The Naked Zoo (1970)

William Grefé made some fun ultra low budget horror films but with The Naked Zoo he switched his attention to the counterculture.

It’s most notable for being one of Rita Hayworth’s last films and she’s by far the best thing in this movie.

Terry Shaw (Steve Oliver) aspires to be a great writer but earns his living as a gigolo. One of his clients is Helen Golden (Hayworth). She’s married to a very rich guy who is confined to a wheelchair which is why she turns to Terry to satisfy her physical needs.

Terry is a total creep and he spends his time hopping from one woman’s bed to another.

He hangs out with a bunch of hippies although they look more like beatniks from a decade earlier. 

Like so many movies from this era dealing with the counterculture it was clearly made by people who just thought beatniks and hippies were pretty much the same thing.

Terry and Helen are caught in the act by her husband and he has a gun and it all gets messy. Terry is worried that the cops will be after him but he doesn’t do anything about it.

The plot is almost non-existent and what there is is an incoherent mess.

Terry beds a few more women and lots of controlled substances get consumed. It’s all a big freak-out.

Eventually Grefé decides that maybe he needs to wrap up the plot but the way he does so is rather feeble.

The music sounds like it’s a decade out of date and reinforces the beatnik vibe.

There’s lot of acid-trip psychedelic stuff which is amusing enough.

There’s plenty of grooving and bed-hopping but it’s all rather tame.

There’s very little violence but the wheelchair guy with the gun going after the guilty couple is entertainingly goofy.

Hayworth is excellent. Steve Oliver is quite good, bearing in mind that he’s playing a thoroughly loathsome human being.

This is not a movie that is sympathetic to hippies. Mostly they’re portrayed as ridiculous but let’s face it it’s not easy to make hippies look anything but ridiculous. They also come across as slightly sinister.

There really aren’t any wholly admirable characters in this film. We feel that if bad stuff happens to them they have at least to some extent brought it on themselves.

The Naked Zoo doesn’t quite work. It’s just too much of a mess and it’s not a sufficiently entertaining mess. It’s recommended only if you really like hippies being awful movies.

The Naked Zoo is included on the four-disc Blu-Ray collection He Came from the Swamp: The William Grefé Collection. Two versions of the film are provided. There’s the director’s cut (which is the one I watched) and an alternative version, supposedly spicier.

Grefé’s earlier horror offerings The Death Curse of Tartu (1966) and Sting of Death (1965) are much more fun.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera blockbuster written and directed by Luc Besson.

It is based on a French science fiction comic book series, Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières. The comic book series ran from 1967 to 2010. Besson was a huge fan in his youth.

Many centuries into the future Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are elite security operatives of the United Human Federation. Their latest mission will take them to Alpha, a giant city in space inhabited by thousands of species from different planets.

We have already found out in the opening sequences that Alpha had been a space station orbiting the Earth but due to its growing size it was blasted into space.

And we also know that in the recent past the planet Mül was destroyed. It was home to a peaceful humanoid species. We know about Mül because of Valerian’s dream. Which might have been more than a dream.

Mül was also home a strange little animal with remarkable properties. We know this animal is important and we know the pearl is important but we don’t know why they’re important.

There is is something wrong on Alpha. An inexplicable radioactive dead zone is slowly expanding and threatens the city’s existence. Security personnel have sent to investigate. None have come back alive. That’s why Valérian and Laureline were sent there.

Aliens have attacked Alpha and taken its commander prisoner. Valérian and Laureline have to retrieve him. This will involve a great deal of action and excitement and danger, and also mystery. Part of the mystery is hidden in the files that nobody but the commander can access.

This film suffers from some of the same flaws as Besson’s earlier science fiction extravaganza, The Fifth Element. The plot loses direction as Besson focuses too much on visual coolness, and he just offers us too much visual coolness. He just keeps throwing too many new cool visual ideas at us.

The lengthy subplot involving pop diva Rihanna as a shape-shifting stripper is an unnecessary distraction should have been cut. She can’t act, it’s too silly and it slows things down. The movie ends up being half an hour too long.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets suffered from the same problem as Disney’s John Carter a few years earlier. Both movies did quite well at the box office but they were both so expensive that they still ended up losing a lot of money. It’s a broken financial model, that makes it too risky to make blockbusters that are in any way original.

I did like the two leads. They’re likeable and we care about them. I like that Valérian is allowed to be a brave masculine hero rather than inept male who needs a Strong Competent Woman to rescue him. I like the fact that for most part Laureline is an old-fashioned Feisty Heroine rather than a girlboss. Valérian is her commander and she doesn’t constantly undermine him. Laureline is also allowed at times to behave like a woman. She doesn’t come across as a female character who could just as easily have been written as a male character.

I liked their relationship. He wants to marry her. She isn’t sure. It’s increasingly obvious that she loves him but she needs to be convinced that he’s ready for marriage. Marriage is something she takes seriously.

This is a much more successful film than The Fifth Element, partly because Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker are not in it. It isn’t ruined by incredibly annoying characters.

The best thing about it is that it has no connection to Star Wars or Star Trek or Marvel comics.

While it needed to be trimmed just a little Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed some of the Valérian and Laureline comics - Valerian The Complete Collection vol 1. In the comics they travel through time a lot but for a standalone movie I think Besson made a wise decision in dropping that angle. The comics are fun!

And I've reviewed Besson's two great early movies, Léon: The Professional (1994) and La Femme Nikita (1990).

They're Playing with Fire (1984)

They're Playing with Fire is a 1984 erotic thriller directed and co-written by Howard Avedis. 

Its biggest selling point is unquestionably its star, Sybil Danning.

Jay Richard (Eric Brown) is a typical college student who has a major crush on his sexy English professor, Mrs Stevens (Sybil Danning). He is thrilled when she wants to hire him to do some work on her boat (a huge pleasure cruiser). She’s very friendly and tells him to call her Diane). He polishes the woodwork but she wants more than her woodwork polished. Before he knows what’s happening she’s got his trousers off and they’re having wild passionate sex.

She wants him to do another little job for her. And for her husband Michael (Andrew Prine). It’s a harmless prank they want him to play on Michael’s mother and grandmother. All he has to do is break into their mansion and scare them.

What Jay doesn’t know is that Diane and Michael don’t have a penny of their own. Michael’s mother and grandmother are fabulously rich. Diane and Michael want that money and they want it now and they have a plan to get it. 

Unfortunately Jay doesn’t know that he is part of that plan.

The plot does rely on Jay being incredibly gullible but it’s perfectly plausible - he’s young and I don’t think any male would be thinking straight after a steamy bedroom romp with Sybil Danning, especially if he figures there’s a chance she might want her woodwork waxed again in the future.

There’s murder and Jay is uncomfortably aware that he’s likely to be a suspect. He’s left footprints and fingerprints behind at the murder scene.

We, the audience, do not know exactly what happened. We have our suspicions but we can’t be sure. All we know for certain is that Jay didn’t do it. Jay also doesn’t know exactly what happened. He has his suspicions as well but no evidence.

Jay would like to trust Diane, because he’s obsessed by her. But he’s far from sure that he really can trust her. He also has at least some awareness that his lust for Diane might be clouding his judgment.

The plot has fairly decent twists and some good misdirection. It keeps us guessing.

The action finale is OK but probably needed just a bit more energy and imagination.

This was obviously a low-budget movie but the mansion and the yacht give it reasonably high production values.

The acting is pretty good. Andrew Prine is low-key menacing but with a touch of ambiguity. Eric Brown is very good as Jay - it’s a convincing picture of a young guy who cannot believe his luck that this amazingly hot babe wants his body. But he doesn’t make Jay too pathetic or stupid. Or annoying.

But the movie’s biggest asset is of course Sybil Danning and she also effectively keeps us  guessing about Diane. Is she the unscrupulous schemer she appears to be? Has she actually fallen for Jay? She admits that she’s not getting any bedroom action from her husband - maybe the hot sex with Jay is including her judgment as well. It’s a very fine performance. And Miss Danning takes her clothes off frequently and there are moderately steamy sex scenes. 

There’s not a huge amount violence but what there is is quite graphic. Despite what some people claim this is not really a slasher film but the rising popularity of that genre made it commercially advisable to add some moderately graphic stuff to other genres.

This is an erotic thriller, and an erotic thriller that is actually erotic.

Iraq-born Howard Avedis is usually dismissed as a director of cheap drive-in trash. Which is quite unfair. He did make mostly drive-in movies but they were often extremely interesting and rather offbeat. The Stepmother (1972) is an erotic thriller with an inverted mystery structure and it’s not bad. The Teacher (1974) is also an erotic thriller and it’s deliciously crazy and weird. The Fifth Floor (1978) is a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest rip-off and it’s top-tier psychiatric horror.

They're Playing with Fire is solid entertainment and Sybil Danning is reason enough to make this one highly recommended. And it looks great on Blu-Ray.

Ghost of Kasane Swamp (1970)

Ghost of Kasane Swamp is based on Encho Sanyutei’s 19th century ghost story Shinkei Kasanegafuchi although earlier (and rather different) versions of the story date back as far as 1690. There are still those who believe that the original was a true story.

Shinkei Kasanegafuchi has been filmed many times, the first version being a 1924 silent film. A famous version directed by Nobuo Nakagawa  was made in 1957.

Kimiyoshi Yasuda directed two versions for Daiei Studio, a black-and-white 1960 film and a colour 1970 version, Ghost of Kasane Swamp. 

It’s that 1970 version we’re concerned with here.

These events clearly take place during the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603-1868).

A penniless samurai, Fukami, is heavily in debt to blind masseur and money-lender Soetsu. The samurai consoles himself by sleeping with the housemaid, Okuma. Then he comes up with a plan. He will offer Soetsu the use of his wife Sawano’s body in payment of the debt. He will then catch them in the act, play the outraged husband, and kill them both. This way he gets rid of a wife he’s grown tired of and he doesn’t have to pay the debt.

As a result of this murder a considerable amount of money belonging to Soetsu comes into circulation. Some of it falls into the hands of Soetsu’s daughter Oshiga. She’s a whore but she can now buy the brothel in which she works and set herself up as the madam.

The samurai’s son Shingoro has now shown up. He had been estranged from his father for years.

That initial double murder will set in motion a whole series of dramas. There are certainly ghosts seeking vengeance but it’s the dark motivations of the various characters that cause most of the trouble. Some are motivated by greed, some by revenge, some by lust. And some by a combination of all three.

It’s not just revenge but in many cases an obligation to seek revenge. An obligation which some of the characters carry out while others evade that duty.

There will be more murders, and many betrayals. There will be complex interlocking sexual relationships with plenty of potential for jealousy and mistrust.

Shingoro gets romantically involved with Oshiga. That later becomes a romantic triangle and in the meantime he encounters Okuma who is enraged that the money she stole has been stolen from her. Shingoro gets mixed up with Oshiga’s sister Osona as well. The possibilities for betrayal multiply.

While most of the characters’ woes stem from their own failings that does not mean that this is one of those movies in which there are no actual supernatural elements and characters are simply haunted by their own guilt. There are ghosts here although apparently earlier movie versions put more focus on the ghosts. 

In this version it would appear that the ghosts mostly exert their influence indirectly although they do appear to the various characters at various times. And by the end of the story there are more than just two ghosts.

By 1970 audience expectations were changing and this time around Kimiyoshi Yasuda decided to put more emphasis on gore (although it’s moderate gore by later standards) and sex. This works quite well since sex is always an effective motivation in a horror film. 

This is not a story in which the poor and downtrodden are exploited by the rich and powerful. There are no great feudal lords. Soetsu has money but no social status. Fukami clings to a semblance of social status but is penniless. Nobody has any money, unless they can get their hands on some of Soetsu’s money. They are all, male and female, just barely managing to survive.

This is a sordid tale and that gives it a nicely lurid feel.

Sadly a year after this film was released Daiei Studio went bankrupt. Television had had a devastating effect on the Japanese film industry.

Ghost of Kasane Swamp is fine rather sleazy gothic horror and it’s highly recommended.

The Radiance Films Blu-Ray transfer looks lovely. There are three movies in this set. The accompanying booklet includes a brief moderately interesting essay.

I’ve also reviewed The Demon of Mount Oe from this set.

The Seventh Victim (1943)

The Seventh Victim, released in 1943, was the fourth of the eleven movies (nine of them horror movies) made by producer Val Lewton at RKO in the 40s. It was Mark Robson’s directorial debut.

Lewton’s first RKO film was Cat People which was a huge hit. In commercial terms the series started to falter slightly after that. Lewton’s idea of taking a totally fresh and original, and subtle, approach to the horror genre was an artistic triumph but audiences were increasingly unimpressed.

The nine Lewton horror films gradually established major cult followings and are now immensely admired by cinephiles but it is worth bearing in mind that only Cat People and The Body Snatcher achieved massive commercial success at the time.

The Seventh Victim bombed at the box office. It’s easy to see why. It sounds like it’s going to be a murder mystery but it isn’t. It’s also not a conventional horror movie. It’s not a conventional anything. No matter how good such films are they’re difficult to promote and are likely to provoke audience resistance. These are the sorts of movies destined one day to become cult movies.

The Seventh Victim begins with what does seem like a straightforward mystery. Schoolgirl Mary Gibson (Kim Hunter) is told that the school has been unable to her sister Jacqueline. Jacqueline is her only living relative and pays her tuition fees. Mary decides to head for New York to find her.

She is befriended by lawyer Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont) who claims to be in love with  Jacqueline and to be equally anxious to find her. Ward seems like a very nice man.

Mary is also offered help by a down-at-hell private eye, Irving August (Lou Lubin). He is scruffy and seedy and looks very disreputable but he also sounds very confident and Mary probably figures all private detectives look like bums.

Mary meets several other men who have played some part in Jacqueline’s life. There’s failed poet Jason Hoag (Erford Gage) and psychiatrist Doctor Louis Judd. Since Judd is played by Tom Conway he could turn out to be a sinister figure but in a Lewton film it’s foolish to jump to conclusions.

Mary also discovers the room that Jacqueline rents but keeps permanently locked. The contents of the room provide the first unsettling moment in the movie and it’s very unsettling indeed, for Mary and for the viewer.

Gradually it emerges that Jacqueline had belonged to a group of Satanists known as the Palladists. It seems that Jacqueline is trying to break off her contact with this group.

The movie was criticised at the time for being incoherent. The fact that several scenes were apparently cut (including a longer ending) may have contributed to this but I suspect the cuts were deliberate. Those cut scenes were unnecessary and would have slowed the movie down. The Lewton movies had to come in with running times around 70 minutes. That was non-negotiable. And that was a good thing. They couldn’t afford to have an ounce of fat on them, and they don’t.

The ending as it stands works extraordinarily well and I think the movie is meant to remain enigmatic. In particular I think that Jacqueline is meant to remain something of a mystery. What led her to the Palladists?

It’s definitely not a plot-driven movie. Mood is everything here. None of the characters take any actions that really achieve anything. The attempts by Mary and her friends to rescue Jacqueline are confused and ineffectual.

This is a very morbid film. Most of the characters are either failures or disappointed by life or drifting through life in a mood of quiet despair. This incredible bleakness almost certainly contributed to the movie’s commercial failure just as it has contributed to its later cult status. Nobody made movies like in the 40s, but Val Lewton did.

What’s really fascinating is that these devil-worshippers are themselves so ineffectual. They are effete self-indulgent would-be intellectuals playing at wickedness. They would head for the fainting couches if they ever encountered true evil. Their devil-worshipping game of make-believe staves off the boredom and despair for a while. They think it gives their lives meaning but it doesn’t.

Forget the silly stuff about homoerotic subtexts that some reviewers try to read into this film. I don’t buy it because it would be out of place. This is a movie that has other fish to fry. This is a movie about people who are emotionally, spiritually and intellectually neutered. They’re empty vessels.

Mark Robson had edited the first three movies in the series for director Jacques Tourneur (whom he admired greatly) and Robson learnt his lessons well. He does an excellent job. And the cinematography is once more done by the great Nicholas Musuraca.

The Seventh Victim is awash with film noir nihilism. It’s tough viewing but it’s very highly recommended.

DeepStar Six (1989)

At the tail end of the 80s suddenly everybody was making “terror beneath the sea” science fiction horror movies. Sean S. Cunningham’s 1989 DeepStar Six falls into that category. And it has a slight Alien vibe. 

Cunningham is of course best known as the director of the original Friday the 13th.

None of these movies did particularly well. Even James Cameron’s The Abyss lost a stack of money (due to its $70 million budget). DeepStar Six was made on a much more modest budget of $8 million and lost money.

So what went wrong with DeepStar Six? In my view nothing really went particularly wrong. This is a perfectly decent if not dazzlingy original sci-fi horror B-movie.

The setup is solid enough. The US Navy is building a missile base on the ocean floor. The crew of the undersea habitat DeepStar Six is responsible for the construction and to give the project some respectability and make it appear less sinister there’s a marine biologist with the team (you can’t have an underwater adventure without a marine biologist). The Navy can now claim that this is a scientific research project.

Of course things go wrong. One of the things this movie gets criticised for is that we have a long wait to see the monster. Personally I think that’s one of the movie’s strengths. The monster you don’t see is always scarier than the monster you do see. Until very late in the proceedings the members of the team have absolutely no idea what they’re up against. Is it something natural or man-made? They’re not even sure that it is a creature. If it is then what motivates its actions - is it hunger or a lust for killing or fear?

So the emphasis is on the effects on the crew of an unseen and inexplicable menace. Not knowing the nature of the threat means that they have no clue how to counter it. And they don’t know how much real danger they’re in. The fear builds slowly, which makes it all the more effective.

The pacing is pleasingly brisk. There’s a reasonable amount of action, there’s decent suspense and there is a sense of menace.

The special effects are old school (these were the pre-CGI days) and they look good. The miniatures are excellent. The interiors look good - DeepStar Six looks like a place where people live and work and it looks suitably claustrophobic. Obviously an undersea habitat is not going to be spacious.

The monster is not one of the great movie monsters but it’s OK.

The movie never looks cheap. It looks like some real effort was put into it.

I suspect that the big reason for its box-office failure was the lack of star power. The cast members are all perfectly competent but they’re basically solid character actors. Miguel Ferrer is particularly good.

A second reason might have been the lack of a human villain. There is one character who lets the side down but that’s the result of cracking under extreme psychological pressure rather than evil machinations. I like the fact that these are all people just doing their best but audiences love larger-than-life super-villains.

It might also have benefitted commercially from a bit more sexiness.

This movie isn’t perfect but it’s thoroughly enjoyable. It was treated harshly by critics at the time and still gets unfairly dismissed by online reviewers. It’s a B-movie and it isn’t trying to be profound. You just need to approach it with an open mind. And any movie with submarines and undersea action is inherently cool.

DeepStar Six is highly recommended as a beer and popcorn movie.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray looks lovely and they’ve included three (!!) audio commentaries.

Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard (1967)

Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard, released in 1967, was the last of the three French Fantomas eurospy thrillers directed by André Hunebelle.

The first of a prolific series of novels featuring the arch-criminal Fantômas and written by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre appeared in print in 1911. The first of Louis Feuillade’s Fantomas movie serials was released in 1913.

It was obviously Bond Fever that created the commercial environment in which the 1960s Fantomas movies could be made but they have quite a different feel. They’re crazy and very lighthearted but they’re not the same kinds of spy spoofs as the Matt Helm movies. 

The Fantomas movies are very very French.

Diabolical criminal mastermind Fantomas has surfaced again. His latest scheme is to tax very rich people. If they pay the tax they will be allowed to live. If they don’t pay they will be killed.

Lord Edward MacRashley (Jean-Roger Caussimon) is very rich indeed and he isn’t happy about this. He gets together with his super-rich friends to discuss the matter.

They decide to call in Commissioner Juve (Louis de Funès) from Paris. Juve arrives in Scotland, at Lord MacRashley’s castle. Which is of course haunted.

There’s another quite separate conspiracy being hatched. There are gangsters also. And ghosts, although Commissioner Juve is confident that they’re fake. There’s the obligatory séance scene. All these elements eventually come together very satisfactorily. There’s also a fox hunt but it’s a fake fox, another of Fantomas’s schemes. Nothing is what it seems to be.

We also find out that Fantomas has built a flying car and is now working on a spaceship. There are not as many gadgets as you might expect but the mobile beds are fun. And Fantomas has a video recorder in an attache case.

Juve is accompanied by his assistant Inspector Bertrand (Jacques Dynam), his old friend the reporter Fandor, and Fandor’s girlfriend Hélène Gurn (Mylène Demongeot).

Juve intends to lay a trap for Fantomas but the arch-villain is laying traps of his own.

Fantomas is a master of disguise which plays a key role in the story. This is something that betrays the 1911 origins of the character. Disguise played a huge role in countless Victorian and Edwardian potboilers but was going out of fashion by the 1920s. It is however a nice touch that gives these movies some of their flavour.

The basic plot is not particularly elaborate.

They managed to keep the core cast intact for all three films. I find that a little bit of Louis de Funès goes a long way but this is after all a spy comedy and Juve is a comic character. Jean Marais as usual plays both Fantomas and Fandor, with his customary charisma. Mylène Demongeot is cute and adorable and amusing.

The Château de Roquetaillade stands in for Lord MacRashley’s castle. It doesn’t look all that Scottish but it does look nice.

There are some action scenes but they’re played for zaniness rather than thrills.

As with any spy spoof you need to have a high tolerance for silliness.

Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard is good-natured fun. Recommended.

Kino Lorber have released all three Fantomas movies in a boxed set, available on both DVD and Blu-Ray.

I’ve also reviewed the first two movies, Fantomas (1964) and Fantomas Unleashed (1965). And I’ve reviewed the 1913 movie serial Juve contre Fantômas (1913) and the first of the novels, Allain and Souvestre’s Fantômas.