THE FIFTH CORD (1971)

  Franco Nero plays a drunk reporter trying to solve a string of murders because civilians doing police work is a weird staple of giallos. This is based on a novel and it's a bit slow and talky. There is a creepy scene towards the end when a little boy gets stalked by our mysterious killer which was the most memorable bit to me. Franco's excellent acting does make it more enjoyable than it otherwise would be though. This was also known in the U.S. as EVIL FINGERS which makes more sense since the killer cuts off one finger of a glove that he, or she, leaves at each murder scene. 

                                                 French video release as EVIL DAY!:

THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (1972)

  There's a killer dressed like Little Red Riding Hood offing folks in this giallo. The lovely Barbara Bouchet is our prime suspected killer, or is it her sister(Carla Mancini) who's supposed to be dead? Well I'm not gonna spoil that because one of the big draws of these types of flicks is the always the crazy explanations at the end. You get lots of stab-happy antics, a crazy lady spiked on the top of a fence, a rapey junkie dragged down the street to his demise, a couple of girl fights and a young Sybil Danning looking very different than she would in the 80s.  The film itself is pretty typical though the stylishness really added extra points for me. AKA THE CORPSE WHICH DIDN'T WANT TO DIE and BLOOD FEAST

Retitled as BLOOD FEAST and paired up with Joel M. Reed's horror anthology flick:

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)

 

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 Vincent Price hams it up as a Satanic prince in this AIP Edgar Allen Poe adaptation. Directed by Roger Corman, who is known for working as cheaply as possible, this one actually has some pretty good-looking production values since it was filmed on location in England. That "try the wine" guy from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, Patrick Magee, has a pretty big role as a jerk who ends up in a gorilla suit getting his just rewards and the personification of death makes a few appearances kind of like in that DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY/BILL & TED style. 

 The story itself is a blending of 2 Poe stories which is more than some of the AIP Poe-inspired films were and probably one of the best.  

            Released in Germany as SATANAS: THE CASTLE OF THE BLOODY BEAST:

QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958)

 I know Zsa Zsa Gabor as being on a million T.V. programs in the 70s and being the star of this. Now the acting level of this is pretty low so she fits right in. The plot of this, Venus is a planet ruled by women and some astronauts crash land there, seems to be borrowed from ABBOTT AND COSTELLO GO TO MARS so it's pretty dumb. Any sane person watching this today would assume this is supposed to be a parody but amazingly the director, Edward Bernds(who also made a bunch of comedies including Bowery Boys and Three Stooges features) claims it wasn't. So unless he was suffering from some kinda dementia at the time this movie misses the serious mark by a mile. Still a goofy good time for schlock-lovers and Zsa Zsa doesn't disappoint in the terribly cheesy acting department. Also a giant spider shows up briefly for added thrills!

                                                      Sci-fi punk!:

ENTER THE FAT DRAGON (1978)

  Sammo Hung does his impression of Bruce Lee in this comedy kung fu flick. I guess technically he does his impression of a guy obsessed with Bruce Lee who wishes he was the king of martial arts. The humour, as in most Hong Kong films, is pretty retarded. Probably the goofiest thing in this is that one of Sammo's big enemy showdowns at the end is with an Asian fellow in blackface and a big afro wig. The most offensive thing, to me anyway, was Sammo punching a bunch of pigs for training right at the start of the film. If you want a lot of goofiness with your fighting this might be to your liking.

 This is one of Sammo's first directorial jobs and he would go on to make 35 more features including that WHEELS ON MEALS with Jackie Chan that I recall being pretty good. 

 There is a 2020 ENTER THE FAT DRAGON with Donnie Yen in a fat suit and a bunch of CGI but it doesn't look like a remake or even very good at all. 

STOP ME BEFORE I KILL! (1960)

  So this newlywed couple get into a car crash before the title even pops up, from there our husband character(Ronald Lewis) develops an uncontrollable urge to kill his wife. In steps one weirdo psychiatrist(Claude Daphin, who you might recall as the president of Earth in BARBARELLA) and then there's a bunch of psychological mumbo-jumbo and maybe a love triangle developing? This one is pretty different from your usual Hammer studios horror film and plays out more like a thriller/drama. The main characters, besides Diane Cilento who is pretty easy to look at, come off as pretty unlikeable which makes for a long haul. The plot itself is interesting enough and does build suspense towards the end just try and disregard the ridiculous psychiatry on display. Also, at 109 minutes, this was Hammer's longest film up until this date and it sure feels it.

         AKA THE FULL TREATMENT, which was also the name of the book this was based on:

DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

 

 This Amicus anthology features Peter Cushing on a train with five other passengers including Christopher Lee and a young Donald Sutherland. He ends up telling them all their futures using a deck of tarot cards. Spoiler alert: none of them has a very bright future since this is a horror film with "horror" right there in the title. The 5 tales include a werewolf one, a vampire one, a killer plant one( which is sort-of a short version of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, which had come out 2 years prior), a voodoo curse one featuring a jazz band and lots of music and what's probably my fav, a killer disembodied hand(yes just like Thing from THE ADDAMS FAMILY) that stalks snobby art critic Christopher Lee. Pretty simple yarns but they're all effective enough and the acting is top-notch throughout. AKA THE BLOOD SEEKERS and THE HOUSE OF HORRORS

Played, for some reason, with a western in the U.K.!: 

This old 1940s spook show had a very influential name!:

MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED (1976)

 While this is ostensibly a comedy, since it was made back in the 70s, it features things like rape, people getting blown away with shotguns and other dramatic elements that you don't see in very many comedies of any other era. As a fan of movies that blend genres together this appeals to me greatly. Of course we have to put aside our modern-day perceptions of sexual harassment(Raquel Welch's nickname is Jugs after all) and especially of Bill Cosby as a rapey individual behind the scenes for maximum enjoyment of what I consider his greatest(and his most sleazy (especially the massage parlor scene)) role as a constantly drinking-while-driving, nun-molesting, goofball. Other folks in the all-star cast include Harvey Keitel, Larry Hagman, former football player Dick Butkus and a bunch more. 

                                        Played on an exciting double-feature bill in the U.K.!:

DEVIL KILLER (1981)

  

 After having viewed the other Taiwanese DEVIL KILLER from the previous year I figured I would give this one a watch. I thought it would be a similar kung fu epic but there's actually very minimal martial arts in this and it relies mostly on gun-fu and drama concerning a hitman's quest for redemption. Sadly the version I watched was severely cropped on the sides and subtitled so that anytime someone said more than a few words it was cut off on either end. I don't expect something this obscure will ever be cleaned up but if it was it would be a way less disappointing viewing experience. 

 Two things I didn't expect  from this Taiwanese gangster flick: 1. the classic arcade game Missile Command puts in an appearance 2. Music from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST showing up multiple times for dramatic effect. One other thing I really didn't expect is the one character that pretty much does a goofy Jackie Chan impersonation for much of the film(Hsaio-Fei Lee?) getting brutally gunned down by the bad guys so that's something.

Shitty cropped YouTube version!: 

TEENAGE TWINS (1976)

 So this one is an early porno directed by Carter Stevens. The hook here is that it features a couple of actual twins in the lead roles so if you're into incest this may be of special interest to you. It does feature some lesbian antics between sisters Brooke and Taylor Young who would go on to be in 2 more adult features before disappearing back into polite civilization. This one is super dull for the most part. They do throw the Necronomicon in and give the twins some super power where they can feel when the other one is having sex but it all is just an excuse to end in a big orgy scene on top of a pentagram. 

        This does have a pretty cool soundtrack which actually got a release!: 

JACK THE RIPPER (1976)

  So having Klaus Kinski play the title role here is a big plus, unfortunately director Jess Franco imbues the film with such a leisurely pace that it really drags things down. There are a few gory bits in the uncut version, including poor Lina Romay getting one of her tits cut off and multiple stabbings happen but it's hard to get over the dullness of it all. Also it plays like a mystery but we all already clearly know who the killer is. 

 My favorite-named actor Herbert Fux shows up and Franco reuses the Dr. Orloff name for ol' saucy Jack. 

Cool-sounding Italian title of EROTIC DEEP?:

Spinal Tap tribute!:

DEVIL KILLER (1980)

  Not to be confused with the other Taiwanese kung fu movie titled DEVIL FIGHTER from 1981. This one is a mix of a rape/revenge film and a kung fu movie but outside of some surprising nudity and forced humping(only in the uncut version) it sticks really close to the standard kung fu flick formula. They do make the bold choice of killing off half of the main characters midway through the movie which gives it a strange disjointed feeling like they stuck two movies together and there is a high percentage of scenes where people are viciously tortured but even this doesn't really manage to elevate this one too much out of the ordinary and expected.

 Released on VHS as NINJA EXTERMINATORS even though there are no ninjas to be seen anywhere in it. 

GOLDEN NEEDLES (1974)

 Bruce Lee died in 1973 but thanks to his popularizing the martial arts genre Hollywood kept on trying to capitalize on his success. This film is even directed by Robert Clouse who gave us ENTER THE DRAGON with Lee. Unfortunately, even with all the big star power this has going for it, it's a pretty disappointing overall effort. Joe Don Baker, while convincing as an ass-kicking redneck in WALKING TALL the previous year, is not much of a kung fu master. Jim Kelly totally is a legitimate martial artist but his role is sadly pretty small. Maybe if they had switched roles this would have been more exciting. The other 2 big names, Burgess Meredith and Ann Sothern, also aren't all that interesting here. Basically it's a chase movie concerning a golden statue containing the titular needles that give men magical sexual powers or something like that. If only they had viagra back then they vould have saved a bunch of time. AKA THE CHASE FOR THE GOLDEN NEEDLES

LOVE ME DEADLY (1972)

  Fifteen years before that vile German NEKROMANTIK film made necrophilia hip and cool there was this little slice of pervy 70s horror that mined the same vein of grossness. It's kinda bizarre to see Lyle Waggoner(best known to me as Wonder Woman's main squeeze in the 70s W.W. T.V. show) in a movie where a lady humps a corpse but this just gives me another reason to marvel at how mind-bogglingly amazing 70s cinema was. There's one pretty gruesome murder sequence where a gay hustler gets embalmed while still alive but the whole film creates a pretty ominous sense of dread where you know things are just not gonna work out. A must see for lovers of the bizarre. 

There really isn't anything supernatural in this movie. Just a cult full of pervs that get off fiddling with corpses. 

                                                     Great night down at the drive-in!:

A nice Italian appetizer before the necrophilic main course!: 

A boring 1970 crime/horror flick a.k.a THE LOVING TOUCH and A 1970 Danish sex flick support our main feature at this drive-in:

GHOSTRIDERS (1987)

  I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. I thought, judging from the poster, perhaps it was horror in the old west or maybe some zombie cowboys. You don't really get either one of those though. It's actually a tale of some western outlaws that are hanged and then come back 100 years later as spirits to stalk and kill the ancestors of the folks who had them snuffed. I guess you could sorta cram this into the slasher genre as people are offed one by one but there's a very small cast of potential victims and there's very little blood(everyone pretty much just gets shot and falls down) and no boobs at all so as a slasher it's pretty low-tier junk. The poster and VHS box is cool though with the skeleton cowboy gang. Nothing close to that exciting happens in the film though. 

THE LEGACY (1978)

  There's a movie called LEGACY OF BLOOD from 1971 where a bunch of people gather at a house to hear a reading of a will and are bumped off one by one. There's also Andy Milligan's LEGACY OF BLOOD from '78 with a similar plot. I'm not sure why all these movies use the word "LEGACY" in the title but I guess it's fitting. This one is a bit different because instead of reading a will the people are gathered before the guy dies and are bumped off by some weird occult/Satan magic crap. There's an exploding mirror, a naughty fireplace, a self-sealing swimming-pool and a mysterious chicken-bone that knocks off various members of an upper-crust British family. The family includes THE WHO's lead singer Roger Daltry and Sam Elliot with his magnificent moustache. Sam does the hero bit and I'll give this film extra credit for having Satan not be defeated by the end of the film. It is a bit of a stodgy British horror film but interesting enough for a snowy day watch. Oh and there's even a lady who can turn into a cat and somehow she's not the focal point of the movie though she is the star of the poster.