Deathmaster, 1972

This "hippy meets Dracula messiah" flick will leave you wishing you had been a teenager in the 70s (which we weren't. Damn). Bikies, beards, beer, beads, boobs and sitar infused folk music, this movie has it all. The plot is barely worth a mention but as usual we have much to say.

[Khorda fade-out exit. Hippy comments: "Wow, that cat is something else!"]

The eponymous Deathmaster, a vampire called Khorda, (also star of Count Yorga Vampire, 1970 and Return of Count Yorga, 1971), is more convincing as a messiah than a vampire. He breezes in, bewitches a happy commune of hippies with lessons on living a clean life to achieve immortality. Bring on the organic food, clean water, healthy living and you could be in any middle class suburban city in the white world.

[Rona and Pico are impressed]

[Rona and Pico at the knees of the guru]

But this guru likes his blood, and he likes it free of preservatives and toxins. David Pirie in The Vampire Cinema (1977) suggests a connection with Charles Manson, but it didn't occur to us. Drac also has a bowl of pet leeches which seem to have vampire repelling properties! A new one on us. Plus a nifty amulet that allows for the night walkers to go shopping in daylight, without turning into walking torches.

The young male lead (Pico) is gorgeous! He knows kung fu and beats up a grisly biker in the early part of the film, he resists the blood suckers thrall and puts up a impressive fight to save his girl, and sports the most wonderful shirt (shame about the headband!) with pants only just tight enough to make your girly knees go just a little shaky. Rona, his female counterpart (P assures M) is equally gorgeous, stunningly pale and a figure well worth a bite. Her beautiful body ends up a sacrifice in a black mass. Khorda gets to fang her before being dispatched by Pico, but this 'aint Disney and Rona turns to dust along with the other disciples. P is still crying.

[hippies are freaked out]

[Khorda leaving Pico in the tunnels]

[Pico escapes]

[Rona sacrifice at Black Mass]

Apart from the gorgeous cast; everyone looks lean and fit, the setting for the commune is absolutely fantastic. Far from the decrepit castles of Transylvania or Mason hovel, this is a Californian Spanish-Mission style beachside mansion with a twisted mess of stairs and hallways set in a lush and overgrown garden. It even has underground tunnel system; what for? Your pet leeches and the occasional vampire-visitor of course.

[Nightime at the commune]

[Daytime at the commune]

The disk we watched was from VideoScreams, but there is a Retro Media DVD on Amazon that is probably a lot sharper. There is an interesting review and some more screen caps. here.

Kiss Me Kill Me, 1973

P. wanted to watch Baba Yaga [aka Kiss Me Kill Me] because it features a witch who isn’t a story book hag; in fact the witch is played by Carroll Baker, a steamy sixties sex symbol! It’s a shame that this central female figure turned out to be a very wooden and unconvincing bad dame! Fortunately, however, the worst aspects of the film are kept to a minimum and there are unexpected delights aplenty.

[Carroll Baker as Baba Yaga]

Basically female photographer, Valentina, has a chance (or is it?) meeting with witch, Baba Yaga, when the witch almost mows her down in her enormous old Bentley. What an eastern European witch is doing in Milan is anyone’s guess.

[Isabelle De Funès as Valentina Rosselli]

Baba Yaga is a lesbian who wants to seduce Valentina, and who takes out her sexual jealosy of Valentina’s models and friends by cursing a camera so that the shutter action flattens anyone it photographs. Baba Yaga gives Valentina a strange large doll dressed in S&M gear, Annette, as a protective talisman.

[Annette and one of Valentina's many partially-dressed models]

Things get weird and Valentina calls her handsome lover Arno to help her figure it all out. Annette comes to life (oh my, what eye candy that is) and it all gets weirdly hallucinagenic and disitinctly S&M for a while. In the end the evil witch is pushed into the bottomless pit—which just happens to be a lounge-room feature of dilapidated houses—and the beautiful Annette is beheaded by Arno, but it is only doll parts that fall to the floor.

[Ely Galleani as Annette. She's Alive!]

[Annette departs with Valentina's camera (note the Morticia Addams cane peacock-back chair)]

[Annette shackles and whips Valentina]

[Annette's head]

The end has everyone wondering if the whole episode was in Valentina’s head—and the film has plenty of perverse dream sequencess—or if it were some truly magical happening.

Kiss Me Kill Me is an adaptation of an adult comic book, something which took us by surprise. The comic, Valentina, written in Italian and never translated to English, is considered a classic, a classic that became increasing erotic as the series went on. Graphic novel and comic-book adaptations have been such a successful filmic enterprise in the last fifteen years that we were surprised to find one from 1973. Even earlier, however, is Vadim’s Barbarella of 1968, itself “an imaginative adaptation of a French cartoon strip by Jean-Claude Forest”* with psychedelic detail rather than 70s goth chic (and, strangely enough, Barabrella is also attacked by vicious dolls).

Kiss Me Kill Me has cinematic features of more modern comic-book adaptations, especially the comic-book interludes in the film. The prelude to the only sex scene is beautifully set up, with the two lovers viewing an adult comic book together, which changes to include them in the comic book images, which changes to a montage of black and white stills in place of the actual sex scene. It is fantastically well done, especially when you realize how new this style is.

[Valentina and George Eastman as Arno Treves, reading an erotic comic]

[comic images seague with BW montage]

It is also worth mentioning the amazing sets. Baba Yaga’s house is a wunderkamer of sensual delights. Everywhere the photographer looks is an impossibly beautiful image and she is seduced to masturbatory delight by all that she sees.

[Baba Yaga's mansion]

[Baba Yaga's mystic symbols, used to control events]

[70s Gothic Chic]

And of course, there are the 70s features. There are sculptured plastic chairs, vast and low beds, transparent phone and brick like answering machine, a red Mini, Hippies, casual nudity, earnest “social unrest” and a cool soundtrack. The blokes have beards and Starsky and Hutch sheep-skin jackets, the girls (other than the Louise Brooks-inspired Valentina) have long hair and death-defying footwear.

[The phone you've always wanted]

[Technicour Hippy]

[Make Love Not War]

Kiss Me Kill Me is widely available on DVD.

*John Stanley, The Creature Features Movie Guide (1981), the bible for all things mad, bad and fab. This has been P’s main viewing guide since he was given it as a teenager. It now has an terrifying number of ticks!!!!