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Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: The Wicker Man (1973)

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The Wicker Man begins with Christopher Lee, a Hammer star, talking to writer Anthony Shaffer about more interesting roles. Shaffer had read the David Pinner novel Ritual — which had first been written as a script for Michael Winner, and I can’t even imagine what he would have done — and turned that inspiration into his own story.

Shaffer’s vision for the film was unique. The story delves into the intersection of modern religion and ancient pagan practices. It departs from the typical blood and gore of horror, opting instead for a creeping, unknown terror that lurks in the shadows. This unique approach is what we now refer to as folk horror.

The Wicker Man stands at the crossroads of art and horror, somewhere between movies like Performance and The Devil Rides Out, but with a twist, as the traditional rules of horror no longer apply. The concepts of good and evil, as defined by Judeo-Christian beliefs, are absent in this story. Instead, it’s a journey into the unknown, exploring ancient ways that have existed long before the modern era.

Christian Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) is initially presented as the virtuous hero. He is on the island of Summerisle investigating Rowan Morrison’s disappearance, yet the villagers refuse to admit that she ever existed.

He’s shocked at these people’s ways, which include putting frogs in their mouths to cure illness and dancing around phallic maypoles. He finds images of past May Queens. He meets Lord Summerisle (Lee), who leads this village. And he sees the answers that he seeks, despite perhaps not liking them.

There’s also tempted by Willow MacGregor (Britt Ekland, who was three months pregnant; she was dubbed by Annie Ross, and her body double was dancer Rachel Verney), and there’s a scene where she dances with a wall between her and Howie that is volcanic. It has no nudity, but it’s filled with sensual energy.

Director Robin Hardy also made The Fantasist and The Wicker Tree, a very loose sequel to the original movie. Hardy first published the sequel as a novel, Cowboys for Christ, about American Christian evangelists who travel to Scotland and end up in a similar situation. Lee plays the Old Gentleman, who is either Summerisle or not.

Shaffer also wrote The Loathsome Lambton Worm, a direct sequel that begins immediately after the ending of The Wicker Man. In it, Howie is saved by his fellow police officers. The movie features a fire-breathing dragon and is much more fantastic than the first one.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN), along with the Folk Horror: Lands of Cruelty, Beliefs of Terror program. It includes films like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Eyes of Fire, Kill List, the 2019 French version of la Llorona, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Bldg. N, In My Mother’s Skin and To Fire You Come at Last. You can learn more at their official site.

EXPLORING: What’s with all the Zombie sequels?

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In the spirit of my deep dives into Demons and La Casa, I was excited to discover just how many movies use the title Zombi or Zombie. As I learned which ones were which, I figured it would be a good idea to share my scholarly research.

Dawn of the Dead (1978): Obviously, Zombi is Dawn of the Dead. It was released under that title in Italy and features an international cut by producer Dario Argento that is nine minutes shorter. Debuting nine months before the film played its native country, Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi (Zombies: Dawn of the Dead) has more music by Goblin, less exposition and a faster pace, as well as dialogue and gore that never appeared in any version of Romero’s cuts.

Speaking of that Goblin score—The Goblins—three of their songs are in the U.S. version, and much of the soundtrack would show up in Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead (as well as Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind; Hark was a zombie fan, one assumes, as he made another film around this time called We’re Going to Eat You).

It’s intriguing to me that Dawn is the next part of the story in America. For Italy, it was the first part of their consciousness. While it would be followed by four official sequels and a remake in the West, the unofficial world of Italian exploitation would soon take over and create an entirely new monster from the shambling corpse that originated in Western Pennsylvania.

Zombi 2 (1979): When Enzo G. Castellari stepped away from making an Italian sequel to Zombi , the rules regarding intellectual property rights for installments to movies in Italy were quite hazy. This allowed for Lucio Fulci to be hired to continue the story. His film would sail away from the scientific explanation of zombies in Romero’s work and goes to voodoo for its origins, taking the ultraviolence that Tom Savini created in Monroeville and amping it up for the island of Matul.

Writer Dardano Sacchetti, who wrote this movie as Nightmare Island, said his influences included The Island of Doctor Moreau and classic zombie tales like I Walked with a Zombie, The Walking Dead and Voodoo Island.

I don’t need to sell you the magic of this movie. Romero told Paul Weedon when asked, “So I didn’t pay attention to it and I didn’t go to see them. I’ve seen them since, of course, and I think they’re sort of fun. But I had no particular care or concern about it at all.

I’ve always been sort of off in my corner doing my thing. And I’ve just hit the point where I can’t do that anymore, you know? I can’t hide and just bring the zombies out. I used to be the only guy working with zombies, except for those guys, like Fulci. And that died quickly.”

In Germany, Day of the Dead was Zombi 2.

Zombi 3 (1988): Directed by Fulci and/or Bruno Mattei, written by Claudio Fragasso and Rossella

Zombi 3 (1988): Directed by Fulci and/or Bruno Mattei, written by Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, and all sorts of strange, Zombi 3 was shot in the Philippines. That’s where either Fulci got sick before it was finished or fought with producers. Either way, Mattei finished Strike Commando 2, went home to spend the holidays with his family, and returned to finish the movie with Fragasso.

In the magazine X-Rated, Mattei was diplomatic and even complimentary of Fulci, saying, “…the film’s soul is from Fulci. It was his object, not mine. I only took it over after the main production was finally finished. Fulci was informed about everything, and there was little discussion about it.”

While charitably a mess, the film does have a standout moment with a great flying zombie head attack. This scene, despite the film’s overall quality, is a testament to the creativity and ingenuity of the filmmakers. Additionally, the film features a DJ narrating the movie, a nod to The Warriors, which adds a unique and entertaining element to the viewing experience.

This is not the only movie listed as Zombi 3. Others include Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City, which was released as Zombi 3: Efialtis stin poli (Zombies 3: Nightmare In the City) in Greece; Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground, which was released as Zombie 3 in Japan, Zombi Horror on Italian video and Zombie 3 – Die Rückkehr der Zombies (Zombie 3: Return of the Zombies) in Germany; Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust (remixed in the U.S. as Doctor Butcher, M.D.) was released as Zombie 3, José Luis Merino’s The Hanging Woman (AKA Orgy of the Dead, Beyond the Living Dead, Return of the Zombies and Bracula: Terror of the Living Dead) was sold as Zombie 3 and Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (AKA The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Don’t Open the Window, Don’t Speak Ill of the Living Dead and Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue) was released in Greece as Zombi: Epidromi apo to nekrotafeio (Zombies: Graveyard Raid) and in Brazil and Italy as Zombi 3, despite being made four years before Dawn.

Zombie 4: After Death (1989): Claudio Fragasso, who directed this, refers to it as the “last gasp” of Italian zombie movies. The movie starts as researchers discover that the natives are practicing voodoo. They kill the priest, who places a curse that brings the dead back to life before he dies. Only a young girl named Jenny survives thanks to an enchanted necklace her parents gave her.

Jess Franco’s and Jean Rollin’s A Virgin Among the Living Dead may have been made in 1974, but it was released on video in the U.S. as Zombie 4: A Virgin Among the Living Dead.

In Greece and Australia, Panic (AKA Bakterion) was released as Zombi 4, and Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead was also released as the fourth movie in this series.

Zombi 5: Killing Birds (1987): Whether this was directed by Joe D’Amato, Claudio Lattanzi or Claudio Fragasso, this movie has zombies killing people, birds eating eyeballs and the same house from The Beyond. It somehow also has Robert Vaughn in the cast. I still can’t figure out how they got him.

Jess Franco’s Revenge In the House of Usher was also released as Zombie 5: Revenge in the House of Usher (that title is on the video box only, not the actual movie); Hell of the Living Dead (which was released as Zombi 4 as well) was retitled Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare in America. Seeing as how it rips off Dawn‘s soundtrack, that actually makes sense.

Zombi 5 in Australia is really León Klimovsky’s Revolt of the Zombies (which was re-released in 1980 by Independent Artists as Walk of the Dead complete with red flashes during the gore; it was picked as a Dog of the Week by Siskel and Ebert; it also has the title Invocation of the Devil so that it could be mistaken as an Exorcist movie).

Zombi 6, anyone?:  In Australia, Zombi 6 is a movie that desperately wishes it were Zombi, Dawn of the Mummy. It even has the same markup artist as Fulci’s movie, Maurizio Trani. The Down Under version of Zombi VII: Last Rites is from another entirely different film series. It’s the fourth Blind Dead movie, Night of the Seagulls. Finally, Zombi VIII: Urban Decay is an Australian-made movie.

Jess Franco’s Oasis of the Zombies AKA The Abyss of the Living Dead is also Zombi 6.

Strangely enough, Absurd might be a sequel to Antropophagus, but it was sold on video as Zombie 6: Monster Hunter. That’s OK. Antropophagus came out as Zombie 7.

Even more Zombi: The North Korean kaiju film Pulgasari is a big story in and out of itself — director Shin Sang-ok was kidnapped and taken to North Korea by Kim Jong-il to make the movie — but for our purposes, it was called Zombi 34: The Communist Bull-Monster in Pakistan.

Andreas Schnaas’ Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence was also released as Zombi 7.

How does each country number the movies? Glad you asked.

Italy

Note: While Zombi 4 is titled Zombi 4 in America, in Italy, the film is titled Oltre la more (After Death), while Zombi 5 is Uccelli assassin (Killing Birds).

Great Britain

  • Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) — Zombi 2
  • Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (1988) — Zombi 3
  • Zombie Flesh Eaters 3 (1989) — After Death

Thailand

Germany

Australia

  • Zombi IV: Bakterion (1982) — Panic AKA Bakterion
  • Zombi V: Vengeance (1973) — Vengeance of The Zombies
  • Zombi VI: The Mirage (1981) — Dawn of The Mummy
  • Zombi VII: Last Rites (1975) — Night of The Seagulls
  • Zombi VIII: Urban Decay (2020)

America

T-Z Video/Eddie’s Entertainment also released these movies on VHS in America as Zombi sequels.

Greece

  • Zombi 2: To nisi ton zontanon nekron (Zombies 2: The Island of the Living Dead) (1979) — Zombi 2
  • Zombi 3: Efialtis stin poli (Zombies 3: Nightmare In the City) (1980) — Nightmare City
  • Zombi 4: Meta thanaton (Zombis 4: After Death) (1989) — After Death
  • Zombi 4 (1982) — Panic AKA Bakterion
  • Zombi 5: Matomena nyhia thanatou (Zombies 5: Bloody Claws of Death) (1988) — Killing Birds
  • Zombi: Epidromi apo to nekrotafeio — Let Sleeping Corpses Lie

In summary, I’m sure I missed something, so please add your notes in the comments, and you’ll be credited.

Sources

Wikipedia: Zombi film series

Zombi 3 – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombi_3

Rate Your Music: “The Confusing as Fuck Zombi Series”

Matul Island | Rotten Ink. https://rottenink.wordpress.com/tag/matul-island/

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: Anthropophagus II (2022)

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It’s pretty amazing to me that this movie exists, seeing as how Anthropophagus came out all the way back in 1980—and was spelled Antropophagus—and already has had several spiritual and unofficial sequels, like Absurd—which is closer to Halloween than D’Amato’s first film, which was released as The Grim Reaper in the U.S.*—and the German sort of sequel Anthropophagous 2000, which was made in 1999.

You don’t need to really know anything about the original to watch this.

The BIFFF website has a great line about this: “It ticks off all the boxes of Italian Z-grade trash cinema: an outrageously idiotic script, paper-thin and brain-dead female characters who are more likely to break out into a pillow fight than to engage in a scientific discussion on their thesis (we do hope the filmmakers have met actual women in real life), bad acting made worse by hilarious dubbing and such outlandish amounts of blood, guts, intestines, brain mush, baby removals and other such niceties that put Hostel to shame. In short: pure, unfiltered bad taste.”

A teacher named Nora (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Claudio Fragasso’s 2022 movie Karate Man) has assigned her students — Giulia (Jessica Pizzi, The Slaughter), Angela (Giuditta Niccoli), Diletta (Maria D’Ascanio), Betty (Chiara De Cristofaro), Sonia (Shaen Barletta), Cinizia (Valentina Capuano) and Isabel (Alessandra Pellegrino) — to an assignment that will help her thesis paper on the impact of isolation. She’s gotten the keys to a fallout shelter where numerous people have already died, asked the girls to not bring their phones, and everyone just goes along with this plot.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man (Alberto Buccolini) is hunting them all.

Antropophagus is best known for a scene where Klaus Wortman (George Eastman, who also co-wrote the script for the 1980 movie) tears a fetus out of Maggie (Serena Grandi) and eats it right on camera. For being a degenerate exploitation filmmaker, that film’s director, Joe D’Amato, waited until nearly the movie’s end. Here, it happens three minutes in.

Director Dario Germani started his career as a cinematographer (he’s still working as one, as he made Emanuelle’s Revenge with Carpanese last year, as well as the aforementioned Karate Man), and he understands that for this movie to work, the tunnels — the Bunker Soratte, Gallerie del Monte Soratte — that it takes place within have to be claustrophobic. There are some nice shots within this, as well as some gore — skin rolling off arms — that got close to disturbing me. Writer Lorenzo De Luca doesn’t do much to tie this to the original, and instead, it feels like it could easily be a ripoff of The Hills Have Eyes or Hostel.

Credit — or blame — for putting this together goes to Giovanni Paolucci. Yes, the same man who wrote Ark of the Sun God before writing and producing the last period of Bruno Mattei’s career (from Attrazione pericolosa — which starts Carpanese — to Zombies: The Beginning) and Dracula 3D.

I have to be honest. Yes, this movie is terrible, but if it was shot on film and made in 1980, the dubbing, bad acting and lack of story would not bother me. I wish the monster in this had an intimidating size and aura like George Eastman. The dubbing is so bad here that it made me love what I was watching. That said, I can only imagine someone who hasn’t made it through the assembled canon of D’Amato, Mattei and Fragasso would detest this movie.

*I can make this even more confusing by saying that Absurd was also released as Zombi 6 and Antropophagus as Zombi 7, but let me tell you, breaking down which movies are called what Zombi numbers will give you a migraine. Check out this article to learn more.

I watched this film as part of The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFAN). You can learn more at their official site.

Get ready for the Drive-In Super Monster Rama in September!

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Coming up this September at the Riverside Drive-In is the Drive-In Super Monster Rama! plays for two awesome nights! For just $30 ($15 a night), you get eight astounding movies! Make your travel plans now!

Night one: Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!, Impulse and Shriek of the Mutilated

Night two: Humanoids from the Deep, Grizzly, Piranha and Day of the Animals

You can hang out with some of the biggest movie fans ever, get great food, buy movies, get a drink from me and so much more. See you September 22 and 23!

 

BEARS AND BEASTS ON THE DIA DOUBLE FEATURE!

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This week, we’re heading into the woods and wilds to meet a mutant bear and a SYNthesized GENetic ORgansism. Join Bill and me at 8 PM EST on the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels.

Up first…Prophecy which you can watch on YouTube and the Internet Archive.

Every week, we talk about the movies, share the ad campaigns and have two drinks. Here’s the first recipe:

Gummy Katahdin

  • 1.5 oz. pineapple vodka
  • 1 oz. rum
  • 2 oz. pineapple juice
  • 4 oz. Hawaiian Punch
  • Prepped gummy bears

Day before…

Take a plastic container and line it with 20 or more gummy bears. Pour 3 ounces of pineapple vodka over them and let soak for a day.

Drink…

  1. Combine all ingredients in a shaker with crushed ice and several uncrushed agitator ice cubes. Shake up like you’re a bear destroying an oil industry worker.
  2. Pour in a glass, then drop in those drunken gummy bears. Roar loudly.

Up next is the slasher with a killer that might not be human known as Scared to Death. You can watch it on YouTube and Tubi.

Here’s the second drink.

Spinal Fluid

  • 1.5 oz. pineapple vodka
  • 1 oz. sour apple schnapps
  • 2 oz. pineapple juice
  • .5 oz. lime juice
  • 4 oz. Mountain Dew
  1. Shake all ingredients except Mountain Dew in a shaker filled with ice.
  2. Pour over crushed ice, then top with Mountain Dew.

See you Saturday night!

Chattanooga Film Festival wrap-up

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I’m sad to see another year end at the Chattanooga Film Festival. If you’d like to help the festival — and get some cool movies every month — you can keep the film fun going by joining their Patron. Starting at just $2 a month, you can support independent cinema. At $5 a month, you can join the Double Secret Cinema Society. At $10, you get two secret movies on the 13th of every month!

Here’s what I watched this year. You can also check out the Letterboxd list.

Salute Your Shorts: Includes Stephen King’s All That You Love Will Be Taken Away, Punch the Boss, Solitude, Don’t Look Too Far Ahead, Greenhouse, After Hours, Anya, Crossing Tides, Harmonious, Netneutal, Retribution, The Businessman and Morse Code.

Dangerous Visions: Tell Alice I Love Her, Fetal Position, Glitch, No Overnight Parking, Vexed, Seaborne, Mickey Dogface, The Inverts, Splinter, Stop Dead, They Call It…Red Cemetery, Memento Moti, Stop Scrolling, Dead Enders and Gnomes.

Fun Size Epics: A Good Scream, Ringworms, Kickstart My Heart, Shallots and Garlic, Greetings, The Lizard Laughed, Black Tea, Farmer Ed, Picture Day, Canal, The Five Fingers of a Dog, Likeness, When You’re Gone, The Waiting Room, Or Eggs In Purgatory, Cafe Cicatriz, The Spirit Became Flesh and the Stewards.

WTF (Watch These Films): CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man, Seatbelts, Don’t Let Kyle Sit Down, We Forgot About the Zombies, Variations On a Theme, Foot Trouble, Gold and Mud, The Earthling, The Promotion, Vertical Valor, Foul and FIN.

Red Eye Films: Obsession: A Taste for Fear, Campfire Tales, Tales from the Crypt, The Divine Enforcer, The Haunted, Club Life, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead, Silver Slime, Killing Spree and Possibly In Michigan

American Meltdown

Bad Girl Boogey

Beaten To Death

Brutal Season

End Zone 2

Followers

Hell Hath No Fury

Invoking Yell

King On Screen

Local Legends

Mrs. Booker On 8th Avenue

New Religion

Poundcake

Satan Wants You

Soft Liquid Center

Sour Party

Space Happy

Stag

Subject

Summoning The Spirit

Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood

Tearsucker

The Bigfoot Trap

The Elderly

The Haunting of Hype House

The Last Movie Ever Made

The Legend of Mexman

The Once and Future Smash

The Third

The Weird Kidz

Trap

Trim Season

We Might Hurt Each Other

Next year can’t get here soon enough. Thanks again to everyone involved with CFF.

 

Chattanooga Film Festival: American Meltdown (2023)

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Directed and written by Andrew Adams, American Meltdown follows Olivia Walker (Jacki Von Preysing), who experiences a series of unfortunate events. Her boyfriend Rich (Christopher Mychael Watson) dumps her, her boss puts her on leave to avoid paying benefits, and her apartment is robbed, all on the same day. Her boss blames unions, her property manager, Lou (Clayton Farris), blames her lack of insurance, and the cops seem indifferent. The sheer absurdity of Olivia’s predicament is both amusing and unbelievable.

She becomes friends—and later roommates—with Mari Navarro (Nicolette Sweeney), who starts their relationship by lifting Olivia’s wallet. Their eventual burglary is a humorous yet poignant response to the absurdities the heroine has already endured. Sometimes, humor can be a balm that allows us to address more serious themes. In my mind, we’re going to need more of it to get through the next several years.

It feels like no one is here for you. The majority of the day is work, then more work and the reward is often, well, more work if you can handle it. But said, “You can handle it, right?” The notion that the only way to escape late-stage capitalism is through acts of crime should be frankly terrifying instead of heartwarming, but here we are.

Olivia has to face the idea that to escape the life she’s in, she must destroy it. For so many of us, this means leaving the comfort that we’ve created for ourselves. It’s so much easier to complain and feel that momentary release than to tear off the bandages and attempt to change everything forever. This film makes you face that, but in a way that is gentle, nudging and hilarious. It has definitely made me better consider the choices that I make.

The Chattanooga Film Festival is over. For more information and to see how you can donate so that next year is even bigger, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: House of Usher (1960)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: House of Usher was on the CBS Late Movie on September 19, 1972; March 2, 1973 and July 26, 1974.

Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher,” this was the first of eight Poe adaptions by Roger Corman, often working with writer Richard Matheson. Shot in fifteen days, it was a big gamble for American-International Pictures, who had mostly done black and white double features. This was a color movie with a big budget by AIP’s standards.

The most important thing to know is that the Usher family are all cursed to grow mad and that horrible portent has spread to the very home they live in, which is crumbling around them and even destroying the very ground that it sits upon.

Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon, Black Sabbath) thas traveled to the House of Usher to take his fiancee Madeline, which is opposed by her brother Roderick (Vincent Price), who is determined to see his family’s bloodline end with this generation. This leads to an argument so brutal that Madeline’s catalepsy is triggered, making her appear dead and when she’s buried alive, she fully gives in to the madness within the Usher family, bringing the entire home down in flames all around everyone but our hero, who leaves with nothing.

Although Corman and Lou Rusoff are the people usually given credit for the AIP Poe cycle of films, Damon spoke up on a Black Sabbath commentary track, claiming he gave Corman the idea and was even allowed to direct The Pit and the Pendulum. This story hasn’t been confirmed, as there are several images of Corman directing that movie.

The success of this movie led to not only many more films with Corman and Price working together, but also the same sets and special effects being used over again. You can spot the Usher house set ablaze in more than one movie. It was really a barn scheduled to be demolished.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fearless Vampire Killers was on the CBS Late Movie on February 18, 1972; May 31, 1974 and June 15, 1976.

Pete Stein asked for this movie and I was happy to write about it. Hope he enjoys this.

Created before Polanski’s U.S. debut, Rosemary’s Baby, this film was marketed by MGM as a farce, with twelve minutes cut from the movie, an animated prologue added, and both protagonists dubbed with cartoony and silly voices. This version was retitled from Dance of the Vampires to The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck.

I’ve seen that version of the film, which was the one most commonly seen in the U.S. until it disappeared from circulation in the mid-1970s.

In the early 1980s, MGM found the original cut and released it. This version has garnered new interest and better opinions of the film. I probably need to see that one to evaluate the movie properly, but I’m not sure I could make it through this one again.

Overall, it just feels too cute.

It’s about the adventures of the ancient Professor Abronsius and his apprentice Alfred, played by Polanski. They bumble their way through just about everything they do, which some would take as comedic, but I took as boring and cloying.

They end up in a village filled with angry townsfolk who constantly engage in occult rituals to keep the vampires away. Alfred falls in love with the tavern owner’s daughter, Sarah, but who can blame him? The best part of this movie is the doomed Sharon Tate, who owns every second she’s on screen.

The vampiric Count von Krolock (Ferdy Mayne, who played God in Night Train to Terror) captures her and even turns her father into a vampire. Soon, a convention of vampires and the Count’s gay son enter the story. Yet our heroes are never heroic and simply fail to make it to the movie’s end.

Again, I may need to check out the real version. But I’ve always found this too cheeky. Perhaps that’s the intention, and perhaps it’s just dated. Then again, a few hours of Sharon Tate isn’t the worst thing.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Eye of the Devil (1966)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Eye of the Devil was on the CBS Late Movie on May 10 and September 8, 1972 and September 6, 1973.

Based on Day of the Arrow by Philip Loraine, this was shot under the title Thirteen. It was a prophetic title, as the film had to have felt cursed.

Sidney J. Furie was originally going to direct, but he was replaced by Michael Anderson, who then got sick and was replaced by J. Lee Thompson. Even worse, two weeks before filming was scheduled to end, star Kim Novak was thrown from her horse and hurt her back. Production shot around her, but it would take eight more weeks for her to heal up, so the entire movie was shot with Deborah Kerr.

But the circumstances of her injury remain shrouded in mystery.

In Blow Up… and Other Exaggerations: The Autobiography of David Hemmings, the actor said that he saw Novak arguing with producer Martin Ransohoff, and she was fired afterward.

Philippe de Montfaucon, the Marquis de Bellenac (David Niven), owns an ancient estate in Bordeaux. The grapes have not grown in three years, but he lives far away in Paris with his wife Catherine (Kerr) and two children.

He is asked to come home, where Père Dominic (Donald Pleasence), a dark priest, gives him a strange amulet. After their son Jacques dreams about his father, Catherine takes her children to Bordeaux. As soon as they arrive, they see Christian de Caray (David Hemmings) shoot a dove.

When asked of him, Aunt Estelle (Flora Robson) says that he is “an evil little boy” and that his sister Odila (Sharon Tate) is “no better.” That night, Catherine watches them conduct a ceremony with the body of the dead dove before an old man closes the doors and tells her to take her children and get away.

That’s when she learns how many heads of the family have died and starts to see robed figures everywhere. Her husband must die to keep the family’s fortunes and even the town strong. There’s no stopping it.

Alex Sanders, renowned as the King of the Witches, was the consultant for all the rituals in this movie, adding a layer of intrigue and authenticity to the film’s occult elements.

This was Tate’s first movie and the last black-and-white movie from MGM.