DEMONOID : MESSENGER OF DEATH ! 1981

aka MACABRA

 

"Up from the depths comes the ultimate horror !"

      Coming just on the cusp of the 1980's youth centered slasher craze and featuring a throw everything against the wall in a gooey mess script along with a couple of recognizable names for the marquee (and were probably wondering how they ended up here) this bizarrely entertaining Mexican/U.S. co-production has just been given a new lease a life courtesy of Vinegar Syndrome. Although released in 1981, DEMONOID with its mature cast of established (if not all well known ) faces and plot points concerning devil worship & procession (not to mention car chases, crawling hands & corpses exploding out of the ground) which seem to hearken back a few years to the glory days of 70's drive-in goodness.

     Produced and directed by Alfredo Zacarias for his indie distributing company American Panorama (which along with equally mind boggling THE BEES from 1978 were it's only two releases), it was co-produced by Americans Valley Hoffman and Paul Bagley, who both had connections to films such as THE HILLS HAVE EYES, STARHOPS and CAGED HEAT both in front of and behind the camera.

    Opening with a prologue in which a buxom blonde is shown knocking around some guys in robes and hoods before she's subdued, stripped topless and chained to a cave wall. Her hand is then chopped off whereupon it scuttles off before being skewered and placed in small silver box. Flash forward to the present where in the Mexican town of Guanajuato, Jennifer Baines (Samantha Eggar from David Cornenberg's THE BROOD) shows up to find her husband Mark (Sam Peckinpah regular Roy Jensen) in a bit of a quandary as the workers won't venture down into his silver mine for fear of a local legend concerning a satanic cult and "the devil's hand".
    Hoping to show this to be false the couple head down into mine and after discovering a mummified prospector (with a missing hand) they knock aside a few fiberglass rocks and come upon an underground temple where they come across the silver box seen in the prologue. Finding it filled only with dust they take the silver box home and later that night a hand crawls out and begins feeling up Jennifer while she's asleep in bed (!). Mark then wrestles with the hand and it appears to merge into his his own hand and now seemingly possessed by a evil & insane force, he goes to the mine the next day and blows it closed with all the workers inside.

    Fleeing to Las Vegas (with Jennifer in pursuit) Mark happily discovers that his new hand is now gangbusters at throwing craps which later leads to him being seemingly killed by a mobster and his frizzy headed moll (an uncredited turn by Russ Meyer starlet Haji). Jennifer traces his body to a cemetery in Inglewood, Ca. (where it later explodes out of the ground) and there joins forces with Father Cunningham ( Stuart Whitman - with a fading in and out Irish accent) who appears to having a  conflict of faith - along with being handy in boxing and welding.
    They begin following the hand as moves from one victim to another including a policemen (Lew Saunders from CHiPS) and a plastic surgeon (and his buxom nurse) all of whom go to some extraordinary lengths to extract themselves from the devil possessed extremity. Jumping from Mexico to Las Vegas to Los Angeles, the plot moves forward seemingly without the benefit of logic or common sense and takes a left turn about every 15 minutes or so into more and more bizarre sequences including a car chase with randomly flipping automobiles, the hand grabbing on to the underside of a train to gain a fast getaway and Whitman using a blow torch to burn off his Satan afflicted appendage.
    Zacarias actually prepared two different cuts of the film with the U.S. version titled DEMONOID : MESSENGER OF DEATH clocking in at compact 79 minutes while the international cut MACABRA ran at an expanded 90 minutes. The U.S. version also added the opening female sacrifice prologue (which some sources claim was shot by Jim Wynorski in Bronson Cavern as Roger Corman was involved in the early stages of the film's production) and also periodically quickly cuts to a sword wielding demon statue and adds a ending scene cribbed from Brian De Palma's THE FURY. DEMONOID also loses some dialogue sequences (including the entirety of Whitman's first scene) making it more of choppy viewing experience and adds a more ramped up bloody finale to Haji's death. DEMONOID's score is a patchwork of library music and cues from 70's A.I.P. and New World pictures while MACABRA has an original score comprising some disco-like rhythms and spooky choral music ala' THE OMEN.

    The British born Eggar had started out in major films such as DR. DOLITTLE but by this time had begun moving into TV and lower budget films and added to her drive-in bona-fides by also appearing in THE EXTERMINATOR this same year. Stuntman Roy Jenson (billed here as Roy Cameron Jenson) was a recognizable face as character actor usually playing "second heavy on the right" such as in Sam Peckinpah's THE GETAWAY where he was memorably blown away by Steve McQueen's shotgun and appears here in a rare (semi) leading role. At this time seemingly saying yes to every script within eyesight ex- Hollywood leading man Stuart Whitman had appeared in Tobe Hopper's excellent and underrated EATEN ALIVE and New Worlds CRAZY MAMA in 1976, Hammer's oddball SHATTER from 1974 and in 1979 he was a scenery chewing Rev. "James Johnson" (i.e. Jim Jones) in Rene Cardone Jr's infamous GUYANA : CULT OF THE DAMNED.
    Robert Burns (credited here as "special effects art director") worked on THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and was most likely responsible for the atmospheric temple setting and the periodically popping up demon statue. The appropriately grungy cinematography is by Alex Phillips Jr. who had shot Sam Peckinpah's (also appropriately grungy) BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA in 1974. Erika Carlsson was a pretty big star in Mexico at the time (which explains her prominent billing on the MACABRA version) and here as the busty nurse who runs afoul of the hand has only one line as she shouts "NOoo...!"  at her demise.
    Although Whitman's mumbling attempted Irish accent comes across as inebriation at some points (which may have well been the case) and Eggar spends most the film staring bug eyed at the proceedings around her, both are pretty good here as they say their lines with much more conviction then the material warrants and giving the entire plot a gravies that almost seems out of place (even when they're trashing about while holding a rubber hand to their face). I've always had a fondness for this ever since I saw it on a double feature with DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE back in the early 80's and because of the weirdly bizarre proceedings and its whack-a-mole style plot DEMONOID is an entertaining exercise in low budget drive-in horror (and would make a wonderful dbl. feature with Oliver Stone's entertainingly bad bigger budgeted THE HAND from the same year).
     Frustratingly hard to view in recent years as DEMONOID's only U.S. release was the old Media VHS tape (which seemed to show up in every Mom & Pop video store in existence at the time) and a few years back there was a quasi-bootleg DVD release of the MACABRA cut in Europe. Vinegar Syndrome recently released it on a DVD/Blu dual pack that image-wise brings forth the WTF (?) story line with in startling clarity, plus it contains both cuts of the film along with some extras including an interview with Zacarias. The equally insane THE BEES is hopefully coming in 2016. Lucky patrons to the early showings of DEMONOID were given a "Demonoid Diploma" (which I would love to find).

All the above screen grabs are from the Vinegar Syndrome DVD

Hey, if E.T. is sold out you can always check out SATAN'S MISTRESS & DEMONOID !

       

Made for T.V. Manson Family - HELTER SKELTER 1976

 

      One of the more seminal and unsettling made for T.V. movie events of the 1970’s HELTER SKELTER is probably best known today for the career defining (or career killing some might say) performance by Steve Railsback as Charles Manson. Originally broadcast in two parts (neatly broken up into the investigation and trial) by NBC on April 1 & 2 1976, it drew a 36.5 rating which makes it about the 16th most popular movie ever shown on network television. As it was broadcast only seven years after the actual events, for a time NBC considered not running it in the Los Angeles viewing area.

    A factual re-telling of the infamous murders perpetrated by Charles Manson and his hippie “family” in Los Angeles during the late summer of 1969, it was based upon the bestselling book by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. In spite of its obvious TV origins that pop up glaringly at some points it’s still surprising to see when watching it today straight thru how what is basically a police and later courtroom procedural movie can hold ones interest for 194 minutes. As to be expected it concentrates more on the prosecution side of things and their efforts to bring a case against Manson and his followers while sorting out the wildly diverging motives (which are still debated to this day).

    The film starts off kind off oddly with Bugliosi (George DiCenzo) addressing the viewing audience directly with a brief preface concerning the case. DiCenzo’s narration continues throughout the rest of the film and does serve a purpose (along with overheard TV newscasts) of filling in various details such as brief background on the victims and the various members of the Manson Family along with some smaller plot points instead of wasting dialogue and running time explaining them. It then follows the timeline of events as laid out the book fairly closely as it starts off immediately with the murders, which although not shown there are quick glimpses of the bloody aftermath and later during the trial testimony there are flashbacks shown that while not overtly gory do still back a punch. Looking back on this it still seems pretty amazing what the filmmakers were able get away with (1970's network television wise) on this.
    Although we do go back to it at certain points, the police investigation is dispensed with pretty quickly as we mostly just have a few scenes of the detectives standing around talking in the squad room and the movie seems more interested in pointing out the errors made by the police as far as mislaying evidence and the separate jurisdictions failing initially to connect the various murders. The film does an admirable job of keeping the various characters and locations cohesive enough to follow (although for those not overtly familiar with the actual case it might get kind of confusing as the plot bounces back & forth between locations and characters are introduced and then disappear). Plus anyone with knowledge of the basic history of the case might be also be confused as some of the names of the family members have been changed (except for a few instances basically it seems that everyone who was not charged at the time with a crime refused to have their real name used).

    As with most TV movies the acting is pretty much all over the map with Railsback’s performance naturally taking front & center with his creepily intense persona (there are instances where he doesn’t blink for what seems like whole minutes) and a performance that for better or worse would loom over his future portrayals and is pretty much the yardstick by which all future portrayals of Manson would be measured against. He brought the same slightly brink of insanity twitchiness to 1980’s THE STUNTMAN (where he also showed some vulnerability, but was upstaged by Peter O’Toole’s maniacal slightly bonkers director) and LIFEFORCE from 1985 - or Charles Manson meets naked space vampires (actually I love LIFEFORCE).
   As far as the Manson girls are concerned Nancy Wolfe is excellent as Susan Atkins and in any other film probably would have got noticed more (she dropped out of sight for about 20 years soon after HELTER SKELTER) and Cathy Paine as a scenery chewing Leslie Van Houten looks more wild eyed then Railsback’s Manson most times. Busy T.V. actress Christina Hart plays Patricia Krenwinkel and oddly enough most times looks like she stepped off the cover of VOGUE magazine. And hey look, there's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE alumnus Marilyn Burns as Linda Kasabian ! DiCenzo as Bugliosi is fairly stiff in the role, but does bring a single minded doggedness along with being the face & voice of the "The Establishment". The rest of the cast is filled with some familiar TV faces including stuntman and tough guy Roy Jenson (it’s amazing how many things he shows up in) from HARPER and CHINATOWN and in a few years he would battle a disembodied hand along with Samantha Eggar in DEMONOID : MESSENGER OF DEATH

   The film was shot on location in the actual house for the LaBianca murder sequence with another house filling in for the Polanski residence and even more bizarrely the L.A. Police Dept. loaned out the actual car used to transport the murderers to their two nights carnage for use in the movie. The Spahn Ranch location (as by this time the real one had burned down) is that vastly familiar western/corrugated warehouse back lot setting that CHARLIE'S ANGELS, ADAM-12, THE BRADY BUNCH among others all showed up on (along with countless westerns naturally).
   With its combination of murder,drugs, satanism, sex and hippies along with rock & Hollywood royalty the Manson story has fascinated filmmakers with the Academy Award nominated documentary MANSON appearing in 1973 and before that from 1971 was THE NIGHT GOD SCREAMED and SWEET SAVIOR (starring former teen heartthrob Troy Donahue as messiah-like killer) with both while not specifically about the actual murder are obviously influenced. Plus there's the very weird THE CULT (AKA THE MANSON MURDERS) from the early 70's with its somewhat mysterious origins. HELTER SKELTER was first major attempt at a dramatic retelling on the events and was remade in 2004 (with more emphasis on Manson himself & the family).
   There has been numerous projects rumoured in recent years with both Oliver Stone and David Fincher's name being attached at various times and more recently Rob Zombie. In addition there's a low budget one in the works titled THE MANSON GIRLS and for a real decent into hell check out Jim Van Beeber's THE MANSON FAMILY.

   HELTER SKELTER was re-edited into a feature length movie (with a bit more violence added) and released theatrically overseas. Supposedly there's a couple of F-bombs still lurking around in the T.V. version (available on DVD), but I've never been able to catch them. For anyone wanting to delve a little deeper into this after reading HELTER SKELTER, I highly recommend Ed Saunders THE FAMILY (which he periodically updates & reprints).

 

THE CAR 1977

Big 'ol Hunk of Evil Detroit Rollin' Iron Terrorizes James Brolin & Kathleen Lloyd !!

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"Is It A Phantom, A Demon or the Devil Himself ?

"There's Nowhere To Run, nowhere to hide, no way to stop..."

    One of the many off-shoots of 70's horror is the "killer vehicle" sub-genre which had its roots in Steven Spielberg's 1971's made for TV thriller DUEL and was kicked into high gear with 1974's JAWS (ironically also Spielberg) which brought the menacing animal (or thing) into popularity. Another piece of this puzzle is 1974's KILLDOZER , which is based upon a 1944 short story by Theodore Sturgeon (and might be considered ground zero for the possessed mechanical thing genre) - and arguably reached its zenith with Stephen King's CHRISTINE in 1983 and the subsequent John Carpenter movie adaptation.

    The film opens ominously with a quote from Anton La Vey's THE SATANIC BIBLE and Le Vey is also has a credit as "Technical Advisor", which probably translates to the producers throwing some money at 'ol Anton to give themselves some satanic street-cred & publicity. Like most movies of this ilk and time period THE CAR was labeled a JAWS knock-off (“JAWS on wheels!”) and is one of those movies that a lot of people have heard of without actually seeing, as its mere title (and the premise that title puts forth) has turned into a parody of 70’s horror.

    Although woefully underwritten in some areas, there is an atmospheric creepiness underlying the story. This is due in no small part to the vast open desert scenery, beautifully shot in widescreen by cinematographer Gerald Herschfeld (for whatever faults THE CAR might have it is a gorgeous looking film). Often put on lists such as “most enjoyable bad movies” its reputation makes it sound like Mystery Science Theatre fodder, which is a shame as its lot better than that. The plot keeps a minimalistic approach to some areas of the story , such as the origin of the car – it just shows up and starts killing people (which I sort of liked) while minor subplots are drawn out in some detail (and often left dangling at the end).

   There is some talk of Indian mysticism (“evil winds”) and veteran character R.G. Armstrong as a wife abusing lowlife is hinted at in the beginning of the film as being linked to the car, but neither of these theories are expanded upon.  Plus there’s a bit of philosophical meandering about, with critic Jim Knipfel writing “If Ingmar Bergman had made a horror movie about a murderous automobile, he would have made THE CAR” (!?). Although it seems doubtful that’s what director Elliot Silverstein and the writers were trying to accomplish (and even more doubtful in regards to the finished product), there is a sense of the supernatural & wonder of the unknown present here instead of just the crude exploitation that you’d expect.
   After a wonderfully atmospheric opening sequence of two young bicyclist being stalked and killed by the car we’re introduced to Sheriff Wade Parent (James Brolin), a single dad of two young girls who’s romantically linked to local school teacher Lauren (the very busy & cute Kathleen Lloyd from THE MISSOURI BREAKS) with their relationship shown in a way too long initial sequence - which does however illustrate the sometimes schizophrenic proceedings of the plot. After a French horn playing hitchhiker (John Rubinstein) is knocked-off by the killer automobile the local sheriff’s office (which seems to consist of an inordinately large amount of personal for a small Idaho desert town) begins investigating and is headed up by familiar face John Marley (probably best known from THE GODFATHER as the producer who ends up with a horse head in his bed).

    In another one those unconnected subplots Marley’s character is shown to have a past relationship with Amos Clements (R.G. Armstrong) abused wife and soon afterward he's chalked up as car fodder which puts Brolin in charge of the investigation (which mostly consists of him racing around on his motorcycle and starring bug-eyed at the car). Ronny Cox appears as an alcoholic deputy and there is some rather oddball humor inserted into a scene with Lloyd and her class trapped in a cemetery by the car (which for a reason never fully explained it cannot enter - although there is some talk of "hollowed ground"), with her shouting insults at the car while it gets more & more pissed while almost throwing temper tantrum in the process. Plus with stuntman and all around movie heavy Roy Jenson (who in a few years would battle a possessed hand in DEMONOID) and Kim Richards (NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR & THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF BEVERLY HILLS), who along with her real life sister Kyle play Brolin's children.

   The solid black driver less car (a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mk III customized by George Barris) is used to great effect in the attack scenes - whether just getting a glimpse of flickering chrome on the desert horizon or the headlights appearing outside a window at night (with a slowly rising wind heralding its arrival) and the weird orange glow that's shown from the interior. Plus there's some pretty good stunts and special effects including the car rolling over a couple of speeding police cars
   One of the things that made JAWS great was that even when the shark was off screen, everybody was talking about the shark. THE CAR goes a little off track at some points with unrelated plot detours and at times because of its lack of those 70's staples blood & nudity it plays out like a TV movie - but its still a solid little movie with some of the little quirks adding to its charm. In a nice surprise this was released on region B blu-ray from Arrow in a packed special edition with interviews, a documentary & director commentary (although this review and screen captures are from the U.S. DVD). In one of the more bizzare movie tie-in toys ever released Kenner marketed an "action" game of THE CAR (which I would love to find).