THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #18: MONSTER ISLAND (2004) ***

(Streamed via FilmRise)

Here’s a surprising horror comedy that was made for MTV in the mid ‘00s.  I wasn’t watching the channel at that time since they had long stopped playing music videos by then.  Because of that, I’m a little late to the party.  

A class clown (Daniel Letterle) wins his school a class trip to party on an island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle (sponsored by MTV, of course).  As a bonus, he also gets to meet Carmen Electra (playing herself) and wins backstage passes to her concert.  Meanwhile, he tries to win back his socially conscious ex (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, two years away from starring in Final Destination 3) while trying to rescue Electra from the giant insects that inhabit the island.  

I was fully prepared for this to suck, mostly because of its association with MTV.  Much to my surprise, it had a few tricks up its sleeve.  I mean I never thought I would see stop-motion monsters in a straight to MTV horror flick.  As a bonus, Adam freaking West is the mad scientist named “Dr. Harryhausen” responsible for their creation!  

I expected Monster Island to be bad, but it’s harmless cheesy fun.  One great so-bad-it’s-good scene is when Electra takes the stage and sings.  Naturally, the song is awful (she whispers breathlessly the entire song), but the staging is particularly hilarious.  It’s obvious she’s lip synching the whole time and about halfway through the number, the editor gives up the entire charade and the song plays out while she doesn’t move her lips.  Brilliant.  

The giant insect monster didn’t like her singing either, which is why it swoops down mid-performance and kidnaps her.  I didn’t know I needed a movie in which Carmen Electra gets kidnapped by a stop-motion bug, but here we are.

The stop-motion effects are a lot of fun.  The giant praying mantis fight is particularly well done, as is the scene where the victor dukes it out with a bulldozer.  The cheesy (on purpose) models of the island and mountain (which is revealed to be a giant anthill) are cool too.  We also get a pretty good Gillman knockoff in there as well.  

Sure, some of the acting is bad and the characters are annoying, but it’s breezily paced and highly enjoyable, making Monster Island a destination getaway for fans of cheesy monster movies.   

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #17: THE NORLISS TAPES (1973) ****

(Streamed via Film Rabbits)

Dan (Dark Shadows) Curtis produced and directed this TV pilot that is sort of similar to The Night Stalker.  It didn’t get picked up as a series, which is unfortunate.  It has a clever enough hook, a great cast of guest stars, and some genuinely creepy moments.  

The Invaders’ Roy Thinnes stars as a writer named Norliss who disappears while working on a book debunking the supernatural.  The only thing he left behind was a series of cassette tapes documenting his experiences.  His worried publisher plays his first tape, which finds him coming to the aid of a widow (Angie Dickinson) who shoots a midnight intruder.  The problem is, the intruder was her husband… who happens to be already dead.  

Curtis uses the detective story trope to string together a bunch of cool supernatural ingredients.  These elements include a cursed Egyptian ring, fortune tellers, motorists drained of their blood, and zombies.  Since the tapes are material for Thinnes’ book, the narration is a lot more descriptive than your average TV film, which helps to perfectly set the mood.  

The opening really draws you in and once the tape is popped into the player, the momentum rarely lets up.  Curtis also stages a first-rate zombie attack when Thinnes and Dickinson are menaced by her undead hubby in the rain.  What makes this guy a memorable zombie is the fact he continues his sculpting hobby into the afterlife.  Since he’s a maniacal ghoul, he likes to put his victims’ blood into his clay and makes red demon sculptures out of them.  Really sick stuff.  I love it.  Curtis keeps the fun coming right along all the way through to the fiery finale, which contains a fine blend of genuine shocks and ‘70s Made for TV cheese.  That is to say, it was very much my shit.  

The film is anchored by a cool and confident performance by Thinnes.  It’s a shame the series never got picked up because I would’ve loved to see him battling monsters on a weekly basis.  Dickinson is excellent as the scared widow who is capable of blowing away zombie husbands at point blank range.  We also have Claude Akins as (what else?) a sheriff, Soap’s Robert Mandan as Thinnes’ lawyer, and Vonetta (Blacula) McGee as a medium who dabbles in the occult, all of whom lend fine support.

DUNE PART ONE (2021) * ½

Despite the fact that it simultaneously premiered in theaters and at home on HBO Max, Dune Part One director Denis (Arrival) Villeneuve was adamant that people see his film in a movie theater, the way he intended.  I wound up watching it the way I usually watch movies:  On my couch late at night while nodding off to sleep.  In fact, I had to eventually watch it over the span of a couple nights because this dreary bore kept putting my ass to sleep.  

David Lynch’s Dune was bad, but this is something else.  At least Lynch’s version was so spectacularly bad that it was an unforgettable mess.  Villeneuve’s Dune is like watching someone throw sand on monochromatic paint and then spending hours watching it dry.  Neither the action nor the drama is compelling.  Lynch’s picture was an assault on the senses.  This one would make for perfect ASMR background noise.

The best moments come early on and are staged almost exactly like the original.  Both highlights revolve around the training of Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet).  Once the action switches its focus to the desert planet Dune, the pace gets stuck in the quicksand (slowsand?).  The big issue is the ending, or lack thereof as it’s just half a movie.  (Villeneuve puts the subtitle “Part One” front and center in the opening credits as a way to let himself off the hook.)  Like Halloween Kills, it doesn’t mean a whole lot as it’s only leading to another movie.  It's all set-up and no payoff.  I don’t know about you, but it’s a little irksome to spend nearly three hours on something that forgets to have a climax.  Like the original, it ends with a knife fight, but it’s poorly staged and it’s hard to care what happens because we already KNOW what’s going to happen.  I mean if Paul DIES, there won’t be a Dune Part Two.  

The performances are a mixed bag.  Chamalet looks like a wax sculpture of Tim Burton that went Pinocchio on us.  Everyone was hard on Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars prequels, but he is positively Shakespearian compared to Chamalet.  The villain is even worse.  Having Stellan Skarsgard play The Baron as Col. Kurtz was… a choice.  He’s pretty awful and isn’t given a whole lot to do.  Heck, even the usually engaging and energetic Oscar Isaac looks bored here.  It’s not all bad though.  I’m curious to see whatever movie Jason Momoa and Josh Brolin thought they were acting in as they seem like the only ones who are half awake.  Rebecca Ferguson isn’t bad as Paul’s mother, although she and Chalamet have no chemistry together.  (Then again, it’s hard to have chemistry with a wax figure.)

The droning soundtrack and bland visuals put me to sleep three nights in a row.  Even during the occasional fight scenes and battle sequences, the music is curiously apathetic and doesn’t do anything to heighten the action on screen.  I can’t imagine paying money to see this in the theater.  I would’ve been asleep by the first hour.    

AKA:  Dune.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #16: MIND OVER MURDER (1979) ***

(Streamed via The Film Detective)

Deborah Raffin stars as a dancer who begins having strange premonitions.  When she has her visions, the world stands completely still around her while she receives flashes of the future.  A creepy bald dude is often in the center of her premonitions, and she teams up with an investigator (David Ackroyd) to put together the pieces of her mental puzzle before it’s too late.

This Made for TV movie has a pretty good cast.  In addition to Death Wish 3’s Deborah Raffin we have ‘70s staple Andrew Prine as the bald psycho, X-Men’s Bruce Davison as her uncaring boyfriend, and Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund as Akroyd’s partner.  Raffin does a solid job in the lead, and her invested performance keeps you watching, even when the plot begins to chase its tail.

Director Ivan Nagy (who would later gain notoriety as a one-time boyfriend of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, and eventually wound up directing porn by the end of his career) creates a modicum of atmosphere during Raffin’s prolonged slow-motion visions.  The problem is these sequences get a little repetitive as the film is entering the homestretch.  There’s probably about two too many of these long scenes, but I guess he had to do what he had to do in order to fill a two-hour time slot.

The good news is just when you think you’ve had it up to here with the psychic shit, the movie switches gears from an ESP drama to a full-blown woman in peril movie.  The last act gets a real shot in the arm thanks to Prine’s intense performance as the sketchy, sweaty psycho.  His crazed theatrics help push Mind Over Murder over the top to become a first-rate TV thriller.  

Naturally, Prine gets the best line of the movie when he asks Raffin, “What do you want to do first?  Make love or DIE!”

AKA:  Premonitions.  AKA:  Psychomania.  AKA:  Deadly Vision.

EROTIC PASSION (1981) ***

Young Della (Monika Nickel, from Mandinga) lives with her uncle in a fancy villa.  She catches her sexy aunt Marsha (Femi Benussi) banging a doctor, so she decides to seduce him as well.  Frustrated that her aunt is controlling her inheritance, Della takes off to visit a friend.  When she isn’t home, Della takes to seducing a criminal named Haris (Dimitris Tsaftaridis) who’s staying at the house.  Before long, his partner in crime (trans exploitation star Ajita Wilson) shows up and they form an uneasy alliance to help Della bump off her aunt and take off with her money.  Naturally, double and triple-crosses ensue.

Erotic Passion is a solid skin flick through and through.  The crime-centric sequences towards the end are perfunctory, but fortunately, don’t get in the way of the nearly non-stop softcore sex sequences.  The bouncy, upbeat Euro Pop music is good for a chuckle too.  

The trio of ladies in the cast get naked a lot and all look great doing it.  Nickel is particularly hot as the young and frisky Della.  She gets a terrific striptease on the beach that culminates with her getting pawed by a dirty old man, who then bones her in the sand.  Benussi is sexy too as the hot to trot aunt.  Whenever Nickel isn’t off banging someone, Benussi is, so there’s always some action going on.  Wilson doesn’t have a lot to do, unfortunately, until the second half, but the three-way between her and Nickel and Tsaftaridis, while short, features some near-hardcore action.  The finale, where Nickel rides Tsaftaridis for all his worth on a rocky shore, ends things on a fine note.

Director Ilias (Emanuelle, Queen of Sados) Mylonakis gives the softcore scenes a touch of class, but just a touch, as they are at their best when the performers are getting down and dirty.  He also keeps the plot (what little of it there is) moving at a decent clip too.  One or two talky stretches aside, Erotic Passion is action-packed in more ways than one.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #15: THE HORROR HALL OF FAME (1974) **

(Streamed via YouTube)

Vincent Price hosts this silly shot on video look back at the Golden Age of Horror.  He sits down and reminisces about horror films and stars with the likes of Frank Gorshin (who does a good Karloff impression), John Carradine (who discusses silent horror films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera), and John Astin (who helps plug Famous Monsters of Filmland).  Later, he goes down into “the dungeon” where a make-up man transforms Candy Clark into a witch.  A vampire expert also shows up to talk about Dracula Has Risen from the Grave.  It all ends with a tribute to Price complete with clips of House of Wax, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and his (then) latest film, Madhouse.

The Horror Hall of Fame was co-written by Famous Monsters’ Forrest J. Ackerman who I’m sure supplied as much information about the movies as he did the bad puns.  That’s kind of the problem, as there’s more time devoted to unfunny shtick (the comic relief hunchback sidekick is rather unbearable) than an actual informative exploration of the subject. The constant use of phony canned laughter and applause gets irritating after a while too. 

Since it was made in ’74, they spend more time talking about the then-current horror films like The Exorcist and Blacula and briefly talk about the “new popular stars” like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.  While there are brief segments on Boris Karloff (Die!  Die!  My Darling), Peter Lorre (Mad Love), and Bela Lugosi (Mark of the Vampire), there really aren’t as many clips as you’d think.  I did like seeing part of the Schlock trailer though.  

The best part is when Price talks about how big-name movie stars often get their start in monster movies and shows scenes of Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Steve McQueen in The Blob before introducing clips from Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them.  While this sequence is little more than a greatest hits compilation, at least it’s better than all the comic relief shit.  It’s also cool seeing Price showing off props from Ackerman’s memorabilia collection and hocking Godzilla model kits, but ultimately, connoisseurs of the subject will find little of substance here.  Kids might get a kick out of it though.

THE 31 MOVIES OF HORROR-WEEN: MOVIE #14: NIGHT OF THE WITCHES (1970) ** ½

(Streamed via Drive-In Classics)

A conman dressed as a preacher (Keith Larsen, who also co-wrote and directed) on the run from the authorities goes to a small island inhabited entirely by witches.  Their leader is the sultry Cassandra (Kathryn Loder from The Big Doll House), who has a pretty sweet deal going on as she lives in a castle full of hot women who perform rituals that require them to execute intricately choreographed dance moves while wielding samurai swords.  The preacher sets his sights on fleecing the women for all their worth, but he soon learns they have other plans for him.

Night of the Witches starts off with a great, surprising, and funny scene where the phony baloney preacher threatens a woman’s soul with damnation for fornicating on the beach.  He then conveniently gets rid of her boyfriend before worming his way into her pants.  Every time he rants and raves about Jesus, a hilarious sound effect of a choir chanting, “AMEN!” is dubbed into the action.  (Remember the “Randolph Scott” chorus from Blazing Saddles?  It’s kind of like that.)  That’s your first tip-off this won’t be your average run-of-the-mill horror flick.  

The movie works in fits and starts, but it’s pretty amusing and memorable, even if the seventy-four-minute running time sometimes feels much longer.  Some of the subplots bog things down a bit, like when Cassandra and her minions off a Sydney Greenstreet impersonator in a witchy ceremony.  The humor is a little uneven too.  While Larsen’s antics are funny, the supporting comic relief characters and fast-motion scenes are lame and ill-fitting.  

Since this was the late ‘60s/early ‘70s after all, there’s a lot of astrology-inspired horse hockey involved as the witches refer to the men by their zodiac signs.  Loder, who has a sexy Barbara Steele quality about her, makes all the stuff with the witches work.  Whenever she and Larsen are on screen, it’s fun.  Too bad there’s a boring third-wheel romantic lead who kind of mucks thing up about halfway through.

Overall, Night of the Witches is just weird enough to be memorable.  It’s not necessarily weird enough to be good, however.  It didn’t exactly cast a spell over me, but I enjoyed myself most of the time.