Mansion of the Doomed (1976)

The movie opens with a desperate man on a mission. His name is Dr. Leonard Chaney, and he is an eye specialist. This is ironic as due to an accident his lovely daughter Nancy is now blind. Partially out of love but more so out of guilt (he was driving the car) he is determined to restore her sight. But how can he accomplish that? He decides the only way is to transplant the entire eyeball from a living donor! I bet you can see where this is going.

The first donor/victim is Dr. Bryan who is not only a colleague of Dr. Chaney but was also his daughter’s boyfriend/significant other. It is hinted at that he has left her after she lost her sight, so Chaney seems to think it is a good place to start. Amazingly enough she can see again, but it only lasts for a couple of weeks and her father is back starting all over again. By that I mean he keeps going out and finding victims so he can knock them out and remove their eyes. Though it seems futile because none of the other surgeries even temporarily restore her vision. But being a doctor, he won’t just kill the donors so soon he has a cage full of them in his basement. This leads to an attempted escape, his nurse being murdered by an angry victim, and eventually them being released to get their bloody revenge. Sounds like a good time, no?

I enjoyed the heck out of this movie. I was a bit worried when the credits started off with “A Charles Band” production but this was back when he cared and was trying to make a good movie. The voice over from Dr. Bryan lets us know what he is thinking and sets his desperation up to heal Nancy right away. That then leads to him slowly becoming more and more monstrous as he keeps pushing. In his own mind we see him try to justify the blinding of his Guinea pigs with the “I’ll fix them once I have this perfected” only to conveniently forget that would mean blinding someone else. This total lack of logic as well as the performance from Veteran actor Richard Basehart sells the character and the story.

Speaking of actors selling the story we get a very young Lance Henriksen as the first victim and eventual ringleader of the blind Dr. Bryan. He disappears for a long stretch until his eyeless face is revealed in a cool jump scare. Once that happens we see a lot more of the basement and the caged victims interacting with each other. This makes what has happened to them so much worse. The script also takes the time to show different reactions from comatose, to wanting to escape, and finally homicidal rage for what has happened to them. I was shocked that the script has us spend that much time with them. I was expecting an exploitative drive-in movie, and this was far more than that.

We should talk special effects. This movie doesn’t have many kills as again the doctor tries to be humane; I mean other than ripping their eyes out and keeps them alive. When they do die it is tame with an escapee getting hit by a car and the nurse being strangled. Where the movie shines is the makeup used to show the eyeless prisoners as well as some gruesome gags with the surgeries. I was again shocked and surprised to see a familiar name connected with the work. This is a Stan Winston flick! He manages to make the audience squirm on a low budget, and I dug it.

The final thing that I wanted to note was the director. Michael Pataki is more well known as an actor appearing movies like Graduation Day, Halloween 4, The Return of Count Yorga, and my personal favorite Grave of the Vampire. He only has three directorial credits to his name with this being his first. From what I see here he had some talent as a director, and it is a bummer that we didn’t get to see more from him. If you haven’t figured it out yet I’m recommending Mansion of the Doomed. It is a fun, creepy, and at times gross movie that checks all the boxes I want from a drive-in horror flick with the bonus of an excellent script.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Grave of the Vampire (1972)

This along with Blacula and Count Yorga is one of my top three “drive-in” vampire flicks. I’ve been watching this one for years having first seen it on a local horror hosted late night movie show. That transitioned to VHS and then to those budget public domain DVD sets. Of course that means it has always been a beat up and neglected print. But now the folks over at Shout Factory have put out a remastered Blu-Ray with some deleted scenes. Damn I’m excited to check this one out!

The movie opens in the forties with a couple sneaking off from a party to have some sexy type shenanigans in a nearby graveyard. That ends up being a terrible idea because a vampire named Caleb Croft climbs out of his coffin drinks the fella dry and has his way with the lady. She gives birth to a son who is part vampire and nurses him. Though she eventually dies. The action moves forward to the early seventies with the now grown-up boy, James, looking for his bloodsucking father to get some revenge for what was done to his mother.

He does eventually track him down and signs up for his class, Croft is teaching night classes of course! This leads to some murders as Croft does away with an annoying college girl who has figured out his secret and a love triangle of sorts. See James’ lady friend is the spitting image of Croft’s dead vampire wife. All of this results in a séance, more murders, and a twist ending where James puts his father down but with twisted results.

Again, I’ve always loved this movie. Long before Blade we had James the day walker half-vampire half-human. The late great William Smith is excellent as James Eastman playing the character with the right mix of brooding and anger. Michael Pataki is fantastic as Caleb Croft oozing evil as he murders his way thru the cast. He isn’t the tortured type forced to feed but seems to enjoy playing with his food. The rest of the cast is solid.

The story is paced well without any slow spots. Every scene we see is there to move the plot along and either develop the characters or set us up for something twisted that will come along shortly. More than once the movie does something unexpected, mostly due to the unpredictable nature of the Croft character, so you are always guessing as to what is going to happen next. I also thought that the idea of him fathering a half breed was a neat take on the vampire myth. Sure it might not seem so unique now, but for the early seventies this was unexpected. I will admit that there is an odd jump with new characters being quickly introduced for the séance which sets up the ending. But I’d rather they just dive in and keep things moving along briskly then spend time setting up more characters that are just there to be killed off.

This new Blu-Ray has a fantastic transfer which allowed me to appreciate how well Grave of the Vampire was shot. There are so many shadowy scenes that I can actually see now and while it never bothered me in the past this allows me to enjoy the movie that much more. I was also impressed with the deleted scenes. Most of the time these are just bits of dialogue that were trimmed out for pacing reasons. But here the scenes are extended lingering shots of Croft dispatching his victims. While not overly gory they do have a disturbing vibe to them, and I can see why they were trimmed initially. Though it is sad because we lose some excellent bits with Pataki. The guy was clearly having a blast playing Croft.

Grave of the Vampire is one of those rare flicks that has aged well. It is great to see a company spend the time and money to clean up and give it a proper release. I highly recommend it and can say that the new Shout Factory Blu-Ray is the way to watch it. I don’t often recommend people go buy physical media anymore, but this is one of those times that you should.

 

© Copyright 2022 John Shatzer

Sweet Sixteen (1983)

This is the first movie in this summer’s marathon that I hadn’t seen before. It is getting increasingly rare for me to find a slasher that I’ve not seen yet, so I was excited to check this one out. It has an amazing cast including Bo Hopkins, Patrick Macnee, Don Stroud, Michael Pataki, and Larry Storch. That is a whole lot of acting experience right there. The fact that I hadn’t heard much about this one sort of scares me. Well might as well dive in. 

Melissa moves into town with her father, an anthropologist doing research nearby, and soon runs afoul of someone. She is a rather “friendly” girl and being as pretty as she is there is a lot of attention coming her way. The boys that pursue her end up dead, so something is wrong with that. We are given several suspects, including her overprotective father, but nothing is set in stone until the very end of the movie. Along the way we also get to see some racist locals going after the “damn Indians” whom they blame for the killings. This leads to some non-slasher drama that I wasn’t expecting.  

In theory Sweet Sixteen is a slasher flick. You have the mysterious killer knocking off victims while the sheriff tries to figure out who the killer is. There is also a cool supernatural vibe where the killings appear to be done with some sort of ancient ceremonial knives, thus tying both the Indians working on the dig as well as the Melissa’s father to the crimes. Having some suspects and keeping the audience guessing is a key for one off slashers where we don’t’ have an established character. There is the requisite nudity, which is expected in a slasher flick. But what is weird is how many of the characters are much older adults. Normally in a movie like this the adults are at best supporting characters and at worst something to be sent off on vacation or a business trip so that the teens can get up to hijinks and the killer can get to murdering them! 

I did find the story to be very slow at times. There are long stretches where nothing much happens on screen. The kills are spaced unevenly with three of the meager six we get happening in the last fifteen minutes. The special effects work is lame and the kills mediocre. The first is okay enough as a drunk kid gets stabbed, but after that most of it is offscreen. What we do see are quick glimpses. I was left wanting more. To top things off when they finally resolve the plot it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We do get a few lines of dialogue trying to sum up what happened, but it feels forced and didn’t work for me. 

I know in the past that I’ve mentioned some movies that were repackaged and presented as a slasher flick when they were really a thriller or just a murder mystery. This movie feels like one of those, but I think it was actually shot to cash in on them. Either someone didn’t get the memo, or they just did a bad job on the script. One more thing I wanted to mention is that the movie is very dark, but to be fair that might be the VHS copy that I watched but I wanted to mention that in case there was a better copy out there you would know to look for it if you were so inclined. I’m not going to recommend spending your time watching Sweet Sixteen, but if you must try to find a copy where you can at least see the action. Really though I’d recommend passing on this one. 

© Copyright 2021 John Shatzer

Graduation Day (1981)

The Slasher marathon keeps chugging along with Graduation Day. A masked killer picking off high school seniors the day before graduation seems like a logical continuation of the genre. I mean if they don’t get you at summer camp or on Prom Night then Graduation Day is the next logical milestone for murder. Plus, this one has Vanna “Wheel of Fortune” White in it!

The movie starts at a track meet where a young girl is being pushed by her coach to set a new personal best record and win a race. Her name is Laura and the good news is that she wins the race, the bad news is that she immediately drops dead from the strain and a blood clot! A couple of months later her class is graduating and her sister, Anne, has come back from the Navy to accept her diploma and trophy (she did win the race after all). Coincidentally at the same time a black gloved fencing enthusiast starts to murder everyone that was on the track team, hiding the bodies around campus.

Who is the killer? Well it could be the creepy music teacher, the coach who is being fired at the end of the school year, the sister, or the random weird cop. Hell, I haven’t even mentioned all the suspects yet! Eventually after a few twists and turns we do find out the identity of the murderer and I suppose it makes sense in a way. Though I wasn’t happy with how they reveal it as I felt it was anticlimactic.

Graduation Day is a movie that should be a hell of a lot better than it is. The cast is solid and filled with many familiar faces such as Christopher George as the angry coach and Michael Pataki as the principal are prime examples. These guys were legends in the seventies and could have carried the movie. Graduation Day also has Linnea Quigley on one of her earliest roles, and yes within seconds of appearing onscreen she is taking her top off! I even thought that the actress playing Anne, the older sister, is very good. There is a lot of talent in the cast of Graduation Day and they are all let down by a really bad script or maybe it was the editing. I’m honestly not sure so let me try and explain what I’m getting at.

Look kids it's Vanna White!

The story jumps around and ignores the established characters to establish someone else who then is also ignored. At the beginning I thought this was going to be about the older sister, Anne, returning to town and either becoming the killer or getting wrapped up in the killings. This seems to be what is going to happen until the twenty-minute mark when she disappears only to show back up at the end. Of the three that I’m going to mention this was the most frustrating as I sort of liked the character and was hoping she was our protagonist there to unravel the crime or in a shocking twist be the killer! But that doesn’t happen. Instead…

We have Christopher George’s coach Michaels who seems to have an unhealthy fascination with some of his female student athletes. This also goes nowhere as it is hinted at as a motive and then ignored. Then we have the principal, Pataki’s character, who is also a bit creepy and isn’t fond of the “children”. We spend some time with him and then ignore his storyline as well. With all three we get that scene with black gloves and a stopwatch appear in their possession, which we have seen the killer use. I guess the movie is just setting them up as suspects. But it does so in a way that feels choppy and disconnected. Again, I’m not sure if this is to be blamed on a script that is poorly written or maybe just crappy editing. While I’ve mentioned these three there are more characters that get introduced and then ignored to move onto someone else. So yeah, it gets really annoying.

Fencing and football don't mix well!

Since Graduation Day is a slasher movie, we need to talk kills and gore. They are unevenly spaced with two happening in the first forty-eight minutes and the last five happening in the last forty-eight minutes. Yeah this is a long movie, which might also point to the editing being the issue. We do get a cool sword thru the neck and another taking a head off. If you didn’t catch on with my fencing enthusiast comment earlier most all of these kills are sword related. The other kills happen offscreen and are only seen after the fact. Though for an early eighties Slasher it wasn’t bad. This of course only makes the story issues that much more annoying.

What we have here is a Slasher with a good cast, passable kills, and an interesting setup with the graduating seniors. All of this is ruined because they didn’t write a script and/or edit the individual characters and storylines together in a cohesive plotline that flows nicely. Instead this is a choppy flick that keeps jarring the audience by yanking them from one character to the next. I was very disappointed and can’t recommend Graduation Day.

© Copyright 2019 John Shatzer