Nightmare City



By chance, this week I viewed two movies back-to-back: Nightmare City (1980) and David Cronenberg’s Shivers (1975). These two films made for a fantastic and appropriate double-bill because they both provide an interesting spin on the Zombie flick.

 



Umberto Lenzi is credited with establishing the Italian Cannibal genre with 1972’s Deep River Savages (aka The Man from Deep River) but, in-between two other Cannibal romps – Eaten Alive! (1980) and the notorious Cannibal Ferox (1981) – he tried his hand at the Zombie film. The plot goes like this: after an unidentified plane exposed to radiation lands at the airport of an unnamed city, a horde of zombies emerge and go on a rampage, attacking anything in their way.

 



This film is different from a lot of the other Walking Dead movies from around the time. The creatures in Nightmare City are not the same as George Romero’s undead or of other Italian gore films like Zombie Flesh Eaters or Zombie Holocaust. Lenzi’s ‘Zombies’ are not the dead rising from the grave, but living people who have mutated after being exposed to radiation which has enhanced their strength but also given them an insatiable thirst for blood. These, as Lenzi puts it, ‘infected people’ are not living corpses, shuffling about, relying on impulse; no, they can run and retain the mental capacity to use weapons and even communicate with each other. They do, however, retain some of the hallmarks of Romero’s flesh eaters: they can infect a victim with a bite and can only be stopped by a gunshot to the head.

 

The movie plays on a common theme in 1980s horror flicks: fear of the dangers of nuclear power. The people on the plane were exposed to high levels of radiation and thus became mutated and developed a taste for human flesh. The film also briefly explores themes such as freedom of the press, the military industrial complex and human-kind’s tendency to play God.

 

  Nightmare City is a fun film to watch and is (ahem) a feast for the gore-hounds out there. It’s an orgy of over-the-top violence as the Zombies, sorry ‘infected people’, rampage through the city. Necks are bitten, guts are chewed, eyes are gouged and there’s even a scene of a woman’s breast being ripped off! It’s a spectacularly awesome Italian exploitation flick; with loads of action and thrills. People who love this sort of movie will have a blast.

 

 

The Werewolf & The Yeti

This obscure Video Nasty is extremely difficult to find and I wouldn’t be surprised if the original pre-cert cassettes change hands for, what I would call, ‘silly money’. I did manage to watch The Werewolf & The Yeti (AKA Night Of The Howling Beast and La Maldicion de la Bestia), however, on the internet – without having to exchange a ridiculous amount of cash!

This cheap, rough film does have a sense of adventure about it, which makes it quite fun to watch. Werewolf & The Yeti sees Spanish exploitation lothario Paul Naschy (born Jacinto Molina Alvarez) once again reprising his role as Waldermar Daninsky as he attempts to track down the mythical abominable snowman. However, Daninsky falls under the curse of two mountain demonesses, which causes him to sprout hair and claws whenever there’s a full moon out.

 

Naschy is the closest thing the grindhouse has to a James Bond. He’s smooth, charismatic, tough and always gets the girl. Werewolf & the Yeti was the seventh time Naschy played Waldermar – I’m reliably informed he played the character in over a dozen films.

The film was obviously made for very little capital but I think manages to make do pretty well with it’s limited resources. I thought the locations were impressive and added to the gothicness of the movie - although, when it comes to special FX, that’s clearly a bloke in a Werewolf costume. Unconvincing the costume may be, but it reminded me of Lon Chaney’s portrayal of the ‘The Wolf Man’ so it wasn’t too distracting.

Werewolf & The Yeti is notorious for being one of the 72 ‘Video Nasties’ banned in the UK (and remains to this day) by the Director of Public Prosectutions (DPP) in the early 1980s. Once you finally see the film, it’s surprising that the DPP even bothered with it because there’s nothing ‘nasty’ about it really; there are scenes of sex and violence, but they’re so frivolous that it becomes difficult to call the film offensive  – even more surprising is that it was one of the 39 films that were successfully prosecuted! I’ve touched on the issue of how or why certain movies ended up on the Video Nasties list, and how their appearance appears arbitrary when you compare and contrast with other non-Nasties, so I won’t proceed with this argument any further. What I will say is that Werewolf & The Yeti is further evidence of what a nonsense the Video Nasty scandal proved to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bloody Moon

 
 
 
 





In his 200 plus film career, Jess Franco has never been afraid to adapt to the times. As well as his usual skin flicks, he’s tried his hand at the Zombie movie, the cannibal movie and the slasher. The latter is what we have here with Bloody Moon. Even for someone like me who is a relative newcomer to Franco’s films, ‘quality’ is not usually a word you begin to associate with the European sleaze king. ‘Bloody Moon’ is no exception but, as I’m beginning to see with a lot of Jess’ repertoire, it does have a certain charm to it. Hell, this might just be me. One man’s trash is another’s treasure, so they say.

 

The film follows Angela, (Olivia Pascal from erotic classic Vanessa) a student at an all-girl (naturally) language school in Spain, who is being stalked by a mysterious killer who bumps off her friends one-by-one. This is a good Jess Franco film for the non-Franco fan as there’s not many of his trademarks here (no zooms or crotch shots).

 



Let’s start with the faults. Bloody Moon isn’t a bad who-done-it movie, but Franco seems incapable of adding any other sort of suspense.  Scenes often plod along at a snail’s pace and the (attempted) shocks just don’t, well, shock you. Then we have scenes that involve reactions by the characters that are so odd. For instance, when Angela catches a glimpse of Miguel, who is hiding in her bathroom, she is naturally petrified and runs from the room. But after about two minutes, she suddenly relaxes and gets on with things. Uh, did you forget about that creepy guy in your bathroom? Then you have the film’s most famous scene where Inga is decapitated with a giant buzz saw (see the clip below). The build up to this set piece is so absurd it’s comical. Inga (Jasmin Losensky) let’s a mysterious masked man, who she’s only just met,  tie her to rock with no objections what so ever, because, as she puts it, “It’s a little perverse, but I’ll try anything; as long as I get back to the club in time”. I think you need to worry about something more than being late for class, Inga. Did you not see that giant buzz saw behind you? What did you think was going to happen? Rounding out the negatives are some dubious acting, unconvincing special effects and crap music (bad disco!) – all three not unusual for Franco’s films.

 



But enough whining, like I say, this film has charm despite it’s shortcomings. First and foremost, Bloody Moon looks beautiful. Say what you will about Franco, there’s no denying that a lot of his movies are photographed exquisitely. The luscious Spanish countryside is captured stunningly and perfectly complements Franco’s always great looking female cast members. The main reason I can’t be too critical of this movie is because it’s fun to sit through. The negatives above can be taken for ironic laughs. The characters bizarre actions are just so bonkers it’s hard not to have giggle. The SFX are mostly poor but do try to be gory and, as set pieces go, they are fun and memorable – sometimes for the wrong reasons: Angela almost gets flattened by the most obviously fake boulder in movie history.

 

 

‘Bloody Moon’ is an example of Franco having a stab at a different genre. Though he’s attempting an American-style slasher, I feel his European-filmmaking tendencies have got the better of him here because it plays more like an Italian Gialo. But whatever Franco was trying to accomplish here it’s a blast none the less and is definitely a film that you can sit through on more than one occasion.