archive1 Reviews

Scream of the Demon Lover (1970)

Talk About the European Union!!

[20 July 2003]

'Scream of the Demon Lover' stradles the time period when sex and gore were slowly becoming more explicit and extreme in European genre movies. Made in 1970, the cast is a hodgepodge of nationalities and names, leading one to wonder if anyone could understand each other during shooting...the dialog ie obviously dubbed, so it's possible that the wooden acting is really the result of too many languages being spoken at once. Similar in some ways to Bava's far superior "Whip and Body", this film presents the story of a young female chemist who comes to live in a town's gothic castle helping the young baron find a way to bring his dead brother back to life. Most of the plot twists come from Italian gothic horror films of the 60's , and there is really very little original or striking about the locations or performances. In short, 'Scream of the Demon Lover' is a well-paced but cliche-laden movie that probably will entertain completists only.

Flashback (2002)

Weak German Slasher Film

[24 May 2003]

I basically rented this one for two reasons: First, I had really enjoyed 'Autopsy' and was curious what other young German genre directers were doing in this vein; secondly, in reading the box credits, I saw that Elke Sommer was in the movie, albeit in a small role. As my personal choice of the hottest of the 60's screen sirens, I was curious as to what she was doing now. The answer to this question, at least if 'Flashback' is any indication, is 'walk-on rolls in domestic B Movies'! This is forgettable nonsense regarding a young woman who is hired on as a French Tutor at an country estate. The direct inspirations seem to be Henry James 'Turn of the Screw' and the American slasher flicks of the 1980's. Just about every cliche of the slasher genre is brought in somewhere...the spoiled kids, the sexually-repressed girl, the strange caretaker (played by Sommer...who looks great for her age, I am happy to report!) , the hedonistic and sadistic 'cool' kids who you just know are not going to be with us to the end of the picture. It's been done, and it's been done far better than 'Flashback'. One other comment, although I rarely mention things like this: the English Dubbing is AWFUL...not even close to synched to the lip movements, and you get the feeling that they were trying to make the movie more 'topical' to an American audience by changing parts of the script. The worst example of this is one of the cloddish local Maintainace Men who finds the first body is given a American Southern Redneck accent, even though his companion is decked out in liederhosen and Tyrolian hat!! For Slasher genre completists only...3 out of 10!

All of them Witches (1996)

Visually Arresting

[8/10 · 15 November 2002]

I never saw this movie with English subtitles, and my Spanish is not the best, but Telemundo ran this on Halloween a few years ago and I taped it. I would put this film in the very top tier of horror films, as gripping as Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". Director Gruener gets to the real root of the horrific; that horror is not some lunatic standing outside your door with an axe, per se, but a human reaction to trauma and isolation. He emphasises this idea by frequently contrasting the wealth of the young couple at the center of the action with the poverty, misery and superstition found in any Third World country. As the young woman decends to the verge of insanity, she finds herself more and more in contact with this gutteral, almost bestial world that all their luxury cannot protect her from. The shattered fishbowl of the opening scene is used as a metaphor(I think) for the narrow margin between these two worlds; wealth and poverty,the beautiful (Suzane Zamora is an eyeful!) and the grotesque; the sane and the mad. A great film, thoughtfully and sensitively presented!

Blood Frenzy (1987)

Dud Frenzy

[4/10 · 6 October 2002]

Ah, the 80's...big hair, twelve step programs, bad slasher films..."Blood Frenzy" features all three, in a way that is at least mildly interesting. The central plot device involves a therapy group cavorting around Death Valley for a weekend "away from it all" in the 110 degree sun! Just as they are settling into their weekend digs (the whole thing would fall apart as a premise now because of cell phones) , the slicing and dicing starts. Of course, the van they came in has been sabotaged, so they have to figure out how to get away from the crazed killer, while dealing with their own psychological problems. This film is quite similar to the far better "The Hills Have Eyes". The dialog is sometimes laughably bad (the last line of the movie is "It's over"...) and the acting rarely gets to a level above your average student film. That said, there is something almost endearing about "Blood Frenzy", maybe in the way it encapsulates the first wave of Straight-To-Video movies, when local Mom and Pop stores were filled to the brim with cheap, knocked off junk like this. No one is ever going to do a delux DVD remaster of "Blood Frenzy", and even at a distance of 15 years it seems almost as quaint and dated as a 1950's low budget drive-in movie. To me, this is part of its off-the-wall charm, but if anyone actually wants to watch an atmospheric horror flick...avoid this title!I gave this movie a rating of **** , largely for personal nostalgia for this kind of stuff, but the actual rating in any sort of objective sense would really be a * or at best a **! Enjoy!

Qiao tan nu jiao wa (1977)

Great Hong Kong action ahead of its time!

[8/10 · 8 September 2002]

This is a surprisingly important film, representing the break between Hong Kong studios production of Martial Arts movies and the contemporary action/adventure yarns that would dominate the industry in the 1980's. Within THAT subgenre , the "girls-n-guns" motif became one of the most reliable (some would say cliched) breadwinners for the HK industry. This, produced in 1976, was one of the first, and for my money one of the best! There's a plot in there somewhere about a diamond smuggling operation, but this one works if you check your logic circits at the door and enjoy the spectacle of some great looking athletic young women doing battle with the usual assortment of one-dimentional sadistic triad bosses. Kind of similar to Charlie's Angels from US television, except their "Bosley" is the lovely Evlynn Kraft of 'Mighty Peking Man' fame...it's a good thing for everyone that no one tried to fit David Doyle into some of Kraft's hot pants and go go boots outfits! If you can find this one....check it out!

Second to Die (2002)

Interesting Thriller

[23 July 2002]

I have to give Erica Eleniac credit: she really is trying hard to shed her early career as 'eye candy' and take on more challenging and serious roles. Hollywood being what it is, she still spends a lot of time in this movie scantilly clad...but also delivers a performance of real depth as a party girl who married for money only to find herself trapped in a loveless marriage. When she starts to plot to have her husband killed, things start to go terribly wrong. The movie uses an unusual framing devise in having the action related in a series of flashbacks from the dead woman's diary as it is being read by her younger sister (also Eleniak). Paul Winfield also delivers a solid performance as an aging cop, somewhat similar to that of Gene Hackman's aging cop in the movie 'Falling Down'. While not exactly a masterpiece, and utilizing plot devises that have cropped up many times in other movies, the quality of the cast and the dead-on solid performance by Eleniak combine to lift this film over its B-movie cliches!Recomended

Frightmare (1974)

Disturbing and Thoughtful

[8/10 · 30 June 2001]

Until recently Peter Walker's films were rather hard to find in the U.S., appearing in chopped-up form on late-night television only...The video box I found for this film identified it as "Once Upon a Frightmare"(!) which may have something to do with the rights to the title held by an awful American horror film from the eighties. Appararantly this is now out on DVD, which is great, because it really deserves to be watched by more than a few horror afficianados. Although the movie concerns cannibalism...it is similar to Hooper's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in that it uses the idea of cannibalism as a metaphor for one generation destroying its predecessor generation. It is also interesting that the women in this film are the strong characters while the men are the emotional and helpless ones...I would highly recommend this film to anyone interested in thought-provoking genre cimema.

The Defilers (1965)

The DVD is worth the price of admission

[7/10 · 2 June 2001]

This is a great DVD package from Something Wierd with two early sixties exploitation classics ("the Defilers" and "Scum of the Earth"), two great short subjects, three drive-in intermission promos(if you don't believe this world is gone forever, check out the butter-and-red-meat saturated 'refreshments' offered by the friendly drive-in snack bar!) , a great commentary track by David Friedman tracing the history of West Coast poverty-row movie production, and a dozen cool trailers for such masterpieces of cinema as "Banned" and "Sex Killer"! The folks at Something Wierd should be commended for a great job of packaging which captures the time period better than a thousand pretentious documentaries! For fans of the genre, I would give the DVD an eleven!

Of the two features, "the Defilers" is the'better' of the two, almost artistic in some sections, and although it's very tame by today's standards, I personally think it is a thousand times more sensual and interesting than the pro-forma 'erotic thrillers' the industry turns out today.

Yajuu densetsu: Dragon blue (1996)

Well done Japan Formula Piece

[7/10 · 31 March 2001]

While "Babe takes on Hideously Deformed and Horny Demon" movies are almost an entire subgenre in the land of the Rising Sun, "Dragon Blue"is a cut or two above the norm. Director Takoya Wada has clearly been influenced by European genre masters like Mario Bava and Lugio Fulchi, learning the most important lesson of suspense films:timing is everything! Rather than focus on piling up the transgressive stuff early, which some Japanese genre directors seem to relish, Waba allows his story to build dramatically. While it is difficult to take a movie about a big blue sea monster who kills men and rapes and kills women altogether seriously,Wada uses the setting (an isolated island far from mainland Japan) well to bring out the normal hopes and fears of the characters. Even the demon is not just a typical heavy,but a sympathetic character who actually represents enlightenment over the superstious villagers who would hunt him down. The young lady who plays the part of the Feng Shi master destined to kill the demon is not only eye candy, but an accomplished actress, turning in a surprisingly understated performance.

Katie Tippel (1975)

Surprisingly Thoughtful Indictment of 19th Century Capitalism

[7/10 · 25 March 2001]

I came across this film under the title "Hot Sweat" at my local video store, and rented it out of curiosity; I had seen many movies by this director, and always thought his work was severely underated. The movie really surprised me with it's unsensationalistic style and well done cinematography. Although the female lead is very beautiful, and manages to get undressed frequently, there is always a tension to her sexuality...she is forced to rely on it only because the audience is clearly made aware that on the other side is the penniless abyss. Rutger Haur plays totally against type as a foppish young bank officer who adopts her as his mistress.

I think most people today think of Holland as a totally liberal and affluent country. This film goes a long way towards dispelling that stereotype, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a (sometimes brutally) realistic picture of 19th century life among the underclass in Amsterdamn. I liked it.