La Casa 4 (1988) d/ Fabrizio Laurenti

It's been a minute, but we have returned with genre goofiness from the Boot just for you, as promised. Does this mean we won't be doing an Italian-themed month of reviews in Wop-tober? Hardly the case. This mutt, a Joe D'Amato produced sequel to Umberto Lenzi's La Casa 3 aka/ Ghosthouse (1988), unrelated genre fare rebranded as "House" movies to coincide with Sam Raimi's legendary Evil Dead movies, which just so happen to have been distributed as La Casa and La Casa 2, respectively, in Italy, at the time. Laugh all you want, there were several more to come after this one. Vidmark unleashed it upon unsuspecting American home video enthusiasts as "Witchery" in 1988. I'm pleased to report that nothing works in this movie, from the direction, to the pacing, to the special effects, right on down to the acting. Buckle up...
  

"T' ain't a finer stewing onion in all of London than this!"
In my best estimation, it would seem that Gary (David Hasselhoff) is a horny, young photographer who's taken his writer/girlfriend Leslie (Leslie Cumming) to a remote Massachusetts island and a run-down resort hotel where she can research famous witch lights...or gates to Hell...or something paranormal or other, as it's incredibly difficult to anybody to understand most of her dialog. Hard to tell if she's drunk, handicapped, or just affecting the most puzzling portrayal ever committed to celluloid, on purpose. Either way, when she's not emotionlessly mumbling her lines and pacing the hallways, she's denying Gary access to the poontang like some kind of virgin. The hotel formerly belonged to an old German woman (Hildegard Knef) with an all-black wardrobe who may have turned her toes up decades earlier as the result of a potent witch hunt, as she was tragically pregnant with child (cue: slo-mo flopper out upstairs window). Only she seems to be still flitting mysteriously about the old place, and she's likely plotting a course for gruesome, bloody retribution, as these witch-types usually are.


"Dis is a message from Aquaman to yer pal Jeremy Wade. 'E sez knock it off or else."
Meanwhile,  with Mater Rose (Annie Ross) having designs on buying the property,  her Brooks clan is arriving with a pair of horny realtors (including Hasselhoff's then wife, sultry blonde soap opera star, Catherine Hickland) via boat to assess the purchase, restoration costs, etc. There's her husband Freddie (Bobby Chanpagne), and their two children, the adult Jane (Linda Blair), who's very pregnant and having weird visions, and bashful young Tommy (Michael Manchester), who looks authentically petrified to be in front of the camera. Naturally, things go sour in a hurry, and in a most graphically violent and innovative manner, if not always (okay, ever) a coherent one. The lady in black and her spinning jeweled pin unlock a very seventies tele-visual effect-laden doorway to another dimension, where taunting witch-bullies eat still-born fetus parts, old women get hung upside down in a roaring fireplace, unable to scream with their lips sewn shut, and puffy nippled virgins lose their hymen to a yuck mouthed, leering Satan. You can assuredly bet that Linda Blair's character will be possessed and lip syncing gibberish with a cock metal hair do before the end credits roll, as well. That's a given...


Bert was the last Cockney chimney sweep she'd ever cross...
With confusing and inept fare such as this being exported from Italy in the late eighties, it isn't hard to see that the earlier Golden Era for the genre was shrinking rapidly in the rear view mirror, and an inevitable flat line was on the horizon. Claudio Fragasso's La Casa 5 aka/ Beyond Darkness (1990), also produced by D'Amato, would come next. Nobody's any good in this one, with Leslie Cumming of Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1987) fame cementing her position as the worst on screen, scene after laughable scene, and perhaps Hasselhoff delivering the only cringe-less performance, albeit a pedestrian one. Despite the constant flow of negativity that's just been bellowing out of me concerning Witchery, and the inevitable single Wop I've got to lay upon it, you might just have a blast taking this one in with your buddies, if rotten fun is occasionally your fancy. You know what I'm saying. Scream Factory will be releasing it as a Blu-ray on a double bill with it's predecessor, Ghosthouse, in June, so look out for that.


"Rock and roll crazy naaaaaaaaht! You are the hero toniiiiiiiiiiiight!"

"Stranger in Our House"(1978) d/ Wes Craven

On Halloween night back in 1978, a nine year old you-know-who was faced with two seasonal telly options after having exhausted his trick or treat/ neighborhood vandalism options for the evening. CBS offered up Richard Crenna, Yvette Mimieux, and a Satanic puppy in Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell, while over at NBC came the debut of tonight's feature; a made-for-tv adaption of a Lois Duncan novel called Summer of Fear directed by Wes Craven {fresh off the cult classic, The Hills Have Eyes (1977)}, that stars a curvalicious Linda Blair (who looks to have tried to balance out her bountiful bobblers with some seriously Brobdingnagian hair for this one), fresh off of some serious coke charges, and the lovely Lee Purcell, who you might recall from things like Mr. Majestyk (1974) and Valley Girl (1983). In the end, it's Purcell who'll stick with you here...


"Only Deep Purple understands me!" pouts Rachael (Linda Blair).
Life is awkward-looking horse rides, boyfriends, and clothes shopping for teenage Rachael Bryant (Blair), until her distant cousin, Julia (Purcell) comes to stay with her family, after a mysterious car crash at the outset leaves her sans folks. Soon, Rachael's roses are all showing their thorns, as her father, brother (Jeff East), and even boyfriend all instantly turn pheromone-induced sycophant at the sight of Julia, who's been leaving matches on her cousin's nightstand, spilling red paint on her bikini shots, and keeping graven wax images of her horse, Buttercup, who doesn't happen to like Julia one bit, Wilbur. No siree. After Rach breaks out in hives just before the big dance, she's forced to send Mike (Jeff McCracken) with Julia, decked in the pink number she'd crafted for herself and looking better in it, instead.


"Whattaya mean, my face is super freakiiiiiing out, Rick?"
By the time Rachael's grill clears up, it's already too late. Mike and Jules are an item, and Pop(Jeremy Slate) is also enchanted by the young woman's ample charms, himself, too much so, in fact, to do much about his daughter's equestrian accident that sees Buttercup prepped for an Alpo can with a bullet. And when resident witchcraft expert, Professor Jarvis (Macdonald Carey) is suddenly struck gravely ill, Rach's suspicions grow into a full-scale Nancy Drew-with-34C's style investigation, after spirited pouty whining for half the film's run time doesn't seem to get her anywhere. It soon becomes apparent that the Ozark Jezebel has set her homicidal sights on Rachael's mom (Carol Lawrence), which leads to the inevitable cat fight we'd all been waiting for, followed by a typical seventies made-for-tv twist ending that you probably could have laid money on, five minutes in.


"Me? Oh, I was just burning some Exorcist II: The Heretic reviews for you, honey..."
In those dark pre-technological days before video cassette recorders and Tivo, when a guy couldn't have his cake and bite at it, too, I remember choosing Crenna and his Devil Dog over tonight's witchery, as did most others, according to the Nielsen's, though if I could step through some portal into the past and do it all over again, I'd probably go with Stranger, instead. Ms. Blair's always been one of my favorites, and she's appropriately cute-as-a-button, as usual,  but she's so over-the-top whiny about it all here, you'd have to be certifiable to not be plugging for Purcell's comely witch to prevail. On the scale, this Stranger earns a pair of Wops, an average score that director Craven is no stranger to, his fourth thus far here. Obviously, still worth a look or two.


Have you been spleefing off the Hippie Crippler again, Julia (Lee Purcell)?

"City of the Dead" (1960) d/ John Moxey

Tonight's entry is a beauteous little British number, an early atmospheric Psycho-esque horror piece known as 'Horror Hotel' in America; boiling over with artificial fog, witches' covens, and human sacrifice set in New England, as evidenced by the odd forced regional dialects affected by the British actors, with iconic genre baddie Christopher Frank Carandini Lee providing the most serviceable of the lot. As Lee has always been tops among my favorite actors, I've always gotten special satisfaction from repeated screenings of this one, whether it was on late night cable in the seventies or recently on the big plasma screen , with much more dialog than he was afforded later in his career once he'd been typecast as that Count fellow. In addition,  British television staple Patricia Jessel is memorable as Newless/Selwyn, and sexy blonde Venetia Stevenson  is an eyeful during her scenes. Vulcan Productions would later become Amicus, probably the steepest competition for British genre giants Hammer during their heyday.


This look means you're failing Witchcraft class. I know, I had him for French in college.
After we see a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn(Jessel) burned at the stake for witchery in 1692, we fast forward to present day and a young coed named Nan (Venetia Stevenson) who ditches her winter vacation to research her senior paper on witchcraft in a creepy little burg named Whitewood, upon the suggestion of her professor(Lee), and against the wishes of her boyfriend, Bill (Tom Maitland). C'mon, what's the worst that could happen, old man? It's not like she's gonna get marked by a coven of ancient witches for sacrifice on Candlemas Eve or anything. Well, actually, yeah, it is exactly like that. Among the hooded cultists at the altar are Mrs. Newless(Jessel) from the Raven's Inn (Newless... Selwyn, don't you ever watch vampire movies, chick?) and Professor Driscoll himself! Hopefully he'll give her posthumous extra credit towards her final grade for her troubles, eh.


"Kookie, lend me your comb. Kookie, Kookie?"
When Nan is a no-show at the party held at her her brother Richard's (Dennis Lotis), he and Bill decide to investigate her puzzling disappearance, leading them both inevitably to Whitewood, where the blind reverend's daughter(Betta St. John) has been marked for sacrifice on the witches' Sabbath. The soupy fog proves too much for Bill, who wrecks his wheels on the drive into town, while Richard gets snatched up by hooded cultists in the graveyard as they wait for the thirteenth toll of the clock's bell to plunge the hulking dagger into the chest of their unwilling offering. A busted up Bill finally makes the scene, and gets said dagger thrown into his back for the effort, but he manages to loosen a cross from one of the graves and set the witches aflame with it's shadow, as per required. Selwyn escapes the righteous judgment only to age hundreds of years and slump dead underneath the plaque commemorating her burning at the stake on the Raven's Inn, to the dismay and horror of our surviving protagonists...

 

"Watch me dissect this hooker, Driscoll. Her blood is well groovy."

Moxey also helmed 'The Night Stalker' (1972), genre-wise, during a long career in television, while it would be another seventeen years before Lee would turn down the role of Sam Loomis in John Carpenter's Halloween and take his place in horror history as the narrator in the unforgettable Meatcleaver Massacre(1977). While you're laughing at that, try to remember that the immutable 91 year old has only appeared in over two hundred movies to date, and counting. You can't expect farcical cgi light saber battles with Yoda, every time outta the gate, y'know. Three wops.

"No, no, of course I don't fault you, seeing how 'pail of water' sounds like 'oversized cross' when you think about it, old chap..."

"Witchcraft '70"(1970)d/Luigi Scattini

Just got through this seldom-seen "shockumentary" in two viewings(I fell asleep half way through the first time)after years of fruitless searching for a watchable copy.For the record,let me state that if true witchcraft was ANYTHING like what this film's makers captured on cameras back in 1970(and allegedly paid greenbacks for "secret 8 mm documentaries" from unknown individuals for),then the occult arts and black magic simply ain't much to write home to Aunt Beatrice about,period.

Newlyweds exclaim "King Diamond rules!" from Anton LaVey's Black Church.
The viewer is treated to 88 very tedious,tame minutes of occult practices in Bali,New Orleans,and California,among other places,all seen through the eyes of the mayor of squaresville.To validate their prudish outlook on the subject,they even interviewed a deaf-ish police officer with a speech impediment to emphasize the threat to society these cults pose.If witchcraft were to take hold of large numbers of the populace,he reasons,the world could arguably be gripped in a second medieval age,he lisps.And who would rule over these global covens,Officer Douchebag?Alice Cooper?

I really groove on Satan's cloven hooves,maaaan.
So what are the filmmakers committing to the big screen as a cautionary warning to parents of the world?Well,it seems the recurring themes in witchcraft back at the outset of the seventies were:
1)Nudity-You CANNOT show affection for the dark lord and master while your bell bottoms are still on.
2)Groovy dancing-Just like a Josie and the Pussycats musical segment,but with no troublesome clothes to get in the way.
3)Wine laced with L.S.D.-Nothing brings outta sight otherworldly demons to the party like mind-altering hallucinogens.
4)Guy in papier mache' goat mask-He only feels like a jackass until the naked,acid-soaked hippie chicks start grooving off of him.
5)Sexual freedom-Herein lies the true draw to the dark arts.You throw a pentagram necklace on,utter some mumbo jumbo,sip some chicken blood out of a metal chalice,you KNOW you're gonna get laid very shortly.
There you have it.Whether you're a Louisiana Voodoo Queen,or Anton LaVey,the devil is a means to get some righteous coital action.And if you're a parent of an impressionable teenaged hippie girl,monitor those acid rock concerts she's been seen grooving at,otherwise,she's gonna end up stoned and spreadeagle underneath some satanic cats somewhere in Death Valley.Those of us who don't touch up our drape haircuts with a belt sander knew all this beforehand,of course,but in brief intervals,this documentary could prove guilty amusement on a Wednesday night.

Wake up,warlock,you're supposed to be performing some spooky witchery!