by ·Comments Off on Alice, Sweet Alice (1976, Alfred Sole)

Alice is a creepy kid who loves masks and torments her popular little sister Brooke Shields. After Brooke is murdered in church and her mom’s shitty sister is repeatedly stabbed in her legs and hands, Alice is brought in for questioning. The parents take her home against psych recommendations, and more people get stabbed, but the masked raincoat killer has been the family’s psycho-catholic housekeeper (a Spike Lee regular)… all along? It’s confusing since Alice wears the same getup, but given the movie’s half-giallo half-Don’t Look Now influence, it’s probably meant to be confusing.

Unlike Tucker & Dale we got real filmmakers in charge, though you wouldn’t know it from checking their other credits – Sole made porn and did production design for the Wishmaster and Donnie Darko sequels, the producers and DPs made nothing, and the editor cut The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. But for a brief moment in the mid-70s they made a beautiful slasher film in which the vibes are so far off.

by ·Comments Off on Messiah of Evil (1973, Willard Huyck)

This is the real stuff, pre-Lynchian eccentricity (even art directed by Jack Fisk) with rich color, good eerie music and some quirky sound editing.

Marianna Hill (Blood Beach, Schizoid) is seeking her missing dad, finds a hotel room throuple (Joy Bang of Night of the Cobra Woman; Anitra Ford of Invasion of the Bee Girls; Tiresome Tom) in the middle of interviewing freaked-out Elisha Cook, who says she’d better kill and burn her dad if she finds him. Anitra ditches the group now that Tom is slobbering over the new girl, she flees a rat-eating albino then comes across a gang of locals eating raw meat at Ralph’s, so they grab and eat her instead.

Marianna finds dad’s house and his diary entries about gradually turning into a zombie. She’s not doing so well herself, vomiting up bugs and lizards. Tom hasn’t adequately explained himself, claims to be just an art dealer, but knows that the bleeding eyes indicate a transformation is starting. Sometimes zombification takes long enough to leave behind an entire diary, sometimes it happens real fast (a cop changes sides mid-shootout). Dad Royal Dano (Gramps in House II, the farmer in Killer Klowns) finally comes home to provide an 1870s backstory flashback about a dark priest hiding in the sea. But it stays compellingly mysterious because none of these things exactly come together – even the DVD commentary guys agree that it’s never clear exactly what’s the deal in this town. The directors getting kicked off the movie before the editing couldn’t have helped.

Royal Le Fou, he blue himself:

All sorts of weirdos show up in this. The first victim is Walter Hill, a rude art gallery guy is Morgan Fisher, a murdered mechanic was the killer Santa from Silent Night Deadly Night. Huyck directed Howard the Duck, which I’m not keen to revisit even though I enjoyed it when I was ten, and with Gloria Katz he wrote Radioland Murders and Temple of Doom. Elisha was prolific – it’s exciting to think I’ve got 100 more Elisha performances to go.

by ·Comments Off on Long Weekend (1978, Colin Eggleston)

Good tagline: “Their crime was against nature – nature found them guilty.” This refers to the lead asshole, on a camping trip with his unwilling wife, who trashes and destroys and kills every natural thing he comes across. He flicks wildfire cigs out the window and runs down a roo before they even arrive, then shoots a manatee he thought was a shark, is always brandishing axes and missile weapons.

Can these matching jackets save their marriage?

The wife didn’t want to be here in the first place, won’t let him touch her because she has a headache this year. He persists, both with her and with his camping-by-brute-force mission. An eagle attacks him, weirdly, then a possum bites him, righteously. A half hour before the movie’s over we’re still in anything-could-happen mode. After the wildlife frustrations and the wife threatening to exit the campsite and the marriage, husband kills her with a speargun, then he tries to fuck his way out of the swampy forest in a 2WD Nissan. At this point we know he’ll die – and he does in the funniest way, getting run down by a truck when a cockatoo attacks its driver.

When not spending time with the horrible humans the movie offers a parade of cool creatures. This was the back half of my Australian weirdo-horror double-feature. From the writer and cinematographer of Roadgames, Eggleston later made a (bad?) vampire movie featuring the expectant husband from Body Melt.

by ·Comments Off on Last House on Dead End Street (1977, Roger Watkins)

Looks and sounds like shit right from the start, with spectacularly out-of-sync sound recording. Manos: The Last House on the Left Hands of Fate, about a misanthrope making snuff films, made by a (presumed) misanthrope and looking like an actual snuff film. “This isn’t my cup of tea. I’m not interested in art.”

Dirtbag Bill, about to drill-kill:

Terry, who looks like Dirtbag Bill Hader, gets out of jail for drug dealing and says he’ll show ’em all. Filmmaker Bill isn’t getting much play from his softcore lesbian dramas and blackface whipping scenes. They kidnap some people and murder them on camera, then a voiceover tells us they were all apprehended, ok. An incoherent, possibly evil movie. The cinematographer later shot Avengers: Infinity War, which makes sense.

Despite this movie’s rocky/aborted release it definitely predates the Misfits song:

by ·Comments Off on Torso (1973, Sergio Martino)

Opens with a threesome sex scene over the credits, nice. “Torso” turns out to be code for “boobs.” This was technically pre-shocktober, part of Criterion’s giallo series from which I also watched Who Saw Her Die? and The Girl Who Knew Too Much.

Someone is strangling hot young people with scarves. Flo goes out to a sex commune and gets drowned and mutilated in the swamp on the way home. The local scarf vendor (of Toby Dammit, also a good scarf movie) knows who bought the murderscarves but instead of telling the cops he calls the killer to blackmail him, then is immediately smooshed by a car. Mostly this raises the question of why a weirdo running a scarf kiosk keeps his customers’ phone numbers.

Suzy Kendall (kidnapped girlfriend of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and macaw:

A group of hot girls decide to take a trip to the country after failing to locate their friend Stefano (Roberto Bisacco of Stavisky), presumed scarf murderer – though after watching more than one giallo, we know the most suspicious guy is least likely to be the killer, and sure enough when Stefano finally shows up he’s been scarf-strangled.

Jane’s car has Chicago (not Illinois) plates:

Jane wakes up and the others are dead, then hides while the killer hacksaws them. Their professor John Richardson (victorious hero of Black Sunday) is the baddie, and the moment he’s discovered he narrates his entire traumatic triggering backstory which involves a Mac & Me-esque cliff fall. Some guy fights him and saves her, I’m not sure who. Have I mentioned that all the dialogue is super ridiculous?

Girls who need a vacation:

What girls do on vacation:

by ·Comments Off on Who Saw Her Die? (1972, Aldo Lado)

Four years ago a kid was killed in the snowy woods by somebody in a woman’s hat. Now a bunch more people start dying so the survivors and authorities figure they’d better inspect whether Adolfo Celi (of Thunderball) has a secret brother who wears ladies’ hats and pretends to be a priest and murders red-haired girls – which he does. He’s still not as big a maniac as the people who do sound for these movies. James Bond himself George Lazenby and giallo fave Anita Strindberg play the grieving parents. Strangers online point out (coincidental) similarities to the following year’s Don’t Look Now, and seem to prefer Aldo Ladi’s debut Short Night of Glass Dolls over this one.

by ·Comments Off on Minnie and Moskowitz (1971, John Cassavetes)

You settle in for a Gena Rowlands memorial screening and you’re immediately treated to a long ornery Timothy Carey showcase, what a great day. Mosk is Seymour Cassel with a grand mustache, introduced going out to a Bogart movie. He makes a scene at various bars, gets money from his mom, moves to California and gets a shitty job parking cars.

Minnie is introduced going out to a Bogart movie with her friend, a good sign. Her man (John) is a real loser so she goes out and finds a new one, Val “Zelmo” Avery, who is disrespectful to people around him, and so gets beaten up by Seymour while picking up the car. In fact every time there’s more than one man in a scene a brawl ensues. But this leads to Minnie meeting Mosk, very much against her will, and soon her mom (played by her mom) will meet his mom (played by John’s mom) and they’ll be blissfully married. It’s a performance movie, also has alarming/hilarious editing

See: Kenji and Brendanowicz and Filipe.

What John C. could never have predicted is that the movie would provide so many useful subtitle reaction images in the horrible online future.

by ·Comments Off on Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974, John Hough)

Opens with a heist, Peter Fonda collecting money from the manager whose family is held hostage by his partner Deke (biker-movie regular Adam Roarke). Dirty drifter Susan George (Straw Dogs) gets in the way so they take her along. Sheriff Vic Morrow takes this pursuit personally and throws all resources into the chase. Car swappin’, fast drivin’, and drawbridge jumpin’ ensue, up to the requisite ’70s downbeat ending (our group is flattened by a train). Amazing to read that a lab error led to the movie being badly color-shifted for its first 30 years. Hough was mostly a horror guy, made The Legend of Hell House, the Cassavetes Incubus, and a Howling sequel.

Movie is known for its car action but I only gasped at this helicopter:

by ·Comments Off on Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall (2022, Bob Smeaton)

Long wikipedia-caliber intro with narration by Jeff Bridges (haha). He shouldn’t have compared CCR’s sales records to the Beatles in the intro then followed with a bunch of interview and tour diary clips where they are infinitely less witty and charismatic than the Beatles. But after a half hour of this feature-length stretching-out, the April 1970 concert begins and is pure fire.