I’m constantly on the hunt for certain movies. Ever since I saw the trailer for this — the only film to ever be shot in Duo-Vision — I’ve been on the hunt. Finally, in an Exchange store on a Sunday afternoon, my patience was rewarded.
The Grandview is one of those gorgeous California hotels that you dream of living the rest of your life in, Telly Savalas style. But there’s one big problem — any blonde female who checks in never leaves. I’d make a Hotel California joke here, but that just seems too easy.
Trivia note: This is really the Hotel del Coronado, where Some Like It Hot was shot.
David Bailey, from TV’s Another World, plays hotel detective Rick Stewart, who is busy with old women who don’t pay their rent and overly amorous beachfront lotharios. Soon, he’s on the trail of the killer, which gets more personal when his ex-wife Lisa James (Tiffany Bolling, The Candy Snatchers) shows up to sing at the Grandview and promptly dyes her brunette hair blonde. Whoops.
This song is the best part of the film. Becca and I have been singing it to one another ever since we watched this.
Writer/director Richard L. Bare — who holds the record for directing the most successive number of television shows (168 episodes of Green Acres) — planned to follow up this film with another Duo-Vision movie called October Incident, which was about trying to kill Castro. The gimmick wasn’t well received so the movie was canceled.
I’d best compare Duo-Vision to the way that Ang Lee shot his version of The Hulk. The other screen often shows what’s in someone’s mind or reveals the truth of what they’re talking about. The story probably wouldn’t be anything I’d seek out if it wasn’t for Duo-Vision, but I’m glad we have this in our collection. It’s one of the rare movies we’ve seen that reveals the killer almost instantly yet remains interesting.
More trivia: Aside from the songs that Bolling sings, the film’s soundtrack is mostly made up of the piano score from 1925’s silent Phantom of the Opera. And thanks to DVD Drive-In’s George Reis, I now know that Charles B. Pierce of The Town That Dreaded Sundown fame was the set decorator!
Thanks to the Warner Archive for restoring this oddball film. I wish I had seen it on the big screen and hope to get the chance one day!
Paolo Cavara and Gualtiero Jacopetti (who took all the credit) directed the first shockumentary, Mondo Cane. Following that, they worked on Women of the World before Jacopetti moved on to make increasingly more insane films with Franco Prosperi. Cavara? He went on to make his own films, including this one, which some place amongst the best giallo ever.
A mysterious killer is killing women who were involved with a blackmail scheme, using a needle to paralyze them before he slices their stomachs open, the same way a tarantula kills a wasp. Even worse — the victims are awake and can feel the pain, but are unable to move or scream.
Cavara uses one of the queens of giallo for his first victim, Barbara Bouchet (The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, Don’t Torture a Duckling, Amuck!). Soon, it’s up to Inspector Tellini to solve the case before he or his girlfriend is killed. He’s a totally likable character, rare for a giallo, who mainly argues with his wife, who buys too much furniture while worrying if he’s good enough at what he does. He hits a little too close to home.
There is plenty more eye candy in the film, with Claudine Auger (Domino from Thunderball) and Barbara Bach (The Spy Who Loved Me, The Humanoid) showing up. And there’s an excellent Ennio Morricone score.
Umberto Lenzi, come on down! We’re looking for you to shock us, to titillate us, to maybe even thrill us a bit. Oh, you’re brought Carroll Baker with you! Please! Show us what tale you’ve crafted!
Kathryn West (Baker) is a glamorous American widow who has come to Italy weeks after the death of her older wealthy husband. She movies into a huge villa but her life is lonely and boring until Peter shows up. His free-spirited ways shake her loose and he soon moves in his sister, Eva. But things aren’t what they seem — they aren’t brother and sister and the relationship becomes a threesome. But when Kathryn tries to quit them, they keep her prisoner, constantly high on drugs and alcohol as they keep playing the same song over and over until she goes insane and wants to kill herself.
If you like twists, if you like more twists, if you like your sex scenes filled with acid drenched visuals, then by all means, it’s time for you to savor this one.
I’ve recently been reading the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980’s and reminded of my own misspent youth. In sixth grade, a teacher knew that I was religious and thought I could warn my fellow classmates about the dangers of evil music and movies. He gave me a mimeographed sheet of heavy metal (and non-metal) bands to study and by the time I got to Black Sabbath, my soul was sold to rock and roll.
By eleventh grade, I was squarely in the devil’s camp in the eyes of my teachers. My love for bands like King Diamond and Danzig, along with my predilection for drawing Leatherface in class, marked me as a subject of interest. Obviously, I was doing drugs and black mass rituals — I could easily discuss Dungeons & Dragons, too. I was to be more feared the dead-eyed athletes who would soon realize their lives were peaking at 17 while mine hadn’t even started yet.
It’s to those times in my youth, when I wanted to escape my hometown and sat in my room blaring Samhain’s “November Coming Fire” and reading Fangoria, that this movie perfectly fits in. It is disgusting. It is unrepentant. It has no moral or social value. It is filled with the kind of gore than makes churches throw VHS tapes into a blazing bonfire. In short, it is everything amazing and wonderful and metal about horror movies.
The movie starts with two Germans exploring a beautiful Greek beach. Someone emerges from the ocean and murders them. Meanwhile, five travelers are joined by Julie (Tisa Farrow, who some may know as the sister of Mia, but we all know her as Anne from Zombi 2), who asks for a ride to the island. However, Carol (Zora Kerova, Cannibal Ferox, The New York Ripper) uses her tarot cards to learn that something bad will happen. No one listens to her.
The pregnant Maggie (Serena Grandi from Delirium) stays behind on the boat and is abducted by the killer, who quickly beheads a sailor.
The island is in ruins and completely abandoned, except for a woman in black, who writes go away in the dust. Upon finding a rotting corpse that has been eaten, everyone runs back to the boat, which is floating unmanned, then goes to the house of Julie’s friends. There, only the family’s blind daughter Henriette has survived.
The young girl panics and attacks Daniel, but when she is calmed, she tells everyone of the maniac that is stalking the island. Daniel is wounded and needs medicine, so Andy and Arnold head to town. Meanwhile, Daniel flirts with Julie, which causes Carol to run into town and Julie to follow her. While all this drama is going on, the killer rips out Danel’s throat.
Everyone travels to a mansion that belonged to Klaus Wortman, who died along with his wife and child in a shipwreck. This caused his sister, the woman in black, to lose her mind. And to hammer that point home, we soon see her hang herself.
Everything seems like its going to get better when a boat rifts to shore. On board, Julie finds Klaus’ journal. It turns out that he is alive…and the killer! Soon, Maggie is confronted by him and we learn that it’s George Eastman, who is in so many awesome Italian movies, such as Baba Yaga, 2019: After the Fall of New York, The New Barbarians, Blastfighter, Rabid Dogs, Hands of Steel, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, oh man! So many amazing films! This is his star-making role though and he really goes for it. He has a flashback where we learn how he accidentally stabbed his wife while trying to convince her that they should eat their dead son to survive. After eating his family, he went insane. Soon, Klaus breaks out of his flashback reverie, stabs Arnold and rips out and eats the unborn baby inside Maggie’s belly. Holy fucking shit, this movie!
I wish that those teachers who thought I was a Satanic terror in 1988 could see me now, jumping up and down with glee at 2:44 AM on a school night screaming “GEORGE EASTMAN!” while drinking a beer and holding a small dog.
What follows can’t really top that, but fuck it if Eastman isn’t going to try, including eating his own intestines after Andy hits him the stomach with a pickaxe! That’s commitment to your role!
The American version of this film, The Grim Reaper, has 35 cuts in an attempt to get an R rating. That’s correct – nine minutes are missing, including the baby being devoured and the killer eating himself. It just ends when he is stabbed in the stomach. It also replaces the electronic Italian score with the music from Kingdom of the Spiders.
Director Joe D’amato and George Eastman would return in a spiritual sequel called Absurd. You better believe we’ll be getting to that one soon. This is a rough film, but isn’t that why you’re this far down in the review, reading this? You know it. And you can check it out in sadly edited form on Amazon Video. If you want the real deal, you probably know how to find movies on iOffer, right?
EDIT: You can forget the end of the paragraph above and just grab the insanely awesome Severin Video rerelease and stop bothering with edited crappy looking versions of this movie.
René Cardona Jr. gave us Tintorera, a Susan George star vehicle about the Mexican version of Jaws and Guyana: Crime of the Century, which somehow included Stuart Whitman as Reverend James Johnson leading Johnstown, along with Gene Barry and Joseph Cotten. If these things warm your heart, you’re reading the right website.
Based on Charles Berlitz’s best-selling book, this one has it all. Atlantis. A possessed doll. Black characters dubbed to sound like they’re coming straight out of Amos ‘n Andy. John Huston.
The Black Whale III has set sail for the Bermuda Triangle with the Marvin family leading the way. Sure, they’re looking for Atlantis, but mostly they just argue with one another. Finding a doll in the water, the family’s young daughter Diana becomes possessed, telling people how they’ll die and locking the cook in the freezer.
Oh yeah — there’s also a scuba diving expedition that leads to the oldest daughter getting her legs crushed and her father just can’t decide whether or not to cut her legs off. Such is the drama of this film.
People start getting killed off until the desperate captain tries to call other ships for help. They end up hearing multiple distress calls, including their own being played back to them. When they finally reach someone, they learn that everyone on board died ten years ago. All that’s left is the doll floating in the water.
Claudine Auger (Black Belly of the Tarantula) shows up here, livening things up somewhat. This film is strange, as it wants to be about so many things while struggling to be about anything. And as mentioned before, the near minstrel show dubbing of the black cook is quite troubling at worst or hilariously inappropriate at best.
Let me reiterate: Hollywood legend John Huston is somehow in this piece of shit. Oh the 1970’s, when once big time talent would show up in the strangest of films!
I found this for free on Amazon Prime, so I recommend you do the same. The doll parts are at least somewhat cool, as is the atonal soundtrack and poor dubbing.
What happens when you mix a teen sex comedy with a gore film? It’s kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, one would think, but the results don’t always taste as good. Witness 1985’s Evils of the Night.
Three vampire aliens, Dr. Zarma (Julie Numar, who of course is the Catwoman, but is also a writer, real estate mogul and lingerie inventor), Cora (Tina Louise, who is of course Ginger from TV’s Gilligan’s Island) and Dr. Kozmar (John Carradine, who is of course skinny Dracula), have come to a college town to get the blood of young co-eds, which keeps them young.
There’s also Neville Brand (Al Capone from TV’s The Untouchables) and Aldo Ray (whose career trajectory goes from the highest of heights to the lowest of lows) as two old mechanics that are helping the aliens. As for the teens, we’ve got Tony O’Dell (Ferdy in Chopping Mall), Karrie Emerson (who was also in Chopping Mall), 80’s adult movie queen Amber Lynn and “Raw Talent” Jerry Butler, who was also a well-known adult film star.
Director Mardi Rustam (who wrote and produced Psychic Killer and Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive) is the person to blame for all of this. If you’re used to sex in the woods looking fake and feeling gratuitous, then this film will decimate your sensibilities. It feels like porn sex could literally break out at any minute, but the only penetration is when one of the girls gets drilled. With a drill. Get your mind out of the gutter.
Along the way, there are lesbian aliens, spaceships, axe murders, the Millenium Falcon on the poster for the movie, rings that shoot lasers, John Carradine in a space suit and more.
You can also blame Aquarius Releasing for this one, the fine (well, maybe not fine) folks who brought Dr. Butcher, M.D., Zaat, Deep Throat, Make Them Die Slowly (Cannibal Ferox) and Silent Night, Deadly Night to 42nd Street. They also released The Beyond as Seven Doors of Death, cutting out plenty of gore along the way to get an R rating.
Look, this movie is terrible. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. The pathos at the end when one of the mechanics laments his dead friend are poignant. You could find a worse movie at 4 AM to watch. You can check it out for yourself by ordering the DVD/blu-ray combo from Vinegar Syndrome or watching it on Amazon Video.
It takes a lot for me to say that a movie is horrible. I am here today to tell you that Wacko is a horrible, horrible movie. Imagine — with all I have seen — what that entails.
13 years ago, Mary Graves’ (Stephanie from TV’s Newhart) older sister was killed on Halloween by a lawn mowing killer. Now she sees mowers everywhere, but tonight, she just wants to go to her prom. Can she avoid the pumpkin masked killer? Can Dick Harbinger (Joe Don Baker, Mitchell, The Pack) save her?
This is a film packed with actors you may or may not love filmed, lit and treated poorly. The film is so dark that daylight scenes appear shot night for day. It redefines the term shoddy. Where Airplane! works because it allows actors like Robert Stack and Peter Graves to be themselves while chaos explodes around them, everyone in this film acts as if Lloyd Kaufmann were dosing them with laughing gas.
George Kennedy deserves better, despite his appearances in Airplane 1979: The Concordeand The Uninvited. Stella Stevens deserves better. Fuck, even Andrew Clay, before he became Dice (a character he first played in the film Making the Grade), deserves better. So do E.G. Daily (Pee Wee’s Big Adventure), Anthony James (The Chauffer from Burnt Offerings!), Jeff Altman (who also appeared in the utter piece of shit TV series The Pink Lady and Jeff) and anybody who somehow ended up connected in this mess.
I place the blame at the feet of Jensen Farley Pictures, who also rewarded us with pieces of dreck like Madman, Joysticks (yes, I see you in that movie too, Joe Don Baker) and Homework (yet I still love you, Joan Collins). PS – my thrift store has had a DVD of that and Private Lessons for a few weeks that I know I’ll end up buying). They did bring us Curtains, but at what cost?
Greydon Clark also bears the brunt of the blame. I mean, did he hate George Kennedy or something? He directed him here and also in the aforementioned The Uninvited, a movie about a mutant military weapon housecat. And oh yeah, Joysticks also comes from him. As does Final Justice, proving he hates Joe Don Baker as much — if not so much more — than George Kennedy. He also was behind Without Warning, the 1980 movie that features an alien hunter played by Kevin Peter Hall who is looking for human trophies. You may say, “Hey, that’s Predator.” You’d be right. And this movie came out seven years before that one.
Notice how I’ve done anything but talk about Wacko? That’s because this movie is a piece of absolute fecund drivel that makes movies like King Frat and Movie 43 look like Citizen Kane. I stopped it at 28:00 in, thinking the film had to be over 19 hours long and was shocked at how much pain it had put me through. Please don’t watch it on Amazon Video. No matter how much you want to.
Devil’s Express was in my recommended Amazon Prime video list for some time. And now that I’ve just finished watching it, I wish that I could have seen it even sooner. This is the kind of movie that I feel like becoming an apostle for — it’s a film that hardly anyone talks about and has probably never seen, but combines all of the elements that make it perfect for culthood — it’s the perfect mix of blaxploitation, 1970’s occult, tough guy cop and martial arts films, all in one off the rails package.
When The Warriors came out, the distributor of this film retitled it as Gang Wars to try and make more money. And sure, it’s about gang fights. It’s also about so much more.
Back in 200 B.C., Chinese monks get rid of an evil medallion by dropping it into a hole. That’s where it stays until sometime in the 1970’s, when martial arts teacher Luke Curtis (played by a man who has an even better real name, Warhawk Tanzania, who is also in Black Force) and his sidekick Rodan (no, not that Rodan, this guy is played by Wilfredo Roldan, also of Black Force) travel overseas on a spiritual journey. Sadly, Rodan can’t erase the revenge in his heart, so when he finds the medallion, instead of resisting its evil, he takes it.
When they get back to New York City, a demon possesses a Chinese guy and starts violence everywhere he goes, setting up a feud between the Blackjack and Red Dragon gangs. The cops try and keep things cool, but the martial arts action just can’t be stopped.
If you’re looking for cameos, this one’s got ’em, from Brother Theodore (The ‘Burbs) to David Durston, the writer and director of I Drink Your Blood as a doomed 9 to 5’er!
Also, if you’re looking for a funky soundtrack, gold lame outfits, a villain named Lo Pan (yes, really), a final kung fu fighting monster that is wearing tennis shoes, Dolemite-esque chop sockery and the kind of movie that five different writers all making a totally different movie at the same time, then this film is exactly what you’re looking for. You’ve got a hero cool enough to help train the cops, but also street enough to not trust them. You’ve got romance. And you’ve got fights with missed cues and nonsensical editing. Holy shit, writing this review makes me want to watch this movie all over again.
There’s even a subplot where one of the new cops thinks that all of the murders and gang violence are the result of mutated pets that have been flushed into the sewer. And how does a martial arts instructor so devoted to harmony and bettering himself also let a coke dealer and gang leader learn from him? Why did Warhawk Tanzania do so few films? Why didn’t they make ten sequels to this movie? When can I watch it again?
Luckily, the folks at Code Red have released this on blu-ray. You can also find it on Amazon Prime. I’d advise that you watch it today. Leave work or whatever you’re doing and just do it.
Danny Steinmann started his directing career with the adult movie High Rise and worked on the films Savage Streetsand Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning along the way. After that film, he was injured in a bicycle accident and was unable to return to directing. He also produced the Gene Roddenberry made-for-TV movie Spectre. Today, though, we’re here to discuss his 1980 effort The Unseen.
Keep in mind — Steinmann had his name removed from the movie as he was upset with the final cut. He’s credited as Peter Foleg.
Jennifer (Barbara Bach Lady Starkey, the wife of Ringo Starr who also was in The Spy Who Loved Me, Black Belly of the Tarantula and Short Night of Glass Dolls) and Karen (Karen Lamm, the wife of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson), along with their friend Vicki, are in Solvag, CA to cover a folk rock show and town festival. A mix-up over their reservations leads the girls to stay with Ernest Keller (Sydney Lassick, Skate Town U.S.A., Lady in White), the owner of a museum.
Jennifer is in town to report on the town’s parade and festival, but has to deal with her soon to be ex-boyfriend Tony (Douglas Barr, TV’s The Fall Guy‘s Howie, as well as Deadly Blessing), who wants to talk about their relationship. Ugh.
Meanwhile, Vicki just wants to get naked while creepy old men stare at her through vents. Sadly for her, The Unseen pulls her through one of those vents and slams it down on her beck, killing her. Soon after, Karen is also killed. Their bodies are discovered by Ernest’s wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni, who was in Cassavetes’ Shadows and the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
That’s when we learn the secret: Virginia and Ernest are husband and wife, as well as brother and sister. He killed their father two decades ago and they’ve lived here ever since, along with Junior (Stephen Furst, the guy from Animal House in the role one wonders if he was born to play), their inbred son. Ernest is keeping up the cycle of abuse that his father started, beating his son and keeping wife/sister in submission. Now, Jennifer must die to keep the secret.
Ernest lures her into the basement where she finds her friends’ bodies. She panics and runs into Junior, who she discovers probably didn’t mean to kill anyone. Ernest tries to kill her, but Virginia tries to save her. This leads to a family fight and Ernest kills his son with a board with a nail through it.
Just as Ernest is ready to off Jennifer with a hatchet, her stupid ex saves her. Well, he tries to, but an old leg injury flares up, Oh, you inept moron! It’s up to Virginia to save the day by shooting her husband/brother and going back in the house to hold her dead son.
The Unseen was originally written by Kim Henkel and Michael Viner. While Henkel is best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Viner was a producer and audiobook pioneer who also assembled the Incredible Bongo Band, whose song “Apache” is one of the most sampled songs ever. Their screenplay was adapted into the book Deadly Encounter by Richard Woodley.
Bluntly put, this movie is all over the place. The reveal of The Unseen stays on the monster so long that you wonder why this movie is called The Unseen. It starts with so much promise, but by the end, you may find yourself staring at the time left, hoping that it ends quickly.
The middle of the night is dangerous business. You can awaken from a dream where your psychiatrist boyfriend is murdered only to find that he has disappeared. Then your life will seem like a waking nightmare, but only if you’re Julie, the heroine of Eye of the Labyrinth.
Known for her appearance in a two-part episode of The Saint that was turned into the theatrical release Vendetta for the Saint, Marquis de Sade: Justine and The Shoes of the Fisherman, Rosemary Dexter plays Julie, whose search for Luca (Horst Frank, who also appeared with her in Marquis de Sade: Justine) takes her to a small seaside town. From the moment she knows he’s been missing, people have been harassing her as to his whereabouts. Everything simply feels off.
When she gets there, she meets Frank (Adolfo Celi, Danger: Diabolik, Thunderball), who tells her that her boyfriend had been in town. Then there’s Gerda (Alida Valli, Miss Tanner from Suspiria), whose house is full of artists with some level of ill repute, including a young Sybil Danning as Toni.
However, Julia keeps meeting people over and over who refuse to believe that they know her, which lends the film even more of a dreamlike quality. Is there a crime syndicate involved in every moment of her life? Is she in constant danger? Or has she simply gone insane? I’m not going to answer this all for you. You should drink it all in yourself.
This is a rare film financed by the city of Monaco (along with some German investments and stars). Mario Caiano (Nightmare Castle) was the director and he keeps things both mysterious and driving. There’s also a great soundtrack by Roberto Nicolosi, who scored Black Sabbath and Black Sunday. It’s a loungy, jazzy affair that adds verve to the proceedings.
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