The Sex Machine (1975)

An Italian science fiction sex satire, The Sex Machine (1975), while never quite managing to balance its various elements satisfactorily, is nevertheless an entertaining watch.  It's premise is simple, but intriguing: by 2037 fossil fuels have been exhausted and the world is reverting to a pre-industrial society, with horses and carriages replacing cars, buses and trains, candles electric lights and carrier pigeons telephones, as scientists search for new forms of energy, Professor Enrico Coppola (Gigi Proietti) hits upon the idea of using the energy released by sex to set the world back in motion.  He starts off modestly, with the stroking of the erogenous zones of a female assistant generating a few volts.  Reasoning that more 'friction' is required, he succeeds in lighting a bulb with the energy released by two more of his assistants having sex.  Reasoning that, to generate a larger charge, he needs participants who are more energetic and skilled in their love making, he gets access to police and medical records to identify likely candidates, settling on an oversexed hotel manager and a housewife (who also turns out to be the wife of a rival scientist) with similar sexual appetites.  He and his assistants then contrive to have both admitted as patients in the hospital in which the professor is based by running both down with a horse drawn ambulance, causing minor injuries.  Placing both in the same room, they wait for nature to take its course - when it does, the result is an entire chandelier lighting up.  The professor's plans now become more grandiose, as he schemes to light up the entire street, which requires the unsuspecting couple to make love ten times in quick succession.

The streetlight incident brings Coppola's experiments to the attention of the authorities, who are sceptical and want further demonstrations.  At which point the plot settles back into a series of contrivances as they first have to get their Guinea Pigs back together (still unaware that they are being used in an experiment) and overcome the objections of the Vatican to a scheme to promote sex as a solution to the energy crisis.  Various interventions of the spouses of the two subjects complicate matters, preventing all but a single successful demonstration at the hospital, but the authorities want a larger, real world, demonstration.  So the professor and his assistants engage in more machinations (aided by the authorities) to bring the woman and the hotel manager together in a room at his hotel, where their sexual activity is able to reactivate the lifts for a few minutes.  Unfortunately, the intervention of the manager's wife leaves an elderly government official trapped in a lift and the professor's female assistant has to be deployed to seduce the manager to produce sufficient energy to rescue him.  Whilst amusing, all of these plot convolutions and contrivances are ultimately the film's biggest weakness.  Whilst such an incident filled plot, packed with misunderstandings, sexual frustration, coincidence and the like is pretty much the norm for the sex comedy genre, here it ultimately distracts from the film's satirical elements which, it feels, were its entire raison d'etre.

These satirical elements are squeezed into the film's latter half, after all the lengthy farcical sex scenes, feeling rather underdeveloped and hurried, as a result.  They are possibly best integrated into the main action in the lengthy sequence when Coppola demonstrates to the authorities that his discovery could be used on a larger scale, when the hotel is filled with sexually active guests, with every room wired up to transmit their sexual energies.  Various assistants report back to Coppola in the kitchens as to what is going on in each room and how much electricity is being generated by each sexual act, which he gleefully shares with the Monsignor who is representing the Vatican, sitting next to him.  The latter's expressions of disgust, despair, anguish and utter mortification as the professor tells him how much energy is variously released by anal sex, missionary position, masturbation, gang bangs and the like are alone worth watching the film for.  Later, when it is decided to try and deploy sex energy on a wider scale, the Monsignor is forced to agree that, for the greater good of Italy, if not the world, the church will have to start promoting sexual promiscuity, masturbation, homosexuality and any other form of sexual activity that can be thought of - as the professor reassures him, they'll still have six deadly sins left to scold people over and they could always hold a conclave to come up with a new seventh sin to replace sex.  

While the hypocrisy of the church is explored at some length - and quite effectively - in this second half of The Sex Machine,  (the Vatican is able to justify its volte face by the revelation that generating electricity from sex is most effective when it is simply a physical act, without love, thereby not compromising the sacred and God given gift of true love), its other main, but related, satirical point is less well served.  In the film's final act, after the technological world has been restored thanks to the conversion of sexual energy to electricity, resulting in Coppola being awarded the Nobel prize, it is found that, without the old taboos around unbridled sexual activity, people's sexual activity has peaked and is now in decline, as people start to seek something more: love, romance, companionship, deeper relationships not just based on the physical act of sex.  The proposed solution is to make love a taboo, with church now being urged to stigmatise it in the same way it had previously done with sex.  But, as the professor notes, when sex was taboo, people thought of nothing but breaking the taboo, but when it was encouraged as a necessity, becoming freely available, they began to lose interest - making love taboo would likely have the same effect on romance, suddenly making it more desirable and preferable to straightforward sex.   

Although feeling slightly shoe horned into the more straightforward sex comedy elements, it is these satirical elements which help lift the film into something more than just a regular sex movie.  Indeed, the film was clearly intended as a more mainstream entertainment, giving the impression of being made on a much higher budget than the average sex comedy.  Consequently, the production values are excellent, with the post-oil world vividly realised, with the streets lined with rusting cars and crowds going to airports at weekends to marvel at the now near-mythical flying machines, now sitting. lifeless, on the runways.  People's attempts to cling to the past are amusingly parodied with characters who still maintain their cars and pretend to drive them, providing, like children, their own engine sounds, or families still going through the ritual of gathering around the TV every evening and staring at a blank screen.  That said, the low tech world it portrays doesn't entirely make sense: such a collapse of technology would surely push the world, pretty quickly, into an agrarian based economy, not to mention resulting in a far more extensive collapse of central authority is portrayed.  But, hey, The Sex Machine isn't looking to be a post apocalyptic science fiction film, but rather a sexy satire and it tailors its vision of the future to meet the requirements of its plot.  The 'science' of the professor's plans is, interestingly, also something of a satire, taking the theories of Wilhelm Reich - who believed that sexual energy could be captured and stored.  (Indeed, Reich and his theories are name checked several times in the course of the movie).

Even though it is far from perfect, The Sex Machine is actually a very well made and enjoyable film, looking good and directed at a reasonable pace by Pasquale Festa Campanile (who adapted it from his own novel of the same name).   It does, though, get rather bogged down at some points by its straight  sex comedy elements,which become increasingly farcical and repetitive as the film progresses, ultimately becoming detrimental to the satirical elements.  That said, the sex comedy angle was doubtless  the film's main selling point when it came to getting it financed and distributed and, inevitably, would have been the main attraction for audiences.  Certainly, the film provides a constant stream of very attractive Italian ladies taking their clothes off and cavorting around naked, (these include Agostina Belli, Eleonora Giorgi and Monica Strebel), which isn't to be complained about.  There's also plenty of comedic schtick, most of which, being sex-based, translates easily into English, without losing much of the humour.   But, while The Sex Machine can be enjoyed purely on the level of a sex comedy, (albeit an uncommonly well made one), comparable to contemporary British films of the genre in terms of content and humour, it shouldn't simply be dismissed by wider audiences as just another Italian 'sexy comedy'.  The satirical elements, along with some effective acting performances and characterisations, do add a level of sophistication and intelligence not usually seen in the genre.  (The version I saw was the original Italian release with English sub-titles - there was also a dubbed English-language version which ran much shorter, probably cutting out much of the satire, which would account for the film's perception in the English-speaking world as being simply another crude and frantic sex comedy).

The Immoral Three (1975)

Chesty Morgan reportedly pissed off Doris Wishman sufficiently during the making of the second 'Agent 73' movie that she dropped Morgan completely from the third film in the series - The Immoral Three (1975).  As a result, the trilogy found itself being rounded out by a strange quasi sequel that kills off the heroine of the previous films within the first few minutes - although this isn't the last we see of her, as she appears later in the film in a series of flashbacks.  Not that she's played by Chesty Morgan in any of theses appearances, of course.  Instead, we have a somewhat less chesty actress, who also doubles up in a different role, playing one of the film's three leads.  Because, it seems, during her career as a secret agent, Agent 73 got pregnant three times, gibing birth to three daughters, all of whom ended up being fostered or adopted.  (While Agent 73's equivalent to Q branch clearly didn't issue her with any contraception devices, they must have had some pretty good rejuvenation technology as the Agent 73 seen in the 'present', being murdered, not only appears to be the same age as her younger self in the flashbacks, but also the same age  middle daughter, played by the same actress, is in the 'present').  These three meet for the first time at the funeral, where their late mother's lawyer and her former spy boss fill them in on Agent 73's career.  On top of this, it turns out that they've been left an inheritance of three million dollars, with the catch that to get it, they have to find which of six suspects - who could include their biological fathers - murdered their mother.  The money will be split between the survivors of the mission.

Now, it's pretty obvious from the off who is behind the various attempts on the lives of sisters as they investigate the suspects, (although the film does provide another, equally obvious twist at the end), but plot dynamics are pretty much irrelevant in what is, essentially, a softcore porno movie.  The plots of such films exist solely to provide a series of scenarios whereby the main female protagonist or protagonists, get naked and have sex, more often than not in novel locations.  On that count, The Immoral Three delivers to the best of its resources, with one sister having sex with a stranger in a lift, another seduces a gardener by fellating a banana, but not before molested by a priapic delivery boy, while the third gets pawed by a horrible old man.  They also all take off their clothes and wander around naked at the slightest excuse.  The three leading actresses are interesting, not because of their acting abilities, which are, at best, serviceable, but because, as was often the case in seventies sex movies, they don't look remotely like the sort of photographic models you'd see in contemporary adult magazines.  They are decidedly not at all glamourous, bore 'girl-next-door' types.  Only the moody eldest daughter, who refuses to become involved in the hunt for their mother's killer, comes anywhere close to looking like a centre fold girl.  But not that close.

While you'd expect the film's running time to be more or less evenly split between the three female leads, this isn't the case, with the middle daughter, (who also played their mother), getting the lion's share of the acting, while the youngest barely gets a look in.  Possibly this reflected the fact that Wishman considered her the strongest performer of the three, both in the sex scenes and the dramatic sequences.  Certainly, she seems able to keep a straight face more regularly than her 'older sister', who is quite clearly laughing as she is attacked by that delivery boy.  To be fair, that and most of the early scenes do seem to be pitched as being broadly comedic, in its last act, the film shifts into a totally different gear, with the blood flowing and the bodies piling up as things get dark and serious.  Indeed, the final scenes come on like the last act of 'Macbeth', as characters are dispatched, often unexpectedly, left, right and centre, resulting in a pretty bleak ending for what is, ostensibly, a light-hearted sex movie.  It's quite a contrast to the average British sex comedy of the era, with the only analogy, in terms of climactic tonal shift, that comes to mind is The Playbirds (1978), which has an even more downbeat ending.

That the film is cheaply made goes without saying - no matter where any particular scene is meant to be set, it is clearly still Florida.  The only possible exception being the Las Vegas scenes where, in between all the stock footage of casino exteriors, it does look as if there are a handful of on location street shots involving the main actress.  The supposed globe-hopping of the action does, at least, mimic the plot structure of the average Bond movie, which represents the film's only real attempt to parody contemporary mainstream spy films.  I have to say here that the version of The Immoral Three that I saw was missing nearly fifteen minutes of footage and had the on screen title Too Hot For Hell.  Quite why the footage was cut isn't clear, it certainly wasn't to excise sex, nudity or violence (and let's face it, doing so would be a weird decision with regard to a porn movie) - all of which are still present in abundance.  It seems unlikely that it was to trim an excessive running time as, on its original release, the film only ran seventy five minutes.  Whatever the reasons for them, the cuts - which are abrupt and crudely made - render some parts of the film incoherent, particularly early on, where one of the flashbacks is cut short.  Despite this, I can't deny that I enjoyed The Immoral Three quite a lot.  Sure, by any objective critical standard, it's rubbish, but, within the limitations and conventions of its genre, it is highly entertaining rubbish.

'I Went From a Ninety Seven Pound Weakling...'

If you are my age, then you will, inevitably, have encountered an ad similar to the one above while browsing magazines and comics.  This one - from a 1965 'Meccano Magazine' - is fairly restrained.  By the seventies I seem to recall variants featuring tales of skinny geeky guys getting sand kicked in their faces on the beach by musclebound thugs.  After reading Charles Atlas' book, of course, this never happened to them again.  (The clear implication being that it is now them who are doing the sand kicking, an attitude which, I can't help but suspect, has informed society's seemingly ever escalating levels of violence).  These, apparently, stemmed from Atlas' claims that he had originally taken up body building after getting sand kicked in his face by a bully.  Of course, by the time I was reading those ads, Atlas himself was dead, (or Angelo Sicilano, to give him his birth name), having passed away, at the age of eighty, in 1972.  

I've often wondered how many young British comic readers actually sent off for that booklet.  I never did, despite the prospect of being able to kick sand in the faces of school bullies seeming very tempting to my young self.  But others did, some, like Dave Prowse, with considerable success, so clearly it wasn't all hype.  Even back then, though, I knew that I was too lazy to ever get into body building - all that weight lifting, stretching and the like just seemed too energetic, not to mention time consuming for me.  I'm just a natural born slob.  As it turned out, so were a lot of other people, judging by number of people who, by the eighties and nineties, had turned to steroids rather than weights to get those muscles.  I guess that it was around this time that these ads started to appear less frequently - not only were people looking for easier shortcuts to getting that physique, but for those still interested in traditional approaches, there were new heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger.   Still, my affection for those ads remain, they are an integral part of my misspent youth reading schlocky magazines and comics.

A Violent Tax Dodging Oaf

If there is a sure sign that Twitter (never X) is broken beyond repair, it is the fact Jeremy Clarkson was trending there for over a week, as various knuckle dragging right-wing xenophobes, bigots and general idiots drooled over his petulant comments over the Labour government's changes to inheritance tax.  They were all cheering him on as he bellowed about how he was going to join other 'farmers' in a Westminster protest (which seems never to have taken place), seemingly thinking that he was going to overthrow the (democratically elected) government because he doesn't want to pay his taxes.  Before going further, let's get one thing clear: Jeremy Clarkson is a violent oaf who was sacked by the BBC because he physically assaulted a colleague in an unprovoked attack.  (Although, of course, in the bizarro world of the extreme right, his dismissal was down to excessive 'wokeness' and 'political correctness gone mad', rather than violent conduct).  Now, if you or I were to behave in such a way, not only would be lucky to avoid criminal prosecution on top of disciplinary action from our employers, but our future employment prospects would also be severely impacted.  But Clarkson's thuggery was instead rewarded with lucrative contracts from other broadcasters.  Which brings us back to the beginning of this post, as Clarkson's main vehicle for staying in the public eye is that streaming series where he plays at being a farmer, full of manufactured confrontations with his local council (which also provides sensational headlines for his newspaper column in a right-wing rag).  By his own admission, he originally only bought that farm because, like James Dyson - the Brexit supporting millionaire who, once he got what he want, moved his manufacturing base out of the UK - he wanted to dodge paying inheritance tax.  Unfortunately for him, the incoming Labour government decided that farmers should pay inheritance tax.

It's profoundly depressing that there are people out there who idolise a violent thug throwing a hissy fit because he can't find a way to transfer his wealth to his offspring without paying tax.  Worse, that they seem to want him to be part of destabilising and 'overthrowing' the legitimately elected government.  Doubtless, these are the self same morons who directed abuse at protestors challenging the previous Tory government on issues like immigration, the environment and human rights.  They don't seem to grasp that the whole point of inheritance tax is prevent unearned wealth being accumulated by individuals because, contrary to what the Moron's Guide to Economics might say, wealth does not generate wealth.  Wealth simply accumulates more wealth, preventing it from being redistributed and redirected to those who most need it and where it can do most good for society as a whole.  But they probably get all of their opinions form the Daily Mail, which tells them that inheritance tax is widely 'hated', whereas the truth is that very few people are wealthy enough to be affected by it.  Certainly not those idolising Clarkson.  That's the irony of the situation, that they are the sort of people that, in real life, their idol would cross the street to avoid.  Make no mistake, privately educated Clarkson is a product of privilege, the sort of privilege that gives that sense of entitlement that makes his ilk believe that the rules don't apply to them and that those without wealth and the advantages it buys are, basically, scum.  Trust me morons, he might like to lap up your idolatry and take your money for his books, DVDS, farm shop and pub, but ultimately he has nothing but contempt for you.  Yet we have this whole strata of people in the UK who seem unable to see through the likes of Clarkson, Farage, Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson, seemingly cannot see them for the grifting,venal, utterly self-centred elitists that they really are.  It's quite depressing and a sad indictment of of education system.  But these people now seem to make up a large proportion of the dregs that remain on Twitter.  No wonder it is broken.

Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)

Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962) is part of that sub-genre of exploitation films that seeks to legitimise its sensational content and presentation by virtue of the fact that it is derived from a literary classic, which, of course, makes all the sex and violence justified on artistic grounds.  In reality the film, the product of seasoned exploitation director/producer Albert Zugsmith has only a tenuous relationship with Thomas de Quincy's 'Confessions of an English Opium Eater', its supposed source.  In truth, it is only inspired by the book, presenting its hero as a descendant of the Thomas de Quincy, who embarks on a crusade against Chinese white slave traders in early twentieth century San Francisco, finding himself in the middle of a Tong war in the process.  Not surprisingly, as it was made for Allied Artists, Confessions of an Opium Eater was clearly made on a tight budget, with most of the action being confined to a series of cramped-looking back lot sets.  Even the exteriors representing Chinatown appear to be a lightly redressed western town main street.  The only exception comes at the film's opening, which features extensive exteriors, firstly at sea on a couple of boats, then on a beach.

But the cheap sets, along with the gritty black and white photography, contribute to the generally surreal atmosphere of the whole film, which quickly becomes dream like once the main character enters the interiors of Chinatown.  The casting of Vincent Price in the lead, playing the closest he ever got to being an action hero, adds to the sense of weirdness, as do the proliferating anachronisms, (despite being set in 1902, one character wields a Tommy gun, which didn't appear until 1918, while a motor car of similar vintage to the gun also turns up in the beach scenes).  The film finally topples over into full surrealism with a lengthy opium trip sequence which culminates in Price running around in silence and slow motion.  Even the finale - which features Price and a Chinese woman being swept away in an underground sewer - defies convention.  Along the way there's plenty of violence, torture, murder and threats of sexual violence which, along with the drug use, adds up to a pretty sleazy, but bizarrely entertaining package.  In a way, Confessions of an Opium Eater reflects the schizophrenic nature of its studio, Allied Artists (formerly Monogram), which kept striving for artistic legitimacy with bigger budgeted films with 'name' stars and directors, yet couldn't resist the allure of its poverty row origins, continually turning out low budget exploitation movies on the side.  Thankfully, in the case of Confessions of an Opium Eater, its trashy side won out.

The Horrible Sexy Vampire (1971)

The English language title The Horrible Sexy Vampire (1971) rather implies that this film is going to be some sort of horror themed sex comedy.  Sadly, the reality is that it is actually a pretty conventional Spanish vampire movie completely lacking in humour and - in the version I saw - sadly short on sexiness.  While there was, supposedly, a raunchier version of the film prepared for export, featuring more nudity, the version most commonly available appears to be the original Spanish cut with an English soundtrack.  This consistently cuts away from any nudity, instead offering only some flashes of side boob every time anyone either undresses or is undressed by the titular vampire.  That, along with a distinct lack of gore and a pedestrian plot, results in a very tame viewing experience.  It isn't as if the film doesn't start promisingly enough, with a couple booking into a motel, finding themselves attacked and killed by an invisible presence.  But it immediately gets bogged down in a pretty tedious police investigation, which relentlessly continues throughout the film, even after the original police investigator and coroner are killed while investigating the long unoccupied castle of an historical figure long rumoured to have been a vampire.

Things look like they might be picking up when a distant descendant of the allegedly vampiric count turns up from London in the wake of the publicity of the murders, to take up residence in the castle and make his own investigation.  Unfortunately, the new detective on the case has the new count put under surveillance and launches his own tedious investigation, while the murders continue.  In the film's only real twist, it turns out that the new count and the old vampire aren't one and the same, although they are both played by the magnificently named Waldemar Wolfahrt.  (Actually, this was the actor's real name, but casting director's clearly felt that it sounded completely made up, so in most of his subsequent film appearances he was billed as 'Wal Davis').  The real vampire count, it turns out, is cursed to rise from his tomb at intervals of twenty eight years to ravage the local population (particularly young girls about to have sex or get in the bath or shower) - only his own descendants are immune from his deprivations and can put him to rest.  So, while the new count is safe, his fiance who turns up unexpectedly at the castle isn't and ends up menaced by his ancestor.  

Horrible Sexy Vampire (El Vampira de la Autopista to give it the original Spanish title) is, unfortunately, a ploddingly directed film, with director Jose Luis Madrid never managing to spark it into life.  The pace never rises above walking pace while the snowy Stuttgart locations, while novel and interesting-looking, are never really used to their full potential.  Despite the vampire being able to turn invisible in order to stalk his victims, these scenes never generate and tension or suspense, (also, the vampire seems to favour strangling his victims rather than biting them for some reason).  The script (in English, at least) is quite terrible, not just full of clunky dialogue, but also including far too many talky scenes of exposition: not only does the coroner spend an age explaining the history of the castle and original count to the first police inspector, but the new count also spends what feels like an age explaining his entire family tree and relationship to the original count to the second inspector n excruciating detail. (It all has something to do with his being the Polish branch of the family, making them black sheep.  Or something).  All of which means that the plot has no chance whatsoever of taking flight.  The performances of the cast, not surprisingly, never rise above the cliched.  About the only part of the film which is vaguely amusing is the lascivious leer that the vampire gives to camera as he removes the underwear of one female victim.  If only the rest of the film had taken a similar approach to the subject matter then it might have lived up to that English language title...

Fat Boy Has Fallen

I guess our best bet now is that Trump suffers a fatal heart attack between now and his inauguration.  I mean, he is a fat bastard, I say fat, but grossly obese would  be a better description, and we're constantly being told by the medical profession that being overweight is a one-way ticket to all sorts of fatal shit.  Except that there seem to be a Hell of a lot of fat bastards wandering around with no sign of popping their clogs, leading me to seriously question medical opinion, (not for the first time).  But to get back to the point, even if Trump was to shuffle off this mortal coil, it still wouldn't do us much good, as all that would happen is that JD Vance would step up to the Oval Office - which is possibly an even worse prospect than another four years of the Fat Boy (I'm unreliably informed that that's what his Secret Service security detail call him).  As I've noted before, in any political system, there are so many layers to government that, in order to ensure fundamental change, just assassinating the figure head is unlikely to change anything.  Under the US system, for instance, you'd have to simultaneously get rid of the President, Vice President, Speaker and pretty much all of the cabinet in order to completely remove all of the existing chain of succession - most of whom would, as most of them are appointed by the sitting President, simply represent continuity.  So, right now, a 'Fat Boy Has Fallen' situation would not, in itself, be sufficient to ensure change.

Which is why, everywhere other than in dictatorships, political assassination is very ineffective tool for effecting radical change.  Indeed, where the leader is targeted because they are perceived as being too oppressive, it can have the opposite outcome, with their hand-picked successor using the assassination of his predecessor as a pretext for further repression.  Which is why, where democratic regimes are concerned, military coups tend to be the preferred method of radical change, as they remove completely the entire top level of government and circumvent all existing political norms, allowing democracy itself to be suspended while the new regime rewrites constitutional arrangements either to favour themselves or try to prevent the democratic process from being captured by extremists in future elections.  Obviously, all of this is academic as, no matter how much we might loathe the likes of Trump and the ways in which they manipulate democratic systems to their own advantage, political assassination and military coups are clearly an unacceptable way to effect change.  We should, instead, have faith that the system can survive blips like Trump and eventually correct itself.  That's the text book answer but, are there ever circumstances where, in a democracy, it would be legitimate to remove an elected leader by force?  At what point does a regime become so repressive and reactionary that the use of violence against it could be justified?  Because the weakness of democracies is that they are based upon the premise that the people who seek election are reasonable individuals committed to maintaining the norms of the system.  But what if someone comes to power who doesn't respect these norms and either disregards them or changes the system completely, to circumvent the usual safeguards that restrict their power and the rights of citizens?  Just how far down such a road would we have to go before their violent removal would be legitimate?  I suspect that this is a question that Americans might find themselves having to ponder over the next four years.

Crypt of the Living Dead (1973)

 Crypt of the Living Dead (1973) - also known as Hannah, Queen of the Vampires - is one of those films that feels, as you watch it, as if it is having something of an identity crisis.  The presence of various recognisable American actors, in both main and supporting roles, and the crediting of Ray Danton as director, would suggest that it is a US production.  Yet several continental actors, familiar from European exploitation films, in supporting roles, some of the plot elements and the locations suggest a different origin.  In reality, Crypt of the Living Dead was actually La Tumbla de la Isla Maldita (1973), a Spanish production, shot mainly in Turkey and directed by Julio Salvador.  Or rather, it is a version of that film, reshaped and partially re-shot by US producer Lou Shaw, who had bought the US rights to the film.  Although the film already starred US actors Andrew Prine, Mark Damon and Patty Shepard, Shaw felt it necessary to further 'Americanise' it, having Ray Danton shoot new sequences, with US supporting actors and Prine, in California.  To be fair, the match between the two sets of footage isn't too bad, with most of the new scenes turning up toward the end of the film, adding a new climax and adding some additional action in the lead up to the finale.  Watching the film, it perhaps isn't surprising that Shaw wanted to reinforce the film with these new, more action-orientated, scenes as, prior to this, the film had moved at a deathly slow pace, with lots of talky exposition, but little of any substance actually happening.

The film starts briskly and atmospherically enough, with an archeologist entering an underground tomb, despite someone having hung a slaughtered animal over the entrance to deter him, only to be set upon by two strange figures, one in furs, the other in a hooded robe.  Shoved under the tomb, he is crushed to death when his assailants smash the stone legs holding it up, before being decapitated by them.  After that, it slows down as it chronicles the arrival on the island where these events took place, of the victim's son, who is intent upon finding out what happened to his father.  The movie subsequently settles down into a series of predictable scenes where various island inhabitants try to warn him off from prying into ancient mysteries, he arrogantly dismisses local legends about the 'Vampire Queen' whose tomb his father was investigating, (with the legend being spelled out to him at length by the local school teacher, a fellow American), and people generally act mysteriously and suspiciously.  Inevitably, he goes too far when he tries to lift the tomb in order to find out how his father came to be under, which, of course, releases the vampire.  Not that he believes in her, dismissing reports of her activities as ignorant superstition.  He only changes his tune when people start getting murdered.

It isn't as if these parts of the film don't contain some interesting ideas - when first free, for instance, the vampire isn't strong enough to attack and drink the blood of anything other than animals in order to build her strength up - and they're also very atmospherically shot, making excellent use of the Turkish locations, establishing a real sense of isolation for the characters.  Hannah, the vampire queen herself, is also cuts a very striking figure, as played by Teresea Gimpera, icily beautiful, exuding a strange air of serenity and periodically transforming into a wolf.  It's just that it moves so slowly, with only a few brief flashes of action.  There are some typically (for a continental exploitation piece) bizarre elements, most notably the 'Wild Man', who wears a fur waistcoat and looks as if he could be a close cousin of Bela Lugosi's Ygor, from Son of Frankenstein (1939), an acolyte of the vampire queen.  Consequently, it comes as something of a relief when Ray Danton's footage kicks in to provide some action toward the film's end.  The best part of this footage is undoubtedly Hannah's extended death scenes - she plunges, in flames, from a cliff, as the surviving islands gather around her smouldering, skeletal corpse on the beach, it suddenly gets up again to menace them before Prine finally stakes her.   

While the new scenes bring some welcome action, you can't help but wonder what the original Spanish version was like in its entirety.  The US version runs around seventy five minutes, suggesting that a fair amount of the original footage was cut.  The original was, reportedly far gorier and I wouldn't be surprised if it had also included some nudity, (which would have been par for the course for a Spanish horror movie of this era).  As it stands, Crypt of the Living Dead is a passable, but minor, vampire movie which rather squanders what decent ideas it has and spends far too much time setting up its plot - it feels far longer than its seventy five minutes.  It doesn't help that it has a not particularly likeable hero in the bland Prine.  Indeed, few of the main characters are especially sympathetic, with the most memorable character being Frank Brana's salty old blind sea dog, forever coming out with prognostications of doom.  There's also something about the lighting and film quality, in both old and new footage, that, at times, gives the movie something of the feel of a seventies TV movie (although far better shot).   Not exactly a 'must see' film, Crypt of the Living Dead is, nonetheless, watchable when nothing else is available.

The Season is Upon Us, it Seems

It's like a switch has been thrown as we enter November and the Christmas TV commercials start in earnest.  Sure, there have been Christmassy ads running since, well, probably September, but this week the 'Big Boys' have been launching their full on seasonal TV campaigns.  Just today, I've seen the opening salvo of commercials from M&S, Aldi and Lidl.  It can only be a matter of hours before Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons join in, (I'm pretty sure that I saw a Waitrose Christmas ad the other day, so they've already fired their first shots of the season).  Oh, and the number of TV spots for those designer perfumes have ramped up - always a good indicator that the festive season is upon us. Obviously, the one that seasoned Christmas commercial watchers are waiting for is the John Lewis TV ad, although I've never understood just why people get so obsessed about these.  It isn't as if they're particularly memorable - I vaguely recall that one about the old peado who loves on the moon, but beyond that, I can't say that I clearly remember any of them.  Getting back to the point, it's hard to remember exactly when these Christmas commercials started this year - were they showing over the weekend?  Did it kick off last Friday, the first day of November?  (I didn't watch a lot of terrestrial TV over the weekend, instead focusing on various Roku streaming channels, which, more often than not, play US ads, usually about  dodgy sounding pharmaceuticals, Medicare claims and tax avoidance). 

Which leads me to ponder as to whether there's some complex formula used by advertisers as to when the Christmas TV ad campaign starts.  Steeped in mystery, like the way the church formulates when Easter is going to fall every year.  Something, perhaps, to do with which weekend the clocks go back on - is there a rule that says we have to have left British Summer Time before Christmas ads can show?  Maybe that is it - it has to be the first weekend following the one where we go back to GMT and the nights start drawing in, making us feel Christmassy.  Of course, these days it is all complicated by the fact that early November is when we also get ads banging on about 'Black Friday' sales.  A concept which, as I never tire of saying, is completely meaningless in the UK, as we don't have Thanksgiving on the Thursday before, (which conveniently marks the start of the US holiday season).  Having answered the question of how they calculate the date for the commencement of the UK Christmas TV commercial season, the other burning seasonal question which needs answering is that of when is it time to put up the external Christmas decorations?  Clearly it doesn't coincide with the TV ads, as I haven't so far seen any displayed around Crapchester.  (Although there are still some lingering Halloween external decorations, which seem to be becoming more popular - there was an inflatable witch popping up and down in the front garden of one house I walked past last week, for instance).  When they arrive, we'll really know that Christmas is here. 

Hand of Death (1962)

Lately, I've been catching up with a number of B-movies that piqued my interest when I first became interested in horror films - more years ago now than I care to remember - but which I was never able to see due to their lack of availability on UK TV back then.  We're talking about the pre-internet era here, when we had only three TV channels and home video was in its infancy.  So, if a film didn't turn up on one of those three channels, then you weren't going to be able to see it, it was that simple.  To research my new found interest, I had to rely on books (often borrowed from my local library), which usually included all too brief write ups of the films and tantalising stills from them.  So it was that I first became aware of Hand of Death (1962), from a single still in a book about movie monsters.  It showed a guy with grotesquely swollen face and hands steadying himself on, rather bizarrely, a parking meter.  The caption on the picture simply named the film and there was no other reference to  it in the main text.  In the years that followed I found out a bit more about the movie from other books - cast, director, basic plot outline - but was never able to catch up with the film itself, which remained an obscurity, not even to be found anywhere on the net.  Until now, that is, when I found a number of copies have turned up online.  

So, having finally ended my decades long wait to see Hand of Death, was it worth it?  The most immediately striking thing about the film is that it is very traditional science fiction/horror B-movie, yet was made as late as 1962.  The plot could easily have come from thirties or forties Universal or Monogram B-movie starring Karloff or Lugosi: scientist working on revolutionary new gas that can pacify those who inhale it, gets a whiff of his own invention and finds that his very touch deals death.  Even his motivations for developing the gas - for use on the battlefield to incapacitate enemy armies without harming them - could have come from one of those thirties films an over-reaching scientist's good intentions turn out to pave the road to Hell.  While mad scientist type films were still being made in the fifties and into the sixties, they tended to have moved with the times, with experiments involving then fashionable radiation to grow insects to giant proportions and the like becoming the norm.  Moreover, they were also increasingly tailored to the youth market, as drive in audiences became ever more important to the box office fates of low budget films.  AIP, in particular, targeted this demographic with the likes of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Blood is My Heritage, to name but a few.  Hand of Death, by contrast, makes no concessions to this market, with its middle aged cast and lack of hot rods and surfers, (although a beach does feature prominently at the climax - but there are no parties going on there).

What we get instead is a pretty standard science-gone-wrong plot, as the protagonist finds not just his body, but also his mind warped by his encounter with the gas he has developed, (reminiscent, to some degree, of Universal's The Mad Ghoul (1943)).  The performances, from a cast of B-movie veterans, including John Agar as the unfortunate scientist, are pretty standard for this sort of film.  What is outstanding is the make-up worn by Agar as he starts changing into a monster, with both hands and face hugely swollen, with blackened, cracked skin.  Indeed, the scenes where he wanders around the streets in this state, wearing a trench coat and trilby hat are more than a little surreal and give the film a genuinely bizarre feel.  (It is from this sequence that the still with the parking meter, which sparked my interest in the film, was taken).  The film tries hard to make Agar's character a tragic hero: not only were his original intentions peaceful, but he never intentionally kills anyone in the film, it's just that people keep touching him or forcing him to fend them off, resulting in his fatal touch killing them.  (The make-up effects for his victims are also above average, with his initial touch leaving a black mark on them, before their skin swells, blackens and cracks like his).  The problem is that his character is too stereotypically written and performed for the audience ever to care much about him.  

In terms of production values, Hand of Death looks pretty decent for a low budget movie, making good use of its locations and featuring some memorably shot sequences. These include the aforementioned street scene as well as the long tracking shots of Agar stumbling along the beach toward the end, while a child plays on a terrace in the foreground, the set-up constantly teasing a collision between the two.  The low budget shows, though, in the generic-sounding electronic jazz-style score, which never really seems to match the onscreen action.  Still, at around an hour, Hand of Death is a reasonably brisk experience, with an interesting set-up and a great-looking monster in a pretty standard plot.  Was it worth the wait?  Probably not, but I still found it a reasonably entertaining diversion for and hour or so.