I’ve recently been reading the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980’s and reminded of my own misspent youth. In sixth grade, a teacher knew that I was religious and thought I could warn my fellow classmates about the dangers of evil music and movies. He gave me a mimeographed sheet of heavy metal (and non-metal) bands to study and by the time I got to Black Sabbath, my soul was sold to rock and roll.

By eleventh grade, I was squarely in the devil’s camp in the eyes of my teachers. My love for bands like King Diamond and Danzig, along with my predilection for drawing Leatherface in class, marked me as a subject of interest. Obviously, I was doing drugs and black mass rituals — I could easily discuss Dungeons & Dragons, too. I was to be more feared the dead-eyed athletes who would soon realize their lives were peaking at 17 while mine hadn’t even started yet.

It’s to those times in my youth, when I wanted to escape my hometown and sat in my room blaring Samhain’s “November Coming Fire” and reading Fangoria, that this movie perfectly fits in. It is disgusting. It is unrepentant. It has no moral or social value. It is filled with the kind of gore than makes churches throw VHS tapes into a blazing bonfire. In short, it is everything amazing and wonderful and metal about horror movies.

The movie starts with two Germans exploring a beautiful Greek beach. Someone emerges from the ocean and murders them. Meanwhile, five travelers are joined by Julie (Tisa Farrow, who some may know as the sister of Mia, but we all know her as Anne from Zombi 2), who asks for a ride to the island. However, Carol (Zora Kerova, Cannibal Ferox, The New York Ripper) uses her tarot cards to learn that something bad will happen. No one listens to her.

The pregnant Maggie (Serena Grandi from Delirium) stays behind on the boat and is abducted by the killer, who quickly beheads a sailor.

The island is in ruins and completely abandoned, except for a woman in black, who writes go away in the dust. Upon finding a rotting corpse that has been eaten, everyone runs back to the boat, which is floating unmanned, then goes to the house of Julie’s friends. There, only the family’s blind daughter Henriette has survived.

The young girl panics and attacks Daniel, but when she is calmed, she tells everyone of the maniac that is stalking the island. Daniel is wounded and needs medicine, so Andy and Arnold head to town. Meanwhile, Daniel flirts with Julie, which causes Carol to run into town and Julie to follow her. While all this drama is going on, the killer rips out Danel’s throat.

Everyone travels to a mansion that belonged to Klaus Wortman, who died along with his wife and child in a shipwreck. This caused his sister, the woman in black, to lose her mind. And to hammer that point home, we soon see her hang herself.

Everything seems like its going to get better when a boat rifts to shore. On board, Julie finds Klaus’ journal. It turns out that he is alive…and the killer! Soon, Maggie is confronted by him and we learn that it’s George Eastman, who is in so many awesome Italian movies, such as Baba Yaga, 2019: After the Fall of New York, The New Barbarians, Blastfighter, Rabid Dogs, Hands of Steel, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, oh man! So many amazing films! This is his star-making role though and he really goes for it. He has a flashback where we learn how he accidentally stabbed his wife while trying to convince her that they should eat their dead son to survive. After eating his family, he went insane. Soon, Klaus breaks out of his flashback reverie, stabs Arnold and rips out and eats the unborn baby inside Maggie’s belly. Holy fucking shit, this movie!

I wish that those teachers who thought I was a Satanic terror in 1988 could see me now, jumping up and down with glee at 2:44 AM on a school night screaming “GEORGE EASTMAN!” while drinking a beer and holding a small dog.

What follows can’t really top that, but fuck it if Eastman isn’t going to try, including eating his own intestines after Andy hits him the stomach with a pickaxe! That’s a commitment to your role!

The American version of this film, The Grim Reaper, has 35 cuts in an attempt to get an R rating. That’s correct – nine minutes are missing, including the baby being devoured and the killer eating himself. It just ends when he is stabbed in the stomach. It also replaces the electronic Italian score with the music from Kingdom of the Spiders.

Director Joe D’amato and George Eastman would return in a spiritual sequel called Absurd. If you want to see this,  grab the insanely awesome Severin Video rerelease or watch it as The Grim Reaper on Tubi.

BONUS: Here’s a drink to go with the movie.

Tasty Baby on a Greek Beach

• 1 oz. rum
• 1 oz. Southern Comfort
• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. grenadine
• 2 tbsp. lime juide
• 1.5 oz. orange juice

1. Mix and serve over ice.
2. Watch over your shoulder for Klaus Wortman.

Based on Ray Russell’s novel of the same title, Incubus is all about demon rape. There’s really no other way to say it. If you’re looking for the definitive word on the subject, this movie would probably be your best choice. And hey, John Cassavetes is in it!

The film opens in a rock quarry where Mandy and her boyfriend are swimming. More likely, they’re fooling around until an unseen force caves in the dude’s head and attacks her, putting her in the hospital with a ruptured uterus. While all this is going on, Tim Galen, a local teen, dreams of hooded men tying a woman down and torturing her.

Dr. Sam Cordell (Cassavetes) is treating the girl and we soon learn a lot about his life. His wife has recently died, he’s relocated to the town of Galen following a scandal and his daughter, Jenny, doesn’t really get along with him. Oh yeah — and she’s also dating Tim.

Sheriff Hank Walden (John Ireland, whose career stretches from classics like All the King’s Men and I Saw What You Did to Satan’s Cheerleaders) and reporter Laura Kincaid are on the case too, which expands when a librarian is killed and murdered. It turns out that she has red semen inside her body — so much semen that she’s literally been filled up and destroyed by it. If you’re thinking this is a totally scummy storyline, well, buckle up.

The rapes and murders continue and every single time, young Tim is having the dream while they happen, including an attack at a movie theater where he’s gone to try and distract himself. Look for an appearance by a really young Bruce Dickinson singing for his pre-Iron Maiden band Samson in this scene!

What is Dr. Sam doing? Oh, you know, showing Laura photos of his recently deceased second wife — the reason why he left wherever it was he lived before — and she looks exactly like the reporter. She has some news, too. The town of Galen has a long history of Satanic activity and these rape crimes are nothing new.

Is Tim the killer? Was his mother a witch? Or is his family part of a long line of witch hunters? Is the real killer a shapeshifting incubus, which rapes women in their dreams?

We get our answers pretty quickly. Sam tries to induce Tim’s demonic state while Laura takes Jenny up to bed. Tim tries to attack Laura with a witch hunting dagger his grandmother has given him, but Sam stops the boy and kills him. That’s when we learn that Laura had been the incubus all along. As she lovingly holds Sam, he looks to the bed where his dead daughter is bleeding between the legs.

Yes. That’s really the ending. I warned you that this film was rough, didn’t I?

Incubus was directed by John Hough, who was behind one of my favorite movies of all time, Twins of Evil. He also helmed The Legend of Hell House and both of Disney’s Witch Mountain movies. It’s written by Ray Russell, who also wrote plenty of other horror fiction that was made into movies and screenplays, including X the Man with the X-Ray Eyes, Mr. Sarndonicus, Zotz! and Roger Corman’s The Premature Burial.

While this movie moves slow and some subplots go nowhere, the last few minutes are exactly what you want the movie to be and Cassavetes is — as always — better than the material.

Satanic Harassment

• 1 oz. Absolut Citron or citrus vodka
• .75 oz. Midori
• .5 oz. Chambord
• 2 oz. orange juice
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. margarita mix

1. Shake everything in a shaker with ice.
2. Pour out and be careful at the rock quarry.

The FVI title sequence for Being from Another Planet — AKA Time Walker — uses stock or archival footage of various Egyptian artifacts, bizarrely including what appears to be an image from an MRI cross-section of a mummy. You can also hear two people talking and you have no idea what they are talking about.

California University of the Sciences professor Douglas McCadden (Ben Murphy, the Gemini Man!) is exploring the tomb of Tutankhamun when an earthquake causes a wall to fall down, revealing a mummy that is really an alien kept alive through suspended animation thanks to being covered with a green fungus.

Dr. Ken Melrose (Austin Stoker!) calls a press conference to reveal the mummy, but at some point student named Peter Sharpe (Kevin Brophy, who was in Lucan, so this is really a collection of people who were in failed science fiction shows of the 70s that really only I care about) steals some gems from the body, which keeps getting bathed in radiation, bringing it back to life.

The mummy — who is way faster than your normal wrapped up Egyptian in rags — ends up killing anyone who has the crystals, putting a cop named Lt. Plummer (Darwin Joston, so this movie is also an Assault on Precinct 13 reunion thanks to him and Stoker appearing) on the case.  He thinks it’s a serial killer, but the truth is that the mummy was worshipped like a god and needs the crystals to go back home.

This movie also has James Karen from Return of the Living Dead and Shari Belafonte, who certainly knew that she deserved much better.

Time Walker was produced by Dimitri Villard and Jason Williams. If you recognize that last name, it’s because Williams plated Flesh Gordon. He co-wrote this movie (he also scripted The Danger Zone, Danger Zone II: Reaper’s Revenge, Danger Zone III: Steel Horse War and Nude Bowling Party, which certainly needed some level of wordsmithing) with Tom Friedman and Karen Levitt. It’s director, Tom Kennedy, edited Silent Night, Bloody Night and the American release of Goodbye Uncle Tom. This was the only movie he ever directed.

There’s a “to be continued” at the end of this movie and I have to tell you, I’ve never been so excited that a sequel wasn’t made.

NOTE: Thanks to Andrew Chamen for catching my error and saying Brother from Another Planet.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as Pick-Up Summer and Flipper Girls in Germany, this Canadian film comes after the Crown International beach movies and before Porky’s. Most of the action revolves around a place called Pete’s, an arcade that is hosting a pinball competition, which also has a Miss Pinball pageant, which I really hope was a thing at some point.

Speaking of movies leading to something more, director George Mihalka and cinematographer Rodney Gibbons would make My Bloody Valentine* after this, a movie that is much better remembered than this teen summer comedy that revolves around disco, burger joints, amusement parks and hijinks between a biker gang and our heroes over the pinball trophy.

Film Ventures International bought this for America and changed the name, thinking pinball was dead. It did pretty well and people didn’t even notice that it was made in Quebec and not California. It’s a pretty innocent movie when it comes to teen comedies.

*Helene Udy, who played Sylvia in that classic slasher, Thomas Kovacs, who played Mike, and Carl Malotte, who played Dave, are all in Pinball Summer as well.

Rospo Pallenberg, the director of this film, is probably better known for the movies that he collaborated on with John Boorman, like Exorcist II: The Heretic, Excalibur and The Emerald Forest. This is the one and only movie he ever directed and sadly, it’s mostly known for being one of Brad Pitt’s first roles.

Brian Woods (Donovan Leitch, son of Donovan, the man who sang about smoking bananas in “Mellow Yellow”) has just been released from a mental hospital after his father was killed suspiciously. He quickly falls in love with Paula (who can blame him, she’s played by Jill Schoelen from Popcorn), but she’s already dating the big jock in town, Dwight (Pitt, who met Schoelen on set and got engaged to her at the end of filming). For some reason, the school’s principal Mr. Dante (Roddy McDowell!) is also in love with her. Once we get that all settled, a bunch of murders start happening and any of Paula’s suitors could be the killer.

I mean, how can you not love a movie where Paula’s district attorney dad (Martin Mull!) gets shot by arrows and spends the entire movie stumbling around and trying to get rescued?

The kills in this movie are ridiculous: one teacher is killed on a Xerox machine and every kid gets a copy of it. Another is having way too good of a time on a trampoline before a flag gets put under it.

It all ends with Dwight’s head in a vice and Brian making him choose between the two men. Paula screams, “Stop fucking with my emotions!” and literally sends a claw hammer into his brains and slicing him in half with a circular saw.

Seriously, this movie is just weird. It has no set tone and usually, that’d make me hate things, but it works here. Also, if you like Wall of Voodoo, they and lead singer Andy Prieboy are all over the soundtrack.

You can get this on blu ray or 4K UHD from MVD. Each includes the 2018 4K restoration from the 35mm original camera negative, as well as interviews with Jill Schoelen and Donovan Leitch, an R-rated cut and a trailer. There’s also a DVD without these extras.

Mark Rosman started his directing career with The House On Sorority Row before working with Hillary Duff on Lizzie McGuire and directing two of her films, A Cinderella Story and The Perfect Man. He was the original director of this film, before his vision clashed with producer Edward L. Montoro.

Yes, Edward L. Montoro, the man behind Film Ventures International, the same guy who brought you movies like Grizzly and Day of the Animals before taking a million dollars out of the company and disappearing forever.

Mutant is one of the reasons why Film Ventures International was failing, which is why Montoro bounced forever. No one even knows if he’s still alive.

Taking over the directing duties of this film would be John “Bud” Cardos, who broke in to Hollywood as a result of his father and uncle managing the Graumann’s Egyptian and Chinese theaters. He started as a child actor in Hal Roach’s 1940’s Our Gang shorts,  was a rodeo rider and a bird handler on The Birds before he began appearing in biker and exploitation films like Hells Angels on Wheels, Psych-Out and Satan’s Sadists before directing his own films like Kingdom of the Spiders, The Day Time Ended and The Dark. Ironically, he was also a last-minute replacement on that movie, taking over for Tobe Hooper.

He’s kept working in Hollywood, even appearing in credits as a driver on films like Memento. You can see him in the recently reviewed Danger God.

When brothers Josh (Wings Hauser, looking and acting bonkers throughout) and Mike (Lee Montgomery, the full-grown star of Ben who is also in the made-for-TV blast The Midnight Hour) are run off the road by local rednecks — it’s Josh’s fault — and forced to spend the night in a small town.

Bo Hopkins — who has been in so much of our redneck favorites like White Lightning and What Comes Around, where he played lookalike Jerry Reed’s brother — plays the local sheriff.

Cary Guffey, the child actor from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, is also here, but unlike most movies that keep the kids safe, Mutant truly does not care. The scene where he’s taken over by mutated children is pretty harrowing and I’m glad I saw it as an adult.

Jennifer Warren, who played the wife of Paul Newman in Slap Shot, gets a special appearance credit. Man, Mutant looks like such a stain on her resume, considering other films she was in like Sam’s Song and Ice Castles. 

Somehow, this movie has a score that was recorded by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. It was composed by Richard Band, the brother of Charles Band.

It’s pretty interesting to me that the fortunes of Montoro’s company rested on this film, which is probably why directors were replaced and the title was changed from Night Shadows.

To be perfectly blunt, this movie is a mess. It never even gets its footing before it starts killing off characters left and right, unsure if it wants to be a redneck movie or a zombie film. That’s OK. I kind of like it just the same.

You can watch this movie on Tubi.

Yes, now I can say that I have seen all four Deathstalker movies.

I have no idea how this is a Film Ventures movie but assume they stole it like they did their films that Mystery Science Theater showed.

Rick Hill, who played Deathstalker in the first film is back (John Terlesky had the role in Deathstalker II and John Allen Nelson (Killer Klowns from Outer Space) was the protagonist in Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell) and he’s in a tournament where the queen wants to commit assault with a friendly weapon on all of the male combatants. He’s also looking for his sword, which means sleeping with plenty of barbarian women, but such is being a sword and sorcery hero.

Also, for some reason, lots of footage from the original film gets re-used.

Maria Ford (Burial of the Rats) is a major plus in this, but you know, after four Deathstalker movies, I kind of feel like just looking at the poster art and imagining a much better film. Brett Baxter Clark — Nick the dick from Bachelor Party, Bruiser from Teen Witch and Shane from Malibu Express — plays Vaniat, one of the fighters, so there’s that.

Writer/director Howard R. Cohen has some pretty decent credits, though. He wrote Unholy Rollers, Stryker, Barbarian Queen and episodes of Rainbow Brite and Care Bears, as well as directing Saturday the 14th, Space Raiders, Space Case, Time Trackers and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back.

I was hoping that the last Deathstalker was going to blow my mind, like how the Ator series suddenly becomes an insane MTV musical with Iron Warrior. That said, even the worst sword and sorcery movie fills me with happiness, so I didn’t hate the time I spent watching this.

The rest of the movies in this series:

• Deathstalker
• Deathstalker II
• Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell

You can also check out our Sword and Sorcery list on Letterboxd.

In 2013, when the Alamo Drafthouse presented the uncut version of this film for the first time in the United States, they referred to it as an “unforgettable assault on reality.” Those words best describe what is otherwise an indescribable film.

But I’m going to try.

Maybe a recipe will help.

Take Chariots of the Gods, and some of Rosemary’s Mary, then a little bit of The Omen, throw it in a blender and then pour the whole thing down the sink.

No? Maybe a synopsis.

We start in Heaven, or somewhere very much like it, where Franco Nero (the original Django) is one of those space gods that Erich von Däniken wrote about. He tells the bald children who surround him that there was once a war between two aliens, one good and one bad. The bad one — who is either called Sateen or Zathaar — was defeated, but not before he slept with a whole bunch of Earthwomen. Cue the Book of Enoch in the Lost Books of the Bible. Or cue the Scientology myth of Lord Xenu. Or Xemu, because he has two different spellings, too.

Only one child is left — a young girl — and a vast conspiracy wants her mother to have another child — a brother this time — so they can mate. The Christ figure sends John Huston — yes, the director of The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen — and the bald children to a rooftop somewhere in Atlanta to stop this plot. To do that, the children become adult bad men and dance around a lot while Huston walks up and down the stairs to triumphant music. If you think I’m making that last sentence up, you’ve never been blessed with this movie.

Meanwhile, Lance Henriksen (Near Dark, Aliens) is Ted Turner, pretty much. His name is Raymond Armstead and he owns the Atlanta Rebels basketball team that plays at the Omni and is dating Barbara (Joanne Nail, Switchblade Sisters), who of course is the woman who has the seed of the gods inside her. Her daughter Katy is 8 years old and already using her powers to help the Rebels win their games. But that isn’t all the help Raymond is getting. The rich, powerful and ultra-secretive Zathaar cult control the world and are helping his team become winners. All he has to do is marry Barbara, knock her up and let their kids fuck. Hopefully, they have a boy, or Raymond is gonna have to get in the saddle all over again.

Raymond can’t even do that right and the leader of the bad guys, Mel Ferrer (The Antichrist and Eaten Alive!) is upset and ready to quit on Raymond. Barbara doesn’t want more kids and certainly doesn’t want another child. But who can blame her? Her daughter is one creepy little girl. Her daughter knows all about the conspiracy and begs her mom to get married so she can have a brother (and this is where, in person, I’d throw in “…to have sex with” but I’d use the f word). How creepy is Katy? Well, she kills a bunch of boys with her mental powers because they make fun of her while she ice skates. And then she accidentally shoots her mother at a birthday party. Yep, it’s as if The Bad Seed met Carrie!

Then, as all 70’s occult movies must, the stars of Hollywood’s golden age make appearances!

Glenn Ford, the actor, plays a cop that Katy curses out and uses hawks to make wreck his car!

Shelley Winters plays Barbara’s nurse who once had one of the space babies and killed it, but can’t bring herself to kill Katy! According to interviews, Winters really smacked around Paige Conner, the actress who played Katy!

Sam Peckinpah, the director (!), plays an abortionist who removes one of the space babies from Barbara after the conspiracy pays a bunch of things to artificially inseminate her. Turns out Peckinpah had trouble remembering his lines, which is why we never learn that he’s Barabara’s ex-husband! Then is he Katy’s dad? Who knows! His voice is even Peckinpah’s! They had to ADR all of his dialogue.

In response to the abortion, Katy shoves her mom through a fish tank. She also decides to throw her down the stairs, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?-style. And by throw her down the steps, I mean do it over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, John Huston is still going up and down the stairs. Finally, they HAVE HAD ENOUGH (I like to emphasize that so you get the gist) and sent their John Woo-ian flock of doves to fight the hawks. And meanwhile, Mel Ferrer and all his men show up dead with black marks on their bodies.

And Katy? Well, as Huston tells us, kids can never be evil. She gets her head shaved and goes to space to meet Instellar Jesus Christ. The title comes up as insane music blares.

Writer/director/insane man Michael J. Paradise (Giulio Paradisi) also was in Fellini’s 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita. What inspired him to this level of cinematic goofiness? He was helped along by Ovidio G. Assonitis, whose resume includes writing Beyond the Door, Madhouse and Forever Emmanuelle before becoming the major stockholder and CEO of Cannon Pictures in 1990. That may explain some. But not all.

I know I often write things like “I don’t have the words to describe this” when I do these reviews — especially after I write a few hundred words all about said subject. But this is one time that that statement is not pure hyperbole. Just watch the trailer and be prepared to lose your grasp on normalcy!

The Visitor defies the logic of good and bad film. It can only be graded on the is it an absolute film, ala Fulci or Jodorowsky. It is something to be experienced.

You can watch this movie on Tubi.

This movie is, of course, Juan Piquer Simón’s Extra Terrestrial Visitors. The opening and end credits use footage from The Galaxy Invader by director Don Dohler.

Simón also made Pieces and Slugs, so we can forgive him for Supersonic Man, The Rift and Cthulhu Mansion (which I like for some reason). With this movie, he’s challenging us a bit.

Los nuevos extraterrestres was meant to be a frightening movie about an alien on a murderous Earth rampage, but then E.T. came out and who better than the man who made Pieces to create a clone of Spielberg’s family classic?

It starts with poachers trying to get to the alien eggs that they find in the woods and being killed in the process, as well as a rock band getting involved. Then Tommy (Óscar Martín), our child protagonist, brings one of the eggs home and ends up helping it hatch, at which point he gets a new telekinetic friend he calls Trumpy.

Maybe that name hasn’t aged well.

Meanwhile, the band — Rick (Ian Sera, Kendall from Pieces and obviously his genitals have healed well as he has a roving eye), his girlfriend Lara (Susana Bequer, who shows up in Hostel: Part II), Kathy (Sara Palmer) and Tracy (Maria Albert), along with a hitchhiker named Sharon (Nina Ferrer) they found on the way — show up at Tommy’s house and Lara soon dies with a Big Dipper symbol on her forehead, which happens after she’s attacked by Trumpy’s mother and falls off a cliff.

This movie alternates between sweet moments between alien and child versus angry alien mother killing people left and right before being shot tons of times by Rick after she kills Tommy’s angry Uncle Bill (Manuel Pereiro). The boy and alien say their goodbyes and you’re like, well, didn’t we just watch Bambi’s murderous mother get killed? Has anyone learned anything in this? Is Trumpy going to grow up and murder us all?

By the way, if Tommy’s room feels familiar, it’s the same room where Timmy was working on his dirty puzzle in Pieces. 

I have no idea who this movie is for, but I have to respect the lengths it takes to make us think that it was shot in America, as Tommy’s bedroom has tons of Boston sports pennants to the point that you question why there are so many of them and start to realize that no, this didn’t come from the colonies and no, in no way is this a sequel or in the same world as E.T., no matter what they want to tell you.

The chocolate of alien murder in the woods and peanut butter of human and alien childhood friendship does not taste that great when smashed together, but it sure is fascinating and man, Trumpy looks legitimately like an alien to the point where if you told me that he was an escapee from Groom Lake, I’d believe you.

This is being released on blu ray from Severin. It has a 4K scan from the 35mm negative, plus extras such as The Simon’s Jigsaw — A Journey Into the Universe of Juan Piquer Simon, interviews with Emilio Linder and composer Librado Pastor, a private concert with Pastor, the Pod People credits and a CD soundtrack single. You can get it from Severin.

José Ramón Larraz went to school for philosophy, became a comic book writer and then made some wild movies, like Whirlpool, which Roger Ebert negatively reviewed — I mean, I love it — by saying that it was a genuinely sickening film. It has to do with various varieties of sex, yes, but its main appeal seems to be its violence… The violence is not, however, the cathartic sort to be found in The Wild Bunch or the comic strip spaghetti Westerns. It’s a particularly grisly sort of violence, photographed for its own sake and deliberately relishing in its ugliness. It made me awfully uneasy.” He also directed the Spanish Western Watch Out Gringo! Sabata Will Return, The House That Vanished (which had so many titles, including Scream…And Die! and Please! Don’t Go in the Bedroom, as well as a campaign that made it look like Last House on the Left), Symptoms, Stigma, Black Candles (AKA Sex Rites of the Devil) and three American co-productions before the end of his career, the underrated Edge of the Axe, Rest in Pieces and Deadly Manor.

The film starts with its leads, Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska, billed here as Anulka; a former Page 3 girl who was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for May 1973, she was once married to Soupy Sales’ son Tony, who was in Tin Machine with David Bowie, Reeves Gabriels and his brother Hunt Sales) in bed together, which was probably quite shocking in 1974, but perhaps even more shocking is when they’re machine gunned before the credits.

They’re brought back as vampires that roam the British countryside and take in wayward male motorists, draining them of more than blood before disposing of these conquests. They have a different form of vampirism than you may have seen before, making grisly arm wounds that they continually feed from, closer to cannibals than bloodsuckers.

Morris and Anulka make quite the pair; the film is in love with everything they do. Beyond the gorgeous leads, the scenery is just as inviting, as this was not around Oakley Court, which Hammer used for The Man in Black, The Lady Craved Excitement, The Brides of Dracula, The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies. William Castle shot The Old Dark House there and you’ll also see it in films like Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly; And Now the Screaming Starts! and perhaps most famously, it was the home of Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. While it had no heat or running water when that movie was filmed, it’s now a luxury hotel.

This played double features with The Devil’s Rain! in England, which is my kind of night.

You can watch this on Tubi.