QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966)

 

(a.k.a. PLANET OF BLOOD. Director/co-screenwriter: Curtis Harrington. Based on Mikhail Karykov and Otar Koberidze’s story/film MECHTE NAVSTRECHU.)

 

Review

1990. Ambassadors of a mysterious alien race, enroute to Earth to establish relations with humans, crash-land on Mars. On Earth, the International Institute of Space Technology, created to “explore” Mars and Venus, sends a rescue mission for the aliens, with whom communications are hazy at best (along with their general appearance).

The crew of the Oceano are on their way to Mars when multiple complications occur, starting with a sunburst, which damages the Oceano’s system. Upon reaching Mars, the crew members find a lone survivor (a green-skinned, exotic-looking, and mute Alien Queen (her character end-credited as “?”, played by Florence Marly, DOCTOR DEATH: SEEKER OF SOULS, 1973). Several men, especially Paul Grant (Dennis Hopper, TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2, 1986), are dreamily, romantically drawn to her. After she drains one of her admirers of blood (offscreen), killing him, the remaining crew members decide to restrain, not kill her, because she’s a scientific specimen. . . an obviously bad decision, an opinion voiced by alarmed crew member Allan Brenner (John Saxon, TENEBRAE, 1982), who wants to destroy her.

QUEEN, with a fun, familiar twist or two, is a fast- and tightly paced (for its time) low budget movie, with an all-around solid cast and crew. Its look is sumptuous in an often color-drenched B-movie way (opening with John Cline’s exotic, science fiction-monstrous “title” paintings and stock spooky-theremin music by Ronald Stein, billed as Leonard Moran—Moran’s credits include SPIDER BABY, OR THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD, 1967). QUEEN’s look is further augmented (and made more atmospheric) by impressive special effects lifted from bigger budgeted and uncredited Russian films, BATTLE BEYOND THE SUN, 1959, and MECHTE NAVSTRECHU, 1963), fitting because QUEEN is a remake of MECHTE, English translation DREAM TOGETHER. (MECHTE was also titled DREAM COME TRUE in some countries.)

 

QUEEN’s other notable players and behind-the-scenes crew include:

Basil Rathbone (SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1939) as Dr. Farraday, head of the International Institute of Space Technology;

Judi Meredith (THE NIGHT WALKER, 1964) as Laura James, scientist and Allan Brenner’s romantic interest;

Don Eitner (KRONOS, 1957) as Tony Barrata, one of the crew members;

Forrest J. Ackerman (THE HOWLING, 1981, and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD II, 1988) as Dr. Farraday’s assistant (“minus his trademark glasses”, according to IMDb’s QUEEN OF BLOOD “Trivia” page). Ackeman, then-editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, holds something in the movie’s last shot;

Virgil Frye (GARDEN OF THE DEAD, 1972) as “Control Panel” (Frye’s first feature);

Gary Crutcher (GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN, 1958) as an uncredited spaceship crew member;

Leon Smith (VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, 1965, also co-directed by Curtis Harrington) was VOYAGE and QUEEN’s set designer, then billed as "set decorator".

and

Vilis Lapenieks (VOYAGE TO THE PREHISTORIC PLANET, 1965) was VOYAGE and QUEEN’s cinematographer.

QUEEN might be worth your time if you appreciate its above-noted qualities, particularly if you’re a fan of MARS ATTACKS! (1996; director: Tim Burton) and ALIEN (1979; director: Ridley Scott), the latter of which shares a similar, if darker, more primal, and feminist storyline.

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

According to IMDb: though Ronald Stein’s spooky theremin music sounds like it’s mixed with Louis Barron and Bebe Barron’s FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956) “tonalities” it’s not.

Florence Marly reprised her role of “?” (her character’s end-credit in QUEEN) in a six-minute, 16mm sequel, SPACE BOY (1973). In SPACE BOY, her character is named Velarna, and Marly is billed as Florence Marly von Wurmbrand.

QUEEN’s running time is an hour and eighteen minutes, a good choice if you’re looking for a shorter movie to watch.

THE CRIMSON CULT (1968)

 

(a.k.a. CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR. Director: Vernon Sewell. Screenwriters: Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, based on Jerry Sohl’s story, loosely extrapolated from H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Dreams in the Witch House.”)

 

Review

Antiques dealer Robert Manning (Mark Eden) visits his family’s English ancestral home of Greymarsh when his brother, Peter (Denys Peek), disappears during a business trip. Peter’s last known location is Craxted Lodge.

Once Robert arrives, he is warmly greeted by Craxted’s owner (Morley), a descendant of Lavinia Morley (a green-skinned Barbara Steele) who was burned at the stake in 1652. Also in residence is Eve Morley (Virginia Wetherell, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, 1971), Morley’s niece, who becomes Robert’s romantic interest and fellow investigator. A cryptic local historian of the occult (Professor John Marsh) also visits Craxted; he is barely civil to Robert.

Robert’s questions get the run-around treatment, so he further investigates, at night having kaleidoscopic nightmares about a green- and red-lit room, and half-naked servants (men and women) who hold goats and writhe around Lavinia, sitting on her throne.

Eventually, all becomes clear with help from surprising quarters, ending in a visually fun (cheesy for some) end-shot.

CRIMSON, is a mostly bland, silly admixture of a straightlaced murder mystery and pseudo-psychedelic hippie-ish Lovecraftian nightmare, with its filler party scenes, a sex scene, and overlong, investigative-dream sequences. By the time Robert has figured out what happened to his brother and why, it’s a great, is this movie done yet? situation. CRIMSON’s behind-the-scenes crew made a good-looking movie, made darker with Peter Knight’s spare, effective music score.

Beyond the seething and sensual Barbara Steele (PIRANHA, 1978), a big part of what CRIMSON gets right is its top-billed leads: Christopher Lee (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, 1970) as the polite Morley, who is hiding something; Boris Karloff (BLACK SABBATH, 1963), in one of his final roles, as Professor John Marsh, whose brusque manners hide something as well; Michael Gough (DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1965) as Elder, the Morleys’ troubled butler; and Rupert Davies (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, 1968) as “The Vicar.”

CRIMSON, with its not-quite-psychedelic trial scenes, solid behind-the-scenes work and worthwhile actors, is a “meh”movie, not terrible, not great─and worth seeing if you’re a completist fan of any of its leads, as long as you expect CRIMSON to be one of their lesser flicks.

THE RAVEN (1963)

 

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriter: Richard Matheson.)

Storyline

A malevolent sorcerer targets two fellow magicians, one of whom he has turned into a raven.

 

Review

This Richard Matheson-scripted (and family friendly) comedy horror film, set in 1506 and not-really-based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem, is one of my favorite entries in Corman’s Poe-cinematic hexad. Everything about RAVEN, shot in fifteen days, works: the physical comedy and adroit wordplay; the top-notch acting of its masters-of-horror co-leads (Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff) and other actors (e.g., Hazel Court, who acted opposite Price in 1964’s THE MASQUE OF RED DEATH, and Jack Nicholson, who worked with Boris Karloff in the 1963 movie THE TERROR, shot immediately after RAVEN on the same set); its good-for-its-time FX (Price’s spellcasting is shown as bright green laser beam-like rays); its era-evocative, color-rich sets; and its often playful, mood-varied soundtrack. . .  like I said, everything.

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)

 

(Director: Gordon Hessler. Screenwriter: Christopher Wicking.)

Review

This American International Pictures [AIP] movie is based on a 1967 novel (THE DISORIENTATED MAN) by Peter Saxon, a pseudonym used by various authors between the late 1950s and the 1970s. According to Wikipedia, Stephen Frances wrote most of DISORIENTATED, with W. Howard Baker editing. The novel was later republished as SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, a title it shares with its resulting flick.

In SCREAM, a vampire-like killer runs wild in London. While the police try to track the blood-obsessed murderer down, an offbeat scientist gets caught between them.

The film is a non-gory, fragmented science fiction-conspiracy-thriller work starring three top horror stars. Vincent Price (THE RAVEN, 1963), played Dr. Browning, an experimental scientist and head of a lab compound trying to create a humanoid master race who wear SS-like uniforms. Peter Cushing (MADHOUSE, 1974) cameoed as Major Benedek, an officer in an unnamed eastern European intelligence service. Christopher Lee (HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF, 1985) played Fremont, a high-ranking officer in an unnamed British intelligence agency. Price and Lee share a scene near the end of the film. 

Meanwhile, a serial killer with vampiric tendencies targets young women in London clubs, tragedies that, in choppy fashion, draw attention to Browning’s medical-military compound.

If viewed as an oddball, triple-segment and solid conspiracy thriller with horror actors and a horror title, SCREAM may prove to be a fun cinematic outing for you. If watched as a traditional horror film─it has touches of horror, e.g., Browning’s under-the-floor acid vat beneath his operating theater─it might not be choice entertainment for you.

Deep(er) filmic dive

SCREAM’s “Michael Gothard versus police chase” [IMDb] scene was partly shot on the Alpine Circuit at Milbrook test track—also used in TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972, “Wish You Were Here” segment).

THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)

 

(Director: Daniel Haller. Screenplay by Curtis Hanson (billed as Curtis Lee Hanson), Henry Rosenbaum, Ronald Silkosky, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s story of the same name.)

Storyline

A young man, who’s more than he seems, tries to return a race of monstrous, god-like creatures via sacrifice in Dunwich, Massachusetts.

Review

Miskatonic University, Arkham, Massachusetts. A strange young man, Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell, THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON, 1973) attends a lecture by Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley, ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW, 1959). He attracts the attention of two young women, Nancy Wagner and Elizabeth Hamilton. Nancy (Sandra Dee, NIGHT GALLERY, 1971-2), returning Armitage’s copy of the Necronomicon to the library, is curious, charmed by Wilbur. Elizabeth is repelled by him.

Wilbur reads the Necronomicon in the library, where he also meets Armitage. He invites Wilbur to have dinner with him, Elizabeth and Nancy. After dinner, Nancy offers him a ride back to his nearby hometown (Dunwich). He accepts.

In Dunwich, he invites her into his ornate, occult-symbol-adorned house. Within the house, Nancy hears ghostly theremin music and ocean swells, and has flash-visions of orgiastic multicolor-painted women, causing her to become dizzy. Due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that her car won’t run, he offers her a bedroom to sleep in, one that “hasn’t been used in years.”

Thus begins the nightmarish, sometimes goofy work that is DUNWICH, climaxing at the Whateleys’ cliffside altar (The Devil’s Hopyard), replete with a soundtrack that incorporates growl-distorted sounds of flocking seagulls.

This film has a lot going for it. It has great actors in the over-the-top roles, an intense, miasmic (if sometimes unintentionally goofy) atmosphere and often solid pacing. Its FX (wild color palates, weird soundtrack noises, quick-cut visions, and Monster POV) is effective and intoxicating for its filmic period. Its scope─the full range of the Old Ones’ influence is experienced over a wide area─is ambitious for a modest-budget project like this.

The end-twists work, making DUNWICH more fun and goofy. And the actors, who put their all into their roles, sell the characters.

The film sports a noteworthy cast: Sam Jaffe (THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, 1951) as Old Man Whateley; Donna Baccala (BRAINSCAN, 1994) as Elizabeth Hamilton; Michael Fox (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, 1974) as Dr. Raskin; Talia Shire, billed as Talia Coppola, as Nurse Cora; and Jason Wingreen (THE TWILIGHT ZONE, 1960-3) as Sheriff Harrison.

DUNWICH is a fun, color- and mood-intense Lovecraftian horror flick, one worth watching if you have a tolerance for antiquated counter-culture-infused nightmares, occasionally slow pacing, and flirtations with cheesiness, and are a Lovecraft fan.

THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (1979)

 

(Director: Stuart Rosenberg. Screenwriter: Sandor Stern, screenplay based on Jay Anson’s book of the same name.)

Storyline

A dysfunctional, cash-strapped family move into what they believe is a demon-possessed house.

 

Review

1975. A year after the gruesome murder of the DeFeo family, the Lutzes─in emotional and financial distress─move into the cursed murder house, later revealed to be built on a Native American burial ground.

From the get-go, the briefly shown, melodramatic DeFeo murders set the tone for this atmospheric, blood-in-your-popcorn demonic house-possession flick. If you’re a viewer like me, you might laugh a lot, occasionally jump during the barrage-rush of AMITYVILLE’s miasmic mood and obvious-horror-trope terror scenes, which really put the unreliable in unreliable narrator, supposed occurrences that, if they happened, have easily spotted, non-supernatural explanations.

Some of these tropes include: flies swarming inside the house and on windows; demon-stalked Catholic priests and a nun, made sick by an unseen force; extreme, in-a-second temperature changes within the house and doors that slam by themselves, without warning; George Lutz (James Brolin, THE CAR, 1977) has trouble sleeping and routinely wakes up at 3:15 a.m., the exact time Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his family (in real life he claimed he “heard voices”); the hidden, bizarre “red room” behind a basement wall; animalistic, glowing eyes appearing in windows; and so much more!

What makes this potboiler devil-haunted abode flick work is the talent involved in its making. Camera shots are seen in extreme closeups or from a distance, as if characters are being watched by an unseen someone or something. Lalo Schifrin’s constant-state-of-alarm score maintains the film’s pulse-racing tempo (whether those emotions are laughter or terror), Robert Brown’s editing further enhances Sandor Stern’s brisk, constant-jolts screenplay while Stuart Rosenberg’s direction matches its mood and pacing.

The cast, who often scream and yell at top volume at the drop of a penny, is great.

James Brolin’s George Lutz is a man under visible strain, pale and creepy as he stalks around the yard and house with a constantly sharpened axe. Margot Kidder (BLACK CHRISTMAS, 1974) is excellent as Kathy Lutz, an argumentative, passionate Catholic who hums the love theme to SUPERMAN, 1978, while washing dishes. Their name-changed kids, Greg (K.C. Martel, THE MUNSTERS’ REVENGE, 1981), Matt (Meeno Peluce, Dio’s  "THE LAST IN LINE" video, 1984, directed by Don Coscarelli) and Amy (Natasha Ryan, THE ENTITY, 1982) are appropriately reactive, especially Amy who’s enthralled by her imaginary, satanic-porcine friend, Jodie.

Rod Steiger (IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, 1967) is volatile and loud as Father Delaney, who’s repeatedly attacked by the long-range demon. Don Stroud (SWEET SIXTEEN, 1983), as Father Bolen, imbues his secular psychiatrist-priest with quiet, urgent humanity. Murray Hamilton (JAWS, 1975) once again plays a bureaucrat (this time as Father Ryan, a church administrator) who puts maintaining the status quo above obvious human safety.

Other notable players include Helen Shaver (THE CRAFT, 1996) as Carolyn, the Lutzes’ psychically sensitive, basement-exploring acquaintance. Val Avery (FRIDAY THE 13^th:THE SERIES, 1988 episode) is his usual solid and understated self as Sgt. Gionfriddo, who’s called to 112 Ocean Avenue, after George reports a break-in, which appears to be a breakout.

AMITYVILLE’s climax is wow-cataclysmic, with an abrupt and crazy-shots finish. Based on Jay Anson’s supposedly nonfiction 1977 book, this is a risible, fun, and iconic late-Seventies flick.

Suggestion: if you buy it, try to purchase it used. Wouldn't want the con artists who perpetuated this hoax (George and Cathy Lutz, Ed and Lorraine Warren and their estates) to further profit from it.

THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964)

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriters: Robert Towne and an uncredited Paul Mayersberg.)

Storyline

A newly married woman’s relationship with her husband is threatened by his obsession with his dead wife.

 

Review

The last of Roger Corman’s six Poe-inspired films, TOMB has a different feel than Corman’s other Poe flicks in that it was mostly shot outdoors─the other films were largely interior works. In it, the second wife of a rich man finds that her husband’s obsession with his first, dead wife is causing her to have ongoing nightmares, even as the first wife’s black cat stalks and slashes at her. Vincent Price (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, 1970) played the husband, Verden Fell; Elizabeth Shepherd (DAMIEN: OMEN II, 1978) played The Lady Rowena Trevanian (second wife, with ginger features) and The Lady Ligeia (the first wife, with long black hair). John Westbrook (THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, 1964) played Christopher Gough.

Made from a screenplay by Robert Towne and an uncredited Paul Mayersberg, TOMB is a lesser, okay entry in Corman/Price’s Poe series. That said, this is not terrible film, given the talent behind it─it merely, compared to its predecessor flicks, recycles themes and visual elements that were more richly shown in the first five films. If you’re a fan of Corman’s Poe-cycle movies and a completist, it might be worth seeing once, but don’t expect too much from it.

BLACK SABBATH (1963)

 

(Director/co-screenwriter: Mario Bava. Co-screenwriters: Marcello Fondato and Alberto Bevilacqua).

Storyline

Boris Karloff hosts three terror tales revolving around a stalked call girl, a thieving nurse and a familial vampire.

Review

BLACK, a visually lush trilogy-tale film, is mostly excellent, an effectively spooky, giallo- and tradition-influenced hybrid flick that remains a high mark work in the genre.

The first segment, “A Drop of Water,” is set in London, England in 1910. It is loosely adapted from an Anton Chekhov story (billed here as Checov). In “Drop,” a thieving nurse steals her recently deceased employer’s ring, only to be haunted by the old woman’s yowling black cat, a pestiferous fly, and the eerie sound of dripping water. This segment is creepy and unsettling─excellent.

In “The Telephone,” possibly loosely based on Franco Luncentini’s story “Three and Thirty-three,” a beautiful French call girl (Rosy, played by Michèle Mercier) is stalked by an unseen man who seems to know her every move as she gets ready for bed. Initially a ghost-story giallo segment, it becomes a straight-up thriller in its twisty second half. Like “Drop” before it, the color-rich cinematography (provided by Ubaldo Terzano and an uncredited Bava) is wow-worthy. It doesn’t hurt that Mercier is gorgeous, like many of Bava’s actresses in this period of his career.

Screen credit for “Telephone” is given to F.G. Snyder. According to Wikipedia, Bava claimed he was “Telephone”’s original writer─two film critics later (supposedly) tracked down Luncentini as its source author.

When AIP (American International Pictures) and Titra Sound Corporation bought the US rights for the film and edited BLACK for its stateside audience, they trimmed scenes in “Telephone” that showed graphic violence and non-explicit lesbianism and prostitution. A supernatural element was also inserted in the US version of BLACK. Not only that, AIP also replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s score with Les Baxter’s.

The third and final entry in this atmospheric tryptich is “The Wurdulak,” loosely based on Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s “The Family of the Vourdalak.”  (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi.) According to Wikipedia, “other parts of the story were inspired by the Guy de Maupassant story ‘Fear’ and Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.” (Tolstoy is billed as Tolstoi and Maupassant is billed as his last name only.)

“Wurdulak” takes place in nineteenth-century Russian forest. A traveling nobleman (played by Mark Damon) finds a headless bandit’s corpse with a dagger stuck in his breast and takes the dagger with him. Taking shelter in a nearby house where a large family lives, he is informed that the blade belonged to their father (Gorca, played by Boris Karloff). Seems Gorca disappeared five days before─and, before leaving, told his family that if he disappeared and returned not to let him in. The father returns, and they don’t heed his earlier warning. . .

Karloff is ghoulishly delightful in this film, both as the tale-telling host (playing himself) and Gorca. The rest of the film’s cast is excellent as well. Unfortunately, “Wurdulak” runs long with a meh finish─it does not help that the women in “Wurdulak” choose to cower when they should be staking and beheading.

Despite “Wurdulak”’s excessive length and helpless women (like many in films of this era), BLACK is a superb, sumptuous stylistic and hybrid genre work, one that beguiles.

Beyond the film. . . according to Wikipedia, the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath liked the film and its name so much they changed their band name to it. Originally, they were called Earth, and wanted to avoid being confused with another band, also called Earth.

Quentin Tarantino and fellow filmmaker Roger Avary were also influenced by BLACK. Tarantino has been quoted as saying, “What Mario Bava did for the horror film in BLACK SABBATH, I was going to do with the crime film [PULP FICTION, 1994].”

THE MASQUE OF RED DEATH (1964)

 

(Director: Roger Corman. Screenwriter: Charles Beaumont and R. Wright Campbell.).

Storyline

While the Red Plague stalks the peasantry, a cruel prince and his fellow deviants shelter in his castle.

Review

Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s story, MASQUE is an excellent, possibly perfect film, from R. Wright Campbell and Charles Beaumont’s tightly penned script, its top-notch acting, its vivid, symbolic splays of colors and lighting, to producer Roger Corman’s waste-no-shots directing. (If Beaumont’s name sounds familiar, he was a staff writer on the original 1959-64 TWILIGHT ZONE series.)

MASQUE stars include: Vincent Price (THE TINGLER, 1959) as the cruel Prospero; Hazel Court, who played opposite Price in THE RAVEN (1963) and whose last film was an uncredited role (“Champagne Woman at Hunt”) in THE FINAL CONFLICT (1981); Patrick Magee, as an envious, toady-like Alfredo─two of his later films include A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) and THE BLACK CAT (1981); and an uncredited JohnWestbrook as Man in Red (a.k.a. the Red Death); Westbrook also appeared in THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964). Be sure to look for the background/visual cue callbacks to earlier Corman/Price films, THE RAVEN and THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)!