The Head
The Hitch-Hiker
Honor Thy Father
Horror
The House that Screamed
House with Laughing Windows
Hang
'Em High (C, 1968)
American take on a spaghetti Western doesn't quite hit Leone level (like
anything could) - the direction is solid but it's meat and potatoes,
no noticeable stylishness - but it's still vintage Eastwood. Clint's a
former lawman named Jed Cooper, who gets lynched on circumstantial evidence.
A marshal sees him hanging and cuts him down before he's dead, and the
only way for Jed to legally get the men who hung him is to put on a badge
again, so he does and hits the trail after Alan Hale Jr., Bruce Dern,
and others. He's not quite the superhuman that The Man With No Name is
(they almost kill him twice) but he's no slouch. Good music score. -zwolf
Hard Boiled (C, 1992) AKA Lashou
shentan, God of Guns, Hot-Handed God of Cops, Ruthless
Super-Cop
Chow Yun Fat is a cop named Tequila in this John Woo film, and he takes
on some arms dealers and makes them die by the dozens in transcendental
orgies of gunfire. Forming a shaky alliance with an origami-crane-making
killer who might be a triad member or an undercover cop, Fat wades through
numerous hyperviolent and very creative gunfights, and ends up doing the
Bruce Willis thing in a hospital full of hostages, which also includes
a hidden arsenal with enough heavy ordinance to equip a small country.
Much of it gets used as Chow and his buddy mow down multitudes of gangsters
while saving babies. You won't believe the amount of gunfire in this (and
they don't even have to reload!) or how beautifully it's all done. The
first time I saw this I was a little put off because I thought it was
just a Hong Kong version of Die Hard - and comparisons are inevitable
- but on a second screening I decided I'd misjudged it and it's more original
than I'd thought. -zwolf
The Haunted Palace (C, 1963)
Another Roger Corman adaptation in the Poe series, but this is Poe in
name only - it's actually based on H. P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles
Dexter Ward. Charles Dexter Ward (Vincent Price) and his bride (Deborah
Paget) come to fog-shrouded Arkham, where his warlock ancestor Joseph
Curwen was burned for sorcery a hundred and ten years earlier, after placing
a curse on the village. They've come to take possession of Curwen's mansion,
which they inherited. The townspeople aren't glad to see him, because
he looks just like his ancestor. The palace is so creepy that Lon Chaney
Jr. is the caretaker, and Ward is automatically obsessed with a portrait
of Joseph Curwen. The streets of Arkham are no relief - they're full of
robed, deformed mutations, people with eyes or mouths grown over. Worse
things are kept in locked rooms in the houses and fed raw meat. Soon Ward
becomes possessed by the spirit of Curwen and is taking his vengeance
on the town, with Chaney and another wizard from the old days helping
him. Frightened townspeople like Elisha Cook Jr. and Leo Gordon want to
stop him, but he carries on with his plans to resurrect his dead witch
consort, using rites from The Necronomicon, and goes down his shit-list,
burning townspeople alive. The usual uprising of townspeople happens,
but not necessarily with the usual results. Lots of atmosphere and some
creepy moments in this AIP production that's true neither to Poe nor Lovecraft
but is good on its own. -zwolf
The Head
(B&W, 1959) AKA Head for the Devil, The Screaming Head,
Die Nackte und der Satan
German entry into the disembodied-head-kept-alive subgenre of B-horror
schlock. A scientist who's come up with a means of keeping tissue alive
after death takes on a new assistant, the sinister Dr. Uhd. The scientist
needs a heart transplant, but things don't work out, so instead Dr. Uhd
severs his head and keeps it alive, so he can learn the scientist's medical
secrets. The professor is not pleased by this and wants to die, but Uhd
is not about to comply. He wants the doctor's formula for Serum Z, so
he can graft the head of his hunchbacked nurse onto the body of a stripper.
The first thing he does after the operation is to give her a cigarette;
that should show you the kind of quack he is. The refurbished nurse starts
an affair with the stripper's old boyfriend, who recognizes the body but
not the head... and this leads her to the truth, and even more craziness.
Made the same year as the similar The Brain That Wouldn't Die and
goofy in its own right, but with a darker, more gothic atmosphere. "NO!
NO! NO! I AM NOT MAD! NO! NO!" -zwolf
The Hearse (C, 1980)
Trish VanDevere is a rather assertive woman who goes to a small town to
take up residence in her late aunt's house for the summer. The place is
shunned because her aunt was supposedly a devil-worshiper, and most of
the townspeople are really unfriendly, especially caretaker Joseph Cotten,
who wants the house for himself. She's not there long before she's being
stalked by an old black hearse and its driver (I guess they were hoping
he'd be as creepy as the hearse-driver in Burnt Offerings or the
Tall Man in Phantasm, but he's not) and she has a pretty creepy
dream/vision. She learns that her aunt's hearse crashed and burned on
the way to her funeral, and her coffin and the driver were never found.
Trish's new boyfriend is also a little sinister. This was an attempt to
buck the gore-movie trend that was so big at the time by leaving out all
the blood and relying more on atmosphere and suspense for the scares.
It's a nice idea and a sincere effort, but it's not completely successful.
There are enough creepy moments to make it worth watching, though. -zwolf
Heaven (C & B&W, 1987)
Completely weird mind-fuck documentary consisting of loops of film, both
new footage of people giving their conceptions of Heaven and strange bits
of film from countless old movies and religious programs. Bizarre editing
and camera work, guaranteed to leave you bewildered. The strangest thing
about this indescribable odyssey is that it was directed by Diane Keaton!
Funny at times, overwhelmingly schizo at others. Hey, somebody should
make a sequel called Hell! Are you afraid to die? Are you afraid
to die?! -zwolf
Hell's Wind Staff (C, 1979)
AKA Long hu men, Dragon and Tiger Kids, Dragon and the
Tiger Kids, Hell'z Windstaff
Militant vegans will get their panties in a wad over the fighting-over-a-live-chicken
bit that opens this kung fu extravaganza, so if you're one o' those, do
us all a favor; sneak yourself one of those ham sandwiches you think nobody
knows about and sit this one out instead. This strange scene is followed
by another where guy who's making himself the target of a human game of
Whack-a-Mole. Then the plot sorta begins to kick in, and a troublesome
jerk kid named Tiger gets a new kung fu teacher who puts him through torturous
training sequences while evading Tiger's sneaky attempts to kill him (which
always backfire in some really lowbrow comedy). Then Hwang Jang Lee, who's
one of the most extreme badmen on the planet (in real life as well as
movies; supposedly Hwang got attacked by a Viet Cong soldier while training
South Vietnamese troops during the war, and he fired off a back kick that
shattered the VC's AK-47 and his neck. I don't know if that's true or
not, but I still ain't gonna mess with the fella), shows up with "Devil's
Claw" fighting, including a Devil Staff which was "made in Hell."
Only a style called "White Dragon Fist" can hope to defeat it,
but it's a lost style that no one knows anymore. Meanwhile, the bad guys
are selling people into the slave trade, and they kill off Tiger's family
and his teacher, so he and his friend Dragon escape and find a teacher
who knows White Dragon Fist, but he'd used it against Hwang Jang Lee in
the past and ended up crippled. He also knows Paddle Staff, and they decide
to combine the two styles in hopes of coming up with something strong
enough to counter Devil Stick. This leads to bizarre training sequences
and some really incredible stick-fighting and hand-to-hand. An obscure
classic, and one of Hwang Jang Lee's finest hours - witness how twice
in the space of a minute he jumps into the air and kicks three guys before
hitting the ground. And I thought only Cassanova Wong was supposed to
be able to do that... -zwolf
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (C, 1988)
The Cenobites return in this even gorier sequel. The girl from the original
teams with a disturbed girl who's great at solving puzzles, and they travel
through labyrinths of Hell and battle a power-mad new Cenobite. Includes
the origin of Pinhead, razor violence, bodies torn apart, and lots of
people with no skin. Great makeup effects, of which you will see more
if you get the unrated videocassette, which is five minutes longer. Almost
as stylish as the original, and full of gore and weirdness. -zwolf
Hercules Against the Mongols
(C, 1964) AKA Maciste contro i mongoli
Hercules (Mark Forest, who's actually playing Machiste - a lot of those
Machiste movies got redubbed into "Hercules" movies because
Americans are easily confused) visits China and helps some people somehow
(the print I saw was choppy at the beginning, but it looked like he built
a bridge for a possum!) and a girl foretells his future - he'll have to
fight a dragon and some superpowered Mongol warriors: the sons of Genghis
Khan. One is named Hurricane because he's so strong, another is an expert
archer, and the third uses a whip. Since Genghis wanted peace at the time
of his death, his sons kill one of his officers and blame the white men
for it, so they can keep conquering in the name of revenge. While lifting
a tree to help another possum (oh, the possums of China are a troubled
lot!) Hercules gets attacked by Mongols, so he picks up another tree and
laughingly beats 'em up. The Mongols work out their frustration by chaining
a guy to some doors and then rushing them with a battering ram, then they
enslave and torture more captives. Things look really bad, but then Herc
shows up and they throw him in prison. They force him to compete in a
tournament, and he, o' course, wins everything. Then they put a lion in
his cell, but it lays down and wants to go to sleep, so Herc rips iron
bars out of the windows and attacks it... even though it seems to just
want to sit in the corner and be left alone! They must've over-drugged
the poor animal or somethin'. Some crusaders come along to fight the Mongols,
Herc breaks out of some stocks, there's an inept battle (watch the Mongols
just toss their spears on the ground), and your insomnia is cured. Most
of the film's atmosphere is provided by the scratches and color-fade in
the print. "Sorry I can't be here to listen to your cries of agony!"
-zwolf
Hercules In The Haunted World
(C, 1961) AKA Hercules at the Center of the Earth, Hercules
Vs. The Vampires, The Vampires Vs. Hercules, With Hercules
To The Center of the Earth
To Hell with Hercules! Literally. Most Hercules movies are pretty bad,
but Mario Bava directed this one so it looks incredible (or it would,
if the print that Rhino Video mastered their tape from wasn't so washed
out). Hercules (Reg Park this time) is attacked by men sent by a pale,
grim sorcerer (Christopher Lee), but he fights them off. Lee is not pleased.
He keeps Dianara - who should be queen - in a mesmerized state, making
her live in a crypt while Lee rules in her stead. A weird sibyl tells
Hercules that the only thing that can free her from this insanity is a
stone found in the depths of Hades, so he sets out for the underworld.
First he and his friend Theseus have to get a magic apple from the garden
of the Hesperides so they can enter and leave Hell. First he saves one
of his friends from being torn in two by horses, so he can get a magic
ship to go to the dark garden of condemned women clad in flowing veils.
Herc has to climb a giant tree to get the apple, but this proves impossible
so he knocks it down with a giant slingshot, while a creaky rock monster
tortures his friends in a completely bizarre, funny-but-nightmarishly-absurd
scene. Then they enter Hades and find such things as damned souls imprisoned
in bleeding vines and the stone they need surrounded by boiling lava.
Herc makes it but loses his friend Theseus, or so he thinks at first.
When Herc gets home he finds that an angry Pluto has cursed the place,
because Theseus's girlfriend is Persephone - Pluto's daughter. Even after
this problem is overcome, Herc has to deal with an army of rotten-shrouded,
flying zombies that rise from their tombs in a way that must have influenced
the Blind Dead films. At the core the film is the usual muscleman
epic - the fight scenes are pretty terrible - but the stylized sets and
the cheap special effects make this a surreal, dreamlike film, and you
have Mario Bava to thank for that. Captures a child's-fairytale feel,
and has some genuinely creepy images. -zwolf
The Hideous Sun Demon
(B&W, 1959) AKA Blood on His Lips, Sun Demon, Terror
from the Sun
A scientist who absorbs isotope radiation during an accident soon learns
that exposure to sunlight will make him become a scale-covered lizard
man. As you might imagine, this disturbs him to the point of screaming
"Why me?!" and so he goes into hiding and tries to stay out of the sun.
But, one problem is, he's an alcoholic, so he keeps going to nighclubs
after dark. He gets involved with a gangster's girlfriend, and staying
out all night with her leads to slip-ups. His transformations start making
him violent and deranged, too, so he tries to stay inside completely,
but that doesn't work out, and eventually he lizards-up and goes on a
rampage. One of the best '50's sci-fi monster B-flicks, with an impressive
monster suit (and you have to give them props for making it full-upper-torso
so he could take his shirt off, rather than being budget-conscious and
going for just the mask-and-gloves look). The only problem with the suit
is, it was made from a wet suit with scales glued on, and so it was very
hot. So star/producer/director Robert Clarke sweated a lot in it, and
the sweat drained down... so, a lot of the time the Sun Demon looks like
he wet his pants! Much of the music is the same library stock that was
used in Night of the Living Dead. In 1983 a re-dubbed
version called What's Up, Hideous Sun Demon? was released, with
narration by Jay Leno and one of the voices done by Susan Tyrell. -zwolf
High Noon (B&W, 1952)
One of the most-classic o' classic westerns stars Gary Cooper as Gil Kane,
a marshal who's just retired because he married a Quaker girl (Grace Kelly).
They're leaving town to start a store when word gets out that Frank Miller,
a gunslinger who swore to come back and kill Kane for arresting him, has
just been released from jail and will be arriving on the noon train. Three
of his dangerous buddies (including Lee Van Cleef) are already there waiting
for him. Kane goes around town trying to get help, but everyone turns
their backs on him, leaving him to face the four badmen alone. The film
moves in real time, which adds to the tension, and the resulting gunfight
doesn't disappoint. Reportedly when John Wayne saw this he yelled at his
agent for not getting him the gig. I'm glad he didn't get it because I'm
sure Cooper did a better job. His tall, thin frame walking down the middle
of a wide, empty street is one of the cinema's best images of isolation.
The writer of this film was blacklisted during the big Hollywood communist
scare, so the movie may be seen as a personal statement in metaphor form.
-zwolf
Hijack! (C, 1973)
Time has been good to 70's TV movies. Compared to the unoriginal, lame,
cliched, formulaic crap we're given now, these things are stripped-down
classics. In this one - calculated to cash in on the big trucker craze
of the time - David Jansen and Keenan Wynn are contracted by the government
to transport a great whatsit from L.A. to Houston. On the way some enemy
agents with walkie-talkies, guns, and cars that explode way too easily
try to stop them. But Jansen and Wynn are no punks, so stopping them won't
be easy. They try sticking to the backroads, but the bad guys get a helicopter
to keep tabs on them. It's not as slam-bang as a new-school movie like
Black Dog or something, but action flicks back in the day had a more
human, organic realism to them, and tension makes up for the
shortage of explosions and gunfire and stunts... not that those things
are absent, either. It never really goes into high gear, but it does keep
going, and there is one thing that may make you wonder if the guys who
made The Road Warrior saw it. -zwolf
The Hitcher (C, 1986)
Nonstop action and suspense as C. Thomas Howell picks up hitch-hiking
psychopath Rutger Hauer and sets in motion a sick and crazed game that
becomes almost a sadomasochistic affair of sorts - Hauer wants Howell
to stop him, and becomes kind of attached to him, deciding to see just
how miserable he can make the poor bastard. He frames Howell for his murders
(he kills everybody who picks him up, even families with kids), gets him
jailed... then kills off a whole station full of cops to set him free
so the game can continue. You get the feeling that he's grooming Howell
to be a protégé of sorts - he wants Howell to kill him,
but only after putting him through enough hell to drive him insane. Where
other films would balk, this one plows ahead - the girl who went out of
her way to give Howell a hand (Jennifer Jason Leigh) even gets torn in
half between two trucks. This film is often regarded as hyperviolent and
gory, and violent it is - lotsa car crashes ala The Road Warrior
- but the gore is very minimal, because the film doesn't need it. Scarier
than the nonstop suspense is the darkness of the subtext - something really
twisted is happening between the stalker and the victim. After a while
you wonder if Hauer is always real, or if maybe he's sometimes just a
dark part of Howell. Definitely an underrated film. -zwolf
Hitch Hike (C, 1978)
AKA Death Drive, Hitchhike: The Last House on the Left,
Autostop Rosso Sangre
Rarely-seen, intense exploitation flick with a couple who hate each
other - an alcoholic reporter (Franco Nero) and his "great lay" wife (Corinne
Clery) - traveling across country with a camper trailer. Into their personal
hell of each other comes an even more hellish third party - a psychopath
(David Hess) that they unwisely pick up in the desert. Hess is on the
run from a bank robbery with a suitcase full of two million dollars. He
terrorizes the couple, kills some accomplices, and rapes the wife. But
he may not even be their biggest problem. Intense sex and violence with
a typically-menacing performance from the solidly-typecast Hess (who says
this was his favorite psycho role) and more good work from Nero and Clery.
It's intense but underplayed and not as sick as Hess's other psycho films...
but is perhaps even more nihilistic, cumulatively. Fast-moving, well-done
obscurity that will have a good reputation given proper exposure. -zwolf
The Hitch-Hiker
(B&W, 1952)
A hitchhiking killer (William Talman) with a droopy eyelid hijacks a couple
of guys on a fishing trip (Edumund O' Brien and Frank Lovejoy) and makes
them drive him into Mexico, threatening them and subjecting them to sadistic
games the whole time. As the police get closer to finding out where they
are and the car has problems, their situation grows more tense, and the
captives have to find a way to turn the tables on their captor. Fast-paced
and scary film noir directed by Ida Lupino. Definitely recommended. -zwolf
Hit Man in the Hand of Buddha
(C, 1981)
Convoluted kung fu with an expert martial artist coming to town and finding
plenty of trouble. First he's robbed by a kid and has to fight the wacky
Fagin-like beggar who runs the gang of thief-children. Then he's got a
hired killer on his case, and a menacing expert killer named Tiger, as
well. The bad guys rape his sister (who commits suicide) and beat up his
shiftless cross-eyed brother-in-law. The beggar sends him off to a temple
so he won't be killed. They keep him there and make him do ridiculous,
meaningless tasks and refuse to let him see the abbot. They're actually
training him in kung fu, but he's impatient. He practices in secret and
finally he's ready to return home and seek revenge, only to find that
he has more reason to want it now than ever. Fairly standard kung fu plot,
with better-than-average fighting since the star and director is Hwang
Jang Lee, in one of his few good-guy roles. He's one of the best kung
fu movie stars ever, and most people need to use wires to do what this
guy does under his own power. He's a former Korean Army taekwondo instructor
and legends about him are many. One of them says he once got in an argument
with a knife expert who claimed that no one unarmed could beat a man trained
with a knife. Hwang disagreed and tried to walk away but the guy attacked
him, and Hwang killed him with one quick spin-kick. I'm not sure if that's
true or not, but from what you'll see in this movie, I don't think I'd
put it past him... -zwolf
The Holy Mountain (C, 1973)
Something about South America must really work its way into the minds
of creative types... Jodorowsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez,
Horacio Quiroga, Jose Mojica Marins... these guys are all a bunch of wacko-geniuses!
Writer-director Alexandro Jodorowsky, responsible for such cult classics
as El Topo and Santa Sangre, pulls out all of the stops
in this film about spiritual awakening. Typical of Jodorowsky films, dwarves
and amputees are heavily present, as are bizarre, sometimes disturbing
images of fascism, skinned animals, and a perverted take on Catholicism.
Jodorowsky plays a role as a mystical guru & alchemist who guides
a small band of people into asceticism on their journey to the Holy Mountain,
where they plan to destroy the gods dwelling there & gain immortality.
Along the way, the viewer is treated to their individual stories, and
some of the most bizarre images ever caught on screen, including a crazed
sequence wherein the conquest of the Aztecs is retold using frogs &
lizards in the roles of Aztecs & conquistadors. Part science-fiction,
part fantasy, part parable, this is a must-see for students of Zen and
other would-be mystics. Too bad that Hollywood bullshit & red tape
split Jodorowsky from the Dune project back in the 1970s. With
him directing, using storyboards from frequent collaborator & amazing
European artist Moebius, we'd have ended up with a much better film than
the David Lynch cesspool we got. (An aside: The Holy Mountain,
much like The Wizard of Oz, syncs up almost perfectly with Pink
Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, though the album ends well before
the film. And it's as much of a coincidence here as it is with that film.
Coincidence, as well, that the two films share a similar thematic concept
in the last reel? Of course, there are no coincidences... just patterns
too complex for the human mind to understand. "Zoom back, camera!")
-igor
Honor Thy
Father (C, 1972)
Made-for-TV mob flick documenting an episode where Salvatore Bonano had
to take control of the mafia when his father, the notorious "Joe Bananas,"
is abducted in the middle of a gang war. There's plenty of shooting and
some good scenes, but overall it tries to cover too much ground and ultimately
becomes confusing and uninvolving, despite a narrator who tries to hold
it together. The amount of blood is kind of surprising for a TV movie
of its time; you seldom see squibs used in TV productions even now. -zwolf
Horror
(C, 2002)
Some juvenile delinquents break out of drug rehab, killing a security
guard in the process, and head out to visit a certain Reverend Salo, who
gave them drugs. The preacher is... The Amazing Kreskin! Kreskin does
feats of hypnosis (or, he claims, "suggestion") that are legit; his approach
to acting was to do it all for real, so the responses he's getting are
actual-factual. Too bad the movie makes no damn sense whatsoever. The
very, very thin narrative that you can impose on this is something about
evil Rev. Kreskin's granddaughter, who's been tormented by her parents
(her dad is also an evil priest)... but then the ending reveals that the
whole movie is one of the guys' story, so, so much for that,
and we're left with some zombies attacking (with no explanation), people
starting to rot, Kreskin's act, a painting that changes (something director
Dante Tomaselli also used in Desecration), and a black goat wandering
around looking evil. The director's commentary is very helpful in explaining
some of what he was thinking, but it doesn't really display that he has
much knowledge of storytelling. Not to say it's a bad film - there's plenty
of good, creepy imagery - but it's best viewed as a nightmare and will
only frustrate you if you try to find a story or logic. Dante Tomaselli
is an interesting director, because he has some strange obsessions and
a good eye for scary, weird scenes, but he doesn't have any grasp of how
to tell a story (which is bad since he's ambitious and tries to tell really
complex, symbol-rich ones) and somehow everything comes out looking false,
cheap, and stiff. It'd be interesting to see him collaborate with another
director, to combine his strengths with someone who could fix his weaknesses.
Then you'd really have something. As is, this is pretty messy but well
worth watching for its nightmarishness. -zwolf
Horror Of The Blood Monsters
(C, 1970) AKA Blood Monster, Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet,
Creatures of the Red Planet, Flesh Creatures of the Red Planet,
Flesh Creatures, Creatures of the Lost Planet, Horror
Creatures of the Prehistoric Planet, Horror Creatures of the Red
Planet, Space Mission of the Lost Planet, Space Mission
of the Prehistoric Planet, Space Mission to the Lost Planet,
Vampire Men of the Lost Planet
Only a true rip-off artist like Al Adamson would cheat you and try to
convince you that you got something extra. Al took footage from One
Million B.C., some other dinosaur movies, a Filipino cavemen vs. snake-,
bat-, and lobster-men movie, and god-only-knows what else, tinted them,
and passed them off as "Spectrum X Color." The color is explained
by claiming that on the "vampire planet," the sun's radiation
is altered into the individual colors of the spectrum, so everything looks
just like black and white footage with blue, green, red, and yellow color
gels over it! Amazing! Whatta technological breakthrough! How lucky we
are to see it! Anyway, the story is about astronauts (including John Carradine,
Vicki Volante, and Robert Dix) voyaging to a lost planet to stop vampires
from taking over the Earth. Most of the movie consists of scenes of the
cavemen battling guys with big plastic fangs hanging out of their mouths.
It all makes very little sense, and the only thing tight about this movie
is the budget. Some very mild gore, but plenty to laugh at. -zwolf
Hot Rod Girl (B&W, 1956)
AKA Hot Car Girl
Car racing is pretty safe, thanks to teen-friendly cop Chuck Connors,
who has problems convincing his superiors that hot rodders can be good
guys. But then Jeff the car club leader withdraws his support after his
little brother - whose head is hotter than his car - gets killed in an
accident during a street race with an unidentified jerk. Jeff keeps working
at a garage (where the guy who played Rev. Alden on Little House On
The Prairie is his boss) while his goofy pals embarrass themselves
jiving at YoYo's and deciding they don't like the rules and regulations
of the drag strip. Amidst a lot of jerky wisecracks (especially from Frank
Gorshin, who must've been using his role as "Flat Top" to practice
up for being the Riddler on TV's Batman), the teens get more reckless
and are goaded into playing chicken by an attitude-problemed new guy named
Bronc, who's out to cause even more trouble... especially for Jeff, who
gets accused of a hit-and-run killing of a little kid. There is a girl
driver in the movie but she doesn't have a significant role, so the title
is misleading. It had to be rough in the '50's, having to pay admission
for your afterschool specials... -zwolf
The Hot, The Cool, and The Vicious
(C, 1976)
A complex but coherent plot and some of the most amazing legwork on film
(mostly from Tan Tao Liang, who has amazing control) make this a standout
kung fu film. The playboy son of a corrupt official kills the mother of
an expert police captain (Ling)'s fiancé. The police captain owes
the corrupt official a debt, but he's got integrity and plays no favorites,
so he sets out to arrest the son. But the father hides the son and hires
a notorious drifter (charismatic Don Wong, aka Wong Tao) to stand up to
the captain, because only he has the fighting skill to be any match. The
only problem is, the drifter's really not that bad a guy, and he and the
captain have a lot of respect for each other. This is not a conducive
environment for evil plans, and the corrupt official may be in trouble,
unless his gang is big enough to deal with two real experts. He has his
doubts, so he brings in a strange, possibly supernatural zombie-looking
guy (Tommy Lee - no relation to the Motley Crue/Pam Anderson guy) who
has many skills. Top-notch chopsocky results. A classic. -zwolf
House (C, 1986)
Not-so-hot horror/comedy about a writer (William Katt) who moves to his
late aunt's house to write his Vietnam memoirs, only to be attacked by
monsters. There's a fat woman monster and a zombie soldier who's a dead
ringer for "Sgt. D" from the thrash band Stormtroopers Of Death.
Fair special effects, stupid story, but somehow rated a sequel, House
II: The Second Story. I can't remember if I saw that one or not. I
don't really care, either... Stars George Wendt, Kay Lenz, Michael Ensign,
Richard Moll. -zwolf
House by the Cemetery (C, 1981)
AKA Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero, The House Outside the
Cemetery
Another of Lucio Fulci's stylish gorefests. A scholar brings his family
to Boston to study the papers of a Dr. Petersen, who hanged himself after
being banned from medicine for researching the methods of a controversial
Dr. Freudstein. The scholar's son Bob makes friends with a ghostly little
girl, and his wife finds a grave in their floor. Their frighteningly-beautiful
housekeeper, Ann, also seems up to something. But, worst of all, Dr. Freudstein
is still living in the cellar, looking mummified; he's kept himself alive
through hideous transplants, and sees the new family as a good source
of organs. The plot is incidental (and, like much of Fulci's oeuvre, doesn't
really make a whole lot of sense); the strong point is the gore, such
as a knife through the head, bat bites, impalement by fireplace poker,
assorted mangled remains, decapitation, maggot-oozing stab wounds, pulled-out
throats, and other such pleasantries. Plus there's plenty of creepy atmosphere
in which it all takes place. One of Fulci's most popular films. -zwolf
House On Haunted Hill (B&W,
1958)
Vincent Price stars in this William Castle horror flick. Vinnie P, at
his smoothest, invites several people to his wife's "amusing"
party in an infamous haunted house, giving them ten thousand dollars if
they'll stay there for twelve hours. Before the party can even start,
the guests run into such things as an exceedingly-creepy floating madwoman
(I'm serious, that scene works) and a bloody severed head in a box. Despite
this, they are all locked in 'til morning, and Vincent gives them little
coffins with .45 automatics to protect themselves. Pretty soon one of
them is found hanged, and they all think they could be next. It gets kind
of hokey at times (it's a bad sign when my mom sees it on and thinks the
attacking skeleton is "cute") but it's pretty good overall.
Elisha Cook Jr. delivers a bug-eyed, twitchy performance as a true believer.
Remade in 1999, without the benefit of Castle's "Emergo" gimmick,
which consisted of a skeleton being dangled over the audience. -zwolf
House On The Edge of the Park
(C, 1984)
David Hess ("Krug" from Last House On The Left) hasn't
mellowed with age - he rapes a girl while strangling her before the credits
even roll on this one. Then he and his creepy friend (John Morghen, another
guy who always plays a creep - remember the guy who got castrated in Make
Them Die Slowly and got a drill through his head in Gates of Hell?)
go out to "boogie" in their bad disco suits and end up crashing
a small upper-class party. The rich people end up laughing at the two
slobs. BAD idea. Hess becomes the bad-guest-from-Hell, menacing people
with a straight razor, punching them out, gleefully pissing in people's
faces, raping women, keeping everyone hostage, and just generally being
unpleasant to be around. He gets nastier and more out of control until
things are a real mess. Tense, sadistic horror with some simple but nonetheless
stomach-churning gore and lots of nudity. Hess is a little too good at
these things.... Sick, mean-spirited Italian flick, but effective if you're
looking for the strong stuff. Unbelievable twist ending. One of the actresses
is also from Make Them Die Slowly. Directed by everyone's favorite
purveyor of reprehensibility, Ruggerio Deodato. -zwolf
The House
that Screamed (C, 1969) AKA The Boarding School, The
Finishing School, La Residencia
Be aware that there's a vastly-inferior 2000 piece of shit disappointing
people by the dozens 'cuz they've bought it thinking they were getting
this Spanish gothic horror classic - it has the same title and for a while
video dealers mistakingly marketed it as being this movie. It's
not even close. This one is still unjustifiably hard to find; it used
to show up on late-night TV and now deserves a DVD release (Anchor Bay,
Blue Underground, Shriek Show... any of you guys listening?). Lilli Palmer
is the strict headmistress of a school for unruly girls. She tries to
break their spirits with discipline, hard work, boring routine, and -
when those things fail - a cat o' nine tails. Part of the reason she hates
the girls so much is that her horny son is too interested in them, always
peeking at them and sneaking out with them. Because the girls have such
hard lives, everybody blames their frequent disappearances on running
away, but in reality someone is murdering them... and quite stylishly,
too. And it all has something to do with a seriously-demented secret in
the attic... Classy and influential (it supposedly gave Dario Argento
ideas for Suspiria) exploration of the warping potential of repressed
sexual tension; all that energy either goes into the headmistress abusing
the girls, the girls abusing each other, or flat-out pathological psychopathia.
Hard to find, but with DVD manufacturers mining for old Eurohorror, I'm
hoping somebody will have the good sense to get around to this one. -zwolf
House With
Laughing Windows (C, 1976) AKA La Casa dalle Finestre che
Ridona
The most amazing thing about this Pupi Avati pseudo-giallo horror film
is that it managed to stay unseen for so long, because if horror fans
had known what they were missing they'd have beaten down the door for
it a long time ago, because this can easily stand up there with anything
by Argento, Bava, or Fulci. A painter named Stefano goes to an isolated
rural village to restore a fresco on the wall of the local church. It
was painted by an unbalanced artist called "the painter of agonies," who
always painted people dying painfully. Stefano is warned away from the
painting and learns that there's a terrible secret behind it... a secret
he may become part of. There is some gore, but what drives this film is
a menacing atmosphere that builds slowly and results in a nightmarish,
horrific cumulative effect that few other films accomplish. The locations
- lonely wastelands and decaying buildings - heap an oppressive air over
the darkness that unfolds clue by clue. It's not a fast-paced film, and
is thinking-person's horror; you should watch this with no distractions
(not even popcorn) and let it worm its way in. A masterpiece. -zwolf
Hype! (C, 1996)
Documentary about the whole Seattle grunge scene (remember it? It was
the thing that was GOOD before all the Britney Spears/ NSync crap took
over the world), consisting of live footage and soundbite interviews with
gotta be 'bout a hundred bands, known and unknown. It sounds like the
rest of the world took the whole thing more seriously than the bands did;
they were just going for loud, noisy, and ridiculous. It examines how
SubPop started an underground hype machine that got the whole scene to
blow up by promoting the whole label instead of the bands... making sure
fans got the idea that everything on SubPop was cool and the thing to
have. And when it got so huge, the bands were overwhelmed and didn't really
want that much success. Includes footage of the first time Nirvana played
"Smells Like Teen Spirit" live, and discussion of how Nirvana's
success affected the rest, like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Alice In Chains,
and Pearl Jam. Other bands featured include Tad, Blood Circus, Dead Moon,
Gas Huffer, The Gits, Coffin Break, The Melvins, 7 Year Bitch, The Posies,
Fastbacks, Gas Huffer, Supersuckers, Seaweed, Screaming Trees, and more.
The whole thing is interesting, but it leaves you wanting more - there
are so many short clips and the music has aged so well in light of the
absolute dreck that's come out since then that you start wishing they'd
show the entire show. One of the absolute coolest things about this videotape,
though, is that I got an SP pre-rec of it, brand new, for one dollar at
the Dollar Tree! Whoo-hoo! Dat's a bargain, chillun! Especially since
a lotta places - like Amazon - are currently asking $18 for it! Hee-ha!
Great documentary on music... and on hype in general. Often hilarious
and smart. Gee, it's funny that Candlebox never showed up... (I'm bein'
sarcastic, y'know). -zwolf
