It's been quiet over this way, mainly because pretty much everything I've been covering as of late has fallen well within the remit of Spooky Isles, where you can find my most recent articles.
After many hours spent in darkness with Brian Clemens' brilliant creation, my Thriller episode guide finally reaches its end with series six reviewed in depth at https://www.spookyisles.com/thriller-episode-guide/
On a related matter, I've just come into possession of a fantastic new tome on the Thriller series by Martin Marshall - A Thriller In Every Corner goes beyond your wildest expectations in telling the story of this fantastic Brian Clemens creation, and my early impressions after the first 50 or so pages are nothing but positive.
It's self-published and is available by clicking the link to Lulu.com - just bear in mind it's a hefty volume, so don't drop it on your foot.
US 1974, 89m, 20th Century-Fox/Pinto/Chocolate Chip
DVD: 20th Century-Fox
Four relatives gather at the remote mansion of a voodoo priestess, and find she is recently deceased. Soon, someone starts using the craft to pick them off, one by one...
A surprisingly coy horror film, which seems to have difficulty deciding whether it wants to be an out-and-out blaxploitation horror flick or a haunted house mystery. It doesn't quite succeed on either count, but ends up being entertaining enough, mainly because of the sheer ineptitude of its plotting.
Dr. Cunningham (Victor French, better known as Michael Landon's earthly sidekick in Highway To Heaven) is the only caucasian in the group. Exactly why he's the token white guy is never quite explained - perhaps, to quote Cleavon Little in Blazing Saddles, his grandmother was Dutch...
It's just one of several unexplained points in a jumbled and increasingly ridiculous scenario. We are given to understand that all four visitors are distant relatives of the priestess, but have never met her. We don't learn exactly why they haven't been in touch lately, and why they in particular have been chosen for an inheritance isn't quite explained, even at the film's damp squib of a conclusion. Nor is it entirely clear why the two servants of the house may want the group dead, as it's not clear what they actually stand to gain.
I couldn't stop giggling when the doctor apologised for being late arriving, as he had trouble finding the house. Yeah, obviously this neighbourhood must be full of foreboding looking mansions perched precariously on the top of towering rock formations with skulls carved in them. Gee, it's hard telling them all apart...
Click for a larger view
Perhaps a flashing neon sign reading "This Is The House On Skull Mountain, Stupid!" might help.
When a voodoo ritual is revealed to be taking place down below the house, it's a real "WHAT?" moment. Where did all these people come from, when there has only been a cast of a few characters so far? How did they get there? Why did this turn into a swordfight? What the hell does an earlier shopping sequence/musical interlude add to things?
A seemingly innocuous farmer isn't quite the same after his possessive mother's death. He takes to first robbing graves, then committing murder to obtain parts to keep mother's body looking at its best...
Although named Ezra Cobb in the film, there's no doubting the true inspiration here. Deranged is arguably the nearest the cinema got to the truth behind Ed Gein's crimes (at least until the eponymously titled biopic of 2000). The alternative title isn't entirely apt, as Gein wasn't believed to have experimented with Necrophilia, but that wasn't the kind of thing to stop American International's marketing department...
Very atmospheric in places, it's quite disconcerting to have the action broken up as a narrator occasionally breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly. There are one or two particularly gross moments, but the rest of the film is surprisingly restrained. Familiar character actor Roberts Blossom is very effective in the lead.
Deranged got overshadowed by another Gein-inspired film the same year, namely The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Deranged takes a different tack to its rival, coming across like a particularly out-there Crimewatch reconstruction. That's not to say it's a great movie by any means, but it is quite effective in its own way. Worth a look.
BLU-RAY NOTES: Whichever way you look at it, this movie looks grotty. But then, that's probably the point, and the transfer on the Arrow Films release makes the most of the muted colour palette and the grainy stock. Considering the tiny budget, it looks quite impressive. Tom Savini's commentary is most enjoyable, as he reflects on his early career as well as the film (this was his second make-up credit). There are also interviews with Scott Spiegel and Laurence R. Harvey, the original trailer, and a booklet containing an archive interview with producer Bob Clark.
Canada/USA 1974 - Karr International Pictures/American International
84 Minutes
Certificate - 18 (UK, originally X for edited version), Not Rated (USA)
Blu-Ray/DVD: Arrow Films (UK), MGM (USA - DVD only at time of writing)
UK - Island WIP 6193 (April 1974)
US - Island IS 001 (July 1974)
It's 1974. Glam rock has hit a peak and is starting a steady decline. The top 40 is getting a tad cheesy. The Bay City Rollers are on the rise. Then, suddenly, this record appears out of nowhere.
Like a twisted stream-of-consciousness opera compressed into three minutes, it's one of those records that, upon first hearing, makes you wonder exactly what it is you've just heard. Then you play it again. It starts to get under your skin. You play it once more. It's firmly embedded in your brain now, that keyboard motif at the start running through your mind, going "de-de-doo-de-doo-de-doo... de-de-doo-de-doo-de-doo..."
That's what happened to me, anyway. I first heard it on a K-Tel compilation called Music Explosion I picked up from a school jumble sale. This being a K-Tel LP, it had 22 tracks crammed onto it, meaning that some of the track would be edited out to fit it on the record. It still sounded pants anyway... It was bizarrely crammed between a fella called Paul DaVinci singing Your Baby Ain't Your Baby Anymore and The Bay City Rollers' then latest waxing Summer Love Sensation. To say these compilations were thrown together would be an understatement.
Anyway, a trawl around the second hand stores turned up a copy of the actual single, which I then proceeded to play to death. My friends and relatives failed to share my enthusiasm, my mother saying something along the lines of "It was bad enough when it came out, without you playing it". My friends, meanwhile already thought I had lost the plot after I discovered The Doors and had decided I was now beyond help.
Sparks have since continued to produce a body of work which has entertained, baffled and challenged its audience in equal measure. Back in 1974, This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us would have been number 1 in the UK, if it wasn't for those pesky Rubettes with Sugar Baby Love...
WHERE TO FIND IT:
Kimono My House (Island 1974, remastered CD 2006)
The Best Of Sparks (Repertoire CD 2011)
The following clip appears to be from a European TV show. The audience are somewhat subdued. Maybe they don't know what just hit them?
Following my recent review of "Sugar Hill", this is shaping up to be a bit of a 70's black cinema mini-season, as coincidentally this popped through my letterbox as my next rental.
This time, it's Pam Grier taking centre stage. Having become a star the previous year in Jack Hill's "Coffy", she reunited with the same director for this, originally slated to be a sequel before AIP changed their mind and it was hastily rewritten as a separate flick.
As the title character, Grier is trying to help her dope dealer brother Link (Antonio Fargas, of Huggy Bear fame) go straight. It just so happens that her boyfriend Dalton (Terry Carter) is a cop undergoing plastic surgery to avoid being found by the drug pushers he has been pursuing. After falling out with his bosses, Link thinks he has found a way back into their good books when he figures out Dalton's true identity and stitches him up big time. When her man gets knocked off, Foxy decides to deal out some justice of her own...
Posing as a call girl, she works her way into a drugs and prostitution racket run by the suitably bitchy Katherine (Katherine Loder) and her typical early 70's lothario other half Steve (Peter Brown), who it becomes apparent has a wondering eye. Foxy befriends another call girl, Claudia (Juanita Brown, in one of her handful of credits before retiring prematurely from the screen in 1977), and attempts to help her get her life back on track before sowing the seeds of her targets' demise.
There follows some top notch revenge moments, a sequence where Foxy is held captive in a dingy cabin (like a trashy version of The Perils Of Pauline), and the setting-up of drug running pilot Hays (the ubiquitous Sid Haig) before Foxy gets her final revenge by... well, all I'll say is you be laughing and grimacing at the same time.
Foxy Brown is arguably not quite as good a flick as the aforementioned Coffy - it's not in quite the same gear (but not far off), and the sheer novelty factor isn't quite as strong second time around, but it's still a solid entertainment, and Foxy is still one of the iconic poster girls of this enjoyable chapter in early 70's cinema. Consider the more recent references to her: Beyonce Knowles' Foxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers: Goldmember, Loretta Devine's Reese watching the film on her security monitors and copying Foxy's moves in Urban Legend, Quentin Tarantino's own rehash of the form with Grier in Jackie Brown... Foxy's a legend.
FOOTNOTE: Thanks to Arrow Films' Blu-Ray release, you can now enjoy Foxy in High Definition! It's a great presentation overall, with a superb transfer image from a nice print. Only minor quibble: the soundtrack level seems somewhat variable, but otherwise a solid set with extras including a commentary from Jack Hill, an interview with Sid Haig and a featurette on early 70's black cinema featuring none other than Fred "The Hammer" Williamson.
US 1974 - American International Pictures
Certificate: X/18 (UK - It almost made it onto the infamous video nasties list in the 1980's before 2m48s were cut - these cuts have now been waived)
"She's sweet as sugar... with a voodoo army of the undead!"
This is likely to be the best zombie blaxploitation flick you ever see. Admittedly, it's not a field with a vast array of competition, but nonetheless it's an absolute hoot.
We start off with what appears to be a full-on voodoo ritual, accompanied by a funky number called "Supernatural Voodoo Woman". However, it turns out to be just a put-on for the tourists, at an establishment called Club Haiti. The black owner of the club has raised a few hackles with the local white Mafia, headed up by Morgan (Robert Quarry) who decides to have him picked off. So far, so usual. However, Morgan didn't reckon on widow Sugar (Marki Bey) taking over the club. Rather than take her revenge in the usual Coffy/Foxy Brown manner, Sugar instead seeks help from a voodoo priestess to summon Voodoo dude
Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley).
Thus summoned, Samedi calls on his dead servants to wake up from their slumber in the swamps, and what follows is one of the most bizarre revenge movies committed to celluloid as these zombie henchmen proceed to assist Sugar in some novel methods of dispatching with the guys who did her man wrong.
Wow, I can just imagine them pitching this to Sam Arkoff at AIP...
"So, you say it's like Foxy Brown meets Night Of The Living Dead? How cheaply and quickly can you make it?"
The zombies themselves have a truly original look, covered in dirt and cobwebs and with eyes like silver ping-pong balls (hang on, I think they are ping-pong balls... and sprayed with silver paint...) Marki Bey, meanwhile is sassy and kicks ass in the coolest way possible, whilst Don Pedro Colley knows exactly what sort of crap he's making, and overeggs his performance accordingly. Robert Quarry chews some scenery, whilst being a chauvinistic pig to his superbitch lady Celeste (Betty Ann Rees), who gets some entertaining comeuppance herself. Nobody involved seems to be taking this thing too seriously, but somehow all manage to keep a straight face. Just.
Paul Maslansky (a prolific producer, taking a rare place in the director's seat) seems to be enjoying himself too, and somehow manages to keep this potential mess rolling along nicely to its conclusion - it's a shame he didn't direct more, if you ask me.
So; Mafia hoods, zombies, blaxploitation, a funky theme song, some great one liners, dodgy '70's fashions, a cat fight between Sugar and Celeste, several entertaining deaths and a great "spooky" climax in a swamp - What's not to like?
Did I mention that I love this movie? You will never see another quite like it.
US 1974 - American International Pictures (who else but AIP would have made this flick?)
Certificate X (UK, original release)
91 minutes
DVD Releases:
ILC (UK - out of print at the time of writing)
MGM (US)
