Also known as The Hooker Cult Murders, The Pyx is based on the novel by John Buell. The pyx is a container used by Catholics to hold the Eucharist, literally the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the form of blessed unleavened bread.

While directed by Harvey Hart and written by Robert Schlitt, this was a movie that Curtis Harrington had wanted to make for some time.

Elizabeth Lucy (Karen Black) is a barely dressed sex worker who fell out a window, a bloodstream filled with heroin, clutching a crucifix and a pyx. Sergeant Jim Henderson (Christopher Plummer) wants to figure out why she died, which takes us back through the last few months of her life.

As he grows closer to the truth, meeting the people in her life, each of them dies in different ways. That’s because Elizabeth was the victim of a cult who had desecrated a piece of communion and were offering it to her as part of a Black Mass, presided over by a Catholic priest. As she was trying to save her soul, she jumps out a window to her death.

That priest, Keerson (Jean-Louis Roux) claims to be possessed by the devil and only the bullets of Henderson’s gun set him free.

The end of this is strange from a Catholic perspective. Suicide is one of the biggest sins of the church and it keeps the soul in limbo or sends it to Hell, depending on which of the teachers you believe. Would Elizabeth be forgiven for this death as she did it to remain free of Satanic power? I wonder.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Here’s a drink.

Black Mass (thanks to this recipe)

• 1.5 oz. white rum
• .5 oz. Malibu
• .5 oz. blue curacao
• .5 oz. Campari
• 3 oz. pineapple juice
• .25 oz. simple syrup
• .25 oz. lime juice

1. Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice.
2. Pour over crushed ice and drink up.

Noel Black made his name with a short entitled Skaterdater and he made Pretty Poison, which is an incredible movie but died at the box office. Then, his career fell apart. He said, “The gold-plated nail in my career coffin was pounded when, after the box-office failure of Pretty Poison, I accepted a dreadful project, Cover Me Babe, that never should have been made. I reckoned that it was better to stay active than to wait for a project I believed in. That was a mistake. It was followed by another mistake, Jennifer on My Mind, one of the dozens of unsuccessful drug pictures at the time.”

After working in TV, he came back to the big screen — or tried to — with this film, which was originally called Marianne. It took six years to come out on video under the title Mirrors.

He also directed Mischief and Private School, two teen sex comedies that are way better than that genre may lead one to believe.

Marianne Whitman (Kitty Wynn, Sharon Spencer from The Exorcist) and her husband Gary (William Paul Burns) are on their honeymoon in New Orleans where she’s soon the concern of a voodoo group who want to put another soul into her. To get what they want, they’ll murder dogs and even her husband in a dust-delivered asthma attack which is really the wildest way someone dies in a 70s occult movie outside of The Omen‘s gore Rube Goldberg destructions of humanity.

Dr. Godard (Peter Donat) tries to help, but Marianne is trapped in a slow burn 70s possession film with an ambiguous ending. Visually, this is a great film. As for the story, well, it’s a mess. It does have a great party scene — every 70s occult movie should — with Willie Tee And The Wild Magnolias funking it out.

I love this in spite of its problems.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Here’s a drink.

Voodoo

• 1 oz. curacao
• 1 oz. 99 Bananas
• 1 oz. Midori
• 1.5 oz. Malibu
• 3 oz. orange juice

1. Mix all ingredients in a shaker with ice.
2. Pour over crushed ice and stay out of New Orleans.

I’m still trying to figure this out.

Made as Nightmare at Blood Castle, this is about Dr. Arthur Blackwood (Bill Greer, who co-wrote the script with Deedy Peters, who were a comedy team; he would go on to write and produce House Calls, Goodnight Beantown and Charles In Charge; she would be in 17 episodes of House Calls), who runs his own sanitarium and is doing experiments on the forces of evil. Deedy also plays his wife in this, who is working with the sheriff (Jim Dean) to figure out why some teens have been killed. She should be looking inside her own house, as her husband has a hunchback (Pierre Agostino) and they’re whipping girls and locking people up in cages.

This is the kind of movie that has a wig budget, a spaghetti monster, guillotine suicide and dialogue with lines such as “When I saw Mr. Zolak’s head severed from his body, I felt a definite sexual thrill. I must be very careful.” Also snakes.

Somehow, this is PG. 1970s PG. You know what that means.

Director Charles Nizet also made The Ravager, Voodoo Heartbeat and Rescue Force. There’s nothing like this, a regional movie in the desert that has women put in coffins with poisonous snakes and it feels perverted but it’s not as dirty as it feels, which means that it’s really deranged.

A cave blows up at the end. I still, as I said, have no idea why.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Here’s a drink.

Spaghetti Monster (based on the drink from Strawbs Bar in Leeds, England)

• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. gin
• 1 oz. rum
• 1 oz. tequila
• 4 oz. orange juice
• .5 oz. grenadine

1. Shake up everything with ice in a cocktail shaker other than the grenadine.
2. Pour in a glass and top with grenadine.

William Castle mortgaged his house and formed William Castle Productions in 1958. For his fifth movie after Macabre, House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler and 13 Ghosts, Castle had another of his gimmick ideas: the Fright Break.

Before the end of the movie, a 45-second timer would tell audience members that they could get a free refund if they left now. The first night Castle tried this, they all did. Some even came back for a free second show, so he had numbered and color coded tickets. This cut down on the people seeing his movie for free, but there were still some people who wanted a cheap night out.

Castle wouldn’t allow them.

He created the Coward’s Corner, where a voice over would laugh at the people leaving, forcing them into a yellow corner. He even wanted to paint their backs yellow, but this was too much for theaters.

I learned about this from John Waters, who said this in his book Crackpot: “He came up with “Coward’s Corner,” a yellow cardboard booth, manned by a bewildered theater employee in the lobby. When the Fright Break was announced, and you found that you couldn’t take it any more, you had to leave your seat and, in front of the entire audience, follow yellow footsteps up the aisle, bathed in a yellow light. Before you reached Coward’s Corner, you crossed yellow lines with the stencilled message: “Cowards Keep Walking.” You passed a nurse (in a yellow uniform? … I wonder), who would offer a blood-pressure test. All the while a recording was blaring, “Watch the chicken! Watch him shiver in Coward’s Corner!” As the audience howled, you had to go through one final indignity – at Coward’s Corner you were forced to sign a yellow card stating, “I am a bona fide coward.” Very, very few were masochistic enough to endure this. The one percent refund dribbled away to a zero percent, and I’m sure that in many cities a plant had to be paid to go through this torture. No wonder theater owners balked at booking a William Castle film. It was all just too complicated.”

Emily (Joan Marshall using the name Jean Arless) convinces the bellboy at a hotel to marry her and she pays $2,000 to him. Late in the evening, they drive to the justice of the peace and start the ceremony, only to kill the official and run, laughing about it to the mute old woman, Helga (Eugenie Leontovich) that she cares for.

Then we meet Miriam Webster (Patricia Breslin), who has just come back to America with her brother Warren (spoiler if I tell you). Warren is the sole heir of the family, as their abusive father has just died, and if he marries, he will get the money. Miriam is going to marry Karl (Glenn Corbett), who catches Emily destroying his fiance’s flower shop. It turns out that Emily and Warren are married. They’re never seen together.

Well, after Helga goes up the stairs on a stair lift and her head falls off, Emily is revealed. This has a lot of Psycho in it, yet it still feels like a unique film. It’s certainly a major reveal and I’d rather you watch the movie. I’d like if you’d watch several William Castle movies.

Here’s a drink.

Killer Kool-Aid

• 2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. Southern Comfort
• 2 oz. Midori
• 1 oz. amaretto
• 6 oz. grape Kool-Aid

1. Shake everything up with ice in a cocktail shaker.
2. Pour in a glass filled with crushed ice and drink.

A few years in the past, Jeff Ashton (David G. Cannon), Doctor Ray Sanders (John Crawford),  “Mad Man” Herman (Marvin Kaplan) and Ted Rogers (Ray Dannis), among others, were caught in a cave-in. With the prospect of survival seeming zero, they agreed — well, everyone except the victim — to cut off Ted’s arm and eat it.

Now, Jeff has just received an arm in the mail and “Mad Man” is killed on the air during his radio show, his arm amputated by a crazy killer. With the help of Ted’s daughter Teddy (Deborah Walley), they look for Ted, who is missing. But ah — she’s been working with her Uncle Roger (Bob Guthrie) to lure Jeff into a trap where he’ll have to eat his own arm to live!

The lesson of this movie: Never trust the mail when it’s delivered by Angus Scrimm.

Directed by Thomas S. Alderman, who wrote the story with Darrel Presnell (from a story by Marc B. Ray and Larry Alexander and additional dialogue by Kelly Estill), this is a grimy thriller that has cannibalism at its heart.

You can watch this on Tubi or get it from Vinegar Syndrome.

Here’s a drink.

Cave In Cannibal

• 1 oz. amaretto
• 1 oz. high proof rum
• 1 oz. peach schnapps
• .5 oz. Southern Comfort
• 2 oz. cranberry juice
• .5 oz. orange juice

1. Add amaretto, rum, schnapps and Southern Comfort to a glass filled with ice.
2. Stir, then add cranberry juice. Stir and add orange juice.

Christine and Betty (Ann and Vicki Michelle, who are real-life sisters; Elke Sommer was their au pair as they grew up) are runaways who want to be models. Christine is soon hired by an agent, Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines) but as you can tell, this isn’t a movie about modeling. It’s about the occult and the job in the country Christine gets is all about getting her in the coven of Gerald Amberley (Neil Hallett) and into his bed; both happen and she soon learns that she can control white magic or magick if you wear Stevie Nicks garb. Sybil is down with darker magic and wants to control Betty.

There’s also this guy named Johnny (Keith Buckley) who wants to help Betty escape, but he also wants to deflower her because, you know, guys.

This was filmed at the Admiral’s Walk in Pirbright, the same place where Terror and Satan’s Slave was shot. Director Ray Austin started as a stunt man on movies like North by Northwest and Operation Petticoat; working with Chee Soo on The Avengers, he helped Diana Rigg be the first Western actor to do kung fu. He was married to Yasuko Nagazumi and the stepfather of her daughter Miki Berenyi from the band Lush. He also directed The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman.

Writer Hazel Adair created the soap opera Crossroads but didn’t make this movie under her own name. Along with wrestling announcer Kent Walton, they created Pyramid Films. She became Klaus Vogel and he was Ralph Solomons; they also made Clinic Exclusive, Can You Keep It Up for a Week?, Keep It Up Downstairs and Game for Vultures.

Ann Michele went on to be in Psychomania, House of Whipcord and Young Lady Chatterley, while her sister Vicki acted in Queen Kong, The Sentinel, the TV show ‘Allo, ‘Allo and The Greek Tycoon. Supposedly, Anthony Quinn “personally asked the producers to reduce the size of Michelle’s part thinking that her good looks and bright costume would detract the audience’s attention from him.” They have both spoken badly of their experiences on this movie, saying that they were hardly paid and pressured into more nude scenes than they had agreed to.

Here’s a drink.

High Priestess

• 1.5 oz. vanilla vodka
• 1.5 oz. blue curacao
• 1.5 oz. grenadine
• 6 blackberries

1. Muddle the blackberries in a glass, then add ice.
2. Mix vodka, curacao and grenadine in and enjoy.

The Streets of Bangkok is based on the Boris Karloff film The Mask of Fu Manchu and it finds Jean Rollin not on a beach or a falling to pieces mansion with vampires living inside clocks, but instead a comic book mystery. Don’t worry. He didn’t forget to have naked women in it.

Secret agent Rick (Gérard Landry) is killed looking for a biological weapon. The photos on his camera are of a sex worker named Eva (Yoko) who is now wanted by the spies and the syndicate. The syndicate! What is this, a Doris Wishman movie? Rita (Brigitte Borghese) and her two female hitwomen are everywhere looking for our heroine.

Eva is rescued by Claudine (Françoise Blanchard, The Living Dead Girl), but they’re soon in the clutches of the syndicate and Eva gets chained up and whipped because Eurosleaze. There’s also a lot of scenes of Eva dancing — Yoko only did two other films, both adult movies but at least one was a James Bond parody, James Bande 00Sex 2 (thanks Gentry on Letterboxd) — but she’s good in this and, as you’d expect from a Rollin movie, inordinately attractive.

This has the biggest mud wrestling arena I’ve ever seen, Françoise Blanchard rocking a mullet and an ending that has the good guy prove he’s not so good and Eva shooting him with tears pouring down her face. And people tied to the train tracks and endless massage scenes!

You might be bored by this. As for me, I found the joy that is the weird timing of a Rollin movie, just endlessly hanging out near the infinite void as he makes a Jess Franco movie, pretty much.

I discovered this movie from Unsung Horrors, who said that it was “Somewhere in between Jean Rollin and Ogroff.”

How could I not want to see this?

So this is kind of cheating, because Sbatti il mostro in prima pagina is more a drama or crime movie than a giallo, but it has enough elements of the form to warrant being included in the company of black gloved killers.

Il Giornale is a newspaper that may remind you of some other media sources in 2021: it has a strictly conservative and fascist audience and seeks to discover the right wing way of looking at every issue, no matter how silly they are, while ignoring the real issues that people are dealing with every single day.

Then a young woman is assaulted and killed, so the bullpen goes all in screaming for the return of the death penalty and actually goes so far as to get involved in the investigation. They believe that an idealistic student protester is behind the sex crime, which their readership is only too happy to get behind.

Gian Maria Volonté plays the editor who gets the fires burning. He always ends up in the more mindful and socially conscious giallo that don’t really fit the standard ideas of what makes one of these films, like Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Todo Modo and, well, this one. Plus Laura Betti (A Bay of Blood, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) and John Steiner are in this if you’re looking for familiar faces. Plus there’s an Ennio Morricone soundtrack.

Sergio Donati, who wrote the script, was the original director but he and Volonté had artistic differences. He also wrote The Weekend Murders, The Island of the Fishmen AKA Screamers, the original Man on Fire and Almost Blue. And oh yeah — Raw Deal!

Life imitates art: two years later, a real right-wing newspaper named Il Giornale started up.

The Radiance Films blu ray of Slap the Monster On Page One has a 4K restoration of the film from the original negative by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Surf Film and Kavac Film, under the supervision of director Marco Bellocchio. There are interviews with Bellocchio and Mario Sesti, plus an appreciation by filmmaker Alex Cox, new English subtitles, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition of 3000 copies that comes with a booklet with writing by Wesley Sharer.

You can order it from MVD.