Census Bloodbath: The Screams Of Seagulls

Year:
1982
Director:
Nestore Ungaro
Cast:
Prunella Ransome, Jeremy Brett, Nicky Henson
Run Time:
1 hour 42 minutes

Plot: Englishwoman Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome) leaves her nonspecific job in New Orleans to meet her little sister, blind pianist Mary Ann (Sherry Buchanan of Crawlspace), in Rome, only to find that she disappeared three weeks ago. She teams up with hot 'n horny consulate employee Martin (Nicky Henson) to try and solve the mystery, which brings them to the private island of the rich archaeologist David Malcolm (longtime TV Sherlock Holmes Jeremy Brett), who may or may not be keeping secrets on said island.

But where is Mary Ann? And who is responsible for the dead blind women that keep turning up around the area? David? Lascivious seaman Enzo Lombardi (Gabriele Tinti of The Murder Secret)? David's cousin Carol (Pamela Salem, who played Miss Moneypenny in Never Say Never Again), who obviously has the hots for him? David's creepy henchman Giulio (Vassili Karis)? Or somebody else entirely? Like, say, David's dead son Frederick, who might not be as dead as we previously thought?

Analysis: The provenance of The Secret of Seagull Island is confusing and circuitous, even by the standards of 1980s slashers. The British-Italian co-production started its life as a five-episode 1981 miniseries called Seagull Island, which was eventually cut down to 102 minutes and distributed as a TV movie. It was made by an Italian director of no repute and distributed in a way that necessitated a stricter standard for depicting nudity and violence, which kind of nips the possibility of being a solid giallo right in the bud.

And while the British have contributed many great things to pop culture (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hammer monster movies, Maggie Smith, this), slashers are probably their second worst contribution to the world after colonialism. They simply never figured out how slashers ticked. 

I suppose it makes sense that a region smack dab in the middle of the Video Nasty panic wasn't going to throw themselves at the subgenre hammer and tongs, but most of the slashers they put out in the 1980s were simply pitiful. The Last Night sucks. Don't Open Till Christmas sucks even harder. Bloodstream could suck a bowling ball through a straw.

Surprisingly, The Secret of Seagull Island doesn't suck. Maybe that's because one thing the British actually understand better than most is how to put horror on television. I couldn't say. But it was actually not an unpleasant sit.

It completely lacks atmosphere, sure, beyond the fact that they invested in an underwater camera and by jove, they were determined to use it. And it's quite slow. I can't imagine what the 115 minutes they cut out could have possibly contained, because the story hardly races by as it is. But the plucky heroine is reasonably compelling, and her chemistry with her male love interest is strong enough to sustain the movie until it can get her to the island and turn up the heat on the melodrama. 

In fact, pretty much all the acting is pretty solid, give or take some severely patchy moments from Jeremy Brett, who briefly turns into a Looney Tunes character from time to time. They bring to life a charmingly tacky story that wears its influences on its sleeve, including the gialli (the killer targeting blind women is an excellent Italian touch) and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (minus the transphobia, for once).

It's better to approach it as a solid slow-burn TV mystery (complete with evil hands constantly grasping the corners of buildings and the gratings over windows) rather than a proper slasher - the kills are pretty much a wash, as is to be expected - but it's a reasonably entertaining example of one of those. Plus, it has a seagull attack! That was fun.

Killer: David Malcolm (Jeremy Brett)

Final Girl: Barbara Carey (Prunella Ransome)

Best Kill: A blind woman who recently escaped Seagull Island gets the most giallo-y death, with the killer playing a tape of seagulls crying that causes her to freak out, jump through a window, and plummet shockingly far to her death.

Sign of the Times: Martin's "going out" outfit consists of three pieces that are all different shades of tan.

Scariest Moment: Enzo's dog barks and Enzo thinks it's barking at him, but all of a sudden a scuba-diving killer bursts up from the water in front of him.

Weirdest Moment: David sleeps next to a framed shirtless photo of his son.

Champion Dialogue: “My sister seems to have gone through half the male population of Italy."

Body Count: 7; not including a blind woman who was killed six months before the events of the movie, whose body we see.

1. David's Second Wife (Alée? Alaine? I don't know, it's never written down) and
2. Frederick die in an underwater rock slide.
3. Blind Woman jumps through the window of her hospital room.
4. Giulio is stabbed in the chest by Enzo.
5. Enzo either dies by succumbing to being stabbed in the crotch or is killed offscreen in some other way.
6. Carol is drowned.
7. David traps himself in a burning building.

TL;DR: The Secret of Seagull Island is a pleasant TV melodrama blended with a mostly OK giallo.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: Drown By The Seashore

 

Year:
1982
Director:
Peter Medak
Cast:
Patrick Duffy, Cindy Pickett, Lawrence Pressman
Run Time:
1 hour 32 minutes

Plot: Cry for the Strangers follows psychiatrist Brad Russell (Patrick Duffy) moving to the small seaside town of Clarks Harbor with his wife Elaine (Cindy Pickett, Ferris Bueller's mom!) for some peace and quiet while he writes his book. Unfortunately, he finds neither peace nor quiet in the storm-ravaged area. Every time the wind picks up, somebody who wasn't born in the town (a "stranger," some might say) dies under mysterious circumstances. Who is the culprit? Is it a human being? A series of dreadful accidents? Or the indigenous American ghosts who haunt the nearby beach? Speaking of, the ghosts seem to have a special interest in possessing Robby Palmer (Shawn Carson of The Funhouse), a young boy who is a former patient of Dr. Russell's.

Analysis: Just getting through the opening credits of Cry for the Strangers gave me whiplash. First, there was the disappointment of learning that it was a TV movie (for CBS, to be precise). TV movie slashers can be good (Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Fantasies, Deadly Lessons), but more often than not they are bloodless, plodding affairs. So imagine my shock when I learned that this particular movie was directed by Peter Medak, just two years off from helming the exquisitely atmospheric haunted house movie The Changeling.

The man who made the single scariest seance scene in horror cinema does have a few tricks up his sleeve here, even on a TV movie budget. There are plenty of ambitious shots, including the camera constantly spinning around a central axis and a pretty fun mirror shot introducing a scene in the local tavern. He also knows what to do whenever the tension of the movie grows to a crescendo, giving the spine-tingling moments room to breathe, then wanging you on the head with a surprise jump cut.

He also imbues the movie with a solid sense of place. It helps that they used real locations on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, but there's also a strong sense of community threaded throughout, especially in the body discovery scenes.

Unfortunately, Cry for the Strangers is also boring as fuck. I could have done with about 12 fewer scenes of somebody walking across a quiet beach, shouting somebody's name (usually Robby - that fool did love to wander off onto the beach over and over and over again). There's "slow boil" and then there's "under heavy sedation," and this movie is in the latter camp.

It's also deathly dull as a slasher movie. Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that (SPOILER ALERT) it is revealed that there is an actual human being perpetrating the killings, I was going to kick this movie off my Census Bloodbath list completely. I wasn't shocked that the kills in this TV movie almost entirely took place offscreen, but not once does an edged weapon come into the equation even a little bit. And the movie is so dead set on being a (generic, racist) ghost story that the slasher elements recede into the background most of the time.

All in all, it's a bit of a whiff for ol' Peter Medak. But looking at his filmography, it honestly seems like The Changeling might have been more of a fluke than anything else.

Killer: Chief Whalen (Brian Keith)

Final Girl: Dr. Brad Russell (Patrick Duffy) & Co.

Best Kill: The opening scene is kind of clunkily paced, but the closing gag - young Whalen finding his grandparents' bodies buried in the sand on the beach - boosts up the eeriness something fierce.

Sign of the Times: Fisherman/body count padder Chip wears a red headband at all times, day or night.

Scariest Moment: The newly widowed Miriam arrives on Brad and Elaine's porch out of nowhere, with a dire warning.

Weirdest Moment: When Chief Whalen drops off Brad and Elaine at their new home, he lets them know they won't be able to turn on the power for a few days. Excuse me, what?

Champion Dialogue: “Robby! Robby! ROBBY!"

Body Count: 8

1. Grandma and
2. Grandpa are buried up to their necks in sand and drowned offscreen.
3. Pete is found dead in his fishing net.
4. Miriam is hanged offscreen.
5. Max is killed offscreen in a boat explosion.
6. Chip is drowned offscreen.
7. Riley dies offscreen. 
8. Chief Whalen is shot.

TL;DR: Cry for the Strangers is appropriately atmospheric at times, but it's also dead boring.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: Snake Charmer

Note: The 1988 slasher Kiss of the Serpent: Snake Island, which was produced and set in Florida, was apparently never released in the United States. However, it was released on video in at least two major overseas markets, one of which (West Germany) provides the only available poster artwork, and the other of which (South Korea) provides the only available English-language copy, which naturally comes with Korean subtitles.

Oh, and the South Korean VHS doesn't have a proper poster. Instead, the title is printed on top of the poster for the 1986 Italian slasher Body Count. 

Anyway, for obvious reasons, information about Kiss of the Serpent is murky at best. Although five cast members are listed on IMDb, their characters are not. So I will unfortunately not be able to properly credit any of the many, many, many actors who appear in this film. But honestly, I'm lucky I was even able to watch it in the first place.

Year:
1988
Director:
James Ingrassia
Cast:
Chris Moore, Jeff Greenman, Murray McDougall
Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Kiss of the Serpent: Snake Island follows a group of young Floridians who accidentally set the Reptile World Serpentarium (a real place in Osceola County, apparently) on fire while getting a little rowdy with stolen fireworks on the Fourth of July, killing resident herpetologist Dr. Whelan and his wife and daughter, but not his son, Michael. Exactly eight years later, a boat accident brings their horny vacation to an abrupt end and leaves them stranded on an island full of snakes, where Michael is cursed to kill them one by one as revenge for angering the snake spirits (there's a lot of racist stuff about indigenous people mixed up in the backstory) all those years ago, lest he be transformed into a snake-human hybrid. 

Specifically, the grown-up Michael (who has taken on a new identity that is pretty obvious, but is ultimately treated as a reveal, so I won't spoil it until later) is tasked with killing nine specific people, which makes the actual body count of the movie kind of confusing. But there's not a lot about Kiss of the Serpent that makes a whole lot of sense in the first place, so you learn to roll with the punches.

A few people are killed on land before they set sail, but they don't matter, so let's Meet the Meat that made it to the boat: wannabe rock star Chris and his girlfriend Kim (who was present at the arson but didn't approve of it, thus marking her as our Final Girl); Kim's recently cheated-on friend Tammy and her love interest, the boat's horndog captain, Steve; bland horny couples Debbie and Jeff and Robin and Scott; tragic singleton Jennifer; and Alan, who is fat and therefore disgusting (to the point that they layer fart sound effects beneath his dialogue at least twice).

Oh, also there are two cops slowly investigating the murders, one of whom is also named Steve. Figure that out.

Analysis: Kiss of the Serpent: Snake Island is so obscure that it was first brought to my attention just a few days ago. Given its title and poster, I assumed it was either an edge case or completely mislabeled as a slasher. So imagine my surprise when this is not only a true slasher, but a slasher so devoted to the old-school formula that it probably would have already felt like a throwback in 1988.

We're talking a group of nubile young men and women being picked off one by one in an isolated location on the anniversary of hijinks got wrong, and they've even thrown a holiday setting into the bargain. Honestly, watching it was like stepping into a warm bath.

It's also so deeply 1980s that it makes your teeth itch, which is a huge compliment in my book. This includes synth music, women protecting their giant hair with headbands while they work out, and basically everything else about anything the characters say, do, or wear. 

That's not to say that it's a good movie. A lot of what's going on in Kiss of the Serpent is cheap and/or inept, particularly the acting. The screenplay leaves a lot to be desired, too. In addition to being racist, it's not very focused. For instance, the kills are doled out at a wildly uneven pace. Oh, and Kim vanishes for huge stretches, leaving Tammy and Steve to scramble to figure out how to fill time when they're suddenly called upon to be the protagonists. And the way it's shot is extraordinarily aesthetic-free. The closest that Kiss of the Serpent gets to atmosphere is the looming shadow cast by the boom mic in multiple scenes.

However, there is more to the movie on top of simply being "from the 1980s" and "a slasher." Even though it is both of those things with aplomb, I think we can concede that those are kind of the bare minimum requirements for a Census Bloodbath title. But it's also a kooky-ass roller coaster ride. 

The addition of the bizarre snake motif really adds a lot of texture, and the effects involved in bringing the snake man to life are often hilariously bad but sometimes genuinely grotesque and affecting. The kills are also creative, even if they're not particularly well executed. They're never quite the same twice, using a variety of snake-themed weapons, and sometimes just straight-up snakes. 

Plus, for what it's worth (and in exploitation, it's worth a lot), the cast is wall-to-wall hotties. The men are all sexy and sleazy in a perfectly 1980s way, and I'm sure the women are hot, too. They sure do take their tops off a lot, so clearly somebody thought so. All in all, I had a pretty terrific time with Kiss of the Serpent. It's far from a hidden classic, but it's got that regional slasher charm in spades.

Killer: Chris

Final Girl: Kim

Best Kill: Chekhov's Crossbow That Shoots Venomous, Snake-Shaped Arrows is used to excellent effect on Scott's chest and eyeball.

Sign of the Times: Everything is so desperately 1988 that even the long-abandoned Snake Island house has a zebra-print accent wall.

Scariest Moment: A group of drunk partiers picks their way across the shore, singing "99 Bottles of Beer" while Robin's corpse floats in the foreground, unnoticed by any of them.

Weirdest Moment: Who could possibly choose? I'm going to opt for the dream sequence(?) where one of the gals sees the shape of a serpent bulging out from the skin on her lower torso, only to become distracted by the fact that she has breasts, which is a shocking development that she and the camera investigate thoroughly.

Champion Dialogue: “He's definitely first place winner of the Mr. Self-Impressed Jerk of the Universe award."

Body Count: 13 (including Dr. Whelan's wife and daughter, who are mentioned in a news report about the blaze but are never, ever, not once shown on screen or otherwise implied to exist in any way. And do they live at the Serpentarium? Why were they there after hours on the Fourth of July?)

1. Dr. Whalen,
2. Mrs. Whalen,
3. and Daughter Whalen die in the Serpentarium fire.
4. Tracy is held out of frame in what looks like a strangulation that causes blood to splatter, which is later described as having her "throat severed."
5. John is stabbed in the neck with a glove shaped like the head of the snake, but with blades instead of fangs, but the blades are still venomous.
6. Lisa is stabbed with the snake glove thing while in the shower.
7. Robin is drowned.
8. Scott is shot with venomous snake-shaped arrows in the chest and eye.
9. Jennifer is hit in the head with a shovel, buried up to her neck, and lit on fire.
10. Alan is bitten by multiple snakes while tied to a post.
11. Jeff is bitten by a snake offscreen.
12. Debbie is slashed in the face by the snake glove thing.
13. Snake Chris is shot in head by the police captain.

TL;DR: Kiss of the Serpent: Snake Island is a hoot and a half, blending the classic slasher formula with plenty of low-budget Floridian weirdness.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: Funky Tut

Year:
1982
Director:
Tom Kennedy
Cast:
Ben Murphy, Nina Axelrod, Kevin Brophy
Run Time:
1 hour 23 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG

Plot: Time Walker is set at the California Institute of the Sciences, where Prof. Douglas McCadden's (Ben Murphy) class is studying a 3,000-year-old sarcophagus that he recently stole from the tomb of King Tut. Rambunctious X-Ray tech Peter Sharpe (Kevin Brophy of The Seduction and Hell Night) discovers a hidden cache of crystals that he sells off to various classmates. When the mummy, Ankh-Venharis (Jack Olson), inevitably starts wandering around campus, it seeks out the jewels, often killing their possessors either via brute strength or the mysterious flesh-eating fungus that covers it.

Even though this is mostly a sci-fi B-picture (to the point that it was even riffed on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000), it is also a college slasher movie (or at least enough of one that I opted to review it, despite waffling for the majority of its run time). So we must Meet the Meat, to some degree. This mostly involves couples, as the thrust of Sharpe's scam is getting his male classmates to make ugly jewelry out of the crystals and give it to their girlfriends.

So here we have Michael (Gary Dubin of Jaws 2), the teacher's pet whose pastimes include touching the flesh-eating mummy mold as many times as possible; Sherri (Greta Blackburn of Party Line), Sharpe's giggly girlfriend who only gets a little mad when she catches him peeping on her roommate in the shower; Jack Parker (Robert Random), the chief engineer who looks like a drifter and is dating student Jennie (Melissa Prophet of Fatal Games); Susie (Nina Axelrod of Motel Hell), who didn't want to be left out of the eventual misconduct lawsuit and is thus dating Prof. McCadden; Dr. Wendell J. Rossmore (James Karen of Poltergeist and The Return of the Living Dead), the university president who wants to Jaws mayor his way out of any scandal involving the missing mummy; Greg (Gerard Prendergast) who is blond and dating babysitter Ellen (Greta Stapf); and Stanley (slasher legend Warrington Gillette, who played the unmasked Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part 2), who has the hots for Susie.

If you've never seen a more robust lineup of dimensional characters, I recommend watching a second movie.

Analysis: Time Walker is ultimately a huge waste of its titular resource. It's a cheap, aggravatingly slow movie that looks awful, boasts mediocre acting, and couldn't scare the pants off a nudist colony. And yet...

OK, let me address those complaints line by line. 

It's true that I have very few good things to say about the aesthetic. Time Walker has exactly one good shot, and the version of it that's replicated on the poster is leagues better than what we get onscreen. 

While the acting is underwhelming (and Axelrod is actively awful; her monotonous, sleepy performance sucks so hard that I won't need to vacuum in here until Christmas), the movie's ostentatious credit "Introducing Shari Belafonte-Harper as Linda Flores" actually earns every letter of that overlong fanfare. The actress now known as just Shari Belafonte is the daughter of Harry Belafonte and she proves why we shouldn't dismiss all nepo babies wholecloth. She has buckets and buckets of charisma that are wasted in her tertiary role as a journalist at the college radio station. It was a delight getting to watch her breeze her way through scenes that don't ever, not even once, need her to be there.

As for the movie not being scary... Well, that's true, too. We mostly follow the mummy listlessly milling around the college's nuclear reactor (don't ask) or gliding slowly towards its victims. It's less "predator sinuously approaching its prey" and more "mannequin on roller blades that a PA pushed from offscreen." It's so boring that they throw in a nightmare fakeout to spice things up... twenty minutes before the end of the movie. 

Time Walker is also pretty useless as a slasher, parsimoniously doling out its bloodless, infrequent kills after looooong intervals. The only useful moment of gore comes when Michael gets to show off the gloriously gnarly prosthetic the team has cooked up in the scene where his hand is partially eaten by the fungus.

All that said, the movie makes up for at least some of its flaws by being so charmingly weird. I'm gonna throw a big ol' SPOILER ALERT over the rest of this review, because in addition to the mummy and the fungus and the nuclear reactor of it all, it turns out that this is an alien movie. 

Yes, the mummy is actually an alien who was buried alive in King Tut's tomb after his fungal infection spread to King Tut and his courtiers, killing them (never mind that the actual Tutankhamun most likely died of a malarial infection or complications from a bone fracture). Once this reveal drops, the movie basically turns into a more deadly version of E.T., just six months after the Spielberg classic debuted.

It's still not a particularly good E.T. ripoff, but at least it's trying something. I much prefer that to the bland slasher porridge of a movie like Sledgehammer.

Killer: Ankh-Venharis (Jack Olson)

Final Girl: Susie Fuller (Nina Axelrod)

Best Kill: Honestly none of them, but I made up the rules so I should follow them. Therefore I pick Ellen, who is punched by a weird tentacle that surely must be the mummy's arm, though she doesn't die until the fungus gets her a day or so later.

Sign of the Times: Parker checks on the nuclear reactor using a computer that loads graphics one line at a time.

Scariest Moment: Susie tries to escape the mummy in an elevator, which breaks down, at which point the mummy starts to pound its way from beneath the floor.

Weirdest Moment: The mummy reveals its true form, which is honestly kinda cute.

Champion Dialogue: “Here's why I'm so concerned. The structure is just crazy."

Body Count: 3; a paltry number even if we were including Dr. Rossmore's right-hand man, who presumably dies shortly after the credits roll, having been infected with the alien fungus.

1. Janitor (Hugo L. Stanger of Psycho III) is killed offscreen.
2. Ellen is mummy-punched and later dies of flesh-eating fungus.
3. Bill is backhanded into a wall.

TL;DR: Time Walker is a threadbare, tedious movie, but it at least has the decency to be incredibly goddamn weird.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: I Think You're Projecting

Note: This Taiwanese movie was only available to me without subtitles, so take my review with a grain of salt.

Year:
1983
Director:
Darve Lau
Cast:
Feng Shih, Wai-Ying Li, Ming Tien
Run Time:
1 hour 14 minutes

Plot: Soul Killer (originally Cui hua kuang mo/心之魔), which appears to be an unauthorized remake of 1975's Psychic Killer, follows an ex-convict with supernatural powers who uses astral projection to violently revenge himself upon various people. Meanwhile, his female doctor works with the cops and a man styled exactly like Halloween's Dr. Loomis to try and stop him (mostly by watching him through a telescope).

Analysis: Honestly, Soul Killer should be a lot more fun than it is. When it's getting up to supernatural hijinks, it's pretty engaging, at least. Just like Hell Has No Boundary, which is another East Asian supernatural slasher of its vintage that I just watched, the kill sequences have multiple layers that give them an almost epic quality. In addition to the actual murders, we also get flashes of the killer in these sequences, either in astral form or invisibly manipulating objects. I mean, how am I not supposed to enjoy seeing shoes clomp around on their own?

However, with so much being thrown at the screen, it's not always possible to tell exactly what's happening at any given moment in a kill scene. So they're compromised somewhat. Meanwhile, everything else that happens in the movie is pretty damn dull. The doctor and her crack team of telescope-watchers seem distressed by the proceedings, but all they do for about 70 minutes is sit around discussing how very distressed they are.

This is going to be one of my shortest reviews yet, because there's really nothing to this movie. Like... I guess I enjoy that it has this clangy electric guitar soundtrack that feels more like it belongs in an action movie. That's unique. But it's a narratively bland, visually bland affair (except for a ritual sequence that is drenched in cherry red and cotton candy blue, but has absolutely nothing to do with anything else that's going on in the movie). While I didn't have a bad time watching Soul Killer, it's hard to recommend that anybody go through the vast amount of effort it takes to acquire a copy.

Killer: Soul Killer

Final Girl: Doctor

Best Kill: I'm always partial to a good phone cord strangling, but the best one almost certainly has to be the part where they cremate the Soul Killer while he's astrally projecting, thus destroying his "dead" body. Now that's a nasty trick!

Sign of the Times: One of the victims has a pre-redesign Mickey Mouse plushie.

Scariest Moment: The Soul Killer returns to his apartment after being released from prison, and everything is covered in cobwebs and grime. Gross!

Weirdest Moment: During a particularly intense scene, the doctor has her glasses hanging around her chin the entire time.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 9

1. Mom dies from being beaten in a flashback dream.
2. Convict falls off a cliff.
3. Man has two knives telekinetically thrown into his chest.
4. Woman is telekinetically strangled with a phone cord.
5. Bathroom Man is beaten with a length of pipe.
6. Bathroom Man #2 jumps (or is thrown?) out of the window.
7. Car Guy is run off the road and his vehicle explodes.
8. Cell Guy is telekinetically lifted into the air and slammed to the ground.
9. Soul Killer is cremated to death.

TL;DR: Soul Killer is a mostly unremarkable supernatural slasher movie despite a few fun kills.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: No, Madam

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

Year:
1982
Director:
Kuen Yeung
Cast:
Leanne Lau, Derek Tung-Sing Yee, Yueh Hua

Run Time:
1 hour 31 minutes

Plot: Hell Has No Boundary (originally Mo jie/魔界) follows policewoman May Wong Lai-Fun (Leanne Lau), who is possessed by the vengeful spirit of a murdered little girl while on a camping trip. Her new murderous rage, naturally, makes her a better cop, but her boyfriend grows suspicious about the bodies that keep piling up around her as she rises up the ranks.

Analysis: Hell Has No Boundary is an unusually focused Hong Kong slasher, and by that I mean it combines three separate genres rather than 18. What we're looking at here is a slasher film mashed up with a possession film (those two subgenres certainly weren't unfamiliar with one another, even as early as 1982), with a light sprinkling of police procedural on top. It's all fairly straightforward, which allows it to channel early-80s Hong Kong's tendency toward excess directly into the kills and overall horror movie mayhem.

This is a pretty gnarly horror movie, with an imaginative streak a mile wide. The kills, while cheaply rendered and sometimes a little confusing, tend to take place in satisfying multi-stage scare sequences packed with bizarre imagery. By the time act 3 hits, the movie fully immerses its characters into a post-Exorcist, pre-Elm Street nightmare freakout realm that is drenched in bright green lighting and full of well-staged moments where props and environments shift without warning. It's a good time!

The way that the storyline plays out didn't quite rub me the right way all the time, because the possession's tendency to infect others made some of the plot feel too diffuse. However, that doesn't really matter. This is a movie that entirely takes place within the culture and ideology of non-Christian religion (I think Buddhism, given the presence of a swastika in one scene, but I'm no expert), and that makes for an exciting twist on a subgenre that had already been entirely played out less than a decade after the debut of The Exorcist.

Killer: Possessed May Wong Lai-Fun (Leanne Lau)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: May's horny new boss really gets it good. He is ultimately killed by being telekinetically wrapped up with toilet paper (I assume he's smothered?), but first he gets pinched by a crab in his bathtub, an event that I believe is implied to have severed his penis.

Sign of the Times: The movie's opening scene features May doing a Rubik's cube while her boyfriend drives her to the campsite, where they then relax with some delicious 1980s Coke and Sprite cans.

Scariest Moment: As the cops approach the site of a domestic disturbance, a knife protrudes through the door right in front of one of their faces.

Weirdest Moment: May vomits into the toilet, then uses a cup to pour the chunky toilet water over her head and then drink it.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 14; not including May's boyfriend's shadow self, who ultimately perishes when he makes the ultimate sacrifice.

1. Domestic Disturbance Man is shot.
2. Office Mean Girl #1 and
3. Office Mean Girl #2 fall down an elevator shaft.
4. Bird dies from exposure to evil energy.
5. Scammy Psychic falls down the stairs.
6. Prayer Lady has a knife telekinetically thrown through her throat.
7. New Boss is smothered by being toilet paper.
8. Flashback Girl is smothered with a pillow.
9. Naked Refugee is slashed with a sword.
10. Dagger Friend is shot by the cops.
11. May has a ceremonial dagger thrown into her and is burned alive.
12. Nurse is garroted in the shower.
13. May's Killer is decapitated with a cleaver.
14. May's Boyfriend stabs himself in the stomach.

TL;DR: Hell Has No Boundary is a pretty neat supernatural slasher import.

Rating: 7/10

Census Bloodbath: Sharp Objects

Note: Technically, this Dutch-language movie came with subtitles. However, the subtitles were in French. Weirdly, this did help quite a bit, despite my incredibly limited French. But still, take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1982
Director:
Guy Lee Thys
Cast:
Leslie de Gruyter, Rosemarie Bergmans, Christian Baggen
Run Time:
1 hour 14 minutes

Plot: In The Pencil Murders (originally De potloodmoorden), inspector Rick Van Houtte (Leslie de Gruyter), along with his photographer friend Leslie Werkers (Christian Baggen) is trying to track down a serial killer who murders people by shoving pencils into their noses. His work leads him to neglect his beautiful wife, Marilène (Rosemarie Bergmans), who isn't too happy about that.

Analysis: The Pencil Murders is unique in multiple ways. The first is obviously the killer's M.O. Jason Voorhees found a glittering multitude of ways to dispatch his victims, but he never quite reached the point of shoving pencils into people's noses. The other major way is that it's a Belgian giallo movie. While Belgium will pop up in Census Bloodbath from time to time with titles like The Antwerp Killer and Lucker the Necrophagus, they really didn't hop on the slasher train all that often. 

If this is the best they can do, it makes sense why they never really bothered. While The Pencil Murders isn't quite a bad movie, it is an austere and boring one. Weirdly, as far as I could tell, the tone of this movie is entirely serious in spite of its over-the-top premise. Unfortunately, it does not pay to be serious about making a cop-forward slasher, because those tend to land among the worst of the subgenre. After all, hard-boiled investigations fly in the face of what slasher movies are supposed to be about (boobs and blood).

The cop stuff here is particularly uninteresting, which is a bummer, because the slasher stuff is even worse. Despite the fact that the pencil kill concept is intriguing, the whole thing is ruined by a parsimoniously small body count and an unfortunate habit of staging kills offscreen. We do get a look at all of the bodies post-murder, but the onscreen gore isn't well-executed enough that you can parse much of the imagery, in spite of being explicitly told what the killer has done.

The Pencil Murders is also entirely bland as an aesthetic object. There are nighttime scenes that attempt to have some measure of style (a splash of color here, a silhouette there), but they're too dark to accomplish any goal beyond just throwing a bunch of mud onscreen. But bland is still better than bad, so if I had to rewatch a Belgian slasher movie, I'd pick this over The Antwerp Killer. Really though, I'd just as soon watch paint drying, so that's hardly high praise.

Killer: Leslie Werkers (Christian Baggen)

Final Girl: Rick Van Houtte (Leslie de Gruyter)

Best Kill: Unfortunately, the best death is the one doled out to one of the Black men who is unjustly accused of being the killer. The fact that the only prolonged, onscreen death belongs to a Black character is... not great. But it's a pretty chilling scene, involving him being drowned in the bath as the killer attempts to get the pencil close enough to his face to jam it in.

Sign of the Times: Goldfinger is name-dropped and there's an Onibaba poster in the background. Both of these things are signs of entirely different times than the 1980s, but they're all I got.

Scariest Moment: The killer sneaks into a woman's home and steals a pencil from her kid's arts & crafts table.

Weirdest Moment: Marilène's young lover appears to have a gnarly sunburn during their sex scene.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 4

1. Fashion Model is pencil-murdered.
2. Young Mother is pencil-murdered.
3. Black Suspect is pencil-murdered.
4. Leslie Werkers is shot by Rick.

TL;DR: The Pencil Murders wastes a great M.O. on a bland giallo riff.

Rating: 4/10

Census Bloodbath: Stop Messin' Round With Your Tricks

Year:
1981
Director:
Liliek Sudjio
Cast:
Suzzanna, W.D. Mochtar, Alan Nuary
Run Time:
1 hour 30 minutes

Plot: The Queen of Black Magic (originally Ratu ilmu hitam) follows what happens when villager Murni (Indonesian scream queen Suzzanna) is seduced by the playboy Kohar (Alan Nuary) and later dumped for Baedah (Siska Widowati of Srigala), the daughter of the village's headman. After Kohar and Baedah's wedding is magically ruined, Kohar accuses Murni of using black magic, provoking the other villagers into throwing her off a cliff.

However, she is rescued by hermit Gendon (W.D. Mochtar), who trains her in the very dark arts that she was accused of practicing. Later, she returns to the village to extract bloody, magical revenge. This happens around the same time that the santri Permana Sidik arrives in town, preaching to the villagers about how the power of Muslim piety can keep dark magic at bay.

Analysis: I debated for a long time about whether to include The Queen of Black Magic in Census Bloodbath at all. It is divided into three distinct half-hour chunks, and the middle third is really the only one that resembles a slasher movie at all. Eventually, I decided to write it up, for two reasons.

One: Like many regional slashers, the formula is inherently viewed through a different storytelling lens. While Queen of Magic blends melodrama and folk horror into the slasher formula, it's not really further afield from the subgenre than Hong Kong's kung fu slashers or India's musical slashers.

Two: I really liked the movie, and I wanted to write about it, so screw it.

Let's start by discussing the slasher bit, because that's why we're here, after all. Murni doles out a litany of some of the most creative and delightful supernatural slasher deaths you'll ever see, from the relative simplicity of hanging a man with a floating scarf on up to the gonzo grotesqueness of using voodoo dolls to straight-up explode people, making their veins bulge, giving them giant boils that expand and pop in bloody geysers, and so on.

The effects that bring all this to life are genuinely great, too. Whether the filmmakers are using magician tricks like making people and objects float or delivering gooey post-Savini gore, almost everything that they deliver onscreen is not only convincing, but often beautiful. In its own special way. 

Honestly, the filmmaking is very accomplished in general. For one thing, there is a breathtakingly gorgeous setpiece where Murni performs a black magic ritual on a clifftop in front of an exaggeratedly huge moon. But in the less phantasmagoric sequences, there is still a sense that the camera is being placed deliberately in a way that elevates the story.

Plus, the images are crisp and lovely, with an appealing color palette. Trust me when I say that you can never assume you're going to get this kind of thing from a 1980s slasher movie. Only a fool would be that optimistic after sitting through Sledgehammer.

The first and third acts can't really compare to the second, but the film's strengths do carry over into both of those sectors. They look great, and the overcooked melodrama plot that comes to the fore in those sequences is perfectly spiced (I won't go into detail, but I will say that my runner-up line for Champion Dialogue was "You're my brother and my lover.").

I can't say that I was overly thrilled when the plot turned to plodding religious moralizing (turns out it's just as boring in movies about Islam as it is in movies about Christianity), but for the most part the movie operates Exorcist-style, with the religious elements playing well with the horror elements.

Plus, Suzzanna lives up to her status as an Indonesian horror icon here. Her character is the anchor of all three segments, but she has a completely different set of feelings, motivations, and intentions in each one. It's a complicated role, and without her consistent characterization holding the story and the tone together, the movie would have instantly fallen apart. You need to be sympathetic to her throughout, but also disgusted by her choices enough that you're just the right amount of wrecked by the inevitable redeeming self-sacrifice that is the only possible way to be a violent woman in a religious film.

So, yeah. I quite liked The Queen of Black Magic. Spoiler alert, I'm ultimately going to give it a 7/10. But I was seriously considering an 8/10. My heart just wasn't in it. I think it's a hidden gem (at least in the English-speaking world), but maybe not a "rush out and see it right now" kind of way.

Killer: Murni (Suzzanna)

Final Girl: N/A, though plenty of characters survive

Best Kill: Even the worst kills in this movie are pretty great, but the best is probably Kohar's. It would have to be, right? Murni's revenge is prolonged and painful: After being smashed in the face with a magic egg, Kohar begins spontaneously bleeding. He is eventually is driven into an addled frenzy and tears off his own head in the village square!!

Sign of the Times: Although I don't exactly have a strong understanding of contemporary Indonesian gender politics, I imagine that this movie would have been a little more "good for her" if it was made in 2026.

Scariest Moment: During her wedding, Baedah has a vision of Kohar as a hopping skeleton and his groomsmen as rotting zombies.

Weirdest Moment: Mere seconds after taking Murni's virginity, Kohar is chomping on an ear of corn.

Champion Dialogue: “Kohar might die stupid, Sir."

Body Count: 10

1. Kamdi is repeatedly pounded into the ground by an invisible force.
2. Pungut is attacked by a swarm of bees.
3. Villager is voodoo-sploded.
4. Saijah dies offscreen.
5. Field Worker is drowned in a marsh.
6. Goatherd is telekinetically hanged with a scarf.
7. Kohar rips off his own head.
8. Villager #2 is magically lit on fire.
9. Gendon is voodoo-sploded.
10. Murni dies from expending too much power while already wounded.

TL;DR: The Queen of Black Magic is a technically accomplished, engrossing supernatural horror movie.

Rating: 7/10

Census Bloodbath: Brazil Nuts

Note: The only accessible copy of this Brazilian slasher movie was in unsubtitled Portuguese, so take my review with a huge grain of salt.

Year:
1984
Director:
Custódio Gomes & Fauzi Mansur

Cast:
Marcelo Braz, J. Brito, Rosângela de Faria
Run Time:
1 hour 10 minutes

Plot: Karma - Enigma of Death (originally Karma - Enigma do Medo) is set at a secluded farm hotel that was the site of a horrific massacre in the 1800s that was orchestrated by the spurned lover (Mauro Pinto) of one of the women who lived there. The spirits of the slain are growing restless, and mysterious supernatural phenomena lead to the death of Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo)'s husband Fausto (uncredited co-director Custódio Gomes). Fausto's spirit emerges from his corpse and is shown the ropes of the astral plane by a spirit guide (Alain Fontaine) dressed in a prince costume that looks like it was stolen from a high school theater production of Once Upon a Mattress.

Various strangers, including a professor of the paranormal, a married couple, a drunk, and a nun - who are all reincarnated versions of the victims of the massacre - all arrive at the hotel. They are then killed one by one, only for their spirits to join the fray and begin killing the living as well (either by possessing other bodies, operating on the astral plane, or straight-up rising from the dead like zombies). 

Analysis: In case my plot synopsis didn't make that clear, coherence is not high on Karma - Enigma of Death's list of priorities. I usually find it helpful when the killer in a slasher begins mowing down victims, because it means that I have fewer characters to try and keep straight. Such is not the case here. Once people die, they not only stick around in the narrative but multiply like the heads of a hydra, sometimes interacting with the story in three different ways simultaneously (as ghosts, as dead corpses, as living corpses, and/or as possessing spirits).

I think I would have found this frustrating even if I could understand the dialogue. However, the supernatural elements are batshit enough that the movie is deliriously entertaining regardless. 

While I can't say that I love the yellowy film-negative imagery that is used to represent the spirit realm, the movie is exuberant, zestily throwing every possible strand of story spaghetti at the wall (including a demonic pig and a ghost resentfully bonking a woman with a car door), so I couldn't help but admire it.

Honestly, it's much better than I would have expected from this cast and crew, who were primarily known for pornographic movies (my favorite credit from the collected ensemble is the Mauro Pinto movie Meu pipi no seu popo, which roughly translates to My Pee-Pee in Your Butt). 

I wasn't necessarily inclined to trust the Brazilian adult film industry given how profoundly boring the 1983 softcore slasher Momentos de Prazer e Agonia proved to be, but art is art and artists are artists, no matter the medium. And Karma might not be capital-A Art, but I dug this enough that I'm very eager to revisit director Fauzi Mansur when he returns to the slasher genre in 1989 with Satanic Attraction.

Killer: Basically Everyone

Final Girl: Elaina (Tatiana Mogambo)

Best Kill: One character has a sword laboriously shoved through the front of his neck in a pretty killing blow.

Sign of the Times: The hunky dude who shows up to have sex with the widowed Elaina shows up with a sweater tied around his neck like he's a bully in a summer camp movie or something.

Scariest Moment: A character hides from a horde of zombies in the closet, only for them to appear on either side of him and grab him.

Weirdest Moment: One of the characters walks in on the nun conducting a Satanic ritual that involves lighting a liquid-filled bowl on fire, shrugs, and continues about his business.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 10; not including the one or two confused shootings shown in brief flashbacks to the massacre that took place 100 years ago.

1. Fausto is impaled by a sword that spontaneously appears through his torso.
2. Dark-Haired Woman is hanged offscreen.
3. Drunk is drowned.
4. Fisherman is strangled.
5. Blonde Woman dies offscreen.
6. Brunette is stabbed in the chest with a pitchfork.
7. Brown-Haired Guy is stabbed in the gut with a sickle.
8. Servant is stabbed in the shoulder with a sword.
9. Blue Shirt Guy is stabbed in the chest.
10. Mustache Guy is stabbed in the neck with a sword.

TL;DR: Karma - Enigma of Death is a baffling but effortlessly enjoyable affair.

Rating: 6/10

Census Bloodbath: Cyrano De Maniac

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

Year:
1981
Director:
Bruno Corbucci
Cast:
Pippo Franco, Edwidge Fenech, Sergio Leonardi
Run Time:
1 hour 39 minutes

Plot: Luciano Persichetti (Pippo Franco) is a hapless, big-nosed clothing delivery guy who thinks that he has psychic powers, given his uncanny ability to predict which of the people in his life are about to be targeted by a killer known as The Guardian Angel. He mainly uses this to try to get into bed with the gorgeous parapsychology enthusiast Susanna Luisetti (giallo queen Edwige Fenech of Phantom of Death, Strip Nude for Your Killer, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Bloody Iris, Your Vice is a Locked Room, and Only I Have the Key, and more).

Analysis: I've heard enough about vintage Italian comedy movies to assume that the giallo riff The Nosy One (originally Il Ficcanaso) wasn't going to be any good. However, given its vintage, I held out hope that it might be a Student Bodies-style parody of giallo movies. Alas, this was simply a pure comedy movie with just enough giallo elements for me to not boot it off the Census Bloodbath roster (and reader, I really tried to).

Let's talk about those giallo elements first. It won't take long. This is a movie so desperately disinterested in interrogating the gialli that there isn't a single shot of the killer stalking a victim. The only moment where a gloved killer brandishes a weapon turns out to be a prank. And the only victim who we actually see being attacked is 1) shot by an unseen assailant and 2) survives.

This is basically the slasher version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, where a giallo movie is happening just offscreen while the main characters bumble around doing nothing. In fact, I have no idea if my body count is correct, because we barely even see the aftermath of the offscreen kills. I had to deduce that a kill had just happened from the actors' performances and the instrumental score by Franco Micalizzi (which thankfully adds an exaggerated funeral dirge to those moments). I'm sure the dialogue discussed the kills in more detail, but as a visual experience, The Nosy One was even less of a giallo movie than, say, E.T.

At least the comedy is kind of OK. While I can't speak to any dialogue-based humor, the physical comedy is juvenile and broad, but not unappealing. Pippo Franco's performance recalls both Buster Bluth and Mr. Bean, so it wasn't terrible to spend time with him. I wish the comedy had more to do with skewering giallo tropes than farting, but for what it is, it's fine.

The movie also looks pretty good. It has been crisply preserved, and it is for the most part both well lit and legible (save a sequence in a dark warehouse that is dismayingly murky). It generally lacks the abundance of style that the gialli were known for (there is no giallo trope that The Nosy One doesn't fail to evoke), but at least there are plenty of shots where bright reds and greens flood the frame.

Killer: Old Guy

Final Girl: Luciano (Pippo Franco), Susanna (Edwidge Fenech), and basically every other major character

Best Kill: I guess it has to be the death of the dark-haired lady who is vying for Luciano's attention, because at least we see her body being discovered. In true The Nosy One fashion, I have no idea how she died, but I think it was by electrocution.

Sign of the Times: The fact that Italians were so done with giallo movies that they were willing to do whatever this is to it.

Scariest Moment: The moment I realized that we were never actually going to see the killer murdering anybody.

Weirdest Moment: During a conversation with Luciano, Susanna sits there and butters the most enormous pile of toast I've ever seen.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 4; give or take - and not including a dream sequence where both Luciano and Susanna are shot.

1. Man is killed offscreen.
2. Somebody is killed offscreen.
3. Dark-Haired Lady is killed offscreen, potentially by electrocution.
4. Security Guard is killed offscreen.

TL;DR: The Nosy One is unremarkable more than it is truly bad, but it is despicably misguided as a giallo riff.

Rating: 4/10