The Curator of Schlock #385 by Jeff Shuster

The Last House on the Beach

Not as much fun as Back to the Beach. 

I don’t like getting knocked unconscious and waking up in strange places. I don’t like waking up to find someone’s oily sock stuffed in my mouth. I don’t like waking to the sound of GWAR’s Sick of You blasting through the tinny car stereo. I don’t like feeling every bump from every pothole the driver can’t seem to miss. And I don’t like the bloodstained carpet of the trunk I’m hogtied in. — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1978’s The Last House on the Beach from director Francos Prosperi. As you can tell from the title, this is another movie inspired by Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. This is another in the line of sadistic revenge movies so prevalent in the 1970s. The movie begins with a nasty bank robbery. Three young malcontents named Aldo (Ray Lovelock), Walter (Flavio Andreini), and Nino (Stefano Cedrati) make a getaway after shooting some civilians. Unfortunately, their car begins to break down and the cops are hot on their trail. What to do? Oh, look, There’s a house at the end of the beach.

The gang takes a peek inside and sees some girls practicing Shakespeare along with their instructor, Cristina (Florinda Bolkan). The gang takes the women hostage, threatening them with guns. Walter searches the house and finds the maid trying to escape. He beats her to death with an iron. Nino corners one of the young women, Lisa (Sherry Buchanan), in the bathroom, but she stabs him in the thigh. It’s a fairly severe wound, but not fatal. Aldo finds a nun’s outfit in one of the closets upstairs and figures out that Cristina is actually Sister Cristina.

The gang forces Sister Cristina to strip and don her nun’s outfit. Sister Cristina informs them that a bus will be picking them up in two days so that gives them enough time to fix the car, drink some wine, and torment their hostages. I won’t go into too many details, but this is an Italian exploitation movie so it’s going to be nasty. And then Sister Cristina receives a telegram from the postman informing them that the bus will be a day late. Sister Cristina tips the postman and I can only imagine she slipped him a note telling him to inform the police. Lisa finds his dead body stuffed in the lawn shed some time later.

Lisa can’t take it anymore and attempts to swim away to get help, but fails and is brought back by Aldo who leaves her fate in the hands of Walter and Nino. Sister Cristina is in the middle of treating Nino’s would when she finds Lisa’s dead body, murdered in a humiliating way. Sister Cristina removes the crucifix from around her neck before grabbing some poison to inject Nino with. After killing Nino, she takes his gun and plugs some lead into Walter. This leaves Aldo and his fate is the worst of all.

This movie may not be for everyone. By everyone, I mean anyone.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #384 by Jeff Shuster

Night Train Murders

Yes, revenge is a good thing. 

I was getting manhandled by a gang of hooligans in the husk of a building that was once The Museum of Schlock. Their leader was a punk with a mohawk who claimed to be the new curator of this establishment. One of the hooligans asked this usurper what was to be done with me.

“Rub him out,” the curator said. Something blunt hit the back of my head and all went dark. — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 1975’s Night Train Murders from director Aido Lado. The movie went by other titles such as Last Stop on the Night Train, Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains, and The New House on the Left. That last title is significant as it is similar to a well-known American horror exploitation movie from director Wes Craven called The Last House on the Left, a movie so notorious that an audience member once demanded that the projectionist shut off the movie. This movie made its way overseas where it must have made a huge impression on several Italian producers.

The Night Train Murders begins with two malcontents named Blackie (Flavio Bucci) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi) running amok in Munich, slashing a woman’s fur coat and mugging a man dressed as Santa Clause in full view of everyone. Meanwhile, two teenage girls named Margaret (Irene Miracle) and Lisa (Laura D’Angelo) are busy trying to catch a train from Germany to Italy to stay with family over the Christmas holidays.

The train is very crowded with some passengers having to stand during the journey with some passengers complaining that they paid for a seat and can’t sit down. Maybe that’s because there are some extra passengers, stowaways named Blackie and Curley.

The two malcontents bum cigarettes off the girls and get their help in evading the ticket man as he checks each passengers tickets and passports, A mysterious blonde woman (Macha Méril) has an encounter with Blackie in the train’s bathroom and they do things in that bathroom that I can’t discuss on a family blog. Oh, and Curley is a drug addict, shooting up heroin and getting into fights with the train attendants. The train is held over in Austria as the authorities investigate a bomb threat. Margaret and Lisa leave the train for another one that will take them directly to Italy. They get a train compartment all to themselves, but their peace and quiet is eventually interrupted by the sound of Curley’s harmonica.

The blonde woman and two malcontents force their way into the compartment and bad things happen to the two girls resulting in Lisa’s death. Margaret tries to escape from the train, but dies on impact when she hits the ground outside. Blackie, Curly, and the blonde get rid of Lisa’s body and any other evidence the girls were on the train. If you think that’s the end of the movie, you’d be wrong.

Let’s just say there’s going to be a run in with Lisa’s parents and some sweet revenge is coming. I was watching an interview on the Blu-ray where one of the screenwriters remarked that he drove members of the audience for this picture to drink. I’ve got three more of these movies to get through this month. Hopefully, Jim Beam won’t be my best friend by the end of it.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #392 by Jeff Shuster

Malignant

8th Wonder of the World

There was Edwige, my kangaroo traveling companion of the past year, locked up in a cage, waiting to be butchered by a bunch of zany Saskatchewanians. I wanted to free her, but I had to keep up the ruse of being a factory inspector in front of the guard who let me in the building. Just then, an alarm sounded and before I knew it, dozens of factory workers rushed past me. The guard scrambled for his walkie talkie, but it slipped from his fingers as his face grew pale in reaction to what was coming in our direction — To be continued.

This week’s movie is 2021’s Malignant from director James Wan. I think this might be my favorite movie of 2021. In fact, I’m not even sure how Warner Bros. okayed this project. It may have something to do with James Wan directing such hits for the studio like The Conjuring and Aguaman. They gave him carte blanche to do what he wanted with this movie. I see it as a modern take on the William Castle movies that were so popular in the 1950s.

The movie begins back in 1993 at a psychiatric research hospital built on an oceanside cliff. A patient named Gabriel has attacked several of the staff and seems to possess psionic power over electricity. A Dr. Florence Weaver (Jacqueline McKenzie) declares that it’s “Time to cut out the cancer.” We get a credit sequence featuring some gnarly surgery sequences and before we know it, it’s the modern day.

We’re introduced to Madison Lake (Annabelle Wallis), a young nurse on her third pregnancy after two previous miscarriages. She has an abusive husband that complains about watching his babies die inside of her. He knocks Madison’s head against the bedroom wall and then apologizes. He leaves to get some ice. Madison locks the door behind him before conking out on the bed. Later that night, her husband is brutally murdered by a mysterious figure cloaked in black. Madison goes to investigate and is attacked by the killer. She survives, but suffers another miscarriage.

Detectives Kekoa Shaw (George Young) and Regina Moss (Michole Briana White) are called to the grisly murder scene, but have no leads as to who committed the crime. That’s okay because more murders are coming. It seems that the mysterious killer has a beef with the staff of the psychiatric facility we saw at the start of the movie. He finds Dr. Florence Weaver and beats her to death with a trophy she won for medical excellence. The killer then sharpens what’s left of the trophy into a deadly dagger to take out his next victim.

Madison has a psychic link with the killer. It’s a rather cool effect. Madison will be all alone in her house and her surroundings will completely peel away. She sees everything the killer sees, every horrific detail. Eventually, the killer reaches out to Madison, revealing himself to be Gabriel. Madison recalls once having an imaginary friend named Gabriel.

To say anything more about Malignant would spoil the big reveal, but I do highly recommend this movie for horror fans. Malignant is currently available to stream on HBO Max.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #379 by Jeff Shuster

A Taste of Blood

Stick with Uncle Herschel’s Favorite instead.

So my new BFF Larry and I were trying to break out of a prison in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The two of us were hugging the outside wall, planning to scale it using a rope made up of used pairs of prison underwear. And I’m talking about used Fruit OF The Looms with questionable stains! Larry tied it to some iron bars outside a prison window. “You first?” Larry asked.

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s normally around this time of year I share a cannibalism movie with all of you, but it would seem my humble collection of Arrow Blu-rays does not contain such fare. However, I do have another Herschell Gordon Lewis classic in the form of 1967’s A Taste for Blood to share with you. I guess it’s blood consumption rather than flesh consumption, but that’s close enough.

By the way, the sub-head up at the top is in reference to a breakfast entree at Cracker Barrel restaurants. You get two eggs any way you want, grits, a choice of breakfast meat (usually in the form of ham, chicken tenderloin, hamburger steak, or catfish), and fried apples or hash brown casserole. Why am I wasting time talking about a breakfast entree? Well, my time was wasted watching another Herschell Gordon Lewis movie so there.

The Arrow Blu-ray gives you the option of watching this Blu-ray with an introduction from the director himself. He says that most budget horror movies of the period had to be at a minimum of 80 minutes run time and that most directors stopped there, but not him. A Taste for Blood clocks in at nearly two hours. You know what was 80 minutes? Terror in a Texas Town. I liked that movie!

What’s the plot? A man named John Stone (Bill Rogers) gets a letter of inheritance in the mail along with two bottles of brandy. The gist of it is his Romanian ancestor owned a lot of property in London and John must drink a toast to his ancestor with the brandy provided to inherit. And then John gradually exhibits some strange behavior like shying away from crosses and sucking the blood out of go-go dancers. And it turns out his ancestor is the one and only Count Dracula.

John sets about murdering the descendants of those who defeated Dracula back in the day. He murders a wealthy oil heiress who is a descendant of Quincy Morris. All of his victims have to die in the same way Dracula did, with a wooden stake through the heart. This attracts the attention of Dr. Howard Helsing (Otto Schlessinger), descendant of Abraham Van Helsing. And of course, no one believes him when he suggests that John Stone is a vampire and blah, blah, blah.

I’m sorry, but mid-1960s Miami, FL ain’t that scary. This is not the setting you use for your gothic horror movie. Also, I need to complain about the score or rather the three tracks the director licensed from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop that he insists on having played over and over again in every single scene! Still, those of you looking to get into Herschell Gordon Lewis, but are wary of the splatter in his films, there isn’t so much splatter in this movie. Happy Thanksgiving! I think I’ll watch Ronin again.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, and episode 496) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.