Schmollywood Babylon

Beyond Re-Animator (Brian Yuzna, 2003)

Thirteen years after Bride of Re-Animator was released Brian Yuzna and Jeffrey Combs unleashed the second sequel, Beyond Re-Animator. This time produced in Spain through the very uneven experiment Fantastic Factory, which also gave us great movies like Dagon - and stinkers like Rottweiler and Beneath Still Waters. It was an admirable project, and I think it injected some creative energy into the Spanish and European movie biz after all, even if it's quite forgotten nowadays. Beyond Re-Animator is one of the more successful entries, even if it has some mayor flaws - but I'll get to them later.

After Herbert West once again fucked up his experiments with the living dead, he's been in prison. One of the last persons to have seen him in action is a young boy, Howard Phillips, who now has grown up to a young doctor played by Jason Barry. After his sister got killed in the "accident" with West and a very milk-hungry zombie, he manages to sneak away one of West's syringes with the infamous green liquid and now he brings it back to the inventor, in the power of his new job as a prison doctor. Their only real enemy is the sadistic warden Brando (Simón Andreu), who both wants the body of Howard's new hot girlfriend and West's secret to make the capital punishment even more painful than it is - imagine the criminals dying for hours and hours and hours...

Beyond Re-Animator is basically a remake of the first one, just set in a prison than a hospital. Warden Brandon is Carl Hill, Howard Philips is Dan Cain, the movie begins with a failed and gory experiment ending in West being sent away - where he can begin again. Instead of patients he have prisoners to experiment on. I can't say it's a bad movie. It's well-made, gory, have some nice production values and Jeffrey Combs is excellent. It's not Yuzna's finest hour as a director, he still feels very unsure how to tell the story and many scenes just feels a bit awkward and not especially funny. But overall, it works. The worst thing though is the acting. Most of the cast are Spanish talents - and they overact like there's no tomorrow. Imagine a bad porn movie trying to be a real movie. Sure, they're dubbed to English to remove the accents - which might make it even more cheesier, but the original acting shines through and it's not good.

I remember some similar issues in Dagon and Faust (and that one also sports an awful "acting" gig by Swedish movie critic Ronny Svensson). I think it's a lot worse than most of the older European genre movies, but I think it has to do with - in this case - the director and in Dagon's case probably because the actors did a bad job in general.

Anyway, gonna stop with the whining. Beyond Re-Animator is at least not boring. It has a lot of fun special effects, some really graphic gore (the "death" of Santiago Segura might be the most extreme one) and a few really fun comedic scenes, where Penis vs. Rat is the best and most over-the-top one!

When I saw this movie the first time I wasn't that impressed. I probably expected something more, but it grows on you and in the end it delivers 90 minutes of gory, fun entertainment. Which can be enough sometimes. 

The Metafilmic Dreamland of Uncle Jess: Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies (Jess Franco, 2013)

Private dick Al Pereira is dreaming. He's talking in his sleep, waving with imaginary guns. "I'm Al Pereira!" he screams, rolling around in the body we recognize as Spanish actor Antonio Mayans. This is the fourth... or is it the fifth time? Anyway, the umpteenth time Mayans plays Pereira (Eddie Constantine also plays him in Attack of the Robots, from 1966...). And probably the last. Mayans is older, with wrinkles and grey hair. The former so slim man is now a slightly chubby gentleman with a twinkle in the eye.

What follows in Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies is a deconstruction of the career of Franco, much like Jean Rollin did with Night of the Hourglass, one last gasp of insanity. It's also a sharp - and confusing - slaughter of manliness. We have Pereira, who think he can get every women in the world. He loves Chuck Norris and have a strong Christian faith, seeing himself as a sacristan - a "Christian cop", responsible to keep control over what happens in the church. Against him he have a couple of female demons (which just is just a couple of naked women), daughters to Fu Manchu! They want him, but the loath him. They see through, that he's just fake. A racist, misogynist fake. At the end of the movie the camera turns around and Franco sits there, laughing at Mayans who's having a blast dancing and reciting Shakespeare's Macbeth. Franco says "We've just made Pereira look like an asshole, but that doesn't matter".

The world Pereira living in is fake. He's in a movie. He's in a Franco movie, and sometimes he's Antonio Mayans receiving directions from Jess Franco sitting just outside the frame. This is meta, very meta. A couple of times the scene is shot in the front of a mirror, so we can see a very frail Franco sitting there, giving instructions or enjoying the sight. In one scene we're witnessing the rehearsal of a scene, with Franco in the middle of the shot, and the finished scene directly after. Slowly the typical late-Franco style film with endless scenes of naked women showing their pubic hairs a bit too much transforms into a bizarre comedy, a satire over filmmaking, over acting and manliness, religion and sex. Often they've placed the spotlights in the middle of the shot, like Franco tells us he doesn't give a shit. It's not about silly details like that, it's about filmmaking as an art form.

This is a very acquired taste. But if you're in the right mood, this movie will leave you with a huge smile on your face. It's very hard to dislike, especially after Franco leaves the boring nude scenes and tries on some kind of story, fragmented, surrealistic and absurd - but still a story, something that actually can be read and analyzed. Maybe that's not the meaning, but what the hell.

I could go into detail about the bad stuff. Like it's a very cheap film, sloppily made in a good-looking hotel somewhere. Some of the comedy, especially towards the end just doesn't work - but still find it's place in the very absurd last half hour. The nudity in the first part is boring and...boring. But somehow it's become a part of the later career of Uncle Jess, so I guess it belongs there. But still, you have to give it to him that he's never been interested in finding the most gorgeous women. For him a nude woman is enough, even if she's not "perfect" in the eyes of the mainstream audience.

You can say what you want, but this is the best Franco has made in years - and it's also the final movie in his amazing career. I'm probably not the only one who's hair stood up during the last scene, where Mayans turns to the camera and over and over again tries to quote Macbeth - in English and Spanish:

This is a story
told by an idiot
full of sound and fury
signifying nothing.

Camera turns to Uncle Jess.
That's it. That's cut. 

The End.

Torremolinos 73 (Pablo Berger, 2003)

Watch out, it's time for dramedy here at Ex-Ninja. But it's not just an ordinary dramedy, instead it's of special interest for us aficionado's of eurocult. Starring lovable Spanish character star Javier Cámara as Alfredo, this is the essence of a heart-warming, feel-good movie, but with a wonderful spin. I felt attracted to the storyline without already knowing what I would later find in it, but there's always something magical with the celebration of filmmaking, or storytelling... or just the power of creation. Pablo Berger pushes every button in the mainstream American comedy genre (but in that warm, intelligent Spanish way), and does it with hight EQ and IQ, two things that rarely comes together. 

Alfredo (Cámara) plays a hapless salesman of lexicon's about the Spanish civil war. No one wants a lexicon about the Spanish civil war, and now when those sales stands for 1 percent for the company's total sale, it's time to shut the department down and... start something new! Alfredo is invited to a luxury weekend in the mountains together with his wife Carmen (Candela Peña) where they learn that to be able to continue to work they must start making... sex movies. NO WAY! Well, at least until they understand that 50000 pesetas will be payed for each film. Alfredo and Carmen gets caught in the filmmaking passion and soon Alfredo gets a lot bigger plans than so. He's gonna make his magnum opus called Torremolinos 73, an arthouse exploitation film set in the hotels of Torremolinos, a macabre passion-drama about love and death...

Yes. What Alfredo bascially do is to become a Jess Franco for one single movie. With a splash of Jean Rollin, but this is essentinally - partly - a tribute to the cinema of Franco and what the 70's did to exploitation film. Now, Torremolinos 73 is mostly a dramedy set in their apartment and at the office, but slowly we're drawn into Alfredo's vision of sex and death - shot in black & white, with a man dressed in a black cape following a woman around the empty tourist streets... it's poetic and absurd, edgy - the way Franco did it during this period, but with the pretentiousness (in a good way) of Rollin. 

This is not a judgemental movie. It's a movie that encourages to creativity, to love, to do what the hell you want to do. It's way to say to people: fuck what you're doing, there's so much else in life. I see myself in Alfredo, but in my case I quit a destructive and depressing office job to start freelancing behind and in front of the camera. I will never regret that, and that's the message of Torremolinos 73.

Like most Spanish movies the actors are natural and colorful, but this being a co-production with Demark, several Danish (and Swedish) actors makes guest apperances. Nowadays Mads Mikkelsen is a superstar, but I think he still made one of his best performances here as a naive, cute, friendly porn actor named Magnus. This part got him in trouble from the moronic Danish gossip press who years later continued to claim that Mikkelsen made a porn movie. 

There's something beautiful with deserted tourist areas. The highrise hotels above you, endless beaches, labyrinth's of corridors inside. The strict architecture. No wonder Franco found so much inspiration in these areas. That's also what I see in this movie, where creative freedom is found not in your home or office, but in a neutral place, a place where people meet and communicate. 

The first time I saw Torrimolinos 73 I cried of laughter. This time... I enjoyed the human beauty much more. It's not that funny actually, it's just life. Nothing else.

And it can be quite beautiful if you want to. 

Birds of Prey (René Cardona Jr, 1987)

Birds of Prey is the more generic title of René Cardona Jr's Beaks: the Movie, a co-production between Mexico and Spain (and probably a dozen other countries). But why do you name a movie Beaks: the Movie? And add to this that Juan Piquer Simón the year later released Slugs: the Movie! I wonder what was going on there, can we still expect Insects: the Movie or maybe Cyborg Dog: the Movie - oh wait, Brian Yuzna directed the last one, almost anyway (2004's Rottweiler, basically a remake of Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi's El Perro from 1979, but that's another story!). 

Birds of Prey (I will call it that from now on, Beaks sounds so silly) is one of Cardona Jr's weaker efforts, but he's a pro and still gave us a decent-looking movie with cheap gore and impressive animal attacks. The story is very thin - almost non-existant: Michelle Johnson (who later did Waxwork and Dr Giggles) plays Vanessa, a TV-reporter. Her cameraman is played by cute Christopher Atkins (seven years after The Blue Lagoon) and together they go on an adventure of a lifetime!!! No, not really. But Vanessa suspects that there's something wrong with the birds in Spain (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) and soon they find themselves and everyone else under attack from every kinda bird there is! That's it.

It's almost shot like a sequel to Hitchcock's The Birds - and someone is mentioning that there was a big similar bird attack years ago, which seems like a clear reference to Hitch's first movie - but fails to deliver the same kind of depth and characters. Most of the actors do good, but the script is so thin and underwritten that it's very easy to lose interest in what's happening. Most of the attacks are very similar - humans have fun, birds attack in slow-motion - but at least Cardona tries to make something fun out of it and puts the attacks in a lot of different places, including a train and up in the sky. 

At least it's bloody and the effects when people gets their faces ripped off is fun (and not especially well-made), but it works. A more disturbing thing is how many real birds that gets killed, especially in the beginning. So if you don't want to see fine, proud birds getting shot to pieces in super slow-motion, stay away from this film. It's a pity, 'cause it could have been a lot more fun. Now there's a fairly high human body count instead, which is alright and the movie itself looks gorgeous. 

Cardona Jr, just like his father, was an expert in cheap and extremely good-looking spectacular genre movies. They're both favorites of mine and especially junior. It's like he knew exactly what made a good exploitation film. Just check out his 1980 action classic "Hostages" (starring Hugo Stiglitz!), a movie that's a crazy mix of about everything from that time when it comes to action and thriller - from disaster to home invasion. It's awesome in it's trashiness. 

Birds of Prey is not for everyone. But it could have made a bigger splash among the cult fans if it didn't killed so many real birds. Lets keep fantasy from reality in movies, something I've always felt is important. There's NEVER need to kill an animal to make entertainment. 

Stranded (María Lidón, 2001)

I'm struggling with Stranded, the 2001 Spanish sci-fi drama directed by María Lidón under the name of Luna. I'm really having problem with it. Is it good or is it a failure? Maybe misunderstood or... overrated? This is one of those movies that gonna challenge you. Not necessary regarding the story, but more the style it's shot. Personally I dislike the typical space operas like Star Wars and Star Trek, you know. Fantasy dressed up like sci-fi. Star Crash is one of the few in the genre I love more than life itself. The best sci-fi's according to me are the one that dares to be serious, or put a different story in a space environment. Alien is bascially a horror film in outer space. Outland is a western. Solaris is a existential drama. Event Horizon is haunted house movie, etc. 

Stranded is of course not a silly sci-fi movie. It's a quiet drama about the first mission to Mars. Something happens and they crash land on the surface. In the beginning it seems like they're gonna make it, but after a while they realize that there's just enough air and food for two persons to survive until the rescue mission can be there - in two years time! Three people have to sacrifice themselves in order to save the other two. The one's chose takes their space suits and starts walking towards the Mariner Valleys, to die no one have been before... but is there something hiding in the mysterious fog bank down there...?

There's no action in Stranded. There's no horror or spectacular things. But it's still a sci-fi with a naive but interesting concept. I was prepared for a movie about dying - a timeless subject, accepting one's mortality. But I got a little bit more. Instead what we have here is... eh, I don't wanna spoil it for you. Watch it yourself. Let me know what you think.

What can be irritating is the flat direction. I sense there's an idea to shoot this drama like a indie drama down at earth. Naturalistic dialogue, talk about sex, a couple of annoying characters (one of them played by Vincent Gallo - I like that dude!), silence created by irritation and not atmosphere. The first part could have been set in an apartment in New York, but about a totally different subject. Directo Lidón have a problem telling the story in such a confined space and more than once it just ends up with every character in line, saying their lines.

But don't let that scare you away. It's still pretty interesting and after a while you'll get used to the simple style and sometimes flat acting. More than a few times I thought for myself, "This would be very, very good if it got a remake" and I still think the same. It's a simple, effective story that ends in cryptic way - but not so cryptic it gets irritating. You know what's happening and it's cool.

I wish I could like Stranded even more. Now it's a good movie, not great. It triggers the imagination, which is a very good thing in my mind. Give it a try sometime, if you dare...

Seven Murders for Scotland Yard (José Luis Madrid, 1971)

During the right-wing dictatorship of the awful Generalissimo Francisco Franco the filmmakers in Spain had to be extra imaginative to make their movies come true. One of the rules from the censors was that the films must be set either in historical times or in another country, that's why every Spanish genre movie from this time is set in Germany, England, France... whatever stock footage they had in the storage at the moment. Or just somewhere at the countryside in some eastern European country, which could be shot everywhere. 

When Franco died in 1975 it became easier to make the films they wanted to make and in 1983 Naschy shot Panic Beats in one of the general's luxury villas. He closed the circle there. But lets go back to 1971. The giallo craze in southern Europe was still huge and the Spainards wanted in on the market. Seven Murders for Scotland Yard is one of several "Spanish Giallo" movies made, often with Naschy involved as an actor. This might also be the best one. Not because it's a smart flick - it's not - but because it's so damn entertaining. 

Naschy plays a former trapeze artist, no an alcoholic living in the seedy slums of London together with his girlfriend. It's not a happy relationship and it just gets worse when she's killed by a serial killer imitating the crimes of Jack the Ripper! Naschy is the first suspect and when the murder toll raises Naschy desperatly tries to keep away from the cops, because he's innocent - or is he? 

Seven Murders for Scotland Yard is an excellent example of a cheap, gritty, gory Spanish thriller. It reminds me a lot of some old Edgar Wallace film, but with a lot more graphic violence and nudity. The mystery itself is nothing to brag about, but there's a lot of bloody murders, violence, sleaze and a lot of awesome shots of the sex club districts in London during the time - all is stock footage of course, very little seem to have been shot in London with the actors. But that's cool, it just gets more exploitative!

It could be an excellent double feature together with French Sex Murders, but I'll say this is the better film. It looks better, even if it has a cheap porn-style look over many of the interior shots - probably a result from a very fast shooting schedule, but José Luis Madrid craftman-like directing makes up for the faults of the film. As usual Naschy steals every scene he's in. What's a bit surprising is that he doesn't seem to want to find the killer himself - he's just hiding and waiting for the cops to do their job. This could have been boring and takes away some of the tension, but Naschy is so entertaining and cool that I'll forgive this screenwriting weakness.

Seven Murders for Scotland Yard is a very trashy and cheap thriller, which also makes it one of my favorite Naschy films. I like the grittiness, the cheapness of the show. It feel closer to the reality. It's not so damn beautiful... without getting realistic. It feels like I'm there, prowling the streets, chasing the limping Naschy, wearing a trenchcoat, a big mustache and a loaded gun ready to deliver cheesy lines of dialogue. 

So you want to see this film? I hope so! It's out on a surprisingly good quality grey market DVD from Televista. Anamorphic widescreen, probably sourced from a very old beta master. It's not VHS quality anyway, but far from being stellar. It's good enough until someone actually releases it for real. 

Vengeance of the Zombies (León Klimovsky, 1973)

If Paul Naschy was food he would have been a beef.

Truer words has never been written by me. Naschy who I love so much, you're missed. I get those empty feelings everytime I watch something by Naschy. That feeling that Naschy will never make a movie again, never lash out at the movie business in pure bitterness - but still have self-assurance like never before. He was a complex man. 

In Vengeance of the Zombies, a movie he wrote and starred in, there seems to be a general idea of just "giving it all", never set down the foot to stop an idea, a freebasers with movies as art. But with that special Naschy-feeling of course: blood, boobs and... sometimes a bearded Naschy. It's a wild story, a distant relative of the Italian giallo films: a masked man is using voodoo to raise the dead from their graves and make them kill people. An Indian holy man (Naschy) comes to the UK to relaxe and get back in shape, but gets involved in the murder mystery against his will. 

Is there devil worshippers in the basement? Is something supernatural going on? Or is it just the same old Mr Greedy working his bloody hand over the half-naked cast? In one scen you'll see a gold-painted woman cooking something on a stove - down in a basement - while Naschy dressed as the devil tries to get close to female victim. The audience is zombies. 

What the fuck was that? I still wonder that, but that's the wild shit I like about VOTZ. It's not just another "Spanish giallo", it's a murder mystery that dares go beyond the normal stabbings and let zombies do the deed while the killer is safe behind black gloves and hat. The music score is insane by the way. Modern jazz,  very loud and... well, "jazzy" and totally inappropriate for any serious horror film. 

It also have a nice amount of blood and cheap gore, which - believe it or not - is a quite rare detail in his films. This one has a lot of very red blood, fake knifes ripping flesh, a fun decapitation. It's never outrageous, but it's graphic anyway. 

But these film was never scary. They're about mood, coolness, red paint as blood, naked chicks, Naschy flexing his manly chest. You know the deal, it's all the same. And like Godzilla films and the Ultraman shows you know what you gets and that's the reason why we watch it. It's like meeting an old nice uncle again, someone who always have an adventure to tell. That's what Naschy did. He tells absurd stories over a glass of whisky. Just imagine the fire reflecting in his dark eyes while he tells a story about yet another werewolf or a macabre murder. 

It's poety in it's own exploitative way. I don't demand more. 

Vengeance of the Zombies is a colorful, silly and bizarre myster/horror and one of my favorites. It gives Naschy several parts to play and the talented director uses slow-motion in a very beautiful way, a bit similar to what Amando de Ossorio did with his living dead in the Blind Dead series. I'm not sure anyone would call this a masterpiece, but in my little world - in my bubble - it's the best kind of movie.

A movie that makes me happy.

Ten things you (probably) didn't notice in Nightmare City (Umberto Lenzi, 1980)

The movie I've seen most times is without a doubt Umberto Lenzi's Nightmare City. I've own a couple of different releases on VHS (and I think also one betamax) and six different releases on DVD. I have a framed letter from Lenzi here at home and it's also the movie that began my life-long Hugo Stiglitz passion. I've seen it so many times and I always find something new. 

It's easy to mock Nightmare City because it's quite corny and cheesy, but I think honestly it's a great action-horror film, made with a massive amount of energy and superb action editing. The hospital attack is still one of my favorite sequences in Italian genre cinema. Every scene is literary packed with details, good and bad, lots of creativity and Stiglitz who actually goes from beardy baby-face to rugged manly-face during the duration of the movie: 

I think he was forced to do this movie. Maybe he was under contract from one of the production companies involved (it's a co-production between Italy, Mexico and Spain), or maybe he needed the money so well he just said yes to anything that fell down on his desk. Lenzi isn't happy with Stiglitz performance had really wanted Franco Nero or Fabio Testi - and in all honesty, both of them would have made more charismatic performances - but in even more honest, it would never have been Nightmare City with out Hugo Stiglitz. He's the man.

When you watch a movie for the umpteenth time you've noticed a lot of details. Some of them quite famous - mentioned even in the most simple review - and some more obscure, harder to see. Or just story-related stuff you don't think about that much. I could bring up all the occurances it seems like Nightmare City actually is edited for violence, but what you see is what you get. No longer version is available and maybe these scenes doesn't exist at all or was edited out becuase the effects look bad or something else was missing. The famous one being the girl by the pool, and the radioactive mutants starting to rip open her chest - I'm pretty sure there's nothing more than that. Another one is when a guard a the hospital gets decapitated. It actaully sounds and looks like the actually decapitation is cut, but I never found any proof it's been seen in any release. 

But back to my main goal with this article, to bring up ten things in Nightmare City you (probably didn't notice before), especially if you're a novice in the world of eurocult and just thinks NC is one of many zombie-esque films from the land of Popes and Pasta. You more experienced fans out there have probably noticed all of these things before, so I dedicate this to all the newbies out there. From Fred to you, from Lenzi to us all!

Look at the guy at the right. That's Antonio Mayans, "the best camera man you can find", according to the boss of the TV-station. This was his eightieth (80th) credit in movies in television, and yet he's just doing a job anyone could have made. I'm not sure he was star, but a very experienced actor - and in Nightmare City he shows up for a couple of minutes, drives away and is never seen again. He's not even credited! 

During the attack in the TV-studio we see this girl, a dance, scream. Well, I'm not sure she can scream. Seriously, she can't act at all! She's just trying not to laugh. This scene was shot with second unit, in a studio in Rome - but I'm sure Lenzi would have created hell if he was there and saw what a lousy performance she did!

TV-monitors (not TV's) explode in a burning ball of hell-fire! That's a fact. They're even highly flammable. I guess that's why the TV-crew wear white lab coats and looks more serious than death himself.

This boy (who obviously have the hots for Laura Trotter) is set-up like his own sub-story. He even tells about a nightmare where he lost his leg! Then the hospital attacks comes, he's found dead in his bead - and he has his leg intact. Still the most confusing part of the whole movie. Why all that set-up and then... nothing?

Here's a classic! The surgeon has a hobby he's been longing to use, and that's knife throwing. And he's friggin' good at it to! 

Why doesn't she turn off the lawn mover? Why? WHY?

This was the happiest day in this dog's life. Playing around with a field together with it's owner and a couple of dozens of more humans! Sure, the smell of sweat could be irritating for other humans - but for a dog it's like coming to heaven. I'm sure he never had such a fun day after this one, and I'm seriously happy for him. 

I can't say it bothers me, but I ALWAYS think about it when I see this scene. The part of the priest's face we doesn't see bear brutal marks of his mutation - but it's not until he turns that side AWAY from Laura Trotter and Hugo Stiglitz they see the radioactive damage. Noy saying it's wrong, but it's... strange.

You see that doctor on the floor? The second before that position he's running out from the elevator, slips on the floor and lands HARD on his ass. You can see the pain in his face even here. Those hospital slippers can be very dangerous!

This is my favorite photo bombing cat EVER. In the foreground a radioactive mutant lurks, in the background, a happy young couple talks by the pool, in the middle a big cat slowly, casually walks right through the scene like he fucking owns the place. That's awesome.

That's it folks. I will try to post something more related to Nightmare City this week. Until then you can read my old poem dedicated to this fantastic movie HERE! :)

 

The Ninth Gate (Roman Polanski, 1999)

It's not entirely correct of me to review a movie like The Ninth Gate here at Ex-Ninja. The combination of being a bit too mainstream and a bit too new should scare me away, but I've always walked the path of underrated movies, movies that just doesn't get the respect they deserve. And then it can happen I'm reviewing a mainstream movie starring Johnny Depp. This is also one of the last time Depp plays a normal character, not that boring, "quirky", colorful off-beat person he's been specializing in the last years. But I guess it's easy making million by sleepwalking through your work? 

Corso starts off a little bit like that, someone out of the ordinary, a weird guy - but slowly transforms to just an ordinary, greedy businessman who happens to deal with books. Smart but cunning, cunning but boring. He's not fun. He does what he have to do and that's it. It's his transformation to something else, to an interesting, an passionate person we see during the story. Around him is the oddities, the freaks, the originals: Frank Langella as the obssessed collector, Lena Olin has the slutty greedy widow, Jack Taylor as the sad, violin-playing last-of-his-kind, Barbara Jefford  as the one-armed, wheelchair bound old bitch etc. Oh, and Emmanuelle Seigner as the succubus/devil/demon/girl. Compared to them Corso is boring, a nobody. 

But deep inside he wants to be somebody. That's the journey we follow.

No one seems to talk about The Ninth Gate nowadays, that's a pity. I'm sure we all can agree on that it's one of Polanski's more lighthearted movies - just like The Fearless Vampire Killers, The Ghost Writer, Frantic and Pirates - but Polanski is always Polanski and he's put a lot of passion into this work. He plays around with conventions, puts a lot of small jokes here and there, cameos from himself and his family. It's a rich movie, filled with details. Every actor is good in it, but I'm a big fan of Jack Taylor and it's so amazing to see him in such a big movie playing such a interesting character. No wonder he's high up in the pre-credits. A masterful actor. Frank Langella is another favorite of mine, and he's one reason to watch it. A perfect performance, edgy and still classic. A professional like few others. By the way, I watched a very fine movie with him the other day, Robot & Frank. Give it a try.

The Ninth Gate is a mystery, that kind of mystery that Dan Brown later made so popular (this movie is based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novel Le Club Dumas - not a bad one, but quite different from the film). There's symbols and riddles, ancient books and castles. Oh fuck, I love stuff like this. It triggers my imagination. If I was a rich man I would probably start to collect old books just because I can (and probably grow tired of it quite fast). It's a guided tour through the mysticism of Europe and it's a perfect trip! 

And no, it has very little to do with Suspiria and Argento's films - I've heard some people want to read this film as an inofficial part of that series. But no way, this is something completely different. The only similarity is that they're all deal with supernatural stuff and is set in Europe. Nothing else.

The Ninth Gate is worth rediscovering. I'm sure it will be a favorite of those who haven't seen it yet. 

Hyde and Go Seek: Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf (León Klimovsky, 1972)

I'ev seen Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf before, not on the famous Mondo Macabro release but on the Spanish DVD with no subtitles. I wasn't too fond of it, what I can remember. But now when Code Red release it together with The Vampires' Night Orgy in a nice double feature I felt compelled to watch it again - and boy, did I reevaluate it! If you look at it the logical way, this is one of those movies that can't go wrong. The director is genius León Klimovsky, it stars (and written by) Paul Naschy as Waldemar Daninsky and Jack Taylor has a supporting part as Dr Jekyll, the grandchild of the famous mad doctor who could transform into Mr Hyde! It's also set in Transylvania and London (very common thing of course, because they said it was set in Spain it would be banned by the fascist right-wing regime during the time). 

Why I didn't like it the first time I can't understand. Maybe it was a cut version, maybe the simple dialogue - easy to understand without subs - was more important than I thought. But now it seems like it's one of the best and most solid of the Waldemar Daninsky flicks. The story is simple, but still fun: Justine (Shirley Corrigan) travels with her older husband Imre (José Marco) to Transylvania to do something, I already forgotten about it, and when their car breaks down on a far off country road (which happens in every Naschy film, almost!) they meet a lepra-ridden man who scares Justine and they manages to get away. When Imre later is killed by robbers and Justine saved by Daninsky (another trademark plot twist from the mind of Naschy) she discovers the lepra man in his basement! Terror! Anyway, that's just a small detail - because she's soon aware that Daninsky is a werewolf and she takes him to London to meet Dr Jekyll (Jack Taylor) who might have a cure for him... but things goes terrible wrong, and soon Dr Hyde is roaming the streets after prostitutes to kill!

Well, you hear! And doesn't it sound like a lot of fun? It is! The set-pieces when Naschy transforms into werewolf or Mr Hyde is wonderfully staged, the best one being in a stuck elevator together with a scared shitless nurse...and of course the famous disco-scene, which still is very cool. It also have more plot twists than usual, all of them very cheesy - but honest, and it feels like everyone had a damn good time shooting this film. It's bloody and has lots of nudity, there's plenty of Naschy for everyone, the girls are cute, the women are hot, the men are cool - it's one of the best.

Trust me.

What strikes me the most is how scary Naschy is in his Dr Hyde make-up. He looks almost unreal, with those big odd contact lenses, pale face and hair in desperate need of a good balsam. He feels and looks evil, pure evil. By this time Daninsky is a hero and it's easy to love him, so maybe Dr Hyde was exactly what this movie needed - someone even more dangerous, someone calculating. An aggressive animals can always be controlled, but a serial killer is far more fearsome!

The DVD from Code Red looks rough and with scratches and faded colours, but this time I'll agree with all those backwards out there who likes it when it looks more "grindhouse". It fits the film perfectly and gives it a grittier, more gruesome look. It's a wonderful release and a must for everyone who collects either Naschy, werewolf-movies or just Spanish horror.