Category: 1970’s

Directed by Richard Blackburn [Other horror films: N/A]

I’ve seen Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural before, and I didn’t care for it. The fact that I was a teenager probably had something to do with that, and I likely wasn’t in a place where I could appreciate a slower, more sensitive movie like this one.

Well, after revisiting it, I have to say that I still don’t particularly care for it. It’s true that I can at least admit that I appreciate what it was going for, and certainly, I know the movie has its fans and generally positive reception (insofar as much as I hear this one being brought up), but I can’t say that I had a good time with it, because I didn’t.

Honestly, while the movie’s interesting, and the basic idea of a young girl going to a creepy town filled with vampires and seduction is one potentially worth exploring, I find much of the film so damn tedious. I wasn’t exactly falling asleep or nodding off, but more than once, I felt myself trailing off. That may say more about me than it does the film, but either way, this just isn’t my vibe.

I do like the end, though. To clarify, by end, I mean the final two sequences. That random all-out battle between the vampires and the werewolf/vampire things done in almost flash-freeze style was off-putting to the extreme, but afterwards, for the final couple of minutes I thought the movie showed promise that I’d not seen much of up to that point.

To be fair, I do think that Cheryl Smith (Laserblast) does a good job as a naive, religious kid. I certainly don’t fault her performance for my dislike of the film. I didn’t entirely care for Lesley Gilb, but that has far more to do with her character than it does her performance. The only other moderately relevant performance is that of Richard Blackburn’s (also the director of this film), and I think they could have done a bit more with his character had they wanted to.

There’s no doubt that this movie would definitely appeal to some. It’s not exactly a coming-of-age film, at least not in my mind, but it definitely has elements of that, and portions of the film can be quite creepy. The whole movie, in fact, feels dream-like, and the atmosphere is generally on point.

Despite all that, I keep going back to the fact I was bored for a lot of the film, and dangerously close to becoming disinterested. I can definitely understand why I didn’t care for the film the first time I saw it, as it’s an acquired taste, and after revisiting it with fresh eyes, I can say that it’s a taste I’ve still not acquired.

5/10

Directed by Jack Weis [Other horror films: Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)]

I wanted to like Crypt of Dark Secrets, and aspects of it were decent, but large sections of the film were slow as all hell, and it was generally a bit of a slough to get through.

Here’s what I enjoyed, though, about the film: the setting, being the swamps of Louisiana, was great. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – swamps are underutilized in horror. I imagine filming in a swamp would be a nightmare, but boy howdy, what beauty. Much of the film here takes place on a haunted island in the middle of a swamp, and if that doesn’t scream stellar setting, nothing else could.

I also appreciate how the basics of this film can’t help but remind me of “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” by the Charlie Daniels Band. See, in that song, an ornery old man, who had a bunch of money, lived alone in a swamp and was killed. Here, we have a younger man (though still with 15 years experience in the military, serving in both Korea and Vietnam), and when three people hear about the money he has stored up there, they go to kill him and take his riches. I’d argue that the song is a hell of a lot more fun, though.

At this juncture, I did want to briefly talk about one of the main characters, played by Ronald Tanet. As the guy living on a haunted island with a decent chunk of money, I was consistently amused by how little emotion this guy showed throughout the film. I sort of get it – if you’ve been a soldier for almost twenty years, I can imagine not having the capacity to care much about anything once you’re out, but this guy was like a blank slate. It may well have been intentional, but having a focal character with absolutely zero emotion was impressive.

Things take a turn in the second half of the film, though, after the three ne’er-do-wells (played by Butch Benit, Harry Uher, and Barbara Hagerty) successfully get the money they sought, and things slow to crawl. To be fair, it had been sluggish before, in the way that some 70’s films suffered from, but once we get the origin of the snake-woman Damballa (played by Maureen Ridley) in a drawn-out eight minute sequence, I was outtie.

Certainly some elements past that point are fine, but I have to admit I was a lot less invested, and it didn’t help that on two different occasions, we had scenes of a nude, or nearly nude, woman dancing for minutes on end. One of the final scenes was a three minute dance sequence, and I just didn’t really think that was necessary. I was painfully reminded of Snake People, and Snake People is a movie I try to think about as little as possible.

Wayne Mack was the closest thing to a traditional main character here, and I don’t really think he classifies. Still, his performance as a folksy police lieutenant was solid. I’ve already spoken a bit about Ronald Tanet; his performance was void of emotion, but that’s not all bad. I wasn’t wild about Maureen Ridley, but she could dance in the nude with the best of them. Really, the only other performance worth mentioning is that of Harry Uher’s, and it’s possible that Uher stood out solely for the fact that he’s Cajun, and had that Cajun accent I rarely hear in horror films.

It can also be fairly said that along with the movie being slow and occasionally torturous to get through, there’s not a ton of horror. There’s a lot of potential, of course – anytime you have a woman that can turn into a snake on a haunted island in the middle of a swamp, that’s called potential – but I don’t think the movie lived up to it at all, which was disappointing. There was some suspense toward the end, but much of the film seemed like conversation after conversation, and perhaps the best sequence was the literal blood money that briefly haunted the three punk bitches.

In summary, Crypt of Dark Secrets (which didn’t have a crypt in it, nor am I aware of what the dark secrets were, or who was keeping them) was a slow and tedious time with a handful of decent scenes. I do tend to think it’s better than Weis’ later film, Mardi Gras Massacre, but given the set-up, this is one that I wish I liked a lot more.

5.5/10

Directed by George Barry [Other horror films: N/A]

Having seen this oddity once before, I was looking forward to revisiting this one. I had to anyway, of course, but I wanted to see if this was as odd as I remembered it being. And certainly, after seeing it with fresh eyes, I can say that it is.

Most horror fans probably know the story behind this movie. After being filmed, the director George Barry wasn’t able to get it distributed or released on video, but a bootleg VHS was created, and it wasn’t until 2001 that Barry found out that anyone save him and those involved in the movie knew this existed. It finally made it onto DVD officially in 2003, and the rest is history.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats might sound, based on the title, to be a goofy movie, but I don’t really think that’s the case. There are some mildly amusing parts, or some pieces of dialogue that are sort of funny, but there’s very little in here that seems to actually be played for laughs. Really, as ludicrous as the plot is, the movie feels more fantasy than it does comedy.

The reason for that, of course, being that one of the characters in the film is sort of the spirit of one of the bed’s victims who is trapped in a painting. He witnesses all of the atrocities the bed comments, and through his narration, we learn of the bed’s creation and history, with a particularly dry segment detailing some of the bed’s previous victims.

Of course, he’s not the only narrator in this movie. There’s a lot of internal first-person monologue here, which might not be a surprise, given it’s a 70’s film (Let’s Scare Jessica to Death did the same thing), but I almost feel there’s more internal monologue than there is actual conversations here. It’s an odd way to make a film, but given the story this has, which is somewhat bare-bones, perhaps it makes sense.

Only five performances matter here, and that may be a stretch. While the man trapped in the painting is played by Dave Marsh, his monologue is voiced by Patrick Spence-Thomas. Spence-Thomas has a dramatic delivery that adds to the amusement, though much of it may not be intended (‘You [potential victims] gaze at me as a painting on the wall, and I see you as a serving upon some monstrous silver platter’). Even so, it’s good stuff.

Most of the characters, played by Rosa Luxemburg (no, not the revolutionary socialist and Marxist philosopher), Julie Ritter, Demene Hall, and William Russ (Dead of Winter), weren’t really that important. I mean, Luxemburg’s was, but either way, none of them got a whole lot of what you’d actually call character.

Even so, this is a mildly fascinating movie. It’s digestible (see what I did there?), and the special effects can sort of be cool. See, when the bed consumes something, it sort of takes it into it’s digestive fluids. Perhaps one of the more memorable scenes is a man who’s hands get dissolved to the bone before he’s able to pull them out of the bed. There’s also a whole dreamlike atmosphere that permeates much of the movie, which makes sense, as the idea of this film apparently came from a dream of the director.

Those effects paired with the fantasy-feel of the narration and whole of the story make for a rather different movie. It’s not a good one, but it definitely feels unique, and related, totally 70’s. I can’t say it’s a movie I’d watch too often, but it is a somewhat wild ride that should be seen to be believed.

6/10

Directed by Philip Kaufman [Other horror films: N/A]

Probably one of the more popular horror films I’ve not seen until now, this adaptation certainly had some strong moments, and is generally a solid movie, though I have to say I still enjoyed the 1956 version of the film more.

Based on a 1955 novel written by Jack Finney, this story follows the 1956 movie’s decently well, the most important change probably being the setting – in the 1956 movie, the setting is Santa Mira (a fictional small town); the setting in this film is San Francisco – and I do think that change is troubling.

For one, I think taking over a city of 691,000 (an estimate based on the populations of San Francisco from 1970 and 1980) would take longer than what we see in the movie. It just makes more sense to me for the action to take place in a small town (ironically, the 1993 Body Snatchers had too small a scope – a military base – so perhaps I’m just being picky).

Honestly, most of the movie is pretty good. Aside from the ending (which, because I’ve spent more than a day online, I knew was coming), though, nothing here really blew me away. Everything is pretty well done – some solid tension, some solid performances, and such – but I just didn’t walk away from this one feeling amazed.

To be fair, it’s probably very difficult for me to decouple myself from the 1956 movie, which is a film I first saw as a kid, and have seen many times since. Much like how I enjoy the 1958’s Blob movie more than I enjoy the 1988 movie, and enjoy the original Fly over the 1986 remake, based off this one viewing, I do prefer the 1956 version, and while that could change with future viewings, I’ll fully admit that I may be too entrenched in my viewpoints.

Donald Sutherland (The Puppet Masters, Alone, An American Haunting, Salem’s Lot, Don’t Look Now) was a pretty good lead. Having his character work in the Health Department was a fun choice, and I dug his personality. Honestly, neither Brooke Adams (Shock Waves, Sometimes They Come Back, The Unborn, The Dead Zone) and Veronica Cartwright (The Town That Dreaded Sundown, The Dark Below, Alien) did that much for me. I mean, they weren’t bad, but neither one interested me much.

I did love seeing a young Jeff Goldblum (Mister Frost, The Fly, Hideaway, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Jurassic Park) take on a solid role. He doesn’t leave as big an impression as Sutherland does, but still, seeing Goldblum is a lot of fun. Leonard Nimoy (famously Spock on Star Trek) is interesting, but I don’t know if his character adds all that much. However, in a brief scene, we do see Kevin McCarthy (star of the 1956 movie) and later Don Siegel (director of the 1956 movie), so those cameos were nice.

The special effects were quite solid, and at times, quite unnerving. Undeniably, I do think that’s an improvement over the 1956 film, and the end is certainly solid too. I do think I prefer how the 50’s movie ends than I do this one, but I can’t deny that the ending is effective. Like I said, I saw it coming, as I’ve seen the picture of Sutherland’s character pointing before, but it was still a good final sequence.

When it comes down to it, I think Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a good movie, but nothing here, save the finale, did that much for me. It’s a good story, of course – we already knew that from the 1956 movie – and the performances were overall solid, but with just a single viewing, I think I’ll stick with the 50’s movie for now.

7.5/10