Opened 40 Years Ago: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (7/10/1981)

 

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK opening
in Toledo, OH on 7/10/1981

Retro Review: SOLDIER BLUE (1970)

SOLDIER BLUE
(US - 1970)

Directed by Ralph Nelson. Written by John Gay. Cast: Candice Bergen, Peter Strauss, Donald Pleasence, John Anderson, Jorge Rivero, Dana Elcar, James Hampton, Mort Mills, Bob Carraway, Martin West, Jorge Russek, Aurora Clavell. (R, 115 mins)

A revisionist western inspired by the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in the Colorado Territory that also tries to be a then-topical Vietnam allegory, Ralph Nelson's SOLDIER BLUE was a controversial misfire in the summer of 1970 (though its theme song by Indigenous Canadian singer/songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie became a big hit in the UK) and despite some positive critical reassessment and an inevitable cult following over the ensuing 50 years, it hasn't really improved with age. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), SOLDIER BLUE generated some buzz at the time of its release for its sickeningly violent climax, with a cavalry attack on a Cheyenne tribe so gory and over-the-top it that out-splatters THE WILD BUNCH and goes several steps beyond, with heads blown apart, limbs hacked off, children being decapitated, trampled, and/or impaled, a Cheyenne woman gang-raped and getting her left breast sliced off, and a laundry list of other unmentionables in a seemingly endless barrage of atrocities that remains shocking today and seems more in line with an Italian jungle exploitation grinder. That the perpetrators are American soldiers attacking "savages" is a salient point that directly invokes both Sand Creek and the 1968 My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. The finale of SOLDIER BLUE needed to be as difficult to watch as it is, certainly one of the most disturbing depictions of historical carnage ever seen in a mainstream American film, but it's such a tedious buildup in a generally standard western that the abrupt shift in tone seems like a tacked-on afterthought. Imagine if you can a pre-WILD BUNCH Hollywood western that feels like it was started by Henry Hathaway and finished by Ruggero Deodato.

A cavalry escorting military fiancee Cresta Marybelle Lee (Candice Bergen) across the Colorado Territory to her husband-to-be is attacked by the Cheyenne warriors of the feared Spotted Wolf (Jorge Rivero). The only survivors are Cresta and Private Honus Gant (Peter Strauss), who must make their way across the harsh terrain to the safety of her fiance Lt. Johnny McNair's (Bob Carraway) unit at Fort Battalion. Along the way, they brave the elements, deal with a shortage of food and water, have a run-in with Kiowa tribesmen, and encounter a duplicitous trader named Isaac Q. Cumber (Donald Pleasence), who's been getting rich by selling military weapons to various tribes. Complicating matters is that the headstrong, independent Cresta sympathizes with the "savages" and spent two years married to Spotted Wolf. Of course, she and Gant will develop feelings for one another, but there's a lot of bickering and arguing along the way, with the brash, vulgar, uninhibited Cresta and the fussy, whiny, uptight Gant turning into the stars of a mismatched "...if they don't kill each other first!" buddy movie as he expresses continued dismay at her behavior while she derisively refers to him as "Soldier Blue" for his naive, puritanical ways.

The opening attack on Gant's cavalry unit is well-choreographed and features some attention-getting Peckinpah-esque bloodletting, with a memorable shot of a bullet ripping through the cheek of Gant's clownish best friend Private Menzies (James Hampton). But the opening and closing sequences are tonally at odds with everything in the sluggish middle. Bergen and Strauss (in just his second film after his 1969 debut as Michael Douglas' younger brother in HAIL, HERO) both deliver seriously grating performances, with Bergen's especially feeling much too 1970 counterculture to work in an 1864 period setting (when John Anderson's psychopathic colonel sees Cresta and harumphs "When I see young people today behaving like that, I just can't help but wonder what this goddamn country's coming to," the point is a little too on-the-nose). Strauss' Gant is one of the least-appealing western genre heroes you'll ever see, and it's little wonder that SOLDIER BLUE began and effectively ended his career as a big-screen leading man. He next did Sergio Grieco's obscure 1971 Italian desert adventure MAN OF LEGEND before embarking on a successful TV career, vying with Richard Chamberlain for the "King of the Miniseries" title with must-see blockbusters like 1976's RICH MAN, POOR MAN and its 1978 sequel, and 1981's MASADA, along with an Emmy-winning turn in the 1979 TV-movie THE JERICHO MILE, the directing debut of Michael Mann. Strauss only made occasional appearances in feature films for the next two decades (1976's THE LAST TYCOON, 1983's SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE) before aging into the character actor phase of his career in the late '90s and into the '00s. Now 73, Strauss remains busy, and was most recently spotted in multiplexes in a supporting role in 2018's OPERATION FINALE and he guest-starred on a February 2020 episode of GREY'S ANATOMY.

Perhaps SOLDIER BLUE needed a more risk-taking director than Nelson, a high-end journeyman who directed Sidney Poitier and Cliff Robertson to Best Actor Oscars in 1963's LILIES OF THE FIELD and 1968's CHARLY, respectively. Nelson was a top television director in the 1950s and generally took whatever big-screen assignment came his way, whether it was the 1964 Cary Grant comedy FATHER GOOSE, the 1966 Poitier/James Garner western DUEL AT DIABLO, or the 1976 Rock Hudson sci-fi/horror outing EMBRYO. SOLDIER BLUE has some valid points to make and the comparison between Sand Creek and My Lai is a legitimate one, but it needed someone with vision to properly pull it off. Nelson was a go-to "get it in the can" director, but at a time when American cinema was at a crossroads with the New Hollywood era being ushered in by the auteurist likes of BONNIE AND CLYDE and EASY RIDER, SOLDIER BLUE struggles to find its identity. It seems to have one foot in the formulaic, old-fashioned John Wayne westerns of the past and one in the post-WILD BUNCH "Bloody Sam"-style of the present and future. As a result, it never reconciles those discrepancies and ends up working at cross purposes. It's a western with a score by Roy Budd that invokes the grandiose majesty of a composer like Dimitri Tiomkin (HIGH NOON, GIANT), but it doesn't gel with off-the-charts levels of graphic violence and gory atrocities so extreme that it's legitimately surprising that the film somehow managed to avoid an X rating. Nowhere is that inability to settle on a tone more apparent than in Pleasence's unthreatening, almost comic-relief secondary bad guy, complete with his silly name and a set of ludicrous fake teeth to make him even more buffoonish. No politically-charged Vietnam-era allegory that features gang rape, breast mutilation, realistic scalpings, copious amounts of horse-tripping, and children being decapitated, impaled, and trampled as buckets of blood splash across the screen in one stomach-turning shot after another should include a total goofball character named "Isaac Q. Cumber."

Retro Review: AMERICAN RICKSHAW (1989)

AMERICAN RICKSHAW
aka AMERICAN TIGER
(Italy - 1989; US release 1991)

Directed by Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino). Written by Sauro Scavolini, Roberto Leoni and Maria Perrone Capano. Cast: Mitch Gaylord, Daniel Greene, Victoria Prouty, Donald Pleasence, Michi Kobi, Roger Pretto, Regina Rodriguez, Darin De Paul, Judi Clayton, Glenn Maska, Carmen Lopez, Gregg Todd Davis, Sherrie Rose, Von B. Von Lindenberg. (Unrated, 96 mins)

Like me, if you saw the generic-looking AMERICAN TIGER VHS cover art to the left in the video store back in the early '90s, you probably didn't even give it a second glance. There was Mitch Gaylord, who led the gold medal-winning US gymnastics team at the 1984 Summer Olympics on his way to washing out as a leading man in the 1986 flop AMERICAN ANTHEM, slumming in what appeared to be a run-of-the-mill Italian-made actioner of some sort with the meaningless tag line "Miami just got hotter..." just in case the pastel color scheme didn't already vaguely remind you of MIAMI VICE. Oh, what a foolish mistake we made by dismissing this and putting this back on the shelf! Released in Europe in 1989 under its original title AMERICAN RICKSHAW, the film was retitled by Academy Entertainment for its 1991 straight-to-video release in the US, and you almost have to wonder if the marketing people at Academy ever bothered to watch it.

For about an hour, it's a somewhat slow-moving and barely-coherent hodgepodge of action, blackmail, sex, intrigue, religious cults, supernatural horror, and nonsensical Asian mysticism with some bonus inaccurate folklore that has about as much legitimacy as the old Calgon "Ancient Chinese Secret!" commercial. It seems as if director Sergio Martino (under his frequent '80s pseudonym "Martin Dolman") and co-writers Sauro Scavolini (YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY) and Roberto Leoni (THE FINAL EXECUTIONER, SANTA SANGRE) are riffing on BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, and it progresses in a weird enough way until the last half hour, when AMERICAN RICKSHAW goes so off-the-rails bonkers on a one-way trip to Crazytown that even attempting to explain it is an exercise in futility. The fact that there's almost no cult following around this thing has to be blamed on either that bland Academy Entertainment VHS cover (the Italian poster seen above at least appears to sell the supernatural angle) or on people who did rent it ejecting it halfway through out of boredom, while the select few who are aware of it have done a good job of keeping it to themselves. That finally seems to be changing, as AMERICAN RICKSHAW is one of the inaugural releases of the new Blu-ray company Cauldron Films, because physical media is dead. It probably ranks second on the list of 2020's insane Blu-ray resurrections, right after Arrow's WHITE FIRE (WHITE FI-YAAA!), and like that film, it warms my heart to know that there's still mind-blowing gems like this hiding out there, overlooked in their day and patiently waiting all these years to be unearthed.

Much like what happened with NYC and Atlanta in the late '70s and early '80s and with Fabrizio De Angelis' hostile takeover of Page, AZ in the mid '80s, AMERICAN RICKSHAW was produced during a time when Italian exploitation guys were a regular presence in Florida, particularly the Miami area, where Martino shot the boxing drama THE OPPONENT a year earlier. Gaylord stars as college kid Scott Edwards, studying engineering while working part-time at American Rickshaw, a rickshaw service that's big in the tourist areas and popular night spots. One night, his fare, a sultry stripper named Joanna (Victoria Prouty in her simultaneous debut and farewell from cinema) seduces him on a boat, where he discovers a perv hiding in the closet has videotaped the encounter. An enraged Scott beats the shit out of the perv--cutting his own foot on some broken glass in the process--and makes off with the videotape, but discovers when he gets home that it's the wrong one. He goes back to the boat to find the perv drowned in the toilet, and his blood, his fingerprints, and a missing sex tape putting him right there at the murder scene.

A fire ignites and destroys the boat, but the tape is in the possession of ruthless assassin Francis (FALCON CREST's Daniel Greene, who starred in several Martino films starting with 1986's HANDS OF STEEL). He's looking for a key that was on a necklace worn by the dead perv, who's revealed to be Jason Mortom (Gregg Todd Davis), the black sheep son of frothing, fire-and-brimstone megachurch televangelist Rev. Samuel Mortom (Donald Pleasence, chewing on a really hammy Southern accent). It seems--and yes, this gets complicated--Jason and Scott were born on the same day--June 6, 1966 in the Year of the Tiger, according to the Chinese calendar (note: 1966 is not a Year of the Tiger, but 1962 and 1976 are; 1966 is a Year of the Horse, so the movie doesn't even get it right)--and for their entire lives, they've been "linked" and watched over psychically from afar by elderly Chinese mystic Madame Luna (Michi Kobi). She was once in possession of a glowing talisman that holds the key to immortality, and it was stolen from her years ago by the evil Rev. Mortom, in actuality a cult leader who has assigned disciple Francis to retrieve it after Jason stashes it in a train station locker as part of an extortion plot against his father.

By the time one of the cops investigating Jason's death conveniently turns out to be a secret expert in Chinese folklore ("They were born on the same day! 6/6/1966 is the day of four sixes! The high point of the Year of the Tiger, the day of maximum power!" he breathlessly exclaims to his unimpressed partner) and characters start babbling about "celestial spheres," "The Stone of Evil," and "The Urn of Wisdom," things start to seem less like the Van Damme knockoff that the AMERICAN TIGER box art was selling and more like the lyrical outline to an abandoned Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe concept album. This sets up a string of events--including Scott threatening Joanna with a needle and warning "You scream, I swear to God I'm gonna stick you with this thing. I found it in the gutter, I'm sure you're familiar with AIDS!" and one of the greatest dummy deaths I've ever seen--culminating in a jawdropper of a climax that's equal parts VIDEODROME and SPIRITED AWAY, and certainly belongs in the Donald Pleasence career highlight reel.

Pleasence probably only worked on this for a day or two (he was in nine movies in 1989, including another one for Martino, CASABLANCA EXPRESS), but he really immerses himself in his Southern drawl ("Aah shale keel yuuuuuu!"). Unlike most Italian productions of the time, AMERICAN RICKSHAW was shot with live sound aside from a couple of bit players who sound revoiced by veteran dubber Nick Alexander. There are no Italians in the cast, with the supporting roles filled by regional actors from the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas (Davis was also in THE OPPONENT and Umberto Lenzi's Miami-lensed NIGHTMARE BEACH around the same time, and Judy Clayton, as Rev. Mortom's wife, later had small roles in Florida-shot titles like COP AND A HALF, ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE, and BULLY). Mitch Gaylord's place as an Olympic hero is secure, but his big-screen aspirations never panned out. After AMERICAN RICKSHAW, he landed roles in two post-BASIC INSTINCT unrated DTV erotic thrillers--1992's ANIMAL INSTINCTS and 1994's SEXUAL OUTLAWS--and served as Chris O'Donnell's stunt double in BATMAN FOREVER. Aside from a one-off return with a supporting role in the 2005 indie comedy CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTION STAR, his acting career appears to be on permanent hold, though he remained active in the sports world, covering gymnastics for NBC Sports and Fox Sports, and found some success as a fitness guru and motivational speaker. It's doubtful AMERICAN RICKSHAW ever came up in his presentations. It needs to.

One of cinema's great unsung dummy deaths.

Retro Review: TEN LITTLE INDIANS (1989)

TEN LITTLE INDIANS
(US - 1989)

Directed by Alan Birkinshaw. Written by Jackson Hunsicker and Gerry O'Hara. Cast: Donald Pleasence, Brenda Vaccaro, Frank Stallone, Herbert Lom, Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister, Sarah Maur Thorp, Warren Berlinger, Yehuda Efroni, Neil McCarthy. (PG, 100 mins)

Veteran producer Harry Alan Towers (1920-2009) already had two previous big-screen adaptations of Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None to his credit, with both 1965 and 1974 versions titled TEN LITTLE INDIANS, but only his 1989 version cites Christie's 1943 play Ten Little Indians as its basis. The difference is negligible, as the play had a more upbeat ending than the novel,  but none of Towers' three versions stuck with the novel's bleak ending anyway. The 1989 version was the last and by far the least of Towers' takes on the material, with 1965 (directed by longtime David Lean assistant George Pollock) generally considered the best, though the 1974 (directed by Peter Collinson) has aged very well, and with its unique setting in a luxury Iranian hotel, its Bruno Nicolai score, and some surprisingly stylish murder sequences, it almost plays in retrospect like an Agatha Christie giallo. Despite Towers' obvious affinity for the material (he also scripted the 1965 and 1974 versions under his pseudonym "Peter Welbeck"), Rene Clair's 1945 version AND THEN THERE WERE NONE is still considered the definitive adaptation of this Christie work.

But this TEN LITTLE INDIANS, released by Cannon in November 1989 as they were transitioning into their life support years, is mostly lethargic and uninspired, blandly directed with little style or suspense by Alan Birkinshaw. A career D-lister who was usually brought in to clean up other people's messes, Birkinshaw replaced two fired directors on the 1984 killer Santa outing DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS, and he handled extensive uncredited reshoots on Cannon's 1985 Christie adaptation ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE when Desmond Davis (CLASH OF THE TITANS) was handed his walking papers after a disastrous Cannes screening. Birkinshaw's 1978 UK video nasty KILLER'S MOON has its admirers, but he never distinguished himself elsewhere. By 1989, he was finding steady employment with Towers, though TEN LITTLE INDIANS was the only one of their collaborations to make it into theaters: he also helmed two entries in the ill-advised Poesploitation craze of the era--THE HOUSE OF USHER and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH--both shot in 1989 but released straight-to-video in 1991.

Like a lot of Cannon productions from this period, TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 (like Birkinshaw's two Poesploitation movies, which were handled by Menahem Golan's post-Cannon outfit 21st Century) was shot in Towers' then-stomping grounds of apartheid-era South Africa, where production costs were low, and even though it was frowned upon by Hollywood, many actors who needed the work had to go where the work was, regardless of the ethical dilemmas inherent in such journeyman assignments (Michael Dudikoff expressed regret after shooting three Cannon films in South Africa, opting to sit out AMERICAN NINJA 3 and only returning for AMERICAN NINJA 4 after they agreed to move the production to Lesotho). Shooting in South Africa also allowed TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 to take advantage of its location for a safari setting, and the cast of mostly familiar faces corralled by Towers is a veritable Who's Who of "Apartheid? Never heard of it!" The set-up is the same: a group of strangers have been invited to a remote location--this time an African safari in the 1930s--by a mystery host named "U.N. Owen." They have no known ties to one another, aside from all of them having a secret known only by Owen: they're all directly or indirectly culpable for at least one death, and Owen is making them pay, exposing the skeletons in their closet and offing them one by one. In no particular order, there's rugged safari guide Capt. Lombard (Frank Stallone); Judge Wargrave (Donald Pleasence); dementia-addled General Romensky (Herbert Lom, also in the 1974 version, but in a different role); boozy actress Marion Marshall (Brenda Vaccaro); former governess Vera Claythorne (Sarah Maur Thorp); Dr. Werner (Yehuda Efroni); dashing Anthony Marston (Neil McCarthy); private eye Blore (Warren Berlinger), who's been hired sight unseen by Owen to keep an eye on everyone; and Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers (Paul L. Smith, Moira Lister), who claim to have won a contest to be on the safari under the stipulation that they play a recording of Owen listing the crimes of those he's gathered.

TEN LITTLE INDIANS opening in Toledo, OH on 1/5/1990

Christie's novel is pretty much the gold standard in classic mysteries, one that's so good that it's difficult to screw it up, but TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 is like lukewarm leftovers. The setting is unique in theory but doesn't make sense in execution, since they're at a small, cramped camp and it becomes increasingly difficult to believe that the killer can move about undetected in such a limited space. And of course, the more people are bumped off, the more the remaining survivors continue to split up instead of stick together. No one here is at their career pinnacle (well, except for maybe Maur Thorp, whose entire film career consisted of three Towers productions--this, EDGE OF SANITY, and RIVER OF DEATH--all released in 1989), but most of them seem to be acting with a sense of apathy rather than urgency. They're all suspects at one time or another and of the ensemble, Lom has a couple of Commissioner Dreyfus-esque harumphs and seems like the only one who brought his almost-A-game, but he's taken out fairly early. Vaccaro looks like a past Oscar-nominee who knows this is junk. Berlinger does a lot of Charles Durning/Brian Dennehy blustering but little else. Pleasence can always be relied upon to ham it up but he seems uncharacteristically bored and half-asleep (though the goofy grin on his face during a croquet scene is amusing). Smith does the same stink-eye squint that he perfected in MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, PIECES, and however many others, but it just seems stale here. And Stallone is just terrible. Just out on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead), TEN LITTLE INDIANS '89 has some beautiful exteriors when you get to see them, but this third time out for Towers just drags along and is of little interest to anyone but the most die-hard Cannon completists or Frank Stallone stalkers. Birkinshaw also worked with Pleasence on THE HOUSE OF USHER, and with Stallone, Vaccaro, and Lom on THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and I'm surprised neither of those have surfaced on Blu-ray yet.

Retro Review: THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

THE FREAKMAKER
aka THE MUTATIONS
(UK - 1974) 

Directed by Jack Cardiff. Written by Robert D. Weinbach and Edward Mann. Cast: Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Brad Harris, Julie Ege, Michael Dunn, Scott Antony, Jill Haworth, Olga Anthony, Lisa Collings, Tony Mayne, Molly Tweedlie, Kathy Kitchen, Fran Fullenwider, Lesley Roose, Fay Bura, Willie "Popeye" Ingram, Esther "Alligator Girl" Blackmon, Hugh "Pretzel Boy" Baily, Felix "Frog Boy" Duarte. (R, 92 mins)

THE FREAKMAKER, the premiere offering from DiabolikDVD's new partnership with the reactivated VHS-era label Vidcrest (because physical media is dead), is a dreary and often repugnant British body-horror film that was somehow picked up by Columbia and released in the US as THE MUTATIONS. Under either title, it's dull, tacky, and unpleasantly gross, though one can imagine some potential if retroactively looking at it as a DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS remake if directed by David Cronenberg. But it's also a pseudo-remake of Tod Browning's FREAKS (including a "one of us" invocation), and its exploitative use of real-life circus freaks, some of whom are billed with their circus names, is queasy enough to make the climax of THE SENTINEL look like a model of sensitivity, and on top of that, the film's two disparate storylines never really gel. Even on a technical level, it's an ugly mess, which is surprising since it's directed by Oscar-winning BLACK NARCISSUS cinematographer Jack Cardiff (1914-2009), who would occasionally helm his own films, even earning a Best Director Oscar nomination for 1960's SONS AND LOVERS. And though it wasn't a big hit in its day, Cardiff's best-known work as a director is 1968's ferocious "men on a mission" mercenary adventure DARK OF THE SUN, a cult classic now rightfully regarded as one of the best action movies of a decade jam-packed with them.

Cardiff is having a really off day with THE FREAKMAKER, and it's probably a telling sign that it ended up being his last film as a director, as he'd return to his regular day job as a hired-gun cinematographer on titles as varied as 1978's DEATH ON THE NILE, 1981's GHOST STORY, and 1985's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. THE FREAKMAKER gets off to such a rambling, tedious start that it actually never manages to recover and find its footing. It opens with nearly ten excruciating minutes of what looks like stock footage from PBS' NOVA, showing time-lapse plant, flower, and nature growth, sometimes with a droning ambient score that sounds like it's emanating from a broke-ass synthesizer, and sometimes accompanied by muffled, monotone narration from Donald Pleasence. Pleasence is Dr. Nolter, a college professor who's a closet mad scientist, prone to using his students as unwitting guinea pigs in his bizarre experiments cross-breeding plant and human DNA...for some reason. He does so with the help of Lynch (Tom Baker, around the same time he became the Fourth Doctor on BBC's DOCTOR WHO), his drooling, horribly-deformed henchman who keeps clinging to Nolter's empty promises that he'll "fix" him. Nolter's botched experiments are either disposed of by Lynch or sold to a demeaning traveling circus where they're part of the freakshow hosted by dwarf Burns (SHIP OF FOOLS Oscar-nominee and THE WILD WILD WEST villain Michael Dunn, in one of his last films), as they slowly plot a FREAKS-esque revolt against their continued mistreatment. One of Nolter's students, Tony (Scott Antony) starts snooping around after hours and is abducted by Lynch and taken to Nolter, who promptly turns him into a half-man/half-Venus Flytrap. That understandably doesn't fly with Tony's girlfriend Lauren (Jill Haworth), and their friend Hedi (Julie Ege), who's just started fooling around with visiting American botanist Brian, improbably played by muscular '60s peplum star Brad Harris, whose long intro arriving at the airport is accompanied by Lauren and Hedi fawning over him and cooing from a distance about how good-looking he is, an idea no doubt suggested to Cardiff by co-producer Brad Harris.

Executive-produced by oil scion J. Ronald Getty, the second son of J. Paul Getty, THE FREAKMAKER is just an all-around, front-to-back, start-to-finish lousy movie, and it's not even an entertaining bad movie. It's hard to believe Columbia saw fit to even release it--unless Getty greased some palms--and even harder to fathom that someone of Cardiff's caliber was responsible for directing it. Remember when THE KILLING FIELDS and THE MISSION director Roland Joffe made the post-SAW torture porn horror outing CAPTIVITY? That's how bizarre it is to see Cardiff's name on something this trashy. He's totally punching a clock here, as is everyone, especially a sleepwalking Pleasence, whose scenes are sporadic enough that he probably only worked on this for a few days, and from the look and sound of his mumbling, indifferent performance, did so right after some kind of emergency dental procedure. Baker, just a couple of years removed from his memorable performance as Rasputin in 1971's NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA, seems thankful that he's got a ton of hastily-glued-on rubber prosthetics to hide behind. He admirably tries to imbue his character with some degree of pathos when he visits a prostitute (Lisa Collings), who strips nude for him but seems taken aback that he doesn't want sex, but rather, only wants her to say nice things to him. It's a genuinely good moment for Baker, but THE FREAKMAKER blows it by immediately cutting away. This was also one of the last projects to feature Dunn, who had just co-starred in a similarly junky horror film around the same time, the Italian-made FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS. Both were among several films released after the busy character actor died in his sleep in August 1973 at just 38 while working on Anthony Harvey's THE ABDICATION. In a film where nearly everything is handled as badly as possible, Cardiff at least has the sense to include some gratuitous nudity from the stunning Ege, so if nothing else, it does get something right.

THE FREAKMAKER, under its US title THE MUTATIONS,
opening in Toledo, OH on 9/27/1974

Retro Review: PAGANINI HORROR (1989)

PAGANINI HORROR
(Italy - 1989)

Directed by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi). Written by Luigi Cozzi and Daria Nicolodi. Cast: Daria Nicolodi, Jasmine Main (Jasmine Maimone), Pascal Persiano, Donald Pleasence, Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, Michele Klippstein, Pietro Genuardi, Luana Ravagnini, Roberto Giannini, Giada Cozzi, Elena Pompei, Perla Agostini. (Unrated, 83 mins)

In the tradition of SHOCKING DARK, ROBOWAR, NIGHT KILLER, and KILLER CROCODILE, films that only seemed to exist in the pages of the Midnight Video bootleg VHS catalog back in the day, Severin unveils another never-released-in-the-US, late-period Italian horror obscurity in an impressive Blu-ray presentation, because physical media is dead. This time, it's Luigi Cozzi's ludicrous PAGANINI HORROR, a film that serves as a virtual case study for why--with the exception of Dario Argento and his protege Michele Soavi--Italian horror was on life support by 1989. Using his trusty pseudonym "Lewis Coates" as if we couldn't tell an Italian genre flick when we saw one, Cozzi, best known for the 1979 STAR WARS ripoff STARCRASH, the gut-busting 1980 ALIEN knockoff CONTAMINATION, and Cannon's 1983 CONAN-inspired HERCULES with Lou Ferrigno, had been planning a departure project in the form of a biopic of legendary Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini as far back as 1984, with the intention of nabbing GREYSTOKE star Christopher Lambert for the lead. As explained by Cozzi in the Blu-ray's bonus features, the serious Paganini film fell apart in pre-production, prompting the director to abandon his artistic ambitions and return to his genre comfort zone, reconvening with Ferrigno for the 1985 sequel THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES.

Cozzi was then one of five (!) directors cycled through 1988's extremely-troubled, never-released-in-the-US NOSFERATU IN VENICE (six if you count volatile star Klaus Kinski, who also logged time behind the camera), an unofficial sequel to Werner Herzog's 1979 film NOSFERATU, THE VAMPYRE, with only producer Augusto Caminito receiving directing credit. The subject of Paganini came up again for Cozzi a year later when Kinski wrote, directed, and starred in the humbly-titled KINSKI PAGANINI, a self-indulgent vanity project that consisted of little else but Kinski's Paganini bedding a series of beautiful women. Kinski wanted Herzog to direct it, but the legendary German auteur refused, calling the actor's script "unfilmable." The story essentially used Paganini's sexual exploits as more Kinski braggadocio, as the mercurial actor had just taken a deep dive into the locker room with his notorious and probably very embellished X-rated, fuck-and-tell memoir All I Need is Love. An 81-minute Klaus Kinski home movie, the disastrous KINSKI PAGANINI was met with derisive scorn and was apparently only released in Germany. Yet there was a feeling during its production that it would ignite a Paganiniassaince of sorts, as Cozzi quickly began work on the intended cash-in PAGANINI HORROR, which was built around the enduring myth that Paganini acquired his virtuoso skills and violin mastery via a deal with the devil.

Written by Cozzi and co-star Daria Nicolodi, who had recently split with Dario Argento after a long relationship (she's Asia Argento's mother) and many collaborations (DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA, INFERNO, TENEBRE, PHENOMENA, OPERA), PAGANINI HORROR opens with a Venice-set prologue where a young violin prodigy (Cozzi's daughter Giada) electrocutes her bathing mother (Elena Pompei) by tossing a hair dryer into the tub. Cut to a recording studio, where pop star Kate (Kate McKinnon lookalike Jasmine Maimone) and her band--guitarist Elena (Michele Klippstein), bassist Rita (Luana Ravegnini), and drummer Daniel (Pascal Persiano)--are busy working on their latest single "Stay the Night," which sounds suspiciously like Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name." Bitchy producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) isn't feeling it and refuses to sugarcoat it, telling Kate and the band "There's nothing original about it!" (she's not wrong) and exhorting them to get their shit together. This prompts Daniel to arrange a clandestine meeting where he makes a pact with the mysterious Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasence, in an ill-fitting trenchcoat and dubbed by someone trying to sound like HELLRAISER's Pinhead) where he's granted a sealed parchment that contains a long-buried, never-heard-or-performed Paganini piece called "Paganini Horror." Daniel helps Kate arrange the piece into the rocker "The Winds of Time," which sounds more than a little similar to Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight."  The band is rejuvenated, and Lavinia hires famed horror movie director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) to film a music video for the song ("No one has ever done anything remotely like this before, except for Michael Jackson and his fantastic 'Thriller' video clip!" exclaims Kate in a way that no rational adult human ever would) at a creepy, long-abandoned villa owned by Sylvia (Nicolodi), supposedly the very location of Paganini's deal with the devil. They get more than they bargained for when playing their new song resurrects the masked specter of Paganini, who roams the premises like a Dipshit Phantom of the Opera, offing everyone one by one in a variety of gruesome ways, usually with a violin that has a retractable blade at the chin rest.

You almost have to begrudgingly admire the shameless chutzpah of the PAGANINI HORROR songs composed by Vince Tempera, formerly of Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera (THE PSYCHIC). Additionally, there's a certain garish style that makes it an interesting companion piece to Cozzi's next film, THE BLACK CAT, which was shot immediately after PAGANINI HORROR, shares co-star Maimone, and also involves evil goings-on in the entertainment industry. Shot as DE PROFUNDIS but retitled to cash in on the ill-fated Poesploitation craze of 1989-91, THE BLACK CAT was written by Cozzi and Nicolodi and intended to be an unofficial final entry in Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy (following SUSPIRIA and INFERNO), but Nicolodi left the project over the usual "artistic differences" and took her name off the finished film (Argento would eventually complete the trilogy in an official capacity with 2007's MOTHER OF TEARS, which really isn't any better or worse than Cozzi's fake Three Mothers opus). With PAGANINI HORROR, Cozzi takes some of the cosmic bullshit he would use in THE BLACK CAT for a third-act, deus ex machina test spin, with Nicolodi's Sylvia babbling about "the harmony of the spheres," and "enormous radio telescopes," and "the stars making music," and other assorted batshittery that sounds more at home in a Marianne Williamson campaign speech. It makes as much sense as anything else in PAGANINI HORROR, whether it's Cozzi's recurring shout-outs to Argento (Lavinia crawling through a blue-lit, PHENOMENA-inspired tunnel or someone else finding a room with an illuminated hourglass that bathes the whole thing in a SUSPIRIA red glow), the endless, time-killing shots of people walking around, Elena being found covered in a strange mold that Lavinia recognizes as the same kind of unique fungus used in violin construction in the 18th century, and Pleasence standing on top of St. Mark's Campanile in Venice, throwing wads of US cash out of a bag and yelling "Fly away, little demons!" Obviously enticed by a free trip to Venice, Pleasence only has a few scenes and was paid $20,000 for three days' work on the film (was that his own money in the bag?), and at least one of those days had to be devoted to the extended gondola ride his character enjoys, if the actor's goofy grin is any indication.

Produced by Fabrizio De Angelis, who shepherded the work of Lucio Fulci during most of his incredible 1979-1982 run of greatness, PAGANINI HORROR quickly vanished from Italian theaters in the summer of 1989, and didn't get much of a release anywhere else in the world aside from Japan. It never even made it to US home video until Severin's recent Blu-ray release, which gives it an edge over THE BLACK CAT, which also skipped US theaters and VHS before debuting on the old-school Sci-Fi Channel in 1993. THE BLACK CAT has been available on streaming services and frequently runs on Comet, but remains MIA on North American DVD and Blu-ray. Both of these endearingly terrible films are flip sides of the same coin (at least THE BLACK CAT gets some real jams, relying heavily on Bang Tango's barnburner "Someone Like You") and represented the last narrative work of Cozzi's career until his little-seen 2016 mockumentary BLOOD ON MELIES' MOON. For the nearly 30 years in between, the now-72-year-old Cozzi directed a couple of documentaries about Dario Argento, has stayed busy managing the Italian horror memorabilia store and museum Profondo Rosso in Rome, and regularly appears at fan conventions.

Retro Review: CIRCUS OF HORRORS (1960)

CIRCUS OF HORRORS
(UK - 1960)

Directed by Sidney Hayers. Written by George Baxt. Cast: Anton Diffring, Erika Remberg, Yvonne Monlaur, Donald Pleasence, Jane Hylton, Conrad Phillips, Kenneth Griffith, Vanda Hudson, Yvonne Romain, Colette Wilde, Jack Gwillim, John Merivale, Carla Challoner, Walter Gotell, Kenny Baker. (Unrated, 92 mins)

Known primarily for the first dozen films in the long-running CARRY ON series, the British production company and distributor Anglo-Amalgamated occasionally delved into the respectable with BILLY LIAR and DARLING, but was otherwise a prolific B-movie factory through the 1950s and 1960s. They got in on the residual Hammer horror action with what was unofficially termed "the Sadian trilogy" by film historian David Pirie in his groundbreaking 1971 British gothic horror chronicle A Heritage of Horror. 1959's HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (directed by Arthur Crabtree) and 1960's classic PEEPING TOM (directed by Michael Powell) set the tone with their increased focus on the lurid, whether it's the grisly-for-the-time violence or the sexually suggestive elements (particularly in the self-explanatory PEEPING TOM) that took things a step beyond Hammer. 1960's CIRCUS OF HORRORS closed the "trilogy" in grand fashion and became a box-office success in the US, where it was released by American International and spawned multiple versions of Garry Mills' hit UK single "Look for a Star," which is heard several times throughout. Directed by Sidney Hayers, who would go on to helm 1962's terrifying BURN, WITCH, BURN, CIRCUS OF HORRORS is rather tame by today's standards but remains a trashy delight, anchored by the quintessential Anton Diffring performance, and is just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory, because physical media is dead.

Diffring, fresh off off the title role in Hammer's THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH, stars as Dr. Rossiter, an egomaniacal, quack plastic surgeon who flees post-war, 1947 London after a botched experimental operation that leaves a young socialite (Colette Wilde) horribly disfigured. Still convinced of his own genius, and with a pair of fawning sycophants in tow in sibling apprentices Martin (Kenneth Griffith) and Angela (Jane Hylton), Rossiter changes his appearance--primarily the removal of a proto-beatnik beard-- and starts going by "Dr. Schuller" by the time the trio end up in France, which is still in poverty-stricken devastation from the war. A chance encounter on the side of the road where Schuller asks a little girl (Carla Challoner) for directions leads him to a decrepit circus owned by the girl's widowed, drunkard father Vanet (a young-ish Donald Pleasence). The little girl--Nicole--has extensive facial scarring from a bomb blast, inspiring Schuller to concoct a scheme where he can continue to practice his craft by using the circus as a front. He restores the girl's beauty, which convinces Vanet to sign the circus over to him as part of a partnership. Then Schuller does absolutely nothing to intervene when the celebrating, shitfaced Vanet tries to dance with the circus' bear and is promptly mauled to death.

Ten years pass, and the circus has relocated to Berlin, where the grown Nicole (Yvonne Monlaur) now calls Schuller "Uncle," and the other circus performers--among them the star attraction Magda von Meck (Vanda Hudson) and the ambitious Ellissa Caro (Erika Remberg)--are all formerly scarred criminals being blackmailed by Schuller by being given a new lease on life and hiding incognito in the circus in exchange for letting Schuller operate on them. All goes well for Schuller until inconveniences start popping up--like Magda falling in love with wealthy Baron von Gruber (Walter Gotell) and wanting to leave the circus, or spiteful Ellissa making a lot of noise when Schuller starts devoting his attention to new and formerly burn-scarred attraction Melina (Yvonne Romain)--leading to the doctor cajoling the hapless Martin into staging a series of fatal "accidents" to keep them quiet. Adding to Schuller's dilemma is Angela's increasing resentment of being kept on the backburner after carrying a torch for him since his days as Rossiter, plus a detective (Conrad Phillips) who's gone undercover as a reporter to ingratiate himself into the "jinxed circus" to investigate why a dozen of its pretty female performers have died in freak mishaps over the last several years.

Anton Diffring (1916-1989)

The story is beyond preposterous, but it works thanks in large part to Diffring. Born in 1916, Diffring fled Hitler's Germany in 1939 only to find himself typecast as Nazi generals and commandants in films throughout the 1950s all the way to the 1980s (most notably in 1965's THE HEROES OF TELEMARK, 1966's THE BLUE MAX, 1969's WHERE EAGLES DARE, 1971's ZEPPELIN, 1975's OPERATION DAYBREAK, the epic 1983 ABC miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR, and Jerry Lewis' infamous and never-released THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED). Diffring turned up in respectable films like Francois Truffaut's 1966 Ray Bradbury adaptation FAHRENHEIT 451, but he also found consistent employment in Eurotrash fare like 1971's THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, 1973's MARK OF THE DEVIL PART II and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE, Jess Franco's 1977 nunsploitation potboiler LOVE LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE NUN, the same year's German EMMANUELLE ripoff VANESSA (where he played Alain Cuny's aging sexual mentor role), and, in one of his last credits before his death in 1989, Franco's all-star 1988 plastic surgery gorefest FACELESS, where his very presence was an obvious shout-out to his turn in CIRCUS OF HORRORS. As sleazy as the proceedings can be, it's given a classy sheen with the cinematography of the great Douglas Slocombe, a future three-time Oscar-nominee whose long career lasted from 1940 until his retirement following 1989's INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, after which he lived another quarter century until his death in 2016 at the age of 103 (in addition to THX-1138 co-star Pleasence, the film has another George Lucas connection with Kenny Baker, seen briefly as a circus dwarf 17 years before playing R2-D2 in STAR WARS). Though Hayers (1921-2000) displayed some undeniable chops in the horror genre between this and BURN, WITCH, BURN (and a pair of 1971 efforts with IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN and INN OF THE FRIGHTENED PEOPLE), the remainder of his career was spent mostly in TV journeyman mode with credits on shows like THE AVENGERS, THE NEW AVENGERS, MAGNUM P.I., THE FALL GUY, MANIMAL, T.J. HOOKER, KNIGHT RIDER, and THE A-TEAM.