Not enough people talk about Pete Walker, whose movies are mind destroyers and who is all over the map when it comes to output, making giallo-esque in England films like Die Screaming, Marianne; House of Whipcord and The Comeback.
One of his obsessions was to make a movie where actors die in a themed way by those older than them. This is the first time he explored that and it’s all about a mystery producer who has gathered a cast of unemployed actors to be in a mysterious play, rehearsing them in an abandoned theatre beside the sea.
Meanwhile, a black gloved killer is murdering everyone, a killing spree that started thirty years ago when he trapped his wife and her lover behind a wall. Now, everyone is going to deal with his pain as he works it out by you know, killing everyone in the play.
This movie lives up to the flesh part of its title, as no matter how cold that theater looks, nearly every female star feels the urge to doff her bra and show the world their ample gifts. Pete Walker may not have invented the male gaze, but damn if I can’t think of someone who was in its grip more.
Parts of this movie were even shot in 3D, which makes me happier than you’ll ever know.
29. DOUBLE TROUBLE: There’s gotta be some twins in there somewhere.
Brian De Palma was inspired to make Sisters after reading an article in Life magazine about how Soviet conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova were separated. A photo at the end of the article — along with a mention that the girls were developing psychological problems — struck him, as one twin looked happy and the other appeared to be deranged. And, as always, Hitchcock loomed large, as the script that DePalma wrote with Louisa Rose was directly inspired by his films Rope — the tracking shot that follows the murder of Phillip — and Psycho, as the main character shifts during the movie. He even got Bernard Hermann to come out of retirement and record the music for the movie.
In fact, DePalma had cut his movie to another Hermann score. When he showed it to the composer, he answered back, “Young man, I cannot watch your film while I’m listening to Marnie.”
The film has since influenced countless others. I can see echoes of the documentary within this film on the film within Get Out that details another sinister operation.
An operation is behind much of the horror in this film, as Danielle Breton and Dominique Blanchion (Margot Kidder, as always perfect) were separated and perhaps one of the two did not survive. Then there’s Emil Breton (William Finley, the literal Phantom of the Paradise), who is either Danielle’s ex-husband or the doctor who helped take the twins apart or both. And an investigation into the murder that starts the film and the hypnotic suggestions that perhaps there was no real murder at all.
DePalma has a career that some would say is filmed with misogynistic films, but here, this is the rare slasher with female killers and male victims. Of course, you can also read into this that women’s liberation — somewhat literally — has caused all of these issues.
This is the film where DePalma found his way. Of course, he found it by following in the footsteps of someone else, but if anyone could be the next Hitchcock, he made the best attempt.
DAY24 — 2 CLOSE 4 COMFORT: A main character suffers from claustrophobia(and was Clint Eastwood “too close for comfort” in that editing suite with Jack Ging?).
If only there was an olive-skinned Italian beauty adorned in a graveyard-appropriate mini dress and heels escaping a phalanx of zombie arms in an errant set piece from Paul Naschy’s Horror Rises from the Tomb and Panic Beats.
Well, actually . . . as the plot unfolds, our faux-Naschy Giallo babe, here, is British-American bombshell TV actress (from the late ’50s to the late ’80s) Antoinette Bower (Superbeast, Blood Song, Prom Night, Time Walker), so, it’s not a total loss. Well, yes it is: For as the beauty of Annie blinds us, instead, we get a “Hagsploitation” romp with a down-and-out Edith Atwater (our “Day 24” shut-in, here) — as our “screaming Amanda.” And, come to think of it, even though she was still stunning, the way Hollyweird objectifies women, even at youthful 39, our divine Ms. Bower — who never ends up in a red dress and heels nor is on the run — is on the cosine of appropriation of hagsploition.
So, goodbye pseudo Paul Naschy Giallo ripoff. Hello, psychobiddy riot.
Warning: This scene does not occur in the actual film.And where’s Clint’s credit?
Yes, the old hag in this exploiter, Edith Atwater, you know best from Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi’s The Body Snatcher (1945), which was her third feature film; she also appeared in Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford (herself a “hag” actress with the likes of Berserk! and Trog), then fell into a lot of TV work for the remainder of her career into the mid-’80s to pay the bills.
Atwater was just one of the many, ’40s startlets finding work in the hagploitation, aka psychobiddy, sub-genre where old, crusty women either terrorize “sinning” young women or simply are jealous of their youth, so they “gaslight” them into insanity (and sometimes string ’em up in cellars or dungeons or attics). In line behind Joan Crawford was Tallulah Bankhead with Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), studio starlet Veronica Lake, who took her final bow with Flesh Feast (1970), Wanda Hendrix (thumpy-whumpy goes my heart) closing out her career at the age of 44 with the Gothic, Civil War tale, the really fine The Oval Portrait (1972), and ex-20th Century Fox studio-starlet Jeanne Crain (skyrockets . . . rainbows . . . unicorns) attempted an early ’70s comeback with The Night God Screamed (1971). And let’s not forget Agnes Moorehead in Dear Dead Delilah (1972). Oh, toss Cult of the Damned, the aka’d “horror version” of Angel, Angel Down We Go (Let’s rock ‘n’ roll, Jen, baby!) that starred 1944 “Best Actress” Oscar Winner Jennifer Jones (The Song of Bernadette) on the hag stacks.
The Review
The plot of Die Sister, Die! concerns the greed of Edward (Jack Ging; our “Clint” connection): he tires of the “allowance” granted him by his sister Amanda (Edith Atwater) as he becomes impatient for her death and his inheritance. To hasten her demise, or at least stop her suicides (twice in one year) from being thwarted, Edward hires Esther Harper (Antoinette Bower), an employment-desperate, discredited ex-nurse to watch over her. The $25,000 deal: When Amanda tries for her third suicide attempt, let her succeed — if a heart attack isn’t induced, first. To Edward’s dismay, Esther and Amanda take a shine to one another; now Esther is less than enthusiastic about killing the old woman (e.g., induce a heart attack) — instead becoming more curious about the secrets held in the house, especially as to the whereabouts of a mysterious third sibling, Nell. (Two shut-ins! Where’s my “bonus points,” Scarecrow Video folks?) Nell, of course, either took the money and ran off to Europe, or Amanda killed her, or Nell killed pop, and so on, etc.
So, yeah, sorry. No zombies. Just a lot of Henry James-screw turning mixed with some Hitchcockian-hallucinations amid the twisted Edward and Esther romance.
Yes, this was, in fact, a Hitchcockian “passion project” by producer and director Randall Hood, who got his start working with the horror maestro on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in the mid-’60s. His other two films: The children’s film The Two Little Bears (1961), which starred Eddie Albert, later of Green Acres TV fame . . . and vaudevillian slapsticker Soupy Sales, if that tells you anything. Then something called The Touching and the Not Touching (1965), which sounds like a soft-porn-cum-sexploitation flick . . . only it stars Robert Walker, Jr. (Charlie X from Star Trek: TOS) with Asian actors — never heard of it in all my UHF or VHS years.
As you can see by the dual years in our review’s title, Die Sister, Die! was a beleaguered production. While its pseudo-Gothic proceedings look like it was shot sometime in the Hammer-Edgar Allan Poe-inspired ’60s, it was actually shot in 1972. Randall Hood ran into production problems and the completed, but unedited film, languished on the shelf. Then, on August 16, 1976, at the age 48, Hood, died of cancer.
In steps the film’s star, Jack Ging.
Now, for your ’80s TV kiddies, you’ll remember Jack Ging in his most famous role as the recurring General Harlan “Bull” Fulbright on NBC-TV’s The A-Team. If you’re a B&S About Movies frequent visitor, you know he got his start in Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959). Then there’s you spaghetti western fans who know Ging for his working alongside his longtime pal, Clint Eastwood, in Hang ‘Em High (1968) and High Plains Drifter (1973). Jing also starred in Eastwood’s Play Misty for Me (1971), as well as Sssssss (1973), and the TV air disaster romps Terror in the Sky (1971) and The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974).
As you can see by the credits — of which we barely scratched the surface — Jack Ging was never the “star” or leading man, but he was always a solid, stock support player. Which is why completing Die, Sister Die! was so important to him: it was his lone, leading man role where his name led on the marquee.
So, back to Jack Ging’s longtime friendship with Clint Eastwood: Opinions vary, but it is believed that, as a favor to his friend, Clint ghost-edited the film. Randall Hood’s longtime friend, the 206-plus credited composer Hugo Friedhoffer (Sergeant York and Casablanca are two of them), who retired after working on Airport (1970), signed on to score the film as a favor to Hood. So distraught by the death, Friedhoffer never scored another film.
Also supporting in this Gothic take on Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965) — which made the UHF-TV ’80s rounds as The Companion — is Kent Smith, who goes all the way back to the classic, Cat People (1942), and Robert Emhardt, who I’ll always remember in my pop’s cherished 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Thanks to the cast — especially the effectively sinister Jack Ging — this somewhat dry, TV movie-paced mystery thriller is worth a watch. Freidhoffer’s all-original score is, of course, excellent.
Eastwood assist or not, the film is also expertly edited, but no editor is without a solid cinematographer providing the frames. To that end, Michael Lonzo, a respected camera man who has provided commentary tracks and supplements to DVD reissues of classic films, such as Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), delivers a well-lit, well-shot film. So bravo to Jack Ging for seeing it through, six years after the fact. Die Sister, Die! is a well-made, solidly acted, good watch of a film filled with my own, drive-in undercard and UHF-TV memories.
The Remake?
Die Sister, Die! also has its fans, one of which is the prolific Dustin Ferguson (110-plus films strong since 2007, with eight films in various states of production) who completed a 2013 (cheesier, over the top) remake starring Brinke Stevens in the gaslighted, Edith Atwater role.
We supply links to watch for all of those films in the reviews — most on Tubi or You Tube. As for Die Sister, Die!, you can watch it as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi. Oh, and here’s the trailer.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
18. ALL THUMBS: Picking up a hitchhiker can be risky… lift with your legs, not your back.
Maggie (Hee-Haw‘s Misty Rowe) learns she’s pregnant so she runs away from home. Such begins a movie by Beverly and Fred Sebastian, who also brought is ‘Gator Bait, On the Air with Captain Midnight and Rocktober Blood.
She then falls in with some hippies who rob people so that they can finance getting a schoolbus to travel the country in. And then there’s a gruesome abotion scene which contrasts the feel good 70s vibe of flashing your panties to get a ride from a truck driver.
Somewhere in here, there was a good movie, but the Sebastians aren’t the people to make it. I mean, they try and make a socially conscious movie while all we want are frolicking moments of stealing cash from truckers and making it on the road. And then it turns all Manson family, you know? I guess in that way, it is a very realistic film about the seventies.
Writer/director Robert Emery made one hell of a movie here. Seriously, this is one of the most downbeat movies that I’ve ever seen and yet it’s one that you can’t turn away from. I mean, this is a movie where the lead, Karl, is a stunted child of a man who jerks off to his sister and constantly lives under the shadow of a brutal moment in his family’s history that he witnessed. So what happens when a drifter enters his world of mannequins, monsters and barely repressed and maybe inherited murderous needs?
This feels very stagy and I say that with complete love and respect. There are long stretches of dialogue by actors perhaps not ready for the complexity of what they’ve been given to say and yet it still more than works for me.
Strangely enough, so much of this film reminds me of Pin, which also has a mannequin and sister obsessed virgin of a murderous man and ends on a much different note. And oh yes — no spoilers here — this movie has one of the most audacious, astounding and just plain what did I just watch endings of any movie I’ve ever seen.
Also known as Scream Bloody Murder — and it has nothing to do with the other Scream Bloody Murder — this Tampa-filmed slice of exploitation is practically screaming for a label to clean it up, have someone smarter and more social media-connected than me do a commentary track and give it a collectible slip case.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally watched this made-for-TV movie on April 3, 2018. We’re bringing it back because Kino Lorber has released it on blu ray — making us go wild because we’ve dreamed of a day when TV movies were commercially available — and we want you to get a copy for your collection. Their release has a commentary track by the awesome Amanda Reyes, art by Vince Evans and a new 2K master.
If you ever wonder why I love my wife so much, I watched this movie, and she walked into the room, sat on the couch and excitedly remarked, “That’s Eileen Heckart!” Yes, Becca loves The Bad Seed, a classic psychological thriller where Heckart’s performance as the mother of a sociopathic child is unforgettable. And she isn’t shy about it.
Director Herschel Daugherty’s directorial efforts run the gamut of TV classics, from Star Trek to Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller and The Six Million Dollar Man. He was even the dialogue director for Mildred Pierce!
Kate Wainwright (Elizabeth Montogomery, who you may know from Bewitched, but around here we celebrate her for her role in The Legend of Lizzie Borden) is coming to visit her sister, but unbeknownst to her, her sister is already dead. She has to deal with the increasingly crazy attention of her sister’s maid, Mrs. Hawkes (Heckart), power outages, and an increasingly frightening storm. We soon learn that her sister already fired the maid and plans to divorce her husband, Ben.
While the film opens with the murder of the sister, the identity of the killer remains a mystery. As we witness Kate’s growing fear, Montgomery’s performance is nothing short of superb, keeping us on the edge of our seats.
The McKnight Malmar story this was based on was first filmed for a 1962 episode of Boris Karloff’s Thriller, ‘The Storm,’ also directed by Herschel Daugherty. The Victim was rewritten by Merwin Gerard and doesn’t stick as close to the original story, but it retains the core elements of the original, including the intense psychological suspense and the theme of a woman in peril.
The ending of this movie is bound to stir up some strong emotions. It might leave you feeling frustrated, or you might find it enjoyable, as it maintains a consistent level of suspense and creepiness throughout.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally reviewed this movie on January 1, 2021. Now Kino Lorber is releasing it on Blu-ray, complete with a new 2K master, commentary by film historian/screenwriter Gary Gerani and great new art by Vince Evans. I’m beyond excited to see more TV movies make their way to Blu-ray. Thanks Kino Lorber!
Jack Smight, known for his exceptional directing in films like No Way to Treat a Lady, Airport 1975 and Damnation Alley— well, maybe not movie — brings his talent to this TV movie. Working from a short story by Ray Bradbury, he delivers a quick and suspenseful reminder of the unique cinematic style of 1970s TV movies, a style that could truly get under your skin.
Olivia De Havilland plays Laura Wynant, a wealthy former mental patient who has gone to the country to continue healing. That’d be easier if she didn’t keep hearing the pleas of a woman who has been buried alive on her property. Arthritis has robbed her hands of the ability to save the woman and as she brings others in to help her, her family starts to think that she is losing her control over her sanity again.
De Havilland, Cotten, and Pidgeon deliver stellar performances that elevate the movie to another level. Their talent and dedication to their roles are evident, making this TV movie a must-see for any classic TV movie enthusiast.
This is a movie that masterfully builds its suspense, keeping you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It’s a rare gem that doesn’t let up, a testament to the captivating storytelling of TV movies from this era.
This is really the whole gooey enchilada, ain’t it: for this is where all of those cannibal hybrids of the George Romero-rebooted zombie genre originated.
What makes this film a film that I have never gone back to: three-plus minutes of this Umberto Lenzi puke fest has moments of real animal murder (not cool). Of course, this being our “Video Nasties Week,” the puritanical purveyors of the all-things-holy U.K. cut those scenes from the British release ever since it was first kept out of British theaters in 1975.
Yes. Sometimes you’ll find it out there as Sacrifice!
The plot, such as it is, is a blatant ripoff of the Richard Harris-starring A Man Called Horse (1970). That film’s positive critical reviews and box office success spawned two sequels in The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983), each also equally acclaimed critical and box office hits.
Then there’s this U.K. Section 2 “Video Nasty” that made the rounds on the U.S. “Midnight Movie” circuit and earned a re-renting when it hit home video stores. Some of the titles you know the film under are l Paese del Sesso Selvaggio, aka The Country of Savage Sex, as well as Deep River Savages. The best known and distributed title is Sacrifice!, and that cut can be purchased from Raro Video.
Both films deal with a civilized man incorporated into a tribe that originally held him captive. Here, British photographer John Bradley (Ivan Rassimov) heads off to the rain forests of Thailand for a wildlife photograph wildlife assignment. After a bar fight with a local, Bradley, in self-defense, kills the man; Bradley flees the scene and heads down river to not only complete his assignment, but to escape arrest.
He’s soon captured by natives and put through a series of the tortures — as you’d expect from a cannibal film — only the tongue removals, along with everything else — was done here, first.
The highlights of the film — which is still not enough to get us past the animal cruelty — are the always welcomed Ivan Rassimov; he does the cannibal thing again in Jungle Holocaust and Eaten Alive!. Also starring here — and in both of those films, again, with Rassimov, is the Queen of Cannibal Cinema: Me Me Lai.
Then Ruggero Deodato released Jungle Holocaust in 1977. That film, alongside George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1979), was the one-two punch that ignited the cannibal sub-genre of zombie films. Then Deodato gave us Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Lenzi was presented the opportunity to direct Jungle Holocaust, but the job ultimately went to Deodato. Lenzi would follow up his own Eaten Alive! (1980), with his third cannibal romp, Cannibal Ferox (1981). In between, Sergio Martino chimed in with The Mountain of the Cannibal God(1978).
You can learn more about Lai’s career — the star of TheMan from Deep River (Deep River Savages), Jungle Holocaust, and Eaten Alive! — and the cannibal sub-genre of zombie films, in whole, in a documentary we recently reviewed, Me Me Lai Bites Back (2021). You can purchase restored DVDs and Blu-rays of The Man from Deep River from 88 Films, which also includes Lai’s documentary as a supplement.
We run down most of these cannibal films with our February 2018 “Mangiati Vivi Week” tribute, which serves as a great catch-all reference list. And what’s not on that list is being reviewed during our “Video Nasties Week” tribute, this week.
As always, we appreciated you surfing to B&S About Movies and using us as your one-stop source for discovering and rediscovering classic films from the Drive-In, UHF-TV, and home video eras.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.
La Semana del asesino (Week of the Killer) has no scenes of cannibalism in it, but hey, that title was catchy enough for international distribution. Now that the full version of this film is available from Severin*, people may see it beyond its lurid title and appearance on the section one video nasty list.
Instead, The Cannibal Man presents a journey into a place that few of us have experienced: the oppressive rule of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Estimates are difficult to put together, but Franco killed between 15,000 and 50,000 of his political opponents. His oppression also led to how the arts were treated, with a unitary national identity created at the expense of Spain’s cultural diversity. Women could not manage money, hold certain jobs or even open a bank account. And yet, in the words of geopolitics, Nixon referred to Franco as, “a loyal friend and ally of the United States” when the general died.
Basically, Spain was a real-life horror show and this film attempts to explain that pain through the life of a young butcher named Marcos who accidentally kills a cab driver. That murder sends him on a spiral as he has to start removing anyone who could potentially turn him in, from his girlfriend to eventually his family members, using his butcher shop to remove the evidence. Then the dogs come searching for the rotting human meat hidden in his bedroom.
Even the potential relationship that the protagonist discovers with another man who lives in the high caste high rises above the city won’t be enough to stop the drain at the bottom of this downward spiral. Franco’s censors saw to that.
*Yes, I realize Anchor Bay and Blue Underground also released the full cut, but the Severin one has “both the International and extended Spanish Version newly scanned from the original negatives for the first time ever.”
Made under the title Bad Scene, the British cuts to this movie took out fifteen minutes of footage, taking the film’s total down to under an hour. I can completely imagine what they cut, as this movie has multiple assault scenes that last so long that they become an actual assault on the viewer.
Two girls named Nancy and Kathy (Laurel Canyon and Candy Sweet) are on their way home when their car breaks down, which leads to them getting attacked by drug-addled hippies, soon followed by a Satanic cult who also abuses them and then plans on killing them. That’s it, that’s the movie. Some movies push past the actual act of sexual violence and concentrate on the revenge or the escape, but this one and done by director Ray Williams.
So once the cult kidnaps them, you’d think that the cops would find them or get invovled, right? No because now we move to another story where a female heroin addict is kidnapped, assaulted and sent to Mexico before the cops forget Nancy and Kathy and rescue her.
There’s a biker named Crabs because he has crabs. This is utter garbage and not in the right way. I have no idea who thought they could release this movie in the UK in the early 80s and it kind of makes every other movie in the section 3 video nasty category look positively classy and well-made by comparison. Horrible.
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