Double Agent 73

There's much to love about Doris Wishman's sleazy parody of the spy film. So let's just get right to it, shall we?

1. The overly busty Chesty Morgan plays special agent Jane Renee. She's basically a ramped up fetishist's dream. Her tits are GI-normous, she has a relatively attractive face, although she does kinda look like a day-shift, about to be past her prime, stripper. Luckily, I love almost past their prime day shift strippers.

2. She can take pictures with her boobs via an implanted camera. She also uses them as weapons, in slow motion, no doubt.

3. Her shoes are fantastic! Platforms and towering heels. I also love the lingering shots of them. (This is sort of a Wishman signature - as I've seen the lingering feet shot in several of her films.)

4. The line 'you'll never get away with this!' Easily one of my favorite lines to hear in anything.

5. An anonymous heroin ring, fronted by a guy with a HUGE birthmark on his face and fake Russian accent! Anonymous!

6. Exploding lipstick.

7. Mad-cap car chases.

8. An overall blatant disrespect of the law.

9. Leopard wall paper and zebra sheets! Was this filmed in my house?

10. Death by earring, phone cord, and ice cube choking (three different deaths).

11. A pretty violent shower stabbing.

12. Plenty of mustachioed, Jess Franco-lookalike villains.

13. And her tits are also poisonous.

If you are uninitiated to Wishman yet, this might be a hilarious way to get you going. Literally.

RIP Paul Naschy/Vengeance of the Zombies

It's been two years to the day since Paul's passing and I'll be cliche and say there isn't really a day that goes by where I don't think of him. He's all over my walls, on my t-shirts, tattooed on my forearm, in my copious DVD and VHS collection, and basically just in my heart all around.

So in honor of the great cinematic force to be reckoned with, the Mighty Molina, I sat down with Leon Klimovsky's (!) VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES (1972) for the fourteenth or so time in order to present my thoughts for you here.

The film opens true horror fashion in a cemetery at night, with the two caretakers, husband and wife August and Flora, arguing over how to procure their living. Seems to be these two are grave-robbers and August wants out of the life but Flora wants one last haul; a wealthy young socialite was just murdered and entombed in their charge and it's rumored she's covered in jewels. August relents and the two enter the crypt.

They don't have to work too hard, as the lid pops right off the coffin and Flora snatches an impressive necklace. The dead girl's ring doesn't come off so easily, but as Flora is about to hack on the finger to gain access, a strange masked man locks the couple in the mausoleum. Outside, this strange figure pours red paint on a wax effigy and lights it aflame. Gloria Irving, the lovely young pilfered socialite, rises from her casket to do evil bidding. She strangles August and clubs Flora over the head with a candle stick and....roll opening credits.

We're off to a fun start - voodoo, corpse girls, a double homicide, grave robbing - yes, yes, a very good start.

Cut to a very seventies London. A Hindu ritual is taking place with Krishna (who else but Paul Naschy) is officiating a service for a bunch of whiteys. He holds burning ash in his hand and takes on some pretty heavy duty acupuncture with the help of his lovely assistant Kala and converts the glorious redhead Elvira into his fold. Elvira happens to be the cousin of the recently undead Gloria and is struggling greatly with her cousin's death. She finds solace in Krishna (who wouldn't?) but her friend Lawrence, a psychologist, warns her against the charismatic swami because he's probably just trying to get into her pants. (Krishna also keeps a live leopard on his dining table. Yes, please!)

After warning Elvira of Krishna's probable intentions, Lawrence drops Elvira off to some not so sweet dreams. Those dreams become shocking reality (don't they always?) when Gloria comes to visit her cousin, along with her resurrector, the masked assailant, only to hang her dad and give grandpa (the butler?) a hatchet to the face. Elvira's left a shaky mess in her scanty pink nightgown, but not for long, as we cut to dad's funeral in the next scene.

Lawrence decides he wants Elvira to take a vay-cay, and she decides to go see Krishna at the evil country home he's recently acquired. Seems the family that lived there before was into all sorts of hoodoo and black magic and the villagers revolted and killed them all. You know, there's no kinda justice like angry mob villager justice. Elvira's non-plussed when she learns this information from a creepy train station master, and is even more so not put off in the slightest when a strange scarred up fat black man, T. Zachary, comes to take her to Krishna. Weird. But good weird.

When Elvira arrives to Casa de Evil Black Magic house, Krishna is bedecked in white, spouting cliches with an unrivaled-anywhere intensity, having tea, and ordering the servants around. He doesn't even stand up to invite Elvira into the room. He's kind of an ass, but he can be, so it's alright. He immediately suggests Elvira retire and she does so, to the weirdest dream EVAR and easily the most bizarre and enjoyable scene in the movie.

Paul plays the devil, Kala's all painted in gold, stirring a cauldron with a giant bone, all the servants are zombies. Free form jazz plays maniacally (and it will throughout the rest of the movie in a very interesting choice in score), and Devil Paul kisses Elvira, slits her throat, drains it into a golden chalice, natch, and drinks freely from it. Everyone leers and Elvira wakes up screaming. Krishna comforts her and Kala looks on, jealous. Don't be jealous Kala! There's enough Paul to go around for all you ladies!

So all this is going on and that masked voodoo killer dude is still out there all over the place, whacking more socialites (in one turn, a very compliant strangulation), burning more effigies, and making more undead chicks for his nefarious purposes. There's even a scene with a sandwich-eating mortician (they are always eating!) getting stabbed in the neck with a beer can (Amstel Light!), much to my delight. Scotland Yard is confounded but intent on catching this creepy killer and Lawrence is called in for the assist.

Things get more bizarre with the decapitation of Krishna's old crone housekeeper, a pitchfork/sickle fight between Krishna and T. Zachary, some back to back sexy times with Kala first, and then Elvira, Elvira professing her love to Krishna (as if we didn't see that coming), the station master forced via hoodoo to slit his own throat, the revelation of the masked killer's identity, some serious BLOOD FEAST imagery, and a weird deux ex machina, all not necessarily in this order. It's enough to rival any horror flick, stateside or otherwise, and I LOVE IT.

Described in Paul's memoirs as a 'nightmare within a nightmare' and 'a highly enjoyable zombie film, a strange, esoteric blend of Devil worship and ancient voodoo rituals leading to the resurrection of terrifying female zombies,' I think a far more academic mind could do a hell of a lot more than I have just recounting the events here. Naschy gives a remarkable triple threat performance as Krishna, the masked killer (sorry, spoiler) and the goat-ish Devil and there are enough weird camera angles and slow motion to really give you the sense that you are indeed within Elvira's nightmare.

There are moments that are seemingly WTF, not in a good way, but those WTF good way moments outweigh the bad ones and the anecdotes involving real-life practitioners of the black arts finding hidden meanings in this work and seeking Paul out to discuss these ideas elevate it to cult. It's a great horror movie. The killings are gruesome, the ladies are gorgeous, and it never gets boring.

I urge you to have yourself a Naschy-a-thon today (or any day, really) and check out the Naschy blog-a-thon posts from last year put together by the Vicar and the Duke over at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies. What an amazing time that was!

Thank you, Paul, for your awesome and awe-inspiring body of work in the genre I call my own! *Tear*

October Horror Movie Challenge - Second Week!

Day 8 - 976-EVIL II (1992) and directed by Jim Wynorski. Not nearly as good as the first one, because I used to be totally obsessed with that, due in part because I remember those hotline numbers you could call and my friend down the street in the seventh grade got in trouble with her mom because she was calling Freddy Krueger and Bobby Brown for like 19.99 a minute and it was a huge deal and I was instructed never to call those numbers EVER or else I would dealt with accordingly. So of course the fact that there was a HORROR movie about these sorts of things is going to go down as some awesome shit to a thirteen year old me. I had seen this one before, so I put it on, had a few glasses of red wine, and promptly passed out. I remember some such shit about astral projection and the complete and utter absence of Robert Englund and Stephen Geoffreys and that is about all. I still have the Vestron Video copy so I can revisit whenevs.





Day 9 - JAWS OF SATAN (1981). Lots of fun to be had here with snakes, Christian overtones, witchcraft, wayward priests, demonic possession, overt sexual symbolism, strong female leads, the first cinematic appearance of a ten-year old Christina Applegate, and a constantly-eating mortician. (I swear one of these days I'm going to compile a list of all the filmic morticians that are always fucking eating on camera.) This wasn't great, but it was pretty good. Me likey.





Day 10 - I BURY THE LIVING (1958). There's a new cemetery director and he thinks he can cause people who buy plots to die by some sort of push pin on a map voodoo shit and this plays out over the course of many, many minutes. I was on the phone for most of this, discussing some work drama, so Sam caught more of it than I did. I found it to be lackluster at best.



Day 11 - THE GIRL SLAVES OF MORGANA LE FEY (1971) - sexy sexploitation romp featuring a vampiric beauty intent on acquiring souls of other lovely ladies to continue her immortality, her dwarf assistant, and some all out Jean Rollin-style imagery from Italian director Bruno Gattilion. Good times, here, perverts, good times. Sexy ladies tied up in dungeons, a dwarf scheming to get in their pants all the while, and some other ethereal/exploitative stuff. I dug it.



Day 12 - SWITCHBLADE SISTERS (1975) directed by the venerable Jack Hill. I remember this being a ROLLING THUNDER (Quentin Tarantino's early nineties distribution company) release, so when Sam had just started this on Wednesday night as I rolled home from work, I was down to watch, as I hadn't seen it when it had its revival on VHS almost twenty years ago. Good stuff here - girls, guns, and gang warfare - all with ridiculous fucking accents and plenty of knifings. Wish I hadn't waited so long, but I'm glad I did because I don't think I would have enjoyed it two decades ago.



Day 13 - CHAWZ (2009). Korean wild boar invading the human sphere movie. The title is no accident, but there is nothing that can really redeem this, especially the attempts at black humor. Boring. I feel asleep. But you already know how I work late and drink lots, but this is this week's crap-fest. Total.



Day 14 - THE APE (1940). I showed up for the Karloff, stuck around for the lab-or-atories and circus stuff, and got drunk on the fact that Karloff had to don a fucking ape skin and kill people for their spinal fluid to find a cure for polio. I chose this one in part for its brevity (62 minutes and I'm tired, especially after a Friday night bar shift), but was mostly entertained.

There you go, pervs. Just a regular ol'week. Boris and girl gangs and sideshows and horror chat lines and dwarves and killer boars and Christian snakes and all sorts of other good stuff. You're welcome.

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!

Reasons Why Sssssss is Fucking Awesome

1. It features a snake-obsessed mad scientist antagonist named Dr. Stoner.

2. There is a carnival/fair/sideshow element integrated into the mad scientist plot.

3. A man is turned into a snake, not only once, but twice (it's two different dudes, sorry if I didn't really word that correctly), and we get to see the results at varying times.

4. Heather Menzie's hair. Seriously, what is up with her hair? It's horrible, but also awesome.

5. It's from the seventies.

6. It's name is an onomatopoeia and how often do I get to say that, both the word 'onomatopoeia' and that a title of a film is one?

7. The man snake looks fucking creepy and rad, even though he's sad because he's in the freak show.

8. All the snake milking scenes (of which there was a certain sideshow quality to as well) were apparently real. That, and I got to use the words 'snake milking' in a sentence and attest to their reality.

9. There's a mongoose, who eventually saves the day, if you count taking down the man-snake and subsequent object of Heather Menzie's character's affection as saving the day, which I do.

10. There's a love plot involving a half-reptile/half-man and Heather Menzies.


The only way this could have been better is if Ray Milland had showed up.

Expound on your Sssssss love in the comments.

Dream No Evil

Very simply put John Hayes' DREAM NO EVIL (1971) is the tale of a Grace, orphaned young girl with a daddy complex, turned evangelical circus performer, turned bat-shit crazy murderess in a dream world completely severed from reality.

Before the credits role, eight-year old Grace is having nightmares on her threadbare cot in the orphanage. She's screaming for her daddy to come and rescue her, but her pleas are dissuaded by the nuns, who tell her she has no daddy. Not unlike little Ricky's lot in SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT have I felt so forlorn. It's a deeply saddening scene and you feel for the little girl with her troubled delusions of rescue.

Fast forward ten or so years and Grace is now working as an acrobat of sorts in Jesse Bundy's (her soon-to-be brother-in-law) touring ministry. Her fiance, Patrick, has left the ministry for a medical career. Jesse desires Grace but wheels in his feelings because of her chaste relationship with Patrick. That doesn't stop him from making her don a skimpy outfit for her routines and muse about her figure constantly under his breathe.

Seems like a good life, huh? Doctor fiance, preaching the bible in a skimpy bathing suit. But Grace is still plagued the need to find her father. When her Roadshow visits a town she once lived in, he runs into resident pimp/undertaker (Marc Lawrence, director of the splendid PIGS!) and while trying to enlist Grace into his harem of old floozies, he mentions he has her daddy on ice in the basement! It's there where Grace seemingly sees her father rise from the slab, dispatch with the undertaker via scalpel to the back, and they retreat happily ever after, Southern Gothic ala Flannery Conner to a decrepit farm in the country.

However, as a very superfluous and annoying narration tells us, Grace is completely cut off from reality. All those scenes of her father drinking whiskey and playing the accordion? Never happened. The idyllic ranch where the two reside? Molding and deteriorating. What about when she invites Jesse over to meet her dear old dad? Murdered. The old sheriff who comes to investigate Jesse's disappearance? Sickled to death by the barn. But then, oh narration, who is doing the murdering? Why, Grace of course.

What could have been a magical exercise in the descent into madness tale of a young girl pining for a family is instead stripped of all it's magic by the annoying and intelligence insulting narrator. Case in point. Grace is sitting in a GONE WITH THE WIND style bedroom in a flowing gown. A quick cut and a booming narration let us know the reality of the situation is really a dingy and run-down room, with Grace in a filthy smock. It the voice-over hadn't ruined it for me, I might have been shocked to hear it was Grace's split from reality causing all this trouble.

Still, DREAM NO EVIL is a poignant little film. It's not surreal in its unrepentant representation of reality. Grace is deeply immersed in her dream life, hence the title. There's some fun ghost story elements at play as well. When the sheriff searches for the hotel where the undertaker/pimp works, it doesn't exist. It turns out the illusion has dominated the film long before we are supposed to realize it. Except for the fucking narration going and spoiling all the fun.

Other writers more astute that I, have provided correlations between director Hayes' childhood and Grace's onscreen one and have suggested a possible identifying with Grace on Hayes' part. Themes of abandonment, exasperation with religion, insanity abound and those who knew Hayes, he was a commercial filmmaker with no interest in art. So, if he does identify with Grace, this is a good example of stripping away some of that self-disillusionment. And probably why the whole thing is so damn straightforward, when it could have been much trippier. But that isn't a fault. Sometimes when I'm watching this wacky stuff from the seventies, all that psychedelic camera work to represent madness can get old. I get it, I get it, the fucking person is crazy. Enough with the weird angles and the gels.

I can't wait to see what else Hayes' work holds, because I am a budding fan. I couldn't help but wonder what he could have done with a better budget, because this is a deeply creative work. GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE is his next piece I've got lined up and I'm sure I won't be disappointed. He also worked with Rue Mclanahan quite a bit back during her early career, so that could prove interesting as well. This title is alternately known as THE FAITH HEALER and NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO DIE. I think I like DREAM NO EVIL best, as it points to Grace's candy coated vision of reality with her dead father.

Scream Bloody Murder (Claw of Terror)

You know it's gonna be good when the opening scene is of young Matthew on bulldozer deliberately driving over his father. In a twist of fate, Matthew falls off the machine and gets his hand mangled in the treads. It's all weird camera angles and crazy wide angles that make this Oedipal opening all the more bizarre and wonderful.

Cut to ten years later and Matthew has just returned home unannounced from the nuthouse, crushed hand replaced with a creepy metal claw (you know, the kind you'd find on your car door handle after a night of making out in a secluded area). Mom's been recently remarried and Matthew quickly dispatches this interloper with an axe. Mom's pretty miffed at this action, and in a struggle with her son, she falls and bashes her head in on a rock. Matthew takes to the road and accepts a ride from a cute young couple, only to kill them as well, because he imagines them as his mom and stepfather.

He ends up in Venice Beach were he befriends a prostitute, Vera, on the steps of her cottage as she's painting an abstract. (Vera is subsequently played by the same woman playing Matthew's mom.) Matthew resolves to save Vera from her life, but he needs a home in which to do so, so he drives out to the wealthy part of town, knocks on the door of the first mansion he sees, meat cleavers the maid, strangles the old lady upstairs, and butchers the family dog! Voila. The perfect place to woo Vera.

But once he's lured Vera back to the mansion (which is now occupied by Muhammad Ali and was used in the last ROCKY movie as Sylvester's pad), she's not all that intent on staying. But like it or not, she's going to stay and Matthew ties her up to a bed post. What ensues are some thwarted attempts at escape and Matthew's deep, deep descent into utter madness.

This could be seen as just another unsympathetic momma's boy on a killing spree flick, but there's enough here to transcend this film into exploitation gold. I've been thinking about it constantly since I first stumbled upon it in an bought of insomnia. How has this movie not been on my radar until now? It's gorey as hell, the killings are brutal and plentiful, Matthew is crazed in the way I like my killer's crazed, the performances are over-the-top, there's a good amount of silly deadpan, Oedipal references abound, there's a total ickiness towards sex, Angus Scrimm is the doctor that figures out something with Matthew's story ain't right (with more dialogue here than he ever uttered in the PHANTASM flicks), and there's an overall hallucinatory and claustrophobic feel throughout that just gets under my skin.

Coupled with a goofy made for TV movie score and blood caked ghoul women hallucinations that become all the more frequent as Matthew gets crazier, this movie rules! Where else are you going to get gems like this, 'Look at this - a steak. Well who else ever bought you a steak before? Nobody, that's who!' And when Vera asks what Matthew sees in one of her abstract messes of a painting, he responds, 'He's been punished by the sun, he's been punished for chopping up the man that took his mother away from him.' Vera replies, 'I didn't know I was such a good artist.'

It's stuff like this that takes the mostly downbeat mood and elevates it to hilarity. There's plenty of humor, especially in Matthew's delivery and performance, that just make you laugh, even though enough blood is spilled and bodies are dispatched nastily enough. It's shockingly done, but hey, this is fucking exploitation movie from 1972! Director Marc Ray nailed it, with a tiny budget and gorilla filmmaking techniques. He went on to direct one more movie, THE SEVERED ARM (what is it with the cutting off of appendages?), and retired from the movie business to become a shrink. Fred Holbert, the kid that played Matthew, was never heard from again and prostitute/mother Vera (Leigh Mitchell) never went on to do anything else again either. Shame, really, as Holbert's performance really does elevate this.

You can watch this instantly on Netflix as CLAW OF TERROR and I recommend you do so right away. Search for the BLOOD-O-RAMA collection. Do it now. Just look at that one sheet. It's reason enough.

The Bat People

Read carefully. If you have the following symptoms or have found yourself in the some of the following situations, you may be well on your way to becoming one of THE BAT PEOPLE.

1. You've recently found yourself trapped in a cavern because your wife wanted to have sex with you in said cavern but you fell down and got bit by a bat instead.

2. After the bat bite incident, you and the wife continue with your honeymoon, which is peppered by insane blackouts and lots of skiing.

3. You feel the need to deliver a very campy performance when going into the rabid blackouts.

4. You are experiencing fever dreams where a couple in an abandoned truck is dry humping each other, but the tryst is cut short abruptly when the male of the couple ejaculates prematurely in his pants and then you go smash a mannequin.

5. You must change jackets with more frequency than necessary.

6. You befriend a hobo, and because of your medical background, you fix his broken hand. After fixing his broken hand, you kill him.

7. You think you are actually turning into a bat person, but it remains ambiguous because it could be taking place ALL IN YOUR MIND. Fits of insanity may occur.

8. You steal an ambulance, lead the police on a high speed chase, and crash the ambulance after the hobo abuse.

9. You have sex while turning into a bat monster. Maybe. Because it might be all in your mind.

10. You father a possible bat child and have an undying need to spend time in caves.

11. Your hand keeps turning into a bat claw and your wedding ring keeps falling off.

If you haven't experienced any of these behaviors, you're probably not a bat person. But you could be. IN YOUR MIND.

Okay, my only complaints with this movie:

1. More bat people sex, intoned or full on.

2. More on-screen human-to-bat-person transformations.

3. More hobos.

4. More undying bat love.

That is all.

VHS Additions SCORE

Here are the new additions to our VHS collection:

THE NIGHT AFTER HALLOWEEN from Magnum Entertainment. Big box. I haven't seen this one, but I'm hoping it's the Ozsploitation cash in on HALLOWEEN, which is much sought after.

DR. FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS. Another big box, but in a clamshell.

ALIEN PREDATOR from TransWorld. I know I've heard of this one, but I need more research.

THE RIPPER. Directed by Tom Savini. United World Home Video. Another big box. Can't turn down the big boxes.

THE PACK. Warner Home Video. Clamshell. Still beautiful even in that Warner Home Video packaging. Think I know of this one as well. It's gotta be werewolves. And I love me some werewolves.

KING KONG. A gatefold! From Paramount. We have ever version of any KING KONG movie known to man due an obsession of Sam's so this is extra special!

BAD GIRL'S DORMITORY. Active Home Video (?) It's a big box and it's uncut and it has bad girls and a dorm, so it's gotta be gold, right?

MASTER CLASSICS (Kung fu). Big box. USA Home Video.

SNAKE AND CRANE: ARTS OF SHAOLIN. All Seasons Entertainment. Big box.

SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON. Warner Home Video. Big box

DUEL OF THE SEVEN TIGERS. TransWorld. Big box.

SONNY CHIBA'S DRAGON PRINCESS. A&H Home Video.

SCORE, motherfuckers! It was the perfect night. We had some amazing Thai food and then went to the old school video store. It smells all gross and good like an old school video store should. And since they ain't doing so hot business-wise, they'll sell me their VHS for cheap. And it used to not be this way. I used to have to haggle and pretend I didn't know what the hell I was talking abut. I think we got all the aforementioned for like twenty bucks plus tax. Some horror for me and some Kung Fu and KONG for Sam. It's a beautiful thing! I don't even care about Kung Fu movies but if they're in a big box, I'm salivating!

And no Cavalcade post would be complete without a cat. Here's Moochie choosing his favorite of the new additions. He's going for THE RIPPER, the Tom Savini creation, because he's heard Tom's name before and wants to go for something he can talk about later and sound like he knows what he's talking about.




Moochie's like that.

Bigfoot

This post is a reprisal, as it was presented at J. Astro's Screen Grab during SquatchFest.


BIGFOOT (1970). Sounds about as generic and unmenacing as possible, but throw in the fact that it has John Carradine as a scheming traveling salesman, was produced by Anthony Cardoza (of Beast of the Yucca Flats fame), and has a scene where a ‘squatch fights a bear and then subsequently decides to mate with a human woman! This movie alone is a SQUATCHFEST!

Let’s get started.

A beautiful blond arrives via her convertible at the airport. She mans her private plane and begins to fly out over the hills of Red Bluff, with nary an explanation. She encounters some engine trouble and her plane goes down somewhere in the mountains. She parachutes to relative safety but is almost immediately taken into the custody of a large and hairy creature intent on perhaps mating with her. At any rate, he’ll tie her up and see what Daddy has to say about it.

As our blond makes her descent and capture, two yokels, Jasper (Carradine) and Elmer are driving through the same mountains peddling their meager wares at general stores. They find their way to Bennett’s General Store deep in the mountains and run into some motorcyclists and their girlfriends stocking up for a weekend of debauchery. The bikers ride off and couple of them, Rick and Kris, take a break from the others for sexy times and bike mechanics. Kris wants to get it on, but Rick wants to work on his bike. Kris gets a little angry and wanders off bikini clad into the woods. She finds a Bigfoot graveyard and as soon as she can call Rick over to help her investigate, the creature in question has attacked! The thing makes off with a passed-out Kris and Rick returns to Bennett’s to phone the sheriff and get some help!

What follows is some crazy mad capering around the mountainside in search of Kris. Jasper and Elmer are enlisted to help the distraught lover in his quest to find his girlfriend, but Jasper seems to be in it more for the financial aspect, rather than helping any unfortunate lovely co-ed. Seriously, the Bigfeet capture the search party at one point, and tied to a tree, Jasper is still conniving on how to get a Bigfoot alive and into the carnival circuit. I gotta appreciate his tenacity, but damn.

Turns out, all in all, there’s about five Bigfeet and their Daddy, a nine foot tall behemoth who wants to have relations with a human woman. Our lovely pilot from the beginning has been tied up with this brutish clan for a moment and has come to have some astute observations about them, which she relates to Kris and her search party once everyone is captured. Seems several of the younger Bigfeet might have human mothers because they have different faces. Or something. The whole Bigfoot having sex with human women theme is here, but I wish it were explored further. Nothing says Bigfoot movie like a Bigfoot doing it with a human lady. That, and there seems to be a complete lack of female Bigfeet. They all seem to be dudes.

Then, completely out of nowhere, the Daddy Bigfoot fights a bear! And wins! I think this was for reals, too, in that a guy in a Bigfoot costume actually wrestles a live bear. And I thought a werewolf vs. a yeti was good. This was, gulp, way better. During the bear/Bigfoot showdown, the pilot blond gets loose and makes her hurried escape through the woods. The bikers arrive at the Bigfoot camp and set everyone free. Jasper manages to catch the littlest Bigfoot but also manages to loose him several minutes later. Everyone decides to leave. Roars are roared, shots are fired, dynamite is proffered, everything is blown to smithereens, except for our human characters and Jasper, always the business man, solicits the blond pilot to tell her story at carnivals, thus making them millions. FIN.

Good times. Great times, really. Bigfoot/bear showdowns, sexy times with creatures (even implied, I’ll take it!), liberal use of the words ‘varmint’ and ‘rascal,’ an over the top greedy John Carradine, Bigfoot’s use of weapons (hatchets), baby Bigfeet and Daddy Bigfeet, the fact that I get to say ‘Bigfeet’ over and over, and correlations to KING KONG. If I was feeling more scholarly, I might just have to argue this is a low budget dumbed down KONG, but I’m not particularly academic lately.

There you have it. Track it down. I believe it’s terribly difficult to find, I myself procuring it at a convention as a bootleg DVD in Baltimore many years ago. It should be an integral part of the Bigfoot canon.

Bigfoot rules.

Night of 1000 Cats

It's no secret I love cats. And it's no secret I love horror movies. Hell, I even love Hugo Stiglitz just a little bit. He's like a one-note low-rent Mexican Paul Naschy, and he still gets the hot chicks. And he looks bad ass in big sunglasses. So if this one of those Venn diagram thingies, I would, by default, have to love the 1972 Rene Cardona, Jr. flick, NIGHT OF 1000 CATS. And I'm in luck, because I do!

Simple premise as far as out-there movies go. Mysteriously wealthy, monastery-inheriting, psychopathic playboy (Stiglitz) flies around all day in his helicopter peeping on beautiful women in their backyards in order to lure them back to his crumbling compound for sexy times, horseback riding, water skiing, swimming, and murder most foul. The purpose of murdering these lovelies is two-fold - one - Hugo is quite the collector (a trait, he explains, spans generations in his family) and he needs their heads for his collection. Second, ever the collector, he also has about a thousand felines, give or take, who enjoy eating human meat. And those cats are hungry. Hugo gets his (in more ways than one) and the cats get to eat. Win, win.

Things get going right away with the introduction of the lovely Krista, a blond Hugo has been wining and dining. Hugo woos her back round to his to meet Dorgo, his Tor Johnson-like assistant and groundskeeper of the monastery and show us his 'collection.' After a strange dinner of Dorgo's special 'meat' - Krista is led to the room where the jars are kept. He kisses her, assures her, 'don't worry, they're made of wax', and then brutally strangles her. He then dons a bathrobe, grinds her body up, feeds it to the cats, tastes a little himself, and calls it a day.

With Krista a permanent fixture in the collection, Hugo begins courting a young mother, Cathy. He flits around in his copter all day, dropping dolls from parachutes out of the whirlybird for Cathy's little girl and basically winning her over this way. Cathy's married, but her husband is out of town on business frequently, so she gives into Hugo's advances. Cathy and Hugo engage is some sex in the taxidermy room - 'he enjoyed stuffing them more than killing them!' Prophetic, non? (Oh, I wish I had a monastery I could outfit with a taxidermy room!) Then Hugo decides to show Cathy his collection. The couple is interrupted by a knock on the door. A doctor has broken down on his way to see a patient, can he use the phone? Cathy's gotta go anyway, and so Hugo is forced to make do with the doctor for his collection.

Now, I have an army of cats and I know how they can be, especially during feeding times. Sometimes you just have to take what's available or they will get out of control. I know Hugo would personally rather dispatch of Cathy because something about the combination of sex and killing is appealing, but in this case, I guess it's not entirely about Hugo. And it's not all for naught, because Dorgo gets to keep the doctor's stethoscope to play with.

Hugo decides to forget about Cathy for a few moments, and focus on some other women. Seriously, this dude has so many chicks lined up, it's unreal. They appear in such numbers and are such non-actresses in many occasions, it's often hard to keep up. It makes the head hurt. But if you really want something to make your head hurt, how about the editing of the scene where Hugo remembers his first piece of his collection?

He begins by stroking his polar bear (an actual stuffed polar bear in the taxidermy room, pervs) and gazing longingly at a particular head in a jar. Flashback to a horse and buggy ride and some skeet shooting with another blond. Hugo likes this one and warns Dorgo away from her. He's going to give her a ring that has been in his family for centuries. We get to see this twice. The polar bear petting, the longing gaze, the horse and buggy, the skeet, the everything. And this movie is only an hour and five minutes long! It just adds to the fun for me. Sam got up after that and went to make tea.

The flashback ends badly, obviously, with Dorgo frightening the girl and as she runs away in painful slow-motion with plenty of up-skirt shots, Dorgo ends up spearing her with a giant pair of garden shears. What's a heartbroken young lover like Hugo to do? Why, put her head in a pickling jar and begin murdering other beauties, all in the name of misbegotten love, I'm assuming.

Still worried about Cathy, the one that got away, Hugo is plagued with nightmares of Cathy's little girl sleeping and cats creeping around in the night. He drowns his sorrows with a shapely brunette and when he's about to ask her back to the monastery, she gets a call from her sugar daddy and has to run.

Those cats ain't going to feed themselves. so Hugo challenges Dorgo to a chess game and when Dorgo gets check mate, into the cat pit he goes. It's a shame really, because Dorgo seems to be having a lot of fun and I was sorry to see him go. But even a deadpan killing of a loyal servant doesn't sate our anti-hero and he's still having headaches about Cathy. To kills his sorrow, he tries harpooning a scantily clad young thing, but then winds up drowning her after a quick jungle chase.

I must interject here that Hugo doesn't really seem to enjoy the killing so much. He is so stoic in all his actions, it's hard to tell if he's enjoying it, doing it out of some sort of compulsion, or merely as a way a life. And where the fuck did he get all those cats? And how will he care for them all since he killed Dorgo? Also, he doesn't particularly fear getting caught either. He's persistent and creepy, flying that helicopter all over town, spying on women as they exit their showers and creepily rubbing his beard. It's all very unsettling.

Cathy decides to give him another shot and goes back to the monastery. Hugo insists on showing her the collection again and upon seeing it, she's not very impressed, and smashes a large brandy snifter into Hugo's handsome face. Then she grabs a spear in an attempt to kill her would-be captor, but the cats begin to escape! Sensing Hugo's facial wound, they attack in a swarm, in a scene straight out of a Hoarders episode from Hell. The cats keep a'comin', but Cathy has enough time to reach her car and escape!

Pan back inside where there's one empty jar. For Hugo! Or perhaps.....for you! The End.

I love this fucking movie. I have the tshirt and the poster and the clamshell VHS copy. I watch it five to six times a year and it never gets old. It's ludicrous enough to elicit laughter, yet everyone plays it stalk straight, with perhaps the exception of Dorgo. Hugo Stiglitz is even kinda sexy, although I wouldn't be climbing aboard his helicopter any time soon. It's from the seventies, has cats, and not really all that much violence towards cats, which is something I'm usually worried about in my horror watching and otherwise, especially in a movie called NIGHT OF 1000 CATS. You have to figure one or two gets the hook. I do kinda worry about them at the end, though. With Hugo and Dorgo dead, how are they going to get their dead person meat?

At one hour and five minutes, it ain't gonna waste too much of your precious time and it's silly enough to make your head hurt. I like that in movie. Make my frontal lobes ache, movie! And be from the seventies! And feature cats! That is all.

Crimson

We continue our romp through the Mighty Molina's career with the French genre hodgepodge , CRIMSON aka Las Ratas No Duerman en la Noche (THE RATS DON'T SLEEP AT NIGHT), a far more profound sounding title than CRIMSON, but hey, whaddayagonnado?

At first I think this might be the Naschy answer to RESEVOIR DOGS, as the film opens with a botched jewel heist and the perpetrators, a band of career criminals - Jack Surmett (Naschy), Henry, the old dude and second in command, Paul, the bald suave one, and Karl, the ugly bumbling idiot - fleeing the scene. The police pursue the gang and Surmett gets shot in the head. His cohorts race to get him to their hideout as he bleeds all over the back of the getaway car.

Upon arriving at the hidey hole, they telephone Surmett's sexy blond girlfriend, Ingrid, and have her bring drunk and inept Dr. Reider to help save Surmett's life. Reider is so passed out from the drink, it takes quite a bit of effort to convince him to come help their boss. Reider (you can almost smell the scotch on his breath watching him) doesn't think there's too much he can do for Surmett and suggests the hospital, which of course, is out of the question, being as how they just botched a jewel robbery and and it's implied it wasn't their first. (Side note: the alarm wasn't supposed to go off. They had it planned to the letter. That's just Surmett's way, so it's totally odd that the thing went off in the first place and they're in this predicament.)

Reider does know a reclusive genius scientist in a remote isolated village that might be able to help Surmett. So it's settled. The crew will set off to Professor Thys' country house and coerce him into helping their leader. When they arrive, creepy butler Pierre welcomes them, stating Thys is in his lab where he spends most of his nights. I take this as a good sign. Any scientist, mad or otherwise, should spend countless night time hours in his lab.

We meet the Professor, looking like a young George Romero, and it seems he has suffered some sort of accident in the lab during the course of his experiments and no longer has the use of his hands. His lovely wife Anna, with the cutest blond pixie cut I have ever seen, now helps him in his work at his direction. The couple also has a young daughter, Nathalie, who will come in handy here in a minute.

The professor takes a quick look at Surmett and decides straight away that he'll need a brain transplant to survive the shooting. Henry decides to hunt down a brain in Surmett's worst enemy, The Sadist (that's this character's name!), a nightclub owner and all around sleaze bucket who Ingrid was at one time involved with. This seems like the best idea because the rest of the gang isn't offering up their own brains any time soon.

The professor and Anna have some moral obligations regarding what these thugs are asking them to do and find it against their general constitution to consort with murderers. Henry does the only reasonable thing so they'll comply - he kidnaps Nathalie and demands the couple perform the operation. Geez, Henry sure is loyal. You'd think he'd just want to Surmett to go away so he could become the new leader of the heists. But no, the loyalty here is downright astounding. I hope if I'm ever in the middle of a botched jewel heist and get shot in the head, my friends are as tremendously loyal as these guys.

There's an elaborate nightclub performance smack in the middle of this that I'm finding difficulty describing. Two male dancers and a female gymnast type perform an almost operatic dance routine involving all manner of ballet, Russian folk dance, some calistheics, and a story line that may or may not include jealous lovers. It's a doozy and it's seemingly out of nowhere, but then we learn this is just a segue into meeting The Sadist, as they are auditioning for one of his night clubs.

The Sadist is impressed with the dancing (I really think he just likes the female dancer - she's limber enough) and decides to take in a poker game. However, The Sadist's idea of a poker game is inviting a few friends over, pulling guns and knives on them and taking all their money. Hey, it's all in a day's work for The Sadist. I wish my name was The Sadist. Hi, I'm The Sadist, nice to meet you.

After the card game, The Sadist leaves, but not without Karl and Paul hot on his trail. Apparently, awhile ago, Ingrid, Surmett's girlfriend, was sexually involved with The Sadist. As he leaves the club, Ingrid approaches him and lures him into an alley to rekindle their relationship. Never trust a pretty face, The Sadist! Shouldn't you know that after years of being The Sadist? You would think someone named The Sadist would know all about the wiles of woman. Ingrid really doesn't want anything to do with her ex; it's all a trap to get his brain! Paul shoots The Sadist and they load him into their van.

Now, what about removing the head? No one wants to, because, seriously, they can rip off jewelry stores but they didn't bargain for morgue work! There's some silly banter and back and forth between Karl and Paul until it's decided. They will behead the body via moving train!!!! And this works! They place The Sadist's corpse just so on some train tracks, wait a few minutes, a train comes by, and voila! Head removed and rolled right into their waiting paws.

Back at the professor's, Anna is able to remove the bullet from Surmett's head. The operation is going to be a success and the Thys' will get their daughter back and everyone will be happy. Right? Wrong! Willy, The Sadist's right hand man, has read in the paper about a headless corpse. That, and he can't find The Sadist anywhere. Oh, and Henry and the crew send the brainless head of gift wrapped to The Sadist's wife, Barbara. Willy swears revenge...

Meanwhile, Surmett has woken up and is making out with Ingrid in his hospital bed. You know Naschy - nothing like a little brain transplant to stop him from getting it on. But mid-make out, he starts to want to strangle Ingrid. He tells her of the nightmares he's been and then sends her away. He wants to be alone because he's not feeling quite right.

Ingrid goes to get Dr. Reider while Willy is desperate to make good on The Sadist's death. A girl selling flowers tips Willy off to Paul and Karl following The Sadist and Willy manages to kidnap Ingrid and Reider. Willy then calls Barbara to torture Ingrid into the details of Surmett's whereabouts. They burn her with cigarettes and one of Willy's thugs rapes her. They threaten to turn her body into a 'giant sore' if she doesn't spill the info.

We've now reached pretty much the hour mark and I'm a little disappointed because there hasn't been too much Naschy yet. It's all buildup, gangster stuff, and just a dash of Frankensteinian mad science (implications of the experiment - a breakthrough, but at what cost!?) I'm optimistic though, because Thys thinks Surmett is well on his way to recovery.

Willy beats up Dr. Reider and sends him back to Thys' house. He confesses what has happened to Ingrid and then dies. There's no time to feel sorry or cry for the mob doc because Surmett is up walking around with a sexy white bandage wrapped around his head and wearing a very tight blue shirt. He's so far so good, but feels 'different.' Thys and Anna have some sort of treatment they want to administer to him, but Willy and Barbara show up and hang Paul from a tree and Barbara sexes up Surmett (he is part The Sadist, after all). He has the same perverse desires, he tells her, so she allows him to strangle her and then they do it.

We also come to find out during this melee that Karl is the one that fucked up the robbery in the first place, tripping another alarm while he tried to make off with some (fake) pearls for himself. Henry's pissed, Paul is dead, the rival gang is on the loose, Surmett's become perverted, and everything is basically falling to shit for everyone.

But that doesn't mean Surmett doesn't have time for a little more sex with cute paper girl, Emmy, and by sex, I most definitely mean rape. After his tryst with Barb, Surmett takes off after Emmy into the woods, but Karl and Henry break it up and almost talk him out of his craziness.

Surmett decides he can't live like The Sadist. But honestly, how is he really any different? We don't rightly know, since we don't really know Surmett, but if The Sadist and him were in cahoots enough that they were sworn enemies, they had to have run in the same circles, and therefore been equally maniacal? I don't know. It's Paul Naschy, so of course he's going to be more likable and humane than some sleazoid with a mustache called The Sadist.

Long story short, Surmett goes back to the chateau, tries to fondle and kill Anna, she stabs him with a syringe filled with 'treatment' and then puts his head through a glass door. Non-plussed, Surmett finds a gun, has a shoot out with police, takes a few bullets, and dramatically falls to his death. The ordeal is over for everyone, most everyone that should be dead is, and the Thyses can go on with their lives.

The ending happens at breakneck speed and I still can't help feeling a little sad that we weren't treated to more Naschy here. However, I highly recommend the bonus erotic features on the DVD. If they had been left in, we'd get to see what Naschy does best and that's get along really well with females :) There's even a lesbian scene between Barbara and Ingrid which delves into threesome territory. Can you imagine what Ingrid's torture scene would have been like if this sleazy footage had been left in? And the sex scene between Barb and Surmett is way more explicit on these extra features! The movie would have been twice as long and mostly sex instead of mostly gangster caper stuff! Oh well. I would love to see this in its uncut glory - it would have made it ten times as trashy and much, much more memorable! Surmett actually does rape the paper girl! And she doesn't look old enough to even appear nude here! What is taken out leaves the film with a much more implied sexuality than what actually does take place if these scenes were left in.

If you're a Naschy completist, go for it with this one. You could do worse, like MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND, with his blink and you'd miss it cameo. The death scene at the end is memorable enough and Paul looks kinda cute all wrapped up in bandages.

Let the blog-a-thon continue!

Hunchback of the Morgue

I thought I would kick off the Paul Naschy Blog-a-Thon with one of my favorite testaments to Naschy's talent as an actor - HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE. The film opens as revelers (if they were modern day, they'd be your quintessential douche bags) within a pub challenge each other to a drinking contest with the biggest beers I have ever seen. I'm talking at least eighty ounces here. Our sweet hunchback, Gotho (Naschy), looms outside, watching the party unfold. The winner of the drinking contest leaves the pub, sees Gotho and insults him, based solely on his hunchbackery. So we have the set up of poor, old downtrodden and abused Gotho.

Gotho keeps himself busy by sawing up cadavers in the local morgue while thunderstorms rage and pining after a lovely, terminally ill woman, Ilse, who he has been friends with since childhood. Ilse likes that Gotho visits her in the hospital and brings her flowers, but she's clearly just the nice, pretty girl who just wants to be friends. In the first true pathos of the film, it's obvious how much Gotho loves Ilse. It's a real tearjerker. The first time around I thought how peculiar of a role this is for Naschy. Usually he's the robust, strong one, having the ladies fall at his feet, not the other way around. At times he's so sympathetic you want to weep for him; others he's kinda sorta evil.

After a visit with Ilse, Gotho leaves to resume work at the morgue, when some rowdy youths taunt him and throw rocks at him in the street. He runs into a beautiful doctor, Dr. Elke, who saves him from the kids and bandages his cuts. He repays her by kissing her feet, but not before he tells her about his love for Ilse. You know, so he doesn't feel guilty about the foot fetish thing he's about to do.

But such is Gotho's life, not only kids make fun of him, but medical students, too. They're such total assholes as all Gotho is doing is going about his business, so it's not his fault that he winds up strangling one of them and fighting all the others in true Naschy fashion. Go, Gotho, go!

But after this triumph, there is defeat, because Ilse shuffles off this mortal coil soon after Gotho's beatdown. He places roses on her body (another tear-jerker of a scene) and then retires to his morgue. In a severely cruel moment, orderlies bring Ilse's corpse to the morgue for Gotho to prepare for the dissection room - so those same assholes that beat him up can watch in the name of their medical degrees! Gotho responds by beating the shit out of the orderlies and escapes with Ilse's body to an underground dungeon, riddled with skeletons, gaslights, and chains.

He promises Ilse's body he'll be back after he delivers some roses to one who doubted her beauty, one Hans, another medical student. He winds up suffocating Hans to death with the bouquet, because, you know, that's kind of what he deserves. Gotho returns to the crypt and rats have infested the joint, covering Ilse's body for the meal of their lifetimes. It's Naschy vs. the Flying Rats for a few moments, and woudn't you know some of then are aflame? In interviews regarding this scene, which had a large impact on the audience when the film was screened, Naschy maintains the rats used in this sequence were as terrifying as they were real. The studio had apparently captured the rats in the sewer and then starved them for a time. When they let them loose on the set, they were able to jump super high while biting and thrashing, searching for anything to eat. It, obviously, wasn't one of his favorite scenes to shoot, as he got bit several times.

Gotho has a 'friend' in Dr. Orla, a mad scientist type back at the hospital. He hopes to have Orla help him bring Ilse back to life, but of course, the good doctor wants something in return. There's a particularly creepy scene where Gotho is hiding on a gurney under a sheet behind the doctor at the hospital while he works. He rises slowly, and you're not sure who is hiding there. Then we know it's Gotho, but the doctor is hardly startled. It's weird but chilling and I'm sure something Naschy put there purposefully.

So Gotho explains the situation and the doc agrees, but only if Gotho moves the entire laboratory into the subterranean cave/crypt, which we come to find out in a moment of foreshadowing, was used during the Inquisition. You see, Orla has come under a bit of scrutiny for his strange experiments involving the creation of artificial life and his funds have been cut, so he has no real problem moving his work to an underground lair and continuing his experiments outside the framework of the law. (I love a damn lab in a secret location, as well as doc's science talk - analyzing amino acids and unaltered protein structures! Woo!) The deal is set.

Gotho sets up a pretty amazing and impressive lab down below, complete with a pit of boiling acid. One of the assistants fucks up and puts Ilse into the acid bath, at which point, Gotho returns the favor and has the assistant take a dip. He takes the liberty of putting another one into an Iron Maiden and has another one's face get really acquainted with the floor. Hey, in these kinds of movies, assistants should expect this kind of treatment.

Some more of my much beloved science talk takes place - 'science is unpredictable!' - 'one giant plasmoidal cell is beginning to differentiate the organs!' and we get a glimpse of what Orla's been working on - a giant pulsating organ thing in a big glass jar! It's pretty fantastic, but Gotho decides he wants to stop working for the doc because Ilse's body is no more. Gotho's feeling guilty for what has transpired but Orla says he can build a new Ilse for Gotho, but first things first, he needs a fresh head. So Gotho decides to comply, severs a head, elludes police, and brings the head back to Orla in a bag.

Another interesting anecdote from Naschy himself, is that the head they were going to use was actually real! There was a cadaver brought in that was due to be dissected shortly and the people in charge intimated the cast and crew could do what they liked with it. Naschy knocked back a couple whiskies, picked up the knife, then panicked. He couldn't get past the first cut so a wax duplicate was brought in and that's what we actually see in the film. Could you imagine! Real rats AND a real decapitation! Overload!

Apparently, the morgue where they were shooting had a supervisor who had been repeatedly accused of necrophilia and corpse defilement and had severe sulfuric acid burns on his hands. They should have cast him the movie! He insisted on showing Paul the new 'guests' every morning. 'The dead are wonderful,' he would say. 'They never complain!' This guy wound up as the inspiration for the macabre butler in HOWL OF THE DEVIL, portrayed by the great Howard Vernon.

Gotho's pretty stressed so he goes to see the pretty lady doctor, Elke. He kisses on her feet a little bit more to get things started and then she makes out with him. It's a quick cut and I'm wondering what might have been cut here. A sex scene? We know Naschy and even in hunchback form, he's going to get some. While it's implied here that he and Elke are up to some sexy stuff, we don't get to see it. Yet. I know you are chomping at the bit to see some hunchback sex! Perverts!

Orla's making some progress back at the lab-or-a-tory and this is evidenced by him shoving the severed head Gotho brought him elbow deep into the jar full of artificially grown organs. It's so awesome! I could watch a mad scientist shove a severed head into a giant jar of artificially grown organs all day every day and not get bored! That, and I love how mad scientists all think they're above the law.

The guts and things are nearing transformation, so the doc has to lock it all in a cell because it breaks out of the jar. This is what he labels 'a success.' Gotho has been assigned the task of care and feeding of the 'success' so he has to kidnap a woman and feed her to it. It's around about this point where I really want to know if Gotho does what he does out of his love for Ilse, a woman he deep down knows would never really go for him or if he's got a sub-level IQ, something that is implied early on, or is it something else? What is Gotho's motivation? He's not simply the stock character 'Hunchback,' assisting the mad doctor for a paycheck. He's the protagonist; Orla we could really care less about. He's not even all that great as a mad scientist, in that his delivery is kind of ho-hum, and his madness restrained and weak, at best. Orla just doesn't have enough of the crazy, he's not sweaty enough, and he doesn't grapple with morals. As far as mad scientists go, he's kind of forgettable, which is fine, because this is really more Gotho's story anyway. It kinda flips the whole mad scientist/hunchback thing on it's hump (forgive), and it's because this is the Naschy show and it's all about the Naschy (which is more than fine by me!).

Gotho, feeling guilty and down, goes to visit Elke and confesses he still loves Ilse. Elke doesn't really care and kisses Gotho again. And here comes the hunchback sex! No cuts this time! But then it's back to the grind, as the doc wants to get some girls from the local reformatory ('they're garbage anyway!') to feed to the humanoid. There's some business with the police and some other doctor couple from the hospital who find themselves Orla's prisoners, but what I really want to see is the finished humanoid, because the doc has kept him hidden for far too long now and it sure does bellow a lot! We aren't kept waiting long and the slimy primordial thing lumbers out from its cell! It's like a swampy mess but still pretty impressive, although I don't really know why you would need human flesh to create such a thing. It just seems to ooze all over the place, but hey, I'm no mad scientist so what the fuck do I know?

Dr. Elke happens to wander into the cave at the point where the creature has been let out and Orla wants to feed her to the thing. Gotho won't let him have her, he's lost too much already and Orla and Gotho get into a fight! Orla shoot Gotho and the doc passes out, although I would have rather seen him go into the acid pit. Gotho releases all the prisoners and wrestles with the creature, culminating in his demise, as well as the creature's, but falling into the acid. FIN (and it really does say FIN, which I appreciated).

So, there we have it! HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE. Good times, no? I had uproarious fun watching this for what I think was the third or fourth time. Everything that makes up literary Gothicism is at play in this wonderful film! I can't help thinking of the films of James Whale, the short stories of Poe and Lovecraft, even the tightly woven narratives of Maupassant when I watch Naschy in action here. This movie is Paul in all his glory, stripped away from the pretenses of prior machismo characters. He's a sad hunchback, a new man of a thousand faces, and truly repulsive, yet endearing. At times sinister and defying the laws of what is morally upstanding, Naschy exhibits a love undying, an exaggerated romantic nature, and a loyalty among anything else, handled expertly, with flair and panache.

Gotho, although physically deformed, is a gentle, trustworthy, and kind soul whose acts of selflessness go unrewarded and punished with acts of severe cruelty. Ostracized and maligned, yet sensitive and sweet, this is truly one of Naschy's zeniths! He's at his absolute finest here and this is the film that should put him right up there with Chaney, Sr., Karloff, and Lee. At times you want to cry for him and others chide him for his graveyard crimes, but never do you stop feeling for him. If anyone needs a true testament to this great actor's talent, tell them to watch this. It's a bit more linear than some of the Daninsky efforts, in that it is a bit more restrained (if that's the right word for a hunchback movie involving mad scientists, slimy humaniods, and acid pits), but wholly entertaining nonetheless.

I love you, Paul. Thank you for your amazing legacy. You are truly missed.

Werewolf Woman

Poor Daniela. She was raped by a brute at age 13 and her family has a history of lycanthropy. Nevermind that she looks just like her great great aunt, furthering her delusions she's a bonafide werewolf. She's been having nightmares where she wolfs out and kills pilgrims, after dancing naked in a ring of fire (a very fine opening scene).

Daniela's wealthy daddy is concerned, moves her out to his Italian country home, and enlists the help of a doctor to figure out what the hell can cure Daniela from her mind. The doctor spends most of his time musing upon the obvious, such as, Daniela has sexual phobias because of her rape. Oh, really, doc? Why ever would you suspect that? And, Daniela is obsessed with antiques and old documents because she spends most of her time in the attic. Okay. Sure. Whatever you say.

Daniela does seem to get a little better after the doc's visit, but pretty redhead sister Irena decides to pay a visit from America where she's been studying Nuclear Physics. She brings her very masculine new hubby and fellow nuclear scientist, Fabian, to meet Daddy and Daniela. Daniela is instantly attracted to Fabian but since she has sexual phobias and all, she retires to her room quickly after dinner on the pretense that she's tired. There's a full moon after all.

Irena and Fabian decide to retire as well and end up naked in bed together. They're married, so it's okay. Daniela hears their lovemaking session and, in her extremely flimsy (read: completely see-through) nightgown, spies on the newlyweds, only after she sees a bloody vision of herself (?) and has a komodo dragon crawl around on her body (double ?). She touches herself a bit outside their bedroom door and then makes her way out into the night.

Fabian hears a door slam and leaves his lovely bride to go investigate. Daniela sees a vision of her dead relative she is supposed to resemble in front of a skeleton with a still human face attached. Another vision? It's never explained. Daniela then begins hyperventilating, but sees Fabian, strips nude, and calls him to her. She kisses him deeply and pulls him down to the ground, and instead of a sex session, she goes ahead and rips his throat out with her teeth and then rolls the body into a ravine!

Next cut and Daniela's confined (read: restrained) to a hospital bed in a mental ward. The doctors thinks she's suffering from nocturnal schizophrenia because they can't find anything else physically wrong with her, her symptoms seem to be those suffered by teens in puberty, but Daniela's an adult. Wow, doctor, thanks again for that sage observation.

Irena and Daddy come to see Daniela and Daniela gives the performance of the movie when she tells Irena, 'You liked Fabian. You liked making love with him! You were obscene! Disgusting! But you liked it! I hate you, you whore! Go fuck yourself! Whore!'That's pretty much what I'm going to say to the judge next time I go to court or maybe next time I'm in a really long line at the post office. Daniela has a total meltdown right there and it's freaking awesome. And I thought it was cool when she got all wolfie on Fabian.

She freaks out again when the nurse won't release her from her restraints. 'Damn you, you whore, you pig! You murderer!' It's another epic freakout. I'm beginning to really like Daniela.

The night, the nymphomaniac in the room next door to Daniela's dresses up in sexy black lingerie and red pumps and garish makeup and goes over to Daniela's 'to get to know her.' She rubs all over Daniela's restrained body and promises to release her, but not until after she goes down on her. Daniela bites her, but the girl releases her anyway, and gets scissors to the back of her neck as a thank you! So much for psycho lesbian hospital sex!

On the loose, Daniela steals a red raincoat and hides in a pretty doctor's car. Once on the road, Daniela pummels the doc's face into the steering wheel until it's a bloody pulp, the car crashes and she's free! She sneaks over to a nearby barn were a couple is getting it on and of course, ever the voyeur, Daniela spies on them. The lovers part ways eventually (it was a pretty long sex scene) and Daniela rips out the girls throat with her teeth.

The girl's body winds up in the morgue where the same two detectives that examined Fabian's body notice some similar injuries. The dumber of the two detectives muses about a story he used to hear his grandma tell about if you were born on Christmas, you'd probably become a werewolf (something I had never heard before). This information for some reason leads the smart of the two detectives to Daniela's dad, and they want to find her immediately.

Meanwhile, Daniela breaks into a house and steals some clothes and hitchhikes with an older gent who she gives a sob story about a husband that beats her to explain all her bruises and cuts. He immediately invites her to move in with him, but guess what happens when he wants to have sex with her? Yep, she bashes his head into a bedpost until it's unrecognizable. He did use this pickup line on her. 'Come on, ya big whore! I'm gonna rape ya!' How she could resist, I have no idea.

After killing this dude, she gets picked up by a movie stuntman, who fixes her dinner and relinquishes his bedroom to her, opting to sleep downstairs. This is obviously a decent fellow and Daniela decides to stop thinking she's a werewolf for awhile and allows herself to fall in love with him. She watches him and pretends to shoot him while he practices his stunts, they have sex, they get in the ocean with all their clothes on, have more sex, you know, stuff you do when you love someone.

Daniela decides to call her dad to tell him about her boyfriend, but at the pay phone, she garners the attention of a shady character. He's shady because he has a mustache. He, and three of his friends, follow her home and brutally rape her on the stairs and in the room she shares with her boyfriend. In the midst of this, the boyfriend returns home, and being a stuntman and all, gets kung fu on the attacker's asses. But he's no match for a knife and takes a stabbing in the guts. It's all pretty brutal and violent and I feel really bad for Daniela. Here she was with a decent dude that cared about her and he had to go and get stabbed but a bunch of fucking losers, one of which was wearing a black pleather suit.

Here comes the tonal shift. Until now, we've had a fairly violent tale of a woman's descent into madness, her dealing with this descent and then the subsequent ascent over the recesses of her illness. After the boyfriend gets stabbed, this becomes a revenge tale.

Daniela find out two of her attackers work at a junkyard and wastes no time clonking one of the dudes on the head with a giant wrench, luring the other one to the car to check on the passed out guy, and lifting the car with that claw thingy they have in junkyards and smashing it until both men are pulp.

She then takes the liberty of lighting the other one's house on fire while he's asleep, burning him alive! Then she cooks him and eats him while looking completely and utterly unhinged! Go, Daniela!

The ending is all very abrupt and not very satisfying, but the ride there was certainly madcap enough that I can forgive. I think what's most interesting that a film with werewolf in the title has an almost appalling lack of werewolf action, save for one opening dream sequence. The werewolf-ism in this movie is more of the mental variety in that it's all in Daniela's head, which is somewhat refreshing than the whole curse thing. And it could have gone a menstruation route that most werewolf movies involving women tend to go, and I didn't really detect that subtext anywhere. There is the one mention about puberty, but nothing female-specific. It's almost original, except that it is completely seventies. And it's certainly violent enough and it's a woman doing all the good killing.

I watched some of the special features with interviews with the director, Rino di Silvestro and the woman that played Daniela, Annik Borel, was in no other movies, at least to his knowledge, and he had lost touch with her many years ago. A quick IMDB search revealed she was in Ted V. Mikels' picture BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS as a witch who gets stoned (I'm assuming with stones, rather than the other way), as well as a French film called TRANSVESTITE that sounds pretty awesome, as well as guest appearances on the sitcom THE ODD COUPLE. Weird. I absolutely loved this blond bombshell as she appeared to really think she was a werewolf and therefore, appeared to be certifiably insane. It truly must have been her standout performance, for sure.

I can't say no to werewolf movies in general and I certainly can't say no to voluptuous females who think they're werewolves and call everyone whores. I love movies where the word 'whore' gets used in freak outs. So by default, I must love this movie.

Microwave Massacre

Way back when, I used to see this VHS box in the Movie Time store. It used to scare me. It had a gruesome looking head, eyes still intact, clearly nuked for the sole purpose of the hungry man with the knife and fork licking his lips to consume. Consume! As in cannibalism! Via the microwave! And 'massacre' was in the title - clearly a harsh word intended only for the hardest of the hardcore horror films. Never mind the tagline screamed 'comedy' - to me, this was one fucked up little movie - and I wouldn't see it until, oh, twenty-five years later.

Of course, time changes our views and I'm no longer the wide-eyed ten year old salivating over lurid VHS box art any more. But I still have those memories and those memories shape the movie watching persona I have today, so when I finally tracked down a copy of Midnight Video's version of MICROWAVE MASSACRE, I still had certain expectations in mind. I was expecting an outright horror film, what I got instead a deliciously trashy, misogynistic, pun-laden 'comedy about cadavers and cannibalism.' Allow me to give you the highlights.

Donald's life sucks. He works a crappy job as the foreman at a construction site supervising two horny dudes. (If you've never seen a glory hole for boobs before, the opening scene of MM is your chance!) He can't get a decent meal to save his life (think a giant crab on a huge roll - it's cartoonishly over the top, really), because his annoying wife, May, has taken up French cooking, in her gloriously gigantic new microwave. This thing is bigger than my refrigerator. I know appliances were huge in the seventies, but this thing is retardedly huge. Never mind the fact that May is cooking high-falutin' cuisine in it. Seems the oxymoron, but oh well.

After slaving over the microwave all day (she actually says this), Donald refuses to eat May's cooking. They get into an argument, ala the henpecked husband routine, and in a crime passionale, Donald kills May with a salt shaker, and he doesn't even forget to sprinkle some salt over his shoulder for luck. Relieved to be rid of the annoying bitch (Edie Massey is less irritating and a better actress and I kind of wanted to kill May myself), Donald goes about dismembering her body and storing it in the freezer. He wakes up the next day and doesn't remember killing May, until he opens the microwave and sees her lifeless corpse. 'Oh well, just the way she would have wanted to go - except she hasn't gone yet, oh brother!'

Later that night, Donald is watching a newscast about the perfect crime. Seems some guy stole a bunch of caviar and hid the evidence by eating it all. Ding, ding, ding! What do you think Donald decides to do next?

If you guessed making giant sandwiches out of live prostitutes and seducing a woman in a chicken suit who is dancing an Irish jig to come over for sex, only to cook her body to serve to his construction worker friends, you would be correct. 'I'm so hungry, I could eat a whore,' Donald quips, in one of his many, many groan-inducing, but oh-so-hilarious puns.

It's all in good fun and I love this movie. It's so morbidly over-the-top from the whole Jackie Gleason thing to the cannibalism to the call girls in their trashy outfits. However, it's a bit of a stretch for me to buy Donald's character switch. Yeah, he's been abused by his wife for thirty years, but he ain't no prized pig himself, coming home wreaking of booze and insulting May. It's no wonder she yells like she does, really. They hadn't even had sex since 1962. 'You're a walking contraceptive,' she yells during a heated argument. Donald is completely joyless in the beginning and his murdering of May seems to free him from this joylessness. Heck, he even gets to have sex after all these years. But it doesn't make him a better person. It makes him worse, as it turns him into a serial killer.

Donald just doesn't have it in him to pull off the whole serial killer/cannibal thing. He's just too much of an ignorant goomba. And he falls into the cannibal thing most unwittingly, as he gets up in the middle of the night for a snack, only to groggily discover he's eating a raw hand. 'I may have underestimated May's taste,' he says, and continues chewing. The leap is made too quickly and all of a sudden he's a cannibalistic maniac, while still maintaining his persona of beaten down working class man who can't get anything good to eat from his nagging wife. But it's not calculated, either. Donald is one of the other and a flesh eating Jeffrey Dahmer type he ain't.

But this movie is successful in that it blends the whole horror and comedy thing quite well, something that is very difficult because the writer and director must be skilled at both. It's no massacre of the Texan variety, but it doesn't aim to be either. It's a silly, trashy romp that you just don't come by that often, especially nowadays. Mother-in-law jokes, objectifying women, microwaves - it's all very pre-Married with Children. And the fashion! Oh the fashion. It's the worst of the seventies worst, but it's also refreshing to see real women in a movie, a little cellulite, curves, and all. And where else are you going to see a live hooker slathered in mayo, put between two giant slices of bread, and sawed in half? Or a sexy blond doing yard work with a vibrator? Or a glory hole for boobs? Or death by microwave, for that matter? That's what I thought.

Now, if only I could get an uncut box copy of the Midnight Video version. All my damn Midnight Video boxes are cut to fit clamshells and it's annoying. To the time machine, before all the big boxes on VHS were cut!