Hi there! It’s Saturday morning — are you still with us? If you’re not, don’t worry. You have all day to get raptured. Until then, here’s the second part of this weekend’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers.
(And if you haven’t read part one, it’s right here.)
Anyway, let’s waste no more time because who knows how long we’ve got left.
7) Requiem for a Vampire (1971)
Seeing as this could very well be the last things that I ever post or that you ever read pre-Rapture, there’s no way I can’t start things out without including this trailer for Jean Rollin’s unique, twisted, and very French vampire fairy tale, Requiem for a Vampire. One thing to note here is that when this film was released in the U.S., the American distributor felt the need to emphasize that the two girls were virgins and even went so far as to retitle the film Caged Virgins. However, the original French print of this film makes no reference to whether or not the girls are virgins and, despite all that happens to them in the film, the girls themselves are never presented as being helpless. Whenever I feel the need to explain the difference between American culture and French culture, this is one of the examples I always cite.
8 ) Kenner (1969)
Jim Brown is Kenner! And that’s about all I really know about this film. Well, that and small bundles of heroin are worth millions…
9) The Three Dimensions of Greta (1973)
I was recently reading about 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy, a movie from Hong Kong that is apparently setting box office records because it’s being advertised as the first 3-D pornographic film. And, as the linked article shows, a lot of people are reporting that claim as fact. And they’re wrong. 3-D Sex and Zen might be the first recent 3-D porn film but it’s hardly the first. There was a spate of 3-D porn films in the mid-70s and one of my favorite trailers (which I can’t post here because 1) it’s too explict and 2) I can’t remember the title of the film) features a stereotypical, curly-haired, guy with a mustache type of porno actor going, “Soon, my giant schlong with be hanging right over the head of that redhead in the 3rd seat in the backrow.” And of course, I was all like, “Oh my God, can he see me through the screen!?” Anyway, the 3 Dimensions of Greta was a part of this wave. This is another one of those trailers that will probably be yanked off YouTube in a few more days (assuming there isn’t a Rapture first).
(By the way, why were so many porno films made about girls named Greta? I mean, was that name a turn-on? Were the films of the 70s exclusively made by guys named Hansel? Seriously, boys are weird.)
10) The Violent Professionals (1973)
They’re violent alright! Before the Italian exploitation industry devoted itself to cannibals and zombies, they devoted themselves to ripping off The French Connection and The Godfather. This film from Sergio Martino actually features Don Barzini himself, Richard Conte.
If I didn’t tell you this film was from 1968, you’d guess it just from watching the trailer. The soundtrack was done by George Harrison. Though this film was certainly not designed to be an exploitation film in the way most of the other films featured here were, it definitely is one.
Can you believe I went this long without featuring the trailer for Lucio Fulci’s best known (after Zombi 2) film? Well, I love Fulci, I love this film, and I was waiting for the right occasion to feature this trailer. And the end of the possible end of the world seemed like the right time. Anyway, this is one of those love it or hate it films (and I know that one of our regular readers is not a huge fan of this film but I love him anyway). At his best, director Lucio Fulci made some of the most visually stunning and dramatically incoherent films ever and never was that more apparent than with the Beyond. Out of the film’s cast, Catriona MacColl plays one of the few strong women to ever appear in a Fulci film while David Warbeck (a personal fave of mine) is the perfect hero. My favorite performance in the film (and a lot of this has to do with the fact that she co-starred in one of my favorite movies ever, Beyond the Darkness) is given by Cinzia Monreale, who plays the blind Emily.
And so there you go. If you do get raptured later today, thank you for reading. It’s been a pleasure telling you about the films I love and hopefully, someday, we’ll all meet in the beyond.
And if, as I suspect, there is no rapture today, I look forward to sharing even more.
Ciao!
Through the Shattered Lens 
After playing the “Requiem for a Vampire” trailer, a link to a trailer for a “Caged Virgins” trailer appears. If you did not watch that, it is worth a look. It seems to have been filmed in a theater, and you can hear the audience laugh every time the narrator says the film’s title.
As for “The Beyond”, I don’t know who that other reader who dislikes the film is, but he sounds like a real jerk.
Now, as it turns out, as a matter of remarkable coincidence, I don’t really like the film, either. But since I’m not an opinionated, argumentative person (like that other guy), I would simply pose a question to see if others perceive the same things I do.
If I were to say that Fulci’s films seem to have been directed by a child – illogical occurrences or sequences of events, random things inconsistent with the established theme (some outright WTF-type things, others just kind of out place), the subtlety of a jackhammer, etc. – would you understand what I am referring to? Can you imagine the mind of an eight-year old boy conceiving things this way? Or am I just not getting it?
I think that other reader you mentioned (the more I think about that guy, the more he pisses me off) might have mention this – In this particular film, toward the end, Warbeck’s character keeps shooting the zombies in the torso, even after having repeatedly seen that that does nothing, but that head shots are effective? Why? Why? Why?!
Perhaps one person’s “dramatically incoherent” is another’s…well…”bad”. But I do like “Zombi”. And I will acknowledge the visually stunning aspect of Fulci’s films – there have been some memorable scenes. And, “The Beyond” certainly fits with this week’s trailers theme.
As for that other reader, don’t get me started…
Great batch this week. I’m glad we’re all still here to enjoy them.
LikeLike
lol, that’s why the Beyond is such a love it or hate it type of film. Those of us who love it cannot begin to imagine a world where its not loved and those that hate it kinda look at the other camp and think, “What the Hell’s wrong with you?” lol.
As for Warbeck shooting the zombies in the torso — that was actually Fulci expressing his contempt at the fact that the film’s producers insisted that he add zombies to the finale of the Beyond. Fulci’s original vision for the film was one without zombies (or at least, not the traditional type of walking dead that we get here) but the film’s backers said that they wouldn’t give him any money unless he added some zombies (as zombies were the big thing at the time). Fulci was, by this point, bored with zombies and all the cliches that went with them so by having Warbeck shoot them in the torso, he was making a statement about just how little there was left to do with the zombie genre.
I will always defend Fulci’s early 80s films — roughly from Zombi 2 to The New York Ripper — by citing the strength of his visuals and the fact that his best films, much like Rollin’s, come very close to recreating the feel of a fragmented nightmare. As I’ve studied both Fulci and Rollin(and as I’ve come to realize that the only way to truly evaluate their films is to view them all as seperate parts of one gigantic story), I’ve come to realize that this was not a happy accident but instead something very deliberate on their parts. On that basis, I will always defend their films.
(Though, of the two, Rollin definitely had a firmer and more confident grasp on his artistic vision than Fulci did.)
To me, the events of the Beyond — and other Fulci films — are not as random as they may seem if just because Fulci has such an identifiable style (at least as far as Italian exploitation directors are concerned). To me, those random, seemingly out-of-place scenes are linked together by style and, as Fulci himself often said, his best films were all about style over substance. Though the film’s narrative might not link the various events together, Fulci’s directorial style did. As such, the viewer knows that everything’s connected even if he’s never quite sure why or how (which, again, plays into the dream logic of Fulci’s work). This is why I think most of Fulci’s detractors aren’t so much attacking him as a director as expressing frustration with him as a storyteller. But it takes talent to get people frustrated.
I would also say that, if and once you accept the idea that Fulci was being incoherent on purpose, then the Beyond becomes one of the few effective cinematic homages to H.P. Lovecraft in film history.
LikeLike
I always thought that the City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery are all interconnected by their very Lovecraftian-themes.
LikeLike
Yes, they are. Fulci even went so far as to refer to them as being a trilogy (though this could have been in response to Argento’s proposed Three Mothers trilogy — Fulci was always trying to tick off Argento in much the same way that I’m always trying to find a way to tick off the people over at AwardsDaily).
In fact, Fulci claimed that, at the end of the House By The Cemetary, the creepy little kid Bob escaped by entering the Beyond. House By The Cemetary, btw, has got to be one of the most depressing horror movies ever! 🙂
LikeLike
What a thoughtful response/analysis. Well done.
However, as far as Argento goes…:)
LikeLike