James Devlin (Steve Forrest, Mommie Dearest) survives his own hanging and decides to become a hero, defending Carrie Gault (Sharon Acker) from Lew Halleck (Cameron Mitchell). There are some fun supernatural elements in this, as this is nearly the TV version of High Plains Drifter and was intended to be a series that would follow Devlin across the West as he tried to make up for his past sins.
Director Michael Caffey had a long career directing TV and even did an episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Writer Andrew J. Fenady wrote Black Noon, Terror In the Wax Museum and Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus, which has Charles Bronson play Francis Church, the publisher who wrote to a young girl named Virginia to explain Santa Claus. He also developed the TV shows Hondo and The Rebel.
Based on the book The Fastest Gun in the Pulpit by Jack Ehrlich, this ABC TV movie has Ernie Parsons (Marjoe Gortner) escaping the noose and taking the identity of a murderer holy man. He heads off to take over that man’s church, a job he really knows nothing about, but it’ll keep him alive hiding out for a while.
While there, he finds himself standing up to the man who has taken over the town, Mr. Ross (David Huddleston). It’s not totally noble, as he falls for the daughter of a man Ross has murdered, Sally Underwood (Pamela Sue Martin).
Jeff Corey is in the lynch mob at the beginning and Slim Pickens plays Billy One-Eye, who helps Ernie. Plus, Geoffrey Lewis is a hired killer named Jason McCoy who comes in to take out Ernie and they end up missing each other at close range and then decide to just go their own way.
Directed by Daniel Petrie (Moon of the Wolf, A Howling In the Woods) and written by William Bowers (Support Your Local Sheriff!), this isn’t the finest ride into the West you’ve seen, but it’s pleasant and I always love Gortner.
Directed by William Graham (Return to the Blue Lagoon) and written by George Kirgo, this is the pilot movie for the eventual series that starred Teresa Graves as Christie Love. Graves was the second African-American woman to star in her own television series after Diahann Carroll in Julia.
Based on the novel The Ledger by Dorothy Uhnak, this movie has the book’s lead Christie Opara — a white NYPD detective — become black detective Christie Love. Obviously finding some inspiration from Coffy, Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones, Love even had her own catchphrase: “You’re under arrest, sugah!”
Between the pilot and series, Graves became a Jehovah’s Witness and demanded that the show not be as sexual as the movie, which had Christie having an affair with her captain. She’s on the case of an informant, Helena Varga (Louise Sorel), who is about to testify against her boyfriend. There’s also a serial killer that Christie goes undercover to catch.
It’s nowhere near as exciting as the movies it wants to be. Graves is pretty good, however. The series lasted 22 episodes, which was a full first season. She would retire from acting and become really involved in her religion. Sadly, she died in 2002 after an accident in her apartment with a space heater.
The same year this was made, Graves also played Countess Vampira in Old Dracula.
Muriel Spark sold her novel The Driver’s Seat as a whydunnit instead of a detective story. The movie that was made from it, Identikit, by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi somehow goes from a rambling narrative of a woman who has lost or is losing her mind — you knew it, f.giallo — that eventually transforms at the end into an image straight out of the form.
Griffi also made Metti, una sera a cena (Love Circle), which stars Tony Musante and giallo queen Florinda Balkan, as well as Addio, fratello crudele (‘Tis A Pity She’s a Whore), The Divine Nymph which has Tina Aumont from Torso and La Gabbia which had contributions by Fulci and is called an erotic thriller but come on we know what that means.
This was written by Griffi along with Raffaele La Capria.
What’s incredible about this movie is that it finds Liz Taylor — 45-year-old Liz, mind you — playing Lise, a lonely woman from Germany who has come to Rome to find a dangerous liaison, a fatal attraction, dare I say a strange vice to call her own.
Everyone she meets either wants to fuck her or is afraid of her, like the British businessman (Ian Bannen) who tries to pick her up on the plane and offers that he must orgasm every day on his macrobiotic diet; an Italian man (Guido Mannari) who seems perfect if distant and a would-be French lover (Maxence Mailfort).
There’s also the presence of the days of lead looming over everything, as a moment after she lands in Rome, Lise is nearly killed in the crossfire as the police open fire on a protestor and a bomb has cleared all the shoppers away from a mall except for Lise and a doddering elderly woman (Mona Washbourne) in a role that Taylor wanted Bette Davis to play, but Bette said no thanks to a film without a completed script.
Yet the true explosion is within Lise, a woman who won’t have it any way but hers, screaming at a salesgirl — while her one-time biggest star in the world breasts are exposed to the unflinching camera — that she refuses to purchase an outfit that has been treated with stain-resistant chemicals. How dare they believe she’s the type of woman to make such a mess?
This is all told in a way that is both episodic and all over the place, as detectives attempt to understand why Lise was killed along with all of the people that she’s traumatized along the way. It all looks gorgeous, though, as cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is best known for shooting The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, ApocalypseNow, The Last Emperor and Dick Tracy.
At the end, is it a giallo? Well, that fog coming from the trees as — spoiler warning — Lise directs her would-be lover and killer in how to properly bind her hands and stab her isn’t far off from the way most women have to direct their lovers so that they don’t end up penetrating the crease in their leg and never make their way inside them. Liz was just fresh off her first divorce from Richard Burton and it feels like she’s exploding all of her hatred and frustration in this role and man, I only wish that I knew more of this Liz and not the sad last days of tabloid headlines and Larry Fortensky.
One last giallo connection: Franco Mannino also did the music for Murder Obsession.
My favorite thing about this movie? Andy Warhol walks in and takes over a one-minute scene as a British lord.
I love the f.giallo because it’s not always about murder. Sometimes, as in Footprints On the Moon, a movie that this shares the new Severin House of Psychotic Women box sex with, it’s all the female heroine can do to stay sane.
Also known as The Stranger and the Gunfighter, Là dove non batte il sole (Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine) and El kárate, el Colt y el impostor (Karate, Colt and the Imposter), Blood Money comes from the era where Shaw Brothers was working on other genre mash-ups as part of international co-productions like Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.
Ho Chiang (Lo Lieh) must go to America and find his uncle Wang’s missing fortune and return it to a warlord or his entire family will be executed. His only clue is that a thief named Dakota (Lee Van Cleef) accidentally killed his uncle when he blew up his safe and he knows where Wang’s uncle is buried.
Yes, a movie where Lee Van Cleef and Lo Lieh fight people and are on a quest to see Patty Hsepard and Erika Blanc’s butts. Did I manifest this movie into being? And it’s directed by Antonio Margheriti?
Kino Cult is a new label that embraces a trademark brand of “unapologetically weird” with such diverse genres as European erotica, grindhouse classics, and cinematic rediscoveries that defy categorization. One of their first three releases is Lorna the Exorcist.
This release has an introduction by Stephen Thrower, commentary by Tim Lucas, and interviews with Gérard Kikoïne and Pamela Stanford.
Patrick Mariel (Guy Delorme) decides to take his perfect family to the south of France on holiday, but before long, his wife Marianne (Jacqueline Laurent) and his on the cusp of womanhood daughter Linda (Lina Romay) are dealing with supernatural trauma.
Moments before they even depart, threatening phone calls start coming to their home from Lorna (Pamela Stanford), a woman from Patrick’s wild past who is the reason for his success and someone who has transcended mortality to become a demonic succubus, as a Jess Franco character often does. The deal that she made in blood with Patrick has come due and now, she’d rather take Linda than anything else.
Stanford was also in Franco’s Succubus, but here she’s coating her face in tons of makeup — like a John Waters character or a heel All Japan Women’s wrestler from the 1980s — and unleashing small crabs on her victims. You can’t say that Jess Franco doesn’t try to make it weird. He also shows up as the doctor of a clinic who is taking care of an always nude insane woman (Catherine Lafferière) who has also been possessed by Lorna. Howard Vernon is also in this as Lorna’s butler. And yes, if you wondered how much Jess Franco loves the body parts of women, especially what’s between their thighs, the zoom lens will tell all.
I mean, this movie starts with a long sapphic dream encounter between Lorna and Linda and most of the movie has no story other than love scenes and occult attacks. Please understand that this means that this movie is great.
Franco made this movie for producer Robert de Nesle, who put it out as a clone of The Exorcist, as happened often in the 70s, then re-released it with inserts and called it Luscious Linda, as if trying to figure out what Franco movie it is as the director also made The Story of Linda, AKA Captive Women, as well as Who Raped Linda? And because this is Jess Franco, he remade this movie in 2002 as the shot on video Incubus.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: 1970s
Oh Luigi Batzella, the movies you have brought us. The Beast In Heat, Kaput Lager – Gli ultimi giorni delle SS (Achtung! The Desert Tigers) and Strategia per una missione di more and The Devil’s Wedding Nightwith Joe D’Amato. Thank you for these movies and for this one.
Batzella had seen Rita Calderoni in Black Magic Rites and cast her in this film as Susan, the injured survivor of a car accident. She’s found by Dr. Benson and showing what kind of doctor he is, he leaves her in the car while he walks through the woods. He soon finds a castle and that Susan is there, but has now become Evelyn and that he also has a double named Peter, who greets Susan when she finally comes back to life and finds the castle as well.
Stelio Candelli is also in this and is menaced by a gigantic spider. But you know, when the named of the movie is Nude for Satan, you know what you’re getting into. This feels like a Renato Polselli movie — and not just because Rita is in it — in that it’s probably more interested in nudity and sapphic moments as it is with being a horror movie.
There’s also a Dutch version with hardcore inserts and if you’re wondering, did I watch that, I mean I totally watched that. It didn’t add anything to the movie, but there’s something funny about seeing erect penises and girl on girl full on moments in the middle of a movie filled with distorted audio, thunder, spiders and oh so much fog.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A Black Ribbon for Deborahwas first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 3, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. It also aired on October 4, 1980 and October 2, 1982.
Marcello Andrei directed this movie wrote the script with Alvaro Fabrizio, Giuseppe Pulieri and Piero Regnoli — who wrote the original idea of a woman passing her child to someone else before they “all the usual bullshit: the witches, the sorcerer, the special effects.” It was released as The Torment in the UK.
Deborah (Marina Malfatti) wants a child of her own more than anything anyone could ever want. She’s told that only a miracle will make her pregnant. This fact has destroyed her marriage to Michel (Bradford Dillman). Deborah is also a powerful psychic, even if she doesn’t know it, and when she and her husband find a car crash with a dying pregnant woman named Mira (Delia Boccardo), those skills are used to solve the mystery in this movie.
Sure, this is more supernatural than straight up giallo, but it aspires to f-giallo, as Deborah tries to be a mother in any way that she can, whether that’s doting on her dog Igor or giving toys to every kid she meets.
This also has some more American star power with Gig Young (in a role that Jose Ferrer was supposed to play) as a parapsychologist named Ofenbauer who is friends with Michel and debates him the difference between science and religion. There’s also a dinner party where he demonstrates his skills as a psychic but the feedback between Deborah and him is nearly a tragedy for everyone.
Soon, Deborah begins to feel that she is pregnant and starts to have a psychic proxy pregnancy, if you will and if that’s a thing, while also occasionally being hysterical and destroying all of her artwork. And as you can imagine, this is all heading toward a shock ending.
I love that Un Fioggo Nero per Deborah played on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. What a strange lineup that show played over its decades of being on the air, going from American 1950s science fiction to Japanese monsters, Hammer horror and odd Italian psycho affairs like this. I can only imagine what the talk at the mill or school was the next day about this movie.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 22, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on July 3, 1982.
Edgar Allan Poe’s (Robert Walker Jr., Evil Town, Hex) love Lenore (Mary Grover) was nearly buried alive after a coma made it appear as if she were dead and now, she’s insane. Poe’s friend Dr. Forrest (Tom Drake) advises him that Dr. Grimaldi (Cesar Romero) will take proper care of her, but then Poe starts to worry. That place should be strange but it seems truly odd.
There’s someone who thinks that they are a werewold, an axe murderer and a watery tomb filled with snakes that you just know that Poe will get stuck in. Plus, you also get Dennis Fimple and Carol Ohmart.
It all looks as cheap as possible and that’s why I love it, as Mohy Quandour was the director, writer and producer and tried to do all he could with the limited cash he had on hand. He also made the movie Yanco, which is one of the 95 films on the Church of Satan film list.
I hope that lots of schoolkids who watched this movie tried to use it for their book reports.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Night of the Sorcerers was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 9, 1980 at 1 a.m.
Back in 1910, native sorcerers stole a woman and attempted to sacrifice a woman under the full moon, but not before whipping her because this is Eurohorror, but soldiers stop them before they can chop her head off. However, a demon has possessed the woman, so the bad guys — are they the bad guys, this is colonialism against indigenous people? — win.
Many years later, Professor Jonathan Grant (Jack Taylor, who else) leads a safari investigating where all the elephants in West Africa have gone, bringing along two white blonde women (of course) named Elisabeth (Maria Kosti, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse) and Carol (Loli Tovar, The Legend of Blood Castle), as well as Tunika (Kali Hansa, Demon Witch Child) and the studly Rod Carter (Simón Andreu). They soon find where the natives we saw earlier conducted their occult rites and Carol decides that this would be a good place to take photos and then they all make the worse decision to camp there.
That woman that was nearly killed and possessed before, you know, Bárbara Rey from The Ghost Galleon? She’s been waiting for something just like this and can bring back the old sorcerers and they all chop off Carol’s head. I mean, they whip her first, but you knew that, right?
Now she goes from headless rich girl photographer to leopard skin-wearing vampire and soon, she and the original vampire woman are killing everyone, including Liz, who was dumb enough to take sleeping pills in the middle of all this insanity. Day for night slow motion leopard print insanity, mind you.
Sacrificial rites turn normal women into leopard vampires. There aren’t enough kind words to say about this, one of the many wonderful movies in the Nightmare Theater package.
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