Deadly Strangers is a 1975 film directed by Sidney Hayers (Circus of Horrors, Assault) and starring Hayley Mills (Twisted Nerve), Simon Ward (Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, The Monster Club) and Sterling Hayden (Venom). 

Belle Adams (Mills) has narrowly avoided being raped by a scuzzball lorry driver but runs into travelling salesman Steven Slade (Ward) who is glad of the company and so agrees to get her to her desired destination of Wycombe. Clicking on the radio, in true horror film style, a news announcer warns of a lunatic on the run from the local asylum. After turning off the report before we learn any more details about the escapee, we are soon alerted to the fact that Slade is perhaps not all that he seems – he appears unfamiliar with his own car, struggles to recount personal details and most worryingly, lies to Adams to ensure she misses her train and is stuck with him for the foreseeable future. On the off-chance we have any doubts whatsoever, Ward seems very keen to avoid the numerous roadblocks dotted around the countryside to try and capture the fugitive, blaming his bashfulness on the fact he’s drink-driving (very reassuring).

After spending the night in the car, Stevens awakes to find Adams has vanished and assumes she’s gone for good – in actual fact, she’s just nipped along to the local shop but Steven’s heightened emotions lead him to drive off at high speed alone. Finding herself abandoned, Adams meets the charming American, Malcolm Robarts (Hayden) who, despite his advancing years, manages to woo her into his car with the promise of dinner (and breakfast). Adams has started to suffer occasional flashbacks to sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her drunken uncle. Stevens and Adams are soon reunited but they are trailed by Robarts who seems to be trying to warn one of the pair of some imminent danger. Failing, he contacts the police as we are forced to contemplate that perhaps Adams is not the damsel in distress we had originally assumed…or maybe she is. Or maybe it’s someone else.

The film offers us three very clear options; it’s either Adams, Stevens or an unlikely third who is the escaped lunatic. As we are given the entire film to mull this over, the ending can’t be a surprise of any sort, though it’s handled relatively well. Neither of the leads are particularly likeable – this is fine in terms of Stevens (though he does seem to be channelling the spirit of Michael York, somewhat) as he is the most likely culprit, but Adams is not a character we warm to, even having seen the scenes of her younger self being abused. Her primness (though we are treated to an unlikely nude scene) and the lack of discernible threat throughout the majority of the film leaves the film a rather flat experience.

The introduction of Robarts and one of cinema’s most remarkable beards turns out to be little more than a distraction, offering much but seemingly having a good deal of the role written out mid-way through. The film does reveal a gloriously grotty view of 70’s England, greasy spoon cafes, confused fashions, unconvincing bikers and a hopeless police force all there for us to enjoy. The setting of Weston-Super-Mare, near Bristol, is perfectly unassuming and bland, the every-day community being home to crazy psychopaths being a staple of 70’s British horror and thrillers. The score by Ron Goodwin is unremarkable, a disappointment from a man capable of scores such as Where Eagles Dare and The Day of the Triffids.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Hallmark Releasing Corp. was a Boston-based American film distribution company. With a pointedly provocative approach, Hallmark’s first major success was with German import Mark of the Devil (1970) which was picked up for US showing with an April 1972 promo that included come-ons such as “Positively the most horrifying film ever made” and “Rated V for Violence”, while vomit bags were given free to the audience upon admission. They subsequently came up with the oft-repeated phrase: “It’s only a movie!”

Hallmark developed from the rapidly-growing Esquire Theaters; “a chain of about a hundred screens” according to David Konow in Reel Terror: The Scary, Bloody, Gory, Hundred-Year History of Classic Horror Films. The company was owned by three partners: Steve Minasian, Phil Scuderi and Robert Barsamain.

Vomit bags were back for Amando de Ossorio directed Spanish import Tombs of the Blind Dead and although this was also “most horrifying film ever made” (despite being rated PG!), it was not “positively” this time.

In August 1972, Hallmark distributed The Last House on the Left, Wes Craven’s breakthrough ultra-shocking sex ‘n’ violence combo that showcased power tool carnage before it became world famous via a certain Texas Chain Saw Massacre a couple of years later.

Clearly on a roll of ballyhoo and bloodshed, the company then promoted Mario Bava’s land grab proto-slasher A Bay of Blood in May 1972 with the rather more outré title Twitch of the Death Nerve. Punters were advised that they must receive a warning “face-to-face!”

In January 1973 the hucksters released Italian import Slaughter Hotel (1971) with the crude sensationalist tag line “See the slashing massacre of 8 innocent nurses!’ Subtlety was not a Hallmark trademark. Not to be out done, American International Pictures (AIP) handled the wider release of both this – retitled Asylum Erotica – and the aforementioned Last House on the Left, plus a number of other Hallmark pick-ups.

Originally entitled The Forgotten, S.F Brownrigg’s 1973 offering became Don’t Look in the Basement, Beyond Help, Death Ward No.13 and The Snake Pit. But under any title “it’s only a movie”…

At some point in the later 1970s Hallmark seems to have either become known as Newport or at least partnered with a distribution company of this name. If we find out more we will update this entry. In the meantime, Hallmark/Newport re-released Massimo Dallamano’s 1971 What Have You Done to Solange? as The School That Couldn’t Scream.

Jose Larraz’s British psycho thriller Scream… and Die! became the more sedate The House That Vanished.

Newport also issued Jorge Grau’s zombie movie Let Sleeping Corpses Lie as Don’t Open the Window with a campaign that ripped off Avco Embassy’s Something to Hide.

A 1977/78 release House by the Hill seems to be a retitling of Charles Manson cash-in The Cult (1971) but as Temple of Schlock states this is not clear, as yet.

Another 1977 release, Xmas Massacre, was a festive retitling of the Italian take on Last House on the Left rape ‘n’ revenger, Night Train Murders. This time movie patrons were warned that “you can tell yourself IT’S ONLY A MOVIE – but it won’t help!” Hallmark offshoot Central Park Distributing Corp. also issued this film as The New House on the Left…

Hallmark later financed Friday the 13th (1980) which was subsequently distributed by Hollywood studio Paramount in a ground-breaking move that showed easy $$$’s were more important to the majors since Jaws had shown that exploitation and horror were such big business. According to David Konow’s aforementioned book: “Betsy Palmer remembered two of the Hallmark partners who “were like the men in black… these strange men lurking around the set… all they told us was that these were the moneymen from Boston.”

The men in black… who knew it’s “only a movie!”

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

Belgian Poster

Killer Fish – also Killerfish – is a 1978 Italian-French-Brazilian horror movie directed by Antonio Margheriti and starring Lee Majors, James Franciscus and Karen Black. Killer Fish is a Carlo Ponti  Filmar do Brasil production from I.T.C. Entertainment, released by Associated Film Distribution, and presented by Sir Lew Grade.

Plot teaser:

Death, deception and nature have gone wild, as piranhas protect a stolen emerald cache. Paul Diller (James Franciscus) is the mastermind of a multi-million dollar jewel heist. The team, including Robert Lasky (Lee Majors) and his girlfriend, Kate Neville (Karen Black), steal the gems and hurl them to the bottom of Brazil’s deepest lake, which is then filled with deadly man-eating piranha. Soon, all members of the team are pitted against each other in a deadly battle of wits and a deadly battle against piranhas!

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Reviews:

“Despite the lukewarm premise and goofy script, Killer Fish still manages to be a pretty entertaining little b-movie. Majors is great as the slicker than grease tough guy ladies man and Karen Black is equally as good as the weird looking sex pot criminal chick. The true stars of this movie though are Margheriti’s miniature sets, all of which blow up really nicely and/or flood when the dam inevitably breaks later in the film. These miniatures share the spotlight with some quality plastic fish (some of which are very obviously on wires) that attack anyone who gets near the jewels.” Rock! Shock! Pop! 

“Margheriti packs the film with a lot of miniature work and explosions that are more effective than models seen in later Italian productions. At times the piranhas seem like an afterthought amidst the destruction. It’s easily digestible Saturday afternoon entertainment.” Italian Film Review

“It may not be a good movie — it’s really inept—but it’s friendly, like Mr. Majors’s quizzical squint, which is, I’m told by people who watch more televison than I do, what Mr. Majors does best. Everyone, in fact, carries on gamely, as people do at a picnic when it rains. Miss Berenson, who looks more and more like Ann Dvorak with very thin eyebrows, maintains a kind of resolute availability, always ready to talk to someone who feels low or lonely. Miss Black makes the mistake of attempting to act, and thus comes across as the party-bore, the person who attempts to steer conversation to important topics when everyone else is interested in gossip.” The New York Times

Locations:

Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

IMDb | Wikipedia

WH

Scars of Dracula is a 1970 British horror film directed by Roy Ward Baker for Hammer Studios.

It stars Christopher Lee as Count Dracula, along with Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Patrick Troughton, and Michael Gwynn. Although disparaged by some critics, the film does restore a few elements of Bram Stoker’s original character: the Count is introduced as an “icily charming host;” he has command over nature; and he is seen scaling the walls of his castle. It also gives Lee more to do and say than any other Hammer Dracula film except its first, 1958’s Dracula.

This film opens with a resurrection scene set shortly after the climax of Taste the Blood of Dracula, but is set in Dracula’s Transylvanian homeland rather than England, as that film was. The British Film group EMI took over distribution of the film after Warner Brothers and other American studios refused to distribute it in the U.S. It was also the first of several Hammer films to get an ‘R’ rating. This was Michael Ripper’s 27th and final appearance in a Hammer film.

Deep in the Count’s lair, a vampire bat drizzles blood from its fakely-fanged mouth onto the ashes of the deceased vampire, giving Christopher another opportunity to do not-so-very-much but retain top billing. Skip forward an unspecified period of time and local villagers are frantic that yet another of their number has died in horrible circumstances at the hand (and mouth) of the resurrected Dracula. The timid and constantly at the rear priest gives his blessing to an assembly of the men-folk who set off armed with burning torches to his castle, leaving their wives in the sanctuary of the church. After a spot of ‘knock-knock’ with castle serf, Klove (Patrick Troughton, The Omen), entry is gained and the building is left to burn. However, on returning to the church they find their loved ones have been messily savaged and killed by vampire bats.

Having enjoyed the pleasures of the burgomasters’ daughter, libertine Paul Carlson (Christopher Matthews, Scream and Scream Again, Blind Terror)  flees her father (an ‘enthused’ Bob Todd of Benny Hill fame) and the Kleinenberg authorities by jumping into a nearby coach which, though driver-less, heads off at great speed. He is deposited near Count Dracula’s mountaintop castle. Initially he is welcomed by the Count and a beautiful woman named Tania who later reveals herself to be a prisoner of Dracula as his mistress. Paul later has a liaison with Tania who concludes their lovemaking by trying to bite his neck. Dracula enters and, casually throwing off Paul’s efforts to stop him, savagely stabs Tania to death with a dagger for betraying him – Dracula partakes of several weapons in the film, unusually. Klove, Dracula’s mortal but obedient servant, dismembers her body and dissolves the pieces in a bath of either holy water or acid. Trapped in a room high in the castle, Paul uses a sheet to climb down to a lower window but the line is withdrawn by Klove and he is trapped in a dark room with only door locked and a coffin at the centre of the room. Unfortunate.

In the sensible corner are Paul’s brother, Simon (Dennis Waterman, Fright and many a British TV programme) and his other half, Sarah (Jenny Hanley, who it’s impossible not to picture on her regular slot on kid’s TV show, Magpie) and they both set off to find the absent Paul. Repeatedly having the door shut in their face, they eventually find he’s loitering in the castle after landlord’s daughter can’t resist letting slip against her dad’s better advice, the always tremendous, Michael Ripper. At the castle, Dracula dispenses more of his hospitality wine and starts making a vampiric move on Sarah but hasn’t bargained on the oafish Klove taking a shine to her too. Refusing the relieve her of the crucifix around her neck to allow the Count to feast, he is brutally branded by a red-hot sword, an addition to the whip-marks he already sports.

With the priest we met earlier in tow (Michael Gwynn, Village of the Damned, 1960), Simon returns but the holy man soon meets his end, another to suffer at the teeth of the rampant bats. His is next betrayed by Klove and ends up in the same room his brother, we now find, met a particularly grisly end. Unable to finish the count as he slumbers in his coffin due to some dithering and some hypnotism, we move on to the final act, Simon realising the Count is somewhat quite inhuman and the surviving foursome reconvening on the Castle’s battlements. Klove is thrown to his death and just as Dracula takes aim with a handy metal spike, a storm is brewing…

Scars is the sixth of Hammer’s Dracula films (the fifth for Lee) and is derided in some quarters for the flimsy effects and notable lack of budget. What the film does have is lashings of gothic silliness – how forgiving you are of the capers, not least Bob Todd essentially jumping up and down on a whoopee cushion for five minutes, is entirely down to you. The film has little in the way of traditional blood-sucking action but if you’re after bat brutality, you’ve come to the right place – the aftermath of the church attack is one of Hammer’s biggest ensemble slayings. The bats themselves are another matter entirely – if horror films up to this juncture had taught us anything, it was that the manufacture of believable bats was akin to turning blood into wine. Scars is perhaps not an all-time low…but it’s close.

The perception of the film’s ‘cheapness’ (the budget of around £200,000 was not that trifling and was the same as Taste the Blood of Dracula) can partly be attributed to the castle’s set, which, in fairness, is necessarily sparse due to the first scene’s fire attack. What is less helpful is the cinematography, which shows the flimsy walls and rarely allows the viewer to suspend belief and accept it to be a genuine location. If anything, the film lacks the traditional fog which normally permeates Hammer fare, covering a multitude of sins.

It seems pointless to appraise Lee’s performance, the supporting cast should certainly stand up and be counted though. It seems incredible in retrospect that homely Jenny Hanley should star in one of Hammer’s first real forays into blood and boobs but she performs adequately and not a little alluring. Far worse is Dennis Waterman, absolutely hopeless as a brave, romantic hero and is awfully Scrappy Doo at best – his appearance in Fright is a step up, thankfully. Roy Ward Baker has said in interviews he thought Waterman was badly miscast, his appearance being entirely down to the studio. Equally, Matthews could hardly be more annoying and it is left to the old hands – Ripper and Troughton to carry off the plaudits, pitching their performances as louche and barking as they need to be.

The film’s conclusion is one of the more inventive of Hammer’s – it’s the one with the lightning. Ward was already an old-hand and had come straight off the back of The Vampire Lovers and was ready to launch straight into Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde. James Bernard returns as the composer of the score, shifting the well-known ‘Drac-u-laaaa!’ motif to a new but still distinctive fanfare for the Count’s appearances. The film was released in some markets on a double feature with The Horror of Frankenstein, partly in a (failed) attempt to reinvent the Frankenstein strand as a hip and sexy venture.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Dawn of the Dead (also known internationally as Zombies and Zombi) is a 1978 American horror film written and directed by George A. Romero. It was the second film made in Romero’s Living Dead series but contains no characters or settings from Night of the Living Dead, and shows in a larger scale the zombie plague’s apocalyptic effects on society. In the film, a plague of unknown origin has caused the reanimation of the dead, who prey on human flesh, which subsequently causes mass hysteria. The cast features David Emge (Basket Case 2, Hellmaster), Ken Foree (Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3, The Devil’s Rejects), Scott Reiniger (Knightriders) and Gaylen Ross (Creepshow) as survivors of the outbreak who barricade themselves inside a suburban shopping mall.

The chaotic WGON television newsroom is attempting to make sense of the evidently wide-spread phenomenon of the dead returning to life to eat the living. Their main efforts are being channelled into simply staying on air to act as a public information system for those still alive to find places to shelter. Outside tensions have erupted at a tenement building where the residents are refusing to hand over the dead bodies of their loved ones to the authorities for them to dispose of, resulting in a SWAT team assembling to resolve the issue by force. As both sides suffer casualties at their own hands and those of the reanimated corpses, four by-standers gravitate towards each other and plot to escape this madness; SWAT soldiers Roger (Reiniger) and Peter (Foree) and a couple who work at the station, Francine (Ross) and Stephen (Emge) – it is agreed that they will take the company’s helicopter and seek sanctuary.

With the helicopter liberated, they stop off for fuel, narrowly avoiding the attention of both zombie adults and children – on a human angle, it is clear the soldiers come from very different worlds to Fran and Stephen. Still short of fuel, they set off again and happen upon a shopping mall – though surrounded by the living dead, the opportunity presented by an abundance of food and provisions, as well as a place to the secrete themselves is irresistible. Devising a system of clearing the zombies already in the mall, during which Roger is bitten but survives, and creating their own living quarters behind a false wall, they learn (Stephen included) that Fran is four months pregnant. Roger and Peter are keen to look for other survivors but under the circumstances, the others feel that staying put and essentially quitting whilst they’re ahead would be the safest option.

The images they witness on their looted television give little hope but before a decision can be agreed upon, they realise that the mall has also attracted the attention of an army of local bikers, not looking for anything except target practise and goods. Their defences breached, the foursome face a seemingly impossible situation where both human and zombie foes have designs on their hides. Can they reclaim the mall or get to the helicopter before they find themselves wandering the mall for eternity?

Although in gestation for some years before making it to the screen, the follow-up to Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead appeared a full ten years later. The slow-burn effect of this film, plus George’s notoriously poor grasp of finances led to producer Richard Rubinstein looking further afield for investment to get the project off the ground. Salvation came in the form of the genius Italian film director, Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; Deep Red; Suspiria) who had long admired Night and could see the value in producing a sequel of some kind.

And so began an arrangement whereby the funds were made available to make the film in exchange for international distribution rights and Argento’s option to make an entirely different cut of the film for a Continental audience. Romero ensconced himself in a small apartment in Rome where he quickly wrote the screenplay, allowing for filming to begin in Pennsylvania in November 1977. Key to Romero’s vision for the film was the iconic mall setting, already firmly imprinted in his mind due to the owners of the Monroeville Mall, east of Pittsburgh, in existence since 1969 and one of the first really large out of town shopping districts. His connections were enough for the owners, Oxford Development, to allow out-of-hours filming. Romero had been given a private tour of the facility and was privy to sealed off areas which had been stocked with civil defence equipment in case of a National emergency – a fact fully exploited in the film.

Casting for the film was the responsibility of John Amplas (star of Romero’s Martin and later Day of the Dead) who also has a small role of a Mexican, shot by the SWAT team in the early exchange of fire. The cast was made up of largely local actors who had featured in theatre rather than film roles – indeed few of them went on to have significant film careers but still trod the boards at provincial theatres. Friends and acquaintances were coerced into appearing, amongst their number, George’s wife and assistant director, Christine Forrest (also appearing in several other of his films in an acting capacity, including Martin and Monkey Shines) George himself (seated alongside her in the TV studio sequence), Pasquale Buba (later to edit the likes of Day of the Dead and Stepfather 2), special effects guru Tom Savini and Joe Pilato (Day of the Dead‘s Rhodes). Such economy and camaraderie was to pay off spectacularly. Even minor characters are given hinted-at histories which are endlessly intriguing – an eye-patched Dr Millard Rausch (Richard France) opines thoughtfully on television: “These creatures cannot be considered human… they must be destroyed on sight! … Why don’t we drop bombs on all the big cities?”

Filming at the mall could hardly have commenced at a more inconvenient time, the freezing cold temperatures and busy festive season meaning that shooting times were extremely tight (between 10pm and 8am), resulting in several occasions when members of the public were forces to consider why their shopping trip looked more like an ghoul-invested abattoir. Exterior shots were even harder to come by, only half a day a week was allotted to get the shots of the swarms of zombies roaming the car park, without pesky customers getting in shot. Scenes such as mall breakers revelling in the local bank’s bundles of bank notes necessitated a great deal of care to ensure light-fingered crew members didn’t make off with the ‘props’. The most familiar location in the mall, JC Penney’s department store, has since closed, though the mall remains, in a surprisingly familiar state (see below). Other locations employed, such as the abandoned airfield, the gun store and the quartet’s hideout, were shot locally too, the latter being constructed in Romero’s production offices, Laurel.

Make-up and special effects were the responsibility of Tom Savini and team, also including Gary Zeller and Don Berry, who later both worked on such films as Scanners and Visiting Hours. Having already developed his talents on Deranged and Martin, Savini was far from an enthusiastic amateur, though it was this film and the free reign Romero gave him, that helped establish his name as the go-to for gore effects for many years to come. Signature effects on Dawn include the flat-headed zombie being semi-decapitated by helicopter blades (a ludicrously dangerous effect involving an admittedly obviously fake head-piece) and the exploding head in the tenement sequence (so redolent of a similar effect in Scanners) by shooting a fake heads packed with condoms filled with fake blood and scraps of food. One bone of contention with many is the unrealistic blue/grey make-up the zombies sport, a mile away from the decaying cadavers of, say, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie Flesh Eaters. Romero has ‘validated’ this by claiming it was always his aim to have a comic-book feel to the film, though this smacks slightly of convenience. What is true is that the never-redder blood is a real eye-opener and lends itself to large-screen viewing. What the zombies lack in biological realism, they certainly gain in back story (all walks of life are considered from bride, to Buddhist monk to nurse) and gait – the now familiar stagger now being the blueprint for the correct way for all animated corpses to adopt.

Buy Dawn of the Dead 4-disc DiviMax Special Edition from Amazon.com

DISC 1: The original unrated director’s cut. NOT THE EXTENDED EDITION, which is not truly Romero’s director’s cut. This disc includes commentary with George Romero, Tom Savini, and Chris Romero along with Theatrical trailers and radio spots.

DISC 2: The extended edition, often mistaken for a ‘director’s cut.’ This disc includes an additional 12 minutes of glorious footage. Also includes commentary by producer Richard Rubinstein. The disc has a commercial for the Monroeville Mall and a memorabilia gallery.

DISC 3: The Dario Argento cut. This version of the film has less humor and more drama, released in Europe with additional music from Goblin. This version includes commentary by all four stars of the film.

DISC 4: This disc contains several documentaries including the all new ‘The Dead Walk’ (75 min) and the classic ‘Document of the Dead'; a feature-length documentary shot during the making of Dawn of the Dead. This disc also includes home movies from the set and a tour of the Monroeville Mall with actor Ken Foree.

To complement the garish visuals, Romero favoured library music, a technique he used to good effect in Night of the Living Dead. The De Wolfe library, still in regular use, was employed for this task and a variety of styles from the waltzy muzak of the shopping centre to atmospheric electronic drones to a song by The Pretty Things, “I’m a Man”, a song co-written by one Peter Reno, better known as Mancunian zero-budget film legend, Cliff Twemlow and his working partner, Peter Taylor. The most famous piece, unavailable until relatively recently, is The Gonk, by Harry Chappell (who had his own library business), written in 1965.This trumpet/xylophone led polka-like march is deliciously out of place and yet completely in keeping with the absurdity of the situation. Argento’s vision of the film as a fast-paced action movie with geysers of blood throughout required a different approach and he used the Italian-based band Goblin (incorrectly credited as “The Goblins”) extensively. Goblin was a four-piece Italian/Brazilian band that did mostly contract work for film soundtracks. Argento, who received a credit for original music alongside Goblin, collaborated with the group to get songs for his cut of the film.

A completely different ending was originally planned and, rather like its predecessor, had a resolutely unhappy ending with Peter shooting himself and Fran either purposely or accidentally stepping into the helicopter blades, only for the blades to stop spinning at the conclusion to the end credits, an indicator that they were doomed anyway. These are both hinted at in the filmed version though all signs point to them being ultimately only existing on the page.

Dawn of the Dead has received a number of re-cuts and re-edits, due mostly to Argento’s rights to edit the film for international foreign language release. Romero controlled the final cut of the film for English-language territories. In addition, the film was edited further by censors or distributors in certain countries. Romero, acting as the editor for his film, completed a hasty 139-minute version of the film (now known as the Extended, or Director’s, Cut) for premier at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. This was later pared down to 126 minutes for the U.S. theatrical release. In an era before the NC-17 rating was available from the Motion Picture Association of America, the US theatrical cut of the film earned the taboo rating of X from the association because of its graphic violence. Rejecting this rating, Romero and the producers chose to release the film un-rated so as to help the film’s commercial success. United Film Distribution Company eventually agreed to release it domestically in the United States. It eventually premiered in the US in New York City on April 20, 1979, fortunately beating Alien by a month. The film was refused classification in Australia twice: in its theatrical release in 1978 and once again in 1979. The cuts presented to the Australian Classification Board were Argento’s cut and Romero’s cut, respectively. Dawn of the Dead was finally passed in the country cut with an R18+ rating in February 1980. It was banned in Queensland until at least 1986.

Dawn Of The Dead was submitted to the BBFC in Britain for classification in June 1979 and was viewed by six examiners including the then Director of the BBFC, James Ferman.

BBFC examiners unanimously disliked the film, though acknowledged that the film did have its merits in terms of the film-making art. The main bone of contention were the zombies themselves – were they shells without feelings or dead people with families? One examiner felt so strongly that the film glorified violence that he excluded himself from any further screenings or discussions surrounding the work.

It was agreed that cuts to the film were necessary, Ferman as self-appointed editor extraordinaire, stating that the film featured violence perpetrated against people which was “to a degree never before passed by the Board” and subsequently issued a cuts list that amounted to approximately 55 separate cuts (two minutes 17 seconds). These included images of zombie dismemberment, the machine gunning of a child zombie, a machete cutting open a zombie’s head (one of the most famous scenes!) and the shot of a zombie’s head exploding.

The following month a cut version of the film was re-submitted for re-examination and this time another team of examiners viewed the film. All of the examiners still disliked the film and some were convinced that cutting was not the solution to alleviating the possible desensitising effect that the film might have on vulnerable audiences. Despite this view, the suggestion of further extensive cuts was made and the film was once again seen by James Ferman, who subsequently issued a further one minute 29 seconds of cuts to more scenes of gory detail. At this point the distributor (Target International Pictures) was worried that the film would not be ready in time to be screened at the London Film Festival, so James Ferman suggested that the BBFC’s in-house editor create a version that would be acceptable within the guidelines of the X certificate.

In September 1979 Ferman wrote to the distributor exclaiming that “a tour de force of virtuoso editing has transformed this potential reject from a disgusting and desensitising wallow in the ghoulish details of violence and horror to a strong, but more conventional action piece…The cutting is not only skilful, but creative, and I think it has actually improved a number of the sequences by making the audience notice the emotions of the characters and the horror of the situation instead of being deadened by blood and gore”.

When the work was first submitted for classification for video in 1989 it arrived in its post-BBFC censored version, now clocking in at 120 minutes 20 seconds. However, under the Video Recordings Act 1984 (VRA) , the film was to be subjected to another 12 seconds of cuts to scenes of zombie dismemberment and cannibalism. In 1997 Dawn Of The Dead was picked up by a new distributor (BMG) who took the decision to submit the film in its original uncensored state, with a running time of 139 minutes.

This time the BBFC only insisted on six seconds of cuts. However, it was in 2003 that the film was finally passed at 18 uncut by the BBFC, with the examiners feeling that under the 2000 BBFC Guidelines it was impossible to justify cutting the work.

Internationally, Argento controlled the Euro cut for non-English speaking countries. The version he created clocked in at 119 minutes. It included changes such as more music from Goblin than the two cuts completed by Romero, removal of some expository scenes, and a faster cutting pace. Released in Italy in September 1978, it actually debuted nearly nine months before the US theatrical cut. In Italy it was released under the full title Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi, followed in March 1979 by France as Zombie: Le Crépuscule des Morts Vivants, in Spain as Zombi: El Regreso de los Muertos Vivientes, in the Netherlands as Zombie: In De Greep van de Zombies, by Germany’s Constantin Film as Zombie, and in Denmark as Zombie: Rædslernes Morgen.

Despite the various alternate versions of the film available, Dawn of the Dead was successful internationally. Its success in the then-West Germany earned it the Golden Screen Award, given to films that have at least 3 million admissions within 18 months of release.

Recently, Romero has claimed that to be successful artistically, all horror films must be either political or satirical. Such a ludicrous statement may explain the director’s poor run of recent films but here it is rarely more apposite. The consumer-angle to the zombies mindless wandering is difficult to argue, though has now been stated so many times it’s in danger of overtaking the fact that the film is a magnificent piece of work; multi-layered in both character and plot (whatever became of the soldiers taking their boat down the river?) and influential to a generation of film-makers, as a horror film there are few better, a view echoed many, even the notoriously fickle Roger Ebert who gave it a great many thumbs up. The film has also spawned a range of spoofs, copycat films, a 2004 remake by Zack Snyder, toys, games and merchandise. In 1985, Romero temporarily concluded his zombie fascination with Day of the Dead.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

With thanks to the BBFC for details about the film’s UK release and Nick Richmond for his recent snaps of Monroeville Mall.

Buy Dawn of the Dead on Arrow Video Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

Offline Reading:

101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die – Edited by Steven Jay Schneider, Cassell Illustrated, 2009

Monroeville Mall – then and now:

Nick takes the easier route.

Zombie-fleer or lift vandal, you decide.

US Poster

The Cars That Ate Paris- aka The Cars That Eat People - is a 1974 Australian horror comedy film. Directed by Peter Weir, it was his first feature film. The film stars John Meillon, Terry Camilleri,, Chris Haywood and Bruce Spence.

Plot teaser

Lying in a gently rolling range of hills, the town of Paris has prospered from the hunting and destruction of cars: the road into Paris is a death trap. Into this trap drive George and Arthur Waldo. George is killed; Arthur survives and is pronounced harmless by the mayor. Although unaware, Arthur is a prisoner. He must never leave Paris. But the town that lives by the car shall die by the car, and eventually the hunters become the hunted

The producers unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate an American release for the film with Roger Corman after it was shown with great success at the Cannes Film Festival, being the first Australian film to gain international recognition at the Festival. Shortly afterwards Corman recruited Paul Bartel to direct his Death Race 2000; Bartel hadn’t seen The Cars That Ate Paris but he was aware that Corman had a print of the film.

The movie struggled to find an audience in Australia, changing distributors and with an ad campaign unsure whether to pitch it as a horror film or art film. However it has become a cult film. In 1980, $112,500 had been returned to the producers. It received an American release in 1976 by New Line Cinema under the title The Cars That Eat People with added on narration and other differences.

In 1992, it was adapted as a musical theatre work by Chamber Made Opera.

Buy The Cars That Ate Paris on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews

“Starting out creepy and soon moving on to full-on violence, The Cars That Ate Paris shifts gears with ease. Its petrol-soaked atmosphere is perfectly out of place in the serene landscape of Australia’s First State, which only results in a more powerful impact. Effortlessly employing surrealist and fantasy tropes in a story that is, ultimately, never very far from the possible, Weir steers us on a dizzying journey through autophilia, survivalist politics, and the darker side of human nature.” Eye For Film

“There is very little conventionality in this first feature from respected Australian auteur Peter Weir. More or less an experiment in impression and suggestion, The Cars that Ate Paris does a magnificent job of setting up a surreal, sinister tone for the people and location of Paris. Like a wily magician, Weir hints at hidden horrors (the late night car raids, the infirmary full of “veggies”) and never lets his story get overly expositional. Many things are implied here and it takes an alert viewer to catch them all.” DVD Verdict

“After a wickedly funny start, graced by some of the eerie lyricism of Weir’s The Last Wave and Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Cars That Ate Paris loses some of its allegorical grip in the second half, when the younger generation breaks off into lawless, terrorizing motor clans. Featuring snarling, custom-made death machines, including the poster-image Volkswagen Beetle with porcupine spikes, the climactic mayhem has the flamboyant kick of later work like Mad Max and The Warriors, but the film has frittered away its social commentary.” The A.V. Club

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

The Bloodstained Lawn – Italian: Il prato macchiato di rosso - is a 1973 Italian horror film written and directed by Riccardo Ghione. It stars Marina Malfatti (Seven Blood-stained Orchids; They’re Coming to Get You; The Red Queen Kills 7 Times), Enzo Tarascio (The Designated Victim; The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave; The Dead Are Alive), Nino Castelnuovo, Daniela Caroli, George Willing (Necropolis; Who Saw Her Die?), Claudio Biava, Barbara Marzano (Torso; The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance), Dominique Boschero (Libido; The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire; They’re Coming to Get You) and Lucio Dalla. The film’s working title was apparently Vampiro 2000.

Plot teaser:

A couple of wandering hippies meet a man by the name of Antonio who takes them to the home where he lives with his sister and brother-in-law. There they meet several strange characters: a gypsy woman, a prostitute and a disturbing drunk. The host tells them that he is a producer of wines and loves to entertain strange people. In fact he is a madman who has created a mechanism that can suck blood from human bodies…

Reviews:

“The underlying concepts are watered down by the ample scenes of nonsensical behaviour – like our hippy lovebirds showering in wine, and skipping hand in hand to some groovy hipster music playing in the background. All this aside, The Bloodstained Lawn is a decent romp, far more interesting than it really deserves to be, and well worth checking out if you like your Euro-thriller/horrors with a curious edge.” The Gore Splattered Corner

“Sometimes a film uses tropes that are recognisable from the vampire genre and it is enough to see it as a take on the genre. I felt that this did, but it is entirely up for debate and I expect that many will disagree. The film is also very surreal – and I don’t just mean the flamboyant ties, tied as bowties, worn by Enzo Tarascio’s character Dr. Antonio Genovese.” Taliesin Meets The Vampires

“Unbridled kitsch dominates every shot, putting it in the same category as Ed D. Wood’s or Ted V. Mikels’ most staggering works. To find other films of this ilk you have to seek out Cesare Canevari’s ‘opera omnia’ or the rarest Renato Polselli films. This is not your usual so-bad-its-good film; in fact it’s not that bad… it’s simply the UGLIEST! Every aspect of Il prato from dialogue to photography, from costumes to sets, is the epitome of Seventies ribaldry. The script is decidedly delirious and the actors all appear to be high on drugs. Never mind the clumsy social message – the wealthy bourgeoisie draining the blood of the homeless to get richer – just enjoy the mind-boggling experience.” Simone Romano, Delirium fanzine

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Wallestein il mostro – English: “Wallestein the Monster” – is an Italian fumetti adult comic character who appeared in five series of comics published by Edifumetto from 1972. For the first series, Edifumetto published nine issues; for the second series, nineteen issues in 1973; for the third series, fifteen issues in 1974; for the fourth series, eighty issues from 1975 to 1980; the fifth series (“Nuova Serie”) started in 1981. Over the years, the series has been designed by Cubbino, Romanini, Magnus and anonymous artists.

As with most Italian fumetti, the visuals feature abundant female nudity and gore. Between 1977 and 1980 the comic was also published in France by Elvifrance.

Wallestein is an horrible monster whom, having avenged the murder of the Count of Wallestein, adopts the Count’s identity by donning a rubber mask.

Image credits: Comic Vine | And Everything Else Too | Pinterest

The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 1975 French erotic fantasy horror film written, edited, and directed by Walerian Borowczyk. Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast and a woman.

The Beast began life as part of Walerian Borowczyk’s 1974 short story collection Immoral Tales, with the story The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan being the third tale in the film. The segment played at the London Film Festival in 1973 as part of a ‘work in progress’ screening, and caused immediate outrage – how could a respected director like Borowczyk lower himself to such filth, critics asked, and his mainstream reputation would never recover from the blow dealt to it by this segment in particular and Immoral Tales in general.

By the time Immoral Tales was finally released, The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan had been removed – not for censorship reasons, although it was certainly the most incendiary of the stories featured in the film, but because the finished film was considered too long (you can now see the complete cut on the Blu-ray of Immoral Tales to see for yourself – personally, I think the decision was a sound one) and because Borowczyk was interested in expanding the sequence into a full length feature. When the finished film, La Bête, finally emerged in 1975, it was a big hit across Europe, but did nothing to salvage Borowczyk’s dwindling reputation – it’s only in recent years that anyone outside the cult and erotic film fan circles have started to acknowledge the value of these films, and even now, you’ll find people who see movies such as this as creatively worthless. More fool them.

In the UK, the film was banned by the BBFC, even in a cut version, and a GLC-approved London release was threatened with prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act in 1978 ; this same version emerged later on VHS, which is when I first saw the film. Already a fan of Borowczyk’s work by this time, I was blown away by the movie, even though it was missing much of the controversial footage; it wasn’t until some years later, when I picked up a Dutch tape of the film in Amsterdam, that I would get to see what all the fuss was about. And yes, I could understand the shock and anger – La Bête is gleefully outrageous, crossing one of the last sexual taboos (albeit in a non-realistic manner) and having a graphic nature that went beyond the limits of most softcore. That this footage now came wrapped in a sumptuous, remarkably witty drama that wasn’t particularly sexy in its own right (by mid Seventies standards, at least) somehow made everything seem all the more shocking. Thankfully, times change, and so La Bête is now available, uncut.

This expanded version of the story is based around the house of the Marquis Pierre de l’Esperance (Guy Tréjan), an aristocrat down on his luck, who hopes to revive the family fortune by marrying his misfit son Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) to Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel), the daughter of an old friend. Unfortunately, for her to inherit the estate, certain things need to be in place, according to the will of Philip Broadhurst. Firstly, it must take place within six months of his death, and the clock is tocking, with only 48 hours left; secondly, they must be married by Cardinal Joseph do Balo, the brother of Pierre’s uncle Duc Rammaendelo de Balo (Marcel Dalio). This throws up several problems. Rammaendelo disapproves of the marriage and has to be blackmailed into calling his brother, and the Cardinal refuses to have anything to do with the family as Mathurin has not been baptised. So as Lucy and her sour-faced aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) travel to the chateau, it is arranged for the local priest (Rolan Armontel) – a man who seems to have an unhealthy interest in choirboys – to come and carry out the baptism on the dim-witted son, who is far more interested in horse breeding than marriage. Inevitably, things start to go dreadfully wrong, as Pierre’s carefully laid plans start to fall apart.

All this is played out like an especially stylish version of a French farce, with its cast of eccentric characters and Pierre’s increasing desperation leading to subterfuge and panic as he refuses to accept that the marriage might be doomed not to take place. The film is surprisingly funny in the telling of this story – Borowczyk’s films, perhaps because of the sexual content, are rarely seem as comedic, but La Bête certainly is, often hilariously. This is despite being played with a straight face by most of the cast, and being shot with the director’s usual attention to detail, fetishisation of objects and long takes. Certainly, the film looks like a serious, straight-faced work, and every shot is remarkably well crafted and beautiful. The satire that is behind this straight face of course extends to religion – the pederast priest who comes to carry the baptism is a nicely on-the-ball dig at the priesthood, and also an interesting prediction of the scandals that would beset the Catholic church decades later.

Interestingly, this is a contemporary tale, which comes as a bit of a surprise – it’s only when we see Pierre’s horny daughter Clarisse (Pascale Rivault) clad in jeans and boots – in the few scenes where she isn’t banging the much put-upon servant Ifany (Hassane Fall), the constant interruption of their carnal activity being a running joke – that we realise that this film isn’t a period piece, so old-fashioned are the locations, the clothing and even the attitudes – arranged marriages in non-royal European families in the mid-Seventies?

For a supposed soft porn film, La Bête certainly takes its time in showing any sex. If we discount the startlingly graphic opening scenes of horse copulation – and unless you have very specialised tastes, it’s unlikely that you’ll find this footage especially erotic – then we are some 20 minutes into the film before we have any nudity, and the only sexual activity in the first hour involves Clarisse and Ifany in short bursts that are briefly explicit (we see a semi erect penis, for instance) but not exactly the stuff of soft porn. However, we are being lulled into a false sense of security.

When Lucy takes to her bed, her passions have been inflamed enough for her to spend the night masturbating, while dreaming about Romilda de l’Esperance (Sirpa Lane), who according to legend met a beast in the woods and shagged him to death. It’s this dream that makes use of the original Immoral Tales footage, as it is intercut with shots of Lucy, clad in a tantalising see-through night dress, rolls around on the bed, fingering herself, splashing water across her breasts and tearing off her clothes. These scenes alone are remarkably erotic – Lisbeth Hummel proves to be quite the sex kitten when given the chance, her exquisite body and brazen behaviour sure to turn on many a viewer. But it is the dream sequence that still has the power to startle.

This short story has Euro starlet Sirpa Lane (who went from high-end erotica like this and Roger Vadim’s Charlotte to rather more low rent cinema like Nazi Love Camp 27 and Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals) being chased through the woods by the titular beast, a hairy bear-like creature with a dog-face and a growing erection. She loses her clothes along the way and is finally captured, whereupon the beast rapes her (though not before engaging in a spot of cunnilingus). However, once her passions are inflamed, she proves too much of a match for the Beast, and her sexual rapaciousness eventually causes him to expire as she masturbates, sucks and screws the poor creature into a deadly exhaustion.

This is astonishing stuff. Even if we leave aside the BBFC-baiting issue of a rape victim coming to enjoy her abuse – and I assume the censors realised that this hardly constituted realism and so was unlikely to encourage such beliefs – then we are left with scenes of a woman having vigorous sex with an animal, who continually ejaculates from his monster cock. Yes, it’s a man in a (surprisingly well-crafted) suit, not a real animal. But still, the mere implication is shocking enough – bestiality has not proved to be a subject that many respectable filmmakers have wanted to tackle – and the footage is so wonderfully outrageous and in such bad taste that it’s no wonder critics were appalled. Shot when hardcore porn was still a new thing for much of the world, you can imagine them wondering where the line might be drawn.

The film follows this dream sequence with an amusing and cynical coda that reveals just why this marriage was doomed to failure, though by this point I imagine the more delicate viewers would have long since stopped watching.

In many ways, La Bête feels like the archetypal Borowczyk film, despite the outrageous content of the Beast sequence. It’s the sort of film that would always confuse mainstream critics – a collision of high art and low taste, an unquestionably serious (if humorous) film that is masterfully crafted and yet which seems to be deliberately aiming at the lowest common denominator. How could anyone who drew a line in the sand between art and exploitation ever hope to understand a movie like this, so cheerfully crass and yet so obviously refined? It’s certainly the Borowczyk film I would suggest to someone exploring his (erotic) work for the first time, and it might well be his most popular film these days. I’m not sure it’s his best work, but it’s certainly his most unforgettable. And it’s also a film that rewards repeated viewing – the shock of the Beast scenes can be a bit overwhelming the first time round, but each time you watch it again, you’ll find some new little touches to entrance you. Those people who still think Boro pissed away his career with his erotic films should open their eyes and their minds – they’ll discover a filmmaker who found his niche, and made some of the most impressive, startling, exciting and challenging films of the 1970s in any genre.

This stunningly gorgeous new British Blu-ray edition includes Borowczyk’s 1975 animation Venus on the Half Shell, which is a nice complementary film, featuring as it does Bona Tibertelli de Pisis‘ paintings of men, women and snails; and an hour of silent behind the scenes footage from the making of the film, narrated by camera operator Noël Véry – fascinating stuff and a rare glimpse into Borowczyk’s intricate film making style.There’s also a short piece on the planned sequel Motherhood, which on paper sounds frankly ludicrous. But I would’ve trusted in Borowczyk’s ability to pull it off…

David Flint – this review first appeared on Strange Things Are Happening

Wikipedia | IMDb

Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents is a huge (528 pages) tome by musician and author Stephen Thrower (Eyeball Compendium; Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci; Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco and Horrorpedia.com contributor) that analyses American exploitation cinema with a focus on horror. First published in May 2007, this seminal book was reprinted for a fourth time in a hardback edition with a poster by British-based FAB Press in September 2014.

Publisher’s blurb:

Between 1970 and 1985, American exploitation movies went berserk. With censorship relaxed, and the gate to excess wide open, horror – the Exploitation genre par excellence – offered a vibrant alternative to the mainstream of American cinema. Luridly titled wonders like The Headless Eyes, Scream Bloody Murder and Hitch Hike to Hell were everywhere, from the drive-ins of Texas to the grindhouses of New York, touting a combination of mind-bruising violence, weird sex and drug-soaked delirium. Massively popular around the world, American exploitation movies added immensely to the richness of the nation’s cinema, but they have remained persona non grata in most serious studies of American film. Until now…

Built on five years of research, Nightmare USA explores the development of America’s subterranean horror film industry, spotlighting some of the wildest films imaginable from an era unchecked by censorship or ‘good taste.’ Ranging from cult favourites like I Drink Your Blood to stylish mind-benders like Messiah of Evil and ultra-violent shockers like Don’t Go in the House, Nightmare USA goes where no other in-depth study has gone before, revealing the fascinating true stories behind classics and obscurities alike.

Stephen Thrower, author of Beyond Terror, the definitive book on Italian gore maestro Lucio Fulci, has explored the attics and cellars of American cinema, delved beneath the floorboards, peered between the walls, searching for the strangest, most exotic cine-lifeforms… Nightmare USA is the reader’s guide to what lies beyond the mainstream of American horror, dispelling the shadows to meet the men and women behind fifteen years of screen terror: the Exploitation Independents!

This massive overview of the Horror genre’s development through the 1970s and 1980s features:

• In-depth interviews with twenty-five grindhouse movie makers, many of whom are discussing their work for the first time ever in print, including David Durston (I Drink Your Blood), Robert Endelson (Fight for Your Life), Frederick Friedel (Axe), Don Jones (Schoolgirls in Chains); and Joseph Ellison (Don’t Go in the House).

• Over 175 individual films reviewed, with full cast and crew credits compiled by world-renowned cinema archivist Julian Grainger.
• Vast quantities of previously unpublished stills, posters, press-books, plus behind-the-scenes photographs from the filmmakers’ own collections.

Section One: The Exploitation Independents
A 25,000 word essay charting the rise of Exploitation Horror: from Herschell Gordon Lewis and George Romero to the Slasher phenomenon of the 1980s.

Section Two: Essays on Films and Filmmakers
Dirty Games in Hollywood – the career of James Bryan (Don’t Go in the Woods)
The Frozen Scream Is a Clean Machine – Renee Harmon (Frozen Scream)
The Fiend from Prime-Time – John Peyser on The Centerfold Girls
Carolina on My Mind – the films of Frederick Friedel (Axe, Kidnapped Coed)
It Came from New Jersey! – Douglas McKeown on The Deadly Spawn

Let’s Play Nasty – the films of Don Jones (Schoolgirls in Chains, The Love Butcher, The Forest)
Louisiana Screamin’ – James L. Wilson on Screams of a Winter Night
Satan Was an Acid-Head! – the films of David Durston (I Drink Your Blood, Stigma)
Don’t Make Me Do Anything Bad, Mother… – Joseph Ellison on Don’t Go in the House
If You Go Down in the Caves Today – Mark Sawicki on The Strangeness

The Vigilante of 42nd Street – Robert Endelson on Fight for Your Life
The Living Dead at the All-Night Mall – Willard Huyck on Messiah of Evil

Hollywood After Dark – the films of John Hayes (Grave of the Vampire, Dream No Evil, Garden of the Dead)
What Really Happened to Tony Vorno’s Victims? – Daniel DiSomma on Victims

If At First You Don’t Succeed… – the films of Tony Malanowski (Night of Horror, Curse of the Screaming Dead)
Punished By the Sun – Marc B. Ray on Scream Bloody Murder

Growing Pains – John Ballard on Friday the 13th: The Orphan
Blood Relations – the films of Irv & Wayne Berwick (Hitch Hike to Hell, Microwave Massacre)

Mind Before Matter – Robert Allen Schnitzer on The Premonition
Spawn of Venice Beach – Stephen Traxler on Slithis
Beyond the Black Room – the films of Norman Thaddeus Vane (The Black Room, The Horror Star)
Robert Voskanian and Robert Dadashian – Raising The Child
Who’s the Ghostest with the Mostest? – the films of Fredric Hobbs (Alabama’s Ghost, Godmonster of Indian Flats)
To Sleep, Perchance to Scream – George Barry on Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
— supplemented in the text by a further twenty interviews with cast and crew members.

Section Three: Reviews
Reviews of a further 120 films, with additional notes and commentaries on the reviews by Roger Watkins (director: Last House on Dead End Street), Walter Dallenbach (writer: Psychopath), Jeremy Hoenack (director: The Dark Ride), Christopher Speeth (director: Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood), John Wintergate (director: BoardingHouse), Wayne Bell (composer: Death Trap), Michael Gornick (cinematographer: Martin), Don Leifert (star: Fiend)

Buy Nightmare USA hardback with poster from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Cultural archæology of this kind is increasingly important in our throwaway world, particularly for those of us trying to gain a better understanding of the fringes inhabited by fortean phenomena. The drive-ins, grindhouses and VCRs that beamed Godmonster of Indian Flats or Frozen Scream into the churning collective unconscious of America’s youth are the forge of future forteana, urban folklore and moral panics. These are the cinematic equivalents of Fort’s “damned data”. A final note on the lavish production values – Nightmare USA may be pricey, but it’s all sizzle and all steak, with the text complemented by coffee-table-sized colour pages of rare photos, posters and lobby cards from the filmmakers’ own collections.” Mark Pilkington, Fortean Times

“Time and time again, studies are done on some of the great and historical films of our time, but Thrower has jumped into waters that no one else has dared to tread and creates a new perspective for movie lovers. The retail price maybe considerably high, as it runs for close to 60 dollars on Amazon.com, but for hardcore movie aficionados, it’s a purchase you won’t not be sorry that you made.” Anthony Benedetto, Retro Slashers

“Never, in all my days on this slowly decaying planet Earth, have I read a book that made me feel so minuscule in my knowledge of horror, cult, and exploitation films that I simply had to pause for reflection and come to the realization that I simply had no idea how much I truly had to learn about truly cool movies. Reading this book, filled with lengthy chapters covering specific films and specific directors most may never have heard of and giving them the rock star treatment and care as if Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, or Stanley Kubrick were the subjects at matter, is one component to Thrower’s book that sets it apart from the rest.” Shu-Izmz

Film Threat interview with Stephen Thrower

Stephen Thrower’s reviews/articles on Horrorpedia: The Body Beneath | The Brains of Morphoton – Doctor Who monsters | The Bride aka The House That Cried Murder | Don’t Look in the Basement | Don’t Open the Door | Hierro | Inferno | Images | Keep My Grave Open | The Last House on the Left (2009) | Lokis | Mire Beasts – Doctor Who monsters | Scum of the Earth aka Poor White Trash, Part II | The Synth of Fear: Horror Film Soundtracks with Synthesizer Scores | Women’s Camp 119

US One Sheet

Mardi Gras Massacre is a 1978 American horror film written and directed by Jack Weis and starring Curt Dawson, Gwen Arment, William Metzo and Laura Misch Owens. It is an unofficial semi-remake of the 1963 splatter film Blood Feast.

Plot teaser:

In New Orleans a serial killer wearing a welder’s mask strikes during the Mardi Gras festival. He goes into a bar and asks for the “most evil” prostitute he can find. He then takes her to a basement where he ties her up and cuts off her limbs and genitals. He then kills more prostitutes to get their hearts to sacrifice to an ancient Aztec goddess. A policeman who uses a prostitute as a lover and source of information then hunts down the killer based on her tips…

The film was on the British Government’s list of Video Nasties in the 1980s and has not been resubmitted to the BBFC for a certificate since.

Buy Mardi Gras Massacre on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“On the surface at least, Mardi Gras Massacre offers everything the fans of exploitation find so immensely appealing. Graphic gore, excessive nudity, a masked maniac and the added bonus of a ‘video-nasty’ disqualification – it’s all here for the taking baby! But scratch beneath that glossy veneer and what you’re left with is a vial of tedium-drenched campiness that is so beguilingly awful that it almost defies description.” A Slash Above

“Mardi Gras Massacre has far too many faults and shortcomings to recommend as a good movie, but as a trashy slasher to be watched for only laughs, I do think it has slight merit. If you can get through the tedium of the kills and the sleazy feeling that oozes from nearly every line of dialogue, I think there is a tiny amount of cheap fun to be had with this one. Not nearly enough, however, for me to actively recommend to someone.” Oh, the Horror!

“Mardi Gras Massacre is amusing as all hell in a nostalgic way, and should almost satisfy jaded gore-hounds who – despite their best efforts – haven’t yet seen it all. As an almost more-inept version of H.G. Lewis’ Blood Feast, this massacre simply massacres any notions of suspense, disgust, or engaging storytelling. With skanky, naked hos, beyond repetitive gore, and mucho stock footage of a Mardi gras parade, the movie certainly satisfies the need for those cruddy intangibles, just be aware that the tags for this movie include: plodding, cheap, boring, and stupid.” DVD Talk

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

‘Pretty Young Ladies Make the Perfect Plant Food!’

Please Don’t Eat My Mother – also released as Glump; Hungry Pets and Sex Pot Swingers – is a 1973 exploitation comedy horror film produced and directed by Carl J. Monson (Legacy of Blood; A Scream in the Streets) from a screenplay by Eric Norden for Harry Novak‘s Boxoffice International Pictures. It stars Buck Kartalian (Octaman; Legacy of Blood; Monster Squad), Lyn Lundgren (Strait-Jacket), Art Hedberg, Alice Friedland (The Psycho Lover) and porn star Rene Bond (The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hide; Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love!; A Name for Evil).

The film is an adult-orientated softcore remake of Roger Corman’s The Little Shop of Horrors. According to Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic Video Guide, the film was still playing at drive-ins as late as 1982.

Plot teaser:

A shy and timid man who lives with his mother buys a plant he thinks talked to him. His loneliness is very apparent in the way he tries to turn the plant into a friend. Well, the plant is carnivorous and can talk with a woman’s sexy voice. Henry, the protagonist, now has two joys in life. One is being a voyeur (he is much too shy to actually talk to a girl) and the other is his new plant friend. Soon he discovers the plant likes bugs (and then frogs and dogs and cats but he draws the line at elephants). Eventually the plant wants to try a delicious woman, like in the pictures Henry has hanging in his room.

One day, Henry’s mother breaks into his room thinking to confront him with a woman and all she can find are Henry and the plant. But soon the plant eats her and discovers that women are really tasty. When detective O’Columbus shows up, the plant discovers she does not like eating men, just women…

Reviews:

“Clearly not for everyone, Please Don’t Eat My Mother is an acid-gobbling piece of no-fi sexploitation junk that stands out both for the shabbiness of its monster and for its oddly affecting protagonist, a teeth-gnashing, chronically masturbating man-child fleshed out into a living, breathing hunk of sweaty desperation by Buck Kartalian, one of exploitation’s most sadly unsung character actors. Boner-seekers will be out of luck, since the sex scenes are ineptly staged and boring to watch, but the sniveling characters, eye-scorching sets and inept creature construction are just too bizarre to miss.” Movies About Girls

“It tries to be a number of different types of movie and essentially fails on all counts. When it’s trying to be a comedy it suffers by not actually being very funny. When it’s trying to be a horror film it suffers because it’s not scary in the slightest. And when it’s trying to be a porno it doesn’t actually show the stuff you’d expect to see in a porno, and it keeps cutting to an imbecile acting like a pervert so anyone looking for that sort of thing will be disappointed too (I’d imagine).” That Was a Bit Mental

Buy Please Don’t Eat My Mother on Something Weird DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Special Features:

• Trailers for this, plus “Hungry Pets,” “Booby Trap,” “Exotic Dreams of Casanova,” “Indian Raid Indian Made,” “Pigkeeper’s Daughter,” “Street of a Thousand Pleasures,” “Substitution”
• Radio-Spot Rarities
• Gallery of Harry Novak Exploitation Art
• Two Archival Short Subjects: “Please Don’t Eat My Mother!” star Buck Kartalian in the Harry Novak short “The Voyeur,” “Rene Bond Bound”
• Something Weird Video raids Harry Novak’s Film Vault

Choice dialogue:

“Oh frog me, Henry, frog me!”

Cast:

• Buck Kartalian as Henry Fudd
• Lyn Lundgren as Clarice Fudd
• Art Hedberg
• Rene Bond as Harry’s wife
• Alice Friedland as Call girl
• Adam Blair
• Flora Weisel
• Ric Lutze as Harry
• Carl Monson (uncredited) as Officer O’Columbus
• Zach Moye

Wikipedia | IMDb

Death is the only way out!

The Night God Screamed is a 1971 American horror film, independently made on a low budget by Lasky/Carlin Productions – producers Ed Carlin and Gil Lasky, with Lasky writing the screenplay. Due to the sensitivities connected with displaying such a provocative title, theater owners in some communities were offered the option of using the short appellation, Scream. Released between 1971 and 1974 by exploitation producer Jerry Gross’ soon-to-be-bankrupt Cinemation Industries, it was directed by Lee Madden. The film stars Jeanne Crain, Alex Nicol (The Screaming Skull; A*P*E), Daniel Spelling (Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde), Barbara Hancock, Dawn Cleary, Gary Morgan and Michael Sugich.

Plot teaser:

A hooded figure, dressed like a monk and carrying a six-foot cruciform staff, walks through a forest, stopping on a hill to observe a lakeside baptismal ceremony conducted by a Christ-like figure (Michael Sugich) who starts making a speech to God. He tells God that all those present “were just a bunch of sinners”, but “I saved them”, because “I made them see that using dope was the way to turn on to you”. He continues, telling the assembled young followers that one among them was sent to “spy on us and try to bust us”. He focuses on one of the girls and announces, “there’s a chick that don’t want to be baptized — she don’t want to follow me” and finishes by pronouncing, “Oh, yes, Lord, in our happy flock, maybe we got us a Judas”.

When the girl (Andrea Darvi) gets up and tries to run, she is quickly caught and held, as the Christ-like figure, now revealed to be the leader of a Charles Manson-styled cult, calls for “the Atoner” who, appearing from the bushes, is the initially-seen silent hooded figure with the tall cross/staff. The cult leader, whom the girl addresses as “Billy Joe”, forcibly “baptizes” her, with the Atoner holding her underwater, until she drowns…

Reviews:

“On the film’s plus side, Madden does a good job with the pacing, pulling you right along and never letting things get too boring. This is especially impressive during the seige section of the film, since the director sets himself the challenge of building tension from the victims’ pov without ever showing the attackers themselves. He accomplishes some of this with sound (the ominous phone calls and Fanny’s “voices”), some with light (the hippies hit the breaker box) and occasionally even with a creative tracking shot or two. It’s not just the god-damnedest direction I’ve ever seen in my life, but considering the low-budget constraints, it’s not the worst either.” Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies

“The movie is a total blast from start to finish, and the plot is constantly changing direction on you, up till the very end with, in my opinion, a very surprising twist ending. The movie is short, and for the most part very fast-paced, only slowing down to build tension in the last act. The soundtrack is memorable, if a little dated (nothing wrong with that), and it is very well shot and acted.” Johnny Dickie, Deaf Sparrow

“The Night God Screamed one could say uses it’s visual cues as a way to depict the poor as nefarious predators, dangerous and not worthy of redemption or compassion. The world in this film is a dark, dire and nihilistic place inhabited by human failings, frightening predators, false prophets and faint victims who seem to call the wrath of god upon themselves., showing the intersectionality between religion and class.” The Last Drive-In

Related: Coming Down Fast… Charles Manson on Screen – article by David Flint

Choice dialogue:

“Everything is ugly… and old.”

Wikipedia I IMDb

‘Something deadly in the water… more dangerous than any shark or killer whale!’

Barracuda (The Lucifer Project) - promoted as simply Barracuda - is a 1978 American horror film written, produced and directed by Harry Kerwin (Playgirl Killer – story; Sting of Death – special effects; God’s Bloody Acre – director) and Wayne Crawford (the latter also stars). It also features Jason Evers, Roberta Leighton, Cliff Emmich, William Kerwin and Bert Freed. The film’s score is by celebrated electronic composer and Krautrock musician Klaus Schulze.

Plot teaser:

The residents of Palm Cove, a small Florida coastal town, are menaced by highly aggressive barracuda fish caused by pollution from a chemical plant. The townspeople themselves are becoming aggressive too…

Reviews:

“The conspiracy plot is a complete waste of time and you just know which townspeople are in on the cover-up from the way their characters have been portrayed throughout the rest of the film. The film also ends with a real twist which came as a bit of a shock to me but looking back I should have seen it coming. If Barracuda had focused on the title fish a lot more much like Piranha did and then had the cover-up plot as the secondary theme then its overall quality would have been greatly enhanced.” Popcorn Pictures

“This movie keeps you guessing and makes up for the so-so special effects with a great storyline and amusing and interesting characters. This was actually written and directed by the star of the film, Wayne Crawford, and he did a great job with all three of his occupations in this production. Barracuda is a film that may have gotten lost in the mix of killer fish movies, but it is a quality film with some great twists and a fantastic ending.” Scared Stiff

“The biggest fault of Barracuda is the fact it suffers from not knowing whether it wants to be a complete ripoff or make a political statement. If it went down one path or another, the film might have been able to pull itself out of the sluggish no-man’s-land it finds itself wandering around in for 98 minutes. However, the flick tries to straddle both and accomplishes little in the way of entertainment.” Cain Gardner, The Film Yap

Buy Barracuda + Island Fury on DVD from Amazon.com

Locations:

Pompano Beach, Florida

Fort Lauderdale

French trailer:

IMDb | Related: Piranha

The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe aka Exorcismo Negro is a 1974 Brazilian horror film directed by José Mojica Marins. Marins is also known by his alter ego Zé do Caixão (Coffin Joe). It is one of several Marins’ films that feature Coffin Joe as a major character, although it is not considered part of the “Coffin Joe trilogy”: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, and Embodiment of Evil.

It was filmed in Marins’ trademark style, including the use of inconsistent visual and sound editing, a bizarre audio track, and extremely low budget effects.

Plot teaser:

Playing himself, and having filmed the final scene of his most recent movie, Jose Mojica Marins gives an interview discussing his plans for his next film. After an interviewer asks Marins about the true existence of Coffin Joe, Marins replies “Coffin Joe does not exist”. A camera light then explodes.

He states he will leave for vacation at the country home of his friend Alvaro to write the script for his next film, which he plans on calling “The Demon Exorcist”.

Soon odd things occur around the mansion such as winds blowing and horses being spooked, and that night Alvaro’s father, Mr. Júlio, frightens everyone when he begins tearing off his shirt and declaring in a frenzied voice that has come to collect a debt.

Marins investigates the house that night and finds a locked hallway, but is attacked by flying books and the lights turn off. Betinha sees tarantulas and a snake in the Christmas tree. During these events the scene cuts to a strange woman who carries a white cat and is surrounded by occult figurines and symbols, and has a framed portrait of Coffin Joe behind her on the wall…

Buy the Coffin Joe Collection on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Tons of naked chicks dancing about, worshipping at the feet of their dark lord, ready to offer their virginal bodies to the deities of hell? C’mon… that’s just good horror filmmaking; or at least it was in the 70s.” Marc Patterson, Brutal as Hell

“While Mojica was certainly famous by this time, you can still tell his budgets were nowhere near what he needed for his expansive visions. While the house where he films the outdoor scenes is palatial (nice gardens and a truly amazing swimming pool), the indoor scenes are obviously studio-shot, sometimes with long drapes serving as walls and curtained door frames in the place of doors. This doesn’t keep Mojica from filling the frame with dread and creeping unease, though, and his inventiveness as always is to be lauded.” Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies

“Family Christmas/demonic possession story that really hits its stride when Coffin Joe appears sparking a shit storm of human staircases, Satanic weddings and rampant cannibalism that culminates in a postmodern exorcism showdown with the film’s director.” How Much for the Ape?

Read more about José Mojica Marins in Fear Without Frontiers. Buy from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb

Blind Woman’s Curse (aka The Tattooed Swordswoman, Japanese: 怪談昇り竜) is a 1970 Japanese supernatural action film directed by Teruo Ishii and starring Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood in her first major role), Hoki Tokuda and Makoto Satō.

Plot teaser

Akemi (Kaji) is a dragon tattooed leader of the Tachibana Yakuza clan. In a duel with a rival gang Akemi slashes the eyes of an opponent and a black cat appears, to lap the blood from the gushing wound. The cat along with the eye-victim go on to pursue Akemi s gang in revenge, leaving a trail of dead Yakuza girls, their dragon tattoos skinned from their bodies…

Buy Blind Woman’s Curse on Blu-ray from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews

“If the film rambles on a bit, it is forgivable, since everything else it does is so enjoyable and original. Kinky, weird, scary and funny in equal measures, Blind Woman’s Curse is an excellent re-release of a true cult gem that many won’t even know existed in the first place.” Starburst

“The very least one can say is that there is no shortage of eye candy, with gaudily coloured set pieces like the circus tent filled with wax dummies, the Dobashi hide-out with its mirrors, trap doors and torture dungeons, and the final confrontation between Akemi and her blind nemesis, set against a phantasmagorical painted backdrop of spiralling clouds. It may not make a lot of sense, but there is plenty of fun to be had.” Midnight Eye 

“A genuinely weird mix of the Yakuza and horror genres with a dose of ‘pinky violence’ exploitation thrown in for good measure and elements from the popular Zatoichi series intertwined, Blind Woman’s Curse is a lot of fun even if it isn’t the pinnacle of Kaji’s output or likely to be the film that Ishii is best remembered for.” Rock! Shock! Pop!

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Audrey Rose is a 1977 American psychological horror film directed by Robert Wise (Curse of the Cat People; The Haunting, 1963) for United Artists. It stars Marsha Mason, Anthony Hopkins (Magic; The Silence of the Lambs) and Susan Swift. It was based on the novel of the same title by co-producer Frank De Felitta (The Entity).

In the US, the film has been released as a limited edition Blu-ray of just 3,000 copies by Twilight Time.

Plot teaser:

An affluent New York couple (Marsha Mason and John Beck) is at a loss to explain the transformation of their heretofore happy little girl (Susan Swift) into a nightmare-ridden visionary, haunted by intimations of violent death. Until, that is, a stranger (Anthony Hopkins) appears, insisting that little Ivy is, in fact, the reincarnated-and tortured-soul of his own daughter, Audrey Rose, who died in a tragic accident just as Ivy was being born…

Buy Audrey Rose on Blu-ray from Amazon.com 

Reviews:

“Audrey Rose isn’t your typical horror film but it is a well-made and occasionally very creepy thriller that features some very impressive performances and a smart, thought provoking script. It may very well be a product of its time, but for many of us that’s a positive and those who like their suspense accompanied by some interesting food for thought should appreciate what Wise and company accomplished with this unique picture.” Rock! Shock! Pop!

“However, the tin lid on the film’s artistic failure is the ending. It’s hard to explain how horrible sentimental and manipulative this is without giving it away. It left me with a profound hatred of the film, much more virulent than I normally feel. The last five minutes are unforgivable, lachrymose bullshit and not worthy of the talents of the director and the actors. ” The Digital Fix

“The direction is slick and the production values good. It is compelling enough to be entertaining, but the ending is very unsatisfying and as a thriller it is transparent and unmemorable.” Scopophilia

Elegantly directed and beautifully acted, Audrey Rose is a different kind of horror movie. Wise was a kind of directorial chameleon, able to adapt to any genre with ease … Here, he harkens back to his directorial debut, The Curse of the Cat People, using psychological horror to explore the psyche of a troubled young girl. Wise shies away from the more supernatural elements of the story, especially in the film’s gripping climax, keeping the film grounded even as it searches for answers to bigger questions to answers beyond our world.” Matthew Lucas, From the Front Row

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

It’s hardly surprising that the most notorious, indefensible, loathsome and reprehensible movies ever made are those that exploring nasty Nazi sex and violence fantasies. Even the most liberal of critics seem reluctant to defend these goose-stepping abominations, and they sit at the top of that sorry list known as the Video Nasties.

In fact, the pulp fiction and cinema industry had been exploiting the Nazi nightmare since the war ended. Cheesy B-movies like Hitler’s Madman, They Saved Hitler’s Brain; She Demons and The Flesh Eaters exploited the idea that mad Nazi scientists were up to mischief in remote South American jungles and on desert islands, attempting to revive the fortunes of the Third Reich by somehow resurrecting Adolf Hitler or his marching minions. These movies played on knowledge of the very real mad scientist experiments of Joseph Mengele, which reached levels of atrocity that no fictional mad doctor could hope to match.

The theme ran through to the end of the 1960s with films like Search for the Evil One, and was still potent enough to turn up late into the 1970s – The Boys from Brazil had Mengele and a Jewish Nazi hunter racing to track down clones of Hitler and influence them to their way of thinking before they reached adulthood – the question perhaps being was Hitler a result of nature or nurture – while an episode of The New Avengers TV series saw Peter Cushing (also involved with Nazi zombies in Shock Waves) being forced to bring a preserved Hitler back to life on a remote Scottish island!

However, the grubbiest Naziploitation boom began when the 1960s saw the loosening of censorship rules.

Unable to show much actual sex, mid Sixties adult films would fill the gaps with violence, often S&M tinged. Showing a disregard for any sense of taste or decency, it was clearly only going to be a matter of time before some enterprising producer realised the – ahem – ‘erotic’ potential of the Nazi concentration camp. That man was Bob Cresse, and his film was the notorious Love Camp 7, a worryingly personal movie.

Directed by Lee Frost, the film sets the ground rules for the flood of titles which came almost a decade later. It tells the story of two American female spies who are sent to a Nazi ‘love camp’ in order to help another informant escape. This they do, but only after an hour of unrelenting torture and abuse. Women are depicted as being sexually abused, whipped, strapped to unspeakable devices and generally treated badly throughout the movie.

Cresse played the Commandant himself with a barely disguised gloating glee. He was, to a large extent, living out his own sado-masochistic fantasies in the nasty narrative, and stories abound about how he would insist on take after take of the torture scenes, until the suffering on screen was seemingly matched in reality by the actress.

After this pioneering effort, the genre was suspiciously quiet until 1973. It was then that sleaze producer David Friedman decided that the time was right to revive the dubious concept. He went to Canada and produced Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS under the pseudonym Herman Traegar, a name that remained shrouded in mystery until Friedman finally owned up a couple of decades later. Why the false name? Perhaps some things were just too sleazy for even ‘The Mighty Monarch of the Exploitation Film World’ to admit to.

And Ilsa is very sleazy. The title role was taken by busty nightclub performer Dyanne Thorne, who attacked the part with relish. She’s a cold, heartless sadist who is first seen castrating a male prisoner who is of no further sexual use. During the rest of the film, she tortures women, takes part in appalling experiments, and has sex with the only male inmate (American, of course) who can satisfy her.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a breathtakingly tasteless affair, yet it does have a (warped) sense of humour. Much of the action is so OTT, it teeters the film into the realms of ‘camp’, and it’s this which saves the film. Two sequels followed, though neither had Nazi themed story lines, instead having Ilsa as entirely separate characters in each.

While Ilsa was shaking the drive-ins, the art house theatres were rocking to The Night Porter, in which Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling indulged in assorted sexual antics that stopped short of the atrocities performed by Ilsa, yet still dwelled indulgently in uniform fetishism and Nazi decadence. The film was another box office success, and suddenly, the Italians – never slow to spot a trend – began to sit up and pay attention. Or stand to attention, perhaps?

The floodgates were opened in 1976 by Salon Kitty, which managed to combine the sleaze of Ilsa with the artiness of The Night Porter. The masterpiece of Nazi sleaze cinema, Tinto Brass’ twisted epic switches from making serious political points about the impotence of fascism (often with heavy handed political symbolism) to lip-smacking scenes of sexual perversion with alarming ease. It also established another great Nazi sexploitation plot-line: Salon Kitty is a brothel with an ulterior motive. SS officers use hidden microphones to listen out for any soldiers who might be less committed to the Third Reich cause than they should be.

The same year saw Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, one of the most notorious films ever made. Based on De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini transposed the story to Fascist Italy, and the parade of atrocities committed by the ‘libertines’ – all fascist big wigs – would become as significant a factor in several Naziploitation films as the uniforms, the prison camps and the soft porn.

The popularity of Salon Kitty ensured it would be followed by a frenzy of titles, mostly emerging from Italy and France. Best known of these in Britain is SS Experiment Camp, which was one of the original ‘video nasties’, thanks in no small part to Go Video’s enthusiastic advertising campaign. The enterprising label took full page adverts in the top video magazines, showing the film’s cover – a topless girl, crucified upside-down. Some magazines found the image offensive, so Go supplied a version that had the breasts covered by a bra… this version was, apparently, considered perfectly acceptable.

After all that, Sergio Garrone’s film is quite ordinary, more softcore melodrama than anything… but there is at least one stand-out moment. The evil camp Commandant is devoid of testicles, and so decides to take those belonging to the one nice-guy guard who, in the great tradition of the ‘good Nazi’, hates what is going on. This is done via some gruesome medical stock footage. Our hero is then seen having sex with his girlfriend, at first blissfully unaware that anything is amiss. Once the awful truth emerges, however, he rushes into the Commandant’s office and screams the immortal line, “You bastard, what have you done with my balls?”…

As for the rest of the movies: all have moments of outrageous bad taste, but are mainly dull, with mind-numbing footage of partisans and battle-field stock footage padding out the moments between softcore groping and limp flagellation. Garrone returned to the genre in the somewhat sleazier SS Camp 5 – Women’s Hell, which saw Sirpa Lane – more used to arthouse Euro sleaze like La Bete and Charlotte – subjected to assorted indignities in a concentration camp. Without the ‘camp’ (no pun intended) aspect of SS Experiment Camp, it proved even less fun to watch.

The Beast In Heat is noteworthy as one of the rarest video nasties, but is also one of the dullest Naziploitation movies out there because the tasteless footage was appended to an already existing war movie. Thus, we have to endure seemingly endless footage of partisans fighting off their German oppressors interspersed with occasional torture scenes that would be repulsive if they weren’t so amateurish.

The infamous scene where Sal Boris (also in the aforementioned Salon Kitty), the titular beast who is the result of fiendish experiments overseen by the Ilsa-like camp commandant, bites off a woman’s pubic hair is fairly outrageous, but it’s a brief moment of bad taste respite from the general tedium. The attention to detail in the film is perhaps summed up by the clumsy on-screen title – Horrifing (sic) Experiments of the SS, Last Days. [Read Daz Lawrence's review on Horrorpedia]

Hack director Luigi Batzella – using the pseudonym Ivan Kathansky (or Katansky, depending on how much attention the credits producer was paying) – also made Kaput Lager: Gli ultimi giorni delle SS, released on video in the UK as The Desert Tigers (amusingly, The Dessert Tigers on a Dutch video sleeve mispelling). This was an even more ham-fisted effort, with exploitative prison camp footage grafted onto the end of a dull war movie starring Richard Harrison.

The Deported Women of the SS Special Section has a certain gritty authenticity to it that makes it stand out from the other films, but is otherwise rather average. It’s one of the more downbeat Naziploitation movies, despite the best efforts of director Rino Di Silvestro (Werewolf Woman) to crank up the sleaze factor, but its saving grace is the presence of Euro cult favourite John Steiner (Shock), who refuses to take it at all seriously and instead delivers a fantastic, eye-rolling, ranting and raving performance. It’s worth seeing the film for this alone, as he flits from obsessing over an inmate he’s known in the pre-war years and buggering his faithful servant Doberman.

The Gestapo’s Last Orgy also uses the ‘camp commandant obsessed with a prisoner’ plot, and becomes a curious hybrid of The Night Porter, Salon Kitty and the Nazi atrocity film. It’s a classier production that most examples of the genre, at least visually – a fait amount of money was obviously lavished here. This, the stylish direction and decent performances goes to make the atrocities seem all the more unsavoury – There are moments of such astonishing repulsiveness that you can barely credit them being in such a handsome film – the throwing of a menstruating woman to a pack of dogs, the burning alive of a woman during the cannibal orgy and the dipping of another woman in a pit of lime. The female cast are naked for much of the film and of course there are numerous sexual assault scenes. It’s so shamelessly horrible that you have to admire its audacity, especially as none of it seems to be pandering to the audience – this isn’t soft porn by any stretch of the imagination, and it seems designed to repulse. In the end, the film is perhaps best seen as a prime example of 1970s Italian excess, where restraint was for wussies. It’s from the same mindset that brought us films as diverse as Cannibal Holocaust and Suspiria, the notion that too much is never enough and that everything should be shown. It’s not on the same level as those two films, of course, but it is strangely admirable within its own perimeters.

Less ambiguous was the particularly unpleasant Women’s Camp 119, directed by Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead; Rats – Night of Terror). This unpleasant film seems designed to leave a bad taste in the mouth, even managing to work actual concentration camp footage into the credits sequence (an all-time low in filmmaking?). Yet it doesn’t have the style, the audacity, or the intelligence to get away with its parade of grim atrocities. (Read Stephen Thrower’s review on Horrorpedia)

As well as the films exploiting concentration camp atrocities, there were also a number of less brutal films exploiting the uniform fetish. SS Girls was another blatant imitation of Salon Kitty and The Night Porter while The Red Nights of the Gestapo was a fairly sumptuous affair that tended to concentrate on the decadence of the SS top brass. Elsa – Fraulein SS, on the other hand, was cheap and deliciously tacky, and despite the title similarity to Ilsa She Wolf of the SS (coincidence I’m sure!), was more of a T&A romp than a parade of atrocities, following the Salon Kitty theme of prostitutes being used to spy on Nazi officers who might be slipping in their love for the Third Reich. Many of the same cast and crew returned in Special Train for Hitler and Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg, which utilised the same sets and much the same plot.

Erwin C.Dietrich’s Frauleins in Uniform is a softcore movie that is notable for the strange normalising of the Nazis. While it briefly deals with the horrors of war, it does so from the point of view of the German army recruits – female German army recruits – and while there are hints at a totalitarian state, much of the film is surprisingly uncritical of the Nazi war machine. There’s little in the way of dramatic threat (though one deserter is caught and told “we have ways of making you talk”!), but the constant stream of bare flesh and dialogue like “cleanliness is next to Naziness” ensure that it passes by quite painlessly.

Meanwhile, American porno producers were dabbling in the concept with Prisoner in Paradise and Hitler’s Harlots. But for whatever reasons, the theme didn’t catch on in the adult movie theatres. In Hong Kong, film-makers replaced Nazis with Japanese invaders and unleashed the likes of Concentration Camp for Girls and Bamboo House of Dolls, the latter of which was used as an example of the worst excesses of cinema by British BBFC censor James Ferman during lectures about censorship. This sub-genre eventually led to the notoriously nasty Men Behind the Sun series.

By 1978, the Nazi sexploitation genre was all but dead. Perhaps the moral outrage and censorship problems which greeted such films proved to be too much trouble for producers only interested in profit. Who knows? Whatever the reason, there hasn’t been a single significant addition to the cycle since, making it one of cinema’s most short-lived genres. The only films to dabble in the genre now are zero budget affairs aimed squarely at the cult horror audience.

Keith Crocker’s Blitzkreig: Escape from Stalag 69 (2008) attempts to channel the spirit of the Italian films, but despite star Tatyana Kot spending the whole film naked, either gunning down Nazis or (more frequently) being tortured, plentiful nudity – male and female – throughout, two castrations, tongue pulling, eye stabbing, throat slitting and plenty more gory mayhem, all delivered with bargain basement FX, the film still manages to be the dullest Naziploitation film since The Beast in Heat. Why it needed to be 135 minutes long is anyone’s guess.

More interesting, but still unrealised beyond being a fake trailer in Grindhouse, is Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, which has Sybil Danning taking on the Ilsa role and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu. The trailer was, by far, the best thing about the whole Grindhouse project and hopefully Zombie will eventually get around the making the complete film.

It’s understandable that many people will be upset at the idea of Nazi fantasies. But I’ve never yet come across a genuine fascist amongst fans of this grubby sub-genre, and even the worst of the films doesn’t attempt to portray the Third Reich as being remotely admirable. If we can laugh at sit-coms like Allo Allo (okay, no-one should laugh at Allo Allo, but you know what I mean…), then surely we can be amused by these cheesy, high camp exercises in bad taste without feeling guilty about it? In fact, it’s probably our duty to do so, reminding ourselves that Nazis are little more than a bad joke in a good uniform…

Heinz Von Sticklegruber

Nazis on Horrorpedia: BloodRayne: The Third Reich | Cataclym aka The Nightmare Never Ends | Dead Snow: Red vs Dead | The Flesh Eaters | Frankenstein’s Army | Night of the Zombies | Night Train to Terror | Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz | She Demons | Women’s Camp 119

El robo de las momias de guanajuato (which translates as “Robbers of the Mummies of Guanajuato”) is a 1972 Mexican masked wrestler horror film directed by Tito Novaro (The Castle of Mummies of Guanajuato) from a screenplay by Francisco Morayta and Miguel Morayta (Invasion of the Vampires; Bloody Vampire). It stars Mil Mascaras and Blue Angel.

Review:

Stilted is a polite term for the lack of action and horror here. Two evil scientists spend an inordinate amount of time discussing their plans. There is no tension, no atmosphere and, even from those involved, seemingly no interest. A jaunty jazzy score is credited to director Novaro (as “supervisor”) so its presumably library music and sadly the only positive here.

Strictly second rate, the masked wrestlers involved are even less actors than Santo or Blue Demon. There is scene after scene where everyone just discusses what’s going on… or rather, what’s not going on! Bashing midgets galore and super scared kids do not help either.

A climatic fight between the supposedly superhero wrestlers and the “mummies” – whom are all dressed in modern clothing? – is largely filmed long shot and staged like a school ground fight with no-one making much effort.

The term ‘worst film is the world’ is often bandied around but El robo de las momias de guanajuato is so poorly presented, even for a Mexican wrestling film – and so inept, it has to be part of this unfortunate canon. And whilst some bad films have an undoubted appeal, this is just dull. Nice poster though…

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

IMDb

Il cav. Costante Nicosia demoniaco ovvero: Dracula in Brianza, internationally released as Dracula in the Provinces; Bite Me, Count and Young Dracula, is a 1975 Italian horror-comedy film directed by Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters; The Beyond; The New York Ripper). Several writers contributed to what is more sex comedy than outright horror; Pupi Avati (Macabre), Mario Amendola, Bruno Corbucci (Django), Enzo Jannacci and Giuseppe Viola.

Il Cavaliere Costante Nicosia (Lando Buzzanca) is the owner of Italy’s most successful toothpaste company and enjoys all the trappings there-in, including a beautiful wife, Mariu (Sylva Koscina, Lisa and the Devil), from whom he inherited the firm, and a mistress, Liu (Christa Linder, 1980’s Alien Terror). Though he adopts a bullying management style, he holds very superstitious beliefs, regularly rubbing the hump of his hunchbacked assistant, Peppino (Antonio Allocca) for good luck and coercing his virgin housemaid to urinate over the remains of a broken mirror to cancel out the impending bad luck.

Events take an even more peculiar twist when on a business trip to Romania, he makes the acquaintance of Count Dragalescu (John Steiner, Shock; Tenebrae) who suggests a visit to his castle.

When Nicosia learns his meeting has been cancelled, he takes up the offer but after a sedate beginning, the weekend gets rather friskier, the Count preferring to dine in the nude alongside a bevy of similarly disrobed revellers.

A surfeit of booze leads to him passing out and, upon awakening, he finds himself in bed alongside the Count. Unclear what he has missed whilst out cold, he returns home but soon fears that the Count may have had his wicked way with him, leaving him ‘infected’ with homosexuality.

After visiting his doctor for advice, he finds sucking the blood of his mistress controls his urges but he craves to return to his previous life and visits both his Great Aunt (whose earlier curse he now takes very seriously) and the Magician of Noto (Ciccio Ingrassia, The Exorcist: Italian Style) in Sicily for help. The obviously phoney sage tells him the curse on him will be lifted only if he re-employs his brother-in-law.

Nicosia leaves, where it’s revealed to the viewers that the whole thing was a deliberate stunt organised by his in-laws into tricking Nicosia into giving his brother-in-law’s job back. Returning home far from being cured, he responds to his needy wife’s sexual advances by plunging his fang-like teeth into her bare bottom during foreplay.

Nicosia returns to his bullish habits, re-firing his brother-in-law and surrounding himself with prostitutes, to keep himself availed of blood.

This soon leads to even grander designs, essentially turning the toothpaste factory into a blood bank, into which all his employees must donate, willingly or otherwise. He is overjoyed when his wife arrives one day with his new-born son, which he takes to mean he is once again virile and heterosexual. However, when he peeks into the pram, he’s in for a surprise…

To put this into an even more perverse context, Fulci made this film straight after the ferocious violence of Four of the Apocalypse and Avati shortly before contributing his writing skills to Passolini’s Salo. Less surprising are the depths to which Italian comedy would stoop: most offendable groups are catered for. Fulci was no stranger to comedy, this film coming just three years after the better-known The Eroticist and in typical fashion fills the film with rather more than the traditional low-level laughs, with crude nods at Marxism (Nicosia literally sucking the blood of his employees) and an actually quite effective take on the familiar vampire film traits.

Ilona Staller (soon-to-be renamed Cicciolina, Italy’s princess of porn) appears in a small role, though there are no sightings of female names more readily associated with the genre, such as Edwige Fenech or Gloria Guida – the jaunty score comes courtesy of Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera. Not as knockabout or as crass as the plot or its contemporaries would suggest, this is indeed a curiosity for both vampire fans and followers of Fulci.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia