The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974)

dir. Jorge Grau  cast Cristina Galbo, Ray Lovelock, Arthur Kennedy, Jeannie Mestre

Saddled with a bewildering array of alternate titles, including Breakfast at Manchester Morgue, Don't Open the Window, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Non si deve profanare il sonne dei morti (Do Not Profane the Sleep of the Dead), and others, this Italian-Spanish co-production probably has the most critical love of any of the first generation of cannibal zombie films made between the first two George Romero Dead films: Night of the Living Dead (1968), and Dawn of the Dead (1978). Its reputation is well deserved.

George (Lovelock), a young bearded, long-haired curio shop owner, leaves Manchester on his motorcycle for a relaxing weekend in Great Britain's Peak District. At a highway gas station, he meets pretty strawberry blonde Edna (Galbo) when she backs over his bike in her mini. Now lacking transportation, the assertive George all but forces the meek Edna to give him a ride to his destination in the nearby village of Windermere (he insists on driving). After successfully pleading to be dropped off first at her sister's house, Edna waits in the car while George asks directions at a local farm. Edna manages to escape when a strange man lurches out of the nearby woods, apparently with the design of attacking her. The man matches the description of a well-known tramp who recently drowned in a nearby river, but no one will believe Edna's story. Later, the same man turns up and kills Edna's brother-in-law Martin, an event witnessed by Edna's heroin-addicted sister, Kate (Mestre).

Sergeant McCormick, the detective on the case, won't believe Kate and Edna's story or George's protest that he had nothing to do with the crime. McCormick is a hostile arch-conservative who rails against George's "long hair and faggot clothes". He becomes even more convinced that George and Edna are responsible when photographs of the incident taken by Martin's automatic camera fail to reveal the zombie (this strange detail is never explained). Later, George takes Edna to a remote graveyard to prove to her that the tramp's body lies in its coffin. Of course, it does not and George and Edna barely escape with their lives after encountering more zombies. Further deaths occur, which McCormick also blames on George. George discovers that an experimental sound-wave machine, designed to get rid of agricultural pests, is making the dead rise and attack the living, but can't get anyone in authority to believe him. Carnage ensues.

Grau admitted that he was charged with simply making an imitation of Night of the Living Dead in color, but The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue has enough intriguing differences from the Romero film to have a life of its own. Filmed on location, the movie effectively contrasts the horror of the walking dead with the quaint beauty of the Peak District's woods, valleys, and small villages. The film reveals its menace very gradually, as it takes George and Edna quite awhile to figure out what is happening, and Grau does well in building a sense of mounting dread. Rather than Romero's mass invasion of zombies, we never get more than three or four zombies onscreen at one time. However, these zombies seem more intelligent than Romero's, possessing an ability to use tools and weapons. The only means of destroying them is with fire; even shotgun blasts to the head don't do the trick. In an intriguing touch, the zombies have a desire and ability to increase their number by daubing blood on the eyes of recently deceased corpses. They also have a tendency to strangle or bludgeon their victims before eating their organs. The use of gore is more restrained than in Romero's films, but what we do see is just as intense.

Kennedy is very good as the hateful McCormick; the other performances are acceptable. Galbo is attractive, but regrettably, her character is written as always on the edge of hysteria and perpetually needing to be rescued by George. George is easy to root for when he goes up against the thick-headed officials who refuse to even listen to his story merely because they don't like the way he looks and when he fights the zombies, but his condescending and domineering treatment of Edna makes him seem like a chauvinistic jerk. I'm guessing this is a symptom of the times, rather than the result of any intention of the screenwriters.

In some ways, I like Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, even better than the Romero films. It seems more "plausible" (if that term can even be used in discussing zombie films) and I liked the gradual unfolding of the story. I recommend it highly.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

dir. Emilio Miraglia cast Barbara Bouchet, Ugo Pagliai, Marina Malfatti, Pia Giancaro, Sybil Danning

In contemporary Germany, the aristocratic Wildenbruck family is under a curse. Every 100 years, the "Red Queen", their evil ancestor, takes possession of one of the women in the family and murders seven victims, the last her own sister. Now, its been a century since the last murder spree and when a figure in a red cloak sneaks into the bedroom of the family patriarch brandishing an antique dagger and frightens the old man to death, it seems to be happening again. The new spate of murders centers around the friends and co-workers of Kitty Wildenbruck, a beautiful young woman who works as a fashion photographer. Eyewitness accounts seem to point toward Kitty's sister Eveline as the murderer, but there's just one problem. Years before, Kitty accidentally killed Eveline and covered up the unfortunate incident with the help of her other sister Franziska (Malfatti), telling everyone that her sibling had severed all ties with the family and moved to the US. Is Evenline back from the grave for supernatural revenge?

Giallo (Italian for "yellow") novels were cheap, sensational paperback crime novels, often with yellow covers, popular in Italy beginning in the 1930's.  When Italian directors began to adapt the same style to film in the 1960s, giallo began to be used to denote a cinematic genre. Half crime/suspense films and half horror thrillers, giallo films usually featured twisty, at times nearly incomprehensible, plots, abundant eroticism, and bloody, disturbing murders.  Dozens of these films were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, usually with an eye to the export market, which meant they featured international casts incorporating continental European, English, and American actors.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is a good example of the genre. Like many gialli it has a contemporary setting, but is careful to include numerous Gothic trappings as well. Kitty spends her 
days surrounded by glamorous people in ultra-modern offices and studios, but the climax of the film is set in the crumbling dungeons of the Wildenbrucks' ancestral castle, and the red-cloaked killer, wielding an ancient-looking dagger, is a figure straight from the Gothic past. The murders are disturbing, including stabbing, a fence-post impalement, and one character dragged to death behind a car. The eroticism is also present with Danning, who later became a star of much cheaper and sillier American exploitation firms, providing the major nude scenes. Women are front and center as the major characters, yet there are disturbingly misogynist touches, including one completely unnecessary rape scene, which at least is suggested more than shown, but should have been removed altogether. It has practically no affect on the plot or the characters.

As for the plot, it was made well enough to keep me interested in the solution to the mystery, though the dialogue is often silly and the acting is frequently over the top. Bouchet is acceptable in the major role. I had only seen her in the comic version of Casino Royale (1967), as Miss Moneypenny, so it was fun to see her in a more serious role. The film is flawed, but I didn't find any of the flaws fatal and, for the most part, enjoyed it.

IMDB says that this film is rated PG. They must be referring to a cut US version, because the version I saw had plenty of blood and nudity and was definitely an R. Since it was in unsubtitled Italian (I streamed it on Amazon and had to turn on the closed captioning feature), I'm assuming it was the original Italian version. In a way, it was ludicrous to hear characters with German names speaking Italian while all the signs, documents, etc. were in German, but then American movies do that all the time.  
 

The Devil's Wedding Night (1973)

dir. Luigi Batzella  cast Mark Damon, Rosalba Neri, Esmerelda Barros, Xiro Papas, Gengher Gatti

Karl Schiller (Damon), a scholar of the occult, announces to his twin brother Franz (also Damon), his plans to travel to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to secure the ring of the Nibelungen, which holds great power for evil. His motive is altruistic, to deposit the ring in the "Karnstein Museum of Archaeology" thus keeping it out of circulation. However, Franz needs the money a sale of the ring would bring to pay his gambling debt and beats his brother to Transylvania. There, he seduces an inkeeper's beautiful daughter, Tania, who tells him that every fifty years on the "full moon of the virgins" (the literal translation of the film's original Italian title), five virgins are mysteriously compelled to go to Castle Dracula and are never seen again.

At the Castle, Franz meets the Contessa Dolingen de Vries (Neri), the current owner of the castle, who explains that she was able to buy it cheaply because she is a member of the Dracula family. During sex with the gorgeous Countess, Franz notices that she wears the ring, but he is quickly overcome by her supernatural powers. Soon after, Karl arrives looking for his brother. Can he defeat the Countess, save his brother and Tania (who has been kidnapped by the Countess' servants) and recover the ring?

This is a silly, but entertaining film that amusingly works hard to throw in references to just about every trope of Gothic horror. Franz is introduced reciting lines from Poe's The Raven, the name of the museum is a reference to Sheridan LeFanu's classic vampire tale Carmilla, the Countess' name is from the Stoker short story Dracula's Guest, the Countess bathes in the blood of virgins, just like Elizabeth Bathory, and Dracula features prominently in the story. None of this really hangs together and the script is uneven. The screenwriters have strange ideas about history. The dialogue indicates that Poe is still alive, while at the same time referencing Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, which did not debut until 20 years after Poe's death.

Like many continental horror films of the time, this is at least as much of a softcore sex movie as a horror movie, with as much nudity shorehorned in as possible. For instance, at the climactic satanic ritual, the Countess' henchmen are careful to begin by tearing open the tunics of the virgins who have been hypnotically summoned to Castle Dracula, giving viewers a good view of their breasts. It's a film that's hard to take seriously, but, again like many other European films, it does benefit from being filmed on location, rather than a cheap set. It's also a good showcase for Neri, one of the most beautiful of the many sexy actresses who graced Euro-horror in its heyday. The more well-known Lady Frankenstein was a larger role for Neri, but a much inferior film.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

dir Dan Trachtenberg cast Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher, Jr.

Michelle (Winstead) leaves New Orleans after a phone argument with her fiancee Ben (encountered by the viewer only as a voice on Michelle's cellphone - the voice is supplied by Bradley Cooper). Driving through the Louisiana countryside, she is injured and knocked unconscious in a car accident caused by something we don't see. When she comes to, she is lying on a mattress on the floor of a cell-like room chained to the wall with an IV in her arm. Her captor turns out to be Howard (Goodman), a gruff man who quickly unlocks her, gives her crutches, and eventually lets her out of her cell. He also tells her that they are in an underground bunker that he constructed and that they cannot leave because there has been an "attack" perpetrated by unknown parties (Howard mentions the Russians and "Martians" as possibilities) that has left the outside uninhabitable, either through chemical contamination or nuclear fallout. Michelle doesn't believe Howard at first, being convinced that she heard a vehicle outside, but the only other occupant of the bunker, a young man named Emmett (Gallagher), confirms that he saw signs of an attack before pushing his way into the bunker just as Howard was closing the door. Later, during an aborted escape attempt, Michelle sees evidence that Howard is indeed telling the truth and accepts that she will have to stay in the bunker for a year or two until the outside air is breathable again.

Howard, however, is controlling and jealous and Michelle and Emmett discover revelations about his past which indicate that he may be dangerous, even mentally unstable, and again call the truth of his account of the situation into question. The two begin to plot an escape.

10 Cloverfield Lane began life as an original script which J.J. Abrams purchased and adapted into a sort-of sequel to his 2008 film Cloverfield, about a giant monster attacking New York City. Thankfully, 10 Cloverfield Lane is filmed as a straight third-person narrative and does not use Cloverfield's "found footage" narrative method. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a masterful horror/suspense film, much better, in fact, than its predecessor, which you don't need to be familiar with to understand this film. As Michelle slowly uncovers more information about who Howard really is and what happened in the outside world, we share her anxiousness and this makes for a compelling and suspenseful viewing experience. What's really going on here?

All three central performances are very good, with Winstead's and Goodman's work particularly outstanding. Winstead, an actress who I was vaguely aware of, but had never seen in a major role, was a revelation, at least to me. Her transformation from a frightened and bewildered victim to a resolute (and physically strong) agent of her own destiny is put over with complete conviction and is eminently believable. Goodman also does a great job. Howard at times seems like a basically rational and somewhat friendly, if gruff man, and at other times seems dangerous, even psychotic. Goodman takes a character that could have seemed like a scriptwriter's contrivance and makes him seem like a plausible human being.

Though 10 Cloverfield Lane garnered mostly positive reviews, I was shocked to find that many critics who did not like the movie criticized the ending as anticlimactic or disappointing. Although I did feel this way about the ending of Cloverfield, I found the ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane to be extremely satisfying and I don't understand how anyone could see it as anticlimactic. It does leave open the possibility of a sequel, but even if one is never made, I think it's just fine as a way to leave this story.

10 Cloverfield Lane is an excellent film. It's thoughtful, intelligent, suspenseful, and scary, with a main character that you can really root for.

Honeymoon (2014)

dir Leigh Janiak cast Rose Leslie, Harry Treadway, Ben Huber

Bea and Paul are newlyweds, who, we are led to understand, have both been extremely unlucky in love and are super-excited to have found each other. They're headed to her family's cabin in a Canadian forest to spend their honeymoon. Things are going great until one night when Bea simply disappears from their bed. After a frantic search, Paul finds her standing naked in the pitch-black woods. She dismisses it as a simple case of sleepwalking (which she's never been subject to before), but seems to act strangely afterward as if she's not quite herself. She also has mysterious wounds on her thighs, which she explains as mosquito bites, but which look much more serious. Unfortunately, Paul's feeling that there's something not right here is only too accurate.

The move is well-acted and fine in the technical aspects. I was grateful that it wasn't yet another "found footage" narrative, and the strange events are (kinda, sorta) explained at the end. I appreciated the mystery format and the buildup of suspense without graphic violence (though things get plenty gross by the end), but at the end, it seemed pretty trivial. It was an acceptable time-killer, but didn't really grab me.

Leslie played Ygritte ("You know nothing, Jon Snow!") on Game of Thrones; so it was interesting seeing her in another role. She was quite convincing playing an American.

Night Tide (1961)

dir Curtis Harrington cast Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson, Gavin Muir, Luana Anders

On the Santa Monica pier, Johnny (Hopper), a sailor on liberty, introduces himself to Mora (Lawson), a distant young woman who seems to want only to be left alone. However, Johnny's persistence pays off and the two strike up a friendship. Mora, it transpires is an immigrant from a Greek isle, who works as a mermaid, wearing a fake fishtail and lying in a tank of simulated water in an attraction run by an Englishman, Captain Murdock (Muir). Johnny's and Mora's friendship turns into a romance, but Johnny learns a disturbing fact: both of Mora's last two boyfriends were drowned under mysterious circumstances that are still being investigated by the police. Mora eventually tells Johnny that she is the descendant of the "Sea People," the man-killing sirens of Greek myth, who are trying to compel her to return to the sea. Captain Murdock tells Johnny that Mora's instinct to kill will eventually get the best of her and that he will meet the same fate as her former boyfriends if he does not leave her.

This is a slow and talky, but not uninteresting film that effectively builds up a feeling of strangeness and dread amid a laconic atmosphere of jazz clubs, carnival rides, and sideshow attractions. Both the Leonard Maltin and Video Hound film guides say that this is not a horror movie, but it is every bit as much of a horror movie as Cat People (1942), which it closely resembles. Like Cat People, it hints at the presence of the supernatural without insisting on it. Mora meets a mysterious woman who seems to share her ancestry, just as Irena did in Cat People, for instance. In fact, Night Tide, is one of the most successful attempts since the Val Lewton thrillers to make a truly Lewtonesque film. Its not as good as the actual Lewton films, but is a worthy attempt.

V/H/S (2012)

dir Adam Wingard, Davis Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence cast Calvin Reeder, Lane Hughes, Kentucker Adley, Adam Wingard, Hannah Fierman, Joe Swanberg, Sophia Takal, Norma C. Quinones, Helen Rogers, Daniel Kaufman, Nicole Erb

A revival of the old portmanteau format made famous by Dead of Night (1946) and the films of Amicus Productions in the 60s and 70s, crossed with the found-footage style of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007), this is an uneven, but frequently entertaining mix.

In the wrapaound segment, "Tape 56", directed by Wingard, a group of thugs who make money filming their own acts of vandalism and assault sneak into a house to steal a videotape wanted by a mysterious employer. They find a corpse and a stack of VHS tapes that they then watch, hoping to discover the one they are searching for. The rest of the segments, of course, represent the contents of the tapes they watch.

In "Amateur Night", directed by Bruckner, a bunch of drunken slimeballs go out on the town, hoping for easy sex. Unfortunately for them, they pick up the wrong girl and meet a very bloody, but richly-deserved, fate. This segment has obvious strengths and weaknesses. The main drawback is that we actually have to spend time with the bar-crawling idiots, which is even more painful than the horrors that are inflicted upon them at the end of the segment. Of course, watching scummy characters get what's coming to them seems to be a major trope in recent horror, but I think these guys are even more annoying than intended. On the other hand, Hannah Fierman does a masterful job playing the monster. Slim, pop-eyed, and spacy, she's exactly what a supernatural creature masquerading as human would be if such a thing were to turn up on the real world.

"Second Honeymoon" is the most restrained of the bunch. This is not surprising as the director is Ti West who in The House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011), directed two of the most Lewtonesque horror films of recent years. Two young marrieds traveling through the West on vacation are stalked, unknown to them, by a plastic-masked figure with a very large knife. What does this person want from them? This was somewhat conventional, but played to a satisfying conclusion.

The less said about the Glenn McQuaid-directed "Tuesday the 17th", the better. The only good thing about this one is that it's short. Three kids travel to a small lake where a series of brutal murders took place not long ago. You can guess the rest. Just another cookie-cutter 80's slasher cut down to 20 minutes.

The most notable thing about "The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger" is that we see it through Skype, rather than a hand-held camera. A young woman has regular conversations with a lifelong male friend in anticipation of his imminent visit. He is able to see through her computer that a strange presence seems to be haunting her apartment. No points for guessing that everything is most definitely not as it seems. This episode is just OK, but does feature a very good performance by Helen Rogers as Emily. She's very appealing as an emotionally fragile, but game character who seems to take the weird occurrences in stride. Nicely played. This one also features some hilariously gratuitous topless shots.

The last segment, "10/31/98", directed by the collective Radio Silence, rivals "Amateur Night" and "Second Honeymoon" as the best of the segments. A group of 20-something guys, on their way to a Halloween party in Seattle, get lost. When they think they've discovered the house, it seems deserted, but they do hear some strange noises in the attic. When they go to investigate, all hell breaks loose, almost literally.

I watched  V/H/S late on a dull night on Netflix streaming, and didn't feel that I wasted 2 hours of my time. The found-footage style has definitely been overdone in recent years, but V/H/S does a good job making the style work to its advantage. It's not destined to be remembered as a classic, but is perfectly entertaining for horror fans.