Invitation to Hell (Michael J. Murphy, 1982)

 Like the Murphy's, I'm not bitter.

Obviously, the among-we of the cult film fraternity who have long lurked in the forgotten byways and murky back alleys of cinema history (HMMM... that's a very familiar turn of phrase) know of many an auteur of alchemy that most middle of the road cineastes would spurn and spit upon the name of had they but heard of them.  Maybe that shows better judgement and taste, maybe it's snobbery.  Maybe it's Maybelline.  But Michael J. Murphy is one of those names that could certainly be described (or decried) as an acquired taste.  And seeing his output given the descriptor of "micro-budget cinema" might well conjure up thoughts of backyard productions of the likes of more modern practitioners such as the Polonia brothers or Chris Seaver (creator of his own baffling 'cinematic universe' including the perplexing Teen Ape) but Murphy at the very least shot on film (generally 16mm) rather than video for the majority of his output; though I believe that some of his later end of career stuff may be on digital I'm nowhere near getting to those yet if I'm going to proceed at least roughly chronologically.  Not that there's an imperative to or anything, I haven't started with the actual earliest artefacts from his extant output for the reason that the very earliest projects are non-extant or fragmentary and that didn't seem the best place to dive in.  I'll come back to those later.

I first came across the name of Michael J. Murphy, the Merlin of Murlin (or Murlyn) Films and a veritable wizard of speed and time, in Creeping Flesh: The Horror Fantasy Film Book (a book fleetingly referred to by Murphy himself in one of the Blu-ray extras I've just been watching, enabling this timely addition).  A tome from Headpress imprint Critical Vision containing a number of essays on such sundry subjects as the BBC classic 'A Ghost Story for Christmas' strand, the notorious Parky possessed by Pipes brilliance of Ghostwatch and Steve Coogan's affectionate Amicus/Tigon/Tyburn homage Dr Terrible's House of Horrible in its television section and tributes to relative silver screen obscurities like Alan Birkinshaw's Killer's Moon, the Pete 'n' Dud dud version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (such a comedown for Paul Morrissey after his superlative Frankenstein and Dracula films with the late Udo Kier) and Saxon Logan's Sleepwalker that I was gifted a long distant Christmas past (thanks, John!), 'twas in this latter section that much younger me espied a piece titled 'Looking for a Moment: the Unknown Cinema of Michael J. Murphy' penned by Darrell Burton.  Burton focused in particular on two short-form pieces from Murphy, the 1982 double-hander of Invitation to Hell and its companion piece The Last Night, which were bundled together when they had been released (or perhaps escaped, like a crazed beast) onto VHS in the United Britain of Great Kingdom via Scorpio Video and in the Americanias by Mogul.

Ed Wood, Andy Milligan and Michael J. Murphy, as eternal a golden braid as Godel, Escher and Bach are in the orbits of their own spheres, truly should be carved into the emerald tablets of history as the Holy Trinity of the brilliantly inept but determined art creators.  And there are a number of similarities betwixt the trio - not just the indefatigable underdogs creating genre filmmaking in the howling face of adversity and lack of money or some may cruelly say talent but also the detectable strain of kink (many will know of Ed Wood's penchant for crossdressing either from Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy or Tim Burton's biopic, Milligan's homosexuality and penchant for a walk on the seedier side of life was never kept secret; Murphy's movies certainly have a palpable homoerotic current [too blatant to call it an undercurrent] running through them as well).  Murphy was and remains at least from my viewpoint the most obscure of the three; I was in my twenties by the time I first heard of him and it took until my forties before I actually got round to seeing any of his works, thanks to Powerhouse/Indicator's comprehensively curated Blu-ray box set Magic, Myth and Mutilation which collects pretty much everything that the man ever shot - even down to the couple of minutes' scraps from otherwise lost early films.  It's a truly amazingly extensive overview of a single filmmaker's life collated into on box assembled with the kind of loving care that's usually reserved for the likes of legends such as Hitchcock or Pasolini, and upon finally getting my clammy hands upon it (another Christmas present: at this rate I think I associate Murphy and his oeuvre with the festive holiday season more than Frank Capra) one of the first things I wanted to check out was the short film that had intrigued me so many years earlier: Invitation to Hell.

Beginning with Murphy's seemingly favoured title sequence with lettering in a Celtic font over a flaming background, also used in 1980's rather good short The Cell (which  really liked, but at a little under fifteen minutes I didn't think worth a review on its own; still, I can highly recommend it), we begin with a house in the country.  Shot over a four or five day stint in a rented farm property deep in the wilds of Devon, the short starts with our protagonist Jacky (Becky Simpson, with amazingly early '80s hair) summoned to the isolated locale of Manor Farm in deepest darkest Mummerset for a reunion with old friend Laura (Murphy regular and producer on a number of his early efforts Caroline Aylward, here acting under the name of Catherine Rolands) and her husband Ed (Joseph Sheahan) who are throwing a fancy dress party much to the unprepared and uncostumed Jacky's chagrin.  Supplied with a last minute Elsa Lanchester Bride of Frankenstein outfit by the accommodating vampiress-clad Laura (wearing the same black bob wig that Aylward sported in Murphy's Hellenic-set giallo short Death in the Family the previous year), Jacky joins in with the other revellers including one guest in a cheap plastic Halloween skull mask that is eerily evocative of my childhood trick or treating: just seeing it onscreen brought the smell of the cheap hot plastic pressing against my face and the bite of the elastic into the back of my head all rushing back.

"If you try to leave, he'll stop you."

The perils of Jacky in the wild, wild land of the yokel really begin - menacing and oppressive atmosphere from arrival notwithstanding, as it's the countryside isn't it, and one has to expect that kind of thing - when she's led outside the farmhouse to a burning pyre as part of some kind of Summerisle-on-Sea ritual and roofied by her hostess.  Waking the morning after the night before, she finds that not only is she missing memory but has gained some suspicious scars on her inner thigh courtesy of her midnight tryst with daemonic forces beyond human understanding.  So I suppose as well as the obvious Wicker Man (or perhaps the BBC's paganistic Play for Today Robin Redbreast, another tale of rural shamanic skullduggery; I suppose that film's karate-loving 'Rob'/Edgar could be compared with this piece's piece of countryside beefcake Maurice, both being under the control of outside forces) influence, we get a pinch of Rosemary's Baby added to the mix as well as a hint of Lovecraft.

Finding herself seemingly trapped with the more afraid than antagonistic Laura and Alan (who provides the warning about the unnamed "he" who just might walk between the rows and will definitely impede any attempts at egress) along with servant Tina (Tina Barnett) and farmhands Alan (Steven Longhurst) and the mute brute Maurice (Colin Efford), Jacky begins to panic and the apprehension isn't assuaged by the appearance of her boyfriend Rick (Russell Hall, another early Murphy regular who had appeared in the short films The Cell, Stay and Death in the Family before this, his screen swan song) who makes it clear that he hasn't only just arrived but has been on site all along.  It probably isn't paranoia when it turns out then all your friends genuinely are part of a weird and eerie conspiracy involving and against you.

It slowly begins to dawn that whatever the state of Jacky and Rick's relationship, it hasn't progressed to the fully carnal stage and it's because of her being virgo intacta that marked her out as being the required participant in the ceremony.  Whatever cthonic primordial force it is that haunts the land doesn't go for anyone else's sloppy seconds, I guess.  But it's fine with possessing in turn first Alan to issue commands in a daemonic voice to Maurice (after Alan, whilst completely under his own aegis, admiringly observes Maurice pumping iron topless) and then the man mountain himself to kill off the farm's other denizens in a variety of ways including rolling up his erstwhile roommate-cum-lover and former possessee in a carpet and tossing him onto a fire, whereupon Alan rises like a revenant for revenge.

Over the brief span of forty-four minutes we get low budget thrills and chills, a smidge of homoeroticism, some damn effective gore and a great burned skellington / Grim Reaper taking names and tearing out still-beating hearts in the climax.  What more could one ask, to be honest?

I have no idea how easy this is to access short of splashing out the full price for the Indicator set but being a bite-sized slice of folk horror with a nicely eerie, evocative and menacing synth score from Terence Mills makes this an ideal introduction for newbies and acolytes to the wild and wacky world of the Murphyverse.  Something that I'd highly recommend to any and all other voyagers on the wyrd back roads of cult cinema.

All the Strange Vices: the Early '70s Gialli of Sergio Martino

I don't think you're ready for these gialli.  Even if they're five months overdue.

Okay, so I'm a little bit late for Giallo July with this. By at least a couple of months.  But, y'know... I've been a bit busy.  Life not only finds a way, as Ian Malcolm so sagely spake, it can bloody well get in the way too.  Still, better late than never I guess, and as the vacillating eye of Providence (that's not an H.P. Lovecraft reference: this is giallo) there's the event of Gialloween that I can repurpose and aim for.  I'll let the wonderful Alex the Bookubus fill in the meaty deets on that for you if you care to find out.

'Meaty deets'.  Fucking hell.  What have I become?  And anyway as you can tell, dear reader,  I also missed the dates for the Gialloween weekend as well.  Fingers crossed I can get this finished for actual Halloween*.  I swear I'm getting worse than Douglas Adams for deadlines.  The lines are dots to me.

(*Reader, I didn't.  I should definitely have finished the piece before the 31st of October, but as I type these words I've come down with either a terrible case of the flu or a dose of the COVID, causing a fourth delay to getting this done.  A very happy, very belated Samhain to all of you at home as well as a merry and maybe messy Christmas and the most joyous of New Years.)

And so Giallo July hath once more come and gone.  That time of the year in which some of the braver and hardier denizens of Booktube venture into the sanguineous depths of that particular subgenre, replete is it is - in both the printed word and celluloid ribbon versions - with murder, mystery and suspense.  Which, if memory serves, was the title of an ITV strand on weekend evenings with a truly terrifying (for a child) opening logo featuring thunder and lightning tearing the night sky asunder that showed a mixture of American TV movies - including occasional edition of franchises like Columbo and Ironside - featuring the titular themes.  Certainly the murder and mystery parts: I suppose whether they were genuinely suspenseful or not is subjective.

For the as yet uninitiated, a brief history: the nomenclature for the subgenre, 'giallo', is the Italian word for the colour yellow.  This was the hue (and cry!) selected for the pulpy paperback printings from the publisher Mondadori whose Italic translations of authors such as Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace made a curious yellow the shade of mystery, murder and mayhem; though as we shall learn, there are many other colours of the dark. 

Gialloween seemed as good a time as any for me to finally take a deeper dive (making a bigger splash, mayhap, if one wants to get Hockney about it) into the directorial career of Sergio Martino.  "Who he?" you cry - I shall endeavour to elucidate.

The man who would arguably be the fourth face on a putative Mount Rushmore of Italian genre directors - after  Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci - Martino was born in Rome itself on the 19th of July 1938 (Wouldn't it have been nice if I'd managed to have written this in time to post on the day of  his eighty seventh birthday?  Alas, I only realised too late, so it was either write this as a belated tribute or put it off until next year [and at this point of repeated delays and disappointments I may as well have done, to be honest with myself]) into a family already steeped in the cinematic tradition.  His grandfather was Gennaro Righelli who had been directing films since 1910 including a 1927 version of Svengali starring genre legends Paul Wegener (the Golem himself) and Alexander Granach (Nosferatu's Renfield knock-off, Knock) and had been a pioneer, helming the first Italian talking picture The Song of Love (La Canzone dell'amore) - an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's In Silenzio - in 1930.  Sergio's older brother by almost five years Luciano Martino also worked in the film field as a writer and director but was best-known as a pretty prolific producer who would work with his sibling on many famed and feted entries in the joyous giallo division, a number of instalments of which starred Italian scream queen par excellence, the absolutely incandescent Edwige Fenech (who at the time was the wife of Luciano; lucky Luciano I calls 'im), the gorgeous Franco-Italian actress who I think looks a bit like Alejandra Villareal Velez from The Warning if one squints just slightly.  And if you don't know who they are, I'm afraid that I cannot help you and we cannot be friends.  Because you are surely going to hell.

So am I of course, just for different reasons.

"Blood has a strange effect on her.  It excites and repels her at the same time."

It's not cool to kink-shame, you know.

The first pairing of Martino and the Fenech fox, The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh  (originally Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh and also known as Blade of the Ripper Stateside and by the oddly absurd moniker of Next! in Britain) commenced filming in August 1970 and was released on the fifteenth of January 1971 for a limited Italian run, gaining a wider release in its home country a month later in February.  The story starts with a quotation from the Freud dude himself before we join a mysterious driver on the night time streets of the capital of Osterreich (the film was known as The Killer of Vienna in Austria and Germany) scoping out the ladies of the night line up to select the latest victim of his slasher serial killer campaign.  As this is going on, diplomat Neil Wardh (Alberto de Mendoza, familiar to fans of Euro horror as the Temu Rasputin-a-like Pujardov the mad monk in Eugenio Martin's superb Horror Express) and his emotionally and erotically neglected wife Julie (Fenech) fly in to be met at the airport by a couple of business acquaintances, leading to his neglected younger beautiful bride to take the ride home alone - a trip that involves a police traffic stop and the following exchange between her driver and the cops: 

"Was it Sex Fiend?"

"Yes, and he's still using the razor."

Educational and informative.  That's what we need.  And a slasher wreaking a campaign of blood-flecked terror just might be what an unholy trinity of men conspiring to do away with a certain woman who intersects their lives might need as a cover for their Machiavellian machinations.  In what might prove surprising news the initial script from Ernesto Gastaldi (probably European cinema's first horror specialist, starting in the genre in 1960 with The Vampire and the Ballerina and following it up with such monstrous delights as Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory, The Horrible Dr Hichcock, The Whip and the Body in 61, '62 and '63 respectively following by the feral flurry of Terror in the Crypt, The Vampire of the Opera and The Long Hair of Death all in '64) did not contain the giallo staple of the black gloved killer, being more in the mould of the '60s Gaslight influenced proto gialli before Martino suggested the addition - doubtless with an eye on the developing trends post Argento's L'ucello dalle piume di cristallo from the previous year.

At a party, Julie's fast friend Carol (Conchita "Christina" Airoldi) introduces her to George (George Hilton, also apparently a member of the extended Martino family), Carol's Australian (at least according to the subtitles, the dub actor in the English language version certainly isn't attempting 'Strine) - but sadly for Morrissey fans, not Alsatian - cousin.  Sadly this budding romantic diversion from her ailing marriage and cold, perpetually absent husband is complicated by the persistent attentions of former lover Jean (Ivan Rassimov, with his devilish smile) with whom Julie was entangled in an obsessive sado-masochistic relationship which he keeps sending her notes reminding her about.  Surely we must all feel for Julie's dilemma - looking for an alternative to her staid and stagnant domesticity with her husband and suddenly spoiled for choice trapped betwixt George Hilton's 'unrealistic handsomeness' and the dark magnetism of  Ivan Rassimov, possibly giallo's hottest hunks.  At least, according to the brilliant Katie of the Night on Youtube in both her top ten giallo actors video and her giallo hunks collab with Selis from Sweet 'n' Spooky.  Essential viewing.

"Worst part of you is the best thing you've got, and it will always be mine - Jean."

The messages from the past paramour continue, and Julie vacillates betwixt husband, blossoming new relationship and being lured back into the thrilling danger of her her old lifestyle.  Poor George.  What's he meant to make of all these mixed signals?  Almost like if a girl got increasingly flirty with one, including revealing her kinks ("Are you into choke fucking?") and then suddenly went as frigid as a nun in winter and talked about how much she loved her boyfriend.  Can you imagine such a thing happening?  No, nor can I.  Ahem.  Anyway...  I'll get over that one day, I'm sure.

Is Jean not only a stalker, forever lurking on the peripheries of Julie's mind and vision, but also the maniacal Ripper?  Or is far more going on than we or she might possibly know?

"Now I know you're trying to get away from me... But your vice is like a room locked from the inside and only I have the key." 

This gnomic and evocative simile makes me smile, and portends a later Martino joint that was to come the following year.  We'll get there, don't worry.

We suddenly smash-cut to a spot of Spanish scuba diving (these sunny Spanish seascapes situated in Sitges, famed for its Festival of Fantastic Film) and the film suddenly goes all Thunderball, with Hilton as 007 and Fenech as Domino.  Actually, Edwige would have made a marvellous Bond girl; her fellow giallo ingenue Barbara Bouchet of course featured in the '67 parody version of Casino Royale (Daliah Lavi too, now that I think about it).  Julie and George's idyll suddenly swerves from Thunderball to Casino Royale (the proper one) as Julie realises that her paradise has been invaded by a malevolent pursuer: but rather than the one-eyed Adolph Gettler who pursues Vesper Lynd, it appears to be the undead spectre of Jean who haunts her steps.

With a cry of "You're my wife now!" Neil channels The League of Gentlemen's Papa Lazarou.  But a jealous husband who's planning to off the straying missus and pin the blame on the serial killer who happens to be running rampant is the least of Mrs Wardh's (the odd spelling, incidentally, is down to a real window by the name of Ward who allegedly threatened legal action for defamation) worries as multiple men in her life turn out to be plotting against it and Julie is trapped unconscious in the kitchen filling with gas, an ice cube melting under the latch to seemingly render this a locked room mystery, some real Jonathan Creek shit.

Accompanied by a wonderfully haunting score by composer Nora Orlandi, including the repeated haunting electronic organ and choral refrain over the electric organ in 'Dies Irae' ('Day of Wrath') - sung by Orlandi herself, without a credit for her vocals - that acts like a motif for Julie's fragile and fraying psyche that would by recycled / repurposed by Quentin Tarantino for the scene where Michael Madsen's Budd contemplates his oncoming death in Kill Bill Volume 2, the film builds on previous dark entries of Italian cinema like the Luciano Martino-produced The Sweet Body of Deborah and Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body to deliver a heady mix of sex and violence  that set the trend for the giallo pictures of the '70s.

Killer in a wetsuit.  I know, I know, it's serious.

Opening with a shot of the lovely Lisa Baumer (Ida Galli, under her regular nom de cinema Evelyn Stewart) strutting through the streets of London in her rather splendid and fashionable hat, with a score from the legendary Bruno Nicolai that sounds like an early precursor of Goblin's later scores for Argento's giallo flicks, The Case of the Scorpion's Tail (La coda dello scorpione, released August 16th 1971) sports a script from a returning Ernesto Gastaldi along with Eduardo Manzanos Brochero (given a token nod despite doing no work on the film as a Spanish co-production needed an Iberian writing credit) and Sauro Scavolini  (who provided the basic story before leaving Gastaldi to craft the screenplay solo) as well as a cast that includes both George Hilton and Alberto de Mendoza returning from Mrs Wardh as well as familiar Euroslash faces Luigi Pistilli (Romolo Guerrieri's aforementioned The Sweet Body of Deborah, Riccardo Freda's The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire and Mario Gariazzo's Exorcist homage The Eerie Midnight Horror Show among others - including a Martino film we'll be getting to shortly) and Janine Reynaud (probably most recognisable to genre fans from Jesus Franco movies such as Succubus and the 'Red Lips' duology of Sadisterotica and Kiss Me, Monster).  With a pedigree like that, it would surely contend for the Best in Show at any Euro sleaze Crufts.

Absent is Edwige Fenech, who was pregnant at the time (Lucky Luciano striking again) of filming, but on the bright side we have Galli/Stewart subbing for her (now there's an image) as our lead in the earlier part of the movie but with the Psycho-style twist - or a "change of horse", as writer Gastaldi phrased it - with Galli's Lisa initially presented as our central character to follow until she's offed around half an hour into the movie, after which Anita Strindberg (who also featured in Lucio Fulci's giallo A Lizard in a Woman's Skin the same year, and would go on to be utilised again by Martino the following year) fills the designer pumps of giallo girl as the indefatigable investigative reporter Cleo Dupont.  So maybe if Fenech had been available she'd have played Cleo rather than Lisa.  Carry on, Cleo - the scene where Cleo is menaced in her apartment lit in a crepuscular green lighting a la Mario Bava or Argento would seem to affirm her as our lead to root for, so I think this would have been Edwige's part for the taking.

Even though this was filmed and released after Strange Vice, in some ways the film feels more like the earlier Lenzi-lensed jet set gialli. Like Strange Vice's third-act change of scene and change of style from Vienna to the Catalonian coast, the switch of locale from still Swinging Seventies London (replete with requisite red buses and 'phone boxes) to the sun-drenched Athens locations ("A black-gloved killer stalks the streets of Athens" as the trailer tells us) giving the film a Fleming-esque travelogue sweep.  Lisa makes her way to the Helios-blessed climes of Hellas after her husband Kurt's life is curtly cut short in an aeroplane 'accident', leading her to inherit a lot of money much to the suspicions of the authorities including urbane insurance investigator Peter Lynch (Hilton), Interpol agent John Stanley (de Mendoza) and police Inspector Stavros (Pistilli).  Lisa meets her early fate at the gloves hands of the eternal black-clad murderer - who alternates the requisite black hat with variations in jet such as what looks like biking leathers and even a diving wetsuit - who also goes after involved parties such as the late Kurt's Greek lover Lara Florakis (Reynaud) during whose murder the blade of the straight razor poking through the crack in the door to hitch open the latch is very similar to the scene where Stefania Cassini's Sara Simms ends up amidst the razor wire in Suspiria; her henchman Sharif (Luis Barboo, another Franco star as he'd go on to essay the mute assistant Morpho in Jesus's batshit blessing Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein as well as Redbeard - no relation to Al from Youtube - from the 1982 John Milius sword 'n' sorcery classic Conan the Barbarian) don't like it.  It's up to plucky girl reporter Cleo to untangle the threads of this web of mayhem and intrigue.  Scorpions don't spin webs of course, but they're arachnids so I feel it still works.

Inspired by the scene where George Hilton quite obviously turns a bottle of J&B whisky so that the label faces the camera for the gods of product placement, I issue the challenge: if you the viewer are feeling especially brave and/or foolish, you too could try the giallo J&B drinking game: simply take a shot every single time you spot a bottle of J&B - but only if you live within wheelbarrow distance of a hospital and/or have your own stomach pump, as there is as definite and real a risk of death as if you were a sex worker in a slasher film.  Attempt it at your own risk.

Cleo's deep dive discovery leads to the realisation that she is all at sea with the killer, and culminates in a Dead Calm-esque climactic sequence on the boat, with Peter suddenly code-switching from the Sam Neill to insane Billy Zane roles - if the flippers don't fit, you should probably quit.  Lynch's citation of a quote from "a famous Frenchman" shows that he has been reading Balzac, and should knock back some Prozac.

Linger on, Pale Blue Eyes.

All the Colours of the Dark (Tutti i colori del buio, or as on the version I have Todos los colores de la oscuridad), also known by the slightly ludicrous moniker of They're Coming to Get You! replete with Oliver!-esque exclamation mark making it look like a giallo musical (and wouldn't that be a hell of a thing, though I suppose it's already been done with Lucio Fulci's bizarro 1984 offering Murder Rock) emerged from the tenebrous shadows on February the 28th 1972 and once more featured the dream team of Edwige Fenech, George Hilton and Ivan Rassimov - the return of the (un)holy trinity amid other surface similarities prompting a fun comparison vid from Katie of the Night - with the addition of the lovely Nieves Navarro a.k.a. Susan Scott playing Fenech's sister.

With Fenech at possibly her most luminously alluring (a highly contested award, it must be said) as the psychologically fragile Jane Harrison, who is suffering from recurring nightmares and high anxiety due to the knockout combo of the childhood trauma of her and Barbara's mother's death and a recent car crash which caused a miscarriage,  For this trauma, she is prescribed drugs by her significant other, Richard Steele (Hilton) - wait, Dick Steele?!?  Definitely a porn name, right? - rather off the books.  He's not a doctor, he's a sales rep FFS.  Can't be legal.  Little blue pills?  I don't think Edwige needs 'em.  I certainly wouldn't.  Feeling isolated and abandoned due to often being alone in their swanky London flat in Putney's swanky Kenilworth Court with only shady recreational pharmacology for company, Jane turns to her mysterious and alluring neighbour Mary (Marina Malfatti) who also feels that she has the cure for all Jane's ills - prescribing a visit to a Sabbat.  Because, you know, why not.

There was a big 'black magic in suburbia' craze of the late '60s and early '70s (as detailed pretty well by Al Redbeard on videos such as this on his channel), akin to the weirdo heavy metal meets Dungeons & Dragons Satanic Panic of the mid '80s. Devil worshippers in an apartment block (I know, I know it's serious) a la Roman Polanski's 1968 adaptation of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, and Paul Wendkos' 1971 The Mephisto Waltz starring future Hawkeye from M*A*S*H Alan Alda and the lovely Barbara Parkins - a still of whom from said film leading a human headed dog on a leash stuck in my mind and haunted my dreams as a child.  Jane didn't sign up for a greedy girls party - certainly not one where the liquid required to be greedy for is puppy's blood - at yet another recognisable location: the Satanic house was obviously typecast as a devilish edifice as West Sussex's Wykehurst Park would play the legendary Hell House itself the following year John Hough's wonderful adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel.  Also, the mysterious man with unnaturally pale blue eyes (it's Ivan Rassimov again) who has been haunting Jane's steps makes an appearance and the cult's Satanist leader (D.B. McBride?!?  What a name for a Temu Mocata.  Sounds more like the kind of guy that would pull off a daring heist, leap out of a plane and disappear than someone who'd conjure the goat of Mendes) played by Julian Ugarte of Paul Naschy's werewolf debut La marca del hombre lobo with shiny metallic Fu Manchu talons looks like a cross between Mike Raven and Aslan Tennant - which was my little brother's nickname for Small from Big Chef, Little Chef as he thought he looked like David Tennant's Tenth Doctor but with a mane.  We're getting into the deepest of deep cut references here when I'm dropping jokes only one other person on the planet would appreciate, and he doesn't even read my blog.   The git.

There's also the recognisable autumnal environs of Putney's Bishop's Park, a menacing aura of dread belying the bucolic mise en scene, where Pegory Greck met Troughton's Father Wossface in The Omen.  Clearly that area of London was rife with Satan in the Seventies.  "Not all black magic is mumbo jumbo" as Rutger Hauer so rightly said in the Guinness ads.  And who are we to argue with Roy Batty?  It being the swinging early Seventies, nobody seems too fussed about using protection at the Sabbat gangbangs.  One would think that winding up with a bun in the oven from all that coven lovin' would be a hazard to best be avoided.  Oneiric. psychedelic and atmosphere-drenched, accentuated by an excellent Bruno Nicolai score, All the Colours of the Dark is a beautiful nightmare of paranoia and suburban Satanic swinger's shindigs that leaves an impression on the memory like a half-remembered dream or vitreous opacities dancing at the edges of the waking mind's field of vision.  What's that in the corner of your eye?

He's coming to get you, Barbara.

"Hello there, Satan!"

The as has by this time become de rigueur unwieldy yet still wonderful title Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (Il tuo vizio e una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave, unlocked and unleashed from its solitary chamber on August 18th 1972) was an enigmatic variation upon Edgar Allan Poe's oft-retold tale 'The Black Cat'; one of the many alternative release titles for the picture was Eye of the Black Cat, which is prosaic but appropriate - another was apparently Excite Me, which isn't but can at least be read in the voice of Tom Atkins from Night of the Creeps saying "Thrill me".  So there's that.

We are here introduced to the struggling writer Oliviero Rouvigny and his much put-upon wife Irina (Luigi Pistilli and Anita Strindberg respectively, returning to the Martino fold after The Case of the Scorpion's Tail); the past his prime alcoholic author routinely holds drunken orgies in his picturesque countryside villa, inviting all sorts of hippy riff raff round for a gangbang and subjecting his tormented spouse to emotional and physical abuse.  We also have the awful Oliviero's Oedipal obsession with his late mother, whose portrait hangs upon the wall overlooking these Bacchanalian proceedings.  Forget the Freudian frolics of Julie Wardh - pertinent though they were to that film's Viennese setting - Siggy (as we Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure alumni know him) would have a field day with his guy.  He may harbour a sublimated desire to mate with his mater, but he's soon going to meet his maker.

So sick, so perverse (oh wait, that's another film) we discover that in addition to degrading his spouse as well as their housemaid Brenda (Angela La Vorgna), whom he also routinely subjects to racial verbal abuse, the oh so odious Oliviero is also indulging in a fling with the feisty but fated Fausta (Daniela Giordano, who would go on to star in Paul Naschy's Spanish Inquisition - I bet nobody expected that), an ex-student whose bookshop the dissolute writer has been visiting to put his bookmark between her inviting pages if you know what I mean. 

Making her entrance thirty three minutes into a ninety five minute movie we finally find Fenech, her raven locks cut into a stylish bob making her resemble a somehow even more sizzlingly sexy Phryne Fisher - should such a thing be humanly possible - as Floriana she's able to play a much more vivacious and outgoing character with more agency than her vulnerable star turns in Strange Vice and All the Colours.  Arriving at this house of mortal sin (no, that's another film) as Oliviero's visiting niece, the cunning coquette quickly seduces both her uncle and aunt amply able as she is to utilise her sexuality and weaponise her feminine wiles.  Another deadly pussy loose aboot this hoose is of course the aptly-named Satan, the black cat that used to belong to Oliviero's late mother who constantly stalks and persecutes Irina - or is that just in her increasingly paranoid mind? - to the extent that the downtrodden woman turn like a proverbial violent vermis and gouge out the feline's eye in an attempt to annihilate that pussy (no, we're not back to talking about her sex scene with Floriana, gutterbrains).

When bookshop doxy Fausta is offed, implicating Oliviero, and Brenda is killed rather nastily with a billhook rending her nice and tender flesh the shadowy mansion increasingly becoming a house of internecine intrigue and counter-plotting, like Gormenghast with gore.  Gormenghastly?  This is a house with secrets just waiting to be uncovered, some of them literally buried beneath the bowels of the building; "somebody's in my fruit cellar", as Evil Dead II's Henrietta would say but it doesn't want to stay there especially if the spectral Satanic cat has any say in the matter.

Seriously sleazy with a cast comprised of a cadre of thoroughly unlikeable and reprehensible characters doing - or planning to do - awful things to one another, Your Vice is like being dunked into the murky depths and taken on a tour of a Gothic sewer by Martino's masterful mounting of tension through the cinematography enhanced by another great Bruno Nicolai score; all anchored by an intense performance from Anita Strindberg that's a complete 180 degrees remove from her portrayal of Cleo in Scorpion's Tail.

Where WHORES meets SAWS!

Martino's next opus Torso was released under its original nomenclature of I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale (the rather literal The Bodies Bear Traces of Carnal Violence - vestiges of which made its way to the DVD release title of Torso - Carnal Violence) on January 4th 1973.  The aforesaid DVD release also bore the legend "Where WHORES meet SAWS!" in lurid lettering on the front of the box, which as I recall earned me a suspicious look from the rather attractive girl behind the counter.  Thanks a lot, Shameless releasing.  Bad enough that the girl in the record shop doesn't think that I'm avant-garde enough without the lass in HMV thinking I'm some kind of a deviant.  Alright, knowing I'm some kind of a deviant.  I did buy The Beast in Space (and see here for more on that little gem) at the same time.  Odd that it was Torso that earned me the glare, honestly.  Maybe for a hot sparkle goth she was really conservative and vanilla and dull and I wouldn't have wanted to ask her out on a date anyway.

Yes, this is me coping.  Anyway...

We open with a lecture on art at Perugia's university for foreign students, the specific artwork being the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, being delivered by professor Franz (John Richardson, as in the romancer of fur bikini-clad Raquel Welch in Hammer's One Million Years B.C. rather than the comedy panelist and ex Mr Lucy Beaumont) to a hall of students including honey blonde Jane (Suzy Kendall, Dario Argento's premier giallo The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and the lovely brunette Dani (Tina Aumont).  We also have the lovely Flo (Patrizia Adiutori) enticing us to go with the Flo (I'd love to, even risking the hazardous consequences of this particular date.  Well worth it, I reckon) who meets a sadly early tragic end at the hands of the faceless killer in a Toolbox Murders-style balaclava/ski mask who's offing the campus's cuties.

Next up: Carol (Conchita Airoldi, Carol from Strange Vice... in this film as another killed Carol!), heartbroken after being dumped by her sugar daddy, takes off with a couple of biker guys to a very listless and un-happening orgy with terrible dancing.  The complete opposite of the very happening happening that opens Mario Bava's Five Dolls for an August Moon which had Edwige Fenech disco dancing like the video for Saint Motel's 'Just My Type'.  Speaking of dolls as a metaphor for gialli victims, this film has the antagonist actually spell it out clear as day:

"They were only dolls... stupid dolls made out of flesh and blood... I hacked them to pieces like dolls."

Carol plodges through the muddy forest in her bare feet, and likely would catch her death from pneumonia if the masked killer didn't deliver it to her sooner

Wanting to get away from the slayings in Perugia (grimly amusing  from today's point of view for those of us who are twisted is the realisation that the setting is the same, as well as 'foreign' Anglophone victim[s], as the notorious Amanda "Foxy Knoxy" Knox case) the girls head off to the countryside villa of Dani's slightly dodgy Uncle Nino (Carlo Alighiero), who likes to watch his nubile niece and her girlfriends when they're freshly showered and moist.  And good for him, I'm not here to kink-shame.  Also along for the trip are Ursula (Carla Brait) and her special friend Katya (Angela Covello) - Katya with her head nestled in Ursula's lap during the train trip, an openly Sapphic relationship that only becomes more explicit after they arrive at the mansion on a mountain top - as neither Shocking Blue nor Bananarana sang - and we get Ursula's Salome-esque dance of the veils and more lesbic canoodling.  It's still representation even if it's exploitative is my take on it.  And so all the young dudettes wind up riding to the villa on a tractor through the village at the foot of the mountain, ordering provisions to be delivered by the local yokels Withnail & I style.  "Eggs and things", in the words of McGann's Marwood.

After Jane takes a rather nasty spill down the staircase, Luc Merenda's Doctor Roberto - which is almost a Beatles song, but not quite - prescribes painkillers for her busted ankle.  Let's hope it doesn't wind up feeding... heh... Jane's addiction.  Confined to bed and sleeping off the tablets for a while, Jane awakens from her somnolence to find the still unseen killer taking the corpses of the girls apart with a hacksaw, inspiring the DVD box strapline that I utilised above and was judged for so harshly.  Still not over it.

Trapped alone in the villa, barred windows above a sheer cliff - like Jonathan Harker ensnared in Castle Dracula - Jane finds herself in the perilous predicament of having to deal with the killer while coping with a busted ankle like Laurie in Carpenter's '78 Halloween.  Not that I necessarily think that Carpenter's Shape jape was consciously influences by this film; if it were then it wouldn't be so clear that Jamie Lee was the protagonist 'til near the end - here it really feels like Aumont's Dani will be the focus until Jane wakes up to find herself, to her surprise as much as ours, to be the Final Girl.

I'm tellin' y'all, it's sabotage.

The Suspicious Death of a Minor (Morte sospetta di una minorenne, also trading under the name Too Young to Die) was released through Titanus on August 12th 1975 and takes something of a left turn to the previous dark entries in Martino's giallo canon, being as it is something of a hybrid of giallo and the poliziotteschi genre - a sort of hard-boiled police procedural generally featuring a loose cannon cop who gets the job done despite a reckless disregard for normal procedure and breaking all the rules (usually much to the chagrin of an over-stressed boss) to crack the case.  A sort of Milanese Dirty Harry, if you like.  

Opening with a plangent and percussive theme from Luciano Michelini, which I think it's fair to say and the very least 'homages' Goblin, we are swiftly introduced to the young Marisa Pesce (Patrizia Castaldi) and her shifty businessman and upper-class deviant uncle Gaudenzio Pesce (Massimo Girotti) who is certainly up to something fishy.  Pesce, you see?  Never mind.  The script, once again from Ernesto Gastaldi, gives us our dishevelled and decidedly anti-heroic protagonist Paolo Germi (Claudio Casinelli) - at first we don't know if he's acting in any kind of official capacity, or is he some kind of lone wolf rogue agent like Simon Templar (the original Leslie Charteris pulp version, rather than Roger Moore, Ian Ogilvy or - God forbid - Val Kilmer, whom Casinelli slightly resembles in the artwork on the reversible Arrow Blu-ray cover) taking matters and the law into his own hands?  Germi encounters Marisa in what might be called a 'meet-strange' at a public dance where she is being followed by a menacing man in mirrored sunglasses (Roberto Posse, which sounds like the name of some Milanese gang or militia to me - "We think it's the work of the Roberto posse again") and briefly flirts and dances with Paolo in an effort to shed this unwanted tail, leaving Germi blue-balled and baffled with his spectacles shattered on the cement floor setting up a running broken glasses gag.  The effort is all in vain, though, as her pursuer catches up with her in her flat and takes her out by slashing her throat and repeatedly plunging his blade into her in the way that Germi was interested in doing more metaphorically.

Taking up the cause of investigating Marisa's murky murder, Germi - with the aid of his new-found young hustler sidekick Giannino (Adolfo Caruso) - begins to uncover the shadowy world of an under-age call girl ring whose number includes student Floriana (ah, there's a recurring name) Gori, who meets a gory end at the hands of pimp Raimondo 'Menga' Menghini when he shoots and fatally wounds her in the side, is played by the striking French-Italian actress Barbara Magnolfi, Olga the sibilant student from Suspiria (who hisses "the names of snakessss!") before Menga himself suffers the same fate when Germi delivers the same kind of injury to him.  Only fair, really.

Much mayhem ensues with thrills, kills and hilarious set pieces such as the attempted killer on the Big Dipper - as Ronan Keating told us, life is a rollercoaster, so I suppose death can be, too.  Suddenly splatted by a train like the agent following Ned Beatty's Otis in Richard Donner's Superman, in quite a severe case of tonal whiplash.  There's also Casinelli's car chase with his rickety car incrementally coming to bits in a way reminiscent of the 1984 Amy Heckerling knockabout action-com Johnny Dangerously

A more minor Martino is still a movie worth watching, crafted by a well-oiled machine of a team of professionals operating at the peak of their powers including Gastaldi on script duties (alongside Martino himself) and a score heavy on the prog-rock influences like the iconic Goblin soundtrack for Argento's iconic Profundo rosso from the same year courtesy of composer Luciano Michelini.  It's an uneven and slightly schizophrenic film held together by a fascinating central performance from Casinelli, who would sadly meet a premature end when he was killed in a helicopter accident on the set of Martino's 1985 science fictioner Hands of Steel (which reunited Martino. Casinelli and John Saxon - Nancy's Dad himself - after The Scorpion with Two Tails in 1982), crashing into Colorado's Navajo Bridge.  Man, the '80s were a rough time for chopper incidents on the set of genre movies, weren't they?  At least we can't blame John Landis for that one.

Martino would go on to direct a number of entertaining genre movies, ranging from 1978's infamous video nasty entry in the grubby Italian cannibal subgenre Mountain of the Cannibal God (La montagna del dio cannibale) which pitted Bond girl Ursula Andress against the type of hungry jungle denizens first seen in Umberto Lenzi's Man From Deep River and sundry other less palatable even than longpig) fare, the 1979 Island of the Fishmen (L'isola degli uomini pesce, also released as Screamers) in which her fellow former Bond girl Barbara Bach tangled with unfriendly Gill Men on an Atlantean island, and Mad Max meets Escape from New York two for one mash-up 2019, After the Fall of New York (2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York) from 1983 with former Hollywood matinee star Edmund Purdom slumming it with elusive cult star Michael Sopkiw in the Children of Men-style infertile nuclear irradiated wastelands.  None of these new adventures in genre cinema though, not even the aforementioned giallo at the tail end of the giallo wave The Scorpion with Two Tails (alias the more evocative or more prosaic [you pays your money, you takes your choice] Assassinio al cimaterio etrusco; or Murder in the Etruscan Cemetery) in '82 could compete with his early flurry of activity in the subgenre: a six flick stint of giallo goodness that in your humble correspondent's opinion is up there with the great pioneering works of Mario Bava and Dario Argento.  Yes, I'm totally serious - they're that good.  Check 'em out if you haven't already.  Once you dive in, you may never want to leave.

The Last of the Famous Universal Monsters: June Lockhart (1925 - 2025)

And here's to you, Mrs Robinson.

That title I've given this piece is a bit Smiths, isn't it?  May as well get some Simon and Garfunkel in there too.

And so I woke in the early hours of the 26th of October to discover that the last Famous Monster of Filmland had departed this earthly plane at a grand century.  June Lockhart may be better known to many for her motherly roles in the likes of Lassie and of course for the iconic role of Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space, but to us horror fans and monster kids she was - and remains forever, of course, such is the immortality of the celluloid ribbon of dreams that is cinema - the titular heroine of the 1946 Universal horror film She-Wolf of London.

Of the pantheon of the Universal Monsters Lon Chaney Senior left us first at the age of just 47 in 1930, Bela Lugosi proved Bauhaus right at 73 in 1956, Boris Karloff aged 81 in 1969, Lon Chaney Junior was 67 when he went away in 1973 and John Carradine 82 in 1988.  Most recently and until now the most elderly / long-lasting was the Black Lagoon's Gill-Man Ricou Browning who reached 93 before going in 2023.  June Lockhart's death truly closes that chapter.

Born on the 25th of June 1925 and leaving us on the 23rd of October 2025 at just under one hundred years and four months, Ms Lockhart was only twenty years old when She-Wolf was shot in December 1945.  She would later hazily and self-deprecatingly recall of the film "If I'm remembering right, I was just submitted for it by my agent.  I did it - and I was not very good in it.  But the following year I was the hot young ingenue on Broadway in a wonderful comedy.  So I guess what I needed was a good direction."  Which I feel it's fair to say she did.  Whatever the film's flaws, the direction from Jean Yarbrough (helmer of five Abbott and Costello entries [sadly none of the 'meet the monsters' dark entries, but Here Come the Co-Eds did co-star Lon Chaney Junior and Martha O'Driscoll who would make penultimate monster rally House of Dracula the same year] as well as genre entries The Devil Bat, King of the Zombies, Rondo Hatton's Creeper duology House of Horrors and The Brute Man, the unrelated The Creeper, the Bowery Boys' Meet Frankenstein knockoff Master Minds and ending his cinema career with the bathetic thud of Hillbillys in a Haunted House) isn't one of them, bringing quite a bit of atmosphere to a latter-day entry in the Universal cycle that many seem to disregard due it's "cheat" ending which is to be fair more Scooby-Doo than horror and perhaps calls Lockhart's status as Last Monster Standing into question.  Phyllis Allenby may turn out not to be yer genuine lycanthrope like Wilfred Glendon and Larry Talbot, but she still counts as far as I'm concerned.

It does feel odd to be writing a post on this blog that isn't a review of something, and normally of course the obvious thing to do would be to rewatch and review She-Wolf of London properly as a tribute but seeing as a) I'm already in the middle of about five not so easy pieces to complete (how and why I constantly let myself get into these situations I don't know) and b) I was already planning on a marathon runthrough series of reviews of the Universal Monsters movies for next year (so at my current forever stymied rate of progress expect them sometime around the Space Year 2035 or thereabouts) I thought I'd say a little something to mark her passing.  It would have felt odd to do nothing to mark the occasion, and I'm not going to try to pretend this is the greatest panegyric in the history of the world - this is just my little tribute.  There we are: as well as The Smiths and Simon and Garfunkel, we've added Tenacious D to the musical roster.  Quite the festival we've got going here.

God bless you, please, Mrs Robinson.

Scared to Death (William Malone, 1980)

"They wanted to create a new form of human life... They failed."

Michigander (yes, that is an actual word.  As are Michiganite [boring] and the frankly wonderful Michigine) William Malone has carved out a smallish but perfectly formed corpus in the horror genre over his sadly sporadic career with a limited number of movies in the forty five years since 1980 - a period of mere months longer than my entire lifespan.  They may, like love, come in short spurts (of ten CCs, I'm led to believe) but they're great when they do.  The five feature films Malone has helmed over that time (not counting made for TV movies and episodes of series) include 1985's superior Alien clone Creature (a.k.a. The Titan Find) - a film in which guest star Klaus Kinski is a far more terrifying presence than Robert and Dennis Skotak's animatronic xenomorph (a test run for the work they would do a year later on James Cameron's Aliens, in a pleasing symmetry) could hope to be - as well as the 1999 House on Haunted Hill (one of those oh-so-rare things: a remake that is better than the original), 2002's interwebs-based thriller FeardotCom (bizarrely originally an erotic vehicle for Zalman King of Two Moon Junction, Wild Orchid and Delta of Venus [whatever happened to Audie England, by the way?] fame) and 2008's Parasomnia; a film that features Kathryn Leigh Scott as a character named Margaret Evans and is therefore canon in the Dark Shadows universe.  I insist.  I truly do.

.

More so than that fucking Burton / Depp abomination, anyway.  I'm still a bit annoyed about that, even though it had Alice Cooper's 'The Ballad of Dwight Fry' [sic] on the soundtrack.

But it all started with Scared to Death, also known by sundry other titles including Scared to Death: Syngenor (on its eventual DVD release, presumably to link it with the belated and not good [despite the lovely Starr Andreef being in it] 1990 sequel Syngenor) and The Aberdeen Experiment (though there is no granite or Doric to be found within).  Made fresh out of film school (Malone studied at U.C.L.A. after being obsessed with genre cinema from a young age, crafting his own home-made monster masks as a kid before working at the renowned Don Post studio where he came up with the idea of adapting one of Post's William Shatner Captain Kirk masks into the white-painted visage of Michael Myers / The Shape for John Carpenter's classic 1978 Halloween) on a scraped-together budget of circa $74,000 raised from Malone mortgaging his house and selling his car, the film was already in profit before release due to securing a $90,000 deal for the East Asian market through distribution company Lone Star (who had put up $40,000 towards the movie's four-week shoot).

Beginning with a ludicrously portentous attempt at grounding the phantasy we are about to see with the text caption "PROLOGUE: The events portrayed in this film, although fictional, are based on scientific fact.  If they have not already happened, they soon could.  Genetic engineering is real.  And soon we may all have to deal with new values and definitions of life and death.", we move with a P.O.V. tracking shot through the sewers as a clue to us dealing with a C.H.U.D. four years earlier than Douglas Cheek's seminal subterranean shlocker before moving overground wombling free to a shot prowling around a house and peering (and perving) upon the young woman within that could make Dean Cundey sue cinematographer Patrick Prince, so reminiscent of the opening of Carpenter's '78 Halloween is it.  Except this time we don't just get Judith Myers' sideboob, as our opening victim Janie Richter (Pamela Bowman, who IMDb informs had a part as a 'Fleshette' in the same year's Ultra Flesh alongside Seka, Jamie Gillis and Lisa De Leeuw - there's one to add to the watchlist - and who I recently saw in an episode of HBO's extremely '80s T&A filled anthology series The Hitchhiker) treats us to a brief bit of full-frontal nudity before slipping into her scarlet satin scanties while chatting on the phone to her boyfriend, all the while illuminated by crimson Suspiria-esque lamplight.

Going to investigate the prowler who's been point-of-viewing around her property, armed only with a solitary candle like Deborah Kerr from The Innocents - if she'd been American and dressed in her underwear - Janie meets her end at the hands of a pretty impressive monster; it manages to resemble both a post-Alien H. R. Giger xenomorph (or, possibly, a decade and a half early Species one) and a 1950s Roger Corman man in a rubber suit creature feature antagonist at the same time depending on the lighting and camera setup.  The cops are swiftly on the scene - finding an unknown and unidentifiable sticky substance strewn around (not surprised really, she was a bonny lass) - to investigate this tragedy, the latest in a string of murders, and Detective Lou Capell (David Moses) turns to ex-cop turned pulp novelist-cum-private investigator - and possibly also part-time gentleman, scholar and acrobat on the side - Ted Londergan (John Stinson, substituting for rock singer Rick Springfield - the future original incarnation of Nick Knight having signed up and then dropped out of the role at the last minute).  Londergan, our corduroy-clad hero, is introduced as a loose cannon; the kind of protagonist beloved of cop shows that have the character of 'the Chief' growing ever more apoplectic and exasperated with his off-the-books antics but gets the job done.  He's also a bit of a knob to be honest, as evidenced by his attitude when he is asked by Capell, his ex-partner, to come on board the case.  He's also a BOAK (bit of a knob) during the meet-cute - more like meet-infuriating - with the film's female lead and love interest Jennifer Stanton (the lovely Diana Davidson in sadly her only screen role aside from an uncredited part in Dirty Harry almost a decade earlier).  I get the feeling that we're supposed to find Londergan's antics quirky and endearing, but it really isn't working for me.  Others' mileage will invariably vary, I may just not have been in the right mood - like Tommy Lee Jones on the set of Batman Forever - to sanction his buffoonery.

After initially refusing Capell's plea to aid with the investigation Ted has a change of heart when, after belying her seemingly sensible and head screwed on image by sleeping with this obvious sociopath with narcissistic personality disorder, Jennifer becomes one of the beast's victims - after a series of attacks including rending a teen asunder inside her car after only tearing the bloody doors off and squeezing a sewage worker's skull ("I crush your head - I pinch your face") - and left comatose.  And not the kinda coma you wake up from with Johnny Smith style psychic powers.

Teaming up with disgruntled - did you ever meet a gruntled one? - ex-laboratory employee at the Amberdine Research Facility Sherry Carpenter (Toni Jannotta) to stop the monster's reign of terror which includes such antisocial behaviour as homing in on a gang of roller skating youths and doing what we're all thinking by using its lethal tongue on Joleen Porcaro's lovely brunette Kelly (thoughts and prayers for the rollergirl to go along with Rick King's 1990 Prayer of the Rollerboys), he - and through him, we - find that that the Syngenor (synthetic genetic organism) is an engineered life form that feeds on the spinal fluid of its victims.  I'm more into GILFs than GELFs myself, but Ted is very eager to get his hands on this slippery sucker with a thirst for bodily fluids.  Jeez. your girlfriend's been hospitalised for a few hours and you're already out scouring the sewers for a replacement. 

I couldn't help thinking that the sight of our protagonist clad in corduroy descending into the sewers is quite reminiscent of the teacher-cum-rodent fighter lead in Deadly Eyes, the disappointing 1982 adaptation of James Herbert's 1974 pulp horror classic 'when nature attacks' rodent rampage The Rats in all of its disappointing glory.  At least this has a well-realised monster rather than little dogs in vermin maquillage; plus one for the Syngenor.

First escaping onto the silver screen of dreams and screams in France in November of 1980 with its domestic release in March of 1981,  wasn't initially sure whether to have this down as a 1980 flick or a 1981 one.  Josh Spiegel opts for the latter, having its entry in the '81 volume of his ongoing and quite magnificent The 80's Project, but I figured that I'd go with the former date just because I'm different.  And it just feels like a 1980 film to me for whatever that's worth.

Originally released on home video by Media Home Entertainment, a company established by Charles Band later of Empire Pictures and Full Moon Entertainment legend, Scared to Death would also make its DVD debut under its modified title of Scared to Death: Syngenor to connect it with the aforementioned semi-sequel (I call it that not just because aside from the creatures themselves there's zero narrative or character connective tissue between the two films, but also because Starr Andreef never failed to give me at least a semi-on).

Not exactly a well-remember genre classic etched into the formative memories of a generation of fright fans like many of its contemporaries, Scared to Death nevertheless is a well-made debut from a director who would go on to make more memorable movies that boasts at the very least a good atmosphere and a striking central creature that registers high on the H. R. Giger counter and would become a mainstay of Halloween monster masks.  Given Malone's start working for Don Post and making such hideous visages, surely that's a satisfying legacy in anyone's book. 

A Very Adult Wednesday Addams (Joanna Angel, 2015) [NSFW]

Being most of the way through the second season of the glorious gothic phantasmagoria of Wednesday and eagerly waiting finishing it by the end of September (yes, it can take me a while with current series, there's only so many hours in the say and so much film and television that needs watching.  Spoiler-dodging his become something of an art at this point) my idling thoughts about Jenna Ortega and goth chic and goth chicks wander, as is their wont, to the dirty end of the dark side.

For the longest time I've been trying to find a reason to extol my longtime obsession with Joanna Angel and her prolific litany of works that have brought me much intense joy over the years (in fact, I honestly thought I had done years ago when I meant to write a review of her superb Evil Dead parody - titled, appropriately, Evil Head - but apparently that was just another in the long, long line of things that I meant to get round to doing but either got distracted or just never bothered; though I did scribble down my thoughts on Doug Sakmann's 2004 Re-Penetrator [HERE], a skit on the classic Re-Animator that starred the divine Ms Angel and her Evil Head co-star Tommy Pistol).

In any case, I have very much enjoyed her works including her musical output.  I can't decide between 'Ay Lay Un' and 'Fish Food' as the song I like best to be honest: the former is about aliens so naturally it should claim my love, but the later has a really fun music video so maybe wins on that score ("To the bottom of the pool, of course / Of course!  (GIGGLE)").  But they're both slices of '60s inflected punk-pop heaven in my opinion.  She may not have the greatest voice in the annals - I mean, she's more used to anals right? - of music history, but it works for me in a kawaii kewpie doll vocalising sort of way.  With guitars.  And buttfucking, probably.

For any uninitiated out there who may have stumbled naively into this piece, the artiste known to the world as Joanna Angel was born Joanna Mostov in Brooklyn, New York in 1980 (which makes her a year younger than me, which wouldn't be a problem apart from the fact that she has resided in the 'MILF' categories of porn for quite a while and that makes me feel old) and grew up in New Jersey - working in a kosher restaurant in Teaneck and graduating from Rutgers University before founding the alt-porn Burning Angel website in 2002.  Which I may have come across whilst I was myself at uni, now that my aged memory struggles to think about it.  Thereabouts or very shortly thereafter, anyway.

When it came (and so did I, of course) to deciding which of her Burning Angel movies to scribble a review about I was hard pressed to choose.  So many great titles to choose from, including the rather magnificent As Above, So Below from 2018, which is certainly the best no holds barred (and indeed no holes barred) gangbang that takes its title from the Emerald Tablet of Hermeticism that I've ever seen - if you know of any others, please let me know.  The shortlist also included not only but also the amusingly titled Fuck This Couch (a favourite of smoky-eyed Vice President and connoisseur of upholstery J.D. 'Just Dance' Vance, no doubt) as well as rather wonderfully self-explanatory Goth Anal Whores 2, the prospect of which had me not only foaming at the mouth and glans but also was enough to make me abandon my generally de rigueur rule of never watching a sequel without having first viewed the original; a cast including lady Joanna herself (also on writing and directing duties such are her skills as auteur as well as star) plus queens of the nightside Aiden Ashley (wearing a collar and leash in a wonderfully ball-emptying sweaty scene of ass 'n' vag-munching, fingering and buttplugs with Joanna), Charlotte Sartre (playing with a ouija... sorry.. orgy board before taking a big schlong up the wrong 'un) and the lovely Marley Brinx (in a threeway with the aforementioned Tommy Pistol and Small Hands - the very jammy real life Mr Angel - that ends with her gorgeous face plastered with cum).  Wonderful film, extremely highly recommended.  Alas, I don't think my vas deferens would survive another viewing so for the purposes of a review I went with this prophetic 2015 vision of a hot Wednesday's exploits.

Or should that be sexploits?  Yes.  We'll go with that.

Taking its inspiration - though this one both has and causes a whole lot more perspiration I can tell ya - from the title of the 2013 to 2015 Youtube series Adult Wednesday Addams by Melissa Hunter and having the extended title of A Very Very Very Adult Wednesday Addams in the opening credits, we kick off with a house-hunting Wednesday (Draven Star) being interviewed by dudes Xander Corvus (Peter Parker / Spider-Man in all those Axel Braun XXX Marvel parodies where he continually fires out a white sticky fluid almost but not entirely unlike 'web') and Mr Pete as a prospective new housemate for their shared apartment.

"There comes a time in every ghoul's life when she has to leave the family plot and find her own mausoleum" says the groovy ghoulette, who has no time to waste on wastemen and wants to skip the smalltalk of the digs being a "4/20 kind of place" and get down to smoking something fleshier than a fat chronic blunt.  You know what I mean.

The guys naturally don't much encouragement; when a girl says "Gentlemen, please remove your pants and we can proceed as the Darkness taught us" she tends to mean it.  Unless she's talking about Justin Hawkins' '70s metal tribute band.  Fortunately for both them and out eardrums, the type of wanking she has in mind involves frenulums rather than fretboards and she's swiftly on her knees taking mouthfuls of man meat and putting those tongue piercings to proper use.  "How's your gag reflex?" asks Xander as she demonstrates how to have your tonsils ticked with a todger in various positions: standing bent over, reverse cowgirl (always a fave) and mish as she takes it from both ends before a great and very loudly enthusiastic D.P. - she certainly seems to love both those holes getting rammed - and her face bedecked with sticky spaff as they discuss the house rules concerning cleaning the dishes. 

The second scene features Ophelia Rain with Xander Corvus and begins with Corvis awaking in his bed not, like Gregor Samsa, that he's been transformed into a monstrous insect whilst somnolent but to find that his sexual partner is now a different actress.  At least, that's how I read the scene at first: we have one of the performers upon which we've just perved in the previous scene waking up in an obvious post-coital situation but the female protagonist whist still a Wednesday has seemingly regenerated into a newer form.  That's very probably not meant to be the case, though, and it's just the way my brain does things.

Ophelia!Wednesday acknowledges that she may have had fun the previous evening and makes ready to leave, giving the number 666 - because "Satan is real", obvs. - when he asks if he can at least get her number.  She soon decides to remain and do the sexing again, though, because "Your penis was like rigor mortis, and I want to have it again before I die".  None more goth.  Maybe not a sparkle goth, but she'll get some sparkle soon.  Maybe some glitter up her shitter if she asks nicely.

Gasping with delight throughout a preliminary fingering, she responds equally affirmatively to a tongue in the pussy and a finger probing her arsehole before submitting to a vigorous face fucking with her pigtails held like handlebars as he uses her mouth like a cunt.  Flipped and fucked doggy-style for a while, she eagerly receives it in the rectum ("Up my hole, yeah!") spreading her pink for us as her arse is hammered to the hilt to a pretty convincing screaming orgasm.  Which kind of makes sense, that being the name of a cocktail and she having a cock up her tail.  

And so on to the highlight of the film for me, which serves us Joanna herself with Mark Wood.  And believe me, wood shall be achieved.

In the words of the late Macho Man Randy Savage (or was it Yello?  It's so easy to get those guys mixed up): Ohhh yeah.

Mr Wood knocks at the door of stately Angel Manor in the guise of a worker for the gas company and asking for "Mr Small Hands", which rather begs the question as to whether the lady who's answered the door in the Spirit Halloween Wednesday cosplay is meant to be Joanna Angel in character as Wednesday Addams - or, rather, a Wednesday Addams - or as a fictionalised version of herself.  Either way, Mr Hands is not available possibly due to a gas leak, and the baffled gas man is directed to use the rear entrance to gain access; this is definitely not the last time he will obey this instruction over the coming (cumming?) minutes.

From the back garden, he witnesses the spectacular sight through the window of Joanna sliding off her panties on the black-sheeted bed and sliding an ebony dildo into her pussy with the rather appropriate salutation "Hail to the darkness!  The void is opening!".   It surely is.  Summoned into the boudoir by the power of her sex magicks, how can our hapless helper do ought but obey when ordered to "put that clipboard down and stick that dildo inside of me"?  Once she's nicely lubricated with a thorough tongue lashing and stripped down to her black high heels, she feasts on man flesh like a hungry orc taking that johnson deep down her throat.  Some rigorous choke-fucking serves as the warm-up to her spreading her cheeks to have her ass reamed out.

Hnnggg.  I'm pretty sure that was the exact sound I made as my nuts emptied at this point, which as pretty much as high a recommendation as  can make for this type of thing, really.  Still, we must soldier on I suppose.  After some energetic cowgirl riding, we get some more enthusiastically-received rimming before some orgasmic (both her and me; the fact that I'd already gone five minutes earlier didn't stop me and my poor testes are like raisins) anal.  "I can take it!" she shrieks, but I don't know if I can.  There's still at least one scene to go.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to walk after this.

The fourth and final scene of this titillating tetraptych brings us sexy suicide girls Judas (as Monday Addams) and Necro Nicki (as Tuesday Addams) who meet the palindrome-tastic Ramon Nomar on the street as he's handing out leaflets and perhaps naively asks them whether they'd like to party.  These girls are up for semen.

"Fuck our brains out - the Abyss is waiting!"

Nice girls being nice, getting nasty.  To be honest, I'd all but checked out by this point despite both ladies' enthusiasm during a lovely sloppy double blowjob with ball sucking and some of the best ATM action seen on screen since the late Chandler Bing got stuck in a vestibule with Jill Goodacre.

I really should give this segment another go after a little lie down when I can give it the attention it deserves.

So there we have it.  Incidentally, I watched this film in order to write this here review or whatever this is on a Saturday morning.  I have no idea how traditional (I almost said 'hardcore', but that would have been absurd wouldn't it?) Ms Angel is in her beliefs and whether or not I'd be castigated by her for wanking on the Sabbath - after all, it could certainly fall under the classification of manual work, and I certainly worked up a sweat - but maybe I want to be castigated by her.  Really, really hard.

Right.  That's it - you can fuck off now while I wait for my balls to regenerate.  There I scene I need to get my breath back and rewatch...