"From Beyond the Grave" (1973) d/Kevin Connor

We'll wrap up September with another one of those groovy early seventies British horror anthologies from the folks at Amicus, with segments based on four short stories from R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and featuring the likes of David Warner, Donald and Angela Pleasence, Diana Dors, Lesley-Anne Down, and Peter Cushing tying the whole thing together, as a creepy, old antiques dealer with a clientele of cheats, chumps, and burglars who all get more than they bargained for in the end. The first-time director, Kevin Connor, would move on to Doug McClure drive-in fodder like The Land That Time Forgot (1975) and At the Earth's Core (1976) before moving on to campy cult classics like 1980's Motel Hell and 1982's The House Where Evil Dwells, which, for those of you that happened to be wondering, also stars Doug McClure.


"I seem to have stumbled out of my flat and onto a Mario Bava set..."
In "The Gate Crasher", we see an artsy know-it-all twat (David Warner) con The Proprietor (Peter Cushing) on the sale of an antique mirror, which after an obligatory seance, proves to contain a murderous spirit that resembles Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, leading the man down a dark path that surely can't end well for anyone involved, especially birds picked up on the fly at a dance club. Then, in "An Act of Kindness", an unfulfilled husband (Ian Bannen) pockets a wartime medal  from the shop without paying, thus becoming the focus of a down-and-out war vet named Underwood (Donald Pleasence) and his pin-happy lookalike daughter, Emily (Angela Pleasance). Diana Dors is in there, too, and she's delightfully abrasive, up until her untimely demise.


"He's bad, bad Leeroy Broooown, baddest man in the whole damned tooooown..."
Next, a chap named Warren (Ian Carmichael) switches out the price tags in a pair of antique snuff boxes, and manages to get a troublesome, invisible titular "elemental",  burrowing psychically into his shoulder, strangling his wife in bed, and making a general nuisance of itself until he calls upon the services of  Madame Orloff (Margaret Leighton) who's apparently just the woman for the job. Then, a young fellow (Ian Ogilvy...shee, there's a lot of Ian's in this one) purchases a ornately decorated, bulky antique door for a linen closet in his flat, only to discover that it sometimes leads into a blue room from another era, belonging to an evil nobleman who dedicated his life to the pursuit of, as if you couldn't guess, more evil. Finally, an enterprising criminal enters the shop with designs on relieving it of any excess cash lying around, only to provide the final twist for the audience, whom the Proprietor addresses directly before closing his doors and end credits roll.


For those about to rock, Donald salutes you.
Amicus Studios filled a genre niche with a fine run of pormanteau-style anthologies, starting in 1965 with Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, followed by Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), Vault of Horror (1973), and this, which would turn out to be the final one they'd tackle. Nothing out of the ordinary going on here, but the whole production is handled so well by all involved, you'll be too entertained to notice. On the scale, Grave earns a solid score of three Wops, and should really be checked out, if you're on board with this style of film. Recommended.


"No, you certainly may not have the freeze-dried crocodile for five quid."

"Nightwing" (1979) d/ Arthur Hiller

I once had to rescue a gothic concubine of mine from a tiny bat that had trapped itself on her porch roof. She called me, calmly declaring the furry little fellow a gift of love to me, though I knew she was secretly petrified to go near the thing, and only called me so I'd remove it, and maybe pull a few orgasms out of her afterwards. It took less than a minute to capture it in a critter carrier, one of the least tense minutes I can remember, to be honest, because bats aren't scary. And neither are the bats in tonight's review, a major release that I went to see in the theater back in 1979 after enjoying Martin Cruz Smith's novel beforehand. I never envisioned the book's characters being terrorized by puppets whose on-screen hokiness rivaled even Val Lewton's floppy bat-props of the forties either, in the book's defense.


"I track and kill vampire bats, exclusively. Sixty thousand in one clip. That's what I do, that's who I am. It is my raison d'etre, my joie de vivre. Just a bat killer...killing some bats. You still rolling?"
A huge colony of vampire bats has migrated to New Mexico, leaving a trail of dead livestock and ammonia piss in their wake. Two utterly fictitious tribes of American Indians, the Pahana and the Maski, are at odds over the discovery of oil in the mountain range that houses the sacred burial ground for both groups. Representing the Pahana, is Walker Chee (Stephen Macht), a progressive, slick young entrepreneur who wants to sell the land to Peabody Mining Co.,  using the revenue to drag the tribes into the twentieth century with updated medical care, education, etc. On the Maski side, is Duran (Nick Mancuso), a reservation lawman who's got the interests of his tribal elders in mind when he isn't skinny dipping in the hot springs with his paleface arm candy, Anne (Kathryn Harrold). His elderly pal and resident witch, Abner (George Clutesi), isn't concerned with the upcoming rain dance festival in the least, and only wants to end the world with an angry sand painting.


"Well, the forecast did call for ominous darkness with a chance of phony bats..."
Then there's Payne (David Warner), the British scientist who tracks and kills vampire bats from his state-of-the-art radar-equipped vehicle, when he isn't raving on at great dramatic lengths about killing them, their inherent evil, the bubonic / pneumonic plague they spread (both, I guess...what evil bastards, these bats), and the excess blood they piss out becoming ammonia. He'll later track them directly to their massive cave, only to fall through the entrance, tangled in a length of rope and dangling helplessly, after less than a minute of trap setting. Wonder if the other four professional vampire bat killers in the world are that bloody clumsy. Anne serves the colony a midnight snack in the form of some Christian missionaries( that include the late Charles "Norris" Hallahan of Carpenter's Thing fame) camped out on a small desert set, Duran chews jimson weed and trips his balls off, sending the whole mountain range up in a phony blaze in disposing of the equally artificial-looking desmodus rotundus, effectively ending any mining schemes (and the movie) in the process.


Is she laughing or screaming? It's hard to tell from here.
Hiller, who directed things like Love Story(1970) and Silver Streak(1976), had never taken the director's chair for a horror vehicle prior to this, and thankfully never tried to do so again. David Warner has always been a favorite of mine, and his hammy turn as Quint/Hooper here might be the best thing about this one, if it weren't for the lovely Kathryn Harrold, who memorably starred opposite of Ahhhnold in 1986's Raw Deal before embarking on a long career in television. Carlo Rambaldi, who'd provided unforgettable effects for classic genre fare like Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (1971), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973), Blood for Dracula (1974), and Possession (1981), clearly phoned it in here. You're allowed a few of those once you've worked with Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci, I would think. On the scale, Nightwing scores a solo, scareless pile of guano that it no doubt is. Avoid.


"...so this is Dianetics, New Mexico."

"Time After Time"(1979)d/Nicholas Meyer

Tonight's feature answers the second most nagging question on the collective 1979 conscience, "What if H.G. Wells unwittingly provided Jack the Ripper with an escape route throughout time via the time-travelling machine he'd only just constructed in his basement, forcing him to follow the murderer through the years, like some sort of impromptu time detective?".Number one, being: "You mind if I bang this hulking line of  fishscale Peruvian off of your ass quick?I hear "Night Fever" coming on out there, and I love that song.".These words I speak are true.Seriously, look it up.Malcolm McDowell had just premiered his controversial turn in Tinto Brass' Caligola(1979) seventeen days before tonight's release, a sharply dilineated departure from the nudity, urination and slo-mo vomiting he'd shared for Brass' lens in bringing the disturbed young Caesar to the big screen.Opposite McDowell here is genre vet David Warner as the infamous sex-selling slut-slicing surgeon he's in pursuit of, and he's sinister, as always, if not a bit underappreciated here.Mary Steenburgen plays Wells' modern love interest, Amy, and you can even spot former Andy Warhol discovery-turned-supporting-actress, Patti D'Arbanville, in here as one of Saucy Jack's vic's, and a young Corey Feldman as a boy at the museum.Revisiting it for probably the first time since the cable box days(or network telly, methinks), I found it to be an enjoyably fluffy romp, despite the lengthy running time(nearly two hours), and the film's general aversion to worthwhile action occurring within it's frames.It must be some sort of childhood nostalgia going down in me gulliver again.Forwards!

"Oi, that weren't me cunny, guv'nor...."
John Leslie Stevenson(David Warner) arrives late for his mate, H.G. Wells'(Malcolm McDowell) unveiling of his latest invention, a working time machine, due to an as-yet-undiscovered propensity to leave Whitechapel whores slumped dead in back alleys with their innards whistling in the wind.By the time Scotland Yard has policed the blood trail to Wells' flat, Saucy Jack has already deftly skirted past the commotion to the basement, somehow managing to transport himself forward through time into 1979.Wells, realizing his contraption has sprung Jack the Ripper on an unsuspecting future socialist Utopian society(Ha!), packs up the available folding money and shiny trinkets to trade with the natives(!) on a journey through the tapestry of time to catch a cold-blooded killer.Once in 1979, Wells finds himself hopelessly out of place, even in ordering fast food, while Stevenson has adapted to the future quite seamlessly, trading his antiquated garb for groovy denim action vests and polyester disco boogie suits.Wells traces the Ripper to his hotel room by monitoring his guinea exchange at a local  bank, where the surgeon/slasher illustrates the current society's violent-prone mindset with a television remote, leading to a mostly unthrilling chase on foot through the crowded streets of San Francisco.Losing his target, who's wrongly believed to be killed in a traffic accident, Wells is forced to retreat to the friendly face of a teller named Amy(Mary Steenburgen) who removes the sting of his wounds by showing him around the city and giving up the first date mogambo while she's at it.

"I don't see the promotional 'Caligula' soft drink glasses display anywhere, and I should very much like a word with your superior, young lady."
A newspaper headline declaring the discovery of another Ripper victim abruptly snaps Herbert from his recent liason, and forces him to reveal the whole unbelievably mad truth to her when offering tips to the police under the alias of 'Sherlock Holmes' proves rather fruitless, indeed.Wells sneaks Amy into his time machine, taking her forward a couple of days to prove his story, only to have her discover via future headline that she is to die at the hands of the ripper herself.The duo plot Stevenson's next moves using the future newspaper, but Herbert gets himself locked up hours beforehand, only to be released when the authorities mistake the mutilated body of Carol, one of Amy's friends for her, just in time to find Saucy Jack making off with his girl in tow, at knifepoint.Herbert tearfully pleads with Stevenson at the museum for Amy to be delivered over unharmed, but Stevenson is not satisfied by merely proving Wells wrong about man's instincts, and plans to take Amy with him in Wells' machine.In the melee, she manages to escape his clutches before Herbert can remove the 'vaporizing equalizer' from the side of the time craft, effectively sending Jack the Ripper screaming through the ages without the machine.Amy's emotional pleas influence Wells to take her with him back to his own age, vowing to change her name to Susan B. Anthony as part of the bargain.The credits that follow tell us the couple later married.

Jack the Ripper(David Warner) would rather spill your entrails on the concrete than shake his groove thang.
The real Amy Robbins was one of Wells' young real-life students that he fell in love with while already married to his own cousin,and married a year later in 1895.Free love, indeed, Herbert, free love, indeed.Steenburgen and McDowell tied the knot themselves the following year, and divorced in 1990.He's one of my favorite actors of all-time, whereas she's mostly appeared in the kind of movies I'd never watch unless there be pussy to be gained afterwards, and even then, prolly not, folks.Meyer, who also helmed the cult classic, Invasion of the Bee Girls(1975), is probably best known today for directing several of the Star Trek films, most notably 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.Insert your best over-dramatic William Shatner scream here.Warner, another long-time favorite of mine, can be seen in such diverse fare as 1970's Straw Dogs, From Beyond the Grave(1974), The Omen(1976), The Island(1980), The Man With Two Brains(1982), and even Titanic(1997).On the scale, Time stands the test of time for the most part, earning a respectable two Big ones.Worth a look...

Whore-ripping, time-space continuum-spitting, tron-gasm finales: One.