Graveyard Of Horror (1972)

When I was young, my family used to vacation in Long Beach Island, New Jersey.  For one magical week a year, my world was filled with getting super-cool iron-ons applied to shitty quality tee shirts, buying puffy monster stickers and Slurpees from the 7-11 (a chain we didn’t have anywhere near where I live, then or now) while wearing no shoes (I had astonishingly tough soles; I even unknowingly bent a nail once when I stepped on it, though I also was cursed with grotesquely wide feet which made buying footwear a chore and flat feet which I’m sure will absolutely not come back to haunt me in my coming autumn years), and listening to some of the greatest soft/pop rock songs ever written (most music today sucks in my opinion; there, I said it).  Walking through a five and dime’s toy aisle was a world of discovery ignited by the smell of made-in-Taiwan rubber monsters, only one of which you could afford to take home (decisions, decisions) and subsequently lose while playing with it in the ocean.  Now, I don’t remember if I related this particular story before, but if so, I’m going to tell it again anyway on the off chance there’s someone reading this who’s not one of my five loyal readers (thanks for taking the time out of your day, guys and gals).  

Anyway, one year my family took a little road trip South to Brigantine and wound up at Brigantine Castle.  The castle was a massive building built on a pier, and it was essentially a year-round (or at least summer-round) haunted house.  You may have seen the cool commercial broadcast on one of the New York or New Jersey stations at the time (but you can find it on Youtube these days).  This place even had a guy with no head but whose body was still alive!  As a monster kid from the day I was born, this place was Mecca.  The pier leading to the haunted house’s entrance proper was lined with games of chance like you’d find on any carnival midway.  I want to say (and I’m going to say anyway, because I’m the one telling the story) the night we visited the castle was stormy (“the night was sultry…”), but we inched closer and closer, and soon there it was: the ticket booth.  It was set, if memory serves (and how often does it, actually?), in an alcove where waiting victims could amble around, and behind the booth was a set of steps leading up to (what I was sure in my pre-adolescent mind could only be) the very gates of Hell.  

Sudden trepidation, nay, panic set in.  The impending fulfillment of my every horror-fueled fantasy was rapidly dissolving into a fight or flight scenario.  The tipping point arrived with the sort of abruptness usually reserved for car crashes and the removal of tape from the hairier parts of the human body, but it wasn’t anything I saw that did it.  No horrid latex mask-wearing ghoul or grue-drenched beastie put me over the edge.  No, it was the shuddersome first notes of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata And Fugue In D Minor blaring out over the loudspeaker that did it.  The hair-thin strand of courage remaining in my soul snapped.  Like the proverbial shot in the ass, I took off down the pier and as far away from the castle as I could get.  I don’t know how far I got, but I knew that my siblings went into Brigantine Castle while I sat outside terrified, blubbering, and sulking that I wasn’t in there, too.  Funny enough, we never did return to Brigantine on any subsequent vacations.  To top it all off, everyone who went in refused to tell me any of what they saw.  Bastards.  I love ‘em.

Michael Sherrington (Bill Curran) returns to Binbrook Castle in search of his wife Elizabeth.  He is told that she died while in labor with their stillborn child.  None of Michael’s in-laws want anything to do with the man, nor do they have any intention of helping him out.  Robert, the Earl of Binbrook and “the world’s greatest scientist” has also gone missing.  Mr. Fowles (Víctor Israel), the graveyard caretaker is cantankerous and uncooperative in the extreme, clearly not hiding anything.  Meanwhile, there is a pair of Halloween-masked goons running around snatching people and feeding them to some…thing which is kept buried (alive?) in a decrepit crypt.  Who’s behind it all?  Where’s Robert?  Why are coffins in the cemetery empty?  I guarantee, even if you care enough to have these questions answered, by the time “The End” flashes up onscreen you’ll wish you didn’t.

Miguel Madrid’s (under the pseudonym Michael Skaife) Graveyard Of Horror (aka Necrophagus aka The Butcher Of Binbrook aka Necromaniac; this movie has more pseudonyms than a black ops agent’s safety deposit box) is a Gothic Horror film in the mold of the (rightfully) influential films of Mario Bava.  I will say this: the scenery looks authentically atmospheric.  Outside of that, the film is crap, and worse, it’s incompetent, boring crap.  Before I dig my talons into it too far, though, I find it prudent to remind you readers once more (and myself by proxy) that what we get to see in one country may not be even close to resembling the filmmakers’ original intent or the film’s original form.  According to IMDB, however, there do not appear to be any other cuts of the film extant, so I have to assume that this is how the film was exhibited everywhere it was released.  By that same token, the film was released in America by Independent-International Pictures, and it was often the case that films would be filleted by producers looking to up the exploitable elements of a film for the drive-in crowd.  Nevertheless, Independent-International also released Al Adamson’s joyously execrable Dracula Versus Frankenstein, and that was apparently unmolested (the same of which cannot be said for that film’s audience), so it is entirely possible that they just slapped an English dub on Graveyard Of Horror and sent it on its way.  So, an audience can only view a film in the form(s) it is available.  Is it right to not take into account the production/distribution background of a film?  Maybe a little, but that doesn’t in the slightest change the experience I had watching this specific movie.

And it was painful.  The film adheres a little too stringently to the old screenwriting adage, “get in late, get out early.”  Scenes start and end at a whim, sometimes with absolutely (and literally) nothing happening.  Actions don’t line up in any sort of logical fashion, and many times characters will show up for a single, quick shot and then disappear until they just show up again (I won’t say “until they’re needed,” because so few of these ones are).  The story makes no sense at all, even discounting that quality as a requisite for a good film.  Who we assume is the main character (yes, Michael) goes through some trauma, and then is only depicted for almost the entire rest of the movie as a faceless shape peregrinating around aimlessly (like the plot).  Was Mr. Curran’s price too high to include him in the whole film?  The world holds its breath.  

And speaking of holding one’s breath, no one in the film is capable of doing that.  By this I mean the acting is so overwrought by every performer in this thing, Rudolf Klein-Rogge must be positively spinning in his grave.  The monster is never shown until the very end, and it is so wildly unimpressive the DVD distributors simply slapped its likeness on their cover art.  Madrid uses POV camera techniques throughout in an effort to draw the viewer into the story in some way.  Unfortunately, it only succeeds in killing an already non-existent pace and comes off as shooting for a goal above this film’s station.  This is a dull, vapid, bloodless, sleaze-less black hole of a film.  It is not entertaining as a straight film or from an ironic perspective.  If you put this film on as background viewing at a party, you had damn well better be prepared for a riot, because if anything could singlehandedly piss off a broad spectrum of filmgoers, Graveyard Of Horror is it.

Make Or Break:  The first few scenes of the film set up the muddy storytelling the rest of the film embraces like it’s in a death roll.  The opening scene (which is recycled a very short way into the film) has Michael literally throwing dirt at the camera lens.  Normally, I would applaud taking a risk like that, but here it winds up imparting the impression that this is the filmmakers’ attitude toward the viewer.  I don’t go down this route as a writer often, but fuck this movie.  Now you know why my introduction ate up over half this review.

MVT:  As I said, the rural Spanish backdrop is great to look at, and the castle interiors are wonderful.  They just weren’t filmed or assembled in any sort of satisfying way.

Score:  3/10

The Fabulous Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1977)

King Kong (1933) is hands down one of my favorite movies of all time (and arguably one of the best ever made, not that I’m biased).  It succeeds as an adventure picture.  It succeeds as a monster picture (and how sad is it that the spider pit scene doesn’t survive as anything other than a few fascinating stills?).  It even succeeds as a love story (bestiality aside).  Over the Thanksgiving holidays in my youth, WWOR-TV out of Secaucus, New Jersey used to show not only the original Kong, but also the lighter but no less fun Son Of Kong and the exceptional Mighty Joe Young.  The day after the Kong fest, they would play some Toho daikaiju eiga, though the lineup that sticks in my mind included King Kong Escapes and King Kong Versus Godzilla.  

Back to the point, what really makes Kong such a fantastic character is he has personality to spare.  As a performance created mostly by a one-foot-tall puppet, the giant simian manages to go through a range of emotions and sell them all.  There are live actors who to this day cannot convince me that they’re not robots, yet a piece of aluminum, rubber, and rabbit fur is capable of bringing an audience to tears.  Even the fabulous Rick Baker, whose ape makeups have fooled watchful eyes, couldn’t quite wring the same emotions out of his creation in the John Guillermin version of the story in 1976.  Naturally, this didn’t stop less talented creators from trying to convince viewers that primate costumes barely one step up from Don Post get-ups (man, they were great) were in fact giant apes, invariably to hilarious results.  From Konga to Mighty Peking Man and everything in between, convincing ape suits have been the exception rather than the norm.

 

A mysterious man in an old age disguise (or is it?) wanders into a book store where Dr. Otto Lindenbrock (Kenneth More) peruses the shelves.  Taking an enigmatic guide (written by the never-glimpsed Arne Saknussemm) from the old man, Otto ropes his niece Glauben (the truly beauteous YvonneSentis) and her beau, soldier and all-around wimp Axel (Pep Munné), to join him on an expedition to Mount Sneffels in Iceland, where a portal leading to the center (sorry, centre) of the Earth is located.  Bribing stoic shepherd Hans (Frank Braña) with sheep (yes, really), the group descend into a world filled with not only wonders but also with dangers.

 Juan Piquer Simón’s Jules Verne’s The Fabulous Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (aka Where Time Began, aka Viaje Al Centro De La Tierra) is yet another in a long list of adaptations of fabulist Jules Verne’s famous story.  Verne has been linked with cinema almost as long as there has been cinema (just ask Martin Scorsese or better yet Georges Méliès).  His work is tailor-made for the film medium, loaded as it is with visual wonders.  Despite the dubiousness of much (but not all) of Verne’s science, his concepts were set and written in a time when discovery was still very possible (in a broad scope sense of the word).  The world was vast and large sections remained unexplored.  Consequently, Verne’s tales would be about probing a certain aspect of the world (and the universe) and pondering the possibilities of what could be out there awaiting man.  It didn’t matter whether or not a ship like the Nautilus could take on a giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.  It didn’t matter that a cannon can’t launch a manned missile From The Earth To The Moon.  It didn’t matter that traveling Around The World In Eighty Days in a hot-air balloon would be a foolhardy venture at best.  What matters is that the concepts invite flights of fancy.  The stories are about the power of imagination and the fueling of the sense of wonder we all have inside us (admit it, you do) more than they are about rendering the astonishing with verisimilitude.  Any adaptation, then, must also maintain such a sense, and Simón’s film does, or at the very least it does halfway.

The fantastical elements of the film kick in once the characters reach the underground ocean, and when they do, I feel fairly confident in stating that they can be enjoyed on multiple levels.  The rubber puppet monsters are cheapjack in the extreme, but they are still monsters, and that counts for a lot.  A fight between two Plesiosaurs (?) is actually quite violent, with chunks of meat being ripped out and blood roiling the water.  The absurd giant ape (certainly a ripoff of Guillermin’s King Kong, though a large man-ape is mentioned very briefly in Verne’s story) will prompt flashbacks of The Mighty Gorga, I’m sure, but the scale and sets are handled relatively well.  Also, there are a number of composite, forced perspective, and matte painting shots which are better than some stuff being done on computers today.  The filmmakers never succeed one hundred percent in convincing the viewer that the expedition is actually inside the interior of the Earth (except for the scenes obviously shot in caverns), but the effort is definitely there, and that really goes a long way.  There are also elements like the character of Olsen (Jack Taylor, exploitation cinema’s answer to William Fichtner before the question) which are truly intriguing but are brushed aside, amounting to little more than teases.  The film’s major problem is that it takes its sweet time getting to the interesting bits, but it does so without managing to flesh out its characters in the slightest or building much tension, which we need in order to keep us hanging on.  And once it gets to the dinosaurs, giant mushrooms, and so on, the film gives them all short shrift, rushing as it is to reach the end.  So, what could have been some low-fi, dirt poor fantasy instead comes off like a highlight reel of same.

More’s Lindenbrock (and we won’t get into spelling variations or name changes between the written work and this) seems completely unfazed and mostly uncaring about just about everything in the world as well as what he witnesses underground.  It makes it difficult to believe that he is a man as interested in exploration as he claims to be.  Hans also is granite-like in mien.  Even when he gets to embrace a lamb towards the film’s end, his countenance betrays no sense of joy whatsoever.  Conversely, Axel and Glauben do nothing but show emotion (usually delight and awe), being (as they must have been) the audience’s point of view characters.  There are no complex emotional moments whatsoever in the film, for good or ill.  Some would argue that’s because the film is aimed at children, so these things need to be kept simple.  I would argue that’s horseshit, and most children not only understand the meaning behind subtle acting, but they probably intuit it better than many adults.  The problem is most kids would be bored to tears by this film, so the filmmakers’ simplifications are essentially for naught.  And that’s kind of a shame, really. 

MVT:  The special effects are the meat and potatoes of the film.  Unfortunately (and frustratingly), they are not dwelt on at any length, depriving the audience’s inner child from fully satisfying itself.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the first monster scene, while the gang is still in the caverns.  A five-and-dime dinosaur pokes its head out of a pool of thick movie fog.  It lights the fuse which doesn’t quite fizzle but certainly never “goes boom.”

Score:  5.75/10

 

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