Scars Of Dracula

 

Bloody Mess

Scars Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Roy Ward Baker  
Hammer/Studio Canal
Blu Ray Zone B

Wow. I wish I could say this Dracula film was as bad as I remember but, truth be told, while I remember thinking how bad it was last time I watched it, I didn’t remember any of the plot details at all. I think it’s so bad I just blanked them out of my mind somehow. Many people believe this is where the decline of the Hammer Dracula films started, with each one being steadily worse as they were released onto an unsuspecting public. Frankly, I think those people are crazy, considering the next film in the series was easily the jewel in Hammer’s Dracula crown and was, itself, followed by two very interesting Dracula movies too.

Now, you could be forgiven for looking at various elements of Scars Of Dracula on paper and thinking, wow, this one looks really interesting and, yeah, it does look interesting and I will go on to call out those points of interest in a minute. Also, it has a very strong cast with Christopher Lee reprising his signature role and with Jenny Hanley as the ‘final girl’ he has to bite. Playing her boyfriend and main minder is a young Dennis Waterman, a role many have said was miscast but, honestly, I think he does just as good a job with his lines and actions as any of the other actors in the cast and he’s certainly not why the film fails to engage. We also have the great Patrick Troughton playing Dracula’s human slave in this one... a part which I still think is beneath him but he does a good turn here. And, of course, Hammer regular Michael Ripper turns up in his third consecutive Dracula movie, with a much more expanded role than he usually gets, I would say.

So it’s still a great surprise, considering all the things it’s got going for it, that it’s a dull as ditchwater, almost plotless affair which even the impeccable acting and James Bernard’s score cannot rescue. The storyline just involves Hanley and Waterman ending up in Castle Dracula looking for his lost brother and bringing on various vampire troubles for themselves. Everything leading up to their confrontations with Dracula and his helper seem to be just so much terrible story padding and, none of it really works. There are though, as I said, a few points of interest but lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first...

The film starts off with Dracula reviving, from powdered blood on his cloak, by a very fake looking (and much used throughout the course of the movie) vampire bat flying over it and dropping fresh blood onto the ‘Dracula residue’. Yes, Dracula is brought back to life by a complete lack of imagination leading into his demise in the previous film, Taste The Blood Of Dracula (reviewed by me here) being played in reverse and, well, the location of his death, which took place in a cathedral of sorts if memory serves, has somehow been relocated to Castle Dracula... don’t ask me how. Since this film was released the same year as the previous entry, they must have thought audiences have a really short memory.

There’s an interesting scene, probably not the first movie to deal with this and the goriness is mostly kept below shot, where Patrick Troughton is seen clearing up after his master’s latest blood feast by sawing up a young lady’s body for easy burial. This was a nice touch and certainly showed something the producers may not have gotten away with in an earlier entry in the franchise (although I'm sure their Frankenstein films must contain something similar).

Another point of interest is the scene where Dracula, who is mostly played more like an English gentleman in this by Lee (probably his most interesting stab at the role, in which he brings a certain parallel humanity to the character), scales the sheer wall of his castle in much the same way that Spider-Man might do it. Although the scene shows his progress up the wall at high speed, it’s a moment which is taken directly from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, albeit with Lee’s incarnation of the un-dead Count looking a lot different from the one that Stoker wrote about.

Finally, Dracula’s death in this is also quite novel... although somehow still quite dull looking in execution. Dennis Waterman pulls a bar of iron off of the top of the castle and throws it into Dracula’s torso like a spear, staking him. However, maybe in this version the stake has to be wooden to be effective because, Dracula just pulls it out again. He then raises the makeshift spear in order to do unto Waterman what has been done to him, when a stray lightning bolt from the raging storm is attracted to the stake in Dracula’s hand as it would be to a lightning rod and, before you know it, Dracula is up in flames and his burning corpse falls from the walls of the castle. So, yeah, an interesting death at least, if poorly realised when away from the page.

And that’s me really done with Scars Of Dracula now. It’s a real mess but, of course, the series would soon redeem itself, at least in my eyes, with the truly wonderful Dracula AD 1972, which I’ve already reviewed on this blog and which you can read just here.

The Devil’s Hour Series 2

Loop Dreams

The Devil’s Hour Series 2
Directed by various
UK October 2024
Five Episodes

Warning: Very light spoilers for series one.

Okay, so when I reviewed the excellent first series of The Devil’s Hour (right here) I rightly praised it but was forced to conclude that it’s a bit of a one trick pony in terms of any future iterations. But, just to prove me wrong (and they really did), here comes Series Two. I wasn’t expecting much from it after the conclusion of the first series but, I certainly got more than enough here to keep me happy. This second season is easily the equal of the first... although it’s one episode shorter than the 2022 season.

One thing which I’m very happy about is that, after hearing a short interview with the main co-star Peter Capaldi (who plays the serial killer but on the side of righteousness, as far as we know) is that the story arc obviously has a very clear beginning, middle and end because the second and third seasons have been shot back to back and the third series will definitely be the final one (although I suspect it won’t actually get a release until October 2025 or 2026).

All the cast return here, including Capaldi as Gideon, the always brilliant Jessica Raine as Lucy (in at least two different iterations of her character and their respective occupations), Nikesh Patel as Ravi (who is a detective in both of his ‘versions’, so to speak), Benjamin Chivers as Isaac and Meera Syal as Isaac’s psychiatrist. They’re all absolutely fantastic in this, as are all their co-stars.

This one starts off with the Detective version of Lucy we were introduced to right at the end of the last series... we see her life post-Gideon and, I think (it gets confusing at first), we find that the future version of her character is the one who is talking to the ‘far future’ version of Gideon in this particular multiversal loop, which we saw towards the end of the last season. It all points to this second version of Lucy we know as living a life taking place before the main Lucy of last season... because when she dies, Gideon has her blessing to ‘wake her up’ in the next life (if I’ve got this correctly), which is what the first series was all about, it turns out.

The show continues after this following both Detective Lucy and the later (or previous, depending on your point of view) iteration of Lucy after the events of the first six episodes, crosscutting between the two and also the various versions of the other actors’ characters in their respective versions of their reality. Where this one gets interesting is that Gideon seems to be building, possibly by accident, a network of people who seem to be ‘awoken’ (sometimes tragically so) to their plight in the universe. This could possibly be a small group utilised in future loops of themselves, I suspect.

So the focus on this one is the explosion in the toy shop which kills so many children... primarily to find the identity of the bomber in the yellow hoodie. Now, we’ve not been shown his/her face as yet but it kind of seems obvious to me just who this person must be and, maybe it’s a bit obvious from the start (although I’m still hoping series three will be able to surprise me on that score... fingers crossed).
 
A couple of things of note though... they’re still hiding people in the background of shots on occasion. There’s a brilliant moment in the early stages of the second episode here where Lucy and Isaac are with their psychiatrist and, in one long shot only, another version of Isaac peeking out at them from behind the curtains is clearly visible in a ‘blink and you’ll miss him’ appearance. And it’s not just things like this which keep me watching because the show is just so gripping on its own but, heck, this is pretty good icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.

Two minor gripes though... and they really are minor.

We still don’t know why the show is called The Devil’s Hour. The waking up at 3.33am is still a feature for at least one of the characters but there’s no significance attached to this at any point, it seems to me.

Secondly, when one of the Lucy characters is going through a lot of pregnancy test kits over a ‘time passing’ montage, we see her throwing each dud into her bathroom bin as each negative result comes to light. Alas, the dud kits are piling up on top of each other in the bin to suggest the passage of time but... yeah, honestly that’s ridiculous. I mean, I know, visual shorthand and all that but are they really expecting us to believe that this woman doesn’t ever empty her bin over a number of months? Or even let other rubbish pile up on top of it?

Other than that though... I was gripped and thrilled and, asides from feeling smug at least about the identity of the yellow jacketed bomber (to an extent), The Devil’s Hour continues to surprise me, certainly with the twists the story takes but, not least of all in that it actually manages to hold its own with the previous series. I’m absolutely, once again, flagging this show up as one to watch and... I just hope there’s a Blu Ray version coming up at some point down the line.*

*Got sick of waiting to show this one to my folks so I just ordered a ‘Korean Blu Ray’ of the first two.

Gladiator II

Maximus Carnage

Gladiator II
aka GladIIator
Directed by Ridley Scott
UK/USA 2024
Paramount Pictures
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Very small spoilers.

I really wasn’t expecting much from Gladiator II (or GLADIIATOR, as the actual film print reads) as I didn’t think too much of the first movie when it hit cinemas. For me, the first Gladiator had some nicely staged battles and a fantastic score by Hans Zimmer. Those were the two standouts for me... other than that, it was an okay movie, not a great one. So I really wasn’t expecting much from this sequel which, honestly... did anyone want a sequel to a movie where the title character, Maximus, died at the end... thus going a good way to negating any attempt at a possible follow on.

Well, I have to say that, although Gladiator II is a completely unnecessary follow up, I actually preferred it a lot more to the first film. I mean, it’s still not a great film but, yeah, it kept me entertained for much longer and, despite running for two and a half hours, it didn’t really drag either (I thought the first one did drag, somewhat, it has to be said).

This one is, in terms of story content, a kind of toned down remake of the first movie where, this time, it’s Lucius, the grown up son of Maximus, played here by Paul Mescal, who is captured after his wife is killed by his mother’s new husband. Said husband, Marcus Acacius, is played by Pedro Pascal but he’s not really a villain and he plays the character sympathetically. Lucius goes about conquering the new games devised by two Caligula-like ruling emperors (who are essentially the main villains, for a bit), with the intention of taking his revenge on Acacius but there’s more to it than that. Denzel Washington plays the guy in charge of the Gladiatorial school, so to speak and he wants to use Lucius to rise up for his own political ends. Washington is amazing in this, as is the returning Connie Nielson as Lucilla.

There are political conspiracies paced with, frankly, somewhat over the top Colosseum games which include... I dunno... some kind of genetically altered killer ape/dog creatures and a flooded arena filled with sharks. Um, I assume there are going to be one or two accusations levelled at director Ridley Scott that he’s jumped the shark with this movie, for sure. That being said, although the action sequences are maybe not quite as consistently engaging as the first film, they still work very well and the quieter scenes where violence suddenly intrudes into the narrative have positively Japanese levels of arterial spray (well, more like arterial floods) and certainly liven up those moments considerably.

But, I don’t really care, as escapist fantasy it’s fast moving and, well it’s Ridley Scott so, whatever you may think of his movies post-1982 (after his three masterworks The Duellists, A L I E N and Blade Runner, reviewed here), you know that the cinematography is going to be nothing less than stunning so, yeah, no surprises there (and he seems to be using the different qualities of image tone between the two films for the flashbacks as the very thing which makes them feel like a window to the past). What did surprise me was the last combat scene in the film as I didn’t expect to see a certain character turning out to be the real villian until about half an hour before the end (I thought he would become an ally)

And as an added bonus, we get a score by one of Zimmer’s stable, the great Harry Gregson-Williams, who of course gave us the incredible score to Wonder Woman. And yes, Gladiator II is on CD and this was the real motivating factor that dragged me into cinemas to see (well, hear) this thing and, on the music front, I was not disappointed. I can’t wait to hear this thing as a stand alone listen, for sure. It does have a fair few nods to Zimmer’s leitmotif on occasion (although not the Holst derivative, from what I could hear) but it does its own thing and has some nice orchestration.

So yeah, I think that’s me done with Gladiator II other than to acknowledge that Derek Jacobi’s returning character feels somewhat wasted, Connie Nielson is the absolute glue which holds the film (and the story, to an extent) together and I didn’t even mind the tongue-in-cheek ‘I Am Spartacus’ moment after the Coliseum sea battle scene. Definitely worth seeing this one at a cinema if you can spare the time.

The Black Widow

Along Came
A Spider Woman

The Black Widow
USA 1947
Directed by
Spencer Gordon Bennet & Fred C. Brannon
Republic Pictures

I really love the old cinema serials... starting right back from my passion for Feuillade’s silent French serials and with more than much love for the American talkie serials, which met their ultimate demise at some point in the 1950s. I mean Universal, Republic, Columbia... they all had their own, distinct style of serial making and I could watch these things forever. So it brings me no joy to say that The Black Widow, a theatrical serial I wanted to see so much I had to look for it as a non-commercial release (if you catch my drift), is probably my least favourite of them all... although it’s still quite watchable and has at least a little entertainment value for sure.

I don’t know what went wrong with this one though. It’s got all the ingredients of being another fast and furious serial from Republic which, if you know their serials, means the odd car chase and lots of fist fights where everything at a location or interior set which isn’t nailed down will, within the course of a few minutes, get thrown or used as a breakable weapon by protagonists and antagonists alike. And The Black Widow looked like a real good one... not only that but it’s directed by the team of Spencer Gordon Bennet & Fred C. Brannon, who both had a very good track record with directing exciting serials. And it’s even got special effects by Howard and Theodore Lydecker, who did absolutely fantastic work in many a Republic serial. Think of the cave melting effects of the decimator in King Of The Rocket Men (a serial I hope to revisit in a high definition restoration very soon) or their work on getting the title characters in that and The Adventures Of Captain Marvel (reviewed here) to fly to their destinations in various shots.

Okay, so this one is about Sombra, aka The Black Widow... a fortune teller who is a female spy working in the USA, under the instructions of her father who will sometimes teleport to her headquarters in a puff of smoke, instructing her in which secret gadgets and inventions to try and steal from the American authorities to hinder their war effort and help their own. Now it’s not really said which foreign power she’s working for but the implication is that she’s supposed to be Japanese, I think... although the ‘yellow face’ make up job is pretty unfathomable most of the time and she just seems like the US girl she is... played here by all American gal Carol Forman (who made a name for herself playing leading villainesses in similar productions and who would, of course, go on to play the lead villain, The Spider Lady, in the first Superman serial a year later).

Anyway, the big flies in her ointment here are the two main protagonists, detective fiction writer Steve Colt, played by Bruce Edwards and his ‘side kick cum damsel in distress’, lady reporter Joyce Winters, played by Virginia Lee. These two, week after week, put themselves in danger trying to thwart The Black Widow’s plans for world domination. Except, there’s no chemistry between the two at all, it seems to me and not much interaction besides the odd argument as Steve tries to stop Joyce from going along with him on dangerous missions. It just all feels kinda limp and there’s not even a hint of romantic interest suggested between the two leads either so... yeah, these two are not helping the serial much, it has to be said.

And that’s even with the inclusion of a number of neat gadgets and ideas littered throughout the ‘13 exciting chapters’ of this one. Such as the fact that Sombra can disguise herself as anyone via a mask and impersonating their speech, making for many shenanigans and plot twists reminiscent of the modern Mission Impossible films. This obviously wasn’t a new idea then, of course... Fantômas was doing the same thing back in the 1913 serial and the books which pre-date that but, this may well have been one of the earlier American examples of the ‘mask madness’ which we’re all so familiar with today... the impossibility of which is always overlooked by whichever film maker is going with it.

Other interesting novelty features for the serial are a fake looking black widow spider that pops out from a compartment in a chair and bites Sombra’s victims to death and also a drug which feigns death by slowing the victims heart so it looks like they’ve passed on. Sombra uses this heart stopping pill to escape from jail at one point. There’s even that neat trick which I’ve seen used in a couple of other serials (such as Batman in 1943) where, at the flick of a button, the fleeing enemy car changes its colour so the good guys miss it... but even that is badly done here on two occasions, where it looks nowhere near as good in this serial as I’ve seen done elsewhere... I was surprised at how this turned out for the Lydeckers, to be honest.

And, yeah... not much more for me to say in this one. It’s got the usual quota of fights and chases (none of which were that exciting here, it seemed to me) and it’s got plenty of cliffhangers where the director has to reveal a slightly different sequence of events the next chapter, to allow our hero or heroine to survive the certain death we’d witnessed the week before). So, yeah, The Black Widow is certainly still fun but, I dunno, I prefer the other 20 to 30 serials I’ve previously seen to this one so... it was okay. I’m not done with the serials though... I’ve just bought a nice Australian Blu Ray set of seven restored Republic serials, five of which I’ll be revisiting and, with the other two, I’ll be making my acquaintance with them for the first time. So there will definitely be more serial reviews coming to the blog at some point... but I will be watching them an episode a week so, there will be gaps between the reviews, for sure.

Holy Spider

Murder She Saeed

Holy Spider
Directed by Ali Abbasi
Denmark/Germany/
France/Sweden/
Jordan/Italy 2022
Mubi Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Spider spoilers within.

Well this is a stunning film. I think it may be a bit political too but I’m not the best person to pick up on stuff like that.

Holy Spider is based on a real life incident which happened in Mashhad in Iran and it starts off, for the first ten or fifteen minutes, following a sex worker who works the streets of the area to support herself and her young child when said child is asleep. We see the bruises on her naked back as she dresses up to go out in the search for clients. And we follow her on her routine as she works a couple of tricks, has a break to do some drugs and then gets on a potential client’s motorcycle as he takes her back to his home (on the regular night he knows his family stays over at his mother in law’s home). The director then pulls a ‘Marion Crane’ on the audience and this person who you thought was the lead protagonist is strangled by the guy, wrapped in a scarf and then driven and dumped some distance away. When the camera moves up and away from the killer’s speeding motorcycle, we take in a view of this beautiful city at night and the many lights make it look a little like a spider’s web, as the main title of the film appears.

Okay, so from here on in we meet the real main protagonist, a young journalist called Arezoo Rahimi, played brilliantly by Zar Amir Ebrahimi,... a character who was fired from her last job for refusing the affections of her boss. We see exactly how things are in this culture and religion right from the get go, as she is refused a room at the local hotel she has booked because of a technical error (that error being that the manager didn’t realise she was a single woman and not accompanied by a husband). She changes the man’s mind when she shows him her journalist’s ID and, suddenly the error is magically fixed. He asks her to cover her hair more with her head scarf but she refuses. And, yeah, this sets the tone for the whole film where… and it always amazes me how women in these kinds of countries tolerate this… stupid religion and beliefs are used as a way to control women and ‘keep them in their place’. It never fails to anger me.

So Arezoo has seen what a mess the police are doing of catching this ‘spider killer’ (not sure why he’s called that, it’s never really made clear other than he leaves some mark on them… something which I either misunderstood or we don’t see) and wants to break the story and catch him herself. But she faces all this discrimination because of her sex and even the local police chief just wants her to sleep with him rather than do the job. The police do not come out of this whole thing well, it has to be said and, I suspect... rightly so.

After a street walker who Arezoo was trying to help the night before becomes the killer’s umpteenth victim (with an MO so ridiculous that it’s implied the police should have been able to catch him fairly quickly), she goes undercover as bait and works the streets with a colleague watching over her, nearly getting herself killed in the process by the killer.

There’s no mystery maintained past the post credits sequence about just who the killer is either. He’s  a family man and ex-military guy Saeed, played equally skilfully by Mehdi Bajestani, who turns in a blisteringly good performance of a man a little mentally unstable but who believes himself to be doing the work of God, cleansing the streets of the immoral women who hire their bodies to a willing crowd. It’s not a one dimensional performance here… it’s not a film about too many black and white issues of morality and Bajestani gives the character a certain nuance and subtlety that serial killers in other movies often don’t receive.

And the whole film crosscuts between Arezoo and Saeed’s worlds, as we wait for their paths to intersect. And then, just when you think it’s all over and she manages to turn in the spider killer to the police, after surviving his brutal attack… the film has a fairly long end game and, it’s a little disturbing because, like I said at the start, this film is based on true events that happened in the city in the early 2000s.

Arezoo is convinced that this man’s world in the justice system is going to side with Saeed and let him ago and, to be fair, this is almost what happens. By the people in the streets, Saeed is seen as a hero for his murders of ‘corrupt women’, not a killer and, as he says himself, that his hands are clean. There are massive protests outside what passes for halls of justice in Mashhad and right until nearly the end of the picture, the director will have those not familiar with the facts guessing as to Saeed’s final fate. Spoilers here though because, I want to discuss the last scene of the movie so… look away, go somewhere else while I say…

Saeed is executed for his crimes, midst massive protest and friendly faces. At the end of the film Arezoo returns to where she came via a bus and, on that bus ride, she watches a video news item. It’s a video of Saeed’s young son demonstrating, with the aid of his even younger sister, just how his dad, ‘the hero’ would creep up on the girls and cleanse them, showing how his father might stand on their necks if they weren’t yet dead. A chip off the old block, so to speak. It’s a grim coda for a film which already is full of the terrible cultural malaise which lets these kinds of attitudes thrive. It’s a film full of equally grim moments too, such as when Saeed’s wife comes home a day early and he’s making love to her on the floor next to a rolled up carpet containing the body of his latest victim from ten minutes before… pounding into his wife as he notices the toes of the woman sticking out from the end of the carpet.

And as I said, it’s not a one dimensional movie. Nearly all of the girls working the streets are shown to be there, excepting possibly one, not by choice but by circumstance and, though they are not trafficked women, they are in this line of work due to necessity. Now I don’t believe that’s the full picture for that industry at all but the writer/director does take time to contemplate the women and show something of their circumstances in this regard. And, indeed, when one fights back and nearly escapes, one who seems to be there by choice rather than what she’s been forced to become, she comes alive again in Saeed’s head and he has to kill her again. And later on, when his defence is trying to get him off the hook, he refuses to recognise in front of the court that he is crazy… which might well have helped him escape the death sentence.

Now, as I said, the film looks absolutely spectacular. Mashhad is nothing, if not a beautiful looking city and the cinematography and different kinds of shots employed to capture it and certain details (such as a cam strapped on an actress so that her head is completely still as she rides the back of Saeed’s motorbike towards her death) are nothing short of spectacular. And it’s such a jarring clash when you think about the prevalent attitudes of the culture and religion represented by the film. In various Star Trek shows and movies they had the Prime Directive of non interference in cultures and beliefs to stop the characters acting on moral judgements and interfering with the development of the specific world they were on but, in real life it seems to me that something similar to this must be coming into play, when the outside world looks on.  

And just to drive that message home, as I finish up on the brilliance of Holy Spider (which I would whole-heartedly recommend to most people), the lead actress herself,  Zar Amir Ebrahimi, was only supposed to be the casting director. However, at the eleventh hour, the actress they had chosen dropped out as she didn’t want to run the risk of being seen on film without her head coverings. And so, Ebrahimi took the role and won the best actress Oscar at Cannes for doing so. However, here’s the thing… the film is pretty much condemned in Iran (presumably for showing the truth) and she and many of the cast and crew have had multiple death threats for their involvement with this one. All I can say, aside from noting the troublesome and obvious condemnation of a dominating religion that lets this kind of attitude survive, is you really need to take a look at Holy Spider if you want to see the women of the Iranian culture shown in a fairer and, perhaps more accurate, way.

Paddington In Peru

Dear Peru Dance

Paddington In Peru
Directed by Dougal Wilson
UK/France/Japan/USA 2024
Columbia
UK Cinema Release Print.

Paddington In Peru is the third in the staggeringly successful and popular series of films based on Michael Bond’s eponymous bear and let me say up front that, as far as I’m concerned... yes, this is perhaps ‘the least’ of the big screen Paddington adventures. And I think there are some very specific reasons for that, which I’ll probably get into in a minute but, it would also be remiss of me to not say that this is by no means a bad film. Like the previous installments it’s fun, entertaining and has a lot going on for it. It just pales slightly in comparison to those first two but, what other family films don’t these days?

The majority of the former cast are all present and correct, with people like Ben Wishaw doing the voice of Paddington, Hugh Bonneville as Mr. Brown and Julie Walters as Mrs. Bird. That being said, I did really miss one of my favourite modern British actresses, Sally Hawkins, in the role of Mrs. Brown. Alas, my understanding is that she has a medical condition which prevents her from filming overseas at the moment so... yeah, it’s a damn shame because she was my favourite thing about the Paddington movies, to be honest. Having said that though, this is not to detract from her replacement, Emily Mortimer, who steps into her shoes really well and still manages to hold the family unit together as they embark on their adventures.

And it’s a fair old romp. Olivia Colman plays the nun in Peru in charge of the Home For Retired Bears but, as she writes to Paddington, Aunt Lucy has gone missing. So Paddington and the Browns (and Mrs. Bird) all fly off to ‘Darkest Peru’, as it was always known in the books, to find her... accidentally getting involved in a quest to find the lost gold of El Dorado with ‘interested parties’ turning up and coming out of the woodwork, including the captain of a river boat they charter, played by Antonio Banderas. The game is afoot, so to speak and Paddington is off on new adventures, of course.

So, yeah, it’s all very good but I have to say, this one makes a little mistake, I think, in terms of the idea of what makes the Paddington franchise tick. It’s not, I believe, the fault of the new director, who absolutely does an excellent job here... it’s more the fault of the writing or, more specifically, the story idea. You see, Paddington is from Peru and the comedy hijinks he gets involved in are often of the fish out of water variety (or should that be bear out of forest), relying on the bear’s unfamiliarity with the trappings and rituals of British life, it seems to me. However, we don’t really have that charming part of the equation here for this one... the opening of the movie (asides from yet another flashback to Paddington’s childhood) is once again set in London but it really isn’t long before the family have upped stakes and transported themselves to Peru. Consequently, some of the comedy and, I would say, some of the wonderfully creative ideas of its cinematic forebears (pun absolutely intended) are not in abundance in this installment either. It all seems to run out of steam fairly early, once the novelty wears off.

But, honestly, it’s just a minor gripe and I still had a fairly good time with it, it has to be said. And it’s not creatively dead by a long shot. For instance, Banderas’ character speaks to his various ghostly ancestors and the way one of them suddenly appears to him as a 3D version of his painting is masterfully done. I also, truth be told, shed more than a tear at some of the more moving scenes towards the end of the movie which, it’s fair to say, is not unusual in a Paddington movie, for sure.

People who are fans of the previous movies will want to hang around for the post credits and mid-post credits sequences too, where a much loved character from the previous installment appears in two mini scenes, although the actor is only billed as the character name ‘playing himself’ in the end credits.

And that’s me done with Paddington in Peru, I think. Not the best of the series but good enough to keep me entertained and I certainly hope there will be another one in a few years time. Hopefully located firmly in the British Isles this time. If you’re a fan of the previous two then you’re certainly not going to hate it... just don’t raise your expectations too high, I would say.

Man Made Monster

The Elec-Strickfaden Man

Man Made Monster
aka The Electric Man
aka The Atomic Monster
USA 1941
Directed by George Waggner
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Man Made Monster, directed by George Waggner, was adapted from a short story, The Electric Man, by Harry Essex, Sid Schwartz and Len Golos and was originally intended to be a vehicle for Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi before being put on hold for a little while. It stars Lon Chaney Jr as Dan, the titular horror and, well, it was a very important movie, despite it not being one of the best remembered horrors from Univeral at the time. Not only was it important to the careers of Chaney and director Waggner... it also was important, ultimately, to a famous comedy team of the 1940s and 1950s... I’ll get to all that in a minute.

So the film starts out with a bus crashing into an electrical pylon, killing the driver and five of the six passengers. That surviving passenger is Dan, played as I said by Lon Chaney Jr in what was pretty much his first starring role in a Universal picture, although he gets second billing behind the mad scientist character Dr. Rigas, played by Lionel Atwill. Anyway, Dan survives the crash and is invited by kindly Dr. Lawrence, played by Samuel S. Hinds (who played George Bailey’s dad in It’s A Wonderful Life, reviewed here), to stay with him at his laboratory/home for pay and food so he can study the condition that Dan seems to have. Dan had a sideshow carny act involving electricity... or rather electrickery, much like the shows I suspect Ken Strickfaden was involved with in real life, many years before. And, certainly, Stirckfaden’s marvellous machines feature prominently in this movie (you can read my review of a biography of Strickfaden and find out his importance to mad science movies everywhere here).

However, while Dr. Lawrence is away for a science conference, Rigas starts experimenting with Dan and gives him daily charges of superhuman amounts of energy. Eventually Dan becomes a shadow of his former self because he comes to depend on the electric treatment for his strength. Of course, a side effect is he can shoot electricity from his fingers and so on... so another movie which I’m sure comic book gurus Stan Lee and Steve Ditko would have seen and been influenced by back in the day. Of course, when Lawrence twigs what’s been going on, with a little insight from his daughter played by Anne Nagel and her newspaper man boyfriend Mark, played by Frank Albertson (who would go on to play... Hee Haaaw... Sam Wainwright in It’s A Wonderful Life), things turn sour and Rigas gets Dan to kill Frank and uses hypnotic powers over him, to make him confess to the killing (and forget everything else about it). But, when he is given the electric chair for his perceived crimes, of course, thing take the expected turn, leading to one of those ‘Just’ but, tragic endings that Universal did so well with some of their horror pictures.

And it’s great. A really nicely put together slice of ridiculous pseudo-scientific gobbledy gook played for drama and a cautionary tale (the Second World War had just started and Rigas wants to build an army of such electric supermen). It’s well acted by all the principal cast but the outstanding actor in the crowd is Corky... as Corky The Dog. He’s Lawrence’s canine who takes a shine to Dan and does funny, doggy things throughout the movie, including some clever tricks. He’s the one character I was most afraid might come to harm but, spoiler, he survives the movie to give a touching performance as he rests his arms and head on the lifeless body of Dan at the finale. The only problem with his performance was that you can occasionally catch him looking off screen to see what his owner wants him to do next but, this is something many porn actresses have also been caught doing on camera over the years in many productions so, I think I can cut the four legged thespian some slack here.

It’s an entertaining film and clocks in at just under an hour. It also has some nice shot compositions in it too, which is something I always find astonishing considering the 4:3 aspect ratio of these pictures. For instance, there’s a scene where Lionel Atwill is standing over Lon Chaney Jr’s body on a medical table, using his stethoscope to figure out if he’s accidentally killed him or just made him faint. A loop of wire from one of Strickfaden’s marvellous machines loops down from above into the foreground of the shot just above Chaney’s horizontal slab and, of course, Atwill is perfectly framed within the loop. Some nice noirish moments too, where the shadow of the police guard is seen only as a bold silhouette against the wall, as it approaches the lever for the electric chair. Yeah, there’s some nice stuff in the movie, for sure.

And, like I said, it’s also important. In that it was well liked enough that it gave director George Waggner and star Lon Chaney Jr their next picture together, released later that same year. That picture was, of course, The Wolf Man (reviewed by me here) and without it, the Universal werewolf movies that followed (if there had been any at all), would certainly have turned out a little differently. Would they have contributed to the later ‘monster rally’ movies and therefore, at the end of the 40s, have contributed significantly to saving the career of two comedy stars on the wane, Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, when their combined project Abbot And Costello Meet Frankenstein (which included Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster and The Wolf Man, reviewed by me here) took in big bucks at the box office? Who knows what would have happened if this director and actor hadn’t done this picture together.

Man Made Monster is part of Eureka Masters Of Cinema’s recent(ish) Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci Fi Terror, alongside The Monolith Monsters and Monster On The Campus. It’s treated as well as all the other sets they’ve recently been releasing in a similar vein, which means it has some nice commentaries and, frankly, is about as good a transfer and print as you’re ever going to see it in. So, yeah, lovers of Universal Horror might want to check this set out and I’m very pleased to now have these wonderful films on the shelf, so to speak.

Halloween FrightFest 2024

Bull’s Eye

Halloween FrightFest 2024
ODEON Luxe 1st and 2nd November 2024

Well that rolled around quickly again... as the years frequently do when you get to my age. The Halloween edition of this year's FrightFest was held over two days again, the first day starting around 6pm and finishing just after midnight and the second starting at 11pm and finishing around the same time as the first day. So three new movies on the first day and six on the second. As usual, these were all either UK premieres or world premieres of the films in question and some of them are still waiting for distribution deals to be inked out (or whatever the digital equivalent of that is these days). And, also as usual, this is going to be a series of very short capsule reviews (not really even reviews, probably, more quick sketches) of the films in question, just to give a flavour of the tone of the festival (which I’m glad to say was, once again. all over the place... good for them). If I revisit any of these at a later date, I’ll review them properly then.


DAY ONE

Magpie
Directed by Sam Yates
UK/USA
First up was Magpie, starring Daisy Ridley (and based on her story which was written as a screenplay by her husband, Tom Bateman), Shazad Latif and the absolutely brilliant Matilda Lutz (who top-lined Revenge, reviewed here). This is a somewhat dark tale of marital erosion as Ridley plays the housewife looking after one of the kids while her writer husband takes the other kid to work, shooting a major movie. It’s pretty intense and features a lot of close ups of Ridley as we study the emotional turmoil within her (which is a good thing, she’s always worth a watch). It reminded me a just a tad of Polanski’s Repulsion, to be honest. It’s not really a horror movie, more a thriller but it’s got beautiful cinematography and is only let down a little, perhaps, by the obvious twist which I suspect most people will see coming from about a third of the way into the picture. But a pretty good movie, nonetheless. It was nice seeing Ridley and a few others in person too... almost all the screenings had cast and crew intros and Q & A sessions this year. 

Parvulos
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Mexico
Directed by Isaac Ezban, the incredible Mexican genre director behind the likes of The Incident (reviewed by me here) and The Similars, Parvulos was one of the two really stand out films of the festival this year, for me. A post-apocalyptic zombie tale about three brothers (two of them very young) trying to get food to survive after everything has ended while keeping alive two zombies in the basement, for reasons which will be made clear as you get into the narrative. Visually, the colour palette is so knocked back that most of the time it feels like you are watching a monochrome movie, apart from the odd smudge of strong colour deliberately placed here and there. As usual, Ezban pulls no punches and you won’t see every beat coming as the tale develops.  Another outstanding film from this director. 

 

Advent
aka The Krampus Calendar
Directed by Airell Anthony Hayles
UK
This movie has a similar central idea to the far superior French movie The Advent Calendar (reviewed here) and is told in a fake documentary using ‘found footage’ style. Alas, although a couple of the main performances are nice, the film seemed a little badly executed and, I dunno, just felt like it could have used a lot more money pumped into it to make the central idea work better. Kinda cheap and tacky, I thought. I hate typing that because I know these movies are hard to make and there are some nice moments but... it just didn’t work too well for me, I guess.

DAY TWO

The Bitter Taste
Directed by Guido Tölke
Germany
Well this was kinda interesting. A well made action adventure, sc-fi, horror movie that was well shot, had some great performances and went along at a fair lick. It was certainly a rich and diverse movie but, yeah, that’s a double edged sword for this production, I reckon. It felt like everything and the kitchen sink had been thrown into the film to make a very dense narrative which I feel isn’t easy to process in one go. I honestly felt that this story would have been better served as either a serialised comic or a TV mini series. I also thought the score could have been dialled down in the sound mix just a little in a couple of places. However, it was certainly an ambitious project and you have to admire a lot about the end result, even if it doesn’t all jell well in one installment.


Alien Country
Directed by Boston McConnaughey
USA
Directed by Boston McConnaughey and starring his wife Renny Grames and K.C. Clyde, this one is a comedy ‘aliens in the desert town’ movie as a bunch of people are thrown together trying to stop an alien invasion force consisting mostly of big, insect like predators. This was pretty entertaining, had some good jokes and some nice visuals. Can’t fault this one... would play well as part of an all-nighter with your mates with liberal doses of alcohol on a Saturday night.

The Draft!
aka Setan Alas!
Directed by Yusron Fuadi
Indonesia
Five students go to a remote location from which they can’t escape while they slowly get picked off by a killer. I won’t reveal too much about this because they don’t want spoilers going out ahead of its release but this didn’t quite make it for me. When I noticed a large, seeming ‘continuity error’ involving a suddenly appearing bunch of tea cups early in the picture, I got kinda interested because I knew it must be there deliberately. Unfortunately, the film tips its hand too early on in the process and, again without giving too much away, sometimes a joke can go on forever and lose its power completely. Not a good one for me.


Time Travel Is Dangerous
Directed by Chris Reading
UK
This is another one which didn’t really work for me. A ‘fun comedy’ with two leads who get next to last billing because they’re shop owners and not actresses and are essentially playing themselves (and doing a very good job of it) this one has a huge support by British comedy A listers. About two ‘retro store’ ladies who go back in time to get brand new historical artefacts to sell, it kinda falls flat and dull fairly early on, I think. I know I’m not alone in thinking (the guy sitting next to me reacted similarly) that it just went on too long and, to paraphrase him, fun should not be this much hard work. Would have made a great short film though... which apparently it was at some stage.


Catch A Killer
Directed by Teddy Grennan
USA
This was a kind of fun one for fans of American horror and also slasher movies, with lots of references which are actually built into the DNA of the thing and which an ex-police inspector uses to try and catch the killer. It’s a bit obvious (really no surprises here) but it’s a solid, consistent movie which is rather well made and lands its ending nicely. Not a bad little thriller... very entertaining.


Animale
Directed by Emma Benestan
France
Animale was the other outstanding movie of the festival. Absolutely brilliant with a knockout performance by Oulaya Amamra as Nejma, the film’s central protagonist who wants to work with bulls. Now, it was the last film of the festival and I was exhausted and sleepy but this one transported me, dream-like, to another level. I definitely need to research and pay more attention to both the lead actress and director. A real high to end this year’s festival with.

Heretic

Die Agnostic
Evaluation

Heretic
Directed by Scott Beck
and Bryan Woods
USA/Canada 2024
A24
UK Cinema Release Print.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the new movie Heretic and I’m going to mention those first to stop them getting in the way of what should be a, mostly, very positive review.

Firstly, well... regular readers will probably remember I have quite rigid ideas about what makes a horror genre movie and so... I don’t appreciate going out on Halloween night to see a preview of a new horror movie (I would be at FrightFest for the next two days so it was the only day I could fit it in) only to find out by the end that it wasn’t a horror movie at all... just a thriller (albeit a very good one).

Secondly, the title is a bit of a nonsense because a ‘heretic’ is, by dictionary definition, somebody who disagrees with beliefs that are generally accepted, in this case religion but, honestly, the beliefs of the main antagonist, played brilliantly by Hugh Grant, do not define him as a heretic because, well, I think a large amount of people on the planet would probably have come to the same conclusion about just what organised religion is from an early age. And to just underline my own conclusion of these things, which pretty much mirrors Grant’s in the movie but I won’t reveal what his ‘one true religion’ is in case it’s a spoiler... I’ll just acknowledge that, religion doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the belief in God (whatever that is for you), it’s something else very much man made... so it’s possible to believe in God without being in any way religious, I suspect.

Anyway, other than those two points... Heretic is a mostly cracking movie with, perhaps, just a little of a disappointing denouement but it was still an okay enough ending. It’s not, as I said, really a horror movie, although various genre trappings are brought into play because, right from the offset, the directors certainly seem to want you to think it is.

It opens strongly with two mormons, Sister Paxton (played by Chloe East) and Sister Barnes (played by Sophie Thatcher, who was so good as the young version of Juliette Lewis’ character in Yellowjackets) talking about an amateur porn film. Around them... and this is the best part of the film for me... is some superb typography showing the title, cast and crew etc, creeping around the edges of the frame as the two talk. They then go on with their chores which involves checking their list and going around town, knocking on the doors of people who have expressed an interest in joining their religion and trying to convert them. The last stop on their journey tonight is the house of Mr. Reed, played by Hugh Grant.

Once they’re inside his home, however, it soon becomes clear that he’s a religious scholar and that he has them there for a purpose... he’s not letting them go anytime soon. And the majority of the film is fairly slow paced but that’s okay, it’s pretty riveting dialogue and the discussions around religions and Reed’s metaphors likening the various religions as a series of boards games is all pretty great (and I seriously have to check up on the origins of Monopoly now... that’s just so wrong). As the girls are taken down a winding, conversational path, it isn’t too long before they find themselves in the first of a series of lower levels to the house, as they try and find a way out of their situation (I’m pretty sure something important about the layout of this area may have been cut which was in one of the original trailers but I think I’ll need to revisit those trailers again to make sure).

And that’s where I’m leaving the story dangling... like I said, I don’t want to get into any spoilers past what you know from the trailer. But I will say that the movie is less like the horror film it’s trying to fool the audience into thinking it is and much more like one of those small scale, two hander plays/movies such as Sleuth and Deathtrap, albeit this involves a few more characters at various stages. Now, the cinematography is great and I’ve mentioned the strong, typographically excellent opening (which feels more like something Wes Anderson might use). There are also some outstanding shots such as the way the directors play with the syntax of the visual language by, at one point, showing one of the girls running through a scale model of the house from above in a room as a short hand metaphor and, when she reaches that specific room with the model in it, the camera just pans up to show her arriving in that room.

However, the film’s power comes from a well written script and the powerful performances of the three central characters, all of whom work really well together. Especially Grant... I’ve seen him playing comic villains before such as in films like Dungeons And Dragons - Honour Among Thieves (reviewed here) but he really does have a chance here to remind the audience about just how good an actor he can be and he certainly seizes the opportunity.

Now, the ending, which I will try and discuss but not spoil, does seem to me like it’s totally not horror but, it has to be said, there is more than a hint that something supernatural does occur by the movie’s end but, it’s more of a choice on the behalf of the particular viewer, I believe... and could be interpreted a number of ways. It could be argued, for example, that a certain ‘deus ex machina’ moment in the movie is just exactly that, in the literal translation of the phrase but, I personally didn’t necessarily plump for this ‘is it or isn’t it a miracle?’ moment myself... especially considering the aftermath of the moment. But it doesn’t matter because, I’m sure some people will take certain things as a positive message about religious faith and others will, I suspect, not even realise that it’s built into the DNA of the movie as a possible ingredient.

Either way, although I felt the ending was a little lacking I certainly enjoyed the journey and, despite it not really being a horror movie, I think fans of that genre will still certainly get a kick out of Heretic. So, yeah, I’d happily recommend this one to people although, I’m not sure I’d buy it on Blu Ray because I don’t know if I could sit through it a second time. Very good movie though.

Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula

Boneward Hound

Zoltan - Hound Of Dracula
aka Dracula’s Dog
USA 1977 Directed by Albert Band
EMI/Kino Lorber Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers, I guess.

Wow, this is a terrible film but, you know what? Even though it’s not stood the test of time very well, it’s still kinda watchable and for people of a certain age, like myself, the nostalgia of revisiting this strange movie will probably more than make up for the somewhat pedestrian pacing and dull bits.

I must have been around twelve years old when I was allowed to stay up late and watch Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula on TV (my parents elected to go to bed instead). And so I watched a film which was so, mostly, unexciting that I’d always assumed that it was a made for TV movie. It was a title that also kinda haunted me over the years because nobody I could remember for the longest time, until the internet came along decades later, could even remember the title. Watching it now, it’s still mostly dull but I can appreciate it a little more and it’s certainly far from incompetent... just a little plodding in places.

The film starts off with an offshoot of the military, presumably in Transylvania, blasting open a crypt where they find a load of coffins of the House of Dracula. While one guy sits and guards the site overnight, a coffin breaks loose from its crypt and said guard foolishly removes the stake from the sheet covered corpse he finds inside. Then, quick as a flash, the titular vampire dog jumps on him and fangs him up on the neck before pulling out another coffin and freeing his master, Veidt Smith, played by Reggie Nalder. Genre fans may remember Nalder in such roles as the spy posing as an Andorian in the first series of the original Star Trek, as ‘Mr. Barlow’ the Nosferatu looking vampire in the original TV mini series of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot (reviewed here) and even as an assassin in Dario Argento’s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (reviewed by me here). He and Zoltan go to America to find the last living descendent of the Dracula family, to bite him up so he becomes his own master. Now, personally, I would have thought he’d have made things easier on himself if he just opened all the other Dracula family members in the crypt and revived them all instead but, hey, 1970s movie logic, I guess.

Hot on his trail is Inspector Branco, played with considerable presence, it has to be said, by José Ferrer. He also goes to America to try and locate Dracula’s descendent Michael Drake, played by Michael Pataki (who also plays the main Dracula in some of the flashback scenes, including a ‘Zoltan origin scene’ where he changes into a vampire bat and bites the poor pooch on the neck). As luck would have it, Michael, his wife, his two kids and their four dogs (two adults and two puppies) are on a camping holiday in the wilderness. They immediately start having trouble with missing dogs during the night, when Zoltan starts biting them up to grow Smith’s army of vampire hounds... intending to ‘Draculise’ Michael when they can get near him. Can Inspector Branco locate and save the Drake family before it’s too late?

Well, the film is a bit basic, it has to be said. There’s too much of the ‘idyllic family camping’ montage with saccharine soundtrack at the front end of the movie and, there’s a bunch of local camper encounters (who, of course, have their own dogs to get bitten up and added to the ‘vamp pack’) which all feel a bit light weight and padded. But there’s at least a consistent tone to the production, even if the scene where Drake and Branco are holed up in a cabin for a night while attacking vampire dogs try to eat their way through the walls and roof seems to go on just as long... that is... all night.

However, you do get to see and then wonder at why vampire dogs would be scared of the Christian symbol of the cross (maybe the term ‘old faithful’ means just that) and there’s a nice touch where Zoltan, on seeing the cross worn by Drake at the end of the picture, backs up over a cliff edge, only to be impaled on the fencing below, staked through its doggy heart.

Yeah, okay... it’s nonsense but it does hold together quite well and, with the added nostalgia rush I was getting from this, I did kind of enjoy this one. Ferrer probably comes off the best here, driving around in his black sports car and wearing his French resistance style beret. And there’s even a silly punchline at the end where the camera follows a trail of a decapitated owl and a half eaten rabbit carcass to come upon one of the kids’ puppies, who has now got glowing eyes, suggesting it’s been vamped up by the titular hound.

And yes, Zoltan... Hound Of Dracula is not a film I would probably recommend to most, if any people but, if this is a film that people of a certain age remember from when they were a kid, well, all I can say is that Kino Lorber’s Blu Ray transfer looks pretty good and, despite how it looks, the aspect ratio and odd scene of bloody carnage can attest to the fact that my initial instincts in the early 1980s was wrong... this one definitely had a theatrical release back in 1977. So, yeah, not the most spectacular film but I suspect some people reading this would benefit from knowing it’s on a US Blu Ray presentation (I don’t expect something like this to get any kind of release over here in the UK, that’s for sure). Glad I caught up with this one... might well watch it again some day.

The Disco Exorcist

The Devil In Miss Jones

The Disco Exorcist
Directed by Richard Griffin
USA 2011
Monster Pictures
DVD Region 2

Warning: Spoilers deep inside.

Disclaimer: The producers have no memory of making this motion picture.

Ha! Well I’ve had this movie languishing in an old pile of DVDs for some years now but I’ve finally got around to watching it and, I have to say, it’s both hilarious and, honestly, one of the most politically incorrect films I’ve seen in a long time (if ever).

The Disco Exorcist starts with a cold opening at a badly rendered strip club (showing it’s low budget to the full)... we watch as a witch kills one of the punters in a gory way. Cut to main leading man Rex Romanski, played by Michael Reed, as he sexes up his two lady friends in his lava lamp lit apartment during a credits sequence set to a funky disco/bad porno music beat... and then follow him back into the film properly as he gets down at the local disco and picks out a lady for that evening’s pleasure.

Unfortunately for Rex, he picks the witch lady from the pre-credits, Rita Marie played by Ruth Mahala Sullivan. Everything is fine until the next evening, when someone he’s been dying to meet enters the disco in search of love. That someone is introduced to us earlier when Rex and his DJ pal are watching one of her films, Disco Ball Delivery, which is double billed with a Marilyn Chambers film called Saturday Night Beaver (which I think is a fake movie too... I don’t think she was in the real porn film of that title, although I’m no expert so I may be wrong).

The lady in question is world famous porn star Amoreena Jones, played by Sarah Nicklin and, when she walks into Rex’s disco world it’s love (and sex) at first sight... much to the fury of the woman scorned, who curses Amoreena for her trouble. The next day, when Rex is standing in for a late actor on Amoreena’s next porn film, all hell breaks loose and the women, including Amoreena, slaughter most of the crew. When she snaps out of it later, Amoreena and Rex realise they have a problem but, who can they call on for help? Not The Disco Exorcist, for sure, as this movie didn’t play out in any way like I thought it would and, at the film’s denouement, Rex himself has to take up the role of exorcist after another guy’s head explodes while doing the ritual.

And the trailer and my rough synopsis is really selling this short. I haven’t even got into the carnage at the orgy or Rex’s priest brother who is also into nuns whipping him. This movie is one of those ‘ironic grindhouse’ exploitation movies... so you’ve got the worn out 1970s film stock all the way through and the odd “Scene Missing” caption. Now I find these films hit and miss but this one has all the right ingredients... tonnes of nudity, loads of sex with bouncing bosoms and dangling male members, strong goriness, witchcraft, kill crazy demon infested porn actresses and a completely funky score plus songs which, I think, were even written for the film.

Now the inclusion of all those elements should but, rarely do guarantee, a good time is had by all but, in this case, the film also has some slick dialogue and some witty one liners. Not to mention call backs to other films. I mean, fans of The Exorcist will recognising the one-upmanshipness of the line “You suck faggots from you’re mother’s asshole!” and know exactly why it’s in there but there are some really silly gems such as, when the group of porn actresses go to get Rex and he assumed they want to do some more sexing, his line pleading off when he says “I need at least 15 minutes to put a bullet in this chamber, if you know what I mean?” Even the not exactly subtle last line of the film, “From now on, you’re the only devil I want coming inside me.” is a bit of a winner the way it’s delivered.

Yeah, the film isn’t subtle, for sure but it is a hoot and the 1970s style of shooting combined with the low budget and juvenile sex jokes... somewhat surprisingly... give it a certain charm which I didn’t see coming (if you know what I mean?). So, definitely don’t watch The Disco Exorcist with people who wouldn’t understand where it’s coming from but, yeah, this is one fine movie. It’s not just Not Safe For Work... it’s pretty much not safe for most people you know but, I dunno, this film won me over quite quickly and didn’t let go. Definitely worth a look if silliness mixed with gore, nudity and sex is your thing. 

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals

Taste The Blood
Of Jackal, ahhh!

The Mummy And The
Curse Of The Jackals
USA 1969
Directed by Oliver Drake
Vega International Pictures
Severin Films US Blu Ray

The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals is, from what I understand, a film bought by one of the heads of Severin Films in an estate auction of film cans. This film was shot in 1969 and, as far as I can tell, it never had any kind of legitimate release until a quite muddy 4:3 transfer in the 1990s on VHS casette. So, no matter what you think of the film, a big shout out to Severin for rescuing and fully restoring another obscurity of cine-art which may have stayed lost forever. Of course, many people who see this one might think that would probably have been the best fate for it but, not me. I loved it. Whenever you see one of those almost mythical ‘so bad it’s good’ films in the flesh, I am all for it.

This one stars Anthony Eisley as archaeology professor David Barrie who has found a perfectly preserved mummy princess and her less than perfectly preserved, bandaged guardian. And when I say perfectly preserved, the mummy Princess Akana (played by Marliza Pons) has no ageing… she’s just an Egyptian lady laying in a glass covered box. In one of many statements made by the film to anticipate accusations of continuity errors, this one from David’s best friend Bob (Robert Alan Browne)... he didn’t realise that the ancient Egyptians were able to make such sophisticated glass which they’ve only been able to make in America for a few years. Hmm. Another one is when, as the back story of the mummy and the princess is being covered (and it’s pretty much the same as all the old 1940s Hollywood mummy movie back stories), it’s said that Isis (who makes a cameo when Bob suddenly transforms into her midst a puff of smoke at one point) will ensure that Akana will be able to speak whatever language is being spoken thousands of years later when she awakens in… well… in 1969. Aha… they’ve thought of everything. Well, some things… well.. oh, never mind.

Anyway, when the moon is full, David comes under the spell of Akana and changes into a Jackal… so, yeah, this is a were-jackal film. So he attacks innocent bystanders at night and serves Anaka by day in his normal human guise. It’s not long before the Mummy (Saul Goldsmith) and the were-jackal come to blows of course and, it all ends unhappily ever after, as you would expect.

The film is perfectly silly. It’s not just the absolutely, ridiculously bad script which is entertaining… the inept acting in this means that there’s never any credibility to anything in the film (you have to witness the line readings in this to believe them). And the continuity errors come thick and fast… not to mention the little leaps in logic (or lack of) that the film is guilty of on a regular basis. For example, when David leaves Akana to go out shopping for 20th century clothes for her, he tells her he hasn’t got a car so it’s going to take him a while to walk the three miles. Well, when he returns home later in the movie… well, maybe this section was shot first from an unfinished script because, he arrives home in his car. Wait, what?

Okay, so the were-jackal make up is both terrible and, honestly, quite cute. It’s like a Lon Chaney Jr make up from the 1940s (and the director actually helped produce one of those and provided the story for it, actually… but this later movie is far less sophisticated) but, with added big ears and cute, protruding nose. A bit like a huggable werewolf, to be honest. The light jazz twangs accompanied by stripper saxophone when he goes prowling makes for a preposterous but also somewhat cool atmosphere, it has to be said.

And talking of Lon Chaney Jr, the ‘one crazy swollen eyeball’ bandaged mummy shuffles around with exactly the same gait as the Tom Tyler/Chaney Jr incarnations from the 40s, even down to the one gammy arm hugged close to the chest. So as not to spoil the tone, however, it also looks incredibly silly and, this silliness is exacerbated vastly when the two stalk each other in Las Vegas... as the crowds and passers by on the streets pause to watch the filming and laugh at them in their ridiculous costumes.

During the Akana/mummy back story there are the usual scenes of the slaves being speared to preserve the secret of the pharaohs and there’s also a tongue ripping effect which, I can only assume was inspired by Herschel Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast in 1963 (reviewed here) but that’s about as daring as the film gets, it would seem. Even the scene where David has to explain to Akana how to put on a bra is tamer than you could possibly imagine.

About a quarter of an hour before the end of the picture, the film’s number one billed star actor turns up… yep... John Carradine. Carradine was probably drunk but could always deliver his lines well and he seems to run rings around the other actors here (and of course, he has the required audience baggage in that he was in a few of those 1940s mummy movies himself). He’s there to name the creature as the ‘jackal man’ (just as the werewolf in the Lon Chaney Jr productions was the ‘wolf man’) and to basically explain the plot to the police and speed up the film’s inevitable ending, such as it is. It’s a bit of an anticlimactic conclusion to say the least and, also, makes no logical sense with the rest of the story, it seems to me. But this doesn’t matter because I could watch his film a fair few times without getting bored of it, for sure. Especially with the needle dropped stock music playing all the way through it… choices ranging from surf-instrumental bubble gum pop to the equally unsubtle topless jazz dance fodder. Great stuff.

The film comes with the usual Severin quality extras, including a 20 minute segment of Francophile Stephen Thrower telling us how much he loves the film and giving the complete, as far as anyone knows it, story of Vega International Pictures… pointing out just how shady they were. Included in the extras is another film, which is the only reason I’m gong to review that one for this blog at some point soon… the Vega soft core porn production Angelica: The Young Vixen, which I think was also picked up in the same auction as part of the same package although, the quality of it is so deteriorated that the film has been relegated to an extra rather than get its own release. I’ll get to it though and, honestly, if you’re a fan of the ‘so bad it’s good’, cringeworthy z-grade horror movies then, like me, you might just find you love The Mummy And The Curse Of The Jackals.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein

Muted Monster Mash

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein
aka Drácula contra Frankenstein
Directed by Jess Franco
Spain/France/Liechtenstein/Portugal 1972
Severin US Blu Ray

Warning: I guess some spoilers but, meh, it’s not that kind of movie.

Like many people who tend to weigh in on the subject, I find that Jess Franco is a bit of a hit and miss affair. Sometimes he’s an absolute genius producing classic films such as Vampyros Lesbos (reviewed here), She Killed In Ecstacy (reviewed here), Countess Perverse (reviewed here) and Female Vampire (reviewed here). Then there are the many movies he’s directed which are just plain awful, such as Nightmares Come At Night (reviewed here) or A Virgin Among The Living Dead (reviewed here). Then there are the in-betweeners... movies which are still pretty awful but have some great sequences in them and also manage to maintain a high entertainment value... like Shining Sex for example (review coming soon... been holding that one back for possible inclusion in a themed ‘sexy week’ on the blog, perhaps?).

Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that his monster mash-up  Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein falls into that third category.

The film stars the British ‘thespian’ Dennis Price playing possibly the most casual and ineffective Dr. Frankenstein I’ve ever seen. Then we have Franco regular Luis Barboo as Morpho, Frankenstein’s variant Igor for the movie. We also have Alberto Dalbés playing the Bram Stoker character Dr. Seward and yet another Franco regular, Howard Vernon, playing Count Dracula himself. All four would be back for what I can only assume is some kind of sequel the following year, The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein (which I’ve not seen but I hope to grab a copy for the blog in the next few weeks), although only Price and Dalbés would be playing the same roles.

Added to this cast you have Geneviève Robert as a gipsy witch woman (of the good variety), Carmen Yazalde as a vampire lady, Fernando Bilbao as the Frankenstein monster and, just in case you thought this film didn’t have enough monsters in it, somebody called Brandy playing the Wolfman!

Okay, so the plot is almost non-existent with its simplicity and lack of credibility. After Dr. Seward tracks down Dracula in his coffin and stakes him through the heart, reverting him to the model bat which we have glimpsed hanging from strings earlier in the film, Dr. Frankenstein absconds with the dead bat, removes the stake and revives Dracula, making him his slave and leader of his growing vampire army (which numbers an incredible... four... by the end of the movie) with which he wishes to dominate the world. But luckily, the wolfman pops up for the last five minutes (the make up is... less effective than you may imagine) and then gets soundly trounced by the Frankenstein monster. 

Meanwhile, Frankenstein sees some kind of betrayal from Dracula (although I couldn’t see one myself) and stakes him again, also going on to destroy his own monster, for no apparent reason that I could figure out. When Dr. Seward arrives on the scene and thanks the spirits for their help in aiding him to defeat the monsters, you have to wonder why he thinks he had anything to do with it at all... he literally arrives on the scene after the monsters are all dead and Frankenstein has fled.

Now, I had a strange experience with this film. The first 17 minutes, which I watched in Spanish, were free from dialogue and, despite the fact that those suffering from epilepsy in the audience might be affected by the huge amount of zoom shots used to establish various environments, it’s actually an incredibly effective and eerily atmospheric film up until this point. However, as soon as I got to the first word spoken... I realised that the subtitles were not working correctly, they seemed to be subtitles for the hard of hearing for the English language version, which was obviously using slightly different dialogue (another subtitle option was heavily out of synch from scene to scene) so I switched to the English dub and rewatched. More wordage is added (when mouths are out of sight ) for this opening and it’s perhaps a little less effective. Although, I don’t think the Spanish dub could possibly save a lot of the rest of the movie, that’s for sure. It’s ridiculous and, although there is a total lack of nudity in the film (hey, Jess, what’s going on?) it does make for an entertaining and, sometimes unintentionally funny movie.

But there are also touches of brilliance. The entrance of Price’s somewhat antiseptic Frankenstein starts with his blurred head in close up in the left of shot inside his car. Then his head, consisting of just his eyes and a bit of his forehead come into focus before, the inevitable ‘Franco zoom out’ reveals more of his features. It’s a brief shot but it works quite well. There’s another shot where two characters eyes are zoomed in and out of, in turn, for about three rounds each, to establish an empathy between them... and that’s not half as bad as it sounds.

Now then, things of note...

Some of the location shots feel a little like they’re a part of a spaghetti western of the time but, honestly, that’s not a bad thing. What is a strange artistic choice, I thought, is the Frankenstein monster’s skin being green (just like the beautiful Mego Boris Karloff version action figure I had as a kid). Now this green colour has quite often been used in some nods to Frankenstein over the years and I suspect it comes from people seeing behind the scenes colour stills of Karloff (and possibly Glen Strange) in the Universal films of the time (there’s some film footage of Karloff in the green make-up from Son Of Frankenstein, reviewed here, for sure). However, I suspect/believe that, since these films were black and white movies, the green paint was applied in the make up to make the features appear drab and lifeless, zombie-like if you will, in monochrome. I don’t think it was Universal’s, or Jack Pearce’s intention to ever suggest that the Frankenstein monster actually had green skin but, yeah, there it is... and certainly the monster in this movie is a beautiful shade of green.

Then there’s the music. Bruno Nicolai’s score is pretty cool in this. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I went to Soundtrackcollector online and found that it has never has a commercial release. But hold on though... I then found a website review claiming that the score was recycled from that composer’s score for Franco’s Justine. So, yeah, I will at some point crack open my Blue Underground Justine Blu Ray set with its bonus soundtrack CD and give that a listen when I get a chance (and, you know, watch the movie too), for sure.

And that’s me just about done on this one, I think. Dracula, Prisoner Of Frankenstein is not a great movie and certainly not a great ‘Franco movie’... but it is entertaining and does still have a certain pizazz to it. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and am grateful to Severin for putting this one out. If you are a Franco fan then you’ll obviously want to pick this one up (if northing else than for another couple of Francophile Stephen Thrower’s entertaining featurettes) but if you’re new to this particular director, I wouldn’t recommend starting on this one.