Night of the Sorcerers

  Night of the Sorcerers (Night of the Witches, La Noche de los Brujos)

1973

Director- Amando de Ossorio

Cast- Jack Taylor, Kali Hansa, Bárbara Rey, María Kosty, Simón Andreu, José Thelman, Loreta Tovar

            

    The movie begins in Africa in 1910. An obviously western woman (Barbara Rey) has been taken captive by some natives who seem to be in the middle of an occult ceremony. She is tied between 2 trees and the head priest uses a whip to literally whip the clothes off of her. He then gives her a vampire bite and she is transported to an alter where a priestess, after some dancing, lops the woman’s head off with a machete! Meanwhile, a bunch of pith helemeted colonial soldiers surround the scene and then open fire, killing all of the natives. The woman’s head reanimates, alive and with vampire fangs. And that’s all within the first seven minutes!

           

     Fast forward 60 years or so and a new group of Europeans has arrived in the area to do research on elephants. They are led by manly Jack Taylor, who has been in too many horror movies to list but I’ll just throw out a few Jess Franco’sCount Dracula and The Ninth Gate, not to mention a cameo in Conan the Barbarian! His crew includes 3 beautiful women (Hansa, Kosty, Tovar) and Rod, a man for hire who is helping the expedition. They are met by a local guide who explains that all of the elephants in the area are gone or dead and drops a hint about a local superstition involving witches.

            

     That night, one of the ladies decides, since she can’t get pics of elephants, she’ll go out looking for the witches. She finds them all right, all returned from the grave! She receives the same treatment as the last woman; clothes whipped off, vampire bite,  beheading, and reanimation.

           

      Somehow the heads are reattached to the bodies and the new vampire woman is joined by the original woman from the beginning of the film. They stalk the camp at night and turn another of the young women into a vampire. Rod and his girlfriend refuse to leave, hoping to find their missing members. Will they make it out alive or join the ranks of the undead?

            

    The movie was directed by prolific Spanish horror director Amando de Ossorio who, among other things, directed The Blind Dead saga. All of the stars in the film except one have starred in his movies and most appeared in one or another of the Blind Dead films.

            

     As far as it being a serious examination of the occult, forget about it. In the English dub, words like, Voodoo, Satanist, sorcerer and witches are all used interchangeably. The word Brujo is used in the Spanish language version and I guess that serves as a kind of a catch all.  The women are sacrificed in a ritual but return as vampires clad in leopard skin bikinis (because why not?).  As for the witches themselves, are they ghosts? Zombies? We never really know. 

     The Blind Dead movies are very dark, bordering on the point of oppressive at times. This movie takes itself much less seriously. This is a fun film with exactly what you’d expect from Spanish horror exploitation from the 70s; lots of nudity, bright red blood, and enough originality to keep it interesting.

Dangerous Seductress

  

Dangerous Seductress

1995

Director- H. Tjut Djalil

Cast- Kristin Anin, Tonya Lawson, Amy Weber, Joseph Cassano, John Warom

From Indonesia 

            

    The movie opens with a frenetic, violent chase. Police are in hot pursuit of jewel thieves. The chase ends with a crash and blood spilling on the ground. From that ground rises a succubus, the Queen of Darkness (Amy Weber). The problem is, only her head is formed. Her body is still rotted flesh and bones. She learns real quick how to solve that when a poor dog tries to gnaw on her leg bone and she lops its head off.  She absorbs its blood and this restores most of her body. However, she can’t go out looking for more because some kind of earth spirits have her pinned in place.

        

   Meanwhile, across some continents, beautiful blonde Susan (Playboy model Tonya Lawson, billed as Tonya Offer here) is finding out what a jerk her boyfriend is. Not only is he late coming home for their anniversary, he then beats her and rapes her! This has apparently happened before but she decides enough is enough and hauls ass.

            

     Susan’s older sister Linda (Kristin Anin) is also a beautiful blonde (good genes in the family I guess) who is working as a model in Indonesia. Big sister lets little sis crash at her pad while she goes off to some exotic locale for a photoshoot.  As it just so happens, Linda has a grimoire of Indonesian black magic because someone gave it to her for her birthday (because ,you know, that’s what you give people right?). She has left it lying around and Susan, not having any copies of TV guide, decides to give it a whirl. Not only is she able to read it but she summons the spirit of the Queen of Darkness, who appears in Susan’s mirror. The Queen promises her beauty and power if Susan will just let her use her body. Susan agrees and then goes out to do the Queen’s bidding.

    Susan walks the streets and haunts the nightclubs picking up guys, seducing them, killing them, and draining them of their blood. She then reports back to the mirror where she slits her own throat so that the mirror can absorb the blood for the Queen (that’s a pretty original idea, I have to admit). Things hit the fan when big sister returns home from her work trip.

            

    I have seen the film listed with the title Evil Queen, with a date of 1992, but its most commonly listed as Dangerous Seductress with a date of 1995, so that’s how I have it listed here.  Just watching the film, it’s hard to tie it to any particular era. It has a 70’s disco opening theme, the whole thing in general seems like an 80s B film, but the fashions are definitely 90s. All of the Caucasian expats filling up the background look so 90s you can almost smell the Drakkar dripping off of them.

   

   

 The director is Indonesian, and despite its American leading ladies and English dialogue, the film is very Asian and reminds me of the genre films being made in Hong Kong at the time. The beginning, especially, reminds me of the HK  movies of that decade, not because of its quality certainly, but the wild originality. The production values are low but the creativity is high where as in America things trended in the opposite direction. That pretty much summed up the difference between Eastern and Western cinema at that time.

            

     The film has something for everyone; shoots outs, vampirism, folk magic, underground spirits, a floating head, a dismembered  finger walking around. The one thing it doesn’t have is any nudity! A whole film about a succubus, staring a beautiful Playboy model, and there is no nudity? Tonya Lawson was in so many skimpy outfits, you think they could have tossed us a complimentary nipple, but no. This was typical though of Asian cinema at the time and to a much lesser extent even today. In the 90s, the Japanese might have been pervs making cartoons about school girls being raped by alien octopuses, but they shied away from explicit sex in their live action films. Even today there is a general taboo about showing genitalia. There are 2 scenes, one with the Evil Queen and one with Tonya, where the actresses are nude, but they’ve covered over the naughty bits with special effects to make it look like their nipples are glowing energy balls (!?!?). You can find uncensored stills on the interweb, but what print those are from, I don’t know. Well, in any case I’m sure that glowing energy nipples is somebody’s fetish.

            

     To put it straight, most people will not like this movie. Its low budget and cheesey. But if you want something different, or are old enough to remember getting bootlegged VHS copies of laserdiscs from Asia, then you may find something you like here.

Poor Devil

Poor Devil

1973

Director- Robert Scheerer

Cast- Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Klugman, Christopher Lee, Adam West

            

    This feature length film was the pilot to an unsold TV series. Sammy Davis Jr. is a bottom tier demon spending the centuries shoveling coal into Hell’s furnaces. Christopher Lee is his over bearing boss, the Devil, who gives Sammy one chance to prove he is worth a promotion from his menial duties.  He has to get a mortal to sell their soul. His target is a hapless mortal, Jack Klugman, who wants revenge against his boss played by Adam West.

            

     In truth this isn’t a very good movie. What makes it worth watching is that this is a shining example of just how comfortable pop culture was with Satanism in the early 70s (something that would change by the next decade).  Sammy Davis Jr., beloved member of the Rat Pack casually tosses up some Devil horn hand signs with no more taboo than a peace sign. Jack Klugman was at the height of his career, right in the middle of a 13 year run on TV between The Odd Couple and Quincy M.E. And remember this was a pilot for NBC. This was actually intended for mass consumption on TV by middle class American families.

           

     Well, who knows how the show would have turned out if it had been picked up. Maybe Klugman would never have played Quincy. One shudders to imagine Christopher Lee so busy starring in a TV show that he didn’t go on to make The Wicker Man, but I guess that could have happened in this theoretical alternate universe. Looks like we were better off without it.

 

Blood Diner

    

   

Blood Diner

1987

Director- Jackie Kong

Cast- Rick Burks, Carl Crew, LaNette LaFrance, LaNette LaFrance, Lisa Guggenheim, Max Morris, Drew Godderis, Tanya Papanicolas, Michael Barton

           

     As children Michael and George (Rick Burks and Carl Crew) watched their uncle Anwar get gunned down by the police after he chopped up a bunch of co-eds. Before he died, he exhorted them to follow the goddess Sheetar, an ancient goddess with sorceress powers.

            

     Fast forward 20 years and the brothers are all grown up and running a health food restaurant. They have, in fact, been studying Sheetar and have a plan to bring her to life in an avatar. They dig up their uncle’s corpse, remove his brain and he guides them as they set out to build her a body. They must construct the vessel from the dismembered bodies of wanton, immoral ladies. They begin by shooting up a studio where a bunch of girls are filming a topless aerobics video (hey it was the 80s). They ransack the fresh bodies for parts. Meanwhile, they are serving up the leftovers they don’t use to the customers in their restaurant. They make a veggie burger that tastes just like meat and there is a good reason why.

            

     Once they have the vessel for Sheetar ready, they must prepare for a “Lumerian Feast” the ritual that will bring their goddess to life. This involves capturing a virgin for Sheetar to eat once she arrives (obviously) and a “Blood Buffet” where the attendees are all turned into flesh eating zombies.

            

      The movie is utterly crazy. Its silliness level is about on par with Troma. It has strange characters like a rival restaurant owner that has an ugly dummy as his only customer, a police chief that gut punches his detectives, a wrestler named Little Jimmy Hitler and more. If you’re not sure whether to take the movie seriously, it begins with the disclaimer that  “All of the mutilations, bodily dismemberments and cannibal rituals were performed by seasoned professionals.”  So while the movie doesn’t take itself seriously, neither was it made lazily. There is an obvious effort to make something different and entertaining. It has an excellent soundtrack of mostly classic doowop but also with some punk and new wave.

           

    It was originally intended as a sequel the 1963 movie, Bloodfeast. There are a lot of similarities, but somewhere in the production stage, they decided to let it be its own film. When it comes to cannibal movies, Blood Diner isn’t scary like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or clever like Motel Hell, but it’s original and isn’t afraid to be weird, which goes along way with me.

The Masque of the Red Death

 

The Masque of the Red Death

1964

Director- Roger Corman

Cast- Vincent Price, Hazel Court, Jane Asher, David Weston, Nigel Green, John Westbrook, Skip Martin, Verina Greenlaw, Patrick Magee

            

   This is one of the Vincent Price /Roger Corman collaborations that the pair did through the early 1960’s. It, like the others, is loosely based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe. The Poe story serves mainly as inspiration for a much larger story.

            

    Prince Prospero (Price) is an evil nobleman who terrorizes the locals under his power. He has people taken prisoner and executed at a whim. He is a loyal devotee of Satan and he seems intent on doing evil purely for the sake of evil. A plague, the Red Death, is ravaging the countryside. Prospero withdraws behind his castle walls and invites the landed gentry to join him while the commoners die. Prospero uses this as a chance to humiliate and degrade his peers. Juliana (Hazel Court), his mistress, is trying to get him to induct her into the deeper mysteries of devil worship. She might have succeeded except that a new plaything has caught his eye.

          

 

    He meets a young peasant girl, Francesca (Jane Asher), who is virtuous and kind. Prospero kidnaps her and holds her fiancé hostage.  He wants to corrupt her and turn her to evil. Prospero treats everyone else like dirt, but he dresses her in finery and is quite cordial, all the while espousing the virtues of a life devoted to evil.

            

    He throws a masquerade ball to celebrate the fact that he and all of his hangers on are safe from the plague while everyone else dies outside.  However, an uninvited guest shows up. It’s not Satan, as he hoped, but rather the spirit of Death itself. Will it spare Prospero as reward for his life devoted to evil? Will it spare the virtuous Francesca? Will it spare anyone?

            

    This movie doesn’t get into deep psychological examinations like Pit and the Pendulum or House of Usher. No one is on the verge of losing their mind. Instead, this movie is about the submission to evil. Prospero has done it and his mistress Juliana is attempting to do it.  Will Francesca submit to it as well?

      This is Corman's most straight forward horror movie with not the slightest bit of camp or humor. Its also Price's darkest film, with the one exception of Witchfinder General. The film is absolutely beautiful to look at with a superb color pallet, not quite to the extent of Suspiria, but certainly beyond what you'd expect from most horror movies. A must see for fans of Roger Croman or Vincent Price.

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil

 

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil

2017

Director- Paul Urkijo Alijo

Cast- Kandido Uranga, Uma Bracaglia, Eneko Sagardoy, Ramón Aguirre, Josean Bengoetxea, Gotzon Sanchez, Aitor Urcelai, Maite Bastos

From Spain

            

    A fairy tale from the Basque Country in Spain, it was produced by Alex de Iglesia who directed El Dia de Bestia. This is a true fairy tale complete with the imagery, tone, morality, and folklore of a Brothers Grimm tale.

            

    The fairy tale was often the horror story of its day. One of the things I like about fairy tales is that the evil is always tangible. It’s not an abstract concept; it’s a real person in a real place. The evil isn’t some malleable, culturally relative idea. It’s always evil. The witch from Hansel and Grettle is a child stealing cannibal. No amount of sensitivity or retrospection is going to change our mind about her.

           

    A little girl with a burned face is a bit of an outcast in her town. She is an orphan who has been taunted her whole life, being told that her mother is in Hell for committing suicide. Out in the forest is a reclusive blacksmith whose temperament is so cruel, it drove his wife to suicide. Of course, the blacksmith isn’t entirely alone. He keeps, locked up in a cage, a demon from Hell. The little girl stumbles onto this along with a group of townspeople who believe that the blacksmith keeps a horde of gold hidden away.

            

    The demons and devils of this film look fantastic. Especially nice is a trip to Hell, complete with a parade of sinners, tormented by demons, pouring through its gates. The movie has a medieval esthetic evoking Gustav Dore and Hieronymous Bosch. There is a minimum of CGI, relying on realistic looking make-up and prosthetics.

            

     More than its look, the film is charming like a fairy tale. It is spirited and takes chances. This is the first feature length film for director Paul Urkijo Alijoa and it has that spark and ingenuity that you only see in young directors that have that burning desire to tell stories. A beautiful film and I highly recommend it.

Brotherhood of Satan

Brotherhood of Satan

1971

Director- Bernard McEveety

Cast- Strother Martin, L. Q. Jones, Charles Bateman, Ahna Capri, Charles Knox Robinson, Alvy Moore, Geri Reischl

            

    This odd Satanic thriller was written by, produced by and stars L.Q. Jones, an actor you may recognize from numerous westerns including his excellent performance in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (where acts opposite of Strother Martin, his costar in this film). Like other Satanic films of this era (The Devil’s Rain, The Car, Race with the Devil) it takes place in a generic town in the American west and features another common theme of this era, a family stumbling upon a Satanic conspiracy.

           

    A family (dad, his little girl and dad’s girlfriend) get stranded in a remote town that is in the middle of a crisis. Children are missing, adults are being murdered, and anyone who tries to escape ends up brutally killed. The family tries twice to escape and is unable. The town sheriff (L.Q. Jones) is at his wits end. As it turns out, the town is beset by a coven of Satanists, led by Strother Martin. Now that’s not really a spoiler. If you know Strother’s resume, he would have been your first suspect anyway.

            

    The Satanists are kidnapping the town’s children to use in a ritual to maintain eternal youth. The coven members are all elderly and they plan to transfer their souls into the children’s bodies. The Satanists are presented rather theatrically with red cloaks and lots ritual and ceremony.  The best part is when Strother Martin is chastising a wayward member who didn’t want to sacrifice her child to the group and he yells “Not your baby! Our baby! Satan’s baby!” Strother Martin (as he often did) played the part completely over the top but that’s OK, that’s what makes it enjoyable.

            

    Not a great movie, but an original movie. It wasn’t put together very stylishly but it’s got heart. In addition to Storther and LQ, look for Ahna Capri as the girlfriend. She is best known as John Saxon’s main squeeze in Enter the Dragon.