ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNKNOWN (1972) *

Encounter with the Unknown is an amateurish low budget horror anthology that is only noteworthy because of the participation of The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, who narrates the trio of tales.  His familiar voice is the only touch of class in this otherwise dreary slog of a film.  I’m not sure how much he got paid for this gig, but it probably kept him in cigarettes for a few days. 

The first story (*) involves a trio of teens playing a prank on their friend, which predictably goes wrong, leading to his death.  At his funeral, his mother curses the three boys responsible for the prank.  Then, every seven days, one of them meets an untimely demise. 

The acting is bad, the pacing is sluggish, and the whole thing feels like a student film.  Even though the story is less than a half an hour, it’s heavily padded with repeated sequences and flashbacks to stuff that happened just a few minutes prior.  The awkward structure doesn’t do it any favors either. 

The second tale (* ½) begins with a boy looking for his lost dog.  Eventually, he stumbles upon a mysterious hole in the ground.  His father investigates and hears a strange moaning sound coming from the hole.  His buddies lower him into the dark cavern, and he is ill prepared for what he finds there. 

This one suffers from low budget as the period setting is hardly believable.  It almost looks like one of those cheap filmstrips they used to show in history class.  Or maybe an episode of The Waltons directed by Charles B. Pierce.  At any rate, it squanders a decent premise almost immediately, and the complete non-ending is downright infuriating. Like the first story, there’s a lot of unnecessary flashbacks to stuff that just happened that help to pad things out. 

The last tale (* ½) is a familiar enough ghost story.  A motorist discovers a young woman wandering alone on a rickety bridge in the middle of the night.  He offers to give her a lift back home and discovers she hasn’t lived there for a very long time.

This story is predictable, but it’s probably the best of the bunch because it is the shortest.  Even then, the story is needlessly stretched out with (you guessed it) flashbacks.  It might’ve got ** if it was only fifteen minutes long, but it goes on and on senselessly for another five minutes, which is nothing more than endless scenes of the ghost girl and her former lover having romantic interludes through the woods while a sappy love song plays on the soundtrack.

I would have split the difference and gave the movie an overall score of * ½.  However, after the stories wrap up, another narrator comes along and gives us a recap of every tale, each one lasting several minutes.  These scenes didn’t work the first time and are even more excruciating the second time around. 

Without all these repeated scenes, Encounter with the Unknown could’ve easily been a sixty-minute movie.  Thanks to the heavy doses of padding and unending narration, it clocks in at a whopping ninety.  The egregious padding helps to make it one of the worst horror anthologies of all time. 

To sum up, this is for Rod Serling completists only.  His intros are the only thing worth a damn.  The rest of the movie is just mind-numbingly bad.

CORRUPTED (1973) ** ½

A pimp named Derek (Nicky Fylan) and his hooker girlfriend Angela (Janice Duval) are looking to make a big score.  They devise a way to blackmail, cheat, and swindle rich clients by luring them into sessions with “photographer’s models”.  They then take incriminating photos of the men and use them for extortion.  Trouble brews when Angela starts getting a little too cozy with their latest mark (Arthur Roberts from Not of This Earth), which drives Derek crazy with jealousy.

Directed by Ed (The Brain) Hunt, this Canadian softcore flick has perhaps a bit too much plot, but it features plenty of nudity.  Things get particularly repetitive late in the game as there are probably two too many scenes of the pimp being jealous that Duval is off getting busy without him.  Duval is easy on the eyes though, and she drops her drawers at a moment’s notice, which helps keep you watching even when the movie is chasing its tail.

The subplot centering around the head of the local moral brigade (Tom Celli) makes for the most memorable moments.  He gets a great introduction scene where he sits in his office and burns a Playboy centerfold to show just how serious he is about wiping smut from his community.  Not to be outdone, once the centerfold goes up in smoke, he sets a match to Burt Reynolds’ nude spread for Cosmopolitan!  This guy is an equal opportunity smut smasher!

Another highlight is when he breaks into a nurse’s apartment and forces her to use a vibrator at gunpoint.  (“Don’t play innocent with me!”)  It hilariously backfires on him when she winds up getting turned on and tries to seduce him, effectively flummoxing the creep and sending him running off into the night.  If only the movie had one or two more scenes like this, it could’ve been a minor classic.

While Celli’s plotline is a lot more fun than the blackmail stuff with Roberts and Duval, his big orgy scene is a bit of a bust.  The editing in this sequence is a bit choppy too, so I have to wonder if I was stuck watching a cut version.  Even if there were some juicy tidbits still intact, I don’t think it would’ve been enough to completely salvage Corrupted.  However, it remains a decent enough skin flick, warts and all. 

AKA:  Pleasure Palace.

ZOMBIE NIGHT (2013) ** ½

This Asylum zombie flick has a little bit better pedigree than your typical low budget gut-muncher.  It was directed by John (Feast) Gulager, features music by Alan (the Halloween sequels) Howarth and boasts a pretty solid cast for this sort of thing.  We have Anthony Michael Hall as the family man trying to keep his clan safe during the zombie outbreak, Daryl Hannah is his wife, and The Partridge Family’s Shirley Jones is her blind mother.  We also have Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’s Alan Ruck as the asshole neighbor who won’t let anybody into his heavily fortified panic room. 

If you want to see an endless barrage of zombie cliches for eighty-eight minutes, Zombie Night will make for an evening of undemanding entertainment.  Characters have to watch in horror as their loved ones are bitten, turned into zombies, and then they are forced to shoot them in the head.  There’s the scene where people keep shooting zombies in the chest until they finally realize shooting them in the head is the only way to stop them.  There’s the lovelorn teen who keeps wanting to check on her boyfriend who’s almost assuredly Zombie Chow.  It’s all here, and it’s solid for the most part.  The stuff with Jones stumbling around in the basement is almost laughable at times though, and the finale where the family makes their final stand kinda fizzles out.

As a regular movie, it sort of falls short when it comes to things like plot, characterization, and suspense.  As a zombie flick (especially one made by The Asylum), it works as well as could be expected.  Gulager stages the action in a competent, workmanlike fashion.  He also wastes no time cutting to the chase, which is always appreciated in something like this.  The pacing overall is fairly brisk, and while he brings nothing especially new or memorable to the genre, it’s far from a bad film. 

There is something to be said for the three-chords approach.  Do I wish Gulager and company aimed a bit higher?  Kinda.  However, there’s nothing wrong with aiming low as long as you can hit the target.  (Or at least shoot them in the head.)

AKA:  Dark Night of the Walking Dead.

HELGA, SHE WOLF OF STILBERG (1978) **

Helga (Malisa Longo) wants to be taken seriously by her male bosses, who rule a small country with an iron fist.  They give her a job presiding over a women’s prison, and she quickly takes to it like a duck to water.  There, she dishes out torture, punishment, and (sometimes) pleasure to the captive cuties.  Things get complicated though when Helga takes a shine to one of her model prisoners. 

Helga, She Wolf of Stilberg is an odd Women in Prison movie.  It wants to ride the coattails of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (Longo even looks like Dyanne Thorne a little), but it lacks that film’s conviction to depravity and disgustingness.  Heck, it doesn’t even have the heart to be a real Nazi flick as the bad guys all wear knockoff swastika symbols on their armbands.  The various scenes of whipping, torture, and rape all seem tame and halfhearted for the most part too.  Many sequences start off promising, but end abruptly, while others just sort of fizzle out.  There are quite a few scenes of people going for a roll in the hay (both literal and figurative), although it’s nothing that will fog up your glasses or anything.

I might have felt a little differently if the version I saw had subtitles.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss much as there is very little here in the way of actual plot.  Because of that, I had to rely on the exploitation elements to carry me through.  While the nude scenes and torture sequences are plentiful, they just never really go for broke. 

Longo is quite lovely.  She has a good masturbation scene that like most everything else in the movie starts off steamy but has no payoff whatsoever.  That’s kind of how the whole movie is though. 

Also, in addition to not being subtitled, the version I saw didn’t even have opening credits.  Just a long shot of a sword while library music played.  Weird. 

AKA:  Girl Slaves.  AKA:  Helga, the Leather Mistress.  AKA:  The She Wolf of Stilberg.  AKA:  Bloody Camp.

DOWN BY LAW (1986) **

A DJ (Tom Waits) and a pimp (John Lurie) are both framed for various crimes and sent to jail.  They wind up as cellmates in a New Orleans prison and are at first annoyed by each other’s very existence, but eventually, they grow to tolerate one another.  The duo is at first irritated when they receive another addition to their cell in the form of an oddball Italian murderer (Roberto Benigni).  However, he just may know a way out of their seemingly hopeless predicament. 

Down by Law is the third film by Jim Jarmusch, and it feels like a companion piece to his previous movie, Stranger Than Paradise.  Both pictures are filmed in black and white and feature Lurie in the middle of a trio of misfits.  As a big fan of Stranger Than Paradise, it pains me to say that this one just left me cold. 

The film does have a fairly tight structure.  The first act shows us how our characters wound up in prison, the second act features them getting to know each other behind bars, and the third act centers around their escape attempt.  The middle sequence is the best as both Waits and Lurie play off one another well enough in such a claustrophobic setting.  

Once Benigni enters the fray, the movie goes down the drain quickly.  I’ve never been a fan of his schtick, and he grates on the nerves every time he opens his mouth.  Strangely, the film slowly runs out of steam after their prison escape, and it sort of lumbers along to an unsatisfying conclusion. 

I guess this was Jarmusch’s riff on an old prison movie from the ‘40s.  However, it’s sorely lacking the spark and charm of Stranger Than Paradise.  While that film had a lot less going on, it still felt more alive and vibrant than this (mostly) joyless slog. 

THE SWORDSMAN (1993) * ½

The name of the movie?  The Swordsman.  The man with the sword?  Lorenzo Lamas.  He’s not only armed with a sword though.  No, he’s also equipped with “postmortem telepathy”.  That means he can stick his finger in a dead guy’s bullet wound and find out who killed him.  The cherry on the top:  He’s got a mullet that just won’t quit.  

Oh, and he’s also the reincarnation of Alexander the Great. 

His latest case is to protect a sexy archeologist (Claire Stansfield) who’s on the hunt for a legendary sword.  That sword just so happened to be owned by… you guessed it… Alexander the Great.  Now it’s up to Lorenzo the Not-Exactly-Great to get his hands on it before the bad guy does.

The Swordsman tries to jam a lot of shit into its ninety-two-minute running time.  There’s reincarnation, Highlander-style swordfights, Dead Zone-inspired psychic flashbacks, long history lessons, and dream scenes.  It’s either really ambitious or really confused.  It’s funny, because even when it manages to introduce an intriguing concept, it just sort of shambles onto the next half-baked subplot or idea.  

I mean, there’s a subplot that involves an underground fencing circuit.  Now, we’ve seen so many DTV action flicks that feature underground kickboxing circuits.  You’d think the idea of underground fencing would be fresh enough to breathe some life into the film.  Sadly, that’s not the case.

Adding to the movie’s woes is the decided lack of action.  I know he’s the “Swordsman” and all, but would it kill Lamas to use a gun for a couple of old-fashioned shootouts?  I guess it wouldn’t be so noticeable if the swordfights themselves weren’t so lackluster.  They really go overboard with the hazy lighting in these scenes, which makes much of the swordplay look like it’s taking place in a Meatloaf music video. 

Lamas dials down his usual likeable persona, which is unfortunate.  I know he’s “acting” and all, but I much prefer him in something like SnakeEater where he can at least cut loose and have some fun.  He also doesn’t have much chemistry with Stansfield, and the villain (played by Total Recall’s Michael Champion) is weak too.  Land of the Dead’s Eugene Clark also shows up as Lamas’ captain. 

Lamas returned for the sequel, Gladiator Cop.

THE ALIEN DEAD (1980) * ½

Fred Olen Ray’s second effort as a director (his first full-length feature) is a sluggish southern-fried zombie flick.  As much as I enjoy his cut-rate actioners, Skinamax movies, and cult classics like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, I have to admit that his early, low budget, regional horror films are a chore to sit through.  While The Alien Dead isn’t quite as bad as Ray’s next one, Scalps, it’s pretty rough going at times. 

People wind up dead in a swamp.  The local law enforcement chalk it up to gators (or possibly a giant possum).  Turns out, there’s a bunch of zombies running around putting the bite on everyone.  You see, a meteor fell out of the sky, landed on some pot-smoking teens who were partying it up in a houseboat, and turned them into zombies.  You know.  That old story.

The Alien Dead apparently started life as a loose remake of Attack of the Giant Leeches (which explains characters with in-joke names like “Corman”, “Gordon”, and “Kowalski”).  Ray soon realized giant leeches were too expensive, so he opted to make the monsters traditional zombies instead.  As bad as much of this is, I have to give Ray credit.  Ever the trailblazer, he was making low budget Romero knockoffs long before they were chic.  (The gore scenes are okay too.)  Also, Ray was doing the in-joke character name thing before it was a cliché, so there’s that.  He even throws in a long, completely gratuitous nude scene of a coed skinny-dipping.  These types of sequences would go on to become a staple of his later work.

Overall, The Alien Dead feels less like a Living Dead rip-off, and more like Ray’s riff on a William Grefe flick, what with the swamp setting, the constant country music, poor sound, and amateurish performances.  Speaking of performances, the only “star” in the cast is the former Flash Gordon, Buster Crabbe as the sheriff.  He looks too old to be a sheriff (he was seventy-two at the time) and flubs his lines, but he’s no worse than the terrible no-names in the cast. 

While there’s an occasional bright spot, the long dialogue scenes that go nowhere ultimately sink it.  The opening scene featuring a bickering married couple on a boat in particular will have you scrambling for the remote.  If you do manage to stick with it, you’ll get to see a decent scene where a guy gets eaten in half.  Ultimately, The Alien Dead deserves to be stuck in the swamp.

AKA:  It Fell from the Sky.  AKA:  Swamp of the Blood Leeches.