Category Archives: retrospective

Retrospective: Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)

29 Thursday Apr 2021

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Slasher films had been around through the 70s, although they were more commonly associated with snuff films, but when John Carpenter thrust Michael Myers and Halloween into the horror genre, the flame was struck. Two years later, Sean Cunningham teamed up with writer Victor Miller and stoked the fire further to propel slashers into the mainstream and a plethora of similar movies soon followed.

So, it was inevitable that Paramount Pictures would look at the film’s success and look at ways to spawn a franchise… but there was one big problem.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear, at the beginning of my movie, Jason is dead!

Victor Miller

When they offered me the script for Part 2, I got the script and Jason was running around and I said, “What are you doing?

Tom Savini

If you track that into any kind of timeline, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Sean Cunningham

If the original creators were puzzled, so were the fans, but it wasn’t just the script that was out of whack. There were a number of other conflicts that occurred behind the scenes. Most notably was the return and demise of the films original heroine, Alice played by Adrienne King. King wasn’t shy with her complaints about the production and the way that both her and her character were treated… killing her off in the opening scene supposedly without her knowledge. Those who had come to love her character and her strength in the climax against Jason’s mother Pamela, thought that it was dealt with rather too swiftly.

Another controversial component in-house came with the casting of Jason himself. Let’s forget about the whole sandbag over the head thing which was clearly a lift from The Town That Dreaded Sundown released five years earlier. Instead the issue centred on Warrington Gillette who was given the role of Jason when he failed to win the role of lead counsellor Paul, losing out to John Furey. The only problem was that Warrington at the time wasn’t a stuntman, so the producers had to call in Steve Daskewisz to perform the stunts and debate would strike over who the real Jason was.

Friday the 13th Part 2 was clearly trying to stitch the pieces back together on its path to create a franchise, and arguably were pulling from other movies to inspire or develop this world. Although the creators claimed ignorance, there is a striking similarity to one death scene in the movie to Mario Bava’s 1971 flick, Twitch of the Death Nerve, aka A Bay of Blood (The Surgeons will be taking a look at this movie in more detail for a podcast down the track).

Despite all this, some iconic moments were created.

The introduction of Ginny (Amy Steel) who not only kicked arse as the final girl, but was smart and managed to psyche Jason out by pretending to be dear old Mom. This also brought Betsy Palmer back to resurrect Pamela albeit in dream form.

Also returning from the original movie was Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) and with him the wacky old guy character that would become synonymous with the slasher films. Plus the iconic camp fire scares and young school counsellors getting busy before they get whacked, which is a key draw card for the sub-genre. 

Speaking of kills, with the absence of Tom Savini in the makeup and effects department having signed on to make The Burning, another mastro Stan Winston stepped into the scene, only to also be called away for another commitment. Instead Carl Fullerton (Wolfen, The Silence of the Lambs) would more than step up to the plate and deliver some great effects sequences and some of the most memorable kills from the franchise.

It may have been built on some shaky ground with some questionable narrative decisions that are still debated today, but the final result pulled in $21.7 million at the box office. This wasn’t as successful as its predecessor but it was enough for Paramount to call it a win and from the wake of Pamela Voorhees came the birth of Jason. They were still finding their feet in who or what Jason would be and he is more in embryonic stage, but with Director Steve Miner returning again to helm the next instalment alongside producer Frank Mancuso Jr. history was being made and Jason would soon take great strides in the horror film industry.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Hand (1981)

23 Friday Apr 2021

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Before he gripped the cinematic world with his realistic and harrowing depiction of the Salvadoran Civil War and Vietnam war with the movies Salvador and Platoon…
Before he cast his views on the cold-hearted world of Wall Street where Gordon Gekko declared that “Greed is Good”…

You might be surprised to hear that the director, Oliver Stone turned his hand (pun-intended) to a psychological horror film that would sit perfectly well in the mind of Stephen King.

Stone’s sophomore outing in the director’s chair of a feature film production would cast Michael Caine as his lead. Caine by this stage had already established himself as the charismatic cocksure characters on-screen, most notably in the espionage or crime movies. Here Caine is equally as enigmatic as the brash, hard-headed comic book artist, Jon Lansdale. As we meet Lansdale, it is clear that his mannerisms have caused friction between his wife, Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) and daughter, Lizzie and that the strain may be too great. Anne is already hinting at a temporary separation and that she is thinking of taking Lizzie back to New York and leaving Lansdale in the country to continue with his work. The subject causes a heated argument between the two whilst driving in their car, which in turn leads to a horrific accident where Lansdale’s right hand is severed.
In this one fleeting moment, a sudden change of character from both parties develops. Lansdale at first softens, his dominant male pride and ego is squashed and he is lost and vulnerable without the one tool that gives him power in his life… the hand from which he draws and creates and inflicts his amour propre into the world. Anne on the other…hand (ahem), equally becomes withdrawn and submissive as she feels guilty for what she has inflicted upon Jon.
It’s not long however before the cracks begin to show once more as Lansdale becomes more erratic and uncontrollable with his behaviour. Lansdale is driven by fits of jealousy over Anne’s relationship with her yoga instructor and this mental breakdown consumes him to the point that he is fired by his agent and starts to have apparent delusions manifested around the hand of his former appendage. But is this a figment of his broken mind or has the hand actually formed a life of its own and is now wreaking havoc on the world that surrounds Lansdale?

Lansdale and Anne go through a separation, leading Lansdale to retreat to teach at a small community college, but is left to his own deranged and worrying thoughts, spiralling deeper into a world of torment.

Knowing what we know now about Stone’s fascination with the breakdown of the human mind when inflicted with a significant trauma, The Hand becomes incredibly significant in his canon of work as a director. Some may scoff at the ridiculousness of the subject and its delivery having a severed hand roaming around and killing people, but at its heart, is a powerfully poignant insight into the lengths and breadths that mankind will go to when subjected to a great deal of physical or psychological pain that sends them to the brink of humanity. This precipice is a tightrope between sanity and psychosis. When exposed to such drastic measures, is it really possible to claw our way back to stability? Or is the trauma too great a burden to bear?

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

23 Friday Apr 2021

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From it release back in 1981, Cannibal Ferox, aka Make Them Die Slowly (US), aka Woman From Deep River (Australia), was instantly destined for the Video Nasties list for its brutal depiction of cannibalism and animal cruelty on-screen.

Much like the probably more well-known feature released the year prior, Cannibal Holocaust, the visual aim of hyper violence and bloody torturous designs were made to schock the audience. In places this is still the case with some scenes hard to bear as we bear witness to the slow and meticulaous torture of the central characters.

By today’s standards Cannibal Ferox struggles under the weight of a misogynistic gaze, which is doubled by the main antagonist, Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), a drug dealer who not is not only driven by his own selfish means, but his actions draw the main group deeper into anarchy and the cannibals domain.

The film itself holds an interesting message beneath the surface of stupefaction and glorious sensationalism, following two siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), who are accompanied by their friend Pat (Zora Kerova) as they journey through the Colombian rainforest, ironically to disprove the existence of cannibals.

Director Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!) then subjects these characters to all manner of horrors as they attempt to escape from their tormentors, the rainforest, and some sense of freedom. But you can’t help but feel that they deserve their comeuppance because if you go around poking a bear with a stick, you’re eventually going to get mauled, or have your male appendage severed, and then cauterised, so that you can later get scalped alive and have your brains consumed by said bear analogy.

It is Lenzi’s choice of ending that perhaps is the most numbing of all, when our sole survivor Gloria returns to western civilisation to launch her book, based on her theories, Cannibalism: End of a Myth, which essentially turns a blind eye to her ordeals and pushes down any indication that cannibalism exists. The social commentary seems to suggest that we as a human race continue to shut down or deny any deep issues.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Mephisto Waltz

08 Thursday Apr 2021

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This may be down to pure ignorance as this film was released before I had been born but The Mephisto Waltz is one of those movies that I feel deserves more recognition than it currently receives, forgotten a little by the ebbing of time.

Some critics ridiculed the movie at the time because of its loose handling of the magick involved and the occult’s fairly basic premise, that of soul transference, but this is exactly why I believe it works. The cavalier approach that the people have wields these dark arts have allowed it to consume them and are now governed by these external forces. 

The film draws its name from the musical compositions of Franz Liszt, in which one of the four waltzes involved the intoxicating lure of Faust by Mephistopheles.

This sexual lust and frenzy that is on display is deliberately heightened and reduces all the people involved to base animalistic behaviour.

Initially the temptation falls on Myles Clarkson (Alan Alda) a music journalist who still pines for his lost ambition to become a pianist. When Myles interviews a virtuoso on the piano, Duncan Ely (Curd Jurgens), a fascinating link is drawn between the two figures, one from admiration, the other, a curious magnetism arises when Duncan notices Myles’ hands are perfect for playing the piano.

From this moment on Duncan and his grown daughter, Roxanne (Barbara Parkins) inject themselves into the lives of Myles and his wife, Paula (Jacqueline Bisset). Paula is instantly suspicious of the attraction, but Myles is enraptured by it all and sees Duncan as a fatherly figure. This is particularly strengthened when Myles learns that Duncan is dying from leukemia.

Myles and Paula begin to drift apart as cracks begin to appear in their relationship, bearing in mind that this was the era of free love, but there is an amount of control that is needed on behalf of both parties. This is when Duncan and Roxanne strike, and begin the transfer of Duncan’s soul into Myles body.

At first Paula is unaware of the changes but this is where the film becomes to turn into something of a mystery. Paula delves into the strange behaviours of her husband Myles and the history behind Roxanne to uncover a satanic plot. Will she be able to turn things around and win Myles back or will the occultists turn her instead?

While the plot tackles leaps of fantasy, Jacqueline Bisset is magnificent as the troubled wife and distraught woman, struggling to come to terms with the loss of her husband and the threat of losing her own identity in the turmoil of satanic rituals.

If you can forgive the ridiculous nature in the plot, you can be treated to a fun and enjoyable thriller, where the end is far from predictable.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The House That Dripped Blood (1971)

01 Thursday Apr 2021

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It seems crazy to me that as a Brit and lover of Horror, that I am only now writing my first article on an Amicus Productions, a company that became notorious over their 15 year span between the early 60s and late 70s, and much like their counterpart Hammer Horror, boasted Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as their key stars.

The House That Dripped Blood which celebrates its 50th Anniversary this year, was released at the height of their success not only lays claim to these fine British actors but also stars fellow actors Denholm Elliott, Ingrit Pitt, and Jon Pertwee.
To top it off, the four stories that make up the anthology in this film were originally penned by Robert Bloch (Psycho). 

Each of the tales are strung together by Inspector Holloway from Scotland Yard who is investigating the disappearance of film star Paul Henderson (Pertwee) from the titular house, which harbours some strange events over the years.

The first tale, Method For Murder sees Denholm Elliot as a horror writer, Charles who moves into the country abode with his wife Alice.  Whilst there, Charles throws himself into his work where he comes up with a menacing psychopath Dominic. When he starts to see visions of the murderous strangler, Charles begins to question his sanity. Is Dominic really a figment of his imagination or part of Charles’ split personality manifested to enact his inner and darkest thoughts.

The second tale, Waxworks stars Cushing as a recently retired stockbroker, Philip who stumbles upon a wax museum in his local town that contains a mannequin that strikes an uncanny resemblance to a woman that he once loved.
Philip automatically senses that there is something evil about the museum and swears never to return, but when his friend Neville (Joss Ackland when he had hair) arrives, both find themselves drawn once again into the spiritual domain and its maniacal owner, Grayson (Wolfe Morris).

By the third tale, Sweets to the Sweet featuring Christopher Lee as a widower, John, comes around, it is obvious that there is something untoward about the house and the power it has over its occupants. John is typically reserved and apparently over protective of his daughter, Jane. When a former teacher Ann moves in to be the young girl’s Governess, she at first suspects John of cruel and malicious treatment, but it soon becomes clear that there is more to Jane than meets the eye.

The last tale, The Cloak comes full circle and picks up with Paul Henderson (Pertwee) a brash and unlikable actor, who believes that he is above all those around him. Unhappy with the set design and costume department of his low budget feature, Paul takes it upon himself to get his own costume, namely a vampire cloak. The cloak though contains a dark energy though that slowly turns its wearer into a creature of the night. 

At first I was a little unsure of the anthological approach to the movie but each of the stories involved are solid and compact, held together by fantastical elements and strengthened by a bloody good cast. They may stretch into the melodramatic, but I for one enjoyed every minute of it, especially its conclusion and the breaking down of the fourth wall.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: House of Horrors (1946)

28 Sunday Mar 2021

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This is the movie where Rondo Hatton’s (The Spider Woman Strikes Back) shambling frame comes to the fore and I personally think that it works in this instance. There are some critics that felt at the time and retrospectively feel otherwise, and that the giant killer concept is awkward and laughable.

For me, there is a similarity to Of Mice And Men with the Lenny and and George characters, two misfits in society, outcasts if you will. The Lenny character in this case aligned with Hatton’s character, The Creeper,  instead of a good heart, misguided by those around him, he’s a malicious cold blooded killer seeking to please he’s supposed friend, Marcel De Lange (Martin Kosleck – The Mummy’s Curse, The Frozen Ghost). 

Marcel is an art sculptor and the subject of ridicule among his community. Tired of being savaged by critics, he seeks his vengeance and  just when all seems lost he has a chance encounter and saves The Creeper from drowning.

Now Marcel has a human killing machine at his beckoning call, to carry out his demands on those who’ve wronged him.

The only person who could potentially stand in his way is a female reporter, Joan (Virginia Grey) who Marcel is also infatuated with.

But will love or vengeance lead to ruin for the scared artist?

Once again, Universal were trying to champion a new horror series in The Creeper, but after receiving fairly low reviews, unlike it’s antagonist failed to unleash the horror into the world and the third strike out would leave them stumbling towards the end of the decade.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Bloody Moon (1981)

26 Friday Mar 2021

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It’s probably criminal that a self-confessed Surgeon of Horror, that I have now just sat down to watch a film by Jesús Franco, a Spanish director whose work spanned over 170 films and garnered a reputation in the field of exploitation and B-Movies.

The film under the retrospective gaze is Bloody Moon, which celebrates its 40th Anniversary since its release, fits perfectly into this description. Part of its appeal / repulsion, depending on your stance comes down to the heavily stylised nature of the film.
Bloody Moon is incredibly clunky and on many occasions the editing of the narrative is fractured and sparse, which can alienate the viewer through the series of seemingly unrelated scenarios that are strung together.
What does work well however is by creating a prologue that deliberately skew our perspective of our lead suspect, Miguel (Alexander Waechter). Miguel bears a horribly disfigured face and due to this he is already ostracized from society. When he tries to hide his features from a woman during a sexual encounter, by masquerading as someone else, it naturally goes wrong. Feeling rebuked again, Miguel loses his temper and stabs the poor victim to death with a pair of scissors and is institutionalised in a mental institute for his crime.

Five years later, Miguel is left in the care of his equally disturbed sister, Manuela (Nadja Gerganoff) who runs a youth boarding school of languages on the Costa Del Sol. It is the school camp / campus setting that has likened this film to other slasher films of the time, like Friday the 13th.

We have our central heroine, Angela (Olivia Pascal), who arrives at the school and immediately becomes the subject of Miguel’s infatuation. So when the body count then starts piling up then Miguel immediately falls under suspicion. 

Despite its displaced narrative, there are some moments when the bouts of the extreme are satisfying for fans of the genre, namely the power saw scene. There is however, a harrowing moment that swiftly follows this when a child who tries to save the girl from the killer grind, and is mowed down by a car as he tries to escape.

Bloody Moon is nicely tied up through an admittedly maniacal conclusion that is handled with a heightened sense of melodrama. It deserves your time, for it is both entertaining and twists and turns its way along while amping up the gore factor at timely moments. So if you can forgive the clunks and awkward delivery, there is a decent slasher film lurking beneath the surface.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Spider Woman Strikes Back

21 Sunday Mar 2021

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Not to be confused with some kind of Marvel spin off, or even a follow up to the Sherlock Holmes feature some years before, The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a stand alone feature from the Universal vault that starred Gale Sondergaard, who also featured in the afore-mentioned Holmes film, The Spider Woman.

Sondergaard is given reign to flex her acting muscles and prowess as the local town’s wealthiest person Zenobia Dollard, and with that she carries a huge amount of privilege and entitlement of the land and those in her community. 

Zenobia also hides behind her supposed blindness to get people to think she is a weak and ailing old woman, when she is anything but.

Our lead protagonist is Jean (Brenda Joyce), a young woman new to the town to become Zenovia’s personal assistant. It’s not long before Jean suspects that all is not well in the household, and that something sinister has occurred to her predecessors. Just as she starts to uncover Zenovia’s sinister plan, she finds herself ensnared with her life in danger.
Her only hope may lie in her only contact in town, Hal (Kirby Grant) to discover the death serum, concocted by spider venom and Jean’s blood. 

Rondo Hatton is on hand to provide the lumbering muscle to protect and do Zenovia’s bidding, but he doesn’t offer much beyond this stereotype that he was now attached to.

Universal had grand plans to start a new series involving The Spider Woman, but much like The Jungle Woman, which was launched in a similar timeframe, it never registered well with the audience.
This may have something to do with the lack of enthusiasm from director Arthur Lubin, who strongly opposed the idea of directing a horror feature, but was forced to do so by Universal or else lose his contract.

Mostly though, The Spider Woman Strikes Back suffers from a convoluted script and little substance.

It’s a shame though as I could sense from watching the film that Sondergaard would have relished the opportunity to revisit the role.

As such, it has slipped into obscurity a little and Universal were beginning to suffer from trying to climb out of the shadows of Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. to make a mark on the horror genre further.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Omen III: The Final Conflict

19 Friday Mar 2021

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It’s been nearly 45 years at the time of writing this article that Damien Thorn first graced the silver screen, crafted by the mind of Director Richard Donner from a screenplay by David Seltzer. The story of the antichrist, starring Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, and Patrick Troughton would carve its place in horror film history and spawn a further three films, a remake, and a TV series in its wake.

This year sees the 40th Anniversary of the third instalment, Omen III: The Final Conflict, starring Sam Neill as the antagonist, Damien.
Controversially, I find this movie one of the strongest in the series and have vivid memories watching it when I was younger. Some fans of the series connected more with the sequel, Damien: Omen II over this film, but I still find, having recently gone through the entire franchise, Omen III the stronger movie. Perhaps this is because of Neill’s magnanimous presence, but there are also some notable moments that put the audience off kilter, in a good way, and allow the film to shine through as a result.

Possibly the most troubling point played with is the hunting down and meticulously cold-blooded killing of baby boys, born on a certain day, predicated to be Christ reborn. As a father, these ideas are always a tough watch.
The strongest component for me is the symbolism attached to the fox hunting and the blooding of reporter Kate Reynolds son, Peter, grooming him to be a disciple of Damien. Also, the moment when Damien unleashes the hounds on one of his assailants. Some may see it as comical, but I really enjoyed the concept of the priestly pact of assassins, attempting to bring down Damien with the Seven Daggers of Megiddo. 

Equally as compelling is Kate’s character, played by Lisa Harrow. There is a strong character arc at play here with her tackling her journalistic instincts, driving her to understand Damien more, but ultimately luring her into his web of demonic destruction. The scene in which Damien draws Kate in with sexual intimacy before sodomizing her, is the height of convulsion and a significant turning point for Kate.

Its weakest component to the film has to be its ending. The 1976 feature had such a strong finale with Damien turning to the camera before striking that wicked grin. And Damien: Omen II’s fiery end held an impactful conclusion. So it’s a shame that Damien’s demise should falter, admittedly at the hands of Kate, but to fall down before a Christly apparition seems a little too twee for my liking. It would have been nicely played had they kept this more ambiguous and leaving the downfall down to the interpretation of the audience.

As it stands though, it’s a great addition to the franchise, even if it does fall short of The Omen, but that was always going to be a tough act to follow. 

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Blood and Lace (1971)

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

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Before the slasher craze would strike in the 80s and both Voorhees and Myers would don their respective masks…

Before even Halloween or Black Christmas would sew the seeds of what was to come in the world of celluloid horror, Blood and Lace would grace all the hallmarks of what typifies the sub-genre.

Initially considered to be too gratuitous for the cinema audience by the MPA (Motion Picture Association) Blood and Lace would find a home as a regular slot at drive-in theatres, where it would garner a following.

As the film opens, we’re greeted with the now familiar trope of the killers POV as they stalk through a house and centre in on the intended victims lying in bed, being clobbered by the weapon of choice; a hammer, and then setting the house on fire.
The sole survivor, the woman’s daughter, Ellie (Melody Patterson) is then sent off to an orphanage to be raised by the crazed Mrs. Deere (Gloria Grahame) and her odd-job man, Tom (Len Lesser). This is where the level of sinister and fuckdom begins as Mrs. Deere is a crackpot, who keeps her dead husband on freeze, believing that it will keep him alive. She is also fuelled by money, working the children in her care to the bone, and for those who she pushed beyond the limits, keeps in the freezer in order to keep up the head count and receive her welfare checks.
Tom is no saint either, with eyes on the young females that come through the orphanage to satiate his sexual lusts. In fact, it’s hard to actually find anyone to like in this movie, as our lead protagonist, Ellie is suitably off-kilter and hard to connect to for obvious reasons when the full scope of the story is revealed. We also have a lingering, sexual predator in Detective Carruthers (Vic Taybuck), who has a curious interest in Ellie, that reveals itself in a couple of ways in the films climax, pushing the boundaries of taste and decency.
This twist in the storyline isn’t necessarily a shock moment, as you can sense it coming from a mile out, but the fact that it still travels there, leaves you feeling completely disturbed.
A sign of a movie leaving its sticky residue on the mind of its viewer and potentially where it still resonates when viewed today, despite its slow methodological pace, cheap budget, and standard script.

  • Saul Muerte