thomandybish-15114

Ah, the 1980s, when everyone with a camera and a barely coherent script was lensing slashers. With all this groundswell, it was only natural that this mania would extend to Europe, which is why we have this Swedish sausage product--I AM CURIOUS it ain't. As others have noted, it's pretty standard stuff: a group of folks (Swedish Hair Metal band and their groupies/video tramps, along with a retinue of stylists/makeup people/cameramen) descend on a location (a cabin in a snowy mountain region, adjacent to a condemned factory) ostensibly to film a music video. The trouble starts when the director wants to use the factory as a backdrop for said video. A fortuitous avalanche strands the group at the location. A feral, homicidal family resides in the factory. It isn't long before various members of the party wander into said factory at met their various, grisly demises.

BLOOD TRACKS is not the worst I've seen in slashers from this era (the second golden era--1984-just before SCREAM debuted), but it does have some flaws that lessen its impact. The nonsensical prologue in which we are given the origins of the murderous family doesn't make sense and could have been left off altogether. Clearly, this trope borrowed from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE/THE HILLS HAVE EYES and should have followed those films leads of just presenting the family cold, with no explanations. Another problem with the film is that, once we get inside the factory, it's so bloody dark you can barely see what's happening. This could just be the way the film was shot, so there may not be any way of correcting, such as remastering, high def, etc. If this could be remedied, it should be. The cast seems to be either British or American, or the film makers may be resorting to the Italian trick of giving native actors prosaic American-sounding names. The acting is OK, but these are not characters given to thoughtful, analytic discourse, so it works. A real rock group, Easy Action, was hired to portray the band, but they appear in the film mostly as a pretext, and the members don't get much dialogue. No real reason is given for the family's feral state (the prologue doesn't shed any clues to this) so they just are the way they are. There are a few PG-13 sex scenes, but the nudity is minimal. The action, once it gets started, is self-propelled and doesn't let up, which makes the less than 90-minute runtime bearable.

If you've seen all the slashers from this era and are looking for a forgotten entry, this one will do the trick.

With low budget films, you have to adjust your expectations. Limited funds mean limits on sets, accurate period costumes, name actors, etc. I don't really expect those things on low budget efforts. Too often, low budget means low quality, but that isn't always the case. Yes, not everything here is period correct, sets look a little cheap, not all the acting is top shelf (I understand those who criticized the lead actor's squeaky voice--you don't expect that from a male lead in a western!), but this film combines the western and zombie genres in a quirky new way. Rene Perez maintains the pacing and action extremely well--nothing drags or bogs down the flow. We also get three unlikely allies against the zombies: the gunslinger, the girl he saves from literal sex slavery, and the Native American man the gunslinger deems a threat. Throw in a meteor that spurts some kind of spores which turn anyone who comes in contact with them into zombies and you have a reasonably good time. Better than average effort.

This is a film that borrows tropes from other films but in the end lacks any kind of verve to sustain viewer interest. It is beautifully lensed, with creative shots and a dream-like cinematography--the focus is on imagery rather than narrative, tell-tell signs of a Giallo film. And yet, this isn't a Giallo, despite numerous stylistic flourishes associated with the genre. Some half-baked narrative about a psychic teenager who believes he can kill with his thoughts and pursues his older brother's girlfriend. It's slow moving by today's standards, taking it's time to develop characters (which is nice), but ultimately the movie doesn't deliver the goods. Others have remarked about the modest gore, which didn't help things, but this wasn't directed by Fulci or Argento. The movie veers between a coming-of-age drama, a thriller, a Giallo, and an art film, but ultimately can't make up its mind what it wants to be, so it's nothing.

Just an over long mess that remains a curio of Spanish Cinema, a movie that is constructed as a patchwork of other, more interesting films.

Charlie Steeds is a British filmmaker who has produced some passable efforts in low budget filmmaking. This early effort shows some moxie to be sure but doesn't live up to expectations. Many have made much of the fact that the movie's budget was 1500 pounds. What was put up on screen for that amount was the admirable part. The rest of the movie lacks. A claustrophobic effort, the action is severely lacking--there aren't a lot of choices when your set consists of low, narrow tunnels constructed from wooden pallets. Clearly, this is supposed to be some coming of age epic backdropped by an apocalyptic event that destroys the world and forces humanity underground to survive, as we see when a special ops team enters the tunnel system to retrieve some stolen water. This may have worked if the script was better, but it isn't. This movie is too talky for the set--who wants to listen to half-baked exposition while actors struggle to crawl around in these halls of pallet? And if there was a way to make exciting action sequences in these tunnels, the filmmakers didn't have it. This one gets rather tedious until the characters manage to break free from their underground hell, but by then most viewers will have lost interest. Check out Charlie Steeds' latter efforts like WINTERSKIN to see the man's vision realized well.

For a number of years, the Filipino film industry was a force to be reckoned with on the exploitation film scene. The films, while not always great, proved to be durable staples of American drive ins and grindhouses of the era, which brings us to this effort, coming near the end of the golden age and having some rather singular delights. The main attraction is Jillian Kesner, a well-endowed blonde who apparently was a martial arts master in real life. Ms. Kesner's film career seems to have been short lived, which is a shame, since she could have easily become a female Chuck Norris. The flick's set-up is standard fare: American arrives in a foreign locale, trying to locate her missing journalist sister. She runs afoul of a mafia-type setup that uses martial arts competitions as a front for drug and gun running. One of the players, an American martial arts fighter with bushy early 80s hair, sets out to romance her in order to find out her true motives. Chaos ensues. The fight scenes are fairly well choreographed, with seemingly dozens of accommodating Filipino stuntmen getting handily disposed of by our lovely leading lady. One unforgettable scene has our heroine being chased by two thugs, losing her sheer cocktail dress, high heels, and bra in the process. This is clearly a film that you can turn your brain off and simply enjoy for what it is. Despite all this (not to mention an hour and fifteen-minute run time), the movie feels about twice as long as it really is. Only our leading lady's various topless or nude scenes would make male viewers (let's face it, they're the only ones viewing this) consider giving this a second watch.

Director Brandon Slagle is an indie filmmaker with a long list of credits, most of which are competently made and offer something--cinematography, fascinating visuals, gutsy subjects for small budget films-to hold viewer interest. An overarching tendency is to take existing properties or narratives and put his own unique spin on them. Other efforts include takes on Charles Manson and the Amityville Horror. Here, he chooses the unlikely story of Elizabeth Short, a young woman murdered in post WWII Hollywood whose unsolved murder has become the stuff of legend, so much so that most of what is passed off as fact about the tragic femme is in fact, fiction. Slagle weaves together several ideas that no one has linked to Short, namely that her vengeful spirit possesses the living to exact her revenge and that a pre-fame Marilyn Monroe was her friend. These concepts are cobbled together with some sort of story about a young girl arriving in Hollywood to sort out the death of her father at the hands of her blind half-brother. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it doesn't have to, as most people watching have no idea who Elizabeth Short was. This seems to be an effort by Slagle to piggyback on an existing narrative, even if that narrative wouldn't resonate with most viewers. The film seems poorly paced; some judicious editing would tighten things up considerably. Slagle also takes liberties with the main elephant in the room: Short's murderer. Despite numerous writers, detectives, and others making claims as to who the killer was, the case is still officially open. Slagle's implication that Short was somehow complicit in her own death due to some liking for S&M is sleazy and distasteful. Erratic, jumbled, and ugly. Pass, pass, pass!

Sometimes, the chutzpah of a filmmaker is more worthy of praise than their abilities or efforts. Such is the case with this shot in Alabama oddity, a palatable mix of sci fi and satire. Which is not to say that it's bad, it isn't, at least technically; the clever use of old fire extinguishers as oxygen paks, terrarium domes and vacuum cleaner hoses as space helmets, and hazmat jumpsuits as space suits are no less ingenious for being recognized for their original purposes. The script's satire of corporate culture borrows more heavily from OFFICE SPACE than ALIEN, which is timelier. Of course, this is low budget indie film making, so there are some seams. But given the limitations under which the filmmakers were working, these are more charming than anything. Most everyone has dealt with smarmy bosses, nonsensical internal policies, and boredom on the job, so it's relatable. Gore effects are good, but the ending seemed a little slipshod. Not a bad watch.

A movie lensed to cash in on the marquee value of H. P. Lovecraft's name, this Indiana curiosity has its strengths. Unfortunately, those don't include competent acting or a coherent script. Filmed in a historic 19th century house, the story concerns a grad student who has moved to said house to avoid an abusive ex. She's writing a thesis on geometry somehow providing the doorway to another dimension, or something. The film kicks into high gear when said student pierces this other realm. Fever dream sequences of Satanists and witches cavorting naked in occult rituals abound, which seem to be the director's strong suit. Murder and mayhem ensue. There's probably some half-baked message about female empowerment in here, but it's lost in the bad acting, wild occult rituals, and gore. Just enough here to hold your interest.

Lured in by a psychotronic-sounding title, I sat down for this low-budget effort and immediately got pulled up short. Now, I'm not naive enough to expect filet mignon efforts on a potted meat budget, but I did expect to have a reasonably good time without too many rough edges and seams showing to distract me from the movie. Not so. The first clue that this movie was going to be a mess was the fact that it's list of executive producers was probably longer than the cast and crew COMBINED.

Really. I lost count after 60. The movie was produced by Mahal Brothers Productions, which apparently relies heavily on crowdfunding and isn't above using the bigger donors to fill out minor roles or as extras. So, you have professional actors like Michael Paré delivering the goods next to overweight crowd funders delivering lines with all the subtle nuance of particleboard. In any other venue, this talent disparity would be fine (high school or community theater production), but in a mainstream film I do expect a modicum of professionalism; there's a big difference between a professional actor who can't act vs. A non-actor who has been shoehorned in because they contributed a few grand to the film's budget. I'm a firm believer in the old maxim about lots of cooks and broth, so I can't help but wonder what other machinations these execs did to make the movie worse than it was. A zombie apocalypse of unspecified origins is the reason we have a group of soldiers going to secure and/or destroy a key bridge. That's after we get almost 30 minutes of scenes of people belching out exposition or being massacred by zombies, little of which has to do with the bridge. Once we get to the bridge, things get marginally better, with an unspecified monster underneath that begins dispatching the soldiers. For some reason, the zombies have gotten out of the cities and are stumbling around this rural landscape, so they're a threat as well. Add in a hostile group of survivors, John Birch types who wouldn't like authority figures like army personnel anyways, and you should have enough conflict to generate interest, right? Nuh uh. This movie somehow manages to be boring even with all these factors. I have to wonder if this movie was some sort of tax write off, or simply created to fill the world with product. It's utter lack of entertainment seems to point to this.

Closed for the Season aka Carnival of Fear offers something that seems more like a feverdream, a stream of consciousness excursion into fear that gets rather muddled in the second and third acts. Director Jay Woelfel has to be given credit for trying to create an alternate universe where fear and regret exist tangibly and haunt the lives of the characters. Yes, it's a very slow burn, but it's fascinating. Woelfel has helmed many films, mostly in the horror and action genres, so it's interesting to see this approach. It's also understandable that so many reviewers would hate this movie--it's not a "gotcha" horror movie. Other reviewers have compared it to "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood", which has a very dreamlike, metaphysical feel to it. In some ways, it also resembles Herk Harvey's "Carnival of Souls", although that film has a very clear-cut rationale that is revealed at the end. Both films are exceptional in their use of cinematography to set an eerie mood. The whole idea of a closed amusement park being a receptacle for the negative energy produced by human suffering is a great metaphor, and Woelfel tries to layer on other ideas as well, but it seems like too many metaphysical concepts spoil the broth. If you like your horror with a lot of esoteric philosophical concepts drenched in atmosphere, then this one might be for you.

You know, it's always interesting to see a movie made by a filmmaker whose ambition outstrips his talent. Such is the case with Richard John Taylor's "The Haunting of Pendle Hill", an atmospheric film based loosely on some real-life witch trials in rural England in 1612. While the cinematography of the rural countryside it lovely, the film itself struggles to build any suspense or interest. Some of this may be due to a low budget, but most of it hinges on the fact that it's bloody difficult to keep an audience engaged with the "slow burn" method when the story and/or actor's performances don't create any momentum or rising tension. And, as the title of this review implies, there are a few glaring period glitches. It's not a technical stinker (most of the film seems very competently made), it just doesn't deliver in terms of action or scares.

While I'm not a Ken Russell expert or afficionado, I have come to expect certain things when viewing one of his films. One is the almost obsessive attention to period detail, which is refreshing in this day and age. I mean, when Carol Kane comes out with a soup tureen full of french fries and a bottle of ketchup, you can bet your Aunt Myrtle's girdle that that bottle is period correct for the 1920s. Another thing is that Russell usually drops some sort of fever dream-styled scene into the proceedings that usually results in a form of tonal whiplash from the rest of the movie. This happens with the jail scene of Valentino and his wife. Sweet Mary, I almost had flashbacks to the torture scenes in THE DEVILS with that one. Russel definitely marches to his own beat; if the mythology behind Valentino doesn't suit his purposes, Russell simply barges ahead and creates his own. Valentino historians and fans (are there any still living?) may take issue with accuracy and sequence, but Rudolf Valentino is no sacred icon to me, so the film is a nice palate cleanser from all the corporate, comic book sausage product we've been fed of late. It's nice to see this ragtag bunch of players, from Nureyev and Mama Michelle to Leslie Caron and Carol Kane to players like John Ratzenberger in an early role. Part fever dream, part movie mag ballyhoo, the film drags during its middle/third act, but ultimately goes down easy . . . Well, as easy as a Ken Russell movie can.

For years, my knowledge of this film was limited to its trailer, which played up the old carny trick of having a bell ring during the most salacious scenes to warn "sensitive" viewers when to avert their gaze to avoid offending tender sensibilities. Of course, it could also be used in reverse, to alert drowsy viewers to when the "good parts" were about to happen. Even if you laid that gimmick aside, the bleak piano score and scenes of a small town wrapped in a desolate, snowy landscape didn't lend any suggestion of a comedy/horror that some have claimed this movie to be. This movie is, in my opinion, so much more.

CANNIBAL GIRLS has an odd reputation, one that largely rests on what it's cast and director did after this film wrapped. Director Ivan Reitman, of course, when on to bigger and better things with Hollywood blockbusters like GHOSTBUSTERS and leads Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin forged careers in sketch comedy, so watching them here in what amounts to a bleak study in paranoia and depravity is disconcerting. Actually, Martin was starting to have a mini career in horror, as her next big appearance was in the transitional slasher BLACK CHRISTMAS. This might have become a full-fledged career had it happened five years later, as that was the time that John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN opened the slasher floodgates. But by that time Martin was a fixture on SCBTV, diverting her career path in a totally different direction. But I digress.

While Levy and Martin's banter makes them sympathetic, the comedy goes down hard. Reitman and cinematographer Robert Saad have beautifully captured the wintry rural Canandian landscape, making it a lonely, almost sinister backdrop to the events of the film in a way that almost turns the snowy backroads, fields, and banal, snow-flecked small-town streets into another character. The opening scene, in which we see a wide shoot of two cloaked figures running along a large sandbar bordering a lake shows that the talents behind the camera are destined for better things than just low-level exploitation. Despite the talent on display, it is still exploitation, so we get the promised gore and nudity (although the nudity outweighs the gore). While no one with any brain cells would call this an art film, Reitman's choice of close ups, overhead shots, fades to black, and other stylistic choices belies a talent destined for better things. Reitman's sense of atmosphere, as mentioned earlier with the natural landscape, is good, but is even better in the scenes with the townspeople, the interactions between Levy, Martin, and the townies, and in the interiors of the country house that serves as the base of operations for the titular cannibals and their top hatted, opera cape-wearing master, a mysterious "Reverend" whose exact powers are not sufficiently explained. There seems to be some sort of magic or witchcraft involved: killings are accompanied by some sort of ritual that requires the chicks to bare their breasts and chant incantations. The third act ventures into INVASION OF THE BODYSNATCHERs/BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN territory, as we see Martin's character grow increasingly panicky with all the odd goings-on and attempt in vain to leave the small town. From a tonal perspective, this blows all the comedy out of the water. The film ends on a bleak note that emphasizes this nihilism.

Although tonally uneven, CANNIBAL GIRLS is worth a watch for direction that makes an average script seem so much better, and for the early appearances of Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, especially Martin, who goes from being a ditzy chick to a woman in peril whom we fear for.

This film is not a sleeper hit, but it's also not an incompetent mess. The prologue, with some children telling scary stories around a fire, starts things off with some appropriate dread. What I believe hacked a lot of viewers off is the whiplash like change from this great start to some sort of domestic drama about a family dealing with the father in a coma after an unexpected accident. In addition to this, the family has just purchased a farm and house that both date back several hundred years. While this element of the story humanizes the characters, it probably seems slow and draggy to some viewers. I personally thought the film makers did a decent job of integrating the family's troubles with the weird goings-on, which kicks into high gear when some bullies coerce the son into holding a seance with a Ouija board. I've seen enough episodes of "Ghost Adventures" to know that the psychic energy generated by extreme sorrow or trauma can make people vulnerable to spiritual infestations. That may be why the family, in particular the son, comes under attack. The film kicks into high gear after the revelation of spirits on the property, with burlap sack wearing ghosts in the dark and the appearance of a blind medium to reveal the reason for the haunting. A reasonably entertaining way to pass an evening.

This movie is not a big budget feature. It's a low budget example of what used to be called "exploitation". Knowing this, the viewer can adjust their expectations accordingly. All the usual things are here; continuity errors, bad or ham-fisted acting, low quality special effects, and on and on. These flubs don't preclude enjoying the movie. "Unseen Evil" (or "Unseen" or "The Unbelievable") actually functions pretty well. The somewhat hackneyed plot device of a college professor and some students/guides going to explore a Native American artifact site gets turned on its head when we learn the professor and some of his associates are mercenaries planning to plunder the artifacts and sell them. In one fell swoop, this turns into a thriller, as the unknowing members of the group are tied up and forced to participate. Of course, there is an evil entity protecting the site, and the looters/kidnap victims run afoul of it. What pleased me about the movie was the effort that went into building backstories for some of the characters, as well as their interactions once they're put upon by the entity. Greed, regret, and betrayal all come into play; these characters seem like real people, making decisions and taking action based on understandable motives. The acting is, for the most part, passable. This was filmed in the late 90s/early 2000s, so the special effects aren't so special across the expanse of 20 years, but the filmmakers do a decent job with some of the practical effects, holding to the old idea of showing the monster as little as possible. Still, if you can adjust those expectations, it can be an enjoyable ride.

From what I can tell, the story of this lost film's eventual release over 30 years after its production is almost more interesting than the film itself. A cautionary tale about the pitfalls of independent filmmaking, that story has all been covered in the trivial section. I'm here to chew bubblegum and review this flick, and I'm all out of bubblegum.

"Heartland of Darkness" (or "Fallen Angels" or "Blood Church"--another danger of independent filmmaking seems to be that anybody can re-titled your movie at will) has a promising premise. A former report from a major newspaper moves himself and his daughter to Copperton, OH--the living embodiment of apple pie, MId-America. However, below the wholesome facade of this little burgh lies an awful secret--the town has been infiltrated by Satanists who are perpetrating some grisly murders, led by the charismatic Reverend Donovan, played with gleeful aplomb by Nick Baldasare. Baldasare looks like any number of interchangeable actors who played boyfriend or college kid cannon fodder in slasher movies of the era, and I for one think this is an advantage. It makes perfect sense, as there's nothing particularly striking about him to draw attention to his evil acts--that, and the fact that he's a pastor in a small town at a time when people still respected clergy enough to not question them--makes his takeover all the more chilling. But this is exploitation, folks, so Baldasare doesn't miss a chance to ham it up, quoting Bible verses and gesticulating in a most grandiose manner during his monologues. Others have noted the era in which the movie was made as being rife with "satanic panic" (in part due to some hysteria drummed up by media coverage of deaths or suicides reportedly caused by the influence of role-playing games) which definitely is an influence, but the movie could also be viewed as a treatise on conspiracy thinking/paranoia (the Satanists have infiltrated their way almost to the top of state government and stage an assassination to keep their secret), as well as shifting gears into a decent action movie in the third act, which makes up for some of the weak writing/terrible acting in the first.

Prior films have explored Satanism as a conspiracy to corrupt normal life --look at "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Brotherhood of Satan", both of which were lensed roughly 20 years before this effort. Of the two "The Brotherhood of Satan" is much more similar in concept--a family, travelling through an unfamiliar town, gets tangled up with the Satanists who run the place, particularly the town's doctor, who is engaged in some scheme to transfer the souls of aging Satanists into the bodies of the town's children. While the slow burn of suspense and the eventual reveal is more skillfully handled, there is still this concept of a bucolic, supposedly safe small town masking this horrific evil and snuffing out any outside influences. The Satanists kidnapping the daughter kicks off the switch into Action mode (Praise be), but it also causes the lead character's motivation for fighting the evil Rev to change; he's no longer a crusading reporter or soldier for goodness, but a Dad fighting for the life of his child. That is what motivates him to fight to the end, including the false ending and the true one, the one that includes a showdown in the church where the Rev dies in a most symbolic way. In short, the movie starts out weak and moves to a somewhat dull middle but pays off in the end. Just hold out till the third act; therein lies the goods.

It would be easy to dismiss this film. Journeyman CGI effects, erratic editing, sets decoration that consists primarily of trash bags, acting that veers between being ham-fisted or semi-comatose, and a schizophrenic plot all contribute to a so-bad-it's-good classification. What piqued my interest was the perceived philosophical intent. The movie switches gears about a third of the way through, going from a lurid torture-on-a-UFO plotline to something more spiritual. Dave Wascavage attempts to bring his own existential view of life to the screen, one that seems to blend an affection for alien abduction theories with a Karma-inspired what-comes-around-goes-around worldview with Catholic overtones. The movie is still technically bad, but it goes to an interesting place near the end. Enjoy the technical ineptitude but be pleasantly surprised by the higher meaning offered up.

Witchcraft, at least cinematic witchcraft, has been either played for laughs or, with recent offerings like "The Witch", used as a dark, impressionistic metaphor for societal or personal fears. Something that is almost never portrayed is the idea of witchcraft being an albatross around the neck of the practitioner. "Bad Witch" does this through the lead character. Xander Perkins is a narcissistic tool who glides by on his looks by mooching off women and the occasional spell casting. But while other movies show witchcraft as an asset to characters, such as an instrument of revenge, the dark arts don't do Xander any favors. In fact, they make things worse. After a misguided spell results in a beat-down from the victim and his bros, Xander retreats to the house of a high school friend, swearing off the witchcraft and resolving to go straight. The drug terminology isn't accidental; the movie pointedly compares witchcraft to drug addiction, something not seen in other films. Rather than making Xander powerful and dangerous, witchcraft has seemed to make him lazy, self-absorbed, and constantly in trouble. This changes when, goaded by his friend to get a job, he befriends Roland, a nice kid who is bullied by a loutish jock and his friend. In an uncharacteristically empathetic move, Xander teaches Roland witchcraft, which at first seems to work: the jock gets the worst case of zits in the history of high school, and Roland gets to make it with the girl of his dreams--almost. Unlike Xander, Roland has a moral compass. He can't go through with the spell to make it with the girl, and even goes to apologize to her the next day (She doesn't remember it). This idyll doesn't last, as the ramifications of the spell casting snowball into a traumatic climax.

Incredibly, I detected a moral lesson here. Most movies steadfastly refuse to do it, but "Bad Witch" does. Witchcraft, even done for the right reasons (such as to right a wrong or get revenge on bullies) is inherently evil. Xander, despite his front of being a don't care hedonist, seems to have some sort of guilt about his craft: this is proven by the scenes in which he hallucinates that a TV preacher is screaming at him. This idea culminates in the finale, which has tragic repercussions for almost all of the characters. So maybe that is the final spell cast by "Bad Witch".

Okay, this one generated some controversy for using footage of horror icon Christopher Lee expounding on the occult for a supposed documentary that ended up being purchased by the film's producers in order to bookend the movie and punch up its marquee value with a name actor. Lee was understandably angry at the state of affairs and attempted to sue, only to back down when he realized it would result in a financial quagmire for himself. That's all been covered. What I'd like to talk about is the film itself.

Despite its exploitation-style title, MEATCLEAVER MASSACRE isn't a slasher movie. What we have is supernatural revenge flick, with the well-worn trope of a college professor who is an expert in (and practitioner of) the occult, specializing in evil pagan spirits that can be summoned to avenge wrongs. The trouble starts when the dear professor publicly berates one of his students, a sneering tough guy with anger management issues who takes the professor's drubbing as an assault on his worth. Allowing his rage to metastasize into full-blown psychosis, the creep convinces three of his buddies into going over to the prof's digs to have a talk. Drunk out of their skulls, the four descend on the professor's home where they proceed to attack the family, resulting in the wife, son and daughter being killed. The professor is rendered paralyzed and unable to speak. But things start to get hairy for the four goons, as one by one they get what's coming to them . . .

This shouldn't be as good as it is. The filmmakers clearly weren't novices, so there aren't any lingering shots of nothing or 5 minutes of passing landscape via a car window--MANOS THE HAND OF FATE it isn't. The shots are well composed, especially the death sequences of the goons, and there is even a black and white dream sequence that puts out a CARNIVAL OF SOULS vibe. Most of the actors never graced a movie screen again, but there isn't really a bad performance among the main actors. Larry Justin nails his role as the head creep Mason. With his Me-against-the world attitude and narrow face perpetually twisted into an angry scowl, he convincingly plays a young man about to pop off at any moment. Justin had a bigger career than most of his co-stars, appearing in a few exploitation titles before dropping off the radar. Doug Senior, as the baby-faced Dirk, plays his part as a guy totally in over his head, and you actually feel sorry for him. There's even a bit more character development for him, and we're privy to his interior monologue as he ruminates about how things were beginning to look up for him until, well, until. Senior managed to stay in the business for several decades, transitioning into television and working as late as 2015. J. Arthur Craig, as Wexler the detective, puts the clues together to find the killers, all while seemingly benefitting from frequent trips to an all you can eat buffet. Not sure if Craig was dubbed, but if he wasn't, the man could have found his niche in voiceover work--the guy sounds like a poor man's Orson Wells!

Overall, you get the feeling that this was a movie that wants to be better than it is--that even had the capacity to be better than it is--but was hamstrung by lack of funds, behind the scenes problems, meddling producers/financiers, or just plain old bad luck. If any of this is true (and in low budget indie films, it more often than not is) then the deceptive and unscrupulous adding of the Christopher Lee footage (as well as the psychotronic title) might have been a last-ditch effort to get distributors to prick up their unholy ears and put the film onto screens and in front of viewers. That's all conjecture, and, while it's no lost classic, this film seemingly aspired to be better than some flash-in-the-pan Ed Wood or Andy Milligan abomination. It's just unfortunate that it hasn't been appreciated more, if not for what it is, then at least for its intent.

For the record, there are two films titled "The Astrologer", both released in 1975 and 1976. Both are deliriously bad. The 1976 offering is the product of Craig Denney, an auteur/egomaniac who stars in a film that boasts a script that is either an exercise in stream-of-consciousness screen writing or was conceived during an acid trip or fever dream. Denney himself seems to be a big part of this film's allure, and more can be found on him and his "masterwork" elsewhere on the net. That isn't the film being examined here. The 1975 film, directed by Jon Glickenhaus, is its own special brand of bad.

I watched this on Tubi, a service that seems to have a tendency to edit prints of horror/sci-fi films. This may be the case with "The Astrologer", but I can't say for certain, as I have no desire to seek out an uncut version. After watching enough movies--good or competent movies, that is--you instinctively know when a movie isn't up to parr. Movies that aren't show their seams, and this one has its seams showing all over the place. Copious narration that gives lengthy exposition dumps, captions that label the time and date of specific scenes, jarring jumps to different locales, and other technical things that make you suspect various people put their shovels in to edit this mess into their concept of what it should be. One thing that indicates an amateurish/inept production is the heavy use of dubbing. Most all of the secondary or minor characters are dubbed--this is glaringly evident in the scene in which the female lead, played by Monica Tidwell, visits a fortune teller, and again in the dinner scene in which leads Tidwell and Bill Byrd visit a colleague of Byrd's. Interestingly, the one actor who isn't dubbed--but should have been--was Tidwell, whose molasses-thick Louisiana accent is distracting. Tidwell, a former Playboy Playmate, wasn't cast for her vocal talent, as the nude scenes near the end clearly indicate. Casting is another millstone. The self-important subject of the US government using astrology to keep tabs on potential evil threats would, you would think, necessitate casting some name actors to plump up the flick's marquee value, but alas, no. Not even stalwarts like Joseph Cotton, Glen Ford, Donald Pleasance, or Cameron Mitchell could be procured, which speaks volumes about how low budget this thing was--those guys would appear in anything!

Instead, we get Tidwell, as mentioned earlier, Bill Byrd(who?), and the producer, sporting brown body makeup, eyeliner, and a hypnotic stare, sort of looking like a cross between Jesus and Rasputin.

It could be chalked up to a low budget or first-time director, but the whole production looks like a TV series--cheap sets, scenes supposedly set in India but looking like somebody's back yard, and heavy use of stock footage--either a money saving or run time stretching trick, who knows? The film makers also try to shoehorn too much information about government agencies, end-times conspiracies, and the titular astrology into 90 minutes or under 80 minutes, depending on the cut you're viewing. One thing that can be said in this film's favor is that it isn't boring--it lurches from overheated melodrama to exposition dumps to lengthy uses of stock footage to lengthy closeups of the producer as the bad guy to gratuitous gypsy dancing to Monica Tidwell naked. The ultimate question is this: why haven't the crew of RiffTraxx seized on this?

Arthur Marks had a respectably consistent career as a director and producer, working on TV series like "Perry Mason", then transitioning to exploitation films in the 1970s: blackspoitation ("Friday Foster", "Detroit 9000", "J. D.'s Revenge"), sexploitation ("Togetherness", "Linda Lovelace for President"), and things like the sexploitation/proto-slasher hybrid "The Roommates". While these films were popular, none of them would hit any artistic high marks, which brings us to this film, something of an anomaly in Marks' oeuvre. I watched this on a DVD/Blue Ray set that included both "A Woman For All Men" and "The Roommates", so I could compare Marks' style. "A Woman For All Men" wins hands down in terms of being the better film. That being said, it's still not a great or even good film when held up against other "mainstream" titles of the era. Marks was not a great screenwriter, so he was wise to bring in Robert Brees to provide the story. Brees had also had a respectable career, writing (or more accurately, collaborating on) potboilers like "Magnificent Obsession" and "Autumn Leaves" before graduating up (or down, depending on your preference) to exploitation like "From Earth to the Moon", "Frogs", and "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?" What we have here is a domestic soap opera with some noirish overtones, accented with some rather demur nudity by Judith Brown. Anyone who is familiar with Ms. Brown inevitably remembers her as she looked in "Women in Cages" and "The Big Doll House", with long auburn hair. For this film, she totally changed her look, getting a curly, dyed-blonde bob that would become the standard coiffure of middle-aged, gated-community housewives during the 1980s; she looks a younger Rue McClanahan. I won't bother to rehash the plot, but I do believe the movie begins to fragment once the affair between Brown and Andrew Robinson's characters is underway. The supporting characters, such as the older brother and his girlfriend and Steve's girlfriend, all but vanish from the story. There's also a lot of choppy editing and scenes that end suddenly. One complaint: we see a randomly inserted scene where Karen, Brown's character, witness the daughter masturbating. The scene cuts from Karen's face, to the daughter doing the act, then back to Karen, then a close-up of the daughter screetching at Karen that she's ruined everything. Apparently this was some sort of leftover from an incest plot point that was cut from the final print. It would have been interesting, but some slipshod editing let it go. And of course, the twist ending that you could more or less suspect: there were two characters that might have possibly wanted Karen out of the picture, so it was no big surprise to learn who it was.

Despite being a decent thriller, Marks couldn't resist marketing the movie like one of his "girly" flicks, insinuating all kinds of sexy shananigans (the movie's alternate title was "Part Time Wife") which ultimately were not there. The version I saw looked great, the only noticeable grain was on the opening montage of Karen putting on make-up under the credits. The dialogue in the first half of the film is crisp, but as I said erratic editing plagues the second half. The ending seems like something out of a TV movie of the era, most of which look like high art when stacked up against recent theatrical offerings. Given this was made by a sexploitation director/producer, all around it's rather good. Average, but good.

This low budget effort with Victor Buono ought to be some sort of cult classic but somehow has fallen off the radar. While not quite a proto-slasher, the film's protagonist has several of the tropes that distinguish the genre: psycho-sexual disfunction with an Oedipal basis; social awkwardness/sexual frustration with the opposite sex, and a kinky fetish, this time out for carnival-prize dolls. No blood or gore (that's why the film is called "The Strangler" instead of "The Slasher"), but there is an approach to the sexual element of what Buono's character does that must have been daring at the time: Buono's climaxing as he undresses one of the dolls he won at the arcade is no less shocking for the fact that we only see his reaction in close up from the neck up. There's also a police procedural element that gives the hint of a giallo, although the film hardly suggests that genre in style or design. An intriguing character study of a disturbed individual operating in broad daylight that deserves a bigger audience than it has.

There are actually two versions of this film. Originally released in 1965, DAY OF THE NIGHTMARE was a pretty standard detective thriller with a lurid twist: the killer was an artist with a split personality (dissociative disorder) that was female. Apparently this version didn't register at the box office, because four years later it was re-released with newly-filmed sex scenes inserted--the producers lured several of the actors back to make them. This sexploitation version is the one that Something Weird released back in the 90s. I used to get their catalogues, and the writer who described this version wondered why star John Ireland was in a "nudie". The fact is, he wasn't, at least as the movie was originally released.

The 1969 recut version --the Something Weird version I originally reviewed--is available for sale on Amazon and through other second-hand dealers. The original 1965 version is on Amazon Prime. If you don't have the stomach for sixties grindhouse fare, go with that version. If you want a walk on the wild side-lesbian make out sessions, fetishistic whippings, etc.--go with the Something Weird version.

There are so many concepts competing for the viewers' attention here that the end result is a Mulligan's stew of badness. Seemingly created as a vehicle for Fred Travalena (remember him?), you have a comedy with that peculiar brand of arch humor that propelled the Monkees for a few seasons before they fell out of favor. This family-friendly approach makes me think this thing may have been geared toward teens, along with a hokey, believe-in-yourself philosophy that seems to have been the driving force behind many an afterschool special. No sex, campy violence, and mild profanity reinforce this idea. Sure, it's a parody of slasher films, if the parody was written by middle schoolers for a school talent show. It's also an independent production, so lack of funds, producer meddling, and some generally bad ideas probably kept it in obscurity until Code Red resurrected it from oblivion. Still, it's somewhat charming if you're in the right mood or are jonesing for some late eighties/early nineties nostalgia.

I gave this picture 5 stars--dead center (a good slasher title, now that I think about it). Which is the quality of THE MUTILATOR aka FALL BREAK--mediocre. The flick does have some cred with me for being shot in my home state of NC, so it can go in that venerable hall of acclaim with FINAL EXAM and THE BODY SHOP (look that one up). It's technically fine--the director and crew seem to have known how to keep boom mike shadows out of the shots--but the tone veers back and forth between PORKY'S inspired levity and mild menace a little too much for my taste. After the prologue, we wait nearly 40 minutes (in a 1 hour, 26 minute film) for the first kill. Fortunately, the acting is competent, with the two leads coming out the best. The supporting players are fine, but their heavy eastern NC accents can be distracting. The final act contains all the goodies, as we get the full force gore we've be languishing in a wasteland of TV-sitcom level comedy and middling suspense for. One detail that sets this one apart: we know upfront who the killer is (who, by the way, has no dialogue--wonder why?) Watchable, but hardly extraordinary.