Santo Versus the Martian Invasion (1967)

One of the more glaring gaps in my movie-going career has been that although I’ve seen (and adored) several of the Mexican wrestling women movies, until now I have not seen a single Santo movie. I have now remedied this serious oversight by watching Santo Versus the Martian Invasion (Santo el enmascardo de plata vs la invasión de los marcianos).

This one was made in 1967, and since it’s my first I can’t really say how typical it is of the Mexican masked wrestler superhero genre. What I can say is that it’s enormously entertaining in an outrageously camp way.

The Martians are worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons on Earth, which may one day threaten the survival of the whole solar system. They decide to give us one last chance to abandon our destructive tendencies. Landing in Mexico, they take over the nation’s television transmissions to make their demands - we are to destroy all nuclear weapons and establish peace and universal brotherhood immediately, or they’ll start vaporising people. We’re going to be taught to learn to live in harmony and friendship even if they have to kill us all in order to teach us.

The Martians have technology far in advance of ours so things look fairly grim, but humanity does have one ace up its sleeve - we have Santo, the world’s greatest wrestler. And he’s working closely with Professor Ordorica, an all-round scientific genius, so the Martians are in for a much tougher battle than they anticipated. It’s Professor Ordorica who realises immediately that the Astral Eye used by the Martians to disintegrate people is similar to that used in ancient Atlantis, although tragically this tantalising coincidence is never followed up.

A few encounters with Santo are enough to convince the Martians that they need to capture both Santo and the professor and take them back to Mars - the scientist’s intelligence and Santo’s strength can be used to strengthen their own race. Given that the Martians are supposedly five centuries head of us scientifically it’s not clear why they need this assistance. Their initial attempts to capture Santo also persuade them that brute force may not be enough to subdue the pesky earthlings (again given their incredibly advanced technology including vaporising weapons and belts that allow them to teleport it’s not clear why they decide to rely on brute force in the first place).

Luckily the Martians just happen to look exactly like humans except for their blonde wigs and funny hats (and their cute silver caped costumes). By making use of their Transformation Room they can change themselves into exact replicas of humans, although for some reason this changes their silver spacesuits into costumes that make them look like extras from an Italian sword-and-sandal epic. And even more fortunately their crew just happens to include four beautiful female Martians. They will use their feminine wiles to capture earth people for transportation back to Mars.

Santo meanwhile has a plan of his own. The Martians seem to be strangely addicted to wrestling, so he arranges a wrestling match knowing that the Martians will not be able to resist the challenge of having one of their number fight Santo. This will allow him to get possession of the Martian’s teleportation belt. The fact that the Martians have to take regular pills to avoid asphyxiation by earth’s atmosphere should help. Santo must also find a way to locate the invaders’ spacecraft before it can return to Mars with its human cargo of prisoners. For this purpose the professor has provided him with a tracking device that can detect Martian brain waves.

This movie has everything you could possibly ask for. It has masked wrestlers, a delightfully silly but cute Martian spaceship, aliens in shiny silver spacesuits, beautiful seductive female aliens, lots of wrestling scenes, incredibly lame special effects, an insane plot and outrageous acting. Its camp quotient is right off the scale. It’s wonderfully silly and it’s non-stop fun.

Body Double (1984)

My Brian de Palma obsession is growing by leaps and bounds. I think I liked Body Double even more than Phantom of the Paradise.

Of course de Palma is just one of the countless film-makers who have done Hitchcock-style thrillers. What most of these people miss is Hitchcock’s love of black comedy, and his delight in playing games with the audience. In this respect Body Double arguably captures the authentic flavour of Hitchcock’s movie-making more successfully than almost any other attempt at a Hitchcock-style thriller, even though it’s not actually a Hitchcock-style thriller at all. It’s not even really a thriller. It’s a movie about Hitchcock-style thrillers. Yes folks, we’re in meta-movie territory here, but don’t despair because Brian de Palma is at the helm and this is actually going to be fun.

I’ll try to make this plot synopsis as vague and spoiler-free as possible but I really don’t think spoilers matter much in this case because I strongly suspect de Palma wants us to know what’s going to happen.

Jake Scully is a struggling actor who suffers from claustrophobia, which causes him to freeze up on house-sitting job, in a magnificent and spectacular home that looks like a flying saucer perched on top of a tower. Apart from the luxurious fittings there’s an added bonus. The house boasts a powerful telescope, and it’s trained on the windows of the apartment house across the valley. And every evening, at the same hour, the woman in one of those apartments provides some free entertainment as she undresse the set of the low-budget vampire movie he’s working on. He’s sent home to take a rest, and on arriving home he finds his girlfriend in bed with another man. Since it’s her house he can’t kick her out, so he’s on the streets. Then he has what seems to be a stroke of luck. Another actor offers him as and masturbates in front of a window. Jake may not have been aware of his voyeuristic tendencies before, but he’s certainly aware of them now.

After a couple of days the free show takes a disturbing turn. The woman is being menaced by a man. Jake decides to play the hero and starts to follow the woman around. At least he rationalises it to himself as playing the hero, but he obviously doesn’t mind following this very attractive woman around. After her purse is snatched and he pursues the thief he has the opportunity of meeting her, and it’s love at first sight. But that night he still can’t resist watching her regular performance, but this time she really is in extreme danger and Jake must play the hero for real, but will he be in time?

After this the movie abandons Rear Window territory for Vertigo territory. Jake has been watching porn movies (so his voyeurism is alive and well) and a performance he’s just seen from porn star Holly Body has triggered some vivid memories. He must meet her. And the obvious way to meet her is by auditioning for a role in one of her movies. He gets the part, and he gets to do a scene with her, and the scene involves getting to know her very intimately indeed, to the evident considerable enjoyment of both parties. Now that they’ve been introduced, so to speak, he asks her out on a date and pretends to be a big-time producer, because there’s a vitally important question he has to ask her and he has to win her trust.

The director signals his intentions right from the start, with a movie-within-a-movie sequence. He then goes to ostentatious lengths to make sure we realise the plot is a combination of Rear Window and Vertigo. It is necessary to make absolutely sure we know this, because if for even one minute we forget that we’re watching a movie and actually start to believe in the events or the characters the whole edifice will collapse. The most surprising thing is the number of reviewers over the years who have missed this and have taken the film to task for the predictability of the plot. The plot is supposed to be predictable. We’re supposed to know exactly what is going to happen, because we’ve seen Rear Window and Vertigo. This is not a suspense film. A suspense film requires a suspension of disbelief, it requires us to believe in it enough that we really do fear for the safety of the characters, that we really do believe they’re in danger. And that’s the last thing de Palma wants us to do. It’s all an elaborate joke, and he wants us to be in on it.

Early on there’s a scene in a car which I’m convinced was done in that obviously fake rear-projection technique that is so familiar from Hitchcock’s own movies. The choice of Craig Wasson for the role of Jake is another indication we’re not meant to be taking this seriously. He can’t act at all, but then he is playing the part of a failed actor so it’s rather appropriate, and his bad acting functions quite effectively. Gregg Henry as his actor buddy is very hammy, and again I’m assuming this was intended. And then there’s the casting of Melanie Griffith as porn star Holly Body. I don’t think anyone has ever accused her of being able to act, but she’s actually delightfully funny. Her line delivery is bizarre as always, but then so is her dialogue, and it works. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable performance. And of course she’s Tippi Hedren’s daughter, which acts as another reminder that we’re watching a movie. And the title of the movie is itself a spoiler.

Not only is de Palma enjoying himself playing Hitchcock games with us, he’s also having fun with some remarkably risque dialogue (which is presumably what earned it an R18+ rating in Australia, the equivalent of a US NC-17 rating). Melanie Griffith has fun talking very dirty, which she manages to make extremely funny. Apparently the British censors cut much of her dialogue, which is tragic. The sex and nudity content isn’t all that high, but would have been much higher if de Palma had been able to convince the studio to go with his original idea of casting an actual porn star as Holly Body, and including unsimulated sex. Which would have enraged his detractors even more, which no doubt would have amused de Palma even more.

This whole movie is a total hoot from start to finish, and I enjoyed every moment of it. It reminds me a little of Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct in the sense that it’s also a movie that has been spectacularly misunderstood, and in both cases the director’s use of the sexual content has also been misunderstood. And I suspect that in both cases the directors have deliberately courted that misunderstanding in a deliberate attempt to provoke an extreme reaction. Body Double is a movie for movie-lovers to treasure.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Brian de Palma’s 1974 musical extravaganza Phantom of the Paradise is a movie that combines completely over-the-top campness with surprising intelligence, and outrageous excess with equalling surprising subtlety. It also proves that it’s possible to include homages to other people’s movies that actually serve a purpose, rather than being mere rip-offs.

And Phantom of the Paradise, a clever blending of the basic plots of Faust and Phantom of the Opera, homages just about everything, from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to Dr Mabuse, from The Picture of Dorian Gray to Frankenstein, and includes the best ever (and the most diabolically amusing) Psycho homage.

Swan (Paul Williams) is a musical entrepeneur/promoter/producer/manager/all-round music business mogul owing more than a little to Phil Spector. Winslow Leach is a struggling singer/songwriter who attracts Swan’s attention. Winslow has written an ambitious rock cantata based on the Faust legend which he intends to perform himself, but Swan has other ideas. He steals Winslow’s music, and announces that Faust will be premiered at his new club, The Paradise. Winslow’s attempts to reclaim his work gain him nothing but a series of beatings and a spell in prison after Swan frames him for drug dealing. Increasingly unbalanced, Winslow breaks into the corporate headquarters of Swan’ company, Death Records, but is horribly injured and disfigured after his head is crushed by a record press.

His face hidden by an elaborate mask, Winslow takes up residence in Swan’s club, and has now become the Phantom of the Paradise. In a misguided attempt to regain control of his work and to have the cantata performed by a promising young female singer Phoenix with whom he is infatuated he has signed a contract with Swan, not realising that he has (literally) sold his soul. It turns out he’s not the only one who has made this deal.

Swan has decided that Phoenix is too perfect and hires an extravagant glam rock singer improbably named Beef to sing the lead role. This provokes the Phantom to action, and after Beef is disposed of it is Phoenix who takes the starring role after all. She is completely seduced by the adulation of the crowd.

The movie starts in outrageous style and becomes progressively more outrageous, but de Palma retains a sure grip on his material. This is excess, but it’s excess that is exquisitely controlled. Paul Williams is eerie and creepy and exudes evilness, William Finley is great as Winslow/the Phantom, and Jessica Harper is unexpectedly fabulous as Phoenix, nicely combining naïvete, integrity, greed and out-of-control ambition. Gerrit Graham is wonderfully bizarre as Beef.

This is the movie that The Rocky Horror Picture Show aspired to be, but while that movie consistently missed the mark (mesmerised by its own cleverness) this one hits the target every time. Phantom of the Paradise has even more cleverness, but it cleverness with purpose. Brian de Palma uses every visual trick in the book, and all of them work to perfection.

Mention must also be made of the superb soundtrack provided by Paul Williams. It’s a perfect melding of soundtrack and visual imagery.

I love this movie so much. I think I’ve just become a drooling Brian de Palma fanboy.

Die Screaming, Marianne (1971)

Any movie that begins with a scantily-clad Susan George go-go dancing over the opening credits is pretty much guaranteed to get my attention. If there’s a better way to start a film I can’t think offhand what it might be.

Tragically this is the only go-go dancing scene in the whole of Die Screaming, Marianne. The lurid title (something that all Pete Walker’s movies seem to have in common) might also suggest that what you are about to see is a horror movie. It isn’t. It’s a thriller. The good news is, it’s a pretty good thriller.

Leo Genn plays a character known only as The Judge. He was in fact an actual British judge until he was sacked for corruption, and he now lives in voluntary exile in Portugal. His second wife somehow managed to get her hands on a large proportion of his ill-gotten gains (in excess of half a million pounds, a colossal amount in 1971) along with an assortment of incriminating documents. She stashed the lot in a numbered account in a Swiss bank just before her untimely death, from poison. The only person who knows the number of the account is Marianne, the daughter born to her and The Judge.

Marianne is now on the run, since she has grave doubts about her likelihood of long-tern survival if she falls into the hands of The Judge and her beautiful but seriously psychotic half-sister Hildegarde. She meets a rather creepy Englishman named Sebastian and after considerable pressuring agrees to marry him. When he checks the paperwork after the wedding it turns out she’s actually married the best man, his saxophone-playing buddy Eli. Sebastian is understandably rather miffed, and storms off. Eli and Marianne decide that since they’re married, they might as well move in together. And soon they’re in love.

Unfortunately The Judge is still on her trail, and a complicated series of double-crosses and attempted double-crosses follows.

This is a stylish and very dark thriller. While it can’t be described as a horror movie, it does have a couple of very creepy villains. Leo Genn as The Judge is oily and sinister and thoroughly evil. Judy Huxtable is memorably deranged and depraved as Hildegarde. Her hatred of her half-sister Marianne is one of the ruling obsessions of her life, the others being greed and an incestuous passion for her father (which he seems at least half-inclined to reciprocate). Susan George, always an underrated actress, does her usual solid job as Marianne. Barry Evans is a distinctly odd choice as the hero, but then Eli isn’t much of a hero, and mostly Marianne is left to save herself. Luckily she’s both resourceful and extremely determined.

There’s a nice use of locations in both Swinging 60s London and Portugal (The Judge’s villa is rather impressive) and the movie manages to look slick and reasonably expensive although it isn’t. That it succeeds as well as it does is largely due to exceptional acting performances by Genn, Susan George and especially Judy Huxtable who creates one of the great evil sexy film villainesses.

The Region 4 DVD seems, judging by the running time, to be more or less uncut but this is a movie remarkably lacking in sex and gore by the standards of 1971 so it may in fact be slightly cut.

It’s not a great movie by any means but it’s entertaining and it looks good. It really needed more go-go dancing though.

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969)

In 1969, with a string of enormously successful science fiction puppet shows behind them (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, etc) Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were keen to branch out into live action sci-fi. This led to the TV series UFO, possibly still the best British science fiction television program ever made. But immediately before UFO, they made the far less successful feature film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (also known as Doppelgänger).

The biggest problem with this film is that it came out in the wake of Kubrick’s sensational, controversial, widely praised and widely condemned but impossible to ignore 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the shadow of 2001 hangs heavily over Journey to the Far Side of the Sun. Not that it’s by any stretch of the imagination a rip-off of Kubrick’s movie. The plot has nothing in common with it. But the feel of the movie is very similar. It seems to be aiming for the same arthouse/cult crossover audience as 2001. And although it’s a much shorter film, the pacing is just as leisurely.

It starts in a similar way to 2001, with an unexpected and mysterious discovery that leads to the mounting of a manned space exploration mission to investigate this perplexing find. The puzzle in question is the existence of a hitherto unknown planet, revealed by an unmanned probe launched towards the sun. This planet is the same size as Earth, it’s the same distance from the sun, and its orbit is identical to ours, except that it’s on the opposite side of the sun and has therefore remained hidden until now (yes I know the science there is fairly dodgy but hey this is the movies). Two astronauts are sent by the European Space Agency to take closer look. The journey there and back will take six weeks. Three weeks later the mission ends with a crash landing, and when the chief astronaut is rescued he is surprised to be asked if he speaks English. But where exactly is he? The plot, with many variations, will not be unfamiliar to hardened sci-fi fans but I’ll still try not to give away the solution

American actor Roy Thinnes (best remembered today for the reasonably good 1960s science fiction TV series The Invaders) was imported to play the spacecraft pilot. His performance is less than riveting, and had the movie been made after UFO rather than before I suspect that the star of that series, Ed Bishop (who plays a supporting role here), might have landed the lead role, and would probably have made a much better go of it. The second member of the crew is a British scientist played by Ian Hendry, who gives much the same performance that he gave in every other role he ever played.

The movie’s arty pretensions don’t quite come off, and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson would have been well advised to stick with the formula that worked so well for them on TV, combining interesting science fiction ideas with reasonably strong characterisation and a healthy dose of action and adventure. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun just takes itself a bit too seriously. It’s certainly not a complete write-off though. The movie wisely doesn’t try to explain too much and retains some aura of mystery. The special effects are what you expect from the makers of Captain Scarlet, UFO and Space: 1999 - in other words they make very extensive use of models and they look extremely good. The movie as a whole looks terrific, with cool 1960s sets and costumes.

It’s a bit of an oddity, but worth a look, and as well as Ed Bishop you’ll also spot several other members of the cast UFO including George Sewell. Plus there’s a cameo by Herbert Lom, always a plus.

Universal's PAL DVD release looks extremely good.

The Premature Burial (1962)

Having now watched The Premature Burial I can say that I’ve seen the whole of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle. This one is interesting because Corman had originally intended not to make it for AIP, and since Vincent Price was under contract to API he had to find a new star (ironically the movie ended up being made for AIP anyway). Corman’s replacement for Price was Ray Milland, and he proved to be an exceptionally good choice.

Milland plays Guy Carrell, a man convinced that his father, who suffered from catalepsy, as accidentally buried alive. He is tortured by the sounds of his father screaming as he lay trapped in his coffin. As a result, Guy is obsessed by the fear of premature burial. His marriage to the beautiful Emily (Hazel Court) does little to lessen his obsession. He even builds himself an elaborate crypt full of ingenious escape devices so that if he is buried alive he will be able to break free of the tomb.

It seems that nothing anyone can do has the power to distract him from his fears. His sister is certain that their father was not in fact buried alive, that it was only Guy’s imagination, and in any case there is no evidence that Guy has inherited his father’s propensity to catalepsy. None of this is of any avail. His fear dominates his every waking thought, and his dreams as well.

Corman’s Poe films varied quite a bit in tone, from the more serious and very doom-laden efforts (such as the brilliant Masque of the Red Death) to the black comedy of The Raven and Tales of Terror. The Premature Burial is definitely one of the darker entries in the cycle, and Ray Milland contributes considerably to its success. There is not a trace of camp in his acting in this movie, and his fear is frighteningly real and communicates itself to the viewer very effectively. I’m not suggesting that Vincent Price couldn’t have pulled it off (he was a more versatile actor than he’s usually given credit for) but I honestly don’t think anyone could have bettered Milland’s performance.

Hazel Court (who appeared in no less than three of the Corman Poe movies) is extremely good indeed as his wife. She approaches her task with the same seriousness as does Milland.

Corman had assembled a talented production team for these movies, and like Hammer’s movies of the same vintage they look more expensive than they were. Until The Tomb of Ligeia they were very studio-bound, but Corman and cinematographer Floyd Crosby make a virtue out of this necessity and it adds the right touch of claustrophobia. That claustrophobic feel is especially suited to The Premature Burial. The dream sequences are an object lesson in achieving good effects that work without spending a fortune.

The Region 4 DVD includes only one worthwhile extra, a brief but entertaining interview with Corman. It’s a nice transfer though.

I’m a huge fan of these Poe films and this is a particularly good one. A must for any serious gothic horror fan.

Teenage Devil Dolls (1955)

Teenage Devil Dolls (AKA One Way Ticket to Hell) is a 1955 juvenile delinquent flick that exposes the shocking truth about teenage dope fiends in the 50s.

Cassandra has the odds stacked against her from the start. Her mother (played by Lucille Price as a particularly monstrous movie mother) has gone through a string of husbands and this selfishness and the resultant lack of a stable home life has made Cassandra immature and vulnerable. She’s a good student but she falls in with the wrong crowd, a gang of motorcycle-rising delinquents. She is desperate to gain acceptance so she is easily drawn into their bad habits and is soon smoking reefers. From there it’s all downhill.

She marries her high school sweetheart, but she is unable to deal with the responsibilities of married life. Her doctor prescribes pills, lots of them. She becomes addicted to Seconal, and walks out on he husband. Pretty soon she’s dealing dope on street corners, involved in a car-stealing racket and she’s graduated to heroin. She’s also attracted the attention of the police, including the movie’s hero, Narcotics Squad cop Lieutenant David Jason. Jason is determined to smash the drugs racket, and tries to get Cassandra to turn informant. Cassandra is torn between her desire to kick the habit and her relationship with her drug-dealer boyfriend. The movie’s climax sees Cassandra and her boyfriend on the run for the Mexican border pursued by hordes of sheriff’s deputies.

This is a fairly typical example of the shocking exposé type of 50s exploitation movie, with a strong moral message but capitalising on the shock value of teen delinquency. There are fairly graphic scenes of drug use, which exploitation movies could get way with as they weren’t subject to Hollywood’s Production Code. The most surprising thing is probably the lack of sexual titillation. This is a movie that tries hard to convince us that it takes itself seriously. The reefer-smoking scenes will undoubtedly amuse many viewers, and some of the later scenes of narcotics withdrawal are extremely melodramatic. But that’s the appeal of classic exploitation cinema.

The omnipresent voice-over narration gives it an interesting semi-documentary feel although it’s really just a way of covering up the fact that the movie was shot was shot without any synchronised sound so there’s no actual dialogue. The movie has a very cheap feel, even by the standards of such movies. The acting is typically overwrought and inept although Barbara Marks as Cassandra has a certain presence.

One surprise is that the movie doesn’t place all the responsibility for her problems on Cassandra and her mother - the medical profession is made to take much of the blame for over-prescribing tranquilisers and sleeping pills. We even get to see the Narcotics Squad cops busting crooked doctors!

Teenage Devil Dolls has a certain amount of entertainment value and like all such movies it holds up a fascinating mirror to its time period, showing us a corrupt and seamy side to life in Eisenhower Era America. It’s not as much fun as true classics of the genre such as Girl Gang and the Ed Wood-scripted The Violent Years but it’s still enjoyable for devotees of juvenile delinquent movies.

It’s in the public domain and can be found online.The online print I saw wasn’t too bad as far as picture quality was concerned. I believe it’s also been released in several compilations of public domain juvenile delinquent films.