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Review: Messiah of Evil (1974)

Marianna Hill arrives at a seaside town in search of her artist father (Royal Dano), whose communications have become increasingly erratic. She hooks up with Michael Greer and his friends Anitra Ford and Joy Bang as they slowly realise it’s the hundredth anniversary of an incident involving a blood red moon and the dead have risen to feed on the living. Charles Dierkop appears briefly as a gas station attendant, and Elisha Cook Jr. plays a fearful homeless man. 1974 cult item from husband-and-wife team of director Willard Hyuck and co-writer Gloria Katz, George Lucas’ pals who later forced “Howard the Duck” onto the cinematic landscape. This one’s considerably better, but still not a complete success in my book. It’s got a pretty agonising pace and a little too much vagueness for my liking. After 40 minutes, you kinda want the details to start filling in, and they just don’t come until you’ve stopped caring. Character motivation in particular seems lacking, and the character played by...
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Review: The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)

Set in an 18 th Century English village, local judge Patrick Wymark is shown some disturbing remains with what was meant to be strange tufts of fur. However, when the judge arrives to examine things, the remains have vanished and the judge thinks nothing further of it. However, he’s going to have to face up to the fact that something disturbing is indeed going on in the village, as young Linda Hayden (17 at the time of filming) has taken to trying to seduce the local Reverend (a very serious Anthony Ainley), and leading the village’s youngsters in Satanic activity. Tamara Ustinov and Wendy Padbury play frightened local girls, Michele Dotrice plays one of the young Satanists, Milton Reid appears briefly as a dog handler, and James Hayter adds colour in the role of a pompous Squire. Tigon (or Tigon British) were never quite able to compete with Hammer Films or Amicus Films in the independent horror market. However, they did give us two of the best witch-hunter films in “Witchfinder Gene...
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Review: In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Psychiatrist David Warner visits a mental patient (Sam Neill) in his padded asylum cell. He’s an insurance investigator named John Trent who was hired by a publishing company to track down a missing horror novelist named Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow), kind of a mixture of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. Cane believed that his works had a drastic effect on his readers…fiction was starting to turn real! He also came to realise that the fictional town he wrote about had suddenly sprung up in the real world, not featured on any map. Trent says he attempted to travel there with his editor (Julie Carmen) and what they encountered was truly the stuff of nightmares. Charlton Heston plays the publishing company head, John Glover turns up as the asylum administrator, Peter Jason is an insurance cheat, Frances Bay plays a creepy hotelier, Bernie Casey appears briefly as a client of Trent’s (in perhaps the film’s most famous scene), and a young Hayden Christensen can be seen as a paper boy in his...
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Review: The Beast Within (1982)

A honeymooning couple in the 1960s (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch) are stuck beside the road in a small town in Mississippi after their car gets stuck in swampy undergrowth. Whilst Cox goes in search of help, a prone Besch is raped in the nearby forest in the dark. Seventeen years later Besch and Cox are raising their son (Paul Clemens), who is in truth the product of that awful incident seventeen years ago. He has been stricken by very painful, unexplained illness. So the couple decide to head back to small town Mississippi for answers about Besch’s assailant, to see if the illness is genetic. Unfortunately, the townsfolk are a secretive lot, some even quite surly. Meanwhile, Clemens escapes from the hospital and heads for Mississippi too, whilst his body seems to be undergoing some very painful transformation. Katherine Moffat is a local girl Clemens meets and falls for, with John Dennis Johnston playing her lout of a father. L.Q. Jones and Meshach Taylor play the local sheriff and his de...
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Review: The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954)

King Richard (Patrick Holt) is held prisoner in Germany, Sir Nigel of Saltire (Douglas Wilmer, in an excellent film debut) enlists the help of Robin Hood (Don Taylor) to uncover plans regarding the King’s return. After all, if the plans fall into the wrong hands the King’s life could be in danger. The trail eventually leads to the rotten Sir Guy Belton (David King-Wood), but there is another conspiratorial figure who is tied to Prince John. Eileen Moore plays the lovely Lady Alys, who along with Friar Tuck (Reginald Beckwith), and Robin’s Merry Men fill out the support players. Giant Bernard Bresslaw can briefly be seen as a dopey guard, and Leonard Sachs plays The Sheriff of Nottingham, far less important to the tale here than usual. Moderately enjoyable 1954 Val Guest ( “Yesterday’s Enemy” , “The Full Treatment” , “Hell is a City” ) adventure film was Hammer’s first of several Robin Hood films, but not the best of them (that would be 1967’s underrated “A Challenge for Robin Hood” ). ...
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Review: Samurai Cop (1991)

Mathew Karedas (credited as Matt Hannon) stars as the title San Diego cop now transferred to Los Angeles to tackle a Japanese drug syndicate called The Katana Clan (headed by Cranston Komuro). Mark Frazer plays Karedas’ partner on the force, whilst Gerald Okamura and Robert Z’Dar play Komuro’s subordinates. Melissa Moore plays a fellow cop Karedas beds down with at one point, Jannis Farley plays Karedas’ chief love interest (a restaurant owner), and an actress simply credited as ‘Cameron’ plays Z’Dar’s girlfriend…whom Kaderas also seduces. Nearly every review of Amir Shervan’s cheap and dull “Killing American Style” seemed to suggest I perhaps had started with the wrong Shervan film. So here I am having now seen his 1991 ‘magnum opus’ of crap. Indeed this is the Armin Shervan film to see for those of a certain deranged cinematic mindset like me. Sadly, it was his last directorial effort even though he didn’t pass away until 2006. Apparently he just couldn’t get financing for anything ...
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Review: The Munsters (2022)

Mad scientist Richard Brake and his hunchbacked assistant Jorge Garcia rob graves for body parts to create what is ultimately named Herman Munster. Lily is a 100+ year-old vampire who falls in love with the big lug. Daniel Roebuck plays Lily’s father The Count (later to be known as Grandpa Munster, even though he’s Lily’s father, not Herman’s), who does not approve of Lily’s choice of mate. I wouldn’t say I was a devotee of the TV show, but I definitely watched re-runs of “The Munsters” (and “The Addams Family” for that matter) from time to time as a kid and enjoyed them well enough. Rob Zombie ( “Halloween” , “The Devil’s Rejects” ) is yet to make a film I can wholeheartedly embrace but I was at least mildly intrigued to see what he could do with the project. Then I saw the first trailer for this 2022 big-screen adaptation and my heart sank. I honestly thought I was watching something from not even Zombie, not even a Troma movie, but one of those E.I. Independent/Seduction Cinema c...
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Review: Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973)

Set in the California town of Peckham, there’s been a bizarre string of murders where it appears the male victims have been…fornicated to the point of death. Federal agent William Smith shows up to aid local law (represented by Cliff Osmond) in their investigation. Anitra Ford plays an entomologist specialising in bees, whilst Victoria Vetri turns up as a librarian at the local scientific research facility. Nudity and sense of humour in the Nicholas Meyer (director of “Time After Time” and two “Star Trek” films) script make this 1973 B-grade film the cheesy cult classic that it is. Without that humorous touch, I doubt it would be as affectionately received including by at least one well-known, dearly departed critic (and occasional screenwriter) I could name. Directed by Denis Sanders (the concert doco “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” ) it’s played totally deadpan for very silly, comedic effect in what is essentially a non-porno about men being fucked to death by an alien race. It’s ver...
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