Filmmaker Jack Conrad has one of the most ruthlessly efficient filmographies one will see on IMDb. He has some unremarkable work editing and assisting a director, and then BAM! All of a sudden, in 1973, he’s writing, producing, directing, editing, and starring in Country Blue. Then it’s back into anonymity until he produced The Howling in 1980. Fin! He hasn’t been heard from since. Conrad went from being an auteur, to producing one of the most iconic horror flicks of the 1980s, and that’s it. There have been shorter film careers featured in Shitty Movie Sundays, but Conrad got a lot out of his cup of coffee. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Country Blue, aka On the Run”
Tag: 1973 in Film
October Horrorshow: The Creeping Flesh
When is a Hammer flick not a Hammer flick? Well, when it wasn’t made by Hammer. It’s not a trick question. But, the filmmakers behind The Creeping Flesh, from 1973, made every effort to craft a movie indistinguishable from a Hammer flick, going so far as to cast Hammer Film Productions’ two biggest icons in Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
Taking place in Victorian England, Cushing plays Emmanuel Hildern, a scientist recently returned from an expedition abroad. He has returned with a monstrous skeleton he excavated, which he hopes proves his theories about the origin of man. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Creeping Flesh”
Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Lisa and the Devil
Lisa and the Devil, the 1973 film from Italian auteur Mario Bava, has become one of his more renowned films in the last couple of decades. I first saw it around twenty years ago with a roommate who was watching it for her film class at NYU. Upon release, though, it was a butchered product, with a framing story shot and added after Bava delivered his cut. Of this film, which had been released under the title of La Casa dell’esorcismo (House of Exorcism), Bava said, “La casa dell’esorcismo is not my film, even though it bears my signature. It is the same situation, too long to explain, of a cuckolded father who finds himself with a child that is not his own, and with his name, and cannot do anything about it.”
That’s some pretty strong language. But, he wasn’t referring to the film that was eventually released as Lisa and the Devil. He was referring to a cobbled-together mess insisted upon by the film’s producer, Alfredo Leone, who wanted a whole bunch of exorcism-related material added to an already completed film in order to cash in on William Friedkin’s Exorcist. This year’s Horrorshow is not concerned with that movie.
Lisa and the Devil follows Elke Sommer as Lisa, a tourist who gets lost in the wandering, narrow streets of old Toledo, Spain. She hitches a ride from a rich, married couple, Francis and Sohpia Lehar (Eduardo Fajardo and Sylva Koscina), and their chauffeur, George (Gabriele Tinti). The Lehar’s old limo breaks down in front of a villa, and they are invited in by the Countess (Alida Valli) and her son, Max (Alessio Orano). In a bit of stunt casting, the Countess’s butler, Leandro, is played by Telly Savalas. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Lisa and the Devil”
Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Torso, aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
Viewers of gialli would be hard-pressed to find a film that ticks more of the genre’s boxes than 1973’s Torso, from writers Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino, with direction by Martino. It has copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, a killer who stalks women, a final reveal of the killer’s motivations that makes little sense, and enough blood and guts that the film bleeds over into the slasher horror genre.
In Perugia, Italy, a killer sets his sights on lovely female students of a local university. The women are stereotypical free spirits of the age; into drugs, sex, and nude sunbathing. They stand out amongst the stodgier parts of contemporary Italian society, not least because their miniskirts reach nowhere close to the knees. Martino seems to take glee in showing the clash between the prudes and the debauched. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Torso, aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale”
October Horrorshow: Horror High
Poor Vernon Potts. He’s the meekest kid in high school. He’s so skinny a stiff breeze would blow him over, he wears glasses (gasp!), wears his hair to hide his face, and carries himself as if he’s cowering from the world. It doesn’t help matters that, besides being bullied by his fellow students, his teachers and staff at his school treat him so unfairly that it could be considered abuse. Finally, the only girl in school who knows Vernon exists (Rosie Holotik) is also dating the star football player (Mike McHenry) who likes to beat him up. Writer J.D. Feigelson and director Larry N. Stouffer lay it on thick for Vernon in their 1973 drive-in horror flick, Horror High. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Horror High”
October Horrorshow: It Happened at Nightmare Inn, aka A Candle for the Devil
It Happened at Nightmare Inn is something of a travesty. It’s a victimization of what looked to be a fairly decent Spanish horror flick from 1973 called A Candle for the Devil. That film is an 83-minute-long flick about a pair of murderous sisters who run a B&B in a rural village in Spain. It Happened One Night is a 67-minute-long cut of that film with all the juicy bits removed for American television. The cuts are so ruthless that it’s obvious to the viewer that key scenes are missing. So much has been excised that it ruins much of the storytelling, as important plot points are passed over. If at all possible, I recommend potential viewers stay away from the TV cut, unless they are curious to see what happens when a toddler with a pair of scissors is allowed to edit an already finished film.
From screenwriters Antonio Fos and Eugenio Martin, and directed by Martin, Nightmare Inn follows Marta and Veronica (Aurora Bautista and Esperanza Roy), two very Catholic sisters who spend their time judging the lifestyles of their guests. Should a female guest dress scandalously, or stay out late into the evening, there follows a severe scolding and a murder. The two are so holier-than-thou it’s infuriating, and also makes for a compelling premise. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: It Happened at Nightmare Inn, aka A Candle for the Devil”
Shitty Movie Sundays: The Amusement Park
This is the strangest film from George A. Romero that I’ve seen. Perhaps O.J. Simpson: Juice on the Loose has more absurdist kitsch, but I’ll never know.
Originally from 1973, thought lost, then rediscovered in 2017, The Amusement Park was some work for hire from Romero in between making Season of the Witch and The Crazies. Commissioned by the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania, the aim of the film was to show the struggles of the aged, and society’s disregard for their plight, through the allegory of the world’s worst amusement park. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: The Amusement Park”
October Horrorshow: The Werewolf of Washington
Writer/director Milton Moses Ginsberg had something to say about the rot infecting Washington D.C. in the early 1970s. It was the time of Watergate, when the president, the attorney general, and all the rest of the president’s men were a pack of felons working to undermine the rule of law. How times have changed. Ginsberg’s response to the constitutional crisis posed by the ongoing criminal conspiracy that was the Nixon administration, was to make a movie satirizing the president. And he chose to make it a werewolf flick. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Werewolf of Washington”
Empty Balcony: Walking Tall (1973)
Joe Don Baker is Buford Pusser, real-life Sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, in this violent drive-in classic from 1973. Directed by Phil Karlson, Walking Tall is the fictionalized account of one man’s war on crime in rural America.
After giving up his career as a wrestler and returning home with his wife, Pauline (Elizabeth Hartman), and kids to McNairy, Pusser finds that his home county has been invaded by organized crime. Gambling dens and houses of ill-repute have opened in the once-lazy locale, and Pusser doesn’t hold with any of that. After getting angry and trying to beat up an entire casino, Pusser is cut to ribbons and left for dead on the side of the road. But, the bad folks of McNairy underestimated Pusser’s resolve. Being almost murdered just made Pusser angrier, and he continues going after the criminal element. Continue reading “Empty Balcony: Walking Tall (1973)”
October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula
Here we are. October 31st. Halloween. The end of the October Horrorshow. The final film in this look back at Hammer Film Productions is a departure from type. If there’s one thing I’ve picked up on from watching 31 Hammer films in a row, it’s that Hammer basically made the same film over and over and over again. That’s not negative criticism on my part. Hammer had a style, in the same way that a musician like John Lee Hooker had a style or an artist like Willem de Kooning had a style. Listen to an album or see a painting hanging on a wall and it becomes immediately clear who is responsible. Hammer films followed a theme. They developed over time into something that was very much their own. Towards the end, though, they began to switch things up in search of a new formula. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula”