All posts by Rod Lott

The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (1974)

Rip-offs of The Exorcist are a fascinating subgenre all their own. So many were made in that blockbuster’s wake, it’s difficult to keep them apart. It doesn’t help that so many of the foreign imports played in the States under a litany of titles. Originally L’ossessa, Italy’s Enter the Devil can be found as The Tormented, The Devil Obsession, The Obsessed and, best of all, the rather misleading The Sexorcist. But it’s the moniker of The Eerie Midnight Horror Show under which this mess is mostly widely available — a sheer marketing ploy of association with Rocky Horror, with which it shares nothing but color.

According to the opening credits, this one’s “based on a true story.” Because no doubt, every art student like Danila (Stella Carnacina) has been raped by an arched-eyebrow Satan (Ivan Rassimov, star of Umberto Lenzi’s Eaten Alive!), who inhabits a 15th-century, wooden crucifixion sculpture and makes it come to life to show her wood of a different kind. From there, her face goes flush and she begins exhibiting strange behavior.

You know the drill: gaping stigmata, thrashing bed, scab-ridden lips, emission of more orgasmic cries than there are minutes in the movie. Her parents catch her masturbating, but wait for an uncomfortably long time before doing anything about it. (That could be because her mom is a bit of perv herself, a cheating whore who likes to be whipped, played by The Arena’s Lucretia Love, a name that sounds like a Sucrets fetish.)

Before long, it’s “Get thee to a nunnery!,” where the nonsensical script kicks into narrative overdrive and crackles with compelling dialogue, like this exchange:
“Good morning, Father Xeno.”
“Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Father Xeno.”
“Morning.”

The last 15 minutes find said Father Xeno (Luigi Pistilli of For a Few Dollars More) in the inevitable good-vs.-evil showdown. The possessed Danila wants to give him a beej, then foams at the mouth and vomits great, green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts or something of that sort. Don’t pretend like you don’t want to see that. —Rod Lott

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Double Vision (2002)

If Seven had more of a supernatural bent and was heavily steeped in Asian culture, it might look like Double Vision, a superb serial killer effort from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The killer first strikes when a CEO is discovered in his office dead from drowning, yet with no signs of water to be found. Later, a senator’s mistress is burned to death in her apartment, but with no indication of fire present.

Troubled cop Tony Leung (Red Cliff) is baffled, as is the rest of the force, so they call on the expertise of American FBI agent David Morse for help. What they discover in their investigation proves more complicated than anything they’ve encountered in their work before.

The reveal of the killer proves to be anticlimactic, but then the film makes up for it by throwing a huge, steel-plated monkey wrench into the plot that really shakes things up – something I would never expect. The last act isn’t as good as the setup since the focus shifts from suspenseful to spiritual, but Chen Kuo Fu’s film as a whole is extremely well-crafted and anchored by two solid leads. —Rod Lott

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Game of Death II (1981)

I’ve never seen anything quite like Game of Death II, in which the late Bruce Lee unwittingly reprises his role as Billy Lo from the misbegotten Game of Death. Like that 1978 turd, this is a Bruceploitation film, utilizing as much Bruce stock footage as they can get away with, and creating an illusion that he’s the star by shooting a double from the back, from the side or obscured by household items. But whereas that film was a chore to sit through, this hack job is a hoot.

If there’s a story to it, I sure didn’t catch it, but Billy fights his way through several colorful opponents before tragically dying at the film’s midpoint when he falls from a helicopter. For the second half, his brother, Bobby (Tong Lung), enters and becomes the main character, seeking revenge for Billy’s death.

That’s when things get crazy. Like my favorite scene, when Billy is sucking face with a fully naked skank. She tries to kill him, the lights go out, and a lion (obviously a guy in a suit) bursts through the wall and chases them around the room. Read that sentence again and let it sink in. I also dug the finale, which takes place in the underground “tower of death,” a high-tech, booby-trapped, spy-type lair that suggests the film is a cut-rate Enter the Dragon impostor. There Bobby takes on several henchmen and a guy in a Tarzan suit, just because.

Although the film itself is pretty funny (not on purpose), the martial arts on display in Game of Death II are pretty serious stuff, courtesy of fight choreographer Yuen Woo Ping, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Matrix; Kill Bill and just about everything else that rules. —Rod Lott

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