Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

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I have seen Inferno a number of times over the years, and wasn't down with it the first time, but then grew to love its nonsense more with each successive viewing.


The shifting of the protagonists is a narrative problem in terms of wanting to get the viewer to care about who we're sticking with, but on the flip side, the doofus answer to, "surely by now you must know who I am," goes down more smoothly (excuse me? You think I know who you are? Who do you think I am? The protagonist of this movie? I just solved the dumbest, context-free riddle to find you. By the way, have you seen my sister?).


That dialogue might not have actually happened in this movie.

Looking ahead, did you know Robbe-Grillet did a movie with Sylvia Kristal?


Playing with Fire


There's a Blu-ray of it coming out in January.

I guess I have to buy this.

As far as sexy vampire movies go, The Velvet Vampire has at least one claim to greatness in that it features in incredibly sexy vampire. The vampire here is played by Celeste Yarnall, who navigates through the movie entirely slinky and elegant, as all sexy vampires should be. She also finds herself in all sorts of great outfits, often in bold colours and with hats and gloves to accessorize, but sometimes hatless and gloveless, as the situation demands. Indeed, the surest sign of narrative progression in this movie, where not a whole lot happens in terms of the plot, is the changing of her outfits. And she has a way of communicating that’s entirely befitting a sexy vampire, all suggestion and innuendo, like when she hints that death can be sexy depending on one’s point of view, which is exactly the kind of thing a sexy vampire would say, or at the very least a sexy weirdo. And unlike many sexy vampires, she’s quite practical, traveling around her desert estate in a bright yellow dune buggy. If this strikes you as unusual, I should note that a few years prior, all the way over in Pakistan, Dracula frantically drove a car during the climax of The Living Corpse. Vampires, sexy and otherwise, were getting with the times.

So Yarnall is great, and as far as the element of seduction inherent in the genre goes, she holds up her end of the bargain. As I alluded to above, one could find themselves easily seduced by her. And she certainly plays her seduction with a good amount of conviction. The problem is the people she’s seducing. They suck. Her targets in this movie are a husband and wife played by Michael Blodgett and Sherry Miles. They can’t act. Blodgett, who most will recognize from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, is probably the better of the two, but...I’m gonna be mean here, please forgive me. But I found his face unpleasant to look at. Like, from a distance, he looks like he could be handsome. But you move the camera in closer and the proportions are all wrong, like a hunky cave troll. And Miles, well, the nicest thing I can say about her is that she has a Sally Struthers vibe, meaning that during this movie’s lulls, I imagined that Yarnall was instead seducing Archie Bunker in a very special episode of All in the Family.

If you can get past the fact that two out three of the main cast are complete voids of charisma, there are things to enjoy here. This is not a terribly eventful movie, but does have a low key psychedelic ambience that distinguishes it from the elegance of Jean Rollin’s sexy vampire movies and the fluidity of Jess Franco’s sexy vampire movies. The desert setting, likely chosen for budgetary reasons, does add to the stripped down, trancelike nature of the film, nicely accentuating the dream sequences in which Yarnall goes to bed with either Blodgett or Miles, depending on who’s doing the dreaming. The decor and the costumes are certainly striking, and if you squint just a little, you can see there’s some gender commentary here, although I think it’s a bit undermined by Blodgett’s and Miles’ thespian shortcomings. Based on those last few elements, it’s obvious this was an inspiration for The Love Witch, and proves that these movies are a lot more enjoyable when they let their points unfold incidentally from the proceedings, instead of underlining every potentially subtextual point and adding a citation to whatever gender studies textbook the author happened to have read. Movies like this should float along, not land with a belabored thud.

If Boris Karloff is in a movie, there's a good chance I'll enjoy it, and I think his performance here goes a long way in warming me up to this movie. He plays a Greek general during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and when we first meet him, we see him order an officer shot for abandoning his unit and forcing his troops to carry supplies instead of putting them on horses. I think in another movie, or with another actor, this character could have easily come across as a cruel authoritarian, and indeed, that's how the other characters see him. But here, you get the sense that this is not a cruel man deep down, but one who has been forced into cruelty by a cruel situation. I recently watched Barbarian, which I highly recommend going into as blind as possible, but there's a bit there about a character chewing over whether they're a bad person or a good person who did a bad thing, and I think that thought very much applies to Karloff's character here. Of course it helps that Karloff has spent his career imbuing monsters with a certain humanity, so that we understand why he's doing what he's doing even if we might not be inclined to agree with his actions.

Of course, his actions are probably easier to sympathize with if you're watching this movie now. His character finds himself stuck on a secluded island during a deadly plague, and the last thing he wants to do is to have the inhabitants or his soldiers get infected. So naturally he defers to the doctor and enforces a strict quarantine protocol. Nobody gets in or out. Of course the other characters plead with him about he inhumane he's being, but I dunno, most of what he says seems pretty reasonable to me. Of course, as this is a horror movie, it's possible that what's killing the inhabitants might not be a plague after all, and after their efforts prove futile, Karloff's mental state deteriorates, and he becomes convinced that the unexpectedly youthful and healthy Ellen Drew is a vorvolaka (or vampire, essentially) and reorients his efforts to protect the others from her. Again, the characters (this time more rightfully) plead with him to change his mind, but one, he probably goes easier on her than someone else might, and Karloff plays his character with enough sympathy that we do feel for him, even as he's going off the deep end.

So Karloff is great, and Drew is good, as is Helene Thimig as the old crone who keeps putting bad ideas and superstitions in Karloff's ear. The problem is that the bulk of this is a chamber piece, where Karloff goes room to room discussing the proceedings with a bunch of significantly less charismatic actors. Meaning that I was leaning very heavily on my affinity for Karloff to enjoy a good chunk of this, although I should disclose that this ploy succeeded. As this is a Val Lewton production, there is some nice shadowy, windy atmosphere at the bookends, particularly in the almost abstract depiction of the battlegrounds in which the opening is set.

Damn, two movies I've actually seen. And one I saw this October. I'll have to read those reviews later tonight.

Movies people have seen? Hmmm, better switch back to porn.

(Not just yet though.)

Like Inferno, this is a movie I’d first watched around eight years ago, back when I was first really getting into splatter movies, having given myself a project to work my way through the Video Nasties. And like with Inferno, I’d gone into this movie only a few movies deep into the director’s body of work and walked away thinking it was not too great. I did manage to give this one another shot a few years ago and enjoyed it a bit more, but still held it at arm’s length. I think that’s a perfectly reasonable opinion, provided one still possessed any critical perspective. This has Lucio Fulci’s greatest strengths on full display, but also his biggest weaknesses, and doesn’t find a way to alleviate them like some of his outright classics do. But of course, you spend enough time with a movie, you’ll find yourself warming up to it, and this time I had a blast with it.

Like with my review of Inferno, this will be an exercise in me looking over my old review and seeing which of my criticisms held up. I’m gonna say it right now: everything I said previously was technically correct. (Okay, maybe not everything. I had a weird joke about Gilbert Gottfried that seemed funny at the time but doesn’t hold up so well now. R.I.P.) But the difference now is that I don’t care. Yes, this movie is monstrously stupid. Yes, it contrives its gore scenes and has characters stand around and gawk as they’re about to get offed. Yes, the kid is terrible. But all these things make the movie so funny. I was laughing all the way through. Was it with the movie or at it? Who cares?

I will say that this time around I didn’t hate Bob as much as I did the first time. No, the kid isn’t a good actor, but I think a few factors make Giovanni Frezza’s performance seem worse than it is. First, the dub is terrible. The person doing the voice is very obviously not a little boy, and their voice sounds like the human equivalent of that weird tone you get with PA systems that makes you want to plug your ears. Second, the kid is so dumb. I realize that picking on a child is not a good look, but ****, this kid is a total dumbass. Exhibit A: He clearly sees his babysitter get her head hacked off, and then a scene or two later loudly calls out to her to ask if she’s still alive. (The babysitter is played by Ania Pieroni, who looks nothing like she did in Inferno.) And hey, it’s not just the people watching this movie who find him annoying. The ill feeling extends to his parents. It’s the only explanation for the scene where the father takes an axe to the door that he knows his son is on the other side of, and when he sees blood, starts hacking away even more aggressively. Now, I just said I didn’t mind Bob as much, and I’m going to stand by that statement. Sure, the scenes where he’s onscreen can be a challenge. But all the scenes where he’s not onscreen are a breeze. If familiarity (with Bob being onscreen) breeds contempt, then absence (of Bob as he’s not onscreen) makes the heart grow fonder.

I do think that while this is illogical like The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, it’s a detriment here unlike in those films. One, the horror here is, well, not exactly mundane, but a lot more limited in scope than in the other films, so the illogic remains simply that, instead of adding to the almost atmospheric sense of threat in those other movies. It also doesn’t consistently work in one direction like in those other movies, most notably with a scene where a character we thought was working with the evil forces inside the house ends up facing their wrath. So the proceedings remain at the level of goofy shit and doesn’t really build to anything sinister. But at the same time, I suppose there’s something to the way the characters, even the supposedly evil ones, are totally helpless against forces that are beyond their control or even understanding. (With this in mind, the characters freezing up as they’re about to be killed goes down a bit smoother.) I do not think this movie provides the best articulation of that idea (you’ll have to turn to those other two), but it did manage to get a little under my skin this time around. With that in mind, I did find myself a little more unnerved by the violence, and the absolute glee Fulci takes in destroying the characters’ corporeal forms. Every blood spurt, every bone crunch has an impact. Like I noted in my review of Inferno, there’s an almost existential bleakness to the violence, even when it’s depicted so stylishly.

And the movie is extremely stylish, bringing some of that Italian horror decadence to the cozy textures of its New England environment, deploying frame after gorgeous, shadowy widescreen frame for our eyes to feast on. And we get to hang out with a few Italian horror regulars, who greet us like old friends: Paolo Malco, Catriona MacColl, Ania Pieroni, Dagmar Lassander, Carlo De Mejo, and yes, even Giovanni Frezza. And we get lots of great gore scenes, a great looking monster, and plenty of goofy shit, like bat attacks, maggoty sludge and characters turning keys with knives. What’s not to like?

House by the Cemetery was somehow my first Fulci. And I missed a bit because I had to go to the bathroom.
I rewatched it a year or two later to see what I missed (and if things made sense with that missing gap filled in).
It did not.


I probably owe it another rewatch after finally finding my Fulci groove with Gates of Hell, but I suspect my experience will be similar to yours here, it's definitely the lesser of the films in that group, but it does have its merits amongst its flaws.

The Bob appreciation pleases me.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Also, I will never not laugh whenever somebody says "Freudstein".

Have you ever seen the Svankmajer short of the little girl who goes to the basement (or something) to get... something (it's been probably at least a decade)?
I think that's the best explanation for why we should get dream logic in this movie, though it doesn't really hold, because it's not like we stay with the perspective of Bob.

The Criterion Channel was nice enough to put up a bunch of ‘80s horror movies this October, so I’ve been spending the last few days working my way through the collection. Rather than prioritizing the closing of blind spots as I normally do early in the month (although I did finally get around to The Keep, and...eh, it was fine), I’ve tackled a few movies I’ve been meaning to rewatch. Inferno went up significantly in my esteem, the wisdom I’ve accumulated in the years since my initial viewing having primed me for greater appreciation of its merits. The House by the Cemetery also went up quite a bit, although this was more of a Stockholm Syndrome situation where I’ve just spent enough time with the movie to embrace what it does well and ignore its shortcomings (in the case of Stockholm Syndrome, that you’re being held hostage; in this case, that it’s dumb as hell and makes no sense). I will say that in those cases, I could at least recognize some of the films’ merits even on my first viewing, even if I didn’t gel to them entirely.

The Funhouse is one that I also saw back in the day and didn’t gel to at all. I don’t have an old review to look back on and figure out what my criticisms were, but my vague memory is that I thought it was boring and nothing happened. This was before I pushed myself to write about what I saw and as such hadn’t developed much of a vocabulary to articulate my feelings. I will say that I did have some fond associations with the movie, as I’d watched it back then on Scream, the now defunct horror-themed cable channel that used to give free previews every October during my high school years until they closed up shop. That channel was a pretty big influence on my horror movie fandom and cinephilia in general, so revisiting this movie did provide some nostalgia for that reason. I also vaguely remember discussing this on the now defunct Rotten Tomatoes forums. I’m pretty sure I said something to the effect of “this is boring and nothing happens”, which may or may not have exasperated some of the horror fans on there. But those horror fans were and still are good people and I consider them some of my oldest internet friends. For those of them reading this, let me reach out and offer a warm hug, preferably in a darkly lit environment with lots of fog while tense music plays in the background.

But yeah, on a rewatch I can confirm that this is boring and nothing happens. Okay, that was a little harsh, but this is not at all heavy on incident. The movie opens with a Psycho fake-out, not unlike the one in Neon Nights the same year, although it makes more sense here as this is a horror movie and that one’s a weirdly dreamlike porno. I vaguely remember being really put off by the nudity in this scene when I first watched this, but the reason behind my reaction has been lost to time. Then the characters go to the carnival, and basically walk around for over half the movie. There is some nice, gaudy carnival atmosphere, and at least one good gag (involving a magic trick conducted by William Finley), and a pretty weird one (one of the carnival barkers promotes a striptease act by telling people to check out his hot sister), but none of this accumulates to actual dread. (Also, there’s a tent of deformed animals, with the centerpiece being a probably fake two-headed fetus, but the two-headed cow they have readily on display is way cooler, in my humble opinion.)

The supposed dread kicks in after the halfway point, when the protagonists spy one of the carnival freaks (in tights and a Frankenstein mask) getting a handy from the psychic, for which she charges him a hundred bucks in 1981 US Dollars. I don’t know what the going rate for a handjob is, but considering that the act lasts like barely a minute and taking inflation into account, a hundred bucks seems pretty steep. Anyway, the freak kills her and then along with his father (who is not a freak but still unsavoury), goes after the protagonists in classic slasher movie fashion. Some of this uses the darkened, depopulated carnival setting to good effect (although one kill blatantly borrows from Alien), but I dunno, I would have enjoyed this more if it had been spread out better across the movie instead of being saved for the end. I normally like when movies build to the good stuff, but this never actually does. I didn’t hate hanging out in this movie, I just wish it did more with what it had.

I do think this is interesting to consider in the context of Tobe Hooper’s career. There are similarities with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, in their similar level of cacophony and the family dynamics of the killers, but the comparisons do not work in this one’s favour. In the earlier movie, the assaultive approach and sheer level of noise really puts you through the ringer, where in this one, it does not. In the other movie, Leatherface, thanks to Gunnar Hansen’s unsettling physical performance, has pretty distinct body language, one which the movie mines for horror and pitch black humour. Here, when the freak is startled or wounded, he flails around, but I don’t sense the same intelligence in how he’s portrayed. (Also, I’m definitely in the minority here, but I think the freak’s appearance is pretty lame, like a kid who dressed up for Halloween in black tights and threw on an ugly mask at the last minute.) This is also closer to the more concretely defined slasher dynamics of the early ‘80s than the prototypical form of Massacre, in that it explicitly defines the heroine as a virgin and frames that against the freak’s sexual troubles. I will also note that I was aware that Rob Zombie is a big fan of Hooper and you can readily see the influence of Massacre and Eaten Alive in his movies, but revisiting this, with its colourful carnival aesthetic, provided another piece of the puzzle.

House by the Cemetary is Fulci for the pros. I like it, but like most, know how riddled with issues it is. I definitely find some of the basement attacks by....freudstein....pretty unsettling though. Regardless of how dumb the movie is.


Funhouse is mostly a nostalgia piece for me. I've seen it a bunch and it still never leaves much of an impression. But it's inoffensive and I like movies at carnivals. Especially the Gary Busey kind

At the beginning of Strange Behavior, it seems that our hero might be Dan Shor, the bizarrely old looking high school student who wants to go to a local college instead of going out and exploring the world like his father insists. But as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that our hero is not Shor, but his father Michael Murphy, the decidedly square chief of police of the podunk town in which the movie is set. At first he seems almost pathologically ordinary, his greatest concern being that the minifridge in his office doesn’t make his beer sufficiently cold. But then we get hints of his past regrets, and that maybe the reason he’s pushing his son to go to one of those fancy eastern colleges is that he never followed through on it himself. And then we get this off the cuff scene of him buying flowers for his wife, who’s been dead for years and no matter how brave a face he’s put on, he’s never gotten over it. And when he finally figures out what the hell is going on in this podunk town, and he picks up a gun and puts on his old glasses and steps into the role of hero, well, I was a little moved.

Murphy is known mostly for playing stodgy authority figures, and that serves him well in disguising the depths of his character early on. But he’s also capable of a great deal of snark, and in the climax you get to savour him Murphing out, waving his gun around and barking out threats. And in between those poles, well, it turns out he’s capable of nuance and sympathy, and you can see those qualities in his performance over the course of the movie. I think you need to be partial to Murphy’s acting style going into the movie in order to enjoy his work here or at least pick up on what he’s doing, but it’s there if you look for it. So there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on with his character and his performance.

The problem is that it’s buried under the movie’s relentlessly deadpan style. This is either an homage to or a parody of ‘50s paranoid horror, but it plays its cards so close to its chest that it’s hard to tell which one. So I admit I struggled with this for the bulk of the runtime, and clung for dear life to Murphy’s performance because I could at least tell what he was going for. I will note that there are fun moments, like a song and dance number that goes on for much longer than you’d expect and a needle in the eye like the one in Dead and Buried the same year. And you have Fiona Lewis, who sounds too reasonable to be a mad scientist even if her crazy hairdo says otherwise. And you have the atmospheric widescreen compositions which do a lot of the legwork in imbuing tension into the proceedings when the movie’s tonal covertness leaves you hanging.

Oh yeah, those last few minutes go pretty hard. Fulci is ruthless.