“Eh, you’ve seen one exorcist flick, you’ve seen ‘em all,” scoffs the B&S Movies surfer.

Oh, how wrong you are, you wee demon-possession babe in the woods.

There’s nothing in the post-William Friedkin horror oeuvre that will prepare you for this German rip-off. . . . Not Assonitis’s Beyond the Door. Not de Ossorio’s Demon Witch Child. Not Bosch’s Exorcismo. Not Gariazzo’s The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. Not Mickey “Mario Bava” Lion’s The House of Exorcism. Not Cascio’s The Return of the Exorcist.

None of these Italian and Spanish demon-possession soirées compare to the silver screen sleaze that is Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil. And you thought the Germans crossed the boundaries of bad taste with their Hammer Studios witch hunt rip-off, Mark of the Devil (1970)? And you thought The Eerie Midnight Horror Show threw Friedkin’s class and style out the window? Not even Tony Curtis’s pimple-on-the-neck-turns-into-an-Indian-demon-shaman buffoonery of The Manitou (1978) is up to the challenge of this X-Rated demon romp.

“I want to take communion, but not in my mouth, but down in my ‘hoo-hoo,’ you dirty nun ‘boinker,’” Magpie caresses her “triangle of death” before a priest. “When are you going to ‘screw’ your housekeeper,” she rants to Father Ed in an un-synced dub that makes Italian Giallos look in-sync.

Welcome to the X-Rated adventures of Linda Does Berlin, aka Satan’s Full-Frontal Lesbians School for Girls.

Our story beings with a Godspell-cum-Rocky Horror Show cast reject, aka a prostitute, walking down the street on a pleasant Ash Wednesday evening who launches into scenery-chewing hysterics at the discovery of an old man, Joseph Winter, crucified Jesus-style on the gate of her apartment building and . . .

Jump Cut! We’re in a record store with hot German chicks so we can meet ol’ Joe’s niece, Magdalena, who’s off to a party at her boarding school. . . . Now, if you know your Eurotrash cinema, you know the entire student body—even the headmistress and the instructors—at all-female boarding schools are red-herring “lesbians” because, well, all of the girls in Eurotrash-boarding schools are lesbians and up to some nefarious, bitchy deeds to torture the naïve innocent girl who just had a rich uncle kick-the-bucket, aka Joseph Winter.

. . . And cue the swarm of buzzing-house-flies SFX so people know shits-about-to-go-down. Ol’ Uncle Joe is sitting up in the morgue and, for whatever reason, this inspires Maggie to spaz n’ spider-arch and spew some rabies-foam and ruin the Lesbian School for Girls party. But that’s just plot piffle: We got ourselves two red-herring lesbians on the stairs giving us a “triangle of death” rub and a full-frontal rack at the 15-minute mark. What does this have to do with the plot? Nothing, it’s the ubiquitous and unnecessary “de Ossorio” lesbo-scene—so the director has a fantasy to jerk to after the day’s wrap.

Uh-oh. The eerie synth-music backing the buzzing flies . . . here we go. And Magpie is a-kung-fu fighting and trashing a kitchen and wants the school’s headmistress “inside of her.” Yes! Magpie’s gone full-frontal at 20 minutes with some invisible demon sex and Satan is going for some back-door action.

More buzzing flies . . . Mags has another episode and climbs a concrete wall like a spider monkey and takes a nap on top of ol’ Joe’s grave. Do we get a Carrie-style hand pop through the dirt? A Phantasm dwarf? It’s a dream sequence, right? Nope, she really did run away from the school to sleep on ol’ Joe’s grave. And on the way to take a cat nap on Uncle Joe’s grave, Mags hitched a ride and, big surprise, it’s time for the obligatory you-owe-me-for-the-ride rape gag so she can “wishbone” his legs . . . and rape him! Dick Hurtz, indeed.

Meanwhile, lamps and paintings are flying around on wires in the school’s attic. Why? Who cares! We have another full-frontal “triangle of death” rubbing alert at 31 minutes and Magpie’s off on another rabies-Tourette’s rant that puts Ms. Blair to shame.

Okay, I’m getting bored . . . cue the buzzing flies SFX. Now ol’ Magpie is on a McCambridge-PMS magnum opus to a priest and tearing through bibles like Jon-Milk Thor through a phone book. Will Mags kiss the priest and blow ‘em up like a water bottle (it’s a Jon-Mikl Thor thing)? Nope.

Now we’re in Exorcist II: The Heretic territory—even though that hasn’t been released yet to rip off—with the ol’ psychobabble-and-attach-the-electrodes-to-her-head-scene. Is it epilepsy? Tourette’s? Schizophrenia? Split Personality Disorder? Manic Depression? Why is no one listening to the priest? Eh, who cares? What’s up with the staircase lesbians? Are they drugging Magpie to steal Uncle Joe’s inheritance? Nope. Toss that red herring back in the water and just wait for a Paul Naschy-styled, out-of-left-field dues ex machina to appear.

So . . . the electrode-brain-scan hocus pocus tell us Mags needs some time in the county to ride horses and bicycles in a plaid mini-skirt and go-go boots to, you know, pad the film’s short running time. (This clever music video created with the film’s filler scenes—set to Cat Stevens’s “Morning Has Broken”—sums it up nicely.)

There are those flies, again. . . . Yes! Magpie’s going topless and picking up strange men in bars via pressing her nips into a windowpane. . . . Now, if I may interject for a moment: If ever the time comes when I see a woman pressing her ta-tas onto a windowpane and “wants me to give it to her now,” I just naturally assume the chick must have a demon rattling around inside of her—and I get the hell out of there . . . but this dude. . . . Yes! Full-frontal alert at 55 minutes and Magpie’s pitting two rapists against each other and one stabs the other . . . what the hell? She’s vanished into thin air.

La, la, la . . . more romantic bike rides in the countryside . . . friggin’ horses . . . a Table Tennis match with a romantic piano interlude? Okay, wait. Hold on! We may have a full-frontal moment here. . . . Nope. More horseback riding? What happened to the Table Tennis sex scene? Oh, wait! Naked piano playing and autoerotic asphyxia in the parlor. . . . Nope.

Now the cops arrested a burglar at ol’ Uncle Joe’s apartment whose babbling about the “man in black” who killed ol’ Joe. Why? Who? We’ll never know because “Joe” gave creepy-red herring-trench coat-burglar guy a push over a Hitchcockian-Vertigo stair railing at the police station. What does this have to do with the plot? It’s another red-herring tosser for the river.

Okay, so doctor dude at the psycho-chateau can clearly see Magpie is completely unhinged—devil possession de damned. Naturally, he jumps into the sack. I guess he didn’t hear the buzzing flies nesting in her Devil’s Triangle south of the 41st parallel.

Finally! We get to the Mercedes McCambridge-demon-voice-bed-flip-out scene of the movie so we can learn who in the hell this demon is and what this full-frontal lesbians excuse of a mess has to do with Magpie’s uncle and this red-herring burglar.

Welcome to the plot twist: Uncle Joe was frequenting prostitutes and his wife murdered him. So ol’ Uncle Joe, and Auntie Winter’s suicide soul, are inside our Magpie fighting each other and . . . okay, enough of that plot piffle. We have another full-frontal invisible demon rape scene at 1:15 with only seven minutes to go . . . well, whadda ya know . . . ol’ Joe, you sly-pedophile.

Are you following? Uncle Joe is the horny devil, doggy-style rapist. And all of Magpie’s mouthin’ foam moments—that was Auntie Winter. You got that? At least I think that’s what’s going on with this Euro-demon tomfoolery. . . .

Okay, so for a little back story to clear up this mess:

In the beginning of the film, during the initial investigation of Uncle Joe’s Ash Wednesday crucifixion, the headmistress of Magpie’s prep school told the detectives “how excited” Mags would be when it came time for one of her “visits” with Uncle Joe. Where do we file this uncle-niece incest insinuation? Is it a dues ex machina, red-herring, or MacGuffin incest? Someone please cue the random, Paul Naschy errant knight and out-of-left-field zombie attack. Will Mags use her demon-soul to resurrect the dead to attack the psycho-retreat? Nope.

And the flies are back so Magpie can set fire to the psycho-farmhouse and swing an axe and . . . one “Our Father Who Art in Heaven” later and . . . Magpie is spitting up a gummy fishing worm that turns into a baby garden snake. What the hell? Ladies and gentlemen: We have our Ruggero Deodato-denying-he-sliced-up-a-live-turtle-during-Cannibal Holocaust moment! Horny doctor dude just head-stomped a live snake! Call PETA. Alert the ASPCA!

Huh? We can’t file charges. The snake-evidence just vanished into thin air.

“There are things between heaven and hell,” so says horny doctor dude.

Yes, and there are things between one’s ass cheeks and the toilet.

---

For an alternate, less unhinged perspective on Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil, you can check out Sam’s take on it.

Also be sure to read his reviews of the film that started the whole ‘70s Euro-demon enchilada, The Exorcist, and its sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic.

And where did all of this demon possession hocus pocus originate: Check out Brunello Rondi’s (Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle) Il Demonio (1963; The Demon) starring Daliah Lavi. Her spider walk exorcism scene (without wires) says it all; you won’t sleep for a week after watching it.

You want another totally inappropriate, blatant rip-off of The Exorcist? Then check out 1975’s The Return of the Exorcist.

About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his rock ‘n’ roll biographies, along with horror and sci-fi novellas, on Facebook.

Vampires, cannibalism, graveyards, nudity, and gore. Oh, my!
Vampires, cannibalism, graveyards, nudity, and gore. Oh, my!
I’m confused. What’s going on? Who is that? Oh, my!
Why is there no apostrophe before the “s” my dear, Dorothy?
Because there’s more than one vampire, can’t you see?
So, doesn’t the “Night Orgy” belong to the vampires many;
There should be an apostrophe after the “s” I do believe.
You’re over analyzing the film, R.D;
Just turn your neck so I can feed, as
Punctuation lessons are not part of my blood cult’s creed.
I know, Helga, my dear;
You’re sick and tired of my pseudo Dr. Seuss poetry.
Yes, R.D, you are a dumbass film dweeb.
I’ll shut my mouth;
Click your heels, dear Helga;
Let’s slop across this bloody brick road.
We’re off to see the Blood Countess . . .
The wonderful Blood Countess of the Night Orgy Oz!

Now we’re talking. A film with the words “Vampires” and “Orgy” and a Paul Naschy connection! Look at that DVD cover. You got two semi-breast shots. You got one hot vamp-babe carrying a woman and another vamp-babe goin’ down on a guy’s neck!

Is this one of those rare occasions when the cheesy art work lives up to the film? Eh, sort of. It depends on which cut of the film you’re seeing. You know how it goes with American TV and video distributors: they never want us Euro-horror lovin’ horndogs have any fun!

The Naschy connection comes in two forms: First, we have heart-melting Belgian actress Dyanik Zurakowska from his Mark of the Wolfman (1968) and The Hanging Woman (1973) as a vamp-victim (she’s starred in 40 films, so you better get to a-rentin’!). Then we have Naschy’s long-time collaborator, León Klimovsky, who directs this dripping-with-atmosphere tale.

And that’s not all! Wow! Look at this cast!

We’ve got two Juan Logar alumni: American expatriate actor Jack Taylor of Autopsia (1973) and Jose Guardiola of Transplant of a Brain (1970).

Then we’ve got Maria Jose Cantudo of Paul Naschy’s Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973), Amando de Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” sequel, The Ghost Galleon (1974), Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (1970; with Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinksi and Herbert Lom), and Klimovsky and Naschy’s Universal tribute, Dr. Jekyll vs. The Wolfman (1972). Maria also went full frontal in Franco’s hardcore-porn vamp-romp, Bare Breasted Countess (1975).

And there’s Luis Ciges of Naschy and Carlos Aured’s Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974) and Horror Rises from the Tomb, along with Klimovsky and Naschy’s Vengeance of the Zombies (1973). Along with Helga Liné, Ciges was also in Klimovsky’s The Dracula Saga (1973).

Rounding out the cast is Manual de Blas of The Ghost Galleon and Paul Naschy’s Hunchback of the Morgue (1973), along with Charo Soriano from The Garden of Delights (1970), and Fernando Bilbao from de Ossorio’s Fangs of the Living Dead (1968) and Franco’s Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972).

And . . . sigh! Dear Lord, be still my heart and hold steady my tender loins as the star of this Spanish vamp festival is Helga Liné (Eugenio Martin’s Horror Express; 1972) as the rich bitch blood countess-vampire queen of the hive. (I’m bending my head to expose my neck now, Helga!)

And with this cast—led by Helga—who needs continuity or logic?

As is the case with most Spanish horror films of the period: Two versions of La orgía nocturna de los vampires were shot: one with actors clothed and one with nudity. The clothed version was mostly for Spanish distribution while the nude version played in the rest of Europe—and the clothed ones (with more edit-killing continuity) ended up on U.S TV in the ‘70s and VHS video in the ‘80s—and appears in this Mill Creek cut (and most of the econo-friendly box sets).

Regardless of the “orgy” and the implied “gore,” there isn’t much gore and the nudity is only in three scenes—and the “orgies” are so-so. When the gore comes, it’s effective; but what The Vampires Night Orgy does have, as do all of the what-the-fuck-is-going-on shenanigans of Spanish horror films: lots of atmosphere.

And not a lot of sense: The “churchless” town is deserted, but there plenty of clean beds and the booze flows plentiful at the local tavern. But it’s the “afterworld” and the devil or a connected blood countess can make “things appear,” right? And while there’s booze, there no meat to serve the tourists to keep ‘em fat and happy. So the vamps hospitality-string along any stranded tourists that happen by, suck them dry, serve the leftovers to the survivors, then suck another one, etc., and so one. And Helga gets first choice: always. In one scene: she plugs a horn dog, sucks ‘em, then tosses the meat out the second floor window to the fanged hoards below. (Bitch be crazy! Helga I’m ready for my window toss!)

To place this film into a contemporary context with a film you’ve more likely heard of or seen: 30 Days of Night, only with its vampire town in the Carpathian Mountains run by Helga as a bus load of six tourists take the obligatory “wrong turn” and end up in the uninhabited town of Tonia, Transylvania—where the vamps are more cannibals than vamps and attack in Lucio Fulci-style, zombie wolf packs. And that pack is in full force when Jack Taylor (Luis) and Dyanik Zurakowska (Alma) barley make it out with their blood intact in an escape-by-chased car scenario. When they arrive safely in Bojoni, the town of their original destination before their detour, the superstitious townspeople pull the ‘ol Hershell Gordon Lewis Two Thousand Maniacs dues ex machina on them: there is no such town. Huh? So the vamps weren’t “vamps,” they were the ghost of vamps? Denied! What the fuck is going on here!

Eh, screw continuity. Screw logic. Screw the perpetual stupidity of the tourists. People are vanishing and dying, yet the little daughter of one is allowed to prance in the mountains and run in a graveyard with a ghost boy? Screw it. Screw the dubbing that rivals the worst in Asian cinema. Screw it. Follow the Red Brick Road to Madrid . . . Helga Liné is at the end of the line.

She’s the Wicked Witch of My West and so help me god, trust me, you’ll enjoy every bite. It’s a wonderful Spanish Oz.

About the Author: You can learn more about the work of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writers for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note: We got hornswoggled on this one. Mill Creek’s Pure Terror 50-pack doesn’t carry this Indonesia horror: it programs the British-made Satan’s Slave (1976). No worries, we reviewed that Norman J. Warren programmer as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Gorehouse Greats 12-pack. You can read it, here.

Now, let’s check out the Indonesian one — with that pesky plural “S” that hung us up.

It’s time for more cheap n’ scary—yet creative—fun with another Indonesian horror film with its roots nourished in the horror films of the West—with Muslim and Hindi religious beliefs substituted for the usual Christianity-based horror themes. However, while American horror films are mostly blood and gore for the sake of blood and gore, Indonesian horror films carry a deeper religious message regarding the folly of abandoning one’s longstanding traditions and beliefs.

How accurate are the various, bargain-DVD imprints marketing Satan’s Slaves as an Indonesian version of Don Coscarelli’s cult horror hit, Phantasm?

If you go into this expecting an Asian-inspired Angus Scrimm-cum-Leàk crypt keeper guiding an army of dwarfs and flying cutlery guarding a dimensional portal with a Lady in Lavender sidekick, you’ll be disappointed. There are, however, moments of visual déjà vu with the film’s teen protagonist riding a motorcycle through a cemetery and there’s a fortune teller that knows more than she’s telling, and . . . that’s about it.

The more expansive similarities are of the narrative persuasion: Phantasm’s Mike and Satan’s Slaves Tommy are both teenagers dealing with the death of a parent and the resulting fears regarding death and dealing with loss and abandonment issues that leave them tangled in a psychological web.

As with its American antecedent, a teenager, Tommy, and his sister (instead of a “Jody”) deal with the death of their mother; their affluent-materialistic family, unable to cope with the loss, completely abandoned their already lackadaisical religious beliefs. As result, Tommy delves into black magic and searches for solace with Darminah, a fortune teller he recognized attending his mother’s funeral. Once Daraminah works her way into the family’s good graces as the family’s maid, Tommy’s friends and family members suffer violent, Omen-styled deaths and the Salem’s Lot-reminiscent shrouded ghosts and reanimated zombie-vampires appear.

Is this Indonesian horror entry worth the watch? It depends on a horror buff’s opinion. Me? I say pair it up with the shot-for-shot The Exorcist clone, Seytan (1974), and The Evil Dead clone that is Mystics in Bali (1981) for a night of fun.

Did Bach Ke Zara (2008) deliver on its reputation as Indonesian remake of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981)? What are your feelings about Mystics in Bali (1981; The Leàk), its Taiwanese remake, The Witch with the Flying Head (1982; Fei tou mo nu), and the Chinese-inversion, The Corpse Master (1986; Jiang shi shao ye)—all which are rooted in the 1967 Russian film, Viy, based on the Nikolai Gogol tale?

While this Mill Creek reissue of Satan’s Slaves—as part of their Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack—is a minor curiosity for U.S audiences, it was a major, influential hit in its homeland and Japan. Sources place the domestic release of the film at 1980, but it seems to be more likely released in 1982; international distribution outside of the Pacific Rim countries didn’t occur until 1987.

The film was such a substantial hit that a remake became a pet project for Indonesia’s most successful horror director, Joke Anwar (Ritual, The Forbidden Door), who cited the film (as B&S Movies’ readers cite Phantasm) as his favorite childhood film. He eventually convinced Rapi Films, who released the original, to let him do it. Released in 2017, Anwar’s remake received thirteen nominations—the most for any picture that year—including Best Picture in The Film Festival Indonesia, and became the highest grossing film of 2017 in Indonesia.

If you’re up for other films influenced by Nikolai Gogol’s classic horror tale, search out the Yugoslavian film, A Holy Place (1990), the Russian horror film, The Witch (2006), and Park Jin-seong’s excellent, Evil Spirit (2008).

There’s a non-dubbed and non-subtitled upload of the 1982 original on You Tube. Vudu has the 2017 remake.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

I’ve seen way too many Dyanne Thorne films . . . and I’m proud of that fact. The only other person I know who’s seen more than I . . . is the freak that runs B&S Movies.

“Who’d the frack is Dyanne Thorne?” you ask.

You’re kidding, right? She’s Don Edmonds’s “She Wolf”!

“Who’s Don Edmonds?” you reply.

Oh, dear god. Sit down, kiddo. Ya needs sum ‘80s VHS schoolin’.

Dyanne was born in Greenwich, Connecticut (the home state of Michael Sopkiw), and got her start alongside Robert De Niro in a lost black-and-white experimental short, Encounter (1965) . . . De Niro received an Oscar nod for Taxi Driver (1976) and won an Oscar for Raging Bull (1981) . . . Dyanne was torturing female prisoners for Nazis and Oil Sheiks for Don Edmonds (Tender Loving Care).

Yes, Hollywood is a cruel bitch.

Dyanne’s starred in four of the ‘70s trashiest Drive-In fests that became ‘80s video rental de rigueur: Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975), Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (1976), Wanda, the Wicked Warden, and Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (both 1977). (How did she not end up in SOVs like Blood Cult or the pseudo-porn of Spine? I mean, she was half way there with the Ilsa movies.) (Oh, and Dyanne made Wanda and Tigress without Don, so, please: spare the server space with the e-mails.)

Oh, yes Dyanne. You had this wee lad at the first push of the VCR’s start button with these two ditties . . . or is that . . . never mind!

And so . . . with no less than three video store membership cards in hand, this celluloid connoisseur embarked on his obsession with Dyanne Thorne: Love Me Like I Do (1970), the porno-fairy tale (see, told you so!), Pinocchio (1971), her turns as Alotta (!), the Queen of the Witches in Blood Sabbath, and Boo-Boo in The Swinging Barmaids (1972). And who can forget her “mainstream” role working with Ray Sharkey and Marjoe Gortner and Robert Z’Dar in Hellhole (1982)? And would you believe Dyanne worked alongside John Ritter and Jim Belushi in the spy comedy, Real Men (1987)?

So thank you, Mill Creek. Thank you for including at least one Dyanne Thorne flick on your Pure Terror 50 Film Box Set (the recap list of all the “Pure Terror” films reviewed) so this writer can sigh and swoon over Dyanne all these years later. . . . (Wink, wink: There’s two Dyanne reviews: Jennifer Upton reviewed Blood Sabbath for Pure Terror Month. So life is good.)

The twisted mastermind behind this tale of a nightclub singer’s nightmares becoming reality—or are they?—was California-born thespian Peter Carpenter who, along with fellow actor Chris Marconi, formed a production partnership and secured a distribution deal with the epitome of film exploitation, Crown International Pictures (Orgy of the Dead, Blood of Dracula’s Castle, The Crater Lake Monster, and Galaxina, just to name a few).

Sadly, we never got to know the full potential of Peter Carpenter’s horror visions.

As the duo began working on their third sexploitation-horror romp, Middle of the Night, Carpenter suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died* shortly after the release of Point of Terror. He made his acting debut in Russ Meyer’s Vixen! (1968) and, back in the days when X-Rated dramas were “chi-chi to see” and advertised in the movie sections of mainstream-commercial newspapers, costarred with Dyanne in the hit Swedish sex-romp, Love Me Like I Do (1970). After making his screenwriting debut with Blood Mania, Carpenter and Thorne costarred in his second feature, Point of Terror.

Is this a gory blood fest?

Nope. But you get to watch Carpenter on stage and in the studio singing his soon-to-be “hits” “This Is . . .,” “Lifebeats,” and “Heart of the Drifter” an awful (awful) lot.

It’s a psychological-sexploitation romp (add graphic kills and you’d have Spine) concerning a red pants-suited, fringe-swinging Tom Jones-clone’s descent into madness—with the occasional burst of (not-so-graphic, off-camera) violence. Do you get-off seeing an old guy in a wheelchair pushed into a pool? Have you ever wanted to see a film that was written by Mario Bava and directed by Russ Meyer and produced by Jean Rollin—who subsequently fires Meyer and hires Jess Franco to finish it because, well, you know, things worked out okay with Franco’s weirdo, X-Rated erotic-horror mystery, Venus In Furs?

Then this is your movie. Only, be warned. This isn’t as “good” as a Franco-fest. And there’s no Klaus Kinksi to class-weirdo the proceedings.

Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter) dreams of stardom as he swings his Elvis-hips for the très chick boozy ‘n sex-starved old broads at the Lobster Lounge, who he subsequently beds (and gives ‘em “the crabs”). Things start looking up when he beds Andrea, the “young,” drunk nympho-squeeze of a wheelchair-bound music industry professional who, if we are to believe Andrea’s best friend, Andrea “put him there” because the sex was that incredible. Daaaamn, Dyanne. Damn.

Do we get to see Dyanne nekked? Yes we do! We even get her naked on a boulder—or was that her step-daughter? Oh, who cares, it’s a naked babe on a beach boulder—and her being joyfully “buoyant” in a swimming pool. Wee! However, ugh, we also get lots of Carpenter backdoor mud-flap action and many almost-see-his-family-jewels shots. Where’s Dyanne’s “triangle of death” shot? Oops, there’s those damn camera angles and edits again. Denied again.

Anyway . . . amid the Hard-R-cum-Soft-X sex rompin’ and Carpenter’s bag-o-cats caterwauling, it seems he has a “psychological break” and has dreams of a giallo-styled killer with a butch knife. And you’d think bangin’ Dyanne Thorne would be the sexual mother lode of “triangle of death” strikes . . . and he’s got a recording contract in the bag for bangin’ the old bag. Nah, Tony Trelos’s pocket rocket is always at the launch-pad; now he’s bangin’ Dyanne’s step-daughter.

Oh, did we mention that when Dyanne came o’ callin’, Tony ditched his pregnant girlfriend? Did we mention Dyanne may have killed the first wife of wheelchair-in-the-pool guy? And the step-daughter sex isn’t just “sex,” but something else? Is Peter another one of these blackout-and-I-woke-up psycho murders? Is Dyanne the murderer? Her step-daughter? Tony’s preggo-ex? Who’s Henry James-screwin’ whom?

And proving everyone—even in Hollywood—has to start somewhere: Oscar-winning editor Verna Fields—who earned an Academy Award for her work on Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and edited American Graffiti (1973) for George Lucas—edited this Peter Carpenter tour de force.

Alex Nicol, the man behind the glass eye, closed out his directing career with Point of Terror and made his debut with 1958’s The Screaming Skull.

Some other Crown International Pictures flicks you can check out on B&S—that we actually got around to reviewing—are Low Blow, Killpoint, Nine Deaths of the Ninja, The Patroit, Sharks’ Treasure, and Van Nuys Blvd.

* It’s a “urban legend” in horror cycles: In reality, Pete didn’t die in the early ’70s. He simply left the movie business, only to pass away at the age of 56 in 1996 in Los Angeles. Or did he. . . .

Update: July 21, 2021: We’ve since reviewed Peter Carpenter’s third film — his first as a writer and producer — Blood Mania, contributed to us by guest staff writer Eric Wrazen for our month-long Mill Creek box set blowout back in February, as part of our Gorehouse Greats 12-pack tribute.

So, after discovering our review for Point of Terror — as part of his own research on the life and career of Peter Carpenter — uber fan, librarian Mike Perkins (thus his awesome research on Peter), let us know that Peter Carpenter did, in fact, die in Los Angeles, in the community of Alhambra, on April 2, 1996. Mike also discovered Peter’s birth name was Nathaniel Joseph and, prior to his work in film and music, Peter served in the Air Force.

Mike is a man on a mission: Surf over to his very cool Flickr posting featuring early photos and ephemera on Peter. Mike’s also honored Peter Carpenter by not only having Peter’s IMDb page updated with correct information, he’s also created an all-new Find A Grave entry to honor Peter’s life. Is Mike working on Peter’s well-deserved Wikipage entry? Yes, it’s currently in development.

And, for additional reading, be sure to check out this incredible (two-part) expose on Peter Carpenter’s life and career courtesy of B&S About Movies’ friend Mike Justice, on his The Eerie Midnight Night Detective Agency blog. Strap it on, as both Mikes’ fandom and research are great reads. (Thanks for turning us on, Mike #1, as this article by Mike Justice slipped by us.)

Yeah, we love our readers! Thanks for contributing to B&S About Movies, Mr. Perkins! (Yeah, we love you too, Justice.) And we love it when our readers reinforce and uplift our passions in honoring the actors and filmmakers of our youth — and not tear down our efforts. You gotta fight for the ’cause to preserve films!

About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his rock ‘n’ roll biographies, along with horror and sci-fi novellas, on Facebook.

“The worms are waiting are waiting for you, Gladys!”

If I had a nickel every time a fellow film lover told me they hate Italian Gialli and that the films make no sense. . . . It certainly doesn’t help when a skull-faced woman in a curly-red wig and flowing nighty sashays around a crumbly castle. I guess you have to be a video store dork raised on UHF television suffering from a case of the nostalgia-blues to understand the attraction of a skull-faced woman in a curly-red wig and flowing nighty sashaying around a crumbly castle.

Today, with the advent of DVDs released through boutique imprints, horror connoisseurs can watch these Neapolitan thriller-horrors in their pristine state, free of the heartless butchering imposed by American distributors for their ‘70s Drive-In and UHF television and ‘80s VHS distribution. It was those distributors—according to Roberto Curti’s comprehensive Giallipedia, Italian Gothic Horror Films 1970-1979 (2017)—who additionally cheapened the beauty of Evelyn with William Castle-styled camp-servings of “bloodcorn,” actually dyed-red popcorn. I guess dumping red food coloring onto popcorn was cheaper than printing up bogus “insurance policies” (a stunt pulled on Night of Bloody Horror, also available on the Mill Creek Pure Terror 50 Box Set) or “vomit bags.”

Evelyn circulates under a variety of titles on public-domain, bargain DVD box sets (and its early ‘80s VHS reboots), such as The Night She Rose from the Tomb, The Night Evelyn Left the Tomb, Evelyn Raises the Dead, Evelyn’s Back from the Dead, and the really crummy title of Sweet to Be Kissed, Hard to Die. Don’t be fooled: When you come across any of those titles, know you’re seeing a heavily-edited cut—not that the American cuts under the film’s original title are any better. Thankfully, Sinema Diable, Sinister Cinema, and Arrow Video each offer restored, uncut letterbox editions of the film in its full 99-minute format. However, if you’re not a hardcore Giallo fan and can’t afford to purchase boutique DVDs, the version provided on the Mill Creek Pure Terror 50 Box Set is a great introduction to the golden era of Italian horror cinema.

This twisty whodunit-hybrid mixed with British Hammer-Amicus gothic overtones is directed by Emilio P. Miraglia (of the Giallo The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) and tells the tale of a psychologically-troubled British aristocrat recently released from an asylum who’s haunted (read: obsessed) by the death of his “cheating” first wife, the red-headed Evelyn. To assuage the “haunting,” he seduces red-heads in the local taverns that he subsequently tortures and kills in his kinky dungeon. Then he meets and marries Gladys (Marina Malfatti of the Giallo All the Colors of the Dark), which triggers a series of Twitch of the Death Nerve-styled deaths at Lord Cunningham’s crumbly, remote estate. Or is this more Henry James-inspired “turning of the screws” afoot amid the greedy cast of characters?

One of the Lord’s “conquests” is Erika Blanc of The Devil’s Nightmare, Mario Bava’s Kill, Baby, Kill, and the German Hammer Studios-inspired romp, Witches Tortured Till They Die, aka Mark of the Devil II, and a slew of Italian spaghetti westerns with the words “Django” and “Fistful” in the title.

There are two trailers available: The Italian version, while nicely cut and more “stylish,” it looks like it’s promoting an episode of TV’s Columbo—with an occasional splash of a full-frontal and a web-strewn crypt. The American trailer cheeses it up a bit, but at least shows Evelyn isn’t a G-rated American detective romp, but the Giallo-gothic screw turner we know and love.

Ugh! We lost the Italian one. Argh! At the risk of another black box of death: we’ll link instead of embed the American one. We also reviewed this, previously, due to it’s Arrow reissue. Of course, you can get a copy — plus 49 more films — on Mill Creek’s “Pure Terror” box set, which we reviewed, in full.

About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his rock ‘n’ roll biographies, along with horror and sci-fi novellas, on Facebook.

Don’t let the addition of this ‘80s Amsterdam-bred thriller’s inclusion alongside the American, low-brow ‘60s horrors of Night Fright and Night of the Blood Beast in this Mill Creek Pure Terror 50 Movie Pack leave to you believe this movie will be a boring watch. While it doesn’t provide the ‘80s slasher overtones coupled with cliché horror shock-twists in which American audiences are accustomed, those who enjoyed the Dutch art-thrillers The 4th Man (1979) from Paul Verhoeven and The Vanishing (1988) by George Sluizer will be drawn into the film noirish twists of De Prooi (The Proof, aka Death in the Shadows).

As with the previously referenced films, the cinematography of De Prooi is polished; in conjunction with the score, the film maintains a purposefully sullen mood throughout. An added plus: the English dub is excellent. As with any giallo-influenced thriller—regardless of the lack of blood (so we have a film noir here)—red herring characters are afoot and the obligatory “strange things” start happening, i.e., an address book leads to a weird couple who run a garage that want nothing to do with Valerie and say they never heard of her dead mother. Val discovers Ria, her mother’s friend and neighbor—who moonlights as a peep show worker—is suddenly planning a trip to Sri Lanka. When Val finds a regretful long-lost “uncle,” he’s murdered. Then there’s Val’s mother’s red-herring ex-employer, a local lawyer who’s a bit too eager to help Val. And on the night her boyfriend doesn’t pick her up for a party, someone runs Val’s bicycle off the road.

Da. Da. Dun. Another You Tube trailer upload bites the dust.

Written by the husband and wife, editor-and-directing team of Ton Ruys and Vivian Pieters (she’s the executive producer of the oldest and longest-running Dutch daytime-series, Goede tijden, slechte tijden, aka Good Times, Bad Times), De Prooi tells the story of a soon-to-graduate high school student, Valerie Jaspers, and her mother, Trudy, who live a quiet, middle class life in a village outside of Amsterdam—with skeletons.

When her mother becomes a victim of what seems to be a random hit-and run, an autopsy reveals that it wasn’t an “accident”: Trudy was run over twice. The police investigation reveals that Trudy was never married and had no children: she’s not Valerie’s mother. So Val sets off to solve the mystery—of not only who her real mother is, but who murdered the woman she thought was her mother.

As with any film noir, an Italian Giallo-influenced masked assailant will make sure those skeletons are kept closeted. Remember being disappointed by the forced, homogenized ending tacked onto the 1993 American remake of The Vanishing? As with most Euro-thrillers, there is no warm and fuzzy ending cast in the shadows of this effective, chilling and dreary Dutch thriller.

About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his rock ‘n’ roll biographies, along with horror and sci-fi novellas, on Facebook.

A movie starring a Pittsburgh born-and-bred actress who starred as Yeoman Tankris in “Wolf in the Fold” on Star Trek, and as Jeanne Leeds, one of Mr. Drysdale’s secretaries on The Beverly Hillbillies, and as Darlene Wheeler, Ebb’s girlfriend on Green Acres?

Yeah, I know it’s weird that I can “six-degree” Judith McConnell like that. She’s this Pittsburgh born-and bred-Trekkies dream! To the transporters, Scotty!

Hold on there, Bones. Stow the pocket rocket.

Before Judith McConnell beamed to the Philippines to quench the blood lust of fellow ‘60s television mainstay, John Considine (who made his film debut as “Doctor Death” in 1973’s Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls), she had to meander through the New Mexico desert so a devil-worshipping cult could maintain their eternity in The Brotherhood of Satan (1971).

. . . And somewhere between being a member of Ted V. Mikels’s The Doll Squad (1973) and finding steady work in the American daytime dramas As the World Turns, Another World (86 shows), One Life to Live, and Santa Barbara (over 1,000 episodes!), she appeared in this Filipino pseudo-vamp potboiler.

So, this movie is about . . .

Hey, there’s Filipino cheap-fest mainstay and Ciro H. Santiago’s favorite actor, Vic Diaz, from Beast of Yellow Night, The Big Bird Cage, Superbeast, Daughters of Satan, Black Mama White Mama, and Equalizer 2000!

Gulp! It’s Brigette Bardot’s doppelganger, Jennifer Billingsley, from Burt Reynolds’s rednecksploitation classic, White Lightning (1973)!

There’s that bucktoothed hottie, Tani Guthrie, from Daughters of Satan (1972) playing another twisty, witchy-bitchy blood priestess!

R.D! We get it! All of the B-Movie actors you love are in the movie. What’s it about? Is it as tantalizing as the art work depicts? A film featuring Judith McConnell strapped to assembly-line style tables under the tagline: They need a special liquid to stay young. It is thick, red and warm, must be hot n’ sexy!

Yeah, you’d think.

It starts off AWESOME, with Judith McConnell go-go dancing in a cage for a bunch of horny, on-shore leave U.S sailors . . . that’s kidnapped by mysterious, crimson-hooded figures. . . . That’s what’s great about these Filipino horror flicks: there’s never a shortage bikini-clad, hot white chicks to kidnap and sacrifice.

So, anyway . . . going along for the boat ride to Baru’s (John Considine) plastic-trees jungle and papier-mâché caves, jungle-cult island getaway are Fredricka Myers, Chiqui da Rosa and, GULP!, Jennifer Billingsley who, at first, assume they’re going to shipped to Hong Gong for the sex trade.

Didn’t you girls read the “plot twist” in the script? You’re going to be “blood cows” for some eternal youth elixir hocus pocus in the name of a “God” that is a . . . disembodied talking head in a glass box?

So how does the mayhem end? I bet they’re building a Frankenbabe with all the “best parts,” like in Blood Cult (1985), to put the “head” on, right?

Nope.

Baru decides to defy the “Ring of Age” and spend his mortal life with Jennifer Billingsley. Yep, the little head out thinking big head screws up yet another evil plan. . . .

What? Huh? Ssork! Is the movie over?

Yeah, this one’s a sleeper that even Judith the babe can’t save. If this had only been a Star Trek episode where Kirk and the gang land on a planet with a blood-cult society tying up all the red mini-dress lassies. . . . Why the hell not? With all the flowing pastel getups and Considine’s high-collared Dr. Strange wares, it looks like that Star Trek episode with David “Hutch” Soul feeding that stone-cave god. (Check out this review of Soul’s In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I Murders for last month’s Scarecrow Pyschotronic Challenge.)

It’s not a surprise the film ended up being the first and last writing-directing features effort for television actor-director Terry Becker, who directed episodes of Mission: Impossible and starred as Chief Sharkey on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

After The Thirsty Dead, John Considine returned to TV work; in the ‘80s, you couldn’t not see him on a TV series—mostly notably the daytime drama, Santa Barbara, and multiple episodes of MacGyver.

As for Judith McConnell: She’ still thespin’ in 2019 with roles on the successful web-soap opera, The Bay, and truTV’s comedy series, I’m Sorry. . . .

Oh, by the way: Judith McConnell maintains a “Bacon Rating” of “1”; she co-starred with Kevin Bacon in 2016’s The Darkness. It was produced by Blumhouse Productions, known for the low-budget horrors Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Get Out, Insidious, Happy Death Day, and Halloween.

About the Author: You can read the music and film criticisms of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his rock ‘n’ roll biographies, along with horror and sci-fi novellas, on Facebook.

In preparation for my review contribution to B&S Movies’ tribute to Mill Creek’s Pure Terror 50-film box set, which features Paul Naschy’s debut appearance as the devil worshiping knight Alaric de Marnac in Horror Rises from the Tomb, I wrote a June 2019 review of de Marnac’s second film appearance in 1983’s Panic Beats. In that review I pointed out that contemporary horror fans proclaimed: “Naschy is boring.” (You can learn more about Naschy’s oeuvre with his 1975 post-apocalyptic romp, The People Who Own the Dark, which I reviewed for B&S Movies’ September 2019 Apoc Tribute Month. See our “Atomic Dustbins” Part 1 and Part 2 for the complete list of reviewed films.)

(And yes: This “review” is also a Naschy dissertation that goes 18k words off the rails, so pull up a popcorn bag.)

Throughout his catalog, Naschy crafted films with admirable nods to Alfred Hitchcock, but Naschy didn’t craft scenes with a Hitchcockian eye. At the height of his Spain-based cinematic weirdness in the early 1970s, Naschy (and Italy’s Dario Argento) need not be concerned with the ultraconservative American standards and practices that shaped Hitchcock’s visions. Naschy let the tits fly and the colors run red—misogynistic outcries be damned.

Naschy doesn’t do bloodless cut-away murders shadowed on walls. Naschy doesn’t go “Nicolas Roeg” with artsy love-making (read: fucking) jump edits. If Naschy directed Paramount’s mainstream giallo move, Don’t Look Now (based on a Daphne du Maurier story; her story, Rebecca, inspired Naschy’s Panic Beats) . . . oh, what might have been, Julie Christie.

The charm of Naschy’s films, for us lovers of Spanish and Italian Euro-horror, is that logic and reality goes out the window—more so when they’re edited for “offensive content.” So with Horror Rises from the Tomb (aka, El Espanto Surge de la Tumba) it’s more of Naschy’s patented, cursed kitchen-sink mayhem with a vertigo-mixture of fortune tellers, séances, supernatural shenanigans, medieval warlocks, witch finder generals and executions, demon possessions, Satanism, vampires and bisexual vampiras, talismans (in place of crosses), a pinch of lesbianism and a dash a necrophilia, giallo-styled kills, disembodied heads, coffin-based revivals, and errant zombie attacks.

Also in classic Naschy style: exquisite women—the kind that makes Garth Algar feel like he climbed the rope in gym class—are at the forefront. In Euro-trash horror women are ubiquitously attired in graveyard-sensible mini-skirts, dresses, and hot pants. Here, in the snow-swept mountains of this Naschy bizzaro-universe, women sashay through the chilly halls of the estate’s unheated mansion-chalet in the sheerest of negligees.

Horror Rises from the Tomb served as the first of four collaborations between director Carlos Aured and Naschy: the screenwriter and star. Next was their Hammer/Universal tribute, Curse of the Devil (El retorno de Walpurgis; 1973), then their giallo entry, Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (Los ojos azules de la muñeca rota; 1974), and their Spanish updating of Universal Studios’ The Mummy (1932): The Mummy’s Revenge (La venganza de la momia; 1975). The film also marks the first time Aured took on full directing duties, after serving as an assistant to Leòn Klimovksy, who also directed Naschy penned-and-starring horror romps. It’s always a family affair with Naschy’s company of Grand Guignol players.

Naschy’s cinematic inspiration behind Horror Rises from the Tomb was Universal Pictures’ The Thing that Couldn’t Die, which played on a drive-in double bill with Hammer Studios’ Horror of Dracula during its initial release. In Thing, the resident damsel-in-distress discovers an ancient chest; opening the box with a belief it contained treasures, she unleashes the wrath-head of a 400-year old sorcerer. Seeing the double-bill in his youth, the film had such a profound effect on Naschy that he played a “disembodied head” a second time—instead transferred to a different body—in Crimson: The Color of Blood (1973). Naschy connoisseurs, however, debate whether The Thing that Couldn’t Die inspired Naschy at all: Naschy stated in interviews that the film was in homage to Luis Buruel’s Exterminating Angel (1962)—a tale about a group of narcissists “trapped” while attending an upper class dinner party at a remote chateau (which also fueled the plotting of 1975’s previously mentioned, The People Who Own the Dark).

As for Naschy’s historical Gilles de Rais inspirations: Not only did the serial killer knight appear in Panic Beats, Naschy utilized Rais to create an all-new lead character in his 1974 film, The Devil’s Possessed (El Mariscal del Infierno; full movie/You Tube), and the Rais-influence appears in Naschy’s giallo entry, Blues Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974; trailer/You Tube). (The infamy of de Rais also inspired Thomas Gabriel Fischer, AKA Tom G. Warrior, to write the extreme metal classic, “Into the Crypt of Rays.” Naschy movies and Celtic Frost? I’m in!)

Horror Rises from the Tomb appears in at least three-distributed versions: One is the “clothed version” that ran in its native Spain—but the gore is intact; and the shorter American-version—with both the gore and nudity cut (which appears in the Mill Creek box set), and the uncut international version (which appears as part of Anchor Bay’s “Spanish Horror Collection” series). So while the U.S version loses 8 minutes of sex and gore—to run at 1 hour 20 minutes—the Spanish version runs uncut at 1 hour 28 minutes. There’s also a rumored “unseen” fourth version at 1 hour 45 minutes floating around in the analog-cum-digital ether.

However, if this is your first time with the oeuvre of Paul Naschy, especially if you’re on a tight entertainment budget, then there is no better primer into his world—and the world of Spanish and Italian horror—courtesy of your copy of Mill Creek’s Pure Terror 50-film box set.

Well, okay kiddies. It’s time to grab your microwave popcorn bags and beware of the 7th moonrise—the head of Alaric de Marnac is coming for you!

Warning: The following film review contains multiple cut-through throats, torn out guts, heart rippings, lesbian sex, and decapitations. Well, maybe. . . .

Paul Naschy—who wrote the screenplay under his real nom de plume, Jacinto Molina—stars as a 15th century medieval warlock-knight accused of witchcraft: the aforementioned Alaric de Marnac—based on the real life sexual-deviant French night, Gilles de Rais. In the film’s atmospheric execution-prefix shot in the dead of winter at Naschy’s country estate in the Lozoya Valley outside of Madrid, we meet Lord de Marnac. As is the case with any sociopath in any century or decade: Alaric is innocent. So he curses his witch hunting identical twin brother, Armand, (Naschy) and his executioner-sidekick, Andre Roland (Vic Winner), right before his beheading (edited; damn it). Alaric’s Elizabeth Bathory-inspired squeeze, Mabille de Lancré, (Helga Liné) is also executed—abattoir-style in a tree-by-feet hanging-dissection and burning (edited; double-dog damn it).

So, denied of our cherished tits and gore within the first five minutes, we fast forward to present day France: Naschy is now a skeptical-to-a-fault de Marnac descent, Hugo. Inspired by two swinging (red herring), new-age mysticism friends bragging about their visit to a fortune teller, Hugo decides to have a séance so Alaric’s “head” can tell him the location of the family’s legendary treasure. And the séance works: The cackling ghost-head of Alaric gives Maurice Roland, Armand’s descendant, an “artistic breakthrough” to finish his latest painting of some black-caped Dracula dude that’s been “haunting his mind.” So he paints the decapitated head of his buddy, Hugo, into the picture—and there’s de Marnac’s disembodied head looking down from the ceiling, dripping blood onto the picture.

So, do you cancel the trip to Marnac country? Nope. You pack your Scooby-snacks and load in the Mystery Machine. Going along for the ride is Maurice’s back-in-town-fuck toy, Paula (Christina Suriani), and (one of) Hugo’s squeezes, Silvia (Betsabé Ruiz). On the way to the remote Marnac chalet-estate, a couple of red herring road bandits attack and wreck the car; then a red herring posse of creepy townspeople serves up some on-the-spot vigilante justice with a gool ‘ol fashion tree hanging. Oh, and to show there’s no hard feelings: the creepy-posse sells Hugo a beat up shit-wagon to finish their trip.

Now, at this point: You’re attacked, you wrecked the car, witnessed backwoods vigilante justice by shotgun and rope—and you still got victimized via the posse-car deal for twenty times the vehicle’s Kelly Blue Book value. You’d say: “That’s it, let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Nope. Onward, brave Ulysses.

So the estate’s longtime, creepy red herring of a groundskeeper—complete with two requisite, stunning daughters designer-dressed for crypt-exploring action, Elvira and Chantal (Emma Cohen and Marie Jose Cantudo)—recruits two toothless wonders from town to dig for Marnac’s head-box for clues to the family jewels. And—big surprise—the groundskeeper and the toothless wonders are in cahoots to steal the Marnac head-jack-in-the-box. Dumbass groundskeeper: the dental-illiterates just double crossed you. When they break open the box; Marnac’s head possesses the sullen-skinny Frank Zappa lookalike of the duo, who subsequently performs a bloodless shadow-on-the-wall kill by pruning sickle (damn editing). Finally—we have our first two kills. No, wait. That’s four: the two roadside bandits by the creepy-posse. But Marnac wasn’t responsible. Kill tally: back to two.

Now what in the hell is this red hearing-cupcake in the requisite mini-dress and chunky Giorgio Brutini designer-loafers screaming about in the dead of winter? Oh, that’s Elvira—she found the two bodies. Oh, did you know that she and Hugo had a “thing” in their youth growing up together at the estate? (Jealous lover red herring. Check.) Was there a Hugo, Elvira, and little sis Chantal threesome? (Red herring ménage. Check.)

Now, at this point, you’ve dug up the box, there’s no family fortune, two guys were cut from asshole to elbows with a sickle, and Frank Zappa vanished like a fart in the wind with the jack-in-the-box. What do you do? Jump into the overpriced posse-jalopy and get the hell out of Marnac Country. . . .

“We need to bury the bodies in the swamp,” Hugo convinces Maurice. And cue the film’s repetitive-annoying rearrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor,” so as evoke a little of Paramount’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and Universal’s The Black Cat (1934) into the proceedings.

So, you just covered up two murders and made yourself an accessory-after-the-fact. What do you do? Get in the car and get the fuck out of Marnac Country. . . .

Oh, Marnac, prince of darkness. Please kill these two dumb-fucks and the shitty organist already.

So Frank Zappa de Marnac the mortal-zombie shows up and gives Chantal a (edited; triple dog damn it) sickle-neck chop in the kitchen. Meanwhile, dopey Paula stumbles around in the unheated manor in the dead of winter in a sheer negligee clutching a candle. Hey, Paula, come on down. You’re kill number four on the Marnac Is Right!

Oops, and there goes big-sis Elvira for a header-by-trip wire down the stairs—kill number five denied; she survives. Did Silvia try to get Elvira out of the way? Or did Chantal-zombie do it? Or did Zappa de Marnac take a swing and miss and cause the fall? Can’t tell you; those crappy edits are back.

So, four people are dead (or six, if you’re still weeping for the road bandits), two of which you buried in the swamp, and there’s been one attempted murder. What do you do? Run?

Nope. You bitch about it.

So Freddie and the Mystery Machine gang assess (read: “ass” ess) the situation and Maurice is pissed that, somewhere along the line, the car—that’s been sitting there unused—ran out of gas (?), some off-camera storm knocked down the phone lines (?), and he’s pissed the townspeople won’t come into Marnac country to help them or investigate the murders.

Now, wait a minute Maurice? You walked into town (off camera) and now you’re bitching to Hugo about how “the town mayor wouldn’t even listen to you” and the “kids threw rocks at me.”? Why the fuck didn’t you get a can of gas or get another car? Why didn’t you hire a delivery truck driver to transport the Mystery Machine gang out of there? And why are you bitching about only having enough food for four days? You were in town, why didn’t you pick up some groceries?

So, while Silvia’s in the kitchen doing the dishes in the middle of a murder spree, and the just-fell-down-the-stairs Elvira is recuperating in bed, Hugo’s decided anytime is the right time for some off-camera, puritanical-edited nookie with Elvira. Yep. People are dying and daddy needs a chug-n-clug. What daddy really needs is a sickle-neck chop for being a dickhead. And you have to hand it to Elvira: she rolled down two flights of stairs unscathed and she’s sweet as a peach and fresh as daisy—and ready for a Hugo-deflowering.

 “Shit,” says Naschy. “I ran out of bodies and red herrings and I can’t afford to hire another actor. Uh, Emma, can you come back to set? . . . No, you’re not a zombie. . . . No, the fall didn’t kill you.”

“Paula, Paula,” says whiny-bitchy Maurice as he goes off into the swamp to brood over Paula’s disappearance. Then, suddenly, the misty, come-hither voice of Paula beacons.

Okay. So, you’re in Marnac country. There’s a killer on the loose and now Paula’s in the middle of the fucking swamp—in a still Downy-soft negligee—without a scratch on her after missing for two days—and you’re going to have sex with her Marnac-possessed body?

“Damn straight,” brags Maurice. “I’m in the middle of a Paul Naschy movie.”

Pocket the rocket, Morey. Thanks to good ‘ol American editing, you and Paula pose for a Hallmark greeting card moment: with a sun-kissed silhouette embrace.

Well, the off-camera, possessed-ghost sex must have blown Maurice’s mind; now he’s a possessed zombie-mortal and does a punch out-kidnap of Silvia in the kitchen. . . . Again: murder and mayhem is afoot and your friends disappear. Shouldn’t you be cramping on the toilet and IBS-ing your brains out of your ass in fear? Who the fuck makes tea and crumpets and does dishes with a Gilles de Rais-inspired knight on the loose?

So Maurice and negligee-clad-in-the-dead-of-winter Paula deliver Silvia’s mini-dressed “warm body” to the family crypt where, with the help of Zappa de Marnac the zombie-mortal, busts open the tombs and Marnac regurgitates some mystical-babble about the “seventh full moon and propitious heavens.” Then the puritanical editing goes off the rails as the revived Marnac takes a sickle to Silvia and does an off-camera heart ripping and cape flip and, well, it seems he stuffed her heart into Mabille’s boney-coffin remains and she’s back. Kill number five: done.

Well, sorry Mr. Zappa, we don’t need you anymore; Maurice sickles him for kill number six. Now it’s time for Alaric and Mabille to have a night on the town and feast on some Marnac descendants—and for Alaric to flip his cape and spin around in dry ice, you know, to evoke Dracula, even though Mardick’s a warlock and not a vampire. And we get two—one male and one female—townsfolk-edited kills: number seven and eight, done. And we’re moving on. I guess the townspeople freaked out over it. Don’t know: bad editing strikes again.

So while the de Marnac’s are having a feast of off-screen kills at the Golden Corral all-you-can-eat buffet, Elriva suddenly remembers . . . “Hey, Hugo, there’s a talisman—“Thor’s Hammers” (some crossed hammer-coin amulet-trinket)—hidden in the bottom the estate’s deus ex machina well.”

What? You lived on the estate your entire life; know the grounds and legend like the back of your hand—and you’re just now remembering—six kills in—there’s a vampire-killing amulet? Give me an axe; I’ll save Marnac the trouble.

Shit! Too little too late: Naschy cued an out-of-left field zombie siege!

Now we’re in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead as the groundskeeper and the schlemiel dumped in the swamp—along with Chantal and Frank Zappa—lay siege to the estate as a Plan 9 from Outer Space fighting force. And when daddy calls out to his sweet Elvira, what does she do?

“Hi, Daddy. May I take your coat?”

So, one makeshift table-leg torch and back door furniture bonfire later: zombies defeated. All that’s missing is the Kelly Blue Book crap wagon making a failed run for the gas pumps.

And we cut back to the crypts: Mabille is in full PMS-lesbian vampire bitch mode; she’s “ravenous” and wants Paula’s heart. No, not yet. The seventh moon hasn’t appeared yet, so declares de Marnac. What the fuck ever, Mardick.

Now, Maurice shows up out of the blue—and he’s not possessed anymore? And what’s Hugo’s bright idea? Hand Maurice a shotgun and an axe, and trek to the swamp to dredge the zombies and burn them before they reanimate for a second attack. Oh, shit! Maurice is still possessed—and he blows Hugo away. You’re a real prick, Alaric the Mardick. And I thought the demons in The Evil Dead were assholes to Ash.

And why the fuck is Elvira trusting Maurice all of the sudden? Oh, yeah, she burnt him with the Thor amulet and excised Alaric once and for all . . . or something. Now that Maurice is a dezombied mortal, he discovers a deus ex machina operator’s manual to kill Mr. and Mrs. de Marnac—if they are ever revived.

Elvira. Again, you lived here all your life. Shouldn’t you have studied and memorized the “How to Kill de Marnac” manifesto cover-to-cover? Shouldn’t you be the resident Xena, the Marnac Warrior Princess by now?

“Oh, by the way, Elvira. We have to go back to the swamp (again) and burn those zombie-bodies,” declares Maurice. “You know the ones that I didn’t burn the last time because I gave my best friend a double-dose of buck shot.”

Uh, Maurice, excuse me, but some serious vampire-zombie shit’s been going down for four fucking days. Maybe if you weren’t so bitchy-whiny and wimpy-brooding in the fucking swamp, you would have found the book sooner—like on day one.

Finally, it’s time for the big show down and the D-grade Bach organ-festival is almost over.

So, Mabille finally has her lesbo-heart ripping moment with Paula. Is there a heart ripping? Is there a lesbo-vampire make out session? Yes. Do we see it? Nope. Cut to: Maurice battles de Marnac to the death in the woodshed and dies by an (edited) axe-to-the-chest—but not before “Thor’s Hammers” serious fucks up de Marnac. Cut to: Elvira, using some magic silver needle voodoo, kills Mabille the vamp-bitch. Cut to: Elvira gives de Marnac the Dick a second dose of “Thor’s Hammers”—and his head falls off. Then he bursts into some Christopher Lee-styled flames and his ashes blow away in the wind.

And sweet Elvira, in her still-perfect makeup and untarnished fashion wares, walks off into the snow drizzle along the estate’s lake and . . . tosses the legendary vampire-fighting weapon into the water. Didn’t you just say—upon the death of your dad and sister—that you have nothing and no one? Sell the one-of-kind ancient amulet; you need the cash to rebuild your life.

And that’s it? That’s the end? No! It’s Elvira’s fault that everyone is dead! Zombies should burst out of the cold lake waters and pull her into the depths of hell for a grand finale! What happened to those two red-herring townspeople the de Marnac’s feasted on? Oh, and while floating around the estate, the de Marnac’s performed an (edited) disembowelment on two more crooks hiding in the bushes conspiring to rob the estate. That’s four potential swamp-lake zombies, right there, to take down Elvira. Did those Marnac-infected victims release a zombie plague in the city? Won’t the townspeople need the amulet?

Great job, Xena of the land of Marnac. If you weren’t so friggin’ hot, I’d “Marnac” you myself.

Oh, shit. A drop of blood just fell on my keyboard from the ceiling. . . . It’s the 7th moonrise already? Where my “Thor’s Hammer”? Marnac!!!

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You can also see Emma Cohen (Elvira) in Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) and The Other Side of the Mirror (1973), Eloy de la Iglesia’s The Cannibal Man (1972), Leòn Klimovsky’s Night of the Walking Dead, and John Gilling’s Cross of the Devil (both 1975).

In addition to appearing alongside Barbara Steele in Nightmare Castle (1965), Helga Liné (Mabille) worked with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in Horror Express (1972), Leòn Klimovsky’s The Vampire’s Night Orgy (1973), and again with Naschy and Aured in The Mummy’s Revenge (1975).

A loyal member of Naschy’s Grand Guignol company of players, Victor Barrera/Vic Winner (Maurice) appeared in Javier Aguirre’s Hunchback of the Morgue and Dracula’s Great Love, and Leòn Klimovsky’s Vengeance of the Zombies—all penned by Naschy—in 1973. He also appears in Eugenio Martin’s It Happened at Nightmare Inn released that same year.

Armando de Ossorio cast Betsabé Ruiz (Silvia) in his Blind Dead sequel, Attack of the Blind Dead (1973). Maria Jose Cantudo (Chantal) made her debut alongside Ruiz in Juan Logar’s Autopsia (1973), and Christina Suraini (Paula), Helga Liné and Betsabé Ruiz worked together again in Leòn Klimovsky’s The Dracula Saga (1973).

Update: July 2022: During the glory days of local UHF-TV channels, AVCO Embassy distributed Horror Rises from the Tomb as part of their Nightmare Theater television syndication package. Sam Panico, our Editor-in-Chief, explores the history behind the package and breaks down all of the films with his mighty fine “Exploring: Nightmare Theater” feature-homage to those lost UHF-TV days of snowy-analog yore.

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Do you need even MORE Paul Naschy? Still? Yikes! Then check out these B&S Reviews to get you started down a Naschy rabbit hole. These reviews, of course, feature links to even more Naschy films.

Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968)
Fury of the Wolfman (1973)
Haunts (1976)
La Noche de Walpurgis (1971)
Seven Murders for Scotland Yard (1971)
The Craving (1980)
The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975)

 

About the Author: You can learn more about the work of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.