If there was ever a horror film that didn't require a sequel, Ulli Lommel's cult 1980 hit The Boogeyman is it. Telling the story of two siblings who accidentally release the spirit of their mother's dead boyfriend via a magical mirror, The Boogeyman is a hokey, stupid, and instantly forgettable film, although I can understand why certain fans of the genre may hold it in higher esteem. Following its surprisingly successful limited run, Paramount Pictures were keen to hand Lommel, a bad-boy German arthouse director, a substantially larger budget for the follow-up, but the filmmaker became annoyed at their refusal to allow him to work on other projects outside the realm of horror.
Lommel eventually made Revenge of the Boogeyman, or simply Boogeyman II, out of sheer frustration, and the result was one of the most notoriously terrible movies ever made. You get the sense that the sequel is one giant middle-finger to all those pesky studio heads who were only interested in squeezing some quick cash out of a mediocre horror film that proved an unexpected hit with the horror crowd. Lommel even casts himself as a movie director tasked with adapting the events of the first film for the big screen, who also questions Hollywood's opportunistic, closed-minded approach. You could almost admire Lommel's arrogance if Revenge of the Boogeyman didn't also feel like a huge middle-finger to the audience, who are not only forced to sit through some of the most laughable and badly-constructed set-pieces ever committed to screen, but also over forty minutes of flashbacks which consist of recycled footage from the previous film.
The 'story' follows lone survivor Lacey (Suzanna Love) as she travels to Hollywood to stay with friends and recuperate after the trauma she suffered at the hands of the 'boogeyman'. After recapping her tale, she is quickly pounced on by a bunch of Hollywood types who are keen to profit on her misery. God knows why, but Lacey carries a piece of the cursed broken mirror with her wherever she goes, so it isn't long until the party guests start turning up dead. And how spectacularly they die. There's death by toothbrush, death by exhaust pipe through the mouth after being hit on the backside by a ladder, and worst of all, death by that most terrifying of household items, shaving foam. Looking as though it was shot over a weekend and patched together without any resemblance of a script, Revenge of the Boogeyman is an insult to film and filmmakers, and anyone seeking to find the most reprehensible of all the 'video nasties' need look no further. To make matters worse, Lommel went back to try and salvage the film, releasing a 'Redux' version in 2003. Apparently, somehow, it's even worse.
Much of the outrage drummed up by so-called 'moral crusaders' concerned with how violent and tasteless movies were affecting our impressionable youth during the 1980s was based primarily on how these types of film advertised themselves. The rise of VHS led to home media companies taking full advantage of highlighting how grisly and amoral the film supposedly was, and this led to the now-iconic covers of The Driller Killer, which depicted a man receiving a nasty drill to the head, and Cannibal Holocaust, which splashed the image of one of the titular flesh-eaters chowing down on some human intestines on its casing. These films were placed on the infamous 'Video Nasty' list in the UK, and the two aforementioned titles are indeed pretty nasty. Others that found themselves on the banned list - that did nothing but provide free promotion - were actually hiding a cheaply-made and laughably executed production underneath. Sergio Carrone's SS Experiment Camp, one of the lesser-seen titles on the list, is one such example.
The eponymous camp of the title is a base constructed by the Nazis during World War II to conduct shocking experiments involving attractive Jewish women and some of the Fatherland's most dashing studs. Before being entered into the programme, the women must swear their allegiance to the Fuhrer, otherwise they face torture and eventually a trip into the ovens. Those wise enough to agree to their captors' demands are led to a dorm complete with bunk beds, so the girls can chat like teenagers at a sleepover, and are watched over by a lesbian (what else?) commander. When they are eventually called into action, they must have sex with handsome German men - sometimes even underwater! - while a sympathetic Jewish doctor carries out more sinister experiments with ovary transplants. German officer Helmut (Mircha Carven) ends up falling in love with one of the inmates, and in exchange for her safety, he rather stupidly agrees to take part in a highly secretive experiment with the Colonel von Kleiben (Giorgio Cerioni). Helmut doesn't know it, but von Kleiben has recently lost his balls during the war, and is finding life without intercourse a little hard to take.
Yes, this is a movie set during one of the greatest tragedies in human history about a guy who loses his gonads and can't have sex with the woman he loves. With a video cover showing a dying woman hung upside down while a smirking Nazi officer looks grimly on, Mary Whitehouse and her cronies likely called for the film to be banned for the gruesome horrors that surely lurked beneath that poster. If they had actually taken the time to watch it, they would probably laugh as dead bodies jerk unconvincingly while dodgy-looking flames bounce in front of them, or be puzzled at why a unit of German soldiers look and act like Italian footballers cracking wise in a changing room. Tasteless? Certainly. Most of the increasingly silly torture scenes focus on the victim's jiggling breasts. Horrifying? Well, yes, but not in the way the film intended. For a film that can boast a scene in which its lead character bursts into a room and asks "what have you been doing with my balls?", SS Experiment Camp is a tedious and repetitive experience. It has some unintentional humour, but then there's 90 additional minutes of atrocious acting and awkward dialogue to wade through. The nazisploitation genre is pure trash but it can occasionally offer the odd guilty pleasure, but this is no Ilsa.
Tony Waylam's The Burning, the first film to be produced by Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films, is but one in what seems like an endless churn of stalk-and-slash movies inspired by the low-budget success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980). It performed moderately at the box-office and was panned by the critics, and did little to disguise its desire to replicate the success of Cunningham's newly-established franchise, merely re-hashing the plot in the process. So why now, 35 years after its release, is The Burning so beloved amongst genre fans?
It's difficult to really pinpoint the reason why Waylam's film isn't as insufferable or outright boring as many others from the 'slasher' genre generally are. But for me, I found that the characters, who are little more than your usual horror archetypes, rather enjoyable to be around when they weren't busy getting carved up in the woods. The likes of Jason Alexander, Brian Backer, Fisher Stevens and Holly Hunter appear before they were famous, and are given the job of fleeing from the deformed killer stalking them - here a psychopathic victim of a prank-gone-wrong named Cropsy (Lou David). They are in the woods as part of a canoe trip arranged by Camp Blackfoot leader Todd (Brian Matthews), who is unaware that the camp-fire spook tale he frequently tells is about to become reality.
With a rather likeable bunch at its core, The Burning doesn't really drag when it isn't dishing out scenes of gore, and the performances feel naturalistic. When the gore does come, special effects maestro Tom Savini, having turned down Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), delivers some of his finest work, naturally landing the film in trouble with the censors. As one of the first films slapped with the 'video nasty' tag, it was always destined to achieve legendary status amongst fans, and the infamous scene of mass murder on a raft, which really had the right-winger media up-in-arms, is extremely well-executed. I doubt I'll ever take to the slasher genre - I find them generally dull, dated, formulaic and misogynistic - and while The Burning certainly contains those elements, it isn't difficult to see why it is still so popular with fans of the genre.
As is the case with many low-budget horror films released numerous times with different cuts and ratings in various different continents, Joe D'Amato's Absurd is known under a wealth of alternative titles. Also known as Horrible, Rosso Sangue and Monster Hunter, the film was labelled as too gruesome for British audiences in the 1980's and found itself on the dreaded Video Nasty List. The most bizarre title to make its way onto its VHS cover is Anthropophagus 2, although the film has little in common with D/Amato's Anthropopogus: The Grim Reaper apart from the lead casting of George Eastman as yet another impossibly strong man-mountain with a fondness for gruesome murder.
The film begins with Mikos (Eastman), a beast of a man with an unnaturally fast healing factor, fleeing a priest. As he tries to escape by scaling a fence, Mikos is impaled on the railing spikes which disembowel him. It is while at the hospital that the doctors discover his amazing ability to heal, but he is soon on the loose after murdering a nurse. The madman is eventually hit by a car driven by Mr. Bennett (Ian Danby), who flees the scene and returns to his wife, son, and bed-ridden daughter Katia (Katya Berger). The family soon finds themselves under attack from Mikos, while police officer Sgt. Engleman (Charles Borromel) and the priest (Edmund Purdom) attempt to hunt down the rampaging savage.
Apart from a couple of entertainingly gory murders (a buzzsaw to the temple and a head in the oven are particular 'highlights'), Absurd suffers from some serious pacing issues. As the story bobbles around between the various characters having inane conversations, the film becomes incredibly boring and short of action. It's debatable as to whether Anthropophagus (1980) or Absurd takes the prize for the most tedious 90 minutes, but I feel that Absurd just edges it. Although Eastman does little more than stumble around with a crazy look in his eyes, he certainly has a presence, but here he is given a disappointingly short amount of screen time. By the time the climax finally arrives, it plods on and on as Katia is forced to learn to walk again to escape the bogeyman, which does not make for exciting viewing. Absurd, indeed.
Although it is now lost in the annals of 1980's slasher movies, Terror Eyes, or Night School, has at least one claim to fame. The tale of a motorcycle helmet-wearing killer armed with a kukri blade and a distaste for co-eds was deemed so vile that it was placed on Britain's notorious 'Video Nasty' list and banned. Such is the irony of the video nasty list, Terror Eyes will never be totally forgotten now thanks to Mary Whitehouse and her crusade. And arguably, it shouldn't, as although the film manages to tick off every cliche in the slasher handbook, it delivers a few effectively-staged set-pieces more in common with the giallo genre.
The basic premise is that Boston is under attack from a serial killer dressed head-to-toe in black leather, whose identity is permanently disguised by a motorcycle helmet. The first murder we witness sees a young teacher's aide get her head lopped off after being forced into a rather twisted merry-go-round ride. Educated cop Lt. Judd Austin (Leonard Mann) is the detective assigned to the case, along with his trusted, wise-cracking partner Taj (Joseph R. Sicari). Their investigations lead them to a local college and to the classroom of anthropology professor Vincent Millett (Drew Snyder). Millett is an expert on tribal rituals in Borneo, where the skulls of defeated enemies are often worn as trophies. Austin spots a similarity to the way the victims heads are being removed and left submerged in water, and so investigates Millet and his relationship to his young assistant Eleanor (Rachel Ward) further.
Possibly the most alarming thing about Terror Eyes is not the dodgy effects or lack of plot, but the fact that it was directed by the same guy who gave us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Ken Hughes. You would never guess it though, there's no sickly sets or questionable Cockney accents here, but Hughes' experience in mainstream Hollywood may be the reason that Terror Eyes feels a slight step above the usual slasher fare. The build-up to the moments of routine butchery are patient and manage to generate a little tension, more akin to Argento than, say, anything found in the Friday the 13th series. But for the most part, this is standard slasher fare, chocked full of awkward cop banter, wooden acting, annoying comic relief, and a bizarre erotic shower scene during which Millet rubs a sort of berry paste all over a moaning Eleanor.
The only British film to be included on the infamous 'video nasty' list of the 1980's, Expose, also known as The House on Straw Hill,is tailor-made for inclusion - a sleazy, often unforgivably dull piece of exploitation featuring lots of sex, blood and B-movie favourite Udo Kier. Kier plays writer Paul Martin, who, following the huge success of his debut novel, moves to the remote British countryside to focus all of his attention on his follow-up - an erotic piece he believes could win him the Pulitzer prize.
Paul is plagued by visions of having sex with a well-endowed woman and his hands covered in blood, images he doesn't understand and which are hampering his efforts to get words onto paper. He calls for an assistant, and he is sent the young and beautiful Linda (Linda Hayden) who begins to efficiently type up his dictations. Yet something is not quite right with Linda - she sends Paul's faithful housekeeper away, carries sex toys and a large knife in her suitcase, and seems to open herself up sexually to Paul only to repel his advances.
Comparisons to Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs (1971) are obvious (the countryside setting, the inclusion of the word 'straw' in the alternative title and in the script, and Hayden is a dead-ringer for Susan George), but Expose shares none of its quality. The sex scenes are gratuitous and ridiculously loud, and the gang-rape scene fails to garner any sympathy for the victim due to being shot like a soft-core porno. What comes in between is tedious to say the least, and the events play out with all the complexity of a soap opera. Technically, the film looks quite nice, and the performance of Hayden adds a layer of intrigue to her character, but without Mary Whitehouse and her cries of moral outrage, Expose would have been lost in the annals of exploitation.
Eager to cash in on the faux-sequel success of Lucio Fulci's Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) - which was dubbed Zombi 2 in an attempt to dupe audiences into believing it was the sequel to George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978), Italian director Luigi Cozzi released Alien Contamination on the back of the success of Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). The similarities between Contamination (as it was named in the UK and on the infamous 'video nasty' list) and Flesh Eaters are quite striking - they shared the same production building, they both star Ian McCulloch, and they are both pretty bad.
When a large and apparently empty ship pulls into New York Harbor, obnoxious NYPD lieutenant Tony Aris (Marino Mase) steps in to investigate. Soon enough, a dead, mangled body falls out of a cupboard, and the rest of the crew are discovered in a cramped space, all dead. The ship is transporting a large quantity of strange eggs that, when heated, explode, releasing a deadly fluid which causes anyone it splashes on to explode. The military call in Colonel Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau), who links the eggs to a recent mission to Mars, where astronaut Hubbard (McCulloch) returned claiming to have seen a nest of alien eggs only to have his claims dismissed by fellow astronaut Hamilton (Siegfried Rauch).
The main problem with Contamination - and there are a lot of them - is that the film is so carelessly put together in an attempt to blend various successful genre tropes of the time, that it neglects to offer any kind of explanation or logic to the alien's plan. The eggs burst, killing anyone near, but don't hatch and therefore increasing the alien population on Earth. In fact, there's only one 'cyclops monster' who overlooks the eggs. Add to the mix an increasingly sagging middle section in which very little happens apart from dull exposition, the film becomes confusing and nonsensical. The exploding bodies offer a little light humour as the actor's bloated mechanism is clearly visible, but this just adds to the air of tragedy, as it tries to desperately cash-in on the success of Alien.
With the emergence of everyday computers during the 1980's, came the natural fear of just what they were capable of. Evilspeak may not contain the most ridiculous use of blending technology with the supernatural ever committed to film, but it does demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of how they actually work. Apparently, you can key in a question or a Latin sentence, and you will receive an answer or interpretation. Of course, with Google now the most omniscient tool since the Almighty himself, computers are now capable of doing just that. In Evilspeak, it is used in an attempt to summon Satan, but how exactly is unclear.
Social outcast Stanley Coopersmith (Clint Howard) is a young cadet at an American military academy, where his chubby appearance, lack of football (soccer) skills, and general idiotic behaviour make him the subject of bullying. Whilst cleaning the church cellar, he comes across the diary of Father Esteban (Richard Moll), a Spanish Satanist who existed during the Dark Ages and who is glimpsed in the opening scenes sacrificing a woman. Using his trusty computer, Stanley interprets the diary and discovers that it contains a recipe to perform a Black Mass - a black magic ritual he plans on using against his classmates.
Similar in subject matter to Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), Evilspeak fails to engage as De Palma's iconic horror did due to bad writing and a lack of any engaging back-story. Howard is impressive as Stanley, playing the bumbling goon well enough to get him on our side, but for the most part, the film aimlessly and bloodlessly ambles on, occasionally throwing in random supernatural events such as deadly pigs attacking a naked secretary in the shower (naturally). When the climax comes, it is a satisfyingly bizarre collection of blood and guts that cemented it's classification as a 'video nasty', and the effects aren't bad at all. However, this comes too late and Evilspeak never manages to become anything other than an occasionally amusing oddity with an amiable performance from it's lead.
When looking at Abel Ferrara's entire body of work, his feature debut (aside from his dabble in porn - 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy (1976)), The Driller Killer, has many of the same themes theme that run throughout his filmography. In a urban, decaying setting, a central character flourishes while simultaneously destroying themselves in the process, physically and/or mentally. Here, artist Reno (Ferrara himself, credited as Jimmy Laine) undergoes a psychological decline brought on by bill and rent troubles, a demanding boss, the loud punk rock band next door, and the depressing, crime-filled area that he lives. After seeing an advert for an electric drill on the television, Reno begins a killing spree, mainly targeting the homeless and drunk.
Whereas the likes of King of New York (1990) and Bad Lieutenant (1992), two of Ferrara's finest achievements, maintained this feeling of grime and general street filth, they were helmed by a far more experienced director, and were anchored by Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel, two of the finest American actors of their generation. The Driller Killer never manages to crawl out of its bargain-basement Taxi Driver (1977) credentials, filmed by a director seemingly more concerned with controversy than creating a serious picture. In fairness, the gore levels are relatively low and features only one scene of full-on blood-shedding - being the iconic moment depicted on the cover that caused so many Daily Mail readers to blow their top in the 1980's video nasty debacle - but it's just so bloody tedious.
Ferrara cannot act, but he certainly looks the part. He's always been a strange character in the movie business, which is one of the main reasons why the bulk of his later films are so intriguing. His near-supernatural ugliness and strange mannerisms made me believe that there could be something genuinely wrong with him, that helps to add at least of bit of weight to the film. Yet his screen-time is oddly limited, and the attention frequently shifts to the No Wave punk band The Roosters, who seem to practice endlessly, spout lyrical nonsense, and behave even more bizarrely than Reno. Is this shift of focus Ferrara's way to juxtapose Reno's mental decline with the rise of the New York punk movement, intertwining them somehow? Well, no. You know a film is in trouble when repetitive music scenes primarily there as a diversion is more interesting than the central story of a man drilling into people's skulls with a power tool.
The Driller Killer was single-handedly responsible for the video nasties list, so I guess we can 'thank' it for that. Although the films on the list are generally terrible, it created an interesting little story in recent cinema history, and helped save a few titles from absolute obscurity. It's certainly far from the worst nasty on the list (for me, Snuff (1976) holds that title), and is an embarrassing reminder of the nation's reaction to the scaremongering of the 80's, given the film's lack of gore and unconvincing effects. Ferrara would flourish in the 90's, so we all know what he is capable of and how much better this film could have been, but this is repulsive, amateurish film-making.
So we find ourselves here again, confronted with yet another sub-standard effort in the early '80's flood of slasher films. Unhinged sees three young women leaving the city in a car on a trip to a music festival. Their car is in an accident and they find themselves trapped in the home of an eccentric mother-daughter household, with inevitable dark secrets. Perhaps writer/director Don Gronquist was attempting to reverse much of the arguments in the media against these genre films with a gender twist. Famously, Siskel and Ebert held a vociferous discussion of slasher films and their attempt to subvert the feminist movement by stabbing and eviscerating women on film, and the films were targeted as misogynist. In the mansion house/prison of Unhinged female characters the head of the house, a wheelchair bound matriarch, Marion Penrose (J. E. Penner), has an inate hatred of men, and accuses her daughter of having men in the house, and prostituting herself.
Although if this were the case, the victims (no matter whom their attacker is) are female. The film uses many of the tropes from slasher films from Psycho (1960) to Friday the 13th (1980), and the girls trapped in the house are spied on through peep holes, whilst the deep, sexualised breathing of an unknown male are heard through the walls. It's a strange and almost farcical use of heavy breathing when considered against the backdrop of previous slasher films; particularly when this kind of audio effect was parodied in the dreadful slasher spoof from 1981, Student Bodies. Of course the girls are killed off in a bloody fashion, and the deep-seated psychological damage of the feminine family unit of the household is exposed, bringing with it the fastidious climax which reverses gender specifics - but not, however, creating any kind of revelatory, or even interesting, conclusion.
As would be expected from a low-rent, straight-to-video horror film, the acting is awful, although the campy histrionics of the old woman, are quite irresistible, and often humorous, but her space in the films narrative is underused. Whilst her performance is funny at times, the overall film is simply tiresome. The film doesn't entirely feel like a slasher film either, and at times feels and looks like an early 1970's sorority horror drama - but does not penetrate any kind of character study. No doubt that if this film did not find infamy with its early inclusion onto the UK's video nasty list, then this film would have been lost in time, forgotten, and rightfully hidden in the film history bargain basement - where shit films go to die. Even compared to other little remembered films of the same genre (Deadly Games (1982) or Blood Song (1982) for example), the pacing of Unhinged leaves you with a drab feeling. The dialogue is both written and delivered like the cast were under duress, and the languid, stilted camera glibly moves through the mansion set. I did find myself drifting away from the screen whilst viewing this, and found that whatever else was happening around me (admittedly there was nothing) was more interesting than Unhinged.
It has been stated before, here on 'The Wrath of Blog', and no doubt it will be said again, that Italian genre cinema (particularly through the 1960's, '70's, '80's and '90's) has had a tendency to emulate (or rip-off, if you like) successful American cinematic tropes. From the imitations of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), to the multitude of "re-imaginings," mainly of lucrative box office horror's, Italian film producers would regularly ask of a proposed project, not what the script is about, but what Hollywood film is the script like. Whilst Zombie Flesh Eaters' screenplay was conceived and written before the release of George A. Romero's uber-special zombie masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead (1978), the script was altered to "cash-in" on the success of it's American counter-part.
Written by Dardanno Sacchetti (but credited to his wife, Elisa Briganti), and originally titled 'Island of the Living Dead,' the film was at first conceived as an adventure yarn, with elements of horror. Sacchetti was influenced by older, pre-Romero zombie films, such as I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and White Zombie (1932), films that looked towards the Caribbean mysticism and the then largely unknown pseudo-religion of Voodoo. In these narratives, the zombie could easily be seen as victim rather than outright monster (like the somnambulist in the seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)), who is ultimately under the control of sinister magic, and dominated for nefarious purposes. The screenplay's influences are further illuminated with Zombie Flesh Eaters's Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), the mad scientist, who's original conception was taken largely from H. G. Wells's science fiction novel, 'The Island of Doctor Moreau'. However, much of these more "classic" horror devices were thrown aside in favour of an attempt to address the same audience that saw Dawn of the Dead (but more specifically for the more national cut that Dario Argento released in Italy as Zombi).
Whilst the majority of Zombie Flesh Eaters is set on a Caribbean island, the first and last scenes have the backdrop of Manhattan, New York. According to Sacchetti and director Lucio Fulci, these scenes were added to the script to attach it to Dawn, acting as the codification of American zombies. These scenes could either represent what the Italian producers would have called a sequel, but it could just as easily be reviewed as a prequel. The film opens as an unmanned yacht enters the waters surrounding the big apple. Coastguards board the boat finding a pit of decaying food, and eventually a zombie. It is a fantastic opening, creating tension through simple static camera shots. Fulci and cinematographer, Sergio Salvati, take their time to get to the gore in this opening, and seem to have been visually influenced by Sergio Leone's cinema of pro-violence. Like Leone, Flesh Eaters makes the audience wait for the violence that is inevitable, the masts and the New York skyline acting as the onlookers, or the eventual witnesses to the devastation to come.
The abandoned yacht leads its owners daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) and pushy British journalist, Peter West (Ian McCulloch), to the mysterious and locally vilified island of Matul, where Anne's father had been, and where they discover these zombie's originate from. The dead, it seems, are rising to "tear the flesh of the living". It would be impossible to talk about Italian horror cinema without discussing the graphic nature of blood and gore. Argento and Fulci are the masters of this kind of imagery, and Flesh Eaters delivers these moments with glee. From the ripping of flesh from the neck of a coastguard, to the infamous scene where Mrs Menard's eye is pulled towards a wood splinter (eye gauging being a particular relish for Italian filmmakers, acting - like Bunuel and Dali's eye-slicing Un Chien Andalou (1929) - as a literal assault on the audience, who's eyes are essential to the viewing of cinema), the excessive blood-letting of Italian horror will delight fans of the genre, but more specifically gives Italian Horror its raison d'etre, and (at the time) distinguished it from American horror - although the influence of these directors would inevitably transfer.
Whilst the cinema of Fulci is easily lambasted, with his narratives becoming increasingly incoherent, there is no disputing his visual flare (incidentally, Argento has been accused of the same unintelligible narrative structures). Seeing Zombie Flesh Eaters in its original aspect ratio highlights his love of the image. This was a problem for Italian horror in the 1980's, as it was served badly by pan and scan video releases. Whilst this is no cinema classic, it is a whole lot of fun. Fulci's zombies look fantastic, dripping with vulnerable flesh, clearly only recently exhumed from the dusty grounds, oozing with maggots, worms, and newly ripped flesh. As with the opening scene, the closing moments frames the Brooklyn Bridge, pointing towards the world famous city, as the marauding dead slowly move towards apocalypse. A chilling final image, as the sound of a radio presenter is devoured by the intrusion of flesh eating monsters.
The morbid human fascination with on-screen death and all things grisly began as early as 1962, with the release of the hugely successful Mondo Cane, a 'documentary' that explored the bizarre traditions and practises of obscure sub-cultures that were, at the time, relatively unknown to Western audiences. The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or and even received an Academy Award nomination, and this success spawned a rather repulsive sub-genre known as mondo films, which generally exploited audiences ignorance and their undeniable thirst for death. Thankfully, mondo quickly became unfashionable and had all but died out by the early 1970's, with the exception of a few z-grade obscurities that passed under the radar. Yet it seemed that audiences weren't done with their lust for real cadavers, and the genre saw a resurgence in 1978 amidst an influx of midnight movies and cheap, gory horrors. This came in the form of Faces of Death, the cinematic equivalent of slowing down while passing a car accident.
We are first greeted by Dr. Francis B. Gross (Michael Carr), a surgeon who talks directly to camera and ponders the various 'faces of death' he has experiences throughout his career - that being the various ways in which a person can meet their doom. We are then taken on a journey throughout Gross's 'career', in which we meet an African tribe, a Satanic ritualistic cult, a man being eaten alive by a crocodile, slaughterhouses, a pitbull fight, and state executions, amongst others. It is presented as a genuine documentary, with the various vignettes trying to be palmed off as being genuine footage. The vast majority is fake and rather terribly done, and some is genuine, resulting in the more disturbing aspects of the film.
I've always been somewhat reluctant to watch Faces of Death, as although I was assured by Marc that the majority of the film is laughable, I have always found scenes of real violence genuinely unsettling. With the rise of the Internet occurring in my teens, I found myself unable to resist the lure and treated myself to endless photographs of gunshots, stabbings and car accidents, yet maturity seemed to have muted my curiosity. Yet after finally sitting through the (somewhat exhausting) 100 minutes of Faces of Death, I was dumbfounded by the approach of director John Alan Schwartz and his complete ineptness in the staged scenes, cancelling out the impact of the real footage, and making the entire film disappointingly laughable.
It may have convinced audiences back in 1978, but the film has badly dated. While it may still boast the tag of 'banned in 46 countries!', it is now desperately tame. Of course, there are some distressing scenes in the genuine footage (mainly in the scenes of seal clubbing and the suicide of Mary Ellen Brighton), Schwartz makes many mistakes in the staged scenes. I mean, did it not occur to him that a shot from inside an active gas chamber may just give the game away, or narrating "in the country of Africa..." may cause the film to come across as, well, plain stupid? Maybe I'm being a bit too harsh, as although the film is rather risible, it is still one of the most popular cult horror films of all time, and Dr. Gross's occasionally amusing narration does make some interesting observations, and at least attempts to form a coherent narrative. Time will tell as to where Faces of Death will remain in horror history, but for now it will remain a subject of curiosity, and nothing more.
Back in the early 1960's, when drive-in theaters were still all the rage and the place to go for some haunted house and alien invasion B-movie thrills, producers were completely oblivious to a colossal gap in the market. That is until 1963, when producer David F. Friedman and director Herschell Gordon Lewis came up with a 'script' called Egyptian Blood Feast, a film that would be designed to not only show gratuitous violence, but to have the explicit gore as its main selling point. So Friedman hyped up publicity by handing out 'vomit bags' at screenings, and going as far as taking out an injunction on its own film so kick up a fuss. The film was pants, but the legacy is history, and so was born gore cinema, a sub-genre that horny teenagers still flock to in order to get their cheap thrills.
The film follows the exploits of Muad Ramses (Mal Arnold), an exotic caterer and author of 'Ancient Weird Religious Rights'. Socialite Dorothy Freemont (Lyn Bolton) enters his store and asks Ramses to create a party to remember for her daughter Suzette (Connie Mason), to which Ramses obliges, hoping to create an Egyptian feast that will re-awaken his god Ishtar. The town is beset by gruesome murders, with bodies being butchered and dismembered, puzzling Detective Pete Thornton (William Kerwin), who is co-incidentally studying Egyptian history with, co-incidentally (there's a pattern emerging!) Suzette. Will the detectives be able to unravel the mystery? Will Ramses create his feast, causing the re-birth of Ishtar? Will anyone point out how ridiculous Ramses' fake eyebrows are?
It is easy to make fun of this film - this is H.G. Lewis after all. Yet while every conceivable factor of Blood Feast's production is of the lowest standard, you can't argue with the film's importance. Ramses is an instantly forgettable madman, but he is the original machete-wielding maniac, paving the way for countless slasher imitators, from Michael Myers to Jason Voorhees. Lewis himself said it best - "I've often referred to Blood Feast as a Walt Whitman poem. It's no good, but it was the first of its type." Shockingly, this is arguably Lewis' most gruesome, with the gore factors dropping noticeably with follow-ups Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) (now dubbed The Gore Trilogy). At only 67 minutes, this still tries the patience, and has more plot holes than I care to mention (maybe to stop the killings, someone should have told Ramses that Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess!), but its historical significance has cemented it's place in horror history.
James C. Wasson's Night of the Demon (not to be confused with the 1957 Jacques Tourneur "classic" of the same name), is undoubtedly one of those films that would have been lost into the ether of forgotten trash, had it not been for moral crusaders involved in the ludicrous video nasty furore in the early 1980's. Of course, the likes of Mary Whitehouses' lobbying group, 'The Festival of Light' - along with MP Graham Bright, - would have only seen the "nasty" and gruesome shots from the accused films. Seeing a series of gore scenes from 79 films would surely grate on anyone (even someone who likes gore movies), and reading these outside of the context of the narrative fundamentally alters its meaning. In this low budget gore film, there are some significantly gruesome dismemberment and bloodletting - in one scene a motorcyclist has his penis ripped off whilst taking a leak at the roadside.
Night of the Demon is practically a slasher film (prevalent in the horror market at the time), in its approach of the infamous myth of the Bigfoot - or Sasquatch. Professor Nugent (Michael Cutt) takes a group of students to the wild wilderness of America, in search of the beast, who is suspected of being the culprit in some gruesome deaths. The films use of the flashback device is a simple technique used to fit as many kills in as possible. Nugent orates the history of the horrific deaths; each 3 to 6 minutes previous events are show in detail. Interviewing a local eccentric, they are guided towards a mysterious hermit woman, affectionately known as Crazy Wanda (Melanie Graham), and the myth of Sasquatch takes on a satanic edge, involving sexualised rituals, and offering of virgins. It's a bizarre inclusion to the narrative, but one that does eventually bring some obvious, silly, but semi-interesting ramifications - a kind of explicitly fantastical stereotyping of the redneck American "outback" of films like The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre (1974), or The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
Whilst overall the film is substantially awful, there are some technically accomplished - or at least effective - sequences. In the opening a man has his arm ripped off by the monster, the camera zooms onto the stump at the shoulder, the blood pours out, and as the title, Night of the Demon, emblazons the screen, the blood has filled a foot print in the mud of Bigfoot. It's an incredibly simple, but effective idea. Later a pair of girl guides are attacked, the beast bangs the girls together, as they stab each other with the knives in their hands. This incredible scene has the editing spirit of the shower scene from Psycho (1960), and cuts in some very gut churning shots of knife penetration.
Night of the Demon does have a few accomplished moments, but the film is generally a very haphazard production, with lamentable narrative drag, and incompetent performances (but it's preposterous to even criticise acting abilities in films like this). Of course, as you would expect also, from low budget horror, the monster - man in a suit - is stupid, looking like Chewbacca with a shaved face and an afro, and they save that beautiful reveal (sic) for the climax of the film. With all these bad elements, I have to say that it is not the worst of its kind. Night of the Demon offers some unintentional laughs, and possibly even some intentioned. Taking the gore scenes out of context would lead to some questioning of the film - some of the special effects are very well done for such a minuscule budget - but it is possibly far too amateurish to be absolutely convincing, but would certainly not damage the mind of any spectator.
Three sisters travel to their late father's mansion where they are to spend three nights together with their respective husbands, before they are eligible to hear the will (read to them by a man wearing make-up to rival Ramses' from Blood Feast (1963)). Also there are the two housekeepers, Martha (Veronica Radburn) and Ruth (Maggie Rogers), and Martha's deformed and dim-witted son Colin (Hal Borske), who we see murder two people at the beginning of the film. After a night of pompous partying, one of the couples, Veronica (Eileen Hayes) and Bill (Don Williams), find a dead rabbit in their bed (which was previously seen being eaten alive by Colin) with a note attached reading 'blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit."
Directed by exploitation and horror hack Andy Milligan, The Ghastly Ones (titled Blood Rites in the UK and placed on the Video Nasty list) is a fine example as to why he is considered one of the worst directors of all time, commonly placed in the same category of Edward D. Wood, Jr. and Herschell Gordon Lewis. He began his career in small-time off-Broadway production during the 1950's, and his experience in that medium is evident here as, unlike most trashy horror films, the film is almost unbearably wordy, as the main characters have their mundane conversations between the brief moments of gore. Saying that, I would much rather be listening to conversation than watching overlong stalking scenes or disco dancing which was so prevalent as running-time-filler in Grindhouse movies.
However, the movie is a massive bore, and even with the slender running-time of 70 minutes, I checked how long there was remaining at least three or four times. The awful, clunky camerawork, added to the fact that the film stock was so poor I could barely make out faces, gave me a headache. When the moments of inevitable gore come, the film is given a little relief, as the scenes of pitch-fork impaling and disembowelment are so bad it does give the film a little charm. It would work quite nice as a double-bill with the aforementioned Blood Feast, as they are both short, amateurish, and most notably, shit.
Elke Sommer (the premier German actress (sic)), plays Magdalene Kruschen, a gold digging model, whose marriage to rich Charles, loses its verve. Each of them conspires to hire killers to knock off one another. The film is structured using court room scenes, mixing this with flashbacks to the events that are discussed on the stand. Based upon the true-life murder of Christine Demeter, one of the most famous crimes in Canadian modern history, this film, with its made-for-television aesthetic, is cheep, and fundamentally flawed.
We follow as the married couple (the names were changed for legal reasons), as they conspire against each other, Charles embarking on an affair with the young Pauline Corte (Cindy Girling - Miss Canada 1977). Magdalene, simply fucks anyone with money, power, and connections with killers-for-hire. It's an incredibly dull affair, pacing through severely wretched people, and their petty affairs. And of course, what these "wonderful" characters want, is the large insurance payoff in the event of deaths.
Whilst taking much of the real-life crime, it obviously needs to change it slightly. But it is left a little ambiguous as to Charles' actual guilt. He is (as in life) convicted of hiring a murderer, we are left guessing as to whether he actually did it. Still, awful film, with very little merit - although Howard Shore composed the score (his first feature film), and we of course know his subsequent scores include David Cronenberg's output, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Lommel eventually made Revenge of the Boogeyman, or simply Boogeyman II, out of sheer frustration, and the result was one of the most notoriously terrible movies ever made. You get the sense that the sequel is one giant middle-finger to all those pesky studio heads who were only interested in squeezing some quick cash out of a mediocre horror film that proved an unexpected hit with the horror crowd. Lommel even casts himself as a movie director tasked with adapting the events of the first film for the big screen, who also questions Hollywood's opportunistic, closed-minded approach. You could almost admire Lommel's arrogance if Revenge of the Boogeyman didn't also feel like a huge middle-finger to the audience, who are not only forced to sit through some of the most laughable and badly-constructed set-pieces ever committed to screen, but also over forty minutes of flashbacks which consist of recycled footage from the previous film.
