I’m going to be posting an Italian Western a day all November long.
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Have a suggestion for me? Check out the Letterboxd list of what I’ve watched and send it to me!
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, July 17, 1971 at 11:30 p.m.
Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater really gave you something of everything: Universal monsters, science fiction, strange movies from Spain and Italy, kaiju from Japan and even krimi from Germany.
Directed by Harald Reinl, Der Würger von Schloß Blackmoor is a Bryan Edgar Wallace adaptation. Not Edgar Wallace, but his son. He wrote books of his own, adapted his father’s stories for movies and even had some of his stories turned into films like this and The Phantom of Soho and The Dead Are Alive. There’s also a rumor that he was an uncredited contributor to the script of The Cat o’ Nine Tails.
The killer in this is strangling people on a British estate. However, not only does he do that, he then brands an M into the foreheads of those he murders and then decapitates them. Well, maybe he likes to make sure that they’re dead.
The masked killer shows up after a party during which Lucius Clark (Rudolf Fernau) announces that he will be knighted. The hooded strangler accuses him of stealing diamonds and killing Charles Manning, then claims that he will kill until he gets what he wants. He may also only have nine fingers and the police, Lucius and his niece Claridge (Karin Dor, who would play Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice and is also in The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Los Monstruos del Terror) must solve the case before more are killed.
October 30: A Horror Film Directed by Koji Shiraishi
This is based on the Japanese urban legend known as Kuchisake-onna. She was a woman who missed her samurai husband while he was away at war and began to sleep with other men. When he returned and learned of how she was stepping beyond the bounds of their marriage, he sliced her face. She came back from the dead as an onryo who covered her face and appeared to people, asking if she was beautiful. If they answered no, they died. If they said yes, she removed her mask and asked again. Now, if they say no, they will die. If they say yes? They will be given a face like hers.
This legend dates back to Japan’s Edo period but came back in the late 1970s, when rumors of her reappearance led to children needing to be walked home by parents from school.
In this movie, rumors of Kuchisake-onna have spread through a small town. School teacher Noboru Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Kato) hears a voice asking “Am I pretty?” while students begin to disappear. One of the students, Mika (Rie Kuwana) doesn’t want to go home to her abusive mother (Chiharu Kawai). The teacher she tells this to, Kyoko Yamashita (Eriko Sato) has lost her daughter to her ex-husband. She hesitates in dealing with Mika and the girls runs away, meeting Kuchisake-onna.
Noboru and Kyoko start to look for the missing children and learn that Kuchisake-onna can possess other women. That’s when Noboru reveals that a woman in a photograph who may be the evil demon is actually his mother Taeko Matsuzaki. She used to abuse him until one day she disappeared. Later, she came to him and asked him to kill her. He slit his mother’s mouth and stabbed her, then dressed her body up in a coat and mask, and hid it in the closet. He thought that would stop the demon but it has only led to decades of possession and torment for women and children.
Directed by Kōji Shiraishi, who wrote the movie with Naoyuki Yokota, this followed his movie Noroi: The Curse.
30. CAMPOTRONIC: A summer camp that puts the zing in blazing inferno, the spice in hospice, the fest in infestation, the fun in funeral. Go and have yourself a time.
Ignore Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers and Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland, as this is a direct sequel to the first movie.
Camp Manabe is where Alan (Michael Gibney) is going through some things. He’s awkward and while he tries to be tough with the younger kids, he’s abused by his stepbrother Michael (Michael Werner) and even a girl named Bella (Shahidah McIntosh). He also gets into it with camp counselors Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) and Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten, who was in the first movie) over the food. Ronnie feels bad for him and lets him go get an ice cream sandwich, which starts another argument between Alan and a cook named Mickey (Lenny Venito). A butcher knife gets thrown, Frank the camp owner (Vincent Pastore) screams at the kid and Alan runs away.
Mickey is soon killed by deep frying and being thrown into a trash compactor.
Alan keeps getting abused. They try and get him to smoke marijuana that is really cow manure and this causes him to fall into another student’s privates. As you can imagine, he’s really getting made fun of now. The kid who caused this, Weed (Adam Wylie)? Well, he’s forced to drink gasoline and smoke a cigarette.
Why would anyone keep after Alan? Why do Michael, T.C. (Christopher Shand) and Marie (Samantha Hahn) force Karen (Erin Broderick) to lure Alan up on stage where he’s stripped in front of the entire camp? Why does anyone let this go on so long?
Only Petey (Kate Simses) stands up for him, which makes Ronnie think that she could be the murderer. Well, the killings don’t stop. Even the owner isn’t safe, as rats eat through his face and come out of his intestines, while Randy gets his penis removed via rope tied to a jeep and Linda goes face first into barbed wire. T.C. gets a sharpened piece of wood to the eye and Bella gets impaled by a bed of nails. Ah man, this camp!
Michael saves Karen at the last minute and finds his stepbrother hiding. He beats him with a mallet, nearly killing him, before being stopped by Sheriff Jerry. He claims that the victims had it coming so…l don’t want to ruin the ending, but it’s pretty great because it gives you what you wanted for the entire movie. Of course, it would have been a better movie if this character was here from the beginning.
Director and writer Robert Hiltzik also made the original movie. This is not as well-recalled as that movie.
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: Hammer time
Directed by Robert Young, with a screenplay by Judson Kinberg and a story by George Baxt and Wilbur Stark, Vampire Circus is pretty great. Young hadn’t made a movie with the studio so he was surprised that when he tried to get an extra week of filming, they just took the movie to be edited.
What they got it one of the most adult and interesting films the studio would ever make.,
Somewhere in Serbia, schoolmaster Albert Müller (Laurence Payne) watches his wife Anna (Domini Blythe) take a little girl into the castle of Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman). She’s become his mistress, helping him to get children and drain them of their blood.
That night, Müller, the girl’s father (John Bown) and a lot of the men of the town attack the castle with nearly all of them dying. Müller puts a stake through the vampire’s heart but not before he curses the village, claiming that all of their children will die to bring him back to life. Anna runs through the village and takes the Count to his crypt just as the castle is blown up. She seeks Emil (Anthony Higgins) and his Circus of the Night.
Years later, the entire town has been quarantined due to a plague. They believe that they are living under the curse of Count Mitterhaus. The Circus of Night shows up, somehow able to get past the blockade of soldiers outside the town. The gypsy woman that leads the group (Adrienne Corri) and Michael the dwarf (Skip Martin) get the tents up and the townspeople excited while Emil and twin acrobats Heinrich (Robin Sachs) and Helga (Lala Ward) find the Count’s body and state his curse.
Dr. Kersh (Richard Owens) goes for help while his son Anton (John Moulder-Brown) distracts the soldiers. The circus also begins, taking in the daughter of one of the villagers who stopped the Count — Rosa (Christina Paul) — while Emil turns into a black panther and kills several others. Anton’s sister Dora (Lynne Frederick) finds several bodies but by now, it’s too late to stop the death from destroying their little town.
The gypsy woman? Well, that’s the mother of Anton and Dora and she wants to use the blood of her children to bring the Count back. Can they save anyone?
Vampire Circus is so great. It’s filled with so many wild sights, it has a full circus with a pre-Darth Vader David Prowse as the strongman, fully painted female dancers and sets that were also used on Twins of Evil.
The end teases that there could there could have been a sequel and man, I wish there had been. The later Hammer movies fascinate me.
You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Blood Mania was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 27, 1976 at 11:30 p.m. It was also on the show on April 14, 1979; December 20, 1980 and January 2, 1982.
Dr. Craig Cooper (Peter Carpenter) is overseeing the care of the dying Ridgeley Waterman (Eric Allison), who is tended to by his daughter Victoria (Maria De Aragon) and round the clock nurse Miss Turner (Leslie Simms).
Victoria has repeatedly tried to seduce the doctor, who has problems of his own. He used to perform abortions when that was illegal and he’s being blackmailed. He finally gives in to her and looks the other way when she poisons her father. Her sister Gail (Vickie Peterson) comes to contest the will, only to learn that she gets everything. She also has a would-be lover — maybe, it’s never outright said but come on — named Kate (Jacqueline Dalya), but once Gail hooks up with the doctor, she leaves. And this all puts Victoria from being bedridden over the will to absolutely a murderer when her sister reveals that she’s taken her doctor from her.
Then she paints in blood.
Shot in a home once owned by Bela Lugosi by Robert Vincent O’Neill, Gary Kent said of this, “Robert was a prop man to begin with. I had no idea he was a director. The next thing I knew he was doing it, and he called me in as a production manager. It was fun. He took it seriously, so you never got the feeling he was just in it for the bucks. I thought it just took him forever to get a shot. He was always fussing over it. It was murder. His movies were long and arduous, but nonetheless I had some affection for Robert.”
According to Leslie Simms, a year after production had commenced, she was called back to complete re-shoots for an alternate cut of the film intended for television broadcast. In order for the film to be shown on TV, the nudity and violence had to be cut. That left a lot of time. They added a subplot that has her nurse working with the blackmailer. Instead of the murders, we see Miss Turner report the killings to the blackmailer.
This movie also has Regan Wilson in the cast. She was Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for October 1967. Those photos were taken to the moon inside the schedule of Apollo 12’s mission commander, Pete Conrad. Her co-star, Vicki Peters, was also the April 1972 Playmate of the Month.
You can also read Eric Wrazen and Bill Van Ryn‘s feelings on this movie.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fabulous World of Jules Verne was on Chiller Theater on June 14, 1980 at 1 a.m. and September 3, 1983.
Vynález zkázy (Invention for Destruction) was brought to the United States in 1961 by Joseph E. Levine. He had it dubbed into English and changed the title to The Fabulous World of Jules Verne, releasing it with Warner Bros. Pictures as a double feature with Bimbo the Great. There’s also a new introduction with narration by Hugh Downs.
Based on several works by Verne, including Facing the Flag, this movie combines the original illustrations from his books with live action. For all that people compare about effects heavy movies that were made on green screen, this film — made in 1958 — has a major effect in almost every shot.
Director Karel Zeman had already made one movie, Journey to the Beginning of Time, based on Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth and made two more movies afterward in this series, The Stolen Airship (based on Two Years’ Vacation) and On the Comet (which is taken from Hector Servadac). This movie also has references to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Robur the Conqueror and The Mysterious Island.
There are also parts of the work of Georges Méliès, Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin and the 1916 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in this.
The artwork comes to life in a variety of styles of animation, including traditional, stop-motion and cut-outs, as well as miniature effects and matte paintings. Actors appear directly within this line art and this movie looks like nothing I’ve ever seen.
The story is about a gang of pirates working for the evil Count Artigas who want to get a scientist to give them his most futuristic weapon. As simple as that is, the film looks incredibly complicated and filled with incredible visuals. Known as Mysti-Mation, this movie looks like woodcut illustrations that can move and house human beings.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Amphibian Man was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 3, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on May 29, 1971. I can’t even believe it. I wonder what people thought of this.
Based on the 1928 novel by Alexander Beliaev, Amphibian Man seems timeless even as its tech seems ancient. It feels like it comes from no set point of origin, as if it could be made today or fifty years ago.
At a seaside port in Argentina, the pearl fishermen all have told the story of an amphibian man who can live in the water. Ichthyander (Vladimir Korenev, voiced by Yuri Rodionov) was adopted by Professor Salvator (Nikolay Simonov), who had to save his life by replacing his lungs with the gills of a shark.
The dramatic thrust of this story occurs when Ichthyander falls in love with Guttiere (Anastasiya Vertinskaya, voiced by Nina Gulyaeva), the daughter of a fisherman and the wife of Pedro (Mikhail Kozakov), who uses the love between his wife and the undersea human to exploit him into getting him more pearls.
As a child, I was always told that Russia was a sad, cold place that had no access to art. How did this beautiful movie come to be? Had I been lied to? Perhaps.
In the January 2018 issue of Indie Cinema, the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water is taken to task, not just for allegedly taking its plot and visuals from the Dutch student film The Space Between Us, but for how close Guillermo del Toro’s film is to Amphibian Man. It’s set in the same year that the Russian film was made and, yes, much of the movie concerns the Russian element in America.
Directed by Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadiy Kazanskiy and written by Akiba Golburt, Aleksei Kapler and Aleksandr Ksenofontov, this is at once a retro future movie — whooshing doors are everywhere and the costume that Ichthyander looks like Alex Raymond or Rick Yager drew it — while it also has musical numbers, which makes it so charming that it nearly breaks my heart.
I mean, read this dialogue:
Gutiere: This must be love at first sight!
Ichtyandr: Is there any other kind of love?
Of course it has to end with its lovers separated by the waves and unrequited love.
Is there any other kind of love?
You can watch this on Tubi.
October 29: A Horror Film That Has Multiple Beheadings
Tag starts with an entire schoolbus full of girls making fun of Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) for being a dreamer before all of them — like fifty people — are beheaded as Mitsuko stands screaming and covered in blood.
This is not the last time that she will be the only survivor.
She wanders through the woods, avoiding a deadly wind, and meets Aki (Yuki Sakura), Sur (Ami Tomite) and Taeko (Aki Hiraoka). The girls discuss predetermination and how they could all die at any moment. Before they go back to class, Sur shares her hypothesis that fate can be tricked by simply doing something one would never normally do.
Back in class, the teacher pulls out a gigantic weapon when no one is paying attention and kills everyone with Sur and Taeko saving Mitsuko, who is again the only survivor as teachers and the wind kill everyone she knows. Mitsuko wanders into town where a cop recognizes her as someone else, Keiko (Mariko Shinoda). She is taken to her wedding, where Aki is her bridesmaid and encourages her to kill all of the other bridesmaids to save herself from being married to the pigheaded groom inside a coffin before the teachers return and attack again. Aki and Keiko defeat all of them as our heroine runs away from the church.
Keiko, who was once Mitsuko, now becomes Izumi (Erina Mano). She’s trapped in a deadly marathon with Aki, Sur and Taeko as they run from the pig husband, the teachers and the wind. Izumi finds her way into a cave where zombie girls try to kill her, claiming that while she lives, they remain undead. Aki saves her and they travel through several parallel world until she demands that Izumi pulls the cables from her arms, killing her and opening a doorway to where she meets a young and old version of a man who is playing as her in a game called Tag that has Mitsuko, Keiko and Izumi as the characters. More than a century ago, Izumi was a girl he admired. He took her DNA and that of her friends and made clones for his 3D game, which is played by men throughout the world. The final part of his game is that she will make love to him.
She then changes the game and each version of herself through all of the different moments of the film kill themselves all at once. She wakes up in a pure white world.
Sion Sono, who directed and wrote Tag, is wild. Seriously, this never stops and never gets the least normal. For a movie that starts with so many heads being removed, you’d think that was the highest point. It’s not. Somehow Sono made four other movies in 2015 and it was inspired by 2008’s The Chasing World.
29. PHANTOM LIMB: Severed or not is optional but this extension of will has to have a different energy pushing it.
Bill Chrushank (Jeff Fahey) is a psychologist working with convicted killers who loses his arm while driving to work. Dr. Agatha Webb (Lindsay Duncan) gets his wife (Kim Delaney) to sign off on an experimental transplant surgery that gives him a new arm. One of his patients tells him that the tattoo could only be from someone on death row and it turns out that he has the arm of Charley Fletcher, who killed twenty people, and now it wants to kill more as it takes over Bill.
The others who got body parts from the murderer, Mark Draper (Peter Murnik) and Remo Lacey (Brad Dourif) aren’t upset about where their parts came from. It’s enabled Draper to be a better artist as he can see the same visions and Lacey is just happy to walk again.
They should have been worried. Fletcher (John Walsh) is still alive and has his head on a new body. He’s hunting down everyone with his body parts and is killing them. Why did the doctor go along with this plan?
The car crash is pretty brutal. That’s because Fahey’s stunt double got launched fifty feet when the safety harness didn’t work. They didn’t die and the real accident is in the movie.
Body Parts was directed by Eric Red, who wrote The Hitcher and Near Dark. He also co-wrote the movie with Norman Snider from a story by Patricia Herskovic and Joyce Taylor. It was based on Choice Cuts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, who were the screenwriters of Eyes Without a Face.
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