APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 5: The Passover Plot (1976)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 5: Easter Sunday — Watch something religious.

Faith should be strong enough to withstand doubt, perhaps even strengthened by it. There is a theological belief I’ve heard many times in Christian sermons–”The Bible said it. That settles it”. This definitive statement leaves no room for mistranslations or potential bias as the Scriptures were compiled by human men. While they might be divinely inspired, there should be room for questioning.

Biblical scholar Hugh J. Schonfield took his doubts public in 1965 with his book The Passover Plot. After researching non-biblical historical documents, as well as the Gospels, Schonfield reached the conclusion that Jesus was not the Messiah and instead had determined that he should self-manifest himself as the Son of God in order to be elevated to the status of king during a time when Rome occupied Israel.

Jesus had the lineage as a Son of David (his bloodline could be traced back to the former king of Israel, and it had been prophesied that the Messiah would come from his descendants). Israel was experiencing a time of great persecution by Rome. The people were looking for someone who would conquer the Romans and restore sovereignty to the nation. Why couldn’t it be Him?

According to Schonfield, Jesus shrewdly planned the details of His crucifixion. Knowing that His body would need to be removed from the cross prior to the Sabbath, He only needed to survive a few hours. He also conspired to have a medication given to Him while on the cross to slow his heart rate enough to appear dead to the Romans. Unfortunately, the plan backfired when Jesus’ side was pierced with a spear by a Roman soldier (as was common practice during a crucifixion to ensure the person had indeed perished). Jesus died from that wound and would not be able to assert His place as king while on Earth. 

Ten years prior, Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis wrote his own controversial novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. While not basing his story on historical documents, Kazantzakis instead hypothesises Christ’s final temptation–coming down off of the cross and living life as a mortal man. Jesus experiences a normal life, but one that would be ultimately meaningless. He rejects this final temptation and fulfills God’s plan of salvation for humanity.

As one might expect, both of these novels and the films on which they are based became magnets for controversy. The Last Temptation of Christ might be more famous due to being relatively more recent as well as the presence of Martin Scorsese as director. But the cinematic version of The Passover Plot experienced its own boycotts and outrage. Singer Pat Boone went as far as purchasing airtime on syndicated television stations to convince people not to watch The Passover Plot. Did he watch the film before calling for a boycott? The answer to that question is not clear.

I cannot imagine that he actually watched the film and was terribly offended by what transpired. Unfortunately, The Passover Plot is a pretty bland retelling the last days of Christ. Nothing new is really offered despite the promise of blasphemy. We have seen it all before. John baptized Christ in the River Jordan. The Pharisees and Sadducees disturbed by the cult of personality that formed around Christ. Pontius Pilate (here played by a surprisingly subdued Donald Pleasence) complaining about his inability to not offend the Jewish citizens he governs. The brutality of the crucifixion. In fact, if you blink, you might miss the whole conspiracy angle. It is not made clear until the very end, and even then, it is a light vague. 

Honestly, the entire production is brought down by Jesus himself, played by Zalman King, an actor I typically find void of charisma. If nothing else, Jesus has to be charismatic in order to attract followers (although there is also a surprising lack of followers shown here–it is typically just Jesus and his disciples. In the Gospels, Jesus is always surrounded by an ever growing crowd of people clamoring for at least a glimpse if not a full out miracle). If you have ever watched Blue Sunshine, you know that King has an intense stare that comprises around 90 percent of his acting chops. Not much else. Maybe he was holding back, saving all of his, how shall I say, vitality for Red Shoe Diaries.

I’m happy to report that The Passover Plot did not rattle my faith. It did not challenge it either though. And that lukewarm result might be the worst outcome. By being neither hot nor cold, the film quickly becomes forgettable. I haven’t watched The Last Temptation of Christ in maybe 20 or 25 years, but scenes from that film are indelibly etched into my mind. My faith was strengthened by the knowing that Jesus could have let that cup pass by him and led an ordinary life. There is nothing in The Passover Plot (at least the cinematic version) that gives me anything with which to grapple, which might be the ultimate unforgivable sin.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 5: Heaven’s War (2018)

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April 5: Easter Sunday — Watch something religious.

Listen, you think your local politics are a mess? Try being Jonah Thomas. He’s a U.S. Senator who finds himself trapped in the ultimate filibuster, where the lobbyists are literal demons, and the swing votes are decided by the Heavenly Host.

Director Danny Carrales, a man who spends his days teaching the craft at Liberty University and his nights chronicling the invisible war for our souls, dropped Heaven’s War on me like a prophetic ton of bricks. This is the kind of movie that feels like it was found in a time capsule buried beneath a Christian bookstore that went out of business in 1996, yet it’s talking about things that make today’s headlines look like yesterday’s news.

Thomas told The Worldwide Threat, “Heaven’s War is about spiritual warfare and I believe that spiritual warfare, at least from, I think the heat of the battle is probably taking place in DC. I think that’s where a lot of spiritual battles are taking place, and I thought what would be a cool way to represent people’s lives in danger, everyday walks of life, that the powers that be in DC can have a major push towards God or away from God. In this case, I thought, “Let’s go ahead and have some bad guys that are senators that are trying to put together this vaccine that will hopefully stop cancer, stop the pain that people go through in that cancer world.”

I thought, “What if the vaccine wasn’t actually what they said it would do? It would heal some people, but there’d be a small percentage, which turns out to be a larger percentage of people that would suffer because they took the vaccine.” I thought that would be a really cool idea to implement, explaining why there’s such a spiritual battle to stop this vaccine from happening. Little did I know that COVID would come right down the road following the making of this film.”

Yes, the bad guys are trying to cure cancer. And yes, one of them is Joe Estevez. You know the rule: if a movie features a member of the Sheen/Estevez dynasty and involves a government conspiracy, you’re watching Tubi.

Anyways…

Senator Jonah Thomas (Jason Gerhardt) wants to be a good politician, but is there such a thing? He’s been overlooking what’s really important — his family — and worrying about his future. If this movie has any say, he doesn’t have one. Terrorists blow up all the bad guys and try to flip him to their side, but everything is viewed through a lens of supernatural high-stakes poker.

But who is good? Who or what is evil? Why do the lightsabers in this invert the good-guy/bad-guy paradigm of Star Wars, so the heels get blue and the faces get red (thanks for noticing, Logan Harrington on Letterboxd)?

Why do American politics and flags, so many flags, matter to the spiritual world? Why is there so much dialogue? Why does God need a starship? I have so many questions, and this movie just hit me with a wall of flashbacks so dense I felt like I was undergoing a neurological exam. I tried, I really did, but I started to get lost in the temporal slipstream. At least the Senator gets the best help, because when you have Gabriel (Danny Boaz), well, I don’t know how you can do better than have the Angel of Revelation.

There’s also the whole debate over why God lets bad things happen. I think when you’re in the middle of battling actual demons with an angel, the point of all this is moot because you now know God exists, so your faith has been rewarded or your lack of faith has been shown. It feels like a very shooting fish in a holy water barrel situation.

Many of the IMDb reviews are punching down on this or over-praising it, saying things like, “…if you are a person of faith, you will enjoy it. If you don’t consider this a love story on several different levels. If you are trying to get into the business, watch and learn how to put all the pieces together to create a great story with conflict that has emotional impact.”

I don’t know about love story, unless you mean the love between a director and his green screen, but Heaven’s War is definitely a trip.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 4: Rats (2003)

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April 4: World Rat Day — Celebrate this holiday by writing about a movie with a rat in it.

World Rat Day is observed every April 4 to honor the friendly, loyal, and intelligent nature of rats as pets and companions. While most “fancy rats” are known for their social bonds and ability to learn complex tricks, Hollywood usually prefers to cast them as the ultimate harbinger of doom.

If you’re looking to celebrate the loyal and intelligent side of these rodents, Rats (also known by the far more subtle title Killer Rats) is arguably the worst possible choice. 

Brookedale is a decaying architectural nightmare. Formerly a prison, it now functions as a high-security rehab facility for the rich and famous. It sits atop a labyrinth of ancient, stench-filled sewers, the kind of place where you’d expect to find a health code violation, not a miracle cure.

Samantha (Sara Downing) has gone undercover there, hoping to break a story about celebrity drug addicts. There’s just one person in charge, Dr. William Winslow (Ron Perlman), and he loves rats. Just digs them. Even has a pet rat. As a result of his experiments, the rats can all communicate telepathically, and there’s one big rat that rules them all. 

What does that have to do with treating addiction? Look, I didn’t write this movie. Jace Anderson, Boaz Davidson, Brian Irving and Adam Gierasch did. Yes, the writers of Mother of Tears joined up with the director of both Lemon Popsicle and The Last American Virgin to write this. Maybe that explains how a character gets the name Johnny Falls.

This was directed by Tibor Takács, who made The Gate and I, Madman, so we should forgive him for any of his direct-to-streaming and SyFy movies.

How you spend World Rat Day is your own decision to make. For me, I spent it watching Ron Perlman whisper to rodents while a giant animatronic rat terrorized a psychiatric ward.

Also: One time as a kid, I totally had a rat climb up the sewer and into a toilet that I was sitting on while everyone else watched Evel Knievel wipe out in Las Vegas. My grandfather stabbed it with a giant gold serving fork that my parents got for their wedding and had never used before.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E14: Dream Girl (1986)

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Directed by Tinma Ranon, who wrote the script based on a story by Barbara Paul, this is about Andrea Caldwell (Carolyn Seymour), a high-strung theater director with a short fuse and zero patience for her lazy maintenance man, Otto (Lou Cutell, Amazing Larry!). After she berates the poor guy and tosses away his magazine, she and her missing lead actor Syd (John Cedar, who wrote and produced The Manitou!) are sucked into a surreal, low-budget dreamscape where Otto is the boss and they’re the help.

Andrea eventually figures that out and decides that the only way to beat a dreamer is to out-dream him. I mean, only a ninja can kill a ninja. She pops some reds to hijack the fantasy, but wakes up in the dream of Joe D’Amico (Dawson Mays), a stagehand Otto was also  keeping captive. The tragedy isn’t just that she fails to take over; it’s the layering of the dreams. In a precursor to films like Inception, she escapes one man’s nightmare only to fall into the subconscious of another person she mistreated.

Can someone get Ken Lauber on the phone? The score in this one sounds a lot like the music from A Nightmare on Elm Street.

What a weird episode.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 131: Eyes Without a Face

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This week, we’ll get into movies that are all Eyes Without a Face, such as The Awful Dr. Orloff, Faceless, Corruption and Mansion of the Doomed.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 3: Luther The Geek Tromatic Special Edition Blu-ray (1989)

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April 3: American Circus Day — Write about a big top movie.

As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, the term “geek” didn’t always imply a tech-savvy enthusiast. In the early 20th century, it was a title of derision for the lowest rung of the carnival hierarchy. These performers, often struggling with severe alcoholism or mental illness, were paid in liquor or room and board to perform “he bite, a gruesome act involving the decapitation of live chickens or rats.

Director Carlton J. Albright turns this historical footnote into a psychological trauma trigger for his protagonist, Luther Watts. The film establishes Luther’s trajectory not through a complex descent into madness, but through a singular, scarring childhood moment: witnessing a caged, desperate carnival geek bite the head off a chicken.

This trauma doesn’t just break Luther; it resets him. He becomes a literal geek in the most archaic sense. By the time we meet him as an adult (played with unsettling commitment by Edward Terry), Luther has shed his humanity, speaking in clucks and replacing his teeth with metal dentures.

Director Carlton J. Albright also wrote The Children, so he has no problem going for, well, the throat here. He has no qualms about putting innocents, including children and the elderly (or a young girl dressed like an old woman), directly in the path of Luther’s metal teeth. He also loves his villain. Luther isn’t a misunderstood monster or a villain with a complex moral code. He is a biological machine driven by a singular, primal urge to feed and destroy.

Extras include the original Lloyd Kaufman DVD intro, Carlton J. Albright’s Blu-ray intro; a director’s commentary with Carlton J. Albright; interviews with Carlton J. Albright, William Albright and Jerry Clarke; bloopers, Troma’s Freak Show and music videos. You can get this from MVD.

VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU RAY RELEASE: Forgotten Gialli: Volume Nine

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This is the seventh Forgotten Gialli set from Vinegar Syndrome. You can check out my articles on the others here:

This box set has the following movies:

Madness (1992): Also known as Gli occhi dentro (The Eyes Inside) and Occhi senza volto (Eyes Without a Face), this Bruno Mattei* giallo — made a few decades late, but hey, give the man a break — tells the story of Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Mattei’s Dangerous Attraction and Legittima Vendetta). She’s the creator of a comic book called Doctor Dark, the tale of an anti-hero who is a Pagan professor by day and a babysitter killer by night, cutting out his victim’s eyes and replacing them with shards of broken glass. Now, someone is acting out the murders in real life and leaving the ocular evidence in her apartment.

Written by Lorenzo De Luca — who wrote Anthropophagus II and The Fourth Horsemen which will have Franco Nero as Keoma and Fred Williamson as Cobra, as well as appearances by Mick Garris Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Fabio Testi, Enzo G. Castellari, Gianni Garko, Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, R.A. Mihailoff, Massimo Vanni and more but that feels like IMDbs — and shot by much of the same crew that worked on the aforementioned Dangerous Attraction.

There’s a fair amount of story taken from Tenebre — like the line “If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?” which comes directly from Peter Neal’s question “Let me ask you something? If someone is killed with a Smith and Wesson revolver…do you go and interview the president of Smith and Wesson?” in Argento’s movie, as well as the idea of art becoming real-life murder. Doctor Dark’s trick of putting glass into the eye sockets of his victims feels a lot like Manhunter. And, of course, there’s Eyeball to be taken from as well. And while we’re on the subject, the entire plot of Sexy Cat. But the most grievous theft is in the Italian VHS release of this film, which completely takes two murder scenes from Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark. Did Mattei think no one would notice**?

That said, it may just be the fact that I love giallo and am a Bruno Mattei apologist, but I found myself liking this movie. You’d have to be a superfan of both for me to recommend it to you, but if you are, come on over and watch it with me.

*Using the name Herik Montgomery.

**Trick question. He didn’t care.

Bugie rosse (1993): A ruthless serial killer is stalking the Roman night, targeting male prostitutes with a cold, methodical precision that feels less like passion and more like pathology. Into this neon-and-shadow underworld steps Marco (Tomas Arana, Body Puzzle), a journalist who thinks he’s chasing a story but quickly realizes the story is starting to chase him back. His investigation pulls him deep into the city’s gay clubs, back rooms and coded encounters—territory that immediately invites comparisons to Cruising, except filtered through the glossy, psychosexual lens of late-period giallo.

Marco’s descent is as much internal as it is procedural. The deeper he goes, the more the film toys with the idea that exposure changes you—that proximity to desire, especially desire you don’t fully understand, begins to blur boundaries. He’s married to Adria (Gioia Scola, who is in another late 80s/early 90s giallo that needs more people talking about it, Obsession: A Taste for Fear), a stewardess who represents stability, normalcy and the hetero safety net the film keeps returning to like a nervous tic. The movie almost reassures the audience she’s there, like a defense mechanism, because otherwise Marco’s increasing discomfort (and curiosity) around male attention might actually lead somewhere more transgressive. And that’s where the tension lives: the film flirts with queerness but keeps one foot planted firmly in early ‘90s conservatism, no matter how one of the suspects, Andrea (Lorenzo Flaherty), makes him feel.

Still, it pushes further than most gialli ever dared. Traditionally, the genre treated queer characters as punchlines, perverts or disposable misdirection. Here, there’s at least a surface-level neutrality as men meet men, desire exists and the camera doesn’t leer at it with the same cruelty you’d expect from earlier entries. There’s even a surprisingly prescient detail: the use of early internet chat rooms as a way for men to connect. In 1993, that’s borderline sci-fi for this kind of movie, and it gives the film a strange, forward-looking edge, as if it accidentally stumbled into predicting the digital cruising culture that would explode years later.

Plus, I’m always happy to see Natasha Hovey (Cheryl from Demons) in a movie, as well as Alida Valli (Suspiria, Eyes Without a Face, The Killer Nun, Fatal Frames). It was directed and written by Pierfrancesco Campanella, who also made the 2003 giallo Bad Inclination and the shorts La goccia maledetta, L’idea malvagia and L’amante perfetta.

And then there’s that ending. Full spoiler territory, but it’s the kind of twist that reminds you why you’re watching this stuff in the first place: Adria disguising herself as a young man and deliberately entering her husband’s hunting ground is equal parts absurd and weirdly perfect. It collapses the film’s anxieties about identity, desire and performance into one final, lurid gesture.

Murder In Blue Light (1992): By the time he got to this one, Alfonso Brescia was less a director than a one-man exploitation factory. The guy made 51 movies, jumping genres the way other filmmakers change lenses—westerns, war films, sci-fi knockoffs, crime flicks, gialli—you name it, movies like Killer Caliber .32, If One Is Born a Swine, Naked Girl Murdered In the Park, War of the Planets, Star Odyssey, Beast In Space, Iron Warrior, Miami Cops and more. He wrote this as well.

Enter Starlet DuBois, played by Florence Guérin, who feels like a relic from an alternate timeline where the giallo boom never died. She’s a decade late to be a proper genre queen, but she makes up for it by diving headfirst into plenty of fun late in the game entries like Bizarre, Cattive Ragazze, Faceless, Too Beautiful To Die, Knife Under the Throat. She’s the kind of presence these movies need—hypnotic, slightly unreal, like she wandered in from a better production and decided to stay.

Her character’s setup is pure exploitation insanity: by day she’s Starlet, by night she becomes Sherry (kind of like Angel), a Times Square sex worker prowling the neon gutters of the Deuce, hunting for the man responsible for her brother’s death. And what a death it is! This isn’t just backstory, it’s a dare. Russian roulette…with a hand grenade. The result? Multiple casualties, injuries and one very specific mutilation that becomes the film’s obsession. Because the killer she’s tracking isn’t just murdering men. He’s targeting their masculinity in the most literal, grindhouse way possible, turning the whole thing into a revenge story filtered through body horror and psychosexual panic.

Trying to impose some kind of order on this chaos is Flanigan, played by David Hess—yes, that David Hess — bizarrely cast as a quasi-heroic cop. And if that sounds strange, just wait until the movie asks him to dress up as Guérin’s character as part of the investigation. It’s the kind of tonal whiplash only late-era Italian exploitation could deliver: deadly serious one minute, completely unhinged the next.

If this all starts to feel like it’s referencing Body Double, well, that movie was a giallo, so Brescia is just getting back some interest for the Italians. DePalma’s film was called Omicidio a Luci Rosse in Italy, which means Red Light Killer. This is Blue Light Killer.

Stylistically, this is where Brescia’s late-career quirks really take over. He’d been dabbling in music video aesthetics — Iron Warrior already hinted at it — and here you get pulsing lighting, awkward slow motion and sequences that feel like they’re one synth track away from MTV rotation. There are even flashes of primitive computer graphics.

But most of all, it has David Hess in a dress, trying to pretend he’s Florence Guérin, one of the most gorgeous women in the history of, well, existence. And he’s David Hess.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

VINEGAR SYNDROME BLU RAY RELEASE: Forgotten Gialli: Volume Eight

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This is the seventh Forgotten Gialli set from Vinegar Syndrome. You can check out my articles on the others here:

This box set has the following movies:

Rings of Fear (1978): This is the third entry in a loosely linked series of films that are known by the pervy and wonderous title of the Schoolgirls in Peril trilogy, a run of movies that take the already queasy obsessions of giallo and crank them into something even more uncomfortable. These are films where the camera lingers just a little too long, where morality is nonexistent and where the punishment for youthful sexuality is swift, brutal and usually wrapped in plastic. 

The series starts with What Have You Done to Solange?, directed by Massimo Dallamano, one of the absolute high-water marks of the giallo form, a movie that balances sleaze, sadness, and a genuinely upsetting mystery in a way most of its imitators can only dream about. He followed that up with What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, which dials up the nihilism and leans harder into the idea that the world is an uncaring machine designed to chew up the young and spit them out. Sadly, Dallamano would die before this movie was made, but his fingerprints are all over it thanks to his screenplay credit, which means you still get that same mix of procedural grit and moral rot.

This time around, the film wastes no time getting to the good stuff. A teenage girl’s corpse is found wrapped in plastic, which feels like a grim premonition of Twin Peaks and the whole Laura Palmer thing by over a decade. Inspector Gianni DiSalvo, played by Fabio Testi with the kind of weary, seen-it-all expression that giallo cops are contractually obligated to have, starts digging into a group of schoolgirls known as The Inseparables. You know right away that any group with a name like that is going to be nothing but trouble.

These girls attend one of those prestigious all-girls’ schools that only seem to exist in Italian genre cinema — the kind of place where education is secondary to whispered secrets, coded glances, and the constant threat of violence lurking just outside the gates. Among them is Fausta Avelli, played by Barbara Bach, who had already been orbiting the genre in films like Don’t Torture A Duckling, The Psychic and Phenomena — basically a resume that screams “you’re in for something good” You also get Helga Liné, one of those faces that shows up in everything from classy Euro-thrillers to absolute bottom-shelf horror like So Sweet…Perverse and Nightmare Castle to The Vampires Night Orgy, Horror Rises from the Tomb and Black Candles. If European exploitation cinema had a frequent flyer program, she’d have lifetime platinum status.

Then there’s that ending. You get one killer casually offing himself like it’s just another item on the to-do list, and just when you think the movie is winding down, it pulls the rug out and reveals who’s really been behind everything. It’s mean, it’s cynical, and it’s exactly why you sat through all the recycled sleaze in the first place. In true giallo fashion, justice doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like just another ugly secret getting buried along with the bodies.

Reflections In Black (1975): A mysterious woman, dressed all in black, including stockings, is killing other beautiful women with a razor. Tano Cimarosa — usually an actor — directs this film, where we soon learn that all of the women are connected to affairs that they had with another woman, which was quite shocking in 1975.

Inspector Laurina (John Richardson) and his partner, Sergeant Panto (director Tano Cimarosa), are on the case, but, as always, defund the giallo police. Who could the killer be? Leondra (Dagmar Lassander, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire and The House by the Cemetery), a politician’s wife? Lesbian photographer Contessa Orselmo (Magda Konopka)? Former Miss Italia Daniela Giordano (Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key)? Drug dealer and denim lover Sandro (Ninetto Davoli)?

This is really just for those who have to see every giallo ever made. Which would be me. Probably you, too, if you’re reading this. I mean, you’re going to buy this set, right?

A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services (1972): Cristina (Paola Senatore*, Emanuelle in America, Ricco the Mean Machine) is a call girl, and for that, every man that has ever partaken of her services must pay, in some sort of role reversal for every other giallo and slasher.

Much like how his leading lady was known for westerns, so was director Demofilo Fidani, who made movies like Coffin Full of Dollars (how’s that for a title?), Django and Sartana Are Coming… It’s the End, One Damned Day at Dawn…Django Meets Sartana!, His Name Was Pot… But They Called Him Allegria and His Name Was Sam Walbash, But They Call Him Amen. As you can tell, many of his films were titled and treated like either sequels or — let’s be fair — rip-offs of better-known characters and movies.

So when everyone else started making giallo, Fidani was sure to follow.

You know how people on Twitter like to use the term problematic? Well, they’d lose their brains all over those, which presents leaving home to enter the sex industry to be a loveable lark, even when your clients get their throats slit the minute they leave her flat. It’s also a film that wants its cake — Vitelli is gorgeous and frequently involved in increasingly kinkier situations — and eat it too, as the whole moral of the story is that the world is falling into decay because of all this sex. So let’s show some more sex! And violence!

Also known as Caresses à domicile (Caresses at Home), the funny thing is that her life gets better when she leaves her father’s house — well, despite the fact that her daddy gave her everything that she ever wanted — to live with a friend, Paola (Simonetta Vitelli, who is the daughter of the director). So there’s not really any drama here, other than you know, all the murder.

*Sadly, she became addicted to heroin late in her career. After making two softcore films for Joe D’Amato, she made her one and only hardcore film, Non stop… sempre buio in sala. She was then arrested for drug smuggling, went to prison and disappeared.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ1fSPQu6cw

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 2: The House by the Lake (1976)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey. His April Movie Thon list is here.

April 2: Get Me Another — A sequel or a movie way too similar to another film.

When I first started my exploitation cinematic journey in 2020, I must confess that I just considered the word exploitation to be synonymous with the word sleazy. Now, oftentimes the two go hand in hand. As is the case in this film, The House by the Lake (AKA Death Weekend). But what I learned by watching way too many exploitation films over the last six years is that the term exploitation has many facets with many questions to ask. Who or what is being exploited exactly? The characters, or more specifically, the female characters? The actors themselves? The audience? The genre? As it turns out, the answer to all of these questions can be yes, and they can all be yes at the same tie.

By 1976, the Canadian government had launched their program offering tax credits to investors who produced films in Canada. After producing only three feature films in the country in 1974, Canada hoped to incentivize producers to use Canadian resources in hopes of helping create a national identity through cinema. European countries had long ago established a system that produced films reflecting the values and history of their nation. Why shouldn’t Canada? Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for us, these tax shelter years attracted producers who wanted to make low budget films that maximized their profits, and filmmakers who were happy to have a chance to work without the pressure of necessarily delivering the highest quality result.

This subset of films produced in Canada during the late-1970s and early-1980s became affectionately known as Canuxsploitation. The House by the Lake does not simply dip its toe into one sub-genre of exploitation though. It also wants to cash in on the success and/or notoriety of films popularized by Sam Peckinpah’s controversial Straw Dogs and Wes Craven’s infamous The Last House on the Left. Films in which our protagonists are terrorized by a small group of menacing figures who have no moral compass guiding them.

Producers Ivan Reitman (of Ghostbusters fame) and Andrè Link (who would go on to produce the Canuxsploitation horror classics My Bloody Valentine and Happy Birthday to Me) hired home grown William Fruet to direct this tale of a couple whose weekend getaway is instantly marred by a group of men who did not appreciate being shown up by a woman driver. Fruet found instant acclaim with his debut feature, Wedding in White, which won Best Motion Picture at the Canadian Film Awards in 1972. Based on Fruet’s stage play and starring Carol Kane and Donald Pleasence, Wedding in White focuses on the aftermath of a rape that results in a pregnancy. 

As it often does in exploitation films, rape (or multiple rapes) plays a role in The House by the Lake. Fashion model Diane (Brenda Vaccaro) is invited to a lakehouse by dentist Harry (Chuck Shamata), which, according to the locals of the area, is Harry’s favorite pastime. And we soon learn why. Harry has a two way mirror set up in the bedroom so he can photograph his lady friends in various stages of undress. Very naughty Harry. 

After being outwitted on the road by Diane in the opening scene, the guys in the sportscar, led by Lep (Don Stroud), are hellbent on getting revenge. And basically disposing of anyone in their way. The House by the Lake quickly turns into a home invasion thriller, not necessarily offering anything new to the format, but able to keep this viewer engaged to the very end.

It helps when you hire high quality actors for these roles. At this point in her career, Brenda Vaccaro was a three time Tony Award nominee, an Emmy winner, and had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Once is Not Enough, as well as having a memorable role in Midnight Cowboy. She brings the same skillset to her role as Diane here. She’s not slumming it in some cheap exploitation picture. She’s giving it all she’s got. And Don Stroud is definitely no low rent David Hess. He can play unhinged as well as anybody. If you have any doubt, just watch The Divine Enforcer.

William Fruet would go on to have a very successful career, mainly as the director of several episodes of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series. But he also delivered some very unique and singular  horror films of the 1980s, including Funeral Home, Trapped (speaking of unhinged, this one stars Henry Silva in a performance that is over-the-top even by his standards), Spasms (one of the all time great horror posters), Killer Party (perfect for this time of year), and his final feature film, Blue Monkey (which has nothing to do with monkeys, blue or otherwise).

While The House by the Lake might not reach the heights of other cash-in films like Late Night Trains, I Spit on Your Grave, or House at the Edge of the Park, it is a very watchable entry in the sub-genre that might stick around in my mind longer than I initially anticipate.

APRIL MOVIE THON DAY 2: Liquid Dreams (1991)

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April 2: Get Me Another — A sequel or a movie way too similar to another film.

Eve Black (Candice Daly, Zombi 4: After Death, Cop Game) has moved from Kansas to the big city in the hopes of living with her sister, Tina (Karen Dahl). Instead, she finds Tina’s cooling corpse in a bathtub and a sprawling conspiracy involving NeuroVid, a media conglomerate that seemingly either runs this world or is this world. To solve the murder, Eve transforms into Dorothy, a taxi dancer at The Red Top, guided by the perpetually chain-smoking Lt. Rodino (Richard Steinmetz).

Liquid Dreams is a cocktail of a movie. Some Videodrome, some Wizard of Oz, some Dr. Caligari, lots of The Seventh Victim, some Café Flesh, some Cinemax After Dark and plenty Rinse Dream early 90s adult energy. This mix taste good and isn’t afraid to show bloody lips, BDSM imagery and static bursts of noise and video. Or to have John Doe from X be a cab driver.

This movie seems to reach into my brain for its casting. Bob the Goon, Tracey Walter? Paul Bartel? Mink Stole? Adult star Crystal Breeze? Don Stark, the next door dad from That 70s Show? What is happening?

NeuroVid is more than a building. It’s also a channel that gets inside your brain. The Red Top is like that, too, because the women who dance there all get the men worked up and taken to The Hot Box, where the endorphins are sucked out. Oh yeah, and now Eve is called Dorothy. Her first slow dance — she’s a taxi dancer now? — is with Bartel, who is obsessed with her sweaty feet. Once she sees what they do to him backstage, she’s horrified.

Eve/Dorothy is such a potential star that she’s fast-tracked into a Oz-themed porn that’s not really porn where a reactor (that’s what we call actors in the past future of Liquid Dreams) is dressed like a half-naked scarecrow, two men prance dressed as crows and she shows up as a seriously underdressed Ms. Gale as Mink Stole directs the action and the music and video screens demand that they seek freedom from the flesh.

Dorothy then starts dancing at Twilight, and if you become a star there, you’re asked to be part of The Ritual, which takes place on the top floor of the NeuroVid complex.

Everything is bathed in neon glow. The soundtrack is a rhythmic, industrial pulse that feels like a headache you don’t want to get rid of. All of the music is industrial. And this is such a reminder of that lost early 90s moment where erotic meant cold and thriller meant ritualistic.

Directed by Mark Manos, who wrote the script with Zack Davis and would go on to direct the dance sequences in Playboy: Farrah Fawcett and All of Me, this feels sadly prescient. Sure, this isn’t the future we got, but Daly sadly died 13 years later, found in a rundown apartment, her cause of death listed as polydrug intoxication complicated by severe steatohepatitis. Her boyfriend said that she was a victim of foul play.

This is the kind of movie marketed to the trenchcoat brigade but actually designed to make them feel deeply uncomfortable. It may have been sold as an erotic thriller, but what they got was a film filled with slick visuals and strange rituals, TVs screaming messages like gender is slavery and everyone is unapproachably gorgeous or fascinatingly grotesque. Again, I am obsessed with movies that people rented to goon to and ended up being enraged and upset by. It’s my vice. Watch this immediately.

You can watch this at the Cave of Forgotten Films or YouTube.