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Devil’s Express, The

Friday, March 5th, 2010

a.k.a. Gang Wars
company: Mahler Films
year: 1976
runtime: 82′
country: United States
director: Barry Rosen
cast: Warhawk Tanzania, Wilfredo Roldan,
Larry Fleishman
writers: Niki Patton, CeOtis Robinson
and Barry Rosen
cinematography: Paul Glickman
not on home video in the USA

Luke (awesomely named Warhawk Tanzania) leads a successful martial arts dojo in New York. Among his pupils are as diverse people as the white cop Sam as well as Rodan (probably not related to the kaiju, played by Wilfredo Roldan), the drug-dealing thug leader of a street gang called the Black Spades.

Luke seems to have become quite successful in the growth of his own martial arts as well, at least he has earned the honor to travel to China to attain a new rank by getting his ass kicked by an elderly master. Luke seems to have some hope for instilling a bit of spiritual growth in Rodan, so he takes him on his Chinese adventure.

After a bit of fighting and losing, the New Yorker only needs to do some meditation in the woods to level up to level nine. He chooses Rodan to protect his body while he’s doing the silent soul-searching stuff. Unfortunately, Rodan is easily bored, and instead of protecting his friend, he’s all too soon roaming through the woods until he finds a cave full of century old corpses. Unknown to the freshly awakened Luke, he also steals an amulet one of the dead wears around his neck.

Both men don’t realize that their indiscretion has awakened the amulet’s owner, who is annoyed enough to possess some poor random Chinese guy and stow away on the same ship to New York the martial artists take, obviously with bad intentions in mind.

Back in New York, Rodan steers his gang into a war with a Chinese gang called the Red Dragons, while the demon, although seemingly pining for the return of his amulet, moves into the subway system and starts to kill people.

At first, the police think the gang war and the subway murders are somehow connected, but Sam – who is quite bright for a cop in a blaxploitation movie – soon realizes that there must be more to the latter than meets the eye. He also tries to get Luke’s help in containing the gang situation, but the martial artist is of course too much in love with his own machismo and the evils of The Man to be of any help.

Luke is only getting active when the demon finally kills Rodan. At first, he tries to avenge his friend on the Red Dragons, but when a random wise old man explains to him who really killed his friend, he decides to catch himself a demon.

There’s not much that could be sounding more grindhouse than a combination of blaxploitation, American martial arts and horror flick, promising a very special sort of dubious movie nirvana. Of course, “sounding good” was often as far as films made for the grindhouse circuit came to the word “good” at all, so I went into watching The Devil’s Express with some reservations regarding its quality. I was positively surprised.

Sure, Barry Rosen’s film isn’t exactly what one would call a good film, but it takes the elements of the three (four, if you add the surprise visits in cop movie territory) genres it plunders with enough enthusiasm and earnestness to win my heart.

It’s certainly a film with its share of problems. The acting – with the exception of the guy (possibly Larry Fleishman) who plays the Italian-American cop with excellent clichéd gusto and a schizophrenic bag lady – is rather wooden, but carries with it the sort of authenticity you get by casting semi-professional actors and amateurs. And I can hardly blame Warhawk Tanzania for not being as awesome as his name.

Compared to even the most mediocre martial arts movies from Hong Kong or Taiwan, the fighting (I wouldn’t really speak of fightchoreography in this case) isn’t much good either, but are there any US martial arts films with good, or even just competent, fights? At least the fights aren’t lackluster, because everybody on screen is really trying to get into it like Bruce Lee, just without the required training.

The movie’s plotting isn’t much to gush about either. The script doesn’t even seem to be able to decide who its protagonist is – Luke? Sam? both? – and therefore jumps merrily back and forth without developing much momentum.

Additionally, the film’s running time is padded out by random inserts of not exactly important scenes. However, in this film the padding is where the fun lies, since here “padding” doesn’t mean the usual travelogue footage or scenes and scenes of people explaining the plot to each other, but wondrous moments of exploitative art. Sudden bouts of grindhouse social realism (the things that just happen to land on camera when you film outside in a big city without a permit), an utterly random love montage between Luke and a nameless woman, a kung fu fighting waitress, or the rambly monologueing of a bag lady unite to become something quite special.

In these moments, The Devil’s Express isn’t so much a cheap shot at making money by haphazardly throwing a movie together, but a near-magical evocation of a particular place at a particular time. This is something you couldn’t get in a more carefully constructed picture that (understandably enough) would need to keep out all the randomness Rosen’s film (probably unconsciously) embraces. Of course, not too many low budget films of this type manage to incorporate as many of these moments of magic/unconscious art as this one does.

I also have to stress that some scenes belonging to the film’s main plot line are pretty great, too. The scenes in “China” are very creatively realized, and while you’d never believe them to take place in China, Rosen gives them a very different feel from the city scenes. I think it is the quality of the light that’s mainly accountable for that effect.

First and foremost, The Devil’s Express is an extremely fun movie. I can take a lot of delight in a film that goes out of its way to keep the promises of fun it makes, even if it is a little sloppy, a bit cheap and very silly, so I felt right at home with it.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Tags: Action, Blaxploitation, Cult, Horror, Martial Arts, Warhawk Tanzania
Posted in The Horror!? | No Comments »

‘Max Headroom’ coming from Shout! Factory

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Shout! Factory is quickly becoming one of my favorite DVD companies, and this news only furthers that opinion. From the press release:

Shout! Factory and Warner Home Video, a division of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc., announced a multi-property alliance to bring the highly anticipated Warner Bros. television series Max Headroom and The Norm Show to the home entertainment marketplace. Under its multi-year agreement with Warner Home Video, Shout! Factory will be the exclusive media company to distribute Max Headroom and The Norm Show DVDs for home entertainment releases in the United States and Canada. The announcement was made today by Shout! Factory founding partners Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos; and Jeff Brown, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Non-theatrical Franchise Marketing.

Production has begun to develop a wide range of bonus content for Max Headroom: The Complete Series DVD box set, as well as re-transferring the episodes from the original elements to provide the highest picture quality.

“Max Headroom is a uniquely sought-after television property, boasting a large fan following and consumer interests. We have been pursing this property with Warner Bros. for years, and we’re thrilled that it’s finally coming to fruition,” state Shout! Factory founding partners. ”We’re pop culture fanatics at Shout!, and both of these shows are loved by fans of TV and are highly requested. We’ll do them justice with great extras and packaging.”

You can read the full press release on Shout! Factory’s agreement with Warner Brothers here: Shout! Factory and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Inc. Announce Content Deal

Tags: Cult, Matt Frewer, Max Headroom, Shout! Factory, Television
Posted in DVD News | 1 Comment »

Long Island Cannibal Massacre, The

Friday, October 30th, 2009

company: Happy Enterprises
year: 1980
runtime: 91′
country: United States
director: Nathan Schiff
cast: John Smihula, Fred Borges,
Michael Siegal, Paul Smihula,
Richard Stone, Nancy Canberg
Order this film from Amazon.com

A pair of murderous madmen (one wearing a pillow case and goggles) butcher Long Island locals for Jack (Fred Borges) so that he might feed his family, who are suffering from a bizarre cannibal leprosy. Inspector Cameron (John Smihula), having discovered the remains of a young woman on an isolated beach, works to track down the killers.

Nathan Schiff strikes again! This, his second Super 8mm feature, was produced shortly after WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and continues in that effort’s tradition of blending creature-feature homage with ridiculous no-budget gore effects. The scale is increased in some ways and pared down in others, in accordance with lessons learned during the making of WEASELS. You won’t find any tabletop trips to Venus or desk lamps standing in for rocketships here, but rest assured that the lengtheir and more focused narrative of THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE offers up plenty of inspired insanity all the same.

As with all his productions, Schiff wears his inspirations on his sleave. Inspector Cameron is a cop of the Dirty Harry variety, fed up with the system and itching for a chance to take his quest for justice offroad. A spate of gruesome homicides seem to be just what the doctor ordered, and Cameron is off the force and on his own in no time. But this inspector has more than just a chip on his shoulder, and his character arc takes some truly unexpected turns by the end of things.

The rest of the story, focusing on Jack and his hired serial killers, is a madcap mash-up of H. G. Lewis-esque ultra-violence and odes to the classic Roger Corman monster pictures of old. A scene halfway through, in which one of Jack’s family dies of starvation because he’s not strong enough to fight for food, is an almost verbatim replay of one from Corman’s THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED. The relationship between Jack and his hungry father echos that of Lee Van Cleef and the Venusian in IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, though the monster’s plans here are even more twisted as he goes about the countryside raping young women so that he might raise a race of cannibal children!

As the title (and any experience with Schiff’s other work) might suggest, there’s gore to be had in spades here. The film opens with a tour-de-force, Jack’s hired killers attacking a young woman with a lawnmower, and doesn’t let up much from there. The graphic imagery on display is gruesome, and the camera hovers lovingly over each of the gut-ripping and head-smashing setups – there’s no room for the squeamish here. The conclusion is the best of Schiff’s career, bringing the killers, Inspector Cameron, Jack and his chainsaw-wielding monster of a dad neatly together for a grue-strewn death battle of epic proportions.

From a purely technical standpoint, THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a big step up from Schiff’s previous film. Writing, photography, and editing are all improved, and the frequent action scenes are particularly well handled. This is still an amateur effort, to be sure, but there’s something undeniably infectious about the enthusiasm of a teenager who decided one day to shoot an 8mm feature film, and did.

Never intended for any sort of widespread consumption, Image Entertainment saw fit to release THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE along with WEASELS RIP MY FLESH and THEY DON’T CUT THE GRASS ANYMORE to home video in February of 2004. While not so feature-laden as those other two discs, Image’s DVD of MASSACRE is still impressive, especially for a film so obscure as this.

Image presents THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE in its original full-screen aspect ratio in an interlaced transfer. The footage still looks very rough at times, exhibiting scratches and speckles that have been inherent in the source since it was first edited together. But once one looks beyond the aesthetic limitations of a 29 year old feature shot on 8mm reversal film things don’t seem so bad. There has been a good deal of color correction work, and I doubt the image could be improved drastically beyond this without an extensive (and expensive) restoration effort behind it. The audio fares quite well, with dialogue and stock music cues carrying through quite nicely. Some alterations were made to the score along the way to account for unlicensed music, but the new tracks merge well with the rest.

Supplements include interviews with writer / producer / director Schiff as well as his chief cast members, Fred Borges and John Smihula. Smihula practically carries the film, playing a cop, a killer, a mutant, and Borges’ monster dad! Also included is a feature commentary track with Schiff that brings the production information available here into full-on overkill mode. Trailers for all three of the Image-released Schiff films are to be found as well, though there are no shorts made available here as they were with the other two DVDs.

The collected works of Nathan Schiff are certainly an acquired taste, and one I’ve railed against in the past. But as with everything else, opinions change. THE LONG ISLAND CANNIBAL MASSACRE is a grim sort of cornball insanity and I don’t mind saying that I enjoyed every minute of it – and what a title! Recommended.

Tags: Awesome Titles, Cannibals, Cult, Horror, Monsters, Nathan Schiff
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Aventura al Centro de la Tierra

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

a.k.a. Adventure at the Center of the Earth
company: Producciones Sotomayor
year: 1965
runtime: 78′
country: Mexico
director: Alfredo B. Crevenna
cast: Kitty de Hoyos, Javier Solis,
Columbia Dominguez, Jose Elia Moreno,
Carlos Cortes, Carmen Molina
Order this film from Amazon.com
(note: not currently available with subtitles)

A woman survives an accident during a tour of some caverns and recounts a terrifying story – that something inhuman killed her husband. Convinced that prehistoric animals must still exist beneath the surface of the Earth and believing the woman’s story to be evidence of just that, professor Diaz contracts a disparate band of adventurers to trek into the uncharted depths of the cavern system in which the man was killed . . .

Well this is certainly an odd one, though one should expect as much from production house Producciones Sotomayor – responsible for the delightfully bizarre musical comedy horror mash-up LA NAVE DE LOS MONSTRUOS five years earlier. As with that effort, an homage to the 50’s monster boom that had occurred in America a few years previously that referenced everything from INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN to THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, AVENTURA AL CENTRO DE LA TIERRA has inspirations from all over.

The most notable of these inspirations is Jules Verne’s classic fantasy novel Voyage au centre de la Terre from 1864, from which AVENTURA takes its title. The barest of the basics of the plot are retained, with a scientist leading an expedition into the depths of the Earth and finding prehistoric animals there, but not without considerable tinkering. Several points also seem to be taken from the 20th Century Fox film version of the story, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, from 1959 – notably the discovery of the ruins of a sunken ancient civilization (which remain unexplored here out of budgetary necessity).

While its title indicates adventure, AVENTURA is more a straight monster-driven science fiction / horror film than anything else with nods to classic Universal efforts and more recent Roger Corman pictures to be found throughout. Characterizations are typical for the genre – manly men, shrieking women, and a daft elderly professor to hold them all together. The cast is kept busy through a number of diversions, like death-defying climbs along precipitous cave walls and even a poorly-devised love triangle, but it’s obvious that most of the large exploration party is here as monster fodder.

And there are monsters a-plenty to be seen. On the low end are a few incidental creatures – some horribly unconvincing giant bats as well as some endearingly laughable floppy dinosaur puppets here seen alongside stock footage from ONE MILLION B.C. and UNKNOWN ISLAND. That staple of the genre, the googly-eyed giant spider, is here as well, only with no ray-gun toting figure of square-jawed masculinity to stop it.

The most satisfying of AVENTURA’s monster assortment are a weird toothy cyclops (likely modeled after the one seen in LA NAVE DE LOS MONSTRUOS) that poses no end of pesky trouble as it mauls through the outer ranks of the research party and a more mysterious bat-person that seems derived, in personality and action at least, from the Gill-Man from THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. While only fully revealed in the final twenty minutes, the bat-person is seen stalking hottie Kitty de Hoyos from the moment the expedition starts, eventually kidnapping her and dragging her back to his lair (a process that, oddly, involves the bat-person swimming with his victim through a previously unseen waterway). His demise likewise echos that of Gill-Man’s from the first CREATURE film, though there’s little in the way of ambiguity to this army-assisted bullet-heavy ending.

AVENTURA is a reasonably produced effort that makes the most of its vast cavern locales (the only sets to speak of are offices early on, and the film lingers on them only briefly) and sparse effects budget, cleverly (and sometimes not so cleverly) intermingling more expensive library effects footage with its own bargain basement variety. Even with apt direction from the prolific Alfredo B. Crevenna [LA LOBA] and a cast of bankable Mexican genre regulars, it’s the uncredited effects crew that’s really the star of the show. The suit work on display is in league with the similar work done by Paul Blaisdell in the States and the close-up creature make up for the bat person, which allows for a good range of emotion the less animated suit can’t provide, is pretty fantastic.

Thanks to the growth of the immigrant population in America and increasing demand for Spanish language entertainment, the number of obscure Mexican genre treasures available on home video here has grown drastically over the past five years or so. AVENTURA AL CENTRO DE LA TIERRA has been released to these shores by Xenon in a bare-bones and, unfortunately, subtitles-free edition that is blessedly inexpensive if one is able to avoid the ridiculously marked up Amazon retail price. Transfer quality is on par with similar low-rent releases – a full-frame combo job that’s slightly zoomed in but that still offers an excess of headroom at the top of the frame. The SD transfer looks to be from tape and is a bit soft, but is certainly watchable.

This is another little-known creature feature that I’m perfectly happy to have stumbled upon. While certainly nothing special AVENTURA is a fun and surprisingly graphic (for 1965) genre romp that should be a treat for those monster fans un-daunted by the language barrier posed by the only edition presently available. I say see it.

This review is part of the October Monster Mayhem roundtable:

Tags: Alfredo B. Crevenna, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Cult, Horror, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, Mexico, Monsters
Posted in Film Review | 3 Comments »

Mardi Gras Massacre

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

company: Omni Capital Releasing
year: 1978
runtime: 89′
country: USA
director: Jack Weis
cast: Bill Metzo, Gwen Arment,
Curt Dawson
Order this film from Amazon.com

An overdressed man (Bill Metzo) comes into a bar in New Orleans. He asks the resident helpful prostitute Sherry (Gwen Arment) who among her colleagues there is the most evil. After being pointed in the direction of the evil gal of evilness, he introduces himself with the words “Hello….I understand….that you are the most…evil woman…here”. Having thusly won her trust (and delivered his big line of the movie), he takes her home, straps her to a massage table in the evil temple to the Aztec goddess of Evil part of his apartment and cuts her heart out.

He’ll do that intermittently for the rest of the movie with women of whose evilness he has made sure of by the mystical power of asking about it, because they are evil, the goddess is evil, and they’ll be happily evil together everafter. His final goal seems to be to kill three prostitutes at once on Fat Tuesday to bring the evil Aztec goddess of Evil back to (presumably evil) life.

When we are not watching him and his evil designs (of evil, etc), we have the dubious pleasure of witnessing the investigational efforts of the two cops (Curt Dawson & another guy) who are supposedly working on the case. In practice, they are sitting around in bars and drinking a lot and Dawson is romancing Shelly in a way that makes the romance plots of Don Dohler films look positively riveting. And that’s it for the plot.

I can recommend Mardi Gras Massacre only to the true scholars of horrible independent local filmmaking from the US. Less inquisitive/depraved minds will probably, nay certainly, be bored out of their minds with this one even before the cops make their first snail-like appearance.

And yet the movie looks so good on paper: a Blood Feast rip-off taking place in New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras! Whatever could go wrong? So it is too bad that MGM’s director Jack Weis makes Herschell Gordon Lewis look like a genius filmmaker. There’s no shot too static for Weis, no actor too slow and boring, no interior too drab and brown. It is difficult to truly comprehend how little creativity a director can bring to the plate and still be called one, really. Speaking of a lack of enthusiasm for his work would be sounding much too positive here. I suppose “zombie-like” is a fair description of Weis’ directorial style.

Not even the gore effects are worthy of consideration, mostly because it is one single, improbable heart-cutting effect repeated ad nauseam.

And don’t go around thinking Weis will show you much more of New Orleans than darkened bar interiors (although I doubt that it is in truth more than one place filmed from slightly different angles) and a handful of naked women, the latter often dancing unenthusiastically. True, there are two musical montages (yes, one of them a love montage) and a “chase” (if you like to call it that) through a Mardi Gras procession, but the former are painfully disinterestedly filmed and the latter comes much too late in the course of the movie to matter anymore.

There’s a complete and utter apathy about anyone we see in front of the camera, too, except for Bill Metzo’s nameless killer. He isn’t exactly sprightly, mind you, yet I appreciate his brilliant failure to sound or act like a human being, his…awkward…pauses…after…every…single…word….he…….says and his near-permanent bug-eyeing. At least someone is putting a little effort in.

Then there’s the music, a neverending, throbbing mass of bad disco funk with only short breaks for pointless, wavering synthie throbbing. The music never fits anything we see on screen, and if I were a cynic, I’d say that Weis just dubbed a “Worst of Disco Funk” compilation onto the film’s soundtrack to keep himself awake while editing and forgot to replace it with something more appropriate later on.

But that’s not the worst of it. The worst, the terrible, unspeakable truth is that I somehow enjoyed watching this.

Mardi Gras Massacre has the warm and cozy rhythm only the truly great cinematic abominations have, combined with the curious thrill of watching a film in which every camera movement or an honest to god close-up are sensational moments of visual creativity that suddenly jolt the viewer awake.

There is something about a film that is structured like this one is – boring scene, utterly boring scene, boring scene, sudden idiotic line of dialogue, another boring scene, an even more boring scene, sudden excitement as a victim shows her dancing skills before she is sacrificed, another boring scene, more boring scenes, Shelly demonstrates her imaginary disco dancing prowess to the viewer’s shattering mind, more boring scenes, the end – that makes it hard for me to look away while it is running. When one’s taste has gone so far down the drain that one begins to think that Herschell Gordon Lewis wasn’t actually so bad in comparison to the director of the film one is watching out of one’s own free will, something like Mardi Gras Massacre develops a kind of hypnotic power much too perverse to be explained by a concept like “so bad that it’s good”.

Mardi Gras Massacre is so far beyond trivialities like this that I can’t help but think of poor, overused Nietzsche and one of his most overused little ditties. Enjoying its presence is what happens to you when you have stared into the abyss, the abyss has stared into you, and you have learned that, gee, you kinda like this abyss. At least nothing ever happens in it.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Tags: Cult, Horror, Jack Weis, New Orleans, Thriller
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Curse of the Living Corpse

Friday, September 18th, 2009

Deal Productions [1964] 84′
country: United States
director: Del Tenney
cast: Roy Scheider, Margot Hartman,
Candace Hilligoss, Dino Narizzano

Rufus, the patriarch of the Sinclair family, is laid to rest in the family mausoleum. Nobody seems all that shaken by the old man’s death, in fact, it would be difficult not to diagnose the bereaved with a certain amount of happiness. If we can believe their tales, Rufus must have been something of a sadist and a madman, making the life of his wife Abigail (Helen Warren) and that of their children a living hell. Which is not something I’d recommend to people like Rufus who have an uncommon physical illness that makes them prone to seem quite dead when they are still most definitely not, awaking fears of being buried alive. He might have set down certain security measures against it in his will, but no one is actually willing to take them. As you might have guessed, the Sinclair family is about as pleasant as Rufus himself was, with the exception of cousin Robert (Dino Narizzano), the boyfriend of Benson’s daughter Deborah (Carnival of Souls‘ Candace Hilligoss in her completely forgettable other role). He’s the young, bland guy the gothic trappings require to survive everything on account of the power of pure, concentrated boringness.

The opening of the will by family lawyer Benson (Hugh Franklin) doesn’t go well, anyway, because the will also keeps the money out of the family’s hands for a whole year, to make sure Rufus is truly dead. Oh, and by the way, dear children, if you are not doing what I told you, I’ll come back from the dead and kill you all after a fashion based on your worst fears.

Obviously, it comes like it has to come – the old man’s coffin is soon empty and a disguised figure is slaughtering the charming family one by one. The family calls the local chapter of the keystone cops, but those aren’t of much help to anyone, so it’s either up to alcoholic son Philip (a young Roy Scheider) or the bland one to step up to the occasion.

And lo! It happened that AIP made a shedload of money with Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations and the early Gothics of Mario Bava. And Del Tenney said “I want some of that money too!”, and decided to make his own little Gothic picture on the grounds of his father-in-law’s highly photogenic property. But something strange and terrifying happened to Tenney. We are not sure if it was a sudden bout of artistic ambition or just a knock on the head with the rubber suit out of his The Horror of Party Beach, but in any case, Tenney suddenly developed the idea of making a cheap knock-off that was also trying to emulate the visual flair of the films (in a sense cheap knock-offs themselves) it stole its ideas from.

So the courageous viewer of Curse of the Living Corpse is confronted with things he won’t usually connect with Tenney’s handful of films – carefully constructed shots, rather thoughtful framing and effectively moody outside locations. It is really impressive to look at, and even though the sets used for inside shots are a little drab and perfunctory, Tenney (or is director of photography Richard Hilliard to praise?) for once films in a way developed to cover up these limitations.

Alas, while Tenney the director is showing actual artistic development from his earlier films, Tenney the scriptwriter isn’t able to rise to the occasion. The script’s weakest point is the terrible dialogue, obviously based on the way people in Corman’s Poe adaptations speak, but Tenney is neither Charles Beaumont nor Richard Matheson and decides to turn the dialogue up to a crescendo of unbelievable stiffness that is at times difficult to stomach. It is the way stupid people think cultured people of the 1890s used to sound, I suppose.

The dialogue’s weakness is quite a shame, too, because the basic character concepts that are lost among all the monologizing aren’t bad at all. As a matter of fact, they remind me of the giallo principle of packing your cast full of the most unpleasant people you could imagine (and aren’t all rich people unpleasant and of dubious morals, young grasshopper?), giving them more psycho-sexual hang-ups than necessary or in good taste and then killing them off in even more unpleasant ways. The slightly cruel streak as well as the violent-for-its-time murder scenes also give up a whiff of American proto-giallo (more than of proto-slasher), just less class-conscious and less willing to really go to the unpleasant places.

Pacing is of course also a problem. The film is money-savingly talky, something I am willing to tolerate, but also cursed with a bad sense of timing that usually puts the most annoying comic relief imaginable right after a scene that is atmospheric and immersive, as if something in Tenney just couldn’t abide the thought of his audience actually being interested in his film, or even thrilled by it.

Actingwise, Curse of the Living Corpse is better than one would expect of a film that affords its – obviously not costly - cast to speak dialogue this stiff with fake English accents. Sure, the accents are sometimes off, but very tolerable, and most everyone does her or his role with solidity. Scheider and his film wife (and Tenney’s real life wife) Margot Hartman are even rather good, obviously having fun with being less than pleasant human beings.

The three (oh yes, the humor is so painful it had to be divided between three people, or someone would have died from it) comic relief actors are of quite a different caliber, of course, even making me think wistfully of people like Johnny Walker (at least not, fortunately, of Jagdeep), but when has the odious comic relief ever been well acted, not to speak of funny?

All of this might make the film sound a lot worse than the experience watching it was for me, but I am a fan of Gothic and mock-Gothic horror and therefore easy to please in this regard. Your personal mileage will certainly depend on your love for Gothic tropes.

For more bizarre movie goodness, be sure
to visit Denis’ excellent review blog The Horror!?

Tags: Cult, Del Tenney, Gothic, Horror, Roy Scheider
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