Psychic Killer (1975)

The ability or power to perform acts of vengeance through astral projection would be quite desirable to anyone who had an ax to grind.  Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t use this power for acts of murder or violence but maybe something embarrassing for my enemies.  For example, a depantsing of one of my foes in a public place.  That would probably bring me satisfaction.  If one were more bloodthirsty and felt their enemies deserved death for what they had done, you could potentially make a pretty interesting film from that premise.  Psychic Killer from 1975 attempts to tell a thrilling story from this idea, but unfortunately the idea is the only thing interesting about this movie in the end.

Psychic Killer is an early example of the slew of psychokinesis horror and thriller films that were being made during the 70’s and early 80’s.  Psychic Killer even came one year earlier than Carrie, which is the film that launched this sub-genre into popularity.  Unlike Carrie, Psychic Killer fails to generate any sympathy for the suffering protagonist, Arnold Masters, played by Jim Hutton.  Hutton does his best with what he’s given, but after the first act his character spends much of the movie sitting in a chair as his unseen spirit does the violent deeds.  The film also fails at being an effective proto-slasher.  Psychic Killer and Patrick, from 1978, share a lot in common.  With the exception of one kill, Psychic Killer simply doesn’t deliver when it comes to a good murder sequence like Patrick was able to do three years later.

We’re introduced to Arnold Masters as he awakes from a nightmare and attempts to escape from an institution for the criminally insane.  He claims he’s innocent of killing the doctor who treated his now deceased mother.  Masters holds a very strong grudge against those who incarcerated him and those he feels neglected his mother prior to her death.  Masters befriends another imprisoned patient who, with the help of an amulet, teaches Masters the art of astral projection.  After the real murderer of the doctor is convicted, Masters is exonerated and released from the institution.  He is now ready and capable of exacting his revenge on those who have caused him so much pain through his newly learned powers.

The film starts off promising.  Hutton does well early on expressing his character’s torment and we begin to get behind him.  There’s a pretty amazing dummy death in the first act and an introduction to a slimy psychiatrist who’s taking advantage of one of his female patients.  The setup of the astral projection is decent and makes for an interesting mode for revenge.  Unfortunately, when we get to the scene with the psychiatrist the film begins to slowly go downhill.  Masters chooses the psychiatrist as his first victim but there’s really no payoff with his death.  He’s killed off-screen with just a dribble of blood running from his mouth as he lies motionless on the ground.  Most of the murder sequences are a letdown.  The film doesn’t go far enough with the gore, with the exception of one scene but by then it’s too little too late, and it fails at building any suspense.

At times it didn’t seem like the filmmaker was sure what kind of film he wanted to make.  It’s setup like it’s going to be a thriller but there are no thrills or suspense.  The editing doesn’t work and the score is forgettable.  Because our killer can’t be seen stalking his victims, we’re never on the edge of our seat waiting for him to strike.  It just sort of happens.  The film doesn’t work as a horror film either due to the already mentioned lack of violence and gore.  There’s a shower scene death that’s decent but not that memorable and a death at a butcher shop near the end that’s pretty good but by then you’re pretty much checked out of the movie.  It even at times feels like the director was going for some dark comedy.  An attorney, whom Master’s blames for his imprisonment, is shown singing opera at a construction site just before he is crushed flat by a pillar like in a cartoon.  The intentional comedy falls flat and there isn’t enough unintentional comedy to save the picture.

It doesn’t help that the film is a bit confusing at times.  This should never be the case in a low-budget B-movie, such as this.  When Masters is preparing for his out-of-body experience, we get quick black and white dreamlike sequences that show a person harming Masters’ mother.  We’re not sure until later who these people are.  In the case of the lawyer, I wasn’t sure who he was and why Masters wanted him dead until I had deduced that he could be the only character left on Masters’ hit list.  Another example of this is the murder of the butcher, played by Neville Brand.  There is never a motive given for why Masters wants this character dead or how the character is linked to Masters’ mother.  It just seems like the filmmakers wanted to increase the body count and they had access to Neville Brand for an afternoon.

The psychokinesis thriller is an interesting sub-genre that has brought audiences many entertaining films over the years.  Psychic Killer has the honor of being one of the first of its kind and perhaps even inspired some of the films that would follow.  Sadly, that’s as much praise as I can give this one.  When I think of some of the most entertaining movies that could be lumped into this sub-genre, films like Carrie, Scanners, and The Fury, I’m reminded of their spectacular endings and having to pick my jaw up off the floor.  When I think back to the end of Psychic Killer, I’m reminded of its lackluster ending and having to pick my eyelids up off my face.

MVT: The premise of the film.  It had so much potential.

Make or Break Scene: The murder of the lawyer.  This scene broke it for me.  No suspense, no gore, no laughs.

Score: 4/10

Season for Assassins (1975)

Within the Italian poliziottesco genre, there was a sub-genre of “youth gone wild” films.  These films would typically portray the Italian youth as entitled, violent sociopaths who committed crimes out of sheer boredom.  Savage Three, Like Rabid Dogs, and Young, Violent, Dangerous are all examples of this sub-genre.  Season for Assassins is another such film, but in this film’s case there’s more focus on the loved ones of the young criminals and how their lives are impacted by the selfish acts of said criminals.

Season for Assassins focuses on the life of a young petty-thief named Pierro, played by Joe Dallessandro.  Pierro has aspirations of becoming a criminal kingpin by working his way up from the bottom of the underworld.  He and his hooligan friends are shown pulling off burglaries for small sums of money, when of course they’re not riding around Rome terrorizing those who get in their path.  The opening plays out much like the opening of A Clockwork Orange, but that’s as far as the comparisons go.  Gradually, different characters in Pierro’s life are introduced.  We learn that Pierro is a father to a newborn and that he has a wife named Rossana.  Rossana is a former prostitute who is now committed to being a mother, even though Pierro is neglecting both her and the child.  We are also introduced to Pierro’s family priest, Father Eugenio, who has faith in the young man and attempts to help Pierro stay on the straight and narrow, despite Pierro constantly brushing him off.  Finally, a third significant character enters Pierro’s personal life, a naïve, young girl named Sandra, who Pierro strikes up a romantic relationship with.  These three characters will all eventually be negatively impacted by Pierro’s selfish and destructive lifestyle.  In one particular case, the impact is fatal.

While Pierro is going around wreaking havoc, a very jaded and disgruntled police captain, played by screen legend Martin Balsam, is nipping at the heels of Pierro and hoping to finally set the right trap that catches the hoodlum.  Balsam’s character is supposed to act as the counterpoint to Father Eugenio.  Where Eugenio sees hope for the young man, Balsam sees a thug and lost cause who will inevitably hurt and/or kill several people before he gets himself killed or caught.  I suppose another parallel could be drawn from this and A Clockwork Orange in terms of the debate over whether or not criminals can truly be reformed.  Unfortunately, this question is handled rather clumsily in Season for Assassins.

It’s commendable that director Marcello Andrei attempts to construct emotional depth within the characters of his piece, but most of them still come off as one dimensional.  With the Pierro character, specifically, there’s a scene where he’s shown to be physically ill by the violent actions that he allows to occur against one of his loved ones.  However, this is the only moment in the movie where the character seems to show any remorse or humanity.  We are never given Pierro’s backstory to have a better understanding of how he got to this point in his life and potentially feel some empathy for the character.  Another problematic aspect to the film is that Andrei can’t seem to decide if he’s making a melodrama or an exploitation film.  The scenes between Pierro and his young mistress, Sandra, bounce from being honest and genuinely dramatic one minute to being sleazy and exploitative the next.  It makes for a very uneven viewing experience.

Despite these flaws, Season for Assassins is certainly worth seeking out for the hardcore Eurocrime fans.  Joe Dallessandro brings a sadistic charm to the Pierro character, which is entertaining to watch.  The character may be one note but Dallessandro plays that note well here.  Balsam’s portrayal of the grizzled, old police captain brings some class and legitimacy to the picture.  And Andrei peppers in enough violence and action to keep things interesting throughout the runtime, even if it is 10 to 15 minutes too long.  Season for Assassins isn’t going to show you something you haven’t seen before from the crime drama, but you could definitely do much worse from this ever broad genre of film.

MVT: Joe Dallessandro

Make or Break Scene: Bumper car scene – Attack on the young couple

Score: 6.5/10

Bruce Kung Fu Girls (1975)

One may be the loneliest number, but five (and three, and seven, and thirteen; all odd prime numbers, funny enough) has a nice ring to it, too, and good things tend to come in that number.  For example, we have five fingers (and toes) and senses.  There was The Jackson Five and The Dave Clark Five.  Five Alive was a fruit juice/punch concoction I craved in my youth and very rarely got.  In the world of cinema, you have Devil Times Five, Fast Five, Slaughterhouse-Five, Five Easy Pieces, and Five Deadly Venoms, to name but five.  It’s that last one that relates to this week’s film, Shut Dik’s (what a great name!) Bruce Kung Fu Girls (aka Five Pretty Young Ladies aka Wu Jiao Wa).  Now, this film has about as much to do with Chang Cheh’s classic martial arts masterpiece as it does with Bruce Lee (whom do you think the Bruce in the title refers to?), but it does actually have five young women who can handle themselves in a fight, and we all know that things that come in fives have to be good, right (especially when they’re doing Kung Fu dressed in garish costumes)?

The Invisible Thief terrorizes Taiwan, robbing from the rich and giving to himself.  The Police Superintendent (Lui Ming) is flummoxed.  Luckily, his five nieces, who operate a Kung Fu gym/spa, volunteer their services in catching the bandit.  But will Ku Lin’s (Polly Shang Kwan) feelings for the hapless scientist Lu conflict with her devotion to justice?

Bruce Kung Fu Girls is as much of a Bruceploitation film as Schindler’s List is a buddy cop film.  It’s deliberately mistitled to lure fans of Lee into the theater.  Don’t misunderstand, I didn’t expect this movie to have anything whatsoever to do with the man, a la something like The Dragon Lives Again, but you have to admit, it’s fairly brazen to slap even an allusion to his name on a film like this.  I admire that spunk.  What this film does, like The Dragon, is creates a science fiction influenced superhero world.  Key to this is the idea of “technology.”  The Invisible Thief uses super science to fuel his super powers.  He has a cheap little laboratory and a shiny, silver suit, and it’s all very kitschy while also being just enough for the audience to buy it.  The police, who normally have enough on their hands with the likes of thugs under the command of Mistress Pei Pei Chow (Chang Chi-Ping), now have to contend with robbers whom they cannot see.  Despite the fact that this guy calls his shots, the cops just can’t seem to get their shit together (why does no one think to throw a bucket of paint in the proximity of the floating gun?), the Superintendent and his boss lament their own Stone Age techniques (“Technology is all around us.  We’re getting left behind”).  The Girls must be used because they are “modern,” though not necessarily tech savvy.  What they are, however, is clever, and they wear black leather uniforms, complete with hot pants, thus making them a superhero team of sorts.

The Girls have a seemingly fierce feminist streak in them.  They use a girls-only swimming pool.  They run a girls-only gym.  They have no compunction about throwing down with bad guys, and the bad guys (I suppose being equally feminist) have no compunction about striking back.  For all their independence, however, the Girls all behave like school children.  This is spurred on by the appearance of Lu, in a quasi-interesting reversal of the cliched “damsel in distress” syndrome.  They save his sad ass, and each woman suddenly thinks he’s the cat’s meow.  This is illustrated in a rather drawn out sequence.  Lu visits the gym and gives each of his rescuers a gift (I fantasize it was Pet Rocks for all).  That night, each of them makes an excuse to call Lu and go out to meet him (let’s just never mind that he doesn’t accept any of their invitations that we are aware of).  While waiting, each of them hallucinates that they see Lu with another woman, and they react violently.  They are, in effect, Boy Crazy.  But Lu only truly has eyes for Ku Lin, of course.  For all of the individual freedoms for which the Girls fight, they are, in the end, just young girls who get swept away by the wave of puppy love that Lu instigates in them.

Bruce Kung Fu Girls has a certain easy charm to it.  It is purely lite, dumb fun, and it knows this.  Yet, it missteps in two very distinct ways.  First, it is overly concerned with the act of frolicking.  The Girls jaunt off to the park and toss a large ball around.  They throw a birthday party for Chao Ping, the youngest of the quintet (we know she’s the youngest because she always wears her hair in pigtails and acts even more childish than the other four).  They go camping with some pals, but not before they waltz all through the forest, chuckling and acting up (or acting up as much as they ever will).  The camping trip also includes a full song sung by Ku Lin (you can almost smell the record tie-in, can’t you?).  Dik wisely spices up these long sequences by having the bad guys randomly appear and cause a ruckus, just not much of one.  The birthday party winds up turning into a cake-smashing party, and the villains appear to be having as much fun as the attendees (and far, far more than the viewers).  Second, the plot, such as it is, meanders and forgets that it exists at all for long stretches.  Further, the crime aspect of the film doesn’t do much original and repeats itself once or twice too often.  The finale is sufficiently ridiculous (Mistress Pei Pei Chow seriously did not think this thing through), and it all ends up as harmlessly as a television cop show.  The thing is that the film doesn’t give itself over to its more unique aspects enough to make it fully satisfying.  It’s like the frozen pizza of Taiwanese pulp cinema which, every now and then, is innocuous enough to get you by.

MVT:  The leather outfits.  Well, I liked them, anyway.

Make or Break:  The scene at the museum is the most distinctive one in the film, and displays what the movie should have trafficked in more.  Plus, it has lots of the Girls in their leather costumes.

Score:  5.5/10      

Fango Bollente (The Savage Three) 1975 

There is an air of unique pulpishness to the Poliziotteschi genre. Determined super cops and mafia shenanigans make for one of the most fascinating and exciting sub-genres in cinema. But there is a flipside to this genre. One that delves into the human psyche and of the time politics.

Fango Bollente (The Savage Three) poses two questions. Are we a product of our time or is it human nature to commit acts of violence? Vittorio Salerno attempts to answer these with a truly fantastic film.

Ovidio (Joe Dallesandro) leads a trio of everyday blue collar workers who live on a hair trigger outside of their working lives. Stress at work and the expectations of society is what charges the trio's hate. An all too familiar story. One simple act of road rage sets a bloody and violent series of events into motion. Inciting crowd violence at Football matches, carjackings, murders and rape are a part of the day to day reprehensible behaviour of the gang. But with Salerno’s equistic direction the film never crosses over into sleazy territory (For that see the the 1976 film Violence for Kicks)

Dallesandro, deep into his Poliziotteschi run, excels as the uniquely handsome and charming Ovidio and thanks to his performance has managed to elevate Fango into the upper echelons of great Polizio films.

The films visuals should not go understated. Thanks to a superb restoration by Camera Obscura, Fango can finally be seen in the way it was meant to be. The highlight of the film being the set piece including the murder of a truck driver. A scene shot in slow motion manages to capture the pure hatred in the crime.

A highlight of any Poliziotteschi is the music and not without merit the film is scored by the incredibly underrated Franco Campanino. A fantastic theme that plays out to a great showdown between the law and Ovidio at the end of the film.

MVT: Dallesandro is fantastic in his role as the dashingly dangerous Ovidio.

Make or break: The Football riot. One simple act of violence sends hundreds into a rage

Score: 8/10

Four For All (1975)

I like turkey.  Every Thanksgiving (or any time that it’s served with my family), I get chosen to carve up the bird.  It’s not that I’m especially adept at it, I believe.  I think it’s more that I’m willing to do it than anything else.  The carving itself is actually quite simple, once you understand how to take the breast off the bone, and know where to crack off the wings and drumsticks.  It can get a little messy, however.  I should probably invest in a pair of turkey-handling gloves (I assume that this is something that exists), but normally I just use a little tin foil to hold anything steady (any tips or tricks you may have would be appreciated).  At any rate, while I enjoy turkey, I don’t like gravy.  Like, on anything.  I guess this is the same proclivity that makes me dislike condiments (with the exception of possibly ketchup [or catsup, depending on where you’re from]) on hot dogs, hamburgers, and so forth.  There’s just something about gravy that turns me off, but what can you do, right?  What the hell has this got to do with Giulio Giuseppe Negri’s (credited on screen) and Yilmaz Atadeniz’s (credited as co-director on IMdB) Four for All (aka Dort Hergele aka Fighting Killer)?  Well, the film is an Italian/Turkish co-production and was filmed in Istanbul, Turkey.  But really I was just grasping at straws for an introduction this week.

Members of The Organization are murdered at the command of the villainous Joseph (I love the genericity of foreign language genre film character names, don’t you?), who wants total control of the crime world in Istanbul.  The unlikely-named Tony Tiger (Irfan Atasoy, also a co-writer on the film and a man who perhaps enjoys Frosted Flakes a bit too much) and his family are targeted soon thereafter, but Tony survives, thanks to former flame (no pun intended; when you read further you’ll understand) Olga (Feri Cansel).  Calling upon three buddies he bonded closely (perhaps intimately) with during “The War,” including Nick (Richard Harrison) a gambler, Gordon (Gordon Mitchell) a Judo expert, and Brady (Fikret Hakan) a crooner, Tony plots his vengeance.

Four for All is, first and foremost, a revenge story, and in this it is, like so very many films from Turkey, both straightforward and quite insane.  Tony certainly has good reason to be out for blood, as I think almost anyone who is tortured and whose family is ruthlessly murdered does.  But the four killers really go the extra mile for Tony.  They beat his son Nino (and I have to say here that the actors actually do throw this kid around and smack him up a bit, unless the boy was in reality an amazing stuntman, and the scene was extraordinarily blocked out, but I doubt it).  They rape his wife.  They tie Tony up, spread eagle and face down, hanging over the carnage.  Then they light his house on fire.  Now, that’s a total “goon service” package, if ever there was one.  What this all does, of course, is gives Tony a reason to go on living, a singular purpose to his now-miserable existence.  Characters like him cannot move on or find closure like normal human beings.  The retribution beast must be fed (maybe this is why his surname is Tiger?), and nothing else matters.  Olga offers him solace (kind of), and while he stays with her, there is no indication that the two ever reignite (no pun intended…again) their former relationship (and the handling of Olga throughout the film is something I’ll let you discover for yourself if you choose to watch this movie).  His friends are there for him, but Tony is myopic in his obsession.  He has to be.  He has no other raison d’etre, now that his family has been destroyed.  I think that the interesting thing about this drive in cinema is that it can end in death for the hero as easily as he can walk away from it at the fade out, but, either way, he will not emerge unscathed, and quite often, the protagonist finds that his revenge, though cathartic for characters (and audiences), ultimately is meaningless.

The film is also an Assemble the Team story, and the camaraderie between the four men (referred to directly as The Four Musketeers, though I think that reference is fairly superficial here) is heightened to an unrealistic degree (this in a film rife with unrealistic touches).  In the flashback scenes to their time in “The War” (I assume this is a reference to Vietnam [though possibly not], since all the guys are the same age then as they are in the present), the men are shown laughing and having a good old time (as you would expect of soldiers during wartime).  Nick, Gordon, and Brady are also shown running (practically skipping with glee) from different sides toward Tony (who inhabits the camera’s POV), calling out his name, because Tony is the center of the group and of this story.  This will be revisited as a visual motif when the four meet up again before and after their “mission.”  Tony stands on a silent hilltop.  As he turns, each of his friends approach from separate (yet deliberately geometric) directions.  These men are so dedicated to their bond, they actually stack hands to display their solidarity with one another (I always think of the origin story of The Fantastic Four when I see this type of visual, but that’s just me).  

Nevertheless, the film, its characters, and its structure are distinctly comic-book-esque.  The cabal of gangsters is straight out of a James Bond film.  They gather at a long table, sneer at each other, and discuss their business with the polished casualness of executives delivering quarterly budget reports.  They all dress like they were peeled off a Dick Tracy cartoon with a glob of Silly Putty (and it should be said, I believe this film may have the most magnificent collection of mustaches ever assembled under one roof).  They wallow in their cruelty, chuckling and grinning as they go about their work.  

By that same token, our heroes’ story is divided up in such a way that I was immediately reminded of the longtime structure for DC Comics’ early Justice League of America books (and others like The Sea Devils and so forth, but the JLA stands out for me and is the most recognizable to folks for our purposes here today).  In the comics, there would be a basic threat introduced (say, Starro or Despero, it doesn’t matter).  The characters would then split up and each would tackle some aspect of the peril in individual chapters before they would all gather again at the end to finally vanquish their foe.  The same thing happens in Four for All, where each of the boys tracks down and roughs up one of the four assassins (Gordon chases Bob from a Turkish bath house, Brady busts up Johnny’s wedding day, Tony lures Brahma [Brimmer? Brummer? Who the hell can tell from the various pronunciations heard in the movie] to a remote locale, Nick goes skiing in pursuit of Charlie).  Funny enough, this is one of the most entertaining aspects to the film, since it helps keep the pace moving, gives us varied setups (while still sticking strictly to a formula), and showcases just how outlandish this whole affair is.  Tony’s plan is utter nonsense from stem to stern, and no one with half a brain would agree it, but like reading an old JLA comic, it’s enjoyable nonsense, and in this I can honestly state that I didn’t mind the gravy so much.

MVT:  The action in the film is practically non-stop, and it’s all goofy fun.

Make or Break:  The classic underworld meeting that kicks off the film lays all of this picture’s cards on the table.  S.P.E.C.T.R.E. would be proud.

Score:  6.5/10