composed. It even invokes the trope of the over-ambitious surgeon pushing the bounds of medical science a la The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, but paints that as a noble pursuit. It also sidestepped the cheap plot of him being possessed by his hands and instead played it as him being a narcissist sliding into depravity. The tipping point happens at a carnival in a sequence that is both unintentionally funny and legitimately well-composed.

So this is a recommend, almost just on the level of being a curiosity. It’s okay as a movie with some obvious artistic touches as well as being a riffable campy delight. What makes it curious is that it manages both at the same time—I was constantly laughing while thinking, Well done.

This movie is in the public domain and I’ve added an MPEG-2 version to archive.org here.



124. House of the Living Dead aka Curse of the Dead (1974)
Director: Ray Austin
Writers: Marc Marais from a story by John Brason
From: Cult Cinema

A young woman travels to her fiancé's plantation in colonial South Africa only to find herself trapped in a Gothic nightmare including a mad scientist hiding in the attic.

The movie starts promisingly enough, for those seeking campy pleasures, with good old-fashioned monkey torture. A man in a black robe, in broad daylight, in the middle of a vineyard, has trapped a monkey and is forcing it into a bag. He ducks behind one of the plants (which doesn’t hide him at all) as someone rides by on a horse. He then runs off with the monkey. Cut to the monkey on a table having experiments done on its brain. I was anticipating the most delicious trash at this point, but the movie’s all downhill from there.

The house is run by the final members of the Brattling family: Michael who runs the plantation, his brother Breck conducting unholy experiments, and their mother who is encouraging Michael to break off his engagement with Mary Anne so that the family line and all its evil can finally die. That, by the way, is an interesting element. Oftentimes these faux-Gothic pieces will have the evil mother disapproving of a match because of greed or some Oedipal element. Here, she says the family is evil and needs to die.

No matter, though, because six weeks later Mary Anne arrives. She learns from a doctor who traveled with her that Breck had a terrible accident with a horse and is now an invalid. Also, that he was exploring a theory that the soul could be isolated from the body and contained. My suspicion at this point: Breck has swapped bodies with Michael.

Anyway, this is thirty minutes into the movie. Up to this point, Michael had been the central character. Now it’s Mary Anne being frightened by seeing Breck prowling the grounds at night even though he’s confined to his room in the attic. There are some pretensions to Gothic tropes—hooded figures walking around, spooky music, rioting townspeople, but nothing that builds to anything or carries any weight.

In the final half-hour, the doctor becomes the main protagonist investigating the goings-on at the house. He realizes that Breck is still alive and rushes back to the house to warn Mary Anne. Mary Anne, though, is already being attacked by Breck. Turns out he and Michael were identical twins and it’s been Breck she’s been talking to the whole time—Michael died in the horse accident six weeks prior. Breck has sucked Michael’s soul into a bottle and is planning to add Mary Anne’s to it. After he’s strapped her to the table, the doctor arrives, Breck tries to attack him, but accidentally breaks the bottles holding souls. The newly-released spirits attack Breck and drive him over a balcony where he dies. The End.

There’s no mystery, tension, or invention to the piece so there’s nothing engaging about it. The big problem is that the story’s about Mary Anne who doesn’t appear until the film’s 1/3 of the way done. So the movie spends thirty minutes setting up its story, and then basically resets to do all that work again. In the end, it’s dull, uninspired, and trying to jump on the “Living Dead” bandwagon because, why not? It’s not like there’s anything else at play in the piece. This appears to have a valid copyright, but it’s not worth hunting down regardless, so no big loss.

121. Battle Beyond the Sun and 122. Jive Turkey

Jump to Jive Turkey (1974)

121. Battle Beyond the Sun aka The Sky Calls (1959)
Directors: Mikhail Karzhukov, Aleksandr Kozyr, and Francis Ford Coppola
Writers: Mikhail Karzhukov, Evgeniy Pomeshchikov, and Aleksey Sazonov
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: archive.org

After the Great Atomic War, the two major world powers are racing to be the first ones to land on Mars. Their missions, though, encounter unexpected problems.

We should probably start by noting this was originally a Russian film with both the expected Soviets vs. Americans angle and a legitimately hard sci-fi aspect. Roger Corman bought the rights to the American version and handed it over to Francis Ford Coppola to make it more America-friendly. This meant 1: removing the politics and 2: adding space monsters. The end result, unsurprisingly, is a bit of a mish-mash.

The opening is narration so long that it continues over the first actual scene of the movie. The narrator is blathering on about the space program while we see footage of models of space vessel prototypes. Then the movie starts with characters talking about something, but we never hear it because the narrator isn’t done yet. I was hoping the majority of the film would be narrated a la The Creeping Terror, but no luck. We do get the backstory, though, of the Great Atomic War that wiped all the nations out. Now it’s the villainous Northern Hemisphere vs. the curiously pale Southern Hemisphere in the far off future year of 1997.

The South’s secret Mars mission is docked on the space station when they get a distress call from a Northern ship requesting permission to land and make repairs. They accept their Northern neighbors as guests, but the North figures out what the South’s mission is and leaves early hoping to beat the South to Mars, despite receiving direct orders not to.

Their ship fails en route and starts drifting into the sun and the Southern ship picks up the North’s distress signal. The South save the Northern crew, but use up all their fuel doing so. They land on an asteroid and try to send a message back to the base.

The base sends a fuel rocket that crashes before it can reach them and then another, this time with a pilot. He lands on the asteroid and, while looking for the stranded crew, sees two alien monsters fighting—the element Coppola added. According to Wikipedia, “Coppola's idea was that one monster would look like a penis and the other a vagina.” I’d include a screenshot, but they all came out too dark. However, it’s clearly visible when watching the movie and, if you were told beforehand, as you have been now, you can see it. The more I learn about Coppola, the more I keep saying, “and he made The Godfather” with curious incredulity.

Whatever. Astronaut dies but signals the crew as he does, and they all return home to a hero’s welcome even though they didn’t complete their mission. The narrator returns to say it’s bravery like theirs that will end up moving science forward and yadda yadda yadda. END.

Truth be told, this movie wiped me out several times. I kept falling asleep, rewinding, and falling back asleep. It’s kind of fun in its translation errors—the villains don’t work as villains unless you think of them as the conniving enemies and the heroes as the noble us, “enemies” and “us” being, as always, relative terms, and even then that just ups the camp factor.

The original Russian version, according to Wikipedia, was in fact a long dream sequence and so faced its own narrative problems. The biggest issue is that it’s still a little too close to pure sci-fi: rather than a character or plot being central to the story, the “What if” question is central, here being “How could a mission to Mars go wrong?” Interesting enough, but nothing here carries dramatic weight so the movie just putters along for most of its running time.

There is fun to be had: it’s easily mockable and I’d love to see someone do an entirely new dub in the style of Dr. Chuck Tingle. The movie’s in the public domain and I’ve added an MPEG-2 copy to archive.org here. That’s probably the best way to think of it—not so much as a piece of entertainment, but as raw material for other projects.


122. Jive Turkey aka Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes(1974)
Director: Bill Brame
Writers: Fredricka DeCosta from a story by Howard Ransom and Elizabeth Ransom
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In

In 1956, Pasha, head of the numbers racket in his African-American neighborhood, is facing pressure from the Italian mob to hand over control of his empire. He’s been told a hit’s been placed on him and that he has a traitor in his organization. Pasha needs to shore up his power before it’s too late.

An unintentional Turkey Day reference to celebrate Thanksgiving. The movie follows crime boss Pasha over the course of several days as he runs his empire. You’d think there’d be some dramatic tension or a looming threat, but there really isn’t despite movie’s nods to some.

We open with Pasha meeting mafia crime boss Tony. The two grew up together and entered their respective fields at the same time. The mafia handles drugs, Pasha handles the numbers game, and each stays out of the other’s racket. Only the drug profits are drying up and the mob wants a cut of Pasha’s numbers game. Pasha refuses, but is told by Tony, because they go back so far, that someone’s put a hit on Pasha and there’s a traitor in his organization.

Meanwhile, the mayor is up for reelection and he wants an easy moral target to focus public outrage on to help his campaign. He chooses the numbers game, sets the cops on a mission to take down Pasha, and never comes up in the movie again.

The third plot line comes up when local kid Nathan shows up in Pasha’s office demanding his winnings for hitting the numbers and Pasha starts grooming Nathan to be part of his empire by asking one of his top numbers men, Sweetman, too keep an eye on him.

The movie plays out from there without much action or consequence. There’s a bit of the feel of a picaresque of Pasha checking in with every part of the community and his empire, there’s a sense of him preparing his replacement by having a specific numbers man follow him from place to place, and of course the cat-and-mouse of both the cops and the mob trying to take him out. None of it carries any weight, though.

Pasha has someone on the inside of the police, warning him about upcoming raids so he’s never caught flat-footed, and the mob’s efforts to kill him never feel like they’re a primary concern for any of the characters. Even the presence of the mole doesn’t get much attention until the very end of the film where he's revealed by Pasha having him executed.

The Nathan plotline feels like it’s the one that’s supposed to have some moral resonance—he’s a young man single-handedly raising his younger siblings, promising that he’s going to get them out of the neighborhood. Then he’s killed by the mob. I’d feel worse about his death if the actor weren’t so terrible. All the acting, outside of Pasha and Tony really, is hilariously awful.

Anyway, Nathan’s death enrages Pasha and he has a final one-on-one with Tony. Tony admits that he’s always hated Pasha because he was so "uppity" and "refused to know his place." They play a rigged game of Russian Roulette (Tony has sabotaged the gun so it won’t fire), and then Pasha beats him to death.

The movie ends with Pasha preparing to flee the country, but saying goodbye to friends in one of his nightclubs. He also reveals that he’s known who the mole is the entire time and has him killed. Final shot is Pasha laughing.

So not a lot going on in this movie, or, at least, not a lot that has consequence within the movie itself. I didn’t even mention Serena, the psychopathic hitwoman that works for Pasha and brutally murders his enemies. Secret twist: she’s a transvestite and was a man the whole time. Her final scene is getting a light from a car full of mobsters waiting to kill her, but they don’t recognize her without her make-up.

There are some camp pleasures here. It’s a pretty generic blaxploitation film so you can laugh at the clichés: the man trying to get out of the game, “drugs in the community,” and of course the music whose lyrics I cannot quote here. The acting, as I said, is really bad, such that every dramatic moment becomes a joke. Finally, there are the grim gags that were probably pretty grim even back then, like the black lawyer responding to Pasha’s demands that he get one of Pasha’s men out of prison immediately. “They wouldn’t kill him! This is 1956.” Oof.

Overall, it’s all right--not awful, not great. It made me appreciate Black Dynamite that much more, honestly, which isn’t nothing. I’m not sure about its copyright status. There’s a copyright logo at the end of the film that looks legit, but there’s a Mill Creek Bug throughout, which they only seem to do on PD films. A light Googling will find it for you regardless, so you can decide if it’s to your tastes or not.

119. Eternal Evil and 120. I Bury the Living

Jump to I Bury the Living (1958)

119. Eternal Evil aka The Blue Man (1985)
Director: George Mihalka
Writer: Robert Geoffrion
From: Cult Cinema
Watch: archive.org

A man experimenting with astral projection starts to fear that he’s murdering people, but there might be something even more sinister at work.

Paul is a commercial director who’s become dissatisfied with his life. His company is running well, but he’s abandoned his dream of being a film director to make commercials he hates. After meeting Janus, he begins to explore astral projection because of the thrill it gives him. He tells his psychologist about it, but the doctor brushes him off. That evening, the doctor sees a ghost and is killed by it.

At home, Paul has a strained relationship with his wife, Jennifer, and is frustrated by his son, Matthew, waking up throughout the night. Matthew keeps seeing a form he calls “the blue man” that’s telling him to do things. The family goes to Jennifer’s father’s house that Paul had previously visited while astral projecting. That time, he was seen by both his father-in-law and the dog and is attacked by the dog on this visit.

Meanwhile (honestly, this whole movie could be summed up with “meanwhile”), the police are investigating the psychologist’s death because, even though he died from a heart attack, it looks like he exploded from the inside—all his organs are shredded and his ribs are all broken facing out.

Stuff happens, Paul talks to Janus about how he’s worried that he can’t control his projections and may be hurting someone, his father-in-law visits to tell Paul about seeing him as a ghost and then the father-in-law is killed, cop starts investigating Paul and gets a lead on Janus as well which leads him to watching Paul’s only film, Wandering Souls.

Wandering Souls is a documentary about astral projection where Paul meets a couple who claims to be able to use astral projection as a means of soul transference—as they approach death, they find a new vessel to possess. They work to make that person suicidal and then release the soul and replace it with their own.

So now, more than halfway through the movie, the actual plot emerges. It’s not about Paul, who’s a dick, killing people through astral projection; it’s actually about these “soul vampires” using him while preparing for new bodies.

The soul vampires force Matthew to drink varnish which distracts his mom enough for them to kill her. Paul, now close to despair, figures out that everything has been engineered by Janus, who’s one of the soul vampires, and goes to kill her. The cop figures it out at the same time. They meet, fight briefly, and Paul goes to face Janus alone. She’s about to possess him when the cop walks in. He shoots the other soul vampire and, as Janus is about to attack the cop, Paul shoots her in the head.

Epilogue: a few months later. Paul has sold his company and is getting ready to make movies again and the cop has quit the force and started traveling. Cut to the cop in Japan writing Paul a postcard which he signs Janus. TWIST!

Yeah, it sucks. The movie’s slow, the plot doesn’t make sense, and the main character is a dick. On top of all that, the dramatic moments are scored by what sounds like a choir going, “Weo-weo-weo” as loud as they can. It’s not that it’s a bad idea—a psychological thriller built around astral projection—it’s just that the movie never pulls it off. The fact that it takes more than half the film to introduce the actual threat is a big mistake and it doesn’t help that the cop manages to figure things out because the script needs him to. It’s not even particularly cheesy so there aren’t a lot of riffing opportunities. This is one I’d definitely give a pass.

The movie, however, is in the public domain. Mill Creek smeared their logo feces across my copy, but there's a version available at the Internet Archive.


120. I Bury the Living (1958)
Director: Albert Band
Writer: Louis Garfinkle
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org

A newly appointed cemetery director comes to believe that by switching the pins on a map of graves from "reserved" to "filled" he causes the death of the owner of the plot.

A late black & white era piece that’s pretty competently done. Local department store owner, Robert Kraft, is put in charge of the cemetery. Even though he’s busy with other work, it’s his turn and such jobs are the responsibility of the leading businessmen of the community. When he arrives, Andy, the groundskeeper, gives him the tour, ending with the map of all the plots. Those marked with a white pin are reserved, those with a black pin are filled. Robert then instructs Andy to start looking for a new groundskeeper—Andy’s been working for forty years and the company wants him to retire with a full pension.

It’s a quick set-up leading to the actual plot of the movie: initially, Robert mistakenly reserves a few plots with black pins and, on the respective nights, those people die. While he gets nervous, the people around him insist it’s impossible and force him to swap other pins leading to more deaths. At a final moment of stress, after seven deaths and the police tricking him into swapping the pin of a man currently out of the country, Robert switches the pins he’d initially placed with white ones and, the next morning, finds those graves empty.

He returns to the cemetery office about to kill himself when the phone rings. It’s the wife of the man abroad reading Robert a telegram announcing the man’s death. As he hears it, Andy enters, covered in grave dirt, and says it’s impossible. Andy killed all the people to get revenge against Robert for forcing him to retire—a man without a job isn’t a man at all. Robert starts to convince Andy that it wasn’t Andy’s doing, it was some unexplained power within Robert that actually forced his hand. As Andy starts hearing sounds, he panics and believes that the bodies he’s dug up have actually come back to life and are trying to break into the office. As the police break in, Andy dies of a heart attack. Robert is absolved and reunited with his fiancée.

I watched this movie the last time I tried to work my way through these sets, and I remember it standing out. It’s not lavish or overly-ambitious—indeed, it keeps itself bound to just a few small sets and a very small cast—but the movie doesn’t feel restrained, it feels straightforward. It’s pretty short, 76 minutes, and does feel like it lacks a little bit of incident. The movie limits itself to Robert starting to believe he has these powers and being very disturbed by them, but it doesn’t take it much beyond him or the confines of the cemetery office. That said, I liked its focus and I liked the performances.

This film appears to be in the public domain and I uploaded a copy to archive.org here back in early 2014. I don’t know why, but this feels like a very winter movie, like it’s supposed to be enjoyed on a snowy Sunday afternoon with popcorn and hot chocolate. It’s an all right flick on its own and offers lots of opportunities for riffing as well. I recommend giving it a peek.

117. Shock and 118. The Alien Factor

Jump to The Alien Factor (1978)

117. Shock (1946)
Director: Alfred L. Werker
Writers: Eugene Ling from a story by Albert DeMond, additional dialoge by Martin Berkeley
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In
Watch: archive.org

A psychiatrist who’s murdered his wife has the only witness committed to his sanitarium so he can try to convince her she imagined the whole thing.

Janet Stewart checks into a San Francisco hotel to meet her husband, Lt. Stewart, finally returning from the war after two years in a POW camp. She hasn’t had word about him the entire two years and doesn’t even know if he’s injured or not. While waiting for him to arrive, she overhears an argument outside. When she looks, she sees Dr. Cross (Vincent Price) murder his wife. Lt. Stewart arrives the next morning to find her in a state of shock.

The hotel calls in the service of a psychiatrist who happens to be staying there and it’s none other than Dr. Cross! He does a preliminary exam and then, after getting details from the Lt., suspects Janet witnessed the murder. He suggests the Lt. admit her to the sanitarium Dr. Cross runs.

Things inevitably escalate. Cross learns that she did see the murder, he tries to convince her it’s just a delusion, events in the sanitarium convince the other doctors that Cross is right, Janet tries to get out but isn’t believed, and Cross keeps weighing his options while his mistress starts to advocate murder.

Mrs. Cross’ body is found near Cross’ vacation lodge and it’s assumed she fell over a cliff while walking at night. However, the police catch a cat burglar in the area and suspect he may have killed Mrs. Cross. The exhume the body and determine that she was murdered with a candlestick. While they suspect the burglar, Cross decides too much of the truth has come out and decides to kill Janet.

He’s going to put her into a state of shock with shots of adrenaline, and “accidentally” make her overdose on the final one. At the last minute, though, he loses his nerve. His nurse mistress tries to finish the job and Cross murders her instead. It’s at this moment the Lt. and authorities, now suspecting the truth, rush in and find Cross with the nurse’s corpse. Janet and the Lt. are finally reunited and Dr. Cross leaves with the chief detective, presumably to spend the rest of his life in jail.

I mentioned with Green Eyes that I have a real affection for these old black-and-white films, but this one missed the mark a bit for me despite having Vincent Price. The presentation is nice and it feels very film noir, but the movie never commits to one of its two possible storylines.

The set-up’s pretty clear. Either the movie will be about Janet trying to escape an institution where everyone assumes she’s disturbed and she has to endure the doctor’s attacks, or it’s about Dr. Cross getting pulled ever deeper into a situation he never wanted to be a part of. While the movie is primarily the latter—he murders his wife in a moment of pique and has to keep doubling-down on the error—it didn’t feel like it was committing to his moral degradation. Once he hypnotizes Janet, he knows she saw the murder, and has to decide what to do from that point on. His mistress, the nurse, is more overtly evil, occasionally seducing him into deciding to make Janet’s life worse. They start by keeping her sedated, and then he’s hypnotizing her trying to erase the memory, and then straight-up gaslighting her.

That’s all fine, plot-wise, if we’re either watching it from Janet’s point-of-view or seeing Cross wrestle with the decisions to do these things. Since it’s neither, the movie has no clock, no end point it’s being forced to, so there’s rarely any sense of dread. Then it has the blah ending where the good are reunited and the evil punished.

To the good, the movie appears to be in the public domain. There are a few copies already up on archive.org and I’ve added an MPEG2 here. It’s not a terrible movie and it’s put together well enough, it just never grabbed me.


118. The Alien Factor (1978)
Director: Don Dohler
Writer: Don Dohler
From: Sci-Fi Invasion
Watch: YouTube

A spaceship crashes unleashing a trio of horrific monsters upon a small rural town.

From Don Dohler, arguably, the master of low-budget backyard filmmaking, comes a simple flick about monsters killing random people. Dohler’s also known for the very strange, very bad The Galaxy Invader, which I had felt like I’d seen as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but it never was one (although Rifftrax did do a version). I saw it 8 years ago when I first started the PD Project and, from my comments there, clearly hated it. While that movie is pretty poorly done, The Alien Factor, Dohler’s first, is pretty good.

We open with a couple making out in a car only to be attacked by a monster. The girl gets away, but the boy is killed. The local doctor and sheriff both think the boy was killed by a wild animal since the girl is in shock and can’t tell them differently. The sheriff tells a trio of men not to go looking for the animal and they, of course. . . actually listen to him.

There’s a real sense of people acting reasonably in this film.

The trio does eventually decide to hunt down the animal and bring their friend Susan, but insist on sticking together just so nothing happens to any one of them. Again, reasonable, except what happens happens to all of them: the first alien monster shows up and kills all three men and Susan runs away screaming.

The next day, an invisible alien approaches a man outside his house and ages him to death. The sheriff and doctor don’t know what to do about any of it and the sheriff wants to call in the State Troopers. The mayor objects to that plan as it would bring too much attention to the situation and torpedo his plan to build an amusement park in the area.

The movie also hits every sci-fi/monster movie cliché, and I kind of love it for that.

At this point, the movie pauses to take a breath, watch a local band play “Theme from Filler,” and then another deadmeat gets et.

An astronomer from a nearby observatory, Mr. Zachary, visits the mayor and says he saw a meteor land in the area a few nights before and asks for permission to go looking for it. The mayor joins him on the search leading them to the crashed spaceship and the funniest line in the movie: “Looks like my meteor is a spaceship of some kind.” Everything about it—its cadence, delivery, tone—all of it had me laughing harder than I have in a while.

Zachary finds a dying alien at the crash site who psychically relates the rest of the plot to him before the ship blows up. Zachary goes back to the sheriff, reveals there are three aliens, but that he has secret technology that can kill them. He feels more and more like a Poochie as the movie progresses, killing each alien when no one else can and then being told how awesome he is for doing so. Peak Poochieness comes at the end when it’s revealed that he himself is an alien who has come to save the Earth from the monsters, but now must return to his home planet. Only he gets gut-shot by the sheriff and dies. So I guess he’s 100% Poochie.

The movie has flaws, but it’s fun both in spite of and because of those flaws. The acting’s generally flat, but Zachary is pompous and hilariously bad. Since everyone else is right in the middle, his Shatner-lite antics really stand out. And while, as I noted, it slows down a bit in the middle, it picks back up after that scene. The movie manages an even enough pace throughout and even the technical aspects like sound and camerawork are competent: they’re never so good that they stand out, but never so bad that they’re distracting. In fact, there are several shots that demonstrate Dohler knew how to frame a shot and get the most out of the available light.

And the monster costumes are awesome. Yes, they’re guys in goofy suits, but they’re awesome suits. The final monster is superimposed on the film, a stop-motion creature, I think, whose movements they manage to match to the actor pretty well. The monsters legitimately impressed me.

The seams show, yes, but I found that made the movie more impressive. This was a demonstration of what a bit of passion, skill, and a whole lot of sincere effort can do. The frustration of so many of the other movies I’ve been watching is they had budgets, teams, and talent, but couldn’t give a single damn about making a movie. It’s clear Dohler liked making movies and this one came out nicely.

While this movie is not PD, the owners have made it available to watch freely on YouTube, so please don’t repost or reshare without their permission. Normally I gripe about films not being public domain, but these guys have been working to keep the movie available and to protect their copyright. The actual frustration I have is that Cinematic Titanic did an episode of this, but when I went to link to it, I found that CT had pulled all of their content. I suspect this might be related to the upcoming reboot of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but whether it is or not, I’m always frustrated when access to content is revoked. At least the unriffed version of The Alien Factor is available, and it is so, so riffable. Very fun bad movie that’s not even that bad.

115. The Werewolf of Washington and 116. They Saved Hitler's Brain

Jump to They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968)

115. The Werewolf of Washington (1973)
Director: Milton Moses Ginsberg
Writer: Milton Moses Ginsberg
From: Pure Terror
Watch: archive.org

Jack, newly appointed as the President’s Assistant Press Secretary, is bitten by a werewolf while leaving Budapest. Once he arrives in Washington, he begins transforming into a werewolf and attacking critics of the administration.

Happy Election Day everyone! If you haven’t yet, get out and vote. I’ve largely avoided making political comments here and on my Facebook page, and I think I’ll keep that up. My obvious SJW-tendencies in these reviews probably express my stance enough anyway.

That said, I am like a kid on Christmas Eve waiting for this to end. Very soon, we’ll be about to think about anything else. Can you imagine? So, to help you through this final moment and maybe even provide background material while you’re waiting for the election returns to come in, here’s a special Election Day Misery Mill featuring two kinda, sorta, political-ish films. Neither is overtly political. Both are, frankly, a little dull in their own way, but become just spectacularly silly by the end, and maybe that’s what we need right now.

So, The Werewolf of Washington opens with a voice-over from Jack (Dean Stockwell), where we’re told that he had been the youngest member of the Washington Press Corps and a rising star. However, he was also having an affair with the President’s daughter. To avoid complications, he asked to be transferred to Budapest, but the President was told Jack was transferred for being too pro-administration. So the President appointed Jack as Assistant Press Secretary necessitating Jack’s return to Washington.

From this, we cut to the movie where Jack is examining a walking stick with a silver handle shaped like a wolf. It’s a gift from his Hungarian translator/girlfriend (?) Giselle. It doesn’t really matter since, shortly, she’ll no longer be in the film. They’re driving to the airport when Jack sees a man blocking the road with a motorcycle. Jack swerves, hits a tree, and the car is wrecked. He goes looking for help because his plane leaves shortly, but is attacked by a wolf. He beats it to death with the cane, but it turns out to be the man blocking the road. The authorities insist there was no body and that Jack leave the country. The mother of the man gives Jack a charmed necklace to wear to prevent the curse from spreading. Once Jack gets home, he flushes it down the toilet (shown in a toilet-POV shot).

After that, the movie becomes ham-fisted routine. Jack is introduced to an administration critic, he sees a pentagram appear on their hand, and he kills them when he turns into a werewolf that night. First it’s the wife of a man the President wants to appoint to the Supreme Court, but she’s a political liability because she’s too brazen about the administration’s far-right politics. Next, it’s the publisher of a newspaper that was always critical of the President. Then he attacks a couple that saw him murder the newspaper woman—he’s aiming for the girl but kills the guy instead. The fourth night (how many nights do full moons last?), he’s loose in a federal building and kills a guard (he also meets a little person who’s a mad scientist keeping someone in a cage and apparently building a Frankenstein’s monster. They don’t factor into the movie, they’re just there).

The fifth night, he convinces a psychologist and the Press Secretary to chain him up so he doesn’t get loose. The President’s daughter comes by, though, agrees not to untie him, but the President orders Jack to come to the White House for a speech with the Chinese Prime Minister. Jack transforms on the helicopter ride over, attacks the President as it lands in front of a group of journalists, and then runs off to attack the President’s daughter. When he arrives, she kills him with a silver bullet. The President gives a speech over the closing credits that concludes with him turning into a werewolf.

This is supposed to be a horror/comedy or some sort of satire, and if we were closer to the Nixon administration, the targets of the comedy might be clearer. As it stands now, it’s just a laughably bad movie. I couldn’t stop laughing as I watched this. You can get some clues that this is supposed to be the Nixon administration—they’re at war with the media, trying to figure out an exit from Vietnam, and the President is concerned about his China policy—but the movie’s stance is never actually clear. Its politics are at once ham-fisted and very vague. I mean, how are we supposed to read lines like this one from Jack: “I think your father’s a cross between Abraham Lincoln and Jesus Christ.”

This whole enterprise feels cheap—cheap sets, cheap sound, cheap script. The comedy rarely hits because the pacing is so deliberate and there’s a real sense of earnestness here. Even though there are parts that are clearly supposed to be comic or absurd, you can feel the director behind the camera going, “We’re showing those bastards, goddammit!” This is one of those rare comedies that misses the mark so much that it becomes funny in a wholly unintentional way.

The movie’s been in the public domain from the start and you can find a copy on archive.org here. Elvria featured this on her show Elvira’s Movie Macabre, both the original and the 2010 reboot. The latter episode had been on Hulu, but seems to have been pulled since it’s now available for purchase from Elvira’s Apple app.

Anyway, this is a fun, stupid movie. Nice to have on in the background while other things are going on or when people are actively looking to riff something. It would also serve as a nice counterpoint to election coverage as you watch the results come in.



116. They Saved Hitler’s Brain (1968)
Director: David Bradley
Writers: Steve Bennett, Peter Miles
From: Pure Terror

A pair of Americans are kidnapped and taken to the South American country of Mandoras where they find a Nazi plot to return the severed head of Adolf Hitler to power.

Who's been shaving Hitler's face?

I will admit to having very little to say about this movie. I watched it with my bad movie group, the Space Dukes, and there wasn’t enough going on to really keep our attention. There were, though, hilarious shots of Hitler’s head in a jar.

This is your standard 60’s B-flick: sci-fi premise exercised on a minimal budget in a pretty slap-dash way. Why is this one American couple so important? I cannot tell you, especially since the Americans don’t actually save the day. Instead, it’s local townspeople, objecting to the presence of the Nazis in their town, who actually take out the Furher. Considering this has a white hero who isn’t particularly heroic or useful, I have to wonder why it never got riffed by MST3k. It’s right up their street.

I can't offer a clever caption

What’s more interesting than the movie itself is the production story. Originally, this was the feature Madmen of Mandoras, which is a better title if you want the Hitlerhead to be a surprise. That movie was made in 1963, about 60 minutes long, and not impressive (although there’s a copy of it on Cult Cinema so I’ll be watching it eventually). In 1968, the producers decided to market it as a TV movie and hired some students at UCLA to film material to pad it out to 90 minutes. Thus this version with the more lurid, but spoiler-tastic, title. Most of the first half-hour is clearly from a different film that occasionally is intercut with the original movie. The new material focuses on two agents investigating the assassination of a government scientist who was developing “G-Gas.” They’re both dead by the 30 minute mark and we’re off to the races with Bland McSlabface and his wife, Mrs. Wife.

Toasty!

Once Hitler’s head gets into the flick, it’s outright laughable, and it’s certainly interesting to see how the film was recut, but it’s such a slog until that last half-hour. The movie’s not PD, although there are plenty of copies on YouTube. I can’t recommend it, but it’s there if you’re curious.

113. Mad Dog and 114. Savage Weekend

Jump to Savage Weekend (1979)

113. Mad Dog aka La Belva Col Mitra (1977)
Director: Sergio Greico
Writer: Sergio Greico
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In

The notorious Mad Dog killer escapes from prison and is out for revenge against the people who ratted him out and the judge who put him away.

Oh, this is a grim pairing and right before the election at that.

Mad Dog breaks out of prison with three co-conspirators, taking a guard hostage. Supercop, who has a real name but I don’t care, goes after him with all the gusto of a man picking up his dry-cleaning even though he doesn’t really have to. There’s a shoot-out, supercop somehow shoots the driver in the head, but his own car is shot, goes off the road, and explodes. Supercop, though, had jumped out.

Then we get the backstory: villain bad, hero good. All caught up? Let’s make it personal then. Supercop is the son of the judge that convicted Mad Dog. That’ll matter because Mad Dog wants revenge, but it won’t matter for a good hour because that’s not the plot.

Instead, supercop goes into background as Mad Dog finds the guy who testified against him. The informant and his girlfriend, Giuliana, are taken to the middle of nowhere. Mad Dog rapes Giuliana then beats the informant to death. Then he tells her to keep quiet.

Supercop tracks down Giuliana, but she gives him the brush-off. He leaves suspicious and completely unaware of Mad Dog hiding in the same room dressed as Father Guido Sarducci. Mad Dog rapes her again, since he’s basically keeping her as a sex slave, and tells her the details of the next job they’re pulling—one that she’ll have to be involved in.

Do the rapes make you uncomfortable? Don’t worry, they’re all played out as extended sex scenes, but violent.

Giuliana, despite her fears, goes to the cops anyway and reveals the plan to rob a factory where her estranged father is the head security guard. Supercop tells her he’ll replace all the workers with cops so the whole thing will be a set-up and then sends her back to Mad Dog. The heist goes off, but when the cops show up, Mad Dog takes all the women working the line hostage and stuffs them into a van. Giuliana drives it while Mad Dog gets into a separate getaway vehicle.

Unsurprisingly, Guiliana kills the crook riding with her and saves all the hostages. Mad Dog is stopped at a road block, his cronies get out of the car, and Mad Dog escapes when he realizes Giuliana betrayed him.

The only reason this brutally violent idiot is a threat is because his nemesis, supercop is even dumber.

Supercop expects Mad Dog to try to kill Giuliana, so he puts her under surveillance, but somehow misses the sniper’s nest with easy access to her room. Fortunately, Giuliana notices it just as Mad Dog takes a shot at her and so only takes a bullet in the leg. This is the end of Guliana’s role in the movie. Wave good-bye to the person who was actually heroic.

Now it’s Mad Dog vs. supercop. Mad Dog kidnaps supercop’s dad and sister, supercop figures out where they are by pure luck—no skill or detective work for this man, and pummels Mad Dog until the rest of the police arrive. The End.

This is, I think, the sleaziest movie I’ve watched so far in this project. There’s so much sexualized violence and the movie is delighting in it. The rape scenes are supposed to be enticing. When Mad Dog kidnaps supercop’s sister, he takes her top off and starts cutting her. It’s an excuse to show tits, but has that edge of sadism added to it.

Compare this to something like Driller Killer which also has a lot of violence and a weird sexuality to it. That film, though, seemed to have some thought to it. The violence comes from somewhere and is never framed as entertainment. Likewise, the sex in that movie is highlighting or emphasizing the strangeness of this character and his situation. That’s a film about depravity, this is a film that’s merely aspiring to be called “depraved,” but it’s not even that.

If a student turned in a story like this to one of my classes, I’d roll my eyes and call them “Junior Edgelord Supreme” to myself for the rest of the semester. This is a film that’s eager to shock, to be included amongst the work of the people working in the realm of Grindhouse cinema, but it’s not there. The best of Grindhouse pushed boundaries to tell new stories. This is just delighting in showing people get hurt.

And that’s the key. Supercop’s ostensibly the protagonist, the hero, but the movie wants you to think Mad Dog is super-threatening and cool. And he’s not. He’s just a brutish idiot. He’s not even interesting as a monster.

No surprise, I don’t recommend this. I didn’t bother to check if it was public domain; this was originally an Italian production and many of those got GATT’d. On top of that, there’s a Mill Creek Bug throughout so I couldn’t upload it anyway. No loss.


114. Savage Weekend (1979)
Directors: David Paulsen, John Mason Kirby
Writer: David Paulsen
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In

A stock broker brings his friends to his house in the country for a weekend getaway, but there’s an extra member of the party looking to kill.

Another late-70’s writer/director effort with no likable characters and really weird sexual politics. Is 2016 over yet? Can I do something else?

We open at the end of the movie with Marie running through the forest while a banjo song plays on loop. She runs into Otis, a dazed man holding a chainsaw, and is terrified.

Flashback for the rest of the goddamn movie. Marie is getting ready to go her boyfriend Robert’s country house with her sister Shirley, Robert’s friend Jay, and their gay friend Nicky. I’m not speculating, they’re pretty open about it, and about as weird about it as you’d imagine from 1979. They’re just waiting for Marie’s ex-husband Greg to come by and pick up the kid. He’s not happy about what’s going on, but they don’t care because, while he used to have political power through his job, now he’s unemployed and a joke.

On the way to the country house, they stop for gas and Nicky goes into a nearby bar. The customers are vaguely homophobic, but Nicky actually picks a fight and basically wrecks the place. Our heroes?

We arrive at the house and Jay is creeping on Shirley, but he was also invited to hook up with her. Nicky stalks them and watches them screw from a distance. Meanwhile, Robert and Marie are on a boat with local handyman Mac who tells them about Otis—a local Robert has hired to help him build a giant boat. Turns out Otis took a fancy to a young girl that was visiting a few years back, but got mad when he saw her with her boyfriend so Otis killed him and branded the woman with an “H” on her chest for “whore.” Otis ain’t too good at spelling.

So, I get it, the movie’s setting up Otis as the killer or just a general threat. But then Mac sets Robert up to step on a fishing hook and then starts creeping on Marie. So maybe there’s a city-folk vs. country-folk dynamic being set up. But that doesn’t work because we don’t like any of these people.

Jay, turns out, is a scumbag cheating on his wife, Nicky is a jerk who’s only character trait is he’s gay, Robert is a rich POS who just buys his way into everything, and Marie, our main character, is seemingly using all the men around her for sex, or to sexually humiliate them, or something. Sex in this movie is way strange. Whenever Marie and Robert have a sex scene, she’s imagining he’s someone else or imagining her ex-husband watching so that he’s getting cuckolded. She tries to seduce Mac a bit, but then loses her nerve, but it still results in a weird scene where she’s erotically milking a cow and then he makes her drink the milk.

No, if you’re confused then I described it properly. The movie is way weird.

Anyway, everyone’s awful, someone grabs a Halloween mask and starts killing the jerks in the house. Jay is the first to go, then Nicky. Shirley is tied to a table saw, but the power doesn’t work so she’s just left there. Robert gets killed and then the killer unmasks himself and it’s Greg, the ex-husband, who felt emasculated by losing his job and no longer being powerful enough to prevent people from laughing at him. He takes Marie out into the woods for a murder-suicide, but she starts to run.

Meanwhile, Mac comes to the house, wanders around, maybe kills Shirley by turning on the power (there’s no sound effect to indicate that), and then hears Marie in the woods. He finds them both, fights Greg, and then Otis shows up and kills Greg with the chainsaw. We freeze on Otis’ smiling face then cut to him visiting the graveyard. The End.

It’s always satisfying when a movie sums itself up in one line of dialogue. Shirley gets mad at Jay for reasons that aren’t explained and don’t happen on-screen, and tells him, “I thought you had imagination, but turns out you get all your ideas from girlie magazines.” There’s the movie for you.

Whereas Mad Dog feels sleazy, this feels like it desperately wants to be sleazy. Jay first hooks up with Shirley when he sees her sunbathing naked in a field and just strips down and walks up to her. Nicky watches from a distance closing his fist around barbed wire. Mac and Marie have the weird not-quite-sex-scene with the cow’s milk that’s just whatever, and the story of Otis attacking the couple is shown in flashback including Otis stripping the woman and locking her between the posts that hold the cows. I’m sure this is someone’s fetish, but it’s not mine.

And really, that’s the feel of the entire movie, like someone’s winking at you going, “Eh? Pretty intense, huh?” when it’s not. Ever. While it wasn’t obvious that Greg was the killer, it should have been because this is exactly the kind of film that thinks, “The character you haven’t seen who isn’t part of this movie is actually the killer!” qualifies as a twist. See also, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.

So it’s not a recommend: the characters suck, the story doesn’t matter, and there’s a smugness to its pretensions of transgression that get old within the first 15 minutes. I think it’s PD, but, again, Mill Creek Bug all over it, but I don’t care.