This collection, freshly on demand from Warner Archives, corrals the last of RKO’s Falcon series, starring Tom Conway as the suave meddler in murder. A funny thing happens on the way from the first three films here to the last three. WWII ended, and crime films evolved from slick jokey larks to the darker, more somber tone of noir. You can see it happening.

The Falcon Out West sends our hero to a ranch for a story whose most interesting element is Barbara Hale, years before her career as Perry Mason’s secretary on TV, as a self-reliant cowgirl who rides a fine horse. William Clemens here finishes his run directing the series; this sturdy toiler in B mysteries had a hand in films of Perry Mason, Nancy Drew, and Philo Vance, among others.

Redemption has released two early ‘80s zombie films that can easily be confused by the non-connosseur. Both are Eurociné productions scripted by Jesus Franco and sharing much the same crew: photographer, composer, editor, etc. Oh yes, and both are about Nazi zombies. However, they are differentiated by the styles and obsessions of their directors, Franco (on Oasis of the Zombies) and Jean Rollin (on Zombie Lake). Again, the casual eye may think both directors are similarly languid, but their signatures are apparent even though they used pseudonyms. That implies they regarded these products as inessential in their filmographies, and we’d agree.

Rollin’s film, although less interesting than his other zombie movies (e.g. The Living Dead Girl, The Grapes of Death), manages to be another of his elegiac sonnets about yearning for death and the love that transcends it (or delivers it). The setting is a French village haunted by an incident that occurred in WWII, which the mayor (Howard Vernon) says was ten years ago. That means the film is set in the 1950s; some details don’t really support that, but never mind. The French Resistance killed some German soldiers and tossed them in the lake, which has its own evil history, and now the decaying, green, flesh-gobbling zombies emerge whenever damsels go skinny-dipping, which is all the time.

You’ve got to hand it to Don Coscarelli. After three decades in service of his scary movie franchise, Phantasm, he started the new millennium with the hilarious horror mash-up Bubba Ho-Tep. That film, featuring Evil Dead icon Bruce Campbell as an aging Elvis battling an ancient mummy became an instant cult classic. Now, nearly a decade later, he is back. No, not with the proposed sequel Bubba Nosferatu, but with a brazenly bizzaro world comedy called John Dies at the End. Based on a popular novel by Jason Pargin (under the pseudonym “David Wong”) and dealing with drugs, demons, and parallel dimensions, it serves as a solid reminder of why Coscarelli is so well loved among horror geeks. It also illustrates why his vision won’t be copping any mainstream acceptance anytime soon.

Alternative titles: Say Yer Prayers; The Manly Dentist
 
POSITIVES:

A praying mantis is so cool—and it’s the only insect that can turn its head on its neck, like you or me! (True fact).

Monster effects are generally okay, though fleeting.

At least there’s no little kid.

Bad movies are nothing new.  Surely they date as far back as cinema itself; as soon as you have more than one of anything, you run the risk of one being “better” than the other. 

And certainly early American film history is littered with some pretty pungent cinema stinkers—the hyperbolic Reefer Madness came out in 1938; the notorious flop I Take This Woman, with Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr, emerged in 1940; and the nadir of Bette Davis’s career, Beyond the Forest, was unleashed in 1949.