CURSE OF THE UNDEAD

d. Edward Dein (1959)

An uneven horror western, Curse Of The Undead isn't completely successful but it does come up with the brilliant idea of a vampire working as a hired gun, a black clad killer who isn't particularly quick on the draw because he doesn't have to be: you can shoot him all you like with ordinary bullets, it doesn't make a scrap of difference.

The vampire himself (played by Australian character actor Michael Pate) is almost sympathetic and, in his attacks on the necks of the local girls, regretful and tender. It seems that, some twenty years previously, he found out that his new wife had been sleeping with his brother, so he stabbed the brother to death before killing himself. Via a route that is not particularly well signposted, he then came back as a vampire and few soft necks have been safe since. To his credit, he hates what he has become, shouting 'do you think I wanted this?' as he kills. It's not all nibbling virgins and long lie ins, you know.   

Somehow the vampire ends up in a love triangle with a beautiful local land owner called Dolores and her pompous and overbearing preacher boyfriend (Eric Fleming*) and, as this is cowboy times, it can only end in a shoot out. Although you're rooting for the vampire, the preacher prevails, killing his undead rival with a holy bullet, a slug capped with a sliver of thorn from the site of the crucifixion. As the vampire's body fades away into nothingness, Dolores looks on in horror, knowing that this means she will now have to marry the boring, bossy Vicar and spend the rest of her life hearing about how he saved her life . Oh well, Dolores does mean 'sorrows', after all...

* I don't like Fleming's character in this film, but I always feel a bit sorry for the actor himself. In 1966, he was making a film in the Amazon when his boat overturned and he was eaten by piranhas. 

SATAN'S CHILDREN

d. Joe Wiezycki (1975)

Rape revenge films are always mean and tawdry: no matter how satisfying the revenge element is, there always has to be a disturbing attack to set up the story. Here, there's a slight twist on standard exploitation mores: the victim is a teenage boy, a runaway from an intolerable home life who meets an older guy who he hopes will be a friend and mentor but instead turns out to be  the scumbag leader of a gang of scumbag abusers. The scumbags all take a turn with the unfortunate youngster then dump his ripped and torn body in the middle of nowhere, where he is discovered, semi-conscious, by a group of satanists. How lucky can one boy be?

The satanists are all young, hippy-ish and in the thrall of a super louche smoothie called Simon, who gives orders in a slow, quiet voice whilst fiddling with his Zapata moustache. He talks of The Master as if he were the area manager. It's a ridiculously tough group – disciplinary infractions are punished by execution by hanging or, if they're being generous, by burying you up to your neck in sand and covering your hair in syrup to attract the ants.

Strangely for an unconventional cult of sexual freedom and social anarchy they are dead set against homosexuality to the extent that poor Bobby, even as a rape victim, is treated with suspicion and labelled a 'loser' who was 'weak' enough to 'let' himself be abused.

The only way Bobby can prove himself is in the bloodiest terms possible. He escapes, pushes two of the pursuing Satanists into quicksand (actually a hole filled with plaster of paris and washing up liquid), goes home, hits his mean Dad over the head with a bottle and bundles his wicked stepsister into the boot of his car before finding and shooting his attackers and cutting off their heads and putting them in a bag which he presents to Simon as proof of his sincerity, proving himself as a ‘winner’: a bright eyed boy with a bright arsed future. His stepsister (who is more unpleasant than plain evil) is handed over to the group as a kind of cult-warming present, to be tortured and, eventually, crucified.

It’s a remarkable film, really, despite clear technical limitations: the sound often overlaps or gets suddenly cut off; special effects and pyrotechnics are on show; several key scenes lose dramatic intensity by simply being too dark. The cast is made up entirely of students, which occasionally shows, but actually helps create a terrifying vision of a post-Manson USA where disaffected youths are being corrupted, abused, degraded and turned to the dark side all across the country without anyone knowing about it.

BABY FACE NELSON

d. Don Siegel (1957)

Americans love outlaws, and cinema, so it's not surprising that most notable American criminals have been commemorated on film. Yet these notorious people, whether they are Jesse James or John Dillinger, Butch and Sundance or Bonnie and Clyde, have something else in common besides celluloid immortality: they're all scum bags. Despite the glamour and mythology that springs up around them, outlaws are very rarely Robin Hood style philanthropists, or even oppressed people striking a blow against the system. Instead they are usually violent criminals, ruthless, amoral people who steal and kill and spread misery and fear: fascinating but not exactly admirable. 

Take Lester Gillis aka Baby Face Nelson, as played here by Mickey Rooney. This character has but one redeeming feature, the love of a beautiful woman (Carolyn Jones). By the end of the film, even she is becoming sickened by his blood lust and, it would seem, his death wish. Nelson is a monster, no-one is safe around him and no matter how much money he steals, how many people he kills, he never stops, he can't stop. The real Nelson died after being shot seventeen times. Even then he managed to make it home and die in his bed, a defiant final 'fuck you' to the world. Here, his wife administers the coup de grace in a graveyard after he is fatally wounded, which is a more obviously dramatic finale, but a less satisfying one.

Director for hire Don Siegel doesn't particularly distinguish himself here, but he keeps everything moving. Outlaws life stories always seem to have a kind of fatal momentum, anyway, a short, quick charge to death or imprisonment. Rooney is far too old to play Nelson (Nelson was dead at 25, Rooney is pushing 40) but has the right look and the right stature (throughout Nelson is referred to as 'shrimp' or, ironically, 'the big man' - he doesn't like it). His performance has two gears, a sort of closed off auto pilot that allows him to function on a day to day basis, and a murderous, explosive anger that drives him onwards. This uncontrollable ire is the focus of one of Siegel's few directorial flourishes, a big close up on Nelson's face as he swears revenge, his right eye twitching involuntarily with rage.       

WOMEN IN BONDAGE

d. Steve Sekely (1943)

Cheap but potent propaganda, Women In Bondage takes the unusual step of showing Nazi Germany on the home front, and from the perspective of the women caught up in the mad world of Hitler and his murderous stooges. 

All women must join a paramilitary organisation, for instance, and spend their time marching, identifying enemy planes and informing on their friends, colleagues, neighbours and anyone else who dares question the Fuhrer. On their spare evenings, the girls are expected to be sexually promiscuous, particularly with soldiers, doing their bit to keep the master race well stocked. Then there are the intrusive medical examinations, and the obsession with Aryan purity (one girl is unable to marry her SS man boyfriend because she fails an eye test), as well as other sundry surprises that the insanely inhuman and unsentimental logic of the Reich throws up (a woman's husband returns from the Russian Front a hero but an impotent invalid; she is officially instructed to get pregnant by his brother instead). 

It's occasionally strong stuff, and is particularly successful in the way that it presents the regime (quite realistically) as a sick but ultimately rather banal bureaucracy that, like all totalitarian states, can only function by the constant exertion of force, a mountain of paperwork and a willing workforce of goon-like enforcers. 

Please note that the title refers to bondage in the sense of serfdom or slavery, not the act of tying or binding for sexual pleasure. Although there is a bit of that, and some whipping.