Eyes Without a Face: Countdown to Halloween: (Day 31)

CLICK…WHIR!

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS

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THE HEADLESS EYES

For fans who howled at THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF THE DEAD, more gruesome gore is in store when blood fills the screen for HEADLESS EYES. An artist turned housebreaker is discovered by his victim. In their struggle she gouges out his eye with a spoon! With the eye hanging down his cheek by a nerve and driven insane by pain and horror, the artist seeks vengeance on the world-and the sex-that maimed him. He stalks beautiful women through the streets of New York, leaving a gory trail of hideously mutilated bodies that makes headlines and baffles police!

He’s out there…

out of sight, and out of his mind!

Too Gory for the Silver Screen!

It’s VHS movie time on this final night of our Halloween Countdown and we’ve saved the most… American of our WIZARD VIDEO tapes for last.  It’s actually a film made in the good ol’ U.S. of A. and it’s made by a man who made some rather fine Americans too… Kent Bateman, father of film and television stars Justine and Jason Bateman.  Producers released it with a self-imposed “X” rating—the MPAA never rated it.

Shot on a bare-bones budget and with the simple idea that this struggling artist becomes a twisted psychopath who kills and steals eyeballs using a spoon and uses them in his art after he looses an eye while trying to rob a lady so that he can afford his rent.  It’s a strange kind of character study of the killer played by Bo Brundin.

Sounds like it’s potentially interesting, right?  Well it’s interesting in a way because it’s quirkier than expected and strange in that the main character is hard to pin down.  He doesn’t really struggle with his psychosis, he simply goes from scene to scene simply because that’s how life unfolds.  Short periods of calm followed by ranting insanity and murder.

A psycho killer doing his thing in the very early 1970s New York City.  It’s simple, it’s to the point, but the ending does leave a lot to be desired.

My Grade:

“C+”

May this videotape sit on your shelf collecting dust for a decade until you rediscover it, toss it out for a DVD version that you find for a buck-fifty at a discount store that you leave in the wrapper until you stumble across it on Netflix streaming and check it out that way and realize that you’ll never watch it again, so you sell the DVD for fifty cents on a yard sale.

Enjoy this taste of ham!

Some of the more insightfully entertaining reviews of HEADLESS EYES can be found here:

Cynical Celluloid

Chud.com

Something Awful

Bleeding Skull

The Fwoosh

Naked Exorcism: A Countdown to Halloween (Day 23)

THE POSSESSOR

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THE RETURN OF THE EXORCIST

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NAKED EXORCISM

Beyond the terror of "The Exorcist," "The Amityville Horror" and "The Omen" lies a sadistic female demon called Haggia —THE POSSESSOR! When Peter-an archeology student-opens Haggia's cursed medallion, her spirit immediately takes control of him and begins a hellish assault on his loved ones. Peter's girlfriend Sherry, his sister and mother soon fall prey to Haggia's twisted carnal advances.

And when Peter undergoes the hideous sexual transformation into Haggia, his family has but one recourse: Brother Erasmo-The Exorcist. Before long, there ensues a frenzied battle between good and evil that escalates to a literally eye-popping, bloodcurdling climax that out-shocks "The Exorcist"!

Viewers beware: once THE POSSESSOR snatches your soul, you will never be the same!

CLICK.

WHIRR.

Those two sounds always get my eyes and ears ready for a movie on video tape and, unfortunately for both, they did it for this film, too.  

Well.

Having experienced the movie that was “The Possessor”, I have to say that I very much disagree with the box on this one.  It doesn’t come close to the level that any of the other films mentioned were able to reach.  In fact, the possession itself was about as scary as that “Bicycle Man” episode of DIFFERENT STROKES.  Creepy, sure, but nothing to terrify one to their soul.

Still, it is a bit more than an Exorcist rip-off.  It has Satan worship and a secret history and that counts for something.  What it lacks it writing and budget and make-up and SFX and talent, it somewhat makes up for in enthusiasm.  They’re trying here, they’re swinging for the fences with what they’ve got… and what they’ve got is the budget of a small American television station from the mid-70s.

My Grade: “D”

May this VHS tap sit in a cool dark place, eager to be played, yet just out of reach of the memory of it's owner... where no one can ever find it.

Still, I urge you to check out the trailer…

But I REALLY urge you to check out the Full Moon (honest) trailer at this link:

FULL MOON STREAMING

And here are a few more thorough reviews of this fine film…

CRITICAL OUTCAST

GRINDHOUSE DATABASE

Kitty Exploitation: Countdown to Halloween (Day 5)

FRAULEIN DEVIL

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FRAULEIN KITTY

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CAPTIVE WOMEN 4

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ELSA: FRAULEIN SS

Fraulein Kitty is the sadistic overseer of a Third Reich "Pleasure Train" loaded with young women to serve Hitler's combat officers. The pitiless Kitty delights in torturing and killing suspected traitors to the Fuhrer. French partisans have vowed to stop this evil train at all costs. Kitty's ex-lover Franz is the train's interpreter. Franz falls in love with Liselotte, one of the train's hostesses who secretly works for the Resistance. The vengeful Kitty looses her fury on the lovers...but the train is about to be attacked by partisans who plan a battle to the death!

This cut of the film—the one Wizard Video purchased and distributed—is an American dubbed French film released in 1977 featuring mostly German speaking characters.  So it’s a strange one to get your head around, especially when you hear the soldiers marching in German while the mouths are moving in French and the regular dialog is English.

I figured I’d start the VHS viewing with this movie because it’s really the least Halloween adjacent.  In fact, as a Nazisploitation film, and I’m not sure it even comes close.

Oh sure, the horrors of war and all that, but this has less to do with war and more to do with the machinery of oppression.  I mean, it really implies more about the hatred the Nazis were pushing than anything else.  Hell, it’s set on a TRAIN.  And we all don’t need to get hit over the head with a hammer to get that implication.

FRAULEIN DEVIL begins with loads of actual footage of Hitler speechifying and WW2 war footage.  Altogether too much of it, but I gotta say it does set the time (near the end of the war) and place (German occupied France).  And what aids that quite a lot is the sets and costumes used in the opening scene featuring a Nazi headquarters and throughout the seemingly endless train scenes.

Unfortunately, the film is pretty bad—even for an exploitation film.  In fact, it’s very weak.  It’s almost as if the makers were going for a kinder, gentler soft core gore flick.  There’s virtually no gore and the soft core leaves one looking for more.  The one highlight is the scene where a German officer who looks like Dr. Evil is tortured…and that’s mildly entertaining because  it would’ve been funny had it actually been Mike Meyer’s villain… but alas, no.

One does get a train full of women forced into white slavery, an evil dominatrix who is quite a Nazi bitch (for which Malisa Longo deserves some praise), about a half dozen scenes of executions and gunplay and a wee bit of the French Resistance—viva la France!

Gotta go low, so low on this score that “B” isn’t even close…

FRAULEIN DEVIL

My Grade:  “F”

May this VHS sit upon the dash of an Oldsmobile ’88 and melt in the hot sun during the peak of the hottest Florida Summer.

Video Vamp: The Countdown to Halloween (Day 2)

Since I had no solid plans for my Halloween blog this year, I figured I would wing it.  I’ve done it before, but not up to my own expectations.  I always have a few ideas come the lonesome October, but sometimes an overarching theme avoids reach.  So I figured that this year would probably be much the same…

And then I looked to my movie shelves… I’ve got a lot of them.

And then I remembered all the VHS tapes of old taped shows I’ve yet to transfer to DVD.  And then I saw a handful of oversized VHS boxes that I’d been meaning to view for about a year.  They are pretty neat.

Last year, while doing my usual orders for the comic book store where I work, I came across a listing in the Diamond Comic Distributers monthly Previews catalog for about three dozen VHS tapes being offered by Full Moon Features…

WIZARD VIDEO

“Lost in a warehouse for 33 years! The amazing big box Wizard Video Collection! An early pioneer in the home video business, Charles Band started both MEDA HOME ENTERTAINMENT in the late 70's and WIZARD VIDEO in 1980.

After releasing features like THE GROOVE TUBE, FLESH GORDON and TUNNELVISION in the standard VHS box format, WIZARD VIDEO introduced the oversized "big VHS box" which featured lurid titles such as ZOMBIE, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, DEMONIAC & BREEDERS! After a few short years of these big VHS box releases WIZARD VIDEO returned to the standard size VHS box as retailers were quickly running out of shelf space. A fond memory for people who grew up in the video store era of the early 80's - the big VHS box has become a rare collectable due to its scarcity and (usually poor) condition. 

And now a treasure trove of original big VHS boxes was found late last year in one of Charles Band's and Full Moon's many overcrowded warehouses! 36 features are represented in this discovery with quantities ranging from 180 boxes to 420 boxes. The 30+ year old big VHS boxes are in mint condition as they have never been out of their original shipping boxes!

This unique sale!

Beginning February 12th and for every month thereafter four of these 36 Wizard Video big box VHS cassettes will go on sale. They will contain the original program newly duplicated on VHS in a black clam shell which will be in the original box.

This is truly a rare discovery and little part of the early days of the home video explosion!”

And so, even with the quantities as limited as they were, I ordered a handful of these big box VHS videocassettes.  I have yet to view them, partly because I was unsure if I had a working VCR.  I was pretty sure the last working one I had had eaten the last tape I tried to play in it.  But we’re in the proper season for both cheesy B-Grade horror and Mad Doctor antics and, so, I’m willing to take the risk!  More than crazy enough to sacrifice VHS tape to the Great Pumpkin if there’s a chance for real, unwholesome, schlocky goodness!

Each week I will attempt to watch and review one of the following five features for The Goods:

A Virgin Among The Living Dead

Click to Enlarge for a better look at the art stolen from Marvel Comics' Marvel Zombie, by Pablo Marcos, methinks!

Headless Eyes

The Screaming Dead

The Possessor

Fraulein Devil

More on each of these titles as they arrive on the blog individually!

As for the rest of the days...

we'll figure it out.

We've got, what, twenty-nine more of these to go?