Monday, March 21, 2011

Werewolf Waldemar Wanders Into A Warzone!!!

Video Nasty #12

The Werewolf And The Yeti
1975

TWO BLOODTHIRSTY BEASTS IN DEADLY COMBAT.




HIS LUST FOR BLOOD CANNOT BE SATISFIED...

Original Spanish Title: La Maldicion De La Bestia.  Other alternate titles: Hall Of The Mountain King, Night Of The Howling Beast
PAL Running Time: 81:58
Directed by Miguel Iglesias (as M.I. Bonns)
Written by Jacinto Molina
Produced by Jose Antonio Perez Giner and Modesto Perez Redondo
Starring: Paul Naschy, Mercedes Molina, Silvia Solar, Gil Vidal
Body Count: 26!
Availability: Out of print NTSC VHS from Independent-International Pictures as Night Of The Howling Beast

BBFC Status

Why it's a Nasty: Women tied up and tortured, Cannibalism, and Gore murders
What was cut: Nothing.  It was banned.
Current BBFC Status: As it has never been submitted for classification, The Werewolf And The Yeti remains banned in the UK.  Original Video Nasty cassette released by Video Programme Distributors Limited
The Werewolf And The Yeti was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.

This one's so rare and out of print that I couldn't even find a trailer.  Enjoy the opening titles...and Paul Naschy's fuzzy wolfman makeup.

A few things one should keep in mind: La Maldicion De La Bestia was made before both American Werewolf In London and Raiders Of The Lost Ark.  In 1975, Rick Baker had not yet revolutionized cinematic lycanthropy, and no one had heard of Indiana Jones.  In 1975, when Spanish audiences wanted adventure and excitement, they turned to Paul Naschy and his recurring werewolf character, Waldemar Daninsky.

The eighth Hombre Lobo film begins in the Himalayas.  Two hikers are attacked and killed by something hairy.  Cut to London, where Waldemar (Naschy) meets with a professor about to lead an expedition to find the Yeti.  He has photographs that show the Yeti not as an Abominable Snowman, but just another hairy apething.  The professor has a daughter, Sylvia (Mercedes Molina billed as Grace Mills), who falls for Waldemar (since Naschy wrote this thing, nearly all the female characters fall for him somehow) and soon they are off to see Nepal.  Waldemar finds a guide who will take them through a secret, dangerous pass that the Sherpas don't want anything to do with.  The fact that he found the guide raving and spitting in an opium den should have tipped him off that all might not go well.  Sure enough, the guide ditches Waldemar at the first sign of trouble, so our intrepid hero finds his way to a cave where there just happen to be two scantily clad babes to collapse in front of.  Their plans for Waldemar seem to be along the line of revive him then rape him, but he's up before they expected and he catches them eating human flesh and worshipping the skeleton of a monster.  So, like any rational person, he kills them...but not before one of them bites him with her vampire fangs...which turns him into a werewolf.

Wags might insert a snide comment here about how witches-slash-vampires don't turn men into werewolves when they bite.  I'm more impressed that all of that above was crammed into the first 20 minutes of the movie.  Diametrically the opposite of Unhinged (see Video Nasty #11), La Maldicion De La Bestia moves so fast that you have trouble catching up to all of the action.

Because this isn't a horror film.  Despite the werewolves, vampires, witches and that elusive yeti (who appears only at the beginning and end), this is an action-adventure film that has lots of blood and violence.  What clinched its' status as a Nasty are the cannibalism scene near the beginning, and the torture scene near the end where women are tied up and have the skin flayed from their backs.  Good times, good times.

Back to something I said above that may have either slipped past or stuck out like a sore thumb: Yes, this is the eighth film in a series featuring the character Waldemar Daninsky...but there's no continuity between any of them, just that Paul Naschy plays the character and he keeps becoming a werewolf for various reasons.  I've only seen this one, so I can't speak for the others, but I'm betting the formula is much the same between all of them: chicks in revealing outfits, monsters fighting each other, cliffhanger after cliffhanger until all is resolved in the final reel.  Naschy himself is a pretty smooth customer: he looks like the burly love-child of Dick Miller and Joaquin Phoenix, and he fights like...like Paul Naschy.  The dude's an original.  Born Jacinto Molina Alvarez in 1934, he wrote over forty films, directed over ten, and acted in at least one hundred, until pancreatic cancer took him from us in 2009.

In all, there were twelve Waldemar Daninsky films, although only eleven survive (Las Noches Del Hombre Lobo, one of the earliest Hombre Lobo pictures, has a fate that is still unknown.  The director was killed in a car crash in 1968, with the film possibly unfinished.  No known print has survived, with Naschy himself unable to locate a copy.), the first in the late 60s, the last, Tomb Of The Werewolf, released direct to video in 2004.  Quite a body of work.

If you choose to venture into La Maldicion De La Bestia, remember what I've told you: the makeup is old-school.  The adventures fast and furious, with little exposition and lots of gore.  And please ignore the British title.  Night Of The Howling Beast or Hall Of The Mountain King are definitely better titles - the werewolf and the yeti meet only briefly.

So stay the hell out of mountain caves with weird women.  Sure, they might want to have sex with you, but then they'll eat you or turn you into a monster, and that's just not worth it.  Heed my warning.  I sure will.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

There's A Man In The House...

Video Nasty #11

Unhinged
1982


VIOLENCE BEYOND REASON, VICTIMS BEYOND HELP...




THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS WHEN YOU WAKE UP.


NTSC Running Time: 79:38
Directed & Produced by Don Gronquist
Written by Don Gronquist & Reagan Ramsey
Starring: Laurel Munson, J.E. Penner, Sara Ansley, Virginia Settle
Body Count: 4
Availability: On Region 1 DVD from Indie DVD (2002) and Brentwood Home Video (2005) ... currently also available two inches up from where your eyes are now!

BBFC Status

Why it's a Nasty: Because of the lurid cover art.  Seriously.
What was cut: Not a frame.
Current BBFC Status: Unhinged was granted an 18 certificate for cinema release on May 4, 1983.  A video certificate of 18 was awarded on June 11, 2004.
Availability: Region 2 DVD from Platinum Media Corp.
Unhinged was seized, but escaped prosecution.

 
Have you watched the video up there yet?  Noticed that it's not a trailer?  Yep, that's the entire film posted up there.  You're welcome.  Enjoy.  It's okay, I'll wait.

Actually, I'm not going to assume that you've watched the film.  While having the entire film at the top of the page would give some justification for doing so, I will not give away any spoilers in the text.  It's rude to do so (still looking at you, Jim Harper) and having to write around the film's secrets provides a fun challenge and gives me a slight amount more class than someone who will just throw down with the ending.

You see, Unhinged has an incredible, intense ending.  It's just too bad that the first 68 minutes don't match the last 11.

Three Oregon girls head for a big jazz festival on a stormy weekend.  The get into a wreck and wake up in a creepy old manor house.  Terry (Laurel Munson) and Nancy (Sara Ansley) are basically okay, their friend Gloria (Barbara Lusch) is worse off and we don't see her much.  Occupying the mansion are Mrs. Penrose (Virginia Settle) and her daughter/servant Marion (J.E. Penner, the J is for Janet).  They're isolated and far from any roads.  Mrs. Penrose hates men with a psychotic fervor and constantly accuses Marion of having men in the house.  It isn't long before Terry and Nancy flip a coin to see who has to hoof it through the woods to town to call their parents...but then the loser doesn't come back...

Shot entirely in the Portland, Oregon area (prominently using Pittock Mansion, a historic landmark owned by the city of Portland) with local cast and crew, Unhinged is well done in several respects and awful in others.  I very much enjoyed the editing, which may include the largest number of smash cuts to black screens than any other movie I've ever seen.  The camerawork is good, though sometimes underlit, which is common for movies like this when the lighting budget is only slightly more than bus fare.  The more experienced cast members (Settle, Penner and John Morrison as handyman Norman Barnes) did a wonderful job, but the three younger girls seem to have been chosen based on their willingness to do shower scenes (there are two), rather than any acting ability.  Indeed, Munson and Ansley have no other screen credits.  Penner, the most talented member of the cast, is still working, I'm happy to see, most recently on the television show Leverage (interestingly, her first film was Unhinged and the second, a TV movie called The Haunting Of Sarah Hardy, also used Pittock Mansion as a location).

In the world of exploitation horror, Unhinged is a bit of a red-headed stepchild: The film is long on atmosphere and short on shock.  The first kill happens halfway through the picture and the remainder of the violence is saved for the final 11 minutes.  The rest is exposition, with one pretty good scare to liven it up.  This is a classic example of distributors hyping a modest horror effort into a bloodbath of debauchery, promising things that the picture cannot deliver...but all is not lost.  As I said above, the climax is incredible, a riveting end to a movie that is at times boring.  If the intensity and ominous feeling of doom given by the final scene had been matched by the rest of the picture, Unhinged would be a minor classic.  Alas, it was not to be...but it's enough, because thanks to the moral watchdogs of unregulated UK videotapes, Unhinged is now immortal, and it's a damn good thing, because it deserves to be seen, no matter the shortcomings. 

Besides, after catching Elvira hosting a showing of Teenagers From Outer Space late last night, it's easy to see that even the smallest of films can find their true audience.  And as someone who had seen it before and been underwhelmed the first time (much like Death Trap, see Video Nasty #9), I'm happy to say that I am definitely a fan of Unhinged, and if you take the time to watch it on its' own terms, maybe you will be, too.  I hope so.  That's why I write this thing, in the hopes that others will find their own favorites in the detritus most sweep under the rug.  Because that's where I've found so many jewels.  And always check the shed.  It might not contain what they've told you it does.  Best to make sure.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.

Two Months Bender.

Hey!  How have you been?

I'm back!

Not that I went anywhere.  In the time since I've last posted, my Nasties collection has grown to 27, and there's been some changes around here.

The biggest of those changes, however, occurred before my hiatus, about two weeks before Don't Go Near The Park.  Check it out:


That's Isabella.  Photo by the lovely (and prize-winning) N. Credible.  The glared-out case to Izzy's right is The Evil Dead, on glorious widescreen VHS.  And if you're counting, you may notice there's only 26.  The Driller Killer arrived the next day.  And you may notice a new prize: Romano Scavolini's Nightmare (aka Nightmares In A Damaged Brain) in an uncut bigbox.

Oh, yeah.  Not pictured: Izzy's favorite movie.  What is it?  Why, Pieces, of course.

Unhinged is up next.  I mean real next, like in 30 seconds, so stay glued to this channel.  You wouldn't want to miss it.  And if you've got any questions, I'm always here, ready to help.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.