12 ROUNDS 3: LOCKDOWN (2015) ** ½

 

WWE Studios keeps grinding out DTV sequels to their films, and for some reason, I keep watching them.  This one has nothing to do with the last 12 Rounds movie, which makes sense since that one didn’t have anything to do with the first movie.  Part 3 stars a wrestler named Dean Ambrose, who doesn’t exactly exude Hulk Hogan levels of charisma.  Heck, he makes 12 Rounds 2’s Randy Orton look like an actual thespian in comparison. 

Ambrose stars as a cop who is just coming back to work after his partner was killed under mysterious circumstances.  Naturally, all the cops in the building suspect Ambrose, so they treat him like garbage.  When Ambrose comes into possession of a flash drive belonging to a dirty cop (Roger Cross), it puts a target on his back.  The felonious Five-O puts the police station on lockdown and declares open season on Ambrose.  His trigger-happy cop cronies are only too eager to take Ambrose out.  Severely outmanned and under gunned, our hero must use his wits to survive the night. 

The 12 Rounds series is interesting in that the first two movies were rip-offs of Die Hard with a Vengeance as the hero had to go traipsing through the city diffusing bombs while the bad guy made him jump through all kinds of hoops.  Part 3 is much more like the first Die Hard as it mostly takes place in one claustrophobic location.  It’s almost a flip-flop of the Die Hard franchise formula as the films get smaller as they go along.  In fact, there are no “rounds” the hero has to go through this time out, but the title does make sense because there’s a scene where Ambrose gratuitously says how many bullets are in his gun and… you guessed it… he’s got 12 rounds.

Which brings me to a short digression.  Why do the 12 Rounds movies star wrestlers?  Wouldn’t it make more sense if they starred boxers?  I mean it’s called “12 ROUNDS” and not “BEST TWO OUT OF THREE FALLS”.  Anyway…

Because of its smaller scale, inventive death scenes, and tight pacing, 12 Rounds 3 is easily the best one in the series.  I can’t quite call it “good”, but it certainly got the job done.  While there are a few too many unnecessary zooms during the shootouts, we do get a surprising exploding body scene, a funny Home Alone-inspired gag, and a genuinely great moment involving a taser gun.  Plus, I admire any Die Hard clone that shows restraint when it comes to the obligatory ventilation shaft scene.  I also enjoyed the fact that the hero can’t shoot straight to save his life, which at the very least is memorable. 

Sure, casual viewers will probably give it a pass, but indiscriminate fans of WWE Studios’ fare are apt to enjoy it.  If only the lead had gone to a wrestler (or boxer) with some actual screen presence, it might’ve even approached *** territory. 

As an added bonus, there’s a completely gratuitous nude scene early on that helps to spice things up.  This sequence also ups the WWE quotient as the rapper on the soundtrack namedrops “Ric Flair” in his song.  Of course, by doing so, it only makes you wish The Nature Boy was in the movie instead of the bland Ambrose.

BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE (1969) **

 

 

Blood of Dracula’s Castle marks the first out-and-out horror film directed by Al Adamson.  While it leaves a lot to be desired, it’s certainly his best movie up to that point in his career.  He was still finding his voice as an auteur, but even though there are some slow and sluggish passages, a few Adamson flourishes manage to eke out of the tedium.

The film was a collaboration between Adamson and writer/producer Rex Carlton.  I had high hopes for this one seeing as Carlton was the man responsible for one of my favorite ‘60s horror flicks, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.  However, the movie is rather tame compared to that one and the pokey pacing doesn’t do it any favors either.

A photographer (Gene O’Shane) receives a telegram that he’s just inherited a castle.  He and his girlfriend (Barbara Bishop) go to check it out and learn that an older couple (Paula Raymond and Horrors of Spider Island’s Alex D’Arcy) are living on the grounds.  Turns out, they are a couple of vampires who keep young women chained in their basement and use their blood to keep them eternal. 

There’s a kernel of a solid story somewhere around here.  It’s a shame that the overabundance of padding more or less prevents it from really taking off.  The opening credits sequence, in which a woman is stalked by the hunchback, goes on seemingly forever.  (I did like the toe-tapping ditty, “The Next Train Out” that plays over this scene though.)  This is almost immediately followed up by a long scene where O’Shane takes lots of pictures of his fiancée at the Marineland amusement park which is padded with footage of dolphins and walruses and shit. 

The plot is also a bit overstuffed.  If it was nothing but the couple investigating their new home and discovering monsters a la Scooby-Doo, it wouldn’t have been so bad.  When you tack on shit like cults, deranged hunchbacks, and human sacrifices, it kind of clutters up the narrative.  The most egregious subplot involves the vampires’ familiar.  The long scene of his escape from prison and subsequent crime spree stops the movie on a dime and could’ve easily been excised without anyone really missing it.  This sequence is further proof that crime pictures really aren’t Adamson’s forte.

It’s funny that the film feels so padded when there’s another version (titled Dracula's Castle) that includes even more material to beef up the running time for TV showings and video releases (it adds about seven minutes of new material in all).  This one features a subplot in which one of the characters becomes a werewolf (it looks like a Don Post mask) that doesn’t really do much for the overall story, but it does add at least one more monster into the mix.  There’s also a repetitive synthesizer score that plays during these scenes.  Throughout his career, Adamson would add new footage to other films (including his own) so they could be repackaged under another title.  This is the first time though another director (in this case, David Huelette) added new footage to one of Adamson’s films.  (Theatrically, it was released by Crown International who put it on a double bill with Nightmare in Wax.)

Despite the sluggish pace and jumbled narrative, there are some bright spots.  The finale is strong and it contains at least one impressive fire stunt.  I also enjoyed the rapport between D’Arcy and his wife.  Their scenes have a half-assed Addams Family vibe to them, and while they don’t get a lot to work with, they make the most of their screen time.  I only wish the FX budget was bigger to make their crumbling-to-dust death scenes worth a damn. 

AKA:  Dracula’s Caste.  AKA:  Castle of Dracula.

 

I reviewed this back in the day (about 2005 or thereabouts) for my old fanzine, The Video Vacuum, which eventually grew into this website.  In those days, due to space constraints, I wrote capsule reviews.  Even though the review was short and sweet, it looks like I didn’t have much to say about it back then.

BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE  (1967)  **

When the director of Dracula vs. Frankenstein and the producer of The Brain That Wouldn’t Die get together to make a movie, this is what you get.  A photographer and his model fiancée inherit an old castle that happens to be inhabited by Dracula, his wife, a butler, and a disfigured hunchback.  They chain up virgins in the cellar, drain their blood and sacrifice them to the moon god Luna.  With John Carradine as the butler and Alex (Horrors of Spider Island) D’Arcy as Dracula.  The excellent cinematography by Lazlo Kovacs can’t save this tame and slow flick.  

THE MYSTERY OF HURRICANE RAMIREZ (1962) ** ½

 

After sitting through a couple dozen El Santo movies, I decided to give the films of Mexican luchador Hurricane Ramirez a try.  His self-titled debut picture is notable for being the first lucha libre movie ever made.  It’s also notable for the fact that an actor, David Silva, plays the unmasked secret identity while the real Hurricane Ramirez does the wrestling.

This sequel, which was released nine years later, finds Hurricane in hot water with a gangster known as El Principe (Carlos Agosti) who is obsessed with uncovering his true identity.  He even goes so far as to performing an assassination attempt on him while he’s wrestling in an arena!  It’s then up to Hurricane to stay one step ahead of the gangster and his trigger-happy goons.

Since The Mystery of Hurricane Ramirez was made at a time when the genre was still in its infancy, it’s easy to overlook some of the stumbling blocks that prevent it from being a first-rate lucha libre flick.  Some of the dialogue scenes are a bit of a slog (especially when you consider the version I saw didn’t have subtitles) and the gangster villain is kind of boring too.  Future lucha libre movies would rectify this by featuring monsters as villains, but since there are appearances by heel wrestlers with names like “Frankenstein” and “Lobo Negro”, you get a sense the filmmakers were already sort of testing the waters.

The B plot about Hurricane’s family struggling to keep their diner afloat is actually sort of snappy, thanks to the completely random musical number in which the harried waitress breaks out into song while at work.  The shots of her and her boyfriend twisting like there’s no tomorrow is definitely good for a chuckle or two.  I also enjoyed the scene where the little boy (who is also a junior judo expert and aspiring luchador) sang a lullaby to his siblings. 

The wrestling scenes themselves are kind of hit-and-miss.  That’s mostly due to the fact that one long scene involves the little kid donning a mask in an attempt to become a real wrestler.  I did like the scene though when Silva’s buddy wears the Hurricane Ramirez mask to impress a girl.  Naturally, he winds up getting jumped by El Principe and his men and the real Hurricane has to come and save his bacon. 

While a little spotty in places, The Mystery of Hurricane Ramirez is a better-than-fair attempt.  It put a silly smile on my face, which is about the best one can hope for in these trying times.  It’s just good enough for me to want to check out the rest of Hurricane Ramirez’s filmography, which I hope to do ASAP.

BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR (1973) *

 

Okay, so this is my third go-around with (almost) the same movie in a twenty-four-hour period.  It’s a bad sign when I’m only four movies into this Al Adamson box set and my brain is already turning into mush.

Speaking of mush-for-brains, Akro (Richard Smedley), a green-faced zombie, stumbles around on a killing spree.  He mails the head of a cop to detective Tommy Kirk (the ex-Disney star looks pretty out of it), who then relates flashbacks from Psycho a Go Go (and Fiend with the Electronic Brain).  We eventually learn Carradine’s daughter (played by Adamson’s wife, Regina Carrol) is being targeted by another mad scientist (Kent Taylor) who commands Akro, his zombie servant to abduct her.  It’s then up to Kirk to rescue her before Kent can make her into his latest experiment.    

The make-up on the zombie is pathetic.  I mean it looks like they just slapped Play-Doh over his eye, painted him green, and mussed his hair and called it a day.  Your little sister could do a better job.  He does rack up a decent body count in his limited screen time though. 

At least there’s more original footage here than there was in Fiend with the Electronic Brain.  (About thirty-five minutes in all.)  Unfortunately, it’s cheap looking, dull, and indifferently edited.  The finale is particularly lame.  Not only is Carrol’s transformation scene hokey, she also calls Akro “Arko”, which is pretty funny.  Oh, and this time out, “Christy” the blackface doll isn’t billed in the credits.

Too bad we still have stomach about fifty minutes of Psycho a Go Go and Fiend with the Electronic Brain in the form of flashbacks.  If you thought the boring-ass diamond heist plotline was dreary the first time around, let me tell you, it’s downright coma-inducing the third time.  It’s puzzling to me that Adamson was so confident in this weak material that he would try to repackage it time and time again in hopes of it finally working.  I guess I admire his persistence, but he really should’ve moved on and tried to do something new instead of spending so many years trying to polish (and re-polish) this turd. 

 

As a bonus, I dusted off an archival review of Blood of Ghastly Horror I wrote on my old site.  Even though it was posted in 2007, it’s quite possible I wrote it earlier than that.  I can’t remember.  Heck, I don’t even remember writing the review.  I must’ve REALLY hated it back then to give it NO STARS at the time.  I’ve only made some minor corrections here and there, but this is how it originally appeared thirteen years ago:

BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR  (1973)  NO STARS

Director Al Adamson has done all kinds of B Movies: biker movies (Satan’s Sadists), blaxploitation (Black Samurai), and softcore sex (The Naughty Stewardesses) just to name a few.  This mess is the worst Adamson film I’ve ever seen (so far).  It’s actually three Adamson movies edited into one.  It’s one part heist movie, one part Frankenstein rip-off and another part zombie movie. 

Here’s the plot.  See if you can stay with me:  A zombie rips a man’s head off.  He MAILS it to cop Tommy (Catalina Caper!) Kirk (!!!) who tells a story about a robbery.  One of the thieves, Joe gets killed and mad scientist John Carradine gives him an electronic brain and brings him back to life.  Joe kills a woman and then blows up Carradine!  Joe’s father, a doctor in Jamaica, uses Akro the zombie to kidnap Carradine’s daughter, and plans to turn her into a zombie to get revenge.  Then Kirk tells another story of a botched heist Joe did, but the editing, lighting, and acting are so bad, I’m not even sure what the hell happened in that scene!  In the finale, the doctor changes her into a zombie and when the jealous Akro kills him, she turns back to normal.  The End.  Wow. 

You’ll have an ice cream headache for three days after watching this movie.  Also starring the director’s wife, Regina Carrol.  Adamson also did Blood of Dracula’s Castle. 

AKA:  Psycho A Go-Go.  AKA: Man with the Synthetic Brain.  AKA:  The Love Maniac. 

FIEND WITH THE ELECTRONIC BRAIN (1967) * ½

After Al Adamson’s Psycho a Go Go failed to meet much success, producer Sam Sherman attempted to sell the picture directly to television.  The distributor was uninterested in a crappy crime thriller.  They wanted a horror picture.  So, Adamson agreed to add new footage of a mad scientist (played by John Carradine) in an attempt to make the strangle-happy jewel thief played by Roy Morton a product of some Frankenstein-type shenanigans. 

In this version, Morton is no longer just a loose cannon who gets his kicks by killing women.  Now he’s a dead Vietnam vet who was brought back to life by Carradine as a part of his illicit experiments.  The new footage, which amounts to about twelve minutes, is nicely shot and benefits from a fine performance by Carradine, who lends a touch of gravitas missing from the original version.  It also helps that Morton also appears in the newly shot scenes, which doesn’t make them seem as superfluous as you might expect.  The chintzy lab equipment is also amusing.  (It looks like it was installed in a men’s room.)

The downside to all this, is… you guessed it… you still have to watch Psycho a Go Go in its entirety… again… and boy, if you thought those scenes were a chore to get through the first time around, they’re even tougher to sit through a second time.  Thankfully, Adamson didn’t cut out the go-go song and dance numbers, so those scenes, along with the new Carradine footage, is enough to make this marginally better than its original iteration.  That said, it’s still far from Adamson’s best.

Incredibly enough, this wasn’t Adamson’s last rodeo with the material.  He would later add new footage (AGAIN) to the movie and rerelease it as Blood of Ghastly Horror.  As you’re probably aware, the third time was not the charm.

AKA:  Man with the Synthetic Brain.  AKA:  The Love Maniac.

PSYCHO A GO GO (1965) *

 

Five years after co-directing Half Way to Hell, Al Adamson piecemealed together funds to make his solo directing debut with a low budget crime drama called Echo of Terror.  It failed to gain traction, but when it was recommended that Adamson cash-in on the go-go dancing craze that was sweeping the nation, he readily added in some gratuitous scenes of go-go dancers shaking their moneymakers to the groovy sounds of a not-bad lounge singer.  It’s funny because these sequences that were only tacked on after the fact are far and away the best thing about the film. 

A botched diamond heist results in the death of a thief (Adamson) at the hands of his crazed partner Joe (Roy Morton).  In a panic, the robbers toss the bag of loot off a balcony as the cops close in.  The bag happens to land in the bed of a truck belonging to David (Kirk Duncan), who unwittingly comes home with the loot.  The gang then tracks him down and tries to force him to give up the stones.  When THAT goes south, Joe goes after David’s wife (Tacey Robbins) and kid (K.K. Riddle).

The film goes downhill almost immediately after the cool go-go dance number.  The heist scene at the beginning is so-so at best, but it’s unfortunately the only passable action scene in the entire movie.  (It mostly feels like a cold open to a forgettable ‘60s cop show.)  Sadly, it only gets worse from there as the scenes of the hot-tempered thieves arguing with one another and threatening our hero get monotonous in a hurry.  Things pretty much come to a dead halt during the long, dull sequence where the villain pursues the hero’s wife and daughter through the wilderness.  In fact, I’m pretty sure the Earth stopped spinning on its axis during this scene. 

Thank goodness for those go-go scenes or else this would be totally without merit.  I’m sure if the original version of Echo of Terror existed in some form, Severin Films would’ve issued it as part of the Al Adamson Masterpiece Collection.  I’m sort of glad they didn’t because I can’t imagine watching this mess without at least one go-go dance number to numb the pain.

You can derive some humor from the fact our hero gives his daughter a painfully politically incorrect “minstrel” doll for her birthday that sings songs like “Oh Susanna” in an Alvin and the Chipmunks voice. (The doll even gets its own billing!)  That’s about it as far as the WTF factor goes.  On the plus side, Vilmos Zsigmond was the cinematographer, so at the very least, it’s nice to look at.

AKA:  Echo of Terror.  AKA:  Rififi a Go Go.

THE GIRL IN ROOM 2A (1974) ** ½

When you see the name Dick Randall in the opening credits, you prepare yourself for something special.  After all, this is the man who was largely responsible for such classics as The Clones of Bruce Lee, For Your Height Only, and Pieces.  He produced and co-directed (albeit uncredited) this Italian/American co-production, and while it’s not as sleazy as some of his best stuff, it does contain healthy dashes of nudity and blood.  That’s not quite enough to make it a classic or anything, but it’s an acceptable way to kill 84 minutes. 

Daniella Giordano stars as a woman fresh out of prison who goes to stay at a creepy old boardinghouse.  Before long, she starts having visions of a killer in a red mask and cloak.  There’s also a matter of a bloodstain on the floor that keeps reappearing.  Is it all in her head, or is someone trying to drive her mad?  When the brother of the previous tenant comes snooping around the place, he teams up with Giordano to get to the bottom of the mystery. 

Although the film has the look and feel of an Italian giallo, it’s largely lacking the big murder set pieces that are hallmarks of the genre (outside the opening murder sequence, that is).  There’s more of a Polanski influence than anything else as there are scenes reminiscent of both Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby.  The hooded killer also similar to the one found in Torso, which was released the year before.  (The music is kind of similar too.) 

Overall, this isn’t bad as far as this sort of thing goes.  Giordano makes for a likeable lead, and Rosalba (Lady Frankenstein) Neri and Karin (Black Venus) Schubert help to up the eye candy factor.  The scenes of nudity and violence that bookend the film are solid, and the mystery-solving sequences in between are OK too.  It’s just that it never quite kicks into gear and puts the pedal to the metal the way Randall’s best stuff does.  In short, Room 2A is worth a rental but you wouldn’t want to live there. 

AKA:  The Girl in 2A.