To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

To the Devil a Daughter was released in 1976 and was the last Hammer horror film, and the company’s second-last feature film.

There is a common misconception that Hammer in the 70s was hopelessly out of touch and that their 70s films were mostly unsuccessful. In fact the problem was that in the 70s the company made some very unwise financial deals which meant that even when their movies turned a profit Hammer did not receive any real financial benefits.

There is another common misconception that To the Devil a Daughter was a flop that ruined the company. In fact the film was a major box-office hit.

Hammer’s 1970s horror movies are extraordinarily varied and they’re as interesting and exciting as any horror movies made elsewhere during that decade.

To the Devil a Daughter is a gothic horror movie in a contemporary setting but unlike Dracula AD 1972 this is not vampires in the modern world. This is Satanism in the modern world.

To the Devil a Daughter obviously has more affinity with movies like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist and The Omen than with the usual run of Hammer horrors (although I believe it slightly predates The Omen).

This film is based on Dennis Wheatley’s 1953 novel To the Devil - a Daughter. It’s one of the three Hammer films based on Wheatley novels, the others being The Devil Rides Out (1968) and The Lost Continent (1968). These are three of Hammer’s most interesting movies.

We know that Father Michael Raynor (Christopher Lee) is up to no good. He’s a Catholic priest who’s been excommunicated for heresy and has formed his own breakaway church. We know that he has plans that involve a young nun, Catherine (Nastassja Kinski). We don’t know what those plans are.

None of this has anything to do with American writer John Verney (Richard Widmark), until a very jumpy very frightened man named Henry Beddows (Denholm Elliott) tells him a strange story and asks for his help. Henry wants Verney to meet his daughter at the airport in London and take her somewhere safe. His daughter is that young nun Catherine.

Verney is an interesting hero. He’s no knight in shining armour. He’s a cynic. He makes his living writing lurid sensationalistic books about the occult. What Henry has told him sounds like it might be material for a book. A bestselling book. Verney doesn’t believe in the occult and he doesn’t care about Catherine. He has no desire to go about saving people or battling the forces of darkness. But slowly he begins to suspect that unlike 98 percent of Satanists Father Michael Raynor might be more than just a charlatan. He might be the real deal. Verney doesn’t want to be a hero but he may not have much choice.

Not only is Verny not conventional hero material. He’s not quite as much of an expert on the occult as he likes people to think. And frightening things are happening. People are killed. Catherine’s behaviour is disturbing. Verney is out of his depth.

This movie has an extraordinarily strong cast. Richard Widmark gets across to the audience Verney’s not entirely heroic motives and he’s a different sort of hero for a Hammer film. Christopher Lee gives one of his strongest performances - he is very sinister, very fanatical and very scary. This movie made Nastassja Kinski a star overnight and she gives an excellent complex performance as a young woman who doesn’t really understand what is happening to her.

Denholm Elliott is delightfully twitchy and nervous and cowardly and treacherous.

The supporting cast is headed by Honor Blackman as Verney’s agent Anna and Anthony Valentine as her husband David. They’re excellent as two very ordinary people who are totally bewildered.

It’s a rather lurid story and there’s some real creepiness. Father Raynor and his acolytes are very very nasty people with very nasty plans.

It was a major departure for Hammer with lots of location shooting and a starkly contemporary feel. Hammer had finally abandoned the traditional gothic horror aesthetic. It’s also quite confronting. This is Hammer’s answer to The Exorcist and it’s arguably a better film. The most surprising thing is that it was passed by the BBFC without any cuts at all. Hammer had feared that it would be savagely cut.

This was Hammer positioning itself at the cutting edge of 70s horror. The tragedy is that although it was a huge hit the profits did not flow back to Hammer. And by this time the British film industry was a walking corpse. Hammer were doing everything right but making feature films in Britain was no longer a viable proposition.

Hammer made some very fine horror movies in the 70s and To the Devil a Daughter may well be the best of them. Very highly recommended.

Studiocanal’s Blu-Ray presentation looks terrific.

Ninja III: The Domination (1985)

Whenever I see the Cannon Group logo at the beginning of a movie I get a feeling of confidence. Whether it turns out to be a great movie or a not-so-great movie it will be fun. Ninja III: The Domination belongs to the not-so-great category but in its own perverse way it achieves a kind of quasi-greatness.

This is a psycho ninja chick movie. And any psycho ninja chick movie has got to be worth watching.

It begins with a bunch of people playing golf. Then a ninja shows up and kills everybody. Then the cops show up. Lots and lots of cops. Dozens of cops. The ninja kills most of them. Finally, having been shot about 98 times the ninja has had enough and he’s about to expire. But his story is not yet finished. Christie (Lucinda Dickey), a perfectly ordinary young woman, finds him lying in the bushes about to die and something weird happens.

One thing that’s cool is that we never find out why the ninja ran amok on the golf course. We presume someone hired him. We have no idea who that someone could be. Writer James R. Silke knows that we don’t need to know. This is not a mystery or a police procedural, it’s a ninja action picture.

The cop who interviews Christie, Officer Secord (Jordan Bennett) takes a shine to her. Christie doesn’t date cops. But Secord isn’t a quitter and his desperation to get into her pants is finally rewarded with success. And soon there’s a thing between them.

Christie has a sword, a katana. We soon have reason to suspect it’s a magic sword.

The cops who shot that ninja start to die in rather grisly ways. Maybe there’s another ninja about.

There is, in a way. That evil dead ninja has possessed Christie. She now intermittently turns into an evil lady ninja.

And there’s another ninja, Yamada (Shô Kosugi). He has an eye patch. We don’t know if he’s a good ninja or an evil ninja.

More cops get sliced up. Poor Secord doesn’t know what’s going on. Christie doesn’t know either.

Truly immense quantities of mayhem follow.

This is not just a psycho ninja chick movie. It’s also an incredibly bad rip-off of The Exorcist. And it’s a bit of an 80s dance movie as well. Lots of aerobics. And a video game movie. If something was fashionable in the 80s it will show up somewhere in this movie.

The acting is terrible. If you’re wondering why Lucinda Dickey did not become a major star then watch this movie and you’ll have your answer. The gal just can’t act.

But then this is not exactly a character-driven movie so that doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the martial arts action and there’s plenty of that and it’s pretty entertaining with a very high body count. And Miss Dickey can dance and trained dancers always handle fight scenes pretty well.

There are some really bad special effects as well, which adds further layers of fun. I have no idea why some of these effects were even there except that I think they wanted a video game vibe.

What do you want in a psycho ninja chick movie? You want a cool lady ninja and you want her to be totally nuts and you want her to leave a path of death and destruction behind her. That’s what this movie offers. It doesn’t offer anything else. It doesn’t need to.

Ninja III: The Domination is in truth a very bad movie but that’s what makes it fun.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray release which sadly doesn’t provide a very good transfer. On the other hand this is the sort of movie that is more enjoyable if it looks like you’re watching it on a VHS rental from Blockbuster back in the day.

Murderock (1984)

Murderock (AKA Murder-Rock: Dancing Death) is a 1984 Lucio Fulci giallo.

The setting is a dance school in New York. This was 1984 so it has a bit of a Flashdance vibe. There’s fierce competition. Out of more than a dozen young dancers only three will be chosen for bigger things.

Candice Norman (Olga Karlatos) runs the class. She was once on the brink of a glittering career, until she was knocked over by a motorcyclist. She recovered, but not fully. Not fully enough to have a career as a dancer. Now she teaches.

One of the girls in her class is murdered, in a rather odd way - a hatpin through the heart.

Lieutenant Borges (Cosimo Cinieri) has insufficient evidence to make any moves. It appears likely that someone in the dance school was the killer. Likely, but not certain.

There’s a second murder. Another girl pupil. The same murder method.

There’s no certainty as to whether the killer is male or female. The victims are knocked out by chloroform first.

Candice is worried. Her boss Dick Gibson (Claudio Cassinelli) is worried. He knew some of the girl pupils. He knew them intimately. That makes him a suspect but there’s so much jealousy and backbiting within the school that everybody is a suspect.

Candice has strange dreams. There’s a man in the dreams trying to kill her. She knows the man from somewhere but she can’t remember having actually met him.

There are romantic entanglements between the various students as well as entanglements the students and the staff. There has been a relationship between Dick Gibson and Candice. Candice also has a hot new boyfriend, male model and unsuccessful actor George Webb (Ray Lovelock).

There’s another murder. This time the killer was photographed but frustratingly the photo shows nothing useful. The paranoia builds. Everyone is jumpy. And nobody believes that the killings have stopped.

There are a lot of interesting aspects about the way Fulci made this movie. It’s a giallo with almost no gore at all. I don’t mind that. There are other things that matter more in a giallo. Style is more important, and this movie has style. An atmosphere of indefinable menace matter, and this film has that. Hints of sexual motivations are essential in a giallo and they’re found here as well. And while there’s no gore there’s a hint of kinkiness in the murder method.

Many giallo fans consider plot coherence to be of minor importance but in this case the plot does all come together even if there are some offbeat outrageous elements. Offbeat and outrageous elements are always welcome in a giallo.

And there are plenty of clues. Lieutenant Borges does not rely on inspiration. He has spotted those clues and he has noted their significance. He’s a good cop. He notices clues and he thinks about them, about what they really mean.

When the solution is revealed it makes perfect sense. The motivations make sense.

I love the automated message that warns the students to vacate the premises within fifteen minutes every night before the whole school is locked down tight by electronic means. It adds to the suspicion that the murder was an inside job and it also adds a touch of paranoia. The school itself is a character in the story.

There are cameras everywhere in the school. Everybody is being watched by somebody - and not just by those authorised to be watching. There’s visual surveillance and auditory surveillance. This is a movie with a definite interest in voyeurism of various kinds.

I love the way Fulci shoots so many scenes in a fragmented way. The frame is fragmented. Some parts of a shot will be lit while other parts are unlit. Lights keep flashing on and and off. Music recordings switch on and off. It’s as if reality is being splintered. It’s very unsettling, and deliberately so.

I’m increasingly fond of 80s Fulci. This was a fascinating extremely varied phase of his career, and Murderock is Fulci in top form. Highly recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks great.

Other 80s Fulci films that I recommend - The Black Cat (1981), The Devil’s Honey (1986), Aenigma (1987).

Common Law Wife (1961)

Common Law Wife actually started out as a movie called Swamp Rose, directed by Larry Buchanan and shot in colour. It was then turned into a black-and-white movie called Common Law Wife with a huge amount of additional footage shot by a different director, Eric Sayers.

It all becomes quite confusing. It appears that Buchanan’s original film no longer exists. If indeed he ever completed it.

To make things really confusing the central character, Baby Doll, is played by two different actresses!

Both versions originated in Texas, with the swamp footage being shot near the Louisiana border.

Surprisingly, in its own way, it all works as a lurid thoroughly enjoyable hicksploitation potboiler. It’s not a sexploitation movie. There’s no nudity. It does however qualify as swampsploitation with a bit of southern gothic thrown in. The plot is complicated but delightfully lurid.

Shugfoot Rainey (George Edgley) is the richest man in town. His money comes from oil. He lives with his wife Linda (Annabelle Weenick) except that they’re not actually married. Or so Shug Rainey assumed.

Shug is tired of Linda. Her looks are fading and she’s rather needy. Shug has wired for his niece Jonelle (played by Lacey Kelly in Buchanan’s footage and an unknown actress in Sayers’ footage) to come to see him. He intends Jonelle to be Linda’s replacement. Jonelle is a stripper in New Orleans. Everyone calls her Baby Doll. She’s a whole lot younger and cuter than Linda. Jonelle is very pretty, albeit in a cheap sort of way. Shug doesn’t mind if she looks cheap. He likes his women that way.

The problem is that Linda has seen a lawyer who has told her that as far as the law in this state is concerned she is Shug Rainey’s common law wife. He can’t just boot her out the door. He could try to buy her off but Linda isn’t having any of that. Linda likes living in Shug’s mansion. She is emotionally dependent and she also has her pride. She’s not going to be replaced by a brazen hussy like Baby Doll.

The local sheriff, Sheriff Jody, gets mixed up in the drama. He’s Shug Rainey’s nephew. He’s married to Jonelle’s very respectable very prim sister but he’s lusted after Jonelle for years. They had an affair in their teenage years. The two sisters most definitely do not get along. Pretty soon the erotic embers are blazing back into life for Jonelle and Jody.

And then there’s Bull the moonshiner. He’s after Jonelle as well.

There are therefore lots of emotional betrayals and sexual triangles going on. And there’s money at stake as well. Shug has money. Bull has money. You figure this could easily end in murder. What’s cool is that there is no way to be sure which of these sleazy people is likely to be the victim, and which is likely to be the killer.

And of course it does end in murder.

The plot is wild and crazy but surprisingly, given the film’s bizarre production history, it does hang together in its own overcooked way. And Baby Doll is a memorable bad girl.

This is not a sexploitation movie. There is no nudity. It is an exploitation movie but of a slightly earlier more tame variety. It relies on overheated passions rather than bare skin.

The DVD transfer isn’t great but it’s acceptable. I believe there’s now been a Blu-Ray release. The Something Weird DVD also includes two other hicksploitation films, Jennie: Wife/Child and Moonshine Love (which is great fun).

I enjoyed Common Law Wife quite a bit. Highly recommended.

Common Law Wife is fairly close in feel to another swampsploitation potboiler, the rather entertaining Louisiana Hussy (1959). It also has a bit in common with Russ Meyer’s southern gothic hicksploitation classics Lorna (1964) and Mudhoney (1964) although it has to be said that Meyer’s two films are way way better.

Innocent Blood (1992)

1992 was, unexpectedly, an interesting year for vampire movies. There was Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula and John Landis’s Innocent Blood. Two very very different movies but both stylish and daring and breathing new life into an old genre. Coppola’s Dracula is insanely romantic. Innocent Blood is an erotic horror black comedy. It’s also a hardboiled gangster movie. There’s a lot going on!

Horror comedies were nothing new but they had invariably been goofy and innocuous and had relied on broad comedy and even slapstick. They had been very kiddie-friendly. Innocent Blood isn’t the least bit kiddie-friendly. This is not family entertainment. This is blood-drenched full-on horror but combined with sophisticated witty black comedy and vampire sex.

Marie (Anne Parillaud) is a cute French lady vampire finding life in the big city in the U.S. to be a bit of a challenge. She hasn’t fed for quite a while and she’s very hungry. She’s also sex-starved.

Marie has solved the ethical problems posed by vampirism in a rather neat way. She does not drink innocent blood. Her victims are very bad people and by killing them she’s doing society a service as well as feeding herself. It’s a win-win!

At the moment she has turned her attention to a syndicate of mobsters. Specifically, the mob led by Sal Macelli (Robert Loggia). These are very hard very violent men but they’re no match for a vampire.

Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia) is an undercover cop who has infiltrated Sal Macelli’s organisation but now everything is out of control and his cover is blown. And Macelli is dead anyway.

Macelli is dead but he’s now a vampire. He’s even nastier as a vampire than he was as a gangster and he has plans to lead a vampire mob that will control the city.

In the midst of all this chaos Gennaro finds an unlikely ally. She’s an odd but cute French girl named Marie. He thinks she’s a murderess. It takes him a while to get used to the idea that she’s a vampire. And it takes him even longer to realise that they are going to have to be allies. Gennaro is no match for a bunch of vampiric hoodlums but Marie is not just a vampire, she’s an old vampire. She’s more powerful than Macelli and she knows how the whole vampire thing works. She knows the weaknesses of vampires.

Gennaro and Marie are not sure that they can trust each other but the sex is really really great and after a good old steamy bedroom romp they decide they can be friends.

Much mayhem follows.

Surprisingly all the disparate elements in this movie come together effectively. This is full-blown horror with plenty of violence and gore. It’s a tough violent gangland tale. There’s some inspired black comedy but Landis is careful never to cross the line into goofiness. And this movie is never camp. There’s plenty of erotic heat. There’s an offbeat love story. But these elements are kept in perfect balance. Landis knows what he’s doing and he’s in complete control.

The acting is generally very good. It’s fun to see Don Rickles as a crooked lawyer - he’s amusing but it’s not an out-and-out comic performance. Robert Loggia goes way over the top as Macelli but that’s the right way to play it and he’s truly scary.

Obviously this movie was always going to stand or fall on Anne Parillaud’s performance and she turns out to be an inspired casting choice. Her French accent makes her seem exotic and an outsider. You don’t want a vampire with a Brooklyn accent - that would lead to goofiness. Anne Parillaud makes her lady vampire suitably enigmatic. Parillaud is beautiful but not conventionally pretty - she doesn’t have a Barbie doll look. She looks like a sexy dangerous lady vampire. This movie came out the same year as her star-making turn in the superb La Femme Nikita (1990).

One thing I like is that although Marie has her ethical inhibition about not taking innocent blood she doesn’t indulge in a whole lot of angsting about it. She’s sincere, but she doesn’t revel in moral grandstanding. And while that aspect could have made it into a species of vigilante killer movie that aspect is not pushed too far. Marie is a vampire, not a cop or a social worker.

The practical effects are done well. There’s enough gore to satisfy those who like that sort of thing. Landis keeps things moving along (I don’t agree with those who think this movie is too slow). There’s some sex and quite a bit of nudity.

A lot of people disliked this movie. I suspect that those who were unaware that the vampire movie had moved on and had been comprehensively reinvented during the 70s and that the traditional elements of vampire lore had long since been consigned to the dustbin disliked the movie because those traditional elements are lacking here. No crucifixes. No wooden stakes through the heart. No vampires sleeping in coffins. What’s great is that Innocent Blood is not only a non-traditional vampire movie, it doesn’t try to ape the revolutionary vampire movies of the 70s like Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, Jose Larraz’s Vampyres or Jean Rollin’s Lips of Blood. It’s its own thing.

Innocent Blood is hugely entertaining and original. A great vampire film. Very highly recommended.

Landis was going for a visually dark shadowy look and thankfully the Warner Archive Blu-Ray retains this.

Cyborg (1989)

Cyborg is a 1989 science fiction action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and directed by Albert Pyun. While there is a cyborg in the film the character played by Van Damme is totally human.

The setting is your basic post-apocalyptic wasteland world. There’s been social, political and economic collapse and then a devastating plague.

The last remaining scientists are holed up in Atlanta and they’re working on a cure for the plague. They need some crucial data. That data is contained in a female cyborg, Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon). She has to make it to Atlanta.

The chief bad guy is an incredibly vicious pirate named Fender (Vincent Klyn). He wants that data. Not to save lives, but because he would give him unlimited wealth and power.

Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a Slinger - a kind of mercenary/hired gun/adventurer/freebooter. Slingers might not be solid law-abiding citizens but they’re not pirates and they’re not murderers. He doesn’t care about the data or the cyborg but he has a really big grudge against Fender (explained in a series of brief flashbacks). He’ll try to save the cyborg but what he wants is revenge.

He hooks up with Nady Simmons (Deborah Richter). She’s some kind of thief and she tries to kill our hero but he feels sorry for her and he doesn’t like hurting women and when she insists on tagging along he puts up with her. She has come over all idealistic and wants to save the cyborg.

She makes a likeable cute side-kick and gives Rickenbacker the chance to show that he has a gentle side. He’s not interested in getting her into bed but he does end up caring about her.

The plot is very sketchy but that doesn’t matter because it’s just an excuse for a series of extremely violent incredibly brutal action scenes but that’s OK because those action scenes are superbly staged.

This movie is a non-stop adrenalin rush.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast for his very considerable martial arts skills. As an actor he’s competent.

Fender is an evil villain with the emphasis on the evilness and he’s effectively scary and very very nasty.

This is a Cannon Group production and while the budget was limited and the concept of the post-apocalyptic world is routine it looks very impressive. Imagination and energy are more important than a big budget.

The presence of a cyborg suggests a cyberpunk influence but really she’s just there to add an extra coolness factor. Both the plague and the cyborg are just plot devices to make Rickenbacker’s quest about something more noble and important than mere revenge. There is however one major emotional twist towards the end.

The movie is totally focused on the action and Pyun wisely allows nothing to distract us from that. He’s not going to waste time on exposition. We don’t care where the plague came from. We don’t need a detailed history of the process of social collapse. We don’t even need to know exactly what a Slinger is. We just need to know that they’re basically good guys while the pirates are seriously evil. This is totally a good vs evil story. The villain has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Cyborg is pure action entertainment and it delivers the goods very impressively. There’s not a wasted minute in the movie. The plot probably has lots of holes in it but there’s no time to notice such details. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a badass action hero and his martial arts skills are pretty awesome. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t need to.

Cyborg is highly recommended.

I have the French Blu-Ray release and it looks terrific.

I’ve also reviewed another much less successful Albert Pyun-directed Cannon Group release, Alien from L.A., released a year earlier.

Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974)

Lady Snowblood is one of the best-known of the Japanese pinky violence movies and a movie very much admired by Quentin Tarantino. It was a success in 1973 and a sequel followed in 1974, Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance.

Both movies were directed by Toshiya Fujita and had the same writing team.

The setting is Japan in 1906, just after the the Russo-Japanese War.

Now it really seems like luck has finally run out for the notorious killer Yuki Kashima, known as Lady Snowblood (Meiko Kaji). She has fallen into the hands of the police. It only took about forty cops to capture her and she was only able to kill a dozen or so of them first.

Now she is about to be hanged. Or maybe not. She is rescued although rescued may not be quite the right word. The secret police have decided that they need the services of one of the most skilled assassins in the country.

So now Lady Snowblood is a secret agent and a government assassin. She’s not thrilled about this but she doesn’t have much choice.

Her job is to infiltrate the house of notorious anarchist Ransui Tokunaga (Jûzô Itami) by posing as a maid.

Ransui has in his possession a document that could bring down the wicked corrupt government. He is captured and tortured by the secret police. He asks Yuki to deliver the document to his brother. For reasons that are never explained she agrees to do so. None of Yuki’s actions make any sense. She has no reason to get involved in childish revolutionary plots and there is no indication that there is the slightest emotional attraction between Yuki and either of the loathsome brothers.

Much misery and violence follows. There are a few action scenes but they’re uninspired and rely entirely on gushing fountains of blood.

Strident political subtexts could be a problem in Japanese movies of this era. This movie is nothing more than an adolescent wallowing in revolutionary chic. Everybody connected in any way with the government is portrayed as a grotesque cartoon villain.

Yuki plays no real role in the movie. She only seems to have been included so they could promote the movie as a sequel to Lady Snowblood. The focus is entirely on the two brothers and the glorious revolutionary struggle. Meiko Kaji gives her worst ever performance but it’s not her fault. The script gives her nothing even remotely interesting to do and offers not the slightest hint of her motivations.

The violence and torture are both nauseating and boring.

This is not a pinky violence movie. It’s a political violence movie. Not only is there no sex or nudity there’s no indication that any of the characters has any emotional life. The heroes are too busy with the glorious revolutionary struggle, and the villains are too busy being wicked and dastardly.

This is a movie absolutely dripping with venomous loathing for Japan, for Japanese society and Japanese culture.

It’s also an extraordinarily boring movie about worthless people being worthless people.

I have seen worse movies than this, but not many.

I’m generally a very big fan of pinky violence movies but Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance is bitterly disappointing. It has no style, no excitement, no suspense.

This movie just seriously rubbed me up the wrong way. If you enjoy incredibly brutal torture scenes you might enjoy it. My recommendation is to give it a miss.

It looks OK on the Criterion Blu-Ray but it’s no a particularly visually impressive movie to start with.