Horror

Nude for Satan (1974)

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nudeforsatanRight away, as in mere seconds, the genius-titled Nude for Satan delivers on the “nude,” with a woman fleeing something at night. We’re not made to wait too long for the “Satan” part of the equation, either, assuming Ol’ Scratch is that guy who won’t cut out the cackling and has the blacked-out tooth — a safe bet, wouldn’t you agree? (As for “for,” well, let’s just give this slice of Italian cheesecake the benefit of the doubt.)

How does one get au naturel for the Antichrist in the first place? Per writer/director Luigi Batzella (The Devil’s Wedding Night), the first step is to be like Dr. William Benson (Stelio Candelli, Demons) and assist a confused beauty like Susan (Rita Calderoni, Delirium), who’s just been injured an auto accident. Then you seek help at the nearest spooky castle, preferably inhabited by Beelzebub (James Harris of Jess Franco’s Kiss Me Killer) because the pieces naturally fall into place from there.

nudeforsatan1Inside the Gothic estate, time is suspended, which means Susan and the doc meet alternate-reality versions of themselves. That’s just for starters, as other strange stuff happens, from seeing painted images on canvas move to falling down a hole and into a room-sized spiderweb. The latter happens to Susan; upon landing with a bounce, her life-affirming right breast pops free and hangs out carefree for the remainder of the 82-minute wonder of softcore surrealism.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, so back to that web: Susan nearly becomes a midnight snack for a giant spider, so poorly made it would not be out-of-place in a small-town church spookhouse. The arachnid has somewhere between 10 and 12 legs, and looks like a dog turd rolled in hair. It also emits sound effects that merge space transmissions and sirens. Basically, it makes the robotic spider from a similar scene in 1965’s Bloody Pit of Horror look good.

Batzella’s work makes about as much sense as Batzella’s last name; he’s like a vo-tech Mario Bava, which equates this project to junior-college performance art, complete with dime-store fireworks, but tell me you don’t want to see that! Research tells me the Dutch added hardcore inserts to push Nude for Satan in full-on porn, but given the extra limbs the spider got, I shudder to think at what the humans might acquire in their triple-X translation. —Rod Lott

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Thriller

Rape Squad (1974)

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rapesquadAlso known under the far less exploitative title of Act of Vengeance, the AIP release Rape Squad is one of those strange drive-in thrillers that packs a feminist message of female empowerment, but only after giving audiences gratuitous images of the women being groped and molested.

Lunch wagon proprietor Linda (Jo Ann Harris, The Beguiled) is the film’s first and foremost victim, raped by a man dressed right out of a slasher series, what with his hockey mask and orange jumpsuit. During the assault, he creepily “requests” that she sing “Jingle Bells” because — his words here, so don’t shoot the messenger — “Music is always good with ballin’!”

rapesquad1When she finds other women who underwent similar trauma, she excitedly poses the hence-the-title question, “How do you feel about forming a rape squad?” Even without Linda explaining what a rape squad is or does, and what privileges its membership possibly could have, the ladies are all-in. It entails taking karate classes, followed by a nude group Jacuzzi bath, then turning the tables on predatory dudes via such methods of dying their dicks blue. Activism never felt so … I dunno, primary-hued?

Bob Kelljan of AIP’s Count Yorga pictures directs from a script credited in part to Betty Conklin. Don’t be fooled thinking a woman had any creative say on this uncomfortable revenger, as that’s a nom de plume for David Kidd, scribe of The Swinging Cheerleaders, which I’m guessing isn’t to be found on Gloria Steinem’s shelves. —Rod Lott

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Horror

Fear Clinic (2014)

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fearclinicIf it’s Tuesday, it must be a new straight-to-video horror film starring Robert Englund. In this case, it’s Fear Clinic, born from the short-lived web series of the same name, in which the former Freddy Krueger traded Nightmares for phobias.

Englund reprises his role as Dr. Andover, renegade brain researcher and inventor of a coffin-like machine that animates one’s fears into vivid hallucinations, in hopes of curing his patients of that which frightens them to the point of crippling. This being a horror movie, the contraption doesn’t work as planned. This being from the same creative team as the 2009 series — namely, director/co-writer Robert Hall, the man behind the effective throwback ChromeSkull slashers — it arrives as a missed opportunity and a major disappointment. What worked in episodic bursts does not gel as one shared story, which concerns the struggling survivors of a tragic diner shooting that left several dead, including one child.

fearclinic1In shedding the serial nature of its source material, Fear Clinic the feature loses its base appeal. While it’s not required viewers have the show under their belt before watching the movie, this project does serve as a direct continuation. Yet it doesn’t even follow its own internal logic, so fans may be as lost as newcomers as to just what the hell is going on. I was, and I happily devoured those episodes as they premiered five years prior.

Budgetary issues are apparent, and may be somewhat to blame for the script not being up to snuff. I am assuming that a poor showing in crowdsource funding are why once-attached Kane Hodder and Danielle Harris are no-shows in reviving their series characters; in their place is Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor — not exactly a fair trade. Casting issues aside, one can’t help but notice how fake the CGI spiders look: so pitiful, the intended scare effect is anything but. Speaking of the arac war, a special effect Hall is able to pull off seems swiped from the Venom portions of Spider-Man 3. Oh, what a tangled web … —Rod Lott

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Thriller

The Bride Wore Black (1968)

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brideworeblackThirty-five years before Uma Thurman’s Kill Bill bride murdered her way through a five-person list to avenge the assassination of her would-be hubby, Jeanne Moreau did the same in The Bride Wore Black. The film was director François Truffaut’s homage to the suspense thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock, whom the French New Wave pioneer interviewed in the now-essential cinema-study text Hitchcock/Truffaut, published one year before.

For this stylish tribute, Truffaut brought frequent Hitch composer Bernard Herrmann (Psycho) along for the tour and tapped a crime novel by Cornell Woolrich, who wrote the short story on which Hitch’s Rear Window was based.

While the details surrounding the shooting are held from viewers too long that confusion initially reigns, brand-new wife Julie Kohler (Moreau, La Femme Nikita) watches in horror as the love of her life is shot dead on the church steps, presumably seconds after the ceremony bound them ’til death do they part.

brideworeblack1Part!

One thwarted suicide attempt later, the grieving, perpetually frowning Julie decides to move on with life, as in getting even with the quintet of card-playing bachelors responsible for her spouse’s untimely demise. As she does so, each through a wildly different method — pushing, poisoning, whatev — she crosses off the poor bastard’s name in her little black book. (An avenger’s trade secret? Accurate, real-time record-keeping.)

Even masters of cinema have their missteps, and that’s how Bride may strike viewers who look at it strictly as an exercise in the Hitchcock vein. Without Herrmann’s score in place, the movie doesn’t feel the slightest Hitchcockian; heck, Moreau isn’t even blonde! To be fair, approach Truffaut as Truffaut. The French approach genre markedly different than the English, and Bride is his take on the thriller as Fahrenheit 451 was his take on sci-fi: an ambitious, if not entirely successful marriage of art and commerce. With an unexpected sequence of animation, the film is always interesting to look at, even when the story points lag. Don’t pay too much attention beyond what resides at the surface, because Truffaut didn’t; in fact, he left open a huge plot hole — upon which the entire work hinges. —Rod Lott

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Reading Material

Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection

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madmoviesIn 1985, I was 14 and at the peak of my obsessive love for Mad magazine. Late that summer, when I read a one-sentence mention in TV Guide that a syndicated show titled Mad Movies was among that fall’s new fare, I flipped. Finally, something to look forward to in my so-called life!

Imagine my disappointment when Mad Movies soon premiered, and under the full title of Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection. Not only did the program have zilch to do with my favorite “cheap” mag, but I didn’t find it all that funny, either, no matter how hard its rather desperate laugh track tried to convince me otherwise. (Don’t even get me started on FTV, the woeful MTV parody that shared the hour on my local station.)

The premise of Mad Movies was simple: The California-based improv troupe The L.A. Connection lip-synched a comical new storyline to heavily condensed versions of various films in the public domain, including comedies (The Little Princess), mysteries (Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon), thrillers (D.O.A.) and horror (Night of the Living Dead).

I share all that so I can say that even with my relationship with the show being brief and unsuccessful, I still looked forward to reading the world’s first — and likely only, ever — book on the short-lived series: the straightforward-titled Mad Movies with the L.A. Connection by Cashiers du Cinemart madman Mike White. After all, the show has its cult, and I admire its playfully anarchic, subversive spirit even without loving the final product. It’s possible that without it and similar experiments (see below), Mystery Science Theater 3000 would not exist.

From BearManor Media, the slim paperback details the show’s history, and it’s one that includes such players as Alan Thicke, Will Ferrell and — va-va-voom! — the Landers sisters. While not exactly sordid, the behind-the-scenes stories are candid enough to reveal a fair share of dueling egos at play, so perhaps it’s for the best the series lasted only one season. White includes an episode guide shortly after the halfway mark, and the book is illustrated with photos and old ads throughout.

It’s to White’s credit that the book would be interesting enough telling The L.A. Connection’s brush with nationwide mainstream television. Yet he doesn’t stop there; as readers of Cinemart’s most recent issue know (being treated to a preview excerpt), White discusses the comedic art form of “mock dubbing” as a whole, which has resulted in such niche features as What’s Up, Hideous Sun Demon (with Jay Leno among the voice cast), Blobermouth and Hercules Returns, all of which I now must see.

Love or loathe Mad Movies the TV show, any fan of that culture-spoofing style will enjoy Mad Movies the book. If there’s a bone to be picked from this chicken, it’s that White often quotes what should just be paraphrased, if not all but stricken, and yet his prose flows. (Allow me to pause and plug his outstanding collection of film criticism, 2013’s Cinema Detours.) At 132 pages, it can be read in less than two hours, which is roughly equal to the total time I spent watching the show in ’85 before deciding to stop tuning in; there were many Mads to be read and re-read, after all. —Rod Lott

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