Brothers.

The next tape off the pile was Alberto De Martino's 1982 thriller Blood Link. This was a recent acquisition and it was probably my recollection of the coverbox that made me pick it up from the Vinegar Syndrome store. I always thought that was Doug Hutchinson on the cover, but it is in fact Michael Moriarty so big upgrade there for a number of reasons. Anyhoo, let's see what we have got here...

An American doctor named Craig (Moriarty) starts having visions of murders happening in Frankfurt. Realizing he is seeing through the eyes of his twin brother, whom he thought died when he was young, Craig sets out to stop him.

Having previously seen some of De Martino's work, namely the Montreal-set Strange Shadows In An Empty Room, I had good reason to think I would enjoy this one and for the most part I did. Shot mostly in Germany with an Italian crew, there are sections that do - especially the climax at the park - feel very giallo. Apart from that though, it becomes very clear that all involved in this project loved Brian De Palma. I mean, a lot of this movie feels like a gender swapped version of Sisters (right down to the fact Craig & Keith were Siamese twins) though there is a sprinkle of Eyes of Laura Mars in there, too. Blood Link is definitely one of those European knock-offs versions of stuff coming out across the pond at that time.

Michael Moriarty as Keith & Craig in Blood Link.

But that's not to say it is without merit. Moriarty, who would've just been starting his long tenure with Larry Cohen, is very good here. At first I thought he was being unusually reserved as Craig, but then I realized he was saving the crazy shit for the evil twin. I'm no doubt sure that the character's penchant for putting jam in his coffee (!) was Moriarty's idea on the day. You've also got an Ennio Morricone score as well as a welcome guest appearance from Cameron Mitchell.

As the movie goes on though, it starts to wear on you when the awkward and uncomfortable (even more than you'd expect) rape scenes start to mount up. I was quite taken with Craig's girlfriend Julie, played by Penelope Milford, to the point I was increasingly worried for her well being. When she took it upon herself to take down Keith, I was sure she was going to end up like Nancy Allen in Blowout. In retrospect it may have been better if she had because the ending she does get - pushed for by the producers apparently - was far more gross and disheartening.

Penelope Milford as Julie. She deserved better.

Blood Link is a more than serviceable thriller with good locales and interesting characters, but its subject matter descends into sleazier territory than one might expect.

May 2023 Horror Trivia Screening List

To all those who came here from the Storm Crow FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog.

If you heard a title while at Wednesday's event and thought “oh that movie sounds cool, I should check that out”, here's a comprehensive list of all the films that were mentioned. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.

For everyone else, maybe there's one or two here you have yet to catch. Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do often stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.

Deadly Eyes (1982)

The Ruins (2008)

Let The Right One In (2008)

The Thing (1982)

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015)

Zombie (1979)

Under The Skin (2013)

X (2022)

Pearl (2022)

Ready Or Not (2019)

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Black Phone (2021)

The Evil Dead (1981)

Inferno (1980)

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

The Beyond (1981)

Wicked Wicked (1973)

Gates of Hell (1980)

Demons (1985)

Bay of Blood (1971)

Suspiria (1977)

Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Nightmare City (1980)

High Tension (2003)

Ebola Syndrome (1996)

Zombie Ass: Toilet of the Dead (2011)

Junk (2000)

Halloween (1978)

Oculus (2013)

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Madman (1981)

The Invisible Man (2020)

The Entity (1982)

100 Feet (2008)

It Follows (2014)

Razorback (1984)

Midsommar (2019)

Phantasm (1979)

Phantasm II (1988)

Phantasm III (1994)

Phantasm IV (1998)

Phantasm: Ravager (2016)

Burnt Offerings (1976)

HMG: Beyond The Door II

The next entry in the Guide was Beyond The Door II, however I didn't realize until I looked closer that this film was actually Mario Bava's last effort Shock retitled for American audiences. I'd seen once or twice before back in the 00's when I dove into his back catalogue, but I figured what the hell, if it's Bava and Daria Nicolodi, it's worth a revisit.

Dora (Nicolodi) returns to her house after a brief stay in the loony bin after her husband's suicide. Being left alone with her son Marco (David Colin Jr.) for long stretches by her new beau (John Steiner), she begins to suspect her husband's spirit is still present.

Shock almost immediately brought a smile to my face because I was reminded that circa 2005 I had a roommate named Mark and I culled a sample from this movie for our answering machine message.

Such good times. Marco is such a little shit, but even with the terrible par-for-the-course dubbing, he still manages to do more than you would expect from a six-year-old. I obviously never realized until now that Marco and that pea soup sucking kid in Beyond The Door were one in the same. Wild, man.

Not unusual for Italian thrillers of this time, the score - by prog rock band Libra - is way out front, to the point I was often confused as to whether the music box and piano music was actually part of the environment. In any case, a solid score that I am currently listening to as I type this. 

Daria Nicolodi in Beyond the Door II aka Shock.

Shock bounces back and forth from psychological to supernatural like a metronome, before finally deciding which one it wants to be. This, with the help of his son Lamberto, was Mario's last film and he still had it way into his sixties. Sure, it's not in the upper echelon of his catalogue, but even lesser Bava is still worth watching. 

I'm not gonna lie, this film does drag in parts, especially when it's just Daria wandering around her house, but he still finds ways to engage with his signature visual flourishes, like the razor blade in the piano keys, that close-up shot of Daria in bed that must have been shot on some sort of rotating set and let's not forget it boasts one of the all-time great jump scares;

Shock was a worthy revisit that I am glad the Guide concurred with. I can't say I agree with their knock on the visuals though. I mean sure, it ain't Blood and Black Lace... but what is?

HMG: Beyond The Door

The next entry in the Guide was Ovidio G. Assonitis' 1974 flick Beyond The Door. I obviously knew the coverbox from way back, but didn't really know what I was in for.

Jessica (Juliet Mills) has a lot on her plate, not only being possessed by a demon, but also apparently carrying the devil's child. Levitation, regurgitation and desecration ensues.

It's funny to me that I just watched Beyond Evil, a film with similar themes to Beyond The Door, but couldn't be more different. Evil attempts to tell a coherent story - it fails, but at least tries - whereas Door has no such allusions. This is textbook Italian replication at work here. Mix together a large helping of The Exorcist (which came out the year previous) with some Rosemary's Baby, add some weirdo badly dubbed children and sprinkle a Euro-funkadelic score on top and voila; you've got Beyond The Door!

I have so many questions, chief among them, why is the son obsessed with pea soup, to the point he drinks it from the fucking can? Is it some sort of in-joke about Pazuzu vomit? Both these kids talk like they're from outer space. Man, onscreen children that call their parents by their first names always irk me. But I digress. Whatever the deal was with those kids was irrelevant anyway because they are mercifully shuffled away in the third act, save for the nonsensical final freeze frame.

Like, what the fuck dude?

Beyond The Door is just so perplexing. It should be simple, but just can't help going off on these strange tangents, like that extended scene when the husband, Argento regular Gabe Lavia, is accosted by nose-fluting buskers on the sidewalk. Oh, I forgot about this... the movie opens with narration from the Devil himself. I don't know why the Prince of Darkness felt the need to lay everything out for us, but thanks I guess? You know what I'd like to forget? That skeezy goodnight kiss scene. Ick.

This all results in a movie that feels loooong. However, I did appreciate that at some points two scenes were super-imposed over each other to save time. I guess the only real takeaway - apart from the usual bonkers Eurotropes - was Mills' performance as she really gives her all in the possession scenes. I'm sure this wasn't what she was envisioning when she signed onto this project - her last film in Italy was alongside Jack Lemmon - but that's the nature of the biz I guess.

It looks like the Guide had even less tolerance for Beyond The Door than I did, finding the kids equally as boggling.

S is for Specters (1987)

This one was a blind buy at yet another Rue Morgue flea market. I'd never heard of it, but it has Donald Pleasance in it so that was enough for me to shell out five bucks.

Drilling near an archeological dig site in Rome unleashes an ancient demon.

Specters was pretty straightforward stuff, and yet incoherent at the same time. The Italians can usually be counted on to spice up said confusion so you can at least rejoice in the din, but director Marcello Avallone falls short of the mark. This movie had four(!) screenwriters and it shows, as there are more than one subplots that struggle to take center stage. Is this movie about a pissed off demon? Is it about duelling archeologists? Is it about an actress/singer's failing career?

Trine Michelsen in Specters

It is amusing to watch Donald Pleasance half-ass his way though the few days (if that) he was on set. To be fair though, even Pleasance at fifty-percent makes a movie one-hundred percent better. Was there ever anyone who could describe evil better than Sir Donald?

Despite its shortcomings, there were some bright spots. The score by Lele Marchitelli & Danilo Rea slaps and regular Argento collaborator Sergio Stivaletti is on hand for the gore effects, even if it is mostly just demon claws coming into frame to rip off people's flesh.

Not much more to say about this one. It's no The Keep that's for sure. Onto the next!

Q is for A Quiet Place to Kill (1970)

Q's beyond The Winged Serpent and Quatemass are not abundant so I had to dig deep. Fortunately, due to Shudder's fairly large Euro-horror catalogue, I was able to pull this one out.

After recovering from a injury while racing, Helen (Carroll Baker) accepts an invitation to visit her ex-husband Maurice (Jean Sorel) in Majorca, only to be sucked into a murder plot.

This was my first giallo for Alphabet Slop and I'd almost forgotten how much fun they are. Everything is just amped up. The music is boppier, the locales are prettier, the clothes are flashier, and the women, hoo boy, the women are nuder. Now, I wouldn't call QP2K a horror persay, truth be told it's really only gialli adjacent - it has more in common with Diabolique than it does Deep Red - but with more treacherous seaside driving. Seriously that dash-cam made me very uncomfortable.

Carroll Baker & Jean Sorel in A Quiet Place To Kill

Cinephiles often equate director Umberto Lenzi with his cannibal films, but he was a very versatile director. Seven Bloodstained Orchids is an underseen gem and Nightmare City is terrific schlock. I talked about the endless superfluous dialogue scenes that sucked the life out of Open House. Well, QP2K has those same scenes, except Lenzi knows how to make them sing. He'll show some skin, have two men play chess who very clearly have NO IDEA how to play chess, or ahem.. .murder some pigeons. It is Lenzi, after all...

Yes, let's shock zoom over to the ladies. Lenzi mainstay Baker was stunning and rocked a mean leather jacket. Her rivals Anna Proclemer & Marina Coffa were no slouches either. I was surprised to see Coffa had little work after this movie because she had real presence and reminded me of someone I couldn't put my finger on. Margot Kidder? Jen Connolly? 

Anyway, this was a good bit of fun from Lenzi's catlalogue and I can see myself checking out the other two films in this apparent trilogy - Paranoia & So Sweet, So Perverse - at some point in the future.

B is for Beyond the Darkness (1979)

This viewing was a long time coming. This 88 Films release of Beyond the Darkness has been sitting on my shelf for a decade after being brought over from the UK. Anytime my parents would visit relatives overseas, my Mom would always bring me back something horror related. Only she's horror averse so it would inevitably be something random that she thought I'd like. When I was younger it was easy because she'd grab me the latest James Herbert novel (which were never available on this side of the pond), but since he's no longer with us this particular time she just picked a DVD with the most striking cover. And to her credit, it does have some pretty bad-ass artwork. 

A taxidermist named Francesco (Kieran Canter) digs up his dead lover and brings her home.

Beyond the Darkness was Joe D'Amato's 1979 remake of I imagine a lot less sleazy Franco Nero picture called The Third Eye. It's a bit hard to nail down this movie in that I spent the first half wondering what the fuck was going on. I get Francesco is a weirdo and wants to Gein his girlfriend, but why bring all these random ladies back to his place for no other reason than to quench D'Amato's insatiable urge for boobs and bush.

I believe that it had something to do with his housekeeper/milkmaid Iris (Franca Stoppi) - it's all very vague - as she seemed to pulling the strings based on the one voodoo ritual she performed after the opening credits. There's so little dialogue at the onset, I kind of had to infer a lot. Then, to be honest, the further it went along, the harder it was to stay conscious. 

I feel you...

I do know one thing... THE SOUNDTRACK SLAPS! Provided by Goblin (credited here as The Goblins) it is definitely the best part of the movie. Unless you're into necrophilia...

Overall, I've seen better D'Amato and I've seen worse. I do have to say I think I made the rare mistake of watching the subtitled version over the dubbed. While I was on YT pulling the pictures/gifs I could see that the latter was much more of a hoot. Oh well, live and learn. 

R.I.P. Giannetto De Rossi 1942-2021.

Today we sadly say goodbye to legendary FX artist Giannetto De Rossi. Rest in peace.

R.I.P. Daria Nicolodi 1950-2020.

I was saddened to hear about the passing of actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi yesterday. She was 70. Nicolodi was an integral contributor to Italian horror cinema. 

Daria Nicolodi 1950-2020

She starred in dozens of horrors, including several of maestro Dario Argento's films, including Deep Red, Tenebrae and Inferno, as well as co-writing Suspiria. Nicolodi & Argento also share a daughter Asia, a fierce filmmaker in her own right. The trio collaborated in 2007 with the last of the Three Mothers trilogy, Mother of Tears.

Rest in peace, Daria.

Happy 80th!

Happy 80th birthday to Italian shock maestro Dario Argento!

Source: Tenebrae (1982)

Fulci For Fake

Simone Scafidi's half biopic/half documentary on the life of legendary director Lucio Fulci looks pretty dope.

I'm down!

Still Puzzlin'

I finished my latest puzzle, Messed Up's edition of the Lucio Fulci classic The Beyond, graciously lent to me by my gal pal Ali.

It took a while because there are sections that are the same colour and the individual pieces are less unique than Mondo's Thing puzzle were. I'm just glad I got to finish this before The Last of Us Part II came out.

Not sure what the next one will be or if there will be a next one. Puzzling isn't my natural state so now that things are slowly returning to normal in my corner of the world - not to mention the weather becoming more favourable - it may fall by the wayside. We'll see I guess.

Wild is Right!

I decided to take a break from streaming services and crack open something from my stacks of physical media. Within reach of the couch was Franco Prosperi's 1984 animal attack opus Wild Beasts.

A tainted water supply causes animals in the area to go crazy and attack humans.

I was obviously familiar with the coverbox, but holy balls was I not prepared for this movie. Wild Beasts is fucking bonkers. My jaw spent most of this movie on the floor because I couldn't wrap my head around how a) they got the animals to do some of this stuff and b) how the filmmakers were ALLOWED to do it. I swear, that cheetah chase scene is almost as impressive to me as Fulci's infamous zombie vs. shark sequence. This movie is just one crazy (and often ill-advised) set piece after another.

I watched the making of interviews afterwards and I had to scoff at some of their explanations. They got the animals from a circus and breeding farms and Prosperi made it seem like they just gave them all back after they finished shooting. Okay, but what about the rats YOU SET ON FIRE?!

I wonder which production committed more raticide, this one or Bruno Mattei's Rats: Night of Terror. I know that these rats were probably going to be offed in labs or eaten by pet snakes, but still. Not cool. They also maintained that when the animals were attacking each other (the hyena in the pig pen for instance) they just went their separate ways when they yelled “cut”. I remain unconvinced.

Perhaps the most disturbing part though was the introduction to Suzy (Louisa Lloyd) as she leapt half-naked out of bed. I literally threw my hand over the eyes, yelling “Jesus, how old is she?”. She was like, twelve if she was a day. This movie is the fucking Wild West. I guess I should have expected this from the dude who made Mondo Cane.

Common sense and decency aside, Wild Beasts is pretty bitchin'. The gore is pretty good and because there is something batshit happening every ten minutes, it really moves. I'm surprised this movie isn't talked about more, especially considering how cinephiles lost their shit when the Alamo released Roar! a few years back.

Horror-Rama 2019

The sixth annual Horror-Rama took place last weekend in Toronto.

The usual fun was had by all, but this year was particularly significant because the HR gang was able to bring out living legend Lamberto Bava. I mean, this guy was at ground zero during one of horror's most significant eras. At his panel - interpreted by actress Geretta Geretta - he recalled tales of working in Italian cinema, how his seminal film Demons came into being and what he's been doing since. It was pretty surreal having him there to be honest.

Director Lamberto Bava & actress/interpreter Geretta Geretta

I caught up with the usual familiar faces behind the vendor booths and of course picked out some choice cuts.

I was also glad to catch up with Schwartzy, as well as effects artists Steve Kostanski and Jeff Derushie, the latter pair of which were esteemed guests at the convention.

Director/FX artist Steve Kostanski (left) & Jeff Derushie.

Now, the main reason I was there was a retrospective on one of my favourite cult Canadian horror films and IT DID NOT disappoint. But more on that tomorrow...

NYG.

Geez, I wish I lived in New York - at least in October - so I could catch this screening of Black Gloves and Razors at Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater. Once a legendary bootleg tape of the gialli's greatest hits cobbled together by musician Sam McKinlay, it has now been digitized and ready to stain the walls of the Spectacle red. Here's the sizzle reel.

I don't often succumb to FOMO - because frankly my own city has an embarrassment of riches - but DAYAMMMMM. Black Gloves and Razors plays the Spectacle Theater Oct 5th and 31st.

Eyesore Haul

There was a VHS swap meet down at the ol' Eyesore Cinema this weekend and here is the resulting booty.

Looking forward to digging into these over the next few months. Been a long time since I watched The Mangler, but my memories of it are quite fond. I mean, you really haven't lived until you've seen Ted Levine get attacked by an icebox.

Lucio's Eyes.

This week, I decided to start out 2019 with some Lucio Fulci and my VHS of his 1977 giallo, The Psychic.

When a vision leads her to a body inside the walls of her husband's former home, Virginia (Jennifer O'Neill) goes about trying to solve the crime.

The Psychic was made right before Fulci's extended foray into the supernatural – for which many consider to have been his best period – with titles that included Zombie, The Beyond, House By The Cemetery and City of the Living Dead. With this one being on the cusp of that era, I actually found myself surprised by how understated this movie was.

With the body count standing at an anemic three – with only one happening onscreen – I would go so far as to say The Psychic was downright restrained. It also didn't help that the aforementioned death scene was an almost shot-for-shot lift from Fulci's earlier film Don't Torture A Duckling.

The Psychic at its heart was a giallo with all the usual misdirects, visual queues and star Jennifer O'Neill put in a solid performance and she wandered from shock zoom to shock zoom. Seriously, there were so many, it would've made Mario Bava blush.

The story owed most of its DNA to Edgar Allan Poe, namely The Black Cat, but with the furry object of its climax switched out for a watch alarm. A pair of things struck me about that, first was how much the final moments mirrored Denis Villeneuve's 2013 film Prisoners and also that Fulci felt the need to revisit this Poe classic less than five years later in 1981, albeit with a better cast and more grandeur.

Though The Psychic may be the weakest of Fulci's giallos, it was still super watchable on the strengths of tried and true formula and a solid score by Fabio Frizzi.