Phenomena (1985)

Dir: DARIO ARGENTO
Country: ITALY

AKA:
Creepers

Italian filmmaking pensioner Dario Argento has an ongoing obssession with monstrous matriarchs and parental failure. In his masterpiece Deep Red (1975) the mother of homosexual pianist Carlo turns out to be a raving homicidal maniac who murdered his father and is forced to resume the slaughter to cover up the past. In Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007) Argento takes his hatred of mothers to mystical and supernatural degrees by exploring an omniscient trio of tyrants who are united by cruelty and sadism. Argento positions these evil harridans at the heart of all human misery and suffering. If Argento’s films do not feature a grotesque mother figure then they invariable present a world that is entirely absent of parental figures. In Phenomena Argento prefers the innocent world of childhood, and the wondrous and often mysterious world of insects. But Phenomena is unique in that it features a hideous homicidal parent in the shape of Frau Brückner (Daria Nicolodi) that works in tandem with parental absence. The horribly deformed child who was conceived after his mother was raped in an asylum is the only child in the film whose parent is ever present. This is in itself is abnormal enough to merit insanity and deformity in Argento's universe. The children who find themselves at the Richard Wagner boarding school have all been abandoned, and the protagonist Jennifer (Jennifer Connelly) comes from a broken family in which her father is often absent due to his profession.

Deadly Blessing (1981)

Dir: WES CRAVEN
Country: USA

At this point in his career Wes Craven was known for the mindless sadism and cruelty of The Last House on the Left (1972), an amateurish and vile exercise in screen grotesquery that he has since spent a career trying to defend. I’d have much more respect for Craven if he were to admit that his repugnant debut was an implement purely intended to make money. Instead he lives up to his surname by suggesting it is more than what it is. This shows contempt for the horror audience, a contempt he has shown throughout his career. But despite this obvious disdain, horror fans have, by and large, bought into Craven’s assertions about his debut film. Some will even argue that The Last House is a classic! Personally I’ll stick to The Wicker Man (1973) and Suspiria (1977) and anyone who wants scenes of women being made to piss themselves are welcome to them. The thematically similar The Hills Have Eyes (1977) however is far superior, and showed at least that Craven could actually a decent looking film. He took this visual competence a step further with his third theatrically released feature film Deadly Blessing. The film is notable for its lack of savagery and sadism. This is a sanitised Craven on his knees begging for entry to a mainstream he always craved. It is little more than a rural slasher, and although Craven enters into the realm of sub Halloween (1978) trickery (this just goes to highlight how inferior a filmmaker he is to John Carpenter), Deadly Blessing still manages to emerge as a lot of fun.

Lone Wolves and Hidden Dragons



Like a bullet from a Yakuza gun a new blog has been fired into the blogosphere and hopefully it will lodge firmly in your brain. I refer to Lone Wolves and Hidden Dragons, a new concern written by myself in collaboration with Brian Bankston aka Venoms5 of the brilliant Cool Ass Cinema. We both share an interest and fascination in the films of the far east, and this blog will allow us the opportunity to express our curiosity and attraction to the often wild and frequently wonderful films produced in Japan, Hong Kong, China, Thailand, and South Korea. So if giant radioactive monsters, noble samurai’s, long haired avenging ghost women, martial arts experts, and everything from art films to cult gore fests gets your attention head on over and lend your support.



Torture Garden (1967)

Dir: FREDDIE FRANCIS
Country: UK

After the resounding success of their first portmanteau horror film Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) it was inevitable that Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky would initiate a second. In the meantime Amicus had produced eight single narrative films with varying degrees of success. The commercial high point of this two year period was without a doubt Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 AD (1966). But in terms of creativity Amicus hit a home run with the peculiar contemporary set gothic chiller The Skull (1965). The short story that formed the basis of this distinctive film was written by Robert Bloch, and it was to his short stories that Amicus would turn for their second anthology Torture Garden. This time Subotsky took a back seat with regards to the writing and allowed Bloch the opportunity to adapt his own stories. One of the weaknesses of Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors was the clichéd nature of Subotsky’s screenplay, the stories themselves were highly predictable, but the movie was saved by an ingenious framing narrative. Although Torture Garden has aged very badly (it is easily amongst the weakest of Amicus’ anthologies) the stories themselves do at least possess a certain off kilter originality, and a weirdness and unpredictability that makes them far more intriguing propositions than the desultory generic retread Subotsky had provided two years before.

Empire Pictures Poster Gallery

A selection of excellent poster images from the production arm of Charles Band's Empire Pictures...Enjoy!

THE ALCHEMIST (Charles Band, 1984)

GHOULIES (Luca Bercovici, 1985)

TRANCERS (Charles Band, 1985)

Island of Terror (1966)

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

AKA:
The Creepers
The Night the Creatures Came
Night of the Silicates
The Night the Silicates Came

While director Terence Fisher showed a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and flair for the gothic horror productions he made for Hammer, his approach to films with a contemporary setting was significantly less accomplished. The two science-fiction pictures he made for producer Tom Blakely’s Planet Film Productions are ample evidence of this. Although I enjoyed both Island of Terror and its thematic sequel Night of the Big Heat (1968) it’s clear that Fisher’s heart isn’t in either project. This is despite the erstwhile support of Peter Cushing in both films. Where Fisher conjures up moments of sublime inspiration for Hammer, here his direction is bland and awkward, as featureless and uninspired as any hack invited to direct a low budget genre film. But somehow Island of Terror still manages to possess a certain charm, almost as if the ultra low budget is seen by the filmmakers as a challenge to their ingenuity. With its extremely silly and unconvincing monsters Island of Terror is very reminiscent of early 1970’s Doctor Who, and like Doctor Who a greater reliance is placed on the writing. Although the screenplay by Edward Mann and Al Ramsen is entirely unpersuasive in its badly researched science, the film moves along at such a quick pace that it doesn’t really allow an audience time to laugh at the absurdity…that comes after the end credits have rolled.

From Beyond the Grave (1974)

Dir: KEVIN CONNOR
Country: UK

AKA:
Creatures
Creatures from Beyond the Grave
Tales from Beyond the Grave
Tales from the Beyond
The Undead

Amicus Productions’ seventh horror anthology film From Beyond the Grave is one of the better efforts from Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg. This is largely due to an even tone throughout the stories, and a more inspired visual style. Although it doesn’t quite compete with The House that Dripped Blood (1971) and Tales from the Crypt (1972) it is a significant improvement over Amicus’ previous anthology film The Vault of Horror (1973), which was a tired and perfunctory affair that didn’t do justice to the EC comics source material. Instead Subotsky turned to the chillingly well crafted short stories of R. Chetwynd Hayes and by and large Raymond Christodoulou and Robin Clarke’s screenplay does justice to the tales. This is probably one of the most fondly remembered of Amicus’ anthologies due to the memorable framing narrative. The cadaverous Peter Cushing plays the doddery proprietor of an antiques store called Temptations Ltd. Within its dank and dusty interior Cushing busies himself at his vast collection of object d’art, disappearing and reappearing with unnerving and eerie regularity. For each customer that enters the shop and makes the bell above the door chime, the proprietor seems to have exactly the item they desire. Their fate rests upon their decision to acquire the item with honesty and openness or deception and lies.

Doctor Who - The Seeds of Doom (1976)

Dir: DOUGLAS CAMFIELD
Writer: ROBERT BANKS STEWART
Country: UK

Original Transmission Dates:
31/01/1976 - 06/03/1976 (6 Episodes)

Season 13 (1975-76) of Doctor Who saw the programme reach a pinnacle of derivation under the stewardship of producer Phillip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes. In the wrong hands this might have been disastrous, but in fact the stories that emerged were highly inventive variations on a theme shot through with an enthusiasm only matched by Tom Baker’s beaming smile. The season opener Terror of the Zygons explored the mythology of the Loch Ness Monster within the framework of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Planet of Evil was a direct take on Forbidden Planet (1956), and Pyramids of Mars and The Brain of Morbius delightfully recreated the saturated style and atmosphere of Hammer’s gothic horrors whilst finding time for innovative uses of The Mummy and Frankenstein motifs. The season finale was the most ambitious of all. A six part adventure encompassing both the Antarctic and the English countryside and recycling the themes and plot devices of John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951), The Quatermass Experiment (1954), and The Thing From Another World (1951). The resulting tale The Seeds of Doom is one of the most enjoyable stories of Tom Baker’s tenure, and perhaps most impressively is that all too rare six part adventure that doesn’t suffer from too much padding, and doesn’t have episodes that feel tacked on in order to extend the story.

The Offence (1972)

Dir: SIDNEY LUMET
Country: UK/USA

AKA:
Something Like the Truth

Director Sidney Lumet and actor Sean Connery collaborated a number of times on some interesting and diverse projects. Lumet would be the filmmaker to which Connery would return most often, and his trust in Lumet’s abilities is best exemplified by the director being invited to helm this harrowing tale of brutality and psychological breakdown. The territory wasn’t entirely new for both men. In 1965 Connery appeared in Lumet’s sadistic war drama The Hill, and Lumet would return to the theme of police corruption in the Al Pacino vehicle Serpico (1973). The Offence however is far more interesting than either of these films. It was made at a time when Connery had finally severed his ties with the James Bond franchise, in fact this film directly followed Diamonds are Forever (1971). It seems interesting to me that Connery would pursue a role that explores a crisis in identity and motivation due to exhaustion and mental fragmentation at a time when his own iconic screen image was in a state of flux. The Offence is without a doubt a self-conscious attempt on the part of Connery to distance himself from the role for which he would forever be known. To be fair to Connery he is a revelation here. His Detective Sergeant Jonhson is a very disturbing creation indeed. Early in the film we see him treat his colleagues with contempt, bully his way through a crime scene and show a singular lack of patience and empathy for his fellow human being. This is a police officer on the edge, and an ineffectual investigation into a series of horrendous child molestations is the event which tips him over the edge.

The Prowler (1981)

Dir: JOSEPH ZITO
Country: USA

AKA:
Rosemary's Killer

The celluloid highway has some interesting intersections and junctions, some are unjustifiably overgrown, others deserve to be riddled with potholes. The slasher film is a road that is very well travelled, but deserves the utmost neglect. If one is a fan of genre films, one must inevitably accept that derivation is something the genre fan not only accepts, but is comfortable and happy with. The genre fan searches like a gold prospector for those rare genre films that attempt to do something radical within a highly commercialised and derivative form. My reason for dismissing slasher films is that, in my view, this is the one subgenre that has the least amount of imagination. Few subgenres hold so rigidly to a template as the slasher film. The mean spirited nature of the films are fine with me, the wonderful make up effects and scenes of graphic violence are also fine, the rampant misogyny that masquerades as gender equality through the insulting device of the ‘final girl’ is also fine with me too. But the singular lack of revisionism makes this subgenre a wasteland of creativity. The slasher film represents the horror genre at its most juvenile and moronic. This has nothing to do with the adolescent concerns of the screenplay, but it has everything to do with a mindlessly literal attitude to the propagation of a genre. I’m sure my esteemed readership will offer individual examples that may challenge this reading, but in the main the slasher film remains such a stupid, hollow and vacuous experience because of the inability of filmmakers to think even slightly outside of the box.

Onibaba (1964)

Dir: KANETO SHINDO
Country: JAPAN

AKA:
Devil Woman
The Hole
The Ogress
The Witch
The Demon

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindô directed his 45th feature film Ichimai no Hagaki in 2010 at the tender age of 98. Born in Hiroshima in 1912 Shindô has also written some 158 screenplays, making him easily one of the most prolific filmmakers in world cinema. Shindô’s failure to secure the type of distribution enjoyed by Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu remains a mystery. His early films are slightly more visible in the West. In recent times we have enjoyed pristine DVD presentations of The Naked Island (1960), Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968) and they have afforded us a glimpse into a highly stylised and expressive formal style that is both challenging and invigorating. The latter two titles have also illustrated Shindô’s ability to meld this formal eloquence with popular genres and past theatrical traditions. However the unavailability of Children of Hiroshima (1952) still remains a mystifying aberration. It is certainly the case that as the 1960’s wore on Shindô’s work became less distinctive and his interest in social purpose took a back seat to explorations of sexuality. But as we saw in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976), sex in its purest form can be a potent political and social weapon. The success of his quasi historical horror film Onibaba isn’t particularly surprising as it retains just enough generic signifiers to satisfy western audiences, and possessed the added draw of an unusually frank exploration of frustrated sexuality.

Hammer Historical Adventures Poster Gallery

MEN OF SHERWOOD FOREST (Val Guest, 1954) - UK poster

MEN OF SHERWOOD FOREST #2 US poster

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THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY (Terence Fisher, 1959) UK poster

THE STRANGLERS OF BOMBAY #2 French poster

Day of Anger (1967)

Dir: TONINO VALERII
Country: ITALY/WEST GERMANY

AKA:
I giorni dell'ira
Gunlaw

With his cold steely eyes, predatory angular features, and icy determinism Lee Van Cleef cuts an apocalyptic swathe through the dust and disharmony of the Euro-Western. Van Cleef possesses an aura and a smile that would have coffin makers rubbing their hands in glee. More than any other actor Van Cleef embodied the feral cynicism of this distinctly European vision of the American west. It is only appropriate that the breakdown in distinctions of good and evil should coalesce around an actor that was adept at playing both roles and everything in between. In the remarkable and quite brilliant Day of Anger Van Cleef is given the opportunity to explore the full range of this territory. His expert gunslinger Frank Talby is slick and ruthless and possessed of a burning intelligence and ambition. Talby represents a kind of justice, but the justice he metes out to the corrupt leaders of Clifton, Arizona is poetic, and not at all motivated by an innate sense of moral justice. In reality Talby is entirely interested in feathering his own nest, making plenty of money, and eventually taking control of Clifton. He does this through a combination of guile, gunfire and blackmail. When Talby takes Scott Mary (Giuliano Gemma) under his wing early in the film we are deceived into believing Talby is a good man outraged by the disrespect and injustice Scott endures, but this is a spaghetti western and Talby’s motives turn out to be selfish and self serving.

Warlords of Atlantis (1978)

Dir: KEVIN CONNORS
Country: UK

AKA:
Warlords of the Deep

The inconsistent and uneven Warlords of Atlantis was the fourth and final collaboration between producer John Dark, director Kevin Connor, and square jawed actor Doug McClure. The first three period set fantasy adventures The Land that Time Forgot (1975), At the Earth’s Core (1976) and The People that Time Forgot (1977) were all produced under the auspices of Amicus Productions and were based on works by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Warlords of Atlantis broke with this tradition in both its means of production and its writing. The screenplay was concocted by Brian Hayles who spent most of his career writing for British television. He contributed six serials to Doctor Who (The Celestial Toymaker, The Smugglers, The Ice Warriors, The Seeds of Death, The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon) and many of these adventures had strong socio-political allegorical undertones, this narrative dimension bleeds into the screenplay for this film. Hayles’ screenplay emphasises action over plotting and character development, and the result is energy and excitement at the cost of effective storytelling. The film also differs in its stress on science-fictional elements and in its interest in the future of mankind. However Warlords of Atlantis still celebrates unlikely feats of engineering and places its trust and support in the unshakeable symbol of the eccentric Victorian scientist. The result is a film that maintains the iconography of the Amicus pictures, but develops a series of themes that offer an altogether darker vision than that presented in the earlier films.

Vampire Circus (1972)

Dir: ROBERT YOUNG
Country: UK

Thanks to the efforts of the DVD distributor Synapse Films Vampire Circus (1972) became the second Hammer film to be released in the High Definition Blu Ray format. It joins Paranoiac (1963) which was released on Blu Ray last year by Eureka Entertainment. These are unlikely titles perhaps, but Vampire Circus has over the years built itself a steady cult following, largely based on its unusual and offbeat approach to the clichés of gothic horror. By 1972 Hammer were willing to take greater risks in order to reverse their fading fortunes, and although Vampire Circus has plenty of conventional and predictable moments, it also possesses a sensibility, structure, and tone that makes it a unique entry in Hammer’s vampire lore. It is not an experimental film as such - but perhaps the relative inexperience of key personnel such as the director Robert Young (this was his second film) and the screenwriter Judson Kinberg (this was his first screenplay) and the producer Wilbur Stark (who had never produced a horror film before) led to a freshness of approach that accidentally created moments of peculiarity that at times border the modes of art cinema narration. However this isn’t entirely a fresh slate - the name of George Baxt as an uncredited contributor to the story is an important one. Baxt had a long history in the genre - providing uncredited additional dialogue for The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), and screenplays for City of the Dead (1960), and Circus of Horrors (1960). In front of the camera we do at least have Thorley Walters and Dave Prowse to offer a link to past Hammer's.

Masters of Horror: Dance of the Dead (2005)

Dir: TOBE HOOPER
Country: USA

First Transmitted - 11/11/2005

One has to admire the bravery (or possibly outright gall) of series creator Mick Garris in inviting several washed up has-beens to contribute direction to the first season of Masters of Horror. There is a certain amount of back slapping and arse kissing endemic in a project like this, because if one were to be entirely objective it about there is no way that in 2005 Tobe Hooper would qualify as a ‘Master of Horror’. Hooper has made lots of horror films yes, but he hasn’t made a single good one in my lifetime. In fact I would argue that Hooper has only made one creatively successful horror film and that was his astonishing debut picture The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Unlike his contemporaries in the 1970’s Hooper peaked instantly. His career since has been a pallid and depressingly dreary attempt to recapture the ferocity and creativity of his first film. In this respect Hooper’s later career must surely rank as the most disappointing in horror history. The promise of his first film was destroyed almost immediately with his lacklustre thematic follow up Eaten Alive (1977). Somewhat surprisingly though he did manage to direct an excellent television mini-series adaptation of Salem’s Lot (1979), proving that he could adapt to the strictures of television with aplomb. Unfortunately Salem’s Lot has proven an exception in Hooper’s career, and though some horror fanatics might cite The Funhouse (1981) (I’d prefer to watch the grass grow) and Poltergeist (1982) (Hooper pimping himself out to Spielberg whose themes dominate the film) the reality is that these films are largely inconsequential and bereft of ideas and intelligence. But based on thirty years of shocking mediocrity Mick Garris invited Hooper to take part in Masters of Horror. So we have thirty years of cinematic garbage from Hooper, what would his episode Dance of the Dead be like?…believe it or not its utter garbage!

Trailer Tuesday: Dirty Harry Special

Dirty Harry Poster Gallery

"Well, when an adult male is chasing a female with intent to commit rape, I shoot the bastard. That's my policy." (Harry Callaghan, Dirty Harry, 1971)

DIRTY HARRY (Don Siegel, 1971) #1 US poster

DIRTY HARRY #2 US poster

DIRTY HARRY #3 - US poster