Bring Out the Perverts: Torso (1973)

torso movie poster

I’m not sure how the Criterion Channel decided to organize their list of Giallos. It certainly isn’t chronological, and I can’t see any sort of thematic relevance. But we have definitely entered into the sleazy section of the list. By their very nature – black-gloved, knife-wielding maniac stalks and murders beautiful, young women – all Gialli are at least somewhat sleazy. But some definitely lean into that aspect of the genre.

Torso is not the sleaziest Giallo I’ve ever seen (that award goes to Strip Nude For Your Killer which is on the list and will be reviewed soon) but it certainly has plenty of gratuitous sex, nudity, and violence.

In the Italian city of Perugia, someone is strangling and then mutilating women from the local university. Terrified, four students take off for the weekend to an isolated villa that sits on top of a tall cliff overlooking a small village. Naturally, the killer follows them there and now they have nowhere to run.

But first, the two lesbians have to do a little sexing, and everybody must lounge around in skimpy lingerie. The violence ratchets up until our Final Girl is stuck inside the villa watching the killer literally make torsos out of his victims.

But Sergio Martino is too good a director to let this slip completely into sleaze. The mystery is well done (even if I did guess who the killer was early on). There are lots of red herrings and the kills are gruesome, but interesting and effective.

It is definitely not the first film I’d recommend to people looking to dive into the genre, but it is definitely not one I’d say you should avoid.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4K UHD is the new Blu-ray Pick of the Week

nightmare on elm street

After my glowing review, it should come as no surprise that my pick this week is the 4K UHD release of A Nightmare on Elm Street. I truly do love it and it truly does look fantastic in this new addition.

There are some other good horror releases coming out this week and some complete collections of television shows. Click here to view them all.

31 Days of Horror: A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

a nightmare on elm street 4K UHD

I recently upgraded to a 4K UHD Blu-ray player. I was pretty late coming to this upgrade. Honestly, I was pretty late buying a Blu-ray player. For someone who claims to be a physical media enthusiast, I just don’t care that much about video and audio quality in my movies.

That’s not entirely true, if you gave me the choice between playing a badly degraded copy of a film and a newly restored Ultra High Definition version of the same film I’d go with the quality. But I’m not going to not watch a film simply because the video quality might not be the best that is available.

If I’m being honest, though, I’ll likely not purchase a great many 4K UHD discs, unless they are on sale for a very good price. I still buy DVDs because I’m a cheap bastard.

If I might be honest again, I only bought a UHD player because I review physical media for Cinema Sentries and increasingly it is 4K UHD discs that are available.

That is, perhaps, a strange way to introduce my review of the new 4K UHD release of A Nightmare on Elm Street. It is a very good film, a great horror film and it has never looked better. Every time I watch these UHD discs I am duly impressed with the quality of the video.

Getting to see Freddy Krueger and his nightmare-induced kills is a fantastic way to further my Halloween Season viewings. You can read my full review here.

31 Days of Horror: The Invisible Woman (1940)

the invisible woman poster

The original The Invisible Man (1933) is a classic Universal Horror picture. It was followed by a sequel, The Invisible Man Returns in 1940. The sequel stays pretty close to the original in that it is a serious dramatic film with horror undertones. It is also very much a sequel in the sense that one of the characters is the brother of the original film’s Invisible Man and the plot follows it chronologically.

The Invisible Man Returns was a success and so Universal immediately put a third film into production, also releasing it in 1940. But it is a sequel in name only. None of the plot has anything to do with the first two films and the characters are unrelated. Gone, too is the serious tone of the first films and instead, this plays as a very broad comedy.

Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) has created an invisibility potion but he needs a human test subject to make sure it works. Naturally, he puts an ad in that paper (as one does) and Kitty Carroll (Virginia Bruce) answers the call. She’s less interested in scientific progress and more interested in being able to give her sexist, slave-driving boss a good kick in the pants without being fired. The experiment works, Kitty turns invisible and she gives her boss a literal kick in the pants whilst making him understand he needs to treat his employees better.

Meanwhile, a gang of criminal stooges (including one real-life Stooge – Shemp Howard) have learned about this invisibility experiment and decide to steal it for their boss who is stuck hiding out in Mexico. They steal the invisibility machine but don’t understand how to make it work. They try it on the biggest, meanest stooge and only manage to make him speak in a high-pitched voice.

Hilarity ensues whilst our heroes save the day. Because this is The Invisible Woman and one must remove your clothing in order to be fully invisible there are quite a few 1940s-era jokes about how unseemly the whole thing is. The film is full of jokes you could sit around with your grandfather laughing about. It is a light, forgettable, but more or less enjoyable film. But I did find myself hoping the next film would take itself more seriously.

Furthur Festival – Ventura, CA (08/01/96)

Furthur Festival
August 1 1996
Ventura Fairgrounds
Ventura, CA

FOB: Nyquist Omnis >Sony TCD-D7 (16bit/48khz)
DAT Master Transferred: Tascam DA-P1 >S/PDIF >HHb CDR 800 PRO (16bit/44.1khz)*

CD Masters >FLAC (Level 8) Via xACT 2.41**

*HHb CDR 800 Changed Sampling Rate Automatically During Digital Transfer.

**WAV >Audacity (Final Track Of Disc I [Happy Birthday To Jerry] Was Extended With A Patch From Disc II Track I To Make One Complete Track. Track I Disc II Was Deleted And Subsequent Tracks Renumbered.)

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC’d, Tagged, & Amended Front Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr
Recorded 40ft In Front Of Left PA Stack.

Missing: Opening Hot Tuna Electric Set, Last Few Songs Of Bruce Hornsby’s Set, And Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box Set

Disc I:

(Los Lobos)

Peace
Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes
Will The Wolf Survive?
Revolution
Cinnamon Girl
Maricela
Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio
Let’s Say Goodnight*
Mas Y Mas
Bertha^

– w/ Harvey Sorgen On Rubboard
^ – w/ Pete Sears On Keyboards

(Alvin Youngblood Hart)

Pony Blues
Them Fair Weather Friends
Joe Friday
Gallows Pole
Big Mama’s Door
Flying Karamazov Brothers wish Jerry Happy Birthday

Disc II:

(Bruce Hornsby)

Black Muddy River
Spider Fingers >
xx. Tighten Up >
(Tempus Fugit)
Night On The Town
Western Skyline >
Iko Iko
What A Time >
–. Jacob’s Ladder
Mandolin Rain//
xx. That Would Be Something > (missing)
xx. Another Day (missing)

(Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box)
xx. Missing

(Hot Tuna Acoustic)

I Am The Light Of This World
Keep Your Lamps Trimmed And Burning
How Long Blues*
Let Us Get Together Right Down Here*
That’ll Never Happen No More*

– w/ Hornsby’s Horn Section: Bobby Reed – Saxophone, Steve Berlin – Saxophone

Disc III:

(Ratdog)

Walking Blues
Wang Dang Doodle *
Eternity
Blackbird
Looks Like Rain +
Juke
It’s All Over Now
I Need A Miracle
The Winners >
Bass / Jam >
Turn On Your Lovelight

Disc IV

(Encores)

Playin’ In The Band *** >
Proud Mary *** >
One Way Out *** >
Knockin’ On Heavens Door ***

*-with Cindy Wasserman (Vocals); +-with Bruce Hornsby (Keys)
**-with Hornsby, Los Lobos, Hot Tuna, Mickey Hart, etc….

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
I was hoping for a board patch for the Furthur Festival, because I had heard from other tapers that they were allowing limited board access. (The bands would only allow board patches from Hot Tuna and Los Lobos, and occasionally by Bruce Hornsby, so the other bands were audience or nothing.) Unfortunately I got there late because of traffic and missed my opportunity to plug in because they were only giving access to a certain number of tapers. So, I had no choice but to record the festival up front and hope for a copy of the board tape later. (I had already missed the opening Hot Tuna set.) As it was, I met Jeff Lester at this show, who was fortunate enough to have plugged in with his TCD-D3, and he sent me a copy later of the Hot Tuna and Los Lobos sets. I had brought two 60 meter DAT blanks with me but ran out of tape on the 1st DAT and missed the end of the Hornsby set, and I didn’t notice this until just after the set. I also missed all of Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box because I wanted to conserve my second DAT blank. I like the Ventura Fairgrounds. I taped the Dead there in ’87 and actually had tickets for the ’86 show and drove all the way down before I found out that they were cancelled because of Jerry’s coma. I was there for Jerry in ’92 and ’94. I forgot a cable at the ’92 show and wasn’t able to record with my deck and I met some other tapers there and got a copy later, but I pulled a good one in ’94.

One think I always thought was cool about the beach right next to the fairgrounds is that when the waves would wash in, they would roll the cannon-ball sized rocks around and make a really surreal noise. (It was even better sounding if you were…partaking in party favors.) 🙂

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉

31 Days of Horror: The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

phantom of the opera hammer horror poster

Hammer Studios became well known for their horror output. This is mostly due to the way they remade all the classic Universal Monster movies – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, etc., though they did make a great deal of other films, some of which were not horror-related at all.

In 1962 they adapted another famous horror story, The Phantom of the Opera, with mixed results. The Gaston Leroux book has been adapted numerous times and, of course, was turned into a Broadway Musical. I loved the book, and have seen at least a couple of those cinematic adaptations (though I’ve never seen any version of the musical, much to my wife’s surprise.)

Directed by Hammer stalwart Terrence Fischer the action is moved from Paris to London. Quite a few other things have been changed as well, but my memory is too faulty to lock those down for you.

The basics are the same. A pretty opera singer named Christine (Heather Sears) gets a chance to sing the lead in a brand-new opera. Producer Harry Hunter (Edward de Souza) takes a liking to her. Meanwhile, the Phantom (Herbert Lom) keeps causing problems.

There is a different backstory for the Phantom and Harry takes a much more active role and is more of a hero here. The Phantom spends a great deal of time training Christine to be a better singer than she already is. The real villain in this story is Lord Ambrose D’Arcy (a wonderful Michael Gough) who stole the opera from the Phantom (which we see in a flashback). And most of the really horrible things the Phantom usually does is given to a henchman to do.

All of this is fine, if a bit staid and clunky. The story never has any real oomph to it, and the ending is a dud. Lom is good and the sets have that usual Hammer charm to them. There are definitely better adaptations of the story than this one, but if you are a Hammer aficionado then you’ll probably like this just fine.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Salem’s Lot (2024)

salems lot poster

‘Salem’s Lot was not the first Stephen King book I ever read (that honor would go to the short story The Langoliers) nor was it the one that turned me into a lifelong fan (that would be Mr. Mercedes) but it was the one where I realized how good of a writer he is and that I should maybe start paying attention to him (I wouldn’t do that for a few more years, but the seed was planted then.)

It remains one of my favorite King books.

The story’s basic idea is: what if a vampire came to a small town? But like so many of King’s books, it is so much more than that. It follows Ben Mears, a writer who has returned to the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot, where he grew up, to write about the Marsten House. That’s your classic old spooky mansion on top of the hill, where he saw a ghost as a child.

Naturally, that’s where the vampire lives. But before he gets there Ben makes a friend with a schoolteacher and falls in love with a girl, and meets lots of interesting people. That’s what I love about Stephen King. Sure, he’s written a terrifying story about an ancient vampire taking over a small town, but it is really a story about small-town living and the characters that fill it up.

Tobe Hooper directed a two-part miniseries of Salem’s Lot for CBS in 1979. It is far from perfect, but Hooper understands the heart of the story is its characters and the scares should be built around that. But he also creates some truly memorably scary images.

TNT adapted a version of the story with Rob Lowe in the lead in 2004 but the less said about it the better.

When I heard that had made a new adaptation for Max I was excited. I’m always excited to learn about new Stephen King adaptations. Then I watched the trailer and that excitement flew right out the window. It looked cheap. Worse than that it looked like it was going to rely too heavily on violence and jump scares. Then the reviews started coming in and they were not good.

But it is spooky season and I’m still a sucker for King adaptations so I crossed my fingers and pressed Play.

My friends I am happy to report it is not that bad. It is a long way from great, and you won’t exchange this for the Hooper version in your collection, but it is worth the watching.

They say writer/director Gary Dauberman has a three-hour cut but Max made him edit it down to just under 2 and you can feel it. The movie plays like the greatest hits of the story. It isn’t so much that it jumps straight to the action, but that it shortcuts through everything.

We meet Ben (Lewis Pullman) as he’s driving into town (the soundtrack plays Gordon Lightfoot’s “Sundown” which is a great choice) he meets Susan (Makenzie Leigh) at the real estate office. She’s reading his book but doesn’t recognize him. But by the next scene, she’s inviting him to the movies, and we learn both their stories within a few minutes. Movies always have characters falling in love way too fast, but here it is even faster.

The realization that the weird stuff going on in this town is caused by vampires happens extraordinarily fast as well. Ben’s newfound friend, Matt (the always great Bill Camp) sees a friend in a bar looking a little pale and pekid. He takes him home and notices the guy has a couple of little scars on his neck. Later he thinks he sees the guy scurrying into an upstairs window.

That little bit of information convinces him that the town is full of vampires. He quickly convinces Ben and Susan of this information. Then the alcoholic priest (John Benjamin Hickey). The new schoolboy in town, Mark Petrie (Jordan Preston Carter) doesn’t need to be convinced, he already knows. He’s an old-school horror nerd who doesn’t take crap from nobody.

This happens throughout the film. Relationships deepen and plot points happen offscreen, in the cuts. Before I realized that they were literally happening in the cuts, that more details had been shot and then edited out at the last minute I thought it was an interesting story choice. Now it just seems distracting.

But what is left is well done, if a little disjointed. The editing is interesting. There are a lot of shots like one in which a man is alone on a bed. The camera moves slowly to look under the bed, then it moves upward and the room is full of people – a great deal of time has shifted while the camera was under the bed. Or the camera will focus on an object and then it will cut to a similar object in a different scene.

When the violence comes it comes with that frantic modern style of scaring you with jumps, and quick edits, which is not to my liking at all. They changed the ending quite a bit. Some of it I liked – they moved it from the Marsten House to somewhere interesting. Some of it I did not – far too much generic action. But more or less it worked for me. Or perhaps my expectations were so low that anything not terrible would have been enjoyed by me at this point.

31 Days of Horror: The Retaliators (2022)

the retaliators bluray

My goal for 31 Days of Horror is to write about a horror movie at least once a day. Honestly, my goal for the blog is to write something every day, but this is especially true during Horror Month.

But sometimes (or maybe even often) life gets in the way. I have work, a family, and another blog to run, and I just don’t always have the time or the energy to review something.

So it is tonight. Work was long and full of sawdust in the face. We decided to run to a nearby (relatively larger) town to look for a manga for my daughter and then we had supper. Now I’m home, in my pajamas, and too tired to come up with actual thoughts about a movie.

Luckily, I still have loads of reviews I’ve written for Cinema Sentries and not posted on this site. Some of those reviews are for horror movies. And here we are.

I barely remember watching The Retaliators. In my review, I can see I didn’t much like it. The film follows a man of the cloth and his crisis of faith. Also zombies. You can read my full thoughts here.

Bring Out the Perverts: Who Saw Her Die? (1972)

image host

I’ve seen all but one of the Giallos on the Criterion Channel. That is to say almost all of the films that will make up this series. I own quite a few of them on Blu-ray and reviewed most of them for Cinema Sentries. I’ve enjoyed rewatching these films thus far and writing new reviews. It is fun to read the old reviews and think about how my opinions have changed.

The thing with Who Saw Her Die? is that my opinion has stayed pretty much the same. Reading over my review from 2019 I find myself nodding along, pretty much completely agreeing with my thoughts from back then.

So what do I have to say about it now? Not much, really.

Like a lot of Italian films from this period, the actors all spoke whatever language came naturally while they were on the stage and then their voices were dubbed in post-production. They created two soundtracks for the film – one in English, one in Italian. In the English dub star George Lazenby used his own voice. In the Italian version, some Italian actor spoke his lines.

The Arrow Video Blu-ray has both soundtracks. I previously watched the English track. Criterion only has the Italian one. Lazenby once played James Bond. It was weird watching him act but hearing someone else’s voice come out of his mouth.

That really affected my view of his performance. In my review, I praised his acting, this time around I was less impressed.

The plot is pretty standard-issue Giallo. The visuals aren’t all that stylish, and the kills are pretty tame. But it does look lovely. It uses the Venice setting wonderfully and has that warm feel that only an excellent film and a good cinematographer can provide.

I’m making it sound worse than it is. It’s really fine. The mystery is interesting, and it has a good collection of weird characters. There are perhaps a few too many of them, and the plot gets a little too complicated, but it is still enjoyable to watch.

And that Ennio Morricone score is wild.

31 Days of Horror: Mimic (1997)

mimic poster

There is a cockroach infestation in New York City. Well, I guess there has always been a cockroach infestation in New York City, but this time they are carrying with them some kind of terrible disease that’s killing children. Our hero, Dr. Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) is a bug scientist and she’s genetically mutated a superbug that’s a cross between a mantis and a termite that will eradicate the cockroach problem.

It has been engineered into sterility and thus it will die out in one generation and everything is groovy. Except, of course, it isn’t. The bugs don’t die out but rather breed at an exceptional rate, undergoing multiple mutations. Three years later they’ve turned into the kind of nightmare fuel only Guillermo del Toro could create.

There is nothing particularly new or inventive about Mimic, we’ve seen this type of film a thousand times from 1950s monster movies to Alien and its countless ripoffs. But del Toro is too good a director not to make it interesting. He’s such a wonderful visual stylist that he’s turned what could be another hacky, schlocky, forgettable b-picture into something really quite good.

Much of the film is set underground, in the bowels of the city’s sewers and forgotten subway systems. This gives the film a claustrophobic feeling, while also enabling the characters freedom to run. In a similar manner the film is often quite dark and full of shadows, but but he allows light to creep in through grates and lanterns so that you can always see what you need to see.

The creature designs are great and there is a lot of slimy, disgusting goop. The characters are pretty basic but well done and well acted. Charles S. Dutton plays a subway cop who gets to yell and scream about how crazy everything is. Josh Brolin is a goofy scientist guy and F. Murray Abraham shows up at some point as Dr. Tyler’s mentor.

It is a big, dumb horror film that knows it’s a big dumb horror film and doesn’t care. With del Torro at the helm, it becomes one of the best big dumb horror films I’ve seen in a while.