50 Years Ago Today: New In Cincinnati Theaters

Darker and Why: FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL

FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1972, Scream Factory, Blu-ray)

My book habit being what it is, I have to be fairly conservative about what I acquire - and more particularly, reacquire - on Blu-ray. When the news got out a week or so ago about the forthcoming Shout!/Scream Factory release of Terence Fisher's FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL missing the footage that was cut from Paramount's US theatrical release, there was an instant blowback on the various social media and message boards from fans saying they were outraged, that they would never knowingly spend their money on something that was needlessly incomplete. I was also surprised by the news, though it ultimately made sense in that Paramount was a production partner on the picture, putting up some of the money in exchange for the North American rights; they never had any participation in the slightly more gruesome version distributed through other hands elsewhere around the globe, so would be legally unable to make a more complete version available in their territories. I checked my collection and found that I already had the "more complete" version as an import Blu-ray; nevertheless, I placed an order for the new release immediately, primarily for the extras - a new audio commentary by Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr, and the latest (am I correct in thinking "last," as well?) of Richard Klemensen's reminiscences about "The Men Behind Hammer," which this time is dedicated to producer Roy Skeggs.

The Shout! Factory discs credit Cliff MacMillan as disc producer, but Constantine Nasr has played a decisive, producer-like role in the shaping and assigning of all the various bonus materials included with the company's recent Universal and Hammer classic horror releases. With each new release, I've found their bonus materials to carry the weight of literary monographs on the individual titles, making the overall packages far more than just about definitive presentations, which they anyway usually are. The scholars chosen to represent these films generally have a number of books behind them, qualifying them for their positions, but the discs have the additional value of giving them a face, a voice, and an authority we can actually experience in a more direct and human way. I am always impressed to see someone, whose finished work I've read and appreciated, speaking spontaneously on the subject at hand with equal eloquence - and sometimes even more persuasively or more to the point than in print. 

So I knew, going into FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, that the movie was not going to be technically complete, but that what its commentaries had to say about this sometimes controversial film would be essential listening - and indeed it was. 

I first saw the film at a private advance screening for theater owners, and I must confess to feeling a bit underwhelmed at the time. My friend Michael Schlesinger was also there and I remember him being more impressed, which is certainly to his credit. One of the aspects of the film's fate discussed by Haberman and Nasr is that the film was shot in 1972 but held back from release until 1974, which placed it after the genre-changing release of THE EXORCIST in December 1973. Though not Hammer's last horror film, it was their last traditional Gothic horror film and, as such, embodies the autumnal end of an era. When it is cited as a misfire, a throwback, an unfortunate stumble, these opinions actually have far less to do with how well the film met its own goals than with how those goals seemed at the time in regard to the company they kept on companion screens. What may have looked at the time like a failure to advance, to keep up with the times, was actually a remarkable feat of British craftsmanship that has not aged at all, while some of the independent horrors we may have preferred then have grown to look very much like products of their time. FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, I learned from this track, was actually made for less money than 1964's THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN yet I can find literally nothing missing from its overall makeup. Makeup, funnily enough, is the one area where the two commentators and I disagree, as I don't find it under-budgeted or problematic. Actually, the first time I saw an advance photo of the makeup, I had a strange déja vù reaction to it; it felt like something I'd seen before, perhaps in the depths of a dream or somewhere in my own subconscious. 

Last week, DVDBeaver carried their review of the film, which was accompanied by the usual comparative frame grabs from the new release and a previous one. The new release looks conspicuously darker, which some respondents have taken as another mark against this release. I feel this is a serious misunderstanding of what people are seeing. When I first saw the film, at a compact indoor screening room, I remember it looking darkish and not especially colorful ("Hogarthian," actually - a word I was surprised not to hear mentioned anywhere in the commentary) and I believe this was a deliberate choice on the part of Terence Fisher and his director of photography Brian Probyn. By opting for a darker light scale, a number of things happen: we become more aware of where light is deliberately concentrated in each and every shot; the art direction is smoothed over to become more easily accepted as a general setting; and indeed the prosthetic makeup worn by David Prowse as the Monster becomes less rubbery, more realistic. There is a shot in the lab involving a blue lamp as Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) considers something and the blue actually reaches out to color his hair - if everything else in the shot were equally bright, it wouldn't have a quarter of the effect its placement has now. So I feel that, from the standpoint of the film's presentation alone, 30s shorter or not, what it shows to us about the intentions of the cinematography is articulate and valuable. It shows me that the film has been judged in recent years, by and large, by home video presentations that were far too bright and much too colorful, insensitive to how it ought to look.

The Haberman/Nasr commentary covers a lot of ground, hitting the ground running by identifying the asylum where the entire film is set as analogous to a Purgatory in which Frankenstein's disciple Simon Helder (Shane Briant) undergoes a test of soul; he is arrested for sorcery and placed in the same stronghold where his hero is planning his latest experiment. Commentaries that address newer films, and a good many older ones as well, don't even bother offering literary correlatives, but here we get Haberman wondering aloud if screenwriter John Elder (Anthony Hinds) or perhaps Fisher had read Milton's PARADISE LOST at some point in the film's pre-production, given the Angel in the cast (Madeleine Smith) and the battle she and Frankenstein essentially wage over the soul of Helder (a name that means "hero" in German). A detail I especially appreciated concerns two zoom shots that appear at points when a room is literally stricken dumb and another when a mute character finds their voice. They talk a bit about Cushing reusing the wig he wore in Amicus' AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! (1972), which sports some French curls and looks somewhat effeminate, drawing no particular conclusions from it - but the discussion did take me to a conclusion of my own, which is that the only weakness left to Frankenstein at this stage of his career is vanity, a vanity that also sets him apart from and above his fellow inmates. It is this same vanity that causes him to take Simon on as his disciple, and I also realized that this very idolatry was the key it took to get the film made; 1970's HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN had been a failed attempt to reboot the franchise as a black comedy, and MONSTER FROM HELL struck the solution of having a new young doctor, a new 1970s level of special makeup effects gruesomeness, and Cushing's Baron as well. In this way, the commentary is not only informative but engaging in the best way.

Richard Klemensen's talk on Roy Skeggs, like all of his precedent talks in this series, gives us the benefit of Klemensen's almost 50 year history as the publisher and editor of LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS, the Hammer specialty publication. He actually went to London and met these people, who are little more than familiar names to most of us. Speaking here casually, warmly, and even sentimentally about Skeggs, Klemensen presents us with the man - his likes and dislikes, his thoughtfulness, his sense of humor, and above all his thorough dedication to Hammer as a true company man. As with the commentary, I now have different levels of appreciation for Skeggs, and in the future as I see his name on the screen in the credits of films, it will now mean something considerably more to me than it did before. 

Whether or not you buy this disc is obviously up to you, but I wanted you to be aware that there is too much of importance gathered here to be thoughtlessly written off. I'll obviously be keeping my import disc for its European content, but for valuable information and a definitive record of how the film itself should look, Scream Factory's disc will be my go-to copy of FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

More Fulci: DEMONIA and Documentary

DEMONIA (1990, Severin Films Blu-ray and DVD) 

                                      FULCI FOR FAKE (2019, Severin Films Blu-ray and DVD)

In addition to AENIGMA, Severin Films is also releasing two other Lucio Fulci titles today: DEMONIA and Simone Scafidi's recent documentary FOR FAKE. In contrast to AENIGMA, which I find less a serious horror film than an absurd lampoon of 1980s trends in American and Italian horror, DEMONIA is a far more genuine project. This is as it should be, as credit for the screenplay goes to Fulci and Piero Regnoli (THE PLAYGIRLS AND THE VAMPIRE, THE THIRD EYE), one of the earliest writers in the Italian horror genre. Though visibly underproduced, it feels a more organic outgrowth of the best traditional Italian horror, telling a genuine Italian Gothic story and successfully summoning some potent imagery. It's the story of an archaeological team from the University of Toronto sent to a coastal village in Sicily to excavate the grounds surrounding an ancient castle where a nunnery was headquartered in the 15th century. During the excavation, one of the students - Liza Harris (Meg Register) - finds herself drawn inside the forbidden castle ruins where she unearths a long-blocked passage to a room where the locals had long ago crucified the nuns as devil worshippers. Being predicated on a kind of psychic affinity for the place, her discovery leads to demonic possession and a series of local murders (of typically Fulcian juiciness) where Liza is not physically present but for which her connection is somehow responsible as a conduit for a vengeful oltra-tumba energy. 

An American actress who seems to have abandoned her career after 1997, Register bears an interesting resemblance to child actor Giovanni Frezza (from Fulci's THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY) and, though attractive, is never sexualized in her role. She's a strong, resilient character who starts out by mirroring our own curiosity about the location and gradually evolves into the film's battleground. Her performance is complemented by veteran actor Brett Halsey (who had previously worked with Fulci in THE DEVIL'S HONEY, 1986 and TOUCH OF DEATH, 1988), very good as Paul Evans, the expedition's leader, who is both responsible for extending their stay despite signs of danger and trying to summon Liza back the more deeply she sinks into her metaphysical mire. (As with AENIGMA, Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca can be heard prominently among the voice actors on the English dub.) Al Cliver (ZOMBIE - credited as "Al Clever") has a supporting role as one of the film's several alcoholic characters, and Fulci himself appears as the detective assigned to the murder investigations. There are images throughout the film that resonate with other scenes in other Fulci films, while others nicely inhabit the same universe or visual vocabulary while blazing macabre new trails. This film and AENIGMA share a cinematographer in Luigi Ciccarese and, while both films have in common a bluntly lit, overexposed look to them, he nevertheless presents us with some classic Fulci images. Happily, one of these is the closing shot - which can be read metaphysically as an alternate tense of a shot near the beginning of the film.

In one of the disc's most informative extras, running about 34m, uncredited screenwriter and production assistant Antonio Tentori tells the entire story of the project from his point of view, mentioning that Fulci was able to spend  only one day in the cutting room with the film's editor Otello Colangeli (whose vast number of credits - more than 235 - include nearly all of Antonio Margheriti's films). He blames the ineffectual quality of the film's death scenes to lax editing and, I would mostly agree: the 89m film might have made a considerable leap in quality had it dared not only to tighten up these scenes but to lose as much as seven or eight minutes of its running time. The scenes of the after hours celebrations of the students, drinking and dancing to monotonous folk guitar, are unnecessary and several conversation scenes are indulged for much too long before getting to their point. Also badly inhibiting the film's pace is Giovanni Cristiani's meandering, indistinct score, which feels more dedicated to lending additional veils of uneasy atmosphere than in underlining character identification, contrasting the 15th and 20th century storylines, and making Liza's possession by the long-dead Mother Superior more deeply felt. The largely incapable special effects makeup, credited to Franco Giannini and two others (one of them with the unfortunate surname Terribili), is also to blame for the film having less overall impact than it should.

The disc's extras include a rare feature-length commentary by Stephen Thrower (BEYOND TERROR: THE FILMS OF LUCIO FULCI), a 5m piece of on-set video that documents an effects shot in preparation and gives us a sample of Fulci's way of speaking English, and a 15m interview with camera operator Sandro Grossi. 

Scafidi's Fulci documentary approaches its subject from the standpoint of actor Nicola Nocella, who wants to learn more about the real Fulci, as preparation for playing him in this documentary. If we can overlook the fact that Nocella is utterly ill-suited to playing the gaunt Fulci of his CAT IN THE BRAIN days, the questions he addresses to various Fulci friends and family members are earnest and helpful, and his inquisition prompts some wonderfully candid responses from Fulci's daughters Camilla (who died shortly after filming) and Antonella, as well as composer Fabio Frizzi, cinematographer Sergio Salvati, and several others. Particularly unforgettable is NOTTURNO CINEMA publisher Davide Pulici, who has a granite mien and offers his opinions - for example, that if Fulci had stopped after his first 15 films, more than most directors get to make in an entire career, he would not have reached his greatest works - with the precision of mastered style and the weight of Biblical law. It would be a mistake to expect this film to provide a wealth of film clips and open access to the musical themes associated with Fulci's work, but Fulci devotees will want this anyway and be well rewarded by it. The extras are extensive and generally encompass unedited or expanded interviews conducted for the documentary, as well as Michele Romagnoli's tapes of Fulci in conversation as they were preparing his never-completed autobiography, and family home movies - which make this release more of an essential purchase.  

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

Severin's AENIGMA Reviewed

AENIGMA (1987, Severin Films, 89m 17s) 

If you've ever seen THE EDITOR (2014), the ironic horror comedy co-directed by Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy, Lucio Fulci's AENIGMA is exactly the kind of Italian horror film it was spoofing. Stressing tomorrow (August 25), it's a sort of half-digested amalgam (aemalgam?) of CARRIE (1976) and its Australian knock-off PATRICK (1978) by way of Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA (1977) and PHENOMENA (1985); it's the story of Kathy (Milijana Zirojević), a plain, Elizabeth Keane-eyed student who is the butt of a rather incredible, mortifying practical joke played not only by her fellow students at St. Mary's College in Boston (make that "St' Mary's College") but - still more incredibly - by one of her male instructors, as well. The outlandish prank ends tragically with Kathy being hospitalized in a coma (and, incidentally, no one disciplined for their part in it). From the depths of her dissociation, Kathy discovers a psychic vantage from which to avenge herself against her tormentors. As soon as Eva (Lara Naszinski aka Lara Lamberti) - a new, attractive student - arrives at the school to inherit Kathy's former dormitory bed, she finds herself vulnerable to Kathy's possession and a conduit to all kinds of inexplicable goings-on. For example:

As the guilty students and teacher are serially knocked off in mostly silly, gory and ultimately illusory set-pieces, Kathy's doctor (Jared Martin) observes mental activity in her, though she is, like the other characters, technically brain-dead, and ponders the question of what's going on. A bit too conveniently for the story, this supposedly responsible adult is seduced by evil Eva and, eventually, falls more truly in love with another teenage student, Kim (Sophie d'Aulan), who one supposes represents a more innocent option.

From its very first scene, there is absolutely nothing about AENIGMA - its characters, performances, situations, locations - that bears any connection or resemblance whatsoever to real life. Rather like Jess Franco's BLOODY MOON (1980), the film unreels like a misanthropic, tongue-in-cheek satire of 1980s horror movie clichés made for idiots and those who take a modicum of pleasure in feeling superior to them. It amplifies the inherent silliness of the pictures it's modeled after to a level of hysteria, with Fulci directing every scene, every character, to be as laughably artificial and two-dimensional as possible. It's hilariously obvious that not one of the smoking college girls has ever touched a cigarette before; the dorm rooms are decorated with dated posters celebrating 1980s icons like David Bowie (in the "sell-out" phase of his career, natch), Snoopy, Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone (the latter two posters are incorporated into ironic, post-shock chuckles); all the gruesome set-pieces are scored with rip-roaring Van Halen-like guitar noodling; and after the first student death, there is no further reference given to any police investigation of the insane goings-on. (When one girl dies by being smothered in slimy snails, we hear through the gossip of her fellow students that it's been supposed she smothered herself with a pillow. For all the concern anyone shows, the film might just as well have been made by a crew of Eloi.) There is one brief scene in which an ill-looking Fulci himself appears as an investigating reporter, and most of the roles are dubbed by Ted Rusoff and Carolyn de Fonseca.

For all the jaw-dropping hollowness and half-hearted mimickry it serves up (culminating in a final shot that screams THE SHINING), AENIGMA reaches a ticklish point when its mind-numbing quality becomes entertaining in spite of itself, partly because the reaction it provokes mirrors the amused contempt with which the smug, narcissistic fools onscreen regard one another. Even if the movie is kind of indefensible as a whole, it's not entirely without interest, especially to anyone able to recognize the standard issue Fulci tropes. The metaphysical triangle that connects Kathy, Eve, and Kim - an implicitly indirect attack on the man who's keeping Kathy alive - becomes an intriguing abstract design by the conclusive scene in the marble-walled morgue, and Fulci pulls off a few fairly ambitious shots utilizing his own hand-made miniature effects. They are not convincing but they are charming. There is also a mysterious freeze-and-fade-to-black at one point, for which there is no apparent reason, giving the moment a strange, haunting quality.

This all-region release includes the film's first-ever 4K-sourced 1080p presentation, and it successfully banishes the greenish bias and non-anamorphic bars found on earlier DVD releases. The extras include an interview with screenwriter Giorgio Mariuzzo, which mostly avoids discussion of this film, as he relates vague, half-delineated memories of his history with Fulci; a roughly 40m documentary focusing on the "latter day Fulci" movies with input from writers Mikel J. Koven, Calum Waddell, John Martin and a couple of Fulci's past collaborators; and a podcasty audio commentary by Troy Howarth (author of SPLINTERED VISIONS: THE FILMS OF LUCIO FULCI) and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson. 

The talk greatly favors Howarth, who says a great deal about Fulci in general, recommending other pictures like BEATRICE CENCI and DON'T TORTURE THE DUCKLING very highly, and mostly relating and reacting to the obvious details of what we're seeing, saying many times that he likes AENIGMA without reasoning why. Both commentators agree a lot, laugh a lot, and don't really present a case for the film so much as sentimentally embrace it as one of the inexplicably endearing, meager facets of a far worthier career.       

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

50 Years Ago Today: Opening In Cincinnati Theaters

 

Andy Milligan had already been cranking out the next worst thing to home movies since the early 1960s but this was probably the biggest national launch his work ever had: the double feature BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS and TORTURE DUNGEON, whose clip art images in this tiny advert were indelibly incoherent and wonderful. I wasn't able to see them at the time, but I remember this ad as being the decisive one that made me clip it out and start collecting newspaper ads, which I kept in a small valise. When the valise began to overflow after a few years, I reconsidered my hobby and threw them all out. But when I first saw this ad, something told me it might be a fleeting thing that might never come around again. I was wrong all three counts. The top tier titles are easily found on DVD but your best bet for BB and TD is finding the Code Red Blu-rays on eBay; they can be hard to find. Supposedly Severin Films has an Andy Milligan box set in the works, if you can wait it out.  DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, from 1965, is the Hammer classic directed by Terence Fisher and starring Christopher Lee, of course; it's available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

MGM apparently had little faith in the title of this Robert Aldrich film - which, if you look very, very closely, you'll see was not "THE VIOLENT BUNCH" but TOO LATE THE HERO. Aldrich was further  bushwhacked by the tagline "From the man who brought you THE DIRTY DOZEN" (which took the place of "Directed by Robert Aldrich"). I've heard it's well worth seeing. A 2004 DVD release from MGM Home Entertainment is still available, if a bit pricey.  

What's particularly odd about this one is the co-star billing assigned to those last few names. Raquel Welch makes sense because she's pictured in the ad with Ringo, but Leonard Frey? When they could have just as easily mentioned Christopher Lee? Available on Blu-ray from Olive Films.

Picture proof that, in 1970, Bruce Cabot and Patric Knowles could still open a picture. Available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Video.

Three years after Roger Corman's THE WILD ANGELS, American International Pictures was still cranking out biker pictures. This one was from HELLS ANGELS '69 director Lee Madden, who went on to direct THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED. This one starred Don Stroud, Larry Bishop, Luke Askew, Aldo Ray, and - of all people - Tyne Daly as the ingenue. Released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment back in 2003 as part of a double-feature with CYCLE SAVAGES; it's still available here.

Starring and directed by Tony Vorno (the locations manager on EASY RIDER!) under the alias "Sebastian Gregory." An IMDB reviewer calls it "an embarrassing display" - but judge for yourself; it's available as a download or on DVD-R from Something Weird Video. Vorno used his real name on his 1982 feature, VICTIMS: THE DAY OF THE RAPIST. 

The apparently unpresentable full title of this Entertainment Ventures (David F. Friedman) release was THE JOYS OF JEZEBEL. Directed by Peter Perry, Jr. (KISS ME QUICK) under his "A.P. Stootsberry" alias. (He sometimes directed as "Seymour Tuchas.") The co-feature MY BROTHER'S WIFE was a black-and-white Doris Wishman title dating back to 1966. Shot without live sound in the same apartment used for Wishman's INDECENT DESIRES from the same period, it unreels at a co-feature length of only 61 minutes, but the IMDb reviewers seem to feel it's still overlong. Both titles are available as downloads or on DVD-R from Something Weird Video, if you're curious. 

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

Revisiting Neutron, the Atomic Superman

I recently indulged a whim to revisit the series of Mexican films about Neutrón, El Esmascarado Negro ("Neutron, the Black Mask") - known as "Neutron, the Atomic Superman" in English - which I hadn't seen in 50 years. Now that I've refreshed my memory, I'd be surprised if I ever saw more than one of them, all those years ago. There were five such films in all, the first three directed by Federico Curiel, a true horror auteur whose prolific career as a writer, actor and director encompassed more than 70 genre films including the Nostradamus and Santo series as director, and THE BRAINIAC and THE LIVING HEAD as a writer. His directorial career began in 1960 with the trilogy of films about the masked crimefighter known as Neutron (played by Wolf Ruvinskis) who, despite his American credentials, has so super powers nor atomic patrimony to speak of. We never get an origin story for him, but with his rippling bare chest and action tights, he appears to be one of those luchadors (masked wrestler)s Mexico seems to inspire, though - as far as I know - Neutron had no actual real life experience in the ring. I was able to look at the first and third of the Curiel films - NEUTRÓN EL ENMASCARADO NEGRO (NEUTRON AND THE BLACK MASK, 1960) and NEUTRÓN CONTRA EL DR. CARONTE (NEUTRON VS. DR. CARONTE, 1963) - in Spanish with English subtitles (old Cinemageddon downloads) and the second - NEUTRÓN CONTRA LOS AUTÓMATAS DE LA MUERTE  - in its English version (NEUTRON VS. THE KILLER ROBOTS, 1962) which was dubbed by the Coral Gables group responsible for dubbing the K. Gordon Murray children's films and much other Mexican dubbing, which VIDEO WATCHDOG profiled in issue #2 with Bill Kelley's interview of voice actor (and Bill's former teacher) Paul Nagel.

Wolf Ruvinskis, 1921-1999.

Thanks to the greater access we enjoy today of the serialized thrillers of Louis Feuillade, it is much easier to appreciate Curiel's work as being in that same mold. Though the films exist in the form of feature-length stories, the original Mexican posters and lobby cards list them as serials; for example, NEUTRÓN EL ENMASCARADO NEGRO is said to consist of three episodes: "El Enmascarada Negro," "Caronte Triunfa," and "En Invento Diabolico." The contemporary story opens with the successful creation of a Neutron Bomb in the laboratory of Prof. Mendez (Ernesto Finance), whose intention it has always been to present it as a gift to all nations to ensure world peace. However, as soon as it is perfected and completed, Mendez' assistant Prof. Walker (Claudio Brook) tries to tempt his superior to use it to the ends of personal gain through terror. Walker shoots his noble mentor, who triggers the bomb, unleashing a deadly mist that leaves his insane murderer's mind and visage half-disfigured, much like the famous Batman villain Two-Face. Even more covetous of the bomb is the masked villain Dr. Caronte, an evil menace entirely dressed in white, who with his evil dwarf sidekick Tony (Manuel Vergara) and army of mush-faced zombies is grave robbing and reactivating the disembodied brains of the world's most brilliant dead scientists to access the secret of the bomb's invention. This story is complemented by the introduction of three best friends - TV producer Mario (Julio Alemán, who would later play the masked wrestler... Rocambole!), the nightclubbing Carlos (Ruvinskis), and the independently wealthy and lazy Jaime (Armando Sylvestre) - who think of themselves as "the Three Musketeers" (Rivinskis had actually played Aramis in a 1957 film, Gilberto Martinez Solares' THREE AND A HALF MUSKETEERS) and who find their loyalties tested when they all fall in love with the cocktail singer Nora (Rosita Arenas). Naturally, one of these Three Musketeers is actually Neutron, who dedicates himself to destroying the bomb, the terrorists who would wield its power, and also to protecting Nora - whose abode is discovered to contain a secret passage leading directly down to Caronte's lair!

At the end of the first film, Caronte falls victim to the bomb and is vaporized by it, leaving only his costume behind, and one of the Musketeers reveals his identity not only to Nora, but to the other two. Disappointingly, the second film pretends that neither of these things happened; Neutron's secret identity is once again unknown, and Dr. Caronte never explains (not even to the slavishly devoted Tony) how he managed to cheat death and get another costume in the bargain. The same pretty much goes for the third film, and all three leaven their creepy matinee thrills with Nora's soppy nightclub ballads and guest songs by rock and roll bands like Los Tres Diamantes (The Three Diamonds), Los Rebeldes de Rock (The Rock Rebels), and Los Tres Ases (The Three Aces). This trilogy is a bit gruesome but always in a cartoonish way, and was clearly intended to entertain young people. It's not really scripted on an adult level but it has a delightfully pulpy atmosphere. Some viewers might be surprised to discover the great Spanish actor Claudio Brook cast as the disfigured mad scientist Walker, but we must remember that Brook is best known for his collaborations with the surrealist filmmaker Luís Buñuel (THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, SIMON OF THE DESERT) and Curiel's inspirational source, Feuillade, was championed early on by the Surrealists. It's also a pleasure to see in the first three films the now-renowned Spanish actor Jack Taylor playing the important role of Prof. Thomas under the early alias "Grek Martin." The English dubbing of his performance is terrible, but he makes quite a favorable impression acting with live sound in the Spanish originals.  

For reasons unknown, Curiel left the franchise after the third film and Neutron - along with new writers and a new director - returned wearing a different mask (and far more chest oil) in 1964's NEUTRÓN CONTRA EL CRIMINAL SÁDICO (NEUTRON VS. THE MANIAC, though the original Spanish translates as "Neutron vs. the Sadistic Criminal"). Its direction was entrusted to Alfredo B. Crevenna, a prolific filmmaker (BRING ME THE VAMPIRE and more than 150 others) who would also direct the sequel, NEUTRÓN CONTRA LOS ASESINOS DEL KARATE (NEUTRON BATTLES THE KARATE ASSASSINS, 1965). This bizarre and stylish film opens with a nightclub singer's performance, which includes a band with a blind pianist who immediately catches our interest. To our surprise, he becomes one of the film's key characters as the singer approaches him afterwards and offers to walk him home. Though he is used to doing this himself, he agrees - but for the pleasure of escorting her. During their walk, the pair are attacked by a lurking shadow in a black mask, cape, and wide-brimmed hat. Leaving the blind man stricken, the attacker absconds with the woman, taking her to a garage where he proceeds to stab her to death as a rattling movie camera documents the killing. The blind man is aroused by her death screams and awakens just in time to see the sadistic criminal fleeing from the crime scene behind the gates of the Robles Clinic for the Mentally Deranged. Yes, I said "see" - the pianist, who lost his sight as the result of an accident, has since regained his sight but kept this a secret as his infirmity was actually good for his career. He comes forward to the police with this information, and Inspector Rivas (Rodolfo Landa) shares it with Neutron, who decides to enroll at the clinic under his true identity for a rest, to investigate the strange goings-on from the inside.

I've still not seen NEUTRÓN CONTRA LOS ASESINOS DEL KARATE, but EL CRIMINAL SÁDICO I enjoyed quite a bit, even though it dilutes and diminishes the original naïve charm of its superhero and makes the man who wears his mask seem at home in a house full of neurotics on a dark and stormy night. The film not only has more adult ambitions and thrills, but it names its main characters after luminaries of Latin American literature (Marquez, Fuentes, etc) and, most cleverly, casts series regular Rosita Arenas not as Nora but as a patient of the clinic who labors under the delusion of being a great actress that no one has ever heard of - and who must be continually humored by the people around her! Also presented, with a similar dose of irony, is the popular  Mexican wrestler El Lobo Negro (Guillermo Hernández), who is portrayed as a washed-up has-been who cannot accept that his career is over! (according to wrestlingdata.com, he had 39 bouts between 1935 and 1954, of which he won 12 and lost 18, so perhaps Hernández was just being a good sport about the plain truth of his career.

Something peculiar that I learned by watching the Spanish version of the first film and the English version of the second: Television Entertainment, credited as the series' US distributor, monkeyed with the content of at least the first two films, removing some of the musical numbers and removing the scene in which the Musketeers confront Nora with a mass marriage proposal from the first film and moving it into the second. There is also a fifth film that alleges to be part of this series, NEUTRON TRAPS THE INVISIBLE KILLERS (1965), but its original title was EL ASESINO INVISIBLE and it stars Jorge Rivero as El Enmascarado de Oro ("The Golden Mask"), not as Neutron.  

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

50 Years Ago addendum

There were no display ads for it in the local paper, but I now see that Joy M. Houck Jr.’s NIGHT OF BLOODY HORROR opened at one of Cincinnati's local drive-ins 50 years ago last night, co-billed with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was an important turning point in my own movie-going experience, as it was the first feature I'd ever seen that was shot in 16mm and blown-up to 35mm for projection. There were scenes so dark and obscure that it was impossible to tell what was going on, on a drive-in screen. The problem could have only been worse if it started before it was completely dark outside. I later saw it again at an indoor screening and it was no better. I'm told that Something Weird Video's copy is the only presently available source for an uncut copy of the film.

In other "50 Years Ago" news, it was half a century ago tonight that the original line-up of the Stooges played their final gig at Goose Lake. Third Man Records is acknowledging this Golden Anniversary by releasing on CD and vinyl the recently unearthed, only known live soundboard recording of the original group, which happens to date from their last show together. Bassist Scott Alexander was supposedly fired afterwards for his erratic playing; you can read more about it by clicking here. They play the entire FUNHOUSE album, almost but not quite in sequential order. There is so much exceptional coverage of the FUNHOUSE material out there - including the complete studio recordings of those sessions - that the album isn't quite the earth-shaking document we'd like it to be, but it’s Ron Asheton on lead guitar and Iggy’s off the leash as usual. Sound quality is slightly better than METALLIC K.O., and you can check an audio sample by going to the page indicated.

(c) 2020 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email

If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.

50 Years Ago Tonight: Now Playing in Cincinnati Theaters

Another heartwarming reminder of the great diversity and creativity available to motion pictures half a century ago...