4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking! (And yes, sometimes we do more than just 4 shots!)
Today, we honor the one and only Jesus “Jess” Franco!
6 Shots From 6 Jess Franco Films
The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Godofredo Pacheco)
Count Dracula (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DPs: Manuel Merino and Luciano Trasatti)
Vampyros Lesbos (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Manuel Merino)
A Virgin Among The Living Dead (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DP: anyone’s guess)
Female Vampire (1973, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Jess Franco)
Oasis of the Zombies (1981, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Max Monteillet)
Since tomorrow will be the great man’s birthday, it seems appropriate that today’s horror film on the lens is Edward D. Wood’s 1955 epic, Bride of the Monster.
(Much like Plan 9 From Outer Space, around here, it is a tradition to watch Bride of the Monster in October.)
The film itself doesn’t feature a bride but it does feature a monster, a giant octopus who guards the mansion of the mysterious Dr. Vornoff (Bela Lugosi). Vornoff and his hulking henchman Lobo (Tor Johnson) have been kidnapping men and using nuclear power to try to create a race of super soldiers. Or something like that. The plot has a make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel to it. That’s actually a huge part of the film’s appeal.
Bride of the Monster is regularly described as being one of the worst films ever made but I think that’s rather unfair. Appearing in his last speaking role, Lugosi actually gives a pretty good performance, bringing a wounded dignity to the role of Vornoff. If judged solely against other movies directed by Ed Wood, this is actually one of the best films ever made.
Having been recently diagnosed with serious heart problems and having also recently lost his wife in a car accident, James Bragg (Gary T. Smith) collapses when he’s informed that he has been fired from his job. When he opens his eyes, he discovers that his office is on fire. A man in a suit (Clay Butler) claims to be an agent with the Department of Homeland Security and he explains that the building has been bombed.
“By who?” James asks.
“Al Qaeda. Boko Haram. Mexican drug cartels,” the man replies.
James asks for the man for his name. The man smiles and says that must people call him Bub.
Bub leads James through the burning building, explaining that he’s taking James to safety. However, as the flames grow higher, James hears a voice saying, “Don’t follow him.” Bub says that the voice is just a ploy of the terrorists but James isn’t quite so sure….
As soon as I tell you that 2023’s The Friend is faith-based film, you’ll probably be able to guess where this story is going. Will James follow Bub onto the elevator going down or will he listen to the voice telling him not to follow. Will James remember that Bub is a nickname for Beezlebub, one of the more fearsome of the demons that are said to populate Hell? Will James make peace with the death of his wife and find the strength to continue? Who will James’s new friend be? Will it be Bub or will it be the older man who always seems to be showing up in the background?
Again, you can probably guess where all this is heading but The Friend is still a well-made and surprisingly well-acted meditation on life, death, and faith and, with the exception of two scenes, it’s a film that does a good job of avoiding the preachiness that one expects to find in films like this. Along with co-directing and co-writing the script, Gary T. Smith starts in the film and he gives a good performance as a man overwhelmed by both his mortality and the loss of the person who gave his life meaning. Smith does a good job of showing how it’s the little things that hurt us the most when we’re missing someone. Even an act of kindness, like a co-worker expressing sincere sympathy, can cause the pain of a recent loss to flare up. Of course, for many viewers, the film will work because it makes Bub a government agent. The implication, whether deliberate or not, is that an authoritarian like Bub is right at home working as a federal agent and that he has no problem using James’s understandable fear of a terrorist attack as a way to convince James to give up everything that was previously important to him. Obviously, I don’t know that the filmmaker had any sort of political statement in mind when they made Bub an agent of Homeland Security but it does certainly provide an interesting subtext to the film.
Actually, I’m a bit surprised that Bub didn’t apply for a job with TSA. Imagine the pain and misery he could spread there!
“You know what they say, Sam! Everyone wants a piece of a medical student.”
“That’s sick, Punk Rock Dan.”
So say two radio hosts towards the end of the 1986 film, Evil Laugh.
Evil Laugh is a slasher film that was directed by Dominick Brascia, the actor who appeared as Joey, the most annoying character ever, in Friday the 13th Part V. Joey was the fat kid who got on everyone’s nerves by offering them a chocolate bar. Eventually, he made the mistake of approach axe-crazy Vic while Vic was holding an actual axe. “You know I’ve never chopped wood before but it looks like fun,” Joey said. “LEAVE ME ALONE!” Vic shouted. “Okay, Vic …. but I think you’re way out of line.” Vic responded by burying his axe in Joey’s back and I imagine audiences cheered. Seriously, Joey was that annoying.
Evil Laugh actually contains some references to Friday the 13th. One of the potential victims, a medical student named Barney (Jerold Pearson) is a horror movie buff who points out that the reason that Jason keeps coming back to Camp Crystal Lake is because everyone keeps having sex. Unfortunately, none of his friends listen to him.
Barney is one of a group of med students who are spending the weekend at an abandoned orphanage. Years ago, an employee named Martin was falsely accused by the orphans of abusing them. Martin’s father committed suicide from the shame and Martin went on a killing rampage before setting the place on fire. (And yet, the building still stands without so much as a burn mark.) A doctor has decided to reopen the orphanage and, in the tradition of Steve Christy and the counselors he got killed at Crystal Lake, he has recruited a bunch of med students to help him get the place ready to go. The doctor has already been killed by the time the med students arrives but they get to work anyway.
The cool thing about this movie is that there’s a cleaning montage. Everyone really gets into cleaning. I could relate to that. Another cool thing about this movie is that there are a few moments when it reveals itself to have a sense of humor. Barney is a horror fan and is constantly pointing out that everything that is happening is like something that would happen in a slasher film. Barney’s friends are dismissive of him and, as a result, things don’t go well for them. The deaths are all memorable. As well, the film’s ending worked surprisingly well. Finally, the last cool thing about this movie is that, towards the end, one character got to wear the really pretty black kimono. As soon as the movie ended, I decided to order myself a new black kimono.
That said, I don’t want to overpraise Evil Laugh. It had its moments and I think it can be argued that it had more “good moments” than the average low-budget, independently-made 80s slasher film. At the same time, some of the acting truly is unfortunate and it does seem to take a while for the film to really achieve any sort of narrative momentum. For every scene that works, there’s another one that’s just downright boring. Evil Laugh is not an overlooked classic but, again, it has its moments.
In 1986’s Dreamaniac, Adam (Thomas Bern) is a total dork who lives with his much more popular sister, Pat (Ashlyn Gere). Adam aspires to be a heavy metal superstar and he is very much interested in the occult. He’s been having dreams about being visited by a sultry and mysterious woman named Lily (Sylvia Summers). When he performs a Satanic ritual to summon her for real, Lily offers him anything that he wants. Instead of asking her to turn him into the world’s greatest guitarist or something smart like that, Adam asks to be irresistible to women.
Seriously, Adam, if you were the world’s greatest guitarist, you would be getting laid all the time whether you were irresistible or not. The ugliest guy in the world is still be sexy if he can play guitar. Take a look at the Rolling Stones and its long history of ugly guitar players who all looked good as long as they were playing. Take a look at …. oh, I don’t know. I’m tired and I’m just trying to pad out this review because there’s not much to be said about this movie. Let’s move on.
Anyway, Adam gets his wish but he also has to kill the women so that Lily can take their soul and …. eh, that’s stupid. Like Adam, why would you agree to such a counter-productive agreement? Adam was so desperate to get a girlfriend that he apparently didn’t consider that none of them would really live long enough for him to have a real relationship with them. What an idiot.
After Adam sells his soul or whatever it is that he’s supposed to be doing with Lily, Pat throws a party at the house and a bunch of shallow sorority girls and fraternity boys come over and everyone dies one-by-one, usually right after having sex. No one really notices that everyone at the party is dying but then again, no one in this movie really seems to like anyone else so maybe they just don’t care.
Dreamaniac kind of ticked me off, largely because the title should have been Dream Maniac instead of Dreamaniac. I guess I would have let them even get away with something like Dreammaniac. But Dreamaniac, with only one m, just doesn’t make sense and looking at the word makes my multi-colored eyes tear up. This may sound like a petty complaint but there’s honestly not much to be said about Dreamaniac. It’s one of those low-budget, shot on video horror films where the lighting is often so dark and the soundtrack so muddy that you’re never really sure what’s happening on-screen. I dare anyone to watch this film and seriously try to tell one character a part from another. I had no idea who half the characters were and quite frankly, I didn’t care. This was one of David DeCoteau’s earlier films and it has none of the subversiveness that distinguished DeCoteau’s better efforts. (Considering the harsh tone of this review, I feel like I should point out that DeCoteau has directed some truly entertaining movies. Dreamaniac is certainly not the film that should be used to judge his overall career.)
Of course, today, DeCoteau is best known for directing the “Wrong” films for Lifetime. And really, I think the only thing that could have saved Dreamaniac would have been Vivica A. Fox showing up and saying, “Adam, you picked The Wrong Succubus.”
Today’s scene comes from 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein. The villagers want to execute the Monster (Boris Karloff). The Monster has other ideas.
This scene epitomizes what made the first two Karloff Frankenstein films so effective. As scary and as destructive as the Monster may be, he’s nowhere near as bad or deliberately sadistic as the humans around him. He’s a monster who is definitely more of a victim than a victimizer, someone who has been cruelly tossed into a world that he doesn’t understand and who has been persecuted nonstop since the moment he was created. It’s hard not to feel sorry for Karloff’s Monster, no matter what he does. And it’s hard not to cheer a little when he escapes, even though it does inevitably lead to more tragedy and heartbreak.
In the 1985’s The Ripper, a straight-to-video, regional production, Richard Hartwell (Tom Schreier) is a college professor who teaches a class on Jack the Ripper. He discusses Jack the Ripper films, though he does at one point accidentally say that Murder By Decree starred Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes. (Lee did play Mycroft Holmes in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes). He talks about some of the conspiracy theories that surround the Ripper. He encourages his students to try to move beyond the version of Jack the Ripper that’s been sold to them by Hollywood. Some of his fellow professors think that it’s a strange class and I kind of agree. I mean, can you really do an entire semester on just Jack the Ripper?
One day, while shopping at an antique store with his girlfriend, Carol (Mona Van Pernis), Richard comes across an antique ring. Even though the ring is way too big and kind of gauche, Carol loves it. Richard decides to secretly buy it for her. Unfortunately — and this is quite a coincidence considering Richard’s profession — the ring once belonged to Jack the Ripper. And, by putting the ring on his finger, Richard is allowing Jack the Ripper to come back to life in 80s Oklahoma!
Soon, local women are being murdered in ways that duplicate the grisly crimes of Whitechapel. The police suspect that it might be one of Richard’s students. When Richard sleeps, he’s haunted by dreams about the crimes, with the Ripper always appearing in the shadows. When the Ripper is finally revealed, it turns out that he’s …. TOM SAVINI!?
Well, kind of. Tom Savini does appear as Jack the Ripper towards the end of the film. Reportedly, he flew from Philadelphia to Oklahoma and shot his big scene in one day. For the rest of the film, though, the Ripper was played by a stand-in who was always either seen from behind or seen standing in the darkness with his face usually obscured. The few glimpses we do get of the stand-in’s face, it’s obvious that he looks very little like Tom Savini. (He does have a mustache and a beard but they both look like they were pasted on.) When Savini does actually play the Ripper, he seems slightly embarrassed by the whole thing. Tom Savini has always been a pretty good actor but, in The Ripper, he’s not given much to do other than glower at the camera with an evil look on his face. There’s little of the humor that Savini has brought to other roles and that’s a shame because Tom Savini can be a very charming actor when he’s allowed to poke fun at his image.
That said, I have to admit that I have a weakness for low-budget, regional films. In this case, it helps that I’ve spent enough time in Oklahoma, as both a visitor and an occasional resident, that I felt like I could immediately recognize almost every location in the film. There’s a DIY-charm to the film, one that is evident in both the stiff but likable performances and the gore effects, which are occasionally effective and occasionally rather cheesy. (A decapitation scene manages to be both.) Savini, I should mention, did not work on the special effects. This is a silly, nonsensical horror film that runs about 20 minutes too long but it’s just such a product of its time and place (i.e., Oklahoma in the mid-80s) that it’s rather fascinating as a time capsule. I mean, this may be the only Jack the Ripper film to feature an aerobics montage. It doesn’t get more 80s than that!
“Godzilla has been erased from time …. but now, King Ghidorah is here!”
Whoops! I guess you all shouldn’t have traveled back in time and kept that dinosaur from mutating into Godzilla then!
1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was the 18th film in the Godzilla franchise and, because the Back To The Future franchise was very popular in Japan at the time that the film was made, it has a plot that revolves around time travel. A group called The Futurians appear in 1990s Japan. They explain that, by the year 2204, Godzilla will have destroyed all life in Japan. However, they have a plan. They’ve built a time machine and they will be going back to 1944 so that they can remove Godzilla from his island home before the nuclear testing begins. For some reason, the Futurians take a few people from the 90s back with them.
After witnessing a dinosaur stepping on a World War II American army platoon, the Futurians arrange for the dinosaur to be transported to the Bering Strait, where it won’t get doused with radiation. Meanwhile, they secretly leave behind three adorable baby dragons that, once nuclear testing begins, will end up being transformed into King Ghidorah.
It turns out that Futurians are liars! I’m shocked too. In 22o4, Japan is actually the most powerful country in the world and it is so economically strong that America, Russian, and Europe are dependent upon it for their survival. The Futurians were just jealous of what a great country Japan was destined to become so they decided to get rid of Godzilla and instead allow King Ghidorah to destroy the country.
Now, if the Futurians were smart, they would have actually destroyed the dinosaur. Instead, they just sent it to the Bering Strait. And if the Futurians were really smart, they wouldn’t have allowed people in 1991 to know what they were doing. To be honest, all of the mistakes made by the Futurians were self-inflicted. By taking people from the 90s back to the past and letting them see where the dinosaur was sent, they basically ensured that those people would immediately go to the Bering Strait in 1991 and give the dinosaur a dose of radiation so that it would become Godzilla and then battle Ghidorah….
WHAT!?
Yeah, I know. It makes no sense. This is one of the least logical Godzilla films that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. Godzilla vs Biollante was loved by critics but it was considered to be a disappointment at the box office. For the follow-up, the producers not only brought back a classic Godzilla opponent (and I did smile when the three-headed Ghidorah showed up because he really was the most awesome member of Godzilla’s supporting cast) but they also came up with a plot that was considerably more juvenile than the previous film. The end result is a film that makes no sense from a narrative point of view but it does at least feature a few good fights between Godzilla, Ghidorah, and a robot version of Ghidorah. And it was also a film that did well enough at the Japanese box office to guarantee that Godzilla would return.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today’s director is Roy Ward Baker, one of the masters of Hammer and Amicus horror!
4 Shots From 4 Roy Ward Baker Films
Quatermass and the Pitt (1967, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Arthur Grant)
The Vampire Lovers (1970, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Moray Grant)
Scars of Dracula (1970, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Moray Grant)
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: John Wilcox and Roy Ford)
Released earlier this year, Cult Killer stars Alice Eve as Cassie Holt, a former librarian who is now a private investigator in Ireland. Cassie has a tragic backstory, which we hear about from several people along with hearing about it from Cassie and then getting to see most of what we’ve already heard about in a series of flashbacks. Cassie was sexually abused by her grandfather, dropped out of university, learned Brazilian ju-jitsu, became an alcoholic, went to AA, and is now a private investigator.
Her mentor is Mikael Tallini (Antonio Banderas, looking embarrassed). When Mikael is murdered by a woman who pounces on him and then steps him to death, Cassie sets out to solve his murder and get revenge. She discovers that her sleepy Irish village is actually the home of a cult of sex abusers and Jamie Douglas (Shelley Hening) has been killing everyone who either abused or betrayed her, though Mikael apparently was just killed because he had been hired to find out what she was doing. Soon, Jamie is calling Cassie on the phone and telling her about all the details of her crimes, encouraging Cassie to help her while also acknowledging that Cassie will eventually have to arrest her or kill her or do something to avenge the death of her mentor at Jamie’s hands. “We not do different, you and I,” Jamie says without a hint of irony.
Antonio Banderas gets top-billing in Cult Killer and he’s prominently featured on the film’s poster. His character is killed off after the first ten minutes but he then reappears in flashbacks as Cassie remembers him training her and all the times that she told him about her tragic backstory. There’s a lot of flashbacks in Cult Killer and they don’t exactly show up at the most logical of moments. They’re rather randomly sprinkled throughout the film and often, there’s no real indication that we’ve entered flashback territory until Banderas shows up. I know and understand that it’s currently totally melvin to tell a story in chronological order. Everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan. But the thing is, Christopher Nolan is a genius. Most directors are not. The director of Cult Killer is not.
Along with the jumbled timeline, the other big problem with this film is that Shelley Hening’s performance as Jamie is absolutely atrocious. Some of it is the script, which forces all of its worst lines onto Jamie. But, beyond that, Hening plays Jamie as being a somewhat mischevious brat while the film needs her to be a charismatic maniac. Throwing a skull into a room and then calling Cassie to tell her that you just did some “Monster shit,” doesn’t make you into an intriguing anti-hero or a compelling villain. It just makes you into the equivalent of a pre-teen tossing eggs at the house of a hated teacher and then bragging about it the next day. Jamie’s relationship with Cassie never rings true and neither Eve nor Hening really seem to have much idea what’s going on with their characters either. It takes a lot of effort to make two sex abuse survivors come across as being incredibly annoying but this film manages to do it.
The film features Jamie targeting the members of a cult of wealthy sex abusers. That story had potential, especially when you consider that Epstein didn’t kill himself. But the film gets so bogged down in flashbacks that it never creates a proper feeling of paranoia or, for that matter, any narrative momentum. It all just feels rather pointless and confused, as if the film itself isn’t quite sure what it’s trying to say. The best film to be inspired by the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein remains The Scary of Sixty-First.
Through the Shattered Lens 