Kill, Baby, Kill Another great Mario Bava classic

By Steve D. Stones

In 1966, Italian director Mario Bava made this gothic supernatural classic – Kill, Baby, Kill! The film was also marketed as Curse of The Living Dead and under its Italian title – Operazione Paura. Bava is considered a master of the Italian “Giallo” genre in film-making.

A coroner, played by Italian actor Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, arrives in a small 19^th century Carpathian town to conduct an autopsy. He discovers that the death of a child is haunting locals, who were responsible for her death. The ghost of the girl seeks her revenge on the locals by driving them mad enough to commit suicide. A local witch is also spinning evil sorcery in the town. Gold coins are found embedded in the hearts of villagers who are found dead. The coroner realizes that the dead child has put a curse on the village. He encounters the ghost of the child while visiting her mother, the Baroness Graps.  The Baroness has a strange painting of the girl covered in spider webs on her castle wall.

Bava uses a number of filming techniques that have become characteristic of his directing style. For example, a number of scenes show a character peeking through a window or standing in a doorway as the camera quickly zooms in closely to the character, and then quickly pulls out and away from the person. In one very surreal sequence, a child is swinging back and forth on a swing as if the camera is in her lap, zooming closely to a tombstone off in the distance as the child swings forward.  Bava also uses strange red or blue lightning in a number of scenes, which he also repeats in Planet of The Vampires (1965) and Danger Diabolik (1969). In another scene, actor Rossi-Stuart runs through the baroness’ room over and over again, as his duplicate catches up behind him.

Kill, Baby, Kill is not the masterpiece of Bava’s 1960 film – Black Sunday, but it is still an effective horror film worthy of your viewing. Happy Viewing. 

Ogden, Utah, regional classic: Don't Go in the Woods ... Alone

By Steve D. Stones

This film is of particular interest to me because it was filmed in my native state of Utah. The composer who created the music, H. Kingsley Thurber, is a resident of my hometown of Ogden City. Thurber is responsible for composing music tracks for popular video games of the 1990s. With the exception of the four main actors in the film who play the young campers, most of the cast members were from Salt Lake City. Many scenes in this film were shot at Bridal Veil Falls, a beautiful mountainous location up Provo Canyon here in Utah. The film was banned in the U.K. in the 1980s as a "video nasty," and remains banned in that country to this day. Unlike many cult films, I actually loved this film the first time I viewed it. It usually takes me several viewings to appreciate a cult film.

There are many interesting "point of view" shots in the film. One shows the camper Joanie, played by actress Angie Brown, tearing through a sleeping bag after she has been strung up in a tree inside the bag as a prank from her boyfriend. As she tries to tear through the bag to get out, she witnesses the murderer of the film through a hole in the bag as he runs down a mountain trail and stabs her boyfriend in the stomach with a knife tied to a long tree branch. The murderer is similar to the maniac Jupiter in Wes Craven’s 1977 classic "The Hills Have Eyes." On the audio commentary for the film, director James Bryan describes the maniac-murderer as a Siberian-Shaman looking character.

One very creative murder sequence shows a young mother painting on canvas outdoors in the mountains as her infant is bouncing up and down in a baby swing. The canvas she is painting on has only been painted with green strokes of paint. Suddenly she is murdered and gushes of red blood splatter across the canvas, making an interesting use of complementary colors together. I don’t know how intentional this was in the film. For those of us who paint frequently and know about color schemes, it is an interesting sequence. There are also many "fake scares" in the film that set the audience up for thinking they may see the murderer attack a character in the film. Many of these sequences turn out to be a "fake scare" to add to the black humor of the film.

Although the humor sequences outweigh the serious ones, it is often hard to tell whether the film wants to be a full-blown black comedy, or a serious horror film, This may be one of the biggest reasons why I enjoyed the film the first time I viewed it, and continue to enjoy it with each viewing. If you pay careful attention to the film, you will notice that every time a new character is shown on screen in an awful costume, you can guarantee that this person will be the next to be killed. This is part of the black humor director Bryan is trying to get across in the film. Death comes to those with a horrible fashion sense.

A particularly tacky scene shows Cheri and Dick making out in the back of a Volkswagen Van on their honeymoon night. Dick repeats: "Cheri, Cheri, you’re the most beautiful thing that has ever come into my life." This is pretty bad dialogue to say the least. The director once worked in the porno business before he worked on the Grizzly Adams television show of the 1970s, so this may be why he intentionally gave these two characters the tacky names that he did and their poor dialogue. To add to the tackiness, the interior of the van is designed with a poster of Farrah Fawcett plastered to the ceiling with gold trim, red shag carpet, and heart-shaped pillows. Perhaps the interior of the van was once used as a set for a porno film? The awfulness of the van’s décor would lead us to believe so.

It seems like such a cliché to have an overweight, soft-spoken sheriff of a small town in a low-budget horror film, but this may be the most convincing character in the entire film. The sheriff, played by Texan Ken Carter, flies a small plane into the skies in search of a missing person reported lost. This sequence seems like homage to Coleman Francis’ plane scenes in "The Beast of Yucca Flats" with the sheriff fulfilling the role of Tor Johnson. Another scene shows Carter helping a pretty young roller skater from falling to the ground as she runs into him getting out of his police vehicle. The sheriff frequently wipes his brow from sweating profusely, which has also become another cliché in low-budget horror films.

If you are a fan of low-budget horror films and a native of Utah, I highly recommend that you view this film. The 25th Anniversary Edition DVD distributed by Media Blasters is full of extra features, such as a short featurette made by director James Bryan with cast and crew members, two audio commentaries and a poster and production still gallery of the film. You are guaranteed to get your money’s worth if you purchase this DVD. It is one of the most cherished DVDs in my collection.

The Unearthly -- Carradine chews up the scenery

                                                           

                                                              The Unearthly

The Unearthly, 1957, Director: Brooke L. Peters; Cast includes John Carradine, Tor Johnson, Allison Hayes, Myron Healey; About 75 minutes in most prints. *******1/2 out of 10 stars on the Schlock-Meter

By Doug Gibson

The Unearthly boasts Ed Wood’s giant Tor Johnson among its cast, which automatically bumps it up a star or two on the Schlock-Meter. The tale is pretty standard fare for 1950s sci-fi/horror filmdom; Mad scientist John Carradine uses unsuspecting patients to try and graft on a “17th gland,” which the “good” doctor hopes will create eternal life. The problem is, all of the previous human guinea pigs he’s tried the gland procedure on have turned up mentally impaired and deformed. They exist -- a pretty motley bunch -- in the basement.

Pretty Allison Hayes is Carradine’s next intended victim, but she’s saved by Myron Healey, who plays an undercover cop who infiltrates Carradine’s sanitarium pretending to be a killer on the lam. Don’t you love these convoluted plots. Anyway, it’s up to Healey to save the day, since the patients of Carradine are too dense to realize that their ranks are shrinking rapidly.

Surprisingly, Carradine makes a pretty effective bad guy in this low-budget offer. He’s more subtle, resisting the urge to revert to his usual “over-the-top” overacting. The few times Carradine raises his voice in anger, his sinister side is effectively revealed. In a more quiet way, he's still chewing up the scenery. Tor Johnson, as Carradine’s hulking helper, is actually allowed a few lines of garbled dialogue. There are a few shots of Allison Hayes in a low cut nightgown, which must have a excited quite a few movie-going boys just entering puberty in 1957.

Some of the more glaring inconsistencies include: The sanitarium appears to be located in a secluded, out-of-the-way site, but it only takes the police a couple of minutes to arrive when called; none of the “patients” of Carradine’s doctor appear too concerned that Tor Johnson’s grotesque “Lobo” is on the staff; also, it’s amusing to see characters feign the effects of being shot in the stomach without any blood or bullet holes showing up.

The Unearthly is definitely worth a rental, if just to see one of the few films Tor Johnson made. Watch the MST3K riff above.

White Zombie -- Lugosi's '$800' blockbuster

By Doug Gibson 

"White Zombie" is a marvelous film. Panned by the supercilious critics of the 1930s, the 1932 voodoo/zombie Haitian mystical horror film is an established classic today. Frankly, all the credit goes to Bela Lugosi. His character, Murder Legendre, is a cinema masterpiece of horror. Evil, courtly, always thinking of revenge and sans a conscience, he is a dark God of the Caribbean, creating zombie slaves for various whims, to fuel his sugar cane mill, to punish his enemies, and merely to amuse himself.

The plot, as virtually everyone knows, involves a young couple, a banker, Neil, and his fiance (John Harron and Madge Bellamy) rather strangely traveling to Haiti to be married in the mansion of a sugar plantation owner, Charles, (Robert Frazer) who Bellamy's character, Madeleine, barely knows. Charles has an obsessive crush on Madeleine, and repeatedly begs her to marry him. She rejects his overtures with quiet patience. However, Charles lust is so strong that he accepts help from Legendre to make it appear Madeleine has died and then have return as a pliant zombie. (There is an early, pre-Hays code scene Bellamy, dressing for her wedding, is quite sexy in undergarments)6

 Anyway, after Madeleine's "death," her stunned, bereaved husband spends most of his time in a saloon until prodded by a local missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn) to double check on Madeleine's death. Bruner, a longtime resident of the island, suspects that Legendre may be involved. Meanwhile, the merciless Legendre casually turns Charles into a zombie after the repentant suitor begs to have the lifeless Madeleine restored to life. (It needs to be mentioned that prior to George A. Romero's influence, cinema zombies -- thanks largely to "White Zombie" -- were generally sinister slaves for evil henchman.)

The independent film was directed by Victor Halperin and produced by his brother, Edward. It was shot on the Universal Studios backlot. The Halperins were ordinary talents. "White Zombie" was their only money-maker, and its success is owed only to Lugosi. Although shots of the zombies are impressive, including a chilling scene where a zombie falls into a cane masher, the rest of the actors, with the partial exception of Cawthorn, are dull and lifeless. Bellamy is beautiful but as stiff as a state. Frazer is OK but mostly emotes, and Harron is weak as the romantic lead. Lugosi simply dominates the film, with his cheerful evil and his ability to convey devil-like behavior with affability. The film has a wonderful climax that includes zombies stepping off cliffs and falling to new deaths without a sound.

How much Lugosi earned and how much the $60,000 or so film earned is still debated. Lugosi claimed he was only paid $800 for the role. If so, that would be criminal, although he was in poor economic straits at the time and needed cash. I suspect he was paid at least a couple of thousand dollars, still a paltry sum. Lugosi also claimed the film grossed $8 million. That's likely untrue. It was a huge hit. Gary Don Rhodes, in his excellent book, "White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film," estimates that the film grossed about $1.75 million, a lot for that time period. Rhodes also writes that the Halperins only earned $80,000 from the film.

In any event, someone made a lot of cash from the movie. The fiscal abuse Lugosi dealt with his entire career from Universal and other studios has always annoyed me. What a pity that whoever got the lion's share of White Zombie's earnings couldn't be bothered to write Lugosi a check for $25,000 or so -- a pittance of the film's profits? After all, he was the sole reason that the film was a blockbuster. Anyone who has seen the pitiful, non-Lugosi 1936 Halperin follow up, "Revolt of the Zombies," knows that all too well.

I hope that wherever the folks who profited from "White Zombie" are, they've offered a beyond the grave apology to Lugosi for stiffing him on the proceeds of the film. As a matter of fact, the Universal execs should also be apologizing.