The first flick I watched in my triple feature was this silly 1960 offering The Dead One, about a woman who uses voodoo to reanimate a corpse and make it her zombie of vengeance.
A guy named Johnny gets married. Per his grandfather’s will, upon taking a bride, Johnny will inherit a large family home in New Orleans called Kennelworth Plantation. His cousin Monica lives there, and being angry that Johnny will be the new owner, she plans to use voodoo to revive the corpse of her dead brother Jonas to kill Johnny’s new bride, thus invalidating the will.
The flick is filmed in New Orleans, with the zombie resembling Michael Jackson, with his long black hair and suit. Since this was made in the early 60’s, before Romero’s classic introduced gore and flesh eating to the zombie genre, this movie was quite goofy and tame, with no blood. Still, it’s runtime is a little over an hour, so it goes by fast. The zombie is probably the best part of this affair, as is cousin Monica, with her cold demeanor and over the top voodoo antics. I watched it on YouTube, from a channel called Pizza Flix.
The next one I watched was 1981’s Alison’s Birthday, from Australia. I remember seeing this at the video stores when I was a kid, and was always fascinated by the VHS cover, that showed cult members in robes. I was always curious about this title, but after picking one too many bad films based on the cool cover art (for example The Body Beneath, “filmed in bone-chilling color!”), my brother stopped letting me choose movies to rent. I streamed this one on Tubi.
It begins when the title character, Alison, is 16. She is playing a homemade ouija board with her 2 friends (scrabble letters on a table, with drinking glass as planchette). Suddenly, one of the friends becomes possessed and starts talking in another voice through clenched teeth. Claiming to be the spirit of Alison’s dead father (her parents were killed in a car accident), Alison is warned to not go home on her 19th birthday. A book case then falls and kills the possessed friend. Then we flash forward several years later to when Alison is 18. She gets invited by her Aunt and Uncle to come home for her birthday. She’s hesitant, but after Aunt Jenny tells her that Uncle Dean is ill, Alison agrees to go home and brings her boyfriend Pete with her. Once she arrives, she begins to suspect that something is not right at the home where she grew up in.
The flick reminded me of the made for TV movies from the 70’s and early 80’s I watched as a kid. The story played like Rosemary’s Baby, with Alison and Pete slowly discovering the sinister cult activity at her childhood home, which include a mysterious old woman who lives upstairs, Stonehenge-like blocks that are in the backyard, a moon shaped necklace, and Alison’s Aunt and Uncle insisting that Pete shouldn’t be present for her bday party as it’s only for family. The flick contains no blood or gore and is more of a mystery, but it still manages to be entertaining. Despite the cheesy opening ouija scene, the rest of it is serious, which helps set a creepy mood. If you’re a fan of flicks like The Spell or Summer Of Fear, then you might enjoy this one.
The last film I watched was so damn bad but funnier than hell. 1974’s Voodoo Black Exorcist is about a professor and his assistant (Dr. Kesling and Sylvia) who are transporting an ancient sarcophagus that holds a mummy on a luxury liner. For no explained reason, the Mummy comes to life and starts attacking the passengers. When he sees Sylvia, he recognizes her as the reincarnation of his long lost love Kenya, and sets about to reclaim her. Meanwhile, a detective is called on board to solve the mysterious deaths.
The story is absolutely ridiculous, introducing a bunch of random characters, and jumping around from one development to another. Not to mention inconsistent; sometimes the mummy looks normal, other times it’s old and mummified. The beginning shows the mummy and his love before they died, wearing God awful blackface makeup, and being killed in a voodoo sacrifice. On board, the mummy stabs a passenger who tries to steal his snake ring with the sharp end of it, and makes him his slave, while some annoying old bag does a reading on her tarot cards and insists that that there’s an extra passenger on the ship. The ship eventually docks, where the mummy finalizes his plan to be with his reincarnated love forever, while the detective is hot on his trail.
I laughed many times throughout this atrocity. The dubbed dialogue is nonsensical (the film is from Spain), some of the murders are funny, including a few decapitations, and the acting is bad. The entire thing is what bad movies are made of. If you get a kick out of hilariously awful z grade cinema, then I highly recommend Voodoo Black Exorcist. I streamed it on Tubi.
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