SPIDER BABY (1964)

 

(a.k.a. SPIDER BABY, OR THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD; ATTACK OF THE LIVER EATERS; THE LIVER EATERS; director/screenwriter/uncredited editor: Jack Hill)

 

Review

Bracketed by an introduction and outro by nice-guy Peter Howe (Quinn K. Redeker), “distant cousin” to the Merrye clan, this black-and-white, G-rated (more PG-13) film tells—via an extended ten-years-prior flashback—the story of the last generation of the Merrye family, who suffer from a rare mentally and physically degenerative disease (the Merrye Syndrome), an inherited madness that progressively reduces them to savages as they age. These thrilled-to-kill siblings (Ralph, Elizabeth, and Virginia), in their early twenties to early thirties, are watched by over by their tired old chauffeur, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) who promised their dead father (Titus) he’d look after them. Exacerbating Bruno’s efforts to shield them from the world, despite an impending highway near their house, are the siblings’ increasing curious about the outside world.

Bruno’s situation is made more difficult when distant “cousins” (ruthless, money-hungry Emily Howe and nice-guy brother Peter) come to the rundown Merrye residence to become legal guardians of Virginia, Elizabeth, and Ralph, relatives they’ve never met. Accompanying them are their pushy, cigar-chomping lawyer, Schlocker (Karl Schanzer, DEMENTIA 13, 1963), and his kind, twenty-something secretary, Ann Morris (Mary Mitchel, DEMENTIA 13, 1963), later mother to Jessica Howe.

Shlocker and Emily insist on spending the night at Chez Merrye, over Bruno’s polite objections. From there on, it’s fast, onscreen-bloodless slide into disaster for all involved. Dinner—a cooked cat (for the guests), insects, “Soufflé Fungi” and other questionable options—goes badly, and as the night progresses, it becomes deadly for some of the visitors after Schlocker kills one of Virginia’s beloved tarantulas (offscreen), and later, sneaks around the house.

SPIDER, made in 1964 but not released until 1967, is an influential, genre mash-up masterwork on many levels. It’s a rare dark-comedy horror flick where the filmmakers and actors embraced its key elements (terror, madness and humor) with equal, effective fervor—there’s plenty of secret passages, a dangerous basement, spookiness and chiaroscuro, over-the-top acting and sly dialogue (e.g., when Bruno says “There’s going to be a full moon tonight,” a reference to Chaney’s THE WOLF MAN, 1941). SPIDER is further buoyed by its consistently playful tone and offscreen, hinted-at darkness (murder, cannibalism, rape). This is a suspenseful, tightly written and edited movie, with twists and turns and a fun, sequel-friendly finish.

The entire cast and crew shine as well. Lon Chaney, billed as Lon Chaney Jr. and true to form, evinces empathy, sadness, and resignation as Bruno. Jill Banner is entertaining as Virginia Merrye, who “play[s] Spider” with her “prey.” Beverly Washburne is also fun as Elizabeth Merrye, the told-you-so sibling of the bunch. Sid Haig (HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, 2003) is great as their shy, murderous, Peeping Tom older brother, Ralph, who creeps around and has an erotic yen for Emily Howe.

Other non-Merrye clan members include: Carol Ohmart (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, 1959) as the immodest-but-always-dressed, aggressive Emily Howe; and Mantan Moreland (KING OF THE ZOMBIES, 1941) as the wide-eyed, comically scared “Messenger” at the film’s start—by today’s standards his role will likely seem racist, but given his popularity in the 1940s, it was more filmic character trope than conscious racism.

SPIDER’s excellent behind-the-scenes crew includes: director of photographer Alfred Taylor (KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE, 1988); art director Ray Storey, billed as Ray Story (THE TIME TRAVELERS, 1964); and composer Ronald Stein (NOT OF THIS EARTH, 1957), whose spooky-yet-mood-varied cues add to SPIDER’s effective feel.

This is one of my all-time favorite horror comedies, an entertaining balance of humor, terror and quirky characterization, and a great example of both showing and implying its terrors, more implied than shown. Fans of Rob Zombie and THE ADDAMS FAMILY (1964-66) may especially appreciate its charms.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES (2006)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Alexandre Aja. Co-screenwriter: Grégory Levasseur, billed as Gregory Levasseur.)

Plot: A vacationing family, lost in a desert, are hunted by mutants.

 

Review

Aja’s remake of Wes Craven’s 1977 shocker is a slicker, less raw, more-tightly scripted film. The savagery─malicious violence, rape and killing is still in-your-face and gory, and the underpinnings of national unease are still there. Also: this remake shows more of the nuclear test town and the automotive graveyard; and the remake is more overt in its political-divide commentary, e.g., Big Bob and Doug’s Right Wing/Left Wing exchanges are explicit in their political barbs—Ted Levine (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, 1991) and Kathleen Quinlan, as ex-cop Big Bob and his ex-hippie wife, Ethel, represent Red State thinking; their daughter, Lynn (Vinessa Shaw) and her husband (Doug, played by Aaron Stanford) represent Blue State leanings. Lynn’s siblings, Bobby (Dan Byrd) and Brenda (Emilie de Ravin) aren’t solidly political yet. And of particular interest to the cannibals there’s Lynn and Doug’s baby.

Like Craven’s original film, inspired by Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), there’s a steady build-up of small-but-unsettling events that, midway through the film, become more overt, terrifying and deadly.

Veteran actor Tom Bower is great as the “Gas Station Attendant”─ Bower, in this excellent cast, stands out in what might be one of the most rewarding roles in HILLS, as a man struggling with his conscience.

The mutant cast: Michael Bailey Smith (Pluto); Robert Joy (the lecherous Lizard); Laura Ortiz (Ruby); Ezra Buzzington (Goggle); Greg Nicotero, HILLS’s special makeup effects designer, played Cyst; and cold-gazed Billy Drago (THE UNTOUCHABLES, 1987) as the family patriarch, Papa Jupiter.

“Remake” is understandably a bad word in many movie-goers mouths, but this second-time-around take on HILLS is a well-made, timely flick worth watching if you’re not an originals-only purist, and willing to judge the 2006 version on its own merits.

GERMAN ANGST (2015)

 

(Directors: Jörg Buttgereit, Michal Kosakowski and Andreas Marschall. Screenwriters: Jörg Buttgereit [“Final Girl”], Goran Mimica [“Make a Wish”] and Andreas Marschall [“Alraune”].)

Review

This tripartite anthology features “love, sex and death”-themed segments, all of which take place in Berlin. There is no wraparound story in GERMAN, though each segment is separated by footage of Berlin architecture and closeups of the city’s fountains.  

 

Jörg Buttgereit’s sly, melancholic “Final Girl” features extreme close ups, odd camera angles, blurry-image mirrors, and home film footage. Its suburban-set story concerns a teen girl (with a proclivity for cutting), her beloved guinea pigs and a blindfolded, gagged man tied to a bed. Girl (as her character is called) obsesses on guinea pig behavior and the man’s gory pain via household instruments. Buttgereit provides enough visual and dialogue clues to provide the (possible) backstory leading up to the current situation, with a finish that is suitably abrupt and striking (credit editor Michal Kosakowski for that─Kosakowski also edited his directorial segment, “Alraune”). “Final” put me in the mindset of the 1976 American film THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE.

Lola Gave played “Girl.” Axel Holst played “Father.”

 

“Make A Wish,” initially light and romantic, turns malicious and violent after a deaf and dumb couple (Jacek and Kasia) explore an abandoned industrial building where they’re interrupted by racist punks. The couple’s situation parallels something that happened in a Polish village in “late summer 1943” when Jacek’s grandmother, along with her fellow villagers, were rounded up by Nazi tormentors─and, like those long-ago soldiers, the punks don’t know about a two-figured necklace their intended victims have in their possession.

“Wish”’s story is interesting, the camera work is fluid and constantly moving (Kosakowski lacks Buttgereit’s propensity for artsy closeups), and its tones─visual and otherwise─is grimy, contrasting well with “Final”’s almost antiseptic cleanliness. (Credit cinematographer Sven Jakob-Engelmann, who worked on all three segments.) Unfortunately, “Wish” runs long in the middle, though its ending, like “Final”’s, is sharp and satisfying.

Among “Wish“’s standout players: Matthan Harris (FOR WE ARE MANY, 2019) played Jacek; Annika Strauss, Kasia.

Andreas Marschall’s “Alraune” centers around a successful bottle photographer (Eden) who tells his girlfriend (Maya), via flashback, about a mysterious dark-haired seductress (Kira Kutyneko) who inadvertently introduces him to a secret “members only” sex club (Opius), where the powerful Petrus (with his menacing charm and curious empathy) holds sway. There, Eden’s carnal encounters with Kira take on a further, supernatural edge, one that hooks the pushy photographer─he’s blindfolded and told not to lift it under any circumstances (lending a fairy tale-esque morality to “Alraune”). Then, of course, he lifts it, unleashing a nightmare existence.

This is my favorite of the three segments, one that beguiles (with its brief bursts of extremity, humor, rich color, intuitive closeups and effective editing)─a great minifilm with some gory, nasty elements coming to the forefront near its finish.

Milton Welsh, who provided voicework in “Wish,” played Eden. Désirée Giorgetti (ZOMBIE MASSACRE 2: REICH OF THE DEAD, 2015) played Maya. Kristina Kostiv (the upcoming THE CORPSE GRINDERS) played Kira. Rüdiger Kuhlbrodt, with his striking features, played Petrus.

 

GERMAN is a good, memorable film (even with “Wish”’s brief lag-time), one of the better compendium gore-and-shock films I’ve seen in a long time, its execution enhanced by Fabio Amurri’s subtle and effectively mood-fluidic compositions.

SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE II (1987)

 

(Director/screenwriter: Deborah Brock)

Plot: Young female collegiates have a slumber party. Unfortunately, one of them is Courtney Bates, younger sister of Valerie, who was stalked by a drill-wielding murderer in the original SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. . . a surreal situation Courtney and her friends find themselves in!

 

Review

The second entry in producer Roger Corman’s “all-girl franchise” SLUMBER trilogy, like its other films, was scripted and directed by women. This time out, it was director/screenwriter Deborah Brock. In a post-SLUMBER II interview, she said it was largely inspired by the 1975 science fiction musical film THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, also noting that it, like ROCKY, was made as a satire.

SLUMBER II, officially a sequel, is an updated, musical, and loosely scripted remake of the original film. Valerie Bates, main Survivor Woman from the first flick, is now in a psych ward. We see this in the dreams of her younger sister, Courtney, whose nightly horrors include visions of a transmogrified, breakdancing rockabilly Driller Killer, wielding a Gibson guitar with a big drill tip. He dominates Courtney’s surreality─a surreality where she and her friend will likely end up dead.  

This incarnation of the Driller Killer (DK) is obviously not the original DK. DK 2.0 has a flashier, rock ‘n’ roll personality and displays musical talent (Atanas Ilitch, who played him, is a real-life musician with several solo albums).

SLUMBER II furthers the franchise’s virgins-afraid-of-sex theme, and Brock tries to inject levity, absurdity, and suspense into it, but its fuzzy logic, rambling screenplay, lack of character development, and 1980s-generic cut-away scenes nullifies any suspense that might’ve been achieved─SLUMBER II feels longer than its hour-and-fifteen-minutes run time. To its credit, it has occasional, fun-cheesy gore, especially the infamous exploding giant zit scene.

Notable actors include longtime gospel singer Crystal Bernard (WINGS, 1990-97) as Courtney Bates, Jennifer Rhodes (HEATHERS, 1989) as Mrs. Bates, Courtney’s mom, and Kimberly McArthur, PLAYBOY magazine’s January 1982 Playmate, as Amy (she keeps her clothes on in II).

Its unsurprising dovetail finish is not bad, but given what comes before it, it doesn’t matter. A series-ending sequel, SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE III (a.k.a. SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE 3) followed in 1990.

THE SHRINE (2010)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Jon Knautz. Co-screenwriters: Brendan Moore, Trevor Matthews.)

Plot: Evil stalks a photographer and two journalists while they investigate mysterious disappearances in Europe.

 

Review

SHRINE is a bland, largely terror-less horror film with a familiar, drawn-out setup, good acting on the part of Aaron Ashmore (WAREHOUSE 13, 2011-14) and the cultists, two fun horror sequences and a not-quite-a-twist that keeps it from being a total rip-off of THE WICKER MAN (1973). SHRINE’s limited budget suggests this might’ve been a made-for-television venture although it’s not.