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Sie tötete in Ekstase (1971)
attractive Soledad Miranda but bad acting
She Killed in Ecstasy is a sort of sister film to another Franco-Miranda production I've already reviewed, Vampyros Lesbos. It has a handful of the same actors and is also a Spanish-West German production. Hueber and Schwab, the musicians who composed the amazing score for Vampyros Lesbos, also scored this film. And like Vampyros Lesbos, She Killed in Ecstasy has a meandering, nonsensical narrative structure, but works on the strength of Soledad Miranda's performance, charisma, and visual appeal.
A doctor (the sexy Fred Williams, a Franco regular) is criticized and alienated for his experimental research that involves human fetuses, which leads to his suicide. His wife, very much in love with him and driven a little insane by his death, gets bloody vengeance on the team of doctors who drove him to death. Unsurprisingly, she dons a number of paltry disguises and seduces the men (and one woman), hypnotizing, deceiving, and then killing them. There is some random necrophilia, which is effectively creepy and also sadly sweet. The death scenes are completely implausible, but it doesn't matter within the loosely surreal narrative world of Franco's film.
As with many of Franco's films, this is a rehashing of familiar themes and includes elements from his enjoyable Venus in Furs with Klaus Kinski. He reused much of the same crew from Vampyros Lesbos, which explains the similarly robust (and very '70s) sense of style. I don't think this was a direct influence on Franco, but lately I've been reading a lot of Cornell Woolrich novels, particularly his "Black" series and its themes of obsessive love and murder. Woolrich has several characters who lose a loved one (the death is usually accidental) and then going a killing spree to get revenge for his/her death. Truffaut adapted the first of these – The Bride Wore Black – and She Killed in Ecstasy has a similar, if campier and more exploitative feel.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
one of my favorite horror movies from 80's
By 1984, the slasher genre was wearing thin. Halloween bombed out with number 3, and Friday the 13th was falling into the dreadful mix of completely cliché horror. Without A Nightmare on Elm Street, that could have been it for the slasher film. With it, however, the genre was brought off the respirator for another 10 years when Craven did it again with Scream, but I digress. Wes Craven delivers a very original, creative, and well played out horror film that has the perfect level of plot, fright, gore, and imagination. The balance of these elements is key, as it gives you the best of all of them, without becoming too cliché, too bloody, or too silly. The movie keeps you with the characters throughout, who, unlike in the Friday the 13th series, aren't there only to be lined up for slaughter. To top all that off, there's the smart, fear-inspiring bogeyman Freddy Krueger, who is one of the greatest villains in cinema history. The combination of all these factors makes A Nightmare on Elm Street easily recognizable as a landmark in classic horror.
Nancy and Tina are a little upset. They both are having terrifying nightmares of someone they can only describe as a man in a dirty sweater with knives for fingers, and Tina is having some guy issues. In fact, this nightmare shook Tina up so much that she has her friends over to keep her company, and has some great makeup sex with her man, Rod. Well, the man with the dirty sweater visits her subconscious once again, and she is inexplicably dragged to the ceiling and butchered, in an incredibly brutal, horrifying scene. Rod is arrested for the crime, and one by one, this mysterious specter assimilates Nancy and her friend's dreams. She keeps being stalked by this bogeyman, and after several episodes (that nearly puts her in the nuthouse), Nancy learns of a certain child murderer, Fred Krueger, who happened to use a glove with knives to kill the kids, and was also burned to death by the parents of the neighborhood. Now knowing what she's up against, Nancy prepares for battle, but how do you fight your dreams? An interesting approach is taken by Craven to solve that problem, leading to the final show down between the lion and the lamb. The whole ordeal ends with a twist so bizarre that you can't help but love it.
When this movie was made, Halloween had set the stage, and Friday the 13th turned into what is now known as a cliché slasher. Wes Craven picked up on the psychological terror of Halloween, and the gore in Friday the 13th, and made it a psychologically chilling gory movie, while not turning to exploitation just to keep your interest. It stays terrifying by unbelievably violent and scary scenes while not going over-the-top. What makes these scenes effective is not only Craven's imagination, but the movie has a good, fear-inspiring villain. Freddy Krueger is the perfect horror villain because he's so brutal that it's terrifying. He hits home with everyone's idea of the bogeyman, but instead of hiding in your closet (where you can be safe from), he gets you in your dreams. There's virtually no way to stop him. How do you resist sleep? How do you resist dreaming? Of course, the idea is so outrageous that no one believes Nancy, which leaves the audience and the characters frustrated. The problem is, the person with the power is the person whose in control, and that's him. That's what allows Craven to build the tension in the movie. Again, like Carpenter's Halloween, Craven gets you attached to Nancy and her friends, instead of presenting characters in hopes of you being scared when they die, or just to pad the body count (and he still makes it gory without that factor). They're ordinary teenagers that a young audience can relate to, which is the target audience for this film.
If you think about it, the movie is kind of goofy. A clown-like bogeyman who haunts your dreams with various wisecracks. I guess we needed something less cliché. This is one of the most original horror movies I've ever seen, and is one of my favorites. Craven brings the evil, scar faced bogeyman that was considered a flop by Hollywood into one of the scariest, most memorable movie villains of all-time. The acting by relatively new actors is pretty good (holy crap, Johnny Depp's first!), especially for Heather Langenkamp as Nancy and Robert Englund as Freddy. The screenplay is very well written, as the dialog isn't cheesy and it goes with the time period. No event is put in only for exploitation (like random strip poker in Friday the 13th), so the atmosphere stays chilling and doesn't turn stale. Not just a great horror movie, but a great scary movie. A real gem from Wes Craven (who gets to be called the master of horror for this epic) that arguably saved the slasher genre from itself.
The Evil Dead (1981)
watch it , that's if you dare
Five Michigan State students venture into the hills and mountains of Tennessee to spend a weekend in an isolated cabin. There they find The Book of the Dead (a fictional Aztec/Canaanite text, unrelated to the Egyptian Book of the Dead), otherwise known as the Nyturan Demonta. While searching the basement of the cabin, the students find and play a tape recording of demonic incantations from the book, unwittingly resurrecting "Kandarian" Demons. The characters are then possessed one by one, beginning with Cheryl Williams (Ellen Sandweiss), after she is hypnotized by the song of a Demon and lured into the forest at night. Alone and far from the safety of the cabin, the Demon proceeds to possess the trees of the forest, which come to life in a snake-like fashion and brutally rape her. Cheryl escapes the trees and is chased by the Demon all the way back to the cabin, where no one believes her story and assumes that she was attacked by a wild animal. Her brother, Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell), decides to drive her into town where she can stay the night. They discover that the only bridge is completely destroyed and the supports are bent into the shape of a claw-like hand.
Soon thereafter, Cheryl, having been infested by a Demon during the rape, dies and becomes a deaden (a corpse that is used as a vessel for the Demon that has possessed it) and stabs Linda (Betsy Baker) in the ankle with a pencil. Scotty beats her with the blunt end of his axe and kicks her in the cellar; he then locks her in the fruit cellar, but afterward Shelly (Theresa Tilly) enters her room and is killed and possessed by a Demon lurking there; now a deaden, she becomes psychotically vicious and attacks Scotty (Hal Delrich), who dismembers her with an axe. Scotty then leaves to find a trail out of the woods.
Ash goes to check on Linda, but finds that she too has become possessed by a Spirit. Scotty returns, but has suffered massive injuries inflicted upon him by the possessed trees. Before losing consciousness he tells Ash there is a trail in the woods. Linda revives momentarily from the possession & Ash drags her outside and locks her out of the cabin. He goes back to check on Scotty, but finds that he died from his injuries. Linda later returns as a deaden and tries to stab Ash, but Ash stabs her through the chest with a dagger. Ash drags her outside to dismember her with a chainsaw, but finds that he cannot bring himself to do it, and simply buries her instead. She rises from the grave and, after a violent struggle, Ash beheads her with a shovel. He returns to find the cellar door open. He enters the cellar, to find shotgun ammunition and returns to the upstairs. He hears a noise from Shelly and Scott's bedroom. With the shotgun, he goes in to investigate and suspects Cheryl may be in the closet. Cheryl jumps at the window a demon had earlier broken through and tries to take the shotgun from Ash, grabbing at it wildly. Ash shoots her in the chest, but it does not seem to have any effect. Ash then proceeds to barricade both the front and back doors. He runs back into the cellar to find a box of shotgun shells and experiences a strange series of events including the cellar filling with blood and hearing voices. Cheryl tries to attack Ash through the door, but he shoots her and then barricades the door.
Meanwhile, Scotty's dead body suddenly revives to reveal that he has been possessed by a Spirit, only to have his eyes gouged out by Ash after a brief struggle. Ash notices that Nyturan Demonta has fallen near the fireplace and is starting to burn. Ash sees that Scotty's body is starting to burn as well, giving an allusion that disposal of the book into the fire will also destroy the Demons. Before he can reach it, however, Cheryl successfully breaks in through the front door and easily knocks him down. Scotty then pins Ash to the floor while Cheryl grabs a fireplace poker and repeatedly hits Ash in the back with it. Ash manages to grab the book after several attempts, using the necklace he had given to Linda earlier in the film, and throws it directly into the blazing flames just as Cheryl raises the fireplace poker to impale him. The Demons leave the bodies of Cheryl and Scotty, and their corpses become inanimate and fall apart over the course of several minutes just as dawn breaks, leaving Ash as the only survivor. He heads outside and stands in front of the cabin for a moment, thinking he has survived the ordeal. An Unseen Evil speeds through the forest, breaks its way through the cabin doors, and descends upon Ash, who screams in terror as the film ends