Marjoe (1972)
Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner first became known — way back in the late 1940’s — as the youngest person to be ordained as a preacher. Just four years old, he possessed an innate ability to speak sermons and lead revival meetings. By the time he was sixteen, the Gortner family had taken around three million dollars from the […]
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey claimed that the main character in this Vincent Price film was based on him. Well, his name is Dr. Anton Phibes and he’s an organist, researcher, medical doctor, biblical scholar and ex-vaudevillian who has created a clockwork band of robot musicians to play old standards at his whim. Seeing as […]
This week: The Church of Satan film list
This week on B&S About Movies, we’ll be delving into several of the films on the Church of Satan Film List, originally published in Magistra Blanche Barton’s The Church of Satan as approved by Magus Anton Szandor LaVey. There are some films there that may not surprise the non-initiated, such as The Car, Evilspeak and It’s Alive. What may […]
Who Saw Her Die? (1972)
If you see one movie where a father has sex instead of watching his daughter and spends the rest of the movie hunting her killing through the canals of Venice, you should probably watch Don’t Look Now. In fact, you may not even realize there’s another movie with the same plot. Actually, there is and to […]
Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)
Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel, Perversion Story) has a problem. His body has been found in a park in Prague, but the American journalist is anything but dead. His heart is still beating and his mind is still able to replay the sinister events of the last few days, a story that started with the disappearance of […]
A Blade in the Dark (1983)
Known in Italy as La Casa con la Scala nel Buio (The House with the Dark Staircase), Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark was originally intended to be a four-part TV mini-series, with each segment ending with a murder. However, it was too gory for regular audiences, so it was released as a film. It was written by the husband and […]
Ten Sergio Martino films
After the Bava and Fulci retrospectives we featured, I felt like Sergio Martino was the next logical choice. Please keep in mind that I don’t feel that I’m an expert, like Kat Ellinger who wrote the all-encompassing All the Colors of Sergio Martino. Martino is an Italian film director and sometime producer, mainly known for his […]
Seven Blood Stained Orchids (1972)
Umberto Lenzi made the first Italian cannibal film, The Man from Deep River and followed that up with Eaten Alive! and Cannibal Ferox. When he followed a trend, his movies always stand out. Zombies? Lenzi’s Nightmare City outgrosses and out-insanes them all. Horror? He made the utterly bizarre Ghosthouse, which was shot in the same house as The House by the Cemetery. Sword […]
The Psychic (1977)
Before Fulci became known as the godfather of gore, he made movies in nearly every genre. This is the next to last film he’d make — Silver Saddle follows it in 1978 — before 1979’s Zombie announced to the world that he was here to tear eyeballs, unleash bats and provide dazzling if incomprehensible odes to mayhem. […]
Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)
After The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and The Cat o’Nine Tails, Argento had one more movie left in his “Animal Trilogy.” Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash) would both write and assistant direct the film and the results are…interesting. It’s a lot funnier than his other giallo and was considered his swan song to the genre until his movie The […]
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