Eegah (1962)

Eegah appears on the IMDb’s list of the 100 worst films of all time and was the subject of a celebrated episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Which just shows how spectacularly some people can miss the point. Sorry folks, but you’re wasting your time trying to send this movie up. It was clearly intended as a comedy in the first place.

It’s a rock’n’roll monster movie, for heaven’s sake. Cult movie legend Arch Hall Sr set up Fairway International Pictures with several aims in view, one of which was to make his son Arch Hall Jr a movie star. But Dad Hall was no fool. He knew his progeny was no Brando, and that if he was going to make it he was going to make it on the drive-in movie circuit. So he set out to produce (and often write and direct) drive-in movies. The results were some of the most entertaining drive-in movies ever made.

Eegah opens with a young woman driving across the desert at night. Suddenly a giant dressed in animal skins and carrying a huge wooden club appears in her headlights. It’s a real live caveman! The woman, Roxy Miller, is the daughter of an eminent author, explorer and adventurer (played by Arch Hall Sr). Her dad is inclined to be sceptical about her tale, but if it is a caveman he wants pictures. It could be the subject of his next book! Roxy’s boyfriend Tom, played by Arch Hall Jr, works at the local gas station, but he also fronts a band. We get to hear several of his songs, and we’re inclined to think he should hang on to the job at the gas station. The younger Hall actually wrote some of the songs he performs in his various movies, and while they’re fairly awful they’re no worse than the general run of songs you’re going to encounter in rock’n’roll monster movies.

Mr Miller sets off in a helicopter to explore the hills around the spot where Roxy met the caveman. And he soon discovers that her story was absolutely true. He’s so shocked when he runs into the neanderthal that he falls over and manages to break his collarbone. Meanwhile back at the ranch Roxy is getting anxious. Mechanical problems have prevented the helicopter from returning to pick up her father, so she and Tom set off in Tom’s dune buggy to make the rendezvous. Once they’re in the right area they do what people always do in horror movies. Tom takes his gun and sets off into the hills, leaving his girlfriend all alone by the dune buggy so that she can be kidnapped by the prehistoric man. Which is of course what happens. He takes her to his cave, where she finds her dad who has also been kidnapped. It turns out that this primitive is named Eegah, and he is the last survivor of his race. He is also apparently incredibly old, despite his appearance. He’s not really a monster, in fact he’s fairly good-natured, but he is a little on the unpredictable and excitable side. And he’s very lonely. He’s especially lonely for feminine company, and Roxy is a very attractive woman. Eegah hasn’t had a girlfriend for a very very long time and he is anxious to get to know Roxy better.

Various unlikely complications ensue as Roxy tries to protect her virtue from the lustful cave-dweller.

There’s a great deal of often very amusing sexual innuendo, which would certainly have been enjoyed by drive-in audiences. There are plenty of laughs, but despite what you will read in most reviews I don’t believe any of the humour was unintentional. The whole thing is being played for laughs. Arch Hall Sr has thrown into the mix every possible element that could appeal to a drive-in audience - a goofy plot, some songs, a love story, lots of sexual jokes, a pretty leading lady who at times is wearing very little, teenagers, dune buggies, silly humour.

Once you realise it’s all done with tongue planted firmly in cheek you also realise that it’s quite wrong to see it as a bad movie. It’s very much like The Horror of Party Beach - it’s self-consciously parodying teen rock’n’roll monster movies and it’s doing a pretty good job of it. The hammy acting is a major asset. Arch Hall Jr was a terrible actor, but he was never dull. Marilyn Manning as Roxy delivers her lines in a sly knowing kind of way, especially the more suggestive dialogue. And when she starts to find her caveman suitor rather appealing and a bit hunky she does the sexy ingeue thing quite well. I’m inclined to think she knew exactly what the part demanded and knew the movie was intended as comedy and played the role accordingly, and her performance works for me. Richard Kiel also seems to be having plenty of fun being a zany, lecherous but oddly vulnerable and sympathetic caveman.

The extreme silliness of the plot makes perfect sense as well, since any good spoof movie should have a plot that is totally unbelievable and defies logic. And you get bonus points for having characters behave in classic dumb horror movie ways. The shaving scene is truly bizarre, but it’s funny and weirdly sexy.

Eegah succeeds extremely well in doing what it sets out to do - it’s an enjoyable romp of a movie that never takes itself seriously and is deliciously camp. One of the biggest and most common mistakes that many modern reviewers make is to fail to realise that very often the low-budget film-makers of the past actually knew exactly what they were doing and were intending their films to be both silly and funny. If you’re looking for a fun popcorn movie this one delivers the goods.

Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives (1978)

Claude Chabrol’s Blood Relatives (Les Liens de sang) is a 1978 Canadian-French co-production, really more of a murder thriller than a slasher movie or horror flick although it does perhaps some some affinity with the giallo genre. Being a neglected movie by an interesting director is I think enough to qualify it for discussion as a cult movie.

The movie starts with the murder of a 17-year-old girl. Her 15-year-old cousin is the only witness, but when she dramatically changes the story she tell to the investigating officer, Detective-Inspector Carella (Donald Sutherland) the plot, as they say, thickens. Although the plot contains some major twists I think it’s safe to say Chabrol is really more interested in psychological explorations of his characters and and in a fairly brutal dissection of apparently respectable middle-class family life than in the plot for its own sake.

The discovery of the murdered girl’s diary leads to a long and not entirely satisfactory flashback sequence. Most of the important story points are dealt with in the flashback, but unfortunately the use of this technique deflects attention away from Detective-Inspector Carella, and since he’s the most interesting character in the movie and since Donald Sutherland gives by far the best acting performance this weakens the movie considerably. The movie loses some of its momentum and interest when Sutherland is not on screen.

There really isn’t much in the way of plot. The plot is really confined to Carella’s gradually developing suspicions as to what has actually occurred. The most effective part of the movie is Carella’s response to the evidence as it unfolds and his response to the conclusions he is forced to draw. This is a movie very much centred on the detective, and the detective’s own psychology and emotions, rather than on the crime. He becomes as much a victim as the actual victim, and we feel that he will never be quite the same again. He has lost his innocence.

David Hemmings is exceptionally creepy as the murdered girl’s boss, while Donald Pleasence contributes a brief supporting role as a convicted but now released sex offender. Both give superb performances. Both characters are clearly psychologically twisted and even more morally twisted, but then this kind of sexual and moral derangement is something that permeates the whole film and to some degree has infected very character and every relationship. The other supporting players are unfortunately somewhat wooden and not terribly convincing. Donald Sutherland’s detective is the pivotal element, and while he was capable of some reasonably flamboyant acting in other roles in this movie he very successfully underplays the role. It’s a very effectively subtle performance.

Despite some serious flaws this is an involving and fascinating movie with an extraordinarily claustrophobic and unhealthy atmosphere of lust, jealousy, guilt, hypocrisy and all-round moral corruption. In some ways the low-budget nature of the film works in its favour, increasing the feeling of enclosure and entrapment. Too much gloss would have weakened this effect.

I caught it on late night TV. There’s a DVD release, but apparently it’s a very poor quality pan-and-scan print. This is a shame as it’s a movie that is most definitely worth seeing. So given the deficiencies of the DVD it’s probably one to grab if you find it in a bargain bin, otherwise keep a lookout for it on cable TV. It’s a neglected movie that certainly deserves a decent DVD release.

Son of Dracula (1943)

The most criminally underrated Universal horror movie of the 1930s and 40s is undoubtedly Son of Dracula. It’s one of my three or four favourite Universal monster flicks and coming so late in the cycle makes it an even more pleasant surprise.

Curt Siodmak’s story on which Eric Taylor based the screenplay wisely gets as far away as possible from the settings and plot of Stoker’s original novel. This is certainly not a retread of the earlier Universal Dracula movies. The setting is the American South in contemporary times. Katherine Caldwell (or Kay as she is more generally known) is the heiress to a plantation located deep within the bayous. She’s more than a little eccentric, and her enthusiasm for the occult borders on mania. Her family regards her as morbid, but that doesn’t stop her good-natured and wealthy young neighbour Frank from falling hopelessly in love with her. Her latest craze is for telepathy, and she believes she’s in contact with a mysterious Eastern European aristocrat and that she is calling him to her. And it turns out that that really is exactly what she is doing.

The luggage of her mysterious nobleman, a Hungarian by the name of Count Alucard, arrives by train. It includes several very large crates, but there’s no sign of their owner. The welcoming party returns to the Caldwell mansion, but Kay is convinced that he will arrive that evening. Night falls, and an unexplained fire breaks out in the bedroom of her father, the Colonel, whose dead body is then discovered. He seems to have been the victim of a heart attack, although someone remarks that he looks like he died of fright! Shortly thereafter the Hungarian count arrives on the doorstep.

The family doctor is suspicious of the newcomer from the start, and his suspicions are inflamed when he speaks to Professor Lazlo at the Hungarian embassy in Washington. He knows of no Count Alucard, but he and the doctor notice that Alucard spelt backwards is Dracula, and the professor has certainly heard of the Draculas! Doctor Brewster becomes even more concerned when it appears that the Count and Katherine may be contemplating, a fact that is naturally even more upsetting to young Frank.

One of the problems with most horror movies is the time it takes for the characters to figure out that something supernatural is afoot. The interesting twist in this movie is that the characters are all familiar with Bram Stoker’s novel, and they very quickly realise they’re dealing with the Undead.

Lon Chaney Jr gave a slightly unconventional performance as Dracula, but he gave the role some real menace. Most people seem to dislike his interpretation of the part but I like it a great deal and consider it to be perhaps his best performance. His voice is not quite right, but when he’s allowed to stop talking and simply rely on his physical presence and his piercing stare he really is quite frightening. He conveys a ruthlessness and a contempt for humanity that Lugosi couldn’t quite pull off.

Louise Allbritton as Kay looks terrific, her appearance perfectly reflecting her “morbid” preoccupations. She looks like a 1940s goth girl! Unfortunately she isn’t able to bring to the role the disturbing and unconventional eroticism that Gloria Holden brought to the title role in Dracula's Daughter seven years later. The character needed an actress who could add a somewhat stronger does of perversity. Notwithstanding that, Kay is one of the most fascinating characters to be found in any horror movie of this period, a heroine more wicked and more unsettling than the ostensible villain. You almost feel sorry for poor Alucard for getting mixed up with her! The fact that the movie is so heavily focused on such a strong but dangerous female character makes it almost like a film noir, with Kay as the femme fatale.

Robert Siodmak (a very fine director who incidentally made some great movies in the film noir mould) gave Son of Dracula some of the most striking images you’ll see in any horror movie of that era – especially the coffin rising from the swamp. It’s an interesting mix of styles, with the scenes centred on the vampire hunters being mainly shot in bright daylight while the scenes centred on Kay and the Count are all night scenes filmed in a pure Expressionist style. This has the effect of emphasising the contrast between everyday reality and the nightmare world of vampires. For a film that puts a vampire into the world of the 1940s this is a bold move, but this disjunction between the rational daylight world of the doctor and the world of shadows in which Kay and Alucard move works rather nicely.

This is a fairly early example of a movie doing the decadent decaying southern gothic thing, and visually it works superbly. Vampires, southern plantations and swamps are a perfect combination.

It’s unfortunate that this was Siodmak’s only real horror movie. Sadly it was also the last collaboration between the Siodmak brothers, Robert’s first action on being given the directing assignment being to have his brother Curt fired from the picture! Apparently it was not a case so much of personal dislike as intense competitiveness between the two. Son of Dracula is a classic not just of gothic horror, but of American gothic. A great movie.

Devils of Darkness (1965)

Devils of Darkness was made in Britain in 1965 by Planet Pictures, one of a number of small companies trying to jump on the gothic horror bandwagon that had proved so profitable for Hammer. It has black magic, vampires, sultry gypsy maidens and decadent arty thrill-seekers but although all the right ingredients are there it just doesn’t quite make it.

The movie opens with an apparent flashback to an earlier period of history where a gypsy wedding is disrupted by the revivification of the sinister Count Sinistre, your standard local evil aristocratic vampire. Then we’re in contemporary times, with a party of British tourists in a remote French village. An expedition to explore some local caves goes badly wrong, one of the men is killed and soon afterwards one of the female members of the party disappears. The locals, including the doctor and chief of police, are oddly unconcerned. They give the impression of wanting the tourists to depart as soon as possible and they evince little interest in any in-depth investigation. This is not good enough for Paul Baxter (played by William Sylvester) who arranges for the bodies to be flown back to England for detailed post-mortem examinations. Unfortunately the bodies never arrive in Britain.

Near where the woman had vanished Baxter had picked up a strange object which we later earn is a magical talisman, and on his return to Britain he continues to brood over these strange events. Like all good horror movie heroes he happens to be well acquainted with a scientist who has a knowledge of the occult, and he begins to suspect that the French villagers had been involved in witchcraft. What he doesn’t know is that it’s not just witchcraft, it’s a coven led by the vampire Count Sinistre and that the vampire is now in England. The decadent arty thrill-seekers mentioned earlier are mixed up with a local
antiques dealer, Madeleine, who had been a member of the party of British tourists involved in the fatal events in France. Our noble hero Baxter becomes infatuated with a member of this circle, an artist’s model named Karin. The artist for whom she has been posing recently is none other than Sinistre himself!

The movie dates from those long-vanished days when censorship still prevented horror film-makers from relying on large helpings of sex and violence and gore. Atmosphere and suspense were crucial because you simply didn’t have anything else to work with to create the necessary horror. This limitation on what could be shown could be a weakness or an asset. A director with sufficient ability would use all his skills to build up a mood of dread and foreboding that could be considerably more effective than throwing buckets of blood at the audience. Devils of Darkness is an example of what could happen in the hands of a less skilled director.

The plot is reasonable enough. The movie is polished and the production values are fairly high. The acting is competent. It’s photographed and directed quite competently. The settings have the necessary atmosphere to them. But no actual horror eventuates. Hubert Noël looks the part as the vampire but he lacks any real menace. A couple of scenes are slightly spooky, but there are no real chills, no sense of evil or of any real cosmic wrongness. Director Lance Comfort just doesn’t seem to know he’s making a horror movie.

William Sylvester is a very dull hero. The female characters are potentially a lot more interesting. Tracy Reed as Karin has the same sort of strange exotic beauty that Gloria Holden and Carroll Borland brought to Dracula's Daughter and Mark of the Vampire respectively, but there’s no chemistry at all between her and Baxter or between her and the Count. There’s no erotic charge at all. And that means that Baxter’s obsession with her makes no sense. The idea that the Count uses hypnotic power to exercise control over his followers and victims is a good one, and it’s a useful way of explaining how he’s able to movie in the modern world without attracting undue attention, but it’s not executed convincingly. Hubert Noël lacks the charisma to make those hypnotic powers believable. The members of the wicked decadent circle centred around the antiques shop don’t seem especially wicked or decadent. The vicar could walk in on one of their conclaves without being shocked.

The whole exercise is simply too bland and too genteel. If you compare it to the movies Terence Fisher made for Hammer at around the same time and under the same censorship constraints the difference is startling. It’s easy to see why Hammer had prospered while Planet Pictures made very little impact.

It’s not a terrible movie, it’s just a trifle dull and that’s something that a horror movie can’t afford to be.

Spermula (1976)

Now this one is a real oddity. Spermula is a 1976 French science fiction art-house sex comedy with a very marked surrealist influence and large helpings of general weirdness. All that, and Udo Kier as well!

The planet Spermula is facing imminent destruction, and its inhabitants need to find a new home. The Spermulites are invisible bodiless beings who apparently devote their time to intellectual contemplation. Their leader is known as Big Mother, and as their new abode she has selected a small and rather obscure planet named Earth. Earth is unfortunately already inhabited, but by a very low form of life. The Spermulites will first have to eliminate these primitive beings, beings so backward and barbarous that they practise a form of reproduction known as sex, much to the disgust of the Spermulites.

To carry out her plan Big Mother has given a select band of Spermulites human form. These humans exist in two varieties, but the Spermulites have naturally chosen to take the form of the dominant variety, known as women. The earth creatures will be eradicated by destroying their ability to reproduce. This will be accomplished by draining the males permanently of their reproductive fluids. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you how they intend to accomplish this. The Spermulites have sent one of their number on ahead as a kind of advance scout. Werner (Udo Kier) was supposed to turn out female but Big Mother was still getting the hang of creating human bodies at that stage and something went terribly wrong. He turned out a male, but a male sadly deficient in one area of anatomy that these human creatures seem to consider to be of considerable importance. And Werner has started to go native, and has fallen in love and wants to get married, which makes his inadequacy in that area something of a problem.

The Spermulites begin their campaign in a small village in France. Big Mother has supplied them with clothes and accessories (including a car) copied from a 1938 issue of Vogue magazine but she assures them they’ll blend in quite successfully in 1976. They manage to recruit several human women to their cause, but after some considerable time they have only succeeded in ending the reproductive careers of a handful of men, and they’re encountered an unexpected complication. They discover to their horror that they not only have the bodies of human females, but their emotions as well. And even more shockingly, their sexual desires as well. They’ve discovered that this disgusting activity the humans call sex is something they could learn to enjoy. A lot. The two chief weaknesses of the Earth creatures, sex and love, turn out to be the Spermulites’ undoing.

As you might expect given this plot synopsis there’s a lot of sexual humour in this film. But it’s never crass or merely crude. It is genuinely funny. And it has a lot going for it besides the humour. The production design is interesting with some nice Art Deco touches, the 1930s-influenced costumes of the Spermulites are quite snazzy, and the cinematography is stylish. The movie looks great, and while the acting on the whole isn’t that great the actresses portraying the Spermulites are uniformly beautiful and, and in a movie that relies so heavily on style that’s arguably more important. Charles Matton had a background in painting, sculpture and photography and was responsible for the production design as well as being the writer and director. As you’d expect given his training the movie is more a strange erotic visual tone poem than anything else.

Given the plot outline you might also expect this movie to have a lot of sex and nudity. And it does, but the sex is strictly softcore and as is usually the case with French erotic movies it’s all very tasteful. If you’re expecting anything resembling a typical porn movie you’re going to be rather surprised.

Several cuts of this movie exist, although all are difficult to find. I saw the English language version; I’m told the French language version is rather different and is superior but since it isn’t sub-titled I thought it was wiser to stick with the English version.

In addition to the science fiction, comedy and erotica elements there’s some social commentary on sexual mores, and there’s even an off-beat love story, or rather several love stories. While so many alien invasion movies show humanity triumphing through ingenuity or determination or a stubborn refusal to surrender, this is a movie about the triumph of love and sex. It’s an exceptionally bizarre movie, even more so than my description of it would indicate, but this is weirdness done with taste and style. The arty, erotic, comedic and sci-fi elements are quite nicely balanced. It’s sexy and funny, and it has Udo Kier! What more could you want? I loved it.

Next of Kin (1982)

Next of Kin is a 1982 Australian horror movie so obscure that I’d never even heard of it until someone mentioned it to me quite recently. It combines elements of the Australian gothic and giallo sub-genres, and combines them pretty effectively.

It was actually an Australian-New Zealand co-production, directed by a New Zealander, Tony Williams. Sadly it was one of only two movies he directed, and both apparently sank without trace at the time.

Linda (Jacki Kerin) arrives back in her home town after spending several years away teaching. She has returned to take possession of Montclare, a large rambling and run-down and rather gothic mansion which seems totally out of place in the unnamed fly-blown one-horse town. Montclare has been converted into a nursing home. It turns out that Linda’s decision to leave several years earlier had been an extremely wise one and coming back proves to be a major mistake. She discovers her mother’s diary, and it becomes apparent that there are some very big secrets in her family history. Connie, the manageress of the nursing home, and the family doctor, Dr Barton, know quite a bit about this history but they refuse to tell her anything.

As you’d expect, this makes Linda more determined to uncover whatever skeletons may lurk in the family closet. Her only ally is her good-natured but not overly bright boyfriend Barney (played by well-known Australian actor John Jarratt).

Not only are there secrets hidden in the past, but those secrets seem to be intruding into the present. Linda sees a mysterious figure watching her. Someone has been in her room. She has odd memories coming back to her from her childhood. Her mother’s diary mentions a series of deaths, of people found dead in the bathtub. And then one of the present-day residents of the nursing home turns up dead in the bathtub. The past is not going to stay in the past, and Linda will need to find out exactly what that past is.

While it has definite affinities with the giallo genre, this is a movie that relies almost entirely on mood rather than on continuous violence and gore. At least until the final ten minutes when the movie suddenly kicks into overdrive. Until that stage what you get is a very deliberately paced film, with the atmosphere being built up very slowly and very patiently. If you’re accustomed to modern horror movies you may find the pacing to be too sedate, although personally I think it works rather well.

The plot isn’t overly clever, but again it’s the atmosphere that counts, and while the plot twists may not be entirely unexpected they’re executed with style. The final set-piece, or rather linked series of set-pieces, is fairly spectacular and very effective. And Montclare provides a suitably creepy setting.

The acting is generally considerably better than you expect in a low-budget horror film, and Jacki Kerin is exceptionally good. The music is a bit of a weakness, being just a bit too 80s in places.

It’s available on DVD in Region 4, but I have no idea about its availability elsewhere. The Region 4 DVD is disappointing in its complete lack of extras, but that’s par for the course in Region 4. If you favour atmosphere over mayhem in your horror then this one is certainly worth seeking out, if you can find it. It's apparently one of Quentin Tarantino's favourite ozploitation movies, and whatever his weaknesses as a film-maker himself Tarantino has fairly good taste.

A Youth in Babylon

David F. Friedman is one of the legends of exploitation cinema. A Youth in Babylon is the first half of what was intended to be a two-volume autobiography although the second part never materialised. The book is like his movies - brash, unsubtle, shameless and joyously trashy.

Friedman started his career in movies respectably enough as a publicist for Paramount, but respectability and life as a wage slave never did appeal to him and in the mid-50s he accepted an offer to work for Kroger Babb, one of the greats of the exploitation movie business. Babb made a fortune from what was a movie version of a travelling medicine show, the centrepiece of which was a corny 15-year-old cinematic morality play called Mom and Dad which he marketed as an educational sex film, accompanied by a lecture by famed sex hygiene expert Elliot Forbes. Audiences were given the opportunity to buy paperback books explaining the mysteries and wonders of reproduction, at just a dollar each or two dollars for the set of two. Since the books cost nine cents to produce the show was a huge money-spinner. Babb had the reputation of being a showman who could sell absolutely anything, a talent that the young Friedman already possessed in abundance but which blossomed under such expert guidance.

The exploitation movie business of the 1920s through to the early 60s was essentially an offshoot of the world of circuses, sideshows and travelling carnivals, and this carney world was Friedman’s natural environment. Friedman went on to be one of the pioneers and leading figures in the sexploitation movie business of the 60s and 70s, producing and writing (and occasionally directing) a series of immensely profitable nudie-cuties and roughies. With his partner in crime Herschell Lewis he also invented the gore movie.

Friedman comes across as a loveable rogue, with no illusions about himself or his movies but with an infectious zest for life. He has some wonderful anecdotes about the fabled
Forty Thieves, the shameless hucksters who created and maintained the bizarre but fascinating exploitation movie genre. They were essentially conmen, selling movies with virtually no sexual content but convincing audiences they were about to see a veritable feast of naked flesh. They were imbued with the carney spirit. You were either “with the show” meaning you were one of those who understood the rules of the game, or you were a mark.

It’s all highly entertaining and it provides a wealth of information on this vanished cinematic world. The book covers Friedman’s career up to the mid-60s. It’s a great pity that the projected second volume has never appeared. A Youth in Babylon is highly recommended to any serious cult movie fan.