Argento's Dracula 3-D (2012)

Title: Dario Argento’s Dracula 3-D (2012)

Director: Dario Argento

Cast: Rutger Hauer, Asia Argento, Thomas Kretschmann, Marta Gastini, Unax Agalde, Giovanni Franzoni

There’s this idea amongst film buffs that directors tend to make worse films the older they get; and I think it's true, with very few exceptions, as directors get older, they lose that magic that made their first films great. Case in point: Dario Argento who had his golden age back in the 70’s and 80’s when he made films like Suspiria (1977), Deep Red (1975) and Opera (1987). I remember those movies being awesome because of their atmosphere, the over the top violence and those special camera angles that Argento was so fond of. But somewhere around the late 80’s and early 90’s Argento was showing signs of fatigue, his films just weren’t the same. I guess when I started to notice something was off with Argento was around the time he made his version of Phantom of the Opera (1998) which was just a goofy, goofy film. Trying to be all serious and romantic, yet failing horribly at it. After that one, he’s never really ever given us anything as remotely good as his early stuff. Seeing Argento’s Dracula cements the idea that Argento is totally done for as a director. Sadly.

I get what Argento was trying to do with his take on Stoker’s Dracula; simply put Argento was going for a tribute to Hammer’s Dracula films, you know the ones that starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Specifically, Argento’s Dracula plays out a lot like Terrence Fisher’s Horror of Dracula (1958), the very first Hammer Dracula film, it even uses that idea that Terrence Fisher used in Horror of Dracula were Jonathan Harker travels to Dracula’s castle to function as a librarian. The film feels like it’s trying to be purposely old school, right down to this silly sounding Halloween soundtrack that it has. The film looks and feels pretty much like a Hammer film, the difference lies in the graphic gore which was something that Hammer films never dabbled too deeply into. I mean, Hammer films had their blood, but they were never too graphic, not like Argento’s Dracula which goes over the top at some points. That’s right my friends, on this one Argento amps up the levels of gore, which is always fun in my book. There’s this moment where Dracula goes nuts and starts slicing off heads like there’s no tomorrow, I have to admit, those were some cool scenes. But gore alone does not make a good horror film; we gotta have other things thrown in there, like for example some common sense, which Argento has always loved to throw out the window. Did you ever think you’d end up seeing Dracula transform into a giant Praying Mantis? No? Well, after you see Argento’s Dracula you can scratch that one off your bucket list!

So this film has enough gore and nonsensical elements to get the fan boys talking on the net, what else do we need to make this one stand out? Oh yeah, how about some good old fashion nudity? Well, there’s tons of it as well. I mean, five minutes into the film two young lovers are making out in a barn and there’s flesh everywhere! If you ever wanted to get a good look at Asia Argento’s nakedness, this is your chance! Don’t worry about it, her dad is okay with it, he’s the film’s director! So yeah, this one has all the shocking elements necessary to get fan boys attention. Problem is that along with all these ‘goodies’ we get some really terrible elements to this film, which sadly brings it really down or makes it cheesier, which some folks don’t mind. For example, the computer animation is just freaking terrible. God! How can a director like Argento look at this footage and say “were good to go”? I mean, the digital stunt doubles on this one? So laughable! But then again, even the real actors are terrible! There’s this actress that plays Mina Harker (Marta Gastini), she has these scenes where Dracula and her are all emotional about their love for one another and all that…you should see that scene, it’s the most shameless rip off! She’s imitating Wynona Ryder in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)! She uses the same facial gestures, the same everything, her performance was Xeroxed, it made me want to puke because it was such a shameless copy/paste! Asia Argento herself turns in a terrible performance, but she was never much of an actress if you ask me. Not even Rutger Hauer can save this one, sorry.

Overall, even though this movie isn’t what I’d call a good Argento film, I’d say that it retains a certain cheesy watchability to it which reminded me of another one of Argento’s goofy yet enjoyable films: The Phantom of the Opera (1998). Argento’s Dracula is a train wreck of a film, but it’s a fun train wreck. It has all the things you’d expect in a Dracula film, the full moon, the spooky woods, the mist, the castles, the big breasted vampire ladies, crosses, stakes, coffins and lots of blood! It really is trying to be an old fashioned horror movie, and I have to give it props for that. It’s kind of like a modern day Hammer film, but cheesy to the max, with bad dialog and acting, and Argento’s unique brand of weirdness. For example, Argento’s obsession with insects returns! I’ve already mentioned the giant Praying Mantis, but he also plays with some images he’d played with before in Phenomena (1985), namely, a horde of insects swarming outside of a house. Yup, on this one Dracula can also turn into a bunch of flies! In many ways, this is a fun movie, because hearing this dialog is a trip, but also because it’s trying so hard to be spooky and old school that it’s kind of endearing in that way. I’d say this one would make a fun watch come Halloween night, but that’s all its good for because no matter how hard it might try, Dracula 3-D won’t be reminding you of Argento’s glory days; those days are long, long gone.

Rating: 2 out of 5 

Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

Title: Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

Director: Bruno Mattei, Claudio Fragasso

Review:

It’s kind of hard to believe that four people hold writing credits for this completely nonsensical film, but yeah, four brains got together to write this stupid, stupid film! Normally you’d think that the more writers the better the movie should be, but truth is that in Hollywood the rule of thumb is the more writers, the worse the movie. This is certainly the case here, this movie blows! Yes my friends, this movie is awful, but in that Italian horror sense that also makes it completely watchable? This is the reason why you’ll find people that will tell you this film rules and in a strange sort of way, it does. Yes my friends, this is yet another “so bad its good” flick from those money loving horror directors of Italy. And by money loving I’m talking about directors Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso two guys who just loved to make cheap knock offs of American films to make a quick buck. These guys knew these films were so sleazy and low grade that they always used pseudonyms for these films, which is why instead of saying this film was directed by Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei, the title screen says ‘Directed by Vincent Dawn’, as if they were ashamed at the film they just produced;. chances are they probably were. These films would get made at lightning fast speeds and with very little money, the results would usually be the kind of film we’ll be talking about today, the nonsensical (yet entertaining just for that) Hell of the Living Dead a.k.a. ‘Virus’ a.k.a. ‘Night of the Zombies’ a.k.a. ‘Zombie Creeping Flesh’ a.k.a. ‘Zombie Inferno’.

The story goes something like this:  a chemical leak has taken place in a chemical plant in New Guinea. The air borne chemical spreads all over the land, bringing the dead back to life. As chaos spreads throughout New Guinea, a swat team of four men is sent to investigate this situation. I thought it was funny how there’s talk of zombie threat in New Guinea and all that gets sent in are four SWAT team members? For a whole zombie threat? What the --? But whatever, so these guys are sent in and apparently left for dead because they’ve lost contact with whomever it was that sent them; I’m guessing it was the U.S. Government. These crazy SWAT guys end up meeting with a crew of two documentarians who are here to investigate what’s going on in New Guinea. For whatever the reason, they end up together for the rest of the film; together they must try and uncover the mystery behind the appearance of zombies in New Guinea.

Hell of the Living Dead was shot in Spain and Italy but in order to give the illusion that the film takes place in New Guinea, the filmmakers spliced in all this random stock footage of wild animals flying and jumping from trees and running through the wilderness. This stock footage is pretty funny because it appears randomly at any given moment in the film, so it’s like, we’ll have these characters talking and suddenly, there’s a monkey jumping from tree top to tree top! Characters walk a bit and then we get a gazelle flying, then, a stampede of elephants, then, a fox eating a rabbit and so on, it’s a cheap-o way to make your film longer. They even used stock footage of real life tribes conducting their rituals. Most of the time, whenever we see tribes men dancing and running, what we’re actually seeing is footage from a documentary called ‘La Valle’.

I’m afraid that with the kind of film that Hell of the Living Dead is, this is going to be the kind of review that makes fun of how nonsensical and stupid everything is on this film, so excuse me for that, but I just can’t help myself. So these zombies are the chemical kind, and since this chemical is airborne, it spreads all through out New Guinea, reaching deep into the desserts and forest and turning even the Indian tribes that live within into zombies. The first time we meet these tribes, they are conducting a burial of some kind. The lady documentarian says she knows how to deal with these cannibal tribes because she’s lived with them before, so she immediately strips which I thought was hilarious, because she strips right in front of these horny SWAT guys,which by the way apparently have nothing to say about this naked lady. Then, she puts on some body paint (which she apparently always keeps handy) and then goes mingling amongst the tribe. This scene was so sleazy; it was obviously just an excuse for some nudity! She could have done just the same with her clothes on, but whatever. A few minutes after that, the SWAT guys meet up with her and the tribe and all hell breaks loose when the dead guy that the tribe is burying comes to life and starts infecting the whole tribe. It turns into a full blown gorefest of a scene, in this respect I must say that the film does not disappoint, there’s tons of gore.

Earlier I mentioned that this film was a rip off, and it is. It’s a rip off of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978). This is blatantly obvious when we see that some scenes are almost identical . Let’s see, we get little kid zombies, we get a SWAT team, a hostage situation…they even stumble upon a priest, who ends up being a zombie, mimicking that scene where the SWAT team guys in Dawn of the Dead stumble upon that freaky priest. We get scientists and politicians talking on television trying to solve the zombie situation. The main characters work on television and so on.  But of course, this film is also NOTHING like Dawn of the Dead, because Dawn of the Dead was never a comedy which is basically what Hell of the Living Dead feels like to me. Funniest part is that it was all unintentional; it’s obvious these guys didn’t know they were making such a hilarious movie, but they did it anyways. The comedy comes from how stupid these characters are and the dialog they say. For example, it is made abundantly clear that in order to kill these zombies you have to shoot them in the head, yet the characters keep shooting an exorbitant amount of bullets in the chest! It makes you feel like screaming out loud to these stupid characters, they’d save so much ammo if they simply shot one bullet to the head, but no, they empty a whole machine gun in every other body part that isn’t the head! Even after a character has screamed it and showed them how effective it is to shoot them in the head.

Want funnier stuff? Well, how about the fact that some zombies are repeated during the film? We’ll see a zombie in this scene here, then cut to another scene somewhere else and there’s the same actor playing the same zombie! Ha ha ha! Hilarious! How about a SWAT team member who in the middle of a zombie attack decides to put on a Tu-tu and start dancing and singing “Singing in the Rain”? How about motor boats that are simply lying around on the beach waiting for the protagonists to arrive? How about the fact that characters seem to simply wait around for the zombies to grab them? Arrgh this annoyed the hell out of me! I’m like run, don’t just stand there waiting for all those zombies to grab ya! Ha ha…hows about the fact that this films borrows the soundtrack from Dawn of the Dead and Alien Contamination (1980)? Ha hah….How about the fact that characters never seem to run out of bullets? EVER? And the dialog? It’s pure cheesy brilliance. For example, when a group of characters stumble upon a building one of them says: “Buildings have people in them, we’d better go investigate” I mean the hilarity is never ending with this movie and therefore it’s watchable just for that; its empty calories of the zombie kind.

Rating: 2 out of 5

House by the Cemetery (1981)

Title: House by the Cemetery (1981)

Director: Lucio Fulci

Cast: Catriona McColl, Giovanni Frezza

Review:

This is the third and final film of the “Gates of Hell” trilogy, which is composed of City of the Living Dead (1980),  The Beyond (1981) and the film I will be reviewing today House by the Cemetery. The idea behind calling these three films the ‘Gates of Hell Trilogy' is to unite these similarly themed films that deal with magical books that open the Gates to Hell. The books presented to us in these films talk about a doomsday scenario where evil conquers the planet and humanity pays for their sins, not unlike the bible. An interesting fact is that House by the Cemetery has nothing to do with any of that. There are no magical books; there is no gate of hell and the earth isn’t in peril as in the previous two films. I guess symbolically speaking, the family in this film does open the door to hell when they decide to finally go down to the cellar of their new home, unleashing another kind of hell upon themselves, but that’s stretching it. What really unites all these three movies is actress Catriona McColl, who stars in all three of them as the main character.

In House by the Cemetery we meet the Boyle family as they are headed towards their new home in New England. The father, one Dr. Normal Boyle is moving there to continue the research of a colleague of his that used to live there but for some mysterious reason ended up committing suicide. The little boy in the family ‘Bob’ keeps getting these visions that warn him not to go to ‘Oak Mansion’. But of course, nobody listens to the little kid and so the family moves in anyways. Once they get there, they notice one odd thing about the house: the cellar door doesn’t open. For some reason it is absolutely shut down. Nobody pays much mind to this detail; they figure they’ll eventually get to it. No big hurry. Yet the cellar does hold a mystery to it. What is making all those weird noises in the middle of the night?

What House by the Cemetery does right is that it builds up the mystery surrounding the cellar. Just what is down there? If there’s one thing that Fulci did well in his films it’s the way he used ambiance and atmosphere. The house looks appropriately spooky, there are a lot of noises in the night, things move about the shadows, mysterious disembodied eyes peer at you from the velvet darkness. The house does have a cemetery near it, in accordance to the films title, heck we even have a tomb inside of the house! This is all great stuff, and the gore, boy the gore is awesome on this one. There are some truly grizzly deaths on display in House by the Cemetery! The gore is so plentiful and graphic on this one that it was heavily edited on many countries; as a result, there are various cuts of this film out there. The most complete one is the Anchorbay release which includes all of the gory goodness from the original cut of the film.

The problem for me with this movie is that a lot of the things that happen don’t really make sense, or happen simply for shock value, not because they have anything to do with the story whatsoever, this was a common thing in Fulci films. For example, one scene has a giant vampire bat attacking Dr. Boyle! The bat leaps out of the darkness and bites him on the hand. Apparently, these bats have one hell of a bite! When he is unsuccessful in getting the bat to let go of his hand, he gets a pair of scissors and stabs the bat to death, blood splurts everywhere and great, we have a shocking moment! But that’s it. That’s all it is. There’s no story development behind the bat. It tells us nothing! Great moment; but an empty one at that. Yeah, it’s exciting, it’s gory, and you probably won’t forget it, but moments later you are left wondering “why did that happen?” This will go on all the way to the films final frames. 

Another nonsensical scene has a terribly bloody murder committed on the living room floor, lot’s of blood gets spilled all over the place, a bloody carcass is carried all around the living room and kitchen floor leaving streaks of blood all over the house. The next morning, we see the nanny mopping up the blood as if it was nothing. The lady of the house doesn’t notice these buckets of blood spilled on the floor, she simply goes on with her business and makes herself some coffee. What the hell?! Wouldn’t the nanny find all the blood spilled a tad bit suspicious? I mean, suspicious enough to notify her employers? But no, nobody gives a damn, nobody notices. Its little details like these that take you out of the movie, suddenly, your suspension of disbelief is in peril. But this doesn’t surprise me coming from Fulci, many of his films have nonsensical elements about them, sometimes they come off as mysterious and ominous, other times they come off as lazy storytelling.

Ultimately though, the film works. It is not Fulci’s best film, but it certainly is one of his good ones. At times it feels like a haunted house story, a ghost story, and at others it simply feels like a monster movie. What I love the most about Fulci’s horror films is that he really tries his best to freak us out. Nothing might be happening on screen, but the mystery is in the music, the noises, the spooky lighting, the actress suddenly screaming her lungs off out of pure fright. It’s the little buttons that Fulci pushes in our psyche that makes it all work, and ultimately, that’s what I enjoy about a Fulci horror film.    

Rating:  3 ½ out of 5 

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Title: City of the Living Dead (1980)

Director: Lucio Fulci

Cast: Christopher George, Catriona MacColl

Review:

In typical sleazy Italian horror movie fashion, City of the Living Dead (a.k.a. The Gates of Hell) is a film that’s derivative in some ways of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) which by the way was made two years before City of the Living Dead was. I guess the excitement behind Romero’s Dawn of the Dead fueled Lucio Fulci into making not just one, but two zombie films. Fulci’s first ode to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead came in the form of Zombie (1979), a film that was actually released in Italy as a sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. City of the Living Dead was also an ode to Romero’s films, its original title was to be ‘Twilight of the Dead’, again, a cheap way of attempting to sound like a sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Actually, posters were made with the ‘Twilight of the Dead’ title on them but had to be recalled. A lawsuit made the Italians change the title, so they changed the films title to City of the Living Dead or The Gates of Hell, two awesome titles on their own right. But were Fulci’s films really ripping off Romero’s?

If you ask this Film Connoisseur, I would say he wasn’t. In reality, the ‘ripping off’ element really comes into play in the marketing. Apparently, the people trying to sell Fulci’s films tried very sleazily to associate themselves with Romero’s highly successful zombie films. Hence the similar sounding titles, but Fulci’s film themselves? In my opinion they are diametrically opposed to Romero’s films. Save for the zombie element, Fulci’s zombie films dealt with completely different scenarios and situations than Romero’s. While Romero’s films dealt more with social issues through its plot, Fulci seemed contempt with shocking and entertaining you, and scaring the crap out of you while at it. While in Romero’s films no one knows why zombies now roam the earth, in Fulci’s they are here because of a strange mix of voodoo and science; or for supernatural reasons. Fulci’s zombie films also had a level of originality to them. For example, only in a Fulci film will you see a zombie go up against a shark! And underwater no less! Only in a Fulci film will you see zombies that teleport! So yeah, Fulci did put an effort in presenting us with new ideas within the zombie genre. Also, grossing you out was a top priority and speaking of grossing you out, City of the Living Dead will do that for sure!

City of the Living Dead is the first of a trilogy of films directed by Lucio Fulci dealing with the living dead, this trilogy includes City of the Living Dead, The Beyond (1981) and finally, House by the Cemetery (1981). The trilogy is called “The Gates of Hell Trilogy” or the “Death Trilogy” by others. Point is they are all about mystical books that open gates to hell, according to these films there’s 7 gates of hell and various magical books to open and close the gates with. One of these books is ‘The Book of Enoch’, another is the ‘Book of Eibon’. The mention of these books in Fulci’s films was his way of paying homage to legendary horror author, H.P. Lovecraft who mentioned these mystical books in his stories as well. Actually, City of the Living Dead has a lot of Lovecraft in it, aside from the books, same as in Lovecraft’s stories, characters see things that are too horrible for our feeble human minds to comprehend as evidenced by the films opening sequence.

The film opens with a séance; four people are trying to contact the dead. Unfortunately, they end up contacting more than they can handle! Mary, one of the people participating in the séance sees the vision of a priest hanging himself from a tree in the cemetery of a spooky little town known as ‘Dunwich’, by the way, Dunwich is another nod to Lovecraft’s short story ‘The Dunwich Horror’. Why does this priest commit suicide? Who the hell knows! And Fulci isn’t telling you either! But this event causes one of the seven doors of hell to slam open; and if this door isn’t closed before ‘All Saints Day’ then the dead will rise from their graves and take over the earth! So it’s up to the good guys to destroy this evil priest and close the Gate to Hell. Will they get there in time?

Various elements make City of the Living Dead an awesome zombie film, one of them being how far Fulci will go to shock the hell out of you! This is the kind of film I like watching with my friends, just to see their faces when things happen. Ever wondered what a girl puking her innards out of her mouth looks like? Look no further! Ever wondered what a brain looks like when it’s being squished by a zombie’s hand? It’s all presented on this classic zombie without any kind of remorse. I love how these Old Italian horror films don’t hold anything back. I mean, where any other American film would have cut away, Italian horror just keeps on showing you stuff, I love that about them. City of the Living Dead delivers in this department. Also, I enjoyed the films atmosphere. This was something that Fulci paid lots of attention to in many of his films: the spooky town, the wind howling constantly, the lonely streets.

Ultimately, City of the Living Dead is a film filled with many memorable moments. Actually, there is a scene that Tarantino was obviously inspired by for Kill Bill  Vol. 2; I’m talking about the scene in which a woman is buried alive and screams at the top of her lungs for someone to try and save her. That scene is so suspenseful! Gots to hand it to Fulci there; he created a truly memorable scene there. I dare you not to feel some sort of desperation while watching it! On the down side, the film does drag a bit in certain areas, but it doesn’t happen often; and same as in many Fulci films, plot holes abound. Why did the priest kill himself? Why to these zombies teleport? Are they ghosts? Or are they physical beings? Ultimately, none of these hiccups matter, City of the Living Dead is a fine piece of ZombieZinema. The gross out scenes are really out there! We get teleporting zombies which is pretty original and we have some truly memorable scenes; so much so that this is my second favorite Fulci film, second only to The Beyond, which in my opinion remains Fulci’s masterpiece. Highly recommend this one for a night of good old fashion Italian style zombie fun.

Rating: 4 out of 5

     

Manhattan Baby (1982)

Title: Manhattan Baby (1982)

Director: Lucio Fulci

Review:

In Manhattan Baby, we meet the Hacker family while they are visiting Egypt. The father, George Hacker is an archeologist conducting an exploration of ancient Egyptian catacombs. While he does this with a colleague of his, his wife Emily and his daughter Susie go around Egypt exploring buildings and architecture, taking in the sights. Suddenly, a blind old lady walks up to Susie and hands her an Egyptian amulet. The blind old lady then disappears into thin air. Susie seems to think nothing of the lady vanishing into thin air before her very eyes (how typical of Fulci!) and decides to keep the amulet  and take it back home with her. At the same time, while exploring the ancient catacombs, George comes upon an ancient hieroglyph on the wall; a symbol of a snake. Suddenly, rays of blue light shoot out of the symbol and blind him! Will he regain his eye sight? And what’s up with the strange amulet that Susie brought back with her from Egypt? What strange powers does it hold?

Watching Lucio Fulci movies can sometimes be something of a challenge. Case in point: Manhattan Baby which proved to be a difficult movie for me to follow. I kept trying to pinpoint why the hell this was so. I mean, I watch so many movies, why can’t I grasp the ideas that Fulci is trying to put across with his visuals? What is it that distracts me from following? Then I figured it out, its Fulci’s camera movements! I had to rewind certain moments and re-watch them instantly until I realized that Fulci sometimes focused his camera on completely unnecessary things that had nothing to do with the story. Here we are focusing on a light bulb….for no reason whatsoever! Here we are panning out towards….what? Something else that doesn’t even matter or say anything that’s what! Why did Fulci do this so much? It’s almost as if he didn’t want you to understand the film. Some might try and pass this off as “visual poetry” or what have you, but I say boloney! I think it’s just lazy filmmaking, or just plain bad filmmaking. While watching Manhattan Baby it felt as if Fulci was actually purposely trying to confuse me as a watcher rather than helping me understand his story. This got really annoying after a while. Is it the “Italian Way” of telling a story? I mean, I’ve seen a lot of Fulci movies and have encountered this same feeling, so maybe it’s not just this film. Maybe it’s the way Fulci chooses to tell his stories that I find hard to follow. Whatever the case, you’ve been warned! This movie just might get on your nerves to the point where you’ll suddenly find yourself completely lost. And it’s not that it’s a difficult story to tell, or even a complex one, it’s just the way Fulci unfolds his story that gets in the way.

Fulci goes overboard with close ups of eyes on this one! 

   

There is a phrase amongst film buffs that is commonly used to refer to unexplainable moments in a film. That phrase is “What The Hell---?” or What the Fuck---?” In order to keep this blog family friendly, I’ll use “What the Hell---?” from here on in. The last Lucio Fulci film I saw that had an excessive amount of “What the Hell---?” moments was House by the Cemetery (1981). That one was a “What the Hell---?” type of film every step of the way. Just when you think House by the Cemetery  is starting to make some sense, right out of nowhere comes some image or situation that has nothing to do with the film, and ends up confusing you even more. I never thought the day would come, but House by the Cemetery is no longer the most confusing film in Lucio Fulci’s repertoire! Manhattan Baby has now taken its place! Manhattan Baby is overflowing with moments that have little to no explanation whatsoever. For example, on this film people disappear and are never heard of again…and nobody gives a damn if they do! Wouldn’t you be the least bit concerned if your co-worker suddenly vanished into thin air right in your own home? Wouldn’t you be freaked if some blind old lady handed you an amulet and she would suddenly disappear right in front of you? Wouldn’t that freak you for life? Well, not in the world of Manhattan Baby, things like these phase no one. And this are just some of the “What the Hell---?” moments I'm referring to, trust me, there are many more where those come from. So be ready for that. Manhattan Baby is a strange, strange movie.

As is the case with many Italian films from the 70’s and 80’s, Manhattan Baby was extremely influenced by a number of American films. First up, we open up with the exploration of an ancient Egyptian catacomb, something along the lines of something we’d see in Indiana Jones film. The films title Manhattan Baby is an allusion to Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), in fact, the writer of the film actually admits that there was an attempt to turn this film into a Rosemary’s Baby of sorts, but honestly, I don’t see anything that even resembles Rosemary’s Baby except for the films title, and the fact that one of the characters in Manhattan Baby has the same last name as one of the Satanists in Polanski’s film. The film that Manhattan Baby most resembles is The Exorcist (1973), though it doesnt have a miligram of the atmosphere found in that horror classic. Manhattan Baby has possessed girls, exorcists and exorcisms. The only real difference between both films is that the demon who posseses the little girl in Manhattan Baby doesn’t come from Africa, but from Egypt. It also has a bit of Poltergeist in it, especially when it comes to how they handled the kids and the supernatural events that unfold in their rooms. So once again we have one of these Italian films that’s trying to be like a more successful American film. The only problem with these attempts at ripping off American films is that American films like The Exorcist and Poltergeist were made with millions of dollars while Fulci only had about 300,000 dollars to make Manhattan Baby. So what we got here is a film that needed more money in order to tell its story, unfortunately Fulci had to make do with the little money he had. The film suffered because of it in my opinion.

The film has some positives going for it though. First off, I loved how the film opens up in Egypt. The filmmakers actually went out to Cairo, Egypt and shot the opening sequence of the film there. Filming in an exotic location like that, with real pyramids and dessert vistas for a backdrop can add a lot of beauty to your film, and I must say Fulci really took advantage of filming in Egypt. Unfortunately, I learned later that these scenes in Egypt were actually filmed after the film had been completed so they could give a more international feel to the movie, to help sell it. That Egyptian opening sequence was just tacked on. Back in those days, Italians had an extremely messy way of making movies; sometimes it feels as if they were making them up as they went along. And I’m sure they did on many occasions. Manhattan Baby has some of Fulci’s trademarks. For example, on this one he went over board with the focusing on the eyes thing he always does in all his movies! We get animals turning evil on this one as well, only this time it’s with a twist. Yet, strangely enough, this film has very little of the traditional Fulci gore. It starts and ends with a bit of gore, but it’s not the amount we are used to seeing in a Fulci film.

Final words: this is not what I would call a good Lucio Fulci film. I am used to a certain amount of confusion from an Italian movie, there is something about how they tell their stories that can end up confusing the hell out of you as a viewer, but Manhattan Baby takes the taco as one of the most confusing of all. I get that they were trying to get away from zombies and what is considered a traditional horror film, by the writers own admission, they were trying to take horror to ‘new dimensions’ with Manhattan Baby. I guess by this he meant that he didn’t want to do what he’d always done with Fulci meaning zombies, ghosts and magical books that open doors to hell. On this one they were going for something just a little different. Demons from Egypt! I don’t think they were entirely successful in pulling off the story they wanted to tell, a lot of that seems to stem from their meager budget. I’d suggest this one to fans of Fulci films, everyone else will either be completely bored or confused, take your pick.

Rating: 2 out of 5

Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Title: Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Director: Mario Bava

Cast: Barry Sullivan, Norma Bengell

Review:

In the world of filmmaking, there are directors out there who choose a certain type of genre and make it their specialty, making only films from that particular genre. Others like to venture out of the box and do all sorts of genres. For example, Terry Gilliam is a director who has never ventured far from the fantasy genre; he has decided that fantasy is his specialty, and his quite good at it, if not one of the best. On the other hand, a director who constantly shifts genres and rarely makes the same film twice is Ridley Scott. The guy goes from sci-fi, to fantasy, to sword and sandal films, to gangster films. You name it, he’s done it, or on his way to doing it. He does seem to love the sci-fi genre though since amongst all the genres he has worked on, it’s the sci-fi genre he’s most worked with, in fact, he is currently working on his third science fiction film, a prequel to Alien (1979) called Prometheus (2012). The thing about directors such as these is that they always try and make the quintessential good film for whatever genre they happen to be working on. If Ridley Scott’s going to make a sci-fi, he will make sure it will be the best damn sci-fi you have ever seen. By they way, Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) was very influenced by the film I will be reviewing today, Mario Bava’s campy science fiction/horror film, Planet of the Vampires. But more on that later! Italian maestro Mario Bava was a director who was primarily known for his classic contributions to horror but in reality, Bava made films from many different genres. Planet of the Vampires was his venture into sci-fi territory. How was it?

Well, story goes something like this: the crew of spaceship Argos is forced to land on an alien planet known as Aura when their sister spaceship The Galliot crash lands there. There should be no major problem with this operation since the planet has an atmosphere, and it appears there are no dangerous life forms on the planet. Yet, upon landing on the planet something strange happens to the crew of The Argos! Everyone suddenly tries to kill each other! What has overcome them? Why has everyone suddenly turned so murderous and violent? Thankfully, this fit of anger passes, and they all go back to normal. But the question remains: what just happened? The crew decides to continue with their rescue mission. Once they reach The Galliot, they discover that most of the crew is either dead or violent and crazy! What’s going on in this strange planet?

‘Planet of the Vampires’ is actually a very misleading title for this film since there are no vampires to be seen on this flick. At all! A more appropriate title would have been Planet of the Zombies; since what happens on this film is that the crew members die and come back to life as zombies, not vampires. But whatever, I guess that was just a clever marketing scheme used to capitalize on the popularity of Hammers vampire films, which were quite popular during the time of this films release. Even The Haunted Planet, one of the films many alternate titles suits this film better.

So basically, what we have is a planet in which the buried don’t stay buried, they come back as zombies, and you can’t trust anybody. It’s the kind of story where you have a bunch of people locked up in an isolated environment, and you don’t know who is going to turn against whom. It has a similar vibe to John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). This comparison makes sense; since Carpenter has stated on more then one occasion that Bava was a major influence on his films. But then again, Bava was a major influence on many filmmakers, for example, the similarities between Ridley Scott’s Alien and Bava’s Planet of the Vampires are many. Let’s see; we have a spaceship that is forced to land on an alien planet. The crew decides to venture out into the planet and explore it since it has an atmosphere. While exploring the planet, they encounter an abandoned spaceship from another alien race that also crash landed on the planet, but died; what’s left of them are their giant carcasses. Sounds pretty much like the first half hour of Ridley Scott’s Alien don’t it? But it aint, its Bava’s Planet of the Vampires!

Aesthetically both films are similar as well. The alien planet is shrouded by eternal darkness, never ending fog and the landscape is filled with jagged mountains. The only difference between the two films is that Bava made his film with a mere 100,000 dollars, while Ridley Scott made Alien with 11 million. Of course you can achieve a whole other level of believability with 11 million clames, but still, it goes to show just how much Bava could do with a small budget. Plus the level of influence Planet of the Vampires has had on science fiction films over the years goes a long way considering the films meager budget showing once again that its not how much money a production has, but the talent that’s behind the camera that matters. A relatively small film like this one has influenced so many others that have come after it! That’s how influence goes, one filmmaker influences the next, and the next, and the next, each film taking things one step further. Each film trying to improve on the previous one that influenced it. The chain could go something like this: Planet of the Vampires influenced Alien, which in turn influenced Galaxy of Terror (1981), which in turn influenced Aliens (1986), which in turn influenced an innumerable amount of films, like David Twohy’s Pitch Black (2000). But they can all be traced back to Bava’s Planet of the Vampires! It just goes to show how important Bava was as a filmmaker; a real trend setter.

Above, Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), below, Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Planet of the Vampires is a real Bava film, it has all his trademarks. One of the legendary filmmakers’ trademarks is making a film with an extremely low budget, yet making the end product seem beautiful beyond its budgetary limitations. Bava was famous for saving his producers money on his productions; as a result they were always willing to finance his films because they would always make their money back. On Planet of the Vampires, the budget limitations are visible at times, mainly when it comes to showing the spaceships flying in space. I have to admit, this is one of the few set backs that the film has, the effects aren’t convincing when it comes to the spaceships, which are obvious miniatures that scratch on looking like something out of an Ed Wood film. Some might hate this aspect of the film, others will find it adds to the films b-movie charm. The effects on this film where achieved old school style, with miniatures, smoke and mirrors. And they were all achieved on camera! The small budget they had pushed the filmmakers creativity in order to achieve
the visuals they needed to tell their story.

U-shaped spaceships. Above: Alien (1979), below: Planet of the Vampires (1965) 

But what really makes this one special is Bava’s trademark use of colors and style. The planet itself is lit with Bava’s wonderful use of primarily colors, lots of reds and blues. The use of these primary colors gives the whole film a pulpy, comic book feel. Planet of the Vampires isn’t the deepest film in the world, its story is extremely simplistic, almost childlike in its innocence, but visually it pulls you in. Some of the most visually striking moments come when the crew stumbles upon the giant skeletons of the long dead alien species. That scene is awesome! Spookiest part is when they play a machine that lets us hear how these creatures sounded when they talked in their alien language. You can definitely see where the ‘Space Jockey’ in Alien came from when you see these scenes. Another eerie scene is when the crew members who have died come back to life as zombies, this scene reminds us that we are also watching a horror film! Bava successfully mixed both genres with this film.

Giant alien skeletons! Above: Alien (1979) Below: Planet of the Vampires (1965)

My only problem with Planet of the Vampires is that it drags in certain areas. Visually its amazing, love the colors and the marriage of sci-fi and horror, but I found it lacking in terms of excitement and thrills. The film starts out with a real interesting premise, and the alien planet is eerie enough, unfortunately the film manages to fall into a rut as far as excitement goes in its third half. Things could have turned out so interesting had we gotten a glimpse at those giant aliens! But no, they never show up. Same as in Ridley Scott’s Alien, we never get to see where the giant aliens come from. I guess that’s just another way in which Planet of the Vampires influenced Scott’s film. But still, Planet of the Vampires is a beautiful marriage of science fiction and horror, it might not be the most exciting film ever made, but is sure is a great film to look at!

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

The films original Italian title translates to: Terror in Space

Burial Ground: Nights of Terror (1981)

Title: Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror (1981)

Director: Andrea Bianchi

Review:

I think I’m a pretty knowledgeable dude when it comes to my zombie movies. Yeah that’s right, I’ve seen a lot of films about the walking dead. I’ve seen the most popular ones like Return of the Living Dead (1985) and all of George Romero’s zombie films. I’ve even seen some pretty obscure ones like Wild Zero (2000), The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue (1974) and The Dead Pit (1989) amongst countless others. But the road to seeing all zombie movies is a long one, filled with many, many bad films. Right now I am trying to see all these zombie movies that I never got around to seeing, most of them are zombie films from other parts of the world like Burial Ground: Nights of Terror which just so happens to be an Italian zombie flick.

Necronomicon Ex-Mortis...loosely translated....Book... Of the Dead!

Burial Ground doesn’t have much of a story. It’s basically the kind of film in which for whatever reason, a group of people end up isolated in a mansion in the middle of nowhere. While there, the living dead begin to emerge thanks to the work of a scientist who is studying what is referred to in the film as “Ancient Etruscan Magical Practices”. The scientist then decides to read the words of a magical scroll that brings the dead back to life. So from there on in, it’s all about people locking themselves up inside of a house trying to protect themselves from the living dead, who are dying to get into the mansion to feast on human flesh. That’s about it ladies and gents. The producers of this film where the same guys and gals who made Patrick Still Lives! (1980) which has the same basic premise of locking people up in an isolated mansion. In fact, I think they even shot this movie in the same exact mansion!

So basically, this movie runs on it’s premise alone, plot is non existent. Having these characters locked up in an isolated location is atypical horror movie behavior; the filmmakers are just giving themselves an excuse to slowly kill off characters in grizzly ways. And that they do well! This film is filled with the kind of gore you can come to expect from an Italian gore fest. Zombies really gorge on human flesh on this one! You can really see them ripping apart flesh and tearing out intestines…the film gets pretty graphic. It’s the kind of gore you’d expect to see in a Fulci movie. Speaking of Fulci, this film is extremely influenced by Fulci’s Zombie (1979). It has a scene in which a zombie grabs a girls head and impales her eye on a piece of broken glass, much like that scene in Fulci’s Zombie. The shots are even freaking identical. Many situations and zombie attacks are taken directly from Fulci’s zombie classic. It also has a bit of the Blind Dead movies because all of the zombies are supposed to be monks from a nearby monastery, ooooh! A plot twist!

This film has many funny things going for it. Same as Patrick Still Lives! Burial Ground is as sleazy as a horror movie can get. You kind of get the idea that this movie is just an excuse to see naked chicks. Hey, just remember, this here film was directed by the same guy who made Strip Naked for Your Killer! (1975) It’s really funny, at one point in the movie, every couple in the film goes to their respective rooms to have sex with each other, and the film switches from one room to the next, from one sexual situation to the next. What’s funny is that they have these beautiful ladies, I mean smoking hot models, having sex with these old dudes, it boggles the mind. During those years, the sex/horror film was extremely popular in Italy and these sleazy producers made them as quick and as cheaply as they could. And they sold ‘em to America! I’m sure this film played just fine on 42nd Street somewhere in sleazy 70’s New York City in a double bill with some ultraviolent Sonny Chiba movie.

In Burial Ground, there’s this couple who have a kid named Michael. The kid looks like a midget, because he is a midget! You see, the filmmakers used a 26 year old midget to play the boy because they knew they were going to be filming scenes involving incest and boob munching. That’s right! I said boob munching! I mean this kid bites a good chunk of his moms breast clean off and chews on the thing! This flick is most famous for that scene and that scene alone! So we have this odd looking kid through out the whole movie! Even worse is the fact that the kid makes sexual advances on his mom even before he is a freaking zombie! Weirder still is that when his mom is suddenly confronted with the fact that her son is a zombie, the first thing she tells him is “feed on my breast! You always liked that!” and she whips out her left breast in front of all the other people (and all the other zombies) this lady just doesn’t give a damn! Her son wants to breast feed in public, so be it! If that’s not entertainment, I don’t know what is. And here I was thinking that Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak (1995) was the only movie in which someone gets their breasts munched on! Burial Ground had done it more then a decade before Castle Freak had.

Something needs to be said about the zombie mayhem in this movie. I mean, these are ultra slow moving zombies, the go at a snails pace, but they are many and they kill their victims in extremely gory ways. They are pretty clever as well! I mean, you ever heard of zombies grabbing a scythe and slicing heads off with it? Exactly! I think this is the only movie on which I have seen zombies using a battering ram! Oh wait, they did that in Army of Darkness (1993) didn’t they? Still, it makes the zombies in this movie look extremely resourceful and intelligent! The make up on the zombies is interesting, and to the films credit, each zombie has a distinctively undead look. I mean, they all look different and varied. Its not the same zombie mask over and over again. Also, this is a movie in which no matter how cheap or sleazy it is, you can’t say you didn’t see enough zombies. The zombies are on screen most of the time, so if it’s zombies you want, its zombies you get with this one. The zombie mayhem is equally non stop. Zombies are always killing someone every five minutes, so it isn’t boring in that sense.

The film ends with a nice little Fulci/Romero homage, or is that rip off? Well, this being an Italian horror flick, Im gonna go with rip off. But in actuality this "prophecy" sounds like a last minute way to try and make some sense out of the whole film. It is called “The Prophecy of the Black Spider” and it appears on screen as the films final shot, notice all the grammatical errors as you read it:

So that’s it my friends, another obscure zombie film seen! Now I need to get my hands on those Tombs of the Blind Dead movies that are waiting for me at home. Expect reviews for those soon! But Burial Ground? An a-typical sleaze bag Italian horror film. I mean, I never saw Fulci’s, Bava’s, or Argento’s films as sleazy. Burial Ground is. In fact, it’s on a whole other level of cheapness and sleaziness in the Italian horror movie pantheon. Don’t get confused, this isn’t a masterpiece at all, but it can make for an amusing (if not completely stupid) evening of zombie movie watching.

Rating: 1 1/2 out of 5