Italian Locandina

Cannibals (also known as Mondo Cannibale, White Cannibal Queen and Barbarian Goddess) is a 1980 French/Spanish/Italian cannibal film directed by prolific Spanish exploitation director Jesús Franco which starred Sabrina Siani . It is one of two cannibal films directed by Franco starring Al Cliver, the other being Man Hunter (aka Devil Hunter).

Plot teaser:

Doctor Taylor, his wife Elizabeth and their teenage daughter Lana go to an isolated hospital in the Brazilian jungle. They are attacked by savages and the doctor witnesses them kill and eat his wife, and abduct his daughter. Taylor manages to get back to civilization, but he needs psychiatric help; only Doctor Ana believes his story about cannibals, and takes the risk of going with him and a few rich people who can pay for a safari in the remote jungle. The cannibals decimate a number of the safari members in a succession of attacks, and only Taylor, Doctor Ana, and a photographer reach the cannibal tribe – only to discover that his daughter is now the wife of the tribe leader, and considered a goddess…

The film is notable for the fact that it shares an amount of footage with Cannibal Terror. While many sources suggest that Franco’s footage was ‘borrowed’ for Cannibal Terror, a closer examination reveals that there are more connections than this between the two films. Both films share a number of locations, cast, and even dubbing actors. Some connections which suggest more than a mere borrowing of footage are:

Sabrina Siani is the eponymous White Cannibal Queen of Cannibals, and also appears (as a fully clothed adult) in a bar scene in Cannibal Terror. Several shots of the dancing cannibal tribe in their village are common to both films, and several shots appear only in one or the other. One actor with a very distinctive face and large Mick Jagger type of mouth is seen in Cannibal Terror in no less than three roles (two cannibals and one border guard) and is also quite visible as one of the cannibals devouring Al Cliver’s wife in Cannibals. Porn star Pamela Stanford plays Manuella in Cannibal Terror, and has the brief role of the unfortunate Mrs. Jeremy Taylor in Cannibals. She also appeared in a number of Jesus Franco’s other films around this time period, perhaps most notably, Lorna the Exorcist. As well, the actor who plays Roberto in Cannibal Terror is the captain of the boat at the beginning of Cannibals.

Cannibals is considered even by Jess Franco himself to be the worst cannibal film ever made, due to its slow pacing, bad acting, terrible special effects and awful camera work. Franco said that he only did the two cannibal films for the money, and admitted he had no idea why anyone would want to watch them. He said that Sabrina Siani was the worst actress he ever worked with in his life (second only to Romina Power) and that Siani’s only good quality was her delectable derrière which he shows off to good effect in this film.

Buy Cannibals on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Franco’s film is no masterpiece by any means, but it certainly deserves its place in the pantheon of cannibal films that appeared in this period of exploitation film history. Omitting the animal cruelty, that seemed to be part and parcel of so many of the Italian entries, Franco actually brings in a reasonably competently made slice of cannibal mayhem without resorting to such shock tactics. The cannibal attacks are also quite nightmarish and unpleasant and very effective, as they play out in close-up slow motion”. Sex Gore Mutants

“This film is one of the most uninspired that I have seen in while from Jess Franco and I was totally caught off guard how tame and restrained he made the cannibals. Ultimately is you have climbed to the top of the cannibal mountain with films like Cannibal Ferox or Cannibal Holocaust then a film like Cannibals might be to tame and uneventful for you”. 10,000 Bullets

“If you are one of those people who clings to the misguided belief that Uwe Boll or Paul W.S. Anderson are the worst directors in history you need to watch more Franco. Seriously. Cannibals is a piece of shit, and is really for cannibal completists only. Not even rabid Francophiles will find much value from this bland atrocity.” Digital Retribution

Further reading: Jungle Holocaust: Cannibal Tribes in Exploitation Cinema – article

Buy Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

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The Pied Piper is a 1972 British film directed by Jacques Demy and starring Jack Wild, Donald Pleasence (Death Line; The Mutations; Halloween) and John Hurt and featuring Donovan and Diana Dors (Nothing But the Night; Craze; Theatre of Blood). It is loosely based on the legend of the Pied Piper. Rather than behaving as you might expect a film aimed at children to, it feasts upon the darker elements of an already concerning fairytale.

A quick reminder of the fairytale: In the Middle Ages, the German village of Hamelin is beset by the plague-carrying rats which are taking over Europe. A famed piper is employed to lead the rats to a watery grave – rats being fond of a good tune. Alas, the local authorities are somewhat forgetful in their commitment to paying the tunesmith and he duly lures the hamlet’s children to the local lake and drowned them. Very few people lived happily ever after.

The 1972 film takes many elements of the original tale but generally speaking manages to reign itself in before causing too much national panic. In 1349, The Black Death is sweeping Germany, courtesy of millions of infected-flea carrying rats. We are introduced to a caravan of travellers, the gypsy Mattio (Keith Buckley, Dr. Phibes Rises Again), his wife Helga (Patsy Puttnam, wife of the now Lord David, who produced the film), along with their children and assorted stragglers. Along their route to Hamelin they meet the cheery Pied Piper (singing wonder elf, Donovan) who they are happy to take on-board. Upon arrival at their destination, he manages to gain entry to the village, along with the other travellers, who are understandably reticent to allow potential disease-carriers into their community, by using his musical talents to sooth the fevered-brow of a young girl Lisa (Cathryn Harrison, Black Moon), the daughter of village Burgermeister (named Poppendick, of course played by Roy Kinnear – his wife, Frau Poppendick, is none other than Diana Dors).

In a head-spinning turn of events, the 11 year-old is betrothed to the power-crazed son (John Hurt) of the local baron (played with typical exuberance by Donald Pleasence) and is only pretending to be ill to get herself out of the dreadful situation. Also mixing things up are a troupe of red-robed religious fiends who have even greater control than the baron or Burgermeister, Lisa’s actual love-interest, Gavin (Jack Wild) and his master, Melius (the always magnificent Michael Hordern, also in Whistle and I’ll Come To You) who is rather more suspicious of events than most others in Hamelin. It is he who warns of the imminent arrival of rats in the village, though his words are initially ignored but then cause rather more upset, landing him in prison for his crazy scientific views, whilst the rest of the populace look to religious antidotes to their fears and fevers. Aside from this, there is rather more emphasis being placed on the financing of a cathedral, in which the happy marriage can take place. However, when the rats eventually arrive in their droves, has The Pied Piper had enough of the religious and under-age outrages to help rid them of their disease-filled rodents?

If your children aren’t either terrified or completely disturbed after that then congratulations. In truth, there isn’t too much in the way of graphic violence, though not all the rats look entirely happy when they’re on-screen. The rank, highly evocative gloominess of the film is largely thanks to the cinematographer, Peter Suschitzky (The Empire Strikes Back and many of David Cronenberg’s films) and the sets and art production by George Djurkovic and Assheton Gorton (Legend, Shadow of the Vampire) and it is this, along with a parade of almost exclusively British acting talent which gives the film its highly unusual tone.

The Pied Piper was directed by Jacques Demy, best remembered for the still popular The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. For a supposedly jolly kids’ film, there’s a massive, barely concealed commentary on the role of religion in society, from the Church versus science dilemma to the treatment of Jews (Hordern’s character) to in-fighting within the local priests themselves. The cast is superb, even Donovan, perhaps mercifully brief in his musical turns as they are featured in the film as necessary interludes rather than slapped onto the soundtrack. It was shot in location in Bavaria, Germany and the dislocation of the British cast again lends an air of unease.

Though The Pied Piper did receive a US release on DVD via the Legend label, it has yet to receive an official release in the UK, as the grimness and downbeat take on a well-loved fairytale are seemingly just still that little bit too strong for British stomachs.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Territories (original title: Territoires) is a 2010 Franco – Canadian horror film co-written and directed by Olivier Abbou and starring Roc LaFortune, Michael Mando and Cristina Rosato.

Plot teaser:

Five friends returning from a marriage in Canada return home to the United States. Not far from the border, two customs officers stop them to check their identity. Suspicious, they take their time especially with Jalil, a man of Arab origin. The situation worsens when a customs officer finds a small bag of marijuana in the luggage. Then things degenerate rapidly: a customs officer grabs the little dog that’s part of the group and slits open its belly to be sure it’s not a mule. When Gab makes a move, he’s shot. The customs officer orders the surviving friends to undress and put on orange coveralls. Gradually, it dawns on the four tourists that they are in the hands of former torturers from Guantanamo…

Buy Territories on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Territories isn’t as violent as you might expect, and it even manages to throw in some unsettlingly cruel humour, but it is a deeply upsetting experience that transcends simple ‘torture porn’ pigeonholing as well as predictable politicized posturing. A difficult watch but a worthwhile one.” Eye For Film

“Horror fans will delight in a handful of impressive gore scenes by make-up artist C.J. Goldman (Orphan), captured with handheld verve by cinematographer Karim Hussain (Hobo with a Shotgun). But Territories is ultimately less about the bloodletting than about revealing torture (and torture porn) to be a by-product of Bush-era extremism – an idea that seems worn out following Hostel and its many rehashes.” Hollywood Reporter

“The film is beautifully shot and the acting is fantastic all around. A creepy tension slowly builds and once it has taken hold it doesn’t let go. I found the final act of the film unrelenting and at times surreal. This is a film that stands very clear of others and will grip you to the very end. It will also leave you with something to think about for a long time afterwards.” Screen Jabber

IMDb

WH

Belgian Poster

Killer Fish – also Killerfish – is a 1978 Italian-French-Brazilian horror movie directed by Antonio Margheriti and starring Lee Majors, James Franciscus and Karen Black. Killer Fish is a Carlo Ponti  Filmar do Brasil production from I.T.C. Entertainment, released by Associated Film Distribution, and presented by Sir Lew Grade.

Plot teaser:

Death, deception and nature have gone wild, as piranhas protect a stolen emerald cache. Paul Diller (James Franciscus) is the mastermind of a multi-million dollar jewel heist. The team, including Robert Lasky (Lee Majors) and his girlfriend, Kate Neville (Karen Black), steal the gems and hurl them to the bottom of Brazil’s deepest lake, which is then filled with deadly man-eating piranha. Soon, all members of the team are pitted against each other in a deadly battle of wits and a deadly battle against piranhas!

Buy Killer Fish on Blu-ray from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Despite the lukewarm premise and goofy script, Killer Fish still manages to be a pretty entertaining little b-movie. Majors is great as the slicker than grease tough guy ladies man and Karen Black is equally as good as the weird looking sex pot criminal chick. The true stars of this movie though are Margheriti’s miniature sets, all of which blow up really nicely and/or flood when the dam inevitably breaks later in the film. These miniatures share the spotlight with some quality plastic fish (some of which are very obviously on wires) that attack anyone who gets near the jewels.” Rock! Shock! Pop! 

“Margheriti packs the film with a lot of miniature work and explosions that are more effective than models seen in later Italian productions. At times the piranhas seem like an afterthought amidst the destruction. It’s easily digestible Saturday afternoon entertainment.” Italian Film Review

“It may not be a good movie — it’s really inept—but it’s friendly, like Mr. Majors’s quizzical squint, which is, I’m told by people who watch more televison than I do, what Mr. Majors does best. Everyone, in fact, carries on gamely, as people do at a picnic when it rains. Miss Berenson, who looks more and more like Ann Dvorak with very thin eyebrows, maintains a kind of resolute availability, always ready to talk to someone who feels low or lonely. Miss Black makes the mistake of attempting to act, and thus comes across as the party-bore, the person who attempts to steer conversation to important topics when everyone else is interested in gossip.” The New York Times

Locations:

Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

IMDb | Wikipedia

WH

The Catman of Paris is a 1946 American horror/mystery film, directed by westerns specialist Lesley Selander (Fury, The Vampire’s Ghost) and starring Carl Esmond, Lenore Aubert (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein), Douglass Dumbrille and Gerald Mohr (The Angry Red Planet).

It’s 1895 and the upper echelons of Parisian society are gathered to welcome returning hero, Charles Regnier (Esmond) to their midst, after the runaway success of his latest book. Sadly for Regnier, this turns out to not quite be the case, The Men In Suits being more than a little concerned that his writing appears to be informed by top-secret government documents. To make matters worse, the very same evening, an official who is connected to the documents is brutally murdered, suspicion immediately being focussed on the author.

The finest police minds of the French capital are scrambled (Inspector Severen, Mohr and the Prefect of Police, Fritz Feld, The Golem), the results being a beautifully-crafted diorama of the local streets and the somewhat wild shot in the dark that the savagely-scratched victim pointed to the culprit being a metamorphosed human, there being a history of “man turning into wolves and vultures”. Yes, vultures. Regnier, we learn, has suffered from bouts of amnesia since he returned from a jaunt in the Tropics, and he is concerned when it is pointed out by Severen when interviewed the following morning, that he is still wearing his clothes from the previous evening. He is not arrested but the police have him nailed as their prime suspect. Alas, the next victim is his fiancée, Marguerite (the stunning Adele Mara, Curse of the Faceless Man), the killer has his identity hidden from us, though is heralded by a bizarre transformation scene showing large waves and a bobbing buoy followed by a yowling feline.

Regnier is now convinced of his guilt but is offered words of comfort by his friend, Henry Borchard (Dumbrille) and the daughter of his publisher, Marie (Aubert), who warns him that he must flee to safety before the police inevitably come for him. After a thrilling horse-drawn carriage chase, Regnier bemoans his fate, whilst the audience is treated to a fanciful explanation for the monster, the celestial heavens conspiring to periodically curse a man with murderous feline tendencies, the last time in 1845, this time, the ninth, doomed to be the last of the ‘cat’s’ lives. By the time the police do arrive, Marie’s life is in real danger and as the mist descends in the mansion’s grounds, the mysterious creature threatens to claim yet another victim.

It’s interesting to see how horror films managed to be made whilst the Second World War raged, and in its immediate aftermath, The Catman of Paris offers no moral posturing or knowing nods, only an hours worth of rather aged thrills. An unusual influence is the undervalued Werewolf of London, Henry Hull’s doomed travails in Tibet essentially echoing the protagonist of this film, though why ‘the tropics’ should be evocative of waves and sea furniture is a little bemusing. Other more superficial influences include Val Lewton’s Cat People, the dark streets and top hat and cape of Jack the Ripper and even the lost Lon Chaney film, London After Midnight, the latter allegedly offering almost as brief a glimpse at the monster as this film. The make-up by Bob Mark (Valley of the Zombies) is excellent, though, being a whodunnit, it is sadly necessary to keep the identity of the Catman a mystery until, literally, the last five minutes.

At only 65 minutes, there is still an impressive amount of action crammed in here, of particular note the carriage chase, which threatens to break out into 19th Century French Connection insanity. There is a fundamental problem, that of the almost perverse insistence at convincing us, the audience, that cats are in any way frightening – rats or bats maybe but the friendly moggy that keeps popping up to remind us what we’re watching does nothing to support this ludicrous notion. The hypothesising is terrifically silly, culminating in an Allo, Allo-accented cry of, “Wi zer faytures of ay kit!”. The largely internationally-flavoured cast of B-movie nearlies have their hearts in the right place, even if they’ve mislaid their scripts. A product of Republic Pictures, known for their Poverty Row, ‘schlock and flaw’ conveyor belt of trash, the surprise ending, at least, is certainly worth sticking around for.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

” … even a mouse should be able to watch without too much great alarm. For the ‘cat’ in this case is permitted such infrequent appearance on the screen and is such a decrepit looking monster that it is more to be pitied than feared.” The New York Times, 1946

IMDb

The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 1975 French erotic fantasy horror film written, edited, and directed by Walerian Borowczyk. Although sometimes compared with Beauty and the Beast, there are no parallels in the plot except that it features the relationship between a beast and a woman.

The Beast began life as part of Walerian Borowczyk’s 1974 short story collection Immoral Tales, with the story The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan being the third tale in the film. The segment played at the London Film Festival in 1973 as part of a ‘work in progress’ screening, and caused immediate outrage – how could a respected director like Borowczyk lower himself to such filth, critics asked, and his mainstream reputation would never recover from the blow dealt to it by this segment in particular and Immoral Tales in general.

By the time Immoral Tales was finally released, The True Story of the Beast of Gévaudan had been removed – not for censorship reasons, although it was certainly the most incendiary of the stories featured in the film, but because the finished film was considered too long (you can now see the complete cut on the Blu-ray of Immoral Tales to see for yourself – personally, I think the decision was a sound one) and because Borowczyk was interested in expanding the sequence into a full length feature. When the finished film, La Bête, finally emerged in 1975, it was a big hit across Europe, but did nothing to salvage Borowczyk’s dwindling reputation – it’s only in recent years that anyone outside the cult and erotic film fan circles have started to acknowledge the value of these films, and even now, you’ll find people who see movies such as this as creatively worthless. More fool them.

In the UK, the film was banned by the BBFC, even in a cut version, and a GLC-approved London release was threatened with prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act in 1978 ; this same version emerged later on VHS, which is when I first saw the film. Already a fan of Borowczyk’s work by this time, I was blown away by the movie, even though it was missing much of the controversial footage; it wasn’t until some years later, when I picked up a Dutch tape of the film in Amsterdam, that I would get to see what all the fuss was about. And yes, I could understand the shock and anger – La Bête is gleefully outrageous, crossing one of the last sexual taboos (albeit in a non-realistic manner) and having a graphic nature that went beyond the limits of most softcore. That this footage now came wrapped in a sumptuous, remarkably witty drama that wasn’t particularly sexy in its own right (by mid Seventies standards, at least) somehow made everything seem all the more shocking. Thankfully, times change, and so La Bête is now available, uncut.

This expanded version of the story is based around the house of the Marquis Pierre de l’Esperance (Guy Tréjan), an aristocrat down on his luck, who hopes to revive the family fortune by marrying his misfit son Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) to Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel), the daughter of an old friend. Unfortunately, for her to inherit the estate, certain things need to be in place, according to the will of Philip Broadhurst. Firstly, it must take place within six months of his death, and the clock is tocking, with only 48 hours left; secondly, they must be married by Cardinal Joseph do Balo, the brother of Pierre’s uncle Duc Rammaendelo de Balo (Marcel Dalio). This throws up several problems. Rammaendelo disapproves of the marriage and has to be blackmailed into calling his brother, and the Cardinal refuses to have anything to do with the family as Mathurin has not been baptised. So as Lucy and her sour-faced aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) travel to the chateau, it is arranged for the local priest (Rolan Armontel) – a man who seems to have an unhealthy interest in choirboys – to come and carry out the baptism on the dim-witted son, who is far more interested in horse breeding than marriage. Inevitably, things start to go dreadfully wrong, as Pierre’s carefully laid plans start to fall apart.

All this is played out like an especially stylish version of a French farce, with its cast of eccentric characters and Pierre’s increasing desperation leading to subterfuge and panic as he refuses to accept that the marriage might be doomed not to take place. The film is surprisingly funny in the telling of this story – Borowczyk’s films, perhaps because of the sexual content, are rarely seem as comedic, but La Bête certainly is, often hilariously. This is despite being played with a straight face by most of the cast, and being shot with the director’s usual attention to detail, fetishisation of objects and long takes. Certainly, the film looks like a serious, straight-faced work, and every shot is remarkably well crafted and beautiful. The satire that is behind this straight face of course extends to religion – the pederast priest who comes to carry the baptism is a nicely on-the-ball dig at the priesthood, and also an interesting prediction of the scandals that would beset the Catholic church decades later.

Interestingly, this is a contemporary tale, which comes as a bit of a surprise – it’s only when we see Pierre’s horny daughter Clarisse (Pascale Rivault) clad in jeans and boots – in the few scenes where she isn’t banging the much put-upon servant Ifany (Hassane Fall), the constant interruption of their carnal activity being a running joke – that we realise that this film isn’t a period piece, so old-fashioned are the locations, the clothing and even the attitudes – arranged marriages in non-royal European families in the mid-Seventies?

For a supposed soft porn film, La Bête certainly takes its time in showing any sex. If we discount the startlingly graphic opening scenes of horse copulation – and unless you have very specialised tastes, it’s unlikely that you’ll find this footage especially erotic – then we are some 20 minutes into the film before we have any nudity, and the only sexual activity in the first hour involves Clarisse and Ifany in short bursts that are briefly explicit (we see a semi erect penis, for instance) but not exactly the stuff of soft porn. However, we are being lulled into a false sense of security.

When Lucy takes to her bed, her passions have been inflamed enough for her to spend the night masturbating, while dreaming about Romilda de l’Esperance (Sirpa Lane), who according to legend met a beast in the woods and shagged him to death. It’s this dream that makes use of the original Immoral Tales footage, as it is intercut with shots of Lucy, clad in a tantalising see-through night dress, rolls around on the bed, fingering herself, splashing water across her breasts and tearing off her clothes. These scenes alone are remarkably erotic – Lisbeth Hummel proves to be quite the sex kitten when given the chance, her exquisite body and brazen behaviour sure to turn on many a viewer. But it is the dream sequence that still has the power to startle.

This short story has Euro starlet Sirpa Lane (who went from high-end erotica like this and Roger Vadim’s Charlotte to rather more low rent cinema like Nazi Love Camp 27 and Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals) being chased through the woods by the titular beast, a hairy bear-like creature with a dog-face and a growing erection. She loses her clothes along the way and is finally captured, whereupon the beast rapes her (though not before engaging in a spot of cunnilingus). However, once her passions are inflamed, she proves too much of a match for the Beast, and her sexual rapaciousness eventually causes him to expire as she masturbates, sucks and screws the poor creature into a deadly exhaustion.

This is astonishing stuff. Even if we leave aside the BBFC-baiting issue of a rape victim coming to enjoy her abuse – and I assume the censors realised that this hardly constituted realism and so was unlikely to encourage such beliefs – then we are left with scenes of a woman having vigorous sex with an animal, who continually ejaculates from his monster cock. Yes, it’s a man in a (surprisingly well-crafted) suit, not a real animal. But still, the mere implication is shocking enough – bestiality has not proved to be a subject that many respectable filmmakers have wanted to tackle – and the footage is so wonderfully outrageous and in such bad taste that it’s no wonder critics were appalled. Shot when hardcore porn was still a new thing for much of the world, you can imagine them wondering where the line might be drawn.

The film follows this dream sequence with an amusing and cynical coda that reveals just why this marriage was doomed to failure, though by this point I imagine the more delicate viewers would have long since stopped watching.

In many ways, La Bête feels like the archetypal Borowczyk film, despite the outrageous content of the Beast sequence. It’s the sort of film that would always confuse mainstream critics – a collision of high art and low taste, an unquestionably serious (if humorous) film that is masterfully crafted and yet which seems to be deliberately aiming at the lowest common denominator. How could anyone who drew a line in the sand between art and exploitation ever hope to understand a movie like this, so cheerfully crass and yet so obviously refined? It’s certainly the Borowczyk film I would suggest to someone exploring his (erotic) work for the first time, and it might well be his most popular film these days. I’m not sure it’s his best work, but it’s certainly his most unforgettable. And it’s also a film that rewards repeated viewing – the shock of the Beast scenes can be a bit overwhelming the first time round, but each time you watch it again, you’ll find some new little touches to entrance you. Those people who still think Boro pissed away his career with his erotic films should open their eyes and their minds – they’ll discover a filmmaker who found his niche, and made some of the most impressive, startling, exciting and challenging films of the 1970s in any genre.

This stunningly gorgeous new British Blu-ray edition includes Borowczyk’s 1975 animation Venus on the Half Shell, which is a nice complementary film, featuring as it does Bona Tibertelli de Pisis‘ paintings of men, women and snails; and an hour of silent behind the scenes footage from the making of the film, narrated by camera operator Noël Véry – fascinating stuff and a rare glimpse into Borowczyk’s intricate film making style.There’s also a short piece on the planned sequel Motherhood, which on paper sounds frankly ludicrous. But I would’ve trusted in Borowczyk’s ability to pull it off…

David Flint – this review first appeared on Strange Things Are Happening

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Devil-Doll aka The Devil Doll is a 1936 horror film directed by Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks) and starring a cross-dressing Lionel Barrymore (Mark of the Vampire) and Maureen O’Sullivan (Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan) as his daughter, Lorraine Levond. The movie was adapted from the novel Burn Witch Burn! of 1932, written by Abraham Merritt.

17 years after being wrongly convicted of robbing his own bank, Paul Lavond (Barrymore), escapes from incarceration at the Devil’s Island penal facility, along with fellow prisoner, Marcel (Henry B. Walthall, London After Midnight, The Birth of a Nation) a scientist who is trying to create a formula to reduce people to one-sixth of their original size. Eluding the chasing guards and hounds, they eventually reach sanctuary at the riverside home of the scientist’s widow, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano, an actress from the original Théâtre du Grand-Guignol). Marcel’s aims are entirely just, aiming to preserve the Earth’s natural resources but when he dies as a result of the pair’s exhausting escape, Lavond gratefully picks up the baton and sees an opportunity to seek revenge against those who made his life a misery.

Lavond is astounded when he sees the work Marcel has left behind, a St Bernard dog reduced to the size of a paperback book but which will, by the power of his thought alone, perform any task he wishes (correction – any task a dog would usually be expected to perform). A further test, on Malita’s half-wit maid, Lachna (Grace Ford) shows promise but confirms that without an external force to control her, she is ultimately useless. Roping in Malita to assist, they relocate to Paris and he disguises himself as a harmless little old lady, Madame Mandelip, with a talent for making surprisingly realistic dolls. Using the diminutive Lachna as his easily-missed weapon, he gains revenge on the three former business associates who had framed him and vindicates himself. Trickier are his attempts at reconciliation with his daughter, Lorraine (O’Sullivan) who, obviously not recognising her estranged father, recalls how she was left to fend for herself after her mother died whilst he was in prison. Despite Lavond’s gentle enquiries, she makes it clear that nothing will change her mind. Meanwhile, Malita hasn’t finished what she’s started and wants to continue to use the formula for personal gain, even if it means killing Lavond.

Having dealt with this threat, Lavond’s plight, is that although he has cleared his name, he knows he is ultimately a murderer, as well as the perpetrator of some legally-dubious shrinkings and finds he is unable to shed his disguise and reintegrate himself back into society. With the aid of his daughter’s suitor, Tonto (yes, Tonto, played by Frank Lawton from The Invisible Ray) he settles for one last attempt to clear his name with Lorraine.

Though he had an enviable career behind him as a director, by the time it came to filming Devil Doll, Tod Browning was a changed man from the auteur who had, alongside Lon Chaney Sr (not to mention Bela Lugosi), terrified and astounded audiences for the last twenty years. His battles with censors, critics and audiences alike filming Freaks had left him distant and frail, Devil Doll being his penultimate film before he sought life away from the camera until his death in 1962. Although there are sinister echoes of some of Browning’s earlier work, particularly dramas such as The Wicked Darling (1919) and the much-compared The Unholy Three (1925), it is actually the actors and special effects work which elevate the film to one of the must-sees of the 1930’s, a film which deserves far mention attention than it receives.

It is worth noting that the prisoners have escaped from Devil’s Island, a location mentioned as also being the ‘living quarters’ of Erik in the 1925 film, The Phantom of the Opera (though not the book) before he took residence in Paris, the doomed love and disguise following a theme of sorts. Ade Merritt’s source novel is similar in narrative but far darker, crueller and pulpy in tone, the cross-dressing Lavond being very much an invention of Browning and Barrymore. Had he still been alive (and been willing to appear in the talkies he was always dubious of), Chaney would no doubt have taken the role seized eagerly by Barrymore. It is, by all standards, a ‘broad’ performance, scenes of idle old lady chit-chat lasting ten minutes at a time when two would be closer to sensible. However, Barrymore is pretty convincing as an old dame, not exactly the master of disguise of Chaney’s Mrs O’Grady of The Unholy Three but a sterling effort.

Also excelling themselves are Ottiano who, sporting Elsa Lanchester’s grey streak from Bride of Frankenstein plays the unusual part of a female mad scientist with glaring, if slightly pantomime, menace. The big surprise is O’Sullivan who plays the traditional MGM fawning, swooning tragic-but-wins-in-the-end female lead with a believability that was unusual to find at the time. Clearly the film is a chance for MGM to compete with Universal who were flying high with horror at the time to say the least, though the studio couldn’t bring itself to reign in the schmaltz for long, though an ending which hints at suicide sailed close to the sails of the Hays Code.

The special effects were no doubt a daunting prospect, Universal wowing audiences with the likes of 1933’s The Invisible Man and, more pertinently, Dr Pretorius’ experiments in shrinking humans in Bride of Frankenstein. Although some of the matte work isn’t exactly seamless, it is still a joy to watch and this post-production work is supplemented by some giant sets to help create the illusion of tiny folk (a trick also used successfully in Laurel and Hardy’s Brats of 1930). Some of the set-pieces are particularly fine, a tiny puppet freeing themselves from a sleeping grown-up’s grasp, when there were surely more easily-filmed options and a tiny but very real ornament on a giant Christmas Tree (quick point – if you’re ever asked what your favourite Christmas film is, throw this one in to feel very superior).

The inability of the film to really break out from melodrama to full-blown horror is unfortunate, it would surely rank as a classic had the director been on top form and willing to be as challenging as he had been throughout his career. The film comes complete with a Franz Waxman score (Bride of Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, 1941).

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (French pronunciation: ​[ɡʁɑ̃ ɡiɲɔl]: “The Theatre of the Big Puppet”) – known as the Grand Guignol – was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, rue Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialized in naturalistic, usually shocking, horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil), to today’s splatter films. The influence has even spread to television shows such as Penny Dreadful.

Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol was founded in 1894 by the playwright and novelist, Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalist performance. Méténier, who in his other job had been a chien de commisaire (a person who accompanied prisoners on a death row), created the theatre in a former chapel, the design keeping many of the original features, such as neo-Gothic wooden panelling, iron-barred boxes and two large angels positioned above the orchestra – the space was embellished with further Gothic adornments to create an atmosphere of unease and gloom. With 293 seats, the venue was the smallest in Paris, the distance between audience and actors being minimal and adding to the claustrophobic nature of the venue. The lack of space also influenced the productions themselves, the closeness of the audience meaning there was little point in attempting to create fantastical environments, the illusion shattered immediately by the actors breathing down their necks – not that there was any room on the 7 metre by 7 metre space for anything much in the way of backdrops.

The Guignol from which the theatre and movement took its name was originally a Mr Punch-like character who, in the relative safety of puppet-form, commentated on social issues of the day. On occasion, so cutting were the views that Napoleon III’s police force were employed to ensure the rhetoric did not sway the masses. Initially, the theatre produced plays about a class of people who were not considered appropriate subjects in other venues: prostitutes, criminals, street urchins, con artists and others at the lower end of Paris society, all of whom spoke in the vernacular of the streets. Méténier’s plays were influenced by the likes of Maupassant and featured previously forbidden portrayals of whores and criminality as a way of life, prompting the police to temporarily close the theatre.

André de Lorde

By 1898, the theatre was already a huge success but it was also time for Méténier to stand to one side as artistic director, a place taken by Max Maurey, a relative unknown but one who had much experience in the world of theatre and public performance. Maurey saw his job to build on the reputation the theatre already had for boundary pushing and take it to another level entirely. He saw the answer as horror, not just the tales of the supernatural but of the realistic, gory and terrifying re-enactments of brutality exacted on the actors, with such believability that many audience members took the plays as acts of torture and murder. Maurey judged the success of his shows by the number of audience members who fainted, a pretend doctor always on-hand to add to the pretence.

The writer of the majority of the plays during this period was André de Latour (later de Lorde), spending his days as an unassuming librarian, his evenings writing upwards of 150 plays, all of them strewn with torture, murder and what we would now associate with splatter films. He often worked with the psychologist, Alfred Binet (the inventor of the I.Q. test) to ensure his depictions of madness (a common theme) were as accurate as possible.

Also crucial to the play’s success was the stage manager, Paul Ratineau, who, as part of his job, was responsible was the many gory special effects. This was some challenge, with the audience close enough to shake hands with the actors, Ratineau had to develop techniques from scratch, ensuring that not only were devices well-hidden but that the actors could employ them in a realistic manner, without detection. A local butcher supplied as much in the way of animal intestines as were required, whilst skilfully using lighting helped to make the scenes believable as well as aiding the sinister atmosphere. Rubber appliances made suitable spewing innards when animal’s were not available and several concoctions were devised to simulate blood, ranging from cellulose solutions to red currant jelly. Actual beast’s eyeballs were coated in aspic to allow for re-use, confectioner’s skills employed to enable the eating of the orbs where required. Rubber tubes, bladders, fake blades and false limbs were also used to create gruesome scenes, though on occasion these did prove hazardous – reports detail instances where one actor was set on fire, one was nearly hanged and yet another was victim to some enthusiastic beating from her co-star, resulting in cuts, bruises and a nervous breakdown.

The actors themselves were not especially unusual – they were performers taking work wherever it came. There were a few stars of note – Paula Maxa (born Marie-Therese Beau)  became known as “the Sarah Bernhardt of the impasse Chaptal” or, if you prefer, “the most assassinated woman in the world”, an appropriate claim for an actress who, during her career at the Grand Guignol, had her characters murdered more than 10,000 times in at least 60 different ways and raped at least 3,000 times. Maxa was shot, scalped, strangled, disemboweled, flattened by a steamroller, guillotined, hanged, quartered, burned, cut apart with surgical tools and lancets, cut into eighty-three pieces by an invisible Spanish dagger, had her innards stolen,  stung by a scorpion, poisoned with arsenic, devoured by a puma, strangled by a pearl necklace, crucified and whipped; she was also put to sleep by a bouquet of roses and kissed by a leper, amongst other treats. Another actor, L.Paulais (real name, Georges) portrayed both victim and villain with equal skill and opposite Maxa in every one of their many performances.  He once commented that the secret to the realistic performances was their shared fear. The actress Rafaela Ottiano was one of the few, perhaps even only, original actors in the theatre to transfer to the Big Screen, appearing in Tod Browning’s Devil Doll (1936).

At the Grand Guignol, patrons would see five or six plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre’s naturalistic ideals. These plays often explored the altered states, like insanity, hypnosis, panic, under which uncontrolled horror could happen. Some of the horror came from the nature of the crimes shown, which often had very little reason behind them and in which the evildoers were rarely punished or defeated. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies. Under the new theatre director, Camille Choisy, special effects continued to be an important part of the performances. Many of the attendees would barely be able to control themselves – if they weren’t fainting, they were quite possibly reaching something approaching orgasmic fervour, private booths being extremely popular to allow some privacy for their heightened emotions. On occasion the actors were forced to come out of character to reprimand more excitable audience members. Some particularly salacious examples of plays performed include:

Le Laboratoire des Hallucinations, by André de Lorde: When a doctor finds his wife’s lover in his operating room, he performs a graphic brain surgery rendering the adulterer a hallucinating semi-zombie. Now insane, the lover/patient hammers a chisel into the doctor’s brain.

Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous, by André de Lorde: Two hags in an insane asylum use scissors to blind a young, pretty fellow inmate out of jealousy.

L’Horrible Passion, by André de Lorde: A nanny strangles the children in her care.

Le Baiser dans la nuit by Maurice Level: A young woman visits the man whose face she horribly disfigured with acid, where he obtains his revenge.

Jack Jouvin served as director from 1930 to 1937. He shifted the theatre’s subject matter, focusing performances not on gory horror but psychological drama. Under his leadership the theatre’s popularity waned; and after World War II, it was not well-attended. Grand Guignol flourished briefly in London in the early 1920s under the direction of Jose Levy, where it attracted the talents of Sybil Thorndike and Noël Coward, and a series of short English “Grand Guignol” films (using original screenplays, not play adaptations) was made at the same time, directed by Fred Paul. Meanwhile in France, audiences had sunk to such low numbers that the theatre had no option but to close its doors in 1962. The building still remains but is used by a theatre group performing plays in sign language. Modern revivals in the tradition of Grand Guignol have surfaced both in England and in America.

Grand Guignol was hugely influential on film-making both in subject and style. Obvious examples include Prince of Terror De Lorde’s works being used as the basis for D.W. Griffith’s Lonely Villa (1909), Maurice Tourneur’s The Lunatics (1913)  and Jean Renoir’s Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). Others clearly influenced include the Peter Lorre-starring Mad Love (1935), Samuel Gallu’s Theatre of Death (1967), H.G. Lewis’ Wizard of Gore (1970) and Joel M. Reed’s notorious Blood Sucking Freaks (1975). More recently, More recently, Grand Guignol has featured in the hit television series, Penny Dreadful. The 1963 mondo film Ecco includes a scene which may have been filmed at the Grand Guignol theatre during its final years – as such, it would be the only footage known to exist.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

We are grateful to Life Magazine for some images and Grand Guignol website for some of the information.

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Simon Killer is a 2012 American-French film directed by Antonio Campos and starring Brady Corbet, Mati Diop and Nicolas Ronchi.

Plot teaser:

Recently heartbroken, Simon travels to Paris to clear his head. After several days of wandering aimlessly, Simon finds himself drawn into a sex parlor and has a sexual encounter with an exotic prostitute, Victoria. The chemistry builds between the two until they find themselves in a serious relationship, one that leads to blackmail, betrayal and the ultimate revelation of Simon’s true nature…

Buy Simon Killer on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk | DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“What’s most effective about it is that, like the simmering thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene(whose director Sean Durkin co-produced this film), Simon Killer is a sensual experience that asks the audience to question what it sees and hears. In that way, Campos takes all-too-common feelings of loneliness and disorientation, and shows how they can shade into madness.” The A.V. Club

“The movie does of course come with the predictable caveat of “it won’t be for everyone”, and to be honest it does fall more squarely into the drama genre with elements of psychological horror thrown in. However, if you have a propensity for challenging filmmaking coupled with a desire to be placed unapologetically inside the mind of a disturbed individual, then look no further.” UK Horror Scene

“Campos’ facile Simon Killer plays out a narrative of bruised masculinity it rarely sets out to challenge, masked with shades of a sordid pop sensibility reminiscent of the stylistically divergent but similarly shallow films of Gaspar Noé.” Tiny Mix Tapes

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Red Nights (French: Les Nuits rouges du Bourreau de Jade) is a 2010 French-Hong Kong film directed by Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud and starring Frédérique Bel, Carrie Ng and Jack Kao. It is an erotic horror thriller. The filmmakers refer to it as a Hong Kong giallo with mystery, murders, fetishism and women.

Plot teaser:

During the reign of the first emperor of China, an ingenious torturer concocted an elixir that paralyzed its victim’s limbs, while increasing the sensitivity of their nerve endings tenfold. Kept in a jade skull, the elixir could provoke sensations in infinite variations everything from erotic caresses to appalling lacerations. Haunted by the desire to experience the extreme sensations caused by the elixir, the executioner kills himself with his own poison, intensifying his death experience. His pursuers never found the skull, which had been concealed within a large imperial seal. But the curse of the jade skull, responsible for its creator’s death, will endure within the seal, bringing misfortune to all of those who possess it. Until today …

Buy Red Nights on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

‘Red Nights is a decent erotic torture-porn type of thriller with some good acting, an excellent music score by French composers Seppuku Paradigm (who apparently are responsible for the scores to Eden Log and Martyrs), an original story (rare these days) and some amazing photography. The film combines elements of the Italian Giallo, German Krimi films and European espionage thrillers to create something that is both unique and quite exotic.’ Blueprint

“I can see Red Nights being a film that I come back to in a few years and then appreciate a lot more. Though the story left me wanting, there is no denying the excellent filmmaking on display here.” The Horror Section

“Stylish and beautiful it may be but it’s just a shame that nobody involved decided to just embrace the weirdness of the central concept (something I won’t spoil by mentioning here). The movie therefore becomes a wild and strange beast that stands there after having a haircut and being forced into a nice suit. It’s restricted and polished when it yearns to break free and bite people.” Flickfeast

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WH

French poster

The Nude Vampire – French title: La vampire nue – is a 1969 film (released May 1970) directed by Jean Rollin. It stars Christine François,Olivier Rollin, Maurice Lemaitre, Bernard Musson, Jean Aron, Ursule Pauly, Catherine Castel, Marie-Pierre Castel and Michel Delahaye.

Plot teaser:

Wealthy and decadent industrialist Georges Radamante rules over a strange secret suicide cult and wants to achieve immortality by figuring out a way to share the biochemistry of a young mute orphaned vampire woman. Complications ensue when Radamante’s son Pierre finds out what’s going on and falls for the comely lass…

The Nude Vampire was Jean Rollin’s first collaboration with cinematographer Jean-Jacques Renon and his first film in colour.

Buy The Nude Vampire on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Reviews:

“The film comes across with the emotionally intense illogic of a dream, intellectually nonsensical but meaningful on an instinctive plane. No means a total triumph, dialogue is stilted, and the story lags in several places. Still, there is enough suggestive menace and outrageous imagery to make up for this shortcoming, and the touches of science fiction and kink point dramatically to the dreams of surrender and destruction that Rollins had up his sleeves.” Sex Gore Mutants

“Though the pacing of The Nude Vampire is still recognizably Rollin-esque, this film may prove easier for newcomers to swallow as its story veers from one oddball element to the next. Leopardskin fabrics, party masks, and lots of teasing partial skin shots set this one firmly in 1970, and as a mod French art film gone berserk, it’s plenty of fun.” Mondo Digital

“There are a lot of signs of what is yet to come from director Jean Rollin and yet this early effort is also appealing because it is not as filled with the usual Jean Rollin clichés. Ultimately The Nude Vampire is a solid early effort from director Jean Rollin with its many memorable images and fascinating take on immortality.” 10,000 Bullets

“Jio Berk designed the fabulous costumes and the visual style was drawn from pulp comics and old paperback covers. La vampire nue is one of Rollin’s most enjoyable films and a great leap forward, technically, from Le viol du vampire. It also remains remarkably true to its original conception of a film around the idea of mystery, of enigma. Even the ending, when an explanation is given for all the mysterious events, is successfully undercut.” Cathal Tohill, Pete Tombs, Immoral Tales: Sex & Horror Cinema in Europe 1956 – 1984

Buy Psychedelic Sex Vampires: Jean Rollin Cinema book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“The film’s visual highlights include shots of night-lit streets which evoke the paintings of Paul Delvaux, or tableaux ala Max Ernst (a strong influence on Rollin) often using spotlights to achieve vivid contrasts and shadowy outlines, as well as back lighting to make women’s transluscent. The picture is most fascinating if seen as an intensely fetishistic but luscious play of textures punctuated by beautifully stylised, extravagantly romantic comic-strip compositions chronicling the obsessions of a guiltily Catholic voyeur, wallowing in a sense of perversion and sin.” Phil Hardy (editor), The Aurum Film Encyclopedia: Horror

Jean Rollin on Horrorpedia: Fascination | The Grapes of Death | Lips of Blood | The Living Dead Girl | Night of the Hunted | The Nude Vampire | The Rape of the Vampire | The Shiver of the Vampires | Virgin Among the Living Dead | Zombies Lake

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It’s hardly surprising that the most notorious, indefensible, loathsome and reprehensible movies ever made are those that exploring nasty Nazi sex and violence fantasies. Even the most liberal of critics seem reluctant to defend these goose-stepping abominations, and they sit at the top of that sorry list known as the Video Nasties.

In fact, the pulp fiction and cinema industry had been exploiting the Nazi nightmare since the war ended. Cheesy B-movies like Hitler’s Madman, They Saved Hitler’s Brain; She Demons and The Flesh Eaters exploited the idea that mad Nazi scientists were up to mischief in remote South American jungles and on desert islands, attempting to revive the fortunes of the Third Reich by somehow resurrecting Adolf Hitler or his marching minions. These movies played on knowledge of the very real mad scientist experiments of Joseph Mengele, which reached levels of atrocity that no fictional mad doctor could hope to match.

The theme ran through to the end of the 1960s with films like Search for the Evil One, and was still potent enough to turn up late into the 1970s – The Boys from Brazil had Mengele and a Jewish Nazi hunter racing to track down clones of Hitler and influence them to their way of thinking before they reached adulthood – the question perhaps being was Hitler a result of nature or nurture – while an episode of The New Avengers TV series saw Peter Cushing (also involved with Nazi zombies in Shock Waves) being forced to bring a preserved Hitler back to life on a remote Scottish island!

However, the grubbiest Naziploitation boom began when the 1960s saw the loosening of censorship rules.

Unable to show much actual sex, mid Sixties adult films would fill the gaps with violence, often S&M tinged. Showing a disregard for any sense of taste or decency, it was clearly only going to be a matter of time before some enterprising producer realised the – ahem – ‘erotic’ potential of the Nazi concentration camp. That man was Bob Cresse, and his film was the notorious Love Camp 7, a worryingly personal movie.

Directed by Lee Frost, the film sets the ground rules for the flood of titles which came almost a decade later. It tells the story of two American female spies who are sent to a Nazi ‘love camp’ in order to help another informant escape. This they do, but only after an hour of unrelenting torture and abuse. Women are depicted as being sexually abused, whipped, strapped to unspeakable devices and generally treated badly throughout the movie.

Cresse played the Commandant himself with a barely disguised gloating glee. He was, to a large extent, living out his own sado-masochistic fantasies in the nasty narrative, and stories abound about how he would insist on take after take of the torture scenes, until the suffering on screen was seemingly matched in reality by the actress.

After this pioneering effort, the genre was suspiciously quiet until 1973. It was then that sleaze producer David Friedman decided that the time was right to revive the dubious concept. He went to Canada and produced Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS under the pseudonym Herman Traegar, a name that remained shrouded in mystery until Friedman finally owned up a couple of decades later. Why the false name? Perhaps some things were just too sleazy for even ‘The Mighty Monarch of the Exploitation Film World’ to admit to.

And Ilsa is very sleazy. The title role was taken by busty nightclub performer Dyanne Thorne, who attacked the part with relish. She’s a cold, heartless sadist who is first seen castrating a male prisoner who is of no further sexual use. During the rest of the film, she tortures women, takes part in appalling experiments, and has sex with the only male inmate (American, of course) who can satisfy her.

Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS is a breathtakingly tasteless affair, yet it does have a (warped) sense of humour. Much of the action is so OTT, it teeters the film into the realms of ‘camp’, and it’s this which saves the film. Two sequels followed, though neither had Nazi themed story lines, instead having Ilsa as entirely separate characters in each.

While Ilsa was shaking the drive-ins, the art house theatres were rocking to The Night Porter, in which Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling indulged in assorted sexual antics that stopped short of the atrocities performed by Ilsa, yet still dwelled indulgently in uniform fetishism and Nazi decadence. The film was another box office success, and suddenly, the Italians – never slow to spot a trend – began to sit up and pay attention. Or stand to attention, perhaps?

The floodgates were opened in 1976 by Salon Kitty, which managed to combine the sleaze of Ilsa with the artiness of The Night Porter. The masterpiece of Nazi sleaze cinema, Tinto Brass’ twisted epic switches from making serious political points about the impotence of fascism (often with heavy handed political symbolism) to lip-smacking scenes of sexual perversion with alarming ease. It also established another great Nazi sexploitation plot-line: Salon Kitty is a brothel with an ulterior motive. SS officers use hidden microphones to listen out for any soldiers who might be less committed to the Third Reich cause than they should be.

The same year saw Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, one of the most notorious films ever made. Based on De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, Pasolini transposed the story to Fascist Italy, and the parade of atrocities committed by the ‘libertines’ – all fascist big wigs – would become as significant a factor in several Naziploitation films as the uniforms, the prison camps and the soft porn.

The popularity of Salon Kitty ensured it would be followed by a frenzy of titles, mostly emerging from Italy and France. Best known of these in Britain is SS Experiment Camp, which was one of the original ‘video nasties’, thanks in no small part to Go Video’s enthusiastic advertising campaign. The enterprising label took full page adverts in the top video magazines, showing the film’s cover – a topless girl, crucified upside-down. Some magazines found the image offensive, so Go supplied a version that had the breasts covered by a bra… this version was, apparently, considered perfectly acceptable.

After all that, Sergio Garrone’s film is quite ordinary, more softcore melodrama than anything… but there is at least one stand-out moment. The evil camp Commandant is devoid of testicles, and so decides to take those belonging to the one nice-guy guard who, in the great tradition of the ‘good Nazi’, hates what is going on. This is done via some gruesome medical stock footage. Our hero is then seen having sex with his girlfriend, at first blissfully unaware that anything is amiss. Once the awful truth emerges, however, he rushes into the Commandant’s office and screams the immortal line, “You bastard, what have you done with my balls?”…

As for the rest of the movies: all have moments of outrageous bad taste, but are mainly dull, with mind-numbing footage of partisans and battle-field stock footage padding out the moments between softcore groping and limp flagellation. Garrone returned to the genre in the somewhat sleazier SS Camp 5 – Women’s Hell, which saw Sirpa Lane – more used to arthouse Euro sleaze like La Bete and Charlotte – subjected to assorted indignities in a concentration camp. Without the ‘camp’ (no pun intended) aspect of SS Experiment Camp, it proved even less fun to watch.

The Beast In Heat is noteworthy as one of the rarest video nasties, but is also one of the dullest Naziploitation movies out there because the tasteless footage was appended to an already existing war movie. Thus, we have to endure seemingly endless footage of partisans fighting off their German oppressors interspersed with occasional torture scenes that would be repulsive if they weren’t so amateurish.

The infamous scene where Sal Boris (also in the aforementioned Salon Kitty), the titular beast who is the result of fiendish experiments overseen by the Ilsa-like camp commandant, bites off a woman’s pubic hair is fairly outrageous, but it’s a brief moment of bad taste respite from the general tedium. The attention to detail in the film is perhaps summed up by the clumsy on-screen title – Horrifing (sic) Experiments of the SS, Last Days. [Read Daz Lawrence's review on Horrorpedia]

Hack director Luigi Batzella – using the pseudonym Ivan Kathansky (or Katansky, depending on how much attention the credits producer was paying) – also made Kaput Lager: Gli ultimi giorni delle SS, released on video in the UK as The Desert Tigers (amusingly, The Dessert Tigers on a Dutch video sleeve mispelling). This was an even more ham-fisted effort, with exploitative prison camp footage grafted onto the end of a dull war movie starring Richard Harrison.

The Deported Women of the SS Special Section has a certain gritty authenticity to it that makes it stand out from the other films, but is otherwise rather average. It’s one of the more downbeat Naziploitation movies, despite the best efforts of director Rino Di Silvestro (Werewolf Woman) to crank up the sleaze factor, but its saving grace is the presence of Euro cult favourite John Steiner (Shock), who refuses to take it at all seriously and instead delivers a fantastic, eye-rolling, ranting and raving performance. It’s worth seeing the film for this alone, as he flits from obsessing over an inmate he’s known in the pre-war years and buggering his faithful servant Doberman.

The Gestapo’s Last Orgy also uses the ‘camp commandant obsessed with a prisoner’ plot, and becomes a curious hybrid of The Night Porter, Salon Kitty and the Nazi atrocity film. It’s a classier production that most examples of the genre, at least visually – a fait amount of money was obviously lavished here. This, the stylish direction and decent performances goes to make the atrocities seem all the more unsavoury – There are moments of such astonishing repulsiveness that you can barely credit them being in such a handsome film – the throwing of a menstruating woman to a pack of dogs, the burning alive of a woman during the cannibal orgy and the dipping of another woman in a pit of lime. The female cast are naked for much of the film and of course there are numerous sexual assault scenes. It’s so shamelessly horrible that you have to admire its audacity, especially as none of it seems to be pandering to the audience – this isn’t soft porn by any stretch of the imagination, and it seems designed to repulse. In the end, the film is perhaps best seen as a prime example of 1970s Italian excess, where restraint was for wussies. It’s from the same mindset that brought us films as diverse as Cannibal Holocaust and Suspiria, the notion that too much is never enough and that everything should be shown. It’s not on the same level as those two films, of course, but it is strangely admirable within its own perimeters.

Less ambiguous was the particularly unpleasant Women’s Camp 119, directed by Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead; Rats – Night of Terror). This unpleasant film seems designed to leave a bad taste in the mouth, even managing to work actual concentration camp footage into the credits sequence (an all-time low in filmmaking?). Yet it doesn’t have the style, the audacity, or the intelligence to get away with its parade of grim atrocities. (Read Stephen Thrower’s review on Horrorpedia)

As well as the films exploiting concentration camp atrocities, there were also a number of less brutal films exploiting the uniform fetish. SS Girls was another blatant imitation of Salon Kitty and The Night Porter while The Red Nights of the Gestapo was a fairly sumptuous affair that tended to concentrate on the decadence of the SS top brass. Elsa – Fraulein SS, on the other hand, was cheap and deliciously tacky, and despite the title similarity to Ilsa She Wolf of the SS (coincidence I’m sure!), was more of a T&A romp than a parade of atrocities, following the Salon Kitty theme of prostitutes being used to spy on Nazi officers who might be slipping in their love for the Third Reich. Many of the same cast and crew returned in Special Train for Hitler and Helga, She Wolf of Spilberg, which utilised the same sets and much the same plot.

Erwin C.Dietrich’s Frauleins in Uniform is a softcore movie that is notable for the strange normalising of the Nazis. While it briefly deals with the horrors of war, it does so from the point of view of the German army recruits – female German army recruits – and while there are hints at a totalitarian state, much of the film is surprisingly uncritical of the Nazi war machine. There’s little in the way of dramatic threat (though one deserter is caught and told “we have ways of making you talk”!), but the constant stream of bare flesh and dialogue like “cleanliness is next to Naziness” ensure that it passes by quite painlessly.

Meanwhile, American porno producers were dabbling in the concept with Prisoner in Paradise and Hitler’s Harlots. But for whatever reasons, the theme didn’t catch on in the adult movie theatres. In Hong Kong, film-makers replaced Nazis with Japanese invaders and unleashed the likes of Concentration Camp for Girls and Bamboo House of Dolls, the latter of which was used as an example of the worst excesses of cinema by British BBFC censor James Ferman during lectures about censorship. This sub-genre eventually led to the notoriously nasty Men Behind the Sun series.

By 1978, the Nazi sexploitation genre was all but dead. Perhaps the moral outrage and censorship problems which greeted such films proved to be too much trouble for producers only interested in profit. Who knows? Whatever the reason, there hasn’t been a single significant addition to the cycle since, making it one of cinema’s most short-lived genres. The only films to dabble in the genre now are zero budget affairs aimed squarely at the cult horror audience.

Keith Crocker’s Blitzkreig: Escape from Stalag 69 (2008) attempts to channel the spirit of the Italian films, but despite star Tatyana Kot spending the whole film naked, either gunning down Nazis or (more frequently) being tortured, plentiful nudity – male and female – throughout, two castrations, tongue pulling, eye stabbing, throat slitting and plenty more gory mayhem, all delivered with bargain basement FX, the film still manages to be the dullest Naziploitation film since The Beast in Heat. Why it needed to be 135 minutes long is anyone’s guess.

More interesting, but still unrealised beyond being a fake trailer in Grindhouse, is Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS, which has Sybil Danning taking on the Ilsa role and Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu. The trailer was, by far, the best thing about the whole Grindhouse project and hopefully Zombie will eventually get around the making the complete film.

It’s understandable that many people will be upset at the idea of Nazi fantasies. But I’ve never yet come across a genuine fascist amongst fans of this grubby sub-genre, and even the worst of the films doesn’t attempt to portray the Third Reich as being remotely admirable. If we can laugh at sit-coms like Allo Allo (okay, no-one should laugh at Allo Allo, but you know what I mean…), then surely we can be amused by these cheesy, high camp exercises in bad taste without feeling guilty about it? In fact, it’s probably our duty to do so, reminding ourselves that Nazis are little more than a bad joke in a good uniform…

Heinz Von Sticklegruber

Nazis on Horrorpedia: BloodRayne: The Third Reich | Cataclym aka The Nightmare Never Ends | Dead Snow: Red vs Dead | The Flesh Eaters | Frankenstein’s Army | Night of the Zombies | Night Train to Terror | Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz | She Demons | Women’s Camp 119

The Mummy can, in many respects, hold claim to being the most unloved of the classic movie monsters – if not, then surely the most inconsistently served. The oft-quoted line from Kim Newman, that the issue lies with “no foundation text” upon which to base the creature, certainly carries some weight, though Mummies had certainly been written about in the 19th Century – notable works include Poe’s short story, Some Words With a Mummy (1850), Conan Doyle’s Lot No. 249 (1892), the latter establishing the Mummy as a malevolent predator seeking revenge, as well as touching upon elements also explored in later films, such as the methods of resurrection and the supernatural control of a ‘master’.

Poe’s tale is rather more barbed, the bandaged cadaver reanimated by electricity and quizzed upon its ancient knowledge (or lack of), a side-swipe at both modernist self-aggrandising and the Egyptomania which had swept through both America and Europe since Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign of 1798-1801. The fascination of the general public in all levels of society lasted throughout the Victorian era, peaking again when Howard Carter uncovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. This obsession didn’t stop with the collection of Egyptian artworks and an influence on fashion and architecture – it was not uncommon in both America and Europe (though England especially) for the upper classes to purchase sarcophagi containing mummified remains at public auctions and then charging interested parties to a literal unveiling at what became known as ‘mummy unwrapping parties’. Though many of these were under the slightly dubious guise of scientific and historical investigations, the evidence of publicity material listing admission prices for children rather suggests a more obvious parallel of the fascination with freak shows, as well as the ever-popular grave robbing and body snatching.

It is such unbalanced factors which contributed to the Mummy onscreen as such a difficult to pin-down character. Bram Stoker’s 1909 novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars, concentrated on the attempts to resurrect a mummified Egyptian Queen but is full of the author’s own clear obsession with the subject, detailing minute features of objects and environment. Even looking at these three texts, very different perspectives are offered:

1. The curse
2. The resurrection (either via electricity, potion or supernatural means)
3. Love across the ages
4. The exotic nature and history of Egypt

Mummy films are somewhat doomed to pick one or more elements of this and then factor in the very nature of a Mummy – a zombie with bandages with a grudge. Most films dealt with this threat as a singular foe, one with pre-determined victims in a relatively limited environment (either in his native Africa/South America or relocated to a museum elsewhere). Fundamentally, it’s not easy the share the fear of the pursued – the regularly featured greedy archaeologist or treasure hunter clearly would not have many rooting for them, the similarly omnipresent character of the innocent damsel being mistaken by old clothy for his bride from B.C. is often equally wretched.

The first documented films concerning Mummies are 1899’s Georges Melies‘ Cleopatra (French: Cléopâtre), also known as Robbing Cleopatra’s Tomb, which, at only two minutes in length, is pretty much the synopsis, action and epilogue all in one. Despite a false alarm in 2005, no copy of the film now exists, a fate shared by another French film, 1909’s The Mummy of the King Rameses (French: La Momie Du Roi). Though literature was raided for ideas in some of these early efforts, in particular 1912’s The Beetle, based on the Rich Marsh 1897 novel of the same name, the general tone was of mystery, over-egged comedy and slushy drama, the long-lost tombs of nobility and monarchy gripping audiences without the need for too much in the way of ravenous corpses.

1932’s Chandu the Magician just pipped Universal to the post as an Egyptian villain stalked America’s screens with a recognisable actor in the role of the baddy, Bela Lugosi kidnapping all and sundry in a bid to possess a death ray (he later appeared as the hero in the follow-up, 1934’s Return of Chandu). As with so many of Universal’s introductions of classic monsters, many elements of 1932’s The Mummy leeched into films right up to the present day. For first-time viewers, the biggest surprise is the incredibly short screen time of the bandaged one, though the slowly-opening eyes of the revived Mummy is one of the great moments in horror film.

It is as the reawakened Ardath Bey that Boris Karloff spends most of the film; Jack Pierce’s excellent make-up giving ‘life’ to a cadaverous-featured, be-fezzed Casanova seeking his love whom he believes has been reincarnated. The Egypt of the film is populated by aloof and cultured Westerners working in a land of subservient and befuddled locals, including Horrorpedia favourite, Noble Johnson as ‘The Nubian’ and can be seen as a view of a colonial viewpoint of ‘foreigners and their strange ways’, sometimes quasi-religious, at others playing on the public awareness of the so-called Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, an event only a decade prior. Egypt is still as remote, uncouth and dangerous as the forests of Romania and the invented village of Vasaria – the notion that this place actually exists and that tombs were still being uncovered lending an extra, illicit thrill, modern science at war with religious belief and customs. Bey/Imhotep stalks his beloved in a more stealthy manner than that of Dracula, the quick nip on the neck replaced by a rather more sinister, unspoken threat of capture, death and sex, the latter two being interchangeable. This, of course, remains unspoken but presumably an inevitability, Universal instead charging the film with shots of unbridled romance, both in set-design and, importantly, a specifically-composed score by James Dietrich and Heinz Roemheld, the first for a Universal Horror. This was underpinned by passages from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, another nod to Transylvania.

Though a success at the box office, it was a full eight years before Universal unleashed a Mummy again, the 1940 film The Mummy’s Hand not being a sequel but rather a reintroduction of the monster. Universal flex their creative muscle here, rather like 1941’s The Wolf Man, their invented lore (the poem of how a man is doomed to turn to beast) it is a given ‘fact’ that a Mummy can be brought back to life and indeed sustained by a potion of ‘tana leaves’. Evidently aware of the lack of an actual Mummy in its 1932 effort, the studio pushed the bandaged monster to the fore, plot and backstory being secondary to getting him on screen and tormenting people. It was a simple enough conceit that it was this Mummy, Kharis who would appear in the film’s sequels, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse, all of which would feature Lon Chaney Jr as the monster, the quality always sinking ever lower but still with Pierce’s sterling work on the costume and make-up, much to Chaney’s chagrin.

If the lack of genuine horror in the films wasn’t enough, the ever-present comedy or cartoon featuring Mummies again gave the character a persona that was not to be taken seriously. No matter how hard you tried, if you put bandages on a violent, ever-living zombie, there was a danger of farce.

This can be evidenced with attempts such as the RKO-distributed Wheeler & Woolsey film, Mummy’s Boys (1936), The Three Stooges’ We Want Our Mummy (1939) and Mummy’s Dummies (1948) and on to Abbott and Costello’s encounters in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), a threadbare affair in both costume and entertainment – comedy often leaned on the fact Mummy is an un-threatening sounding word with two meanings as well as the opportunity to sing and dance in a manner audiences might expect from Egyptians (or not). Bandage unravelling was a given.

It would be two other countries which would rescue the Mummy from the filmic doldrums, at least in sparking an audience’s interest. 1957 saw the release of two Mexican films – The Aztec Mummy (Spanish title: La Momia Azteca) and The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Spanish: La maldición de la momia azteca), neither likely to win awards for outright quality but giving Mummies in new life in a new environment, the ancient Aztec culture and wacky wrestling superhero (in this case El Ángel) marrying easily with the tropes already laid down by the earlier American films. The films offered enough promise for Jerry Warren to recut, dub and add additional scenes for an American audience. The films were a success in both markets and led to two further sequels, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958) and Wrestling Women vs.The Aztec Mummy (1964).

Britain’s bandaged offering, inevitably from Hammer, was 1959’s The Mummy. Here, Hammer borrowed heavily from Universal (again, overlooking the studious 1932 film and cutting straight to the monster-driven sequels) but brought out the big guns; Terence Fisher directing and the double-whammy of Lee and Cushing. For all the film’s faults, and there are several, the film finally gives the monster the strength and terror that his complex evolution and background demands.

Here, Lee towers over the other characters both literally and metaphorically, emerging from a swamp in a scene which should be considered as iconic as any in Hammer’s canon. No longer a shuffling bag of bones, the Mummy here is athletic and merciless, with the strength and stature of Frankenstein’s Monster with the eternal threat of Dracula.

Two of the sequels misfired quite badly, 1964’s Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and 1971’s Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb yet both have the odd moment of inspiration (the latter’s scenes involving voluptuous Valerie Leon in particular!) but running out of things for the Mummy to do. On the other hand, Hammer’s The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) is instantly forgettable.

Interestingly, Egypt’s own attempt at filming its own national monster feasted liberally on Abbott and Costello romping, the result being 1953’s Harem Alek (literally ‘shame on you’, retitled as Ismail Yassin Meets Frankenstein). Shrieking and gurning abound in a very close relation to the American comedians in their meeting of Frankenstein, the mummy in question being much nearer to the bolted creature.

One of the oddest appearances for a mummy was a narrator – voiced distinctively by Valentine Dyall – for Antony Balch’s 1969 British low budget anthology film Secrets of Sex aka Tales of the Bizarre. A healthy dose of dark humour, plus copious nudity from both sexes, has ensured that there is still a cult following for this eccentric entry.

Grabbing the monster by the scruff of the neck was Spain’s Paul Naschy, never one to tip-toe around a subject. 1973’s Vengeance of the Mummy (Spanish: La vengance de la momia) is gory, lurid and enormous fun, the hacking and head-crushing monster being completely self-governing and with the added bonus of an alluring assistant, played by Helga Liné, though sadly her rumoured nude scenes have yet to surface. Naschy played the Mummy once more, in the all-star monster fest of 1988’s Howl of the Devil.

The Mummy often appeared as part of an ensemble of monsters, giving the film-maker an answer as to what to do with it – from singing puppet mayhem of Mad Monster Party? and 1972’s animated semi-prequel Mad Mad Mad Monsters to encounters with Scooby Doo and rock band KISS, the monster remained an also-ran and supporting character. Though managing to get on screen in Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad (1987), missing out on the action in comedy horror anthology The Monster Club (1981) suggests his standing in the pantheon of monsters was less than stellar.

The Awakening (1980) was a latter-day attempt at filming Stoker’s novel – though managing to visually capture a sense of antiquity and some pleasing shots of Egypt, it lacks fire and threat and once again a classic monster is reduced to dreary, slow-paced banality. On the other side of the coin was Frank Agrama’s 1981 brutal guts and gusto Dawn of the Mummy, which sees the restless ones reanimated by the hot lights of a fashion shoot. This at least forgives lots of manic running around and a conflict between the modern day and the ancient, gloves off and with little regards to sense or history. The title alone should lead the audience to expect a more zombie-based event and though frequently silly and frayed, largely due to the low budget, it does at least give the sub-genre a shot in the arm.

Later films perhaps tried too hard – 1982’s Time Walker pitched the Mummy as actually being an alien in stasis; 1983’s baffling and boring Scarab throwing Gods, Nazis and scientists into the mix but only ending up with a mess; Fred Olen Ray’s breast-led 1986 effort, The Tomb. None came very close to succeeding in any sense.

The 1990’s was possibly the most desperate time for Mummies worldwide – whether it was the schlock of Charles Band (The Creeps, 1997), the critically-mauled 1998 film Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy or Russell Mulcahy’s flying Mummy of Talos the Mummy (1998), the monster suffered more than most at the hands of those trying to use new technology at the expense of plot and character to succeed. Only in 2002 with Don Coscarelli’s film Bubba Ho-Tep did The Mummy make a meaningful return, pleasing both fans of Bruce Campbell and too-cool-for-school scouts for cults as they happen, as well as horror fans desperate to see their bandaged hero as a tangible threat.

When Hollywood finally decided to throw some money at a reborn franchise, there was to be disappointment – the Indiana Jones-type action of 1999’s The Mummy, as well as its sequels and spin-offs were an exercise in CGI and tame thrills. Speakers were blown, images were rendered but whatever fun audiences had, omitted the scare factor.

2014’s R-rated The Pyramid promises Rec-style horrors and a return, successful or not, to the concept of a straight-forward monster released from its tomb. Further field, Universal have promised/threatened to relaunch their entire world of monsters, beginning with The Mummy from 2016.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Mummy Filmography: 

1899 – Cleopatra

1909 – The Mummy of the King Rameses (aka. La momie du roi)

1911 – The Mummy

1912 – The Mummy

1912 – The Vengence of Egypt

1912 – The Mummy and the Cowpuncher

1913 – The Egyptian Mummy – comedy short

1914 – Naidra, The Dream Worker

1914 – The Necklace of Rameses

1914 – Through the Centuries – short comedy

1914 – The Egyptian Princess

1914 – The Mummy

1915 – The Dust of Egypt

1915 – When the Mummy Cried for Help

1915 – Too Much Elixir of Life

1916 – Elixir of Life – comedy short

1916 – The Missing Mummy – comedy short

1917 – The Undying Flame

1917 – The Eyes of the Mummy

1918 – Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled – comedy short

1921 – The Lure of Egypt

1923 – The Mummy

1923 – King Tut-Ankh-Amen’s Eighth Wife

1926 – Mummy Love

1926 – Made For Love

1932 – Chandu the Magician

1932 – The Mummy

1933 – The Ghoul

1934 – The Return of Chandu

1936 – Mummy Boy

1938 – We Want Our Mummy

1940 – The Mummy’s Hand

1942 – Superman ‘The Mummy’s Tomb’ (animated short)

1943 – The Mummy Strikes

1944 – The Mummy’s Ghost

1944 – A Night of Magic

1945 – The Mummy’s Curse

1953 – The Mummy’s Revenge (Spain)

1953 – Harem Alek (Egypt)

1954 – Sherlock Holmes ‘The Laughing Mummy’ (UK TV episode)

1955 – Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy

1957 – Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Mexico/USA)

1957 – Castle of the Monsters

1957 – Curse of the Pharaohs

1957 – Pharoah’s Curse

1957 – Robot versus the Aztec Mummy (aka “La momia azteca contra el robot humano, Mexico)

1958 – El Castillo de los Monstruos

1958 – Dos Fantasmas y una Muehacha (Mexico)

1958 – House of Terror (aka “Face of the Screaming Werewolf,”  Mexico/USA)

1958 – The Man and the Monster (Mexico)

1959 – The Mummy

1960 – Rock n Roll Wrestling Woman vs the Aztec Mummy

1962 – I Was a Teenage Mummy

1963 – Attack of the Mayan Mummy aka The Mummy Strikes

1964 – Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb

1965 – Mummy’s Dummies

1965 – Orgy of the Dead

1966 – Death Curse of Tarta

1966 – Carry On Screaming!

1966 – Mad Monster Party?

1966 – The Mummy’s Ghost (short)

1967 – Get Smart ‘The Mummy’ (TV episode)

1967 – The Mummy’s Shroud

1967 – Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea “The Mummy” (TV episode)

1968 – El Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monster (Mexico)

1969 – The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? “Scooby-Doo and A Mummy, Too” (TV episode)

1969 – Secrets of Sex aka Tales of the Bizarre

1970 – Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy (aka Santo En La Venganza de la Momia, Mexico)

1970 – Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (aka ‘Assignment Terror, Italy/Spain/Germany)

1970 – The Mummies of Guanajuato (Mexico)

1971 – Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb

1971 – Santo and the Vengeance of the Mummy (Mexico)

1972 – El Castillo de las Momias de Gaunajuato (Mexico)

1972 – Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters

1972 – The New Scooby-Doo Movies “Sandy Duncan’s Jekyll and Hyde” (features The Mummy)

1972 – Dr Phibes Rises Again

1972 – El Robo de las Momias de Guanajuato

1973 – Love Brides of the Blood Mummy

Las Momias de San Angel aka Terror en San Angel (Mexico)

1973 – Vengeance of the Mummy (La vengance de la momia, Spain)

1973 – The Cat Creature

1973  – Chabelo y Pepito vs. los Monstruos (Mexico)

1973 – Son of Dracula

1974 – Voodoo Black Exorcist

1975 – Demon and the Mummy (US TV Movie). A compilation of two episodes from the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Demon in Lace and Legacy of Terror

1975 – Doctor Who ‘Pyramids of Mars’ (TV episodes)

 La Mansion de las 7 Momias (Mexico)

1978 - KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park

1980 – Fade to Black

1980 – The Awakening

1980 – Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo “Mummy’s the Word” (TV episode)

1981 - Dawn of the Mummy

1981 – The National Mummy (La Momia Nacional, Spain)

1981 – Sphinx

1982 – Secret of the Mummy (Brazil)

1982 – Time Walker

1982 – Scarab

1983 – The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show “Where’s Scooby Doo?’

1984 – The New Scooby Doo Mysteries “Scooby’s Peep-Hole Pandemonium” (Maid Mummy)

1985 – The Tomb

1985 – Dear Mummy (Hong Kong)

1985 – Transylvania 6-5000 (US/Yugoslavia)

Amazing Stories ‘Mummy, Daddy’ (TV episode)

1987 – Night of the Living Duck (US animated short)

1987 – The Monster Squad

1988 – Howl of the Devil

1988 – Saturday the 14th Strikes Back

1988 – Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School

1988 – Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf

1988 – Waxwork

1989 – Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 (Hong Kong)

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight (US TVM)

1990 – Tales from the Darkside: The Movie “Lot 249″

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight

1992 – I was a Teenage Mummy

1992 – Nightmare Asylum

1992 Franky and his Pals

1992 – Bloodstone: Subspecies II

1992 – I Was a Teenage Mummy

1993 – Bloodlust: Subspecies III (US/Romania)

1993 – The Mummy Lives

1993 – The Mummy A.D. 1993

1993 – The Mummy’s Dungeon

1993 – The Nightmare Before Christmas

1994 – Stargate

1995 – Goosebumps ‘Return of the Mummy’ + ‘TV Mummy’ (TV episodes)

1995 – Monster Mash

1996 – Bone Chillers ‘Mummy Dearest’ (TV episode)

1996 – Bordello of Blood

1996 – Le Siege del l’Ame (France)

1996 – The Mummy (Pakistan)

1996 – Birth of a Wizard (Japan)

1996 – La Momie Mi-mots” (aka “Mummy Mommy, France)

1996 – The Seat of the Soul” (aka “Le siege del Time, Canada)

1997 – The Creeps

1997 – Bram Stoker’s The Mummy aka Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy

1997 – Mummy’s Alive

1997 – Under Wraps (TV Movie)

1997 – 1998 – Mummies Alive! (animated series)

1998 – Legend of the Mummy

1998 – Mummies Alive! The Legend Begins (animated feature)

1998 – Trance

1998 – Talos the Mummy aka Tale of the Mummy

1999 – Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy

1999 – Ancient Desires

1999 – The Mummy

1999 – The Mummy (documentary narrated by Christopher Lee)

Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed (documentary)

1999 – The All-New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy ‘For the Love of Mummy’

2000 – Curse of the Mummy

2000 – Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb

2000 – The Mummy Theme Park (Italy)

2001 – Mummy Raiders

2001 – The Mummy Returns

2001 – The Mummy: Secrets of the Medjai (animated series)

2002 – Bubba Ho-Tep

2002 – Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb

2002 – Mummy Raider

2002 – The Scorpion King

2003 – Mummie (Italian short)

2003 – The Mummy’s Kiss

2003 – Scooby-Doo! Where’s My Mummy? “Mummy Scares Best”

2003 – What’s New, Scooby-Dooo?

2004 – Attack of the Virgin Mummies

2005 – Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (TV episode)

2005 – The Kung Fu Mummy

2005 – Legion of the Dead

2005 – The Fallen Ones

2006 – Monster Night

2006 – Seven Mummies

2006 – The Mummy’s Kiss 2: Second Dynasty

2006 – The University of Illinois vs. a Mummy

2007 – Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy

2007 – Mummy Maniac

2008 – Day of the Mummy (short)

2008 – Mummies…

2008  – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

2008 – My Mummy aka My Mummy: The Tomb Is a Drag Without Her

2008 – Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior

2009 – Cry of the Mummy (comedy short)

2010 – Creature Feature (adult video features a mummy)

2010 – The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

2010 – Pink Panther and Pals ‘And Not a Drop to Pink’ (TV episode)

2012 – Hotel Transylvania

2012 – Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption

Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H (animated series features N’Kantu the Living Mummy)

2013 – Isis Rising: Curse of the Lady Mummy

2014 – American Mummy

2014 – Day of the Mummy

2014 – Doctor Who “Mummy on the Orient Express” (TV episode)

2014 – Dummie the Mummy

2014 – Frankenstein vs. the Mummy

2014 – Mummy, I’m a Zombie

2014 – The Mummy Resurrected

2014- Scorpion King 4 – Quest for Power

2014 – The Pyramid

Requiem for a Vampire - original title: Requiem pour un Vampire – is a 1971 French erotic horror film written and directed by Jean Rollin.

It was apparently the favourite of all of the director’s own films because he came up with the scenario from his subconscious, and because it was rushed into its written form so quickly (Rollin claimed that he wrote the entire script in only two days), he felt it was his purest work. For its US release, Harry Novak’s Boxoffice International retitled it Caged Virgins.

Plot teaser:

Two women dressed as clowns and a male driver are being chased through the countryside, for unknown reasons. As the man drives, the women shoot at their pursuers. When the man is shot, the women are forced to burn the car with his body inside and once they remove their costumes, they run through a forest, and later a cemetery, in which one of the women, Michelle, is almost buried alive. Walking through a field, they come to the outside of a gothic castle. There they are bitten by vampire bats, which lead them to go into the castle, where they make love.

They tour the castle and discover a few skeletons along with a woman playing an organ.

She begins to follow them, so they shoot at her, but she doesn’t die. They run away and are caught by some men who force themselves on them. A vampire woman stops the men, and the vampire woman who chased them almost bites them until they break away. They soon come across a male vampire, the last of his kind. He has plans for the women. They are bitten in order to continue his bloodline, but they must stay virgins…

Reviews:

‘ …an easily watchable surreal exercise in foreign filmmaking, crammed with bizarre comic art imagery strung together with various incidents of fetishistic kinkiness and sadism. With the usual low budget Rollin was allotted, he makes excellent use of some authentic gothic locations, and the picturesque, massive chateau makes for a better vampires’ liar than any studio could possibly provide. The use of oddball props, including rotted corpses affixed with squirming worms, severed arms protruding from stone walls, a line of hooded standing skeletons and assorted bats real and phony, add to the film’s unique appearance, and the clever use of colored lighting in some of the outdoor nighttime scenes is also noteworthy.’ George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

‘Requiem for a Vampire is not a movie I would recommend to people with a distaste for explicit, rather creepy sexual content, but it is worth watching and discussing from an historic and filmic standpoint. You can tell that Rollin was trying to stretch his filmmaking and storytelling muscles, but was tamped down under the weight of having to make another vampire titty flick.’ Kyle Anderson, Nerdist

‘Apparently Rollin’s always had an eye for beauty in nature and architecture because once again his cinematic eye focuses on beautiful vistas, trees, mountains, night skies, he often times focuses on breathtaking  sunsets and cloud formations. He also shot the film inside this ancient castle, it just looks haunting. The visual compositions that Rollin comes up with is the element of his films I love the most and on Requiem for a Vampire he demonstrates that he’s always had that eye for beauty.’ The Film Connoisseur

Cast:

• Marie-Pierre Castel as Marie
• Mireille Dargent as Michelle
• Philippe Gasté as Frédéric
• Dominique as Erica
• Louise Dhour as Louise
• Michel Dalesalle
• Antoine Mosin
• Agnès Petit
• Olivier François
• Dominique Toussaint
• Agnes Jacquet
• Anne-Rose Kurra
• Paul Bisciglia as L’homme au Vélo

Filming locations:

The movie was filmed in the small village of Crêvecoeur. The graveyard was located outside the village on a knoll. The castle, a historical place entirely furnished with genuine antiques, all of which were worth a fortune, had been rented from the duchess of Roche-Guyon. It wasn’t her castle that Rollin and the crew were interested in, but the ruins of the dungeon above, that overlooked the entire area.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Robert le Diable (translation: “Robert the Devil”) is an 1831 opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto written by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne. Robert le Diable is regarded as one of the first grand operas at the Paris Opéra. It derives some of its development from the medieval legend of Robert the Devil, a tale which was written in 13th Century France.

The opera introduces Robert, Duke of Normandy, the son of a union between Bertha and Bertram, a disciple of Satan, perhaps even a demon himself. In Normandy, alongside several other knights, he attempts to win favour with the beautiful Princess Isabelle. A minstrel, Raimbaut, inadvertently singing a song that referred to Robert as a devil is imprisoned by the enraged Robert but is granted forgiveness when Robert realises his fiancée is his foster-sister, Alice. Under the influence of a disguised Bertram, whom Robert is unaware is his father, let alone a devil, the duke gambles, leaves the door open for the Prince of Granada to woo Isabella and sees Raimbaut given a sack of gold to pursue love interests other than Alice.

By the time Bertram reveals to Robert that he is his father, he has communed with the devil himself, an event overheard by Alice who learns from the depraved chanting that if Bertram cannot convince his son to sell his soul to Satan by midnight, he will lose control over Robert forever. Bertram discovers he is being spied upon and threatens Alice, who leaves. He turns his attentions to his son who he informs could win back Isabelle by taking possession of a magic branch which grants invisibility, hanging near the tomb of Saint Rosalia in a nearby cloister. He agrees, despite knowing this is sacrilege and is punished by zombie nuns, the remains of sisters who lived with impure thoughts, who rise from their graves to taunt him.

Avoiding their suggestive drinking and dancing, he escapes with the branch and seeks to interrupt the imminent marriage of Isabelle and the Prince. With the clock approaching midnight, Bertram fails in his attempts and is cast down to Hell, leaving his son to step in and marry the Princess.

The opera was an immediate success on its premier in 1831 and drew plaudits from the likes of Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas (who featured the opera in his classic tale, The Count of Monte Cristo) and Edgar Degas. Brass (some provided by the now rarely used ophicleide, a forerunner to the bass tuba), fabricated thunder effects and baritone voices create unease throughout the opera, the Gothic drama of which comes to a head in the graveyard sequence where the hero is attacked by ghostly nuns rising from their tombs, Robert having to fend them off with supernatural powers. In many productions, this sequence is carefully choreographed to make the nuns particularly horrific and moving in unnatural ways.

Whilst the opera was so successful that Meyerbeer became a celebrity and was feted by the French court, it is said that his rival, the Italian Rossini, was so affected by Robert le Diable that he retired from composition. The opera has been compared to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, and is in fact mentioned by name in the musical. Considered shocking at the time of creation and still performed around the world today, the opera last appeared at London’s Covent Garden Opera House in 2012.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘Sometimes you are not welcome.’

Home Sweet Home is a 2013 Canadian-French ‘home invasion’ horror film written and directed by David Morlet [as David Morley] (Mutants). It stars Meghan Heffern, Adam MacDonald, Shaun Benson, Marty Adams.

Plot teaser:

A young married couple, Sara (Meghan Heffern) and Frank (Adam MacDonald), arrive home from a date night to discover that they have been imprisoned in their own house by a methodical killer (Shaun Benson)…

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Reviews:

“Whilst in many ways Home Sweet Home doesn’t bring anything new to the table, it’s a solid home invasion thriller with its own set of twists and pay offs which will please horror or slasher fans. A convincing, strong performance from the leads, Meghan Heffern, Adam MacDonald and Shaun Benson, as the silent killer, ensure the film can retain the audience during its more ‘reflective’ moments.” Cult Horror Films

“Looking at Mr. Morley’s IMDB, it would appear that short features have been his main work before this film. I honestly think this film might have been better served as a 20 – 30 minute short feature, instead of a feature length film.” Rio, HorrorNews.net

“The film that unfolds is pretty suspenseful but not without a few missteps that arise mainly from some pacing issues during the action. At times, the action pauses and the killer does not seem to finish the job when it seems like he could. There are also some stereotypically dumb actions from the couple that tamper with the story’s credibility a bit. Yet, for all that, things move toward a pretty solid conclusion with a bit of a twist that while not completed unexpected is satisfying enough.” Nicholas Strange, Strange Amusements

IMDb | Official site

Revenge of the Living Dead Girls aka The Living Dead is a 1986 French supernatural horror film directed by Pierre B. Reinhard from a screenplay by producer Jean-Claude Roy. Originally titled La revanche des mortes vivantes it was released in France on 16 September 1987.

Cast:

Véronique Catanzaro, Kathryn Charly, Sylvie Novak, Anthea Wyler, Laurence Mercier, Patrick Guillemin, Gabor Rassov, Christina Schmidt and Cornélia Wilms.

Plot teaser:

In France, the CEO of a chemical company looks to cheaply dispose of their plant’s chemical waste. He and his secretary come up with the idea to dump it illegally. When the secretary contaminates a milk tanker, it causes several deaths in the town.

The toxic waste, dumped in a nearby graveyard, then causes the recently dead townspeople to rise as ravenous zombies, who seek revenge on the unscrupulous company and its employees…

Reviews:

“In the end, the utter nonsense of the whole affair undermines Reinhard’s “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” message and the general sleaziness undermines the female empowerment angle of lady zombies (and Bridget) beating up the boys. What you have is some nakedness, some blood and some terrible dubbing.” Dave Bow, Portland Mercury

“What follows is a impossible-to-follow-even-if-we-cared plot involving chemical dumping, corporate blackmail, and enough fornication to make a soap opera roll its eyes; everyone seems to be involved with everyone else’s partners. As toxic chemicals seep into the graves of the dead girls, they rise and exact their revenge on those who are responsible – just as the title advertises! See zombie girls rise from the grave looking like cheap knockoffs from Thriller. Kill girls kill! Mix in some unsexy nudity. Rinse. Kill again.” Peter Schorn, IGN

” … for fans of bad trash cinema, this one is worth a look. Despite some slow spots it offers enough ineptitude, gore and completely unnecessary nudity to satisfy the wants of most exploitation fans and the unintentional hilarity scattered throughout give it a fair amount of entertainment value if you have a tolerance for bad movies.” Ian Jane, DVD Talk

“The best bit is probably when the three women zombies lamely sexual assault and play grab ass with a female victim, who sort of starts masturbating with a severed hand. She loses interest in the sex about the time a zombie chick sticks a sword into her vagina. No, I’m not kidding. Yes, on paper it sounds like it would be an awesome, brutal, gross scene. In execution, its kind of like bad softcore porn, but it is a scene worth watching, horror fans.” Robert Fure, Film School Rejects

” … numerous dull boardroom scenes and typically gratuitous nude scenes featuring the majority of the female cast. Almost everything about this production is inept, thanks to director Pierre B. Reinhard (who, unsurprisingly, also has several soft-core porno titles to his credit). Gives milk a bad name.” Glenn Kay, Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide

Trailer 1:

Trailer 2:

Wikipedia | IMDb

Among the Living – French: Aux yeux des vivants – is a 2014 French horror film written and directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (Inside; Livid; ABCs of Death 2 ‘X is for Xylophone’; Leatherface).

Cast:

Béatrice Dalle (Inside; Livid), Anne Marivin, Nicolas Giraud, Francis Renaud, Chloé Coulloud, Zacharie Chasseriaud, Damien Ferdel

Funding for the film was raised through a successful crowdsourcing campaign. It had its world premiere on 10 March 2014 at South by Southwest.

Plot Teaser:

Three young adolescent friends decide that they want to start their summer vacation early, so they decide to skip the last day of school in favor of having a little fun. Their adventures that day get them into a little trouble, which causes them to wander to an abandoned film studio lot on the edge of town called Blackwood Studios.

The young boys are horrified when they see a man in a clown mask dragging a chained woman across the lot. They manage to flee and try to get the police involved, only for the police to assume that because the adolescents are only causing more trouble. The adolescents end up going back to their respective homes, unaware that the masked man and his father are planning on taking their revenge on the three friends…

Reviews:

“When Among the Living shifts gears into full-on slasher territory—with the gore to follow, there’s an amazing face slice—who lives and who dies depends on the strength of their family unit. It’s possible only a family willing to go bat for one another could possibly face a father and son so connected, so warped. It’s this section that sees Among the Living at its successful.” Samuel Zimmerman, Fangoria

“The tension in Among the Living is so thick that it spawned collective coping mechanisms, wherein neighboring strangers locked eyes when they couldn’t bear to look at the screen any longer. The fear in the room was palpable as audience gasps and audible cringes fed off one another, heightening the shared discomfort. This is what makes Bustillo & Maury’s work such a treat.” Zach Gayne, Twitch

“Among the Living works quite well in its simplicity and adoration for the ’80s. There’s plenty of creepy/nightmarish imagery on display (best use of a cat door!) yet, to destabilize you, there are some moments you think would be big splatter moments that are surprisingly restrained. Still, Bustillo and Maury push a lot of buttons in what is a classic “clash of families” scenario.” Ryan Turek, Shock Till You Drop

” … a joy to watch (even when you’re viewing it from behind your own splayed fingers). Cinematographer Antoine Sanier completely nails the small-town atmosphere while setting up some truly dazzling reveals. Bustillo and Maury’s film is also something of a homage to the American films they grew up watching…” Marc Savlov, The Austin Chronicle

“Bustillo and Maury are masters of both atmosphere and gore. We’re also reminded that a lot of American films with similar production values play it so incredibly safe compared to these guys – without spoiling too much there are casualties you wouldn’t expect.” Evan Dickson, Bloody Disgusting

Cast and Characters:

Béatrice Dalle as Jeanne Faucheur
Anne Marivin as Julia
Nicolas Giraud as Nathan
Francis Renaud as Isaac Faucheur
Chloé Coulloud as Mila
Zacharie Chasseriaud as Tom
Damien Ferdel as Dan
Théo Fernandez as Victor
Fabien Jegoudez as Klarence
Sidwell Weber

Trailer:

Wikipedia | IMDb

Buy original poster from Amazon.com

‘He needed her body and her blood to live!’

Love Brides of the Blood Mummy – original title: El secreto de la momia egipcia – is a 1973 Spanish/French horror film directed by Alejandro Martí from a screenplay by Vincent Didier and Julio Salvador (Hannah, Queen of the Vampires). In the UK, it was released as Lips of Blood (not to be confused with Jean Rollin’s film of the same name).

Cast:

George Rigaud, Michael Flynn, Catherine Franck, Frank Braña, Patricia Lee, Sandra Reeves, Julie Presscott, Jacques Bernard, Martin Trévières, Teresa Gimpera.

Plot:

James Barton (Frank Braña), an Egyptologist, travels to Dartmoor Castle because there is a rumour that the Count (Jorge George Rigaud) has a collection of mummies. There are also rumours that a number of young women have gone missing in the area. When he comes across the Count he is shocked to find him whipping a mummified hand he has nailed to the wall…

Reviews:

” … this Spanish/ French adventure is not without its own quirky charms. There is some fondling and the occasional flash of flesh. There are a lot of scenes involving the butler chasing women around. The mummy stares at people a lot. And there is some odd use made of irising in and out of scenes.” Dan Budnik, Bleeding Skull!

“Aside from any nudity found in the uncut version, the only other thing this has going for it is the shooting locations. It was filmed during the Autumn and the outdoor scenery is lovely. There are lots of colorful trees, fields of tall wheat blowing in the wind and some nice shots along the ocean. The director, who seems obsessed with both shooting reflections of people in water and horse riding, has a nice eye for landscapes. Too bad the rest of this sucks.” The Bloody Pit of Horror

“Unfortunately this is one of the dullest pieces of Euro-Horror I have sat through in recent memory. Most of the film is a boring series of repetitive scenes of a kind of hypnotized servant going out to drag female victims back to the castle dungeon for the ‘mummy’ to molest and drain of blood.” Rod Barnett, Pit of Rod

“Unfortunately it is pretty darn boring as well, the pacing is plodding and we don’t really get any characterisation to draw us in.” Taliesen Meets the Vampires

“For an exploitation picture, it feels eerily serious with its strong and creative score, moody with piano and percussion. Pacing is slow, yet something is always happening on screen. I loved the chase through the tall grass … it’s a good weird atmospheric exploitation picture that fans should seek out…” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers

Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Also released as:

Le sang des autres (France)
Les chemins de la violence (France)
Perversions sexuelles (France)

IMDb | Image thanks: The Bloody Pit of Horror | Mark Williams | Taliesen Meets the Vampires | Wrong Side of the Art!

‘When the undead can evolve, no-one is safe’

Extinction – formerly known as Welcome to Harmony – is a 2015 Spanish-French-American-Hungarian science-fiction horror film directed by Miguel Ángel Vivas from a screenplay co-written with Alberto Marini. It should not be confused with the found footage dinosaur film with the same title.

Cast:

Matthew Fox, Jeffrey Donovan, Quinn McColgan, Valeria Vereau, Alex Hafner and Clara Lago.

Release:

The film was released on July 31, 2015 in the United States.

Plot:

After a virus turns people into zombies, a small group of survivors seek refuge in a snow-covered town, believing the virus and all of its monstrous creations had died out. But they only discover the infected had adapted to the environment change, for the worse…

Reviews:

“Director Miguel Ángel Vivas tries to add a family-drama twist to an otherwise standard survival story, but the characters aren’t complex enough (and the secrets aren’t explosive enough) to elevate this beyond a basic zombie flick.” Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“More filmmakers should treat the zombie subgenre as allegorical, the way George A. Romero intended. But Extinction and Maggie both arrive at the same conclusion about fatherhood, thereby confirming it as a cliché rather than a coincidence.” Martin Tsai, Los Angeles Times

“Extinction stumbles in its efforts to evolve beyond a simple, bloody tale of the zombie apocalypse. Its narrative leans toward the untenable side of melodrama and pushes viewers away when it should be pulling them in for a suspenseful finale.” Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

“Director Miguel Angel Vivas (Kidnapped) fails to bring any visual flair to the sluggishly paced proceedings, and the CGI effects prove less than convincing. Fox and Donovan, who did far better work on their respective TV shows Lost and Burn Notice, are unable to breathe much life into their stock characters, with the former seeming particularly uncomfortable in his largely non-action role. Far better is child actress McColgan, delivering a well-rounded, naturalistic performance.” Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

” …at its best moments competent, at its worst risible and downright silly. It very much feels like it’s trying too hard to be a grand and serious work while at the same time using some of the most hoary and overripe tropes of the genre to make its points. Maybe these cinematic elements can never die as they keep coming back again and again. Maybe that is the central ironic conceit of Extinction.” Jason Gorber, Twitch

Wikipedia | IMDb