Four faux fiends

Under the bed, in the bed, on the table, or in the sea: these are places monsters can be. And if you're a good parent, you'll warn your kids of all these possibilities and more.

But if you're looking to raise terrified children, don't turn to these four films, which uniformly disappoint in their attempts at fiendish offerings.

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The Head (1959)

Grade: D+



"No, that's German for The Brain That Wouldn't The."

And indeed it is -- though here the brilliant scientist gets the John-the-Baptist treatment, and is kept alive against his will by his newly hired and alarmingly Aryan associate, Dr. Ood (Horst Frank). Meanwhile, a crippled young woman gets a brand-new and sexy-sexy chassis, much to her (eventual) horror, though it's a triumph for the unscrupulous Dr. Ood.



A stylish beginning gave us high hopes for this Teutonic tale of transplantation and torment, but it quickly fizzled out, leaving us with yet another humdrum saga of world-weary dancers, shaky science, crappy image quality, and Götteryämmerung.

Faux fiend the first:



From the beginning, The Head drops hints that Dr. Ood has some sort of...affliction...involving the full moon. As his behavior grew viler and more erratic, we rather expected a big reveal with lycanthropy, baying at the moon, and so on.



Instead, just another sociopath. Perhaps he should've just gotten the MBA instead?
 

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Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)
(aka Hannah, Queen of the Vampires)

Grade: C



I've got news for you, kid: in 1973, the bad guys were the ones without mustaches. If you can understand this, many doors of perception will open for you.



Indeed, this moody vampire flick set on a Turkish island has many a mustache to offer, and it's there that you should seek your satisfaction, since the ladies don't have much. The titular vampire looks good while on her back, becomes less compelling once up and out of bed...



...and if that invites a smug remark about how a dude obviously wrote it, well, then there's Lois Gibson. And B.D. Wong.



Plus there's a Barbara Steele lookalike, but who cares?



Unfortunately, mustaches can't do much to repair the terrible sound on Mill Creek's print, nor can it restore the color that's mysteriously gone missing (sorry, Dad).



Faux fiend #2:

Well, at least she's actually a vampire (paging Peter Loew on Isle Üç), but Hannah herself was really kind of lame. She's either supine or lupine, and never does much of anything. Plus there's some guy that lurks around à la Torgo and doesn't do much.

Which leaves the mustaches, or lack thereof. Take heed, friends:

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The Devil Monster (1946)

Objective Grade: F
Manta 'n' Mammary Modifier: C+



Oh Christ, this thing. Sorry, but we have to go into pottymouth mode for this one: people who blather about the "worst movie ever" don't know what the fuck they're talking about, because they haven't seen The Devil Monster yet.

Not that this is the worst movie ever -- it's far too amusing for that. And like chronic Lyme disease, the movie's incompetence mostly festers in its joints, especially where the main source material, The Sea Fiend (1936), is haphazardly spliced together with documentary footage taken from God-knows-where.



Highlights of that footage include seals, sharks, bare-breasted ladies of several different ethnicities, and an octopus and a moray eel having an epic battle in the bottom of a "lagoon" that's bounded by a strange, almost aquarium-like pane of glass.



Anyway, tropical island, Béla Lugosi accent, blah blah blah. Other people have written about this shit, we don't need to.

Faux fiend the fird:

The titular monster is a manta ray, for fuck's sake. It's a filter feeder! They don't hurt anyone! Hell, even Captain Caswell doesn't fight them! What's wrong with you people?

Well, nothing a little Grade-Z special effects won't fix, it seems:

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A Walking Nightmare (1942)
(aka The Living Ghost)

Grade: C+



Wacky horror-mystery-comedy wherein Nick Trayne (James Dunn), a brilliant PI who got "fed up with the detective business" and became a huckster, is coaxed out of retirement by spunky Billie Hilton (Joan Woodbury) to solve the case of a missing millionaire. So it's off to the millionaire's mansion to meet a colorful cast of characters, and naturally, banter and bickering ensue.



Soon the millionaire turns up, alive but zombified. Cue more banter, some medical mumbo-jumbo, a murder, a spooky abandoned house, and a pro forma romantic subplot.



The (alternate) title notwithstanding, the only real specter in this film is the horrendous ghosting in the spooky-house scenes, which makes everything look like an acid flashback done 1930s style.

Still, it's all inoffensive and moves along relatively quickly. That, plus one or two good one-liners, helps to elevate this a bit above the usual B-grade screwball fare.



Faux fiend the final:



A Walking Nightmare feints at setting itself up as a comic zombie movie, but the two specimens of zombiedom amount to little more than lobotomized deer (hi, Faith!) meandering aimlessly around. There isn't even a supernatural explanation; it's just a couple guys who've turned stupid, without first enjoying the pleasures of a bagful of airplane glue (or a tankful of propane). That may be tragic, but it's hardly frightening.



Unless you count Joan Woodbury's hair and outfit. That's some scary shit.

Avenging Mom with fire

We didn't plan it this way, but our next two films have a remarkable amount in common:

• distinctive and intriguing titles;
• mothers preoccupied by witchy thoughts of revenge, and daughters who get caught up in their schemes;
• scenes of fire and catharsis, in which the movie's proletariat is at last invited to let loose;
• murky plots that left us scratching our heads over certain key details;
• and, courtesy of Mill Creek, terrible transfers with very bad sound, which surely don't do the movies in question any favors.

So in this spirit of ennui and motherhood, let's dive in:

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Chloe, Love is Calling You (1934)

Grade: F



As Kelsey Grammer would say, "Oh, dear Lord."

Let's get this out of the way up front: the only saving grace of Chloe, Love is Calling You is the historically significant footage of the Shreveport Home Wreckers. Their performance, though brief, is certainly a highlight.



Otherwise, this atrocious melodrama in the "one drop of black blood" vein manages to be both offensive and boring, which is no small feat. Olive Borden (in her final screen role) is almost plausible as Chloe, a girl who yearns to escape the not-entirely-loving arms of her mother, the voodoo priestess Old Mandy (Georgette Harvey). Old Mandy fled after her husband Sam was lynched many years ago, and now she and Chloe have come back to their old home.



Chloe's decidedly unmelanistic appearance is explained by the fact that she's allegedly "high yella", or mixed-race. And okay, it's not inconceivable that Olive Borden could be mixed-race; she looks more Joyce DeWitt (or Gilda Radner) than Lena Horne, but whatever.  But this guy?



Yes indeed: they chose Philip Ober, best known as "the guy who married Vivian Vance and beat her up", to play Jim Strong, the movie's second mixed-race character. (What kind of person would beat up Vivian Vance, for God's sake?)  Mr. Ober was many things, but a plausible non-Caucasian was not one of them, and even in 1934 one has to imagine his casting must have elicited giggles in the audience.

Jim is utterly besotted with Chloe, and even wrestles dead alligators on her behalf to prove his love:



But she'll have none of it, and instead pines for local plantation foreman Wade Carson (Reed Howes), who returns her affections -- but doesn't realize she's black. (Cue dramatic music here.)

Still, Chloe and Wade fall madly in love, leaving poor Jim out in the cold. A noble soul even so, he saves Wade's life not just once, but twice, and barely gets a thank-you in return.

(He could've at least sent a card. One imagines that the local gift shop in Chloetown would've had "Thanks for saving me from murderous minorities" stocked in both A1 and A7 sizes, since every non-white character in the movie except Chloe and Jim is either servile or treacherously homicidal.)



Now, Wade has recently started working for the genteel Col. Gordon (Francis Joyner). Years ago the Colonel lost a daughter, Betty Ann, under mysterious circumstances: she was presumed to have drowned, but her body was never found.  (You can probably see where this is going.)



The chief roadblock in Chloe's road to happiness (and not-black-ness) is Old Mandy. She holds Col. Gordon responsible for Sam's lynching, which some reviews of the movie seem to take at face value. But racist though Chloe, Love is Calling You is, it's not Birth of a Nation, and as far as we could tell the sequence was actually meant to be:

• Col. Gordon fires Sam (probably for stealing, since the movie makes a point of showing Wade confronting a pre-existing workplace culture of employee theft);
• Sam attacks Col. Gordon, knocks him unconscious, and escapes;
• then an unspecified group of "folks" pursues, catches, and lynches Sam, without the Colonel's knowledge or encouragement.

Not that it made a big difference to Sam, of course, but the bottom line (we suppose) is that Old Mandy is taking revenge on the wrong man. And in fact, there's a little hint of "the cycle of violence ends here" in the movie's closing scenes, when the Colonel pointedly notes that he wants to prevent a second lynching.



At least Chloe, Love is Calling You is short. But it's terrible, and thanks to the poor audio and shaky picture, it's literally hard to watch.  So unless you're interested in black screen presence in early talkies -- or in the Shreveport Home Wreckers -- avert your eyes and ears, and be the happier for it.

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The Long Hair of Death (1964)

Grade: D-

As a wise man once said, "OH, NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAHHHHH! OH, THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAAGGHHH!"



Or, perhaps more to the point: "BITCHES! YOU BITCHES!"



Barbara Steele plots and schemes her way through this mediocre Italian gothic tale of murder, revenge, and creepy (though not terribly convincing) medieval dungeons. The film opens on a rather festive note, as an accused witch flails about in the midst of a flaming maze of hay bales and cross-shaped scaffolding. A stylish change from the typical crone-on-a-stick set-up, we thought.



Meanwhile, upstairs in the castle, the woman’s eldest daughter Helen (Steele) endures the sleazy advances of the local nobleman, who promises to spare mom in exchange for a little rapporto carnale.  It makes no difference, of course: the crispy witch expires, but not before cursing the village and imploring her two daughters to avenge her death.



Revenge, however, will have to wait. Helen is abruptly offed by the Count in the next scene (to the outrage of Steele fanboys everywhere, we’re sure) and the other daughter, Elizabeth -- just a child, at this point -- is, perversely, entrusted to the Count’s household. Keep your enemies close, we suppose, or pray that Stockholm syndrome does its magic.

All this is a prelude to the real action, which takes place a decade or so later amid the Black Death or some similar plague. Elizabeth (Halina Zalewska), by now a petulant, sulking sourpuss of a woman, is married, against her will, to the Count’s son Kurt (George Ardisson) -- a boorish Shatner lookalike with a penchant for frilly shirts and pig-headed chauvinism.



Things aren't going so well for Elizabeth, but soon the requisite dark and stormy night blows in a mysterious figure -- why, if it isn't good ol' Barbara Steele, back from the great beyond! At least, we guessed it was the great beyond. Here is where things got somewhat murky (murkier than the terrible Mill Creek print, if you can believe it). Now Steele claims she's a traveler named Mary, and everyone in the household seems to go along with this fiction (except poor old Count Humboldt, who keeled over from the shock). Not even a flicker of recognition from Kurt, the staff, or, significantly, her own sister.



Plot hole, or lost in translation? Who knows or cares, because soon the film turns into a long, slow, murky slog to the finish. Kurt, predictably, falls under the spell of the mysterious Mary, who seems to oscillate between wanting it and not (women, right?), and the two of them eventually plan to do away with Elizabeth permanently. There's a ton of gabbing around the dinner table, skulking in dungeons, mooning about the bedroom, and a generous helping of not getting on with things.



Other reviewers of this film (and there are many) seem to fall into two schools: first are those who agree that, yes, it does get rather dull in the middle -- but that it's not really relevant, because Barbara Steele is just such a talented actress. Then there are those who rabidly insist that no, what you plebes call dragging is actually mood and atmosphere and a building sense of dread.



As to the latter, all we can say is that we tend to love films where nothing much happens (Idaho Transfer, anyone?), but there's a difference between good atmosphere and pea soup. As to the former? No accounting for taste, we suppose. It is our expert and informed opinion that both sets of reviewers enjoy this movie for precisely one reason. Well, two reasons.



Inexplicably, nobody else seems to be bothered by the score, which is heavy-handed, mind-numbingly repetitive, and by its presence alone threatened to put this film firmly in "F" territory. We decided on a "D-" simply because we were genuinely curious about how things would all turn out. Though reminding us not unpleasantly of a similar denouement in a more recent film -- and there is something vaguely Summersisle about all the women, it should be said -- ultimately, we were left feeling unsatisfied. Next time the Italians have a zany adventure, we'll make sure they bring a big tomato sauce.

Tales of canine bravery and wisdom

These next two films are, as far as we know, the only ones left in our backlog: one is a recent watch that we hadn't written up yet, and the other is a movie we skipped out of laziness.

Getting this unfinished business cleared up is pleasant enough, but it was even nicer to realize they also share a theme: in each, one of the most important characters is a dog.

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Beartooth (1978)

Grade: C+



This first film takes us out of Mill Creek territory and into the 2-DVD set 4 Movie Marathon: Grit 'N Perseverance, which we're hoping to review in full if we can get the discs successfully resurfaced (they're half-clean, half-trashed, so only two of the movies are currently watchable).

Anyway, this set was our source for 1978's Beartooth -- or, as the DVD case calls it, Beartooh:



In certain films, there's a moment early on -- maybe 20 minutes in, depending on the runtime -- when you realize something important about the movie you're watching, something that will shape your experience of the remainder of the film.  And that realization is: Nothing is going to happen in this movie.



Or, phrased more generously: This movie isn't about plot, but about character, atmosphere and a sense of place.



Now, in the case of Beartooth, that's not strictly true.  It has a plot (albeit one that could be summarized in two sentences with very little loss of information), and it even has peripeteia and anagnorisis.



But it also has long, long stretches where nothing is happening except some combination of: (a) beautiful Technicolor vistas of the American Rockies, (b) the strumming of the world's jangliest banjo, (c) stock footage of wildlife, and/or (d) Dub Taylor doing his chores while his dog Sugar keeps him company.



Your patience for this sort of thing, and your tolerance for sweet-natured stories of grizzled, lonely old mountain men who find lifesaving companionship in canine form, will heavily shape your enjoyment of Beartooth. We watched it while suspended thousands of feet in the air, in the last stage of a long and stressful transcontinental trip, and as K. said, "it was just what the doctor ordered."



Though there's almost no information on the Internet about Beartooth, it seems likely that it was intended as an educational film, or perhaps as a product to sell to schools and communities. At the very least it was produced by Educational Services Inc., and one can't help but notice that Dub Taylor's character, "old" C.J. McDonald (as he describes himself), never utters an oath any stronger than "Dadgum!"



And one more crucial point: the DVD cover features a promotional image of a snarling bear with razor-sharp teeth exposed, looking ready to kill. (Apparently, Amazon.com also uses the same image for its digital download/rental.) But if you come to Beartooth looking for pulse-pounding scenes of C.J. McDonald doing battle with a grizzly, you will be sorely disappointed: the only bears seen in Beartooth are part of stock footage montages.



It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Beartooth is, in fact, the opposite of such a movie. Speaking solely in bear terms, it's far closer to Grizzly Man than Grizzly, but minus Werner Herzog.



Really, the closest archetype for Beartooth would be the evocative Canadian educational shorts they used to play on PBS on weekday mornings when you'd be home from school, sick in bed. If you have fond memories of those, you might like this, but horror fans should almost certainly steer clear.

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Embryo (1976)

Grade: B+



Our K. had seen this Rock Hudson vehicle before (which is why we skipped over it in our first pass through Nightmare Worlds), but only barely remembered it; our P. hadn't, and his expectations were totally confounded.



Not a monster movie starring some grotesquely deformed fetus with psychic powers (and room for a pony), it's instead a kind of variation on Flowers for Algernon, except this time Charly Gordon is smart, hot, and female.



And Algernon is a Doberman named Number One, and doesn't die. Plus he cleans up his messes.



Apparently Embryo has gotten poor reviews in some quarters, and some reviewers absolutely loathed the movie. But we found it totally engaging up until the last five minutes, when it finally degenerated into the kind of schlock we'd been expecting all along (and were pleasantly surprised not to have gotten).



We have to give a special shout-out to the dog that played Number One (sadly uncredited), whose obvious intelligence and calm dexterity impressed the hell out of us both. Good actor, too, with inquisitive eyes, a convincing head-tilt, and a terrifying growl: we wouldn't want to be bacon on a sawhorse when Number One got in a bad mood.



In fact, Number One was probably the best performance in the movie, so it's a crime that we can't praise him (or her? -- we didn't check) by name. If there isn't a canine version of the Screen Actors Guild, there surely should be!