The Bat Woman (1968)

The Bat Woman (La mujer murcielago) is a 1968 Mexican wresting woman action/spy romp.

Gloria (Maura Monti) is a rich beautiful socialite. She is also a very successful lady wrestler. And as well as that she is the Bat Woman, a masked crime-fighter. She manages to keep her real identity a secret. This is necessary since she has a lot of enemies in the underworld.

Someone has been kidnapping wrestlers. Male wrestlers. They are found dead after having had their pineal glands removed. The killer must be insane but he must also be a skilled surgeon. In fact we know right from the start that the man behind these murders is neurosurgeon Dr Eric Williams (Roberto Cañedo).

He definitely falls into the mad scientist category. He plans to create a race of fish-men. That’s why he needs those pineal glands.

The police are relieved that the Bat Woman has agreed to assist them in solving the case.

Dr Williams has created his first fish-man hybrid. The fish-man isn’t too bright but he follows orders.

Dr Williams has a rather cool-looking mad scientist laboratory on board his yacht, the Reptilicus. The Bat Woman has to find a way to get aboard this yacht, preferably without being captured by the bad guys.

Of course we know she will be captured by the bad guys. More than once. Capturing the Bat Woman is one thing. Holding on to her is another. She’s clever and resourceful and she doesn’t give up, and she has a few tricks up her sleeve (although were she hides her gadgets in a costume that is really just a bikini is another matter).

Dr Williams has other evilness planned. He needs a mate for his fish-man. He intends to create a fish-woman. As you might guess the Bat Woman figures in this dastardly plan.

Enjoying some movies has a lot to do with how you approach them. This is a movie that should definitely not be approached as a “so bad it’s good” movie. It’s an excellent well-made movie. It should also not be approached as a “camp classic” - it is not camp. And certainly not camp in the way the Batman TV series was. It’s a lighthearted adventure ro,p but that doesn’t make it camp.

René Cardona directed an immense number of movies and all the ones I’ve seen have been fun. Alfredo Salazar wrote the screenplay. He scripted a lot of very enjoyable movies including luchadora (lady wrestler) and Aztec Mummy movies.

This is a movie made by seasoned professionals. These guys knew what they were doing. This movie is not in any way amateurish and it does not look cheap. It’s a lot more polished than most American low-budget movies of that era. It compares quite favourably with the Hammer movies of the same vintage.

Maura Monti is an Italian actress who had a brief but prolific career in Mexican cinema. This is not a role that requires great acting but in fact she’s perfectly competent in that department. What was needed was an actress who could be beautiful, sexy and glamorous. Miss Monti is well qualified in those areas. She also looks like a fit healthy active young woman and she looks quite convincing in her action scenes (and it’s obvious that she did most of these scenes herself). She also had to look great in her Bat Woman costume. It’s a rather cool costume and it’s quite revealing. Miss Monti, who is rather well developed in the bust department, fills it out very nicely. She’s also lively and likeable with charisma. She makes a fine action heroine.

The fish-man is a guy-in-a-rubber-suit monster but he’s a cool monster and I happen to love guy-in-a-rubber-suit monsters.

The most important thing of all in a movie of this type is pacing. You have to keep the action moving along. This movie certainly does that.

The Bat Woman is stylish good-natured fun. Highly recommended.

While the Bond movies may have been an influence this movie has stronger affinities with the comic book-inspired pop cinema of the 60s, movies like Modesty Blaise (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), Satanik (1968), Umberto Lenzi’s Kriminal (1966) and Deadlier Than the Male (1967). And maybe even Jess Franco’s The Devil Came from Akasava (1971), Kiss Me, Monster (1969) and Two Undercover Angels (1969).

Indicator’s Blu-Ray release looks terrific. It’s loaded with extras but honestly a barebones release at a more reasonable price would have been preferable.

Evil of Dracula (1974)

Evil of Dracula, released in 1974 by Toho, was the third instalment in Michio Yamamoto’s so-called Bloodthirsty Trilogy.

It begins with Mr Shiraki (Toshio Kurosawa) arriving to take up a post at a small girls’ school in a remote rural locale. Some odd things seem to be happening. A couple of days earlier the principal’s wife was killed in a car crash. She was with another man, not her husband. The principal is keeping her body in the cellar. He assures Mr Shiraki that that is the local custom.

One of the girl has disappeared. Apparently that’s a common occurrence. At least two girls vanish every year. It’s just one of those things. Nobody worries about it.

Mr Shiraki has an encounter with a half-naked woman who tries to attack him. She has fangs. But he thinks it was just a dream. It had to have been a dream.

He knows he shouldn’t but Mr Shiraki sneaks a look at the corpse of the principal’s wife. She bears a striking resemblance to the woman in his dream.

The local doctor, Dr Shimomura (Kunie Tanaka), tells Mr Shiraki about the local legends concerning vampires, dating back to the shipwreck of a European sailor two centuries earlier.

The doctor has his suspicions that the vampire legends might contain some truth. Perhaps the schoolteacher who ended up in the lunatic asylum might know something. Dr Shimomura thinks the teacher had a mental breakdown after finding out something shocking.

One of the girls at the school, Kumi (Mariko Mochizuki), has developed a major crush on Mr Shiraki. And one of her friends was found passed out, with strange puncture marks on her breast. Mr Shiraki is certainly convinced that he is dealing with vampires.

And Kumi and her friends are in danger. This vampire targets schoolgirls. We will eventually find out why.

Mr Shiraki’s only reliable allies are Dr Shimomura and Kumi. They’re not sure how many vampires they are up against. There’s a male vampire and there seem to be several lady vampires. The odds don’t look too good. And nobody is quite sure how to deal with vampires anyway.

The plot is a fairly stock-standard vampire movie plot. Michio Yamamoto is not trying to do anything ground-breaking. He does manage a reasonable amount of spookiness.

Putting vampires into a Japanese setting does provide some interest. There are plenty of suitably gothic visuals, with a Japanese flavour.

The male vampire looks a bit silly but the lady vampires look great - subtle creepy makeup that still makes them look sexy and seductive.

This movie adheres pretty closely to established western vampire lore. Which is a bit disappointing - a few more distinctively Japanese touches would have made things more interesting.

There’s no shortage of attractive women. There’s virtually no nudity (a couple of glimpses of nipples). There’s no gore. This is a rather old-fashioned horror movie for 1974.

The acting is adequate. Michio Yamamoto does not exactly do an inspired job as director but he’s competent.

Evil of Dracula is the weakest film in the trilogy. Vampires were an unusual feature in Japanese gothic horror in the 60s and 70s although they became slightly more common in anime movies and TV in the 80s and 90s.

Arrow have released all three movies in the Bloodthirsty Trilogy in a nice Blu-Ray boxed set with lovely transfers.

Evil of Dracula would not be worth purchasing on its own but it’s maybe worth a look if you’re buying the boxed set anyway.

I’ve reviewed the two earlier movies in the trilogy, The Vampire Doll and Lake of Dracula.

A Night in Hollywood (1953)

A Night in Hollywood is a 1953 burlesque movie.

This was an odd genre. These were actual burlesque shows, filmed in actual burlesque theatres but without an audience present (presumably because that would have caused major sound recording problems). They’re a chance to see what classical burlesque was really like. Burlesque was a mix of songs, comedy sketches and strip-tease routines.

The songs were usually terrible. The comedy was invariably atrocious. This was the so-called ”baggy pants” style of comedy and it’s an ordeal to sit through. There was only ever one reason for seeing a burlesque show (or a burlesque movie) - the strippers. Fortunately the strip-tease artistes were often excellent.

How much the girls could reveal varied from city to city and varied over time. In some cases the moment the girl took her dress off the police would move in and arrest everybody, in order to protect America from the mortal danger posed by half-clad women. In other cases the girl could strip down to a G-string and pasties. In rare cases they might get away with losing the pasties. They generally took off as much as they could get away with.

Since the girls were not naked they had to rely on provocative dancing to generate the necessary erotic heat. The things some of these girls could do with their hips and their posteriors can only inspire awe. These women played the female body like a musical instrument.

By 1953 when this film was shot burlesque was almost dead. Strip-tease would survive but old-time burlesque finally succumbed to the twin challenges of legal persecution and the rise of new forms of erotic entertainment. That makes watching the burlesque movies (mostly filmed between the very late 1940s and the early 50s) a rather poignant experience.

Nothing seems to be known about where this particular movie was shot. The fact that it’s partly in black-and-white and partly in colour suggests it was filmed on two separate occasions, possibly in different burlesque theatres.

It’s notable mainly for featuring two of the legendary burlesque queens, Misty Ayres and Tempest Storm. There are half-a-dozen strip-tease routines. Tempest Storm’s routine is by far the most daring.

My advice is to fast-forward through the songs and the comedy.

These movies do have enormous historical interest. This is a fascinating uniquely American art form now totally extinct.

Modern attempts to revive burlesque can never work because classical strip-tease relies on the tease. It relies on the fact that at a particular historical moment seeing pretty girls in very very skimpy costumes was a genuine erotic thrill. I have no moral problems with strip shows in which the girls take everything off but if the strippers end up fully nude it’s not burlesque. It’s no longer a tease. It has become something different. Not necessarily better or worse, but different.

A Night in Hollywood is perhaps worth seeing for Tempest Storm but there are better burlesque movies.

This movie is included in Something Weird’s six-movie DVD set Strip Strip Hooray. I’d recommend some of the other movies in this set such as Everybody’s Girl (1950), Midnight Frolics (1949), B Girl Rhapsody (1952) and French Follies (1951) much more highly than this one. Image quality is acceptable.

Sinderella and the Golden Bra (1964)

Sinderella and the Golden Bra is a 1964 nudie-cutie and it also belongs to a rather small sub-genre, the nudie musical.

It has what seems like a perfect setup for a nudie-cutie. It’s the Cinderella story, but when our heroine flees the masked ball she doesn’t leave behind her glass slipper but her bra. A golden bra. So in order to find the mysterious girl whom the price hopes to marry the kingdom has to be searched for a maiden possessing the physical attributes that will perfectly fill out that golden bra. It’s exactly the sort of naughty but goofy concept you want for a movie such as this. Honestly, with that setup you can’t go wrong. But surprisingly this movie does go wrong, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment.

The prince is a dreamy lad and his father feels that his son needs to be married off as soon as possible. A masked ball to which every young lady in the kingdom will be invited seems like the answer. Somewhere in this land there has to be a girl capable of arousing the prince’s interest.

The problem is that he already knows which girl he wants to marry - the one he keeps dreaming about.

The king is really much more interested in his knitting than in his son’s romantic problems. The idea of a king devoting himself to knitting is mildly amusing at first but it wears thin real fast.

Derella (Suzanne Sybele) is of course the step-sister of two awful girls, Flossy and Fanny. Both they and their mother treat Derella with contempt. Derella is beautiful but no-one has noticed.

Instead of a fairy godmother she has a fairy godfather who does the magic stuff with pumpkins to get Derella to the ball. He’s well-meaning but he’s a drunk and he’s been a failure as a fairy godfather.

Derella flees from the ball at the stroke of midnight, minus her bra. The rest of the movie follows the basic fairy tale story.

Now, as to what went wrong. Firstly, the songs are rather lacklustre. Secondly, the jokes are rather feeble. The biggest problem however is that by 1964 nudie-cutie standards it’s ridiculously tame. We get a few very brief glimpses of bare breasts. Given that the musical and comedy elements are not up to scratch the movie could still have been saved had it been made genuinely titillating. But it isn’t. And we spend the whole movie expecting that we will see Derella’s presumably impressive bust but all we get is a brief flash. Given that Suzanne Sybele isn’t much of a singer or actress you have to wonder why she was cast if she wasn’t willing to show a bit more skin.

Of course it’s probable that the print that Something Weird found is the only surviving print and it is possible that it was cut at some stage. But it gives the impression that it really was simply a very tame film.

The print is certainly in very poor condition. There’s a lot of print damage.

Sinderella and the Golden Bra is good-natured and inoffensive but doesn’t quite make it. It is mildly interesting if you’re into nudie fairy tales.

Something Weird paired this film on DVD with H.G. Lewis’s Goldilocks and the Three Bares which I am yet to watch. There are of course also the assorted short subjects you expect from Something Weird.

Some online reviews will tell you that this is one of only two known nudie musicals. That is utter nonsense. There have been quite a few, several of which are in fact extremely good.

The First Nudie Musical (1976) is inspired sexy craziness and I highly recommend it. And the 1977 Cinderella (AKA The Other Cinderella) is an example of how to do a nudie musical fairy tale properly. It’s very sexy and very crazy and the songs are a riot.

In the Eye of the Hurricane (1971)

In the Eye of the Hurricane is a 1971 giallo but it isn’t. It’s a proto-giallo which was a totally different genre. I’ll have more to say about that later.

This was a Spanish-Italian co-production with a Spanish director, José María Forqué. It was also released with the title The Fox with a Velvet Tail.

Ruth (Analía Gadé) has been cheating on her husband Michel (Tony Kendall). Now she wants to divorce him and shack up with her new lover, Paul (Jean Sorel). Michel is devastated. Paul is annoyed that Michel is taking it so badly - all he’s done is to steal another man’s wife. A gentleman would not make such a fuss over such a trivial matter.

Ruth and Paul set up house in Ruth’s villa. Paul’s slightly shady slightly mysterious friend Roland (Maurizio Bonuglia) keeps hanging around.

Ruth and Paul are very happy, apart from those silly accidents. But they were just accidents. It would be absurd to think that they attempts at murder. Ruth is however rather shaken up.

Then the major plot twists start to kick in. And there are some lovely plot twists in this movie.

An essential ingredient of a proto-giallo is an atmosphere of decadence and that’s present here. No-one is innocent in this movie. Ruth, the ostensible heroine, is after all cheating on her husband. This is a world of casual affairs and emotional betrayals. The pursuit of pleasure is everything. This is also a world of wealth and luxury.

I always like Jean Sorel in movies such as this. He had a low-key charm and a high likeability factor but he was always able to suggest that there just might be something beneath the surface of the characters he played. There’s a certain ambiguity. The charm might turn out to be all on the surface. His performance here is typical. Paul might turn out to be the villain, or the hero or the victim. All those possibilities seem quite plausible.

You absolutely have to watch the Italian-language version with English subtitles. The actress dubbing Analía Gadé on the English version has an atrocious shrieking voice which is entirely wrong for the character and which damages the movie severely. When you watch the Italian-language version you realise that Analía Gadé’s performance is actually rather good.

There’s plenty of sexual tension and also some potential romantic mysteries. Such as Danielle (Rosanna Yanni). Whose girlfriend is she? There’s some nudity and sex but it’s fairly mild.

I liked the swan. I’m not sure what his significance was but he adds a nice touch of visual oddness. I should also add that the swan survives the movie unscathed.

Now we get to the important matter. The Italian proto-giallos (or proto-gialli if you prefer) really did form a genre of their own, with very little in common with the full-blown giallo as it emerged in the 70s. Both genres owed quite a bit to Hitchcock but while the full-blown giallo owed a debt to the Hitchcock of Psycho the proto-giallo owed a lot more to the Hitchcock of Dial M for Murder. The proto-giallos were erotic suspense thrillers with none of the blood and gore we usually associate with the giallo, and none of the extravagant brutal murder scenes. They often include just a single murder. It’s the suspense, the erotic unease and the decadence that matter, not the violence. I personally much prefer the proto-giallo genre.

This is a gorgeous-looking film. It’s clear that a lot of thought and effort was put into the visuals. The acting performances by the four main characters are all excellent.

If you go into this movie expecting a giallo you’ll be disappointed, but if you have an appreciation for the particular charms of the proto-giallo genre you’ll find a great deal to enjoy in this movie. I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.

I saw this movie on DVD (in which form it looks fine) but it’s now on Blu-Ray, as The Fox with a Velvet Tail, from Mondo Macabro. 88 Films have released in on Blu-Ray as well.

I’ve reviewed lots of these proto-giallos - Lucio Fulci’s One on Top of the Other (1969) and A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), Umberto Lenzi’s So Sweet, So Perverse (1969), Orgasmo (1969) and A Quiet Place To Kill (1970) and Tinto Brass’s Deadly Sweet (1967).

Satanis: The Devil's Mass (1970)

Satanis: The Devil's Mass is a 1970 documentary on Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, formed by LaVey in the late 60s.

LaVey is a fascinating figure who really belongs more to the history of American pop culture than to the history of occultism. He claimed to have been a former circus lion tamer and to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, both claims being dubious. LaVey was a musician and released several albums.

LaVey was reasonably well read in esoteric literature but seems to have been more heavily influenced by weird fiction writers such as H.P. Lovecraft.

Overall LaVey comes across in the interviews in this film as a born showman and a rather genial charming man. He had charisma but it was the charisma of a show business impresario rather than of a cult leader.

His actual teachings come down to not a great deal more than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (as found in that notorious satanic text the United States Declaration of Independence).

At the time the film was made the Church of Satan’s headquarters was still the famous Black House in San Francisco.

There was at this time a media obsession (in the U.S. but especially in Britain) with witchcraft in suburbia. Journalists, being journalists, neither understood nor cared that satanism and witchcraft were not necessarily the same thing. The most scandalous thing about both satanists and witches was of course that they apparently had sex. And that the women took their clothes off.

LaVey may well have been both a showman and quite sincere in his religious beliefs. That’s the case with many cult leaders.

LaVey’s concept of satanism has little to do with evil. In fact he disapproved of many white magicians on ethical grounds. He intensely disliked the idea of sacrificing animals and this was never done in his Church of Satan. He saw Satan as an oppositional figure, a figure representing freedom as opposed to the rigid moral riles of Christianity, rather than a figure of evil. He was particularly keen on the idea of sexual freedom. His ideas were not wildly different from those held by many counter-culture figures of that period.

There are interviews with many of his closest aides and with his wife of the time and his daughter. His followers actually seem saner than most hippies of that era, and there is at least some coherence to their beliefs.

Of course Satanis: The Devil's Mass’s main selling point was the Black Mass, and the nudity (of which there’s quite a bit). It’s all rather theatrical but there’s common enough in plenty of religious sects.

The interviews with LaVey’s neighbours are amusing. One old guy reveals the true evils to which satanism leads - satanists don’t mow their lawns regularly. Another neighbour describes him as a very nice man. On the whole he appears to have been regarded as entirely harmless. Which of course he was.

This one was released on a Something Weird double-header DVD some years ago, paired with Ray Dennis Steckler’s Sinthia: The Devil's Doll. It has to be said that the transfer of Satanis: The Devil's Mass is pretty rough. One assumes that the surviving print was in poor shape. It was clearly shot on a very low budget so it probably never looked particularly great.

Satanis: The Devil's Mass is a fascinating look at both a religious and pop cultural phenomenon of a particular time period. For those reasons it’s well worth seeing. Recommended.

Horny Working Girl: From 5 to 9 (1982)

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