Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1980s

August Caminito planned a sequel to Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre. Step one: Get Kalus Kinski. That wasn’t so hard, as Kinski had already spoken to the writer of the film, Carlo Alberto Alfieri. Kinski signed a two movie deal with Caminito, finally getting to make his passion project Paganini.

Step two: Get a director. Not as simple. Originally, Maurizio Lucidi (The Designated Victim) was going to direct and even shot some scenes that are in the movie but Caminito thought that this should have a higher budget and a more well-considered director. He hired Pasquale Squitieri (Vengeance Is a Dish Best Served Cold) but Squitieri changed the script so much that he was let go. Mario Caiano (Nightmare Castle) was next, but he couldn’t get along with Kinski.

That’s because Kinski refused to wear fangs or shave his head. He argued with Caiano and would not listen to the director saying cut before locking himself into his trailer, as he thought that he was directing the film. In response, Caiano ran into Kinski’s trailer and shouted, “Now you’re directing the movie!”

It was decided that Caminito would direct the film. He’d only directed two other movies, Maschi e femmine and Grandi cacciatori, which also had Kinski.  He had help from Luigi Cozzi, who shot second unit. But Kinski remained, well, Klaus Kinski. He kept changing where he would act from, causing lighting set-ups to be redone and he would never do a second take. It got so bad that the entire crew quit and would not come back until Kinski apologized.

If that’s not bad enough, Kinski fired Amanda Sandrelli and replaced her with actor Yorgo Voyagis’ girlfriend Anne Knecht, who was visiting the set.

After six weeks of shooting, Caminito gave up and tried to edit it together.

A seance awakens Nosferantu (Kisnki) from two hundred years sleep and throws Princess Catalano (Maria Cumani Quasimodo) out a window before stalking her daughter Henrietta (Barbara De Rossi), seducing her while her sister Maria (Knecht) watches.

The monster then easily defeats Professor Paris Catalano (Christopher Plummer), Father Alvise (Donald Pleasence) and Dr. Barneval (Voyagis) before taking Henrietta. Catalano then shouts that only a pure woman willing to give Nosferatu her true love can destroy him before he kills himself by jumping into a canal.

Maria tries to save her sister and catches the vampire’s eye when she climbs to a tower and jumps to her death. He catches her and informs her that he wants to die, but he needs a virgin to love him. They become a couple and wipe out most of the rest of the cast before Dr. Barneval shoots Maria. As she dies, she begs for the undead beast to turn her. He tells her that that is a punishment that he can never give. They wander into the fog without a resolution.

I think I made this sound a little more cohesive than it really ends up.

Characters show up and we have no idea who they are and then disappear. Some of that is because Kinski was a lunatic. He sexually assaulted actresses Elvire Audray and Barbara De Rossi. With Audray, he physically beat her, tore off her clothes and bit her between the thighs, while he was brutally rough in his lovemaking scene with De Rossi.

Every time I write about Kinski, it’s more about how insane he was than how great he is in movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: George “Buck” Flower

Coco (Lola Falana, the singing star who started acting in Sammy Davis Jr.’s A Man Called Adam but also shows up in the Italian Western Lola Colt) gets out of the Nevada prison system by being a witness against her boyfriend Eddie (James A. Watson Jr.). She’s being protected by Ramsey (Alex Drier) and local police officer Doug (Gene Washington) while hiding out at a Lake Tahoe hotel.

She’s being hunted by Arthur (director Matt Cimber, who made The Witch Who Came from the Sea after this) and Big Joe (“Mean” Joe Greene). There are also some newlyweds Arthur (Gary Harper) and Marie (Millie Perkins) who aren’t who they seem.

So yeah, Doug starts to fall for Coco, but she might still be with Eddie. At least George “Buck” Flower shows up as a drunken gambler, which pretty much seems like the role he would do best playing.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: A movie covered by Bleeding Skull

Back in 1986, there was a very real idea that we had broken the world. Or the ozone layer.

Discovered in 1913 by French physicists Charles Fabry and Henri Buisso, it absorbs most of the world’s ultraviolet radiation. This layer of protection for us was destroyed after years of pollution,  chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and bromofluorocarbons, which means unabsorbed and dangerous ultraviolet radiation was now hitting us at a higher intensity.

You can feel the effects now when there’s a bad weather quality day, as what they call bad ozone can cause harm those with respiratory illnesses such as asthma, COPD and emphysema. Code orange kids, unite and try to take over while hacking up your insides.

I tell you all this to inform you that in 1986, there was a hole in the ozone layer and that seemed like as good a reason as any to cause zombies to wander Texas.

Directed by Matt Devlen, who directed and wrote Tabloid, as well as the man who wrote The Invisible Maniac — and produced Crispin Glover’s What Is It?, which quite frankly blows my mind — Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants is the movie brave enough to answer the call to make an ozone-related mutant zombie shot on Super 8 epic.

The spiritual cousin or some family to The Abomination — which has a lot of the same cast and crew, as it was shot first and then this came next — this all starts with Kevin Muncy (Scott Davis, Cody from The Abomination, get ready for a lot of …from The Abomination mentions) sneaking into the trunk of the car of Arlene Wells (Blue Thompson AKA Carolyn McCormick, Bret’s wife; of course she was in the movie you already know I’m going to talk about, playing Kelly. She also edited his movies Blood On the Badge and Armed for Action as well as acting as the costume designer for Time Tracers). They’re on their way to Poolville, Texas — an incorporated community of around five hundred people in North Texas that’s close to the birthplace of Robert E. Howard — he was from Peaster, TX — and Mart Martin, as well as the final resting place of Chewbacca. No, really. Peter Mayhew lived in Boyd, TX.

Anyways, Poolville is at the junction of farm roads 3107 and 920, named for the big pool of water in the middle of town. There are five churches, one for every hundred people.

Back to Ozone. Get ready to meet characters with names like Outhouse Mutant, Car Mutant, Country Store Mutant, Granny Mutant, Big Fat Mutant and Melon Mutant. There are lots of melons. This movie has more watermelons than Mr. Majestyk. It also has effects that make me genuinely concerned for the actors in this, as the effects look like being tarred and feathered. I can only imagine that the zombie makeup stayed on their skin for days and that throwing up all of the multicolored liquids gave them all diarrhea.

This also has some kind of misplaced love story, as Wade McCoy (Brad McCormick, Ike from…yeah, repetition is the essential comedic device) has promised to pick up Loretta Lipscomb (Ashley Nevada AKA Barbara Dow who is in…actually a whole lot of movies, such as The Invisible Maniac, Mad At the Moon, Deathrow Gameshow, Curse of the Queerwolf, Nudist Colony of the Dead, Witchcraft IV: Virgin Heart, Cage II, Red Lipstick and G.I. Jesus) for the talent show down at the general store. We also meet his mother Ruby (Janice Williams), who at one point invites Kevin and Arlene to a picnic that turns into chaos. 

I asked Bret McCormick about this movie and he filled in a lot of the gaps for me.

“We agreed to do these two movies back to back. It was supposed to be like a one-month thing with ten days on each movie. He was supposed to go first. And at the last minute, he backed off and bailed out. So I went in and shot The Abomination first and we shot for 10 days and that was kind of it. The production of Ozone went on for like 22 days. And it got to the point where we just kind of had to say it’s time to stop because it could have gone on forever.”

As to how they were able to just shoot whatever they wanted and not be bothered, he said, “In Poolville, back in those days, I mean, you could shoot a scene on one of the dirt roads, run through the town and be out in the street for 30-40 minutes before a car came by. We were largely undisturbed with pretty much anything we wanted to do out there. The locals, some of them were curious and, you know, helped us out and played big parts in the movie.”

This is the kind of movie where puke and blood get on everything. That’s how they do it in Texas, the kind of place where a chainsaw massacre gets filmed in a way too hot shack filled with real animal guts and the sequel is made in a newspaper printing facility that had ink pouring down the walls and everyone had some mysterious respiratory illness. It feels handmade and not perfect and that’s how movies should be, messy affairs that make you laugh or throw up and sometimes that happens in the same moment.

The score is great, too. The music crew was Richard Davis (who also worked on Dear God No!, Amazon Hot Box, Monsters and, wow, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), John Hudek, Lasalo Mur and Kim Davis, who has worked as a location manager on movies like Alita: Battle Angel, Stone Cold, Problem Child, Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss and Don Henley’s video for “The End of the Innocence.”

Where The Abomination is a film about darkness within the light of religion and literal cancer coming to life to be a Biblical end times beast, Ozone is happier to just be people hooting and hollering, shotgun blasts blowing melons to bits and an ending that’s beyond deserved.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Creepy twins

Daisy and Violet Hilton were born joined at the hips and buttocks, sharing the same blood circulation but no major organs. Their mother was a barmaid and when the owner of her bar, Mary Hilton, met them, she bought them outright. She controlled them with physical abuse and ran their careers until she died and their contracts were given to Mary’s daughter Edith Meyers and her husband Meyer, a former balloon salesman. In their San Antonio mansion, they beat the sisters into learning how to play jazz.

In the early 30s, they legally emancipated themselves with the help of Harry Houdini and went into vaudeville and then burlesque, even doing some limited exotic dancing that audiences did not react well about. Violet dated musician Maurice Lambert and despite applying in 21 states for a marriage license, no one would marry them. Around this time, they also appeared in the movie Freaks.

A few years later, Violet married actor James Moore — who was gay — as a publicity stunt. Daisy was also pregnant and gave her child up for adoption. She was also married to a dancer named Buddy Sawyer — also gay — for ten days.

This movie was made in 1952 — directed by Harry L. Fraser — and told the story of their lives. Well, except for the fact that Violet never shot a man that was in love with Daisy. It’s kind of a not true story, because they use the name Dorothy and Vivian Hamilton.

Their manager sets them up with a gun shooting expert named Andre Pariseau (Mario Laval) who is supposed to date Dorothy, who falls in love with him. The problem comes in when Andre still has a lover, Renee (Patricia Wright).

Yet because their marriage would be bigamy, they can’t get married until they meet a blind clergyman. Andre tells her on their wedding night that he can’t live this kind of life, but Vivian knows that he’s going back to the other way, so she shoots him dead. A judge has to decide what to do, because if he condemns Vivian to death, he’ll kill an innocent woman. The movie then asks you, the viewer, what you would decide.

The Hiltons had a hot dog stand — The Hilton Sisters Snack Bar — and their last public appearance was in 1961 at a drive-in double feature of Freaks and Chained for Life in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their tour manager had taken their money and left, stranding them. They applied to work at a Park’n’Shop grocery store and only asked for one salary. The owner, Charles Reid, was a religious man and hired them both and built a special desk for them so that customers couldn’t tell they were conjoined twins. The shop owner’s church also provided them with a small home and they devoted themselves to work and that church for the rest of the decade.

In early 1969, Daisy caught a horrible case of the flu and died. Four days later, Violet died as well. She never called for help, realizing that she couldn’t survive without her sister.

At their funeral, Reverend Jon Sills said, “Daisy and Violet Hilton were in show business for all but the last half dozen years of their life. In the end, though, they were cast aside by the glittery and glamorous world they had been part of for so long. In the end, it was only ordinary people who showed they cared about them.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

RESOURCES:

Memories of San Antonio. Violet and Daisy Hilton, San Antonio’s conjoined twins. Their uplifting story facing the odds and adversity.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: The undead

Also known as War of the Zombies, Rome Against Rome was the second to last film from the Galatea production company (some of their other films include Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Mill of the Stone Women and Ghosts of Rome). It was directed by Giuseppe Vari, who used the name Joseph Warren, and also made The Last Killer, Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead, Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why?, Sister Emanuelle and Urban Warriors. Its story came from Ferruccio De Martino (who usually was a production manager) and Massimo De Rita (Violent City, The Valachi Papers, Street Law) with a script from Piero Pierotti (who directed Hercules Against Rome and Marco Polo) and Marcello Sartarelli.

In a remote part of the Roman Empire, cult leader Aderbad (John Drew Barrymore, Drew’s father) is working with the governor to create their own land using the corpses of Roman soldiers brought back from the dead. Centurion Gaius (Ettore Manni) is sent to protect the interests of the senate.

Most of the production money probably went toward making Aderbad’s secret rooms look like something out of Bava, because the actual fight scenes are taken from Hannibal. Susy Anderson (Black Sabbath, Thor and the Amazon Women) and Ida Galli (The Psychic, Arabella: Black Angel, The Sweet Body of Deborah, The Whip and the Body) are also on hand.

https://www.zomboscloset.com/zombos_closet_of_horror_b/2017/03/the-lost-world-of-sinbad-and-war-of-the-zombies-double-bill-pressbook.html

American-International Pictures played this movie as a double feature with Senkichi Taniguchi’s Samurai Pirate, which they named The Lost World of Sinbad. When it was time for Rome Against Rome to air on TV, it was renamed the completely incredible title Night Star: Goddess of Electra.

http://www.peplumtv.com/2019/10/different-titles-war-of-zombies.html

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: In Memoriam

Racquel Welch had the kind of power behind her game that when men of my dad’s age would talk about her, they’d get excited or look to see if their wives were listening. Just that name was enough for them all to communally make happy noises and look skyward, as if to thank whatever is waiting for us up there for making something so wonderful.

She died February 15 of this year and I’ve been watching more of her movies.

I always wrote her off as someone getting by on her looks yet I have enjoyed so many of these films.

Written by Ed McBain (who is really Evan Hunter and changed his name from Salvatore Albert Lombino; he wrote the scripts for The Birds, Walk Proud and Strangers When We Meet and had movies made of his novels, including Blackboard Jungle, Mister Buddwing from his book Buddwing, Last Summer, Every Little Crook and Nanny and Lonely Heart from his book Lady, Lady I Did It.

Fuzz comes from one of his 87th Precinct books. Directed by Richard A. Colla and written by the author, it stars Burt Reynolds as Detective Steve Carella. He’s investigating why teenagers are setting unhoused people on fire and nearly dies from one of them doing exactly that to him. There’s also a killer threatening to murder city leaders which has Detectives Kling (Tom Skeritt) and Brown (Jack Weston) looking for whoever grabs the money the caller asked for. They fail twice at this and a commissioner and the deputy mayor are both rubbed out.

Detective Eileen McHenry (Welch) is new to the precinct and set up by Carella and Meyer when she’s looking for a rapist. She’s not in the mood to find their antics funny and that night, when walking through the park, she’s stalked. The detective turns the tables on the rapist and beats him unmerciful and solves the case.

The caller ends up being someone called The Deaf Man (Yul Brynner), so called because, yes, he ahs a hearing aid. He’s one of those unstoppable villains, even getting set on fire by the kids from the beginning and somehow surviving at the credits.

Welch got paid $100,000 for this and was supposed to be in her bra and panties in one scene. It’s not in the movie but it is on the poster, which was painted by Richard Amsel which also has Reynolds in his famous nude pose from Cosmo.

This was a hard movie to find for some time, as a series of copycat crimes — strangely in Boston where the movie is set, even if the 87th Precinct books are in New York City — that had teens setting houseless people on fire. The movie was pulled from airing for most of the 70s.

There are even more movies made of the author’s works than those I listed earlier. The 87th Precinct novels were adapted as the movies Cop Hater, The Mugger, The Pusher, Kurosawa’s High and Love (King’s Ransom is the book it’s based on), Sans mobile apparent, Claude Charbrol’s Blood Relatives and Killer’s Wedge. There was also a TV series in 1961, the TV movie Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct: Lightning and two sequels, Ice and Heatwave. And two of the Columbo TV movies, No Time to Die and Undercover were based on So Long as You Both Shall Live and Jigsaw.

Fuzz is very 1972 in the good and bad ways. But hey, Reynolds says it best.

“It was kind of fuzzy. It was made by one of those hot shot TV directors. I liked working with Jack Weston; it began our relationship. I did like working again with Raquel. And I liked the writer whose book the film was based on, Ed McBain, The 87th Precinct. I’d like to direct one of his books.”

You should read that in Norm Macdonald’s voice.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Physical media

John Ebony (David Hemmings, who also produced this) is an idealistic young teacher who arrives at Chantrey School for Boys to fill the shoes of the recently fallen-off a-cliff Pellham. Yet this somewhat of a dream job is anything but, as he lives on the school’s grounds with his wife Sylvia (Carolyn Seymour), who feels trapped. She struggles to fit in with the older wives who have been there for decades, just as John is challenged by the juvenile delinquents he must somehow teach.

Directed by John Mackenzie and written by Simon Raven and based on a radio play by Giles Cooper, this movie gets dark when the boys in his class tell John that they killed the last teacher and they’ll do the same if he doesn’t do exactly what they say. No one believes him, not even his wife.

She makes the mistake of thinking that she can connect with the boys much more than she can with the much older teachers and their wives, even sharing a cigarette with her. Yet she’s defiant in the face of them threatening her with gang rape, which luckily is stopped at the last moment.

I’d never seen this movie, but it really gets across the way that British schools can lead to a legacy of brutal men who do the same thing in real life that they did in class. Seymour is also incredible in this. I’d never seen her in a movie before and now I’m seeking out other roles that she performed in.

The Arrow blu ray release of Unman, Wittering and Zigo contains a new audio commentary by Sean Hogan and Kim Newman; an appreciation by Matthew Sweet; a featurette with several of the cast members looking back at the movie; an original 1958 recording of Giles Cooper’s radio play; a trailer; an image gallery; a double sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Eric Adrian Lee, which also appears as a reversible sleeve and book with writing by Kevin Lyons and Oliver Wake. You can get it from MVD.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1960s

Director and writer Gino Mangini claimed that he wrote hundreds of movies, but IMDB lists 21. There’s a lot of peplum on that list, as well as a very late in the day mondo, Mondo cane 2000 – L’incredibile, which was made in 1988 and directed by Gabriele Crisanti, the producer of Giallo In Venice, Burial Ground and Patrick Still Lives, three of the grimiest movies ever allowed to escape the camera. Oh yeah, he also produced Gesichter des Todes V. That’s right. The bootleg German Faces of Death 5.

1883 London: Martin “The Hyena” Bauer has been strangling people for three years before Scotland Yard finally brings him to the gallows. Except that his body disappears from the morgue and the killings start all over again.

Dr. Edward Dalton (Giotto Tempestini) believes that the killer is back from the grave, but he’s also dealing with his daughter Muriel (Patrizia Del Frae) dating a man not right for her named Henry Quinn (Luciano Stella who you know better as Tony Kendall). No problem, because Dalton’s assistant Dr. Anthony Finney (Angelo Dessy) frames Henry for the killings. But ahh…what if Dalton had been putting pieces of Bauer’s brain into his own and transferred the need to kill to himself?

I thought this was going to be an early giallo and it’s quite nearly a soap opera. But hey — the ending! What kind of bullshit science is that? Oh, Italian exploitation bullshit science.

The Francesco De Masi score for this movie was taken from Riccardo Freda’s The Ghost and would return again for Joe D’Amato’s Beyond the Darkness. And hey! There’s Luciano Pigozzi in the cast!

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Japan

I haven’t seen any of Kurando Mitsutake’s movies before this and, well, now I’m looking for more.

The director of Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf, Lion-Girl and Gun Woman, in Maniac Driver he’s loudly proclaiming that this is a Japanese giallo.

A taxi driver (Tomoki Kimura) is usually quite normal and even mild until gorgeous women get into his vehicle. Then he loses his mind and is driven to the kind of murderous impulses that get your movie named after animals and filled with black gloves, wearing a motorcycle helmet like the murderer in Strip Nude for Your Killer.

While there are moments of Argento in this and definite tones of Maniac — the poster tagline is “I warned you not to take a taxi tonight” and The New York Ripper — this also draws on the pinky violence genre of its native country.

With a cast of Japanese AV stars (Saryû Usui, Ayumi Kimito, Iori Kogawa, Ai Sayama), a metal soundtrack by the band Aim Higher that makes this feel like the 80s wave of giallo and neon lighting, Maniac Driver is unafraid and unashamed to go there. Is it a giallo? Well, it has the feel of the genre, even if it gives away the killer right away and his reasons — his wife was killed while he was unable to protect her — aren’t discovered by someone else or the police blundering in the dark.

It’s closer to a slasher or Taxi Hunter. That said, I could care less what bucket it has to fit into. It’s fast running time is filled with non-stop violence and sex, a movie that’s ready to be lurid and cheap. And I mean that as a good thing.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Ghosts

Released in the UK as But You Were Dead, La lunga notte di Veronique is about Giovanni Bernardi (Alba Rigazzi) losing his parents in an automobile crash and then coming to stay with his grandfather Count Marco Anselmi (Walter Pozzi). There, his love for his girlfriend (Anna Maria Aveta) is in doubt once he becomes obsessed with Veronique (Cristina Gaioni), the spectral woman that he sees every night.

Director Gianni Vernuccio is barely mentioned by fans of Italian genre cinema. He made the 1964 proto giallo L’uomo che bruciò il suo cadavere, a peplum named Desert Warrior and another by the title Desert Desparados that stars Ruth Roman. He also wrote this with Enzo Ferrari, who IMDB lists as the same man that started the car company. There’s no way that that can be true, right? Because this writer used the name Enzo Ferraris and also wrote movies that were all directed by Vernuccio.

This has a slow pace and wants to be in the gothic Italian tradition of Bava and Margheriti. It doesn’t have their abilities behind the camera, but I still am a sucker for any time an Italian woman in a white dress dances through fog.