The Good, The Bad and the Living Dead

So, Ive been continuing my journey through a slew of low rent movies, courtesy of my Roku box.  This week I've already caught a couple of dubious horror films on one of those streaming channels that offer a variety of channels via the one app.  In this case, one of those channels is a linear ad-supported streaming version of Horrormax, showing, it seems, a selection of the worst movies from their library, (and that's saying something),  Anyway, I caught a double bill that kicked off with something billed on the EPG as A Haunting in New Jersey, which turned to actually be A Haunting in New England (aka Provoked, aka American Poltergeist).  From the off, this felt like one of those glorified 'home movies' we see too many of on streaming services nowadays, albeit with slightly better production values than average.  To be fair, it started reasonably well, with a team of TV ghost hunters drawing a blank at a supposedly haunted house.  Not an original scenario, but decently set up.  Following this disappointment, they try again, at a house whose occupants have been experiencing all sorts of weird shit.  Again, though, the team come up blank, with one of them so exasperated, he resorts to trying to call out the supposed entity haunting the property.  Inevitably, when he returns home, he finds that the entity has followed him home and it proceeds to menace him and his girlfriend with some low budget poltergeist activity.  The problem the film has is that not only does it never develop this idea sufficiently, but by taking this sudden plot turn, it abandons virtually all of the characters and the scenario it had spent the first half of the film setting up.  Various relationships and tensions between the team had been established, then forgotten about as it suddenly switched focus to only a single member of the team.  In the end, it chooses to follow an entirely predictable path, rolling to a completely unsurprising conclusion.

It was followed by Bruno Mattei's entry into the eighties zombie cycle, Hell of the Living Dead (aka Zombie Creeping Flesh and a plethora of other titles, depending upon where and when you saw it).  While largely inept, it at least has the virtue of being entertainingly schlocky.  While the credits proudly proclaim that the music is by Goblin, they don't mention that the makers were unable to afford to commission an original score, instead getting the rights to use a mash up of bits of Goblin scores from other films.  Which pretty much sums up the slipshod nature of the project.  Supposedly set in Papua, New Guinea, but, for budgetary reasons actually shot in Spain, it tries to convince us that we're in Papua by inserting bits of stock footage of jungles and wildlife.  Unfortunately, these seem to have been randomly lifted from wildlife films, possibly Mondos, with little regard for accuracy - I'm pretty sure, for instance, that there are no elephants in New Guinea, certainly not charging about in herds.  Just about every cliche of the genre is present: the jungle settings, the native village, the crack commando team composed entirely of trigger happy psychotics, Edward Mannix's voice dubbing their leader in the English language version and a plucky lady journalist heroine.  There's plenty of zombie action, with hordes of them being mown down by the commandos at regular intervals as they try to reach the mysterious chemical plant which lies at the centre of this outbreak of the living dead.  (This is another one of those eighties Italian films where people blast away with Tommy guns, a weapon obsolete for at least thirty years at this point - Italian props suppliers and armourers clearly obtained large numbers of them at some point and persisted in using them as props).  We even get a reprise of that recurring theme from Italian jungle films - that the best way to placate dangerous natives is by having a white woman bare her breasts at them.  Like I say, utterly slipshod, but hugely enjoyable.

Finally, yesterday I caught, courtesy of Otherworlds TV (a fairly obscure Roku channel that, nonetheless, shows some interesting cult and schlock movies across a range of genres), a 1969 Hong Kong action comedy crime movie Temptress of a Thousand Faces.  A wild and wonderful Shaw Brothers production, it pits a young police woman against the titular villainness, who is a master (or mistress) of disguise. It features furious kung fu fights, gun fights and car chases, with the villainness operating from a typically sixties underground lair.  Confusion abounds as she steals the heroine's identity to discredit her, particularly befuddling a pair of comic relief uniform cops.  As always with this channel, the print shown was of excellent quality, highlighting the excellent colour photography and decor of the underground lair.  It moves along at a breakneck speed for a  a very entertaining eighty minutes or so - it is well worth looking out for.