The Temple Closes its Doors.

It's been a tough decision, but the the Temple is closing for business for the foreseeable future. It's a pity, because I really enjoy doing it, but there are just not enough hours in the day any more. I've had to face up to the fact that I've only got so much writing time and maintaining this blog means not much else gets written in the small amount that is 'free' ! I am, however, working on something very exciting (if just to me at the moment) and, if I'm lucky, maybe you'll hear about it sometime.

So, before I sign off, I thought I should let you know about a couple of other blogs worth your time - ones which I'll certainly keep reading...

Italian Film Review
I was a big fan of Nigel M's last blog, I Spit on Your Taste, and this one's great too. Nigel's knowledge of Eurohorror and Exploitation is second to none.

Mondo 70: A Wild World of Cinema
Sam Wilson's blog just gets better all the time. Check it out right now if you haven't already.

And of course there's Kim Lindberg's Cinebeats, Tenebrous Kate's Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, and the Phelpster's Manchester Morgue which are all doing very well, thank you very much, and need no recommendation from me.

And last of all, special mention has to go to...

Sleazy Listening
For fleshing out my soundtrack collection to the level of ridiculousness. Hail, Brianiac! Get on over there for that Tony Arzenta soundtrack now!

That message delivered, all that's left to say is au revoir, good luck with anything you do, keep blogging, keep watching the movies, reading the books and collecting those lovely discs.

The Temple will return some day in some form or other.

Until then - goodbye!

TRAGIC CEREMONY [1972]

Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea [1972] ('From the Secret Police Files of a European Capitol')
AKA Tragic Ceremony at Villa Alexander, Tragic Experience at Villa Alexander.

Directed by Ricardo Freda (as 'Robert Hampton')

I've always liked the look of Tragic Ceremony, so was pleased as punch when it came flopping through my letter box in DVD form the other day. But is it any good? Well, it's... okay. Four 'youngsters' who've been out on a boating trip end up holing up in a fancy old villa when their yellow dune buggy runs out of gas and an almighty storm breaks out. Their hosts are Lord and Lady Alexander (Luigi Pistilli & Luciana Paluzzi), no less, who seem to be involved in dark goings on in the basement.

The only girl in the group of 'teenagers', Jane (Camille Keaton of I Spit on Your Grave [1978]), finds herself compelled to creep down to the basement late at night - only to end up on the altar as the centre of attention in a Satanic ritual held by the Lord and Lady and what appears to be the rest of the local gentry in its entirety. Fortunately, the three dudes arrive just in time (or do they?) to rescue her, but not before the whole cellar goes apeshit. Lady Alexander is stabbed with her own ceremonial dagger in the struggle, and what happens next has to be seen to believed. Seemingly trying to attack our heroes, the coven actually manage to completely wipe each other out in the process, with swords, pistols and Godknowswhat, in sixty seconds of pure splatter mayhem.

The scene is just so utterly crazy, and illogical, that it can't help being ever-so-slightly disturbing. Having filled their tank earlier, the gang manage to split unharmed, but soon begin to be killed, one by one, in mysterious and deeply unpleasant ways, including a pretty brutal throat slashing. In the meantime the cops are on the scene, and jump to the conclusion that they've stumbled on a Manson family style massacre, perpetrated by our long haired heroes.

Things do get slightly confusing, but luckily Eurocult stalwart Paul Muller is on hand in the last five minutes to don the 'mantle of the expert' and explain to us in great detail what has just happened. Thanks, Paul. What's also slightly disorientating is the point, beyond halfway through the movie, when one realises, thanks to some police car markings and the mention of Scotland Yard, that the film is in actually supposed to be set in the UK. Maybe it was the obviously Mediterranean countryside and villas that threw me off. Or maybe it was because they were driving around in a dune buggy. No one drives a dune buggy in England.

It has to be said that Tragic Ceremony is far from being one of Freda's better films, but it does create a suitably creepy atmosphere with some breathtaking use of light and shadow, particularly in scenes set within the Villa Alexander. The film's main strength is in its distinctly Euro, dreamlike, disorientating ambiance, which begs the question of why the distributors/whoever thought it wise to market it from a police procedural angle (that original title! Jeez.). Maybe it was fashionable that week.

Probably best viewed at three in the morning under the influence of mild altering drugs. Not that I'd know anything about that, mind you.

BthroughZ #14 is up!

Like the heading says... I've missed the boat with this one (again), thanks to heavy work commitments, but as you can see there's a lot of great stuff to get your teeth into there. Enjoy!

MACABRE [1980]

Macabro [1980] AKA Frozen Terror

Directed by Lamberto Bava

I first saw this beast back in the dark days post-Video Recordings Act and pre-DVD, and have to say that it left me pretty cold. Perhaps my critical standards have plummeted since then, but seeing it now, in a pristine and nicely packaged new uncut print from the cool folks at Arrow Films, I found it to be a solid piece of sleaze-tastic entertainment and certainly to be Bava Jnr's best film - although I must admit that I've yet to catch up with his latter-day giallo A Blade in the Dark [1983].

In what must surely qualify as the worst day ever, adulterous wife Jane (Bernice Stegers of Xtro [1983]) races home with her lover after hearing that her young son has drowned in the bath, only to crash her car, causing said lover to be decapitated in the process. And, to make matters worse, what she doesn't know is that her son actually drowned because her older daughter, Lucy (Veronica Zinny in her one and only film role), was deliberately holding his head under the water at the time!

Quite understandably after all this, a year on the local funny farm ensues. On her release, Jane moves into the boarding house where her illicit rendezvous with lover boy took place. Enter her blind landlord, who goes by the name of Robert Duval (!- played by Stanko Molnar of A Blade in the Dark). He may not be able to see her, but has a serious case of the hots for her nonetheless. Knowing that Jane's lover is dead, Robert is soon disturbed to hear moans and groans of pleasure and snatches of conversation coming from her apartment and is soon compelled to investigate. The answer lies in her fridge - and, if you didn't know already, you'll have already worked out what it is in the first ten or fifteen minutes!

Bava Jnr's debut is probably closest in feel to his famous father's work and manages to generate a decent amount of suspense - especially in the last reel when young Lucy comes around for dinner. Stegers' performance is suitably degenerate and you'll come away thinking that Molnar really is blind thanks to his.

Arrow's release is a really top-notch package, so good that I'm almost tempted to buy their new releases of House by the Cemetery [1981] and Sleepless [2001] as well, despite owning perfectly good copies of each already. Almost.

Goodbye Tyrant

Well, it's finally happened. The time has come to wave goodbye to my cosmic alter ego, 'The Great Tyrant'. There are several reasons for this:

a) The whole 'greetings earthlings' thing has really started to grate, to be honest.
b) I'm finding that it limits the extent that I can meaningfully discuss anything on this blog - or converse meaningfully with readers or other bloggers, for that matter.
c) I'm tired of hiding behind a fictional character that I didn't even create in the first place.
d) I'm not entirely sure that most people 'get it', anyway.

So it's 'Goodbye Tyrant - hello Rob.'

So long Black Queen of Sogo - it's been fun....

RICCO THE MEAN MACHINE [1973]

Ricco [1973] AKA Rico, Ricco The Mean Machine, The Cauldron of Death, Mean Machine, The Dirty Mob, Gangland, Some Guy with a Strange Face is Looking for You to Kill You (!)

Directed by Tulio Demicheli

I was first made aware of Ricco about 20 years ago thanks to a capsule review in Michael Weldon's Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (pub. 1983) under its The Cauldron of Death moniker. Weldon was pretty down on it, clearly disappointed that it wasn't a horror film as the title and poster art had led him (and no doubt many other American grindhouse punters) to expect. It's also likely that that version was cut. However, this Italian/Spanish co-production is a reasonably good gangster/action movie and it's nice to have caught up with it at last. And, well, it does have a 'Cauldron of Death' in it.

Floppy fringed Christopher Mitchum (Murder in a Blue World, Faceless [1988]), at that time still politically exiled from Hollywood for his association with John 'I make Mussolini look like Billy Bragg' Wayne, plays Ricco Aversi, a young mob family member just released from a two year stretch in the slammer. In a change from the usual formula, our hero isn't really all that arsed about exacting revenge on the mafia low lives that killed his father just before he went inside - the chief suspect of which being Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy), who has appropriated his girlfriend Rosa (Malisa Longo) to boot.

However, after being nagged and castigated by his mother and other family members, he, rather half-heartedly it must be said, starts out on the revenge trail, hooking up with a young grifter called Scilla (Eurocult icon Barbabra Bouchet) along the way. When the news gets back to Don Vito that Ricco and Scilla have relieved a couple of his enforcers of a substantial amount of protection money, the bodies of Ricco's family members begin to pile up, setting him on the revenge kick in earnest.

The main problem with the film is exactly that Mitchum is far too laid back - from seeing him in other films it's reasonable to suggest that this is the full extent of his acting range. He's certainly nowhere near as convincing a tough guy as his superstar father, but he does have a nifty line in bright orange polo neck sweaters. Nice. Arthur Kennedy, however, puts in his one of his sleaziest, nastiest performances as 'Don Vito', replete with pencil moustache and greased back hair. Don Vito dispatches his enemies - well, usually his own men whenever they fuck up - by having them hurled into a vat of broiling acid; the 'Cauldron of Death' of the US title.

Although in many ways forgettable, Ricco has long been notorious for it's gore quotient. And it is indeed a sporadically bloody business - most notable is one shocking scene in particular where I defy any male humanoid not to wince involuntarily: after being caught in flagrante with Rosa, one of Don Vito's henchman has his cock and balls hacked off and shoved into his mouth (on screen), before being hurled into the vat of acid. I kid you not. "Pray it doesn't happen to you" indeed!

After this bloody build up, it has to be said that the climatic face-off is a bit of a damp squib in comparison. We don't get the brutal payback frenzy that we're led to expect. All in all, though, Ricco is a diverting piece of sleazy entertainment in the classic Italian seventies style. Should you fancy it, the film is still available as thoroughly decent disc from Dark Sky Films.

Cover of a Fanzine that Never Happened

Like the title says - this is a cover that I - sorry, I mean my Earthbound agent Diabolik72 (mmm... this is wearing a bit thin) - drew for a fanzine that very nearly happened a couple of years ago. Oh yes, it did indeed have Norman J. Warren and Ray Harryhausen interviews in it. Got a couple of art projects on the go at the moment (hence lack of reviews) - I'll be starting a sister blog to share these as they're slightly outside the Eurocult agenda of The Temple.

Next up: Ricco the Mean Machine!

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, ACOLYTES!

...with love from Your Tyrant. x

THE LEGEND OF BLOOD CASTLE [1973]

Ceremonia Sangrienta [1973] AKA Female Butcher, Blood Castle, Bloody Ceremony, The Bloody Countess

Directed by Jorge Grau

Although I was pretty down on Scorpion with Two Tails in the last post, it still has to be said that it's great to have labels like Italy-based Mya Communications putting rare stuff like this out for nerds, I mean connoisseurs, like Your Tyrant to at least finally see and have an opinion on. And the best thing about the unearthing of such obscurities is that occasionally you get to catch up with something really special - like this previously difficult to obtain little beauty from Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue/Let Sleeping Corpses Lie [1974] maestro Jorge Grau.

An eerie opening sequence featuring a procession of torch-wielding villagers led by a naked youth on horseback reveals a countryside in the grip of superstition; a suspected vampire is dug up and staked and a ludicrous posthumous 'trial' is held, presided over by local lord of the manor Karl Ziemmer (Espartaco Santoni, best known for a supporting role in Bava's Lisa and the Devil of the same year). He clearly finds the proceedings as absurd as you or I would do.

Meanwhile, Karl's bored wife, one Erzebet Bathory (Lucia Bose), laments both the fact that she is growing visibly older and that he seems to prefer watching his falcons tear smaller birds to shreds to spending any time whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Her creepy old maidservant (Ana Farra of Curse of the Devil [also 73]) offers a solution: why doesn't she simply bathe in the blood of virgins like her infamous namesake and ancestor of the 16th century? Erzebet dismisses the idea as nonsense, but when a drop of a young serving girl's blood finds its way onto her hand by accident, she sees that the skin there indeed appears to have somehow become more youthful in appearance.

From here on her course is clear, and she enlists the help of said creepy maidservant in enslaving Karl's mind through the power of witchcraft. Under her thrall he stages his own death. The townspeople are all to quick to believe this as he proudly wore a supposedly 'cursed' amulet in an effort to debunk their superstitious beliefs - the very beliefs that are played on as he seeks out and butchers young girls for blood for Erzebet to bathe in, masquerading as the very vampire he scoffed at. But could his attraction to young village wench Marina (Ewa Aulin of Death Smiles at Murder [also 73], in her last film role before deciding acting wasn't for her) break the spell and be Erzebet's undoing?

A theme that runs through the film is that everything that lives and thrives does so at the expense of something else; it is alluded to in the dialogue that humans need dead animals and vegetable matter to live, Karl's falcons thrive in all their beauty by savaging smaller beasts and when some serving girls are caught with some pigeon's blood, their defence is that it 'firms the breasts'. The church gains its strength and power through torture, fear-mongering and repression. To maintain a young and vital appearance Erzebet must bathe in the blood of young girls, provided by Karl, who has to 'die' to make this possible. And, of course, it goes without saying that, the presentation of the ruling classes as 'vampires' sucking the life-blood from the proletariat is older than film itself. For Grau, working here at the tail end of General Franco's repressive and ultra-conservative regime, this theme would in no way been arrived at randomly.

While the film is slow-moving at times it never fails to grip the attention. Grau, like Mario Bava, has a true artist's eye and his use of costumes, settings and lighting is nothing short of sumptuous. A scene in which Erzebet's tortured conscience conjures images of the undead corpses of she and Karl's victims in a mirror is breathtaking in its use of light and shadow, bringing to mind the work of that great Italian maestro. The performances are generally much stronger than you might perhaps expect in a Spanish exploitation movie, especially from Bose and Santoni. Santoni's appearance is reminiscent of that of Paul Naschy as 'Alaric de Marnac' in Horror Rises from the Tomb of the same year - but, with all due respect to Naschy, Santoni's acting is much better.

This Spanish/Italian co-production is superior in every way to Hammer's Bathory inspired opus Countess Dracula [1970] and as such it's great to have it to add to the archives in this complete and uncut form. Well, as complete as it's ever going to be - years of obscurity and neglect have taken their toll on the film, with the odd missing frame here and there and visible print damage throughout. However, Mya have clearly done their best with what they have - the film probably hasn't looked this good since its premiere in '73. With deleted and alternative scenes (mainly the 'nude' variants for markets outside Spain) and a poster gallery, this is a very worthy release indeed from the mystery men of this interesting label.

Thanks to original uploader CultMovieForums