The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Turner Classic Movies is showing old horror movies Friday nights in October. The first 3 Fridays have been devoted to offerings from Hammer Studios, which has allowed me to get a much larger exposure to the Hammer catalog than I had before this month. Unfortunately, I missed the first 40 minutes of this one - I thought it was DVR'ing but I neglected to set it to record. However, I really enjoyed what I saw and it wasn't hard to pick up the plot - an English village is being affected by a plague of zombies of the voodoo, not brain eater, variety. It had the trademark sets from the other Hammer films I have seen - old English manors, misty cemeteries, etc. As I get further in to this horror marathon, I think that these types of movies from the 50's and 60's may be my favorite type of horror film - they aren't necessarily scary, but they are creepy and atmospheric, the dialog and plots are rarely cheesy, and the performances are are rarely over the top.
The Devil's Bride (1968)
This was the second Hammer film from TCM last Friday night, and the first I have seen with Christopher Lee where he is not Dracula. In even more of a change, he is the hero of the movie, rather than the villain. Its a credit to his talent that he is able to pull off both types of roles equally well.
The Devil's Bride is about a cult in the 1930s who's members, English aristocrats, are trying to summon Satan himself. Lee plays a family friend of the cult's newest member who attempts to save his friend and stop the ritual. The leader of the cult (played by the same actor who portrayed Blofeld in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever), has the scary magnetism that you would expect a cult leader to have. This is a solid supernatural thriller that builds the tension well right up until the end. Another classic from Hammer.
(This is the trailer for the British version, The Devil Rides Out...)
New Year's Evil (1980)
New Year's Evil struck me as what a made-for-TV version of a slasher film would have been like in the early 80s. The production values were all low rent, there wasn't a lot of blood, all the kills happen off screen, and the dialog and acting were bad.
The plot revolves around a Punk/New Wave music program (or, at least what Hollywood in the early 80's thought that type of music program would be like - the first band on the show looked and sounded like an early hair metal group) holding a New Year's Eve special where viewers could call in and vote for their favorite song of the year. The show takes place in California, and someone calls in and says he is going to kill someone at the stroke of midnight in every time zone, finishing up with the host of the program (a woman named "Blaze", who is way to old to be hosting this type of program, and who comes off as more of a forced sultry lounge singer than a Punk/New Wave queen) at the stroke of midnight local time.
I did like the idea that the killer had a plan in place, rather than the film being about a bunch of random murders, or murders that only seemed random until the big explanation at the end. That was a nice change of pace. However, other than that, there is not a whole lot of originality in this movie (the only other inspired bit is one of the victims was asphyxiated with a giant bag of weed - I enjoyed that). It wasn't boring, it was just middle of the road. Nothing stood out to recommend it, just as nothing stood out to not recommend it.
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