Census Bloodbath: Nailed It

Year:
1985
Director:
Bill Leslie & Terry Lofton
Cast:
Rocky Patterson, Ron Queen, Michelle Meyer
Run Time:
1 hour 25 minutes

Plot: The Nail Gun Massacre follows a killer wearing camo fatigues and a motorcycle helmet targeting a group of men who were involved in a violent sexual assault at a Texas construction site. The town's sheriff (Ron Queen) and doctor (Rocky Patterson) are not quite hot on the killer's trail. Let's say they're room temperature on the killer's trail.

Analysis: We've finally made it. The Nail Gun Massacre is our last slasher movie of 1985! I wasn't sure if we'd be ending the year with a bang or a whimper, but it turns out that the movie is kind of both simultaneously.

The Nail Gun Massacre is... peculiar. As the only feature ever made by Dukes of Hazzard stuntman Terry Lofton, the Texas-based slasher is very clearly a labor of love. However, the stuntperson-to-director pipeline that brought us the John Wick movies clearly hadn't been constructed yet in the mid-1980s, because this movie is slapdash as all get out.

Essentially every aspect of the filmmaking goes wrong at some point or another, often multiple times in a single scene. The camera can never quite find the right place to view the action from, the cast seems not only untrained but completely unfamiliar with the concept of acting, and the dialogue is almost always completely drowned out in the mix.

That last one may not be a terrible thing, because the script ain't all that good, either. Plot elements float in and out and are sometimes swapped at random (a trio that is clearly a mother and her two sons is at one point referred to as a group of friends), and the screenplay swirls woozily around a few recurring characters without ever committing to actually making any of them a proper protagonist. In fact, it was looking for a while like the aforementioned two sons would become the main characters, but they vanish from the movie completely about 30 minutes before it ends.

However, the movie's ineptitude actually does it a major service. The fact that the plot keeps shifting at random leaves you without solid ground to stand on. There are no rules to The Nail Gun Massacre, and you never know exactly what's going to happen next or which characters are going to live or die. 

That unpredictability, combined with the film's inches-thick layer of sleaziness, the cast being attractive but in a normal civilian type of way, and the fact that the unpolished nature of the footage lends it an almost documentarian verisimilitude, makes it genuinely dangerous. Your awareness of the camera and the people behind it gives it a home movie feel, like you're watching real people actually have sex and die onscreen. 

In fact, there's a sex scene that's so sleazily presented from every possible angle that it seems almost like it must be real, to the point that there is an apocryphal story that the male actor's girlfriend broke up with him after seeing the movie, even though he is gyrating his hips in a way that would probably snap his penis in half if he was actually mid-coitus. 

There are times when this unsophisticated realism is a demerit, such as the sexual assault scene that opens The Nail Gun Massacre (as in the first frame of the movie is a sexual assault, before the credits even roll). However, for the most part, it effectively makes you feel like you're being grabbed by the hair and dragged inexorably through a hillbilly nightmare.

This vibe is boosted by the two elements of the movie that are actually quite good. First, the kills are pretty decent. In addition to the nail prosthetics and stage blood looking pretty solid (give or take a wobbly rubber moment or two), a fair amount of the kills are cleverly staged. While their primary instinct (a good one) is to lean in on hand trauma, there are a lot of grace notes that make the kills feel different and freshly violent, even though the killer's M.O. basically never changes and the violence doesn't always make biological sense (one girl gets her hand nailed to her open mouth - did the nail hit her uvula, or what?).

Speaking of the killer, the Night School motorcycle helmet is a decent look, though I could have done without the constant, laconically delivered Freddy Krueger quips that are so exaggeratedly voice modulated that they're almost indecipherable.

However, the killer's voice leads us into the second element of The Nail Gun Massacre that works more often than it doesn't: the soundscape. In any dialogue-free moments, Whitey Thomas' surprisingly girthy synth score blends with Vocoder-ized evil laughs and pained moans that bathe the imagery onscreen with an enormously unsettling, surreal blanket of sheer noise that is reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in a way that isn't merely ripping it off.

While The Nail Gun Massacre is many things (including, for a brief and bizarre moment in the final confrontation, a Dukes of Hazzard rip-off), it is also a rape-revenge movie, after a fashion. It's too incoherent to really have subtext (it's never quite clear if the victim, Linda, is the killer or not, though the final few shots imply she might be), but there is something effectively subversive about the choice of a nail gun as a weapon meaning that the men being targeted are violently penetrated multiple times before they die.

All in all, I think The Nail Gun Massacre is neither a bad movie nor a good movie. It's too slippery to be put in a box like that. But whether the good elements are intentional or not, whether it's effectively disorienting or just slapdash and grimy, I found it to be a hypnotic, transfixing movie to sit through. And I suppose that's a recommend, especially when the movie is taken in the context of 1985, which has given us dud after dud after dud.

Killer: Bubba Jenkins (Beau Leland), but I'm still inclined to believe it's actually Linda Jenkins (Michelle Meyer)

Final Girl: N/A, but kind of Doc (Rocky Patterson)

Best Kill: I am most partial to Mark's death, because he gets nailed while chainsawing a tree and the still-functioning chainsaw slices off his hand as he falls, adding insult to injury.

Sign of the Times: A young man wearing a M*A*S*H is told that he is being "bogus."

Scariest Moment: The opening sexual assault scene had me worrying that this movie was going to be infinitely more unpleasant than it turned out to be.

Weirdest Moment: A group of friends has a picnic where they talk about eating both sandwiches and hot dogs, but all they seem to have brought with them is Ritz crackers and beer.

Champion Dialogue: “Do you remember when you could sit outside and not worry about the mosquitoes and the killers?"

Body Count: 16

1. Leroy Johnson has his hand nailed to his forehead.
2. Brad is nailed in the stomach and the dick.
3. Mark is nailed in the back and accidentally chainsaws his own hand off.
4. Hitchhiker is nailed in the chest, through the hands, and (the killing blow) in the shoulder.
5. Woman is nailed offscreen.
6. Hal is nailed in the back of the head.
7. Ann is nailed in the hand and boobs.
8. Ben is nailed to a tree via the hands.
9. Rick's Friend is nailed in the face.
10. Rick is nailed.
11. Jethro is nailed.
12. Jethro's Date is nailed in the boob and the neck.
13. Dad is nailed and falls stomach-first onto a grill.
14. Curly Haired Woman is nailed.
15. Blonde Woman is nailed.
16. Bubba falls from a great height.

TL;DR: The Nail Gun Massacre is a poorly made movie, but its ineptitude gives it a verisimilitude that makes its nastiness really sting.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1308

Census Bloodbath: You Don't Know Jack

Year:
1985
Director:
E.W. Swackhamer
Cast:
David Hasselhoff, Stepfanie Kramer, Adrienne Barbeau
Run Time:
1 hour 37 minutes

Plot: Terror at London Bridge (also known as Bridge Across Time) is somehow neither the first Jack the Ripper slasher movie of 1985 (that would be The Ripper) nor the first movie set at London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, Arizona (that would be Olivia - by the way, that bridge really does use the exterior masonry from the actual London Bridge).

Anyway, back in 1888 London, Jack the Ripper is being chased by the bobbies after his latest bloody murder. He is shot and falls into the river, knocking one of the bridge's stones down with him. In 1985, the final stone has been recovered and Lake Havasu City is holding a ceremony commemorating the official completion of the bridge, more than 20 years after they originally acquired it and built up a chintzy Little England tourist trap around it.

When traveler Alice Williamson (Barbara Bingham of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) accidentally smears her blood on that stone, the spirit of Jack the Ripper is resurrected and he kills her. 

Her husband Dave's (Michael Boyle of Luther the Geek) frantic attempts to find her go unheeded by police chief Peter Dawson (Clu Gulager of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, The Return of the Living Dead, The Initiation, and Hunter's Blood) and local city council member Anson Whitfield (Lane Smith of Dark Night of the Scarecrow, Prison, and Night Game), but they do catch the attention of Detective Don Gregory (Baywatch's David Hasselhoff, who at the time would have been Knight Rider's David Hasselhoff), a Chicago transplant with a tortured past.

He tries to solve the case while also flirting with local fishing boat operator Angie (Stepfanie Kramer), whose librarian friend Lynn Chandler (Adrienne Barbeau of The Fog, Escape from New York, Swamp Thing, and Creepshow) finds herself flirting with two different oddly stiff British weirdos (David Fox-Brenton and Paul Rossilli) who are new to town, and either of whom might be the Ripper. Can Det. Gregory uncover the fantastical mysteries behind this case as the bodies continue to pile up?

Analysis: As you may have been able to surmise from my unusually long plot synopsis, there are a lot of moving parts in Terror at London Bridge. This isn't terribly shocking, considering it's a full-on sci-fi-fantasy slasher. But this is also the case because it's an NBC TV movie, so they had to lard up the plot with characters and incidents in order to fill time that might otherwise have been taken up by sequences of nudity or gore in a regular degular theatrical slasher movie.

That said, it's really not a half-bad mystery thriller, especially in its first two acts. There are quite a few reasons for this. One is its weirdly pedigreed cast and crew, which also includes the composer, who is six-time Oscar nominee Lalo Schifrin (of the Mission: Impossible theme, The Amityville Horror, The Seduction, and the original rejected score for The Exorcist).

Another reason is the fact that spending time with this cast of characters is actually mostly worth your while. David Hasselhoff's limited range does not lend itself to playing such a troubled character, but everyone around him believably inhabits their roles, resulting in the movie inexplicably becoming a solid slice-of-life drama that paints a compelling picture of how the townies at a tourist trap relate to one another.

Plus, the stalk-and-kill scenes that take place before the reveal of which character truly is Jack the Ripper (which is predictable and comes probably 20 minutes too early, but happens in a scene so eerie that it almost doesn't matter) have enough shadow-drenched melodrama and squeeze enough realistic "girl walks home alone at night" atmosphere from their scenarios that they are quite satisfying.

Unfortunately, the third act sputters and stalls when it turns into a classic "Hoff wears unbuttoned shirts and punches bad guys" extravaganza that lacks the zesty campiness of some of his other television roles. His scenes are also frustrating because they mostly involve telling us he solved a clue about the mystery without showing us. 

However, even with a lead who drags down the proceedings, Terror at London Bridge is quite charming, and manages to surpass both The Ripper and Olivia as the definitive installment in their weirdly specific subgenres. That maybe wasn't the highest bar to clear, but for a TV movie slasher this late into the 1980s, it's about as impressive as climbing Mount Everest.

Killer: The Ripper (Paul Rossilli)

Final Girl: Angie (Stepfanie Kramer) feat. Det. Don Gregory (David Hasselhoff)

Best Kill: There really isn't one, but the slit throat makeup is most lovingly displayed in Alice's death.

Sign of the Times: There's an E.T. poster proudly displayed on the wall of the library where Adrienne Barbeau's character works.

Scariest Moment: David Fox-Brenton's character Mr. Latting meets Lynn at the local House of Horrors, and invites her to go for a walk to discuss the nature of good and evil. Because red flags hadn't been invented yet in 1985, she says yes. However, as she walks, the things he says grow creepier and creepier and she desperately tries to find a way to get out of the conversation, only to be rescued and then menaced afresh by a different weird British man. 

Weirdest Moment: After an ad break, there is a brief interlude where David Hasselhoff is boxing while shirtless.

Champion Dialogue: “That's a theory, Gregory. That's all it is, it's a theory, and it's your theory, and I don't wanna see your theories in the newspaper!"

Body Count: 6

1. 1888 Woman is stabbed.
2. Alice Williamson has her throat slit.
3. Elaine is stabbed.
4. Kid is shot by Don Gregory in flashback.
5. Lynn has her throat slit offscreen.
6. The Ripper is shot.

TL;DR: Terror at London Bridge is surprisingly good for a mid-1980s TV movie slasher, but that doesn't necessarily get it as far as being a proper hidden gem.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1008

Census Bloodbath: If I'm Gonna Tell It, Then I Gotta Tell It All

Year:
1985
Director:
Mark Blair
Cast:
Robert A. Burns, Dennis Hill, Berkley Garrett
Run Time:
1 hour 35 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Don't be fooled by the cover art (which comes from the movie's 1992 video release, totally coincidentally around the same time when The Silence of the Lambs was at its peak popularity). The serial killer in Confessions of a Serial Killer looks more like Steve Christie from Friday the 13th than Hannibal Lecter.

Loosely based on the story of Henry Lee Lucas (who also inspired the infinitely more iconic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, which we'll be taking a look at once we get to 1986), Confessions follows the exploits of one Daniel Ray (Robert A. Burns, a Texan who is better known for his work as an art director on a few lil' projects like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Tourist Trap, The Howling, Re-Animator, Blood Song, and Mausoleum).

Daniel Ray has been apprehended by Texas authorities and is in the process of being interrogated by Sheriff Will Gaines (Berkley Garrett), which facilitates a variety of flashbacks to murders, some of which he may be lying about being involved in. This doesn't come to much, don't worry. Eventually in these flashbacks, he teams up with fellow serial killer Moon Lewton (Dennis Hill of Mongrel) and his sister Molly (Sidney Brammer). 

Daniel eventually gets a job as a handyman for the preacher Dr. Earl Krivics (Ollie Handley), where his reign of terror is isolated to a single location long enough that the people around him grow suspicious.

Analysis: I think that Confessions of a Serial Killer would very much like to be viewed as a successor to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Almost as much as it later wanted to be viewed as a predecessor to Henry. This desire is indicated by its Texas setting, its light sprinkle of Ed Gein iconography, its opening title card touting the story's connection to real-life events, the presence of Robert A. Burns (who was brought on as art director initially and took the lead role when the original actor dropped out), and the quasi-family of hillbillies that is formed when the Newtons join the fray.

However, it forgets a few important elements of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, like the fact that it is made by a confident, competent filmmaker. Or that it tells a coherent story. Or that it's a good movie.

Unfortunately, Confessions is an utterly bland affair that is hampered by the very format that gives it its title. The flatly lit, flatly performed interrogation scenes do absolutely nothing other than drag the movie out to feature length. Not that cutting the interrogation would have helped all that much, because the murder vignettes that the movie keeps flashing back to are unilaterally bloodless.

Every single kill that could have been worth a damn takes place offscreen. We are mostly just treated to scenes of Daniel hanging out with his prospective victims that then make sure to judiciously cut away at the proper moment, lest anything interesting happen. 

Not that the editing really needed to help. One of the only onscreen kills is so poorly shot and staged that at no point are you made aware of what weapon is actually being used. The whole endeavor is frustrating and hollow: basically the slasher version of those YouTube videos where they remove the laugh track from an old sitcom. 

And, regardless of the anemic kills, a worthwhile "hero killer" movie this ain't. Confessions of a Serial Killer doesn't have a single iota of insight into the mind of its protagonist, which is a terrible shame, because he yammers on and on and on, both within the flashbacks and in voiceover.

That said, there are a few tense pre-murder sequences to be had. The opening scene where Daniel's menacing a woman with car trouble and an act two moment where he's chasing a hitchhiker through a cornfield actually manage to conjure a few moments of intensity.

The best of these scenes all come during the final third, which is the only part of the movie that in any way resembles a story with forward momentum. Things eventually coalesce into a more-or-less serialized story that roughly resembles the finale of a proper slasher movie, which allows you to actually almost care what happens to the characters around Daniel.

Here, we get a barrage of reasonably well-executed slasher tropes, including a shower scene and a "victim just barely misses catching the attention of potential helpers" moment. Dr. Krivics' daughter Monica (DeeDee Norton) even gets the chance to pull together a half-decent Final Girl sequence, which sees Daniel chasing her across multiple locations and her pulling off a few clever tricks in the process.

However, even the best moments of the movie are hampered by the fact that Burns is giving a flat, affectless performance that completely fails to cover up the limitations that the character of Daniel already has on paper. Literally, the only moments where Burns truly comes alive are the ones where his character is about to drink a milkshake. Which is a method acting technique that I would also be happy to use, by the way. But all I'm saying is that maybe he shouldn't have been tasked with leading a movie with this little else to offer.

Killer: Daniel Ray (Robert A. Burns)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: Uh... none? Or, bar that, the one where Daniel and Moon are chainsawing a victim in their garage while Monica spies on them. Which is offscreen, of course. But the scene is noteworthy because Monica is spying on them, and she is discovered because she somehow forgot to turn off the radio she always carries around with her, which was previously drowned out by the chainsaw noise.

Sign of the Times: Monica has a huge Wham! poster on her bedroom wall.

Scariest Moment: The opening scene, where Daniel tampers with a stranded woman's car and gives her a ride, where he spends an alarming amount time clearing off the middle console (the better to reach her) before actually going in for the kill.

Weirdest Moment: When Monica heads upstairs to take a shower, she grabs a donut, which she is still munching on as she turns on the shower. It conveniently vanishes right before she actually steps in. 

Champion Dialogue: “If I can keep them young girls from hitchhiking, I'll know my life has important meaning after all."

Body Count: 11; not including a client named Pauline, who is presumably killed offscreen, but we never even see her onscreen to begin with.

1. Stranded Motorist is killed with a switchblade offscreen.
2. Prostitute is bludgeoned with a stick.
3. Louisiana Hitchhiker is killed offscreen by Moon.
4. Karen Grimes is killed offscreen, presumably by Moon.
5. Convenience Store Clerk is shot by Moon.
6. Convenience Store Customer is shot.
7. Carjacking Victim is chainsawed offscreen.
8. Doris is stabbed in the back with... something by Molly.
9. Cop is shot in the back by Molly.
10. Molly is shot.
11. Monica is presumably killed offscreen.

TL;DR: Confessions of a Serial Killer is a bland, scattershot affair that at least has a few solid slasher scenes nestled inside it.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1204

Cardboard Science: Siri, How Many Fathoms Are In A League?

Year: 1953
Director: Eugène Lourié
Cast: Paul Christian, Paula Raymond, Cecil Kellaway
Run Time: 1 hour 20 minutes

Happy Halloween, everybody! It's time for the final leg of the annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s/60s B-movies. Last time, we covered a film from Cardboard Science stalwart Bert I. Gordon. This time, we're tackling The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which brings us another legend of the genre, in the form of stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen. Also, it was directed by Eugène Lourié of The Colossus of New York, but I hope nobody will blame me for finding that fact a touch less exciting.

We've seen Harryhausen's work many times before as part of this project and others, in titles including Mysterious Island and It Came from Beneath the Sea. But you know what The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms has that they don't? The distinction of being a direct inspiration for a Cardboard Science Hall of Fame title, 1954's seminal Japanese masterwork Godzilla. 

Comparing The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms directly to Godzilla is a fool's errand, and we're gonna do it anyway. But first, the plot.

That is, if you really need a story hook other than "big monster go aargh."

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which, for good measure, is based on the Ray Bradbury short story "The Fog Horn") follows Atomic Energy Commission physicist Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian of The Day the Sky Exploded). After he witnesses a bomb test in the Arctic freeing an ancient, still-living Rhedosaurus from the ice, he tries desperately to get anyone to believe his story as a series of mysterious and deadly incidents take place along the Atlantic coast, heading south.

He, and eventually the lovely paleontologist Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond) and her mentor Professor Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and, more importantly, 1959's The Shaggy Dog), are the only ones who know that a giant monster is the reason for these attacks. That is, until the monster surfaces and stomps around in Manhattan for a bit.

Honestly, he's doing the neighborhood a favor. What's knocking over a couple buildings if it lowers the rent?

Let's cut right to the good stuff: the monster. Ray Harryhausen's work is a perfect encapsulation of the best of 1950s science fiction filmmaking. You're never at any point unaware that you're watching a stop-motion creature interacting with composited shots of humans running away screaming. However, at a certain point the magic of cinema takes over and you stop caring about any of the flaws (which include the fact that Lourié keeps trying to shoot the monster through ugly distorted lenses).

That's because, no matter how jerky the frames got, Harryhausen simply got how to breathe life into a stop-motion model. The second the Rhedosaurus stops hanging around and attacks, its muscular physicality is absolutely captivating. Your disbelief has gone weightless. No suspension is required.

I also think that there is one advantage to this being a dry run for Godzilla, which is that the monster is rather smaller than you might expect for a kaiju movie. He is not city-stomping size, which requires him to pummel buildings and rip them apart instead of merely squishing them beneath his sheer bulk. 

Another part of what makes this particular monster so convincing are the little touches. Its eyelids are blinking, and its tongue is flicking out, smelling the air. In addition to stomping around town, it is doing all of those little unconscious, barely noticeable things that living creatures need to do in order to stay that way.

Thanks to Harryhausen's delicacy and attention to detail, when his Rhedosaurus looks toward the camera, you feel like it can see you. And that makes every second spent with the monster absolutely worthwhile and dazzling. Alas, there is a larger number of monsterless seconds than just about anyone would prefer.

Oh yeah. Them.

I'm a seasoned veteran of Cardboard Science, so I knew not to expect 80 jam-packed minutes of monster mayhem. They simply couldn't have afforded that. We had to have a human plot in there somewhere. 

While The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' human characters could certainly have been worse, they mostly just rattle around the frame, reenacting various sci-fi tropes until the screenplay can finally dispense with them in the third act. Yes, the movie itself clearly resents that it had to have people in it, too, to the point that it has the most perfunctory finale, both in terms of the conclusion of its romantic arc and its literal final frame.

That said, the bland human story does have its bright spots. Its requisite "stirring narration about the progress of science" opening sequence is a particularly good one, running through a roughly hourlong countdown in the space of just a few minutes to ratchet up the tension, and kicking around the movie's most dramatic lighting in the process.

None of the rest of the human plot can live up to those moments. Though Lee and Tom do parade around in some pretty nifty coats throughout the movie that prevented my attention from ebbing entirely.

But really, the most interesting way to watch The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is one that was not available to audiences at the time: comparing it to Godzilla. It was fascinating to see how differently a Japanese film handled the idea of a nuclear monster as opposed to an American movie (though with a Russian-French director and a Swiss lead, Beast is hardly the most flag-waving American motion picture there ever was).

It should be no surprise that Godzilla handles things better, tapping into its premise in a more potent and impactful way. Its nuclear monster is a stand-in for the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' approach involving a nation's fear of its own power growing too great (which, come to think of it, is also a thematic motif in Godzilla that is handled better). 

Beast is best represented by its final sequence, which takes place on a flaming roller coaster. It's meant to be a thrill ride that deposits you safely on the ground at the end. It's not its fault that Godzilla sought to be something more complex and interesting and devastating than that. And we should thank Beast for being one of the many reasons that Godzilla exists in the first place. But it's hard to completely admire The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms knowing what was soon to stomp its way through global cinemas just over a year after its release.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*The most fantastical moment of all in this monster movie was the fact that they expected us to believe Professor Elson could climb through a hatch in a diving bell that was clearly about half his size. You can't trick me with a judicious cut, editor Bernard W. Burton.
*Yes, the best place to store those barrels of flammable materials is at the base of the wooden roller coaster, why do you ask?
*I can't even come up with a joke that roasts the name of the top secret research project harder than just telling you what it is: "Operation Experiment."

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*About 25 minutes in, I noticed that Tom Nesbitt hadn't gotten a standard-issue sci-fi movie love interest, and I wondered out loud if he was going to just stay single the whole movie. The movie then answered my question by more or less immediately cutting to the door of the university's Paleontology department, which reads something like "Professor Thurgood Elson, Assistant: Ms. Lee Miller." They quite literally hung a sign on it.
*The duties of said Lee Miller would lead me to believe that she only minored in Paleontology while majoring in Making and Dispensing Coffee and Sandwiches.

Sensawunda:

*Seeing Times Square bedecked with posters for Clark Gable and Judy Garland movies is such a lovely time capsule.
*One less delightful time capsule is the absolutely arbitrary underwater sequence where a shark and an octopus fight to the death, presumably to entertain us without adding to the special effects budget. Boo.
*I must praise the Manhattan sequence for being unusually brutal for a sci-fi movie of its vintage. Sure, we see the monster munching on a person or two, but where the movie really kicks things up a notch is a harrowing sequence of a blind man being trampled as the people around him try to escape the destruction. This is a much more effective "the horror, the horror" moment than the knocked-over mailbox from The Spider.

TL;DR: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms rocks some excellent Ray Harryhausen effects, though the material that surrounds them is understandably a bit drab.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1479

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Cardboard Science: Spins A Web, Any Size

Year: 1958
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Ed Kemmer, June Kenney, Eugene Persson
Run Time: 1 hour 13 minutes

It's time for the second entry in our annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue, in which I task him with tackling three 1980s slasher reviews and in exchange he assigns me three 1950s B-movies. Hunter is now bringing us The Spider (previously known as Earth vs. the Spider, which is a much less accurate but much better title). After all, it's not truly Cardboard Science without a movie helmed by the notorious Bert I. Gordon (The Cyclops, Beginning of the End, and so many more).

The plot of The Spider is just as simple as its updated title: high school student Carol (June Kenney of Attack of the Puppet People, which was at the time Gordon's most recent of three 1958 directorial features) ropes her reluctant, gaslighting boyfriend Mike (Eugene Persson) into helping her find her missing father. When investigating a cave near where they find his car abandoned on the side of the road, they discover the lair of a giant spider. Said giant spider emerges from the cave to rampage about in their small town of River Falls for a bit. Then it returns to its cave, where special effects are cheaper, for a final confrontation with the unlikely duo of Professor Art Kingman (Ed Kemmer) and Sheriff Cagle (Gene Roth of Attack of the Giant Leeches).

They're gonna need a LOT of rain to wash this spider out.

Now, cheap movies can be great fun. I can appreciate that. I did give It Conquered the World 7 out of 10, after all. But Roger Corman knew how to wield a shoestring budget like a lasso. Bert I. Gordon may have gotten it right every couple movies or so, but more often than not, he ended up accidentally tying both hands behind his back.

This is one of those pictures, unfortunately. There's just not a lot of spark here, at least when it comes to finding creative ways of bringing its core premise to life. In a movie like this, it's wise to tap into gut-level emotions rather than appealing to the rational side of the brain with convincing special effects. The effects used to supersize the spider do look somewhat decent, but said spider mostly just ambles around, waggling his legs in a friendly manner. It doesn't exactly keep you on the edge of your seat.

Nor do the majority of the spider-related deaths, which mostly involve people cowering as the camera slowly approaches them (a very traditional, but boring approach).

The best way to overcome a low budget is with a sharp script and compelling actors, which don't tend to cost quite as much money as, say, a giant rampaging spider. This movie has neither a sharp script nor compelling actors, alas. The screenplay is tedious as all get out, doling out endless expository dialogue (hardly unusual for a 1950s sci-fi movie, but I can't pretend to love it) and relying on Carol and Mike to supply The Spider with its most intense moments of pathos.

Unfortunately, Carol and Mike are outrageously miscast. It's hardly shocking to see a Hollywood movie where high schoolers are played by people who actually look like teenagers. Plus, Kenney was 25 and Persson was 24, so they're nearly a decade younger than Stockard Channing was in Grease, at least. But an actor in this position needs to do their best to play a teenager, and both of them look and act like a newlywed couple who are bickering about their plans for an upcoming dinner party.

Don't even get me started on their classmate Joe, who is weeks away from getting his pension.

Carol and Mike's sniping drags down a subplot where they get lost in the spider's cave during the climactic battle. This is deeply troubling, because that subplot was actually clever enough to have covered up the holes in the movie's budget if they had pulled it off. 

For one thing, the cave does look pretty neat, especially when it comes to the expressionistic diagonal slash of a stalactite-covered ceiling that marks one of its first chambers. It's one of the only things in the movie that feels like it was designed with cinematic aesthetic in mind (unlike the spiderwebs, which are clearly made of rope that the actors must pretend is sticky - at least spray paint the rope white or something!).

The other thing is that "we're trapped in this cave" could have been a compelling low-budget subplot that takes some of the pressure off the more expensive spider mayhem. However, in practice it just traps the viewer with Carol and Mike, who are irritating and have long since ceased to have any sort of plot function.

Pictured (left to right): Carol, Mike, The Movie's Momentum

I've been mean to The Spider for long enough that I should probably point out some things it does right, because those do exist! It sometimes slips into campy time capsule mode in a way that is satisfying (the teens having a sock hop in the restricted room that contains the supposedly dead giant spider is an indelible scene). And it has quite a few moments that are more intense and ooky than horror films of this vintage usually boast.

I'm a sucker for any scene featuring an air raid siren, but there are other moments that effectively crank up the horror atmosphere out of nowhere. For instance, Carol discovering the desiccated corpse of her father, or the casual shot of a lonely toddler on the street covered in what is heavily implied to be his mother's blood. The Spider quite frequently goes a bit harder than was strictly necessary, and I respect it for those instincts.

So all in all, the movie isn't terrible. It's charming just often enough to prevent that. And most of what it contains is just tedious rather than bad. Except the music. The score is awful oooooWEEEEEEoooo horseshit that makes it sound like the spider is seconds from being abducted by an alien at all times.

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*Professor Kingman tells us quite a bit about how spiders operate, including injecting their prey with venom to stun them and sucking all the juices out of its victims. So it's weird how he neglects to actually explain the science behind this particular spider's M.O., which is mostly to smack people about the face with one of its legs.

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*When the kids inform Professor Kingman that they have discovered a giant spider, the first thing he says is "the man to see about it is the sheriff." If you say so, Artie...
*Speaking of, the first thing the sheriff does when he arrives in the cave (which is known to have stalactites so delicate that a mere shout can knock one from the ceiling) is shoot a bat to death by firing multiple rounds into the ceiling.
*I'm so sad that the 1950s are over and I've missed my chance to stop by River Falls to shop at Gay Mattress Company.
*At the end of the big rampage sequence, the filmmakers linger on a shot that they clearly view to be a potent metaphor: a U.S. Mail box has been tipped over. The horror!

Sensawunda:

*Mike's dad's movie theater is heavily advertising Bert I. Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man and just got in Attack of the Puppet People. In fact, the latter title is so new that Mike tries to excuse himself from a second cave adventure so he can stay and watch it. If only he had. I certainly wish I had gotten to watch Attack of the Puppet People rather than spending more time with Carol in that cave.

TL;DR: The Spider is a reasonably affable B-picture, but it doesn't have a whole lot of gas in its tank.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1331

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Cardboard Science: I'm Looking Through You

Year: 1963
Director: Roger Corman
Cast: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone
Run Time: 1 hour 19 minutes

Happy October, everybody! It's time for the 12th Annual Great Switcheroo with Hunter Allen of Kinemalogue. For those who are new here, it's the time of year when I assign Hunter three 1980s slashers from my Census Bloodbath project to review. Keep an eye out for those. In exchange, he assigns me three of his Cardboard Science titles, which are science fiction movies from the 1950s (well, mostly the 1950s - his timeline is not quite so strict as mine).

Notice that I did say three movies! For the past couple years, I've only had the bandwidth to do one title in October, but this time I was able to jump pack into the pool with both feet and return to the traditional trio of reviews, which I'll be publishing throughout the month! Thankfully, that pool has been nice and warm and comfortable, because this year, Hunter has been especially nice by assigning three titles with huge names of the genre attached. 

We're gonna kick off with one of the biggest. You see, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes was directed by the late, great Roger Corman. Corman is the perfect lynchpin for any year's Switcheroo, because - in addition to helming titles under the Cardboard Science purview like It Conquered the World - he went on to produce a number of Census Bloodbath movies as well, including Stripped to Kill, The Slumber Party Massacre, Sorority House Massacre, and Mountaintop Motel Massacre. 

What can I say, the man loved a massacre.

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes follows Dr. James Xavier (Oscar winner Ray Milland; you know, the guy from Frogs!), who experiments with eye drops that will allow him to see a broader spectrum of light than any person has ever seen before. Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone) has grave misgivings about this, but helps him anyway. Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vlis), who represents the foundation that is funding Xavier's research, has less grave misgivings, but mostly because she has the hots for him.

Anyway, his experiment gives him X-Ray vision, but only for temporary periods. However, his continued use of the drops leads to permanent, compounded intensity of his X-Ray vision, to the point that he can see through the fabric of the universe into the Lovecraftian madness at its center. Things don't go all that well for him. 

Oh, and along the way he works at a carnival briefly because... well, why not, I guess.

So, I do love a time capsule, and X certainly provides on that front. Even though it's a fairly tried-and-true sci-fi horror story about a scientist's hubris destroying his life that boasts a screenplay that could have been written a good 10 years earlier, its aesthetic trappings allow you to carbon date it to the exact second it was shot, which is one of the great things about many Roger Corman movies.

Largely, this is evidenced in the overall look of the movie, which is cozy and colorful, with great big splashes of that burgundy red that we used to have in such abundance back when movies had saturated color schemes. But there are some sequences that are totally far out, including the big purple spiral swirling behind the opening credits and the hyper-mod party where everyone does that absurdly gyratey 1960s dance that everyone seemed to innately know how to do back then, where you swing your little T-Rex arms around too rapidly for the human eye to process.

Unfortunately, in spite of these manifold 1960s delights, there really just is no getting around that story. It starts off fine, at least. It cuts right to the chase, which I appreciate, to the point that Ray Milland is giving himself X-Ray vision by the time we hit the 12 minute mark. And about 3 of those minutes were credits.

However, once it gets cracking, the pacing immediately goes slack and the movie just sort of meanders around for an hour and change until it's had enough of itself. It has no direction whatsoever, and I wish it had just chosen a path. If it was hornier, it would have been camp fun. If it made the lead into more of a Bond villain, it would have been camp fun. If it was more cosmic, it might have been legitimately great.

More of this, please and thank you.

However, it just kind of floats around like a detached retina. There are several clear attempts to mold the story into some genre or other, but they never stick. It's a romance sometimes, and a sci-fi movie other times. Then it's a horror movie and eventually even an action movie. Like, it literally ends on a car chase.

It's perhaps at its best when it's a horror movie, because that's the register that Ray Milland's plummy, perfect performance is channeled in the most exciting way. I could watch him waxing poetic about the skeleton of a city or his unwanted ability to see through his own eyelids all day. If it was purely a character study giving Milland free reign, it might have been an all-out masterpiece.

It's just too distracted to ever really get there. Yes, some of the moments that the movie vomits up on screen are quite good. I do like when the movie gets cute with his X-Ray vision (particularly in a scene where he's being given an eye test, or the part where he sees everybody at the party dancing naked). And he briefly has a fabulous scene partner in Don Rickles as a crooked carnival barker (Rickles laces a bit of poison around his showman's charisma that is quite compelling).

But ultimately, the sum of X's parts swings the wrong direction, especially because some of those parts are, say, the scene where Xavier is diagnosing a sick little girl by X-Ray visioning through her clothes and only then through her skin. And then his colleague comes in and comments about how pretty the little girl is and Xavier agrees and we're meant to be heartwarmed or something. Let's just say that not everything about a time capsule is worth the effort of digging it up.

Oh, also, I unequivocally hate the way his X-ray powers actually look onscreen. The shots that are filmed in what I've dubbed "eyeball-vision" are surrounded by this blood red frame that's meant to mimic the shape of an eye. Never mind the issue that you don't see your own eye sockets when you're looking out of them. You've got to let a genre movie do its thing. But it's just an ugly visual, and we get so damn much of it. Boo.

Anyway, it's so good to be back! Long live Cardboard Science!

That which is indistinguishable from magic:

*So in the scene where he can see everybody at the party dancing naked, including being able to see through their shoes, how come everybody's feet are touching the floor instead of floating a couple centimeters above- you know what, nevermind.
*I would also like to take issue with Xavier's "X-Ray vision" while driving into Vegas, which is literally the same collage of neon signs that any movie with a Vegas sequence does, but seen through a distorted filter.
*I've been really trying not to nitpick a silly Roger Corman movie, I promise, but it's baffling how Xavier is able to see the blackjack cards using his X-Ray vision. It would canonically just show him the back of the next card in the deck. Make it make sense!

The morality of the past, in the future!:

*The scene where Ray Milland lights a cigarette using a Bunsen burner might be the most 1960s thing I've ever seen, and I'm including that party sequence.
*When Dr. Xavier pushes Sam out the window in a fit of pique (happens to the best of us), Dr. Fairfax urges him to escape, lest he be accused of murder. She, however, stays put in the room where a man was just murdered, because I guess the police would never suspect a woman of having the upper body strength to pull off such a crime.
*As he begins his winning streak in Vegas, Xavier hands Fairfax a coin and she protests "I don't gamble!" as if it would somehow be a moral failing to put his coin into the machine so he can try and win some money. Some people need to take a chill pill.

Sensawunda:

*I shall not embarrass myself by revealing how long it took me to notice that Dr. Xavier's name begins with... an X!
*By far the best scene in the movie is when Roger Corman stalwart Dick Miller and his Little Shop of Horrors co-star Jonathan Haze show up to heckle Dr. Xavier when he's working at the carnival.
*The movie starts on a 37-second still frame of a bloody eyeball with music playing behind it, which was actually effectively unsettling, but mostly because I was worried I had broken my TV.

TL;DR: X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is a charming movie, but it's ultimately pretty empty.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1541

Cardboard Science on Popcorn Culture 

2014: Invaders from Mars (1953) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Them! (1954)
2015: The Giant Claw (1957) It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
2016: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Godzilla (1954) The Beginning of the End (1957)
2017: It Conquered the World (1958) I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958) Forbidden Planet (1956)
2018: The Fly (1958) Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958) Fiend without a Face (1958)
2019: Mysterious Island (1961) Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

2020: The Colossus of New York (1958) It Came from Outer Space (1953) Rodan (1956)

2021: Robot Monster (1953) Queen of Outer Space (1958) The Cyclops (1957)

2022: Tarantula (1955) The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)

2023: Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
2024: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)

2025: X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (1963) The Spider (1958) The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

Census Bloodbath on Kinemalogue
2014: My Bloody Valentine (1981) Pieces (1982) The Burning (1981)
2015: Terror Train (1980) The House on Sorority Row (1983) Killer Party (1986)
2016: The Initiation (1984) Chopping Mall (1986) I, Madman  (1989)
2017: Slumber Party Massacre (1982) Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987) Happy Birthday to Me (1981)
2018: The Prowler (1981) Slumber Party Massacre II (1987) Death Spa (1989)
2019: Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) Psycho III (1986) StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

2020: Night School (1981) The Fan (1981) Madhouse (1981)

2021: Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)

2022: Hell Night (1981) Return to Horror High (1987) Cutting Class (1989)

2023: Blood Rage (1987)

2024: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

2025: Superstition (1982) The Carpenter (1988) Visiting Hours (1982)

Census Bloodbath: Now That's What I Call Scissoring

Year:
1985
Director:
Carlo Vanzina
Cast:
Tom Schanley, Renée Simonsen, Donald Pleasence
Run Time:
1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Plot: Nothing Underneath (Sotto il vestito niente) follows Yellowstone park ranger Bob Crane (Tom Schanley) traveling to Milan after having an intense bout of twin telepathy where he senses that his sister Jessica (Nicola Perring) is in grave danger while on a modeling job. When he finds that she's missing, he teams up with the local police commissioner, Commissario Danesi (noted Italian Donald Pleasence, and if I need to tell you that he's Dr. Loomis from the Halloween franchise, you probably shouldn't be starting your journey through this blog with my Nothing Underneath review).

Naturally, because we're in giallo territory after all, a black-gloved murderer wielding a lethally sharp pair of scissors is hunting down models in the meantime. But is Jessica one of the victims, or is she herself the killer? And will Bob's simmering flirtation with model Barbara (Renée Simonsen) ever come to a boil?

Analysis: If you've even seen a single giallo movie, you've probably seen between one and nineteen Italian models getting murdered. That's just statistics. So for Nothing Underneath to bust out this premise a good two decades after Mario Bava's The Man Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace kickstarted the genre is a little redundant. And guess what Blood and Black Lace was about, in the first place. A murderer hunting down models, of course! 

I'm just saying, this story is played out. So it's a good thing that Nothing Underneath is pretty fucking weird on top of everything else it's delivering. It's not necessarily weird in a way that would shock a seasoned viewer of gialli, but it's got a lot of beautifully florid stuff going on around the edges. 

For instance, that twin telepathy thing, which causes the unusually sexy protagonist Bob (by that I mean it's unusual for men to be sexy in giallo movies) to nearly tumble off a bridge when he goes into a fugue state. Or the apartment building that randomly has a spinning statue on the lawn in front of it. Or the fact that Bob convinces a telegram operator to bend the rules by helping her decide the best place to put her hamster. That is not an innuendo.

The extremely pleasant thing about watching a weird giallo movie is that the filmmaking craft is almost always on point, so you don't even have the excuse of the movie being shoddily made to explain any strangeness in the storytelling. A weird giallo just boldly proclaims its weirdness while looking from top to bottom like a major motion picture.

Give or take some audio issues, that it very much the case with Nothing Underneath. There are no Argento-esque flourishes to the cinematography that make it truly breathtaking, but cinematographer Beppe Maccari shows a real facility with landscapes. And composer-of-note Pino Donaggio (Dressed to Kill, Tourist Trap, Seed of Chucky, Night Game, Phantom of Death, Crawlspace, The Fan) provides the whole thing with a rich, lush score.

So that's basically why I enjoyed watching Nothing Underneath even though it's tedious as all hell. You'd be a fool for going into a giallo movie expecting the murder mystery to be tightly plotted, but we are forced to sit through so much of the investigation, and we get very little in the way of slasher kills for our trouble.

There are just enough murders that I couldn't strike it off my list for this project completely, but they are doled out at a snail's pace and generally disappoint once they do arrive. There are a few spurts of blood here and there, but the kill that should be a showpiece is placed delicately offscreen, and the ones we do get to see are presented in a cursory, almost resentful manner. 

[SPOILERS ABOUND FOR THE REST OF THIS REVIEW]

If you want to take a bath in mid-80s vibes, then this is the movie for you. If you want to watch a compelling slasher, pick literally anything else. At least Nothing Underneath has the decency to end with some of its best material. There is a prolonged flashback that involves a Russian roulette game gone wrong, and that does manage to wring some genuinely thrilling tension from the material.

Additionally, the lesbian panic killer reveal is gloriously overcooked. Maybe I was just grateful it wasn't the trans panic killer reveal that I had predicted, but my head was practically spinning from how loopy and deliciously unhinged it was, all the way down to the final slow motion shot of the killer (Barbara, naturally) grabbing Jessica's corpse and jumping out of the window in a full-on Thelma and Louise blaze of glory).

Killer: Barbara (Renée Simonsen)

Final Girl: Bob Crane (Tom Schanley)

Best Kill: Margaux's death via being stabbed in the back with scissors has the showiest gore effect, but it also has a cool moment where the camera sort of woozily tracks the scissors moving in the killer's hand afterward, so that's more than enough to shove it to the top of the pile.

Sign of the Times: Everything in this movie is incredibly 1980s. I mean, just look at that image up there. There's also a scene where a dude does coke in a bathroom that is done up in black and white tiles. But I think the moment that most specifically places Nothing Underneath in Europe in the mid-1980s is the incredibly random (and very welcome) needle drop where "One Night in Bangkok" plays during the big fashion show setpiece.

Scariest Moment: Babara suddenly uses her phallic power drill on the closet door, behind which Tom is hiding.

Weirdest Moment: Commissario Danesi and Bob go to Wendy's, where Danesi makes a big deal out of being unused to eating in this way and insists that he needs 10 napkins, whereupon he proceeds to chow down on sauceless spaghetti (which he always order plain because tomato sauce reminds him of blood).

Champion Dialogue: “I always notice people who don't notice me."

Body Count: 4; I'm not counting Barbara even though she jumped out the window, because the credits start before she hits the ground.

1. Jessica is scissored in the chest (but we don't find out until way later).
2. Carrie is scissored offscreen.
3. Margaux is scissored in the back.
4. Cristina shoots herself during Russian roulette in a flashback

TL;DR: Nothing Underneath is a dull late-period giallo that is sometimes pretty to look at, but really only good when it's at its goofiest.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1097