Fangs of the Living Dead = Even Adds a Light Offing

Note:  This is a review I originally posted to my Epinions account. A few modifications have been made.

Many years ago, back when I was working at Wolf Camera, I got several collections of movies, each containing about 9 or 10 movies.  Each had a theme, like science-fiction movies.  One set was called “The Living Dead” and had 9 movies about zombies, vampires and the like.  I figured that most of them would be bad.  Regrettably, I had no idea how bad they could be.

Fangs of the Living Dead starts with Sylvia talking to her soon-to-be husband, Dr. Piero Luciani, and his friend, Max.  She’s just received a letter from her uncle, Count Waldrick, informing her that her mother has died and left her this really plain-looking castle.  She decides to go over to the castle, if only to sign the paperwork and be done with it.  Piero objects, but Sylvia insists that she’s just going over, doing the paperwork stuff and coming right back.

When she gets there, she meets the butler, who informs her that Count Waldrick won’t be available until 10:00 that night.  So she waits.  When he does arrive, he tells his niece about some family history and informs her that she’s to stay and continue the family tradition or something like that.  She refuses, insisting that she’s to marry soon.  He says that all that’s ancient history.  He has her write a letter to her fiancé, informing him that she won’t ever be coming back.

Piero and Max talk it over and decide that Piero’s not taking “get lost” for an answer.  So, they go over to Sylvia’s castle to talk her out of staying.  The doorman says that he’s under strict orders not to let anyone talk to her.  They yell out and even get to see Sylvia who doesn’t talk to them, but doesn’t exactly look like she doesn’t want to, either.

Back at the inn that they’re staying at, Piero and Max try to figure out a way to get Sulvia back.  They meet a local doctor who tells them of the count and his family.  Now, Piero and Max know that they have to do something.  They get into the castle, get into some trouble and finally manage to get out with Sylvia.  They all go back home and presumably live a happy life.  (That is, except for Max, but I don’t want to ruin the end.)

The first thing you notice is that the dubbing isn’t really that good.  It’s not the cheap martial-arts dubbing where people speak way more or way less than their lips would indicate, but it’s fairly obvious if you look at the screen.  At first, I thought that the audio was slightly out of synch, but I soon realized that this was dubbed.

Then again, the film quality is really bad, too.  You know when you went to the movies as a kid to see a film that had been in the theater for about two months and the film quality had suffered greatly?  That’s what this looks like.  I haven’t watched all of the movies in the collection yet, but I suspect that whoever put this together didn’t buy the rights to the best version of all of the movies.  The video and audio are so bad that there has to be a better version out there.

Also, a lot of the people look alike.  The women could almost have been played by one brunette playing all the dark-haired roles and one blond playing all of the light-haired roles.  There’s some differentiation in the men, but there aren’t a whole lot of male roles.  You have Piero, Max, the count and the local doctor.

Speaking of Max, I have to wonder if he was intended to be so funny.  He comes across as a loser meant to provide a few laughs.  He complains that garlic makes his nose “tickle,” but he has no problem walking over to it and picking it up.  He also carries some with him, causing him to sneeze at an inopportune time.  (For the record, I don’t like the word tickle, especially when used about the nose.  This doesn’t really make me like the character.)

Overall, the dialogue is also pretty bad.  Maybe it was lost in translation, but I doubt it.  I think that the translator had to watch the movie and realized that he didn’t really have to try too hard here.  I almost wonder how good the script was in the original version.  I’d like to know mostly because it does detract from the movie.  It’s hard to take the actors seriously when the voices came across so badly.

I don’t really think I’d want to watch it again, even if I did learn the language.  Everything about this movie is so bad that it should be used as an example of what not to do when making a vampire movie.  Even though I like vampire movies, there are some that truly are not worth the DVD that they were burned on.  If you see it on one of the movie channels that you get, I’d only tell you to watch a few minutes just to see how bad it is.  This is another candidate for any bottom-ten lists out there.

La Notte Che Evelyn Uscì Dalla Tomba/The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave (1971)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

Some movies have no business having been made.  Yes, there are a lot of bad movies out there and some at least have some value, even if it’s as fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Then, there are those like The Night Evelyn Came out of the Grave.  It’s a movie so horrible that I really don’t think anyone will mind if I give it one star.

The movie centers around Lord Alan Cunningham.  He lost his wife, Evelyn, several years ago and hasn’t remarried.  He does have a thing for redheaded women.  In fact, he likes to lure them back to his castle.  At first, it looks like he’s interested in sex, but when the women say or do the wrong thing, Alan goes ballistic on them and kills them.  (At least I think he does.  He’s not actually shown killing anyone, although the women go missing.)

The late Evelyn’s brother seems to have nothing better to do than to hang around Alan’s estate and spy on Alan.  This is probably because Alan is paying him off.  All of the brother’s dialogue seems to deal with him knowing the truth about Evelyn’s death or what Alan is doing now or about how he wants more money.

About halfway through the movie, Alan’s good friend and cousin, George Harriman, convinces Alan to remarry, saying that it will bring balance to his life.  So, Alan eventually agrees.  He has his castle fixed up so he can have it ready for someone should she present herself.  Eventually, Alan meets Gladys.  After knowing her for a few hours, he asks her to marry him.  She doesn’t believe him, so they spend the night together.  When he asks again the following morning, she agrees.

They live in the castle, which has just been finished, and hire a bunch of women to wear blond wigs and be their maids.  (I don’t know why they were supposed to be blond, either.)  They throw parties and have guests and do everything a couple is supposed to do.  Alan starts to become unhinged when Gladys reports seeing a redhead roaming around the house.  From there, it’s just a matter of time before a really boring plot to have Alan committed comes to light.  Once the plan is foiled, the movie ends.

Yes, this is a movie that is so long and boring that it even has a long and boring title.  It’s actually as if we have two shorter scripts that couldn’t really go anywhere on their own, so someone got the bright idea to put them together to see what happens.  Alan is going about murdering women.  As soon as he marries, this stops.  There’s no mention of killing anyone or having any homicidal tendencies at all.  Instead, the brother-in-law mysteriously dies and it seems that Evelyn’s body has gone missing.

There are some parts that are downright laughable.  Alan’s last victim is an erotic dancer who’s big thing seems to be blowing out candles.  (Her act lasts all of 30 seconds.)  Yes, there’s nudity, but very little of it is erotic.  (Alan takes his victims to a room filled with torture devices; if you’re not into that, be warned.)

The movie was also very confusing.  It starts with a man running from two other men, apparently trying to escape from a mental institution.  It’s not clear what this has to do with anything.  Also, Alan’s last victim escapes, but doesn’t run very far.  It’s not that she couldn’t.  It’s just that she chooses to stay in a very visible area as if she’s hiding there.  Alan finds and catches her, only to fall asleep.  When he wakes up, he finds that she’s gone.  I’m not even sure if she escaped or not.

Both the acting and the dubbing are very bad.  (The movie was originally released in Italy in 1971.)  None of the characters really inspire any sort of interest.  Looking back, it was like the people translating the movie didn’t have the actual script to work with and had to make a lot of stuff up as they went along.

Video quality is at a low.  This looks like it was transferred from actual reels that were on the verge of deteriorating beyond repair.  There were also points where the tint would go from a bright, normal hue to yellow, then to green and go back to normal, only to go back to a dark yellow.  Whoever was responsible for this may have actually had to patch together several different versions.

There are apparently several different releases.  Mine was the 100-minute version, which was about 90 minutes too long.  It takes a long time to get going.  Once it does, it abruptly changes direction and takes a while to really get going again.  Had I not been so intent on reviewing all 9 movies in the 3-disc set I have, I would have totally skipped this movie.  Avoid it at all costs. 

IMDb page