Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974)

Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a 1974 Spanish giallo starring Paul Naschy. 

Early on there is perhaps some doubt about its genre categorisation but it does get more and more giallo-esque as it goes.

Naschy is Gilles, a drifter looking for a job. The suggestion is made that the three sisters who live in a big house on the outskirts of the village might employ him, although the way the suggestion is put could lead one to suspect that working for the sisters might not be the best of ideas. 

He gets the job anyway and it’s a live-in job.

The eldest sister Claude (Diana Lorys) has a badly disfigured arm as the result of an accident. She is convinced that men now find her repulsive. Her sister Ivette (Maria Perschy) is wheelchair-bound, presumably as the result of the same accident. And then there’s the man-hungry Nicole (Eva León).

The sisters all take note of Gilles’ manly physique when they see stripped to the waist chopping firewood. They like what they see. So now we have Gilles living in a house with three women. They all seek potentially dangerous. All three seem crazy. And, for very different reasons, Claude and Nicole are so sexually frustrated that they’re climbing the walls.

Gilles is by no means immune to their feminine charms.

Then the nurse arrives and there’s something about her that makes us wonder if she’s everything that she seems to be.

A guy suddenly turns up and tries to kill Gilles.

Three cute teenage backpackers arrive in the village. They’re looking for fun. These girls spell fun M-E-N.

Gilles has disturbing dreams, or perhaps they’re flashbacks.

There’s plenty of potential now for mayhem, and there’s a brutal murder. It won’t be the last murder.

There are at least half a dozen very plausible suspects. All of these people are either twisted in some way, or we suspect that they may be twisted in some way. Their motives might be rational or totally irrational.

As usual with his movies Paul Naschy wrote the screenplay and for the most part he plays fair with us. The resolution gets a bit wild and outrageous but it works. For me a successful mystery story is one in which I find the ending believable because the clues pointing in the right direction were there and it feels psychological plausible. That’s the case here. There’s a respect for the conventions of the mystery genre, and that’s not always the case with a giallo.

There is some gore and there are some disturbing moments.

There’s not much in the way of nudity and sex but there is an all-pervasive atmosphere of unhealthy eroticism, and that applies to both the male and the female characters.

Naschy’s performance is very good. He is able to convince us that GiIles is a decent good-natured guy and he’s also able to convince us that there’s at least the possibility of some inner darkness. All of the performances are solid with Diana Lorys and Maria Perschy being particularly good. And Eva León as Nicole oozes sex is a delightfully over-the-top way.

Carlos Aured was the director and co-writer and he worked with Naschy several times. He does a fine stylish imaginative job here. The house in which the three sisters live is a perfect setting for a giallo and Aured takes every advantage of it.

Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a top-tier giallo. Highly recommended.

The transfer (in Shout! Factory’s Paul Naschy Collection Blu-Ray set) is in the 1.37 aspect ratio which is possibly incorrect but it looks OK.

I’ve reviewed Naschy’s other foray into the giallo genre, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1975), and it’s very much worth seeing.

Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963)

Goldilocks and the Three Bares is a 1963 nudie-cutie directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis and produced by Thomas J. Dowd and the legendary David F. Friedman.

Now I’m not saying that Herschell Gordon Lewis was the worst film director in history. Well actually, now that I think about it, he really was the worst film director in history. In his work there’s a dullness, a lack of inspiration, a lack of imagination, a lack of understanding of pacing and of how to structure a feature film that is in its own way quite awe-inspiring.

There was a secret to making a good nudie-cutie. Russ Meyer discovered it in The Immoral Mr Teas back in 1959. A Supreme Court ruling had decreed that nudity per se was not obscene. But you had to make the nudity non-sexual. That led to a deluge of nudist camp movies. But there is only so much nude volleyball that any human being can endure.

The secret was to find a silly, goofy, amusing and clever excuse for presenting lots of naked women. In Meyer’s film a man has his optic never damaged during a dental procedure and as a side-effect he can now see straight through women’s clothing. In Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon the first manned mission to the Moon discovers that the Moon is inhabited - by naked women. Both these gimmicks make the nudity seem fun and playful and you don’t need to resort to nude volleyball.

The other secret was to add gags. Russ Meyer’s sense of humour might not have been sophisticated but he did have a sense of humour. The Immoral Mr Teas is genuinely amusing.

Which brings us to Goldilocks and the Three Bares which is just a standard nudist camp movie. Producer Tom Dowd did however have one gimmick up his sleeve - he was going to make this a nudie musical. An interesting idea but unfortunately the five or so songs that were written for the film are atrocious. And they’re sung by Rex Marlow who had been working as a pool cleaner. As a singer he’s a great pool cleaner.

And Dowd found the world’s worst comic, Tommy Sweetwood, to provide the comic elements.

The plot, such as it is, is that nightclub singer Eddie Livingston (Rex Marlow) is sweet on publicist Alison Edwards (Louise Downe). She keeps disappearing on weekends, which puzzles him. Tommy Sweetwood follows her and discovers the shocking truth - she is a nudist! She goes to a nudist camp on weekends. Eddie is devastated. He thought she was a nice girl.

Eventually Alison and her friend Cynthia persuade Eddie and Tommy to accompany them to the nudist camp. Eddie discovers that nudists are just like ordinary people, so it’s OK for him to be in love with Alison. After lots of nude boating and horse riding everything is fine between Alison and Eddie.

The problem is that it takes the movie takes so long to get to the nudie parts and in the meantime we have to endure interminable nightclub scenes with Tommy telling terrible jokes and Eddie singing awful songs.

On the plus side when we do get to the camp there is an immense quantity of nudity with lots of very pretty unclad girls. Lewis obviously waned to push the nudity as far as he could. Frontal nudity was not allowed in 1963 but there are lots of shots that go very very close indeed to revealing all of these girls’ charms and there are glimpses of frontal nudity which were probably accidental.

The Something Weird DVD also includes another nudie musical, Sinderella and the Golden Bra (1964) plus loads of extras.

The real highlight on the disc is the audio commentary for Goldilocks and the Three Bares. It features the great man, himself, David F. Friedman. As always he manages to be hugely informative and incredibly entertaining. It provides wonderful insights into the way these movies were made and marketed. The commentary is way more fun than the movie.

Goldilocks and the Three Bares isn’t really worth seeing on its own but with the commentary it becomes an absolute must.

Interestingly enough there have been a couple of truly excellent nudie musicals. The First Nudie Musical (1976) and Cinderella (AKA The Other Cinderella, 1977) are delightful movies which I highly recommend.

Firing Line (1988)

Firing Line is a very cheap 1988 jungle war action movie. I’ve recently become interested in exploring Shannon Tweed’s filmography and her movies are not easy to find so when I saw this one on DVD I grabbed it. But this is definitely not a typical Shannon Tweed movie.

The setting is an unnamed Central American republic. An American Mark Hardin (Reb Brown) has been captured by government soldiers. We have no real idea who Mark Hardin is except for a brief hint that he may have been a mercenary. We know no idea why the government had him arrested and we never find out.

e don’t know anything about the government except that we seem to be expected to see them as the bad guys. There’s a tough hardbitten American guy working with the government. He might be an American military advisor ie he might be C.I.A. or he might be a mercenary. We’re never told.

He has some kind of connection with a cute blonde American girl, Sandra Spencer (Shannon Tweed). We don’t know who she is or where she came from or why she’s in Central America or how she came to know Mark Hardin. We never find out. The government is after her as well, but we never find out why.

Mark and Sandra join a rebel group in the jungle-covered hills. We never find out what cause the rebels are fighting for. We never find out why Mark Hardin joins them but we assume he was a mercenary working for the government and he had a falling out with them.

The rebels are attacked by government troops. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Mark helps the rebels to bust Montiero out of gaol. We never find out why Montiero was arrested or why it’s important to rescue him. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Then the rebels attack a military post. There’s lots of shooting and explosions.

Later the rebels try to capture the radio station, but the attack doesn’t seem to achieve anything apart from offering the opportunity for lots of shooting and explosions.

At one stage Mark and Sandra wander off into the woods for a bit of recreation. We get an unbelievably brief unbelievably tame totally passionless love scene.

Then there’s more action centred on a bridge, and more shooting and explosions.

I won’t tell you whether the good guys or the bad guys eventually win and to be honest you may not care very much.

There are two credited screenwriters but there’s nothing in this movie to suggest that it ever had what you might call an actual script. Or even an actual director. We don’t learn anything about the motivations of any of the characters. We don’t know why any of the events happen.

The acting is terrible. I’ve now seen four of Shannon Tweed’s movies and I think she’s quite a good actress (yes, really) but this is the weakest performance I’ve seen from her. It’s not her fault. Her part is horribly underwritten. Since Mark Hardin’s part is horribly underwritten as well it’s difficult for these two to get any chemistry going. Apart from their brief roll in the hay and a brief swimming scene we don’t have enough of an idea how they feel about each other. We don’t see any scenes of tenderness or playfulness between them. If we knew they were madly in love we’d be a bit more invested in the story.

This is a movie that desperately needed some nudity and sex not only to break the monotony but to convince us that there’s some real fire and passion between Mark and Sandra. And casting Shannon Tweed and not giving her any opportunity to be seductive and sexy is eccentric to say the least.

Another problem is that you have a cute blonde babe here but she’s never put into any real danger so Mark doesn’t get to do anything brave and heroic to rescue her. He also never seems in any real danger so we don’t get to see Sandra desperately worrying about her man’s safety.

The action scenes are lively and relentless although not terribly inspired. It’s like the same basic action scene endlessly repeated.

This really is a total zero of a movie.

But don’t let this put you off Shannon Tweed. Given a decent role she could be very effective and deliver some genuinely interesting performances. Check her out in Illicit Dreams and especially her delightfully twisted performance in the excellent A Woman Scorned.

Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)

Kenji Misumi’s 1959 gothic horror film The Ghost of Yotsuya is one of several film adaptations of a very famous kabuki play. Nobuo Nakagawa’s version came out in the same year so the two versions can easily be confused. There have in fact been countless film, television, manga and anime adaptations.

Iemon Tamiya (Kazuo Hasegawa) is a samurai down on his luck. He cannot find a position. He lacks the connections and the money needed to secure a decent position. He is a proud man but he is almost penniless and heavily in debt. He is basically a good honourable man but he is embittered by poverty and failure. Perhaps that clouds his judgment a little. His wife Oiwa (Yasuko Nakada) is ailing which adds to the pressures and the bitterness.

Iemon has become involved with some disreputable characters. He trusts them, which is a very foolish thing to do.

The loyal family servant Kohei (Jôji Tsurumi) is devoted to Oiwa. He is a good man but his devotion to his mistress may be just a little excessive. He would not think of doing anything dishonourable but his judgment my perhaps also be a bit clouded.

Oiwa’s health is failing. There is a medicine that could cure her but it is very expensive.

Iemon attracts the attention of Oume (Yôko Uraji), the beautiful young daughter of Lord Ito. Oume is in search of a husband. She has chosen Tamiya. The fact that he is already married does not deter her. She is a stubborn girl and she has become obsessed by Tamiya. She must have him.

Oume’s obsession grows. She is tempted to take drastic steps to separate Tamiya from his wife. Oume is headstrong and spoilt and selfish and she is a young girl carried away by love and lust. She might not be evil to begin with but she is vulnerable to temptation.

Iemon’s disreputable friends can see the potential for profiting from this situation.

The stage is set for tragedy.

In gothic horror the aesthetic is everything. If the aesthetic is lacking then any gothic horror film is worthless. The aesthetic is certainly no problem in Ghost of Yotsuya. This is a visually dazzling film. Like any good gothic horror film it was shot entirely in the studio and like any good gothic horror film is has a deliberately and exaggeratedly artificial look. The film was shot in colour so this is not the world of shadows of black-and-white gothic horror. This is a misty world of sickly disturbing colours.

The basis of the story was an 1825 kabuki play although the origins of the story go back much further in time than that.

The various film adaptations differ slightly. In some versions Iemon is much more of an out-and-out villain.

The problem for Daei studio was that Kazuo Hasegawa was a very big star. They were reluctant to have him play a mere villain. In Daei’s version Iemon’s character is softened somewhat. This actually woks quite well. He becomes almost a Shakespearian tragic hero, an Othello manipulated by the true villains. Iemon is no paragon of virtue. He is a bit of a fool. His bitterness has warped his character just a little. He is vulnerable to Oume’s seductive charms. He never becomes evil but his actions are unfortunate and have tragic consequences. And he is aware of his follies and is haunted not just by a ghost but by his own guilt about his cruel behaviour and his foolishness.

We feel some sympathy for him, and we feel a great deal of sympathy for Oiwa. She is not perfect. She is jealous and perhaps not sufficiently understanding of her husband’s frustrations but she is a woman who is horribly wronged.

It takes a long time for the supernatural elements to kick in but since we know that this is a ghost story that becomes quite effective. We can see the tragedy unfolding and we know that the ending will be disastrous.

The Ghost of Yotsuya is classic ghost story and it’s a classic Japanese ghost story that deals with themes of honour and ambition as well as jealousy and emotional betrayal. Highly recommended.

The Radiance Blu-Ray looks gorgeous (and this is a visually stunning movie in a weird fantastic otherworldly way). There are some decent extras.

The Radiance Blu-Ray set also includes the excellent The Snow Woman (1968).

Witchery (La casa 4, 1989)

Witchcraft (AKA La casa 4 AKA Witchery) is an Italian gothic horror movie shot in the United States in English. 

It was Fabrizio Laurenti’s first feature film as director. The producer was Joe D’Amato.

The setting is an old abandoned hotel on an island in Massachusetts, about 50 miles from Boston. Leslie (Leslie Cumming) is there to research a book on witchcraft. She is there with her photographer boyfriend Gary (David Hasselhoff). Linda is a virgin. That’s not Gary’s fault. Lord knows he’s tried his best but Linda won’t play ball.

They forget to ask permission to visit the island.

A rich middle-aged couple, Rose and Freddie Brooks, have just bought the island. They’ve hired architect Linda Sullivan (Catherine Hickland) to restore the place. They arrive on the island along with their pregnant daughter Jane (Linda Blair), Jane’s young nephew Tommy and a real estate agent. The fact that Jane is pregnant will also become important later.

What they don’t know is that living in the hotel is an ageing witch, an ageing witch known only as the Lady In Black (Hildegard Knef). She’s a super-evil witch and she has big plans.

The witch is opening portals. Jane falls through one, witnesses horrifying scenes of torture, but is then returned to reality. The witch has other plans for her. Rose Brooks falls through another portal. She is not so lucky.

Meanwhile Linda and the young estate agent have grown bored and have retired upstairs for some bedroom shenanigans.

The witch seems to be picking these people off one by one, in ways that seem appropriate to her given their sins.

Of course you won’t be surprised to learn that these unlucky people are stranded on the island. Yes, the telephones lines are down and their boat has vanished.

This is a gruesome movie with some definite gross-out moments and some nasty torture scenes. It doesn’t really need to rely on these since it has an unoriginal but perfectly serviceable premise, a superb location, some very fine creepy atmosphere and some good suspense.

The cast is quite OK. I’ve always liked Linda Blair. David Hasselhoff as always has plenty of charm. They’re by far the most effective members of the cast.

One amusing touch is that we’re told that the locals are a superstitious lot. They’re simple fisher-folk. Typical gothic horror movie ignorant peasants in fact. But this is Massachusetts in the late 80s.

The hotel is truly wonderful. This is not a typical gothic horror crumbling medieval castle but the hotel is very spooky and very gothic in a distinctively American Gothic way. And while Laurenti may not be a great director he knows how to use this location to best effect.

This is, to be brutally honest, a pretty bad movie. But it does have some interestingly oddball touches and a fine sense of evil and menace. The pacing is brisk enough.

The whole opening of the portal thing is a bit hard to follow but it’s one of the oddball touches that I like about this movie. The supernatural is not supposed to be rational!

The bathtub and fireplace scenes are memorable.

This movie is obviously in the witchcraft and devil-worship in the modern world mould. It has some slight affinities to the 70s/70s folk horror moves such as The Wicker Man and the excellent 1966 Eye of the Devil but it can also been seen as a kind of Exorcist rip-off, with hints of an Omen rip-off. It’s weird in ways that are unnecessary and make no sense and that makes it fun in spite of its faults. Recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks very nice. I believe that there’s a US Blu-Ray release from Shout! Factory.

A Woman Scorned (1993)

A Woman Scorned is one of Shannon Tweed’s 90s direct-to-video erotic thrillers. It’s one of several movies that she did for Andrew Stevens. Stevens directed and he also plays the male lead.

This movie is not to be confused with the 1992 movie of the same title. It's the 1993 movie with Shannon Tweed that you need to look for.

The title is perhaps misleading. The heroine is not actually scorned in the sense that you might expect. She’s not rejected, but she is humiliated.

This is a genre hybrid. It’s a female revenge movie but it’s also a psycho female movie. The greatest of all psycho female movies is of course Pretty Poison (1968) and Tuesday Weld’s performance in that film will never be equalled. Having said that, Shannon Tweed has no reason to be ashamed of her performance in A Woman Scorned.

Truman Langley (Daniel McVicar) is a hard-driving hyper-ambitious business executive and is close to achieving his goal - he is about to be made a partner. He is a sleazy low-life creep who will do anything to advance his career, even to whoring out his wife Patricia (Shannon Tweed) in order to close a deal. Truman thinks this is OK because he’s a winner. He’s about to find out that he is actually a loser. He misses out on the partnership. The form brings in an outsider, Alex Weston (Andrew Stevens). And worse still, Truman is demoted. His career in ruins, he shoots himself.

Patricia is determined to get revenge. She wants revenge on Mason Wainwright (Stephen Young), the creep to whom her husband whored her out. No-one could blame her for waning revenge on Wainwright. He knew when he had sex with her that she had only agreed very reluctantly under extreme emotional blackmail from her husband.

But Patricia also wants revenge on Alex Weston. She blames Alex for beating out Truman for the partnership and thereby causing his death but in fact Alex had had no idea that he was inadvertently wrecking Truman’s career. Alex is basically a nice guy and a decent guy. He’s a family man. He would never have treated a woman the way Truman treated Patricia. Swearing revenge on Alex is crazy and wrong. And Patricia swears vengeance on Alex’s family as well, which is both crazy and evil.

So this is an intriguing twist on the female revenge movie. This is a woman who has picked the wrong targets for her revenge.

The truth is that Patricia, after her husband’s death, is no longer quite sane. One of the things I really love about this movie is that this is made wholly believable. Patricia has endured sexual humiliation engineered by her own husband. She has then had her husband blow his brains out. She is also facing financial ruin. Truman’s suicide voided his life insurance policy. All he has left Patricia are debts. But her emotions are very very conflicted. Despite everything, she loved her husband. Perhaps he had been a good man once and having fallen in love with him then she cannot stop loving him.

She is also conflicted about that sexual humiliation. Had she been raped she might have dealt with it. But she consented, which left her feeling like a whore.

She is dealing with so many confused and contradictory emotions that we can readily believable that her mind might well give way under the strain.

Andrew Stevens is fine as Alex, as is Kim Morgan Greene as Alex’s wife Marina.

But everything hinges on Shannon Tweed’s performance and she acquits herself extremely well. When she has to convey Patricia’s combination of horror, humiliation, disgust and self-disgust and when she has to get across Patrica’s tangled feelings towards her husband she does so effectively. When she embarks on her campaign of revenge Patricia is herself playing a part and Tweed makes sure we’re always aware that every emotion that Patricia displays is calculated.

We slowly come to realise that Patrica’s revenge plans are much more complicated, fiendish and devious than we expected.

Another thing I like is that whereas in most female revenge movies (including such excellent examples as Thriller: A Cruel Picture and Hannie Caulder) the woman has to learn to use a man’s weapons in this movie Patricia uses a woman’s weapons. This is to be a woman’s revenge.

The sex scenes all advance the plot and they all tell us something important about the characters. When Patricia seduces Robey she gets a great deal of pleasure out of it, but it’s clear that her physical pleasure comes from the psychological buzz of knowing that she in complete control and that she has him dancing to her tune. For the first ytime since her husband’s death Patricia is in control. It might even be the first time in her life she has experienced the pleasure of such total domination. In the scene in the poolroom the guy thinks he’s taking her violently but doesn’t realise that in fact she is the one taking him violently.

The impressive screenplay, by Karen Kelly and Barry Avrich, is packed with moral ambiguity and it has some nice twists. Patricia does evil but she is convinced that she is a righteous Avenging Angel. Having made that decision in her own mind she never questions it.

This is a much better and much cleverer movie than you might be expecting. In fact it compares quite favourably with major studio erotic thrillers of the 80s and 90s. Highly recommended.

I’ve only seen one of the other movies Miss Tweed did with Andrew Stevens, Illicit Dreams, a movie that has some fine moments and good ideas although the ending lets it down.

The Howling (1981)

Joe Dante’s The Howling was released in 1981.

The 80s was a mini-golden age of werewolf movies. It’s not hard to see why. There had been great werewolf movies in the past (The Wolf Man, Hammer’s The Curse of the Werewolf) but the problem had aways been that the look of the werewolves was so disappointing. They looked like guys who were just badly in need of a haircut and a shave. During the gothic horror boom of the 60s and early 70s werewolves were largely ignored. They would have looked too lame.

But by the 80s practical effects and makeup effects had become incredibly sophisticated. This was before CGI. CGI wasn’t needed. By the 80s old school effects could produce a genuinely convincing and terrifying werewolf. The result was movies like An American Werewolf in London (1980), The Company of Wolves (1984) and later, in the 90s, Wolf. And The Howling.

Interestingly enough werewolf movies would soon once more disappear into oblivion. Werewolves are the kinds of creatures that are always going to look lame done with CGI. CGI cannot capture that visceral feel that 80s special effects achieved so well. In The Howling you can almost smell the musky wild animal scent of the werewolves.

The Howling starts off as a scuzzy crime thriller. Newsreader Karen White (Dee Wallace) is helping the police to catch a psycho killer. He’s a media-obsessed psycho killer so he’s made contact with her. They arrange a meeting. Karen will be safe. The cops will be watching. Of course the cops, being cops, make an unholy mess of things. Karen finds herself trapped in an adult bookstore with a crazed killer. She is lucky to escape alive. The killer is gunned down by the cops.

The police have been getting advice from renowned psychiatrist Dr George Waggner (Patrick Macnee). You have to remember that this was the 80s, when people still took psychiatrists and the media seriously.

Karen is badly shaken up. Dr Waggner advises her to go his therapeutic retreat, The Colony. Her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) can accompany her. It’s in the middle of the wilderness. Karen is sceptical. Like any sane person she knows that the countryside is much more dangerous than the city.

The Colony is full of weirdos, perverts, burned-out hippies, drunks, druggies and assorted losers. Karen is not very happy. She’s even less happy when she sets eyes on Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks) and we can’t blame her. One look at Marsha and you know she’s a sexy dangerous bad girl who’s probably a firecracker in bed. Karen is not reassured when she’s told that Marsha is being treated by Dr Waggner for nymphomania.

And Marsha is already casting lustful glances at Karen’s husband. Karen suspects that Marsha will soon be tearing BiIl’s trousers off and that he probably won’t put up much resistance.

Meanwhile Karen’s media friends Chris and Terry have been finding out some disturbing things relating to that now deceased psycho killer.

And that’s before Karen finds out that the woods around The Colony are crawling with werewolves.

This was a fairly low-budget movie (made for $1.1 million dollars). When it was completed Dante realised that the special effects were hopelessly inadequate but luckily was able to pry some more money out of the backers and do some reshoots. The final results are quite impressive.

It’s an example of good low-budget filmmaking. If you only have one werewolf suit but you know what you’re doing you can convince the audience that there are lots of werewolves.

The gore level is moderate.

There’s only one sex scene and it’s great - it convinces us that this man and woman are no longer bound by civilised restraints. They’re werewolves and they’re coupling like wild animals.

The acting is mostly good. I liked Patrick Macnee. He’s playing a psychiatrist so he’s supposed to be weird and creepy, and he leaves us guessing as to whether this is just a regular creepy psychiatrist or a totally evil one.

Elisabeth Brooks as Marsha is not just mysterious, dangerous and sexy but also gives off some seriously wild vibes. She’s like a she-cat on heat. And she looks terrific.

The most interesting thing about his movie is how long it take for the werewolf elements to kick in. First it makes us think it’s a gritty sleazy urban crime drama, then it makes us think it’s a psychos in the woods movie. Don’t worry. Once the werewolf thing gets going there’s plenty of it.

The best thing is that this really feels like a drive-movie. In the best possible way. The Howling is highly recommended.

It looks great on Blu-Ray.

The first of the sequels, Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, has little connection to the first film but it’s great cinema trash.

Blind Date (1984)

The first thing to be noted here is that this review concerns the 1984 Nico Mastorakis-directed Blind Date, not the 1987 Blake Edwards movie with the same title.

Mastorakis has made movies in both his native country, Greece, and in the United States. Blind Date was shot in Greece.

Mastorakis was one of those guys who figured out early on that the secret to making money out of modestly-budgeted movies was to get involved in the production side so he set up his own production company. On most of his movies he’s the producer, director and screenwriter.

In Blind Date we are introduced to Jonathon Ratcliff (Joseph Bottoms), a young American now working for an advertising agency in Athens. At the office he meets Claire (Kirstie Alley). They sleep together. Everything seeks to go fine in the bedroom. Jonathon seems like a fairly regular guy with no particular hang-ups.

Except that there was that girl at the photo shoot. He thought he knew her. Or at least he thought she was a girl he knew in the past.

Something terrible happened to that girl in his past. But it wasn’t his fault. That’s what he was told.

And then we see Jonathon with a pair of binoculars, watching people through their windows. He appears to be a Peeping Tom. Which is a bit odd. He has a hot girlfriend. And she apparently has no complaints about his performance in bed. Guys with hot girlfriends and normal sex lives are not usually peepers.

Then we find him watching a young couple making out in a car. The guy spots him and chases him. That’s when the accident happens. The bizarre and unlikely accident that leaves him blind. So we have a Peeping Tom who is now blind. I think they call that irony.

And there has been a brutal murder, of a woman.

There are some hints that things may not be as straightforward as they appear. We’re not sure what is really going on with Jonathon. Maybe it’s not simple voyeurism but something to do with his obsession with the woman from his past. We have no idea if Jonathon is actually involved in anything genuinely disturbing or violent. Or if he ever has been. All we have are hints that could point in those directions but we’re aware that perhaps we’re being led up the garden path.

Another murder takes place. We still have no clear indication that this has any connection whatsoever with Jonathon.

What we have here is a setup for an erotic thriller, or perhaps a slasher movie. And then the cyberpunk elements kick in. Jonathon is given bionic vision. It’s like very crude 80s video game graphics. He cannot see any details at all. He cannot identify individual people. But he can now get around. The problem is that he will find himself in dangerous situations where he needs to see details. He needs to be able to identify people’s faces. It’s a nifty thriller plot mechanic.

It’s incredibly interesting that Mastorakis was playing around with cyberpunk concepts in 1984, at a time when cyberpunk was in its infancy. The movie Blade Runner had established the cyberpunk aesthetic but content-wise it was not full-blown cyberpunk. Wililam Gibson’s short story Burning Chrome had been published in 1982 but it was not until 1984 that his novel Neuromancer put cyberpunk on the map. But here we have Mastorakis dealing with at least some of the themes of full-blown cyberpunk in a movie released early in 1984, a movie that was presumably already in production before Mastorakis could have had any opportunity to read Neuromancer.

Mastorakis did something similar a few years later, in his excellent In the Cold of the Night (1990). That movie starts out as an erotic thriller with neo-noir overtones and then veers into cyberpunk territory.

Mastorakis was very good at choosing locations that provided production value without spending much money. He uses Athens rather well. This is not tourist Athens. There are no shots of the Parthenon. This is the Athens of the wealthy middle class but it’s still clear that this is a movie that is not set in LA or London or Rome or any other familiar thriller locations. There’s just that very subtle hint of the exotic.

Joseph Bottoms is an adequate lead. He is ambiguous, which is what was needed. It’s not a demanding role for Kirstie Alley but she is very good.

There’s decent suspense and the action scenes are made interesting by the fact that at times we’re seeing things through Jonathon’s primitive video game graphic vision.

Blind Date is an enjoyable thriller made much more interesting by the proto-cyberpunk touches. Highly recommended.

The Shadow (1994)

The Shadow, released in 1994, was one of several 1990s attempts to kickstart superhero franchises. Other notable attempts were The Rocketeer, Dick Tracy and The Phantom. All these attempts failed which is a pity because they’re pretty good movies.

The Shadow began as a pulp magazine hero was was featured in several movies in the late 1930s.

The 1994 movie wisely adopts for a period setting although it looks more 1940s than 1930s.

The movie gives us a backstory. Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) is a very nasty American bandit operating somewhere in central Asia. He ends up as a prisoner in a monastery where he learns to deal with his inner demons. 

He returns to America to become a force for good as a masked crime-fighter.

He has one super-power. He can cloud men’s minds. This gives him virtual invisibility - others are hypnotised into not seeing him.

Now he’s up against Shiwan Khan (John Lone), a descendant of Genghis Khan who has some similar hypnotic powers. Shiwan aims at world conquest. He plans to get hold of an atomic bomb. Such things do not yet exist (we assume the setting is the United States just before the Second World War) but Shiwan knows of a couple of eccentric genius scientists who may be able to invent one.

Lamont Cranston has one possibly useful ally. Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) is the daughter of one of the crazy scientists but she appears to have telepathic powers. Or at least she has the ability to make telepathic contact with Lamont Cranston.

I have a few reservations about this movie but they’re more matters of personal taste than actual criticisms.

Alec Baldwin is seriously lacking in charisma and charm. But given that it was decided to make Lamont Cranston a very dark tortured character constantly battling the darkness within him his casting works reasonably well. He does the tragic brooding ominous thing very well and overall his casting works.

I’m not sure that Penelope Ann Miller has the necessary star power. Margo Lane is more than just the hero’s love interest. She becomes his active ally. This movie needs a really strong female lead, especially with such a taciturn leading man. Compared to Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Phantom or even Madonna in Dick Tracy she’s a little bland. I can’t help thinking of several other major female stars of the period who might have injected bit more life into the character. Nicole Kidman perhaps. Or Sharon Stone (who had demonstrated in King Solomon’s Mines that she could be a delightful adventure heroine). On the other hand Penelope Ann Miller is pretty, she’s likeable, she looks very good in period costumes and hairstyles and there’s nothing actually wrong about her performance.

At times the visuals are just slightly too reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Batman, but I must admit that The Shadow does the 1940s urban gothic thing very effectively.

Viewers unaware of The Shadow’s long pop culture history were likely to dismiss this movie as a mere Batman rip-off. In fact The Shadow as a character pre-dates Batman by a decade.

The biggest problem with these 90s attempts to launch new franchises was that these movies were horrendously expensive. It was not enough for them to do well at the box office. To justify a franchise they needed to be gigantic hits, which they weren’t.

Australian-born Russell Mulcahy was a solid choice to direct. One of this movie’s great strengths is that it doesn’t suffer from the problems that afflict so many movies of recent decades - bloat and poor pacing. It keeps powering along and there’s always something happening.

The Shadow is heavy on the urban gothic noir vibe but with moments influenced by old Hollywood musicals and even (as Penelope Ann Miller quite correctly points out in her interview) some nice screwball comedy touches. The dynamics of the Lamont Cranston-Margo Lane relationship are structured in a very screwball comedy way.

It’s very special effects-heavy but they are done extremely well. There’s some CGI (CIG was around but still in its infancy) but Mulcahy preferred practical effects and that’s mostly what we get. It really is a great-looking movie.

The Shadow delivers dazzling visuals, thrills and adventure. That’s more than enough to keep me happy. Highly recommended.