Directed by Lee Frost, who wrote the script with Wed Bishop, this starts with Tom Eldridge (Mark Miller) running into trouble with the law, thanks to running moonshine. The law being Sheriff Marsh (Christopher George!) and Deputy Frank (Bishop), who screws up and shoots the man and as a result, his daughters Dixie (Jane Anne Johnstone) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley) lose the farm to banker Charlie White (R.G. Armstrong). And there’s also crime boss Dade McCrutchen (Stanley Adams) to deal with. Luckily, they know Mack (Warren Oates), a racer who can help them get the revenge they need.
Somehow, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley were never in a film before or after this, which surprises me. They’re pretty good in it and actually own most of the film, as Oates is in it for like ten minutes. And if you’re looking for that secret Steve McQueen cameo, good luck. He has a motorcycle helmet on. Supposedly, he hadn’t been in a movie for some time, was bored and showed up to be in the dirt bike racing scene.
The soundtrack — Duane Eddy played on it — and the stunts are the reason to watch this one. It’s very proto-Dukes of Hazzard as the girls play Robin Hood, stealing from the crooks to give to the poor. There’s also a crook getting blown up real good while on the toilet, which is something I’d like to see more of.
Dirkie DeVries is eight years old and played by Wynand Uys, credited as Dirkie Hayes; he’s the son of director, writer, and producer Jamie Uys, who also directed The Gods Must Be Crazy. As he flies over the Kalahari Desert with his Uncle Pete (Pieter Hauptfleisch), the old dude has a heart attack, stranding Dickie and his small dog (Lolly, played by Lady Frolic Of Belvedale) in the middle of nowhere, with his father Anton (Jamie Uys) searching for him.
If you love dogs, this is a harrowing movie, as that little Cairn Terrier is supposedly eaten, has rocks thrown at it, fights hyenas, and so much more. It lives, barely, as does Dickie. But not for any lack of trying by the actor’s own father!
This could have been released as early as 1969, under the title Dirkie Lost in the Desert in South Africa. This is a cruel movie to make children watch, one that seemingly has nature and foreign cultures at war with kids. If I had seen it when I was small, I would have nightmares to this day.
As for young Wynaad, he had to film all of this twice, as they made both an English and Afrikaans version. He never acted again. I can only imagine how he felt about his dad, but since then, he has worked in adventure travel and as a pilot in the Kruger Park region of South Africa.
The trailer for this movie claims that it’s “a movie that tells it like it is about blacks. The beautiful blacks. The evil blacks.”
It’s also a movie that’s preaching to its audience about ending the drugs and violence in black communities to the point that it moves from blacksploitation to Godsploitation. It starts with Chris Townes (Renny Roker and yes, he is related to Al) going shithouse in a room full of glass vases and getting sent to a psychiatric ward where he screams at people. When he gets out, he has to deal with the worst white people ever at work and back home with his landlord. Maybe he can get with Mindy (Marie O’Henry), a social worker who he has a crush on. Well, when he drives her home, his maniacal skills behind the wheel show her that yes, Chris is a dangerous human being to be avoided.
Chris needs to get with Mindy, so he decides to start being nice to the wheelchair-bound Little Joe (Danny Martin) to prove how nice a guy he is. But then it is revealed that Mindy is married, and Chris uses Little Joe to meet her friend Kim (Kandi Keath) because this movie flies through character, and at the same time, black on black crime is out of control to the point that it appears in this movie and is moralized over more than a day of Fox News.
But you know, I kind of love this as it ends with Chris looking directly at us, the audience, and demanding that a million black men march on Washington 18 years before that happened. And then this title comes up:
The tagline for this movie was “Our streets… nightmares! Our neighborhoods… execution chambers! Look what we’re doing to ourselves!”
Director and writer Horace Jackson had some talent. Sure, this movie is all over the place, but there’s a scene where criminals beat up Mindy that is really artistic. And sadly, it could still be made today and be completely relevant. You could watch this and laugh at how silly and earnest it is, or you could look at it as a filmmaker using all of the tools that he had to get out a message that he believed in.
I’ve been obsessed with the trailer and artwork for this movie for years. Throw in the fact that it has ’70s teen idol Leif Garrett amongst its cast of pint-sized psychopaths, and it seems like a recipe for my kind of movie insanity. However, I just never found the time to sit down and watch it. With so many movies on our shelves and streaming online, my to watch list is constantly bulging with films all screaming to be enjoyed.
Five children have survived a van accident on a snowy road, and unbeknownst to everyone they encounter for the rest of the film, they were on their way to a mental institution for criminally insane young folks. They make their way to the secluded mountain home of Papa Doc, awealthyh businessman, who has all manner of guests staying with him, like his sex-starved wife Lovely (Carolyn Stellar, who beyond being Leif Garrett and Dawn Lynn’s mother, would go on to design the costumes for the 1978’s utterly brutal Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band), his daughter and her boyfriend, plus Dr. Harvey Beckman (Sorrell Booke, Boss Hogg from TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard) and his wife, Ruth (Shelley Morrison, Rosario from TV’s Will and Grace). Oh yeah, there’s also the dim-witted handyman, Ralph (original screenwriter John Durren).
Soon, the power is out, the phones are cut, and the kids are killing people left and right. Little actor and budding crossdresser David (Garrett), army lover Brian, Susan the pyro, Moe (Dawn Lynn, who played Dawna in the Walking Tall films) with her plush fish and usage of piranha, and last but not least, albino nun Sister Hannah will find their way into your heart, then cut it out and show it to you. Imagine The Bad Seed times five, with none of the great story or acting.
This movie is also known as Peopletoys, Tantrums and The Horrible House on the Hill. Of course, that last title has a Last House on the Left ripoff poster to go along with the similar title.
Devil Times Five was distributed by Jerry Gross’ Cinemation Industries, which also brought Son of Dracula, Teenage Mother (“She’s nine months of trouble!”), The Black Sixand Idaho Transfer to audiences that had to be absolutely bewildered by their level of pure strangeness.
Original director Sean MacGregor was fired from the production after his footage was unusable, and David Sheldon finished the film (you can tell that they switched interior locations because there’s no continuity in the backgrounds). By the time those reshoots happened, Leif Garrett had cut his hair, so he wears a wig that you can easily point out several times.
Even stranger, MacGregor was in a psychiatric ward after leaving this movie and was also dating Gail Smale, who played Sister Hannah. That last bit doesn’t seem all that interesting until you realize that she was underage and was given a nun costume and rose-colored glasses to hide the fact that she was so young and a legitimate albino.
Seriously — how crazy is a movie where Leif Garrett watches as his real-life mom is nude and being murdered by carnivorous fish in the bathtub? This must have been a strange thing for people to watch, as Garrett was already well-known as Oscar’s son on TV’s The Odd Couple, and his sister was on My Three Sons.
If you’re looking for a movie where children annihilate adults, that isn’t The Children, Village of the Damned or Who Can Kill a Child?, then I guess you should watch Devil Times Five. Actually, I kid. This is a goofy little film that is pretty much the horror version of Home Alone. I enjoyed it, but you know, I also have no taste whatsoever.
Supposedly, The Devil’s Wedding Night (AKA Full Moon of the Virgins) was all Mark Damon’s idea. After being in House of Usher, Damon had moved to Italy and appeared in movies like Black Sabbath and Johnny Yuma.
Perhaps this idea was the start of his producing career, which was more successful than his acting job. Damon was planning on selling the movie an American production company. Luigi Batzella (Nude for Satan, The Beast In Heat) was picked to direct, but most people believe that Joe D’Amato stepped in and finished the film.
I’m a firm believer in this theory because there’s a moment near the end of this movie where an otherworldly Countess Dolingen De Vries rises from a bathtub of blood and fog and writhes near nude on the screen and somehow going beyond the confines of the screen to destroy my mind. I generally try my best not to turn reviews of movies with atrractive women into male gaze spectacles, but Rosalba Neri is absoutely iconic in this moment, a perfect scene that is never discussed nearly enough.
There’s also a magic vampire ring of the Nibelungen, which is gigantic costume jewelery and therefore better than any Hollywood baubles, village girls with sacred amulets of Pazuzu (yes, really), five virgins getting sacrificed all at once in an express line of bloodletting magic, three different twist endings in a row, tripped out Dr. Who looking tunnel moments, D’Amato billing himself as Michael Holloway and going absolutely wlld capturing every inch of womanly curves and an incredible setting, the Castello Piccolomini Balsorano, the same place Lady Frankenstein, Bloody Pit of Horror, Crypt of the Vampire, The Lickerish Quartet, The Blade Master, Sister Emanuelle, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, The Reincarnation of Isabel, Farfallon, Pensiero d’amore, Lady Barbara, 7 Golden Women Against Two 07: Treasure Hunt, C’è un fantasma nel mio letto, Baby Love and Put Your Devil Into My Hell were all shot at.
Plus, Xiro Papas, the monster of Frankenstein 80, plays a vampiric giant.
If you’re a fan of the harder side of Hammer, then allow this female vampire to obsess you as well.
Has there ever been a better movie than Destroy All Monsters? It is everything magical about film: giant monsters smashing cities and fighting one another while people run and scream in terror. It is cinematic junk food, a treat for the mind that transports me back to watching Action Movies on Youngstown’s WKBN 27 as a little kid, jumping around the room in pure glee.
Every giant monster on Earth has been captured and sent to Monster Island, where they are kept secure and studied — until all communication is mysteriously cut off.
Turns out that the scientists on the island are being mind-controlled by the Kilaaks, who demand the human race surrender or face total destruction. They control the monsters to attack famous cities all over the world: Godzilla decimates New York City, Rodan smashes Moscow, Mothra takes out Beijing, Gorosaurus crushes Paris and Manda, a giant Japanese dragon, goes shithouse on London. All of these attacks are to keep the UNSC forces from finding out that Tokyo is the real target.
Luckily, the humans are able to take out the control signals and the good guy monsters take on King Ghidorah, who is overcome and killed (Minilla, Varan, Anguirus and Kumonga show up, too). The Kilaaks also have a Fire Dragon, a monster that starts setting cities on fire. Godzilla takes out its base, and the forces of good triumph.
This was intended to be the final Godzilla film, as the series’ popularity was waning. However, the success of Destroy All Monsters led to even more Godzilla films.
When I was a kid, I was impatient for the human scenes to end and for the monsters to show up. I’ve never changed. All I want to do is watch giant monsters destroy cities and fight one another. This movie delivers all of that and more. It’s not high art, but does it have to be?
Let’s just assume that the events of Demons actually happened, as this movie does. Released just seven months after the original, this movie opens with the residents of a high-rise apartment building watching a movie dramatization of the events that took place in that film. They watch as several teenagers trespass into the closed-off city that was destroyed after the demonic outbreak. Finding the dead body of a demon, one of the teens accidentally drips blood in its mouth and the whole thing starts all over again.
Sally Day (Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Mother of Tears, Opera) is upset that her boyfriend hasn’t come to her sweet sixteen party — or, as they say in Italy, “dolce sedici anni” — and she decides to watch the movie. So, you know, as these things happen, a demon crawls out of her television set and infects her. She kills nearly everyone at her party and turns them into more demons, who begin to infect the entire apartment building. Little kids, dogs, cops, bodybuilders, pregnant women — no one is safe from these demons.
George and Hannah (David Edwin Knight and Nancy Brilli, who was also in Body Count) spend most of the movie trying to escape Sally so that they can have their child. She’s nearly unstoppable, plus she has a flying demon on her side.
Italian movie fans should keep their eyes open for Asia Argento, who debuted in this film as Ingrid. Plus, Bobby Rhodes (from the original, as well as Hercules and War Bus Commando), Virginia Bryant (who is also in the unrelated sequel Demons 3: The Ogre), Lino Salemme (Ripper from the first film), Davide Marotta (who played a child alien in a very famous series of Italian Kodak commercials and was also the monstrous boy in Phenomena) and Michele Mirabella (Dancing Crow from Thunder).
Initially, Hannah’s baby would become a demon inside her and claw its way out of her stomach. This scene was taken out when Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento decided they wanted a happier ending. Which is nice, I guess.
After all, this movie is more about jump scares and less about freaking you out with the sheer amount of gore that it features. Is it any wonder that it has less of a metal soundtrack and instead features new wave bands like The Smiths, The Cult, Fields of the Nephilim, Dead Can Dance, Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets, Gene Loves Jezebel and The Producers?
Sept 22-28 Chuck Vincent Week: No one did it like Chuck! He’s the unsung king of Up All Night comedy, a queer director making the straightest romcoms but throwing in muscle studs and drag queens. His films explore the concept of romance from almost every angle – he loved love!
Tony Cannelloni (Louie Bonanno) just wants to get out of his mom’s (Marie Sawyer) house and get laid. If you were watching this on USA Up All Night, you get it. He gets a book, Sex Appeal, and tries to become a sexual dynamo. He doesn’t, but his landlord (Jeffrey Hurst) writes about him as the New Jersey Casanova, which becomes some kind of fame (and the source of a heart attack for his mother).
Tony is in love with Corrine (Tally Chanel), but the thing viewers will probably enjoy — well, me — is that this is packed with mid 80s adult stars, like Gloria Leonard as a newscaster, Veronica Hart as a woman so sensitive that her fingers are erogenous zones, Merle Michaels as a nerdy girl who ticks all my boxes and ends up flipped into a Murphy bed and Taija Rae and Samantha Fox as two tough girls who truss up Tony and have their way with him. And Candida Royalle as a sex worker!
I get that this is a dumb sex comedy with no budget, but it caught me on an afternoon where I had doom scrolled the end of the world and was in sheer panic mode. I was feeling like no one wanted to listen to me or help me feel better and here’s Chuck Vincent, forty years in the past, giving me the hug that I needed.
As for the lead actor in this, “In February of 1992, following a string of miraculous events, and in answer to his prayers for Divine guidance, Louix had an encounter with four Ascended Masters. Soon thereafter, he renounced the material world and began training in earnest with the Masters in The Ancient Mystery School, fulfilling one of the prophecies spoken to him by Jesus at the age of five.” Thanks to theironcupcake on Letterboxd for this.
One can only imagine that Jess Franco sat in a theater as Ken Russell’s The Devils ended and thought to himself, “But where’s the sex? I want more of it. I demand more of it!
After watching a witch burn, we meet two nuns in a convent, the virginal Margaret (Britt Nichols AKA Carmen Yazalde, who appears in The Erotic Rights of Frankenstein, A Virgin Among the Living Deadand is sacrificed in Tombs of the Blind Dead) and her more sex-obsessed sister Kathleen (Anne Libert, House of 1000 Pleasures and Sins of the Flesh).
A rich woman named Lady De Winter (Karin Field, Target Frankie and Return of Shanghai Joe) believes that Kathleen is possessed by Satan and that the two are the daughters of that blackened witch, so she puts her top man, Thomas Renfield (Alberto Dalbés, A Quiet Place to Killand Espionage In Tangiers) after her. Of course, he falls in love and lets her escape. And even when Inquisitor Lord Justice Jeffreys (Cihangir Gaffari, Dick Turpin and Bloodsport) gives him another chance, Renfield runs back to her and the two are soon tortured into near oblivion.
Meanwhile, Satan himself appears in the convent and assaults Margaret, replacing her innocence with an overwhelming desire to punish anyone who harmed her mother or sister, starting with Lady De Winter, often by kissing them into skeletons. You know, no one loves female revenge more than Jess Franco and he’s going all out here, with Margaret seducing her Mother Superior right into suicide and then leaving no man or woman safe from her vengeance.
This is one of the more gorgeous films Franco would make — it was shot by Raul Artigot (The Ghost Galleon, The Cannibal Man, The Pyjama Girl Case) — and he makes excellent use of his budget. And he lives up to those dreams of a movie that somehow answers, “What if Witchfinder Generalwas more about lesbians?”
They will make cemeteries their cathedrals, and the cities will be your tombs. With that line, you know that what you’re about to watch better be the most mind-blowing horror film possible. Good news — Demons is all of that and then some, the kind of movie that has everything that I watch movies for.
I can’t be silent or still while it runs, growing more excited by every moment. It is the perfect synthesis of 1980s gore and heavy metal, presented with no characterization or character growth whatsoever. It’s also the most awesome movie you will ever watch.
This is an all-star film, if you consider Italian ’80s horror creators to be all-stars. Lamberto Bava is directing and doing special effects, Dario Argento producing, a script written by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini (Once Upon a Time in America, Phenomena) and Dardano Sacchetti (every single Italian horror film that was ever awesome…a short list includes A Bay of Blood, Shock, The Beyond, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Blastfighter, Hands of Steeland so many more), and assistant directing and acting from Michele Soavi.
The movie begins on the Berlin subway, where Cheryl is pursued by a silver-masked man (Soavi) who hands her tickets to see a film at the Metropol. She brings along her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo from A Cat in the Brain and Demonia), and they soon meet two boys, George (Urbano Barberini, Gor, Opera) and Ken.
The masked man has brought all manner of folks to the theater: a blind man and his daughter, as well as some interesting couples, including a boyfriend and girlfriend, an older married couple, and Tony the pimp and his girls, one of whom is Shocking Dark‘s Geretta Geretta. As they wait for the movie to begin, a steel mask in the lobby scratches her.
The movie that unspools — a slasher about teenagers who disturb the final resting place of Nostradamus — also has that very same steel mask. When it touches anyone in the movie, they turn murderous. At the very same time, one of the prostitutes scratches herself in the bathroom, and her face erupts into pus and reveals a demon. From here on out, the movie becomes one long action sequence, as the other prostitute transforms into a demon in front of the entire audience.
Meanwhile, four punks do cocaine in a Coke can and break in, releasing a demon into the city as the rest of the movie audience attempts to escape and are killed one by one. Only George and Cheryl survive, as our hero uses a sword and motorcycle to attack the demons before a helicopter crashes through the roof. But then the masked man attacks them!
I’m not going to ruin the rest of the movie, but it will tell you that even the credits offer no safety in the world of Demons. And oh yeah — Giovanni Frezza (Bob from House by the Cemetery) shows up!
Demons are ridiculous. Pure goop and gore mixed with power chords, samurai swords, punk rockers and even a Billy Idol song, which had to blow the budget. It also looks gorgeous — filled with practical effects, gorgeous film stock and amazing colors, no doubt the influence of Bava’s father. The scene where the yellow-eyed demons emerge from the blue blackness is everything horror movies should be.
This doesn’t just have my highest recommendation. It earns my scorn if you haven’t seen it yet!
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