Cave of the Living Dead (Der Fluch der grünen Augen; Akos von Ratony, 1964)

Inspector Frank Dorin (Fassbinder regular Adrian Hoven) is sent by boat(!) to a small village to investigate the mysterious deaths of six young women, all of which happened near a grotto and were accompanied by brief blackouts. Although the manager of the inn where Dorin is staying insists that a vampire is responsible, the Inspector is understandably skeptical, even after the hotel's maid soon becomes the seventh victim, and has two puncture marks on her neck. Even the shifty local doctor (Rififi's Carl Möhner) attributes the deaths to heart failure, although the scraggly-haired, black-toothed witch Nanny insists that the undead are indeed responsible. Dorin is invited by blood specialist Professor von Adelsberg (Wolfgang Preiss, Rudolf Klein-Rogge's successor as Dr. Mabuse) to stay at his castle, which is also inhabited by his beautiful secretary Karin Schumann (Karin Fields from Jess Franco's The Demons) and his black manservant John (John Kitzmiller, Quarrel in Dr. No). Eventually, Dorin is forced to accept the existence of the supernatural and end the vampire's threat once and for all.

This West German/Yugoslavian co-production (also known as Night of the Vampires and The Curse of the Green Eyes) is worth a look, though hardly a masterpiece. Director Ákos Ráthonyi (credited as Akos von Ratony) makes the film genuinely atmospheric and creepy, helped greatly by Hrvoje Saric's cinematography. Hoven is surprisingly laid-back for a Police Inspector, while Preiss is every bit as sinister as he was as Mabuse (even if the film gives away his secret before it needs to). Fields isn't given a lot to work with, although she does provide some welcome sex appeal, at one point changing (shot from behind and with her panties still on) into a more revealing nightgown than one would expect for the era. Kitzmiller is referred to as "colored" twice, and a "Negro" once, but given the aforementioned time period I suppose I should cut the film a little slack. Herbert Jarczyk's music is excellent, with jazzy themes at the beginning and end but eerier material in between. This will never make anyone's top 10 vampire movie list, but I dug it.

The Jade Mask (Phil Rosen, 1945)

Charlie Chan (the mostly-Scottish Sidney Toler), working for the Secret Service in Washington, is staying at a hotel in another town with his bookworm Number Four Son Eddie (Edwin Luke, brother of Keye "Number One Son" Luke) and easily frightened chauffeur Birmingham Brown (Spider Baby's Mantan Moreland) when he's called to investigate the murder of Harper (Frank Reicher, Captain Englehorn in King Kong and Son of Kong), a scientist working on a gas that can make wood as hard and durable as metal, which the government feels will be very useful in the current war. Everyone in Harper's house hated him, from the butler to his assistant to his own sister and niece, so everyone is a suspect. It's up to Charlie to solve the case and find the formula, despite Eddie and Birmingham's bumbling and more bodies turning up.

Charlie Chan is often regarded as a racial stereotype, and considering that he's usually played by a white man speaking broken English, it's not hard to see why. However, in this film he's shown in a pretty respectful manner despite the verbal mannerisms and yellowface. I will say Toler is slightly more convincing as an Asian than Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto or Boris Karloff as Mr. Wong, but only slightly. Unfortunately, white actors being cast as Asians is a problem that has still yet to go away entirely, as shown by the recent Ghost in the Shell controversy. Eddie's a comic relief character, but there's no racial connotation to his buffoonery. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of Mantan Moreland as Birmingham, who is a one-note character, and that note is "scared." His performance is a lot more wince-inducing than either Toler's or Luke's. The ending in particular is pretty undignified where he's concerned. Other than that, the film is a decent enough mystery, with Charlie working for the U.S. government during World War II, taking time away from his usual police work. There are some interesting elements to the plot, such as the life masks Harper has hung about his mansion of the people living in it in case he ever needs to identify them to the police. Also, a female helper of Harper's is a former strongwoman who helps him in experiments involving ventriloquist dummies that somehow will lead to the creation of a new kind of toy robot for children! These bits add a nice touch of oddity to what's otherwise a fairly standard whodunnit.

Yankee (Tinto Brass, 1966)

A bounty hunter identified only as "Yankee" (Philippe Leroy from Jean-Luc Godard's A Married Woman) rides into a New Mexico town ruled by a bandit called Grand Cougar (Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man's Adolfo Celi, sporting dyed black hair and a mustache, as well as a whip). He decides to collect the bounties for the Cougar's gang, which has members with names like Gold Teeth, Tattoo, Painter (who wears a paint-stained smock), Philosopher, and Portuguese. Yankee kidnaps the Cougar's fortune-telling girlfriend Rosita (Mirella Martin in her only film role) in order to lure him into a trap.

Holy shit, has it really taken me this long to review a Spaghetti Western here? You can probably tell I'm a fan from the fact that I've seen a whopping 129 of them, counting this one. That's more than double the amount of American ones I've seen. The Spaghettis have a unique style all their own that make them entertaining to me. This one is not great, but very interesting for a number of reasons. It was directed by Tinto Brass, who later directed a number of erotic films, including the prostitution-in-Nazi Germany tale Salon Kitty and the Penthouse-produced Caligula (before he got fired). Not a director I would've thought of doing a Western, and perhaps as a result of being out of his element there are several peculiar elements of the movie. It begins with an outlaw, who we later learn is a member of Grand Cougar's gang, riding into a saloon on his horse to rob it, where our hero, who is getting a shave right there, shoots him and collects his stolen gold. Yankee is the only Spaghetti Western hero I've ever seen clad in pinstripes. The town's barber is also its undertaker, and he has a coffin in the barbershop. For no apparent reason, Grand Cougar's lair has a rooster in it. During a scene where Yankee is being held prisoner by Cougar and his men, the film is tinted red in a couple different frames. Tattoo, who has a face drawn on his stomach, puts a cigarette in his navel, and smoke comes out of his mouth. It's not as weird as Giulio Questi's Django, Kill...If You Live, Shoot! or Cesare Canevari's Matalo!, but definitely one of the odder films I've seen in the genre. Leroy isn't particularly intense, nor does he look the part, but nevertheless he does well with the material. He did go on to do two more Spaghettis, Panhandle 38 (which I have not seen) and A Man Called Blade (which I have). Celi clearly had fun with the role, chewing lots of scenery. It's also interesting to note that two scenes in this film may have influenced later, superior westerns. Grand Cougar's men burning a scorpion in a ring of fire anticipates Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Another scene where the bad guys try to obtain Yankee's whereabouts from one of the townsfolk, who has his wife standing on his shoulders with a noose around her neck, calls to mind Once Upon a Time in the West, in this reviewer's opinion Leone's finest hour. This will never be one of my favorites of the genre, but it has a lot of noteworthy elements that make it well worth your time. The music by Nino Rossi is nicely understated, including a cool whistling theme that Leroy himself takes up at a few points. So do what I did and head to Amazon Prime (they have a ton of great movies for Streaming, including tons of Spaghettis) and check it out.

Eaten Alive! The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film (Calum Waddell, 2015)

An in-depth documentary on the Italian cannibal films of the '70s and '80s, covering such films as The Man from Deep River, Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Apocalypse, Cannibal Ferox, Mountain of the Cannibal God, and Eaten Alive, with input from several directors (Sergio Martino, Umberto Lenzi, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man's Ruggero Deodato), stars (Me Me Lai, Robert Kerman, Giovanni Lombardo Radice) and film scholars (including Kim Newman, who incidentally is also one of my favorite fiction authors).

As stated in my review of Live Like a Cop..., I love Italian cinema. Next to Spaghetti Westerns (one of which will be the subject of my next review), I love their horror films most. From the Gothic supernatural tales like Mario Bava's Black Sunday to gialli such as Dario Argento's Deep Red, no country does horror like Italy. Some of their films have brutality and gore that put American films of the same era to shame. This is especially true of the cannibal films, most though not all of which featured white Americans and/or Europeans traveling to a foreign country (South American locales, the Philippines, etc.) for reasons of their own, and falling prey to savage cannibal tribes. Often, the "civilized" whites were shown to be just as sadistic and bloodthirsty, if not moreso, then the "savages" they encountered. This is especially true of Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust, one of the first "found footage" movies (the documentary mentions its influence on later films of that type, such as The Blair Witch Project and REC). Thus, there was a little more, in terms of social commentary, to some of these films besides blood, guts, and nudity. Of course, that was always the main focus. This documentary thoroughly covers the history of these films, and does it with stupendous passion. Director Calum Waddell (who also co-wrote and -produced the equally excellent documentary American Grindhouse) brings together many of the subgenre's leading filmmakers and actors to talk about their experiences. From Lenzi and Deodato each claiming to have invented Italian cannibal cinema, to the Jewish Kerman's having to find a solution when the script for Cannibal Holocaust had him eating a pig's liver, to Radice's not-always-positive feelings about Cannibal Apocalypse and Cannibal Ferox, there is a lot of fascinating material here. And of course, there is discussion of the music, as well as the (usually non-simulated) animal slaughter seen in many of the films. As previously stated, the influence of the films on latter-day cinema is covered, also including Eli Roth's own cannibal film, The Green Inferno, which he dedicated to Deodato. If I feel anything should've been mentioned that wasn't, it would be two things: 1) Mountain of the Cannibal God has a scene with a native doing something rather nasty to a pig, which thankfully was simulated, in this case. 2) The name of Radice's character in Cannibal Apocalypse? Charlie Bukowski!!! Other than these two minor omissions, this is another of many great exploitation cinema documentaries seen in recent years, and absolutely a must-see for fans.

Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Police and reporters gather at a Sunset Boulevard mansion, where a dead man is floating in a pool. The deceased Joe Gillis (The Wild Bunch's William Holden) narrates the story of the circumstances leading up to his death. Gillis, a struggling screenwriter, has to trick the creditors who seek to repossess his car by parking it in a lot behind a shoeshine stand. Going to Paramount Pictures, he tries to pitch a script to a producer, but he is unwilling to take it, and reader Betty Schaefer (The Absent-Minded Professor's Nancy Olson) criticizes it. Seeing the repo men are watching him, Joe drives into the garage of a mansion he thinks is deserted. A mature woman calls out to him, asking him to come in. The taciturn butler, Max (Erich von Stroheim), lets him in, saying something about a coffin. Joe discovers the woman thinks he is there to perform the burial for her dead chimpanzee, and recognizes her as silent film actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), whose career ended with the advent of sound in cinema. Finding that Joe is actually a writer, she asks him to take a look at her script for Salome, her comeback picture, though she detests that term. Although the script is horrible, Joe merely tells her it needs a little work. Norma hires him to help her punch it up, and convinces him to stay the night in. Waking up the following morning, Joe is furious to discover Max has moved all his things from his apartment to the mansion. Although Norma says she still gets fan letters constantly, Joe discovers Max himself is writing them to comfort her, and that Norma has suffered from depression and attempted suicide in the past. Norma is besotted with Joe, and buys him the finest things money can buy. At a New Year's Eve Party for just the two of them, Norma reveals her feelings to Joe, but he rejects her and leaves, heading for a party held by his friend assistant director Artie Green (Dragnet's Jack Webb), where he runs into Betty Schaefer, who turns out to be Artie's new girlfriend. Betty has read another of Joe's scripts, and thinks one scene in particular has potential. The two seem to become strongly attracted to one another, but Joe receives a call from Max, informing him that Norma has attempted to slit her own wrists, and feels he has no choice but to return.

It's hard for me to say anything about Sunset Boulevard that hasn't been said a million times before. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and won for three: Screenplay, Art Direction, and Music, though amazingly Swanson lost Best Actress to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday, which also featured Holden. Swanson's performance, though, is incredible, both pathetic and not a little horrifying at the same time. Many of her mannerisms scream "silent film character," and the famous ending and the immortal last line show perfectly how reality and film blur for Norma Desmond. Holden as screenwriter-turned-gigolo Joe Gillis is superb, and he exudes the same cynical air he would bring to later films such as Network. von Stroheim, who directed Swanson in Queen Kelly (a clip from which is shown as one of Norma's old films), is perfect as Max von Mayerling, Norma's enabling butler who turns out to have had a much closer connection to her once upon a time. Nancy Olson's chemistry with Holden is excellent, and one can't help but feel for her when she finds out the truth about Joe's relationship with Norma. It's also amusing to see dead-serious Joe Friday Jack Webb playing a wisecracker for a change. The film also features a number of Hollywood icons of yesteryear playing themselves, such as Cecil B. DeMille and Buster Keaton. I also have to note that Bert Moorhouse's character, Gordon Cole, was the namesake of David Lynch's character on Twin Peaks. I've heard vague rumors one of those Wold Newton guys proposed Moorhouse's Gordon Cole was the father of Lynch's, but I can't verify that. The script by director Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett (who also co-wrote The Lost Weekend) is as great a piece of film noir as Wilder's Double Indemnity, while also showing the darker side of stardom. Not every movie considered a classic is one I would consider as such myself, but this most definitely is one I would.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht; Werner Herzog, 1979)

Jonathan Harker (Wings of Desire's Bruno Ganz) is a real estate agent sent by his giggling, unstable boss Mr. Renfield (Roland Topor, who created the "Panic Movement" along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal) to Transylvania to sell a piece of real estate to Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski, who played Renfield himself in Jesús Franco's Count Dracula). After meeting native Transylvanians and Romani ("gypsies") who seem fearful of the Count, Harker finds himself at Dracula's castle, where he soon realizes the bizarre-looking and even stranger-behaving count is a vampire. Eventually escaping, he makes his way back to Wismar (where Renfield, who babbles about the coming of "the Master," is now locked up in an asylum), soon followed by a boat arriving, with the dead captain lashed to the wheel and the rest of the crew missing, carrying the Count and rats who spread the Black Death. Realizing what has happened, Harker's wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani, who was in Roman Polanski's film adaptation of Topor's novel The Tenant) seeks to destroy the Count and save her husband, despite the disbelief of Dr. Van Helsing (The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser's Walter Ladengast).

Contrary to popular belief, not all remakes are garbage. This view is mainly the result of the glut of crappy ones in recent years, but there are lots of exceptions. I would argue that Brian De Palma's Scarface is superior to Howard Hawks' original, although the original has more than its share of strengths. On the other hand, I will never understand how people can prefer Frank Oz's putrid version of Little Shop of Horrors to Roger Corman's edgy original, which had the balls to have Seymour actually kill the people he fed to Audrey Jr. himself, as well as being free of the eye-rolling musical numbers and bullshit test audience-inspired happy ending. There are also instances of remakes of great movies that are excellent in their own right: Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (itself based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest), comes to mind. Nosferatu the Vampyre is another great example, coming close to (but not equaling or exceeding) the brilliance of F. W. Murnau's original silent film from 1922, adapted from Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Herzog and Kinski collaborated on many films, and brought out the best in each other creatively, despite their oft-tempestuous professional relationship. Herzog's script largely adapts the original film faithfully, but has a unique eerie style all its own, while also restoring the names of the characters in Stoker's novel, rather than the original names Murnau gave them, although even then there is an exception in that Lucy is the name of Jonathan's wife, and Mina her best friend's, rather than the opposite. Kinski's performance and makeup masterfully evoke Max Schreck's performance in the original while making Count Dracula (Graf Orlok in Murnau's film) somewhat more sympathetic, though thankfully with none of the glamorization of vampires found in the execrable Twilight Saga. The man is, and will always be, one of my favorite actors, especially for his performances in not only Herzog's films, but many of his appearances in Spaghetti Westerns, particularly Sergio Corbucci's brilliant and bleak The Great Silence. Ganz portrays the traumatized Harker with his usual skill, and the ever-beautiful Adjani manages to evoke silent film-style acting in her speaking role. Topor, who Herzog cast after seeing him interviewed on French TV and being impressed with the laugh with which he followed every question answered, portrays Renfield's mental breakdown very convincingly. Popol Vuh, who provided music for several of Herzog's other films, does wonderfully atmospheric work, and Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein's cinematography and Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus' editing are award-worthy. A noteworthy scene not in the original film, which I nevertheless loved, is Lucy coming across a group of people in fancy dress, dying from the plague, gathered for one final banquet and dance. The altered ending is very interesting as well, being even more downbeat than the bittersweet conclusion of Murnau's take. If you loved the original Nosferatu, then this is a must-view.

For Y'ur Height Only (Eddie Nicart, 1981)

When the mysterious Mr. Giant's men kidnap the scientist Dr. von Kohler in order to hold the world hostage with his N-Bomb, it's up to the diminutive Weng, aka Agent 00 of "the Secret Agency," (Weng Weng), to save the day, armed with gadgets such as a ring that changes colors when it detects poison, an Oddjob-style razor-brimmed hat, and x-ray specs (which our pervy little hero uses initially on his boss' secretaries, though they're seated behind concealing desks). Helping him along the way is Irma, a fellow agent undercover as a gang moll.

The Philippines were no stranger to exploitation cinema, as those who have seen the documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed know. From Pam Grier's women-in-prison flix to the Blood Island series, the Filipinos produced a lot of great trash cinema. For Y'ur Height Only (and yes, that is an apostrophe in place of the "o" in "Your") is no exception; it knows it's ridiculous, and revels in it. The 2'9" Weng Weng (born Ernesto de la Cruz), listed in the Guinness World Records as the shortest adult actor in a leading role, is impossible to take seriously as an action hero, and yet 00 kills dozens of bad guys, has a swordfight, and sweeps every woman he meets off their feet. At one point, he uses a woman's umbrella to leap out the top floor of a skyscraper. My umbrellas get turned inside-out by a particularly strong wind, but Weng lands without any damage to his brolly. Unsurprisingly, the voices of many of the dubbed characters are ridiculous, including a Filipino gold broker with a posh British accent. Earth, Wind, & Fire's "Boogie Wonderland" is played in a disco, and I'm sure the filmmakers did not even bother asking for permission to use it. This is an utterly mind-boggling piece of cinema, and now I must see the sequel, The Impossible Kid!