Curtis Threesome

 

 (imdb)

DEAD OF NIGHT-1977-TV movie trilogy by director Dan Curtis and screenwriter Richard Matheson, narrated by John Dehner. 

 In "Second Chance"-A guy named Frank (Ed Begley Jr.) restores an old car that had been in a car crash (killing two people) in 1926. While driving it on a back road, he's transported to 1926. His car is stolen and he's stranded but the next day he's back in his own time. He meets Helen (Christina Hart) and her father (EJ Andre) & mother (Ann Doran) who have the exact same car. It seems Frank may have changed the past. From a story by Jack Finney.

In the second story "No Such Thing As A Vampire"-Prof. Gheria (Patrick Macnee) calls on his friend Michael (Horst Bucholtz) to help his daughter Alexis (Anjanette Comer) who he says has been attacked by a vampire. Elisha Cook Jr. is his butler. This has a good twist ending. From a story by Matheson.

"Bobby"-A woman (Joan Hackett) uses witchcraft to try and bring back her dead son. He (Lee Montgomery) comes back but wants to murder mom. His "friend" shows up in the finale. Based on the WW Jacobs classic short story "The Monkey's Paw". 

Director Dan Curtis made this a year after the feature film BURNT OFFERINGS. It's very good (especially for TV) but is usually pushed aside in favor of his earlier anthology TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975). 

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How Scary?

 

 (TMDB)

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH-1971-Jessica (Zohra Lampert) and her husband Duncan (Barton Heyman) leave NYC to live in an old farmhouse after Jessica has been released from a mental institution. Accompanying them is their hippie friend Woody (Kevin O'Connor). The nearby town is occupied by unfriendly men who all seem to have bandages on some part of their bodies. Jessica has strange visions and hears voices but says nothing fearing her Duncan will think her illness is returning. When they get to the house, they are surprised to find Emily (Gretchen Corbett), a kind of hippie squatter living there. Jessica invites her to stay for a while. An antique dealer tells the couple about a woman who drowned right before her wedding. Local legend says she still exists and roams the island as a vampire. Are Jessica's suspicions and visions real or only in her head? 

This film has garnered some accolades recently even touted as one of the scariest movies ever! It's interesting to a point but the actors sometimes seem as though they are making up their dialogue as they go along. The strange open-ended finale doesn't really explain things. 2 years later, director John Hancock made BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY.

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Blood Bath AKA

 

BLOOD BATH-1966-After it seems like a vampire killed a woman, some beatniks (including Sid Haig & Jonathan Haze) check out Max (Karl Schanzer) the artist's new painting. Then waitress Daisy (Marissa Mathes) has a discussion with ballet dancing Dorean (Linda/Lori Saunders) about a secret meeting she has with a man. 

While looking at some paintings Daisy meets artist Antonio Sordi (William Campbell), who's artist ancestor was burned at the sake after being betrayed by his mistress Melizza. While having a flashback/hallucination, he turns into the vampire and kills Daisy with a meat cleaver. Sordi is also the person Dorean was meeting on the beach. Later at a party, he attacks a woman who falls into a pool. Daisy's sister Donna (Sandra Knight) goes looking for her (Max recognizes her from Sordi's latest painting) but Sordi denies knowing her. She learns about Sordi's ancestor who came back as a vengeful vampire after being burned, eventually being staked. 

Donna sees a connection between the missing women and Sordi. She decides to shadow him but he kills her on a merry go round (while others do nothing). His vampire self terrorizes Dorean but she escapes. Max has a fight with the vampire who seems to fall to his death but his body disappears. Poor Dorean seeks shelter at Sordi's bell tower residence where she discovers a dead corpse (Patrick Magee). Sordi isn't dead and thinks Doreann is Melizza come back to him. Fortunately some of his victims come back to life and throw him in bubbling wax. 

This movie has a crazy history. It started out life as a US-Yugoslavian production called “Operation Titan” for which Roger Corman provided American actors William Campbell and Sid Haig as he planned to distribute it in the US. Corman was unhappy with the resulting film and finally asked Jack Hill to write a new script and shoot new scenes while incorporating some of the original. Hill turned it into a horror film called “Portrait in Terror”. Corman was still unhappy with this new version and hired Stephanie Rothman to shoot more scenes. Unfortunately star William Campbell refused to do anymore re-shoots and an unidentified actor portrays the vampire monster which is why the Sordi character transforms into a totally different monster! Sid Haig's character also grows a beard for his later scenes! New scenes were also shot for a TV version called “Track of The Vampire”. 

There's always a story with Roger Corman!

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Vampire?

THE VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES-1946-Dopey Dr. Evans (Robert Livingston) romances nurse Susan Drake (Adrian Booth aka Lorna Gray) . Their boss Dr. Maynard (Charles Trowbridge) tells them blood is missing from their supply. Later that night Maynard is visited by an ex-patient Oraman Merks (Ian Keith) who says he takes some kind of voodoo drug that brought him back from the dead and now he needs blood to survive. He kills the doctor. Then we learn that Maynard's chemist (Earle Hodges) is Merks' brother who'd been stealing the blood. Merks kills him too and embalms both bodies. Detective Blair is sure Evans and Susan are the killers. The pair go to the old Merks home and discover Merks' coffin empty. Eventually Merks kidnaps Sarah making her his hypnotized slave. Just when it looks like Sarah will kill Evans, Blair shoots Merks and he falls to his death. 

This crazy little Republic studios short film (57 minutes) directed by Phillip Ford doesn't make much sense. Ian Keith was one of the handful of actors considered for the title role in the original DRACULA before Lugosi.

Oh yeah...and no zombies!

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