HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE PREMONITION (1976) **

Ellie Barber is an emotionally unstable carny who wants to kidnap her biological daughter (future member of New Radicals, Danielle Brisbois).  She enlists the help of her mime boyfriend (Richard Lynch) and discovers her daughter is living with a loving foster family.  Sharon (It’s Alive) Farrell is the foster mom who starts having weird visions.  When Barber finally kidnaps the kid, Farrell uses her second sight to find her.

Seeing the always kooky Richard Lynch performing a mime routine over the opening credits is about as creepy as The Premonition gets.  While the early scenes that set-up the premise are sound enough, the constant cutaways to the doctor explaining a lot of psycho babble really slows the momentum down.  These intrusions get on your nerves in a hurry and detract from the family drama at hand.  The freak-out scenes, when they finally do come, just aren’t that freaky.  The monotonous finale which heavily relies on Farrell endlessly playing a piano is lame too.   

All of this sort of plays out like a Lifetime movie with a hint of exploitation elements.  However, it’s all much too tame to really leave much of an impression.  Director Robert Allen (Rebel) Schnitzer lends a touch of atmosphere to the proceedings, but fails to deliver the goods in any sort of meaningful way.  The scummy performance by Lynch alone makes it watchable, although you may have trouble keeping your eyes open, thanks to the leaden pacing.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE BURNING MOON (1992) ***

The Burning Moon is a German horror anthology movie directed by special effects artist Olaf Ittenbach.  It contains two predictable, uneven, but mostly enjoyable stories.  However, it’s the wraparound segments that really make it memorable.

In the Wraparound (***), a punk (Ittenbach) deliberately pisses away a job opportunity so he can partake in a big gang fight.  He comes home, where he is less than enthused to have to babysit his sister while his parents are out of town.  She makes him read her bedtime stories and he cheerfully makes up some of the most grotesque shit imaginable to scare the pants off her.

The first story is called Julia’s Love (***).  A schizophrenic serial killer escapes from a mental hospital.  Meanwhile, a single woman goes out on a blind date with a guy who turns out to be the very same escapee.  She’s able to get away, but he follows her home to torment her further.

The Purity (** ½) is set in the ‘50s.  A priest rapes and kills a woman in the woods before sacrificing another woman and drinking her blood during a black mass ritual.  The locals blame a farmhand for the murders and routinely beat him up.  When they eventually go too far and kill him, he rises from the grave to get revenge.

The Wraparound is often very funny.  The scenes of Ittenbach standing up to authority are good for a few laughs, and the gang fight scene feels like Repo Man Meets The Outsiders.  These scenes are great, but unfortunately the ending is a bit underwhelming.

Julia’s Love is pretty basic.  Some of the effects are laughable (like the obvious dummy), but no more so than your typical Troma movie.  Still, the high body count and copious amounts of gore means you should be pleasantly entertained.  The shot of an eyeball being swallowed alone is worth the price of admission.  I also loved the serial killer’s pick-up line:  “I want you to absorb all of my love juice!”

The Purity has a much slower pace and is more serious in tone, which of course means it isn’t nearly as much fun.  There’s more of an emphasis on atmosphere here than in the previous story.  Other than that, it’s pretty slow going.  Things get quite gory by the end, but it’s not much of a payoff as much of it makes little sense.  While there’s still some squirm-inducing moments here (like the tooth drilling scene), it’s just not enough of them to put this story into the win column.

Qualms aside, The Burning Moon should please anthology horror fans as well as die-hard gorehounds alike.

BANDIDOS (1967) **

A quick draw gunfighter named Billy Kane (Venantino Venantini) bests trick shot artist Richard Martin (Enrico Maria Salerno) in a duel, crippling his hands in the process.  Unable to properly hold a gun, Richard trains a younger cowboy (Terry Jenkins) to get revenge for him.  He soon learns his protégée has plans of his own.

Bandidos is an amiable variation on Django.  The various gunfights and standoffs are slightly better than the typical spaghetti western shenanigans.  That’s largely due to the fact director Massimo Dallamano (who was the cinematographer for A Fistful of Dollars) gives us enough inventive camerawork to prevent the confrontations from getting stale.  (I particularly liked the cool shot of a bottle being slid down a bar.)

The double-crossing back and forth between the characters is interesting at first.  Their motivations for treachery are understandable, but they are doled out in a frustrating manner.  By the time the third act rolls around, the ever-increasing plot twists begin to get in the way of the action.  Because of that, the film pretty much runs out of steam before the final showdown even occurs.  

It also doesn’t help that Salerno and Jenkins have very little chemistry together.  They almost feel like a budget version of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer.  If only the movie had those guys in their place, it might’ve been a winner.

AKA:  Guns of Death.  AKA:  You Die… But I Live.

TONY ARZENTA: BIG GUNS (1975) **

Alain Delon stars as a hit man who wants to retire.  The Godfather (Richard Conte) won't hear of it, so he puts a hit out on him.  The goons accidentally blow up Delon's wife and kid instead, which sends him on a quest for revenge.

Delon gives a measured performance.  Maybe a bit too measured.  His low-key brand of quiet brooding just isn’t enough to sustain an entire movie.

On the plus side, Tony Arzenta:  Big Guns is a bit more stylish than most of its type.  The hit on the train is especially artsy.  The shadow of The Godfather was still looming large at the time this was made.  As a result, most of the murder scenes have an odd little touch to them (like when a fish tank is shot out when a gangster is gunned down).   

Unfortunately, the pacing is so staid that it never really catches fire.  Certainly, there are scenes that crackle with precision (like the car chase), but the stretches in between those moments are long-winded and more than a little dull.  It’s also capped of by one bummer of an ending.

All the ingredients were there for a solid little revenge thriller.  It’s just that director Duccio (Beyond Justice) Tessari fumbled the formula.  Still, any movie that features both Erika Blanc AND Rosalba Neri can't be all bad.

AKA:  Big Guns.  AKA:  No Way Out.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: SUPERBEAST (1972) *

I started to watch Superbeast a long time ago on Joe Bob Briggs’ Monstervision, but fell asleep about halfway through on it.  Ever since then, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to finish it.  I got my chance when Comet TV played it recently.  I shouldn’t have bothered.  Twenty years or more later, I still had trouble staying awake all the way through.

A drug smuggler goes ape and kills a bunch of people before being gunned down by the cops.  A pathologist performs an autopsy on the body and learns he’s been experimented on.  She then goes off into the jungle to find out what happened to him.  Naturally, she finds a mad scientist who experiments on criminals in his hidden laboratory.  He’s not really mad though; he’s only trying to rehabilitate them.  Sometimes the criminals regress and turn into primitive killers and go traipsing through the jungle.  This happens more often than you’d think, which is why the scientist keeps a big game hunter on hand to hunt them down just in case.  Eventually, the pathologist has seen enough and decides to give the doctor a taste of his own medicine, which of course turns him into a monster.

So, basically what we’ve got here is Island of Dr. Moreau meets The Most Dangerous Game.  If you’ve seen the other Made-in-the-Philippines Dr. Moreau remakes, Terror is a Man and The Twilight People, then there really isn’t any reason to see this one.  In fact, it’s even worse than those dogs if you can believe it.

The only joy comes from seeing the Pilipino Marlon Brando, Vic Diaz turning up as a cop.  Sadly, he is given very little to do.  Even his sporadic appearances may not be enough to keep you from nodding off.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: WILD BEASTS (1984) ****

Before there was Zoo, there was Franco (Mondo Cane) Prosperi’s Wild Beasts.  It’s almost like a zombie movie, but with wild animals instead of undead flesh-eaters.  As far as killer animal movies go, it’s one of the best ever made.

Animals at a zoo in “a large European city” drink contaminated water and turn feral.  They kill some zookeepers, escape, and run wild in the city.  Turns out, the shit they drank was PCP!?!  No wonder they animals have all gone ape!

Prosperi’s work on the Mondo Cane movies came in handy.  His documentarian’s eye makes the animal attacks seem authentic.  The scenes of tigers, lions, and dogs turning vicious are captured in such a way that it feels like it could ALMOST happen.

Sure, many of the situations are ludicrous.  Where else can you see a polar bear attacking children?  Or a cheetah chasing a Volkswagen Beetle?  Or elephants causing a plane crash?  However, Prosperi’s shocking sensibilities really come into play during the opening scene where zoo workers chop up a horse and feed it to the tigers.

Prosperi also knows how to orchestrate the usual B movie mayhem like a pro.  The scene of giant rats attacking a couple necking in an alley is a lot of fun.  Some of his touches are downright surreal.  The sequence where a herd of cattle stampede through a deserted city street is something Salvador Dali might’ve enjoyed. 

Just knowing Prosperi did all of this without the aid of computers makes it that much cooler.  When you see rampaging elephants breaking down a wall, they’re really doing it.  Sure, the wall was probably Styrofoam or something, but you still have to DIRECT the elephants, so they hit their marks.  That takes talent, folks.

AKA:  Savage Beasts.  AKA:  The Wild Beasts Will Get You!

ROBOT LOVE SLAVES (1971) ** ½

A scientist is so busy in his lab perfecting his robot love slaves that he doesn’t have any time for his paralyzed wife.  Not to worry.  She’s not really paralyzed.  She’s just faking it so she can fuck her doctor.  Once the robot love slaves are in working order, the scientist sends them off to ball various friends before turning them on his wife. 

Robot Love Slaves might’ve been better if the hardcore scenes had remained intact.  As it is, this softcore version is perfectly acceptable.  Then again, the missing XXX footage might’ve been terrible, so who knows?  All I know is that sometimes, the editing gets a bit too herky-jerky during the sex scenes.  

Thank goodness the sci-fi scenes are just silly enough to keep you interested during its hour-or-so running time.  I mean the filmmakers did a nice job of making the most of the production’s shoestring budget.  It was all clearly filmed in someone’s apartment, but at least the lab looked decent as far as these things go.  The girls are appealing for the most part.  They certainly seem game enough.  There’s even an OK plot twist near the end.

The funniest and most memorable part though was hearing instrumental versions of the day’s top hits during the sex scenes.  I’m sure there are plenty of other better ‘70s sex films you could waste your time on.  However, how many of those feature people screwing to instrumentals of “Hey Jude” and “What a Wonderful World”?

AKA:  Too Much Loving.