Movieline Online

Yasuzo Masumura, like many other directors from Japan’s golden age, dabbled in whatever genre his home studio, Daiei, demanded at the time.   But within those confines he found a freedom that allowed him to push the creative limits while still toeing the company line.  Films like  Giants and Toys  (1958) and  Black Test Car  (1962) ,  clever cultural critiques of the “salaryman” lifestyle, were not only fun and entertaining, they were essential to the birth of the Japanese new wave.    But Masumura really came into his own during the late ‘60s, free to explore the grotesquely erotic undertones that had popped up under various disguises in his earlier work.  And  Blind Beast  may be the most accessibly shocking of the bunch, anticipating the psychosexual obsession of modern films like David Cronenberg’s  Crash  and William Friedkin’s  Bug  with disturbing precision.   Famous for a ser...

Slasher fans are often dismissed as an undiscriminating bunch.     But the fact is there’s nothing they enjoy more than poring over the cinematic fossil record looking for missing links between the   giallo , regional drive-in fare and more popular masked killer franchises.     And something like   Death Screams  (1982) provides a fascinating case study.   While a quiet little North Carolina town says goodbye to its seasonal summer business and rowdy college students headed back to school, a killer stalks those foolish enough to engage in pre-marital sex.  There are plenty of suspects...and even more victims, including the virginal Lily Carpenter (Susan Kiger) whose first date with the most eligible man in town isn’t going anything like she planned.   Death Screams  could have been written by an artificial intelligence program fed with all the classic slasher ingredients:  sex, blood, cringey comic relief and teens wh...

By 1971, the peace and love generation has begun to suspect there was a conspiracy around every corner.     Even the pop-up retreats and Wiccan societies were infiltrated by pagan power brokers whose sinister motives were inspired by Satan himself.     So describing   The Brotherhood of Satan   (1971) as a sort of “Brady Bunch goes to Hell!” episode isn’t really that far off. When Ben (Charles Bateman), his girlfriend and young daughter drive into the town of Hillsboro to report an accident on the road they find themselves trapped in a Twilight Zone scenario.  All the residents, including the sheriff  (L.Q. Jones) and Doc Duncan (Strother Martin), are being held captive by a supernatural force that’s stealing their children one by one.   That force – as the title suggests - is a coven of Satan worshippers who need 13 kids to make their quota before renewing their contract of eternal youth with Lucifer.   A fairly earl...