From Jerry Warren, the “auteur” who gave us the hilariously bad Face of the Screaming Werewolf, comes another one of his zany offerings. He cut and pasted two Chilean films (La Casa Está Vacía and La Dama De La Muerte), dubbed them in English, and added a few scenes with John Carradine. The finished product attempts to tell two separate tales of terror.
The story begins with an artist painting a house. An old man walks up to him and invites the artist into the home. There, he tells of the house’s history of bad luck and curses. The first story is about a desperate young man who must come up with a large sum of money so that he and his new bride can stay in their home. He seeks help from an old family friend, who gets him into a secret club where gentleman play cards in order to pay their debts, but also face the risk death if they draw the wrong card. The second story is of a young brother and sister dominated by their older brother, who became the matriarch after the death of their parents. Located around the house and yard are various stone statues of hands, one of which possesses the older brother. Or something like that.
Good Lord, was this movie an incoherent mess, even more haphazardly put together than Face of the Screaming Werewolf. It ends up being a Frankenstein monster of mismatched scenes, with the dubbed dialogue only making the plots even more hard to follow. The scenes with John Carradine do nothing to clear up the confusion, but at least he gives a spirited performance and seemed to be enjoying himself. If you enjoy bad dubbing, a plot that makes David Lynch films look like simple, linear storytelling, misplaced music cues that will have you scratching your head, and random scenes that lack logic, then you’ll be sure to enjoy this atrocity. The first story wasn’t too bad, and at least the conclusion of it made some sense. The second story has an ending that doesn’t make any goddamned sense, as well as a story that meanders and goes nowhere, probably due to scenes that got cut that actually tied to plot together. Jerry Warren’s hatchet jobs make Ed Wood’s films look like critically acclaimed, billion dollar masterpieces. I streamed this abomination on YouTube, if you so dare.
The next one, also streamed on YouTube, was a late 60’s horror film about a group of people who decide to spend the night at an alleged haunted house.
Two friends named Hank and Dick are sitting in a bar, drinking, when they wager a bet. Dick dares Hank to spend the night at the Hanley house, a place known to the locals as being haunted. If Hank fulfills the bet, Dick will give him his Ferrari. Hank enlists a couple of friends and acquaintances to spend the night at the home with him. Things are all fun and games until strange noises, mysterious knocking, and disembodied voices show up. With the help of a psychic medium named Gabby, Hank and friends decide to investigate the strange phenomena to determine if it's real or not.
This movie is ultra low budget and it shows. The actors, while not entirely bad, are not great either. The soundtrack consists of bizarre, electronic sounds, and the scares are laughable and lame. The hauntings are portrayed by knocks, scratches, a few doors opening and closing, and clock hands moving by themselves. I guess when your budget is about $75 that's the best you can do. The only special effects are a light that comes towards the camera, a shadowy figure that stands watching the house, and dirt smeared on a door whom the psychic claims is the imprint of a spirit. There's a scene where a blonde named Sheila is attacked by an entity, and it's more hilarious than scary, due to her overdramatic performance. When the ghost finally starts talking to them, it's simply a guy's voice trying to sound eerie. The majority of this film consists of the characters looking wide eyed into the distance. It's hard to believe that this came out the same year as Night of the Living Dead, and a few years after Carnival of Souls, two other low budget horror films that put this thing to shame. It feels more like a guy with a camera filming his buddies. Despite nothing really happening, other than a twist at the end that explains the haunting, the movie still manages to be watchable, if only to have a few chuckles at what the filmmaker considers horror. I'd never heard of this film, and I can see why it was forgotten.
Comments
Post a Comment