Released in Italy as Horror, this film’s script by Gianni Grimaldi and Bruno Corbucci was said to be based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Sure, there are some parts of The Fall of the House of Usher, A Tale of the Ragged Mountains and Some Words with a Mummy, but it’s as much a true Poe as the films of Roger Corman.
It was directed by Alberto De Martino who I celebrate for so many of his remake remix rip-off movies like OK Connery, The Antichrist and Holocaust 2000. Outside of those movies, he also made the wild giallo cop movie hybrid Strange Shadows In an Empty Room. It won’t sell you on this movie if I told you that he said that it was “a little film of no importance.”
Emilie De Blancheville (Ombretta Colli, who would one day become the President of Milan) has returned to her family’s ancestral home only to learn that everything has changed. Her father, the Count Blancheville, has become disfigured and gone mad, locked in a tower. Her brother Rodéric (Gérard Tichy) has taken over the home and rules over his servants with an iron fist after, well, all the old help has been killed. And now, the Count is loose and sure that if his daughter is killed before his 21st birthday, the curse on the Blancheville family will end. And oh yes — there’s also a cold and evil housekeeper known as Miss Eleonore played by Helga Liné.
AIP sold this to American TV, so if you watched horror shows from the 60s to the 80s, there’s a good chance you’ve seen this. However, you haven’t seen it look as good as it does in the new Arrow box set.
Along with a new video introduction by Italian film devotee Mark Thompson Ashworth, a limited edition 80-page book featuring new writing by Roberto Curti, Rob Talbot, Jerome Reuter, Rod Barnett and Kimberly Lindbergs, a fold-out double-sided poster and limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, The Blancheville Monster also has commentary by filmmaker and film historian Paul Anthony Nelson, a new video essay by writer and pop culture historian Keith Allison, a new video interview with author and filmmaker Antonio Tentori, opening credits for the US release of the film and a trailer.
Massimo Pupillo also made Bloody Pit of Horrorand Terror-Creatures from the Grave, but this would be the last horror movie he’d make. He said, “I started in the horror genre because I wanted to get out of documentaries, I wanted to enter the commercial market. In Italy, when you do a certain type of film, you become labeled and you can’t do anything else. I remember one day, a producer called me to do a film only because the other producers told him he had to get either Mario Bava or me. When I understood this, I felt dead.”
Using the name Max Hunter and working from a script by Giovanni Grimaldi, this starts with Susan Elaine Blackhouse (Barbara Nelli) and Pierre Brissac (Michel Forain) discussing their plans to be married while riding in a boat. Then, a caped figure shoves Pierre into the water to her horror, which leaves her broken and soon married to Sir Harold Morgan (Paul Muller). It’s not all bad — she has a huge home and several servants, including the kind Josef. But when she comes back from a trip, there’s a new housekeeper named Lilian (Erika Blanc), her husband’s assistant Roger and a maid named Terry (Edith MacGoven). And then things get really weird, like her being locked into her room, Lillian’s voice speaking to her in the middle of the night and screams in the night.
Well, poor Susan gets gaslit so badly — and even hypnotized by Lillian on an intercom system — that she is walked right out a window to her death. The moment she dies, we find Pierre waking from his amnesia, her spirit calling to him. And now her ghost will use him to have her revenge on them all.
Horses galloping through fog? Erika Blanc creeping up dark steps holding a candle? Are conspiratorial killers all turning on one another? Yeah, this has it all and then some. And finally, thanks to Arrow, it looks gorgeous.
Along with a new video introduction by Italian film devotee Mark Thompson Ashworth, a limited edition 80-page book featuring new writing by Roberto Curti, Rob Talbot, Jerome Reuter, Rod Barnett and Kimberly Lindbergs, a fold-out double-sided poster and limited edition packaging with reversible sleeves featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Colin Murdoch, Lady Morgan’s Vengeance also has new commentary by author and critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, a new video essay by author and producer Kat Ellinger, a new interview with actress Erika Blanc, newly edited interviews with Paul Muller and Massimo Pupillo, a trailer and the complete original cineromanzo, published in Suspense in April 1971.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site on August 20, 2018.
Despite being direct to video releases (yes, some have had limited releases in theaters and the first was considered for theatrical release), the Puppet Master series is one that’s packed with content. Produced by Full Moon Features, the series started in 1989 with Puppet Master, which has been followed by ten sequels/prequels, a non-canon crossover with the characters of Demonic Toys, two comic book mini-series, an ongoing comic book series, toys and now, this reboot.
Opening in Postville, Texas, where that “old guy” comes into a bar where he’s been frequently upsetting the female customers. That “old guy” is Andre Toulon, the inventor of the puppets who this movie is all about and he’s played by Udo Kier, of all people. After bothering the bartender and her girlfriend, he leaves into the night, upset as they embrace and kiss.
Later that night, the girls leave the bar and discuss their future. After hearing a noise, one of them is attacked. Soon, we see Toulon lying in a basement, telling the puppets to come to him. This scene felt really disjointed — setting up the murder but not showing it actually happening. Everything jumps forward to the police investigating the crime scene, with both girls dead and small footprints running away from the car.
The police rush — with no backup or warrant — to the Toulon house, where we see Andre rise painfully and pull down a concrete pillar. They enter the house and we hear gunfire as the title card appears.
Note: the producers have stated that this film takes place in a parallel universe, which is why Andre Toulon is an evil Nazi instead of battling against the Third Reich.
Dallas, Texas. Today. Edgar (Thomas Lennon, The State, Reno 9-11 and a character actor who has shown up in plenty of films way below his talent level) is recovering from a divorce and has retreated to his childhood home to heal. There, he discovers a mint condition Blade doll in his dead brother’s room and decides to sell it at a convention that celebrates the Toulon Murders for a big profit. Joining him on the way are Markowitz (Nelson Franklin, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Ashley.
They sign up for a tour of the Toulon house, led by Carol Doreski (Barbara Crampton, Re-Animator, Chopping Mall, We Are Still Here), the officer who raided the mansion thirty years ago. She explains the backstory of how Toulon began creating the puppets and where everything went wrong.
Once Toulon escaped World War 2 — his wife committed suicide at sea — he settled in this small Texas town. On the night the police were called in, they found a house of horrors, including a soundproof room where Jewish women were tortured. There are also books in the house on all manner of subjects like astrology, numerology, demonology and more, as well as books that came directly from Adolf Eichmann, the creator of the Final Solution.
Finally, Doreski shows the tour group where Toulon was shot as she finishes the tour at the mausoleum where his body lies in rest. There are rods inside the building that some feel have occult significance, but that no one can really explain.
When Edgar and Ashley — now a couple who make out at every opportunity — come back to their hotel room, his Blade doll is missing and the front desk answers back in French, saying “Remain in the shadows.” If you think things are going to get normal from here on out, well, things are only going the other way. Soon, Torch appears and makes the first two gory kills. In a world of CGI, it’s nice to see some practical effects here! The burn effects are really well done.
This isn’t a film that skimps on nudity, either. We cut right from those brutal kills to a couple in the throes of passion — including breasts against the window ala Catholic High School Girls in Trouble from The Kentucky Fried Movie. Blade soon gets involved, slicing them to ribbons, including a Pet Semetary style ankle shredding.
Say what you will about this movie, but it knows its audience. We find another convention goer watching some wrestling in his room (I recognize David Starr, which I wonder is intentional as he’s a Jewish pro wrestler). Man, I don’t want to spoil the kill that follows, but suffice to say I’ve never seen anyone urinate on a decapitated head before. Just wow. If you’re looking for the red stuff — and I guess the yellow stuff — this movie has you covered.
While Markowitz tries to get some action at the bar, Detective Brown (Michael Paré from Streets of Fire! This is the kind of casting I’d dream of if Italian exploitation movies were still being made!) shows up to investigate the missing Blade doll. Soon, he learns that everyone that brought a doll has lost them. And man do they pay. We don’t meet a single character really and get to know them, we just watch puppets decimate them. But hey — isn’t that why you’re watching this?
This movie totally needs a Joe Bob Briggs breakdown of the kills. Spinning robot fu. Intestine ripped out fu. Drill fu. Puppet abortion fu. Seriously, that last one is on the level of Joe D’Amato or Ruggero Deodato depravity.
The police make everyone leaves their rooms and gather in the lobby as multiple crime scenes appear. Can everyone survive the onslaught of Blade, Pinhead, Tunneler, Torch, Mechaniker, Happy Amphibian, Grasshüpfer, Mr. Pumper, Junior Fuhrer, Autogyro and Money Lender?
“Lots of terrible shit happens to people who don’t deserve it,” says a fan at the end of the film. “I don’t think things are fully resolved,” says our sole survivor as a TO BE CONTINUED comes up. Well, here’s to hoping!
Directed by Sonny Liguna and Tommy Wiklund (Animalistic) and written by S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) with credit given to Charles Band, there’s a major narrative shift that changes up this film from any that have come before. Where in the past, the puppets were created to battle the Nazis and have been taken over by whomever can command them, here they were explicitly by a Nazi to kill their enemies, like Jewish people, blacks, gay people and gypsies. Essentially, the characters that you want to cheer on are committing hate crimes. That’s a pretty big jump to make. Then again, if you see this is an exploitation film, you know that all bets are off. Creator Charles Band told Entertainment Weekly, “You’ve got to go back to what exploitation movies were 40-50 years ago. I mean, it’s hard today. There’s so much out there. We’re so jaded. I mean, television news, when something bad happens, it’s worse than most horror movies I’ve ever made: decapitations and terrorism. And, you know, what do you do to an audience that has seen it all, to get them talking? What [Cinestate] has done is gone full-on exploitation. They’ve got something going there, where there is going to be controversy.”
I’ve hinted at it before, but the Italian sleaze roots of this film run deep. So deep that Fabio Frizzi (The Beyond, Zombi, Manhattan Baby) did the score! And the role that Skeeta Jenkins plays totally feels made for Bobby Rhodes.
Band has stated that he still has plans to make his own Puppet Master movies and that Cinestate has plans to make a big budget version of Castle Freak next. Here’s hoping that movies like Trancers and Subspecies also get their shot!
Despite the changing of the series’ premise — I’ve never been a hardcore fan, so I got past this quickly — this movie is exactly what it should be. Quick, brutal and filled with the red stuff. Sure, we never find out what the hell is going on in that mausoleum. And we have no idea what happens next. But isn’t that the beauty of a fun exploitation movie? Shut your brain off and enjoy.
21. A Horror Film That’s Shot on Mini-DV (But is not a found footage film).
I don’t know if this is horror to be exact but it’s Takeshi Miike, so anything goes. Part of the Love Cinema series, which contains six straight-to-video releases by independent filmmakers that played an exclusive engagement at the Shimokitazawa cinema in Tokyo, this was made on digital video to keep the budget low but also capture the look of the video camera used in the movie itself.
The other films were Ryuichi Hiroki’s Tokyo Trash Baby, Mitushiro Mihara’s Amen, Somen and Rugger Men!, Isao Yukisada’s Enclosed Pain, Tetsuo Shinohara’s Stake Out and Akihiko Shiota’s Gips.
Like Terence Stamp in Pasolini’s Teorema, Visitor Q comes into the lives of the Yamazaki family and changes their lives. Of course, he also beats the father Kiyoshi (Kenichi Endō) over the head with a rock, teaches the mother (Shungicu Uchida) the magic of lactation and throwing knives at her abusive son, explores the incestuous relationship that the daughter Miki (Fujiko) has with her father and teaches the son (Jun Mutō) to be less violent while still encouraging his parents to murder and hack up his bullies from school.
Somehow, through chaos, necrophilia, vinegar filled bathtubs, heroin and murder, the family comes back together. Visitor Q has filmed it all, yet created something magical through his rock bashing psychological torture, I guess. The family unit thrives. Somehow, in the midst of all the blood, feces and breast milk, a traditional heart beats. Who knew Miike had it in him? Then again, he does reinvent himself with nearly every movie.
Somehow, in the middle of comparatively chaste slashers, Bloodsucking Freaks was on the shelves of the mom and pop video store in my cozy and safe hometown. It made its way from the fecund streets of 1976 end of the world New York City to the same VCR we watched cartoons on. And we watched it, over and over again.
Knightriders is a complex film, packed with great performances and a cast packed with Pittsburgh drama standouts mixed in with Hollywood greats like Ed Harris.
It is absolutely impossible for me to be impartial to this movie. How can you be? A western set inside a destroyed New York City that’s been converted into a prison for the worst people in America being invaded by someone even worse than all of them put together to rescue a President with only 24 hours to do it? Yeah, they don’t make them like this anymore.
Where most giallo films have five murders or so, this one goes wild with 15 murders, several of which are done with an umbrella knife. Inspector Scaporalla (Paul Naschy) and his high fashion wife Silvana (Erika Blanc) follow this vigilante killer — who the police debate may be doing their job for them — and she gets so focused on the case that she studies crime scene photos in bed. Naked.
The CBS Movie of the Week on September 19, 1972, The Woman Hunter has what I consider an all-star cast, what with Barbara Eden in the lead, alongside Stuart Whitman, Larry Storch and Robert Vaughn.
Julie (Isabelle Mejias, Scanners II: The New Order) just wants to play with her pet snake, hunt with her dad (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) and, well, lie in bed with him. But when her mom takes away her snake, she just watches a delivery boy violate her and does nothing to save her. But soon, she has a new mom named Susan (Sybil Danning!) and might have to do something about it.
To get away from the city and all its crime — dudes are peeping in on Rhoda while she’s trying to pee! — Chuck Yoman (Gerald McRaney), his wife Rachel (Valerie Harper) and their family move to redneck country where he’s going to make windsurfing boards. And then, you know, the people across the lake…
Any film that has squads of nuns burning buildings and killing people — as well as a crucified zombie nun and a savage elder god hidden beneath the world — is worth checking out.
If you ever watched the aforementioned American Gladiators and said, “Is there any BDSM-obsessed fan fiction of this show?,” Legion of Iron is the film for you.
I haven’t seen a movie like this that can somehow combine the roughest moments of 70s exploitation with female characters that are given plenty of agency and personalities that are explored more than their bodies. I mean, yes, it’s scummy as it gets, but it also surprises you at every turn.
Frank (Brad Cowgill) and Arnie (Anthony Tomkins) have traveled for hours to see Kharma (Joe Turkel, Lloyd from The Shining) perform. Frank had heard that Kharma could do the kind of magic that only Houdini was able to conjure, yet he learns that the magician just does the simplest of magic. His assistant Flora (Cynthia Frost) explains that he’s exhausted but Frank gets past her and asks why Kharma no longer does his levitation trick. He tries to explain how dangerous it is, but Frank isn’t satisfied. He starts to heckle every time Kharma tries to perform until he’s called on stage to be part of it. He should have perhaps not pushed an occultist so far.
Directed by John Harrison, who directed eight episodes of this series and the movie, as well as music for Effects, Creepshow and Day of the Dead, this was written by David Gerrold (who also wrote the “If the Shoes Fit…” episode) from a story by Jospeh Payne Brennan.
It’s one of the best episodes of the show, setting up the idea, creating a great story out of it and even better, having a dark payoff. If someone asked me for an episode of the show they should watch, this would be it.
21. TRAPS: To lay or be laid, that is the question.
Based on Shi Yukun’s The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, this Shaw Brothers movie has the Venom Mob and a house of, well, traps. Not a trap house. That’s different.
Directed by Chang Cheh, this is the last Venom Mob movie. Lo Meng is already gone. Only Kuo Choi and Lu Feng get to fight. It seems odd. But then again, there is the house full of traps, which seems to be the main selling point.
Butterfly Chua (Lu Feng) has taken a priceless jade statue and hidden it inside his — do I have to say the title of this movie again? — which has spikes everywhere, steps that rip off feet, steel nets and archers ready to kill anyone who makes it close to the treasure.
Inspector Yuan (Lung Tien-Hsiang) is the person who will challenge the house, because that jade statue — and the other art treasures hidden within — have some great importance to the government. Both Yuan and Butterfly Chua end up employing entire armies of martial artists ready to kick, punch and brutalize one another.
The good guys are called the Rat Gang, which wouldn’t happen in America. There’s also a killer umbrella and some wild costumes. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it doesn’t have to. That’s why I love these movies, I can just put them on and they fill my eyes with so many images, my brain was so many visions and my heart with so much joy.
Wes Craven Presents Carnival of Souls is directed by Adam Grossman, who also wrote the script, and Ian Kessner. It has nothing to do with Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls other than the name. What it does have is comedian Larry Miller as a carnival clown named Louis Seagram. In 1977, he raped and murdered the mother of Alex Grant (Bobbie Phillips). After he’s released from prison, he attacks Alex in her car, which she drives into a river — maybe it has a little bit of the original, including a role for Sidney Berger, who was in the Herk Harvey film — and dreams of the carnival where she first saw the clown.
Candace Hilligoss, star of the original, turned down a role. She saw this and hated it, saying that if anyone sees the words “A film by Adam Grossman” they should run for the exit. She also blasted Craven for putting his “signature crap” all over it, saying he should be “hung up by his thumbs at Hollywood and Vine for fans to stone, because he so devastated the intent of the original.”
Other Grossman films that Hilligoss should not watch include Sometimes They Come Back… Again and Sometimes They Come Back… for More.
I don’t think this movie is exactly great but the fact that it isn’t bad is a major success. Miller is really good in this and really plays a great villain. And hey — Shawnee Smith!
Directed by Charles Band, who wrote this with Neal Marshall Stevens, Puppet Master: Axis Termination has Blade, Tunneler, Jester, Six Shooter and Leech Woman teaming up with Dr. Ivan Ivanov (George Appleby), his clairvoyant daughter Elisa (Tania Fox) and sex magic priestess Georgina (Alynxia America) to battle the Axis, who have Doktor Gerde Ernst (Tonya Kay), the Elder God worshipping Sturmbahnfurher Steiner Krabke (Kevin Scott Allen), Freddy hyperdermic glove ripoff artist Oberheller Friede Steitze(Lilou Vos) and puppets Bombshell, Weremacht and Blitzkreig within their ranks.
It also kills off Danny and Beth, the good guys from Axis of Evil and Axis Rising about a minute in. Hope you weren’t didn’t like them all that much.
This also has a total Italian horror look as it’s packed with color gels. There’s also plenty of blood and gore, perhaps the most in this series for a long time.
It’s not the best movie you’ve seen, but it’s the third puppets against the Third Reich movie and the twelfth overall movie in the series, so the fact that it’s even halfway decent has to be some kind of small victory.
20. A Horror Film That Features Testicular Trauma.
La novia ensangrentada is based on Carmilla, that tale of forbidden Sapphic vampire love. Released as a double feature in the U.S. with I Dismember Mama, it even had a special trailer that had an audience member losing their marbles.
Susan (Maribel Martín) is so newlywed that she shows up on her honeymoon still wearing her gown. She’s being followed by Mircala Karstein (Alexandra Bastedo) and has waking terrors, imagining a man has come into her room to assault her. When she visits her the house where her husband (Simón Andreu) was raised, she finds paintings of all the men, but no women save Karstein, who murdered her husband on their wedding night after he forced her to commit unspeakable acts.
As her dreams are taken over by Karstein, her husband finds a woman buried on the beach. She’s still alive — well, she’s undead — and she’s Karstein in human form, seducing Susan in dreams of deadly daggers and in waking caresses. By the end, he must destroy them while they sleep intertwined in a coffin and then fulfill the wish of her thrall to shoot her in the head.
Sure, it’s a lot like The Vampire Lovers and Daughters of Darkness, but those movies don’t have their protagonist’s sexual awakening come complete with remembering that her husband uses her for sex whenever he wants it without pleasure for her, so she blows another man’s balls clean off with a shotgun.
“The good ones are those who are content to dream what the wicked actually practice.”
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