"Le orme"(1975)d/Luigi Bazzoni

Four years removed from his first giallo, Giornata nera per l'ariete aka/ The Fifth Cord (1971), director Luigi Bazzoni serves up a visually interesting if not entirely engaging psychological thriller/mystery that lacks just about every identifying giallo characteristic; there's no black gloved killers, no beautiful model types being violently killed off with exotic weapons, and not much sci-fi to wrap your mind around here, either, despite the alternate "Footprints on the Moon" title. What there is, is some nice, atmospheric cinematography from Vittorio Storano, who also worked with Argento on L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo aka/ The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), and a solid performance from lead actress, Florinda Balkan, with supporting appearances by Italian 70's ginger-kid extraordinaire, Nicoletta Elmi, and, of course, Klaus Kinski, misleadingly billed as a lead here.


"...all of this fucking cheese belongs to me now."
Alice (Balkan), a Portuguese translator,  has no recollection of the past three days and a recurring nightmare vision about astronauts bouncing about on the surface of the moon that she attributes to an old movie (with the same title as the one the audience is currently watching, mind you) that she must have missed the ending to. A discarded photograph of a hotel on the isle of Gama compels her to pay the holiday hot spot a visit in attempt to piece it all back together. To further complicate matters, several of the island's residents seem to already know her from the previous week, only as Nicole, a red head who sought refuge from some sort of imminent danger there, despite having no memories of ever having been there, at least, as Alice, anyway...


"...e il mio capelli rossi fastidioso per voi?" asks Paola (Nicoletta Elmi).
More sleepless nights filled with images of helpless men in space suits left behind on the moon (I dunno, that's gotta be pretty high on anybody's list of unsexy things that could happen to a person, huh? Still, you can't hear the Dave Matthews Band from space, so that's a plus...) and an abrasive scientist named Blackman (Kinski), who briefly bickers with some off-screen colleagues about his mind control experiments, the results of which have stranded some poor bastard on the moon's surface, to test his mental resolve. The bad karma finds it's way into Alice's dreams from space, and thus, aligns her as the logical choice to be Blackman's next lunar guinea pig. In the end, we see her being dragged off, screaming, by astronauts, no less...


Dicono che alle mie palpebre, Klaus.
Bazzoni would only direct a series of documentaries on Rome during the nineties, never returning to feature films, which leaves the genre fan to much speculation on where he could have gone with the medium, had he chosen to continue. Sadly, he passed away in 2012. As for Footprints, it's a little too long-winded for me to recommend to anyone but hardcore Kinski completists and fanatics of visual style, though it remains ambitious enough an effort to avoid being totally boring, and for that, it earns a single Wop score. I prefer Fifth Cord, as space isn't really my bag, maaaaan.


Smettere di resistere...Pianeta Earth è blu, non c'è niente che puoi fare.

"Inseminoid" (1981) d/ Norman J. Warren

How can you top homicidal inter-species  lunacy in space in the form of a thirty-five cent British Alien(1979) rip-off as overseen by the legendary Shaw Brothers' elder,  Run Run? This stuff is way ahead of it's time, believe me. Just imagine Jason Reitman's Juno if Ellen Page was British sex kitten Judy 'To Sir With Love' Geeson (I like where I'm taking this), and Michael Cera was a rubbery bug-eyed intergalactic horndog with a clear tube full o' green pipsqueak pudding (Okay, maybe not.). Warren's fourth feature, which follows marginal genre fare like Satan's Slave(1976) and 1978's Prey, is as loopy as it's gore is goopy; don't think of it as laughable Dollar Store knockoff of Ridley Scott's groundbreaking 1979 cult classic, think of it as a feature length Doctor Who episode with ample boobs and over-the-top splatter that more than compensates for not having Tom Baker running around the cheap-looking sets with that toothy grin and ridiculously long trademark scarf, don't you think?

 
Remember to always use your low beams when approaching a crater.
While excavating the ruins of an ancient civilization based on dualism and once ruled by a pair of twins on a desolate planet, a team of  Xeno project scientists has set up base precariously near a stage set cheaply decorated to resemble a convolution of catacombs where an alien intellect has taken up residence in some crystals, influencing some of the team members to act in a less-than-British manner indeed. One deranged fellow is plugged with a harpoon gun, while his trapped partner removes her helmet in the deadly atmosphere and freezes solid when a chainsaw foot amputation turns out worse than aspirations. Unfazed by the gruesome deaths, another duo naturally sets out to investigate the murderous crystals, and this time, is set upon by a stretchy-looking alien beast, who extirpates the gent and lays down his partner for some sweet otherworldly dream sequence rape.


"No time for the old in-out, love, I've just come to read the meter."
Rescued by her remaining colleagues, Sandy (Judy Geeson), who's been regularly injected with contraceptives like the rest of the female officers (Call me, ladies) along the way, is now pregnant with twin alien/human hybrids, and as a side effect, is inhumanly strong, and quite prone to dismembering her coadjutors and drinking their blood when she feels her progeny is threatened. Several super sanguinary slayings later, it's up to Mark (Robin Clarke), the senior officer and Sandy's former fuck-buddy, to take her down for keeps after delivering her newly stumbled upon twin reptilian urchins over to Sharon (Heather Wright). Mark C.T.F.O.'s his ex, but discovers one of her mutant kids chewing Sharon's neck upon his return, and is wiped out himself, by the other equally homicidal one. When a rescue team later arrives to investigate loss of communications with the team, the twins stow away on the shuttle as it departs, as no survivors are found...


Sometimes a chick's gotta take a vadge fulla space yogurt for a movie, I guess.
If  you like your cinematic rip-offs like your sin-sating one-offs (cheap n' sleazy, who doesn't?), then you'll do right by yourselves in securing a rental copy of this one at the very least. The more hopeless of you probably already bought it on purpose. Mine's an Embassy VHS print under the alternate "Horror Planet" title transferred to dvd with custom dupe sleeve, though I'm not sure where that places me on the aforementioned  scale.  It'd make a sick fit on a sci-fi / schlock horror drive-in retro triple bill with Galaxy of Terror(1981) and Contamination(1980), for anybody with the money and means out there to make such an affair transpire. Rancid space debris as you like it. One wop.


"I just tasted some Adam's apple, you're a MANNN, BABY!"

"Drive-In Massacre"(1977) d/ Stu Segall

Forget any visions of  half-dressed, Flowbee-coiffed Farrah lookalikes getting claret-splashed in the back of  customized vans or terrified drive-in patrons screaming against an outdoor screen playing fifties sci-fi classics as a backdrop that the deceptive one sheet for tonight's review may have invoked in you during your first glance. You won't get any of that here. If you're in the market for nerve-wracking synthesizer scores, line-flubbing detectives, stuttering sideshow geeks turned janitors-in-Pinocchio hats,  anti-social drive-in managers decked out in polyester leisure suits, or murky lighting, muffled sound, and establishing shots that go on and on like Uschi Digart's buh-hubbas and make seventy or so minutes feel a lot more like two and a half hours, then you'll probably dig this one for the sheer ineptitude of the thing.


It's what's playing tonight, and also, what's happening. You see what they did there?
Couples are getting whacked by a sword-wielding fiend after burping dialog unconvincingly at each other in a darkened drive-in theater that's run by a miserable, mouthy bald prick in his polyester pimpiest, if we're to believe the cut n' pasted one-sided newspaper headline pointed at the camera by one of the two mostly sedentary detectives on the case. Who the fuck could it be?There's quite a few one dimensional suspects to choose from: The unseen drive-in/carnival owner with a suitcase full o' swords? Austin, the aforementioned abrasive chrome dome manager who swallowed swords previously?  Germy, the stuttery one-time bite-offer of snake and bird heads und sword swallower in the carnival that formerly employed him? Orville, the local pervo who just wants to beat his meat? One of these squarish cops is gonna have to embarrassingly pose as a woman at the drive-in to draw the killer out, I know that much about cinematic crime investigation techniques.


Do you remember where you were when you first saw the fake headlines?
Just when you're sure you've pieced together the plot, you're treated to twenty minutes of a police standoff with a babbling machete-gripping stranger('Buck' Flower, no less) in a warehouse that ends up having fuck all to do with the ongoing nightly 'massacre' at the drive-in as he ends up having only escaped the nuthouse that same day. So who was the killer? None of the above! The cat is on the loose at your drive-in, as a hasty voice over tells us after a sloppy freeze of the harmless janitor fellow's corpse, looking to add you to his admittedly unimpressive body count thus far! Like anybody'd still be paying attention to this crap in a car with a hot broad at the drive-in...


Funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky boss, funky bald-ass boss (Newton Naushaus).
Segall's early slasher has the feel of a latter day J.G. 'Pat' Patterson or H.G. Lewis clunker minus all the red stuff, and with classic lines like "I just wanted to beat my meat!" and "She's in pretty bad shape... she's been murdered with a sword.",  it's easy to confuse it as such at first glance. I much prefer his later porn fare, like 'Up n' Coming"(1983)( starring the late Marilyn Chambers, Loni Sanders, and Johnny Wadd himself!). You'll instantly recognize 'Buck' Flower from his numerous cameos in John Carpenter's films throughout the era; George also co-wrote the movie with Segall, before moving on to better things like 'Devil's Ecstasy'(1977) and 'Capture of Bigfoot'(1979).A lot less fun than it coulda/shoulda been, and therefore, one wop on the scale.


Gettin' a little head at the drive-in was never like this!

"Blood Cult"(1985) d/ Christopher Lewis

The first time I saw this image staring back at me from a clamshell VHS on the shelf of a mom n' pop joint ( that probably had a zeroxed sketch of me behind the counter that read "Do NOT rent to...") at a point when I was also exploring the possibilities of translating genre fare on Beta video(spoiler: it doesn't very well at all.), and seeing that someone had actually gotten their work on the shelves right next to Fulci, Argento, Romero, and the rest of my favorites had proven to be very reaffirming to me. My expectations for the flick weren't bad out of the gate, either, the giallo-esque black glove and meat cleaver on the sleeve promised me I wasn't in for a cookie cutter slasher padded out with mile upon depressing mile of dialog delivered by line-flubbing amateurs and hacked prop limbs spattered with stage blood, all shot with the ambience of a vintage Ginger Lynn DP scene. One would assume that was the case, and that night in front of the big floor model tv in the parlor, I discovered that it couldn't be farther from it.

"Alright, alright ! Maybe we could use a fine set of encyclopedias ! "
Some hacked n' slashed sorority gash has the local small town sheriff(Charles Ellis) baffled in his investigation into the mysterious black gloved fiend, who isn't the least bit opposed to ktfo meddling roommates with severed eighties bimbo heads when he feels so inclined, leaving as always, a cryptic dog's head medallion at the scene of the crime in place of heisted body parts. Luckily, the sheriff's daughter happens to sort out the card catalogues at the college library, and with a little effective Nancy Drew-age, turns up an antique book on the occult that illustrations of the medallion appear in, and may even tie the recent slayings to a coven of eighteenth century witches.

And then, the only military service that would have her was the arm-y. Sorry...
After what seems like at least ten more dialog scenes than in real estate nail biter, Glengarry Glen Ross, the Dean of the school sends the sheriff out to respond to alleged poachers making a racket and setting fires in the nearby forest disturbing the evening's peace, and he brings along his daughter's bookworm-esque boyfriend(James Vance) for reasons only he could explain, knowing full well it couldn't be the blood cult out there, sacrificing future Saved by the Bell extras in diabolical black rituals, and more importantly, the whole infernal occurrence would never end in a ludicrous twist, like so many slasher copies before and since, would it? To cut to the chase, the correct answers in this case are : "Why, yes, yes it could" and "It most certainly would". Just the way you like it!

This broad's neck has just experienced what the newsmedia would probably refer to as 'a brief moment of political unrest'...
You might also remember the director's other release the same year, as covered right here at the Wop. Despite how snore-producingly bland and un-great this one no doubt is, in comparison to later SOV genre efforts like Cannibal Campout and Wally Koz's  555, it may as well be a Leone epic. Retro videophiles and crap cinema enthusiasts alike will be able to dig more merit out of it than I have just now, I'm sure. Still, it deserves a place in genre history as a victory for independent filmmakers everywhere, turning significant home video profits that were once reserved for the studio giants alone. One wop.

He especially likes the part of the song where Glenn Danzig says, "We are 138" eight times in a row. Almost knows all the words, now.

"The Life and Death of a Porno Gang"(2009) d/Mladen Djordjevic

Any comparisons between tonight's movie and 'A Serbian Film' beyond their mutual country of origin should be readily dismissed by discerning film buffs straight away. Serb tackles unspeakable atrocity with strokes of flair and dark wit, while Djordjevic's effort plays like a clumsy 'Multiple Maniacs'(1970) clone with heaping gross-out dollops of explicit gay sex, rape, bestiality, and faux snuff in place of the subversive black humor of the aforementioned cult fave. I often thought about breaking the frame around my vintage Mark of the Devil earl bag and putting it to good use during this one, kids, and that doesn't happen too often, believe you me.

Auntie Slavna's gonna cream you when she sees what a mess you've made of her raspberry preserves...
Marko(Mihajlo Jovanovic) dreams of directing a horror/fantasy genre piece but settles for the next best thing, which in Serbia, is taking to the dreary countryside in a tacky-looking bus full of ugly, misshapen drug-addled sex-freaks to put on live porn shows in front of small crowds of  grinning, toothless rural folk, apparently. Where else was he gonna find the young transvestite that'd would, besides causing a lover's spat between the two gay performers,  fellate a horse dick on stage? The theatergoers had grown quite weary of the dirt-fucker, fat chick, and even he and his gal pal horizontal boppin' , as evidenced by the gang rape-by-posse that follows, but hell, even that gets the porno gang laughing hysterically, mid-rape. Oh, the wacky adventures these guys are having!

"SMILE! You're on Rancid Camera...."
Unfortunately, heroin costs more than the admission of a live porn show, and Marko soon turns to snuff movies to pay the pusher. Luckily for him, in Serbia there's no shortage of miserable suicidal fucks willing to let him gruesomely whack them on camera in exchange for monetary security for their families, post-mortem. A cutter tears into himself with a straight razor, then a shell-shocked soldier gets dome-mugged by a giant mallet, and  a rapist gets his top piece removed with a chainsaw(not complaining here, all of the gore looked the shit). Pretty soon, the porno gang is dropping faster than its many victims; getting shot by the cops, hanging themselves, car accidents, really, you fuckin' name it. If it's gross, it probably happens here. In the end, it's even too much for Marko and his girlfriend, as they open their veins to die in a nice scenic place together. Flush...

" Cervical vertebra! Errr, ummm Timber, I mean. Timber."
The film may have succeeded if the director gave me characters I could relate to on some level, but all I saw on the screen was a miserable Mystery Machine full of miscreants that I not only didn't give a shit about("Oh, I hope the horse-blowing transvestite goat killer ends up okay," said nobody ever, including not this guy),  I couldn't wait for every last one of them to die horribly on camera for subjecting me to such a disgusting mess.  The only two things Porno Gang really handled effectively were the ultra-realistic gore pieces(the grainy war atrocity vid looked pretty straight up at certain points), and also,  moving Serbia further down towards the bottom of the list of places that I'd ever grace with my presence. Not for all the Newport's, petite brunettes, and Green Crack you could muster up. Solo wop-o.

With a resounding crash, Pavle knew the world's record for juggling hula hoops and red paint while nude, wrapped in X-mas lights, and attempting a Superman seat grab, had just slipped through his fingertips.

"Roller Boogie"(1979)d/Mark L. Lester

An hour and forty-three minutes later, to say that the prodigious section of my blood pump reserved unrequitedly for former child star Linda Blair had just been rigorously tested, would be more of an understatement than the following: Joseph Merrick, or 'The Elephant Man', was a curiously-shaped individual.After having scored nominations for an Academy Award and two Golden Globes(fittingly) for her portrayal of Regan MacNeill in The Exorcist(1973), Blair spent much of the rest of the seventies and early eighties assailing her once promising film career with lunkheaded decisions, bizarre romantic pairings, nude pictorials, and even narcotics possession and distribution charges at the tender age of eighteen,  but some things are just unabridgedly unpardonable, baby.Take this movie, for example.Whenever you see footage of the  boardwalk on Venice Beach, California in a movie or on television, there's a good chance you'll spot one or two jackasses rollerskating by, and much of the reason there aren't more of these goons-on-wheels lies sandwiched between the disco-fueled credits here.Together with Skatetown, U.S.A.(1979), and Xanadu(1980), which featured many of the same rollerskaters as tonight's production, Hollywood moved forward with it's next new craze as the once-popular disco scene had pretty much worn out it's national welcome by decade's end.Packed to the brim with nuthugger shorts, Mork suspenders, satin baseball jackets, and more feathered haircuts than Kristy McNicholl's fourteenth birthday party, Boogie plays like a longer, less likeable Annette Funicello beach movie from the sixties, with less Annette and more gay guys on wheels with their nuts hanging out.

Another ten or fifteen minutes just like this might have made it all worthwhile.
We open with what looks to be the entire population of Venice Beach boogieing about the boardwalk on rollerskates, as we're introduced to Bobby James(Jim Bray), the resident phenom on wheels, as he skates to work with his cartoonish pals, Phones, Hoppy, and Gordo(I'd name the actors here, but you really don't care who they are, trust me).Meanwhile on the other side of the tracks in Beverly Hills, we see Terry Barkley(Linda Blair) , the foxy, young concert flautist, decked out in her foxiest Danskin-wear for a ride to the beach in her convertible 1978 Excalibur Phaeton Series III with her  snobbish top-heavy pal, Lana(Kimberly Beck).Bobby spots Terry and is instantly smitten with the affluent rollerskater, who coldly spurns his romantic advances while hiring him to teach her how to skate well enough for the upcoming "roller boogie" contest.You know, I just bet these two are gonna end up terrific friends who thwart some local mobsters trying to close down the popular disco roller rink that everyone boogies at, just in time for the big contest, which they'll win in the end, despite their grossly different tax brackets.I dunno, call it a hunch.Back at the palatial estate, Mother(Beverly Garland) expresses her wishes that Terry skips the roller boogie contest, accepts the slapstick-heavy courtship of cooch-grabbin' upper-crust twit, Franklin(Christopher S. Nelson), and enrolls in Juilliard."But mother," she pouts, like the lost member of Alvin and the Chipmunks."I'm a musical genius...what a drag!What a bummer!"Mother simply doesn't comprehend how cool it is to rollerskate backwards on the boardwalk in a pair of short shorts that shows off your camel toe with a poor man's teenaged, metrosexual Eric Roberts by your side.Damn you, generation gap!

"But mother, I'm a musical genius...what a drag! What a bummer!"
Terry apologizes for having been a spoiled, manipulative cunt to Bobby over breakfast, cuing a lengthy outdoor montage of the duo refining(perfecting is a strong word when your dance partner keeps busting her ass on the pavement) their routine for the big contest.The club owner, Jammer Delany(Sean McClory), is leaned on to sell his place by unscrupulous businessman, Thatcher(Mark Goddard), who happens to be legally represented by Terry's father(Roger Perry).After Bobby's friends destroy a classical musical recital at the Barkley residence(All you rich fucks into the pool!) and Thatcher's henchmen chase Bobby and Terry all over the city in a thrilling, stunt-filled car v. rollerskate chase(wait, wasn't Terry a novice skater like, a minute ago?Oh, nevermind.) while Bobby's black buddy, Phones, momentarily joins the Hare Krishnas for whatever reason, Bobby finds a drunken Jammer passed out in the dj booth at the club, and decides the best medicine for the stressed-out owner, is an elaborate solo skate routine.Makes perfect sense.Phones records Thatcher threatening Jammer on his tape recorder, negating the roller rink sale, then it's roller-groovy, roller boogie contest time.Terry and Bobby win the trophy afterall, then share a bittersweet goodbye, as she gives him the trophy before setting off  for New York City, while he prepares for the coming Olympics, determined to win a Gold for the U.S. in, ummm, rollerskating, I guess?

I have no idea what the fuck's going on here, nor do I want to.
As the story goes, Canadian actor David Kennedy was replaced as the male lead when his real life romance with Blair fizzled during the production, leading the filmmakers to use a stunt double, amateur rollerskating champ, Jim Bray, instead.Besides the two or three months his Eric Roberts-esque grill was plastered all over candy fap for teenaged girls, like Tiger Beat, upon the film's release, you'll no doubt remember him...in...yeah, nothing.Blair allegedly developed bursitis in her hip from all the Danskin-clad ass-busting she did on skates for the production, to which I say, we're still not even, Linda-baby.A sore hip simply doesn't compare to the grotesque imagery depicted on the screen and forever seared into my memory.I just hope you guys appreciate the lengths I go to keep you entertained here at the Wop, and the irreparable damage sitting through crap like this has, no doubt, caused me.Screening this one silently, with some Electric Wizard blaring through your speakers as you ogle the adorable Blair as she rolls groovily through inane dialogue and uninspired love scenes might get you all the way through this one, but I doubt it.One Wop.

Incendiary romance was never like this!Seriously, it never was.

"The Possession of Joel Delaney"(1972)d/Waris Hussein

I hadn't seen this one since the days when staying up 'til eleven to catch the end of a horror movie on a school night was an effective bargaining chip towards my behavior for an entire afternoon, if the mood struck me, and apart from the dumb title and Shirley MacLaine, one of the hotter redheads of her day, for sure, I'd remembered practically nothing from it.Never a good omen when revisiting movies like these I've come to find out.Directed by Waris Hussein, who'd helmed the original Dr. Who serial in '63(I'm a Tom Baker/Jon Pertwee guy myself), oddly enough, and predating The Exorcist by a year, Delaney showcases the lush New York exteriors of yesteryear, some tame, phony gore, an outrageous Mex-orcism with flaming feet, cigars, and whiskey, and Perry "Riptide" King in his first role, as a rich white hippie who somehow manages to get himself possessed by a murderous piped-in hispanic stereotype that causes him to cut the heads off of the women in his life.King says the role, where he forces his own niece's face into dog food and nephew to dance around in his birthday suit, was the best he's ever gotten.Don't expect the usual projectile vomiting, appearance of stigmata, levitation, or readable welts in this take, instead,  look for a leather jacket, slicked-back hair, and a stiletto as signs that gringo Delaney has undergone la posesión, in one of the hokiest Indio portrayals on film since West Side Story.I was half-expecting Perry to appear in an oversized sombrero and droopy moustache for the finale, leaning against Port Authority, too siesta-ed out to terrorize much of any-Juan, errr, anyone, sorry.Two Mules for Sister Sara(1970), it ain't.

You know it was a real ballbuster of a party last night, when...
A party full of well-to-do Manhattan snobs is attended by recent divorcee Norah Benson(Shirley MacLaine) and her younger brother, Joel Delaney(Perry King), a Bohemian from the East Village who's just returned from Tangiers.The parvenus mistake Joel for Nora's new lover, and judging by the looks she fires at Joel's ex, Sherry(Barbara Trentham), they might not be that far off with their assumptions.Days later, after he fails to attend a dinner she's planned for him and a phone call to his Spanish Harlem apartment nets her only strange music and choking sounds, she pays him a visit, only to arrive just in time to see him being led from his stoop in cuffs, having just made an attempt on his landlord's life.After learning that her brother is being evaluated in Bellvue's psych ward from her ex-husband, a prominent surgeon, she enters Joel's pad, finding symbolism used in Santeria painted on the wall, and...a switchblade(insert 50's sci-fi theremin here).At the squirrel farm, she tells her sibling, who remembers nothing of the incident that led to his incarceration, to admit to having been on drugs so he can be released into her care.Dr. Lorenz(Lovelady Powell), Joel's former shrink, asks him why someone of such affluence would want to live where he does, to which, he explains his shared wavelength with the locals and his friendship to one Tonio Pérez.Back at Norah's, the siblings' creepy repoire degenerates into sex questions before Joel can escape out a window to the discotheque, where he spots a pissed up Sherry, being chatted up by a host of male admirers.He gives it to her, hard style, afterwards at her high rise flat.At the juvenile birthday party Norah holds for him, he leads Sherry on a Peter Pan-styled wild goosechase for a missing earring, which he attaches to a helium balloon and sets into the atmosphere, before nearly setting her hair on fire with the cake candles as a dubbed voice insults her en Espanol.When Norah stops in on Sherry the next morning, she finds her decapitated body next to her blatantly phony head, which is suspended from a houseplant by the hair.A detective asks her if Joel has any Puerto Rican friends...dun dun DUN!It turns out there were three unsolved low profile murders of Puerto Rican girls last summer believed to have been committed by Tonio Pérez, who has since gone missing himself.

!!Matando Gueros!! Machete en mano y sangre india caliente!
After her maid up and quits, she sends Norah to Don Pedro (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez), a strange little guy who runs a witchcraft general store and arranges a crazy Santerian Mex-orcism with Norah and Tonio's mother in attendance.The woman admits that her son committed the murders, but that her husband had killed him for it shortly afterwards.Pedro explains that Tonio's evil soul now possesses Joel, and to remove it requires his dramatic barefooted prancing around with a sash tied around his head, spitting liquor, shouting, and smoking cigars.Of course, Tonio isn't interested in relinquishing power over Delaney, as evidenced by Joel's barricading himself in at home and shouting in Spanish, which leads Norah to snatch up the kids and take them to the family beach house far from the whole, troubling, supernatural enchilada.After a night of much needed rest, she awakens to find Lorenz's muy phony disembodied domepiece among the canned goods above the fridge, and even more troublingly, Joel, decked out in a leather jacket, with his hair slicked back, wielding a switchblade, and not looking or sounding the least bit hispanic, in her very midst.Ah, but this isn't Joel holding his niece and nephew at knifepoint as cops surround the property, aggressively gutting the fish they'd just caught, insulting them in Spanish, before forcing the girl's face into a bowl o' dog food, and ordering the boy to strip naked and dance.This is Tonio, pendejos, or what Perry King imagines such a homicidal hispanic would be like, anyway.When the kids run out of the house, Joel follows suit, and is abruptly plugged in the breadbasket by one of the officers.Norah cradles his dying body in her arms, puts on a "This place could use a StickUp!" face(this is what's known as 'conveying a soul transference' in the acting community, apparently), takes the stiletto from her brother's lifeless hand and turns upwards towards an attending cop nearby, now possessed herself.Freeze frame.Roll credits.

"Let's see...we've got some purple stuff, Sunny D, or your Uncle Joel's therapist's head??"
Hussein would feature prominently as one of the BBC's top directors over the next several decades.MacLaine has authored several books during her prolific acting career, while her real life brother, Warren Beatty, is nothing like her cinematic one, I would think.Ironically, she would be the basis for the Chris O'Neill character in The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, which would be released as a film a year later.King would go on to appear in tv-movie Deadly Visitor the following year, and score roles in Mandingo(1975), Lipstick(1976), and Bad(1977) before the decade was through.Veronica, Norah's maid, is played by Miriam Colon, who you'll remember as Tony Montana's mother in Scarface(1983).She looks pretty damned good here, too, if I might say so myself.Apparently, the dvd spares us the full sequence of the fully nude thirteen year old boy that's present in the theatrical cut and VHS release of the film.I dunno, what's left in was disturbing enough to me and I mean that in the least flattering way possible.Who shot this, Ulli Lommel? For most discerning horror fans, this thing gets long-winded in a hurry, with precious little action to keep them from D.T.F.O.-ing(dozing the fuck off) in the recliner, the sexy MacLaine, notwithstanding.Final Tally:No scares, no atmosphere, very little red stuff, and only One of these:

A stiletto, Shirley? How Latino of you...

"Midnight"(1982)d/John Russo

I'm willing to forgive NOTLD co-writer John Russo for the folly of much of his cinematic output since his famous collaboration with George A., with special emphasis on his mordacious handling of the so-called 30th Anniversary recut, rescored, (retarded) re-imagining of the b&w Romero zombie classic.Instead, tonight we'll take a look the 1982 film version of his novel, first published in 1980, a mostly uncoordinated, slow moving, minor effort, with occasional moments of eerie backwoods atmosphere and amateur splatter.Working with a skeleton crew, light-damaged cheapo film stock, and mostly unreliable amateur actors, while the cut-happy MPAA censors neutered his horrific theological vision, Russo still manages to insert some quality unease into his directorial debut, sort of a TCM meets Deranged vibe going on here.Until the advent of dvds, most of Midnight's juicy bits ended up on the cutting room floor, with the craptastic Vidmark VHS release from the early eighties still stale on my mind, though Arrow's transfer looks to be an equally murky dub from weathered video source materials(as evidenced by the time coding at the top of some of my screenshots, eh).Apart from Lawrence Tierney and John Amplas, the cast, garbed in what looks like a  J.C. Penny's sidewalk sale run on 1978 backstocked polyester and denim, is mostly forgettable, though antagonists David Marchick, Greg Besnak, and Robin Walsh run the gamut from gleefully sadistic to stiltedly comical as the family of hayseed Satanists.Melanie Verlin as the female lead is neither effective nor particularly swell to look at, for that matter.The headache-inducing AM Gold-esque synth score that perfectly accentuates the disco wear and shag carpeted van interiors within, if you see where I'm goin' here. Russo delights in padding out already snore-worthy driving and walking sequences throughout the movie, still, there's that foreboding dread, sporadic as it may be, that rises out of his frame that's rare for slashers of the era.You could do a lot worse than a movie like this on a Wednesday night, I guess.

Five words no girl ever wants to hear: "Come to Lawrence Tierney, baby..."
We see what looks to be Jimmy Peterson's little sister screaming her fool head off while snagged in an animal trap, before Momma(Jackie Nicoll)  can convince her brood that the terrified girl is really a demon in disguise, and in desperate need of a hearty clobberin' with an axe handle.Back at the farmhouse, we see the girl sacrificed to the dark lord and master with a single plunge of a sizeable dagger, as wielded by Cynthia(Debra Smith) .Over the credits, it gets even more diabolical, as Nancy Johnson(Melanie Verlin) gives a juicy confession(she's committed sins o' th' flaish with her boyfriend...wait, chicks that looked like the leisure version of Prince Valiant got laid in the early eighties? It can't be.) and is told she oughta be burning in Hell for sharing her cunt before marriage the way she's done, by cracky!At home, it might even be worse for the old looking teen, who's drunkenly ogled and groped by her own stepdad(Lawrence Tierney) before braining him with a transistor radio(!) and thumbing her way outta town before he comes to, and she has to hear him say, "Why don't ya just relax and let Daddy make ya feel good?" again.To strains of easy listening AM radio'd be too embarrassed to play, Nancy hops in a shagged out delivery van on it's way to Fla, as piloted by a checkered pair of squares, Tom and Hank, and together, they embark on a corny driving montage complete with racial tensions in a saloon, and a black preacher at a gas station who's barely able to spit out some exposition about missing locals, gas cans, and anti-black sentiment in the area before a yokel can bark at him.The priest gets knifed up in a nearby graveyard and his daughter gets C.T.F.O.ed in the tub by a snickering mountain of a good ol' boy while our heroes steal groceries, netting them anti-climactic cop chase that lands them directly in the center of fucking nowhere.Meanwhile, back home, Nancy's stepdad breaks it to Mom that she's been showing off her little body to him whenever she gets the chance, and he's kept it from her out of love.Larry Tierney a sex magnet?Now I've seen it all...

If you give tonsilectomies with a rusty machete in a rundown farmhouse, you might be a redneck.
Our gang awakens from their camping overnighter with gun barrels in their faces the next morning, courtesy of Abraham(John Amplas) and Luke(Greg Besnak), dressed as cops.Hank, cuffed, makes a break for it, and pays with a point blank execution headshot from Abe, who later plugs Tom in the heart, savin' taxpayers money an' all.The trigger-happy badges chase Nancy through the woods to a farmhouse where Cynthia(Robin Walsh) deals Solitaire while her brother Cyrus(David Marchick) gigglingly saws off a victim's head with a machete.Why, these are the same evil brats from the pre-credit sequence, all grown up and twice as psychotic.I see what you did there.The siblings squabble about having three sacrifices to Satan for Easter(I was unaware Satan even celebrated beyond your obligatory basket full of chocolate bunnies and eggs like the rest of us) while Nancy gets cozy in a dog cage, next to Gwen, another kenneled up cutie for the festivities.The boys burn the burgeoning pile of bodies and snatch another shapely young victim while Luke shanks up her husband in a nearby woodpile, following up on the promise he'd made earlier to his mother's mummified corpse in the attic.The first girl gets herself an extra mouth during the pentagram-heavy ceremony,  her blood caught in a chalice and fed to the siblings' mother's rotting cadaver while Nancy quietly gives an act of contrition from her cage.While the boys make Tom's van disappear, they're spotted by Burt, Nancy's stepdad, who's on the case like Kojak, if Kojak was an uglier, heavier drunk who fancied molesting his own stepdaughter, that is.Burt flashlights the shit outta Luke's domepiece and holds Cyrus and Abe at gunpoint, demanding they return his blow up do-uhhh, daughter, to him.In the melee, Cynthia jabs Burt with her dagger, Burt shoots Cyrus in the head, Nancy scythes Cynthia's throat, and later sets a resurrected Luke ablaze with a gas can and a match in the barn.Abe is dead somewhere too, I think.Cue that rotten title track one last time, thankfully, and let's recoup our losses already.

With her hair and makeup done, Mama was finally ready for the family photo at Sears.
Russo would follow tonight's review up with things like Midnight 2: Sex, Death and Videotape(1993), the direct-to-video sequel, Scream Queens' Naked Christmas(1996), and Santa Claws(1996), while chisel-faced Brooklyn tough guy Lawrence Tierney would  appear in genre offerings like 1987's The Offspring, The Prowler(1981), Chris Gore's Red(1992), The Horror Show(1989), and even that Tarantino cat's own debut, Reservoir Dogs(1992), as Joe 'Mr. Big' Cabot.Juicy.Real juicy, Junior.John Amplas, an always likable  Romero regular and favorite of mine, starred in Martin(1976), got shot off a rooftop in Dawn of the Dead(1978), played a mime in Knightriders(1981), rose from the grave in Creepshow(1982), and donned a lab coat in Day of the Dead(1985).While we're on the subject, Verlin would turn up in Romero's Monkey Shines(1988).Savini would stay busy throughout the decade, lending his effects wizardry to productions like Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter(1984), Creepshow 2(1987), and the 1990 Argento/Romero film, Due occhi diabolici, while appearing in direct-to-video titles like United's The Ripper(1985), which we'll be taking a gander at in the days to come.Despite Savini's credit for providing makeups and effects for tonight's feature, in the Arrow dvd featurette, "“Midnight at your Door: The Shocking Sacrifices of John A. Russo”, we hear the writer/director admit to fabricating much of the film's stabbing/slashing effects himself, even taking a potshot at Savini for his work on the mummified corpse in the finale.Also noteworthy, is Bill Hinzman, NOTLD's legendary 'Cemetery Zombie', who provided still photography for the movie.A technical dud, but worth a look, regardless.One Wop.

Nancy(Melanie Verlin)'s refusal to go on the paper lands her in the 'Punishment Kennel'.