Crucible Of Horror (1971)

MAY 14, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

It’s bad enough that Crucible Of Terror is a dull film that barely even meets the requirements of “Horror?”, but it’s also a confusing one. Only one thing happens in the entire movie and then the final 5 minutes tell you that it didn’t happen, so unless you’re a Michael Gough completist or just love watching people yammer in a big British manor, I suspect you can find something better to do with your time.

To its credit, there’s a decent idea at its core – it’s basically a remake of Diabolique but with a mother and daughter looking to kill the man who is making their lives a living hell. Gough plays the tyrannical father, and he’s pretty damn scary – one of the film’s few “action” bits involves him whipping his daughter for stealing, and it’s pretty horrifying to a modern day audience who only knows him as the kindly Alfred from the pre-Nolan Batman films. Like Diabolique, the “murder” occurs around the halfway mark (once we hate him enough to side with them), and then the rest depicts what happens when their plan goes awry.

But instead of that film’s clever twists and double crosses, we just a bunch of confusion. The body disappears, a dummy wearing a Gough mask swings from the ceiling like Bob in Halloween, and then Gough is shown to be fully alive. So what happened? Did they accidentally kill a dummy or an impostor? Was he not really dead? Was he even in the crate when they buried it at sea? Etc, etc – there are many possibilities, and the movie offers nothing in the way of answers. You can be ambiguous about certain things, but it’s not the best idea when it’s the main plot. It’d be like leaving it up to the audience to decide whether or not John McClane stops the terrorists or saves his wife in Die Hard. No, follow through on that, let us nerds wonder about the minor stuff like whether or not Theo got away or arrested (think about it – Argyle knocks him out, then drives off with McClane without talking to anyone).

And come on, you’ve bored us for 80 minutes and now you’re going to leave us hanging? Again, there’s some mild amusement to be had at watching Alfred Pennyworth smacking people around, but that dies off quickly, and no one else in the movie is all that memorable (though the daughter is quite lovely). And it has a slight bit of Hammer feel, but it doesn’t have any of those films’ rich cinematography or atmosphere. Most of the movie takes place in the house, where the folks sit around the dinner table or sip brandy in the parlor, so it more closely resembles a BBC special than a feature. Nice cliff during the “burial” scene though.

This has nothing to do with the movie really, but I’m kind of bummed to discover that this will be one of the last entries on my Pure Terror set, despite only being the 13th. There are 50 films on the set, but many are duplicated from the others (mostly Tales of Terror), and others are heavily edited versions which I refuse to watch. Then there are a few that I can’t possibly believe to be horror films (one of the movies is a Japanese adventure about a spaceman), which I find kind of insulting when you consider a. Mill Creek has plenty of sci-fi sets and b. like there aren’t hundreds of public domain horror movies to put on the disc instead? Even tossing on Night of the Living Dead for the millionth time would make more sense – it’s not like there are a bunch of people like me who own several of these damn sets.

Another film on this set that I had seen before is Satan’s Slave, which also involves Gough and a British manor, but is far superior to this. Stick with that one.

What say you?

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Point Of Terror (1971)

APRIL 11, 2012

GENRE: HORROR?, THRILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

SO DISAPPOINTED. As I mentioned the other day, Point Of Terror is on a disc with three of the better/best films on the Pure Terror set, so I was hoping it would measure up and become a sort of "perfect" budget pack disc. But alas, not only is it a fairly terrible movie, it's barely even acceptable to call it horror; if it didn't fit under two of my rules, I would have just abandoned it and watched something else for the day.

On paper it sort of sounds like a slasher/thriller, at least. A cheesy lounge singer meets a woman who claims she can get him a recording contract, and people start dying. But there's only like two deaths in the movie, and most of it is just a melodrama about this asshole doing his act and wanting to be a star. See, the lady isn't really involved with the record company - her invalid asshole husband is, and the whole thing is a ruse to help her knock him off, which gets complicated because Mr. Lobster Lounge's ego swells instantly and doesn't want to help her do shit. There's a lot of yelling and sex and singing... not so much of the slashy-slash that the poster promises.

That said, this would be a hoot at a "crowd participation" screening. At times I was reminded of the terrible Girl In Gold Boots that aired as an MST3k episode (the only non-genre film of its Sci-Fi Channel run, in fact), and - assuming they could only do ONE melodrama about people who wanted to be stars getting mixed up with crooks - I wish they had done this instead, because so much of it was seemingly tailor-made for Mike and the 'bots to ridicule. The film opens with an awful musical/dance number, and the guy playing the invalid also suffers from restless leg syndrome (!). And it has a godawful twist ending that you can practically hear Tom Servo berating. But alas, I was by myself, and while I recognized its camp value and chuckled a few times, it was mostly just a chore.

Most of my entertainment stemmed from the fact that the main actor Peter Carpenter also wrote and produced the film, which means that his character's ego is nothing compared to Carpenter's own. He writes himself nude scenes, singing scenes, dancing scenes... I wouldn't be surprised if he actually ghost-directed as well, since credited director Alex Nicol never directed again. Interestingly, Nicol's debut film WAS an MST3k entry (and one of my favorites), The Screaming Skull ("Is he reading from a report?"), which Nicol acted in as well. And of course, we can't ask either of them, because as it turns out both men are deceased. Nicol died in 2001 of natural causes, though he apparently retired from show business in the mid 70s, and Carpenter sadly died in 1971, over a year before this film was released (at least, per their info - they have the release as May 1973 but the below trailer claims October 1971). The cause was a massive cerebral hemorrhage according to the IMDb, and forgive me, but a swelled brain is a darkly ironic way of dying for someone who obviously thought highly of himself. Also, is there nothing more depressing than (possibly) dying before the release of your own vanity project? I feel bad saying that sort of stuff, for all I know he was a wonderful guy (couldn't find much biographical info on him), but let's just call it even for false advertising me on a slasher movie.

If this plays a revival house and you enjoy "so bad it's good" entertainment I would highly urge you check it out; it definitely seems like the sort of movie Brian Quinn would dig up as the B-movie for one of his Grindhouse night double features at the New Beverly. The goofy soap-opera plot and rather out of nowhere (and even kind of Giallo-esque) kill scenes are definitely crowd-pleasing, as are the frequent sex scenes (one including Ilsa herself, Dyanne Thorne). But alone at home? Steer as clear as you possibly can.

What say you?

P.S. Adding insult to injury, this had the best transfer on the disc as well. Letterboxed and seemingly remastered (and then compressed poorly), it just added to my "Hey this might be good!" feeling, one that quickly evaporated.

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Grave Of The Vampire (1974)

APRIL 2, 2012

GENRE: VAMPIRE
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

Well I’m not about to track down a print to show it at the New Beverly, but Grave Of The Vampire is the closest thing I’ve seen to an enjoyable movie on my Pure Terror set in quite a while. Interestingly enough, it’s on the same disc as Vampire’s Night Orgy, which is one of the best films on the set, but I know that from watching it on my previous Mill Creek 50 pack (the Tales Of Terror set). I wonder how many movies I own 2-3 times over, albeit completely unintentionally.

Anyway, this movie has such a laid back approach I kind of fell in love with it, as it seems director John Hayes was intent on keeping things as mellow as possible. The movie is ostensibly about a man seeking revenge on his birth father, a vampire who raped his mother, but the guy doesn’t bother doing much about it until the film’s very end. He even takes the vampire’s community college class and presumably does his assignments! And, yeah, the bad vampire is a professor, instead of the usual rich guy that sleeps all day and plays ladies’ man by night. He’s probably home grading papers and what not instead.

It’s also low on violence, though this might be a cut print. IMDb claims of a couple different run times, but as with all of these movies you run into a lot of misinformation over there, so if the differences are minor (5 or less minutes) I figure it’s OK. Also, the kills are seemingly cut, but the soundtrack doesn’t cut along with it, so it’s possible that these kills were cut for ratings purposes back in the day (which is acceptable to me) as opposed to just hacked out at random by some distributor at some point after the film’s completion (unacceptable). But even so, they’re pretty infrequent, and the movie’s success or failure doesn’t rest with the kill scenes, like say Friday the 13th VII, a film that lost what little appeal it had after the MPAA was through gutting it.

The bad vampire is played by Michael Pataki, which is awesome because he’s using the same angry, gnarled voice he uses in every role, which is why he usually played angry cops or whatever. It’s a pure delight to see this handsome, typical looking vampire start yelling at people in the same tone of voice you’d expect to hear from a guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn, or maybe yelling at a waitress for getting an order wrong. The son is played by William Smith, a long ways from appearing in EVERY SINGLE POLICE SHOW EVER MADE. Seriously, look at his IMDb – every cop/mystery show you’ve ever heard of from 1970-1985 or show can boast at least one Smith appearance. I was kind of disappointed that they didn’t interact more in the film, but since the first half hour and change is about how he was created, we’re into the 2nd act by the time he even shows up.

Speaking of this first half hour, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was an influence on Grace, as the baby likes to drink blood, which the mother is OK with – same as that film’s “A mother will do anything to take care of her child” theme. And then Smith is similar to Blade in that he’s got the abilities of a vampire but not their weaknesses, and was more or less doomed from birth. But the rest of the movie doesn’t really feel like either, since we cut 30 years later and thus get rid of the mother angle, and unlike Blade he doesn’t really kick any ass.

Making up for the lack of action is a lot of goofy dialogue, such as when a girl eats some cake and sighs “Cake is so delicious; I can’t believe dead people haven’t figured out a way to eat it.” She’s right, it seems to be that this would be the top priority for a corpse. There’s also a lady that gets annoyed with a doctor and gets the final word by saying “My husband DIED from pills!”, as if to explain why she wasn’t listening to this poor sap who had nothing to do with her husband or his overdose. Also, being a 1970s horror movie, we are treated to out of nowhere dance party scenes, as well as a séance sequence. I should note that the latter is led by Pataki (instead of a heroic character), which is not only unusual since he’s the villain, but it also allows for more of his angry dialogue delivery.

And now for the kicker. The screenwriter of this film is none other than David Chase (adapted from his own novel), who you probably know as the creator of The Sopranos. In fact that’s probably how he’d prefer to be known, but I would be delighted if there were some folks out there who loved this movie (or his novel) and that was the reason that they decided to check out Sopranos, sort of like how I was partially inspired to check out Community because it had “the girl from Born” in it. And if you were one of the many millions who was disappointed with how Sopranos concluded, take comfort knowing that was sort of his “thing”, as this movie ends on a sort of cliffhanger with a “The End… OR IS IT?” title card. Well, it’s been nearly 40 years; Pataki and Hayes are dead and Smith has seemingly retired, so yeah, I’m going to have to go ahead and assume it was indeed the end. Oh well. Maybe Chase will consider a remake? This was shot on the cheap and quickly, and obviously has more or less faded into obscurity – it’s from the creator of one of the most beloved TV shows of all time and yet here it is on disc 7 on a lesser budget pack. Shameful!

What say you?

P.S. Satan’s Slave (another movie I own multiple times now) is also on this DVD, so Point of Terror – the fourth film on this disc – better live up to its disc-mate’s “Surprisingly pretty good” status!

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Monstroid (1980)

MARCH 26, 2012

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

I’ve owned the Pure Terror set for quite a while now, but haven’t watched too many movies from it, because most of them are quite bad even by budget pack standards. Monstroid (aka Monster, aka The Toxic Horror) is no exception; in fact it may be the worst of the lot, or at least tied with the woeful My Mom’s A Werewolf. I guess Mill Creek knew what they had on their hands and stocked up Chilling Classics with all the gems in their library. That or I just have poor judgment in picking titles; maybe the other 40 are awesome and I just got all the garbage out of the way.

Anyway, there are two ways one could approach Monstroid’s limited use of the title monster: you can either be thankful that it barely appears, because it’s so terrible looking and lacks even the slightest bit of menace, OR you can be pissed that you have to wait so long to catch a glimpse of the damn thing and you’re “rewarded” with what looks like a bootleg of a lesser Muppet, soaked in water and missing its puppeteer, since it doesn’t blink or have any obvious life to it.

Either way, you realize that the movie sucks; the monster is too lousy to appreciate on a legitimate level, and appears too infrequently to enjoy it ironically. There are only two brief attack scenes in the movie until the final 10 minutes – the rest of it is nothing but talk. And not even talk about the monster! Photography, sonar, dancing, relationship troubles… any of these topics are covered in greater detail than the damn monster. Maybe that’s why they named the movie after him – they probably felt bad for leaving him out of so much of the actual narrative.

Even his origin is a waste of time. If I’m understanding the movie correctly (doubtful, given the woeful transfer that made me feel partially blind AND deaf), he is formed not by the usual toxic waste excuse but concrete being poured into the lake. Huh? Concrete? I had to have heard this wrong. Even filmmakers as inept as this wouldn’t go with such a ludicrous premise. Maybe the monster was already there and the concrete just woke him up or pissed him off? That makes more (movie) sense. I also like the idea that this monster was in there and the only ones who seem to want it dead are evil corporate types, since (again, if I’m following this nonsense) they’re the ones who put the team together to destroy it.

The plan is amazing, too. They stuff a lamb with dynamite and just circle the lake in their helicopter, letting the thing bob around until the monster eats it (whole!), at which point they will detonate the explosives, as if being put inside an animal and chewed up by another wouldn’t already have done that. If Dr. Arzt saw this movie from Lost Heaven I bet he’d be pretty pissed off that he just had to swing a single stick to get blown up while Monstroid can make a snack out of the stuff and be OK. Anyway, the plan is nearly botched when the detonator falls into the lake, so one of our heroes dives in to get it. It’s not too hard though, because the water is super clear for a lake, and surrounded by helpful white walls to provide even more visibility and contrast. Note to filmmakers – if you’re going to fake your damn backyard pool for a swampy lake, maybe try changing the color timing or putting a cover over the surface or something to darken it up a bit?

The only other bit of entertainment I got out of the entire movie (besides a few moments with John Carradine, who is in the film because it’s a low budget horror movie from the 70s and thus there is no alternative that I know of) was courtesy of the asshole who runs the concrete company. No matter what this guy says he peppers it with profanity: “Put on the next goddamned slide!” “What the fuck’s a sonar?” “Read your fucking contract, asshole!, etc. It’s pretty great, and the fact that I often had little to no idea who he was talking to or how it fit into the movie just made it all the more charming. Oh, and they claim it's based on a true story, too. That's always worthy of a laugh.

At this point I should mention what little I learned about the film from the IMDb (it has no Wikipedia page – Wikipedia has pages about bands that released one album, but not even a “stub” for this movie). Apparently they began production in 1971 but ran into money/personnel problems, and it wasn’t finished until 1979. I don’t doubt it for a second, and it would certainly explain the movie’s nearly impenetrable plot and abundance of pointless characters, but I’d be curious to know what parts of the movie were 1971, aka BEFORE Jaws. Because it certainly feels like a post-Jaws movie – the scene with the two drunk fishermen is way too similar to be a coincidence, and other bits and scenes seem lifted or “inspired” from Spielberg’s film as well. Plus, it’d be much easier to dismiss this film as yet another crappy Jaws wannabe than as a just plain terrible movie that was actually trying new ideas in 1971. It also resembles Crater Lake Monster at times, another film that came along later (1976 I believe), so if I had to guess, they had a very small part of a 1971 monster movie that wanted to be Godzilla or something, but they opted to go after some of that Jaws money when it came time to shoot the rest.

It’d probably be easier to tell the difference between the two shoots if the transfer wasn’t sub-Cathy’s Curse for the most part, with the image bouncing up and down like they were projecting it from the back of a truck. In addition, the picture is murky and blurred, and the sound is warbled and tinny – it’s pretty much the worst. It deserves no better, however.

What say you?

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Curse Of Bigfoot (1976)

MARCH 23, 2012

GENRE: MONSTER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

Folks love to mock guys like Charles Band for recycling footage from older movies and splicing it with a few minutes of newly shot stuff to make a "new" movie, so it's kind of nice to know the practice is quite old. 1976's Curse Of Bigfoot is about 20 minutes of new movie, and all 59 minutes' worth of the wonderfully titled Teenagers Battle The Thing, a 1958 effort that may not have ever been officially released (there's no IMDb page). It's good to know that if I'm ever hard up for ideas I can just shoot a few scenes of myself telling stories and use all the terrible "short films" and such I made in high school as the meat of the story.

Interestingly, the new footage actually has the same actor as Teenagers, giving this a bit of credibility I wasn't expecting. He sort of looks like Ronny Cox from Deliverance in the present day sequences, telling the story of his "Bigfoot" encounter to a class of hilariously bored (or stoned) 70s students. Weirdly, there's no wrapup to these scenes - the movie ends as Teenagers did, still in the 50s as the monster (spoiler!) burns to death as the result of their amazing plan to throw gasoline on the thing and set it on fire. I'd complain that it takes the entire movie for them to figure this out, but the damn "Bigfoot" doesn't wake up until the final 20 minutes, so it's pretty much the only plan they ever try.

You'll notice I'm putting "Bigfoot" in quotes; that's because he's actually an Aztec mummy. See, Bigfoot was a big craze in the 70s thanks to the Patterson-Gimlin film, but not so much in 1958. Oddly, the term was first coined (as "Big Foot") that same year by some folks who discovered some tracks (though this was later proven to be a hoax), but as that was in October of that year the odds are pretty good that Teenagers was already shot. Not that it matters, since it's a Mummy, but it's kind of interesting all the same - maybe the Flocker brothers (director Dave, writer James) noticed the 1958 connection and that's how they got the idea to finally get some use out of their crappy little movie, almost 20 years later.

Anyway, it's pretty dull. Again, it takes forever for the Mum-foot to show up, and it doesn't do a hell of a lot - just lumbers around awkwardly while terrible actors react (or not). Even when it wakes up we're robbed of a cool scene - it's under a blanket, which starts to rise, and the nearest teen just instantly runs off to get his friends. Then they go outside (a scene so dark I began to wonder if the movie was actually just a fever dream I was having) and one of them says "Look! He must have taken off into the grove!" and we just have to take his word for it, because we can barely see who's talking let alone what he's referring to. To be fair, in the original version this would be just past the halfway point, which is pretty standard for a movie of that time, but the Brothers Flocker should have re-edited their original film a bit more to move the early parts along.

Indeed, the runtime is 88 minutes, but the movie is listed as "TV" on the IMDb. If true, how did this fit into a 90 OR 120 minute block? 90 minute blocks required a movie of around 75-78 minutes for commercials, and two hours would be 96 or so. I certainly wouldn't want a LONGER version of this movie, so it seems like it would make more sense to cut another 10 minutes of this padding both in a creative sense (get to the monster!) and a business one (get this thing a 90 minute slot so we can put on a MASH rerun!).

The mask is a wonderful slice of terrible cheese; it appears to be a paper mache attempt at a Wolfman mask, complimented by a suit that can best be described as a beat up full body sweater. I guess it's just serendipity though; it actually looks more like a Bigfoot than any mummy I've ever seen (also good that the original title just called it a "Thing" - you can assume it's whatever the hell you want!). For even more fun, there's the professor's speech early on about "real vs movie" monsters, where he talks about "demonic possession" and "Great white shark" movies, but without actually saying their name lest anyone get in trouble. As if Warner Bros or Universal didn't have anything better to do than fuck with the poor Brothers Flocker, just trying to make some coin off of their lousy, but endearing little "thing" movie.

I should note that the bad acting is another blessing in disguise. See, the monster looks terrible and has no menace whatsoever, so the fact that the "actors" couldn't be bothered to display any real fear when they encounter it actually fits - why WOULD they be afraid of this goofy looking thing? Even after it goes on a killing spree and the cops join in, nothing seems particularly urgent. There's a hilarious bit where a guy says "We should move, it's been a half hour" (or something along those lines) and rather than just take his word for it and spring into action, the cop grabs the guy's wrist and verifies the time for himself, before muttering an acknowledgment and having everyone shuffle off to another area.

In other words - BEST MOVIE EVER.

What say you?

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The House That Screamed (1969)

DECEMBER 17, 2011

GENRE: SPANISH, SLASHER SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

I almost wish that Mill Creek would go back and "remaster" their original Chilling Classics set, replacing all of those terrible transfers with ones along the lines of those seen in most of the Pure Terror set. For example, The House That Screamed (Spanish: La Residencia) is given a full 2.35:1 transfer (not anamorphic), and is presented fairly close to uncut, with only about 30 seconds of missing footage - some versions are said to be missing 20 minutes! In the Chilling Classics days, they probably would have tossed that version on there, and there wasn't a single letterboxed transfer on the entire set, whereas now I've almost come to expect them.

Anyway, good flick! A bit slow at times (you'll feel its 99 minutes), but being that it's basically a slasher film from 1969, you can't really expect a Friday the 13th style pace. On the contrary, I was quite surprised to see a few on-screen murders, including a decent throat slashing - these sort of things were certainly not in vogue at this time, especially not in a fairly classy looking production. Most of the movie takes place inside the school, but the scope imagery, above average acting, and slow burn, Psycho-tinged storyline puts it well above the HGL type low budget films of the day (where such gore shots wouldn't be a surprise).

But it was really the typical slasher plot that I was most taken aback by - how is this movie not mentioned more often when folks discuss the origins of the sub-genre (where Halloween is usually given credit, and then someone says "Black Christmas was first!"). It's as close to the basic template as any of them; a girl arrives at an isolated school, makes some friends, some enemies, and then girls start being picked off one by one. It's even a whodunit, and a pretty good one at that; without spoiling the killer's identity, I will say that I only guessed it a few seconds before it was revealed, after a fairly genius sequence in which the person you will probably suspect is the killer discovers the body of a "safe" character and panics.

It's also got some pretty good "horror" scenes that have little to do with the slasher plot. The lady that runs the place is quite strict and abusive; at one point she gives a girl a pretty brutal whipping for a minor infraction. Director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador even manages to make a needlepoint class seem like high class terror, with closeups of needles and spools of thread being unraveled and such. And as is mandatory for any "new girl" movie, one of the popular girls instantly hates her and bullies her, culminating in a fairly disturbing scene where they force our heroine to act out a dance routine. The slasher plot is almost sort of a bonus; even if it was removed you'd still be left with a "psychological thriller" about the tortured students of a strange boarding school.

I am kind of curious about the 75-80 minute versions I have read about, though. I can easily see how a few scenes could be removed without hurting the plot too much, though it would certainly be a much less interesting experience. For example, there's a scene late in the film where the headmaster has a breakdown of sorts during a dictation class - one could think it was useless in the grand scheme of things, but it was this sort of stuff that gave it more of a personality (not to mention helped misdirect you away from the killer's real identity). However, a distributor looking to book this into drive-ins would certainly cut out anything that wasn't full blown horror, especially in the third act when folks would be expecting a faster pace. Indeed, I was a bit surprised when things slowed down again after a graphic murder during an escape attempt in the rain - I thought for sure it was kicking off the climax, what with only 20 minutes to go, but then they cut to the next morning and talk/go to class/etc before the horror kicks in again.

Back to Serrador - I think I need to see more from this guy. I've never heard it mentioned that I can recall, but it seems like the film could have been an influence on movies like Suspiria and The Woods, and so even if you like those other movies more (I prefer Suspiria, myself), Serrador deserves some sort of credit. He was also behind Who Can Kill A Child?, a pretty great killer kid movie from a few years later, as well as the OK enough Blame from the Six Films To Keep You Awake series - but is that it? A quick look at his filmography reveals mostly TV movies and shows - did he do any other horror features? I'd like to believe that if he had 2-3 more of this caliber that his name would come up more often, but it seems that this might be it for his horror feature output. And after the other day's Dinner With A Vampire, I am quite hesitant to check out a television project from a filmmaker I admire. Anyone have any recommendations?

Oddly, from what I understand, the best widely available version of this movie is available from an Elvira DVD, which I am pretty sure is the same transfer presented here, albeit not as compressed (since this shares disc space with three other movies). Throughout the movie you'll see unnatural quick fades to black, which would be where Elvira would come in with her silly skits (again, not an Elvira fan), but obviously those are not present here. Someone on Youtube has also presented the uncut one, however it is a full frame transfer, which means you get those 30 seconds back but miss 40% of the picture! But don't be swayed by "original Spanish" language tracks - the movie was shot in English and redubbed anyway, so no matter what you get it'll be dubbed (and the dubbing is actually pretty good - lip sync is way off but the actors are solid).

At any rate, definitely worth hunting down if you enjoy REALLY old-school slashers and primarily female casts (many of them are quite fetching I must say; another reason to look for the best transfer possible). And it finally justified my purchase of the Pure Terror set, which had produced almost nothing but disappointments so far.

What say you?

P.S. I have finally added "Spanish" as a genre to join Italian and French... if you see an older title that needs the tag, please let me know!

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The Dungeon Of Harrow (1962)

MAY 11, 2011

GENRE: SURVIVAL (I GUESS?)
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear The Dungeon Of Harrow was one of the most influential films of all time, as it continually reminded me of films that actually came along later in time. But even if those other films HAD been inspired by Pat Boyette’s opus, they all pretty much did it better, so that’s fine. While not terrible, it’s a woefully dull, cheap film that was seemingly going out of its way to be uninteresting until its final moments.

The main one it reminded me of was The Terror, as it also involved a castle by the water, and a young stranded guy seeking shelter there only to be more or less held prisoner by an insane owner who sees ghosts and has a tragic backstory involving his wife, as well as a long-suffering servant who turns on him near the end. Hell, the bad guy even looks a bit like Boris Karloff (as played by J Peterman from Seinfeld, who he also resembles). Except The Terror, while no great film, has a lot of great actors; along with Karloff you get Jack Nicholson and Dick Miller, while this movie offers, uh, Russ Harvey, who has one other film on his resume (another Boyette production). And hell, even though that production was notorious for being so cheap (all shot on existing sets, over a couple of days, and seemingly made up as it went along), it looked better than this, with its miniature boats and castles, and cobwebs that are somehow thicker than most breadsticks.

The other one it reminded me of was Manos, which is funny because both were shot in Texas. Not so much in the plot (this movie was coherent), but just in the general sloppiness. Hardly anything in the movie cuts together smoothly, and 95% of the movie takes place in the same three or four rooms, which you’ll be pretty sick of seeing by the time the end rolls around. The audio is also astoundingly bad; I was wondering if my copy had deleted footage because of the way that the music would noticeably cut from one piece to another in between shots, but then I noticed the same thing happening when there was no change to the shot at all. It all sounded like canned organ music too, so my guess is Boyette (who also edited, bless him) didn’t know how to loop or fade the music selections and just sort of tossed them in however he saw fit (making matters worse, the score covers most of the movie). There’s also a hilarious bit where the hero explains that some attack dogs are getting closer, even though all we hear is the same (also canned) simple dog bark playing over and over, without any sort of elevation to its volume to signify that they were indeed getting closer.

Then there’s the narration. I am of the opinion that narration shouldn’t be used in a horror movie, as it sort of clues you in that the character will survive (the movie Fallen being one rare exception that put it to good use and had a clever way around this issue), but here it’s particularly annoying because the guy just narrates the events we are watching anyway, without adding much insight or reflection. That he’s a bad actor and delivers lines with as much effort as you hear from the CSI actors when they have to do a tie-in game for the PC makes it even more of a chore to listen to.

One bit that didn’t work at all wasn’t their fault though. Near the end our hero discovers he too suffers from leprosy, just like the Count. His love interest says “You can tell just by looking at the color of your skin” or something to that effect, but it’s impossible to tell ANYTHING about the color of his skin because the transfer is so lousy. Throughout the movie it keeps changing hue, like someone had three settings (reddish, greenish, and purplish) and would switch them at random. Again, as with the music, it wasn’t always in between shots, like the print was assembled from different sources – it would sometimes shift in the middle of a shot, which I cannot explain in any way. But at any rate, leprosy was the furthest thing from my mind when that line came up; to me it looked like he was either quite nauseous or had just tried some of Willy Wonka’s experimental gum.

Ultimately, it’s just one of those lousy movies that folks who may have caught it when they were younger on their local network’s “Chiller Theatre” or whatever probably thought was scary, because it has a couple of decent creepy images near the end (like the love interest, in the final stages of leprosy). I’ve often bemoaned the lack of these sort of things nowadays (even when I was growing up they were pretty scarce), but on the other hand, if we had them today, kids that are now like 9 or 10 would be catching these sort of things at an impressionable age and then growing up thinking they were good. “I saw Dark Fields on TV at my grandmother’s when I was 8 and it freaked me out for life!” – something that will hopefully never be uttered by a human being.

Random aside, it ALSO reminded me of Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, because the Count thought they were pirates (he hated pirates!), and that is why he tortured them. Indeed, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer tortured US with their shockingly lackluster sequel (which I saw tonight, in the middle of my two sitting sessions with Harrow), which despite being the shortest in the series actually felt like the longest. The action scenes were incredibly dull, Ian McShane’s Blackbeard was less threatening than the anonymous asshole pirates that have populated the series, and worse, there’s hardly even any boat sequences! There are literally more boats on the damn billboard than there are in the movie, which features precisely ONE reel’s worth of ship scenes, while the rest is just Depp and co. slowly making their way through a series of jungles and caves (it was shot on the same Hawaiian islands that they shot Lost). Even Depp seemed bored; his reported 55 million payday apparently didn’t necessarily mean he’d put any effort into it. On the plus side, it was more in the spirit of the first film (read: it wasn’t unnecessarily mean-spirited like the second film, or just plain confusing and obnoxious like the last one), and Geoffrey Rush’s Barbossa remains a highlight. Also the 3D, while unnecessary for the most part (since so few shots that had any depth to them to begin with), did not make the movie too dark like some others, which is a good thing since a lot of it took place in foggy, dimly lit locales or at night. I wouldn’t pay the extra for it, but if that’s your best option, it’s not a nightmarish endurance like the last Depp/Disney teamup. And it’s better than this movie, so there’s something.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Night Evelyn Came Out Of Her Grave (1971)

MAY 5, 2011

GENRE: GIALLO, PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

The Tales Of Terror set has The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (Italian: La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba), but I had avoided it due to the fact that it was a full frame version that ran 82 minutes, when I knew the movie was around 100 minutes and presented at 2.35:1 (though this seems to be a mistake as well, more on that later). In other words, it wouldn’t be fair or right to review the movie in such a mangled form. Luckily, Mill Creek has been getting a bit more respectable over the years, and so the Pure Terror set had what seemed to be a complete, letterboxed version.

Best I can tell, this version is as complete as they can get, as there are at least three different prints of the film being used to put it together; one that’s incredibly faded, one that’s severely under-exposed, and a fairly decent (for the Creek) one that luckily serves as the primary source. It’s still edited a bit, but it appears to be the result of a projectionist cutting out a few (not nearly all) of the nudity “highlights” for himself. There’s even a wonderfully “odd at home” moment where the reel switches and the framing is off, with the top of the image running at the bottom, and then after 10 seconds it slowly gets righted, as if the projectionist didn’t notice right away (a common problem with old prints during theatrical projections). It’s the type of thing I’ve seen a dozen times at the New Bev or Aero or whatever, but seeing it at home was kind of charming.

As for the aspect ratio (I’ll get to the movie eventually, I promise!), I think it might be intended to be 2.1. I looked at a few screengrabs from a new special edition, and while the image is obviously much sharper, I noticed that their framing (at 1.85:1) was missing some information that I was seeing on the left side of my copy. However, there was a bit more to see on the top and bottom of their frame, so either way you’d be missing some of the visual information. I doubt it ever matters (the actors’ headroom wasn’t noticeably being cut into), but worth noting if you, like me, are pointlessly obsessed with aspect ratios.

Anyway, the movie is pretty fun, though I was disappointed with the climax, where (spoiler) we find out that the supernatural/ghost elements are just the result of some scheming jerks. Yes, it’s yet another movie in which someone is purposely driven mad in order for their no-good lover to scam them out of their inheritance. There are two big differences to elevate it a bit above those others with regards to how much it annoyed me, however. One is that the sexes are reversed; usually it’s a woman being psychologically tormented, but here it’s an alpha male type, which I don’t think I’ve seen before, but even if I have, it’s far more likely that you’ll see a woman going through these motions than a man.

The other difference is sort of a “two wrongs make a right” affair. Not nearly as much as the inheritance plot, but I’m also annoyed at plots that require way too many things to happen exactly the way the mastermind hopes in order to work. However, when you find out that the guy was actually only pretending to go insane, and going along with the whole plan (which he knew about) just to expose the scam artists is so batshit stupid, it kind of got me back on board. Sort of like the movie Wild Things, where it goes back and forth between just plain stupid and flat out insane/amazing several times in the third act. I mean, why not go for broke – you’ve already probably pissed off all the horror fans in the audience who wanted ghosts and ended up with a girl in a skeleton costume.

But it’s pretty entertaining throughout, especially since it keeps switching gears. I’m almost tempted to watch that 82 minute version now – the movie is dangerously close to incoherent even in its complete form; without 20 minutes of footage it must seem like entirely different movies spliced together. For starters, our hero is actually a murderer; while there are a couple of kills we suspect him of that turn out to be the work of the scammers, there is no denying that he is the killer in the opening scene, taking home a hooker, whipping her for a bit (part of the sex), and then stabbing her. He then pays off his groundskeeper (also his former brother in law) 30 pounds not to say anything. Our hero!

He also has a thing for redheads, as his wife (Evelyn) had red hair and thus every one he sees reminds him of her. At one point he even yanks on the hair of a nice hooker to make sure she’s really a redhead, something that doesn’t stop her from coming back home with him, at which point the movie sort of starts over, as the next five minutes are pretty identical to the opening hooker scene, except this time she gets away. It’s actually a pretty good chase/stalk scene, and one of the few that actually allows me to feel comfortable considering this a horror.

Another would be the death of the psychic lady who keeps hanging around (actually she might be a family member, as she shows up for the main guy’s wedding), as the killer has black gloves and everything. It’s a pretty short scene, but it’s effective. Just one thing – the character has been in a wheelchair throughout the movie, yet right before she gets killed, she just casually gets out of the chair and walks around. They don’t make a moment out of it, not even a change in the musical score that would announce a major character revelation had just occurred – but it doesn’t matter because she dies seconds later and is never really mentioned again. But that’s just the sort of thing you come to expect in Italian horror movies; it’s not even the weirdest thing in the movie (that would be the fact that her body is fed to baby foxes).

I also like that the villain is double crossing his partner with another girl (what, you thought it was just as simple as a guy letting himself be scammed so he can scam the scammers? Utilizing baby foxes?), which results in a somewhat disturbing catfight where one woman (who is poisoned) stabs the shit out of the other, so they’re both sort of using their last breath to take the other one with them. Meanwhile, the villain just sits there calmly watching (well, when he’s not delivering more exposition), which is kind of harsh. You’d think he’d want to save at least ONE of them, but maybe he had another girl at the ready somewhere else.

So, obviously, perfectly enjoyable nonsense. Just make sure your copy is around 100 minutes!

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Thirsty Dead (1974)

APRIL 26, 2011

GENRE: CULT
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

There are always a couple movies in the horror budget packs that stretch the limits of what can be considered a horror movie, and I hope that The Thirsty Dead represents the most extreme example from the Pure Terror pack. If this movie was any less “horror” I’d have to watch something else for the day. More often than not it just resembles a particularly dull episode of Star Trek, except without Shatner or Nimoy around to bring the fun.

You know those episodes where the Trek crew would land on a planet, come across some folks, find out their way of living didn’t jive with theirs, and then either kill or reform them? This movie is basically about one of those planets, except before the crew ever found them. You have this cult kidnapping women and draining them of their blood to live forever, and nothing happens to them - they're not stopped, or even given a fine for their actions. One of their higher-ups dies, but he’s sort of the obligatory sympathetic one who will turn against the folks he has been living/working with for a long time in order to help someone he just met. The rest of the cult folks, including the evil female leader, are left alive at the end, and will presumably resume kidnapping women and taking their blood as soon as the coast is clear.

And if you’re wondering why I thought of Star Trek, just take a look at these screenshots:

Yeah, doesn’t exactly scream horror, does it? The score is pretty Trek-like too, which doesn't help. There are really only two sequences in the movie where I knew I was watching a horror flick. One was early on, as our heroine is trapped in a sewer and trying to avoid being taken (spoiler: she fails). Obviously we know how it will play out or else there’s no movie, but it’s still a decent little chase scene, and makes good use of the sewer locale (read: she gets scared by rats). The other is near the end, when the shriveled, zombie-like women who have been drained of blood start striking back at the cult, crawling out of their cages and swarming the place. And this occurs with about 20 minutes to go, so I was excited about a Day of the Dead type finale, with the audience cheering on the zombies as they tore apart the evil humans. But there’s no such luck here – the “zombies” cease attacking and actually run away at the first real sign of opposition (a guy waving a torch), and their entire “mutiny” ends seconds later. Lame.

And that’s the whole problem with the movie: there’s no tension or danger. Our four kidnapped heroines never really seem upset with their predicament (one almost seems to welcome it), and the cult doesn’t “make an example” and kill one of them early on in order to raise the stakes. In fact, they don’t kill ANY of them; only one of the four dies and it’s more or less her own fault, falling off a ledge as she fights with the main girl. And the cult dude is way too pleasant and flowery to be menacing even BEFORE he “turns” (plus he looks like the dark haired dude from Air Supply, which meant I spent the entire movie hoping he’d bust out “Sweet Dreams” or something).

Plus the ending is just a total anti-climax; the girls escape thanks to a guy in a jeep that happened to be driving by (the sight of a car after an hour of Trek-y looking costumes and such actually disoriented me a bit), and then they try to bring authorities to the cult’s lair, but can’t find them. That’s it. No fight, not even a minor victory. It’s fine to have the evil folks get away at the end, but you have to offer some kind of triumphant moment for the heroines (and no, simply escaping doesn’t count, since most of the cult members weren’t even trying to chase them). Take Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning – as it is a prequel, they can’t really kill anyone, but they at least have the Jordana Brewster character cause some serious injuries to them, offering the audience a bit of a crowd-pleasing moment. And then she dies, which also would have been acceptable here. At least if the cult killed them all, I could be like “Wow, grim ending.” But this isn’t grim OR satisfactory, it just sort of stops.

It’s also way too melodramatic. The girls argue like they’re in a soap opera, the main girl and the cult dude talk about their feelings and such... even the cult member squabbles seem like they were taken from Dynasty or something. For a group of people who need blood to survive, you’d think they’d cause bodily harm more often instead of just yammering on and on or making angry eyes at someone (and then yammering on and on). Who the hell was the audience for this movie? My only guess would be that it worked as a nice transitional piece for Trek fans who were moving on to Guiding Light.

Oddly, this is like the best transfer I've seen from the Creek in ages; letterboxed transfer, crystal clear image, clear sound... the type of thing I wish I saw all the time on here. So why couldn't it be for a movie I actually like? When I really like the movie, it looks like mush (i.e. Cathy's Curse). I can't win.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

Night Of Bloody Horror (1969)

APRIL 19, 2011

GENRE: PSYCHOLOGICAL
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

It seems like half of the horror movies I watch have at least one other title, particularly the independent ones of the 60s and 70s, since their distributors would change the title and re-release it in a different region as an all-new movie (or to avoid anyone remembering that it tanked elsewhere, which was the case for I Spit On Your Grave/Day of the Woman). So I assumed Night Of Bloody Horror was just an appropriately exploitive title that they used to get more attention than, I dunno, “Mama’s Boy” or something that might be a more appropriate title.

But nope! It seems that this is indeed the original and only title for this particular film, which takes place over months (so “Night” is out), isn’t particularly Bloody, and it’s only Horror because of the process of elimination keeping it from being a Western or a sci-fi movie. It’s not scary, the few kills are all the same, and it seems writer/director Joy Houck Jr would just toss any goddamn thing on the screen in order to meet a feature running time, including a lengthy “trippy” music number and a hilariously overlong photo montage in which we see the development of a relationship between hero/possible killer Gerald McRaney and a girl who better end up dead, quick, or else there’s no movie (since the movie is about every girl he becomes involved with ending up dead).

Well, luckily she does indeed die not too long after that, making the sequence all the more hilariously worthless. It reminded me of a great SNL sketch about "The Hulk Hogan Talk Show", where they cut together this 60 second opening credits sequence and recorded a theme song and everything, and then cut to Will Ferrell explaining that Hulk Hogan couldn’t be there and that he’d host instead. Except the movie’s not supposed to be funny.

The main problem is that it’s just too damn dull for its own good. McRaney’s character isn’t interesting enough to either root for or truly fear, and by the time the twist ending comes I doubt anyone will still be engaged enough to care. It’s obviously influenced by Psycho, but this version of Janet Leigh (the girl from the photo montage) doesn’t ever come across as a real heroine, making her death the polar opposite of shocking. And McRaney may be a beloved television star, but this (his first role in anything) doesn’t exactly do him any favors, and even if he delivered a more interesting performance, he’d still be a long way from living up to Norman Bates, who remained sympathetic even AFTER we found out he was up to no good. McRaney’s just sort of THERE.

That leaves mother, who, in its biggest departure from the basics of Psycho, is still alive. But they don’t stray too far; she’s got the corpses of her husband and other son propped up in a room, and talks in the husband’s voice. Really drawing outside the lines there, Houck. But she’s probably the most interesting character, because you almost feel kind of sorry for her, as McRaney’s all she’s got and he’s now interested in girls and getting into barfights instead of hanging around her all day. However, it’s this rather narrow-minded bit of characterization that helps make the twist at the end so much easier to guess, so it’s sort of a mixed bag.

At least there’s some unintentional humor to keep it from being a total waste of my time. The radio announcer in particular was a delight, explaining that the nude body of “an attractive young woman” was found (an ugly woman wouldn’t make the news, I guess), and I also liked McRaney’s wacky mental freakouts, where a bunch of cartoon spirals would flash on the screen around his head, as if the Penguin was trying to hypnotize him or something. I also quite liked the numerous interrogation scenes (McRaney is a suspect pretty much from the start), as the cops question his sexual preference using colorful language and generally just act like assholes instead of cops. And one of the victims was surnamed Collins, so there’s something.

It’s also something that I was able to hear the name, because while the picture ain’t too bad for Mill Creek, the sound was pretty atrocious. Muffled throughout and poorly balanced to boot, I wasn’t sure if it was the fault of the Creek or the original source material. It’s also out of sync on several occasions, however, which leads me to suspect the latter. Either way, I’d be lying if I said the movie deserved better, but if you plan to watch it, be prepared to keep your finger on the volume button (I eventually just used headphones, which helped a bit).

Man, I’m four films into Pure Terror and I haven’t really been truly won over by any of them. By this time with the Chilling Classics set, I had seen the awesome Haunts and the delightful Horror Express (Cathy’s Curse was my 6th selection – I don’t expect to be as blown away with my 6th pick on this one). Hopefully there are a few gems on here, but as I’m picking the ones that actually SOUND like potential classics (well, not My Mom’s A Werewolf), I’m starting to lose hope.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

The Embalmer (1966)

APRIL 16, 2011

GENRE: ITALIAN, SERIAL KILLER
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

As it's starting to get hotter out, I live in greater fear of my Xbox "red-ringing" (heat is its Kryptonite), and thus I opted for a rare viewing of a budget pack title at home rather than load something up on Netflix Instant (I am between mail-in rentals right now). I usually don't watch them at home because they are of such poor quality I almost feel guilty subjecting my HDTV/6.1 surround theater to a glorified VHS transfer, but when it comes to my Xbox, there's nothing I wouldn't do to protect it (especially with Portal 2 hitting in a couple days), so I gave it the afternoon off. And thus I put in The Embalmer (Italian: Il mostro di Venezia, or The Monster Of Venice), which sounded pretty cool and potentially not work-safe anyway.

Well, it was OK for work, as there wasn't any nudity or explicit violence, but if I HAD watched it there, I probably would have started "corner of my eye"-ing it after 15 minutes. It's an OK enough time-waster, but it's very poorly paced and repetitive, and the poor dubbing provides some but not enough unintentional humor to qualify as a "so bad it's good" affair. But my cell was charging in the other room and I didn't have a magazine nearby, so I had no other distractions. It may not have been WORTH my full attention, but that's what I gave it, dammit!

For a serial killer movie it's a pretty good travelogue, however. Venice is one of those cities that even a terrible director (or a poor Mill Creek transfer!) couldn't botch making it look nice, but Dino Tavella (who has only one other film on his resume, an obscure war film called Una sporca guerra from the same year; he died four years after these) goes the extra mile, including a lengthy sequence where our hero shows a bunch of lovely females around town. It'd be fine if the locales were used later, or if any of the information he was providing tied into the plot, but no, he just points out locations and the girls go "ooh" and giggle because he's so dreamy, and then finally, the plot resumes again, half a reel later.

I was also a bit tickled by the killer's getup. As with yesterday's Stupid Teenagers Must Die, I inadvertently celebrated the release of Scream 4 by watching a movie that had something in common with it. Here, our killer wears an oversized black robe and hood, with a skull mask covering his face. The key difference, of course, is that when he's finally unmasked, it's not a big "holy shit, it was HIM?" moment, but more a "Wait, who was that guy, again?" one. It took me a few minutes to remember who he was, because he only had 1-2 scenes in the movie prior to his reveal, and the reveal did not carry any information along with it, such as, you know, WHY he was killing women. Why bother making it a whodunit if you're not going to provide a worthy explanation for it? It makes the reveal completely arbitrary, if you ask me. It's like the killer turned out to be whatever one of the male actors in the movie was available to come shoot that day.

The final chase was also disappointing due to the fact that I spent the whole thing distracted by the silliness of how it was staged. It appears to be a beautiful morning in Venice, but I guess the city was closed for the day or something, because our hero chases the still masked killer around several locations and yet not a single person can be seen. If it was night I could at least buy it, but even then I'd suspect they'd at least come across a party-goer coming home, or a homeless dude or something, considering how far they travel from the start of their chase to the end.

I will give the movie's ending credit for one thing: it's surprisingly grim. The few girls that are murdered don't carry much weight, because we don't know anything about them prior to their death, but near the end (spoiler!) the killer offs our hero's love interest, which I did not expect. The non-kill scenes of the movie have a fairly breezy and light tone to them (there's even a lengthy music/dance scene featuring what I assume is an Italian Elvis impersonator), so killing off a woman who is essentially our heroine was a bit of a shock. I also liked the somewhat creepy "freeze-frame" motif that preceded each kill, like the cinematic version of a "last known photograph".

There's also a creepy scene that I don't even know if it's intentional. Our killer wears a scuba suit when he's stalking/kidnapping his victims (it's not until near the end of the movie that we see the "skull & cloak" disguise), and then there's a scene where the cops and our hero reporter are in a boat while a scuba diver looks below. The cop in the scuba suit surfaces and gets back in the boat, but we never see his face, so I wondered if he was actually the killer, right under the detectives' noses. Sort of like how Spacey was a photographer in Se7en (hey wait a minute, that movie surprisingly killed off the hero's woman at the end too! It's just a rip-off of The Embalmer!), but I'm guessing it was NOT intentional since the killer turned out to be someone not involved with the cops in any way. Just an unintentional red herring, I guess.

While it may not be a very good movie, I do wish it was available in its native Italian, as the dubbing leaves much to be desired. In addition to the usual lack of proper room tone behind the new voices and other factors that make it sound exactly like what it is (a guy in a booth), it also falls victim to a lot of everyone talking simultaneously to make it fit over the footage. So someone will ask a question and the other person will give the answer at the same time, making them seem like a rather rude psychic. I also would have liked to hear the Elvis-y song in Italian.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...

My Mom's A Werewolf (1989)

APRIL 14, 2011

GENRE: COMEDIC, WEREWOLF
SOURCE: DVD (BUDGET PACK 5)

I wasn't too far into My Mom's A Werewolf before I realized that it was yet another one of those late 80s comedies that only someone who saw it at a young age (or just has a really lame sense of humor) would still have any appreciation for today. Horror or not, whenever I see one that had passed me by, and still held in high regard by friends, I usually sit there wondering why they found it so amusing. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about late 80s comedies that really just don't hold up in any way. And I'm a victim of it as well; Christ, I thought Caddyshack II was funny when I was nine, and will still defend it on occasion ("Look at it this way, purple! Look at it this way, gold!").

Luckily, no one has ever defended this movie to me, so I don't have to question their intelligence the next time I see them. I got exactly one laugh out of the entire thing, which is a big problem when the focus is far more skewed towards the comedy than the horror. Plus that one laugh came at the very end of the movie (when our heroine keeps asking a bunch of questions that the cops do not have the answers to, yet when she asks about the size of the Caspian Sea, the cop immediately provides the information), so by then I had totally given up. The rest of the humor was just generic, bland, largely physical comedy, or sitcom style misunderstandings like when the daughter's friend is trying to warn her that a cop has spotted them spying through a window, but misinterprets her attempts to get her attention (and then, adding to the "hilarity", she claims she was looking for a contact lens! HAH!). And at least 20% of the movie consists of Mom making puzzled faces, as she never remembers her werewolf adventures (can't say I blame her, they're not very interesting).

According to the IMDb, the movie's budget was under a million dollars. While it's not impossible to make a good movie for that small amount of money, I really don't think a high-concept style movie like this can work with such minimal resources. You're either working with good actors who aren't being paid enough to give it their all, or bad ones who try too hard to make an impression (which, in this type of movie, means a lot of mugging and frantic hand motions). The FX aren't good enough to impress anyone, the story has no real scope (most of it takes place in their house or uninteresting San Fernando Valley exteriors), and there's really nothing to it beyond what's in the title (which is an actual line in the movie, of course). Mom gets turned, does a couple of kooky things, and her daughter finds a way to make her human again. The end.

There are only two bright spots in the cast. One is John Saxon, who seems to be enjoying himself (it's rare to see him in an actual comedy) as the evil werewolf. He's got reddish eyes and plays him as a James Bond type ladies' man, and while he's not in the movie enough, at least he adds some gravitas to the movie. I was shocked to discover what a long and varied career that Susan Blakely has had, as she's a very bland presence, best used in movies like Over The Top where she spends the entire movie dying in a bed and thus can be forgiven for being so lifeless. The other is a brief cameo by the adorably ditzy Kimmy Robertson, best known as the receptionist at the police station in Twin Peaks. Everyone else... shit, it's only been a few hours and I already forget what most of them look like.

The soundtrack actually does more to impress than the movie. They use Sam the Sham's "Little Red Riding Hood" quite a bit (twice in the first reel!), but that's fine since the song on a loop for 90 minutes would be preferable to the dialogue. I was also surprised to hear a generic cover of J Geil's Fright Night theme - bold choice to remind audiences of a far superior horror comedy. Speaking of other movies being referenced, the daughter's horror-loving friend has a poster of Prime Evil up in her room, which is mad suspect (both films are from Crown International).

Speaking of her, what the hell was up with their Fangoria references? At one point she finds an important bit of information in "Fangoria #43, from 1978". First of all, Fangoria didn't even START until 1979, and issue #43 was the one with the awesome Day of the Dead cover story. If you're going to bother getting the permission to use their magazine, do it right. And if she's some sort of Evil Ed type character (with the Fright Night allusion already established), why doesn't she turn evil? One of the problems with the movie is that Saxon is the only real villain, and you know he's OK until the end, leaving it completely without tension. If you look at Fright Night, American Werewolf, etc - they function as horror movies just as well as comedies. This is a comedy with some minor, generic horror stuff tossed in, and it's a shitty comedy to boot. The only thing even remotely approaching a scare is when Saxon rips off the Beetlejuice "What do you think of THIS?" scene, except (thankfully) we actually get to see the face he's making. Decent design, I must admit.

Well, whatever. There's a reason the movie is now available for 24 cents in budget packs. Also, oddly enough today's my mom's birthday. She is not a werewolf. And she could probably make a better movie than this.

What say you?

PLEASE, GO ON...