The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)

Director: Vicente Aranda

Starring: Simon Andreu, Maribel Martin and Alexandra Bastedo

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The revenge of a young bride on her wedding night!

Plot: A young husband's sexual fantasies frighten his new wife and cause her to seek advice from Carmilla, a descendent of Mircalla de Karnstein. Carmilla seduces the young bride and forces her to commit gory acts of mutilation.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? That's a real tough one. Maybe. Ask me again in about ten years after I've watched every 60s/70s European lesbian vampire movie ever made.

#8 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

#5 on 42nd Street Forever Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)


I think this is at least the fourth film based on the story of Karnstein I've seen in the past three years. Three others were Hammer productions and were better done (and a bit shorter, too). Pretty much everything in this version works except for the pacing. It's realllllllly sloooooooow. It took three attempts for me to finish this, nodding off each time. The funny thing is I saw this a few years ago and I remember liking it.



If it didn't drag so much it'd be great. I don't mind movies that move at a leisurely pace but this one is just plain lethargic. The occasional organ music cheapens it a bit, too. The camerawork is nice and it really is a good looking film but there's just not enough of interest to keep me alert and hanging on. Things started to pick up at about the halfway mark and from there on, it's pretty damn good (but it still has a leisurely pace).



Except for the WOW FUCK ME SIDEWAYS last two minutes which was welcome, the standout scene is when the husband finds Mircala Karnstein buried at the beach. THAT was cool and wonderfully surreal.












Outside of that, you may find very little in this Spanish production to hold your attention enough for you to appreciate that hidden in all of those 100 minutes is a good film.

Frontier(s) (2007)

Director: Xavier Gens

Starring: Karina Testa, Samuel Le Bihan, Estelle Lefebure, Aurelien Wiik

More info:IMDb

Tagline: What are your boundaries?

Plot: A gang of young thieves flee Paris during the violent aftermath of a political election, only to hole up at an Inn run by neo-Nazis.



My rating: 4/10

Will I watch it again? Merde alors no!

#7 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

Now here's one I had hopes for being at least better than average. Wrong. It's practically a French remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but without the chainsaw. Seriously. Some youngsters make their way to an inn/restaurant where the caretakers have been killing passersby for quite some time and eating them. There's a dinner table scene, there are the hanging bodies underneath the house and they even keep pigs.


Remove the flashiness of the director and his camera (which feels like it's covering up his inability to build tension, btw) and the worst offender of the movie (the character's dumb as fuck actions) and you've got the potential for something much better. My biggest issue was how many incredibly stupid things these people do. It's like they think for a split second that the smartest thing to do is to go in one direction but end up going in the opposite one. I realize this is a horror cliche that will be with us long after we're dead but this pictures filled with so many that it's laughable. Is this supposed to be a comedy? It was last night.


There's a spot where two of the kids walk away from a car they drove off the road that fell a good 50 feet, landing upside down! Then, instead of walking into the woods, they go into the large tunnel, the mouth of which they just landed. With a lighter in hand they go into the tunnel and climb up to a hole in the wall just small enough to crawl into. They crawl upward at about a 45 degree angle with the space getting smaller and smaller. THE FUCK? Hey, rather than leave or go deeper into this tunnel, let's go through this incredibly long hole. Brilliant. I officially mentally checked out of the picture at this point and it only got worse.

I'm growing weary of seeing films that are filled with missed opportunities. I realize I watch a lot of questionable films but this one at least has been lauded by fans of the genre. And while I'm at it, there needs to be a moratorium on horror movies with inbred families of killers. This cliche is getting old and fast. It's currently on Netflix's instant view if you give a rat's ass.

Simon, King of the Witches (1971)

Director: Bruce Kessler

Starring: Andrew Prine

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The Evil Spirit Must Choose Evil!

Plot: Warlock Simon Sinestrari (Prine) is determined to become a god. In jail for vagrancy, he meets a hustler, Turk (George Paulsin), who introduces Simon to his circle of hipster friends. Challenged by the nonbelievers, Simon proves the lethal potency of his powers.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

#6 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

#69 on Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

Man, two missed opportunities in one night. First FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943) and now this. The first hour is great and then there's the "Wait! Where did the fun go?" of the last 40. It's almost like there were two stories with one common character that were tacked onto each other.


Prine's performance as Simon takes a little getting used to. It's laughable at first because he's skirting that line of being serious or campy but he never waivers and that's the best thing about the movie. He's a real gas to watch. His sidekick, Turk, acts about as gay as can be but he's got a thing for the ladies. His outfits are the second best thing in the film.


On a challenge, Simon puts a curse on a man who dies within two days. Cool. He beds the daughter of the local police commissioner in what has to be the strangest love scene put to celluloid. It's priceless. And then he's got this mirror which requires a glowing rod of sorts in which to enter another dimension or something.

"Don't touch me. I'm a religious object."

All of this stuff is trippy but about halfway through the story changes direction involving some local dope heads wanting a curse on the D.A. (or commissioner or something) because he's cracking down on drug dealers. So it goes from stupid and fun to just plain stupid. Count me out. At an hour and forty minutes long, it's forty too much.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

Director: Roy William Neill

Starring: Lon Chaney Jr, Ilona Massey, Patric Knowles, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya

More info: IMDb

Taglline: A Death Fight . . . Between Two Beasts !

Plot: Larry (Chaney Jr.) seeks out Dr. Frankenstein to help him lift the curse, but encounters the doctor's monster (Lugosi) instead, which leads to a classic showdown.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? I don't think so.


#5 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

I should just say it showed promise and blew it and leave it at that. Apparently all it takes to revive a dead werewolf is to expose the corpse to a full moon. They could have at least come up with something better than that but whatever. I liked having the gypsy woman, Maleva (Ouspenskaya), back to help Talbot by taking him to Dr. Frankenstein. That was brilliant. She certainly would have know about Frankenstein in her travels. That's the neatest aspect of the picture.



Once they arrive they discover that the doc had been killed in a fire but, upon snooping around the grounds, they find the underground portion of the castle with a lot of the machinery still intact AND the doc's frozen (?!?!?!) creation (this time played by Lugosi which I didn't realize until halfway into the movie). The dead doc's daughter is in town and there's a scientist friend or something that offers to help Larry and the monster which leads to a scene that clearly inspired Mel Brooks for the climax of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974).


The next thing you know, the monster gets pissed, breaks loose, goes after the girl. The moon is full so Talbot turns into a werewolf and Wolfy goes after Franky. A very small scuffle erupts until a hateful villager dynamites a dam that floods and destroys what's left of Frankenstein's castle, Wolfy and Franky.


You'd think that all of this fits nicely in 74 minutes but it doesn't. There's a solid ten minutes or so of fat that needs to be trimmed like most of the business of Talbot in a hospital in the beginning and the brief investigation into what's going on with this man who claims to be a dead man killing folks (Talbot). Lugosi as the monster should have been more inspiring than it was. As mentioned, I didn't even realize it was him for much of the film. More should have been given to Lugosi's creature. I could have used more werewolf action and less Chaney acting (fortunately there's less of Chaney in this than THE WOLF MAN (1941)) and a much larger battle between him and the monster at the end.



I thoroughly enjoyed the last 20-30 minutes except for wanting a bigger climactic fight. It's the first half hour or so that's flawed. Shit, it had only been two years since TWM was released and all that exposition at the beginning with Talbot was probably aimed at people who hadn't seen it but it seems like you would be perfectly OK by having someone say one or two lines that would have accomplished the same thing as 10-15 minutes of bland storytelling. If it weren't for the great ending and fantastic sets and set-ups, it would have been a major disappointment.

Raw Meat (1972)

Director: Gary Sherman

Starring: Donald Pleasence, David Ladd, Sharon Gurney

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Beneath Modern London Lives a Tribe of Once Humans. Neither Men Nor Women...They Are the Raw Meat Of The Human Race!

Plot: There's something pretty grisly going on under London in the Tube tunnels between Holborn and Russell Square. When a top civil servant becomes the latest to disappear down there Scotland Yard start to take the matter seriously. Helping them are a young couple who get nearer to the horrors underground than they would wish.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? It's in the "give away" pile as I write this.

#4 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.
#89 on Drive-In Delirium Volume 2 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)


I don't know what I expected from this more than what I got. There is only one reason to watch this and that's for an amazingly quirky performance by Pleasence. He's ball-busting insane as the lead inspector trying to figure everything out. The acting from everyone is good except for the American, Ladd. Ugh. The quirky main title theme was neat albeit repetitive and it appeared nowhere else in the film.

Hey, look! It's Clive Swift from one of my favorite Britcoms,
KEEPING UP APPEARANCES!

The underground "monster" wasn't really scary or even all that menacing. The world he lived in was cool and creepy but that's about it. There's a great 360 degree, long walk through his lair early on that's utterly top notch. Seriously, any scene with Pleasence is engaging and any with the monster is dull and lifeless. I expected more from a movie called RAW MEAT. Sigh.

The Wolfman (2010)

Director: Joe Johnston

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving

More info: IMDb

Tagline: When the moon is full the legend comes to life

Plot: Lawrence Talbot's childhood ended the night his mother died. His father sent him from the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor to an insane asylum, then he goes to America. When his brother's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe, tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns to his father's estate to learn that his brother's mauled body has been found. Reunited with his estranged father, Lawrence sets out to find his brother's killer... and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself. Someone or something with brute strength and insatiable blood lust has been killing the villagers, and a suspicious Scotland Yard inspector named Aberline comes to investigate.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? YES!


#3 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

NICE! I can't believe all of the negative hype between critics and audiences kept me from seeing this in the theater. To be fair, they saw the theatrical cut and I just watched the director's cut on Blu-ray. I thought it was fantastic. The performances were great (Benicio's could have been more livelier, however). Hopkins was fun as always and Weaving needs another movie with his character. He was a blast.


The effects (except for the STUPID and unnecessary CGI bear - really? Is it just that expensive to hire a fucking bear?) were good. I liked the throwback look to the 1941 original. Hell, there were a lot of callbacks to that one - the wolf cane, the quoting of the legend on the tombstone, lots of plot points - this is how you do a remake. Tell the same story with a few things added and there you go.



I almost forgot, Danny Elfman's score. WTF? It was really good for a change. I've been a huge fan of his since the beginning but his scores lately have been far from memorable. With this one he's got that Wojciech Kilar BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) vibe that's ideal for this film. The word is his score was yanked after re-shoots to change the tone of the film but was, obviously, re-instated. Asshole producers.


It kills me that when I built my computer earlier this year I neglected to add a Blu-ray drive. I wasn't forward thinking enough to see the necessity to grab screen shots. There's a scene where Hopkins and Blunt are on the stairway and he's got this wonderfully blank stare on his face that's just priceless. I got the disc from Netflix which doesn't have any extras on it. That's almost OK because, when the price is right, I'll purchase it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I recommend it but only the director's cut.

The Wolf Man (1941)

Director: George Waggner

Starring: Lon Chaney Jr, Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi

More info: IMDb

Tagline: "His hideous howl a dirge of death!"

Plot: A practical man returns to his homeland, is attacked by a creature of folklore, and infected with a horrific disease his disciplined mind tells him can not possibly exist.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yeah.


#2 of 31 Days of Horror 2010.

The Universal horror films of the 30s and 40s are a mixed bag. For me, the Frankenstein films fared better as a series than did Dracula or the Wolf Man but I still enjoy watching them...mostly. I've never really taken to Lon Chaney Jr. He's a capable actor but not that good, especially in his later, boozing years. In THE WOLF MAN you can almost sense the future liquor on his breath. He does a decent job of being troubled but his character is too much of a blowhard to take all that seriously. I guess an argument can be made that by making him so over the top and imposing that his sad state at the end is that much more effective.

PREVERT!

I really enjoyed Lugosi in his all too brief role as the gypsy werewolf. He was doing some real acting instead of his extended Dracula persona. I liked it a lot. It's a nice change of pace for him. Besides, that big ass mustache is groovy. I need one. Claude Rains seemed to be walking through his role which isn't much of a stretch as he did that quite often. He does bring a needed presence to the picture.

For a change, I don't vant to suck your blood!

The two giant Americans bookending the lone Brit. Are they trying to tell us something?

The monster effects were great for the time and are still pretty cool. One thing though, why does the werewolf choke his victims most of the time? I did notice this time out that he would sometimes go to choke them and then bite their necks but it seems to me like, oh, I don't know...he's a fucking animal and animals don't choke their victims. It's not like it took me out of the picture or anything but it was a curiosity. Hack & slash. That's how it should be done.


While not the great classic I remember from my youth, it is a fun movie with some memorable bits, and at 70 minutes it's not much of a commitment. I'm going to try to burn through the rest of the films in the Legacy collection this month with FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN (1943), SHE-WOLF OF LONDON (1946) and WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935), something I've been wanting to do for years. Next up...the 2010 remake, THE WOLFMAN!