D2D entry #70: Private Duty Nurses (1971, George Armitage)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #8.)
Pale, dull retread of The Student Nurses. Offers nothing that wasn’t already done better in the first film, unless the inclusion of a drug-trafficking plot line counts as progress. Hackwork at its laziest - a prime example of trying too hard to strike while the iron was hot. Maybe some auterist can defend this within Armitage’s filmography. They can have it.
D2D entry #69: The Student Nurses (1970, Stephanie Rothman)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #8.)
A fascinating mess, mainly for all it tries to do within the framework of its nubile-nurses-in-L.A. setup: Rothman, producer Roger Corman and all others involved are not so much trying to eat their cake and have it too as much as they’re sampling from several different cakes at once and trying to make one cake out of the crumbs left behind. It’s a free-love nudie flick, plus it’s a soapy drama, plus it’s an issues flick, plus it’s a girl-power flick. The social-problem impulses are the most interesting thing the film has to offer, mainly because they’re muddled and conflicting (I’ll elaborate once I find my notes, but I remember there being some push-pull tension between idealism and activism, especially as presented in the plot thread about the Hispanic nurse who falls in with a radical-left revolutionary). Rothman has a sharp eye and puts as much polish on this as she can given the limited resources, and if her actresses aren’t the finest thespians around they still acquit themselves well enough within the framework of their cast-to-type roles. Also, they look damn good out of their clothing.
D2D entry #68: The Centerfold Girls (1974, John Peyser)
(Featured in 42nd Street #1.)
Halfway between an omnibus and an Americanized giallo, this slash-and-jiggle number could have only been made in the ’70s… and maybe that’s a good thing. The thing is split into three parts, each part following a different centerfold girl, with Andrew Prine’s moralistic mad-dog killer as the linking device. The second and third sections offer some low-grade entertainment value, and the climax offers the ever-awesome Prine squaring off against fierce Amazonian blonde Tiffany Bolling, which comes pretty close to redeeming everything before it. But there’s the matter of the opening segment: It follows a young nurse who drives into the woods (for a job, if I remember correctly - it’s been a few months), only to be victimized by both Prine and a group of nasty hippies straight out of a Last House on the Left ripoff. The tone in this segment is ugly (the sequence, as set up, is basically suffer-suffer-suffer-die), but the real problem is that Peyser and co. don’t seem set up to handle this brutality; the remainder of the film, while sleazy, is nowhere near as heartless or vicious as this first bit, and leading off with such material creates a permanent imbalance. Something like Night Train Murders can get away with this level of sadism and horror because its makers demonstrate a basic understanding of the material’s potency and a commanding formal control. Here, it’s just misogynistic window dressing.
D2D entry #67: Commuter Husbands (1973, Derek Ford)
(Featured in Dusk to Dawn #3 and Grindhouse Universe.)
Commuter Husbands is a film caught between two worlds. On one hand, it’s firmly in the tradition of classic English sex-comedy humor, with lots of mishaps, misunderstandings and cheeky double entendres. On the other, it’s a film well aware of changing social mores and the new permissiveness. Derek Ford plants a foot in both camps, and his resulting film is something that, while not entirely successful, gains a surprising amount of interest from the push-pull tension between what was and what will be. It’s structured as an omnibus, with gorgeous narrator Gabrielle Drake relating tales that examine the battle of the sexes. In the battle of the sexes, there is naturally sex, and this being the ’70s, that means a shit-ton of nudity (especially in the second story, which features a plumber stumbling into an orgy when he’s asked to fix the hot tub); yet, the resolution to each story involves a certain level of moralism and punishment for transgression. Ford is undeniably interested in the swinging lifestyle and getting cute birds to strip their kit off (as I understand it, he started splicing hardcore pornography into his later films for foreign markets), but the proper British soul still lurks within him, so the loose and the swinging don’t come out on top - most of the stories end with some measure of humiliation for those with perverse impulses (a peeping tom gets caught and forced to break a long-standing routine, a philandering married couple is forced to confront each other’s infidelities), and all of them result in a return to an idea of a man-woman middle-class status quo. (There’s also a likely soupcon of class commentary in the gist of the film, though Ford only gets overt about it during the plumber’s story.) It’s that space in between desire and social propriety into which Commuter Husbands wedges itself, and on those terms it’s modestly successful. As a film, otherwise, it’s rather spotty, with cornball humor and dry stretches alternating with the occasional flash of wit. But it does have something at least going for it, which puts it ahead of a good many other films.
Horror Challenge entry #23-#28 (plus): The tragic end
I just didn’t have the mojo this year, man. Some of that is attributable to an injury that kept me more or less bedridden for the first two weeks of the month, which meant more than one film a night was tough since I tend to nod off while watching films in bed. That doesn’t explain my flameout in the second half of the month, though. I hoping to hit at least thirty, but alas, ‘twasn’t to be. Oh well, what the hell, here’s what I got anyway.
#23: Delirium (1972, Renato Polselli as “Ralph Brown”) Before cranking out The Reincarnation of Isabel, the team of Polselli, Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni came together to essay this offbeat spin on the giallo genre. Hargitay is excellently creepy as a police psychologist who is tormented by his own impulses to kill, and Polselli directs this with a nice amount of polish and skill (the opening sequence is a dazzler). Shame, though, that the narrative breaks down in the home stretch - more questions are raised than answered by the bugfuck climax. The film doesn’t end so much as it flames out.
#24: My Bloody Valentine (1981, George Mihalka) First-wave slasher benefits greatly from finally being available in its uncut form, but it benefits even more from possessing a solid and palpable sense of place and atmosphere. It’s not enough to be set in a blue-collar milieu a la the soggy remake of this - the milieu has to convince, and it’s to this film’s credit that its depiction of the spirited roughneck culture in this old mining town indeed convinces. What that does is make the downtime between killings (of which there’s a lot - Mihalka doesn’t fully cut loose on the murder front until an hour has passed) tolerable, maybe even something to be enjoyed, rather than something to plow through in impatience. Still has its share of lame material (the lost-love plot thread works no better here than in the remake), but it’s about as good as this genre gets.
#25: The Last House on the Beach (1978, Franco Prosperi) Not only is this film dead-ass boring, it seems ashamed of its own exploitative material - anything that’s even mildly spicy is either cut down into inference or stylized so heavily that the impact vanishes. Snore.
#26: Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned (2008, Brian Thomson) I’ll bet this seemed funny while it was being made, anyway. The Lloyd Kaufman cameo made me laugh at the very least.
#27: /Slither (2006, James Gunn)/ This movie is so freakin’ awesome. I love it.
#28: The Return of Count Yorga (1971, Bob Kelljan) Practically the same film as the first, and I’d accuse Kelljan of repeating himself if he wasn’t doing it as essentially a way to correct the mistakes made on his first go-around. From the opening scene, this Yorga is a far more confident, dark and creepy-cool venture than its predecessor, with Kelljan openly displaying a Eurohorror-influenced vibe that was only hinted at in Yorga the first (love that slo-mo hallway chase!). Bonus points for the well-deployed Creepy Kid, and even more bonus points for the terrifically handled final scene. Robert Quarry, as before, is awesome.
And just for posterity, here’s three stragglers I took down on Nov. 1st.
Bonus film #1: Night Train Murders (1972, Aldo Lado) It’s like Aldo took a look at Last House on the Left and thought to himself, “Not a bad idea, now how can I spin this so that it’s actually a good movie?” Takes its time with its setup (the terrorization doesn’t start in earnest until the film is half over), paces itself carefully, exercises reserve so that its big shocks hit all the harder and makes its narrative more believable… this, folks, is how it’s done. Possibly even more cynical than the Craven flick, as well, with a class-based social critique centered around the character of The Woman on the Train; all this, plus it gives us a random passenger on the train and uses him to ensnare the viewer in his own presumed voyeurism with a stroke so clever and cruel that it hurts to think about it. Is there anything this film can’t do?
Bonus film #2: Oral Fixation (2009, Jake Cashill) Starts off surprisingly well, like a script-flipped Lifetime movie with a nasty body-horror edge to it (I visibly cringed when the chipper blonde psycho dug out one of her own teeth so that she could have an excuse to see her dentist, the object of her obsession), but some time in the second act it takes a turn towards the silly and never quite recovers; the third act is nothing less than an act of self-immolation. Not as bad as the reviews would have you believe, but not essential viewing or anything.
Bonus film #3: Lucifera: Demon Lover (1972, Paolo Lombardo) It’s like they threw a Satanic-orgy movie and a soap opera broke out. Fuck this nothing of a movie.
Horror Challenge entry #17-#22: Quick words to catch up
I think Adam is gonna whup me this year, unless I go bugfuck nuts next week. I’ve gotten caught up in other things. (I only got in two — TWO! — films this past week. I suck.) Anyway, here’s some brief thoughts on films I haven’t written about yet:
#16: Thirst (1979, Rod Hardy) Takes the class metaphor implicit in Browning’s Dracula and runs all the way home with it, creating a system wherein a group of privileged bloodsuckers descended from nobility (the lead, a woman the clan is trying to coerce into their way of life, is a relative of Countess Bathory) sustain their hungers via controlled blood farming and exploitation of semi-willing donors. As both a slashing metaphor for the allure of moral compromise as a path to financial gain and as a unique, institutionally bright take on the vampire genre, it’s solid stuff. Good B-movie cast too, with Henry Silva, Robert Thompson (from Patrick) and David Hemmings among the featured players. Shame, then, that lead actress Chantal Contouri is the weak link — while she handles the dialogue scenes and any bit of business that requires her to play haughty, she’s far more awkward when attempting to express states of extreme emotional distress. Which dampens much of her character’s arc.
#17: It’s My Party and I’ll Die if I Want To (2007, Tony Wash) No-budget spam-in-a-haunted-house flick showcases some pretty neat dimestore FX ingenuity. (Tom Savini has a cameo as an electrician, implicitly sanctifying the filmmakers’ efforts with his mere presence.) That’s about all it showcases, though: the filmmaking is rudimentary, the actors are mediocre, the characters are mostly obnoxious. Wash doesn’t do anything you can’t also find in The Evil Dead, Night of the Demons or any other film in this genre, really; you can’t fault the enthusiasm, though, and it looks like this was at least fun to make. So there’s that.
#18: The Uninvited (2009, Charles & Thomas Guard) Tries hard to maintain a semblance of fidelity to its source material… so much so that it ends up feeling like an imperfect wax simulacrum. There’s a far more interesting movie in here, one about the painful and awkward dynamic of resentment between teenagers and those they perceive as intruders into their carefully-composed familial worlds; this intriguing film, alas, is thrown over for tired shocks involving dead kids.
#19: Friday the 13th (2009, Marcus Nispel) Aren’t these things supposed to be, you know, fun? A humorless, grim version of this series was about the last thing the world needed, but fuck it — this is the 21st century, and the classic slasher has no place in the era of slickly aesthetized torture. So here he is, your ‘roided-up and angry as fuck Runnin’ Jason, as emblematic of the mean-spirited film that spawned him as Classic Jason is of his more mechanically goofy outings. Has exactly one inspired moment (Willa Ford’s death scene, a neat little symphony of cause and effect as related to aquatic breasts), and given the film surrounding it, I’m tempted to think of it as a happy accident.
#20: Count Yorga, Vampire (1970, Bob Kelljan) Robert Quarry cuts a striking figure as an ancient vampire — his seedy, weary elegance gives the impression of a man hiding something and wanting you to know that he’s hiding something, that he considers you beneath him and he’s only just holding his poisonous contempt in check. He’s a sight better than the film, really, which plays out like a cross between a superhero origin story and a J-horror discovery narrative. There’s a lot of meandering and time spent wandering around, reiterating things that should be plainly obvious… until, starting at the first meeting between Quarry’s Count Yorga and Roger Perry in the distaff Van Helsing role, turning as it does into a barbed war of words to rival anything in Inglourious Basterds, Kelljan abruptly kicks this shit into high gear. The propulsive third act forgives a lot of this film’s sins. I have it on good authority that the sequel dispenses with this film’s faults. Which makes me kinda excited.
#21: Paranormal Activity (2009 Oren Peli) If Peli had succeeded in drumming up any sympathy for the two characters here, I might be siding with this scrappy flick’s champions. But he didn’t. Rarely have I more wanted to shove myself through the screen and smack a couple of faces into sense. So fuck this undeniably effective but exasperating video wonder.
#22: Blood: The Last Vampire (2009, Chris Nahon) Remember in Kiss of the Dragon when Jet Li fought those two giant blonde guys? That was awesome. Nahon shoulda quit while he was ahead.
Horror Challenge entry #16: Don't Answer the Phone! (1980, Robert Hammer)
The psychotic ‘Nam veteran was a staple of action and horror cinema for a good number of years, and this film is a prime example of why - it’s an easy way to slam together titties ‘n’ gore into a ready-made framework, and it allows at least one role to go way, way over the top, which is something any semi-pro actor can do. (Subtlety is for nerds and Europeans, man.) Funny thing is, though, Hammer’s flick is really two movies in one; the first, more discomfiting film follows the creepy, sweaty, terrifyingly strong killer around Los Angeles as he kills, lifts weights and taunts a comely radio psychologist (Flo Lawrence) over the phone, while the second is your typical police procedural stuff except the cops (James Westmoreland & Ben Frank) are buffoonish wiseasses prone to random acts of brutality and general assholery. Does that structure sound familiar to you? Surely it’s a formula, but the specifics (rage-a-holic killer whose profession ties into his murders, goofball cops who can’t be taken seriously until they get mean, bifurcated structure) hearken forward to the supremely disturbing Hong Kong serial killer classic The Untold Story. Not that this film is anywhere as effective or impressive as that, and it doesn’t have Anthony Wong’s staggering psycho performance. But the thrust is similar as is the effect - we have, in essence, a world of normality and frivolity rent asunder by a vicious madman (portrayed with believable cruelty and fury by Nicholas Worth), and the only way towards restoration of the balance is to match violence with violence. The Untold Story went further, evolving into a critique of police brutality and human capacity for cruelty in general; this film is not as nuanced, but the primal force remains. Especially potent is the film’s depiction of its killer as a sociopathic type, hateful and murderous but otherwise lucid and reasonable; the lead-in to the climactic action sequence, where a bound & panicked Lawrence attempts to psychoanalyze Worth into submission only to have him mock and debase her attempts to do so, explaining that he just likes to hurt people… well, it’s a jolt. Not quality cinema, but authentically scuzzy.
Horror Challenge entry #15: Dracula (1931, Tod Browning)
No, I’d never seen this before. Leave me alone.
Anyway… this seminal iteration of the Stoker story, today, seems a bit creaky. Its status as a stage adaptation is hard to miss, given how many static medium shots are featured here; though he does craft some indelible images (like the shadow of the captain lashed to the wheel of his death boat), it’s striking how large a stylistic gulf there is between Browning’s slightly staid direction and F.W. Murnau’s earlier telling of the tale with Nosferatu. And yet, none of the joint stiffness matters when Bela Lugosi is onscreen. From his first appearance, it’s easy to see why this was both his starmaking role and the role that ruined his career forever - he’s too good, too believable as the Count to not be instantly iconic, and too instantly iconic to be seen as anything else. If Max Schrek is death personified, slinking from the grave to steal away the life of any and all, Lugosi is the biggest progenitor of the vampire as class metaphor; Lugosi’s natural regal air, his refined noble elegance, makes Dracula truly seem like the Count he is. Living in a decaying castle, (rightly) feared by superstitious townspeople, he is a stark portrait of nobility gone to seed and surviving by feeding off those below his station. It’s an extraordinary, alchemic performance, and it elevates what would otherwise be a slightly stuffy (if wildly compressed) version of an oft-told tale.
Horror Challenge entry #14: Don't Look Now (1973, Nicolas Roeg)
This is one of those films that I’ll need multiple viewings to process. But, yeah. Damn. Good shit. I especially appreciated how the entirety of the film is built on a carefully controlled sense of creeping inevitable dread, yet the one time Roeg goes for the jump scare (the falling plank of wood), he uses slow-motion, cross-cutting and expanses of silence to pretty much announce, “See this plank of wood? Yeah. Not only am I going to use it to scare the holy shit out of you, I’m going to give you plenty of time to prepare yourself for the shock. Guess what, though? You STILL won’t see it coming, and you’re still going to leap right the fuck out of your seat.” A gorgeous, haunting and ultimately shattering piece of work; yet more proof that true, lasting horror results from mature, adult filmmaking and not the petty stings of juvenilia. (Not that said juvenilia can’t be fun, of course.) If Donald Sutherland has ever given a better performance than he has here, I’m at a loss to remember it right now.
Horror Challenge entry #13: I Sell the Dead (2009, Glenn McQuaid)
Has a curious rhythm where nothing much seems at stake no matter what is onscreen menacing the characters. This could be a side effect of the episodic flashback structure (it really is one damn thing after another) - after all, since we see Larry Fessenden beheaded in the film’s first scene and Dominic Monaghan is clearly alive to tell the story of his and Fessenden’s adventures in the graverobbing trade, it’s not like any major harm is going to befall these two prior to that. But then, menace and horror aren’t this film’s stock in trade; if it feels like there isn’t much to lose and nothing bad will happen to our two ne’er-do-wells, that’s probably because the film is less about the creepy-crawly evil shit they encounter and more about their relationship with each other and the people they encounter as they ply their trade. It’s a cheeky buddy movie in dank Gothic garb. It may be fairly flat as a horror film, but it’s lively as an agreeable character-based comedy. The solid performances help quite a lot; Monaghan is winning as an intelligent and pragmatic sort who sees body theft as just a way to keep food on the table and beer in the glass, while Fessenden steals every scene he can playing the gruff, cantankerous sort of fellow he specializes in but tilted just enough so his growling comes off as humorous instead of menacing. There’s also able support from Ron Perlman as a priest who might be a bit too interested in Monaghan’s tale and John Speredakos as a vicious business rival. McQuaid does right by the tricky tonal balance, keeping the wit bone-dry (the temptation to take this over the top would have defeated many a man), and he also shows some nascent directorial chops. All in all, a ghoulish good time, with a relatively predictable twist in the tail that nonetheless gets topped by a better twist I should have seen coming and didn’t. There’s promise in this debut.
