Inn of the Damned (1975)

I keep digging thru my piles of movies and finding new to me stuff that I’ve not seen before. This is one of those and is also an example of why I’ve never seen it before. Spoilers… it is bad, really bad. But more on that later.

Set in Australia in the late eighteen hundreds the movie kicks off with an English gentleman completing a “transaction” with a working girl. He hops on a stagecoach and eventually gets dropped off at a small inn where he liaisons with another working girl or maybe it was the same one. Not entirely sure. While they are sleeping it off something happens to them, and they end up dead. What was it? Not entirely sure as we mostly just see their faces as they react to it. Eventually we see the the elderly German couple who run the inn are killing folks with the help of a man who is wanted for an entirely different murder. This is important later.

The rest of the movie follows an American bounty hunter who is tracking and eventually kills the helper. The locals get mad at his violence, so he needs to track down the trooper who was with him to show that his killing of the fugitive was justified. Guess where the last place the trooper was seen headed? Yeah, the inn. So, the American goes there, figures out what is going on, and gets into a shoot out with them. Along the way more random travelers stop by to get killed, including a stepmother and stepdaughter who she is molesting. I guess any excuse for some sleaze… Then it ends. Why were they killing travelers? A bad man killed their kids and um. You know who I don’t actually know.

Inn of the Damned didn’t work for me at all. My first complaint is the pacing, which is just terrible. There are long stretches of riding horses, useless characters that either show up for a hot minute as comic relief or to spend the night at the inn for the sole purpose of ending up tossed down the well after meeting their demise. It feels fragmented and never builds any momentum. This is reinforced by the complete lack of motives. We get the flashbacks to their children being abducted which is filled in a bit with some dialogue at the end. But they never connect why that set them on a path towards killing anyone who stopped by their inn. The story needs to make sense within the world that it exists, no matter how twisted.

They picked the wrong place to stop!

The decision to make this a horror and western hybrid also causes issues. I will admit that there are brief moments where the movie does get somewhat creepy with them lurking around the house and spying on the guests thru peepholes. But it keeps getting interrupted with random shootouts and chase sequences on horses. Trying to jam both film genres into the same movie might also explain the bloated runtime of two hours. I think they were trying to serve fans of both and ended up failing miserably.

The cast is filled with Australian actors that I sort of recognize from other flicks from down under. The most obvious is John Meillon, who was in the Crocodile Dundee movies. We also get Alex Cord as the American bounty hunter. I think that the cast is solid but is saddled with a terrible script that gives them nothing to work with. It is sad to see talent wasted like this.

If it isn’t obvious yet I’m not recommending Inn of the Damned. There was a seed of something interesting here and I really wish they had spent more time on the script to let it grow. Sadly, they didn’t so we end up with this muddled mess. You can skip this one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Burial (2022)

When this popped up on Shudder I thought we were going to get some sweet ass Nazi horror action. The description even mentions werewolves… oh wait that was wehrwolves. As in regular old Nazi soldiers hiding in the woods sniping and ambushing folks. God Damn it.

The movie opens in London where an elderly woman is watching the news and listening to the fall of the Soviet Union (the year is nineteen ninety one you see…). A skinhead breaks into her house and you think bad things are going to happen, but she gets the drop on him with a stun gun. He wakes up handcuffed to the radiator yelling about what an old man told him. She drugs him and then tells him a story. Why in that order? Apparently, the drugs will help him understand what she is saying. The woman was a Russian soldier in World War II and is assigned with others to escort a crate from Berlin to Moscow. This crate is more important than any of their lives and the orders come from Stalin himself! Insert Brad Pitt screaming “What’s in the Box?” meme here. Every night on the road they bury the box only to dig it up the next morning to continue on their way. Eventually they get ambushed by the Germans and get stuck near a small Polish village.

Here we find out that Hitler’s body is in the box. Stalin wants it because “Russians look their enemies in the eye.” And the Germans want it so they can “prove” it isn’t old Adolph and keep the “dream” alive. I mean they know it is him but don’t mind a bit of lying. Bad stuff happens, most everyone dies, and the action moves back to ninety one and the old lady. She kills the skinhead but not before pulling out a hatbox and showing him something that freaks him out. I’m guessing it was Hitler’s skull, but we never know. The end.

If we ignore the fact that this was sort of sold to me as a creature feature and not a war/drama movie I still was disappointed. There isn’t much in the way of action as we go for long stretches of the characters establishing that the war has given them bad dreams. This is shown thru the fact that the Germans like to use lichen to make smoke that causes those folks breathing it to hallucinate. Which is how they work traumatic images in to torture the characters. Though the story never explains why these images haunt them. So that seems like a missed opportunity.

I will give the cast credit as they are all good in their roles. The acting is top notch, and they are doing their best, but sadly aren’t given much to work with. The only familiar face was Tom Felton, old Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter flicks. He has turned out to have made the transition from child actor to adult quite nicely. If you get the chance to check out any of his newer projects do so… though this might be the weakest.

The action sequences aren’t very dynamic and seem to play it like an old war movie from the fifties. There are a few bits of blood, but for the most part folks get shot and fall over. That might seem like an odd complaint, but the standards are a bit higher these days. Especially when you make a central theme of your flick to be the horrors of war. I mean show me some horrors then!

Overall, there is nothing memorable about Burial. I’m also not sure what the point was. Nothing much happens and the payoff I kept waiting for never materializes. We start the movie with an old woman who has Hitler’s noggin’ in her closet and end with an old woman who has Hitler’s noggin’ in her closet. What happens in between isn’t much better. While not a horrible movie I can’t recommend anyone spending their time on this one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Even the Wind is Afraid (1968)

A girl wakes up and finds a woman hanging above her bed. I mean like hanging from the neck. She screams and we see that it was a nightmare. The next scene has a doctor and a teacher, Lucia, talking about her condition. The headmistress later states that Claudia, the girl with the nightmare, will not get special treatment and must attend classes. Well, she isn’t a nice lady, I’m sure that won’t be important later. Spoilers… it will be!

Later Claudia and her friends find the forbidden tower door unlocked. They know that they shouldn’t go inside, but Claudia recognizes it from her nightmare and decides to investigate and her friends don’t let her go alone. They get caught and the headmistress decides that their punishment is to spend vacation on campus and attending special classes. Yep, she is a real peach. That means they are on campus all alone when spooky stuff starts to happen.

The nightmare and the hanging girl are tied to the death of a former student five years earlier. Seems that the headmistress was mean to her as well. It all leads up to a rather shocking twist that is compounded by yet another one. Though in the end I suppose it can be considered a happy resolution, unless you were a fan of the headmistress that is!

Captain Kangaroo uniforms!

I can’t say much about Even the Wind is Afraid without some spoilers. If you don’t like that sort of thing, you can stop reading right now and skip to the last paragraph for my conclusions. Okay with that out of the way lets get to the good stuff. The movie is very interesting but does cover familiar ground. You have normal haunting tropes like the doors that open themselves, the storm that blows in every night, folks sneaking around in the dark, a jump scare with a cat, and of course the classic face at the window. The execution of these gags is decent, though I never found them scary but maybe just creepy. Still the movie does build some atmosphere and checked enough boxes that I was happy with it.

Where the movie excels is in the way it is plotted out. Our lead character is Claudia so when she dies with a half hour left to go, I was shocked. Her body is laid out in the church and the headmistress seems genuinely distressed by the turn of events and questions her actions. Though when Claudia miraculously wakes up she does go right back to being unpleasant. Yeah, Claudia isn’t dead after all… or is she? The movie establishes that her behavior has changed and using discussions about the dead girl from earlier it is clear who really came back. If you guessed that the big twist is the ghost coming back in her body to get some revenge, then you are correct. I honestly didn’t see this twist coming and I really dug it.

Muy Spooky!

A couple more things that I liked were the music and lighting. We do get some odd sixties music along with dancing that didn’t seem to fit, but when it is trying to be spooky the music kicks up the tension a notch. I also loved how well the movie is shot with the shadows playing out on the background. We also get a couple neat reveals as shadows on the wall that I thought were fun. Other than a stretch in the middle with the unsupervised girl shenanigans that felt a lot like padding the pacing is mostly good.

All in all, Even the Wind is Afraid was a pleasant watch and one that I can recommend. I had never heard of this movie before. I’m guessing that is because it is a Mexican production and if the subtitles (which feel like a fan project) are any indication it hasn’t been released officially in English. It can be difficult to find a copy, but if you can I think it is worth the effort. I did hear that there is a dubbed version in English, but I can’t speak to it’s quality as I couldn’t find it myself.

Note: I found it on TUBI but there are no subtitles, so I hope you speak Spanish.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Frogs (1972)

If you have spent much time here at the site, you probably have noticed my love of regional drive-in movies. Frogs is one of those flicks, but I’ve never been a huge fan of it. That said I thought it was about time for me to revisit it.

The movie opens with a guy in a canoe taking pictures of the wildlife around a lake. We notice he is being watched by what appears to be some angry frogs. Later we find out that his name is Pickett, and he is working on an article for an ecology magazine. When a member of the local rich family, the Crocketts, almost runs him down in their fancy speedboat he gets an invite to the big fourth of July shindig. There he meets Karen, the granddaughter of the family’s patriarch Jason (played by a very crusty Ray Milland).

The rest of the movie has Crockett, the household staff, the Crockett family, and a couple guests hanging out at the house not noticing how the animals in the local swamp/lake have started behaving oddly. It isn’t until Jason asks Crockett to find his missing employee Grover, who is dead, that anyone even realizes how screwy things have become. But by then it is already too late as one by one the critters lay traps for the humans killing them off in creative ways. When the survivors finally do get off the island and back to the mainland, they find out that this is happening everywhere and that the frogs are in charge and coordinating the deaths… at least I think that was the point of the freeze frame at the end.

I’ll admit that I did like Frogs a bit more this time around, though I’m still not a fan. It is an early entry into the ecohorror subgenre that had flicks like Day of the Animals (Ozone Layer), Food of the Gods (pollution/nature hitting back), Prophecy (pollution again), Night of the Lepus (genetic manipulation), and many others. It is your basic mother nature being fed up with humans and fighting back. Though that is only hinted at here. You have Crockett’s work, but he isn’t too in your face about it. Not a single monologue about how it is our fault! Even the crusty old patriarch seems to tolerate the animals in the woods, though he does allow the liberal use of pesticides. But I expect these movies to beat us over the head with the message.

I find his lack of mustache disturbing

I think that the choice of frogs as our main “villain” is a bit of an issue. Especially since they don’t actually kill anyone until the end of the movie and that is only by freaking out Jason and giving him a heart attack. Instead we get a guy tripping-shooting himself-tarantula kill, lizards-greenhouse-poison containers getting knocked over kill, butterflies-leaches-snakebite kill, and a snapping turtle attack after someone gets trapped in the mud. There is also another snakebite ambush kill and a straight up alligator attack, which is probably the best. Most of the time the frogs are just watching and planning evilly… which of course I had to infer because we get nothing in the actual dialogue to explain it. Though everyone keeps bitching about being kept up all night by their croaking so maybe it is psychological warfare!

Really though the entire movie is quite silly and not in a giant mutant bear, killer dog sized wasps, or truck sized bunnies kind of way. At least in those cases the animals on the poster were the danger. Here the frogs, who by the way were imported toads, do nothing. Combine that with some slow pacing as even the “chase” scenes drag, and you get a movie that just doesn’t scratch that creature feature/nature attacks itch. I’m still not a fan and while I appreciate some of the goofy bits and the hammy acting from the legendary Ray Milland Frogs is still a drag to sit thru. Oh, and Sam Elliot without his signature manly mustache is a deal breaker as well. Skip this one and watch one of the other movies I mentioned in this review instead.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Madame Death (1969)

Dr. Favel is a mad scientist conducting experiments that involve the deaths of young women. We know this because the “star” John Carradine, who plays Dr. Favel, has a monologue before the action starts. Yep, he is talking right to the audience.

When the movie starts we are introduced to Marlene who is married to a man that can’t stop talking about death. In fact, they are rolling around in bed and he is still all mopey about his impending doom. Brother that is a pretty lady right there, get your head in the game! Anyhow he has some sort of episode, and he tells her to call Dr. Favel. She doesn’t want to because the doctor has been dismissed due to his theories and actions. But he insists so she does. Then we see them in the laboratory with Dr. Favel and his hunchbacked assistant (not much of one but it is there depending on the scene). He announces a terminal cancer diagnosis and offers a special treatment that immediately kills the husband.

But lucky for Marlene he offers to bring him back to life if she gives him all of her blood. So the next night she tries to do just that, but it fails and she is horribly scarred. But then the doctor tells her he can fix that and cure her husband being dead if she brings him the blood of other young women. Okay Marlene should have figured by this point that he was a bad doctor, but instead she starts to kill folks and drain their blood. For some reason this also temporarily cures her scars. I mean she doesn’t take a shot or have some formula from the doctor… it just happens. Eventually the police figure it out, she runs back to the lab, the doctor reveals that it was his plan all along for her to get sick and die so he could do another experiment. And the hunchback blows the lab up. The end.

This movie makes no sense. The story is a muddled mess that has no logical plot at all. Why does killing make her scars go away? Why does she keep trusting the doctor after he repeatedly screws up? How does she go from nice to murderous monster in a hot minute? Toss in odd choices like her just showing up at wax museum to throw acid on a guy so she can then lure her actual victim there for what seems to be the sole purpose of guillotining her after draining her of blood! That seems overly complicated and pointless. But that is pretty much how I’d describe the plot of Madame Death, so I suppose that makes some sense.

The “star” John Carradine is barely in the movie. They must have only had him a day because all his scenes are on the same set with just three of the other characters. This is an early example of what I like to call “stunt casting”. Basically putting someone in the movie so you can feature them on the poster when they have hardly anything to do with the proceedings. Being a production in Mexico featuring a cast entirely of Spanish speaking stars I’m guessing this was done to sell it to an American audience. Not a bad business idea but it doesn’t help the movie as entertainment.

I did like a few things about the movie. The soundtrack has a groovy late sixties vibe. The makeup when Marlene “monsters” out is a very simple appliance, but it looks decent and gets the job done. We also get a mad scientist lab done on a budget that looks cool. But other than these I can’t find a lot of positives about Madame Death. I had some hope for the movie as I’ve seen a lot of great Mexican horror from the fifties and sixties but this one isn’t among them. I can’t recommend it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Alien Escape (1997)

There is something comfortable and almost innocent about the straight to home video science fiction flicks of the mid to late nineties. I mean if anything that focuses on getting as many lovely ladies topless while connecting those scenes with a paper thin alien invasion story can be innocent. More on that later.

Things open with a naked lady in a shower. I did sort of warn you… Something is outside spying on her. She gets out of the shower and eventually is attacked by a black glove with I’m guessing someone attached to it. Then we see three ladies in a convertible. After trying to convince us that one of them is a lawyer they stop because you know girls have to pee in the woods. Hey man I’m sure that happens! Eventually they arrive at a resort aka. the house they rented to shoot the movie and find that the person they were expecting, Janet is missing. Yeah, she was the naked lady from earlier. But they do find another naked lady named Laticia who talks to them.

Later two of the girls get naked and get into a bathtub to soap each other up. Hey, I did tell you what to expect a couple of times already! The third, Cindy, goes for a walk. In the dark woods all alone. Then a lady hiker shows up… after getting naked in the stream to take a bath… and asks for a glass of water. The lawyer lady’s boss shows up and acts like a creep. He and the lady hiker get killed by the same black glove. Then Cindy finds a spaceship, shows the other girls. A car explodes they meet Matt, who is an alien, and the girls with Cindy get killed. Then Cindy gets naked with Matt, and they fight the bad alien that was killing everyone. The end.

This isn’t a good movie, but I was entertained. When I was younger all the ladies would have been the reason I liked Alien Escape, but an older and much more jaded (thanks internet) me had to find other reasons to like this flick. Luckily, this is the sort of movie that embraces the silliness and piles on a lot of laughs. While the plot is thin and the dialogue rough there are a lot of pop culture references and intentionally (I think) lines that had me giggling.

The best example of this is legendary no budget filmmakers Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski showing up in acting roles as a couple of locals working road construction. They go all redneck when the “city folk” are around but then shift back to wine sipping intellectuals who discuss art as soon as they are out of earshot. Silly? Yes, but I think that the filmmakers were playing with the prototypical stereotypes present in the more serious attempts to tell stories like this. There is also a much less funny bit with some government agents tracking the aliens, but I will give them an “A” for effort.

For a movie with little to no budget they do a decent job with the alien. Sure, it is a guy wearing a suite topped off with a cheesy rubber mask, but it works fine. We also get some movie magic where characters climb into the “hatch” of the ship in the woods to clearly be climbing down a ladder in some industrial location located elsewhere. But that kind of movie “magic” is what low budget filmmakers must use to make things happen. And it wasn’t too bad. The kills are tame and well that is about all I have to say.

Alien Escape isn’t a good movie. I’ll freely admit that. It may also seem weird that I describe a flick that uses nudity and titillation as a selling point innocent. But when I watch a flick like this one, I get very nostalgic for the days of renting crap at my local video store. Despite watching a digital copy I swear I could hear my VCR chugging along. If you have the same sort of memories or are looking for something silly, then check this one out. I think you might get a kick out of it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Haunted (1995)

The movie starts off in the early nineteen hundreds with a little boy and girl, twins, running and playing on a large English estate. They are having fun, but the little girl hits her head and falls into a pond. Her brother tries to save her but is unsuccessful. That little brother grows up to be a professor of psychology who investigates psychic phenomenon. He mostly does this to expose fakers. After seeing him bust a séance we follow as he goes to an isolated estate at the behest of Nanny Webb.

He is picked up by a beautiful woman named Christina who drives him to the rambling old house. There he meets Nanny Webb as well as Christina’s brothers Robert and Simon. There is an odd dynamic between the siblings as they are overly affectionate with each other. Like to creepy levels. Nanny claims that she is being haunted, though not without a lot of prompting from the professor. That night spooky stuff starts to happen and David, the professor, is convinced that one of the brothers is responsible for it. Things ramp up and Nanny Webb becomes very disturbed, which leads to the family calling in Doctor Doyle. She doesn’t like that much at all.

After arriving we also see that David begins seeing what appears to be the ghost of his sister in the distance. As if she was trying to lead him to something but can’t quite communicate with him. Is Nanny Webb crazy? Did David catch her crazy? Or is someone messing with both of them? In the end all is explained and we are given some closure… with a twist!  

I’m trying to keep this review as spoiler free as possible because I really liked Haunted and don’t want to ruin it for anyone. The movie is paced decently, though at times is a slow burn. But if you pay attention there are clues and all sorts of spooky shit happening. I could give examples but then I would be giving hints that might spoil things for you. Trust me though that you will want to pay close attention to enjoy the movie. Not only because of the clues but also the things that are happening. The movie is packed with lots of visual tricks mostly in camera. Again, you really need to pay attention to Haunted to get the most out of it. If you only half watch it, then you might as well skip it altogether.

The decision to introduce the house to both the audience as well as the professor in the daylight was a cool choice. In a way it makes the later scenes in the dark all that much spookier and more surreal since we have some idea of how things are. There aren’t any real jump scares as the story leans more heavily into creeping you out with odd noises, doors that seem to open by themselves, and shadows that seem to have things moving in them. Like I said you really need to keep your eyes on the screen with this one.

When I was doing my research on this movie I found a lot of folks talking about Kate Beckinsale and how naked she is in it. Before you go off Googling for images I have bad news, it was all a body double. One that isn’t even close to her appearance in other scenes. Same goes for Aidan Quinn. It seems as if either they had no nudity clauses, or the producers went back afterwards to spice things up. Funny thing is you keep seeing their faces so clearly not them. That said both Quinn (playing the professor) and Beckinsale are great in their roles. They have some actual chemistry, and their relationship drives the ending of the movie. Can’t say much more than that. Spoiler free, remember?

While I did guess at the big twist I still was interested in Haunted until the very end. To be honest it was a guess and they kept it vague enough that I wasn’t sure I was right. It wasn’t until after the movie was over that I realized it was based on a novel from James Herbert, who wrote some very cool horror stories. Not sure if it follows his book closely but having read may of his other books (I’ve reviewed The Fog and The Spear here at the site) it doesn’t surprise me that the plot was so engaging and fun. I recommend tracking down a copy of Haunted and giving it a watch.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer