The Strange Countess (1961)

The Strange Countess (Die seltsame Gräfin), directed by Josef von Báky, is a relatively early entry in Rialto’s wonderful cycle of Edgar Wallace krimis. It was based on Wallace’s 1925 novel of the same name. This is an extremely interesting entry in that cycle.

Margaret Reedle (Brigitte Grothum) is a very ordinary young woman who works in the office of a lawyer named Shaddle. She will soon be leaving this job to take up a position at Canterfield Castle as private secretary to the Countess Moron (Lil Dagover). Yes, Moron. Don’t blame me, that really is her name. Miss Reedle has one more job to do for Mr Shaddle. She has to deliver the release papers for a prisoner named Mary Pinder to a women’s prison. Mary Pinder has been serving a long sentence for murder. She is a poisoner.

Miss Reedle has been getting some strange telephone calls telling her that her time is almost up. She thinks the calls must be coming from a madman. In fact the calls really are being made by a madman. He is Bresset (Klaus Kinski) and he is confined in an asylum but he keeps escaping.

Miss Reedle isn’t worried until someone tries to kill her. There are three attempts made on her life. She has absolutely no idea why anyone would want to kill her. If it hadn’t been for Mike those attempts would have been successful. Mike is Mike Dorn (Joachim Fuchsberger) and Margaret Reedle thinks that he seems like a rather nice man although she is a bit mystified. How does he always manage to turn up at the right moment to save her life?

She hopes that these attempts to kill her will stop when she takes up her new position at Canterfield Castle. Unfortunately she’s wrong.

There’s an uneasy atmosphere at the castle. Everyone there seems a bit strange and they seem like they’re hiding something, which of course they are. The countess is a bit odd. Her son Selwyn (Eddi Arent) is eccentric to say the least. He dreams of going on the stage and spends his free time on mysterious electrical experiments. The butler, Addams, is very sinister. The countess’s financial advisor seems a bit shifty. And then we meet the family doctor, Dr Tappatt (Rudolf Fernau), and he doesn’t seem any too trustworthy.

Quite apart from the odd collection of misfits living at the castle there’s Mike Dorn. He seems trustworthy but Miss Reedle actually knows nothing about him. And there’s still the crazed telephone caller played by Klaus Kinski who just keeps on escaping from the asylum and he is certainly stalking our heroine.

Miss Reedle is no fool but she’s very confused and frightened and we can’t blame her.

It’s a setup that promises plenty of thrills and suspense and The Strange Countess delivers the goods on those fronts.

On the acting side Joachim Fuchsberger was a Krimi regular and was always reliable. Eddi Arent is quite amusing. Klaus Kinski is of course perfect as a murderous madman and he’s in fine creepy form. Brigitte Grothum makes a likeable heroine and gives a very creditable performance.

Even more interesting is the casting of Lil Dagover as the countess. Her remarkable career as a screen actress began in 1916 and lasted until 1979. It included appearances in several very early Fritz Lang movies as well as a starring rôle in one of the great classics of German Expressionism, Robert Wiene’s 1920 The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. And Fritz Rasp, who plays the lawyer Shaddle, had appeared in Lang’s Metropolis in 1927.

These are not the only links to the German Expressionism of the Weimar era. The Strange Countess was shot in the legendary Ufa studio in Berlin.

The horror in this movie (and there is definitely horror in this one) comes not just from the deceptions you expect in a krimi but to an even greater extent from the idea of madness. Many scenes take place in a lunatic asylum. That’s scary enough but what makes it far more chilling is when characters who are not mad end up in the asylum. Some of the characters in this film really are mad, but some have either been deliberately sent mad or made to believe they are mad. Neither Miss Reedle nor the audience can be quite sure which of those categories the other characters fit into. She knows she is not mad but that’s no guarantee she won’t end up in a padded cell in the asylum. Even more terrifying is the thought that she might end up driven to actual madness.

You expect in this sort of movie that at some stage either the hero or the heroine will be locked up by the villain or villains and will have to find a way to escape. In many movies the means of escape prove to be disappointingly contrived but this movie includes a truly ingenious escape.

The Strange Countess is a first-rate krimi with a definite gothic horror vibe and some intriguing nods to the great days of German Expressionism. Highly recommended.

Tobis have provided an excellent transfer on their Blu-Ray release, included in their Edgar Wallace Blu-Ray Edition 6 boxed set. Both English and German language (with English subtitles) options are available for The Strange Countess.

Vampirella (1996)

Vampirella is a legendary comic-book character created around 1969 by science fiction super-fan Forest J. Ackerman. She’s a sexy vampire from outer space. The most surprising thing about Vampirella is that she has never been the subject of a movie franchise. Maybe because she’s too sexy and that scares big studios off. They prefer their superheroes to be bland and safe. We do however have this 1996 movie, directed by Roger Corman protege and ultra low budget movie legend Jim Wynorski (with Corman acting as executive producer). It has an IMDb rating of 3.3, which is promising (with genre movies generally speaking the the lower the IMDb rating the better the movie).

The movie is an origin story of sorts, and while it retains a few elements of the comics it adds a lot of other elements. Gary Gerani wrote the script.

As in the comic Vampirella is from the planet Drakulon. The inhabitants of Drakulon are vampires but they don’t go around biting people. By a happy coincidence Drakulon has rivers of blood. Actual rivers, of actual blood. So these vampires are not killers. They’re not predators.

Well, mostly not predators. There are a few bad vampires who want to go back to the good old days when vampires really were killers. The leader of this faction is Vlad (Roger Daltrey).

Vlad’s followers carry out a bloodbath and the wise ruler of Drakulon is one of the victims. Vlad’s followers set off to find a planet where they can express their true vampire natures, by killing people.

All this happened centuries ago. Now we’re in Los Angeles in the 1990s. There are vampires but nobody knows about them. They are plotting away in secret. There’s also a paramilitary force of vampire hunters. The paramilitary outfit is codenamed Purge and it’s run by Adam Van Helsing, the last descendant of the Van Helsings.

Vlad and his followers have another more deadly threat to deal with. The daughter of the ruler of Drakulon who was killed by Vlad has arrived on Earth. She wants to destroy Vlad and his followers. She is Vampirella (Talisa Soto).

Vlad is now a rock star, a useful cover. People expect rock stars to be weird and decadent.

Vlad has some very big very sinister plans.

Adam Van Helsing trusts Vampirella but his colleague Walsh doesn’t. Van Helsing thinks that Vampirella could be the key to defeating Vlad.

Vampirella is clearly attracted to Van Helsing but he’s too uptight to do anything about.

I’ve only read some of the very early Vampirella comics but to me the movie doesn’t really capture the flavour of the comics. It’s a bit too much of a 90s action movie. But in commercial terms that may have been a sound move. There isn’t quite enough fun and sparkle, and (despite a few bare breasts) there’s not quite enough sexiness.

Vampirella’s costume is disappointingly tame compared to the comic-strip version. Talisa Soto was apparently concerned that the original much sexier costume designed for her would be a problem in the action scenes because certain parts of her anatomy would undoubtedly pop out during such scenes. She was probably right but the final costume is just very unexciting.

Talisa Soto is OK as Vampirella. She’s certainly beautiful. Her problem is that Roger Daltrey is in full-bore scenery-chewing mode and tends to dominate the movie. That’s not Daltrey’s fault - he gives exactly the right performance. The movie probably needed an actress with a bit more zing, and she needed to ramp up the sexiness in order to avoid being overshadowed. She also needed to be more amusing and more fun. Hammer had planned to do a Vampirella movie back in the 70s and they had Caroline Munro in mind. She would certainly have made a much better Vampirella.

The movie does have its strengths. The high-tech anti-vampire weapons are rather fun. The western ghost town near Las Vegas used as Vlad’s hideout is a great location.

This origin story here really has no connection at all with the origin story in the comic, and the version in the comic would have been preferable.

The bat transformations are so crude that it would have been better to dispense with them completely.

The paramilitary anti-vampire organisation was later shamelessly ripped-off by Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Vampirella isn’t as bad as it reputation would suggest. It’s moderately entertaining. The Vampirella in the movie isn’t really Vampirella. The movie is not sexy enough, it’s not enough fun, it doesn’t have enough energy, it doesn’t have the cheerful tongue-in-cheek vibe it needed. If you’re a hardcore Vampirella fan you’ll want to see it out of curiosity but it is a disappointment.

The German DVD which I own not only includes the original English-language version, it also includes Jim Wynorski’s commentary track (in English of course). Wynorski always does great commentary tracks.

Picasso Trigger (1988)

Picasso Trigger is an Andy Sidaris movie and a fairly typical Andy Sidaris movie. If you enjoy schlocky low-budget 80s action movies with plenty of T&A you’ll have fun with it. If you don’t enjoy such movies you won’t like it.

And when I say Sidaris’s movies are schlock I’m not kidding. They’re like a double serving of shlock with extra schlockiness sprinkled on top.

This one is a sequel of sorts to Sidaris’s wonderful Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987). The two glamour babe federal agents from that movie, Donna (Dona Speir) and Taryn (Hope Marie Carlton), are back and they’re now targets for assassination.

The hero is yet another member of the Abilene clan. We’ve met Cody and Rowdy Abilene in earlier Sidaris movies. This time it’s Travis Abilene. Of course our first thought is, will this Abilene actually be able to shoot? The incompetent marksmanship of the Abilenes was a running gag in these 80s Sidaris movies. It turns out that Travis Abilene also can’t shoot worth a damn.

It’s an amusing gimmick which gives an otherwise impossibly handsome and brave hero a human weakness.

This movie starts with a major crime kingpin apparently assassinating all the federal agents whom he blames for his brother’s death (his brother having also been a crime kingpin).

Travis Abilene acquires a sidekick, the sexy and glamorous Pantera (Roberta Vasquez). Travis and Pantera had been sweethearts back in high school. It doesn’t take long for the sexual attraction between them to blaze up again.

It gradually becomes apparent that the chief bad guy has another agenda in addition to revenge. The plot is complicated with lots of double-crosses. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but it provides plenty of opportunities for acton scenes.

This is the standard Andy Sidaris formula. It was shot in glamorous exotic locations such as Las Vegas and Hawaii. Sidaris believed (correctly) that this was a good way to make very low budget movie look more expensive than it was. There’s lots of gunplay. There are plenty of explosions. There are gadgets. There are chases involving everything from helicopters to speedboats to surf skis to hovercraft. There are lots of bare breasts and a few bare bottoms. It’s fast-paced and silly and fun. The formula worked for Sidaris and it works for me.

The acting is OK for a movie that doesn’t exactly have much in the way of in-depth characterisation. It doesn’t have any characterisation at all. What matters is that the heroes look like heroes, the villains look like villains and the mindless thugs look like mindless thugs.

Pretty much every female cast member was a former Playboy Playmate. They’re not great actresses but they weren’t cast for their acting abilities. They’re there to look like glamorous babes and they do that very successfully. What’s nice about these early Sidaris movies is that the girls don’t look like walking advertisements for silicone. They rely on what Nature gave them and that proves to be more than ample.

The nudity serves the same purpose as everything else in the movie - it’s there quite frankly for entertainment value. And it’s approached in the same spirit as everything else in the movie - lighthearted and cheerful and rather innocent. There’s none of the embarrassed sniggering quality to the sex and nudity that you encounter in too many movies. Picasso Trigger is sexy but it’s not really sleazy.

The gadgets are typically Sidaris - amusing and clever and they cost almost nothing. The stuntwork is reasonably good.

It has to be admitted that this movie does not quite recapture the magic of Hard Ticket to Hawaii. It doesn’t quite have the same zing.

Picasso Trigger is still a lot of fun. That’s all it was ever intended to be. Make sure you have lots of beer and popcorn on hand. If you’re in the mood for fun it’s highly recommended.

The DVD in the Mill Creek boxed set offers a lovely transfer. The most notable extra is an audio commentary by writer-director Andy Sidaris and his wife Arlene(who was the producer). Their audio commentaries are always a treat.

I've also reviewed Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) and Malibu Express (1985).

Amorous Sisters (Julchen und Jettchen, 1982)

Julchen und Jettchen (retitled Amorous Sisters in the U.S.) is a 1982 sex comedy produced, directed and co-written by Erwin C. Dietrich. For some bizarre reason it was released in Britain as Come Play with Me 3 although it has not the slightest connection with Come Play with Me or Come Play with Me 2.

The Swiss producer Erwin C. Dietrich was one of the legendary figures in European exploitation cinema for decades. He directed a lot of movies including numerous softcore erotic films. His best-known directorial effort is probably the very stylish Rolls-Royce Baby (1975) starring Lina Romay.

Julchen und Jettchen is set in an exclusive girls’ school in Switzerland.

Julchen (Brigitte Lahaie) and Jettchen (Flore Sollier) are sisters and both are students at the school. In the English dub they are renamed Jenny and Juliet respectively. It seems to be a very small school. In fact there seem to be only seven pupils and one teacher. And the only subject on the curriculum seems to be sex education. Luckily it’s a subject in which the girls have a keen interest. They know the theory but they’re anxious for some practical experience.

They practise a lot on their own, and with each other. They are fast learners. And they don't mind doing their homework.

There really is virtually no main plot. There is a kind of sub-plot about a body builder and his wife (in which Julchen und Jettchen eventually become involved). The movie is a series of brief episodes very loosely connected.

The girls’ progress in class is accelerated by the unexpected opportunity to observe live specimens, both male and female. They have a day out in the countryside. They sneak a man into their dorm. Their teacher, Mademoiselle Blanche (Barbara Moose), being dedicated to her job, brushes up on her own practical skills. This is not just satisfactory from Mademoiselle Blanche’s point of view, it provides considerable entertainment for her pupils who are observing these events with a great deal of scholarly interest.

The body builder spends hours training every day. His body is in peak physical condition. His muscles function like precision machines. Except for one particular muscle, which happens to be the muscle in which his wife is most interested. Apparently that muscle ceased to function some time ago, much to the wife’s disappointment. Eventually, in an unforeseen way, Julchen und Jettchen will come to the rescue and restore marital bliss.

There is an astounding amount of nudity, mostly but not exclusively female. The female nudity is very explicit. There’s lots of sex, including numerous sapphic couplings. The sex scenes are moderately graphic. If that sort of thing bothers you then this movie is not for you. If it appeals to you then you’ve hit the mother lode.

The acting is perfectly adequate. The women are very attractive and they’re also charming and likeable. Brigitte Lahaie is of course the film’s biggest drawcard.

If you’re going to make a movie with no plot but with acres of nudity the question arises - can you make it cinematically interesting as well? The answer in this case is yes. The solution adopted is to find clever, inventive and amusing reasons for the young ladies to shed their clothes and to shoot the sex scene in slightly offbeat and unusual ways that you’re not expecting. And Dietrich was technically proficient and in his unassuming way reasonably stylish. This is classy well-crafted erotica.

This movie is refreshingly free of the sniggering quality one sometimes encounters in British and American movies of this type. It’s also mercifully free of social messaging. It does not attempt to examine the human condition. It has no artistic statements to make. It’s a lighthearted comic erotic movie that has zero pretensions to being anything else and it’s totally unembarrassed and unapologetic about it. And it’s very good-natured. These are nice people. You don’t want anything bad to happen to them, and nothing bad does happen. Nobody gets punished for having sexual desires.

The naked butterfly hunt is a definite highlight. As everyone knows if you’re going to hunt butterflies you must first remove all your clothing. And it’s shot in slow-motion. It makes no sense but it has an oddly lyrical feel.

There’s picturesque scenery, which doesn’t hurt.

The only fair way to judge a movie is to ask whether it achieves what it set out to achieve. Dietrich set out to make a fun happy amusing very sexy movie. This film achieves those objectives admirably and therefore has to be regarded as a complete success. It’s not Citizen Kane but it’s a very good movie of its genre and if you enjoy that genre it’s highly recommended.

Julchen und Jettchen is now available on Blu-Ray. My copy was a bonus DVD included with Jess Franco’s Die Sklavinnen (1977). The only connection between these two movies is that both were produced by Erwin C. Dietrich. Apart from that they’re a million miles away in tone and approach (although they’re both good in their very different ways).

I’ve also reviewed the Erwin C. Dietrich-directed Rolls-Royce Baby (1975) which is also a very good movie of its type.

La Maison de rendez-vous (novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet)

La Maison de rendez-vous is a 1965 novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Robbe-Grillet received great acclaim in his native France as a novelist, belonging to the so-called New Novel (Nouveau Roman) school. This was one of the many variants of modernism with perhaps some touches of what would later become known as postmodernism. These writers were not notably concerned with traditional approaches to narrative and characterisation.

Robbe-Grillet also achieve both fame and notoriety as a filmmaker. His movies play around with conventional narrative and include some very marked surrealist influences. He is best-known in the English-speaking as the screenwriter of the superb and influential 1961 movie Last Year at Marienbad (which was directed by Alain Resnais but feels much more like an Alain Robbe-Grillet movie).

My full review of La Maison de rendez-vous can be found here at Vintage Pop Fictions.

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)

A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is a 1971 giallo written and directed by Lucio Fulci although its giallo status has to be qualified. We’ll get to that later.

It’s an Italian-Spanish-French-British co-production (although the extent of British financial involvement in the project is debatable) which accounts for the casting which is very multi-national even by the standards of European genre movies of that time. It’s set in London with some location shooting done there although the studio shooting was done it Italy.

This movie hits the ground running. We get a crazy WTF opening sequence on a train and a crazy WTF sequence with two women and a fur coat. Then we get a woman talking to her psychoanalyst. We get the half-naked blonde woman but now she’s the crazy woman’s next-door neighbour. And a hippie freak-out party with lots of naked chicks. Way to go Lucio. We’re already totally fascinated. Who is this dark-haired woman? Is she crazy? Is she drugged-out? We don’t know but we want to find out.

The possibly crazy woman is Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan). She is married to successful lawyer Frank Hammond (Jean Sorel). Her father is one of England’s most eminent barristers, Edmond Brighton (Leo Genn). Carol has a stepdaughter, Joan Hammond (Ely Galleani).

The young woman in the adjoining flat is not at all respectable and Carol strongly disapproves of her. We will later found out that this woman is Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg).

Carol doesn’t really seem to be crazy but she suffers from insomnia and has disturbing dreams. She does all sorts of naughty things in these dreams, such as having sex with a stunning blonde woman. In the dreams she also takes a knife to the blonde.

Her psychiatrist is very Freudian (Freudian psychoanalysis was still a big thing in 1971) and he isn’t worried. Everything is under control. Carol is just working out her inner conflicts in the dreams. In fact the dreams are a sign that she is making good progress.

Then a murder takes place. It’s puzzling at first until the police forensics guys turn up a vital clue that narrows the range of possible suspects drastically. Then a further clue makes the case cut-and-dried. The evidence is overwhelming.

Inspector Corvin (Stanley Baker) should be delighted but he isn’t. He’s a good copper and his copper’s nose tells him this case just doesn’t smell right. He is convinced that something very important has been overlooked.

After this the plot twists kick in and there are plenty of them. The possibility of a second murder seems quite real. Someone certainly seems to have murder in mind.

What makes this movie extra special is that it’s a psychiatry murder thriller and I just love psychiatry murder thrillers. We get lots of psychobabble and half-baked Freudianism. Bliss. There are some obvious nods to Hitchcock’s Spellbound with cool dream sequences. There’s a fair bit of Hitchcock influence at work here. In fact lots of Hitchcock influence.

Fulci offers us some gore (and it's full-bore gore), but not too much. He does offer some effective visual set-pieces with some wonderfully executed nicely scary paranoid chase sequences. And we get a really good scene with bats.

Fulci is trying to keep us in a state of uncertainty about Carol and Florinda Bolkan’s very effective performance keeps us very uncertain indeed. Jean Sorel is good, as always. Leo Genn is excellent. This was not a particularly demanding role for Stanley Baker but Baker is always watchable.

While Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace may have been the first giallo it was Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970 that pretty much defined the 1970s giallo. Prior to Argento, at the tail end of the 1960s, there had however been quite a few movies that could be called proto-giallos or phase 1 giallos. These included Romolo Guerrieri’s The Sweet Body of Deborah (1968), Fulci’s own One on Top of the Other (AKA Perversion Story, 1969), and several Umberto Lenzi movies including So Sweet, So Perverse (1969). These movies lacked a lot of what we think of as the classic giallo trademarks (serial killers, black-gloved killers, extreme visual excess). They were essentially stylish erotic thrillers almost invariably set against a backdrop of 1960s jet set decadence. I personal love these proto-giallos.

I would regard A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (which was made in 1970 although released in 1971) as belonging to this proto-giallo sub-genre. There are no serial killers and in fact only two murders. There’s a very strong atmosphere of decadence, interestingly blended with counter-culture stuff. The events of the movie are precipitated by a collision between the world of the very rich and the world of the hippies, both decadent worlds but decadent in different ways.

There’s also an element that is found in most of the late 60s proto-giallos - the possibility (but not the certainty) that one or more key characters might be mad.

Don’t think too much about the plot of this movie. And don’t expect a gore-fest. There is some shocking gore but it’s very brief. Just enjoy the atmosphere and the visuals and let Lucio Fulci play with your head for a while. I rate this as top-tier Fulci. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks great and is packed with desirable extras.

my cult movie highlights of 2023

In 2023 I watched 254 movies - some first-time watched and some re-watches.

Among the first time cult movie watches the most pleasant surprises were:

Just Jaeckin's Madame Claude (1977), a stylish intelligent political thriller about sex and power.

Lucio Fulci's Aenigma (1987), seriously surreal and twisted, unsettling and perplexing but unsettling and perplexing in a way that is original and distinctive.

Lucio Fulci's The Devil’s Honey (1986). A sleazy kinky movie, but sleazy and kinky in an intelligent and provocative way. A movie about sex and sexual obsession and it confronts those subjects in the kind of direct way that very very few American movie have ever done.

Among the re-watches the highlight was Paul Schrader’s 1982 Cat People. In order to appreciate this one you have to regard it as being an entirely different movie from the 1942 version although dealing with similar themes. Both movies are equally great in their own ways.