Hitch Magazine | Ancient Evil

The Killing Kind

(1973)

****

While at the beach one fine day, Terry’s friends decide to gang rape a screaming coed under the pier. Terry (a young John Savage of The Deer Hunter) will have nothing to do with it, but his pals yank off his swim trunks and force him to have a go. He screams in horror.

Two years later, Terry has been released from a two-year jail stint for the crime and goes home to his mama Thelma, the tubby Ann Sothern, who runs a boarding house for elderly women and new tenant Cindy Williams. Thelma dotes on her boy, making him chocolate milk, asking for kisses and even taking pictures of him while he showers. So yeah, their relationship isn’t exactly normal.

The first clue that Terry’s wiring isn’t properly hooked up is that he wants to watch Williams undress. (Who could ever look at Shirley that way? Ewww!) The next one is when he strangles his mom’s cat, or when he almost drowns Williams. But the clincher has to be when he hunts down the coed from the opening incident and runs her off a cliff, killing her. He follows this up by almost choking his own mother and poisoning his lawyer (Ruth Roman) and setting her house on fire.

Why? The film doesn’t offer any explanations. It’s simply implied that forced coochie makes you snap. But it makes for enjoyable ‘70s trash from director Curtis Harrington nonetheless.

Anatomy of a Psycho

(1961)

*

In this turgid crime melodrama/JD quickie, the scar-faced brother of a man about to be executed on death row just can’t take it and snaps. He believes his brother is innocent and wants to take revenge on those responsible for putting him behind bars. This entails him putting on a potato-sack mask and roughing people up. There’s a party scene, an act or arson, a foot chase and not much else. With nothing going on, it’s a torturous 75 minutes.

Maniac

(1934)

*

Dwain Esper’s Maniac is one of the more notorious early exploitation films, but it’s still dreadfully boring, even at 50 minutes. And while you can cut it a little slack for being from the ‘30s, the story still doesn’t make a lick of sense. Maniac is amateurish in all aspects, from the actors (sometimes gazing in the camera) to Esper’s direction (sometimes the performers’ faces are blocked by props).

An old, eccentric doctor and his young assistant are experimenting with formulas to revive the dead. When the doctor wants to kill the assistant and then bring him back with a new heart, the assistant shoots the doctor dead. Instead of shooting him with reanimating juice, however, he holes him up in the wall of the basement and then changes his appearance – he’s a vaudeville actor, you see – to look like the doctor so no one will notice his absence.

To help mask the illusion, the assistant-as-doctor keeps seeing patients, including a shy topless chick and one man who goes mad, kidnaps a formerly dead girl, strips off her clothes and rapes her. Meanwhile, the assistant’s wife hangs out with her friends in their bras and granny panties. The nudity in this must have been shocking way back then; now it’s simply comical.

The high point comes out of nowhere, when the assistant grabs a cat and pokes its eye out in graphic detail, admires it (“Why, it’s not unlike an oyster … or a grape!”) and pops it in his mouth. Bon appetit! Then the cops arrive and find the doc in the wall, thanks to the cries of a cat accidentally trapped in there with him, thanks to a storyline swiped from Poe. Then you get to go to sleep, if you haven’t already.

Horror Express

(1972)

***

While exploring the frozen lands of China at the turn of the century, explorer Christopher Lee finds a half-man/half-ape frozen in a block of ice. When it gets it on the choo-choo train to go home, bad things start to happen. Probably because curious rival Peter Cushing pays the baggage man to open up the secret crate and have a look-see.

The prehistoric monster thaws, gets loose and its eyes glow red, causing anyone who looks at it to have their eyes turn white and bleed, and instantly fall down dead. Midway through, the train makes a stop to pick up crazy, sword-slingin’ cop Telly Savalas, and even he doesn’t quite prove a match for the hairy foe.

The premise is a fine one, but Horror Express is a little slow, no matter how many times the frequent cutaways of the speeding model train try to make me believe otherwise. It’s also overly, if not gratuitously, British.