The Price of Fame: The Comeback (1978)

The Comeback (United Kingdom, 1978) (AKA "Encore", "The Day the Screaming Stopped")
Rating: ****
Starring: Jack Jones, Pamela Stephenson and David Doyle

Oh yes, Pete Walker! This is a name any slasher fan should be familiar with as the man directed, wrote and produced a fair number of reviled horror and titillating sexploitation movies back in the days, practically providing 70s British horror its share of gruesome proto-slashers such as The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), Frightmare (1974) and, one of my personal favorites of his, House of Mortal Sin (1976). Here, we see him basically laying out the stepping stone for various mystery-adjacent slasher flicks, focusing more on plotting and even managing to reel in American Grammy Award-winning straight-pop singer Jack Jones to lead. This is The Comeback (1978)!

After a six-year hiatus from the music industry and dealing with a crumbling marriage, Nick Cooper (Jack Jones) returns to England looking for a comeback. His fickle manager Webster (David Doyle) is willing to give him another shot and found Nick an old country manor to stay at to sort things out and write his new material in luxury. Unbeknownst to our comeback star, his ex-wife Gail (Holly Palance) also returned to England with the intention of taking expensive valuables from their former penthouse, only to fall victim to a sickle-wielding, shrieking ghoul in a hag's mask and a crocheted shawl. 

As the story progresses, Nick's recording sessions proceed with relative success and he even found the time to score a relationship with Webster's adorable secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson), though his nights are haunted by the echoing sounds of a girl sobbing down the estate's darkened hallways, which progresses to demented cackling and visions of decomposing corpses as the days go by. All of this while Gail's corpse continues to decompose back at the penthouse and more of Nick's old friends start getting bumped off by the same assailant in the hag mask. This leads us to multiple red herrings that may or may not tie in to our singer's seemingly paranormal night terrors and the vicious mad slasher attacks, from Nick’s contact and friend Harry who verbally harasses Pamela by venomously commenting on her breasts when he found the time to be alone with her, to the old caretakers staying at the same estate to help around only to break down behind Nick's back, to Webster with his apparent dislike for girls and implied closet-crossdresser lifestyle of eye shadows and lipstick.

It's hammy and exploitive, much like many of Pete Walker's works, though it is noticeable that there's a length of restraint put to The Comeback (1978), giving room to establish a workable brooding atmosphere, gothic scares, and, too, an intriguing direction to the mystery in regards to what is happening to Jack Jone's character, how all of the madness and murder onscreen will somehow tie in to one another in the end. It is this angle that I find very enjoyable from this movie as the attempt on a serious psychological thriller plot mostly hits the right spot with a developing casts and story, peppered with shockingly brutal murders, gruesome imageries of maggot infested corpses, and a stellar line of casts toplined by Love Boat singer Jack Jones, who I am sure baffled and horrified his fans back in those days for starring in such a gruesome flick!   

The pace can be on the slow side and uneven at times but Walker does an interesting job in managing the horror elements with a lot of build-up and suspense, and, though the bodycount is rather lacking in high numbers, there's a genuine shock value to the murders for how swift and savage they are, implemented greatly with wild editing and a copious amount of onscreen blood. In the end, we get a fair twist and motive behind the killings after a mental institution got involved and another one of Nick's acquaintances disappears, something that I find leaning forward to feisty feta for how cheesy and overly complicated this killer's revenge plan was. But I got a good laugh out of it and I stupidly grinned at the hamminess of it all, so it's not a complete loss in my book! Elevated it actually, to be frank!

A decent treat for slasher fans who wouldn't mind a bit more dimension in their bodycounter stories, The Comeback (1978) is far from perfect, pedestrian as some people would say, yet it's far from awful. Effective and enjoyable for its honest chills, modest thrills and promised spills, it's an unsung cult gem that delivers. Color me impressed!

Bodycount: 

1 female hacked to death with a sickle

1 female corpse seen
1 male stabbed repeatedly with a knife
1 female hacked on the chest with an axe
Total: 4

Deadly Habits Down At The Colorado Rapids: Savage Water (1979)

Savage Water (1979)
Rating: *

Starring: Gil Van Waggoner, Ron Berger and Bridget Agnew

You know you more or less fucked up when the horror movie you're watching opens with a foreboding voice monologuing about the beauty and savagery of the Colorado river, only for it to start singing what I assume is the movie's own opening country song, guitar twangs and all. 

I'm going to need the bottle for this one...

In this rarity (cannot imagine why) of a slasher title, we follow a group of tourists from both in and out of American soil in a white water rafting holiday and, I stress you not, a big chunk of this movie is just these folks enjoying the soggy tour through the rapids. Their guide prep talks about the dangers of the rapids and its surrounding wilderness, they raft, camp, talk, eat, talk, sleep, talk, did I mentioned they talk? Like, we literally have a scene where two dudes in short shorts is just standing next to a portable toilet tent, talking about the lady inside using it. It doesn't help that the dialogue here are also poorly written, ineptly acted and ran through low quality audio, further numbing my senses until I begin to ponder if the "horror" of this horror flick may have more to do with it existing.

We eventually got our first kill about halfway or so into the plot, with one poor sap getting pushed off a cliff and landing as a bloody mess in a pool being used by some bathing girls. Even then the endlessly tiresome conversations and now awkward camping scenes never ceased, taking more of the movie's precious time away from properly building up any workable tension towards the murder spree and the mystery behind the identity of the killer hiding within the group. It's just bad low-budget celluloid all the way, bearing little excitement with its lackluster kills and overcooked "character development", with perhaps the only good things I can get out from all of this are unintentional hilarity and the worthwhile nature shots of the Grand Canyon and Colorado Rapids, minuscule points to clamor over when everything else about this late-70s grindhouse wilderness murder mystery is just one big gaffe.

I guess I should have heeded the signs that the universe was trying to protect me from seeing this film when my first copy of Savage Water (1979), released by Vinegar Syndrome, got scratched to hell by a malfunctioning disc player and that was around the time the company pulled the movie from distribution due to some issues with the rights. It wasn't until last year that I managed to get a digital copy of the film from a generous contact, only to lose that copy when the hard drive I stored it at crashed. Another digital copy was handed to me a few months later by a different contact, who also gave me the weird eye before wishing me "good luck, you sad strange little man". So many opportunities given to save myself from this fecal mound and I took none of them. Learn from my mistake and don't bother with this.

Bodycount:

1 male pushed off a cliff

1 female falls to her death while mountain climbing (flashback)

1 male falls to his death

1 female knifed in the back

1 female fed with ginseng leaves, succumbs to a heart seizure

1 male shredded with a boat motor propeller

1 boy drowned in the rapids

1 male had his climbing rope cut, dropped to his death

Total: 8

The Six-Fingered Hand of Bloody Redemption: The Redeemer (1978)

The Redeemer (1978) (AKA "The Redeemer: Son of Satan!", Class Reunion Massacre")
Rating: **1/2

Starring: Damien Knight, Jeannetta Arnette, Nick Carter

Oh, Lordy. This movie. This wonderfully horrible movie.

It starts with a shot of a hand punching out of a clear lake after a tedious run through the opening credits and a sacrilegious quote, revealing a boy with a very dated haircut casually walking out of the waters and boarding a bus headed to the town church. Elsewhere, a shadowy figure grants a sleeping fellow an extra thumb on one hand because spoiler-related reasons. And, yes, it's kinda gross-looking. One tiny thumb on top of an elongated one.

Urge to poke it with a stick... Growing...

We then we see that the soaky lil' dude is one with of the (more bullied) choirboys and the sermon is your typical fire-and-brimstone type about sins and whatnot, yelled by an equally typical Bible-thumping priest. This is where we get our character introductions interjected through out the righteous Gospel ramblings; John, a lawyer who values money more than a fair trial; Cindy, a party girl with multiple failed marriages; Terry, the eater of burgers; Jane, one who shoots at pigeons for fun; Roger, a vain actor who walked out of set because someone spilled a drink on his pants; and Kristen, a lesbian. Just, uh, just a lesbian. The six happen to be part of a small clique back at their highschool years and they all recently received an invitation to attend a reunion back at their alma mater.

Unbeknownst to them, they're the only ones who got the invites, which could've just been weird, amusing even, if it wasn't for the loon out stalking and prowling around the campus killing them one-by-one. A loon with a penchant for hammy disguises, life-sized weapon-wielding puppets and Biblical tirades. A loon who calls himself- The Redeemer!  

Now, see, as much as I want to decimate this movie and make a mockery out of its flaws, I can't. I just simply can't. I have a soft spot for dumb cheesy movies, particularly those that are done with the right amount of unintentional humor and have made odd spectacles out of themselves, something The Redeemer here manages to do and a little more. For one, the atmosphere is just befittingly weird coming from the story's dream-like logic and semi-creepy direction, straight from the shot of a random choirboy rising out of the cold waters and the random double thumb appearing at one's hand, to the villain's unusual gimmick of donning random costumes and his somewhat supernatural nature. It plays well with the movie's good eye on expressive cinematography and, too, the villain's warped morality which can be best described as very shallow at best (or worst), yet strangely entertaining leaning on the fact he's going through all of this trouble of dropping swords and setting up blowtorch-equipped mannequins to attack just because the clique is guilty of things like eating too many fast food or loving themselves too much. That said, despite the absence of strong grue or a high count, I also came to like the murders perpetrated by our Redeemer here all for the sheer unusualness of it all, may it be the execution of the scene or the imagery itself.

Character-wise, it's hard to hide how regular the victims can be, unfortunately; don't get me wrong, the actors tried (and I mean, tried) to milk out any seriousness and talent they can muster to act their respective one-note meat bags, but writing and scripting are hardly this movie's strong points so they go against creating any real solid casts unsurprisingly. You could say the same for our titular killer with his holier-than-thou horror trope psychosis, but he at least has the thankful joy of being exaggeratedly bad, to the point that I can't really take him seriously despite the murdering business and all. (Like how can you? This guy can't even get the number of sins right. It's seven deadly sins, shmuck. Not six. Unless we're pulling a Se7en (1995) here and the killer is the seventh sin?!)

Yes, The Redeemer (1978) is no real gem, but it's a personal treat that keeps splitting my sides with its ludicrous ham, as well as captivate me for just how absurd it can get. Perhaps you can say I find it so bad it's good, so much so that it deserves to sit proudly next to other lovable bad trashes like ThanksKilling (2008) and Nail Gun Massacre (1985). If you see yourself a wee bit curious enough to try it out then I say, go for it! Just remember to dim the lights in your noggin and not take any of it as high art as much as possible and you'll do mostly fine!

Mostly.

Bodycount:

1 male shot on the neck

1 male set on fire with a blow torch

1 female shot with a shotgun

1 male gets a sword dropped unto his head

1 female drowned in a handwashing sink

1 male shot on the head

1 female hacked to death with a sword

1 boy seen dead from throat cut

Total: 8 

Festive Fears With The Family: Home For The Holidays (1972)

Home For The Holidays (1972)
Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Jessica Walter, Sally Field, Eleanor Parker 

On a stormy Christmas Eve, married Jo (Jill Haworth), alcoholic Freddie (Jessica Walter) and young Christine (Sally Field) are summoned back to their old country home by their sister Alex (Eleanor Parker) to help settle a disturbing family matter; their father (Walter Brennan) suspects that his current wife Elizabeth (Julie Harris) has been slowly poisoning him as she's rumored around town to have murdered her own husband the same way years ago. Paranoid and desperate to save himself, he orders his daughters to do the unspeakable: murder his wife!

With some of the sisters not being big fans of their patriarch and his condescending tongue, the women mostly scoff off his demands and see his ramblings as nothing more than senility finally getting to the old man. After one uneasy Christmas Eve dinner and an incident with Freddie getting suicidal-drunk, Jo decided to brave the storm and ride out to catch a flight back, only to be pitchforked dead by a figure in a yellow rainslicker and red gloves. It appears that there is indeed a murderer within the family, but could it be Elizabeth as their father suspected all along? Or perhaps another lunatic out to thin down the family?

As a made-for-TV proto-slasher, Home For The Holidays plays less like your standardized bodycounter filled with murdered teens and masked hulks, and more like a cozy Sunday afternoon whodunnit thriller packed with a few familiar horror tropes. Little slasher set-ups like a bonafide chase through the dark, rainy woods and the killer skulking around ala point-of-view shots do occasionally pop up, but majority of the play doesn't abide by the typical slasher trappings completely, thus the twisty surprises in its direction often come genuine and enticing, even if the story bogs down into TV soap territories more often than it needs to. Thankfully, the film doesn't overstay its welcome and gets the intrigue rolling as soon as the women are made aware of their father's plight, squeezing in Gothic sensibilities, Hitchcockian flair (Psycho (1960) screenwriter Joseph Stefano did write this) and an impressive performance from its casts to keep this murder plot exciting albeit the minimal, bloodless bodycount.

Hardly a complicated film to sit through, Home For The Holidays (1972) is a simple holiday thriller in the vein of paperback mystery novels, or at least a longer episode of Murder, She Wrote. If you fancy yourself a fun whodunnit that doesn't go all-out exploitative, this is a fair title to indulge in and enjoy during the Winter holidays or whenever it's raining outside. 

Bodycount:

1 female stabbed in the back with a pitchfork

1 female pulled into a bathtub, drowned

1 male murdered, method unknown

Total; 3

Survival and The Price Men Pay For It: Rituals (1977)

Rituals (Canada, 1977) (AKA "The Creeper")

Rating: ****

Starring: Hal Holbrook, Lawrence Dane, Robin Gammell

While some backwoods slashers tend to set themselves within campgrounds or lakeside vacation homes, a faction of them do brace the very woods itself and have their casts face on not only a psychopathic figure out for blood, but also the unforgiving savagery of steep terrains, rapid waters and forests veiling its threats in shadows at nightfall.

Rituals (1997) is among the early examples of these backwoods "survival slashers", taking very strong cues from the 1972 drama Deliverance as we follow five doctors on their yearly outdoor trip, escaping the busy and stressful city life. It's clear in their banters that they've been friends for a very long while now, their little jabs at each other's professions, ethics and personal life hinted with much good terms and sly warmth that only a good tempered bond can forge, thus this little stroll down to some place called the "Cauldron of The Moon" should have been nothing more than just another hiking and camping trip for these men.

However, in the morning after, they see their first hint that something's amiss when all but one pair of their boots suddenly go missing and, later that evening, someone erected a macabre idol made out of a freshly decapitated deer head on a stake nearby their camp. Assuming these being the work of a prowler (or prowlers) who decided to terrorize them, the men choose hike out while they still can with nothing but rags wrapping their feet, while one of them with the only pair of boots volunteers to venture to a dam he spots in the map to find help. It is then that they become aware of the severity of their predicament when, during a wasp attack from a hurled hive, someone throws one of them to their death, a cold murder that's bound to happen to the rest of them should they stay in the woods any longer...

From here, Rituals (1977) shows how strong its as a survivalist thriller and I will admit with no hesitation, it is verily effective; the further our men go through nature's harshness of heavy rain, crashing waterfalls and sun-scorched trails, the more we see their necessities get taken away and they slowly lose grip on being civil as they start throwing blame around or open old wounds to pick fights, getting reduced into angry babbling messes simply struggling to survive. This direction works so well with the casts' stellar delivery of the movie's superb scripting, bearing little to no ham even if the plot progresses out of its near-realistic wilderness terrors and stalk into straight-up fantastical horror. The film's handful of striking imagery somehow works itself within the plot's theme of losing control and the unpredictable cruelty of nature, swinging in a right amount of dread and suspense upon both its characters and the audience as we path through and observe an environment that is as unforgiving and dangerous as the human threat teased throughout the movie, a strong staple of survivalist horror done right.

As a slasher in turn, Rituals (1977) may not follow the classic bodycounter rulings given its greater focus on psychological strain and devolution, it does still tackle enough from the sub-genre to be a solid early outing for the backwoods hack 'n slash-type; we do have a body count with a decently fair number, albeit it's brought upon from a more wider variety of causes not limited to the movie's eerily obscured maniac. In fact, the killer's never really completely present on screen until the hour mark where we finally catch a glimpse or two, or see things through their eyes in your typical point-of-view shot. They got through a couple of kills, yes, but they're mostly an observer, biding their time to commit their next kill or let Mother Nature take out these men for them. The motive behind their killings can be a bit loose though, silly even for how both unrelated and specific it is, but I see it as a minor gripe considering how well the rest of the movie works itself around it, especially if it all leads to a harrowingly intense climax, a hauntingly silent reveal to what's behind these deaths and misfortunes, and one last shot that's serene and cathartic at the same time.

An excellent Canuck proto-slasher, this is one title that earned its cult fave status. I strongly recommend any true horror fans to try this out and consider giving this movie a spot for their collection as a minor classic and a hidden gem. A guaranteed genre pleaser!

Bodycount:

1 male thrown down a cliff

1 male strangled to death

1 male had a leg caught on a rusted bear trap, suffers through toxic shock

1 male hacked on the chest with an axe, bled to death

1 male set ablaze

1 male shot with a shotgun

Total: 6

Curtains For The Critics: Theatre of Blood (1973)

Theatre of Blood (United Kingdom, 1973)

Rating: ****

Starring: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry 

Ah, Vincent Price. You and your enjoyable proto-slashers! We meet again!

A deliciously campy romp from the legendary horror icon, Price is Shakespearean actor Edward Kendal Sheridan Lionheart! Disgraced by a group of critics who tore his performance apart, leading to him losing a prestigious award to a newcomer and driving him into suicide by jumping to the Thames from a building's height. Thought to be dead for two years, Lionheart, surviving the fall, soon returns as a madman hellbent on revenge and he has a little mob of homeless meth drinkers, as well as a mysterious man in shades helping him impose gruesome demises upon those who failed to see his genius.

Basically, Theatre of Blood (1973) is a brilliant classic proto-slasher for Price to demonstrate his ability to be both horrific and melodramatic at the highest levels of camp. He succeeds in doing this with the most over-the-top devilish persona to ever grace an exploitation piece, a shamed former actor who puts his stage skills and newfound bloodlust to use through the most entertaining revenge plot that's as cheeky as it is horrendous. There's no doubt Price adored this role seeing his twisted enthusiasm and wry delivery, perhaps one of his most entertaining characters in his acting career! He even gets to treat us with his stage play prowess reciting lines reeking in high grand, all to entertain his smelly and impressionable group of minions inside the abandoned Putney Hippodrome, adding a layer of appeal to his character.

The rest of the cast are a catch too, mainly Diana Rigg, a 60’s sex symbol and the Bond Girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Lionheart’s avenging daughter Edwina who willfully carries out her father's plan along his side, and Ian Hendry as Peregrine Devlin, the only likable critic who suspects Lionheart's hand on the recent deaths and putting up a good fencing fight in yet another of the movie's more memorable scenes. The pompousness of the doomed critics does rile up a good nerve to earn their ruthless yet creative dispatches, but not enough to make them overly unlikable to the matter of being unentertaining considering their sneering banter with one another provided some laughs.

And speaking of dispatches, the deaths here are another aspect of this movie that makes it a spectacular watch, perverting Shakespearean writing into decidedly gory comeuppances ranging from a delightfully messy decapitations, an ironic drowning, upsetting meat pies and a clever trick that has one of the critics getting themselves into a fate leading to death. The graphic nature of these killings contrasts fully with the light-hearted comedic tone of the script, hence making them cathartic and striking enough even if they have a twinge of dark humor in them.

In all honesty, I see very little to speak ill of about this movie as everything about it works as a comical slice of horror cinema. From Price playing dress-up multiple times to lure in or get close to his victims, to the outrageous set-pieces he and his cohorts have to work with just to get back on those who wronged Lionheart's talent and make a point, there's hardly a boring scene here. Every thing is dipped in a good amount of gloriously hilarious goodah and on a pace that flows so smoothly that its hundred minute running time feels like a satisfying breeze. The movie carries its British retro charm to a fun tee and snazz it up further by practically not taking itself too seriously, just having fun with the ridiculousness of its premise. 

Shockingly macabre yet innovatively dark, Theatre of Blood (1973) is a horror comedy in its best form, and too Vincent Price's testament as to why he's regarded as one of horror's treasured artists. Don't delay yourself from this 70s genre classic and see it as soon as you can!

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed to death by a mob of vagrants

1 male ran through with a spear

1 male decapitated in an impromptu surgery

1 male had his heart carved out with a dagger

1 male drowned in a barrel of wine

1 female smothered with a pillow

1 male implied to die in prison due to old age

1 female electrocuted with a rigged salon hair dryer

1 male choked on force-fed meat pie

1 male immolated inside a car by an incoming train

1 female dies from a bludgeoned head

1 male set ablaze

Total: 12

A Drug Trip For Pounded Flesh: Death Walks At Midnight (1972)

Death Walks At Midnight (La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte) (Italy, 1972)
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Nieves Navarro, Simón Andreu, Peter Martell

When fashion model Valentina (Nieves Navarro) volunteers to be an anonymous human guinea pig for a new experimental drug called HDS for her journalist friend Gio (Simon Andreu), she didn't expect seeing a vision of a girl getting her face caved in with a spiked iron gauntlet by a maniac in large shades. Worse even is that Gio didn't stay by his word to keep her anonymous, exploiting her freak out from the vision by taking and publishing pictures of the session, crafting a sensationalized tabloid piece for the city to see and read.

Rightfully angry about his deceit, Valentina confronts Gio about the stunt as it costs her a magazine job, vandalizing his office in the process, but she'll soon learn that something worse is stirring up for her; presumably to cover his tracks, the killer from Valentina's vision begins to stalk her, spiked gauntlet at hand, and has come pretty close to killing her in more than one time. When the police fails to properly recognize her stalker, it's up to Valentina to figure out who this is and stop him for good.

An intriguing labyrinthine plot is always a good expectation to meet from a well-crafted giallo and Death Walks at Midnight certainly delivers on that point; there's no mystery that killer from Valentina's drug trip actually exists, but their identity and motive is what keeps the story going, especially with the twists that the murder she saw was actually committed six months prior and, apparently, a different set of victim and murderer was involved. It's a twisty situation and the increasingly tangling dread subjected unto our lead makes for a good practice of paranoia that heightens the  curious nature of this conundrum, getting further muddled and oppressing the more the plot goes.

Despite the growing strangeness of the story, soon tainted with talks of suicidal women and drug addiction, Midnight impressively keeps a focused direction to all of these set-pieces and revelations, giving us a palpable stream of prowling sequences and an atmosphere of crippling helplessness that sustains the story with enough thrills and haunts to entertain its audience. A drawback here is that it can get too talky with its expositions, force-feeding us one info to the next before we can even properly sink everything in. There's also the matter that the movie nulls over exploring Valentina's relationships from her artist boyfriend and on-off journalist friend to a creepy talker and an inspector who believes she's holding out information from the crime, more often branching the story into character drama territories before kicking itself back into a murder mystery.

Nevertheless, it all ties up neatly at the final act in which the movie shift gear to a hammy action thriller with bad guy monologues, giggling assassins and a drawn-out brawl up at a rooftop in broad daylight. It's also in these parts wherein the kill count starts piling back up, the bloodiest it can get being another spiked gauntlet beating and one hilarious looking drop in which the unfortunate sap's brains get splattered out.

A crafty example of the giallo form, albeit less graphic and sleazy and putting more emphasis on curving plot lines, Death Walks at Midnight works an engaging enough tale that may have spiraled  out of control in some parts, its certainly isn't lacking on blood splatter and vintage cheese to occupy us in the midst of the madness. Rewarding us a fair payoff for sitting through its tricky little devil of a plot (I say fair because I don't even think they bother explaining how drugging Valentina got her seeing visions in the first place), it's an invitingly fun piece of Italian horror/thriller cinema well worth your time.

Bodycount:
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove
1 female found knifed on the chest
1 male found dead with chest wound
1 male found knifed on the chest
1 female beaten to death with a spiked iron glove (flashback)
1 male falls off a building, brains splattered upon impact
1 male shot through the back
1 male shot
Total: 8

Night of the Glass Eyes: Tourist Trap (1979)

Tourist Trap (1979)
Rating: ****
Starring: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Jon Van Ness

Inspired less by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and, instead, taking cues from Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976) (among plenty others), Tourist Trap (1979) is a slasher that defies structure and embraces nightmare logic, resulting to a surreal trip down familiar footings and then some.

When a friend fails to turn up after working on a car tire and their spare ride breaks down in the middle of an isolated countryside, a small group of youngsters foots to a nearby watering hole and garage that's also close to the titular tourist trap. There, the teens are greeted by an eccentric yet kind-looking old man named Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), owner of the trap which turns out to be a wax museum filled with a collection of mannequins and life-like mechanical figures made by Slausen's brother who left for the city.

The gang is allowed to hang around the museum under Slausen's approval, given that they don't leave and go snooping around the house next to them while he and another dude of their number drive off to town to find assistance. Finding Slausen to be a tad suspicious, most who remained choose to disregard the old man's request, not knowing they have sealed their fate to an unimaginable masked horror awaiting them.

Truth be told, the only flaw I endured through Tourist Trap (1979) is its slow padding moments wherein characters are either just walking around and sticking their noses in places it doesn't belong, or getting chased for the umpteenth time. It can get testy, but other than that, everything else about this movie just works.

Its meager budget may have shown the rough edges of the movie's production, but I cannot completely disregard this lack of funds as a negative aspect as it did little damage to the final product and, in some way, may have even help the story somewhat achieve a feat of creepiness and surrealism, particularly on how they utilize the simplicity of their special effects to it full unsettling potential. The worn-out and cluttered set-up of both the tourist trap and the killer's home, for example, not only boast a claustrophobic feel from the piles and piles of mannequins displayed or trashed around, but little details like the smooth gazes of the figures' glass eyes and the janky movements they do in places add an air of mocking menace and haunting uncertainty to what exactly the teens are dealing with.

Giving the killer telekinesis is a concept not often tackled in slasher movies, let alone have it leave out any solid ideas as to how they ended up with it and to what extent they can wield it. This, however, works favorably in Trap's case as the absence of background concerning the killer's psychic abilities strongly adds to the surrealism of the massacre, especially when it eventually reaches a climax where the lines of living, inanimate or dead gets blurred so bad, it's insanely delightful in its cheap yet effective execution. The kills, in turn, are an unconventional set with only a dab of blood here and there, as it focused more on the creative demises of the casts with sound design and editing helping elevate the techniques used.

More or less, Trap's strength lies more on creep factor than violence, an approach that succeeds greatly through its share of silliness that managed to double as effective eeriness, like how its own score flips from bells and whistles to exaggeratedly gasps over striking violins. It also helps that Chuck Connors does a wonder of a job conveying this tone to his scene-chewing range of personality from a calm old timer-type to a deranged man-child with godlike powers, giving little points like out-of-place cracker dinners with mannequins or the fact the killer couldn't stick to just one masks all the dinky and disturbing identity they needed.

Tourist Trap (1979) dwells openly in the unknown, fancying itself to leave its logic at the door to dish out a nightmarish story for us to enjoy. It's unique and disconcerting in all the right ways, thus a cult classic deserving of its status and that little space in our growing horror film hoard.

Bodycount:
1 male impaled by a levitating pipe
1 female strangled with a scarf
1 female had her face covered with plaster, suffocates
1 female gets a thrown knife to the back of her head
1 male killed offcamera, mannequin duplicate revealed
1 male gets an axe to the neck
Total: 6

A Man of the Cloth. And Killing: House of Mortal Sin (1976)

House of Mortal Sin (United Kingdom, 1976) (AKA "The Confessional", "The Confessional Murders")
Rating: ***1/2
Starring: Anthony Sharp, Susan Penhaligon, Stephanie Beacham

The idea of a slasher film with a murderous pastor for a villain is always a cheeky treat for me; if done right, the irony of this concept can be deliciously juicy as an exploitation piece, as well as terrifying looking into the fact that it can happen in real life with many people in respected positions abusing their authority. Pete Walker's House of Mortal Sin (1976) is a good example of this, serving us a distressing scenario about an everyday woman being stalked by a disturbed and very repressed pastor.

Down in the dumps from a recent nasty break-up, Jenny Welch (Susan Penhaligon) opted to pour her heart out to an old friend, Bernard (Norman Eshley), who entered as a curate at their local Catholic church. When she goes to see him, though, she instead ends up wandering into a confessional box where Father Meldrum (Anthony Sharp) secretly records her confessions, including that of a secret abortion she had. The more Meldrum creepily asks her for details about her sex life, the further Jenny gets freaked out and soon books it out of there, unknowingly leaving her keys behind. 

What soon follows is tragedy upon tragedy as Meldrum starts to stalk Welch, breaking into her house to lurk around and use the confessional  recording to try blackmailing into coming back to him. Should she choose not to, or if someone gets too close to finding out his true nature and intentions, Meldrum wastes no time killing whoever gets in his way whenever he fails to lie out of trouble.

It's clear House of Mortal Sin (1976) aims for controversy by putting organized religion under criticism and showing us the possible dark side a man of the cloth would harbor within, but for its worth, it is still a darkly entertaining film with honest-to-God chills and a fairly intriguing villain.

There is no doubt that Meldrum is one key character that kept this movie alive; his obsession over one woman is just frightening for the lengths he's willing to go, all the while tormented by guilt over his urges to the point he has no problem lashing out at anyone, this includes his poor bedridden mother who has no choice but to listen to her son ramble out madness. Anthony Sharp did a wonderful job here bringing this mad pastor to life, deceiving us with his old, pompous and frail demeanor before engulfing us in toxic malice and brewing lust through hammy yet creepily uncomfortable dialogue, as well as the occasional bloodshed with everything from burning incense censers to rosary beads getting the profane treatment of being murder weapons, resulting to a few impressively brutal kill scenes.

On the other side of the poisoned communion wafer, Penhaligon played her Jenny character decent enough as a memorable and vulnerable victim of Meldrum's mania and Eshley leads a strong and rather likable liberal pastor whose decision for celibacy is tested as he starts to grow feelings for Jenny's sister, played with girl-around-town spunk by Stephanie Beacham. We also have Sheila Keith (who starred at two previous Walker movies) as Miss Brabazon, an imposing figure who looks after and tortures Meldrum's mother as a side element the film brings up from time to time. Her slice of the story, however, does come into some importance at the end where in it's revealed that Meldrum's demented disposition and Brabazon's continuing torment upon his mother are tied together.

Story-wise, House of Mortal Sin (1976) does not deviate much from its main plot, hiding little to no twists in its direction while borrowing elements from other psycho-drama and bodycount thrillers of the time. It goes through the events in an escalating manner that the stalker drama sequences that comes in between the murders felt natural and piece everything together interestingly, albeit suffering a few padding issues that's close to tedious. This remains to be the case until the last act, when the movie picks itself up agreeably before swinging a bleak ending at us that not only is littered with bodies, but broke expectations, too.

In my eyes, House of Mortal Sin (1976) is one of Pete Walker's better movies and an underrated proto-slasher that's full of inventive ideas, old-fashioned psychological horror and a shred of mischief, all meant to shock and stir. A Grand Guignol commentary on religion, there's no denying this is a unique effort worth seeing.

Bodycount:

1 female threw herself off a bedroom window

1 male bludgeoned to death with incense burner

1 male found killed

1 female poisoned with tainted communion wafer

1 female strangled with a rosary, neck crushed

1 elderly female poisoned with tainted communion wafer

1 female found with throat cut

Total: 7

Eastwood vs The Vigilante System: Magnum Force (1973)

Magnum Force (1973)
Rating: ****1/2
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Hal Holbrook, Mitchell Ryan

When Dirty Harry (1971) came out in theaters back in the days, audiences saw the birth of a future pop culture icon Inspector Harry Callahan, a cop who gets assigned to "every dirty job that comes along" and handling them through means crossing professional boundaries, all in the name of his own vision of justice. In that movie, Callahan went bullet-to-bullet with an insane sniper going by the moniker Scorpio and as impressive it is as a movie (perhaps one of the best action flicks ever) it doesn't really challenges you to ponder on whether or not you should empathize with its villain.

Scorpio was a heartless, manipulative psychopath who demands money under the false pretenses that he'll stop his killings should he get his ransom, so it's no deal-breaker that we'd root for him getting the hot leaded end of Callahan's controversial yet well deserving sense of justice, but what will the inspector do should he face someone who lives by the same brand of antiheroism, set to the extreme? This is where Magnum Force (1973) comes in.

The first sequel of many following the further high caliber cop adventures of "Dirty Harry", it starts with mobster Carmine Ricca being acquitted of a mass murder on a legal technicality. Smugly driving away from the court with his cohorts, Ricca and company soon got the attention of a motorcycle cop and asked to pull over in an isolated road due to some traffic violation. Unbeknownst to them, this is all just a foil as the cop proceeds to execute all of them with gunfire.

Among the many to respond to this eventual crime scene is none other than Inspector Callahan, alongside his partner Earlington "Early" Smith. Although supposed to be on stakeout duty, the Inspectors have no qualms sticking their noses in this circus, though their superior Lieutenant Neil Briggs thinks otherwise and would rather have the two take down other baddies instead, including a couple of plane hijackers and a gang of pharmacy store robbers.

However, it seems the cop-gone-rogue is far from done being judge, jury and executioner as San Francisco's underworld continues to thin down. Hoping to end the threat as soon as possible, the city's police department have no choice but to assign Harry on homicide to help with the investigation, leading him to suspect the vigilante is someone within the department after one too many coincidences concerning the deaths and a particular new recruit.

The whole film is practically a cop drama with a small slice of proto-slasher action as the scenes involving the vigilante cop strongly resembles the stalk-and-kill style of later slasher villains, only with a handgun. The vigilante cop is shot mostly from the neck down whenever they appear on screen at the early half of the film, an obscuring technique used for plenty of horror movie killers, and the executions they bring have this focused build-up that often ends with brutal results. All of this working its way to a climactic cat-and-mouse chase between Callahan and the vigilante-type inside an abandoned harbor bay, not so unlike the slasher finales between a masked killer and the final character.

Cleverly, these scenes are incorporated into the story with a rather thought-provoking take as while the killings only target those criminal types at first, it gradually starts to include those that just happens to be in the way the further the plot goes. This gives both our main casts and the audience new grounds to cover regarding grey area characters, identifying with them regarding their goals but also questioning where exactly do we draw the line, an exceptional and intriguing position to put the likes of someone who isn't that big of a fan of the law as "Dirty Harry". Even more noticeable is that while not out riding through the city of San Francisco looking for hoodlums to kill, the rogue is a rather likable individual, particularly during the times they're just shooting the breeze in vigorous zeal with the then-unknowing Callahan.

In the midst of this, Magnum Force still doesn't forget its run-in-the-mill shoot'em up thriller roots, fortunately, so while this concept of grey shade law enforcement is tackled, the film is no short of the random misadventures of inspector Callahan thrown here and there to pad time, establish a tone and/or keep the main mystery exciting. Some of them works, others are cheesy for how odd they are, but they're there to entertain and entertain they did.

It also helps Callahan in this sequel is portrayed to be less angry than he is in Dirty Harry (1971), keeping it chill and even smiles a lot more despite getting the bad end of the stick or receiving a mouthful from Lt. Briggs or any higher officials. He takes his time to calculate his moves and even isn't shy on hinting a genuinely calm and humorous demeanor underneath his tough as nails personality.

All in all, whether you see it as an action flick or a potential proto-slasher, this is a movie that does little wrong but isn't guilty of missing an opportunity or two; some characters are introduced that could have been expanded (Harry's neighbor Sunny, who has the hots for the rugged cop, more or less just steps in to make love and almost be a victim of vigilantism) and the plot has its moments of simplicity in its approach that it's almost readable in its direction, but as a sequel, Magnum Force (1973) strives to move its predecessor further from being a sort-of fascist law enforcer flick and it succeeds to reasonable levels. Clint Eastwood shines well in this action-filled cop mystery, armed with his trusted .44 Magnum to put an end to a humongous killcount for our viewing pleasure!

Bodycount:
4 males shot to death
1 male shot
6 males and 5 females gunned down with a submachine gun
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 female poisoned with a drain cleaner
1 male shot to death
1 male shot
1 male shot to death
1 male shot to death
1 female repeatedly shot, crashes and falls off a building
1 male shot to death
1 male shot with a shotgun
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male shot
1 male crashes his car through a crane, killed
1 male decimated by an explosive
1 male killed in vehicular collision
1 male had his throat beaten repeatedly
1 male tossed out of his motor bike and into a bay, drowned upon fall
1 male decimated by an explosive
Total: 38

Golden Title: The Omen (1976)

Let's celebrate Halloween 2019 with a classic.

The Omen (United Kingdom/USA, 1976)
Rating: *****
Starring: Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, Harvey Stephens

In Rome, Robert Thorn, an American diplomat, just received word that his newborn child died at birth, a grave news that is not only distraught to him but will surely crush his wife, Katherine. Hence when a well-meaning priest offered Robert a chance to adopt a newborn child whose mother died during an operation, he is quick to accept the child as his own, naming him Damien, and his wife was none the wiser.

Five years later, not long after Robert gets appointed as the US Ambassador for Great Britain, the Thorns find themselves in an increasingly frightful predicament as mysterious deaths and events start to plague them, beginning with the moment the family nanny commits suicide during Damien's birthday, claiming it is all for the boy. In fact, all of the sudden strange happenings seem to be linked to Damien and it isn't too long before an unsettling truth will come upon the family, as well as to those who insists on aiding them against a powerful dark force.

A prime example of a quintessential title within the 70's Satanic cycle, The Omen (1976) works its apocalyptic narrative through a more subtle and realistic direction compared to, let's say, The Exorcist (1973), a similarly religiously themed horror movie that's made effective thanks to its shocking blasphemous visuals. The Omen, alternatively, focuses more on downplaying the typical onscreen demonic horror elements of nightmare imagery and underworld monsters, in its place instead is a strongly orchestrated sense of helplessness as its plot implies that the Devil's forces may have already got most, if not all of the cards played in the favor of the Beast right at the beginning of the movie, while those who choose to fight against them are doomed to die while their God remains distant or absent.

It's a particularly powerful notion and The Omen (1976) captures this quite intriguingly through its story's flow, starting everything up with good fortune falling upon the Thorns only for it to slowly crumble down as one accident and odd occurrence pressures the family to seek help from both conventional and unconventional ways, leading to either a ghastly death or a revelation that defies rational explanation and leans more on the prophetic. It's this direction that the film revels at and to a good effect, as it eventually questions how much control do our protagonists have to begin with and where exactly does the line draw in regards to what is nothing more than a phase or a pawn to a grand cosmic scheme, which in this case is the Apocalypse as indicated in the Christian Bible. This Biblical concept is justly explored, but done in a way that doesn't feel overly pretentious and still caters to a wide array of horror hounds like you and me.

One of the movie's memorable elements, for example, leans more on the exploitative side of horror as it tackles smaller omens indicated through a photographer's collection of photos they took during Damien's birthday. A lot of these results to well-executed Rube Goldberg-inspired set-pieces that executes victims in spectacular manners, pretty much a precursor to Final Destination movies. (In fact, Final Destination 3 (2006)'s idea of omens through photographs was directly inspired by this movie) Gothic overtones are also strong in this movie's cinematography, done mostly through location shots and gloomy stylized lighting. Add on the Oscar-winning score by none other than Jerry Goldsmith and the effectiveness of The Omen's dark tone is very much achieved.

In terms of talent, The Omen (1976) boasts quite a casts for a horror film with Gregory Peck bringing all he can to the table as the leading man, playing a character determined to dig out the truth yet still holding on to a grounded view to his situation. Young Harvey Stephens, playing Damien, would also become one of the most memorable horror icons to grace cinema, odd as the child barely uttered a word nor did he did anything gradually evil but his very normal appearance contrasts his grim fate as the Antichrist, unsettling at best as one could never tell, reflecting the written deceptive nature of the Devil himself.

All in all, The Omen (1976) is a classic that earned its place among horror giants. Past the religious connotations and the over-the-top deaths, it is a story that can very well transpire in real life as a possibility, questioning fate and control at a terrifyingly psychological manner, thus a true treat for all genre fans, both in and out of the horror community.

Bodycount:
1 baby died during birth, later revealed due to head trauma
1 female hanged
1 male impaled by a broken-off lightning rod
1 unborn child miscarried
1 female pushed through a window, lands on an ambulance
1 male decapitated by a projected glass pane
1 female stabbed with a fork and knife
1 male shot
Total: 8