'MAUSOLEUM': A HORROR HOWLER Miami Herald, The (FL) May 25, 1983 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
My favorite part of the new film, Mausoleum, is when Marjoe Gortner, playing a worried husband who has just been told that his wife is possessed by the devil, goes home, finds her more peevish than usual and asks, "Susie, what's gotten into you this evening, anyway?" But others may have their favorites, too. Perhaps the scene in which Susie (played by Bobbie Bresee) is accosted by the gardener in her kitchen. Gardener: "We're alone at last." Susie: "What did you say?" Gardener: "Ah, the coffee. It smells good."
Or this romantic badinage involving Marjoe and Bobbie. He: "What's for dinner?" She: "Poached salmon. And me."
Mausoleum is that kind of movie, just bad enough from start to finish to be thoroughly entertaining to the connoisseur of potboilers. It's about Susie, who is a descendant of the infamous Nomed family (Nomed -- spell it backwards and it's Demon.), whose first-born girl children have long had problems with demonic possession. In the early going, a concerned caretaker tries to prevent the young Susie from mucking about in the old mausoleum, but her eyes turn green and he stumbles out into the sunlight, where his head explodes.
Similar things happen to men who cross paths with the grown-up Susie, who fills the hours when Marjoe is at work by luring a variety of menials into the mansion, where they are exploded or worse. By mid-picture, the family has no domestics left, and there's gore all over the kitchen phone, but Marjoe never does figure it out. He gets his when Susie's breasts grow teeth (this is what really happens, yes).
Mausoleum was so casually made that toward the end, when Bresee flubbed a line and then giggled about it, the filmmakers said the hell with it and kept on rolling. It has dialogue to match its shabby effects, and it is wonderfully funny. Study the names of the cast and crew below; they may work again.
Review
Mausoleum (R) no stars
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CAST
Marjoe Gortner, Bobbie Bresee, Norman Burton, La Wanda Page, Maurice Sherbanee, Laura Hippe
CREDITS
Director: Michael Dugan
Producer: Robert Madero
Screenwriter: Robert Madero
Cinematographer: Robert Barich
Music: Jamie Mendoza-Nava
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An MPM release
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Vulgar language, nudity, sexual situations, violence and gore
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At Omni, Trianon, Marina, Ambassador, Miller Square, Movies at the Falls, 27th Avenue, Movie City, Movies of Pompano, Sheridan, Coral Springs, Movies of Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In.
XTRO,' 'XTRO,' READ ALL ABOUT THE GORE Miami Herald, The (FL) September 13, 1983 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic Estimated printed pages: 2
Xtro has the year's best promotional tag line -- "Some extra-terrestrials aren't friendly" -- but as is often the case, the rest of the movie isn't so hot. Apparently the promotional effort exhausted the production team before the fact, or something.??Though Xtro offers some of the more unpleasant images in the screen history of father-son relationships, during the moments when the film is neither cheap-looking nor revolting, it does affect a rather eerie tone. Those moments are few, however. Little Tony lost his dad three years before the action begins. He literally lost him -- one moment they were playing in their back yard somewhere in Great Britain, and the next Dad was gone in a flash of otherworldly light. When Dad returns, he is not the same.
Boy, is he not the same. At first he is apparently little more than inter-galactic larva, requiring the services of a monster rapist to find him a place to be born. This is accomplished, an unsuspecting woman carries to term in less than 30 seconds, and amidst much shrieking and rending of flesh, Dad is emitted, fully grown. He cuts his own umbilical, stops to melt a pay phone and heads for home, where he sucks little Tony's shoulder until the boy is no longer what he seems, either.
Little Tony develops the ability to make his toys come alive, takes hideous revenge on the neighbor lady when she kills his snake, and puts the au pair girl in a compromising position. Soon there are larvae and E.T. eggs all over the place. It's gross.
With a little more thought and an extra dollar or two, the filmmakers might have come up with a scandalously funny spoof of E.T. They chose a festival of splatter effects instead, aiming Xtro squarely at that segment of the audience for whom The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's The Thing were good stuff but too subtle.
Movie Review
Xtro (R) *
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CAST
Bernice Stegers, Philip Sayer, Danny Brainin, Simon Nash, Maryam D'Abo, David Cardy
CREDITS
Director: Harry Bromley Davenport
Producer: Mark Forstater
Screenwriters: Robert Smith, Iain Cassie
Cinematographer: John Metcalfe
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A New Line Cinema release
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Running time: 82 minutes
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Vulgar language, nudity, implicit sex, considerable violence and gore
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At DADE: Trianon, Apollo, Palm Avenue, Marina, Northside, Movies of Kendall, Regency; BROWARD: Coral Ridge, Movies of Pompano, Diplomat Mall, Coral Springs Movie Center, Movies of Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In; PALM BEACH: Village Green, Movies at Town Center, Movies of Lake Worth, Beach Drive-In, Delray Drive-In. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCHLOCKY SCREEN SCREAMS - TWO TERROR-BLE FILMS: 'XTRO' AND 'BASKET CASE'
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - April 4, 1983
Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer
* "Xtro." A thriller starring Philip Sayer, Bernice Steges and Simon Nash. Directed by Harry Bromley Davenport from a script by Iain Casi and Robert Smith. Photographed by John Metcalfe. Music by Davenport. Creature by Francis Coates. Running Time: 85 minutes. Rated R. At the Goldman Twin, 15th St., between Chestnut and Market. (Screened at the Goldman Twin).
* "Basket Case." A comedy thriller starring Kevin Van Hentenryck and Teri Susan Smith. Written and directed by Frank Henenlotter. Photographed by Bruce Torbet. Music by Gus Russo. Running Time: 85 minutes. Not rated. Shown at Midnight every Friday and Saturday at the TLA-Roxy, 2021 Sansom St. (Screened at the TLA-Roxy)
It's no secret that movie terror has become determinedly unwholesome, what with most of the on-screen carnage being the direct result of someone's (or something's) insatiable appetite for control.
What is surprising - and perhaps even more dubious - is that most modern horror films are content with being affably terrible. They work at being funny-bad - schlocky - and in both Harry Bromley Davenport's British import, ''Xtro," and Frank Henenlotter's midnight flick, "Basket Case," we have schlock horror movies that stress their ineptitude with swaggering pride.
One only wishes that they were worse. (That way, they'd be better. Get it?) What I'm saying is that these are two oedipal horrorfests (about bloodthirsty relatives) whose tackier details and overall cheapness fail to work in their favor.
Of the two, "Xtro" is the most pathetic, a lurid movie made for people of sociopathic tastes or for junk-movie addicts looking for something a little kinky. Its ads imply that "Xtro" is a nasty put-down of Steven Spielberg's ''E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial." But its nastiness is closer to David Cronenberg's "The Brood."
Its oedipal plot is about a towheaded boy named Tony (Simon Nash) whose father is really an alien being. Three years ago, dad (Philip Sayer) got weary of being an earthbound human (obviously, a fate worse than death), regained his former scaly/-
sticky appearance and disappeared in a flash of light.
Tony has been having nightmares ever since and, lately, they've been more intense. That's because his dad is en route from his planet to claim little Tony.
To accomplish this, dad has to transform himself into a human again, and, to accomplish this, he has to be reborn. This particular sequence and the scenes detailing alien intercourse are singularly unpleasant. Sitting through them is roughly akin to having a double-barrel rifle pointed between your eyes. "Xtro" is an endurance ordeal.
In terms of special effects, "Xtro" is amusing. It's the kind of movie that would use hubcaps for flying saucers if it could get away with it.
Much more amusing - at least, diabolically funny - is "Basket Case," a self-concious black comedy that already has gained ground as a cult favorite in New York.
Its oedipal plot is about a sweet, emotionally stunted kid named Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) who lugs around the lardlike body of his former Siamese twin brother, Eli, in a huge basket.
Whereas "Xtro" is determined to do violence to our minds, "Basket Case" is content with merely jabbing at our thoughts. It is more concerned with being casually funny but works too hard at it to provoke anything more robust than a giggle.
Of course, depending on your priorities, you might find humor in its grotesquely untalented performers, atrocious lighting, haphazard compositions, stop-action animation and dogged avoidance of logic: Its plot is about Eli wanting to punish the three veterinarians (yes, veterinarians) who separated him from Duane - a plot that is as unenthralling as it is obviously unconvincing.
'FORBIDDEN WORLD' 'ALIEN' IN DISGUISE' Miami Herald, The (FL) June 1, 1982 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic Estimated printed pages: 2
Forbidden World, one of those genre knock-offs from the Roger Corman organization, looks a lot like Alien. That's bad -- after all, a lot of us have already seen Alien -- and it's good -- for a low-budget feature to look anything like at $10- million movie is at least a moral victory for the filmmakers, and for the unwary patron.
The sad part about Forbidden World is that the part that's missing is one of the cheapest, at least in contemporary moviemaking. For another $10,000 or so Corman could have had a real-life, not-so-derivative script. And then, given that he seems to have borrowed an expensive set somewhere (on Corman's budgets, the Forbidden space station is either borrowed, or testament to a genius production designer), this might have been one of the summer's sleepers.
As it is, Forbidden World concerns a strange and ruthless parasitic life form that takes over an experimental station in deep space. It's ugly, this thing, and it grows and mutates through progressively more ugly forms, each of which seems dedicated only to making a sloppy meal of the nearest human. That's pretty much Alien. And though Forbidden World adds a few gratuitious sex scenes (so perfunctory that they could play at the Pussycat matinees), the movie is a copy, plain and simple.
As this is a Corman movie (directed by someone named Allan Holzman, but a Corman film nonetheless), there are some over- the-edge moments, and a few tributes to horror films past. Corman steps outside the mainstream when he needs to shock, so the alien in Forbidden World leaves a trail of scooped-out brain cavities and still-breathing gore wherever he goes. In one nice twist on the old horror staple of man 'communicating' with a misunderstood alien, comely geneticist June Chadwick (that's her stage name, yes.) taps a computer-screen greeting to the alien, who by this time is not only sentient but the size of a Mercedes with teeth. 'Can we coexist?' she asks, to which the new life form gives a 'Stand by' before impaling her with a tentacle. Boy, does she scream.
The effects are well-made and gruesome; the set is 'used-car tech,' a la Alien -- a space station that looks real and lived- in. Even the music is OK. But good gore only works in movies when the story is good, and this story is stolen, almost scene for scene.
Movie Review Forbidden World (R) ** (LEADER:)1..... CAST: Jesse Vint, Dawn Dunlap, June Chadwick, Linden Chiles, Fox Harris, Raymond Oliver CREDITS: Director: Allan Holzman Producer: Roger Corman Screenwriter: Tim Curnen Cinematographer: Tim Shurstedt Music: Susan Justin (LEADER:)1..... A New World release (LEADER:)1..... Nudity, implicit sex, violence and gore (LEADER:)1..... At the Trianon, Miami Gardens, Ambassador, Tropicaire Drive-In, Movie City, Mall, Movies at Plantation, Hiway Drive-In, Lakeshore Drive-In. (LEADER:)1..... **** Excellent*** 1/2 Very Good*** Good ** 1/2 Average** Fair* PoorZero: Worthless
ESCAPE 2000' MAKES 1984 SEEM PLAYFUL Miami Herald, The (FL) October 12, 1983 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
On its very eve, 1984 continues to fascinate filmmakers with visions of the city as jungle and government as hyper-fascist. Sadly, the filmmakers thus fascinated have not included many of our more prominent artists, and the resultant films have been uniformly bad. Escape 2000 is the latest -- note that the fateful year keeps getting pushed up, the real 1984 not seeming likely to fit the bill at all -- and possibly the worst.
It is 2000 (or maybe 1995 -- movie and press-kit information are at variance on the issue). Nonconformists, known officially as Deviates, are packed off to Re-Ed camps for a long stretch of behavior modification. The Deviates are the good guys, of course -- one woman's offense seems to have been the fact that she ran a shop that sold cheap crystal -- and the government folks are very, very bad.
How bad? The head of the camp plays chess with foot-high pieces, and stages an inmate-hunt to amuse visiting dignitaries. One of the VIPs is a fat rapist; another is a homicidal equestrienne. Day-to-day harassment of the inmates is conducted by a huge bald man and his associate, who limps and carries a bullwhip that he is only occasionally able to snap. A loudspeaker sets the tone: "All Deviates assemble immediately in Center Compound." On their arrival, male and female prisoners are ordered to take showers together, and one woman is forced to clean fish.
Escape 2000 is about how the new arrivals manage to stage a revolt and spill a prodigious amount of blood; limbs are severed on several occasions, and at one point a vicious mutant bites off a man's small toe.
These proceedings are badly staged, badly performed, badly filmed and badly dubbed. Those with long memories and sharp eyes will detect the presence of Olivia Hussey, once luminous in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), now appearing pinched, weathered and largely without talent as one of the Deviates. The film is otherwise of no interest.
Movie Review
Escape 2000 (R) No stars
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CAST
Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey, Noel Ferrier, Carmen Duncan, Lynda Stoner, Michael Craig
CREDITS
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Producers: Anthony I. Giannane, William Fayman
Screenwriters: Jon George, Neill Hicks
Cinematographer: John McClean
Music: Brian May
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A New World Pictures release
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Running time: 80 minutes
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Vulgar language, nudity, brief implicit sex, violence and gore.
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In DADE: Apollo, Omni, Trianon, Roxy, Marina, Movies at the Falls, America, Tropicaire Drive-In; BROWARD: Movies at Pompano, Sheridan, Coral Springs Movie Center, Lakes, Movies at Plantation, Lakeshore Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In; PALM BEACH: Boca Mall, Cross-County, Delray Drive-In
'SORORITY ROW': COEDS NEVER LEARN Miami Herald, The (FL) February 23, 1983 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Every June 19, the creepy old housemother of Pi Theta closes the sorority house down, kicks out the students and disappears into the attic for a festival of strange behavior. You'd think the sisters would know when to leave ill enough alone, but slasher-movie kids, they never learn. So it is, in The House on Sorority Row, that someone sets in to coed bashing. The killer is the type of psychopath who speeds for the basement boiler room, to lie in ambush. The coeds are the type of people who find, on their last day in school and on earth, a pretext to visit the boiler room.
As is usual for this durable genre, victim and villain are well matched. Though House on Sorority Row does not have a single screeching-cat red herring, and though power tools are not employed, it does have a classic of low camp, a scene in which a girl who has just been nearly brained by a falling corpse repairs immediately and alone to her bedroom, where she changes into a baby-doll nightie and stands with her back to an open window.
It also has a scene in which the heroine, the only virtuous gal in Theta house, confronts a classmate who has staggered in with a bludgeon wound to the head. "Jeannie," says the heroine, "did somebody do this to you?"
Those SAT scores are going down, all right, and the film- school folks aren't helping the curve.
'FRIDAY THE 13TH III': 3-D GORE COMING AT YOU Miami Herald, The (FL) August 16, 1982 Author: BILL COSFORD Herald Movie Critic
Friday the 13th Part III--In 3-D --perhaps the most eloquent statement of theme and content for a motion picture since I Spit on Your Grave. No excuses this time, folks: Don't write us, shocked and outraged, about how you went to the movies expecting some innocent fun and found...and found...this. The title is a demographic smart bomb, and if you're in the 7-17 target audience, Friday will find you. Otherwise, you ought to know better. Beyond that, what to say? Through the miracle of refined 3-D -- not the cheesy stuff that scrambled vision across the nation during Comin' at Ya and Parasite, but a sumptuous pseudo-depth not seen here since Andy Warhol's Frankenstein several years ago -- you can now have the bloodbath in your lap.
And, to borrow from the sporting vernacular, in your face. In your face: popping popcorn, a bobbing yo-yo. A laundry-line pole, a baseball bat. A pitchfork, a knitting needle, a red-hot poker. Plus, two eyeballs, one dangling from an outstretched hand, another projected from a squeezed-in face. Someone offers a joint to your face as well, which, though not much of a 3-D effect, is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
The only truly entertaining moment in Friday III comes in the first half-hour, after a woman in curlers is impaled on a knitting needle.
This early gore accomplished, the film jumps to a daylight scene, the Next Morning, and shows us a van-load of perky teens heading out for the notorious Crystal Lake, where so many other teens have died. There is little subtlety here, and no attempt to establish a credible circumstance for the slaughter to come -- the kids just pack up and head for the charnel house, throats vulnerable and soft bellies begging for the blade.
Implicit in the artlessness of this scene is the filmmakers' sense of the formulaic nature of their work, which requires no higher art than bartering with the butcher for spare parts; when the teen van moves out, like a fisheries truck loaded with trout for the spring re-stocking, it's a nod to the genre and a wink for the grown-ups in the crowd. The rest is in your face.
Movie Review
Friday the 13th Part III -- In 3-D (R) *
CAST
Dana Kimmell, Paul Kratka, Tracie Savage, Jeffrey Rogers, Catherine Parks, Larry Zerner, David Katims, Rachel Howard, Richard Brooker
CREDITS
Director: Steve Miner
Producer: Frank Mancuso Jr.
Screenwriters: Martin Kitrosser, Carol Watson
Cinematographer: Gerald Feil
3-D Supervisor: Martin Jay Sadoff
Music: Henry Manfredini
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A Paramount Pictures release
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Vulgar language, brief nudity, brief implicit sex, considerable violence and gore
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At the 167th Street, Coral Ridge, Atlas, Lakes, Coral Springs Movie Center, Hi-Way Drive-In, Thunderbird Drive-In
MAKING SCI-FI FILM CAN BE HORRIFIC Miami Herald, The (FL) - May 26, 1984 Author: CRAIG GILBERT Herald Staff Writer
It was Day Three in the filming of Red Ocean , an Italian- made, low-budget thriller about a mutant sea creature that terrorizes a fictional Caribbean Island.
It was also Day Crazy.
The motorized shark fin wouldn't start. A boat hired for the filming didn't show up. And the shooting on a Virginia Key beach dropped slowly behind schedule.
"The Italians have a strange way of doing things," explained Bob Warner, executive producer for the segments shot in America.
"I love them personally, but when it comes to elements of organization, I think it's the least of their priorities."
Sound man Raffaele DeLuca disagreed. "It's not a real confusion," he said. "Maybe the Italians look disorganized, but everything finishes at the right moment."
Red Ocean 's 26-member crew, employed by National Cinematografica of Rome, was in Key Biscayne and environs for two weeks of shooting. Then it would be on to Key West for two more, and back to Rome for the tricky underwater stuff.
By the end of the year, Warner hopes, the sci-fi flick will be ready for distribution in Western Europe, the Far East and South America.
But first there was work to be done Thursday on Virginia Key. And the motorboat hadn't shown up.
In a sweat, location manager Eric Moss raced next door to Jimbo's Shrimp and appealed to anyone within earshot.
"I'm in desperate shape. I'm with the movie company, and I need a boat and a captain right now," Moss blurted. "I'll pay through the nose for it."
A minute later he had his boat.
"I've worked with the French. I've worked with the Japanese. I've worked with English," said Moss, who lives in Coconut Grove.
"I can honestly tell you, the Italians are like the French. They really seem to enjoy working in an atmosphere of chaos."
Back at the beach, it was time to shoot. Michael Hicks , 11, of North Miami, waited with mother and dog for his scene to roll around. A freckled kid with braces, Michael had a bit part four years ago in an Italian movie called Superfuzz.
In Red Ocean , he and his poodle would stumble upon a mangled victim of the sea creature, which has huge teeth and tentacles and is known to crew members as the "sharktopus."
But first a shark scene had to be shot, and there was motor trouble with the dorsal fin.
"It seems to be a little more disorganized than the other Italian movie we've done," said Michael's mother, Daryl Hicks .
The scene featured two fishermen who take to the water despite Coast Guard warnings. People have already started disappearing at sea.
One of the men goes diving, and sure enough a menacing fin appears, heading straight toward him. But there's a twist: The shark turns around in terror. It has just seen the monster.
It was Troy Enriquez's job to swim underwater and guide the motorized fin through its turns. The engine trouble had been licked, but Enriguez, a 22-year-old from Leisure City, quickly found that as soon as he gained control of the fin, he had to come up for air.
"It wasn't designed for that," said Enriquez, looking back at the fin and shaking his head.
The contraption had been trouble from the start. Even filling it with gas was an adventure.
"Go get a gallon of gas with 3 percent oil," Warner had instructed one crew member. The man was off -- and back again in 30 seconds.
"What's 3 percent of a gallon?" he asked.
When it finally came time to shoot, the entire crew, it seemed, was up to its armpits in the ocean chop, hands held high over the water.
In truth, there were six: one to steady the fisherman's boat, one to direct, one to shoot, one to hold the wire drooping perilously close to the waves, one with the power supply seated firmly on his head, and one guy with the Kleenex to wipe the lens.
It was early evening before the last scene had been shot at Virginia Key, too late by then to do a sequence planned at Bill Baggs State Recreation Area.
"All things considered, it wasn't too bad (a day)," summed up Warner from his production room at the Sheraton Royal Biscayne Hotel.
After shuffling the schedule, he figured they'd lost just a quarter of a day.
Actually, "in terms of efficiency, foreign crews have it all over American crews," said Warner. "The biggest problem . . . is they don't prepare as much as American companies.
O’HERLIHY PROUD OF ’HALLOWEEN’ ROLE Miami Herald, The (FL) - July 5, 1982 Author: VERNON SCOTT United Press International
Dan O’Herlihy, a native of the auld sod, has appeared in scores of American movies and TV shows but never as an Irishman until now, playing arch-villain in Halloween III.
If it seems a comedown for a distinguished graduate of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre to be playing a menace in a Hollywood horror film, O’Herlihy is quick to disabuse the notion.
"This is the most interesting character and the first Irishman I’ve ever played in Hollywood," said the proud Hibernian.
"As a matter of fact, I’ve played nothing but Americans in this country going back more years than I care to count. I’ve even portrayed Mark Twain and Franklin Roosevelt. But never an Irishman."
As Conall Cochran, O’Herlihy plays one of the most fiendish villains in film history. Although his motivation may be obscure, Cochran’s scheme is to kill off all the children in the United States.
Cochran, the sole owner and proprietor of a Halloween mask manufacturing company, has a micro-chip built into each mask, which, when activated by a TV signal, will kill anyone wearing the mask.
Cochran, of course, sees to it that on Halloween all 84 million American kids are wearing his masks. Then, during a TV commercial, the proper button is pushed and pffft, there goes the younger generation.
As is usually the case with horror films, fate steps between the maddened heavy and his would-be victims and the audience leaves the theater safe in the knowledge that they have been scared half to death.
"It’s delicious," O’Herlihy said with relish. "Cochran is a man who simply doesn’t like children. I’m the father of five and the grandfather of four, so Cochran is a man with whom I can identify."
O’Herlihy, who has starred in such stark dramas as Fail Safe, Home Before Dark and Imitation of Life, is convinced audiences prefer such other of his films as The Highwayman, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe and The Black Shield of Falworth.
The success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and horror films have convinced O’Herlihy that science fiction and fantasy are the order of the day for moviegoers.
"They are all played for reality, just as Halloween III is, but they are tales that can only be told in the motion-picture medium," he said. "They don’t work well in books, TV shows, on stage or in radio.
"It’s all fantasy and that’s as it should be. I’m all for it. People are staying away from hard-edged movie dramas.
"Horror and fantasy provide escape from the grinding reality of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, which drag audiences down to glory in neuroses.
"Escapism should be the central core of movies," he said. "I get bored with realistic films, even when they are well done. They are too predictible. Even good historical films are a form of escapism because they get away from today’s stresses and problems."
O’Herlihy’s most recent brush with fantasy was last year’s BBC classic gothic horror TV movie "Artemis" in which he played a Dutch organist chosen by the gods to disseminate death throughout the world by striking a certain chord in a 1,000- year-old cathedral.
"He was almost as fascinating as Cochran," O’Herlihy said. "Anyone he touched died immediately. It was a truly satanic story.
"It’s much more fun playing heavies than straight roles, especially when you can bring so much sincerity to a part. I played heavies in The Tamarind Seed, The Night Fighter and Home Before Dark, which my agent thought would ruin my career.
"Strange as it may seem, I’ve got my best reviews playing villains. But of the heavies I’ve played, Cochran in Halloween III may be the most villainous of the lot."
KIDS HAVE A SAY IN ’NIGHT’ Miami Herald, The (FL) - January 11, 1983 Author: DENNIS GEORGATOS Associated Press
A psychiatrist cast in the unfamiliar role of horror - movie producer wanted some advice on what scares young people, so he went straight to the source, with newspaper ads asking for help.
The result is the movie One Dark Night, a film about a "school wimp" who takes a dare, spends the night in a mausoleum and ends up being kept company by living corpses with glittering eyes and coffins popping out of walls.
About 100 young people between the ages of 12 and 25 responded to the ads in San Diego newspapers last September and helped in the film’s production by offering comments, criticisms and suggestions.
"Basically, this is their film," said psychiatrist Thomas P. Johnson, executive producer and senior consultant with Comworld, the Orem, Utah-based studio that bankrolled the $865,000 venture.
Johnson said he solicited their thoughts because "I wanted their feedback, with the potential advantage being that we would be in closer touch with the grass-roots ticket buyer.
"Some people feel that people in Hollywood start making movies for each other and lose touch with the public and what the non-Hollywood people would like to see on the screen," he said.
Having young people help select the script, make plot changes and vote on versions they liked best had never been tried before on such a large scale, Johnson said, and the experience to the participants was a positive one.
"They are at a very critical stage of development," Johnson said. "Many of them feel that this is an adults’ world, and adults don’t listen, and this was a chance for them to find themselves in a position like
producer-director Steven> Spielberg. They got to call the shots."
The movie was shot in Hollywood, produced by Michael Schroeder and directed by Tom McLoughlin. McLoughlin wrote the script with Michael Hawes.
It opened last week at 300 theaters in the West. A South Florida release date has yet to be set.
"I liked it, but I expected it to be more scary," said Julie Phillip, 22, a student at Mesa College who contributed suggestions to the movie . "I would recommend it to my friends. It has good suspense. It’s pretty creative. And it was nice to be part of the moviemaking process, even if it was a small part."
Bobby Straker, 16, a La Jolla High School student who answered the ads "because I like the movies ," said the film is "100 per cent better" because of the input from young people.
The moviemakers didn’t use all the suggestions. While the young people came up with some macabre situations, Johnson said he was surprised that the consensus was for a nonviolent ending -- which the studio vetoed.
"It just goes to show you that young people don’t need to see a chainsaw hacking someone up or violent scenes with a lot of blood in a movie thriller," he said.
The young people who participated in the novel arrangement were not compensated for their time, nor did they receive screen credits. "I wish we could have done something about that, but we had to follow traditional Hollywood protocol," Johnson said.
Johnson, who has never been involved in making a movie before, said he was approached by Comworld last year "to see if my background with psychiatry in the prime movie age group of 12 to 29 would better the odds" of making a successful film.
Comworld is an independent studio, and one of the factors in seeking opinion was the fact that so many independent ventures lose money, he said.
’THE BEASTMASTER’: FROM HOME FLICKS TO HOLLYWOOD Miami Herald, The (FL) - September 8, 1982 Author: BOB THOMAS Associated Press
A late entry in the summer movie sweepstakes is The Beastmaster, a new film by Don Coscarelli, who is accustomed to playing catch-up.
Coscarelli is the prodigy whose homemade movie was released by a major studio when he was not yet 21. He also gave the movie world Phantasm, which reportedly sold $25 million worth of tickets in the U.S.
Coscarelli is now an oldtimer of 28, and he is dealing in big chips with The Beastmaster, a $10-million fantasy-adventure that MGM is releasing. That’s a hundred times more than what his first movie cost.
As with their other three films, Coscarelli and his producer, Paul Pepperman, also 28, financed The Beastmaster privately, then sold it to a major releasing company.
"The title turned some potential investors off. They thought it sounded like a low-budget horror picture," Coscarelli related. "The story takes place in the Bronze Age and deals with a hero who has a rare ability to communicate with animals. In his quest for his origins and for revenge, he is helped by an eagle, a black tiger and two ferrets, with whom he has a telepathic capacity."
In searching for a new project, Coscarelli remembered a book he had enjoyed in the sixth grade. In rereading The Beastmaster, he discovered it wasn’t as good as he remembered. But he used the title and fashioned his own story, drawing from extensive research in primitive cultures. The backing came from two investors and foreign distributors who had profited from Phantasm. David Begelman, then president of MGM, agreed to distribution on the basis of a 20-minute presentation reel.
Coscarelli and Pepperman didn’t go crazy with their first big budget. They found a cheap rental for property owned by an oil company in the Simi Valley and built a prehistoric settlement, including a huge pyramid. John Alcott, Oscar-winner for Barry Lyndon, was cinematographer. The cast includes Marc Singer (If You Could See What I Hear), Rip Torn, John Amos and Tanya Roberts, last of "Charlie’s Angels."
"It was my first time dealing with professional actors," said the director, "and there is a difference. Before, the actors were motivated by the love of the project. This time the motivation was the paycheck: ’Do this or you’re fired.’
"Another revelation was working with animals. The only direction you can give them is a buzzer for food. It takes a lot of time to get a performance on that basis. Still, we finished principal photography in 12 weeks."
Coscarelli and Peppermen were college roommates in Long Beach, Calif., eight years ago. Too young to enter UCLA’s film school, they decided to make their own movie . Coscarelli’s father helped put together the $100,000 to make Jim, The World’s Greatest with an unknown actor, Gregory Harrison, now of "Trapper John, M.D."
Universal paid $250,000 to release the film, much to father Coscarelli’s relief. Next came Kenny and Company, filmed for $150,000 and bought by Fox for $250,000. Phantasm was another step upward; it cost $500,000 and made millions for Avco Embassy.
"After that I was deluged with horror scripts," said Coscarelli. "Things like Ghost Ship, The Beast Within, Claws and Rats. I decided I wanted to do something entirely different instead."
BIG HORROR IN ’INCUBUS’ IS THE ACTING Miami Herald, The (FL) - September 25, 1982 Author: TERRY KELLEHER Herald Arts Writer
They say John Cassavetes appears in junk movies to raise money for quality films of his own making.
He certainly seems distracted throughout The Incubus, in which he assumes the traditional horror -picture role of the town doctor who inspects a succession of gored bodies and declares: "This is not the work of an ordinary human being."
The first time we see Cassavetes he’s behind the wheel of a parked car. He sits. He squints. He puffs on a cigaret. He sighs. He squints some more. Come on, John, you have to start acting sometime.
Between and within lines, Cassavetes inserts pauses that suggest nothing except a wandering mind. At times he actually seems to be nodding off. "Do you hear me, Doctor?" demands a weird old woman after Cassavetes shows no reaction to a particularly ominous revelation. The doc doesn’t even bother to run a comb through his hair. "You look awful," a female reporter observes. She’s right.
Of course, a pro like Cassavetes knows a few tricks to keep on his toes. In a scene that places all the principals at a long table, Cassavetes disdains a chair and crouches, so that we see him only from the neck up. An intriguing interpretation. Is the character hiding something, besides his shirt? Cassavetes gives numerous broad hints of incestuous overtones in the physician’s relationship with his 18-year-old daughter. They never amount to anything but, hey, anything to relieve the monotony.
Monotony is the main problem with The Incubus. This Canadian film is not cheaply done; indeed, the publicity boasts of a $7-million budget. It’s no bloodier and no more degraded than most of today’s shockers, though director John Hough does take us to the autopsy room once or twice too often.
Nothing is new, that’s all. The closeup of the eyeball? Check. The "eerie" music that serves as an early-warning system, thereby reducing rather than enhancing suspense? It’s here. The cockeyed camera angles? Got ’em. Does the pretty tease in the bikini get hers when the monster comes around? Are you kidding?
The burning issue in The Incubus is auto registration. The movie was shot in Ontario; the story is supposed to be set in New England. But Cassavetes’ car bears a Wisconsin license plate. Pull over, mack.
Movie Review
The Incubus (R) *
...
CAST
John Cassavetes, John Ireland, Kerrie Keane, Erin Flannery, Duncan McIntosh, Helen Hughes
CREDITS
Director: John Hough
Producers: Marc Boyman, John Eckert
Screenwriter: George Franklin
Cinematographer: Albert Dunk
Music: Stanley Myers
An Artists Releasing/Film Ventures International Release
Gore, violence, nudity
At Omni, Palm Springs, Miracle, Normandy, Marina, Campbell Square, Cutler Ridge, Dadeland, Gateway, Sheridan, Broward Mall, Coral Springs, Lakeshore, Thunderbird
They picked the wrong man from Rocky to appear in Amityville II: The Possession.
Burt Young, who plays Sylvester Stallone’s boorish brother- in-law in the Rocky films, is a wife-beating, child-abusing ogre in Amityville II, the "prequel" to The Amityville Horror . But Young isn’t nearly mean enough to face down the demons that scared James Brolin out of that notorious Long Island house. Maybe Stallone himself, or the fearsome "Mr. T." from Rocky III, could have been hired to pound the devil into submission. As it is, the champion of good is another priest brandishing a crucifix. The spirit is willing, but the firepower is insufficient.
If this sounds blasphemous, blame the cynicism of Hollywood, which has turned hell into a profit center with three Omens, two Exorcists and two Amityvilles. The devil’s weapons are more sophisticated than ever in Amityville II, thanks to special effects that are as much sickening as terrifying. Flesh bursts and peels, blood flows all over the screen. The priestly incantations, on the other hand, seem increasingly feeble. Poor Father Adamski (capable James Olson) can’t even secure diocesan authorization for a formal exorcism, as the evil one tauntingly reminds him. The wonder of it all is that Olson, the head of the family in Ragtime, manages not to be ludicrous.
The devil, as we know, can assume many forms. In Amityville II, the devil is the camera, chasing the cast through the house in swooping point-of-view shots. One might suspect that director Damiano Damiani wanted the audience to identify with Satan. Hmm, this calls for an exorcist. Further evidence can be found in Young’s character, Anthony Montelli, certainly the foulest father of the year. When the devil -- speaking through Walkman earphones, yet -- advises the oldest of the four Montelli children to pull the trigger on Dad, the suggestion does not strike us as entirely out of line. Mr. Montelli, after all, is the type who hears his wife and daughter singing and snarls, "What are you, the Andrews Sisters?"
With their flair for wretched excess, Damiani and screenwriter Tommy Lee Wallace (who happens to be the distinguished director of Halloween III) make it hard to bear Amityville II in good humor. We don’t have to look inside the body bags after Sonny Montelli wipes out father, mother and three siblings. There is more than enough offensive material here without gratuitous incest. But count on Damiani and Wallace to walk that extra mile for exploitation.
Movie Review
Amityville II: The Possession (R) *
...
CAST
Burt Young, James Olson, Rutanya Alda, Diane Franklin, Jack Magner, Andrew Prine, Moses Gunn
CREDITS
Director: Damiano Damiani
Producers: Ira N. Smith, Stephen R. Greenwald
Screenwriter: Tommy Lee Wallace
Cinematographer: Franco Di Giacomo
Music: Lalo Schifrin
...
An Orion Pictures Release
...
Gore, violence, vulgar language, implicit sex
...
At Cutler Ridge, Dadeland, Miller Square, Palm Springs, Miracle, Omni, Byron-Carlyle, 163rd Street, Plaza, Campbell Square, Gateway, Southland, Thunderbird, Coral Springs, Lakes, Movies at Plantation
There is a look of wonderment on Sam Raimi’s innocent face, a deferential expression of curiosity in his drowsy brown eyes.
The looks are deceiving. The 23-year-old Michigan State dropout is a driven man. He is obsessed with a passion for making movies .
Raimi is savoring an early success. He has written and directed The Evil Dead, an unrated movie so gloriously gory that some American critics are calling it a cult classic.
The guts of the story:
Five Michigan college kids on a winter getaway to Tennessee are engulfed by demons and turned into horrific zombies. Carnage between them and a lone, spared soul ensues. Villainous vines and trees ravage a female character. Blood spurts everywhere, sometimes in blue and orange, just to keep things from getting too predictable. Eye sockets ooze. Arms and legs -- ripped, axed or bitten apart -- fly everywhere. Dismembered limbs twitch on splattered wooden floors, refusing to die.
This is violent rampage at its best -- or worst -- depending on your point of view. Sometimes camp, the movie doubtless will be seen as comic by many viewers because of its almost unimaginable excess. It owes its existence to every major horrormovie ever made and Raimi’s interest, as he puts it, in producing a movie that will make people scream.
"I think a lot of people go to horror films to be challenged, to see how much they can take," Raimi says. "We just kept it coming. It’s unrelenting."
Most all is done with surprising sophistication for a film that initially was shot as a Super-8 home movie , reshot in 16 mm and then blown up to 35 mm for theatrical release.
Raimi is learning fast about making movies , but he is rather oblivious of ways used to promote them. So he is somewhat baffled that, during a promotional trip to coincide with the opening in Miami, reporters are coming around to ask him questions. He seems more content to be in the area so he can visit brother Ivan in Fort Lauderdale.
He figures he has precious little wisdom to impart, but he responds, however sheepishly, to anything that’s asked. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, he speaks with uncalculated candor.
"It has a limited purpose," Raimi says of The Evil Dead, his first nationally distributed movie . "It is schlocky, but it’s fun. I think it’s entertaining and jolting. We made it to shock and amuse, to get the adrenaline flowing. That’s really all the movie has to offer. It certainly doesn’t have much of a plot.
"For raw, visceral shocks and roller-coaster effects, it’s definitely the movie to see."
Horror -story author Stephen King has said the same thing. King admiringly calls The Evil Dead -- it long lacked a distributor -- "the most ferociously original horror film of 1982." King further notes that it represents a "black rainbow of horror ."
Of course, not everyone agrees.
A British critic castigated it as a "mindless, tasteless glut of gore." Raimi himself likes to quote the Atlanta critic who observed: "Even though the director is 23, this work looks like the work of an out-of-control 12-year-old."
For now, the criticism is only slightly bothersome. Raimi is more amused by it than anything else. What’s important, though, is that the movie is getting attention. And that could lead to another film.
Raimi didn’t have an easy time getting the film together. It was quite different from the Super-8 epics he started making when he was 12. This time he had to worry about "financing."
"None of my friends or relatives gave me money, because they knew what kind of punk I was," he says with a grin. "I was just a loudmouth kid making Super-8 movies . We were just punks with no track records, so we put on suits and started carrying briefcases."
In suits and with briefcases, Raimi and a couple of friends -- producer Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell, who plays the lead character Ash -- were able to talk 15 doctors, lawyers, contractors and insurance agents in Detroit into investing $380,000 in the film.
That is what The Evil Dead cost when the eight-month production was finished in the summer of 1980.
The movie ’s distributor, New Line Cinema, estimates that it will gross $10 million from theatrical release in the United States and Canada. It should gross much more in Europe. There are reports that some French audiences literally have jumped to their feet and applauded when the closing credits rolled.
That’s heady stuff, but Raimi isn’t even counting his money yet. In fact, he may not make any, the finances of selling an independent film being what they are. He says he’s personally in debt $20,000, which his share of the profits ultimately may cut to a $10,000 deficit. He has been living with his parents in Detroit to curb personal expenses.
Raimi, the son of a furniture salesman, shakes his head when discussing the finances of his first significant film, but it doesn’t discourage him. Another project is in the works, and there’s financing, which he cannot yet discuss.
Only one thing is important to him, regardless of the cost: making movies . He and friends now have formed Renaissance Pictures Ltd., which has offices in downtown Ferndale, a suburb 10 miles north of Detroit.
He hopes to begin filming The X Y Z Murders, a crime thriller, in Detroit in November.
"That would be my big break, and I wouldn’t louse it up," Raimi says. "I’ll try to make a good movie and come in below budget, so they
backers> will have a good experience with me. I got an early start, but it could be an early finish, too, if I don’t get the money for the next one."
WOULD YOU DARE DO THIS...
Miami Herald, The (FL) - June 11, 1983
Author: LAURA MISCH Herald Staff Writer
After you see it, you may never take another shower without thinking, if only for the briefest instant, that Norman Bates is on the other side of that plastic curtain with a butcher knife.
You may never take another shower, period.
Alfred Hitchcock’s masterly, gory murder scene in Psycho was scary not only for the sheer horror of it but also because it could really happen. The villain was a human being, not a monster or evil space alien; the situation was possible, if far-fetched.
The original black-and-white footage is used again as the opening scene in Psycho II partly as a tribute to the late master of suspense and partly because it is still as shocking today as it was when it was made 23 years ago. Film schools often show it as a masterpiece of film editing.
For the uninitiated: In the original movie , actress Janet Leigh, playing a woman who has stolen some money from her boss, is on the run. In a driving rainstorm she makes a wrong turn and ends up at the Bates Motel, a lonely-looking place run by a strange young man named Norman Bates, played by Tony Perkins.
After eating dinner with Bates in his office, she goes to her room and takes a shower before bed. As she is soaping up, the audience sees, through the milky shower curtain, the blurred image of the bathroom door slowly opening and a tall figure stepping in.
In a staccato series of 78 separate shots that takes only 45 horrifying seconds on film, the curtain is flung open and the unsuspecting woman is brutally stabbed to death, the blood spiraling down the drain as she thrashes in agony.
Graphic and extremely violent, the scene was a milestone for horror pictures. Yet not one frame of film actually shows the character being stabbed.
"It’s much easier to use the imagination of the audience," Hitchcock once said. "People still want to enjoy the vicarious pleasure of getting away from fear."
The audience leaving the much bloodier Psycho II last week at one area theater was no exception.
"I thought the slasher parts were pretty good," said Marie Dickinson, 20, who enjoys Texas Chain-Saw Massacre and other spatter flicks. "But I was more scared when they were creeping around the house not knowing who was around the corner and behind the door."
Exactly.
Hitchcock, who died in 1980 after making more than 50 movies , knew that building up the suspense slowly is much more exciting than going for the quick thrill. Psycho II director Richard Franklin borrowed much from the master: The new movie is loaded with startling camera angles, Hitchcock editing techniques and even dialogue taken straight from the first film.
"We were not trying to remake the original," said Hilton Green, who was Hitchcock’s assistant director on Psycho and the producer of the current movie . He said Hitchcock never intended a sequel to be made to the low-budget ($780,000) thriller.
"It was one of the most scary movies ever," Green said. "But I didn’t think so at the time. You lose your perspective when you’re that close to it," he said.
"I take the average man and put him through a bizarre situation," Hitchcock said 11 years ago. "I don’t use private eyes or detectives simply because the audience can’t identify with these people. They identify with the common man and not the professional, and I always like to get my audience involved."
Dr. James Sussex, former chairman of the University of Miami department of psychiatry and former chief of psychiatric services at Jackson Memorial Hospital, has not seen either movie -- but he is familiar with how people deal with fear.
"Seeing a movie like that is exciting," he said. "If you’re watching something weird or bizarre, even if you know that it’s fantasy, it tends to step up your heart rate, dilate your eyes. Your blood starts flowing.
"They can have the combination of fear and anxiety and know they are still safe," he said. "It’s safe terror. It’s even pleasurable. But past a certain point it can cease to be fun."
In 1960, after Psycho was released, a man who had strangled three California women confessed that he had committed the second slaying after taking the victim to see the movie .
"That does happen, in an infinitesimal number of people," Sussex said. "You could have a disturbed or highly suggestible person who can act on impulses triggered that way."
The psychiatrist said it is "not a good idea" to see a lot of violent movies , especially for young people.
"People require more violence as they go along," he said. "The more they see, the more they want to see."
In Psycho II, there is plenty.
Norman Bates, again played by Perkins, has just been released after 22 years in a mental institution, judged cured of his psychosis. He returns to the Bates Motel and gets a job in a nearby diner.
But for Norman, carving a niche in the real world is tough. Trouble starts immediately.
His mother, long dead even during the first Psycho, apparently has returned to drive him crazy -- again. There are more knifings. There is even another shower scene, but this one ends safely.
Eventually, the character reverts to his old self.
"Most psychotics are not violent," Sussex said. "But it is not impossible for it to occur. I’ve read about some real ones that were so bizarre I wondered if they made up. And it would be possible to be free of symptoms for 22 years and then have a psychosis return."
Green said Universal had a psychiatrist on the set of Psycho II as an adviser.
But most moviegoers aren’t concerned with the picture’s psychological validity -- they paid their money to be scared out of their seats.
Andy Hunt, 18, watched most of Psycho II through his fingers. Outside the theater after the movie , he lunged at his friends, pretending to stab them again and again.
They laughed and ran away from him, shrieking in mock terror.
"People are born to be frightened," Hitchcock once said.
