The Black Pit of Dr M (1959)

If you see The Black Pit of Dr M (Misterios de ultratumba) expecting something in the so-bad-it’s-good or the amusingly camp categories you’re in for a surprise. This 1959 Mexican production is a serious horror film, and a very good one. This is no camp classic - not that I have anything against camp classics, in fact I adore them, but The Black Pit of Dr M is not that type of movie. It reminds me quite a bit of the Val Lewton RKO horror movies of the 40s – there’s the same emphasis on atmosphere, and the cinematography and set design have a similar feel. Like Lewton’s movies it has at times almost a film noir feel. You can also see the influence of the best of the Universal horror classics of the 30s, and there are definite touches of Expressionism. There is nothing cheap or shoddy about this production. While it was undoubtedly made on a very limited budget, it doesn’t look low-budget; in fact it looks classy and very very professional. I doubt that anyone could teach Víctor Herrera, the director of photography on this movie, anything at all about the use of shadows and fog and noirish photography. I don’t think anyone could teach director Fernando Méndez anything about directing horror films either – he does an extremely assured job.

The plot is delightfully twisted and nasty. Don’t worry, I’m not going to reveal any spoilers – this is much too good a movie to ruin for anyone by doing that. The movie starts with three eminent doctors who make a pact with each other that whoever dies first will find a way to get a message to the others, revealing the means by which a person can travel to the world of the dead and return to the realm of the living, and thus reveal the secrets of the world beyond the grave. As you might expect in a horror movie, things don’t work out as nearly as they had hoped! The acting is very competent and it’s nice to see all the players in a horror film taking their roles seriously – there’s no scenery-chewing going on here. Rafael Bertrand is particularly good as Dr Masali, the man who receives a communication from the afterlife from the deceased Dr Aldama. The movie is essentially an exercise in psychological horror, with very little reliance on gore. The special effects are simple and used sparingly. And I can’t recommend the Casa Negra DVD too highly – the picture and sound quality are both absolutely superb, and the extras include an exceptionally good commentary track. It’s great to see a fine movie getting a high-quality DVD release. I’m looking forward to buying more DVDs from this company. Overall this very entertaining, very stylish and genuinely chilling little movie is a must for any serious horror fan.

Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (1977)

Jess Franco’s Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun (Die Liebesbriefe einer portugiesischen Nonne) tells the story of a young woman, Maria Rosalea, in 17th century sent to a convent against her will. She soon discovers that these nuns have dedicated themselves to serving Satan rather than God, and they have plans to sacrifice her chastity to the Evil One. Anyone who regards Jess Franco as a technically incompetent film-maker really need to see this movie. It’s not just a well made film, it’s a beautifully made film. For once Franco has a decent budget to work with, and the results are ravishing. The movie avoids the creepy cobwebs-and-ruins gothic look of so much 60s European gothic horror - this is a movie of gorgeous architecture bathed in brilliant sunshine, and sumptuous-looking sets, which makes the events seem all the more horrific. The movie visits the same sorts of territory as Ken Russell’s 1971 masterpiece The Devils, with religious hysteria and sexual repression leading to inevitably ghastly results. Compared to The Devils it’s quite restrained, although admittedly the DVD version has been rather savagely cut. Franco makes his point efficiently and economically. The film benefits from some very fine acting. William Berger as the sexually depraved priest who acts as confessor to the nuns and Ana Zanatti as the Mother Superior are exceptionally good, but it’s Susan Hemingway as the young Maria Rosalea who walks off with the acting honours. She gives a powerful and moving performance. There’s no scenery-chewing in this picture – the actors play it straight and they have the acting chops to carry it off.

The Anchor Bay DVD release looks absolutely marvellous. The colours are glorious, and there are really no problems at all with the picture quality. This is Franco in a serious mood, and it’s a disturbing and effective movie. It’s a treat for all serious Franco-philes, and indeed for all serious horror fans. And of course it’s a must for everyone who loves movies about devil-worshipping nuns - and let’s face it, who doesn’t?

99 Women (1969)

99 Women was Jess Franco’s first attempt at a women-in-prison movie. It‘s a genre that he revisited on many occasions. Released in 1969, 99 Women is rather tame by the standards of later movies of this type but it’s still an entertaining and very effective movie. The film opens as a new batch of women prisoners arrive at a notoriously tough and brutal island prison, a sort of Devil’s Island for women. Among the new inmates is Marie, convicted of murder although (as we find out later) she actually killed in self-defence. The prison supervisor is a particularly vicious and sadistic woman, played with relish by Mercedes McCambridge. Just as unpleasant is the island’s governor, the corrupt Santos, who regards the sexual favours (whether given willingly or more usually unwillingly) of the women prisoners as being one of the perquisites of his office. Their rule may be about to come to an end, as a new supervisor (played by Maria Schell) is about to take over, although events are already moving towards a crisis that no change of policy will be able to avert.

The movie benefits from a rather strong cast. Maria Schell gives a solid performance. McCambridge overacts, but it’s a role that really demands that type of approach and she’s certainly entertaining. Herbert Lom is delightfully sleazy as Governor Santos. Maria Rohm is adequate as Marie. Rosalba Neri is outstanding in a part that could easily have become a mere stereotype, the evil lesbian predator. Instead she makes the character believable, complex and rather sympathetic. Franco’s approach is quite restrained, and the film is surprisingly lacking in sleaze or tackiness (at least by the standards of a women-in-prison movies). There’s no explicit sex, and very little nudity, and the violence is fairly muted as well. Franco nonetheless manages to convey the cruelty and viciousness of the prison quite convincingly. There is of course the escape through jungles and swamps, without which no women-in-prison movie would be complete. The DVD includes a couple of alternate scenes and a trailer, and a 17-minute interview with Franco. He is, as always, interesting and enthusiastic. In general 99 Women delivers the goods, and the Region 4 DVD release looks reasonably good if just a little grainy.

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Since I managed to pick up a DVD copy of the movie in a bargain bin for a dollar I thought that was sufficient excuse to sit down and enjoy Valley of the Dolls all over again. It did not disappoint. It never does. In fact my admiration for this film grows and grows. Any movie can have the odd line of embarrassingly bad dialogue. Some have quite a few. But every single line of dialogue in Valley of the Dolls is magnificently awful. Each viewing brings out more of the truly epic quality of Patty Duke’s bad acting. It’s the kind of performance that comes along once in a lifetime. Sharon Tate gets to deliver a line that is exquisitely cringe-inducing even by this movie’s standards – yes, I mean the line about the bust exercises. Barbara Parkins is fighting out of her class in this company but she’s a game little trouper and she gives it her best shot, although one can’t help feeling that she didn’t know what movie she was making.

Susan Hayward is of course the one member of the cast who understood what was happening. She knew how bad the movie was, and she loved every minute of it. It was a role originally intended for Judy Garland, but I don’t think anyone could top Hayward. I don’t think I will ever get tired of watching this movie. It would be like growing tired of chocolate. In fact the pleasures of this movie increase with each viewing, because of the delicious sense of anticipation when you know that a really horrendous piece of dialogue is coming up, or an instance of overacting that achieves true grandeur, or a positively outrageous slice of maudlin sentimentality or, best of all, those moments when the film delivers one of its important moral messages.

This movie is the standard by which any movie that aspires to be a camp classic must be judged, and very few films have ever surpassed it. I just can’t wait to watch it again!

The Long Hair of Death (1964)

Barbara Steele started her career in Italian horror on a very high note indeed, in Mario Bava’s brilliant Black Sunday (La Maschera del demonio). Her subsequent Italian movies never quite equalled that masterpiece, but the strangely-titled The Long Hair of Death (I Lunghi capelli della morte) is actually not bad at all. It’s a tale of a woman falsely accused of a crime and suffering death at the stake, of witchcraft, of revenge and betrayal, of dead women who refuse to stay dead, of adultery, and of a country and its leader cursed from the grave. It has all the ingredients you could possibly want in a gothic horror movie, and it has the gothic atmosphere in spades. Director Antonio Margheriti was no Bava, but he was extremely competent and was always at his best working in the gothic horror mode. When you’re making a movie with Barbara Steele you need to be able to make the most of her considerable screen presence and her striking and unusual beauty, and Margheriti manages to do just that. And Steele, given a pretty decent role, does a very fine job. The movie is, by the standards of 1964, rather gruesome, but this quality is used effectively and contributes to the mood of mounting corruption both personal and political. Italian horror of this period sometimes relies almost exclusively on the visual elements, but this one has quite a strong plot - it’s complicated but it hangs together well, and it has a nice symmetry to it. It’s a consistently entertaining movie with some moments of real terror, and a powerful and effective ending.

It would be nice to say that the DVD release, on the Sinema Diable label, was worthy of the film, but sadly I have to say the picture quality is pretty dubious. This movie deserved better treatment. The Long Hair of Death is more than good enough to compensate for these deficiencies however, and if you have any interest in 60s eurohorror then this is a movie you simply have to see.

Shaft (1971)

Despite the 1971 fashions and the 1971 urban hip slang Shaft is a movie that has aged surprisingly well. Partly it’s because the acting is not only generally competent, it’s also somewhat understated. The temptation to go totally over-the-top is resisted, and the dialogue is delivered with such conviction that even though it should sound embarrassing, it somehow sounds right. Richard Roundtree is even able to get away with lines like “Can you dig it, man?” Roundtree actually is extremely good – he has plenty of attitude, he doesn’t take any crap from anybody, and he’s not averse to forceful expressions of indignation (to say the least) when he encounters racism, but he doesn’t overdo it. He plays Shaft as a man who gets angry when there’s a reason to be angry, but he doesn’t play him as an angry man. In fact Shaft is basically a guy who is doing OK in life and he’s enjoying himself. It’s possible that the movie struck such a chord among black audiences at the time for precisely that reason – it has a black protagonist who is in control of his life and although he has problems like everyone else he’s having a pretty good time. Shaft of course is a movie with not only a mainly African-American cast but also an African-American director, Gordon Parks. Parks is careful not only to avoid black stereotypes but also white stereotypes as well. Most of the bad guys are white, but they’re bad guys because they’re gangsters, not because they’re white, and the black gangsters are portrayed as being just as vicious as the white ones. And the white detective who is involved in the case is a decent guy (a very good performance by Charles Cioffi in a role that could easily have become a clichéd crusty cop with a heart of gold but doesn’t).

The plot of the movie is, well really it’s so threadbare it’s hardly there at all (black gangster hires black private eye John Shaft to retrieve his daughter kidnapped by rival gangsters), but you don’t watch a private eye movie for the plot, you watch it for the atmosphere and the attitude, and in those areas Shaft delivers the goods. And it’s a great deal of fun. With wonderfully quotable 70s hipster dialogue. The print shown by TCM was very grungy. They may have cleaned it up for the DVD release. I hope not, since I’m sure Parks intended the movie to look nicely grungy. This wasn’t the first blaxploitation movie, but it was the movie that established the genre at the box office. Plus you get to hear the classic Isaac Hayes theme song for which he picked up an Oscar!

Don't Deliver Us from Evil (1971)

Joël Séria’s 1971 debut feature Don't Deliver Us from Evil (Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal) was inspired by the same murder case as Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, although Séria’s film makes no attempt to follow the facts of the case at all - it's merely a point of departure for a thoroughly fascinating and disturbing little movie. Don't Deliver Us from Evil also has major autobiographical influences as well – Séria’s relationship with his own parents was extremely bad, and he had an unhappy childhood made infinitely more unhappy by being sent to a Catholic boarding school which he regarded as being no better than prison. The movie tells the story of two teenage girls at boarding school who are experiencing the usual problems – a repressive and guilt-laden atmosphere coupled with their own awakening sexuality. In the case of Anne and Lore, though, there is a complication – an excessively close emotional bond between the two girls causes them to withdraw more and more into their own private world, a world in which they can make the rules. One of the rules they make is that they should dedicate their lives to each other, and to evil. Their first attempts at evil are little more than run-of-the-mill adolescent rebellion, but they slowly and inevitably work their way up to more serious acts. They are particularly attracted by the idea of playing sexual games with men, to see how far they can push things. Inevitable they eventually push things too far, with tragic and unforeseen consequences. The movie builds to a conclusion that has lost none of its shock value in the 36 years since the film was made. Along the way Séria manages to include a truly astonishing amount of material guaranteed to enrage Catholic sensibilities.

This is a very low-budget movie, with both cast and crew including a large number of non-professionals, but it has none of the slapdash or amateurish feel that you would expect in such circumstances. It’s a very assured and visually arresting production, and the performances by the two lead actresses, Catherine Wagener and Jeanne Goupil, are superb. They succeed in making their characters both frightening and sympathetic, and both dangerous and vulnerable. Goupil had had no previous acting experiences whatsoever and the director made the bold decision to allow her absolute freedom in her interpretation of the role – a bold decision that paid off handsomely (and launched Goupil on an acting career that continues to this day). Don't Deliver Us from Evil is one of those European movies that is able to succeed as both an exploitation movie and an art film. It’s a rather obscure movie, and it’s to be hoped that the DVD release will make it much better known. It certainly deserves to be better known. Mondo Macabro have done a fantastic job with the DVD – the movie looks great and the extras include an interesting featurette on the influence of the infamous Pauline Parker/Juliet Hulme murder case on the film as well as interviews with the director and with star Jeanne Goupil (who is delightful and very entertaining). I recommend this one very highly.