The Case
October is such a busy month, what with the transitioning to fall, the
pre-prep for the holidays, and for the geeks among us, the 31 Days of Halloween,
the shamefaced but essential ritual in which one watches a different horror
movie every October night until the 31st.
When I received Cult Terror Cinema in the mail for review, I thought,
"Great! It's a 12-movie set! I can use this collection of shock, schlock,
chills, and thrills (featuring Pleasance, Cushing, and Reed!) to offset my 31
Days in October." Unfortunately, I was faced with reality, cruel reality in
the form of deadlines (if you've seen The
Front Page or All the President's
Men, you know what I'm talking about). Bruised but not broken, I decided to
rejigger my viewing schedule a bit, so this year, in addition to the 31 Days of
Halloween, I'm adding the 12 Days of Autumnal Equinox. If the film Equinox had been included on this set, my plan
would have approached genius.
In any event, I'm watching one of these a day 'til the Equinox and reporting
my findings.
The first thing I'd like to report is that while the set comes in a big,
giant box, inside the box are three measly discs in paper sleeves. They didn't
need a big, giant box, they could have packaged this in a small, Manila
envelope. There are four films on each disc—flippers, with two films per
side. Since there's no room to write anything on the small paper slipcovers, the
film's titles are listed in tiny print on the disc's band. There are
descriptions on the back of the case, but they're listed alphabetically, unlike
the discs, where they just seem to be randomly thrown together. Everything's
full frame with mono audio, and there are no extras.
With that out of the way, let's wade into some Cult Terror Cinema.
You're reading this…in the order I watched it—which will help
explain the sense of fatigue you might experience as the review goes on.
Fleshburn
A New Kind of Revenge!
An escaped lunatic
(one-time porn actor Sonny Landham) kidnaps four shrinks who were responsible
for having him locked up in an asylum. Rather than simply slaughter
them—as he did the poor soul who picked him up hitchhiking—he
deposits them in the middle of the desert to fend for themselves against the
elements. For good measure, he breaks the leg of one of them (a gay guy, at
that). The intellectuals squabble, eat rabbits and cactus, and generally have a
miserable time, though nowhere near as miserable a time as I had trying to stay
awake through this snooze fest. Also, it seems there was some bleeping of
profanity, meaning this is probably the TV version.
The Hearse (1980)
There is a door between life and death,
and now…that door is open!
I thought this might be a sequel to
The Van, only with dead people
instead of naked people. It's not. Rather, it's the story of a slightly bonkers
woman named Jane (Trish van Devere, widow of George C. Scott and his co-star in
his salute-to-incest vanity project, The Savage Is Loose). To escape some
vague bad experience, she moves into a creepy old house she's inherited from her
creepy old deceased aunt, in a creepy old small town. It soon becomes apparent
that the house has been the scene of some sort of vague horror, since every time
she mentions it—"I live in the old Harper house!"—people
react with undisguised disgust, two-note piano cues flare up, dogs bark, horses
whinny, and thunder claps. She might as well be announcing that she's living in
the old Frau Blücher place.
It soon becomes apparent that there are ghostly goings on at the Harper
place—the dead aunt pops up from time to time, lights go on and off at
will, and there's this pesky hearse that seems to follow Jane everywhere she
goes. Plus, she's taken up with an odd skull-faced guy whom she finds
inexplicably appealing.
Horror High (1974)
The Man Who Survived "Precinct
13" Is Back!
OK, it's George Bailey time: What would the world
have been like if Code Red special editions had never been born? Well, if
nothing else, the world would have been lacking the outrageously good Horror
High: 35th Anniversary Edition, and we'd be stuck viewing this trash classic
on cheap-o sets like this. This one's full frame and looks cruddy, as you'd
expect, and it doesn't include the extraneous shot-for-TV footage. My review for
the 35th Anniversary Edition is in the sidebar.
Lurkers (1988)
Cathy's Not Scared. She Should
Be…She's One of Them!
Finally, a sleazy, incomprehensible piece
of trash I can get behind! This one's got child abuse, topless women, malevolent
youngsters, cheesy score, reasonably graphic violence, terrifying '80's hair and
fashion, and random shots of people in S & M get-ups. It was directed by
exploitationaire Roberta Findlay who, with husband Michael, gave us such exotic
treats as The Touch of Her Flesh and The Curse of Her Flesh. This
one's neither touchy nor cursed enough, and it's fairly incomprehensible until
the lonnnnng explanation at the end, but it's a sufficiently grubby, slightly
disturbing, and not terribly frightening good time.
The Babysitter (1969)
She Came to Sit with Baby…and
Ended Up with Daddy!
Wow, forget the popcorn, this one ought to come
with a shot of penicillin. A middle-aged prosecutor whose cranky wife just had a
change-of-life baby gets involved with a nubile, free-spirited babysitter, who'd
earlier thrown a rock band and naked girls and pot party while ostensibly
watching the infant. In the meantime, his grown, lesbian daughter comes for a
visit and fiddle-faddles with another young lovely in the family's sauna while a
duplicitous miss with a bone to pick with the lawman snaps photos. These prove
unusable because the nymphets are going at it behind beveled glass, but evil
chick soon discovers the other secrets behind the manicured lawn and
Olympic-size pool, and Mr. Prosecutor finds himself in hot soup—morally,
professionally, and personally.
Tawdry and hilarious, this has no business being on a set called Cult
Terror Cinema—most of the terror is accomplished by having the
long-in-the-tooth prosecutor romp au naturale with the frisky hippie
nanny. But this is the kind of high-minded exploitation sleaze that just doesn't
come along every day. Perhaps it did at one time, but those days are long past,
unfortunately. With its overripe, "timely" dialogue, gratuitous
nudity, and faux-suspenseful subplot, The Babysitter is a pungent slice
of exploitation purgatory.
The Teacher (1974)
She Corrupted the Youthful Morality of
an Entire School!
Nah, she only corrupted Jay North, but since he'd
been TV's Dennis the Menace, she gets a few extra points. She also tried
to corrupt my own youthful morality when I reviewed this film a couple of
summers ago, and since this release doesn't bring anything new to the table,
I'll leave it to you to seek out the original write-up in the sidebar.
Escape From Hell Island (1963)
A Movie So Obscure and Bad,
It Doesn't Even Have a Tag Line!
If you like your terror with a large
helping of tedium, then this pointless, non-action, non-horror, non-anything
flick might be the way to go. A modestly grizzled charter boat captain in
Florida is hired to sneak into Cuban waters and ferry a few refugees back to the
'States. He does so in about 10 minutes, thus using up all the potential of the
title. The remainder of the run time is filled with a dull romantic triangle and
an even duller showdown between two-thirds of said triangle. For insomniacs
only…
The Crater Lake Monster (1977)
A Beast More Frightening
Than Your Most Terrifying Nightmare!
Horrible hillbilly high jinks
about a dinosaur-baring meteor that crash lands in the titular body of water. I
guess back in the '70s, these good ol' boy epics were all the rage (thanks, Max
Baer Jr. and Macon County Line), but
they tend not to hold up all that well, and this one is no exception. Cheap-o
production, ludicrous monster, and far too much time spent on backwoods antics.
As a stand-alone, I might have thought more kindly toward this one, but as part
of this set of a dozen, it's just irritating. Pass.
Land of the Minotaur (1976)
Half Man…Half
Beat…Trapped in a World Forgotten by Time!
OK, here's some
quasi-entertainingly ludicrous fare—normally not the sort of thing you'd
take as a recommendation, but for this set, close to a rave. The good: Donald
Pleasance (Halloween) vs. Peter Cushing
(Scream and Scream Again); an outstanding score by Brian Eno;
grin-and-grimace worthy '70's hair and clothing; and some occasionally
atmospheric direction. The bad: everything else. The story of a cult offering
human sacrifices to the titular mythic beast—which here looks like
something Sid and Marty Kroft might have dreamed up after overindulging in some
ouzo—is pretty slow moving and ridiculous. Apparently, the original
release in the UK contained quite a bit more gore and nudity than what's on
display here, with potentially gruesome scenes oddly and obviously truncated for
a U.S. PG rating. A little T & A and gore would have improved this
considerably; instead, we're left with some bloodless kills, and some berobed
villagers menacing people—mainly women—who look like they could take
them in a fair fight.
Carnival of Crime (1962)
At the Height of Wild, Frenzied
Sensual Pleasures…a Murderer Strikes and Terror Grips the City!
I don't know what movie that tag line was written for, but I wish I'd watched it
rather than Carnival of Crime. This paint-drying mess of tedium is a
badly dubbed potboiler about an architect on the run after he's suspected of
murdering his death-is-too-good-for-her spoiled, unfaithful wife. The usually
great Jean-Pierre Aumont (Day for Night)
has nothing much to do here, and if you're looking for thrills or horror, this
ain't the tree up which to bark. A weird scene near the beginning has two chatty
assassins stalking their prey in the jungle (this all takes place in Brazil). It
has nothing to do with the rest of the film, and it looks like it was shot for
an entirely different movie altogether and just plopped in here by accident. No
thrills, no terror, and no cult here.
Bloodlust! (1961)
Maniac Hunts Humans in a Jungle
Hell!
The old "Most Dangerous Game" gambit with a youthful
Robert Reed and some friends as prey. The spare, 68-minute runtime belies the
fact that this is a dreadfully slow-moving talk and blooper fest. It's also been
celebrated on MST3k; that review is in the sidebar.
The Creeping Terror (1964)
Nope, No Tagline for This One,
Either
The mother lode of bad sci-fi. MST3K will certainly
recognize this tale of a carnivorous carpet from outer space. Justifiably hailed
as one of the worst movies of all time—a substandard that was harder won
in the pre-digital video age—I've always believed that films like this
should get "special" releases and more attention, the way Plan 9 From Outer Space did after the Medved
brothers declared it the absolute worst of all time.
In the case of The Creeping Terror, this wish might actually be
fulfilled. Creep!, a documentary about the film and its "con
man" director, Art Nelson (a.k.a. Vic Savage), is about to go into release
as of this writing. Hopefully, the story behind the film is more interesting
than the film itself, which is so horrible on every level that even its camp
value wears thin before the halfway point.
The prints range from barely acceptable to flat-out atrocious, and the audio
follows suit. Things like subtitles and supplements are nonexistent. The only
unifying element is that all these films were released in the U.S. by Crown
International. They've all apparently been released before, and are currently
floating around on a number of other multi-film sets, including the
masochisticly massive Drive-In Cult
Classics: 32-Movie Set.
By the way, there's little here that's remotely worthy of the term
terror; four of these aren't scary movies by any plausible
definition. So, if you're looking at this to up the ante of your Halloween
viewing, don't block out more than a week for it.
