HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS (1970) * ½

 

Here’s another archival review of an Al Adamson movie from my old site, originally posted on April 15, 2010.  (Tax Day.  Bummer.)

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS  (1970)  * ½

A bunch of vampires attack a mess of people then the plot begins.  A team of astronauts travel to a prehistoric planet complete with different colored atmosphere and stock footage from other movies.  On their journey, the team finds feuding clans of cavemen; some of which happen to be vampires.  One hot cavegirl eventually makes friends with the astronauts and leads them to a pit of petroleum so they can gas up their rocket and go home.

So basically, it’s Dracula Meets Women of the Prehistoric Planet.

If Horror of the Blood Monsters doesn’t make one lick of sense, it’s because it was directed by Al (The Possession of Nurse Sherri) Adamson.  Actually, it was only partially directed by him since he just added new footage to a cheap-o Filipino caveman flick and tried to pass it off as the world’s first Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie. 

If you haven’t already guessed, most of Horror of the Blood Monsters is just plain awful.  It does however have a couple moments that are so bad that they make you chuckle.  For example, one of the cavemen’s names is “Dookie”.  How funny is that?  You can also have fun spotting just how many movies get ripped off during the course of the film.  The color changing planet is kinda like the one from The Angry Red Planet; except there are more colors.  There’s also a couple who fuck with the help of a glowing machine that’s similar to the one in Barbarella.  What they have to do with the plot is anyone’s guess. 

The flick also has a couple of marginally well-done monsters too.  There are some big bug men that aren’t too shabby and the way they made the Bat People appear to fly was sorta clever.  The gore is pretty much non-existent but there are a couple of fairly decent arrow shots, including one to the head.  (All of this comes from the Filipino movie-within-a-movie by the way.)

Yeah, Horror of the Blood Monsters has some neat stuff sprinkled throughout.  The problem is that you have to sit through a LOT of boring shit to get to it.  On top of that, everyone in the cast is terrible.  The lone exception is an especially cranky looking John Carradine.  I wonder why he looks so pissed off in this movie.  Oh yeah, that’s right, he read the script.  Say what you will about Horror of the Blood Monsters though, it’s the best Sci-Fi Vampire Caveman Movie I’ve ever seen; so, it’s got that going for it.

AKA:  Blood Creatures from the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet.  AKA:  Creatures of the Red Planet.  AKA:  Space Mission to the Lost Planet.  AKA:  Vampire Men of the Lost Planet.

How could I possibly follow up that fine bit of decade-old film criticism?  Okay, well, I guess I have to write SOMETHING.  So, here goes:

This was the tenth film on the Al Adamson box set.  It is the FIFTH one that has the word “Blood” or “Bloody” in the title, after Blood of Ghastly Horror, Blood of Dracula’s Castle, Hell’s Bloody Devils, and Five Bloody Graves.  The man obviously had a limited word bank when it came to titles, but that’s just one of the reasons why old Al is such an icon around these parts:  The man knew what the audience wanted to see, and they wanted BLOOD.  In fact, this won’t be the last Adamson movie with the word “Blood” in the title on this box set.  That distinction belongs to Brain of Blood, which I should be watching very soon.

I like the random opening with vampires sporting phony fangs (including Adamson himself) stalking unsuspecting victims.  The narration tries to tie it together with the space exploration plot and does it so poorly that it almost feels like you’re watching an anthology.  The spaceship scenes are slightly worse, but still sort of watchable in a “I can’t believe they’re making a ‘50s Sci-Fi movie in the ‘70s” way.  The longest part is the middle section where the astronauts walk along the planet’s surface and watch a bunch of tinted footage from a Filipino caveman flick.  

I’m not much of the fan of the space-set scenes, although I kind of love seeing an extremely crotchety John Carradine barking orders, acting annoyed, and generally being a big whiny ass grouch.  You take what you can get when you’ve sat through ten bad Al Adamson movies in two weeks. 

Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone’s noticed the way I compliment Adamson’s cut-and-paste directorial style of taking old material and incorporating new material to make a new product by cutting and pasting together new reviews from the scraps of my old ones?  Probably not.  Then again, what better way to honor a director who made a career off repackaged movies than with a bunch of repackaged reviews?

NEUTRON, THE MAN IN THE BLACK MASK (1962) ***

 

Wolf Ruvinskis stars in the first of five movies as Neutron, the Man in the Black Mask.  Unlike his Lucha Libre counterparts like El Santo, Blue Demon, and Hurricane Ramirez, Neutron doesn’t wrestle in the ring.  While I was at first a bit dismayed by the fact we weren’t going to see Neutron strutting his stuff in the ring, the film as a whole is so entertaining and fast-moving that it becomes a relatively minor quibble in the long run. 

A brilliant scientist creates a neutron bomb that will turn human beings to dust.  When his unscrupulous assistant, Dr. Walker (Claudio Brook) tries to murder him and steal the discovery for himself, the bomb is detonated, leaving Walker hideously scarred.  Another scientist is working on a similar project, and Walker teams up with a masked mad doctor named Dr. Caronte (Julio Aleman) to steal the formula and replicate the experiment.  It’s then up to Neutron (no relation to the bomb that’s so hotly sought after), the mysterious masked man to foil the evildoers’ plans. 

Even though there isn’t any professional wrestling to be had in Neutron, the Man in the Black Mask, our hero still finds time to body slam and suplex a bunch of bad guys and monsters outside the ring in places like living rooms and mad scientist labs, so it’s all good.  Unlike, say, El Santo, Neutron is leaner, faster, and lighter on his feet, which gives him his own unique fighting style.  You do have to wait a good half hour or so before Neutron arrives on the scene, which is a bit weird.  However, there’s enough scenes of mad scientists, dwarf assistants, zombies, and Mexican rock n’ roll to keep you entertained until he finally shows up.

The credit must be given to director Federico Curiel, who does a fantastic job creating a creepy atmosphere, especially during the laboratory and castle scenes.  The scene where Caronte first displays his zombie army is particularly well done.  Incredibly enough, this was his first film as a director and he already shows complete command over his craft.  He would later go on to direct many El Santo, Black Whip, and Nostradamus movies, but this is the one that started it all.

AKA:  Neutron and the Black Mask.  AKA:  Neutron, the Atomic Superman and the Black Mask.  AKA:  Neutron, the Black Mask.  AKA:  Neutron vs. the Black Mask.

SATANWAR (1979) *** ½

 

What do Paranormal Activity, The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, and The Entity have in common?  They all ripped off Satanwar to some degree.  What?  You never heard of Satanwar?  Well, let’s remedy that!

After a lot of Dragnet-style narration (you know, the whole “The names have been changed to protect the innocent” spiel and all that), a couple moves into their new house.  It doesn’t take long to discover it’s more like a nightmare.  The cross on the wall keeps turning upside down, chairs move on their own, bright lights appear out of nowhere, and slime and goo drips out of the major appliances.  Since the headstrong couple just paid for the house, they decide they’re not going to leave it.  They still stay put even after Louise (Sally Schermerhorn) is groped by a ghost!  They do have a heart to heart talk about the situation though, which leads to her hubby Bill (Jimmy Drankovitch) telling Louise, “If he tries it again, tell that ghost that rape, sex, and molestation is my department!”

Satanwar is a scrappy, no-budget horror flick that will have your jaw dropping more often than not.  It’s not exactly well made, but it’s certainly entertaining as hell.  The opening scenes kind of have a Charles B. Pierce feel to them as both the narrator and Louise take turns dictating to the audience.  The supernatural shenanigans scenes are admittedly cheesy, and the special effects are lame.  However, the grimy film stock, coupled with director Bart La Rue’s off-kilter direction makes it all unforgettable.  The synthesizer score is genuinely effective too, which adds to the overall uneasy feel of the attack scenes.

Although the climactic finale occurs at the hour mark, the movie isn’t quite over.  It presses on with a faux-Mondo Cane-type expose on voodoo priestesses.  After they writhe around a campfire for fifteen minutes or so, the film finally wraps up.  While Satanwar kind of loses steam during this stretch, it’s still totally worth it just for the complete randomness of it all.  I don’t know if La Rue was like, “Oh crap, the movie’s only an hour long!  Let’s tack some bullshit at the end!”, but it still sort of works. 

In short, Satanwar is breezy, cheesy, WTF fun.

BLOODSHOT (2020) ***

 

I don’t know if it’s because I miss the theatrical moviegoing experience.  Or the fact they pushed back the new Fast and Furious.  Or if it’s because we’re not getting to see comic book movies like Black Widow and Wonder Woman this year.  For some reason, whatever it is, I had a helluva good time with Vin Diesel-starring comic book adaptation, Bloodshot.

Is it a thoroughly generic and derivative superhero movie?  Yes.  However, it’s one that happens to be slightly self-aware, which helps it be enormously entertaining. 

Diesel stars as a soldier who vows revenge on the man who killed his wife (Talulah Riley).  The only problem is… he’s dead.  Thanks to a smarmy scientist (Guy Pearce), he is brought back to life, infused with self-healing nanite technology and a computer brain that gives him complete access to government surveillance satellites, and trained to become the perfect soldier.  Naturally, he goes AWOL in order to exact revenge on his wife’s murderer (Toby Kebbell).   

That’s the set-up.  To get into more detail would spoil some of the fun.  Just know it’s kind of like Robocop Gets a Memento from Wolverine and Deadpool at the Edge of Tomorrow on Groundhog Day.  Even though he’s juggling a lot of clichés and half-baked parts from other movies, director David S.F. Wilson (a former visual effects man) has a keen sense of humor that doesn’t get in the way of the story, but actually enhances it.  Things start off a little wonky, but even that has a humorous payoff, as the film finds its footing about midway through and really begins to take off.

It helps that Pearce injects the movie with a slimy arrogance that elevates his potentially one-dimensional role into something memorable.  Another bonus is Wilson’s surprisingly strong flair for action.  The shootout in a tunnel where Diesel gets his face blown off and then it reattaches itself is cool, and the final duel with a bio-enhanced henchman (Sam Heughan from Outlander), who dons a pair of Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot arms for their big slobberknocker is quite amusing.  (When their big brawl atop a series of speeding elevators occurs, try to imagine WHO is actually in those elevators as the facility looks like it’s only home to about four soldiers, one scientist, and maybe half a dozen tech guys.) 

Vin delivers a solid performance and emotes as much as the freshly resurrected corpse of a super-soldier can.  I especially liked his reactions during his funny superhero workout montage.  I don’t think it’s as good as the Riddick series or as wild as the Fast and Furious franchise, but I would put this a notch or two above the XXX movies.  It’s not a game changer or anything, but it’s a perfectly suitable Diesel placeholder until the next Fast and Furious flick gets here. 

HURRICANE RAMIREZ (1954) ***

 

I know I kind of watched these movies out of order, but the continuity is strong enough throughout the series that it wasn’t difficult to figure everything out, even without the benefit of subtitles.  In fact, after watching his antics in and out of the ring for two sequels, it was interesting to go back witness the humble origins of Hurricane Ramirez.  It also made me appreciate the family subplots in the later films a little more as their scenes in this one are better developed and entertaining to watch. 

Fernando (David Silva) works at night as a lounge singer, much to the dismay of his father Tonino (Tonino Jackson), a distinguished wrestler.  Little does his old man know, Fernando secretly moonlights as the masked wrestler Hurricane Ramirez.  When Hurricane refuses Tonino’s request for a wrestling bout, it drives father and son farther apart.  Their feud is put on hold when some gangsters kidnap Tonino and Hurricane swoops in to save the day.

The wrestling scenes are fast and furious.  Ramirez cuts a dashing figure in his wrestling matches, and Tonino has his moments to shine as well.  I think my favorite wrestling match was when Hurricane’s buddy puts on his mask to throw off suspicion to his true identity and winds up in the ring with an overly vain grappler who checks his hair in the mirror every two minutes.  The scene where father and son finally team up for a tag team match in the finale is a real barnburner too.  Heck, there’s even some women’s wrestling thrown in there for variety.  On the song and dance side of things, Silva’s numbers are a bit dull, but the cha-cha routines are full of energy. 

Hurricane Ramirez is indispensable as a historic milestone of Mexican (and the world, for that matter) cinema as it was one of the first Lucha Libre films ever made.  While it may feature a few too many dull musical numbers that gets in the way of the Mexican wrestling, the dynamic between Hurricane and his father gives the movie a dramatic core that many of its kind lacks.

As a connoisseur of these films, it’s fascinating to watch.  It may not be the best Lucha Libra movie ever made, but it’s interesting to see the genre taking its first formative steps.  After all, without Hurricane Ramirez, we wouldn’t have El Santo, so I think we all need to pay homage to the man who started it all.

FIVE BLOODY GRAVES (1969) ½ *

 

I accidentally skipped over Five Bloody Graves while working my way through the Al Adamson box set from Severin.  I’d like to think it was because I was all-too eager to get to the one-two punch of Smashing the Crime Syndicate and Hell’s Bloody Devils.  I mean, Colonel Sanders only made so many film appearances, and you have to savor each and every one.  (Even if it is the same footage of him awkwardly delivering two lines in both movies.)  It probably had more to do with the fact that I savaged it in my previous review of the flick.  (Which appeared on my old site back on February 8^th, 2008.)  Here’s what I had to say then: 

 

FIVE BLOODY GRAVES  (1969)  ½ *

Director Al Adamson has done some pretty awful movies in nearly every genre, so it’s no surprise that a western directed by him would be equally as shitty.  As Adamson flicks go, it’s no Dracula vs. Frankenstein, but at least it’s better than Blood of Ghastly Horror. 

Robert Dix stars as a cowboy who is on a quest for vengeance to find the Apache Indian named Satago (future director John “Bud” Cardos), the man responsible for his wife’s death.  Dix saves one woman from being turned into an Apache love slave and warns her and her husband to skedaddle because even more Indians are on their way.  Of course, they don’t listen, and they end up getting their wigs torn off.  (I would say “scalped”, but clearly the Indians just pull the wigs off the tops of their heads.) 

Then Satago finds a squaw who’s been shacked up with a white man.  He doesn’t like it much, so he beats the guy within an inch of his life and leaves the squaw out for the vultures.  Two cowpokes find her tied up in the middle of the desert and one of them decides to rape her.

Let’s talk about rape in movies for a second, folks.  We’ve had some brutal rape scenes in the movies before.  Anyone who’s seen I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left or Ms. 45 can attest to that.  But let me tell you something, you’ve not seen anything like the rape scene in Five Bloody Graves.  I am not stretching my imagination when I tell you that it lasts .012678 of a second.  Seriously, the guy leans over the squaw, doesn’t even thrust ONCE and is DONE.  Incredible.  He rewards her generosity by shooting her in the face.  Honestly, I think it takes her longer to die than it did for him to finish. 

After that bit of business, Dix comes to the aid of Scott Brady and his band of whores to fend off some more Apaches.  The duo of rapists also joins the caravan and when the husband of the rapee finds the man who did it, he gets revenge by giving him a Bowie knife to the gizzard.  Satago finally puts an arrow through the entire cast except for Dix.  Unfortunately, he runs out of arrows and Dix throws him off a waterfall. 

I LIKE westerns, but they aren’t my bread and butter.  I only watched this flick primarily because of Adamson’s involvement and to see John Carradine play yet another priest, but this flick is one of his all-time worst.  The film is loaded with stupefying narration that’s spoken by “Death”, but anyone could plainly see that “Death” is clearly the editor’s way of holding the slipshod plot together.  Dix (who also wrote this inexorable excrement) makes for a pretty pathetic hero and at one point gets out-acted by his horse. 

The music in this sucker is equally atrocious.  (It was obviously taken from other movies and haphazardly edited in.)  At one point, Brady clutches his beloved dead whore and striptease music inexplicably plays.  

What’s worse, it that there are only TWO graves in the entire movie and not one of them are bloody.  (At least a movie like Three on a Meathook has the balls to actually give you what the title implies.)  Even if you count the two people who are tied up and left for the vultures as being in a “grave”, that still only makes FOUR.  We DO get to see a little bit of blood every now and then, like when somebody gets an arrow into their abdomen, but it’s about enough to fill a medicine dropper. 

AKA:  Five Bloody Days to Tombstone.  AKA:  Gun Riders.  AKA:  The Lonely Man.

My second go-around watching it was even more painful.  I don’t really have much to add to what I already said twelve years ago.  I will say that I no longer think Blood of Ghastly Horror is worse than this one.  At least that flick has a cheesy looking zombie in it.  Anyway, here are a few new thoughts: 

You know you’re in trouble when the narrator (this this case, “Death” himself”) keeps referring to “Five Bloody Days” when the movie is called “Five Bloody Graves”. 

I fell asleep on this TWICE.  (I can safely say I didn’t fall asleep on Blood of Ghastly Horror when I re-watched that.)  If it wasn’t for the gratuitous nude scene that opens the picture, it probably would’ve been three times. 

The horror-tinged opening credits are pretty cool, as is the Psycho Goes West theme music, but it’s all downhill after that. 

Remember when I saw Satan’s Sadists, and stated my theory that Adamson was at his best when he was making a single movie and not cutting and pasting one together out of two movies?  Five Bloody Graves shoots a hole into that theory.  Big time.

HELL’S BLOODY DEVILS (1970) *

Hell’s Bloody Devils is basically Smashing the Crime Syndicate with the addition of a biker subplot.  These new biker scenes were the only way director Al Adamson could get the picture released as Hollywood was still in the midst of its post-Easy Rider biker boom.  They don’t add or detract much from the overall film, but they certainly stick out like a sore thumb.  Vicki Volante is the lone holdover from the original cast to link these new scenes together, although it nevertheless feels quite incongruous. 

The plot is essentially the same as Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  Only this time, there are a few scenes where the depraved biker gang The Bloody Devils (led by Adamson regular Robert Dix) receive payoffs from the Neo-Nazi group for allegedly helping their cause.  Mostly though, The Bloody Devils just ride down the highway to pad out the running time.  There’s also a scene where they pick up some cute hitchhikers, get stoned, and have an orgy, but it’s nowhere near as good as the Lolita scene from the original version of the movie (which is fortunately still intact).

If you’ve been following along with me for Al Adamson August, you’ll know that his cut-and-paste features are often a chore to sit through.  The secret agent shit is just as insufferable as it was in Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  At least there isn’t as much of it this time around.  Adamson was also wise not to remove the Colonel Sanders scene, which is probably the only reason the movie is even remembered fifty years later. 

AKA:  The Fakers.  AKA:  Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  AKA:  Nightmare in Blood.  AKA:  Swastika Savages. 

 

I reviewed Hell’s Bloody Devils way back when on my old site as well.  2007 to be exact.  Here’s another review from the vaults.  As you can see, my opinion on the film hasn’t changed much since then:

HELL’S BLOODY DEVILS  (1970)  *

From director Al (Black Samurai) Adamson and producers Rex (The Brain That Wouldn’t Die) Carlton and Fred (The Phantom Planet) Gebhardt comes this lethargic “biker” movie. 

It stars some pretty capable talent like Broderick (Highway Patrol) Crawford, Scott (Gremlins) Brady, Kent (The Mighty Gorga) Taylor, John (The Howling) Carradine, Jack (The Born Losers) Starrett, and Leslie (The Girl in Gold Boots) McRae, but the REAL star of the movie is none other than Colonel Sanders!  That’s right the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken himself has a small cameo (playing himself) and is the only thing memorable about this mess.  (The reason for his appearance:  He was offered a role in exchange for free chicken for the cast and crew!) 

If the plot involving bikers, FBI agents, Mafia hitmen, and Neo-Nazi counterfeiters doesn’t make a lick of sense it’s because Adamson patched this movie together (much like he did with Blood of Ghastly Horror) with an unreleased spy movie and added some new bikers scenes to cash in on the post Easy Rider biker movie craze.  The non-existent action scenes, shoddy car chases (they actually stop at traffic lights!) and static dialogue scenes will be sleep-inducing for most viewers, but since Colonel Sanders is in it, you should at least watch it for him.  Maybe if he added his “11 herbs and spices” to the movie, it would have helped. 

There’s also James Bond opening credits (complete with fake Shirley Bassey music) and some brief nudity.  (“I turn 17 next month!”)  John “Bud” Cardos was the production manager and Greydon Clark was an assistant director.  They also appear in small roles. 

The ads promised: “The frightening story of the attempt to take over the USA by a mad political group using the meanest motorcycle riders they can find to rape and pillage their way into power!”  

Don’t bet on it. 

AKA:  Operation M.  AKA:  Smashing the Crime Syndicate.  AKA:  Swastika Savages.  AKA:  The Fakers.