ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Nick Vaught has worked in the entertainment industry for several years. Nick currently serves as an Associate Producer on the upcoming horror documentary In Search of Darkness: Part III. Nick also worked on the long-running CW series Supernatural. In 2019 he co-wrote the well-received episode “Don’t Go in the Woods.” In addition, Nick has written punch up jokes on multiple TV pilots and teamed with actor Jason Mewes to help write his biography.
No matter how much of a horror buff you think you are, no matter how many horror movies you think you’ve seen, there’s always a lot more out lurking in the shadows, or in this case the basement. I had never heard of Don’t Look in the Basement before signing up for this assignment. I chose it simply on its title alone. Why? For starters, it has a similar name of an episode of the show Supernatural I co-wrote called “Don’t Go in the Woods.” Beyond that, the title intrigued me because I was always scared of basements as a kid, well basements and attics. I think a lot of us are. They’re dark, dank, dirty; much like the worst corners of our brains where our most devious thoughts lurk. On top of that, they usually only have one way in or out, which makes those locations prime real estate for horror set pieces.
The movie’s set in a sanitarium in the middle of nowhere. The head doctor, “Dr. Stevens” (Michael Harvey), has an unusual way (isn’t that always the case) of dealing with his patients. He believes in letting his patients act out their realities in the hopes it will right them. Dr. Stevens also treats his patients like family; he doesn’t even lock their bedroom doors at night.
This practice ultimately backfires when Dr. Stevens is working with a patient, “Judge Oliver W. Cameron” (Gene Ross), whose dialogue is mainly repeating his title over and over. Judge Cameron is chopping wood with an axe, which ends up in the back of Dr. Stevens. The head nurse, “Jane St. Claire” (Jessie Lee Fulton), is able to subdued Judge Cameron. This is however the last straw for Nurse St. Claire who herself was the subject of a violent attack from patient “Harriet” (Camilla Carr), who is obsessed with a plastic baby doll, that she believes is real. Harriet attacked Nurse St. Claire believing St. Claire was trying to steal the before mentioned baby. Harriet kills Nurse St. Claire by slamming her head in a suit case!
With Dr. Stevens and Nurse St. Claire dead, “Dr. Geraldine Masters” (Annabelle Weenick), is now the lone doctor. Soon after she takes over, she’s greeted by “Charlotte Beale” (Rosie Holotik), who informs Dr. Masters that Dr. Stevens hired her as a new nurse for the sanitorium last week. Dr. Masters had no knowledge of her hiring and is reluctant to uphold Dr. Stevens’ commitment. Finally, Dr. Masters relents and brings Nurse Beale on board.
Nurse Beale soon meets the other patients: the brute of a man, “Sam” (Bill McGhee), who has the mentality of an eight-year-old after being lobotomized by Dr. Stephens, “Sgt. Jaffee” (Hugh Feagin), who suffers from PTSD after Vietnam, a nymphomaniac, “Allyson King” (Betty Chandler), a prankster, “Danny” (Jessie Kirby), who you know is crazy because of his loud and obnoxious laugh, and a couple others.
As Nurse Beale gets to know the patients and watch Dr. Masters work, she begins to wonder if Dr. Masters isn’t a danger to the patients. Her suspicions are seemingly confirmed when it’s revealed that Dr. Masters is actually a patient and that Dr. Stevens let her pretend to be a doctor. But are the patients messing with Nurse Beale to get back at Dr. Masters? Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted? What’s in the damned basement? The truth perhaps, or a body or two? There’s a couple of fun turns that I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie and wants to.
Don’t Look in the Basement was shot in 1972, on a shoe-string budget of $100,000 over twelve days. It came on the heels of The Last House on the Left and immediately gives off a similar feel. Written and directed by S.F. Brownrigg, who made a few decent horror films in the 70’s; Don’t Look in the Basement is dirty and grimy and has the look and feel of a documentary, just as a lot of horror movies of the era did. The movie is also infamous for ending up on the U.K.’s Video Nasties list.
The low budget movie actually benefits from the use of a single location. The staff and patients seemingly exist apart from the rest of the world, save for one outside character. The isolation raises the paranoia between the characters; not exactly knowing who or what information to trust, especially for Nurse Beale.
The movie isn’t your traditional slasher fare. The violence is spread throughout the movie; it’s not one kill after another. And the majority of the gore is held back until the finale, when viewers are treated to a blood bath. The movie is more of a character study and the no-name actors do a very good job with their characters, especially Bill McGhee as the sympathetic, Sam. The characters are treated as humans with real ailments opposed to caricatures.
Don’t Look in the Basement seems to have been buried by the countless other horror films in the 70’s, but it’s definitely worth a look. It’s sort of like if Session 9 was filmed in one small portion of the Danvers Mental Institute and we got to know the patients. This movie is a great reminder of why we used to be scared, and maybe still are, of the basement.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We first wrote about this movie on March 16, 2021. As a bonus, we even have a mixed drink recipe that we shared when this aired on our weekly Saturday night show.
We often refer to movies as “Brownriggian” when we watch films on Saturday nights all night with the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature on Facebook Live. There’s no better example of what this word means than S. F. Brownrigg’s 1973 shocker Don’t Look in the Basement AKA The Forgotten AKA Death Ward #13.
Dr. Stephens, the main doctor at Stephens Sanitarium has a theory that patients should be able to freely act out their insanities in the hopes that someday they will snap back to reality. You know, if I’ve learned one thing about asylum doctors from, well, Asylum and Alone in the Dark, it’s that they’re all just as insane as their charges.
Before one of the older nurses can retire, we have the Judge (Gene Ross) chopping the doctor with an axe and Harriet (Camilla Carr) smashing the nurse’s head inside a suitcase. So when Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik, the cover girl of the April 1972 Playboy, as well as appearances in Horror High and the ghostly hitchhiker in Encounter with the Unknown) shows up for a new job and things seem weird. Or Brownriggian. In short, everything feels off. Hallways and stairwells seem like passageways to other dimensions and sweaty horror lurks sleeping like some kind of Southern gothic force of dread and menace.
This is a place filled with human children, killer women obsessed with sex, an elderly woman who thinks that flowers are her kids, a military man who lost his platoon in Vietnam and more. Even the sane are driven mad just by being in their presence.
There are plenty of people who decry Brownrigg’s movies, but I’m certainly not one of them. They invite you to worlds that are not our own and seem to come from a dimension far from here. For that and the vacation to the psychotronic that they offer, we should celebrate them.
For an added treat, check out JH Rood’s journey to the set locations, which you can download from the Internet Archive.
“When you finish watching this, R.D., please let me know if the house ‘vanished,’ and if so, where did it go?” * — Bill Van Ryn, Drive-In Asylum
The Italian theatrical one-sheet.
To start off this review, I’ve opted to use the Italian theatrical one-sheet — the title translates as the effective and logical, The Shadow of the Murderer — that gives this fourth film by Spanish writer and director José Ramón Larraz a decidedly giallo feel, but it’s not. Yeah, we are back to that ol’ “it’s not a giallo” debate that applies to Larraz’s directorial debut, 1970’s Whirlpool, and his 1971 follow up, Deviation — both considered Hitchcockian erotic thrillers (rife with lesbianism, natch) that lean towards the bloodless psychological. That debate continues with what I believe to be the quintessential Larraz production: his more subtle, restrained sixth production, Symptoms (1974). Courtesy of its lesbian subtext, it was Larraz’s seventh film, the Spanish-British co-produced Vampyres (1974), that became his best known, most successful film.
Originally known in its homeland as Violación y…?, aka Rape and?, the eventual title settled on for the English-speaking, overseas international marketplace was the generic Scream and Die. Meanwhile, in the U.S. and the U.K., The House That Vanished title was marketed. However, before that title appeared on U.S. drive-in screens, it went by two other, sexploitive titles: Don’t Go in the Bedroom and Please! Don’t Go in the Bedroom. Four years gone, the film was still barnstormin’ across American drive-ins as a double-biller under the (idiotic) titles Psycho Sex Fiend and Psycho Sex.
Okay, let’s load her up and figure out where the house, went. . . .
Drive-In snack bar lobby card.
Valerie Jennings (Scotish-born British Playboy and Penthouse model Andrea Allan; she previously appeared in several episodes of the U.S.-imported British series UFO and Space: 1999) takes up with Terry, a photographer who sidelines as a petty jewel thief. While on a trip through the countryside, they become lost in a fog-shrouded darkness. For help and shelter they break into a secluded, what seems abandoned country home — and look for jewels. Instead, they find the passports of multiple women. When another couple enters the home, they hide — and witness a woman’s sex-murder-by-switchblade.
Becoming separated from Terry (an in-his-debut Alex Leppard; lots of British TV) and barely escaping with her life, Valerie returns to London — and discovers Terry never returned (well, his-now-trashed car, does; and a photo from her still-in-the-backseat modeling portfolio is missing). Not wanting to implicate herself in the robbery, she doesn’t report Terry’s disappearance (“You know how he’s always ‘off,’ without telling anyone.”), instead choosing — with her friends (a couple who owns a pet monkey for no particular herring-reason) — to try to find the house on her own.
Oh, yes. True to the title: they can’t find the house**. And true to any smudge-proof make-up cutie of the Spanish and Italian variety (see Paul Naschy’s Panic Beats for more on that horror phenomenon): in the wake a loved one’s murder or disappearance, Valerie finds a new love. But our timid sculptor, Paul (Larraz stock player Karl Lanchbury; four films, up to Vampyres), in addition to bedding Val, has an incestuous affair with his aunt (they make ceramic theatre masks, aka death masks “. . . like the ancient Incas used to make.”). And true to any Spanish or Italian Hitchcockian film noir: Valerie’s model-flat mate is raped and murdered (Judy Matheson of 1971’s Lust for a Vampire). Coincidence? That new, floor-below eccentric neighbor who raises pigeons (Peter Forbes-Robertson; 1966’s Island of Terror with Peter Cushing), is he behind the sudden rash of strange goings on in the building? Do all of those strange events lead Valerie back to the “house that vanished”? Do we see giallo-black gloves-in-POV? Does Valerie find Terry’s body, only to discover Paul and his aunt (Maggie Walker; the 1973 British comic strip adaptation, Tiffany Jones, and fellow 1974 sexploiter, Escort Girls) are behind it all?
So, to answer the $1.98 Beauty Pageant question for Bill Van Ryn: Was the house really there in the first place? Was it a “ghost house” that only appears so as to swallow the souls of weary travelers? Where did it go?
My take is that Paul and his incestuous aunt are ghosts. When travelers come by, the house appears, spews a fog, the travelers become disoriented, and the house “takes” them; the masks they make are from their victims. Since Valerie got away, Paul and his aunt came to the city to lure her back to the house. So, the house didn’t so much “vanish,” as it was never really there in the first place. You know, like that Scottish village in Brigadoon (1954) with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse that Herschell Gordon Lewis clipped for Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964). Then, when Paul murdered his pedophilic Aunt Susanna to save Valerie, it “killed” the spirit of house (Paul’s grandparents and parents lived there; his father committed suicide in the house because his “mother was too beautiful,” etc.) — and it couldn’t “vanish” anymore, so the cops found it.
I mean, if Wes Craven can steal from Ingmar Bergman . . . does that makes sense? Larraz, well screenwriter Derek Ford, clipped Brigadoon?
“What the fuck, R.D.? I think the simpler version is that the house never actually vanished and Valerie was just an idiot who couldn’t find the house. As for Aunt Suzanna: She’s one of those sociopathic hagsploitation chicks*˟ you dig so much who used Paul to destroy the youth and beauty of the younger women Paul kept falling for, much to her incestuous dismay.”
“Valarie is a dumb bitch?’ You know what, Bill, you’re right. That’s why you run a magazine and I am just some schmuck in Pittsburgh writing movie reviews down in his mother’s basement as I wait for her to bring me my lunch of raw goat livers and a glass of milk.”
A what-the-fuck glaze permeates Bill’s bearded face. A dismissive puff of cigar billows from his lips.
“Don’t worry. It’s just an obscure reference to Brazilian filmmaker Fauzi Mansur’s Ritual of Death. Just being creative, working in those hyperlinks,” I reply to Bill, full knowing he ain’t buying into my shit. For that liver mommy’s serving is not of goat . . . but human.
Is The House That Vanished a little slow? Sure, you can see why American International Pictures trimmed 15 minutes from its original 99-minute runtime for U.S. distribution. The trade off is that the noir-cum-giallo proceedings become confusing (and you lose the extended rape scene, the hetro and incestual sex scenes). Are the yellowed frames as good as my cherished Symptoms and Vampyres? Eh, we’re lost between the two. Larraz, as his celluloid modus operandi: everything is artfully framed and shot, there is plenty of mystery (monkeys, pigeons, death masks, taxidermy heads, car junk yards . . . all that is missing is fellow Spaniard Bigas Luna’s snails from Anguish — which also had pigeons . . . mating with snails), the mood lingers and the atmosphere drips. So, you may say, “Boring. Nothing happens.” I say this is still one of Larraz’s finest. One thing is for sure: this is not “Wes Craven” in the least.
“Wes Craven?”
Yeah. The reason this fourth film from José Ramón Larraz is lost, forgotten, and sometimes, hated: its U.S. marketing — of which he had no control.
The U.S. home video prints issued by Home Media Entertainment (1984) and Video Treasures (1988) under The House That Vanished title run at 84 minutes: the same title and length as the American International Pictures cut (1974) issued to drive-ins. Those home video prints are 15 minutes shorter than the 99-minute drive-in version that first screened under the title of Please! Don’t Go in the Bedroom in December of 1973. Almost a year later, after making the rounds at the same 99-minute length as Scream . . . and Die!, AIP acquired the film in October 1974 for a wider, domestic distribution: they cut the film down to 84 minutes and retitled it as an ersatz Craven clone.
As we discussed in our two-fer review of The Last Victim (1975) and Forced Entry (1973), and Death Weekend (1976): the runaway box office of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) — itself a sloppy n’ scuzzy, grindhouse remake of Ingmar Bergman’s tasteful-superior The Virgin Spring (1960) — inspired a slew of copycats. It was never Larraz’s intent to create a “faux” sequel, as was the case with the worsening, revenge-rape sub-genre entries of Roger Watkin’s Last House on a Dead End Street (1977) and Francesco Prosperi’s The Last House on the Beach (1978).
Larraz was — as Canadian William Fruet — a victim of the American International Pictures marketing department. Freut was on a higher road, in his emulating Sam Peckinpaw’s Straw Dogs (1971) from 20th Century Fox and John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972) from Warner Bros. Death Weekend became more wildly known on the U.S. drive-in circuit as an ersatz Wes Craven sequel, The House by the Lake. That marketing, of course, didn’t work: the movie bombed.
In Larraz’s case, the marketing fared even worse because, not only is The House That Vanishednot a gory, Italian-styled giallo nor a graphic, rape-revenge exploitation film: it’s a psychological, supernatural ghost story, akin to his previous work, Symptoms. But a buck is a buck, so drive-in audiences were duped by a theatrical one-sheet that mocked Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left — complete with its infamous “It’s Only a Movie” tagline.
It’s only a crappy marketing plan . . . it’s only a crappy marketing plan . . .
At least they give a “psychological” hint with the Hitchcock button.
Oh, yes, the faux “The Last House on the Left” sequels continue . . . with The Horrible House on the Hill, aka The Devil Times Five, which also rips the Last House poster art. Oh, yes. It can happen to you!
A very cool You Tube portal, Belz’s Movies From the Past has done us a solid and uploaded the original, Scream . . . and Die!99-minute print of the film (an age-restricted account sign-in) — and here’s the original trailer. However, we found an alternate upload on You Tube (it’s five minutes shorter . . . but seem to be the same cut). When you visit Drive-In Asylum Facebook, search for “The House That Vanished” and you’ll discover several U.S. drive-in newsprint ads to enjoy from the film.
We’ve since done a week-long tribute to José Ramón Larraz’s works in July 2022 — including an admittedly less unhinged second take on this film. Yeah, we love him!
As for that name of Derek Ford credited as the screenwriter: No, that’s not a nom de plume for Larraz. Ford’s writing credits include the early sexploitive smutter, Secret Rites (1971), the Peter Cushing vehicle Corruption (1968), and the Christmas-based slasher Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984). Amid his fifteen credits as a director, Ford gave us the “No False Metal” classic (well, it is to us), Blood Tracks (1985), as well as the tech-horror, The Urge to Kill (1989), which he also wrote.
Bill? Where are you? Bill? Bill, you fuck. Figures he’d vanish when there’s all of this monkey and pigeon shit to clean up. Why were there even pigeons and monkeys in the movie?
* There really is a tale about “The House That Vanished,” as this BBC Radio Four broadcast, explains.
** Other houses that may or not be there: The Bride (1973), which also Craven-aka’d during its drive-in life as Last House on Massacre Street. Warlock Moon (1973) has one as well, but that was more of a health spa than a house. No alternate “street” title for that one, but Joe Spano, later of TV’s Hill Street Blues, stars.
*˟ Mr. Van Ryn speaks truths: We dove down that hagsploitation rabbit hole with our review of The Night God Screamed.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Lost somewhere Burt Reynolds’s White Lighting (1973) and Peter Fonda’s Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974) is this hicksploitation passion-cum-vanity project that served, not only as Jack Conrad’s lone acting effort, but his lone feature film writing and directing effort. Perhaps if his negotiations with a then up-and-coming and hot Jeff Bridges and Robert Blake — both who made inroads with their early, southern-fried films The Last American Hero and Corky, respectively (both 1973) — hadn’t broken down to the point that Jack had no choice but starring himself, maybe we’d remember this ersatz-Bonnie and Clyde (see Fabian in A Bullet for Pretty Boy) beyond its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Drive-In Movie Classics 50-film pack.
Hey, Jack, being on a Mill Creek boxer ain’t a bad place to be.
Jack Conrad is a name you know as rolling in the credits of The Howling as a producer: he was originally slated to serve as the project’s writer and director. After his dust-ups with the studio cleared: John Sayles — a two-time, future-nominated Academy Award Winner — was given the job of adapting Gary Brander’s novel of the same name. Joe Dante sat in the director’s chair (and, if you are keeping track: Dante and Sayles previously worked together on Piranha).
So goes the life of a then twenty-something film school graduate fresh of the prestigious USC Film School, one who got his first job as a second unit director on an 1870s-era drama called West Texas (1970), in addition to editing a psychological horror film called Moonchild (1972) that starred Victor Buono and John Carradine.
While Jack isn’t exactly Bridges-Blake (or even Fonda) magnetic, he’s certainly serviceable in the role of the fresh-out-of-prison, ne’er-do-well-to-inept bankrobber-cum-garage mechanic Bobby Lee Dixon. What saves the picture is the presence of well-worn, southern fried character actor Dub Taylor (Bonnie and Clyde and Bridges’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) in his lone, leading-man role as Bobbie Lee’s boss, J.J “Jumpy” Belk. Adding to the need-to-stream is the presence of equally “southern” character actor David Huddleson with one of his rare, marquee roles.
Rednecks, Vampires, and Richard Burton? We ain’t hatin’!
On a low-budget and in Tallahassee, Florida (although we are in “Georgia”) — and certainly done better, by others — Jack Conrad shoots it all on location as he opens with great shots of a local stock car mudtrack where he serves on Jumpy’s pit crew — trying to go straight. But Bobby Lee’s tired of the poverty — and he’s in love with Jumpy’s daughter: his married daughter. So, to impress Ruthie by making a better life for himself in Mexico, he returns to robbing banks — and she goes the “bad boy” route to become his “Bonnie” for the inevitable, bloody shootout.
Considering Jack Conrad was two years out of school and on his first film (around the same time, George Lucas put together THX 1138; John Carpenter assembled Dark Star), Country Blue isn’t great, but it’s not a disaster, either. Sure, there’s sound issues (not the print itself from which Mill Creek copied, but in the film itself) and a few awkward shots, some which looks like too-long, lingering filler to pump the running time. For the most part, Conrad captures everything with a decent, competent against-the-budget skill set (as you can see below: the film’s car chase set piece is well done).
Country Blue is a decent B-Movie from the mosquito-strewn, bygone drive-in days of yore. Watch it on You Tube HERE and HERE or own it as part of Mill Creek’s Drive-In Movie Classics 50-film pack that we’re reviewing all this month. And here’s all the car crashes cut as one easy-to-use clip.
Be sure to check out our rundown of hicksploitation and redneck cinema delights from the ’70s and ’80s with our “Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List.”
UPDATE: Our thanks to The CultWorthy website for the comments below, on Country Blue, and for Day of the Panther. It’s great to talk film with you in a positive way. Guys like you keep me QWERTY’ing against the odds!
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Man, what a title. Better than the original one, Dracula is Dead…and Well and Living in London, which upset Christoper Lee so much that he was outspoken at the press conference that introduced the movie: “I’m doing it under protest… I think it is fatuous. I can think of twenty adjectives — fatuous, pointless, absurd. It’s not a comedy, but it’s got a comic title. I don’t see the point.”
The eighth Hammer Dracula movie, the seventh and final to star Lee (John Forbes-Robertson played Dracula with David de Keyser as the voice in The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires) and the third and last to put Lee’s vampire against Cushing’s Van Helsing (they would appear in only one more movie together, House of the Long Shadows), this is pretty much the end of an era.
Every time I think of this movie, I remember Bill Van Ryn of Drive-In Asylum excitingly saying to me — after we saw the trailer at a drive-in — “It’s not enough that Dracula is a vampire. Now he has an entire army of Satanists and he wants to rule the world and he has a plague!”
It turns out that there’s a govenment occult conspiracy that only Van Helsing can stop and he’s bringing along his granddaughter Patsy Stone, err, Jessica Van Helsing.
As the cabal prepares for the Sabbath of the Undead, their mysterious fifth member is revealed to be, of course, Dracula using the identity of reclusive property developer D. D. Denham and operating out of the very same churchyard where he died in Dracula A.D. 1972.
Somehow, this is more of a Eurospy science fiction movie than the traditional horror film, but that’s kind of the beauty of the whole thing.
Somehow, this fell into the public domain in the U.S. That’s why it’s on so many Mill Creek sets under this title and the edited TV version Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride.
Scotsman Serge Chekov (Stelvio Rosi, of Luchino Visconti’s incredible The Leopard, 1963) inherits his uncle’s estate that overlooks a small Balkans village, only to discover that Professor Droilia (Gerald Tichy, of Mario Bava’s Hatchet for the Honeymoon), has taken residence in the basement. As Chekov investigates, he leans the professor is a mad scientist who has perfected the reanimation of the dead — with the help of Igor (Sir Paul Naschy), a necrophiliac grave robber.
Chekov, as is the case with most of the Counts in these films, gives Peter Carpenter (Point of Terror) lessons in how to improperly treat n’ bed the ladies. Meanwhile, the professor’s put-upon wife, Doris (the heart-melting Dyanik Zurakowska), is exactly the distressed damsel we pay to see — gowns, nighties, and improper designer footwear, in check. Naschy, as usual, no matter the star or support player — amid the horny witches, the necrophilia, the zombies, the graveyards, and the Satanic coven-foolery — excels in his character’s kinked weirdness. And yes, we do get the ol’ Drolia’s creations rising in league against him amid the dumb detectives without the skill to fish the herring o’ red.
Oy! I love this film. It has everything I come to expect in a Spanish horror film subsidized by — and copying — the Italians.
The European theatrical one-sheet.
Directed by José Luis Merino as La orgía de los muertos, which translates as Orgy of the Dead (a great title), this Paul Naschy-starrer became known as The Hanging Woman during its initial U.S. theatrical release (as result of our Scottish lad, upon arrival, finding his cousin hanging from a graveyard tree). Over the years, it has been released to VHS and DVD under the titles of Beyond the Living Dead, Return of the Zombies and Terror of the Living Dead. What really twists the sprockets is this Paul Naschy curio is also known in some quarters as Zombi 3 — which also serves as an alternate title for Burial Ground, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Nightmare City, and Marino’s stomach-churner, Zombie Holocaust, aka Doctor Butcher, M.D.
Some critics have opined this was directed by Naschy associate León Klimovsky (of the excellent The Vampires Night Orgy), as result of some prints of the film — for reasons unknown — instead crediting writer-director Jose Luis Merino as “Leo Klimovsky,” while other prints anglicize the Spanish-born director as John Davidson. The “Jack Daniels” on those prints is actually Merino’s co-writer, Erico Colombo (Scream of the Demon Lover, 1970).
Usually, when it comes to Naschy — at least when he’s in the writer’s and director’s chairs — we get a film rife with Universal homages. Here, under the pens n’ lens of Jose Luis Merino, we have an effective, Italian-Spanish variant on the atmospheric-purposeful, “historical” Gothic dramas of old: to that end: if you’ve burnt out on your repeated views of ’50s and ’60s Hammer flicks (moi), you’ll have a fresh, homage-watch to the British horrors of old.
The overall effectiveness of this obscurity in the Spanish horror realms is Merino’s artful juxtaposition of the beauty of the (nineteenth-century) Spanish countryside with the bizarre-cum-sinister, red herring-rife noir dealings. Naschy, again, while only in a support role, relishes the tastelessness of his necro-creep and, as result, this slides nicely amid my Naschy-quartet favorites of Horror Rises from the Tomb, Panic Beats, Inquisition, and The People Who Own the Dark.
You can watch this as a with-ads stream — via Charles Band’s Full Moon Studio — on Tubi. For an ad-free experience, Full Moon offers it on their Amazon Prime page. The Tubi-version runs at one hour thirty-eight minutes; Full Moon’s at thirty-four.
The 2009 DVD reissue by Troma (just seeing their logo makes me ill) includes an audio commentary with Jose Luis Merino and an interview with Paul Naschy. As result of the common denominator of Dyanik Zurakowska, the DVD also features her work in Sid Pink’s The Sweet Sound of Death (1965), directed by Spain’s Javier Seto (best known to U.S audiences for the 1963 sword-and-sandals flick, The Castilian). Emptor the caveats: While the transfer stinks, Troma (claims) their DVD presents the long, uncut version; complete with nudity, it runs at one hour thirty-one minutes. However, how Troma’s is the “Definite Cut” (as advertised on the box), when it’s shorter than the Tubi/Amazon versions, is anyone’s guess.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
DAY 25 — SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE*: Sleep deprived and still alive . . . for now. (*Does not have to be set in Seattle . . . so Belgium, works!)
Just so you know what you’re getting into with this very odd, badly acted and poorly scripted tale about a deranged (our “sleep deprived” lad) American brigadier general (our auteur, Burr Jerger) living in Belgium as he awaits trial for his atrocities committed in Vietnam: General Massacre was deemed “unacceptable” by the American Humane Association for “animals killed during filming” (a cow and a couple of ducks), upon its release in 1976 on U.S. shores. The backlash so damaging to the film, Burr Jerger, the film’s director, writer, producer, and lead actor, sued the U.S. government for “conspiracy” against this film, which he described as a “cinematic protest against war.”
Okay. Well enough, Burr. But you still harmed, maimed and killed animals to make your anti-war statement. And those “auteur” excuses didn’t fly with Ruggero Deodato butchering squirrel monkeys and river turtles to make his “statement” film, either.
Animals were killed during the making of this movie.
Anyway, when Wilbur “Burr” Jerger filed suit in 1975 in the Los Angeles federal courts, he claimed the FBI and CIA maintained an illegal dossier on him for his “political activities.” Jerger also alleged in the lawsuit, after a conspiracy born out of those files, caused the release of General Massacre to be irreparably damaged and he lost $100,000.
Who is this Burr Jerger?
Well, the West German auteur also resides in those weird, hazy frames of celluloid resided by Peter Carpenter: a vanity auteur that went all out on his masterpiece, with Jerger managing one quadruple-threat to Carpenter’s two of Blood Mania and Point of Terror. And both vanished from the business after four films when their master works, failed. And, like Carpenter, Jerger passed through the Russ Meyer turnstiles. But unlike Carpenter, Burr also passed through Jean Rollin’s turnstiles. (For another lost soul of the celluloid turnstiles, check out our overview of Gene O’Shane’s career in our review of The Velvet Vampire.)
Jerger actually stuck around for more than four films as an actor: he made five: he appeared in Captain Sindbad (1963; a West German film edited into Quentin Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers), No Survivors, Please (1964; a black and white alien invasion tale), and an uncredited appearance (thus the four-to-five snafu) in Fanny Hill (1964) for Russ Meyer. Jerger made his final acting bow in Jean Rollin’s The Demoniacs (1974; a sexploitation, haunted island/pirate romp).
Jerger initially came to Europe in 1961 as a free-lance-reporter for Show Business Illustrate, Ebony and Globe Photos. That led to his making his cinematography and directing bones as the set photographer on Escape from East Berlin (1962), as well as working as a production assistant on A Cold Wind in August (1961), and as an assistant director on the French-made films Madame Sans-Gene (1961) by Christian Jague, and Cartouche (1962) by Philippe De Broca.
However, while Burr worked on all of those films in East Germany and France, he was actually born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Married to Lieva Lone, his co-star in The Demoniacs, he died on May 12, 1982. It was after his failures in film, that he relocated from Belgium, to Paris, and back to the United States, working as he began: a freelance writer and photographer. He would go on to write an (unnecessary) novel based on General Massacre, as well as The Saga of April 6th, and a storybook, Four Letter Words.
The Review
As with all early ’70s drive-in flicks: it made it to ’80s video.
“Politics are the extension of war.” “Civilians are as much the enemy as men in uniform.” — the ravings of a warmonger
We learn of those ravings via a non-linear, flashback story as our U.S. WW II and Korean War veteran awaits his trial for the atrocities he committed in Vietnam. But what’s his excuse for killing his wife (whom he met-raped during a Nazi Germany tank raid) for cheating on him (he chases her into the forest around his estate and shoots her)? And killing his daughter — whom he has the incestual hots for — when he catches her with his hospital orderly?
In between, our General goes nuts on his Antwerp estate, where he “commands” his troops and straps on his weapons and hunkers down in the woods — woods now haunted by his wife on ghostly horseback. Oh, and our General has “recruited” his old Vietnam lackey, Corporal Tsai, to film his “war games,” his hateful and racist insights on the world, and his animal murders . . . which are graphic, ugly, and down right cruel as the camera lingers as the life leaves the cow. Then, to make matters worse: there’s the close up of the duck’s eyes as its life leaves the body.
Oh, yes, for there is a “statement” in the murder of cows and ducks . . . but the proceedings are just so clumsy across all of the inept disciplines that Burr Jerger kept for himself — on top of the art house pretensions deploying every sweeping and zooming camera trick in the book known to cinematography — as we flash to and fro from 1945 Nazi Germany to our fair General’s freakout in the Antwerp wood, the “anti-war” message Jerger intended, is lost.
Yes, Burr. War is awful. But your movie, even more so. And animals died for it. Certainly not one of the proudest moments of my little ol’ VHS home library.
There’s no freebie streams or trailers to share, but you can get DVDs from DVD Planet, if you must.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
22. BEASTS OF BURDEN: One where a horse/donkey/mule/ox etc is doing some serious work.
This was supposed to be Devil Story but I got so excited after I watched it that I jumped the gun and posted it, thinking that surely I’d find another movie to fit the bill.
I spent almost this entire month trying to find another one.
This is an episode of the show Ghost Story, which changed its name to Circle of Fear midway through its one season. Executive produced by William Castle, the original idea for the show was to have Sebastian Cabot play Winston Essex, the owner of a mysterious hotel called Mansfield House, which was really San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado where Wicked Wicked was filmed.
By episode 14 of 22, the show was retitled and Cabot was out and the show still suffered poor ratings, despite featuring writers like Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, D.C. Fontana and Jimmy Sangster.
Episode 15 was Dark Vengeance, which was written by Peter Dixon (whose career was all over the place in TV, working on everything from the Superman 1950s TV series to the Masters of the Universe cartoon) and directed by Herschel Daugherty (The Victim).
While working at a construction site, Frank (an incredibly, near imposible young Martin Sheen) finds a box that can;t be opened. He becomes obsessed with it and finally is able to break into it, revealing only a broken mirror and a toy horse that upsets his wife Cindy (KIm Darby, queen of the TV movie supernatural heroines) to increasing mania.
Of course Cindy would have a past with the horse. But how do you get it back in the box or even destroy it when it can even survive being set ablaze?
There’s no way a goofy wooden horse should be so damned frightening, but everyone is beyond committed to making this happen. Man, after seeing this episode, now I have an entire series to devour. This show suffered comparisons to Night Gallery, but after all, shouldn’t every anthology show made ever after Serling’s masterwork suffer that fate?
Alternatively titled An Eye for an Eye, this 1973 freakout is all about Mr. Rabbey, the host of a children’s television show. He’s so beloved by the children that they tell him all of their secrets, like when their parents don’t treat them well. To get back at them, well, he shows up and kills them. Strangely enough, one of the weapons that he uses is a blanket. Yes, a deadly blanket.
Mr. Rabbey is played by Tom Basham, who was in The Pink Angels, and I have to say that this movie is a much better use of his abilities. That said, that may be the lowest of low bars to ever be tripped over. More to the point, director Larry G. Brown made that movie, too. He also made Silent but Deadly, in which “America’s first black, Jewish and female president must save the nation from a smelly and lethal threat,” so I think we call all just say that The Psychopath is an aberration of gold from guano.
No movie today would dare have so many children be throttled and beaten about, much less have one of their mothers get their head run over by a running lawnmower.
Speaking of kid shows, two of the cops in this movie all had something to do with programming for youngsters. Lt. Hayes is played by Peter Renaday, who in addition to being several voices in Disney parks like Abaham Lincoln and Captain Nemo, was also Mickey Mouse’s voice for the cash-in album Mickey Mouse’s Splashdance and Master Splinter in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. And Jackson Bostwick was Captain Marvel in the live action Shazam! series.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie originally ran on our site on March 8, 2018. We’re sharing it again as Kino Lorber has released it on Blu-ray, and we’re beyond happy that more made-for-TV movies are coming out on home video and want people to buy and support the companies that are putting them out. This new release has a revised 2K master, commentary by Troy Howarth, a TV commercial and new art by Vince Evans.
The central character of the film is Peggy, a college student who aspires to become an artist. She applies for a job at the home of noted sculptor Jeffrey Elliott (played by Ted Bessell, TV’s That Girl) and his mother, the iconic Bette Davis. Peggy’s annoyingly chipper character adds a unique dimension to the story.
Let me give you some advice, in case you are a young girl looking for a housekeeping job and find yourself in a 1970s TV movie. If the house you’re working in has an Old Hollywood actress in it, run (refer back to my past rules of always avoiding Old Hollywood actors and actresses). And if you find out that there’s a room that you aren’t allowed to go into, don’t try to go into that room. Just get away as fast as you can.
However, Peggy’s curiosity gets the better of her. She stumbles upon Jeffrey’s collection of eerie demon sculptures, each more terrifying than the last. She also encounters George Thornton, whose daughter used to work in the house. This leads to a confrontation with the formidable Mrs. Bette Davis, a situation one should never find themselves in.
It turns out that Jessica, Jeffrey’s sister, is living in the room above the garage that Peggy isn’t allowed into. Again, get out. Now.
No, Peggy decides she wants to make a new friend. And what if that friend is really Jeffrey, who killed his sister and has split his personality with her inside his head? Oh, Peggy. You brought this on yourself.
Scream, Pretty Peggy is a fine slice of 70s TV movie thrills. Any time you have Ms. Davis deigning to be in a TV movie, you will get something good. But seriously, I wish these girls would wise up. There are better things to do in this world than live in a house of maniacs!
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.