Halloween always gets me in the mood for the classic
Universal monsters, so I thought I would revisit a Spanish monster mash-up (done in
the vein of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) and House of Frankenstein
(1944)) that I had not seen in over ten years.
Assignment Terror is one
of the Paul Naschy films I revisited the least for some reason. Naschy
wrote and starred in it, but at the same time I couldn’t help thinking it
needed a little more Naschy. Paul Naschy’s scripts usually come
off as real personal projects, but, even with the presence of the Universal
monsters that inspired Naschy’s childhood love for horror, I didn’t
quite feel that as much with Assignment Terror. But to be fair, it is quite early
in Naschy’s filmography. Plus, I can see how Naschy might’ve
thought it best to have his tragic lycanthrope character Waldemar Daninsky step
aside a little to make room for the other classic monsters. In the end, it
still ends up being Naschy’s show and what I think is an alright old-school
monster movie that has got a few neat tricks up its sleeve. The whole thing is
of course messy and flawed but also kind of whacky and fun.
For me, going back to Macumba Sexual is going back to my Jess
Franco origins, as it was the second Jess Franco film I ever saw, the
first being Mansion of the Living Dead (1982). I came across both Severin
DVDs of these films at a video store in 2007 and took a chance with Mansion
first even though I was expecting it to be terrible (I had heard of Jess
Franco and a not so revered zombie movie by the name of Oasis of
the Zombies (1982)). At the time, I was desperate for something new, and I
was sort of fascinated by the cheap looking blind dead Templar rip-offs on the DVD
cover (Diet Tombs of the Blind Dead?). My expectations were low, but it turned
out to be a funny, sexy, ultra-weird, and surprisingly atmospheric horror movie
with a captivating lead actress, Lina Romay (born Rosa Maria Almirall). I shortly went
back to the store for Macumba Sexual and, despite some frustrations,
have been hooked on Jess Franco ever since (thanks Severin!).
Evil Eye is that kind of movie that
gracefully tries to do it all but ends up not really knowing what to do with
itself afterwards. When looking at the film as a whole, it feels like a nice
recap of the enduring motifs of the giallo, occult, gothic horror, and erotica
film, and for that it will surely find a place in the hearts of Eurocult fans (it
certainly has for me), but it’s hard to tell if it is a work of genius, a
mistake of a masterpiece, or just an empty, routine cash-in. Is it great or not-great? I honestly have referred to
it as both.
The Spanish, Italian, Mexican co-production Evil Eye
(aka Mal de ojo in Spain, Malocchio and Eroticofollia in
Italy, and Más allá del exorcismo in Mexico) is directed and co-written
by Mario Siciliano. It was also co-written by Spanish writers Julio
Buchs and Federico De Urrutia. Interestingly, Buchs and De
Urrutia have several co-writing credits together, such as Alta tension
(1972) and A Bullet for Sandoval (1969), many of which Buchs directed. Evil
Eye seems to be the very last film either writer worked on. Julio Buchs
died in 1973 before the film was released.
This wicked looking poster for the nominally X-rated
Italian/German drama The Sex of Angels
and the Google plot synopsis, which reads “young women steal a yacht and kidnap
a young man and spend a weekend having sex and doing drugs,” really aren’t all
that misleading, although there’s a lot more to the story. The poster also
exaggerates the situation, as what is depicted is rather the result of a
conundrum brought on by irresponsibility followed by an even more irresponsible
course of action.
The setup to The Sex
of Angels is, of course, an appealing one to the male fancy. Being seized by three
beautiful modern-day angels and taken on a boat ride into the endless summer of
’68? Why not? It sounds like a good time, and for the most part it is, but in
trying to postulate what the film might be trying to say with its outcome, I
can’t help but put it in the context of ‘60s youth counter culture and the sexual
revolution and see it as a cautionary tale of seduction and widespread use of LSD
and what I thought was a kind of critical impression of the behaviors of the “sexually
liberated.”
I’ve been a fan of Alice
in Wonderland since I was a kid, although I didn’t read Lewis Carroll’s Alice books until I was an
adult, which was prompted by my first viewing of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice
(1988), and ever since reading them I’ve been pretty enthusiastic about keeping
an eye out for films inspired by or adapted from the books, which was what
attracted me to the French surrealist film Alice
or the Last Escapade in the first place. I thought the film did a pretty
good job at creating an interesting new take on Alice in Wonderland (without actually being about Alice in Wonderland) while also being a
bit derivative and having an ending that viewers will no doubt have seen before
that I still thought was beautifully executed. It’s also very much of the ‘70s
Eurocult sensibility and a product of its time, but it feels like there’s also a
little something here for everyone, including the curious Alice in wonderland fan (who doesn’t mind a lightly inspired
non-adaptation), and even the surreal, the arthouse, or even the gothic horror
fan.
