The film opens with Blindman (Tony Anthony) riding into a western town. It seems like a ghost town as all the streets are deserted. He rides back and forth, around and around. Finally a door opens and a scrawny looking fellow pops out. He approaches Blindman who climbs down from his horse. Blindman inquires about a man named ‘Trouble’ — get it? He’s looking for trouble! The scrawny man directs him to the undertakers where Trouble is holed up. Blindman walks down the street towards the undertakers, but to wake up the townsfolk and alert everyone to his arrival, as he walks, he shoots at the bell in the church tower. The ringing wakes everybody, and Trouble comes to greet the Blindman.

Sometimes, things that are great on their own become horrible when mixed. That’s when you get things like “rap-metal.” Sometimes however, the blending is a success, and results in things like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or biker movies with werewolves in them. Werewolves on Wheels is able to successfully blend supernatural Satan mumbo-jumbo with all the brawling, drinking, drugging and driving around we’ve come to expect from biker movies. Most of the bikers were stuntmen, which explains their ease driving the choppers. Their dialogue and interaction seems unscripted and is excellently improvised. If it was written, then the mostly-first time actors do an amazing job of making the words flow naturally, which if you’ve ever watched student films or anything by Kevin Smith, you’ll realize is pretty damn hard to pull off.

In fact, the only break in Pirkle’s robotic harangue occurs, quite effectively, during the film’s fading final seconds. Films such as Footmen, as mentioned before, would typically be shown in small churches, and would be followed by an altar call, during which those audience members who had yet to do so, shaken by what they had seen, would step forward and, just as Judy had done at the film’s conclusion, accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. As a prelude to that moment, Pirkle looks into the camera as the closing music swells and, in a tone that is suddenly both gentle and beseeching, softly repeats the words “Won’t you come?”

In addition to his loyal crew of tiresome oafs, Swing also has at his side his busty perpetual fiance Betty. At first it seems that Betty is only on hand to provide eye candy, as she spends much of the film’s first half dancing suggestively around the campfire for the benefit of Swing and his men and carting around an impressive pair of jugs. As the story progresses, however, Betty proves, in the best Turkish cinema tradition, to be quite a fighter in her own right, taking on a somewhat pointless undercover mission that involves her dressing as an Indian squaw and ultimately leading a climactic charge that saves the hide of the hopelessly outgunned Swing.

American cinematic portrayals of voodoo, and of anything even related to African or Afro-Caribbean culture, might historically have tended to be reprehensible, but it’s hard not to at least enjoy a movie which begins with a cackling dwarf. As the opening scenes unfold, the dwarf (played by ostensible Mexican mainstay Santanon) alternately cackles in riotously [...]

1971, Japan. Starring Reiko Oshida, Masumi Tachibana, Yukie Kagawa, Meiko Tsudoi, Yumiko Katayama, Yoko Ichiji, Reiko Maruyama, Junzaburo Ban, Tonpei Hidari, Nobuo Kaneko, Tsunehiko Watase. Directed by Kazuhiko Yamaguchi. Man, it’s amazing what a little foul health can do to your burning desire to review somewhat obscure girl gang movies in which Japanese chicks in [...]

But the film appeals to me never the less, perhaps because I can sympathize and relate to Franco’s weird pacing and personal quirks. There are times when I simply can’t struggle through one of his films — A Virgin Among the Living Dead remains to this day one of the most excruciating chores to finish that I’ve ever failed at completing — but The Devil Came from Akasava is much breezier, eye-catching and fun, helped in large part by Franco’s dwelling on Soledad Miranda, a goofy spy plot, and some really good Euro-lounge cocktail music, which gets better when it’s employed at really inopportune times that should be tense and exciting save for the breathless “la de do za zu!” female vocals accompanying the action.

Bay establishes all the essential genre cliches that would be mercilessly flogged some ten years or so later. You have the remote, wooded location and a seemingly complete lack of police force. You have the diverse group of generally unlikable characters. You have most of those characters getting murdered by sometimes outlandish methods, then piled up in some central location for someone else to stumble across. And perhaps most important of all, you have the founding of the “get naked, then get killed” pattern that became the lifeblood, so to speak, of the entire slasher genre. Bava flirted with nudity in previous films, but it was generally incidental — who would make a movie with Edwige Fenech, for instance, and not get her naked for at least a couple shots?

There comes a time in a man’s life when he simply can’t stand the thought of sitting through another Spanish devil-worshiper movie from the 1970s. For me, that time came a mere two films into my exploration of Spanish devil worshiper movies from the 1970s. I admit, I am weak. I thought I could take [...]

Release Year: 1971 Country: United States Starring: Jason Robards, Herbert Lom, Christine Kaufmann, Adolfo Celi, Maria Perschy, Michael Dunn, Lilli Palmer, Peter Arne, Rosalind Elliot, Marshall Jones, Maria Martin, Ruth Plattes. Writer: Christopher Wicking and Henry Slesar Director: Gordon Hessler Cinematographer: Manuel Berenguer Music: Waldo de los Rios Producer: Louis Heyward Director Gordon Hessler is [...]

It’s a shame that Hammer didn’t take more risks with unique material during the 1970s instead of going the route they went, which was to film the same things over and over but with lower budget, lesser actors, and more boobs. I mean, the more boobs part was fine, but it still shows that rather than being a trend-setter, Hammer had become a trend follower desperate to attract attention to themselves in whatever way possible. Granted the entire British film industry was in a bit of a moribund state at the time. But rocky though the 70s may have been for Hammer, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is a stand-out that, while perhaps not keeping pace with the company at its best, certainly makes for solid b-movie material.

1971, United States/Britain. Starring Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, Terence Bayler, John Stride, Nicholas Selby, Stephen Chase, Paul Shelley, Maisie MacFarquhar, Elsie Taylor, Noelle Rimmington. Directed by Roman Polanski. Buy it from Amazon. So this is what a Playboy-produced film used to look like. You know, back before they modeled themselves after their brainless [...]