Simon, King of the Witches (1971)

Dir: Bruce Kessler

This wonderfully psychedelic film begins with the titular character (played by Andrew Prine) living in a storm drain and selling occult trinkets to rich scenesters. As his status among them increases, following a couple of effective spells, so does his power. He becomes convinced that if he can just perfect this one magical working, the entire universe and all the Gods will bend to his will. "Simon" is a very interesting film with a great deal of both intelligent subtext and high camp satire. It doesn't always entirely work but that's not for lack of ambition. With its genuine grasp of matters esoteric (the screenwriter was a practicing warlock), its startling imagery and its rabid lead performance - Prine is at once charismatic, psychotic, lovable, cool, irresistible, terrifying and pathetic - there's much to love here. At times it kind of plays like a cross between "Fight Club" and the Gospel of Christ, only far funnier than either. If nothing else, you've got to give that points for originality. ***

Beyond Dream's Door (1988)

Dir: Jay Woelfel

A student named Ben Dobbs (Nick Baldasare) experiences bizarre nightmares and finds that the lines between the dream world and reality are blurring in this micro-budget, Lovecraft-influenced, experimental horror. He hallucinates giant red monsters, armless janitors, creepy kids with plasticine eyes and topless girls with amazing 80s hair but what does it all mean? Who knows? Director Woelfel clearly has talent and ambition in abundance. The film is superbly shot, considering the money they obviously didn't have, and there are some great ideas here, but they over-reach beyond the script's ability to present them coherently. Granted, the film's nightmares-within-nightmares structure was always going to equal a degree of abstraction but the total lack of characterisation is probably the main sticking point for me. It's very tough to engage in a plot like this when no one has a personality (especially tough given some of the ropey acting) and without that connection, there's not enough to propel the plot forward at a satisfactory pace. It's a shame because some of the imagery is fantastic and a lot of love and hard work has clearly gone into making the best film they could, given a lot of limitations. **

The Black Cat (1990)

Dir: Luigi Cozzi

This oddball unofficial sequel to "Suspiria" and "Inferno" finds Cozzi going vaguely post-modern on our asses and having a pair of filmmakers try to script a "Third Mother" film to cash-in on the success of Argento's classics. However, all this attention lavished on the Mother of Tears (a whole four pages of screenplay, apparently!) is too much and she is SUMMONED! The filmmakers begin to see her glowing-eyed, maggoty visage everywhere and they start to drop dead (and/or explode!) one after the other. This should be quite a simple premise but Cozzi packs his script with an array of increasingly weird twists and turns that eventually render the film impossible to follow (especially when time and space themselves start to bend for the climax), albeit oddly entertaining. It's a kaleidoscope of crazy lighting, splattery gore (Cozzi visibly has a love for watching people explode from the inside out and, y'know what? So do I!), multi-coloured lasers, eighties haircuts and Caroline Munro in her lingerie. So yeah, it's not right, but it's okay. As usual, Cozzi's rabid enthusiasm for the genre covers up a good many problems that could punch holes in less spirited efforts. Also, this is a lot more coherent and watchable than the real "Mother of Tears" wound up being. **

Etoile (1989)

Dir: Peter Del Monte

Extremely bizarre Italian fairytale/thriller from the 80s stars Jennifer Connelly as a ballet student who flies to an unspecified European city (Budapest? Rome? Vienna? Seems to be a little of all three) to audition for some kind of Suspiria-esque school that has "get the fuck out!" written all over it. Things get weird when she becomes possessed by a long-dead ballerina, stalked by a creepy old guy (well, two creepy old guys if you include horribly miscast "handsome" lead Gary McCleery) and forced to perform in some sort of ghost version of "Swan Lake". There are some incredible ideas in "Etoile", it is filmed beautifully and the ballet backdrop is always one I appreciate in a horror film, but it's way too muddled, unstructured and incomprehensible to work. There are several annoying dead end subplots (including one with a manic, screaming Charles Durning buying and selling clocks for no discernible reason) and Connelly and McCleery's total lack of onscreen chemistry kill their scenes together but it's actually worth sitting through all the nonsense just for the truly insane final reel. I don't want to give away the twist but it's one of the most glorious "WTF!?" moments I can remember. Not a great film but wow, what an ending. For an idea as batshit outlandish as that, I'm willing to forgive a multitude of sins! **

Death Laid An Egg (1968)

Dir: Giulo Questi

The beautiful Ewa Aulin leads the cast of this psychedelic proto-giallo set in a hi-tech poultry farm. There are a couple of plots going on at once here; one involving a love triangle between Aulin's character, her cousin (Jean-Louis Trintigant) and his wife (Gina Lollobrigida!) and another involving the farm's ultimate owners (THE ASSOCIATION) and some mutant headless chickens that double in size at an alarming rate having accidentally fed on a combination of dead dog and radiation... Um. Yeah. There's a dude in black leather gloves killing some women in lingerie as well if that helps you? "Death Laid An Egg" is an odd one in that it's years ahead of the giallo curve with its insane crossover ideas and its beautiful photography by Fellini collaborator Dario di Palma (think of how an episode of "Mad Men" might look if you watch it right after sustaining a serious bump on the head). It's rich with symbolism. Even the "mystery" element,as pulpy as it is, makes sense. But there's just something that doesn't quite work. If it's anything, it's an overabundance of ideas trying awkwardly to squeeze into 85 minutes (which is no bad thing in itself) but there's just something stopping it from attaining the greatness that it so frequently brushes. **1/2

Howl of the Devil (1987)

Dir: Paul Naschy

Paul Naschy (who also writes, produces and directs this) plays a pair of brothers, Alex and Hector Doriani. Alex is a B-Movie horror actor. Hector is a serious thespian. They hate each other but when Alex dies, his son Adrian (played by Naschy's own son) is placed into Hector's care. Hector beats the boy, abuses the servants and has a habit of abducting and drugging prostitutes for his weird sex games, so Adrian (understandably) retreats into a world of fantasy based on the characters played by his late father. This turbo-paced movie plays a little like an overheated, X-rated Spanish soap opera on fast-forward but with the mind-boggling bonus of Paul Naschy playing no fewer than 12 roles. Besides Alex and Hector, he is also Rasputin, Quasimodo, Bluebeard, Frankenstein's Monster, Fu Manchu, The Phantom of the Opera, Mr Hyde, his own wolfman creation Waldermar Daninsky (in one of the film's rare moments of poignancy), a mummy/zombie and, ultimately, Satan. On one hand "Howl of the Devil" is a glorious mess; a feverish kaleidoscope of misogynistic shouting, gratuitous nudity and ever-increasing absurdity. On the other, taken as part of Naschy's oeuvre, it's a heartfelt love letter to the artform he mastered and a furious lashing-out at the audience who rejected his genius. There's even political allegory in there; a disparaging of both tyrannical government (bear in mind Naschy's career began under General Franco's regime) and the Catholic church. What's weirdest is that, if you take out the fact that no one would/could ever behave like any of these characters do, the story - within its own universe - actually makes sense and has a really good twist. This kind of intensely personal cinema is rarely so entertaining as it is here and "Howl of the Devil" has the added bonus of watching Naschy - for perhaps the only time - completely off leash and wildly indulging every B-Movie fantasy he's ever had. For those who appreciate his genius, this is stuff that will really raise the goosebumps. Why this has never had a proper DVD release is beyond me. ***1/2

The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974)

Dir: Giuseppe Bennati

Incomprehensible giallo which tries to blend as many subgenres as possible in order to achieve an optimum level of confusion for the viewer. It starts out as a kind of drawing room mystery. Ten rich assholes who hate each other congregrate in a theatre that's been abandoned for a hundred years after a series of unsolved murders. They're picked off one by one by a black-gloved killer in what appears to be a Harpo Marx mask (!) but there's also a gothic element in play here; hidden doors in the wall, family curses, candlelit corridors and torrid melodrama (even a little incest!). To cap things off, they start hearing voices that can't be recorded on tape and seeing a strange man who materialises (and disappears as quickly) in random places to spout nonsense. This all leads to a bizarre, almost Fulci-esque conclusion in a hidden labyrinth beneath the theatre. The sets are great, there's one particularly shocking death scene and it's all peppered with copious nudity but Bennati's offbeat direction is too scattershot to pull it all together. Ultimately, the slipshod way in which the film tosses aside even its own internal logic in favour of twisting the meagre plot further towards obscurity wrecks what could've been a far better movie. File under "obscure and interesting curio" instead. **

Nightmare Maker (1982)

Dir: William Asher

Thoroughly unhinged early-80s obscurity that was briefly on the UK's Video Nasty list, despite its director being a respected veteran of TV fluff like "Bewitched", "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The Bad New Bears"! It does frequently feel like a low-key TV movie potboiler as it tells the story of poor Billy Lynch (Jimmy McNichol), an orphan teen raised by his weird and controlling Aunt Cheryl (Susan Tyrell at her battiest and best) in small town America. Somewhere, something breaks and the film tips into a final reel of surprising intensity. There are two distinct storylines - Cheryl's rapid descent into madness is offset by the investigations of a hard-boiled homophobic cop (Bo Svenson) who's trying to frame half the men in town, including Billy, to fit into a gay murder conspiracy he's concocted. Somehow, by the end these two strands have become one and the insane conclusion feels oddly logical, at least until you take a step out of the film's world and think too hard about it. Still, the gay element is particularly unusual for the era/genre and Tyrell's performance is compelling enough to really drive the film beyond its limitations. Love it, hate it or just find it baffling, you'll never see another film quite like this one. ***

Spasmo (1974)

Dir: Umberto Lenzi

Umberto Lenzi delivers a pretty incoherent effort with this bizarre, ridiculous giallo about a man being driven mad by those around him. The trailer is hilarious but sadly almost all of the film's good stuff is in there and ninety more minutes of nonsense can drag even the most patient viewer into a state of just screaming at the screen and wanting it to be over. It's odd that a film with such a linear storyline can feel so utterly impossible to follow. Lenzi tries to justify it with a twist that almost pulls things together (and an admittedly fantastic finalé) but the absurd dialogue ("I have a razor in my room. It's big, sharp and sexy!") and his ability to focus on irrelevant minute details of the plot for ages, then rush through something important makes this workaday thriller (with almost no sex or violence, I should add) feel like the antithesis of conventional filmmaking. It's an uneasy mix that while memorable and quotable for weeks afterwards ("I'M NOT A STRONG WOMAN, CHRISTIAN!") is tough to sit through. NB: no one uses the word "Spasmo" throughout the entire film. EL BOMBA!

Black Magic Rites (1974)

Dir: Renato Polselli

(aka The Reincarnation of Isabel)

I'm not even sure where to begin with trying to explain this. There's a witch/vampire called Isabella who gets burnt at the stake in some nebulous past where everyone wears funny hats. 500 years later, a cult of old dudes in red morphsuits try to ressurect her by killing naked virgins in a castle. Maybe? It's hard to tell because half of the actors play multiple roles and, thanks to fit-inducing editing, no shot lasts for more than a second or two. There's constant fire, psychedelic lighting, whips, chains and abundant nudity from some pretty ladies, yet somehow the total lack of coherence and technical ineptitude makes this near-unwatchable. The denouement includes 3-way sex with a podgy vampire who can't stop blinking, two naked girls prodded by pensioners with sticks for what seems like forever, a hunchbacked Donald Pleasance lookalike thrown into a snake pit with only two snakes in it, and a peculiar vision of Hell that's all red lycra and girls chained to stepladders. This film was lost for decades and, watching it now, it's not hard to see why. It is like staring directly into the mind of a complete lunatic. EL BOMBA!

The Mansion of Madness (1973)

Dir: Juan López Moctezuma

Surreal Mexican horror (loosely based on Poe) in which a journalist named Gaston LeBlanc shows up at an insane asylum in the woods, hoping to write a piece on the methods of the famous Dr Maillard. Said methods start seeming a little unorthodox (assuming crucifixions in the basement and attempted human sacrifices are unorthodox to you) and Gaston soon suspects the inmates may have taken over the asylum. Director Moctezuma's understanding of surrealism and its power to unsettle is strong and its hard to deny the weirdness of images like a man dry-humping a skinned veal carcass or three people dressed as birds performing a scythe-toting dance of death. The film looks fantastic - so many shots are framed as things of beauty - but ultimately the thin Z-movie plotting is so predictable and generic that it lets down the overall effect (especially during a seemingly endless chase through the woods sequence in the middle). At its best, the film scales the giddy heights of Russell and Jodorowsky but frustratingly fails to sustain anything like that for a full 83 minutes. Clearly a dry run for the director's later masterpiece, Alucarda. **1/2

Satan's Blood (1978)

Dir: Carlos Puerto

(aka Don't Panic!)

This atmospheric and low-key piece from the 70s starts with a young couple, Andres and Ana, being accosted in the street by a pair of swinger-looking types named Bruno and Berta. Bruno insists that he and Andres went to school together but Andres has no recollection of this. In order to see a photograph that Bruno swears he has from back then, Andres and Ana drive out with them to an isolated house in the country and terrible, terrible things ensue. On one hand, Satan's Blood is original, creepy and actually rather harrowing in parts and the limited but uninhibited cast work well with their roles. On the other, it seems to purposely abandon logic, plausibility or any kind of explanation for the horror in favour of an abstract, nightmarish approach. The film plays like one long anxiety dream and, sadly, that's not an altogether good experience. Rather than being tense, it's just somewhat stressful for the most part. I praise it for its mood and the fact that I probably won't forget it in a hurry but I can't say I genuinely liked it. **

Alucarda (1978)

Dir: Juan López Moctezuma

Batshit crazy Mexican horror that had me muttering "they don't make 'em like this any more" at the screen more than just about anything else I've ever seen. An innocent orphan named Justine (of COURSE she's named Justine!), who looks a bit like a young Carol Vorderman only more naked, enters a bizarre convent that seems to have been built inside a cave. It's covered in dangling Christ statues and candles, the nuns all dress in bloodied bandages and flagellate frequently, so it's really no surprise when fanaticism leads to lesbianism leads to Satanism leads to the dark side, etc... It is, however, a surprise when you throw in a bunch of vampirism, zombie nuns, blood rain, nuns on fire and goat-faced demons. Words can't describe how hysterical much of Alucarda is. It finally delivers on the promise of so many "all sizzle, no steak" nunsploitation films of its era. The truly insane gypsy black mass sequence alone wipes the floor with much of the subgenre. If you like 70s occult/psychedelic imagery, you'll find very little that will quell the hunger like this one. A lost classic. Just don't expect it to actually make sense (the film's only real flaw) and you'll love it! ***1/2

Death Smiles At Murder (1973)

Dir: Aristide Massaccesi (aka Joe D'Amato)

Notable for being the only film directed by Joe D'Amato in which he used his real name on the director's credit, this one is, in his own words, "special". It's a gothic period piece and the stunning Ewa Aulin plays a girl whose memory disappears after her horse-drawn carriage crashes in front of a rich couple's mansion. From there, the plot spins off in several directions that take in the usual D'Amato themes of necrophilia, obsession and violent death, with a little bit of "Mad Science With Klaus Kinski" thrown in for good measure. Perhaps mismarketed as some kind of giallo, this bears far more relation to dreamy, abstract pieces like "Lisa & The Devil" or "La Vampire Nue". It doesn't make a lot of sense on first viewing but there's a feeling encouraged by the film's fervour that, beneath the madness and the leaden pacing, are the seeds of a brilliant, serious vision that perhaps D'Amato never got chance to fully realise as his career became ever less adventurous. Beautifully shot and loaded with bizarre imagery, this may not be his most watchable film but it's undoubtedly his most ambitious and the one to show to non-believers who doubt his artistry. ***

The Baby (1973)

Dir: Ted Post

An obscure 70s movie that's garnered cult classic status over time, I remember reading about this some twenty years ago and yet I've only now got round to watching it. I have to admit that it was a disappointment. Once you get over the shock of the unpleasant premise, it's really quite a boring film. A grown man with the apparent mental capacity of a small infant is treated like one by his mother and two older sisters. They keep him in a crib, call him only "Baby" and punish him with cattle prods when he does anything that might suggest he's growing up. There's a social worker trying to save "Baby" but it's clear from the start that she may have her own ulterior motives and dark secrets too... Some of the special 70s touches - the hair, the lighting, the costumes, the dancing, Suzanne Zenor - are enjoyable but these can't save the drab, lifeless TV-movie-like script/direction and the fact that it's just a little bit offensive. It deals with heavy subject matter like mental illness and child abuse in a way that's neither sensitive and well-informed, nor intentionally, gleefully tasteless. Instead it's just a bit misguided and leaves an aftertaste somewhere between a yuck and a yawn. *

Witchery (1988)

Dir: Fabrizio Laurenti

(aka Ghosthouse 2, La Casa 4, Witchcraft)

Ropey late-80s Italian chiller in which a sexy virgin (Leslie Cumming, whose tragically short film career consists of just this and the even worse "Zombie 5 : Killing Birds") gets trapped on a haunted island with a witch, a pregnant girl (Linda Blair!), a rich old couple, some creepy real estate agents, a kid with the most annoying voice EVER and... (wait for it)... David Hasselhoff. What the Hoff was doing in this is beyond me but it marks either the high or the low point of his career, depending on how you judge things. There are many dubious aspects of "Witchery" - it's slow, badly acted, cheaply made and not entirely logical - but I have a soft spot for the sheer weirdness level. The gore FX are nasty and imaginative, it almost manages to be spooky at times and there are a few trippy, messed-up ideas buried beneath the more obvious ones (ie: while it's no surprise that Linda Blair's character gets possessed, it certainly feels new when she hallucinates two witches roasting a foetus on an open fire!). I'd never try to say this was a GOOD movie but it's easily watchable B-Grade fodder and there's much worse out there. **

Buio Omega (1980)

Dir: Joe D'amato

(aka Beyond The Darkness, The Final Darkness, Buried Alive)

Millionaire playboy Frank (an unforgettable turn by Kieran Kanter) is consumed by grief and decides to keep his beautiful girlfriend (Cinzia Monreale) around after she dies. He steals her corpse, embalms it and keeps it in bed with him at his isolated villa, convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan... and how could it, right? "Buio Omega" is a wild original. A film so unutterably barmy that it plays almost like an extreme Horace Walpole novel, blending high camp soap plotting and gothic melodrama with genuinely disgusting, graphic gore and sex. It's hard to take the latter elements seriously when the story hits its most absurd highs and yet still somehow the combination of gorgeous location photography, a fantastic Goblin score (one of their best ever) and the sheer grimness of the ideas leaves an unsettling feeling behind. It's illogical, uneven and ludicrous but you'll never see another film like it and for that it's kind of brilliant. ***1/2

Phenomena (1984)

Dir: Dario Argento

Jennifer Connelly talks to the insects and befriends a monkey with a penchant for straight razors in this marvelously bonkers giallo. Phenomena blends a classic "killer on the loose in a girls boarding school" plotline with sprinklings of the gothic grand guignol Argento played with in "Suspiria" and "Inferno" and somehow it works. I think it's mostly Argento's tremendous confidence in what he's doing that pulls "Phenomena" through. At times even the really terrible artistic decisions (like playing Iron Maiden's "Flash of the Blade" loudly over the top of a knife murder) kinda work just because everything's so amped up and stylized. It's like he's just shrugging and saying "so what? I think it's cool" and that works. What's particularly cool is that, although it's not remotely realistic, the plot actually makes a strange kind of sense by the end. Or maybe the film's just obliterated the bothersome braincells that were raising objections. Good shit. ***1/2

Lisa and the Devil (1974)

Dir: Mario Bava

Elke Sommer parades around a gothic mansion in a series of gorgeous outfits in this most surreal and personal Mario Bava film. There's a soapish web of family secrets, dead lovers littering the house like dustmites and Telly Savalas as a spooky mannequin-bothering butler who may or may not be the Devil. The dreamlike nature of the film makes it hard to really discern exactly what's happening (and if you get a bad DVD transfer like the R1 Image Entertainment one it's even harder as the audio track is virtually inaudible) but there's something to it nevertheless. The photography is beautiful, Sommer and Savalas play their parts perfectly and some of the weird imagery is unforgettable. Shame it's marred by the fact that there really isn't a decent print available anywhere. This one really needs a lovingly restored Blu Ray version to happen soon so it can be enjoyed as intended; a beautiful kaleidoscopic nightmare. **1/2

Inferno (1980)

Dir: Dario Argento

Beautifully barmy, this gothic horror from Argento's halcyon period is definitely his most abstract and Bava-esque creation (unsurprisingly since Bava worked, uncredited, on the set design). There's a story in there somewhere about the architect who built the houses for The Three Mothers (the demonic witches from Suspiria) and some keys that must be found are an adequate MacGuffin to drag a group of characters through a whirlwind of surreal, violent imagery. The script's approach to matters magical and esoteric is surprisingly perceptive but it's less effective when it comes to linear storytelling. Looking better than ever on Blu Ray, I feel the only way to properly digest Inferno is to detach it from reality and just go with it. It's not a film for everyone but it is a fascinating and unique entry into Argento's oeuvre. ***