Born for Hell (1976)

Original title:  Die Hinrichtung

AKA:  Naked Massacre

Director:  Denis Heroux

Writers:  F.G. Ranger, Denis Heroux, Clenn Wood, Fred Denger, Geza von Radvanyi

Composer:  ???

Starring:  Mathieu Carriere, Debra Berger, Christine Boisson, Myriam Boyer, Leonora Fani, Ely Galleani, Carole Laure, Eva Mattes, Andree Pelletier, Ehmi Bessel, Karl-Heinz Kreienbaum, Paul Edwin Roth

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  For these nine young women, opening the door that night meant ending their lives!

Plot:  A disturbed American war veteran arrives in Belfast during the Northern Ireland conflicts, and proceeds to terrorize a household of female nursing students.

My rating:   7/10

Will I watch it again?   Maybe.

Good flick.  The first half of the picture sets it up and the second half is the home invasion.  Before the horror begins, we get to see both Cain's (played by Carriere) situation and we get to spend some time with the nine girls; all of this happening in Belfast, Northern Ireland, against the backdrop of a country torn apart by extreme violence.  For the most part, Cain is handled pretty well although I think there could've been a few more subtleties to give it a bit more nuance.  The filmmakers aren't giving Cain excuses but rather show you how this man, in his mental state, was able to find himself in a self-created situation that led to the murder of eight women over the course of one short night.   And with the set up involving the girls, that was handled masterfully, giving the audience enough information to know a little about each one to get a sense of who each are.  That was splendidly handled.

Once Cain makes his way into the girls' home, it gets ugly fast.  Cain's slippery slide to murder starts with an impulse that makes each subsequent murder easier to the point of being as natural as breathing.

 

 

The ending delivers something unexpected and still somewhat satisfying, insofar as Cain's fate is concerned.  I'm rather surprised at the low IMDb score.  I don't care to read the reviews on this one.  It's a good, well-made film, made at a time when edge was all the rage but this came from Europe whose filmmakers had a different sensibility and one that likely kept this from being the depraved exploitation film it would've been had it been made in the US.

I do have one last observation.  The version I watched was an English dub.  The dub itself was good which worked as it was set where English was spoken but the problem was with the sound levels for the music which often drowned out the dialogue.  What's more, the music, which is uncredited on IMDb, often didn't fit well with the visual.  There is one theme that did and it had a strong John Barry ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1968) vibe and it was great.  It had the right tone and unsettling vibe about it that fit well but the other cues were problematic.  Add to that the music would often stop quickly, unfinished.  I can see how that could be used as a technique to set the viewer on edge but it happened so much that, if that were the case, it ceased being effective after the umpteenth time.  I'm curious as the mixing levels and the music in general on any of the non-English versions.  Please let me know if you've seen one of them.  Fixing these issues alone would've boosted my score another point. The print I watched had no title card.

 

The Undying Monster (1942)

Director:  John Brahm

Writers:  Lillie Hayward, Michael Jacoby, Jessie Douglas Kerruish

Composers:  Emil Newman, David Raksin, Arthur Lange, Cyril J. Mockridge

Starring:  James Ellison, Heather Angel, John Howard, Bramwell Fletcher, Heather Thatcher, Aubrey Mather, Halliwell Hobbes

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Sinister! Savage! Supernatural!

Plot:  Surviving members of an aristocratic English family are threatened by a legendary monster when they venture out on chilly, foggy nights.

My rating:   6.5/10

Will I watch it again?   Nah.

 

If you're looking for some "undying monster" or werewolf action, you're going to find very little here and that's a shame.  However, what we've got is a great looking gothic mystery with a horror setting that delivers on atmosphere and a fast-paced, tight running time of just barely an hour.  It feels like a cross from a traditional werewolf movie and the Sherlock Holmes story, THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, leaning heavily on the latter.  I was struck by how good the picture looked.  The pacing is brisk and I'd even say too fast because it felt like stretching it out more would've made it better and less rushed.  But they do pack an awful lot into those 63 minutes.  The performances are good and I just loved Heather Thatcher as Christy, a lady detective that works alongside Bob (James Ellison).  She's got a dark, gallows sense of humor and she gets giddy when grisly matters are discussed.  I wanted more of her.  She was a real treat.  

 

This picture looks and feels great, much better than other B-movies of the day.  And there's a reason.  It's got a bevy of talent in front of and behind the camera.  Director John Brahm would go on to make HANGOVER SQUARE (1945), a movie I've heard great things about for decades and I only know of because of Bernard Herrmann's great score from it, art director Richard Day who went on to work on some of Hollywood's biggest classics (with nearly 300 film credits!!!), plus there are the composers, specifically David Raksin and finally cinematographer Lucien Ballard who camerawork graced the screens of a lot of famous classics including THE WILD BUNCH (1969).

 

Having seen that image before watching the movie, I was waiting for it and never saw it, not even close.  I even went back and see if I blinked for too long and couldn't find it.  Maybe it was cut from the movie and only used as a publicity still.  It looks great, though.

There's a trial in the final act that felt unnecessary but it's the last five minutes that was too much to handle.  Bob and Christy solve the case but it's another character that confesses to them that they were in on it the whole time.  Everyone has a good laugh about it and Bob and Christy take it much too lightly.  If this person confessed all of this shit like that I would've been pissed and pressed formal charges.  It was a fucked up scene considering everything that everyone had just been through.  Just sayin'.  What little werewolf action there is occurs briefly in the beginning and almost as briefly near the end with everything in between a who-done-it.

Dead of Night (1977)

Director:  Dan Curtis

Writers:  Richard Matheson, Jack Finney

Composer:  Bob Cobert

Starring:  Ed Begley Jr., E.J. Andre, Ann Doran, Christina Hart, Patrick Macnee, Anjanetta Comer, Elisha Cook Jr., Horst Buchholz, Joan Hackett, Lee Montgomery, John Dehner

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Three tales of mystery, imagination and suspense.

Plot:  Three imaginative tales involving a vintage car that transports its driver back to 1926; the mistress of an old mansion terrified by vampires and a mother tormented by the spirit of her dead son.

My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

This three-tale, made-for-TV horror anthology is a weaker entry in the genre and it's not because it's a TV movie.  Just look at producer/director Dan Curtis' earlier telefilm, TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975) and you'll see that it can be done well.  The first tale, SECOND CHANCE, is the weakest by far.  It's more akin to a TWILIGHT ZONE episode that deals with time travel back to the 'good ole days' and the unknown consequence.  There's not a horror element in it but more of a mystery I suppose.  There's A LOT of narration by the main protagonist, Frank (played by Ed Begley Jr.) which lessens any enjoyment I might've gotten from it.  It's OK at best.  The second story, NO SUCH THING AS A VAMPIRE, is more of what you sign on for when watching something like this.  It's especially good, especially considering the story that preceded it.  It also helps to have a nice cast headed by Patrick Macnee and a score that evokes that of a classic Hammer Horror movie.  The final story of the three, BOBBY, finds Mother (Hackett) being tormented by her son Bobby (Montgomery) who she just conjured up from the dead.  During their little cat and mouse game you discover some backstory that doesn't bode well for Mommy.  This one's pretty good, too.  I can see the last story freaking out young enough children in its day but certainly don't go into this expecting to be spooked yourself. 

Halloween 8: Resurrection (2002)

Director:  Rick Rosenthal

Writers:  Larry Brand, Sean Hood

Composer:  Danny Lux

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Loree, Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Sean Patrick Thomas, Daisy McCrackin, Katee Sackhoff, Luke Kirby, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Ryan Merriman, Tyra Banks

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  Michael Myers is back...and he's ready to clean house!

Plot:  Three years after he last terrorized his sister, Michael Myers confronts her again, before traveling to Haddonfield to deal with the cast and crew of a reality show which is being broadcast from his old home.

My rating:   4.5/10

Will I watch it again?    No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! YARRRRRRRR!

I fucking LOVE the first fifteen minutes with Jamie Lee Curtis' literal kiss goodbye!  

Well, that is until 2018 when the Hollywood showed up at her house with the Brinks truck, shoveling sweet green leafy spendy monies onto her front lawn.  The end of that opening pre-credits sequence was dumb as fuck and I loved it!  The rest of the movie was just full of stupid.  One of the few things that I liked was seeing Katee Sakhoff in an early role.  She's got charisma that helps the picture but not enough to save it.  The music?  I guess it worked.  I can't remember anything about it one way or the other.  There's so much dumb shit in this thing like how the six participants have shitty cameras that look horrible to us but are crystal clear on the in-movie bank of monitors.  Cutting between the horribly fuzzy video from those cameras to the actual movie footage was annoying and distracting.  I was ready for this picture to end halfway through but I persisted since I'm determined to get through the rest of this series.  I can see why this movie was the last one until 2007.  Since I've seen the two Rob Zombie pictures (which I really enjoyed), it's the 2018 film next and then I'll sit down and remember something about HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) which I watched a couple of weeks ago.  After that I'll wash my hands of all this and move onto something else.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

Director:  Steve Miner

Writers:  Robert Zappia, Matt Greenberg

Composer:  John Ottman

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, Josh Hartnett, LL Cool J, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chris Durand

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  It's going to be one hell of a family reunion.

Plot:  Laurie Strode, now the dean of a Northern California private school with an assumed name, must battle the Shape one last time, as the life of her own son hangs in the balance. 

 

My rating:   6/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Wait, I thought Laurie Strode was dead.  How silly; no one ever really dies.  It's a movie and you can do whatever you want.  For this series, I've learned to check my brains at the door and just go with it.  On one hand, this feels more like a Halloween picture because Jamie Lee Curtis is back but on the other, it's less of one.  That's not to say I don't like it.  It's fine I suppose and I kind of like it.  One big departure from the rest of the series is the music, this time from the wonderful John Ottman.  Gone are the synth vibes from twenty years earlier.  Ottman's score has a SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) vibe and I LOVED it!  There are some fun kills but the film has too many jump scares.  The only one I dug was this one.

Nice!  The ending was great.   When Michael was pinned down and unable to escape, I was thinking that one sure-fire way to put this fucker down would be to decapitate him.  And then Laurie goes and does just that.  But just before that she and Michael seemed to share a moment when he reached out to her.  I found it a little touching.  It would've really tugged hard at my heart strings if Michael had groaned a bit in a sad way like a wounded animal.  It was a nice touch...you know, just before the beheading.  While there was a lot here that played by the numbers, there's enough here to like to at least give it a watch.  Watching it again?  I can't see that happening.  The way this series is going, I'm probably going to stick to re-watching the first and third films.

Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

Director:  Joe Chappelle

Writer:  Daniel Farrands

Composers:  Alan Howarth, Paul Rabjohns

Starring:  Donald Pleasence, Paul Rudd, Marianne Hagan, Mitchell Ryan, Kim Darby, Bradford English, Keith Bogart, Mariah O'Brien

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  True Terror Never Dies!

Plot:  Six years after Michael Myers last terrorized Haddonfield, he returns there in pursuit of his niece, Jamie Lloyd, who has escaped with her newborn child, for which Michael and a mysterious cult have sinister plans.

My rating:   5/10

Will I watch it again?   No.

The continuity in this serious is pretty fucking bad.  This is the first one (of the Michael Myers Halloweens) that feels less like a Halloween picture and more like a typical horror movie.  There are jump scares all over this thing and that's not something I remember the previous entries relying on.  I can't think of much to say about it which is neither good nor bad.  It's OK at best.  There seemed to be less music than in previous films and that takes away from building any much-needed atmosphere.  It's just 90 minutes of mostly meh.  I guess they introduced the cult angle to explain how Michael is un-killable.  My mind wandered a lot while watching this and I found myself asking questions like what does Michael do in the off-season?  Where does he hang out, what does he like for breakfast, does he have an exercise plan to keep in tip top knife-lunging shape?  I reckon he must hibernate or something.  He is the definition of evil according to Loomis and the rest of the cast so there's definitely a supernatural thing going on.  This is a notable entry in that Pleasence died shortly after filming and Paul Rudd makes his film debut.  Hey, at least they're getting a little more consistent with continuity by not having any when Jamie Lee Curtis shows up in the next one.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

Director: Dominique Othenin-Girard 

Writers: Michael Jacobs, Dominique Othernin-Girard, Shem Bitterman 

Composer: Alan Howarth 

Starring: Donald Pleasence, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr, Jeffrey Landman, Tamara Glynn, Jonathan Chapin, Matthew Walker, Wendy Foxworth, Don Shanks 

More info: IMDb 

Tagline: He's Back With A Vengeance 

Plot:  One year after the events of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), the Shape returns to Haddonfield once again in an attempt to kill his now-mute niece.

 My rating:  6

Will I watch it again?  Doubtful.

After watching HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021) the other night, it seemed like a good time to finish this series since I've only ever seen the first four. 

I don't know what else you can do with a simple character like Michael Myers but this isn't all that bad of a direction.  All you do is change the person he's going after and let a shitload of people around them get slaughtered.   Start the film off by eating up time with a re-cap of the previous film and change a little here and there, and then jump into the present-day story establishing everything you need to in order for the plot to happen.   Donald Pleasence has some batshit crazy moments that make this worth watching.  There are some fun kills and Howarth does a serviceable job with the score.  The laundry chute was a nice sequence so at least there's that.  Oh, jesus.  I almost forgot about the two idiot cops and the horrible Mickey Mouse silly music Howarth vomits up when they're on screen.  It's just terrible and is very much out of place.  At least they died, albeit offscreen which robbed me of cheering Michael on.  Shame, that. 

Satan's Baby Doll (1982)

Director: Mario Bianchi

Writers: Gabriele Crisanti, Piero Regnoli

Composer: Nico Catanese

Starring: Jaqueline Dupre, Marina Hedman, Aldo Sambrell, Giuseppe Carbone, Giancarlo Del Duca, Alfonso Gaita, Mariangela Giordano

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil!

Plot: In the crypt of the remote castle of the Aguilars lies the recently-deceased body of Maria. Her husband Antonio is a jealous bully, his mute brother Ignazio is in a wheelchair peeping on his caretaker Sol, a novice. Also present are Miria, the couple's virginal daughter, and Isidro, a factotum who fears Satan's power. A frequent visitor is Juan Suarez, a doctor who wants Miria in a sanatorium for a month. She doesn't want to go. Isidro tries to exorcize the castle's evil spirits. Bodies pile up. Is Miria's mother truly dead, and who is Satan's tool?

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  Nope.

Hmmmmm.  Where to start?  Director Bianchi thought it best to begin with a two minute softcore lesbian makeout session and you know what?  He was right.  The music over that (by Nico Cantanese, for his sole feature film) is pretty fucking of-it's-day-Eurosleaze great.  Sadly, that one motif is repeated enough over the first few minutes that you get the idea that he'd run out of ideas.  I counted two themes used in the picture with that first, main one playing 80% over the other one and you hear it A LOT, which got old fast.   The nudity, ahem, thankfully does not tire.

It needs to be said, before you stop reading, that there's a lot of nudity.  It's shocking, I know, because it's an Italian horror movie.  It's a small cast.  There are 3 women and 4 men.  Between this troupe of 7 actors, you get to see 3 different pair of tits (for a total of 6 - count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 boobs!), 3 glorious Euro bushes and two dicks.  Dicks, you say?  Yes.  More on that in a moment.  When the film needs to move, it does at a reasonable pace.  But there are many scenes that linger for a long, long time and over stay their welcome, and they all revolve around naughty bits.  Now, I know what you're thinking; "Hey, Scorethefilm.  What gives?  Don't you like the sex?".  I do, and thank you for asking.  However when the already overplayed and once memorable theme makes yet another go around AND the sex act feels like it's playing out in real time (because it takes a while) only it goes beyond that, then it's too much.  Sol (Giordano) pleasures herself in bed while the parapalegic, wheelchair bound Ignazio (Gaita) secretly watches on.  You'd think this would last 60 seconds or so but it goes on for a full four minutes.  This is softcore, not porn so no graphic stuff.  This is a frequent thing with this flick.  And then, BAM!  An hour in, someone looks like she's going to go down on Ignazio...

And then she does.  For real.  With hard dick in hand, she does her little mouth dance.  Alright, it seems that we now just went hardcore.  I can dig it.  A couple of minutes in you can tell that she's already at the point in the act that she ready to milk it for all it's worth, so to speak.  So she's fist pounding it like she's in the whack-a-mole finals and occasionally tries to restore life with her tongue, hoping that will light the nerve endings on fire, but that clearly isn't helping.  Look, I've been there.  It's frustrating when you're unable to finish on cue but it's also sad to watch.  She spent 4 full minutes trying to make that happen after she'd given up on the throat bath.  After that, she sets her sights on bangin' Antonio (Sambrell), her husband before she died, but this time, after another overlong speed bag session with his dick and her uvula, they have vaginal sex.  

 Now, you could make the argument that these two hardcore scenes help the story and I would not disagree in this case, but the sheer length of the scenes makes you aware that this is no longer artistic but rather excessive.  But that's just me.  Anyway, back to the movie proper... There's something strange going on that involves Antonio's dead wife from the beginning of the picture.  Is she alive or what?  What's making all this weird shit happen?  As the film goes on you get more and more until you know exactly what the fuck is going on in the last half hour.  Once that happens, bodies start dropping like flies and the kills are fun.   There's a bit of padding in addition to the sex and some of the dialogue exchanges get tedious where a character will repeat the same thought but with different words.  It's not an economic screenplay by a long shot.  Mood is more important.  And it didn't hurt that it was filmed in a castle, giving that Gothic vibe and the widescreen print I watched was dirty which adds to the sleaze factor.  Italian dub with English subs is the way to go.  It's no classic but there's a good movie in here somewhere.  Great fucking posters, right?

Tales from the Hood (1995)

Director: Rusty Cundieff

Writers: Rusty Cundieff, Darin Scott

Composer: Christopher Young

Starring: Clarence Williams III, Joe Torry, De'aundre Bonds, Samuel Monroe Jr., Wings Hauser, Tom Wright, Anthony Griffith, David Alan Grier, Duane Whitaker, Corbin Bernsen, Rosiland Cash

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Where nightmares and reality meet on the street

Plot: A funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.

 

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

Of all of the horror anthologies I've seen that were made in the past forty years, this is one of the best.  I loved it!

There are four main stories with a fifth one being the framing wraparound tale which is called...

 Welcome to My Mortuary sees three gangbangers approach a mortuary (in a house) around Halloween for a drug deal.  Once inside, Mr. Simms (hilariously played by Williams III).  Before he gives them the drugs he starts spinning tales of horror (as you would).  This sets the four main stories in motion with a little bit of stuff inbetween with the guys reacting to Simms' yarns.

 

Rogue Cop Revelation has a couple of horrible, white, drug-dealing, crooked cops pulling over a black man for no reason but to send him a message for speaking out against said crooked cops.  They fuck him up hard and it's painful to watch.  Anyway, his dead body gets his revenge.  The only thing fun about this one is seeing these assholes get their comeuppance and boy do they get it.

 

Boys Do Get Bruised is a depressing tale of a small boy often coming to school bruised up.  He tells his teacher a monster does it and shows him the picture he drew of the giant, scary green creature.  Naturally, being a kid and talking all fantastical, the teacher finally is concerned enough to visit the boy's single mother at her home to get to the bottom of this.  She's rude about it and seems to be hiding something.  She's got a touch of a violent streak but it's not until her boyfriend comes over for dinner that you find out he's the monster and the child has manifested his abuse as coming from an actual monster.  This story is fucking great all the way through with a fantastic finish.  There's some great storytelling going on here.

KKK Comeuppance - Corbin Bernsen stars as Duke Metger, a former KKK leader who is running for office and is one racist mother fucker.  He lives in a Southern mansion where slaves were slaughtered in the 19th Century.  One racist thing after another and the ancestors of the dead (in the form of a doll) fuck Metger's shit up real good.  Bernen throws himself into the role and brings out the relentless asshole of the character.  It's a fun one.

Then there's Hard Core Convert where a gang member who, after a shootout with another gang when the police show up, finds him self severely wounded and taken to a hospital.  Some time later he's recooperated and Dr. Cushing (Rosalind Cash) tells him he will be released from prison hospital if he accepts to go into a behavior modification program, which he accepts.  Then it gets into A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) territory where the big takeaway is he's spent his life killing black people and that needs to stop.  That's the gist.  He sees horrifying actual vintage photographs of the KKK, lynchings and murders of black men, often times with smiling whites (including children) surrounding them, proud of their deed.  The images flash so quickly that you get the message, but after the movie, I went back to this part and slowed it down so I could see more clearly what was shown and it's some severely fucked up shit.  

 

But wait, the movie's not over yet.  We've still got the mortuary story to wrap up and that one was fun as hell.  The looks on their faces when they find out what's really going on are priceless.

These are, unfortunately, real life situations that far too many people regularly face which makes this even scarier than your typical monster movie anthologies.  Writer, director Cundieff did a marvelous job of going beyond what typically satisfies a horror anthology and brought to the screen something that is real world horrifying while still fulfilling the scary movie stuff we usually get, and each story satisfies each side of the fence equally well.   It digs deep and remains a fun, scary movie.  It's sad that all of these stories are just as relevant today, if not more so, as they were when the picture was made 25 years ago. 

I see that it took Cundieff and Scott 23 years to make a sequel in 2018 and another just last month!  The more you know.  I'm going to have to check those out.  And I almost forgot, Christopher Young's score is great!

The Alien Factor (1978)

Director:  Don Dohler

Writer:  Don Dohler

Composer:  Ken Walker

Starring:  Don Leifert, Tom Griffith, Richard Dyszel, Richard Geiwitz, George Stover, Eleanor Herman, Anne Frith, Christopher Gummer

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  They brought terror from beyond our galaxy!

Plot:  A spaceship containing specimens for an intergalactic zoo crashes on Earth near a small back woods town. The specimens escape, and soon town folk are turning up mutilated.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I like watching low/no budget movies made by people who are passionate about making them.  Don Dohler was a Baltimore filmmaker who started with this movie and made a few others (which I'll have to check out).  He also started Cinemagic Magazine in the early 70 and sold it to Starlog in '78.  I started reading it shortly after and still have a few of those early issues around here somewhere.  Neat-O.  For an ultra low budget movie, the story is simple at first but gets more intricate as the movie goes on and there's a lot of exposition at the end which made it even cooler.  I dig Ken Walker's electronic score.  Some scenes more than others but it's largely pretty cool and effective. The special effects run the spectrum.

There's even a stop motion animated creature at the end!  I LOVE that shit.  Anyone who includes stop motion animation in their pictures gets major points with me.  The acting is on the "gather everyone you know and put 'em in a movie" quality but there are some decent performances all things considered.  Some of the lines the sheriff had were great.  I'll have to add the sequel to my list. 

The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (2014)

Director:  Anthony Masi

Composer:  ?

Starring:  Lots of talking heads, Linnea Quidley, P.J. Soles, Brinke Stevens

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  A Countdown of Horror's Hidden Gems

Plot:  Fifty lesser-known horror flicks hailed by critics and genre fans as "absolute must-sees" are given the spotlight with fun, engaging commentary from journalists, directors, actors and critics in a countdown like no other. Stalkers, monsters, slashers, evil dolls, terrorized babysitters, holiday maniacs, mannequins, eerie motels, even giant rats... they're ALL featured in "The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen!"



My rating:  6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

The problem with any list like this is that it will rarely even satisfy 50% of the audience.  Either this was made for old people, young people who are completely ignorant of anything that happened before 1995, or for people who don't watch horror movies.  I mean, shit.  They've got THE DESCENT, APRIL FOOL'S DAY and BLACK CHRISTMAS on the list for fuck's sake.   Or maybe they made this for horror fans to give them something else to yell at the TV for.  They even spoil some movies. 

Say, while I'm thinking about it, it's time for people to STOP saying, "We can give away the ending.  The movie's been out for ten years;  you've had a chance to see it."  Fuck those people.  Just give a simple warning that you're going to spoil the movie.  Don't make it the fault of the viewer or listener for not seeing it for fuck's sake.  Jesus!

The film is overly produced with fast editing, super upbeat music (dance or techno) whenever the talking heads are, well, talking.  This came out in 2014 so there are A LOT of movies that came out within a few yeras prior.  I don't know why I bother with garbage like this.  This one is too slick for its own good.  I'd say avoid this and listen to some good podcasts that talk about obscure horror movies.

Sweet Kill (1972)

AKA:  The Arousers

Director:  Curtis Hanson

Writer:  Curtis Hanson

Composer:  Charles Bernstein

Starring:  Tab Hunter, Cherie Latimer, Nadyne Turney, Isabel Jewell, Linda Leider, Roberta Collins, John Aprea, Kate McKewon, Angus Scrimm, Frank Whiteman, Harve Selsby, Josh Green, John Pearce, Sandy Kenyon

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  They take on all comers!

Plot:  A handsome and lonely gym teacher Eddie Collins can't perform sexually due to his constant watching of his mother undress while he hid in her closet as a child.  His only recourse is to kill the women he tries to sleep with and stash them in a pigeon hutch on his roof.  He hires a prostitute to dress as his dead mother,the only way he is able to achieve sexual gratification.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?   Yes.

Nice!  There's a well-told serial killer story here the has the pretense of a cheap horror movie with lots of great nudity but it does have some good psychological moments that pay off in the end.   Now I'm not saying there's a great movie in here somewhere but it is a good one.  It's also Curtis "L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997)" Hanson's first movie.  How 'bout them apples? 

And how 'bout them cantaloupes?  Tab Hunter does a good job and so does Nadyne Turney (as Barbara), the woman he frequents throughout the film and once more just before the end credits roll.  There's a lot of this that looks like typical exploitation horror stuff, and it is, but there's also something else going on that elevates this a bit higher than your typical psycho killer movie of the day.  The print I saw was a filthy fullscreen print with color issues.  It's unlikely this will get a decent restoration and released in its original 1.85 : 1 format. 

Mesa of Lost Women (1953)

Directors:  Ron Ormond, Herbert Tevos

Writers:  Herbert Tevos, Orville H. Hampton

Composer:  Hoyt Curtin

Starring:  Jackie Coogan, Allan Nixon, Richard Travis, Lyle Talbot, Paula Hill, Robert Knapp, Tandra Quinn, Chris-Pin Martin, Harmon Stevens, Nico Lek, Kelly Drake, John Martin, George Barrows, Dolores Fuller

More info:  IMDb

Tagline:  A race of deadly spider-women luring men to their death!

Plot:  A mad scientist named Arana is creating giant spiders and dwarfs in his lab on Zarpa Mesa in Mexico. He wants to create a master race of superwomen by injecting his female subjects with spider venom.

My rating: 3/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Narration opens the picture and there's a lot of it.  It sounds like a bunch of jabbering and it runs on for a few minutes but it's so entertainingly spoken by silver screen veteran, Lyle Talbot, that it doesn't matter. I was rather sad to hear it stop.  This flick is dull.  Nothing much happens and it's hardly an excuse to make a movie.  Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester from THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1964)) adds little.  Granted, he's not in it much despite top billing.  For as much as I LOVE THE ADDAMS FAMILY, I still find it difficult to see Uncle Fester under that goatee and lower voice.  Hoyt Curtin's repetitive score (of mostly quick strumming guitar and sometimes with piano) is just plain lazy and it hurts the pacing even more.  About thirty years ago I interviewed Curtin on a radio series I was working on regarding writing music for animation (he wrote the themes and music for most of Hanna Barbera's TV shows like THE JETSONS and THE FLINTSTONES) and when I mentioned this picture, his sole feature film, he chuckled and came back with, "The less said about that, the better." and laughed some more.  I agree.