Hell Fest

Hell Fest (2018)

Dir. Gregory Plotkin

Written by Seth M. Sherwood, Blair Butler, Akela Cooper, “Story by” William Penick, Christopher Sey, Stephen Succo. Yes, you read all that right.

Starring Amy Forsyth, Reign Edwards, Bex Taylor-Klaus

            HELL FEST is an absolutely by-the-numbers, low-concept, meat-and-potatoes slasher flick, distinguished only by two minor details. The most immediately obvious of these details is that it’s set in a gigantic, spectacularly elaborate Halloween-themed amusement park from whence the film takes its name. But the more startling detail is that it is an absolutely by-the-numbers, low-concept, meat-and-potatoes slasher flick which hit theaters in 2018. There was a time (the 80’s) where you could just count on this stuff getting churned out like clockwork, but these days it’s almost a high concept in itself to have a film this simple. Just a normal old slasher, where there’s some young women in a place and a stabby guy kills them off one by one in colorful ways. By law must contain at least 50% fun. HELL FEST meets that modest goal efficiently, and seems pretty content with that. And why not?

            Little enough needs to be said about the setup: a straight-laced young woman named Natalie (Amy Forsyth, A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY, BEAUTIFUL BOY) returns to her hometown to visit her slightly estranged best friend (Reign Edwards, The Bold and the Beautiful, Snowfall) and, to her obvious annoyance, an obnoxious old classmate (Bex Taylor-Klaus, THE LAST WITCH HUNTER, Scream: The Series) who she would clearly have preferred to leave safely in her past, but who is inconveniently her BFF’s roommate. In order to avoid talking to one another, the trio heads to Hell Fest, a sprawling horror-themed amusement park that we’re told travels across the country during Halloween season, which --given the immense scale and functional complexity of the park-- seems like a questionable business proposition at best. But that’s a thread best left unpulled, especially when we begin to consider how remarkably blaise they appear to be about the possible legal ramifications of their extreme caveat emptor philosophy of park attendee safety. At any rate, the girls also drag along some body count boys including one for Natalie to shyly flirt with.

Alas, any burgeoning relationship is going to have to remain unconsummated, for you see --and sit down, because this is going to come as a real shock-- there is a masked killer on the loose. And this is a particularly appealing hunting ground for a masked killer, because, of course, in Hell Fest, everyone is wearing a mask, and everyone is acting creepy and vaguely threatening. So even though our heroine is starting to suspect that some creep is stalking her and her friends, of course no one is going to believer her. This is the basic gimmick of this almost gimmick-free movie, and it allows for a light dusting of (spoilers for the 1944 movie GASLIGHT) gaslighting plot on top of our normal stalk-and-slash mechanic. It’s not strictly necessary, and HELL FEST is content to pursue this line of thinking only in the most casual sort of way, but it really doesn’t matter, because the movie’s real gimmick is the park itself, a genuinely magnificent creation (A+ work, production designer Michael Perry [THE WILLIES, IT FOLLOWS] and art director Mark Dillon [BLOOD MONEY]) absolutely stuffed with loving detail and grand scope, and rapturously photographed by José David Montero (THE HOLLOW POINT) with an altogether pornographic eye for gaudy monochromatic lighting. Ripping off SUSPIRIA’s signature look has gotten to be a bit of a cliché in recent years for low-budget horror films hoping to see artsier than they actually are (to the extent that the actual SUSPIRIA remake avoided it altogether) but hey, repetition has not made it any less pretty, or any less apt to evoke a surreal, slightly dreamlike vibe which makes a slasher’s sudden outbursts of visceral violence more potent.

Which is good, because HELL FEST does not exactly have an overwhelming abundance of violence to fall back on. It’s rated R, and it’s not exactly averse to bloodshed, but it seems like between the six (yes, six) credited screen and story writers, not everybody was on the same page about what the point of a gimmick slasher is. Because we get two agreeably over-the-top gorey kills (including a bravura “how have I never seen this before?” kill where a guy gets his head smashed in on one of those “test your strength” hammer games) and then after that, the kills completely fall off the radar. The only remaining characters to die get obliquely stabbed in one confusingly shot rampage, and after that’s it’s on to the final girl chase. Which is fine, I suppose; lots of those slasher movies I loved from the 80s were a lot of fun, but abandoned the sublime cat-and-mouse adrenaline rush of HALLOWEEN in favor of silly splatter. HELL FEST is no HALLOWEEN, but it is just barely competent and imaginative enough to make a suitable meal of a final chase sequence through an intricately curated haunted house (that plays like a walking tour through virtually every distinct horror cliché the genre has accrued in its century of life, from cannibal butcher shops to creepy doll rooms), and eventually settles on that goal. We get a handful of beats that play off the colorful setting, a handful of neat-looking images, a few effective stalk-and-shock moments. It’s as by-the-book as these things come, but I like the book it’s by, and this is a perfectly adequate rendition. Tony Todd has a cameo, anyway, so that’s good. 

Of course, six credited writers does not exactly speak to an overwhelming abundance of laser-focused artistic vision, and while the movie overall is generally competent (and let’s face it, technical competence has gotten so easy in the decades between 1980 and 2018 that this is not the pleasant surprise it once was), there are a few real obvious blunders that remind you that in 2018, even a movie this unambitious and conventional can’t quite escape being overthought and re-written into an inelegant kludge of half-scrapped ideas and malformed detrietus from various early drafts that fit into the final product so awkwardly and uncomfortably as to stand out. The most obvious to me is the (SPOILERS) final fate of Bex Taylor-Klaus’ obnoxious, attention-craving character, who is clearly set up to die in the big, elaborate set piece which would have been the movie’s third big gimmick kill. But then, obviously, some later screenwriter came along and decided she should actually be around for the final act, maybe even get a shot at redemption, and so inexplicably she ends up surviving this laboriously set-up death machine, and realizing that Natalie was right all along about the crazed killer. But then, apparently, some other screenwriter came alone and decided, no, the last act should really just focus on the core two friends, and so Taylor-Klaus needs to die after all. But instead of going back and re-writing the script so she just dies where she obviously should, he kept both previous revisions and just wrote a new scene where she gets randomly stabbed in a crowd two minutes later along with all the other remaining characters that the finale has no use for but the script has not yet disposed of.

An effective slasher has no real need for good writing in most of the traditional senses of that phrase (which suits HELL FEST just fine), but good structure is another matter, and the way the movie sets up and pays off this character is bad structure, a failure to properly capitalize on the things that it invests in. It’s not the kind of problem people usually have in mind when they use the phrase “bad writing”; they're thinking of clichéd characters, unrealistic situations, tin-eared dialogue. All of which HELL FEST has in abundance, of course, but that's not the problem. It’s just bad economy of storytelling. What’s the point of so carefully cultivating us to hate this character and setting her up for a spectacular death scene if she’s just going to get knifed off screen and never mentioned again? You can insult my intelligence all you want, but don’t waste my time.

Likewise, the movie has a curious little coda that I kind of like, but also demonstrates that they didn’t really think this through very carefully. (SPOILERS FOR THE VERY END) Natalie defeats the killer, of course, but he, equally of course, manages to sneak off into the sequel night before the cops can bring him in. Completely standard-issue, taken directly from the HALLOWEEN playbook. But the movie doesn't end right there; instead, it cuts to an unassuming, upper-class house in the suburbs that we've never seen before. We see the killer casually enter, and we realize this is his house as he walks into what is clearly his serial-killer hidey-hole, where he takes off his mask and places it in a cupboard with a dozen others, like Mr. Rogers changing into his friendly lounging sweater after a hard day at the office. Honey, we got any beer in the ‘fridge? You won’t believe the day I had at work. But then, he walks into a nicely-appointed living room, where a cute little girl is sleeping on the couch, and he stands menacing over her for a moment until she awakes, and greets him with a hug and a 'daddy, you’re home!' Cut to credits.

(Spoilers continue) Now, this is, in a way, a kind of provocative ending to a nasty little slasher, no? The movie has steadfastly told us nothing whatsoever about this killer (we never even see his face) but this puts to bed the idea he’s some kind of mythical boogeyman, and instead tells us something arguably even more disconcerting: this is just a normal, everyday citizen, someone no one would suspect, someone even his own family doesn’t suspect. It makes the killer retroactively more grounded in reality, but also even more frighteningly unknowable. It's an interesting and suggestive detail... but it’s also a damn strange note upon which to end this studiously unambitious gimmick slasher flick. It’d be like ending Skid Row’s 1989 debut album with a tender rendition of Judy Sill’s Enchanted Sky Machines. Nice, but, uh, what does this have to do with anything? It seems like you can’t end a movie this way without trying to say something, but I’ll be damned if I could imagine what. And in fact, all evidence points to this ending being just one more dumb little detail that somebody thought up in some earlier draft and it just kinda got stuck in there wherever it would fit because it never got entirely written out.

 I’m not asking for the film to make some kind of sweeping thematic statement of course, but I am asking it to stick to its established central conflict. The way it plays, the last beat of the film suddenly introduces a completely different conflict totally absent anywhere else in the film. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t the very last shot, but ending it that way makes it the thing we leave the film thinking about. Again, bad structure.

(Incidentally, even something as simple as reversing those two beats in the coda would go a long way towards making it land more gracefully; since we see him go to his murder closet first, we understand immediately that this is his house, and therefore this is likely his daughter. Since he’s obviously been doing this for awhile and living a successful double life, it makes the idea that he’s any threat to this girl sleeping in his own living room seem unlikely, so the final shot is robbed of both tension and purpose. Better, I think, to introduce the killer standing in this unknown living room. Oh shit, he’s escaped, and now he’s gonna take out his revenge on this poor girl! Oh wait, no, this is his daughter, holy shit, he’s been living a double life! Maybe he’s rethinking his evil ways now that we see him in a tender domestic situation? Nope, look at his closet of murder, not only has he done this before, he’s done it far more than we ever suspected and is surely going to do it again, setting up a sequel! THEN you smash cut to title, back on message.)  

Not that any of this is movie-killing, it just kind of irks me when a movie which obviously has plenty of resources fumbles such easy material. I often reference Vern’s “Blues Theory Of Slashers” which holds that "slasher movies are a classic American artform not equal to but similar to the blues. There are simple, familiar tunes that you follow, and you put your own spin on it, but you don’t have to get too fancy, you still want it to be recognizable." But to that, I like to add George Carlin’s line about the blues: “it’s not enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played.” Imitation will get you most of the way there, but sooner or later you’re gonna have to improvise at least a little, and if you haven’t really considered why you’re playing these notes in the first place, it’s probably gonna come off a little bit muddled. Not enough to ruin something with such a solid and familiar structure, but enough that you notice a few errant notes that jar you out of it for a second.

            Anyway, not really that big a deal, and certainly not worth devoting half a review to these small bumps in a mostly enjoyable road, but what’s done is done. Mostly HELL FEST is a perfectly serviceable genre movie with an ingratiating cast, some stellar production design, and the bare minimum amount of effort and imagination necessary to pull off its modest goals. There’s about 40,000 slashers which are easily superior, but at least twice as many which are substantially worse, and frankly in this crazy world of found footage anti-cinema and “post-horror” po-faced gloomfests, just being a normal, mildly entertaining genre outing with a few good parts and a run time of less than 90 minutes is something worth applauding. Or at least enjoying. I’d be up for a sequel, anyway.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2018 CHECKLIST!

Searching For Bloody Pictures

TAGLINE	Fun Going In. Hell Coming Out.
TITLE ACCURACY	Sure, it’s the name of the theme park, which is without a doubt the most important thing in the movie.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No
SEQUEL?	None as of yet. Not a huge box-office money-maker, but surely made enough of a profit to justify a DTV sequel, no?
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Slasher
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	None
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Tony Todd
NUDITY?	None
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	No
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	No
POSSESSION?	No
CREEPY DOLLS?	Totally.
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	No
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	No
VOYEURISM?	Standard stalker stuff, but no POV shit.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Someone needs to take this same premise and set it in Disney World with a killer Mickey.

Torture Garden

Torture Garden (1967)

Dir. Freddie Francis

Written by Robert Bloch

Starring Burgess Meredith, Jack Palance, Beverly Adams, Michael Bryant, Barbara Ewing, Peter Cushing

TORTURE GARDEN is not the first anthology horror film I’ve seen. It’s not the first Amicus Productions anthology horror film I’ve seen. It’s not the first Amicus Productions anthology horror film directed by Freddie Francis that I’ve seen. It’s not even the first Amicus Productions anthology horror film directed by Freddie Francis from the late 1960s and starring Peter Cushing that I’ve seen.

But you know what? It’s a damn fine one. I think it’s not only one of the studio’s best, but one of the best of the era’s many portmanteau films, period. And it’s not hurting for competition.

I mean, Amicus --scrappy competitor to the comparably more venerable British horror powerhouse Hammer Studios--  made a whole bunch of anthology horror films, it was kind of their thing. TORTURE GARDEN was an early one, but not the first (that would be 1965’s DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS); it was followed by THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970), ASYLUM (1972), TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972), VAULT OF HORROR (1973), and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974), and THE UNCANNY (1977). And that’s just Amicus’s output; if you want to take a broader look at the anthology landscape from this period, you’ve also got Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH (1963) from Italy, DEAD OF NIGHT (the 1977 one, not the 1945 classic), THE DEVIL’S MESSENGER (1961), JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS (1968), Masakai Kobiyashis’s KWAIDEN (1968) from Japan, THE MONSTER CLUB (1981), NIGHT GALLERY (1969), PARAPSYCHO - SPECTRUM OF FEAR (1975) from Austria, SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968), TALES OF TERROR (1962), TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973), TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975), TWICE TOLD TALES (1963). And that’s an almost-certainly incomplete list of horror anthology films only from the two decades between 1960 and 1980. So yeah, there’s a lot of these.

And yet, TORTURE GARDEN manages to stand out.

Part of that is director Freddie Francis; a veteran cinematographer by the time he became a director (a career to which he would later return --to great acclaim and a couple Academy Awards-- after his days as a horror schlockmeister were over), he had a pretty uneven career, but, especially in his early days, still seemed to have enough ambition to make his films look nice. No Brit ever dared go as purely psychedelic with their lighting as the Italians, but here and there he and cinematographer Norman Warwick (THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES) manage to sneak some surreal green or feverish red into the lighting scheme, which nicely compliments the pushy, slightly heightened reality of the production design and the camerawork. It's not showy direction, but it has a careful attention to detail which subtly informs the tone and adds to its amiably creepy vibe.

Another part of TORTURE GARDEN's success is writer Robert Bloch; originally a short-story author in the Lovecraftian vein (he spent his early years corresponding with Lovecraft himself), Bloch had matured by the 1960s into a style distinctly his own, staking his claim to stories of prickly, abnormal psychology laced with a dark sense of irony (he wrote the novel which became Hitchcock’s PSYCHO in 1960). His stature as a titan of horror fiction is not in dispute, but his tenure as a film writer was as uneven as Francis’; I really dug the far-out weirdness of his work in ASYLUM, but his script for THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD isn’t nearly strong enough to survive the limp direction, and the movie is a total bore. And let's not forget, he wrote at least one draft of THE DEADLY BEES, a movie which -- I cannot stress enough -- technically qualifies as a war crime if shown to enemy combatants. The stories here, though, are some of his better, more fully realized work, and even if they probably worked better in their original form as short stories (especially the one with the murderous piano, which, as we will see, looks a little silly when visualized literally) they provide a solid foundation which Francis fleshes out admirably.

So the talent behind the camera is there, and that helps immensely. But the real ace in the hole this time around is the cast. Amicus supposedly originally wanted the old reliable duo of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing as their anchor stars, but American distributor Columbia Pictures demanded they ditch the Brits and bring in some big American stars, so instead of Lee we get Burgess Meredith (ROCKY) and Jack Palance (SHANE) (Cushing got to stay on in a small guest role).

Even by 1967, Palance was long, long past the point in his career where he was interested in working very hard (as weird as it is that this stoic Western star would go on to win an Academy Award after doing z-movies movies like WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY and CRAZE [also for Freddie Francis!], it’s even weirder that the film that did it was fucking CITY SLICKERS. 1991 was a weird time), and he’s mostly a non-presence in this one. But Burgess Meredith --at the time, right in the middle of his tenure as The Penguin in the Adam West Batman TV series-- was always one of those actors who you could always count on to put in a little effort, whether he was working for Otto Preminger or voicing a character named “Golobulus” in G.I. JOE: THE MOVIE*. Meredith was also from an old school tradition of Hollywood vaudeville hams, and correctly identifies his appearing in a movie called TORTURE GARDEN as sufficient reason to play to the cheap seats. And he is absolutely correct: as much as I love Lee and Cushing, their brand of redoubtable British class can be a bit stuffy at time, and having Meredith in their place brings a huge influx of anarchic, broad energy to the proceedings and gives this particular horror anthology a very distinct feel.

Meredith, of course, plays “Dr. Diablo,” a gaudily-attired carnival barker at a macabre “torture garden” attraction, which I guess must have been a real thing at the time because nobody seems to be confused as to why there’s a tent filled with grotesquely mutilated wax dummies at this carnival, and seem to feel they’ve got their money’s worth. Once the show’s over, though, he appeals to five straggles to pay an extra £5 -- £83 in 2016 money, or a whopping $110 bucks US!-- and step into his back room for a very special show. This turns out to be a statue of Atropos, one of the three Greek Moiroi, and the Goddess who determines the ultimate death of mortals. Not really a good use of 100+ bucks (good thing everyone came to the county fair flush with a hundred bucks cash in their pocket), except that when you stare into her shears, you get to experience a neat little self-contained vignette which ends in your death. So, arguably a better value than it would first appear.

Even so, Palance looks a little bit more excited than I'm comfortable with, and he's definitely not wearing pants. I think Michael Ripper's expression on the left speaks for all of us here.

The first taker is Max (Michael Bryant, who at the time had every reason to believe he would soon be a big star with the inevitable release of his showy role in Orson Welles’ THE DEEP**), who murders his wealthy uncle for his mysterious stash of gold, only to discover the source of the gold is decidedly, shall we say, unexpected: a demonic man-eating cat who demands he commit murder! And is not interested in taking 'nice kitty!' as an excuse. Obviously, a diabolical, man-eating cat is a difficult thing to film without looking silly, and this is certainly the sort of thing which would work better as a short story. But somehow Francis actually pulls it off here; rather than using a lot of lame cat puppets (or just hurling unwilling cats at actors, as Dario Argento did in INFERNO), he tells the story through implication and meaningful close-ups of a tragically uncredited cat actor who has charisma like you wouldn’t believe. Though the gore leaves a little to be desired, the segment proves a surprisingly effective opener.

This cat should have been a huge star

Next up, we get aspiring Hollywood actress (Beverly Adams, mostly a TV actor who struck it big when she married hairstyle tycoon Vidal Sassoon and later divorced him and launched her own line of pet care products***) who has her sights set on clawing her way to the top, no matter what the cost. And she’s well on her way (muscling past her naive roommate to a date with a producer, and dumping him for a big star [American B-movie stalwart Robert Hutton, TALES FROM THE CRYPT]) before she starts to get the sense that something is a little… off about Hollywood’s ultra-elite. Before long, she’s risking her career (and life!) to uncover the horrible truth. If that sounds a lot like SOCIETY, well, it is (though the truth doesn’t turn out to be quite as colorfully goopy), but Francis again does a fine job of cultivating an atmosphere of incipient menace, clearly perceptible but never quite visible, and Bloch’s nasty, misanthropic take on these Hollywood clinger-ons --who aren’t even phonies, but wannabe phonies-- gives it the bite it needs to differentiate itself from countless “ain’t Hollywood a drag” tales of woe.

Following that, in the second-to-last slot where they inevitably stick the weakest segment, we find Kiwi actress and later crime novelist Barbara Ewing (DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE) as the girlfriend --and aspiring wife-- of a famous piano prodigy (John Standing, V FOR VENDETTA, BBC’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Game Of Thrones). She’s something of a controlling, demanding character, but not nearly as controlling or demanding as the other woman in the musician’s life -- his mother, who is currently residing as a ghost in a possessed piano which demands he constantly practice. The two women are immediately thrust into a competition for the musician’s time and affection, which Ewing seems to be winning, until the competition becomes a physical altercation and, well, it turns out a 98 pound blonde doesn’t have what it takes to go 10 rounds with a pissed-off, 'roided up aggressive grand piano (ROCKY hadn’t come out yet, so the piano doesn’t know it should play Eye of the Tiger while it dukes it out with its rival). Alas, this setup is just as funny to watch as it sounds on paper, which is a shame, because riiiiight up til the big piano vs woman throwdown, the segment does a perfectly respectable job as an escalating battle of wills. But there’s no getting around it, that ending, while appreciably eccentric, is just plain silly.

Fortunately, the film rallys for the last segment, which finds Jack Palance, as an obsessed Edgar Allan Poe fan, pumping rival Poe fanboy Peter Cushing (who recently returned to the big screen as a cartoon zombie made of money in ROGUE ONE) for the secret to his unparalleled collection of Poe memorabilia. The segment has one major hurdle to overcome: Palance is a bizarre choice for this character, who needs to come off as nerdy and manic and vulnerable in a way which Palance isn’t even close to achieving, though he makes a game effort. Really, this segment is obviously written for Cushing and Lee, but even without Lee to balance things out, it could not be more clear that the roles here should be reversed, with stone-face, intimidating Palance as the character holding all the power and tiny little Cushing as the obsessed, desperately curious interloper. The dialogue even makes it clear that Cushing has had at least three generations of his family living in America, so what the fuck is up with his posh accent? Argh!

Anyway, all that aside, Cushing is a delight to watch, as he inevitably is, and working with the old British pro seems to inspire Palace to at least make an effort. I don’t know how successful he is --or is even capable of being in this inexplicably miscast role-- but he’s definitely not phoning it in, and as one twist leads to an even crazier twist, the whole thing builds magnificently. While the first three segments are sturdy, well-constructed horror shorts, they’re pretty standard stuff, playing with timeless horror tropes which go back ages and ages. Here, though, the Robert Bloch who wrote the segment from ASYLUM where Herbert Lom obsessively builds tiny, anatomically accurate robot dolls with his own face on them makes himself known. This story is absolutely fucking nutty, and I love it, from the more staid opening --where Cushing and Palance trade nerdy, obsessive anecdotes about Poe-- to the screaming mad out-of-the-blue climax. My only complaint is that for a segment so fixated on Poe, his writings, and his legacy, it ought to have a touch more of Poe’s actual influence. Bloch and Poe shared a fixation on abnormal psychology as a gateway to a deep, subliminal horror, but Bloch’s instinct for dark irony and ambivalence to Poe’s baroque, brilliant use of language seems to put an insurmountable gap between the legacy of the two greats, and consequently the segment has the feeling of a affectionate reference more than a true soul-deep tribute. But no matter; it’s fun and crazy and I’m for it.

After this final segment, we return again to our five carnival attendees, and you recall that there’s actually a fifth person here -- Hammer Studios mascot Michael Ripper (more than half of all Hammer films 1956-1970)-- and you briefly wonder if he’s going to have his own segment, which would be highly unusual for the guy (who spent most of his career a bit player, and never a leading man). Alas, it’s not to be, but he does get one good showpiece moment right at the end, before Burgess Meredith swoops in to bid us adieu in his inimitable broad style. It’s an odd ending, and I must confess I’m not even exactly sure that I understand what’s going on here (obviously Meredith is the Devil, taunting wayward souls about their evil ways, but what exactly does he need these accomplices and all the hokey carnival fakery for?) but no matter, it’s a delightfully colorful end to a rock-solid anthology which makes exceptionally potent use of the talents of nearly everyone involved. Francis, Bloch, Cushing, Palance, Meredith, --and Amicus itself, for that matter-- all had the capacity for greatness in them, but rarely indeed did the stars align so perfectly to bring that capacity out. TORTURE GARDEN is, then, anything but.

(I mean the “torture” part, obviously. To watch, I mean. But it’s not really a garden of any kind either, so that interpretation would also be acceptable)

*Wait, was he cast in that because of his famous turn in the 1945 WWII veteran porn classic THE STORY OF G.I. JOE? If so, I hope they asked Robert Mitchum too. If that was an intentional referene, it definitely went over my head as a kid.

**The release of which did not turn out to be quite so inevitable as it surely appeared at the time

***The American Dream really can come true.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017 CHECKLIST!

The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree

TAGLINE	Do You Dare See What Dr. Diabo Sees? Which is pretty much the same thing as Can You Smell What The Rock Is Cooking? When you get down to it.
TITLE ACCURACY	There is a “torture garden,” with a sign explicitly naming it as such. Still not sure that’s a real thing, but hey, the magic of cinema.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	Robert Bloch adapts from four of his own short stories
SEQUEL?	Arguably part of Amicus’ loose series of anthologies, being preceded by Dr. TORTURE’S HOUSE OF HORRORS and followed by THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	UK
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Anthology horror
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	I suppose neither Palance nor Meredith were exactly on the A-list at the time, but they were definitely Marquee names
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Cushing, of course, and Michael Ripper. Also arguably director Freddie Francis, and certainly Robert Bloch.
NUDITY?	No, although there is a truly startling live bikini snow globe in one of the segments, which goes uncommented on.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Killer Cat! But then again, there’s a killer grand piano too, so it’s not that special.
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Definitely a zombie, and a haunted piano, too.
POSSESSION?	Possessed piano
CREEPY DOLLS?	The wax dummies in the “torture garden”
EVIL CULT?	Arguably SPOILER some kind of crazy new age Hollywood bodysnatcher cult, though not exactly in a religious bent.
MADNESS?	Certainly!
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Yes!
VOYEURISM?	We get a killer grand piano POV, that’s unusual
MORAL OF THE STORY	If a shifty carny in a slapdash schlock murder-porn torture garden asks for a hundred bucks to go backstage and get a “real show,” definitely do it.