Morpho, the Doctor and Me: The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962)

    Jesus Franco has been haunting the catacombs of my mind for a long time. The man directed over 200 films in almost every genre. I am most familiar with his output in horror (shocker). Surreal, exploitative, insane and boring are all words that can describe his work. Sometimes, all words could be used to describe just one film of his. Franco treads familiar waters with The Awful Dr. Orlof, yet he does so in a way that it becomes something not often associated with Franco's work: classic. 

   If one wishes to explore the deep ocean that is Franco's filmography, I would recommend you come to this film a little later down the line. It may falsely convey the notion of Franco as a master. I enjoy a majority of his films, I love a few and I avoid a good amount. His early output is stronger than what came later and The Awful Dr. Orlof remains one of my favorites (I still believe Miss Muerte is his greatest film). If he had carried on in this fashion he may have gone down as one of the most essential horror directors of all time, instead he hits more on infamous and a bit of cult icon. I'd rather have him as the latter anyways.

So good I wanna SIIIIIIIIIIIING!

    The film opens with a drunk woman stumbling and singing in the middle of the street. She makes it home and continues to sing as she shuffles around her room like me at my nephews birthday party. Unlike that classic time I was being awesome, she meets her end when upon opening her closet Morpho emerges and strangles her. Morpho is a towering, caped and deformed gentleman who carries off the recently perished woman into the night. The tapping of a stick by some unseen person leads the blind beast in the proper direction. 

Blind...Beautiful...Morpho

       Our poor blitzed babe is not the first woman to disappear. A newly engaged inspector is on the case and is, sadly, getting nowhere. He is not privy to the same information as us, we soon learn that Dr. Orlof is the mystery man in control of Morpho. His night out with a beautiful lounge singer concludes with murder and more Morpho. Orlof is using the skin of his victims in an attempt to cure his daughter's fire generated disfigurement. I'm not sure how he is going about it. They don't explicitly show his treatments like they did in Eyes Without a Face (which is the definite inspiration for Franco's film), but it's not working. He decides he must use a living host in order for his treatment to be a success. 

The Icky Dr. Orlof

    As Orlof does his weird surgery thang, we spend some more time with the inspector. He's following clues and trying to piece together why his witnesses seem to be seeing two different murderers. With a helpful push from his fiancee (who just so happens to be the spitting image of Orlof's daughter) the inspector comes to the realization of the tag team murder scheme afoot. This still seems to get him nowhere. His fiancee, being the awesome woman she is, decides to go undercover to flush Dr. Orlof out. This all leads to a whole lotta death and a whole lotta Morpho.

   If you failed to notice, I fucking love Morpho. Ricardo Valle makes for an imposing "monster". His make up is goofy as hell but he still manages to give me the chills after all these years. This is helped in a major way by Franco's atmospheric direction. In contrast to his later catalogue, The Awful Dr. Orlof shows an assured hand all the way through. You'd get moments of this in his later films but rarely frequent. The familiar Franco aspects are also present but not yet prevalent. Breasts are fondled, jazz erupts, lounge or club numbers (although not as intrusive as they would become) appear and Howard Vernon is his usual wonderful self. Not as psychopathic as some of his other films, The Awful Dr. Orlof maintains its status as genuinely accomplished cinema. Find it and enjoy it but do not judge the man's work by it.

Did I Forget to Mention That Most of the Women Are Gorgeous?

    

Temporarily Out of Service 

Capsule Review #003: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

         Awaiting his execution, Baron Victor Frankenstein discloses his tale to a chaplain. The chaplain was called, not for any religious comfort or absolution, because the Baron couldn't think of anyone who would have come if summoned. Victor confesses his involvement in dabbling where man was not supposed to dabble. Victor and his tutor, Paul, began experimenting with restoring life to dead animals. Frankenstein's thirst for knowledge, leads him to attempt creating man from spare body parts collected from the recently deceased. His ultimate goal being to give life to something which never lived. This quest of his gives way to him butting heads with his former mentor and completely losing  himself to his obsession with creation. This leads to murder, a damaged brain and tragedy.

         Hammer's first foray into gothic horror helped save the genre from the steady decline it was experiencing. Watching it now, nearly six decades after its original release, it's easy to see why. The Curse of Frankenstein is remarkable. It's a perfect storm of every filmmaking aspect. Fisher's assured direction, Sangster's exciting script, acting, set design and the overall mood. Peter Cushing plays the Baron perfectly. A man far too concerned with science to worry about the emotional side of being human. He can pretend for appearances but all that matters in the end is knowledge. Any other actor who lacked Cushing's class would have made the Baron contemptible. Christopher Lee's creature is excellent. With no dialogue, Lee's eyes speak volumes about the confusion and rage at work in his damaged mind. The lab sets are perfect, the scenery plays to the cold and creepy mood of the film and there are sprinkles of unexpected (and shocking for the time) gore. It all combines to produce a perfect horror film.

10/10

       

Capsule Review #002: Friday the 13th (1980)

       The reopening of the long closed Camp Crystal Lake (due to its violent past the locals have named it Camp Blood) brings death to the young adults preparing the camp for its grand reopening. The counsellors are knocked off one by one in splattery ways by an unseen maniac. Tom Savini supplies the special effects so you know you're in good hands. 

        Black Christmas and Halloween built the structure laid out by the German krimis and Italian giallos but Friday the 13th designed the interiors. Much like the giallos before it, each death is treated as a set piece. It lacks the artistic boundary pushing of its Italian cousins but it still hits the mark on visceral slayings. It stumbles this soon out of the gate but the genre would eventually master it, get lazy and crumble into itself. Friday the 13th is good for what it is. It's a blueprint and is only formulaic because of how much it was impersonated. Friday the 13th deserves its status as a slasher classic. It's unimaginable where the genre would be without it. It's not my favorite of the series (2, Final Chapter and VI outrank it in my book) but it should still be viewed by any fan of 80s horror.

7/10

Get Nasty: Anthropophagus (1980)

      Some people dread seeing "FILMIRAGE presentano" in the opening credits of a film. I look forward to it. It's an easy clue as to what kind of film you'll be experiencing. You're going to be in Eurotrash heaven and it is going to be awesome. Anthropophagus is a Filmirage presentation. It's the movie that pops into my mind whenever I hear the term "video nasty". Finding it after years of combing through video store horror sections, it's not the film I had imagined it would be. It is still a tasty slice of Italian cheese and it has one hell of a mean streak. 

He Has Just Enrolled in Proper Headphone Usage 101

   
        An accidentally broken camera allows Tisa Farrow (she of Zombie fame) to tag along with a group of vacationing friends on a boat tour. She needs to be dropped off along the way on an island where her friends have a summer home. They arrive on the island only to find the village a ghost town except for a mysterious woman who warns them to "go away". After exploring the vacant town and discovering a half eaten corpse, they wisely decide it's time to leave. They are shit out of luck on that front because their boat has drifted away from land without any warning from the boat's captain or their pregnant friend who stayed aboard due to a sprained ankle. 

Chicks Dig Boats

      With no other option available, the group decide to spend the night inside the house of Farrow's absent friends. They discover the missing family's blind daughter hidden and in shock. She rambles on about a man who smells like blood but the group have no idea what this distressed girl is talking about. It turns out that a man from the island became marooned on a lifeboat with his wife and son. Madness set in and after accidentally stabbing his wife (she tried stopping him from eating his dead son) he lost it completely. He returned to the island, killed and ate everyone and now he's picking off the group one at a time.

Pure Horror or Pure Rock God?

        It may drag in some spots (they seem to spend a lot of time exploring) but Anthropophagus has a hell of a lot going for it. The soundtrack kicks ass. It's electronic and it's all over the place. It sounds like the composer just purchased a decked out keyboard, said "fuck it" and went insane. Music betrays the scene, music enhances the tension and sometimes music seems to be from another film altogether. It's wonderful. Another point in its favor is the splatter. There's a hatchet to the face, a scalping and, in the film's most infamous scene, a fetus is ripped out of the mother and eaten in front of the wounded father. This is why I often equate Anthropophagus to the term "video nasty". Reading about this scene conjured something quite horrific in my mind before I actually saw it play out. The special effect is obvious but still remains one of those "oh fuck" moments many films wish they had. Finally, the casting of George Eastman (or Luigi Montefiori) as the monster was perfect. He towers over the cast and makes for an imposing and terrifying killer.

Prefers to be Called "Big Guy"

               Anthropophagus will never live up to the movie I created in my head all those years ago when I first read about it. That is probably for the best. I'm sure that film would have been unwatchable. As it is, Anthropophagus is a perfectly adequate piece of exploitation. I recommend it. 

This Moment Made Possible by the Fine Folks at FILMIRAGE

   

Capsule Review #001: The Hunted (2013)

      Sometimes there's just not a whole bunch to say about a film. Be it good or bad (although, I do find it easier to write about bad films). I started doing this blog not to just ramble on and on about trash films but to keep track of all the genre appropriate films I watched. Instead of struggling to stretch out reviews for films I don't have much to say about and drive myself insane over a blog that only friends of mine read, I decided short capsule reviews were a safe way of curbing any frustration. 

      Two men set off into the woods to film themselves buck hunting on some newly acquired land. Attempting to get a show deal out of it, their frustration grows as they can't seem to get the buck they are after and they are plagued by a piercing scream that seems to be following them. Their cameras are catching nothing,  whatever is screaming is escalating its "attacks" and the landowner may be hiding a secret of just what the hell is going on.

      Many people have grown bored and needlessly angry towards the "found footage" subgenre. I have no issue with it. Like every other subgenre sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For every good slasher film (The Burning, Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter) you have less than stellar examples (Doom Asylum, Pranks). It's the risk every horror fan takes. The Hunted is a good found footage film. Creepy as hell, aided by likable characters and  utilizing the true horror of the woods after dark, The Hunted comes out as a nice showcase of how found footage can be done right. 

8/10

Opening the Floodgates: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)

         It all begins somewhere. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is my starting point. Rented from Palmer Video (long gone) by my mom and watched with wide eyed wonder by a very young me, I would forever be a monster kid. The Universal horrors, TOHO's Godzilla series and any other monster film I could get my hands on soon littered the living room. I had found my first love and we'd have disagreements and even a few separations but monster movies were never far from my heart. This would lead to 80's slashers, Italian zombies and whatever the hell Hong Kong would dream up in the 70's and 80's. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man was the first and has my eternal gratitude for warping my brain and beginning my obsession.

Already Hammered

        Lawrence Talbot was a werewolf. He was killed by his father and has been dead for four years. Sadly, resting in peace is not in the cards for dear Larry. Two grave robbers make the mistake of doing what they do during a full moon. Not tipped off by the lack of decay on dear Mr. Talbot's corpse, one of the grave robbers starts rummaging for whatever goodies he can find. He ends up murdered by a now resurrected Wolf Man. He's a grave robber, so we're happy to see this shit stain cleaned off the earth's underpants. 

He Comes From a Long Line of Grave Robbers

       Talbot is found passed out in the streets of Cardiff with a skull fracture. The skull fracture given to him by his father with the help of a silver cane. He is brought to the hospital, and much to the surprise of his doctor, heals at a superhuman rate. Dr. Mannering treats Larry as if he is his only patient. All his time is spent figuring out why this man thinks he is a dead man and, more importantly, why this man thinks he is a werewolf. When Larry escapes, he follows him across Europe because that is how much Mannering cares for his patient. Talbot goes to visit the wise old gypsy from The Wolf Man to figure out a way for him to die and stay dead. She believes there is a Dr. Frankenstein that may be able to help him.

Mad Skillz

      Talbot's quest for eternal sleep leads him to a small village and more importantly to the icy grave of Frankenstein's monster. The creature is still alive and seems to be a bit thankful for his rescue from a freezing cold oblivion. Instead of immediately strangling Larry, the creature attempts to help him find his dead creator's journal. Obviously, the brute with a damaged brain proves useless in this endeavor so Larry turns to the only surviving Frankenstein heir, his beautiful daughter. She arrives just in time for a village festival under the belief that Larry wishes to buy her families castle. He admits it was a lie to get her out there and starts fishing around for her papa's journal. She refuses but still attends the festival with the man who just lied to her. Mannering arrives in time for the festival and confronts Talbot but that is soon interrupted by the creature whom I assume got lonely and wandered into town looking for his flabby new friend. 

When Hats Were Hats

You Better Believe He's Gonna Be Touching You

           The townspeople grow antsy and a little quick to thinking the only option is murder and Mannering becomes a little obsessed with Dr. Frankenstein's work. He convinces Baroness Frankenstein that he will destroy the creature and he also promises to help Talbot with his whole problem of living. He lands somewhere in between when he tries to feed more power into the creature and does shit all for Talbot. It all leads to the far too brief showdown between the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster. 

Mustache Heaven

You Got a Friend in Me

       Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man can do no wrong . Digging deeper into it you may find it to have quite the implausible script but what do I care? I just spent a year looking for an Indonesian movie where trees grow out of people in grisly detail (Review forthcoming). Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is 71 minutes of pure fun. It's simple, it's got an awesome cast (Chaney JR! Lugosi! Atwill! Frye!) and I am completely biased towards it. Even if it could have used ten more minutes of monster on monster action. Enjoy