Hitch Magazine | Ten Nights of Terror

Death at Love House

(1975)

**

Made for TV, Death at Love House drops married writers Robert Wagner and Kate Jackson in the empty, spooky home of long-deceased Hollywood starlet Lorna Love (played by a hot Marianne Hill), where they are conducting research for a book they’re writing about Lorna’s affair with Wagner’s artist father.

Seems the bosomy actress dabbled in the black arts! They see mysterious figures running across the lawn, yet they don’t leave. John Carradine visits one night, only to be found dead on the grounds the next morning, yet they don’t leave. They meet Lorna’s cat named Nosferatu, yet they don’t leave. Kate nearly gets killed by a gas leak when she’s locked in the bathroom, yet they don’t leave.

Rather, Wagner gets all RJ on us, staying put because he’s having lucid fantasies and dreams about makin’ it with Lorna. Kate pouts, but doesn’t put up much of a fight, and sounds like a 9-year-old girl. The supernatural film is star-laden (if you count embarrassing appearances by old-school Dorothy Lamour and Joan Blondell as stars) and one-note, although it does have a perverse (and thus, hilarious) twist I didn’t see coming.

Snake People

(1968)

**

I had high hopes for Snake People – one of Boris Karloff’s final films – because for the first seven minutes, it’s basically an atrociously dubbed Mexican midget in a tophat sacrificing a chicken. Poor dubbing and midgets are a staple of Mexican cinema, and the only way it could get more Mexican is if it had a masked wrestler and a guy in a bee suit. But it does have such household names as Julissa, Tongolele, Santanon and Martinique.

Either the story – from Jack Hill – is so incredibly complex that the film fails to adequately tell it or so disarmingly simple they just plain forgot to tell it. But Karloff, in full Col. Sanders regalia and a Styrofoam hat that shakes more than he does, plays a scientist experimenting with mind control, voodoo curses and good ol’ zombiefication. One guy tries to make it with his Nubian zombie princess, so the Main Snake Belly Dancer Girl punishes this act by turning her to ashes, ashes, she all falls down. The big shock of Snake People isn’t the one the film presents at the end, but that I sat through this whole thing without once fast-forwarding.

Horror Hotel

(1960)

***

When is not a good idea for a comely college co-ed to take a road trip by herself to do research for her term paper?

a) When her subject is witchcraft;

b) When her all-too-eager professor who gives detailed directions to the town is played by Christopher Lee; and

c) When the hotel where he suggests – if not demands – she stay is run by a hundreds-year-old witch.

In a twist similar to the same year’s Psycho, the girl gets killed – in an elaborate satanic sacrifice – halfway through, leaving her femme brother and knucklehead boyfriend to come looking for her, only to discover the mysteries of the coven. And all this could have been avoided if the girl would have simply kept that ominous trapdoor in her hotel room floor shut! I don’t believe any college girl is this dedicated to academics, anyway – at least not any girl that wears that kind of lingerie.

Unfortunately, Horror Hotel doesn’t have anything approaching the shocks or the scares of Psycho, though it does do a credible job of establishing a spooky atmosphere upfront. It might be more effective had it not revealed the plot’s “secrets” in the prologue.

Indestructible Man

(1956)

****

First of all, the Indestrucible Man of the title is not indestructible. If that were the case, the movie would go on and on forever. And since he’s played by Lon Chaney Jr., I’m not all that sure he’s a man, either. But that aside, Chaney is “The Butcher,” a two-bit robber thrown in prison and sentenced to death after his accomplices double-cross him.

While attempting to cure cancer, a local scientist uses Chaney’s fried cadaver for research purposes, and accidentally revives him with 287,000 volts! Though the process has given him life and super-strength, it has burned out his vocal chords, thus playing to Lonny’s limitations for the remainder of the film. His acting from then on mostly consists of quivering his eyeballs in menacing close-ups.

The now-bullet-invulnerable Chaney’s order of business is to seek out and kill the men who put him in jail, but Chaney is such a sweaty, disheveled, lumbering ox that he looks like he’s constantly in search of a nice, quiet hole in which to take a grizzly-bear dump. Aiding the cops in their search for Mr. Indestructible is a voluptuous stripper (Marian Carr), who toils at a burlesque house introduced with a quasi-disturbing establishing shot of a sign reading “TAQUITOS – CHILI SHOP.”

This nice-girl stripper tells the lead detective, “For the past six months, I’ve only known you as Lt. Chasen. Don’t you have a first name?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, pausing for sexual effect. “Dick.”

She smiles mischievously while rubbing a finger along her lips. Yowsa!

Eventually, Lon is turned into a bacon-faced meatball via flame-thrower. This death, like the movie, is fun and efficient – a pulpy crime tale with an outrageous sci-fi bent. Dig the incredibly chauvinist ending!

Dominique Is Dead

(1979)

**

Cliff Robertson is a man who loves money and hates his wife, Dominique (Jean Simmons). So he plots to drive her insane, and ends up causing her to do the ol’ dangling-from-a-noose dance. Yes, kids, Dominique Is Dead!

Or is she? Seems Cliff sees visions of her walking down the hall at night and hears her piano playing on its own. Could someone be trying to beat him at his own mind games? Well, of course. And that makes what could have been a good ghost story not a true ghost story at all. Regardless, it’s slow going anyway.

Nightmare Castle

(1966)

*

Barbara Steele does the philandering wife thing again in the markedly laborious Nightmare Castle, and pays for it early when her resourceful scientist hubby electrocutes her and her gardener lover after chaining them to the bed. He then remarries, to his wife’s loony sister (also Steele), and she’s driven even madder by visions of bleeding plants and mysterious laughter in the middle of the night. Gee, what could possibly be going on? Not much of anything, really; I was bored stiff.

Invisible Ghost

(1941)

***

Barely an hour long and this good-ol’-fashioned Bela Lugosi vehicle has almost as many plots as its DVD does chapter stops. Everyone’s favorite smack-lovin’ Hungarian plays a guy who – whenever he sees his nutty wife out of the lawn – goes into hypnotic trances and strangles people in his house with his robe. Strangely, the police are baffled.

It’s part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, part thriller, part slapstick comedy and all very incoherent, anchored by a truly terrible performance from the wooden Lugosi. For the record, there’s no ghost, nothing invisible.

Carnival of Souls

(1962)

*****

Even if it weren’t a low-budget film, Carnival of Souls would still be a benchmark in psychological horror. The perfectly eerie little movie is one of the genre’s most overlooked and underappreciated gems, even though its influence can be seen today in everything from Night of the Living Dead to The Sixth Sense.

Candace Hilligoss stars as a lonely church organist who is the only survivor of the opening scene’s freak car accident. Her world grows stranger after that, finding herself mysterious drawn to a long-abandoned carnival and being haunted by visions of a pasty-faced ghost (director Herk Harvey).

Though it’s a bit slow – scenes tend to be drawn out, with stretches of silence – there’s no question as to its effectiveness and atmosphere (not to mention a few well-placed shocks). Harvey does wonders with what little money he had, and his direction looks like a million bucks.

Wolfman

(1979)

**

Earl Owensby serves as producer of Wolfman. And yet despite his jiggly man-breasts and enough back hair to weave a shawl, he is also the film’s star. This leads me to believe that maybe he won the writer/director’s “You Pay, You Star” contest.

Miscast doesn’t quite cover it, but Owensby portrays Colin Glasgow, a man who returns home at the turn of the century after news of his father’s untimely passing. He soon learns that dear ol’ Dad was a werewolf (or were-wolf, wear-wolf and weir-wolf; take your pick, as the movie uses all three pronunciations) and he will inherit the Satanic curse. As the title suggests, he eventually does and goes on a throat-biting rampage in an impeccably clean white dress shirt and halfway-decent monster mask.

The production values are pretty impressive for a low-budget film shot in North Carolina, but its earnest attempt at Gothic horror is completely derailed by the multitude of accents, from the Valley Girl barkeep and the borscht belt doctor to Owensby’s Droopy Dog.

At one point, Owensby looks at a newspaper story about the mysterious wolf slayings, but in the corner, there’s another headline that caught my eye: “CHURCH HOMECOMING DISRUPTED BY BEES.” At this point in the film, I thought, “Now that’s the movie I want to see!”

Track of the Moon Beast

(1976)

****

After being nicked by a falling meteorite, a mild-mannered but vaguely redneck and oft-shirtless anthropologist is turned by night into a raging reptilian monster – a “moon beast,” if you will. This understandably complicates the new relationship he’s started with a blonde photographer who wears ultra-short shorts and may be one of the worst actresses of all time (“Moon rocks? Oh, wow!”).

As anyone who’s seen this mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000 can tell you, Track is a real howler, amateurish and slipshod in every sense of the word. Even after watching, I wouldn’t be able to pick the leading man out of a lineup, because he’s always obscuring his face from the camera’s view. Can’t say I blame him.




The Unofficial Brentwood Communications 10-Movie DVD Sets Shrine and Info Center

	TEN NIGHTS OF TERROR (2002) Reviewed: Death at Love House Snake People Horror Hotel The Indestructible Man Dominique Is Dead Nightmare Castle Invisible Ghost Carnival of Souls Wolfman Track of the Moon Beast



		BUY ME!

Death at Love House (1975) Made for TV, Death at Love House drops married writers Robert Wagner and Kate Jackson in the empty, spooky home of long-deceased Hollywood starlet Lorna Love (played by a hot Marianne Hill), where they are conducting research for a book they’re writing about Lorna’s affair with Wagner’s artist father. Seems the bosomy actress dabbled in the black arts! They see mysterious figures running across the lawn, yet they don’t leave. John Carradine visits one night, only to be found dead on the grounds the next morning, yet they don’t leave. They meet Lorna’s cat named Nosferatu, yet they don’t leave. Kate nearly gets killed by a gas leak when she’s locked in the bathroom, yet they don’t leave. Rather, Wagner gets all RJ on us, staying put because he’s having lucid fantasies and dreams about makin’ it with Lorna. Kate pouts, but doesn’t put up much of a fight, and sounds like a 9-year-old girl. The supernatural film is star-laden (if you count embarrassing appearances by old-school Dorothy Lamour and Joan Blondell as stars) and one-note, although it does have a perverse (and thus, hilarious) twist I didn’t see coming. Snake People (1968) I had high hopes for Snake People – one of Boris Karloff’s final films – because for the first seven minutes, it’s basically an atrociously dubbed Mexican midget in a tophat sacrificing a chicken. Poor dubbing and midgets are a staple of Mexican cinema, and the only way it could get more Mexican is if it had a masked wrestler and a guy in a bee suit. But it does have such household names as Julissa, Tongolele, Santanon and Martinique. Either the story – from Jack Hill – is so incredibly complex that the film fails to adequately tell it or so disarmingly simple they just plain forgot to tell it. But Karloff, in full Col. Sanders regalia and a Styrofoam hat that shakes more than he does, plays a scientist experimenting with mind control, voodoo curses and good ol’ zombiefication. One guy tries to make it with his Nubian zombie princess, so the Main Snake Belly Dancer Girl punishes this act by turning her to ashes, ashes, she all falls down. The big shock of Snake People isn’t the one the film presents at the end, but that I sat through this whole thing without once fast-forwarding. Horror Hotel (1960) * When is not a good idea for a comely college co-ed to take a road trip by herself to do research for her term paper? a) When her subject is witchcraft; b) When her all-too-eager professor who gives detailed directions to the town is played by Christopher Lee; and c) When the hotel where he suggests – if not demands – she stay is run by a hundreds-year-old witch. In a twist similar to the same year’s Psycho, the girl gets killed – in an elaborate satanic sacrifice – halfway through, leaving her femme brother and knucklehead boyfriend to come looking for her, only to discover the mysteries of the coven. And all this could have been avoided if the girl would have simply kept that ominous trapdoor in her hotel room floor shut! I don’t believe any college girl is this dedicated to academics, anyway – at least not any girl that wears that kind of lingerie. Unfortunately, Horror Hotel doesn’t have anything approaching the shocks or the scares of Psycho, though it does do a credible job of establishing a spooky atmosphere upfront. It might be more effective had it not revealed the plot’s “secrets” in the prologue. Indestructible Man (1956) First of all, the Indestrucible Man of the title is not indestructible. If that were the case, the movie would go on and on forever. And since he’s played by Lon Chaney Jr., I’m not all that sure he’s a man, either. But that aside, Chaney is “The Butcher,” a two-bit robber thrown in prison and sentenced to death after his accomplices double-cross him. While attempting to cure cancer, a local scientist uses Chaney’s fried cadaver for research purposes, and accidentally revives him with 287,000 volts! Though the process has given him life and super-strength, it has burned out his vocal chords, thus playing to Lonny’s limitations for the remainder of the film. His acting from then on mostly consists of quivering his eyeballs in menacing close-ups. The now-bullet-invulnerable Chaney’s order of business is to seek out and kill the men who put him in jail, but Chaney is such a sweaty, disheveled, lumbering ox that he looks like he’s constantly in search of a nice, quiet hole in which to take a grizzly-bear dump. Aiding the cops in their search for Mr. Indestructible is a voluptuous stripper (Marian Carr), who toils at a burlesque house introduced with a quasi-disturbing establishing shot of a sign reading “TAQUITOS – CHILI SHOP.” This nice-girl stripper tells the lead detective, “For the past six months, I’ve only known you as Lt. Chasen. Don’t you have a first name?” “Uh-huh,” he says, pausing for sexual effect. “Dick.” She smiles mischievously while rubbing a finger along her lips. Yowsa! Eventually, Lon is turned into a bacon-faced meatball via flame-thrower. This death, like the movie, is fun and efficient – a pulpy crime tale with an outrageous sci-fi bent. Dig the incredibly chauvinist ending! Dominique Is Dead (1979) Cliff Robertson is a man who loves money and hates his wife, Dominique (Jean Simmons). So he plots to drive her insane, and ends up causing her to do the ol’ dangling-from-a-noose dance. Yes, kids, Dominique Is Dead! Or is she? Seems Cliff sees visions of her walking down the hall at night and hears her piano playing on its own. Could someone be trying to beat him at his own mind games? Well, of course. And that makes what could have been a good ghost story not a true ghost story at all. Regardless, it’s slow going anyway. Nightmare Castle (1966) * Barbara Steele does the philandering wife thing again in the markedly laborious Nightmare Castle, and pays for it early when her resourceful scientist hubby electrocutes her and her gardener lover after chaining them to the bed. He then remarries, to his wife’s loony sister (also Steele), and she’s driven even madder by visions of bleeding plants and mysterious laughter in the middle of the night. Gee, what could possibly be going on? Not much of anything, really; I was bored stiff. Invisible Ghost (1941) * Barely an hour long and this good-ol’-fashioned Bela Lugosi vehicle has almost as many plots as its DVD does chapter stops. Everyone’s favorite smack-lovin’ Hungarian plays a guy who – whenever he sees his nutty wife out of the lawn – goes into hypnotic trances and strangles people in his house with his robe. Strangely, the police are baffled. It’s part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, part thriller, part slapstick comedy and all very incoherent, anchored by a truly terrible performance from the wooden Lugosi. For the record, there’s no ghost, nothing invisible. Carnival of Souls (1962) * Even if it weren’t a low-budget film, Carnival of Souls would still be a benchmark in psychological horror. The perfectly eerie little movie is one of the genre’s most overlooked and underappreciated gems, even though its influence can be seen today in everything from Night of the Living Dead to The Sixth Sense. Candace Hilligoss stars as a lonely church organist who is the only survivor of the opening scene’s freak car accident. Her world grows stranger after that, finding herself mysterious drawn to a long-abandoned carnival and being haunted by visions of a pasty-faced ghost (director Herk Harvey). Though it’s a bit slow – scenes tend to be drawn out, with stretches of silence – there’s no question as to its effectiveness and atmosphere (not to mention a few well-placed shocks). Harvey does wonders with what little money he had, and his direction looks like a million bucks. Wolfman (1979) Earl Owensby serves as producer of Wolfman. And yet despite his jiggly man-breasts and enough back hair to weave a shawl, he is also the film’s star. This leads me to believe that maybe he won the writer/director’s “You Pay, You Star” contest. Miscast doesn’t quite cover it, but Owensby portrays Colin Glasgow, a man who returns home at the turn of the century after news of his father’s untimely passing. He soon learns that dear ol’ Dad was a werewolf (or were-wolf, wear-wolf and weir-wolf; take your pick, as the movie uses all three pronunciations) and he will inherit the Satanic curse. As the title suggests, he eventually does and goes on a throat-biting rampage in an impeccably clean white dress shirt and halfway-decent monster mask. The production values are pretty impressive for a low-budget film shot in North Carolina, but its earnest attempt at Gothic horror is completely derailed by the multitude of accents, from the Valley Girl barkeep and the borscht belt doctor to Owensby’s Droopy Dog. At one point, Owensby looks at a newspaper story about the mysterious wolf slayings, but in the corner, there’s another headline that caught my eye: “CHURCH HOMECOMING DISRUPTED BY BEES.” At this point in the film, I thought, “Now that’s the movie I want to see!” Track of the Moon Beast (1976) **** After being nicked by a falling meteorite, a mild-mannered but vaguely redneck and oft-shirtless anthropologist is turned by night into a raging reptilian monster – a “moon beast,” if you will. This understandably complicates the new relationship he’s started with a blonde photographer who wears ultra-short shorts and may be one of the worst actresses of all time (“Moon rocks? Oh, wow!”). As anyone who’s seen this mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000 can tell you, Track is a real howler, amateurish and slipshod in every sense of the word. Even after watching, I wouldn’t be able to pick the leading man out of a lineup, because he’s always obscuring his face from the camera’s view. Can’t say I blame him.