Immaculate

Hot Cross Nuns

Immaculate
Directed by Michael Mohan
Italy/USA
2024 Black Bear
UK Cinema Print

Warning: Some slight spoilers as this is a celebration of the film as much as it is a review.

Wow... just absolutely wow. Immaculate is an amazing film which, I suspect will get enthusiastic reviews from horror fans of a certain age and bad reviews from anyone else. I absolutely loved it and hats off to Sydney Sweeney, not just for her continually impressive acting talent but for her to get this thing produced and finally accepted after it stalled some years ago.

Okay, so this one is a blisteringly wild and deeply satisfying ride of a motion picture. The basic plot is, after dying in a Damien Omen 2 inspired, accidental swim under some ice when she was a kid, Sister Cecilia, played by Sydney Sweeney, is revived after almost ten minutes and tries to find out what the heck God has saved her life for. She joins a monastery in the US but is then rescued... when that goes under due to a lack of attendance... by a convent in Italy. We already know, though, that things are really bad there from the pre-credits scene, when four sinister nuns break the leg of another nun and then bury her alive because she was trying to escape.

Then, as Cecilia is getting used to the spooky place, she undergoes a trauma, which she and the audience perceive as a nightmare/dream sequence, only to awaken pregnant. Since she is still a virgin, carrying a seemingly immaculate conception, the various nuns worship her for the miracle she is hosting but, as you may guess by now... demonic things are afoot.

That’s the basic intro and I have to say, this one impressed me so much. It totally goes where most modern horror films don’t go these days. It doesn’t quite make the nunsploitation genre... I think topless, lesbian nuns and whips would be needed to sell that one... but it has torture, violence, gore (and wet, flimsy, see through habits which leave absolutely nothing to the imagination) and it absolutely feels like a 1970s/early 1980s Italian exploitation/horror film. I mean it when I say that this tongue slicing, foot branding, face pummelling, womb cutting, umbilical cord chewing movie goes the whole hog and, if it had been released on video tape in this country in the 1980s, it would have easily made the Video Nasty list, for sure. In fact, I’m surprised that the censors let this one in the country right now, to be honest.

And not only that, the movie really embraces that vibe right from the start. I mean, Will Bates’ cimbalom infused score with chorus and atonal colourings is absolutely brilliant (please, somebody release a CD of this). This included an astonishing moment where the music actually acts as a surrogate for the character. When somebody is getting a cross branded onto the sole of her foot, the sound has dropped out without detection and Bates’ score is already standing in, giving voice to her scream with high pitched notes! And, boy, was I surprised when a whole montage sequence of Cecilia settling into the convent needle drops Bruno Nicolai’s exquisite main theme from the giallo The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (one of my favourite pieces by this composer). It’s admittedly striking to the point of distraction but, heck, it’s toe tapping as hell and I was surprised to see that none of the other audience members were getting down the beat, as it were.

And Sydney Sweeney totally leans into the atmosphere of the film completely, giving a really brave performance that is an absolute powerhouse (more so even than her brilliant turn in Reality, reviewed here). There’s something primal about the way she pulls this one off and the last five to ten minutes of the film are totally owned by her. Talk about pulling out the stops.

The ending was a satisfying moment, too. This doesn’t do the Hollywood thing where we cut to an epilogue releasing the tension of all that’s come before and giving a nudge towards closure. No, this ending reminded me specifically of a late 1960s/early 1970s Hammer horror movie like Quatermass And The Pit (reviewed here). At the time, those films would usually end with whatever surviving protagonist(s) just wallowing silently in the aftermath of the sheer grimness of what they’ve just survived, their minds adjusting slowly to what they’ve fought through. This one does exactly that and... yeah... the film is intense and grim but, if you are not too distracted by the harsh suspense of certain scenes, there’s also a thread of somewhat blasphemous humour shot through it as well.

And, honestly, I have nothing but good things to say about Immaculate and it looks truly beautiful (just as an Italian horror film from that period would). I hope that a boutique Blu Ray label such as Severin or Vinegar Syndrome or Arrow pick this one up for release because it certainly wouldn’t look out of place with certain parts of their catalogues and I know they could do some amazing extras with the correct kind of context. Talking of which, I absolutely cannot wait to get this one on Blu Ray so I can watch it again. Unfortunately, limited time and a slew of ‘to be seen’ cinema releases for the next month or so means I won’t be able to experience this one at the cinema again but, back in the day, I would have been going back to this one a couple of times, I can tell you. So there you go, if you are into 70s/80s Italian horror movies then... run, don’t walk, to your nearest cinema and check this one out. Such a treat.

The Masturbating Gunman

Fantom Seed Slinger

The Masturbating Gunman
aka Masked Avenger Versus
Ultra-Villain in the Lair
of the Naked Bikini
Directed by Mark Savage
Australia 2000
Severin Blu Ray Zone 1

Warning: Spoilers... because, wow!

The Masturbating Gunman (known bizarrely in some territories by a much less appropriate title, as Masked Avenger Versus Ultra-Villain In the Lair Of The Naked Bikini) is a micro-budget film by Mark Savage. It’s actually a lot of fun and straddles the line between softcore comedy action with just a dash of added nunsploitation... pretty well. It’s also, it has to be said, truly ridiculous and a film which you really have to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy it properly, for what it is.

It starts off with the truly unstrustworthy statement that the film is ‘based on a true story’ and follows this with a quote from a fictional person which certainly flags up one of the director’s influences... “If you don’t stop, you’ll go blind. - Hiroshima Nikkatsu” and so the Nikkatsu name firmly establishes that the director wants to make an action thriller and, this is certainly an off beat one, with a plot the likes of Seijun Suzuki might contemplate. However, instead of the rice sniffing hero of Suzuki’s Branded To Kill we have Robin Brenna as the panty sniffing private detective who, when on a case, dons the black leather gimp mask that transforms him into the title character... The Masturbating Gunman. He and his lame assistant take on missing person/abduction cases and he uses the panties of the missing person to completely profile the missing gals and then track them throughout the country via his keen sense of smell.

During a scene early on in the film, we see him track down a girl and rescue her from a bunch of kidnappers on a beach, in an action sequence which serves to set the tone of the movie while also introducing us to the gunman’s other personality quirk, which is a huge flaw in his chosen profession. Whenever he sees a beautiful woman and is turned on by her, he has to stop whatever he’s doing and masturbate to her until he’s finished. Something we also see at the start of the film when he hires a sex worker to look at him while he jerks off... and huge gouts of semen cover his masked face, in a scene with a preamble much reminiscent of the way Sergio Leone might stage a showdown in one of his spaghetti westerns.

So in the action sequence in question, we see him take out two gunmen and then, reaching into the gaping wound of one bad guy, he pulls out his intestine and uses it as a whip to disarm the main man. Alas, a bikini clad woman is also on hand and he has to stop what he’s doing, fall on the floor and masturbate. He manages to finish just before the bad guy hits him on the head with a rock and saves the day.

After this set up, we meet the main villain, Helmut Gunta, played by Peter Beitans, a ruthless but bizarre criminal who has just got out of jail and orders his hired goons to find him a virgin so he can father the ultimate God-like child as an heir to his villainous organisation. Where his goons make a mistake is in kidnapping a nun from the local church (played by Nene Powell) who happens to be the sister of... you guessed it... The Masturbating Gunman. Luckily, she realises what’s happening and leaves her panties behind outside the church, for her brother to find.

And the film is totally silly, over the top and, a little strained on occasion in terms of how it’s edited (I suspect not quite everything got shot) but, for a micro-budget feature, it’s actually pretty impressive with all the actors playing it straight faced and totally going for it... which is hard when the script is full of lines like “They say he must jerk before he does his work” or “Only a gay man would jerk off to a woman with a moustache”.

Spoilers now though so, if you don’t want to know how strange this film gets (and how much you have to cross your fingers and go with it due to the sheer ridiculousness of the content), then read no further. After a lengthy action scene near the end of the movie, the villain has laid on a series of stripping woman, each one slowing the hero down a little more while he has to masturbate to each on in turn until, by the time he’s ‘well spent’ after the last one, he is in the clutches of the enemy. However, his nun sister opens her legs to inspire him and he jerks a fresh load of come into his enemies faces, incapacitating many of them.

However, this is still not enough but then the deux ex machina comes from a place where, I didn’t see coming (if you’ll pardon the expression) even from the set up. That is to say, there’s a scene earlier in the picture where, behind the main villains back... the nun sleeps with every one of the thugs and steals their guns while she does so, leaving the villain’s army without any guns at a crucial time. It pays off later when her brother has accidentally pulled his cock off from too much wanking and has no more of his deadly weapon left because, when all hope seems lost, she starts masturbating and ejaculates around 15 automatic weapons from inside her vagina where she has hidden them, allowing her brother to grab one and save the day.

So yeah, like I said, did not see that one coming.

My main problem at the start of the movie was the cheap sounding synthesiser score by Bryony Marks... which I can tell you now is not the way to score a masturbation scene shot like a Leone western. However, the score does actually work quite well in context of other things with a couple of nice leitmotifs and it does reasonably well as a solid piece of musical glue to hang the story onto... so I would say give it a chance because that score’s got more legs than you may, at first, realise.

And that’s me about shot my load on this review, I think. The Masturbating Gunman is a fun slice of exploitation movie which, if you can handle the kind of production values that this kind of micro-budget tends to throw up, should keep most explorers of unusual movie making entertained for an hour and a half. I really enjoyed this one and am pleased Severin saw fit to issue this (although I can’t imagine it getting a release in the UK, is my guess). Definitely worth a look though, I would say and, where else would you see a movie with these two entries in the end credits roll... Cum Wrangler - Julie Stone, Masturbation Consultants - Cast and Crew.

Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity

The Cleavage Of Zaroff

Slave Girls From
Beyond Infinity
USA 1987
Directed by Ken Dixon
88 Films DVD Region 2

It seems strange to me that a prestige label like 88 Films, no less, would release this movie in an open matte 4:3 aspect ratio but, at least I know I’m gaining picture in that method of transfer, rather than losing the sides. As a result of this decision, I made a mental note to be kind if I saw any camera booms entering the shots from the top, because that can often occur in open matte transfers, when extra picture information the film maker didn’t expect you to be able to see makes its way into the frame.

I don’t know what it was that drew me to watch Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity... maybe a sense of curiosity about Buzz Lightyear’s famous catch phrase. Possibly the prospect of seeing a finely crafted science fiction epic to stimulate my brain with its twisty, philosophical bent. Or maybe it was the vaguely ridiculous title coupled with cover art of scantily clad ladies with huge, photogenic features wielding unfeasibly large guns and being menaced by strange aliens and robots... all hovering above the strap line, “Big Movie. Big Production. Big Girls.” But mostly it was probably the ridiculously cheap asking price when I ordered it from Amazon four years ago (something which has since inflated to a figure close to the Infinity mentioned in the title, due to its out of print status).

We start off with a title sequence with some actually quite wonderful music composed by someone called Carl Dante. Nice music which is totally and deliberately reminiscent of Basil Poledouris’ amazing score for Conan The Barbarian, for sure, due to it’s orchestration. It even contains a little hint of Jerry Goldsmith’s klingon battle music from Star Trek The Motion Picture in it too and I have to wonder if those composers’ music was used as a temp track to rough cut the picture with.

The film continues quite strongly, it has to be said, with a prologue where a top heavy, scantily clad young vixen is being chased through a jungle by a not unimpressive, given the budget, alien monster with a gun wired to its arm. It closes in on the girl but, just before it kills her due to its ‘non-cleavage appreciating alien ways’, a man shoots it with his miniature laser crossbow and the woman is saved... or is she? Probably not as we can probably conclude from what this guy gets up to later in the film.

Meanwhile, on a starship, two chained slave girls called Daria (played by Elizabeth Kaitan) and Tisa (played by Cindy Beal)... who have absolutely no back story at all, I should point out... break loose from their chains through brute force and then, in the words of one, “reverse the polarity of their cuffs.” Hmm... where have I heard something like that before? They overpower their dumb guards and somehow manage to steal a smaller spaceship from inside the larger spaceship, winning their freedom. Their celebrations are short lived though, due to there being no inhabited planets nearby. Well, none, that is, apart from the ‘planetoid’ that pops up on some kind of beacon. They go to investigate and crash their ship on said planetoid. Then they find a castle with their new host Zed (played by Don Scribner), his two lethal robot servants and his other two guests... brother and sister Rik and Shala, played by Carl Horner and Brinke Stevens. However, after sneaking about in the castle after dark (plus some hot softcore sex action between Daria and Rick), Zed’s sinister secret is out and after Rik is killed on a hunt, the three women are released into the surrounding jungle and its ‘phantom zone’ filled with various zombies, giant spider webs (no spiders though) and the big alien wielding the gun from the start of the picture.

It turns out, you see, that Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity is actually a cleavaged up, busty remake of The Most Dangerous Game (aka The Hounds Of Zaroff)... a film which has been remade many times over the years, most recently as The Hunt (reviewed here). And, actually it’s not a terribly made film but the writing is very bizarre. In that it’s kind of rubbish and elabourate and unnatural sounding while, at the same time, you get a sense that it’s supposed to be this bad and that’s all just part of the writer’s plan. Which actually makes the film a lot of fun in the ‘so bad it’s good’ stakes, it has to be said. So yeah, a typical dialogue exchange might be, when Daria burns her hand getting them out of their cell on the slave ship at the start of the movie and, when Tisa asks if she’s alright, she quips back... “A little well done, perhaps.” And the villain is a little too much like he’s a schoolboy philosopher in some respects, coming out with lines like... “I’ve always found the female of the species to be the greatest challenge... far more crafty and cunning than their male counterparts.”

Also, although the special effects look quite low tech in some ways, they’re actually not too terrible either although, there are a few technical flaws in the movie. Such as when one of the gals hits an alien over the head with a big stick. For some reason not made very clear in any way, shape of form, this causes the alien to just explode out of existence... however, when he does this, an entire wall wobbles like you’re watching a movie equivalent of an old BBC episode of Blake’s 7. So, yeah, that’s not so good. And there are other things in the movie that don’t really make sense... like when Tisa goes back to look for a map dropped on the jungle floor because her cleavage wasn’t quite adequate to hold it in her bikini top by itself (should have given it to Daria). When she backtracks to look for the map, she is looking all around her cautiously without even once looking at the ground where, you know, you might think a dropped map may be located (she finds it eventually).

And, yeah, that’s mostly everything I want to say about this movie. Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity isn’t exactly high art but it’s an entertaining enough diversion for what it is and maybe that’s enough for a Saturday night. Probably better as a collective ‘movie night in with friends and booze’ experience, I suspect. The UK version of the film from 88 Films is probably the best version to get in terms of the DVD as the American disc is apparently similarly presented in an open matte transfer.

However, the UK disc wins out, kinda, by having an accompanying feature included called... hmm, okay... Famous T&A. This is literally a collection of badly cropped 4:3 clips of various actresses such as Ornella Muti, Ursula Andress, Brigitte Bardot and various others, in examples of their nude scenes. Starting off with Sybil Danning doing a reverse strip into a costume, she hosts the entire thing dressed as a Roman Gladiatrix and reading ridiculously written lines about the various actresses bodies over the course of the hour and a quarter. And I do mean reading. You can see she’s reading from cards in certain scenes for sure. Now, I would normally be up for something this rubbish and pseudo-sexy but, honestly, the 4:3 aspect ratio on this was a real turn off for me. If I want to watch various stars taking their clothes off, then I want to be seeing them properly framed in the correct aspect ratio, thank you very much. I mention this bonus film in passing here purely because I know some people will have some nostalgia for this kind of bosomy showcase, which may remind them of the old celebrity episode of Electric Blue from the 1980s. Ultimately though, it’s not worth purchasing the disc for this special feature alone... although I could understand why you may be tempted.

Candy Land

In The Realm
Of The Cleanses

Candy Land
USA 2022
Directed by John Swab
Roxwell Films
FrightFest Screening 27/8/22

Warning: Okay, this one will have slight spoilers
because I want to talk about certain things.

Candy Land is a new film I saw at FrightFest this year and, as you’ll probably see people writing in their various reviews, it’s got a kind of grindhouse movie vibe to it. It’s not actually a horror film as such, more of a throwback (in the absolute best way) to the kind of raw edged thrillers being churned out in the 1970s except... that grindhouse tag also does it a bit of a disservice because it’s actually a very well put together, slick piece of movie making for sure. I had a couple of problems with it, which I’ll come to (and it’s the same issue my friend who saw it with me had) but, overall it’s a very gutsy and technically well made piece of art.

Okay, so the film is about a group of truck stop girls (and a guy) played by Eden Brolin, Sam Quartin, Virginia Rand and Owen Campbell, plus their ‘employer’ played by Guinevere Turner. They all live in a few motel rooms and service the various truckers and other customers either in their rooms or out in ‘the pit’ where the truckers park up, taking sex directly into their trucks. Another character, who turns a blind eye but constantly procures the male sex worker for his own gay thrills is the local sheriff (who is very bad at his job, it has to be said) played by William Baldwin.

Now, they are constantly bothered by some kind of ‘deeply Christian’ cult talking about repenting and cleansing their souls living nearby and, one day, rejected from that clan of people, a character called Remy turns up, played by Olivia Luccardi. Now she is the naive girl who, because of their protective nature, gets taken in by the friendly bunch sex workers and she soon becomes one of the girls working tricks. Then a client turns up dead in the bathroom, his eye stabbed out. Things get more violent and it’s not long before one character starts attacking the customers in gory ways.

The film pulls no punches in certain areas of the dark territory it explores... via nudity and editing (yeah, I’ll get to it) but also has a truly poignant atmosphere and a sense of joy, love and camaraderie between the main characters. Which of course, makes the murders and sense of peril for these people all the more engaging.

Okay, so the editing. At lots of points in the film, especially early on, a bunch of close ups are used with the director cutting to details of what would normally have been a wider shot, often edited together every two or three seconds without any real sense of establishing shot, often used almost as a montage to bring you straight in, up close and personal, to the way the truck stop characters live their lives. So, that way of shooting things against the ingrained, expectations of wider master and establishing shots quite often, tends to leave you with a sense of being less than comfortable with the way the film is shot and, of course, this all serves to make the audience more vulnerable to the onslaught of both violent imagery but, also, really helps generate the amount of suspense and tension you are feeling. Especially coupled with the charming performances of the actors here. It really is skillfully put together and so I can forgive it any other problems I had with the film.

Bit I’ll highlight those two problems here anyway because, heck, it’s what I do, I guess.

Number one problem for me is you will clock onto who the killer is right before any of the murders take place. So when the first murder happens and it’s not made clear by that point who the culprit is (it will be soon), you pretty much know anyway what’s happened. Then there’s a red herring of a scene where one of the truckers attacks Owen Campbell’s character but, to be honest, that really doesn’t detract from who the real killer is and, yeah, I was disappointed to latch onto who it was that soon in the film. Although, having said that, maybe the writer/director wanted us to know that anyway from early on, to build the sense of tension so... yeah... it didn’t spoil things overall.

What did detract just a little (but not enough to not celebrate this marvellous film in the way it needs to be championed) is that both my friend and I were expecting the film to be a lot more violent than it is. Don’t get me wrong here... it’s a total bloodbath of a movie but, I think because they were going for practical effects instead of CGI (which is always going to be a better choice, I think, no matter what), I did get a sense of ‘feeling’ the kills rather than seeing them. Things were cutting away just before a body hit for the most part or taken from a concealing angle and, although there was plenty of gore on offer, it felt like the illusion of violence was in the foreground, rather than seeing a knife or blunt object actually penetrate a targeted part of someone’s anatomy in close up on camera. But, again, it’s only a minor grumble and, like I said, because of the visual language the director, DP and editor have boiled it all down to, it feels a lot rougher than it looks, if that makes sense.

All in all, then, a nicely put together movie full of nudity, gory aftermath, fantastic acting, a somewhat off-kilter editing style and some rough, dark subject matter. I won’t say anymore than that because I don’t want to spoil the experience for people but, yeah, Candy Land is definitely one to watch. Also, Colin Salmon was at hand to introduce a clip from his new exorcism movie Prey For The Devil, which is released in UK cinemas at Halloween this year and... yeah, he’s an interesting person to have speaking about your new movie, that's for sure.

When Dracula Met Frankenstein

Sherman Fountain

When Dracula Met Frankenstein:
My Years Making Drive-In
Movies With Al Adamson
by Sam Sherman
Murania Press ISBN: 9798530794858

What a great book!

Just a quick shout out to something which will be a nice addition, I’m sure, to many a film enthusiast’s book shelves. You may remember when, a couple of years ago, Severin films put out a very pricey but, as it turned out, worth every penny boxed edition of 32 Al Adamson films, as part of a package to accompany the documentary movie Blood And Flesh - The Reel Life And Ghastly Death Of Al Adamson (which I reviewed here). Well, I went through that boxed edition of Adamson films and, though I found some titles to be terrible, I found others to be pretty good and sometimes beyond that but, whatever I thought about them (and I reviewed every one of them for this blog), going through that wonderful set reminded me of just how great an art form cinema could be and it revitalised my slowly waning interest in the medium.

Now, as I said, you can find my reviews of those on this blog and you can check for a title in the second ‘movie’ section of my site index (link at top left) or, if you want to go a more direct way, I also wrote an article specifically about the box, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, as a bookmark section, from which all my reviews are linked... and you can access that here.

As I waded into the set, two things bacame apparent and impressed me. One was that Adamson’s films were more often than not produced by Sam Sherman, who seemed a really sweet guy and came across in all the interviews as someone very knowledgable about the world of film, demonstrating a genuine love and affection for movies in general. He seemed like someone you would want to hang out with in a bar and buy drinks for so he won’t stop telling fascinating, illuminating stories about his decades in the business.

The other thing which came across to me was that, heck, I really needed to read a decent biography, or at least an enthusiastic book, on the films of Al Adamson and so I looked for one on Amazon and various online book stores but couldn’t find anything in print at the time. There was apparently one published in 1998 called Schlock-o-Rama: Films of Al Adamson but, yeah, good luck even finding a copy now, even at the ludicrous price I’m sure it would go for if anyone had a copy to sell. Well, that was a year ago so, imagine my surprise when I’d found out that, not only had a book which was much of what I wanted been published since I’d last looked but, it took the form of a memoir by Sam Sherman, about the films he’d produced with Adamson (and others) at Independent International Pictures.

When Dracula Met Frankenstein, subtitled My Years Making Drive-In Movies With Al Adamson, is a valuable, well written tome from somebody who’s about as no nonsense and as fair a person running a business as you can get. Going out of his way to help people along in the process of his career and championing the art form while still managing to make tonnes of money from... well, if you ask me... from some unlikely pictures. Sherman managed to make something out of both his own productions and others peoples (as I’ve talked about in some of my reviews of... let’s call them ‘rescued films’) and is a genuine success story, capturing various niche markets as and when required.

The various forewords to the book tell it all in terms of Sam’s character, with the people writing those intros singling him out as a nice, honest human being (which really comes across in both this book and various interviews on the Severin set, not to mention his little audio section on the Dracula VS Frankenstein soundtrack CD). And cinephiles will have a ball with many of the anecdotes on offer here.

The book is split into two sections. The first half being a look at his personal history with ‘the age of celluloid’ with tales of Al’s dad, cowboy star/director/producer Denver Dixon, how Sam himself got started on the road to producer by re-releasing an old 1930s Hollywood production of The Scarlet Letter in the 1960s, how he hired out equipment from the late great Kenneth Strickfadden (there’s a book about him I reviewed right here), how he worked with the infamous Hemisphere Pictures and so on. And really great stories I’d never heard before such as how he managed to generate income for the old Hammer films adaptation of the TV serial The Abominable Snowman (reviewed by me here) and, of course, how some of those Adamson flicks like Brain Of Blood and Nurse Sherri turned out like they did (and just why they did too... which was an eye opener). He even had famous artists like Neal Adams (who passed away last week) and Basil Gogos designing and painting promotional posters, sleeves and whatever else was needed to give a movie a first run lift or, often, a new lease of life when required. In fact, there’s a very interesting section which explains the early days of the sudden, burgeoning Home Video market and just how he was able to ‘more than stay afloat’ with some of his old titles.

The second section of the book is a rundown of chapters devoted, alphabetically, to various films he’s been involved with (mostly but not limited to, working with Adamson) and, as you would expect, he has quite a few stories to tell of just what happened on those productions. Blazing Stewardesses which, I’m sorry Sam, I really didn’t like compared to their original The Naughty Stewardesses, certainly makes more sense now in terms of just why the heck it ended up being the film it is now, for sure. Also, the inside story on just what happened with the ending of Girls For Rent is kinda interesting.

There’s also more than a hint in the book that Sam is working on a second book of memoirs (which I’ll be first in line for if it’s publicised better than this one was... I need to know about it before I can buy it) of all the other things which he’s been involved with outside of IIP. Frankly, there’s an unexplained photograph of Sam in the book (it’s also loaded with plenty of photos relating to the various stories, if that’s your thing) where he’s standing with the one and only Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe and, yeah, I really want to hear about that meeting, for sure.

As you can see, I had a real blast with When Dracula Met Frankenstein and I’m sure glad Sam’s still around to share his stories. This is another of those essential film books every cineaste shouldn’t be without, as far as I’m concerned. Perhaps Tom Weaver, a film historian whose name I tend to associate with his expert knowledge on the classic Universal horror movies of the 30s - 50s, says it best when he shares an anonymous quote that... “When an old man dies, a library burns down.” That’s a really nice way of putting things and I couldn’t agree more. When Dracula Meets Frankenstein is available now from Amazon and, as the saying goes, all reputable book stores and... I sure hope Sam gets his skates on writing that second book. I want to read it sooner, rather than later.

My 2100th Blog Post - Al Adamson The Masterpiece Collection

 

My 2100th Post

Al Adamson -
The Masterpiece Collection
Review Index
Blu Ray Boxed Edition
Severin Films


Wow, that last 100 posts sailed by quick. That’s what you get from saving on time by not having to commute to the office in a pandemic. Talking of which, I saved not only in time last year but in cash too due to not having to shell out for various different bus line tickets. So, if you’ve been following my blog for the past year, you’ll know I diverted and invested that cash into something worthwhile, aka I shelled out for the wonderful Blu Ray box set put out by Severin in the US, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection... boasting 32 films plus assorted other extras. I reviewed the stunning documentary film Blood And Flesh - The Reel Life And Ghastly Death of Al Adamson last July and then, starting from this March, I began to methodically work my way through the contents in the order the films are threaded in the box... and reviewed each and every one of them. So I thought, why not do an index to my reviews of the titles in this for my 2100th Blog Post? Then, any of my readers who have enjoyed the Adamson reviews I’ve put up here can find them all easily in one place.

Well, it seemed like a good idea and so here it is, with the contents of each disc including the various extras listed (some of which I haven’t got around to watching yet but I’ve seen all the presented films). Most of these discs also include trailers or TV spots, which I’ve not bothered to reiterate in this listing. Please note that two of the reviews listed in this overview of the set were from different sources. I’d already written a review of Dracula VS Frankenstein for a separate release and so didn’t really need to rewrite it (although I obviously did revisit the film itself, on Severin’s beautiful new transfer) and I also reviewed the Vinegar Syndrome edition of Dr. Dracula because it had the whole film on it (plus the original, superior version of the movie)... click on the title of each full movie listed to take you to my review of it.

Disc One
Blood And Flesh - The Reel Life And Ghastly Death Of Al Adamson
Outtakes, The Cowboy Life Of Denver Dixon,
Russ Tamblyn’s Melted TV, Manson and Screaming Angels,
The Prophetic Screenplay Makes Gary Kent Testify,
Beyond The Earth Promo Reel

The Female Bunch
The Bunch Speaks Out, Extended Scenes

Disc Two
Psycho-A-Go-Go
Blood Of Ghastly Horror
The Fiend With The Electronic Brain
Archived Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate title sequence as Man With The Synthetic Brain

Disc Three
Half Way To Hell

Five Bloody Graves
Outside Of Tucson Interview with actor/screenwriter Robert Dix,
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate Five Bloody Days To Tombstone Title Sequence

Disc Four
Blood Of Dracula’s Castle
Partial Audio Commentary with expert Brian Albright,
Audio Interview excerpt with Alex D’Arcy

Horror Of The Blood Monsters
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate Space Mission Of The Lost Planet Title Sequence

Disc Five
The Fakers
Alternate Smashing The Crime Syndicate Titles

Hell’s Bloody Devils
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Sam Sherman interviews actor John Gabriel

 

Disc Six
Dracula Vs Frankenstein (my old Cheezy Flicks edition review)
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Zandor And Friends, Feed Your Head! Lose Your Head!,
Monster Protest Home Movie Footage,
Sam Sherman interviews Forry Ackerman, Outtakes

Brain Of Blood
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Memories Of Blood

Disc Seven
Satan’s Sadists
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman, Outtakes

Angels’ Wild Women

Disc Eight
The Naughty Stewardesses
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Fly Girls - The Stewardess as Lifestyle Icon in the Golden Age of Exploitation Film

Blazing Stewardesses
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate The Great Truck Robbery Title Sequence,
Bedroom Stewardesses Adamson Footage

Disc Nine
Girls For Rent
Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate I Spit On Your Corpse Title Sequence

Jessi’s Girls

Nurses For Sale

Disc Ten
Black Heat
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
Alternate Girls Hotel Title Sequence, Alternate The Murder Gang Title Sequence

The Dynamite Brothers

Disc Eleven
Mean Mother
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman,
The Joy Of Marilyn Joi

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Disc Twelve
Black Samurai

Death Dimension

Disc Thirteen
Sunset Cove
Sunset Toolbox

Cinderella 2000
Partial Archival Audio Commentary with Producer/Distributor Samuel M Sherman

Nurse Sherri
Dr. Dracula Adamson scenes

BONUS REVIEW: Vinegar Syndrome’s release of Lucifer’s Women/Dr. Dracula 

 

Disc Fourteen
Carnival Magic
A Boon To Science, Audio Commentary by Producer Elvin Feltner, Outtakes

Lost
The Happy Hobo - Rushes For Promo from unproduced Adamson kid’s film.

And there you have it. I must say, I had a really good time with most of this boxed set and even the truly terrible movies contributed to me rediscovering my passion for film. I hope you had a good time reading about them (if you clicked on any of the links) as I did writing about them.

Doomed Moviethon

Thon Voyage

Doomed Moviethon
by Richard Glenn Schmidt
Create Space Publications
ISBN: 9781540577269

Doomed Moviethon is the third of Richard Glenn Schmidt’s print version spin offs of his web site... being about the author, his wife and the occasional friend binge watching various long stretches of movies over a weekend... linked sometimes quite tenuously by a common theme. You can read my reviews of his two previous tomes, Giallo Meltdown - A Moviethon Diary (right here) and Cinema Somnambulist (right here) and this one, if you’re a newcomer to these books, is very much a case of the author’s enthusiastic but somewhat sardonic style being an acquired taste... something which I acquired about a third of the way through the first book I read of his. Certainly, once I’d gotten into his first volume, I’ve not looked back since... which is a handy tip I would reserve for most readers actually... don’t look back while you’re reading these things or you’ll never be able to see the book you’re holding and quite possibly get dizzy trying to read just dead air. Instead, look forwards so the book is fully in view for best results.

If you can get past the fact that some of the English language used here is mangled and realise, as I did fairly early on with these books, that these are often incidents of deliberate linguistic sabotage on the part of the author for the sake of being silly and entertaining - not to mention the confidence of not explaining the jokes, you’ll either get them or you won't depending on your prior experience of certain films at hand... then you should have as good a time as I do with these books. Especially once you realise that all normal rules of engagement pertaining to critical discourse about these movies are out the window. Richard does completely his own thing here and these are movie responses and reactions to the bizarre and mostly silly films he manages to pick out for his moviethons and, not something which is going to inform you too much about the actual motion picture art in question... although I have to say, I do learn things from his books too.

Once again the book is split into chapters, with each of the 18 chapters covering a specific viewing bonanza. This one also has a little introduction covering the birth of the ‘moviethon’ with the author watching video rentals with his best friend as a kid. There are clear chapters for moviethons dedicated to various of the hot names which a lot of genre fans will happily embrace... such as chapters entitled Argentophobia, Bavadoom, Franco Friday and Video Naschy... as well as chapters which wouldn’t personally appeal to me... like three on American Slashers, which I mostly hate as a genre, give me an Italian giallo any day of the week and I’ll be happy. However, the author’s sense of fun and enthusiasm for even the movies he absolutely hates is infectious and makes each and every chapter a delight.

There are also some nice points which he and I share in common and which gave me a warm feeling in the brain when I read his wisdom on certain things. For instance, I was pleased that he singled out the “punk rock stripper chick with the bullwhip” in Norman J. Warren’s Terror as I also mentioned her in my recent review of the film (right here). Similarly, some of the sessions are obviously throwbacks from quite a while ago as he touches on how difficult it was to get a decent looking bootleg of Dario Argento’s Four Flies On Grey Velvet to watch. Ah, yes, I remember those dark days when the film in question was almost impossible to get hold of and each new bootleg edition was a slight improvement on the previous one... I think I now have five or six different versions now on DVD and Blu Ray and... hooray... the Grey Velvetless days are finally over.

And, yes, if you’re wondering, Schmidt is very up front about where and how he sources his ‘viewing copies’. If he’s watching a muddy, dark DVDR transfer converted from a VHS copy of dubious quality, he will let you know about it and I find this both this honesty and his level of commitment to watching what he needs to watch, whether it’s been released commercially or not, a refreshing attitude in today's bizarrely PC and ‘corporate obsequious’ world. Like me, I suspect he’s happy to go down the bootleg route if it means he can see films before such a time when cartoonists would be able to legitimately draw pictures of him with little crosses where the eyes should be, instead of healthy, living dots.

As usual with this writer’s books, there’s a huge amount of humour and I did find myself entertained, especially when his sentiments reminded me of my own dad’s reaction to certain things. For instance, when he’s talking about Karl Malden in Dario Argento’s Cat O Nine Tails, he gives us the ‘fun fact’* that Malden’s nose got separate billing and its own trailer. And moments like this or when, for example, he will refer to the vampires in Paul Naschy’s Night Of The Werewolf and Werewolf Shadow as “God damn grandstanding bloodsucking undead attention-whores”, really give a reader a good time and a certain accessibility where some more respected critics might lose out in credibility points (and it also helps if you know the movies too, of course, to see the kernel of truth behind some of Schmidt’s words).

Also, how many critics will make a point on counting the number of bosoms and penises that pop up in the viewing experience and give you a running count at the end of a ‘thon? Not many I’m sure. And I’m pretty sure no other grand appreciator of movies has ever written the phrase “Oh man, we just got De Palma’d right in the Hitchcock!” before either.

I should probably mention the fearlessness of the author too, when it comes to watching something he calls Disco Of Death (spoiler... no films with actual death in them but how he got through these terrible movies I’ll never know). And also, that strange combination of both bravery and total insanity in the chapter entitled, Elvis Is My CoPilot because, well seriously, who would attempt to watch a movie with Elvis in it, let alone the amount of them he endures here? This is serious dedication to going to new lows in movie watching as far as I’m concerned. Although, I did learn the interesting fact that Barbara Steele was replaced by Barbara Eden of I Dream Of Jeannie fame in one Elvis movie. And extra credit has to go to the writer here for managing to write about Barbara Eden without once mentioning her bellybutton. Strangely, no navel warfare is on display in his shenanigans here but I was okay with that.

And the book is full of surprises too. Is it a spoiler to say that you’ll turn the page and find two photographs of his constant companions, his cats Crisco and Sparkles? Maybe but they’re adorable and another lure to buy the book in my opinion. And I say this being a dog person myself, Schmidt is obviously a cat person. But, when I say that, I mean he just likes cats and is not, in fact, an escaped experiment from the island of Dr. Moreau.  

Doomed Moviethon is an absolute blast and I’m sure you can probably tell I had a good time with it. Once again, his other constant companion, his wife LeEtta, has done the cover art and I have to say it’s my absolute favourite of the three covers she’s done for her husband. A more minimalistic approach with a colour wash leading down to Richard, LeEtta and the two cats on a sofa... and also a wonderful back cover illustration which is the exact reverse of that, where we are looking at them from behind and see some of the items on the wall where the TV they are watching is. Yeah, this is a really great cover and, as I said, a really great book full of humorous commentary about a whole bunch of films, some of which you’ll probably be familiar with and some... maybe not so much. This one is as good a jumping on point as either of the other two (I don’ think these moviethons are strictly chronologically presented and probably interpenetrate around viewing sessions in other books) and all are worth a look if you are into things like horror, giallo and exploitation films... among others. Also, anybody who loves Josie And The Pussycats as much as I (it’s one of the greatest movies of its decade) really deserves huge sales for going on record and defending that magnificent and mostly misunderstood movie in print. Definitely give this guy some of your time and money and also look him up at http://www.doomedmoviethon.com and also https://doomedmoviethon.blogspot.com.

*not a fact.

Blood Of Dracula's Castle

 

Blood Bank

Blood Of Dracula's Castle
USA 1969 Directed by Al Adamson
Severin Blu Ray Zone A

Okay, so the next film up in my mammoth exploration of the beautifully put together Severin box set, Al Adamson - The Masterpiece Collection, is... Blood Of Dracula’s Castle. And, it’s a surprising one because, after Psycho-A-Go-Go (reviewed here) and Five Bloody Graves (reviewed here), I was coming around to maybe thinking that Adamson wasn’t just a director of trash and was actually an unsung genius and, you know, as I go through this set more I may find that to be the case. However, this movie is truly an argument for the opposite conclusion.

It starts of nicely enough with Vicki Volante as an unnamed character driving her open topped car through roads cut into what looks like a half desert, half forest kind of environment, to the sound of a pretty simplistic pop song. However, she turns out to be a not so intelligent character when she discovers she’s not filled her car with enough petrol and it runs out, stranding her in the 'desert forest'. So she gets out and goes to try and find help, walking slap bang into... a thuggish brute called Mango, who works for Mr and Mrs Dracula... who lease a castle just nearby. She gets chained in their cellar, along with a bunch of other young ladies, so Dracula’s butler, played by John Carradine, can slowly syphon off their blood, day by day, to pour into wine glasses for Count Dracula (played by Alexander D'Arcy) and Countess Dracula (played by Paula Raymond) to sup from. So, yeah, they have their own little blood bank in their cellar.

Immediately following the abduction of the gal by Mango, we cut to a bunch of dolphins and the two main protagonists of the movie. Here we have Glen (played by Gene Otis Shane), who is a professional photographer taking shots of his model fiancé  Liz (played by Jennifer Bishop). There are a lot of shots of Seaworld while Glen takes pictures of Liz in various costumes and poses as she cavorts with sea lions and such like. The only reason I can think all of this padding is in here is because Seaworld must have been relatively cheap to hire and so they wanted to get some substantial footage shot there. Anyway, while they’re at Seaworld, Glen gets a message handed to him because, yes, you would get a stray telegram or post handed to you while you’re out visiting Seaworld, right? Um... okay, ignoring this new rumple, the message says that Glen’s Uncles Tom has died and left him his castle in his inheritance. So Glen and Liz decide to go off to visit the remote castle to live there (because, of course a model and photographer who are living in the city where their jobs are would want to go off to some remote spot hours away from civilisation and live there). However, they are a little worried because Uncle Tom’s castle has been rented to an old couple for the past 90 years (so Tom never lived there then?). You can see where this is heading, right? When they do get there a bit later in the ‘story’, the couple don’t look as old as they expect and, that’s because they’re really hundreds of years old vampires, of course.

Meanwhile, as they make their way through the same desert/forest roads that Mr. and Mrs. Dracula’s last victim took at the start of the movie, Dracula has arranged for ‘friend of the family’ Johnny, played by Robert Dix, to be 'released' from prison where he’s serving time for being a crazy, homicidal lunatic. There’s a cameo from director John 'Bud' Cardos as the prison guard under Dracula's pay who asks Johnny to hit him over the head to make his escape look realistic. Johnny does him one better, getting to like it after the first hit and then bashing his brains in with a rock as he smiles and laughs about it. It wouldn’t really need anything else to cement this character's reputation as a psycho with the audience but the writer and director then proceed to drive the message home by showing us his long trek through the desert, pursued by prison guards.

Even though, you know, Johnny needs to make good his get away and find his way back to the castle, he suddenly comes across, in the middle of nowhere and cavorting near a small waterfall, a bikini clad gal. Who, of course, he then drowns in the water. He then comes across another guy with a car and he smacks his brains in with another rock (a fine weapon of choice), loading him and his handy shotgun into the back seat to drive back to his mates, 'The Draculas'. However, on the way he comes across a hitchhiker who he shoots through the window with his shotgun, dumping him into the back seat with the other guy and switching clothes with one of them (in the most ridiculous and less than credible manner possible, while he is still driving). He then pushes the car off the cliff with the corpses in it, knowing the cops will find his clothes on one of the men and somehow assume it’s him and stop looking for him. Bizarrely, although I was pretty sure both guys in the car were dead, as the car goes over the cliff and rolls down the rocky terrain, one of them lets out a scream. Yeah, I really don’t know what’s going on here at this point. Robert Dix was pretty good in Five Bloody Graves but, honestly, though he tries his best in this one, he just doesn’t have any decent dialogue to work with and his forced, maniacal laugh isn’t quite what the doctor ordered to be honest.

Pretty soon after Glen and Liz arrive at the castle and stay for both dinner and the night (in a guest room) but, after refusing Dracula’s offer to buy the property, they know something’s up. The next day they go to investigate the ‘toucan’ they were told was responsible for all that screaming they heard in the night and find the chained up gals. They then get chained up themselves but are all left free as they are forced to wear robes and go up a hill while John Carradine and his employees burn Vicky Volante at the stake, as a sacrifice to the great moon God Lunar (I’m not making this up, by the way). But, when they get back to their dungeon they break free and Carradine, Johnny and the Draculas are killed. However, Liz is nabbed by Mungo who takes her up a cliff. Glen follows and, though it looks like they are doomed to a dumb demise due to Mungo’s brutish strength, Glen happens to find a nearby axe just handily laying around by one of the rocks and finishes the towering man servant off. End of story and, frankly, that ending came in none too soon.

It’s easy to trash this as just a really terribly made movie... and so I have. However, I will say that Adamson’s visual flair... or eye for hiring someone with visual flair... does come into its own in a few places. The cinematographer here was a young Lazlo Kovacks and it does show from time to time. Seriously, how did Adamson get to work with so many ‘A’ list, award winning professionals in his early movies? I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

So yeah, there are some nicely done shots with vertical split sections and they manage to get a lot of depth into some of the frames. The print is in terrible shape though but Severin have, as always, done their best with the materials they have to work with. They have also included another, extended TV version of the movie where someone, probably not Adamson, has added 7 or 8 minutes of werewolf sub plot. It’s hinted that Johnny goes more than a little crazy when it’s the full moon (although I honestly don’t see how he could get to be any more of a volatile nutter than he already is in this) and so I guess he goes 'full wolfman' in this cut. I was going to watch this version so I could give a more rounded view of it here but then found out that it’s been cropped into a 4:3 aspect ratio for television and, well, I’m sure fans of cinema will forgive me if I take a pass. I’m sure some of you, like me, get stabs of pain and deep anxiety when forced to watch a film in an incorrect aspect ratio. It’s not something I would wish on anyone so, I can live without those extra minutes of lycanthrope filled footage, to be honest.

And that’s that. I don’t know why Carradine is only playing the butler here when he already played Dracula twice for Universal in the 1940s but, it’s not so much of a missed opportunity when you see how awful this film is. I can’t recommend Blood Of Dracula’s Castle in any way, shape or form but I can certainly recommend the wonderful box set it comes as part of and, again, my compliments to Severin on this one.

Satan's Slave

Slave Regina

Satan's Slave
UK 1976
Directed by Norman J. Warren
Indicator Ray Zone B

You know, I’d only seen one Norman J. Warren film before this first time watch.* However, since that other film, Inseminoid, holds a special place in my heart due to circumstances surrounding its release (I’ll get to that when I review it for this blog), I thought pursuing the recent Indicator Blu Ray boxed edition of five of this director’s films (including Inseminoid), was a good idea. Indeed, it turns out that in the case of this film, Satan’s Slave, it’s good that this is my first experience of it because it seems that the previous UK releases of it were cut down to something approximating the original ‘X’ certificate theatrical release. Somehow (and good on them), Indicator have been allowed to include a full on ‘director’s cut’ with the sex, nudity and violence enhanced even more than what the film-makers were allowed to get away with back in the day.

The film starts off strongly with a nice, strong graphic line drawing of a face which goes through a few transformations before it’s a skull with bulging eyeballs... then a cross and then various cards from a Tarot deck before returning to the bloodshot eyeball skull thingy (as is the technical term for this), all accompanied by composer John Scott’s wonderful score. Then we have a preliminary opening where a naked girl, played by one of the producers as the actress didn’t show up on set, is sacrificed in some kind of satanic ritual (including a nice ‘bloody eye’ effect reminiscent of some of those Hammer films where Christopher Lee played Dracula). Since Satan doesn’t actually appear in the film and I don’t remember the devil getting much of a shout out, I’m assuming the robes, blood and general nakedness are the only real reference to which the film’s title can allude. The main masked/robed priest doing the deed is, you can totally hear from his voice, played by Michael Gough so, when he comes into the main body of the story a little later, it’s no real surprise that he is just as much a threat as the character of his son Martin, payed by Stephen Yorke. And we also get a scene where Martin murders one of his lovers (he seems to have a few on the go at the same time) in a protracted sequence where he non-consensually smothers her to unconsciousness, ties and undresses her on his bed, then threatens the young lady with scissors before letting her go... only to change his mind by splitting her head in between a door and its frame before stabbing her.

The plot involves main protagonist Catherine, played by Candace Glendenning, who is accompanying her parents to visit her previously anonymous uncle, a day or two before her birthday. The car crashes (well it’s just a little bump, really) a few yards from their destination, a big country house. After Catherine gets out of the car to get help from her uncle for her parents in the front of the vehicle, the car inexplicably explodes. The uncle, his son Martin and Martin’s lover, Frances, played by Barbara Kellerman , take her in to recuperate for a few days. However, Catherine is prone to premonitions and visions, which makes sense since it turns out she is a direct descendent of some kind of witch from hundreds of years before. Michael Gough’s character has already sacrificed his wife to have said witch reborn and, although she doesn’t know it yet, Catherine is earmarked to be the next 'stab' at resurrection fodder unless she can escape.

It’s also nice to see former Doctor Who companion to William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton, Michael Craze, as Catherine’s boyfriend. Alas, he only has two scenes because his second appearance has him taken over psychically by the long distance but, apparently mesmerising, mind powers of Michael Gough’s character, compelling him to throw himself from the roof of a block of flats with a rather grisly aftermath.

Now, I’m used to seeing British horror films by the likes of Hammer, Amicus and Tigon studios but this really is a proper piece of trashy exploitation with a UK flavour to it and it’s a very strong and entertaining work, to be honest. In fact, I’d say it’s a lot better than much of the US stuff I’ve seen in a similar vein, to tell the truth. It’s got lashings of nudity, sex and gore as part of its genetic make up and Warren seems to have no trouble capitalising on all these factors to make the film really work. Indeed, I was somewhat taken aback when the heroine of the film stabs an antagonist directly in the eyeball and we see it go in and then we get a few aftermath shots of the nail file she used still lodged in the guy’s eyeball. Something which the majority of directors mostly cut away from and it’s rare to see something this strong since Dali and Bunuel dissected a lady’s eyeball at the opening of their silent masterpiece Un Chien Andalou in 1929.

In a similar vein, although not as impactful and probably not the first time this was done, the moment when a door swings back to reveal a young lady hanging from the door and held there by the big carving knife which has gone through the front of her mouth and out the back of her head before being embedded into the wooden panel, must have been a few years early, at the time, before this kind of reveal became a more common factor in various American slasher films of the late 1970s and early 1980s (not a genre I get on with particularly... I prefer a well shot Italian giallo to those kinds of movies).

What also really works about the film, though, is the way some of the shots are designed. The colours are quite a bit more muted or greyer than you might see in a Hammer film of around the same time but the director more than makes up for it by getting creative with some of his framing, especially since his modus operandi seems to be to just start off with a static screen in which a character is seen and then moving the camera with that character in whichever direction they are going. So, sure, standard stuff in that respect but he manages to do some nice things visually which lift the sequences and it’s exactly the kind of stuff I like...

For example, one scene shows Catherine sitting alone in a room on a chair. She gets up and starts walking to the left of shot with the camera moving on her to keep her in the centre of the frame until she comes to a stop in front of a mirror. A she moves in front of the mirror, Stephen walks into the reflection of the mirror and comes to a stop opposite her (his real self out of frame entirely, of course) to start a conversation up. Another sequence has Frances wearing a nice purple and blue hotch potch of a garment but she’s standing in front of a painting of a lady wearing the exact same kind of purple tones. It’s all nice stuff and it’s this kind of thing which really contributes to the overall entertainment value of the film... for me at least.

One slight cliché is when composer Scott uses a kind of rip off of Bernard Herrmann’s classic ‘stab music’ from Psycho, when ever somebody crosses paths with a knife or, indeed, nail file or similarly pointy object. It’s a bit of a steal in terms of the way it borrows from Herrmann’s masterpiece but heck, even the great Jerry Goldsmith did a similar thing once (in Coma) so I can certainly cut this composer some slack here.

Satan’s Slave is packaged as part of the Indicator box set Bloody Terror: The Shocking Cinema of Norman J Warren 1976-1987 and, as you would expect from such a great boutique label, they’ve not only given us a proper, uncut version of the film for the first time ever in the UK but also put some great extras with it, which include a couple of commentary tracks (one with the composer), outtakes and deleted scenes, a making of featurette, a chat with the composer (who actually plays a part of the main theme on a piano for us) and an interesting comparison featurette on the censorship issues of the film. I was really impressed with this set and, I have to say, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the movies in this collection sometime soon. 

*Since reviewing the movies in this boxed edition, I also saw his earlier film
Her Private Hell, which explains why that review beat these to the site.

Mandy

Thulsa Bloom

Mandy
2018 USA/Belgium/UK 
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
UK cinema release print.

I’ve been trying to get to see this one for a little while now. Unfortunately, because of it’s near simultaneous release on streaming and DVD (although not in the proper Blu Ray format it needs to be seen on in the UK... I'll have to import that from the US - since publishing this I've found out that there are actually two UK Blu Ray editions of this, both exclusive to HMV), the very limited cinematic release has made this almost impossible for me. Then I finally managed to find one screening which was on at an appropriate time for normal, working people to actually be able to go and see this thing, at the Prince Charles Cinema in London. Like almost all the screenings it sold out fast due to a mix of good word of mouth and limited showings but at least I finally got to secure a ticket. The cinema was packed and this was kind of good because this film is a very intense ride and it seemed almost like a community spirit took over in the auditorium as this near magical motion picture started to stream deliriously into our collective eyeballs.

Mandy is both... not the film I’d expected it to be but everything I would have hoped it could be if this kind of film-making was more common. The dream-like quality of the visuals and the way the film kind of slowly ebbs and flows on a singular course at a very deliberate pace is not something I think a lot of director’s would have held their nerve with (I guess I’m going to have to catch up with Cosmatos’ other movie at some point).

At its simplest level... which is pretty much the only level you can really take it, I think... the film is an old school revenge movie. Mandy Bloom, played almost enigmatically by Andrea Riseborough, lives in a cabin with her lumberjack boyfriend Red Miller, played by Nicolas Cage... until fate intervenes in the form of cult leader Jeremiah Sand, played by Linus Roach. Well, I say cult leader but there is some evidence to show that he might be the devil or some other major demon although, at one point in the film, his hold over others weakens and whatever power he may have had deserts him.

He and his psychotic group of followers also have the use of a group of biker ‘heavies’, for want of a better term and there are many ways to interpret these bizarre creatures. With their superhuman strength and impenetrable visage there’s a lot to suggest that they are either demonic entities or, possibly, even aliens. Or are they just totally drugged up humans who think they are either demons or aliens? I don’t know and, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as they are just another obstacle in the path of Red Miller as he seeks revenge for the brutal murder of his girlfriend... who was coveted by Jeremiah but who dared to laugh at him.

Now Nicolas Cage is an interesting actor but I do find him an acquired taste and haven’t seen a great deal of his movies. That being said, I was blown away by him back in 1990 when he played Sailor Ripley in David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. Alas, it’s been a long time since I was able to watch that film again because subsequent DVD and Blu Ray releases to date have been heavily censored... I wish someone would release this properly at some point. He’s great in Mandy too, though and, although he doesn’t say a whole lot, you get the feeling that Red is completely focused by his grief and hate.

Now talking of David Lynch... if I was asked to sum up the atmosphere of this movie by comparing it to other things, I’d be hard pressed. Like Argento’s Suspiria (reviewed here) it’s very much a movie which works completely on its own terms and is not like much else you’ve seen at the cinema, in terms of style and feel at least. So my best summation of the feel of the movie would be this... imagine if Dario Argento and David Lynch had met in the early 1970s and decided to make a film together and then, furthermore, gave all the audience members some LSD before they went in to the cinemas... that’s what I would imagine Mandy feels like in words. The colours, the intensity, the animated cartoons of a naked Mandy giving Red cryptic clues as to the location of the cult from beyond the grave... it’s all very overwhelming and, indeed, the slow pacing of the film is almost a necessity to give your head a chance to catch up to what you’re seeing and hearing on screen.

Also, I don’t know if anyone else saw this possible connection but it almost feels like our imagined versions of Lynch and Argento were trying to do a modern reboot of the John Milius version of Conan The Barbarian. I can see Jeremia as a stand in for Thulsa Doom and the simple revenge arc as almost an homage to that 1982 classic (indeed, Mandy is even set in the 1980s and also includes an oblique reference to the animated Heavy Metal movie). So yeah, this film felt very much, to me anyway, like Eraserhead meets Suspiria meets Conan the Barbarian by way of the artistic sensibilities of Panos Cosmatos, so... yeah, that works for me.

The score is fantastic too. This is one of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s last movie scores before his accidental death earlier in the year and it’s another absolutely brilliant piece. It’s quite similar in tone to his amazing scores for Sicario (reviewed here) and Arrival (reviewed here) and I can’t think of anything else that could hold the film together in the way that this intense music, mixed right into the foreground of the film, could. It elevates the ‘in your face’ nature of the visuals and really helps glue the imagery together without letting up. It keeps you in the headspace required to appreciate Mandy as the work of art it is because, it has to be said, there are a couple of places where it does threaten to drift over into ‘camp’ territory and there are plenty of laughs midst the blood and gore to be found here. That’s another reason why this is a great communal experience because the audience reaction was terrific... a girl in a group of people sitting to my left held her hands over her face when a giant, fiery “bat’leth” of an axe is thrown into a man’s head and then found herself laughing at something one of the characters said not five minutes after this scene. And, it has to be said, everyone had a little chuckle at Nicolas Cage’s grin in a shot near the end of the movie. This is another film which people are going to remember this actor for in future generations, I think.

One scene where Miller is trying to process what has just happened to his girlfriend, could have gone either way. It’s a protracted scene of him alternately drowning down a bottle of Southern Comfort (I think that’s what the bottle was) and screaming emotionally in his y-fronts and, it very nearly got a lot of unintentional laughs, I suspect. However, let me say just this about that scene... it’s possibly the closest contemporary equivalent I’ve seen to the Isabelle Adjani ‘grocery in the subway’ breakdown sequence in Zulawski’s Possession (which I reviewed here)... so I think a certain cross section of the audience would have appreciated this. It’s a raw moment for Cage and, luckily, it does just come out as the right side of credible in a film that is being called by a lot of reviewers... ‘totally bonkers’ and, who am I to disagree with them. As long as they mean bonkers in a good way then I have no fight with that.

Mandy is a hallucinatory, intense, vibrant, fun and somewhat trippy pill to swallow. It’s 100% a modern exploitation movie but one which doesn’t skimp on a lot of the implications of that term and celebrates itself in a way that lets the audience join in with it. A really great little flame of a movie and one which I’m sure an insane bunch of cinephiles will be happy to keep burning for a number of years. Don’t miss out on this one... especially if you can see it on a big screen with a full house... a gem of an experience.

Luciferina

The Sexorcist

Luciferina
2018 Argentina Directed by Gonzalo Calzada
26th August screening at FrightFest 2018

Wow. Well I have to say that, of the five films I saw at this year’s FrightFest, Luciferina was easily the standout movie for me. And that’s saying something, considering I actually got lucky and saw five pretty good movies this time around.

Right from the start of the film, the director states his intentions that Luciferina is the first part of a Three Virgins Trilogy, in much the same way that Universal branded their recent version of The Mummy (reviewed here) as part of their new, probably now aborted, Dark Universe. Indeed, if you stay long enough into the end credits here you will find that the next two intended installments of this series will be called Immaculada and Gotica and… I can only hope this director has more success with these than Universal did with their Dark Universe because, frankly, this film is an absolute blast.

The film starts off with a young woman called Natalia, played amazingly by Sofia Del Tuffo, who is an apprentice nun at a convent and who is the main protagonist of the movie. Right from the start we are clued in to the fact that she is gifted with some kind of ‘special religiously manifested powers’, as she can make here eyeballs go a milky white and see people’s white auras of spiritual goodness when she needs to… presumably to check that they are pure people at heart. Anyway, the plot moves along when she goes home to what’s left of the family unit she rejected when she hears her mother has died in what is being called a suicide. She returns to find her father bandaged up (after being attacked by her mother) and unresponsive, with her angry sister Angela, played by the strikingly good looking Malena Sanchez, at her throat. And Angela’s bunch of short fused friends are not much help to the situation here either but Natalia agrees to go with them to a remote place to take a spiritual, drug fuelled journey to find herself and the dark secret at the heart of what made her father and mother so weird and gruelling to live with in the first place. Pretty much the equivalent of a peyote dream I would guess but, as you would probably suspect from a film in this vein, things go much more wrong than anyone is expecting and it all leads to a confrontation between the forces of darkness and light, culminating in a long scene which is what inspired me to title this review... The Sexorcist.

That’s pretty much all I am going to say about the plot because you need to discover the joys and twists of this movie yourself. Some of them are more obvious than others but everything is so well presented and it’s almost like watching a modern equivalent of something like Alucarda (reviewed here), although it’s not quite the same experience and it’s even more beautiful to look at.

Indeed, alongside the always welcome shots of female nudity which become, by the end, almost essential to the plot in terms of the conflict between good versus evil... where Calzada uses the age old trick of ‘who is on top and dominating’ the sexual positions to show us which side of light and dark are winning the battle at any given moment... we have some very beautiful cinematography incorporating some lovely shot designs which, in this, are very much pitched towards the centre of the screen. It’s not always symmetry the director is after but I would say a good 90% of the film uses either static images or smooth moving camera to make the main focus of the shot hit the middle third of the screen and it’s a technique which works surprisingly well. There are some odd shots which are pitched to the side of the screen and I wasn’t quite sure why he did that in those particular moments given the nature of the design in the majority of the movie. The two I can remember are when Natalia and Angela are sitting on some garden furniture at night and they are the main focus on the right of screen, drawing the eye into the master shot and then, a little later, one of the shots of their boat journey places them on the right of screen too. For the most part, though, the choice seems to skew to placing things front and centre in the composition but it also turns out to be quite a functional thing as well.

For instance, in one of many dream sequences involving a specific location and something scary walking up from behind Natalia, he uses Natalia’s proximity to the screen and the fact that she’s blocking the centre of the shot, to build the sense of tension as a creature gets nearer. Every time she moves to the right of screen to look behind her at the creature, we see it has gotten a bit closer before she returns to her position and blocks the view again. This is repeated a couple more times to obstruct the audience view and leads to the inevitable ‘oh my gosh it’s right there with you’ moment but this was a really cool sequence, even if it was a little predictable and it’s a good example of the cinematography enhancing the film in a very practical way in terms of helping the story along. There’s a scene later in the film which isn’t set in the dream world where, as you kind of know is going to happen, the character finds herself in exactly the same position and situation at the same location she dreamed of (more than once, in fact) and echoes of this earlier scene prickle at the back of the subconscious of the audience because, by this point, the director doesn’t need to repeat that exact moment to the finish to achieve that same tension... he’s already done it so well earlier in the film.

Luciferina is, bearing in mind its remote location in terms of where it places the characters, actually quite gory as well with lots of facial mutilation and death. The writer/director gives us a mentally unstable/villainous character right from the time we meet Angela’s friends... her boyfriend, in fact. It’s the thorough nastiness of him and the moment where he leaves the group of friends with the unvoiced threat of coming back and killing them that’s a nice bit of a set up for something which happens later in the film but... yeah... I really don’t want to give any spoilers away here because it’s such a lovely film and you should discover it for yourself, if you can get the opportunity. I will say, though, that Natalia certainly finds out a lot about her past from a time when she can’t remember and that there are a couple of sequences in this film that might make some viewers think of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 - A Space Odyssey (reviewed here).

So yeah, loads of gory violence, a fair amount of nudity and sex and it’s all supported by a very nice score by... well I don’t know who it’s composed by because the IMDB doesn’t list it. I would love to find out because it’s really well done and I would really like to pick up a CD of this at some point. I knew I was in for something special, in terms of scoring, when the opening Three Virgins Trilogy logo came up and I was treated to a piece of music which sounded, in the first few bars, just like a piece from Jerry Goldsmith’s score for The Omen... and not just because of the strong choral content either. As the film progresses, though, the beauty of the score becomes apparent and it plays so appropriately well with the images that I would love to give this a spin away from the film.

The one, slightly false note in the film comes not from the score but from the last minute or so of the movie. Once character says something and you know it’s only there to set up the idea that there are supposed to be two more sequels and... I think with the strength of the branding on this, it maybe didn’t quite need that. Other than that, though, I can’t stress enough just how great a piece of horror/exploitation movie making Luciferina is... shot through with some absolutely exquisite cinematography and with a central protagonist you really want to root for (Sofia Del Tuffo really does a fantastic job here). Definitely a recommendation from me if you are into horror movies and I just hope it gets a UK release at some point. And I certainly hope those sequels get made sometime soon, too.


FrightFest 2018 @ NUTS4R2

The Most Assassinated Woman In The World

Luciferina

Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years

Videoman (aka Videomannen)

Crystal Eyes (aka Mirada De Cristal)