When people start asking you for suggestions.
Last week, my Twitter friend ‘Mad Cat’ Cattis asked on behalf of his ‘back-up human’ for me to recommend some cheesy horror films from the 70‘s and 80‘s. Now granted, there are some that I have covered during the last two Halloween Horrorfests, so I advise this petitioner to also wander through the achives associated with this month-long festival (and for those films I discuss below which I discussed during the Horrorfest, I will provide a link to the specific article.) Some of these films I discussed on episodes of Dread Media, so I will provide the link for that.
So I started going through my files for possible suggestions...and started finding a lot of them. So what lies below are ten films I recommend which are kinda weird, kinda cheesy--sometimes kinda freakin’ scary--that were released between 1970 and 1975. I will return at a later date with films from 1976-1980, then 1981-85 and 86-90.
Since the request was for ‘cheesy and scary’ films, I focused more on lower budget entries. Most of them are kinda silly--some of them wildly so--but I included some real frightening fare in this list as well.
And if you’d like me to suggest some stuff, I invite you to buy me a Ko-Fi and private message me with your request. I’ll be glad to comply!
Got it? Let’s begin...
TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1970)
I am a big fan of The Golden Age of British Cinema, typified by the work of Hammer Films...and the 70‘s was where that Age started going seriously off the rails before it crashed completely. This film is directed by Peter Sasdy, it's the last of the really good entries in Hammer’s Dracula series, and it’s notable for how Christopher Lee’s Dracula is kinda treated like the hero. A group of decadent rich people are conned into conducting a Satanic ritual...but when those guys kill the young acolyte leading the ritual, Drac comes back from the dead and turns all their kids into bloodthirsty monsters. In addition to Lee, watch for the divine Linda Hayden as one of the kids....we’ll be seeing her a little later.
THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971)This, which is one of my favorite films overall, was directed by Robert Fuest, a very...dramatic and stylized director who got his start working on my favorite television series, the 60‘s spy romp The Avengers. It’s a film that, to me, acts as a bridge between the Gothic Horrors of the last half century and the more garish, confrontational Horrors that were just emerging from the United States. Vincent Price gives one of his best performances as a theologist/expert musician who has come back from seeming death to wreck havoc on the nine medical professionals who let his wife die on the surgery table. Since he uses elaborate methods based around the Plagues of Egypt, I’m betting young Jigsaw saw this and took notes! It’s witty, its Art Deco set design is fun to look at, and it features a mute performance by the great and gorgeous Virginia Noth (who retired after marrying an English Lord!) as the ultimate henchwoman, Vulnavia!
This film was made by Tigon, which was a grimy, low-rent counterpart to Hammer. Some of their work was downright goofy, like The Blood Beast Terror, but this film that started out as an portmanteau, is a nightmarishly twisted little thing that benefits from its chaotic nature, its use of natural lighting, and an exceptional cast of British character actors...including a Master Class of a performance by Linda Hayden as the villianous Angel Blake!
NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972)This film is based on an Australian satirical novel The Year of The Angry Rabbit. Unlike the novel, it plays things totally straight. It features a bunch of aging Hollywood types like Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, Stuart Whitman and DeForrest ‘Bones’ Kelly contending with a plague of giant, bloodthirsty...rabbits. It is as gloriously silly as it sounds, especially when we get to the not-so-special effects of actual rabbits rampaging through toy railroad model towns and stuntmen in rabbit suits with blood on their teeth. One of those things you may end up dying from laughter watching.
This mostly improvised film was directed by Ivan ‘Ghostbusters’ Reitman and starred a very young Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin before they gained fame as founders of SCTV. It is inept, it is hilariously low budget, it is nonsensical...and yet it is endearingly charming in its goofiness. I defy you to not smile during this slice of Canuckploitation about a couple who end up spending the night in a...restaurant?...managed by a weird cult leader in a top hat and cape and the three literal man-eaters (a brunette, a blonde and a redhead, natch) who are his daughters/slaves/whatever. Sadly, I don’t think the American cut of the film survives, which featured a ‘Horror Horn’ gimmick to warn scaredy-cats for the not-really-gory scenes of violence.
Many people assume this film is British, but it’s actually Spanish...and it is a crackingly good sci-fi/horror mash-up featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing joining forces to stop an alien missing link from taking control first of the Trans-Siberian Express, then the world. Really cool, really well paced...plus we get Telly Savalas as the baddest mutha-f’in cossack of all!
You know Bob Clark from either Black Christmas, Porky’s or A Christmas Story. He also directed this Vietnam-era variant on ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ with make-up effects by Tom Savini. It’s fairly dark and gruesome, short enough to not wear on you and unfortunately falls through the crack due to Clark’s...eccentric career
The 70‘s was an insane time for Hammer Films. New chairman Michael Carreras was notorious for cruising the canteen asking writers to pitch new ideas...which is how my hero Brian Clemens of The Avengers fame ended up writing and directing this pulpy-as-all-Hell ‘horroventure’ about a possibly immortal, swashbuckling, pot-smoking vampire killer, his hunchbacked assistant, and the hot gypsy girl (played by Caroline Munro, one of the most beautiful women to ever walk the Earth) he picks up on the way to defeating a strange, youth-sucking monster. It’s strange, it’s unique, it has some kick ass sword fights, and it’s tons of fun.
Forget the rather campy secondary title--this is a serious cool blaxploitation horror film about a woman getting revenge for her lover’s death thanks to Baron Samedi and a number of creepy, cobweb-encrusted zombies. Marki Bey, besides being flat-out gorgeous, skillfully plays this film’s two extremes, toggling between super-sweet southern belle and vengeful, spiteful vigilante. It also features Robert Quarry, the not-very-good aspiring horror idol.
This is Robert Fuest again, and it is a ludicrously out there satanic panic melodrama featuring William Shatner trying to save the souls of his family from cult leader Ernest Borgnine--who, as we find out, is very likely a demon complete with horns and goat-face. Even though much of the film is as stylized as the Phibes films, it is notorious for its climax, which features a snow-globe of the damned and a goopy-as-all-hell sequence where a lot of cultists (including a blink-and-you-miss-it John Travolta) melt into a messy puddle. It’s real silly, but I guarantee you haven’t seen anything quite like this before.
Next Time: Ten Cheesy Horror Films from the later part of the 70‘s!
If you’d like me to recommend a list of stuff especially for you, please buy me a Ko-Fi and message me with your request. If you’d like to support me further, please consider becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon and receive lots of free goodies throughout the year including exclusive essays, movie commentaries and podcasts.
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