This week, amongst the usual great reviews over at Joe Horror, is my look at a classic, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, done a little differently, in the theatrical style.

Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma, chameleon...

Posted by: Ted at 05:50 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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You know the drill. Over at Joe Horror, the new movie reviews are up.

This week, I give the surprising lowdown on Gojira, also known (in it's bastardized and heavily edited American version) as Godzilla.

Posted by: Ted at 05:35 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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Over at Joe Horror, my review this week is of Onibaba. Classic Japanese horror, and one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen. Read the review, see the movie.

Posted by: Ted at 05:24 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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Ralph Bakshi animation is either hit or miss.

Miss.

Posted by: Ted at 06:55 PM | category: Cult Flicks
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This week at Joe Horror, I review Black Magic. Hong Kong film fans might enjoy this 70's-era Shaw Brothers horror film that contains, astoundingly, *no* kung fu!

Posted by: Ted at 05:08 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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On August 10th, Turner Classic Movies will be showing Vincent Price movies all day long. I've already got the recorder set for classics like The Tingler, The Masque of Red Death, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes, amongst others. This is a grand opportunity to fill in some holes in my Vincent Price collection, and I'm taking full advantage.

It might be worthwhile to check out the rest of the month, as they're highlighting a star each day.

Posted by: Ted at 04:36 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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Deep Red is the second half of the double feature with Silent Night, Bloody Night. It's also an Italian giallo by Dario Argento, who followed up with Susperia and Tenebre, two amazing flicks. Unlike many of his other movies though, this one has a reasonably coherent story to tell.

Oops! What's a giallo? From Wikipedia:

"Giallo" films are characterized by extended murder sequences featuring excessive bloodletting, stylish camerawork and unusual musical arrangements. The literary whodunit element is retained, but combined with modern slasher horror, while being filtered through Italy's longstanding tradition of opera and staged grand guignol drama. They also generally include liberal amounts of nudity and sex.

Gialli typically introduce strong psychological themes of madness, alienation, and paranoia.

This is a typical Dario Argento movie. It’s filled with lush colors, surreal moments, brutal murders, sudden shocks, an exceptional music score by Goblin and a storyline that is vague enough to not get in the way of the imagery that Argento is striving to project. Calling it “typical” though doesn’t make it ordinary, as if anything he did could be merely ordinary.

Marcus (David Hemmings – Blow Up) is a professional musician. Helga (Macha Meril) is a psychic who can read minds. What they have in common is that they live in the same apartment building in the city.

One evening, Helga is appearing on a panel discussing paranormal phenomenon when she detects the thoughts of a killer. Someone in the audience is radiating enough murderous hatred that Helga is quite overcome by the emotion. ItÂ’s powerful enough that she also learns who the murderer is, although she doesnÂ’t reveal that because thereÂ’s no proof beyond her psychic detection.

Later that night, the murderer goes to HelgaÂ’s apartment to permanently prevent her from revealing the truth. Marcus witnesses HelgaÂ’s brutal (understatement alert!) murder from the street below their apartments, and when he rushes upstairs he is too late to save her life. The killer has escaped, yet Marcus is certain that he saw something that positively identifies the murderer, if he can only remember what it is. Even though the police are handling the case, Marcus becomes obsessed with they mystery and starts to investigate himself, aided by pretty newspaper reporter Giana (Daria Nicolodi - Tenebre) and HelgaÂ’s fellow psychics.

The killer seems to anticipate his every move, and each time he makes progress towards solving the mystery another person who knows something important winds up dead in a savage and entertainingly gruesome way.

ItÂ’s not all murder and mystery though. Several humorous scenes involving the Gianna and Marcus are used to ease the tension, and the contrast heightens the impact of the darker moments.

YouÂ’re kept guessing right up to the end. The butler didnÂ’t do it.

The city where this all takes place is never named, other than being in Italy. The direction offers frequent moments throughout the movie where a scene is framed as a static tableau, and it lingers there until movement intrudes upon the carefully crafted still-life. At other times, the cuts are frantic and almost subliminal as multiple viewpoints flash by onscreen. The storyline is more prominent than ArgentoÂ’s next film, Susperia.

I was taken by surprise when the movie switched from English dubbing to Italian with English subtitles and back, sometimes within the same scene. What IÂ’ve since learned is that quite a bit of the movie was edited out before the English dubbing was done. This version restores much of the original film, but itÂ’s only available with subtitles because it was never dubbed in English. Apparently several versions of the source material were used because in a few scenes you can tell that the Italian is dubbed! As quirky as that was, I was able to quickly get used to it and before long I hardly noticed it.

For the most part, the acting is excellent, although the scenes where the police were involved didnÂ’t match the tone of the rest of the movie. Perhaps it was intentional, but the various cops come across as knuckle-dragging dolts. Not just ineffective police officers, but as uncouth paint-chip-eating boors. Maybe that was to give Marcus a reason to continue his personal investigation.

Damn good movie. Highly recommended.

Posted by: Ted at 05:53 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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I submitted a couple of reviews to Joe Horror a while back which weren't accepted due to editorial considerations. I thought we'd worked it out, but they still haven't been posted there, so I'll post 'em here. I put effort into these things, dammit, so somebody is going to get to read them!

I picked up a stack of horror/thriller double features at the flea market a few weeks ago. They're one step up from no-name releases, but I recognized enough of the titles to take a chance on four of 'em (for about ten bucks and change).

First up is Silent Night, Bloody Night. After watching this movie and putting down my initial impressions, I did a little research on it. I discovered that it was made a full two years before the seminal Black Christmas even though both movies were released in 1974. Black Christmas is considered by some to be the original slasher flick, but this movie was actually the first to introduce the main elements of the genre.

Silent Night, Bloody Night is a low budget effort that mostly works, right up until the surprise ending. Yes, it was a surprise (to me anyway), but it really stretched my capacity for suspending disbelief. Stretched it right beyond the breaking point. The plot itself is somewhat confused, but I had no problem following the main arc of the story.

The movie opens with a nifty little point-of-view scene (shades of Halloween!) where someone uses a monkey wrench to bludgeon their way to freedom as they escape from a mental hospital.

Next, in a narrated flashback we witness old man Butler burning to death in his front yard. He set himself on fire in one of those freak fireplace accidents you hear about all too often. You havenÂ’t? Me neither. In his will, the old man left his mansion to his grandson, with the proviso that the house be left empty. Over the years, the house gained a reputation for being haunted.

Thirty years later, the house is up for sale. Nobody has lived there in accordance with the wishes of old man Butler, but a caretaker has kept the property and house in good repair. A hotshot city lawyer is in town to handle the process, and he offers it to the town council for a fraction of what it’s worth. The town council jumps at the offer for reasons that become clear later on. The lawyer and his girlfriend are staying at the house overnight, even though the council members offer to put them up in a motel. Ominously, the town’s switchboard operator offers to re-connect the telephone service to the house “just in case”.

Having that phone connected comes in handy, just not for the lawyer and his girlfriend. They get brutally hacked to death while having sex. Afterwards, the axe-wielding maniac uses the phone to place chilling calls to the members of the town council, inviting them out to the house.

The grandson himself makes an appearance and ends up accompanying the MayorÂ’s daughter (Mary Woronov) through the rest of the movie. When asked why heÂ’s selling, he simply answers that he needs the money.

The rest of the plot is your now-standard fare, as victims are isolated and killed one by one. ItÂ’s only interesting here because the slasher genre that we now know so well hadnÂ’t evolved yet, at the time of this movie it was all brand new.

The acting was pretty good all around. Woronov as the MayorÂ’s daughter has the best role in the flick. John Carradine plays one of the members of the town council and he communicates by ringing a desk clerk bell when he agrees with something that someone else said.

Ok, back to the ending that I hated so much. ItÂ’s memorable, because the whole background story about the house and the Butler family is told, accompanied by an extended flashback done in sepia-tone. The actors that appear in the flashback were all from Andy WarholÂ’s Factory. While the story told is chilling, the writers took it one step too far. Sharks are cool, sharks with frigginÂ’ laser beams on their heads is silly. You know what I mean?

The first axe murder in the movie is nicely gory, but after that most of the killing happens in darkness, making it impossible to see details. Part of the problem is the original camera work, which is strictly low-budget, but the video transfer on my copy was very poor. The movie has been released several times by different distributors and the picture quality varies among them.

The opening music to the movie was a creepy version of “Silent Night”. Done in a minor key and using unexpected dissonant chords, the song was recognizable and yet the entire feel of the music went from reverential to sinister. Very nicely done.

Silent Night, Bloody Night is kind of a missing link between 60Â’s horror and how the genre evolved into the slasher craze, and for that reason alone I think itÂ’s worth seeing.

Posted by: Ted at 05:29 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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