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Al Adamson holds a special affection for fans of cheap and trashy cinema...no matter how low-budget and low-down his films were, they still attract a sizeable fandom. Perhaps this is because Al always went for the "money shots" in his films--as bad as they were usually rendered, they almost always delivered the exploitable goods. This is particularly true of his horror flicks, which is why we feel more than obligated to take a long and hard look at...
By GREG WOODS (Note: This is the first of two articles examining the low-budget films of Al Adamson. Part Two of this series will appear in next month's issue.) Back when there were still such things as late-night movies, before all those rotten infomercials replaced them, the television dial provided a veritable film school of classic and not-so classic movies. One night about 20 years ago, I fell asleep watching The Hustler on Buffalo’s late great The Cat’s Pajamas, the all-night movie show. I woke up at about 4 o’clock in the morning, right in the middle of some strange, tinny, lurid, movie (in a blotchy 16mm print) which I later learned to be Al Adamson’s infamous Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. I have seen many of Adamson’s films since then, but it is perhaps that one night’s accidental introduction, which comes to mind whenever I think about the work of Al Adamson. His body of work is indeed strange and lurid. They are fascinating for these reasons and more.
Indeed, Adamson’s works have not aged as gracefully as other genre pictures made in the same time period. The colorful AIP horrors of Vincent Price now emerge as enjoyable live-action cartoons, and movies made by the big studios of the day (like The Exorcist) are certainly more polished. Perhaps time has not been kind to Al Adamson’s movies-- his cut-and-paste works remain as demanding as they were 30 years ago. The horror films that Adamson produced and directed in the 1960’s and 1970’s are still considered to be wretched, even by the most jaded exploitation moviegoer. Those who hate these pictures usually do so for more than just the seeming poor taste in which they were made. Because one single picture was often made over the course of a few years, with new scenes continually added thus making a slight narrative incomprehensible, the end results are stitched-together pieces, much like the Frankenstein monster. However, these Adamson "messes", if one will call them that, are fascinating because and in spite of their liabilities.
Albert Victor Adamson was born in 1929- the son of Victor Adamson, AKA- Denver Dixon, a director of B-westerns. (In fact, Al starred in one of his old man’s efforts, Desert Mesa, way back in 1935) A veritable child of Hollywood, it only seemed natural that his future would graduate towards the movie business. Perhaps what Al learned most from his father was his independent streak. Dixon was a pioneer of early cinema, before there was even such thing as a studio system, yet when that system did emerge, he turned down an offer from a major studio to purchase his production company, opting to be in charge of his own unit instead, thus answering to no-one. Another important figure in Adamson’s career was Sam Sherman. Sherman was a star-struck youngster when he met Denver Dixon, and he and the young Albert formed a lifelong friendship. Seeing early photos of the young, clean-cut Sherman suggests a possible alternate future as a leading man. Instead, Sherman’s legacy was forged when he became a producer at Hemisphere Films in the 1960’s, and then by forming his own Independent-International in 1968.
Sherman preferred to simply import films from overseas, re-title them, and if necessary, film a few scenes with American stars for marquee value, and then release the film simultaneously with several different titles to prolong its life at the box office. However, when he did decide to produce original material, it was Al whom he often employed to make these desperate movies on zero budgets. Although the two men made many pictures for whatever genres were popular at the time –biker epics, Blaxploitation, sexploitation- it is the horror movies for which they are best remembered. The Adamson-Sherman enterprise remains one of the most fruitful and peculiar partnerships in all of movie history. Even today, Sherman continues to speak of Al Adamson in high regard. His testimony (best heard in alternate audio tracks of DVD re-issues), and David Konow’s lovely book., Schlock-o-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson,, are the first attempts at re-evaluating the works of the director.
First, Sherman maintains that people should blame him and not Al for how bad the horror films were, because Adamson simply did what Sherman paid him to do, and under dire circumstances. (When was the last time any producer in Hollywood admit that?). Secondly, those who dismiss Adamson’s talents usually have not seen his later films, which do have some craftsmanship. Both Sherman and Konow delightfully portray Al Adamson as a gentle person, who aspired to greatness, but wouldn’t play the Hollywood game. Many forget that Adamson also produced a well-regarded TV-movie, Cry Rape, yet alas, he found himself back in the B-world, directing films he hated.
Al Adamson didn’t always work with Sam Sherman, yet even those echoed Sherman’s love of old actors. Adamson’s pictures in his heyday are a "Who’s Who" of B-movie favorites. For the masochistic viewer, it is morbidly fascinating to see these stars eke out a living in Al’s zero-budget films… well past their glory days. His horror films alone are peopled with the likes of Kent Taylor, Reed Hadley, Angelo Rossito, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Davis, J. Carrol Naish, Lon Chaney Jr., Alex D’Arcy, Paula Raymond, and of course, John Carradine. This miniature Hollywood also features future B-directors John Cardos and Greydon Clark before the camera, and even no-name offspring of once-famous matinee idols (namely, Robert Dix, son of cowboy star Richard Dix). But also, the film enthusiast would be interested in these works as they were often shot by the great cinematographers Leslie (Laszlo) Kovcs and Vilmos Zsigmond, before they began doing A-pictures and never looked back.
Hearing how much a gentle soul Adamson was is rather surprising, considering the ferocity and tastelessness of his works. This is perhaps the key to all of his films as a director, not just his horror movies. Perhaps Adamson’s catharsis was directing these very pictures for which he had disdain. All of his frustrations and anger thusly came out in every frame. These seemingly threadbare movies thusly emerge as pieces of a complex personality- one who perhaps disliked what he did for a living, yet relied on these very things to exorcise the demons within him. David Konow and Sherman have done admirable jobs in keeping Al’s name alive. The Schlock-o-Rama book is a highly entertaining account of Al’s life and the wild times had while making these pictures. However, the book skimps on any critical analyses. Perhaps the next step to the posthumous re-appraisal of Adamson is to re-evaluate his work as the art it is.
You may balk at associating the word "art" with anything by Al Adamson, but we once laughed at Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Ornette Coleman, John Cage and Stan Brakhage. The works of Al Adamson carry a distinct personality and style, which clashes with most of the homogenized establishment, then as now. Are these not traits of an artist? Forget for a moment the technical liabilities of his works, and concentrate on the ways in which they affect the viewer. Sure, he could have gone to Hollywood, and arguably he may have become another faceless commodity. Instead, these movies have a signature. Whether he liked making them or not, these demanding pictures have a signature of a true movie maverick. Join us now, as we have another look at the desperate horrors of Al Adamson…in blood-drenched color! Thanks, Greg. You're right...time has not been kind to Al Adamson's film output. At the time these films were released, the splashy posters and siren-song radio and TV ads, plus the primitive shocks delivered by the films themselves, created a kind of visceral appeal that teenaged moviegoers found somewhat irresistible. That appeal is likely responsible for the fondness these now grown-up folks still feel for Al Adamson's movies. We'll examine more of his films in the next issue. Article copyright © Greg Woods. We wish to thank Greg Krieger and his Al Adamson Horror Films Celebration Site for contributing to this article. |
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Adamson Portfolio... Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (1969) Al Adamson’s first horror film remains his most coherent, in that it was the rare genre picture not to be assembled from various bits and pieces. But still Blood Of Dracula’s Castle is just as busy as any of the subsequent cut and paste jobs. We open on some day for night footage of a big sedan driving through the countryside. The car is driven by a the fetching brunette Vicki Volante, an Adamson regular, who resembles soft-core queen Shauna O’Brien just enough to feed my fantasies, thank you very much. Anyway, this overlong two-minute sequence almost seems to exist to market the faux- Bobby Darin song, "Next Train Out", by Gil Bernal. Finally after so much travel footage, she screams and faints when she sees a deformed-looking monster, who picks her up and takes her away.
In Marineland, photographer Glenn Cannon (Gene O’Shane) is taking snapshots of his model-fiancée Liz Adren (Barbara Bishop). This sequence is filled with a lot of coverage with Liz posing with fish and walruses. In fact, the film is shot with a lot more establishing footage, and long master shots, as opposed to the little fragments we usually accord Adamson’s claustrophobic universe. Perhaps the difference is because this effort was the sole Adamson film shot by Leslie Kovacs (who, in a year, would shoot Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider!). Cannon gets a telegram stating that his Uncle Travis has passed away, and has left him a castle! Presently, the castle is inhabited by a couple with the surname of Townsend, played with slight exaggeration by Alex D’Arcy and Paula Raymond. As the Townsend’s sit by the fireplace and read the telegram about the new owner of the castle, they muse that hopefully the new owner will sell it back to them, so they can stay there- and then we see why they’re such homebodies. The girl Ann, whom we saw in the opening, is chained up in the castle’s dungeon, and being ogled by John Carradine as George the butler, and Mango the deformed monster (played by Ray Young, later one of the bald maniacs in Blue Sunshine).
Carradine’s booming Shakespearean voice, which could rattle the Styrofoam walls, utters: "You had the misfortune of meeting Mango, now you must stay here!" He extracts some blood, which then he serves in goblets as a Type Double-O negative cocktail to the Townsend’s, whom we later learn to be Count Dracula and his bride. Only in Adamson’s skewed universe, would John Carradine get the role of George the butler, and not that of Dracula, which he has played many times… just prior to this, he played the count in Willy One Shot’s immortal Billy The Kid Versus Dracula. We anticipate where this movie is going, as the young couple will to come to the castle and be endangered by the vampires. That alone might have been enough to satisfy the fans, but they also add a monster with some girls and chains, and what is more, an elongated subplot of an escaped convict! Townsend has bribed a prison guard to release the psychotic Johnny (played by Adamson regular Robert Dix). The prison by the way consists of an iron gate, which looks like one at the front of a drive going to some mansion. To make up for the lack of visuals, Johnny and the guard do the old Grade-Z movie shtick of explaining away everything instead of showing it. In order to make Johnny’s departure look like a breakout, the plan is to knock the bribed guard on the head, however Johnny’s psychotic tendencies take over, and he clubs the guard to death. ("Johnny is so wild, so carefree," Mrs. Townsend informs us.) The scene’s sensationalism is somewhat lessened by the lack of sound effects of the beating,, as the soundtrack is filled with wind instead!
Meanwhile, in the castle, Mango is rewarded for bringing in the new girl by being given "Girl #4" for his own use. She is dragged off-screen, as untold atrocities are committed upon her before we hear her final scream. Perhaps this scene is indicative of the tone of the entire film. The movie is so cheaply made as to be laughable (in addition to the cardboard sets, the key light moves, trying to simulate the flickering lights of candelabra), and the distracting $1.98 production values almost make the viewer forget just how vulgar this film really is. Even in this seemingly ordinary film (compared with Adamson’s subsequent work), is full of danger, ugliness, sweat and psychosis. The vampire couple retires for the night, getting into separate coffins, and blowing kisses to each other. This segment is a perverse satire of 1950’s TV sitcoms featuring sexless couples who sleep in separate beds, and the two stars play the moment with the proper amount of Father Knows Best kind of wholesomeness.
Meanwhile, Johnny is pursued by the law…a whopping two cops and one dog. One long track shot follows the convict trudging through the river. This is a flourish not normally accorded to the stifling world of Al Adamson. However, because this is an Al Adamson movie, right smack dab in the middle of this chase scene, there is a girl doing the unlikely prospect of sunbathing on slippery rocks by a waterfall, and lives long enough for Johnny to take a break from his great escape to strangle her to death, to prevent her from tipping him off to the cops. Then he kills a man by the road, steals his car, shoots a hitchhiker and puts on the latter’s clothes. Anyone familiar with a foot of Al Adamson’s cinema is aware of his bizarre images. However, one of the strangest in all of Adamson happens next. Seeing tuxedoed John Carradine shoot pool with Johnny upon his return to the Townsend castle is indeed wild. We see the pot brewing with numerous subplots of vampires, escaped convicts, monsters and chained girls, and if the movie is not busy enough, we get yet another subplot when Carradine is scratching the felt. Apparently, the Townsend’s rescued George from a lynching by townsfolk who were irate over his worshipping a deity named Luna. Also, we learn that Johnny gets a little crazy when the moon is full…
Cannon and Liz arrive at the castle. Liz remarks at how beautiful the castle is, as Mango leers at her from the bushes. George the butler answers the door, and tells the guests that the count and his wife are not available until after sunset (cute). Alas, when it is dark, the Townsend’s make their grand entrance, and Cannon is surprised that the couple is not older looking, considering the lease on the castle was for 60 years! The tenants are however disappointed that the young couple actually wants to take over the castle. Later, the Townsend’s tell Johnny to get rid of the young couple in a discreet way. Later in the night, Liz is awakened by a scream, and she runs to Cannon’s room. (They’re in separate bedrooms? Come on, this is the Sixties!) After a pretty good lengthy single-take, Cannon finally agrees to go investigate. George stops them. "I didn’t hear any screams", he booms. The next morning, they decide to investigate the screams a bit further, and they find the dungeons, the girls and the coffins, and they get chained up themselves. George wakes up the vampire couple ("I see the moon is full tonight"); and tonight they are to offer a sacrifice to the god Luna. In some cheap day-for-night scene, everyone in black cowls goes outside to a ceremony, in which Ann is burned at the stake. In the next segment, it is darkly funny to see George serve drinks to toast Luna… back with his tray and tuxedo just after burning someone alive!
Amidst all the revelry, Cannon takes Johnny’s gun, and plugs him in a struggle. George goes downstairs, Cannon pursues, and George is killed in a struggle in the dungeon.. The Townsends are tied up, and as the sun rises, they age and turns to dust. Mango pursues the young couple, and the bullets don’t slow the ogre down, so Cannon resorts to throwing the gun at the monster. Like, that always works! After a struggle, Mango carries Liz away, ties her to a stake and then in close-up, pours gasoline on her (however, if you look real close, no gasoline comes out of the can!). Cannon finds a hatchet on the ground (handy thing to have laying around) and plants it in Mango’s back. Then he sets Mango on fire, and the monster falls off the cliff while in flames. The ending is quite exciting, in that it is composed of quick editing and numerous cut-ins, counterpointing all the languid master shots. Finally, we end with the credits, featuring the cast members in overlong static poses, just like in the credit sequences of those old RKO programmers. Part of this film’s weird appeal is its perverse potshots at nuclear family values, as the mannerisms of Johnny and the vampires are lost in some 50’s sitcom, despite their murderous tendencies. Because the movie is quite often told with lengthy master shots, instead of Adamson’s usual in-your-face aesthetic, the horrible acts in this film remain tolerable. Horror Of The Blood Monsters (1970) After getting burned in a distribution deal on Blood Of Dracula’s Castle (that film ended up getting sold for peanuts to Crown, who in turn made a mint with it), Adamson and Sherman decided to join forces, thusly making pictures on their own terms. For the next decade, Adamson would often work under Sherman’s Independent-International banner, prolifically turning out dour cash-ins on whatever genre was fashionable at the time. Before we continue, I think it is imperative to mention that one of the appeals of the Independent- International flicks was their wild opening credit sequence. The cartoony graphics, Warhol-ish portraitures and bold colours of these great teasers would actually be the segments which most fulfilled the lurid promise of the films’ suggestive titles. Horror Of The Blood Monsters is one of Adamson- Sherman’s many chop jobs, in which they would combine footage made from different projects and then attempt to make narrative sense of it all. The foundation of this one is some Filipino vampire- caveman movie called Tagani, which Sherman purchased, and then they shot new scenes with American actors (John Carradine, Robert Dix, Vicki Volante et al) as spaceman landing on an alien world reacting to all the caveman action off-screen. While not having seen all of Al Adamson’s 30 films, I would say that perhaps Horror Of The Blood Monsters is his masterpiece. Certainly it is the most entertaining and charming of all the films in this article. It is the fruition of all of those times in which Adamson attempted to make a coherent narrative out of different sources, and this time the results actually sort of work! Sort of.
The act of appropriating previous footage and shaping it into something else is as old as cinema itself—exploitationeers and avant-gardists alike have done it, and the results may or may not be equally profound in either camp. But performing "cinematic plunder" if you will, is not an act of construction- it is actually de-construction. In other words, when one tries to make a narrative body out of different pieces, regardless of whether the result is coherent, these different pieces, obviously taken from different sources, call attention to themselves. They remind us of the artifice that cinema really is. The films implode because any rationale of reality is thwarted by these incongruous marriages, and under the right circumstances, the viewer’s mind explodes. I’ve always felt that the main difference between underground filmmaking and exploitation filmmaking has been the attention paid to narrative. Otherwise, they tackle similar subject matter, challenge taboos, and are often made by people eking out an existence on the fringe. To me, Ed Wood is just as avant-garde as Craig Baldwin. Grade Z drive-in movies can be just as profound or as empty as experimental films, and vice versa. Therefore, in the realm of narrative cinema, Al Adamson and Sam Sherman are plunderers par excellence. What makes their work so avant-garde is that the narrative actually becomes drained by the act of adding plots, not subtracting them.
Horror Of The Blood Monsters may be the most playful film of all of Adamson, and yet no other ends up as such a shaggy dog joke. Perhaps for once, we don’t mind being told "Up yours!", just because this may be the most audience-friendly movie he ever made. This picture was made just before Vilmos Zsigmond hit the big time, and yet it is incredible what this man could do just with one light. The Spartan opening scenes of the vampires prowling around alleys have a minimalist beauty in their own right. Vampires prowling around, you ask? Ah yes. One is put in a daze right from the start of this crazy picture , as an uncredited Brother Theodore rambles on, primarily about how vampires actually originated from another planet, and to find out how to stop this menace, Brother Theodore acquiesces that we have to journey to outer space.
Well, considering that there are a whopping six vampires running around, I’m not sure how much of a global threat this is. However, you do get to see a cameo by Al himself as one of the vampires. Despite these hilarious fangs, he actually resembles Henry Hull in Werewolf Of London. These opening moments are rather effective, if you don’t think about them too hard. Forget for a moment why a mother and a small child would walk down a dark alley at night, or that a horny guy walks up to a prostitute and notices her fangs. This decoupage sort of works on its own because the minimalist lighting and art direction accentuates the primal behavior onscreen. Anyhow, we are next introduced to the crew of the spaceship XP 13, whom we presume to be heeding Brother Theodore’s advice. The gruff Dr. Rynning, played by the immortal John Carradine, captains the mission. As we will see, regardless of how silly or threadbare the films of the Adamson-Sherman enterprise, one marvels at how the veteran casts find the dignity within themselves of playing it straight. These opening scenes are indicative of the remainder of the picture—shamelessly drawn out to ensure that the movie actually clocks in at a respectable running time. On the ground, Dr. Manning (Robert Dix) and Valerie (Vicki Volante) sit at a control panel, saying "prepare for liftoff", "Roger" and other inconsequential dialogue over and over. The ship experiences some turbulence after lift-off, shipmates Bob and Linda blather on and on about the safety of the mission, and Carradine goes around spouting technical jargon.
Perhaps what is most interesting about this film is its depiction of life in a futuristic setting (at least I am assuming that it is set there, based on man’s ability to travel to other worlds). I am not referring to the little scene where we see a crewmember smoking. In the film, there is not one but two sex scenes between Manning and Valerie while the crew toils around in space. Lovemaking in the future consists of having electrodes taped to one’s temples, and enjoying carnal activity hooked up to a control panel with a lot of groovy flashing lights. While the futuristic settings look clinical in their predominant whiteness, and Zsigmond’s cinematography gives the picture a classical look, this cold depiction of what passes for love in the future prefaces Adamson’s later "futuristic sex musical" Cinderella 2000, which also offers a dystrophic vision of a seemingly antiseptic environment. Despite that we get to see Vicki Volante in between the sheets –twice- these moments are completely devoid of passion. It may be said that humankind is already as dehumanized and bloodless as the vampires. Adamson’s films are typically empty of romance, and even this "classical" picture is no exception.
Horror Of The Blood Monsters feels like a mid-60’s spaceship movie a la Planet Of Blood--not least because wunderkind David L. Hewitt contributed some cheap special effects, especially with miniatures from the director’s own rock-bottom space opera, Wizard Of Mars. (While I’m on the subject, I think it’s time that HORROR-WOOD re-appraises the cheapo chillers of Mr. Hewitt—don’t you agree, Renfield?) This entire film feels out of the time slip, as it relies on conventions that were outmoded only a few years previously. The ship’s landing on the planet consists of an obvious model resting atop a bloody rock in the foreground! Moments of the rocket in flight feature a silly paper flame coming out of the back. These dime-store special effects wouldn’t even have fooled the most undemanding viewer of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. It takes a special kind of filmmaker with enough crassness to throw in such blatantly phony moments, and brother, you haven’t seen anything yet!
Making a low budget movie in which the cast has to react to things off-screen is one thing, but when the footage to which they are reacting comes from the most outlandish sources, that is quite another. Once the astronauts go out on the planet surface, this is where all of Sherman’s groovy footage from Tagani comes in handy. Because this caveman movie was shot in black and white, Sherman thusly tinted the scenes red, green or sepia, as well as all of the footage of the humans reacting to it all. This is all explained away by stating that the planet is infected by radiation. This babble is given credence by the fact that the good Tagani tribe endlessly battles with the Tubata tribe, who all wear these silly vampire fangs, thus supporting Carradine’s theory of the mutations on the planet. All of this footage is dubbed with rubbery grunts and hisses. When there is dialogue in these scenes, it purports to be about the different tribes fighting over the sacred firewater found in the cave. (Mind you, the bat-people who fly around in the caverns are pretty cool.)
And if that’s not enough, there’s also inserted footage of dinosaurs from Willis O’Brien’s The Lost World from 1925! Also, we get even more shots of lizards fighting from One Million B.C. by way of Robot Monster! Now that’s plunder!! Seeing these modern-day actors reacting to cut-ins of stuff a generation or two older is just dumbfounding. There is an attempt at giving this some weight by the addition of the beautiful Jennifer Bishop as the Tagani cave girl Lian, who meets up with the landing party. Willy is so smitten with her that he gives her a necklace. While the crewmembers find some crude elements by which to re-power the ship so they can take off, off-screen cave people besiege the landing party. A Tubata tribesperson stabs Bob, and then Steve plugs the evil doer before he collapses from the radiation. Oh yes—to further the length of the film, in between rolls in the hay, Manning and Valerie discuss the radiation on the planet, which we already had explained to us. Anyhow, when the crew is ready to leave, Willy grudgingly leaves Lian, as she clasps her necklace and looks longingly off-screen at the model spaceship on the bloody rock.
With some more moments of the ship in space, including a paper flame fluttering out the back, Carradine explains attempts to explain away the ending, stating that the radiation will not affect the crew as there is something in the Earth’s atmosphere that negates it. As this dizzying picture draws to a close, Dr. Rynning muses that this planet once had a brilliant race of people before the radiation. "I have no doubt we will be as brilliant one day." The end. What a minute! What about the bloody vampires? I guess after such a crazy movie experience, the filmmakers hoped that opening would have been nicely forgotten. Then we realize we’ve just sat through a shaggy dog joke of a movie that added up to completely nothing, but it was damn fun along the way. The French Dadaists would have loved it. Blood Of Ghastly Horror (1971) If you think Horror Of The Blood Monsters is incoherent, then wait until you see this film! For this effort, Adamson and Sherman didn’t need to pillage from other sources—by this time, they had enough material of their own. Therefore, they decided to take the footage of Al’s 1965 crime saga, Echo Of Terror and shape it into something new. The film in its original incarnation is a grainy thriller, which was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond. After an unsuccessful bid in getting investors to put money in it, the enterprising duo decided to insert footage of a girl doing a go-go dance, and thusly renamed it Psycho-A Go-Go. This epic was still fated to sit on the shelves for a few more years until they shot some additional footage with John Carradine and Tommy Kirk, and even brought back the older film’s lead heavy Joe Corey (actor Roy Morton), and added an additional subplot of Corey being a brain-damaged Vietnam vet who is kept alive via Carradine’s experiments. This film was now titled The Fiend With The Electronic Brain.
Then, new footage was still added, featuring Adamsons’ wife Regina Carroll as Carradine’s daughter, and Kent Taylor as Corey’s father! Finally, this mad decoupage was released with the present title, Blood Of Ghastly Horror. If Horror Of The Blood Monsters seems like an old-fashioned movie, this one is muddy, dark and claustrophobic. To some, this mélange of footage from seemingly three films may be rather confusing, so we have offered a handy scorecard below. 00:00 First, we begin with another of Independent International’s groovy title sequences. 02:08 How many of Al’s movies open with a streetwalker? (See Horror Of The Blood Monsters, above) In a dreary scene shot in ugly blue, she and some prospective john get strangled by this zombie thing. A guy in a nearby car investigates- he and another girl get killed. 05:26 Cut to the interior of an office in a police station. This looks like home movie footage, all shot in sweaty close-up. Former Disney child actor Tommy Kirk appears as Sgt. Cross, who is muttering on the phone about a bunch of fellow officers who got killed. We’re not sure if he’s referring to the cops who appear in the next scene, or if there were some undercover officers in the opening. Anyway, this moment is indicative of how the timeline in this film is rendered non-existent, as the film marries together footage shot years apart. Sgt. Cross gets a package with a severed head and a message: "Will kill for Corey." 08:37 Psycho A Go-Go / Echo Of Terror footage, as we can tell once we suddenly see a guy with a 60’s brush cut. In a silent sequence, robbers wearing surgical masks tie up their victims in a jewelry store and snatch diamonds. A bound-up girl tries to reach the alarm. Then we see young Al Adamson himself, carrying the bag of loot away, and hoping to nonchalantly escape down a busy glass elevator. (Cool cutaway to the Jerry Lewis restaurant across the street.) Just when they reach the ground floor, the girl manages to sound the alarm. The cops give chase. In a wobbly scene with rubbery post-synced dialogue, Al throws the bag onto the back of a pickup truck just before he gets shot. Joe Corey shoots the cop. The girl in the getaway car sees the bag in the back of the truck, as its driver unknowingly speeds away. Cut to a shot of a little girl picking up a diamond bracelet. 13:50 Fiend With The Electronic Brain footage. Sgt. Corey (who inexplicably refers to himself as Sgt. Ward- did no-one pick up on this blooper?) goes to see Dr. Vanard, played by John Carradine. He tells Vanard of the robbery, and after checking out one person’s apartment, he had found fingerprints of one Joe Corey, even though he is deceased! Vanard remembers that Corey had died on the operating table, one of the first casualties of the Vietnam war (who says Adamson movies aren’t topical?). 18:19 Back to Psycho A Go-Go. A girl leaves the office of Clark Construction. A guy with a cigarette sneaks in. There is no diagetic sound, just bongo music on the soundtrack. The girl forgets something, goes back to the office and gets stabbed with a pair of scissors by the guy with the cigarette. This moment is left unexplained, as large segments of this film were sacrificed for the new footage. Cops in a car talk about one of the trucks belonging to one Dave Clark. Clark goes home to find the robbers there looking for the jewels. He gets roughed up by Joe Corey. 23:17 Back to Fiend With The Electronic Brain. Cross goes back to Vanard’s place. The doctor finally confesses that after Corey died on the table, he used some electronic device to bring the patient’s brain control back.. Distraught by his own confession, Vanard is left alone with holding his head in his arms. 28:54 Psycho A Go-Go. Joe enters a hotel room, and asks a girl for Nancy’s whereabouts. She says that Nancy had taken a bus to Lake Tahoe. He then strangles the girl, while the filmmakers cut to canted shots of a flashing hotel sign. Even though much of this film takes place in the swinging 60’s, there is nothing nostalgic in this or any of Al Adamson’s movies. As in Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, we are reminded of the monumental ugliness of the times in which they were shot. 34:40 Back to Fiend With The Electronic Brain, back to the shot of Vanard with his head in his arms. He gets a visit from Joe Corey, much older-looking than when we saw him a moment ago, and with a bad toupee. In an ironic twist, Corey straps the doctor to the table and sends electricity through his brain! 38:16 Blood Of Ghastly Horror footage. Cross is visited by Susan Vanard, daughter of the late doctor. Regina Carroll plays Mrs. Adamson Ms. Vanard, of course. We don’t see her as the glamorous Vegas showgirl of her past, but as a world-weary forty year-old trying to look 25. In fact, her haggard appearance also suits the film. This scene was likely done on such a small set that the filmmakers couldn’t do any medium to long shots, so the pock-marked cheeks of Tommy Kirk and the tired eyes of Regina Carroll are made to carry the moment. This probably makes sense, as this claustrophobia suits the uncomfortable nature of the film. Anyway, it is also learned that Joe Corey’s father Elton is involved in strange voodoo practices! (As if the narrative wasn’t already busy enough). Elton is played by none other than Kent Taylor, who actually lends a crusty grace to his roles in Adamson’s pictures. Once again, we are witness to a washed-up B-movie actor who decides not to reduce the silly material to buffoonery. Elton looks at a picture of his son, vowing to avenge the torture that Vanard put him through. He calls Susan at her hotel room, and says that he has information for her, but doesn’t trust the postal system to send it to her (wisdom beyond his years!), so she agrees to meet him person. She leaves Cross a message of her impending rendezvous. Meanwhile, Elton feeds some serum to this pathetic blue-skinned zombie named Akro, whom he keeps behind bars. In this and the next two films, the monsters are never scary—they emerge as pathetic subhumans, made even more so by slipshod makeup. In fact, it is always their human creators who are the true evil. With Akro all drugged up, the rendezvous takes place in another of Adamson’s typical dark alleys (likely so they could sneak and shoot without paying for a permit). The zombie grabs Susan. A cop tries to stop it, but is strangled for his trouble. As he lies dying, he writes Elton’s license plate number in his own blood. (Neat touch.) Susan awakens in Elton’s lab, and he gives her some serum, which will make her his slave to carry out his bidding at will. Corey then explains what Vanard did to his son. The film rack focuses out of Taylor’s face… 55:09 …and we’re back to the climax of Echo Of Terror, or Psycho A Go-Go. Joe meets Mrs. Clark and her daughter Nancy when they exit their bus. He says that her husband sent him to meet her. They leave together, and Joe rifles through the luggage looking for the diamonds. She doesn’t know anything about it. Joe then tries to assault her, but is interrupted by someone who is killed for his trouble. The Clarks escape in their car, and Joe grabs another vehicle to pursue them. Once the Clarks’ car conks out, the film becomes an underexposed foot chase in the snow. The cops soon give pursuit. Nancy drops her doll, which she has been carrying throughout the scene. The diamonds are seen coming out of the doll. Joe struggles to grab them and ends up getting shot by the police. 77:29 …and rack focus back into Kent Taylor’s face. The police break into Elton’s warehouse. Akro manages to reach through the bars and strangle the cops. Susan is given the final injection in Corey’s mad scheme, in a scene relying on sweaty, craggy close-ups of Kent Taylor. The camera then focuses in and out to see the gradual changes of Susan into a zombie. He then carelessly mentions that Akro’s body is fighting the serum he is given, and thusly will soon kill him. This causes Akro to kill Corey. Suddenly, Susan no longer looks like a zombie. Cross shows up, naturally too late to save the day. Blood drips on a photo of Joe. The end. Viewer runs to take a nice sponge bath. (Next issue...the rest of Adamson's oeuvre...) |
