Retro Review: THE CHOSEN (1978)

THE CHOSEN
aka HOLOCAUST 2000
aka RAIN OF FIRE
(Italy/UK - 1977; US release 1978)

Directed by Alberto De Martino. Written by Sergio Donati, Alberto De Martino and Michael Robson. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Simon Ward, Agostina Belli, Anthony Quayle, Romolo Valli, Adolfo Celi, Virginia McKenna, Alexander Knox, Ivo Garrani, Spiros Focas, Massimo Foschi, Geoffrey Keen, Alan Hendricks, Peter Cellier, John Carlin, Penelope Horner, Caroline Horner, Vittorio Fanfoni, Teresa Rossi Passante, Andrea Esterhazy. (R, 102 mins)

The Italian ripoff is one of the most enjoyably rewarding aspects of being a fan of '70s and '80s exploitation and Eurocult cinema. If there was a game-changing American blockbuster (THE GODFATHER, THE EXORCIST, JAWS, STAR WARS), an immensely popular genre effort (DAWN OF THE DEAD, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II), or even an influential film that wasn't necessarily American-made but was a worldwide hit (THE ROAD WARRIOR), it was guaranteed that at least a dozen shameless Italian ripoffs would follow in its wake. These often starred slumming, past-their-prime American and sometimes British actors who weren't getting lead roles at home and often had to resort to TV guest spots, considered at the time to be a step down. By contrast, European producers were offering starring roles, top billing, treated them like royalty, gave them an all-expenses-paid Italian vacation, and all they had to do was put in the bare minimum for the biggest paycheck, or in many cases, a suitcase full of tax-free cash. In the annals of Italian ripoffs, the 1978 OMEN knockoff THE CHOSEN stands out from the crowd, not just because it's unusually ambitious, has a much bigger budget than most of its Eurotrash imitation brethren, and a distinguished supporting cast, but because it stars a surprisingly engaged Kirk Douglas. Already a Hollywood legend by this point and not exactly hurting for work (he had Brian De Palma's THE FURY in theaters at the same time), Douglas had enough clout and his name enough value that he could've gotten away with doing as little as possible, shot his close-ups, and gone sight-seeing while his stand-in did the heavy lifting and competent editors could create the illusion that he was there the whole time, but he approaches this with all the gravitas and teeth-clenched, lock-jawed intensity of SPARTACUS.

THE CHOSEN works largely because Kirk clearly believes in it. In an era when aging leading men who stayed in Hollywood were often begrudgingly starring in glossy, big-budget horror movies that they never would've made in their heyday--Gregory Peck wasn't that enthused about being in THE OMEN, and William Holden did DAMIEN: OMEN II because he turned THE OMEN down only to see it become a huge phenomenon--Douglas passionately brings his A-game to THE CHOSEN and busts his ass like his reputation and the future of his career depended on it. We're obviously not talking Henry Fonda literally phoning in his performance from his living room in the 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff TENTACLES or Richard Harris turning up, presumably at gunpoint, in Bruno Mattei's 1988 RAMBO knockoff STRIKE COMMANDO 2, but it's always fascinating to find someone of Douglas' stature in a movie like THE CHOSEN, and usually, it's for the wrong reasons, especially in those occasional instances where they don't even stick around to dub themselves. But THE CHOSEN isn't a run-of-the-mill, quickie Italian ripoff, and perhaps Douglas recognized that. It deals with the same core ideas as THE OMEN and has some very OMEN-esque cues in Ennio Morricone's score, but also has the political and corporate plot elements that would eventually turn up in subsequent OMEN sequels as well as other Italian ripoffs like the insane THE VISITOR. It's a rare case of an Italian ripoff inadvertently influencing the later sequels to the movie it was ripping off in the first place, including a disturbing sequence in a maternity ward that foreshadows the third OMEN film, 1981's THE FINAL CONFLICT.

Douglas stars as Robert Caine, a successful London-based American industrialist whose Caine Enterprises is about to break ground on a nuclear power plant in the Middle East. The first red flag appears when Caine's wife Eva (Virginia McKenna), who opposes the construction of the plant, is killed by a fanatical protester (Massimo Foschi) in a botched assassination attempt on Caine. Then the Prime Minister (Ivo Garrani) who approved the plant is defeated in an election by military hardliner Harbin (Spiros Focas) who sternly informs Caine that his project is too dangerous and will never come to pass. One by one, everyone who opposes the construction of the plant is killed in a variety of OMEN-inspired freak accidents (including a bisection that would be copied in a much gorier fashion in DAMIEN: OMEN II, which opened two months later) as Caine, over the objections of his son Angel (Simon Ward), starts to question whether the plant should be built. A chance meeting with a priest (Romolo Valli), who may as well be named Father Exposition, leads to Caine's realization that the design and layout of the power plant is an atomic-era recreation of a Biblical prophecy of the apocalypse brought about by the Antichrist (and to further hammer it home, Father Obvious emphatically declares "The dragon of the apocalypse...is your atomic plant!"). The priest tells him that the Antichrist is a mirror image of Jesus, and with the help of Caine Enterprises chief computer programmer Griffith (Anthony Quayle), Caine discovers that a nonsense mathematical equation is really the revelation that he has "generated something that is not human." This is just before Sara (Agostina Belli), the much-younger anti-nuke journalist with whom has been having a fling, announces that she's pregnant with his child.

Directed and co-written by Alberto De Martino, best known for the blasphemous, goat-rimming 1974 Italian EXORCIST ripoff THE ANTICHRIST (belatedly released in the US in the fall of 1978 as THE TEMPTER) and whose next film was the MST3K favorite THE PUMAMAN, THE CHOSEN is endlessly entertaining despite boasting the most awkwardly-cadenced protest chant you'll ever hear ("What do our children...want to be...when they grow up...ALIVE!") and its inability to play its cards close to the vest. This makes some of Belli's performance as Sara a little baffling, since by the time she's acting strange and refusing to enter a church, we already know who the Antichrist is thanks to De Martino using no subtlety in his direction of Ward, making him look sinister from his first moment onscreen (and he's named "Angel," for Christ's sake). The screenplay has some intriguing ideas that lead to arresting images, like Caine holding a meeting of his 12-member board of directors that's staged exactly like The Last Supper. The sight of the inscription "IESVS" carved into a cave wall near the plant site and the use of the equation "2√231" to illustrate the priest's assertion that the Antichrist is a mirror image of Jesus and Griffith reminding Caine that digital numbers can form words won't fool anyone who's ever looked at the Dio logo upside-down or keyed "80085" into a calculator when they were in third grade, but like the De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST using sexual frustration as the impetus for demonic possession, THE CHOSEN is film that tries harder than it needs to and has ambitions beyond presenting a rote (yet memorable) series of splattery kill scenes.

Originally titled HOLOCAUST 2000 for its European release in late 1977, the film was rechristened THE CHOSEN when it arrived in the US in the spring of 1978 in an altered version with a different ending. The HOLOCAUST 2000 ending is more open-ended and suggests that Caine and Sara's child is the Second Coming and will battle its evil, mirror image older brother. But the cobbled-together US ending features newly-shot footage of a bearded Douglas walking through an airport, intercut with Angel vowing to complete the nuclear power plant by his 33rd birthday in a meeting with the board of directors, which he's just increased from 12 to 21 members. This goes on while an unseen figure--Caine, played by a pair of hands probably not belonging to Douglas--blows up the Caine Enterprises headquarters to ensure Angel's evil plan never comes to fruition. It isn't known whether De Martino shot this new footage commissioned by US distributor American International (ABBY and FOOD OF THE GODS editor Corky Ehlers is credited with "additional editing" in the US credits), but that was the version I remember seeing when CBS aired this in prime time in summer 1983 under its HOLOCAUST 2000 title. The film has undergone a number of title changes over the years, which hasn't been easy to keep straight given the two different versions. Despite being retitled THE CHOSEN for the US, the title reverted back to HOLOCAUST 2000 for TV and on Vestron Video's 1985-issued VHS, even though it has the CHOSEN version's "Kirk blows shit up" ending, and when it finally appeared on DVD from Lionsgate in 2008, it was retitled RAIN OF FIRE, but was the original HOLOCAUST 2000 European version without the explosion. Confused yet?

Scream Factory's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead) contains both the HOLOCAUST 2000 and THE CHOSEN cuts, albeit in different aspect ratios (HOLOCAUST 2000 is 2.35:1, while THE CHOSEN is 1.78:1). There are minor tweaks to both versions aside from their endings (the conclusion to an early confrontation in an asylum between Caine and his wife's killer plays a bit more smoothly in the US cut), with both clocking in at 102 minutes, THE CHOSEN running a few seconds longer. Oddly, a Douglas-Belli sex scene is slightly more explicit in the US version, with some additional Belli nudity and a few extra Kirk thrusts. In a display of Douglas' absolute commitment to the project, which includes doing his own stunts like being thrown off a hospital gurney and into the air by asylum inmates while strait-jacketed, both versions showcase full-frontal Kirk in an insane dream sequence where he envisions the end of the world while running and flailing around a desert in his birthday suit. Whether it's a sense of professional dedication or just Douglas showing off his still-sterling 61-year-old physique (which he would also be happy to do in 1980's ridiculous SATURN 3, possibly influencing the future exhibitionism of co-star Harvey Keitel), his willingness to throw himself into his role helps sell the hell out of THE CHOSEN, a gem among '70s Italian genre ripoffs that deserves to be better known.

THE CHOSEN airing on CBS as HOLOCAUST 2000 on 7/30/1983

Cult Classics Revisited: THE MONSTER CLUB (1981)

THE MONSTER CLUB

(UK - 1981)

Directed by Roy Ward Baker.  Written by Edward and Valerie Abraham.  Cast: Vincent Price, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Stuart Whitman, Richard Johnson, Barbara Kellermann, Britt Ekland, Simon Ward, Anthony Valentine, Patrick Magee, Anthony Steel, James Laurenson, Geoffrey Bayldon, Warren Saire, Lesley Dunlop, Fran Fullenwider, The Viewers, B.A. Robertson, Night, The Pretty Things. (Unrated, 98 mins)

Anthology, or portmanteau horror films weren't a new concept when they became hugely popular in the 1960s.  1945's DEAD OF NIGHT, anchored by the classic ventriloquist dummy segment with Michael Redgrave, established the template, Roger Corman's Poe anthology TALES OF TERROR (1962) was a big hit, and TV series such as ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THRILLER, THE OUTER LIMITS, and THE TWILIGHT ZONE got fans accustomed to compact, 30-minute stories.  But when the British company Amicus, led by Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky, produced 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, the style really took off, generating many similar, frequently star-studded anthology outings with titles like TORTURE GARDEN (1967), THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970), ASYLUM (1972), TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) and THE VAULT OF HORROR (1973).  By the mid-1970s, the subgenre's popularity began to fade, with lesser titles like TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973) and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974) paling in comparison to the anthology's heyday.  With shocking horror films like THE EXORCIST (1973) and THE OMEN (1976) rendering classic horror passé with 1970s moviegoers, the omnibus film of the Amicus sort quietly faded away, much like Amicus itself as Subotsky (1921-1991) and Rosenberg (1914-2004) parted ways in the mid-1970s.  Similar to the in-name-only resurrection of the legendary British horror house Hammer, the Amicus name would be revived in the 2000s, but we haven't heard much from it other than Stuart Gordon's STUCK (2008) and the atrocious 2009 remake of Larry Cohen's 1974 cult classic IT'S ALIVE.  As far as the British anthologies go, a few stragglers wandered in, like 1977's Canadian/British feline-centric collection THE UNCANNY, but by this time, audiences moved on.

Made during a period when theaters were filled with gory, post-HALLOWEEN/FRIDAY THE 13TH slasher films and the groundbreaking special effects of ALIEN, THE HOWLING, and AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and featuring a cast of geriatric and/or past-their-prime actors, it's little wonder that the tardy anthology THE MONSTER CLUB failed to attract a US distributor, going straight to syndicated TV and appearing on VHS a few years later.  An Amicus production in every way except by name, THE MONSTER CLUB, recently released in a beautiful transfer on Blu-ray and DVD by Scorpion, was an adaptation of three stories in British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes' 1975 collection of the same name.  Directed by Amicus and Hammer vet Roy Ward Baker, the film stars John Carradine as Chetwynd-Hayes, who's bitten by an affable vampire named Eramus (Vincent Price) and taken to the secret Monster Club, a hangout for ghouls, monsters, and new-wave bands, where Eramus tells him three horrific stories to inspire his writing.  In the first, Simon Ward is a scheming shitbag who badgers his girlfriend (Barbara Kellermann) into answering a newspaper ad seeking someone to help catalog a library, figuring there's expensive goodies to steal and fence.  The homeowner (James Laurenson), a sensitive, lonely shut-in, turns out to be a "shadmock," a supernatural creature who emits a lethal whistling sound when angered.  In the more comedic second tale, Richard Johnson is a vampire quietly going about his nocturnal routine as his loving wife (Britt Ekland) keeps his secret even from their bullied son (Warren Saire).  The son has been befriended by a concerned priest (Donald Pleasence), who's really the leader of a squad of vampire hunters from the government's "Blood Crimes" unit.  The final story has a frustrated movie director (Stuart Whitman) location-scouting for a gothic horror film and stumbling on a creepy village populated by grave-desecrating, cannibalistic ghouls led by Patrick Magee (in one of his last roles) and figuring out too late that he's their next intended feast.

Occasionally eerie but never taking itself very seriously, THE MONSTER CLUB certainly won't go down as an essential British anthology horror flick, but even with some cheesy humor and some dated songs, time has been surprisingly kind to it.  While there might not have been a place for it in American movie theaters in 1981, TV audiences were much more welcoming with it, likely because young horror fans were already watching movies with Price and Carradine (and Karloff, Lugosi, Lee, Cushing, etc) on Saturday afternoon and late-night "Creature Features."  There's nothing in the way of gore other than one rather icky result of a shadmocking, and even some near-nudity gets obscured and turned into an animated joke.  In those respects, it's quaintly old-fashioned, but also nothing that 1981 audiences wanted to see on the big screen.  The biggest concession THE MONSTER CLUB makes to "the kids" is the inclusion of some extended musical interludes featuring songs by UB40 and onscreen appearances by the short-lived Night, and The Pretty Things, who had just reunited and contributed the title track as Price and Carradine can be seen busting moves on the Monster Club's dance floor (with Price almost grinding on a large actress named Fran Fullenwider).  Carradine seems a bit miscast and more than a little bewildered (Peter Cushing would've been perfect; Christopher Lee was approached for the role and reportedly declined when he heard the title), but Price is clearly having fun with his sole big-screen appearance as a vampire.

While some of THE MONSTER CLUB's humor is corny by design (especially in the second story, though the predicament Pleasence ultimately finds himself in is a rather ingenious development that's legitimately laugh-out-loud funny), some of it is surprisingly witty, with Price's vampire complaining that his kind find it hard to do their thing because of so many horror movies ruining things for them ("Everybody knows about garlic and stakes through the heart!"), and when Anthony Steel appears as a producer of vampire films named "Lintom Busotsky," Carradine exclaims "A vampire film producer?" to which Price quips "Aren't they all?"  There's also some unexpectedly sharp and cynical social commentary near the end when Price's Eramus nominates Chetwynd-Hayes to become the Monster Club's newest member, explaining that humans, with their guns, their wars, their anger, and their endless bloodlust and propensity for murder, are perhaps the biggest monsters of all.  None of this is to say that THE MONSTER CLUB is filled with deep insight, but it is better than its reputation as the last gasp of a dying subgenre.  Anthology films didn't go away--they just changed shape:  George A. Romero's CREEPSHOW was in theaters the next year, Price would similarly appear in the wraparound segments of the much more grisly 1987 horror omnibus THE OFFSPRING (aka FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM), and more recently, the two V/H/S films and THE ABCs OF DEATH have found an audience with newer and apparently more lenient horror fans.  But THE MONSTER CLUB was the last of its kind: the British portmanteau rooted in classic horror.  Fittingly, it was also the last feature film directed by Baker (1916-2010), whose career began with Hollywood fare like the Marilyn Monroe thriller DON'T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952).  He's best known among serious cineastes for the Titanic classic A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (1958), but not long after that, he became a go-to horror guy for Hammer and Amicus, helming such genre favorites as FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1967) and THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970), among many others.  After THE MONSTER CLUB, Baker moved into British television until retiring in the early 1990s.  Late in his life and still sharp and full of stories, he contributed several commentary tracks on DVD releases of some of his classic horror films.

Scorpion's Blu-ray, framed at 1.78, really is the best this film has ever looked (despite their usual packaging typos, like "R. Chetwood-Hayes" and "Milton Dubotsky"), and it features two outstanding extras courtesy of journalist/historian/close Price friend David Del Valle, including an audio interview and an hour-long, career-spanning 1987 interview for Del Valle's public access show THE SINISTER IMAGE. Price, taking a little time to plug Lindsay Anderson's just-released THE WHALES OF AUGUST, is very much the elegant raconteur here, candidly talking about his classic films and his old and, in some cases, departed Hollywood friends.  This same interview, previously released as its own DVD by Image, is featured on Shout Factory's upcoming Price box set from his AIP/Poe days.