Cave of the Living Dead

Cave of the Living Dead

aka Der Fluch der grünen Augen aka Night of the Vampires

1964
Written by Kurt Roecken (as C.V. Rock) and Ákos Ráthonyi
Directed by Ákos Ráthonyi (as Akos V. Ratony)

Cave of the Living Dead
Good thing our hero has no peripheral vision and no vision at all, in fact!

Cave of the Living Dead (aka Night of the Vampires aka Der Fluch der grünen Augen) is a German/Yugoslavian coproduction that is a pretty good atmospheric creeper, and turned out much better than I thought it would be. The “Living Dead” in the title are vampires, though I believe that Cave of the Living Dead is a drive-in double bill retitle to cash in on Night of the Living Dead. If my research is right, it shared billing with Metempsyco (aka Tomb of Torture).

Being German, it borrows a lot of the vampire imagery from Nosferatu, while also having some of the Universal and Hammer films to mildly influence things. The black and white film helps give the whole thing a Gothic feel, whether intentional or not. In fact, had the production had the money for color film, I don’t think it would have been as effective. The cave sets would had looked cheap or been poorly lit. The spooky atmosphere would be replaced by the dull life of an antiquated village. The whole kit and caboodle would be off. In fact, from the dub we have, there is jazz music and other not really so spooky music. I don’t know what the original German music was like, but there doesn’t seem to be a consistent attempt to make the whole town spooky, just dreary.

Cave of the Living Dead
Despite my advanced flat panel display, you still have to get up to change the channel!

Also being German, the film is dubbed, and the dubbing is a very good job, at times you will forget it is dubbed. One great dub job is for the black servant John. Though the actor playing John seems to be doing the occasional mugging, the dubber gives him a very distinguished voice that makes him come off as a respectable and cool guy. The small amount of mugging done by the actor is completely ignored, washing away the Mantan Moreland vibes. I wonder if the choice was related to the strong black lead in Night of the Living Dead, or if the dubber just happened to have some sense and knew how to improve a film. In any event, I am thankful for whoever made the choice, as it is the correct one. The fact I have to bring it up should tell you that it’s also a rare choice.

The main plot is the standard city hero comes to town to teach the suspicious country bumpkins a lesson about modern living. No one in the town is brave or smart enough to bother to figure out the mystery, and the few townspeople who are smart are either burned out, suspicious of everything that moves, or just visiting and eager to leave. Most of the locals (barring the Innkeeper, Nanny, and the doctor) are xenophobic of outsiders, with Thomas reacting violently to anyone not from around there. During Thomas’s episodes, most of the rest of the town are too apathetic to do anything, just staring. It mirrors their apathy in fighting the true horror. They are literally the living dead at this point, only waiting to actually die. The only real reactions are a few drunken smiles, the only responses from those so inebriated they don’t remember their lives are shambles. The town’s apathy comes into play again when Dorin attempts to organize an angry mob, but they refuse to be an actual angry mob and defend their town from the vampires down below in the sewers. The people are too scared, too beaten down despite their large numbers. Dorin has to once again be the hero, to show the town what someone can do.

Cave of the Living Dead
Manos!

This particular version of Cave of the Living Dead is hosted by Commander USA as part of Commander USA’s Groovie Movies! Yes, this film is infected with horror host, and we like it! As usual, the Commander USA material will be in blue text, for easy skipping by those not down with the Commander. This particular show was part of a two-episode block that also aired with Psychotronic Man, though we don’t have that episode on tape. It aired the day before Mother’s Day, which even fits into the plot of what Commander USA does.

Commander USA talks about how his Mom loves romance novels, so he is writing his Mom his own romance novel. Yeah. it’s called Love’s Burning, Smothering, Smoldering Flames of Passion by Jack Lovesbuck (pen name!) and Commander USA reads us a sample. It’s not good. Commander USA then shows the previews for the films for the day. First Psychotronic Man, and then Cave of the Living Dead.

So let’s get started!

Cave of the Living Dead
She’s gone full vampire on us! Someone burn her True Blood DVDs, stat!

Inspector Frank Dorin (Adrian Hoven) – Famous out of town detective who comes to town to teach these local yokels just how they do things out of town! And by do things, I mean kill vampires.
Karin Schumann (Karin Field) – Professor von Adelsberg’s secretary, she does experiments with blood and it’s totally not creepy at all or suspicious that her creepy boss may be involved with all this vampire nonsense going on. As she’s the hottest woman in town not turned into a vampire, she becomes the love interest for Inspector Dorin.
The Village Doctor (Carl Möhner) – The Doctor has seen so much death lately he’s become dead inside, burying himself in the bottle. A burned out shell of a man, he slowly comes back to life when Inspector Dorin makes some headway. Like all good doctors, he doesn’t have a name.
Professor von Adelsberg (Wolfgang Preiss) – Every villiage has a creepy doctor who lives in a giant house who does unholy experiments at the same time some sort of mysterious supernatural killer is on the loose. And no one suspects a thing!!!! I don’t get the Professor’s plan, he vampirizes random women, but doesn’t bother to do anything to his closest coworkers, even though they’d be easy targets to grow his army.
Maria (Erika Remberg) – Local hot lady who disappeared and then showed up dead. But that was all a ruse, because she really became a vampire!
Thomas (Emmerich Schrenk) – Deaf guy in town who hates outsiders, picking fights and stealing things from them. He’s basically a big jerk designed to add random minor drama, even though his whole character is pretty lame and useless.
John (John Kitzmiller) – Black servant of Professor von Adelsberg, notable because he’s not a walking stereotype. It’s sad that Cave of the Living Dead is from an era where this is the exception instead of the rule, but it is a delightful exception that I will take eagerly! Granted, it’s probably because this is outside the Hollywood studio system, but even the English dubbing didn’t make him talking all shamefully, so there was hope! While there may have been a bit of mugging, the English dubbed voice turns him into a very respectable gentleman.
Cave of the Living Dead
Make a Tom Sawyer joke and I’ll murderize ya!
Hwarang V Trio

When a Stranger Calls Back – New RiffTrax VOD!


RiffTrax has gone so advanced, they’re not riffing on sequels before they riff the original film! This latest VOD is When a Stranger Calls Back, the sequel to When a Stranger Calls, which was remade a few years ago and was godawful. The original isn’t that bad, but this sequel has a reputation for not being very good. Though I haven’t seen it yet to verify. Though now I can, thanks to it being on RiffTrax VOD. If I ever have time to watch them. This is the kind of problem I want to have, so much good stuff!

When a Stranger Calls Back RiffTrax VOD link!

Contains scenes of nudity. (Fortunately, not Charles Durning.)

The sequel is coming from inside the house! That’s right, one of the tiredest pop culture tropes of all time finally gets a sequel! And you’ll never believe where the calls are coming from this time (because it’s a really, really stupid reveal. We’re talking the end of Signs level stupid.)

Julia is a babysitter, whose motto was evidently “Charisma free child care or your money back!” Her plan to put the kids to bed and then spend an evening quietly enjoying a glass of water is disrupted when a stranger comes to her door. He has a chilling request: he needs her to call the auto club because his car is broken down. Julia responds as anyone would: by lapsing into a hysterical panic attack while the poor guy trudges four miles to a gas station and misses his kid’s birthday party. We’re just kidding of course, he actually is a maniac and he kidnaps both the kids and they’re never seen again.

Traumatized by the incident, Julia responds by growing a Joe Dirt level mullet and enrolling in a small liberal arts college. (Experts strongly recommend you do neither of these things, but if you must choose just one, they tentatively recommend the mullet.) Everything is going just fine until one day she notices that small objects in her apartment are not where she left them. Cue hysterical panic attack. She’s really a charmer, this Julia.

Fortunately, she’s got Charles Durning and Carol Kane to help her. Durning appears to have gotten over Doc Hopper’s failure to sign Kermit The Frog as spokesperson by eating the Electric Mayhem Band and Kane looks appropriately traumatized for someone who had to play the wife of both Billy Crystal AND Andy Kaufman. At one point, in one of the most terrifying and disturbing scenes ever filmed, Charles Durning goes to a strip club to watch a ventriloquist act.

With Mike, Kevin and Bill there to riff, When A Stranger Calls Back will have you holding the line…for hilarity! (The writer of the previous sentence has been fired and is currently working as a strip club ventriloquist.)

Note: This RiffTrax was already underway before Mr. Durning passed away. As Mike wrote back in 2008, we here at RiffTrax stand in awe of his service.

When a Stranger Calls Back RiffTrax

Flying Monkeys swarm SyFy!!

Flying Monkeys syfy

What was shot as Winged Terror is now airing as Flying Monkeys on SyFy on March 9th! Despite knowing the film was shot in Louisiana (at the same time as Heebie Jeebies), there isn’t much out there for Flying Monkeys. Electra Avellan, Alvin Chon, Christopher Matthew Cook star (IMDB doesn’t seem to have any big names at all) and the director, Robert Grasmere, was one of the writers of Baby Geniuses and is making his directorial debut.

This has the potential to be utterly ridiculous or ridiculously awesome. Let’s hope it isn’t the worst sin of all…boring! I can say that there doesn’t seem to be any Oz puns in the listed cast, even if the airing seems to coincide with being a mockbuster for Oz: The Great and Powerful.

pic via EW

The She-Hulk Diaries – Marvel gets into the romance novel biz!

She-Hulk Diaries

In a move that will be entertaining for those of us who love reading comment sections filled with screaming manbabies, Marvel has announced it’s releasing some superheroine romance novels published through Hyperion (yet another company owned by Disney!) Marvel says the “novels showcase strong, smart heroines seeking happiness and love while battling cosmic evil.” Two books will constitute the first wave – The She-Hulk Diaries by Marta Acosta and Rogue Touch by Christine Woodward

The She-Hulk Diaries focuses on Jennifer Walters (aka She-Hulk) who is trying to balance climbing the corporate ladder during the day with battling super villains at night “all while trying to navigate the dating world to find a Mr. Right who might not mind a sometimes-very big and green girlfriend.”

Rogue Touch centers on the popular X-Man heroine who can absorb another heroes powers through touch. After she accidently puts her boyfriend in a coma, Rogue runs away from home. She then meets the “handsome and otherwordly Jame and sparks fly.”

Rogue finds herself caught between her superpowers and “the only man alive who seems to truly understand her.”

Hopefully these take off and suddenly the romance books outsell the actual comic books. Because I want that day to happen. It will be glorious! The tears…

If you love reading about romance novels, you have to check out Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and Dear Author, two of the best blogs in the field. Even a guy like me who doesn’t read romance novels reads those blogs.

via THR

Rogue Touch

The Blood Beast Terror

The Blood Beast Terror

aka The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood

1968
Written by Peter Bryan
Directed by Vernon Sewell

Blood Beast Terror
Who you calling a bird brain???

It’s Commander USA! Legion of Decency, retired. Yes, we’re gonna have us a horror host for The Blood Beast Terror, which we desperately need because this film plods along so slowly like so much British cinema and so much American film in the 1970s. There is no way anything like this could be made now, because the audience would be asleep by reel two. Heck, I was almost asleep by reel 2, luckily Commander USA and the retro 80’s commercials also on this tape kept me awake enough to finish the review. You would think a movie where there is a female were-moth that drinks blood would be more exciting. Then you would be wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. As usual, the Commander USA’s Groovie Movies sections will be in blue, so you can easily skip them if you aren’t into awesome things. Amazingly, I have this flick on DVD, so enjoy the higher quality film screencaps mixed in with the retro VHS rip screencaps. It’s called inconsistency, baby!

Blood Beast Terror
Won’t it look weird when one hand is more tan than the other…?

Tigon British Film Productions was a smaller production company that mainly put out low budget horror films to compete with Hammer Studios. They were formed in 1966 and didn’t last much past the late 1970s. Their legacy is classic horror like Witchfinder General, The Creeping Flesh, The Sorcerers, and this masterpiece of were-moth entertainment. And, no, Mothman came to Earth to harass Americans before this film was made. And Mothman is totally real…like Owlman

Blood Beast Terror
Oil can! He said Oil can!

So what we got here is Peter Cushing fighting another monster that drinks blood, but this time it’s a were-moth. What we also have is a villain so identifiably evil it’s weird that he wasn’t arrested the second we were introduced to him. Instead, we’re supposed to believe Dr. Carl Mallinger is a pillar of the community. Maybe that community was hurting for pillars?

Blood Beast Terror
Every time I leave the door open, interpretive dancers burst in and start busting moves…

Now I bet you are wondering if female moths drink blood. The answer is no! But the Death’s Head moths (Acherontia spp.) do have a pattern on their backs that looks similar to a skull, thus the species have become associated with death and the macabre. Oddly enough, these moths attack beehives to get honey! So they’re more like honey badgers in that they don’t care, instead of vampires in that they drink blood. So suck on that, superstitions!

Clare Mallinger does drink blood. The blood of young men, young men that she often seduces, but not to the point of sexual intercourse. Instead, the men are lured off alone, or even just attacked while in a vulnerable location. The Blood Beast Terror is also a period piece, set in the not so distant past. Just set at the right time to do some Frankenstein allegories, up to and including a Frankenstein like play in the actual movie. It also helps quantify the pseudo-puritanical subtext of the Jezebel woman running around seducing all these nice young men who totally wouldn’t want to have the sex…with a girl…unless they were seduced by this temptress! The only thing missing was a giant letter A branded on the were-moth’s chest. Temptation and sin is probably why her demise is the way it is, spoiled below the fold in the recap portion. The setting in the older days help magnifies the sexual undertones.

Blood Beast Terror
Jolly good fish, sir! Right-o!

When The Blood Beast Terror was released in the US, it was retitled The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood and paired with Slaughter of the Vampires. Which I hear may involve vampires being slaughtered. But maybe not.

Inspector Quennell (Peter Cushing) – Famous and proper British police inspector who can solve any case, even bug-infested ones! His daughter is Meg Quennell
Dr. Carl Mallinger (Robert Flemyng) – Notable village eccentric, which means he has enough money that his weirdo obsessions are passed off as charming instead of creepy. Is the local scientist who lectures young lads on proper moth identification.
Clare Mallinger (Wanda Ventham) – Dr. Mallinger’s daughter, who totally isn’t secretly an evil were-moth who lures men to their doom. DOOM!!!!
Sgt. Allan (Glynn Edwards) – Quennell’s facial haired partner in crime who helps him bust crimes.
Were-moth (Herself) – Got blood?
Blood Beast Terror
Commander USA’s Groovie Movies forever!

SyFy has the Heebie Jeebies!


This Saturday you can get your Heebie Jeebies on with SyFy”s newest creature flick! Robert Belushi, Cathy Shim, and Michael Badalucco star, as they battle a CGI mess! Robert Belushi you might remember from being Jim Belushi’s son. Did you not watch According to Jim every day???? Cathy Shim you may remember from Reno 911! or Reno 911!: Miami. Michael Badalucco you may remember from The Practice. Writer Trent Haaga wrote a film called Deathbone, which has the tagline “Prepare to be boned.” That’s all I could find out about Deathbone. This is Thomas L. Callaway’s second feature, though he has a massive career as a cinematographer.

Heebie Jeebies

We pray to the spirits of SyFy and our departed brothers and sisters: Mega Shark, Sharktopus, Python, and Mammoth