HORROR...70s STYLE

Growing up in the 70s and left alone late at night with the family TV set, I discovered a world of horror and fright that to this day remains unequalled on Sci-Fi or any other channel. Cheap horror, exploitation and Vincent Price were always available in the wee hours of Friday and Saturday night when I’d find myself flipping between Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, The Midnight Special and any fright fest I could lay my eyes on. The following is a short list of movies I’ve, well, never quite forgotten regardless of whether I saw them in their entirety or only partially. Rock n roll and horror films, I have to agree, were two great taste treats that tasted great together. Read on, if you dare…

Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir: Robert Fuest, 1971)
One of the all time great Vincent Price movies features diabolical death scenes, post-Avengers wit and humor, sexy assistant named…Mulvania (?), a home filled with a life sized mechanical band and a most-excellent theater organ that rises from the floorboards. Most memorable death: what patience it takes to drill a large hole directly above the head of a sleeping soon-to-be victim, slip a plastic tube through the hole, pour honey through the tube covering the face of the soon-to-be victim and then finally, through another tube, releasing hundreds of locusts who feed on the honey and flesh of the…well she’s a victim now! And to think she never stirs during any of this. Priceless!!

Blue Sunshine (dir: Jeff Lieberman, 1976)
Memorable for the plot that had people who had all dropped some bad acid, man, back in the 60s experiencing horrifying side-effects ten years later like losing their hair and becoming homicidal zombies. It was the 2nd movie I’d seen starring Zalman King, this time taking the role of dashing hero shooting the bad baldies and getting to the bottom of things. Best scene: guy loses hair and turns zombie at a party and holds another partygoer’s head in the fireplace fire.
Ouch, dude!

Deathdream aka Dead of Night (dir: Bob Clark, 1974)
Caught the last third of this late one night and found myself simultaneously baffled and intrigued. I wasn’t privy to the fact that this was based on Monkey’s Paw with a distraught mother bringing back her deceased Vietnam veteran son with a wish. He’s back but guess what: he craves blood! Best scene and BIG TIME SPOILER: the end where the boy returns to his gravesite, lays down in it and reburies himself. Absolutely freaky and chilling. Director Bob Clark went on to direct the Porky movies as well as one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, A Christmas Story (1983)

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir: Robert Fuest, 1972)
The follow-up is more of the same and features one of the strangest endings I’d seen in my young life involving an underground stream to…ever after? Eternity? More laughs, more gruesome dispatching, more British wit. Most disturbing death: guy is…folded up? Crushed? Squished...inside a cube that comes at him in two halves and is slowly brought together and fastened. Only his sad head is visible peering out of a hole in the top. Very odd and quite unsettling.

Homebodies (dir: Larry Yust, 1974)
Old folks are being kicked out of their long-time domicile by greedy real estate moguls and they take matters in their own hands…by ruthlessly dispatching each in wonderfully gruesome ways. Can’t remember the ending except that it seemed to get trippier and trippier as it progressed. Imprinted in my memory: the old timers wheel a bound and gagged victim over to the construction site where they cover him in cement. Better hold yer breath!

SSSSSSS aka SSSSnake (dir: Bernard L Kowalski, 1973)
Strother Martin is a mad scientist who wants to turn people into cobra snakes. I have no idea why although I’m sure he feels it will be for the benefit of mankind. Poor boob who begins working for him as an assistant winds up a guinea pig. Movie ends with a climactic fight between cobra and mongoose. Guess who the cobra is. Creepiest scene: guinea pig-guy wanders into a carnival side show and witnesses one of the doctor's…failures: a moaning humanoid with no arms, no legs, scales and reptilian face. Very disturbing.

Tender Flesh aka Welcome to Arrow Beach (dir: Laurence Harvey, 1974)
Director Laurence Harvey, nowhere in the vicinity of his Manchurian Candidate days, stars as a Vietnam veteran who has learned to love the taste of…tender flesh. What’s that in the fridge in the basement? Is the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster going to be his next victim? Stand out scene: nothing aside from the lovely green-eyed Meg Foster who is indeed lovely...and green-eyed.

Theater Of Blood (dir: Douglas Hickox, 1973)
Another brilliant entry from Vincent Prices wonderful early-70s period. He plays, of all things, a ham Shakespearean actor who commits suicide after getting skewered by the critics for his latest performance. He doesn’t die and in fact is able, with the help of the sewer dwellers who rescue him, to off each critic in a manner described by the Bard himself. This features very British wit and the fetching Emma Peel, I mean Diana Rigg, as his foxy assistant. Best scene: hell, all of it. Then again I’d have to say Mr. Price throwing lit torches from the stage into the box seats still has kind of an apocalyptic feel to this day for me. Burn, baby, burn...

Trip With The Teacher (dir: Earl Barton, 1975)
Gruesome exploitation features the crazed Zalman King as, get this, a psychopath who abducts a mini-school bus of three students and their hot teacher. They're subjected to rape, torture and murder before the big Z winds up impaled on a big metal rod. In movies, it’s always possible to shove a big metal rod completely through someone with one’s bare hands with equal parts sticking out the front and back. Scenes I regrettably remember: dude gets run over by a biker and girl is smothered having her face forced into the sand. Yuck.

Twisted Brain aka Horror High (dir: Larry N. Stouffer, 1974)
I remember almost nothing of this except for the twisted brain boy running down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. I think it was filmed with a fish-eye lens too. How cool is that? Best scene: boy runs down the halls of his high school with some pretty awesome pre-punk punk music blaring. Gabba Gabba Hey!

Well, that's it for now! Up next: movies I actually saw in the theater way back in the fabulous day-glo seventies! Stay tuned and...make sure your night light works.