Bloodsucking Freaks (Joel M. Reed, 1976)

Hoo boy. Bloodsucking Freaks. I'd never seen this infamous cult film until last night, and now I never need to see it again, though it's not without interest. There are even a few things I like about it, and it's definitely a time capsule of weird '70s New York City, but torture movies ain't my thing. Bloodsucking Freaks is probably the best torture movie since there's genuine humor and a couple of fun performances and an S&M and meta audience commentary thing going on, but, you know, it's still a torture movie. I don't want to sound like some Moral Majority scold or uptight prude or square from Delaware, but I worry about you torture movie lovers. Are you people okay? 

Granddaddy of torture porn, Bloodsucking Freaks is about an off-off-off-Broadway theater in Soho where a Grand Guignol-style theatre of the macabre show is staged. Unbeknownst to the small crowds attending the shows, these performances are legit torture. Owner/host/master of ceremonies Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) is secretly running a lucrative white slavery hustle while also keeping some of the women as sex slaves/torture victims/servants/performers. He has an assistant, a dwarf named Ralphus (Luis de Jesus), who kidnaps for him and shares his sadomasochistic tendencies. Sardu has artistic ambitions to take his torture theater to Broadway and Hollywood, and he desperately wants to be taken seriously by art critics.

When one of Sardu's performances is attended by hilariously named theater critic Creasy Silo (Alan Dellay) and famous ballet dancer Natasha Di Natalie (model Viju Krem) and her professional football player boyfriend Tom Maverick (Niles McMaster) (I gotta hand it to writer/director Reed, the character names are top-shelf), Sardu gets an idea for his greatest artistic triumph yet. The idea is sparked when Silo insults Sardu and his show and says the show is so bad he won't even give it a bad review because that will only encourage people to show up. Sardu has Ralphus kidnap the critic and the dancer in order to stage the S&M ballet The Death of a Critic. Meanwhile, Tom Maverick teams up with corrupt but effective police sergeant John Tucci (Dan Fauci) to find Natasha. Fauci later became a television producer and executive (including a partnership with Ted Danson in the '80s to produce TV movies) and put as much distance as he could between himself and this film, but he's one of the best things in it. He's hilarious, and the movie improves in the second half when his character becomes a major part of the events.

I can't completely dismiss this movie. It's often funny, some of the actors are actually good, it's incredibly weird, and the second half is pretty fun once the torture scenes are mostly dispensed with, but I can't get past my aversion to torture scenes. They make me feel dirty, especially when misogyny is added to the mix (almost all the torture victims are nude women), though the actors here knew what they were getting into and were given plenty of warning by the filmmakers. That cast, by the way, was a weird mix of porn stars, theater actors, models, and amateurs who were mostly college students. 

Speaking of the actors, several of them met unfortunately early deaths. Seamus O'Brien, who played Sardu, was stabbed to death by a burglar in his apartment in 1977 while attempting to detain the man until police arrived. Viju Krem, who played Natasha, was shot to death in a hunting accident in Minnesota in 1983. Alice Sweet Alice's Alphonso de Noble, who appears in a cameo as a representative of Sardu's white slave trade business partner, died of a heart attack in 1978. De Noble lived a highly eccentric life. A 500-pounder who kept a trunk full of food in his car, De Noble worked as a bouncer at a gay bar in Paterson, New Jersey, acted in horror movies, and liked to dress up as a priest and hang out in cemeteries on his days off. Luis de Jesus, who played Ralphus, also lived an eccentric life. He worked as a circus performer for many years before acting in porno movies, including such titles as The Anal Dwarf and Let My Puppets Come, and one of his only non-porn film roles was playing an Ewok in Return of the Jedi. He died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 36. I've said it many times before, and I'll probably keep saying it. This is a strange planet. 

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)

The early 1930s were an incredible time for horror films, with so many iconic classics setting the mold for what would follow. Island of Lost Souls is one of the strongest and strangest of those early '30s films, sharing with Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation a frank, pre-Code sexuality and unflinching look at human cruelty against a backdrop of mad-scientific hubris. Lost Souls is also much lighter on its feet and funnier than most mad scientist films, thanks to Charles Laughton's performance as Dr. Moreau and Erle C. Kenton's atmospheric visuals and fleet pacing.

So many mad scientists in film are single-minded, humorless bores, their only personality being their need to experiment, whatever the cost. Laughton's Moreau is just as single-minded, but he's got loads of personality. He's a cherubic yet intimidating dandy, full of arrogance, charm, hospitality, and menace, and Laughton has a great deal of fun with his delivery and body language. It's a performance that still feels modern, a kind of "take that, nerds" to other movie scientists.

Director Kenton started his film career as an actor in the silent era (he was one of the original Keystone Kops) before realizing his true calling behind the camera. The bulk of his directing career from the silent era until the early 1950s was in comedy (though he tackled many other genres), including multiple Abbott and Costello films (can't decide if my favorite title is Pardon My Sarong or It Ain't Hay), and he spent his last decade in the business directing for television, mostly in the detective and Western genres. Besides Lost Souls, he directed four other horror films (The Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and The Cat Creeps). He retired in 1960 and died of Parkinson's in 1980.

Based on an H.G. Wells story, Island of Lost Souls begins with the crew of a cargo ship discovering a shipwreck survivor, Edward Parker (Richard Arlen), and bringing him on board. I have to digress for a second and tell you how Richard Arlen got his break in the movie business because it's one of the craziest Hollywood origin stories. Arlen (real name Sylvanus Mattimore) was lost after his World War I service, drifting from city to city, odd job to odd job. He ended up in Los Angeles working as a motorcycle messenger for a film lab. While delivering some film to the Paramount Pictures lot, he crashed into a gate and broke his leg. As Arlen was being attended to by the studio doctor, an executive saw him, thought he had movie star good looks, and signed him to an acting contract. He was initially pretty terrible and worked mostly as an extra, but he slowly improved as an actor and ended up with a fairly successful movie career. Digression over. Parker is brought on board the ship, which is carrying a cargo of caged animals to a mysterious island, and is nursed back to health by Montgomery (Arthur Hohl), an ex-doctor who works for the man living on the mysterious island. After the cargo drop-off, the ship is supposed to bring Parker to the port at Apia, where his fiancee Ruth (Leila Hyams of Freaks fame, who would also work with Laughton again in one of my favorite comedies, Ruggles of Red Gap) is anxiously awaiting his healthy return so they can get married. Instead, Parker angers the drunken, loudmouthed ship's captain, Davies (Stanley Fields), who dumps him off with the cargo on the mysterious island of Dr. Moreau (Laughton).

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, this is a really weird island. Moreau is not too happy to have a stranger visiting, since, besides himself, Montgomery, and the island's one woman (Kathleen Burke), the island is populated by strange humanoid beasts, including Bela Lugosi as The Sayer of the Law ("are we not men?" later becoming an important phrase for Devo). Parker is a bit freaked out, but Moreau warms to his presence, which makes Montgomery uncomfortable, which in turn makes Parker uncomfortable. Soon, Moreau is very invested in the sexy Ms. Burke getting to know Parker (with sexy results?). When Parker discovers the origin of the beast-men. and his fiancee Ruth tracks him down with the help of unflappable captain Donahue (Paul Hurst), all hell breaks loose.

Kenton creates such a beautiful, unsettling atmosphere with his shots of fog on the water, thick island vegetation, glimpses of the beast-men through the trees, the sultry but disturbing Burke, Moreau's home, and the dark of night. He tells the story with quick, B-movie economy but also with eerie, poetic imagery and a mastery of tone. Wells hated this adaptation of his work because he thought the horror drowned out the philosophy, but, with all due respect, Wells can piss up a rope. This is one of the great horror movies, full of life and spirit and humor and sensuality and terror and atmosphere.