THE VAMPIRES (1969) ***

 

The Vampires is one of the rare Lucha Libre movies to boast a handful of name stars.  In addition to wrestling superstar Mil Mascaras, we also have Pedro Armandariz Jr., and John Carradine popping up.  Carradine is in the fun opening sequence where he is sitting on the set reading from a book of Poe before disappearing before the audience’s eyes.  Later, he turns up wearing a shitty Dracula cape while locked in a cage by the sexy vampire villainesses.  Many people would be tempted to make a criticism about Carradine’s career here, but all I can say is it’s good work if you can get it.

After winning a wrestling match, Mil Mascaras is nearly run off the road by a speeding car.  When it crashes, Mil investigates to find the car was being driven by… bats!  Naturally, the bats fly off into the night and take the form of sexy vampire women.  Sensing Mil Mascaras is a strong and worthy adversary, they offer him a chance to join their ranks.  Mil Mascaras wants nothing to do with their bargain and sets out to put a stop to their reign of terror once and for all. 

I’ve seen some shitty rubber bat effects in my time, but The Vampires might feature the all-time worst (which is to say, they’re hilarious).  My favorite bit was the scenes where the bats transform into the vampire women.  The camera lingers on a shot of a bat flapping its rubbery wings before slowly dissolving to a shot of a vampire maiden in a green dress flapping her arms!  This is why I love the films of Federico Curiel so much.  The guy could take the barest minimum bargain basement effects and turn them into some sort of B-movie surrealist masterpiece that would make Ed Wood envious.

Another touch I loved was the vampire women’s henchmen.  They wear tight red t-shirts and black berets, which makes them look like villains from an old episode of the Batman TV show.  Also, when they are shot, they disappear, leaving behind only their clothes!  The throne room fight scenes also have a distinct Star Trek feel, which adds to the fun.

Then of course, there is the vampire dance number.  In a typical Lucha Libre horror movie, the big dance number usually has nothing to do with the plot and is only there to pad out the running time.  What makes The Vampires fun is that the big dance number is actually vital to the plot… and by that I mean a bunch of sexy vampire women do a big dance routine, flapping their capes in the air, and twirling around while Carradine (whose voice is dubbed into Spanish) gleefully looks on. 

If the film has a flaw, it’s that it lacks the balls-to-the-walls weirdness Mil Mascaras’ best work has.  Cheesy special effects and costumes aside, it’s fairly straightforward stuff, all things considered.  Even Carradine is a bit wasted as he spends most of the movie locked up.  I would’ve also liked to have seen Maura (The Batwoman) Monti playing the Vampire Queen instead of the boring girlfriend character.  Still, despite those quibbles, fans of Lucha Libre horror cinema are sure to get their money’s worth from this one.

AKA:  The Vampire Girls.

DOCTOR DRACULA (1978) * ½

 

Note:  For whatever reason (probably rights issues), Doctor Dracula, Al Adamson’s cut-and-paste version of the hardcore flick Lucifer’s Women was not included in its entirety on Severin’s Blu-Ray boxset.  As with Bedroom Stewardesses, the scenes he shot, and only the scenes he shot, have been included as a bonus feature.  Seeing how I reviewed this not too long ago, the completist in me figured I would repost it here, if only for posterity’s sake:

ARCHIVE REVIEW:  DOCTOR DRACULA  (1978)  * ½ (ORIGINALLY POSTED:  FEBRUARY 26^TH, 2018)

Producer Sam Sherman got a hold of the softcore skin flick Lucifer’s Women and hired cult director Al Adamson to take all the sex out and put in a bunch of new scenes. The new scenes feature members of his usual stock players such as John Carradine and Regina Carrol.  Because of that, it’s a lot more tolerable than Lucifer’s Women, which was filled with a lot of bad acting.

The central premise of Lucifer’s Women is intact, but Adamson shoehorns a vampire subplot in there.  The narrative was already pretty jumbled to begin with.  The movie already has hypnotism, reincarnation, and Satanists in it.  It’s a small miracle that the new scenes are much more entertaining than the old footage.

If you’re a fan of Adamson, this should go down smooth enough.  I’ll admit, he’s not one of the most competent filmmakers out there, but he does a better-than-expected job at blending the new footage with the old.  It helps that they got Larry Hankin back for the new scenes, so the transitions between the old and new footage is hard to spot in some scenes.

Although most of the movie is bad, the scene where Dracula has sex in a coffin is kinkier and more inventive than anything in the X-Rated Lucifer’s Women.  Adamson also wisely dropped the Paul Thomas subplot, which allows the film to run much smoother.  You still have to sit through those long scenes from Lucifer’s Women though, and let me tell you, they’re twice as hard to get through the second time around.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked it when Carradine name-dropped Elvis in a list of Satanic messengers.  While the new stuff isn’t great, the scenes of Svengali holding seances and Dracula stalking his victims are more entertaining and atmospheric than the stuff the other director came up with.  However, the ending is really dumb and is about as stupid as anything found in Lucifer’s Women.  In fact, it was probably a Two Star movie until the shitty ending brought things to an abrupt halt.

AKA:  Lucifer’s Women.  AKA:  Svengali.

BEDROOM STEWARDESSES (1978) **

As with Nurses for Sale, Sam Sherman and Al Adamson took a Rolf Olsen/Curd Jurgens movie (in this case, The Doctor of St. Pauli), re-edited it, added new footage, and released it in America under a different title  Unfortunately, their version of the film did not end up on the Al Adamson boxset.  Instead, the Adamson-lensed additions were included as a bonus feature.  I was kind of disappointed by this, since the whole point of buying this boxset was to watch every single Al Adamson movie in existence.  

On the bright side, I found The Doctor of St. Pauli on YouTube and was able to do a double feature of that and the Adamson footage from Bedroom Stewardesses.  The Olsen movie is heavily mired with subplots, so I imagine Sherman and Adamson cut a bunch of stuff out to make room for their new scenes.  After seeing both Olsen’s film and Adamson’s additions, I can kind of piece together in my head what the finished product would look like without too much trouble.  (There are many characters who don’t appear on the 1978 version’s IMDb page, so it’s safe to assume they were left on the cutting room floor.) 

The original version is about a kindly doctor named Jan (Jurgens) who treats the poor and downtrodden.  Meanwhile his brother Klaus (Horst Naumann) is a rich, arrogant gynecologist who is up to his eyeballs in gambling debts.  A woman named Margot (Christiane Rucker) holds parties where women are drugged, forced into sex, and then blackmailed.  Among Margot’s blackmail victims is Klaus’ wife.  When he tries to retrieve the negative, a rash of problems, including everything from malpractice to murder occur.   

Adamson’s scenes (which amount to about eighteen minutes) revolve around a stewardess (Jackie Giroux) who is all excited about going to Europe and being invited to Margot’s party.  Once there, she meets a seemingly distinguished party guest (played by Adamson regular, Geoffrey Land) and they instantly hit it off.  Sadly, for her, he’s a perv who roofies her drink and takes advantage of her when she’s passed out. 

Presumably, we wouldn’t have seen her character again until the very end of the movie when she returns home.  It’s here where her roommate (played by another Adamson regular, Sherri Coyle) picks her up at the airport and asks her how everything went, and she essentially says, “Don’t ask”.  Well, if we’ve learned anything from Adamson’s ‘70s output, it’s that his films aren’t exactly woke.

The Doctor of St. Pauli has way too many characters and subplots that get in the way of the sleaze.  Seeing how Nurses for Sale was only sixty-six minutes (about ten or so of which was Adamson’s footage), I’m sure Adamson would’ve cut the film down considerably.  Since I don’t have access to the Adamson directed 1978 version of Bedroom Stewardesses, I can’t say for sure, but judging from all the footage available, I’d guess they kept all the sex party plotlines and cut out a lot of the subplot involving Jurgens’ brother. 

Either way, neither footage contains anything particularly explicit or hot, but there’s just enough of titillation to keep you watching.  We get a nude Bobby and Cissy routine, topless boating, and a funny scene where a topless combo plays in a nightclub.  However, whenever the depressing drama takes center stage away from the T & A, the doldrums set in almost immediately.

AKA:  The Doctor of St. Pauli.  AKA:  Orgy Blackmailer.  AKA:  Street of Sin.  AKA:  The Bedroom.

MACABRE LEGENDS OF THE COLONY (1974) *** ½

 

Mil Mascaras’ tag team partner, Darkness the Giant buys an old painting, ignoring the antique dealer’s warnings that it’s haunted.  After they win a hard-fought wrestling match, the duo retires to Darkness’ home for cocktails, along with their wrestling pal, The White Ghost and their three girlfriends.  At the stroke of midnight, the possessed portrait starts smoking and magically whisks them back in time hundreds of years to colonial Mexico.

The heroes and their girlfriends find themselves in a mansion where the lord has been killed in a duel.  His sexy wife (Lorena Velasquez, looking as luscious as ever), who just so happens to be a part-time Aztec priestess, puts his soul into a mummy, and sets him off on a course for revenge.  Meanwhile, the wrestlers and their gal pals have to find a way home before they are stuck in the past forever. 

It seems like I’ve sat through a lot of paste-up jobs here lately.  I can’t say Macabre Legends of the Colony is a cut-and-paste feature for sure, but it certainly feels like one as the wrestling plotline and the Aztec mummy stuff rarely intersect.  Most of the time, Mil Mascaras and his wrestling pals are off doing Scooby-Doo-style shenanigans while Velasquez is doing her Aztec priestess thing.  In fact, Velasquez and Mil Mascaras don’t even appear on screen together until the last ten minutes of the movie.  

That isn’t necessarily a criticism, just an observation.  The fact is this movie rocks.  It may feel a bit half-assed, but the wrestling scenes are great and horror sequences are legitimately fun.  Even if it does take a while for plots to come together, the great twist ending makes it all worth it.

Velazquez once again proves why she is one of the sexiest ladies in cinema.  Director Arturo Martinez compliments her beauty by filming her from low angles, which also gives her an intimidating presence.  Martinez handles the mummy sequences nicely too.  The scene where it comes to life is surprisingly eerie and effective.  I also enjoyed the little asides with the monk who has a face like the monster in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein who plays the organ like the Phantom of the Opera.

We’ve seen how great Mil Mascaras can be in these movies, but it’s Darkness the Giant who really steals the show.  He’s so full of himself that it’s fun when he gets taken down a peg.  He also has an awesome black and yellow mask that makes his head look like Pac-Man.  His tag team match with Mil is a real slobber knocker too.  It lasts nearly fifteen minutes and goes the full three falls.  It’s the final wrestling match that really puts the flick over the top though as the surprise ending will leave you grinning from ear to ear. 

SCHIZOID (1980) ** ½

Marianna (Messiah of Evil) Hill stars as a recently divorced advice columnist who attends group therapy sessions ran by her shrink (and secret lover) Klaus Kinski.  Meanwhile, a maniac in black gloves is stalking and stabbing members of the group with a pair of extremely sharp scissors.  Hill is also receiving threatening messages in the mail that are possibly from the killer.  The line of suspects includes Kinski’s potentially crazy daughter (Donna Wilkes from Angel and Jaws 2), Hill’s jealous ex-husband (Body Double’s Craig Wasson), and a patient with a hot temper (Christopher Lloyd).

Schizoid is notable for being one of the first Golan-Globus Cannon productions, and for being an early entry in the ‘80s slasher craze.  Because the subgenre hadn’t really worked all its kinks out yet, it often feels like a ‘70s giallo, thanks to the black-gloved killer.  Still, there’s enough slasher movie touches (POV shots, horny teens, a healthy dose of nudity, a cool electronic score, etc.) to fit comfortably within the confines of the label. 

Although it’s not entirely successful, Schizoid is a solid enough effort.  The pacing kind of stalls out once the police investigation gets underway, and the ending is a bit drawn out.  It’s not enough to completely derail the movie or anything, but the finale is sorely lacking the pizzazz of the first act. 

It helps that the cast is stellar for this kind of thing.  Kinski underplays his role to a surprising degree, which helps give his character an unpredictable energy.  Hill makes for a much more mature Final Girl than we are used to seeing.  The underrated actress (who was terrific in High Plains Drifter) delivers a fine central performance that connects all the crazies together.  Wasson is spot-on as the asshole ex and Lloyd does a good job imbuing his character with a sense of potential menace.  My favorite performance though came from Wilkes, who plays Kinski’s sexpot Lolita daughter.  She has a great nude scene where Kinski pervs on her that is some truly unsettling shit.     

Speaking of unsettling, the stalk n’ slash scenes are well done.  The opening scene where a woman on a bike is chased down by the killer really cooks.  Director David Paulsen (who also did the solid shocker Savage Weekend) delivers the kills in stylish fashion, and it makes you wish he continued on with the genre instead of heading to television where he produced shit like Dallas, Dynasty, and Knots Landing.  Come back to us, Dave, we miss you.

A cop played by Murphy Brown’s Joe Regalbuto gets the best line of the movie when he says, “The law works in mysterious ways!”

AKA:  Schizo!  AKA:  Murder by Mail.

THE KILL FACTOR (1978) **

 

Death Dimension is yet another Al Adamson movie I watched and reviewed years ago.  As with I Spit on Your Corpse!, I saw it under a re-release title.  Because of that, I will be referring to it as The Kill Factor, the title I originally watched. 

This was the second film Adamson made with Jim Kelly.  It’s lacking the fun of their first collaboration, Black Samurai, but it definitely has its moments.  Whereas that film shamelessly ripped off James Bond, Adamson was actually able to get James Bond himself, George Lazenby in the movie.  Not only that, but we also have Harold “Odd Job” Sakata as well.

Oh, and remember when Kelly famously shared the screen with the one and only Bruce Lee in the immortal Enter the Dragon?  Well, this time out, he partners up with the one and only MYRON Bruce Lee.  Yes, there was only one Myron Bruce Lee, and when you watch The Kill Factor, you’ll know why. 

The plot, such as it is, revolves around Odd Job getting his hands on a freeze bomb.  When it ignites, a bunch of fake snow blows around and causes people to turn blue and freeze to death.  Naturally, it’s up to Kelly and Lee to stop him before he turns the world into a winter wonderland. 

Like Black Samurai, the film is a hodgepodge of James Bond and Kung Fu, but it’s nowhere near as successful.  Just to keep everyone on their toes though, Adamson will toss out a random Psycho-inspired shower scene or some completely gratuitous T & A.  The action sequences are better than you’d expect, but overall, the whole thing moves at a snail’s pace.

At first glance, the movie is low on the sleaze you’d expect from Al Adamson (and producer Dick Randall, for that matter).  However, if you are patient, you will be rewarded with a demented scene where Odd Job threatens to turn a snapping turtle loose on a woman’s tit.  This scene really cooks, but highlights these are unfortunately few and far between

Kelly does what he can, but he’s missing the charisma he brought to Black Samurai.  The supporting cast is solid though.  We get the vastly underrated Bob Minor as Odd Job’s ruthless henchmen, Aldo Ray (in his second Adamson movie) as Odd Job’s grouchy business partner, and Mighty Joe Young’s Terry Moore (who was the first woman I remember seeing naked in Playboy) as a madam.  While they don’t exactly save the movie, it’s nice to see them turning up.

Here’s my original review from over a decade ago: 

 

ARCHIVE REVIEW:  THE KILL FACTOR  (1978)  ** (ORIGINALLY POSTED:  MARCH 26^TH, 2010)

Director Al Adamson is not quite known for making good movies but on occasion, he’s been able to make a few so-bad-they’re-good movies (like Dracula vs. Frankenstein).  The Kill Factor isn’t one of those movies.  It’s actually Jim (Enter the Dragon) Kelly’s second Adamson flick.  It’s no Black Samurai, but then again, what could be, right?

Kelly plays a cop who is told by his captain (George Fucking Lazenby) to bring down Harold “Odd Job” Sakata.  You see, old Odd Job has created a “Freeze Bomb”, a bomb that uh… freezes people.  (So yeah, does this sound stupid enough for ya folks?)  Kelly teams up with a guy named Myron Bruce Lee (no, I am not making this up, his name is MYRON Bruce Lee) and they Kung Fu a lot of guys and stop Sakata.

The plot is ludicrous (a fucking FREEZE BOMB?), the acting is shitty (just watching Sakata try to string together several sentences in English is pretty painful), but the dialogue is priceless.  Kelly gets a mess of funny lines like “The name of the game is save your ass!” and “This is malt liquor; the black man’s beer!”, but my favorite exchange came when Sakata asked the scientist why he betrayed him.  The doctor replies, “A twinge of conscience”.  To which Sakata remarks, “An unfortunate twinge!”

Yes, a lot of this movie is bad, but it does have some jaw-dropping moments of pure unadulterated HUH?!?  Like the scene where Sakata threatens to chop a girl’s boobs off with a snapping turtle.  You don’t see that sort of weirdness in films nowadays, do you?

Look, I know I’m making The Kill Factor sound like it’s a straight-up laugh riot, but I didn’t really laugh much during it.  In fact, you’ll probably laugh more at my review than you will throughout the whole movie.  The thing that really prevents the film from busting loose and becoming a cult classic is that Adamson is almost borderline competent when it comes to handling the action.  He films the fight scenes flatly, yet the choreography isn’t too bad.  (The usually reliable stuntman/co-star Bob Minor was the stunt coordinator.)  There is even an expensive looking boat chase that sorta makes you yearn for the bargain basement aesthetic of Black Samurai.

And you have to kinda feel for Lazenby.  One decade you’re whispering to Diana Rigg that you have all the time in the world and the next you’re telling Jim Kelly about a Freeze Bomb.  While Roger Moore was off fighting Jaws, poor George was trading punches with Myron Bruce Lee.  Yeah, I know George shot his own career in the foot but he didn’t deserve this.  I mean MYRON BRUCE LEE?

AKA:  Death Dimension.  AKA:  Black Eliminator.  AKA:  Dead Dimension.  AKA:  Freeze Bomb.  AKA:  Icy Death.

SUNSET COVE (1978) ** ½

 

Sunset Cove was yet another for-hire gig for director Al Adamson.  This time, producer Tony (The Toolbox Murders) DiDio tasked him with creating a teen comedy done in the Crown International mold.  While I can’t call it one of Adamson’s best, fans of ‘70s nostalgia will enjoy it for the dated fashions, cheesy music, and forgotten trends. 

A nerd pulls a prank on the principal on the last day of school.  That gets him in good with the cool kids who let him cruise around with them in their van.  When they aren’t challenging the local motorhead to drag races along the Strip, they are busy evading the local fat cop who can’t wait to bust the freewheeling teenagers.  Their summer is potentially ruined when a real estate developer threatens to put up condominiums along the shoreline, and the teens must band together to save their beloved beach.

Sunset Cove presented Adamson another chance to collaborate with cinematographer Gary Graver, who once again delivers.  His crisp photography coupled with the excellent transfer makes this one of the best-looking films on the Al Adamson Blu-Ray boxset.  It also afforded him another opportunity to work with many players from Cinderella 2000, including Jay B. Larson, Erwin Fuller, Art Cacaro, and Sherri Coyle.  The rest of his stock cast is largely absent, save for John Carradine who pops up at the eleventh hour as a lawyer who agrees to help the teens.

Like most late ‘70s, pre-Porky’s teen sex comedies, the whole thing is good-natured and innocent, especially compared to the stuff that would be released the next decade.  It’s decidedly low-rent and no-frills, but it remains harmless, innocuous entertainment.  Adamson’s style is a good fit for the loosey-goosey plot.  In most of his films, the overreliance on subplots has a tendency to bog things down, but Sunset Cove’s rambling, episodic script allows him to pile on subplot after subplot without bringing the momentum to a complete halt.  The movie only threatens to spin out of control by the time the big protest/rock concert rolls around.  It’s here where things begin to peter out, but overall, it’s more consistent than many of Adamson’s films.

Adamson never met a trend he didn’t like.  He crams a lot of stuff that the teens of the day could relate to.  If you were young when the movie came out, you should have a fondness for all the detailed vans, Frisbee games, and hang-gliding sequences.  If that sort of thing isn’t your bag, you can always sit back and enjoy the copious amounts of T & A. 

AKA:  School’s Out at Sunset Cove.  AKA:  Teenager Report.