Daily poster: Cut-Throats Nine.

Happy birthday to one of the most brutal Spaghetti Westerns, Cut-Throats Nine. IMDB has the film premiering in Barcelona on July 10, 1972. Good times.

A group of outlaws is being transferred to a new prison. An ambush and subsequent escape leaves only an Army sergeant, his daughter, and a group of convicts alive. The convicts are all chained together. The Sergeant is unusually desperate to get to civilization. The land is harsh. The convicts are ruthless and cunning. The Sergeant's daughter is weak. One of the convicts may be kind, or he may be devious. Will they starve to death? Freeze to death? Or kill each other? A cool story.

Cut-Throats Nine is the heaviest of Spaghetti Westerns. Only The Great Silence comes close. The music is somber, rhythmic, and depressing. There are no good guys. Everyone is hate-able except the Sergeant's daughter, who you can tell is only there to be violated and traumatized. The film is also the goriest of Spaghetti Westerns. Coming near the end of the Spaghetti Western cycle, in 1972, the film stretched the genre into the village of the exploitation film in order to sell some tickets. The gory violence is a tool to this end.

A couple of years ago, rumors began circling that Harvey Keitel was going to film a remake. The second act of the original is so very heavy and so slow; while the core story is excellent, Cut-Throats Nine is a perfect candidate for a remake.

The trailer has quick cuts of gore and boobs.

Daily poster: Blood Junkie.

Blood Junkie.

Blood Junkie is a retro-80's slasher film from 2010. Like all good retro films it takes all the goodies of the genre and discards the crap. Everyone is dressed to the nines in 80's garb; the music is over the top synth; the pace of the film is grindingly 80's. It is a fantastic film if that is what you're looking for. There are a couple of spots that take you out of the rad 80's universe, but for the most part you could trick a ten year old, "This is how it was, dude."

The film has a strange guy aspect to it. It felt like a group of guys made the film and didn't really know the female leads. The pillow fight, rumpus, topless, pillow fight of the 80's slasher becomes a drunken homo-erotic, wrestlefest with the two lead males. It is funny. I laughed. But, imposing modern sensibilities can destroy a retro film. This teetered on the edge, but was saved by the fact that one of the leads may be secretly in love with the other. The shit hits the fan and survival mode kicks in before his feelings can be explored. I've always felt that most third acts are poisonous to the rest of the film. This third act is saved by some hilarious dialog and sudden transformation of the aforementioned lead into a wannabe 80's action hero.

The women are great. They just have the 80's down pat. The looks, the unrealistic, Hollywood horndog promiscuous sensibilities, and their acting is fine. The completely over the top use of body doubles for the nude scenes is funny, annoying, and goes to the theory that this was a group of guys that made the film. I could see them too afraid to ask the actress' before hand, to show some skin.

The gore is standard for the genre. The camerawork, color timing, and editing are fantastic. The pacing was slow and perfect. The killer has a great back story (I wish they would have shown more, with cutaways) and a great look. I felt like they showed the killer a bit too much. Three minutes of the killer carting a body around in a wheelbarrow could have been cut down a bit.

The ending is surprising, all together impossible, funny, and pitch perfect.

I liked the film a lot. I will watch this team's newer film, Billy Club. I love the wave of retro-80's horror films over the last few years.

Daily poster: Shivers.

Shivers (aka They Came from Within)
A scientist working on genetically created parasites as a first step to growing new organs, gets himself infected with the parasite. He brings the thing home to his newfangled and high tech apartment complex. Things spread from there.
One of many body invading themed films from writer/director, David Cronenberg.
The film is from 1975 but play pretty well today. Cronenberg's themes are timeless. He takes a couple of six inch, goofy looking, prosthetic dog turd looking things and creates horror that attacks us on an anthropological level. A master.

I posted Shivers as a daily poster before, but the old lady and I just watched it recently and have been talking about it.

The trailer is a textbook example of a 70's horror film trailer.

Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: I Walked with a Zombie.

I Walked with a Zombie.
I've been making my way the Val Lewton RKO films. They are a quirky handful of films. I don't use the word "quirky" lightly. They are advertised as horror films. Grab a book on horror films and you will see stills from these films. The dead dog in the tree from I Walked with a Zombie is in practically every horror book ever written.These are not horror films. They are something other. Suspense films with a supernatural element. But even the supernatural element can be debated. The films cleverly disguise the truth, and refuse to positively identify their universe as a supernatural one.
The films are clever. The stories are original and you cannot leave the room. They are not scary but they are smart and interesting. I Walked with a Zombie has passionate, stirring, music, mixed with some noirish lighting and shots. The whole thing could be a mess if it had not been handled so deftly.
A nurse comes to the Carribbean island of Saint Sebastian in order to care for a woman who is neither living nor dead. She discovers that many of the locals are part of a voodoo cult. Do they hold the answers to her patient's condition?
There are twists and turns and a bug eyed, creepy looking gentleman.The end is really cool.

Daily poster: Isle of the Dead.

 

Isle of the Dead.
I don't know what the critical consensus is on the films of Val Lewton. I'm making my way through them now.
A mish-mash group is trapped on a Greek Island during the war of 1912. Someone dies of the plague. Some are convinced that they must be quarantined for health concerns. Others are convinced a woman among them is a demonic vorvolaka.
The film is a slow whodunit, what is it? kind of a thing.
Good enough but slow. I Walked With a Zombie is next on the plate.

Daily poster: Without Warning.

 

Without Warning.
Happy 60th birthday! Without Warning opened on May 8, 1952.
Without Warning is, on it's surface, a film noir. However, I believe the film to be much more; I feel comfortable labeling Without Warning as a proto-slasher film.
Sure it has all the police procedures on display; the authoritative voice over; and the chase scene at the end has cops on the tail of the killer. However, the murders are more brutal; the police are not the protagonists of the film; there are no whodunnit or mystery aspects; there is no organized crime element; the killer fits the Psycho, Peeping Tom, and many other later slasher film molds in both personality and murderous techniques.
The film has a slasheriffic pace and the killer is just plain creepy. He is a Los Angeles gardener who had his heart broken by his blond wife. Something ripped in his mind and he kills blond ladies. Simple enough.
If you love a good slasher or are a film noir freak, but you're looking for something a little outside the box, Without Warning is a pretty good choice.
I can't find a trailer for the film, so enjoy this clip.

Daily poster: Yor.

 

Yor.
Holy crap! It's Blaster from Uncommon Valor.
I need a break from all the horror films. I'm watching Yor this weekend.
Up Yor's, he's got a "passion for freedom."


Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: The Haunted Palace.

The Haunted Palace.
Roger Corman's film version of H.P. Lovecraft's novella, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Distribution company, AIP, changed the name of the film to The Haunted Palace to fit the film into Corman's series of Edgar Allan Poe films. The only relation the film has to Poe's poem is the title and a few lines of voice over at the end of the film.

The Haunted Palace is Corman at his finest. The sets are clever and grand. The script is well written (I've heard that a young Francis Ford Coppola actually had a stab at cleaning up the dialog.) The acting is a bit punchy and melodramatic, but all right. Vincent Price is enchanting. I'm a huge sucker for Lon Chaney Jr. too. I just want to hug him; he makes me feel so sad. The villagers are fantastic. Leo Gordon is intense and raving. Big eyed Elisha Cook Jr. fosters the fear that Leo Gordon turns to hatred. A terrific group of actors.

The film is slow. This would be a prime candidate for a remake. Liam Neeson in the Price role.
I watched the film on DVD recently. I had only seen an old, crappy VHS of the film. On the DVD, the actor's makeup looks horrible. Grey-green against the actors flesh hued necks. Does not look good.

If you're an H.P. Lovecraft whore, like me, you have to see the film. Just to hear someone say Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth in a film made in 1963 is thrilling.

Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: Son of Frankenstein.

Son of Frankenstein.
Kharis used to be my favorite Universal monster. In recent years, he has been replaced by the flute playing, sadistic, sociopath, Ygor. I believe Ygor is Bela Lugosi's finest role and the character deserves to rank up there with The Monster, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and all the other classic Universal monsters.
This poster is striking. Karloff's face is beautifully rendered and while the girl is straight out of some other film, she adds a certain amount of peril and excitement to the poster. Karloff's emotionless mug isn't exactly thrilling.

Vince sent me this funny email recently regarding Son of Frankenstein:

A couple of weeks ago I watched Son of Frankenstein on Turner Classic Movies. Now an interesting criticism of that movie came from writer Tom Weaver in an article he did on the Universal Frankenstein series in one of my magazines. He says that director Rowland V. Lee screws up the Monster's height, making him appear shorter than Wolf Frankenstein and Ygor. I saw for myself this isn't entirely true. He certainly isn't the shortest of the three. BUT Wolf IS the same height and Ygor is real close! Yet in all the other films, the Monster is easily a full head to a head and shoulder taller than anyone else.
What's screwy too is that the Monster is bulkier here than in any other film. He may not be fat but he sure looks like he has eaten both sides of the menu. I guess this is the reason Peter refers to him as a giant! At least in the sequel, The Ghost of Frankenstein, the Monster really does appear to be a giant.
And yes, I checked, Boris Karloff was wearing his big Monster boots and Basil Rathbone was still able to look him in the eye. For shame!
Plus in this ponderous (for Universal) horror96-minute picture, the Monster doesn't get off his rear until an hour into the movie. All I can say is Thank God for Ygor! Lugosi saves this movie just liked he saved Dracula.

Hahhahah, the pictures don't lie, The Monster looks a bit wee. I also completely agree with Vince that The Monster is oafy looking in Son of Frankenstein and like so many of the mid to late Universal monster movies, the monsters hardly get any damn action. Monsters are monsters through their actions, not through people talking about them being monsters!
Ah well, it's a decent outing, and like Vince and I both mentioned, Lugosi's performance as Ygor twists the wrist into giving Son of Frankenstein a thumbs up.


Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: Dawn of the Dead.

Dawn of the Dead.
Happy 4-20!

When some people think of 4-20 they think of happy things, like getting lobster eye stoned. Some people think of horrible things like the Columbine massacre or Hitler's birthday. Me? I think of Dawn of the Dead.

The film opened on April 20, 1979 in the United States. It had opened eight months earlier on September 2, 1978 in Italy, under the name Zombies. The Italian version of the film is ten minutes shorter and has a few different music cues.

Dawn of the Dead (hereafter, DoD) is my favorite zombie film. It barely makes the helicopter blade to the top of the head over Night of the Living Dead. The remake of Dawn of the Dead is my third favorite. Tom Savini did the makeup effects on DoD and wrote about it in his masterpiece of non-fiction, Grande Illusions. Like all of the films in that book, I read about DoD, studied the makeup effects, and knew just about every act of violence, well before I was able to see the film. When I was old enough to see it, I was gleefully gutted. The film is a masterpiece of horror cinema.
The story follows two employees of a local Philadelphia television station and two Philadelphia SWAT cops in their effort to survive a zombie apocalypse. The group finds a newfangled indoor shopping mall and sets up camp inside. They do pretty well securing the location until a group of chaos injected bikers screw up everything.

The first third of the film sets a dark tone. Humanity can beat this if we would only stop screwing around and focus on the issue. Some heavy things happen, but the first act ends with some light.
The second act adds kindling and is uncomfortably light in tone. The group of four are making a go of it all. They are managing to keep control of their surroundings. The kindling catches fire.
In the last act, however, humanity catches up with the group's good intentions. Moments of impetuousness turn disastrous, infighting, cockiness, and greed take a boot and stomp out the fire. The end of the film burns like a match in the wind.

Director, George Romero's style is finely clunky. The 70's color palettes and realistic design add a foreign sort of feel. The film is not a slick Hollywood production, the costumes and sets feel real. They probably were. The film also has those 1970's independent film moments of randomness that create a realistic, chaotic mood. Dialog overlaps. Characters sometimes do things that are seemingly random or sudden. They don't talk about everything before they do it. A goofy smile, an explosive emotion (both positive and negative,) unexpected choices. All these elements make DoD endlessly re-watchable and fresh.

And the mall. There's just something about having run over a whole mall, that appeals to the kid in a person. Being where you're not supposed to be, when you're not supposed to be there. When I'm feeling dark, the lighter scenes in DoD almost bother me. But, the teenage thoughts of having a mall of zombies to hack up in relative safety brings me back and makes me feel warm and cozy.
It may sound sick and a bit too timely, but taking over a zombie infested mall with my friends and a bunch of guns is my Thomas Kincaide painting.

There are a million little anecdotes about the film: The brightness of Savini's blood recipe; the alternate ending; the actual screams of a zombie victim when the zombie actor bit too far on a makeup appliance; how they shot the film at night while the mall was open during the day; Italian director Dario Argento sequestered Romero away in Italy, while Romero wrote the script; the kid zombies in the film do not shamble. They RUN!; the film was released in the U.S unrated as the MPAA had given it an X. These anecdotes are interesting, but superfluous. The DVD sets all have "making of" features and endless amounts of extra material, but like Night of the Living Dead, the films stand on their own. Looking behind the curtain doesn't necessarily add value.

"When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth." Good times.

Daily poster: Friday the 13th part 4.

 

Friday the 13th part 4. The Final Chapter.
Happy Friday the 13th!
Not sure why the image is reversed, Jason took an axe to the left side of his melon at the end of Part 3. It is a fine slasher poster nonetheless. Simple, to the point, gratuitous.
Part 4 is my favorite film in the franchise. The teens are mostly interesting. The Jarvis family is interesting. Tommy Jarvis, played by Corey Feldman, is actually pretty likeable. Jason is still a human, monster, killing machine. This was touted as the final in the series, and for a couple of years, it was. When Jason comes back from his "death" in this film, it is through lightening and hate magics. The Jason in Part 4 is still something of a man.
Goremaster Tom Savini came back to provide special effects. He created Jason in Part 1 and got to "kill" him in this one. Savini was on the top of the world at this point. I remember watching him on David Letterman with the Jason head during promotion for this film. The kills in the movie are slasher film gold. There is a fantastic throat slashing near the beginning. Jason's death is fabulously way over the top gory for the franchise and time period.
The film opened on April 13, 1984.


Here is Tom Savini's appearance on David Letterman. Major spoiler, though. It shows Jason's face and the nature of his "death" at the end of Part 4.



Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: Fritz the Cat.

Fritz the Cat.
Happy 40th birthday to Fritz the Cat. The film opened on April 12, 1972.
The trailer has drawn nudity, animated fornication, and the n-word.



Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: Hospital Massacre.

Hospital Massacre aka X-Ray.

Hospital Massacre is one of my favorite tier-2 slasher films. I saw it when I was younger and was deliciously horrified. Honestly, I thought Barbie Benton was first class Hollywood royalty. I just didn't know who she was. I couldn't understand why this famous movie star would be in a slasher film. Well, she gets pretty naked in the film and I was completely blown away, thinking I had discovered some secret movie. HA.

Hospital Massacre opened thirty years ago, sometime in April 1982. I cannot find the exact date.
The film has some tonal consistency issues. Surrealistic comedy is thrown in to the film at a couple of points. These pit stops are confusing and if you can't ride these out, the film breaks down. The motivation of the killer is a big stretch as well.

That all being said, the film has some good slashings and a curious plot that resonates like a nightmare that you can't escape from. Most slasher fans would probably disagree with me, but I think it is a fine entry into the slasher genre.

I can't find a trailer for the film, but here is the entire movie, Benton boobies and all. The only available versions of the film that I know about, are sourced from old VHS tapes. The quality isn't going to get much better than this.

Daily poster: The Mummy's Ghost.

 

The Mummy's Ghost.
The Mummy's Ghost is the third film in the Kharis series. It is one of the first films I saw on Creature Features and one of my favorite Universal horror films.
The film boasts one of the grandest and rarest honors in all of monster movie history. The Mummy wins! He gets what he desires, while the townsfolk and distraught boyfriend can only look on and cry in anguish as the starlet dies.
Lon Chaney Jr. is ever-imposing as the slow but unstoppable Kharis. John Carradine is miscast but rises to the role of, Yousef Bey, a priest of Arkan. Is Bey related to Ardath Bey, the name that Imhotep used in the original The Mummy? Carradine's wide eyed acting is hammy and wonderful. His voice will melt your ear drums. The hero of the film isn't too annoying. Ramsay Ames plays the reincarnated Ananka. She was one of the true Hollywood starlets, likeable, troubled, and beautiful. George Zucco does a fine job playing the crusty high priest, who sends Yousef Bey to America to fetch the mummies of Princess Ananka and Kharis.
The truth of the matter is that nearly all classic mummy movies, both Universal and Hammer, have the same basic story. This is one of the finer outings with some legendary horror actors, a few twists along the way, and a fantastic ending, which I have un-remorsefully ruined for you.
Here's the trailer. Murdering! Destroying!

Daily poster: The Sword and the Sorcerer.

The Sword and the Sorcerer.
Happy 30th birthday to The Sword and the Sorcerer, which was released in April 1982 (I can't find the exact date.)
I remember being blown away by the commercials as a kid. A THREE-BLADED SWORD! Wait a second, did that blade just SHOOT OUT!!!
When I saw the film as an adult, there was no way it could live up to the legendary masterpiece I had in my head. However, within the 80's, Rated-R, fantasy flick genre, The Sword and the Sorcerer is pretty darn close to a classic.
The film was released at the same time as Conan, so it never really had a chance, in terms of box office gold. The Sword and the Sorcerer is hazy, dark, gory, and has a good pace. It is good, corny, fun. I mean come on, it's got Richard Lynch, Lee Horsely, and Richard Moll all covered in gore.
The end of the film has a title card:

The sequel was finally made and released in 2010. It stars Kevin Sorbo. I haven't seen it yet. I'll have to see if they kept it in the Rated-R realm or softened it up.
Here's the trailer. "Dungeons and dragons. Serpents and splendor. Danger and desire."


There is a much better poster over on Wrong Side of the Art, but their site seems to be down at this moment.

Daily poster: Mouchette.

Mouchette.

A rather dramatic poster for a somewhat subdued film. Mouchette opened 45 years ago, today in Paris, March 28, 1967.

I've wondered why there are not more critical analysis' of Robert Bresson's films. When I started thinking about writing this post, I got it. Sure you can write chronolgically about the story. You can talk about his insistence on using non-actors to play the roles. You can dissect Bresson's religious themes (I love that he said in an interview "There are no real atheists." I firmly believe the opposite. HA.) You can look at his long shots. The breathless, muted acting. You can break down a film by Bresson and then you can look at it's lifeless husk.

I will risk laying this on Bresson: Like religion, too delicate to analyze, Bresson's films are most effective when they are felt.

If you piecemeal out all the aspects of his films, the greatness crumbles. I once read that Bresson is the filmmaker mentioned most often by film school graduates, but least seen. I can't imagine Bresson's films in the context of film school. Not to say that Bresson's films have poor ligthing, acting, direction, sets, costumes, writing, theme, music, but if you break out a scorecard, his films would not rate so high. The means most certainly do not make up the ends.

Some critics may call this a cop-out. How else are you going to score Mouchette on Rotten Tomatoes? Or on Amazon.com? Or on IMDB? It must be quantified!  I feel like rating Bresson's films is a pointless and insulting endeavor. Films, music, art, writing, of this nature require dialog, not point values.

That all being said, let me tell you a little about Mouchette.
Mouchette is a 14 year old girl. The universe seems to hate her. Bresson is so very careful to not show us what Mouchette is thinking. We can only imprint upon her.
Mouchette's only happiness comes when she is on a bumper car ride. Hitting and being hit makes her laugh. It is at once confusing and perfect.

The film is unfair, painful, and yet known and familiar. You know Mouchette. Perhaps you are Mouchette. When I watch the film, I feel a complete sadness, but skirt depression. Mouchette is too real to be depressed about, there is no "what if?" The story of Mouchette is in the newspapers every single day. It is the sadness that we all know, we all feel, we all stifle and carry on.
Unless we are in the middle of such a situation, specifically, it is too small to carry with us. Culturally, it is too big to think about.

Find and watch the film. Mouchette is one of Bresson's most watchable films.

The video below is an amazing piece. The interviews each carry fantastic points from Bresson's "modeles" (not actors) and Bresson himself. The behind the scenes footage is fascinating for Bresson fans. Seeing Nadine Nortier, the girl who plays Mouchette, smile and rebuke the interviewer's generic questions is charming and confusing.

Here is a photo from the set.

Daily poster: Casa de mi Padre.

Casa de mi Padre.

My wife and I just got back from seeing Will Ferrell's latest opus. We laughed almost the entire time. The film will not have you choking on your Milk Duds but it can keep a constant I.V. of chuckles, if you get it.

The American press seems to think the film is a play on Mexican tele-novellas, it really isn't. There are small swipes, but the film takes much of its tone from the shot-on-video, fat Mexican guy in a vest and cowboy hat, narco-gangster DVD's that you find at the flea market. The film mixes this with the epic, ranchero, Pedro Infante type classicos.

Make no mistake, Casa de mi Padre is not a good film. It is funny, but if you don't have just the right perspective, even that is lost. The audience we saw the film with was primarily latino and got all the notes, that helped. Laughing fosters laughter.

Will Ferrell is one of the few operators in Hollywood that interests me. He is courageous about switching genres and exploring new territory. He's exciting to watch, even when it ain't working.

Daily poster: Great White.

 

Great White.
A decent ripoff of Jaws. If Spielberg's Jaws robot had functioned as it was supposed to, his film might look closer to Great White. Which would have been a bad thing.
The film was released in the U.S. in 1982 but was quickly pulled when Spielberg got wind. It follows the Jaws storyline so closesly that there is no real argument that Great White is a pretender.
The Italian title is L'ultimo squalo, or The Last Shark. You may find it under that title.
Vic Morrow hams the hell up, as an Irish shark hunter of sorts. The main guy's daughter gets messed up by the shark and after a torrential scene in the hospital, she is quickly and confusingly forgotten.
There is a trailer/TV commercial on YouTube which cannot be embedded, the narrator says the film is rated PG. If this is bonafide, I suspect the U.S. release was edited quite a bit. You're not going to lose your lunch, but the shark does use its teeth to bite people.


Poster courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art.

Daily poster: Don't Go Near the Park.

 

Don't Go Near the Park.
This poster is just so wrong that it's right. I love it.
What starts out as a hot blooded horror pic turns into a made for TV looking double dose of Ambien. It commits the gravest of cinema crimes, it is boring. The end picks up a bit, but it's far too late. This thing was released in 1981 but looks like a film from the early seventies.
A brother and sister need to eat flesh in order to stay young. Some sort of ritual with a virgin needs to be committed to kill the curse. They live for thousands of years. The brother actually marries a lady and has a daughter that he dotes over until the day when he can sacrifice her and lift the curse. The ending has the teenage daughter and her boyfriend walking around town with a little boy who looks like the kid from the 80's show, The Voyagers. The young boy has no shirt on for some reason. Whatever.
It's got Linnea Quigley, so if you need to see every one of her films, you can check it out for that.
Gory, boring, then bloody, then confusing. Not worth your valuable time.

Daily poster: Shivers.

 

Shivers.
Happy birthday, David Cronenberg.
Wikipedia has a funny story about the aftermath of the film:

The Canadian journalist Robert Fulford, writing as "Marshall Delaney", decried the content of Shivers in the pages of the national magazine Saturday Night. Since Cronenberg's film was partially financed by the taxpayer-funded Canadian Film Development Corporation (later known as Telefilm Canada), Fulford headlined the article "You Should Know How Bad This Movie Is, You Paid For It." He called it "crammed with blood, violence and depraved sex" and "the most repulsive movie I've ever seen."
Not only did this high profile attack make it more difficult for Cronenberg to obtain funding for his subsequent movies, but Cronenberg later said Fulford's article also resulted in him being kicked out of his apartment in Toronto due to his landlord's inclusion of a "morality clause" in the lease^.

Fantabulous trailer.