The Fish With the Eyes of Gold (1974)

A Spanish-made entry in the Giallo genre, The Fish With the Eyes of Gold (1974) certainly has a title worthy of any pure-bred Italian Giallo, but otherwise falls somewhat short of being a successful entry in the genre.  It isn't as if it doesn't have all of the ingredients you'd expect for this type of film: an incredibly complicated plot, lots of misdirection with regard to the killer's true identity, plot twists which seem to come out of nowhere, lots of murders and interesting locations. It also boasts plenty of gore, as the murders are all pretty bloody.  But somehow, it just ever really seems to come together satisfactorily.  It gets off to a great, intriguing, opening, with a female tourist on a beach being stalked by a frogman, who eventually emerges from the water to stab her to death, with a passer-by in a boat coming upon the scene and glimpsing the killer as they escape.  But ultimately this turns out to be the first of a series of misdirections which are to characterise the plot as it unfolds.  The misdirection is even telegraphed, with the sight of the bloodstained female victim triggering a psychological reaction in the witness (and subsequently a flashback to a childhood memory of seeing his mother being stabbed to death by his father - accompanied by a spilled bowlful of goldflish flopping around on the carpet).  The striking violence of the opening is followed up post-credits with the introduction of the main character, hitch hiking along a nearby road, who is picked up by a young woman who has just fallen out with her boyfriend and ends up in bed with her in an hotel room, only to wake up to find her bloody body next to him.

Unfortunately, director Pedro L. Ramirez never manages to build on these opening scenes, with the pace slowing down as the script takes the film through a series of convoluted double crosses as various characters are offered up as suspects, before being either murdered or cleared by having other murders occur where they have an alibi.  Despite the hero's propensity for turning up in the same vicinity as the bodies, the police detective investigating the killings never seriously entertains him as a suspect, (obviously he's seen a few Giallo movies himself).  But always, no matter which way the plot twists and turns, we can't get away from the fact that the identity of the killer was clearly signaled from the outset - the other suspects offered up are either too obvious or insufficiently motivated.  The only really effective trick the film has up its sleeve when it comes to diverting attention from the real killer is that it turns out that there are actually two murderers on the prowl - the first responsible only for the initial killing, the other using this as a cover for their own killings by using a similar method.  (A similar plot device was subsequently used by Dario Argento in Tenebrae (1982).)  In an additional complication, the first killer is simultaneously pursuing a vendetta against the second and makes several attempts on their life in the course of the film.

It isn't just the lack of pace - which robs the film of any sense of urgency - that undermines the execution of this complex plot.  Despite shooting against some interesting sun-drenched Spanish coastal locations, including an aquarium full of exotic fishes, there something curiously flat and engaging about Ramirez's direction, which never feels like it is getting the best out of these backdrops.  They never spring into life or exude any atmosphere, simply sitting passively as the action goes by.  The murders too, with the exception of the first, are likewise rather perfunctorily filmed, with none of the panache or artistic flourishes usually associated with the genre.   The script also fails to make the most out of its main protagonist's outsider status - he is apparently an Englishman who works in the record industry, in the locale to visit his artist friend and his wife.  Yet this status makes him neither any more of a suspect than anyone local, nor does it give him any special insight into the local community and the murders, as one might expect.  The titular 'fish with the eyes of gold' is a piece of jewellery worn by the second victim which is taken by the killer, possibly because it might be an indicator of their identity.  Although, as it turns out, it, along with all the comments about the killer being 'fish obsessed', is simply another red herring - it is the drawing it is based upon which turns out to be the key to identifying the killer.  Overall, in spite of its shortcomings, The Fish With the Eyes of Gold is still an enjoyable enough ninety minutes of Giallo mayhem.  Certainly, some of the early scenes are memorable and the whole business of the hero waking to the dead body and his reaction do work in throwing the viewer off kilter, questioning whether or not he might be responsible - but then the plot mechanics kick in and this plot line peters out as other misdirections and diversions pile up.  At the end of the day, it is only a middling entry in the genre, never summoning up the sustained atmosphere of feverish uneasiness and borderline surrealism that characterises the best Giallos.

The Death Boat

I was watching an episode of The Love Boat recently and it occurred to me that they don't have many murders aboard that cruise ship. Any murders, in fact.  (Unless there is an episode out there that I've never come across, where a serial killer stalks the decks).  Which set me to thinking what a missed opportunity for a spin off they had there.  Now, as I understand it - and I'm willing to stand corrected here - if a crime takes place upon a ship while it is in international waters, then the responsibility for investigating it ultimately lies with the law enforcement agencies of the country of its registration.  (Ships are governed by the laws of whichever country they are registered to while at sea - while in port or the territorial waters of a country, then they are subject to local laws).  There was, I recall, a case of a crew member disappearing from a US based cruise ship, but as it happened in international waters and the ship was registered in the Bahamas, when it completed its cruise and docked in LA, a police detective had to be sent from the Bahamas to conduct an official investigation.  (Jon Ronson wrote an article about it: 'Lost at Sea').  Anyway, getting back to the point - surely there's an opportunity for a TV series about a hapless Scotland Yard detective assigned to a UK-registered cruise ship that suffers from an abnormally high number of murders and serious crimes?

Such a scenario is surely no more ridiculous than, say, Death in Paradise, where that tiny tropical island seems to be plagued by the world's highest homicide rate?  It comes with all sorts of plus features: exotic locations as the ship cruises around the world, a legitimate excuse for an ever changing roster of guest stars as new passengers embark combined with the need for a single principal location for the main action: the ship itself.  There would be plenty of opportunities to establish a regular cast, too, in the form of the ship's crew.  Indeed, you could have the detective's hilarious weekly encounters with the disapproving captain, who doesn't appreciate the murders and their investigation upsetting the smooth running of his ship, as a regular comedic high point.  You could add in stuff like the detective suffering from sea sickness to add to the comedy.  Maybe he could be claustrophobic, as well, but assigned to the tiniest, most cramped cabin on the ship - more hilarity guaranteed.  At first I though that you could call it something like 'The Cruise Detective' or 'Death at Sea', but then it occurred to me that there was a far more obvious title: 'The Death Boat'.  (If anything like this turns up on TV, then I'm suing).

Political Gifts and Grifts

It's often been remarked that it is a miracle that Labour governments ever get elected in the UK bearing in mind that the majority of the country's media is rabidly pro-Tory.  Indeed, these days it seems to have traveled even further right, with outlets like GB News, (OK, I know that only three sad bastards and a dog watch it, but its miserable, shouty and hateful output seems to spread everywhere, thanks to the aforementioned Tory press), openly showing admiration for extreme right outfits like Reform.  I swear that we're only a hair's breadth away from the Express or Mail endorsing Tommy Robinson and printing 'Hurrah for the Black Shirts' as a headline.  But it is equally a miracle that, when they are elected, Labour governments are able to govern, so relentless is the stream of disinformation and bile directed at them in an attempt to destabilise them.  Obviously, most of this comes from the right-wing media, but, right now, some of the most poisonous invective is coming from, yeah, you guessed it, the Cult of Corbyn.  Still smarting from the fact that Labour under Starmer has managed to do - at the first attempt - what their guy couldn't achieve at all - winning a general election - they now seem determined to revel in every piece of shit thrown at Labour by the media they profess to hate and have always claimed fabricates stories against the Labour Party.

Now, there's no denying that, having lambasted the Tories for corruption and cronyism, it isn't a good look for the new Labour government's senior members to be accepting freebies from donors, (although, it isn't illegal or necessarily unethical), but let's not forget that the same press gleefully reporting this spent a lot of time defending Boris Johnson for accepting hospitality, holidays and even home decor from his wealth supporters.  There's a lot of hypocrisy involved here, plus, there's a long history of senior politicians, of all stripes, accepting the offer of things like holiday homes from donors and celebrities, which, in the past, has never elicited a murmur from the press.  Equally hypocritical is the non-story about Sue Gray's (Starmer's Chief of Staff) pay - 'Oh look, she earns more than the PM!  Isn't that terrible!  What a scandal!'  Except that it isn't any of those things, despite the BBC (who broke the 'story') defiantly running a headline in the aftermath reading 'Why Sue Gray's Salary Matters'.  Of course, it migt have helped if, from the outset they had been honest in pointing out that many senior civil servants earn more than the PM - as does the reporter behind the story (he earns far more than Gray, as it happens).  As the right likes to tell us, ad nauseum, if you want the best people, you have to give them top pay.  

The point is that, not only isn't any of this new, but you can pint the finger at just about anyone in political circles and you can be sure that they will have accepted hospitality, gifts, been involved in dubious fund-raising or are arguably overpaid.  Which brings us back to the Cult of Corbyn and their blessed Messiah.  That's right, even the saintly Jeremy Corbyn, (who can apparently walk on water, miraculously turn fruit into jam and cure lumbago with his touch), is guilty of involvement with some questionable money matters.  Now, I'm not saying that he is corrupt or has accepted backhanders, but some of us do remember those campaigns his acolytes ran on social media, trying to get donations from people to pay for a defence fund when he was apparently facing multiple libel charges.  I know that, in the UK, libel cases can be expensive and the penalties if you lose them steep, but the reality is that an MP's pay is way in excess of that of any of the people that these supporters were trying to grift money from.  Moreover, Corbyn himself doesn't exactly live in penury - he's got a bob or two in the bank, owns property, etc.  So, frankly, he can pay for his own legal defences.  I have absolutely no idea how much these campaigns raised, or how it was disbursed.  Certainly, I don't recall any of these cases going to court (I'm sure the right-wing press would have been all over them).  I'm prepared to believe that there was no impropriety on the part of the pious former Labour leader himself, but the fact is that even he can be tainted by association - something his Holier-than-thou followers should remember next time they gloat at some supposed scandal the right-wing press cook up against Starmer and his government.

(Don't worry, I'll be working my way back to the schlocky movies and pop culture in due course - it's just that most of the movies I've seen recently were re-watches of stuff I've already written up here.  Plus, there's a whole load of other stuff going on in the world that I've been feeling the urge to rant about).

No Justice for Vigilantes

As noted yesterday, when discussing One Man Jury (1978), vigilante movies of this ilk are predicated upon the dubious thesis that the justice system is unfairly stacked in favour of the accused, thereby justifying their heroes taking the law into their own hands.  What has always struck me, though, is that none of them seem to have sufficient confidence in this thesis to put it to the test  by having their hero actually indicted for their crimes, but getting off because of a clever lawyer who exploits various legal loopholes and technicalities.  I may, of course. be mistaken: there could be such a film out there that I haven't seen and I'm happy to stand corrected.  But even if this is the case, it remains true that the overwhelming majority of vigilante movies aren't willing to explore this avenue.  Largely, I suspect, because, in some ways it disproves their theory, demonstrating that, despite all of its alleged flaws, the system can still be used to deliver what they would consider to be the right result.  Except of course, that it wouldn't be the right result as far as any rational viewer is concerned.  Sure, we could enjoy the irony in such a situation, but the fact is that justice ultimately requires that those who break the law should be properly held to account.

But that's the crux of the contradiction that lies at the heart of the vigilante movie:  while on the one hand remonstrating against a system that allegedly ensures that the guilty don't get punished, it simultaneously demands that its own law-breaking hero be spared justice.  Because these films, particularly the vigilante cop variety, never want to actually examine their heroes' culpability in the failures of justice that trigger their plots.  More often than not, the 'technicality' that the bad guys get off on is that the investigating detective, the hero of piece, had in some way violated their rights when arresting them, had obtained evidence illegally or generally had simply failed to follow established legal procedures.  It has nothing to do with flaws in the system or its alleged bias toward the accused, it has everything to do with flawed investigations carried out by the hero.  All of which is equally true in real life, where miscarriages of justice are inevitably the result of police and/or prosecutors failing follow up leads implicating other suspects, ignoring evidence and/or witnesses or simply failing to look for additional evidence.  In both fiction and real life, courts can only determine the outcome of cases on the basis of the evidence submitted - if crucial evidence is omitted or ruled inadmissible, then that is the responsibility of the prosecution and its investigators.

Obviously, though, none of that interests the makers of these films who just want to to advance the simplistic idea of a biased justice system that puts criminals back on the streets.  The fundamental basis of the justice system used in most of the English-speaking world is that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, (and therefore entitled to the same rights as every other citizen up to the point that they are convicted), is conveniently ignored.  As is the fact that all the rules and procedures that their heroes happily violate in the name 'justice' are designed to protect, not just the accused, but all of society - believe me, those who loudly decry them would suddenly be grateful for them if they were to find themselves falsely accused of a crime.  The system isn't perfect, but it is just about the best we have right now.  But hey, you are probably thinking, this is all a bit heavy isn't it?  After all, we're only talking about cheap exploitation films here, not real life.  Which, to some extent is true.  But, unfortunately, this sort of stuff isn't just contained to films - they tend to take their cue from the wider media and there are sections of the media, not to mention politicians, who like to advance this same view of the justice system, calling for human rights to be scaled back, (after all, it's only the guilty who hide behind them, right?), trial by jury to be restricted, standards of evidence to be lowered and the right to silence (a cornerstone of the assumption of innocence which underpins the whole system) to be abolished.  The films, in turn, feed this stuff back into the public consciousness and amplify it.  Which is why it is important to counter these false assumptions whenever we encounter them.

One Man Jury (1978)

Dirty Harry (1971) and Death Wish (1974) have a lot to answer for, unleashing a cinematic deluge of rogue cops and 'decent ordinary citizens' taking the law into their own hands and blowing away anyone they suspect of being a wrong doer.  One Man Jury (1978) tries to up the ante by combining both genres: its cop hero doesn't just bend the rules and deny scumbag criminals their rights every so often, he goes full on vigilante, cold bloodedly shooting suspects.  Of course, Magnum Force (1973), the first sequel to Dirty Harry, features a group of vigilante cops dispensing 'justice' to those the courts apparently can't touch, but the plot puts them in opposition to Harry Callaghan - he's just a rogue cop, not a vigilante cop, who only beats up suspects, rather than shooting them.  One Man Jury, however, clearly wants the audience to identify with its vigilante cop hero, as it parades a gallery of utter scumbag gangsters, rapists and serial killers before viewers, all of whom are constantly set free to terrorise the public by an overly liberal justice system.  The film's hero might well end up facing his own form of justice in a twist ending, but it is clear that we're still meant leave the cinema thinking tat, bay and large, he was entirely justified in his campaign of extra-judicial 'justice'.

Of course, such reactionary attitudes could be overlooked if the film itself was excitingly made, with good characterisation, well-staged set pieces and plenty of suspense.  Unfortunately, despite some superficially good production values, it is a somewhat roughly made film, that falls well below the standards set by the first couple of 'Dirty Harry' movies for this sort of film.  Its slackly directed plot is all over the place, jumping between sub-plots in a way which fatally slows down the action and prevents it building any kind of rhythm.  While it is clearly trying to imitate the 'Dirty Harry' films, which frequently feature their hero in various vignettes unconnected to the main plot, unlike those films, it doesn't use these deviations to develop aspects of its main character or more clearly establish his main traits.  Moreover, in the 'Dirty Harry' series, these vignettes are never allowed to slow down or distract from the main plot.  One of the main problems of One Man Jury is that its main character never actually develops in any way - his attitudes are clearly established early on and never change.  He learns nothing from his experiences, remaining unchanged by them.  

I had hopes for One Man Jury's entertainment value based upon the fact that the lead is played by Jack Palance - you'd expect any rogue cop played by him to be so rampantly reactionary that he'd regard Dirty Harry as a limp-wristed liberal.  His performance, however, is curiously subdued, nowhere near the lunatic intensity of his scenery chewing antics in things like Hawk the Slayer or The Warning, although One Man Jury's subject matter is just crying out for such excesses - it would have enlivened the film no end.  Part of the doubtless lies with the fact that his character doesn't make a great of sense: a reactionary lawman who believes that the 'system' as it stands is incapable of delivering justice, yet remains part of that system by not only serving as a cop, but also teaching criminology classes in his spare time!  He eschews 'liberal values' while still quite happily shacking up with a much younger woman, who is also one of his students.  There is no nuance to the character, none of the ambiguity displayed by Clint Eastwood's Harry Callaghan and certainly no exploration of the validity of his beliefs.  There is a fairly decent supporting cast, including Chris Mitchum, (as Palance's partner) and Joe Spinell and Andy Romano as hoods, but, like Palance, they struggle to make any impact in the face of a stodgy script. One Man Jury, in the final analysis, is simply an attempt to cash-in on the success of a cycle of films of which both the official sequels to the originals (Dirty Harry and Death Wish) and their imitators were already running out of steam.  The most surprising thing about One Man Jury was that it wasn't an Italian production, as it has all the hall marks of a cheap Italian rip off.

Games Review Vol 2 Issue 8 May 1990

Another rummage in that box of old magazines in the spare room has yielded this May 1990 issue of Games Review.  As the title implies, it reviewed games, predominantly role playing games, as they were the big thing at the time, but also war games and early video games.  As an independent publication, it could cover all publishers' products, rather than being tied to one particular games publisher.  So in this issue, for instance, we get articles on new scenarios for TSR's Advanced Dundeons and Dragons and Chaosiun's Call of Cthulu and Stormbringer, for instance, while the war gaming items included reviews f a new module for Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader and an over view of GDW's 'Europa' system of modular board war games which aimed to provide an operational level simulation covering the whole of World War Two.  There are also reviews of several science fiction board games, (which were also popular in the nineties) including O.G.R.E from Steve Jackson Games.

So far, this is the only issue of Games Review that I've turned up - but there are several more, larger boxes (crates, really) of stuff lurking under the base boards of the model railway.  While most of these are used for storing old issues of model railway magazines, there are three more, to which I currently have only limited access due to the arrangement of the base board's support legs, the nearest of which seems to mainly contain old issues of Interzone, a UK science fiction magazine I once subscribed to, plus a number of old comics and film magazines.  It is unclear exactly what is in the other ywo boxes, other than that they appear to be yet more magazines of some description - I'm afraid that it has been so long since I looked at any of them, I honestly don't recall their contents.Hopefully, as I continue my clear out of the spare room and start expanding the model railway, I'll get better access to them and see if they contain anything interesting.

A Mercy Killing?

Another week, another fake Trump assassination attempt.  This latest one, with some nut allegedly hiding on a golf course and being frightened off by the Secret Service firing their guns is simply pathetic.  They couldn't even be bothered to have the would be alleged assassin in the same frame, so to speak, as Trump.  But we shouldn't expect anything else - as ever it is a clear attempt to divert attention from other issues - in this case Trump's abysmal performance in his debate with Kamala Harris - and paint Trump as a victim of evil plots against him.  Believe me, if he start slipping further behind in the polls, we'll see yet more 'assassination attempts'.  They will probably end up with someone trying to get him in the face with a custard pie, so lamentable is their execution.  Yeah, I know, it is outrageous of me to be making light of such things but so long as Trump and his loonies keep on spreading laughable conspiracy theories, I'm going to keep on coming up with my own idiotic conspiracy theories about their idol.  To be quite frank, if someone was to actually assassinate Trump before the election then it would surely be seen as a mercy killing.  Not that I'm condoning or encouraging political violence, but surely putting this sad, demented old man out of his misery would be to do American democracy a favour.  

The serious question here is why on earth can't large swathes of the US electorate and media see Trump for what he is - an insincere, utterly venal and egotistical charlatan spewing barely coherent, hate filled, nonsense?  Why aren't the US media highlighting the total absence of any actual policy initiatives in any of his burblings?  Why do they not expose his chicanery and obvious lies?  Perhaps, in truth, they do see all of this, but simply don't care.  The fact that he is apparently certifiably insane is irrelevant to many of his supporters and the right-wing media - he is simply seen as a convenient enabler for a cabal of right-wing extremists who would otherwise never get anywhere near power.  But Trump is the key who can unlock the White House for them and give them access to every level of the US government, which they intend to dismantle and remake into a agent for their narrow ends.  Crazy Donald has already shown that he has no regard for the democratic process, the courts, even the Constitution, (with which he regularly wipes his arse), which makes him the perfect front man for the extreme right.  Yeah, I know, I'm ranting.  Again.  But I had a taxing journey home from the coast today, beset by idiot drivers who seemed to think that the rules of the road don't apply to them.  In a way, they are what Trump (and his UK relatives like Farage) represent in microcosm: an obsession with narrow self interest at the cost of everyone else.

Behind Locked Doors (1968) - in Full

I did this one as a 'Random Movie Trailer' a couple of years ago, as I'd been intrigued by the trailer, which, at the time, the American Horrors Roku channel seemed to play incessantly between movies, and I'd been unable to track down a copy of the complete film.  Well, thanks to another of those dodgy Roku channels I spend far too much time watching, I was finally able to see Behind Locked Doors (1968) in all of its sleazy glory.  Checking back on what I'd written about the trailer, I noted then that the trailer was so magnificently tawdry that the actual film could surely never live up to the low rent thrills it promised.  Sadly, my past self was proven right: Behind Locked Doors in its entirety turned out to be a disappointingly tame nudie pic, never delivering on the sort of kinkiness both it trailer and premise seem to promise.  It is also painfully slow moving, taking an age to get properly started and, not surprisingly, full of clunky dialogue delivered by wooden actors.  To recap from the earlier post, the film concerns two girls from the city, Terry and Ann, who find themselves stranded in a remote rural area after attending a party in a barn and find shelter with the mysterious Mr Bradley (who had earlier rescued Ann from being sexually assaulted at the party and sounds as if he doing a bad Noel Coward impersonation), his sister and their mentally impaired handyman.  They quickly realise that they are prisoners in the Bradleys' house, where Mr Bradley plans to use them as his latest subjects in his 'sexual experiments' - all part of his quest for the perfect mate.  

Unfortunately, these 'experiments' seem to be very tame, generally consisting him of getting them naked, tying them to a bed and forcing them to have sex with him.  None of the sex is graphic and there is no full frontal nudity, just lots of bare bums and boobs.  There is also absolutely no kinkiness on offer - the closest we come to that is Ann getting a stroke of the whip from Bradley's sister when she is unco-operative - but even this isn't actually shown:  we just hear the crack of the whip and Ann's scream before a quick cut to the whip in the sister's hand.  Otherwise, the only other perversion on show is some implied necrophilia as the handyman touches up three embalmed previous victims down in the basement.  These three victims provide the film's only particularly effective moment, as they seem to come back to life as Bradley burns to death in the cellar, slowly turning their head to watch his agonies.  The film's problem is that it really doesn't know what it wants to be: on one level it seems to want to be a sexed-up and pervy 'Old Dark House' type of horror thriller, complete with something nasty in the cellar, but it simply isn't thrilling enough to achieve this, with zero suspense and plodding pace that telegraphs every plot development well in advance. On another level, it clearly wants to be some kind of kinky porno film, hinting at S&M and all sorts of other perversions, but fails to deliver on all counts, instead offering only coy sex and nudity and some very tame lesbianism.  Even the ending, where the girls escape, but the story then goes back to that party, implying it was all a dream, (although whose we're not sure, unless both Ann and Terry experienced a shared nightmare), with them making different choices than before (presumably as a result of their dream experiences) feels fumbled. Terry now hooks up with another girl, while Ann goes off with the guy who tried to force himself on her at the start of the film, (having, presumably, decided that being raped by a young bearded guy she knows is preferable to being raped by a strange weirdo who speaks like a bad Noel Coward impersonator).  

So, is there anything of merit about Behind Locked Doors?  Well, it is unintentionally quite funny, what with Bradley's bizarre faux-English accent and over-acting, not to mention the stereotypically lumbering and clearly sexually frustrated handyman.  Some of the scenes in the house are occasionally atmospheric, largely due to the claustrophobically cramped rooms and the over-poweringly oppressive red decor in the hall ways.  There is also a sequence where Terry is chased across a field by the handyman which is actually quite well filmed and surprisingly effective.  As already alluded to, the colour palette is interesting, with the house's interior contrasting between the deep red corridors and pale, anemic looking decor of most of the rooms, (although this could simply be the result of a poor quality print - the version I saw looked distinctly washed out in the exterior scenes and was badly scratched, which, perversely, always seems to enhance the viewing experience where exploitation films are concerned, making watching them seem even more of a furtive pleasure).  I'm glad to have finally seen Behind Locked Doors in its entirety, even if it was predictably disappointing, as it remains a good example of this sort of softcore, non-explicit, sexploitation film that teases rather than delivers.

Sugar Hill (1974)

While George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) might have propelled the zombie into the front ranks of movie monsters, transforming it from the supernaturally created shambling brainless and aimless hulk of tradition, into a ravenous, unstoppable cannibal intent upon eating your brains, you could still throwbacks to their earlier cinematic incarnation.  Sugar Hill (1974) being one such example, returning its zombies to their roots as creatures of Voodoo, the raised living corpses of slaves transported from Guinea to the US.  Its traditional zombies aren't the film's only notable feature, as Sugar Hill is also an AIP Blaxploitation film, with its action firmly set in the seventies and racial politics to the fore in its plot.  Having already given us a pair of popular Blaxploitation horror films featuring the vampire Blacula, it doubtless seemed only logical to follow those up with a black zombie movie (someone had already done Blackenstein (1973), which had done poorly at the box office).  After all, Voodoo and zombies were, by tradition, part of black culture, (never mind that Voodoo was a belief system practiced by a specific demographic of the overall black population, in movie terms all black people had to know at least one Voodoo priest, didn't they?), plus, just as importantly, Voodoo imagery had recently featured prominently in the 1973 Blaxploitation-themed Bond movie Live and Let Die.  Consequently, a Voodoo-themed Blaxploitation zombie movie must have seemed an obvious move.

Sugar Hill's scenario is classic Blaxploitation: Diana 'Sugar' Hill's man is murdered by white mobsters (with one token black hoodlum in the gang) who want to take control of his New Orleans nightclub.  It's thesort of set up used in many a female-led Blaxploitation picture, particularly if it starred Pam Grier, but whereas Pam Grier would have armed herself to the teeth and gone out and kicked whitey's ass in a flurry of violent action, the titular heroine of Sugar Hill instead summons Baron Samedi, Voodoo Lord of the Undead, (a character also featured heavily in Live and Let Die), in order to get his help in exacting revenge, using his zombie army.  This part of the plot features some of the film's most effective and eerie scenes, as former Voodoo Queen Mama Maitresse leads Hill from her dusty and overgrown mansion into a misty bayou to invoke Baron Samedi.  The zombies - silver eyed and covered in earth and cobwebs and still wearing their slave shackles - are raised in an impressive scene featuring them up out of their graves.  After this, the film settles down into a regular revenge plot, as the mobsters are killed, one by one, by the zombies.  The murders are zesty and often inventive, including decapitations, strangulation during a massage and being fed to pigs, but never particularly graphic.  Things are complicated by Hill's ex-boyfriend, a police detective, investigating the murders, who begins to suspect a Voodoo connection, putting himself in the firing line.

Sugar Hill is certainly an unusual take on Blaxploitation.  Whereas other attempts at wedding the horror and Blaxploitation genres had tended to focus on more less conventional horror tropes and stories, simply changing the race of the main protagonists and using urban settings, Sugar Hill puts its horror elements firmly in the service of a conventional Blaxploitation revenge plot.  This gives the film a far grittier and realistic feel than the likes of the Blacula films, while at the same time making the horror elements feel all the more unsettling, as the supernatural in the form of zombies and Voodoo suddenly encroach upon the very real world of gangsters and organized crime.  It is to the film's credit that these elements never feel as if they are jarring against each other, with the weirdness simply seeping into the action, without too much in the way of obvious sensationalism as the plot unfolds.  The zombies, for instance, don't come crashing through doors and windows, but shamble out of the shadows, menacingly.  The portrayal of Baron Samedi is also fairly restrained, in direct contrast to Geoffrey Holder's energetic and flamboyant performance in Live and Let Die, only going in for the full supernatural histrionics while he's in his own domain, the bayou, providing a somewhat subtler, but nonetheless, unsettling presence as he gradually invades the real world, turning up variously in the guise of a cab driver or bar tender. 

Overall, the horror elements, while generally effective, are curiously old fashioned, carried out without blood and gore or even much in the way of shock effects - the zombies simply appear, with little or no build up, having usually already been lurking at the murder scene awaiting their victims.  The essentially mechanistic revenge plot, with victims meeting their inevitable ends one by one, also mitigates against the generation of any real suspense.  Individual scenes, nonetheless, are very atmospheric, with director Paul Maslansky (in, I believe, his only directorial credit, being better known as a producer, with hits including the Police Academy films), making good use of his Houston locations, (standing in for New Orleans).  Indeed, his direction integrates the supernatural elements into the Blaxploitation story rather well, maintaining a pleasing, matter-of-fact feel to the film, eschewing the usual sorts of flourishes and visual cliches often associated with horror scenes in low budget movies.  There's something about the film's pace and feel that is curiously old fashioned, reminiscent of something made in the thirties or forties.  The film is less than subtle, though, when it comes to its racial sub-text, Tim Kelly's script thumpingly pushing the fact that Hill's instruments of revenge against her white oppressors are the living corpses of slaves at every juncture.  The biggest 'star' name featured in the film is Robert Quarry, who gives a smooth and effective performance of the mob boss, while Marki Bey, in the title role, makes for a sufficiently spiky heroine.  There is notable support from Zara Cully as Mama Maitresse and Don Pedro Colley (later the kick ass sheriff of the neighbouring county in The Dukes of Hazzard) as Baron Samedi.  Sugar Hill is a pretty solid Blaxploitation film, but is somewhat less satisfactory as a zombie or horror movie.  You can't help but feel that the whole Voodoo vs gangsters scenario is never really developed to its full potential and that those rather disturbing-looking, cobwebby, zombies are underused.  That said, it is a lot a fun and looks pretty good into the bargain.

Voodoo Drums Over the White House

I'm constantly amazed at the way in which people frequently miss the obvious target.  I mean, right now we've got Trump and all his right-wing crazies slandering Haitian immigrants by claiming that they are eating people's pet cats and dogs, with some of them linking it all to voodoo practices, yet they miss the obvious racist slur that the Haitians are busy raising the dead as zombies.  Surely that is no less lunatic than the eating household pets business?  And this has been a notably lunatic presidential campaign.  But really, there are all sorts of places the crazies could go with the zombie angle in terms of grossly offensive racist stereotyping.  The obvious one is that they are raising a zombie army to attack 'whitey', sending them out to eat not cats and dogs, but their owners.  Indeed, they could try to pin rises in crime rates in cities with significant Haitian communities on the zombie invasion.  Even better, they could claim that evil Haitian voodoo witch doctors are raising white people from the dead as zombies in order to commit necrophilia with them - a sort of gross out 'black-brutes-raping white-women (and men)' meme.  Or, they could claim that they are sending their black zombies out to do the raping of living white women, in an equally gross out scenario.  Maybe they are getting all those white zombies to perform demeaning acts for their amusement - even engaging in gross out decomposing orgies.

I suppose that the failure to exploit the zombie aspect of voodoo politically is simply yet more evidence of the general ignorance of right wing crackpots.  Certainly, it tells us that they don't watch cheap horror movies from the seventies, where Haitians, (or, indeed, just about any black person), were always busy raising corpses for nefarious purposes.  After all, they were very cheap monsters to create - usually just a regular guy in slightly torn clothes and greyish make-up wandering around with their arms out-stretched.  The thing is that never, ever, in any of these films did I ever see those Haitians eating cats and dogs, either as part of their zombie-raising rituals or just for fun - and I can tell you that cheap exploitation films never lie about such things.  But getting back to Trump and his right-wing loons, by ignoring the zombie angle they are missing out on the big one as far as election lunacy goes - the opportunity to tie the whole Haitian immigrant business in with Joe Biden.  That's right, they could have claimed that Biden had actually died in office, then been resurrected as a zombie by Haitian voodoo witch doctors, which is why his administration and the Democrats in general, are i thrall to the immigrant lobby.  If they wanted to go the whole hog in the offensiveness stakes by tying in Kamala Harris as well, accusing her of being a voodoo high priestess who was now controlling the zombie Biden.  But, hey, I'm afraid that they've missed the boat by getting obsessed with those cat and dog rumours.

Home Improvements

I frightened the Hell out of myself this week - I finally stirred from my regular state of torpor to actually start that clear out of the junk afflicting my house.  It was a modest start - I finally cut up that old bed base that's been stored in the spare room for years - but a start nonetheless.  (If you are wondering why I was cutting it up, well, it's easier than trying to get the local council to do a roadside collection, plus, I can re-use the wood from the frame).  If nothing else, it gave me an excuse to get out my jigsaw, (which I haven't used in years), which meant that it actually didn't take that long to cut to pieces.  But what has prompted this sudden burst of activity, (coming less than a month since I finally got rid of a load of stuff from the front room by sticking it all in the recycling bin)?  Perhaps it is the change of season - this cold snap has reminded me that I really need to get something done about my old sash windows and I really can't expect anyone to work at refurbishing or replacing them amidst all the junk I've got stored here.  I say 'stored', but it is supposedly waiting for me to actually take it down to the local dump, (for which I have to make an appointment), but I've just been too indolent.

So why start with that old bed?  Well, the motivating factor there is that now that's out of the way, I can start clearing up the rest of the spare room, with a view to finally starting on that much vaunted expansion of my model railway.  I've been talking about doing it for years and thanks to my visits to the local toy and model train fair, I now have far more rolling stock than can be accommodated on the current layout.  Not to mention the various buildings and other accessories that I've accumulated.  (The wood from the cut up bed base will, of course, be used to construct frames and supports for the new base boards).  In fact, I even started clearing up some of the other junk in the spare room today - another shock to my system!  Anyway, I'm hopeful that I can keep this momentum up and finally start sorting this place out properly: replacement/refurbished windows followed by a revamped bathroom and kitchen.  I mean, it isn't as if I haven't got the time to do this now that I've dropped out of the world of work.  (Although I might yet return to something part time at some point - I seem to have a constant stream of teaching agencies trying to interest me in various temporary positions).  So, watch this space for further developments.

Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962)

A Russ Meyer film from the days when he didn't bother about things like plot, but instead focused on big breasts, Wild Gals of the Naked West (1962) is a lot of fun if you watch it while in the right mood.  While not bothered with plot, Meyer does seem to be trying to create a broad satire of the western movie genre, with many of its conventions parodied amongst the big bouncing boobs.  Opening with an old geezer in a ghost town reminiscing about the wild times and wilder women of the town's golden years, the film seems to determined to pack in as many western cliches as possible.  We have two guys perpetually engaged in gunfight, but who are such bad shots that no matter how close to each other they are, they only succeed in shooting innocent bystanders.  There are also the local 'Indians' who spend their time tying white women (big breasted white women, naturally) to stakes and trying to burn them, (except that they can never get a light), or engaging in an ever escalating war with the 'palefaces', graduating from bows and arrows to machine guns by the film's end.  The town is also plagued by practical jokers who spend their times engaging in such pranks as tipping over outhouses when someone is inside.  There's also an hotel-cum-brothel and a lawless saloon presided over by a mean spirited old timer.  

The closest thing the film has to a plot comes in about half way through, when a stranger rides into town, conservatively dressed and apparently immune to all the shenanigans going on around him.  Eventually, of course, he dons a stetson and spurs, straps on a gun and cleans the town up.  Aside from this sliver of plot, the film is essentially a series of sight gags - many of them, such as a peeping Tom peering through the crescent shaped cut out in the door of an out house being taken aback by the fact that it contains an entire modern bathroom, complete with a squaw in a bubble bath, are pretty surreal.  Most interesting are the interior sets, which go beyond minimalist, mostly consisting of details like fireplaces and pictures simply drawn on blank flats.  Doors sit in their frames, with no walls around them and things like beds are likewise reduced to hand illustrated flats.  Even the saloon piano's keyboard is simply a flat piece of wood with keys drawn on it.  All of which gives the film a pleasingly 'cartoonish' look, which harmonises perfectly with the onscreen action.  While this was doubtless dictated by Meyer's lack of budget, but also plays into his parodying of the conventions of traditional B-westerns, in this case their use of cheap, simplistic and over-familiar sets.  In style, the whole thing is reminiscent of those sixties movies and TV series built around the 'zany' antics of various pop groups, although it actually predates all of them by several years.   At heart just a cheap 'nudie' picture, Wild Gals of the Naked West at least tries to do something a bit different and pretty much succeeds in this aim, providing an hour or so of, by today's standards, pretty innocent sex comedy, with the emphasis firmly on the latter element.

Return of the Ape Man (1944)

Despite the title, the fact that it stars Bela Lugosi and is produced by Monogram, this is not actually a sequel to Lugosi's previous Monogram hit, The Ape Man (1943), despite the fact that it was attempting to lure in fans of the earlier film by implying that it might be a follow-up.  In fact, this 'shock sequel', as Monogram's publicity described it, is what would nowadays be known as a 'thematic sequel', exploring similar subject matter, but with an entirely original story and characters.  Whereas, in the original, Lugosi had been a mad scientist who succeeds in turning himself into an ape man, who commits all the usual low budget depravities expected of B-movie monsters, here he is a mad scientist who is intent upon thawing out and reviving a prehistoric ape man found frozen in arctic ice. Inevitably, the unfrozen ape man turns out to be a brutal beast, reacting to the modern world with violence.  Lugosi's fellow scientist, played by John Carradine, wants to destroy the creature, believing it to be an uncontrollable menace, while Lugosi himself favours transplanting part of a modern man's brain into the ape man, in the belief that its superior intellect will render the beast susceptible to reason.  Inevitably, it is Carradine who reluctantly donates part of his brain to the ape man, which is where the film starts to - almost - get interesting.  

The resulting hybrid, as well as being able to speak, also seems to retain some of Carradine's memories and personality.  Now, this development offers the possibility of exploring the nature of personality and identity - is the creature now the scientist in a new body, or are these memories and and personality traits merely a veneer, an 'add-on' to use modern terminology, to the ape man's existing persona?  But this is a B-movie, so we never really go down this route.  Instead we have a now more articulate ape man, whose violent urges seem to be being filtered through the memories of his brain donor, with him escaping and instinctively going to Carradine's house, scaring his widow, who he then inadvertently kills and later kidnapping his daughter.  The whole thing ends predictably, with the ape man holing up in a tall building with the kidnapped daughter in a sort of ultra low budget version of the climax of  King Kong.  Even cheaper looking that its predecessor, made with Monogram's typically low production values, including scuzzy looking sets and murky photography, Return of the Ape Man at least saves Bela Lugosi the indignity of having to wear hairy make-up as the title creature.  Instead, he wanders through the film disinterestedly, having done this sort of thing a thousand times before for poverty row studios.

This time around, the 'honour' of donning the ape man make up supposedly goes to two billed actors: George Zucco and Frank Moran.  This strange quirk is probably the most interesting thing about the movie.  Zucco was, apparently signed to play the role and even started filming (he can be briefly seen as the frozen ape man in a lab scene), but fell ill.  Monogram, of course, were too cheap to either halt production or reshoot his scenes, instead casting Frank Moran in the role.  The original casting raises some questions, though.  Zucco was known for playing smooth and sophisticated villains, (he was the first Professor Moriarty to cross wits with Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), for instance), making it hard to imagine him spending the film in animal furs and hairy make-up, breaking up furniture and beating people to death.  Which leaves one to wonder whether the original intent was for the brain transplant bit to come earlier in the film and for the ape man to become an apparently normal human being - until he inevitably reverts and starts killing people again.  In the event, the role was taken over by Moran, who tended to play heavies and lacked Zucco's range as an actor, necessitating a quick rewrite and scaling back of the brain transplant sub-plot.  But we'll never know for sure and this has to remain mere speculation.  

As it stands, Return of the Ape Man is a typically unsophisticated, but fun, piece of Monogram output.  Tatty and cheap looking, with a top-billed star who looks to simply be going through the motions, the plot is at least less tangled than those of many other Monogram Lugosi vehicles and does feature a decent enough performance from Carradine.  Veteran B-movie director Phil Rosen keeps it all moving at a reasonable pace, wrapping everything up in just over an hour, making it all relatively painless to sit through.

T.N.T Tim

T.N.T Tim terrorises the local wildlife with his new 'Wayfinder' boots - anti-fox propaganda from Meccano Magazine, June 1967.  I have to say that he reminds me of the sort of smug kids who used 'do-gooding' as an excuse for doing horrible shit to those weaker than them, who I used to hate.  Most of us had to be happy with the standard black Clarke's Shoes that our parents bought for us as they were required as part of the school uniform, but these little shits had families well-off enough to buy them these bloody fancy 'Wayfinder' boots, which they then used to hunt down and kick foxes.  Baby snatching foxes, at that!  Yeah, anything to justify the local hunt chasing them on horses and letting their dogs tear them apart - if that bastard T.N.T Tim hadn't got there first and kicked them to death, of course. 

The Dark Side January 1993

I'm exhausted, having been embroiled in a family crisis for the past couple of days, so I just can't find the energy to come up with a proper post.  I have, however, been rummaging around in those boxes in the spare room and came across a stack of The Dark Side magazines from the early nineties. Incredibly, this publication is still going, now on its third publisher and having endured an eighteen month hiatus between 2009 and 2011, although I haven't bought or read it in years.  It fell victim to a change in my circumstances in the late nineties that meant I had to cut back my spending - magazine subscriptions were amongst the first casualties.  The thing I liked about The Dark Side was that, even though horror and fantasy films were its main focus, it also covered print media - and not just books, but also fanzines.

While it wasn't as hardcore as Shock Express in terms of its coverage of exploitation films, The Dark Side did help introduce me to many aspects of the genre, with articles on various Italian directors, 'video nasties' and the like.  It was also far easier to obtain than Shock Express, which you certainly couldn't find on the shelves of your local WH Smiths.  As you can see, this issue is from fairly early in the magazine's early run - January 1993 - although it had already switched publishers for the first time, with Stray Cat Publications taking over after the dissolution of Robert Maxwell's publishing empire, which had originally put the magazine out.  At this point it was a very slickly produced magazine, with full colour covers and printed on glossy paper.  So there you go - another brief filler post, but one about a publication that, for a few years in the nineties, played a seminal role in my cinematic education.

The Mad Ghoul (1943)

The Mad Ghoul (1943) was one of Universal's 'other' horror movies of the era, one which was always intended to be B-movie, whereas the studio's ongoing Frankenstein series, (which at this point had also incorporated the Wolfman and would shortly co-opt Dracula), were seen as slightly more prestigious, designed to play at the top of double bills, or even as A-features in second run cinemas.  It also comes from a period when Universal was casting around looking for new monsters to add to its gallery of horrors - it had already started grinding out Invisible Man and Mummy sequels as B-features.  The problem is that the title character isn't really much of a monster at all.  He certainly doesn't, as the term 'ghoul' implies, dig up graves and feast on human flesh.  Which, perhaps, isn't surprising in a film made in 1943.  Instead, we get the substitute activity of him digging up the graves of the freshly deceased in order to steal their hearts, (although he does graduate to murder, later in the film).  The lack of truly ghoulish activity isn't the only problem, though.  The fact is that the title menace ultimately has no agency of his own, effectively being a zombie under the control of his creator and needing regular infusions of heart fluid to stay alive.  The film also throws in a touch of the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic, with the Mad Ghoul periodically returning to his normal state, (he looks like a corpse and shuffles around like the Mummy when he's the Ghoul), but with no memory of his ghoulish activities.

The real villain of the piece - as he was in many B-movies - is George Zucco, here playing a professor who has discovered the secret of an ancient Mayan nerve gas, used to make sacrificial victims compliant before they had their living hearts cut out.  He's part of a love triangle, being in unrequited love with the singer girlfriend of one of his students, a pianist.  But, in a twist, the girl reveals to  Zucco that she doesn't love the student, but doesn't want to hurt his feelings by rejecting him outright.  Zucco assures her that he will take care of the situation for her.  Naturally, he uses the gas on the student to try and get him to break off his interest in the girl.  But when in his human state, the student can't be deterred and insists on following the girl on her singing tour, resulting in a series of grave robberies in the cities in which she performs, baffling both police and press.  In another twist, it turns out the girl is actually in love with her pianist, so a jealous Zucco now tries to get the student, while in his ghoul state, to kill him.  Obviously, none of this ends well, with the ghoul turning on his master and giving him a whiff of his own gas.  It ends with the dying student reverting to his normal self, while Zucco turns into corpse as he desperately scrabbles in the dirt  at a fresh grave, in search of another heart.

The film's biggest strength is its sense of utter nihilism, with virtually none of the characters motivated by any sense of morality or purpose other than narrow self interest.  Love is largely unrequited and used bycharacters to justify various unethical actions on their parts.  The object of their affections - the singer - seems either unaware of their feelings or content to let them continue to suffer by not making her lack of reciprocation clear.  Even the supposed romance between the singer and the pianist seems devoid of any obvious affection.  For their part, the authorities are plodding and stupid, seeing the ghoul's crime spree as an inconvenience and interested less in justice than simply pinning it all on a convenient scapegoat.  The press, meanwhile, are interested only in generating sensational headlines rather than getting at the truth.  The bleak and dreary sets - familiar from many a Universal B-movie - just add to the general feeling of misery generated by The Mad Ghoul.  This approach, though, also results in a narrative that fails to provide the audience with any kind of sympathetic character, let alone an heroic one, to focus upon.  You are constantly left wondering which of the various characters who parade through the film is going to pick up the mantle and provide Zucco with a string antagonist.  At various points Turhan Bey's pianist, Robert Armstrong's hard nosed journalist and his colleague Rose Hobart all seem to be about to step into the  role, but instead fall by the wayside.  Indeed, in the case of Armstrong's character he is clearly deliberately built up by the script to be the unlikely hero of the piece, only abruptly fall victim to the ghoul just when it looks as if he has solved the case, in a genuinely shocking twist.  

Not surprisingly, The Mad Ghoul - unlike Universal's contemporaneous new monsters, the 'Wild Woman' and 'The Creeper' - didn't return for any sequels.  He was a limited and pretty dreary monster who left little scope for further development or any variations in story lines.  But as a one off, The Mad Ghoul is an enjoyable, if somewhat depressing, little movie, featuring a dominant and typically entertaining performance from George Zucco.  The rest of the cast do their best with a script that offers them little in the way of opportunities, although Bey is as bland as he was the other films of this ilk that he appeared in, while David Bruce as the ghoul is decent enough but ultimately has little to do.  Evelyn Ankers as Isabel, the singer, gives a serviceable performance in a thankless role, but is nowhere near as memorable as she had been in The Wolf Man (1941).  Robert Armstrong (ten years after playing Carl Denham in King Kong) gives a lively turn as the doomed journalist, but is struck down just as he seems to be really getting into his stride, while Rose Hobart as his colleague is equally lively but has too little screen time to really develop her character.  Milburn Stone and Charles McGraw are suitably thick headed as the police detectives on the case.  James Hogan's gloomy direction conjures up a suitably downbeat feel for the film, which moves quite smoothly through its sixty five minutes of running time.  (this was to be Hogan's last film before dying of a heart attack after its completion).  Ultimately, the most memorable thing about The Mad Ghoul is its utter lack of sentimentality and sheer ruthlessness with regard to its sympathetic characters, which leads up to an unusually bleak ending.

Night of the Bloody Apes (1969)

This is another of those films which somehow got itself caught up in the whole 'video nasties' furore and ended up effectively being banned in the UK, but when seen today leaves the viewer incredulous that it could ever have been considered offensive or morally corrupting to warrant such treatment.  Sure, Night of the Bloody Apes (1969) boasts a lot of gore - including an eye being gouged out - and what seems like acres of bare boobs and bums, as a sex crazed ape man goes on a killing/rape rampage.  OK, put like that, it might sound more than a little offensive, but the whole thing is executed on the level of a comic strip with the gore laughably faked (more striking are the scenes of real heart surgery cut into the film), and the sexual molestation of women fumbled and, to be honest, rather half hearted, (the ape man never takes his trousers off while attacking women). Indeed, director Rene Cardona seems to be going for a comic book aesthetic in the way his film is shot and looks: all bold colours and scenes framed like comic panels, with exaggerated, almost stylised, action and violence.  Both plot and dialogue (at least in the English dub) are quite basic, with the emphasis placed upon the visuals. Despite this minimalism, the film is as lunatic and bizarre as Cardona's other films from this period, such as Wrestling Women vs The Aztec Mummy (1964) and The Bat Woman (1968).  In common with these and many other popular Mexican movies of the time, Night of the Bloody Apes is, to English speaking audiences, a strange and wild melange of themes and genres, combining elements of horror, sex film, police procedural and wrestling movies to create an almost surreal experience.

The film is actually a loose remake of Cardona's earlier Doctor of Doom (1962),  with both films using a mad scientist plot straight out of a forties Bela Lugosi-starring Monogram movie as their basis, but takes it in directions that the poverty row studios could only imply.  Night of the Bloody Apes sees a scientist kidnap a gorilla from the local zoo in order to transplant it into his son, who is dying of leukemia, (this treatment is not available on the NHS).  Of course, this inevitably causes said son to periodically turn into a muscle bound ape man who goes on bloody rampages, climbing up buildings and going through open windows to tear the clothes off of women and violently molest them.  Anybody who tries to stop him is bloodily mutilated and murdered.   Parallel to this, we have a plot involving a lady wrestler who, at the start of the film, inadvertently puts an opponent into a coma, with the film cutting back to her wrestling matches every so often, as she struggles with her guilt, resulting in her losing matches as she pulls her punches for fear of injuring another opponent.  Apart from the fact that her boyfriend is the cop investigating first the gorilla abduction, then the rapes and murders, this sub-plot seems to have no connection to the main plot, seemingly existing only to pad the film out with wrestling sequences and more bare breasts.  We keep waiting for the wrestling lady to somehow get involved in the investigation, anticipating a face-off between her and the ape man.  But it never happens.  The plots finally intersect when the scientist kidnaps the comatose woman wrestler and transplants her heart into his son in place of the gorilla's heart, in hope that this will halt the transformations.  Logically, of course, the son should now turn into a masked wrestler and go on rampages.  Instead, he just keeps turning into the ape man.

The failure to properly dovetail these two plots is a major misstep on Cardona's part, leaving the audience feeling disappointed, particularly in view of the fact that he had done this on Doctor of Doom.  Whatever the reason for Cardona changing the scenario in this way, it leaves Night of the Bloody Apes with a somewhat underwhelming conclusion, as the beast ends up gunned down by the police on a hospital roof top, rather than being held in a headlock by a lady wrestler.  Which is a pity as, up until then, the film had been an exhilarating experience, careening along at breakneck pace, leaving the audience little time to worry about the absurdities of the whole situation.  It offers crude, but vigourous thrills, ripped, it feels, from the pages of one of those weird pulp magazines with garish covers depicting semi-naked women about to be subjected to bizarre and painful tortures.  Yes, to modern sensibilities it might well seem offensive in its treatment of sex crime and its overt linking of sex and violence, but it is very much of its time.  Contemporary English-language horror films might have liked to think themselves more sophisticated and less overt, but they still trod much the same ground in terms of the themes explored.  Night of the Bloody Apes is basically a 1940s mad scientist film, but updated for the mores of the late sixties, adding in the sex and gore that Monogram and PRC doubtless would have liked to include, if not for the production code.  One of its alternative Spanish language titles Horror y Sexo (Horror and Sex) sums up the film rather well.