Original subtitles

Well, we have The Mad Foxes now.

What to say about this one?

I love this film. I didn't see it for a long, long time. I think I only saw it

about five years ago.

And you know how you think maybe you've squeezed the last drops out of a

particular period of film. You think, OK, I know my Spanish horror now.

I'm probably not going to be surprised by any really major revelations or

shockers, you know.

This is extraordinary. It's one of the...

It's one of the funniest and strangest films from that period that I've seen.

Strange on so many levels. Like for a start, it's about the gayest

film I think I've ever seen.

And more, please.

Not only have you got a biker gang who are as homoerotic as anything from

Kenneth Anger, the hero gets beaten up by them and phones a karate club to call

for some help to battle with the bikers.

Gang of bastard hoodlums.

I know where to find them.

And you want us to help you, is that it? Yeah, that's it. Would you?

Of course.

And the karate club are as gay as any karate club I've ever seen.

Mishima ought to be running the place, you know, it's just incredible.

Come on, gang!

Let's teach these guns a good lesson!

I don't know if there was any gay involvement behind the camera at all. I

I'd speculate, at a guess, you know, gaydar tweaking.

Yes, I would imagine there must be some, surely, surely.

Because... I don't know if my sides can take it if there isn't, because it

becomes even funnier if there isn't.

If it's made by somebody with a gay sensibility, then it's a great, fun

exploitation film. If it's made by somebody who's straight down the line

heterosexual, then it's just...

Ten times funnier. Although this is a wonderful film with tons of quotable

dialogue and lots and lots of sex and violence, that's only in its uncut form.

Sadly, the version, this version, which is released in this country on video,

has a lot of that cut out and it was a BBFCX version.

This is one of those instances where I would strongly recommend that you watch

the uncut version and don't go anywhere near this version because too much is

missing.

This is a movie that its opening gambit is to show you the old chestnut of the

biker gang that cut off a guy's prick and shove it down his throat.

If you're going to show that, you need to see it. You can't hint at it, can

What shall I do?

Cut it off.

No, no, no, no!

So it's the kind of thing that this film does all the way through. There are

violent moments in this film, like old ladies in wheelchairs getting shotgun

blasts to the head.

It's got the kind of plotting where instead of actually coming up with a

narrative structure, you just basically say, Right, OK, I need to get some more

victims in. Where are we going to get them from? So the hero literally, en

to somewhere important, stops off and picks up a hitchhiker for no other

than just we need another girl in the story.

Would you mind giving me a lip? I'm going that way.

The lip has been written by somebody who has a complete memory wipe every ten

minutes. You could join it at any point in the film and you won't lose anything,

you won't misunderstand anything, because it's always restarting.

And then if the writer gets into difficulty, for instance, when the hero

trying to track down the bikers and he needs to work out where their secret

is, he just pulls into a gas station and says to the guy at the pump, I'm

looking for this biker gang. And he says, oh, sure, they live down the road,

just as such and such. Yeah, everybody knows their hideout.

Just follow the road straight forward until you cross three bridges, then turn

to the right at the first street you find.

Will they be there? Yeah. You sure those are the ones? Those hoodlums are

unmistakable with their helmets and dirty hair.

So there's no attempt at plotting, just convenience is the name of the game.

But you don't care, it doesn't really matter, because what the film is really

about is some guy having a grenade tossed into the toilet whilst he's on

and getting blown up ass first.

And also imported from some of the Franco films, music as well.

There are musical cues from a lot of the films that Franco made for Dietrich,

like Voodoo Passion.

So there is a lot of overlap, and there are locations which you might recognise.

If you know Jack the Ripper by Jess Franco, you'll see an interior which is

shared with that film as well. So even though most of the film was shot on

location in Barcelona, a lot of the interiors were shot at Irwin Dietrich

Studios in Switzerland, in Zurich.

As far as trying to understand why a film that was so heavily cut ended up on

the Section 3 list, well, maybe this is one instance of the marketing people

getting it wrong, thinking that by putting on dire warnings about... uh

an extremely violent film which could seriously disturb you that they thought

that that would help to sell a film which had essentially been cut to pieces

um maybe instead all it did was attract the attention of the censors it's worth

mentioning as well that on top of the music borrowed from the jess franco

dietrich productions um it does kick off with uh with a piece of music by

croakers

Given the homoerotic quality of the film in general, I can't help feeling that

they missed a trick and really they should have got Judas Priest.

Comrade, tonight we've come here to farewell a friend. A friend whom we will

forget ever.

I swear it!

So here's a question for you. What was the first film rated G for violence in

America?

Give up?

Well, it's Mark of the Devil, directed by Michael Armstrong.

Or was it?

Mark of the Devil's original title in German was Witches Tortured Till the

Comes. But it started off as a script called The Witch Hunter, Dr Dracula.

It was rather as if somebody had seen Witchfinder General on Monday, written

half a script, then seen a Dracula film on Tuesday, and God knows what they've

been on on Wednesday.

Now, this was written by an ex -matinee idol who was a very, very famous actor

in Germany called Adrian Hoven. And he went to Gloria Films and said, look, I

want to make this movie.

They took a look at it and said, well, yeah, it's OK, but it doesn't really get

there. And also, we don't want you to direct. We want somebody else to do

They chose Michael Armstrong, the British director of Haunted House of

because that had been a huge hit in Germany.

Haunted House had opened in Germany and done very good business.

And Adrian Hoven, who produced Mark of the Devil, had originally wanted to make

a film which he would have starred in, written, directed and done everything.

Adrian Hoven hated Michael Armstrong coming on board.

I am the witch finder in this town. Is that clear?

So I thought, well, what on earth am I going to do with this?

And as the starting point had been, at least this witch hunting idea, I

well, let me...

go from there because they had a very limited time which to write it michael

armstrong agreed to do the film but when he first read the script um he told me

that it was like a hardcore version of dracula with a few sort of witch hunters

thrown in so he decided to rewrite it entirely from scratch under the name

sergio kastner now this of course didn't sit well with adrian hoven who thought

he'd written a masterpiece and this was the reason why the filming was

apparently an absolute nightmare

Owen then decided he was going to act in it as well.

These dolls really can do devilish things.

And almost for the first day of shooting, he'd be on set.

And the cameraman also, Ernst Kalinka, was a great personal friend of his. So

that didn't help. I had a lot of enemy in my lighting cameraman, who also

speak English.

I mean, Udo Keir, who's the lead actor in it, used to tell me that there were

screaming matches all the way through, every single day.

And it sort of carried on like that the whole time.

It was an absolute nightmare. I mean, the crew was on Hoven's side, and here

this upstart Englishman coming along and taking over, who they saw as, like, a

master of the art.

Here, of course, was also...

Not truthful about the movie. He always told me that he never saw any of the

violence being filmed But he's actually in the frame and Michael Armstrong then

told me that of course Udo saw everything and he sort of like

slightly from it when it was beginning quite a controversial movie You see

a lot of torture in this and according to Armstrong It was actually filmed

the real torture instruments in the actual places where his fictional story

supposedly set the

Tongue -carrying scene.

The tongue.

All that cage and everything is authentic.

The thumb screws are authentic.

It's horrible, because it's basically just a vice.

They just screwed it down, that was it.

The voting machines, again, were all authentic, the way they were done. Even

the...

the thing with Gabby Hooks when she's actually stretched out and low down that

way.

I suppose for the crowd, they would come up with showbiz -type variations.

And so because of it, I thought, I want to show this. I want to show exactly

what horrendous kind of things are done by God -fearing people in the name of

God and the hypocrisy of it. And so taking that as the principal theme.

I started working on the script.

What became interesting for me was the idea of the local amateur witch hunter,

who's really just doing it for his own personal sexual ends, the albino figure

in the movie. I swear he rapes women before burning them.

Yes, it's true.

Look, look, look at his face.

He is the devil.

But what happens when the state takes over?

And particularly what happens when a character comes in who is doing it in

name of God, in the name of right.

We must never weaken in performing God's work. So I wanted to really show

that whereas a one -off amateur is one thing and bad enough, but once it

official and state, then it is horrendous.

Michael Armstrong always told me the worst sort of violence is the violence

don't look away from.

And that's the reason he made the scenes very, very graphic, very cruel and very

barbarous. I believe violence when presented should be unpleasant for an

audience. I don't think it's helpful that one should be able to sit and enjoy

it.

But in his original script, it was going to end supernaturally with an

explanation that said, it's OK, it's fine.

But the producers decided to take that off because they felt it was a bit

The ending that never was, or the ending that was but never actually ended up in

the film, what happened was that after Vanessa

has come across Christine's dead body,

The film, it was then going to go to a series of dissolves.

And it was going to dissolve where he was then in her arms in the graveyard.

And then hands suddenly came out, were trying to grab him.

And the graveyard came alive, all graves opened.

And the Jews were supposed to be the victims of the torture, all coming up to

take Christian with them. He was in her mind, obviously, by this time.

um dreamlike nightmarish uh idea of her trying to cling on to him screaming

he's mine he's mine you have no right to him he's mine he's mine uh which was

the close of the film as he was gradually taken away and it ended on her

screaming that and here is the vomit

bag that you were given on the way in just in case some of the horrific scenes

you saw made you want to throw up

The vomit bag, yes.

And I've actually got one of these, a friend of mine sent me one, empty, from

America when they first launched it. I think it's a wonderful idea, absolutely.

No home should be without one.

In fact, James Furman used to use this movie, or sections of it, in his

lectures. in the 70s for why censorship uh should be around i mean i went to see

one particular lecture by him where he actually used the first 20 minutes of

this and said look this is the reason why these films have to be cut it's so

disgusting and of course all the more reason for me actually wanting to see it

and we could in the 80s with this one james firmer made sure this was always

rejected by the bbfc but here it was completely uncut one of the reasons why

became the focus of attention

Mark of the devil.

It's your sacred duty to tell us the truth.

In Germany, it had opened and been a huge success, but there'd been no

censorship problems.

The first indication of this was when I was told about the reactions in Cannes,

where I gather that year it was totally the scandal movie with everybody talking

about Mark of the devil.

And the...

A British company, New Realm, were going to distribute it here, were making

plans to open it very big, and they couldn't get it through the centre at

And that's really when I think I first became aware of the real problems with

it. I hadn't known about it until then.

I think also because England was the only country that was really...

acting so ridiculously.

And then, of course, it opened in America, which was huge in America.

And I was aware of the success of the film, the commercial success of the

and the fight and the struggle to try and get it shown in England.

And even to this day, it's still cut, I gather.

I mean, another reason why it was frowned upon by censors worldwide is

the violence actually intercut with the sex scenes.

This was always a no -no for most censor boards.

Nevertheless, it was a number one film in Germany.

Interestingly enough, you can't see it there now because it's banned, and there

was indeed a Mark of the Devil Part II directed by Hovind, so he did finally

his way.

I'd love to know the truth behind this movie.

I've heard three sides of the same story, and they've all been different. I

would love to know what actually really did happen on this film set, but so far,

no -one's ever told me the truth.

And now the only... The ghost will descend on you in the shape of lovely

doves. Nice rooster.

Go on, run.

Heart of the devil.

It's your sacred duty to tell us the truth.

Name just one of the accomplices and the executioner will stop the torture.

Confess, confess that you've been guilty of witchcraft.

We must not let her die yet.

I want confession, not corpses.

When you asked me three years ago to become my pupil, I warned you not to see

idol in me.

On the difficult path we are going to go together, I said.

Many innocent people are going to die. I said that to you. I remember the day.

Stop that witch!

Mark of the devil.

Are you afraid?

Is that clear?

Tear up my tongue, but before you do, I'll make them laugh. I'll tell them you

rape women, you burn innocent people, that you kill for money, that you're

impotent.

Be happy.

You mustn't say things like that.

Why?

So beautiful, isn't it?

My lord, she made a pact with the devil in the shape of a man. And after, she

let the devil fornicate with her.

Making the men impotent.

This Vanessa, for example.

She's falsely accused.

Don't become soft.

She's a witch. A beautiful girl, I grant you, but a witch. She will confess.

The prisoner has been sentenced to have his head cut off according to the law of

the land. It has also been decreed that all his earthly possessions be delivered

to the church for safekeeping until disposed of by the Lord Bishop.

In Europe, between the 15th and 19th centuries, it is estimated nearly 8

people were convicted of heresy and executed by fanatical witch hunters in

to save their souls.

In front of death.

thank you for your mercy for having me freed from the terrible agony

of torture.

Which?

Which? Which?

Which?

George

Romero's

favourite film and the one he thinks is the best directed is martin on hello

video um 29 .95 look at the price of this can you believe we actually pay

amount of money for these things especially with quotes saying how

gruesome it is aren't attributed to anybody which is of course a typical

trick from the time this is the first production of george's with richard

rubinstein who would go on to do many many movies and it was based on um a

newspaper story that he saw about a serial killer drinking people's blood

a goblet. And he thought this is a really interesting way of exploring

in a contemporary context.

Martin, another kind of terror.

So that's why you get lead actor John Ampliss.

Is he a vampire?

Isn't he? You don't really know. And it's that ambiguity that a lot of

took note of at the time, because this is a superbly made movie. And a lot of

the flashbacks, while he's indulging in his little syringe theatrics.

were in black and white because of the gothic universal flavor that george

wanted to bring to it in fact there was an original plan to shoot the whole film

in black and white but of course back then as of now that didn't seem like a

very good commercial prospect martin another kind of terror i would like to

like everyone else john amplis was chosen by romero when he saw him in a

where he played a christian persecuted by romans and he felt that if he could

that well and pull it off, he could certainly pull off what is about

versus reality, really, with a bit of the whole... What did George call it? He

called it the curse of Nosferatu. He never mentioned vampires.

Nosferatu.

Nosferatu. I actually met George on Martin for the very first time, and he

very erudite, very, very, you know, keen to put a cross.

uh what he felt with this subtext in this movie and it is very graphic one of

the reasons why obviously people thought that it was on the video nasties list

this was tom savini's very first collaboration with romero hey but i'm a

mechanic i should be fixing cars what am i doing here and i think they got on so

well that it led to their previous work together um All in all, I think this is

a pretty amazing film.

I'm glad it was on the video analysis.

It probably meant more people actually got to see it.

I mean, three things to note about this movie that you probably don't know.

Although it was made in 1977, investors didn't break even with the movie until

1983. When it was shown in Italy, of course, it actually had a Goblin score

it was recut to that.

And Christine Forrest, who's one of the stars of the movie, ended up being Mrs

George Romero just after.

My name is Martin.

I'm 84 years old.

People think I'm crazy when I tell them how old I am.

I'd like to be normal.

I just have a sickness.

The only way I can survive is by drinking blood.

It's not easy living the way I do.

I have to be careful all the time.

But I'm pretty good at it.

I think as I get older, I get better.

I haven't been caught yet.

Martin, another kind of terror.

See, people don't understand what's wrong.

They think that I'm a monster. They think I'm a vampire.

People don't realize that those things they see in the movies are not real.

I don't have a whole lot of women.

It's nice to watch them.

I watch them a lot all the time. I have to.

To be sure that nothing goes wrong.

I follow them. I plan.

I'm very careful.

I have needles now.

I can use them.

I can put them to sleep.

And it doesn't hurt.

Martin.

Another... Kind of terror.

I would like to be like everyone else.

I have to do things that I don't necessarily like to do.

I want to stay alive.

I do need blood.

From the director of Night of the Living Dead.

Massacre Mansion, also released as Mansion of the Doomed. Mansion of the

And probably filmed as The Eyes of Dr.

Chaney. Well, frankly, it's a remake of Les Yeux Sans Visage, except it's the

other way round. It's not Eyes Without a Face, it's The Face Without Eyes.

As in Les Yeux Sans Visage, our mad doctor has stupidly crashed his car and

injured his daughter, but he's blinded her.

However, him being a genius eye surgeon, he finds a way of transplanting the

eyes of unwilling living donors into her head.

However, they don't last long, so he keeps doing it. And the basement just

up with eyeless and fairly annoyed people who, in the end, do what mutants

always do in films like this and get their horribly ironic revenge.

It's kind of a fun picture in a way.

The director is Michael Pataki, who was best known as an actor. I think he's

terrific in Grave of the Vampire, where he plays the vampire. He's also kind of

fun in Zoltan Hound of Dracula, the last descendant of Dracula.

But not, we have to say, much of a director. It's a bit of a plod.

It's one of the early productions from Charles Band's stable.

So it's sort of a...

you know, a foundation stone of his mini -exploitation empire, which has lasted

several decades since. I'm surprised he's not remade it or made 15 sequels to

it. Like everything else, he's had his name on.

It's kind of a cool cast for a, you know, a frankly rubbish exploitation

Richard Basehart, who plays Dr.

Len Chaney, to homage horror films of previous era, he started out as a really

great, intense...

American character actor in film noir. He made a great movie called 14 Hours

about a guy standing on a ledge.

And then he was married for a while to Valentina Cortese, the Italian actress,

and went to Rome and he appeared in Fellini movies.

And then somehow after that, he ended up on television doing Voyage to the

Bottom of the Sea for endless years, which I think took a bit of the gloss

him as a movie star.

He did appear in major motion pictures afterwards. He's in The Satan Bug, for

instance, as a mad scientist in that as well. But he didn't get the kind of

leading roles his talent deserved.

And in this little film, he's really trying, he's really putting out, he's

for the pathos of this stupid role, which is badly written and makes no

But he's really working hard at it.

Gloria Graham plays the Alida Valley role of the housekeeper who's kind of in

love with him and enables all the horrible stuff to go on.

Get rid of those people, then.

How would you suggest that we do that, Catherine?

Kill them. She also is a great faded beauty from the wonderful 1950s

She made a couple of other...

horror exploitation movies at the time. Blood and Lace, she's pretty good in.

Here, I think she's fun. I think she, you know, brings her A -game to it.

And the, almost by default, the young hero is Lance Henriksen, who must have

longest filmography of any exploitation veteran going.

And he's been in...

almost, I would imagine, well over 100 pictures by now. This is one of his

credits. It's odd seeing a young Lance Henriksen.

Dr Cheney, at the risk of compounding your displeasure with me, some of us

still like to get your opinion.

Dr Buran of Dublin and his theory regarding eye transplants.

It's also unfortunate because...

One of the reasons people hire Lance Henriksen is he's got these great eyes.

They photograph really well on screen. He's got this kind of fanatic gleam.

And of course, most of this film, he's playing with his eyes bandaged because

he's had them ripped out and put into somebody else's face.

Yeah, that was very, very ironic.

Which limits his ability to act down there in the basement. However, he gets

own back at the end.

They told us death was the ultimate horror.

They were wrong.

Yet who would have predicted that dreadful day how far

I might have to go?

I'll see you in hell.

I don't care.

The only thing you...

Better discover is a way to get rid of those people.

Wait a minute. This isn't the way to Disneyland. You're heading toward the

ocean. Catherine, no more!

Kill them.

Daddy, I love you.

That's most of us have my intent.

Oh, please, people. Let me go. Let me go.

Some you'll feel.

You'll feel Mansion of the Doomed.

top 10 means in this context.

I mean, was it like number 10 in Variety's list of director video

couldn't get a proper theatrical release? Who knows?

Are you brave enough to enter the mausoleums?

This is what you'll remember from Mausoleum, is Bobby Brise, who was sort

early screen queen, even before Linnea Quigley.

We seem to court, like, the horror fanzines.

Forrest J. Ackerman, who's in her other film, Evil Spawn, seemed to build her up

as sort of a minor horror celebrity, presumably in the hope that she'd go on

be as big a star as, ooh, Florence Marley.

That, of course, didn't happen.

She stuck around, she made one other film, Evil Swarm, which is a sort of

of The Watchwoman, and then just did cameos in sort of Fred Olin Ray -type

horror pictures.

Truth be told, she wasn't really that well -suited to horror. She was a big,

buxom, bubbly California blonde.

Her credits listed here are things like The Fall Guy and Charlie's Angels.

You OK?

Mm -hm.

I think to be a horror star, you kind of have to have a sort of darker

personality, be a sort of Barbara Steele -type character.

She gave her soul to the evil force in the mausoleum.

What's the matter, Susan?

This film seems to be entirely built around the talents of Bobby Brzee.

You didn't know I existed!

Which is odd, because she's not much of an actress, either.

It does have the scene where her breasts turn into individual monsters with

fangs and chew on the chest

of her leading man, Roger Gortner, the former evangelist and the great

star of Star Crash and Food of the Gods.

And that's kind of like the big ticket in this film is that sequence, is the

fanged nipples.

And I have to say, it's not even that well done. It's a John Buechler effect.

And it's the sort of thing that Italian movies like Demons would have done in a

much more gross and disturbing way.

But it's so conceptually weird that it does kind of lodge in your memory.

However, it obliterates everything else about the film, which is the old one

about the...

The woman who's doomed to be possessed by an evil witch and will then slaughter

everybody else in the film to get revenge.

It's also one of those movies where anagrams and palindromes come into play.

It's about the nomad family and it takes forever for somebody to work out that

that's demon spelt backwards.

And there's a big sort of... you know, crashing revelation built around that.

It's kind of fun. But, you know, as

mausoleum -based horror movies go, it's not Phantasm. It's not even One Dark

Night. It's your third most important mausoleum -based horror film of the

1980s. If that's enough to make you want to see it, and frankly, it would be

enough to make me want to see it.

then you probably need to track it down instantly.

Was it a broken dream?

An unfinished memory?

What terrible secret drew Susan to the mausoleum?

I didn't mean to scare you, Mrs. Farrow.

She gave her

soul to the evil force in the mausoleum. What's the matter, Susan?

What cursed things?

Oh, my God!

Now, the secret haunts her, and she cannot control the power.

There's some strange shit going on in this house.

What are you talking about? What's wrong with my wife? She's not your wife.

The woman you're living with... Looks like Susan. She looks exactly like your

wife, but she's not your wife. She lives in horror as she tries to escape the

demon she has become.

Obviously, we're not going to be able to confine her. What do you suggest?

Go to the mausoleum tonight.

A new dimension in fright. An experience of untold terror.

I am going to finish what your father died trying to do.

Are you brave enough to enter the mausoleums?

Well, Don Russo's Midnight is a very low -budget feature. It's made for about

$70 ,000 or something.

It was probably made around about 1980 or didn't actually get released until

about 1982.

The book from the co -author of Night of the Living Dead comes to life on the

screen. Don't miss John Russo's Midnight.

It's a real mishmash. It's kind of like, I think John Russo said he was

influenced by the success of Friday the 13th, like many filmmakers.

but this is kind of like um if you can imagine a potpourri of horror movie not

cliches exactly but you've got the slasher movie you've got um the backward

satanic cult almighty lord satan we ask thee to help us in the destruction of

our enemies as you have done for us today.

You've got not zombies exactly, but like trying to resurrect the dead

grandmother or mother, I think it was. The backdrop is basically a young girl

called Nancy who escapes home after being molested by Lawrence Tierney,

famous Hollywood actor, who also went on to appear in The Prowler. John Russo

was involved famously with Night of the Living Dead, which, of course, was a

trendsetter by actually having a black protagonist.

And Midnight was one of the few kind of fashion movies or films from the early

1980s which actually had black...

characters in it hey hank i won't mind picking her up like we're just a couple

minutes too late though huh yeah good thing too obviously she's jailbait but

there's also um two characters that become the most flasherific i kind of

element for the film there's a black pastor and his teenage daughter i'm

reverend carrington pastor of the first baptist church this is my daughter

sandra and in the moment where it's really where the real nod to the slash

is they get chased by this huge fat

giggling overweight kind of um backwards psycho with a machete um and he chases

around the house laughing all the time it's

kind of a strange kind of movie but it's i mean i like it and also it's got

probably one of the catchiest theme tunes of all early 80s movies i mean

it's it's bad but i love it

Once you've heard it, you can't get it out of your head.

Midnight stars John

Amplis. You're in luck.

Who was in Romero's Martin. John talks about the film, I think, in one of the

DVD intros for when it was put out, saying that he was a little bit off his

when he did it, but he managed to hold it all together.

It's a great little fun movie. It's amazing how much you can do for $70

Some of the acting's a little bit... you know, rough around the edges.

But Russo said, I think some of the film stock got damaged or there was

something wrong with it. So a lot of the better takes he couldn't use, which is

why the film has a slightly strange feel to it because they use some of the

takes that weren't quite as good. But it gives the film a bit of a dog -eared

charm, I think. Midnight's put out by Intervision in the UK on video with a

slightly misleading kind of cover because it showed this kind of zombie

from a kind of a chalice. And of course, there wasn't actually a zombie in the

movie, but, you know, hey -ho sort of misleading video.

covers a dime a dozen.

And of course, the other thing, of course, with the movie, it's got Tom

special effects, which, of course, is a selling point. But actually, even if you

watch the uncut version, the special effects aren't all that to write home

about. There's a decapitation scene in the film, which is quite graphic.

But again, because it's such a low -budgeted movie, it's not Savini's

hour. It's not Rousseau's finest hour, but it's a fun movie.

Tom is 19, Nancy 17, and Hank 21.

They had a good time for a while, but now they're missing.

It all started as innocent fun.

The van, the drinking, the turn -ons, until they cross the county line.

They cross the line into a lonely community where anything can happen,

anyone can disappear without a trace.

And now, from the pages of John Russo's best -selling novel, the story becomes a

motion picture, Midnight.

I thought I saw a shoe sticking out from under that blanket.

Nah, he was just a big farmer with a bundle.

Your mind's playing tricks on you, girl. You're all shook up.

Soon as we find a good campsite, we'll smoke some of this good hash and loosen

you up.

Hold it there, fellas.

Don't you make any foolish moves.

Keep your hands visible.

You reach for anything inside that bag and I won't wait to see what you're

reaching for.

I'll just shoot.

Maybe we'll drag them out in the woods one at a time.

Question them separately.

Good idea.

What'd you do with my daughter?

Well, she might be right in front of you.

About a half a dozen people found dead

around here just in the past couple of years since I came here to preach.

Some look like accidents, some obviously murders.

I'm looking on you, black woman.

Which one of you owns this van?

I do.

Okay, take your six -pack, get in the van, get out of town, now.

You heard the man.

Come on, let's go, let's go. We don't need your counter out here.

Hank, move it.

Let's go.

They should have known better when they came into town.

Every sign pointed to what could happen there.

Every indication told them to leave.

Now, the wise guys in the bar, the preacher's warning, and the sheriff who

hate a way of life.

Go. Get out of town.

We don't want your kind here.

But they stayed.

They stayed, and it became too late to leave.

Too late, as the clock approached midnight.

Midnight. Now the book from the co -author of Night of the Living Dead

life on the screen.

Don't miss John Russo's Midnight.

Here we have Naked Fist by Sergio Santiago.

It's also known as Firecracker. It was made back in 1981.

Firecracker. See Gillian Kessner.

grand prize winner at the black belt olympics he'll mix seduction with

destruction in the screen's first erotic kung fu classic the box art

features the american one -seat poster as released by Manson international and

most of this company's other releases also just use the posters it's basically

remake of San Diego's earlier TNT Jackson a blaxploitation movie but this

around there's no blaxploitation a lot of action and more nudity and stuff here

we get Julian Kessner, who you might recognise from War 4, who plays Susan

Carter, a six -man black belt karate champion and martial arts teacher, who

heads to the Philippines to track down her missing reporter sister.

After the bar fight, she gets a few locals on her side, including bartender

Pete, and a kung fu expert called Ray.

With their help, she finds her sister's camera, and when she gets the film

developed, she finds pictures.

of a local hoodlum called Chuck Donner, who works at a place called The Arena,

which is a vicious martial arts fighting club. It turns out that her sister was

doing a story on the place. The club is owned by Eric, another bruiser, and in

order to gain his touch, he has to prove her fighting ability by getting up on

stage and fighting their local champ.

Strangely, Susan finds herself in an ongoing sling with Chuck.

From then on, she encounters numerous thugs and must literally fight for her

life in order to discover the reason for her sister's disappearance.

I was hoping this would not be necessary.

I could scream and call the police, you know.

I am the police.

If you like trashy movies, then this one really is well worth tracking down.

It's a lot of fun.

There's a hilarious fight scene where our heroine is sort of chased through

these alleyways and this factory and she loses bits of clothing on the way.

She ends up in a pair of skinny knickers after losing her bra with a knife.

This was one of the additional scenes Cormann had shot by a guy called Alan

Holzman and it's a standout moment.

Holzman of course went on to direct the science fiction movie Forbidden World.

Oh, and if you recognise the soundtrack from somewhere it's probably because it

was also used in Shogun Assassin.

I reckon it was probably put on the section 3 list for the scene where her

clothes are cut off with a knife because that's...

You could probably say sexual violence of some sort. That's the only thing I

could see in it that would probably have had the power to be, you know, worrying

a bit.

Naked fit.

A hundred luscious pounds of TNT.

See Jillian Kessner, grand prize winner at the Black Belt Olympics.

She'll mix seduction with destruction in the screen's first erotic kung fu

classic.

Remember, you've got a date to detonate with Naked Biff. Watch her explode.

Naked Biff. She'll blow you away.

The Nesting is one of those titles that I'm not entirely sure what it means.

The film was, I think, made as phobia. Probably had to change its title because

there was that John Huston movie called Phobia that came out about the same

time. Also, it's one of those things where the heroine originally has

agoraphobia. She's afraid to leave the house.

But that actually doesn't seem to have anything to do with the particular

which is a writer who discovers that the house she's rented is a former brothel

and the site of a massacre that there are ghosts about.

You are not going crazy.

Then what the hell is it?

It's when your dreams turn to nightmares and your nightmares turn on you.

It's an interesting minor ghost story.

It's one of those pictures that uses sort of interesting people in cameos.

Gloria Graham is back in it. She had a certain exploitation record in

Massacre Mansion and Blood and Lace. And she plays a ghost.

John Carradine, who's like your step down from Vincent Price as a horror

He'd been at it for so long. And in the early 80s, with the sort of revival of

horror, he started getting a lot more work. He's in things like The Howling

The House of the Long Shadows and The Boogeyman.

And so he became a sort of horror name again.

And I think this is actually one of his best latter -day parts.

So he gets some meat. Obviously, he's not in good enough shape to be in lots

lots of scenes.

But what he does has a lot of impact.

It's she.

It's got to be.

She's come back.

As a story, it's rather ordinary.

Armand Weston, the director, had made some porn stuff previously under several

names, and this seemed to be the movie he thought would launch him into a

respectable, above -ground career, which he didn't.

He didn't go on to make anything else at all and died in 1988.

He does a good, solid, competent job on this, but no more.

And the movie didn't really stand out enough, set next to any one of a

dozen other.

people moving to a creaky old house and scary stuff happen films it's not as

memorable as silent scream for instance it's not as memorable as legend of hell

house it's just another one of these haunted house pictures watchable enough

an afternoon but nothing special fear visits many places but

this is where it lives

You cannot escape the fear.

You cannot forget the fear.

You will not know until you've killed the nesting.

You are not going crazy.

Then what the hell is it? It's when your dreams turn to nightmares and your

nightmares turn on you.

It goes beyond the supernatural.

Beyond the psychological.

Beyond the realm of reason.

The nesting.

The horror grows.

The mystery builds.

It's she.

It's got to be.

The madness infects everyone around you.

Just you and it.

The net thing. It's the terror that hides inside your mind.

Coming soon.

So the next film we have is The New Adventures of Snow White, and in America

was released as Grimm's Fairy Tales for Adults.

It's got a lot of different actresses that people may find familiar.

Eva Steyer, who was in three James Bond films.

It also has Gabby Fuchs from Mark of the Devil, and it also has Marie Lillardal,

who played Eugenie in Eugenie, Her Journey into Perversion by Jess Franco.

It is a beautifully European looking film and I think you can tell it has a

certain homage to surrealism which may come from the fact that the director was

Czech.

Essentially the film is a story of Cinderella and Snow White merged

so it's all the most perverse and most elegant examples of the events that take

place in those and I say the most perverse and elegant because they are

For example, we don't get in the Disneyfied versions of a lot of these

gory scenes, which you do get in this film when the stepsisters, for example,

cut the backs of their feet off to get their shoes on. This we do see in this

film. But it's not a gory film.

It's not a violent film. It's a film that revels in its absurdism.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, am I the fairest one of all?

My queen.

Thou art of beauty rare, but Snow

White living in the glen with the seven little men is a thousand times more

fair. It's got amazing witches, amazing wenches. It's got a lot of animals with

crowns on.

And there is a lot of interaction with animals and furries and that kind of

wildlife sex, if you like, with a very... naive kind of innocence and

strangeness. So you see women with snakes crawling all over their bodies

the snakes have little crowns on their heads, but it's not a phallic use of a

snake. And the relationship between the bear and Snow White is quite formidable

and quite funny.

What do you animals want from me? Don't you know I'm Snow White? You're Snow

White and I'm an enchanted prince. Save me. Everybody's sexuality in this film

has got its own special direction and a lot of the time everyone's scared of

everyone else because they're all a bit too randy.

Fascinating. It is certainly an eyebrow -raising film and I think that if one

takes it as it's meant to be, which is in a jubilant, naive kind of way, even

the sexuality becomes quite innocent and quite playful.

The one... thing that I found a little bit iffy about the film, it's a West

German film and the ugly stepsisters, obviously because it's meant to be

titillating, they can't be ugly, but they have been made with the assistance

very dark wigs and very dark eyebrows to be very, very southern Italian looking

and so there is certainly a sense in this film that the Aryan is the beauty

according to this kind of ideology from the south of Europe.

And I thought that, you know, that gave a little tinge of iffiness about the

film.

The only reason I can imagine that the film was attempted to be put on the list

is because it does really take, you know, things that should be sacred and

have been Disneyfied. And it shows them for what they are, which is perverse

explorations of burgeoning sexuality in iconic young figures.

It doesn't actually go that far from the fairy tales themselves, so I think that

its adherence to the perversion in fairy tales is possibly a reminder of the

original nature of fairy tales before the Disneyfication of them. Perhaps that

is what is the thing that we find quite difficult to deal with, not simply the

issuing of sexuality from what is meant to be for the realm of children, but the

fact that...

already these children's stories were quite perverse in themselves the cover

clearly adult but at the same time there is a certain kind of cartoonism that

you see in a lot of european countries not not in britain but in european

countries with the the funny jolly either you know a dwarf or um

just a very pathetic sort of skinny scrawny guy in the throes of poking fun

and in passion with the Amazonian kind of big -breasted nymphs. And that is a

kind of European sense of humour that we don't really have in Britain, that

coalescence of comedic, clown -like character in a Fellini -esque

kind of way with the overtly sexualised woman.

I don't think that the British are so comfortable with the idea of laughing

sex.

cartoons and kids and so I would be very interested to know of any

anecdotes of Sunday evening going to the video shop with the kids and watching

this and seeing what mum and dad would say when the Queen says go and get her

lady parts and cut them off for me once upon a time there was a magical kingdom

A land of fertile fields.

And dark forests.

And everyone was busy all the time.

It was here that two brothers came one day.

With their fortune. To seek adventure.

And it was here that lived Snow White.

Cinderella.

And Sleeping Beauty.

You know all about these lovely maidens.

Or do you?

Now it can be told.

The true story.

Where men were men.

And women were women.

But they found the wicked queen.

The evil stepsisters.

A nice old devil. And the blue witch.

Grimm's Fairy Tales.

For adults.

So, Night of the Living Dead, it's strange that it's even in this company,

because it seems so elevated above the entire rest of the genre. It's almost

like all subsequent horror pictures owe this huge debt to Night of the Living

Dead. I wrote a whole book about the influence of Night of the Living Dead on

contemporary horror cinema.

And yet, when you get back to it, one is, of course, it's still...

a low budget black and white film that is rough -hewn and a bit amateurish and

that was part of its shock welcome to a night of total

terror and you know it's uh it's older than

most of the films. It's a film from the mid -60s, not even the late 60s. It's

the template of so much that came afterwards that it's difficult to

shocking it was when it came out. Although recently I...

watched it again at the the ritzy cinema in brixton with an audience of kids who

hadn't seen it before and although you could see that they were distanced from

it in time and in technique uh and some of the things about it seemed clumsy to

them the ending still is a kick in the teeth there are things about this movie

that go further than

most contemporary horror pictures than the remakes and the imitations and the

sequels and the spin -offs. It's where we came in, in modern horror, and it's

still a film that we should regularly watch again.

Well, you used to really be scared here.

Johnny! You're still afraid.

Stop it now, I mean it!

They're coming to get you, Barbara.

So it's odd in this context to see it as just part of the product, just another

popular video release of the early 80s. But it was. I mean, it was a film that

was around a lot, partly because of the grey market rights issue that still

dogs night the living dead.

And it was just, it was another zombie film. I don't know how many of the

big hit...

video movies of the 80s turned out to be in black and white when you pop the

tape in.

I wondered if some renters might have been quite shocked by that.

Because, yeah, it's almost like that.

I think it may be the last American film to be made in black and white for

budgetary reasons.

And things had so much changed by the early 80s, where black and white wasn't

cool yet. There was no sense that maybe you might go out and make a black and

white movie, although David Lynch had just made Eraserhead, that this was

something that distanced it from your usual run of video product.

But it's also possible to look at it and say, yeah, it's just a really gruesome

zombie movie with...

actors you haven't seen before and won't be seeing again, and lots of gut

-munching and some pretty good suspense stuff.

The fact that it then has this enormous weight of critical importance bared on

top of it isn't the film's fault.

And I think that part of its lasting success has been that fresh audiences,

once they get past the sort of shakiness...

can still be shocked and upset by it. And certainly the video rental kids of

early 80s were like the second or third wave of fans of

this movie who embraced it, who went back and watched it over and over again,

which I certainly did, and saw it as a major classic, as one of our films, one

of the most important films of...

our culture.

An experience in shock, more shattering than your strangest nightmare.

Night of the living dead.

It's nice seeing it as a maybe knock down a peg or two to be here.

There's something that there it is on the rack between Charles Band's movies

and the slasher pictures of the 80s as just another good solid horror picture.

And one of the reasons Night of the Living Dead was a big video was that

the Dead had just been a success, so it got re -released off the back of that.

In 1968, George Romero brought us Night of the Living Dead.

It became the classic horror film of its time. There were various things that

linked the two movies, including the amazing box artwork of Tom Chantrell,

everybody stole from the rental copies and stuck up on the wall.

Welcome to a night of total terror.

Night

of

the living dead. The dead who live on living flesh.

The dead whose haunted souls hunt the living.

The living whose bodies are the only food for these ungodly creatures.

What?

Night of the living dead.

A bizarre adventure in fear.

An experience in shock. More shattering than your strangest nightmare.

Night of the living dead.

A night with the dead who cannot die.

A night of total terror.

Night Of the living dead

Okay,

so here's Night Beast by Don Dohler, actually one of the earliest examples of

director who came from the fan tradition of horror Before he became a filmmaker,

he had his own film magazine called Cinemagic, and he was a devotee of the

famous monsters of film land, wrote a great deal about monster movies and was

obviously very, very passionate about monster movies, and made the move from

interest in special effects and an interest in other people's movies as a

and a writer into making his own movies.

Seeing the movie that will change the face of modern science fiction cinema,

Night Beast, Terror From Beyond.

Made, you know, for beer and cigarettes, basically, in Baltimore, for just a

tiny amount of money, but with a great deal of creativity and a lot of love for

the genre. He's also somebody who understands that if you're going to make

monster movie, show the bloody thing. Don't waste time.

Don't spend 45 minutes with people chit -chatting away before you finally let

the thing peek its nose around the corner of the camera.

Show it.

And the great thing about Nightbeast is that within...

Within two or three minutes, it's attacking people, ripping people's guts

and having laser gunfights with the local constabulary. It's great.

For the first 20 minutes, it's monster, monster, monster all the way.

Now, this is something that I wish a lot of monster movie makers would learn.

It doesn't matter how cheap your monster is. It doesn't matter how shabby or

homemade it looks.

The worst thing you can do is hide it.

Because everyone's come to see it.

So, you know, why get coy?

All the best monster movies, no matter how tacky or unlikely their monsters

look, are the ones that push it to the front.

And if you've got the balls to do that, then you gain an awful lot of kudos and

a lot of credit.

And Dola, you know, God bless him, he understood that. He really puts the

monsters out there.

And as drama, the films are rudimentary. Sheriff Cinder!

There's not a great deal of complexity.

There's nothing to tax you. There's no subplot or no subtext or anything to

think about.

Jesus, must have been lightning.

Hell, I ain't never seen lightning like that before.

But if you love monster movies, he delivers.

He knows how to play the game.

The monster itself, well...

It might not have any movable parts, but still, it looks great. It's got more

teeth than it knows what to do with. It's got these little piggy eyes that

hilarious.

The whole thing just looks fantastic.

The design is made by John Dodds, who, probably at the peak of his skills,

created the monsters in The Deadly Spawn.

Almost on a similar basis.

Again, teeth everywhere. That was obviously a thing with him.

It's got a lot of charm, considering that it was made for Peanuts.

It functions very, very well as a fun piece of work. If you're very familiar

with the films of John Waters, it's amusing to see George Stover turn up in

of them.

That scum, you ought to lock him up.

He's always playing kind of concerned local citizens in the Dola films.

I just can't imagine who could do something like this.

He plays straight man as a character in Female Trouble as well.

The films were made in Baltimore in Maryland.

So it's often amusing to think that...

Don Dohler and John Waters in the 1970s, in the late 1970s, were making their

films kind of almost in the same little bits of scrub woodland around the edge

of Baltimore.

You know, maybe just if you would pan the camera to the right in one of Don

Dohler's films, you'd see Divine, you know, making out on a mattress, you

in female trouble.

Or, you know, if you kind of move in the other direction during one of Waters'

films, you'll see some giant infectoid sort of rubber monster lurching around

the trees because they're working at the same time in the same place.

But apart from that, very different sensibilities.

I mean, obviously Waters has a satirical and comic sensibility. And Don Dohler

is as straight as the day is long.

You know, there's irony doesn't exist in Don Dohler's films.

You don't understand, Jack. I've got this party for Governor Embry here this

afternoon. Remember?

Election time, ass -kissing time.

Bert, I've got something running around killing people.

I mean, Night Beast...

I suspect it ended up on the Section 3 list because within the first ten

there is a fairly graphic disembowelling.

Again, I doubt seriously whether or not the police watched the whole film. They

probably just watched as far as the first ten minutes and thought, OK,

all we need to know.

Somebody gets loops of intestine pulled out of their stomach by a monster.

Never mind that the monster looked like something from Doctor Who, that you

couldn't possibly be offended by. How could anybody be offended by Night

But, you know, that's all they care about is a bit of splatter, and that was

enough.

As far as sex is concerned, it very rarely rears its head in Dohler's films.

mean, in his first film, Alien Factor, there's virtually no sexual element at

all. Here, I think somebody's probably had a little word in his ear and said,

you know, Don...

The films might distribute a little better if you just include a little bit

TNA. So there are a couple of nipples visible here and there and a few of the

girls take their tops off.

But the thing is, it's a lot harder to get your friends and neighbours to take

their tops off in your film than it is to get some girl from a casting agency

come and take her top off. And I think that's why the Dohler films don't have

sexual content.

It's because he's making it with...

The guy down the road that runs the hardware store that he sees every day,

can't ask his daughter to take her top off, can you?

So, you know, I suspect that's why they're sexually a little repressed, you

know, because it's just socially kind of difficult.

From another galaxy, from another world,

comes... The embodiment of

fear. What the hell was that?

Night Beast.

Terror from beyond.

A high -tech warrior from a distant planet.

A killing machine with a taste for human flesh.

A community abandoned in a code of silence.

Wicker never even called us a state. They don't even know we have a bad

situation here.

A love affair.

You know, you're a very attractive girl, Lisa. Two people brought together by

the urgency of the moment.

Two people torn apart by the savage fury of Night Beast.

I'm sorry, Jeremy. There was nothing that could be done. The most vicious

creature to ever span the intergalactic void has come to pay its respect.

Jesus Christ!

This is the story of how the little people answer the big questions.

that will change the face of modern science fiction cinema.

Night Beast.

Terror from beyond.

Nightmare City, put out by VTC in a cut version.

Um, Zimberto Lenzi's also known as City of the Walking Dead, and there's an

irony there, because neither are they dead or are they walking. In fact, this

probably an inspiration. I'm sure they probably wouldn't agree with this. This

is something like 28 Days Later.

The film was also put out, um, in an even more cut version, um, on a double

with Alien Terror, um, and, um, again, put out on VTC.

using the American artwork, which was put out, I think that was the one -sheet

artwork for City of the Walking Dead in the US.

And Bertolensi was obviously the famous trash auteur who put his hand to loads

of different films, from Jali to police thrillers to cannibal films.

And this was his zombie film, although, again, he says this isn't a zombie film.

In fact, these aren't zombies. These are radiated madmen and women. In other

words... This individual and others like him have been subjected to strong doses

of atomic radiation, which increased their physical capacities beyond the

Actually, and of course, are they zombies or are they vampires? Because

the other thing.

In the film, they don't chomp on guts like many of the Italian gut munchers.

They actually drink blood.

I don't believe it.

It's got Hugo Stiglitz, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. He was a

actor. Umberto Lenzi said that he wanted to actually cast Franco Nera or Fabio

Testi in the film. Now, it seems very unlikely either Franco Nera or Fabio

would have been in this film. Why me in particular?

He got Hugo instead, apparently for the Mexican audiences who wanted to see this

film. He plays a TV reporter who gets sent out to interview a famous scientist

who's coming into an unnamed city to talk about a chemical spill or a...

accident it's never quite clear and what happens in one of the greatest kind of

trash kind of moments in cinema is this plane lands and out jump all these kind

of well monsters vampires zombies whatever you want to call them they all

like they've all fallen got a bit drunk and fall into a cow pat now again it's

probably not the best special effects ever but again it really really works

these aren't low shuffling zombies

This is basically a complete polar opposite to something like Fulci's

movies, like Zombie Flesh Eaters or Beyond, which is much more insular or

esoteric, I can guess. This is essentially an action movie.

This is one of the greatest party movies, in my opinion.

It's a huge amount of fun.

Maybe one of the best lines in it, I think it's Mel Ferrer, who says,

let's use Plan H.

We'll follow Emergency Plan H.

And if we can't use Plan H, if it gets really bad, we'll go to Plan B.

And we'll keep Plan B in reserve in case the situation gets out of hand.

And it's just bizarre, these kind of bizarre things. But Umberto Lenzi, who I

haven't met Umberto, but he's famously a little bit po -faced about his movies.

Now, I can't believe he didn't make this movie. a little bit of tongue -in

-cheek.

It's got some great moments, great gore moments.

Probably, if it had come out in uncut version, it probably would have been one

of the bona fide video nasties, one of something that would have attracted a

more attention.

And, of course, one of the standout scenes is the scene when, if you

Top of the Pops from the 1970s, when Pan's people were dancing, and if you

imagine, suddenly, on the Top of the Pops studio, a load of zombies burst in

with machetes and start cutting off press.

then you can see why this film might have got the attention that it has.

In reality, the film's far too silly to be offensive.

Lindsay tries to go one further than thought she would with some eye

where there's a very protracted scene where a woman gets her eyeball cut out.

But what the film does do, and I think what it succeeds in doing, is actually,

on what is quite a low budget, it's actually got quite almost a pan...

pandemic feel to it and so much it goes out you actually do have a city being

attacked rather than just a lot of people holed up in a farmhouse it's far

expansive so you although it's kind of very low low budget you do get like a

great scene in hospital where there's doctors nurses being chased and of

All the time, all the nurses have their blouses ripped off, and of course it's

an Italian zombie movie, so what else would you expect?

It's a great deal of fun, you know, it's one of my favourite zombie movies.

And Nightmare City is a bit like, I mean, the horror equivalent of Bobby

stepping out of the shower in Dallas.

It's essentially, it was all a dream.

So Hugo wakes up and suddenly goes... And then, so it's all happening again.

goes off to meet the professor at the airport, and it all starts again. The

nightmare continues.

So it's one of those great circular endings, which I imagine would have, a

groan would have gone out from the audience, possibly because they're going

watch the whole thing again.

Top of the news this evening is speculation concerning the real facts.

behind a Department of Health announcement about a radioactive spill

have occurred yesterday at the state nuclear plant.

Information from an official source, which reached our newsroom this

stresses the seriousness of the situation.

Mr.

Miller. Something very serious has happened at the airport.

But until we conclude our investigation and take the necessary countermeasures,

nothing is going to leak out. Nothing. Last night I had this nightmare.

It was all about my leg. It was a big explosion. It was right here in the

hospital. I got hit.

My leg got cut off.

Well, we don't have to worry over that any longer.

Jimmy, your leg's going to be just fine.

Yes General Murchison would like you to come down here right away now

This

individual and others

like him have been subjected to strong doses of atomic radiation which

their physical capacities Beyond the norm in short. It's a kind of a Superman

This is Channel 5 TV station.

They're being attacked.

For God's sakes, send somebody fast.

The victims of these creatures are contaminated, even if they only suffer

injuries. Then they can reproduce themselves, Colonel, say, indefinitely?

We'll be completely on our own. We'll simply have to declare a state of

emergency ourselves.

Or before we all become contaminated just like them.

It's frightening.

How could a thing like this happen?

It's part of the vital cycle of the human race.

Create and obliterate until we destroy ourselves.

We have special commando units positioned at all strategic points in

the city. Public buildings, offices, and businesses alike have been ravaged. And

damage is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

General Hospital has been hit the hardest.

Many have been seriously injured and hundreds of lives have been lost. With

end still not in sight. My God, Sheila, what's going on? I don't know. I really

don't know.

Dino, I don't want us to die.

Right, so here's Oasis of the Zombies by Jeff Franco.

And it's one of those Franco movies which was everywhere like a bad rash in

video shops up and down the country.

Very frustrating for Franco fans who want to try and make a case for Franco

really interesting director that several of his absolute worst films were

absolutely everywhere on the shelves in this country.

You know, I'm going to do it again though.

Oasis of the Zombies, for all the fact that it's a terrible film, has

I'm probably blowing all credibility as a commentator on Franco now to say this,

but I can watch it, and I can watch it more than... I've watched it about four

times already, and I shall probably watch it another four times.

I think you're out of your head.

There's something there.

There's something a little poignant about it. It's as if all the really

zombie stuff is happening just over the sand dunes, like maybe 200 metres down

the dunes.

there's a really exciting zombie film happening and we're just getting the

dregs. I mean, Franco was making some really wonderful films around this time.

In the early 80s, he was having a real burst of energy and was back to making

maybe 10, 12 films a year again.

And some of them are fantastic.

This one is a mess because he doesn't give two hoots about zombie films. Just

like with the cannibal movies that he made, he didn't care about those either.

He just kind of went along with the prevailing desire.

from his producers to make these kind of movies and said, OK, well, if you want

me to do that, I'll do that.

He probably thought, well, in two weeks' time, I've got another movie that they

want, so why not?

No! No!

No!

He doesn't have a feel for this, but if you're a Franco watcher and a Franco

fan, there are elements and traces there that you can enjoy. I mean, the music,

so copperific and so...

dreamy and half there and half focused you know when a movie goes out of focus

well the sound is doing that it's like organ music that feels like it drifting

out of audibility almost it kind of nudges you out of the frame it's got a

of the signs and symbols that you would associate with the zombie film but It's

drifting away from them.

You feel the energy of the film is not taking you in the action -adventure

direction that you would get from Romero. Franco can't afford the violence

would take you in the Lucia Fulci direction.

All he's left with is ambience, and a sort of a desolate, sandy, vague,

diffused ambience, which, if you can tap into that, and if you're willing to

spend 70 or 80 minutes just soaking that up, fine.

Not everyone's going to be happy with that. That's not enough for a lot of

people. But if you can get off on that, then Oasis of the Zombies does have some

pleasurable aspects to it.

It's an interesting one as well because it was shot in two different versions.

This one is, I think, the less interesting of the two. The version that

as Oasis of the Zombies was actually the French cut of the film.

About a year or maybe 18 months later, Franco went back to the same locations

and shot extra footage.

with Spanish actors, a couple of Spanish actors, including Lina Romay, his

partner, in order to resell the film for the Spanish market.

And the Spanish version has a different score and slightly different themes.

The score actually makes a difference. The score for the Spanish version is

avant -garde, more bizarre and extreme.

puts you up in your seat a little bit, whereas the music for the French version

is, as I say, quite soporific and too dreamy for its own good, really. There

aren't very many people out there that would tax themselves by watching the two

of them back -to -back. I've done it.

I've written about it. No -one else need ever do it.

The Spanish version has a different title. It's called La Tamba de las

Vivientes, which is Tomb of the Living Dead. The French version actually was

called La Bime de Mont -Revant, which is The Abyss of the Living Dead.

It's only the English language version that's called Oasis, but the English

language version is basically the French version retitled. As far as its reason

for attracting the attention of the police or the courts, it's purely to do

the zombie thing.

I mean, this time, really, we can say for certain, I'm sure, that there's

nothing that could really justify putting this film on a list of video

in terms of content.

It's purely going to be that some police officer has had the word zombie branded

into his imagination.

And as soon as you saw it on a video shelf, you just plucked the title down

probably didn't even look at the front.

You believe in zombies?

I believe it when I see it.

The living, the dead.

Oh, Father.

For God's sake, where's the oasis?

For God's sake, where's the oasis?

Chia!

Parasite was one of a little blip of 3D movies that came out in the 80s, mostly,

oddly enough, in 1983.

3D.

The movie fantasy of yesterday is now the terrifying film experience of the

future. We think of Jaws 3D.

Amityville 3D.

It started off with a Spaghetti Western called Come In At Ya. And I think

Charles Band got in second, maybe with Parasite, maybe with Metal Storm, The

Destruction of Jared Sin.

But for a while, he was one of the few people in America who was taking 3D as a

process seriously.

3D, the ultimate sensation of visual art.

He didn't stick with it, perhaps because video.

just took off as the medium that his kind of movies were going to. And even

they can't really do 3D on, you know, using videotape as a medium. There were

few releases of older things like The Mask where they put some glasses in, but

I've never met anybody who's made it work.

who's actually had anything except a headache out of looking through the

cardboard glasses at a VHS playing. So Parasite came out flat on video.

For technical reasons, the preview you are about to see is not three

-dimensional. It was sort of an alien imitation, sort of a Mad Max imitation

its miserable near future in the late 1990s. And there's a scientist who's got

parasite.

Which looks like, as Cynthia Rose memorably said, a Big Mac with teeth.

some futuristic scumbags like the ones in Mad Max who do some bad things which

require revenge being taken on them. And we have the very young Demi Moore in

cut -off shorts and a belly shirt.

As a matter of fact, I don't even know what I'm getting involved with.

All credit to her. She's, over her career, has become... occasionally a bit

standing joke for a kind of tabloid lifestyle she has always been a good

she has always had dignity even in rubbish and she's very good in parasite

i don't have a choice you can see that this is a movie which any producer

watching would say get me that girl and lose the number of all those other guys

can i open it rick can i rick i want to know

So as a stepping stone in her career, it's of interest.

I think now it has, like a lot of those 80s futuristic visions, it's almost

nostalgic. They're kind of broken down America, although, you know, global

warming and gas shortages and all these things that would never happen in real

life. I hope you got some money to pay for all this.

Nobody's filled up their car with gas in years.

And I think that the...

The once -in -a -lifetime teaming of Robert Glaudini and Luca Bercovici,

who I still get mixed up as antagonists, is quite interesting.

3D.

The movie fantasy of yesterday is now the terrifying film experience of the

future, for technical reasons.

The preview you are about to see is not three -dimensional. Be assured, Parasite

is the most gripping and frightening movie you will ever see.

And in 3D, you will be part of the terror.

You are about to witness the future. Be warned, it is a shocking sight.

3D, the ultimate sensation of visual art, now creates the newest, most

terrifying form of fear, Parasite.

That thing on your stomach.

A new strain of parasite. When it reproduces, it will cast millions of

microscopic spores into the air.

Just move your legs towards me. Real slow.

Real slow.

Experience the living, breathing, terrifying vision of modern 3D.

Parasite. You have only seen the preview.

In 3D, you will live the film.

Parasite, the first futuristic monster movie in 3D.

Parasite.

Okay, so we have here Phantasm by Don Coscarelli. Now, I'm sure that this

doesn't need very much of an introduction.

If this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead.

If you're a horror fan and you've not seen Phantasm, then where the hell have

you been? It's an essential, essential film. One of my all -time favourites.

It's doing that kind of dreamlike, is it real or is it a dream, is it real or is

it some parallel fantasy world? It's playing with the boundaries of what's

and what isn't real in a way that a few years later films like Nightmare on Elm

Street would come along and kind of...

nail down a bit more whereas the boundaries in this film feel looser and

stranger than that phantasm is it a nightmare it is very very dreamlike

phantasm is it an illusion it kind of combines so many different elements as

well it's a reality bending uh horror story it's a sort of a story about

fraternal love and loyalty as well which i think is one of the reasons why it's

attracted a lot of among fans over the years. It's not just a... Nothing wrong

with just a horror film, I should add, but it's not just a horror film.

There's a lot of emotional content as well.

Mike, that tall man of yours did not take Jodie away.

Jodie died in a car wreck.

Instead of what usually happens in horror movies these days, where everyone

basically chipping at each other all the time and trying to outdo each other,

and there's a lot of...

waspish and snide comments between the characters, because scriptwriters love

write that shit.

They can make themselves sound a bit sharper and wittier than they perhaps

like they are in real life by writing characters like that. In this, people

each other.

And it's kind of unusual in these kind of horror movies. And it's got a kid at

the centre who's not a pain in the ass.

We're going for the sheriff. Go get your...

Evidence. All right.

The other characters in the film, the relationships between them are...

friends. You feel that they're friends.

It's actually a very warm film in a lot of ways.

And then underlying it is this strange element to do with the absence of

parents. At the beginning of the film, the lead characters, parents, you find

out that one of them died a few months ago and another one has just been put in

the ground now.

So two brothers basically are left to fend for themselves.

I don't know if this is an entirely universal experience, but I remember as

kid feeling, kind of fantasising, not in a really mean way, but thinking, if

your parents died, you'd kind of have the house to yourself, wouldn't you?

And just kind of imagining how that would work and thinking, yeah, just

it'd be really sad, you know, and you'd...

you'd be terribly sad and you'd kind of mentally work through this fantasy of

your parents dying and think, oh, I'd be terribly sad. But then again, you'd

have more freedom as well, wouldn't you?

So there's this kind of underlying trend in fantasy, all sorts of kind of

adolescent fantasies, I think. And then there's also this kind of emerging

sexuality, the fact that the kid's older brother is scoring with girls, so he's

kind of spying on his older brother, and there's all this kind of intimacy.

a blossoming sort of sexual interest and awareness represented by very

mysterious women in the film. There's a mysterious, very beautiful, voluptuous

younger woman that the older brother is making out with.

And then the other women in the film are extremely strange and mysterious,

including a kind of a witch -like mystic living at a house by the crossroads who

has magical powers and who, just in the most casual way possible, the lead

character goes to visit for advice about what's going on. Of course, this brings

us on to...

The central character, perhaps, in the film, the iconic figure, the tall man,

who is as much a part of horror iconography as Dracula and Frankenstein,

as I'm concerned, and I think for a lot of other people as well.

The funeral is about to begin, sir.

And what does the tall man represent? He's a sort of a, again, a kind of a

childhood... And, of course, he's played brilliantly by this wonderful actor,

Angus Scrimm. It's not his real name. He's actually called Rory Guy.

And he did actually appear in some horror films before this. He's in a

little movie called Scream Bloody Murder in the early 70s. Not playing a

menacing figure, playing a doctor, but if you're a big fan of Phantasm and

like to see the tall man a few years before Phantasm, then check out Scream

Bloody Murder.

There's a great scene in Phantasm, one of my favourite scenes in any horror

movie, where you see him walking down...

A high street of this little mid -American town in slow motion.

And there's an ice cream van with the back door open and there's the

condensation wafting out of the ice cream van.

And he just kind of turns and warms his hands or cools his hands on the

condensation and basks for a second, you know, in this kind of mist and fog from

the ice.

It's such a strange scene. It's straight out of a dream.

It's, you know, perfect, perfect filmmaking.

I think Phantasm, it sometimes has more ideas than it can comfortably make into

a coherent whole.

Who gives a fuck? Who gives a... Coherence be damned. I mean, it's just

this way, if there are loose ends and things that don't quite make sense.

It's the kind of movie that should be partially incoherent. It's actually a

strength, not a weakness.

As far as why it was on the verge of being prosecuted, I mean, it's the

balls, isn't it?

The filth of spears with the drill bits drilling into people's heads. Again,

that's probably it, isn't it? You know, a driller killer is anything with

drills. And then, you know, not only do they kind of latch onto your head and

dig blades into your head, but a drill bit goes into your forehead as well.

So, given that there were five or six titles which all the police forces

were obscene, or, you know, the courts were saying were obscene, ice pit on

grave, driller killer, cannibal holocaust, anything that reminded the

enforcement of...

those emblematic titles was put forward for prosecution on the basis that it was

a bit like that. Another possibility, and again, it's always hard thinking

way into the mindset of people who want to ban things. It's a very strange

mental puppeteering exercise you have to do to try and imagine how that process

works. But yeah, maybe because the lead character is a teenager and there's a

general feeling of it almost being a kids' film. It's got one foot in a

adventure as well as horror.

And so maybe it's the collision of some graphic horror scenes with a sensation

of almost like a sort of an after -school children's adventure as well.

plus the fact that you've got whirling drills going into people's heads, I

that probably accounts for it. But, hey, you know, most people can tell that

it's not a nasty in the sense of being anything like.

you know, the more notorious titles. It's a wonderful, wonderful fantasy

really, I think, more than anything else.

Phantasm.

Is it a nightmare?

Phantasm.

Is it an illusion?

Phantasm, is it an evil?

You

have

to take me home. What, what? No questions. You must take me home.

Phantasm, is it a fantasy?

Is it alive?

Was nobody driving?

Whatever it is.

This one doesn't scare you.

You're already dead.

Phantasm.

Pigs. Nice punchy title.

A film that's had a great many titles, not all as punchy as that. It's been

called a variety of things, from Daddy's Deadly Darling to The Strange Exorcism

of Lynn Hart, with the addition of an entirely spurious exorcism scene at the

beginning, which was apparently added because the distributor at the time

like the incest theme that the film's got and took away the first five

which makes that clear.

But yes, it's one of those films that's had a problematic distribution history.

No one seems to have quite been able to squeeze the money out of it that they

thought they were going to get out of it. And it's just been tossed from one

distributor to another, desperately trying to come up with a last house on

left type title that will kind of grab people. But I think it's best called

because, you know, it is a film about a pig farmer who keeps pigs in his

backyard of his little diner sort of restaurant, cafe, and periodically feeds

dead bodies to the pigs. I gotta do it.

If they got used to eating human flesh, I'd got to do it. He explains that he

didn't start this process, it wasn't his fault. You know, the first time it

happened, it was an accident.

They got loose in the field, there was a drunk, he was asleep.

And they'd eaten him alive, but then they developed a taste for human flesh

they wouldn't accept anything else, so what's a guy to do, you know?

Let them starve?

Cut off that.

He feeds those pigs dead people.

And then he eats the pigs.

But then the story actually really gets underway because this isn't a film about

one psycho, it's a film about two, which has got an interesting plot line. The

other psychotic in the film is this unfortunate girl who experienced incest

the hands of her father, murdered him in a fury, spent some time in a mental

hospital having electroshock for her pains, and then manages to escape and

on the run. And Chance brings her together with our pig -farming nutjob.

I'm looking for work.

You want a job, eh?

I guess.

And an unusual May -December semi -romance develops between this girl

about 20 and the pig farmer who's in his 60s.

I like to find things out for myself.

What did you find out?

That you worked in a circus.

And they're like ships that pass in the night, but they have a sympathy for each

other, and he has a sympathy for her.

She starts to understand his and they kind of come together.

Somebody after you?

Why would anyone be after me?

I didn't ask. Why, just if.

It's a very unusual story about two psychos who have a kind of an almost

affair.

It's a particularly unusual film because the director, Mark Lawrence, cast his

daughter, Toni Lawrence, as the psychopathic girl in the film.

So this is a very odd film about infest, where a girl murders her abusive,

incestuous father, goes on the run and shacks up with a psychopath who takes on

a quasi -paternal protective role, played by her real father.

Very odd. And apparently the whole point of the film, the reason why Mark

Lawrence made it in the first place, was there's a kind of a showreel for his

daughter as an actress, and she gives a great performance. She's genuinely

frightening at times.

She's a murderous psychopath one minute and a traumatized little girl the next.

So it's a tour de force of acting.

I didn't do anything. Please don't blame me. I didn't do anything.

I don't blame you.

Mark Lauren.

Tragic story. He was a great, great actor. He was one of those people that

never out of work in the 40s and 50s playing gangsters.

He had one of those faces that just, you know, he was kind of in the mould of

the Cagney's of this world, you know. You would want him as your criminal

sidekick, you know, just looked the part.

Worked his way all the way through the 40s and then in the 1950s he fell foul

the House Un -American Activities Committee

He was questioned about his allegiance to the Communist Party and admitted that

he had been a member of the Communist Party at some point in the past. Under

knows what pressure from the McCarthy questioners, he grasped up a couple of

people that were also members of the Communist Party.

I mean, it sounds reprehensible, but as anyone who's looked into that period

will know, a lot of innocent people were placed under intolerable pressure at

the time.

Anyway, it...

It was the end of his career in America.

He moved to Europe for a while.

I think he came back in the early 70s or late 60s, and Pigs was his only

directorial credit.

It's just a very strange little film. It's got a very, very odd mood to it.

Rather like The Child, which we were discussing earlier, you can't tell where

it's set. It seems to be set in the middle of nowhere, and there's this

kind of hermetic, isolated feel about the film.

It's even stranger, though, when you realise that this is a film that feels

much like a kind of an independent weirdo sort of horror film made by one

classic actors of Hollywood of the 1940s. It's a combination you would

have expected to have happened.

Personally, I think it's a real shame that he didn't get to make any more

because I could watch another three or four films just like it. And, in fact,

screen pigs here in England when...

We had a film festival for the release of Nightmare USA, and I was thrilled to

be able to show a print of one of the many different, slight different edits

pigs on that occasion.

So, yeah, it's another very special film, I think, and a real one -off.

not pigs, you know.

They're dead people.

Evidently, it's the idea of pigs eating human flesh that's the shocking element

of the film.

Within the first few minutes, you do see some pig snouts chomping away at

Severed. body parts.

I doubt, I seriously doubt whether or not the police watched much more than

first few minutes, just probably saw that and thought, it's that kind of

Rather like Evil Speak, one of the ones that was prosecuted, it was Evil Speak

which had a scene where a woman is eaten by pigs in a shower cubicle, I seem to

remember. Maybe that was already in someone's mind when they thought, here

again, more flesh -eating pigs.

You know, that should be the tagline really, shouldn't it?

Perhaps the other reason why it attracted the attention of Her Majesty's

Constabulary is A, because it's called pigs, and B, because the ad line is,

eat anything, even evidence.

Well, perhaps that was just a little too close to the bone for them, you know.

You've got to realize, your father is dead.

That's a lie.

This is real nice and friendly of you.

You know, most girls would be too frightened to give a guy a lift.

Especially as big as I am.

I'm not afraid of you. You remind me of my daddy.

Oh, something should be done about that man.

Whatever you did, I don't care.

I'll make a difference to me.

I know you're here.

They smelt you out.

They got used to eating human flesh.

Something wrong with that man.

Something wrong up here. They're not pigs, you know.

They're dead people. He feeds those pigs dead people, and then he eats the pigs.

Where would you say that he gets his dead people from?

Papa bear, tell me, what do you see?

One little girl...

He really has a new pig now.

That young man is dead.

And he's a pig now. That young man is a pig.

I had a bad dream.

Everybody has bad dreams.

Everybody.

Only small part of the bodies were...

It's Norman J. Warren's Prey.

Norman, I love you, but let's be honest, this is pretty slow.

Okay, it features lesbianism, it features cannibalism, it features

but it's all a handheld camera job, really cheaply made, and a bit slow,

I mean, it comes up with some really outrageous ideas, though. I mean, I

remember one book saying that it featured some of the strongest images of

British horror. And what they're probably referring to is an actual fact,

main scene that it was all geared around, which was the cannibalism scene

Barry Stokes there, actually seen in the...

Quota quickie, as it says. All British quota programme notes here for

distributors. And as you can see, it was on a double bill with Charlie One -Eye.

Well, I mean, what can you say about this movie? I mean, Barry Stokes plays a

half... half -alien called Cantor. He told me that he actually kept the fangs

that he uses in the dog disguise.

So he obviously had a good time making it. Some of the actresses, like Laurie

Annan, didn't, because when they're thrashing around in that stagnant pond,

all had to get tetanus shots just to make sure they weren't sick afterwards.

Obviously the budget was so low they couldn't afford any special effects. So

what you basically get is anything alien is like a few torches sort of waved in

the face off camera. But hey, you know, you took it with good grace in those

days.

of fiction it was only shot in 10 days so it probably made money and i remember

norman actually did announce a sequel called human prey that sadly was never

made but he did make outer touch a sort of a sex alien version of this and that

also starred barry stokes and glory annan too so they went on to bigger and

better things i mean It's a simple movie.

It's one of Norman's warmest. It's certainly one of his cheapest.

This was shot three years before in Seminoid, and in America it was called

Prey. But, you know, all that endless thrashing around in that pond, I mean,

really, you just get enough of it after half of it, and it goes on and on and

on. Obviously, it had to flesh out the running time, but the cannibal scenes...

what it's all about, especially Barry Stokes in Drag 2.

Barry, never have that sex change operation.

Cater to command ship.

Command ship.

I am now in orbit.

Proceed with mission.

UFOs, fact or fiction?

Space explorers are figments of the mind.

Made contact with human life forms.

New identity established.

Are aliens already amongst us?

Command ship.

Command ship.

Their immediate reaction, aggressive.

Take terminal action.

Continue with mission.

Why are they here?

Success of total operation essential.

For a million years, man was a hunter.

Now, he is the prey.

Hooray, certificate X.

Prom Night, made in Canada, where life was cheap, or where slasher movies were

very cheap in the early 80s.

Prom Night.

If you're not back by midnight, you won't be coming home.

There was a sort of...

You know that bit after the Titanic has hit the iceberg and before the sinking

starts, that quiet phase?

And after Halloween and Friday the 13th had come out, it took a while for the

industry to react and start making dozens of imitations. But in Canada,

really got it as early as Halloween because Jamie Lee Curtis got signed up

make Terror Train and Prom Night with Leslie Nielsen, who wasn't yet a comedy.

star directed by paul lynch who'd made a couple of interesting minor canadian

semi -art films nobody had seen and then went on to make more stuff like prom

night humongous is one of his humongous it's loose

it's angry and it's getting hungry and then i think he directed a lot of star

trek but prom night's one of those movies that i feel a certain affection

because i saw it in the cinema

It's not very good.

It's in that subset of slasher movies which are also whodunnits, except you

spot who the killer is really early on.

It has a bunch of teenagers who are really obnoxious and deserve to die, and

then duly do.

Jamie Lee Curtis is rather...

oddly used in it she's the heroine but because of the way the mystery works the

killer is never actually after her in some ways the killer is trying to

her so it doesn't go the the route that terror train or halloween does of of

having her in peril at the end so she's the star of this film but oddly removed

from the plot

It then became kind of a Canadian franchise.

There are three other Prom Night movies, all different. Prom Night 2, Hello Mary

Lou, is a sort of Nightmare on Elm Street rip -off with an evil dead

from the 1950s.

Now, Mary Lou has found her way back.

And Mary Lou is coming out for a party.

And she's back in Prom Night 3, The Last Kiss.

This is Mary Lou Maloney.

She's a good sport.

Touchdown!

She's sexy.

She's dead.

He was looking for something different.

She was looking for something new.

But when they got together, it was something deadly.

Prom Night 3, The Last Kiss.

But it's a killer monk in Prom Night 4, Deliver Us From Evil.

And then there's a movie called The Club, which is a Canadian film from the

makers of Prom Night that takes place on a prom night.

They all wanted to do something special.

So this year, the prom will be a costume ball in an old manor house with a

prince and princess and a new hope for this night.

Now, I would suspect that was developed as prom night five, and then they looked

at it and thought, you know, four prom nights is enough.

In this club, the initiation dues can be fatal.

The club.

So this is an unrelated Prom Night type film. And then there was a remake of

Prom Night, which is the most forgettable of all the remakes of

from the 80s.

If anybody has any particular memory or affection for the remake of Prom Night,

answers on a postcard.

If it's somebody's favourite film, who knows? I'm not sure why.

Prom night lasted so long. There may have been a feeling in Britain that the

whole idea of prom night was kind of exotic and strange.

There's a special night in the lives of all of us. A night to be beautiful, to

be desirable.

Because British schools didn't have them then, they do now.

And I suspect that Carrie had imprinted the ritual of prom night on

a lot of British kids.

from a British perspective, to be this strange alien world where kids could

limousines and tuxedos and all this sort of stuff.

That seemed a lot different from the school discos I remember, not least

is nobody dropped vats of pig's blood or had telekinetic freak -outs.

So that's how Prom Night became a good title for a horror film.

Before Carrie, if they'd made a film called Prom Night, you'd have to assume

was a teen comedy.

I suppose that's all there is to say about it. I don't remember the suspense

the death scenes being particularly explicit or impressive, but it's

reasonably well -made film, which a lot of these movies weren't. It moves along

at a fair old clip. I would happily watch it.

again, after all these years, because I have a certain flicker of nostalgia for

it, for movies like it. I also remember it was Cinefantastique, the

reviewer, said something about it which stuck in my mind ever since, and keeps

coming back every time I hear some old -time critic dissing the kind of films

kids like, and it was a A critic who I assume must have been like 10, 15 years

older than me was saying that he recognised that Prom Night served its

the way that films like I Was a Teenage Werewolf had served him when he was a

kid. He says, yeah, these are films that are addressing the concerns of the

teenagers who like films like this and for that reason will stick in their

minds, will become part of their culture.

They're just kooky and kind of fun and there's nothing actually wrong with

I'm not sure what it says about a generation that embraced Saw or Hostel

same way.

However, I recognize that those are their films and

that we should listen to them when they talk about what they like about them.

There's a special night in the lives of all of us. A night to be beautiful.

To be desirable.

A night we can break all the rules and make our own.

Prom night.

Everyone at Hamilton High is getting ready for prom night.

It's a day of rehearsals.

Arrangements.

Final preparations.

And last minute phone calls.

They're too old for games.

But someone still wants to play.

Why?

Kelly.

It's been a long time.

Tonight, it's my turn.

Tonight,

someone has come to the prom alone.

Someone who watches in the silent corridors.

Kelly.

Help! Someone who waits until no one can help.

Prom night.

If you're not back by midnight, you won't be coming home.

OK, well, here we have Rabid by David Cronenberg. And this is one of the best

the early Cronenberg films and somewhat belies its reputation in a lot of ways.

I think there is a general sense, or sort of a cliché perhaps, that the early

Cronenberg films are quite cold.

Rabid really doesn't feel like that.

You'd be surprised if you actually stop and look at it, just how much affection

is shown between characters in Rabid.

It's a very emotional film.

A film with no real monsters.

I mean, the lead character, played by Marilyn Chambers, is a victim of a

situation which she didn't seek out and which she's now thrown into a strange

new world where she's trying to make sense of her own drives.

And although the plot requires that she does some terrible things, it also

hinges around the idea that she slowly is forced to come to terms with what

she's doing. And it's that process of self -realisation which funnels you

towards the climax of the film.

Got all of the hallmarks of early Cronenberg which can lead to that sense

coldness and detachment. It's set in winter. There's a feeling of alienation

detachment created by these amazing modernistic sort of cold buildings which

would set films in. This is also one of those Cronenberg films that has that

uncanny sense of sort of predicting future developments rather in the way

Videodrome seemed to do.

There are characters early on talking about the possibility of setting up a

franchise chain of plastic surgery clinics.

At the time it was being discussed in the film, this seemed like a sort of a

slightly wacky sort of future sci -fi sort of idea under the character who

I don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery.

I just sure as hell don't want to become the Colonel Sanders of plastic surgery.

Why not?

Sounds great to me.

Well, we're now in a world where plastic surgery is on tap and on demand, that

you'll have high street plastic surgeons in a way which Cronenberg appears to

anticipate.

You know, the idea of a franchised operation for plastic surgery resorts is

unnatural. It's one of those magnificent, inevitable ideas.

There are other kind of prophetic elements, such as the focus on the idea

neutral field grafts. You'll then be called neutral field grafts.

In the film, you've got this whole idea that...

And it was a new idea, certainly a new idea to me at the time and probably to a

lot of viewers, the idea that there are certain kinds of tissue which can be

treated to develop into any kind of tissue, rather like an embryo's tissue

form arms, legs, skin, lungs or whatever.

These ideas, which were kind of cutting -edge medical and scientific ideas at

the time, were being fed into a genre that had absolutely no record for that

kind of thing at all.

I mean, when Rabid was made, we're talking about 1976.

We were only about four years out of classical Gothic, really.

You know, the Hammer Studios and Dracula and Frankenstein and the whole works

were still fairly recent.

And so Cronenberg's work, which was entirely coming from a completely

angle to do with modern concerns about science, to do with anxiety about the

body and the pace and progression of change in modern society.

were a bolt out of the blue.

I think one of the things that made Cronenberg so immediately striking is

that you sensed a whole paradigm shift.

You were no longer dealing with the old verities of the horror genre. He seemed

to have imported ideas that had come completely out of left field.

And I think part of the thrill of those early Cronenbergs, certainly at the

time, was thinking, I actually don't know where this is going.

I'm being presented with new ideas.

This director is not afraid to show me images that I can't even anticipate.

I mean, this is the film where the heroine, stroke anti -heroine, has a

a penis syringe in her armpit with which she sucks blood from unsuspecting

acquaintances. And part of the thrill of those films was just thinking, I'm in

the hands of somebody with a totally unique sensibility for the genre who is

pushing us into a new, troubling...

frightening and yet very, very fascinating terrain.

All around her, people are dying, and only Rose knows why.

You've got to come quick.

You've got to come quick and get me.

And as I was saying earlier, also a great deal of emotional honesty and

emotional resonance as well.

Some of the most upsetting things in the film are to do with people who love

each other, who are forced to deal with this eruption of impossible, insane new

developments in their lives.

and how they cope with that and how they try and understand it.

So they're anything but cold.

And part of that comes from Marilyn Chambers, who I have to say, as a porno

actress, who would have guessed?

I mean, you know, she gives such a beautiful, touching performance as Rose

the film.

I feel strong.

I feel very strong.

There's this wonderful element of the film to do with Cronenberg feeding into

the film his awareness of her reputation as a porn actress.

So there are certain setups in the film which feel like porno setups.

She's in the farmyard with the farm animals and a farmer comes in and wants

seduce her. She's picked up by a lorry driver and you think, oh, it's the porno

thing of the hitchhiker and the lorry driver and the seduction that you would

expect there.

There's the scene in a jacuzzi where she approaches a young woman in a jacuzzi

in a seductive manner.

Do you mind if I get in with you?

It's filmed in a very kind of imperious, seductive sort of pattern as she heads

towards what would normally look like a lesbian scene.

And most of all, in the cinema, when she goes to see a porno film, at which

point the whole thing just combusts with a real sense of wit and self

-awareness. Because here she is, porno queen Marilyn Chambers, going to see a

porno movie, sitting down and some guy two or three rows behind sees her and

thinks, as you can see from his expression, oh my.

God, look at her. She's so stunning. I mean, the dream fantasy, going to a

theatre and seeing a chick who looks that hot, you know, it's just like a

fantasy come true.

And if you couldn't take this level of self -awareness any further, on the

screen, in the porno movie that they're watching, you hear a line, reality is

like a dream.

And reality is like a dream.

And my dreams are like reality.

playing around with your awareness and your awareness of the game's been played

by employing this iconic actress from porn and bringing her into this

situation. Very cleverly done, but it's not done in a kind of a wanky, sort of

smart -ass sort of way.

It's just done carefully and with a level of ironic amusement that doesn't

in the way of the story.

So, yes, it's an incredibly subtle, clever film.

There's another really subtle touch to do with art design as well, which I

think...

In low -budget films, something that falls usually by the wayside is art

usually because they're shot on location.

You can't dress the sets. There isn't time for that. There isn't the money for

that. You film with what's there.

Cronenberg is very good at art design, and he's got a real eye for amplifying

the theme of the film through carefully chosen props and paintings.

And in Rabid, there's a wonderful scene where Marilyn Chambers...

is about to realise that she's the Typhoid Mary character who's been

the plague and she's lying in a sweat from the side effects of the illness

she's got.

And the painting in her friend's house where she's staying has these geometric

kind of triangular shapes all pointing down towards where she's lying.

But it's before she realises. If it was done when she realised, it would be

really, really over -determined and sort of like almost comic.

You know, it would be like kind of over -egging the situation.

But because she's on her way to realising that she's the person who's

all this, this little piece of art design is kind of just pointing you in

direction and just drawing your attention to the way that everything is

gathering without actually kind of hitting the nail, you know, clumsily on

head.

One minute, they're perfectly normal. The next, rapid.

As far as Section 3 is concerned and its presence on the list of films that were

considered to be banned, it is very hard to understand. I mean, as I understand

it, this film was released in the same form in the cinemas as the next

certificate release with no difficulty at all. There are moments of horror.

Obviously, there are moments, upsetting moments, grotesque moments in the film.

to try and understand why it ended up getting anywhere near the video analysis

list is to try and second -guess the mindset of an idiot.

You know, some idiot policeman watched something in the film that he thought

offensive and unpleasant, and here we are, 30 -odd years later, trying to

understand. I don't think... We don't stand a cat in hell's chance, because

there's nothing in this film that ought to be troubling people in the... You

know, I wouldn't put anything on a banned list. Let me get that right. But,

know, if you were to put ice bit on your grave, next to rabid, you know.

How can we possibly understand how anyone could have thought that they were

equivalent in any way?

People are dying and only Rose knows why.

You gotta come quick. You gotta come quick and get me.

It's Rose. It's gotta be. Something's happened to Rose.

Don't scream.

Don't panic. He's dead. And the dead can't hurt the living.

Rabbit.

The Prime Minister was reluctant to officially declare a state of emergency,

as any citizen in the streets can tell you, martial law has come to Montreal.

Shooting down the victims is as good a way of

handling them as we have got.

Trust your mother.

Your best friend.

The neighbor next door.

One minute, they're perfectly normal. The next, rabid.

Pray it doesn't happen to you.

Okay, Rosemary's Killer, a .k .a. The Prowler, is probably better known under

the Prowler title.

The Prowler.

If he wants you, he'll get you.

It's a 1981 slasher classic from Joe Zito, who went on to do Friday the 13th,

the final chapter in 1984.

In fact, it was this film which helped him get that gig. In fact, the people

behind the Friday the 13th series actually said to him, if they could put

film out as the Friday the 13th movie, it would make a, you know... a whole

of money. Unfortunately, they didn't do that, but they did get him to make that

film. You may think you're safe, but you're dead wrong.

Now, Rosemary's Killer is probably an apter title than The Prowler.

what it was was a prologue set in 1945.

At graduation dance, Rosemary is pitchforked with her new lover by her

GI boyfriend, who she sent a Dear John letter to.

Now, obviously, he's a bit pissed off by that, but... Nothing happens for 30 odd

years. And then, of course, as what happens in fashion movies in the early

1980s, they decide to have another dance. Just like My Bloody Valentine,

is a very similar sort of set -up. And, of course, the murders start anew, and

the G .I. is back with his trusty pitchfork.

Tonight.

The terror begins again.

It also, of course, has the Tom Savini special effects, which is probably the

biggest draw for the film.

Now, Tom Savini, you know, it's probably his best work, actually. Friday the

13th is obviously one of his better known than Dawn of the Dead. But you

back at them and they look a little bit hokey now, I would say. But Rosemary's

Killer is still incredibly brutal.

There's a scene where somebody gets a machete through the top of the head and

comes out through the bottom of their neck, get their eyeballs rolled back.

It's in the wine tribe. It's killed in a swimming pool.

Who somehow managed to swim underwater in all this kind of gear and cuts the

throat with a machete. Now, it's incredibly violent. And in its uncut

it still packs quite a punch. Now, of course, Rosemary's Killer, when it came

out in the UK, of course, when it did come out, it came out in cinema and, of

course, it was cut quite heavily. And this version was cut heavily on video.

Now, I remember hiring this when I was about 12 or 13.

And I managed to get it out of the video library.

And they were, you know, it was one of the few times I managed to get away with

actually hiring a film like this after seeing films like Friday the 13th.

And I remember thinking, well, there's not much in it. But, of course, again,

it's one of those films where pretty much everything was cut out.

Now, Rosemary's Killer also stars Lawrence Tierney, who was in Midnight.

another film we've talked about.

And also Farley Granger, who plays the sheriff, who, if you're trying to work

out, it sets itself up as a whodunit. Now, it doesn't really give much away

Farley Granger is probably the best known. with Lawrence Tierney in the

disappears after about five minutes. Now, who could be the killer? Hmm, I

wonder. So he turns up, he ends with Tom Savini blowing someone else's head off

with a shotgun.

Very much in the way of Maniac.

So it's a film that's come back into popularity, I guess, in the last few

It's been given some fantastic DVD and Blu -ray releases, but it's a film that

could have almost vanished for quite a while, and Joe Vito actually said he

almost decided he didn't want anyone to see it, partly because he was actually

concerned about how cheap some of the film looked.

There's a scene in a graveyard with a polystyrene gravestone, and he was

that it looked too cheap. There was also some other props in it he said he was a

bit worried about.

It's not my favourite slasher movie, but it's for fans of early 80s slashers.

You could do a lot, lot worse. Believe me, you could do a whole lot worse. And

think we're actually probably looking at some of these, some others you'll

probably see some trailers for coming up. But yeah, The Prowler, a .k .a.

Rosemary's Killer, is certainly one to watch.

It was 1945, the night of the graduation dance.

The war overseas had just ended.

The terror at home was about to begin.

Roy?

Come on.

Come on, kid. Don't play hard to get.

What about New Year's Eve?

Well, that was different.

I couldn't help myself.

Tonight, the terror begins again.

They never found out who did it.

But it had to be someone in town, someone who knew that she was called

Mark, that guy still might be around here.

I don't believe this. You're talking about something that happened over 30

ago.

Whenever the time was right, he'd come back.

If he wants you, he'll get you.

Night after night he waited for her.

If he gets you, you'll wish you were dead.

Just when you catch your breath, it starts all over again.

You may think you're safe, but you're dead wrong.

This is Savage Terror, 1979, Indonesian Cannibals, also called Primitives.

It's, in some ways, an attempt to be a serious film that goes very much non

-serious. The basic plot is you've got a group of research students who do the

typical kind of anthropology thing, where they want to go out and actually

a new tribe for their research. The object of the expedition...

was to come up with some research that nobody's ever done before. You know,

-blowing. It's one of the basic ways of getting ahead in academia. You go out

and find something nobody else has found.

Now, they journey into the jungle.

Is it possible to go any deeper into the jungle?

Yes, it's possible.

But I advise against it. It can be dangerous.

And at first, they end up talking to a tribe called the Primeval.

I guess all that means Primeval Primitives and so forth.

But naturally enough, they decide this is not enough for them. The tribe's

already been discovered.

no big deal all we want to do is go a little further to see if we can find

real primitives so what they do is they bribe their guide to actually go further

with them into the jungle i take her deep into the jungle big problem for

who are supposedly so intelligent they don't see the big problem with going on

rock in the middle of a fast -flowing river

and they'll get split up

they come across a particular tribe of cannibals we found it a primitive tribe

who evidently rather than being there for them they claim to as academics

that they actually look quite yummy at the time obviously that we are getting

ready to see a proper bit of gut munching and so forth we also see the

they are nevertheless trying to react to and study these savages you got it you

got it that's it now you can make yourself some clothes you know

One of the interesting things to pull out about this in particular is a very

sweet little act of the guy playing Tommy, Johan Margiono.

He's also reasonably believable as an academic in the sense of that he goes

through a very wide -eyed and he's trying to see how...

the tribes are behaving towards him how much would you give for their chances of

adapting to modern civilization you begin to look at the behaviors and it's

actually oddly presented in places as though it is a proper little bit of

ethnography you actually see the camera kind of looking at the way that the

families interact when they're eating you see a mother with a baby the

interesting thing in some ways about this is the use of the music and the

angles we have some quite funky psychedelic bits here particularly in an

instance where dear old tommy

stupidly, very stupidly, gets quite hungry, goes and finds a treat, grabs

stuff off a tree, necks it, and sure enough, we've got this kind of weird,

of disco -y bit going on, and we are, we've basically shown what he's seeing.

Now, the one thing that's got to be said, some of those actors deserve

Why am I saying that? How many different ways can you find to say, ooh?

Half of the script consists of very different oohs.

And it's interesting that they actually managed to get some level of tonality

there.

To convey shock, surprise or humour and general yummy that looks fun to eat.

It does give it a little bit of extra tone that some films don't have.

Of course, you might think you've seen some of this stuff a little bit

before and you'd be completely right. The film is basically a little bit of a

rip -off.

of last cannibal world okay some of the scenes in fact are a direct pinch of it

and naturally enough with things like cannibal holocaust anything that showed

people eating people was going to be a big no -no in terms of section three

I agreed to take you to the Pangaea.

Not any deeper into the jungle.

clothing and I couldn't...

Scanner, a film that I think we all love. It comes from that period where

Cronenberg was graduating out of really gruesome, exploitative horror pictures.

Slightly more mainstream. It's a film that's got its exploding head, but it's

also got conventional action sequences and some quite good science fictions of

mind -stretching ideas.

Why are you such a derelict?

Such a piece of human junk.

The answer's simple.

You're a scanner.

And you can see that Cronenberg, of all the filmmakers who came out of horror in

the 70s, is the one who wanted to do the most. He was probably the cleverest.

He may not have been instinctively the best filmmaker, but he was always a

filmmaker. He could turn around and make fast company if he had to.

Scanners are all Cronenberg's films. It's the one that became a franchise.

There were four sequels. There was a Scanners 2 and a Scanners 3 and two

Cop films.

There was talk of a TV series that never happened. I'm actually surprised that

it's not been remade because it's the kind of thing... Because anything that

four sequels...

is well known enough to be, you know, remakeable.

And it's a good premise.

There's stuff there that's still kind of cool.

I mean, I suppose it's a bit pre -Matrix -y or X -Men -y in its idea of, you

know, telekinetic supermen live among us and they're feuding.

And I see bits of it pop up in so many things. The TV show Heroes seems to me

owe a...

big debt to scanners it's also just a film i like i think i mean it's it's not

downer in a way that a lot of horror was then i mean it has a sort of

transcendent ending um it has michael ironside in uh and and this was the

time we noticed michael ironside and it got him a career you know if he's um

playing bad guys now it's because he was in scanners and actually you know he is

great in it um I'm not so sure about Stephen Lack, the

leading guy, who is a bit all over the place, but it's a kind of difficult

And Patrick McGowan, who'd been a bit AWOL since The Prisoner, sort of came

back, and I think he's really strong in it as well. It has lots of, you know,

great confrontational, bizarre, strange dialogue scenes.

Ripe.

Ripe indeed.

Ripe.

And then we're back to the exploding heads.

It's got great exploding head makeup. I assume the reason that it's on this list

is the exploding head. And that is one of those key moments.

I had a great deal of criticism for all those campaigners who just took the

bits. out of context from films and spliced them together to show how

horror movies were these days but that one scene in Scanners is

still for me the best exploding head that has ever appeared in the cinema

I vividly remember the

reaction the first time and

I remember going to see the film a second time a week later, almost just to

how the exploding head would play.

And it was in an era when films were built around special effects set pieces.

was an era of The Howling or American Werewolves, where one good effect was

enough that you would come out of it.

Now, you come out of a film and you've seen...

two and a half solid hours of special effects and shrug but then you know one

good shock was enough

i

would like again all of you in this room one at a time

I must remind you that the scanning experience is usually a painful one,

sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, nausea,

other symptoms of a similar nature. At this point, I'd like to call for

volunteers.

Just sit right here, please.

No, I'd like you to think of something specific.

Do I have to close my eyes? It doesn't matter.

All right, yes. I have something. Yes.

Everyone has a boiling point. Then comes the, ellipsis, scream for vengeance,

with an explanation mark.

It's pretty much what you'd expect. There's a sort of Last House on the Left

vibe going on here.

It's about bank robbers who are also rapists, and they do some bad things to

some people, and the good guys...

sort of turn things around and do away with them.

This is actual vengeance taking place here on the cover.

Scream for vengeance. A brutal story torn from today's headlines involving

innocent people at the mercy of sadistic killers.

It's one of the most obscure of these films for justifiable reasons.

Not anybody would really remember. I suppose it's...

It works hard to be kind of queasily unpleasant.

It has those villains rather like Last House on the Left or Fight for Your Life

or Death Weekend. They work really hard on coming up with characters who are

thoroughly depraved and nasty, but they also seem to be deeply stupid.

Yeah, they obviously are asking for trouble, and it's only the fact that the

people they run into are so generally feeble that means they get to be evil

a full hour.

All right.

Before the half an hour of screaming vengeance descends upon them, ending

reign of terror.

It's one of those things that's made far away from the population centres of

America. Do you have any idea where we are?

Well...

I know it isn't downtown Miami.

And indeed the talent centres of the American film industry.

Are you ever serious?

Stars people you don't know.

We've only known each other a few hours.

Directed by somebody who never seemed to work again, Bob Blith. Or Bob Blith, as

he is on his IMDb page.

No.

I don't. I don't know.

It's a release that feels required to tell you the entire story of the film on

the back.

This was quite common in the video era, where they would just take the synopsis

that was written for the record for the American Film Institute or the Monthly

Film Bulletin and glue it here.

I mean, it doesn't really help if when you bring the thing home from the video

rental store, you already know the end because it's written here.

But then again...

Maybe for those of you who watched the first couple of minutes and then decided

to fast forward through the walking around bits between the rape and the

and the vengeance, it served as a useful guide.

Doesn't seem to have had any major lasting cult appeal.

Few people may well dimly remember it from their youth.

I couldn't honestly say that I remembered it and I had seen it before.

I think that this is the sort of thing that every video shop had loads of

of films like this and you finally rented out when everything you'd wanted

see had gone.

Scream for vengeance.

A brutal story torn from today's headlines involving innocent people at

mercy of sadistic killers.

Their only hope for survival, to fight for their very existence.

You've been seeing follow -ups.

Look, we've got to keep moving in a straight line. We'll get lost. We can't

outrun them. They're going to kill us.

Lost, intimidated, assaulted beyond human limits, and hunted like wild

Scream for Vengeance, a story of retribution and revenge.

Mom!

Mom!

Just shut up and stay put.

Mom!

Want some more, huh?

Stop it!

Kill him!

That's right, bitch. And you're next.

Everyone has a boiling point.

Scream for vengeance.

Well, here we have Filgrim Assassin, which is one of the

greatest exploitation films, I think.

A lot of people think Shogun Assassin was on the original Section 2 DPP list,

but it actually wasn't until later that it appeared on the Section 3 list. This

version is directed by Robert Houston, who actually edited the first two films

of the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

In fact, in this film, they only used the ten minutes of the first film, and

most of it comes from the second film, which is The Baby's Cart at the River

Styx. There's six Lone Wolf and Cub films.

Long Wolf and Cup Series is a very long -running manga, TV series, film series

in Japan.

It concerns a samurai and his son who go on the road defying the shogunate. This

is during the warring clans period of Japan, obviously, and because he defies

the shogunate, the shogun sends out all the clans after him, but the clans are

into fighting as well.

Once, he was the greatest of the magnificent samurai.

Now he hunts the evil lords who butchered his wife. But he has enormous

He's almost better at swordplay than anyone else.

And his aim is to walk the path of hell, bringing destruction wherever he goes.

But he also ends up helping a lot of small villages and women and children

the way. But there's always almost a lack of morality to the main character.

For the American version, they've taken the action scenes of the first two films

and edited them together with a sort of simplistic narration by supposedly the

son of the ninja.

But my father can't help it.

Sometimes he gets lost in the past.

They also take out all the interwarring clan stuff. They just say the shogun.

So whenever you see actually who's the leader of the Shadow Clan in the

film, they just say the Shogun.

But it moves fantastically because the film itself is so beautifully

choreographed. The violence is almost operatic.

There's gazes of blood just floating everywhere, but it's all long take.

And it is very deliberate, almost balletic action. When there's a sword

it's... doesn't last long the plot in the original is very traditional to the

jideki genre but the american version is obviously a very speeded up version

because they've just taken the action american actress and comedian

sandra bernhard did one of the voices for the film also robert houston got

people to come and suggest lines by reading the lip movements of the

actors so that they would think better, which works to a degree. Some of the

bits actually look like they're saying it. I agree.

The music was actually composed for the American version. It's credited as the

Wonderland Philharmonic, but it was actually one chap doing it in the Howe

Holmes studio.

It uses some of the themes from the original, but it's generally more synth

-based.

No surprises on the Section 3 list, because the violence is at a level that

UK probably hadn't seen.

The blood just flows freely for minutes at end.

And there's also...

the fact that the lead character always travels with his child, and the child

gets involved in this sword fight. The baby cart is well equipped with knives,

and in one instance, he's rolled down the hill, and he operates the knife to

take out the ankles of these ninjas that are running towards them. And you see

in graphic detail, the ankles split and coming off.

I'm sure that didn't bode well, and there's a scene where the child is hung

harness and then dropped into a well really fast, which probably panicked all

the moral guardians out there.

Return to the vanished kingdoms of ancient times.

Journey through a lost empire of mad wizards and

barbaric passions.

Behold the saga of a legendary warrior, a loving father,

who has the power of a dozen armies in one sweep of his mystic blade.

This is a story of honor, disgrace, vengeance,

massacre,

and a man who became a demon.

Shogun Assassin.

Once, He was the greatest of the magnificent samurai.

Now, he hunts the evil lords who butchered his wife and stained his

One man and one child defy the most notorious masters of

death on the planet.

Like father, like son.

Meet the greatest team in the history of mass slaughter.

Nothing on Earth can match their infernal fury.

Nothing on the screen can match this awesome spectacle of sword and sorcery.

So this film is Street Killers, also called Beast with a Gun. And this film

is a wonderful example of a 70s Italian gangster film and it

has... Helmut Berger. Yes.

Or Berger, depending on how you say it, who is this Conti's favourite psychopath

as this extraordinarily beautiful Aryan demigod with the piercing blue eyes and

the blonde hair. And of course, as we know, the prettier you are, the crazier

you are.

Hold it. Richard Harrison plays the buff, thick as two planks.

uh police inspector who really tries very hard to be the enigmatic italian

that fails abominably i practically ran into the gang during the breakout i

followed but lost them and it ends up being a kind of who's sexier who's

spunkier who's buffer hot off between him and helmet burger by the end of it

well look who it is so nice to see you inspector santini you're a filthy hyena

The film has Marissa Mell as the main female character, and she was in Danger,

Diabolique, and One on Top of the Other.

And so she carries off the role beautifully.

The police.

Police are looking for Barbadeschi, haven't you heard?

The relationship that she develops with the mad killer is actually a very

interesting one because obviously she begins as the victim, but there's a very

strange, enigmatic kind of amour -fou that starts to begin to develop between

them that is then interceded by Richard Harris and then it ends up at the end

with some pseudo -incest with another couple. So there's a lot of very

dynamic... triangle going on. It's a film of many triangles and of course

keeps it interesting.

Possibly one of the early scenes could have been the reason why the film was

threatened to be put on the list and this is where Helmut Berger gets his

to kill a man by pouring lime all over him and then burying him and then He

rapes the man's wife.

But it's a very strange thing because he's clearly, it's the least rapey rape

scene. He's got his trousers completely up and he keeps kind of randomly

fumbling with a general area that may be or may not be penile. He's humping her

legs kind of like a dog would do.

But more importantly, he is most obsessed with making sure that his gang

seeing him and seeing what he's doing.

So the whole scene is very much about attention being focused on to be seen to

be raping this woman. And there is a sense, as there is in all gang rape

in most films, this homoerotics, that actually this is a film and this is a

scene where it's men wanting to show their virility to other men and where

they're not actually...

raping women because they hate women although clearly they do but they are

raping women because they are trying to have some kind of homoerotic bond with

the other men that they're in the situation with and so when watching this

initially this is what i was thinking about Far, far later in the film there

some very interesting and nuanced indications that he is actually a

and that his psychotic tendencies may be coming from some kind of repressed

homosexual feelings towards a very handsome young rent boy that has become

partner in crime.

It's an enigmatic little film and I think that certainly both in its

and in all of the little nuanced, niggling, psychological peccadilloes

shows in all of its characters, it does have an enigmatic element for people who

enjoy that kind of Italian -iness in films that you can't really put your

on.

One strange little emergence that this film had was in Quentin Tarantino's

Jackie Brown, where the film is playing on the television in Bridget Fonda's

house.

Yes. I'm going to kill your friend.

And I'll do it very, very slow.

I'm going to inflict much pain.

You're going to hear a guy beg for his life, lady, because he betrayed Nanni

Vitale.

That's the car I want.

Don't worry.

There will be no bloodshed.

Don't worry.

There will be no bloodshed.

Police!

The police!

You afraid

of me?

Are you?

Let her alone.

You're not afraid of me?

No, let me go. Let me go.

Hold it.

Take the girls along. We'll need them as hostages.

Inspector Santini.

So nice to see you, Inspector Santini.

What are you shooting for, you crazy?

I'm sorry I lost my temper. You're lucky you don't get a bullet in the brain.

Check outside.

I told you, no one ever comes here.

Okay, so we have Suicide Cult here by James Glickenhaus.

And what the hell is going on in this one? Very, very confusing film. Very

ambitious film. Feels like a big -budget movie that's been squashed into a low

-budget in some way. Or a low -budget movie that couldn't quite sustain

We are now able, using computers, to accurately determine an individual's

zodiacal potential for response to environmental situations and stimuli.

Very, very ambitious subject matter. The narrative is spread over several

different continents.

There's action going on in Europe, in India and in the USA.

It has the hallmarks of a film that ran into production difficulties.

Someone is exerting a strong hold over you, preventing you from telling the

truth. We must strip away your pretense.

Go behind that screen and take off your clothes.

It's only 72 minutes long and yet it still feels like it hasn't quite managed

tell its story. The first credit that you get at the end is the editor, which

kind of a shorthand for this was hard to cut together. So I'd be intrigued to

know the full story of this film and we don't know it. Jim Glickenhouse, who

went on to make The Exterminator, a very, very successful vigilante movie,

never really discussed this film and apparently doesn't really like to

this film's full story. It's a shame because Suicide Cult is a very, very

strange film.

It's almost a sort of a 14 times sort of area of interest that we're dealing

with here. It's essentially kind of mystics in the CIA is the kind of vibe.

There's a branch of the American government who are exploring the use of

astrology to predict people of great potential for good or great potential

evil. The film is about

attempts to establish the astrological birth record of the Virgin Mary so as to

predict... the next birth of Christ or the second coming. If I had that

document, I could pinpoint the Virgin Mary's birth date to the exact hour.

Wembley, you're going to have that document one way or the other.

So many interesting and unusual ideas that it juggles with but can't quite

together into a coherent whole. Do you know your own didactical potential?

No, I don't. I never punched it in. I don't want to know.

It feels as if... The same director would have made a better film of it

five, six years later, with a bit more experience down the line.

Because of me, we can now wiretap directly into a man's soul, and all we

know is his birthday.

I'm not a devotee of astrology by a long shot, and yet I enjoy seeing a film

that takes such a, what is essentially, to my mind, a crackpot premise, and then

perfuse it relentlessly.

The old astrologers and the daily... Horror scopers expect everyone to have a

destiny. They just don't realise that the average astrological configuration

extremely balanced, almost neutral.

I can't think of any other films that have got that plot.

So it really is kind of going out on its own.

So it deserves full marks for originality, even if the project seems

escaped and run out of control.

The producer is a guy called Mark Buntsman.

He's also playing the lead villain of the film, a mystic called Kershurst.

who is living in india as a kind of almost like a manson -esque kind of cult

leader and he's quite frightening actually do you really think alexei

that a tribal outlaw with a few followers is going to take over the

really solid performance there's a theme in the film where a cia operative or an

american government operative whose job it is to try and enter the villain's

dreams. After we finish the videotape, we're going to play it through

which will temporarily glue to Kajur's skull.

You know, I said it was ambitious, yeah? With any luck, he'll confuse the

videotape with the day's real events.

She goes to India and he wills her to death.

once he works out that that's what he's trying to do. So it's like a battle of

worlds between different mythical forces.

Stay with me forever, Rob.

Not really sure if it's going to win very many converts.

One day, if it ever turned up on DVD in a decent transfer, I think people might

look again.

But it certainly deserves points for going off the map.

I haven't the faintest idea.

why it's called Suicide Cult, doesn't really have anything much to do with the

film. It suggests a kind of a Jim Jones set -up, and the Kajers character does

have elements of Jim Jones and Manson. It was based on a sort of a potboiler

paperback called The Astrologer, which came out in the early 70s, and the

original title for the film was The Astrologer. This film...

As I say, it shows all the signs of having been cut together in a bit of a

panic. Transitions between scenes look a little nervy and unfocused because it

keeps jumping from set -up to set -up using colourisation to affect the image

a way that makes you think, there's no need for this. It's like a stylistic

device that's been added by the editor and the people in the post -production

saying, we've got to find some way of making this cohere.

They haven't entirely succeeded, but still, it's an interesting movie and a

curious, almost... kind of Oliver Stone gets mystical sort of plot, which

deserves a bit of attention.

I think the

reason why it's attracted some negative attention from people wishing to censor

these kinds of movies may be just that the title rang alarm bells because of

idea of there being...

echoes of the you know the then quite recent jim jones uh case and also there

are times in the film where you see what i think are special effects recreations

of dead bodies which in the film were presented as real like mondo footage

but maybe that's the other reason as well maybe maybe whoever watched it

that they were looking at real kind of mondo style footage of corpses and that

might have added to the problem if i had that document

I could pinpoint the Virgin Mary's birth date to the exact hour.

Wembley, you're going to have that document one way or the other.

Very soon.

We are now able, using computers, to accurately determine an individual's

zodiacal potential for response to environmental situations and stimuli.

Kajur's zodiacal potential is so high that he must dominate others. He has no

choice.

His activities have included ritualistic mutilations and public deploration

ceremonies. Do you really think Alexei believes that a tribal outlaw with a few

followers is going to take over the world?

There has to be an answer. There is an answer, Kate. You just have to believe

me. So Kate has the same zodiacal potential as the Virgin Mary.

The child who's waiting to be born.

I honestly didn't do anything to the boy that could have possibly gotten me

pregnant.

I had to know the truth about the virgin birth. That's why I couldn't sleep with

her.

Superstition, aka The Witch, is one of a run of early 80s films on demonic

themes. It's the old favourite, you know, the witch who is done to death in

Puritan times, who manifests to avenge herself on the community that did her

in. I will not die!

Cut the rope!

In theory, going after the descendants of the Witchfinders.

in practice just killing whoever else happens to wander through mostly in

gruesome ways involving telekinesis in that sort of Omidy kind of stuff.

It's got some fairly tough gritty gruesome things in it.

It's a reasonably watchable little picture actually.

It's one of those movies that makes a great trailer.

Will anyone survive?

Yeah, you will find this trailer probably gives you all you need from the

It's got all the best bits in it.

The victims who died were the lucky ones.

It's a film that I think I would lump in with Evil Freak, you know, in terms of

demonic action from the early 80s.

Doesn't star anybody in particular.

Stacey Keech's dad is in it.

Directed by James Robeson, who made an early non -funny film about the American

cannibal Alfred Packer.

And that's kind of about it. It did get a theatrical release.

It's hard to confirm at this late date, but it seems possible that it came out

on video and did reasonably well, and then they put it in cinemas, or in very

few cinemas.

Sneakily changing the name, so if you were one of those suckers who'd already

seen it, you know, a superstition, you had to pay to see it again as the witch.

A ghost.

It's haunted, they say.

I'm scared.

Two kids were killed out there.

One kid was gutted and slashed to death.

He had a microwave.

There was a warning.

There are many houses on this foundation.

All of them and their tenants come to bad ends.

And only one man listened.

When did this violence begin?

There was a legend.

We want justice!

Only one man believed.

Am I too late? Has it already started?

There is a superstition. And will anyone survive?

Superstition. The victims who died were the lucky ones.

Superstition.

Here's the ticket for the actual original press show of Dario Argento's

Suspiria. One of the films that actually changed my life.

From this moment on, I was a devoted Argento fan, even though I'd seen the

Animal Trilogy and all his other jallows. But this led me to actually

him and eventually writing the book on him. You're missing more terrifying than

the last 12 minutes of Suspiria.

Father first.

19. Suspiria, of course, is one of the greatest horror movies ever made.

It's listed in so many top tens. It's certainly in mine.

Here's the original Thorny M .I. video box with, strangely enough, a very, very

erudite review by Alexander Walker on the back. That gives it a bit of cred.

They obviously wanted to go for more than just the horror crowd with this

What can I tell you about this movie? It's quite short because Deep Red had

suffered so many cuts.

It was co -written by Dario and Daria Nicolodi, although she's not in it

she hated the fact he took the credits so much that she walked off the movie.

Because there is a bit of a controversy about where exactly the story comes

from. I mean, is it Daria Nicolodi's grandmother who actually said she

a school for witchcraft in Germany?

Is it a story that...

Darry was told by his grandmother about witches working in schools.

Whatever the case, it comes together brilliantly well, all wrapped around

De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater's Three Mothers Tale, and this

of course, is about Metis Asperiorum. I think this has got the best opening 15

minutes of any horror film you could ever have seen.

Dario, would you tell me that it opened like a major horror film would close,

because that way you never knew what was going to come next.

Jessica Harper is the star.

She was in it solely because Dario had seen her in Brian De Palma's Phantom of

the Paradise and loved her.

Just said to her, can you sort of like fake being a ballet dancer? She said,

sure. And so she was in it.

She told me that she wanted to be a part of it because it had such strong female

roles. There's a Leader Valley in it. There's Joan Bennett in it. She was

Lang's widow.

Fritz Lang being one of Dario's big heroes.

And they're very, very strong characters.

Dario is often sort of accused of being misogynist, but really, when you look at

his work, he did write some amazing parts for some very, very strong women.

I had no idea you were so strong -willed.

I see that when you make up your mind about something, nothing will change it

for you.

Originally, the plan was to have all the actors as about 14, 15 years old, but

the Italian distributor said, no, you can't have that, you've got to make them

teenagers or early 20s. But that's the reason why the production design is the

way it is. All the door handles are quite high up to reduce the actual

characters down, so they do look like children in a fairy tale.

Snow White, Disney's version of Snow White, is what Darius always said,

him on to do this movie.

This, of course, is famous for its look.

Luciano Tolloli's wonderful photography, which was all lights bouncing on

mirrors, to really, really heighten the blacks, the golds, and the three

colours, the blues, the greens, the reds. It is one of the most

-looking movies ever made, I think, and a total masterpiece, which is why...

all this stuff about a remake being done is nonsense because you can never

replicate this look i mean the story is nothing special uh you know a ballerina

goes to black forest time gets involved in a witch's coven um anyone can do that

it's the look and the feel of the film and goblin soundtrack is one of the best

ever how beautiful is that i mean they actually did act to some of it already

pre -recorded on set and you can really tell that you really get a real palpable

feeling of dread and i think that's one of the reasons why this film works so

well you can hide from suspiria i

mean clearly it was

going to cause problems i mean There's so many versions of the early part of

this movie. I mean, the heart being exposed, how many stabs in the heart.

So that would have, I think, drawn attention to the Section 3 listings.

But to everyone who knows anything about horror, Suspira is a total masterpiece

and one of the best of all time. I've attended many premieres in Rome of

films, and he's always exactly the same. He's sort of like...

drives round the corner of the cinema, keeps driving, making sure everything's

OK to calm his nerves. He gets out of the car, he comes up to the cinema, he

goes back, he's a bundle of nerves. But for the first time he told me that that

actually never was an issue with him, was with Suspiria. He was confident

into the premiere that it was going to work, and he said the moment the

screaming started, he relaxed.

He said it's the most...

amazing experience he's ever had at any one of his film showings and he still

remembers it to this day.

Suspiria. You can hide from Suspiria.

Only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of Suspiria are

the first 92.

What

I

have here is terror.

Directed by Norman J. Warren, starring Carolyn Courage and James Albury.

Terror. It's a very fast -moving film. It's very short. It clocks in about 80

minutes. The script was written by David McGillivray, who also has a small cameo

in the film as a reporter.

If Tucker was found stabbed to death in the grounds of a house belonging to her

film producer friend, James Garrick. He worked extensively with Norman J.

Warren, but also Pete Walker and a few other British exploitation directors.

Okay. Also making uncredited appearances in this film are Alan Jones, film

historian and programmer of Fright Fest.

Yeah, I know. And Claire Rocco, who worked extensively with Kenny Everett.

about a 300 -year -old curse, which is put by Mad Molly in the 16th century,

she's burnt to death. And when a director has made a film about Mad

because the curse was put on his ancestors.

It was great.

Is it really true?

Yes. It actually happened in this very house.

The supernatural force seems to start killing him and people around him.

There's some attempt to play it as a whodunit, but that fails pretty quickly.

But what it does have are some rather remarkable set pieces.

The violence is very, very gory and very, very well produced.

There's a beheading and there's a stabbing, which is probably one of the

why it got onto the Section 3 list.

It also has some really dreamy sequences, almost Suspiria -like, with

coding of the environment.

One of the deaths is very, very modern because it involves a director being

killed in a film studio by reels of film.

at first, and then when he tries to run away from them, getting beheaded by the

window.

And the reels of film were apparently not usable copies, reels of Saturday

Fever, which they got from Rank Laboratories.

The film studio is quite an interesting space, because on the wall there's not

only a poster for Norman J. Warren's previous film, Satan's Slave, but also

Thriller, or They Call Her One Eye. Norman J. Warren had two other titles

on the Section 3 list.

in seminoid and pray.

Have you ever had that nightmare where you're running for your life?

But you know that escape is impossible.

That's terror.

Have you ever felt an evil presence all around you, but however much you scream,

no one can hear you?

That's terror.

Have you ever felt that you're being driven completely out of your mind?

That's terror.

Terror knows no bounds in stretching your endurance to the limit. You'll feel

all around you. It will trap you, terrify you.

reminding yourself it's only a movie.

It's only a movie.

Only a movie.

The text of Chainsaw Massacre, the film that everybody assumes was on the video

nasties list because all the films that imitate it were, but actually it wasn't.

What happened was true.

God knows why it slipped through the net. It was a fairly high profile video

release in the early 80s.

And that's after it being refused a BBFC certificate. It only had a GLCX

certificate with cuts.

And it was uncut on 16mm.

And that meant it was seen in London.

It was seen at a few select regional art cinemas. I saw it at the Brighton Film

Theatre, introduced by Alexander Walker, with a discussion about censorship

afterwards.

You didn't see it at your local

Isolde or Classic.

So... By the time it hit video, there was much more of a want -to -see factor.

If you're a horror fan, it was one of those films that had been difficult to

to see, and here it was at last.

If you're a horror fan, you'd seen Halloween, you'd seen Friday the 13th.

those pictures, they came round.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a bit of a forbidden fruit.

aspect to it.

And

so...

It was in demand when it came out on video. It came out from Ivor Films, who

it out several different times. First, they put it out on 8mm for a market that

disappeared very soon after.

Then they brought it out on video, but in the 8mm boxes, which presumably they

had a bunch left over.

Then there was a slipcase edition, and then there were various sleeves.

And meanwhile, Charles Band's Wizard video, who had the rights to it in the

States, rather strangely brought out a few...

copies in PAL, which were distributed here.

So the market was so glutted, you know, you couldn't get enough Texas Chainsaw

Massacres. It was one of those movies that a lot of people did see, against my

advice, first on video, because that was the only way they could see it. And

then when the Video Recordings Act came in, it was off the shelves.

It was one of the few films, The Exorcist.

was another, that James Furman just said, no, Britain's not having this

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was banned on film three times, and we tried to cut

The company said, look, will you work with us and see if we can cut it?

There's very little on -screen atrocity.

It's a slow terrorization. We cut five obvious bits, like the woman hung on a

meat hook.

And I brought it in and showed it to every member of the board, including the

president, Lord Harlech, at the time. It was about 1978.

And at the end of the film, they said, it's exactly the same.

It makes no difference at all. The experience of watching it is the same,

is this relentless terrorization, and particularly of the last surviving girl,

who is mentally tortured, really, for about 20, 25 minutes.

It's very difficult to watch.

And yet it's getting entertainment out of her suffering.

That was essentially what we decided on. And I think that it was a case of it

just being the loudest, the most famous, the most known. And a lot of it is to

do with the title.

If it had a different title...

I don't think it would have stuck in people's minds and been as famous as it

was. Part of the genius of the film comes from its title. I mean, I remember

first person who told me about the film is somebody who came back from America

and said, you'll never believe what I just saw on a marquee in a cinema in the

Deep South. He said, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And I remember being stunned at the thought that somebody would make a film

called that.

It was on a double bill with the incredible two -headed transplant, which

have been an evening out and a half.

But so that title. And even then, it got to the point where the BBFC just didn't

like chainsaws.

They changed Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers to Hollywood Hookers. And if you saw the

box to that, they just painted out the word chainsaw. So the lingering effects

of Texas Chainsaw Massacre in British censorship were quite...

huge i

think

actually it was a film that was not particularly well represented by video

because it's a movie that's an overwhelmingly overpowering experience

theater

Not just because of how relentlessly suspenseful it is and how gruesome it is

sort of conceptually, it's like all the art direction just makes you want to be

sick.

But it has that really interesting layered soundtrack, that kind of David

Lynchian grinding noises that go on underneath everything.

even when the chainsaw isn't buzzing.

And when you were in a cinema and having that, you know, pounded at you from all

directions, I mean, I remember seeing it a couple of times in the cinema in the

70s, and it being an absolutely devastating, shattering film.

Watching it on video...

It was all right. It still works. It still grips you. It's got a lot of

But it's not quite the overwhelming experience it was as a movie.

The only thing it had as a sort of hot button to annoy the censors was the mere

fact of the power tool, the mere fact of the chainsaw.

And... There isn't actually that much chainsaw action in the film. It's much

more concerned with general queasiness and being upsetting and pushing all the

buttons. It's a key horror film. I still think of it as one of the top ten most

horrifying films I've ever seen.

I don't know if I would feel that if my first exposure to it had been as a video

release in the 80s as opposed to a movie in the 70s.

It's interesting, again, seeing it put in the context of all this other stuff.

To me, it towers so far above films which would seem to be identical if you

go by the synopsis. And it shows just how much Toby Hooper brought to the

when he made this picture.

What happened was true.

the most bizarre and brutal series of crimes in America.

This is the movie that is just as real.

Just as close.

Just as terrifying as being there.

Even if one of them survives, what will be left?

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. After you stop screaming, you'll start talking

about it.

John Carpenter's The Thing.

I can't believe anybody seriously thought of banning this one or pulling

one from the shelves.

It's a major studio film.

Although it had a sort of slightly rocky critical reception at the beginning, it

was fairly quickly accepted as a major classic of the modern horror picture.

It had that thing that was really great for video that...

it had underperformed in the cinemas for some reason it came out the wrong time

people said that that year everybody wanted to see ET with nice aliens rather

than the thing with nasty aliens so that meant there was a video audience out

there who hadn't seen it yet it

was also a film that kids loved

because it had like amazing effects

It's one of the few conceptually gruesome films that's more surreal than

repulsive. Because it has no female characters, it doesn't have that element

misogyny that's in a lot of extreme splatter movies, or even in something

The Evil Dead, which is slightly uncomfortable.

The fact is, it's blokes being mutated and torn apart and turned into monsters

and eaten by giant mutant huskies, and nobody cares about that, right? It's

fun.

So it's like, what kind of a mindset...

takes this and lumps it in with these other movies. OK, I can see that it's

of in the same genre.

The academic term at the time was body horror, which always struck me as being

bit po -faced and stupid. But it does key in, I suppose, with the extremes

of, like, Lucio Fulci's work or...

The stuff that Clive Barker started doing in literature about the same time,

sort of transformations and metamorphosis and flesh twisting. And it

of Rick Bader and Rob Bottin's rubber monster chain Joe effect.

And so there is sort of that. But to me, the fantastical element removed it into

another.

I would say a less censorable area. I don't think that it was a film that the

BBFC had any trouble with.

Some people may have felt it went too far, but some people thought Alien went

too far. It came out from CIC, who presumably made a packet with it,

was like a hot ticket video rental. They subsequently had a track record of

pre -cutting their films with quite a lot of the good stuff.

snipped and that may well have been because of responses to the thing I

know if it was put in maybe the science fiction section of video shops so a

younger audience rented it out when perhaps they weren't quite ready for it

that got some upset grannies complaining although I was like 22 or

23 when the thing came out and I actually much preferred the Howard Hawks

And it took me a while to warm up to the remake. If I'd been 12, it would have

been my favourite film ever.

I look at the thing and I see what it does is basically it does what

Doctor Who did for my generation.

It's like, you know, that kind of science fiction and horror in that one

concentrated package.

Absolutely irresistible for 12 -year -old boys.

No wonder they all grew up wanting to remake it badly.

Twelve men have just discovered something.

For 100 ,000 years, it was buried in the snow and ice.

Now it has found a place to live.

Inside.

Where no one can see it.

Or hear it.

Or feel it.

I know I'm human.

Some of you are still human.

This thing doesn't want to show itself. It wants to hide inside an imitation.

It'll fight if it has to. But it's vulnerable out in the open.

If it takes us over...

Then it has no more enemies.

Nobody left to kill it.

And then it's won.

You guys gonna listen to Gary?

We can beat one of those things!

Tomb of the Living Dead, which I don't think it was actually called that for

very long. I still think of it as Mad Doctor of Blood Island.

One of the run of shot in the Philippines Mad Doctor movies. It's

hilariously on the cover as from Eddie Romero, the maker of Apocalypse Now.

It actually stars John Ashley, who's another one of the makers of Apocalypse

Now.

You probably think that Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now, and you'd

right. However, every single person involved in the film industry in the

Philippines has a credit on Apocalypse Now, and Eddie Romero is one of those.

He's officially a producer.

I think that means he was basically a location finder, which is why I am told

that if you look at Apocalypse Now, you can see some of the very same locations

that turn up in the Blood Island movies.

Beast of Blood, Brain of Blood, which is the Al Adamson one that was dumped in

afterwards, Beast of the Yellow Knight, Beyond Atlantis.

They're all kind of a morass. They're a genre unto themselves.

If you only see one, Mad Doctor of Blood Island is a good one to start. It's got

John Ashley, who was sort of the American lead in most of these films. He

emigrated to the Philippines and went into production and direction out there.

And Angelique Petitjean, who's a sort of living cartoon. She'd been in a Star

Trek episode and she ended up making sort of...

soft core pictures and working with the likes of kitten natividad um and and

actually it's quite a strong presence and i guess i'm stupid for believing you

are going to try to help me and it features the chlorophyll man

who is one of the most goofy strange bizarre

of all uh monsters in mad doctrine and island movies oh i know what ails him

symptoms are rather apparent

Chlorophyll poisoning.

Chlorophyll? They're all derived distantly from H .G. Wells.

Wells was about turning animals into men. This is about turning men into

I can't see why anyone was offended by this. This is kiddie matinee horror.

This is the sort of stuff that would have been hokum

if it had been made with George Zuko in 1943.

The fact that they were making it in the 1970s, okay, with a bit more sex and a

bit more blood, maybe goes to show that it took a long time for new

ideas in horror to percolate out to the Philippines.

I think they're kind of endearing as films.

I certainly would happily watch an all -night showing of all of them.

And they have cool gimmicks like the blood -drinking ritual.

Get your samples of the green blood potion ready and recite the oath of Dr.

Lorca aloud with me.

Now, drink your sample of green blood and it is guaranteed that you can never

turn into a green -blooded monster.

I think, rather sadly, they didn't do much of that over here and this wasn't a

particularly big video release.

Why they stuck this title on it when there was already Tombs of the Blind

and Tombs of the Undead on the market?

Maybe they did want to get confused with either of those.

But as it was, they turned it into generic horror product.

Mad, mad, mad!

And he will shock you out of your sanity too when the transfusion of terror is

performed by the mad doctor of Blood Island.

All of those lives that you think have been wasted in the course of this

experiment.

actually have brought us closer to that lifelong dream of longevity.

Eternal youth.

I will not give up the work of a lifetime.

Simply because you think I'm mad.

We finally got him aboard. He was half conscious, so we tried to revive him.

He turned into a raving lunatic.

Killed one of my men before I finally got a bullet in.

What happened to him?

He jumped overboard.

It was right after sunset.

We couldn't find a trace of him.

But before he jumped, he bled a lot on deck.

His blood was green.

This is a barbaric experience in the most grotesque sense.

You will see supernatural beings caught up in the rampage of gory brutality.

And it will shock you and jolt you more than you would ever expect.

Creatures living for synthetic green blood. They walk by night and take

part in gruesome, unholy acts of savagery.

It's incredible. It's unbelievable.

But you will witness scenes so frightening that your mind will not be

accept what you see. But don't say we didn't warn you. The mad doctor of Blur

Island is coming your way soon.

And he's waiting for you.

Why don't you pay him a visit?

No appointments are necessary. But bring along your courage. You will need it.

Yes, indeed.

The toy box is one of those artifacts rather than films that must

have been just astonishing to stumble over on video.

Lord knows what the people who put it out thought they were buying and lord

knows what the people who rented it thought they were getting.

I imagine that there was a similar reaction, probably among the 42nd Street

sleaze patrons who went to see this as a porn movie.

For the most bizarre, horrifying and erotic sexual experience you will ever

have, don't miss the toy box.

It was made in that period where porn skin flicks were no longer...

a novelty but they hadn't yet had the deep throat moment when hardcore started

moving on so they got beyond the sort of the nude volleyball and the torn slips

in in ruffies type things they got a bit beyond ross meyer but this is one of

those movies that if you describe the plot uh it's so bewildering is so

it's about a couple of swingers who go to a party in a mansion, which is thrown

by a character called Uncle, who's this big, fat, strange, apparently dead guy.

But this is insane, performing in front of a dead body. Well, I'll never do it

again. I don't care how much money he gives me, it isn't worth it.

Well, how do we know he's dead?

Who has people around that perform weird sexual charades, and so you get the

turns. Not many of them are actually that sexy, although they do mostly

sexual activity and nudity.

But then in the last... quarter of an hour. It turns out that Uncle and indeed

the heroine are aliens.

There's something you're not telling her.

Nothing's free and easy.

On the contrary, your species on this planet are free and easy.

But on the planet Arkhan, you're expensive and illegal.

And it's all about aliens coming to Earth because they can turn human

into an illegal drug in their planet. We discovered.

By devouring your brains, your emotions enabled us to become effectively

intoxicated. It's sort of like the porn version of Star Trek.

You can't get through my shield.

Turns up in the last 15 minutes of this otherwise rather tame orgy movie in

which people grope each other very delicately in strange outfits and

in a monotone that kind of dialogue that could could just about go for a really

pretentious off -broadway play it just fell from the ceiling out of nowhere and

then it gets down to you know women taking their clothes off for a couple of

minutes and then it gets back to more doom haunted symbolism and stuff and

It sort of takes off for the stars, literally, in the last couple of

don't know if it was an influence on the Rocky Horror Show, but it has sort of

the same ending.

I find this one of those films that's kind of hypnotically bad.

Now, now, behave.

Oh, my gratitude forever, old kind mistress.

It's sort of... inept in many ways it doesn't have the filmmaking skills that

ross meyer or radley metzger brought to similar nudie type material but

it has some ambitions you know ron garcia who's gone on to a mainstream

as a cinematographer worked with david lynch and a couple things is obviously

trying to do more than just photograph naked people

But he doesn't really seem to have an idea what he's trying to do.

I find that quite rewarding.

I find that it's ambiguities and it's strangeness. It is a film that I would

back and look at again because I feel you can't quite puzzle out what it's

doing. Its mood changes all the time.

Some of it is genuinely funny in that.

Yeah, zombie dialogue reading lines. Some of the lines are quite amusing.

Wealthy Pooh doesn't want me.

Sure I do, baby. Cutie.

Or whatever your customers call whores.

You do things my way. You understand.

I copied down a lot of dialogue while watching it because it's the sort of

that I think that'll come in useful sometime.

How did you like my performance?

Was it okay?

It wasn't as good as your birthday two years ago.

But it was all right.

What it isn't, like a lot of sex films made about this time, is very sexy.

There's a lot of sex in it. But the filmmakers aren't particularly

or competent with eroticism, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It strikes me

that... Yeah, there are filmmakers.

Jess Franco comes to mind, someone who has no talent at all for eroticism, who

seems to have made more sex films than anybody else ever.

It's not necessarily a handicap, whereas you think being tone deaf would be a

handicap in making musicals.

Although one -eyed guys have made 3D movies, so maybe it's not that. But this

weird asexuality of the direction and the production, yeah.

cuts against the would -be salaciousness of the material in actually quite an

interesting way.

Enter this doorway to the living, breathing house of captive horror with

inescapable destiny and their own ultimate private reward.

The most extreme human sexual debauchery.

since the dawn of man doesn't begin to compare with the secret, lust -filled

cravings of an unleashed alien mind sucking diabolical

syndromes of depraved eroticism from the undulating pit of

orgiastic consummation.

Ralph and Donna will enter this door and sacrifice all hope of returning.

from an endless existence in the vortex of this gaping orifice of depravity.

He will collect people to perform like puppets in a game with no end and no

beginning.

The game I have in store for you

this evening will be the most bizarre...

the most rewarding venture of your life.

You will see this bed alive with sexual desires.

Surround and penetrate this girl's deepest erotic emotions.

Men and women spreading erotic pleasure from one end of the screen to the other.

You will see that even death is no guarantee of peace in this most unusual

house.

This young man's secret desires include the ecstasy of orgasm with murder.

eaten alive in a scene that goes beyond anything you have ever witnessed.

You will see what happens when someone tries to escape from the toy box.

You will see people sucking pleasure from every dimension of sexual reality.

For the most bizarre, horrifying, and erotic sexual experience you will ever

have, don't miss The Toy Box.

Coming soon.

brilliant, lycanthropic exploitation masterpiece.

I love Reno de Silvestro's movies. He did Deported Women of the SS Special

Section, one of my all -time favourites.

This isn't quite up there, but it sort of works in a way. Quentin Tarantino

loved it. In fact, he actually kicked off an Austin festival with this, and

slot has since been known as the Wolf Woman Section.

Annick Burrell plays La Lupe Manara. More about possession.

really, because it was tying in with the exorcist trend than it was actually

about werewolves.

Possessed with an evil that is older than time itself.

An evil that turns her life into a bloody and terrifying nightmare.

But it's still a pretty good movie. A bit slow.

Some of the psychobabble section sort of slows it down to a bit of a snail's

pace. I think it really could be snail woman more than anything else. But

said that, I mean, the make -up effects are pretty good.

The special effects were done by Carlo Ramboldi, who was later to go on to E

and King Kong.

Of course, we weren't interested in those. We were more interested in all

Lucio Fulci, like a lizard in a woman's skin that he did. And this one, he often

told me that Annick Burrell looked like a wolf anyway, so he didn't really need

that much make -up, just as well, because let's face it, what she's

looks like a, well... a hairy jumpsuit, probably made out of, you know, old

chinchilla. But hey, you know, it worked for the time. It was more a

sexploitation movie, I think, than anything else.

Biggest surprise here is actually Howard Ross, or Renato Rossini, to give him

his real name. He plays a stuntman who actually falls in love with the werewolf

woman. But he gives a very, very strong and muscular performance.

Very atypical for him, despite the disco outfits, of course.

And Dagmar Lissander, who often isn't credited to be in this movie, gives a

of oomph to the meaty sex scenes.

The first release of the movie was on the Cine Hollywood label.

Then it was on...

the intercity video label, and then it went to the Cockney Rebel special label.

So this has had more releases than you could possibly imagine one video title

could ever possibly have.

How could any man guess that this girl, young,

The legend of the Wolf Woman.

A century -old family curse.

Possessed with an evil that is older than time itself.

An evil that turns her life into a bloody and terrifying nightmare that

ends.

The legend of the Wolf Woman.

Daniela is born and reborn in an act of reincarnation that is essential.

as violent, as bloody, as anything you will ever see on the motion

picture screen.

First, she will seduce you with the frenzy of someone possessed.

Then, she'll show you the soul of a creature that must devour the men who

her in order to live.

The Legend of the Wolf Woman.

In the legend of the wolf woman, we'll eat you up.

So this is Wrong Way, a film that was directed by Ron Kelly, who was actually

pseudonym for someone called Ray Williams. And it also starred a woman

Candy Sweet, who was in some other dodgy exploitation films, I guess you could

say. The poster art says they did it the wrong way, which I think was quite

perverse because obviously the first thing I thought was they went the wrong

way. And so it is a standard kind of girls' car fucks up and so they have to

get out, take all their clothes off to try and fix the car and then they are

hijacked, I guess you would say, by fake geologists.

Sam and I are geologists. We have a mobile lab station about four miles up

road. who end up being drug -crazed bikers.

Except that the film really doesn't

have any kind of deplorability that is worthy of it. The film is essentially

over an hour of four very ugly...

sunburnt redneck men naked raping these women and beating them in quite graphic

ways.

It's essentially a soft porn film but because I think for whatever reason

they didn't want to use a soft porn kind of ideology of titillation they've only

used abuse instead.

And then all of a sudden there's this grand rupture to a cult where they are

going to get raped for a kind of Strange God that has no name.

I feel Providence has finally singled us out for the ultimate gratification.

We shall kill them, of course.

Brutally. It is obviously of its time because it's very California Hills. It's

very zero -budget farmyard mentality.

What are you doing here? It was cut to under an hour

upon its release.

which means that they obviously cut all the nudity out.

There's nothing quite as strange as seeing over an hour of soft porn and

penises, because there's just sex scene after sex scene with clearly flaccid

penises, and there's something quite gruesome about that. It shows just how

miserable and insipid the film is. And I think that this is the problem with

this film, that it's not terrible.

and it's not great it's it's deplorable because it's not deplorable enough

there's nothing really dreadful enough it's just it is literally a flaccid kind

of film and also watching these very uh vile naked men one of whom has some kind

of skin necrosis above his ass formula you plus

wrong way the one thing that i will give it some merit for is that the

vernacular is phenomenal and hilarious.

Dig it.

Every second word is dig, bread.

The bread, man. The bread.

I'm down with that man.

It's like listening to Neil from The Young Ones narrate a David Hess film.

Oh, what a bummer.

So in reference to Section 3 and the possibility of what might have caused

to be such a controversial film, it is essentially a soft porn film because you

do see full male nudity, full female nudity. You see simulated fellatio, you

simulated forced cunnilingus. The film did come out the same year as Last House

on the Left and according to my research...

It's not quite clear whether they made it immediately after Last House on the

Left to cash in on it, because it certainly shares some things. But at the

time, it's so sparsely similar that it's hard to decide.

But clearly, because it has got the sort of insert at the end of the crazed cult

leader and the sex cult and the murder that is associated with it. But because

it's so...

as I said, flaccidly done, both in terms of the actual turgidity of the members

and also the kind of acting.

You mean you destroy a human being for a few lousy dollars?

It's like on paper it reads like it would be banned under Section 3.

You're intelligent, I like you.

In terms of...

box ticking it definitely would be considered a pornographic film but in

of what it's actually showing it wouldn't so for that reason its status

peculiar formula this plus

this plus this

plus this

Equal. Wrong way.

Two girls in trouble.

Two guys looking for trouble.

And lots more where they came from.

Action.

Drama.

Suspense. Comedy.

Wrong way.

A true experience brought to life on the screen.

Two girls kidnapped, humiliated, raped, and left abandoned.

Eventually making their way to what they think is safety.

only to fall into the hands of a maniacal killer cult of hippies.

Bizarre? Yes.

Sadistic? Yes.

Formula. You plus wrong way equals

an experience.

Wrong way.

See it.

What's the one film that most people think is on the original 72 video nasty

list, but actually isn't?

Well, it's Harry Bromley Davenport's Extra.

Nothing too extraordinary, I'm afraid, in the alien invasion stakes, but...

enough to warrant sort of like a low -rent franchise, that's for sure.

Tony's father has been away a long time.

Now he's coming home.

The film originally came about because Robert Shea of New Line Cinema wanted to

copy the Phantasm template, the Don Coscarelli movie.

He wanted a movie with lots of buzz moments, and he felt that Extro would

actually fulfil that brief.

Extro, bearing powers of black magic from deep space.

it was actually robert shea who insisted on the black panther scene he thought

it even though it made no sense he thought it needed a bit of a shock in

particular moment but it bears no relation to anything that goes on in the

so harry bromley davenport went off and filmed this i was actually on the set of

this movie and saw the alien which is really a mime artist bent over backwards

thought that was pretty obvious i never actually expected people to buy that

But, you know, it was a reasonable enough attempt at trying to do an alien

the cheap.

Indestructible, ever -changing evils.

And Harry Bromley Davenport was a pretty resourceful director, as Whispers of

Fear proved, but even he couldn't do much with the Michelle Parry script

which was like another version of I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

It takes off where Close Encounters of the Third Kind left off, is the way Mark

Forstater, the producer, explained Extro to me.

Well, fair enough.

It starred Bernie Steggers, Lamberto Barber's macabre star, and the wife of

Newell, the director who would do... Four Weddings and a Funeral and Prince

Persia. In later years, Harry brought me Davenport, who I actually met because

he was a very close friend of Maureen Bartlett, who ran Video Media, one of

very first video labels set in Wardour Street.

Harry always said that he was stoned throughout the whole of this film, and

fact that it actually held together was just amazing to him.

If you think hard about something, you can make it happen.

Harry always said the movie was a complete mess, that the atmosphere was

completely unintentional. He was very cynical about it. But, hey, as I said,

went on to become a major franchise, so, you know, who was right?

Tony's father has been away a long time.

Now he's coming home.

Extro has returned.

Once a man, he is now something more than human.

Indestructible, ever -changing, evil.

His mission, to avenge, to possess, to destroy.

Why did you come back?

I came back for you.

Oh, my God.

John!

Extro. Bearing powers of black magic from deep space.

If you think hard about something...

You can make it happen.

Use it when you need it.

Some extraterrestrials aren't friendly.

From New Line Cinema, rated R.

Zombie Holocaust.

One of the seemingly unendless parade of Italian zombie movies from the early

80s.

Actually, it's a...

It's a kind of crossover film because it's sort of a cannibal movie that turns

into a zombie movie.

Something about cannibalism from what I hear.

Where the hell did you hear that crap?

It's got mad science in it, but it's got cannibal tribesmen too.

Start Ian McCullough could be in a couple of actually better Italian

exploitation pictures.

The man from Zombie Flesh Eaters and Alien Contamination, which would

deliver.

all the stuff that Zombie Holocaust only promises.

You seem to know a great deal about these people. The various video versions

that were around in the UK were heavily cut, so...

The only reason you went and saw these films was for the gruesomeness and there

wasn't that much in the versions you got, which is probably why they took

on it and didn't make it a proper video nasty, although every other film with

zombie or indeed holocaust in the title managed to make it. I suppose calling it

zombie holocaust was an admission of failure because it's like gluing

titles from other films to make your film, which is rarely a way of...

of making striking original work that anybody will care about.

It was released in America as Dr. Butcher MD, which is actually a better

although completely irrelevant to what the film's about.

Yours is a typical example of median intelligence, enough to discover the

existence of my secret, but absolutely incapable of understanding it.

I have a certain affection for this period of rubbish, and I'm sure I own

this on DVD.

I may well have watched it several times, but I'd be hard put to say why in

particular this stands out of the pack.

It is kind of shuffling there at the back, isn't it? Because it doesn't have

really gross -out set pieces that some of the other zombie films have. It's

generally unpleasant.

The patient screamed, disturbing me, performed removal of vocal cords. His

is Dr. Butcher, M .D., medical deviant. He has perverted the science of medicine

for his own maniacal means.

Dr.

Butcher, M .D., medical deviant. You will die, only to live again in a

body. Then you can tell me if the operation was a success, what it's like

pass from life to death and death to life.

See Dr.

Butcher's diabolical surgery.

He must have a psychopathic deviant in the hospital.

See him mutilate patients with his murderous scalpel.

Dr. Butcher loves New York. There are so many attractive patients to operate on.

I could easily kill you now, but I'm determined to have your brain be the

culmination of my career.

Dr. Butcher, medical deviant. He loves to operate on beautiful women.

I'm on the verge of discovering the key to increasing man's lifespan by over a

hundred years.

Prepare the operating table.

I'm anxious to experiment on a male Caucasian brain.

The time has come for you to play your part in this momentous occasion.

Science must surmount all obstacles and this requires certain sacrifices.

It will comfort you to know that generations to come will reap great

from my experiments.

Bloodthirsty lunatic.

Dr.

Butcher, M .D., medical deviant. He's a depraved, sadistic rapist. A

bloodthirsty, homicidal killer.

And now we come to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, probably the best film on

this compilation, probably the best film in the whole haul of this period,

one of the few that's remained a lasting classic.

This situation must be controlled before it's too late. They are multiplying too

rapidly. Dawn.

And yet everyone forgets that in Britain it wasn't particularly well treated

originally. It was retitled. It was called Zombies.

This situation must be controlled before it's too late. It is too late. They are

multiplying too rapidly.

Run if you can, but there's no escaping the zombies.

George Romero brings you face to face with the dawn of the day.

There's no more room in hell.

The dead will walk the earth.

They didn't even do it consistently.

It's called Zombies in its opening credits and Dawn of the Dead in its end

credits. This was the version, in fact, that premiered at the London Film

Festival in 1979. I know I was there.

And then had a successful theatrical run. But this was the very birth of...

It may well have been the first videotaped film I saw on Betamax, of

and I suspect it made a fortune.

Even though it's a slightly BBFC -snipped version that was around, but it

one of the kind of wonder films of the early days of the video rental industry.

I think it was one that everybody saw then.

I suspect we could fill the rest of this tape, the interview, with just talking

about the things about this movie everybody knows and how important it is

what a major influence it is on subsequent horror pictures.

But just in terms of its influence on the video industry, I suspect that it

was...

the release of this picture on video that inspired the release of all those

other zombie pictures.

Yeah, the famous Italian zombie movies, which had started, they got theatrical

releases off the back of the success of Dawn of the Dead.

But then they became the kind of mainstays of the video nasty list.

Imagine, if you will, that something has gone terribly wrong.

It's interesting that this was only, as it were, gray -listed as a video nasty.

I think even then there was a sense that George Romero was a cut above

the Italian hacks.

That this was reasonably serious.

And I think even the people who were predisposed to be upset looked at this

movie and saw something that was plainly operating on a completely different

level. Not that that usually stopped the censorious, but it meant that there

were more people in its corner willing to fight for it.

It is a horrible, hauntingly accurate vision of the mindless excesses of a

society gone mad.

In the UK, the theatrical distributor of Dawn of the Dead were Target, with a

precursor to Arrow, who were still in business.

On video, it was Alpha, who were Stanley Long's company, who were quite big as

an early video distributor.

I think even they were aware that they struck it really lucky with Dawn of the

Dead.

I assume they just bid the most for the rights.

And that they didn't do what some distributors did. did. They didn't

take advantage of the fact that, you know, they didn't have to release the

version. They did release the BBFC version, which is very slightly cut. I

if you watch the two back -to -back, you'll notice there's a famous head

exploding that's gone, and there are some gun sight shots where you see the

telescopic sight and the head exploding.

Those were trimmed.

But it was more or less left alone.

I don't think it was horribly compromised in the way that some of

were, by having anything remotely gory removed, leaving only the wandering

around scenes.

Zombies.

They get up and kill.

The people they kill get up and kill.

So it was a film that was treated reasonably respectfully, as zombie

were. George Romero brings back the dead the reason it's in this kind of

hinterland of almost a video nasty is almost to tick off the boxes it was the

other big zombie flesh -eating movie around at the time when zombie flesh

was why those movies want people wanted to toss into the fire so it was almost

like oh well you might as well take this as well and then people said yeah it's

actually quite a good film and that's quite an important movie uh i think it's

yeah in the the trawls that went round you know there are stories of people

taking apocalypse now because they got it mixed up with cannibal apocalypse

and i think this is one of those give me another list sure i'll just pull it out

of my ass right

and to be fair to ask the police to make distinctions between one

zombie film and another in a day before yeah you could go on your Yeah, your

iPhone and check the IMDB to sort out which is which.

When even companies didn't know which films they were releasing.

When certainly the bloke who ran your video corner store had no particular

what was on his shelves and who made it. It was difficult to ask people whose

job had nothing to do with this to try and make those distinctions. But I think

that's just part of the grand and tragic comedy of the Video Nasties years.

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.

Zombie.

This situation must be controlled before it's too late.

Meet me on the roof at 9 o 'clock. They are multiplying too rapidly.

We've got to survive. Somebody's got to survive.

Zombies.

They get up and kill.

The people they kill get up and kill.

Imagine that the most frightening things on Earth are about to come out of the

darkness.

George Romero brings back the dead.

What the hell are you doing playing around? Someone's upstairs shooting at

They kill for one reason.

They eat their victims.

but there's no escaping the terrifying consequences.

George Romero brings you face to face with the dawn of the dead.

Zombies.

Zombies. Zombies.

Well,

Zombies Lake.

or Zombie Lake, however you prefer, Le Lac des Morts Grévants. You won't find

very many people who are going to stick up for this one, but I'm going to try.

And before I do, I should point out that every time I've watched this movie,

within about 30 minutes, my eyes have been looking at the clock on the DVD

player or the video player, thinking, how much longer?

So I do sympathise. If you're sitting there thinking, God, no, that film is so

awful, how can anybody try and say anything nice about it?

I understand. It's really at the limit.

Why, of all things, are you interested precisely in The Lake of the Dead?

But when it came out on DVD, it actually looked a hell of a lot better.

Photography -wise, it looks actually rather beautiful. The clarity of the

and the beauty of these French rural settings are actually really quite

compelling, and I find myself drawn to it.

It's one of those movies that I find myself wanting to watch more often than

could possibly believe.

I'm in the mood for Zombie Lake.

What's wrong with me?

Why am I thinking this way? But I could sit down and watch it again.

It's a little hard to explain.

I certainly wouldn't want to spread the virus.

I don't want to try and convince anyone else. So don't blame me if you go and

watch it. I'm not trying to persuade you.

But there is something very strange about it.

For instance, if you love zombie movies, particularly from this period, the 70s

and 80s, it's always interesting to see how...

divergent the zombies get and how they act differently to the way they're meant

to act and this one's all over the place i mean in this one you've got zombies

who have fights with each other over points of honor you've got zombies who

for walks in the country with their bastard offspring odd little touches

zombies who return from the grave to express love and devotion to the child

they never saw whilst they were alive it's crazy stuff really i mean you know

sort of like we're not dealing with zombies in the sense of the the

you know, the accepted George Romero sense at all. It's all over the place.

I kind of like that. Another way in which these zombies don't work to the

zombie template is that the people that are bitten by the zombies don't

resurrect and become zombies themselves.

There are no resurrected French villagers who join the hordes and go on

rampage, which, when you think about it, is a little bit like racial purity kind

of zombie style, because the Nazi zombies don't want to create zombies

other races. They're too, you know... They're too into their own thing. So

are no Frenchmen join in with this platoon of Nazi zombies.

So, I mean, again, that's a twist which you don't get in any of the versions of

the zombie mythos.

Our fate's now in our own hands.

We must find a way to safeguard our town from the mad, murdering zombies.

I mean, there are some puzzling points to do with the politics of it, I must

say.

Essentially, it's about, you know, not to mince words, it's about some trollop

in France during the war.

who drops her knickers for a passing German soldier, has a baby, and then

he's killed in the war a bit later, his platoon are wiped out by the French

villagers and the partisan opposition in France.

You would think, really, for a film made in France, that the sympathies would

lie with the resistance.

But it's the German soldiers who are given all the nobility.

In fact, there's one point where a dignitary in the French village that are

being visited by these reanimated zombies many years later says...

We brought this catastrophe on ourselves.

What, by killing the Nazis?

Well, what a miscalculation.

I imagine you think we're all a little crazy.

It just so happens we ain't. And the French villagers, on the other hand, are

bunch of bad -tempered louts who generally kind of shout and leer at

scantily -clad ladies, you know.

So you think, well, what are you saying?

I mean...

This was made in France. It was directed at very short notice by one of France's

great, fantastic filmmakers, Jean Rollin.

Nobody connected with the film wants to claim that it's a valuable piece of

work. There is generally a sense that it was swept up off the cutting room floor

virtually. It was about to be abandoned.

Jess Franco was the original director.

He pulled out because there wasn't enough money.

If Jeff Franco's going to pull out because there's not enough money around,

really is saying a lot, isn't it? I mean, considering the kind of budgets

Franco would go along with, one should as to think how little money there was

the table for this.

Apparently the producers, Yorosini, phoned Jean Rolland over the weekend and

said, we need someone to come and pick up on Monday and shoot this film.

Rolland said yes.

And there is a sentimental streak in the film, which I think probably comes from

him.

No -one is quite sure what state the script was in, if indeed there was a

script.

But there's a kind of a sentimental element to the story involving the

Nazi's love for his daughter, which perhaps has echoes in some of Roland's

films.

But on the other hand, this question of the sympathetically portrayed noble

Nazis versus the coarse and vulgar French villagers is...

coming out of left field. I don't know who's responsible for that.

But it's little details like that that make very, very low -budget films more

intriguing.

It's not programmatic. It doesn't make sense.

It's not a very coherent movie, but the way in which it falls short of coherence

is what justifies watching it, I think.

And the others are bad ghosts, but not him.

As far as its attention from the constabulary, again, it's hard to

really.

Probably due to the fact that it's just a zombie film. It's called Zombie Lake.

So for PC Plod, who's been told to look out for zombie flesh eaters, Zombie Lake

is probably near enough.

The cover's got some guy with pizza stuck to his face chewing on someone's

throat.

That's probably all he needed to know.

Anybody who sat down to watch Zombie Lake would have to wait.

quite a long time before they got to any imagery at all that could be considered

shocking. In fact, most of this film, certainly in the version that was

available on video, could probably have been screened on television without any

major difficulties. It's not a grisly film.

There is some female nudity. There are some rather leering shots from

of female bathers, which in the uncut version gives you quite an eyeful.

I don't think those shots are really... A, they're not all there in the video

version, and B, the video transfer is so murky anyway that you'd be lucky if you

could tell the difference between a snatch and a piece of floating sort of

or something.

a whole team of basketball players, women, just simply disappeared into the

lake, swallowed up by some ghosts.

Let's level, Mayor.

I hope you don't really think ghosts killed them.

Yes, that's what I think. In fact, I'm convinced of it. Me? I didn't see them.

Do you think that if any one of us had seen those poor girls, we would have let

them go out there and get killed? Don't you think we'd have told them to stay

away from the lake?

You're damn right.

We better face the fact that zombies have declared war.

Our fate's now in our own hands.

We must find a way to safeguard our town from the mad, murdering zombies.

We are not powerless.

We must act.

Do you know who the man with the medallion is?

Yes, he's my father. The other ghosts, if you want me to.

But I won't let you hurt him. I won't.

And he would like to be dead.