The October Ordeal II 03: Virgin Witch (1972)

(Spoilers throughout)

Although Virgin Witch (also known as “Lesbian Twins”, which I’m sure sells more DVDs) came at the height of the European horror-sleaze boom, in many ways it’s an isolated and singular film. Partly this is because of narrative—which I’ll get to later—but moreso because it seems to lack specific time and place. It feels like an Italian film, but it’s British. It’s director, Ray Austin, has otherwise worked only for television. It’s writer, Beryl Vertue, is an accomplished producer, but has only this one writing credit on her resume. It promises a swinging mod-London setting, but takes place mostly inside a single house. It looks on the surface like exploitation—which it is—but offers little in the way of eroticism, really. For these reasons, Virgin Witch is rather obscure, and while it isn’t essential, its still an above average and unique genre entry.

Virgin Witch starts off with out-of-focus stills of nude torsos, a montage of nudity to come, with the actors’ names pasted on, much like the opening of an average porno. Then—suddenly—creepy psych rock blasts and a woman is seen being burned alive, screaming, with no explanation. All of this happens in about two minutes, leading an informed genre fan to expect a brain-melt along the lines of Black Candles or any Jess Franco picture. Well, forget this strange opening, because it will never be explained or revisited. The eternal question when viewing Giallo is this: is it better to exhaust oneself attempting to keep the narrative strands in order, or is it appropriate to just give in to sound and image, and hope that by the end something makes sense? I was prepared to ask myself this same question, until I realized that Virgin Witch isn’t a Gialli slasher, it’s a British vampire film. Aside from this first section, Virgin Witch makes sense, and can easily be followed, processed and understood.

After the surreal first minutes, Virgin Witch begins in earnest, with its central characters, Christina and Betty, played by Ann and Vicki Michelle—who are twin sisters, although I didn’t pick that up until researching the film, as they are by no means identical, and never explicitly referred to as sisters in the film. Outgoing Christina and demure Betty have escaped their boring country lives to slum it in London, and they’re living with the middle-aged Johnny (Keith Buckley), a stylish guy who is really just that; it’s a mystery what he does for a living (he exists because later on the film will need a third party to intervene later). This in-media-res opening finds Christina looking for modeling work and finding it with the icy Sybil Waite (Patricia Haines), a character defined solely by the fact that she’s a businesswoman and a lesbian, usually shorthand for villain in a film like this (hold that thought). Christina is willing to go nude and Sybil needs a model on short notice, so she instantly gets the job, and is immediately on her way to an ornate mansion in the countryside, with Betty along for the ride as her chaperone.

This all happens in the first ten minutes or so. By the time Betty and Christina make it to the secluded mystery house, most characters are established, a mystery is developing, and all gears are in motion. Virgin Witch wastes no time establishing itself, making for a breezy and digestible narrative, a feature rare for the genre.

There are two major characters left to introduce, both waiting at the foreboding manor. The owner of the house—and prime-mover of action—effete charmer Gerald Amberly (Neil Hallett), and horny photographer Peter (James Chase), who seems as in-over-his-head as Christina and Betty are about to be. These two are introduced first as voyeurs, preying on the two women in that way; while Peter is an innocuous character, Gerald will soon be preying on Betty and Christina in a more real and serious way. Peter’s voyeurism is work, and more for the benefit of the audience, as his camera’s lens records Christina in progressive states of undress. Gerald is more sinister, as he watches Betty in the tub through a Norman Bates hole in the wall.

While Christina poses outside, Betty explores the interior of the mansion, coming upon an altar in a sub-basement room lined with red curtains, decorated with demonic masks, daggers and other magickal ephemera. When she’s confronted by Gerald, she’s shocked to learn that Gerald and Sybil are open about their esoteric practices, and are happy to reveal to the women that they are the two pillars of a witch’s coven. Gerald brings Christina down to see the room, and is pleased to discover that she’s into it, and wants to join the circle. In fact, this is what the coven needs exactly, a virgin to simultaneously complete a complex ritual and to join as an initiate. According to Gerald, the group practices white magick only (as opposed to the black magick of most films, I presume).

Lest the audience forget, there’s a guy named Johnny in this film, which Virgin Witch points out mid-way through with a London call-back. Johnny is hanging out with a cool Jazz singer chick in a swank club, where news somehow reaches him of Betty and Christina’s predicament. Since he has Sybil’s business card (for some reason or other), he rushes off to the mansion to see what’s up. This scene is an unnecessary one, just a bit of exposition that could have been handled with a phone call, but it’s a nice diversion which really adds a bit of levity to the film, right before one of it’s most intense moments, the first ritual, which is like a watered down version of Behind the Green Door.

During the night-time initiation, a group of new characters gather with Gerald and Sybil around Christina, the ritual’s focus. Some robed minions strip Christina, Sybil rubs oil on her nude torso, and Gerald drops robe and deflowers Christina to jazzy psych-rock akin to Angus MacLise’s score for Invasion at Thunderbolt Pagoda. She wakes up the next morning in bed with Sybil, who apparently demanded Christina sleep with her as well as Gerald. During this scene, which occurs two-thirds of the way in, one wonders where the horror was. Sure, the focus is on typical horror material, but the film isn’t scary, and doesn’t create any sort of foreboding atmosphere. More accurately, Virgin Witch would be called a drama about magicians and models, if not for some strange supernatural elements introduced in the final reel. Up ‘til this point, Virgin Witch is an atypical genre film, a laid-back, unhurried unspooling of events over a long weekend.

The supernatural element I’m referring to is Christina’s burgeoning—and unwarranted—telekinetic abilities, which develop seemingly only out of her desire to force Sybil from the coven and take her place in the circle. This is a strange development, as its abrupt and severe tone betrays the preceding tone of the film. Complaints aside, I did enjoy this final section on its own, Christina drunk with dark power, nastily betraying both Betty (by passive-aggressively forcing her into the second part of the ritual against her will) and Johnny (by applying newfound mind control techniques to bring him into the ritual as well), and by psychically assaulting Sybil, forcing her out of the circle, and (spoiler!) later killing her, turning their white magick coven into a black magick group in a single night.

This final ritual (and the climax of the film) is more intense than the first. Christina rubs oil on Betty’s breasts (fulfilling the explicit promise of the film’s alternate title, and the implicit promise of lesbianism any film of this kind seems to offer by default), and Johnny has sex with her, entering the ceremony in a black robe and Onibaba mask. This scene is the creepiest and most uncomfortable in the film. The music in this scene is even wilder than before, a mix of Comus and Jade warrior, wailing away while a full-blown orgy takes place, bringing in all the characters of the film, including Peter. (Major spoiler for rest of paragraph) Mid-coitus, Johnny snaps out of it, but instead of fleeing with Betty, he moves her to a more private spot, and continues to deflower her! I suppose because they’ve moved outside the circle they’ve decided to have sex on their own terms, simultaneously ruining the ritual. Meanwhile, Christina kills Sybil by stabbing the dirt, somehow.

This is a strange and confusing ending, its signification obscure. At the same time, it’s satisfying, because it’s a pitch-black, weird, atypical, dark and desperate off-type ending, and totally morally ambiguous, ending the film without clear heroes and villains. There may not be any major thematic point delivered; this is simply how this story ends. As to what happens next is anyone’s guess. The one reason this ending is offensive is because it betrays the earlier good-natured tone of the film; if the entire film were as strange as its conclusion, it wouldn’t be impacting, it would just be a bummer, as nasty as the grimiest English and Italian horror (Evil Eye, House with Laughing Windows, Girly, et al).

While I’m not going to seriously suggest that a film I’ve already compared to mainstream porn is feminist in nature, this is one possible long-shot interpretation: to Gerald and Sybil, Christina and Betty are another set of pretty-girl acquisitions, necessary for their power rituals and important only in that way. The women have subverted their positions in both the film and the genre to steal back control of their own destinies. By upsetting the balance of power in the coven, Christina has asserted herself in a surprising and unique way, even if her strategic tools are sex, subjugation, manipulation and murder. Keep in mind a woman wrote the screenplay, so its not surprising that power would be wrestled back by Christina at the end, who as a character also satisfies the sexist demands of the genre for the majority of the picture.

Despite major problems, Virgin Witch is unique enough to warrant attention. It’s a well paced and easy to watch film, without major breaks and confusing jump cuts, usually inherent to the genre. The actors in the film are uniformly good. The music is fantastic. The photography and idiosyncratic and atmospheric, without being as cavalier and bold as in other similar films of the era. This may even make it appropriate for non-genre fans, as it fails to make mistakes many similar pictures do. For genre fans, Virgin Witch may be somewhat disappointing, as its not as weird, profane, perverse and pornographic as Vampyros Lesbos, for example. It’s also British, which has a lot to do with why its markedly different from the Giallo films it nevertheless takes inspiration from. In translation, the genre has both lost and gained in Virgin Witch, an obscure entry, but nevertheless an interesting film.

The October Ordeal Day 17: Race with the Devil

October 17th: Race with the Devil (1975)

Jack Starrett's Race with the Devil is a trim, confident road-thriller. RwtD simmers for the first two thirds (the way good thrillers often do), establishing rhythm between characters and creating tension, simply by not alluding to any terror to come. This provides necessary context for an extended series of scares in the final act (think Texas Chainsaw Massacre). This model may be named "endurance cinema": the payoff is going to be big, going to be great, only patience is required. And the payoff in this film is fantastic; Race with the Devil really cooks in the final third.

Peter Fonda and Warren Oates star as two old friends on a skiing trip with their wives in a brand new RV, whom stop over in a small Midwestern (I presume) town for some shut eye. Putting a few beers away outside the RV, Roger (Fonda) and Frank (Oates) notice something a bit strange just over the hill. It seems a black magic ceremony is underway, robes and all. Frank and Roger have a great time checking the action out with binoculars, until things get ugly: it seems a human sacrifice is needed to complete the ritual. From here the Satanists pursue the men across the film, on and off the road.

While Starrett claims he cast real Satanists for this early scene, the film is not concerned with the supernatural. Its not really even about the practice of Satanism. We never see these specific people again; there is no villain, there is no mastermind. The threat in the film comes in the form of the automobile, as anonymous trucks pursue the RV Ala Duel.

Oates and Fonda play the only real characters in the film. Loretta Swit and Lara Parker play their wives, yet are completely decorative in function. While many chase movies mythologize the male speedster at the expense of any strong female characters, Race with the Devil is really remarkable in its blatant sexism. The wives here are constantly weeping, and utterly unable to defend themselves or even think rationally in the face of any obstacle. Wives Alice and Kelly are in constant need of consoling from their heroic husbands, and only require that they assert themselves, rather than include them in any strategising or defensive action. In this capacity women are presented merely as cinematic trope, as necessary props.

In fact, male assertion is the theme of the film. In one scene, Fonda stands reluctant with a shotgun before a Satanist climbing through the RV's rear window. Oates, driving, barks, "Do it!" and Fonda fires. The idea, I suppose, is that post-hippie city-boys must regain their manhood via a test, a quest through the unknown wilds of uncivilised America. It always struck me as odd in films like Deliverance that the "city-folk" presented acted pretty much exactly like the hicks they faced off against (except with better teeth, of course).

Alas, this stuff comes with the territory. I'm willing to overlook this particular nastiness out of respect for the excellently choreographed final chase. This sequence is plainly the film's raison d'etre, and it must have been great on the big screen. While the "gotcha!" final reveal I saw coming a country mile away, I was left quite satisfied by this well-dressed, expertly-paced bit of genre filmmaking. Liked Death Proof? Give this one a queue.

The October Ordeal day 14: Slime City

October 14th: Slime City (1988)

Of all the low-budget trash horror flicks (and I’m talking low) of the 80s, the cheapo gore fests filmed in New York City seem to have the most life. When you watch a film shot in who-knows-where with a cast of eight and only two or three sets, it seems fake, the budget limitations obvious. Something about this same strategy works if the film is set in a big city however; it’s somehow believable that in a city so large and dense a gruesome scenario could play out behind closed doors without anybody noticing. We get that it’s a big city, so instead of wondering where everybody is, we are simply unsettled by the fact that a character in a place so packed could be so isolated. Yesterday I reviewed Frank Henenlotter’s Frankenhooker, a gory flick placed in NYC. His earlier picture Brain Damage benefits further from this quality. The director of Slime City, Greg Lamberson, is credited as first AD of Brain Damage, so these two films share more than just the same aesthetic, they share the same DNA.

Shameless sleaze-merchants Camp Video can actually count Slime City as one of their higher-budget releases, if you can believe that. Camp’s recent DVD releases (mostly of SOV obscurities) claim “The Awesome 80s are Back!” Well, back in the VHS days, their logo read “Your Ticket to the Future.” Whether Camp looks forward or backward depends on the market I guess. Whatever the case, Camp knew their target in ‘88: the box boasts “A horror film with guts!”

The guts in question belong to our man Alex (Robert C. Sabin, fresh off the no-budget I Was a Teenage Zombie), a starving artist who works at a video store (see also: Night Vision, Remote Control, Video Violence). Alex may be an underground painter, but he acts like a typical frat boy. This is the type of character you only find in horror and soft-core porn. Alex’s major dilemma in life is that his square girlfriend Nichole (Mary Huner) won’t have sex with him. T.J. Merrick plays his stock best friend Jerry, a creep who drools over Alex’s goth neighbor Lori (arbitrarily also played by Huner).

Alex has just moved into a new apartment, a decent room in a decaying building. Roman (Dennis Embry), an unhinged guy from the floor just below, initiates him into a black magick cult by feeding him green yogurt and putrid wine, which all the tenants consume. The confusing origin of the cult involves alchemy, suicide pacts, murder and reincarnation. Soon after, Alex becomes addicted to the slime, and unless he murders bums and prostitutes, his face will melt. Doesn’t make sense, but allows for some interesting sequences. Alex goes through the same sort of bodily ordeal seen in Henenlotter’s films, or Cronenberg’s, a clear influence on the entire gore crowd (there’s even a handful of obligatory bathroom mirror scenes). As Alex becomes more and more addicted to the slime and the subsequent killing, he feels alienated from his friends, even though he’s reluctant to commit fully to the cult living all around him.

In the final scene, it’s a face-off (can I say it? Literally) between Alex in full-on melt mode and Nichole, who causes all kinds of harm to Alex using various kitchen appliances. This effects-heavy scene is what has gained Slime City its minor notoriety. Yet, as with Henenlotter’s films, the gore here is not what interests me. This is a fun, trashy flick which confidently allows its aesthetics to be the substance. The riff-raff populating the film create an idealized NYC; this is a love letter to scum. The crumbling buildings, drug addicts and prostitutes here seem to represent an era that maybe shouldn’t have been idealized, but nevertheless was and is. In such a cinematic environment, a mobile brain escaping from a severed head seems slightly less weird.
Special attention must be paid to Slime City’s fantastic score. Robert Tomaro’s original songs sound like something from a Messthetics compilation, and remind me specifically of the L.A. synth-punk bands, especially Nervous Gender and the Screamers. Synth and piano dominate, but jagged edges of surf, dub, jazz and minimalism jut out as well. While New York’s rich underground history has been well-mined, the trash-synth soundtracks to many NY underground gore flicks have yet to be revisited.

The October Ordeal Day 4: The First Power

October 4th: The First Power (1990)

The First Power is a film which stands in the shadow of the great 80s and early 90s occult thrillers: Jacob’s Ladder, From Beyond, Prince of Darkness, Candyman, Angel Heart and The Serpent and the Rainbow. While this statement may be derisive by definition, I don’t mean to say that there is never a possibility that a film like The First Power can be good; in fact, the existence of Samurai Dreams is in part predicated upon the premise that it can. While countless “me too” rip-offs crowd around superior films, this does not mean that there will not be superior “B” category films like The First Power.

I’ve actually had my eye out for this film for a while. About a year ago, I saw it for sale at a local video store for three bucks. I got something else instead, and decided to come back for it later. However, the next time I made a visit to the video store in question, it had closed its doors for good (an all-too common occurrence these days). So when I saw it for sale at Astro Video a few months ago, I was happy to throw it in my stack and take it home.

Lou Diamond Phillips plays Logan, a tough cop chasing a vicious satanic serial killer named Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober) with the help of Tess Seaton (Tracy Griffith), a psychic. Tracy has “the second power,” while Channing has the third: possession. While Tess is a reliable police informant, Logan does not come to trust her abilities fully until Channing continues killing after his execution and Logan starts seeing some pretty weird things of his own. Also around to help out is Sister Marguerite (Elizabeth Arlen), a nun who knows quite a bit about Satan and the three heavenly powers (as she holds a cross she says to Logan: “the only person in history to have all three powers,” and then pulls half the cross away, revealing a blade). The first power we can assume is held by Logan, but the film is somewhat ambiguous about this.

Lou Diamond Phillips is not a good actor in the traditional sense. That is to say, his range is very limited; Phillips can not adapt to any character. He can however play one character very well. So, like Keanu or Furlong, he can be cast well. And Phillips is more than adequate here, pulling off angry, confused, cynical and impulsive. The acting in The First Power is uniformly workmanlike. The gray and black indoor and outdoor sets are well decorated, and communicate well the kind of seedy urban (in this case L.A.) environment where occult power could conceivably manifest itself (see also: Candyman and Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent). The First Power does a lot of things right—albeit while working within a tested framework—and ends up being wholly entertaining.

The most disappointing thing about The First Power is its conclusion. So often a genre film will unnecessarily end with an ambiguous “Gotcha!” moment, which subverts audience expectation, but for no real reason. As vague as what exactly “the first power” is in the film (and who has it) the ending is even more confusing. A simple and concise conclusion would have been appreciated. But this criticism aside, I very much enjoyed The First Power.

(This review originally appeared in Samurai Dreams issue #4. Its been a busy day so I had to cop out. I haven't posted this review here, so I think I can get away with it. Luckily I don't have many such reviews on reserve, so I'll need to be more diligent in the coming weeks)

The October Ordeal Day 3: The Shrieking

October 3: The Shrieking (1973)

Prism's VHS release of this obscure Leo Garen exploitation pic is titled "The Shrieking"; the original title is Hex. "Hex" actually makes sense, as plenty of people in this film get hexed. I don't recall any shrieking. A confusing title isn't the only dishonest part of Prism's box art; The Shrieking isn't really even a horror movie. Can't blame 'em; this is a confusing film. IMDb says: "A group of friends who were World War I flyers ride their motorcycles across America in search of what they believe their generation lost during the war." I've seen the film, and this is news to me. Apparently, The Shrieking never saw a theatrical release. Strange, as Hex would have been a perfectly adequate drive-in flick.

The bike gang (referred to as "The Company") doesn't ride motorcycles across America, they ride them to Nebraska, and stay there. The Company finds its way to the home of Oriole (Tina Herazo) and Acacia (Hilarie Thompson), two half-Indian (no tribe is given) sisters living alone on their small ranch. An uneasy arrangement is made, yet Oriole's hospitality soon wears thin as inter-personal complications arise. Any further plot synopsis would only lead to a headache on my part, so this premise will have to do.

The film isn't about narrative. Mood is the important thing. The film has that particular dustiness of drive-in classics like Deadly Harvest and Vanishing Point. The archetypal setting could be the creepiest episode of Little House never seen; it isn't set in any immediately recognizable time period. This could be the 20s, it could be the 50s--only the bikes kept me from placing The Shrieking in the Hollywood Old West. The specific time period doesn't matter. The idyllic prairie-town only signifies an already mysterious past. The quiet pastoral languor of The Shrieking at times feels even more tranquilized than Idaho Transfer or Picnic at Hanging Rock. This isn't a bad thing: while there's a lot wrong with this picture, the image itself is confident.

The characters themselves are stock. Oriole and Acacia are opposites: Oriole the strong, dark, handsome older sister; Acacia the blonde innocent. The gang has all the typicals: Keith Carradine plays Whizzer, the idealistic young kid; Gary Busey is Giblets the unhinged madman, Scott Glenn the stoic leader Jimbang; Robert Walker plays Chupo as a Jodorowskian mute wild-card with a big beard. The histories of these two sets are left to the imagination. Most of the company are running from something, or someone, but details are absent. All we really know about Acacia and Oriole is that their "Injun pa" taught 'em how to smoke marijuana and talk to bees before he died. The dialog between these characters is painful, the yokel phrasing laughable ("Shush up!", "Makes no never-mind"); but the non-verbal interplay amongst the group is often interesting.

No character is identified as protagonist, and none as antagonist. In one scene everyone's smoking prairie-weed and playing Jew's harp, in the next Giblets is trying to rape Acacia in the front yard. The Shrieking is full of abrupt shifts in tone, usually signified by Charles Bernstein's strange electroacoustic score. The role of any character can change from scene to scene. Whether a point is being made about the nature of human interaction and game-playing I cannot say. It's just as likely alliances and loyalties shift merely to push the film to its inevitable bloody conclusion. Ultimately it doesn't matter, as the film seems to posit that fate has brought these characters to a specific point in time from which there is no easy escape.

The uneven rhythm of the film becomes uncomfortable. Long periods of cinema-hypnosis are punctuated by moments of grotesque cruelty and acid-trip surreality. Oriole as a character grows more malovolent as the film winds, performing strange rituals: she sews a lock of biker-chick China's (Doria Cook) hair into a toad's mouth, and walks around in a cow's skull like a compelled witch. Her black-magick outbursts occur whenever the pace of the film slows to a stand-still. One thing I love about drive-in movies is how strange they can often be; in an earlier review I mentioned the bizarre images in the slasher Final Terror being especially memorable.

Somehow out of all this two romances develop. Whizzer and Oriole pair off in an antagonistic, almost-violent subset, and Acacia finds her familiar in the company's runt Golly, a flax-haired kid so passive he's almost ethereal. These four actors seem the most competent but also the most mystified: they play every hokey line ("What the jim-jam are you doin?") straight, as if in a trance. The acting in The Shrieking can't be called great, but it is appropriate.

Ultimately, The Shrieking offers no explanations. Moments in the last reel point to clumsy political commentary (the company ride "Indian" bikes, after all), but the stronger point here may be an implicit assumption about the malleability of human psychology in certain situations, or in certain archetypal positions. The final scene is the most bewildering of all, and I can't find the words to assess it. Like many of the films that find a home at Dreamscape, this is a bewildering and perhaps even off-putting film. Its strangeness, however, is the glue holding it together. Like the otherworldly aura of a dream, The Shrieking is often mundane, but the mysterious collection of these mundane moments grants surprising and unqualified occult dimensions.