All Horns And Tail


SATAN’S BLOOD (1978) DVD Starring Ángel Aranda, Sandra Alberti and Mariana Karr


Written and directed by Carlos Puerto Scorpion Releasing


I’ve watched quite a few films about devil worship in


my day but few have featured ritual scenes so raunchy as those depicted in Satan’s Blood, a.k.a. Escalofrío, which would be more fitting in a porn flick. In this steamy Spanish shocker, Andy (José María Guil-


lén) and his four-months pregnant wife Annie (Mariana Karr) are out for a relaxing day with their dog when they’re approached by another couple, Bruno (Ángel Aranda) and his wife Mary (Sandra Al- berti). Though several years older, the man claims to be a former college classmate of Andy’s and invites the pair back home for drinks and to look through old photos. Alex has no recol- lection of Bruno, but he and Annie accept the offer and follow the couple to their isolated manor. Over wine and cheese, they discuss


the occult before engaging in a Ouija board session, where they manage to invoke a spirit that reveals (among other things) Annie’s past infidelity and a prediction that Bruno will die by suicide. Upset but unable to leave due to a fearsome


storm, Alex and Annie are forced to stay the night. They soon discover their hosts sitting stark naked on a pentagram-decorated carpet, calling upon Satan. Placed in a trance, the pair is drawn into a full-on orgy; as the foursome engages in sweaty sex in multiple positions, a picture of Christ bursts into flames on the wall. The following day, the spent couple once again attempts to leave, only to discover their dog, car and hosts mysteriously missing. Will Alex and Annie escape this house of evil alive? Released less than three years after the death of Span-


ish dictator General Francisco Franco, Satan’s Blood was reportedly one of the country’s first films to sport an S- rating (roughly equivalent to an X-rating), which led to a relaxing of Spain’s formerly oppressive censorship laws. But for all its full-frontal nudity and scenes of copulation, it still retains a strong atmosphere of unease and dread, with echoes of Rosemary’s Baby. Part of the Katarina’s Nightmare Theater line – which means there’s an intro and outro from former wrestler Katarina Leigh Waters – extras include a stills gallery and trailers for other Scorpion releases.


JAMES BURRELL Where’s The Beast?


THE MAGNETIC MONSTER (1953) DVD Starring Richard Carlson, King Donovan and Jean Byron


Directed by Curt Siodmak Written by Curt Siodmak and Ivan Tors MGM


Writer Curt Siodmak had great ideas and knew how to let them unfold on the page. You can see it in his literary-


Gurozuka: Yet another terrifying tape.


minded scripts for such crackerjack classics as Dono- van’s Brain (which was adapted from his novel), as well as The Wolf Man and some of the other Universal horror entries. The Magnetic Monster, one of a handful of films Siodmak also directed, tries desperately to overcome its poor production values with an inventive, unorthodox plot and a convincing scientific air. Richard Carlson, who made a big impression in that


same year’s It Came From Outer Space, is very credible as Dr. Stewart, a mystery-solving physicist from the government’s Office of Scientific Investigation – a Quatermass Jr. of sorts. He and his pipe-chomping partner (King Donovan) are sent out to inspect a rash of reports of metal objects be- coming inexplicably magnetized around town. After their Geiger counters go crazy at each scene, they discover a dangerously unsta- ble radioactive isotope that’s grow- ing at an alarming rate and could topple Earth off its axis. Once they


trace this back to the invisible intruder, their only hope is special scientific equipment in Canada that may be able to destroy the magnetic menace with a high-powered electron shower. Tapping into the same nuclear panic that would fuel


the horror genre for the better part of the decade, The Magnetic Monster is a fine but never wholly successful 1950s genre exercise. It struggles to tell a clever, sophis- ticated story with almost no money – not unlike trying to push together two opposing magnetic poles. Though effectively scripted around stock footage and budget constraints – the “invisible” monster surely saved a couple bucks – there’s still a lingering poverty row vibe to the project, including bargain effects, ponder- ous narration by Carlson to explain the science at work and an explosive climax that’s nicked from the German sci-fi film, Gold (1934). Yet there’s still something about The Magnetic Monster


that pulls you in – it’s a cut above the sometimes juvenile genre films of its day, with Dr. Stewart approaching the problem using sound scientific methodology, and an on- slaught of jargon and loving shots of lab equipment. It’s too talky and bloodless to compete with The Quatermass Xperiment from a few years later, but the way Siodmak creates a believable world with mature themes certainly points the way for horror’s heyday in the ’60s and ’70s.


PAUL CORUPE Lingering Curse


GUROZUKA (2005) DVD Starring Yoko Mitsuya, Yûko Itô and Nozomi Andô


Directed by Yôichi Nishiyama Written by Tadayoshi Kubo and Ao Murata Synapse


When Ringu first hit the-


atres back in 1998, it quickly inspired a glut of Japanese films centred upon cursed objects. From videotapes to women’s shoes, wigs to cellphones – even the most unassuming item could suddenly be- come something frightful. And even though that con- ceit was starting to wear incredibly thin by 2005, director Yôichi Nishiyama de- cided to dive headfirst into its shallow waters anyway and came up with Gurozuka. And just like Ringu, this one’s about a cursed videotape. It begins promisingly enough: a group of female stu-


dents treks off to a remote inn nestled deep in the woods in order to make a movie for their audio-visual club. Once settled in, they discover an old videotape from seven years prior, when the club had been disbanded amid ru- mours of a missing girl and another who went insane. The recording depicts a horrific murder, in which a girl in a mask violently slays another girl with a knife, but for some inexplicable reason, the students decide to try to finish watching the film even after it’s revealed that it was made in the same lodge at which they’re staying. The deiganmask itself is probably the creepiest thing


in the whole movie. Originally used in ancient Japanese plays, it depicts the twisted face of a jealous woman. Its unnerving effectiveness, however, is consistently marred by Nishiyama’s ham-fisted direction, which – in an effort to disguise the fact that Gurozuka is comprised of little more than a bunch of teenage girls squabbling with each other as the bodies pile up all around them – includes far too many jump scares, off-screen kills and waking night- mare moments. Set all of that to a jarring, horribly edited soundtrack,


and you may as well hurl Gurozuka into the unforgiving realm of delete-bin duds. Sayonara, sucker!


LAST CHANCE LANCE R E I S S U E S 41 RM


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