Our founder and inspiration: Master Sardu
BLOOD ISLAND VACATION!!
Welcome to the Theatre Macabre, boys and girls. You're one stop destination for honest reviews of extreme horror movies. No judgment calls here about depravity and blood. We take our gore movies seriously and review them accordingly. And now, on to the show...
This time around, I'm reviewing another box set, THE BLOOD ISLAND VACATION. This is a quartet of monster movies made in the 60's and 70's by Phillipine director Eddie Romero. There's blood, breasts and crazed monsters. There's also lots of repetition, but I'll get that soon enough.
The series begins with BRIDES OF BLOOD (1968), where three Americans go to a tropical island. You have Dr. Paul Anderson (Kent Taylor) who's researching strange flora and fauna on the island, his horny wife Carla Anderson (Beverly Powers, better known as Beverly Hills, for two obvious reasons - who's well cast but a little long in the tooth) and Jim Farrell (John Ashley) a heroic type who works for the U.S. government and is on the island to help the natives with irrigation and shit like that. Not long into their visit they find out that native women are taking part in a lottery where the losers are tied up on the beach to be mauled and fucked to death by some mutant monster (first, it rips their tops off!) There's another scientist on the island, who turns out to have a very intimate link to the monster. Not exactly a great movie, but the kind of campy drive-in fodder that thrived in the late 60's and early 70's. BRIDES OF BLOOD has some good moments and the monster is just goofy-looking enough to bring a smile to your face. And it must have done pretty well back in 1968, because it spawned three sequels.
Which brings us to the second film in the series, and probably the most well-known, THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND(1968). This one is kind of a midnight cult classic for some reason. This time the "gringo" guests to the island are John Ashley (this time playing "Dr. Bill Foster" even though this character is exactly the same as "Jim Farrell") and pin-up model Angelique Pettyjohn as Shiela Willard, a woman who has come to Blood Island looking for her estranged (and drunkard) father. Once again, the American guests get caught up in the strange goings-on on the island. This time the evil scientist is Dr. Lorca (Ronald Remy) who has been trying to cure sick people using chlorophyll (!!) and turning them into green-blooded plant/human monsters with huge fangs and sharp claws. As you can tell, the story is very similar to BRIDES OF BLOOD, but the production values are a little better this time around, and the monster looks a helluva lot cooler and more vicious (in the first film, he looked like a muscleman with some dried lava poured on him - but that first monster reminded me an awful lot of the goofy monsters in early Roger Corman movies, so I kinda dug 'im). It's a better movie than the first one, but not by much. Still campy as hell. And Angelique Pettyjohn was one of those odd women who looks kinda ugly in some scenes and hot in others. By the end, I still couldn't tell if she was pretty or not.
The third film, BEAST OF BLOOD, is a direct sequel to MAD DOCTOR and picks up right where the previous one left off. MAD DOCTOR ended with John Ashley and Angelique Pettyjohn escaping from the Island on a boat, but the last scene shows that one of the monsters has snuck aboard. When BEAST OF BLOOD opens, the monster makes its presence known and makes mincemeat out of the boat's crew. Ashley (once again called Bill Foster, I guess they didn't want to change his character's name yet again) jumps overboard and escapes to the island. But where is Angelique Pettyjohn? She's nowhere to be seen this time around! She must have gotten airlifted out of the boat before the third movie began, I guess. Instead, she's replaced by reporter Myra Russell (Celeste Yarnall - easily the hottest female lead of these films)who wants to get the scoop on Blood Island. Once back on the island, Bill Foster investigates more murders of natives which lead him back to Dr. Lorca (now played by Eddie Garcia), who supposedly died in an explosion in MAD DOCTOR, but who is still doing his experiments in an underground lair, assisted by his ever faithful servant and thug Razak (Bruno Punzalan, who was in all three films - he was called Goro in the first one- and who is one of the few highlights). Lorca also has the severed head of the chlorophyll monster in the last movie preserved and alive - and he talks to it! He carries on full conversations with the damn thing, and at the end of this movie, the monster SPEAKS! It's the funniest damn scene in all three of the movies. He says stuff like "I'm going to get you, Lorca!" Funny shit like that. As you can see, this movie has lots of similarities to the previous two, and is just as hokey. But for some reason, I kinda dug these silly monster movies.
Which brings us to the last BLOOD ISLAND movie, BRAIN OF BLOOD (1972). Any repetitive themes this time around are tossed right out the window (thankfully!). Y'see Eddie Romero wanted to continue to cash in on the Blood Island series, but he didn't have time or inspiration for the final flick of the series, so he turned this one over to Al Adamson, that schlock master who also made such terrific no-budget classics as DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN and CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN. The first thing Adamson does is totally jettison the Phillipine location, Dr. Lorca and his chlorophyll monsters, etc. There is no real link between BRAIN and the other films, except for the appearance of Kent Taylor (the scientist from BRIDES OF BLOOD), brought back here as evil brain surgeon Dr. Lloyd Trenton. The plot of this one is typical Adamson, which means it's totally off the wall and hilarious. A Middle-Eastern leader is dying, so he's secretly brought to America to have his brain transplanted into a new body. The only scientist who would dare do such a procedure is the insane bastard Dr. Trenton (Taylor) who immediately sends his henchman - Gor (John Bloom), a retarded giant whose face was disfigured by battery acid and evil dwarf Dorro (Angelo Rossito - whose career went back to the 20's and was one of the stars of Todd Browning's FREAKS in 1932!!) to go fetch a fresh body. (Yes, there was a strange time in the early 70's where tons of movies had hulking retarded guys and evil dwarves - they were a genre of their own and I might explore this more in a later column!) The plan being that once the dictator's head is put in the new body, plastic surgery will be used to make him look like his old self and he can return to his country as if nothing ever happened (this is a typical, convoluted Al Adamson plot, which is why I loved it). Of course, something goes wrong and the body retrieved is unusable, so at the last minute, Dr. Trenton has to transplant the dictator's brain in Gor's hulking body, which eventually drives him mad! The film also stars Regina Carroll (Adamson's wife, who appeared in almost all of his movies) and Zandor Vorkov (Dracula in DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN!). It also features girls chained up in the basement to be used as human blood banks! This movie is totally insane compared to the previous three and is easily my favorite of the bunch.
These movies have had a wild reputation for years and the box set was the first time they were all collected. Unfortunately, I don't think this box set is readily available - it may be out of print (I got mine off Ebay). If you're into totally insane monster movies and stuff like Roger Corman's early classics, you might really dig these films. But you're going to have to do some real searching to find them. I thought they were enjoyable enough, if silly as hell. And I always love a chance to see another Al Adamson train wreck. So it's up to you if you think you need a BLOOD ISLAND VACATION.
GUINEA PIG ON DVD!!
Well, it's been over a year since Sardu's has been open for business, so I figured I'd start things off anew with a review of the GUINEA PIG boxed set...
For those who are into gore and extreme horror films, this one is kind of notorious. It's a set of Japanese horror films meant to shock and offend. The films had been available on bootleg tapes and the like, but it wasn't until recently that the series was released in a DVD box set by Unearthed Films. Finally, a definitive version! Needless to say, with the reputation these films have, I had to check them out.My reaction was pretty mixed. So let's take the films on one at a time:
THE DEVIL'S EXPERIMENT- this was the film that started it all. Alternately known as GUINEA PIG 1 and THE DEVIL'S EXPERIMENT. There's not much plot to it. A woman is kidnapped and worked over by a bunch of guys who start out by slapping her go on to removing her fingernails, and it just gets worse from there. In between "sessions" she's hung from a tree in a mesh bag, somewhere near the highway. Rumor has it (or is it just hype?) that there was a time when this film was under investigation for being a snuff film. But it's not. They even made a "MAKING OF" video to prove it wasn't real. For what it is - a shock film - it's effective enough. But don't come looking for this stuff if you want a story. It's just scene after scene of torture. Something to watch with the guys during some binge drinking.
FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD - easily the best title of the bunch - the second film in the series chronologically (the movies aren't in chronological order on the disks), is a variation on DEVIL'S EXPERIMENT. This time a woman is kidnapped by some strange guy who wears a samurai outfit. She wakes up tied to a bed in some kind of basement. Predictable violence ensues, ending in some dismembering with a samurai sword. When I was in college, we'd watch stuff like as kind of an endurance contest (y'know, stuff like FACES OF DEATH), but now it seems like old hat. These first two flicks are made on video and there's a kind of cinema verite feel to them (probably why the snuff film rumors got started). Once again, effective for what it is, but not much in the way of storytelling.
MERMAID IN A MANHOLE- Around this time, the series changed. I guess they realized they were repeating themselves. Unfortunately, the Guinea Pig flicks are better when they avoid actual storylines. Because while this one is probably the best of the more "commercial" GP films (for lack of a better word), it's far inferior to the first two. This is the point where we trade shock for gross-out. And shock seems to be a helluva lot more powerful. In MERMAID, a painter who is going through a dry spell goes down into the sewers where he used to hang out as a child (weird kid!) to be alone and search for inspiration. While down there, he finds a mermaid! She's hurt, so he brings her back to his studio apartment, where she promptly begins to get worse and worse as her body begins to rot away. He tries his best to comfort her, but ends up having an epiphany. Her presence has broken his dry spell! And he finds that his painting is even better when he starts adding the multi-colored pus spewing from her wounds to enliven his pallette! The end, when she dies and the authorities find out what's been going on, is one of the twist endings that you've seen a hundred times. But for a little while, the gross-out elements work, and I've always had a thing for mermaids.
ANDROID OF NOTRE DAME- Another weird one with an actual storyline. This one involves a dwarf scientist who is trying to find a cure for his (normal-sized) sister's illness. We never really find out what her illness is. To find a cure, though, he needs to experiment on human cadavers, so he buys one on the internet. Some sinister guy on the other end laughs when the purchase is made, and emails the dwarf that he can't tell anyone where he got it. We are then treated to some dissection scenes (a throwback to the first two Guinea Pig films) where limbs and eyes are removed for shock effect. The autopsy doesn't really help in the dwarf's research, but he sure seems to have a lot of fun taking that woman's corpse apart. The story then switches to a blackmail scheme as the corpse's seller tells the dwarf that she was a murder victim and seeks to extract some hush money. The little guy then exacts some bloody revenge which includes the blackmailer's head being severed and kept alive (a'la RE-ANIMATOR) and the blackmailer's female assistant/fellow grifter adding to the dwarf's pool of experiment subjects. But where are the androids? There's one point where our vertically-challenged scientist makes some weird comment about how we're all androids wandering about our lives or some shit. And that's as close to an android as we get. No Notre Dame, either. So the title more of less is just someone fucking with us. That said, ANDROID OF NOTRE DAME is okay. At least it's got an evil dwarf in it. It's not great, but it keeps you interested at least.
HE NEVER DIES- Easily the worst movie of the series, and the point where the Guinea Pig flicks change from horror, to outright comedy. A wage-earning loser who gets no respect at work goes home and tries to kill himself. But - surprise! - he can't die! It doesn't matter if he cuts off his hand and then goes on to mutilate himself more, he just keeps living. As he says at one point "I am the Immortal!" He calls a buddy over to see his newfound gifts. This one isn't funny and even though it tries to be gross, just looks stupid.
DEVIL DOCTOR WOMAN- the last of the series, stays in the vain of HE NEVER DIES and goes for complete gross-out comedy. This time an evil woman with crazy hair and a doctor's coat tells us she is the "Devil Doctor Woman" and then goes on to show us various "patients" who she then "cures" mostly by mutilating them in some way that involves lots of gore. This one has a few funny moments and the Devil Woman is suitably wacky. It's nothing great, just scene after scene trying to gross us out (it didn't do much for me), and going for lame jokes in the process. It's better than HE NEVER DIES, but not much.
Also on the box set are a couple of documentataries that show us behind the scenes on these movies. The point of these is to 1) show us that the first two movies were just actors and nobody got hurt, and 2) to show us a "greatest hits" montage of blood and gore scenes. If you've actually watched the movies before going to the greatest hits, then you really don't need to sit through it all again, and the documentaries are pretty much filler.
So that's the GUINEA PIG BOX SET in a nutshell. Is it worth shelling out $50 or whatever to see what all the hubbub is about concerning these movies? Nope. I felt kinda cheated at the end. Gimme American "shock" classics like the original TEXAS CHAINSAW or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT(or even BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, which actually does have some really funny moments) any day of the week. The first two GUINEA PIG movies at least work on a shock level, but the lack of story makes them kind of disposable (how many times can you actually watch them?) and the more "humorous" gross-out movies are pretty forgettable. If you're curious, then by all means rent them. They're crisp and clear on DVD. But don't believe the hype and the rumors. These movies are not the grossest films ever made.
THE SADIST
Back in the early 60’s, a B-movie actor named Arch Hall Jr. made a half dozen films that were produced by his father, former actor Arch Sr. For all intents and purposes, Arch Jr. was little more than an Elvis wannabe, even playing a similar rock n’ roll star, Bud Eagle, in 1962’s Wild Guitar.
Most of his films are pretty forgettable, except for two that have received special attention over the years. One is Eegah!, a campy movie about a homicidal caveman (played by Richard “Jaws” Kiel from the 007 movies – he also many of the monsters in my fave 70’s television show, Kolchak: The Night Stalker) who wakes up from a long sleep to torment a group of teenagers. Arch was the squeaky-clean hero in that one, and Eegah! has the reputation of being one of the worst films ever made, up there with the work of Ed Wood.
The other film he did of note was The Sadist, a 1963 thriller that has been singled out for the exact opposite reason Eegah! has been. In The Sadist, Hall has the role of his career, and he actually does a decent job with it.
The plot is simple enough. Three teachers (two men and a woman) are driving from their small town school to the big city to see a L.A. Dodgers baseball game. On the way, their car dies and they end up near a gas station/junkyard. While the younger male teacher goes looking around for the spare part they need to fix their car, the other two teachers find it very strange that there aren’t any other people around.
That is, not until Arch shows up. He plays Charlie Tibbs, an escaped convict who has very homicidal tendencies. He’s on the road with his girlfriend Judy and he’s the reason why the previous residents of the gas station aren’t around anymore. His car has broken down too and he decides that once the teachers fix their car, he’ll take it and head on out.
The question is, when they fix the car, will he just leave or will he kill all three of them?
The rest of the movie is a steady wave of tension as the teachers try to second guess Charlie, and he proves to be more and more unpredictable and sadistic. This is the early 60’s, so The Sadist doesn’t live up to it’s name as much as it would have if it was made in let’s say 1973, but for its time its pretty gritty, and Arch Hall Jr. does an amazing job as psycho Charlie.
In fact, his performance is downright strange. He has a very weird way of speaking in this movie, that I first found very irritating. But as it goes along, the weird voice and mannerisms actually work, and you believe this guy is unstable and capable of anything. After seeing him play whitebread Elvis clones before, I was really impressed with Hall’s departure here. Too bad he didn’t do it again. By 1965, Hall’s acting career was sadly over. So we never got a chance to see him shine again.
The girl who plays Judy, Marilyn Manning, is also pretty intense – she barely speaks and seems more than a little unstable herself. In fact, she’s just as disturbed as Charlie is, and the parallels between these characters and real-life Charles Starkweather case (which also inspired Terrence Malick’s Badlands), are too obvious to miss.
The teachers are also solid actors. You care about what happens to them, and you sweat right along with them as they try to figure out crazy Charlie’s next move.
This movie is an obscure gem that definitely deserves a rental, if you can find it. Solid script, great acting, and strong direction from James Landis, lets this movie transcend its poverty-level budget. All around a great little flick!
THE MAFU CAGE
Saw this really obscure flick back in April, and liked it so much I hunted down a copy of my own on Ebay (for only $2.99 no less!). It's a movie from 1978 called The Mafu Cage (I guess it also went by the title My Sister, My Lover at some point), and it's a doozy. Lee Grant lives with her crazy sister Carol Kane. While Lee tries to carry on a normal life, Carol paints her face and sketches monkeys, when she's not beating them to death with chains. Mafu appears to be some monkey from her childhood that has traumatic significance - hence she names all her monkey "pets" Mafu before dispatching them to the great beyond. When they were kids, the two sisters lived in Africa for awhile with their dear old dad, some kind of naturalist, which I guess explains the monkey fixation.
When Carol graduates to killing humans (Lee's potential boyfriend who threatens the idyllic life the sisters have), things get really nutty. Oh yeah, and there is a big cage in the middle of their house, with chain restraints (the actual Mafu Cage) for restraining bad monkeys (and people).
The first time I saw it was over a friend's house. We rented this from a mom and pop video store (I bet this was the first time in many years anyone had rented it!) and the lady behind the counter admitted that this movie "was okay if you're both drunk and stoned." But I disagree. I enjoyed this bizarre gem stone cold sober (well, maybe not stone cold). But then again, I've always had a thing for weird 70's movies. Although, it would have gotten higher marks if the young Carol Kane actually showed some skin and went the whole body paint route. "Oh Latka!"
Chances are slim most people would be able to find this one, but if you happen to be in a video store and see this weird little gem sitting on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust, give it a try. That is, if you have a taste for the weird.
BLOODSUCKING FREAKS!
Okay, so what better way to start off a new blog that's dedicated to a gent by the name of Sardu than with a review of the movie that started it all. Bloodsucking Freaks (aka The Incredible Torture Show) is one of those notorious 70's horror flicks that instantly pisses a lot of people off, and just as quickly brings a smile to other people's faces. Why? Because I contend that even though you'll probably find this movie in your local video store under "horror" it's more of a sick, twisted comedy.
What's it about? Well, Master Sardu has a theater in Soho called Sardu's Theatre of the Macabre (natch). People go there to see weird "shows" where horrible things happen to "actresses" before your very eyes, in Grand Guignol fashion. Unfortunately, the poor actresses aren't acting. It's all for real. The unsuspecting audience just thinks its bad gore effects, but actually Sardu is also a white slaver with delusions of being a theatre impressario.
But ol' Sardu wants to go legit, so he kidnaps Natasha DeNatalie, the famous ballerina, to star in his next production. Of course her boyfriend the quarterback starts snooping around, with the help of corrupt NYPD cop Tucci. There's also an angry theater critic who is abducted to be "front row center" on opening night, a "doctor" who sucks brains through a straw, and a dancing dwarf with an afro!
If you like the movies of Herschell Gordon Lewis (and who doesn't!), you're gonna love this one. The cheesy gore effects are part of the charm, and the minimal plot, goofy acting and dark sense of humor throuhgout make this a midnight classic. The best scenes are of Sardu and his dwarf assistant, Ralphus. These two take male bonding to a new level, whether it involves darts (using asses as targets) or backgammon (using real "ladyfingers" as wagers). Sure it's not for the weak and the squeamish, but it's a lot of fun if you have a particularly demented sense of humor.
Some facts: This film, directed by Joel M. Reed, is one of the first movies that Troma ever distributed, and it was once picketed in Times Square by the National Organization of Women (not sure why they'd bother - this is a pretty obscure flick). According to the Internet Movie Database, Louis DeJesus, who plays Ralphus, first made a name for himself in porno as "The Anal Dwarf." He can also be seen in the futuristic (with more plot than usual) porno flick Ultraflesh. Also, Seamus O'Brien who played the illustrious Sardu was also appearing on Broadway in the musical The Fantasticks at the same time he was filming Bloodsucking Freaks. This was also his last (only?) movie, as he was soon afterwards murdered in his home by a burgular (!), which is depressing news indeed for anyone who enjoyed his performance in this film. He's quite a character, sometimes described as "a poor man's Vincent Price."
So what is this blog all about? We'll be talking about really weird fucking movies here. Ones that you might not talk about in polite company. So pull up a seat, rev up your chainsaws, and enjoy the ride!
