Warlock Moon (1973)
A horrifying tale of the supernatural.
Year of Release: 1973
Genre: Horror
Rated: PG
Running Time: 83 minutes (1:23)
Director: William Herbert
Cast:
Laurie Walters ... Jenny Macallister / Ghost Bride
Joe Spano ... John Devers
Edna MacAfee ... Agnes Abercrombi
Harry Bauer ... Hunter
Steve Solinsky ... Axman
Richard Vielle ... Axman
Summary:
After stumbling on an old abandoned health spa, a young couple are hunted by a bizarre axe-swinging man animal - part of a witches coven.
Review:
Warlock Moon, remindin' us that nothin' says coven like someone in the oven.
And speakin' of slow-roasted turkeys, it's gettin' to be that time of year when everything catches fire and provides an opportunity for all the outspoken local experts to get three inches from each other's faces and declare in no uncertain terms that the present situation is the direct result of poor forest management or climate change at a volume that causes car alarms to go off in Juneau, Alaska.
I forget which side of the issue he's on, but it's also the time of year when Skunky Hernandez gets a look on his face like he placed an order for $10,000 wortha "Let's Go Brandon" beer koozies the day before Joe Biden dropped outta the election when the attendance at the Grime Time dips. Every year this happens, and every year I try explainin' that some folks're gonna forego their usual drive-in regimen once the smoke gets too thick to locate the concession stand. 'Course Skunky was too busy clenchin' his butt cheeks tight enough to turn yesterday's tortillas into diamonds to pay me much mind.
"Alright, you ees both old enough to know truth - Grime Time ees collapseen before eyes. Eef we goeen to save her we need plan; new attraction, new geemeck, sometheen, anytheen!" Skunky squawked as he added up Friday's receipts on an upside-down calculator.
"Hey, that's not fair - I got carded last week," Tetnis objected.
"He's right, Skunky. I really don't think we have the emotional maturity to handle this kinda news. Besides, the stock's gettin' low and we were about to go fish up a fresh load, weren't we?" I motioned towards Tetnis's Dodge Dude.
"Definitely. Pond's lifeless as a Russian Pride Parade. We really gotta get goin'," Tetnis agreed.
"Good idea. We find nice, shady spot to theenk. Then we save drive-een," Skunky nodded, headin' for the truck.
I graciously offered Skunky the passenger seat and rode in the bed given that the choice between lethal levels of particulates and ridin' in an enclosed cab with Skunky is still an easy one. Tetnis didn't say anything, but he took that big rut right after the turnoff with more enthusiasm than is typically recommended and sent me rollin' into an old propane tank to let me know that we were even.
Normally I'm all for fishin' the afternoon away out at Lake Gunkamucka, but Skunky has a way of suckin' the fun and breathable air outta just about anything, and it wasn't long before he trapped me while Tetnis was gettin' the Dude's bed pumped fulla water.
"Well?" Skunky nudged, expectin' me to've solved his manufactured crisis before I'd even gotten a hook in the water.
"Well, what?" I snapped, pawin' around the tackle box for a 3oz sinker.
"How we feex attendance?!" he demanded.
"Look, I'll do a little research and try to come up with some new public domain titles that we haven't shown yet. Beyond that, my advice to you is to haul your butt out to the fire of your choice and either grab a hose or fix sandwiches for the guys operatin' 'em, 'cause things ain't gonna pick back up until the fires're out and it's cool enough to get arrested for indecent exposure again," I told 'im.
I guess I didn't realize how much Skunky relied on me to help 'im weasel out of his various entanglements, 'cause after I laid it all out for 'im he got this look on his face like a German Shorthair whose owner just went pheasant huntin' without 'im and didn't say anything for a good 45 minutes.
In truth I *had* come up with a coupla ideas while Tetnis was usin' his Rhino liner to tenderize my rump roasts, but it seems like the world's gettin' to a place where people needa start adjustin' to the loss of instant gratification, and so I resolved to keep my mouth shut and force Skunky to accept the cards he'd been dealt. Unfortunately, God had other ideas.
"Guy's kinda low, ain't he?" Tetnis muttered as a small tanker plane swerved and headed in our direction.
"Donald Pleasence was a 'little low' after seein' the dailies on Pumaman... this guy's about to convert his plane into a submarine," I mumbled, lookin' around for the quickest path to safety.
Just to put your minds at ease - nobody hadda go divin' to retrieve the plane's black box and none of us got comped a free cremation service, but when the plane was cruisin' overhead at an altitude of, oh, 200 feet, the pilot opened up the belly compartment and dropped 600 gallons of fire retardant directly on top of us and went on his merry way.
"Winthrop, you son of a bi... heeech," Tetnis hacked en route to the cab of the truck where he proceeded to pull out a piece of weaponry I've been instructed not to mention due to its questionable legality.
"For Cripes sake, Tetnis put that away! You bring that plane down inside the city limits and you'll get 30 to life on a domestic terrorism charge and never find another county that'll letcha practice medicine with a taxidermy kit!" I warned, tryna calm 'im down.
"There was no savin' that nipple and I TOLD 'im that before I started! Serves the asshole right for tryna domesticate mule deer in the first place!" Tetnis growled before grudgingly returnin' his artillery to the gun rack and raisin' a whole lotta questions I wasn't sure I wanted answers to.
"Hey, you guys! Come look!" Skunky hollered from the rear end of the truck.
Seems the retardant Archie'd dropped on us had stained the water a horrific red color and riled the hell out of our catch to the point that they were thrashin' around frantically searchin' for a way out and I immediately saw what Skunky'd cooked up in that wad of sun-baked beef he calls a brain.
"Come see keelar demon feesh! One drop of blood drives theem into insatiable frenzy of death!" Skunky grinned like a pitbull with a rawhide chew.
"I think we're off the hook, let's get outta here and wash this crap off," I suggested, bringin' Tetnis back to reality from a universe where he'd been squeezin' Archie's neck like a jug of maple syrup.
"Yeah. Time to scrub up," Tetnis agreed, plainly somewhere else that I preferred not see for plausible deniability purposes.
I'm kinda worried about what Tetnis has planned for Archie, but Skunky got word around about his "mutant freaks of nature" in time for Saturday Night and filled the Grime Time to capacity despite the smoke and heat. I know they say that God protects fools, but who's gonna protect the rest of us from His chosen fools?
Skunky insisted I run Monstroid for the second feature and normally I'd give ya the skinny on that except the smoke was too thick to see the movie from the projection booth, so once Skunky'd finished fleecin' the rubes with his "cannibal catfish from Hell" we closed up and I settled in with Apollo and Shankles on the hide-a-bed to check out a forgotten curiosity called Warlock Moon. There's no moon and no warlocks, but what it lacks in honest advertising it makes up for with a gritty, grim expose on the horrors of 1970s suburbia runnin' aground on the shores of cannibal cove.
Now, as you know, I'm loath to compare anything to Chainsaw without some seriously potent provocation, but this flick shares such an incidental kinship with it that Tobe Hooper himself actually drove out to California to get a closer look over concerns that the movies were so similar, and also that Warlock Moon was gonna to make it to theaters before his film.
There's really nothin' I can say to hype the flick better than that little bit of trivia, but I'd still like to run down a few things I learned while rediscoverin' this overlooked journey into abandoned regions of the country where unsavory elements hold dominion over failed real estate ventures, so let's get to it.
First, there's a fine line between courting and stalking, and a Groucho Marx mustache'll keep ya on the right side of it. Second, there's bein' closeted, and then there's givin' college lectures on homosexuality as a form of social deviancy at UC Berkley. And third, the spa is family.
The movie begins in a spooky old buildin' where this future fry cook of America is tryna scare his girlfriend into a state of sexual suggestibility, only when he slinks away to set up a hump scare some cleftskulled bushwhacker in a spaghetti strap t-shirt takes exception to the intrusion, pulls out his axe, and turns both of 'em into Build-a-Square kits. Sometime later, a college professor is givin' a lecture on deviance and comparin' homosexuality to incest like he's givin' a speech at the RNC until class ends and a geek in a set of Groucho glasses (John) woos one of the students (Jenny) into goin' on a picnic with 'im by performin' skits featuring European caricatures that'd make the boxers in Mike Tyson's Punchout cringe. Following their feast of Wonder bread-centric delights, the pair find themselves at an abandoned resort spa following a wrong turn and go snoopin' around until they run into a kindly old woman (Agnes) who gives 'em a tour and offers Jenny some tea that makes 'er feel like Gorilla Monsoon gave 'er the airplane spin and causes 'er to see the ghost of Mrs. Havisham moonin' around the grounds. A few days pass and John asks Jenny to go back to Rancho The-Axo with 'im so he can research a paper on Depression Era cellulite treatments, only Jenny arrives first and just about gets 'er tailfeathers blown off by a hunter who mistakes 'er for a rampagin' emu and then tries finishin' 'er off with a story about how back in 1930 the resort's head chef went Fuad Ramses durin' a banquet and served some debutante to the guests, resulting in the facility's closure following unfavorable reviews by the local food critic.
Fortunately, John arrives before the hunter's able to launch into his speech about how Nixon's bein' railroaded by Communist infiltrators, and when Jenny hears his car the hunter shows 'er a secret shortcut through the house that can be used to avoid a trip around its perimeter, only he lingers too long when he goes to investigate what sounds like someone's aunt Karen bashin' the service bell at the post office and ends up gettin' axfoliated by Pall Mall Bunyan. Elsewhere, Agnes greets Jenny and John and gives Jenny another shot of halluci-juice that sends 'er followin' the Ghost of Briskets Past or whatever it is till she runs into two cleftskulls who go chasin' after 'er like she just swiped their Lynyrd Skynyrd 8-track. She wakes up unharmed on a pile of popcorn ceiling kernels and tries tellin' John about the Pukes of Hazzard, their axes, and the unbearable aromatherapy she endured while in their presence, but by this point it's startin' to get dark out and so Agnes invites 'em to stay and enjoy some of the rube steak she's got bakin' in the kitchen. Finally, Jenny's 17 credits of Sociology kick into gear and she starts noticin' a pattern, so when Agnes offers 'er some wine with dinner she remembers the teachins of the wise philosopher Vizzini and grabs the farthest glass on the basis that only a great fool would reach for what she is given, 'causin' Agnes to hafta pretend to fumble the glass she'd intended for Jenny and sacrifice the vintage 19th Century shag carpet.
Jenny wants to leave but John's beat from all the gaslighting and so they agree to spend the night, only a few hours later the spa's resident juice barbarian tries breakin' into Jenny's room to whisk 'er away for Midnight Yoga and she hasta start screamin' like she just got a Brazilian wax from Ray Charles to scare the creep off. John and Agnes rush in to check on 'er but there's no sign of Bruiser Grody or the damage Jenny claims he inflicted on the door, so Jenny runs 'em both off and starts prowlin' around like Inspector Gidget tryna figure out what's goin' on till she sees Agnes conspirin' with the tweenage dirtbags and decides to forgo the Oriental Massage. Then the roasted ghost tells 'er to check out the pantry where she finds a buncha student bodies and it's lookin' like she's gonna become Jenny on the block in short order 'cause she doesn't realize that John and the Deathrow Bodines're workin' together tryna herd 'er onto an altar and sacrifice 'er to L'Oreal Paris. Unfortunately, that plan goes tits up after someone accidentally leaves the hunter's pump action layin' around the house, and when the axeman cometh Jenny bloweth his brains out just before John finds 'er and leads 'er the shagrificial altar painted on the carpet where he shoots 'er up with a paralytic agent equivalent to a 24-hour marathon of Barnaby Jones reruns. Prolly oughta stop here seeins we're about to run outta celluloid, but if you like your endings grim as the Cleveland Browns' playoff history you're in for a treat.
Alrighty, well, you can see why Tobe Hooper was just a teensy bit freaked out when he learned about the production of Warlock Moon and then became even more alarmed when he realized it was going to make it to theaters before Chainsaw because the movies are cut from the same cloth in much the same way that Madman and The Burning are; two films with similar tone, plot, setting, and villains that just happened to enter production at the same time through sheer happenstance. Ultimately Hooper had little to fear, as Warlock Moon came and went without much love, but his concern was well-founded as the film that beat Chainsaw to the punch can genuinely be considered a hidden gem.
Were it not for the fact that hardly anyone saw it you could potentially make the case that it inspired a number of other genre films of the era, such as Mother's Day and its sadistic (if ridiculous) mother/sons trio; Midnight and its devil-worshipping family preparing a sacrifice; and even The Shining with its iconic door axing sequence. The similarities are almost certainly coincidental, but the film shares so much with Midnight in particular that I can almost buy the idea that John Russo saw Warlock Moon and appropriated some of its plot points, as they share identical details about a sacrifice and the time frame in which it has to happen, characters with the same name and profession (or at least playing at it), and a comparable family dynamic.
What's more, Warlock Moon shares Chainsaw's tense, unique atmosphere and similarly tricks the audience into believing they've seen a whole lot more violence and bloodshed than it really has, and that's the kinda talent that cannot be taught. It's also the type of movie that would have been given a PG-13 rating had it been released a decade later, but I'd go a step further and say that, had it been released in 1985, it probably would have been given an R based entirely on tone. On paper, there's no reason to rate it as anything more serious than a soft PG-13, but it has the same sort of tone as Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and I am of the opinion that had it been released a decade later, the MPAA woulda slapped an R on it for the same reason they gave Henry an X, which essentially came down to - "it makes us uncomfortable." I'm not suggesting it's in the same league as either of those titles, but understand that I do not draw those comparisons lightly, and that there's something special here that has gone largely ignored by genre fans for the last 50 years.
I realize that sounds like a lotta bluster for a flick that played the drive-in/grindhouse circuit for about five minutes and delivers neither warlock nor moon but let's hold off on the false advertisin' lawsuits a minute while we take a look at the facts.
The plot is disjointed, and while it could be argued that this was done deliberately to avoid giving away too much I wouldn't make that argument given how predictable everything is. There is much that must be inferred due to a lack of exposition, such as the identity of the ghost that can only be seen when the heroine is blitzed on spiked tea, or why the maniac is shown hackin' up a bedroom door that appears unscathed moments later, and it must be assumed that this is where the "warlock" thing comes in as everything does make sense if you accept that there are supernatural powers at work. Title aside, we're given no definitive reason to believe that the family is comprised of witches, as they could just as easily be run-of-the-mill devil worshippers. And with regard to the title pointing toward a supernatural explanation, it should also be pointed out that the original title of the movie was Bloody Spa before the distributor insisted upon the change. So essentially, the story can be made to make sense if you want it to, but taken at face value there are elements that don't make sense, and there seems to be a disconnect as to whether the movie is supposed to be about a family of cannibals, a coven of witches, or both.
The acting is astonishingly good, with Laurie Walters giving a fantastic performance as the victim of a conspiracy bent on sacrificing her to the Gods of the hospitality underworld, Joe Spano hamming it up as the charmingly handsome errand boy tasked with luring liberated college girls to the family homestead, and Edna MacAfee shifting effortlessly between sweet old lady and cantankerous cannibal crone. Walters in particular does more with her facial expressions alone than many low-budget actresses manage with their entire repertoire, and although the direction tends to give away too much about Spano's character, first (and last) time director William Herbert gets good performances out of his principal actors. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, as the college professor (played by the director's brother) in the opening sequence is abominable and the police that arrive during the climax are equally unskilled, but those characters have a minimal impact on the flick's overall quality, and the final result is a film so well acted that it catches you off guard and really impresses.
Here's who matters and why: Joe Spano (Terminal Choice, The Incredible Shrinking Woman), Ray Goman (Vampire 1979, Nightmare in Blood), Joan Zerrian (God Monster of Indian Flats).
And those who forsook us in favor of fame, fortune, and financial security: Laurie Walters (Joannie Bradford on Eight is Enough), Joe Spano (T.C. Farnell on NCIS, Detective John Clark Sr. on NYPD Blue, Ray Velacek on Murder One, Stenner in Primal Fear, Lt. Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues).
The special effects, as you might guess from the PG rating, are virtually nonexistent. Every death occurs off-screen, and the little blood that's shown is unconvincingly thick and sometimes appears almost brown. This is another way in which it aligns with Chainsaw, as both films are largely bloodless despite their intensity. It's difficult to say whether this minimalist approach was the right one, as showing even one solid gore effect (say, the shotgun blast) may have gotten the flick a little more word-of-mouth recommendation goin', but it's also true that, atmospherically speaking, there was a lot to lose with the inclusion of a bad effect, and if the filmmakers didn't think they were up to it the conservative approach may have been the right one. Still, there's essentially nothing to mention in this respect, and it's a little disappointing.
The shooting locations are excellent as well, with the bulk of the movie being filmed inside an abandoned tuberculosis treatment center in Livermore, California that had closed a decade earlier, and that nature was well on its way to reclaiming. Because of the original facility's purpose, its isolated location is consistent with the idea of an exclusive resort hidden away in the hills of San Francisco despite the interiors not being wholly congruent with the type of features one might expect to see in a building that had once been a spa, though the disused outdoor pool helps in that respect. The rest of the film was shot on the campus of UC Berkley (sans permits) and the grounds of a local jail, so it should be assumed that the crew had at least one charming individual on board who was able to sweet-talk folks into letting them use the locations they did - thus boosting the production values of their film substantially for minimal cost. A superb job on the part of the crew to secure such a unique landmark even if the cinematography isn't always the most skillful.
The soundtrack begins with a disarming, semi-silly approach involving a saxophone solo that falls somewhere between romance and a Benny Hill sketch, but quickly shifts gears into a string-based "doom is upon them" motif that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Initially, one is reminded of the absurd score from Last House on the Left that transitions offensively back and forth between grim brutality and slapstick comedy, but thankfully, following the first visit to the resort, the composer never returns to the stylistically goofy nature of the opening sequence. Even so, the comparison to Last House on the Left isn't exactly valid given that the oddball number is being used in conjunction with levity brought forth by Joe Spano's character in his quest to win the trust and affection of his target, and thus, can be generally accepted as tonally consistent with the events of the flick up to that point. There's nothing special or catchy about it, but the ominous string/woodwind segments combine well with the unnerving story and help establish the proper mood.
Overall, the capable acting, excellent shooting locations, and competent musical score are enough to compensate for the garbled plot and lack of special effects even before you factor in the intangible, gritty 1970s vibe that sets the film apart even from most of its peers of the era. There's a sense of menace and discomfort here that helps the flick overcome its lack of gore, predictable plot, and fairly slow pace, and any movie that manages to be memorable based entirely on its mood is one that deserves to be seen. An unjustifiably neglected gem, in my opinion - definitely check it out if you can find a copy.
Rating: 72%