The Skinny On... The Legend of Blood Castle

Elizabeth Bathory was the notorious 16th-century Hungarian countess who butchered hundreds of young girls and allegedly used their blood in an attempt to regain a youthful appearance. While the latter claim has been largely debunked, the story remains rich horror fodder that has spawned at least two excellent films: Peter Sadsy’s Countess Dracula, and Jorge Grau’s sublime The Legend of Blood Castle, a grim Spanish product which easily equals and in many ways surpasses Sadsy’s better-known Hammer entry.

While Countess Dracula focuses on Bathory herself, Grau adds a “sins-of-the-fathers” element (or “sins-of-the-mothers” if you wish) by focusing on the Countess’ granddaughter. Marquise Erzsébet suffers from the same doubts that plagued her infamous ancestor. Her husband Karl no longer shows any interest in her, which she attributes to her age. When the blood of a young girl accidentally splashes on her hand, she notices that it temporarily gives her skin a youthful appearance. In the meantime, the villagers have recently unearthed a supposed vampire, put the corpse on trial and beheaded it. Encouraged by her servant Marina, Erzsébet decides to exploit the superstition of the villagers by having Karl fake his own death so she can send him out to kidnap and kill young girls. The villagers are convinced another vampire is on the loose as Erzsébet receives the blood of Karl’s victims in copious amounts. Everything is going exceedingly well until Karl falls in love with one of his intended victims, which sends Erzsébet into a rage that ultimately leads to her downfall.

While Countess Dracula exploited the supernatural elements of an allegedly vampiric countess, The Legend of Blood Castle – despite its schlocky American title – is steeped in a grim realism that adds a great deal of resonance to the proceedings. Aside from one nightmarish vision in which Erzsébet sees her victims returning from the grave for retribution, there is really nothing supernatural in Grau’s film. The blood Erzsébet receives from her victims never makes her look any younger; any perceived improvement can only be attributed to her fragile mental state. The village “vampires” are nothing more than the recent dead who have unfortunately been branded bloodsuckers by overly impressionable citizens. Not only does Karl scoff at the villagers’ superstitious ways, but he and Erzsébet are able to exploit their beliefs to great benefit. The Legend of Blood Castle is in many ways an anti-supernatural film, graphically showing how the belief system of superstitious people can be used to control and exploit them. Grau even throws in a little swipe at Christianity, as the blood of the virgins is delivered to Erzsébet through a cutout of a cross in the ceiling.

Karl is an intriguing character. He shows no sexual interest in his wife, although she is still quite attractive, but is willing to fake his own death in order to aid a fantastical plan that he, as a realist, must know is ridiculous. It is clear he is willing to kill not for Erzsébet’s benefit, but to sate a strongly sadistic desire within himself. Early in the film he has near-sexual encounters with two women, but both end in mock homicidal gestures: In one scene he acts as if he’s going to choke the woman; in another he holds a dagger menacingly at the woman’s throat. He shows so little sexual desire throughout the film that one begins to wonder if he is homosexual. Even his brief fling at the end of the film ultimately ends in violence. Karl seems much more adept at – and satisfied by -- killing than lovemaking.

Erzsébet herself is not pictured as the monster of the history books. She is despondent over the lack of attention from Karl, and even though she perceives that virgin blood makes her look younger, she has no intention of acting on it. She tells Marina “It’s impossible.” It is Marina who encourages her to act, and Karl who provides the victims. Not that Erzsébet is an innocent. She does willingly accept the blood that Karl provides, and in an early scene she actually cuts a toddler (off-screen) with broken glass. All in all, Erzsébet seems more confused than evil. She is willing to overlook her atrocities in order to regain the love of her husband (though she never does). Fittingly, the fate of Marina – whose words were instrumental in goading Erzsébet into action – is to have her tongue cut out. Erzsébet is sentenced to be walled up in a single small room. The film’s last scene shows her before a mirror, studying her haggard countenance, trapped with her own unsightliness until death.

The Legend of Blood Castle (original title Ceremonia Sangrieta, which translates to the much more somber Blood Ceremony in English) is top-rate horror from one of Spain’s best (Grau also directed the superb Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue). Unfortunately, the recent MYA DVD release does not do it justice. The non-anamorphic transfer lacks detail and doesn’t translate Grau’s superb color schemes, and the English dubbing is leaden to say the least. A superior Spanish soundtrack is included, but it doesn’t have English sub-titles. MYA seems to tow a strict company line against English subtitles, which is inexplicable to me and many other fans of classic horror DVDs. And here’s the clincher: The climax of the film was evidently never dubbed into English, so the film switches to Spanish even on the English-language track. Unfortunately, many of the subtitles were totally unreadable on my disc – they just came out as squiggly lines. I am thrilled to have finally seen this excellent film, but the definitive DVD release is still in the future.

The Skinny On... The Beyond

Considered a genius by some and a hack by many, director Lucio Fulci is responsible for a handful of the most notorious titles of late ‘70s, early ‘80s Italian horror, including Zombie (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980) and House by the Cemetery (1981). The Beyond (1981) is prime Fulci, an occasionally compelling, often head-scratching catalog of weirdness and brutality that epitomizes Fulci’s in-your-mutilated-face approach to horror.

The hackneyed story depicts a Louisiana hotel that serves as one of the seven doorways to hell. In a decently atmospheric prologue, a group of particularly vicious vigilantes arrive at the hotel by canoe to dispatch of a warlock named Schweik who paints strange pictures and has evidently found the key to hell. Why would 10 grown men row canoes across a pond barely larger than a football field instead of simply walking around it? Don’t ask silly questions. This is Lucio Fulci. This is The Beyond.

Cut 60 years in the future. Liza (Catherine MacColl) is renovating the same hotel (although the pond is nowhere in sight) when strange things begin to occur. A painter takes a mysterious fall off his scaffolding; a room bell rings though no one is occupying the hotel; and a plumber -- Joe the Plumber, in fact! – is gruesomely murdered by having his eyes gouged out while working in the basement. Par for the course for a Fulci film, the eye-gouging incident is treated with no more weight than the other two lesser events. Liza then meets a blind girl named Emily (I guess she’s blind – her irises are covered with ornate ivory-colored discs) who tells her about the decadent past of the hotel. As Liza investigates further with the help of Dr. John McCabe (David Warbeck), more people die incredibly gruesome deaths, including a jaw-dropping scene in which tarantulas mutilate a man’s face, and another in which a young girl watches her own mother turned to bloody grue by acid. In the end, Liza and John find themselves inside one of Schweik’s paintings, an endless and inescapable landscape of hell.



While Fulci’s loosely plotted and indescribably gory films might put off mainstream critics and audiences, there was literally more than meets the eye to the his directorial motives. Fulci has said that he wanted his films to be a sensory assault on the viewer, particularly an assault on the eyes. To that end, Fulci’s films often feature graphic violence on characters’ eyes, and The Beyond is his towering achievement in this area. No less than four characters have their eyes gouged out or otherwise graphically removed during the course of the film, whether by hand, spike or – for one unfortunate character – spiders. Compounding these scenes are multiple blind characters who are depicted with those weird ivory discs covering their eyes. No other Fulci film is infused with this amount of eye imagery or eye violence.

But Fulci doesn’t end his assault there. The film treats us to relentlessly graphic scenes of horrific gore, complete with stomach-churning sounds effects to enhance the experience. During scenes in which a character is flayed repeatedly, another is eaten by spiders, and another is ripped apart by a zombie dog, the music is turned off completely, replaced by sickening sound effects of ripping, chomping, and chewing. It is an unrelieved assault on the eyes and ears of the viewer, one that will either have you cringing in your seat or laughing nervously. Fulci adds other elements to increase the unease. We not only see a woman’s face eaten away by acid, we also see her horrified pre-adolescent daughter watch the entire event. This same girl has half her face blown off at the end of the film. Involving children in extreme violence is something few American horror directors would dare, but European directors like Fulci used it to highly disturbing effect.

Fulci is often accused of slavishly imitating George Romero’s zombie films, but this is actually quite unfair. In only one film – Zombie – do his walking dead have a taste for flesh. In City of the Living Dead, they are merely spectral spectators to a surreal apocalypse, and in House by the Cemetery the single “zombie’ isn’t even dead – he’s a 150-year old abomination who needs human blood to stay alive. The Beyond’s dead likewise do not eat the living. They threaten them a lot, often hovering around without moving much, and occasionally they will kill one, as when Joe the Plumber impales a poor housekeeper on a protruding spike. Yes, they can be killed only by a shot to the head, but they are otherwise quite dissimilar to the rampaging zombie hordes of Romero’s Dead films. BTW, the killing of zombies becomes particularly aggravating in The Beyond, as John never quite figures out that only a bullet to the head will do the trick. Literally every time he attempts to kill a zombie, he fires multiple ineffective shots into various parts of their anatomy before finally make the required head/kill shot. For warlock Schweik, he never figures it out, finally abandoning his weapon and running away. For a doctor, this guy is woefully unobservant.

As in just about every Fulci film, The Beyond is filled with mystifying moments. Though Joe the Plumber has clearly been murdered near the beginning of the film, the police are never called. We simply see his body in a hospital morgue a few scenes later. In fact, although there are countless gruesome murders throughout the film, the police never make a single appearance in The Beyond.  After a young girl attends the funeral of both of her parents, she is bid goodbye by the funeral attendees and stands alone in the cemetery, evidently on her own at the tender age of 13.  When housekeeper Martha finds Joe the Plumber’s body in the basement with his eyes gouged out, she barely registers a reaction. She is horrified to see a disfigured Schweik a few moments later, however. Why does one rotting corpse engender a horrified reaction when a freshly mutilated Joe the Plumber doesn’t? The answer is that Fulci is clearly aiming for an off-kilter, otherworldly atmosphere akin to Suspiria. He even borrows the friendly-dog-suddenly-turns-on-his-master trick from Dario Argento’s superior film, although this dog is turned into a zombie after grappling with one of the living dead in an exceptionally silly scene. In the end, Fulci doesn’t come close to achieving the nightmarish atmosphere of Suspiria, but give him credit for trying.

I watched The Beyond with its Italian soundtrack this time after reading that some of the sound effects were different than the English language track. Particularly effective are the whispers of the dead throughout the film, which are not heard on the English track. The climax was especially chilling, as the names of Liza and are John are whispered repeatedly as the two slowly realize they are trapped inside hell. Overall, I probably prefer the English dialogue track (both the leads spoke their lines in English), but the Italian effects track is definitely an upgrade. The Grindhouse DVD release – although using the same transfer as the old Anchor Bay DVD – does contain the Italian track with English sub-titles, so it’s worth checking out if you’ve never seen the film in its Italian incarnation.

The Skinny On... Nightmare City

I’ll admit it -- I’m a sucker for zombie movies. And when it comes to old-fashioned, entrails-eating, blood-spurting hi-jinks, the Italian and Spanish zombie movies of the 1970’s and 1980’s are tough to beat. Doubling the fun is Nightmare City (1980), an Italian/Spanish co-production and a prime slab of Euro zombie beef. Umberto Lenzi’s oft-overlooked opus makes up for its rather meager monster makeup with unbridled energy and an onslaught of kinetic mayhem not seen again until 28 Days Later (2003).  

Unless you’re a Rhodes Scholar or World Literature professor, you might have a hard time following the intricate plot, but here goes: Radioactivity turns a group of people into raging, blood-thirsty zombies. The people they attack then also turn into raging, blood-thirsty zombies. Regular people make a mad dash for the hills. The End.

OK, so the script for Nightmare City wouldn’t pass muster at a community college screenwriting class, but that’s not why we watch zombie movies. Nightmare City doesn’t waste time with character development or complex exposition; it just piles on one entertaining set piece after another. As the film begins a reporter played by the hirsute Hugo Stiglitz, who always seems to be mad about something though I’m never sure what, witnesses a cargo plane land unannounced at a city airport. Suddenly the plane doors open and gooey faced maniacs begin attacking everyone in sight. Immediately, you realize that these are not your Romero’s zombies. They look like they’ve been hit in the face with chunks of putrefying beef; they wield axes, guns, scythes and any other weapons they can get a hold of, and they run and jump like a world-class track team. These are some potent, high-energy, death-dealing maniacs, not zombies so much as highly athletic vampires (the radioactivity poisoning evidently creates the need for a continuous supply of fresh blood). 

After witnessing the attack, reporter Dean returns to his TV station and, without saying a word to anyone, orders the technical director to interrupt an afternoon dance show so he can make an emergency news broadcast. The station’s executives rightly pull the plug on Dean’s report, which makes him even angrier and more indignant than before. Dean clearly needs to work on his people skills. We then cut back to the dancing program, one that makes Solid Gold look like the heyday of the Bolshevik Ballet, when suddenly zombies invade and do what everyone watching the show secretly wanted to do: Rip the dancers to shreds and drink their blood.  

Hours after the initial attack, it now occurs to Dean that he might want to inform his wife of the looming danger. He calls the hospital where she works as a nurse and is indignant when told that she is in surgery and cannot come to the phone. Poor Dean. Stymied again. He rushes to the hospital just in time to witness another mass attack. As the zombie vampires hack, stab, shoot and otherwise pulverize everyone in sight, Dean is able to retrieve his wife, steal an ambulance and escape. The rest of the film follows the duo as they encounter more zombies while limp military men led by the impressively named but otherwise wholly inadequate General Murchison (Mel Ferrer) sit in their headquarters trying to figure out what to do.  

At times, Nightmare City is like that dream in which something is endlessly chasing you. You run and run, tired as hell but helpless to stop, never knowing what’s behind you and not wanting to find out. There is real frisson to the zombie action; these aren’t just machete-wielding maniacs, they’re killing machines without a shred of humanity or compassion. Yes, the makeup is sloppy, goopy and for the most part laughable. The action is the thing here, and Lenzi pulls off some intensely unrelenting sequences that will have you squirming in your seat. For my money, Lenzi’s raucous zombie vampires are just as effective if not more so than the similarly raging creatures from Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Aided greatly by Stelvio Cipriano’s apocalyptic synthesizer-based score, Stiglitz’s perpetually angry leading man, some well-placed nudity, and buckets of gore, Nightmare City is an excellent entry in the Euro zombie cycle.

The Skinny On... Nightmare Castle

Mario Bava kick-started the Italian gothic boom of the 1960’s with the baroque majesty of Black Sunday, which was followed by the exceptional work of Riccardo Freda (The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock, The Ghost), the slow-moving but atmospheric films of Antonio Margheriti (Castle of Blood, The Long Hair of Death), and the sometimes inspired, sometimes insipid films of directors ranging from Giorgio Ferroni (Mill of the Stone Women) to Camillo Mastrocinque (Crypt of the Vampire) to Massimo Pupillo (Terror Creatures from the Grave). By the time Nightmare Castle was released in 1965, the genre was well worn if not verging on tired, but director Mario Caiano keeps the film fairly interesting by eschewing any pretense of great art in favor of a lush, sometimes garish soap opera atmosphere.  

The familiar story opens with Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith (no, I’m not making that up) catching his wife Muriel and her lover David getting hot and heavy in the greenhouse. Mad with jealousy – and probably mad even without jealousy – Arrowsmith tortures Muriel and David in a dungeon located beneath the castle, and then electrocutes them in a spray of decidedly un-special effects. Before her demise, Muriel informs Arrowsmith that she had changed her will, and her vast inheritance will now go to her ditzy younger sister Jenny (Steele again, this time in a ridiculous blonde wig). No problem. Arrowsmith simply woos Jenny, marries her, and brings her back to the castle in order to drive her mad, have her committed to an insane asylum, and take all her money. Simple, huh? Unfortunately for Arrowsmith, the spirits of Muriel and David makes a triumphant return to thwart the good doctor’s plans. 

Nightmare Castle has everything you would expect in an Italian gothic: A spooky castle, a cheating wife, revenge from beyond the grave, and horror icon Barbara Steele playing two roles. Did the lady ever portray a single character in any film? This is definitely one of Steele’s better acting showcases, not in the least because it is the only Italian gothic in which you can hear the actress’ own voice. Steele did the dubbing for Jenny (though, curiously, not for Muriel). The simultaneously desirable and cadaverous countenance of Steele has made her a genre icon, and she really gets to strut her stuff here, playing the lustful, vengeful Muriel to a tee, and doing a fine job as the laughably clueless Jenny. The blonde wig does her no favors, but Steele fans can grouse little about the amount of screen time the actress enjoys. Nightmare Castle is a Steele vehicle, plain and simple.

Though many viewers complain about the pacing in Nightmare Castle, I didn’t find it any slower than the films of Margheriti, Mastrocinque, or even Bava for that matter. But whereas Bava infused his films with richly textured photography and deliriously flamboyant images, Caiano plays things rather straight, achieving few of the striking visual moments that defined the gothic subgenre. The ending is quite well done, however, with a few deliciously creepy shots of the decaying Muriel and Davis returned from the grave and thirsty for revenge. The story is a real potboiler, with elements of infidelity, torture, murder, vengeance, and insanity. Arrowsmith has a predilection for electrocution, which he uses twice during the course of the film. Another lurid touch has the doctor using Muriel’s blood to give his haggard elderly servant Solange (the lovely Helga Line) a youthful appearance. He then strikes up an affair with the newly beautiful octogenarian. When a second transfusion using Jenny’s blood goes awry, Solange withers into a rotting corpse.

The film features the first horror score of Ennio Morricone, and while I’ve heard many praise the music, I found it erratic to say the least. While there are a few effective cues, the music is often bombastic and sometimes badly out of place. One piece in particular, which is quite reminiscent to the main theme of Stanley Kubrik’s Barry Lyndon, sounds like it belongs in another movie. Like Barry Lyndon, for instance. To hear this stately, prim music as mad doctors and ghosts roam around haunted castle is almost a disorienting experience.

Severin’s new DVD release of Nightmare Castle is simply terrific, with a beautiful transfer of the film, and, as mentioned, an English audio track that features Barbara Steele’s actual speaking voice. The DVD also includes a 30-minute interview with Steele in which she speaks about her career. Though Steele seems a tad embarrassed at her status as a horror icon (she speaks much more highly of Fellini than of Bava, for instance), she seems to be warming somewhat to her status as she grows older. Even she admits that while she made all kinds of films, it’s her horror output that everyone remembers. Shouldn’t that tell you something, Barb?

The Skinny On... Up

You will find few if any movies on this blog that can be described as sweet, heartfelt or touching. These are words I do not use lightly to describe a movie (or anything else, for that matter), so when I find one for which those words not only apply but actually shortchange, I feel compelled to say a few words about it. So it is with Up, the effortlessly transcendent, nearly perfect new offering from Pixar Studios. Here’s a challenge: Take several elements riddled with cliché possibilities -- an old man disappointed in how his life has turned out; a chubby kid who is neglected by his father; a colorful bird with three chicks to care for; a cute, oh-so-lovable dog – and mix them into an unlikely fantasy/adventure complete with flying houses, talking dogs, and chocolate-eating foul. Now, make every one of those elements seem totally plausible, and use them to create a film that is moving without being maudlin, funny without being silly, and exciting without being dumb. Presto – you have Up. I had little expectations when I went to see Up with my two elementary-aged boys this weekend, but within the first 15 minutes – a stunning encapsulation of life from the wonder and exuberance of childhood to the grind and disappointments of adulthood to the loss and regrets of old age – I realized I was watching something special. And if I thought momentarily that the remainder of Up could not possibly equal that brilliant, heart-wrenching opening, the film quickly assuaged those worries. Up tells the story of Carl Fredericksen (Ed Asner), an elderly balloon vendor who loses his adventure-seeking wife Ellie before he is able to grant her lifelong wish of traveling to the wilderness of Paradise Falls in South America. After his wife’s death, Carl decides to complete the adventure by himself, tying thousands of balloons to his home and soaring into the sky. His plan is complicated when an eager neighborhood boy, Russell, becomes an unwitting stow-away. Arriving at the wrong end of Paradise Falls, a newly determined Carl decides to drag his home through the jungle and to the edge of falls, and that’s when the real adventures begin. It is pointless to delve further into the plot of Up, because words simply can’t convey the care, precision and heart that saturates every frame of the film. As with other Pixar films, Up is a visual feast, but the economy of the narrative and breadth of the emotional experience is unmatched in the studio’s catalog. I can name a handful of live-action films that have made me cry. Up did it multiple times. Not only is the filmmaking of the highest caliber, but the combination of exceptionally expressive animation and impeccable voice work by Asner makes Carl’s “performance” one of the finest – if not the finest – in the annals of animation. I can’t imagine seeing a better film than Up this year. It is a movie that is literally wonderful – that is, full of wonder – and brimming with unforgettable moments both large and small. Of all the lush visuals, hilarious gags, and heartfelt moments, one shot sticks with me more than any other: Two empty chairs belonging to Carl and Ellie, sitting on the edge of Paradise Falls, never to be used again. It’s as simple, beautiful and heartbreaking an image as the cinema can offer.

The Skinny On... The Curse of the Crying Woman

The Crying Women (La Llorona) of Mexican folklore has been a staple of South-of-the-Border supernatural cinema since 1933, with The Curse of the Crying Woman (1963) being one of her finest film incarnations. Using as a template the classic Universal horror films and -- by extension -- the silent German Expressionistic films, Mexican horror films of the late 1950s and early 1960s are loaded with the crepuscular atmosphere of their esteemed models, but up the ante with either borderline creepy or hilariously silly monsters, along with the violence and shock effects increasingly expected by audiences of the time. The Curse of the Crying Woman falls somewhere in between the fairly serious El Vampiro and the frankly outlandish The Brainiac -- the best of both worlds as it were -- and remains a highly entertaining addition to the Mexican horror canon.

A carriage traverses a forest so desolate it makes the stark landscape in Son of Frankenstein look like the poppy fields of Oz by comparison. Suddenly we see a ghastly visage: A woman garbed in black, with empty pits for eyes, holding three vicious Doberman Pinschers and communicating silently with the heavily scarred, Hispanic version of Warren Oates. As the carriage approaches, the scarred man leaps out and kills the coachman and all the unfortunate travelers. As a young girl is crushed beneath the wheels of the carriage, the opening credits roll. Welcome to The Curse of the Crying Woman.

From here, the plot begins to resemble El Vampiro as Jaime (the ubiquitous Abel Salazar) and his wife Amelia travel to Amelia’s childhood home at the request of her aunt Selma. Once there, they receive a chilly welcome from none other than the scarred henchman from the opening scene, who basically tells them to go to their room and shut up until Selma returns. Things don’t warm up much upon her arrival as Selma begins playing one of the most depressing organ dirges imaginable in order to beckon Amelia downstairs. As Selma’s elegiac death march wafts through the house, Amelia eagerly skips downstairs with a huge smile on her face, prompting one to wonder what the hell this woman’s childhood was like. Amelia is surprised to see that Selma has not aged in the intervening 20 years (again, shades of El Vampiro), and is more than a little baffled by her cold demeanor, even telling her that “It seems like you’re another person.” Selma doesn’t mince words, telling Amelia that she has called her home in order to revive a centuries old-witch – La Llorona -- whose decaying skeleton hangs in her basement. To prove she’s not kidding around, Selma shows Amelia how she casts no reflection in a mirror and can walk through a giant spider web without disturbing it. Amelia is naturally aghast at the plans to revive La Llorona (it is her job to remove the sword that killed her as the clock strikes midnight), but Selma informs her that the witch’s blood runs through her veins, and she will succumb to spirit of La Llorona whether or not she wishes to.

From here it’s a race against time as Amelia is slowly infested with the spirit of La Llorona and Jaime runs around the hacienda trying to figure out what’s going on. On one visit upstairs, Jaime is attacked by a disfigured corpse-keeper type who turns out to be Selma’s long-lost husband Daniel. It seems that when a woman in the family turns to the dark side, her husband becomes a ghastly, whimpering monster. Evidently the same fate awaits Jaime if he cannot convince Amelia to resist the spirit of La Llorona. In a well-executed, suspenseful sequence, a huge bell begins to toll the midnight hour as Amelia is commanded by Selma to remove the sword from La Llorona, while Jaime – shackled and helpless – implores her to resist. Toll by toll, the sword is slowly removed, until finally Jaime’s declaration that “I’m your husband” convinces Amelia to stop just in time. As the house crumbles around them, Jaime and Amelia are able to escape, while Daniel returns to put Selma back in her rightful place.

The Curse of the Crying Woman is a rather convoluted mish-mash of ideas, but it really delivers the gothic goods, from fog-laden landscapes and crumbling haciendas to rotting skeletons and cob-webbed dungeons, all filmed in the superbly atmospheric black-and-white photography that was a staple of Mexican horror cinema during this period. Visually, these films rival the great gothics of the teens, 20’s and 30’s. They are simply beautiful movies to watch.

The Curse of the Crying Woman seems a little confused about whether it’s a vampire movie or a witch movie, so it simply adopts motifs from both. Selma is basically a distaff Bela Lugosi. She casts no reflection, only appears at night, and can walk through a spider web with the best of them. For some reason, her eyes become black pits from time to time (clearly achieved by black cloth surrounded by some face makeup). It’s a spooky effect but becomes a little overused by the end of the film. Selma evidently doesn’t drink blood; it turns out she’s killing the descendants of the people who executed La Llorona and using their blood to help revive the centuries-old witch. Why she needs Amelia to remove the sword from La Llorona is never made clear (something about an old prophecy), and how Amelia becomes possessed by a witch who has not yet been revived is also never explained. Interestingly, it’s the return of patriarchal order that puts an end to Selma and La Llorona. Amelia ignores Jamie until he reminds her that “I’m your husband,” and Daniel returns to kill Selma, ending her maternal reign of terror. It is worth noting that the film pictures men under the rule of a maternal household as weak, pathetic creatures.

Casa Negra’s DVD of The Curse of the Crying Woman is truly breathtaking, with a stunning, uncut transfer of the film in its original Spanish language with easy-to-read English subtitles. An English-dubbed track is also included, but if you want to feel the full power of the film, watch it in its original language. Fast moving, atmospheric and loads of fun, The Curse of the Crying Woman is not to be missed by fans of classic horror.

Fantasy Drive-In Double Feature: Baby Cart at the River Styx & Night of the Comet

Lone Wolf and Cub 2: Baby Cart at the River Styx

Less a movie than a symphony of highly visceral and intensely poetic violence, Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx was my first foray into the legendary Japanese gekiga (graphic novel) that spawned six movies, four plays and a TV series. The ongoing tale of disgraced former Shogun executioner Ogami Ittō and his toddler son Daigoro, who wander 18th century Japan battling foes of every shape and size, Baby Cart at the River Styx may be short on narrative coherence, but makes up for it with scene after scene of beautifully orchestrated, balletic blood-letting. If you ever wondered where Quinton Tarantino got some of his ideas for Kill Bill Vol. 1 – especially the final scene -- look no further. Itto engages enemies from the film’s first jaw-dropping scene, in which his splits the skull of a surprise attacker -- releasing a geyser of crimson blood -- as Daigoro looks on impassively. This image remains central throughout – Itto unleashing an almost supernatural physical prowess on enemy after enemy as his son watches placidly from a wooden carriage. After Itto dispatches his foes, he calmly resumes his life's journey, pushing Daigoro away from landscapes littered with severed limbs and dead bodies. In this film, Itto battles a group of lethal female assassins who are dead ringers for the Crazy 88’s in Kill Bill Vol. 1, and three brothers who are masters of various weaponry, one of which is a five-bladed hand dagger that looks strikingly similar to Freddy Krueger’s famed knife glove. Clearly molding Daigoro in his own image, Itto is not above using his son during battle, at one point pushing his cart into an army of awaiting ninja only to have sword blades pop from the wheels and slice off the feet of several would-be attackers. The film fluctuates from scenes of operatic violence to ones of quite introspection, including a charming sequence at an abandoned mill in which Diagoro cares for his wounded father by bringing him handfuls of water from a nearby stream. It’s a lovely, tender sequence that stands in stark contrast to the extreme violence surrounding it. Among the many visual delights is a montage of attacks along a picturesque bridge crossing, and a final desert sequence in which the three brothers seem to attack the sand itself, only to have blood bubble up from attackers hidden beneath the dunes. By eschewing any pretense of narrative reasoning, Baby Cart at the River Styx achieves an oneiric intensity that few films can match; it’s truly a breathtaking experience.

Night of the Comet

Time has a way of transforming the obnoxious into the nostalgic. If I had seen Night of the Comet when it was released in 1984, I have no doubt I would have hated it. An unlikely combination of apocalyptic zombie horror and Valley Girl-style comedy, Comet is a synth-choked slice of ‘80s cheese that would have been the proverbial fingernails-on-the-chalkboard to my 17-year-old Dawn of the Dead/Burial Ground/Zombie-loving self. Funny thing, though. I recently taped it as a lark on the MGM-HD channel, and this 42-year-old curmudgeon had a pretty good time with Night of the Comet. It’s far from a great movie, mind you, but as a piece of schlocky, leg warmers-era entertainment, it’s not bad at all. A comet transforms most of humanity into Biblical piles of dust, a few others into rampaging zombies, and spares anyone who happened to be enclosed in metal when it passed. This fortunate group includes two sisters, one a tough-talking theater usher and the other a boy-crazy cheerleader, a cute guy for the girls to fight over, and a group of research scientists who may or may not be trying control the spread of zombie-ism (a year before a similar group did the same in Day of the Dead). The girls duke it out with several decent looking dead people (beware the dreaded dream sequence, however), and then engage in a Dawn of the Dead-style mall war with a gang of homicidal punks, a scene that includes this priceless exchange after a punk rocker cold-bloodedly shoots one of his own friends:

Regina (lead girl): You’re crazy!

Punk Guy: I’m not crazy. I just don’t give a fuck.

The final third of the film takes place at the research facility, where the true intentions of the scientists come to horrific light. Borrowing from such films as The Omega Man, Dawn of the Dead, and any number of ‘80’s teen comedies, Night of the Comet is formulaic filmmaking from stem to stern, but is elevated by a solid, occasionally witty script, and good performances from leads Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney, both of whom resist the temptation to sink into vapid teen girl mode. In fact, Night of the Comet presages such films as Aliens and Terminator 2 in its depiction of a female lead – in this case two female leads – who are not only strong, but can legitimately kick ass. The script contains a few decent surprises, especially some nice misdirection involving the motives of the scientists, and writer/director Thom Eberhardt squeezes everything he can out of an obviously limited budget. The Bava-esque gel lighting in the research facility is an especially welcome touch. On the downside, the soundtrack’s incessant parade of grade-Z dance music will have you grinding your teeth before the first zombie attacks. The zombies themselves, while sporting pretty good makeup, are few and far between, appearing in just as many dream sequences as real-life scenes, and the film’s budget reduces the apocalypse to a few piles of dust and a perpetually orange sky, though the empty cityscapes are appropriately eerie. The film has an episodic feel, and the climax is anything but climactic, but overall Night of the Comets is a harmless, nostalgic trip back to a time the 17-year-old Skinny couldn’t wait to escape. Go figure.