The Sentinel (1977)

The Sentinel is a 1977 supernatural horror/occult thriller movie written and directed by Michael Winner. Or at least it might be supernatural horror, or it might not be.

I’m going to lay my cards on the table right at the start. I don’t care what anyone says I like Michael Winner as a director.

We start with a bunch of Catholic priests in Italy and they seem to be very concerned not just about evil in general but about some specific manifestation of evil.

Then the scene shifts to New York. Alison Parker (Cristina Raines) is a successful model. Her lawyer boyfriend Michael (Chris Sarandon) wants to marry her. They’ve been living together for two years. Alison says she needs space. She wants her own apartment.

She is troubled by a bizarre childhood memory. It involves her father, and possibly satanic influences.

She finds a nice apartment. Maybe she should have been suspicious when she found out that such a nice apartment was available for such a low rental but the real estate agent, Miss Logan (Ava Gardner), seems very reassuring.

Some of her new neighbours are a bit odd. Charles Chazen (Burgess Meredith) is a crazy old guy who lives with his cat and his parakeet but he’s very sweet and very friendly.

The two lesbians are more worrying. And the twins. Even fact all of the neighbours are worrying in various ways.

The noises from upstairs are disturbing.

Alison really starts to worry after she asks Miss Logan about the neighbours.

We might wonder a bit about that disturbing childhood memory. Is it a real memory? Could it be a false memory? Or just a dream? Or even a demonically inspired dream? Or is she remembering things that she misinterpreted at the time?

This is a “supernatural evil in the modern world” movie. But this is one of those movies that may or may not be actually about supernatural horror. Everything we see could have non-supernatural explanations. Somebody could be gaslighting Alison. Or Alison may in fact be crazy. That’s a possibility that will occur to us, and it occurs to Alison as well.

Alison goes to investigate those noises upstairs and she thinks she kills an old man. It might be her father. But her father died several weeks earlier. And the only blood the police find is Alison’s blood.

Detective Gatz (Eli Wallach) is worried by several things, principally by a case a few years earlier. A case that could have a link to these recent events.

Winner cleverly keeps things mysterious. He offers us nothing substantial that would back any of the theories we might have come up with to explain what is going on. He slowly builds an atmosphere of menace and paranoia but keeps it vague, which of course makes it all the more unsettling.

Alison is a really nice girl. She might be a really nice sane girl, or a really mad girl. Other characters are ambiguous as well.

And there’s still that niggling suspicion that supernatural evil might be at work.

I’m being deliberately very vague because I think this is a movie you’ll appreciate a lot more if you go into it not knowing what kind of movie it’s going to turn out to be.

Burgess Meredith gives the most memorable performance but all the cast members are fine. John Carradine is quite something as well. Cristina Raines and Chris Sarandon are effectively ambiguous. Look out for Christopher Walken and Jeff Goldblum in small roles.

The unease mounts remorselessly. The ending really is worth the wait. This is a movie that delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Universal Blu-Ray is barebones but looks good.

The Monk (1972)

The Monk is a movie I’ve been searching for for quite a while. I was delighted to find it on DVD. Not the greatest transfer perhaps but it is in the correct aspect ratio at least. This is a movie that definitely needs a full restoration and a Blu-Ray release. It was a Franco-Italian-German co-production shot in English.

It’s based on Matthew Gregory Lewis’s 1796 gothic novel of the same name. This is one of the most notorious most outrageous novels of all time. If you’re telling yourself that a novel written in 1796 couldn’t possibly still be shocking today then think again. The Monk still packs a punch.

It’s necessary to keep in mind that anti-Catholic bigotry was a major strain in English culture (both high culture and pop culture) from the 16th century right through to the 20th century. Anti-Catholicism was a common theme in the first wave of gothic fiction which lasted from 1764 up to around 1820. It found its most spectacular flowering in Lewis’s The Monk.

The gothic fiction of that early period invariably has hints of the supernatural but it almost always turns out that nothing was actually involved. The Monk is unusual in that it has overt and explicit supernatural elements.

This movie certainly has some horror an exploitation elements but it has some definite art-house credentials as well. The script was co-written by Luis Buñuel no less (with Jean-Claude Carrière).

In fact Buñuel had been hoping to film the novel since the 1950s.

For various reasons Buñuel lost interest in directing and the assignment was given to Greek director Ado Kyrou. The script by Buñuel and Carrière was retained.

The setting is presumably Spain, probably in the 17th century. Ambrosio (Franco Nero) is a monk renowned for his piety and wisdom, and especially for his passionate belief in the vital importance of chastity. Ambrosio is admired by all.

He is becoming a little worried about Brother John. Brother John is in fact a gorgeous young woman, Mathilde (Nathalie Delon), masquerading as a man. We will later discover that her motives are less than innocent. Even wearing a cowl nobody could possibly mistake Mathilde for a man. This might of course be a deliberate touch, perhaps an attempt to capture the somewhat outlandish feel of the early gothic novels with unlikely coincidences and implausible disguises.

Mathilde has no trouble seducing Ambrosio. He is wracked by guilt but he can’t give her up.

Mathilde has clearly awakened Ambrosio’s interest in women. He becomes obsessed with a young girl, Antonia. Antoni’s mother is very ill. Ambrosio offers her spiritual comfort but he’d like to offer Antonia comfort of a more carnal nature. By this time Ambrosio has surrendered to the pleasures of the flesh but with the added spice of lots and lots of guilt.

Mathilde tells the wretched monk that there is a way he can have Antonia. Mathilde has commerce with demons. She can summon a demon who will deliver Antonia into his hands. Ambrosio is horrified but his lusts have now taken control of him.

The wealthy and debauched and incredibly wicked Duke of Talamur (Nicol Williamson) also has an interest in Antonia. The Duke is a noted philanthropist. He is always looking for ways to help the unfortunate, especially if the unfortunate happen to be very young girls.

Needless to say these wicked goings-on attract the attention of the Inquisition. It seems that nothing can save Ambrosio.

The cast is fine. Franco Nero did this sort of thing well. On the subject of the blending of art and exploitation in this movie it’s worth noting that is star, Franco Nero, was an actor who shuttled happily back and forth between art movies and exploitation movies and popular commercial movies. Nathalie Delon as Mathilde is suitably wicked. Nicol Williamson oozes corruption and evil and uber-creepiness from every pore.

This movie really needed Buñuel at the helm. Ado Kyrou clearly has no feel for the material. The sleaze and trashiness is there in the source material and the movie doesn’t back away from admitting that shocking things are going on but the style is dull and too arty. With Buñuel unavailable it might perhaps have been better to pick a director with more of an exploitation movie sensibility. It would have been interesting to see Jess Franco let loose on this material. Alice Arno as Mathilde could have been awesome.

This movie came out the same year as Ken Russell’s The Devils. That’s the kind of approach The Monk needed. The Monk definitely needed some visual flamboyance and outrageousness.

The ending is cringe. The Monk just doesn’t make it. The 70s was the time when a great adaptation of the novel could have been made but this film represents a misfire and a lost opportunity.

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.

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.

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

You’re making a Frankenstein movie in 1971 but you want to add something different, to make your film look less like a rip-off of Hammer’s Frankenstein movies. So what do you do? You give Baron Frankenstein a beautiful sexy daughter who is also a mad scientist. And you make her the focus of the story. That’s the basis for Lady Frankenstein.

Of course you’ll need the right actress. How about Rosalba Neri? She’s sexy, glamorous, classy, she can act and she has the ability to be equally convincing as a heroine or a villainess. She turned out to be an inspired choice.

Joseph Cotten gets top billing but he actually has only a supporting role. This is totally a star vehicle for Rosalba Neri. She has to carry the film. And she does so with ease.

The setting is supposed to be England but it looks more like the Central Europe of Hammer’s gothic horror movies. In fact the whole visual style of this movie owes quite a lot to Hammer.

Lady Frankenstein adds some sleaze and some hints of sexual perversity. That was very much the trend in European horror at the time and Hammer were moving, a bit tentatively, in that direction. Lady Frankenstein goes a bit further than Hammer would dare to go.

Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten) and his assistant Dr Charles Marshall (Paul Muller) are on the verge of the final successful breakthrough in their attempts to create a living man out of dead tissue.

The problem is that the brain they are using comes from a hanged murderer and this brain has a few malfunctions. They create a man-monster and bring him to life but they can’t control him and Baron Frankenstein pays the price for his error of judgment.

In the 1931 Frankenstein there is of course a famous scene involving the monster, a child and a pond. In Lady Frankenstein this scene is a little different - the monster hurls a naked young woman into a lake, having surprised her having sex on the lakeshore with her young man. This is the monster’s first killing but there will be plenty more.

Baron Frankenstein’s daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri) vows to continue her father’s work, which Dr Marshall’s assistance. This is where the movie gets interesting. Tania Frankenstein is not a mere simplistic evil mad scientist. She has a number of simultaneous motivations. Ambition is one motivation but she is also driven by both lust and love. Tania has a woman’s emotional needs and a woman’s physical needs. Dr Marshall can satisfy the former and she is attracted by his mind but his weedy middle-ged body does not set her pulses racing. Maybe Tommy, her servant, can satisfy her sexual needs? He has a strong masculine body. Unfortunately he is a halfwit. Tania needs a man with both an exciting mind and an exciting body. If only the dumb-as-a-rock but hunky Tommy had Dr Marshall’s brain!

It’s always difficult to judge acting performances when they’re dubbed, but Rosalba Neri smoulders when she needs to smoulder and she’s convincingly depraved. Joseph Cotten is very good - he did quite a few exploitation movies in Italy around this time but in this instance at least he is not just phoning it in.

Mel Welles directs. He doesn’t have much of a reputation as a director but here he is at least competent. It’s visually reasonably impressive with a fairly cool mad scientist’s laboratory (which was re-used in several other movies) and manages not to look cheap.

The big problem is the very lame monster. It’s not a fatal flaw because the focus is very much on Tania Frankenstein and her romantic and erotic entanglements that lead her to become a fully-fledged evil mad scientist. But the monster is seriously lame.

Lady Frankenstein doesn’t push things very far on the gore front. There is however a fair bit of nudity and sex. The movie’s selling point was clearly going to be the sexy lady mad scientist.

The movie was shot in Italy and partly financed by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. The version released in the States was cut, apparently not so much to remove sex and violence as to get the running time down to the length Corman wanted. With the cut scenes restored the plot makes a lot more sense and the motivations of the characters are a lot clearer.

Lady Frankenstein isn’t one of the gothic horror greats but it offers plenty of enjoyment. Highly recommended.

This movie is included in Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume 1 Blu-Ray boxed set and it gets a lovely transfer. There’s an audio commentary by Alan Jones and Kim Newman which, as you would expect from those two, is both illuminating and entertaining. And there’s a second audio commentary and other extras as well.

The Werewolf and the Yeti (1975)

The Werewolf and the Yeti (La maldición de la bestia) is a 1975 Spanish horror film directed by Miguel Iglesias and starring Paul Naschy and it’s one of the long series of films in which he appeared playing the tragic tortured werewolf Count Waldemar Daninsky. This movie was also released in English-speaking markets as The Curse of the Beast, Hall of the Mountain King and Night of the Howling Beast. Naschy as usual wrote the screenplay.

Waldemar Daninsky is now an anthropologist and he’s part of an expedition, led by Professor Lacombe (Josep Castillo Escalona), to the Himalayas to find the Yeti, the fabled Abominable Snowman. You have to admit that’s a setup that is very promising.

All the passes have been closed by bad weather. All except one. There is a man who knows of a pass open all the year round. The guy is unfortunately not entirely sane. He is haunted by nightmares of the Demons of the Blue Moon. They scare him more than the Yeti. He is however persuaded to act as guide.

The expedition sets off, with half a dozen or so men and two young women plus the guide and a team of sherpas. You’ll be amused to hear that one of the expedition members is named Larry Talbot.

Daninsky and the guide decide to scout out the pass on their own. They are soon lost and Daninsky finds himself alone.

That’s when he finds the cave. There’s some kind of shrine. And two gorgeous babes. The girls are very friendly. Daninsky has a most enjoyable roll in the hay with the girls but then things get weird and scary.

At this point it becomes obvious that the entire Daninsky backstory from the previous films has been scrapped. This is in fact a radical reboot of the franchise, with a brand-new origin story for Waldemar Daninsky the werewolf. It all starts for him in that cave, with those two scary chicks. Scary chicks with sharp teeth.

The expedition is attacked by bandits. There’s an evil warlord named Sekkar Khan (Luis Induni) to whom the bandits seem to be answerable.

More scarily there’s Wandesa (Silvia Solar). She is beautiful, sadistic evil and lustful. She has a dungeon full of babes and her plans for these girls are decidedly unpleasant.

Sekkar Khan is suffering from some horrible disease. Wandesa is trying to cure him. He thinks Professor Lacombe might be able to cure him. That enrages Wandesa. Her power rests on Sekkar Khan’s belief that she is his only hope.

Daninsky is now a werewolf. Professor Lacombe and the two girl members of the expedition are in Sekkar Khan’s hands. Then Daninsky falls into the hands of the arch-villain as well. Of course it isn’t particularly easy to hold a werewolf captive. Despite the wholly new origin story this is still recognisably Waldemar Daninsky - a brave honourable man cursed by a terrible affliction.

The bad news is that this is not really a yeti movie, although a yeti does put it a brief appearance. This is a werewolf movie. The good news is that it’s a very cool werewolf movie.

It also incorporates hints of other genres - women-in-prison movies, lost civilisation stores and mad scientist movies.

There’s plenty of mayhem and a fair bit of nudity. Exploitation movie fans will not be disappointed by this movie.

Naschy’s script is very good. There’s lots going on in this film. There’s that sense of tragedy about Daninsky, there are thrills and chills. And there’s a love story.

There’s a fine arch-villain and a memorable sexy sinister cruel villainess.

It was obviously made on a very modest budget but it looks quite impressive. The transformation scenes are amazingly well done.

The Werewolf and the Yeti is an interesting werewolf movie with some offbeat touches but enough conventional werewolf stuff to keep werewolf fans happy. Later in his career he made another excellent unconventional werewolf movie, The Beast and the Magic Sword (1983).

An under-appreciated Naschy movie. Highly recommended.

This movie is included in Shout! Factor’s Paul Naschy Collection II Blu-Ray set. The transfer is in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The transfer looks very nice.

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (1974)

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (AKA Beyond Erotica AKA Lola) is a Spanish-Venezuelan co-production and it’s crazy twisted eurosleaze. This is definitely not a giallo. It’s not supernatural horror but I would still class it as gothic horror.

Juan’s family owns a sugar plantation in Venezuela. To say that Juan (David Hemmings) is odd would be putting it mildly. He lives there with his mother (played by Alida Valli). She is every bit as crazy as he is, but in a different way. The plantation has been slowly going broke since the death of Juan’s father. Now they’re reliant on financial support from Juan’s uncle. The uncle despises Juan’s mother but he despises Juan even more. He is concerned that Juan may be not just useless but dangerously crazy.

We already know Juan is crazy after the opening scene in which he watches a pretty young woman named Lucia mauled to death by his dogs. Lucia had been the maid. Now she will have to be replaced. Lola (Andrea Rau) is the lucky girl.

Lola isn’t completely stupid or completely innocent. A man trying to get into her pants is something she can deal with. She is probably no naïve virgin. Her problem is that she has no idea at first that Juan is playing a much crazier game than that.

She is also over-confident.

Juan is not primarily motivated by sex but I don’t think he’s motivated by power either. He seems to be a man still stuck in his childhood, playing games of make-believe. The games do not seem to have a specific objective. The game is an end in itself. When he’s playing his games he can forget that the estate is failing and that he has contributed to the decline through his incompetence and childishness. He can feel that he is in control of his life, when in reality his life has been spiralling more and more out of control.

Lola does not want to play the game, but she ends up doing so. She even learns to enjoy doing so. Perhaps, even in a perverse way, it makes her feel more in control. On the surface she might be the submissive partner but in fact she has the real power. She starts to realise that she can end up calling the shots. She might now be a better game-player than Juan.

Juan’s uncle arrives. His aim is to sort things out and if Juan really does prove to be insane he intends to pull the financial plug on Juan and his mother. Juan is outmatched by his uncle but the uncle is outmatched by Lola.

Lola has something that gives her the whip hand over both men - the sexual power of women. She can make them dance to her tune. But if power always corrupts it corrupts Lola as well.

There’s some powerhouse acting here. David Hemmings is superb. He’s incredibly creepy and scary and evil but Hemmings also makes us realise that Juan is more of a deranged child than anything else. He makes the character chillingly believable.

Andrea Rau (from Daughters of Darkness) is equally good as Lola, a young woman who finds herself both repelled and fascinated by Juan. She is drawn into the game, and develops a bit of a taste for sexual kinkiness.

The bizarre relationship between Juan and Lola is something you probably wouldn’t get away with today. It would almost certainly be seen as dated and offensive and problematic, but in the 70s it was assumed that audiences for grown-up movies were in fact grown-ups and could deal with subject matter that was a bit confronting. One Spanish critic at the time compared this film to The Night Porter, and there is a certain affinity between the two films.

Alida Valli is excellent as well. The mother is possibly more evil than Juan since she has more awareness of the evil she is covering up.

It would be tempting to see this as yet another film attacking the decadence of the bourgeoisie but that’s a tedious and simplistic interpretation. This movie is more in the gothic mould of Poe - a story of familial decay and degeneracy. The flashbacks scattered throughout the story suggest that the decay and degeneracy were already well and truly evident in Juan’s father’s day. The decay and degeneracy are now blossoming in a truly unhealthy way.

I’m always dubious about attempts to over-explain character motivations by relating them to traumas in the past. That can lead so easily to half-baked Freudianism. This movie seems like it’s going to succumb to that temptation but it doesn’t really. The flashbacks just let us know that things have been getting crazy in this family for a very long time.

This is a very unwholesome family and their evil infects everybody with whom they come in contact. We know just enough about Lucia to assume that she had been drawn into Juan’s twisted games. Lola is certainly drawn into those games.

The men and women are equally twisted. To try to see this movie in feminist terms is to miss the point. Every member of the family and everybody who comes in contact with them is tainted by madness. Whether they’re male or female is irrelevant.

There’s a moderate amount of sex and nudity. There’s lots of kinkiness.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks terrific and there are plenty of extras.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978)

Kim Ki-young’s Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (also known as Killer Butterfly and several other titles) is a 1978 Korean horror movie. Although whether it’s really a horror movie can be debated. It’s certainly an exercise in weirdness.

At a picnic a young woman offers a young man named Young-gul an orange juice. She then tells him the orange juice was poisoned and that they will both die. Young-gul survives.

He then tries to kill himself. He is obsessed with death.

A strange old man turns up in Young-gul’s seedy apartment and tries to sell Young-gul a book on the will. The old guy claims that he cannot die. When it’s put to the test it appears that the old guy might be right, in a way.

Young-gul gets a job with an archaeologist who collects skulls. He is trying to prove that Korans are descended from Genghis Khan’s Mongols. Young-gul finds a 2,000-year-old skeleton for him.

This is when Young-gul encounters the ghost. In Chinese and Japanese folklore ghosts are corporeal. They can even have sex. They can also fall in love. On the evidence of this movie that is true of Korean folklore as well. The ghost is a very attractive young woman. She wants to have sex with Young-gul. She wants his love. She also wants to eat his liver. Young-gul doesn’t know much about women. He wonders if all girls are like this.

Later Young-gul gets mixed up with the archaeologist’s daughter. She is obsessed with death as well. She is a virgin. The archaeologist offers to pay Young-gul to pop her cherry.

There’s also a cop investigating the headless corpse mystery. And strange masked guys stealing corpses.

There’s still more weirdness to come. And butterflies are important.

I have to confess that this is my first Korean movie and I also know nothing of Korean culture so I may be missing some cultural nuances in this movie. It’s not always easy to understand the humour of other cultures. It’s possible that quite a few scenes in this movie were being played for laughs. Or the movie might just be very crazy. It is very crazy, but maybe it’s supposed to be crazy in a funny way.

There are plenty of horror movie elements here but this does not feel like a horror movie. It feels like an art-house movie or an experimental film.

It’s a depressing movie obsessed with death. Maybe it’s supposed to be about the triumph of death over life, or the triumph of life over death.

I like weird movies but I did not find watching this movie to be an enjoyable experience.

It is however undeniably very very strange and morbidly fascinating. They don’t make movies like this any more. In fact sane people never did make movies like this.

This was a very low-budget movie. The special effects are laughably bad. I don’t mind bad special effects if they’re done in a fun way but in this case they’re just very very bad. It includes the worst skeletal transformation scene I have ever seen in a movie.

I have no idea what the director was trying to achieve in terms of tone. Despite all the weird goings-on it doesn’t really achieve an effectively creepy atmosphere but maybe Kim Ki-young was just aiming for morbid artiness.

It’s a movie that should tick all my boxes (I generally like arty horror) but somehow it just never grabs my interest. I don’t think I could honestly recommend it but it might just be a case of a movie that doesn’t work for me but might work for others so I’m hesitant to advise people to avoid it. It sure is weird.

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death is available on Blu-Ray from Mondo Macabro.

Bluebeard (1944)

Bluebeard is a 1944 PRC release directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and starring John Carradine. It combines melodrama and horror in a characteristically Ulmer way and it’s also interesting as being a serial killer movie which was fairly rare at the time.

Ulmer wrote the original story. It is of course inspired partly by the fairy tale but also by a real-life serial killer who was executed in France in 1922.

The movie clearly takes place in the 19th century and during the Third Republic so it has to be the late 19th century.

Gaston Morel (John Carradine) is a talented painter who has given up painting to concentrate on his marionette theatre. We know right from the start that Morel is a killer (in fact he’s the notorious murderer who has been dubbed Bluebeard). He has killed more than once.

We later find out that his killings are connected with his paintings and that he wants to stop painting so that he can stop killing.

He meets a pretty young seamstress named Lucille (Jean Parker). There’s an immediate attraction between the two of them. Morel is anxious to avoid painting her because he has no desire to kill her. She is not like those other women. She is a woman worth loving.

Inspector Jacques Lefevre (Nils Asther) is investigating the murders. Assisting him is Francine (Teala Loring) who just happens to be Lucille’s sister. Francine works for the Sûreté. She’s a kind of undercover cop. Neither sister is aware that they are both going to be involved in very different ways with the Bluebeard killer.

He is tempted to paint one of the sisters. He knows it’s a bad idea but he needs money and he’s been offered a very generous fee by art dealer Jean Lamarte (Ludwig Stössel). Lamarte is a less than ethical art dealer and he knows Morel’s secret.

The inspector and Francine have a plan to trap Bluebeard but it’s a very risky plan and Morel is a smart guy, and very cautious.

Gaston Morel is a tortured soul. He is driven to kill against his will. It’s a kind of madness that comes over him. It has to do with a woman in his past, and a painting. Morel is perhaps over-sensitive with an artistic but unstable personality. John Carradine gives his career-best performance and imbues Morel with a strange tragic dignity. Morel is doomed but although in his rational phases he tries to escape that doom he cannot escape his periodic bouts of madness. Carradine had been Shakespearian actor and he plays Morel as a Shakespearian tragic hero. It’s also notable that at no point in this film does Carradine overact. It’s a superbly controlled performance.

Jean Parker is very good. In fact the whole cast is good, and the performances are better than you might expect in a movie made by PRC, usually considered to be the cheapest and shoddiest of the Poverty Row studios.

It’s common to assume that all PRC productions were made on ludicrously low budgets. This has been considerably exaggerated and Bluebeard was not the ultra-cheap production it’s often assumed to have been. It cost $167,000 and the shoot took 19 days.

There’s some fine very moody cinematography courtesy of Eugen Schüfftan (who was the cinematographer but had to remain uncredited due to problems with the union). There are some definite hints of German Expressionism in the flashback sequences. There’s one particularly fine shot with shadows and puppets.

The script ran into some problems with the Production Code Authority. Joe Breen wanted some changes made. Ulmer agreed but when he shot the movie he largely ignored Breen’s objections and most of the material he had agreed to remove is still there in the final film.

Despite his rocky career path Ulmer managed to make some very fine movies and Bluebeard is one of his best. And there’s Carradine’s magnificent performance. Highly recommended.

Kino Lorber have released this movie on Blu-Ray and it certainly looks better than it has ever looked before. It is now possible to appreciate to the full the fine cinematography and art direction. We can now see that this was really quite a classy production.

I’ve reviewed lots of Ulmer’s movies including Ruthless (1948), the very underrated The Strange Woman (1946) and his most acclaimed movie, Detour (1945).

There have of course been quite a few movies inspired by the Bluebeard fairy tale, one of my favourites being Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door… (1948).

The Exorcist III (1990)

Exorcist III is the third movie in the series and the story behind the movie is more complicated than the movie.

Willian Peter Blatty, author of the original 1971 novel The Exorcist and screenwriter of the original 1973 The Exorcist movie, wrote a screenplay for a third movie. The production company, Morgan Creek, wanted changes. Eventually a screenplay more or less acceptable to both parties took shape but with a major dispute regarding the ending. Several directors were considered before Blatty decided to direct the movie himself.

After a less than successful preview Morgan Creek ordered extensive reshoots including an exorcism scene. Blatty reluctantly did the reshoots. Blatty remained very unhappy about the exorcism scene. He saw the movie as a story linked to the original story, but not an exorcism movie.

Blatty turned the original version into a very successful novel, Legion. He had always wanted Legion as the title of the movie rather than Exorcist III.

Years later Blatty’s original cut was restored (with the title Legion) using VHS footage in Blatty’s personal possession. Both the Shout! Factory and Arrow Blu-Rays include this Legion “director’s cut” as an extra so it’s possible to see the movie Blatty had wanted to make, which differs in a number of ways from the Exorcist III theatrical cut.

Lieutenant Kinderman (George C. Scott) is investigating a series of horrific murders that remind him eerily of the Gemini Killer murders, but the Gemini Killer is dead. Kinderman expresses his fears to his old buddy Father Dyer (Ed Flanders).

Much of the film takes place in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. A man known only as Patient X claims to be the Gemini Killer.

What is actually going on remains mysterious until the ending, and perhaps even after that. Patient X cannot leave his cell. He cannot be carrying out the new murders. Or can he? This is not just a series of copycat killings. Both the killer and Patient X know things about the Gemini killings that the police have never revealed.

Kinderman is a rationalist. He resists the idea that there could be anything supernatural going on here. He knows that there are things happening that are difficult to explain in any other way, but he still resists.

The plot is complicated. It involves several dead people. Not just the Gemini Killer, but also Father Damien Karris. Kinderman knows these people are dead.

It seems to have been Blatty’s intention to tell a story connected to the events in The Exorcist, and involving some of the same people, but that would not be a sequel in the usual sense. Of course his difficulty is that Morgan Creek wanted it to be a sequel in a much more straightforward sense.

There are grisly murders but they take place offscreen. This is a cerebral slow-burn horror film, until the grand guignol ending (which Blatty vehemently did not want). This is very much theological horror. I wouldn’t say that you have to be a Catholic to appreciate this film but you do need at least a vague knowledge of the basics of Catholic theology. There’s a clever well-executed dream sequence but unless you’re aware of the Catholic concept of Purgatory you’ll misunderstand it completely.

This also seems to have caused tensions between Blatty and the execs at Morgan Creeks who wanted more overt horror content.

The most significant and obvious difference Blatty’s version and the theatrical cut is the exorcism scene which is entirely absent from Blatty’s cut. Blatty was correct to feel that that scene was entirely unnecessary and damaged the film. On the other hand one can see Morgan Creek’s point of view - without that scene it’s a very talky film with very little overt horror.

The movie did poorly at the box office but whichever version had been released it would probably have done poorly. It’s an intellectual theological horror film in which the characters endlessly discuss theological questions. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, but it does make it a movie with limited commercial appeal.

Exorcist III/Legion is interesting but I have to say that it didn’t particularly grab me. But then I’m not much of a fan of The Exorcist either. I’m one of those weird crazy people who think Exorcist II: The Heretic is a masterpiece.

Exorcist III looks good on Blu-Ray. When you Blatty’s version Legion you do have to accept that the VHS-sourced inserts are VHS quality but Blatty’s version is still worth watching.