Terror-Creatures From the Grave (aka 5 Tombe per un Medium) (1965) – Vengeance! Semi-abandoned manor houses! Jealousy between grown daughters and second wives! Barbara Steele as the sole English-speaking member of the cast! Estate planning! This movie has all of those, plus several “almosties,” when an actress was definitely nude but just wasn’t standing at quiiite the right angle. Boundary-breaking in the day, you know.
Notable here (and I don’t think I’d really be guilty of spoiling a movie that’s older than I am, but whatever: SPOILERS!) is that this is one of those spooooky movies where a supposedly supernatural situation looks like it might actually turn out to be a live person using deceit and misdirection to gain revenge… but it turns out to be supernatural after all. Fooled ya!
Return of Sabata (1971) – Between 1969, when Lee Van Cleef starred as the title character in Sabata (1969), and the release of this legitimate sequel, there were no fewer than four unrelated productions which claimed the inclusion of the character “Sabata” in their titles. Talk about an identity crisis! In this one, one-time-Army-officer-turned-professional-gambler Sabata becomes on-again, off-again partners with an old subordinate who now owns a gambling hall and brothel in a Western town run by Irish gangsters. And hey, as long as we’re throwing in Irish gangsters, we might as well include a couple of happy-go-lucky pickpocket acrobats, right?
The movie is shot well (granted, the colored gels almost wander into Dario Argento territory), but the plot is so nonsensical I almost turned it off a couple of times. Eventually I just had to mute my brain and enjoy the unmotivated character twists, bewildering plot twists, and wholesale suspensions of the laws of physics.
The Lake of Dracula (1971) – Another of the vampire movies that were trying to be the Japanese answer to Hammer Films (I last reviewed one here), and the one that probably had the broadest American presence in decades past, if VHS covers are any indication. In this one, a young woman with a recurring dream from her childhood about losing her dog and encountering a man with glowing yellow eyes starts seeing odd things around the isolated lake where she lives. Will her vivacious younger sister and doctor boyfriend pooh-pooh her fears, or will the realize that there’s a vampire stalking the shores, with a special connection to her?
Fun fact: No matter how or where in the world you become a vampire, you will feel compelled to dress in evening clothes, complete with capes/cloaks and patent leather shoes.