The Caller (1987)

I just have to write a review for this absolutely nonsensical and awful movie. Believe me, the movie starts off promisingly, as a typical low budget 80's thriller with a beautiful woman and her invisible stalker who peeps at her from public payphones. Then
 we follow her home through a deserted forest where the woman notices a broken down car with a broken doll inside the glove compartment. At home, she is seen getting ready for a shower as the same stalker peeks through her glass doors and windows.

 The woman who is not named throughout the movie, senses someone's presence and immediately makes a call to her daughter Allisson who lives far away and we hear the woman say that she would take care of everything and that she would make her daughter proud of her. The woman then begins to prepare dinner for a night visitor(probably her boyfriend) when she hears a sound and goes out to the courtyard. She notices that the back tyre of her vehicle has been deflated with a glass bottle and this makes her edgy.

Up till this point, the audience would be in rapt attention, waiting for the stalker to show up and start playing games with her. But nothing comes out of this expectation since soon enough a mysterious stranger(Malcolm McDowell) appears at her doorway and asks for shelter as his car has broken down at the edge of the forest. He calls up the tow-away service and asks for a lift back, and while he waits, the woman and stranger become engaged in conversation. The woman gives no explanation of why she lives in such isolation but states that her husband was killed in the war and that her daughter is away. The man says he is British from London and that he has a girlfriend. Then there follows a bizarre talk on murder and the woman attempts to stab the stranger but he knocks her down. When the woman tells him that she is expecting a guest, the stranger(or caller) prefers waiting outside.

Over the next few days, the stranger follows the woman everywhere, even at her home and breaks into her home several times. The two set out exposing the lies and inconsistencies of each other's stories- the man says she killed her husband, child and lover and that she hangs dead dolls in her daughter's cupboards; the woman says that the stranger has never been to London and that his car never broke down. Through this strange rambling and intense conversation, one would be hoping for a glimmer of reason and logic to both character's motivations.

But unfortunately, the movie tries to be too complex for its own good and thus ultimately fails to appeal to even the most far-fetched imagination possible. There is a half cooked and unconvincing love story between the two characters which leads nowhere and then there is the woman who appears to accept the stranger in her life without knowing his intentions. It is just a clumsily executed attempt where the two people seek to pry open the secrets and lies in the other's life with apparently no meaning. And to top it all, there is the ending which is so idiotic that I am sure that even the feeble attempt of the filmmakers to build a story falls flat on the face. The 'twist' ending converts the 'so called thriller' into a sci-fi movie where the stranger reveals himself to be an android who has been appointed to prevent the woman from getting back to civilization. It seems that the woman has been separated from her daughter and her husband and lover have been murdered and she herself has been isolated by a group of machines who wish to control human emotions, which attempt is of course part of some experiment. Seems like a 'Brave New World' project right ?

It is futile to even try to reason with the script or the aspirations of the film team which wanted to make this movie. Why did they want to make this movie ? Is there a hidden meaning to the words of the two characters ? It is better if these questions remained unanswered. 

Body Puzzle( Misteria) 1992

This is another made for TV quickie effort by italian director Lamberto Bava, which  feels and looks rather cheap in its execution. The story is pretty intriguing, unfortunately the lackluster treatment meted out to the story and an over-the-top ending mar what could have been a taut thriller. Here we have an  maniac who for no reasons apparent murders strangers in grisly fashion and removes an organ from their bodies( a heart, a kidney, and then eyeballs).Hence the police team is confronted with the puzzle of 'body parts' of victims and their connection to the killer, in order that they can discern his motives.

The police officer investigating the murders tracks down the woman who has 'received' an organ wrapped in a packet from the first victim and placed in her refrigerator, and has her husband's writing on top of the package. The woman Tracy is young and recently widowed and has more than a few troubles ahead of her. The officer Michele finds out that the killer had not broken into her house, but rather had a set of keys for them. The letter by her husband Abe was also supposedly left on the package so that Tracy would recognise it. Her husband's grave has been dug out and the body has disappeared. Michele delves a little deeper into Abe's history and discovers two important things- one, that Abe used to rent a country house after his marriage to Tracy where he would get both men and women for sexual trysts; second, Tracy tells him that he had a friend Timothy Bell who was so obsessed with Abe, and so devastated by his marriage to Tracy that he left menacing letters to Tracy and Abe and broke into their apartment several times. Michele suspects that Tim and Abe could have been lovers, and that Tim could be indeed committing these murders. The motive of Tim is also soon made clear- all the victims have had organ transplants from Abe before his death, and hence Tim is trying to resurrect Abe by stealing his corpse and collecting the organs that belonged to him. He also finds that Timothy was undergoing treatment at a psychiatric hospital and that he had taken over the identity of Abe, which indeed was consolation for him rather than facing the reality of Abe's demise.

Michele also finds that Timothy, after his release from the hospital, had been working as a helper in the general hospital, and from here he stole the files relating to Abe's organ transplant, which made it possible for him to trace the victims. A surprising 'twist' occurs almost three-fourths through the movie. It turns out that the police is not so efficient after all, Michele has got his fundamentals wrong. The man he assumed to be Timothy was in fact Abe, so now the facts get a reversal- the police in fact are looking for Abe, who has for some reasons survived, and it is Tim who is dead. Abe has assumed Tim's identity and is collecting his transplanted organs from their recipients by killing them. He has also stolen Tim's body so that he can bring him back from death.

The police race against time to save two more organ recipients of Timothy, a pregnant woman who has had a kidney transfer, and another woman, a primary school teacher, who had her vision restored by cornea transplant from Timothy. Michele manages to rescue the pregnant lady, but  the teacher is unfortunately killed by Abe. This scene is particularly disconcerting, the teacher is stabbed several times in a class full of blind children, and one of the kids even has blood spurted on his face.Abe then removes the eyeballs from the victim and leaves.

Meanwhile, Tracy has found signs that a man is residing in her summer house and Michele agrees to stay above for the night in order that he can catch the intruder. When Tracy is alone in her house for a few minutes, Abe appears with a knife and attempts to kill her too. When she tries to make him understand his mistakes and tells him she still loves him, a supposedly repentant Abe rushes out and speeds off in his motor-bike. Tracy follows him, but Abe is hit by a car coming in the opposite direction of the road, and dies when he falls through the windscreen of the car.

A recent DVD version was released by Raro Video in 2011 running to 102 minutes. Overall, this is a forgettable movie by Bava and deserves a miss.

Eyewitness (Testimone Oculare) 1990

One of the last efforts of Italian horror director Lamberto Bava, this is a fairly standard thriller starring Barbara Cupisti as a blind eyewitness to a murder in a shopping complex. The beginning of the film shows Cupisti( Elisa) leave a mall after shopping for some lingerie. Since it is closing time, she sends her companion and helper Carl to take the car out of the parking lot while she pays for her items. However, even as she finds her way out, the entire complex is shut off.

Meanwhile, a staff at the mall is working late, completing some filing work. Her boyfriend Marcello slips into her room and the two engage in enthusiastic sex. However, the Director of the mall happens to be a sex pervert who sees the two from the window outside. He upsets a flower pot, and the staff, thinking it to be a watchman, ushers Marcello out and asks him to leave. Just then, the director gets hold of the girl and brutally rapes and then murders her. Elise is present at the crime scene and hears the staff's cry for help along with glass breaking( the director killer smashes the victim's head into a glass door after strangulating her with a leather whip). The police commissioner Marra doesn't trust her instincts, especially as she reveals herself to be blind, and is suspicious of Carl, who has a shady past criminal record, and as he happened to be found at the crime scene. He sends Carl for a blood test in order to check his blood with the blood found underneath the victim's nails. Elisa recounts to the commissioner that she felt the murderer pass close to her, and through her senses, she could deduce that it was a man who was assured in his steps and knew his way around the premises, thus suggesting that the killer worked in the complex. Although seemingly crucial, Marra disregards her statement as emanating from a person whose evidence would never be considered since Elisa has seen nothing. Elisa also tells Marra that she and Karl both stay in a community for handicapped persons, and that they manage to live independent, structured lives without much dependence on anyone.
 
The real killer is also brought to the commissioner's office for questioning, and although the police are unable to elicit any information from him, he learns of the presence of a eyewitness. He however mistakenly identifies the District Attorney Tiziana as the eyewitness, and then follows her to the hotel where she has a night shift protecting Elisa. Tiziana is murdered in the same manner as the earlier victim, first being violated, then strangulated. Elisa discovers the body and since  Carl was present again at the scene ( he escaped from the hospital where he was taken for the blood test in order to be near and protect Elisa), the police enlist him as a suspect, and Elisa as her confederate. In between all these actions, Marra and Elisa develop feelings for each other, and he is reluctant to admit her as a confederate to Karl in his alleged murders.

However, he and the police force begin searching for Karl, now more than suspicious of his role in the crimes. Elisa tries to warn Karl off against the police, and in the process Karl is murdered viciously by the store manager/real killer, who has followed Elisa to her secret rendezvouz  with Karl.

With Karl's death, his name is cleared from the murders of the two women, and Marra asks Elisa to return to her community since there had already been two attempts on her life, and in any case since she is blind, she could be of no possible use to him. The killer follows her there, disguised as a person with double glaucoma. Elisa instantly recognises him through his voice and his facial features( she had earlier examined his face at the dockyard where Karl was attacked and killed). She says nothing of her fears to Marra, but takes matters into her own hands. Trying to distract the killer by seducing him, another blind woman sprays acid to his face, and thereafter other handicapped persons bludgeon him to death with their wheelchairs and canes. Marra, who had earlier been to the killer's home and seen his disturbing toys and leather whip, is convinced that the store manager is a disturbed psychotic sex pervert who is responsible for the murders, and reaches the community just in time to see the killer's body. In the final scene, Marra and Elise reunite as Marra formally closes investigation into the case.

This is quite a difficult movie to procure, and available only on a limited DVD edition. Although I would be inclined to categorise this as a giallo film, the difficulty lies in the fact that the identity of the killer is disclosed with the very first murder, and there are no red herrings thrown in by the director to confuse the viewer. The story plays out as straightforward as possible, showing both the hunter and the hunted in a race against time to expose the other. The performance of Barbara Cupisti as the blind eyewitness is commendable, and the music is soft and pleasant. Go ahead and watch it if you manage to locate a copy.

Angel of Destruction (1994) 

Best Lines- (Brit Alwood to the thugs who kidnap and try to rape a prostitute, as she saves the girl) "The nose job is for the girl, the vasectomy's free"

 (Delilah to Brit as she tries to hire her as a bodyguard and Brit explains why the police are better equipped)
Brit-Why don't you like cops ?
Delilah-My father was a cop.
Brit-So was mine.
Delilah- Did your father rape you ?
Brit is speechless !

This is a enjoyable movie starring the 'queen' of B- films Maria Ford in the lead. As is the case with most movies of its genre and budget, there is not much of a story to recount. After presenting a threadbare plot involving bi-sexual singers, psychopaths, undercover cops and an atmosphere of eroticism, the events in the movie just unfold without much logic, and have only to be seen without trying to believe.

The story relates the search of  Jo Alwood( Ford) for a vicious psychopath who has murdered Jo's sister, Brit. Brit was an undercover cop who was called to protect the Controversial rockstar Delilah, the person who is being stalked by the psycho named Robert Kell. After Brit's death, Jo is hired by Delilah to protect her against the psycho and all other present or imminent dangers to her life. Well, the obsession of Kell over Delilah seems to be that she resembles his dead mother with whom Kell was apparently having an incestuous affair. However, Kell is really more unhinged that that 'mother' fact would suggest, for he has a fancy of dressing his victims-to-be in wedding gowns and then declaring the marriage vows to them, before killing them gruesomely by slitting their throats. At each crime scene, he leaves the victim's finger with a ring on it. It is the pattern on the ring which leads Jo and her partner Aaron Sayles( her lover, and ex-boyfriend of sister Brit) to a bar which has the same logo on its entrance. After beating up a few men present there(including the bartender) she manages to extract the relevant information, that the person who she has been looking for( her sister's murderer) is the Kell guy. The bartender also informs Jo and Sayles that Kell was a mercenary in Angola who managed to save a few men who were left for dead by someone, and now these men have become his henchmen and stand by Kell for everything he may do. This Angola angle also has a presence during the beginning of the movie when Kell and a girl proceed to a hotel room. There, Kell leaves the girl and reaches another room, and here he attacks seven men and then last throws a man called Carl from a window by stating-"You left my men to die in Angola. I didn't like that". Whatever that means, it at least shows that Kell is not an easy guy  to fool with.

About one-third into the film, another plot to kill Delilah is disclosed, this time by Delilah's music producer. Lusso. Here at least is a reason we can understand, namely that this Lusso person is angered by her "bad girl Peggy Lee shit" and wants her to change her image to "regular rock and roll". However, since he becomes convinced that Delilah would not cooperate, he hires a group of thugs to murder her, so that he claim the insurance money he has invested in her !

Next, we see this murderous gang enter the house of Delilah and head to her room. This seems a bad time for everyone, a time when Delilah and her girlfriend( meaning her romantic interest, thus the 'controversial' tag) are getting ready for bed, and Jo has just put on only a thong. Well as luck has it, Jo has to combat these intruders in the thong, and she does a brilliant job in it, knocking all men dead with just her wrists. Kell appears too in the house, but it seems his motive was to protect Delilah, and he is keeping her safe till a specific time or event, when he would eventually kill her. Thereafter, Delilah's girlfriend is abducted by Kell, and he demands a price for her safe return- that Jo perform naked on-stage ! This indeed is not too difficult for Jo, for earlier, before she ended up as a cop, she had been a stripper to make ends meet.

Immediately after the performance, Lusso sends more men to kill Delilah, and Jo finishes off all of them. Then comes Lusso himself, and he too meets a similar end. The scene shifts to Delilah's home where her boyfriend and manager Tony( yes, she is dating a woman and man both at same time, and as per her own words "Tony manages her in more ways than one") visits her and they make up for their misunderstandings. Jo walks out to the front gate and is knocked out by one of Kell's men, Kell appears and takes Delilah away. When Jo gains consciousness, Delilah's girlfriend who has been "returned" safely as per Kell's promise informs Jo where Delilah has been taken. Thus, Jo follows the duo to the "Honolulu State Prison"( truth to speak, this particular location reminded me of an abandoned massive public lavatory, what with its peeling broken walls and grafitti, and fact is that the whole film was shot on location in Philippines, yet the idea was to project the occurrence of its events in the US state of Honolulu). There, Kell has already made preparations for his bizarre "bride ritual" by having Delilah tied up. When Jo enters, he is amused and says that "the maid of honour is here". 

Jo demands Delilah to be released, but Kell provokes her to a fight. Jo does manage to defeat Kell( with timely help from boyfriend Sayles) and he falls to his death from the stairs. Then Jo, Delilah and Sayles walk out of the supposed prison, and Delilah proposes drinks for all of them. 

As a Maria Ford fan, I could not miss this one. It is sheer brainless delight where Ms. Ford shows her ample martial acts skill( she is a black-belt in Karate). Also, this movie is a virtual copy of the 1992 "Blackbelt" starring "Dragon" Wilson, made by the same director Charles Philip Moore, only difference being that in that movie, the lead was male, while here we have a female detective. Watch it when you have an hour and half free( running time is 86 minutes) and want to indulge in some silly entertainment.

Showgirl Murders (1996)


Even if you are a fan of Maria Ford, it would be difficult to enjoy this movie. The story is incredibly stupid, the characters are even worse, and even the antics of Maria become annoying after a time, with the relatively short  running time of 82 minutes seeming a torture.So to begin, the plot is about a seductive and mysterious woman Jessica Cross( obviously portrayed by Ford) who is apparently on the run after having fleeced her gangster boyfriend of his money and having left him for dead. She enters the lives of Mitch and Carolyn Goodman, a couple who own and run a nightclub which is almost out of  business. She convinces Mitch to take her in and allow him to manage the club, even though his wife has her doubts as to the motive of Jessica. As it turns out, Jessica is an angel in 'disguise' for she helps the Goodman couple to rake in substantial money by turning the club to a strip joint. Soon, the club starts teeming with people eager for a glimpse of the beautiful Jessica parading semi-naked on the makeshift stage created within the club premises. What follows is a series of unnecessary scenes showing Jessica in her striptease 'act'. However, these scenes establish an important fact, that Mitch has become deeply enamored of Jessica and increasingly distant from his depressive, nagging wife ( it is revealed that Carolyn, the wife, has insomnia and drinking problems because she has caused the accident of a young child some years earlier). It does not prove difficult for Jessica to completely captivate and bring Mitch under her control, and then she incites him to murder his wife so that the two can be happy together in their new-found love. The first try fails due to Mitch's weakness ( call it his humane nature), but in the second attempt, things go according to plan and Carolyn is killed by Mitch with some help from Jessica. Next, the police come questioning about the murder and probe links of Jessica with the gangster who' was' her boyfriend. Mitch becomes disturbed that Jessica has hidden her past from him and shows his suspicion towards her, however she manages to convince him that she had a troubled past and that she loves him.
 Mitch and Jessica marry, and the money they made earlier has been invested as insurance for the club, in the name of Mitch. Then comes the 'dead' ex-boyfriend of Jessica, and it turns out that he and Jessica have conspired to trap poor Mitch and kill him later after taking his money. After this, things are simple. Mitch is killed when Jessica and her boyfriend set fire to the club,and then Jessica claims the club insurance money to emerge rich. Though the police investigating the murder of Carolyn and the 'accidental' death of Mitch is doubtful of Jessica, he has no evidence and has to let the matter drop. Towards the end, Jessica again shows her duplicitous nature when she shoots the boyfriend dead in a remote place. The reason is simple- she has no wish to share the money with him. The last scene shows Jessica in an exotic island setting, enjoying her new found independence and importantly, richness. This scene was reminiscent of the end moment of "Body Heat" where a similarly treacherous wife is seen celebrating after having betrayed two men, although the plot and characterization of "body Heat" come nowhere close to the mess that is "Showgirl Murders". And by the way, if you are expecting a movie with murders of striptease performers in the line of "Stripped to Kill", as the title suggests, then you would be sorely disappointed.

For fans of Maria Ford, I suggest that you stay away from this stinker, and instead watch the brilliantly entertaining " Angel of Destruction(1994)" or the sensible "Naked Obsession(1991)" .   

Popcorn (1991)

Marketed with the tagline-"Buy a bag...Go home in a box", Popcorn is a quirky little movie, with a very interesting premise. Jill Schoelen stars as the young film student Maggie who has disturbing nightmares about a strange man who uses a long curvy knife in an attempt to stab a girl, and a then a woman who is lying on an altar. The man's severed head is also seen on a dinner-table plate, and in the background there is some explosion or storm through which the girl is running before the man catches her hand.
The entire movie was shot in Kingston, Jamaica and the disused Dreamland theater used by the film students for screening their all-night "horrorathon" is Ward Theater, in my opinion a perfect setting for the crazed maniac to be lurking in wait for his victims, with its numerous rooms, corridors and dark passages. The audiences' preference for reggae music is also attributable to the prevalent Jamaican culture.

The group of film students decide to hold this movie festival consisting of sci-fi B-movies from the 50's- The Stench, Mosquito and The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man, along with the gimmicks with which these movies were originally released( the clips of these B-movies were made exclusively for Popcorn, and are not part of any actual film). For instance, for Electrified Man, there are electrical "buzzers' fixed to the seats, which are set off in sequence whenever the on-screen character is subjected to electric shocks, and there is a giant prop mosquito which is remote-controlled to fly near the theater ceiling during the screening of Mosquito.
A movie memorabilia shop owner assists the group in their efforts. As they search through the trunks brought in from the shop, the group stumbles across a roll of film titled "The Possessor". When the movie is run through a projector, Maggie becomes deeply affected on seeing close-ups of the lip, forehead and the eyes of the same man whom she has seen in her nightmares. Davis, one of the festival organisers, informs them that "The Possessor" was the only movie made by deranged filmmaker Lanyard Gates, who sacrificed his family during the premiere of his movie, but was also burnt to death in the theater on account of an accidental fire.
At home, Maggie tells her mother (Dee Wallace) about their discovery of "The Possessor". Her mother looks scared and pleads with Maggie to cancel her festival participation plans, and instead to accompany her on a holiday, to which Maggie refuses. Then the mother receives a threatening call and pays a nocturnal visit to Dreamland Theater, from where she disappears.
Later, at the opening of the night festival, Maggie notices a man resembling her tormentor at the ticket counter, but following him, she loses sight of him. She then meets her on-off boyfriend Mark and tells him that Lanyard Gates may be alive, and may have made his way to the theater . The two then wander off in search of Gates.
The death scenes are not gory, however they have been innovatively managed. For instance, the first victim, Davis, is shown to coordinate  the prop mosquito's movements, but he loses control and the killer instead sets it to fly directly to the victim, thus he is killed upon being impaled by its plastic stinger. Then, using a variety of ingenuous devices, the killer creates a skin mask of Davis which he dons in order to escape notice. The second victim, Tanya goes over to 'Davis' in order to steal a kiss from him in the dark, but in the film's most disorienting scene, as she starts kissing him, finds his skin peeling off to reveal a grotesque face.

The killer is revealed to be Toby, who is a film director, a part of the group organising the festival. He takes Maggie hostage and tells her that long ago, he and his mother had been sitting in the front row during Lanyard Gate's screening of possessor. Gates murdered his wife on-stage but before he could harm his daughter Sara, her aunt Susan ( none other than Dee Wallace) shot him dead. In the process, the theater was engulfed by a fire from which Sara escaped but Toby's mother was scarred to death. As for Toby, he survived with horrific injuries and had to go through extensive facial grafts. He also tells her that she is Sara, Lanyard's daughter, and blames both her and Susan for his misery. He discloses his idea to kill them in the same manner as Lanyard had done years ago, as a 'live show' before the audience, while "The Possessor" is being shown in the background.
In the meantime, Mark visits Toby's apartment and through newspaper clippings and pictorial representations, understands Toby's hatred for Maggie, and apprehending danger to her life, rushes back to help her.
Toby then takes control of the screening booth and inserts the roll of Possessor. He plasters Susan and takes her and Maggie to the stage, in final preparation for their sacrifice, which he has planned to mirror the horrific drama which had unfolded during the original screening of Possessor. The waiting audience cheer him on, thinking his antics to be another maverick surprise at the horror-festival.
In the moment of crisis, Mark arrives and uses his belt and a rope to swing towards the stage. He falls down among the props clumsily, but as an effective consequence, the prop mosquito gets electrified by flying sparks, and moves towards Toby, impaling him.
If you are looking for a genuinely enjoyable horror-comedy with lots of schlock and cheese, then look no further than Popcorn. A  minus factor permeating the structure of the movie is the inherent lack of coherence and logic, but otherwise you won't be disappointed !
Popcorn was released on DVD in 2001 by Elite Entertainment. It was discontinued in 2010. Synapse Films is releasing a dual Blu Ray-DVD limited steel box edition in March 2017, and the extras include the usual radio spots and theatrical trailer covered in the Elite DVD plus a making of featurette and interviews and audio commentaries with the actors, screenwriter and the make up artist.

Lisa (1990)

Directed by Gary Sherman, Lisa is the story of the eponymous character, a 14 year old precocious girl, who is prohibited by her over-protective mother from dating until she turns 16, and has a rather strange hobby. Lisa keeps a look-out for handsome men on the street, notes down their vehicle numbers, and then calls up DMV to track down their personal details, which she records in a large scrapbook. Her mother Katherine is open with Lisa on all matters, except boys and dating, and it turns out that she had Lisa when she was only 14 years. She is apprehensive that if she lets Lisa go on dates, her daughter might want to experience a lot of things which she is not emotionally capable of handling as yet.
Meanwhile, a charming restauranter, Richard, is killing beautiful, single women across the city by breaking into their apartments. He leaves a bizarre message on each victim's answering machine- "Hi, I am Richard, I am in your apartment, and I am going to kill you", which all victims hear before being attacked by Richard. The killer rapes these women before killing them, and leaves an elaborate array of candles in the crime scene, because of which he is dubbed as the "Candlelight Killer". It is also disclosed that Richard uses the same modus-operandi as Lisa, i.e., he first spots beautiful women, and after secretly writing down their car numbers, finds out their addresses. Then he sneaks into their apartments, and thereafter kills them, after they have heard his message.
Lisa bumps into Richard one night, when she is returning home carrying groceries, and Richard is just leaving a house after having murdered a woman. Lisa is fascinated by the handsomeness of Richard, and in the same manner as before, is able to find out his name, address and phone number. She then begins to stalk him, and even starts calling him up, in order to flirt with him. Richard is intrigued by these calls, and encourages Lisa to continue talking to him, since now he is the one who is getting stalked by a mysterious woman.
With Easter around the corner, Lisa makes plans with her best friend Wendy to leave for a weekend vacation. She and her mother decide to have an all-girls night out before Lisa leaves, thus Lisa calls up Richard and informs him that she would meet him that night, and that she would be dressed in a 'sexy white dress'. She then makes reservations in Richard's restaurant. In reality, Lisa has set up her mother, who is wearing the white dress, so that Richard may see his mother, and become her boyfriend. Lisa hopes that this way, her mother will loosen up and allow Lisa to start dating too.
Lisa leaves a love note to Richard, who then appears and notices Katherine. He copies her credit card details, and begins his preparations for killing her. Lisa remains oblivious to the danger that she has exposed Katherine to, and leaves with Wendy for the weekend. However, she talks to Richard, and he tells her that he knows where she resides, and her name is Katherine. Fearing that Richard would tell her mother about the calls, Lisa leaves a message for Katherine, stating that Richard was just an annoying kid from school, and that she should ignore him, if he called her. Soon after, Katherine receives she same message from Richard telling her that he would kill her, but based on Lisa's earlier message, she discards it as a prank.
However, Richard has already hidden himself in Lisa's room and when Katherine enters, he takes her hostage. Some time later, Lisa arrives home and starts looking for her mother. She too is attacked by Richard, and upon noticing the candlelight arrangements, she realises that Richard is none other than the dreaded "Candlelight Killer".
Richard knocks Katherine unconscious and drags Lisa to the room with the set candles, planning to kill her first before dealing with Katherine.Lisa is saved when her mother stabs Richard with a knife to his back, and later she sprays acid on his face, in the process disfiguring his face. In the final confrontation, Katherine strikes the killer several times on his head, and he loses his balance, and falls from an open window to a ditch below, dead from the fall.
The movie was made available on DVD first time in 2012 by MGM.

 The Rain Killer(1990)

The Rain Killer is  low budget independent film starring Ray Sharkey , David Beecroft and Maria Ford ( in a small role as a murdered stripper). It is rarely seen and largely does not appear on the credits of any of the actors.

The plot concerns the murders of well-to-do women, all mysteriously done away with at night, and only when it rains. At the beginning of the film, we witness the killer stalk a woman till the underground station, and then as the woman hurriedly boards a train to escape the looming threat, she is stabbed several times on her chest and abdomen. When the police reach the murder scene, they discover no clues of importance- for instance one passenger describes the killer as "a man with a hat, overcoat and sunglasses with reflective lenses..he seemed out of place", which does not lead anywhere. They also find a plastic raincoat on the rail tracks which is covered with the blood of the victim, but as the raincoat is commonly sold over all over town and no identification marks are visible, this is another dead-end.
The washed out cop Capra is assigned to handle the case, but with the body count rising and with no definite leads to apprehend the murderer, the FBI agent Dalton is roped in to assist. Capra and Dalton are shown to be professionally hostile,each trying to outdo the other, and soon become bitter personal rivals as well, when Capra begins an affair with the estranged wife of Dalton, Adele.
The two investigators figure out that the murdered women were all members of a sewing club circle, to which Adele is also a member, but this is unfortunately where the trial runs cold.
As a side plot, a man named Rosewall visits a strip club and picks up a dancer to spend the night with. The next morning, she winds up dead and realising his terrible situation, Rosewall makes a frantic escape. However, the police nab him and seize the suitcase he has been carrying, which is found full of knives. The man's activities are suspicious enough for the police to pronounce him as the notorious 'Rain Killer', and even when a witness to  a victim's murder fails to recognise Rosewall definitely, the police do not consider it a serious setback, and thus all the murder cases are closed.
But as can be expected, a few minutes later into the film, we witness a man wearing the attire of the 'Rain Killer' enters Adele's apartment, and he reveals himself to be Dalton, her husband. When he expresses jealousy over her relationship with Capra, she is dismissive of him. Then in a fit of rage, Dalton smothers her with a pillow and stabs her multiple times.
Towards the end of the movie, an grief-stricken Capra takes Dalton to Adele's workshop( where she builds her sculptures) and Dalton informs him that he has killed all the women, for some obscure motive, which the movie does not attempt to elaborate on. Then Capra shoots Dalton dead, and leaves the place.

The film starts off with interestingly enough and shows potential to develop into a gripping thriller, adding a bit of suspense here and there; but overall, the slow pacing and the disjoint storyline involving numerous sub-plots, along with a ridiculous ending, hamper a story well-written and tolerably well acted.


Update- In August 2015,the movie was released on DVD by Scorpion Releasing (on special license from Califilms, the minor studio founded by Roger Corman which initially distributed the movie) and also had a limited Blu-Ray release by Kino Lorber Films. The picture quality of the release (I only saw the DVD version) is excellent, the images are crisp and bright and fully reveal the glaring blues and reds used during shooting both on the rain soaked streets as well as inside the apartments, which imbue the movie with a niorish feel. It is a marked improvement over the vhs and laserdisc releases where the picture tended to be dark and washed out and thus did not truly bring out the intended atmosphere. However, the sound quality leaves much to wish about, as I had to turn up the volume control several notches up in order to hear the dialogues and background score. There are no subtitles made available, however the extras include a theatrical trailer and 'behind the scenes' trivia segment on the filming aspects. However, keeping in mind the rarity of the movie, I would recommend any serious collector of obscurities to just grab a copy.

Dance of the Damned (1988)


This low-budget movie by Katt Shea Ruben features a vampire and a suicidal stripper as the only two characters, and is a serious take on existentialism and yearning. A reluctant vampire(reluctant because he dislikes drawing blood from humans, and thus starves himself till he can contain no longer) follows his instincts to a seedy strip joint, where one of the dancers Jody is fighting depression and has attempted suicide two times before. The vampire is attracted to a "dark spot" he notices in her and marks her as his next victim. As Jody is locking up for the day, he approaches her and convinces her in spending a night conversing with him. Once, however, they reach his home, he reveals to her that he is a vampire, and he lays bare his plan to kill her and thus end her misery early the next morning. Trapped in the house with no route of escape, Jody begins a conversation with the vampire, both detailing the griefs in their respective lives( he on the death of his mother when he was a young child and on how he spends his days in extreme isolation, as an out-caste from society that cannot accept him; and she on her low-paid job, the 5-year old son she is not allowed to see anymore, the futility of her existence). As the night advances, the two sad souls begin connecting to each other, seeking companionship in their loneliness. There is a moving scene where the vampire takes Jody to the place where her young son resides with his father, and helps her in scaling the wall to reach the window to his room. Here, she wishes her son a happy birthday, and tells him how much she loves him. Then, on a beach, she illustrates to the vampire the sensation of sunlight through a night light. When they return to his home, the vampire reminds her that it is time for her death. Jody then realises that she wants to continue living and resists his attempts to kill her, thus a cat-and-mouse chase begins between the two.The entire movie is centered on the night-long conversations between Jody and the vampire, action is far and between limited to 3-4 scenes, and the increasing sexual tension between the characters is also understated, with a brief kiss thrown in towards the end.
The film is almost forgotten today, and has never been released on DVD, though surprisingly enough, its 1993 eroticised remake, To Sleep With a Vampire, despite having weak plotting and unmemorable actors, has become the better known of the two, and also has garnered a DVD release.