October Horror Movie Challenge - Final Week

Day 22 - THE KEEP (1983) directed by Michael Mann. Nazis guard a citadel in the middle of nowhere Romania that harbors a demonic force. Said demonic force runs into a Jewish scholar that can likely stop it. Good, scary stuff, if not a little on the predictable side. Ian Mcclellan and Gabriel Byrne star, giving this a little bit of a cult edge.



Day 23 - NIGHTWISH (1990). After much birthday carousing (drinks, brunch, more drinks, a bacon martini, a haunted hayride, and drinks), NIGHTWISH ensued. Although it has a 1990 date, it feels more eighties and stars a 'oh, that guy!' (Brian Thompson). Ghosts, aliens, a crumbling mansion, some grad students. If only this was made about eight years before it's time.



Day 24 - BURN, WITCH, BURN (1962). There used to be a band here in Richmond called Burn, Witch, Burn, and I always thought that was a good band name. A professor discovers his wife has been practicing witchcraft to advance his career, gets pissed, and destroys her occult supplies and unleashing terrible evil in the process. Without her help, he's fucked. Way above average and easily this week's highlight, I'm sorry I waiting so long knowing this existed and I never watched it.

Day 25 - PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (2011). The only film I watched in the theatre for the Challenge thus far, I had a blast watching this with two friends not used to watching horror movies. I am not gonna lie - I was a little scared to come home to a dark house all by myself at night after my girl dropped me off. I had to turn on every light in the house. Including a few nightlights. And four candles.



Day 26 - THE NESTING (1981). An agoraphobic mystery novelist takes residence in an old haunted brothel in the middle of nowhere. Decent, if not a little boring and predictable, this chiller seems a bit removed from its time. Not at all bad, but not at all good, either. The lead gets on my nerves a bit but I don't feel at all guilty when she inadvertantly kills her shrink. Not what I was expecting in a movie called THE NESTING. I was thinking killer wasps or roaches in somebody's weave or something not nearly as understated as this.



Day 27 - PUMPKINHEAD: ASHES TO ASHES (2006). Doug Bradley and Lance Henricksen in the same fucking movie? Yeah, maybe if the year was 1987 and this wasn't this. Still, how can I resist a vengeance demon movie with Doug Bradley and Lance Henricksen in it? I can't. So there. I enjoyed this shit show thoroughly, even though I was only a little wasted at the time. And is this the fucking third or the fifth? Do I care? Only a little.



Day 28 - BRAIN DEAD (2010). Oh, I love you, Kevin Tenney. You gave us NIGHT OF THE DEMONS and fucking WITCHBOARD, so I expect great things from you. Too bad you did not deliver with this cheap-ass crap-fest with the WORST lighting ever (hey, don't film a zombie/horror/captive people movie in BROAD FUCKING DAYLIGHT (the FINAL DESTINATION movies are guilty of this a great deal, as well) and expect it to be great.) There's a little something called atmosphere, which you should know. But hey, everyone needs a paycheck, so whatever. This is crap. I just wanted the zombie monsters to show up and eat all the losers that populated this movie so they would stop getting on my nerves. So much for that. By the time the zombies got around to it, my pizza was here and I had better things to do, like EAT PIZZA.

Day 29 - CHILD'S PLAY (1988). Duh. Only the second movie of the Challenge I had really seen before. Like really, really seen and know all about. Chris Sarandon! Brad Dourif! Give me the power, I beg of you!



Day 30 - GOOD NEIGHBORS (2010). The presence of two beautiful cats practically from the first frame made me very, very anxious. Any time you see cats in a horror movie, especially this early on, means they'll meet a very untimely death. And they figure so prominently I got very very nervous. Almost to the point where I stopped paying attention and started cooking dinner while only half paying attention. And of course I'm right, the cats do meet an untimely end and there is revenge taken, which is the only thing I find redeeming about this predictable piece of annoyingness. You care about no one, except the cats, of course, and the presence of Scott Speedman alone makes me want to kill myself. Not particularly recommended but partially because I'm a crazy cat lady. This was also NOT what I was in the mood for and I should have just netflixed a monster movie of yore. Or watched something from the archives. And oh, how I hate that outdated SCREAM style cover with the disembodied heads floating above or below the title. Oh, how I loathe it.

There's week four, y'all. Neighbors and witches and vengeance demons and Nazis and citadels and ghosts and nestings and zombies and killer dolls and cat murder (the horror!) and who knows what's in store for tomorrow! We're both off all day and it is THE actual day so we will decidedly stay in and drink wine and watch tons of classics. Halloween is much like New Year's to us, in that it's a total amateur night and we'd much rather be at home with cats and Bela and Boris and Vincent and Basil and the rest.

Until tomorrow....

First Week of the October Horror Movie Challenge, Y'all!

Day 1 - Al Adamson's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971). What do you think of when you think of Adamson's pictures? Be honest. They ain't all that, but that doesn't mean there isn't fun to be had. Because here you have a fucked up looking Dracula helping a Anton Levey looking wheelchair bound Dr. Frankenstein bring an even more fucked up looking Monster (back) to life. There's a serum for immortality, a Vegas showgirl with a missing sister, a mute, riddled by alcoholism Lon Chaney, Jr. (which is depressing and sad and almost sick), an appearance by Forry, awesomely bad hair, loads of expository dialogue, a dwarf carnival barker, and all the trappings of something wonderful. To quote Sam 'It's not a great movie, but it's got great shit in it.' Well said.



Day 2 - THE BAT (1959), starring Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead. Fairly run of the mill mystery/suspense thriller. There's some stolen money, an old dark house, a masked killer, and a mild Scooby Doo ending. Vincent's sorta kinda evil here as a greedy doctor and Agnes is pretty annoying as a mystery novelist. The rest of the cast acts as they're supposed to and the killer has some pretty cool fingernails on his black gloves. S'aright.



Day 3 - THE UNNAMABLE (1988). Lovecraft and urban legend inspired, this tale takes four college kids into a haunted house. Much POV demon breathing, practical SFX, and Miskatonic University references ensue, and we're unfortunately left wondering why this garnered a sequel, which I think I have on VHS somewhere here in the house but can't remember either purchasing it or watching it. And the box art totally spoils the monster!



Day 4 - NIGHT OF THE CREEPS (1986). Perennial cult favorite, due mainly/mostly in part to Tom Adkin's chain-smoking cop with a vengeance performance, the gory practical FX, the horror movie in-jokes, and the mix of teen sex comedy with alien zombie plague plot. Throw in a zombie cat, a zombie dog, annoying frat douche-bags, some nubile sorority sisters, and some slug alien thingys that enter your body through the mouth and cause your head to explode and you have a pretty good 90 minutes or so. Schlocky and predictable, this one is still quote-worthy and an overall good time.



Day 5 - THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (2001). This stars a broke ass Randy Quaid phoning it in as a doctor with a past in small town. He tries to keep everything on the down low with the particulars on how he really adopted Ben, an 'orphaned' kid with some pretty freaky telekinesis tricks. It's all fairly typical (I hate you, dad! You're grounded, son!) up unto a point and then pretty Dr. Stillman arrives (Nastassia Kinski, no less, but by no means as hot as when she was in CAT PEOPLE or in that nun's habit in TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER!), a big city therapist thinking she can save Ben. Some light B&E on Stillman's part in the name of therapy, and the fact an alien might be terrorizing the countryside performing brutal murders from those he seeks a certain retribution. There might not be an alien, though, because it could be all in Ben's MIND. And really, if you watched this far, you've already wandered off to the bathroom three times, made popcorn you didn't even want to eat and called attention to a cat's ear placement at least more than twice. This is that boring. Not even the Randy Quaid crazy factor can change that. I want to be punny and say something about my world ending or some such clever thing to tie it all into the title, but I don't care and I took an Ambien halfway through this mess. No apologies.



Day 6 - SNOW CREATURE (1954). An American botanist and his scotch-drinking assistant head into the Nepalese Alps accompanied by some scotch-drinking sherpas who declare mutiny when a yeti steals the lead sherpa's woman. All is forgiven however when the botanist and said alcoholic capture the yeti and bring it back to L.A. Hijinks ensue and honestly, I wish I could tell you more but the fatigue and sleeping pills took their toll and I passed out towards the end. And don't let the word hijinks fool ya, this one is played as straight as an arrow. It is from the mf'ing 50's. I just wanted to say hijinks in the same paragraph as sherpa, two words I love and rarely get to use in tandem. BTW, this still counts towards the challenge even though I fell asleep. I work very late into the night getting perverts like you drunk for my own monetary benefit so you all can get over it.



Day 7 - THE WASP WOMAN (1959). Roger Corman-directed psuedo-science schlock as it's intended to be. (And Jim Wynorski of CHOPPING MALL fame directed the 1995 remake!) Janice, the aging proprietor of a cosmetic company, tries an experimental royal jelly injection to save her failing beauty and enterprise. When the scientist she gets the serum from is hit by a car (plot point!), she must resort to other methods to keep the inevitable at bay; the inevitable being she turns into a fucking wasp. The cover art is excellent and all this plays out exactly how you want it to, but it's good, classic Corman monster fun.

The first week of the challenge is over! I had some fails and some near misses, but I'm still having fun! I have no idea what's in store for the second week, so stay tuned!

Spider Baby

It's oftentimes hard for me to write about something I really love. It's also hard to write about something everyone else really loves too. What can I say that hasn't been said previously and said better? What can I add to the conversation besides my undying love? It's a lot like this with Jack Hill's SPIDER BABY (1964). I've loved this film for years, yet never written about it or really had a good conversation about it with like-minded folks. Case in point, I've never put it into words why I love it so much. I just know that I adore it, with out really flushing out why.

The film came to me years ago. My friend, Rachel, had the shirt of the now common (to me and other film fans) poster art but had bought it movie unseen. It was a kickass shirt and she just liked the art work. Now I usually equate this behavior as poseur-ish, like painting band names on your leather jacket when you're not really a fan of the band, or haven't even really heard the band. But there's a lot to be said about aesthetics, and if something speaks to you aesthetically, why not rock it? So yeah, I saw this shirt and was like, wow, that seems cool. Maybe one day I'll check that movie out.

Years later, I bought a big lot of VHS films from eBay. Having forgot about Rachel's shirt, SPIDER BABY was among some of the fifty odd movies I procured in that lot. I can't recall when I actually first saw it, but I loved it from that moment. It was such an interesting little thing, with the sum of its parts (outstanding performances, dark humor, outlandish scenarios, Psycho-homages, etc.) making it great. Why isn't this up there with midnight movie brethren?

SPIDER BABY tells the story of the Merrye family, Virginia (Jill Banner), the youngest sister who fancies herself a spider and eats bugs, Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), the middle child and the most 'normal' of the bunch, and Ralph (Jack Hill regular Sid Haig), as the oldest and strangest member of the clan. You see, the children suffer from Merrye Syndrome, defined by the Encyclopedia of Rare Peculiar diseases, as a progression deterioration of the mental faculties, a rotting of the mind. The older they get, the more they regress into infantile dementia, thus resulting in strange behavior, not limited to cannibalism. It's all an unfortunate side effect of inbreeding and these three kids are the last of the clan. Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr. in one of his last roles) is the family chauffeur turned guardian of the clan and swore to the children's father, Titus, he would care for them until their dying day.

While psychotic and sociopathic (the kids often kill people that come by the house with seemingly no remorse - take for instance, a hapless delivery man just coming to deliver a letter - Virginia traps him in her spider web and 'stings' him with two butcher knives), the Merrye family is intrinsically likable. They're quirky and strange, Ralph reminds you of Schlitze the Pinhead, but that doesn't mean you don't root for them. You see, after we meet them Merryes, distant cousins Peter and Emily (played perfectly by ice queen bitch from HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, Carol Ohmart), have arrived to take over guardianship of the children and sell the house for a great profit. Titus, although insane, was quite wealthy and Emily wants to cash in on this for her own gain.

When threatened by these outsiders, the Merrye family does what they have to, which is frighten and kill and seduce these distant family members so their world can remain as is. The family is close knit and they could just go on about their business eating cats and playing with tarantulas, but 'normal' society had to step in. I just can't help thinking the entire time these people, who are supposed to be family, need to leave the Merryes the fuck alone. You feel for them, even if they are murderous cannibals. But somehow that never even figures into the equation. They're lovable psychos and you love them just as Bruno does.

Speaking of Bruno, Chaney brings this totally ingratiating-ness (is that a word? oh well, it is here) that's hard not to feel sadness towards. He loves those kids, even though he can't control them and his word is as good as his honor. Chaney was definitely on his last legs here, riddled by alcoholism and looking pretty long in the tooth, but I'd wager to say this is one of his best performances, albeit it, a lesser known one. I read somewhere he didn't touch a drop of booze for the eleven days they were filming SPIDER BABY, but the night the film wrapped he and Jack Hill stayed up until the four in the morning getting plastered.

Sid Haig is just as wonderful. He's very young here and almost disappears into his role. He's not one of those guys you normally think of as someone that can really bring any character to life, he's so recognizable. But here, he's straight out of FREAKS, is mute, and is absolutely perfect as Ralph, the most-gone of the Merrye clan.
The performances from the girls are just as great - Virginia (Jill Banner) is creepy, seductive, flirtatious, and dangerous all rolled into one, and Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn) is just as sinister, if not completely polite, but with a total darkness to her. It's a shame Jill Banner didn't go on to do more. I think she would have been a hit on the B-movie circuit.

The performances are dead on and the whole things sounds morbid and disturbing, but is actually quite darkly comic. I'd love to see this one with an audience and see when and where the movie elicits laughter. Ralph, for sure, would garner a few chuckles based on appearance alone.

SPIDER BABY, made four years after PSYCHO, contains plenty of similarities, although you wouldn't think such immediately about a black comedy about cannibalism and rare diseases. From the rotting Victorian mansion on a hill where outsiders come to ultimately perish, to the father's corpse rotting in a bedroom and referred to as alive, to the warped family values, SPIDER BABY owes a something of a debt to Hitchcock's film. I don't know whether the homage is intentional, since the movie was written and shot at a breakneck pace, but it's there.

I might not have totally done this thing justice, as I'm sure there are more points of discussion. Please feel free to expound upon them in the comments.

The Sin Syndicate

Meet the Zero Girls.

Dolores is a half-Cuban/half-Chinese curvy brunette burlesque dancer who gets picked up by the mafia to become a stripper. She's raped in Cuba and sent to the states to become a hooker. "I didn't know I'd already been bought and paid for."

Lorna (oh, how I love the name Lorna - it's so tough sounding and you never hear of anyone naming their kid Lorna) is an American girl next door type who got 'caught up in a party girl lifestyle.' Before she knew it, she was being raped for two days before being sent to the 'Syndicate' for prostitution.

Candy was left an orphan in London after the Blitz. She was only three days old when her parents were killed. She spent the next eighteen years growing up in an orphanage and even considered becoming a nun. She left the convent at 21 and became a secretary and fell in love. Her first sexual experience is in an apartment inexplicably decorated in an African motif and soon after this, she meets the mob boss and becomes a Zero Girl.

Monica met the mob boss on her wedding night when she was just nineteen. Her own husband made her a Zero Girl, introducing her to the life when they were supposed to be on their honeymoon. Instead of a romantic evening, Monica was forced to strip nude in a room full of strange men and then hook up with another Zero Girl while the men watch.

We get to watch as these women strip and fuck their way into complete oblivion, with no possible way of redemption. But after what they've subjected themselves to, what redemption could be possible? Dolores narrates, 'You've seen us before. You've seen us on every street where pretty bodies are an easy mark with a price. To the rackets, we're Zero Girls. Nothing. Zero. We're all owned by the syndicate, body and soul. Or should I just say ‘body,' because after a few nights you can't remember being a woman or ever having a soul....'

THE SIN SYNDICATE is Michael Findlay's first feature (possibly - there are no known previous efforts, but who knows, he was prolific and film didn't get stored properly way back when) and treads familiar Findlay territory in it's overtly women hating overtones. The film is is essentially an exercise in how four women's soul's are eradicated by a life turning tricks, BUT it's no where near as appalling as some of his other efforts (THE FLESH TRILOGY). And while this might seem an understatement, coming from a film where the very first scene is a woman being strung up and tortured, Michael is just getting started (this is the early 60's and the Findlay would have two more decades to explore his depravity, alongside his equally cracked wife, Roberta, who credits herself with being the first female pornographer). I'd call this a warm up for his later completely revolting efforts in sickening viewer with misogyny, rape, torture, and an overall hatred for all of humanity.

So, if you like that sort of thing, you know, a supreme hatred of EVERYTHING and EVERYONE, and you dig some vintage sleaze and burlesque alongside your rape and torture, look no further. The girls are beautiful in that retro sexy way, curves and cat-eye makeup, and while all are obviously amateur actresses, they seem to elicit some sort of sympathy by the end. The dudes are just that sleazy.

There's also some weirdness - the film stops abruptly to give us stock footage of the Blitz, the Cuban revolution, and even more inexplicably, a battleship being bombed! There's also a strange sequence where the screen goes completely black, three cots are illuminated, the girls are being pawed at by thugs, while Dolores strips on stage. It's extremely stylized. Gotta class it up for those refined perverts sitting in the theatre jacking it to this. Because you know that's what they did back then.

And if this has taught you anything, let it be this - 'wherever there are men, there will be Zero Girls!'

The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy

Do you like lovely ladies battling it out in a boxing ring wearing skintight unitards? Do you like capers involving a Japanese martial arts gangs hellbent on finding a secret codex to unleash the power of the ancient Aztecs? How about mummies? Ya like mummies? Well, you're in the right place, folks, and Rene Cardona is bringing you all of the above in his 1964 flick, The Wrestling Women vs. The Aztec Mummy. I'll warn you though, we don't get to the mummy for a minute. But there's aplenty to keep us entertained until then.

The adventure begins as famed archaeologist Dr. Zorba is deposited on the street from a moving vehicle. He then decides to take in an all-female lucha libre match, which actually feels like it was filmed at a real match with a real audience. We meet our two heroines in the ring - Loretta Venus, a raven haired beauty and her tag team partner, the Golden Ruby, a deliciously tall Amazonian brunette. Both women are sexy and feminine, but could still likely kick the shit out of anyone, as they show their dumpy opponents in this opening match.

After the match, Loretta and Ruby retire to the locker room where Zorba is lurking. Seems he needs to speak to Loretta's fiance, Mike and has tracked him down through Loretta. And I thought he was just there to ask for their autographs! Zorba's been working with Mike's uncle, Dr. Tracy, amongst others, on finding an ancient Aztec codex. All but Zorba and Tracy have been kidnapped, tortured and murdered by the notorious Black Dragon gang in hopes that they'll relinquish the secret of the Aztec treasure to the thugs. But Zorba doesn't know the secret quite yet, but before he can tell Mike and the girls anything else, he's killed then and there with a poison dart!

The leader of the Black Dragons, Prince Fuji, needs the codex so he can give superhuman attributes to his two warrior sisters. How he knows how to do all this is beyond us, but no matter. It sounds cool. But the Black Dragons are going to need Dr. Tracy to help them because he's the only surviving scientist that might know the secret.

Back at Tracy's apartment, Charlotte, the pretty blond daughter of one of those poor dead archaeologists, has taken refuge. Charlotte, the women wrestlers, Mike, Mike's friend, Tommy, and Dr. Tracy all sit around for a bit stating the obvious. 'The situation is very dangerous' and 'they'll try to get the other part of the codex.' Oh yeah, Tracy's decided to split the codex into three pieces and give each girl a piece so 'it will be harder for the Black Dragon to locate.' Never mind the fact that he invites the girls to stay at his apartment with him so they'll be safer. Okay, doc, whatever you say.

But the doc's not that much of an idiot and shuffles all over town leaving pieces of the codex in various locations and thusly sends the girls clues so they can find them. While this seems to be an exercise in futility, not to mention exhausting on the part of everyone, the Black Dragon breaks into Tracy's apartment, kidnaps Charlotte and 'breaks her will' with science. And by science, he injects her with a serum that will keep her under his control, 'dominating her mind.' And they also bug the apartment with a video camera (were there video cameras in '64? - who cares - the Black Dragon is a mad scientist and he would have had access to this technology long before it was actually invented) so they can spy on Tracy and the gang.

Then a sombrero arrives at the apartment and it's a clue to obtain part of the codex. How many times a day do you hear that sentence? The gang figures out that the second part of the codex is at the Hotel Rio in room 13. But when they arrive, the Black Dragon is waiting for them. Loretta and Ruby get to show off their wrestling skills and kick some ninja ass, while Tommy shrieks about his back and Mike gets in a punch or two here and there.

There's some more fighting, some of the Black Dragons are captured and take cyanide pills, Tommy gets injected with truth serum, and the Prince manages to get most of the codex. He then decides he wants his sisters to fight Loretta and Ruby for the remaining piece of the codex. Winner gets the whole she-bang, and Charlotte will be released from hypnotic imprisonment.

Here's where you perverts can really get into this. It's about fifteen minutes of girl fighting and it's pretty realistic. While the warrior sisters don't get too kung fu on the sixties version of GLOW, it's still entertaining and kind of nerve wracking, as you really can't predict the outcome. Loretta and Ruby end up prevailing and the Prince turns the codex over to them. Too easy. Way too easy.

Well, duh, the Black Dragons still have the Tracy gang under surveillance, so as Tracy translates the scriptures, the Prince is all ears. We find out about an ancient Aztec story about a lovely virgin who left with her lover on the night she was to be sacrificed to her gods, the highest honor for a virgin back then, apparently. The two were eventually captured and the girl was put to death and her lover was buried alive to watch over the tomb so his soul could never rest. The Prince, upon hearing all this, thinks it's all fairy tales, but apparently there's a good deal of treasure sealed in the tomb and the gang goes off in search of it, natch.

So we're off to the Aztec ruins and some mummy action, finally, after nearly an hour of capering, wrestling, science, and folklore. Tracy instantly finds his way into the giant pyramid and through some bumbling, release the mummy, which actually looks pretty scary. He's no Ho Tep, but he's gaunt and he shuffles and moans a lot. AND he can can turn into a bat and he hates the sunlight. Some kind of vampire/mummy hybrid, perhaps? The gang takes a gold necklace from the corpse of the mummy's girlfriend and flee back to home base. But the mummy's transformation powers aren't all for naught, because he tracks them in bat form back to the apartment, dispatches with the whole Black Dragon crew who he meets outside, and attacks Charlotte, all before the sun comes up!

The next day, Charlotte thinks they should return the necklace to the mummy so he'll leave them alone. Oh, rly?, Charlotte? What a capital idea! Charlotte and Tommy make their way back to the tomb, but get separated inside and that asshole Tommy leaves Charlotte down there, goes back to the apartment and gets the others to go help him find her. Because we all just live down the street from some ancient Aztec pyramids. Did they have time to stop at Burger King on the way there?

They find Charlotte in the nick of time, as the mummy has her bound and is about to (literally) stab her. I guess he loves her or something. Even though she doesn't resemble his girlfriend at all. You can just tell. If a mummy ties you to a sacrificial altar and tries to stab you with a sacrificial knife, it's love. But the gang arrives just in time and frees Charlotte, captures the mummy, chains him to a column, and runs for their measly little lives. The mummy freaks, pulls down the column, and thusly wrecks the entire ancient tomb, the end.

I kind of feel sorry for the mummy in the end, but I usually always do. It's a curse and it's usually a sad one involving unrequited love, or in this case, punishment for falling in love. I really hate Tommy, as he is annoying and self serving and would have been a good mummy victim. But only the 'bad' guys, the Black Dragons, get to really feel the mummy's wrath, and only then it's out of self defense, really. And what did the mummy ever do to any of these guys? They took his damn necklace and he wanted it back. I don't find that all that unreasonable. It's also a bit disappointing that the mummy bits are only the last ten minutes or so of the movie. Oh well. This has enough female wrestling, age-old legends, inexplicable situations, and inane dialogue ('Look! He's afraid of fire! Look, he's a vampire now! Look, he's a mummy again! Look, it's a spider!) to keep it going, although rather bumpily. I could almost see Roger Corman behind something like this and if you look at Cardona Sr.'s oeuvre, he's not far off the mark.

There are worse ways to spend ninety minutes. Now, if only this had had Paul Naschy in it and it was filmed in the wilds of Spain, and the wrestlers were vampire witches, and Paul had sex with all of them, and the mummy could also turn into a werewolf, and there was a Japanese diamond heist....

The Spy Who Came

I've got on my best dominatrix/spy outfit to relay to you the goings on in The Spy Who Came, complete with shiny black mod slip dress, over-the-knee, black leather stiletto boots, and fishnets, and I'll keep the riding crop handy. Just in case any of you get out of line. And I know how you are, you want to be punished. So you act up on purpose. You'll get the bullwhip for that, you will. I have ways of keeping you in line ;)

Detective Harry is overworked, crime is at an all time high, and he's been burning the midnight oil. On his way home to his lovely fiancee, he stops by the local watering hole for a drink and meets the sexy in a trashy, almost drugged addicted way Heidi. After pleasantries are exchanged - he gets her a whiskey sour and asks her twice where she's from, to which she replies, around - they go back round to hers. Some strategically spilt vodka and a ten minute sex scene later, and Byron (a eunuch in a pirate shirt), Otto (a white guy with an afro), and Tessie (a beautiful blond wearing my blogging outfit) spring out of the closet in Heidi's apartment to take Harry to their boss. I smell a set up!

Seems their boss, an Arab sheik, has some dirt on Harry. Said dirt being that Harry likes to frolick with prostitutes and Sheiky has the film footage to prove it. If Harry doesn't agree to help the sheik, he'll show the footage to Harry's woman. But why does the sheik need Harry? It's quite simple really - he needs a cop on his side to help him in his plan of extracting business secrets from wealthy entrepreneurs. How does he plan to extract these secrets? With the help of the perfect woman, of course!

Using tactics popularized (right word?) by white slavers, the Marquis de Sade, and Pavlov, our Sheik has kidnapped beautiful women, drugged them, and 'scientifically conditioned' them (!) to be the ultimate sex machines, thus seducing the good stuff out of these otherwise unseducable men. How does he scientifically condition them? A lot of questions today, eh? Remember, I'm the one with the crop. But I'll oblige you this time. And you'll thank me.

The sheik and his minions have this creating the perfect woman thing down to, you guessed it, a SCIENCE. They have produced a series of videos, and with the help of creepy mannequins, an omniscient narrator, and the afro-ed Otto, the girls are instructed in all manner of sex positions and how to 'startle the subject into pleasure' including a neat pivot maneuver and the reverse cowgirl. With 'constant continued simulation' and 'exercise' the girls are able to get pretty much anything they want from whoever the sheik wants them to get it from.

It's all very scientific and clinical, even with Otto leering and occasionally positioning the girls during their 'exercise.' But the exercises ain't all. There's more to the scientific-sex-to-extract national-secrets-conditioning than just practice making perfect. There's even more SCIENCE involved.

The gorgeous Tessie has created a 'conditioning unit' - kind of like shock therapy electric chair for the erogenous zones. It emits some sort of radiation to the brain and therefore stimulates the tissue in the nipples. While that's all fine and good, the genitals also get their fair treatment in the conditioning unit and makes it so anything that penetrates the girl after her time in conditioning will fit snugly into place. Tessie explains all of this in a crisp, terse British accent and also explains how the girls get really turned on during treatments, so much so that the next phase is necessary.

The next phase is sadistic Tessie's favorite part, in fact, like the conditioning unit, it's by her design. She prepares injections to keep the girl's complacent, to sap their wills, and make them easy to manage because they are normally so arouse. You wouldn't necessarily think this to look at any of these girls - most have a glazed over vacant look and actually act more like robots than anything. She further explains that conditioning involves punishment, the girls are similar to wild animals in their aroused state so when they receive their injections they must be shackled (nude with sexy black leather gauntlets in a dirty basement).

As Tessie's describing all this, poor Harry, horny as he normally is, can't take it. He tells her how she's wrong, it's wrong to control people. Tessie explains nonchalantly that everyone on Earth is controlled by something and then proceeds to beat a few girls with her riding crop. She approaches Eve and says 'You don't want pain, do you, Eve? You'd rather have pleasure? Close your eyes and pretend you're with your love.' Eve does as she's instructed and begins to masturbate fervently. She goes over to the eunuch, Byron, who's been watching the proceedings this whole time, and Tessie then starts rubbing her riding crop all over Eve, who's still wearing her gauntlets from being shackled. Wait for it. Wait for it. Then Tessie beats the shit out Eve and the girl returns to her automaton like state.

I hope you can take some more, like you've been conditioned to, because now it's Caroline's turn. Tessie explains that after their injections and beatings, it's going to be Harry's job to grade the women. So after Tessie undresses, leaving the boots on, thank goodness, Caroline is unshackled and forced to pleasure Tessie with her mouth. Tessie, reliquishing Caroline to Harry, and not being able to stand hetero sex, goes outside to have a conversation with the sheik.

Seems Tessie's fed up with the way he's been running things and the fact that he made her have a threesome with Harry and another woman earlier in the movie ('You'll start with a strip tease! It will condition you as a woman to have sex with a man.'), and has decided to hide his drugs (he's addicted to drugs) and make him service her out in the garden. 'Don't be shy, pink britches' she tells him as she strips him nude. But they don't get very far...

Suddenly, the cops are on the scene - seems earlier Harry made a deal with his Captain and a Arab man with a French accent who's been hot on the sheik's trail for awhile, to infiltrate the operation. With the French Arab cop in pursuit, Tessie takes off topless, still wearing the boots, through the woods. The conditioned girls get loose and run screaming after Tessie and then kill her in an empty swimming pool. The French Arab cop gets the files he was after and then, for some reason unbeknownst to me, gets into a wheelchair manned by a male nurse (in the middle of the woods), waves to Harry, and FIN.

If I had drawn the words sheik, evil lesbian dominatrix, scientific conditioning, eunuch, 60's, shock therapy, and spy caper out of a hat and then had to write a movie based on those things, I don't think I could have done any better than this. The sexy stuff is super sexy and the SCIENCE stuff is super science-y. But I can't help but wonder, would the sheik's plan have worked?

I'm impressed. You behaved rather well for that. I'll have to think of a way to reward you ;) For now, all you'll get is the crop.

Eegah!

So, yeah, Eegah! I know you've seen it. I know you've seen it on MST3K. Yes, I just wrote MST3K. Let's not waste valuable typing when we all know what it is that I'm talking about because we are all NERDS. I know nothing I could possibly write about one of the best worst movies ever made could compete with that stellar episode of MST3K. But still, I'm gonna give it a go. Because I watched Eegah! last night for the first time without Crow and Tom Servo and for the first time since college, and it still holds up. If by 'holds up' I mean is ridiculously bad and has a home movie feel but still manages to be hi-larious. Yes, then that's what I mean.

For the uninitiated, Eegah! (1962) is the tale of an unrequited romance between a caveman who may or may not be named Eegah and a socialite named Roxy. It all begins one night as Roxy leaves a department store, new bikini in hand, and heads out on a race with her boyfriend, Tom (the so-ugly-he-might-be-kinda-cute Arch Hall, Jr.), and happens to hit a caveman carrying a live goat out on the highway. Tom, ever the dumbass as we will see in a moment, arrives just a hair too late, and misses said caveman as he trudges off into the darkness.

Roxy, although passed out during most of her encounter with said caveman, adamantly swears she knows what she saw, going as far as to blab her mouth all over her country club to daddy and his friends. She even uses this fair piece of evidence in her argument, 'There were giants. The Bible says so.' I can't argue with that evidence, Roxy, but no one else believes you. I'm gonna use that one on everything from here on out. Next time I'm (ill) advised not to have a fifth shot of tequila or to hit on that hot lead singer, I'm just gonna pull out 'The Bible says so.' End of story.

But Daddy's placating enough and takes the teens out to the scene (hey, that rhymes) of the supposed giant sighting the next day. An ominous off-camera voice weirdly tells the trio to 'Watch out for snakes' as they heads into the desert. Seeing footprints, Daddy immediately decides he must pen a tome about this prehistoric man based on Tom's suggestion and heads back to town to charter a helicopter. Just like that. Before leaving, he discloses the location of his credit cards to Roxy and Tom yet orders them not to touch them and flies off. Pilot Kruger drops Daddy off alone with only binoculars, a camera, and small briefcase type bag to his name. We don't have to wait long until Daddy is face to face with his giant, the titular Eegah (Richard Kiel of James Bond movie fame), as if there's any other Eegah.

Back at the country club, Roxy struts around quite deliciously in her bikini and takes a swim while Tom serenades her with a song about a woman named Vicki. Not seeming to mind that the song is about another woman, Roxy is all smiles and splashes until she receives a phone call from Pilot Kruger. Seems his helicopter is broken and he won't be able to pick up Daddy. Well, never fear, Arch Hall, Jr. and his jalopy dune buggy that he won't shut up about is about to come to the rescue. The teens set off for Deep Canyon (that's original) and some sweet dune buggy actions ensues. Someone keeps shouting Whee! over and over and it's hard to tell if it's Roxy doing the shouting or Arch Hall. I'd like to think it's AH and it does sort of sound like him, all whiny and ridiculous, but who knows. It's probably dubbed.

Being that Deep Canyon is completely enormous being a canyon and all, the kids get worried when they don't see Daddy right away. Or at least Roxy does. In what will soon become typical Tom fashion, he dismisses everything Roxy says as nonsense, telling her not to worry about anything. The start fighting, Tom sings another song to Roxy about a different woman named Valerie, and they drift quickly off to sleep. Eegah then takes this moment to appear and gawk at sleeping Roxy and eat up all their stew they were saving for Daddy, until Tom's radio mysteriously turns on, frightening the giant away, although he leaves his club so they know he was there. A calling card perhaps? Or just stupidity?

The next day, they find Daddy's broken, abandoned camera. Tom tells Roxy not to jump to conclusions, it's probably not even Daddy's camera, and that they should check out the ravine. Such a man, he grabs a shotgun and Roxy gets up to accompany him. 'Women!' he guffaws. He wants her to stay with the stupid dune buggy while he goes out looking for stock footage of rattlers and coyotes. Well, his stupid mistake because while he's gone, Eegah takes this as his chance to nab Roxy. Tom returns to the scene moments later and in his efforts to rescue his lady love, he yells her name over and over, occasionally throwing a 'where are you?' in there for effect. Yes, Tom, very effective.

So back Eegah's place, which you guessed it, is a cave, he's got Daddy held hostage, as well as a tribunal of his dead ancestors, whom he introduces to Roxy. Seems he's set his sights on the little lady, even though Daddy already admonished him with the line 'She's mine, she's mine.' But that doesn't stop our giant from sniffing her hair profusely, smelling her skin, and checking her for lice. 'Tell him you're hungry,' Daddy says. 'But I'm not,' Roxy protests. 'Well, then there's the alternative.' I'd think I'd eat even if I wasn't hungry if the alternative was getting raped in front of my father by a cro-mag non man in a cave. Roxy's a sensible gal and decides to eat some meat off an enormous bone, quite literally.

Daddy keeps calling the giant Eegah and when Roxy asks if that's his name, Daddy says matter-of-factly, 'I think so. It's what he says most of the time.' Yeah, because we all just walk around saying our names out loud all day long for no reason and/or to describe other events and people. Like when I want a gingerale, I just say Jenn over and over and point at a can of gingerale.

After the meat bone, Roxy gets treated to some smoking sulfur water. Best to keep Eegah busy so he doesn't get all rapey. Daddy says, 'make it last as long as you can. He won't hurt you as long as you're doing something.' I guess Daddy knows from experience. Eegah then invites Roxy to look at his etchings, again, literally. This is a literal-ass movie. But damn, if I had a dollar for every time a guy invited me over to look at his etchings. I'd have like two bucks. Roxy agrees, saying 'believe it or not, Dad, I'm going to look at his etchings!' Good job, Roxy. I can see she's starting to fall in love. She even sees one that she construes to be her and her car the night she hit Eegah and his goat. It looks mostly like a circle with other circles on it, but a girl in love will believe what she wants.

So dumbass Tom is still wandering around the desert calling out Roxy's name and Eegah's got Roxy and Daddy barricaded in his cave. While Eegah's out gathering flowers for Roxy, forever the good daughter, Roxy decides to give ol'Daddy a shave. Because that's not weird or anything. To shave your father. Ew. I felt really gross just typing that. Anyway, she shaves and he instructs her and at that moment, Eegah arrives back at the casa. Ya'll know where this is going. Roxy has to then shave Eegah because he wants to look all beautiful for her, but just as Tom continues to be useless, even after his shave, Eegah continues to be ugly as hell.

After his shave, Eegah gets all animated, IYKWIM, and Roxy tries to refute him, 'tell me some more about your etchings!' He's having none of it and Daddy instructs her, 'give him something else!' Oh, Daddy! How could you! She gives him a button. Bad idea, because it makes her boobs all the more accessible and Eegah starts pawing at her maniacally. In one last ditch effort, Roxy says in reference to her father, 'he can see us - outside - you and me.' Eegah's game, he's a nature boy, so he moves the boulder and takes his beloved outside for some forced entry. He exposes her strapless bra and roughs her up a bit and Daddy comes fumbling out of the hole and a fight ensues. Dumbass arrives just a second or two too late and hits Eegah with rocks (eventually), thus rendering him powerless (for now anyway). Tom shouts, 'so long, High Pockets!' (whatever that means, seriously, what does that mean?) and they leave Eegah behind in the desert and speed off in the dune buggy.

I mean, it never would have worked out between Roxy and Eegah. They're from two different worlds. I guess it was fun while it lasted. I love when a guy introduces me to the mummified corpses of his parents, makes me drink sulfuric beverages, shows me his etchings, literally, and then tries to force sex on me. It's a date! Oh, but wait, there's still another half an hour left of this thing....

Back in civilization, Roxy gets all depressed-like and wonders what became of her giant. She feels like he's lonely, what will become of him, and blah blah. Tom tries to take her mind off the caveman by rocking out with his band and then dancing with her by the pool, that is, until Eegah shows up and wreaks havoc all over the country club. It's pretty stereotypical stuff, he eats a whole roast, growls menacingly at teens, and is eventually gunned down and falls dead into the pool. Some more Bible stuff is thrown around and FIN.

Okay, LOVE this movie. I LOVE IT. It's got just the right amount of sexist bullshit it's era is popular for (is popular the right word?) to make me LOL. Roxy is quite the stunning brunette and isn't a bad woman in peril, especially when Eegah's getting all gropey. Tom is the perfect dumbass and looks absolutely ridiculous in white short shorts. And Richard Kiel is a great caveman - his dimestore beard spectacular. Eegah's cave looks like a tent made out of garbage bags and his 'family' is papier-mache. The dialogue is banal and crude and sometimes lines come out of complete nowhere. Everything is just the right kinda bad that is blends right in to cult classic territory. And what's with all the Bible stuff? Can somebody please tell me what Chapter 4 Verse 32 is about? It's cited in the last line of the movie.

Next time a guy offers me flowers AND meat still on a giant bone AND etchings, both literally and figuratively, hehe, I'm all over it. Roxy lost out if you ask me. And she knows it. Oh, she knows it. Tom and Daddy put it best in this conversation: Daddy: You know, I think she's still worried about Eegah. Tom: Oh sure, a girl like Roxy don't get over a thing like that right away.

La Residencia

My fellow perverts, have I got a cinematic treat for you. I have lots of treats up my sleeve, some of the celluloid variety, some not (IYKWIM, but those are better left for another time). For now, I will present you with La Residence a.k.a. The House that Screamed, a Gothic atmosphere laden, psychosexual girl's school nightmare drama that you will thank me for. By the end of this, you will be at my knees, praying for one more slice of late 60's Eurohorror that delivers in the most sadistic ways possible. Brace yourself for a lashing from the stinging sweet tips of my cat o'nine tails, because it don't get much better than this!

La Residencia opens with Mme. Forteau(a damn fine in her role Lilli Palmer, she has just the right combination of bitch, cold, and stern), the headmistress of said residencia, reciting dictation for her girls to take down. Pretty Catalina is insubordinate as hell, and refuses to take down said dictation. Well, it's off to the punishment room for her, all of what entails will soon be deliciously discovered, well deliciously if you're sadistic like I am.

But cut to new girl Theresa being brought to the school by a 'friend' of her momma's. Seems mommy can't take care of Theresa like she should be able to, so this gentleman friend of hers has seen to her care at Mrs. Forteau's hand. He pays tuition for two semesters in cash up front and cares not to hear anything else. Perhaps something has transpired between Theresa and said gentleman in the past? It's subtle alluded to. He's more than happy to relenquish his guardianship of Theresa to Forteau and get the eff outta dodge as fast as he can.

So Theresa's first night ain't all that bad, the girl's seem to want to get to know her and are downright friendly, if you count being friendly as going through all of her clothes, trying them on, and demanding to know how rich she is as friendly. But Theresa doesn't seem to mind and even gifts some of her racier outfits to her new-found friends.

Meanwhile, however, things aren't going so well for insubordinate Catalina, and she's pinned down in her punishment cell by three of her classmates, including hall monitor and headmistress favorite Irene (who not only hands out corporeal punishment but arranges trysts for her sex-starved classmates with firewood bringer, Enrique), and whipped mercilessly for said insubordination. Damn, this scene comes outta nowhere - at first I think I'm just watching a simple girl's school movie, and then I'm reminded, hey, you're watching a girl's school movie, and I'm shocked back into reality by the girls taking all sorts of glee in beating the shit outta Catalina. They even manage to get a lick or two in after the headmistress (I keep wanting to refer to her as 'warden') orders them to stop.

Meanwhile again, there's subplot developing involving Forteau's teenage son and the only male on campus, Luis, whose been known to peep on the girls during their daily activities. Luis has been apparently involved with a lovely named Isabelle and has been sneaking visits with her whenever the chance arises. Seems later on Isabelle goes missing (spoiler alert - she has her throat cut in the greenhouse after Luis sent her a note telling her to meet him there in the middle of the night with promise of escape) - and that brings up the point that several girls have gone missing in the previous few weeks, with no trace of their existence ever to be heard from again. But hey, these are 'difficult' girls, the Forteau informs of of this very early on, and so as they say at those meetings I should go to - they are to be considered to 'have gone back out.'

Okay, were are we? It's been a long day - I do NOT recommend drinking pino noir then calling your brother in the middle of the night and have him bring over jagermeister and watching Dawn of the Dead, expounding loudly for hours how AWESOME that movie is, believe me, we were FEELING it, and then having to go to work at 5 p.m. with a massive hangover that still has not really dissipated and it's like almost 2 a.m. Back to the movie. So it's now Tuesday and it's shower day, yippee! And the girls have to get all soapy and clean, but unfortunately they don't get nekkid, with the exception of Catalina, oh that Catalina!, they have to wear white nightgowns in the shower. Which is strangely sexy. Very much so. Luis seems to think so as well, as he peeps on them from the ceiling.

Shower day came at just the right time for Susana, as it is her turn the next day with Enrique. The girls take turns once a month with ol' Enrique and apparently he's got the moves, if you consider moves being thrown into a haystack and grunting. But hey, these chicks miss their boyfriends and I guess beggars can't be choosers. So that awkward sex session leads us to things getting really uncomfortable between Luis and Mamma Forteau

Seems Forteau heard it through the grapevine that Luis has been having some one of one time with some of her girls. She warns him that none of the young ladies at la residencia are good enough for him and that he should meet a woman JUST LIKE HER and fall in love and start a family. She's dangerously close up in his face while she tells him this and I'm all like, if they start making out, I'm done! DONE. But in fact, I really wanted this movie to go there, and it sorta kinda does, with Forteau kissing him on the full on the lips. And scene.

Well, if a mother/son kiss on the lips doesn't make you feel icky enough, Irene has decided she can't stand Theresa and she's going to make her life a living hell. She finds out Theresa's mom is a nightclub singer, which is apparently slang for prostitute, and then forces her to don a corset and sing for her after beating her. They've got to get back to class, but promise to have an encore performance the next day. And the day after that and the day after that.

Theresa's decided she's had it and appeals to Luis to help her break out. Apparently she and Luis are dating now (?) and he gives her some pocket money and encourages her to escape. Then she manages to get her throat cut. Wha, you say? I know! That's how this fucking thing is, one minute you're just watching the movie, hanging out, la-de-da, and then the next thing you know something just comes outta nowhere. It's Theresa's movie! She's the protagonist. She's supposed to survive this thing - maybe not completely unscathed, but damn. I was betting she'd get her throat cut after an hour and twenty.

So the ending is just about the most fantastic ending that I totally did not see coming - seems Luis has been Dr. Frankenstiening himself up a perfect woman, using parts and pieces from all his favorite girls around the house. Mamma Forteau finds his secret room in the attic and he introduces her to his lady love. Then he locks Forteau in the room with the corpse pieces and tells her to teach his GF how to really take good care of him! The kid playing Luis totally owns it - he's got this creepy vibe but he's kinda cute, in a Disney Channel star sort of way.

So, I might not have done it full justice given my current condition, but this is really sight to behold. The house is simply marvelous, brimming with that old dark house vibe. Think everybody walking around with candelabras wearing period garb. If it wasn't in Spanish, everyone would speak in a clipped English accent for sure. And the sexy stuff is so wrong and in a lot of places, so understated, it makes this pervert very happy. And it's good when perverts are happy.

Thanks, Scott ;)

Hideout in the Sun

Ah, the nudie cutie picture. You gotta call the nudie cutie a 'picture' as opposed to a movie because that's what movies were back in those days, pictures. It just sounds better that way. Hideout in the Sun (1960) is Cavalcade favorite Doris Wishman's first picture. For those Wishman-uninitiated, she's one of the most prolific female directors in history (female directors still being somewhat of an anomaly) and popularized nudist movies, as well as made roughies, horror movies, and all manner of sexploitation films in a career spanning almost four decades. Although some refer to her as the female Ed Wood, I love her, but I love Ed Wood too, so there.

You would think that a nudie cutie would necessarily have to have a plot. Well, this one is a bit smarter, I suppose, and it does - it concerns brothers Steve and Duke, two bank robbers, who have just hit a joint for a hundred grand. Duke, the ringleader of the pair and a bit Bela Lugosi looking, does the actual stealing, while Steve reluctantly drives the getaway car. After the heist (while this movie does take place in '60, Duke speaks likes he's strait outta of a 40's noir picture - it's all 'heist', 'double cross', 'dame', 'curtains' and he's the only one that talks like this), the brothers head to the marina to catch a boat to Cuba. Rodriguez, the boat captain, doesn't like the heat the recent robbery has brought (the brothers' deeds are all over the news), and decides not to disembark for Cuba yet, telling them to come back in a little while.

The brothers go to a shopping center and highjack Dorothy and her car as the lovely redhead is leaving a dress shop. Duke demands she take them to her destination where they can lie low until their boat can leave. Dorothy explains she's on the way to the Hibiscus Country Club, and Duke thinks this'll be the perfect spot to hide out. Upon arriving however, they realize the Hibiscus is a nudist camp, and Duke couldn't be more pissed, as is his way. He threatens Dorothy with violence and chain smokes and Steve decides When in Rome and joins the nekkid revelers in the pool, well, wearing a towel.

Steve's liking what he sees, and remarks how healthy and happy all the nudists look. And indeed they do. Nudists have a good time, man. They play volleyball, they swim in the pool and sunbathe, they drink ice cold Coca-Colas, they just relax. The nudist camp is a a pretty idyllic and easy going place, innocent as it were even despite the nudity, and Steve figures he could get used to this way of life, as well as life with Dorothy. I mean, he's already seen her naked.

But reality check time ensures Steve and Duke must head back off to their boat, which incidentally leaves without them. Duke hits Steve on the head and takes off with the money case, running straight into a Serpentarium (Lord, how I wish there were still such things as Serpentariums - basically a south Florida institution housing all manner of poisonous snakes and reptiles in pastel colored enclosures with a giant fiberglass snake out front - sounds like heaven, doesn't it?), and falling victim to a Cobra bite, which kills him instantly. Steve calls the cops and turns himself in, but not before returning to Hibiscus to tell Dorothy to wait for him, which she agrees to, and SCENE.

I was pleasantly surprised by the complexity of the plot. It's not super complex, don't get me wrong, but I was kinda surprised there was a plot at all. The nudie cutie was commerically viable because it was the only way back in the day you could go to the cinema and see boobs. Mind you, there was no full-frontal, all the nudists conceal their junk with beach balls, towels, flowers, all manner of props, because you couldn't just let your balls or your pubic hair hang all out. But breasts were cool and perverts would undoubtedly go see these flicks to see the boobies. Especially by today's standards, this movie seems as tame as it gets. It's all innocence and suntans and beach volleyball.

But seriously folks, how long can we really watch a bunch of naked people play volleyball and swim in the pool? Not very long. And as much as I loved this movie, the happy-go-lucky nudist parts often dragged. (But it's still a beautiful picture - the retro kitsch factor is unbelievable - something about that South Florida setting in the 60's.) Apparently, as times changed, however, the nudist movie died along with the fact that audiences wanted more hardcore and Wishman would be on hand over the next several decades to deliver. Can't say that I blame them.

This is an excellent starting point for budding Wishman fans, because it's a great slice of early exploitation cinema shot by a lady. And the vintage cheesecake shots are not to be missed. Think naked girlies romping and posing in fountains. It's as sexy as this gets, really. It seems this film was ultimately lost, until Wishman found a pristine copy in her storage room some forty years later. So now it's been given anamorphic treatment and looks fantastic. If you watch one nudie cutie picture this year, please let it be this one. Or you can watch Nude on the Moon, I don't care.

Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory

With a title like Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory, what are the first images that spring to mind? I think of non-stop, bloody werewolf attacks resulting in a veritable werewolf/co-ed orgy ensuing after plenty of shower scenes, some lesbian lovin', and lots and lots of bare breasts. This is just one of those movies that was just begging for a remake in the 80's. Instead, what we get is talking, lots and lots of talking, and then a bit more talking.

The whole tale begins with Dr. Julian Alcott arriving at a girl's school, a sort of reformatory for young women who have fallen in trouble with the law. Alcott's a cutie, by sixties standards, I guess, and the girls are excited that he's in their midst. One girl, Mary Smith, even faints at the sight of him, as he makes his way to meet Director Swift. Upon meeting with the director, Alcott alludes to a mysterious past but we learn he was cleared of all charges. He's at the school to start fresh and leave his old life behind.

The night of Alcott's arrival, Mary, the girl who fainted earlier (or was she faking it to get out of gym class?), sneaks away from campus to meet a lover, presumably, as wolves howl menacingly. Make no mistake, this is a meager attempt at atmosphere, and by no means sucks the viewer in. It's like, oh, some wolves are howling. How scary. Hold me please. Mary meets up with Sir Albert Whiteman and tells him she's gonna blackmailing him. Seems they were knockin' boots maybe and now she wants Albert to spring her from the school. He tells her no, she was sentenced there by the court, and he can't get her out. But isn't she already out? She broke out of the school pretty easily, she just climbed over a wall, no alarms or releasing of the hounds or anything, couldn't she just run away into the night? She doesn't do this and decides to get mad at Albert and huff off into the night. As she storms off, a wolf man pursues her in a classic scene we've all come to know and love - young woman runs through the woods pursued by beastly other and is subsequently killed and possibly violated sexually (although that's pushing it here).
I can dig it.

Alfred, unawares of Mary's fate, returns home to his wife, Sheena, who is not at all befitting of the name Sheena. When I think of the name Sheena, I think of a teenager with drawn on eyebrows who works at a smoothie place in the mall part-time, is addicted to text messaging, and will cut you if you look at her wrong. Sheena in this movie is an aging old bitch given to wearing flowing robes and and berating her husband. There's lots and lots of talking between Alfred and Sheena and she may or may not know about Alfred's affair with Mary and she also kind of alludes to the fact that Alfred's a wolf man, but not really.

The next morning, Mary's body is discovered and taken back to the school. The coroner's report names wolves as the culprit, but Alcott and Sir Alfred, upon examining the body, know better. Priscilla (who is at least ten years too old for her role) enters the picture at the point, and as a friend of the deceased, she's determined to find out what really happened to her friend. Seems Priscilla knew about Mary's blackmailing scheme and sees Director Swift about it. But since Sir Alfred never signed the letters and Priscilla doesn't have them in her possession, nothing can be proven. It's also at this point that Priscilla sees a telegram alluding to that mysterious past of Alcott's. So there's all this correspondence flying about and speculated on and blah blah and Priscilla starts to think Mary was assassinated.

So Priscilla strikes a deal with creepy grounds caretaker, Walter, to find out more about Mary's death. He leads her off grounds to a house, where she meets with Sheena, who gives her a wad of cash in exchange for her to stop meddling, I suppose. I was kinda unclear on why Sheena gives her the dough. They talk and blather about stuff, it all pans out very slowly, and Priscilla leaves and runs into Alcott, of all people, in the woods in the middle of the night. While Priscilla and Alcott discuss wolf traps, Sheena returns to her other house (the previous house was just her meeting and giving money to people in exchange for their silence house), and is injected with something that kills hers by a black gloved killer. Then Priscilla gets attacked by a wolf man but a dog comes out of nowhere and bits the wolfie on the hand, so Priscilla can live and keep meddling.

The next day at Sheena's funeral, Walter, Alcott, and Sir Alfred are all limping or holding their arms funny. Anyone of them could be the wolf man. Sandy, another friend of Mary's and Priscilla's, fingers Alcott as the killer since the killings didn't start happening until he arrived on campus, and then the truth of Alcott's sordid past is forced to come to the surface. Seems he meddled in a lycanthropic viral infection of some sort back at an asylum for the criminally insane where he use to be a medical doctor. He fell in love with a beautiful patient suffering from thinking she was wolfen, and he had to put her down. He was, of course, discredited, and was forced to become a Teacher of Science at the girl's school. Oh, and he injected himself with the virus once, to see what effect it might have had on a human. It's shaping up that Alcott's our wolfie, but don't be so sure yet. I'm sure you're just dying with suspense.

In what I'm sure the filmmakers thought was a delightful twist, the identity of the lycan is revealed (it's not Alcott, Walter, OR Sir Alfred) and since I can't remember properly because I was so bored, it's unexplained as to why this individual is the wolf man or why he's doing what he's doing. I guess he got injected with the virus somewheres along the way. Seriously, I was in an out of consciousness while watching this snoozefest, you're lucky (I'm lucky?) I remember what I do. I had to bear in mind since this wasn't an exercise in sleaze, that it's also not a movie about the struggle of the wolf man, like the Universal Larry Talbot movies.

So instead of being a sleazy bestial orgy with lots of shirt ripping, werewolf transformations, and unbridled sexuality like the title invokes, we get a tepid, soggy whodunit that happens to feature a wolf man virus. And there aren't even that many wolf scenes! Maybe three? Four, tops. To its credit, the acting is solid, I suppose, and Priscilla isn't terrible to look at, either, yet she's missing something and is kind of annoying with all her meddling.

If you dig your werewolf yarns ramped up, and and you don't mind cracking a book, I highly recommend Ray Garton's werewolf novels, Ravenous, and its sequel, Bestial, which I just finished. I think those two books have threatened to ruin me on werewolf cinema for the rest of my life, since they are just so filled with werewolf sex and werewolf violence, in a good way.

The Awful Dr. Orloff

Jess Franco hardly needs any introduction here. I've been watching his movies and lovin' them for awhile. The Awful Dr. Orloff, credited as one of Franco's first titles and one of the first Eurotrash pieces of cinema, isn't what I'm normally used to when it comes to Franco's oeuvre. Orloff is actually hardly recognizable as a Franco film, if you're used to his stuff like Female Vampire, Venus in Furs, or Ilsa, the Wicked Warden. In fact, Orloff seems downright understated when compared with Franco's stuff from the 70's. But for all its seeming outward restraint (and believe me, it's not totally restrained, it is still a Franco film after all), it is a pretty subversive little slice of trash that invites us as viewers into an almost pornographic experience.

The Awful Dr. Orloff, or Gritos en la Noche (the Spanish titles always sound so much better), was made in 1962 and, as the credits tell us, is based on a novel by David Khune, which I believe is one of Jess' many aliases. (Curious, because as much as I would like to think of myself as a big huge Franco fan, I don't know why this would be based on a book that may or may not exist by Jess Franco.) The film is the tale of the Awful Dr. Orloff, a former prison doctor who is obsessed with bringing back the beauty of his daughter, Melissa, who was burned in a fire by in the prison of his employ. Orloff hopes to restore this beauty by using skin grafts from female victims he and his assistant, blind and disfigured sex pervert Morpho, pluck from nightclubs around the city after these lovely ladies are adequately sauced on brandy. The film is set in a time of horse drawn carriages, corsets, and gaslights and has an excellent, albeit, anachronistic jazz percussion soundtrack, which really adds to the overall sleaziness of the picture.

The film opens as a drunk woman staggers about the cobblestone streets and eventually makes her way home to her apartment. Chugging wine from the bottle (my kinda gal), she opens her closet to reveal Morpho's distorted face (think a regular face with a graft of eyes and nose, the eyes bulging and rendering him blind - which, btw, makes for the WORST mad scientist's assistant EVAR! Why have a guy doing your evil bidding if he can't even see? He's bound to knock one of these beauties heads into the furniture or banister in your castle, thus rendering them unusable for your crazy experiments! Surprisingly, though, Morpho does a pretty good job of procuring lovelies for Orloff and even manages to get them back to the castle in all one piece for the most part.) Morpho quickly dispatches the young lady and it's off to the castle with her.

We then meet the good Inspector Tanner and his absolutely stunning ballerina fiancee, Wanda. Apparently they've been off on holiday for two weeks and they're over the moon with happiness since they've finally decided to make it official. But Tanner's got to get back to work and leaves Wanda to go about her business. He returns to his office to find a kitty on his desk, which he orders to be replaced immediately with flowers, he's a new man now, and flowers obviously punctuate this newness. But there's little time for revelry, because seems a girl (the one from the opening scene) has disappeared. She's the fourth missing young lady in 20 days and the circumstances surrounding the other three disappearances are similar. Tanner and his deputies set out to interview some dumdum witnesses and figure out what to do next.

Cut to a nightclub. One particularly gorgeous singer receives a diamond necklace from an adoring fan (Orloff), which immediately sways her. She's the needy sort, 'promise me you'll keep me forever and ever,' causing Orloff to spout some ominous blather about youth and beauty. She gets sloshed (the women in this movie are such goofy drunks - all wobbly and bouncy and straps from their dresses falling all over the place and saying the same stupid shit over and over - not like me at all), and Orloff takes this opportunity to take her back 'round to his.

Upon arriving at his garrett, he locks her in the labyrinthine house, leaving her to stumble drunkenly through the halls until Morpho, donning a cape all Dracula like, gums her on the neck killing her, in what critic Glenn Erikson has describes as, 'not as a vampire, but like an infantile pervert with an oral fixation.' Well said. The singer expires and Orloff remarks, 'her face is unmarked. It has such a lovely pattern. Almost as if it was made of pure alabaster.' I want to be remembered in death by my killers has having a face with a lovely pattern.

It's after the singer's death when we first meet Orloff's daughter, Melissa, encased in glass with a horrible burn scar on her face, although the makeup job, like the one Morpho sports, is somewhat technically questionable. It's still fairly effective, however. Morpho helps Orloff with the most recent body and is then banished, to be called when he's needed. Orloff isn't very nice to Morpho, which causes some consternation on the part of Orloff's other (female) assistant, also whose death he faked and took from the prison to help him with his nefarious deeds. Seems though, she's become particularly disgruntled with how he treats Morpho and the nature of the experiments he's conducting to make Melissa beautiful again. It's ironic, because she's quite beautiful herself, why Orloff never considered her for his experiments is beyond me. I think he does hint that he loved her at one point, but now, since she has grown quite obstinate, he's questioning her loyalty and therefore, her usefulness.

While all this is going on, Tanner has assembled some witnesses for a sketch artist party. I don't know the history of police sketch artists or of forensic science much at all, but these scenes, there's also one involving fingerprinting, seem out of place in an old timey setting. It's a time before electricity and gasoline engines - were fingerprinting and sketch artists commonplace at the time? Anyanachronism, the group manages to come up with a good working likeness of both Morpho and the good doctor, which they release to the press, hoping to aid in their investigation, since they all suck at police work. Orloff hangs out at the club where the ladies work! He has a private room upstairs where he gets them drunk! How can Tanner not find him!?!

Orloff has failed to make Mel purdy for the fourth time and has finally come to the scientific conclusion that the victim needs to be alive. Out on the town for another body harvesting expedition, he sees Wanda, Tanner's girlfriend and becomes immediately enamoured. Not only is she hot as hell, Orloff also thinks she really resembles Melissa and decides she's the perfect victim for the living cell experiment. Wanda recognizes him from the police sketch and then becomes increasingly obsessed, like her fiance, in finding out who he is and capturing him. Orloff becomes obsessed with Wanda, at one point even promising his daughter sexually to Morpho, if Wanda can be found.

Since Tanner's a complete dumbass, Wanda takes the investigation into her own hands, puts on the hottest dress I have ever seen, and goes to the club to seduce Orloff. She succeeds, and hurriedly pens a note in lipstick divulging her whereabouts to dummy Tanner, so he can come save her once she's infiltrated Orloff's operation. Tanner's so stupid though, upon receiving the note, he dismisses it as some crazy thinking they've seen the killer, and disregards it. All shit hits the fan and the whole thing degrades into a fairly predictable ending, but not before Morpho gets to chain up some nubile women and grope a pair of boobies.

The film as a whole functions on the obsessions of the characters - Orloff's obsession to bring Melissa back to her full beauty, Tanner and subsequently Wanda's obsession to bring Orloff to justice, and Morpho's to grope a pair of boobies even though he can't see them. If the characters are aware of their obsessions, which increase ten-fold over the course of the action, they don't realize the sexual path it's taking them down. By watching Morpho feel up bare breasts and suck on necks with no gratification, we become the voyeurs, which is really the whole central idea behind the artistic merit of horror films in the first place. Author Phil Hardy, in his excellent horror movie encyclopedia, says that when we engage in the voyeuristic-sadistic elements, we as an audience complicitly acknowledge the horrible acts on screen and therefore, expand and extend the genre. What I'm saying is this - by not having any supernatural elements, Orloff is a story about humans acting on obsessions. The monsters here are human - and horror films throughout the ages explore this idea. Morpho, even though he's disfigured, is still a human being, therefore, the obsessions in the movie - sex and beauty namely - are identified as our, the audiences', own.

Orloff is an important movie, not because it's necessarily all that stunningly great. It's important because it's a shift from the Universal monster films portrayal of human qualities in monsters. Here, the monsters are human. It's also important in that is frankly displays sexuality and sexual perversion. While the Universal monsters merely skirt the sex issue (Creature from the Black Lagoon, anyone?), Orloff puts it right out there, even offering his own daughter sexually to Morpho to complete his (newer) obsession. It's actually not too unlike The Curious Dr. Humpp, made almost ten years later (and not by Franco), which certainly owes a certain amount of debt to Orloff. Obsessions, like sexual tastes, shift here too. At first, Orloff is obsessed with returning Melissa to her original beauty; after he sees Wanda, he's obsessed with attaining her beauty.

I wasn't out and out in love with this movie (it gets tired and downright predictable in many places and even moves kinda slow for the hour and twenty minute running time), but I see its merits. I'll stick with the later balls-out Franco films of the seventies, mostly those starring the sexpot Mrs. Franco, Lina Romay, but as a progressive artifact in the history of Euro-sleaze and horror films in general, Orloff fits the bill. I would have like Morpho to play a more central role, like Masky in Humpp, because he is that unsettling and ridiculous, he's the perfect foil for Orloff. Ah well. Still, good, sleazy stuff. And when Franco keeps it sleazy, which he always does, that makes me a very happy girl.