VIOLENT MIDNIGHT (aka PYSCHOMANIA)

1963/Director: Richard Hilliard/Writers: Richard Hilliard, Robin Miller

Cast: Lee Philips, Shepperd Strudwick, Jean Hale, Lorraine Rogers, Dick Van Patten, James Farentino

This is a really decent early slasher/stalker style film produced by Del Tenney, who would go on to direct films like The Horror of Party Beach, I Eat Your Skin (Zombies) and Curse of the Living Corpse. The direction by Richard Hilliard is stylishly dark and moody. It came out at a time when a spat of films where showing the influence of Hicthcock’s 1960 masterpiece Psycho. But the film is a cut above the rest in terms of story, acting and imagery. We have a pretty decent police style mystery (with none other than Dick Van Patten, from prime-time’s Eight Is Enough, as the tough talking detective who has two men suspected of some slashing murders in the local college town. There is the tortured artist type (Lee Philips) who paints nude women and has anger issues and a incorrigible punk (James Farentino) who seems the logical suspect but we are thrown a surprise ending that seems more like a Giallo shock style ending. In fact the film has a few Giallo elements, including a black leather gloved stalker and lots of strange camera shots but the film in fact predates the Giallo genre by a year or two. Bava’s stylish trend setting Black and Black Lace had yet to be released. Shot in sharp b/w with a good music score it is a must for any fan of stalker/slasher styled films but before they became an actual film genre.

CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (aka THE CRIMSON CULT, THE CRIMSON ALTAR)

1968/Director: Vernon Sewell/Writers: Mervyn Haisman, Henry Lincoln

Cast: Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Mark Eden, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, Virginia Wetherell, Rosemarie Reede

Barbara Steele plays the evil witch Lavinia who has placed a curse on the descendants of the small village where she was executed centuries before during the witch trials of Europe and Britain. She looks great all painted green and wearing some sort of gold, horned witches hat. Of course the curse has finally found it way down the line to last of the descendants Robert Manning (Mark Eden) who has come to the village, during the time of the year when it celebrates its witchy history, to find his missing brother. He attempts to enlist the help of Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff in his search and I think you can imagine how that turns out. The film has that psychedelic feel of the period with mod dances and groovy parties. Sexy women run around in skin tight clothes and the acting is great, of course, but the film over all is not what you might have wanted from all the talent involved. Karloff was ill during the production and I am not sure if his character being confined to a wheelchair was part of the script or was necessary for the ailing actor. Torture chambers and scenes bordering on S/M make this a must see for fans of the 60’s and 70’s witch films. Michael Gough has a small but effective role as the slightly touched butler. A departure from his usually over the top loud mouth egotist characters like he portrayed in Horror of the Black Museum, Trog and Konga.

FROGS

1972/Director: George McCowan/Writers: Robert Hutchison

Cast: Ray Milland, Sam Elliott, Joan Van Ark, Adam Roarke, Judy Pace, Lynn Borden

One of the first eco-horror or animal attack films API’s Frogs is not really that spooky in any real way and the Frogs themselves pose no threat to anyone except to a wheelchair bound Ray Milland at the film’s end despite the misleading poster art that shows a giant frog swallowing a human hand. Millionaire Jason Crocket (Milland) is not going to let anything ruin his annual 4th of July celebration on his plantation style mansion in the Florida swamps. The celebrations are joined by a recently boatless, and sometimes shirtless, Picket Smith (Sam Elliot). Smith was knocked into the swampy lake waters by Crocket’s typically drunken son Clint, played by Adam Rourke who made some of the better biker films of the late 60’s like Hells Angels on Wheels with co-star Jack Nicholson. Also running around in an extremely tight little yellow 70’s style suit is Jason’s daughter Karen (Joan Van Ark of the Dallas spin-off Knot’s landing). While nothing much ever happens in the film I still found it fun to watch. Sam Elliot is good in his super-macho way in this early role. The deaths actually occur by rebelling against destructive mankind animals like snakes, spiders, alligators and even lizards who can somehow figure out the right combinations of poisons to knock over to kill one party-goer in the hothouse. An interesting synthesizer score that sounds like someone just a new Moog or Arp and was pluncking around on the keys and turning the dials to see what would happen. Strangely interesting film overall.

BAMBOO SAUCER

1968/Director: Frank Telford/Writers: John P. Fulton, Frank Telford

Cast: Dan Duryea, John Ericson, Lois Nettleton, Bob Hastings, Vincent Beck

Not one of those films too many people have ever heard of and so all the more deserving of a mention here at the Café. A cold war period sci-adventure that is mostly for cheese lovers. While the film is campy from the get-go the film makers were trying to make a real science fiction with a message. The American military has information that the Red Chinese are holding onto a downed alien space craft which they are keeping in the super secure location of a run down old church in the undeveloped countryside. A team led by Hank Peters (Dan Duryea in his last role) sneaks into China with little trouble and there run into a team of Russians who are on the same mission. The film focuses not so much on the threat of the aliens but on the message that we have to cooperate as a species in order to survive (too bad, I wish a big bug had jumped out and eaten a Red myself) and the Ruskies and Yanks unite to use the UFO escape the more evil of the three Chinese. The acting is pretty bad and the camera work and editing are worse, but I enjoyed this one anf recommend it. I chose to show the more exciting looking DVD cover rather than the original movie poster, which I usually prefer to do. The original cover just was not as cool as the DVD cover.

DEADGIRL

2008/Directors: Marcel Sarmiento, Gadi Harel/Writer: Trent Haaga

Cast: Shiloh Fernandez, Noah Segan, Michael Bowen, Candice Accola, Andrew DiPalma, Eric Podnar, Nolan Gerard Funk

I was simply taken back by the R-rated, independent horror film DeadGirl. I am so tired of PG-13 horror and lost my passion for locating Sam Rami’s new return to horror movie Drag Me to Hell when I read it was PG-13. Of course I will see the film, I simply wanted something that would knock my socks off and usually PG-13 just cannot do that. Deadgirl did. Now I am not saying that this is some super great film. It is fine indie horror film with a cast of essentially unknown faces. I read some reviews that over analyze the film and call it a “sub-standard horror film”. Look the film is basically a horror film about necrophilia and you can criticize how effectively the filmmakers explored their characters motivations and reactions to what they do but in the end it is a film about raping, if not a corpse, a zombie of some sorts. There is gore, action and loads of teenage angst. So if you want to set back and over analyze the film’s intentions and symbolism you may find it wanting. If, on the other hand, you just want to see a couple of screwed up geek boy misfits, and even a couple jocks, have sex with a putrid zombie and get wants coming to them in the end then I can highly recommend this film from directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel and writer Trent Haaga. From what I read the movie was not even shot or edited on film but rather employed the same digital technique David Fincher used on Zodiac. I had my doubts about the new digital movie making processes when I read about them a couple years ago but the movie looks like it was shot on real film.

MORE DEAD GIRL HERE >>

THE GENE GENERATION

2007/Director: Pearry Reginald Teo/Writers: Keith Collea, Pearry Reginald Teo

Cast: Ling Bai, Alec Newman, Parry Shen, Faye Dunaway, Ethan Cohn

The Gene Generation with Chinese actress Bai Ling (or Ling Bai as it sometimes appears if you put the family name first) is one of those films that definitely falls into the category of it ‘could have been better’. The movie is not a waste of time and as the Café has evolved from its early posts I have taken a rather neutral position on most of the films I write about and I do not feel I actually recommend or pan films. I will leave that up to the reader to decide. While I cannot say I liked The Gene Generation all that much it seems to earn a post here not so much for the erratic storyline and touch and go production quality of the film itself but for the presence of lanky and luscious Bai Ling. Before talking about, and hopefully defending, the sometimes (actually usually) maligned Bai Ling I think I will say a word about my blogging process and why sometimes it is a drawback for me.

One problem I have is that I watch simply more movies than I can do decent posts on. I am not the type of person who wants to review every movie  right after I watch it, like better reviewers do I suppose. I started the Necrofiles category which is a way to skim over four or so movies at a time with comments of a brief paragraph or two at most. I work as an ESL teacher in China and the job, as well as life here at times, is draining. I may have the time to write but not the mental energy. I think over the last year I have begun to develop a writing style I like a little. I like to create a post that draws information from different sources on the net, as well as my own personal opinion, and brings them together in one place with images I either find online or make myself in the form of vidcaps, some that are pretty decent. The first thing I do when I decide to write about a film is find articles I like and make them into PDFs for future reference, get cast and crew info from IMDB or a similar site and then start collecting images and then they are all brought together in a rough form and stored as a nearly complete draft that I may save for months sometimes before I get around to writing the article. I must have over a dozen drafts now that have are laid out with images and cast/crew info but no written article. During that time of course I am watching more movies of a Uranium nature as well as mainstream films and sometimes doing posts as well on something I just watched.

MORE GENE GENERATION WITH BAI LING HERE >>

TODAY’S FAR OUT FEATURE: TROG

SEE TROG MENACE JOAN CRAWFORD AND MICHAEL GOUGH HERE >>

I recently happened upon this short and relatively unknown 1984 documentary by Tom Corboy about fanatical Elvis fans whose lives revolve the King in one way or another. After the King’s death in 1977 they ave all experienced some loss of purpose and direction that they cannot seem to resolve. One man  named Artie Mentz is an Elvis impersonator who sees himself as a priest in some ways. The same way a real priest represents an invisible but present God so does Artie represent Elvis. At one point Artie explains how he was bewildered when, during lean times, his daughter said he should basically get a ‘real job’. Artie is driven to do what he does by a higher calling  it seems. Another woman story seems almost tragic as she talks about how her marriage failed because her husband did not share her fervor for Elvis and even felt she was a bit insane. She left her son to finish high school in New Jersey so she could travel south and live closer to Memphis and Graceland. She feels any red blooded American woman would have to desire to have sex with Elvis but she is appalled that a friend of her’s claimed that Elvis singing for her would be enough. She say she would like Elvis to sing for her too but while he is making love to her at the same time of course. She talks about a daughter of hers who loved Elvis as well and who Elvis once took upon stage at a concert and hugged and gave a scarf to as a gift.  Tragically the little girl is one day abducted and murdered and the distraught woman causes a controversy in her family by playing an Elvis song at the funeral service. My God, let the woman play what she wants are her own daughter’s funeral. Another pair of super fans are twin girls who believe that they Elvis’s daughters and one proof is that their mother has never said that they weren’t. The girls and Artie see cosmic significance in adding up the date of Elvis’s death, 16 August 1977, and getting the number 2001 which was the song (used in the the Stanley Kubrick film) Elvis used to open his act with in his last years. Well they call the song 2001 but actually the piece was  Also Sprach Zarathustra, a tone poem by Richard Strauss inspired by the book by Friedrich Neitzsche  but who the hell knows that anyway.

MORE OF MONDO ELVIS HERE >>

Yvonne Craig will always be remembered Batgirl in the great 1960’s TV series Batman with Adam West playing a campy caped crusader and Burt Ward as his trusted sidekick Robin the Boy Wonder. The series featured a host of great villains played by Hollywood notables like Caesar Romero, Burgess Meredith and Vincent Price. Craig played Commissioner Gordon’s daughter Barbara and in a few episode donned a mask and cape to lend a hand to the dynamic duo. She sported a nifty motorcycle and had her own them song. Besides the Batman series she played in a few films along side lead men like Bing Crosby, James Coburn and Elvis. Born in the Midwest in Illinois she has an impish all American girl look but with a just a proportioned dab of the naughty brunette thrown into the mix to make her a little exotic. She was trained in ballet and dance and some of her fight sequences in Batman show her lithe agility and strength and in the famous Star Trek episode Whom Gods Destroy she does a titillating dance sequence before winding up in an insane asylum. Yvonne comes from a time when women had curves and femininity still. All the sex bombs of today have lousy tattoos, six pack abs and chronic hostile angst. In some of the selected images here I think her charm and sex appeal come through without any of the angry attitude that we have to suffer through these days. Recently saw her along aside Tommy Kirk in Mars Needs Women and expect an in depth analysis of that Z-classic soon. Also just got in How to Frame A Figg where she tempts an always antsy Don Knotts and that will show up eventually as a double feature with The Love God?, which sadly she does not star in.

MORE OF LEGGY YVONNE CRAIG HERE >>

REVENGE OF THE ZOMBIES aka BLACK MAGIC II (Gou Hun Jiang Tou)

1976/ Director: Meng Hua Ho/Writer: Kuang Ni

Cast: Lo Lieh, Lung Ti, Ni Tien, Lily Li, Feng Lin, Wei Tu Lin, Terry Liu

AKA:
Bewitch Tame Head
Black Magic II
Ngau Wan Gong Tau

Shaw Brothers Studios leading horror/exploitation director Meng Hua Ho returns to the helm for this 1976 sequel to the previous year’s Black Magic. Also returning are veteran wuxia pian (‘heroic kung fu films’ usually with a wandering swordsman on a knight errant mission) actors Lo Lieh (sometimes Lieh Lo if you search using the Asian method of family names first) and Ti Lung with Lo Lieh serving this time as the black magician. While I have not yet been able to find of a copy the first Black Magic film I understand that Lo Lieh was not the black magician in that one and will reserve any comments on that film until I have actually seen it. While the two Black Magic films have the reputation as Shaw Brothers studio most famous horror films they were in no way the first as the studio had dabbled in non-Kung Fun genres as far back as the 50’s. The Hong Kong horror genres would evolve , after the 80’s, into the Category III variety (meaning sexually explicit but not quite hard core porn) and contain the sort of gory shock elements found in most modern Japanese horror. With Black Magic II (Revenge of the Zombies and Gou Hun Jiang Tou) there are more than enough elements visually and story wise to keep the film somewhat linked to the classic Shaw Brother’s films of the 60’s and early 70’s and yet has a few twists make it a little surprising as well.

MORE BLACK MAGIC II HERE >>

Until only recently I had never seen a episode of the British television production, by Granada Television, of the 1984 to 1994 Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett as Conan Doyle’s master sleuth and David Burke and Edward Hardwicke taking turns at Dr. Watson. There were a few reasons for this that I will go into but in the end I think I may have been simply hard headed and biased towards anyone playing the role other than Basil Rathbone. But that is not the only reason and as time has gone on I can see some flaws in the Rathbone films, though not in his particularly perfect portrayal of Holmes. I picked up the boxed set with Brett a month or so ago and at the same time begin re-reading some of the stories in my two volume collection of the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes that I keep on my bedside table, usually along side a couple books by Louis Lamour and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (my moods fluctuate obviously). I went into the series with some skepticism but not to the degree I will approach the new Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. interpretation.

My main concern was not with Jeremy Brett, who I knew nothing of but had read for some time that his performance is highly praised, but with the fact it was a British TV production. I typically do not like British TV shows, with exceptions of course, simply because of the way they look. The sets usually look like stage sets (even when they’re not) and the camera work looks jumpy and washed out, as if it were all shot on video rather than film. For all I know it may be. Sometimes the camera work is in and out of focus and the sound quality is flat at best. More like some drama you would see on PBS than on American prime time or cable. Which is not to say that what shows up on US TV is really better in substance but is usually better in form than most British TV which is in strange contrast to the usually above average look and feel of British cinema.

MORE OF JEREMY BRETT AS SHERLOCK HOLMES HERE >>

I was never a big fan of National Lampoon and its brand of humor but as a young lad imagine my surprise when I walked by the magazine rack and saw the above fantastic Frank Frazetta cover gracing the August 1973 issue. I picked it up and on the inside was yet another Frazetta drawing for a comic book spoof about a gay Dracula quaintly named Dragula. The story was drawn by another great master Neil Adams who also penned another story for the same issue called Son o’ God about a super hero messiah. Frazetta did another cover for Lampoon that I am aware of but I prefer this one and when I stumbled across this online the other day I thought I would put them up here and share them with the Cafe denizens since these drawings are fairly unknown. I know I just did a Frazetta post recently but I just do not think a person can ever get enough Frazetta. Imagine a time when you could scoop up art like this for a mere .75 cents.