The Skull (1965)

I must confess I've stayed away from Freddie Francis The Skull for many years just because someone, sometime, told me that it had a cheesy flying skull. Stupid me, but I've learned over the years never to listen to anyone who claims a movie is bad in anyway - because I know that I in most cases have  different opinion. The thing is also that I never been a big fan of Amicus. Don't ask me why, but I always had a hard time getting into them. This is a really original and atmospheric horror flick with an original story and well-executed effects. Sure, it has a skull hanging on strings - but if you're gonna basha movie just because of that then you should stay away from this form of art.

The formidable Patrick Wymark (for me he's a part of a childhood trauma because of his death in Where Eagles Dare) plays Anthony Marco, a very shady antiques dealer who's favourite customer is Dr. Christopher Maitland (Peter Cushing), a specialist in the occult and unknown. One evening Marco shows him a skull who he says is the skull of Marquis De Sade. Maitland is not interested, but after Marco leaves he finds himself more interested in the skull and the story behind it. Soon he's possessed by the pure existence of the cranium, he needs to own it - even if his good friend Sir Matthew Phillips (Christopher Lee) warns him, because he once owned the skull himself... and knows the dangers ahead!

Freddie Francis directed some of the more edgy and dark British thrillers and The Skull is no exception. There's not hope for humanity, this easily distracted and greedy animal, here. Maitland is one of Cushing's more complex roles. Think about it, Cushing is doing his nice guy routine here, but the character is both very cynical and greedy - but pretends not to. He gladly buys stolen artefacts, with that patented Cushing-nod towards the thief. He has his full office filled with - it's suggested both by Marco and Maitland - stolen goods. He does everything to OWN. More relaxed, and more realistic his Phillips - who's been there and never want to go that road again. For him it's not important anymore.

The 2.35:1 ratio is used to maximum with deep colours, shadows and an interesting - but hard to define - sense of dread hanging over the characters. The frame is filled with details and interesting props and I would kill for a time machine to go back and take a closer look. Overall the set design is excellent. So how about that flying skull? You CAN see the threads at one point, but who the f**k cares really? It's a flying skull, they don't exist for real anyway! The flying is actually quite effective, especially considering the glorious cinematography by John Wilcox (who has a very impressive resume, including another favorite: The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires).

But the most fascinating ideas with the movie is about the obsession of the skull, and it's possession of it's victims. One of the highlights is a really trippy sequence when Cushing - probably hallucinating - is forced to play Russian roulette and is trapped inside a big red room with moving walls!

The Skull is out on  good-looking blu-ray from Legend Films, well worth purchasing - and it's region all also!

Ninja Internetoholic!

Just letting new readers know that this is not the only place where Ninja Dixon roams!

You can find me on Twitter, on Facebook, Tumblr and also on my special blog about Thai cult cinema.

It's the same style of megalomania like in this place, I'm focusing on movies that few talk about or that I think is under-appreciated. On the tumblr I'm posting mostly mainstream movies - but of course not too mainstream :)

And a warning, I'm very more personal on Twitter - and I'm mixing Swedish and English a lot.

Anyway, you're welcome! :)

Metal Tornado (2011)

Cheap and generic isn't just my life in three words, it's also a part of exploitation movies since the dawn of movie history. It's nothing wrong with being generic, it's part of the game - and the best game for generic scripts is the disaster genre. I think we all can agree that not one single disaster movie is an original movie - and don't defend the 70's masterpieces in the genre, they stole everything from melodrama-king Douglas Sirk and older disaster movies like San Francisco, Deluge and When Worlds Collide. It's also my favourite genre and I never grow tired of seeing either miniatures or CG models getting torn aparts by natural disasters. It's all the same to me.

SyFy Channel has been a saviour of disaster porn for a number of years, spurting out cheap flicks over and over again. After other storm-themed movies like Ba'al: The Storm God and Ice Twister, NYC: Tornado Terror and Space Twister comes Metal Tornado - a movie I don't think is a SyFy original to be honest, but belongs to that specific genre and got released on the channel last years. What makes it interesting for me, as a trash aficionado, is that it's a Canadian production and produced by my favourite exploitation man: Pierre David! Yeah? You know him I hope? He produced Dolly Dearest and Scanner Cop - and yeah, a bunch of David Cronenberg's films. Good, I knew that you knew who he is...

Lou Diamond Philips is Michael Edwards, some blahablaha-scientist, living alone with a troubled teenage son. He's dating his co-worker Rebecca (Nicole de Boer) and that causes some friction between him and his son. Anyway! He's working on a new energy source: taking power from sun flares, sucking it down with some weird space machines into gigantic battery packs down on earth. Something like that. Of course something goes wrong and the energy creates a magnetic tornado who starts to eat every metal thing it can find and of course it's going towards Philadelphia! How can Michael and his team stop it? Will he make peace with his son? Will everyone hug each other in the end? Watch the movie and you'll see...

Seriously, for me - as a very forgiving fan of cheap TV movies - this was quite OK. There's absolutely NOTHING original with it. The story goes from one metal tornado-incident to another - just like a creature feature from SyFy, and Lou Diamond Philips is a good hero running around looking worried, sitting behind computers looking worried, hugging survivors looking worried. I like Lou, no doubt about it. He's good and even if this was an easy paycheck he delivers some acting - which is rare in these movies.

The effects are mostly very cheap (surprise!), but effective. The tornado itself looks silly like hell, but I can buy it just because the story never drags. This is a movie for people who wants to sleep when watching it, just to wake up when some disaster happens. I mean, I can't even pretend any of you will like it - but I like it and that's the most important thing with the movies here at Ninja Dixon!

I have an avid reader who always comments on my blog, and he/she wanted to read about a SyFy movie and here's one for you! Hope you enjoy it!

Die! Die! My Darling! (1965)

The original UK title of Die! Die! My Darling! was the less What Ever Happen To Baby Jane-esque "Fanatic", and actually it's a better and harder title, closer to the disturbing subject of the story. Directed for Hammer Films, TV-director Silvio Narizzano seem more used to the confined spaces and the claustrophobic atmosphere than many others and directs here, I think, one of the best Old Psycho Lady-films of the sixties.

Stefanie Powers plays Patricia, an American woman who travels to London to meet her fiancé. But before their wedding she wants to visit the mother of her former boyfriend, who died in a car accident some years earlier. Just to pay respect, you know the deal. Upon arriving to the house of Mrs Trefoile (Tallulah Bankhead) and her staff, Patricia realizes that she's a religious, Christian fanatic, controlling her house with a steady hand. But worst of all, soon Mrs Trefoile understand that Patricia is a sinner - wearing lipstick, perfume, not going to church regularly - and even more horrible: she's not a virgin! Mrs Trefoile decides she want to save Patricia and reunite her with the dead son. All in the name of God!

I can see how someone, somewhere, wanted this movie to be another Baby Jane or Strait-Jacket. Maybe the distributor or some stupid executive producer somewhere, but this is a smarter and darker movie than just a an ordinary rip-off. Bankhead's performance is one of the most twisted and dark I've seen from this period, an woman deeply evil, extremely bitter and to a certain degree insane. She's taken control over her staff, the emotionally fucked-up Anna (Yootha Joyce), her grim husband Harry (Peter Vaughan) and the retarded helper Joseph (Donald Sutherland) - all three brilliant actors. Powers as Patricia is an excellent heroine, fighting back more or less the whole time and the sparks between her and Bankhead is sensational.

It's a pretty violent movie, without being very bloody or graphic. But it's cruel, it's has a cynical atmosphere - an brilliant cat and mouse game of mindfucking deluxe. But make no mistake, there's no doubt who the monster is - this is one of the more anti-christian and anti-religious flicks I've seen including Kevin Smith's Red State (and I know he's a believer himself, but he at least understand that even Christians can be evil). Yeah, I would go so far to say that Die! Die! My Darling! is the Red State of the sixties. From it's theme of religious fantics to the story about kidnapping a non-believer/random ordinary Joe and force Jesus into his head with violence! It's a brave commercial thriller that dares to make the Christianity the bad guy. The only big difference is that Mrs Trefoile is a sinner deep inside, a weak damned sinner.

This is a movie you can watch only for Tallulah Bankhead. She's worthy every prize in the book her. I'm not sure if she had some illness during the time of the shooting, but from time she looks frail and it's not acting. This was also the last movie she made before her death in 1968. After reading up on her a bit I can understand how this part got her interest. She was a born provocateur, always ready for telling people the truth or just fucking with their heads. No surprise she took the role as Mrs. Trefoile with such enthusiasm. I also love how they, almost like in Sunset Boulevard, connected her to her past as a silent movie star. That's also a brave move from her, but not surprisingly it's said she actually disliked her earlier stardom.

Maybe she wanted to poke fun at what she once was?

Lake of the Dead (1958)

It's rarely you come across vintage Scandinavian horror movies, which is kind of weird because in both Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland we have a rich tradition of myths and legends and deep, dark forests that scared the shit out of our ancestors for many years - and still do, believe me. My fathers grandma died when I was a baby, but she was a witch. A real one. With dark long hair, a wart on her nose and a strong belief in ghosts, goblins, trolls and every other supernatural creature living in the nature. I'm one of those boring atheists that doesn't believe in anything, but I love Scandinavian ghost stories. Lake of the Dead is one of those and probably the first horror movie ever made in our neighbouring country Norway. And it's still one of the best.

Six friends, all intellectuals - writes, critics, doctors - travels far out on the countryside to spend the weekend at a cabin in the woods. The brother of one of them is waiting there - they think. But when they arrive he's gone and when they find his diary it tells a haunting story of a ghost coming back for revenge, a one-legged incestuous man who lures his victims to the nearby bottomless lake. Soon strange things happens and they find traces of a one-legged man around the cabin and they soon understand that their lives are at stake...

Together with Rune Hagberg's ...och efter skymning kommer mörker (Sweden, 1947) this is probably the best genre movie made in Scandinavia before the sixties, even if I hold Arne Mattsson's Lady in Black from 1958 very high. But What makes Lake of the Dead so damn good is how simple it is. The story is very straightforward and the script plays on the ideas of the dangerous darkness that surrounds us in the nature, and the eerie desolate lake where no one can hear the screams of a drowning victim. The story balances right between a murder mystery and a supernatural tale and in the end it's quite open on what really happen. I like that. I hate when it's to clear. The ending isn't perfect, for me they could have kept it more mysterious, but what the hell - that was probably as much as the audience could take at the time.

It reminded me of the writings of Nigel Kneale, with a scientific approach to what's happening, but still leaves open for something more unexplainable. Well, maybe it's more the classic horror tales of the BBC that comes to mind: classy, well-acted and with genuine creepiness all the way through. I also like the discussion how magic is a form of science, close to hypnosis and manipulation of the mind from a distance.

I also need tell you that the dialogue is very important in Lake of the Dead. It's a lot of talk, but nothing is unnecessary and all of it, at proper moments, is also very witty and smart. I can't recommend you to watch this without subtitles, it will lower your experience a lot. Sure, there's stunning cinematography and cool scenes of terror - but this is a movie that needs its dialogue. If you want to see it, and I guess you want after this review, it's out on a gorgeous DVD in Norway with English subtitles! Believe it or not!

A Norwegian masterpiece in horror, there's no excuse to not buy it! 

Beyond the Grave (2010)

Beyond theGrave, or Porto dos Mortos, is something as unique as a Brazilian horror-western-drama hybrid from director Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro. Shot in the beautiful city of Porto Alegre, the movie looks gorgeous and has an attractive cast of talents but suffers from a slow pacing. Will that work when the horror nerds out there most likely expects a gore-ridden splatter-movie?

The seven gates of hell has opened and transformed most people to zombie-demon-thingies. The Officer (Rafael Tombini) is a police officer obsessed with his work and even now, after the apocalypse, he's searching the country for the dreaded serial killer The Dark Rider. During the way he picks up two teenagers (Ricardo Seffner and Amanda Grimaldi) and teaches them to defend themselves without wasting bullets. But the closer they get to The Dark Rider higher the risk, and not everyone is gonna survive the end of the day...

Beyond the Grave is a very ambitious movie. The digital cinematography looks excellent and the main actors, especially the John Savage-esque Rafael Tombini and the two teenagers has a lot of charisma and carries the story all the way through. Even if the movie starts of quite cheesy, in a good way, with a shoot-out (including a very nifty shadow with bullethole-gag) and a samurai, the rest of the story is very, very low-key and is more or less an existential road movie with heavy doses of Stephen King's The Stand and it's villain, Randall fall - also called The Dark Man (compared to The Dark Rider) and the Walking Dude, the latter is referenced in a message that's sprayed on a wall in this movie.

One interesting idea is that the zombies isn't that dangerous (which I guess could be a disappointment to the gorehounds!), unless they are in a larger group of course. In some scenes the creatures is just stumbling around a couple of meters from our heroes without anyone really caring about them. Like stray dogs. Director Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro wasn't interested in doing a normal zombie-movie - which is very obvious when watching the movie. It's more a drama with some supernatural scenes tossed in here and there and very low on the gore front (and I like gore), which could have spiced up the story a little bit.

I was expecting something else, maybe something more less serious and with more action, but if you read this review and plans to watch the movie: expect something totally different, expect more of a road movie. Well-acted, nicely shot and with more focus on characters and dialogue than pure horror. I think you will like it more with that knowledge.

Haunts (1977)

I need to thank Lars Jacobsson for tweeting about this movie, because if he didn't I wouldn't have hard about it and I would have reviewed yet another SyFy production that no one of you care about anyway! Haunts is directed by c-director (and former Rabbi!) Herb Freed, the maestro behind such classics as Graduation Day and Beyond Evil. He directed a couple of hundred TV-commercials before becoming a movie director and his second feature was this very interesting super-cheap thriller set far out in the American countryside...

May Britt Wilkens, the Swedish blonde Rat Pack-nymph who got her first start in Carlo Ponti's AND Dino De Laurentiis Le infedeli in 1953, plays Ingrid Svensson, a deeply religious woman living on an old farm who earlier belonged to her parents. Her only relative nearby is Uncle Carl (Cameron Mitchell) and the rest of the time she spends in church or taking care of her goats. One night a woman gets brutally killed by a masked man (wearing black gloves) and soon everyone is getting more and more paranoid. Who is the killer? The unknown psychopath is also starting to following and attacking Ingrid, and she gets closer to a nervous breakdown...

Haunts might be cheap, very cheap, and terribly slow - but this is actually a very ambitious, giallo-esque backwoods-thriller with a very fine cast. I've never been fond of these local productions, but Haunts stays away from the usual Bigfoots and monsters and goes directly for a complex psycho-thriller that gives the audience more than one twist. I'm surprised, because the directing by Freed is intelligent and arty with a wonderful score by the one and only Pino Donaggio (who the hell did they get him?!). The script, co-written by his wife Anne Marisse, is not that simple - but it's possible to connect all the dots even after the very haunting and cryptic ending.

Aldo Ray and Cameron Mitchell is two of the old farts giving Haunts some respectability, and both are doing it very well. They both starred in countless oddities over the years, most of the time probably just so they could pay the rent, but here both of them are low-key and uses a very realistic style of acting which tells me they probably cared more about this movie than some of the other stuff they did. But May Britt is the lead and with her strong Swedish accent (I'm not sure if that's her real accent or if she made it stronger for the performance) gives a lot of credibility to the story and she carries most of it by herself.

Don't expect any gore or sleaze, just expect a good and cheap horror/thriller with a script more clever than you can imagine.

Haunts is only released in shoddy, crappy releases, which is a pity. It deserves better, at least to make give more people a chance to see it. I have an Italian release with both English and Italian soundtrack, but the quality isn't much better than those 50 movies in one box that floods the net. But still, this is a movie worth watching - and when you've seen it, please come back to me and discuss the ending!