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

Census Bloodbath: From A To Zito

Year:
1981
Director:
Joseph Zito
Cast:
Ian Scott, James Johnson, Judith-Marie Bergan
Run Time:
1 hour 18 minutes

Plot: Bloodrage follows Richard (Ian Scott), a young man who moves to New York City to follow his dream of murdering sex workers. On his tail is renegade cop Johnny Ryan (James Johnson), the boyfriend of Richard's first victim, Bev (Judith-Marie Bergan).

Analysis: Bloodrage is one of those early '80s slashers that had a circuitous enough route to the screen that it was actually completed in 1979, though it didn't arrive at the Cannes market until 1980, in theaters anywhere until 1981, and on video in the U.S. until 1983. So while this is technically a 1980s slasher, it comes from that pre-Friday the 13th period where we were still figuring out what the hell the genre was going to be. 

At the time, one of the proposed answers to that question was "a sleazy post-grindhouse hangover." This is the sentiment that gave us movies like Maniac and Don't Answer the Phone. Not my favorite slasher subgenre. But at least Bloodrage provides an additional point of interest in that it was directed by Joseph Zito, who went on to helm the iconic slashers The Prowler and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Unfortunately, a more inexperienced Zito without makeup maestro Tom Savini giving him something good to shoot makes for a real slog. Bloodrage evokes the crushing boredom of the third act of The Prowler rather than any of the superb gore-thriller elements of its first act or the sublime slasher filmmaking of The Final Chapter. 

That said, there is at least one glimmer here. The opening sequence in Indiana is very special, showing us a regular degular day in Bev's life that is interrupted by her sudden, brutal death when Richard pushes her through a window and her neck is cut open on the broken glass (in the film's only proper gore moment). What follows is a tightly wound thriller sequence where Richard tries to clean up and hide her body before he's discovered by Johnny. The whole introduction is genuinely shocking and cleanly sets up all three characters, putting you in their heads for better or for worse.

Unfortunately, not a single scene that follows comes remotely close to hitting those heights (except maybe the final 15 seconds, which see Richard's reign of terror end in a charmingly perfunctory manner). Once Richard moves to the city, the movie gently oscillates between sequences that are tedious, irritating, or both. He's also a dismayingly passive character, just resentfully drifting through scenes like he'd really rather be anywhere else. Dude, get in line!

At least the movie effectively delivers its thesis that New York City is a grimy cesspit. Plus, the local color that spills around Richard at least offers some interesting texture (particularly the old lady in curlers who calmly stares out her window, watching as he peeps on the sex worker across the street). 

And the very best thing that I can say is that the movie is slightly less misogynistic than it could have been. While it's rough to sit through Richard monotonously monologuing while he stalks and brutalizes women, his victims aren't nameless sheep lined up for him to slaughter. The women he targets are treated with the smallest glimmer of respect by the screenplay. They all have names, lives, and personalities, which makes the horror they go through feel sharper in a way that is admittedly effective.

But "it could have been sleazier" is hardly a ringing endorsement. Bloodrage is an ineptly made motion picture, for the most part. Consider the looooooong elevator scene, where Zito can't find a place to put lights, so he doesn't bother, just slathering the frame in impenetrable shadows. This is compounded by his inability to properly photograph people of color, so the two Black characters in the scene just look like floating hats.

The filmmakers also clearly failed to shoot the entire script, because a vital scene (Richard being recognized by Johnny on the street, which kicks off a brawl) takes place entirely offscreen. Fun!

Killer: Richard (Ian Scott)

Final Girl: Nancy (Betsy Ranlow)

Best Kill: The opening kill - Bev falling through the window - is by far the best, both in terms of gore and execution.

Sign of the Times: Bev writes down all her sex appointments in this cute little flipbook.

Scariest Moment: A long sequence shows Richard working at a Yoo-hoo factory and really gets across the grinding monotony involved in that job.

Weirdest Moment: Richard paints his door, carefully painting around the knob before manically spreading paint all over the knob itself.

Champion Dialogue: “You don't have anything better to do with your time, like jerk off or something?"

Body Count: 6

1. Bev is pushed through a window, and the glass cuts her neck open.
2. Man is stabbed by a mugger.
3. Lucy is strangled with a telephone cord.
4. Ruby the Dog has her neck snapped and is thrown out the window.
5. Candice is choked out with an elbow.
6. Richard is thrown out a window.

TL;DR: Bloodrage could be more misogynistic than it is, but it's a sleazy chore that is tedious and annoying.

Rating: 3/10

Census Bloodbath: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Golem

Year:
1988
Director:
Andy Milligan
Cast:
David Homb, Carrie Anita, Hal Borske
Run Time:
1 hour 32 minutes

Plot: After his girlfriend Ronnie (Audra Marie Ribeiro) is sexually assaulted and killed by punk gang leader Clay Cole (Tommy Voager), Mark (David Homb) recruits his friends - religion student Carlos (Joe Balogh, who had a brief but robust career that saw him land roles in slashers including this, Hollywood's New Blood, Moonstalker, and Hitcher in the Dark) and med student Scott (Michael Lunsford of Surgikill) - to create a Frankensteinian golem with a gorilla arm and a red afro wig who can enact violent revenge on their behalf.

Once the creature, Frankie (Hal Borske) is born, all he wants to do is to play with his stuffed animals and hang out with his new girlfriend Jaimie (Carrie Anita), who falls for him after he rescues her from the gang. Disagreements over whether Frankie should embrace his gentle nature or continue pursuing vigilante justice around Hollywood eventually tear the foursome apart, with deadly results.

Analysis: Monstrosity is Census Bloodbath's first of three encounters with writer-director Andy Milligan, who is - in a word - complicated. First off, he was allegedly a mentally ill misogynist who abused his actors in a variety of ways. The small amount of overlap between the casts of his late 1980s slashers (this, Surgikill, and The Weirdo) would likely speak to that tendency. 

He was also one of the only queer directors to have taken part in the 1980s slasher boom (I'm sure there are more, but the only one that comes to mind right now is Dreamaniac's own David DeCoteau). Being gay doesn't excuse bad behavior. Nor does making charming, handcrafted oddball movies. I'm not trying to excuse the late, maybe-not-so-lamented filmmaker, but he's one of the most colorful auteurs we're going to be encountering in this project, and his life and work are certainly intriguing as historical objects, now that they're far enough in the rearview mirror.

All this to say, I liked Monstrosity quite a bit, in spite of its many, many many flaws. For instance, the amateurish acting. There's at least one thing that goes wrong in each scene, including, but not limited to, actors forgetting which characters have which names, people jumping on each other's lines, and actors delivering pages of dialogue in shrill, high-pitched whines. When more than one of these flaws appears in a single scene, things get pretty dire.

The score is also atrocious. First, there's the noodly electric guitar music that made me long for the peace and serenity of standing next to a jackhammer without ear protection. That never comes back after the opening credits, thankfully, but what follows is a blisteringly repetitive synth riff that makes up in quantity what the credits music lacked in quality.

The script is also a total mess. Even by the beginning of the third act, I couldn't begin to tell you who the protagonist of the movie was, or what the tone was supposed to be. However, the bulging grab bag of tones and characters is part of what makes Monstrosity so special. 

Is it a sleazy B-movie? Yes. Is it a broad comedy? Also yes (this movie literally has a joke where one character says "you can say that again," and the other character says it again). Is it a gruesome mad science parable? Yes. Is it a slasher? More often than you think it's going to be. Is it a romance? Yes, and it might even be a great one.

The twisted relationship between Frankie and Jaimie (which includes a glorious grossout moment where the stitches on his head begin spurting blood onto her face when they're kissing) thrums with tenderness, and the ways in which both characters are childlike and radically accepting makes them a weirdly perfect pair.

Another genuinely good component of Monstrosity is its special effects, which look significantly better than I would have ever expected from a low-budget exercise from the late 1980s.

On top of that, many of the film's incompetent elements end up in the "pro" column, anyway. For instance, there is something so adorable about the fact that Monstrosity can never quite get the hang of how slasher kills are supposed to work. The bottom of an axe is jammed into a guy's head in one memorable moment, but the best use of said axe is when Frankie uses the blunt end of it to hammer a nail into one helpless victim's forehead. Instead of just, you know, axing him in the face.

It's a weird fucking flick, is what I'm saying. Monstrosity is a movie that somehow contains a recurring gag about a Care Bears clock, a guardian angel, three besties bro-ing out about the idea of creating a golem, and a heaping helping of genuine slasher movie body count kills (even though it has far too many killers perpetrating them for it to be a particularly formulaic slasher). I had a good time, what can I say?

Killer: Cole & The Gang, but also Frankie (Hal Borske) and - briefly - Scott (Michael Lunsford)

Final Girl: I guess maybe Carlos (Joe Balogh)

Best Kill: Ronnie's death, which involves Clay Cole dressing as a doctor and removing her intestines in shocking both in its Herschell Gordon Lewis brutality and the fact that nobody in the busy hospital noticed it was happening.

Sign of the Times: There's a LOT to choose from, but I'm picking Jaimie's whole vibe, because I'm pretty sure Rainbow Brite is all over her look book.

Scariest Moment: Ronnie's sexual assault is brought to life with some of the most competent acting in the movie, so it's sleazy in a genuinely unsettling (and unwelcome) way.

Weirdest Moment: Carlos comforts Frankie by grabbing him and holding on and holding on and holding on, to the point that I thought they were going to kiss.

Champion Dialogue: “My wife used to talk after we'd done it. It used to drive me up a wall. It's one of the reasons why we divorced."

Body Count: 13

1. Michael has the side of his neck slashed by Cole & The Gang.
2. Ronnie has her abdomen carved up with a scalpel and her guts pulled out by Clay Cole.
3. Candy has his throat slit by Cole & The Gang.
4. K.C.'s Girlfriend dies from boob exposure (I'm no mortician, but her shirt is ripped open and then she dies, so what else am I supposed to assume?).
5. K.C. is run over with a car by Cole & The Gang.
6. Clay Cole has his hand cleavered off among other offscreen violence perpetrated by Frankie.
7. Kyle has his throat clawed and has a nail hammered into his forehead with an axe by Frankie.
8. Savage is cleavered to death by Frankie.
9. Mugger has the bottom of an axe embedded in the top of his head by Frankie.
10. Drug Dealer has his throat ripped out by Frankie.
11. Jaimie dies by injecting poisoned crystal meth given to her by Scott.
12. Scott is shot by Frankie.
13. Matt is shot by Frankie.

TL;DR: Monstrosity is a weird, uneven, but surprisingly charming B-movie.

Rating: 7/10

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