aka The Beasts’ Carnival/Cannibal Killers
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Bruno Rivera (Paul fuckin’ Naschy) is a famed mercenary in the employ of the Yakuza… not to mention in a relationship with the sister of the idealistic crime boss running the show. He double crosses the dangerous gang and flees into a mountainous region of Spain where they made their score with a cache of stolen diamonds. The brokenhearted woman and her angry brother vow to track him down and soon the criminals are hunting for the back-stabbing bastard. Said bastard, is given refuge in the home of a local doctor, his two daughters and their African housekeeper after sustaining multiple injuries but managing to take out a good amount of the folks out for his blood… including the big boss himself. The family nurse Bruno back to health and put him up in their vast estate. Bruno thinks there’s something strange going on in the house and it may have something to do with the doctor’s dead wife but it could be that Bruno’s mental state is more fragile than he thinks. The growing number of corpses and a peeping eyeball that usually shows up right before loss of life aren’t exactly a good reason to remain calm. Of course, this family has their reasons for helping out the stranger and Bruno may end up wishing the spurned Yakuza woman got her hands on him instead. Naschy, closing in on his fifties here, still carries his swagger even if it’s a bit of a stretch to see all these beautiful women lose their fucking minds over his machismo. Guess that’s the benefit of making your own fuckin’ movies. A Japanese/Spanish coproduction comes off a little awkward with its erotic corruption, crime drama foundation and minor dives into supernatural/horrific waters fitting like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle of various origins. A man gets eaten by pigs in a standout scene that looks fake as fuck but is still intense, a few nightmare sequences play out, there’s a costume party out of nowhere that features Naschy dressed as Napoleon and Naschy probably plays one of his most convincing bastards. Issues arise with pacing and obnoxious comedy but it has a mean-spirited edge that works pretty well for the morally corrosive vibe it’s going for. Killer main track.
aka House of Psychotic Women/The House of Doom
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Ex-convict Gilles (Paul Naschy, looking super handsome in his leather jacket) is having a hard time finding work and is happy to be hired on as a caretaker at an estate owned by three odd (and sexy) sisters after a day of hitchhiking and disappointment. Said hitchhiking is how he meets one of the sisters who lives in the old and large house. Claude has some horrible burn scars on her arm and a fake hand (she’s down to a pinky and thumb thanks to the fire damage that deformed her… hang loose forever). She pulls it off well. He then meets knockout Nicole, who immediately flirts with the handsome stranger. Finally, theres’s the wheelchair-bound looker Ivette and when Gilles mentions her beauty, Claude warns him to stay away from her sisters. This immediately causes his barrel-chested pepper-haired lothario-ass to flirt with the woman, mentioning that her fake hand doesn’t bother him in the least. Such a smoothie.l or maybe it’s just a fetish of his. No kink-shaming here. Nicole sets her sights on the beefcake who is now taking care of things around the house and, whereas her sisters have physical disabilities working against them, Nicole shows up in Gilles’ room claiming she has insomnia… I think she’s just horny. The former caretaker Jean shows up and attacks his replacement, cutting him with a knife before Gilles manages to stab him with his own blade. This gets the inspector involved who warns Claude that the nurse they were expecting to come and care for her sister was murdered by strangulation a few days ago. Hmmmmmm. Soon after, a serial killer begins murdering women with a big-ass cleaver (among other handy sharp objects), and gouging out their eyeballs. Naschy suffers from nightmares where he strangles women so perhaps some lunacy is rotting away in his subconscious and causing him to get a little kill-happy with the female population. Perhaps he’s far too busy banging the siblings with working legs to have much time to fix things around the house, much less slaughter pretty women. Perhaps there’s more than a few suspects popping up to look mighty guilty to any concerned party. A shootout with a little bit too much time left leads to an unlikely answer that the majority of the viewers probably saw coming… or did they? Giallo gothic hybrid feels pretty sleazy thanks to a great turn from Naschy as the womanizing stranger who may be insane or may be in the wrong place at the wrong time but definitely has some skeletons in his closet. Naschy is supported by a great cast of good lookin’ women who all seem to have some mental issues of their own. It’s a nice guessing game that doesn’t give too much away but also has some gory bits for the slasher fans. They do bleed out a pig on camera so be advised there. It’s brief but the audio is horrific.
aka Doctor Dracula/Svengali the Magician
⭐️⭐️
An occult researcher (John Wainwright) fancies himself the second coming of Svengali and he’s just released a book on the subject. His publisher, Sir Stephen Phillips, knows his secret and has some dark perversions of his own. With some shady connections to the underground black magic circuit (sure, whatever) the publisher begins manipulating things to nefarious ends. Sir Phillips has a habit of performing his own black rites and forcing kidnapped women to bend to his will and becoming sexual objects. A strip-club performer by the name of Trilby catches the eye of both men, with John being a point of lust and Stephen seeing her as being needed to kill him during a sex ritual at the height of climax in order to reincarnate. Yikes. Larry Hankin is wonderful as the magician/mesmerist by the name of Svengali but the surrounding cast does nothing for him. Its focus on skin makes it feel a bit sleazy but its soul-jumping plot leaves a bit to be desired. An alternate Al Adamson version features Dracula posing as a psychiatrist and cuts out almost all of the nudity and violence. It adds John Carradine, a shit-ton of talking, wretched performances and a subplot about a murdered mother, her concerned daughter and a worried father. It’s quite boring. But the original ain’t all that great either… you can skip ‘em both.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A military plane transferring a government spook (oh my lord, is that Dracula from Blacula?) on an import mission is shot down by rebels and crashes in some unnamed stretch of Asian jungle. Forced to parachute out, the small crew must now navigate through the dangerous landscape. A careless accident (don’t kick fruit) causes the explosion of a landmine and knocks all the men out. Realizing the road is probably littered with explosive death traps, they cut their way through the jungle which is also riddled with death traps, just not explosive ones. A faulty compass gets them lost and frustration comes with exhaustion and a lack of supplies. They come across an incongruous house and the major decides to watch the house over night in case it’s a haven for rebels. Music and lights come from the building after midnight, even though the men did not see anyone enter or exit the premises. The government spook decides they need to send a man in to investigate because he knows that the area should be uninhabited and there’s no way anything should be here. It is a shadowy spook’s job to know such things, after all. They give it a night but then decide to take a peek after daybreak. We get a look from inside the house as the men poorly sneak around outside and furniture appears out of thin air. The place is void of life but it has all the amenities anyone struggling through the jungle could want. Almost like the house was waiting for them. Things get stranger when meals are prepared by seemingly nobody, the climate is comfortable within the home without air conditioning and clothes clean themselves. The spook is paranoid that someone is playing puppet master while the other men appear to be content with finally finding comfort. A ghostly woman appears in his room and is unaffected by the bullets he blasts into her. There’s no body in the room when the major responds to the gunshots, so now the government agent is looking pretty damn insane. That doesn’t last long because more strange women show up to seduce and confound our heroes. It’s an intriguing film that maintains a strong focus on its odd script while it plays out like a theatrical production with some surprising graphic violence. One of the most off-kilter haunted house (loosely defined) stories I’ve had the pleasure of watching. It feels like a piece of folklore that I can’t quite put my finger on but that appears in every culture. An admittedly slow but undoubtedly fascinating bit of fantastic cinema. Even the cop out feels earned. Another treasure unearthed from a lost status by Vinegar Syndrome.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
It’s a quiet night and a fisherman works alone on his small boat. A coffin emerges from the water and the fisherman goes to investigate. He leads the waterlogged coffin to the shore and unsurprisingly discovers a skeleton contained within. Spooky noises follow him as he gets back to work on his boat and he’s discovered by the police soon after strangled to death with the skeleton lying right next to him. Eerily, the skeleton has its hand around the man’s neck. The coroner raises a couple disturbing questions when he finds that the bones are still sturdily held together after having been rotting for more than a hundred years and the signs of strangulation seem to point to the skeleton being the perpetrator. The police captain is having a hard time accepting this but the science is pointing to these very strange answers. An atomic scientist is called in when the coroner’s deeper probing show the bones to be irradiated and regenerating. Smug American Dr. Redding is intrigued by the idea of a regenerating specimen so he and his superior Dr. Agustin decide they should check it out. As exciting as the strange properties of the bones are, the scientists agree that there is no supernatural killer causing problems and that it’s probably just some lunatic hanging around. That night, the coroner’s assistant is murdered by something unknown with powers of the windy variety. The theremin on the soundtrack lets us know it’s something spooky. The coroner is the next to die when he comes face to face with the being causing all the chaos. Much to my surprise, it appears to be an alien that wouldn’t look out of place in a budget-strained episode of The Outer Limits. In fact, this whole movie is starting to feel like an extended episode. An attack (well, kind of a misunderstanding that escalates into fire and heavy winds) on a costume party is cheapjack magic. The police force and Redding track the trail of terror being caused by the fiend and attempt to figure out what pattern the unknown is following. Long believed to be an alternate title for the same director’s Blood Thirst, this is definitely an interesting bit of formerly lost horror and I will tip my hat to Vinegar Syndrome for unearthing and restoring. A Filipino creature feature from the sixties that overstays its welcome is still a Filipino creature feature from the sixties so there’s no way I don’t give it plenty of leeway thanks to my monster kid mentality. The interesting first act is let down by a lack of action and dulling of originality but I’m still gonna give this one a passing grade.
aka Rock 'N Roll Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy
⭐️⭐️1/2
Sexy lady wrestlers (naturally) Loretta and Golden Ruby have their hands full with Black Dragon (obviously carrying an honorary degree from the Fu Manchu school of villainy) as he and his sisters murder archeologists to get their no-good mitts on an Aztec codex that promises great power. One of the last surviving doctors comes to the wrestling women (who throw on capes after they finish their match, naturally) for help. He dies shortly after, leaving one last doctor with a massive target on his head. Also hanging around is the recently departed doctor’s sexy daughter Charlotte who has sworn revenge (she is immediately kidnapped and brainwashed, naturally). The codex gets divided into three parts amongst the wrestling ladies and the professor’s detective nephew (boyfriend of one of the pointy-bra’d wrestling babes, naturally) to make it more difficult for the evil bastards to put it together and locate the Aztec treasure. This leads to secret messages hidden in sombreros, spy cameras, less than impressive fight choreography, false bookcases, evil clubhouses behind false bookcases and a tag team match between the Judo sisters and the wrestling girls for the last piece of the codex! But that’s not all! You’ve probably noticed I haven’t even mentioned the second part of the film’s title. Well, Aztec treasure is usually protected by the supernatural and a flashback shows us just what paranormal protection has been placed to watch over the treasure. Forbidden love between a princess doomed to die and a witchdoctor who risked it all to save her (he failed, naturally) is the inevitable history and now the witchdoctor, Tezomoc, is cursed to preside over his sacrificed love and the holy breastplate she wears upon her corpse. Our heroes are there to find the treasure and the Black Dragon is following them for his own nefarious reasons. He also thinks the curses and living mummies are all bullshit, that’ll be biting him right on the ass. Tezomoc rises (looking dried out and fantastic,naturally) when the tomb is disturbed and the wrestling women get their hands on the breastplate before getting the hell out of their with the team. Turns out Tezomoc can use his magical powers to transform into a bat (or a tarantula) when he’s not wiping the floor with Black Dragon’s goons… and maybe Black Dragon too? If not, he just vanishes from the film so I’m assuming our dusty boy got his butt. He’s also afraid of the sun, so he’s like a vampire but an especially crumbly one. If you ain’t a fan of armbar-centric wrestling, the opening stretch may be quite the chore because it takes forever to get to the monster shenanigans which are still pretty lethargic when they finally happen. I found the whole thing pretty damn charming but I could definitely see more than a few people dozing off. This was the English dub of René Cordona’s flick put out by that old reliable huckster K. Gordon Murray. At least there’s no American actors there or explain the hell out of everything (Sorry, John Carradine) but there’s also no Asian actors which is… problematic. Thank God they don’t attempt the accents.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Tod Slaughter vehicle finds late 1800’s France being terrorized by a murderer who may be a werewolf! At least, that’s what the majority is thinking thanks to a horrifying face popping up in the windows of various victims. My guess is whoever Tod Slaughter is playing is definitely up to no good. Here, he’s some dope rocking ridiculous facial hair and a cape… so he’s a villain for sure. A Paris bank has been robbed and Tod Slaughter shows up to pull the owner out of trouble by putting a large quantity of gold in his bank. In return, he would like to marry the bank owner’s daughter. The young girl, Cecile, is in love with a poor bank clerk and turns him down. Not one to sit on his hands and listen to the opinion of a young woman, Slaughter decides to frame the man she loves for the crimes and get her all to himself. The young man attempts to prove his innocence and sets out to expose the nefarious businessman behind all the shenanigans. The bank owner ends up with a dagger in his back and Slaughter slimes his way into things with the assistance of his gang of miscreants. Stuffy melodramatics are saved by the usual wonderfulness Tod Slaughter brings to his despicable villains and this one is practically twirling his mustache in every scene. It’s an easy watch that flies by and the day is saved by bullshit science and scheming… so, that’s a win.
