Man-Thing is a 2005 US/Australian horror telefilm, directed by Brett Leonard and featuring the Marvel Comics creature created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. The screenplay by Hans Rodionoff is very based loosely on a storyline by Steve Gerber, who wrote the most well-known series of Man-Thing comics. It stars Matthew Le Nevez, Rachael Taylor, and Jack Thompson. The film had a budget rumoured to be $30 million but this seems inconceivable.

Most of the source material was altered. Among these are moving the setting from the Florida Everglades to Louisiana (though the film was actually made in Australia), and changing the creature’s powers from burning those who “know fear” to being able to manipulate the swamp’s vegetation. The movie also made no mention of A.I.M. or their attempt to steal the super soldier serum. The character is also represented in a significantly more antagonistic light than the comic-book version. Man-Thing’s former identity remained Ted Sallis, though in the film he is portrayed as a Native American shaman instead of a scientist. Consequently, the Man-Thing’s origin is somewhat different, though the Nexus of All Realities is still involved.

Two teenagers who have ventured deep into the swamp to have sex but the young man is killed by a plant-like monster.

The following day, young replacement sheriff Kyle Williams reaches Bywater and meets with deputy sheriff Fraser, who tells him that the previous sheriff was not the only missing person: At least forty-seven other people were missing, the first one having been shaman and Seminole chieftain Ted Sallis, since oil tycoon Fred Schist had bought the ancient tribal lands from Sallis himself to prospect. Schist claimed that Sallis had sold legally and escaped with the money, and asked the sheriff for help: Local protestors opposed to his perfectly legal activities, and mestizo scoundrel Renee Laroque was sabotaging his facilities. Williams investigated this while at the same time trying to find an explanation to the missing people, some of which were found brutally murdered with plants growing from inside their bodies. Weirdo photographer Mike Ploog and shaman Pete Horn tell Williams local legends about the guardian spirit, suggesting that it could be real…

“Brett Leonard turns in one of his best directing jobs to date, giving the movie an eerie feel that constantly holds the audience’s attention. Leonard also does a wise thing by moving the film along at a rapid pace that leaves little time for the audience to question the plausibility of what they’re watching. Comic book scribe Hans Rodinoff turns in an equally good screenplay, allowing for plenty of gory deaths and suspenseful moments. The titular Man-Thing gets a makeover, transformed from a little known comic book character from the 70′s into a frightening and powerful force…” Joseph Savitsky, Beyond Hollywood

“The director, Brett Leonard, tries for some jump-scares, but as with the rest of the film, they just fall flat, not even making for a startle. So not only does this film fail as a Marvel movie, it fails as a horror movie as well. He also tries to ram every Southern stereotype down our throat at any chance he gets (possibly to try and counteract the blaring Australian influences), while giving us some of the corniest and hackneyed dialogue you will ever hear. How can you not roll your eyes when a character yells out, “It’s the Man-Thing, man!”?”
Comic Book Revolution

“The filmmakers cannot seem to decide what Man-Thing is either. Throughout the film, it is implied that Man-Thing is a demigod sent by the vengeful ancestors of the wronged tribe. Or perhaps it’s a mutated Ted Sallis still alive for some odd reason. Or perhaps it’s a demonic ghost of Sallis, like a slimy version of The Crow. Or perhaps it is even a monster from another dimension that came into being from a Nexus of Realities that gets mentioned only in passing (How do you mention a dimensional portal in passing anyway?). The film never bothers to resolve this conundrum and because of their incompetence, it’s up to the viewer to take a guess at just what the hell is going on.” Scott W. David, Horror Express

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

Nothing Left to Fear is a 2013 American horror film directed by Anthony Leonardi III and “presented by” Slash of Guns N’ Roses fame who also provides the score. It stars Anne Heche, Clancy Brown and Jennifer Stone.

Wendy, her husband Dan and their kids have just moved to the small town of Stull, Kansas, where Dan is the new pastor. But in this sleepy community of friendly neighbours, a horrific series of occurrences awaits them: Their teenage daughter is being tormented by grisly visions. Her younger sister has been marked for a depraved ritual. And deep within the heartland darkness, one of The Seven Gates Of Hell demands the blood of the innocent to unleash the creatures of the damned…

“Not as scary as it had the potential to be, Nothing Left to Fear relays too much on the look and not on the display to invoke scares, so you are left with a creepy, slightly tense horror that despite its lack of hype doesn’t live up to what it could have been.” Horror Focus

“A great mood, some impressive visuals, and good performances, make this a solid entry for the genre. It’s not perfect, but as a first outing for Slasher Films, as well as director Anthony Leonardi III, this should have fans waiting impatiently for what the future holds.” The Film Reel

Buy Nothing Left to Fear on Blu-ray | DVD | Amazon Instant from Amazon.com

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Also known as She-Butterfly and The Moth (and indeed Лептирица in the original Serbian cyrillic), Leptirica is a 1973 former Yugoslav horror TV movie based on the story After Ninety Years (1880) written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić. Leptirica was the first Serbian horror film. The movie was filmed in the village of Zelinje, close to the city Zvornik.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Guest review:

Set in a poor, rural village, possibly yesterday, possibly in the 19th Century, an old flour miller is murdered at his rickety mill at night. His fellow superstitious villagers suspect foul play, the old man bearing bite marks and decide their best bet is to employ another miller, lest one of them suffer the same fate. Enter Strahinja (Petar Božović), even poorer than the rest of them and with the added problem of being unable to gain the blessing of his beloved girlfriend’s father (Radojka (Mirjana Nikolić) and Živan (Slobodan Perović) respectively), for her hand in marriage. Determined to impress him, he accepts the dubious offer.

Spending the night in the mill, he too is visited by the nocturnal beast, surviving by falling through a shaft and being buried beneath mounds of flour. Emerging in the morning, he informs the villagers of the creature’s name, ‘Sava Savanović’, a famous vampire in Slavic folklore, killing and drinking the blood of the millers when they came to mill their grains. The villagers set off to question a local (extremely deaf) old woman whom they believe may hold the answer as to how to kill Sava. After much shouting she directs them to a far-off ditch near an elm tree where she believes his grave to be; the hapless villagers, led by an ineffective priest in full garb, go to and fro, realising they need a stallion, holy water and a stake to cleanse the grave. Eventually locating it, the smash the coffin only for a butterfly (the spirit of the vampire) to flitter out, evading their clutches and disappearing out of sight. Thinking they are free of their nighttime threat, the villagers help to free Radojka from her father’s clutches and facilitate the wedding of the young couple. Sadly for Strahinja, a nasty surprise awaits him on his wedding night.

Leptirica is full of all the trappings of Eastern European and Slavic folklore; stick-in-the-mud fathers, love-struck youngsters and time-old monsters romping around in the forests. Sava Savanović works well, immediately recognisable as a vampire but accompanied in his appearances by oddly disturbing owl hoots and covered in black grime, highlighting the white feral nails and teeth. Sticking closely to the 1880 novel by Milovan Glišić, After 90 Years, written only 17 years after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there are some genuinely sinister moments, heightened by the alien setting and unfamiliar actors, all of whom were professional, which is evident throughout. Although the ‘surprise’ ending is telegraphed very early in the film, there is something satisfying about it behaving like a traditional folk tale, the goodies, the baddies and the futility of interfering in the ways of the world Man is destined not to understand, all present and correct.

The humourous elements are used judiciously so that when night does fall the dread is that much keener. There is no attempt to titillate the viewer, only to scare them, something which is certainly achieved, the monster of the piece being both unique in appearance and habit. When first shown on Yugoslav television in the 1970′s, it was reported that a man died of fright whilst watching. Whether true or not, the film remains unreleased officially in any language, the grainy versions available to watch somehow making the tale even more spooky.

Daz Lawrence, Dazploitation

“Leptirica isn’t particularly well-made or well-acted, has an unsteady tone (comedy elements often seem forced or completely out of place) and it really lacks visual punch, though it’s watchable, has a few faintly eerie moments and the country setting provides an interesting backdrop to the action. The biggest problem is that the whole thing is just too predictable.” Bloody Pit of Horror

Squirrels is a forthcoming 2014 US horror film based on an idea by Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), who also produces. It is being written by Daniel Antoniazzi and Ben Shiffrin. The Squirrels teaser trailer has already received lots of interest on the web, much as Sharknado did before its TV debut.

When a young man’s estranged father is killed under suspicious circumstances, he returns home for the first time in years to get to the bottom of the mystery. Hoping to uncover some logical explanation, he instead finds his mom’s sleazy new boyfriend, a natural gas company buying up the town, an angry female sheriff who happens to be his ex-girlfriend, and an army of flesh-eating squirrels hellbent on destroying everything in their path due to an erosion of their food chain as a result of environmental destruction by the gas company…

Black Park is a country park in Wexham, Buckinghamshire, England between Slough and Iver Heath. Covering 530 acres of woodland, heathland and grassland,  the park includes an imposing avenue of mature pine trees, and a lake (dug in the 18th century as a reservoir for a local farmer).

Adjacent to Pinewood Film Studios, Black Park has been used as an outdoor location for many film and television productions. The woods and lake featured prominently in the Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s to the 1970s, such as Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966). In the Hammer films the location was often used to represent Transylvania.

The park has also been used in other film productions such as the James Bond franchise Goldfinger, where it was used for a nighttime car chase scene, and the 2006 version of Casino Royale, and the Monty Python film And Now For Something Completely Different, plus several Carry On films, Batman, Sleepy Hollow, the Harry Potter film series‘, Captain America, The Bunker and the chillingly-effective Eden Lake.

For television, Black Park, together with its lake, was used extensively in location filming for the planet ‘Alzarius’ in the Doctor Who serial Full Circle (1980) which featured the memorable, albeit cheap-looking, Marshmen monsters.

Thanks to Seat at the Back for the Curse of Frankenstein image

Cannibal Diner is a 2012 German low budget horror film directed by Frank W. Montag (Slasher) from a screenplay by co-producer Mario von Crapiewski. It stars Alexandra Lesch, Kristiana Rohder, Lara Baum, Indira Madison, Violetta Schurawlow and Alexandra Jordan.

It was released in the USA by Brink on DVD October 15, 2013.

Kati (Alexandra Lesch) is a young model on her way to a birthday party for her little sister Celine. Tanja, Kati’s best friend, and other friends want to celebrate and camp near the woods. While preparing the party, the girls get attacked by strangers. Still on the way to the camping place, Kati loses her way in the woods and is led on to the wrong track by a young female tramp. When her car is stolen afterwards, Kati finds herself lost in the deep forest and arrives at an old factory, where a clan of cannibals is already preparing their feast’s main course: Kati’s friends…

IMDb

A cavalcade of attractive actresses run around in the woods filmed in high-def widescreen mode, initially holding some minor promise, at least in terms of cheapo production values. However, once the grunting cannibalistic mutants show up in their awful red-tinged make-up Cannibal Diner becomes as tiresomely predictable as its come-on title and the ‘found footage’ finale seems to go on forever.

Adrian J. Smith, Horrorpedia

“There is no nobler of an intention on display here than to fill the screen with breasts and beasts as a sleazy appeal to the stoner set of easily amused horror moviegoers. The film is not even ashamed of the fact that it blatantly apes scenes from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shot for shot as if Gus Van Sant himself were behind the lens. Some shaky night vision “found footage” and a growling soundtrack from metal bands named Demon Boy, Alien Vampires, and Sonic Thrill round out the kitchen sink of dead horse horror movie clichés.” Culture Crypt

Buy Cannibal Diner on DVD from Amazon.com

In Fear is a 2013 British horror film directed by Jeremy Lovering. It stars Iain De Caestecker, Alice Englert and Allen Leech. Although the film is set in Ireland it was filmed on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall.

Tom and Lucy are trapped in a maze of country roads with only their vehicle for protection, terrorised by an unseen tormentor hell-bent on exploiting their worst fears – fear of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of themselves…

‘Only near the end, when the threat becomes more tangible and the plot machinations more forced, does the film shift down a gear, causing the stomach-knotting tension to abate. Lovering’s taut direction and editor Jon Amos’s skilfully modulated cutting wring the maximum suspense from cinematographer David Katznelson’s multi-camera set-ups, tapping into deep-rooted psychological and primal fears.’ Nigel Floyd, Time Out

‘A compact, effective thriller set in way-rural Ireland, Jeremy Lovering‘s In Fearmakes the most of three actors, a car and a network of narrow roads winding through the woods. Literal-minded viewers might have trouble with a hard-to-rationalize ending, but horror fans in general should embrace its stripped-down scares.’ John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

‘In Fear is a definite mixed bag. It offers some thrills only to see them washed away by questionable choices. It owes a debt to the recent (and underseen) Retreat as well as Kim Sung-hong’s near identically-set Say Yes. All three films tread very similar waters and are worth watching, but it’s the Cillian Murphy-starrer that fares the best.’ Rob Hunter, Film School Rejects

‘Claustrophobic and creepy, this experiment in contained horror has its moments as just three characters circle around each other. But the approach is almost infuriatingly vague, which eliminates any real suspense. Still, it’s sharply well shot and played, with a moody atmosphere that builds a strong sense of uncertainty. And director Lovering is extremely adept at making us jump at something unexpected.’ Rich Cline, Contactmusic.com

‘To say that Jeremy Lovering’s directing debut is the best British horror film of 2013 is what one might call low praise. So let’s raise the bar. It’s one of the year’s best horror movies, full stop.’ London Evening Standard

‘It is calculated in its button-pushing, missing out on the awe or transgression that accompanies scariness in more envelope-stretching horrors. In the end, it’s an anecdote rather than a story, even if the last reel holds some well set-up nasty surprises and a pay-off that’s audacious or pretentious, depending on your tolerance for 1970s arty exploitation tricks.’ Kim Newman, Empire

Bind is a 2014 horror film directed by Dan Walton (co-producer of Gutterballs), based upon his own story. The screenplay is by Ken King and the film features Eliza Faria, Sierra Pitkin, Rebecca Rifai, Haley Victoria Hunt, Deborah Finkel, Alisha-jo Penney and Brian Cook.

A family move into an abandoned orphanage and they soon learn that their charming abode has a disturbing history. They also become convinced that they aren’t alone…

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Vampires is a 1979 made-for-television play, broadcast by the BBC as part of their Play For Today strand. Concerning the obsessions of two school boys who suspect their neighbourhood is inhabited by a real vampire, the play was directed by John Goldschmidt who went on to become a celebrated director and producer of documentaries across Europe and America.

Play for Today was a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration. 1979 saw the broadcast of Vampires, one of the best remembered episodes.

With mum away for a night with her new boyfriend, young siblings Stu and Davey (real-life brothers, Peter and Paul Moran) and their friend, Dingo, develop something of an obsession with vampires, after viewing Christopher Lee in Dracula, Prince of Darkness on late-night TV in 1970′s Liverpool. When Dingo goes home, Stu winds up his younger brother by pretending to be under the influence of the Count. As he struggles to get to sleep, the sound of the inebriated elders returning home acts as a strange counterpoint to the world of suspense they have pretended to be in.

The next day, the brothers get into some scrapes whilst attempting to spend their dinner money (£1!) on sweets at the local shop – when this falls flat, they elect to bunk off school, only to be rumbled by Dingo’s big brother who is cruising around in his impressively 1970′s wreck of a car. Stu remains determined to avoid school and takes himself off to see one of his mum’s old flames, ‘Uncle’ Georgie (the most famous actor in the piece, comedy titan, Paul Shane from Hi-De-Hi and many other middle-of-the-road BBC vehicles) who gives him pocket money in a scene which is oddly touching yet almost cruelly sad. The joke shop seems a fitting place to spend his newly found wealth and he purchases a pair of plastic fangs from a man you really wouldn’t want your child giving money to. Spending the rest of the day playing at being the undead in the park, he returns home to apply ‘blood’ to his face to top off the effect.

Also arriving home are Davy and Dingo (who is clearly a bad influence!) who tell him they saw a vampire in the local cemetery earlier and they should go back to check immediately. Return visits to the graveyard confirm that, yes, there is indeed a vampire at large, as what else could a tall old, mute man dressed in black (second most famous face in the play, character actor John G. Heller – also in Clint Eastwood vehicle Kelly’s Heroes) possibly be doing there?

The following day, their teacher has a heart attack and dies at school assembly (how I wished this happened, back in the day) and the boys tell their younger, interim tutor that this is doubtless down to the diabolical influence of the local vampire. It is also mentioned that Stu has dreamed of his father who is buried there, another tell-tale sign of supernatural goings-on. The teacher nods in the disturbed manner. The pair rope their friends in to hunt down the vampire before he can cause any more havoc, a charade which predictably ends in farce, the planning and organisation sadly lacking and the local coppers chasing them off in all directions. Back home, the boys reflect of the bizarre events of recent days and how they could possibly be wrong…but who’s that at the door..?

Filmed in a flat, unremarkable way in the flat, unremarkable (apart from the football club) area between Stanley Park and Liverpool FC’s football ground, this is stellar television,  all the more remarkable due to the lack of professional actors on display, the majority never appearing in a production again. A play which hints at much but discloses little, the picture of a working class family and their mother’s passion for drink and a habit of failed relationships is all too real, a no-frills glimpse at lives which never promise much and require any means of escapism to make tolerable.

Whether any vampires are present seems immaterial – there are far more frightening things out in the big bad world. The huge Victorian school building will have you choking on the clouds of chalk dust, the transition of old-school teaching and new, less conservative methods heralding in a world of new opportunities, evidently no more than the reflection in puddles suggested by the rest of the film. A fun and entirely well-judged school boy chat about the differences between horror and science fiction should probably become the given dictionary definition and the whole thing is wrapped up in the even more eye-popping real-life incident concerning the ‘Gorbals Vampire’.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

With thanks to TV Cream for several of the pics

Volcano Zombies is a 2014 American horror film directed by Rene Perez (The Dead and the Damned) and written and produced by Jeff Miller and Jason Ancona (co-writers and producers of Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan). It stars Danny Trejo (Machete, Machete Kills, Dead in Tombstone), Tom Downey (Axe Giant, The Beast of Bray Road), Moniqua Plante, Robert F. Lyons (Dark Night of the Scarecrow, 10 To Midnight), Nicole Cummins, Kevin Norman, Kyle T. Heffner, Julia Lehman (Cheerleader Massacre 2), Tom Nagel (Hillside Cannibals) and Jenny Lin (Piranhaconda).

The plot concerns a sheriff and an estranged family who must escape not only the impending eruption of what was thought to be a dormant volcano but also a horde of zombies brought to life by the cursed mountain.

The film is in post-production…

Invaders from Mars is a 1986 science fiction horror film, directed by Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Salem’s Lot, Poltergeist, Lifeforce) for the Cannon Group from a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon (Alien) and Don Jakoby (Arachnophobia). It stars Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms (The Fantasist, Parasomnia), Laraine Newman, Karen Black (Trilogy of Terror, Burnt Offerings), James Karen (The Return of the Living Dead), Bud Cort (Bates Motel) and Louise Fletcher (Exorcist II: The Heretic, Strange Behavior).

It is a remake of the 1953 science fiction film Invaders from Mars, and is a reworking of that film’s screenplay by Richard Blake from an original story by John Tucker Battle. Its production was instigated by Wade Williams, millionaire exhibitor, science fiction film fan and sometime writer-producer-director, who had reissued the original film in 1978 after purchasing the copyright to the property. Elaborate creature and visual effects for this remake were supplied by Stan Winston (Gargoyles, Pumpkinhead) and John Dykstra, respectively. The film flopped at the box office.

On the night of a meteor shower, young David Gardner sees an alien spacecraft land in a sand quarry behind his house. This is the beginning of an alien invasion that sees David’s parents (George and Ellen Gardner), his teachers and the townspeople slowly assimilated by the alien life forms, returning with less emotions. The only one who believes David is the school nurse, Linda Magnuson. Together, David and Linda enlist the aid of the U.S. Marines to help save the world.

“…whereas the original worked by building up an increasingly black mood, this version relies almost entirely on the special effects; and such limited brooding tension as it has is gratuitously undermined by a string of sequences played purely for laughs.” Time Out

“In the span of his six-decade career, Invaders from Mars falls squarely in the middle of Tobe Hooper’s canon. Far from his best, it’s not nearly as bad as the majority of his output that followed. It’s a feeble attempt at updating a sci-fi classic for a then-fresh audience. Proof that history often can repeat itself, this sucker is every bit as forgettable as many of our modern day rehashes: Slickly done but hollow and trite. Unless, of course, you’ve got fond memories of Louise Fletcher and those frog legs.” Matt Serafini, Dread Central

“What I like about the Hooper is his looseness but yep, that’s his downfall too. The second half of Invaders is as slack as a wet noodle. Plus, I can’t believe I’m saying this about the guy who directed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but I think he can be too lenient with his performers. Was he afraid to ask for a second take from this bunch?” Kindertrauma

Buy Strange Invaders + Invaders from Mars on M-G-M DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“I think people really have a problem with this movie because of the childish tone of the story. In case nobody noticed, the events are all viewed through the filter of a little boy, of course it plays out halfway like a cartoon. When you are about four feet tall the world is a very different place, think back on that for a second. You can’t drive a car, and adults are already weird to begin with. Everybody needs to drop the logic and get with the program here, this movie is fun period.” Fuckshit! The Home Video Review

Buy Invaders from Mars A3 poster from Amazon.co.uk

Buy Eaten Alive at a Chainsaw Massacre: The Films of Tobe Hooper book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb | Some images are courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art

Track of the Moon Beast is a 1972 American horror film, directed by Richard Ashe and written by Bill Finger (co-creator of Batman in 1939) and Charles Sinclair (Finger and Sinclair also scripted The Green Slime). It remained unreleased until 1976 and is now in the public domain. The film stars Chase Cordell, Leigh Drake, Gregorio Sala, Patrick Wright, Francine Kessler, Timothy Wayne Brown, Crawford MacCallum and Jeanne Swain. Makeup artist Joe Blasco (Shivers) played the titular Moon Beast. It is one of the few horror movies filmed in New Mexico.

Mineralogist Paul Carlson (Chase Cordell) is struck by a lunar meteorite while observing a meteor shower. Lodged in his brain, the meteorite causes him to transform into a strong and vicious lizard demon whenever the moon comes out. In his lizard form, Paul loses all traces of his human self and goes about killing people at random. While human, Paul is subject to spells of dizziness and nausea, causing his girlfriend Kathy Nolan (Donna Leigh Drake) and friend and former teacher Johnny Longbow (Gregorio Sala) to become concerned.

Eventually it is shown that Paul is the monster, and deduced that the meteorite fragment in his brain is the cause of his transformations. Plans are made to remove it from his skull, but the NASA brain surgeons realize, after another X-ray and Johnny remembering some Native American legends documenting similar phenomena, that the meteorite has disintegrated and will eventually cause Paul to self-combust…

“The acting is universally wooden, the dialogue atrociously written, and the camerawork and other production values are barely competent. In some cases they aren’t even that, such as during the painfully bad time-lapse photography sequence of Paul transforming into the Moon Beast. Or maybe when one changes from a human to a giant, humanoid reptile, an extra set of eyes and a nose appear and disappear as part of the process.” Steve Miller, 150 Movies You Should Die Before You See

Buy 150 Movies You Should Die Before You See from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“Incredibly, having your hero be a geologist wasn’t boring enough… they had to add a few supporting radiologists to move the story further along. Approximately 15 minutes or so of Track of the Moon Beast’s runtime is spent in an X-ray exam room… Approximately 2 minutes into that scene, you’re already saying to yourself “Why in the hell are they still in the X-ray Exam room?!?”.  But don’t worry. If you are able to make it through those parts, you’ll be rewarded with terrific action sequences such as digging up ancient pottery…. and engaging dialouge like “His name is Ty. Which is short for Tyrannosaurus.”…. and spectacular scenery such as Albuquerque, N.M.” Cinema Bandits

“Folks, there are horrible guy-in-a-rubber-suit films from the 1970s, and then there’s Track of the Moon Beast (1972). Like its contemporaries Octaman, The Milpitas Monster, and Slithis, the New Mexico-lensed Track rehashes monster movie tropes from the 1950s against a backdrop of the eco-conscious but fashion-challenged 1970s. Only, unlike its contemporaries, Track of the Moon Beast sports an excellent musical interlude and a really long scene about making soup.” Brian Albright, The Dead Next Door

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Wikipedia | IMDb | Interview with Charles Sinclair

Wake in Fright (also known as Outback) is a 1971 Australian-American thriller film directed by Ted Kotcheff and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence and Chips Rafferty. The screenplay was written by Evan Jones, based on Kenneth Cook‘s 1961 novel of the same name. Made on a budget of A$800,000, the film was an Australian/American co-production by NLT Productions and Group W.

For many years, Wake in Fright enjoyed a reputation as Australia’s great “lost film” because of its unavailability on VHS or DVD, as well as its absence from television broadcasts. In mid-2009, however, a thoroughly restored digital re-release was shown in Australian theatres to considerable acclaim. Later that same year it was issued commercially on DVD and Blu-ray Disc.Wake in Fright is now recognised as a seminal film of the Australian New Wave. Australian musician and screenwriter Nick Cave called Wake in Fright ”The best and most terrifying film about Australia in existence.”

John Grant is a middle-class teacher from the big city. He feels disgruntled because of the onerous terms of a financial bond which he signed with the government in return for receiving a tertiary education. The bond has forced him to accept a post to the tiny school at Tiboonda, a remote township in the arid Australian Outback. It is the start of the Christmas school holidays and Grant plans on going to Sydney to visit his girlfriend but first, however, he must travel by train to the nearby mining town of Bundanyabba (known as “The Yabba”) in order to catch a Sydney-bound flight.

At “The Yabba”, Grant encounters several disconcerting residents including a policeman, Jock Crawford, who encourages Grant to drink repeated glasses of beer before introducing him to the local obsession with the gambling game of two-up. Hoping to win enough money to pay off his bond and escape his “slavery” as an outback teacher, Grant at first has a winning streak playing two-up but then loses all his cash. Unable now to leave “The Yabba”, Grant finds himself dependent on the charity of bullying strangers while being drawn into the crude and hard-drinking lifestyle of the town’s residents.

Grant reluctantly goes drinking with a resident named Tim Hynes (Al Thomas) and goes to Tim’s house. Here he meets Tim’s daughter, Janette. While he and Janette talk, several men who have gathered at the house for a drinking session question Grant’s masculinity, asking: “What’s the matter with him? He’d rather talk to a woman than drink beer.” Janette then tries to initiate an awkward sexual episode with Grant, who vomits. Grant finds refuge of a sort, staying at the shack of an alcoholic medical practitioner known as “Doc” Tydon. Doc tells him that he and many others have had sex with Janette. He also gives Grant pills from his medical kit, ostensibly to cure Grant’s hangover.

Later, a drunk Grant participates in a barbaric kangaroo hunt with Doc and Doc’s friends Dick and Joe. The hunt culminates in Grant clumsily stabbing a wounded kangaroo to death, followed by a pointless drunken brawl between Dick and Joe and the vandalizing of a bush pub. At night’s end, Grant returns to Doc’s shack, where Doc apparently initiates a homosexual encounter between the two. A repulsed Grant leaves the next morning and walks across the desert. He tries to hitch-hike to Sydney, but accidentally boards a truck that takes him straight back to The Yabba”…

‘Wake in Fright was originally released around the same time as The Last Picture Show, which used startlingly similar camerawork to capture the hero’s desolate surroundings, and Straw Dogs, which took a similarly nihilistic approach to backwoods mayhem. In 1971, The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun thought it had “a particular terror … that is not quite like anything else I can remember feeling at the movies.” Several decades later, it still chills.’ John Hartl, The Seattle Times

‘Kotcheff depicts an animalistic landscape, one that at the time angered Aussies for showing the flip side of its cherished myth of rugged white male individualism, stark geographical beauty and mateness. But as a strictly psychological portrait of destructive masculinity it’s a gut-sock, vividly photographed, thrillingly edited and marked by performances (Donald Pleasence and Jack Thompson, most notably) that heave with strange complexity and dark camaraderie. Wake in Fright is true horror.’ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

‘It’s a vision of several terrors: not just the bloodshed but also the brutality of men unmoored from restriction, and the culture of “mates” whose delight rises with each dark act. Wake In Fright burrows deeply under the skin. Like Deliverance, or Straw Dogs, it’s an adventure movie that turns into horror: the horror of human nature.’ Jay Stone, Canada.com

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website | Related: Razorback

Enter the Devil (re-issued as Disciples of Death) is a 1972 low budget American horror film co-written and directed by Frank Q. Dobbs. It stars Joshua Bryant (Black Noon, Salem’s Lot), Irene Kelly, David S. Cass Sr. (who also co-wrote it, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, The Island of Dr. Moreau), John Martin (Mesa of Lost Women), Robert John Allen, Norris Domingue, Linda Rascoe, Happy Shahan, Wanda Wilson and Byron Quisenberry (who later directed Scream in 1981). It was filmed in Texas.

‘Anthropologist Irene Kelly and sheriff’s deputy Josh Bryant  discover that a robed, knfe-wielding Penitente cult called the Disciples of Death have been sacrificing people in the desert. The film also features an abandoned mercury mine, racist rednecks at a hunting lodge, death-by-rattlesnake, and a woman being burned alive. The heroine (Kelly) doesn’t show up until halfway through the movie. This played theatres as late as 1977, us usually on double-bills with imported horror films like Beyond the Door (1974).’ Brian Albright, Regional Horror Films 1958-1990

‘Minor classic and unjustly forgotten horror film seems to have disappeared into the mists of time. I don’t ever remember seeing or hearing of this film until I ran across it in the Sinister Cinema catalog. I’m guessing that the film disappeared into the void since it probably had small distribution and was made about the same time as other western set horror films like Race with the Devil, The Devil’s Rain and others of that type. It’s a shame since the film is actually quite creepy and even scary.’ Steve Kopian, Unseen Films

‘Playing out quietly, stylishly, and just a little bit skewed, it’s the very definition of “regional rarity.” The film feels like S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Open The Door) rubbing off on Leonard Kirtman (Carnival Of Blood) in an isolated patch of no-man’s land in Texas. But nothing much happens. However, for the first time in a long time, blank happenings carry little baggage.’ Joseph A. Ziemba, Bleeding Skull!

‘There are some surprises and one pretty good shock at the end that I did not expect. So the payoff is rather good in this one, especially if you like cult films, but the movie moves so slowly that you have to be patient.’ Geno McGahee, Scared Stiff Reviews

Buy Enter the Devil on Instant Video | DVD from Amazon.com

‘The death scenes are actually pretty tame, with the camera panning toward burning torches, while the grotesque killings are going on. However, with the pseudo-western “charm”, the scenery of the desert, the weird latin chanting, the red robes and torches, and the carrying of human sacrifice subjects out into the sunset and down into caves; you simply cannot deny that this moviedoes have some amount of atmosphere and suspense. This is a bit more than you’d expect from your typical, early 70s drive-in fare.’ Jorge’s Film Reviews

‘Enter the Devil should be watched into infinity. It’s truly a fantastic film, and although I’m sure the pampered elite of gore-hounds (don’t worry, I’m still with you, mark my words) would find it “boring”, I can recommend it to almost anybody. I will have no regrets doing so.’ Adam Bezecny, The Liberal Dead

Buy Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990 from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

IMDb | We are grateful to Basement of Ghoulish Decadence,  eMoviePoster.com, CultMovieForums.com and Critical Condition for some images.

Aswang is a 2011 Filipino fantasy horror film directed and co-written by Jerrold Tarog. It stars Lovi Poe, Paulo Avelino, Albie Casiño, Jillian Ward, Marc Abaya and Niña Jose. The movie is a remake of Peque Gallaga’s 1992 film of the same name.

The numbers of the Abuwak race (Aswang) has declined and the only way they can survive is through the rare ability that only the soon-to-be queen of the Abuwaks, Hasmin (Lovi Poe), possesses. Abuwaks look human in their normal state, but they can fly when they transform into raven-like birds. They can also burrow through earth. They are quick and strong, and they can attack and eat humans. Hasmin prefers to stay with and protect humans when her fellow abuwaks attack the village.

A hired killer named Daniel was forced into his disreputable trade as a youth. Like Hasmin, he doesn’t like killing the innocent, and this reluctance leads him to the abuwak lair, suggested to be somewhere in Pampanga…

‘ … the stars are just the bonuses in this movie which is impressive narrative-wise, and more importantly, visually stunning, thanks to some breathtaking locations like the river, the forest and the convincingly designed abuwak mansion. Also worth-noting is the excellence in sound, which makes even a shot of insects crawling to a hole appear something to be coming from a nightmare.’ Earl Villanueva, Philippine Entertainment Portal

‘You know a movie is testing your patience when you keep on checking the time. I was doing that as the succeeding acts continue to unfold. To be fair, the filmmakers were going for parallelisms between the lives of Hasmin as an ab-wak and Daniel as a hitman. And they were able to establish the similarities such as both witnessed the death of their parents; both are trapped in a cruel world of monsters and criminals; both are attempting to escape their present situation; and both retains an ample amount of human kindness despite of their realities. But the presentation is a tad tedious.’ The Birth of Damnation

‘It’s a good looking film, but just not a truly great piece of story telling. The effects here are good… even the “Bugs Bunny” tunneling… but nothing amazing or special. Our lead actress Lovi Poe looks great as Hasmin… and she’s obviously being groomed for bigger and better things in Pinoy cinema.’ Nekoneko’s Movie Litterbox

Wikipedia | IMDb

It’s Alive is a 2008 straight-to-DVD remake of Larry Cohen‘s 1974 horror film of the same name. It was directed by Josef Rusnak from a screenplay by Cohen, Paul Sopocy and James Portolese and shot in Bulgaria. The film stars Bijou Phillips, James Murray, Raphaël Coleman, Owen Teale, Skye Bennett and Ty Glaser. Officially released straight-to-DVD on October 6, 2009, it is available in both rated and unrated editions.

Interviewed by Films in Review regarding the remake on December 21, 2009  Larry Cohen gave it a negative review, saying “It’s a terrible picture. It’s just beyond awful” and “I would advise anybody who likes my film to cross the street and avoid seeing the new enchilada.”

Just before the end of her semester at college, Lenore Harker (Bijou Phillips) leaves to have a baby with her architect boyfriend, Frank (James Murray) at his remote log cabin. After discovering the baby has doubled in size in just a month, doctors decide to extract the baby by caesarian section, although Frank is not present. As the doctor cuts the umbilical cord, the newborn goes on a rampage, killing every doctor and nurse in the operating room. When the film cuts back to the new mother, the baby is asleep on her stomach and the room is covered with blood.

After questioning by the police, Lenore is allowed to take the baby home. Authorities arrange for a psychologist to help her regain her memory of the delivery. Soon, baby Daniel bites Lenore when she’s feeding him, revealing his taste for blood…

‘The tone is also a bit more even here. Cohen’s film was slightly awkward at times due to some ill-fitting comedic bits, but this one is played completely straight (as long as you consider Bijou Phillips’ performance and the occasional kill shot to be “straight”). And I like the angle that they went for, which is that the mother felt a responsibility to the child, possibly brought on by guilty feelings of trying to abort it (which is also about the only thing we get in terms of an explanation – which isn’t something that I cared about, for the record. Sometimes mutant babies are just mutant babies).’ Horror Movie a Day

‘Whilst It’s Alive is reasonably well acted and the production is above average, it isn’t scary – at all! Barely any of the deaths are shown, and what we do see is comical, and not intentionally so. The writers try to present us with a reason for Daniel’s blood hungry ways, but I didn’t buy it, and neither will you. Only Lenore’s character is built at all, the others are merely conveniently placed prey for little Daniel, and it is difficult to care about such weak characters.’ Stalk ‘n’ Slash

‘Mediocre film with a few nice bits of gore. It tries to be all creepy and intense but it’s mostly laughable and nothing special.’ The Girl Who Loves Horror

‘In the remake, the baby is just an evil little shit.  It sees something living and–in a whir of cheap CGI–kills it.  Rats, cats, rabbits, birds, humans, it doesn’t matter.  If it has a pulse and gets close enough, it’s going to die.  And it’s going to die in a flood of gushing blood and gore.  That’s right, in place of the compelling characters and nuanced motives from the original film, the remake just offers up frenetic gore.’ Matt Wedge, Obsessive Movie Nerd

‘Bijou Phillips… lacks the presence let alone the gravitas to carry off the tragedy of having created her own monster, and so the film’s examination of maternity and madness falls short’ Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

Buy It’s Alive on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Wikipedia | IMDb

Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead is a 2014 Norwegian sequel to Dead Snow and Dead Snow 2: War of the Dead directed by Tommy Wirkola. It stars Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henriksen, Martin Starr, Ørjan Gamst, Monica Haas and Jocelyn DeBoer. The film will be making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January 2014…

The gruesome Nazi zombies are back to finish their mission, but our hero is not willing to die. He is gathering his own army to give them a final fight.

Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators (also known as Alligator Alley) is a 2013 American made-for-TV horror film produced by Active Entertainment and directed by Griff Furst (Wolfsbayne, Lake Placid 3, Swamp Shark, Arachnoquake, Ghost Shark) from a screenplay by Keith Allan (11/11/11) and Delondra Williams (Rise of the Zombies, Zombie Night), based on a story by Rafael Jordan (Frost Giant, Dragon Wasps, Poseidon Rex). It stars Jordan Hinson, Victor Webster, Thomas Francis Murphy (Ghost Shark, Leprechaun’s Revenge) and Christopher Berry.

Louisiana: One of the local clans have been dumping bad moonshine laced with a toxic chemical into the bayou. This has created huge ‘red-necked’ mutant alligators with killer spines on their tails. When the members of a rival clan catch and cook gator meat they begin mutating into monsters too. To complicate matters and in a nod to William Shakespeare, there are two young lovers from each clan who are forbidden to date each other…

‘Barring the ending, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators.  It’s your typical Syfy flick that has enough silly humor and silly characters to keep you laughing and a surprisingly decent amount of gore in it as well.  You know what you’re gonna get with a title like this. Just sit back and have a laugh.’ Scott Shoyer, Anything Horror

‘As we’ve come to expect from Syfy, the special effects are eyesores, the acting ranges from broad-side-of-a-barn caricature to sheer catatonia, and the dialogue is unspeakable. But Redneck Gators commits the cardinal sin for this type of shlock: It’s incredibly boring. So much time is devoted to the star-crossed romance between Avery and Dathan, you’d almost think we’re supposed to care about it.  Meanwhile, the gator attacks are all very predictable and alike…’ Scott Von Doviak, The A.V. Club

‘I was looking forward to Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators for its title alone. But to find a Romeo and Juliet story set in the bayou, along with some funny scripting and gory deaths for most of the characters, I couldn’t have been happier.’ Doug in the Dark

‘The gator effects aren’t original – we’ve seen them in many other Syfy movies – but they do the job. I thought the close-up scenes of the gators, which may have been models in some cases, were well done. Though the Cajun caricatures are a little hard to take, the movie has plenty of gator-eating-man and man-eating-gator action.’ Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing

IMDb

Poor White Trash Part II (1974), also known as Death is a Family Affair and Scum of the Earth, is a Texas-shot American horror film directed by S.F. Brownrigg, starring Gene Ross, Norma Moore, Ann Stafford, Camilla Carr, Charlie Dell and Hugh Feagin.

Helen (Norma Moore) and her new husband Paul (Joel Colodner) arrive at a holiday cottage in the woods where they plan to spend their honeymoon, but their idyll is ruined when a mystery attacker slams an axe into Paul’s chest. Fleeing in terror as night falls, Helen encounters Odis Pickett (Gene Ross), whose shack is the only dwelling for miles around. He persuades the hysterical woman to stay overnight with him and his family, including his daughter Sarah (Camilla Carr), retarded son Bo (Charlie Dell) and pregnant wife Emmy (Ann Stafford). Reluctant, but terrified of the unseen killer, Helen agrees. However, the attacker is not to be dissuaded…

Filmed for three weeks on location in a hundred year old shack in Mexia, East Texas, with a small crew of about seven or eight, Poor White Trash Part II exudes sticky, sweaty sexual malaise and grimy gnat-nibbled discomfort. A consummate tale of backwoods horror, it proves that the promise Brownrigg showed in his debut feature Don’t Look in the Basement was no fluke, emphasising his talent for depicting seedy, morally depraved characters and underlining his consistent streak of compassion for the isolated, under-privileged and vulnerable.

A lot of the appeal of Brownrigg’s films has to do with the strength and talent of his repertory cast, and Poor White Trash Part II is no exception; indeed it’s almost a star vehicle for the most prominent of the troupe, Gene Ross, whose sleazy lascivious good ole boy ‘Pick’ fairly oozes from the screen. Here is a man who introduces his pregnant wife as “the skinny one with the big belly”, and repels her offer of sexual attention by snarling “I don’t want no puckered old blown-up balloon!” We soon discover that he is very friendly with Sarah, his bitterly sarcastic and sexually active daughter: when he tells her that he intends to have a talk “real private, like” with new arrival Helen, she taunts “I know what privates you got in mind – the same sort you been pokin’ in me since I wuz twelve.” This is followed by a heated exchange about how he gave her the clap.

So, not really the sort of film you can imagine the Texas Film Commission being involved with? Think again; actor Charlie Dell (who plays Bo) states that Brownrigg received around $200 a week from the T.F.C. (“and they were very lax about how they counted weeks!”).

Unlike her pig of a husband and her squabbling degenerate children, Emmy (Ann Stafford) is shown to be far more decent, sane and compassionate, but her stoicism in the face of her monstrous husband is perhaps the story’s most horrible facet. She knows how dangerous he is: while father and daughter take delight in taunting the distraught ‘city gal’, Emmy persuades Bo to fetch help, knowing her “likkered up” husband will soon attempt to rape the poor woman. Tucked away within what is essentially an exploitation film is a pointed attack on the primacy of the patriarchal figure in Southern family life: and in the figure of Emmy, the film expresses dismay at the breaking of womens’ spirits in abusive relationships.

In comparison to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, another tale of Deep South family life released around the same time, narrative momentum is not this movie’s greatest asset; instead claustrophobia is the watchword, as Brownrigg revels in confining us to close quarters with the sort of ‘white trash’ the cast of Pink Flamingos might look down upon. Technically the film is better than its predecessor; Robert Alcott (who’d worked for Larry Buchanan before lensing Don’t Look in the Basement) excels here with what at first seems a limited pallette, his subtle use of coloured lighting giving surprising variety to the wretched interiors and shadowy, threatening woodlands. Art direction is more appreciable too – it seems that this time the budget could extend to rolls of hideous wallpaper as well as Don’t Look in the Basement’s battered furniture. Robert Farrar, whose scores for Brownrigg’s movies are an integral part of their sorrowful mood, livens things up occasionally with electric guitar, lending a stylized exploitation crackle to the proceedings.

Most importantly though, there’s a very entertaining script on offer. The credits name Gene Ross as writer of ‘Additional Dialogue’, a fact confirmed to me by Ross himself. Dell and Carr also added new lines to the script, making it something of a co-operative effort. Replete with choice bon mots such as “I’ll whup you till Hell won’t have it!”, this is a movie for connoisseurs of fetid verbal sniping. Indeed the film is compelling as much for what is said as for what is shown: the violence meted out by the killer seems almost prim in comparison to the psychological violence eating away at the dysfunctional Pickett family.

Brownrigg’s original title for the project was Death is a Family Affair, but there’s no evidence that the film saw release as such. After doing the local rounds as Scum of the Earth for a while it was bought up and retitled again for national distribution. “In the tradition of The Godfather Part 2!”, boasted the distributor responsible for calling it Poor White Trash Part II and then putting it on a double bill with Harold Daniels’ re-issued 1957 pot-boiler Poor White Trash (confusingly, the film’s British Intervision VHS release was simply as Poor White Trash (not Part II).

A note on the director’s credit: in interviews conducted for my next book, Nightmare USA Vol.2, Charlie Dell, Camilla Carr and Gene Ross all maintained that their fellow actor Annabelle Weenick (aka Anne MacAdams, Dr. Masters in Don’t Look in the Basement) was in many ways a co-creator of the films, offering the inexperienced Brownrigg technical advice and also making significant contributions to scripting and the handling of actors.

In exciting news, Grindhouse Releasing have announced that the film will be making its debut appearance on DVD and Blu-Ray in the Spring of 2014.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

Second Opinion:

Scum of the Earth may well be the ultimate back-woods/redneck exploitation film, filthy and grimy, full of characters with no redeeming features and with utterly head-swirling dialogue, what it lacks in cash and dramatic art, it makes up for in sleaze. Brownrigg can be mentioned in the same breath as Andy Milligan, another low-budget director who played to his strengths but has divided critics ever since. The film was released theatrically twice, under two different titles, doing rather better the second time around under the title Poor White Trash II. Whether this is because audiences had a fondness for the Peter Graves-starring Poor White Trash, or simply thought that anything with a sequel must be worth seeing is not known.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Keep My Grave Open, also known as The House Where Hell Froze Over, is a 1974 Texas-shot horror film directed by S.F. Brownrigg. It stars Camilla Carr, Stephen Tobolowsky, Ann Stafford, Gene Ross, Sharon Bunn, Bill Thurman and Chelsea Ross.

Lesley Fontaine (Camilla Carr), a troubled single woman in her thirties, lives in an isolated farm estate miles from the nearest town. Someone is committing murders in the vicinity, and the only suspects are Lesley or her brother Kevin (Chelsea [Chelcie] Ross). Among the victims are a hitchhiker (Bill Thurman) looking for food, a local girl called Susie (Ann Stafford), Bobby (Stephen Tobolowsky), a young farmhand, and ‘Twinkle’ (Sharon Bunn), a middle-aged prostitute. Despite the attentions of compassionate Doctor Emerson (Gene Ross), Leslie sinks further into depression and sexual frustration; her only source of happiness is her brother, to whom she is incestuously attracted. But is Kevin real, or a figment of Lesley’s imagination?

Keep My Grave Open, the fourth film by Texan director S.F. Brownrigg (Don’t Look in the Basement; Scum of the Earth), can seem dauntingly slow and minimalistic to those unfamiliar with his earlier work. However, if the viewer can set aside the desire for gory thrills and prepare for a slow psychological mood-piece there’s a great deal to be enjoyed. Any of Brownrigg’s earlier movies would make a better introduction to the charms of his cinema, and yet, despite an almost static plot, this fourth and final horror film is in many ways the culmination of his work.

The film’s lead character (a withdrawn, isolated, mentally ill woman) is emblematic of Brownrigg’s difficulties as a storyteller. He is drawn to creating minimalist character studies involving isolated or hermit-like characters (the ‘forgotten’ residents of an asylum, a reclusive Bayou family, a friendless young woman in a house of bad memories), but the pressures of commercial genre film-making require him to provide typical moments of excitement, tension and release; in a word, action. Keep My Grave Open sees Brownrigg rebel as never before against this requirement. He devotes an uncommon amount of time to shots of the heroine doing the washing up, unpacking groceries and generally wandering around. The slender narrative struggles to keep this introverted woman attached to possible sources of story interest, often resorting to desperate measures (such as the hungry hitch-hiker who wanders in and raids the icebox, or the young farmhand comically obsessed with horses). In Brownrigg’s first three films there’s a compromise – the narratives follow the trajectory of outsiders who must enter tightly-knit groups far removed from ‘mainstream’ society. A new nurse at a run-down asylum, a woman fleeing into the bayou to elude a murderer, a relative called back to her rambling childhood home – these women are audience identification figures as they enter disturbing new environments. The tension between their innocence and the situations they encounter keeps the narrative engine ticking. What makes Keep My Grave Open different, and less commercial, is that the lead character is no longer someone who gets tangled up in other people’s craziness – she embodies it herself.

This change of emphasis seems to have short-circuited Brownrigg’s fragile grip on genre structure. Although there’s an interesting shift, from the earlier films’ terrorised innocents to Grave’s schizoid protagonist who is the author rather than the victim of horrors, the film never quite makes the leap into subjective storytelling. As the sole focus, here, is a deranged central character, it would have been a bolder move to convey her perceptions ‘raw’ in preference to the objective views provided by her victims. What ‘subjective’ scenes there are come with explanatory reverse angles that give the game away too readily. We have plenty of opportunity to see the heroine as demented and self-deluded, whereas, if seen through her eyes, the film would have profitably included ‘Kevin’ all the while, just as Robert Altman gave priority to the delusions of Catherine (Susannah York) in his marvellous film Images (1972). Indeed, Keep My Grave Open shares quite a few qualities with the Altman film; certain camera angles and music cues are similar, and Camilla Carr even resembles Susannah York at times. In this context, the bizarre twist ending is perhaps best regarded as Brownrigg’s final, gallant but implausible reiteration of his favoured theme – the woman isn’t to blame, man is still the agent of destruction!

For all its limitations, there’s still a great deal to admire in this swansong to a special sort of deep Southern cinema. Most importantly, Camilla Carr is excellent in the pivotal role of Lesley. She’s tense, distracted, introverted, and yet sensuous, aggressively so at times, caught between repression and sexual fire. Strikingly different in appearance from scene to scene, as befits a depiction of multiple personality, she effortlessly switches from depressed housebound spinster to sexually provocative siren, and conveys the character’s slide into madness with a vigour that stays just the right side of actorly excess.

There are moments in this movie that give a sense of what Brownrigg might have achieved with a little coaxing and recognition. The opening shot of a vagrant surveying the road, his back to the camera, sat on the rear end of a pick-up truck as the open road stretches away like a memory sliding out of sight, conveys a sweet melancholy that by now has become the sine qua non of Brownrigg’s cinema. The sense of time having passed the characters by, both in terms of their life stories and the psychogeography of the region, is subtly worked into the emotional fabric of the film; “There is no now,” Lesley declares at one point, when asked to compare past and present. Such is the mood of the film, soaked in languor and a subtle sense of decay. Nostalgia, regret, melancholy, a sense of life running down; these are the emotional hues of the film.

Brownrigg had the ability (rather like Hitchcock) to marshall other people’s skills whilst always ending up with something uniquely his own. He didn’t write his own scripts, and the actors to whom I’ve spoken all stress that ‘Brownie’ was not the sole arbiter of what happened on set: he needed technical assistance, and he had help dealing with the performers. But the four films he made between 1972 and 1974 share such a powerful linking ambience that mere ‘organisational’ talent has to be put alongside something more elusive; the ability, desire and determination to convey a particular compact of emotions; horror and fear mixed with sadness, tenderness and regret.

Keep My Grave Open was made some time in 1974, but the date has frequently been mis-attributed as anything from 1976 to 1980. There are no dates on the available video prints, but testimony from the cast indicates that all four of Browrigg’s films were made within two years of each other. Given that Don’t Look in the Basement was shot in the late fall of 1972, this puts Keep My Grave Open somewhere towards the end of 1974; the partially denuded trees, chilly-looking weather and sunlight angled low in the sky suggest late October to mid-November. Furthermore, the actor who plays Kevin (Chelsea – now Chelcie – Ross) left Texas in 1975 to join a theatre troupe in Chicago, which puts a definitive outer limit on the possible shooting date of the film.

Interestingly, Keep My Grave Open marked the beginning of two notable acting careers. Chelcie Ross went on to roles in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Basic Instinct, A Simple Plan, and Drag Me to Hell, while Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays Robert, has carved a busy and varied career working for Mel Brooks, Alan Parker, John Carpenter, Paul Verhoeven and Christopher Nolan. The familiar and wonderful Brownrigg repertory cast (Carr; Weenick; Ross; Stafford) were also joined this time by Bill Thurman, a fellow stalwart of Texan exploitation movies, who worked frequently with Larry Buchanan on films like Mars Needs Women and Zontar: The Thing from Venus, along with classic deep South drive-in movies like Gator Bait, The Creature from Black Lake and The Evictors.

A recent photo of Mimosa Hall as it looks today

Location work for the film centred around a handsome brick building called Mimosa Hall, near Leigh, Harrison County, Texas. Built in 1844, and once the hub of a 3000 acre plantation, at the time of shooting the estate had shrunk to one-hundred and fifty acres and was owned by Douglas V. Blocker, who gave Brownrigg permission to shoot there.

Lesley’s favourite shop, in Jonesville TX, seen here in 2011

Another fascinating location is the general store in which Lesley shops, found in the tiny, almost abandoned settlement of Jonesville, Harrison County, TX. A treasure trove of antique Americana, seemingly caught in a time warp, the store was established in 1847 by the Vaughan family, who still run the business today. For more info and some beautifully atmospheric shots of the rest of Jonesville – population 28! – visit Daniel Barnett’s excellent blog Texas Ghost Towns.

Stephen Thrower, Horrorpedia

The artwork for this VHS sleeve re-uses imagery from The House That Dripped Blood and Tenebrae!