When Michael Calls (also known as Shattered Silence) is a thriller-drama television movie directed by Philip Leacock and starring Elizabeth Ashley, Ben Gazzara and Michael Douglas. It was adapted from John Farris’ 1967 novel of the same name.

Single mother Helen (Elizabeth Ashley) is going through a relatively amicable divorce from Doremus (probably over his name – played by Ben Gazzara from Anatomy of a Murder and Bloodline) but otherwise lives a perfectly humdrum middle-class American life on a cosy farm in New England with her young daughter, Peggy. Flitting around in the background is her nephew, the equally inoffensive Craig (Michael Douglas – yes, that one – in a very early film role) who is a psychiatrist working with emotionally troubled youngsters in the town.

Aside from the by-numbers fraught post-marriage arrangements, the only blot on the horizon are a series of phone calls Helen keeps receiving. Not the heavy-breathing sort, these are an entirely different level of weird – they are coming from Craig’s long-dead brother. Michael had perished in a Vermont snowstorm over a decade ago after running away from home; this sent Craig and Michael’s mother into a spiral of mental illness, leading to a short spell in an asylum before she committed suicide. The phone calls begin as confusing and progress to alarmingly intense. Not only that but the calls spark a wave of family members being murdered, leaving Helen to doubt both her sanity and who exactly is at the end of the phone.

This oft-remembered TV movie, held by some in the same esteem as the likes of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Bad Ronald, rests on two principles:

1. Telephones were now the most terrifying household appliance since showers (When a Stranger Calls, Don’t Answer the Phone, Black Christmas)

2. A good percentage of American children were medically mute (Candy Snatchers, Suffer, Little Children)

The latter in this film is a slightly goofy device for spanning out the drama an extra few minutes but the first comes with a real sting – the killer line being a young child sobbing to Helen, “I’m dead, aren’t I?” It really works, though a tough crowd may claim that beyond the odd line like this, there’s little substance and a pretty thin cast numbers-wise. It is worth remembering that this was only a TV movie and is still stronger than many appearing on the silver screen.

Ashley is little more than adequate as the rather slight lead female, her soon-to-be ex-husband coming across as a good egg all round (played by a far stronger Gazzara). Douglas is, naturally in convenient retrospect, the strongest card though is given such a sappy character that it’s almost quite exciting when he starts smoking. Director Philip Leacock was an old hand at television drama to say the least; Bonanza – check, Gunsmoke – check, Hawaii Five-O – check, Buck Rogers and so on, the man was a television Goliath. Equally as deft was the writer of the original novel, John Farris – aside from his career as one of the greatest exponents of Southern Gothic novels, he also wrote two successful screenplays, Dear Dead Delilah and Brian De Palma’s The Fury. The TV movie is adapted for the screen by James Bridges, also extremely accomplished with a typewriter but also as a director, his most famous film being The China Syndrome.

Screened as one of ABC’s Movies of the Week, it was rather bafflingly released as Shattered Silence on DVD in quite appalling quality, adding to the sinister grime but doing little raise its profile, doomed forever to be ‘that film with Michael Douglas smoking, on the phone to his dead brother’.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Madhouse is a 1974 British horror film directed by Jim Clark for Amicus Productions in association with Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures. It stars Vincent Price, Natasha Pyne, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri and Linda Hayden.

Vincent Price plays Paul Toombes, a long-in-the-tooth actor who has made a particularly successful career as Dr Death, a recurring villain in a series of wildly popular horror films. He has been aided and abetted in this franchise by Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), who has served as the writer of his films. At the height of his career and a fifth film in the bag, a party is thrown where he announces his intention to marry his fiancée, Ellen. It’s at this juncture that blustering film director, Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry) informs him that she was quite a star on the porn scene. As she flees in tears, Toombes follows but finds his beloved future wife has been brutally beheaded (is there any other way?) and there is some doubt as to the role Toombes played in the act – regardless, he is despatched to an asylum for twelve years, returning refreshed and ready to return as Dr Death again in a new British-made television series based on the character.

His fame has not eluded him and his is stalked by young Elizabeth Peters (Linda Hayden) on the ship to England and then at Herbert’s pile in the countryside, desperate to become his leading lady. Sadly, she meets her end via a garden fork and once again, there is a cloud of doubt as to whether it was Death/Toombes or someone masquerading as either who committed the crime. Lurking in the bowels of Chateau Flay is his Herbert’s wife, Faye (Faye Flay!) played by  Adrienne Corri (A Clockwork Orange, Vampire Circus), who is now bewigged, horribly burned but scatters memories of her times on Toombes’ like confetti.

The madness progresses and filming is stilted and punctuated by regular deaths, arguments and wistful reflections of Toombes’ greatest film moments, courtesy of film clips shoehorned into the plot. The finger points squarely at the beleaguered actor but there are herrings for all in abundance and the breathless and slightly wonky ending will leave you guessing to the last moments.

The draw here is, of course, the pairing of Price and Cushing. That AIP and Amicus fluffed their role in proceedings is not particularly surprising – the Americans flex their muscle by squeezing in as many clips of their works as they can credibly manage (The Raven, The Pit and the Pendulum, Tales of Terror, Haunted Palace, House of Usher, Scream and Scream Again and Masque of the Red Death are all on-show, also giving Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff – both dead – a brief run-out) whilst the British contingent somewhat haphazardly manage to conspire to make the most obvious and foolproof plot as ragged and endlessly revolving as possible.

Is it over-written? Well, it’s partly based on Angus Hall’s novel, Devilday (1969), though you’d scarcely guess, Death replacing ‘Dis’ and Price’s angry, confused dedicated actor slightly at odds with Hall’s fat, guilty sex-pest.. The rarely seen again Ken Levison and Greg Morrison are credited with the screenplay but even Robert Quarry’s name is thrown into the mix, his journeyman career at least being apt (he plays up the role further by appearing as his own Count Yorga at one of the regular party scenes – Cushing finally donning some fangs in similar get-up).

Lovely Linda Hayden is surprisingly underused, as is Cushing – conversely, the bit-too-silly sub-plot of Faye in the cellar and the stilted nature of the film, clogged up with some ineffective wandering about and even Michael Parkinson cropping up to interview the famous star, make for an unbalanced film, coming at both the end of Amicus’ reign as one of Britain’s guiding lights of horror (it still isn’t as disappointing or frustrating as Monster Club, their death rattle) and AIP’s run of horror successes, leading them to parody their own output with Old Dracula and Abby.

Other titles considered for the film were The Return of Dr. Death and The Revenge of Dr. Death. It is possible that neither title was used because the producers did not want the film to appear to be a sequel to some other film, as well as another, unrelated, film called Dr. Death, Seeker of Souls had been released by another company (Freedom Arts Pictures Corporation) not long before. A shame as both titles would have been more fun than Madhouse, a rather too literal accusatory finger point at Toombes.

Although in his interview with Parkinson, reference is made to the actor having once played The Invisible Man (in The Invisible Man Returns), the history of the actor, though endlessly flashed on-screen through some slightly interminable ruses, still falls rather flat – with the actors clearly nearer the end than the beginning of their careers, a more joyous, celebratory tone would have served better. At times it becomes a bit, well, depressing. Director Jim Clark never helmed a film again, stepping into the editor’s office and doing a cracking job on the Oscar winners like The Killing Fields and James Bond films like The World is Not Enough.

There are two particular highlights, however – Prcies stunning and iconic skull make-up by regular Hammer artist George Blacker is superb and still raises a shiver of delight 40 years on. Equally stunning is Douglas Gamley’s score, as thunderous as ever, the timpani player no doubt in need of a lie down afterwards. Gamley is one of the great under-sung voices of British horror, a force of nature who could grab you by the throat and lead you through a film and leave you battered but overjoyed. Listen out for Vincent himself singing at the film’s conclusion.

As feared, the film underperformed badly at the box-office, AIP essentially washing their hands of horror ever after. It has struggled for positive reappraisal in recent years but Price’s aged ham performance and Cushing in unpredictable form, it’s difficult to be too hard-hearted about it.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Poster art by Tom Chantrell

The Lifetaker is a 1975 British pyschological horror film directed by Michael Papas and starring Terence Morgan, Lea Dregorn, and Blue Peter presenter Peter Duncan.

Plot Teaser

A deceived husband (Terence Morgan) engages his wife (Lea Dregorn) and her young lover (Peter Duncan) in a series of deadly games.

The Lifetaker had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it was both lauded and criticized for its controversial themes of sex and violence and the corruption of youth. According to Papas, the film was scheduled to be released across the UK, but the managing director of EMI distribution canceled the release after viewing the completed film due to its controversial themes.

Peter Duncan joined Blue Peter in 1980, and shortly afterwards it was revealed in a tabloid newspaper that Duncan had appeared nude in the The Lifetaker. The BBC refuted that he was ever a porn star in The Times. Whilst he does appear naked, the film is certainly not porn.

Reviews

A stylish and erotically charged tale of obsession…. not only the quintessence of the kind of film they don’t make anymore, but is also radically unlike the kind of film they made even then.” Julian Upton, Offbeat (Buy at Amazon.co.uk, an essential read!)

“Excellent Roeg-esque UK thriller…this dark, exotic morality piece is stylishly mounted is capably acted and has a suitably unflinching finale.”  Giallo Goblin

IMDb | Michael Papas Website | Tom Chantrell poster artist

WH

“Snuff videos showing scenes of murder, mutilation and cannibalism were on sale alongside Disney films at a children’s comic fair… Trading Standards officers believe the video shows genuine footage of chanting, half-naked Amazon Indians butchering a white man depicted as a jungle explorer.”

THE DAILY MAIL, April 1992

“Many serial killers found an outlet for their vivid sexual fantasies in pornography. Ed Kemper scoured detective magazines for pictures of corpses and frequented ‘snuff movies’ in which intercourse is a prelude to murder.”

Newsweek, quoted in THE AGE OF SEX CRIME, Jane Caputi 1987

“There’s a lot of gay people there, gay men, so they have young boys. You get a lot of rent boys there, because they’re offered a load of money, and then they become snuff movies.”

‘Janet’, quoted in BLASPHEMOUS RUMOURS, Andrew Boyd 1991

It’s the darker side of the film business – the claims that someone, somewhere, is producing films which feature genuine murder and torture. Films which are then sold or screened for vast sums of money to wealthy decadents, who are so bored with life that they can only get their kicks from watching the final taboos being shattered… or videos which are circulated amongst underground networks of child molesters and rapists, ensuring that the violation of the victim continues long after their death. The term for these movies is at once shocking in its cynicism, and unforgettable in the horror of its implications: Snuff.

Nobody is entirely sure when the stories began. Some claim that rumours were circulating as far back as the Forties, but the modern fixation with the idea of the ‘snuff movie’ can be traced to that turbulent period as the Sixties crossed over into the Seventies, and long-held ideas of morality began to crumble. In 1961, a film-maker still risked prosecution for showing naked girls on film; a decade on, and cinemas across America were openly showing hardcore pornography. Nothing seemed taboo any more.

To moral campaigners, the idea of the snuff movie seemed both inevitable and useful. Inevitable, because after all, where else was there for the satiated pornographer and his audience to go? And useful, because it provided a potent weapon to use against the libertarians. Even the most liberal minded individual would, after all, consider freedom to murder a liberty too far, and might even be forced to rethink their deeply held beliefs about sexual freedom in the face of such material. And so began a mythology that has, if anything, grown in potency over the years, to the extent that even now, most people unquestioningly accept the existence of snuff movies as proven fact.

Which is odd. Because despite the hysteria, a single scrap of evidence confirming snuff movies has yet to be found.

What we do have are outright lies, assorted apocryphal tales, staggering cases of mistaken identity and several cases of genuine cinematic death which may seem to fit the bill at first, but don’t actually match the precise snuff movie definition.

The first recognised tales of snuff movie production emerged in Ed Sanders’ exhaustive book on Charles Manson, The Family. Manson was known to be fond of filming Family activity, including sex orgies which he supposedly sold. He is also known to have stolen a van full of NBC TV equipment. In The Family, Sanders interviews an anonymous Family associate who claims to have witnessed the filming of what he describes as “a snuff movie” in which a naked girl is decapitated during a pseudo-occult ritual. Although the video equipment was recovered when police raided the Spahn Ranch, no snuff footage has emerged (other Family films have been seen, but consist of nothing more sensational than skinny-dipping). It was claimed that remaining Family members squirreled the footage away; if true, they hid it well. More than a quarter of a decade on, it still remains a secret waiting to be revealed. Sanders also hints at rumours that various members of Hollywood’s smart set were dabbling in animal porn, torture and snuff movies. Again, such footage, if it exists, has never emerged. Years later, the Manson connection re-emerged when writer Maury Terry tied the Family and snuff production into his exhaustive investigation of satanic connections to the Son of Sam murders in New York. Yet again, no videotapes were ever found to back up these claims.

After years of similar unfounded rumours, the snuff movie was dragged screaming into the public consciousness in the mid-Seventies with the release of Snuff. Hyped as being shot “in South America…where life is CHEAP!”. The film implied – no, almost boasted – that it featured a genuine murder, carried out for the camera. Wherever it played, the film was attacked by feminists, anti-porn campaigners and journalists, who had not long before reported on the case of a so-called snuff movie being intercepted by U.S. Customs en route from – where else? – South America.

The protests were not, however, as spontaneous as they might have seemed. In fact, they were as phoney as the film itself. Grindhouse distributor Allan Shackleton was the warped genius behind the whole sorry scam. It was Shackleton who arranged the pickets and wrote the letters of outrage, Shackleton who planted the story of the Customs seizure (no such interception had in fact taken place), gambling that the negative publicity would ensure major box office returns before the film was run out of town. And it was Shackleton who created Snuff out of an unreleased movie called Slaughter.

Slaughter had been shot in 1971 by husband and wife exploitation movie veterans Michael and Roberta Findlay. Attempting to cash in on the Manson Family headlines, it told of the exploits of a hippy cult leader who leads his followers to murder. It was indeed shot in South America (Argentina, to be exact), where film crews, if not life, were certainly cheap. Filmed without sync sound, the resulting movie was a sorry mess, and sat unreleased until 1975, when Shackleton – a hardened showman distributor with an eye for a good scam – picked it up and decided to revamp it into something that could make money. Noting its incoherence, he figured that the only way audiences would sit through the film would be if they were given a reason to accept – even expect – the amateur style. As a snuff movie, Slaughter’s lack of technical skill became a positive boon.

The first thing Shackleton did was to remove the end of the film, presumably thinking that no-one would have bothered following the plot anyway. He also chopped off the opening and closing credits, giving the film a suitably anonymous appearance. He then hired Simon Nuchtern to shoot a new ending in a studio owned by hardcore adult movie director Carter Stevens, in which the cameras pull back from the action to show the studio set. The “actress” starts to get it on with the “director”, but is then assaulted by him. He reaches for a knife, chops off one of her fingers, followed by the whole hand, then disembowels her. The fact that this footage is considerably better shot than the rest of the film, that the actress bears no resemblance to the woman seen in the earlier footage, and that the special effects are somewhat rubbery didn’t matter. Shackleton knew that, for varying reasons, people would want to believe it was real. And they did. Many still do, despite the truth about Snuff being widely reported. Some believe out of ignorance; others out of cynicism. Anti-Pornography groups are certainly aware of the reality behind Snuff, but still hold it up as proof that women are being routinely murdered for the camera. It’s in their interests for people to believe that the porn industry routinely murders people for profit.

In fact, Snuff was roundly condemned as a tasteless stunt by America’s pornographers. Producer David F. Friedman, who headed the Adult Film Association of America, begged Shackleton not to release the film. Sex film veteran Friedman, in David Hebditch and Nick Anning’s book Porn Gold, traced the snuff hysteria to early Seventies group called the Campaign for Decency in Literature, headed by Charles Keating, who claimed on TV to have evidence that X-rated film-makers were murdering their stars on film. The producer claims that he contacted the CDL and asked them to hand their evidence to the authorities, and, when nothing happened, contacted the FBI himself, who dismissed the claims.

Friedman also offered a $25,000 reward to anyone supplying evidence of snuff movies. It remains uncollected.

Snuff made Shackleton his expected bundle, and faded into history. But it provided new ammunition for pro-censorship groups and moral campaigners. Now, everyone knew that snuff wasn’t just something old men snorted instead of cocaine.

Years later in Britain, where the film had – naturally – never been seen, it emerged on video with spectacularly bad timing. At the beginning of 1982, the first rumblings of what would become the Video Nasty tidal-wave of hysteria were appearing in the press. As the storm over the availability of uncensored video grew, Astra Video – already prime targets for prosecution after releasing the grossly misunderstood I Spit on Your Grave and David Friedman’s early Sixties splatter movie Blood Feast – added Snuff to their roster of titles, featuring the rather ill-conceived (if somewhat accurate) cover blurb “the original legendary atrocity shot and banned in New York… the actors and actresses who dedicated their lives to making this film were never seen or heard from again.” After an outraged Sunday Times article, Astra rapidly withdrew the film from sale, but not before a reasonable quantity had made it to the shops. Tabloid reporters invariably took the film at face value, and the circulation of a “real snuff movie” helped fuel calls for controls over violent videos.

Ironically, slipping out unnoticed on video in Britain a couple of years earlier was a West German rip-off , entitled Confessions of a Blue Movie Star… although the original English language title, The Evolution of Snuff, was far less equivocal. This film was an uneasy mixture of soft porn, documentary and curious moral campaigning – it’s notable as one of the few anti-porn sex films ever made. Supposedly following the career of a German sex starlet who later took her own life, the film suggests that snuff movies are an inevitable symptom of liberal attitudes towards sex. Opening with interviews with various people (including Roman Polanski) who are convinced of the existence of snuff movies, the film reveals its true cynicism and lack of credibility at the end, when it features an interview with a masked “Snuff Movie maker” and then presents an extract from his film. This footage is shocking – grainy, shaky images of a woman seemingly being disembowelled. It looks far more authentic that the footage in Snuff. But it’s also far more recognisable. In fact, it has been lifted from Wes Craven’s brutal 1972 production The Last House on the Left. And although Craven’s movie was condemned by many critics for excessive violence, nobody would suggest that the killings were real…

Although snuff movies would become a standard plot device for film-makers in the Seventies, providing the central or incidental themes in a number of films. Hardcore saw George C. Scott wallowing in the seedy world of pornography, trying to locate his estranged daughter, who he has seen in a porno flick and who, of course, ends up in a snuff movie. Coming from the religiously tortured mind of Paul Schrader, it was a decent film that sadly perpetuated the myth that the porn industry routinely kills its stars.

Similarly, Joe D’Amato’s outrageous Emanuelle in America sees the titular character, played as always by Laura Gemser, investigating corruption and white slavery, at one point watching a ‘snuff movie’ as part of her investigations. The snuff footage in this film is remarkably brutal and realistic – quite what audiences expecting a softcore romp made of it is anyone’s guess.

Last House on Dead End Street is a more impressively disturbing film about a porn producer who moves into snuff movie production. A weird hybrid of sleaze and art, the film for years was the height of cinematic obscurity, only available as fuzzy bootlegs and with no information available about director Viktor Janos. But in 2001, porn director Roger Watkins was revealed as both the director and the star, and the film – which began life as a three hour movie called The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell in 1972 before winding up in the current, thankfully shorter, version in 1977 – is now readily available on DVD. It’s quite unlike anything else you’ll ever see.

1980’s Effects is considerably less interesting. Shot in Pittsburgh by Dusty Nelson and featuring several George Romero collaborators (Tom Savini, Joe Pilato, John Harrison), this is the tale of a horror film maker who decided real death will be cheaper than special effects. It’s a nice idea, but the film is unfortunately very dull and clumsily produced.

Even worse is Australian film Final Cut, made the same year, in which a pair of journalists gain access to a reclusive media mogul who might be producing snuff movies for his own pleasure. Very little happens and the best thing about the film is the video cover.

Snuff movies – or, rather, snuff TV – also featured in David Cronenberg’s hallucinatory Videodrome, in which the director played with a ‘what if’ idea – in this case, ‘what if the fears of the censors were true/’ in a tale of video-induced hallucinations via a signal hidden inside brutal torture and murder videos being beamed from (where else?) South America.

While these films all explored the idea of the snuff movie, it wasn’t until the Eighties that the phrase and the hysteria would fully explode into mainstream consciousness. As the Seventies wave of liberalism gave way to the Eighties Thatcherite New Morality and hard-line feminism, it somehow became easier to accept that pornographers – evil, corrupt exploiters of women, every one of them – would cheerfully kill for the cameras. And by the 1990s, British newspaper hacks, bored with the term ‘video nasty’ were starting to use ‘snuff’ as a description for just about any violent movie, culminating in one tabloid notoriously referring to Japanese amine film Akira as ‘Manga snuff’. Now, apparently, even cartoon characters were being murdered for real, despite never having actually existed in the first place!

Feminist writers and moral campaigners both routinely told tales of snuff movies which were dressed up as proven fact, but which were always vague enough to avoid scrutiny. No names, no evidence. Films that the authorities had been unable to see were apparently easily accessed by anti-porn fanatics. And invariably, the public followed suit. Everyone these days, it seems, knows someone who’s mate has seen a snuff movie.

In many cases, these snuff movies turn out to be more indicative of the gullibility of the viewer – or, perhaps, their desire to believe. The Amazon snuff movie reported (in a cynically racist manner) by The Daily Mail, and quoted at the top of this article, turned out to be Ruggero Deodato’s 1979 production Cannibal Holocaust, a film which has been mistaken for the Real Thing in Britain more than once. At least that film, with it’s powerfully authentic pseudo-documentary style, looks the part; more ludicrous was the insistence by zealous staff from Liverpool Trading Standards and various media (including Channel Four News) that Joe D’Amato’s Anthropophagous (a generally tedious horror movie about a cannibal killer lurking on a Greek island), seized during video nasty raids in 1993 was a snuff movie. Similarly, a scurrilous Channel 4 documentary series ran an episode on ‘satanic abuse’, claiming to show footage of killings in occult rituals – in reality, it was performance art footage by Genesis P. Orridge’s Temple of Psychik Youth.

Flower of Flesh and Blood, an episode from the Japanese  film series Guinea Pig, has also convinced many people – including actor Charlie Sheen, who reported it to the authorities after watching aghast. In Britain, a National Film Theratre employee was taken to court after customs seized a tape of the film, and only narrowly escaped a jail sentence when experts declared the film to be a clever simulation. And indeed it is. Catering to the Japanese audience’s blood lust, the film is a carefully constructed fake snuff movie – devoid of any narrative structure, it simply shows a woman being killed and hacked apart by a man dressed as a Samurai. However, the film still features standard cinematic devices and full credits, which one would hardly expect to find on evidence of crime, and the DVD edition also comes with ‘behind the scenes’ footage exposing the whole artifice.

In more recent years, the scuzzier end of US shot-on-video sleaze has seen similar ‘recreation’ movies. The likes of Snuff Kill and Snuff Perversions are virtually plotless collections of faked snuff movies, designed to look as real as possible – deliberately crude, basic and often minimalist, these films exist only to appeal to the warped tastes of ghouls who really want to see the real thing but who will, in its absence, settle for these reconstructions instead. There’s certainly no entertainment value to be had from such movies, but one can easily imagine them being taken for the real thing by newspaper hacks, politicians and censorial groups.

Meanwhile, the improbably titled Very Very Sexy Snuff Movie is a low budget French addition to the continuing slew of ‘snuff’ titles. This anthology offering includes a tale of three young East European women who are kidnapped by a sick producer of snuff movies and held prisoners on the movie set. Its torpid tagline is: ‘Sexier dead than alive’. And, Sonrie – Snuff Inc from Argentina (‘where life is cheap” perhaps? Certainly where FILMS are cheap, given the $600 budget of this movie) is an alleged ‘snuff comedy’, though you might struggle to see where he humour is.

A long-standing tradition of the snuff movie mythology was that such films were made in South America, where “Life Is Cheap!”. Unsubstantiated stories of prostitutes and children being smuggled over the border into the US, where they would be raped and murdered by organised rings of snuff film-makers, had circulated throughout the Seventies. By the Eighties, however, the mythology had developed to the extent where these films were happening anywhere and everywhere and were. One of the most insistent claims made regarding snuff movies relates to paedophile rings and satanic cults.

In both instances, the evidence remains non-existent, but has been so widely distorted and exaggerated that most people genuinely believe it. The most recurrent individual tale concerns footage of the murder of Jason Swift and several other children at the hands of a group of paedophiles in the early Eighties. At the start of the Nineties, newspapers reported that the deaths of several children had been videotaped, although there was no evidence to support this. The reports would subsequently resurface with remarkable frequency; the raids which netted Anthropophagous were reported as possibly having found such footage. Not true. And the Powers That Be conveniently float the rumour whenever calls for stricter censorship are made. So it’s worth re-stating for the record: there is no evidence whatsoever that the killings were filmed for any reason, let alone for commercial purposes. No tapes found. No cameras found. No statements from the convicted killers. Nothing.

Various cases in which murderers have filmed their activities have been held up as proof of snuff movie production. In 1985, Californian police found videotapes of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng torturing and murdering several women. Many people took these as final confirmation of the existence of snuff movies, but they were wrong. These tapes, shot for the killer’s own personal gratification (much as the Moors Murderers audio-taped and photographed their victims) don’t fit the definition of films being produced for commercial reasons; of people dying on camera for the profit of shadowy underworld figures; of movies which sell to rich, jaded degenerates for thousands of dollars a time. And despite rumours, there is no evidence to suggest that the tapes had ever been seen by anyone other than the two killers.

And tasteless documentary films such as Executions, Faces of Death, True Gore, Death – The Ultimate Horror, Death Scenes, Snuff – A Documentary About Killing and others don’t qualify either, featuring as they do news footage (or, in the case of the Faces of Death series, rather unconvincing reconstructions) of accidents and crime scenes. Salacious they may be; offensive, probably; but hardly snuff movies. The same is true of war atrocity videos (such as the Bosnian propaganda tape that was being sold on the streets of London at the height of the Balkan war) or various medical studies, ranging from surgical operations to post mortems, that have entered into general underground circulation.

Arguably, the closest we’ve come to real snuff movies are the shocking murder videos posted to the internet – be they jihadist executions, murderous drug gangs in Mexico – where life really DOES seem cheap – slaughtering those who have crossed them or Russian murderers filming their killings and then posting them online, these are very, very real. But snuff movies in the accepted sense? They are not being shot to order for money, so no. And interestingly, no one seems to be calling these clips ‘snuff movies’. Perhaps it’s too trivial a term to be used for such obviously real atrocities.

Despite the overwhelming lack of evidence to support it though, the Snuff myth will never die. There are too many people with a vested interest in keeping it alive. Feminists see snuff as proof of the dehumanising effect of pornography – another level of the abuse of women. Moral campaigners cite snuff as proof that we need stronger censorship. Fundamentalist Christians use snuff as a way of backing their claims of widespread satanic abuse, which could only be stopped by outlawing Satanism. Yet all these groups seem to miss the point. Because even if snuff movies do exist, they exist beyond the law of every nation in the world, and no legal changes will alter that fact. Murder is already a criminal offence.

In almost thirty years of hysteria, there has yet to be a single ‘commercially’ produced snuff movie found anywhere on the planet. And yet TV programmes like The Knock and CSI can feature storylines about the cracking of a snuff movie ring by customs or the police as if such events are common occurrences.

Mainstream thriller 8mm perpetuated the myth further (the very title of Joel Schumaker’s film shows the lack of intelligence at work – would actual snuff movie makers shoot on film, given the expense, difficulty and risks involved, when video cameras are widely available?) and has been at the forefront of a new generation of movies playing with the myth.

Preceding it was Mute Witness, made in 1994 and set in Russia, where a make-up artist (Marina Zudina) who can’t speak finds herself seeing what appears to be a porno shoot taking lace after hours in the film studio where she works, only for the shoot to turn nasty as the lead actress is murdered on screen. The authorities don’t believe her, but the snuff film crew (led by Alec Guinness, in scenes shot a decade before the rest of the film!) decide she must be silenced anyway…

Possibly the interesting movie treatment of the subject is Tesis, made in 1996 by Alejandro Amenábar, a thriller that uses snuff movies as a way of examining our fascination with violence and murder, with Ana Torrent as a film student who finds a videotape featuring a snuff movie and decides to investigate its origins. It’s a solid thriller that is smarter than most.

The ever opportunist Bruno Mattei )as ‘Pierre Le Blanc’) climbed on what little bandwagon 8mm spawned with 2003’s Snuff Trap, though the plot – a mother searches for her daughter who might have been involved in porno snuff movie production – is closer to Hardcore. As with most of Mattei’s later, shot-on-video films, this is barely watchable.

Bernard Rose, director of Candyman, made Snuff Movie in 2005, where a horror film director exorcises the demons of his wife’s murder at the hands of a hippy cult in the 1960s (a neat tie-in to Manson) by shooting snuff movies, killing off auditioning actors. Grubbier than you might expect from the director, but fairly mainstream in its approach, Snuff Movie is a decent film but hardly innovative.

Still, it’s better than the likes of The Great American Snuff Film or The Cohasset Snuff Film, all of which are throwaway SOV splatter movies that are frankly best avoided. None of these films offer any new insight and instead attempt to trade on the notoriety of the ‘S’ word.

The Snuff mythology has crept into more mainstream movies recently too. 2007’s Vacancy saw Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson as a bickering couple who find themselves staying at a run down motel, only to find that the video tapes left on top of the TV are actually snuff movies. Worse still, they are snuff movies filmed in the very room that they are staying in! This begins a better-than-expected cat and mouse thriller, with the couple trying to escape from the snuff movie makers who run the motel and lure hapless guests to their on screen death. Vacancy 2: The First Cut follows the origin of the snuff movie ring and is less effective.

The snuff movie myth also informs films like V/H/S and its sequels, which blur the line between found footage – which of course tries to pass itself off as an authentic document – and snuff movie mythology. Several other films have also touched on the subject, including The Brave, Urban Legends: Final Cut and Sinister, while the idea of internet snuff via live feeds – often tied to ideas of reality TV – have appeared in Live Feed, My Little Eye, ICU and Halloween: Resurrection amongst others.

But let’s remember that these films, good or bad, are simply exploiting a public fear for profit. Like alien autopsy videos, they give a salivating public what it wants. The truth wouldn’t sell tickets at the box office. And in the end, the truth doesn’t matter. Snuff movies will continue to make headlines because they make great headlines, and people will continue to believe in their existence, because people need to believe. It’s an idea that simply seems too good not to be true.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Women’s Camp 119 – Italian title K.Z.9 Lager di Sterminio – is a 1977 Italian exploitation film directed by Bruno Mattei. It was released in Italy two months after Mattei’s first Nazi-themed film SS Girls (aka Private House of the SS), with which it shares numerous cast members, and stars Ivano Staccioli, Lorraine de Salle, Nello Riviè and Gabriele Carrara.

In the last months of World War 2, at the Rosenhausen Experimental Camp in Germany, Dr. Franz Wieker (Ivano Staccioli) conducts ghastly medical experiments on unfortunate women imported from Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. When not being operated upon, the victims must cope with the attentions of sadistic Oberleutnant Otto Ohlendorf (Gabriele Carrara) and Chief ‘Kapo’ Martha (Gota Gobert), a predatory lesbian. Meanwhile Wieker’s unwilling assistant Dr. David Meisel (Nello Riviè), and Maria Black (Lorraine de Salle), a Jewish medical student forced to participate in the running of the experiments, try to maintain their humanity and to seek a chance to escape…

Women’s Camp 119 contains all the staple ingredients of the Nazisploitation cycle; maniacal ‘Dick Dastardly’ Nazi officers, sadistic lesbian warders, a couple of unwilling doctors plagued with guilt at their involvement, along with sundry beatings, mutilation and torture. In other words, it’s disgusting, exploitative trash wallowing in the worst of human history. What could one possibly say in its favour? Well, I imagine the reason most horror fans watch the Italian ‘Nazisploitation’ films is to gawp at their outrageous violence and gasp in disbelief at their sheer bad taste. That certainly covers it for me. Seen from such a vantage point, Women’s Camp 119 undoubtedly delivers the goods. The gruesome scenes are really quite disgusting, and Mattei creates some truly pathological images of brutality. An early scene depicting a room full of women being killed with Zyklon-B nerve gas achieves a revolting intensity by showing the dead bodies streaked with excrement (victims of Zyklon-B would defecate uncontrollably as they died). Elsewhere, we witness gory uterus transplants, hideously smashed limbs left to heal without treatment, and plentiful flagellation, interspersed with extensive nudity. An atmosphere of madness and degeneracy takes hold here and there, something which Mattei may genuinely have striven for rather than being merely accidental, although it doesn’t prevent other scenes from descending into absurdity. The monstrous Lieutenant Ohlendorff (Carrara, over-the-top star of Mattei’s SS Girls) spits irony-free howlers like “Lick my boots forever, dog!” or “You’ll wipe the asses of every one of us until you turn purple with fatigue!” One ridiculous moment has Riviè and de Salle flicking through repellent colour photographs of skin diseases in a medical textbook while exchanging over-acted ‘significant’ glances. Then there’s the fate of two homosexual prisoners, seen knitting in their cell, who are forced to undergo ‘treatment’ for their ‘condition’, which involves three women diving onto the horrified queens’ beds where they squirm around in a miserable attempt at coitus.

So there’s plenty to laugh at, if you’re in that sort of a mood. If you’re not, then Women’s Camp 119 is just a reprehensible piece of trash from beginning to end, nowhere more so than when Commander Wieker watches real newsreel footage of the death camps, images we’re all familiar with from such programmes as The World at War. It may be splitting hairs when dealing with such a morally bankrupt sub-genre, but for my money this inclusion is altogether the sickest tactic employed in the so-called Nazi cycle (and considering that the footage in question was filmed by Allied forces, it’s not only morally objectionable but historically ludicrous as well.) One is tempted to drive a judgemental tank over Mattei and classify him as the lowest sort of scumbag, though it’s better to try and understand what he was thinking. Perhaps he got carried away trying to outdo Don Edmonds (Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS), Sergio Garrone (SS Experiment Camp) and Mario Caiano (Nazi Love Camp 27)? Maybe he thought he was just joining in with the spirit of provocation, trying to play the game of nihilism for fun and profit harder and better than the others? Or maybe, with a distributor breathing down his neck demanding more nastiness for the Japanese market, he was ‘just obeying orders’?

The offensiveness of Women’s Camp 119 is compounded rather than alleviated by its gestures toward moral seriousness. Despite decent Dr. Meisel and cool-headed med-student Maria acting as crude pontificatory avatars for decency and kindness, one never believes the film’s pose of integrity. The character of Kurt, a deranged slobbering servant of the Nazis whom they allow to molest female prisoners, is presented in the film as the epitome of sick deranged lust. However, for his scenes to be valid Kurt should be less comedic, and the camera much less eager to share his pleasure; instead Mattei presses the lens against the quivering breasts of Kurt’s victims with the same gluttonous glee as the character we’re invited to despise, suggesting perhaps a degree of unconscious self-hatred on the director’s part. Random inconsistencies abound, such as why a cure for sterility should matter to a regime obsessed with genetic purity (surely the genes of the sterile are unworthy of propagation?) and as the final credits roll, a gallery of real-life Nazis still at large after the war founders on careless research: Karl Silberbauer, described onscreen as “the torturer of Anna Frank [sic]” was in fact merely the arresting officer who took Anne Frank into custody. He was not the one who first betrayed her whereabouts to the police, nor was he her ‘torturer’. The brief information presented onscreen about Franz Murer, Josef Mengele and Walter Rauff is broadly accurate, although it erroneously states that Rauff went to live in America in 1949, when in fact he lived briefly in Ecuador before settling in Chile in 1958.

The current absence of a decent digital transfer makes it hard to gauge the cinematography, by Mattei’s frequent collaborator Luigi Ciccarese. Musically, the film benefits from a ponderously dark and doomy score by Alessandro Alessandroni (strangely one of the more memorable cues here pops up uncredited in the Franco De Masi score for The New York Ripper five years later). From a dramaturgical standpoint the film lacks vitality; there is no sense of accumulation to the horrors, and no formal structure to the material. Everything just plods along until the Allied bombings bring the story to a close; within the narrative there is no exploration of tensions between the captors, and only the most cursory of relationships between the prisoners. Yes, there is the usual escape and capture element, which occupies the last reel or two, but as per usual with these films there’s little energy invested in making us care.

It may seem a tad hypocritical of me to attack a film like this for immorality while at the same time enjoying its tastelessness, but it’s difficult to avoid when the film itself is so inherently confused and contradictory. If a director styles his work as a cartoon ‘for mature audiences only’, a live action version of the Italian fumetti (adult comics which often featured Nazi sex-and-horror tales), it’s easy to go with the flow and let the shocking imagery tickle your jaded sensibilities. I would put something like The Beast in Heat in this category. But if there’s an attempt to ‘get serious’, it seems to me right that we should take a more critical position. Women’s Camp 119, with its use of real-life Auschwitz imagery*, and its sententious coda about the Nazis who got away, falls into the latter category, making it a difficult film to defend without falling into contradiction.

*Note: Sergio Garrone pulled the same stunt by using photographs from the death camps in the credits sequence of SS Camp 5, Women’s Hell (1976), his companion-piece to the more notorious SS Experiment Camp (1976).

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

IMDb

‘Don’t throw rice… just scream your head off!’

The Bride – aka The House That Cried Murder, No Way Out and Last House on Massacre Street – is a 1972 American horror film directed by Jean Marie Pélissié, and written and produced by John Grissmer, the director of Scalpel (1976) and Blood Rage (1983). Composer Peter Bernstein, son of Elmer, also contributed scores to Silent Rage; Dark Asylum and  Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys.

The film stars Robin Strasser (also in supernatural TV movie And the Bones Came Together), Arthur Roberts (Chopping Mall; Not of This Earth; The Mummy’s Kiss), John Beal (The Vampire, 1957 and Amityville 3-D) and Iva Jean Saraceni (Creepshow).

Plot teaser:

Barbara (Robin Strasser) is about to marry David (Arthur Roberts) who works for her father (John Beal). A strong-willed woman, she intends that she and David will move into a house she has designed and built herself, which stands isolated in the middle of the countryside. On their wedding day, after the ceremony, Barbara discovers David in a steamy clinch with his old flame Helen (Iva Jean Saraceni) and attacks him with a pair of scissors, before smashing the wedding cake and driving away in the bridal limousine.

Weeks pass by and she doesn’t return. David invites Helen to move in with him at his house but it’s not long before strange events proliferate: the two of them receive threatening telephone calls and David suffers terrifying nightmares about Barbara… Is she still alive and seeking vengeance, or is she dead and haunting him? Either way the pressure is driving him towards madness, culminating in a terrifying visit to the house that Barbara built…

Buy The House That Cried Murder on DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

Shot in thirty days in June and July 1972, on location in Connecticut and North Salem, New York, this strange little film feels as though it was written to make use of the central location, a bizarre modernist monstrosity with sharp angled walls and giant windows looking out over beautiful cornfields. There’s also some kind of feminist slant to the action, with David’s weaknesses and Barbara’s strengths contrasted. Barbara is the dominant force in their relationship, and the idea that she designed and built the projected marital home herself emphasises the inversion of traditional gender roles. By comparison, David is weak, lazy, dishonorable, and lacking a sense of personal responsibility.

Mexican lobby card

However, neither David nor Barbara are portrayed sympathetically. Barbara may be strong but she’s also breezily indifferent to her husband’s misgivings about the new house, making plans for their future without paying attention to his opinion; her arrogant assurance that things will be done her way makes her difficult to root for. Having said that, there’s no doubt that David deserves what he gets. He’s a total bastard, betraying his new wife with their wedding vows still ringing in his ears, then hanging on to his well-paid job with the bride’s father by pretending the ensuing scene was all her fault.

Despite the scissor attack, at first both David and Helen fail to take the threat of a vengeful Barbara seriously, but their easy dismissals don’t last. Barbara’s father spooks David by telling him about a dark side to her character: “Barbara has a special talent for tormenting,” he says, before recounting a story from Barbara’s childhood: one day her pet chicken lashed out and pecked her, causing a gash that required stitches. Afterwards, he says, she took a straight razor and locked herself in her bedroom with the bird. “We could hear that poor creature screaming for more than an hour.”

It’s all too much for David, and in one of the film’s stand-out scenes he has a nightmare about being trapped in the house that Barbara built. Sweating with fear he stumbles around the empty building, menaced by bizarre camerawork, extreme lighting and electronic weirdness on the soundtrack. The scene builds upon a comment from Barbara in an early scene: “A house is always the reflection of its builder.” The film thus condenses its underlying contradictions (a fearful ‘celebration’ of women’s liberation) into a single powerful image – a weak and foolish man trapped in a world created by a malevolent stronger woman.

If the later scenes at the house feel slightly undercooked, The Bride remains a chilling little treat for fans of oddball independent horror, with an ambiguous finale that recalls Mario Bava’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon: a husband trapped in the power of a malevolent wife whose lust for revenge seems likely to keep them busy forever and ever…   

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Buy Blood Bath 2 Collection on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

“The disorientating, multi-surprise ending involves an axe and ghosts and the soundtrack features loud guitar blasts. It’s a pretty interesting obscurity.” Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide

Buy The Psychotronic Video Guide from Amazon.co.uk

UK ‘pre-cert’ video release from Quality Video

Second UK video release from Viz Movies – Buy VHS

Finnish video cover

Spanish video cover

Buy Regional Horror Films, 1958 – 1990 from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

IMDb

Mean-spirited US poster artwork

Bloodrage (also known as Never Pick up a Stranger) is a 1979 psycho thriller exploitation film directed by Joseph Zito (under the pseudonym Joseph Bigwood) from a screenplay by Robert Jahn. It stars Ian Scott, Judith-Marie Bergan, James Johnston, Betsy Ramlow and Lawrence Tierney (The Kirlian Witness; Silver Bullet; The Horror Show).

Director Zito previously directed Abduction (1975) and went on to helm two slashers, The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, before focusing on reactionary action movies.

Plot teaser:

A young man named Richard visits Beverly, a local prostitute, and runs into her boyfriend, a police officer named Ryan, on the way into Beverly’s home. Richard and Beverly get into an argument, which ends with Richard accidentally shoving Beverly through a window, killing her. Richard cleans up the scene, evades Ryan when he returns from running errands, and hitchhikes to New York City after disposing of Beverly’s body.

Richard acquires a room in a dingy motel, gets a job at a bottling company, befriends a neighboring drug dealer named Candice, and voyeuristically spies on Nancy, a prostitute who lives across from Candice. Intoxicated by what he felt during Beverly’s death, Richard murders a woman named Lucy, torturing and humiliating her beforehand. Ryan, suspicious of Beverly’s disappearance, heads to New York in search of her, enlisting the aid of the local police, and passing photographs of her around at strip clubs and bars.

During the course of his investigation, Ryan spots Richard in a restaurant, and hears a broadcast announcing that Beverly’s remains were uncovered. Concluding that Richard probably killed Beverly, Ryan finds out where he is staying, and heads there…

Reviews:

” …oozes the atmosphere of the sleazy 70’s and is bound to upset even the steadiest of stomachs, not because it is overly bloody (it’s not) but because of the matter-of-fact way that director Joseph Bigwood (actually Joseph Zito using a pseudonym) treats the material and characters. While the storyline is of the basic ‘serial killer murders prostitutes’ formula, the acting and situations seem so natural and unhampered by not having a big budget (this is an extremely low budget effort) that it makes the killings all the more horrendous”. Fred Adelman, Critical Condition

“The unpolished acting works, too, giving things a reasonably authentic flavor, with Scott especially hitting all the right notes as Richie. This is a guy who would creep you out if you even bothered to pay attention to him, but is so non-descript and unassuming that you probably wouldn’t. You can already hear his neighbors being interviewed on the news saying “I guess I’m kinda surprised he’d do something like this, he just seemed like one of those guy who was sort of — I dunno, there, ya know? Ya never had much reason to pay attention to him one way or another.” How many times have we heard a variation on those very words from somebody talking about a real life psycho?” Trash Film Guru

Choice dialogue:

“She was beautiful… she disgusted me.”

Wikipedia | IMDb

Stephanie Beacham (born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, 28 February 1947) is an English television, radio, film and theatre actress. Her career began in modelling before she moved into television with roles in series such as The Saint, Callan, and alien invasion cult classic UFO. Her early film roles included The Ballad of Tam Lin (aka The Devil’s Widow), directed by Roddy McDowall.

Other horror roles:

In Michael Winner’s SM-tinged The Nightcomers (1971), a bizarre ‘prequel’ to the events that occurred in Henry James’ novella ‘The Turn of the Screw’, she starred opposite Marlon Brando. Beacham appeared nude in one scene, during the filming of which Brando apparently wore Y-fronts and wellington boots under the bed clothes to ensure Winner did not film anything lower than was necessary.

Horror would be a genre that Stephanie Beacham appeared often in during the 1970s, and she was subsequently cast as Jessica Van Helsing in Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972 alongside genre icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

Her other horror film appearances are in Amicus period piece  –And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), Pete Walker’s House of Mortal Sin (aka The Confessional Murders, 1975), Schizo (1976) and Norman J. Warren’s Inseminoid (aka Horror Planet, 1981),

She was featured in the Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense episode ‘A Distant Scream‘ in 1984 before achieving worldwide fame in TV soaps such as The Colbys and Dynasty. In 2000, she appeared in supernatural fantasy Charmed TV episode “Reckless Abandon”.

Wikipedia (click for non-horror roles)

‘She walks in terror, stilled with fright. A trail of fear, to fill the night!’

Jennifer is a 1978 horror film directed by Brice Mack from a screenplay by Kay Cousins Johnson and a story by Steve Krantz. It stars Lisa Pelikan, Bert Convy (A Bucket of Blood; Bewitched), Nina Foch (Cry of the Werewolf), John Gavin (Psycho) and Jeff Corey (The Boston Strangler; The Premonition; Curse of the Black Widow). It was released in the USA by American International Pictures.

Plot teaser:

Jenifer Baylor (Lisa Pelikan) is a poor, red-headed young woman from West Virginia. Jennifer possesses a power over snakes, an ability to control them and communicate with them. She and her father, Luke Baylor (Jeff Corey), left their home in disgrace, because when Jennifer was around the age of seven, some snakes she had been handling killed the town preacher’s son. She refused to handle snakes ever again, though Luke now runs a pet store and often encourages her to use her power again. Luke is mentally disabled, unable to make meals for himself without burning them, and relies on Jennifer since his wife died. While Luke does run the pet store, he spends most of the time in a back room, listening to Christian radio.

Jennifer receives a scholarship to an upper-class girls private school. While at school, Jennifer encounters a clique of wealthy and cruel girls, who hate her for being poor and different. These girls turn others against Jennifer throughout the movie, but Jennifer also makes friends of her own, including teacher Jeff Reed (Bert Convy). The wealthy girls’ cruelty eventually pushes Jennifer over the edge, causing her to use her special powers again for the sake of revenge against those that hurt her and her new friends…

Reviews:

“Jennifer is a hand-me-down version of Carrie, from which it borrows all of the above, plus a shower scene, final scare and a couple of costumes that look just like Sissy Spacek’s. If it doesn’t copy the precise ending of “Carrie,” the reasons appear to have been financial rather than esthetic ones. Instead of marshaling an entire special-effects department to help Jennifer (Lisa Pelikan) trash her hometown, the film merely shows her summoning up “the vengeance of the viper.” Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Technically speaking, there isn’t any special or noteworthy about Carrie with Snake’s cinematography, story, or anything else for that matter except maybe the laughably terrible ending wherein an army of snakes and snake demons (or rather, puppets) are unleashed by Jennifer upon all those who had wronged her in the past. The film’s budgetary restraints are never more evident than in the film’s uninspired ending, which could’ve been more effective and chilling if Mack had a better understanding of shadow, editing, or subtly–but then this is the guy who directed Rooster: Spurs of Death!” Examiner.com

“Jennifer is one of those special 1970’s treats. A movie that is sprung forth from the popularity of another (1976’s Carrie) but then goes into it’s own direction and you fall for it’s charms (Whether they be Bert Convy or an awesome theme song).” Cinema du Meep

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘She sucks the life from the bodies of men’

Night of the Cobra Woman is a 1972 American horror film co-produced by New World Pictures that was shot in the Philippines. It was directed by Andrew Meyer and stars Joy Bang and Marlene Clark.

Plot teaser:

After being bitten by a very unusual cobra, a beautiful nurse can turn herself into a snake and remain eternally young. However, to keep her youthful exterior, the cursed priestess requires a steady supply of venom — and lusty young men at her beck and call to steal their youth! But trouble occurs when she falls for the boyfriend of a beautiful snake expert, and he brings along a pet eagle. Can she make a choice between a mortal male and her cobra god Movini ?

Roger Corman expressed great disappointment in the final product and thought its main problem was the script badly lacked logic.

Buy Night of the Cobra Woman on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“It does have sex, nudity and enough bizarro qualities to make it an appealing ‘B’ level quickie, but it never feels assured of what it wants to be from one scene to the next. Just when it’s on the cusp of wrapping itself around its inherent trashiness, it slithers into other territory. If only there were more scenes as squirm-inducing as the ‘skin stripping’ sequence, we’d have something with a bit more fang for the buck. Cool Ass Cinema

“I can get behind this film to some degree, but it still suffers from terrible acting, choppy editing, and some general sloppiness. So, Night of the Cobra Woman is a bit of a mixed bag. Poorly executed to say the least, but somewhat creepy in a cheesy kind of way.” Forgotten Films

“I enjoyed this very much. Not because it’s great, but because I can’t believe whoever made this intended on producing a serious film. Complete terrible dialogue, bad acting, and the movie being all over the place when it comes to a plot, but with that being said, this can be a fun experience if you can tolerate it.” Icons of Fright

Wikipedia | IMDb | Related: Cult of the Cobra | Snakes on Horrorpedia

WH

‘See the unholy feast of the damned!’

Legacy of Satan is a 1974 American horror film written and directed by adult filmmaker Gerard Damiano (The Devil in Miss Jones). It stars John Francis, Lisa Christian, Paul Barry, Jarrar Ramze, Ann Paul, James Procter and Deborah Horlen.

Plot teaser:

A satanic cult chooses an unwitting young girl as its new queen…

Buy Blood Bath 2 Collection on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“It was originally shot as a porn-horror by writer-director Gerard Damiano, only to be de-humpified by outlaw 1970s distro outfit Bryanston. Dirt cheap. Totally confused. It’s like Runaway Nightmare mashed into Satan’s Black Wedding with Jess Franco consulting. In other words, Damiano should be very proud.” My Duck is Dead

“The sets and costumes are generally colorful. The photography, although inconsistent and sometimes badly lit indoors, is quite lovely in the outdoor scenes. Even though nearly everyone in the entire cast seems to have made only this one picture, the acting is on a par with that of some Lifetime TV movies and above that of most non-professional no budget films. In fact, being directed by porn film legend Gerard Damiano, it’s possible many of these folks were low level porn actors.” Going for Broke – The Christa Helm Story

“The master says things like “You pitiful worm under my feet!” and mutates at the end. This slow movie has an irritating buzzing synthesizer score that sounds like ELP outtakes.” Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide

IMDb

Bud Westmore (13 January 1918 – 24 June 1973) was a make-up artist in Hollywood and son of George Westmore, a member of the Westmore family prominent in Hollywood make-up. He is credited on over 450 movies and television shows, including The List of Adrian Messenger, Man of a Thousand Faces, The Andromeda Strain and Creature from the Black Lagoon. For his involvement in Creature from the Black Lagoon he assisted the designer of the Gill-man, Disney animator Millicent Patrick, though her role was deliberately downplayed and for half a century, Westmore would receive sole credit for the creature’s conception – not, alas, the only time the work of others was overlooked somewhat. Westmore was also famous for the make-up for TV show The Munsters.

The Westmore Hollywood dynasty was actually headed up by Bud’s father, George, who alongside work on many Douglas Fairbanks Snr films (1924’s The Thief of Baghdad and 1921’s The Three Musketeers, to name but two) could also claim the have been Winston Churchill’s barber. After taking his family across the Atlantic to America from England, he set up Hollywood’s first make-up department.

After George’s suicide (the appropriately theatrical swallowing of mercury), his sons carried on the dynasty; Monte was much associated with MGM until his early death of a heart attack following surgery; Perc became head of Make-up at Warner Bros; Wally himself became Make-up chief at Paramount; Ern worked at 20th Century Fox and low-budget film studio Eagle-Lion, but his career was hampered by an alcohol problem; Bud became head at Universal, and the youngest, Frank, was more freelance and later wrote a book on the family, The Westmores of Hollywood in 1976.

Bud Westmore was born Hamilton Adolph, but changed his first names to George Hamilton both in tribute to his father and after the rise of Hitler made Adolph an unpopular name in the US. After free-lancing in the 40s (including work at “Poverty Row” studio PRC on the classic noir Detour in 1945), Westmore joined Universal, replacing the Godfather of monster make-up, Jack Pierce, as head of the make-up department. Although Bud worked on every conceivable genre of film, it was for his work creating monsters and aliens for horror, science fiction and fantasy films that he is best remembered, beginning with mega-cheapies such as Strangler of the Swamp, The Flying Serpent and Devil Bat’s Daughter (all 1946) until he finally made something of a breakthrough in 1948 in the (slighter) higher budget, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein – later to cover the comedy duo’s meetings with The Invisible Man, The Mummy, The Killer, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Keystone Cops.

Westmore worked at a furious pace and, truth be told, this can be seen in his somewhat basic style, lacking the intricate and ingenious work of the likes of Pierce and making easy to apply prosthetics and cheap and cheerful frights. Many have also questioned how much of the work Westmore is credited for can truly be attributed to him, never more so than with 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon. For many years, the creature’s design and creation was solely credited to Westmore, though we are now able to cite the original conceptual designs, drawings and paintings to Millicent Patrick and a good deal of the actual creation as being from the hands of Jack Kevan.

Westmore continued to work relentlessly (or appear to at least), throughout the 50’s and 60’s, amongst the atomic age beasties were particularly notable works on James Cagney for the Lon Chaney biopic, Man of a Thousand Faces, and the creation of the make-up for the long-running television series, The Munsters. Here he was able to fully lampoon not only the work of others but also himself, at last the perfect marriage. Sadly, a combination of industry back-biting and financial belt-tightening meant that by 1970, Universal had cast Westmore adrift and the insolvent make-up artist did his final work for MGM’s Soylent Green in 1973. His legacy may be over-shadowed by doubts over his hands-on input but there can be little doubt that the giant bud-headed creatures of the 1940’s and 1950’s would be a little less memorable without him, to the extent that the largest building in Universal’s back-lot is named after him.

Selected filmography:

The Strangler of the Swamp
The Flying Serpent
Devil Bat’s Daughter
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Strange Door
The Black Castle
Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
It Came From Outer Space
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Revenge of the Creature
The Mole People
Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy
Cult of the Cobra
This Island Earth
Tarantula
The Creature Walks Among Us
The Deadly Mantis
The Monolith Monsters
The Thing That Couldn’t Die
Monster on the Campus
Curse of the Undead
The Leech Woman
The Night Walker
The Munsters
Dark Intruder
Let’s Kill Uncle
Eye of the Cat
Night Gallery
The Andromeda Strain
Soylent Green

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘They shared the pleasures of the flesh and the horrors of the grave!’

Vampyres – also released as Daughters of Dracula; Vampyres, Daughters of Dracula; Vampyres: Daughters of Darkness; Satan’s Daughters and Blood Hunger – is a 1974 British erotic vampire horror film directed by José Ramón Larraz. The film’s delightfully discordant score was by James Kenelm Clarke who directed Exposé aka House on Straw Hill a year later.

A novelisation was belatedly published in 2001 by Tim Greaves via FAB Press.

Though initially heavily censored in the UK, an uncut Blu-ray was released in the USA on 30 March 2010 by Blue Underground, including a commentary by director José Ramón Larraz and producer Brian Smedley-Aston, interviews with stars Marianne Morris and Anulka, the international trailer, and the U.S. trailer.

Plot teaser:

Two beautiful undead women roam the English countryside, luring unsuspecting men to their estate for orgies of sex and blood. But when an innocent young couple stumble into the vampires’ lair, they find themselves sucked into an unforgettable vortex of savage lust and forbidden desires…

Reviews:

‘ … quite decent, achieving some good shock moments and showing a taste for the sombre visual…’ Films Illustrated, 1974

‘A non-too-original idea loses through poor acting and the film that emerges is a stock sex-horror exploitation vehicle that gets better direction than it deserves’. Alan Frank, The Horror Film Handbook (Batsford, 1982)

‘… the film is essential viewing for the serious aficionado of British screen terror. Even as the decades pass, it remains one of the most haunting and atmospheric pieces ever committed to celluloid. Few films of such limited funding can claim to be the subject of continued celebration so long after their lensing.” Tim Greaves, Ten Years of Terror (FAB Press, 2001)

Buy Vampyres uncut on Blue Underground Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Cast:

• Marianne Morris … Fran
• Anulka Dziubinska … Miriam
• Murray Brown … Ted
• Brian Deacon … John
• Sally Faulkner … Harriet
• Michael Byrne … Playboy
• Karl Lanchbury … Rupert
• Margaret Heald … Receptionist
• Gerald Case … Estate Agent
• Bessie Love … American Lady
• Elliott Sullivan … American Man

Filming locations:

Oakley Court; Denham churchyard

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Body Shop – aka Body Shop; Shrieks in the Night and later retitled Doctor Gore – is a 1973 American horror film written, directed and starring former TV horror host and magician J.G. Patterson Jr. The film was originally titled Anitra, as can be glimpsed on the film’s slate board, lazily included in the trailer!).

It stars Jenny Driggers (as the aforementioned Anitra), Roy Mehaffey, Linda Faile, Jan Benfield, Jeannine Aber, Candy Furr, Vickie O’Neal and Jerry Kearns. Future directors Worth Keeter (credited as the “special horror consultant”) and William Girdler (credited with music, music editor and sound effects) also worked on the film.

Patterson worked on a number of Herschell G. Lewis’ in a special effects capacity and was associate producer on The Gruesome Twosome (1967). He also produced Axe (1974). He died of cancer in 1975 in Charlotte, North Carolina (he chain smokes throughout The Body Shop).

Plot teaser:

Mad scientist Dr. Don Brandon (J.G. Patterson Jr.) loses his wife Anitra in a tragic car accident. He and his hunchback assistant Gregory begin kidnapping women for re-animation experiments to bring her back to life…

Reviews:

‘Equally not as thought-out is Patterson’s point-and-shoot direction, inert enough to make Lewis look like a Palme d’Or contender. Shots of a two-character conversation don’t match; one scene begins with the clapboard in clear view, as if Patterson simply didn’t care anymore. His alarming ineptitude is exactly what Doctor Gore, also known as The Body Shop, has going for it.’ Rod Lott, Flick Attack

‘Amidst nonsensical and frequent jump cuts, an amazing electronic and organ-based score, and ghastly, but theatrical looking gore, you STILL have J.G. Patterson’s giant head and hilarious musical interludes with country singer Bill Hicks. Dialogue is insane and hilarious. Doctor Gore is a fantastically bizarre movie and should be heralded as a classic. You’ll laugh, cringe, and drop your jaw.’ Bleeding Skull!

Buy Doctor Gore + How to Make a Doll on DVD from Amazon.com

“Frankly, I’m surprised that Patterson managed an entire 75 minutes out of the film. Even with the padded scenes (some that deliver about 15 seconds worth of information can stretch five minutes), it’s obvious the man didn’t know how to get good coverage. There’s numerous instances where footage is repeated or outtakes are used to extend the scene (there’s a memorable instance of the clapboard being withdrawn hastily from the shot). Patterson constantly smokes throughout the film, but he can’t seem to maintain continuity on a single one of those cancer sticks. They just leap in and out of his mouth like bad magic.” Nate Yapp, Classic Horror

Buy Regional Horror Films, 1958 – 1990 from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Trailer on Daily Motion

Filming locations:

Overlook Castle, North Carolina

IMDb | Images thanks: Bloody Pit of Horror

US One Sheet

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin – Italian title: Una lucertola con la pelle di donna; released as Schizoid in the US – is a 1971 Italian giallo film directed by Lucio Fulci. It stars Florinda Balkan, Stanley Baker and Jean Sorel. Ennio Morricone provides the score.

Plot Teaser

Carol Hammond is a sophisticated politician’s daughter who experiences a series of vivid, psychedelic nightmares drenched in depraved sex orgies and LSD. The dreams turns into a nightmare featuring the death of her neighbour, Julia Dürer. The next day Julia is found brutally murdered in her own apartment.

The investigation, conducted by Inspector Corvin, leads to Carol’s arrest, however she is released after a mysterious man confesses to Scotland Yard that he is the murderer. Not convinced of Carol’s innocence, Corvin continues to investigate the murder and unearths new disturbing clues … Did Carol really do it or is she being framed? Where do her dreams end and reality begin?

The scene in which Carol encounters the disemboweled dogs in the clinic became quite controversial because of the startlingly realistic (and graphic) appearance of the fake prop dogs. Director Lucio Fulci was nearly sent to prison because it was believed that the dogs were real and Fulci had allowed animal cruelty on the film. However crew members were able to testify in court that the “dogs” were indeed fake and no animals had ever been harmed. Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi even presented the dog props in court to convince the jury. This was the first time that an effects artist had to testify in court that their work was fake.

Parts of the film were shot at Woburn Abbey after the Duke and Duchess of Bedford granted permission. Alexandra Palace also features.

Buy A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin in its most complete version from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Reviews

Overall the film is a great experience.  Lines between dream and reality are blurred on a regular basis, leaving the viewer appropriately bewildered.  Various gory nightmare sequences are mixed with erotic dreams to create an unsettling contrast.  And the suspense and mystery holds itself to the ingenious conclusion.  All in all this giallo comes highly recommended.” Blood Sucking Geek

“Forget the rather blatant silliness of it all, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is a tremendous film. It is one of the finest examples of the giallo genre available – a taut, clever and supremely controlled whodunit with enough lurid content (gore, nudity, demented characters) to keep even the most jaded Gumshoe hooked. It’s also one of the crowning achievements of director Lucio Fulci’s long and illustrious career.” Sex Gore Mutants

“The acting was average, the plot, more or less, original, the dialogue was acceptable if a little over the top. There’s nothing terribly wrong with the film and I’m sure people who enjoy this genre will find a lot to like here. But that distance, that unwillingness to let the audience get too wound up in what was going on, left me cold.” DVD Verdict

Eccentric Cinema Shriek Show/Media Blasters DVD review

10k Bullets Shriek Show/Media Blasters DVD review

Cinedelica review

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Ruby is a 1977 horror drama film directed by Curtis Harrington, and was one of his last horror films. It stars Piper Laurie, Stuart Whitman and Roger Davis

Plot Teaser

In 1935, a lowlife mobster, Nikki Rocco, is betrayed and executed in the swampy backwoods as his pregnant gun-moll, Ruby Claire watches. He swears vengeance with his dying breath, and then she suddenly goes into labour. Sixteen years later in 1951, Ruby is now running a drive-in theatre in the backwoods near her home and employs some ex-mobsters. Her 16-year-old daughter, Leslie Claire, is mute and has been since birth.

Soon strange and bizarre accidents claim the lives of Ruby’s employees, then Leslie begins to show strange behaviour, and then begins to speak… in her dead father’s voice. Nikki Rocco possesses his daughter’s body and terrorizes Ruby with levitations, telekinesis, maniacal laughing and bizarre sexual aggression…

Ruby was long available on video in the U.S. only in a butchered version that was re-edited (and apparently re-shot by director Stephanie Rothman) for television, deleting the R-rated violence and adding new dialogue scenes. VCI‘s DVD is presented in its original theatrical version; however, this is not a director’s cut: it contains Krantz’s abrupt, horror ending rather than Harrington’s intended romantic one.

Prior to the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Ruby was the top grossing independent film.

Buy Ruby on DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Reviews

“Mr. Harrington delivers the scares. He is a filmmaker from the Hitchcock school in that he uses suspense rather than shocks to keep the audience on the edge of their seats. This is not to say the film doesn’t have several well placed shocks, it does! This is an excellent movie.” Rusty White’s Film World

“While never entirely leaving the film’s quickie exploitation nature behind, Curtis Harrington crafts it with a series of often striking set-pieces – bodies tossed about and impaled on trees; Stuart Whitman being pursued by supernatural winds; that wonderfully EC Comics-esque moment where a severed head is found attached to the interior of a Coke vending machine; and the genuine surprise moment when Janit Baldwin (an almost neglected actress who gives a eerily spooky performance) is revealed as possessed – that lifts Ruby well above most Exorcist copycats.” Moria

“Cheaply made but fairly well acted, Ruby is well paced and features a few decent murder set pieces but borrow a lot from The Exorcist in spots. The film fails to convince us of its fifties setting (everyone looks very much like a product of the seventies here) but it’s entertaining enough, the way a fun B-grade horror movie can be.” Rock! Shock! Pop!

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

The Pied Piper is a 1972 British film directed by Jacques Demy and starring Jack Wild, Donald Pleasence (Death Line; The Mutations; Halloween) and John Hurt and featuring Donovan and Diana Dors (Nothing But the Night; Craze; Theatre of Blood). It is loosely based on the legend of the Pied Piper. Rather than behaving as you might expect a film aimed at children to, it feasts upon the darker elements of an already concerning fairytale.

A quick reminder of the fairytale: In the Middle Ages, the German village of Hamelin is beset by the plague-carrying rats which are taking over Europe. A famed piper is employed to lead the rats to a watery grave – rats being fond of a good tune. Alas, the local authorities are somewhat forgetful in their commitment to paying the tunesmith and he duly lures the hamlet’s children to the local lake and drowned them. Very few people lived happily ever after.

The 1972 film takes many elements of the original tale but generally speaking manages to reign itself in before causing too much national panic. In 1349, The Black Death is sweeping Germany, courtesy of millions of infected-flea carrying rats. We are introduced to a caravan of travellers, the gypsy Mattio (Keith Buckley, Dr. Phibes Rises Again), his wife Helga (Patsy Puttnam, wife of the now Lord David, who produced the film), along with their children and assorted stragglers. Along their route to Hamelin they meet the cheery Pied Piper (singing wonder elf, Donovan) who they are happy to take on-board. Upon arrival at their destination, he manages to gain entry to the village, along with the other travellers, who are understandably reticent to allow potential disease-carriers into their community, by using his musical talents to sooth the fevered-brow of a young girl Lisa (Cathryn Harrison, Black Moon), the daughter of village Burgermeister (named Poppendick, of course played by Roy Kinnear – his wife, Frau Poppendick, is none other than Diana Dors).

In a head-spinning turn of events, the 11 year-old is betrothed to the power-crazed son (John Hurt) of the local baron (played with typical exuberance by Donald Pleasence) and is only pretending to be ill to get herself out of the dreadful situation. Also mixing things up are a troupe of red-robed religious fiends who have even greater control than the baron or Burgermeister, Lisa’s actual love-interest, Gavin (Jack Wild) and his master, Melius (the always magnificent Michael Hordern, also in Whistle and I’ll Come To You) who is rather more suspicious of events than most others in Hamelin. It is he who warns of the imminent arrival of rats in the village, though his words are initially ignored but then cause rather more upset, landing him in prison for his crazy scientific views, whilst the rest of the populace look to religious antidotes to their fears and fevers. Aside from this, there is rather more emphasis being placed on the financing of a cathedral, in which the happy marriage can take place. However, when the rats eventually arrive in their droves, has The Pied Piper had enough of the religious and under-age outrages to help rid them of their disease-filled rodents?

If your children aren’t either terrified or completely disturbed after that then congratulations. In truth, there isn’t too much in the way of graphic violence, though not all the rats look entirely happy when they’re on-screen. The rank, highly evocative gloominess of the film is largely thanks to the cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky (The Empire Strikes Back and many of David Cronenberg’s films) and the sets and art production by George Djurkovic and Assheton Gorton (Legend, Shadow of the Vampire) and it is this, along with a parade of almost exclusively British acting talent which gives the film its highly unusual tone.

The Pied Piper was directed by Jacques Demy, best remembered for the still popular The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. For a supposedly jolly kids’ film, there’s a massive, barely concealed commentary on the role of religion in society, from the Church versus science dilemma to the treatment of Jews (Hordern’s character) to in-fighting within the local priests themselves. The cast is superb, even Donovan, perhaps mercifully brief in his musical turns as they are featured in the film as necessary interludes rather than slapped onto the soundtrack. It was shot in location in Bavaria, Germany and the dislocation of the British cast again lends an air of unease.

Though The Pied Piper did receive a US release on DVD via the Legend label, it has yet to receive an official release in the UK, as the grimness and downbeat take on a well-loved fairytale are seemingly just still that little bit too strong for British stomachs.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘A chilling tale of vengeance from beyond the grave.’

Crowhaven Farm is a 1970 made-for television film directed by Walter Grauman (Are You in the House Alone?) and starring Hope Lange (Death Wish; A Nightmare on Elm Street 2), Paul Burke (Valley of the Dolls) and John Carradine (House of Frankenstein, The Monster Club).

Maggie Porter (Hope Lange) and her husband Ben (Paul Burke) inherit a farm in Massachusetts after the mysterious death of Maggie’s uncle (actually not that mysterious, we see him crash into a tree after he is distracted by a character we meet later). As soon as they arrive, Maggie is startled by several instances of deja-vu – the instant discovery of secret rooms within the house and flashbacks to vaguely familiar scenes are almost too much for her. The visions become ever more vivid and involve her been surrounded by a group of costumed locals and having large stones placed upon her. Putting it down to reincarnation (!), she is soon brought up to speed by local neighbour and know-it-all Harold Dane (Cyril Delevanti looking close to death, though he hung on a couple more years to appear in Soylent Green) who explains that though the area was no Salem, it had its witchy goings-on in years past, the guilty females crushed under a wooden panel heaped high with large stones of the kind their house is constructed.

Maggie longs for a child and their search for a foster child only brings one response, Marcy Lewis (Virginia Gregg, The Amazing Mr X) who due to a terminal illness wishes to off-load her own foundling, Jennifer (Cindy Eilbacher, Slumber Party Massacre 2). Despite the couples’ reservations (Jennifer is already ten, opposed to their desired new-born), they are soon won over by her personality. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that it was Jennifer who caused poor old uncle’s car to career off the road.

Her arrival coincides with Maggie becoming pregnant but from here, events begin to spiral out of control – the images of her 15th century self are becoming frighteningly real and young Jennifer is not all sweetness and light as they hoped, aided and abetted by their handyman, Nate Cheever (John Carradine doing his best sinister leer). Eventually life and visions combine and the Maggie’s worst fears are realised.

It must first be said that this television film is highly-regarded by many and was responsible for many sleepless nights for watching youths right up until the later screenings in the mid-80’s. Perhaps time has been unkind or this reviewer is missing something but it does come across as needlessly overwrought, made worse by the fact that Maggie’s alarm at the farm is so instantaneous that you do rather lose sympathy with her. The threat in the film is ultimately wrapped up in Jennifer, played admirably by young Eilbacher but a level beneath the angelic Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist or as truly wicked as Rhonda (Patty McCormack) in The Bad Seed – in truth, there isn’t strictly a place for a part that is anything less than either of these. The truly ancient-looking Delevanti is worth watching just to make sure he gets to the end of his sentences and Carradine is fun, though pitifully under-used. There’s a slight nod to a very under-age relationship between Ben and Jennifer which is mercifully quickly forgotten but the recurrent ‘threat’ of witchcraft just isn’t a substantial enough hook to truly drag you into Maggie’s plight.

Grauman’s direction reflects his career in television but smacks even more of televisual miasma Aaron Spelling’s (Love Boat, Dynasty) production, with every character pausing slightly after their lines, just to ensure the audience ‘gets it’. There’s enough to keep you watching until the end and, without spoiling it, we are at least saved any ‘it was all a dream’ shenanigans. If you have a morbid fear of being slowly squashed by some costumed-loons, there could be food for thought here yet.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Les Baxter (March 14, 1922 – January 15, 1996) was an American musician and composer. Although he is best know as a practitioner of exotica music, he also scored several films, many of which were horror.

Baxter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory before moving to Los Angeles for further studies at Pepperdine College. Abandoning a concert career as a pianist, he turned to popular music as a singer. At the age of 23 he joined Mel Tormé’s Mel-Tones, singing on Artie Shaw records such as “What Is This Thing Called Love?”.

By 1950 he had moved to Capitol and had progressed to conducting and arrangement, including one of Nat King Cole’s big early hits, “Mona Lisa”. From here, he branched out into his own strange world, firstly scoring a travelogue called, Tanga Tiki and then a series of concept albums: Le Sacre du Sauvage, Festival of the Gnomes, Ports of Pleasure, and Brazil Now. These thickly-layered, atmospheric works featuring bird song, abstract wailing and all manner of jungle and tribal sounds became part of the exotica movement, the archly-kitsch imagined sounds of far-flung lands and would soon inspire similar minds; Martin Denny, Arthur Lyman and Esquivel.

Sadly, much of his work up to this point was over-shadowed by back-biting and malicious rumour. It was alleged on several occasions that Baxter was actually the front for a ghost-writer, the actual composers of several works suspected to be Albert Harris, Pete Rugolo and Nelson Riddle, most famously Frank Sinatra’s band leader. The evidence for this was Baxter’s extremely slow composition and supposed inability to read music, both claims which have since been largely disproved. Regardless, Baxter shrugged off the criticisms and after further, often ‘challenging’ exotica works, cinema beckoned.

Having already composed the familiar’ whistle’ theme for TV’s Lassie, Baxter’s first work of note and a rarity in respect of the reasonable budget, was the Vincent Price-starring, Master of the World. This association with Price and more especially of the Gothic was to become a cornerstone of his career but one sadly that more often than not went uncredited. The speed at which AIP demanded new scores and the lowly resources afforded him and his orchestra meant that he was lucky to receive a credit for his work, luckier still if he was happy with the results of scores his name was attached to.

Baxter scored many of the Poe cycle of films, which have since become critically acclaimed but at the time were seen as fodder by many. Amongst well over a hundred scores he composed there are a handful of particularly interesting ones, unusual in that he was required to re-score a film which already had a soundtrack, for the American market. These included famous Mario Bava works such as Black Sunday (1960), Black Sabbath (1963) and Baron Blood (1972), peplum – Goliath and the Barbarians, and comedies – Beach Party.

In terms of the slew of Italian films he worked on, there is simply no justification for the so-called need for an alternative score. Composers such as accomplished as Stelvio Cipriani (Tragic Ceremony; Tentacles, a theme recycled possibly more than any other in film history, Piranha II), Roberto Nicolosi (Black Sunday) and Angelo Francesco Lavagnino (Castle of the Living Dead; Queens of Evil) were amongst those whose works were presumably considered ‘too exotic’ for the American palate. In fact, it was naturally conservative AIP who insisted that the films were given a new score for the American market. Their explanation, according to the composer Bronislau Kaper (Them!) was that they found Italian scores, “stupid, arrogant, monotonous and tasteless”.

The fun didn’t end there. Samuel Z. Arkoff’s notorious cost-cutting extended to the regular recycling of not only individual cues but entire tracts of music – the score to Samson and the Slave Queen is nearly all taken from Goliath and the Barbarians, not that Baxter got double the money. Similarly, The Premature Burial (1962) features cues heard in some of his previous scores. It is worth noting that although Baxter was one of the most high profile composers to be put in this position, others, such as Herman Stein (Tarantula, This Island Earth) also had their music re-used or went uncredited.

For Mario Bava’s 1960 classic, Black Sunday, so much money was invested by AIP (over $100,000, more than the film’s shooting budget) that they felt obliged to make it their own, despite it coming to them already successful and fully-formed. Ironically, having dispensed with Nicolosi’s subtle, unobtrusive score, they replaced it with something not only extremely similar but something which, if anything, attempted to overshadow Bava’s visuals. At least with 1963’s, Black Sabbath, a distinctly different score took the place of Nicolosi’s work, a somewhat blander, mainstream effort compared to the shifting and free-form original. The extremely distinctive Cipriani score to 1972’s Baron Blood, was given one of the more extreme make-overs and for once actually adds something new, something less intrusive and, well, scarier.

This bizarre practise continued to an even more ludicrous instance for Cry of the Banshee (1970) with AIP insisting on separate scores for both the British and US versions of the film. There are several explanations for this, however daft; firstly, Baxter had by this stage become part of the furniture at AIP and could apparently do no wrong; secondly, the original composer, Wilfred Josephs, was known only for his work in television, not the familiar big-hitter the Americans demanded; finally, the cuts to the US version were so sweeping that the film made little sense with only minute cues remaining. Regardless, it is one of Baxter’s most revered works, though the original is fun for its faux-Elizabethan sound.

After the mid-70’s, work began to dry up on both sides of the Atlantic as Italy’s industry concentrated on home-grown scores and America entered the realms of enormous blockbusters. There was still opportunity there (some work on Frogs in 1972, the score to The Beast Within, a decade later) but both exotica and his film themes had had their time (though he did compose themes for Sea World, amongst other tourist attractions) and it would be after his death that Baxter began to be reappraised in a much more positive light.

Selected filmography:

‘Death his religion – blood his lust!’

Guru, the Mad Monk is a 1970 American horror film written and directed by low-budget trash auteur Andy Milligan (The Body Beneath; The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!; The Ghastly Ones; Bloodthirsty Butchers). It was presumably inspired by Hammer Film’s Rasputin, the Mad Monk (1966).

Guru is a mad monk. Guru is the chaplain of an island-bound 15th century prison. As well as providing spiritual guidance, he delivers prisoner punishments, which range from hands being chopped off to execution. Guru, at first, seems nice enough… you know, despite the whole torture and execution thing. He helps Carl (Paul Lieber), a prison guard, save Nadja (Judith Israel) from her punishment. Only Guru’s help doesn’t come free. He asks Carl to rob graves for him. Guru also shelters Olga (Jaqueline Webb) — his mistress, who also happens to be a bloodsucking vampire.

Guru is quick to murder when questions are raised about his dodgy management of his prison and church. When out-of-luck drifters show up looking for the Lord’s help, Guru and Olga swiftly relieve them of their lives after offering a bit of false hope. Yep, Guru is a sick bastard, but I couldn’t help but kind of like him. Guru is played by Neil Flanagan. Flanagan gives a decent performance, but he is a pretty harmless and gentle looking guy.

There are aspects to Guru’s personality that give him a few more layers than your average mad monk. Guru really loves his prison, and his relationship with Olga is fascinating. He genuinely sees himself as a force for good, and when he stabs a drifter to death (in an admittedly hilariously fake scene) he shows a sad remorse.

Best of all is his relationship with Igor (Jack Spencer), the obligatory church hunchback. His treatment of the hunchback is perversely manipulative. But, sadism aside, he needs Igor, and he knows it. Guru lectures the sweetly innocent Igor in a beautifully mad moment: “I can say anything to you, you ignorant bastard, and you just smile… maybe God knew how desolate and forsaken this place was when he gave you to me to talk to… to keep me from going out of my mind. What a beautiful smile, it’s all you really have, isn’t it?” His words are cruel and made me feel rather ill, but there is something oddly touching about the scene. It’s stuff like this that makes Milligan’s films far more interesting that your average exploitation picture.

Guru was shot and cut in the chaotic matter you would expect from Andy Milligan. The camera wobbles around all over the place. The edits are abrupt and without any acknowledgement of continuity. Actors jump between different parts of the set as the shot moves to the next. While not as exhilarating as Milligan’s best, there is still an energy in Guru that is undeniable.

Though the poster screams that Guru is “A GORY TALE OF TERROR!” shot in “BLOOD DRIPPING COLOR”, it is very tame. The film ends in a bluster of poorly executed violence, but other than its manic conclusion there is little bloodletting. There is, however, one extended scene of torture spliced in out of nowhere that is fantastic in its ineptitude. Mannequin hands go flying, ping-pong ball eyes are stabbed, and a head is awkwardly decapitated. It’s great.

Guru, the Mad Monk is not the best starting point for those new to the demented world of Andy Milligan. However, those already well-versed in his sadistic stylings will lap it up. It features the requisite mean-spirited dialogue, entertaining performances, sick and silly acts of depravity (mild though they may be in comparison to his better known works), and a loving relationship between a mad monk and his hunchback.

Dave Jackson, guest reviewer from Mondo Exploito

Availability:

The splendid fellows at US retro label Vinegar Syndrome have been nice enough to make available a high quality download of Guru. It’s free, though tips are appreciated…