All posts by Rod Lott

The Vampire Happening (1971)

After an incognito viewing of herself in an adult movie shown on a commercial airline (!), American actress Betty Williams (Pia Degermark, Elvira Madigan) lands in Transylvania, where she has just inherited the requisite spooky old castle whose basement is laden with torture devices specifically for use on naked women.

The place also bears — bares? — a nude portrait of her great-grandmother, Baroness Clarimonde (also Degermark), who looks just like her, except that Betty’s hair is blonde to her ancestor’s brunette. Also, Clarimonde is a vampire who emerges from her coffin and corrupts nearby villagers, in particular the leering Catholics next door. Seduction follows, several times over.

All this culminates in quite the swingin’ party-cum-orgy where the guest of honor is none other than Count Dracula himself (Ferdy Mayne, Conan the Destroyer), who swoops in on his own branded helicopter, flashes the devil’s horns to his admirers, and goes inside to enjoy a banana. If you couldn’t tell by now, The Vampire Happening is a stab at sexy horror comedy à la The Fearless Vampire Killers, but minus the touch of Roman Polanski. (In his place is Hammer/Amicus vet Freddie Francis.)

In the most riotous scene, Betty flashes a monk from her window, prompting the lust-suffering holy man to the imagine all the surrounding trees as naughty parts, moss and all, like something from the height of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker era. Speaking of, the gay male flight attendant gags in the opening scenes are as un-PC as Stephen Stucker’s running ones in Airplane!, but not as funny. In fact, little in Vamp Hap is truly funny, but the movie is so odd, so laden with nudity, so goofily self-aware, you gotta see it anyway. —Rod Lott

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7 Lost-in-Translation Title Cards and Taglines from Kung Fu Trailers on the Karate: The Hand of Death DVD

1. Temple of Death: “FATAL FIGHTING, HUMEROUS” and “WELL GUARANTEE”
2. Deadly Strike: “STRON CASTING! NEW STRIKES! RISKS EVERYWHERE!”
3. Superfist: “FUGITIVE? DRUG TRAFFICKER? ASSASSINATION! REVENGE!”
4. Hammerfist Masters: “Featuring the Charming Lady”
5. The Mad, the Mean, and the Deadly: “Furious Fighting That Startle Everybody!”
6. Dragons Never Die: “Take your mama to see it before somebody else does!”
7. Fury of the Black Belt: “MOVABLE SIGHT IN EVERY SECOND! THE FEELING OF PRESSURE! CARRY OUT FORCE! THE QUESTION OF LOWS! IT IS AN EXPLOSIVE FILM!” —Rod Lott

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Death Note (2006)

The Death Note manga has a story so extensive, so twisty-turvy, so dozen-volumey, I wondered how Japan ever could adapt it into a live-action feature film. Answer: It couldn’t. Instead, it had to do it in two: 2006’s Death Note and its immediate sequel, Death Note: The Last Name. Directed by Shusuke Kaneko (one-third of Necronomicon: Book of the Dead and several Gamera films of the ’90s), the first films adheres closely to its source material.

Tatsuya Fujiwara (Battle Royale) plays Light Yagami, a college student who comes across one helluva unique notebook in the rain and takes it home. Clad in black covers emblazoned with the name “Death Note,” its pages are blank. The inside-front-cover instructions explain why: Write someone’s name in the book, and they instantly die. The son of a police detective, Light at first uses this find for good, to rid Japan of its hardened criminals, especially those who’ve slipped through the fingers of Lady Justice. It’s only after he becomes a suspect in this string of serial “murders” that he uses it to save it his own hide.

After the police get nowhere — and lose a lot of their own men in the process — they lean on the candy-addicted, hermit/genius known only as L (Ken’ichi Matsuyama of Detroit Metal City). Thus begins a chess game of wits that also involves a clingy media pop tart, several skeptics and, of course, the so-named shinigami death gods, rendered here through CGI that ranges from fluid to clunky, depending upon the shot.

It’s a crisp, slick slice of crime and fantasy cinema, if a bit too long. The most amazing thing is how much Matsuyama inhabits the L character as originally portrayed on the page by artist Takeshi Obata: his quirks, his stance, his malnourished look, his everything. It’s uncanny. The film marks a killer concept, well-executed — if you’ll pardon the double pun. —Rod Lott

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The Corpse Vanishes (1942)

Better than most of Bela Lugosi’s Poverty Row efforts — but still just average — is The Corpse Vanishes, in which he plays a mad doctor who sends poisoned orchids to brides so that they’ll expire on the altar.

He then steals their bodies — hence the title — so that he can extract their youth and inject it into his aging wife, who sleeps in a coffin. A nosy female reporter figures it all out. A cop shoots a midget. —Rod Lott

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