PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Leptirica 1973

Leptirica 1973 Based on the 1880 short story After Ninety Years by Milovan Glišić, written, screenplay and direction by Đorđe Kadijević. A Yugoslav made for TV horror film that's often said to be the first real horror film made in Serbia and Yugoslav. It's part of the All The Haunts Be Ours from Severin. It's called The She-Butterfly in the US.

The town miller gets a visit at night by a creature that bites his neck until he's dead. The next morning the body is discovered by a local who then reports it to the mayor. The town priest discusses with the mayor and some locals that this is the 4th murder at the mill. No one wants to work the job, suspecting that a vampire is killing the millers.

A young man from a nearby town wants to marry a young woman but the father isn't too keen on his daughter marrying a man with little money. The young man takes the job at the mill. The vampire visits him but the young man hides in the attic. After his description of the creature the villagers are convinced that it is a vampire. They use a black stallion to find the grave of the vampire. They nail the coffin with a hawthorn stake and pour oil on it. A butterfly escapes from the coffin but they don't catch it.

The locals steal the young woman from her strict father and make arrangements to marry her off to the young man. An old woman is watching to see that the couple don't hook up in the night. She falls asleep and the young woman escapes. She visits the young man and he finds a black hole between her breasts. She turns into the vampire and the young man has to poke her with a stick. The movie ends with the young man lying on the ground with a butterfly moving in his hair.

I liked it more than I thought I would. It's vampire creature is different than the average vampire in film, very beast like. The movie looks OK. I'd watch it again someday. You can see a copy over at the Internet Archive. Link above.

Dynasty 1977

Dynasty 1977 Written by Kuo-Hsiung Liu and directed by Mei-Chun Chang. A Taiwan-Hong Kong co-production shot in Taiwan in 3-D. It's released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber.

Chao, the head of the Eunuchs, frames the Prince so the Emperor turns against his own son. The prince fights back, most of the movie is fighting and running about. Chao is a real baddie and a great martial artist. He's nearly unkillable, like a Boss in a video game it takes a lot of hits to put him down. I got kind of bored with all the fighting and started speeding things up a bit. The villain is entertaining, the rest of the main cast weren't as interesting.

The red-blue 3-D on this movie isn't as good as the 3-D in Revenge Of The Shogun Women Blu-ray I watched just a short while ago. Some parts were fine and had good depth, other parts were out of focus and fuzzy. I don't have any gear to play the 3-D version for 3-D TVs so I don't know what that was like. It's not like I'm going to buy a 3-D TV or a player, they've gone out production because of lack of interest and the lack of 3-D films. The image has lost much of it's color and often looks B&W. There is no 2-D version on the disc. There's a short featurette on the company that made the 3-D camera system, they only shot 6 films and two of them were the two mentioned here. There are some shorts in 3-D that have nothing to do with Hong Kong films.

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The Shaolin Invincibles 1977 Written by Chang Cheh and Ni Kuang, directed by Chang Cheh.

A family is attacked by the local leader, a young girl is rescued by a monk. Twelve years later she's trained up and ready for some vengeance. Her pal goes along to help fight the Emperor.

The Emperor has the usual gang of fighting guards. He's also got a pair of kung fu trained apes. It's kind of a sad costume but there you go, it's the 70s. There's plenty of kung fu action but not much story.

I enjoyed it well enough but not enough to desire the Blu-ray. You can see an edited copy of the movie on Tubi, link above. The Tubi version is dubbed and has a very heavily trimmed opening sequence. The scene depicts the killing of the heroine's family and her rescue by the monk that raised her and trained her in kung fu.

Million Dollar Mystery 1985 Written by Rudy De Luca, Tim Metcalfe and Miguel Tajada-Flores, directed by Richard Fleischer. It was Richard's last feature, he'd made some good films in the past: Armored Car Robbery, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Barabbas, Fantastic Voyage, Doctor Dolittle, The Boston Strangler, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Soylent Green and Mandingo.

Sadly this is a poor rip off of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but without a good story, entertaining actors and comedians. There are a lot of jokes but mostly they are a sorry lot, hardly raising a chuckle.

It did poorly at the box office barely making 10% on it's $10,000,000 cost. There was a tie in with Glad bags. The movie ends abruptly with the two FBI agents talking to the camera explaining it's up to the movie audience to find the last million. Here's the bit on that from the Wikipedia.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis conceived the idea for Million Dollar Mystery when he visited New York and saw a row of people lining up for what he presumably thought was a movie. A companion told De Laurentiis that they were actually lining up for lottery tickets.

Glad Bags sponsored a sweepstakes timed for the film's release. The company gave away entry forms, and the audience would fill out these forms with their answer to where the last million is hiding, based on clues given in the film. De Laurentiis said of the film:

This is a really broad comedy with car chases, designed for the young major movie going audience, about 12 to 24 years old. The sweepstakes gives us the potential to reach even more people – the infrequent moviegoer, the person more interested in winning a million dollars than in going to the movies, and these are the kind of people who use Glad Bags, housewives who maybe go to the movies once or twice a year.

De Laurentiis had high expectations for the film, but it did not turn out to be a hit. The winner of the contest ended up being 14-year-old Alesia Lenae Jones of Bakersfield California, who successfully guessed that the loot was hidden in the bridge of the nose of the Statue of Liberty. Apparently, thousands of contestants had arrived at the same answer, and her entry was chosen in a random drawing.

I bought the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray on one of their sales and it looks nice. Too bad it's such a disappointment. I'm hoping that the commentary explains why it was so poor. One of the locations of the movie is Lake Havasu City Arizona, it's where they moved the London Bridge and rebuilt it as a tourist attraction. Never been.

As I was looking for a copy of the movie to link to I found this other movie that features the bridge. It's a time travel story about Jack the Ripper going through time and winding up in Arizona in the modern day. Terror at London Bridge came out in 1985 and you can watch it on YouTube. I still haven't seen more than the first 5 mins.

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Arnold 1973 Written by Jameson Brewer and John Fenton Murray, directed by Georg Fenady. An American film set in a small village in Britain.

Stella Stevens marries her dead fiance. The ceremony is followed by a reading of the will. Stella gets the house and some odd stipulations in the will. Arnold can't be buried, he has to remain in the house, Stella has to remain in the house to keep the estate. Arnold's wife and son don't get anything. Shani Wallis plays the wife and sings the absolutely horrible title song. Roddy McDowall plays the son, he's one of the people Stella has been having an affair with, the lawyer's partner is another.

There's a huge pile of cash hidden in the house. There's plenty of vengeance going on as Arnold has set up various deathtraps for the family and friends to fall into. First to go is Arnold's wife when he died and the son isn't far off. The local bumbling Bobby, Bernard Fox, investigates but isn't smart enough to spot a murder when it's right in front of him.

It made me laugh occasionally but not all the laughs were to the jokes. It has a decent amount of zaniness. I haven't decided to buy the Blu-ray but I might want to see it again. There's a poor copy on YouTube and a good copy on RareLust.

Curse Of The Dog God 1977 Written and directed by Shun’ya Itô. The film is titled Inugami No Tatari in Japanese. Inugami refers to a curse that involves the killing of a dog to make a spirit that is used to curse people. You can read more about it on the Wikipedia.

Uranium hunters find a rich uranium vein in a small Japanese village. While searching one of the hunters ruins a small shrine by driving over it with his jeep, then he runs over a dog. That same uranium hunter marries the daughter of hte man who owns the land the uranium is on, more bad stuff happens and someone puts the curse of the dog god on the hunter, everything in his life comes to ruin.

After a bit of a slow start the craziness starts up and nearly everyone dies. It's a bit grim and might not be to everyone's taste. There's two dog murders, a couple of kids get murdered, and plenty of adults die horribly. Both films are about revenge and I thought they're a good reminder to stay single. Families like that I don't need. Despite all that I thought it was a fairly entertaining movie. I might not buy a copy and I might not need to see it again but I was glad to see it. You can download a copy over at RareLust.

Bigfoot 1970

Bigfoot 1970 Written and directed by Robert F Slatzer.

A pilot parachutes from her conked out plane only to kidnapped by a Bigfoot in need of a woman to keep his species going. That's Joi Lansing on the left, she's the pilot. The other lady is Judy Jordan, she plays the girlfriend of a biker. The gals are in trouble, the local Bigfoot tribe have kidnapped them for breeding purposes. Or lunch, it's not clear yet.

John Carradine and his business partner John Mitchum are traveling through the same area in search of customers. John M is the younger brother of Robert Mitchum. The biker who's gal was taken by Bigfoot is played by Christopher Mitchum, he's Robert Mitchum's son. Bing Crosby's son Lindsay plays one of the bikers and Doodles Weaver is a forest ranger.

None of them can do much with the dialog, the story or the budget. It's lacking in all respects. The director is lacking a Wikipedia page, his IMDb page lists two feature films and a documentary on John Wayne. I've seen Slatzer's 1968 film The Hellcats. It was a MST3K selection that I saw when it originally aired, I watched it more recently, 2015, when I worked my way through one of those 50 Movie Packs. I gave that The Hellcats a 2.

Bigfoot is about 50% better so I gave it a 3. Still poor. You can watch it at the link above, though why you would...

 

Legends Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977

Legend Of Dinosaurs And Monster Birds 1977 Screenplay by Masaru Igami, Isao Matsumoto and Ichirô Ôtsu, directed by Junji Kurata.

 

Made by Toei Company, the studio was inspired by Jaws, the film did poorly in the Japanese theaters but was a block buster in the Soviet Union. It was known in the US as The Legend Of Dinosaurs and it was used in the last episode of the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 which was produced by KTMA. That version was chopped up a good bit, the original movie got a US DVD release in 2007 from Media Blasters and that's what I watched.

A woman falls into a cavern, in the Aokigahara region near Mount Fuji, she awakes to find fossilized eggs, one of which hatches. She runs off and scares a construction crew with her hysterics. A geologist called Takashi goes to take a look, while hiking around Mount Fuji he's knocked out and wakes up in the cabin of a family friend. Takashi continues his hunt for the eggs, on the way he meets an old girlfriend Akiko. She's there with her friend Junko, a scuba diver, who wants to dive in the lake where a couple in a small boat went missing.

A diver is injured in the lake, livestock have gone missing, wild theories of living dinosaurs are tossed out to the dubious public. Well, turns out it wasn't a dinosaur, it was two, one of them a plesiosaurus and the other a rhamporhynchus. The pair battle it out and the volcano erupts killing both dinos. It's a bad day on Mount Fuji and the movie ends on a cliffhanger.

I was much more entertained by the movie than on MST3K. It was like seeing a whole different movie, the MST3K version had so much trimmed out of it. It's a more adult film than I thought, there's a bit of gore, mild by today's standards and a brief bit of nudity. I'd watch it again.

I'm not sure why it did so poorly in the Japanese box office. It was Toei's biggest budget, $2.8 million and it didn't even get a third of that back in receipts. It never got released theatrically in the US but it was released to TV in 1987.

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Summer Of 84 2018 Written by Matt Leslie and Stephen J Smith, directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell. The 3 directors are the same three that wrote and directed the 2015 film Turbo Kid. I enjoyed that film more than this one, mostly because I'm not much interested in a serial killer story.

A 15 year old named Davey decides that the policeman who lives across the street from his family's house is the Cape May Slayer. The killer had written to the local newspaper confessing to the 15 previous killings. Davey sees some clues that lead him to believe the cop is the killer and he's convincing enough to get his three friends to help him investigate. Turns out Davey was right. That knowledge puts him and his gang in great jeopardy, especially once Davey's father, an incredible asshole, spills the beans to the cop. There's no happy ending for Davey once the cop is outed, he escapes the police dragnet, stopping briefly to threaten Davey with the promise of a return visit for a bit of revenge.

It's well made but the story isn't the sort of horror film I like. It's not something I'd bother with again.

Daughters Of Satan 1972 Story by John A Bushelman, screenplay by John C Higgins, directed by Hollingsworth Morse. I didn't recognize the title but I had seen it back in 2010. It didn't look familiar while we were watching it.

Tom Selleck is a museum curator in Manila. He sees a painting in a shop, it depicts three witches being burned at the stake, Tom notices the witch in the middle looks a lot like his wife Chris. He buys the painting and brings it home, Chris doesn't like it but somehow knows the name of the coven and the day they were burned at the stake. 

The painting is a cursed magical thing that allows the long dead witches a chance to take over the bodies of living women. When the witch possesses Chris her image in the painting disappears. Two other women are possessed and the reformed coven team up to get some revenge on the magistrate who ordered them burnt at the stake. That guy's long dead. No matter, the witches don't mind killing the relatives of their oppressors. Tom's that relative and it doesn't go well for him during the movie.

It's not much of a movie, it's struggling to get to average, I gave it a generous five. I doubt I'd need to see it a third time.

Gawain And The Green Knight 1973

Gawain And The Green Knight 1973 Based on the poem Sir Gawain And The Green Knight by Anonymous, screenplay by Philip M Breen and Stephen Weeks, directed by Stephen Weeks.

Nigel Green is the Green Knight. This is his last feature film as he died the year before. Murray Head plays Sir Gawain, you might remember him from his big hit One Night In Bangkok, he's also brother to Anthony Head. He's made a dozen albums but I've only heard that one song. He's made 14 movies but this is the only one I've seen.

The story follows the poem much better than The Green Knight. The Green Knight shows up on New Years Eve and offers a challenge to King Arthur's knights. The Green Knight offers a knight the first blow, a year and a day later his will meet the knight to take his turn. Gawain is the only one that volunteers. The king tells him to strike a blow that will leave the GK incapable of striking back. Gawain lops off the head of the Green Knight, the trick backfires after the GK picks up his head and says he'll see Gawain in a year and a day.

Gawain leaves to find the Green Knight, along the way he has some adventures that involve a woman called Linet, she's played by Ciaran Madden. She's part of a decent cast that includes Anthony Sharp, Robert Hardy, David Leland, Murray Melvin, Tony Steedman, Ronald Lacey, Willoughby Goddard, Geoffrey Bayldon and Richard Hurndall.

The effects for this film aren't as good as The Green Knight but the story makes more sense. I enjoyed it well enough and thought it was just a bit above average. You can see it on YouTube, link in the usual place.

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Doctor Strange 1978 Written and directed by Philip DeGuere. I had forgotten that we had watched this on a previous FNM night. That was back in 2018. Click the link in the title to read that.

I still feel it's just not that exciting. The director was sad it got such low Nielsen numbers but I could see where a lot of people would have bailed on this after sitting through the first half. I don't think Peter Hooten is much of an actor, he certainly doesn't do very well here. The other actors are a mix, John Mills, Jessica Walters and Clyde Kasatsu do well, the rest are weaker by far. Not that they have that great a script to work with.

The Blu-ray does look nice but that isn't enough to make the movie much better. Ironically the second film today, like the film in the 2018 post, made Doctor Strange look a little bit better by comparison.

Bury Me An Angel 1971 Written and directed by Barbara Peeters. It was picked up for distribution by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. According to the Wikipedia, Peeters was the first woman to direct a biker film. Peeters is also credited with directing Humanoids From The Deep. Not a great picture but one that's fascinating to watch none the less.

Corman didn't think Peeters had made the monsters in Humanoids From The Deep nasty enough for his audience, so Jimmy T Murakami and second unit director James Sbardellati were asked to direct a bit more of the rapey monster stuff that Roger wants his audience to have. He did this without telling the other cast and crew, Peeters and Ann Turkel didn't care for the changes and asked to have their names removed from the film, they were refused. Roger, classy or what?

It''s kind of the same for Bury Me An Angel, the exploitative elements are weak for a biker film. Dixie Peabody plays the main character, a biker called Dag. This is her second film, the first was a bit part in the 1970 biker film Angels Die Hard. Peeters worked on that film and it's there she meet Rita Murray, an actor who wanted to producer her own films. In 1971 Dixie had a small part in Night Call Nurses and then worked briefly as a PA on Summer School Teachers. No more acting. It's probably best, she doesn't have the ability.

In Bury Me An Angel Dag's brother is killed by another guy. The brother stole that guy's nice motorcycle and gave it to Dag. She decides to get revenge. After rounding up a couple unarmed goofs for backup and getting some info from a guy, the trio head north. They meet some people along the way, Dan Haggerty was one of them, eventually they find the guy who killed Dag's brother. There's an unsatisfying confrontation with the murderer at the end of the movie.

It's amazing that a movie could fail on so many fronts. Peeters just isn't that good of a director. The film meanders around with nothing happening way too often. The script isn't very good, it's certainly does not make for a good exploitative biker film. It seems more like a melodrama with Dag moping around. Too much time is spent with Dag and her internal struggle over her brother's death. The acting is mostly poor with poor Dixie leading the pack in lack of ability. We were mesmerized by her facial expressions. I think mostly because there wasn't a lot going on up on screen. Oh, well, another one I wouldn't need to buy.

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Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century 1977 Written by Mario Di Nardo and Giancarlo Parolini, directed by Frank Kramer. Italian Yeti movie filmed partially in Toronto.

We watched the Blu-ray of the film. I thought I hadn't seen it before but I recognized the scene with the rich businessman in a box under a helicopter from the first scene in the film. I didn't remember much of the rest of the film. I watched it on YouTube back in July 2012. That YouTube video is still there, it looks pretty poor, there's another version on YouTube that looks better. Link in the title above. Of course the Blu-ray looks even better but I can't see paying 20 bucks for a copy.

It is a pretty entertaining movie but for all the wrong reasons, I'm laughing at it. There's way too many goofy goings on to poke fun at to get at them all. The Yeti's costume provided much humor and none of us could keep a straight face on viewing the sad puppy dog looks the Yeti had for the pretty girl. The theme is pretty annoying and they use it repeatedly through the film. I guess they paid for it, they're going to get their money out of it, no matter how inappropriate it is. You can do better by way of Yeti or Bigfoot type of films. Still, it's a laugh, isn't it.

Men & Chicken 2015 Written and directed by Anders Thomas Jensen. A Danish film about family, told in the oddest way.

Gabriel and Elias are brothers, when their father dies they are given a tape and the father explains he's not their real dad. They find that real dad lives on an island so they go to visit him. They get smacked around by their three violent brothers. The island brothers live in an abandoned building with their animals.  Those three turn out to be even more off the scale from normal than Gabriel and Elias are. All the brothers have some level of physical deformation, most notably a harelip, and their mental abilities are subpar, except for Gabriel, he's noticeably smarter than the others and he's had some surgery to fix his lip. Gabriel is also much less violent than the others.

Gabriel pushes to meet the dad until he finds the man's mummified corpse in bed upstairs. Gabriel digs out the truth and it's a sad story. Pop was a sterile geneticist who impregnated their mothers with a goo made from animal DNA and his own stem cells. Sadly, he wasn't so good at it and there were lots of deaths in the process. The mothers all died because of the fatal caesarean births that their father preformed. Generally, the father was a cruel beast who should have been put down.

It's a rather dark comedy that made me laugh out loud a couple times, both were scenes of slapstick violence between the brothers. It paints an interesting picture of Danish mental health. It's not a film for everyone. Glad to have seen it but wouldn't necessarily need to see it again.