George Kennedy gets possessed by some evil old Nazi sailor ghosts on a mysterious ship of death! This one starts out with a bang as a cruise ship gets totaled by our naughty titular boat but then settles in to what's basically a disaster film crossed with a ghost movie. Not sure that it works all that well but it's fun seeing Mr. Kennedy gradually become an unhinged psycho.
This is a real snoozefest! Shot on video in 2003, so you know it's probably going to suck, it feels more like you're watching some boring travelogue involving a newlywed couple than an exciting narrative. Certainly not much of note takes place for most of the runtime. Our main male character turns into a vampire because of some evil giant ball of dirt, bites a few people then a ghost-lady shows up and tells him about how she got murdered by her husband. From there it's vampire/ghost tag-team revenge time. Very minimal blood or enjoyment to be had. Works good as a sleeping aid. AKA VAMPIRE HONEYMOON
Director Ricardo Freda made a few of those old "ghosts in an old spooky haunted house" films back in the 60s including THE GHOST. This here is kind of an updated version of one of those except it takes a few strange twists from being completely predictable. Instead of Barbara Steele here you get Camille Keaton, who would go on to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE fame, as our main gal in peril. You get a Satanic ritual complete with decapitation and other gory head-bashing fun. The only downfall here might be that the big bloody spectacle takes place about halfway through the movie making the ghostly revenge climax seem a bit lackluster in comparison. I still dig it though for it's unorthodox trappings. AKA TRAGIC EXPERIENCE AT VILLA ALEXANDER
The original Italian title of EXTRACT FROM THE SECRET FILES OF THE POLICE OF A EUROPEAN CAPITAL is not quite as spooky:
The grandson of legendary Mexican horror film director Rene Cardona brings us this tale of a haunted vacation house that's inhabited by an evil doll that's possessed by the spirit of a witch burned at the stake a hundred years ago. Walls bleed, various creepy-crawly animals show up, knives get thrown about and things burst into flames. It's kind of like a crappy version of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR but it must have been popular enough in Mexico to warrant a sequel 2 years later.
I can see where this might have spooked out some British children back in the 90s if they saw it with no context, watching it for the first time over 20 years later though it's a pretty tough sit. Made to look like an ordinary TV programme of the day it's quite dull. I suppose it would also help if you had any belief in the supernatural or demons or whatever you're supposed to think is haunting the people on display. Might be good for a few chuckles but mostly just good to take a nap to. It's also probably a better choice to watch any of a number of documentaries that talk about the circumstances around the initial showing of this than the actual movie itself.
That dude from RED DWARF(Craig Charles) plays one of our intrepid reporters.
Slow-moving Italian gothic ghost(or is it?) story set mostly in an old dark house. The element of necrophilia practiced by our titular Dr.(Robert Flemyng) is pretty crazy to see in a film from this era. Doesn't contain any blood or gore but director Ricardo Freda is certainly a master of creating a certain dark atmosphere with his horror films. His next venture in this vein would be THE GHOST which is a similar lurid tale also featuring a Dr. Hichcock and Barbara Steele, though she is quite a bit more evil in that one. AKA RAPTUS: THE SECRET OF DR. HICHCOCK
I'm not the biggest fan of ghost movies, which this is. It's also kinda disappointing that director Armand Weston, whose filmography, besides this, consists almost entirely of roughie porn flicks, basically went the pedestrian route of a generic horror movie with not all that much sex or violence. There seems to be ample opportunity too with this film centered around a haunted whorehouse that is the scene of a massacre and all. There is some blood, including a sickle to the head, and a smattering of nudity here and there but nothing all that exciting to recommend about this one. AKA MASSACRE MANSION
Also in my head I always mix this up with the later 80s mutant cockroach flick THE NEST and get disappointed when no killer bugs show up!
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This is part 4 in the AMITYVILLE HORROR series and the only real connection to the other movies is that someone buys a haunted lamp from an ill-advised yard sale at the original house(after a gang of priests attempt to run the naughty spirits off) and sends it over to California to spook all-new folks including Patty Duke(best known to me as the star of her own TV show back in the 60s where she played identical cousins). This was made-for TV deal but there's one bloody scene, where a guy gets his hand chomped off by a garbage disposal, that I can't imagine was ever shown on TV anywhere. There's also a pretty gross death of a plumber due to some sewage overflow that seems questionably acceptable to the viewing masses as well. Besides these 2 standout gross-outs this is all really dumb. What else would you expect from a movie about an evil lamp? AKA AMITYVILL 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES
The series would not get any better from here and there are quite a few more as I pointed out when I watched part 5.
NBC world premiere!:
Glacially-paced story of a shipwreck that leaves a couple of survivors in a haunted castle run by an evil count. Took me a couple of attempts to actual get through this one without dozing off. The highlight was the giant very fake looking stuffed spider that shows up. The low-points were pretty much everything else. There is one lady in some crud-faced makeup that looked pretty good. Director, Pat Boyette went on to draw comic books(including HOWARD THE DUCK) which is probably a good thing for everyone. That also explains why the poster looks so good. AKA DUNGEONS OF HORROR
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.
This one of those 80s movies that doesn't really make any sense but is basically just an excuse to show off some makeup fx work. Horseshack(Ron Palillo) from WELCOME BACK KOTTER stars and if you ever wanted to see his naked ass here you go. The plot, from what I can decipher, concerns a magic crystal that can revive life or just make things mutate and explode depending on what the story needs to do. There's a cool mutant fish that doesn't last long enough and a ridiculous biker gang comprised of old people. A bunch of stupid crap happens and the characters are all pretty annoying too which doesn't help make this much of an enjoyable watch. One big plus is main zombie/ghost gal Abigail Wolcott spends a good portion of the film mostly naked showing off her fake boobs. Besides that and one cool decapitation scene it's pretty dire stuff.
Since the first SPIRITED KILLER movie was released in 1994 I'm gonna say this isn't actually any sort of a sequel to that film despite it being billed as SPIRITED KILLER 3 on my DVD. Whatever it is though, it is pretty terrible. The main problem is that the whole thing is a very monotonous series of fight scenes strung together with the most simplistic plot and only interrupted occasionally to inject some horribly unfunny slapstick bits. This unfortunately is also the case with SPIRITED KILLER 2, which I'm also not sure actually has any connection to this one. Towards the end we do get an ogress who rips out and chomps down on some intestines in a very zombie-like fashion so that's something. Also there's a character called The Ass Devil which might have been the only thing I chuckled at while watching this. Best to avoid this made-up series of martial-arts films.
