The Devil Rides Out

The Devil Rides Out aka The Devil's Bride (1968)
Dir. Terence Fisher
Written by Richard Matheson
Starring Christopher Lee, Leon Green, Charles Grey

    Given his sinister beard, magical powers, intimidating bearing, shared moniker with noted Three Musketeers antagonist Cardinal Richelieu, and tendency to be Christopher Lee, you’d be well-justified in assuming that Christopher Lee is going to be a memorable villain in this late-60s Hammer production. But actually you’re getting something far more rare -- a heroic Christopher Lee turn! Lee plays Duc de Richelieu, nobleman, scholar, and all around kicker of Satanic asses as he navigates the ins and outs of saving his buddy’s soul from the machinations of Charles Grey’s (that’s right, Blofeld from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER) devil-worshipping Warlock Mocata. That’s right, two classic Bond villains facing off over the very soul of mortal men! DEVIL RIDES OUT ain’t fucking playing around.

Lee calls this adaptation of Dennis Wheatley’s novel his very favorite Hammer film, and it’s easy to see why. While it lacks the sumptuous atmosphere that often defines their best material, it makes up for it by being absolutely stuffed with memorable action and setpieces which range from the hilarious (a “giant spider” shot in the foreground) to the genuinely spooky (a classic goatman devil actually appears to his gathered masses!). It’s sometimes a little silly, but never boring -- and when it’s working well it casts a pretty powerful spell.

Purple nylon Satanic robes? A definite evil fashion don't.

A big part of it’s power is Lee himself, who I’ve never seen exactly phone it in but who often gets stuck in little cameo parts that just call for him to prance around in a cape for a few scenes while some hooded goons bloody up a naked British chick or two. Those don’t give him much to, er, sink his teeth into, so the enthusiasm he brings to Richelieu here is invigorating. He plays the guy as a genuine badass who may also be the only one who understands the stakes in this game, and his mixture of convincing horror and fortitude do a lot to help sell us on the drama even when things start to feel a little dated. And in the tradition of CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTER, this one has a friend/sidekick (Leon Greene) who takes levels of British Obliviousness to new heights. He’s the kind of fellow who can watch a Satanic mass slaughter a goat, summon the devil, and chase them with knives and then say, “Well, my dear fellow, I wonder what all that was about?” For some reason this affable doofus becomes the main character for a brief period in the middle, but director Terence Fisher know we damn well didn’t hunt down a copy of this out-of-print film to watch Leon Greene find true love with some hopped-up-on Satan waif, so Lee comes back in full force for the exciting climax. And that’s when everything gets crazy and skeletons on horseback may or may not show up.

I would just like to point out that although you can almost always count on these painted 60's and 70's posters to have a super awesome image which is not even remotely close to anything that happens in the movie (see: RAW MEAT, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES), this one is closer than you might assume. It's not 100%, but if you assume it's a montage most of this stuff actually happens in the movie! Now watch the damn thing!

Even though it’s dated and occasionally lacking in atmosphere, Lee is right, this is a strong entry. Director Fisher, it turns out, was one of the luminaries of this period in British horror, pushing boundaries of violence and sexuality, making stars of Lee and Peter Cushing, and directing some of the most memorable (and best) films of this early Hammer era, including the 1957 THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN,1958's THE HORROR OF DRACULA (the first of Hammer’s Dracula films), THE GORGON, and FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED. Fisher appears to have directed at minimum one film every year from 1948-1969, finally winding down in 1973 with the excellent FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL. With that kind of filmography, I’m guess I’m pretty much doomed to watch more of his work just by pure chance, so it’s a good thing I think the guy is pretty sharp. As for the novel, Lee was apparently a friend of novelist Dennis Wheatley, and also helped get TO THE DEVIL...A DAUGHTER made in 1976. That one is a little more disturbing and modern-feeling, but lacks the momentum and eagerness to please that makes THE DEVIL RIDES OUT so great. Honestly, there just aren’t too many horror films out there with this level of commitment to being a consistently wild ride. So when Lee says he’d love to get this one remade with modern effects and himself reprising the role of Richelieu (who in the book is a much older man)... well, consider this one ticket sold.

And it looks like Dan’s probably up for pre-ordering a ticket to the remake too, in his ABBOT AND COSTELLO AND DUC DE RICHELIEU AND WHAT THE HELL, ASH, VS ODDJOB, JAWS AND LET’S SAY LEPRECHAUN.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: None.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: No significant gore. Even the sacrificial goat gets killed off-screen.
SEQUEL: No, but I would watch the shit out of the continuing adventures of Duc du Richelieu. (And it turns out I might have been able to had this one been a bigger commercial success. The studio had planned to adapt "Strange Conflict" and "Gateway to Hell" after this, but abandoned the idea.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Very high. Obscure, now out-of-print.
MONSTERS: Goatman-devil, "giant" spider.
SATANISTS: Hell yeah!
ZOMBIES: No zombies.
VAMPIRES: Nah.
SLASHERS: None.
CURSES: Borderline, but I'm gonna say yeah.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown

H.P. Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (2008)
Dir. Frank H. Woodward
Written by Frank H. Woodward
Starring Neil Gaiman, Ramsay Campbell, John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Stuart Gordon, Peter Staub

 


    OK, you got me. This is not so much a horror film as it is a biographic film about H. P. Lovecraft, the early 20th century writer who was into tentacles back when “tentacle porn” was a genre like “torture porn” instead of a keyword you should never ever google at work. Lovecraft’s uniquely twisted mind was behind a huge amount of the horror iconography of the last century, and seems poised to remain one of the most influential horror figures of all time. His work is so ubiquitous in the field that you’d almost be hard-pressed to find any major horror writer, director, production designer, or special effects wiz who isn’t aware of him and influenced by his work. I would venture to guess, even, that he’s the most adapted horror author ever (maybe only Poe and King come close). True, those adaptations are sometimes loose to the point of irrelevance, but it almost doesn’t matter because Lovecraft’s impact on the very expression of our fears is so pervasive that it works it way into other forms, regardless of the specific story.

    This excellent documentary by Frank Woodward doesn’t quite dare outright ask the most obvious question about Lovecraft, which is, “why?” Woodward and his talking heads offer a few telling incidents that might have shaped the young Providence, RI native’s warped imagination, but mostly they’re simply content to tell his story. While it might be a little disappointing to anyone hoping for a psychological freak show, the film still proves engaging and relevant in it’s simple narrative telling of the man’s life.

    Part of its charm is the obvious, genuine depth of love and knowledge all the assembled parties have for and about Lovecraft. At first it seems like Woodward has called the usual celebrity documentary whores; John Carpenter, Guillermo Del Toro, Neil Gaiman... I can only assume Slash was busy that day. Neil Gaiman was in THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS, for God’s sake, the guy just can’t say no to a documentary film crew. But it turns out these folks are not just casual fans looking for publicity, they’re legitimate experts with seriously thoughtful takes on Lovecraft’s life and work that go well beyond their own artistic output. Even with all those welcomed faces, though, my happiest moments came from many-time Lovecraft-adapter Stuart Gordon, who seems to possess an encyclopedic knowledge not only of Lovecraft’s work, but of the minute details of his life. I never doubted that Gordon was a true fan, but watching the dumpy, bespectacled Gordon effortlessly throw out obscure dates and facts about Lovecraft’s life like an academic biographer... well, that can’t help but make you smile. The professional Lovecraft academics contribute plenty of interesting content as well, of course, but something about Gordon’s impressive working knowledge of his idol simply makes me boundlessly happy. All that, AND there's a serious discussion regarding the correct pronunciation of C'thulu!

Yep, this is where OLDBOY got the idea.

 
    But as much fun as it is to listen to the likes of Gordon or John Carpenter speculate about Lovecraft’s state of mind during his brief and unhappy stay in New York City, the man of the hour is Lovecraft himself, and his short, dismal life. Lovecraft, born in 1890, was a man out of time, an awkward, conflicted, inflexible and by all accounts personally and socially nonfunctional fellow torn between grandiose vanity and self-loathing. His father died in a madhouse, and his mother was part of a strict religious sect that didn’t allow her to touch her son (guess what: she eventually ended up in the nuthouse herself!). The family’s fortunes declined and Lovecraft was barely able to sustain himself with his writing (he was never the most prolific writer anyway), living out most of his life in a quiet insular haze of crushing depression, anonymity, and virulent racism.

    To its credit, the film is pretty honest in its exploration of Lovecraft’s less admirable traits. Unlike many biographies, it doesn’t just let him off the hook by saying he was a product of his time. Several people correctly point out that it’s not like he was writing in 1870 -- his last works were published almost in the 1940s. Racism was still quite open and prevalent, but there were plenty of more enlightened people at the time, even amongst Lovecraft’s own peers, and as such brushing off his own stubborn fixation on race isn’t really fair. But pleasantly, it doesn’t just dissolve into an orgy of righteous condemnation, either -- the documentary takes a nuanced look at why Lovecraft clung so tightly to this despicable stance. No one is offering Lovecraft an easy absolution, but neither is there much point in wearing ourselves out condemning a horror writer who has been dead for nearly a hundred years. Instead, we get a little insight into why Lovecraft ended up this way -- most tellingly, maybe, from the writer Caitlin R. Kieran, who couches Lovecraft's disgust in terms of his hatred of himself. Regarding his despised ‘melting pot’ of cultures in New York City, she simply says: “‘ think, on some level, he knew... “[New York] was something that worked. He didn’t work.”

To Worship Cthulu in 10 easy steps!

 
    You’ll find plenty to pity or even outright dislike about Lovecraft personally in the hour and a half of FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN, but fortunately it’s also balanced out by the one thing which keeps us talking about him almost a century later: his work. A detailed exploration of all his major works makes up at least an equal --and maybe a greater-- amount of screen time than the biographical data, rightly contrasting his vivid inner world with the outside world he had so much trouble dealing with. The two merge pretty seamlessly, and, brilliantly, Lovecraft’s words (well read by Robert Atkin Downes even though obviously it should be Doug Bradley) are brought to life through dozens of paintings, animations, sculptures, and other media. This sort of fantasy imagery leaves such a mark that the film is almost like a better suited version of the experiment being attempted in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED with its rich mix of different artists and media (although they couldn’t get the rights to Metallica’s immortal “Call of Ktulu”, I guess. Understandable, but they would have been better off just leaving it out than reminding us what isn’t there by playing a cheap knock-off which evokes it). Even though we’re treated to only snippets of the stories, Lovecraft’s words -married to the deeply weird images- manage to evoke his signature dread even in the absence of context. Or, maybe, merely placed in a different context -- the context of the scared and frustrated life of their author.

Ultimately, that’s the thing the doc gets most right, and makes it a much more piercing, intriguing examination than these talking-head biographies tend to be. There will always be things about Lovecraft that are mysterious, maybe unknowable. But maybe it was his inability to successfully understand and interact with the world that made it so mysterious and alien to him, and subsequently to us through his writings. Even as the world was becoming more scientific, even as we had more answers than any humans in history, Lovecraft taught us how to fear the unknown again. He reminded us that for everything that we can explain, we learn how little we knew in the first place. We learn maybe there are things out there so vastly beyond the scope of a human that we can’t even comprehend that we ought to fear them. I guess that’s sort of how he saw this world himself. I’m glad I don’t have to live his life, but I think horror fans throughout the world are glad we got the little glimpses into his own personal nightmare that his work provides. An invigorating place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there...*

By the way, you can watch this whole fuckin’ thing online for free.

*In tribute to Lovecraft’s easily-parodied writing style, I felt compelled to end on an ellipse.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: A bunch.
BOOBIES: None. Although I guess Lovecraft himself never saw too many either.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: Some gory still images and the descriptions from "Color out of Space".
SEQUEL: No
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Documentary, so high.
MONSTERS: Hell yeah, some of the best ever.
SATANISTS: Cthuluists (Encthusiasts?)
ZOMBIES: No, it's weirder than that.
VAMPIRES: No
SLASHERS: No
CURSES: Not really.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She did!

Salvage

Salvage (2009)
Dir. Lawrence Gough
Written by: Colin O’Donnel
Starring Neve McIntosh, Dean Andrews, Shaun Dooley

SALVAGE is a respectably assembled indie British hodge-podge of siege movie, monster movie, and THE CRAZIES. It takes place entirely inside a small cul-du-sac which is thrown into chaos when heavily armed government troops storm the place in search of a mysterious missing... something. Trapped in this madness are divorced housewife Beth, her recent hook up, and her daughter who’s a little pissed at her because she walked in on said hook-up. Daughter has stormed out, and Beth is desperate to find her and make sure she’s OK amidst the shooting and monstering.

Good acting is gonna be crucial to this kind of affair, where the key to the horror is our limited perspective as to what the fuck is going on. The leads generally deliver, particularly Neve McIntosh as Beth, the mom, who puts on a pretty good intense face and heroically embraces a few precious moments of mega-acting. But the problem is the characters are all pretty thinly written. Not poorly written, it’s just that there’s not enough to them to really quite carry the majority of the movie the way it sort of needs to. For example, the drunken hook-up (she says she picked him up at a bar, but it seems to be like 3 in the afternoon and no one’s drunk, so I don’t know) is a racist who thinks terrorists are responsible, but he turns out to be an OK guy in the end. It just feels like it wouldn’t have been character growth if he didn’t come off as a jerk at the start, which makes the whole thing feel a little forced and insubstantial. Mom gets a sort of better redemption angle but really just spends most of her time freaking out, so the drama of the situation ends up getting a little repetitive, even though it’s quite well-directed (there’s at least one long show-offy take as she explores through most of a mysteriously bloodied-up house).

Although there’s nothing technically the matter with the movie, there’s also nothing much there to really recommend it. It’s competently put together, but the scale is small, the stakes are just over whether or not Beth will find her daughter (who’s sort of a bitch anyway), the conflict with the soldiers is fairly routine, and the monster is pretty unmemorable. Actually, he looks like he was originally designed to be some kind of freaky human spider, which is a pretty cool idea, but the end result is just kind of skinny and furry and you never get a clear enough sense of it’s look, motives, or abilities for it to have much impact. So even though the film is pretty competent at most things it tries, it never really adds up to much. Sort of a shame to see so much competence put to waste on only an average movie, but I guess it’s a good reminder that technical proficiency will only take you so far. After that, you’ve gotta have imagination.

Beth has a conversation with another mother about her daughter. Not exactly storming the White House, but it counts.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: Yeah, we get a quick glimpse of the hook-up in question and Beth getting dressed afterwords.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: Good bit of blood, though not as much dismembering as you'd like to see.
SEQUEL: No.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: Mid-High. No substantial theatrical release.
MONSTERS: Yeah.
SATANISTS: None.
ZOMBIES: Nope.
VAMPIRES: None.
SLASHERS: Some slashing, but no slasher.
CURSES: No.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

The Ghoul

The Ghoul (1933)
Dir. T. Hayes Hunter
Starring Boris Karloff, Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Ernest Thesiger

    THE GHOUL starts off with a promisingly unique premise: Karloff is an aged and wealthy Egyptologist who believes that, if buried with a valuable jewel, he will return as an immortal. He also casually mentions to his creepy Scottish butler that if by some bizarre unforeseeable circumstance someone happened to steal the jewel, he would come back as an avenging ghoul, killing anyone who possessed it. As vanishingly unlikely as that seems, he mentions that his tomb opens from the inside, just to be on the safe side. Fortunately the burial goes as planned, Karloff dies happy, and the film ends with a stern lecture about the dangers of judging others on account of their religious beliefs. Just kidding, it’s exactly what you think.
   
    The beginning of the film --with a dying Karloff giving instructions and a web of no good scoundrels sniffing around for his fortune circling his deathbed-- is real great, full of great gothic shadows, blatant foreshadowing, and bolstered by a commanding performance from Karloff himself as well as a forgettable one from Ralph Richardson (the supreme being in TIME BANDITS in his first film role) as a sulky priest. But then, Karloff dies and the film shifts to his heirs, (Dorothy Hyson and Anthony Bushell) who are the actual stars of the film and seem to think they’re in a screwball comedy. Karloff, of course, does come back, but you’ve got to wait an intolerably long time for it to happen and once he does, he just wanders around silently, occasionally menacing our heroes without them knowing it. He’s got some nice ghoul-y makeup, but its a pretty small part and the movie dissolves into a bunch of listless broad comedy and unfocused whodunit shenanigans. There’s a ton of plot but not much real story, so the whole thing feels insubstantial and fleeting with too many characters that never do anything and not nearly enough horror to balance it out. It does flirt with getting good at the very end, though, when they toy with a “wow, are they really going there?” scenario before backing off into a completely implausible explanation for everything (ironically, the original play from which this was loosely adapted had an equally ridiculous but completely different twist ending).

It’s always nice to see Karloff as a monster, the film is quite stylishly shot, and it’s brisk enough to stave off boredom, but despite it’s busy plot there’s simply not much here. In fact, the story of it’s presumed loss and subsequent recovery is actually much more interesting than the film itself*. Maybe it’s just as well we never did find LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. On the other hand, check out Dan P’s more positive take in ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET THE B-LIST MONSTERS!

*I guess it was also the first British horror film of the sound era, so even if it's no great shakes in itself, it's the first step on the road to bringing us all those Christopher Lee vampire titty movies, thereby making it a gift to all mankind. 

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: None, not even Karloff's.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: There is a little bit of blood at the end, unusual for 1933. But hardly gore.
SEQUEL: No.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: High-Mid. Obviously less well-known than its contemporaries like THE MUMMY or something like that, probably because it was only rediscovered in the 1980s.
MONSTERS: None.
SATANISTS: No, definitely an Anubis-believer, though. Don't get that too often.
ZOMBIES: Karloff comes back from his tomb, so I'd say that's fair.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: Strangler only.
CURSES: No.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A

The Shrine

The Shrine (2010)
Dir. Jon Knautz
Written by: Jon Knautz, Brendan Moore, Trevor Matthews
Starring Aaron Ashmore, Cindy Sampson, Meghan Heffern, Trevor Matthews

Surprisingly, that's not a dark-haired expressionless Japanese schoolgirl under there.

When a pushy, unpleasant reporter, her reluctant boyfriend, and her wimpy intern pursue a missing persons case to a tiny village in Poland, things turn ugly after they encounter a creepy statue in the middle of  mysterious permanent fog. This Canadian indie horror film (financed by writer/co-star Matthews, who can afford it because his father is a telecoms multibillionaire) starts off nearly unwatchable, but slowly and torturously gets better until it finally crawls to a pretty decent climax. It has pretty much all the beats you’d expect from a film like this: hostile, culty locals, mysterious ancient evil, a couple EXORCIST ripoffs, generic demon masks, long scenes of actors running through the Canadian woods. But it occasionally has a good enough idea or two to justify it’s existence. I like the masks the cultists affix to people’s faces through judicious application of a huge sledgehammer, that’s a good image. I like the Pazuzu-looking statue that causes all the trouble, too. The plot doesn’t exactly go where you might expect, with the focus shifting from people you thought would be the main protagonists/ antagonists to an entirely different conflict by the end. And then there’s the climax, where our heros invade the home of a terrified Polish family who clearly knows more about what’s going on then they do. It features a nice twist on the usual formula by having our hero hearing the horrible things going on in another room but not being able to see it  -- but then forcing him to walk through the grisly aftermath anyway. So we get to imagine the terrible unseen things AND get some good gore -- best of both worlds!

Still, the movie is too indifferently directed to really ever completely overcome it’s slow start. Many potentially good scenes lack the visual polish they need to really come alive, and the atmosphere is anemic, failing to ever work up to a solid tone of dread or panic. The shot-on-video color-filtered overlit camerawork doesn’t help either; in fact, it really highlights some of the iffy acting (although Aaron Ashmore, as the boyfriend, manages to come across pretty well). Still, at least there’s not much shaky cam. Little favors, right?* Plus, I like the little post-climax epilogue, where the surviving hero finally asks a local just what the fuck is going on. The guy (who has never before spoken any English), hilariously responds, “This is curse. Left here on our land from long ago. It cannot be undone.” And that’s it! Real fuckin helpful, guys. Oh, it’s a curse. From long ago. That explains everything.

PS: Don't forget to check out Dan P's alternate take in ABBOT AND COSTELLO GAZE UPON THINGS NOT MEANT FOR HUMAN EYES IV: THE GAZENING.

*Although I don't see how they could have failed to set the credits to They Might be Giant's "The Statue Got Me High," perhaps forever throwing away the only possible cinematic moment that song would be applicable to. Maybe they couldn't afford the rights, though.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No.
BOOBIES: No time for love, Dr. Jones.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: Eye-gouging with a hammer, gotta hurt. Plus some slashings and disembowelings.
SEQUEL: No.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Basically straight-to-DVD, with little fanfare.
MONSTERS: Tough one. There appear to be demons, but I'm gonna say no.
SATANISTS: Cultists, but I don't think Satan can be blamed for this one.
ZOMBIES: No.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: No.
CURSES: Yeah, the Polish guy said so.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: N/A.

Open House

Open House (1987)
Dir. Jag Mundhra
Written By: David M. Evans (THE SANDLOT. Really.)
Starring Joseph Bottoms, Adrienne Barbeau, 

This is a dull and unimaginative slasher from the late-80s glut of dull and unimaginative slashers, the gimmick this time being that the people being killed are all real estate agents, and the killer is seen eating dog food. If you think that’s enough to sustain a whole 95 minutes, man, I like your optimism, but you’re playing real long odds there.

The only thing of any interest here at all is the weird politics of who the killer is. It turns out (when I write “it turns out”, it usually means that a SPOILER is coming) that the killer is a homeless guy who was squatting in the abandoned homes which are being sold by the intolerable yuppie real estate agents, essentially putting him back on the streets. He correctly points out that the real estate market makes people rich by forever speculating the prices of houses upward, making it impossible for a guy like him to get by. And what does he get for his sad tale? Shot in the forehead and kicked in the balls for comedy (and not even by a main character), so out rich heroes can get back to making their 6% commission. I think we’re really supposed to find him repulsive, but he’s the only mildly interesting character anywhere in sight, (actor Darwyn Swalve is a big guy, but with a soft, shy voice and adds a little bit of color here) and shit, that is a pretty fucking sad story which no one bothers to refute. They just don’t give a shit and would like him to go away. The 80s, man.

Otherwise, the film is notable only for the dire boredom it produces during most of it’s runtime, which concerns Adrienne Barbeau working on real estate deals (really! she doesn’t have anything to do with the killer until the very last scene) and Joseph Bottoms working as a radio psychologist who occasionally gets rambling calls from the killer (most of which we don’t hear) and struggles with the gripping drama of... keeping him on the phone. Just awful. Oh, and it’s kind of funny in the couple of occasions the rare murders occur, because the film overplays the shock of them to ludicrous levels. One lady, encountering a body, screams for I think almost two whole minutes as the camera cuts backs and forth, back and forth, over and over, between her face and the body, and then the scene ends. Probably because they just ran out of film. Another kill lingers on the body for a ridiculous almost 40 seconds of screentime, while I suspect the director wandered off to get a coffee. It’s rarely that amusingly incompetent, though -- mostly just crushingly bland. For it’s insufferable boringness, lame kills, and creepy 80s politics, this one gets my coveted AVOID AT ALL COSTS rating.   

On the other hand, Eddie Wong, who played Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat 3 video game (not movie) has a cameo as a homebuyer, so that forgives a lot. For more dumping on this movie, check out Dan P's alternate take as ABBOT AND COSTELLO ENCOUNTER THE AMORAL ISOLATION AT THE SOUL OF THE 1980s.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No
BOOBIES: A few, including Adrienne Barbeau. But she was in her mid-40s and only did this movie to pay for her son's tuition (I bet he wishes she'd just taken out a loan) so kinda hard to enjoy it the way you'd like to.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: He gets one couple a bit bloodied up with a weird razorblade sword (not as cool as it sounds) and there's a late-game decapitation, but nothing too memorable.
SEQUEL: No, thank God.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: High. Out-of-print, little remembered.
MONSTERS: The monster that was 80's American culture.
SATANISTS: No.
ZOMBIES: No.
VAMPIRES: No.
SLASHERS: Yes, this is the closest to an actual "slasher" I've watched this month.
CURSES: No.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: No, thank God.

The Awful Dr. Orloff

The Awful Dr. Orloff (1961)
Dir. Jesus “Jess” Franco
Written by Jesus Franco
Starring Howard Vernon, Perla Cristal, Felix Defaue

This black-and-white Spanish ripoff of EYES WITHOUT A FACE (which had premiered just one year earlier) is apparently considered to be the first ever Spanish horror film. Not too promising a start, but hey, they’re beginners. Just like EYES, Count Orloff concerns the titular Dr. Orloff, a mad surgeon obsessed with stealing young girls’ skin to repair his daughter’s damaged face. In those unenlightened days few if any beautiful young women voluntarily donated their faces for medical purposes, so he’s left to murder pretty girls in search of fresh faces. The only significant change from EYES is that he has a crazy-looking sidekick named Morpho who wears a cape, sports giant bug-eyes, and at first seems to be a vampire because he’s always killing people by biting their necks. Turns out he’s just a guy who likes to bite necks, though. It’s just his thing, nothing supernatural. Because that would be ridiculous. To compensate for his boring non-vampirical cannibalism, though, they add the extra wrinkle that he’s blind and can only kill you if he hears you scream. Or at least, I think so. It’s also possible that the actor playing Morbo Morpho just can’t see past those big fake-looking bug eyes and only appears to be blind.

Jesus Franco is best known today for making sleazy, cheap, ugly and confusing Eurohorror trash which was mostly just a framework to put in a bunch of boobs and deviant sex. So it’s kind of a surprise to say that this one, while inarguably shoddy, is at least a little classy with its black and white look and emphasis on gothy atmosphere over gore and titties. It’s talky and derivative, but there are a few sequences which genuinely strike a classic nightmarish tone, particularly an early sequence where a woman flees through a massive abandoned mansion with lace curtains that are always eerily swirling around her. Ultimately, though, there’s just nothing striking or memorable enough about this one to really recommend it. It’s not well-made enough to coast on its classy atmosphere, nor exploitive enough to work as perverse trash, and the plot is just a retread of EYES WITHOUT A FACE, which would be ripped off much better by the DR. PHIBES movies.

The movie is set in France because Franco feared the subject matter would be rejected by Spanish censors for making Spain look bad. Well, the movie itself doesn’t embarrass Spain as much as Franco’s later work would, but the whole thing sort of suggests that Spain might have been better off just letting the French and Italians take care of cranking out these horror things. Still, gotta give Franco credit for trying. Plus, what other director has titles ranging from TWO LETTERS FROM A PORTUGUESE NUN to MONDO CANNIBALE to THE BARE-BREASTED COUNTESS?

Don't forget to Check out Dan P's alternate take in ABBOT AND COSTELLO MEET A BLIND SPANISH CANNIBAL VAMPIRE.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2012 CHECKLIST!

LOVECRAFT ADAPTATION: No, although one of Franco's best-known films is called NECRONOMICON.
BOOBIES: Orloff strips one victim before removing her skin, but otherwise not much considering it's a Franco film.
> or = HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS LEVEL GORE: One lady is stored (alive?) skinned on the entire left half of her body. It's a little oblique, but pretty gory for 1961.
SEQUEL: The first of two sequels and one remake 1988, all by Franco.
OBSCURITY LEVEL: High-profile Franco, which is to say virtually unknown anywhere.
MONSTERS: No.
SATANISTS: Nah.
ZOMBIES: None.
VAMPIRES: It seems like Morpho is a vampire at first, but I guess not.
SLASHERS: Stalkers, but not slashers as far as I can gather.
CURSES: No.
ALEX MADE IT THROUGH AWAKE: She did, actually. In fact, she stayed awake and alert enough to actually tell US what was going on in the plot.