Parky at the Pictures (DVD 22/1/2015)

A double helping of Mario Bava launches the Cult section. Venturing out of the shadows of Gothic horror, Bava laid the foundations of the giallo thriller with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963), a teasingly Hitchcockian confection that satirises the conventions of potboiling crime fiction. Arriving in Rome to visit ailing aunt Virginia Doro, 20 year-old Letícia Román is still feeling the effects of the doped cigarette she smoked on the plane when Doro dies and Román gets mugged while on her way to inform Dr John Saxon. As she comes round, however, she sees a man pulling a knife out of his female victim. But Inspector Titti Tomaino can find no trace of the body and begins to suspect that Román is a hysterical nuisance who has read too many whodunits. Thus, when Román accepts the hospitality of Doro's friend, Valentina Cortese, she is sure that no one will believe the significance of some press cuttings about the `Alphabet Killer'. But ex-reporter Dante DiPaolo is convinced the police arrested the wrong man a decade earlier.

Acting as his own cinematographer, Bava makes superb use of his sunlit Roman locations and Giorgio Giovannini's noirish sets. But it's the framing of crucial details and the leavening of the suspense with droll wit that makes this so compelling. The performances are a touch too knowing, but Román makes a spirited heroine and the way in which she uses string and talc to protect her bedroom against intruders is unforgettable. American International Pictures re-edited and re-scored the picture for the US release and Arrow have generously included the much-maligned Evil Eye among the extras. Rather splendidly, their edition of Rabid Dogs (1974) also includes Kidnapped, the re-edited, scored and dubbed bowdlerisation that was assembled by producer Alfredo Leone and Bava's director son, Lamberto, after star Lea Lander decided to rescue the movie from its undeserved obscurity.

The inspired storyline derives from Michael J. Carroll's `Man and Boy', which first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. But, while it starts with a bang as Maurice Poli and confederates Aldo Caponi (aka Don Backy) and Luigi Montefiori (aka George Eastman) rob an armoured car and take Lea Lander hostage, the pace slows and the tension mounts once they commandeer the vehicle being driven by Riccardo Cucciolla, who is accompanied by a sickly, sleeping boy wrapped in a blanket. Bava and cinematographer Emilio Varriano keep things stiflingly claustrophobic and even succeed in heightening the sense of menace when Leander pleads for a comfort break. The no-nonsense performances and Stelvio Cipriani's lowering score are also key to keeping viewers on tenterhooks. But nothing can prepare them for the shocking twist, which should have had this hailed as an instant classic rather than a gruesome misfire.

Half a century has done little to draw the sting from John Guillermin's Rapture (1965), a melancholic, but deeply disconcerting monochrome melodrama set on an isolated farm near the Breton coast. It is inhabited by morose doctor Melvyn Douglas and his 15 year-old daughter, Patricia Gozzi, whom he has indulged and infantilised since the death of her mother. He agrees to let her use his wedding suit to cover a scarecrow in the garden. But, when American sailor Dean Stockwell dons the togs to evade the gendarmes after him for accidentally killing a fellow officer, Gozzi convinces herself that the scarecrow has come to life and wants her to run away to Paris to get married.

Evocatively photographed by Marcel Grignon and scored with teasingly inappropriate romanticism by Georges Delerue, this feels like the missing link between Bryan Forbes's Whistle Down the Wind (1961) and Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), although it also feels like something Bruno Dumont might make. With Ingmar Bergman regular Gunnel Lindblom as Douglas's housekeeper and Peter Sallis as his son-in-law, this unsettles like the best fairytales, while also hinting at darker forces and urges that ensure the content retains its controversial edge.

Another veteran of Hollywood's Golden Age sets the action in motion in Jack Hill's Pit Stop (1969), as Brian Donlevy spots street racer Richard Davalos tearing through the backstreets of Los Angeles and pays his bail to ensure he drives for him in the lethal Figure 8 drag races against the fearless Sid Haig. Best known for playing James Dean's brother in Elia Kazan''s East of Eden (1955) and for appearing on the front cover of the 1987 Smiths album, Strangeways Here We Come, Davalos cuts a sullen figure in this cut-price Roger Corman production that was originally called The Winner. He is given little support by Donlevy in his final role. But Haig makes a worthy adversary and Ellen Burstyn (or McRae as she was then) and Beverly Washburn make the most of limited opportunities, as Hill concentrates on the metal and machismo that are captured in slick monochrome by Austin McKinney, who would later produce the process photography for James Cameron's The Terminator (1984).

The scene shifts to 15th-century Austria for Michael Armstrong's Mark of the Devil (1970), a blatant rip-off of Michael Reeves's Witchfinder General (1968) that was released with a self-appended `V' for `Violence' certificate that has prompted some to see it as a forerunner of the torture porn that has blighted the horror genre since the turn of the millennium. Opening with the rape and immolation of some nuns and the dismemberment of the priest trying to protect them, the action lurches between graphic set-pieces with all the grace of a pantomime Frankenstein.

Tormentor in chief is Reggie Nalder, the witchfinder of a country town who decides to persecute barmaid Olivera Katarina (aka Olivera Vuco) because she refuses to sleep with him. She is rescued, however, by Udo Kier, the assistant to zealous witchfinder Herbert Lom, who puts Nalder's nose out of joint by asserting his jurisdiction and upholding Kier's decision to release Katarina from the cells. However, in league with executioner Herbert Fux, Lom steals property from baron Michael Maien in the name of the church and has Gaby Fuchs's tongue removed for claiming she had been assaulted by the local bishop. Drunk with power, Lom has Katarina and puppeteer Adrian Hoven charged with witchcraft and murders Nalder. But, when Kier realises the error of his ways and tries to stand up to Lom, he pays a brutal price during the peasant uprising led by the fiery Katarina.

Denounced by all as an unholy mess, this vicious West German production makes such copious and inexcusable use of gratuitous close-up that it is impossible to view it as a cautionary treatise on inhumanity. Armstrong seeks to entertain as much as shock with his ceaseless cruelty and blood-letting, with the ripping out of Fuchs's being luxuriated over in fetishised detail. In fairness, Herbert Lom ably conveys the banality of evil born of ego, corruption and superstition. But Kier, Nalder and Katarina are less persuasive and Ernest Kaline's photography and Max Mellin's production design are little better and, given the clumsiness of the storytelling and the awfulness of the dialogue, one can hardly blame the Bolton-born Armstrong and the Austrian Hoven (who also produced) for adopting the pen names Sergio Casstner and Percy Parker.

The action is more refined, but much more melancholic than horrific in William Crain's Blacula (1972), a blaxploitation picture that offers few socio-political insights into the African-American experience in the years after the securing of Civil Rights. A coda set in Transylvania in 1780 links the slave trade and addition, but Raymond Koenig and Joan Torres's screenplay pays more attention to romance than subtext after Count Dracula (Charles Macauley) refuses to help African prince Mamuwalde (William H. Marshall) end trafficking and punishes the Abani ruler by transforming him into a vampire and sealing him into a coffin, while his wife, Luva (Vonetta McGee), is left to suffer a slow and painful death.

Two hundred years later, Los Angeles antique dealers Bobby McCoy (Ted Harris) and Billy Schaffer (Rick Metzler) are unpacking treasures from a European castle when they open Mamuwalde's casket and become his first victims in the New World. However, LAPD pathologist Gordon Thomas (Thalmus Rasulala) considers McCoy's death to be suspicious and has Lieutenant Peters (Gordon Pinsent) investigate. But Mamuwalde has convinced himself that the sister of Thomas's girlfriend Michelle (Denise Nicholas), Tina Williams (McGee), is the reincarnation of Luva and he will do anything to win her heart.

Although Crain stages the showdowns at the warehouse and water plant with some panache, this works better in its quieter moments, as Mamuwalde seeks to seduce and then protect Tina. Consequently, there is such pathos in the finale that the audience is left to lament that good has supposedly triumphed over undead evil. Much of this is down to Marshall's poignant performance. But, while Crain wisely eschews knowing humour (apart from giving morgue attendant Elisha Cook a hook instead of a hand), his over-reliance on cliché and caricature has dated the picture badly and Bob Kelljan's sequel, Scream Blacula Scream (1973), is even less accomplished.

When his dying priestess mother passes her voodoo gifts to apprentice Lisa Fortier (Pam Greer), Willis Daniels (Richard Lawson) purchases the bones of Mamuwalde (Marshall) in the hope of reviving him as a compliant sidekick. However, the vampire bites Daniels and embarks upon a feeding frenzy across LA. Mixing in polite circles, Mamuwalde meets Justin Carter (Don Mitchell), a retired cop whose collection of African artefacts includes several pieces of jewellery that once belonged to Luva. But Carter suspects that Mamuwalde is behind the killing spree and persuades Lieutenant Harley Dunlop (Michael Conrad) to place him under surveillance. Lisa, meanwhile, has also discovered Mamuwalde's true identity. Yet, she is still willing to perform a voodoo ritual that will rid the prince of his curse.

Having teamed with Robert Quarry on Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) and The Return of Count Yorga (1971), Kelljan was probably seen as a safe pair of hands for this peppy follow-up. Bill Marx's percussive score is an improvement on the soul provided by The Hues Corporation, while Marshall and Grier create sparks in their scenes together. But there aren't enough of them and Marshall is too often left to bandy words with Lawson and Mitchell. The former is allowed the odd throwaway line (including one about not being able to admire himself in a mirror after being bitten), but the storyline by Koenig, Torres and Maurice Jules feels rehashed, especially when viewed alongside Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess (1973).

Working on a budget of just $350,000, Gunn sought to explore race, religion, enslavement and sexuality in a picture that suggested he was more a playwright than a film-maker. Nevertheless, Spike Lee was suitably influenced to reference Gunn's final directorial outing in Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) and a growing number of critics are reappraising this commercial disaster as a cult classic.

The story revolves around affluent anthropologist-cum-archivist Duane Jones, who is stabbed three times with an ancient dagger by boorish assistant Bill Gunn on a dig investigating the lost civilisation of Myrthia. Gunn kills himself soon afterwards in a drunken rage and Jones hides his body in the wine cellar of the mansion he shares with butler Leonard Jackson and chauffeur-preacher Sam Waymon. However, the knife wound causes Johnson to become both immortal and addicted to blood and he has to keep his nocturnal prowlings secret from Gunn's grasping wife, Marlene Clark, when she returns from Amsterdam seeking somewhere to live. A romance blossoms between the pair and she agrees to marry Jones, even after learning of her missing husband's fate. One night, however, Jones cuts Clark with the cursed blade and she starts to accompany him in stalking prey before he decides to seek salvation.

Four decades on, one wonders why producers Jack Jordan and Quentin Kelly thought Gunn was going to deliver them a Blacula rip-off after his debut, Stop (1970), had been shelved by Warner Bros because there wasn't an obvious market for movies about gay and lesbian sex in Puerto Rico. Despite Ganja & Hess being accorded an ovation at Cannes, Kelly and Jordan clearly objected to the fact there was no mention of vampirism, as Gunn sought to examine the many forms of addiction, and sold it to Heritage Enterprises, who added a new score and cut the running time from 113 to 78 minutes to leave the nudity and blood-letting in situ and remove the passages of Bergmanesque philosophising and existential angst.

Over the ensuing years, the picture would be shown as Blood Couple, Black Evil, Blackout: The Moment of Terror, Black Vampire and Vampires of Harlem in the hope of enticing the midnite matinee crowd. Luckily, the original print was lodged with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and this version is presented here, with all its contradictions. Gunn slyly contrasts antiquarian statuary with modern comforts and Christianity with African creeds, but also allows a wealthy, educated black couple to feed on helpless members of the urban underclass. Yet, while these tropes invite comparisons with Gunn's script for Hal Ashby's The Landlord (1970), it's his handling of Clark and Jones (who had come to prominence in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, 1968) that not only renders this so sensual, provocative and engaging, but also makes it such a shame that Gunn would never direct another film.

While the special effects are barely proficient in these flawed, but fascinating horror movies, they are the sole reason for watching William Sach's The Incredible Melting Man (1977), which has bumped around the nether regions of cultdom ever since it was released to almost unanimously awful reviews. Sachs claims his vision was compromised by his bosses at American International Pictures. But his tale of an astronaut who goes on a radioactive rampage after returning from a flight to the rings of Saturn would have been forgotten long ago were it not for the make-up that transforms Alex Rebar into the human equivalent of the cake left out in the rain in Jimmy Webb's epically eccentric song, `MacArthur Park'.

Having alone survived the radiation blast that killed his fellow astronauts, Rebar wakes in hospital swathed in bandages. However, he is soon on the loose with doctors Lisle Wilson and Burr DeBenning on his tail after he kills nurse Bonnie Inch. Air Force general Myron Healey flies in to supervise the manhunt, but the slow-moving, rapidly melting Rebar proves elusive, even after sheriff Michael Alldredge joins the chase after the slaughter of fisherman Sam Gelfman and the narrow escape of little girl Julie Drazen in the woods.

Despite the misgivings of pregnant wife Ann Sweeny, DeBenning feels sorry for his old friend, who seems to be gaining strength with each slaying. But the quest takes a personal twist after Rebar kills DeBenning's mother-in-law and her boyfriend (Dorothy Love and Edwin Marx). He also attacks neighbours Jonathan Demme and Janus Blythe, only to lose an arm when the latter defends herself. Disorientated, Rebar staggers into a power plant, where he frazzles Alldredge on some live wires and prevents DeBenning from falling to his death. However, security guards Mickey Lolich and Westbrook Claridge misread the situation and shoot DeBenning and Rebar dissolves in exhausted despair after exacting his revenge.

The fact that a second mission blasts off to Saturn in the aftermath of the carnage ends this farrago on a wry note. But, even though Sachs insists he was striving to satirise 1950s comic-books and sci-fi movies, too much of the humour on show here is unintentional. The notion that DeBenning has to rely on a geiger counter to track down a monster shedding ears, as well as oozing pus and blood is as hilarious as the fact that Rebar manages to evade capture despite lumbering along with excruciating ponderousness. In defence of a cast hopelessly out of its depth, the dialogue is execrable and this is such a photofit exercise in exploitation that the action even pauses to allow Rainbeaux Smith to peel off her top for sleazy photographer Don Walters. However, Arlon Ober's score does its best to ramp up the tension and there are guilty pleasures to be had from viewing something so relentlessly terrible.

Thom Eberhardt similarly seeks to poke fun at postwar genre fare in Night of the Comet (1984), It's easy to imagine this being taken seriously by the kids parked up at a 1950s drive-in and that sense of sincere affection ensures this is more than just another snarky exercise in postmodernist kitsch. It helps, of course, that Eberhardt reunited Robert Beltran and Mary Woronov after their liaison in Paul Bartels cult gem, Eating Raoul (1982) and that he was enough of a film buff to have a poster Victor Fleming's Clark Gable-Jean Harlow drama, Red Dust (1932), outside the picturehouse. But, even when the pace flags and the action becomes a tad convoluted, Eberhardt avoids cheap shots and flashed flesh, and, as a consequence, retains the audience's goodwill right down to the wry denouement.

As Earth is threatened by the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs, teenage sisters Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney are too busy to notice. The latter is feuding with stepmother Sharon Farrell, while Stewart is cursing the fact that someone has challenged her best score on a video game at the Southern Californian cinema where she works as an usherette. Stewart is also having a fling with projectionist Michael Bowen and happens to be sleeping inside his metal-lined booth when the tail of the comet reduces the majority of humanity to piles of red powder. Unfortunately for Bowen, many of those who survived the shockwave have been turned into zombies and Stewart decides to head for home after witnessing his gruesome demise.

Luckily, the sulking Maroney had slept in a metal shed and she joins Stewart in venturing out to the local radio station, which appears still to be broadcasting. But, while the girls discover that the programme is playing on a continuous loop, they bump into fellow survivor Robert Beltran, a Mexican trucker whose rig protected him from the death rays. He is keen to check up on his family, but Stewart wants to contact anyone else in their situation and her message is heard by scientists Geoffrey Lewis and Mary Woronov, who anticipated the damage that the comet might wreak and took shelter in an underground bunker. However, someone left an air vent open and the pair need the blood of uncontaminated specimens in order to find a cure for zombiness.

Unconcerned by the fate of mankind, Stewart and Maroney go on a shopping spree at the mall (which is amusingly cut to Cyndi Lauper's `Girls Just Want to Have Fun') and engage in a gun battle with stock boys Dick Rude and Chris Pedersen before being kidnapped by Lewis's minions. However, he has fallen out with the increasingly deranged Woronov, whose antics with a hypodermic put everyone at risk before Beltran rides to the rescue and he hooks up with Stewart to raise a couple of kids they find at the facility, while Maroney is swept off her feet by Marc Poppel, whose number plate includes the same initials that made Stewart so mad at the start of the film.

Such throwaway gags make it easy to overlook the more obvious failings of a pastiche that is short on genuine laughs and scares. The performances are admirably loopy, with Stewart and Maroney being suitably feisty and Woronov biting off her usual chunk of scenery. John Muto's production design and Arthur Albert's cinematography also merit a mention. But it's Eberhardt's bullish direction that keeps the gleefully silly premise from collapsing in on itself.

Director Stephen Chiodo has more of a struggle on his hands with Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988), in spite of the assistance of screenwriting siblings Edward and Charles, with whom he had designed the eponymous fiends in Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984). Once again, the action feels rooted in the past, although it comes closer to a madcap episode of Doctor Who or the TV incarnation of Batman than a 1950s comic-book or B movie. But what undermines this romp at every turn is the fact that the lovingly wrought contrivance is almost entirely devoid of wit and menace and, as a consequence, this rapidly outstays its welcome.

Farmer Royal Dano thinks he sees a comet crash to earth at the edge of his land in Crescent Cove, California. On closer inspection, however, he sees a circus tent and decides to investigate with his dog. He is quickly captured by alien clowns and lovers Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder approach the tent with greater caution when they roll up having spotted something in the sky while smooching at a local beauty spot. Venturing inside, they see a room filled with cotton candy cocoons and only just manage to escape from a balloon dog and clowns firing at them with popcorn guns.

Initially, sheriff John Allen Nelson and his misanthropic sidekick John Vernon treat Cramer and Snyder's story with disdain. But, when Nelson finds cars filled with candy floss at the Top of the World make-out point, he takes their claims more seriously, even though the tent seems to have vanished. The townsfolk also realise they are under siege, as the clowns cause mayhem in the pharmacy and the park. A biker gang refuses to be intimidated and bears down on a clown riding a tiny tricycle. However, he proves more than a match for them and knocks one biker's head clean off his shoulders, while his giant counterpart forces a motorist over a steep incline.

Cramer and Nelson try to ram a clown using a shadow puppet to shrink bystanders into tasty morsels for the young he is carrying around in a bag, but he gives them the slip. Back at the station, Vernon arrests one of the clowns for playing pranks and convinces himself that the whole crisis is a charade. But he is being used as a marionette by the time Nelson gets back and blasts the clown to death before puncturing its red nose. Meanwhile, Cramer has hooked up with siblings Michael Siegel and Peter Licassi, who place their ice-cream van at his disposal. But they are unable to prevent Snyder from being imprisoned inside a huge balloon and amusement park security guard David Piel from being pelted with acid-filled pies.

While Siegel and Licassi fight off the attentions of some female clowns in the funhouse, Nelson and Cramer rescue Snyder. However, Jojo the Klownzilla (Charlie Chiodo) is determined to crush the humans preventing his people from feeding and a titanic struggle commences as the tent-ship takes off for outer space. Siegel and Licassi burst in to help Cramer and Snyder, but all seems lost when Nelson uses his sheriff badge to burst Jojo's nose and there is an enormous explosion.

It says much for the Chiodo brothers' self-belief that they ended this harebrained balderdash with a peal of manic clown laughter that was clearly designed to cue the sequel. Mercifully, it never came - although The Return of the Killer Klowns from Outer Space in 3-D is slated for a release in 2016. But, for all its faults, this remains an intriguing picture and the Chiodos have to be commended for giving their absurdist premise the old college try. They also deserve credit for hiring Kandace Westmore to do the make-up, as she is part of the dynasty responsible for such memorable creatures as Fredric March's alter ego in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1932) and Charles Laughton's Quasimodo in William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). But, while the greasepaint is splendidly complemented by Darcie Olson's costumes, the action is overstuffed with irksome mischief rather than disconcerting turmoil. Thus, while it fitfully amuses, this never seizes the imagination in the way that Charles Chiodo's idiosyncratic production design often demands.