This movie seems like it’s going to be a slasher, yet much like Eaten Alive, it exudes a level of real fear, sleaze and menace that few films reach. Yet it has a heart and joy to it that makes me love it. It’s also one of Becca’s favorite childhood films!

We open on Amy (Elizabeth Berridge, Amadeus) as she showers, but the killer isn’t a killer. It’s her little brother Joey, which is troubling on a few levels. He’s a horror film fan who loves practical jokes. And he goes along with Amy and her boyfriend Buzz, Liz and Richie to a traveling carnival.

They don’t follow any of the rules as they go to the event. Of course, they smoke weed. And then look at naked women. And heckle Madame Zena (played by Sylvia Miles, who was the original Sally on The Dick Van Dyke Show and earned Oscar nominations for Midnight Cowboy and Farewell, My Lovely before becoming close pals with Paul Morrissey and Warhol). And then sneak in and spend all night inside the Funhouse.

They decide to ride into the funhouse when they watch a man in a Frankenstein mask have sex with Zena. He comes too fast and then tries to get out of paying, at which point Zena makes fun of him. He goes crazy and murders her as the teens are trapped. And Richie is dumb enough to steal money from the carnival after all of that!

It turns out that the man in the mask is really Gunther, the son of the owner Conrad Straker. He’s hideously deformed, with long fangs and white hair. He’s played by The monster was played by Wayne Doba, a professional tap dancer and former mime who was also the otherworldly Octavio the Clown in Scarface.

His father riles him up and he kills Richie and goes after the rest of the kids. Liz is killed with an industrial fan. Buzz kills Conrad, but Gunther offs him. Finally, Amy is able to kill the monster with two gears. She barely escapes with her life as the robotic fat lady laughs at her. After all, it ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

There’s a book version of the film by Owen West (Dean Koontz) which adds plenty of back story. As the film was delayed in post-production, it came out a long time before the movie.

Interestingly enough, Hooper would Tobe Hooper reuse several props when he directed the music video for Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.”

My favorite scene here is the reveal of Gunther. And I almost forgot that William Finley from The Phantom of the Paradise shows up as a magician! This is a near-forgotten piece of horror film that is worth you finding and watching for yourself. You can grab a copy from Scream Factory or the Arrow UK import at Diabolik DVD.

In his series, My Year of Flops, Nathan Rubin said, “It’s telling that when a filmmaker succeeds in running his own studio, it’s because he’s learned to let his inner businessman veto his inner artiste. Coppola ran Zoetrope with his heart. It nearly destroyed him.” One from the Heart wasn’t just director Francis Ford Coppola’s dream project. It was his way of saying to producers like Robert Evans, who Coppola famously warred with as he made The Godfather, “Hey. I don’t need you. I can control costs and production and make a movie all on my own.”

Somehow, One from the Heart went from a personal love story to a $28 million dollar epic. It went from a movie to a Quixotic odyssey. Or was that 1979’s Apocalypse Now, a film that went from Joseph Conrad cover version to a sprawling epic that nearly killed several of the people in its orbit? From typhoons to nervous breakdowns, actors getting replaced mid-production, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, Marlon Brando showing up out of shape and not ready to perform, Dennis Hopper high on drugs before disappearing for days in the jungle and so much more, the film was delayed and delayed and delayed. The director himself succinctly put it this way: “We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment and little by little, we went insane.” Yet the movie that emerged was a classic.

Now that Coppola was making a movie on his own terms, the odds were higher than they’d ever been before. The film had to be a winner with the public’s hearts, minds and wallets.

Coppola wanted to create something that he called Electric Cinema (I’ve also heard it called Live Cinema). There would be long takes, performances that felt like they belonged on the theater stage and cameras that would shoot from every angle to ensure coverage so that Coppola’s editing team could craft magic from the wealth of available film. This technique — which involves modern video editing years before it was used or even feasible — isn’t something that Coppola has given up on. He was part of what is said to be “an ambitious “Distant Vision” project as a “live cinema” experiment at his alma mater, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television” in 2016 and published a book, Live Cinema and Its Techniques, in 2017.

Roger Ebert stated in his January 1, 1982 review, “Everybody knows that Coppola used experimental video equipment to view and edit his movie, sealing himself into a trailer jammed with electronic gear* so that he could see on TV what the camera operator was seeing through the lens. Of course, the film itself was photographed on the same old celluloid that the movies have been using forever; Coppola used TV primarily as a device to speed up the process of viewing each shot and trying out various editing combinations.” In short, Coppola did exactly what every modern production does today, particularly commercial shoots, using a more advanced version of the Video Assist that Jerry Lewis claimed to have invented (in truth, Jim Songer was the patent holder, read more in this fascinating article).

What emerged is a film that is just as much theater as it is a movie as it is live TV. It begins and ends with a curtain. And what is in-between is a mix between heartfelt passion and pure cinematic gloss. Everything that can be neon will be — even the names of the cast and crew. Yet the story that is told is between two people and could happen to anyone.

This isn’t the real Las Vegas, though. This is the Vegas of movies, of dreams, of what Vegas feels like but can’t be. It’s a world where the music of Crystal Gayle and Tom Waits provide their voices, as the film becomes a musical. Kind of. Sort of.

Hank (Frederic Forrest, The Rose, Apocalypse Now) and Frannie (Teri Garr, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Young Frankenstein) are a couple who’ve been together too long. Five years too long. They’re sick of one another, they’ve left another one too many times and now, this is the end of their story.

They spend their fifth anniversary with their dream lovers. Hank falls for Leila, who is youth and beauty and pure sex (it’s no accident that Nastassja Kinski plays her). Frannie picks the dark, handsome and mysterious Ray (Raul Julia, who I really don’t want to say is also in Street Fighter, but he was), a man who will give her what she always wanted: he will sing to her.

It’s not enough for Hank, who tracks down Frannie and tells her that he loves her, but she refuses his advances. He even follows her to the airport, where she is due for Bora Bora with her new lover, ready to leave reality behind for a life of idyllic passion. He tries to sing to her in his cracked voice but leaves in tears.

Back in their broken home, he’s lost, but she comes home to him, realizing that they are meant to be together.

My question is, “Why?” The film never shows us why the real world is better than a dream. Would you choose a ramshackle house and a life of arguments over dancing with Julia or a neon sign graveyard with Kinski gyrating against a Technicolor sky? No. You wouldn’t.

That’s my main issue with One from the Heart. Its heart seems in the wrong place, that these two mismatched souls belong together when the film repeatedly shows us that no, they belong with their fantasies.

Another nod to the stage is that the film features understudies, including Rebecca De Mornay. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t call out one of the best parts of the film — Harry Dean Stanton, who elevates every single piece of film he ever wandered into. Here, he’s the owner of the neon graveyard.

What amazes me is that Coppola would try to direct another musical, particularly after his work on 1968’s Finian’s Rainbow led many in Hollywood to brand him as someone who was hard to work with and hard to keep on budget. Again, I turn to the superior words of Nathan Rabin, who had this to say about the film: “As Coppola tells it on Finian’s Rainbow‘s shockingly candid audio commentary, he was the wrong man for the job in every conceivable way. Coppola fancied himself a New Wave-style auteur. Warner Bros saw him as a cheap gun-for-hire.”

While One to the Heart was intended as a small follow-up to Apocalypse Now, obviously things didn’t turn out that way. For Coppola, it meant going back to the studio system. Every movie he made for almost two decades — The Outsiders, The Godfather: Part III, Jack, The Rainmaker and even a return to working with Robert Evans (this one’s a whole other tale in and out of itself) on The Cotton Club was all to pay back the debts from this film.

Should you see it? You better after I wrote over 1,200 words about it! But seriously, the color palette of this film is something you won’t see outside of Suspiria. It’s a music video in an era where that art form was still growing. And it informs later works like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which is even more overt in its reference to the works of Mario Bava than simply loving his brighter color choices. And if you watch this on DVD, you even get the choice to simply watch the musical numbers, which may improve on the film for some.

*Indeed, Coppola would direct a lot of the film from “The Silver Fish, a mobile HQ, fully equipped with a kitchenette, espresso machine and onboard Jacuzzi,” which had a loudspeaker that he could issue orders from. Insane. And by insane, I mean brilliance.

You remember that interview where Vanilla Ice tried to explain why he didn’t steal Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure?”

I’d like to hear whoever did the music for this movie to explain how they added a “da na na” to the theme from Halloween. Then again, there’s plenty more that this movie owes to that film.

A killer with a kitchen knife is on the prowl, killing off college kids. And he’s on the way to Lanier College during finals.

Meanwhile, a fraternity stages a mass shooting to help their members pass a chemistry test. How does this plan work? Who comes up with such a plan?

While students prepare for the end of the year, the killer is hiding among them. We have Courtney, who is the Final Girl, of course. Her roommate is Lisa, who is all into the hot professor. Well, not really hot. He’s a professor, though.

For some reason, all of the pledges can’t dare anyone. But Gary is in love with Janet and pins her, so he gets punished by being tied up to a tree, his underwear filled with ice and then sprayed with shaving cream. What? Where did this ritual come from? Who goes through with this? Even the rest of the town, like the security guard, follow these rules. What is the deal with this school?

Well, he’s tied up and the killer gets him. Then it gets his girlfriend, too. While that’s going on, Wildman, a frat guy, is looking for pain pills when he gets killed by a Universal weight machine. His friend Mark tries to find him and he gets killed.

Then we have Radish, who isn’t gay in the movie but would totally be a proud out character if this was made after 1981. He’s constantly looking for killers and has a great poster collection of old films. All his knowledge of murder doesn’t help, as he’s instantly killed.

Lisa tries to model for her boyfriend in the nude, but she gets killed, too. And now we’re down to one and the killer even catches an arrow and stabs the coach with it when he tries to save Courtney. But then he falls into a hole and she stabs him to death. That’s it. That’s the fight he puts up.

Written and directed by Jimmy Huston (My Best Friend Is a Vampire), this is pretty much Halloween with a killer who was too lazy to get a mask (he was also the fight coordinator for the film).

That said, I wasn’t bored, I laughed out loud at many of the things that Radish did and said, and I enjoyed the arrow catching scene. If you want to see it for yourself, Shout! Factory has released it on blu-ray and you can also watch it for free on Amazon Prime. You’ll be filled with questions. Like, how much chaffing did the short shorts of the 80’s cause?

Real-life husband and wife Richard Benjamin (Catch-22 and the original Westworld) and Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) play John and Mary, who have inherited his uncle’s house in Eerie, PA. If that line made you laugh, then Saturday the 14th is for you.

Along with their kids Debbie and Billie, they try and fix the house up. But they’re opposed by Waldemar (Jeffrey Tambor, Arrested Development) and Yolanda, two vampires who want the book of evil within the house. Billy finds the book and with each turn of the page, he unleashes monster after monster into the house.

Soon, the TV can only get The Twilight Zone, sandwiches, dishes and nosy neighbors all disappear and eyeballs show up in John’s coffee cup. It’s nothing out of the ordinary to our heroes, who seem blind to the supernatural going on all around them.

Waldemar gets into the house as a bat, so they hire an exterminator (Severn Darden, Kolp from Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) who turns out to be Van Helsing.

After a housewarming party where the monsters kill every guest, we learn that the vampires are the good guys and Van Helsing just wants the book so he can rule the world. The good guys — now who include the vamps — win and Jon and Mary get an upscale home while Waldemar and Yolanda settle into the cursed home.

Director Howard R. Cohen also wrote Unholy Rollers, Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen before choosing this as his first film. He also directed Space Raiders, Time Trackers and Saturday the 14th Strikes Back.

Some trivia — every time you see Prentiss, look closely. She’s hiding the cast on her arm, as she broke it before filming began.

Also, this is Benjamin’s last feature film as an actor, as he started directing with 1982’s My Favorite Year.

While sold as a parody of slasher films, this movie more accurately makes light of monster movies as a whole. If you’re looking for other funnier horror films of a similar bent, I’d recommend Wacko, Pandemonium, Student Bodies or Class Reunion.

I remember this movie running on HBO quite often in my youth. It’s a pleasant enough diversion, almost an Airplane! version of horror or a Mad Magazine come to life. The monsters are way better than you’d think they’d be, too!

Four years before Teen Wolf (and 24 years after I Was a Teenage Werewolf), Larry Cohen wrote, produced and directed Full Moon High, a comedic take on what it’d be like to be a werewolf in high school. Ironically, it came out in the same year as An American Werewolf in London, covering some of the same ground, but from a very different perspective.

The tie to Michael Landon’s werewolf turn is that the opening of this film is in the 1950’s. There, Tony Walker (Adam Arkin, Halloween H2O) is a high school football player whose dad, Colonel William Walker (Ed McMahon!), is in the CIA. He takes his son with him to Romania for a secret mission where he’ll shove some microfilm up his own ass. Yes, if you ever wanted to see Johnny Carson’s sidekick yell things like, “Did you get laid?” and act like he’s being butt plugged, then this is the film for you!

Tony gets his palm read by a gypsy while his dad is having sex with a prostitute — yes, this is a comedy — and finds out that he’ll be an eternal doomed to wander the earth. Soon, he will return home to find his destiny and he shouldn’t make any plans during the full moon. On his way back to the hotel, Tony is killed by a werewolf and returns from the dead the next morning.

On their way back to the U.S., Cuban terrorists hijack their plane, but Tony transforms into a werewolf and takes them out. However, Tony’s curse keeps him too distracted to play football, so he misses the big game and costs his school the championship. He also starts to hide from his girlfriend Jane (Roz Kelly, New Year’s Evil) as he’s worried that he will kill her. His dad is convinced that Tony is a neighbor’s dog until he catches him transforming and tries to shoot his son. The bullet ricochets and kills the Colonel and Tony skips town after the funeral.

The film descends into pathos here — not the last time it’ll happen — as Tony wanders the earth for twenty-five years before returning home. It’s just in time, as Tony’s football team hasn’t scored a touchdown since he left town.

His old girlfriend, Jane, is married to his old friend Flynn and still calls out his name during sex. She figures out that Tony Jr., as he calls himself as he returns to town, is really Tony. And she’s fine with having sex with a werewolf. There’s also Ricky (Joanne Nail, The Visitor), a high school girl who falls for him. Oh yeah — and Tony also goes full werewolf and kills his principal before turning himself in. His court-appointed shrink, Dr. Brand (Adam Arkin’s dad, Alan) really wants to conduct experiments on Tony, but acts like he’s trying to help him.

There are plenty of character actors and strange personalities in this strangely cast film. In addition to Ed McMahon, there’s also Laurene Landon (Maniac Cop, …All the Marbles, The Stuff), Sanford and Son‘s Demond Wilson, 1980’s sitcom and Hollywood Squares star Jim J. Bullock, Bob Saget in an early role as a sportscaster and Pat Morita (The Karate Kid) as a silversmith.

Cohen said of the film, “It has some interesting ideas about how life in America has changed sexually and politically since the early sixties. All of Arkin’s friends have changed but he hasn’t. And whereas he changes into a werewolf all of the time, his friends change into middle-aged people while he is gone, with different values and different ideas. They change as much as he does, actually.”

Where most of Larry Cohen’s films succeed in spite of their high concept and low budget, Full Moon High was a bit of a struggle for me. That said, Alan Arkin is great in this and elevates every scene he’s in.

Shout! Factory is finally releasing this film on blu-ray. It’s been available in grey market form for awhile, but it’s getting their full treatment and comes out on April 10th, complete with plenty of extras.

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It’s impossible for me to be objective. The House by the Cemetery is one of my favorite films ever. I cannot defend it’s lack of story, the fact that it’s influences are pinned to its sleeve or that it makes little to no sense. The first time I watched it — at a drive-in marathon that also included Zombi 2 — was an experience that burned the film into my brain.

The beginning will grab you in seconds, as a woman searches for her boyfriend in an abandoned house. She finds him dead, stabbed with scissors. Just then, she’s stabbed in the back of the head and the blade of the knife comes out of her mouth! We see her dragged away as the movie begins.

Meanwhile in New York City, Bob Boyle (Giovanni Frezza, Warriors of the Wasteland, Manhattan Baby, Demons) and his folks, Norman (Paolo Malco, The New York Ripper, Escape from the Bronx) and Lucy (Katherine MacColl, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond) are moving to the abandoned house we saw in the beginning of the film. Sure, Norman’s friend Dr. Peterson killed his mistress and committed suicide there, but why would that be a problem?

In one of the eeriest scenes in the film, Bob looks at a photo of the house and notices a young girl moving from room to room. This is the most subtle of all frights, a small moment where reality is not as it should be, and far more potent than even the goriest of grue that Fulci will soon serve up with glee. Only Bob can see this vision, which warns him to stay away.

As his parents get the keys to the house, Bob sees the girl again. Inside the rental office, Mrs. Gittleson (Dagmar Lassander, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) is upset that the couple has the Freudstein keys to Oak Mansion, but she promises to find a babysitter from Bob.

The mansion is a mess. Yet when the babysitter (Ania Pieroni, Inferno) comes, she enters the previously locked and nailed shut cellar door. Strangeness follows, like a librarian recognizing Norman despite never meeting him, the discovery of a tomb inside the house and a bat attack.

The Boyles demand a new house as Norman goes to the hospital. Mrs. Gittleson comes to tell them that she’s found a new property, but the Freudstein tombstone in the ground holds her while a figure stabs her in the neck. The next morning, Ann the babysitter cleans up the blood and avoids questions.

While the Boyles are at the hospital to treat Norman’s injuries from the bat, Mrs. Gittleson arrives at the house to tell them of a new property. Letting herself in, she stands over the Freudstein tombstone, which cracks apart, pinning her ankle. A figure emerges, stabs her in the neck with a fireplace poker, and drags her into the cellar.

The next morning, Lucy finds Ann cleaning a bloodstain on the kitchen floor while eluding Lucy’s questions about the stain. As they drink their morning coffee, Norman tells Lucy that the house was once home to Dr. Fruedstein, who conducted horrific experiments in the basement. He decides to go to New York City to learn more and on the way, he finds out that Freudstein killed his old friend Peterson’s family.

Ann can’t find Bob, so she goes to the basement where Freudstein slashes her throat and decapitates her. Bob finds her head and screams, but his mother refuses to believe the story. Bob goes back to the cellar but gets locked in. His mother tries to open the door, which can’t be unlocked. Norman returns and they make their way down to see Freudstein’s hands holding Bob. One axe slash later and the hand is cut off as the monster goes away to recover.

Inside the basement, Norman and Lucy find mutilated bodies, surgical equipment and a slab. Turns out that Freudstein is 150 years old and has learned to escape death. He returns and attacks Norman, who returns the favor by stabbing him. The twisted doctor replies by ripping out Norman’s throat. Lucy and Bon try to escape, but Freudstein drags her down to the basement where he rams her head into the floor until she dies.

Finally, the doctor grabs Bob, who is rescued by Mar and her mother, Mary Freudenstein. Mary tells them that it’s time to leave as she leads Mae and Bob down to a world of gloom and ghosts. The film ends with this quote:

House by the Cemetery is a mash-up of Frankenstein, The Amityville Horror and The Shining. And it’s another in the series of classics that Dardano Sacchetti (working with Giorgio Mariuzzo here) wrote for Fulci. If you think it’s nonsensical, imagine how early American audiences felt when the original VHS copies released in the U.S. had several of the reels out of order!

Seriously, this movie makes no sense whatsoever. There aren’t plot holes because there’s not even a plot. And sure, some say there’s too much gore. Yes, I’ve heard these complaints and I say no to all of them! Look, you’re either going to become an evangelist for this film (if you meet me in person, there’s a good chance I’ll have on a t-shirt with this film’s logo, I wear the shirt all the time) and you’ll think it’s the biggest piece of garbage ever made.

Decide for yourself! It’s on Shudder!

There’s a moment in The Black Cat where Patrick Magee is lying on a grave, begging a voice to speak to him while the black cat looks on with hatred in his eyes, as fog rolls across the graveyard, where you say to yourself: this is gorgeous art, far above the hack title that so many give to Fulci. In fact, this is a film packed with moments just like this.

Based on the Edgar Allan Poe story, the film starts with the titular black cat hypnotizing a man and making him crash his car. He smashes through the windshield and catches fire, all while beautiful music plays and the cat explores his neighborhood. This sequence is so perfect, a wordless way to show how this cat can be seen as pure evil yet is above the morality of humanity.

We follow the cat to the home he shares with Robert Miles (Magee, who also appeared in Asylum and Tales from the Crypt), a medium obsessed with speaking with the dead. We also meet Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer, Autopsy), an American tourist who is taking photos of crypts when she finds a broken microphone. She meets Sergeant Wilson (Al Cliver, The Beyond), who warns her that his father told her not to bother the dead. He reminds her that this is a small British town and not London, so even a cop can be superstitious.

Meanwhile, a young couple goes to a boathouse to have sex. However, the key disappears, the air conditioning breaks and they are left to die as the air runs out. Fulci cuts back and forth between what’s happening in the outside world and then dying hand in hand.

The girl’s mother, Lillian (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) asks the police to help find her daughter, bringing Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck, The Beyond) from Scotland Yard. Jill seeks the owner of the broken microphone and discovers Miles. He explains how he can easily hypnotize her and make her do whatever he wants before the black cat attacks him, breaking his hold over her.

Later that night, the cat kills a drunk by causing him to fall in.a barn and get impaled. With no one else to take photos, Gorley asks Jill to take photos for him. She notices the dead man has scratches on his hands just like the cuts the cat gave to Miles.

Lillian begs Miles to find her daughter, even offering to fall back in love with him again. After falling into a trance, he gives clues that lead the police to the boathouse, where the bodies of the couple are found. However, the room is locked from the inside, leaving the murders a mystery. Hours later, the black cat kills Lillian in a house fire.

Jill accuses Miles of using his evil on the cat, but Miles claims the cat has possessed him. Later, he drugs the feline and murders it, but that only gives the cat more power. Even Gorley — an unbeliever — sees the cat, which puts him in a trance, causing him to walk right in the path of a car.

Jill then breaks into Miles’ house to listen to his recordings of the dead. He returns home and she hides in the cellar where the cat begins to appear and disappear. Miles finds her and says that the cat is attacking on his hatred of the townspeople. Jill tries to run, but is attacked by bats (oh Fulci, you do so love bat attacks) and then Miles knocks her out and traps her inside a wall.

However, Gorley has survived, leading the police to Miles’ house. While they find no trace of Jill, they do hear the cry of a cat from the basement. Jill is found at the last minute and the black cat leaves, defeating Miles in the end.

The Black Cat gives Fulci plenty of opportunities to fill the screen with foggy atmosphere. There are moments of gore, but it’s not drenched in the red stuff like his later films. You can see it for yourself on Shudder and for free with a membership at Amazon Prime. Or you can grab the Arrow Video reissue at Diabolik DVD.