Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Keep (1983)

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Based on the novel by F. Paul Wilson* — which was the first of a seven book series called The Adversary Cycle — The Keep is the movie you find on Wikipedia when you look up troubled production. Starting with a rough thirteen week shoot that went all the way to twenty two weeks with reshoots and a supernatural creature that kept changing because director Michael Mann couldn’t decide how he wanted it to look, the fact that this movie was ever released is pretty amazing.

Making things even more challenging was the sad fact that visual effects supervisor Wally Veevers died while the film was still being made and nobody knew how he planned to finish the visual effects scenes in the movie. Mann had to finish 260 shots of special effects himself after Veever’s death.

This is a movie with so many different endings that it’s hard to keep track. The original end was close to the effects Veevers did for 2001: A Space Odyssey with a dimensional wormhole tearing through The Keep and time and space itself. Paramount refused to pay for the filming of the additional footage needed for this finale, so Mann had to compromise.

Mann’s original cut was 210-minutes long and we may never see that version of this movie. It was taken out of his hands and cut down to 96-minutes and the result was utter hackwork. Huge chunks of the story are missing, continuity is all over the place and there are obvious mistakes in the sound design, soundtrack and editing. And that’s what played in theaters!

There was a Laurie Anderson score for this — it ended up becoming her album United States Live — but this film wouldn’t be as successful as it is without the Tangerine Dream score that plays throughout.

Somehow, it took until 2020 for this to come out on DVD and that was only in Australia. It looks like this will never get a big release, but hey — we’ve been surprised before. When asked if it would ever be released in 2016, Mann said, “No. we were never able to figure out how we were to combine all these components that were shot (pre blue and green screen). That one’s going to stay in its…” before he just stopped talking.

A German unit of soldiers have occupied an uninhabited citadel n Romania in an attempt to control the Dinu Mountain Pass. Two soldiers attempt to steal a religious icon before releasing Radu Molasar, a monster that kills several soldiers as it becomes more physically real. And as the soldiers struggle to keep their ownership of The Keep, even more sadistic troops come to town, killing the local villagers.

There’s also a Jewish historian named Prof. Theodore Cuza (Ian McKellen) who the Molasar is using to escape the confines of this building, another mysterious named Glaeken Trismegestus (Scott Glenn) and yeah — just listen to the cool music and watch the pretty lights and let this movie wash over you. I mean, German soldiers and Jewish people joining together to stop a golem? Is that a good explanation? Who knows!

There’s a great cast game for whatever happens, like Gabriel Byrne, Robert Prosky, Jürgen Prochnow and Alberta Watson.

As for Mann, he left the movies behind for a while. But he did just fine, creating Miami Vice and making films like the fascinating Manhunter, Heat and The Insider.

Somehow, Mayfair Games was able to take the movie and make a board game and a Dungeons & Dragons module in its RoleAids line.

No matter how disjointed or poorly editing this movie is, I keep watching it. Maybe someday, the film I get to see will be the one that Mann actually wanted audiences to see.

*Wilso disliked this movie so much that he wrote a short story called “Cuts” in which a writer puts a voodoo curse on a director who has ruined one of his books.

Medusa (2020)

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In the world of myth, Medusa was a gorgeous woman who was assaulted inside the temple of Athena by Poseidon, who gained power over the goddess of wisdom through this attack. Angered, Athena punished Medusa by transforming her into a horrific creature, her radiant hair replaced by snakes. Today, feminists see the story of Medusa as one of the first cases of victim blaming. There’s also the theory that she was transformed into a beast because men have always feared female desire. 

That brings us to the movie Medusa, in which a young woman suddenly finds that a snake’s bite has begun to change her into something new, beautiful and deadly. 

The first full-length movie from director Matthew B.C. — working from a script by Scott Jeffrey — tells the story of a caravan of prostitutes facing a variety of addictions, violent customers and an existence bereft of any hope.

When a new girl named Carly — who had escaped this caravan once before, only to succumb back to the siren’s call of heroin addiciton — is taken to work there by her pimp, her first job introduces her to Alexis, who is both a snake and a woman. Once Carly is bitten, she becomes something that will change the world of all of the women. 

If you told me the premise of this movie without showing it to me — and told me the budget — I’d think it was a trifle. Yet I was pleasantly surprised by the way the narrative is in the now without clubbing you over the head with its messages. It’s a talented filmmaker who can thread the narrow divides of commerce, exploitation and message. Somehow, against the odds, this movie does that.

And hey — I’m all for movies that feature snakes growing out of a woman’s head.

Medusa is available on demand and on DVD from New Era Entertainment.

The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

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Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ligeia” and adapted by Robert Towne, this is the last of the Roger Corman Poe films. Because Poe’s story was so short, Towne expanded on the themes of mesmerism and necrophilia. The result? “Literally being controlled by someone who was dead, which is gruesome notion but perfectly consistent with Poe.” said Towne to John Brady in The Craft of the Screenwriter.

In that same book, Towne confessed he thought that “…it would have been better if it had been with a man who didn’t look like a necrophiliac to begin with. I love Vincent. He’s very sweet. But, going in, you suspect that Vincent could bang cats, chickens, girls, dogs, everything. You just feel that necrophilia might be one of his Basic Things.”

Corman agreed, as he was thinking Richard Chamberlain would be perfect. Yet American-International Pictures wanted Price and Corman had to break the news to Towne.

The film starts with a casket on display with a young woman’s face visible through a window in the pine box. A black cat jumps on the coffin and takes her soul, which belonged to  Ligeia, the wife of Verden Fell (Vincent Price). He’s troubled by her death, as she refused to die and was blasphemous about God to the end of her life.

Despite his strange appearance — he must wear special glasses as he is allergic to sunlight* — he meets another woman at the grave, Rowena (Elizabeth Shepherd, The Kidnapping of the President, The Omen II). They fall instantly in love and he moves her into his home which is haunted by the spirit of his wife in the form of that black cat. By the end of the film, we learn that he’s been mesmerized by his dead wife and can only love her, yet he battles the cat that has her soul until her tomb burns around them.

As for his new wife, well, she goes back to the man she left at the start of the movie and has a happy future, which is pretty sad for poor Vincent Price.

*Poe invented being goth.

Tales of Terror (1962)

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The fourth of Roger Corman’s Poe films — which includes House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia — Tales of Terror was released on a double bill with Panic in the Year Zero!

Each of the three stories is narrated by Vincent Price, who also appears in all three parts of this anthology.

In “Morella,” Poe’s story forms the basics of the story but this take on the story is near-apocalyptic. Lenora Locke has come to visit her father (Price), who refuses her company as he believes that she killed her mother Morella in childbirth. That’s when the daughter discovers that her mother is rotten in her father’s ancient home, father learns that the daughter is dying and the mother comes back for everyone.

“The Black Cat” has Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) discovering that his wife Annebelle is cuckolding him with the world’s foremost wine taster, Fortunato Luchresi (Vincent Price). So he does what any of us would: entomb them inside a wall along with his wife’s black cat. Obviously, this story also has elements of another Poe story, The Cask of Amontillado. If you enjoyed this story, it was also filmed by Lucio Fulci as The Black Cat and Dario Argento within the Poe double feature Two Evil Eyes.

In the last story, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” finds hypnotist Mr. Carmichael (Basil Rathbone) helping to stop the suffering of the dying M. Valdemar (Vincent Price). However, Carmichael places him in a trance between life and death, taking control of his entire life and even trying to take his wife. This story features Price’s face literally melting away, which is really horrifying for a 1962 movie.

Roger Corman and Richard Matheson were really working together quite well here. I’m a sucker for a good anthology and these stories move quick and pack a punch.

Dope Is Death (2020)

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With blight ravaging New York City in the 1970s, groups like the Young Lords and Black Panthers fought for radical change in their communities. Through the leadership of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, the stepfather of Tupac, one of the activities of these groups was to create the first acupuncture detoxification program in the United States.

Seen as “radical harm reduction,” this acupuncture program was a revolutionary act toward the government programs that transfixed the lives of black and brown communities throughout the South Bronx.

While the legacy of the program has long been maintained by the residents of the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, those that created it have suffered from decades of state-sanctioned persecution.

Dope is Death explains how the acupuncture clinic rose to prominence and continues in the present day, despite dealing with funding challenges.

Director Mia Donovan has also made Inside Lara Roxx, the story of adult star Lara Roxx, who went from the adult industry to an HIV infection and a psychiatric ward in Montreal all before the movie even begins, and Deprogrammed, which is all about the anti-cult crusade of Ted “Black Lightning” Patrick.

She takes on really interesting stories and somehow makes them even more intriguing through the way that they are made. For this film, she worked with Sofi Langis, who has directed several VICE features and Texas: women and guns, a love story.

At once a history lesson on how groups like the Black Panthers tried to instigate massive and sweeping change while also explaining the heroin epidemic in the South Bronx, Dope Is Death is a frank indictment of how governments use drugs to oppress communities and how their myriad intelligence organizations seek to discredit anyone that attempts to make a difference.

Terror from the Year 5000 (1958)

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Originally titled The Girl from 5000 A.D., this movie had a great tagline: “From Time Unborn … A Hideous She-Thing!”

Playing on American-International Pictures double features with The Screaming Skull or The Brain Eaters, Terror from the Year 5000 was shot in Dade County, Florida and presents a world where scientists attempt to communicate with the future by sending their fraternity keys through time and getting statues and coins in return. One of the scientists, Victor, grows insane attempting to communicate with the future and pays for it with his life. There’s also a mutant cat cadaver, in case you’re into that kind of thing.

The poster for this movie is, quite frankly, way more interesting than the movie its selling. Which, come to think if it, is  how posters should work, right?

Dede Allen, who would one day edit The Hustler, Wonder Boys, Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon and Reds, started her editing career on this movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Her Name Is Cat (1998)

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Cat (Almen Wong) is a professional killer falling in love with a policeman named John (Michael Wong). John feels torn between his job, his ex-wife and child, and Cat, whose life is anything but simple.

Clarence Fok, who also made Naked Killer, directed this and to be perfectly frank, he’s making his version of The Killer, but featuring Almen Wong looking stylish as she kills everyone in her way. Also — one of the kills is totally ripped off from The Omen.

You may look at this poster and wonder, “Why is this scene not in the movie?” This is how movie posters should work, creating something that you need to watch just to see that image come to life.

Like kaiju movies, this film has really boring moments of human interaction that serve only to give you time to rest in-between moments of stylized violence. Less people, more bullets, I always exclaim.

Method Man (1979)

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Also known as The Fearless Young Boxer and Avenging Boxer, the name of this movie lives on in Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man, who was given that title by their leader the RZA.

It’s directed by Jimmy Shaw, who also directed Fists of Fury 2 and Return of the Tiger. It was written by Ching Kang Yao, whose resume includes scripts for movies like One Armed Swordsman Against Nine Killers, Fists of Bruce Lee and Secrets of the Chinese Kung-Fu.

While on a fishing trip, Shao Lung (Ji-Lung Chang) watches as his father is murdered by Wu Pa Feng (Casanova Wong). He joins his uncle’s traveling circus where he begins to study the fighting styles that will enable him to one day have revenge.

You’d be forgiven if you thought this was an early Jackie Chan movie, because it certainly wants you to think that it is. That said, Wong is awesome as the killer, making his way through the world to murder a list of fighters and earning the enmity of our hero. If only it didn’t have so much comedy it’d be a much better movie.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Evil Town (1987)

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This movie is a mess and I love it. A glorious four director thrown together junkfest that started filming in 1984, as well as containing footage coming from an unfinished Dean Jagger movie made a decade before, God Bless Dr. Shagetz. Then, to spice things up, Gary Graver’s wife — and Fonzie’s girlfriend Lorraine — Jillian Kesner-Graver and Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1982, Lynda Wiesmeier, show up for the “foreign sales.”

A group of four friends end up in a small town where young people just happen to disappear, all because there are some old folks using young folks to become young folks again.

One of the directors of this movie, Mardi Rustam, liked the idea so much that he made his own take on it and that would be Evils of the Night, which may be the better movie and definitely came out two years before this one finally got completed. That said, how many movies have an evil Hope Summers from The Andy Griffith Show?

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

THE EXCELLENT EIGHTIES: The Cold War Killers (1986)

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Based on a series of novels by Anthony Price, this movie was originally part of a six episode ITV series, Chessgame, that was turned into three TV movies: The Alamut Ambush, The Deadly Recruits, and this movie, The Cold War Killers.

Leave it to Mill Creek to drop you into a TV series turned into an edited for time movie with no warning whatsoever.

Terence Stamp, who was one of the villains of my childhood thanks to his turn as General Zod in the Superman movies, stars as David Audley, a Cold War spy exhausted by the secret game he’s been playing against the Russians for decades.

He’s dealing with a missing British bomber, which is found when a small lake is drained to make room for a new housing development. Soon, the simple discovery becomes so much more, as it brings together smuggling, the black market, the KGB, the SS and several murders, all while Audley tries to find love.

Mike Lane, who plays Carmine Longo in this movie, was in several films that fans of our site can appreciate, like Stryker, Ulysses Against Hercules, Grotesque, A Name for Evil, Frankenstein 1970 and Demon Keeper. And Eurospy fans should keep an eye out for Carmen Du Sautoy, who was Saida in The Man with the Golden Gun.