Editor’s Note: We reviewed this way back on November 22, 2018, during one of our first Mill Creek blowouts with the Chilling Classic film pack of 50 movies. Now Mill Creek’s brought it back as part of their Gorehouse Greats 12-pack. Two box sets, twice the movie fun!
Also known as Witchcraft, The Naked Goddess, Devil’s Doll and Live to Love, this black and white film is all about some people in Los Angeles who want to be ahead of the Black House’s curve in San Francisco and start worshipping Satan…err, Gamba, the Great Devil God.
Probably the most interesting thing that I can tell you about this movie is that Chess Records released Baker Harris and the Knightmares’ “Theme from ‘The Devil’s Hand.” No word on how many people bought it.
Rick Turner (Robert Alda, Father Michael from the bastardized version of Bava’s Lisa and the Devilthat was retitled The House of Exorcism, which strangely enough also has a similar plot to this movie, so Satan has to be behind this coincidence) keeps seeing a succubus, a nearly nude vision of a woman dancing in the clouds. Soon, he has come to a doll shop that has one in the exact image of his dreams, which is a likeness of Bianca Milan (Linda Christian, the first Bond girl).
Understandably, his girlfriend Donna (Ariadna Welter, El Vampiro) is freaked out when she finds a doll that looks just like herself. Rick is too after the shop owner Frank Lamont (Neil Hamilton, Commissioner Gordon from TV’s Batman) knows him by name. He also refuses to sell Donna her doll, instead stabbing it and causing her no end of pain.
Of course, while his lady is in the hospital, Rick becomes Bianca’s lover. She’s been sending thoughts into his mind and wants him to join her cult and takes him to a meeting, where Gamba decides if a woman lives or dies when his wheel of knives descends on a woman. She lives, but a cult member takes photos of the event.
Donna is cured by midnight and released from the hospital. There are bigger problems, as the cultist who took the photo is a reporter who Frank curses and kills like Dr. Lavey cutting out photos of Jayne Mansfield.
Soon, the cult is having another meeting to test Rick, asking him to choose if Donna lives or dies. Who knew being in a devil cult had so many meetings? It seems like an awful lot of commitment to make. He chooses her and all of the cult dies in a fire.
The film ends quite ambiguously for when it was made, as the couple thinks everything is copacetic and we soon see in the skies, waiting for him. This is one weird movie, one that feels like a waking dream.
We get it, Mill Creek! You’re a “green” company! You recycle and waste not. We originally reviewed Brain Twisters on November 1, 2020, as part of our reviews for Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion set. We re-ran that review February 1, 2021, as part of its inclusion on their B-Movie Blast 50-Pack. So, in the grand tradition of movies that do not deserve a second, alternate look (we’re talkin’ at you Cavegirl), Mill Creek beat us into submission once again . . . so let’s give Brain Twisters a new spin — as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Gorehouse Greats 12-pack.
Is it possible that this lone feature film from Jerry Sangiuliano appears on all Mill Creek box sets? We just discovered it also appears on their Drive-In Cult Classics Volume 4 set and their Drive-In Cult Cinema Classics 200-pack. So, it seems, whether you want to watch it or not, by hook or by crook, you will, so says Mill Creek. So, let’s crack open our first film on the Gorehouse Greats set.
No, we can’t blame Albert Pyun directing Charles Band’s Arcade, as that 1993 evil video game romp wasn’t made yet. Possibly William Shatner explaining the new Microworld to us wee school kids? No, but we can blame “The Bishop of Battle,” the segment from the 1983 portmanteau Nightmares, you know, the segment: Emilo Estevez’s video-game obsessed ne’er-do-well was sucked into an evil video game, which itself, ripped off 1982’s Tron.
And here comes Jerry Sangiuliano — a decade late and several dollars short — as his 1991-era computer graphics make 1992’sThe Lawnmower Man — this film’s sole raison d’être — look good. And we all know how god awful that’s-not-a-Stephen King-adaptation is. And to prove you can’t keep a god awful movie down: Sangiuliano tried to pass this off in the DVD age as a “new” film, Fractals, in 2013 — with the same out-of-date graphics that were out-of-date in 1991. But where the superior Circuitry Man from 1990 succeeds, this one fails. Utterly. Yeah, this one is lost between order and chaos and heaven and hell, alright.
So what’s it all about?
A sci-fi thriller without thrills.
Mind control with CRT monitors . . . complete with poor pixel resolution. And beeps. And boops. And wires. And conduits. And horny teens. And dumb cops. And cops who take victims to dinner (and he’s not Ponch nor is this a CHiPs episode about a video game-obsessed ne’er-do-well teen). And touchy-feely college professors manipulating weak teen girls (Hello, Dr. Carl Hill of Re-Animator). And a college professor of neuroscience who lectures students on medical quackery who is, himself, a quack: instead of screwing the medieval devices he displays in his classroom to human skulls, he plugs his students into a Commodore 64. And we wished, instead of tinkering with video games, our resident digital deviant developed the mind-control “Light Guns” in Looker.
So, our faux-digital Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Philip Rothman (dry-as-toast Terry Londeree in his only film role), sidelines his professorship with a gig at a software company developing a software platform that taps into the human brain. And he’s using his unknowing students as lab rats. And somewhere along the way, it’s discovered the software has a mind control side effect (I think), so the head of the company decides to integrate the discovery into video games. Is he evil already or does the discovery make him evil? (I don’t know and I don’t care.) What’s the purpose of turning video-game obsessed teens into killers? What’s the end game, if you will? (You got me.) Why kill off the users who dump in the quarters?
Of course, every slasher film — even the most pseudo ones, such as this tech slop — needs a “final girl,” so we have Laurie Strode Stevens (Farrah Forke, in her acting debut; she was Alex Lambert for a three year, 35-episode run on NBC-TV’s Wings; Hitman’s Runfor you direct-to-video fans) as one of several college students who’ve volunteered for Rothman’s experiments to improve video game designs — only to be programmed-cum-hypnotized to kill. Or commit suicide from the second floor of a Chili’s (Or was that an Applebees?). Hey, this was filmed in Scranton, PA., so if you lived there, maybe you recognize the eatery.
Man, nobody wants to go to Scranton. Not even, Archie.“Scranton?!”
So, does this all sound a bit like Conal Cochran’s nonsensical masterplot to take over the world with Halloween masks fitted with computer chips made from stone-flakes of Stonehenge? Or Dr. Anthony Blakely’s plan to take over the world by growing a giant brain the basement of his psychiatric institute for wayward teens?
Yeah, it does. And then some.
Yeah, the body count is building. Boringly so.
Ah, but Halloween III: The Season of the Witch and Ed Hunt’s The Brain had, if not a lot of sense, finesse and charm as it huskered its bananas-as-fuck junk science, along with R-level gore and sex to buoy our interest. Maybe if a Stuart Gordon-esque brain worm-thingy popped out of a student’s reprogrammed head, à la Dr. Edward Pretorius via his Sonic Resonator in From Beyond, we’d have a “bang,” here, instead of a whimper.
In the end, this is all just a bunch of PG-level shenanigans in dire need of a David Warner-embodied Master Control Program and a Cindy Morgan as our cyber-hero babe and a crazed Darryl Revok “sucking brains dry” via video games. But alas: Jerry Sangiuliano ain’t no David Cronenberg and this ain’t no Scanners joint. And the acting just stinks across the board, which is probably why Forke never capitalized on her support role in Heat with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro or scored another notable network TV series, and we never heard from male leads Terry Londeree and Joe Lombardo — ever again. If only we had Dan O’Herlihy as the evil software engineer and David Gale as the megalomaniac professor to prop this up, maybe we’d have . . . something.
Should we give Jerry Sangiuliano credit for being ahead of the urban legend curve? Nope. Should we be watching the HBO-oft run short film, Arcade Attack*, instead? Yes. Or the PBS television broadcast The Colors of Infinity, which aka’d as Fractals: The Colors of Infinity? Yes. Or the PBS rip on WarGames known as Hide and Seek. Yes.
Eh, maybe — one day — they’ll make a real movie based on the Polybius urban legend**, with (speaking of Dan O’Herlihy), a touch of the charm that made the video game as-a-combat-training-tool tomfoolery from 1984’s The Last Starfighter so much fun. The same can be said about screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker’s ten-years-later retrofitting of the Polybius legend — for the now outdated, grunge-era CD-ROM age — with 1994’s Brainscan. The best of (possible, maybe a stretch) the Polybius-inspired RAM-romps was, of course, David Cronenberg’s 1983 offering, Videodrome; the film’s deleted scenes explained the funky headgear of the film as intended for”combat training,” until its beneficial, “brainwashing” side effects were discovered (like in Looker). Polybius, for the tech-uninitiated, first “appeared” inside a Portland, Oregon, arcade in 1981; while word-of-mouthed prior by arcade aficionados since, the legend first seeded on the web in 1994, about a year after the web went online*˟ on April 30, 1993. It was one of the first “viral” posts, if you you will, before such a term was, er, coined (yuk, yuk).
So . . . until that official Polybius flick happens, the curious and the masochist can free-stream Brain Twisters on You Tube.
Phew. We did it! Mill Creek box sets are our jam, as it were, so no sweat in watching 50 movies in 13 days. And, since we’ve dedicated this entire month to our Mill Creek fandom . . . up next is Mill Creek’s Gorehouse Greats 12-Pack.
Every November we tackle a Mill Creek box of fifty movies. We started with the Chilling Classics set in 2018 and also did the Pure Terror set in 2019. For 2020, we jammed on theSci-Fi Invasion set. And Mill Creek’s 12-Packs always come in handy for our theme weeks, such as our recent “Fast and Furious Week,” when we need a lot of films, quickly. To that end: the Savage Cinema set did the job. And, back in March, we were so giddy with glee that we finally got our own copy of 9 Deaths of the Ninja courtesy of the Explosive Cinema 12-pack, we paid it forward to Mill Creek and reviewed all of the films in the pack.
Many thanks to Rob Brown, Herbert P. Caine, Dustin Fallon, Robert Freese, Sean Mitus, Bill Van Ryn, Jennifer Upton, and Melody Vera for chipping in with their reviews for our month-long Mill Creek project!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bill Van Ryn is the creator of Groovy Doom and publisher and editor of Drive-In Asylum. I’m always so happy when he gets the opportunity to write something for us.
So let’s say you’re a kid in the later 1970s, and you’re really into watching scary movies on late night TV. You can’t get away with that very easily at home, but when you visit your grandparents on the weekend, they go to bed early and don’t really care if you stay up and watch TV. When you’re there, you try and see anything marked “-THRILLER” in the TV Guide. On one dark night Saturday night, you stay up late to watch a movie called “Blood Mania”. With a title like that, it’s going to be really scary, you just know it. The opening credits are a weird montage containing slow-motion shots of a woman in a nightgown running from some unidentified horror. This is interrupted by an animated piece where the word “BLOOD” – in large, gruesome red letters – is attacked by a pair of cartoon hands, which claw at the letters until they say “BLOOD MANIA”. There is a terrifying scream that makes your hair stand on end. You don’t realize it yet, but this movie has just shown you everything that is possibly of interest to an 8-year-old monster kid, and it won’t be very long before the TV is turned off and you’re asleep.
This may have been the experience of anybody who happened to watch “Blood Mania” as a child, because it’s one of the talkiest things you could hope to see. The shocks in the film are mostly of the daytime drama variety, so kids would probably check out of this movie very early on. This is probably a good thing too, because during the course of the story we are confronted with situations such as cheating on one’s romantic partner, a hopelessly dysfunctional family of estranged people, a woman who is willing to murder her invalid father for a little bit of money, a ruthless blackmail scheme, the use of amyl nitrate for kicks in bed, and repressed trauma linked to incestuous abuse.
Revisiting it as an adult, however, I appreciated it in a totally different way. Director Robert Vincent O’Neil (Angel, Wonder Women) finds an absolutely glacial pace for this movie, but it is such a visually compelling experience that you don’t seem to mind. Back in the days of turntables, sometimes you might have played one of your 45 rpm records on 33 1/3, just to hear what it would sound like slowed down, and “Blood Mania” is the visual equivalent of just that. I’m a sucker for any movie that emulates Bava’s colored lighting, but the set – a Los Angeles mansion that was once the home of Bela Lugosi – is just as wonderful.
Blood Mania was co-written by lead actor Peter Carpenter, one of two films (Point of Terror is the other) that were created by Carpenter with producer Chris Marconi. Carpenter had been selected by Russ Meyer for a small role in Vixen! after Carpenter’s girlfriend included a photo with him as part of her audition materials. A role alongside Dyanne Thorne in 1970’s softcore drama Love Me Like I Do followed, and this two-film package with Marconi undoubtedly represented a bid for establishing himself as a working actor – a commodity, even. A career never manifested, and Carpenter disappeared. Despite rumors that he vanished because he died, he actually simply left the movie business, although he did pass away at the too-young age of 56.
Carpenter plays a shady doctor named Cooper, who is being blackmailed for providing illegal abortions. The sex-starved daughter of one of his patients offers to help him with his ‘tax problems’, and after he beds down with her to consummate the deal, she kills her father, expecting to inherit his estate. When her younger sister appears for the reading of their father’s will, however, things don’t turn out quite the way Victoria had hoped, and all three of their lives quickly begin to unravel.
Although made in the United States, Blood Mania sure does have the feel of a European film, in part because of its sumptuous look, but also because of its dreamlike atmosphere. Its horror film approach to soap opera material felt like a cheat the first time I saw it, but that’s what actually appealed to me in the long run. Like the Sisters of Mercy doing a Dolly Parton cover version, the result is something a little unexpected and marvelous. Although it does appear on Mill Creek compilations, there is also an incredible 2017 blu ray restoration by Vinegar Syndrome out there that blew my mind when I saw it.
Hey, we love this film so much that Eric Wrazen of the Festival de la Bête Noire collective gave us his take Blood Mania, again, for Mill Creek’s Gorehouse Greats box set.
***
Update: July 21, 2021: We’ve also previously reviewed Peter’s work in his forth and final film — which he, as with Blood Mania, wrote and produced — Point of Terror. And, thanks to frequent reader and uber Peter Carpenter fan, librarian Mike Perkins (thus his awesome research), we learned of this new blog entry from B&S About Movies’ friend Mike Justice, on his The Eerie Midnight Night Detective Agency blog regarding Peter Carpenter’s life and all-too-short career. Strap it on, it’s a great read.
And, surf over to this really cool Flickr posting from Mike Perkins, featuring early photos of Peter. And, there’s no stopping Mr. Perkins’s fandom, as he also honored Peter by not only having Peter’s IMDb page updated with correct information, he created an all-new Find A Grave entry for Peter. Did you know that Peter’s real name was Nathaniel Joseph? Or that he was in the Air Force? We do now, thanks to Mike Perkins’s hard work.
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. You gotta fight for the ’cause!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a ghostwriter of personal memoirs for Story Terrace London and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1967) is truly a boring film, even for Al Adamson, who is not known for making great films. The most exciting bit of action in this movie was the scene-stealing walrus in the opening scene shot at the old Marineland in Palos Verdes, California. That walrus puts in a more energetic better performance than any of the human actors.
The story concerns Mrs. and Mrs. Count Dracula, who have essentially retired as “The Townsends” to a castle in the California desert (Falcon Rock Castle Antelope Valley, California.)
Now free from a life of killing villagers in Europe their new life is one of leisure. There’s no more hunting for these two elites! Their new bougie diet consists mostly of bloody cocktails prepared for them by their butler George played by John Carradine, a priest in a cult who worships Luna the Moon God along with the Townsends.
The blood comes from the various girls kept chained in the basement, most of whom are collected from the nearby highway and brought home by their deformed Igor-like caretaker Mango played by Ray Young. A tall stunt actor better known as the boulder-throwing half of The Kroft Supershow staple Bigfoot and Wildboy (1976.)
The Townsends and also have a strange relationship with a local serial killer named Johnny (Robert Dix). Although how he came to be close with the Townsend’s is never explored, they seem to have a reciprocal relationship. One in which he brings them victims for promised initiation into vampirehood. In the alternate television version (yes, there are two versions of this snorefest – both available online) Johnny is a werewolf.
After escaping from a mental institution, Johnny kills a few people just for the hell of it on the way home to the castle. Here, the added werewolf scenes actually make sense. Somewhat. In the original version Johnny mentions repeatedly how he can’t control his murderous urges when there’s a full moon. The problem with the new inserts lies in the fact that they were clearly shot years later. The hairstyle and wardrobe of the victim places it squarely in the ‘70s and the electronic music bears no resemblance to the music in the rest of the film.
One would think that a police pursuit of a serial killer/werewolf would be exciting. It isn’t. That’s the problem with this movie. Even when things happen it doesn’t feel like it. There’s an utter lethargy to the acting, camera placement and editing. During the chase, the screen direction is completely off and there is very little foley to bring the soundtrack to life.
Once reunited, the Townsends, Johnny, George and Mango now have a new problem to contend with. They must find a new place to live. Sadly, after a nice, calm, sixty-year tenancy, their 108-year-old landlord has died, leaving the castle to his nephew. The new landlord – a photographer named Glenn Cannon and his perpetually complaining model fiancé Liz decide they’re going to live there.
When they show up to inspect the place, instead of chaos, we are treated to a series of long civil discussions between the characters. Most disappointing of all is that the vampires never do anything. They’re far too spoiled and sophisticated. Count Townsend (played by Horrors of Spider Island star Alex D’arcy) is so nonchalant that at one point he tells a potential victim, “Oh, no. We won’t kill you. We need your blood,” with the calm tone of a man making small talk. They don’t even fight when Glenn ties them up in the finale. They’re far too used to being looked after by their staff to do anything as vulgar as defend themselves. If the Howell’s on Gilligan’s Island were vampires, this is exactly how they’d behave. The effect is equally as comical. However, they don’t go as gently into the ether as one might think. After sacrificing a girl on the beach to Luna, aging and turning to dust when the morning sun shines through the window, two bats emerge from the vampires’ fancy party clothes and fly off. Perhaps to rent another castle somewhere else and start over. George and Johnny are dispatched by our heroes.Glenn saves Liz. Mango gets shot, axed and thrown off a cliff. It should be exciting. It isn’t.
We reviewed this drive-in oddity way back on October 25, 2018, just because. Well, wouldn’t you know it: Mill Creek’s included it on their B-Movie Blast set. And it got assigned to me to do another take. Ugh. “Keep the site ‘fresh,'” Sam’s says. Whatever, boss.
When Sam reviewed this back in 2018, he mentioned how Bill Van Ryn from Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum always jokes about movies where nothing happens as being his “favorite movies.” No truer words spoken, William, for ye are B-movie wise. Nothing happens, here. Zero. Nada. Zippity-do-da. And we love End of the World for the fact that the filmmakers behind it were in the editing suite and said, “print, that’s a wrap.”
Yeah, sure, John Hayes, the director behind the very cool Dream No Evil and Grave of the Vampire (both with the great Michael Pataki starring), as well as Garden of the Dead (bad, but I liked it), gave us this Star Wars dropping.
And Frank Ray Perilli? Well, when the guy who pens Mansion of the Doomed and Dracula’s Dog . . . then follows this alien romp with another alien romp for Charles Band, the romper stomper that is Laserblast . . . well, why are we so shocked at this film’s insanity? Oh, and Cinderella. Perilli has the lower-abdominals to adult-up the classic children’s tale. And he had the muscles to squeeze out a film that not only serves to insult the Catholic Church, but E.T.s the galaxy over.
Christopher Lee, who stars here, is, rightfully embarrassed by this movie. And we are embarrassed for him. As well for his work in Starship Invasions — a film that is inventive, to say the least, but was unable to live up to its whacked premise of underwater alien pyramid bases, due to its non-budget. Did Ed Hunt dupe Sir Lee into that movie? Who knows?
But Lee was duped into End of the World with the hook that José Ferrer, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Lew Ayers, and MacDonald Carey would star. Lee knew them and their work. So, sure. Why not, so goes the story. Lee commits to the project.
Well, Ferrer and Carradine aren’t here. Bur Ayers and Jagger are. So is ol’ daytime soap actor Mac. But their collective roles are one-day shoot-’em throw away scenes. And we have Sue Lyon (Crash!) and Kirk Scott (Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land; “Big Bud Dean” in Heathers) as our leads. And outside of Lyon and Scott, the rest are wooden. Yeah, even Ayers and Jagger. Well, Lyon and Scott are driftin’ the wood, too, as they show us why they never rose above junk like this and only booked bit parts in anything rising to the level of being a decent watch — such as Heathers.
Anyway . . . the plotting of this Star Wars dropping . . . Jesus H. you-know-who and a bag o’ chips.
So, Irwin and Frank Yablans of Compass International, who unloaded the VHS crap on us Crown International-style, along with Charles Band . . . yes, he of Empire and Full Moon Pictures fame . . . duped Christopher Lee into this galactic craptastica. You know Band’s work, but you may not know the Yablans Brothers were also behind the first Halloween (Irwin’s “idea” as The Babysitter Murders that takes place during Halloween). But Brother Yablans also unleashed Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula. Then came up with the idea of an alien priest overseeing a convent of alien nuns.
So . . .
Sir Lee is a catholic priest . . . but he’s an alien.
Nuns operate a supercomputer. They’re aliens.
Lee’s is Father Pergardo, but he’s being called back — or is it “replaced” by the alien Zindar. But he doesn’t want to “go back.” But he “is” Zindar and doesn’t know it. Or something.
Kirk Scott is Professor Andrew Boran. He tinkers in his lab and discovers a coming natural disaster by way of an alien radio signal. Or something.
He and his wife, Sylvia (Sue Lyon), intercept the signals and triangulate them back to a convent . . . where alien nuns run said supercomputer.
The Professor and his squeeze are useless heroes.
The night photography is so dark, it’s to the point of blindness.
Aliens by E.S.P can blow up pay phones, diner coffee machines, and car engines.
The aliens can’t get back unless the Professor gives them some crystal do-dad to fix their Phantasm-doorway back home.
NASA labs have shit security one can easily break into to steal what the aliens need.
The Earth is destroyed because its “diseases” are leaking over into the universe.
Cue the stock footage purchased from Roger Corman.
Blow up the glitter-filled Christmas ornament painted to look like Earth.
The end. Seriously, the real THE END . . . the earth is destroyed!!!
Yes. This TV ad, seen below — in my teen I-must-see-ANYTHING-Star Wars-ish years — got me into the duplex. So, I, like Sir Lee, was duped. But wow . . . when you pair this with Starship Invasions . . . what a double feature! And you can enjoy it . . . and see how it all ends . . . on You Tube. In addition to its inclusion on the B-Movie Blast film pack, you can also watch it as part of their Nightmare Worlds box set.
* Nightmare World image courtesy of JohnGrit/Unisquare.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Hey, I’m talking to you, Bill Van Ryn! You want a Groovy Doom Saturday Night Watch Party double feature, then you have to pair Tony Curtis’s and Rock Hudson’s forays into the horror/sci-fi genres with TheManitou (1978)and Embryo. What were they thinking. What were their agents thinking. I know what their fans were thinking: what in the hell is this crap? Then, Rock had to two-fer the bombs with Avalanche (1978). Rock Hudson in a Roger Corman disaster flick? Yep, he did it. Then he upped the ante with a Star Wars dropping: The Martian Chronicles (1980). Doh!
Rock, Rock, Rock. What in God’s great creation! You were a heartthrob from the Golden Age of Hollywood and you did a six-season ratings-winning stint with NBC-TV’s McMillan & Wife, and you gave us the TV movie greats of World War III (1982) The Vegas Strip War (1984). I guess it’s true what they say: aging actors and washing out actors really do retreat to horror films for work (see Wanda Hendrix in One Minute Before Death and Jeanne Crain in The Night God Screamed as examples).
A PC hooked to a fetus? Hey, it’s the sci-fi ’70s!
Apparently, there was a deeper, philosophical meaning in behind Anita Doohan and Jack Thomas’s script (it served as Anita’s debut and Jack’s last) about a doctor dealing with the mental, emotional, and physical consequences of growing a human fetus in an artificial uterus. . . .
Hey, you know what Mr. Van Ryn? You could also pair Embryo with Fritz Weaver in Demon Seed, since both films deal with a fetus spawned in an artificial uterus — only Fritz picked a classic (in my world, anyway). But this Rock sci-fi romp . . . Oy! This isn’t Demon Seed: this is Bruce Dern splitting-heads in The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant — only that’s a trash classic and Bruce Dern was still AIP-drug-and-biker-flick Bruce Dern, so he gets a pass. And, in a twist: Dern’s ex-wife, Diane Ladd, stars here as Rock Hudson’s Dr. Paul Holliston’s sister-in-law/lab assistant.
Holliston is a geneticist who, after the death of his wife in a car crash, and the pangs of wanting her back, he begins tinkering with an experimental growth hormone made from human placental lactogen that not only shortens the gestation period . . . it speeds up an embryo’s growth. After successfully birthing a Doberman Pinscher from a pup he saved from a dog he ran over with his car, he decides to try the hormone on a human; he applies the technique to an unborn fetus from a suicide victim. The fetus quickly grows into a 22-year-old woman he names Victoria (Barbara Carrera) — who also becomes his lover. While she develops superior intelligence — as with Atom Age Vampire, Invasion of the Bee Girls and The Wasp Woman — Victoria begins to rapidly age and craves pituitary gland extract from human fetuses. Now a modernized vampire — in the vein (sorry) of Marilyn Chambers in Rabid — she murders a prostitute to steal her unborn child to suck out the needed nutrition. Unsuccessful in his murdering her in a car crash, the now elderly Victoria — to Holliston’s horror — gives birth to his child: a mad, screaming baby.
More reissue artwork overselling a movie.
Embryo is an updated Frankenstein(yes, that’s the ’73 one; the ’31 one is the influence) — with a smidgen of The Bride of Frankenstein. It’s a vampire tale — lacking a smidgen of fangs. And Rock certainly tries; he’s earnest in his attempt to make it all work. The class and style that William Friedkin brought to The Exorcist — which is this film’s inspiration and a quality Rock certainly thought he was getting — is absent. And that’s baffling when you consider Rock’s director was Ralph Nelson, who won multiple Oscars for Lillies of the Field (1963), Father Goose (1964), and Charly (1968). As with Stanley Donen, the co-director of Singing in the Rain (1952), being woefully out of his element with the Star Wars knockoff Saturn 3, a comedy and dramatic Oscar-winning director does not an Exorcist bid, make.
As with Rock’s fellow Golden Age of Hollywood compatriot, Kirk Douglas, himself an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated and winning actor, expecting more from Stanley Donen, Rock ended up in another “Trog”: Joan Crawford’s attempt to expand her audience with a horror film. What Rock ended up in was a more expensive, complacently-crafted AIP film. But an AIP-mad-scientist film is still an AIP-mad-scientist film: cash flow and A-List stars, be damned. What Embryo desperately needed to push it over the top is one of the favorite lines of dialog of fellow B&S About Movies’ contributing writer, Jennifer Upton: “Herschell, what about the children?” from the crazed turkey-man movie Blood Freak (1972).
But there’s no crazy dialog and just a rabid dog. Nor a blood-craving turkey man. It’s all just turkey with no mayo and Rock committing proxy-incest with his petri-dished pseudo-daughter. And it’s brought to you, in part, by Sandy Howard Productions — yep, the studio behind The Neptune Factor (1973), The Devil’s Rain (1975), and Terror Train (1980). Cine Artists Pictures, the studio behind this, went out of business, which is why this “major studio picture” is in the public domain, endlessly recycled on Mill Creek boxers.
So, in addition to airing on the national, retro-UHF channel COMET from time to time, you can have your own copy courtesy of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-Film Pack and Nightmare Worlds 50-Film Pack. You can also stream it free-with-ads on Tubi TV as well as watch it on You Tube. We found trailers to sample HERE and HERE because: fool us once, trailer embed elves! You need another take on this to convince you to watch? Here it is! Two box sets means two reviews, baby!
* Nightmare World image courtesy of JohnGrit/Unisquare.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Moviesand publishes on Medium.
Editor’s Note: This review ran back on March 12, 2020, as part of our Explosive Cinema 12-Film Pack blowout. Now, we are having a B-Movie Blast as part of that Mill Creek 50-Film Pack of reviews (Amazon).
I came here to see Jimmy Bryant and the Night Jumpers do the “Tobacco Worm” and the “Stratosphere Boogie” . . . and eat popcorn . . . and drink coffee. Lots of coffee. (They’re sort of a redneck, twaggy bluegrass version of Booker T. and the M.G’s; please telll me that you know the iconic instrumental “Green Onions” and get that reference. Don’t make me feel like the old dude that I am.)
“Yeah, I call B.S on the pseudo-intellectual B&S About Movies writer,” you say. “You never heard of them or the movie, R.D, until Sam bought the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” 12-pack.”
Sorry, ye mighty Internet Warrior. You’d be wrong.
Because of my longstanding love of rock ‘n’ roll and movies; slumming, collecting, and working in the vintage vinyl marketplace, doing road work, and working on the radio, I thrive, THRIVE on rock ‘n’ roll movie oddities and obscurities. If a flick has even the slightest cameo by a rock band in it, I’ve tracked down that movie and seen it. Even more so with today’s public domain catchall disc sets. Back before the digital realm, I taped ’em off UHF-TV and have shelves of 6-hour mode recorded VHS tapes packed with these flicks.
The Skydivers is the second of three films written and directed by Coleman Francis, primarily a TV and Drive-In flick bit actor who appeared on episodes of Dragnet who turned up in Russ Meyers’s Motorpsycho! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and had a somewhat larger part in the juvenile deliquent rock ‘n’ roll flick, 1959’s T-Bird Gang, which is just one of the many made in the backwash of 1955’s Rebel Withouta Cause and Blackboard Jungle. (Now I am really missing the old AMC Network’s “American Pop” film series. Tears.) While I have never seen the riffed version, MST3K took The Skydivers to task in the ’80s; perhaps you’ve seen that version.
Skydivers is not, however, a rock ‘n’ roll or juvenile deliquent flick: it’s a bargain basement film noir of the Double Indemity (1944) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) variety. It does not, however, qualify as “explosive cinema” and it is as out-of-place alongside Tony Tulleners’s Scorpion (1986) on the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” set as it is seeing me sitting in front of a plate of sushi or inside a Starbucks. So don’t be fooled by the movie’s tagline: “The first feature length motion picture showing the daredevils of the sky who free fall from heights of 20,000 feet with only a ripcord between life and death!” (Insert yawn, here.) “Thrill jumping guys, thrill seeking girls, and daring death with every leap,” indeed.
Anyway, Anthony Cardoza . . . wait, where do I know that name from . . . holy B&S About Movies, BatSam! Tony starred in Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls and directed Alvy Moore (The Witchmaker) from TV’s Green Acres in Smokey and the Hotwire Gang. He’s produced, as Sam has called out, “interesting films” (aka, turkeys), such as The Beast of Yucca Flats (directed by Coleman Francis) and Bigfoot. (Coleman’s other directing efffort was 1966’s Night Train to Mundo Five, produced by, you guessed it. . . .)
Anyway, Tony-boy is the producer behind this vanity project as part of a unhappily married couple who owns a decrepit airfield-skydiving school in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. Of course, Harry is the loser-dickhead who dragged his wife Beth (don’t be confused; actress Kevin Casey, in her only role, is a “she”) out into the desert—and he’s the one who’s restless and cheats on her. And the woman, Suzy, he’s cheating with is a femme fatale (Marcia Knight, Mako: The Jaws of Death) who’s had enough, so she seduces another guy to kill him. But wait, the wife is restless as well and she’s having an affair with her husband’s army buddy.
And they plot against each other. And they jump out of planes. And they sit in coffee houses and listen to a couple tunes from Jimmy Bryant and the Night Jumpers—who are the only reason to check out this mess.
And they’re the only reason I know this movie exists. And now: you know it exists. Email your disdain to the fine folks at Eide’s Entertainment in Pittsburgh for carrying that cursed copy of the Mill Creek “Explosive Cinema” set and selling it to Sam (we love you, guys!).
You can watch TV-taped VHS rips on You Tube without the riffing, but I think you’ll need the MST3K riffed version to make it thought.
That, and a nice, strong pot of coffee. Stratosphere Boogie, babydoll!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Mill Creek will make you love this movie. Resistance is futile. This post originally ran in November 2019 as part of our Pure Terror month. And it came back as part of the Explosive Cinema set. So here’s Terror In the Jungle, a movie that we love, as part of the B-Movie Blast 50-film pack.
I kind of wish that I was alive in 1968 just so I could have been part of this movie. Seriously, I’ve never seen a film that so quicky changes its tone and central theme so quickly, abandoning characters that its taken time to set up for an entirely new situation. And then we get the airplane, with swinging bands playing on it and people going bonkers before it crashes? I want to live in this insane world.
After we meet all these folks — bound for Rio — we better not get too used to them. Except for little Henry Clayton Jr., who is taking his stuffed lion to live with his mother after his parents split up. There’s also Mrs. Sherman, who may or may not have killed her husband, but has a suitcase full of money and is given to insane crying jags. And there’s an exotic dancer on board as well! And some nuns, traveling with one of their dead sisters in a coffin! And then there’s a band! And a rich dude that talks about cannibals!
Everybody is having so much fun that the band plays their big hit and Marian, the exotic dancer, shows off and even the nuns enjoy it. However, the movie soon turns into sheer insanity, as the plane begins to crash. Money spills all over the plane, a nun gets pulled out of an open door and half the cast abruptly dies. Seriously, somehow this went from “Soft Lips” to dudes getting their foreheads split in half and a gory death with a birdcage. I have no idea what brought on this narrative shift.
Then, to top all this off, every single other person we met is eaten by alligators.
You read that right.
The entire cast is dead.
Everyone except Henry, who is now floating down a reptile filled river in the coffin of a dead nun.
What the actual hell is going on here?
The natives — yes, the cannibals that were discussed on the plane that call themselves the Jivaros — find Henry and thanks to his blonde hair and the magic of 1968’s worst special effects, he has a halo. The leader of the tribe declares that he is a god, except that one of them thinks he has to die. So he chases Henry into the jungle and the kid’s stuffed lion transforms into a real lion and eats the dude.
So wait — is Henry really a god?
This is a movie that starts with the declaration that “This picturd was filmed on location in the Jivaros Regions of the Amazon Jungle. Without the assistance and encouragement of the Government of Peru it would not have been possible.”
It’s also the kind of movie that randomly has Fawn Silver be Marian, the exotic dancer. If you don’t know who she is, she’s Criswell’s assistant in Ed Wood’s Orgy of the Dead.
It also has three directors — Tom De’Simone directed the plane sequence, Andrew Janzack the jungle parts and the temple close was directed by Alex Graton. That may explain the strange narrative leaps that this makes.
Let’s break down each director.
Tom De’Simone went on to become adult film director Lancer Brooks, as well as creating some of my favorite films, like Hell Night, Reform School Girls and Chatterbox. Andrew Janzack never directed another movie, but was the cinematographer for The Undertaker and His Pals.
Alex Graton would finally direct another movie eleven years later, a romantic comedy entitled Only Once In a Lifetime that has Claudio Brook — yes, the same Claudio Brook who was in Luis Buneul’s The Exterminating Angel — in it.
I love IMDB because it has comments directly from De’Simone in the review. I’ll share it below for your enjoyment:
“OK, now it’s my turn to weigh in on this disaster. I’m the director who’s credited with this fiasco but in my defense I have to explain that there were three directors on this film and we all suffered under a producer with no experience, no taste, no sense and worst of all, NO MONEY.
I was fresh out of film school working as an editor when I was introduced to him when he was looking for a director. I convinced him I could handle a feature having already won two awards at film festivals for two shorts I had done. This was the biggest mistake in my life. Once on, for a mere $50 a day, I realized what I had gotten into. He hired a bunch of non-SAG actors who actually PAID HIM to be in his movie. None had any experience in front of a camera and all the characters were his creation. I was stuck in that plane mock-up for two weeks with these desperate souls trying to create something from nothing. The script was only half written when we started and he said he would finish it when we got to the jungle. When we completed the plane interiors, including the now famous “crash” scene, the rough cut was 83 minutes long and we hadn’t even reached the jungle part of the story.
I told him we had to make some serious trims, both for time and for performances. He refused to cut anything. He was so in love with the crap we had he actually once said he believed that the actress playing the stewardess would win an Oscar for her scream scene in the fire. I knew I was doomed. We argued over and over about what I felt should be dropped, trimmed and eliminated until I had it. I walked from the production and that wonderful salary. Undaunted, he went to Peru and used the cameraman as the replacement director. Down there they wrote the second half of the script and shot it as he wrote it.
Back in LA they now had a bigger disaster, naturally. The film was way too long, badly shot, badly acted and unwatchable. He and this second director fought, as did I, and he then walked away as well. Now the producer was over a barrel. He had sunk what little money he borrowed and still believed he had a hit on his hands if he could just get it finished. He hired a third guy to come in and fix the problem. This genius hired a bunch of extras, put bad wigs on them and went to Griffith Park in LA and shot more crap that was even more laughable than what they got in Peru. After that the producer shopped around for stock footage of native ceremonies and came up with some god-awful crap from a 40’s schlock film and cut it in . . . the final disaster is what’s on screen. I’ve lived in shame my entire career because for some reason I always get the credit for making this turkey. I was one of three victims! The entire debacle was the brain child of the producer and none of us had a chance in hell to make it any better than it was doomed to be from the start.
And that’s the truth.”
In case you haven’t realized it yet, I love this movie. Like, beyond love. I’m going to bother everyone I know to tell them just how great it is and then laugh when they look at me and wonder why I enjoy this blast of craziness so much. Beware!
Editor’s Note: We reviewed this early Harry Dean Stanton flick on March 13, 2020, as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Explosive Cinema 12-pack. It’s back as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast 50-film pack.
Lots of Henry Farrell’s stories got turned into movies. Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Such A Gorgeous Kid Like Me, How Awful About Allan, The House That Would Not Die, What’s the Matter with Helen?, The Eyes of Charles Sand and, most famously, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
His first book, The Hostage, was turned in to this low budget Crown International film, which was directed by Russell S. Doughten Jr., who would go on to executive produced the entire A Thief In the Night series of Christian pre-millenial madness. God bless you, Mr. Doughten, for all you have given to me.
A kid named Davey Cleaves sneaks on to a moving truck driven by the bonkers man named Bull (Don Kelly, a TV star who died young as this is his final movie) and his partner Eddie (a very young Harry Dean Stanton).
John Carradine shows up, as he does at least seventeen times a week in movies that I watch, as does Ann Doran, whose career started in the silent era.
This was the first movie ever shot in Iowa. What a joy for the state when a drunken John Carradine was arrested in Des Moines, as he was disturbing the peace by loudly acting out various Shakespeare plays.
You can watch this on Tubi. Or You Tube. Or turn to the Mill Creek Explosive Cinema set that we’ve been covering all week.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.