THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #2: CITY OF BLOOD (1987) **

(Streamed via B-Movie TV)

I have fond memories of seeing the video box for City of Blood at our local mom and pop video store back in the ‘80s.  Despite the memorable image of the screaming skull superimposed over the skyline of the city, I somehow never wound up renting it.  That might be for the best because if I watched it as a ten-year-old, I may have written it off as “boring”.  As an adult, I still think it’s pretty dull, but I can at the very least appreciate the fact that it was trying to do something a little different.

A medical examiner (Joe Stewardson) is investigating a rash of grisly prostitute murders in South Africa.  The culprit seems to be the ghost of a two-thousand-year-old witch doctor who is using the ladies of the night as human sacrifices.  Another decidedly less supernatural possibility:  Corrupt officials are using the killings to cover up murders committed by the local dirty cops.

Say what you will about City of Blood, but it has more on its mind than just your average slasher.  There’s a layer of local subtext here that I’m sure went over American audiences’ heads.  The fact the hero is an old guilt-ridden white man is supposed to be symbolic of the South African people’s changing feelings of apartheid.  Although that aspect might not quite seem apparent to some Yanks, at least it gives it a unique identity that helps separate it from the glut of late ‘80s slashers that populated video store shelves.  

Director Darrell Roodt gives the film an odd atmosphere that keeps things interesting from a visual standpoint, even when the pacing drags.  The occasional moody moment works as standalone set pieces.  One such scene finds our hero waking up screaming from a nightmare.  He then recounts his dream to his wife, and when the camera later pulls back, we see she was just a figment of his imagination.  

Unfortunately, the movie bogs down when the plot veers away from the hooker murders and begins focusing on politics.  Because of that, it feels like a bit of a bait and switch.  Those expecting a horror movie will probably be let down, but then again, the scene where the old fogey Stewardson goes to bed with a hooker a third his age is pretty terrifying.  

Roodt went on to have a wildly varied career directing a little bit of everything including Hollywood fare (Father Hood), politically minded movies (Cry the Beloved Country), DTV action (Witness to a Kill), and eventually SYFY sequels (Lake Placid:  Legacy).  

BOIN-N-G (1963) **

William R. Johnson and William Kerwin star as two aspiring porn producers (based on Herschell Gordon Lewis and David. F. Friedman, the director and producer of the film) who walk out of a skin flick (Lewis and Friedman’s The Adventures of Lucky Pierre) thinking they could do it better.  Together they decide to quit their jobs, strike out on their own, and make a nudie movie (Nature’s Nudniks).  They soon learn making an adults-only feature is tougher than it looks.  

The comedy is pretty inane, as is usually the case with these sorts of things.  Kerwin and Johnson ham it up way too much and their antics fail to generate any laughs.  What’s worse, their silent movie-style mugging gets in the way of the nudity.  Lewis also overdoes it with the comedic musical score that overscores the already unfunny material.  I admire the fact that Lewis and Friedman were poking fun at themselves, but ultimately, they’re probably the only ones who found any of the behind-the-scenes humor funny.  It doesn’t help that many of the sequences end on a predictable note.  (There’s no film in the camera, the lens cap is still on, etc.)    

The nudie scenes are OK.  They’re mostly your typical cheesecake stuff.  The models sunbathe, slowly undress for the camera, rub their butt cheeks so they make squeaky balloon noises, that sort of thing.  None of it is exactly titillating since it’s all sandwiched between the meta scenes of the frantic filmmakers trying to capture the action for the camera.  However, once the film gains a little momentum about halfway through, the nudity becomes more plentiful, which at the very least makes it watchable.  The only real standout in the cast is Christina Castel, who plays Audrey, the starlet who gets naked at the drop of a hat.  Whenever she’s on screen going au natural, Boin-n-g might make you schwing. 

AKA:  Untamed Women in Nature in the Raw.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #1: OUT OF THE DARKNESS (1978) **

(Streamed via American Horrors)

Donald Pleasence stars as a famous big game hunter on the prowl for a deadly panther.  When the badass cat wounds him during the hunt, he puts a bounty on the beast’s hide.  Some local hunters trap it and deliver it to Pleasence’s private island so he can finally hunt it mano y mano.  Problems arise when his daughters Nancy Kwan and Jennifer Rhodes come to the island to visit him with sleazy tour guide Ross Hagen (who also produced) in tow.  

Basically, it’s The Most Dangerous Game, but with a panther.

Director Lee (The Night God Screamed) Madden kind of goes overboard when it comes to the slow-motion shots of the panther tracking Pleasence.  Of course, if he didn’t put every other hunting scene in slow-motion, the eighty-three-minute film would’ve only been an hour or so long.  (The attack scenes that occur later in the picture also suffer from too much slow-mo.)  Some of the POV shots of the cat’s perspective are good for a laugh, especially when the wild-eyed Pleasence is wallowing in fright.  

There are a few off-kilter moments that keep Out of the Darkness from fizzling out completely.  My favorite bits were the scenes of Pleasence staring down the caged cat and trying to intimidate it while delivering a crazed internal monologue.  The scenes of Pleasence playing mind games with the cat are amusing, but the whole thing hits a brick wall whenever the action switches over to his daughters having sisterly bonding time.  I’m a big Ross Hagen fan, so for me, his unique energy made the love triangle stuff between him and the two sisters bearable.  Even then, his moments pale in comparison to the oddball shit with Pleasence.  If the filmmakers had dropped the extraneous characters in favor of more scenes with Donald and the panther, it might’ve worked.

As it is, Out of the Darkness doesn’t have enough of a body count to work as a When Animal Attack movie.  It’s also too weird to succeed as a straight-up hunting expedition drama.  I guess it’s just odd enough to function as a metaphor for man vs. animal, but even then, that’s kind of a reach.  Still, it’s almost worth a look just for Pleasence’s hammy turn.  

AKA:  Night Creature.  AKA:  Devil’s Beast. 

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: THE ROKU HORROR PICTURE SHOW

I’ve been running behind on posting reviews all summer and have just now gotten around to getting my proverbial ducks in a row just in time for Halloween.  As all my long-time readers know, I reserve the month of October to showcase (mostly) nothing but reviews of horror movies.  Most years, I have a theme, usually revolving around horror franchises, bargain bin DVDs, or stuff I’ve had in my Amazon Prime queue that I never got around to watching.  Last year for Christmas, I got a Roku player, and have spent the last ten months finding lots of weird, wild, and sometimes just plain awesome channels.  Since I love my Roku player so much, I have decided to make this year’s theme The Roku Horror Picture Show and highlight various Roku channels I enjoy.  

So, for this column, I will review thirty-one different horror movies from thirty-one different Roku channels.  Each review will have a little note stating which channel I found the movie on.  My hope is that not only will readers discover new or weird horror movies they might have missed, they will also be introduced to some pretty cool Roku channels as well.  

Since I'm already behind schedule, and there's no way I can do the typical 31 "Days" of Horror-Ween, I will instead review The 31 "Movies" of Horror-Ween.  It will still be the same amount of reviews, just not posted on a daily basis.  However, there will definitely be 31 of them.  They just might not be posted until November (or even December).

So, without further delay (I’ve already delayed this column long enough), let’s kick things off!

C.I.A. 2: TARGET: ALEXA (1994) ** ½

I remember very little about C.I.A. Code Name:  Alexa other than it starred Lorenzo Lamas, his wife Kathleen Kinmont, and… uh… O.J. Simpson.  Fortunately for us, the Juice didn’t return for this second installment of the two-picture franchise.  Some more good news:  In addition to starring in this flick, Lamas also directed!  (It was a family affair all around as Kinmont co-wrote the story.)  

Terrorists are out to steal nuclear codes and hold the world at ransom.  Naturally, the only man who can stop them is Graver (Lamas).  Well, he also needs a woman to stop them too, so he turns to his former flame Alexa (Kinmont) to help take them down.  Little does Graver know the terrorist leader Kluge (John Savage) is also Alexa’s baby daddy, which could mean trouble for both sides.  Things get complicated when a rival terrorist faction led by Straker (John Saint Ryan) steals the chip necessary to launch the nukes and Graver must make an uneasy alliance with Kluge to save the world.  

I’ve seen many reviews kind of dis C.I.A. 2:  Target Alexa, or at the very least rank it lower than the original.  I don’t know what movie they saw.  The one I saw features Lorenzo Lamas killing a man with a forklift in the first ten minutes.  That scene alone puts it slightly above the first one in my book.    

Kinmont is quite credible in her action sequences.  She gets the requisite scene where she foils a convenient store robbery, as well as a decent fight where she takes on all of Savage’s henchman.  Too bad her one-on-one brawl with the musclebound Lori Fetrick (AKA:  “Ice” from American Gladiators) gets cut short.

Lamas doesn’t do a bad job directing the action, although some moments just flat-out do not work.  (Like his last-minute escape via hang glider.)  There’s also a love scene between Kinmont and Savage, which I’m sure was awkward for Lorenzo to direct.   (Making things even more awkward was the fact that his producer, Richard Pepin was also the director of photography.)  This was the only feature Lorenzo directed (he also helmed several episodes of his TV show, Renegade), which is a shame because he showed a glimmer of promise behind the camera.

Lamas and Kinmont are fun to watch together and some of their banter is good for a laugh.  The funniest thing though is the fact that Lamas’ long flowing hair is usually more elegantly styled than hers.  John Savage is pretty good slumming as the villain too.  We also get bits from Magnum P.I.’s Larry Manetti (who plays a slimy lawyer) and Branscombe Richard (as a party guest). 

One distinctly Lamas directorial touch:  The long scene that showcases his real-life helicopter pilot skills.  Sadly, Lorenzo has given up acting in action movies to fly helicopters full time.  All I can say is, come back Lorenzo, we miss you. 

AKA:  C.I.A. Codename:  Viper.  AKA:  C.I.A. 2:  Code Name:  Alexa.

THE HANGING WOMAN (1974) ***

Serge (Stelvio Rosi) is returning home to his ancestral castle.  He takes a shortcut through a cemetery where he finds a dead woman hanging by her neck.  The police investigate and seem to think it was murder.  The main suspect is Igor (Paul Naschy), the creepy gravedigger who is also a necrophile.  Meanwhile, Serge tries to get settled in to his new digs, but the place is kind of crowded.  There’s a horny countess (Maria Pia Conte) who performs voodoo rituals, a professor (Gerard Tichy) who conducts bizarre experiments in the castle basement, and his saucy daughter (Dyanik Zurakowska) who has the hots for Serge.  

The Hanging Woman contains a lot of plot elements that are blended together to create a sort of potpourri of Spanish gothic horror.  None of it ever quite gels, but it's never really boring either.  Just let your brain go on autopilot and appreciate the cliches that keep cropping up.  Said cliches include but are not limited to:  The reading of a dead relative’s will, a drawing room mystery (complete with a longwinded explanation from the killer in the end), long walks through the corridors of a spooky castle, trippy freak-out scenes, seances, and of course, the mad hunchback.  Heck, it even manages to turn into an all-out zombie flick by the end.  Despite the fact that it plays more like a laundry list of cliches in search of a movie, it’s still quite entertaining.  There are a couple of strong shocks to be had as well.  There’s a brief, but gory autopsy scene, a nifty decapitation, and the sequence involving the discovery of the titular character is especially well done.  

Despite what you might think, Naschy is not the star this time around.  He’s mostly lurking on the corners of the story, playing peeping Tom on the women and being a red herring.  Nevertheless, he’s in fine form as usual.  It’s Maria Pia Conte who steals the movie though as the nymphomaniac countess who gets naked at the drop of a hat and even plays kinky sex games with Igor.  Sultry and sexy, Conte commands the screen.  Rosi, who sort of looks like a budget version of David Warner, makes for a fine hero too, and Zurakowska is also memorable as the “good girl” who still manages to get naked.  

AKA:  Bracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Dracula:  The Terror of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Beyond the Living Dead.  AKA:  Orgy of the Living Dead.  AKA:  Return of the Zombies.  AKA:  Zombie 3:  Return of the Living Dead.  

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: DÉJÀ VU (2019) **

After forty years, Camille Keaton and director Meir Zarchi return for the first official sequel to the original I Spit on Your Grave.  

Remember that film’s famous tagline?  “This Woman Has Just Cut, Chopped, Broken, and Burned Five Men Beyond Recognition… But No Jury in America Would Ever Convict Her!”  Apparently, no jury did convict her because Jennifer Hills (Keaton) wrote a book about her experience in the first movie and goes on call-in radio shows to not only recount her ordeal, but get the audience up to speed on the plot of the original.  Her daughter, Christy (Jamie Bernadette) is “the most famous and highest-paid model in the world”.  After a mother-daughter brunch they are kidnapped by the relatives of Jennifer’s assailants from the first movie, and well… uh… déjà vu.

I don’t know who thought this had to be two-and-a-half hours long.  The original was always a little long to begin with, but at least the payoff justified the elongated running time.  With two heroines, Zarchi splits the difference and the constant cutting back from mother and daughter fighting their separate battles only adds to the running time.  I’m pretty sure a lot of this could’ve been cut down considerably, but I think Zarchi was working under the assumption that allowing the attacks play out in (nearly) real time would be more effective.  (He was only about half right.)  

I don’t know if Zarchi was trying to soften the blow or say something about equal opportunity by making the ringleader of the rapists be a woman this time around.  She also wears the same wardrobe her husband wore in the first movie, which is kind of weird.  In fact, the more the movie tries to remind you of the original, the worse this one seems.  The occasional flashbacks only highlight how powerful that film was, and how this belated attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle fails.

Although the movie itself is really uneven, I have to give Camille Keaton credit.  Everyone applauds Sylvester Stallone for continuing to be an action star in his seventies.  At seventy-two, Keaton deserves the same kind of praise.  She’s tough and resilient and even though bad things happen to her, she refuses to play the victim.  When she turns the tables on her captors, she once again carries the spark that made the original so iconic.  Although that spark only shows itself briefly in the film, it still manages to make a statement.  Hollywood usually relegates actresses of Keaton’s age to grandmother roles.  Zarchi is smart enough to show that septuagenarian badass women can still kick ass, even if the picture they are in might not be up to snuff.

The rapists’ comeuppance sequences are solid.  While they are nowhere near as savage as the ones found in the original, they are moderately effective on their own terms.  It’s just a shame you have to wait so long to get to them.

As you can imagine the torch is eventually passed from mother to daughter about halfway through.  Bernadette handles herself capably enough, although she suffers from comparison to Keaton.  I can’t help but think this would’ve turned out better if they had split it into two movies; one that focused on the mother, and the other centered around the daughter.  As it is, it just crams too much into one flick.   

I Spit on Your Grave:  Déjà Vu, while a big disappointment, is not exactly a bad film.  I think Zarchi could’ve hammered out a decent flick if he was a little more judicious with his editing.  Although he does give us a couple of strong moments, that last half-hour is especially longwinded and gratuitous (predictable twist included).  

Oh, and I know Zarchi is not one for subtlety, but did we really need the scene where someone spits on a grave LITERALLY?  Multiple times?  Probably not.