"A Taste of Evil" (1971) d/ John Llewellyn Moxey

Tonight's review, another made-for-tv horror movie as directed by John Llewellyn Moxey, made its small screen debut seven days after my second birthday way back in 1971. Though I've managed to catch it a couple of times over the years, it's pretty safe to say that I probably missed it that first time around, on playpen lockdown or something. Standard genre fare boosted by the presence of the late Barbara Stanwyck, who I became familiar with during my teenage years while timer recording kung fu movies one late night, and accidentally ending up with Double Indemnity (1944) at the end of a video tape, and coming away pleasantly surprised. Also aboard here are Barbara Parkins, of Peyton Place (1964) fame, who was in the middle of a nice run of genre roles at the time, with Mephisto Waltz (1971), tonight's production, and an episode of the short-lived Circle of Fear series, and let's not forget seventies horror staple, Roddy McDowall.


"Three Oscar nominations?? Sorry, wrong number.", snaps Miriam (Barbara Stanwyck).
Susan (Barbara Parkins) returns home as an adult to her sizable estate in the country, after being raped in her playhouse in the woods as a child by a shadowy stranger had left her on a seven year mental institution bed. Though her mother, Miriam (Barbara Stanwyck), still dotes over her adoringly, and the old caretaker, John (Arthur O'Connell), seems nice enough, if not a little simple-minded, Susan is convinced that somebody is watching her from the property, and to make matters worse, she keeps seeing Miriam's booze-adled beau, Harold (William Windom),  dead everywhere...in the limousine, drowned in the bathtub. A local doctor named Lomas (Roddy McDowall) examines the distraught woman, and suggests that perhaps her visions are all a product of her subconscious, brought on by her return to the scene of the earlier unsolved sex crime.


"Smoke a couple of hog's legs, listen to your Sugarloaf eight track, and call me in the morning..."
After being ankle-grabbed by Harold's waterlogged corpse in the woods, Susan retreats to her playhouse, where John has precariously left his shotgun while hunting a pesky fox. Huddled in the shadows with the loaded gun, she blasts the menacing silhouette in the doorway, only to find that she has accidentally killed Harold, and has just bought herself a one way ticket back to the squirrel farm, permanent-ish. Back at the estate, Miriam, decked out in her best jewelry, haughtily celebrates with John, as he prepares to dispose of the Harold mannequin they've used to keep Susan teetering on the brink of sanity. Miriam reveals that John was the rapist all those years ago, and she was glad he had done it(!) and has always hated her. Except that Harold has started phoning her from beyond the grave...


"Oh, but love grows where my rosemary goes, and nobody knows like me.", remarks John (Arthur O'Connell).
Jimmy Sangster, who directed The Horror of Frankenstein (1970) and Lust For a Vampire (1971) for Hammer Studios, wrote the screenplay for tonight's movie, a near carbon copy of his earlier script for Scream of Fear (1961), save for the characters and locations, which he simply Americanized for the Aaron Spelling production. The first half plods along rather slowly, despite a brisk running time of just over an hour, but then Stanwyck takes over and carries the film on her shoulders towards a satisfying climax, though the plot twists may have aged less gracefully and lack the punch they might have packed back in 1971. Still, pretty enjoyable stuff, especially if made-for-tv horror is your bag. Two solid wops on the scale. Score yourself a copy.


"Susan, would you like a quaalude? Uncle Roman brought you one..."

"The Legend of Hell House" (1973) d/ John Hough

In the late sixties and early seventies,  lots of folks were tuned in on the far out, such as witchcraft, ghosts, the occult, and paranormal investigation. Tonight's movie, for example, is a classic haunted house movie, full of creepy atmosphere, shadows and whispers turning to screams at midnight, and spectral, otherworldly presences up to no good, indeed,  in the gothic locale of Blenheim Palace, with familiar genre faces like Roddy MacDowall and Pamela Franklin among the ranks of the mortals setting out to endure a week inside the estate investigating the malevolent spirits who call it home. What really elevates this one above it's standard plot, besides several gripping performances from the cast,  is an engaging screenplay full of tense moments by the one and only Richard Matheson, based upon his own novel, Hell House.


Keep your hundred grand, I'd live here for free.
Mr. Deutsch hires a team of experts to spend an entire week inside the fog-enshrouded Belasco House, which has come to be known as "Hell House", and "the Mt. Everest of haunted houses", thanks to the previous failed attempts to do the same that resulted in death, disfigurement, and loss of sanity in all takers save for one: Ben Fischer (Roddy MacDowall), a physical medium who's willing to give it another try for the hundred thousand dollars that Deutsch promises anyone who survives. Also along for the ride are a young spiritual medium named Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin), and a haughty disbeliever of a psychologist named Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill), who plans to use the seven day experience to disprove the existence of life after death with a bulky machine that will negate rogue electromagnetic energy, which he surmises is the true culprit behind the house's phenomena, and finally, his sexually frustrated wife, Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), who's thumbing a ride to planet Orgasmo.


Somebody pack Dr. Barrett (Clive Revill) a bibbity, he's having a rough week.
Instantly, Florence believes she's made contact with the restless spirit of Belasco's illegitimate son, Daniel, and the medium is used during readings to manifest physical phenomena like objects moving on their own and as a lightning rod for materializing ethereal presences that float in the air around her hands and face. Fischer, who's seen it all before, remains tight lipped save for several desperate warnings to everybody to vacate the premises at once, while they're still able, as evidenced by the skeptical Barrett's getting beat down with every dangerous object in the room as it hurls at him, unexplainedly. While Mrs. B repeatedly throws herself at Ben, her husband hurls accusations at Florence, while malevolently misleading poltergeists serve her up the roughest invisi-rape this side of The Entity, while hurling huge, deadly crucifixes down upon her. After Barrett runs his machine, Ben declares the house is clean, but the psychologist succumbs directly to another psychic attack, leaving only the medium and the new widow to solve the mystery of the homicidal home before they're added to its legendary body count...


"...and the music was soothing, and they all started grooving...yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!"
Whether you're talking about genre classics like William Castle's House on Haunted Hill(1959), The Haunting (1963), or tonight's entry, or even later things like Rose Red (2002) or John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987), the haunted house premise remains pretty interchangeable. Experts risk life and limb to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts for a great reward. Like I mentioned earlier, it's Matheson's meaty dialog as acted out here by the late great MacDowall, who purveyed fear in his eyes like few actors before or since, in my opinion, and even Franklin, who's always had a beautiful scream for horror movies, I think, that really sets the production apart from the rest. Director Hough, no stranger to the genre himself (Twins of Evil, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Watcher in the Woods, The Incubus, to name just a few),  handles the eerie material well, as always. Hell House earns Three Wops, and comes very highly recommended. See it if you dare...


"I'm so excited that I'm experiencing great difficulty in trying to hide it," notes Emeric Belasco (Michael Gough).

"Arnold"(1973)d/Georg Fenady

One thing people aren't likely to reminisce about when pondering the late Bing Crosby's storied life and career, is much of his Bing Crosby Productions company's output in the seventies, of which tonight's review is a lesser specimen, no doubt.I vaguely remember the movie's original release, thanks to some tv spots that featured eyes behind paintings that creeped out my three or four year old ass at the time, but negative reviews and word of mouth sent the release into relative obscurity immediately afterwards.It wasn't until a video store clearance sale years later that it'd reappear on my radar in the form of a Lightning Video vhs copy, ironically the last official release of the film in any format; the same videotape I'd wisely back up to dvd with all the packaging bells and whistles, stickler for detail I, no doubt, am.Probably more effort than the film, a weird and mostly unfunny ham-off between familiar genre faces like Roddy McDowall, Victor Buono, and Stella Stevens, upon a gothic studio set, was really worth the more I think about it.Still, it's not altogether without merit, so long as by 'merit' you don't mean 'M.A.S.H.'s Jamie Farr masquerading as a badly made up Hindu with an eye patch', which, by the way, this movie just happens to have covered, thankyouverymuch.That being said, I can't see anybody going out of their way to get a new release for the film, a la certain moustacchioed gents I know with an affinity for 3D spaghetti westerns, but it may appease certain cinephiles enough to give it an hour and a half while Wednesday night-surfing Google Video, where it currently rests, undisturbed, to this very day.

Arnold(Norman Stuart) seems to have gone all stiff at the thought of Robert(Roddy McDowall) gaffling his inheritance.
The film begins with an English caretaker and constable looking on as the funeral procession of local tycoon Lord Arnold Dwellyn(Norman Stuart) as the proceedings abruptly change to a wedding ceremony between the recently deceased and a buxom young thang named Karen(Stella Stevens)(!), much to the dismay of the congregated wedding party, comprised of Arnold's younger brother Robert(Roddy McDowall), his widow, Lady Jocelyn(Shani Wallis), his cousin Douglas Whitehead(Patric Knowles), his doting sister Hester(Elsa Lanchester), Whitehead's law partner, Evans(Farley Granger), and his mysterious Hindu(not really) manservant, Dybbi(Jamie Farr).Constable Hooke(Bernard Fox) decides to sneak a peak at the affair, only to watch the soused vicar(Victor Buono) ask a man's coffin if he takes Karen to be his lawfully wedded wife.A pre-recorded tape of the cadaver's voice piped through a tape deck in the coffin responds appropriately without cue.Hmmm, that's strange.The policeman and caretaker are invited to the reading of Arnold's will, where most of his fortune goes to his lovely new wife provided she stand near to her husband's cadaver for the rest of her life, while miserable pittance bequeathals are doled out to his other family members, and goose eggs for his brother.When the guests are taken aback by their late relative's future money plans, the cassette answers their queries as if he were alive in the room with them.The cryptic tapes continue to turn up at the manor, warning against feelings of anger and greed from his family, though, you just know the circling vultures are about to get their just desserts somehow...

Less material, more flesh from Stella Stevens here, and I'd consider upping it a Wop, to be sure.
Arnold's widow inherits the Rolls Royce and a cosmetic company, but when she samples a facial cream, it reacts violently, disfiguring her face and doing the old girl in before she can scheme any further with Evans.Meanwhile, Karen and Robert have been discreetly planning a getaway for two, but when Arnold seemingly follows the adulterers to Robert's pad, he hurries back to the manor, where a custom crushed red velvet suit for Arnold's body has arrived, and when he tries it on, it constricts around his body until he upchucks his own innards.Karen desperately turns to Whitehead for a way out of her agreement, to which Douglas offers to help for half of the inheritance money plus fringe benefits, the old dog.Whitehead samples some of Arnold's expensive cognac to celebrate his recent good fortune, only to end up being compacted in the back of a garbage truck when the drink turns out to be drugged.Karen turns to Evans with the same deal she offered Douglas, innadvertently getting Dybbi beheaded when he searches the basement lab for Arnold's hidden fortune.After Evans and Karen get themselves crushed to death in a shower with shrinking walls, Hester reveals that she and her dead brother dreamt up the whole scheme to rid themselves of greedy inheritors, and that all of his inheritance will ultimately go to her.When Arnold's final tape begins to sound too cocky for Hester's tastes, she has his body cremated immediately.After snuffing the caretaker with a spade, she stumbles upon Arnold's secret hiding place for his riches while interring his remains in the crypt.She crawls into the secret room to gloat over the money, but a moving wall seals her in permanently as another cassette of Arnold wisecracks that expected such betrayal from Hester, and they'd be together forever now.Outside, Hester's cat traps a raven behind a tombstone as the constable obliviously rides off on his bicycle, while the bird tears the feline to pieces off-camera...

Arnold's painting can see me sawing logs on the couch.
The late Fenady also helmed 1973's Terror in the Wax Museum for Bing, with Ray Milland, John Carradine, and much of the cast from tonight's feature, as well, and countless episodes of television shows over the years, which he was much better suited for, imho.Stevens would appear in genre fare like blaxploitation classics Slaughter(1972) and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold(1975), horror like 1979's The Manitou, and even Chained Heat(1983).If you're into genre film and you don't know Roddy McDowall by now, you're a lost cause, for sure.Grand dame Lanchester only played Frankenstein's monster's titular bride back in '35, while we're at it.If you're unfamiliar with her...alright, I'll stop.Shani Wallis sang the cheesy title song that'll make your life miserable for days after watching, as well as appearing in tonight's movie.Like I may have mentioned earlier, Arnold is a strange little flick, with a hardcore made-for-tv vibe about it, that showcases some inventive deaths while failing epically at making the viewer snicker.If you're into McDowall or any of the others, it may be worth tracking down for a screening.As it stands, it merits a wholly average two Wops on the scale.

Elsa Lanchester looks older than the piles of cash she's surrounded by here.

"Laserblast"(1978)d/Michael Rae

Tonight's review, not to be confused with the Activision Atari 2600 cartridge of the same name(Yeah, I scored a million on it back in the day, what's up, bitches.), was all over the pages of Famous Monsters and Starlog growing up, and with glorious color pictures of Dave Allen's stop motion alien handiwork fresh in my recent memory, I bought the Media VHS print when perhaps fifteen titles on video existed in total.Sort of a bullied-Mark Hamill-lookalike-finds-a-cheap-looking-laser-weapon-in-the-desert-and-blows-lots-of-shit-up-with-it movie, cheap n' silly, with lots of genre value and a cast comprised of former Jeff Beck frontman, Kim Milford, Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Roddy McDowall, Keenan Wynn, and longtime cinematic nerd, Eddie Deezen in his film debut, as...yeah, the gangly, obnoxious nerd he always plays.There's a shocker.Despite having the dubious distinction of being "the worst sci-fi movie ever made" in some circles, it really isn't all that bad, once you put aside the badly matched laser explosions, one-time director Michael Rae's uncanny ability to make explosions seem boring, the hokey alien makeup fx by Steve Neill, the plastic space-weapon(that resembles one of those NERF cannons they were pimping years ago) and matching intergalactic grenade necklace, Gianni Russo as a poor man's Dirty Harry with a peacock's ass worth of leisure suits...okay, okay, the movie sucks, but it's a bad that could be enjoyable to revisit every ten or fifteen years, perhaps, and here's to hoping I'm partying with Keith Moon by the time the next screening rolls around.Two sci-fi reviews in the same month?What the hell is going on here.Onwards!

Yup, Eddie Deezen just burned you.How's that feel right about now...
We see a green-tinged gent(fx man Steve Neill in a cameo) with a laser cannon on his arm being pursued by a spacecraft, whose occupants are turtle-aliens in gold and silver lame' gloves n' boots, respectively, and who zap the piss out of their greenish target and abruptly blow the earthly clambake for space, leaving the weapon and gaudy necklace combo behind in the smoldering pile of ashes in the desert sand.Enter Billy Duncan(Kim Milford), a Luke Skywalker-looking chap who's constantly getting mucked about by everybody, as in the town's two drawl-spittin', jibber-reefin' deputies(Dennis Burkley, Barry Cutler), his girlfriend Kathy(Cheryl Smith)'s shellshocked grandfather, Colonel Farley(Keenan Wynn), and even local gearhead/rapist, Chuck(Mike Bobenko) and his wiry weenbag pal, Froggy(Eddie Deezen).If a guy like Froggy is harrassing you, well, you'd better score yourself a sweet intergalactic weapon of mass destruction while feeling sorry for yourself and kicking around the dust bowl, which is exactly what Billy does.He finds that when he dons the ugly pendant that accopanies it(and looks like something you'd find around the neck of Joanne Worley on an episode of "Love:American Style!"), the cannon obliterates all in its path, with a cheap slo-mo explosion sequence, to boot.Back aboard the spacecraft, the aliens are alerted to the weapon's misuse by their leader via a video screen playback of Billy shooting up tumbleweeds and the like, and they turn their ship around, new mission in place.After Billy takes it upon himself to blow up Chuck's convertible real good after he and Froggy try to spring some surprise sex on Kathy at a groovy pool party, the scene is made by Tony Craig(Gianni Russo), a government agent who puts the town on lockdown, from the smart comfort of a leisure suit.

"Dispose of that infernal weapon...and bring me some lettuce..."
After Kathy discovers the strange inflamed growth on his chest while tonsil-jousting in the grass with him like a couple of Dead show stragglers, Billy visits Dr. Mellon(Roddy McDowall) who surgically removes a small metallic disc from the wound, but gets blown up before he can deliver it to the local police lab tech(Mark the McDowall electric bill:paid).Craig investigates the crash scene and skirts away the perplexing metal to the tech, who determines that it is indestructible, of otherworldly origins, and redeemable for six coin-op arcade games of your choice at participating Top Dog chain restaurants.Just kidding.The next day, Kathy unwittingly props the space grenade on her boyfriend's chest while they're rolling around in the grass again, this time causing him to spring up from the blanket, green-grilled with pointy teeth and colored contacts.Now you've done it, woman.Billy goes on a drawn-out laser-fuelled vendetta against everyone and everything, from gas stations and police cruisers to cherry '55 Chevys and cheap billboards announcing the coming of "Star Wars" to theaters(get it?ehhhh).Craig and Kathy trail him into town, where he's been prancing around, laser-cannoning junk cars and newsstands, slo-mo victory jumping, until the aliens make the scene and blast him with a pleasantly pink-blue destructo ray from a matte painting of the city buildings, effectively killing him and destroying the weapon, before breaking the fuck out like poison sumac, in the process.Scrolling futuristic end credits interrupt Kathy, weeping over the lifeless body of her boyfriend on the street.

"Did I really use that much electricity this month?" thinks Roddy McDowall.
Rae never directed anything else, for those of you that think we've got nothing to be thankful for these days.Milford would ironically play the antagonist to Mark Hamill's lead in Corvette Summer(1978), before succumbing prematurely of heart failure at thirty-seven in 1988.Rainbeaux Smith, always one of my favorites, would follow up her panning here at the fingers of vicious movie critics(leave mah Rainbeaux alone, ye bastards) with roles in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke(1979), and Vice Squad(1982), before succumbing herself in 2002 due to complications from liver disease and hepatitis from her long-standing problems with heroin.We'll be looking at another feature with McDowall, another favorite of mine, later this month.Then there's Eddie Deezen.Grease(1978), Grease 2(1982), 1941(1979), Wargames(1983), Zapped!(1982), if there's a late seventies/early eighties social misfit in the script, chances are, he's it.After cutting his stop-motion teeth in Equinox(1970), David Allen would lend his talents to films like Flesh Gordon(1976), The Howling(1980), Caveman(1981), and Q(1982).As you woprophiles might have figured, Laserblast earns a single Wop on the ratings scale(I never go too hard on the seventies stuff, old softie that I am), for Allen's excellent stop-motion alien footage, and schlocky fun all around.

Weeeeee-ooooooooo!Sumbitchin' gas station blowed up real good, dadgummit.