10/30/09: BEWARE! THE BLOB (Larry Hagman, 1972) 
Having enjoyed revisiting THE BLOB (1958) during this challenge, I could not pass up the opportunity of acquiring its (not very well regarded and ultra-rare) sequel when it presented itself towards the end of October; best-known for being “The Film That J.R. Shot” (in view of Hagman’s famous stint as the charismatic villain in the long-running TV series DALLAS), it is – quite frankly – one of the worst follow-ups to an established or cult classic I have watched (incidentally, there is an in-joke involving the original being shown playing on TV early on: both are Jack H. Harris productions)! The decision to treat its theme in comedic fashion was a disastrous one – though, admittedly, the opening moments prove endearing as they highlight the antics of a small (and very cute) cat that, needless to say, becomes the titular monster's first victim. Robert Walker (a dead-ringer for his late and more famous namesake father) makes for a decent lead under the circumstances and, among the gelatinous monster’s victims are Carol Lynley, Dick Van Patten, Gerrit Graham, an unrecognizable Sid Haig, lesser Blaxploitation exponents Godfrey Cambridge and Marlene Clark (from GANJA & HESS [1973] and THE BEAST MUST DIE [1974]), as well as uncredited cameos by Burgess Meredith and Hagman himself playing drunken hoboes! For what it is worth, the film is at its (relative) best during the blob's attack at an ice rink and the chaos that ensues.
10/31/09: BEYOND THE DOOR (Ovidio G. Assonitis and Roberto D' Ettore Piazzoli, 1974)
THE EXORCIST (1973) lent a sensationalistic aspect to the theme of diabolism, which was enough to guarantee box-office receipts; consequently, it proved the most imitated among the three most notable Hollywood excursions into the subgenre from that era (the others being, of course, ROSEMARY’S BABY [1968] and THE OMEN [1976]). Being the most notorious – and commercially lucrative – rip-off of the film (though it included elements from the first for good measure), obviously I have been interested in checking this one out for a long time. Given the extremely divided critical and audience reaction to the picture, I was not sure what to expect…though I guess I should have, having recently re-acquainted myself with the same director’s TENTACLES (1978) – in its own right, a dire JAWS (1975) cash-in (but, then, his reworking of THE OMEN i.e. THE VISITOR [1979] resulted in a much more worthwhile venture: see my review elsewhere)! To be fair, the first 45 minutes or so of BEYOND THE DOOR (or, as the on-screen title denoting the longer U.K. version would have it, THE DEVIL WITHIN HER) are not that bad; even so, the slow build-up to the possession is nowhere near as effective as in Friedkin’s picture. Where in the latter we had character development and a palpable sense of dread, here we get ceaseless (and very tedious) chatter and a plethora of absurd situations: campy devilish intro (by which the film immediately shoots itself in the foot!), foul-mouthed kids (as if one expected them to be similarly afflicted – and the finale gives us just that!) and idiotic gestures to demonstrate the personality change Mills is undergoing (crossing her eyes, destroying hubby’s cherished aquarium and eating a banana peel picked up off the pavement)! Thankfully, some care seems to have been applied to the film’s look (from the San Francisco exteriors to the predominance of the color red) – so much so that the cinematographer was eventually given co-director status! – and sound design (though it actually skimps on devising a truly scary demon voice, only really effective when she suddenly slips into it at the doctor’s office!) – and Franco Micalizzi’s surprisingly upbeat score easily proves to be its mainstay. Juliet Mills’ performance has garnered a good deal of praise, but I do not feel she was up to the demands of the role – her possessed antics recall more a dotty old crone (particularly when given to raspy laughter) than a malevolent spirit (the head-spinning is creepy but obviously an effect and the repellent vomiting a mere genre contrivance)!; besides, it seems unlikely that the Devil would allow its ‘vessel’ to be scientifically scrutinized, not to mention get back into a strait-jacket after having tricked her husband into getting her out of it! Richard Johnson’s authoritative presence lends credence to the often banal dialogue (especially his repeated cry that “The Child Must Be Born!”) but is defeated by a vaguely defined role. In fact, it is in his relationship with Mills that the film falls apart: to be sure, the latter stages become so hopelessly muddled that I gave up trying to follow the plot (this confusion is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that the question “Who Are You?”, the literal English translation of the original Italian title, is directed by the Devil at the meek, bewildered doctor rather than the other way around – WTF?!). Incidentally, without the presence of an exorcist (apparently nobody thought of calling one in!), the struggle between good and evil so central to THE EXORCIST is lost; the only reference to religion we ever get is in the prologue where the nude sacrifice victim’s face unaccountably turns to that of Christ – an unexpected but lame attempt to equate the crucifix masturbation scene from the earlier film! We do, however, get an inkling that the power at work is so complete that the Devil and his minions (Johnson is actually a ghost who wants to re-incarnate himself in the protagonist’s baby) are even prepared to double-cross one another! Gabriele Lavia, then, is the ineffectual spouse – a recording producer whose latest tune is called “Bargain With The Devil” (as the saying goes: Play With Matches And You’re Liable To Get Burnt), is accosted on the street by a bunch of hippie musicians(!) in a period of respite from the diabolic onslaught, not to mention thrown about (and literally ejected from) the room by unseen forces. What to make of that head-scratching twist ending I mentioned earlier, where Mills’ son (David Colin Jr. who would go on to play the possessed child in Mario Bava’s SHOCK [1977], which actually got retitled BEYOND THE DOOR II!) is revealed to be the Devil himself? So why have him be the victim of a poltergeist (another highlight of the film, by the way) and, more importantly, what was the point of possessing and impregnating Mills in the first place?! Unfortunately, the DVD supplements I went through shed little to no light on what the script’s intentions (four writers were credited for it!) really were, no concession was made to the picture being a deliberate copycat (in fact, this accusation was vehemently denied!) and, frankly, I still have no idea why this became the smash hit and cult item that it did. For the record, the other possession titles I am familiar with (not taking into account various “Nunsploitationers” which dealt with the subject) are IL DEMONIO (1963), THE ANTICHRIST (1974), THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (1975; the bastardized version of Mario Bava’s LISA AND THE DEVIL [1972]), RUBY (1977), OBSCENE DESIRE (1978; viewed recently), MALABIMBA – THE MALICIOUS WHORE (1979), SATAN’S BABY DOLL (1982) and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (2005); I also own ABBY (1974) and THE MANITOU (1978) but these got somehow left out of the challenge, and three more I am interested in would be L’OSSESSA aka THE SEXORCIST (1974), EXORCISMO (1975; starring Paul Naschy) and NAKED EXORCISM (1975; with Richard Conte)!
10/31/09: THE VISITOR (Giulio Paradisi and, uncredited, Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1979)
Whatever one thinks of the movie itself, it cannot be denied that BEYOND THE DOOR (1974) was a highly successful property and when THE OMEN (1976; my own personal favorite of the three major diabolism films of that era) came along, it was almost a given that Ovidio G. Assonitis (aka Oliver Hellman) would contemplate something similar for the Italian market. However, he was anticipated in this by director Alberto De Martino’s HOLOCAUST 2000 aka THE CHOSEN (as it was originally released in the U.S.) and RAIN OF FIRE (under which title it has recently been released on R1 DVD) – whereas Assonitis had, with his own BEYOND THE DOOR (1974), preceded De Martino’s THE ANTICHRIST (1974) virtually by a couple of weeks! Even so, Assonitis went ahead with his project and, not to be outdone, he concocted a truly bizarre but fascinating mélange of horror and sci-fi that also throws in for good measure elements from THE BIRDS (1963), ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), THE EXORCIST (1973), GOD TOLD ME TO (1976), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and even DAMIEN: OMEN II (1978)! The cherry on the cake, however, was the fact that he somehow managed to rope in a stellar cast of Hollywood notables to give life to his ungodly premise: John Huston (in the enigmatic title role), Glenn Ford (as an ill-fated police detective), Mel Ferrer (as a sinister surgeon and chairman of a mysterious conglomerate), Shelley Winters (thankfully less obnoxious than usual as a maid-protector), Lance Henriksen (as the Faustian father who apparently sells his soul – and wife – merely to become a successful basketball coach!), Sam Peckinpah (remarkably restrained, glimpsed only in profile and in semi-darkness to boot, as an abortionist – but, apparently, he was drunk and cocaine-addled on the set!) and even an uncredited Franco Nero (as, ostensibly, Jesus Christ and a blond one at that)!! Despite his surprisingly brief time on screen, Ford comes off best from among his colleagues and I particularly enjoyed his altercations with the demonic and foul-mouthed child (the excellent Paige Conner – with gleaming eyes and, obviously doubled, turning occasionally into a faceless ‘monster’ – who, going effortlessly from sweet to sinister, undoubtedly delivers one of the best child performances in this type of film); another good turn is given by Joanne Nail as her long-suffering mother who, among other things, is left half-paralyzed and wheelchair-bound after a gunshot wound accidentally fired by her own daughter; is abducted and artificially impregnated by an ‘alien’ bunch inside a truck parked down a darkened tunnel; eventually, her offspring contrives to push the woman straight into a large aquarium in slo-mo (just as Winters has finished assuring her that no harm will come to her while she is around)! It would be virtually impossible to describe the decidedly mystifying plot in a few words, so I will just concentrate on a series of images that remained with me since my viewing of the film: the pre-credits sequence in which a cassock-wearing Huston, seemingly in Heaven or at least another planet, prepares to face up to his enemy; the opening scene set in a basketball court in which the leading player of Henriksen’s opponents (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) is literally ‘exploded’ by Conner’s gaze prior to his netting the winning ball!; Conners showing her deadly ice-skating abilities by sending several leering male kids to their doom; the setting-up of Huston’s rooftop base by an army of bald-headed acolytes; the surreal chasing of Conner by the latter in Peckinpah’s dilapidated clinic; Ford’s eye-gouging by Conner’s pet falcon and subsequent fiery demise; babysitter Huston dueling with his charge-quarry Conner via a now-primitive video-game; later still, her attempt to do the old man in by literally dropping a stairway on top of him (flattening a shop in the process) a` la THE OMEN’s unforgettable falling glass-plate; followed shortly by their showdown inside a hall of mirrors (borrowed, no doubt, from Orson Welles THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI [1948]); the landing of the spaceship in downtown Atlanta; the climactic – and apparently elliptical –‘cleansing’ attack of a flock of pigeons (standing in for the proverbial doves); the epilogue in which the monk-like Huston brings a seemingly reformed bald-headed Conner in Nero’s celestial abode of equally head-shaven children. Strangely enough, it is never explained why the villainous sect need a boy ‘heir’ when Conner is clearly being such a good [sic] ambassador of Evil on Earth (incidentally, obscure director Paradisi walked off the film which was subsequently completed by producer Assonitis) but, luckily, Franco Micalizzi’s alternately funky and eerie score and the occasionally striking visuals smooth over such inconsistencies. In fact, it would be very easy to bash STRIDULUM (whatever that means, it is how THE VISITOR is known – if at all – on its home-ground given that it has never been shown on TV in my neck of the woods) as a desperately derivative and incoherent mess but, frankly, I found it far too enjoyable and weird to be dismissed. For the record, I watched an acceptable (albeit full-frame) VHS-sourced copy of the 90-minute English-language U.S. theatrical version but, since most of the cast is American anyway, this is the right way to watch it; still, apparently, the Italian edition is slightly longer and features an alternate version of the scenes featuring Peckinpah! Although an Italian DVD edition is currently available, as a result of this surprisingly satisfactory first viewing – emulating a similar experience I had in a previous Halloween Challenge with the equally maligned William Castle production, BUG (1975) – I am now looking forward to that long-rumored, fully-loaded R1 DVD from Code Red that promises to offer the longest ever available version (108 minutes) of this unique gem!
Edited by Mario Gauci - 11/4/09 at 1:55pm
posters above, JASON DOESN'T TAKE PRISONERS. HE KILLS. THAT'S ALL HE DOES. Ergo, the new Friday the 13th, can't be good. Plus as one would expect these days, most of the kill scenes are mishandled by being quick cut to hell and underlit.
