"Una sull'altra" (1969) d/ Lucio Fulci

One of the main reasons I decided to keep with the Italian genre motif from last October for the site's return (besides my discreetly extreme favorable prejudice towards it!), was the volume of lesser known, underrated gems I'd lined up for you before my latest computer crash, and I just couldn't ignore some of these for another twelve months or the next gimmicky month I happen to dream up between then. Granted, I've been trudging you through some oddities of little renown and even less concern this month, but tonight, your patience has been rewarded with the first Fulci review I've got on tap.  
A Lucio-verture of lush cinematography, beautiful women in various states of undress, and epic treachery is what you'll be treated to, and just what you'd expect from a film proponent of Fulci's level of mastery while he was at his very best. Helping him to realize his vision are Jean Sorel, familiar to genre fans from his turns in  A Lizard in a Woman's Skin  and The Short Night of Glass Dolls (both 1971), as well as 1973's Day of the Jackal, and Marisa Mell, who'd previously worked with no less than Mario Bava himself on Danger: Diabolik a year earlier, later appearing in giallo fave, Seven Bloodstained Orchids (1972). The excellent score was famously provided by the iconic Riz Ortolani. Let's get on top of this one, shall we?


I see what you did there, Lucio.
It seems there's this doctor in San Francisco named Dumerrier (Jean Sorel), who's anchored to a money pit clinic that he runs with his brother (Alberto de Mendoza) and  prior marriage vows to his sickly, asthmatic wife, Susan (Marisa Mell), which are keeping him from running off for good with his healthier paramour, Jane (Elsa Martinelli). Of course, he's not all conscience, this one, as he's left his wheezing burden in the charge of a nurse named Betty as he leaves on a trip to secure some crucial financial backing for the clinic. Just kidding, he's off galavanting at the casino with his fidanzata, Jane, when news of his wife's sudden death is delivered to him, along with some insurance policy mumbojumbo about a two million dollar policy that he's the sole heir of. Something about sedatives mistaken for asthma medication... Of all the lucky breaks a guy can have...you would think.


Guardate! Eccolo.
Soon afterwards, George excuses himself from dinner with Jane to receive an anonymous call, suggesting he check out the headliner at the local strip club, where the good doctor is taken by a certain female sex performer named Monica, who just so happens to be identical to his late wife, save for eye and hair color. Che coincidenza! Such a coincidence, in fact, that George gets slapped into a jail cell, while Monica is taken in for questioning, herself. As you might have imagined, there are several dizzying directions the mysterious narrative can veer off on from here, and Fulci masterfully explores all possibilities before revealing the true course of the film's script, which he also co-wrote, The formula is successful, and the resulting genre staple twists and turns, which I will leave for you to discover on your own when you score yourselves a copy from the fine folks who've made it available over at Severin, bring it all to a very satisfying climax, thanks to another spoiler-free wrap up here from your pal, Wop.
  

Fulci crea una Godiva moderna. C'e' spazio su di esso per un uomo come tutti gli uomini e nessun uomo? 
I feel like the maestro was at the top of his game during the period in which this film was made, and along with Beatrice Cenci (1969), Una lucertola con la pelle di donna aka/ A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), and Non si sevizia un paperino aka/ Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), representing the director's strongest work; a perfect introduction to film buffs that might otherwise ignore his vast artistic merits on the notoriety that his later, more exploitative efforts would be met with, outside of the gore crowd. There are touches of that Lucio here to behold, as well, a mere hint of the floodgates of violence he would help to open later in the decade. I'd suggest that One on Top of the Other, Perversion Story, whatever title you choose to refer to it by, is a must-see for anybody interested in catching some top shelf cinema, regardless of what that person's personal cinematic preference might be. On the scale, the four Wops of perfection have again been bestowed upon the genius that is Lucio Fulci. Recommended.


Holy smokes! Jessica Lange could use a V8.

"Welcome to Arrow Beach" (1974) d/ Laurence Harvey

This lost seventies slasher/ "Psycho" clone would be the last movie appearance for former top shelf British actor Laurence Harvey, who also directed and allegedly edited  the picture from a phone on his death bed, as he lie dying of stomach cancer that would claim his life at forty-five, six months before the film saw an official release. It would be re-released two years later, under the title Tender Flesh, and the Magnetic Video VHS of the film interestingly stands as the second horror movie ever released on the then-virgin media format. Instead of Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed co-starring as advertised (under the working title Yellow-Headed Summer, a year earlier),  the likes of Meg Foster, Stuart Whitman, John Ireland, and Joanna Pettet appear instead, to help Harvey complete his final, somewhat bloody cinematic vision.


"This your bag of shnoz rockets, pinko hippie?", ask the tolerant cops.
Robbin Stanley (Meg Foster) is a happenin' hippie hitchhiker making her way across California, who's latest ride is a coked-out charmer in a banana yellow Model A ("Nice mams!" is his opening line) who leads the police on a high-speed chase that ends in a construction zone crash. Despite their conservative drape leanings, the cops let her go, even after finding an eight ball of coke tucked away under the eight track player. She nonchalantly wanders from the crash site onto Arrow Beach, where she skinny dips under the watchful camera lens of one Jason Henry (Laurence Harvey), who lives in a nearby mansion with his sister, Grace (Joanna Pettet). Jason takes the stray in, amid jealous protest from his sister, feeds her a juicy steak*, and gives her hippie ass a much needed bubble bath. Though Robbin is grooving on Jason's wealth and seems receptive to the idea of giving him some poonany, he louses it up when his incessant late night whacking at slabs of human meat in the basement with an oversized cleaver sends the teenager, bloody and hysterical, screaming from the premises.


Spray that brush burn with some mercurochrome or it'll scar up on you...
With Robbin laid up in the hospital with an arm she injured while climbing out a basement window, Jason reports the incident to the police, destroying her credibility with some planted leftover anti-psychotics in her handbag from a flashback stint in Korean War that he survived through cannibalism. Grace, not only his loyal sibling but also his incestuous lover (like, bleeech, dudes), helps validate his story to Deputy Rakes (Stuart Whitman, who'd seemingly scored as many police roles as Claude Akins by this point), who naturally believes her, sending Robbin out of town on the first available bus, on the promise that she never return. Meanwhile, Jason takes in a weatherbeaten old hooker (burlesque star Gloria LeRoy) who'd been raped and jacked by a biker on the beach outside his mansion, and while snapping some profile shots of her, he introduces his sizable cleaver to the shoot, and makes a real mess of things. Robbin hitches a ride back to Arrow Beach, to the apartment of a young med tech named Alex (David Macklin), and they descend upon the very basement for proof of Jason's misdeeds that night...


Cleaver-hacked old hooker for dinner tonight, again?
When the movie was picked up from Warner Brothers by Brut (Thanks, Faberge'. I enjoy slasher movies and your shaving cream...), they excised nearly fifteen minutes from the print, and most of the cannibalism elements, though it's interesting to note that Tobe Hooper released his legendary cannibal epic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same year. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, the loungey-sounding title track was crooned by none other than Lou Rawls (!), putting to rest the idea I used to have that he'd only had one song, "You're Gonna Miss My Lovin' ", that he sang repeatedly, for years and years. You live and learn, I guess. Beautiful Pa. native Meg Foster and her icy blue eyes would later turn up in things like John Carpenter's They Live(1988) and Niko Mastorakis' The Wind (1986). As it stands, there's no official dvd or Blu-ray release of this one yet, and there really ought to be, as it's a tense little blood-splashed thriller that merits a respectable deuce on the scale. Hunt a print down for yourselves.


"...What a horrible picture, man, he shoulda had his f-stop much lower...and just look at that light fall off..."
*probably not steak at all.

"The Incubus" (1981) d/John Hough

I had to have come away sourly after the first time I saw tonight's review back in the VHS eighties, my usually unreachable teenage expectations of demon screen time and goopy levels of gore having been largely unrealized. I probably even brought the tape back on time, too, as I had a habit of doing whenever the movie didn't grab me. I mean, I must have done that, as I really hadn't watched this one since the Chachi-hair/fragstache days, not something I can say about too many horror movies. An unfair assessment on my part, it turns out, as Incubus contains some fairly moody and effective stuff, underneath the conventional crime drama vibe that's maintained throughout by an especially touchy-feely John Cassavetes and company, leading up to what's gotta be one of the better "Huh??" climaxes in genre history.


...hot enough to fry both your eggs out there, mama. Too late.
We kick off with an unseen fiend rubbing out an unfortunate pair of young lovers who foolishly decide to have a swim at the old quarry, and after using a rundown change shack nearby for prank's sake, which everybody knows, is never a good idea in movies like this, they end up rape-killed and clobbered with a bat with obligatory protruding nail, respectively, for their youthful folly.When the slimy new physician in town, Dr. Cordell (Cassavetes) isn't being creepy about his own daughter Jenny (Erin Flannery) or extensively rubbing people's faces during conversations, he's investigating a recent series of ultra-violent sexual murders that share the same massive vaginal trauma and unusually abundant amount of discharge therein. Cordell's especially impressed with the semen, for some reason, raving about it on several occasions.


S'okay honey, I had the rape-proof glass put in last week.
Meanwhile, Jenny's reclusive beau Tim Galen has been having livid dreams of torture that just so happen to coincide with the murders. His mollycoddling grandmother knows more than she's letting on, too.If that's not enough, the seemingly apathetic drunk that wears the sheriff's badge (John Ireland) has been staving the journalistic inquiries of a masochistic sex bomb of a reporter (Kerry Keane) off, and she somehow ends up romantically linked to Cordell, who may or may not have done in his own girlfriend in a jealous rage, mind you. If you guessed that she's a dead ringer for his old flame, give yourselves a pat on the back. It turns out that the Galen family were renowned for their witch-hunting skills, the last successful hunt transpiring some thirty years ago, bagging a sorceress who'd been impregnated by her incubus(!), the conception somehow resulting in eighteen year old Tim, who can naturally channel the horny hellion's line of sight while asleep. That climax that I mentioned before, occurs thereafter, and I'll leave it for you to experience for yourselves.


Thus, the riddle of Eddie Money's face was solved, once and for all.
You'll instantly spot Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson in a well glammy cameo here, performing with Samson. Director Hough helmed Twins of Evil  for Hammer in 1971, and also the superb Legend of Hell House (1973), a haunted house movie par excellence, as well as Disney efforts Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and 1983's Watcher in the Woods, with Bette Davis. You probably won't class tonight's review with the best of those titles, and the flawed script might leave your head spinning at certain points, but over all, it's still a pretty good time for genre fans, and as such, it earns three big ones on the ratings scale. Check it out...


"Relax, guys, John Cassavetes'll vouch for my sperm count..."