DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE (1971) *

Director Pete Walker’s Die Screaming Marianne starts off with a great opening title sequence that looks like something out of a James Bond knockoff.  Susan (Straw Dogs) George go-go dances wildly in front of a blood red background, flailing her arms around admirably.  Sadly, it’s all downhill from there.

George is on the run from her scheming father, a crooked judge.  She gets picked up hitchhiking by a helpful motorist who almost immediately proposes to her.  George accepts, but she soon runs off (again) and shacks up with his best friend.  This gets her groom so mad that he teams up with George’s father to get force her to return home so they can wriggle a hefty inheritance out of her.

Die Screaming Marianne is a slow moving and monotonous affair.  Although it was sold as a horror movie, nothing remotely horrific happens.  The family strife and double crossing is dull, and the pacing is painfully slow.  The title is a rip-off too because Marianne doesn’t die.  In fact, I don’t ever remember hearing her scream either.

Walker tries to bring some exploitation elements into the film, but he seems too prudish to really rock the boat.  The sex scenes are all very tame, and there’s an incestual angle that never pays off either.  Despite the great opening, that’s about as naked as George gets.  I’m not saying she had to get naked, of course, but if she did, it might’ve given this damned movie a reason to exist.

AKA:  Die Beautiful Marianne.

MAN HUNT (1973) ***

When a big heroin shipment turns up missing, the big boss (Adolfo Celi) casts suspicion on an innocent pimp named Luca (Mario Adorf).  Henry Silva and Woody Strode are two hitmen from New York who are sent to Milan to whack him.  Naturally, his wife and child get killed in the crossfire, which sends Luca on a bloody path of revenge.  

Man Hunt was the second film in director Fernando Di Leo’s “Milieu Trilogy” and if this is any indication, I’m going to have to check the other parts out.  It’s a tough, mean, violent, and enormously entertaining crime flick that features one of the best chase scenes I’ve ever seen.  When Adorf sees his wife and child ran over by a hitman, he latches onto the door of the van while it’s still in motion, punching the guy in the face repeatedly.  The driver swings the door open, which sends Adorf flying onto the windshield.  He then headbutts the windshield in a frenzied rage until it cracks open and he can finally get his hands around the guy’s neck.  It’s incredible.

The rest of the film isn’t quite up to that level, but it does have a nasty streak to it that makes it memorable.  The finale is especially great.  Adorf uses a crane like an arcade claw machine to pick up Henry Silva.  When’s the last time you saw that in a movie?

Speaking of Silva, he gives a lively performance and is a lot of fun to watch.  Pairing him with the stoic Strode was an inspired touch and their mismatched antics are consistently amusing.  It was also nice seeing the stars of Thunderball, Luciana Paluzzi and Adolfo Celi together again.  

AKA:  Hitmen.  AKA:  The Italian Connection.  AKA:  Manhunt in Milan.  AKA:  Black Kingpin.  AKA:  Hired to Kill.  AKA:  Manhunt in the City.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BODY PUZZLE (1992) ***

A serial killer who likes to listen to “Night on Bald Mountain” while he stalks his victims has been busy hacking people up.  He also likes to keep some of the body parts of his victims as souvenirs.  When Joanna (The Kiss) Pacula finds an ear in her refrigerator, she calls the police and a detective (Tomas Arana) sets out to capture the killer.

Directed by Lamberto (Demons) Bava, Body Puzzle feels like a warm-up to the glut of serial killer procedurals that proliferated in the ‘90s.  Because this is Lamberto Bava we’re talking about, he gives the stalking scenes an added bit of juicy gore.  The scene where a woman is attacked in a bathroom stall and her severed hand lands in the toilet is really something.  The standout scene though comes when the killer murders a teacher in front of her blind students.  I bet old Hitchcock would’ve been proud of this sequence.

Joanna Pacula is sexy in the lead, and she has considerable chemistry with Arana.  The supporting cast is full of familiar faces like John Morghen, Erika Blanc, and Gianni Garko.  Their efforts ensure you’ll keep watching, even when the plot is spinning its wheels.

As far as Killers Who Collect Body Parts movies go, Body Puzzle is a pretty good one.  It’s no Pieces, but then again, hey, what can be?  Fans of the cast, and Bava are sure to get their money’s worth.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: THE BELIEVERS (1987) **

Martin Sheen watches in horror as his wife is electrocuted by Mr. Coffee.  Instead of going on a Death Wish after Juan Valdez, he moves his kid to New York.  Pretty soon, Sheen’s son becomes the target of a child-sacrificing Santeria cult.

Directed by John (Midnight Cowboy) Schlesinger and written by Mark (Twin Peaks) Frost, The Believers has a solid pedigree both behind and in front of the camera.  The top notch supporting cast, which includes Helen Shaver (Sheen’s sexy landlady), Richard Masur (Sheen’s lawyer who does gratuitous magic tricks), Robert Loggia (asshole cop), and Jimmy Smits (crazy cop) are all fine in their roles.  However, the film is prone to many of the same pitfalls that similar horror flicks by classy directors face.

The big problem is it’s just not scary.  It’s slick-looking and well-acted, sure.  The only scene that threatens to raise any goosebumps is the part where spiders crawl out of a woman’s open sore.  For the most part, Schlesinger seems to frown upon this type of showmanship in favor of ominous warnings and tedious pacing.

Sometimes, Schlesinger plays things so deadly serious that it’s good for an unintentional laugh or two.  I cracked up during the scene where Sheen sees a cup of coffee and it reminds him of his dead wife.  You’ve also got to laugh when the stone-faced cult leader pulls a Jedi Mind Trick on customs agents so they won’t open his baggage full of voodoo paraphernalia.  

Clocking in at nearly two hours, The Believers is overlong and clunky.  The opening sets the stage nicely, but it just gets weaker and dumber as it goes along.  Like any ‘80s movie, it all ends with a showdown in an abandoned boiler room.  The little “GOTCHA” footnote at the end is really lame too.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: AFTER.LIFE (2010) ***

Christina Ricci gets into a fight with her fiancé-to-be (Justin Long) and flees the restaurant in tears.  She winds up dying in a car crash and wakes up on mortician Liam Neeson’s slab.  She isn’t ready to die yet, and he must assure her that dying is perfectly natural and that he’ll do anything he can to make her “transition” as easy as possible.

After.Life has an overly theatrical plot device that works surprisingly well thanks to the excellent performances by the two leads.  Ricci rarely gets the spotlight so it’s nice seeing her really sinking her teeth into a role that calls for her to bare her soul (and her body) and show a range of emotions.  Neeson is also great as the soft-spoken mortician who occasionally gets perturbed by his corpses' antics.  (He even calls them, “YOU PEOPLE!”, which is a little corpsist if you ask me.)  Rounding out the cast, Justin Long isn’t bad, just miscast as Ricci’s asshole boyfriend.

If you came expecting a horror movie, you might be a little disappointed.  The horror aspects are a bit subdued.  Most of the horror comes from Ricci’s inability to cope with her situation.  The scenes of corpses being prepared for their funeral are a bit icky too, but this is more or a spiritual drama (and a good one too) than a horror film.  

After.Life is overlong by about ten minutes or so.  There’s an unnecessary subplot that tries to make you think Ricci is actually alive and Neeson is merely playing a sick game with her that could’ve easily been excised.  All it does is junk up the third act.  However, when it works, it’s a quietly powerful little movie; one that deserved a wider release.

HALLOWEEN HANGOVER: BLOOD RAGE (1987) ** ½

A kid chops up a necking couple at a drive-in and blames it on his twin brother who is promptly sent to the nut house.  Ten years later, he escapes on Thanksgiving and returns home.  People start dying in a variety of gruesome ways, but which twin is doing the killing?

The gory death scenes are over the top.  Hands are hacked off, machetes are pushed through stomachs, heads are lopped off, and bodies are chopped in half.  I especially thought the shots of the still-wiggling body parts were a nice touch.

The stuff in between the slashing is hit and miss.  The big problem is that the tone is out of whack.  It’s almost like they were trying to make a camp classic on purpose, but it didn’t quite work out.  Louise (Frankenhooker) Lasser gets some laughs as the mother of the twins, but her acting is so broad that it feels like it came out of another movie.  We do get one legitimately funny scene where she chews out her son’s psychiatrist while the shrink’s recorded notes drolly play over her hysterical screaming.

Blood Rage features a decent body count and a good amount of skin.  The twin gimmick works well enough I guess.  The victims think they’re talking to the good twin, but it’s really the psycho, who just so happens to be hiding a sharp implement behind his back.  Your enjoyment of the cheesy and/or dumb parts (like who plays tennis at midnight?) will probably depend on your willingness to go along with the goofy tone.  Even at a relatively-brief 80 minutes; it wears out its welcome awfully fast.

AKA:  Slasher.  AKA:  Nightmare at Shadow Woods.  

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.