The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Director: Robert Fuest
Writers: James Whiton, William Goldstein
Genres: Comedy | Horror
Country: UK
Language: English | Hebrew
Release Date: 18 May 1971 (USA)

Doctors are being murdered in bizarre manners - bats, bees, a killer frog mask, etc. - which represent the nine Biblical plagues of Egypt. The crimes are orchestrated by an organ-playing, demented madman (from his home base, replete with a clockwork orchestra and help from a beautiful, mute assistant). Detectives are stumped until they find that all the slain doctors once assisted a Dr. Vesalius on an unsuccessful operation involving the wife of organist Dr. Phibes, killed in a car crash upon learning of his wife's death. He couldn't be the culprit, could he?

Vincent Price bashers accuse him of being a ham. Now Price was capable of restrained performances, just have a look at 'Witchfinder General', but sometimes his hilarious over the top style perfectly suited the material. This is definitely the case with 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes', which could well be his most entertaining movie. The film was directed by Robert Fuest, who had previously been a writer and art director for 'The Avengers', and it shares a similar camp sensibility, with lots of black humour and some deliciously surreal touches. Price was born to play this role! Later there was a sequel (good), and an attempt to recreate the approach with 'Theatre Of Blood' ( for me, a bit of a disappointment), but the original Phibes is easily the best. Price is supported by a strong cast, including Joesph Cotton (who made 'Baron Blood' with Mario Bava around this period), Terry-Thomas, and Peter Jeffrey ('If...'). Cult fans will also get a kick when they see who plays Phibes wife (uncredited): Caroline Munro ('Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter', 'Maniac', 'Faceless'). 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes' is one of the most entertaining movies I've ever seen. If you haven't seen it before then you are in for a real treat!

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1970s, 1971, Comedy, Horror, Reviews, United Kingdom,

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Tijuana Blue (1972)

Director: Howard Ziehm (as Harry Hopper)
Genres: Adult | Comedy

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 12 January 1972 (USA)

A drug runner gets sent to Tijuana to meet with a person named Oddball. He's told not to get involved with prostitutes, to just do the job and nothing else. He brings one friend with him, and they end up having sex with every female they meet.

The presence of very familiar femme porn stars posing as sleazy Mexican whores destroys the meager credibility quotient of TIJUANA BLUE. This would-be slumming expedition in Mexico turns out to be a slumming expedition on Porno Poverty Row.

Since filmmaker Howard Ziehm/Harry Hopper scored a coup in 1970 with MONA, it is surprising to see him turning in such slovenly executed work. He transitioned from pioneer to hack in just a year or so.

Jamie (his name changes variously throughout the film -no continuity girl to ride herd on the thesps) is played by journeyman performer Howard Alexander, needing to raise money for his girl friend's abortion. Against his better judgment he agrees to do some drug running for The Man (Keith Erickson, in a rare non-sex role, playing it more or less straight for a change).

With his best buddy Rick (1-shot Martin Victor) in tow to ride shotgun, he drives to Tijuana in search of the connection, codename Oddball. The pair hang around at an extremely sleazy (and under-lit) joint called 77 Club, where the dancer atop the bar and the various B girls are all humping right out in the open. The Man has warned Jamie against getting involved with local whores, demanding that the job be done cleanly, strictly business. Since this is porn, we in the audience know better.

Jamie gets the runaround, shuttled from whorehouse to whorehouse until he and Rick have sex with several whores. It's all staged in sleazy fashion, a convincingly low-down gutter approach familiar from other Ziehm movies of this period, like HARLOT and THE INCREDIBLE BODY SNATCHERS.

Film builds clumsily to an idiotic conclusion set on a rocky beach, where Jamie is confronted by a butch blonde girl and the surprise appearance of The Man. The ending is supposed to be ironic but is merely incompetent, on the level of a kids' backyard movie.

What sets TIJUANA BLUE apart is the surprise appearance of so many quasi-superstar actresses, when at first it seemed like we were going to see nothing but real-life Mexican street whores. Besides lovely Jill Sweete as Jamie's pregnant gal back home, the wonderful Andy Bellamy puts on a mixed-combo lesbian show with a black madam in fake-Tijuana, and Eve Orlon is wasted as ensemble prostitute. 

With this level of talent Ziehm could have fashioned a real movie, but that would have required such niceties as a script and a budget. Alas, the pay differential in those early days of porn between a superstar and an amateur off the street was negligible.

Film has been reissued on DVD by Alpha Blue Archives in a "Harry Hopper" set, plus a DVD-R version re-titled HOUSE OF WHORES by Something Weird Video.

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Adult, Comedy, Reviews, USA,

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Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)

Director: Roy William Neill

Genres: Crime | Film-Noir | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 17 September 1943 (USA) 

During WWII several murders occur at a convalescent home where Dr. Watson has volunteered his services. He summons Holmes for help and the master detective proceeds to solve the crime from a long list of suspects including the owners of the home, the staff and the patients recovering there.

This is one of a good number of solid, interesting mysteries in the series of Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce. This one takes the basic idea from the Doyle story "The Musgrave Ritual", and combines it rather freely with several other plot elements to create an essentially new mystery. Some of the additions are rather imaginative in themselves, and overall the mystery has the kind of intriguingly offbeat tone that fits well with the famous characters.

The setting has Watson staying in the Musgrave house, which is being used as a convalescent home for army officers, when a series of violent crimes breaks out. The mystery that arises combines suspense with an interesting puzzle that must be solved. The villain in many of the movies in the Universal series is known from the beginning, but this is one of the exceptions, allowing the viewer to try to deduce what is happening from the same clues that Holmes has available.

Rathbone and Bruce always work well together, and Dennis Hoey always adds some good moments whenever he appears as Inspectator Lestrade. Some of the secondary characters, especially some of the recovering officers, are also interesting. Although this, like the rest of the Universal Holmes features, is set in the (then) present, the setting in the old mansion gives it an atmosphere more like the earlier era of the Doyle originals. Anyone who enjoys the other features in the series should not be disappointed by this one.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death

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Crime, Film-Noir, Films, Mystery, Reviews,

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The Pussycat Ranch (1978)

Director: John Christopher

Genres: Adult | Comedy | Western

Country: USA

Language: English

Also Known As: Pussycat Ranch

The rough life of the western cowboy was dirty in more ways than one. And how better to ease the pains and problems of a round up than at the whoopin'est, hootin'est, whorein'est cathouse in the west - Pussycat Ranch! That's right, an entire layout of voluptuous vixens eager to please their men in every imaginable way. And when the star pussycat of them all, Sweet Polly, gets ahold of Billy The Kid, well, you'll just have to watch it to find out! From haystack to four-poster, at PUSSYCAT RANCH the action never quits!

When this movie was made, there was either no actual Pussycat Ranch or it wasn't well-known...the setting is a working ranch (if a failing one) that is not, when things start, supposed to be a whorehouse.

Chacun à son goût, but I find the women prettier than the usual run, not all of them made that many movies, one sex-scene was a little unusual for its time (there was very little anal sex in American pornography then, and it was typically the province of B-list actresses crying-out in pain), a socially-redeeming warning about moonshine, and in the year of its making it stood-out nicely.

There was good cinematography, a plot, hilariously bad pseudo-attempts at humour, and both terrible but original music and some stolen from the best.

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Adult, Comedy, Films, Reviews, Western,

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Tales of Terror (1962)

Director: Roger Corman

Genres: Comedy | Horror | Mystery | Thriller

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 17 January 1964 (West Germany)

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe. A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

Tales of Terror is a classic anthology of Edgar Allen Poe stories brought to life by Richard Matheson's writing and Roger Corman's directing. It's loaded with genre favorites and Vincent Price stars in all three tales (that right there is enough to make me watch). All three stories are indeed dark or humorous, or both, with The Black Cat being the strongest simply because of the interaction between Price and Peter Lorre. Price really hams it up in the wine tasting scene and I crack up every time. And Lorre is incomparable. This yarn does feature a black cat, but it's more like The Cask of Amontillado actually. The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar is something else that needs to be seen. Basil Rathbone stars in this one and looks remarkably like a beardless Wes Craven. It's uncanny. Let us not forget the first story, Morella. This one is a dark drama and doesn't offer any humor. It's still great though and Price's character here reminds me quite a bit of the one he played in The Pit and the Pendulum (another Corman/Poe production). If you like the other Corman adaptations of Poe, don't miss this one.

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Films, Horror, Mystery, Reviews,

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Blu-Ray)

I went to see this with high expectations,I thought the last film was ok. It lacked imagination and new ideas but I understand why they went safe. I found this one to be a bit odd,at times almost a parody or spoof with the odd dramatic moment. I hoped they'd have an interesting story arc lined up for rey,fin etc but these characters just don't feel like real people so its hard to sympathise with them like you could with the original characters. Luke was sad,like an old dog that needed putting out his misery. Nice one. Klylo is pretty wet,like a big baby and not scary at all. It looked pretty and the costumes special effects etc were nice but story wise a bit hollow. I just remembered the bit when the space ship was landing and it turned out to be an iron. That sums the film up,makes you think something and the goes no its something kind of dum instead. The first order wouldn't use irons as their advanced technologically but the jokes more important than sense. Why not just make a good story and realistic characters or is that no longer possible.

Synopsis:

The Skywalker saga continues as the heroes of The Force Awakens join the galactic legends in an epic adventure that unlocks new mysteries of the Force.

Bonus Content
Feature:
Audio Commentary
Bonus Disc:
The Director And The Jedi
Balance Of The Force
Scene Breakdowns - Lighting The Spark: Creating The Space Battle
Scene Breakdowns - Snoke And Mirrors
Scene Breakdowns - Showdown On Crait
Andy Serkis Live! (One Night Only)
Deleted Scenes (14)

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Blu-Ray, DVD, Reviews, Sci-Fi,

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Enigma Rosso (Blu-Ray)

When the brutally violated body of a young woman is found wrapped in plastic, Inspector Gianni Di Salvo (Fabio Testi, Contraband, The Four of the Apocalypse) is drawn to dark deeds at an exclusive girls' school where the beautiful members of a group called The Inseparables are being targeted with sinister letters and murder attempts. Following a clue in the dead girl's diary, he soon learns that anyone could be harboring deadly secrets as he untangles this web of sex and homicide. A prime slice of sordid shocks from the golden age of the Italian giallo, this is the final film in the cycle of schoolgirl thrillers following What Have You Done to Solange? and What Have They Done to Your Daughters? with enough delirious twists and turns to keep you guessing all the way to the startling final revelation. Also starring Christine Kaufmann (Town Without Pity, Murders in the Rue Morgue), Ivan Desny (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Who?), Jack Taylor (Pieces, Succubus), and Helga Liné (Horror Express, Nightmare Castle), this wicked chiller is now presented in HD and full widescreen for the very first time.

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Blu-Ray, Reviews, Thriller,

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The House That Dripped Blood (Blu-Ray)

The fans of Amicus movies all have their personal favorites. Some prefer the pulpiness of TALES FROM THE CRYPT or VAULT OF HORROR while others enjoy the cheesiness of TORTURE GARDEN or DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS. Then there's the literate approach of HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. I love them all and saw every Amicus film that came my way, even the non-anthology ones like AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS and I, MONSTER. Most of them I caught in drive-ins. My personal preference is for the low key approach of HOUSE and GRAVE with HOUSE being my favorite Amicus movie although it was a close race between the two.

HOUSE strikes me as a combination of MASTERPIECE THEATER and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. It's even based on stories by Robert Bloch (PSYCHO). The film is a remarkably handsome production considering the budgetary limitations of $500,000. It grossed far more than that. The photography is simple and direct, the background lighting is extremely effective, and the performances by old pros at the genre like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are uniformly fine. Even an over-the-top Jon Pertwee in a role originally intended for Vincent Price is, forgive the pun, Price-less. As is often the case with anthologies, some stories are better than others with #s 2 & 3 standing out in my opinion.

The film has an interesting background and release history. In addition to the Vincent Price story, the director, Peter Duffell, wanted to call it "Death & the Maiden" after the musical work in the Peter Cushing segment but producer Milton Subotsky came up with the less prosaic title. Ironically, there's no blood in the film at all. It was originally released in the U.S by a small company called Cinerama (no relation to the film process) who quickly went under leaving the film hard to see for many years. The original VHS was a sad affair but the 2003 Lionsgate DVD (the one pictured here) is the one to get. The more recent Hens Tooth DVD has oversaturated colors. If you love old school British horror, this is one of the best.

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Blu-Ray, Horror, Reviews,

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Eating Raoul (1982)

There’s a certain subset of cinephile culture that has deemed Eating Raoul a classic — heck, it even earned a spot in the Criterion Collection. And I don’t disagree with them. But despite the love from movie diehards, the horror comedy has remained a woefully underappreciated genre gem. To be sure, Eating Raoul skews further in the direction of comedy than horror (a fine counterpart to the twisted terrors of Parents, which you’ll find below), and the movie is light on gore, but it’s a pitch-perfect entry in the horror comedy lineage that hinges on the tropes of terror to land the punchline.

The film centers on a prudish, condescending married couple, appropriately named The Blands (Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov), who decide to take matters into their own hands when their lifestyle is cramped by the swingers and partygoers flooding their complex. When one of the unseemly bunch gets too aggressive with the lady of the house, the Blands get to murdering and it sets off an unhinged chain of events that culminates in a human feast.

Eating Raoul is hilarious, but it plays most of the humor subtly, and under Bartel’s direction, the violence gets the same treatment. In fact, most of the film plays out in deadpan, demanding the audience keep up with the visual gags and slyly delivered quips, with violence doled out in quick, unblinking spurts. A slick satire with plenty to say about capitalism and the comforts of suburbia, Eating Raoul will tickle your funny bone… just before it carves your arm and sells it for dog meat.

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Comedy, Crime, Films, Reviews,

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Blood and Lace (1971)

Seven years prior to Halloween, Blood and Lace featured the first home invasion killer POV during a murder. The hammer murder of a prostitute at the beginning sends her teenage daughter (Melody Patterson) to an oppressive orphanage run by the sadistic Gloria Grahame (all of the great 40s divas eventually made their way to cheap horrors at the twilight of their career), who lives off the state contract given for each orphan and works the children extra hard or punishes them even harder.

Every man in Blood and Lace is oozing filth as they all try to get their hands on the new teen, who talks a big game about her experience with love. That includes Uncle Leo (Len Lesser) from Seinfeld, and leads to a few sick plot twists, and Oscar-winner Grahame pays a pittance for her personal life that excommunicated her from Hollywood—for sleeping with/marrying her teenaged stepson—in a grindhouse movie that would embrace that ickiness.

Is this movie great? Nope. But for cheap thrills and grindhouse fans, it’s certainly very fun. It perfectly straddles the 60s exploitation flicks of yore and has one foot in the future 70s horror nasties. You WOULD NOT want to be the final girl in this sick scenario.

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Horror, Reviews,

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Daughters of Darkness (1971)

With nudity and sexual proclivity loosened across the first world’s various censor boards, the vampire film finally got to embrace the eroticism of the genre in the 1970s. For the past few decades there have been many sex films involving the vampire; Belgium’s Daughters of Darkness is the most artful and moody of the spicy lot. There’s a flower-eating “mother”, a mysterious man on a bicycle, and an ornate Transylvanian hotel where a Countess (Delphine Seyrig, known to cinephiles as the indomitable Jeanne Dielman) and her assistant (Andrea Rau) lament that their world hardly has any remaining virgins, and thus the Countess’ ritual of bathing in the blood of 800 virgins for her healthy sheen, is beginning to wane.

Enter a newlywed couple who’ve already fallen out of love with each other (she is Swedish, and thus not of “good blood”, which is hardly a concern of a vampire) and are thirsty to explore other lovers. This liberating combination makes the hotel a feeding ground for sexual exploration, feastings, and a killer soundtrack.

Harry Kümel’s film is grindhouse fare for those who prefer a touch of class. And Seyrig, a veteran of international arthouse films for Alain Resnais and Chantal Ackerman, provides one of the classiest femme vampires, while Rau is one of the most alluring—particularly when her silky seduction movements perfectly compliment the serenely surprising trap-door score.

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Horror, Reviews,

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Wake in Fright (1971)

Wake in Fright is my personal nightmare: being surrounded by a horde of degenerate men who drink, gamble, fight, dismiss women, and shoot animals for sport, with no ability to leave them behind. It’s under-seen because it includes footage from an actual kangaroo hunt, and though this movie assisted with making kangaroo hunting illegal in Australia, it should be warned that it’s real and it’s disturbing. But if you can stomach knowing that’s coming, Wake in Fright is a massively recommendable film if you’ve ever thought that The Hangover could be pretty interested as a horror concept instead of a comedic set-up. This one follows a schoolteacher (Gary Bond) who takes a rural post in Australia and immediately regrets it. After gambling away all his earnings in an attempt to get back to Sydney, he shacks up with the alpha male (Donald Pleasence) for a weekend of non-stop boozing, fighting, and fucking.

Though having some similar ruralism views, Wake in Fright is more frightening than Deliverance because these outback men are more identifiable to a larger population. They raise hell because there don’t seem to be any repercussions for boys behind badly. It’s also quite lovely to look at, most of the time. The orange desert expanse is lensed beautifully and the kangaroo hunt is vomitus. Pleasaence is quite horrifying as an educated brute that’s chosen nihilism and chaos and pushes the teacher to the brink. Wake in Fright is about men entrapping other men through heightened masculinity.

Wake in Fright premiered at Cannes but the print was lost for 30 years. And the negative traits of men in groups making the worst choices over and over are timeless. Director Ted Kotcheff made his debut with Fright and he went on to make hulkier anthems with Sylvester Stallone (First Blood) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Commando), but this is his masterpiece of identifiable and horrific masculinity that likely everyone has encountered on some scale. The main character here can’t seem to leave it, even though he tries. It’s like he’s in a sand globe.

Kotcheff later made Weekend at Bernie’s. And even though they’re hanging out with a dead guy, I’d rather kick it with those dudes than these.

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Drama, Reviews, Thriller,

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I Drink Your Blood (1970)

I Drink Your Blood is peak grindhouse; pure exploitation designed to titillate, frighten, and amuse with little regard for production value, character development, and the other technical elements that tend to make up a “good movie”. That said, it’s purely, blissfully amusing from start to finish and a bit more cleverly plotted than you might expect.

Nobody actually drinks blood in I Drink Your Blood — though it made for one of the best-titled double billings, released alongside the inferior but still entertaining tribal zombie pic, I Eat Your Skin. But don’t let that disappoint you because I Drink Your Blood is an acid trip freakout of film about a rabies-infected cult of devil-worshipping hippies. Yeah, it’s a blast.

When the Satan-loving ne’er-do-wells roll into town, they brutalize a young woman, incurring the wrath of her grandfather. Naturally, they feed him drugs and rough him up, inspiring his grandson to feed the lot a batch of rabies-laced meat pies. From there, I Drink Your Blood becomes a trippy, thoughtless zombie movie (openly riffing on Night of the Living Dead) as the horde tears their way through town, foaming at the mouth and terrified of water, of all things. It’s those kinds of details that make the film such a rollicking, raucous piece of Grindhouse entertainment. You have to imagine director David E. Durston knew audiences would get a kick out of zombies being thwarted by a hose. My personal favorite moment? A man picks up a chair as his last line of defense, only to have it immediately snatched from his hands as on off-screen voice growls “Gimme that chair, you don’t need that!” Ridiculous.

Fair warning, I Drink Your Blood features some unfortunate animal cruelty; one of the ugliest trends that pops up in exploitation films. They kill a chicken and some rats on screen, and drag around a dead goat. It’s not as bad as some of the other films in the era (looking at you, cannibal movies), but it’s still hard to watch. But if you can look at that element through the historical lens of bad behavior from an era gone by, I Drink Your Blood is a sleazy, silly Grindhouse classic

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Horror, Reviews,

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Appleseed Alpha (2014)

Left to survive in a post-World War society, two mercenary soldiers - Deunan and her cyborg partner Briareos – are sent on a mission on the outskirts of their war-torn city. During the operation, they run into Iris and Olson, two citizens from the utopian city of Olympus, who might have a way to save the world but the ruthless Talos and the scheming warlord Two Horns have their own plans.
The oddly named Appleseed Alpha is essentially a series of action sequences punctuated by bland dialogue and weak attempts at character development. First, the story and dialogue are particularly weak and unoriginal. As someone unfamiliar with the comic book series on which the film was based, I was hoping for a little more back story or at least a little more information about the characters and their motivations. Second, the characters are lifeless and unlikeable, and the relationship between the protagonist and her cyborg partner is nearly devoid of humanity--nothing like the cyborg-human relationship in Ghost in the Shell. Strangely, most of the human characters seemed more like cyborgs than the cyborgs did. The animation is the film's saving grace, however, and hardcore anime fans will appreciate the detailed and amazingly lifelike characters and environments. The voice acting is also decent, considering the laughably bad dialogue. Bottom line: I don't recommend it unless you're a serious anime fan who has run out of things to watch.

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anime, DVD, Reviews,

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Vengeance of the Crying Woman (1974)

In 1658, a beautiful woman named Eugenia discovers that her lover, by whom she had three children, is going to marry someone else in The Vengeance of the Crying Woman. Brokenhearted and scorned, she decides to make a deal with the devil to get revenge. In doing so, Eugenia poisons herself and her children, vowing to return as La Llorona and take every firstborn child of her lover’s descendants. The time has come and La Llorona has returned to the present to exact her revenge. Santo, with the help of his friend Mantequilla Napoles, figures out that the only way to end La Llorona’s curse is to retrieve the medallion from her tomb, which holds the key to a treasure she left behind, and give it to a children’s charity.
This movie in spanish is called "The wrestler, The boxer and the ghost" This movie is a real master work from the mind of a great movie director, this movie is the one who was the real winner before TITANIC, this movie is so lame that no one is gonna get near the chance of even getting their greasy hands on an old movie like this, we have a ghost, "La llorona" the mexican version of the weeping woman, a sad and scary tale, we have a boxer, Mr. Mantequilla Napoles, a guy called "MANTEQUILLA" (Butter) because he used the old nintendo (NES) Mike Tyson´s Punch out strategy "Stick and Move, Stick and Move" and a Wrestler, The best wrestler and the real mexican Superhero, The only, The magnificent, "EL SANTO"..Or..SANTO: El enmascarado de plata. So take a rain check on this one and let life go on.

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1974, Adventure, DVD, Horror, Mexico, Reviews,

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