LA PORTA SUL BUIO - "The Tram" (1973)

 

This week's Saturday Night Special is called "La Porto Sul Buio," and was a four episode 1973 Italian TV show that translates into "The Door Into Darkness."

Written, Produced, and Directed by Dario Argento, if nothing else, it's interesting to see what Maestro Argento can do under the restrictions involved in making a television show instead of a movie. In other words, it's very intelligent and not nearly as violent and gory as a lot of Argento's other work.

Dario even makes an appearance, and gives an introduction at the beginning.

 

This was the second of the four episodes, and it was titled "The Tram."

Dario even introduces the star of the show, Enzo (Blood And Black Lace) Cerusico.

Here comes the other the star of the show, "The Tram," coming into the station to get cleaned. There are some trams scattered across America, but it's a more popular form of transportation in Europe.

While the janitor guy is busy cleaning the tram in between stops, he stumbles onto something quite unusual! 

There's a dead young woman stuffed under one of the seats!

He did better than I did, I couldn't even find a credit for whoever played Monica Rini, but then she was only onscreen for about three seconds.

Pierluigi (Machine Gun McCain) Aprà is Roberto Magli, the guy who is the Collector on the tram, and should have seen what happened, but he's clueless.

Detective, also known as Commisario Giordani is beside himself! How could a girl get killed on a tram car full of people, and nobody saw or heard anything?

 

Detective Giordani gets this brilliant idea. He contacts all the people that were on the tram, and gets them to go along with recreating what happened that fateful night, right up to where they got on and off, as the jazzy music composed by Giorgio (Deep Red) Gaslini, swings hard!

Unfortunately, the plan doesn't yield any more information, and the Detective is back to square one, but you have to give him credit for a valiant effort!

I was going to make a joke about Pierluigi Aprà channeling his inner Ringo Starr, but then I found out he committed suicide at the age of 36, and it didn't seem funny anymore.

There's no other conclusion that Detective Giordani can come up with, it had to be Magli. 

Corrado (Wake Up And Die) Olmi is Officer Morini, Detective Giordani's partner. Morini tells Magli that his knife is just like that one that killed the girl.

Magli is either innocent or in complete denial, but either way, he's about to get sent up the river for what probably will be the rest of his life!

Detective Giordani can't get this case off his mind, and no matter how he looks at it, it still doesn't add up or make sense to him!

The Detective decides to give it one more shot before they send Magli off forever, and he contacts everyone that was on the tram, in an effort to recreate the scene once more, but unfortunately for Magli, everybody is busy or has some kind of excuse as to why they can't make the reunion!

Excuses, excuses, excuses! It's old news, and nobody cares!

The totally gorgeous Paola (Battle Of The Amazons) Tedesco is the Detective's girlfriend Giulia. Sometime in the sub-titles they also call her Gillian.

Giulia volunteers to help flush out the killer since none of the passengers were willing to be of any assistance, but it turns out to be a bad idea after the killer seemingly kills the Detective, and she's next!

Well, at least they know for sure now that the killer wasn't Magli since he's in jail, but was it worth it?

 

Indeed it was, but it was fun to watch!

13 GREAT VINTAGE BRITISH HORROR POSTERS

 So, here are 13 great British posters for us to feast our eyes on, on a Friday! Boy, I had to do a lot of cleanup on these suckers, but I think they'll pass muster for this post.

First up is this very nice Corman double bill from 1959. You can tell if it's a British poster because they usually have a cert. X on them, like the one at the center there.

Here a terrific double bill of THE FLY and THE WASP WOMAN, in this one you can see that they came up with a freakier version of The Wasp Woman. I would love to have this poster, wow!

Then there's this chilling alternative poster for THE FLY! Wild and Weird!

Here's another double bill with THE CURSE OF THE FLY and DUEL OF THE SPACE MONSTERS, aka, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER.

Here's a total freak poster, in Britain INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN became INVASION OF THE HELL CREATURES. This is another poster I wish I had.

The title ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES was changed to DEMONS OF THE SWAMP for the British audience, the movie was directed by Dungeon Pal, Bernie Kowalski! 

Okay, here's a wildcard for you, this rare poster is from that very freaky, ISLAND OF TERROR. This scene doesn't exist as far as I know. I tried to find out if there was a Euro version but found nothing, so, enjoy it for what it is, a real teaser!!

Herman Cohen movies were obviously popular with the British audience, the poster was retitled from BLOOD OF DRACULA to BLOOD IS MY HERITAGE. Seems like they didn't want to confuse the original title with Hammer productions.

They dropped the 'I was a' so the title is just TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, really great poster that is eye catching as Hell!

They didn't change this title for I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, another blood curdling poster to attract the viewing audience.

I really had to work on this poster image to get it to get it to look this good. MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, another great movie from Universal Studios.

The original British title for CURSE OF THE DEMON was called, NIGHT OF THE DEMON, either way, a great movie!

We'll end the show with this nice black and white British lobby card from THE SHE-CREATURE... Well, hope your enjoyed the post, I enjoyed bringing it to you.

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE - "This One's For Eddie" (1962)

 

We've written about "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" on three other occasions, and the post that included Adele LaMont's 'foreign insert' nude scenes is probably the most popular one on this blog with a little over eleven thousand views, but we never have explored the life of the guy who played the monster, Mr. Eddie Carmel in much detail, so that's what I'm here to fix on this Wild Wednesday down in The Dungeon.

 

Lucky for all of us, a fine gentleman named Edward left a comment that included the links to the two sides of this 45 Eddie Carmel made in 1962 that was released on the Radar label.

There are no sides one or two, and this side was "The Good Monster." 

Eddie's biographical information is printed on the bottom of this side, and states 

(World's tallest man: 8'9", 545 lbs, 25 yrs old. With the world's deepest recording voices?)

Known as "The Jewish Giant," Eddie was born in Israel as Oded Ha-Carmeili in 1936, and his parents were both only 5'6" tall. He weighed an unbelievable 16 pounds at birth!

Eddie's height was greatly exaggerated at times like on this record, because he was really more like 7'3" tall. 

As previously stated in one of the other posts, Eddie only ever had two acting gigs, but it seems he tried everything a seven foot guy in the 1960's could try at one time or another. From salesman to carnival side show act, to stand up comedy, Eddie knew somewhere there was a place for him. I even read somewhere but have not been able to substantiate it, that he was a wrestler for a while! At his size, it only makes sense.

 

The flip side was titled "The Happy Giant," and instead of Eddie's stats, it stated the song was by Eddie Carmel with The Demons.This is a rockin'/swingin' number with Eddie laughing with that big booming voice of his.

As far as I can tell, this record is virtually impossible to find, so if you come across one, hang on to it!

According to Wikipedia, he was also in a band called Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons.

 

 

These shots of a big man and a small car crack me up!

 

 Eddie Carmel was 16 pounds when he was born. When he was ten he was 6'1" and by the age of fifteen, he was 6'6".

Because of the various medical conditions that caused him to be so large, they also shortened his lifespan, and unfortunately, Eddie only lived to be 36 years old. 

 

Eddie probably really was nine feet tall with that extension on his noggin!

 

 

How strange that a gentle giant is mostly only remembered for being a gruesome monster!

The bonus of this musical trifecta provided by Edward is the super sleazy 45 single of the theme song from "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

Abie "Available" Baker was born on the same day as me, only thirty-five years earlier. You gotta love anybody with the middle name "Available." Abie was an arranger, a bass player, and a session musician who played with countless musicians such as Snub Mosley, Jimmy "Baby Face" Lewis, The Du-Droppers, Cootie Williams, Little Willie John, Big Joe Williams, King Curtis, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, just to name a few.

There are four copies of this record available on Discogs, starting with a worn out copy for $28.99, and going up all the way to $300.00 + shipping!

The flip side was a song called "Moccasin Rock."

Here's "THE WEB!"

T-BIRD GANG - 1959

Now here's a pretty good little flick starring John Brinkley as Frank Simmons, Ed Nelson as Alex Hendricks, Tony Miller as Raymond, Pat George as Maria, Coleman Francis as police Captain Prell and Beach (sometimes Beech) Dickerson as Barney, with a small part played by Vic Tayback as a policeman.

An interesting fact about the poster, yeah, that's like a 1958 T-Bird there, the bad guys have like a 1955-7 T-Bird, which looks totally different! Plus, the people in the poster ain't in this film! Now, that's a good one, talk about false advertising.

The story's about a 'high school boy' who tries to figure out who murdered his father, then joins a gang of juvenile delinquents who work for a clever boss.

So, Frank pulls up to where his father is a watchman at a warehouse. His father has been beaten up and tells Frank that someone in a white T-Bird did it, then he dies.

Frank meets with Captain Prell and tells him that someone in a white T-Bird committed the crime. Prell says that it sounds like the Hendricks Gang, but the police can't pin anything on them. Frank asks Prell if he had a picture of Alex Hendricks, he wants to see what the guy looks like, and Prell shows Frank a photo of him.

Frank finds a white T-Bird, checks the registration, and goes into the Knotty Pine restaurant to see if he can identify the guy responsible for killing his dad.

One of the guys working for Hendricks, Boy, tries to start some trouble with Frank for brushing his shoulder when he came in.

Frank ends up knocking out Boy after a big scuffle. So Barney (these guys are not in high school!) comes over and tells Frank that the boss wants to talk to him and buy him a drink.

Remember, Frank doesn't like these people at all, but he's interested in finding out what they're up to. He sits down with them and Frank says he's interested.

Frank goes with Barney and Boy to rob a gas station for his first heist. That's Barney's gorgeous Shoebox with freaking tail fins!! And it sounds totally awesome.

Anyway, the cops show up, Barney and Boy drive off, leaving Frank there, and he's carrying a gun. They take him away.

At the station, Prell tells Frank to either work with him to capture the gang, or, he'll have to charge him with armed robbery! You figure out what Frank chose.

On the next heist, they go into the home of a wealthy couple and use nitrous oxide on them to put them out of commission.

And in the meantime, the crew steals anything of value they can get their hands on.

Raymond is Hendricks' right hand man, a psycho, and also the one that killed Frank's father. At the heist, Raymond saw Boy drop something into his pocket. Raymond takes the jewels out of Boy's pocket and shows them to Alex. Alex tells Raymond to cut Boy, so Raymond pulls his trusty switchblade out with delight.

Frank watches Alex be pretty damn evil as Boy screams from the wound he received. Alex tells the guys to take him to the hospital and just tell them that he had an accident!

Before the next heist, the gang sit back and listen to classical music. Barney picks up his bongos and starts playing along but Alex tells him to cut it out.

Since Frank's not able to make any phone calls, he and the police come up with a plan for Frank to write the address and time on the inside of a match book cover, and as they're passing through the hallway, the cop asks Frank if he has any matches, and Frank tosses them to him. The cop then calls the station with the info, and, viola!

The robbery is a bust and all the gang except Alex, Frank and Raymond get captured by the police. Alex has figured out that Frank was the one who ratted on them, so, they drag him back to the closed restaurant and prepare to kill him. Raymond had gone to do something but came back into the room and listens to Alex talking to Frank.

Frank sees Raymond but Alex is not aware of him standing there. Frank asks Alex some leading questions, and Alex reveals that he's going to be throwing Raymond under the bus and take the rap! Uh-oh!

Raymond breaks a pool cue and stabs Alex in the back a number of times, killing him.

And when Raymond tries to escape, the cops are waiting for him, goodbye you goddamn psycho, see you in Hell. Frank is safe now.

Alex's girlfriend has to say goodbye to her man, there with a pool cue stuck in his back, dead as a doornail... There you go, another tale notched into the old Dungeon wall.