Fangs of the Living Dead - 1969

I laid in bed sick and tired trying to escape into a horror movie, only to have the internet shit out on me. I was trying to watch The Ghost Galleon, a later entry Italian horror film by Amando de Ossorio. When it didn't work, I went to the other TV and watched this, not knowing they were the same director. Weird, man.

Also known as Malenka, the Vampire's Niece. Fangs was a much better name.

Anita Ekberg was a well known horror queen and almost a Bond girl. She had a career that went all over the place and she has a lot of entries in the horror genre. She's been on this blog before and countless others I'm sure, as she is quite hot and often nude.

Anita plays Malenka or Sylvia in the English dub. She comes to some giant gothic castle that the locals fear because her uncle lives there. Everyone in town is right about this place, they avoid it for a reason. There's vampires, as we soon discover, and her uncle also speaks of "the Nosferatu". When Sylvia discovers her brother and another woman there are both vampires, she'll have to face her fears and also risk them trying to convince her to become like them.

I wanted cheap Italian schlock with nudity and effects, and of course, I didn't get it. It was 1969, and I should've gotten it. But, I dunno if I was watching a censored version or if Amando was one of those not to "go there" in his films, either way this film had none of that adult-y type stuff. Which leaves you watching...People! Talking! Walking around!

There is a lot of leg and cleavage, so they even tease you. I dunno bro. This wasn't my speed. It was dull, it was empty, it was bland. At the end, there's been so little horror besides the obvious "presence of vampire horror" that I began to wonder, "Is this movie a drama?" I mean really, it's not a fucking horror movie. It is a dramatic movie with horror elements. But shit, replace those fangs with something else and this movie is a straight drama, and a bad one at that.

Fangs is a lifeless, dulled knife that should be scary cuz it's a knife right, but then you grab it and realize it's cardboard.

It Happened at Nightmare Inn - 1971

Also known as "A Candle for the Devil", It Happened at Nightmare Inn was next on the set. I turned on the barely 65 minute movie in the morning and watched it while I got dressed, made coffee, cleaned the cabin, and generally did shit. Whatever, it counts.

Nightmare Inn is a hotel where the main actress comes at the beginning of this decidedly average film. This young girl is looking for a friend of hers that stayed in Spain at this hotel, and since has gone missing. The two hotel staff know something they're not sharing, and soon enough via flashback and via investigation, our plucky heroine uncovers the truth...

Not sure what to say about this one. With some better writing or with something else like that the idea certainly could have had interest factors. But, it instead sorta just lays there limp the entire time. No nudity, no blood, no real thrill either since from minute 3 we know exactly what will happen.

I wasn't sure if there would be a plot twist or another character added as a side story. There wasn't. Hence the short length, and one could complain about lack of development. I won't complain. Helped the movie stay short! I'll give it one star.

Manos: The Hands of Fate - 1966

There's a history of me and Manos, as is the case with probably every MST3K fan. I first saw Manos as an episode in....oh, I dunno, 2005? I'm guessing randomly? It was never my favorite MST3K episode as I felt that it was overrated and average at best. The movie part of it, Manos, seemed like a lot of the shit they did so it didn't stick out to me too much. Kudos to those guys: They really could make anything funny.

This is the first attempt I've ever made to watch Manos without the riffing. Different from Pod People, which is one of my favorites of MST3K, I knew I could watch Manos sans riffing and it'd be fine. This is an episode of that show which I used to put on if I wanted to fall asleep. It was a "secret weapon" in that regard.

Manos exists as the sole film made by Texas businessman Harold P. Warren. He supposedly took part in a bet that he could make a horror film, was part of a local acting scene, and said "fuck it I'll make a movie" and self financed it. Manos is amateur to the very definition, and as I watched it I did think, this has to be one of the most amateur films to exist, ever.

Manos is a bevy of questions. I suppose that's why it's so loved, talked about, and why it is a fan favorite. You have to, HAVE TO wonder about the choices made by the direction, the acting, the camerawork, the soundtrack, everything about it. Let me first give a very brief synopsis to what is a 65 minute movie.

Mike, his wife and daughter are driving long, get lost, and end up at a mystery building in the desert. They are greeted by the oddball caretaker Torgo, a twitchy and nervous man with enlarged thighs and knees(?!) Torgo expresses doubt about them being there, saying that "the master" would not approve, but conditions make the family stay. Soon enough, they meet the master and his harem of wives, and get thrown into a sinister ritual in this mystery spot.

But what the plot doesn't say is the rank, bizarre, shoddy isn't a strong enough word pure what the fuck nature of this movie. Whether it's the lingering shots of absolutely nothing happening, the terrible dialogue, the repetition of dialogue many MANY times with no explanation, or the lack of what I would call "a clear plot, story, character explanation or ANYTHING" this movie simply breaks all the established rules that have existed and will ever exist in film.

In the beginning of the film, I had a moment of questioning because it struck me that Torgo is actually made out to be a very sympathetic character. His many odd behaviors are never explained, but his motivation is, and it is probably the only clear motivation for anything in the entire film so it stands out. He wants a wife. Then, he is sentenced to death, or rather, bizarre slapping punishment, and he gets his hand burned off and simply runs away, meaning Torgo survives this film.

Later on, the Master is front and center as the main heavy in the film, and he's not a terrible actor but the script is terrible and there is never a hint as to a explanation for anything about him. The Master exemplifies one of the biggest takeaways of the entire film for me, which is:

They had no idea what they were doing. When there is a cut, when the plot takes a turn, you can practically hear the director, the actors, and maybe the best boy all sitting around, pitching ideas of what would be "cool" or "scary" if it happened next. You can feel the improvised nature of the film, the way they just sorta thought, "let's throw in a scene where the women fight, cause that would be funny right?" So, they turned on the camera and filmed it. Two minutes later "Cut! How about your character says 'Manos would be displeased' here?" It was all made up on the spot in other words, and it really fucking feels like it.

Manos is the epitome of what a true amateur experiment is. This is the type of film where I think almost anyone on the planet would say "I could do something better than that". It is laughably short and laughably long at the same time, as certain moments feel like they last an eternity. The only way it could be more amateur is if they literally didn't know how to turn the camera on, and then it wouldn't exist.

Manos is the type of film you watch and you know it is something else. It has a bizarre quality, and overall, I think the best thing about it is it's strange plot. If it was more straight and narrow about a killer or some shit, it would not be so compelling. I think one of the unspoken great things about this movie is that to me, it feels ahead of it's time because of the plot. The plot is straight out of a 70s film, take it from the expert: me. This is a forerunner to what would be later known and celebrated as "psychotronic film":  the ones traditionally ignored or ridiculed by mainstream critics at the time of their release: horror, exploitation, action, science fiction, and movies that used to play in drive-ins or inner city grindhouses.

The experimentation of this and the bizarreness of the plot fits more in congruity with the 70s weirdness and experimentation of the decade, and in a way this is one of the few things I've seen which proceeds the type of film coming up in the next decade. Had this come out in 1976, for example, I do not think it would stand out so much. I think it would be another 70's "exploitation" flick and would be very forgotten.

Just another example of how this movie, despite everything, succeeds.

Manos: The Hands of Fate has a legacy, and that is one thing I struggle with. I wanted to go through all the movies on all three other sets and try to determine if any of them have a "legacy". There's plenty of cult films on the sets, but I think the closest would be They Saved Hitler's Brain, Slipstream, mayyyybe Abraxas? But nothing like this. Nothing else comes close to what this has: a fan funded documentary and two fan funded sequels. I intend on seeing none of these. Let the fucking thing stand on it's own!

I really don't know how to rate this one. As a film, it's not good. As an experience, it is great. It's very hard for me to separate the MST3K of it from the film, and the memories I have of the film from the film itself. I will land on 4 stars I think, and I will say: I don't think I'll ever watch this again without riffing.

The Oval Portrait - 1972

Did not know I had a Edgar Allen Poe double dip on this Pure Terror boxset. I hadn't read this story, nor head I heard of it before in the Poe pantheon (the Poentheon?)

The Oval Portrain was apparently a two page short story that Poe wrote. You guys really think a two PAGE source material is enough to base a 90 minute movie on? You're confident about that idea, are ya? Wow, well, ok then.

This movie is also known as One Minute Before Death, and is the story of a woman coming to a house she hasn't been to before and uncovering the strangeness happening there. It wildly deviates from the original story, which I just read a plot synopsis of. Edgar Allen Poe's original story is of a painter who was so focused on painting his wife he doesn't notice she is dead.

In the movie, instead of that cincise and macabre idea, we get endless scenes of women gossiping, men in long coats looking perturbed, and plenty of lingering shots of the titular Oval portrait. The portrait itself is quite good, very lifelike as it was in the original short story. The actual plot revolved around this new woman getting possessed, sort of, by the ghost of the dead woman in the painting. Another decent idea. But, this is so paintfully dull and slow and who-cares and it doesn't succeed in this plot either.

So where does this succeed? I dunno, I guess it doesn't. It goes, things happen, and I was insanely bored for the most of it. I stuck with it but fast forwarded towards the end, which is addittedly when the movie gets a bit better. Not much though. Tooooo slow, too blah, too whatever, I give it no stars.

Monstroid - 1980

I previously watched this for the blog under the name Monster. I thought as I watched it that the monster seemed familiar. and yup I was right. seen it before.

Monster stars John Carradine, a B movie king and someone I'd have expected to be in this blog a lot more. I don't think the entire 70s or 80s set had him at all. He is a king of schlock, and according to my brief research he was present in the beginnings of this blog more, and recently his brother Keith has actually been in more movies I've seen. He's in a small role as a religious guy in a town near a lake where a lake monster dwells.

In my previous review, I talked about this as if I didn't enjoy it. I knocked the lack of a cental character, and the cheap effects. There is truly a lack of characters in this movie. We follow a young woman mostly and she's not in the movie very much. Once the monster is unvelied and being hunted, we have a few main heroes, but they're critically underwritten.

Aside from that I really liked the beginning of this and I like the monster itself. Last time I gave this two stars and I think this time I will go up at least one star. Is all very average and it's all been done before but it was ahead pf it's time, considering it was actually filmed closer to 1971.

The helicopter and the 70s clothes was a lot of fun to see, I'm just enjoying watching movies from the 70s right now, so I'm in my own little personal heaven. Fuck it I'll give this movie 3 stars.

Eerie Midnight Horror Show - 1974

also known as: L'ossessa, Enter the Devil, The Sexorcist.

Producer 1: What is big in the US?
Producer 2: The Exorcist is huge!
1: Great let's copy it.
2: For sure. Let's make a cheap Italian version.
1: Right. Except, we have to sex it up. Add lots of nudity and tittilate the audience.
2: I'm definitely into that.
1: So we begin with a woman having sex with a statue!
2: Eh... come again?
1: Exactly! Sexy psuedo rape scene in the first 20 minutes to really hook the audience.
2: But with a statue?
1: Then that launches a series of weird cut aways to random flashbacks and other scenes that will never connect to anything!
2: But why do that?
1: They'll be atmospheric and cool so it doesn't matter.
2: Well, ok sure. But what about the statue, does that come back?
1: It was a statue of Jesus. Except it was Satan. And then Satan gives the woman stigmata!
2: So Satan took the form of a Jesus statue and then gave stigmata to further confuse exactly what side he is on?
1: I dunno. I guess. Either way, there won't be any more nudity at this point either.
2: What? The audience liked the nudity!
1: Yeah but instead we have to slow the film down and tease the exorcism scene.
2: Tease it?
1: Yeah. Priest arrives and sees the girl but doesn't do the exorcism.
2: Why not?
1: We never explain.
2: Umm, ok...
1: But then he comes back and does it and the movie ends. You in?
2: ....Fuck it. Pour me another scotch.

Doctor Jekyll and the Werewolf - 1972

Man, I was off by one year when I guessed. Shit.

Paul Naschy returns to the set in this bizarre crossover that I didn't know existed. I haven't seen many werewolf movies, and I haven't seen a single Jekyll movie. So I'm a noob.

In the beginning of this one, there is a werewolf terrorizing a small village. For me this was the best part of the film. For the first 20 minutes or so there is a real atmosphere, there is some excellent tone and dark, eerie images. We don't see the creature and naturally I forgot which movie I'd put on so I was pleasantly surprised when the werewolf shows up, but I was also loving the not-knowing before it did.

Once the werewolf does show up and the movie takes it's plot forward, we see the werewolf has his identity known and is trying to rid himself of the curse. He knows someone who had heard of Dr. Jekyll and Jekyll's formula of transformation and soon enough they decide to give the fomula to the werewolf. Apparently I guess the two curses will duke it out and both will no longer affect him? Of course, we know that won't be the case though. We know that instead he'll have BOTH curses!

So yeah, once the whole Jekyll thing starts to happen, the movie gets way less interesting, and I was checked out for sure. The atmosphere gone, we instead get plenty of lab scenes. This movie is the one where the Pure Terror DVD menu music comes from, a weird sciency theme. It's not great, but it's not bad. Which is generally how I'd describe the entire film.

There's a few well known sequences and good parts, but it's also obviously low level B movie entertainment in general. So, it serves it's purpose. Great beginning though.

Curse of Bigfoot - 1975

I'm a bigfoot afficianado. Does that mean I believe in bigfoot? No, not really. I don't believe that there has been a bigfoot creature in the time that modern humans (the last 150-200 years) have existed. But, I think it's clear and obvious that there could have, at one point, been something similar to bigfoot which would be the genesis of the modern story.

Curse of Bigfoot is a 1963 movie given a sprucing up and rereleased in 1975 with bigfoot attached. Originally, this film was just about a prehistoric humanoid monster being risen from the dead. Then the bigfoot thing happened and got into a spotlight after the infamous Patterson-Gimlin Film in 1967, and soon this swept in to capitalize. It's pretty clear this was not originally bigfoot in the movie, because it doesn't quite look like the bigfoot we imagine:

I mean, why does he have fangs? That aside, what I loved about this movie was just HOW 70's it was. This was super of it's time, in a fun fun fun fun fun way. The fuzziness, the acting, the look, the sideburns, the clothes, the low quality. They are all present and glorious and front and center in this schlock-o'clock. That's my new term I'm coining.

This film feels a bit padded out and overly long, but it is still fun and bigfoot is actually a mummy raised from the dead. So it's an undead bigfoot. Random. But yeah, it is a lot of fun and it all works and the pistons are firing, and you could potentially have a great time with it.

The Tell-Tale Heart - 1960

When I was in middle school or somewhere there about we read Edgar Allen Poe in class. I remember The Raven more than I remember The Tell-Tale Heart, but I did remember the basics of this movie before embarking on it in the Pure Terror boxset.

I started this up and it's really crummy black and white footage, but somehow that fits the aesthetic and the movie captures an atmosphere for sure. I don't remember exactly how the story went, but in the movie we start with the main character Edgar suffering from delusion and seeing his floorboards move in a pulsing heartbeat fashion. Then we flashback and watch how he got here.

Edgar is dating Betty and thinks she is cheating on him. He watches her with his friend Carl and pretty soon he is after Carl to kill him. Edgar kills Carl and buries him under the floor of his home. Thinking he got away with it but having a guilty conscience, soon enough Edgar begins to be bothered by normal sounds, and once they go away, he begins to be haunted by something even worse: The faint sound of a beating heart, coming from the floorboards, getting ever louder and louder...

This film version of the book captures an atmosphere, and it works. That's the shortcut of the review. It's a bit slow, after all it is from the 60's, but it is better than average in that regard. The acting is fine, and there is little to be an effect, but later the sequences of the sounds and the sequences surrounding the heart are cool. When all is said and done I'd catalogue it as a worthy film version, which is saying something when you take into consideration the fantastic source material.

I give this one 4 stars.

The Devil's Possessed - 1974

Alright, so I guessed it was a shitty title translation and I was right. The movie was in another language quite obviously, so I won't detract too many points for the stupid name.

Paul Naschy stars in The Devil's Possessed. Honestly you guys, the title. Its the devil. The devil doesn't need to be possessed to be scary, aight? The direct translation fo the name is "The Marshall of Hell" Which is guess is sorta like saying the leader of hell. Satan. I guess the title should've been just "Satan".

The Devil's Possessed is a medieval sword and sandal swashbuckler affair, featuring an evil tyrant ruler and a bunch of....other guys. Seriously, I'm reaching here. You wanna know the truth of this movie??

I sat here for 90 minutes, looking at the time the movie was taking, wondering how much longer there could be, wondering what the fuck I was doing with my life. I sat here, wondering "why me, god".

I had started Mutant. Mutant turned out to be Night Shadows from 1984, which I'd previously reviewed on this blog. I opted not to rewatch it. Instead, I switched to a random other movie on the boxset and I chose this one, woooo, what a mistake.

This was a slow as shit, pondering, meandering, nothing of a movie. The mild action and the would-be scary plot is nothing of interest, you'll wonder what the fuck is going on as you watch bland actors in leather costumes saying stupid things or having a badly choreographed fight. Seriously, I'd never be the one to say, "there's bad choreography here" until I saw this and realized, "OH! That is what bad choreography is like"

I give this stinker a 1. It is not quite a zero. Mind you, the mild erotic tension and the occassional moments were decent enough.

X-Com: UFO Defense - 1994

I don't know, but I sorta wanted to write...so, here we go. I've reviewed TV shows and I've reviewed one book (sorta) and why not throw in a random video game into this blog? It's not like anyone is reading this thing anyways.

I was in high school when I met Derek Raymond. I don't remember how I started hanging out with him, how we became friends, any of it. What I do remember is that we hung out briefly and then we stopped randomly. In that short time, he told me about but never showed me X-Com. I remember he gave me the disc and eventually I was able to get one of my really old computers to play it. This was a DOS game, and I had to dowload DOS box or some shit... I dunno. Good times.

I decided to include this game ultimately because last night I put it on again, played it for about 3 hours, and once again was engrossed by how good it is. It's turn based strategy in genre, and you control a group of humans who has to reply to an alien threat to Earth. You start by positioning your base, building a fleet of soldiers, and then the aliens begin to arrive.

You have to contend with a much more powerful opponent for most of the game, and it is only through learning their patterns and discovering their weaknesses can you ever hope to win. The game really is quite hard. I've never put in all that much effort, the type of effort I'm sure some people do when they play games, but I believe I've only ever won the game once. Usually it's not because I lose, I usually give up at a certain point and just never get back to the game I've started, but that is beside the point.

X-Com offers some genuine horror and suspense moments. The eerieness of the game is front and center, and the sequel Terror in the Deep is much harder and also equally creepy. I have not beat Terror. The route I've figured out to beat the game in X-Com is from mostly reading and being told by Derek. I'm sure there is a route to beat Terror, but I haven't done as much research.

X-Com is from the best era in videogames, it is also on a randomizer engine and is thus slightly different every time you play. It therefore offers endless gameplay action, and I really enjoy myself every time I reboot up Steam, which is how I play it now. Highly recommended.