THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #10: EVIL TOWN (1987) * ½

(Streamed via American Horrors)

Evil Town had a long, painful, strange production.  It was started in 1973 under the direction of Curtis (L.A. Confidential) Hanson.  He wound up getting fired and replaced by the producers (Death Game’s Peter Traynor and Larry Spiegel).  Production was eventually halted due to lawsuits and the film wasn’t completed until the mid ‘80s by producer Mardi Rustam (who added a bunch more nudity to make it commercially viable).  

The results are far from seamless.  Then again, the seams are expected when a film took fourteen years and four directors to finish.  The plot threads are all over the place.  There are two families camping whose car breaks down in the titular town.  We also have two horny gas station attendants who like to sneak off and rape coeds.  Then, there’s also the matter of a nuthouse where a sexy doctor is performing illicit experiments on her patients.  

You can probably guess what’s going on, thanks to the fact that the town is mostly populated by old people.  Yes, they are luring young folks into town and performing experiments on them in order to prolong their life.  Although it’s pretty obvious, the shoddy new scenes kind of make the whole thing kind of confusing.

Incredibly enough, there are some name stars in the cast.  James Keach and Robert Walker, Jr. are the paternal figures taking their family camping, and poor old Dean Jagger (in his final role) is the head mad scientist behind the insidious plot.  Sadly, he makes the whole thing even harder to watch as he is noticeably frail, often looks as if he is in pain, and flubs his lines a lot.  

Yes, Evil Town is a fucking mess.  The film stock, hairstyles, fashions, and cast changes often.  The various plots feel like they were stuffed into an UNO Attack game and then spit out at random.  The overuse of slow motion in some scenes is downright laughable too, but I’m sure it helped the distributors pad out the running time.  At least there is a lot of T & A.  

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #9: SAINT MAUD (2021) ***

(Streamed via Paramount+)

Maud (Morfydd Clark) is a home hospice healthcare worker tending to the needs of a former dancer (Jennifer Ehle) stricken with terminal cancer.  It soon becomes apparent Maud is more than a little touched.  Devoutly religious, Maud fears her hedonistic patient is in danger of going to Hell, and she sets out to do anything in her power to prevent that from happening.  

Saint Maud has a great set-up that first at makes it feel like it’s going to be one of those ‘90s thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  However, it doesn’t take very long for it to dovetail into some very different territory.  Fortunately, writer/director Rose Glass changes gears so subtly that you never quite notice the slight of hand at work.  

I hesitate to get into spoiler territory, so I will try to keep this review as brief as possible.  The second half is pretty wild and features moments that reminded me of everything from Taxi Driver to The Exorcist to Carrie.  Somehow, Glass manages to make all those nods feel organic and fresh and not just a filmed checklist of tried-and-true horror tropes.  

Saint Maud never quite steps over the line into balls out horror, but whenever it tiptoes around those parameters, it’s often very effective.  It’s less an arthouse horror show and more of a character study of a sad, broken, and possibly insane loner on a slow, painful, and tragic journey to an inevitable, horrific fate.  The reason all this works as well as it does is because of Clark’s performance.  Like Sissy Spacek in Carrie, you feel for her every step of the way, even though you know she’s going to pull some heavy shit in the final reel.  It’s a powerhouse performance that keeps the movie afloat, even through its draggier passages, and makes it well-worth watching, even if it isn’t exactly a home run.  Sometimes (especially in October), a ground-rule double is all you need.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #8: THE WEREWOLF OF WOODSTOCK (1975) **

(Streamed via Beta Max TV)

Dick Clark produced this inane mess, a TV movie that was broadcast as part of “The Wide World of Mystery”.  If you’re expecting to see a werewolf attack the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Who, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, forget it.  There’s only about ten seconds of actual concert footage (which may or may not have been Woodstock) in the beginning.  In fact, the Werewolf attacks the TOWN of Woodstock… and by “TOWN” I mean “the woods”.

After three days of peace, love, and music at Woodstock, everyone goes home, but nobody bothers to tear down the stage.  The hippie-hating town drunk gets shitfaced after the festival, wanders onto the stage, and winds up getting electrocuted.  The freak accident causes him to turn into a werewolf (!?!?!?!?!) and before long, he is stalking a rock band who have shown up to the abandoned stage just so they can say they “played at Woodstock”.  After the wooly werewolf kidnaps their favorite groupie, the band agrees to help the cops lure the loathsome lycanthrope out into the open using the rock n’ roll music the monster despises so much.

The werewolf is shoddy as all get out.  It looks just like a Halloween mask you’d see at a five and dime.  I guess they tried to do something different with the accepted werewolf lore (he transforms whenever there is an electrical storm rather than a full moon), but the changes are just as dumb as the make-up.    

Michael Parks brings his typical offbeat energy to the role of a detective, but honestly, he looks embarrassed to be there.  (Can you blame him?)  The only other names in the cast are Andrew Stevens as the hotheaded band member who acts like a prick to everybody and Belinda Balaski (who later faced off against werewolves in The Howling) is the groupie who has psychic premonitions.

I was tempted to give this One Star all the way through, but in the third act something so mind-bogglingly awesome happened that I just had to tack on an extra Star.  It occurs when the werewolf is being pursued by the authorities and he steals a dune buggy and high tails it out of there.  Ive seen a lot of shit in my time but I've never seen a werewolf in a dune buggy before.  It doesn’t make up for the awful effects, lethargic pacing, and constant fade-in and fade-outs for TV commercials, but it does make it memorable.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #7: DEATH GAME (1977) ***

(Streamed via R Flix)

Seymour Cassel stars as a happily married man celebrating his fortieth birthday home alone on a dark and stormy night.  When two beautiful young girls (Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp) show up asking to use the phone, he chivalrously obliges them.  It doesn’t take the lovely ladies long to seduce the poor dope with a three-way in the bathtub.  Problems arise the next morning when they refuse to vacate the premises.  When Cassel eventually threatens to call the police, the girls counter and claim they’ll say they were raped if the cops show up.  They then perpetually harass, manipulate, and eventually kidnap him, which naturally leads to more complications, including murder.  

Apparently, Death Game had a tumultuous production.  Cassel and director Peter Traynor fought so much that he refused to come back to record his dialogue.  The producers were then forced to get cinematographer David Worth to loop his lines.  If Cassel didn’t have such a distinctive voice, it might not have mattered, but the dubbing is painfully obvious, and much of the suspense is lost every time he opens his mouth.  

Luckily, Locke and Camp make a lot of the film’s shortcomings seem like a moot point.  They are a lot of fun to watch and are hot to trot (especially Camp) during their love scenes.  Heck, they still manage to look foxy as Hell even in the midst of their psychotic rantings and ravings.  (Like when they put on way too much make-up and put Cassel on “trial” for his various crimes.)  Even though you know from the get-go they are up to no good, it’s hard to fault Cassel for letting them in.  I mean, duh.

The biggest debit is the annoying music.  The theme song, “Good Old Dad”, which is played way too often will get on your damned nerves almost instantly.  The ending is way too pat, which also knocks the rating down a bit.  However, whenever Locke and Camp are front and center being psychotically sexy, Death Game is a game worth playing.

Eli Roth later remade this as Knock Knock, with Locke and Camp returning as producers.

If you’d like to know my thoughts on the remake, I reviewed it in my book, The Bloody Book of Horror:  The Bloody Book of Horror: Lovell, Mitch: 9781542566629: Amazon.com: Books

AKA:  Make-Up.  AKA:  The Seducers.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #6: GOODNIGHT MOMMY (2022) ** ½

(Streamed via Prime)

If you’ve already seen directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz’s Goodnight Mommy, you probably know where this gratuitous, yet sporadically effective Hollywood remake is going.  Since you’re likely to know the twist before it happens, you can amuse yourself by seeing just how director Matt Sobel has updated it for American audiences.  Even though it has been noticeably watered down, I still think I enjoyed it more than the original, mostly thanks to Naomi Watts’ performance.

Elias (Cameron Crovetti) and Lukas (Nicholas Crovetti) go to live with their movie star mom (Watts) in the middle of nowhere.  She had a surgical procedure done on her face, so she has to walk around the house wearing a scary white mask.  The kids are subject to her increasingly erratic behavior and slowly begin to suspect that it might not be their mother under the mask.  

This is a good role for Watts, who is quickly changing gears from Hollywood It Girl to Direct to DVD Schlock Queen.  It’s a fun performance and she gets to act a little gonzo, as the anonymity of the mask allows her to cut loose when needed.  I don’t know many actresses that could’ve pulled off a role like this (or who would’ve wanted to), but Watts certainly goes for it.  (There are times she looks like a female version of Diabolik… except in a negligee.)  There’s a particularly unsettling scene where she does a sexy dance in front of a mirror unaware one of her kids is watching.  

It may lack the nasty edge the original had, but it’s more straightforward and better paced, and benefits from Watts’ performance.  There’s also some decent horror imagery here and there, although it usually turns into one of those irritating “It was all a dream” scenarios.  It’s not great, but I liked it better than the original.  It’s certainly much better than Watts’ other Hollywood remake of a foreign language horror flick, the overrated The Ring (or even Funny Games, for that matter).  

If you’d like to know my thoughts on the original Goodnight Mommy, check out my book, The Bloody Book of Horror:  The Bloody Book of Horror: Lovell, Mitch: 9781542566629: Amazon.com: Books

SHIVER AND SHUDDER SHOW (2002) ***

Shiver and Shudder Show is another fun Something Weird trailer compilation.  Clocking in at close to two hours, it kicks off with an ad for a “Shiver and Shudder Spook Show” before segueing into the trailers.  There’s a good mix of titles, eras, and subgenres here, which makes it perfect pre-Halloween viewing (or anytime, really).   

We get a handful of movies that appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Attack of the Giant Leeches, The Killer Shrews, and Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy), vampire films (Goliath and the Vampires, Blood Bath, and The Vampire and the Ballerina), and Jerry Warren productions (Creature of the Walking Dead, The Incredible Petrified World, and Face of the Screaming Werewolf).  Other highlights include the double feature of Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory and Corridors of Blood (“A Nervorama Shocker!”) and the trailer for Tales of the Bizarre (which has a face of a mummy taking up half the screen the entire time).  The odd taglines in some of the previews are good for a laugh too, like The Beast of the Yellow Night (“See it with Someone You… Trust…”), Kill, Baby, Kill (“S & Q!  Shiver and Shake!  Quiver and Quake!”), and The Vampires Night Orgy (“Were They Humans (sp) Beings?”).  It all culminates in a long run of great trailers for South of the Border horror flicks that are amusing, mostly because they all use the same narrator, font, and similar ad copy.  

Some of the best ads are devoted to cheesy gimmicks that help lure unsuspecting audiences into the theatre.  You’ll receive a “Witch Deflector” when you see a double feature of Witchcraft and The Horror of It All.  You’ll have to sign a “Fright Release” if you want to check out The Curse of the Living Corpse!  Or you can get free “Spare Body Parts” when you see a double feature of Night of the Bloody Apes and Feast of Flesh!  What a time to be a moviegoer!

I’m an old hand at watching these Something Weird samplers, so I recognized many of the trailers from other compilations.  (The double feature ad for The Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama makes its obligatory appearance yet again.)  Even with that said, this is still a fun time.  The addition of spook show ads (like the bug-themed “Insect-O-Thon”) and vintage Halloween-themed toy commercials also help make up for some of the overly familiar trailers in the collection.  

The complete trailer rundown includes:  Something Weird, Tales of the Bizarre, Witchcraft, The Curse of the Living Corpse, Frozen Alive, Bourbon Street Shadows, Terrified, The Beast of the Yellow Night, a double feature of The Blood Spattered Bride and I Dismember Mama, Daughters of Darkness, The Black Cat, Psycho a Go-Go, The Dead One, Insect-O-Thon Spook Show, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Creature of the Walking Dead, The Awful Dr. Orloff, Macumba Love, The Killer Shrews, The Wacky World of Doctor Morgus, a double feature of Night of the Bloody Apes and Feast of Flesh, The Wild, Wild Planet, Goliath and the Vampires, “Spasmitus” Spook Show, Blood Bath, The Hands of Orlac, double feature of The Vampire’s Coffin and The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy), Kill, Baby, Kill, Virgin Witch, a double feature of Blood Suckers and Blood Thirst, Don’t Look in the Basement, The Incredible Petrified World, Witchcraft, a double feature of Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory and Corridors of Blood, Face of the Screaming Werewolf, Mutiny in Outer Space, Dead Eyes of London, The Witch’s Curse, The Terrornauts, The Vampire and the Ballerina, The Devil’s Hand, a double feature of Carnival of Blood and Curse of the Headless Horseman, Friday the 13th Spook Show, Back from the Dead, “Kooky Spooky” toy commercial, The Phantom in the Red House, The Genie of Darkness, The Brainiac, The Living Head, The Invasion of the Vampires, Samson vs. the Vampire Women, The Vampire, The Witch’s Mirror, Curse of the Crying Woman, The Blood of Nostradamus, and “The Young American Mystics Cult of Horrors” Spook Show.

DANCERS FOR TANGIERS (1977) **

Schlockmeister producer Erwin C. Dietrich gave us this lurid, nasty, but uneven slice of exploitation.  It tells how girls around the world are lured, tricked, and coerced into the white slave trade.  One girl is told the cops are looking for her and a friendly gentleman agrees to help get her out of the country.  When she refuses to work as a cabaret dancer at the Moulin Rouge, her new benefactor supplies her with heroin to make her more compliant.  Naturally, the customers want her to do more than just dance.  

Another girl is picked up at a train station, raped, drugged, boxed up (literally), and sent to Amsterdam.   Then, the slavers pose as film producers and lure an aspiring actress with the promise of a phony audition.  Really, they want to try to sell her off to an oil sheik.  Meanwhile, a feminist reporter tries to bring the illicit sex slave ring down.  

Dancers for Tangiers is sleazy, meanspirited, and chockfull of hateful, poorly dubbed dialogue.  (“Use these juicy boobs to trick the men into buying more booze, babe!”)  There’s plenty of softcore action, hateful men, bondage, and ‘70s bush to go around, that’s for sure.  All of this isn’t exactly sexy or entertaining, unless you get your kicks from seeing women sold into sex slavery.  It’s also heavily padded with striptease scenes; a handful of which are fairly decent.  (The two-girl floorshow is the definite highlight.)  At least these moments are more enjoyable than all the raping and drugging of easily duped women.  

The problem (aside from all the misogyny) is that the narrative hops around way too much.  So much so in fact, that a narrator randomly blurts out wherever the action is taking place at the start of every scene.  (“AMSTERDAM!”  “ZURICH!”  “TANGIERS!”)  If Dietrich had followed the model of the Schoolgirl Report series and just staged unconnected scenes of white slavery in an anthology style, it might’ve been more successful.  As it is, there’s just too much globetrotting for its own good.  

Probably the most memorable part is the white slaver named “Karate Jack”.  The only times he does any karate comes when the police try to bust the strip club and he delivers exactly ONE karate chop accompanied with the obligatory “Hi-YAH!”  The only true fight scene he gets is hilariously half-assed, and you have to wait till the finale to see it, but it’s ALMOST worth it.  I just wish there were more of these unintentional laughs to be had.  Then again, they might’ve felt even more out of step with all the depressing shit going on in the movie.  At least there is this classic dialogue exchange:  

Girl:  “I hear you’re a high-ranking man in the film industry.  Can you use me?”

Slaver:  “OH, YEAH!”

AKA:  Girl Slaves.  AKA:  Sensuous Slaves.  AKA:  Sensuous Slaves of Love.  AKA:  Sensual Partners.  AKA:  Confessions of the Sex Slaves.  AKA:  Island of the Savage Sex Slaves.  AKA:  Naked Street Girls.