Santo vs Evil Brain (1961)

While there had been quite a few Mexican wrestler movies made in the 1950s Santo vs Evil Brain (Santo contra cerebro del mal) was the first actual Santo movie. It was shot (back-to-back with Santo vs Infernal Men) in Cuba in 1959 but not released until 1961.

The movie begins with a silver-masked man (who is in fact Santo) being beaten up and kidnapped by some hoodlums. He is hypnotised and forced to do the bidding of the bad guys.

Later we will meet another masked man (with a black mask) and the two masked men seem to be allies. We discover that they work unofficially for the police.

There have been a number of kidnappings of scientists and the police fear that the brilliant Dr Campos (Joaquín Cordero) will be the next target. A banker is also kidnapped.

The police provide protection for Dr Campos but it may not be enough. 

The next kidnap victim is Elisa (Norma Suárez), the girlfriend of Dr Campos’s assistant Gerardo (Alberto Inzúa). Gerardo tells the police that he is puzzled by this. If the kidnappers are trying to get their hands on Dr Campos’s latest discovery then he, Gerardo, would have been a more obvious target.

The black-masked man sets out to rescue his silver-masked comrade.

While this is going on we find out that the men who kidnapped Santo were part of a spy ring.

The plot meanders around for quite a while as the police hunt the spy gang but we still have no idea what is really going on. Eventually we get a moderately exciting action climax.

If you’ve seen any of the later Santo movies you’re going to be very disappointed by Santo vs Evil Brain which sadly fails to live up to is promising title.

Part of the problem is that the Santo movie formula had not yet been perfected and in fact only exists in embryo in this movie. There is no wrestling in this movie and no real indication that the masked men even are wrestlers. In this film Santo is pretty ineffectual and has no personality whatsoever. He’s actually overshadowed by his black-masked colleague but neither of them could be described as particularly heroic or formidable.

The chief villain isn’t really sufficiently colourful or menacing and his motivations are unclear. We don’t get to know Elisa well enough to care about her fate.

The plot is chaotic. We find out why scientists are being snatched but why the banker? They use him to carry out a bank robbery but that is just a needless distraction from the central espionage plot.

The fight scenes are a bit uninspired.

Although the movie runs for just 72 minutes it still drags. It never develops any real impetus.

The location shooting in Havana is some compensation. The shoot was rather eventful, with the crew escaping from the city just hours before Castro’s army arrived.

While it has considerable historical interest for hardcore Santo fans who will be pleased that Powerhouse Indicator have released these first two Santo movies on Blu-Ray (in very nice transfers) it has to be said that Santo vs Evil Brain is really a rather bad movie. Recommended only for Santo completists.

I’ve reviewed several other Santo movies that are a whole lot better. Santo vs The Zombies (1962) is a much better place to start if you’re a Santo novice. The Santo formula was really starting to fall into place by this time. Santo in the Wax Museum (1963) and Santo & Blue Demon vs. Doctor Frankenstein (1974) are also highly recommended.

The Haunted Castle (1969)

The Haunted Castle is a gothic horror movie made by Japan’s Daiei Studio in 1969. It was directed by Tokuzô Tanaka. It’s included in the Radiance Films Daiei Gothic volume 2 Blu-Ray boxed set.

The setting is the 18th century, during the Tokugawa Shogunate. Almost all the action takes place in the castle, Saga Castle, occupied by Lord Nabeshima.

This film belongs to the fascinating bakeneko or “ghost cat” or “shape-shifting cat” genre. Yes, it’s an entire genre in both Japanese folklore and Japanese gothic horror cinema. And yes, I could easily become obsessed by this genre.

And, fascinatingly, I believe this was director Tokuzô Tanaka’s second “ghost cat” movie, the first having been made in 1958 (and also for Daiei Studio).

The Haunted Castle is based on a legend which, as in so many such cases, was widely believed to have its origins in actual events. Shôzaburô Asai wrote the screenplay,

The Ryuzoji clan was robbed of its lands and wealth by the scheming Lord Nabeshima (Kôichi Uenoyama). The blind Matashichiro Ryuzoji (Akihisa Toda) and his sister Sayo (Mitsuyo Kamei) now live on a small stipend.

Matashichiro is devoted to his pet cat Tama. This will become important.

Now Lord Nabeshima wants Sayo as one of his concubines. Matashichiro refuses to allow it. This refusal will lead to the deaths of both Matashichiro and his sister.

Before she does Sayo remembers a legend concerning cats and vengeful spirits. There is a way that Tama can exact vengeance on Sayo’s behalf.

The feline campaign of revenge begins.

The major weakness here is that some of the special effects involving the cat are rather feeble for fortunately Tanaka is smart enough to make these sequences extremely brief.

This is a movie that relies on moody cinematography and a general atmosphere of subtle menace rather than on gore. There is some gore but it’s not the dominating element.

It was shot in colour but it looks dark and shadowy. The action takes place almost entirely at night.

The movie also relies on some very clever set design. We never really get a film sense of the layout of the castle and this is undoubtedly deliberate. There are lots of shots of corridors but we’re never quite sure where they’re leading to.

Often we hear movement rather seeing it. Mostly we hear the cat but without seeing it.

And there’s something else going on. This is not just a demonic cat. This is a shape-shifting vengeful cat spirit.

Fear stalks the corridors of Saga Castle but no-one is quite sure what it is that they have to fear. There have been gruesome but inexplicable killings.

No-one trusts anyone else. That ghost cat may have assumed human form.

As with most Japanese gothic horror the makeup effects are impressive.

And the lapping of blood is nicely creepy.

Japanese gothic horror films have a flavour of their own and The Haunted Castle is a solid example of the breed. Recommended.

The Radiance Films Blu-Ray transfer looks lovely. There are three movies in this set. The Haunted Castle comes with a few reasonably interesting extras.

I’ve reviewed the other two movies in this set - The Demon of Mount Oe (1960, also directed by Tokuzô Tanaka) and Ghost of Kasane Swamp (1970).

The Golden Buddha (1966)

Bond Fever struck in the early 1960s and soon Bond-esque spy movies were made everywhere. It’s hardly surprising that in 1966 Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers Studio decided to get on on the act with a series of spy films, beginning with the Wei Lo-directed The Golden Buddha.

This is not quite the Bond formula since the hero is an ordinary guy caught up in intrigue against his will rather than a professional spy like Bond.

Paul Cheung is just a very ordinary businessman. He’s also an enthusiastic amateur student of both judo and karate.

On a flight to Bangkok he meets an old friend, Chan Chung Cheung. Paul gets off the plane carrying his friend’s briefcase by mistake. The briefcase contains a small golden Buddha statue.

He then finds his friend dead. Murdered. The little statue is worthless in itself but it is the key to something very very important. Something that the bad guys will kill for, the bad guys being the infamous Skeleton Gang.

Paul was in possession of the statuette in the briefcase. It has been stolen from him but he already knows the secret it conceals.

There are three of these little statuettes. Chan Chung Cheung’s brother Chan Chung Tai has one. His sister Chan Mei-nan has the other.

Paul is determined to solve the mystery of the statuettes because his friend was murdered and it is therefore a matter of honour.

Paul and Mei-nan have the Skeleton Gang after them and the police figure in the story as well.

The plot is not dazzling but it’s perfectly adequate.

Paul Chang Chung makes an effective hero. He doesn’t have the charisma of a Connery but he’s playing an amateur rather than a professional spy and he has that everyman vibe which works.

Of course a film like this needs beautiful women and The Golden Buddha is well supplied on that count. At least one of the women needs to be sexy, bad and dangerous. And the voluptuous Fanny Fan (promoted at the time as the Chinese Bardot) fits the bill admirably.

The chief villain has a whole bevy of bodacious babes to serve him and they’re all as dangerous as they are gorgeous. And this movie has a cute adorable heroine.

Shaw Brothers movies always had high production values and magnificent sets and that’s the case here as well. The secret lair of the Skelton Gang is a triumph of crazy pop art-inspired production design.

There’s plenty of great location shooting in Thailand which adds the necessary touch of the exotic.

The fact that the hero is an expert in judo and karate makes this a martial arts movie as well as a Bond-style movie.

Surprisingly there is some nudity.

The action is non-stop but the violence is not in the least graphic. This is a movie with the emphasis on fast-moving fun and adventure.

It doesn’t have the spectacular action set-pieces of a Bond movie nor does it have the inspired lunacy of the best eurospy movies but it has an engaging distinctive flavour. The Golden Buddha offers fine entertainment and it’s highly recommended.

It’s included in Eureka’s three-movie Shaw Brothers Super Spies and Secret Lies Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfer looks great (the movie was shot in ShawScope and in colour).

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.

The Demon of Mount Oe (1960)

The Demon of Mount Oe, directed by Tokuzô Tanaka, is a 1960 movie from Japan’s Daiei Studio. It’s been included in a gothic horror Blu-Ray boxed set from Radiance Films but it does not fit at all neatly into the gothic horror genre. Of course Japanese gothic horror is rather different from European gothic horror but this is not even typical Japanese gothic horror.

It’s based on a folk tale dating back at least to the 14th century. The director and the writers of the film have made sweeping changes to the story, presumably to a large degree to make it more appealing as a commercial feature film.

The movie begins with the cruel ruthless kampaku (a high court official) deciding to rid himself of his concubine, the Lady Nagisa. Not because she no longer appeals to him but because she is cursed. We will later discover that she was cursed by her husband who felt that having been dishonoured she had dishonoured herself further by not choosing death. The kampaku sends her to the chief of the Genji clan. He already has a concubine, Kotsuma, who is now worried that the Lady Nagisa, with her exquisite court manners, will outshine her.

The district is being terrorised by shape-changing demons and bandits. The demon lord Shuten-Doji (Kazuo Hasegawa) shares his impregnable mountain lair with the female demon Ibaragi.

The Genji general Raikô has the task of destroying this nest of bandits and demons. He will need Kotsuma’s help because there is a legend that only a woman can bring about the destruction of the demon lord.

Raikô has already had an encounter with Ibaragi during which he cut her arm off. She is very very annoyed about this.

There will be be epic battles between Raikô’s soldiers and the bandit army and several nasty battles against demons who have assumed monstrous forms (such as a gigantic spider).

So there certainly are unequivocally supernatural forces at work.

But there’s more than that going on. There are power struggles. There are several intersecting love stories. There is love betrayed, but it turns out to be less simple than that. 

There are questions of honour and some of the characters will find that their attempts to behave honourably have had unfortunate consequences.

What seemed likely to be a straightforward good vs evil story gradually becomes much more complex with lots of shades of grey. Good characters do not necessarily always behave well and wicked characters are not necessarily as purely wicked as we thought.

This is a movie that makes no concessions to realism. This is a world from folklore, a fantasy world. It does not matter if the special effects are realistic because nothing in this film is supposed to look realistic. What does matter is that the special effects do look cool.

The visuals achieve just the right feel, as if we have stepped into another world.

This is like a fairy tale but with psychologically complex characters so the actors need to demonstrate some subtlety whilst still seeming like figures out of legend. They all do a fine job with Kazuo Hasegawa being especially impressive.

The Demon of Mount Oe is very ambitious. It tries to be more than just a supernatural tale and it succeeds pretty well. It’s unconventional approach makes it 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 on The Demon of Mount Oe but this is a movie that really needed an audio commentary. A bit of background on the historical background and on the Japanese concept of demons (very very different from the western concept) would I am sure have been welcomed by most viewers. I've also reviewed Ghost of Kasane Swamp (1970) from this set.

The Blood Drinkers (1964)

The Blood Drinkers, released in 1964, offered viewers in English-speaking markets their first exposure to Filipino horror. And it’s quite a ride.

Gerardo de Leon had been directing movies since the 1930s and was a revered figure in the local film industry. This is a movie made by a seasoned professional.

Katrina is dead but she’s not going to stay dead. Dr Marco (Ronald Remy) will make sure of that. Dr Marco is a mad scientist but he’s also a vampire which is the first sign that this movie is going to be slightly out of the ordinary. These are vampires who are definitely supernatural but they make use of medical science and technology.

This movie gets major bonus points for not being yet another retread of Dracula. It boldly strikes out in a totally new direction and creates its own distinctive vampire mythology.

And Dr Marco was, and is, madly in love with Katrina. Thanks to his mad scientist apparatus he has revived her but she needs blood. She will also need a new heart. Another interesting angle in this movie is that blood is more nourishing if it comes from a loved one, and a replacement heart needs to come from a close family member. A sister would be ideal.

And Katrina has a sister, Charito (Amalia Fuentes) although Charito doesn’t know this. Their mother is a rich old lady, Doña Marissa (Mary Walter), although nobody knew about this.

Doña Marissa does not like the idea of seeing her daughter’s heart cut out but she isn’t given much choice. Dr Marco is not easy to defy.

Charito has a boyfriend and he is determined to protect her from the vampires who have been active in the district. The old priest is also determined to stop the vampires.

The police are sympathetic but there’s no evidence against Dr Marco.

Dr Marco has a sexy female vampire assistant, Tanya (Celia Rodriguez). He has mind control powers as well, 

The first striking thing about this movie is that it continually switches between colour and black-and-white, but tinted black-and-white. When the vampires are active everything gets tinted red. At other times a blue tint is used.

This is obviously a deliberate strategy to emphasis that there are different worlds co-existing. There’s the world of the living and the world of the dead, the world of vampires and the world of non-vampires, the world of good and the world of evil. This is also a very Roman Catholic movie so there’s also the world of the Church and the world of Satan.

And de Leon is not afraid to go all out with the gothic trappings. There’s a lot of fog!

What makes it really interesting however is that these are complex vampires. Dr Marco is scary and evil but his love for Katrina is sincere and overwhelming. He will defy heaven and hell to save her. There is a touch of that “love never dies” angle that Coppola would later push even further in his 1992 Dracula. We cannot help admiring Dr Marco’s resolute determination to save the woman he loves and we cannot help seeing him as, at least to some degree, a tragic figure.

Doña Marissa is complicated also - a mother who can only save one of her two daughters.

And Tanya is more than just a sexy lady vampire sidekick. She obviously loves Dr Marco but is so devoted to him that she will help him to save Katrina even though Katrina is clearly her rival.

And there’s a tantalising hint that redemption may be possible, even for vampires. Unlikely, but possible.

Ronald Remy as Dr Marco is one of the great screen vampires. This guy projects immense amounts of masculine eroticism and he has so much charisma that he makes Christopher Lee look a bit on the bland side.

Mary Walter as Doña Marissa is both creepy and ambiguous. Amalia Fuentes manages to be both sweet and glamorous. The acting from the supporting players is overall pretty good.

The Blood Drinkers is both visually and thematically unusual and interesting and it’s a rather good vampire movie with a nice overheated tropical vibe. Highly recommended.

Severin have released The Blood Drinkers on both DVD and Blu-Ray. There are some extras including an audio commentary.

Castle of Blood (1964)

When considering Barbara Steele’s career in Italian gothic horror movies it’s easy to focus too much on Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. It’s a brilliant movie but she made at least three others that are just as good - Camillo Mastrocinque’s An Angel for Satan (1966) and the two she made for Antonio Margheriti - The Long Hair of Death (1964) and Castle of Blood (1964). It’s Castle of Blood (the original Italian title was La Danza Macabra) that concerns us for the moment.

Castle of Blood opens with Edgar Allan Poe sitting in a pub in London trying to convince his friend, reporter Alan Foster (Georges Rivière), that his stories of the macabre are not fiction but account of true events. OK, so I don’t know how on earth Edgar Allan Poe could have come to be sitting in an English pub but after the huge success of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe movies if you wanted to sell a gothic horror movie in the U.S. market you had to give it a Poe connection.

Also present in the pub is Lord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho) who happens to own a haunted castle. It has lain empty and untenanted for years. Blackwood challenges Foster to a wager. All Foster has to do is to spend one night in the castle.

Blackwood warns him that many have accepted this challenge and not one has survived to tell the tale.

Foster figures this will be easy money. Once he enters the castle Margheriti (quite correctly) starts to lay on the gothic trappings very thick indeed. Cobwebs, mysterious creakings, portraits that seem to be looking back at the viewer, doors opening and shutting for no reason. Foster is a sceptic and a rationalist and a man of science. He is not worried.

Then he meets Lord Thomas Blackwood’s relative Elisabeth Blackwood (Barbara Steele). This is odd. The castle has been completely empty for years. Even the servants are long gone. Foster is puzzled but when you find yourself sharing a castle with a smokin’ hot gothic babe who gives every indication that she is in the mood for love you can be forgiven for not sitting down and thinking about what’s going on.

Then Julia (Margarete Robsahm) shows up. She’s blonde but just as hot as Elisabeth but there’s some real tension between the two women. We will later find out that Julia wants something from Elisabeth that Elisabeth is not prepared to give her. Elisabeth very definitely prefers men.

And it’s soon obvious that the castle has numerous inhabitants. And it’s obvious to the viewer that there is something unnatural, or supernatural, going on. Are these people really alive? Are they really there? Foster doesn’t want to consider a supernatural explanation because he is still a determined sceptic, and he doesn’t want to think there’s anything unnatural about Elisabeth because he’s fallen madly in love with her. And they’ve had hot steamy sex. So he is sure she cannot be a ghost.

While we know that the supernatural really is at work are these people ghosts in the conventional sense? They have one or two unusual non-ghosty habits which I won’t say more about because it might involve a spoiler. But if they are ghosts they are oddly corporeal ghosts. Foster really does have sex with Elisabeth. It’s not quite a straightforward ghost story - it’s something much more interesting.

Margheriti directs with a great deal of assurance. He was in fact a master of the gothic horror genre, for which he doesn’t always get enough credit.

The atmosphere isn’t just creepy it’s also mysterious and puzzling.

Barbara Steele is at the top of her game and this is one of her sexiest performances. Georges Rivière is excellent, managing to be bewildered without seeming to be a fool.

It’s a great looking movie. In 1971 Margheriti remade this movie in colour as Web of the Spider (1971). He later admitted that it worked much better in black-and-white but Web of the Spider is by no means a total failure.

Castle of Blood/La Danza Macabra is a masterpiece of moody atmospheric gothic horror. Very highly recommended.

This movie is part of Severin’s Danza Macabra vol 2 boxed set. We get the rather heavily edited US cut of this film, with the title Castle of Blood, but more importantly we get the original Italian cut, La Danza Macabra (with English subtitles and an English-dubbed option) , which includes important scenes that were cut from the US version. There are lots of extras, the highlight being a lengthy video essay by Stephen Thrower but we also get to hear Barbara’s Steele’s reminiscences of the movie. She has very fond memories of working with Antonio Margheriti (she says that the three directors she most enjoyed working with were Margheriti, Mario Bava and Roger Corman).

Mr Peters’ Pets (1962)

Mr Peters’ Pets is a 1962 nudie-cutie and perhaps an explanation of this genre would be in order.

It started with a 1954 court case involving the nudist camp movie Garden of Eden. In Excelsior Pictures vs. New York Board of Regents the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that nudity was not obscene, as such. That made movies (such as nudist camp movies) depicting nudity legal. Sort of. You still had to tread carefully and go to extravagant lengths to avoid even the slightest hint of sex.

It soon became apparent that nudist camp movies were a dead end. One can only take so much nude volleyball. It was Russ Meyer who came up with the solution in 1959 when, with The Immoral Mr Teas, he invented the nudie-cutie. He realised that there were three key ingredients. Firstly, there had to be a plot gimmick to justify lots of non-sexualised female nudity. It didn’t matter if the plot device was silly. In fact that was a plus. But it had to be silly in a cute endearing way. Meyer came up with the idea of a guy who goes to the dentist and his optic nerve gets damaged. As a result he now has X-Ray Vision, but he can only see through women’s clothes.

Secondly, there have to be lots of gags. They can be mildly risqué but must not be crude. The tone has to suggest lightweight innocent fun. Meyer could come up with the right gags.

Thirdly, the girls had to be beautiful, and they had to be beautifully shot. In 1959 (and up until around 1967) you could only get way with T&A so the idea was to have plenty of it.

The Immoral Mr Teas has all those ingredient combined to perfection. Most subsequent nudie-cuties fell down to some degree in at least one of these areas.

Mr Peters’ Pets has a suitably silly cute plot device. A pet shop owner, Mr Peters, gets hold of a formula that allows him to take on the appearance of an animal for a short period. He can then provide cute animals as adorable companions for pretty girls, and the girls won’t be shy about undressing in front of kittens or puppies, not knowing that they’re undressing in front of the lecherous pet shop proprietor. As I say, it’s silly, but it has a certain charm and it works.

This movie falls down a bit in the second area. The gags are rather feeble, and since the film was shot without synchronised sound we get a never-ending voiceover narration which just isn’t funny enough.

In the third vital area Mr Peter’s Pets scores very highly. These girls are stunners. And there’s an immense quantity of T&A on display.

And it has another major asset. The movie is a series of vignettes as Mr Peters assumes different animal identities. The first vignette is straightforward, just a pretty blonde taking a bath while being watched Mr Peters in the guise of a kitten. But the later vignettes have a bizarre surreal quantity. A girl enjoys a day at the beach but she has with her a beach umbrella, a fishing rod and a fish bowl. She seems to be fishing for a goldfish to put in her fish bowl. And then she wants to play with the fish bowl.

The segment with the three babes having an artistic day out takes on a slightly manic quality as well.

This is an important nudie-cutie ingredient I neglected to mention earlier - a crazy oddball vibe which Mr Peters’ Pets certainly has.

The Something Weird/Kino Cult Blu-Ray provides a pretty solid transfer for Mr Peters’ Pets, plus an audio commentary and two other nudie-cuties.

Peter Perry Jr directed some of the very best of the nudie-cuties. Kiss Me Quick! (1964) is an engaging mixture of monster movie, science fiction and nudie-cutie and it features go-go dancing. The Joys of Jezebel (1970) is a nudie movie set in Hell with some wild 60s visuals. My Tale Is Hot (1964) is another nudie-cutie with devilish overtones. He also directed The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966) for David F. Friedman and that one stars the amazing Stacey Walker. She’s more than enough reason to see that film.

But perhaps the most interesting of the movies directed by Peter Perry Jr is Revenge of the Virgins (1959), a crazy nudie western with a screenplay be Ed Wood Jr.

Peter Perry Jr really does have claims to being the grandmaster of the nudie-cutie genre. I found Mr Peters’ Pets to be oddly endearing. If, like me, you have a soft spot for this much-disparaged genre then Mr Peters’ Pets is recommended.

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.

The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals (1969)

The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals is a very low-budget 1969 horror flick made by an outfit called Vega International. This company had a brief and very chaotic history and it appears that some of the half dozen or so movies they planned to make were never completed, or simply ended up being lost. The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals seems not to have had much, if anything, of a proper release and was pretty much unknown until it turned up on VHS in the 80s.

Egyptologist Dave Barrie (Anthony Eisley) steals two Ninth Dynasty Egyptian mummies after the plane carrying them to a museum crashes near Las Vegas. One is the mummy of the Princess Akana. The other is the mummy of some high priest dude who had been her lover.

Akana is perfectly preserved. Dave is immediately fascinated by her. He had already come up with a theory that she could be revived after being dead (or apparently dead) for several thousand years.

It turns out he was right and she does indeed revive. He naturally falls in love with her but the bad news is that he is now the victim of a curse. He has become a jackal-man, a werejackal.

He runs amok, kills a couple of cops, then returns to his extraordinarily dilapidated house and goes to sleep. He wakes up with no knowledge of his nocturnal rampage.

Meanwhile the other mummy has revived as well and he is determined to destroy Dave, seeing him as a rival to Akana’s love. Their ongoing battle provides most of the movie’s action.

Dave takes Akana out on the town, along with his friends Bob and Donna. Akana likes 1960s Vegas.

Dave has more werejackal episodes and that other mummy is causing mayhem as well. Fortunately people in Vegas are sophisticated enough not to be overly disturbed by rampaging mummies and werejackals roaming the streets.

A movie like this wouldn’t be complete without John Carradine who plays a professor who is a bit worried about what Dave is up to.

The plot obviously borrows heavily from other mummy movies but I can’t recall another movie with a werejackal.

In low-budget movies that rely on iffy makeup effects it’s usually a good idea not to let the audience see too much of the monsters until it’s unavoidable. But in this movie we see lots of both monsters. The werejackal prosthetic head is actually not that bad.

The acting is mostly dull. Anthony Eisley isn’t going to convince anyone that he’s an Egyptologist. Marliza Pons as Princess Akana is a problem. Apart from not being able to act she does does not have the necessary glamour or allure.

On the plus side the pacing isn’t too bad (pacing is where very low budget movie so often fall down).

The fact that the story is crazy is no great problem. A great gothic horror movie doesn’t need a dazzling plot. What it needs is a suitably spooky or creepy atmosphere and a sense of dread - a sense that something is happening that just isn’t possible. These are the things that this movie fails to pull off.

A gothic horror movie set in Vegas is however a cool idea.

It’s all very silly and to be honest it’s a very bad movie but if you’re in the right mood you’ll get some fun out of it.

Severin have released The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals on Blu-Ray. The transfer is acceptable given that this movie probably never looked stunning to begin with. The disc comes with a stack of extras plus a bonus film, another Vega International production - Angelica, the Young Vixen.