Recommendation Round-Up: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Share the Recs that You Should or Shouldn't Watch. At Your Own Peril. But Not Really. Maybe. GAH!

As a cold-blooded killer decked out in scuba gear stalks the canals and red-light district of Amsterdam, leaving a trail of bodies and a burnt out detective in his wake, I was never quite sure if the end goal of Amsterdamned (1988) was to reignite the old Edgar Wallace krimi, emulate a slasher movie, or be some kind of mismatched buddy cop movie from the decade that spawned it until I realized it was trying, and not quite failing, to be all three. What it's unbridled enthusiasm, making up for certain shortages of talent, reminded me of the most was Miami Connection (1987) -- if Y.K. Kim was trying to reignite the old Edgar Wallace krimi, emulate a slasher movie, and be some kind of mismatched buddy cop movie. Alas, that means we don't get any feuding clans of ninjas or musical numbers, but we do get a pretty stellar speedboat chase that easily rivals the one in Live and Let Die (1973). It's about fifteen minutes too long, the mystery fizzles, and the dubbing is atrocious, which either adds or hinders the hilarity, but I kinda dug this oddball Dutch treat.

There’s a delightful slapstick screwball comedy wrapped around a mystery in There’s Always a Woman (1937) as Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas sub in for Myrna Loy and Dick Powell as a working class Nick and Nora Charles. Here, Douglas' detective agency goes bust so he goes back to work for the district attorney. Meantime, Blondell, who is a national goddamned treasure, takes up his role as a gumshoe and lands a pretty big client, allowing them both to come at a murder from both ends. The mystery is thin, but the film just crackles thanks to the two leads.

And as we continue to plumb the depths of Amazon Prime's back catalog of horror films, The Devil’s Ground (2009) finds a woman (Daryl Hannah) driving alone in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, who nearly runs over a Final Girl, who just survived a grisly massacre, who then relates what happened to her and her friends to this rescuer via flashback. Pretty rote as far as these things go, body count wise, but entertaining enough. But then things took an interesting turn as we neared the end, as this standard slasher movie kinda turned into a ghost tale / urban legend and I kinda fell in love with it for a hot a minute -- but then it got really stupid, really damned fast from there and kinda ruined the whole thing. And so, my advice if you take a gander at this, as soon as our heroines reach the apparent safety of the gas station and Hannah's character makes a phone call to the cops, once that phone conversation ends, STOP THE MOVIE RIGHT THERE. Trust me.

Meantime, Escape Room (2019) was a lot more engaging than I thought it would be and proved to be a nice little thriller -- well, up to the point until they reveal who was behind it all, where it kinda falls apart in the climax, and then gets really stupid in the sequel bait epilogue. But! Despite the liberal use of the broadest of strokes for motive and villainy to explain away both what's going on and some fairly sizeable plot-holes -- think where the deathtrap puzzles of Saw (2004) and the money behind Hostel (2005) meet on the graph, the cast sells the hell out of it, making you root for those trapped in this maze of perpetual death, even the designated assholes. There's a good time to be had here if you don't think about it too hard. Honest. And the craziest thing of all, the bad guy behind the escape room enterprise felt like the best Bond villain since Hugo Drax.

Meanwhile, Quicksilver (1986) stars Kevin Bacon as Jack Casey, a young Wall Street whiz kid who whizzes it all down his leg after an extremely bad day on the stock market, losing not only all of his money but his parent's life savings as well. Devastated both emotionally and financially, and having lost the magic touch when it comes to stocks and bonds, he takes a job with a bicycle messaging service, ferrying packages around NYC. Things get complicated when a couple of rival couriers (a ridiculously young Laurence Fishburne and Jamie Gertz) run afoul of a drug dealer who uses them as mules, and his new best friend (Paul Rodriguez) coming to him for financial advice on opening a hotdog stand. Can Jack get back in the game or is he content to dance with his bike until the chain rusts off? This is one of those post-Footloose (1984) movies where you're not really sure where the movie ends and the music video begins in spots. And all of those dangling plot threads do collide in not one, but two eventual climaxes that don't quite gel but, meh. We got Oliver Stone by way of the Go-Go Boys, and I, for one, can dig it.

Then, imagine, if you will, The Howling: New Moon Rising (1995), only it's Danish, and it doesn't suck. In fact, When Animals Dream (2015) was pretty great. No one really wolfs out, but that doesn't matter as the protagonist has just hit the age when her body starts to go awry as she starts sprouting hair, claws and fangs. From there, she starts unearthing a few family secrets and town skeletons. Secrets some would like to keep buried. And there ya go.

And then, for some reason, but I have a pretty good idea as to why, Mercy Black (2019) was unceremoniously dumped on Netflix a few weeks back by Blumhouse. From the very get go it's painfully obviously this horror tale was based on the notorious Slender Man case out of Wisconsin, where two young girls attempted to kill another girl to summon some imaginary, internet-inspired woodland spirit of vengeance. Here, they try to hide it by presenting things as a 20-years later scenario, as one of the perpetrators is released from psychiatric care and deemed fit for society. Then, not only do the filmmakers play a game of is Mercy Black real or not as the bodies start piling up, but they have the tasteless stones and the unbelievable gall to make the original victim who survived the original crime the killer and, hey, lookatthat, she was also a willing accomplice all along back in the day, too, so she doesn't deserve treatment and redemption like our protagonist did and is a bad, bad, bad homicidal cuckoo-bird. Oh, and Mercy Graves was real all along, too. Way to take a dump on the real survivor, you jackasses. You go to hell, movie. You go to hell and you die.

Next, if you’re looking for an off-off-offbeat western, give A Time for Dying (1969) a spin as it spins the tale of a fast-draw farmhand (Richard Lapp) out to make a name for himself as a gunslinger. But this quest gets derailed a bit when he rescues an unwitting girl (Anne Randall) that's about to become the ... *ahem* latest 'saloon girl' in Silver City from a rambunctious (and horny) crowd; and then these two get married to avoid a jail sentence one town over when they're caught in a hotel room together by the notorious Judge Roy Bean. Thus, this film is more of a relationship drama as these two actually fall in love as the film progresses and the girl, not wanting to see him get killed, begs him to give up his guns and go back to being a farmer. Alas, when he finally agrees to this, it's already too late as he's goaded into his first (and last) showdown. This strange little bugaboo of a movie was the last theatrical effort of both director Budd Boetticher and star Audie Murphy, who, despite the ballyhoo, is in the film for like five seconds. Though odd, I do appreciate the non-traditional efforts and the highly brutal downbeat ending and resolution found here, and the film is worth a spin for Victor Jory's inspired take on the Hangin' Judge alone.

A rare non-creature feature effort for producer William Alland, who moves the action from Black Lagoons and the irradiated deserts to the suburbs for The Party Crashers (1958), where a young and violent turk named Twig Webster (Mark Damon) leads a gang of ruffians with a penchant for crashing parties and wrecking the venues. Barely staying one step ahead of the cops, Twig soon woos a bored good-girl (Connie Stevens) from the straight square-jaw (Bobby Driscoll), peer-pressuring the both of them into joining his gang just as the group tries to crash the wrong hotel party, where a bunch of drunken salesman and prostitutes turn the tables and won't let them leave. Along the way, we also get a scathing look at the parenting that bred this new kind of thrill-seeker, zeroing in on Twig's dad, a hapless drunk, who is constantly browbeaten by his philandering shrew of a wife (-- and guess who Twig runs into at the hotel party?). So, we got us a cheap, exploitative knock-off of Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Not terrible by any stretch, with an interesting comeuppance for our party crashers.

Essentially The Bad News Bears Go to Talladega, and while Kenny Rogers is no Walter Matthau, he acquits himself fine in Six Pack (1982) as a washed-up stock car driver trying to get back in the game -- efforts that are derailed a bit by a six pack of foul-mouthed orphans who survive by stripping cars for a corrupt sheriff. Saved from this life of crime, these miscreants soon morph into our hero's pit crew. No real surprises as things play out from there on the career vs family front. Some ready to be familiar faces to be seen with Diane Lane and Anthony Michael Hall, along with a welcome appearance by Erin Gray. Don't think I'd seen this since the theater. No regrets on the revisit.

And lastly, Circus of Horrors (1960) is a highly entertaining tale of a mad plastic surgeon on the run from the law, who hides out in post-war Europe by taking over a rundown circus, using it as a perfect front for his experiments in face restoration. See, his mad plan involves taking other wanted criminals, giving them a new face to avoid the authorities, but then blackmailing them into being part of his troupe. And while this works for awhile, making this circus quite popular over the ensuing years, problems arise when the traveling troupe earns a dubious reputation for being jinxed since it's constantly plagued by a series of dubious accidents to cover-up the mad doctor's efforts to "clean house" when certain fed-up performers try to leave him. Enter a nosy reporter who starts linking the accidents and victims due to their faint surgery scars back to the mad doctor, who is also currently hiding in plain sight with a new face. This one was a ton of fun, folks, all in that lush and beautiful British Technicolor. And while the film kinda stalls as it focuses on certain acts, where we get to see the whooooooole performance, the murder and mayhem that stitches all that together is so, so, sooooo worth it. 

Recommendations :: What I've Been Watching, and So Should You! At Your Own Risk. Maybe. Or Not. You've Been Warned!

To be frank, I was kinda terrified I was dealing with An Occurrence at Owl Creek  Bridge scenario in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) as this delightful though, in the end, melancholic anime about a precocious teenage girl, who finds herself able to leap back in time after a near death experience involving some failed bicycle brakes and a moving train, played out. Turns out my fears were mostly unfounded as the girl, Makoto, uses her new found abilities for silly selfish reasons at first before graduating into trying to fix things and play matchmaker for her friends while she tries to sort out her own confused feelings with a boy named Chiaki. However, Makoto is soon to learn the more you mess around with history to try and fix things, the more chaotic and dangerous the past can get. And through her best intended machinations, she puts one of her best friends in mortal danger just as Makoto finds out too late she only had a finite amount of time leaps. Loved this one. Loved it. The animation is breathtaking, and the voice acting fits perfectly with a special shout-out to Riisa Naka as Makato, who just captures the spirited character's awkward gung-ho-ness effortlessly. See, to make the time jumps work Makato has to actually make a physical jump, and the further she jumps the further back in time she goes leading to some pretty hysterical aerobatics and crash-landings for our girl. Cannot recommend this one enough, folks.

A funny yet bittersweet docudrama, A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018) covers the life and death of Doug Kenney; one of the founding fathers along with Henry Beard of the National Lampoon magazine, radio show, the Lemmings, and co-writer of such comedy blockbusters as Animal House (1978) and Caddyshack (1980). Will Forte is fantastic as Kenney, as is Domhnall Gleeson as Beard (-- spent the whole movie trying to recognize who that was underneath the beard and was shocked when the end credits rolled). In fact, the whole cast really makes this thing cook as we get an inside look at the inner-workings of the Lampoon as Kenney tries to work through some "daddy never loved me issues,” which serves as the root cause for his downward spiral of self-destruction and drug addiction and his eventual death that was either an accident or a suicide, depending on who you ask, at the bottom of a cliff in Hawaii. (As Harold Ramis so famously quipped, Doug probably fell while looking for a place to jump.) How much is true? How much of it is bullshit? Well, it hewed pretty close to Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (2015), a straight up doc on the Lampoon so ... maybe? Regardless, highly entertaining and highly recommended.

A delightfully bonkers Allied Artist programmer, Death in Small Doses (1957) sees an undercover federal agent (Peter Graves) infiltrate a trucking company to smash an amphetamine ring due to a sudden spike in traffic fatalities because too many long haul drivers have been "riding with Benny" with dire consequences. Sure, it's the usual preaching and finger wagging, but the lingo is a hoot; and while Graves is fine, the film gets a definite boost from a free-wheeling Chuck Connors as a pill-popping and jive-talking trucker (-- whose eventual meltdown is one for the ages). You'll probably spot the true "Mr. Big" a mile away but, eh, this ride is definitely worth it.

An interesting little Cold War potboiler, Beyond the Curtain (1960) begins when a commercial airliner veers off course and into Russian occupied Germany's airspace and is forced to land. And after a lengthy vetting process, when the plane is finally allowed to leave, several passengers of interest are left behind, including a stewardess (Eva Bartok), a former East German resident, who escaped to the West, and whose dissident brother remained behind to cause more havoc. And so, the Stasi hold the girl hostage in plain sight thinking it will lure the brother out of hiding so they can pounce and make him "disappear" for good. This, of course, does not sit well with our heroine's fiance, a square-jawed British pilot (RIchard Greene), who doesn't buy the KGB story saying she willingly stayed behind. From there it's a lot of intrigue and spy shenanigans as our hero heads to the other side of the Iron Curtain under false credentials and efforts to match wits with the secret police and rescue his girl -- if she even wants to come back, that is. This movie started really strong, but was kinda running on fumes by the end until it was salvaged, somewhat, by a crackling finale taking place in the bombed out ruins of the Reichstag. Also nice to see Andree Melly (one of those Hammer Brides of Dracula) in a supporting role.

Upon completion, perhaps this Pim de la Parra oddball ode to Hitchcock and Michael Powell should've been called Perversions instead of Obsessions (1969). Judge for yourselves as a medical student discovers a peephole into his neighbor's apartment, who then watches as this neighbor keeps a string of women doped to the gills on horse-tranquilizers and bound to the tub or bed. And does our hero call the police? Nope. The pervert keeps on peeping, steals the landlord's keys, and goes snooping around said apartment. (To his credit, he does release and sober up one of these ladies. The others? Meh. He's gotta have something to watch, amIright?.) Anyhoo, all of this winds up tying into a murder mystery his reporter girlfriend is trying to resolve, which leads them down a rabbit hole of drug-pushers and stolen identity. And all of that leads to one of the greatest, "No shit? Well, he totally had THAT coming" endings I've seen in a good long while. One should probably note this movie was co-written by Martin Scorsese of all people, and the rollicking score was provided by Bernard Herrmann. (The film is also dedicated to Republic Pictures for some reason.) Yeah, this one's a weird duck, folks, that won't make a lick of sense until the last five minutes of the film, when one character finally decides to take a massive plot dump. Is it worth the effort? If you're into this kind of Eurosleaze you could do worse for your 90-minute investment. To me, the ultimate ending was cathartic enough to let everything else slide. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime via a horrible dub with some hot hot audio, so prepare to turn your volume way down if you dare follow.

You know? I'm starting to sense a pattern in horror movies lately. And what that pattern seems to be is a Rashamon (1950) effect, where we are presented one story, and then, about half way through, the film kinda starts over and we see the same story again from a different angle to show how everything we've seen so far and were led to believe were wrong if not an outright lie. All well and good if you feel like watching the same movie twice. SPOILER WARNING! In Fractured (2018), a couple are gonna spend a weekend at an isolated country cottage. Someone is obviously stalking them, and they soon get the sense they're not alone. Things escalate, then murder, and then, the reset button, where we find out these victims kinda had it coming all along. The film is barely 80-minutes, and it's basically the same 40-minutes twice. Clever on the surface, a cheat everywhere else. But it's well made, good suspense, with clues scattered about that something isn't quite right, here. In the end, I didn't much care for it but, as always, your mileage may vary.

Well, what we have here is another gonzo entry in Constantin Film's series of krimi. And while not officially an Edgar Wallace mystery, The Carpet of Horror (1962) still bears all the earmarks of one of those whackadoodle tales of spies, criminals, deathtraps, damsels in distress and Scotland Yard's finest trying to untie an impossible knot of intrigue -- it's even directed by Harald Reinl and stars krimi regulars, Joachim Fuchsberger and Karin Dor! Anyhoo, when a gang of criminals start bumping each other off with those mothballs from hell ... And do I really need to go any further than that? What really struck me with this one was how gorgeous the film looked thanks to Reinl and cinematographer, Godofredo Pacheco, who milk these black and white images for all they were worth -- rivaling the noirish flair of The Third Man (1949) IMHO. As usual, this eye-candy enhances (and overcompensates for) a plot that constantly pretzles itself over and over again. Thus, the mystery and resolution didn't make much sense; then again, they NEVER made much sense in these things. So, who cares! Watch and boggle. Just be wary of those mothballs.

A strange transition piece for Walt Disney via their Wonderful World of Color anthology TV series, The Sky Trap (1979) really feels like the studio dipping it's toe and testing the PG-rated waters, making it a bridge between The North Avenue Irregulars (1979) and Midnight Madness (1980). Here, a couple of teens get mixed up in a drug smuggling operation near the Mexican border, where one of them is forced into becoming a mule by using his glider to transport drugs over said border. Marc Mclure and Katherine Moffat make for a cute couple as our spunky protagonists, but the film can't quite shake the Very Special Episode of Spin and Marty feel of this thing as whole, spoiling some otherwise beautiful aerial footage and some pretty spiffy hand-held camera-work during the myriad chase scenes.

Now. I found The Nesting (1981) to be a fairly interesting ghost tale that is almost undone by some reaaaaaaally bad acting from the supporting cast. Almost, but not quite, as a recovering agoraphobic writer of Gothic fiction takes a chance, moves to the country, and occupies an old mansion that, turns out, is full of belligerent ghosts looking to take revenge on those who committed the massacre that resulted in them being ghosts in the first place. These ghosts then kinda channel themselves through the author, who isn't sure if this is real or all in her head as people around her start dying under dubious circumstances and the truth starts to unravel around her. If you're familiar with this type of genre, you'll probably know exactly where this is all going but I think this film did a pretty decent job of getting us there. Robin Groves is pretty great as our protagonist, making up for all the drips around her; and it's always fun to see John Carradine lurking about; and double-extra points for Gloria Grahame as the madame of the brothel that used to occupy the mansion and the ringleader of our vengeful spirits. I really dug this, but your ectoplasm readings may vary. 

And lastly, I recently plowed through and enjoyed the hell out of the first two seasons of HBO's The Deuce (2017-2018), which is a case study of the fragile ecosystem of the pimps, the prostitutes, the dive bars, corrupt cops, the smut peddlers, the dirty movies and their makers, and the creeping parasitic influence of the mob on all of the above in dirty old NYC of the 1970s as they all caught the fever of crumbling moral standards and siren call of porno chic. Recommended, absolutely, but fair warning: it is ridiculously eXXXplicit when delving into the subject matter. I know I will never look at potato soup the same way ever again. 

Recommendations :: Arrow Video Showcases the Celluloid Crime of the Century with a New Deluxe Edition of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972)

On the eve of her 17th birthday, Mari Collingwood and her bestest friend, Phyllis Stone, set off to the big city to attend a rock concert. Attempting to pick up some marijuana on the way, the pair wind up kidnapped by a group of vicious crooks. Gagged and bound, these young women are bundled into a car trunk and driven deep into the woods, where the gang of sadists subject them to a terrifying ordeal of sexual humiliation, torture and their eventual murder. But this is only half the tale, as this pack of degenerates unwittingly seek shelter in the home of Mari’s parents after the deadly deed is done, who manage to piece together who these people are, what they’ve done to their daughter, and embark on a long night of terrible vengeance.

Originally intended to be something a little more akin to one of Herschell Gordon Lewis' gorenographic epics like 2000 Maniacs (1964) or The Wizard of Gore (1970) -- only with a lot more skin, fledgling filmmakers Wes Craven (writer/director) and Sean S. Cunningham (producer) were commissioned by the Boston-based Hallmark Releasing, who regionally distributed films through their own theater chains -- mostly violent foreign fright flicks, softcore porn, and other drive-in fare -- to make them a new tits ‘n’ ass flick. And the only caveat was to make it as violent and as bloody as possible.

Craven and Cunningham took Hallmark’s money (and most likely pocketed some of it) and proved up to the task, deciding if violence is what they wanted then that is what they'd get; unsanitized and unfiltered for the unflinching eye of the camera, tapping into something on a primordial level where the lines between good and evil, and sadly, what constitutes the difference between actual comedy-relief and insipid buffoonery, blur together like that eye-testing contraption at the DMV, whose viewfinder is totally scummed over with discarded DNA after decades of use and abuse that you really don’t want to look into but you kinda have to.

Now, I admit Last House on the Left (1972) isn't particularly all that good as it burps and hiccups along like the first-time film effort it was; but you cannot deny that when it works -- and I think it works more often than it does not, the film really strikes at a raw nerve. You know, like taking a chisel to your front teeth -- CLANG! -- leaving them shattered, broken, and exposed to the open air to pulse and throb and ache a good long while after young Mari (Peabody) and Phyllis (Grantham) meet their doom and the bad guys get what's coming to them, leaving those who survived to wallow in the aftermath.

Putting the lofty inspirational Bergman and The Virgin Spring (1960) by way of the Tate-Labianca murders to the side, this nasty little exercise in guerrilla and pseudo-documentary filmmaking can be seen or distilled as a metaphor on many levels: as a final, scathing indictment on the failures of the 1960s counterculture movement -- Krug (Hess) and Weasel (Lincoln) are definitely anti-establishment; Junior (Sheffler) dropped out, tuned-in and burnt out; and Sadie (Rain) is "free love" gone horribly, horribly wrong; or, you can read it as bringing the reality of the Vietnam War home (-- the bloody and lingering deaths), and dumping it in the audiences’ lap by way of the Collingwoods; or, the complete and utter destruction of the classic Nuclear Family -- though I think Craven handled that better in The Hills Have Eyes (1977); or, if you're so inclined, you can take it at face value as an unabashed and unrepentant fright flick.

Yeah. Seems as filming progressed, everyone involved from the unknown cast (-- except in Porn circles, that is), to the amateur film crew, realized against all odds they were creating something a little loftier than originally intended; by design or by accident is up for debate, but the film soon changed course as the porn elements were whittled away to concentrate solely on the role-reversal plot and the horrific elements of the film. And though I think Last House on the Left is most effective in the dreadful humiliation scenes, the protracted death of Phyllis -- from her near escape, to the jump-scare in the cemetery, to her eventual disembowelment -- is one of the nastiest successions of cinematic gut-punches committed to film.

Kudos to actress Lucy Grantham for that tough, tough scene. Equal kudos to Sandra Peabody (billed here as Mari Cassell), who walked off the picture due to the “method acting” of her attackers and had to be convinced to come back, pulling off her own harrowing enough and truly disheartening demise. And while we're handing out compliments, I know everyone points out David Hess' performance as the vile Krug as being the ultimate cinematic degenerate, but it's the S.B.D. approach of Fred Lincoln's Weasel that really gives me the creeps. Lincoln was one of those participants who was well versed in the Adult Film Industry of NYC both directing (310), producing (42), and acting (64), and his contributions to the finished film beyond his performance should not be underestimated, providing stunts and staging tips for several gags and murder set-pieces.

Once completed, the MPAA shit a brick and slapped the film with an X-Rating. Hoping for a wider R-rated release, Craven and Cunningham removed ten minutes of footage, and then 20 more minutes, but still no dice. Fed up, as the legend goes, Craven put all the excised footage back in and then, through subterfuge and help from a friend at the MPAA, slapped faux documentation on the finished print, saying it was Rated R and released the film, essentially, unrated. But even in this raw form, upon its initial release under the alternate title Sex Crime of the Century, and later as Krug and Company, the film opened with a dull thud.

But leave it to the Hallmark publicity team to salvage things. Namely Lee Willis, who came up with a catchy, though nonsensical, alternative title and an insidiously infectious advertising campaign, hook, and jingle; and then, soon enough, the film both took off and set off a firestorm of controversy over its content -- the violence, the misogyny, and the perceived misanthropy of the filmmakers, that hasn't settled down even to this day.

In the end, there usually is no gray area with Last House on the Left. You either loved it -- or at least appreciated the movie for what it tried to do (like me), or you hated and condemned it for what it did. You either bought into the use of unfiltered violence to show our darker selves or you were completely screwed in the head and got your rocks off watching the rape and slaughter of two nubile young women. Of course, Hallmark took that controversy and added it to their press-kits and the box-office kept on booming.

Both Craven and Cunningham went on to lucrative careers in the field of legit horror movies but took two different paths to get there (-- though one should note after they both tried and died at more family-friendly genres). And you can see the differences in those styles in their first finished product. Here, Craven was more interested in the motivation and abnormal psychology of what scared us, peeling back the onion, layer by layer, to get down to our more basic, profane, and primal instincts and "feed the gators" -- to cop a phrase from Stephen King. Cunningham, on the other hand, was more of a spookshow huckster, content to just set the audience up, tease them along, and then knock them on their can.

And these differences in approach are personified in the climactic duel between Krug and Dr. Collingwood (Towers). Originally, Craven had wanted them to have a scalpel duel, with Collingwood attacking the major veins and arteries, leaving Krug to die a literal biblical death of a thousand cuts; but his producer thought, nah, saying a chainsaw added more bang and buzz for the buck. And I think if you look at the movie as a whole, the first half, where the deaths are unnervingly all too real, up to the point where the killers actually feel ashamed of what they've done, and no matter how hard they try, can't wash the blood off their hands, is all Craven. But the second half and the Collingwood's revenge, from the cartoony booby-traps, to Mrs. Collingwood (Carr) taking a bite out of crime, to the chainsaw fight is all Cunningham.

Which brings us to Arrow Video’s latest stellar release in a mounting, nay, staggering line of stellar releases: a 3-Disc limited edition Blu-Ray for Last House On the Left, which includes three different restored cuts of the film on the first two discs: an unrated cut, the Krug and Company cut, and the R-rated home video version. And the third disc features the complete original soundtrack for the film composed by star David Hess.

And like all Arrow releases, this set is packed with buku extras, including a brand new audio commentary by podcasters Bill Ackerman and Amanda Reyes along with two vintage commentaries; one with Craven and Cunningham, the other with stars Hess, Sheffler and Lincoln. Featurettes include the mini-docs, Still Standing: The Legacy of The Last House on The Left, Celluloid Crime of the Century, Scoring Last House on the Left , It's Only a Movie: The Making of The Last House on the Left, and Forbidden Footage, which focuses on the film’s most notorious scenes. Also included are new interviews with actor Marc Sheffler and makeup artist Anne Paul, and The Road Leads to Terror -- a brand new featurette revisiting the film's original shooting locations; also included are deleted scenes, outtakes and dailies, trailers, TV and radio spots, and the ubiquitous image galleries.

Bonus features on disc two include The Craven Touch -- a brand new featurette bringing together interviews with a number of Wes Craven’s collaborators, including Sean S. Cunningham, composer Charles Bernstein, producer Peter Locke, cinematographer Mark Irwin, and actress Amanda Wyss; Early Days and 'Night of Vengeance' where filmmaker Roy Frumkes remembers Wes Craven and Last House on the Left; Tales That'll Tear Your Heart Out, an unfinished Wes Craven short; and Krug Conquers England, which charts the theatrical tour of the first ever uncut screening of the film in the UK. The box-set also features lobby card reproductions, the film’s poster, and a limited edition 60-page booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Stephen Thrower, making this release a near definitive look at this seminal horror film. The boxset streets in a couple weeks on July 3rd. So go. Buy this. NOW!

Other Points of Interest:

Newspaper ads for Last House on the Left at the Morgue.  

Buy Last House On the Left at Arrow Video. 

Buy Last House On the Left at Amazon.

Last House on the Left (1972) Lobster Enterprises :: Sean S. Cunningham Films :: The Night Co. :: Hallmark Releasing / P: Sean S. Cunningham / AP: Katherine D’Amato / D: Wes Craven / W: Wes Craven / C: Victor Hurwitz / E: Wes Craven / M: David Hess / S: Sandra Peabody, Lucy Grantham, David Hess, Fred Lincoln, Jeramie Rain, Marc Sheffler, Richard Towers, Cynthia Carr

Recommendations :: Arrow Video's The Bloodthirsty Trilogy Boxset: The Galloping Ghoul Goes to Japan in Michio Yamamoto’s The Vampire Doll (1970)

Our strange and sinister little bugaboo tale of horror begins with a young man named Kazuhiko Sagawa (Nakamura) traveling way out into the county to meet up with his fiance, Yuko Nonomura (Kobayashi), at her secluded ancestral homestead to officially announce their engagement. Once there, Sagawa meets Yuko’s widowed mother, Shidu (Minakaze), and her rather creepy handyman, Genzo (Takashina), who have some rather sad news for him.

It seems Yuko was killed nearly a week ago when her car was buried in a mudslide. And to make this even more awkward, Yuko never got around to mentioning her boyfriend. Completely devastated, Sagawa is allowed to spend the night at the old mansion, whose lights seem to have gone out since Yuko’s death if you know what I mean. And later that night, as Sagawa struggles through the grieving process, he hears a woman sobbing -- a woman who sounds a lot like Yuko. Thinking she might still be alive, a desperate Sagawa starts to search the house and grounds, trying to trace that sobbing back to its source. And then, after unearthing several cryptic clues, Sagawa, much to his regret, finds what he’d been searching for...

Perhaps inspired by the huge success of the imported British and American horror films of the 1960s, Toho Studios decided to give director Michio Yamamoto the green-light to try and cash-in on this trend in Japan. And to my eyes, not only was Hammer Horror and Roger Corman’s Poe cycle an influence on the resulting trio of pictures, but a huge nod also goes to the preternatural American soap opera, Dark Shadows (1966-1971), where executive producer Dan Curtis plucked Gothic horrors from the past and dropped them down in the middle of these modern times; most notably the introduction of the vampire Barnabas Collins.

Thus, director Michio Yamamoto’s Yureiyashiki No Kyofu: Chi O Suu Ningyoo (Fear In The Ghost House: The Bloodsucking Doll) -- a/k/a The Vampire Doll (1970) would be Toho’s first attempt at an Anglo-centric horror story and it really is quite effective in the thrills and chills department. And if nothing else, the film shows what was always missing from those old Hammer Dracula movies: some righteous Toho arterial spray when several jugulars are severed by our villainess -- but is it a real vampire behind this bloodshed as the title would suggest?

Well, see, that’s all part of the unwinding mystery as Yamamoto also gives a few nods to Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) as he pulls the rug out from under us as whom we assume to be the hero of the piece disappears at the end of the first act (-- and it’s safe to assume he is no longer with us). Thus, The Vampire Doll reloads as Sagawa’s sister, Keiko (Matsuo), and her boyfriend, Hiroshi (Nakao), worried that they haven’t heard from him in quite some time, trace the missing man’s last known whereabouts back to the Nonomura’s palatial estate. From there, the couple start unraveling an intricate mystery and uncover several abhorrent family skeletons that reveal the fate of Sagawa and the undeniable truth that, somehow, Yuko is back from the dead and is seeking revenge on the living.

As to what the reason for all that vengeful throat-slashing is, well, I’m not in the spoiling mood because, dammit, this film earned those twists and turns -- especially that last one, and you owe it to yourself to track this one down and see it for yourself. And now, that’s a helluva lot easier than it used to be thanks to Arrow Video’s new The Bloodthirsty Trilogy boxset, which includes The Vampire Doll along with Yamamoto’s Lake of Dracula (1971) and Evil of Dracula (1975), which, alas, I did not get screeners for. But! If they’re even half as good as this first entry, I will not regret the purchase I just made on Amazon. Hell, it’s worth the price for this entry alone.

For it is kind of funky to see these old school trappings -- violent thunderstorms, haunted mansions, creaking doors, cobwebs, and creepy caretakers, mashed up with the usual Toho stock actors and sound-effects, of which I’ve only seen in a ton of Godzilla movies. (The film was even produced by longtime Godzilla producer, Tomoyuki Tanaka.) The film is long on atmosphere and style and, yes, a few Japanese horror tropes are mixed in -- Yuko is by no means a classical vampire but is just as creepy, but this concoction works remarkable well. And all of it is glued together by Riichiro Manabe’s nerve-wracking and highly dissonant soundtrack.

Add it all up and we’ve got an excellent Japanese spin on foreign film tropes on things that go bump in the night and tend to bite back. And before this screener showed up, I had no idea these three films even existed. That’s on me. Now, with this wonderful boxset readily available, if you haven’t heard of or seen them yet, well, then, that’s now on you. Go. Buy this. Now! 

Buy The Bloodthirsty Trilogy at Arrow Video. 

Buy The Bloodthirsty Trilogy at Amazon. 

The Vampire Doll (1970) Toho Company / P: Fumio Tanaka, Tomoyuki Tanaka / D: Michio Yamamoto / W: Hiroshi Nagano, Ei Ogawa / C: Kazutami Hara / E: Kôichi Iwashita / M: Riichirô Manabe / S: Kayo Matsuo, Akira Nakao, Atsuo Nakamura, Yukiko Kobayashi, Yôko Minakaze, Kaku Takashina