EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally covered this movie back on October 22, 2020, but the new Blur Underground 4K UHD and blu ray release is a reason to celebrate. You can get it right here from MVD and it comes with so much! You get bith an ultra HD blu ray (2160p) and HD blu ray (1080p) widescreen version of the movie, plus two audio commentaries — producer Tony DiDio, director of photography Gary Graver and star Pamelyn Ferdin or Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, as well as new interviews with director Dennis Donnelly, acor Wesley Eure, acress Kelly Nichols, as well as an interview with actress Marianne Walter and two new features, Slashback Memories – David Del Valle Remembers Cameron Mitchell and “They Know I Have Been Sad,” a video essay by Amanda Reyes and Chris O’Neill. But wait — there’s more! You get a theatrical trailer, TV and radio ads, and a poster and still gallery.

You can see the trailer here.

Not only does this movie excite me because it’s a slasher and a Cameron Mitchell movie, but it’s also a “based on a true story” riff, which is always fascinating.

Los Angeles producer Tony Didio wanted to make a low-budget horror film after seeing how well The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He knew the film’s distributors — uh-oh — and contacted them to see why they were re-releasing the movie again. While he should have realized it never really stopped playing theaters until the advent of home video — and even afterward for some time — he was smart enough to stay clear of working with the, and making and releasing his own slasher.

Supposedly based on a series of killings in either Michigan or Minnesota that were ritualistic and sex-based, this has famously been cited as one of Stephen King’s favorite movies.

If Pieces can say that “it’s exactly what you think it is,” The Toolbox Murders takes things even further into what I refer to as the pornography of violence, treating each kill as another scene in a gradually escalating orgy of evisceration. That said, the film then goes from slasher to character study in the final act, totally changing everything up on the viewer.

As for Mitchell, he’s completely off the rails in this and I loved every minute of his performance. And this being 1977, of course there’s an incest angle, because the 70’s were just greasy and sweaty and gross.

Vance Kingsley, Mitchell’s role in this, tries to rise above all the sin by using every tool in his, well, toolbox to perforate, slash and decimate every sinner he meets before being killed for love, which then uses scissors to escape into the night. There’s even a square up card at the end for a “this really happened*” shocker.

Wesly Eure loved being in this, relishing the opportunity to do something subversive after being the goody Will Marshall on Land of the Lost. I wonder how Pamela Ferdin felt, as she is better known for being the voice of Lucy on Peanuts (though she is also in the original The Beguiled).

Director Dennis Donnelly would go on to direct plenty of TV, including one of The Amazing Spider-Man episodes in the 70’s, along with Supertrain, Hart to Hart and The A-Team. That makes sense, as this really does look like a TV movie, unless you take into account all the nudity, sex and gore. And speaking of carnal knowledge, that’s adult actress Kelly Nichols playing Dee Dee, the woman who gets nail gunned in the tub (she was still working in the field doing makeup as Marianne Walters, the name she used for this film, as late as 2015).

Despite a 1986 sequel never happening, in a strange twist Tobe Hooper would direct the remake to this in 2004, which was followed by an official sequel in 2015 and an unoffical one, Coffin Baby, in 2013 that used footage from a scrapped sequel. That movie was tied up in legal wrangling, but has since been released. They all have a more supernatural element than the down-to-earth feel of the original.

*But totally didn’t.

Based on the screenplay for the Russian movie Mechte Navstrechu (A Dream Come True) and using the special effects footage from that film and Nebo Zovyot (Battle Beyond the Sun), this American-International Pictures release, directed by Curtis Harrington, had to have some kind of influence on Alien, right?

Harrington agreed, saying that Ridley Scott’s movie was a “greatly enhanced, expensive and elaborate” take on Queen of Blood.

This movie believes — and it made sense at the time — that by 1990 man would be traveling in space and have united to form the International Institute of Space Technology. Astronaut Laura James (Judi Meredith) hears strange signals from space, messages that Dr. Farraday (Basil Rathbone) believes are from an alien race sending an ambassador to Earth, yet the ship has crashed on Mars.

The ship Oceano is sent to rescue the ambassador but only one dead alien is on board. They decide that a rescue ship must have picked up the crew, but when they follow what they think is the rescue ship, they find only one being on board, a green-skinned alien (Florence Marly, who made a short sequel to this movie called Space Boy! and is also in The Astrologer) and several eggs.

She refuses to eat food, won’t let them take a blood sample and when left alone with an astronaut named Paul (Dennis Hopper), she hypnotizes him and drains his blood. Soon, she takes over most of the male crewmembers and plans on making her way to our planet, with only Laura and Allan Brenner (John Saxon) left to oppose her.

This would be the first movie that Harrington would work with George Edwards (as a line producer for this movie). They met when Edwards produced a stage production of Tennessee Williams’ The Garden District and this movie impressed Universal enough that they hired Harrington and Edwards to make Games.

Desperate to escape an overturned ambulance after what should be a normal prison transfer, Melina, some cops, other paramedics and two criminals find themselves being hunted by something in the woods — a costumed hunting party led by Caine and filled reasons to kill everyone — as the survivors have just a hundred feet to climb out of a ditch to escape.

For a movie that takes place in the small region of the crash, this film ramps up the intensity and shows that even though this is his first film, director and writer Christopher Donaldson creates a pretty decent horror movie. His skills as a storyboard are obvious in the way that he sets up a lot of his shots and keeps the action moving.

It’s not perfect, but the constantly flashing ambulance and police car lights, as well as the garish costumes and the incredible levels of gore, set this movie apart. I really liked the performance by Marika Sila as Melina, a woman who just wants to get home to her daughter.

Ditched is available from Dread on VOD January 18th and on blu ray February 15th.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally ran on October 17, 2017, which was early in the life of this site. I’ve adjusted it, added to it and hopefully improved it to celebrate Arrow Video’s release of Shock. 

We went to see Blood and Black Lace in the theater once and there was someone who talked about the movie before it began. Maybe he was bad at speaking in public, but in short, told everyone how the movie inspired Friday the 13th (I’d say A Bay of Blood versus that one) and how it had a different title. And that was it. I was incensed. I wanted to get up out of my seat and scream that Mario Bava is the reason why lighting is the way it is and his use of color and how I can cite hundreds of films that he influenced. But I sat in my seat and boiled while the movie unspooled, because I’m really passionate about Mario Bava and don’t need to make a scene and miss seeing one of his films on the big screen.

Shock is Bava’s last film. Following a series of failures to reach theaters, including Rabid Dogs, Lamberto Bava continued to push his father to make a new movie. Originally written by Dardano Sacchetti and Francesco Barbieri after they wrote A Bay of Blood, this movie was loosely based on Hillary Waugh’s The Shadow Guest. Lamberto has also stated that he wanted this to be a modern film — check out Stephen Thrower’s part of the Arrow Video release for more about that notion — that was influenced by Stephen King.

Bava started pre-production as early as 1973, shooting screen tests with MImsy Farmer for the lead role. Shot in five weeks, some of the film was directed by Lamberto based on his father’s storyboards, which is why he has the credit “collaboration to the direction.”

I kind of love that this was called Beyond the Door II here in the U.S., but I really like the original title better. It’s a sparse film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters).

Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (John Steiner, Yor Hunter from the Future‘s Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the very same place where her drug-addicted husband killed himself — along with her son, Marco.

Dora’s had some real issues dealing with her husband’s death. And Bruno is never home to help, as he’s a pilot for a major airline. Either she’s losing her mind or her son is evil or he’s possessed or her new husband is gaslighting her or every single one of those things is happening all at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watches his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs before using his potential psychic powers to throw things at them. Then he tells his mom he wants to kill her, followed by nearly making his stepfather’s plane crash just by putting an image of the man’s face on a swing.

While Bava was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lamberto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There’s one scene of Dora’s face and her dead husband’s and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind.

The secret of the film? Dora’s ex-husband forced her to take a mix of heroin and LSD, at which point she tripped out and killed him. Bruno dumped his body in the ocean and arranged for her to be placed in an insane asylum until she recovered. Now, the ex-husband’s ghost has returned and demands blood. And he gets it.

Perhaps the finest shot in here is when Dora is lying in the bed and you see her hair fall like she’s upside down, but then it goes back like it’s in the wind, all while it seems like she’s being ravaged. I have no idea how Bava did this shot, but it’s so visually arresting that it’s stuck in my mind for days. There’s also his famous Texas switch where Marco runs into his mother’s arms, only to be replaced by her ex-husband and that horrifying scene with the rake.

There’s also music from I Libra, a Goblin off-shoot. It seems kind of strange against Bava’s old school direction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. It’s a stylish and scary film that’s way better than any Exorcist clone, despite its U.S title.

Arrow Video’s new release of Shock features a brand new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative. There’s new audio commentary by Tim Lucas, author of Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, plus new interviews with Lamberto, Dardano Sacchetti and critic Alberto Farina.

You also get a video essay by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, The Devil Pulls the Strings and Shock! Horror! – The Stylistic Diversity of Mario Bava, a video appreciation of Shock by Stephen Thrower that is worth the price of this disk.

You get even more — the Italian theatrical trailer, 4 U.S. Beyond the Door II TV spots, an image gallery and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Troy Howarth, author of The Haunted World of Mario Bava.

You can get this from MVD.