Thirst (1979)

Thirst is a rather interesting 1970s Australian horror film. It may well be the only Australian vampire movie. And it’s actually quite an interesting vampire movie.

The Brotherhood is a centuries-old world-wide organisation of vampires. It’s an ancient society, but these vampires believe in moving with the times. They’ve embraced modern management techniques and now run a network of high-tech factory farms raising blood cows. Blood cows being of course humans raised as vampire food. This means the modern vampire can be guaranteed of blood free from impurities and disease, neatly packaged in cartons that look just like milk cartons. They combine this modern approach with a respect for their own history, so when they discover that a woman named Kate Davis living in Melbourne is a descendant of Countess Elizabeth Bathory they’re keen to recruit her into their ranks. In fact they’re very keen indeed. She is, after all, vampire aristocracy. Trouble is Kate doesn’t know about her blood-drinking heritage, and when she finds out she’s not exactly over the moon about it. She’s a successful businesswoman, she’s in a relationship, and she’s not enthusiastic about a lifestyle change that includes the drinking of human blood. That’s where Dr Fraser and his team come in. They’re a kind of vampire therapy team, experts in reprogramming reluctant vampires.

At the time this movie was made the Australian film industry was stuck in a particularly tedious rut, churning out turgid historical dramas that took themselves much too seriously. In this environment producer Antony I. Ginnane was a bit of a maverick. He modelled himself on Roger Corman, and started turning out contemporary genre movies – thrillers, sexploitation movies, and horror movies – that were aimed very much at international markets. In fact his movies at this time were commercial flops in Australia but enjoyed considerable success elsewhere. He was a firm believer in including at least one reasonably well-known overseas actor in each movie to give it added appeal internationally. The imported star in Thirst is David Hemmings, and in this case it works well. He’s perfectly cast as the charming and rather ambiguous Dr Fraser. The real star of the movie though is Australian actress Chantal Contouri, who plays Kate. She gives a fine performance.

Horror in movies can be achieved in various ways, most crudely by means of gore and violence, and in a more sophisticated manner by use of atmosphere. Thirst on the other hand relies to a large extent on the sheer creepiness of the idea of factory farms for humans, and it works pretty well. That’s not to say the film lacks atmosphere. Much of it was shot at Montsalvat, a very gothic-looking artists’ retreat in Victoria, and the combination of this rather gothic setting with the high-tech factory farming approach and the sophisticated (by 1979 standards) scientific equipment employed by the Brotherhood is interesting and effective. There are some good set-pieces (especially the one involving the helicopter and the power lines) and some moments of rather black humour, as in the scene with the vampire tourists on a guided tour of the farm. Thirst offers enough original ideas and entertainment value to be very much worth checking out. And it’s available on DVD in all regions. I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Russ Meyer’s Up! (1976)

If you’re familiar with Russ Meyer’s movies then you’ll pretty much know what to expect from Up!, and if you like his movies there’s real no reason not to like this one. It’s very much in the style of his previous movie, Supervixens, and like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls it was scripted by Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert). It has a totally insane plot, involving Nazis and a murder mystery. It has plenty of cartoon-style violence, lots of rednecks, and a host of women with extraordinarily large breasts.

It has even more sex and nudity than his earlier films, but like the violence the sex is done in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. It’s easy to make sex look ridiculous, but very few people have had Meyer’s talent for making sex funny. I can’t imagine anyone actually finding this movie titillating – it’s too silly and too funny. The plot involves an old guy with a German accent who looks like an elderly version of a certain well-known 20th century dictator, an old guy who is murdered by the time-honoured method of dropping a hungry piranha into his bathtub. We are then introduced to the spectacularly well-endowed Margo Winchester (Raven de la Croix), who quickly demonstrates that she’s not a woman to be trifled with when she kills a would-be rapist. She soon finds herself working in the local diner, and becoming involved with the sheriff. We also discover that any one of the townspeople may have been the murderer of the elderly German gentleman who lived in the gothic castle just outside of town, or indeed it may have been one of the young ladies with whom he shared the castle (and with whom he indulged in a variety of kinky sexual practices).

To help us keep track of the plot we have the Greek Chorus, in the form of a very naked Kitten Natividad. The resolution of the plot is as delightfully demented as you’d expect, coming from the director/screenwriter team who gave us Beyond the Valley of the Dolls . It’s all great fun. The Region 4 DVD includes interviews with Kitten Natividad and Raven de la Croix, a charming lady with a host of amusing anecdotes about the making of the movie.

If you’re new to the insanely bizarre world of Russ Meyer Up! provides a reasonable introduction, although I’d really recommend starting with some of his earlier films like Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or Vixen! They truly don’t make movies like this any more, and I happen to think that’s rather sad. Modern cinema could do with a few eccentric mavericks like Russ Meyer.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Day of the Woman, better known as I Spit on Your Grave, is not an easy movie to review. This was possibly the most notorious of all the so-called video nasties” and was the movie that cause Roger Ebert to have an attack of apoplexy. It has a reputation as such a vile and misogynistic movie that normally I would not even have bothered to see it, had it not been for Carol Clover’s eloquent and passionate feminist defence of the film in her provocative and fascinating book on the horror movie, Men, Women and Chainsaws.

The story is simple. Jennifer, a woman writer from New York, takes a house in the country, intending to work on her current book. She immediately arouses the resentment of Johnny, who works at the gas station in the town, and his friends. They resent her for being from the city, and for being rich (the two being synonymous as far as they’re concerned). Along with Matthew, a retarded man who delivers groceries, they stalk her and repeatedly rape her. Their ostensible purpose is to help Matthew to lose his virginity. Matthew’s attempt to rape her fails when he loses his nerve. After leaving her unconscious Johnny sends Mathew back to kill her, but he gain loses her nerve. She recovers, and she sets out to revenge herself on her four attackers.

While it’s nowhere near as graphic as its reputation would suggest, it’s still a very uncomfortable film to watch. It does raise some very thorny an important issues though. If you make a movie that condemns violence, but your anti-violence movie itself contains graphic violence, is the movie part of the solution or part of the problem? Does taking revenge empower a female rape victim, or dies it make her more of a victim? Does taking revenge make her as much of a monster as the rapists? I don’t know the answer to these questions, and I don’t claim to, but I do think they’re questions that have to be faced.

I can certainly understand the position of people who find this movie offensive and disgusting, but I tend to agree with Clover that it does confront us with uncomfortable issues in a very direct and very effective way, and that it’s really far less offensive than quite a number of mainstream movies that have a veneer of respectability merely from being big-budget mainstream features (Dirty Harry being a particularly repellent example). While movies such as Dirty Harry and Death Wish glorify both violence and revenge, I Spit on Your Grave takes a much more negative view of violence, and even though Jennifer’s revenge is portrayed as understandable and even justified it’s presented in a way deliberately intended to make us feel some unease about it. The movie also makes it clear that the men involved derive no joy from their crime. The rapes are clearly not about pleasure or lust, they’re simply about male competition, about establishing and maintaining male hierarchies and dealing with male anxieties. As Clover says, “the rapes are presented as almost sexless acts of cruelty that the men seem to commit more for each other’s edification than for their own physical pleasure.”

It’s difficult to imagine a more sweeping condemnation of male group behaviour than the one offered by this movie. Clover also points out that the violence, as in so many American horror movies, is motivated as much by class and regional (city vs country) tensions as it is by tensions between the sexes. I can’t say I’m entirely convinced by Carol Clover’s arguments in favour of this movie (and she herself admits it’s a difficult movie to defend) but I think that its more vehement critics have perhaps missed the point entirely.

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Tales from the Crypt was one of the series of very successful horror anthology films made by Amicus Studios in Britain the late 60s and early 70s. This one follows the same basic formula as the others. For my money the best of all the Amicus movies is Asylum, which has a genuinely clever framing story that is just as interesting as the individual segments.

Tales from the Crypt on the other hand boasts a particularly feeble framing story. With one of the best horror directors in Britain at the helm, and some of the country’s finest and most outrageous hams in the cast, this should have been a lot of fun. Somehow it doesn’t quite make it. The individual stories themselves are (with one exception) really too short, and they just don’t go anywhere. Milton Subotsky’s script is rather predictable, and lacks any real imagination.

The first story, with Joan Collins and a murderous Santa Claus, has promise but it’s much too short. The next three stories are all fairly pointless, with Reflection of Death being a complete waste of time. Things finally start looking up with the final instalment, Blind Alleys. A cruel army officer takes over a home for the blind, and ruthlessly exploits the inmates, who are driven to a horrific act of revenge. This story gives Freddie Francis the chance to show what he can do in the way of visual horror, and he produces a superb set-piece involving razor blades and a ravenous dog. It’s genuinely chilling, and it benefits from Patrick Magee doing some of the most gloriously over-the-top scenery-chewing you’ll ever see in a horror movie, or any other kind of movie for that matter. This story is almost good enough to redeem the whole movie.

Overall, Tales from the Crypt is reasonably entertaining if a little flat. Worth a rental, not perhaps not worth buying.

On a slightly different note, I’ve now seen Joan Collins in a couple of 1970s horror movies, and I have a shocking confession to make. I rather like her. She’s a mediocre actress, but she has undeniable presence and she’s fun and she has an instinctive understanding of camp, and it’s not as if she ever pretended to be a great actress.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

The Mask of Fu Manchu was MGM’s 1932 attempt to make a horror movie more outrageous, and with more sex and horror, than Universal’s huge recent hits, Dracula and Frankenstein. With Boris Karloff starring as Dr Fu Manchu, this is a glossy and quite spectacular movie with some truly superb set design.

The tomb of Genghis Khan has been discovered, and both the British Government and Dr Fu Manchu are determined to get hold of the most precious of the relics contained in the tomb, the mask and the sword of the great conqueror. Fu Manchu intends to use these symbols to make himself the modern successor to the great Mongol warlord, and to assume the leadership of all of Asia in a war to the death with western civilisation. Nayland Smith (Lewis Stone) of the British Secret Service must prevent this from happening while also trying to rescue the eminent archaeologist Sir Lionel Barton, kidnapped by Fu Manchu’s agents to be used as a bargaining counter. Along with Barton’ daughter Sheila (Karen Morley) and handsome square-jawed hero Terry Granville (Charles Starrett) Smith sets off to foil this fiendish plot.

What makes The Mask of Fu Manchu possibly the ultimate pre-code horror film is the way it explicitly links the sex and the horror. The sado-masochist sexual tastes of Fu Manchu’s daughter Fah Lo See (played by Myrna Loy) are very obvious, and in several memorable scenes we see her becoming very excited by the prospect of inflicting torture. Even more daring is the scene in which she has Terry whipped (while she yells “Faster! Faster!”) and then seduces him. Loy is delightfully wicked. If Loy provides the kinky sex, then Karloff provides the high camp, and he does it with style. It’s this very marked tongue-in-cheek approach that mostly prevents the movie from being especially offensive (apart from one very distasteful scene right at the very end). Karloff and Loy are in fine form. Karen Morley’s insanely histrionic over-the-top performance works in the context of what is, after all, pure melodrama, and adds to the fun.

The Mask of Fu Manchu ran into immediate problems with the censors, but oddly enough its biggest censorship problems came in the 1970s when it was hacked to pieces to remove references that were regarded as racially offensive. The recent DVD release, as part of the Warner Home Video Legends of Horror boxed set, was taken from a recently discovered camera negative and is completely uncut. On the whole it looks sensational, and it’s now possible to see why this movie has had such an outrageous reputation. It’s a good deal of fun if you don’t take it seriously, and it’s difficult to imagine how anyone possibly could take it seriously, especially with Karloff’s deliriously campy performance.

The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1976)

The first thing that has to be said about Radley Metzger’s The Opening of Misty Beethoven is that it is a hardcore porn film. The second thing to be said about it is that it’s an extremely good film. It’s not merely a good movie by the standards of hardcore porn; it’s a good movie judged by any standards.

It’s a movie that demands to be judged by the same criteria that one would apply to any mainstream film - to be assessed in term of plot, dialogue, acting, cinematography, directing. And in all of these areas it’s a triumph. Which will come as no surprise at all to anyone who is familiar with Metzger’s earlier softcore erotic films.

It’s based on Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Dr Seymour Love (Jamie Gillis) is a sexologist, and on a visit to Paris he meets an American prostitute, Misty Beethoven (played by Constance Money). He decides that she’s the most incompetent hooker he’s ever encountered. She has no interest in her work, she takes no pride in it, she is unskilful and worst of all - she manages to be completely sexless. He is so appalled that he is moved to describe her as "the nadir of passion.” Despite all this, he makes a bet with his friend Geraldine Rich that he can transform this Eliza Doolittle of streetwalkers into the Golden Rod Girl (the sex industry equivalent of the Oscars).

While Seymour and Geraldine undertake the painstaking task of Misty’s sexual education the relationship between Seymour and Misty becomes more complex and considerably more strained, and while a whole new world is opening up for Misty she is not entirely certain how comfortable she is about her new life.

This is a sophisticated comedy of manners, and it’s also a love story (and a very effective and quite moving if rather unconventional love story). Jamie Gillis is delightful as the Henry Higgins of sex, proving to be a very talented comic actor. Jacqueline Beudant, in her only movie role, is absolutely superb as Geraldine, and is the perfect foil for Gillis. Constance Money does a fine job as Misty Beethoven. She’s both likable and obnoxious, vulnerable and brash, and her character develops as the movie progresses. Yes, this is a hardcore sex movie with character development!

As you’d expect from anything directed by Radley Metzger, The Opening of Misty Beethoven looks fantastic. Wonderful sets, beautiful cinematography, and lashings of style. The Pygmalion plot work extremely well - this is a very successful adaptation of Shaw’s classic play. The sex is most definitely hardcore, so if that’s a problem for you you might want to stay away from this one. If this isn’t a problem for you, you’ll find that this is a smart, elegant, witty and completely delightful movie.

Madame Sin (1972)

A science fiction/spy thriller starring Bette Davis has to have considerable camp appeal, so it’s perhaps surprising that Madame Sin isn’t better known. Perhaps the fact that it was a made-for-TV movie explains why it’s often overlooked. It’s a cross between a spy spoof movie and a Fu Manchu-style potboiler (with a dash of Sumuru), with Davis playing an Asiatic female diabolical criminal mastermind planning to steal a ballistic missile-armed British nuclear submarine.

Tony Laurence is an American spy who becomes embroiled in her plot. At her secret headquarters on a mysterious island she employs brainwashing techniques and various high-tech sonic gadgets to bend people to her will, thus giving her useful if unwilling slaves. As it turns out she and Tony’s father (also a spy) were once lovers, so she has a personal interest as well in manipulating him.

If you’re expecting James Bond-style action sequences you’re going to be disappointed. The budget didn’t run to expensive social effects and spectacular stunts. On the other hand, as TV movies go the production values are respectable enough and the plot has nice twists to it. There’s a dash of 70s cynicism, and the ending can be seen as either upbeat or downbeat depending on where your sympathies lie.

Davis is in great form, and Denholm Elliott as her charming but sinister financial adviser is inspired to try to out-camp Davis, giving a delightfully arch performance. Robert Wagner as Tony Laurence is solid if unremarkable, Gordon Jackson is heroic but baffled as the commander of the submarine and the supporting cast includes the array of delightful character actors you expect in a British production of this vintage.

If you don’t expect too much from it Madame Sin will provide 90 minutes of amusing diversion, with the bonus of Bette Davis in full-on camp mode. The one is rather like 1960s TV shows such as The Avengers and the Man from UNCLE - silly tongue-in-cheek fun.