Census Bloodbath: Re-Modeled

Note: The only copy of this movie that I could access was in unsubtitled Hindi, so take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1984
Director:
I.V. Sasi
Cast:
Kamal Haasan, Reena Roy, Tina Munim
Run Time:
2 hours 10 minutes

Plot: Karishmaa follows photographer Sunny (Kamal Haasan, who also starred in the 1981 Kollywood movie of which this is a remake, Tik Tik Tik) as he befriends a group of models and begins dating one of them, Nisha (Reena Roy). When they begin dying one by one, he becomes the prime suspect.

Analysis: It is not uncommon for successful regional Indian films to be adapted into full-scale Hindi-language Bollywood productions, so it was perhaps inevitable that we'd be retracing our steps with an Indian slasher at some point. Although the Tamil-language movie Tik Tik Tik was not a success in its original run (nor did it really deserve to be), a Telugu-language dub later found a major audience, and I guess that was enough for Bollywood to snap it up, along with its original star.

Considering the fact that it's the same guy giving the same performance in the same story, it's a little hard to review Karishmaa on its own merits. In fact, it's practically a scene-for-scene remake (down to the weird moment where the horse shot glasses behind the main character's head trigger a neighing noise on the soundtrack whenever they appear), so the only texture comes from the slight differences between the two movies.

For instance, thanks to some careful tweaking, Karishmaa is even less of a horror movie than Tik Tik Tik, instead amplifying the action scenes. While this was annoying for the purposes of Census Bloodbath, it at least allowed for certain pleasures like the stately Bond villain of the original movie being transmogrified into an Evil Karate Guy.

Unfortunately, a great many of the changes that were made are for the worse. The main character is still a pathetic sleazebag (even more so, in fact) and they've given him a disgustingly precocious child sidekick this time around, just to rub salt in the wound. Plus, while the lingering specter of rape culture was present in every scene of the previous movie, Karishmaa adds a sexual assault element to the opening murder that pulls the subtext into text in a particularly gross way.

There are some good changes, at least. The kills we do get are slightly more grody and intense, which elevates the slasher element somewhat in spite of the fact that horror in general is hardly a priority here. Also, the musical numbers here are actively good rather than being bland lumps of nothing. 

The choreography (which includes a number where Nisha keeps teleporting around Sunny, and a fun moment where the couple is dancing with one another face-up on the ground) is creative and well-performed. Actually, Kamal Haasan is such a charming dancer that I almost liked his character more than I did in Tik Tik Tik.

That said, I enjoyed watching Karishmaa slightly less overall, presumably because I was essentially watching the exact same movie within a few hours of seeing the original. The changes aren't major enough to stand out, and the more or less even balance between good and bad changes results in the whole thing being kind of a wash.

Killer: Evil Karate Guy and His Henchmen

Final Girl: Sunny (Kamal Haasan) feat. Nisha (Reena Roy)

Best Kill: Even though I object to it lacking the operatic melodrama of the villain's death in Tik Tik Tik, Evil Karate Guy is crushed by a statue that falls on him, which is still a pretty exciting way to go.

Sign of the Times: The opening credits sequence is a disco meltdown featuring Sunny dancing in silhouette as eye-searing colors surge across the screen.

Scariest Moment: Sunny takes photos of Nisha while a fan is blowing her skirt up, and we're meant to like him. (This doubles as a secondary Sign of the Times.)

Weirdest Moment: Sunny discovers an important clue because he is woken up by it while napping on the beach.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; not including a goon who gets dragged on the ground by horses, but whose fate we never specifically learn.

1. Model #1 has a diamond carved out of her with a knife.
2. Model #2 is stabbed in the chest offscreen.
3. Goon is shot.
4. Bearded Guy dies of wounds sustained in a fight.
5. Evil Karate Guy is crushed by a falling statue.

TL;DR: Kharishmaa is a mostly useless remake, with the good changes and bad changes largely canceling each other out.

Rating: 5/10

Census Bloodbath: Boom

Note: The only copy of this movie that I could access was in unsubtitled Tamil, so take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1981
Director:
Bharathiraja
Cast:
Kamal Haasan, Madhavi, Radha
Run Time:
2 hours 15 minutes

Plot: Tik Tik Tik follows photographer Dilip (Kamal Haasan, who also starred in this film's Bollywood remake, Karishmaa), who makes friends with a group of models and ends up dating one of them, Sharadha (Madhavi). When the models begin dying one by one, Dilip becomes the prime suspect. He strives to protect Sharadha and discover the identity of the real killer while avoiding the police.

Analysis: I have seen quite a few Indian slashers from the early 1980s at this point, and the majority of them are boring. While I can't say that I liked Tik Tik Tik either, it is certainly never boring.

The second half of the movie is something I can fully get on board with. It takes Indian cinema's habit of blending horror with the romance and musical genres and goes one step further by adding an action-crime component with a full-on James Bond villain thrown in for good measure (he doesn't have a cat, but he does roll around shirtless on a bed of diamonds, which is just as good).

The movie is over-the-top and kooky as hell once it really gets rolling. However, it takes a looooooong time for it to get to that point. The first hour is a real slog, for a multitude of reasons. This includes the erratic editing, which I think is supposed to build Dilip's photography into the visual schema of the movie by shoving in random still images. This almost never works, instead making Tik Tik Tik feel distracted and manic.

Also, the lead is an abrasive, bumbling, "don't take no for an answer," lecherous idiot. I was never once on his side, and it was tough to be asked to root for him on his two-hour-plus adventure. He never improves, it's just that the movie eventually adds enough other material to drown him out.

Another demerit for Tik Tik Tik is that, considering how many other subgenres it's balancing, it doesn't focus much of its time on being an effective slasher. While the erratic editing does result in a few genuinely horrific images (largely via superimposed shots that combine two of the movie's manic moments), there are no onscreen kills and the murder plot frequently takes a backseat to underbaked romance or flop-sweaty slapstick. 

Oh, and the musical numbers are pretty boring. They lack bombast and just kind of sit there taking up space.

All in all, I guess I wasn't furious that I watched it, but I don't think I would recommend it to anyone but the most slasher faithful among us.

Killer: Oberoi (Shamasundar L. Asrani) and His Henchmen

Final Girl: Dilip (Kamal Haasan) feat. Sharadha (Madhavi)

Best Kill: The ultimate death of the villain Oberoi is melodramatic as all hell. He swallows all the diamonds that he smuggled into the country (via the models that he has murdered) and shoots himself on the front steps as the police approach. It's quite a scene.

Sign of the Times: There are more corded phones in this movie than characters.

Scariest Moment: Sharadha is menaced by an underwater assailant while swimming in a pool.

Weirdest Moment: In one scene, every time Dilip moves his head to reveal the horse-themed shot glasses that are on the shelf behind him, there is a neighing noise on the soundtrack.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 7; give or take - it was not always easy to tell exactly what was happening, and to whom.

1. Sherley (Sarika Thakur of Sannata and Karishmaa) is killed offscreen.
2. Swapna is stabbed in the chest with a knife offscreen.
3. Radha is killed offscreen.
4. Ambulance Driver is killed offscreen.
5. Woman is shot in the back.
6. Goon is shot by the police.
7. Oberoi shoots himself in the head.

TL;DR: Tik Tik Tik is a kooky good time, but only after you slog through the first hour.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: Canta Y Llores

Note: The only available copy of this Mexican slasher was in unsubtitled Spanish. While I do speak some Spanish, take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1980
Director:
Mario Hernández
Cast:
Antonio Aguilar, Flor Silvestre, José Gálvez
Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Taste of Blood (originally Sabor a Sangre), which is set in the early 20th century, follows Mauricio Rosales (Antonio Aguilar), a noble cowboy who nobly happens upon the corpses of six dead caballeros while traveling the country performing noble deeds with his companion. 

When they bring the dead men and their horses back to town, they learn that the group was on an excursion to catch the serial killer El Tigre, who has been terrorizing the area and seems to be targeting Rodrigo Arteaga (Bruno Rey, who later appeared in the Mexican slashers Yo te amo Catalina and El violador infernal). They did not succeed, but perhaps Mauricio can...

Analysis: In addition to somehow being the second slasher period piece we've covered in a row (after Taiwan's Keep Out of Danger), Taste of Blood has two other elements that had me intrigued right off the bat. The first is the fact that it's technically part of a franchise. Actually, you could even call it a very early example of a legacy sequel.

You see, Antonio Aguilar played Mauricio Rosales (one of those classic "drifter who changes people's lives, then breezes out of town" types who informed characters as far afield as Jack Reacher and Mad Max) in a series of nine matinee Westerns from 1955's El rayo justiciero through 1958's Los muertos no hablan. Sabor a sangre saw him returning to the role for the first time in more than a decade and the last time overall.

The second is the fact that, due to the nature of its franchise, it blends slasher elements with the tropes of both Western movies and mariachi musicals. How could you not at least quirk an eyebrow at that?

Unfortunately, it doesn't evoke any of those three genres particularly well. As a musical, it's pretty drab. The severe tonal shifts that are required to transition the characters from being menaced by a serial killer to singing mariachi tunes are entirely outside of director Mario Hernández's grasp. Taken on their own, the musical numbers themselves aren't much good, anyway.

Even though the singers are pretty good, the numbers are staged incredibly poorly, either involving characters standing still and staring at one another or showing dancing/horseriding people in prolonged, extreme wide shots that render the sequences static and tedious.

It's even worse at being a Western. It's tedious as all get out. When it's not delivering three scenes in a row of pairs of people yelling at each other, it's luxuriating in excruciating moments like Mauricio slooowly reaching for his gun over the course of what feels like the better part of an hour.

Typically, these genre mashups are worst at being slashers, but Taste of Blood does have some decent slasher elements. While it's really not a body count picture as such (there are too many shooting deaths, and the more slashery deaths aren't lingered upon), some of the murder scenes are reasonably shocking and they're liberally slathered in "killer POV" shots. By far the worst thing about the slasher component of the film is its droning synth score, which sounds like an electric razor, only less musical. 

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, Taste of Blood is unremarkable in a way that really shouldn't be possible.

Killer: El Tigre

Final Girl: Mauricio Rosales (Antonio Aguilar)

Best Kill: In a scene so out-of-nowhere that it can only elicit either a scream or a guffaw, a pregnant girl delivers a tearful monologue and is then abruptly shoved off a cliff.

Sign of the Times: The fact that a 1950s Western franchise returned in the 1980s as a slasher franchise tells you all you need to know about how the tides of genre changed in the intervening years.

Scariest Moment: The killer slowly approaches a terrified old woman after murdering her husband.

Weirdest Moment: Mauricio Rosales is introduced on horseback, making his horse do cute little prancey dressage moves. But the horse keeps doing that over the next couple scenes, so I think maybe Antonio Aguilar just couldn't get it to stop.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 25; though the movie is singularly unconcerned with presenting kills in a legible way, so the number could very well be more than what I'm counting. Also, while even the number that I have would put Jason Voorhees to shame, the number of deaths that feel in any way slashery is only 6.

1. Carriage Driver is shot.
2. Caballero #1 is shot.
3. Caballero #2 is shot.
4. Caballero #3 is shot.
5. Old Caballero is killed offscreen.
6. Caballero #4 is killed offscreen.
7. Caballero #5 is killed offscreen.
8. Woman is hanged offscreen.
9. Woman's Husband dies of wounds sustained offscreen.
10. Caballero #6 is shot.
11. Caballero #7 is shot.
12. Niña Arteaga is stillborn thanks to her mother being trampled by horses.
13. Viejo has a knife thrown into his gut.
14. Vieja is killed offscreen.
15. Flashback Man has his eyes poked out with a stick.
16. Flashback Man #2 is shot.
17. Abuelo is shot.
18. Muchacha,
19. Muchacho,
20. and Madre are burned to death in a hut.
21. Swimmer is shot.
22. Caballero #8 is shot.
23. Pregnant Girl is pushed off a cliff.
24. Captain Eyepatch is shot.
25. El Tigre is shot.

TL;DR: Taste of Blood is an intriguing combination of the Western, slasher, and musical genres, but fails to pay that off in any way.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: Sickle And Tired

Note: The only copy of this Mandarin-language movie that I had access to DID have subtitles, but they were in Korean. So take my review with a few huge grains of salt. 

Year:
1980
Director:
Feng-Pan Yao
Cast:
Chen Lai, Chien Li, Chun Shih
Run Time:
1 hour 26 minutes

Plot: Keep Out of Danger (originally 玄機/Xuan Ji), which is set in the Ming Dynasty, follows Master Qian returning after years away. His family has moved to a new home not far from the old one, and the staff are acting strangely. When Qian's friend and the friend's sister come to stay, the three of them feel a sense of ominous dread that is not helped by the masked killer with a sickle murdering people around the property.

Analysis: Keep Out of Danger is a period piece, which is something of a rarity in the realm of the 1980s slasher, so that certainly intrigued me from the jump. The production was able to rustle up a convincing-looking estate in which to shoot the movie, too.

However, period trappings do not a good movie make. The movie needs to do something with them, and Keep Out of Danger mostly doesn't. It is certainly attempting to evoke a Gothic atmosphere (part Rebecca, part Poe, part Mysteries of Udolpho) during the hour-long stretch in which there are absolutely no kills, but self-seriousness does not suit this movie, which is tacky enough that it lards up the proceedings with shitty "hand on the shoulder" jump scares. 

It doesn't actually look that great, either. Its issues are certainly compounded by the bad VHS rip that remains the best available copy, but even without that, there are only two moments with any sort of visual flair (the best being a ghost appearing on a woman's doorstep). For the most part, director Feng-Pan Yao has the unfortunate habit of staging actors either too far to the left or right of the frame, creating these yawning gulfs of negative space that dominate the film.

Really, the only elements of Keep Out of Danger that unequivocally work are the kills. While they're not particularly gory, they do involve a lot of blood splashing around the walls, and the killer (whose mask doesn't not look like Michael Jackson - see below) wields the sickle with a demented energy that makes each blow feel brutal and unrelenting. This makes the movie even harder to sit through during the long stretch without kills, but it is better to have sickled and lost than never to have sickled at all.

Killer: The Old Couple

Final Girl: The Sister

Best Kill: I'm partial to the opening kill, which has the best buildup (a woman wanders through the old house, and at one point she is viewed through a round frame that looks like a noose - the second best shot of the movie, by a country mile).

Sign of the Times: The slasher elements do have an early 1980 sheen in that they are slightly bloodier than Halloween, but not so specifically gruesome as Friday the 13th and its imitators would soon become.

Scariest Moment: The main guy hears muffled crying echoing through the house in the middle of the night.

Weirdest Moment: Master Qian and the sister flirt while taking turns playing a flute.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 4

1. Yellow Dress Woman is sickled.
2. The Brother is sickled.
3. Female Servant is sickled.
4. Old Lady is sickled in the gut.

TL;DR: Keep Out of Danger is interesting in theory as a slasher period piece, but only in theory.

Rating: 5/10

Census Bloodbath: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dread

 Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Italian, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Year:
1980
Director:
Aldo Lado
Cast:
Auretta Gay, Pietro Brambilla, Aldo Sassi
Run Time:
1 hour 3 minutes

Plot: A black-gloved killer stalks the cast and crew of the real-life Italian variety TV show Variety. After Ely (Margherita Sestito) discovers the corpse of the dancer Diamante (Mariarita Viaggi), she enlists the help of PA Sandro (Pietro Brambilla of The House with Laughing Windows) and blind switchboard operator Lia (Auretta Gay of Zombie) in getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Analysis: I don't have a lot experience with the giallo genre on the small screen, but there was evidently a pretty big push to get it on the Italian airwaves throughout the 1980s, which more or less culminated in the short-lived 1987 variety show Giallo (something I now desperately want to get my hands on). Because Census Bloodbath is exclusively limited to features rather than series, this is something I have had very little reason to encounter outside of the aborted-miniseries-turned-theatrical-feature The Scorpion with Two Tails, which is uniquely terrible.

Suffice it to say, in the wake of seeing Scorpion, I approached Crime in Via Teulada with some trepidation. You see, the movie (originally titled Delitto in Via Teulada) had previously aired on Variety as a series of five-minute shorts in 1979 before being assembled into a (sort of) feature-length production and debuting in theaters in early 1980.

While the great Sergio Martino delivered us Scorpion, so I know that a filmmaker's legacy doesn't necessarily mean much with TV giallo, I was immediately intrigued by two of the names in the credits: director Aldo Lado (Short Night of Glass Dolls, Who Saw Her Die?) and composer Fabio Frizzi (The Scorpion with Two Tails, The Beyond, Zombie). 

As it turns out, I was right to allow a ray of hope into my heart. While Frizzi is merely competent, delivering a solid Pino-Donaggio-lite orchestration, Lado is firing on as many cylinders as it's possible to fire. While he is still limited by the standards of television storytelling (given the evidence, Italian standards and practices at the time curtailed violence, but not gratuitous boob shots), he puts on a hell of a show.

He stages quite a few exquisite moments of tension and terror, most notably in a sustained chase sequence that sees the character Annie (Barbara D'Urso) being chased from a cherry red stage all the way upstairs to an editing bay via the narrow stairwells surrounding an elevator shaft. He is also extraordinarily skilled at emphasizing Lia's headspace, highlighting how the chaotic sounds and incessantly moving objects in her environment blot out her ability to keep tabs on where she is.

Simply put, Crime in Via Teulada looks fabulous. Moody scenes are drenched in striking pools of light, and sets abound with rotating mirrors, flowing curtains, and everything else you might want out of a stylish giallo production.

Scratch that. Everything you might want, with the exception of outrageous kills. However, the kills that we do get actually aren't half bad. While there are a few more gun deaths than I'd prefer in any given slasher movie, Crime in Via Teulada generally finds ways to stage kills in ways that emphasize the brutality of murder without actually showing much blood or gore.

I don't want to waste my time by trying to convince you that this hourlong movie that Frankensteins together a few shorts from a variety show is some kind of hidden masterpiece, but it is quite lovely for what it is. 

Killer: Lia (Auretta Gay)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: Annie's strangulation by scarf is probably the best, because it accomplishes the "non-gory but still brutal TV kill" vibe with a bit of classic giallo stylization.

Sign of the Times: After Annie is strangled with her scarf, Lia jams it into a spinning tape reel in an editing bay to pretend that it got tangled up in the mechanism. 

Scariest Moment: Annie's extended chase sequence is a real thrill!

Weirdest Moment: In one scene, a costume department worker appears to be ironing her own hand.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 6

1. Diamante is shot in the head.
2. Annie is strangled with a scarf.
3. Ely is blasted in the face with steam.
4. Stagehand is run through with a sword offscreen.
5. Enrico is shot in the back.
6. Lia dies of a gunshot wound.

TL;DR: Crime in Via Teulada is a well-shot and totally pleasant little TV giallo lark.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: A Whisper To A Scream

Year:
1988
Director:
Christian I. Nyby II
Cast:
Loni Anderson, Joe Penny, June Lockhart
Run Time:
1 hour 34 minutes

Plot: Whisper Kill follows Liz Bartlett (Loni Anderson), the lead (and only?) reporter at a local newspaper called the Faircrest Falcon. When her business partner is stabbed to death after receiving a threatening phone call from a whispery voice, investigative reporter Dan Walker (Joe Penny of Bloody Birthday) takes a job at the Falcon to look into matters. As he and Liz begin to fall in love, they both suspect one another of being the killer as more whispery calls are placed and bodies begin to pile up (though it's a small pile, because this was an ABC TV movie, after all).

Various characters who are either suspects or victims float around the pair, including Liz's advice columnist mother Winifred Rogers (June Lockhart of Deadly Games), her therapist Dr. John Oxford (Jeremy Slate of The Dead Pit), her rival Oz Stevens (Joe Lerer), and Dan's friend/informant Vince Messina (James Sutorius of Cruising).

Analysis: Now, any slasher fan knows to go into a TV movie with some amount of trepidation. Exploitation movies and Standards and Practices departments aren't exactly bosom pals. However, I have found that TV movies frequently overlap with "women's picture" slashers, many of which I hold dear. In fact, the platonic ideal of the slasher TV movie, 1982's Fantasies, was put out by ABC. So I wasn't as nervous as I could have been when I was stepping into Whisper Kill.

Optimism only gets you so far, alas. Thanks to the necessity of keeping Liz a suspect for as long as possible (until the penultimate scene, in fact), this movie keeps its female lead at arm's length, much to its detriment. We're forced to split our time between Liz and Dan, the latter of whom isn't hunky or charismatic enough to hold up his end of the soapy romance. With all due respect to the titular Jake of Jake and the Fatman.

Really, nothing about the small town melodrama plot works. The dialogue is snappy without ever actually being clever, and the only supporting characters who really pop do so because of their absolutely demented 1980s hair.

Unusually, the slasher elements of Whisper Kill almost work. It's got a more sizable body count than other TV movie slashers (here's looking at you, Hotline), for one thing. There is also a bit more emphasis on depicting the process of victims being stabbed to death, even though those scenes are almost entirely bloodless. And the muffled punching noises that the foley artists have chosen to accompany the knife's movements make it sound like the citizens of Faircrest are anthropomorphic body pillows.

It's also hornier than the average TV movie. While it is outrageously bad at depicting actual eroticism thanks to the anti-chemistry between the two leads, Whisper Kill certainly wants to put their sex lives front and center. Hell, we even get a steamy "Unchained Melody" scene two full years before the premiere of Ghost.

I guess I'll leave it at this. Sure, Whisper Kill has more and better slasher touches than I was expecting, across the board. In addition to what I've already broken down, we get a black-gloved killer and a pretty decent score from the underrated Charles Bernstein (A Nightmare on Elm Street, April Fool's Day). However, these were never going to be enough to sustain a 1980s TV movie. The non-horror elements need to pull their weight and they don't, making its 94 minutes feel like an eternity.

Killer: Winifred "Winnie" Rogers (June Lockhart)

Final Girl: Liz Barlett (Loni Anderson)

Best Kill: They're all mostly comparable, but Vince's stabbing is the best because it takes place in his car, allowing the killer to do the classic horror movie thing by popping up from the backseat.

Sign of the Times: The opening scene involves a call being placed from a phone booth to a bar's pay phone.

Scariest Moment: Backseat killer, baby!

Weirdest Moment: Liz and a hungover Dan attend a birthday party for the mayor's granddaughter, where Dan puts sunglasses in the dog.

Champion Dialogue: “All your ancestors are slime!"

Body Count: 4

1. Jerry Caper is stabbed to death.
2. Oz Stevens is stabbed to death.
3. Vince Messina is stabbed in the back.
4. Winnie Rogers is shot.

TL;DR: Whisper Kill is a tedious and bland TV movie slasher.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: Screams In The Witch House

Year:
1989
Director:
Fabrizio Laurenti
Cast:
Linda Blair, David Hasselhoff, Leslie Cumming
Run Time:
1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Witchery is set in a sprawling hotel on an island off the coast of Massachusetts that the locals say used to be the home of a witch. They say this because it's true! Said witch (Hildegard Knef) is still haunting the place, and she begins to enact a murderous Satanic ritual upon a group of people who find themselves stranded there.

It's been a while since we've gotten to do this properly, so let's Meet the Meat: Leslie (Leslie Cumming of Zombie 5: Killing Birds), who is studying the legend of the witch; Leslie's boyfriend Gary (David Hasselhoff, who you'll remember best from Terror at London Bridge), a photographer who is pissed that Leslie wants to remain a virgin; horny architect Linda (Catherine Hickland); nepo baby realtor Jerry (Rick Farnsworth); and a rich family that is looking to buy the property, namely cruel matriarch Rose (Annie Ross), lecherous father Freddie (Robert Champagne of Ghosthouse), pregnant stepdaughter Jane (Linda Blair, who you'll remember best from Hell Night), and young son Tommy (Michael Manchester).

Analysis: The thing that is by far the most interesting aspect of the English-language Italian horror movie Witchery is the fact that it is part of the La Casa franchise, so let's spend some time drilling into that. The series is maybe the most "Italian horror" thing to have ever happened, after all.

So, remember 1981's The Evil Dead? I bet you do. It takes place in an isolated cabin in the woods, so the Italian title for it was La Casa (The House). Six years later, Evil Dead II comes out. What do we call that in Italy? Easy. La Casa 2. That movie's a hit. But Sam Raimi isn't making more Evil Dead movies just yet. What's a film industry with rather lax titling rules to do? If you know even a little bit about Italian horror, you can probably guess what happened next. That's right, they found a series of random, unrelated movies that took place in houses and pretended they were sequels to the Evil Dead movies.

Witchery is La Casa 4, whereas La Casa 3 is 1988's Ghosthouse and La Casa 5 is 1990's Beyond Darkness. La Casa 6 and La Casa 7 are, respectively, 1987's House II: The Second Story and 1989's House III: The Horror Show. Weirdly, the original 1986 House was completely ignored by the faux franchise.

This is the perfect franchise for Witchery to have become a part of, because I'm sure the movie felt right at home in that chaotic, unsupervised free-for-all. Because let me tell you, Witchery is all over the damn place.

Honestly, I wasn't sure going in if it was going to end up being slashery enough for me to include in Census Bloodbath. It's a supernatural horror film about a witch, after all. 45 minutes in, I was still completely unsure about how to categorize it. 

The cast is killed off one by one, yes, but they're mostly pulled into a nether realm (by one of the worst visual effects I've ever seen - a sort of cherry red spiral tunnel that looks like someone flushing a tie dye kit down the toilet and which is given a lavish amount of screen time across multiple scenes) to be tortured and sometimes killed, only to be returned to the real world to either have their deaths continue or happen again in a new way. It doesn't make all that much sense, and it doesn't lend itself to the clean simplicity that I prefer from a slasher body count.

That said, the reason you're reading this review at all is that Witchery assembles just enough of the right slasher tropes in the right order (most notably the cast of Meat being stranded in an isolated location).

The fantasy elements really only work when they lean in on being as Italian as possible. I'm talking witchcraft being visually represented by a flashing brooch that appears in jarring close-ups that interrupt the tempo of the scene, the campy German diva witch showing up periodically just to chat with Tommy when nobody else is looking, and so on. There are also a few moments of demented Italian horror visuals that genuinely work quite well.

Additionally, for fans of bad-good movies, the stilted English dialogue hits that mark more often that not ("I'll never understand which you love more: work or sex"), as do the tremendously inconsistent Boston accents sported by half the cast (neither Hasselhoff nor Blair were paid enough to even attempt accents).

However, none of this prevents Witchery from being a complete waste of time. There are too many characters milling about in this hotel, and not enough happens to them for the first hour and 10 minutes of the movie. Plus, Leslie Cumming is giving a shockingly bad, vacant, bleary performance. This was her last credited acting role, which proves that there is indeed a moral arc to the universe. 

To be fair to Cumming, nobody is directed well enough to deliver a convincing performance (least of all Michael Manchester). Though maybe her direction was "imagine what Daphne Zuniga would do if she had no rizz and was doped up on horse tranquilizers," in which case she executed it perfectly.

Killer: The Woman in Black (Hildegard Knef)

Final Girl: Leslie (Leslie Cumming)

Best Kill: When Freddie is killed via voodoo doll, he begins asphyxiating while the veins on his hands and then his neck bulge and burst. Gross!

Sign of the Times: A licensed Sesame Street tape recorder toy is instrumental to the plot.

Scariest Moment: The group lights a fire, not realizing that Rose is strung up in the fireplace, unable to scream because her mouth is sewn shut.

Weirdest Moment: There is a little girl in a wheelchair who shows up in exactly two scenes that accomplish nothing. One is where she introduces herself to Tommy. The other is where she spots the island's emergency flare and tells her dad, who promptly ignores her. (This scene was my alternate pick for Sign of the Times, because his nighttime routine is apparently to smoke a cigarette in bed while reading The Godfather - what a mensch!)

Champion Dialogue: “They've got a lot of legends about this island. Witches and rainbows and shit."

Body Count: 8

1. Pregnant Lady jumps out of the window in a scene that is either a flashback, a movie, a nightmare, or all three.
2. Sailor is killed offscreen.
3. Rose has her lips sewn shut and is burned alive.
4. Linda is tied up to death (don't ask) and is later found with her neck impaled by a swordfish.
5. Jerry is crucified on an upside-down cross and burned.
6. Freddie asphyxiates and bleeds to death via voodoo.
7. Gary is impaled through the back with like a candelabra or something.
8. Jane jumps out of the window.

TL;DR: Witchery is an aimless supernatural slasher that is only worth watching in infrequent spurts.

Rating: 5/10

Census Bloodbath: Arabella, Where Have You Been, Loca?

Note: The copy of this movie that I had access to was in unsubtitled Italian, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Year:
1989
Director:
Stelvio Massi
Cast:
Tinì Cansino, Francesco Casale, Valentina Visconti

Run Time:
1 hour 29 minutes

Plot: Arabella: Black Angel (originally Arabella l'angelo nero) follows the nymphomaniac Arabella (Tinì Cansino), who gets caught up in a web of intrigue when her writer husband Francesco (Francesco Casale) - who has been confined to a wheelchair since getting into a road head-related accident on the day of their wedding - witnesses her murdering a policeman (Carlo Mucari of Obsession: A Taste for Fear) who was blackmailing her into sex.

Francesco encourages Arabella - against her strong protestations to the contrary - to become a sex worker so he can use her life as inspiration for his next book. However, the twisted drama between them grows even darker when it becomes clear that a black-gloved killer is targeting the men that Arabella sleeps with. Lesbian police commissioner Gina Fowler (Valentina Visconti) is on the case, but the sexual mutilation of the killer's victims triggers memories of her own dark past.

Analysis: At about the 45-second mark of Arabella: Black Angel, I realized that I was dealing with a very particular sub-subgenre of the 1980s slasher: the softcore giallo movie. I figured at that point that I already knew exactly what I was in for. A shitshow. I've seen Killing of the Flesh after all. I know how these things go.

Blissfully, I was proven completely wrong. For one thing, Arabella is a well put-together movie. In addition to a pretty solid score that evokes the late 1980s without leaning too heavily on synths, this movie is extraordinarily well shot (by its director, Stelvio Massi, who also shot The Case of the Bloody Iris and was the camera operator for A Fistful of Dollars).

We're talking striking lighting that makes the (almost) unilaterally sexy cast's faces glow with ethereal beauty! We're talking deep focus shots where things are happening both in the foreground and background. In other words, this is a movie! Speaking as someone who just watched The Strangler of Syggrou and Terror en los Barrios, that's really not something that you can take for granted with a 1980s slasher.

It's maybe not an overly terrific slasher, however. Its startlingly small roster of five kills are doled out with a parsimonious amount of blood, though there is a brutal post-murder moment where you're forced to sit and consider exactly what it might look like for someone's penis to have been snipped off with scissors.

However, it makes up for its not-particularly enthralling kills with one of the best whodunit plots of the giallo genre, which is not only full of twists and turns, but ones that actually make sense for the most part! I wasn't even watching the English-translated version (which exists, but is currently only available via exorbitantly expensive listings on the resale market), and I still had my jaw hit the floor multiple times.

Additionally, it might just be an out-and-out masterpiece of softcore horror cinema. Not only does the sexual content in Arabella: Black Angel feel genuinely transgressive, erotic, and dangerous, it is impeccably blended with the storyline and the characters. The sex doesn't exist solely to titillate the audience (though it does do that, and there ain't nothing wrong with it). Sex informs the backstories of every major character and is the throbbing spoke around which the entire wheel of the plot spins.

Overall, it isn't a masterpiece of cinema in general, but I had a hell of a time watching Arabella: Black Angel. If this sounds like the type of thing you might be into in the first place, I can promise you it's worth taking the plunge.

Killer: Martha Veronesi (Ida Galli of The Sweet Body of Deborah, The Bloodstained Butterfly, and The Case of the Scorpion's Tail)

Final Girl: Arabella (Tinì Cansino)

Best Kill: Gina's journalist girlfriend Agnese (Rena Niehaus) gets those scissors right in the neck in one of cinema's most brutal uppercuts.

Sign of the Times: If you'll allow me to get meta for a moment, I think the only reason that this movie doesn't enjoy a more robust reputation is the fact that it came out in 1989, a decade removed from the heyday of the gialli.

Scariest Moment: The fantasy sequence where Gina sees blood pouring out of a tap isn't scary per se, but it's the scene that feels the most like it belongs in a horror movie.

Weirdest Moment: This sex worker that Arabella picks up is hot, but if I picked him up, I'd spend the first 30 minutes of my hour just having him explain the theme of his outfit.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; not including a dream sequence where Gina is stabbed in the crotch with scissors, which probably wouldn't have killed her anyway, even though it certainly would have ruined her day.

1. Alfonso de Rosa is bopped on the head with a mallet.
2. Nick is stabbed in the dick with scissors (and later has his penis cut off).
3. Cowboy is stabbed in the dick with scissors (and later has his penis cut off).
4. Agnese is stabbed in the neck with scissors.
5. Francesco is stabbed in the back.

TL;DR: Arabella: Black Angel is a gleefully transgressive softcore giallo movie that manages to make exploitation the point of the story it's telling while also reveling in it.

Rating: 7/10

Census Bloodbath: Strangler In A Strangle Land

 Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Greek, so take my review with a grain of salt. Also, I don't have access to translated credits, so unfortunately not every role will be properly credited.

Year:
1989
Director:
Dimitris Tzelas
Cast:
Apostolos Souglakos, Stella Bonatsou, Helen Kelly
Run Time:
1 hour 27 minutes

Plot: The Strangler of Syggrou (originally Ο στραγγαλιστής της Συγγρού/O straggalistis tis Syggrou) follows a strangler (Apostolos Souglakos) whose dark backstory (which includes an abusive mom and a wife who died mid-coitus) causes him to relive the story of 1980's Maniac, complete with an apartment full of mannequins augmented with the grisly spoils of his murders, as well as a budding, danger-laced romance (with a woman who creates displays for department store windows)

Analysis: This Greek remake of Maniac is one of 16 movies that director Dimitris Tzelas made between 1986 and 1990. Let's just say that it shows. I certainly wasn't expecting it to be as nasty-hearted and sleazy as the original (downgrading the killer from a scalper to a strangler already accomplished that, right from the jump), but there's no vim or vigor in the presentation of this story at all. It's delivered with all the screaming terror of a man running errands on his way home from work.

However, there is a bit more diversity in the type of kills doled out by The Strangler than I was expecting. It's certainly a more entertaining array than what we got in the Turkish slasher Psikopat, which has a similar premise and budget level. Additionally (SPOILER ALERT), he kills his love interest far earlier than I expected, in a perfunctory scene that is rendered more shocking due to the matter-of-fact nature of the filmmaking.

Overall, like many low-budget 1980s slashers, it's more enjoyable as a campy curio than as a horror movie. The Strangler of Syggrou is peppered with quite a few unexpectedly off-kilter moments, including the reveal that The Strangler has a cute, tiny dog at home, the Sopranos tracksuit that he's constantly wearing, and everything about the Barbarella Disco (which is the setting of quite a few scenes).

The only thing that unequivocally works about the movie is the propulsive synth score, which gives the movie every last scrap of tone and texture that it possesses, crafting a dark, dangerous atmosphere around The Strangler and his exploits. Of course, that music is largely (and perhaps entirely) stolen from Giorgio Moroder's score for 1982's Cat People. But hey, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best! 

Killer: The Strangler (Apostolos Souglakos)

Final Girl: Spoiled Daughter

Best Kill: The Strangler closes a car window on a woman's neck, which is still amusingly on theme (she asphyxiated, so I guess it counts as a strangulation) while reminding me of Tatum's cat door death in Scream.

Sign of the Times: Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" loudly plays over a conversation at a bar.

Scariest Moment: When the final girl hides from The Strangler in the morgue, she pretends to be a body under a sheet and begins hyperventilating with fear, giving the game away instantly. This goes so badly that The Strangler doesn't even bother doing the classic slasher killer thing and trying the other sheets first before uncovering her.

Weirdest Moment: There's a random interlude about 12 minutes before the end of the movie where a duo led by a man in his underwear and a fluffy black wig perform a minutes-long musical number at the discotheque.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 9

1. Dock Woman is strangled.
2. Cab Driver has a car window closed on her neck.
3. Masked Assailant has his head smashed on the sidewalk.
4. Dominatrix is strangled.
5. Dominatrix's John is strangled.
6. Department Store Lady is strangled.
7. John #2 is strangled.
8. Strangler's Wife dies during sex in a flashback.
9. The Strangler is shot.

TL;DR: The Strangler of Syggrou is a pretty unremarkable Greek remake of Maniac.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: Hellenovela

Note: The only version of this Mexican slasher movie that I was able to get access to was in unsubtitled Spanish. While my AP test scores allow me to claim that I am bilingual, it has been a long time since high school. So take my review with a grain of salt, considering the fact that I was understanding at most 50% of the dialogue in any given scene.

Year:
1988
Director:
Julio Aldama
Cast:
Julio Aldama Jr., Grace Renat, Norma Lazareno

Run Time:
1 hour 22 minutes

Plot: In Terror en los Barrios, Pedro (Julio Aldama Jr. - now how did he get the job?) is a promising young lawyer with a wealthy adopted mother and a gorgeous fiancé, Ángela (Claudia Guzmán). Watching a play about a sex worker's murder triggers a buried memory of his biological mother and her lover being shot by her pimp. This causes him to go mad, dress up in a revolving door of costumes, and murder sex workers and their johns around Mexico City. Frankly, the play was pretty terrible, so maybe I'm misreading the situation and he just decided to go on a killing spree simply to liven up the night.

There's also a bunch of supplemental dramatic material with a pregnant woman - I think her name was Adriana (María Elena Robles, who also wrote the screenplay, making her the rare above-the-line female crew member on a 1980s slasher) - who Pedro hires to be his secretary, and her boyfriend Luis (René Cardona III of Cemetery of Terror, who is the grandson of the director of the exquisite La Llorona). Oh, and a dancer named Rita (Grace Renat), who is trying to support her two kids. Listings allege that there's also a woman named Gabriela (Norma Lazareno of Hasta el viento tiene miedo) kicking around, but I can't for the life of me figure out who that character is supposed to be.

Analysis: It might be time to name a new sub-subgenre here, because Terror en los Barrios is another in a string of what I'd like to call "filler thrillers" that dotted the 1980s. This species of slasher can be spotted by its distinct disinclination to have narrative thrust. Instead of telling a story with forward momentum, these movies lurch to a halt every 15 minutes or so to spend a full scene in the company of time-wasting filler. 

This can take many forms, such as the striptease performances in Stripped to Kill or the aerobics sequences in Killer Workout. Terror en los Barrios is at least more generous than either of those two movies due to the fact that it alternates between two types of filler: weird burlesque dances and mariachi performances.

The mariachi performances are quite good (the burlesque dances considerably less so), but that fact doesn't prevent them from being absolutely fucking useless. Unfortunately, the slasher movie that they're interrupting is pretty bland, so there isn't even much worthwhile to have your attention pulled from.

Terror en los Barrios is fumbles its slasher tropes so much that it even tries to deliver a shocking mid-movie reveal that Pedro is the killer, even though the movie is literally about his mental breakdown. And I'm sorry, but his parade of the frumpiest outfits in the history of drag isn't going to cut it as a disguise.

The kills themselves are also pretty unremarkable. They're not bad, I guess. It's just that the blood budget is essentially nonexistent, so the majority of the murder sequences are awkwardly staged in ways that underscore their artificiality. Thankfully, the story around those kills is where the movie lets loose and gets wet and wild.

Robles' screenplay is clearly influenced by telenovelas, much to its betterment. While the third act of the movie pretty much forgets that it's a slasher (just look at the marked change in the types of deaths that follow #6 in the Body Count), it replaces the insipid mush of the psycho-killer storyline with a string of shocking reveals and melodramatic clashes between the coterie of characters who were previously just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses, taking up space and refusing to die.

At the very least, the way that Terror en los Barrios is a bizarre mishmash between a Los ricos también lloran-era telenovela and a 1980s slasher makes for a fascinating case study. Considering the fact that I'm about to hit my 300th Census Bloodbath title, I'll welcome whatever interesting texture the slasher genre wants to throw at me.

Killer: Pedro (Julio Aldama Jr.)

Final Girl: The woman who I think is Adriana (María Elena Robles)

Best Kill: Pedro slits a woman's throat (with the tip of his knife for some reason) and her gurgling, choking noises really sell the whole thing.

Sign of the Times: The biggest sign that it was shot in 1983 (even though it was released in 1988) is the fact that there's nothing supernatural at all going on here. The influence of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street did spread as far South as Mexico, after all, as movies like Cemetery of Terror can attest.

Scariest Moment: After shooting his fiancée while wearing the above mask (The Hulk? Frankenstein? both?), Pedro breathes so heavily that the mask pulses outward.

Weirdest Moment: After his adopted mother dies, Pedro goes to the woods and stares at a river. And stares. And stares. The movie keeps cutting to establishing shots of the river, then back to him contemplating the water from different vantage points.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 12

1. Pedro's Mother is shot by her pimp.
2. Pedro's Mother's Lover is shot by her pimp.
3. John #1 is stabbed in the side.
4. Cheetah Print Dress Lady has her throat slit and is stabbed in the boobs.
5. Sidewalk Lady is strangled (or something) in a bush.
6. John #2 has his head slammed against a footstool.
7. Mamacita dies of old lady disease.
8. Luis dies in a car crash.
9. Ángela is shot.
10. Pimp #1 is shot.
11. Pimp #2 is shot.
12. Pedro jumps from a balcony.

TL;DR: Terror en los Barrios is a serviceable enough telenovela slasher, though it isn't particularly well mounted.

Rating: 5/10