Devil Dog: Hound of Hell (1978)

Lost: Devil Dog, Hound of Hell

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  Last seen on TV in 1978


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  Father victimized by Martine Beswicke in a satanic cult ritual


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  Sold into the slavery of a wandering pedophile


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  Shot by Richard Crenna


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  Immolates housemaids


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  Causes drowning


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  Sets random fires


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  Mesmerizes homeowners to attempt self-mutilation


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  Corrupts families


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  Breeds insanity


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  Is possessed by the devil


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  Answers to name of "Lucky"

The Virgin Witch (1972)

There isn't too much I can say about this film that Edgar Wright hasn't already said about it (at length) here but I'll try.

First of all, this movie scores a George right out of the gate: quite literally in the very first frame of actual movie footage. Blam! Bewbs! A second George for laughs may as well be awarded in the next few seconds, as the opening credits are so humorously spattered with campy shocked expressions on nude actresses that you can't help but laugh. I'll admit that I was hooked from the start, and set about trying to organize a Dudes viewing as soon as I could. (Thank you, The Jesus, ever so much for bringing this film's existence to my attention!)

Secondly, it is worth noting that Edgar admittedly has a fondness for inflicting "bad" films like this one on groups of friends. As someone who has scared away too many of Maude's friends in the past for doing just the same, I'm not about to cast any stones in that direction; rather, I'd go so far to say that this is the only way to properly enjoy this film. Without a group of friends to laugh at the many unintentionally funny moments, you may find yourself somewhat ashamed to be spending 88 minutes alone with Ann Michelle's naked seventies boobs on your television screen. Or not. Depends on who you are, I suppose.

Edgar pointed out that many of the actors appearing nude should not have. It was just such a scene (the ritual in the final reel) that drove Maude out of the viewing room. As a matter of fact, I think it was this dude who did the trick:



On the other hand, if I had grown up (as I suppose Edgar did) watching Vicki Michelle in countless BBC reruns of 'Allo 'Allo then I'd be scouring the internet trying to get my hands on this film. For an American teenage boy today it would be akin to discovering that Keri Russell appeared fully naked for gratuitous amounts of screen time in a seedy "Rosemary's Baby" ripoff.

Although it has been pointed out elsewhere that the sisters portrayed in the film are, in fact, real-life sisters (Ann and Vicki Michelle) I haven't seen any mention of a rather taboo moment between them. As we all know from films like Satan's Blood, you can't have an occult ritual without rubbing down a naked female with some form of lubricant. To prepare her sister for initiation into the coven, Ann Michelle makes sure that Vicki gets her left breast adequately lubed up for the occasion. Perhaps if I were a gal I'd think nothing of rubbing tanning lotion all over my sister's breasts while vacationing at some European beach... but as a guy I can't help but think this movie moment was pretty damn pervy. Chalk it up to the perverse powers of Skull Butter, I suppose.



The Virgin Witch does indeed entertain, but the only scares came from seeing creepy grandpa up there in the buff. Although seeing this in 1972 was probably much more shocking to the average Joe than it is for a Dude of Horror in 2009, in a modern context it is just plain silly. Aside from the laughs and the flesh-fest there simply wasn't anything else present to boost my rating above 2.5 Georges. Karl, who watched this film with me from a remote location in our beta testing of "Remoto", arrived at this same rating. Watch it with your friends, but follow it up with something truly frightening.

Fun Times With Skull Butter

Dear Readers,

I know there are already two reviews of Carlos Puerto's 1977 film "Escalofrío" (aka "Satan's Blood") on this site... but mine has lots of pretty pictures! Allow me to depart from my usual verbose method of film critique and give you the Jeff's Notes version:



How To Live Like A Satanist

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First, grow a beard and decorate in Tarot Cards:




Next, do what Satanists (apparently) do best: undress women!




Now cut the cheese!


"Why don't you cut the cheese, huh?"


Contact kosher spirits with the Jewija Board!




Finally, make sure you provide a decent home to Chucky's Grandma...





...because she makes the best homemade Skull Butter in Spain!
Skull Butter!!!


Two Georges for plenty of full-frontal nudity and one because I laughed a lot at the unintentional humor. That means at Dudes of Horror, this movie has thrice received a George Rating of three! Three threes? 333! That's half of 666! And look! I unconsciously posted six photos from the film! Help! I'm becoming a Satanist! Where's my skull butter!?!?!?

Satan Digs Nekid Chicks – Satan’s Blood (1978) or if you want to be all proper Escalofrío

Jeff – as requested. Karl already posted his review, here’s mine. Where’s yours?

Caveat: Jeff & Karl gave me the Cliff’s Notes version of the film as I came in 47 minutes late. They kindly provided their thoughts on the well thought out and superbly written plot, Machiavellian twists, the rules of Jewish Ouija and pointed out that skull butter is probably a better lube than Crisco.

So now I know that Bob & Carol along with their dog Blackie setting out for a mini-break when Ted & Alice came along and invited them along to Satan’s Cabin. Side note: if I took one step in the house and saw Evilyn the doll displayed on the table, I would have turned around walked right out of the Manor and headed home – dolls like that are always up to no good.

Carol gets attacked by the guy who is wearing the same outfit as the fisherman who gets hit in I Know What You Did Last Summer, minus the hook of course, freaks out completely and persuades Bob to get dressed and leave. They come upon Ted & Alice all nekid in the living room and before they can say “Jesus save me” Alice channels Kathleen Turner or I suppose, it could have been Satan, and Bob & Carol are nekid too and then the fun begins.

From here on, as Karl mentions in his review is where it all gets a little confusing – Ted somehow gets shot in the temple; whether Alice killed him or he shot himself, this time getting it right, is the question. Immediately after it happens as she does her best Eddie Izzard impression and takes off on her scooter to parts unknown. Carol, apparently a nurse, sets about trying to keep him alive by applying pressure to the wound. When Alice and Doctor come back some time later, the Doc takes one look at Ted and declares that Bob killed him.

Apparently there’s some more naked stuff and something about Alice killing herself – I don’t know if Satan commanded it or not, as I was doing important stuff like hulling strawberries. I do know that Carol is an excellent shot and blows little Evilyn’s head off resulting in a geyser of blood the likes of which hasn’t been seen in sometime. For some reason the house decides that this is a bad thing, I don’t know if it was the zombies or the doll, yet our heroes escape and manage to get home only to find that the Salvation Army has all their crap and the neighbors are shooting the video for Dead Man’s Party.

I would say it’s worthy of 3, maybe 4 George’s based on the amount of nekidness and for the awesome soundtrack alone.

Satan's Blood (1977)

This is what happens when swinging goes bad.
This ribald little Spanish ditty opens with a bang, in the midst of some sort of satanic ritual where a creepy priest? strips a nubile lass and has his way with her in front of the black mass and then sacrifices her. End scene and cut to something completely unrelated.

A young well-to-do set of DINKs (double income no kids) and their dog leaves their apartment and drives through town. During their drive, they are recognized by an old college friend of the male half of the couple while stopped at a traffic light. This new couple invite the DINKs to their place outside of town so they can catch up on old times.

After a verrrrrry long drive they finally arrive and they settle in for some good times. Well, they have a bite, have a chat, then they start to have a bit of fun with a Ouija table which gets a little weird. Later in the evening, the DINKs walk into the den to find the other couple nude and kneeling around a freshly made pentagram. The DINKs get mesmerized or hip-mow-tized or something –ized and get nekkid too. This is when the evening hits its high point and everyone gets it ON. There is a lot of writhing and canoodling going on and at one point some sort of body lube gets applied to everyone. The best part of the lube is the container, a skull. Yeah, baby. “Whenever I have ritualistic sex in the name of my Dark Lord, I always use Old Scratch Skull Butter.”

Anyhoo, after that it gets confusing. At one point the host male is shot in the head and no one can seem to determine if it was suicide or homicide and then his body goes missing, so even death is difficult to label here. A doctor is brought to the house but can’t help if there is no patient to treat. Then the host female tries to off herself. Again, difficult to tell whether she succeeds or not. Then the host male pops up again lumbering toward the male DINK who gives him a little more lead poisoning. The DINK couple tries several times to leave while all the post-sex confusion is going on. Finally they succeed in getting the hell out of Dodge.

In addition to the dead/not dead wackiness, there are several elements that add to the Hunh? Factor. Their dog is killed for some reason that is never explained. There is a creepy doll that becomes ambulatory at one point and cries blood. It gets dispatched with a gun and then the house battens all its hatches in response to the doll’s death. I guess Satan was really attached to his dolly and threw a hissy. There is also a lurking guy outside this villa that we see in cutaways throughout the film. At one point we see another lurker who gets killed by the first lurker. No one in the house ever becomes aware of this lurker Darwinism action.

The movie ends with the DINK couple arriving back at their apartment, only to find that all their belongings are gone. Confused, the couple goes back into the hallway where they are comforted by their neighbors across the hall, who take them into their apartment to console them. Inside their neighbors’ place is a the familiar pentagram on the floor, lots o black candles and everyone from the swingers villa looking like ghouls, even the lurkers!

The final scene focuses on a young couple driving through town and when they stop at a traffic light, they get “recognized’ by a “college buddy” and invited to a villa outside of town. Who is the buddy? Why, it’s the male DINK! Ahhh, the circle of life.

Even with the confusion factored in, I still give this 3 Georges for a good solid opening, for canoodling with skull butter, and for the creepy exploding bloody head doll.

Lust for a Vampire (1971)

Stop! Hammer Time! This is the second movie in the Karnstein Trilogy. This one is the tale of a prophesied return of a creepy vampire family at their castle on the edge of town. The castle just happens to be right next to an all-girl finishing school. Some lauded author visiting the town hears about the prophesy, and more importantly gets an eyeful of the student bodies next to the castle and schmoozes his way into a teaching position at the school. Long prophesy short, the Karnsteins show up again and snack on the local students/teachers/etc. The author/teacher falls in lust with the daughter of the Karnsteins, who is attending the school. Eventually the townsfolk get their dander up and burn the castle.

This movie was full of the Hammer style: extreme close up of peoples eyes, melodramatic overacting, and tomato soup blood effects. There was enough nudity sprinkled throughout to keep me from falling asleep, but it was a little too talky. And the hinted at woman on woman element was in there as well, but limited. I expected a little more from a horror movie with a girls finishing school in it. Count Karnstein, who posed as an Austrian doctor was pretty inadvertently funny giving the answer “Heart Attack” in a low monotone whenever he performed an examination of any of the bite- marked victims to determine cause of death. Given who made this movie and when it was made, I spose this warrants 2 and a half Georges.

Nude for Satan (1974)

Whisky Tango Foxtrot. That is what you will be saying to yourself, or out loud as I did when I watched this movie. This weird little Italian film is packed to the gills with WTF moments. And during some of the slow dialoggy parts it tries to blow your mind with psychobabble and metaphysical nonsense.

It starts with a doctor driving around the Italian countryside at night looking for a particular residence and getting totally lost. He almost hits a pedestrian, or what he thinks is a pedestrian and skids off the road. Shortly after that a woman driving another car along the same stretch has a similar one car pileup. The doctor witnesses this, and seeing that she is unconscious, heads off to look for help, even though he is a doctor. He finds some weird castle, and takes a self guided tour of the place, which seems to be partially occupied by some Victorian S&M Nudist association. On his tour he meets a doppelganger of the female motorist. The doppelganger thinks he is someone else and they proceed to get it on, sorta.

Then the female motorist regains consciousness and wanders off and finds the freaky castle, where she meets some weird dude and then another dude who is the doppelganger of the doctor. They do not get it on. Eventually everyone becomes aware of their doubles and they re-pair off. Then their host, the weird dude who is not a doppelganger, has some nekkid ladies come out and dance and his creepy butler laughs maniacally a lot. I guess he is supposed to be Satan, or maybe just a distant weirdo cousin of Satan.

The ending is the only thing that makes the whole middle crazy/psychedelic/bad camera effect portion make sense, or at least excuses it. Of note: the worst spider prop/effect I have ever seen. Also of note: this film gets a Golden Treehorn, 100% of the female cast gets naked; Rita Calderoni even takes it off for both roles she plays.

Ahh, 70's Horror Movies

Rabid (1977) - David Cronenberg and producer - Ivan Reitman. You read that correctly, Ivan Reitman. Of course, you're not watching the movie for either Mr. Cronenberg or Mr. Ghostbuster's himself, you're watching for Miss Marilyn Chambers and her aversion to bras.

I must confess, I really don’t understand exactly how Rose became, ah, infected with the armpit bloodsucking penis (excellent band name), but I assume it’s because of the skin graft the plastic surgeon took from her leg and sent off for the “radical treatment process,” but I suppose it’s doomed to be one of those mysteries that you never understand (kind of like Republicans). Anyway, Rose’s “dick” has some serious problems, a lust for blood, and jizz that turns you rabid. Granted the way she gets off isn’t exactly pleasing anyone (really, would it kill her to bring flowers or call once in a while?), but it sates her hunger, and turns scores of people into rabid zombies – a good time for everyone.

Any film where they’re using regular old garbage trucks (with snipers atop them!) to haul away the dead is a winner as far as I’m concerned. Also any film that has a dude, in the middle of a epidemic (who, by the way, is wearing cream colored leather pants) breaks down and cries when his girlfriend (granted she is Typhoid Mary) wants to engage in a little phone sex (yeah, she’s gonna die in a minute, but still) is pretty damn funny.

HoPoTo requisites include numerous scenes of Marilyn’s tits, but that’s about all. I thought for a minute we were going to get a little girl on girl action (and really, why not? It’s a horror movie, there was a hot tub, and Marilyn Chambers, why the hell wasn’t there?), but sadly, it was not to be. For an “R” rated movie it was pretty damn tame. I do want to track down the movies that were playing at the p0rn theater cause they seemed fun.