Shameless Self Expression

Carl Schell plays a disgraced doctor who accepts a teaching position at a home/school for wayward girls. Before long, people start getting attacked seemingly by a wolf. Or is it something else? Curt Lowens plays the shifty director of the school, Barbara Lass plays a student trying to figure out what’s going on, and Luciano Pigozzi plays the creepy caretaker.   Despite the cheesy AIP-esque title, this 1961 film from director Paolo Heusch (casting director on the infamous “Caligula” ) and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi ( “Terror in the Crypt” , “The Virgin of Nuremberg” , “The Whip and the Body” , “Torso” ) is an Italian offering and a bit more serious than it sounds. Like the later “The Beast Must Die” it’s basically a murder-mystery where the murderer is a werewolf. It’s kinda watchable and there’s some good stuff in it, but not enough to wholly recommend.   The werewolf attacks are too few and far between, with lots of thumb-twiddling throughout. The makeup is pretty...

Isabelle Mejias is the title disturbed teenager who plots to do away with her mother so that she can have her oblivious father (Anthony Franciosa) all to herself. Yes, in that way. Fate intervenes by way of a delivery guy (Paul Hubbard) who misreads signals and then gets violent with the mother. Everything seems to be working to psychotic plan for Julie until she hits a pretty big snag: Her dad starts seeing a new woman…and she’s played by Sybil Danning. Yeah, good luck winning that one, Julie.   Genuinely messed up, bonkers 1982 film from “Chained Heat” director Paul Nicholas and his co-writer Maurice Smith ( “The Joys of Jezebel” ) is admittedly not very good or particularly well-made. I can’t really recommend it, certainly not wholeheartedly. It is however, pretty committed to its crazy-arse central conceit, and that earns it some points at least. That said, the bonkers premise and the commitment to it do also likely limit the film’s appeal for most viewers. In other word...