October 27: A Found Footage Horror Film That Isn’t From America, Japan or the UK
Director and actor Adrian Țofei plays someone who I hope is not all himself, a director and actor that wants to make a movie with Anne Hathaway so badly that he films a found footage camcorder proof of concept with three local actresses, Sonya (Sonia Teodoriu), Flory (Florentina Hariton) and Alexandra (Alexandra Stroe).
The creator comes from a background in method acting and theatre. On a small budget, he was the director, producer, writer, lead actor, editor, cinematographer and most other jobs usually performed by a film crew. He had never shot with a camera before and met the actresses for the first time while they were doing the movie. He also only kept the original takes in his final cut. This was all set up with months of online preparation.
I really think that he’s a maniac.
His filmmaking method? Working for months on an alternative psychological reality for the actors including himself so that when they start to improvise, he just records it. The action is shot in English and the safe word is basically shifting dialogue to Romanian.
Țofei developed this character over 5 years, first as a monologue and then as a one man school he called The Monster. When he decided to make the movie, he moved back home and started living the same life as the character to get into his head.
Basically, Adrian is in love with Anne Hathaway to the point that no other woman will do. Notably he doesn’t have sex with any of these women in his movie, as he belongs only to Anne. What follows is some of the most disturbing cinema I’ve seen in some time, moments so cringe-worthy that I felt like I couldn’t stop thinking about them. What a strange film and I hope it was really just a movie and not Țofei working out his real obsession.
27. MONSTERS… ALL?: Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman are (universal)ly adored. It’s time we start seeing other “people.”
There’s really no reason for this movie to exist.
Many people have tried and almost as many have failed to bring their vision of Dracula to the screen. For every Tod Browning and Karl Freund, for each Francis Ford Coppola or John Badham, there are just as many poorly received versions of the tale.
The Dario Argento of 2012 does not seem to be the person to be making this movie. Made after Giallo, a film that was considered — charitably — not the best of movies, Argento seemingly had a lot to prove. The visual stylist that made Deep Red, Suspiria, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and Opera suddenly had movies that looked like made for TV films or episodic television instead of the dramatic flights of fancy that fill Tenebrae or even Sleepless. His movies became the law of diminishing returns and instead of being excited by the prospect of a new Argento movie, fans started to worry. I mean, I still haven’t watched Mother of Tears or this movie for so long.
Jonathan Harker (Unex Ugalde) is sent to the castle of Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann, who would go on to play Van Helsing on the 2013 Dracula series that aired in the U.S. on NBC) and becomes the blood donor for the count and his thrall Tania (Miriam Giovanelli). Meanwhile, his wife Mina (Marta Gastini) comes to London to stay with Lucy (Asia Argento), both of whom will soon be bitten by the vampire. You know the story and you know that Van Helsing (Rutger Hauer) will show up but did you know that he has garlic bullets?
As I wrote, we all know the story of Dracula so when an artist like Argento tells his version, we hope that we see it from a new angle. Or, as Coppola showed in his movie, that a famous director can still be indebted to Mario Bava and Terence Fisher. As for the acting, I never expect much, but Ugalde gives Keanu a run for the worst Harker I’ve seen. At least Hauer and Asia are fine in their roles.
That’s before we get into the effects. Yes, this was made in 2012, but the effects looked dated on release, as if they were from another decade or even more before. The scene where the count turns into a grasshopper must be seen to be believed.
Keep in mind that this movie had Luciano Tovoli as the cinematographer. The same person who did Suspiria and Tenebrae with Argento. I have no idea how they made a movie that looks this cheap. The colors are often muted to the point of blandness or worse, it looks like a house from the 70s with the brightest carpeting possible.
At least Claudio Simonetti did the music.
Giovanni Paolucci produced this. He also was behind the late era Mattei movies. If Bruno Mattei made this movie, I would be singing its praises. One because he died eight years before and the fact that he was back from the grave would make me so happy. Second, this is the kind of movie I expect from Mattei. From Argento, I expect more. That’s unfair, I realize, but when you make at least four — maybe five? — movies that I consider some of the best of all time, you get put on a different level. I also realize that your first album is your best album and this would be several albums from where Argento began but when you call a movie Argento’s Dracula, we want to see your specific stamp on it. Your stamp should not be CGI wolves that feel like they belong on a shirt from Wal-Mart.
In his book Fear, Argento said, “I was able to experiment with new movements and close-ups; using the most innovative technologies on the market means rediscovering the original wonder of the director’s job. It was as if what I was shooting had turned into the first movie of my career, and I had to learn everything from scratch.”
He also claims that his goal was to show Dracula’s romantic side and his transformation ability. “…for someone like myself who founded their very career on animals this was a unique opportunity to give free rein to my imagination. As so during the course of the film — thanks to digital effects — the Count turns into an owl, a wolf, a praying mantis, and materializes as a swarm of flies and an intrusion of cockroaches.” He also says that this was inspired by Hammer.
He also tells a story where he and Tovoli got lost in the rain. That seems to be what this movie is all about. A film about a great director lost with technology that he thinks is the future yet holds him in the past, unable to create something that stands the test of time.
I want to love this movie and it does everything it can to keep that from happening. The idea of the town working with the count? Great. The idea that there are hatchet murders in that town? Awesome. It goes nowhere. And there’s so much nudity and gore that you wonder, “Is Argento making his Joe D’Amato tribute?”
Also: This music video makes me laugh. I mean, no one told the drummer not to wear a jersey in a castle and maybe at least try and feel somewhat in the appropriate era?
Amelia (Vail Bloom) and her teen son Rex (Nikolai Soroko) have moved to a rich neighborhood after the failure of her husband’s business and his death. There’s not much money but Amelia has a job and is doing the best that she can to give her son a new start. Rex begins to date Darla Jones (Nikki Nunziato) and Amelia sees so much of herself in this young woman. But when she accuses her son of having nonconsensual sex with her, she has to decide if she’ll believe this girl or her flesh and blood child.
Directed by Bruno Hernández and Damián Romay and written by Philip Lawrence, I am shocked that this entire film was not created by artificial intelligence. The last part of the movie has many twists and turns that you honestly lose track of who you can trust, who is right, who is the villain and if we should even care about Rex, who often acts like the worst person in the world and one who you really could see sleeping with a girl who says no. Then again, the scene where Darla blackmails Amelia only to collapse because she’s pregnant? That’s why I watch Tubi Originals.
No human being acts like anyone in this movie. Everybody hates everyone, everyone is horrible, everyone is at their highest level of drama at all times, people made shady business deals and then scream at each other, all while a strange old man that owes something to someone is involved in everyone’s dirty laundry.
Stephanie (Vanessa Simmons) and Irvine Douglas (Jerome Ro Brooks) have been raising their developmentally challenged son Gerald (Perry Madison) with the help of their nanny Gloria. However, she has decided to move back in with her mother and this places their round the clock care needs in question. Luckily — well, you’ll see — Irvine and Gerald soon meet Olivia Stockton (Tationna Bosier), who is working in a coffee shop. Gerald seems to like her and her resume looks good.
Maybe you should do a background check.
As Olivia deals with David, who suffers from asphasia, which is a brain damage-related injury that causes speech issues, she starts taking over the house. After all, Stephanie is busy. And doesn’t Irvine look like a strong man to marry?
Meanwhile, her brother David (Maurice G. Smith) has been cleaning up her crimes since childhood and Detective Tonya (Jennifer Freeman) has been after him ever since. After all, he and his sister killed and covered up the murder of her best friend Amber Stevens. He’s still wearing her friendship bracelet to this day.
Directed and written by Bobby and Renee S. Warren Peoples (he’s directed 65 movies, she’s got 59), this movie sets up all the things that you want from the bad nanny genre. Does she make out with the dad? Does the developmentally challenge child finally stand up to her? Does the mom try and stop her? It does all that and has David, who only says the words “Tee tee water,” which is his “I am Groot.” He uses it throughout the movie to convey so many different things.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Folk horror
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s novel The Family of the Vourdalak inspired part of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and this film follows the same story.
Directed by Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) and written by Eduardo Manzanos, Romano Migliorini and Gianbattista Mussetto, this starts with Nikola (Gianni Garko) being found frozen and near-death. When the gorgeous Sdenka (Agostina Belli) visits him, he screams until he’s forced into a straight jacket.
We then learn how he came to be in this place. He was driving through the snow and narrowly hit a girl with his car. Then, he watches as Gorca Ciuvelak (William Vanders) and his son Jovan (Roberto Maldera) bury a family member. They invite him to stay the night as his car is damaged as he had driven off the road. There, he meets the dead brother’s widow Elena (Teresa Gimpera), her children (one is Cinzia De Carolis) and the other family members, all of whom fear leaving the house after sunset. Then, Gorca decides to get revenge and kill a witch. The family decides if he doesn’t return by morning or has any change in him, they will kill him.
What follows is a workout for effects master Carlo Rambaldi, because while Bava did his movie with color and camerawork, this goes berserk with torn out hearts, exploding heads and maggots. Oh yeah — also full frontal female nudity, showing how far Italian genre morals had descended — no complaints — in the past decade.
Despite Ferroni needing a hearing aid, he wasn’t some doddering old man. There’s an influence of Night of the Living Dead in this as well as a ferocious energy here. The ending is brutal and goes for it. Maybe there is room for two wildly different takes on this story.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall… who’s the fearest of them all? Looks like I just bought 7 years’ bad luck! Speaking of bad luck, it’s time for another nasty little terror tale from my crawly collection… and this one’s got a message, too. It’s a story about greed, death and a girl, who learned that beauty… is Only Sin Deep!”
This story originally appeared in Haunt of Fear #24. It was written by Otto Binder and drawn by Jack Kamen.
Sylvia (Lea Thompson) is a call girl who sells her beauty to a pawn shop operator named Joe (Britt Leach) so that she can get the money she needs to lure Ronnie Price (Brett Cullen) into marrying her. Joe uses a plaster cast of her face to bring his dead wife back and tells her in a few months, if she doesn’t pay him back, her face will start to lose its looks. The problem is, she forgets when the money is due and suddenly needs a hundred thousand to get her face back. By this point, no one recognizes her, not even her rich new husband, who she shoots to get the cash. But alas — it’s way too late to fix anything.
Thompson’s husband Howard Deutch (Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, The Great Outdoors) directed her in this story and she was friends with Cullen for a long time, which made the love scenes somewhat hard to film. This episode was written by Fred Dekker and Steven Dodd.
I have to confess, I’ve had a crush on Lea Thompson forever and seeing her be a cruel woman who kills a pimp and uses a rich man, well, that adoration is not leaving me any time soon.
“Poor Sylvia, eh, kiddies? Guess she heard the old saying, “if looks could kill”… so she did! Haha! Just goes to show ya, if you wanna sell yourself, take a look in the mirror, first. Eurgh! Well, see you next time, boys and ghouls!”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daughter of Dr. Jekyllwas first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 22, 1963 at 3:00 p.m. It also aired on July 11, 1964 and February 20, 1965.
Janet Smith (Gloria Talbott) and her fiancee George Hastings (John Agar) arrive at the English manor house that she will inherit the next day. They’re met by her guardian Dr. Lomas (Arthur Shields), housekeeper Mrs. Merchant (Martha Wentworth), groundskeeper Jacob (John Dierkes) and Maggie (Molly McCard), who is Janet’s personal maid. They’re worried that she’s getting married so quickly, as she’s inheriting a sizeable sum of money, as well as another inheritance: she’s the daughter of Dr. Jekyll who was a werewolf, which is something new on me.
That night, Lomas hypnotizes Janet. Before bed, Maggie warns her that this is the night that her father rises from the tomb. When she sleeps, she dreams that she’s killed a woman. She wakes up to blood all over herself and a werewolf in her mirror. Ah, but is she just seeing things because of Lomas? Or has she really become a lycanthrope?
Shot in a house on 6th Street in Los Angeles, near Hancock Park, you can occasionally see late 50s cars through the windows, despite this being set in the past. After playing double features with The Cyclops, this was sold to TV by Allied Artists as part of their 22-film Sci-Fi for the 60s package which includes Terror In the Haunted House, House On Haunted Hill, Not of This Earth, The Hypnotic Eye, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Atomic Submarine, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The Bat, Caltiki the Immortal Monster, The Cyclops, The Cosmic Man, The Disembodied, Frankenstein 1970, World Without End, War of the Satellites, From Hell It Came, The Giant Behemoth, The Indestructable Man, Spy In the Sky and Queen of Outer Space. Obviously, Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater purchased this package of films.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Trogwas first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 18, 1978 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on April 10, 1982.
Trog makes me sad. Beyond the fact that it feels a lot like King Kong or Son of Kong—a doomed monster from our past that just can’t survive in today’s horrible modern world—it’s also depressing at times to watch Joan Crawford act her heart out in a film where no one else can come close to her power.
That’s not to say this is a bad film. It’s delightful and well-directed by genre vet Freddie Francis (Tales from the Crypt and plenty of other wonderful Amicus portmanteau films). It’s also quick-moving and enjoyable.
But it’s still sad.
A troglodyte (TROG!) is found alive in the caves of England. Dr. Brockton (Crawford) has had some success communicating with him and sees him as the missing link. However, her neighbors do not like her having a monster in her house, mainly after it kills a dog when it steals his ball.
Local businessman Sam Murdock (Michael Gough, who appeared in many Hammer films and as Alfred in the 1980s and 1990s Batman films) worries that the creature will negatively impact local businesses. But he really has an issue with a woman being in charge.
Meanwhile, Trog undergoes multiple surgeries, which enable him to learn to communicate. In a trippy sequence, we see into his mind, which is filled with memories of the Ice Age and dinosaurs.
The court upholds Dr. Brockton’s goal of teaching Trog, so Murdock sneaks in and lets him loose. He kills several people, including the businessman, before taking a little girl and retreating to his cave. Dr. Brockton can communicate with Trog, and the girl goes free. Meanwhile, soldiers open fire on our titular caveperson, and he falls to his death, impaled on a stalagmite.
As Dr. Brockton leaves in tears, a reporter tries to interview her. She has no comment as she wanders away.
See? Depressing.
Due to the film’s low budget, Crawford used her own clothes. And it shows. She’s a beacon of fashion in a grimy town. She stands out like no one else. And speaking of suits, the one for Trog was left over from 2001: A Space Odyssey!
This was Crawford’s final film, but I don’t believe the TV show Feud: Bette and Joan. She’d continue to act afterward, appearing in an episode of TV’s The Sixth Sense called Dear Joan: We’re Going to Scare You to Death. If you’ve ever listened to My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, that’s where the sample on the song “A Daisy Chain for Satan Comes From.”
PS: I would know none of this were it not for Bill from Groovy Doom.
I’m glad I watched Trog. But the sad ending — and thinking of Joan changing in her car during the breaks in filming — make me a little misty-eyed. That said, it’s one of John Waters’ favorite films, so there’s that.
October 26: A Horror Film Released by Something Weird on VHS
La venganza del sexo (Revenge of Sex) was released by Forbes-Unistar in the U.S. with the amazing title of The Curious Dr. Humpp.
Dr. Humpp (Dr. Zoide in the original, played by Aldo Barbero and wearing a wild outfit) plans on giving mankind eternal life using the power of the human libido. He has kidnapped several people*, including Rachel (Gloria Prat) and her boyfriend, a few hippies, a couple of lesbians and a woman with photos of naked men, and plans on forcing them to make love as much and as often as possible.
He also has a monster to kidnap these young sexual folks.
George (Ricardo Bauleo) is a reporter who follows Dr. Humpp after watching him buy boner pills at a pharmacy. Why does a sex doctor need to buy these things? He follows him to his secret lab and gets captured. He and Rachel make a plan and while George is getting it on with the nurse (Susana Beltrán), he learns that she wants to escape and be part of their plan. The monster has also become obsessed with a stripper that he captured.
Directed by Emilio Vieyra (who wrote this) and Jerald Intrator, this is a movie filled with dialogue like, “I must position this positive electrode against the nerves of the libido. If this experiment succeeds, I’ll not only be able to restrain lust, but also turn humans into veritable screwing machines!,” “Sex dominates the world! And now, I dominate sex!” and “It was I who first discovered how to make a man impotent by hiding his hat. I was the first one to explain the connection between excessive masturbation and entering politics.”
Fog. A monster that plays guitar. A strange and haunting soundtrack that’s as much jazz as early electronic music and I have no way of making it fit into a single category. A movie that tries to look like an Italian horror movie but also has nudity in nearly every scene. And the main power lurking in the shadows? A brain kept alive in fluid. And yes, one of my favorites, ether kidnapping.
The love that I have for this movie cannot be calculated by the logic of alphabets and the weights and measures of the human race.
*All of these scenes are inserts added when the movie made its way to the U.S. You can see Kim Pope (Intimate Teenager) and Kim Lewid (A Thousand Pleasures).
26. ANY WITCH WAY YOU CAN: Cast your eyes upon a spellbinder.
Adele Karnstein (Halina Zalewska, An Angel for Satan) is accused of witchcraft and burned, but really it’s because she wouldn’t sleep with Count Humboldt (Giuliano Raffaelli). When her daughter Helen (Barbara Steele) confronts him, she even offers her body to him to save her mother. The Count still watches as her mother is burned alive and tosses Helen off a cliff. To add even more pain to the Karnestein family, her sister Lisabeth (also Halina Zalewska) is taken in by Humboldt and eventually married to his nephew Kurt (George Ardisson).
As a plague destroys the country, a storm blows in on the night of the Count’s death, bringing Mary (also Barbara Steele) who inspires Kurt to kill his wife and be with her. Bad idea Kurt. This is an Italian Gothic and all men are morons who must be destroyed by the female ghosts of past tragedy and the curses of mothers whose daughters could not save them.
I mean, Barbara Steele is a ghost whose skeleton is reanimated by lightning. Can movies get any more magical? Do you know how much it makes me fall into a dream of movie drugs to have Steele walking through a cobwebbed castle in a white nightgown holding blazing candles?
While written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Tonino Valerii, neither had enough experience to direct — or so said producer Felice Testa Gay — which brought in Antonio Margheriti to make the film. For as much as Margheriti is known for his miniature-rich war movies, he had a talent for making movies like this. Just check out Castle of Blood, The Virgin of Nuremberg, The Unnaturals and Web of the Spider (which is the first film on this list but in color and without Steele).
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