Mark of the Devil - Will's Review

I was quite looking forward to the week's movie; it's a reader recommendation (via our Facebook Page), and it has Udo Kier in it!

Our last Reader Request was Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, while Naziploitation isn't my favourite genre, Ilsa was one of the better examples.

Sadly this weeks movie is, in all but the trappings, a run of the mill naziplotation movie. Swap out Nazis for the church, the SS for witchfinders, Jews for peasants, and the Camp for a small village, and it's the same old same old.

The acting is terrible, save for Keir; who doesn't exactly give a career best performance himself, and spends most of the film in trousers so tight that an interested observer could probably narrow down his religion.

Against the stock background of people (mostly women) being tortured is the story of the Witch-finder general's student/protégé/apprentice (Kier) realising that his beliefs are not all they're cracked up to be.

Aside from that its a fairly standard 70s/80s torture movie; nothing to write home about, but not terrible either.

Mark of the Devil - Lisa's Review

*** Spoilers ***

I'm not going to spend a long time on this one.  For me the high point was that it had Udo Kier in it!  A very young Mr Kier, but the intensity is still there.

If you think Witchfinder General with gore and tits and you've pretty much summed this one up.

The movie basically centers around the torturing and murder of what seems any attractive young person, both male and female (but mostly female) who is suspected to be a witch.   These acts are ordered by an evil Lord Cumberland, all under the guise of religion and god.  We also have one of the most horrid men I've ever set eyes on - Albino, who concocts acts these poor women are supposed to have carried out (all untrue) just so he can brand them as witches and rape and torture them.

Udo plays a very young apprentice/pupil Count Christian Von Meruh.  He is the supposed 'good guy'... well as good as you're going to get in this movie.  Kier inevitably falls in love with one of the accused young women and starts to question the practices and what is going on.

What follows is what you would expect from this sort of movie.  Tortures depicted include: Flogging, water torture, stabbing with skewers, chair of torture, the rack, thumb screws, burning at the stake and a tongue being ripped out. There are also rapes depicted.

Reviews I've read of this movie seem to rate it quite highly and feel that it is much more than an exploitation movie.  True, there is more to it than that.  It does depict the individuals responsible as horrible creatures and does point the finger very squarely at religion, so I suppose there is a moral message of sorts, but I just didn't enjoy this movie.

I didn't like how it 'felt'.  To me, the way it was shot, the lingering on the suffering and the unnecessary nudity in places, which added nothing to the scenes or story, just felt a bit exploitative in the wrong kind of way to me.  Maybe it was just how I saw it.  Maybe I was in 'one of those moods', but the movie just didn't sit well with me.  I felt like I was watching torture scenes which were filmed with the intention of being arousing.  It certainly felt like the director had purely a male audience in mind when he put this together.

Aside from all of this, it was hideously overacted and hammy in several places.  I just found myself feeling impatient and irritated by it.

I think this is just one of those movies that was a matter of personal taste for me.  I'm more than willing to accept a lot of people may enjoy this movie, I am just not one of them.

Won't tag this as 'avoid' down to purely my own personal taste, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

Mother of Tears - Will's Review

And so, we bid farewell to the Three Mothers Trilogy - Meh.

Sorry for the delay by the way - I've been struck down with a nasty (and rather persistent) cold; In fact, I have been toying with the idea of giving this one a second watch-through before reviewing it, feeling I may have missed something. On reflection though, looking back at the other two films in the trilogy  a clear head is likely to have made little difference.



All that said, I'll keep this very brief, as I still feel like crap.

The "Mother of Tears" is revived when her remains are found and examined by archaeologists  and she sets too taking over Rome - and with no small success; seeming hours (at most a few days) after her resurrection  the city is crawling with witches (who look like nothing more than a very large, "The Craft" themed hen night).

The Main character (who's name I forget) is assisted by the ghost of her mother (a white witch) and the whole thing is really kind of hokey.

Worst of all; it doesn't feature any of the touches that make Argento so watchable - the cinematography is below par, the trademark primary colours and odd lighting are no where to be seen, I didn't notice any insects foreshadowing death scenes, and the whole thing (gore effects aside) looked incredibly cheap - due in part to the fact that it clearly wasn't shot on film (given its age I'd say it was DV, but if you told me it was shot on video, I'd believe you).

Some great deaths, including a woman being strangled by her own intestines; other wise a below-average effort.

Suspiria - Will's Review

Argento; primary colours, Goblin soundtrack, beautiful set pieces, and a paper-thin plot (that doesn't make much sense anyway).

This time, an American student (The impossibly cute and perpetually surprised-looking Jessica Harper) has travels to Europe to join an exclusive Ballet school... Which turns out to be the front for a much more sinister operation.

As this is one of the 'Three Mothers' trilogy you've probably figured out by now that (Mild spoiler) it's witches.

Head witch is the Directoress of the school, who is allegedly away on business, but (bigger, but not huge, spoiler) we soon learn that she is still in the school when (I shit you not) one of the students recognises her snore!

Like I said, the plot is pretty much bobbins, but it has to be forgiven as parts of it are a joy to watch - in particular a scene in which a winged creature attacks someone off-screen - we never see the beast, only glimpses of it's shadow, but it's one of the most effective 'monster' scenes I've seen in a while!

For its visual busty, I'm leap eared to overlook the nonsensical / scarce plot, and give this one a thumbs up - it's no more than I did for Fuluci's "The Beyond".

The Werewolf and the Yeti - Lisa's Review

I'll start by saying, this is one crazy assed movie.  I could probably do with a second watch to make much sense of it, but my abject lack of enjoyment of any aspect of it, prevents me from doing so.  One thing I have learnt from this 'Nasties' experience is that I'm not a fan of the 'so bad its good' movies.

Inferno - Will's Review.

This one's an Argento. And then some. From the primary colored lighting, to the score that manages to feature Prog Rock, Experimental Jazz and opera, to the bug that lets us know shit's about to go down, this week's movie has his fingerprints all over it.

That said, it does lack the batshit insanity of his Giallo work... Probably because of the mainstream funding (this one was paid for by Fox); this isn't to say it's entirely coherent ether...

***Spoilers follow***

Part of the problem with the coherency, may be the fact that it doesn't have a clear lead character; Every time you meet someone why might be lead in any other movie, they die. There is a guy who is in most of the movies final 2/3rds, but I'm, not sure he does enough to qualify as a 'lead' in any traditional sense.

It also doesn't have much in the way of a story - there's a book in it, which tells the story of the "Three Mothers", and this book seems to be of  interest to a lot of people, especially alchemists. One such alchemist, lives under a library that has a copy, but rather than just nipping upstairs and checking it out or removing it from the shelves, he seems content until someone wielding a copy takes a wrong turn and winds up in his basement, then attempts to boil their head.

There are also some pretty ropy effects, like a god awful "Death" costume which is clearly a black jumpsuit with a rubber skeleton on it, and a potentially hilarious scene in which a woman has (what I hope are stuffed) cats thrown at her is attacked by cats...

Sad to say it, because I do like a lot of Argento's work, but this one is a bit of an, albeit beautifully shot, mess.

Body Count: 9
Boob Count: 1 pair (through a wet shirt)
Animal Body Count: 5 kills (including one insect), 2 stuffed lizards on desks.
Most Memorable Death: Knife through neck - with a lovely flow of blood from the mouth.

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