Chilling Classics #5/50 - Witches Mountain (1972)

director: Raul Artigot
cast: Cihangir Gaffari, Patty Shepard

Synopsis: A young couple traveling through the Pyrenees stays overnight at an ancient Spanish castle, only to discover that it is the headquarters for a coven of witches.

Whoah! Beware, viewers, beware! This one wins so far for most unwatchable film in the collection, and you know that is saying something. Apparently this particular coven of witches is headed up by the Mother of Boredom, and their spellcasting ability is limited to putting an audience to sleep. Throw into the mix a couple most unwelcome love songs and a seemingly endless string of long car rides.

I can't believe the original film is this poorly edited, because every time something happens that involves actually seeing the witches, it is so badly cut that you cannot tell what is going on. Seems as though there may have originally been a sprinkling of violence and nudity, but these elements have been trimmed so harshly that you can only ponder what was intended. The witches don't do anything, they just appear and stand around a glare at you, or sometimes dance around in a slightly pagan way.

Getting to the end of this film is like hiking through quicksand after downing a bottle of Nyquil. I think this is the first time I've actually fallen asleep while FAST-FORWARDING through a movie.

Jaded horror fan forced to turn off DVD

Inside (2007)
director: Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury
cast: Beatrice Dalle, Alysson Paradis

I'm not a fan of the current so-called 'torture-porn' films. I've never seen Hostel or its sequel. That sort of thing just doesn't appeal to me in the least. That being said, I did enjoy French director Alexandre Aja's High Tension, as well as his remake of The Hills Have Eyes. High Tension's initial killing spree, which seems to stretch on for like a half hour had my ex-wife and I literally breathless on the edge of the futon.

Well now the French have come up with this new film, which is quickly garnering a reputation for its harrowing brutality and gore. As you can see from the cover, I questioned whether or not this was something I needed to see, but as it has been repeatedly compared to Aja's work, I had to check it out. Sometimes, you just get the urge to be pummeled by a full on assault to the senses.

My Netflix envelope appeared almost instantaneously. As the opening credits rolled over what appeared to be a wash of afterbirth, I had only myself to blame.

Essentially, the movie focuses on a pregnant woman being terrorized by a mysterious female assailant who breaks into her house just as she is about to go into labor. Various people show up to the house and are killed off. This is a film that cannot really be laughed at, as most slasher flicks can. People do not behave in grossly unbelievable ways. People do not wander into dark hallways exclaiming, "Is anybody there?" No one goes skinny-dipping. In fact, the heroine calls the police straight away, and they come to the house to investigate. How many times do you see that common sense plot element? Not so often.

Watching a man on a staircase get stabbed with a pair of scissors about thirty times did not phase me, even as the shears repeatedly jammed into the groin area of his trousers, accompanied by crunching noises. Blood sprayed and squirted. The effects look quite good, and suitably sickening.

Shortly afterwards, the terrorized woman has locked herself into a bathroom, with the crazed lady waiting outside the door, sitting on the carpet. The pregnant woman's cat comes purring up the steps, presumably avoiding the pools of blood everywhere. The cat jumps into the killer's lap and begins rubbing against her. The killer holds up the cat, looks from the cat to the locked bathroom door and then smiles.

That's when I turned it off.
I thought to myself, "This movie WILL go there and I don't wanna see that."

Afterwards, I imprisoned the DVD securely back in the Netflix mailing sleeve, and searched the house until I found Ichi sleeping peacefully in the laundry basket, her tail twitching listlessly. I poked around the reviews on Amazon.com. Sure enough, the mostly 5-star opinions do mention the disemboweling of a cat amongst Inside's grotesque attractions.

Everyone has a line I suppose, and animal cruelty is over that line for me. A dog is killed off-camera in the aforementioned Hills Have Eyes, but something in my guts forewarned me that Inside would relish in the senseless butchering of that kitty. I imagine that woman in the bathroom is subjected to the drawn out sounds of the cat screaming from beyond the bathroom door. She would be powerless to stop it from happening. Reaching out to stroke the STOP button, I, however, was not powerless.

Animal cruelty and rape. Those are my lines. In my humble opinion, no movie has ever benefited from graphic depictions of either. For this very reason, I freely admit I have also never seen such genre staples as Last House on the Left or Cannibal Holocaust. If that makes me less of a horror fan, than so be it.

It is a shame too; now I will never get to see the remaining untold acts of violence Inside could have provided me.

UPDATE - My friend let me borrow the DVD and I did return to finish this film. I simply skipped the offending kitty death with ye ole TRACK FORWARD button.

To be honest, I felt like the film got increasingly silly as it went on. I hereby retract my previous statement about people not 'behaving in grossly unbelievable ways.' Why are the responding police officers so concerned with restoring the power -- just get out of the house!!! There were numerous points where I felt like our heroine could have escaped, and I found myself rolling my eyes by the time the disgusting ending arrived.

Chilling Classics #4/50 - Snowbeast (1977)

director: Herb Wallerstein
starring: Bo Svensen, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Logan

Made-for-TV. Words to strike fear into your heart. And it will be the only fear this snoozer generates. It even has those built in fade-to-black for commercial moments, usually after a decidedly un-cliffhangy scene ends. Bloated to maximum length to allow for more commercial spots, heavy on boring character development and light on snowbeasts, this one should help you fall asleep, no matter how stressful your day has been. Over-the-counter insomnia aids are wasting a golden opportunity by not releasing this on DVD. Sominex presents: Snowbeast. Warning: do not view this movie while operating heavy machinery.

To be completely fair, the Snowbeast costume doesn't look too terribly bad, what little we actually see of it. There are a couple furry paw shots here and there, and a fleeting glimpse of the monster's face at the pulse-lowering climax. Even after the beast has been killed, we never see it. Only a trail of blood and ruffled snow as the actors peer woefully over the ski slope, watching their careers tumble down.

About the only enjoyment you can derive from this is matching up each character and plot point with its correlating element from Jaws.

This clip makes Snowbeast look way better than it is.

Chilling Classics #3/50 - Bad Taste (1987)

Anyone remotely interested in my site should already be familiar with Peter Jackson's (Lord of the Rings, Dead Alive) first film - the story of an army of incompetent aliens who invade a small coastal town and pack the inhabitants in cardboard boxes for food. Bad Taste was shot over a period of years with Jackson's mates from work, and already demonstrates his considerable talent for practical special effects and the usage of models. Hilariously gory and filled with memorable gags, this is a bona fide cult classic, and truly doesn't deserve to be included on this collection where it resides alongside the likes of Oasis of the Zombies. I already own the restored Anchor Bay version, but this film doesn't really require a pristine presentation, so if you don't already have it - this is one of the hidden gems you'll come across within Chilling Classics.

Jackson himself appears in a dual role, both as one of the invading aliens and a member of the 'task force' sent to take them down. The performances all around are quite funny, taking into account that no one involved in the film was a professional actor, so far as I know.

From a man who keeps stuffing pieces of his brain back into his split-open skull cap, to aliens who are conveniently disguised as guys wearing all denim, to an extended cartoonish machine gun fight, to a sheep becoming the unintended target of a rocket launcher - there is something here for every B-movie fan.

Chilling Classics #2/50 - Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon (1973)

aka the Mansion of Madness

Director: Juan Lopez Moctezuma
Starring: Claudio Brook, Arthur Hansel

Based on a short by Edgar Allen Poe, this was the first film directed by Jodorowski protege Juan Lopez Moctezuma. Moctezuma is probably best known for his surrealistic possession film, Alucarda. I saw Alucarda a while back and hated it. Mostly I just remember a possessed girl screaming at the top of her lungs.

This is not so much a horror film, as a strange journey through an asylum that is being run by the inmates, but there are some murders and a rape along the way. A journalist visits the asylum and somehow does not seem to realize anything is amiss, when it is completely obvious to the viewer. He walks by obliviously, idly chatting with the asylum director, as an inmate is chased and beaten with sticks by some of the other patients. Once the asylum's 'security' guards jokingly attempt to fling him from a rope ladder, he begins to catch on.

A friend and I were discussing how these seventies movies have some kind of inherent creepiness to them, almost in spite of themselves. Something about the look of the film, the washed out colors, the faded black tones. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it just reminds of watching some weird old horror movie on TV that creeped us out as children. To this day, I remember watching Let's Scare Jessica To Death with my mom and being freaked out by the red-haired woman rising Ophelia-like out of the lake.

In any case, the idea of a decrepit mental ward out in the middle of the woods is a little disquieting, and there are moments of uneasiness here. But like most of the movies in the Chilling Classics set, it suffers from a subpar transfer, that at times leaves you straining your eyes to figure out what is going on, and I ended up stopping this one at about the halfway point, only to skip through it a couple days later to complete this mini-review. This is a competently made film, but I found myself getting sleepy not too far into it.

Chilling Classics #1/50 - Devil Times Five (1974)

Director: Sean MacGregor
Starring: Leif Garrett, Sorrell Brooke, Gene Evans

Following a snow storm, a bus from the local mental ward overturns and five acutely psychotic children escape to prey on some vacationing couples at a nearby resort.

I must admit this one held my interest for the most part. There is some cheesiness here and there, but there are also some stylishly disturbing moments.

Most notable is the first murder of a man in a toolshed. The film switches to high contrast black and white, as the children beat him to death with hammers, a pitchfork, a chain and other blunt instruments. This is a nasty bit of work, and the entire sequence is shown in slow motion, making every blow the man takes seem more painful. One of the children is dressed as a nun, and the ghostly visage of her bringing a sledge hammer down is effectively eerie. Unfortunately the transfer is not too great, and it is very difficult to see exactly what is happening.

Also memorable is when the kids pour a bucketful of piranhas into a woman's bubble bath as one of them holds her underwater. All ridiculousness aside, it looks like they at least used real fish for the scene, and it is something you don't see every day in what is essentially a slasher film.

Normally, I find myself rooting for the bad guys, but, being proudly vasectomized, I wanted to see these little bastards get taken down, especially young Leif Garrett. Instead, evil seems to triumph in every instance, as the adults are always one step behind, even when the kids move in slow motion.

All in all, I rather enjoyed this obscure little bit of exploitative trash. It is another film I'd like to see receive better DVD treatment, though I doubt I would buy it anyway. Does that make me a hypocrite?

Exploring "Chilling Classics"

For my birthday I treated myself to this fine collection of 50 awful movies from Mill Creek Entertainment, available for less than $20. I plan to share with you this masochistic journey into this 12 disc set, hopefully with some mini- reviews and screenshots for each film. Some of them will undoubtedly turn into full reviews at some point.

Here is a listing of all the films included in the set. Feel free to contact me if you feel strongly about any of them.

Death Rage -1978 Yul Brynner
Panic -1976 David Warbeck
Memorial Valley Massacre -1988 Cameron Mitchell
Messiah of Evil -1973 Michael Greer
Medusa -1973 George Hamilton
The Blancheville Monster -1963 Gerard Tichy
Deadtime Stories -1987 Scott Valentine
Cathy's Curse -1977 Alan Scarfe
Scream Bloody Murder -1973 Fred Holbert
The Alpha Incident -1978 Ralph Meeker
The Bell from Hell -1973 Viveca Lindfors
The Demons of Ludlow -1983 Paul Von Hausen
Metamorphosis -1990 Gene LeBrock
The Cold - Carol Perry
Naked Massacre -1976 Mathieu Carriere
Hands of a Stranger -1962 Paul Lukather
Haunts -1977 May Britt
Gothic -1986 Julian Sands
Christmas Evil -1980 Brandon Maggart
Man in the Attic -1953 Jack Palance
Driller Killer -1979 Abel Ferrara
The Demon -1979 Cameron Mitchell
Horror Express -1973 Christopher Lee
Crypt of the Living Dead -1973 Andrew Prine
The Snake People -1971 Boris Karloff
Track of the Moon Beast -1976 Chase Cordell
Sisters of Death -1977 Arthur Franz
The Ghost -1963 Barbara Steele
War of the Robots -1978 Antonio Sabato
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter -1966 John Lupton
Oasis of The Zombies -1983 Manuel Gelin
Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon -1972 Claudio Brook
The Witch's Mountain -1972 Patty Shepard
The Bloody Brood -1959 Peter Falk
Deep Red -1975 David Hennings
House of the Dead -1978John Ericson
Revenge of Doctor X -1970 James Craig-written by Edward D. Wood Jr.
Slashed Dreams -1975 Peter Hooten
Bad Taste-1987 Peter Jackson
A Bucket of Blood -1959 Dick Miller
Virus -1980 Glenn Ford
Horrors of Spider Island -1960 Harald Maresch
The Milpitas Monster -1975 Douglas Hagdohl
The Legend Of Big Foot -1979 Stafford Morgan
Funereal Home -1980 Kate Hawtrey
The Devil's Hand -1962 Robert Alda
Lady Frankenstein -1971 Joseph Cotten
I Bury the Living -1958 Richard Boone
Silent Night, Bloody Night -1974 Patrick O'Neal
Drive-In Massacre -1976 Jake Barnes


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