"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.

"The Prowler"(1981)d/Joseph Zito

Tonight's entry, also known as "Rosemary's Killer", is an early eighties slasher helmed by Joe "Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter" Zito;a long-time favorite for many whose ultra-realistic gore effects by FX maestro Tom Savini(some of his best and most brutal work ever)are the real draw for any self-respecting genrephiles out there.I should probably state for the record here that this one isn't one of my favorites of the slasher sub-genre.For me, the humdrum, cookie cutter plot drags along behind like a bum leg for the most part, and any alleged suspense mentioned in passing discussion of the film eludes me completely.Without Savini's trademark flair for explicitly gruesome death, Prowler would find itself rubbing shoulders with flaccid fare like Final Exam(1980) in the slice and dice sweepstakes of the time period.From 1978 until around 1985, Savini was the unchallenged grandmaster of gore, and his unparallelled and inventive on-screen snuffs here only solidify that status.The cast includes Farley Granger of "Strangers on a Train" fame, as well as legendary silver screen tough guy, Lawrence Tierney, but few others worth mentioning.Some tension and pacing to pair up with the atmospheric setting and moody score by Richard(Dont Go in the House) Einhorn might have vaulted Prowler into the upper eschelon of splatter movies, instead of the plebeian standing it ended up with.Onwards.

Ya fork around, ya get pitched.
Grainy newsreels show the 1945 return of allied troops from Europe, one of which is a jilted sumbitch who receives a "Dear John" letter from his sweetheart, Rosemary, who's given up on her soldier boy in favor of a more readily available lover close to home.The GI serves up broken-hearted vengeance to his ex and her new beau at a graduation dance in Avalon Bay with the help of a trusty pitchfork, leaving a single long-stemmed red rose in her blood-stained hand.Thirty-five years later, Major Chatham(Lawrence Tierney) has ensured that the town has remained grad dance-free since the tragic night his daughter's life was lost.Thanks to current high school graduate, Pam MacDonald(Vicky Dawson), the superstitious streak is about to be broken, as she relates her plans to the local sheriff(Farley Granger).He warns her that someone has committed a robbery and slain a young man in nearby Columbus, and that he fears the killer plans to return to Avalon because of the dance.Then he leaves town to go fishing.Huh?Pam expresses concern about the homicidal possibilities first to Mark(Christopher Goutman), the deputy left in charge, then to her abhorrent girlfriends, Sherry and Lisa.Equally concerned, Lisa flashes her worried bobblers at the wheelchair-bound major in the house transverse to them.Meanwhile, someone gears up in his combat uniform, complete with shotgun, bowie knife, and shotgun.Hmmm, I'll betcha those'll come into play later on...While Sherry showers, her boyfriend Carl unexpectedly makes an early appearance, expecting some pre-dance aqua sex, but as he undresses in the dark bedroom, he's grabbed from behind by someone who plummets a bayonnet into the top of his skull with such force, his eyes go white.

Accupuncture.The prowler(Peter Giuliano) is doing it wrong.
Suddsy Sherry is surprised not by Carl, but the fatigue-garbed killer, who shanks her labonza with a pitchfork, leaving a red rose on her lifeless form.At the dance, Lisa drunkenly cats around with Pam's date, culminating in a clumsy spill on her dress that Pam returns to the dorm to change out of, failing to notice the two corpses in the bathtub.She catches an unnerving glimpse of what looks like a soldier, and is grabbed by Major Chatham during her escape, but she breaks free to find the deputy.Mark investigates the dorm, finding only wheelchair tracks(how about those bodies upstairs?).He reunites with Pam, and the two investigate Chatham's place, finding an old scrapbook revealing Rosemary was the major's daughter killed thirty-five years earlier.They return to the ill-fated dance, warning teacher/chaperone Miss Allison of the lurking prowler, and she advises the boogieing students to hold off on splitting until the perpetrator has been arrested.Lisa, who's decided upon a late night swim, gets kicked in the grill and eats bayonnet-throat-death for her troubles.When Miss Allison looks for her, she gets bayonnet-necked herself.Mark and Pam receive news that a grave at the local cemetery has been desecrated, but when they arrive, it's Rosemary Chatham's grave that's been excavated, and a very dead Lisa has replaced her in the coffin.At the Chatham house, the deputy gets kayed the eff out, leaving Pam to square off against the killer.After a tension-free hide and seek, we discover that the sheriff is the killer, who Pam dispatches with a nuff-gooey shotgun blast to the chin.The next day, she returns to the dorm and stumbles upon Sherry and Carl's bodies in the tub(somebody finally found these dead rascals) and imagines Carl coming to life to reach out for her.Yeah, boo.

The killer gloats as he aerates her throat and that's all she wrote.
The uncanny resemblance of tonight's entry to Mihalka's My Bloody Valentine(1981) is only reinforced by the mere months between both films' theatrical releases.Of course, Valentine is a superior film and a much better ninety minute investment, but that's a no-brainer.I'd only recommend tonight's review to slasher completists and hardcore Savinisti out there.Worth a look, but keep a ready finger on the FFWD button on your collective remotes.Two wops.

Nobody exploded a prop head like Tom Savini in the eighties.Nobody.