Movieline Online

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, today’s horror fans don’t know how good they have it.  Back in the day (that would be the ‘80s) home video presentations of foreign movies meant dubbed, censored, pan and scan versions that rarely captured the filmmaker’s original intent.  As we climbed out of the analog sewer and embarked on the digital revolution, the pendulum swung towards subtitles, correct aspect ratios and international cuts that added  more  than we’d ever seen before.  So why the trip down memory lane?  Because the release of  A.K. Tolstoy’s A Taste of Blood  (2020) is an interesting throwback to complicated, multiple-version history of horror imports. Based on the same story Mario Bava used for his  verdalak  segment in  Black Sunday  (or  Black Sabbath  in its home country of Italy…see what I mean!), this expansion of the Russian myth about a blood-sucking creature that feeds only on its family members offers an original twist on the vampire legend.  In director Sant

If you didn’t live through it, the “Tarantino Effect” might be hard to understand.  The success of  Reservoir Dogs  and  Pulp Fiction  unleashed an avalanche of copycat indie films full of self-aware characters spouting pop culture references while firing guns at each other.  There were  so  many it’s a shame Mel Brooks never got around to making a spoof.  But the maestro himself was still just a struggling screenwriter in the early ‘90s when all his old material was snapped up by producers eager to catch some of the buzz.   True Romance  (1993) was directed by the late Tony Scott, but it’s hard to imagine a more faithful adaptation of the Tarantino aesthetic  not  directed by the man himself.  It’s got a film obsessed nerd (Christian Slater) who falls for a quirky call girl (Patricia Arquette) and goes on the run with a bag full of stolen drugs with most of the Detroit mafia (apparently that’s a thing) hot on his trail.     Of course, this being a Tarantino script, most of the plot is

If you didn’t live through the pre-VCR era, you might not understand the abnormal amount of excitement something like ABC’s Movie of the Week could generate.  After all, short of theatrical reissues, there was no other way to see current or classic flicks.  We also had to change channels and turn up the volume by hand, but that’s beside the point.  While a fair number of major motion pictures popped up (in heavily edited form), you were just as likely to get a “copycat” production designed to spare network execs from paying for the real thing.   Such is the case with  The Initiation of Sarah  (1978), a clone of Brian De Palma’s  Carrie  (1976), minus the nudity, swears, Sissy Spacek and special effects.  That obviously doesn’t leave much to work with.  But that’s part of the retro charm of viewing these old made-for-TV horror rip-offs, many of which made as big an impression on the younger generation who watched them as the much higher profile originals.  In fact,  Initiation  had a re

Anthony Perkins was the most unlikely of horror icons.  With a reputation cemented by his performance in essentially one film (a curse of the horror genre) it took decades for the actor to embrace the legacy of Norman Bates with a surprisingly good trio of sequels, all of which avoided comprising the character – or the  actor’s  – integrity.  1989’s  Edge of Sanity , an anything-goes amalgamation of  Jekyll and Hyde  and the London “Ripper” murders, gives Perkins his last meaty role (the actor passed away in ’92) and shows he was still adept at inhabiting tortured souls at the mercy of their baser instincts. While experimenting with a new anesthetic, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Perkins) unlocks a door into his own childhood trauma, giving birth to a split-personality he names Jack Hyde.  Prowling the streets of London to satisfy his twisted sexual fantasies, Hyde leaves a trail of dead prostitutes dispatched with surgical precision.  Ironically, Jekyll is called to aid with the investigation whi

Shaw Brothers films always seemed to waffle between serious historical action epics and down-n-dirty kung-fu exploitation.  Of the latter, a disabled hero always upped the ante, turning the typical underdog tale into a superhero origin story that granted said character inexplicable powers after the loss of a precious limb…or eye…or ear…or favorite appendage. 1972’s  One-Armed Boxer  (released in the U.S. as  The Chinese Professionals ) sets up the chessboard in typical fashion with rival gangs vying for over bragging rights for martial arts superiority.  The fighting starts practically from frame one, but it’s a full hour before star student Tien Lung is separated from his right arm by a single blow from a Taiwanese vampire mercenary (!) and starts training for his revenge.  The finale is a Shaw Brothers favorite, pitting our hero against a rogues’ gallery of merciless thugs each with their own inventive fighting style.   Having proven himself adapt at one-armed combat already in  The