31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-Day 12: WEREWOLF WOMAN (1976)

Annik Borel wolfs out.

There are those among the horror-addict fraternity who don't give a shit about how terrible a film may be reported to be, so long as they get to see a new movie about their favorite creepy-crawly. I have friends and loved ones who will sit through even the most wretched and boring waste of celluloid provided it gives them their ghost/vampire/slasher/zombie fix, and I'm the guy who's dumb enough to do likewise for werewolves. I’ve endured a number of those horrendous Paul Naschy wolf-man flicks (of which there are around a dozen), WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, the HOWLING sequels, that THE COMPANY OF WOLVES bullshit, THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON and THE BEAST MUST DIE, so I figure I can take just about anything offering the merest hope of lupine violence. So  despite its rather foul rep, I’d wanted to check out LEGEND OF THE WOLF WOMAN since I first heard about it just over thirty-six years ago in a CINEFANTASTIQUE review that gave it a sound panning. Well, that opportunity finally came when the movie was released on DVD in its uncut form (apparently the original U.S. release trimmed the movie by nearly a half hour) under the title WEREWOLF WOMAN and while I’ve seen far worse, I’ve also seen far better.

This bit of lycanthropic Eurosleaze stars French-born, ferret-faced Annik Borel — late of such classics as BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE DEVILS (1972) and the Isaac Hayes blaxploitationer TRUCK TURNER (1974) — a blonde with haunted eyes who looks like a fusion of Sondra Locke and Judith Light (a concept far more shudder-inducing than anything found in the film). As was the wont of Eurosleaze actresses of the period, Borel was in no way afraid of shedding her clothing, a point made apparent less than thirty seconds into the flick as she is seen completely bare-assed nekkid, gyrating in a circle of fire to cheesy voodoo drums by the light of the full moon.

Ah, the joys of witchcraft and ritual nudity!

This marvelously gratuitous nudity plays out in lots of close-ups as the credits roll, the camera occasionally getting so close to Borel’s gingerish pubes that I began to feel like her gynecologist, something I’m not used to outside of the context of straight-up pornography, and I am willing to bet was one of the elements edited when the film first hit these shores. This display of bump & grind is cut short when she lures a horny villager to his death, gorily planting an axe in his skull in what may be the first case of a werewolf committing an axe-murder.

Yes, this chick’s a werewolf and her furry look can fairly be described as the makeup artist — overrated hack Carlo Rambaldi, just prior to his leap to international fame with the 1976 KING KONG remake — sticking a fake nose and some bogus teeth onto Borel, then painting the actress’s nekkid skin with an adhesive and having her roll about on a barber shop floor. Perhaps the most bizarre aspects of this makeup are the werewolf’s blonde hairdo coupled with her otherwise brown fur and Borel’s pendulous breasts being stricken by gravity in such a way that they resemble the much-suckled-upon teats of a mother beast, capped as they are with nipples resembling black olives.

Anyway, the werewolf chick is abruptly seen trussed-up and ready for burning at the stake (we aren’t shown how this happens) and we skip ahead by about two hundred years to then-present day Italy where we meet Daniela (Borel), a mid-twenty-something dead ringer for the werewolf chick who was one of her ancestors. It’s not really made clear, but apparently Daniela summoned the spirit of her shaggy ancestor (that’s what the opening sequence was supposed to be, I guess) and is now possessed by it, giving vengeful power to her deep-seated hatred of men and the sex act. Raped in her early adolescence, she now lives in the country with her kindly and concerned father, but her now-possessed psyche goes completely around the bend when she witnesses her sister having sex with her new husband and lures the guy into the woods where she attempts to seduce him while stark naked and instead tears his throat out with her teeth before dumping his corpse down a ravine.

Driven insane by what she’s done, Daniela is institutionalized but soon escapes with the help of a friendly nymphomaniac (whom she kills with a pair of scissors), immediately embarking on a murderous spree, growling like a crazed wolf and ripping out throats willy-nilly before falling in love with a sweet and hunky stuntman who lives in an abandoned movie studio town once used for filming Spaghetti Westerns (no, seriously). Cured of her bloodlust after a month with this guy (and one of those soft-focus “romantic” montages common to Euro nudie flicks of the seventies), Daniela’s life starts taking a turn for the better. Well, that is until she’s gang-raped by three local scumbags during a home invasion, a trio of from-out-of-nowhere vermin who also murder her lover. NOTE: we are spared the “main event” of the actual gang rape but we do witness the preamble, a nasty bit of business very reminiscent of the most famous sequence in Sam Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS (1971). If you’ve seen that movie you know what I’m talking about, so keep that in mind before renting this on date night.

Finally driven irrevocably mad, Daniela decimates her attackers, somehow tracking down each of them despite having absolutely zero clue as to who they are or where they live and crushing two of them with a junkyard’s claw-crane that she learned to operate after watching it in action for about a minute. Catching up with her at long last, the hapless detectives who’ve fruitlessly tracked Daniela since she escaped the mental institution capture her at a remote location where she sits, open-bloused and titties-a-swingin’, sampling spoonfuls of stew from a cauldron (where she got it from is anyone’s guess). Now snarling and completely feral, Daniela is apprehended as a ridiculous voice-over informs us that we’ve just watched a re-enactment of “true” events that took place in 1968.

What?!!?

So, those like me who love werewolf movies were suckered in by WEREWOLF WOMAN’s promise of a straight-up lycanthrope fright-fest but instead we got a squalid piece of seventies Euro-sleaze exploitation featuring the so-called werewolf being seen only during the movie's first five minutes, minimal gore, no scares or suspense, a script full of ridiculous plot holes, and so much wall-to-wall nudity that I nearly got tired of staring at a naked chick’s bush (say it isn’t so!!!). Simply put, WEREWOLF WOMAN is kind of worth a look as a seventies curiosity that’s infamous for its general uselessness but if you have something else to do rather than see it, by all means do whatever your other choice is. Believe me, you won’t be missing a blessed thing.

Poster from the original American theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-Day 11: MOTHER OF TEARS (2007)

The Mother of Tears (Moran Atlas) lets it all hang out.

There is a very vocal camp among horror movie fans that finds the efforts of writer/director Dario Argento to be the finest work produced in the realm of Italian horror cinema, and while that may be true it’s an assessment that doesn’t really say all that much since the vast majority of Italian horror movies suck ass. I’ve never been much of a fan of Argento’s work — I’m a Mario Bava man — but I have to give him credit for crafting movies that are coherently filmed and clearly identifiable as the work of a singular creator with a visceral vision. That said, MOTHER OF TEARS is the final chapter of Argento’s “Three Mothers” witchcraft trilogy, a series consisting of the classic SUSPIRIA (1977, the commercial for which was far scarier than anything found in the actual movie, in my humble opinion) and INFERNO (1980) and though the evil witches found in those flicks were quite decisively dealt with, the most malevolent of the lot is the focus of this final installment. All of which is well and good in the eyes of the horror-hungry, but this film unintentionally (?) stands as concrete proof that Argento has either completely lost his goddamned mind of he just plain does not give a flying fuck anymore. In fact, MOTHER OF TEARS can best be summed up as “Dario Argento goes bullmoose insane and makes a Lucio Fulci movie.”

Director Dario Argento: genius or loony? You decide!

When an urn containing artifacts relating to Mater Lachrimarum, the “Mother of Tears,” is unsealed in a modern day Roman museum, the hapless unfortunate who opens the urn is immediately set upon by some bogus-looking demons (and an evil, shrieking monkey) and in short order her teeth are ripped out with an infamous Inquisition torture device known as a “pear” (look it up and be appalled), followed by a graphic disembowelment and subsequent strangulation with her own innards. All hell then literally breaks loose and the city becomes a maelstrom of senseless and gory murder, suicide, rape, infanticide, you name it, and that’s just the first ten minutes of the flick.

Asia Argento as American (yeah, right) scholar Sarah Mandy.

American art restoration student Sarah Mandy (Asia Argento, the director’s daughter, who couldn’t be more obviously European Italian if she tried) flees the museum’s scene of horror and immediately finds herself both the target of a police manhunt and the unwanted attentions of the Mother of Tears’ minions, a group mostly composed of chicks who abuse makeup, hairspray and rummage sale fashion sense to a degree not seen since the heyday of Cyndi Lauper. Bouncing from one set piece to another and barely staying one step ahead of the cops and the creeps, Sarah becomes aware of a hidden legacy, namely her latent sorcerous superpowers inherited from her late mother who happened to be a white witch. When not fending off the bad guys, Sarah is urged on by the rather ineffectual shade of her mom but offered no real instruction or insight into her powers, other than that she’s somehow supposed to use her unexplained gifts to defeat the Mother of Tears.

As this odyssey of non-self-discovery plays out, Sarah meets alchemists, an exorcist (played by Euro-horror mainstay and walking cliché Udo Kier), a bunch of the aforementioned “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” witches (one of whom memorably gets her head crushed repeatedly in a train door) and a couple of good lesbian witches (who kindly provide an utterly gratuitous and from out of nowhere girl-on-girl scene), all of which leads her into direct confrontation with the title character (ridiculously played by Moran Atlas), a literally tits-out evil creature who spends the bulk of her time without a stitch on, gyrating and gesticulating in ways that call attention to her outrageously fake breast implants (an aspect that totally confuses me since a shortage of big tits has certainly never been one of Italy’s problems). During the times when the Mother of Tears deigns to be clad at all, she sports either a hooded cloak that falls open to display flesh,

or a red piece of attire found in the urn that amounts to a magic t-shirt which comes just short of completely exposing her witchy nether parts.

"All hail my magic t-shirt!!!"

By the time that Sarah gets to the witch’s underground lair, we’ve witnessed graphic eye-gougings, disembowelings, an immolation, throat-slashings, demonic possession, cannibalism (as if you needed more proof that you were watching an Italian horror flick), torture of church officials and a vaginal impalement with a seven-foot spear (which is literally shoved out of the recipient’s mouth), so we’re within our rights to expect a suitably apocalyptic battle between good witch Sarah and the Mother and her minions, but after all the hype about Sarah’s powers being the key to winning the day all we get is Sarah ripping off the Mother’s magic t-shirt and dumping it onto an open brazier. That move results in an impromptu earthquake (?), the routing of the minions, and what I believe was the enormous spire of a church simultaneously running through and squashing the buck-nekkid Mother of Tears. Sarah and the cop who was leading the manhunt after her escape through catacombs filled with raw sewage, and when they make it to the surface they’re suddenly clean (symbolism?) and sit there laughing like a couple of mental patients. Then, before we’re offered any kind of real conclusion or are even told that the world has been set to right, the credits abruptly roll to the accompaniment of some really bad heavy metal song. Reminiscent as it was of the ending of Lucio Fulci’s THE GATES OF HELL (1980), the finale left me sitting there gobsmacked for a few moments before I exclaimed, “What the fuck did I just watch???”

I have not seen all of Argento’s films but I think it’s a safe bet to say that MOTHER OF TEARS is easily his most over-the-top and nonsensical work, featuring a plot that makes virtually no sense and revels in the kind of gore that his lesser-talented contemporaries relied upon in lieu of Argento’s directorial talents. Compounding the rampaging idiocy on hand is the fact that the film was shot in English, and the consequent delivery by a cast that presumably for the most part doesn’t speak the language ranges from emotionless to downright hilarious; the very idea that Asia Argento is supposed to be playing an American is ludicrous enough thanks to her blatantly native Italian looks, but the accent heard whenever she speaks brings to mind gondolas and the beautiful hills of wine country rather than someplace like Newark, New Jersey.

But despite its myriad flaws, MOTHER OF TEARS is definitely a must-see for the spectacle of what can happen when all reason flees an acclaimed director and he lets his most questionable ideas run rampant across the screen. In fact, I’d rate MOTHER OF TEARS as Argento’s analog to Ken Russell’s THE FALL OF THE LOUSE OF USHER; sure it’s a piece of galloping horse shit, but this is a steaming turd that simply has to be seen to believed, so I recommended it to any and all willing to take the chance.

(Oh, and for the record: the vaginal spearing occurs while the character on the receiving end of it is clad in a shift so there’s no nudity, and that makes it even worse thanks to our imaginations filling in the obvious details with imagery probably worse than anything Argento could have actually shown us.)

Theatrical release poster.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-DAY 10: TOKYO GORE POLICE (2008)

Okay, I have one big question about this flick: How can a movie featuring content like this,

or this (yes, that is a gun/penis),

or even this (giving new possibilities to the old "snail trails" joke)

turn out to be something of a disappointment? The only answer I can come up with is that the Japanese have twigged to the fact that a movie doesn't have to make one lick of sense to rake in box office cash, provided the film in question is crammed wall-to-wall with ultra-violence, gratuitous nudity, kinky sexual freakishness, monsters like something out of a softcore remake of KAMEN RIDER and truly unbelievable amounts of torrential arterial spray, the likes of which have not been seen since Peter Jackson's DEADALIVE (1992).

TOKYO GORE POLICE is a batshit-crazy orgy of over-the-top carnage hung upon a framework that plays out like the result of a three-month working vacation in Japan as taken by David Lynch or David Cronenberg. Replete with "body horror" revolving around the human form mutating into a myriad of fascinating and horrific variations, the film is nothing more than an excuse to showcase loony prosthetic makeup effects, CGI, and Gwar-style splatter that decorates the camera with matter-of-fact abandon, and actresses who are quite content to get topless and allow the makeup people to run rampant transforming their nubile bodies into grotesque fusions of the feminine and the fearsome. But while that's all terrific in theory, the movie itself has the feel of a semi-obscure and at times pretentious art movie that wallows in grue yet manages to stay objective to its own abattoir excesses. Sort of like it's focusing its perception on its own content and not being viscerally engaged in the least.

The often nonsensical story unfolds in a near-future where the Tokyo Police Corporation finds itself at constant war with the "engineers," genetically modified super-baddies whose motives are never explained to any satisfactory degree, but they do have the ability to take helacious amounts of high-caliber punishment and transform assorted bits of their anatomy into bio-mechanical hybrids of flesh and weaponry or disturbing fusions of man and other sundry life-forms.

A trio of "engineered" nightclub performers: gotta love those snail shell ninnies!

Few movies can function without some sort of protagonist, even one with a surfeit of sanguinary explosions and bucketloads of offal, so TOKYO GORE POLICE provides us with Ruka (Eihi Shina), a seriously disturbed cop trained to deal with engineers, whose skirt and garter belt ensemble fetchingly complements her short skirt and razor-edged katana. 

Eihi Shina as policewoman/slayer Ruka.

Haunted by traumatic events from her youth, Ruka vents her neuroses by regularly taking a blade to her left forearm, but when not engaging in self-mutilation she fights against a persistent engineer serial killer who, unbeknownst to her, is tied to her personal tragedy. Her investigation leads to the fetish club headquarters of the engineers and unearths unexpected truths about her adoptive father before the film climaxes in a half hour of nigh-unimaginable bloodshed and totally gratuitous mayhem. But at times the film's visual storytelling is an incoherent mess, and my buddy Chris and I spent much of the film trying to piece together exactly how some of the characters figured into the plot, exactly who they were, and even if they were in fact another character altogether. Our perceptions were not in any way altered by booze; we were simply and profoundly confused by much of what we saw and I'll be damned if I've got all of it straight even as I write this review. I honestly wonder if the filmmakers simply did not care if the film was coherent or not, as long as they were able to create what amounted to a feature-length special effects demo reel. Take f'rinstance this post-punk geisha chick:

She shows up a bunch of times during the movie and bloodily engages the engineers in combat, but exactly who and what is she? I thought she was another incarnation of Ruka but apparently not, and Chris was also at a loss to explain just who she was. I think she may have been another policewoman because she shows up during the climax wearing a kicky uniform while wielding a naginata (a weapon I always welcome with open arms) but I couldn't honestly tell you for certain, even if there were a gun to my head. Then there's the guy seen standing to Ruka's left in the shot below:

As seen here, he's clearly another member of the police corporation, but once Ruka makes her way to the fetish club this same guy is seen wandering in off the street, decked out in tacky '70's gear, and he runs afoul of a chick with stitched-over nipples who bites off his cock in a truly spectacular/ludicrous display of fountaining blood. He then falls prey to the chief engineer and gets turned into a berserker with a sword-arm and a gigantic cannon-penis, but here's the thing: I had no idea that the throwaway cop seen above and the guy reborn with the ballistic boner were one and the same until I took a good, long look at this photo. The character is never really pointed out to be one of Ruka's co-workers (at least not that I can recall), and during the bits where his discoed-out self saunters into the fetish club Chris kept asking, "Who the fuck is this guy, and why are we supposed to care?"

A cock-biter with stitched-over ninnies: not the kind of girl you take home to meet your mom.

But maybe I'm the one who's fucked-up for actually giving a shit about expecting a plot in a movie that has nothing on its mind other than pleasing the gore-hounds that comprise the bulk of its audience, an audience of which I'm supposedly a part?

Despite its art house pacing and feel, TOKYO GORE POLICE lives up to its name and intent, providing colorful and ridiculous gory set pieces that don't disappoint, although as previously stated there is an element of the camera's gaze upon these events being a case of "point and stare" that doesn't necessarily engage the viewer. In fact, at times it kind of reminded me of mediocre porno: all the stuff you want to see is there onscreen, but its depiction is little more than explicitness for the sake of being explicit and it's all rather mechanical. But what other film can you name that depicts a living, breathing torso-chair that treats the patrons of the fetish club to a golden shower of epic proportions?

Seriously, this piece of flesh furniture lets fly with a literal geyser of piss while those in attendance cavort with glee. Hey, whatever turns you on...

The pee-pee chair prop.

There's also abundant eye-candy on display, covering a number of aesthetics from standard fetishy

to my favorite visual in the entire film:

The most impressive example of the classical "vagina dentata" ever seen on the big screen, so there's something for everyone.

Bottom line: TOKYO GORE POLICE is a seriously flawed piece of work and I would only recommend it for those who just have to see every gory movie ever made. It's visually interesting but uninvolving, and while there are many out there who will not care about the story, I felt kind of let down by it. For a vastly better film that mines similiar territory, I recommend THE MACHINE GIRL instead.

Poster from the U.S./U.K. theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-Day 9: SANTO VS. LAS MUJERES VAMPIRO (1962)

Just another day for El Santo.

Mexican horror from the early1960's is a cornucopia of atmosphere, cheesiness, and sheer weird craziness that at times feels like it spewed forth from the mind of a child who was out of his mind during a serious fever. Heavily influenced by the look and feel of the classic Universal horror cycle and more than a little of the then-current Italian flavors, these south-of-the-border shockers overflowed with vampires, lycanthropes, Frankenstein-esque man-made-monstrosities, mummies, mad scientists, random cutlery-wielding madmen, and malevolent space aliens, and on many occasions those baleful ne'er-do-wells were righteously opposed by luchadores, Mexico's signature masked professional wrestlers. Those heroes brought a distinctly Mexican cultural angle to the proceedings and created a popular sub-genre that positioned them as the country's go-to defenders against the forces of diabolical evil. Mil Mascaras, Neutron, the Blue Demon, and numerous others put their boots up the asses of the malevolent and beastly creatures but none took to the challenge with the diligence and longevity of El Santo ("the Saint"), or simply Santo for short. 

El Santo.

El Santo was real-life pro wrestler Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917-1984) and by far the most famous and popular wrestler in Mexico, so his expansion into entertainment areas outside of the squared circle was inevitable. The leap was made to the cinema and El Santo headlined 49 (!!!) films between 1958 and 1982, with only three making it to the States in dubbed form, with the masked hero re-christened as Samson. The most well-known Santo movie in the U.S. is arguably SANTO VS. LAS MUJERES VAMPIRO, aka SAMSON VS. THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, and when weighed against the quality of much of Santo's filmography, it's hands down one of his best. (NOTE: The Santo movies are all cheesy, to varying degrees, so take the praise I bestow upon this film with that in mind.)

The titular vampire women.

When a cabal of female vampires awaken after two centuries, their queen, Thorina (Lorena Velázquez), dispatches her minions to complete a goal that was interrupted two-hundred years previous by an ancestor of El Santo. (NOTE: Depending on the film, Santo is something of an Eternal Champion type, an old presence reborn in each era to fight a never-ending battle against diabolical forces.) Their objective: Find the reincarnation of a woman who had previously been chosen to take over from Thorina and also become the bride of Satan himself. The modern day incarnation is the daughter of a respected professor who's absolutely not down with his little girl becoming the thrall of Hell, so he calls in his old pal El Santo to put much wrasslin' boot to undead suckface ass.

The rest of the story plays like a live-action installment of SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU?, only with real monsters and the Scooby Gang swapped out for a badassed Mexican wrestler in a silver mask. The vampire women and their male slaves get up to all manner of shenanigans that Santo inevitably thwarts in a kid-friendly way — the scares are mild and largely atmosphere-driven, and there's no gore — but there are a few truly memorable visuals to be had. There's a great bit where one of the vampire slaves is fleeing the scene of some evil that he committed, only to come face-to-face with a huge cross mounted in a churchyard that spurs him to use his cape in a futile attempt to shield himself from its influence, but to no avail. He bursts into flames, falls over, and burns out on the sidewalk. But the true highlight is when one of the vampire slaves takes the place of a wrestler who's slated to take on Santo in the ring, and when it becomes clear that Santo's going to come out the victor and remove the evildoer's mask — the ultimate defeat in Mexican wrestling culture — when the mask comes off, the vampire is revealed as...A WEREWOLF!!!

What would Rowdy Roddy Piper have had to say about this?

The werewolf/vampire then proceeds to go buck wild in the ring and the mayhem is indeed glorious in its sheer ludicrousity.

SANTO VS. LAS MUJERES VAMPIRO was only the seventh of the Santo films and being of such a relatively early vintage, it had yet to become the kind of lazy, ultra-low-budget, rote time-waster that the majority of later entries became, and sitting through it feels like watching a slower-paced south-of-the-border analog to the old school Universal monster flicks. Best known nowadays for the treatment it got on a 1995 installment of MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, the film is totally worth sitting through in its straight version, if for no other reason than to experience the kind of kooky monster-laden fun of the kind they just don't make anymore. VIVA EL SANTO!!! 

Poster for the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-Day 8: BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA (1966)

Dracula (or whoever he is), kicking Billy the Kid's ass.

I dunno what the hell was going on back in 1966 but it sure was a banner year for the zero budget horror/western hybrid movie, what with JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER and this being unleashed around the same time. I was barely a year old when those landmarks in cinema came out but some three years later I clearly recall encountering BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA on TV, placing it among the very first handful of movies I ever saw, and I remembered parts of it vividly upon seeing it again over forty-some-odd years later.

Just like its sister film, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA was directed by William "One-Shot" Beaudine, but is the far livelier of the two movies thanks in no small part to the presence of legendary actor/whore John Carradine, whose famous deeper-than God's balls voice gave the film's vampire a bit of extra "oomph." Oh, and for the record, the vampire in this story is never identified as Dracula or even given a name at all, so go figure.

John Carradine as the film's vampire (significantly not Dracula), working the Jedi Mind Trick.

Much like its sister film, this flick bears the look and tone of an especially whacked-out episode of BONANZA and the story kinda/sorta manages to outdo JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER thanks to being a lot more lively and featuring one of the worst (best?) endings in the history of either the Western or horror genres, but more on that shortly.

The movie opens as a family of German immigrants sleep outdoors next to their covered wagon and the unnamed vampire shows up to slake hisbloodthirst upon the family's nubile daughter, but he's driven off by a handy crucifix. Thwarted, the vampire hitches a ride with a stagecoach bearing a whiskey salesman, a widow who owns a ranch (which is the stagecoach's destination) and her bachelor banker brother from Boston. During a brief stopover, the vampire spots some friendly Injuns and of course drains one of their number (a cute actress in cheesy costume shop Pocahontas drag), thus spurring said Injuns to totally massacre the stagecoach, killing everyone onboard . The vampire waits until the dust has settled and steals the banker's identification so he'll have an alias ready for when he shows up at the widow's ranch, his objective being the seduction andvampirism of the widow's comely niece, Betty (Melinda Plowman), so he'll have an undead squeeze to keep him warm on those lonely nights, er, days. Now going by the name of "Mr.Underhill," Dracula (or whoever the fuck he is) arrives at the ranch and announces he's the new owner/proprietor now that the widow is dead, but first he kills the German immigrant girl whose family is staying at the local boarding house.

In case you're wondering how the hell Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney) figures into all of this, he's now a reformed outlaw and the foreman at the ranch and is involved in a tepid territorial pissing contest with the previous foreman over him having usurped both the guy's job and his girl, the aforementioned Betty. (The actual Western-style ranch conflict plot is utterly beside the point, so it won't be discussed any further, except to say that at one point the former foreman kicks Billy's ass like nobody's business.) Anyway, Billy befriends the now-childless Germans and gets them jobs at the ranch, much to Drac's annoyance since they both have his number as being an undead suckface and know all the lore of how to spot and handle undead suckfaces (mirrors, wolfsbane at the windows, et cetera). Needless to say, nobody believes the pair — although Billy begins to catch on — and their obvious suspicion of Drac doesn't please him one bit...

I'll spare you the rest of the particulars but it all comes to a head when Drac kidnaps and semi-vampirizes Betty in order to make her his undead mate, and Billy hauls ass to her rescue. Upon arriving, Billy empties his revolver into the vampire, who merely looks at the outlaw like he's completely out of his mind and promptly hands Billy a pretty decent beatdown. (The second he's received thus far. Some Western tough guy!) As Billy lays on the ground, the sheriff and the town doctor show up and the sheriff also empties his gun into the vampire, who this time around actually states aloud that guns are useless against him. Once the sheriff's gun is empty, Billy gets up from the floor and grabs the sheriff's gun, lobbing it square into the vampire's face, sending him toppling to the floor unconscious. Billy then borrows a scalpel from the town doc and uses it in place of the traditional stake to polish off the evil suckface. THE END. No, seriously! That actually happens! Here, see this flaming bit of lunacy for yourself!

At a mercifully short seventy-three minutes, BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA must have been intended as part of a double or triple bill when originally released, and at so short a running time it's over and done with before it has a chance to get boring, so give it a look for a few cheap laughs if nothing else. And kids love it!

Poster for the theatrical release. You've simply gotta love any movie poster in which the hero looks like he just took a huge, fear-fueled dump in his jeans.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-Day 7: JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1966)

Narda Onyx as Maria Frankenstein, grand-daughter of the original slab-jockey: it takes a special caliber of actor to keep a straight face in a role — and helmet — like this one.

One of the many things I love about bad movies is the more often than not unintentional towering ludicrousness wielded by many films in the sub-genre. A good case in point would be 1966's JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER, a bit of camp candyfloss that's remembered these days for little other than its colossally silly title and its nonchalant fusion of horror and Western tropes. I seriously doubt a bunch of Hollywood film producers spent weeks (or even hours) brainstorming over their next sure-fire creation and settling upon a film in which the famous outlaw has it out with a descendant of of everyone's favorite crafter of man-made monsters, but nonetheless somebody figured making such a film would be a good idea, so there you go.

Considering when it came out, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER could have gone a number of ways with its game of genre-fusion, possibly having been influenced by the groundbreaking Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone or the atmospherically gory and tits-a-plenty splendor of the Hammer films horror cycle, but instead the finished product reads like an even more studio-bound and artificial-looking episode of BONANZA had it been written by a staff script hack ripped on a dangerous cocktail of Percodan and Jim Beam. Directed by William "One-Shot" Beaudine — so nicknamed due to his tendency to make do with only one take of any given shot — the flick is sadly lacking in any scares whatsoever, titties, gore (although there's an "artificial" brain but that doesn't really count), suspense or even excitement of any kind, but what it lacks in those it makes up for by being a played-totally-straight example of "camp" in that distinctly 1960's sense of the term, and being totally suitable for the kiddies dropped off at matinees when it originally played. In fact, the movie kind of has the feel of a kid's Western as filtered through the perceptions of a child suffering a high fever, something I experienced a number of times as a kid, only with films of other genres (most memorably the horrendous THE LAST DINOSAUR).

JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER is a bit of a misnomer since the titular Frankenstein is actually the good Doctor's grand-daughter, but why quibble when you have a story like this: Dr. Maria Frankenstein (Narda Onyx) and her brother Rudolph (Steven Geray) have fled Germany due to their medical experiments being too heinous even for that locale and have now set up shop in a convenient mansion somewhere in or near Mexico (the exact location is utterly beside the point), there to continue their delving into forbidden knowledge.

The pair kidnap local Mexican kids and transplant artificial brains into their crudely-trepanned craniums in hope of creating someone who'll do their bidding (exactly what their agenda is is never explained) rather than piecing together random parts of the deceased and coming up with a towering monstrosity, but each experiment is met with fatal failure for their subjects (they're actually poisoned by Rudolph in hope that his sister will think she's destined to fail, thereby abandoning her madness). Undaunted, Maria determines that what her experiment needs is a grown, muscular giant of a man, but where to find one when every single Mexican in town is either dead or has wisely left the area?

Enter famous outlaw Jesse James (John Lupton) and his hulking pal Hank Tracy (Cal Bolder), who get mixed up in a "who cares?" heist that results in Tracy getting wounded. The pursuit of timely medical assistance leads the pair into contact with peasant girl Juanita Lopez (Estelita Rodriguez) and her parents, all of whom fled town when Juanita's little brother fell victim to the Frankenturds, and Juanita leads Jesse and Hank right to the Doctor's door, hoping to discover the truth about her brother's suspicious demise while Hank receives medical help (not a very good idea if you ask me). Finally obtaining the raw materials for her experiment, Maria devises a plan to keep Jesse out of the way while she transforms Hank into a robotic thrall of flesh and blood, renamed "Igor." Will Juanita discover the truth? Will Jesse get some more G-rated nookie from Juanita (the first round of which occurs after a tasteful TV-style fadeout)? Will Maria have her revenge on Jesse after being spurned by him in favor of Juanita's south-of-the-border sexiness? Will Hank ever wear a shirt again? Will a jealous former-outlaw and the local sheriff nab Jesse and turn him into a human pinata?

Hank (Cal Bolder), post-insertion of artificial brain and renamed "Igor" for no apparent reason (no, seriously), as the Doctor checks out his impressive pecs.

The answers to all this (and less) will be had by the time the words "The End" magically appear onscreen, but it's a decent enough waste of time getting to that point. Yeah, it's pretty much "baby's first horror movie" but it's harmless fun that will definitely hold your interest if you've ever sat through any of the legion of TV Westerns unleashed on the airwaves between 1955 and 1970. The acting is about standard for something of this ilk but special props must be given to Onyx and Rodriguez, both providing over-the-top performances that team up to create an unintentional "Battle of the Ridiculous Accents." My only real complaint here is that there's no decent '60's-era Hammeresque red stuff to be had, because it would have been awesome to see Hank in full-on-Frankenstein mode crush Rudolph until at least some amount of blood spewed out of his mouth, ears or eyes, accompanied by the sound of bones crunching beneath the onslaught of Hank/Igor's muscles.

Oh, what Hammer studios could have done with this...

But whatever. If this turns up on American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies, or even your local TV station at Jesus O'Clock in the morning, give it a look just so you can say you've actually seen a movie with a title this stupid.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2015-Day 6: THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS (1966)

The title characters: On the prowl and not entering as contestants in "spooky biker night" at the Manhole Bar.

When I finally got around to seeing this serial murder/cannibalism "classic" after years of hearing about it,  I was  frankly surprised at what it turned out to be. You know Herschell Gordon Lewis' seminal gore shocker BLOOD FEAST (1963), right? Well imagine BLOOD FEAST if it had been created by and for kids, and then you pretty much have THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS.

Cheap and very silly, THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS offers up the title characters and takes us with them as they ride around on their motorcycles in search of nubile and innocent women to butcher, thus providing the ripoff-artist undertaker (Ray Dennis) with business and allowing his accomplices a two-pronged benefit: one gets to practice his insane amateur surgical skills while the other aids him, and the parts gruesomely pilfered from their victims become the day's special at the pair's greasy spoon diner.

Miss Lamb, that is...

As a feeble detective investigates the murders (which include his secretary/lover and an aggressively horny blonde who seeks to fill the secretary's position), all of it is played for juvenile laughs and brought in at a mercifully short sixty-three minutes.

Yes, folks, this is a comedy...

No bullshit, while watching this all I could think of was the godawful, borderline-public-access-level 1970's kiddie show THE HORRIBLE HOUSE OF FRIGHTENSTEIN, only if it had segments of meaty gore and medical school surgery training film footage. The movie was quite clearly influenced by BLOOD FEAST, but I have to say THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS included a few cinematic elements that its predecessor completely lacked, such as pacing, decent editing, genuine attempts at acting by all who were in front of the camera, semi-successful humor and the common decency of being a film one can actually sit through without being bored nigh unto a torpor. Even with all the bad taste and (marginal) gore on display, THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS is a surprisingly cheerful and tongue-in-cheek effort that would be acceptable to most parents as a grand guignol for under-tens who can take it and be in on the gag. Utterly frivolous but worth a look, provided you don't have to pay for it (I got it on a triple-feature "Cannibal Classics" disc along with THE SEVERED ARM and I EAT YOUR SKIN, so I'd say it was worth the five bucks for a three-in-one).

Poster for the theatrical release.