Although I was most familiar with his 1983 horror comedy House of the Long Shadows, in which he brought together horror icons Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine, director Pete Walker made the bulk of his horror films in the 1970s, and it’s astonishing to me that he isn’t more highly regarded as a trailblazer for much of what came after him. particularly in the slasher genre. Let’s take a look at his 1970s output to see why.
THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW (1972)
Walker definitely needed to gain some experience, because the title of his first major horror flick raises expectations that he doesn’t deliver.
There’s promise of a slasher in which a group of actors is trapped in a theater with a crazed killer—a plotline we’ve seen many times since. Unfortunately, they’re not trapped in the theater even though they are sleeping there, there are barely any kills, and there’s barely any blood.
The cast spends the majority of the film talking and having sex.
There is one scene with so much promise in which a guy discovers a woman’s head, and when he leaves to get the police, we see the killer’s gloved hand come and fondle the face while we hear a pervy breathing sound. An awesome staple of future slashers to come.
We just needed more of that and we simply don’t get it. We also don’t get much in the way of the group of actors feeling any sense of fear being in a theater where murders are taking place.
The movie is most notable for having a 3D sequence at the end when the killer appears and presents motivation in a flashback. As presented on the Blu-ray, the flashback is in black and white, but if you want to see it in 3D you can watch it as an extra in the bonus features—either on a 3D TV or with red and blue glasses that you have to supply yourself.
While it’s annoying that the 3D sequence isn’t inserted into the actual movie, it’s not even really worth it because there are absolutely no fun gimmicky 3D elements to the sequence.
HOUSE OF WHIPCORD (1974)
This looks like it’s going to be a simple exploitation film, with pretty young women being psychologically and physically abused by butch older women while barely dressed, but House of Whipcord is light on the torture (all the whipping is done behind closed doors) and heavy on situations that have echoed through abduction horror films to this day.
For starters, it begins near the end. A barely dressed and beaten young woman runs through the rain and flags down a trucker. He promises to bring her somewhere safe, and then we are taken back to how she got to the state she’s in.
At an art show for her boyfriend, the young model is horrified to find he has used a nude photo of her for his exhibit. Devastated and humiliated, she is comforted by a handsome young man, who offers to let her come stay at his home and meet his mother. I don’t know, but maybe she should have taken it as a bad sign that his name is Mark E. DeSade. See kiddies? This is what can happen to you when they ban books in school…
The home is an institution in the middle of nowhere, and the girl is soon left in the hands of a butch warden, played perfectly by actress Sheila Keith.
The pretty young thing is forced to strip and shower, and is then placed on trial for her indecency and sentenced. The dude’s crazy mother is running a prison for immoral women! Of course that means any pretty young woman she can get her hands on is manipulated into appearing to be a rule-breaking whore.
The young women begin to work together to bust out of their prison, but they keep getting caught and thrown back in their cells, leading them closer and closer to the death penalty. It is rather annoying that there isn’t a single man in the house other than an elderly, feeble judge, there are only like three old wardens without weapons, and there are about a dozen strong young girls, yet they don’t just revolt and attack the old ladies. Of course then we wouldn’t have a movie.
In the meantime, the main girl’s friend is concerned that she has gone missing and has started searching for her, and eventually begins closing in, leading us towards a healthy dose of insanity during a fatalistic final act—the type of downer twists you didn’t often see in horror movies back then.
FRIGHTMARE (1974)
This is warped 70s horror at its best. It begins in black and white, but this isn’t exactly The Wizard of Oz. A murderous woman and her husband are put on trial and sent to a mental institution instead of given the death sentence.
20 years later they’re out and living on an isolated farm. Somehow they have a daughter together and he has a daughter from a different relationship, who has basically been raising the rebellious younger daughter.
This is some serious psycho family melodrama. The mother is still a killer, offering tarot readings before killing and eating young people. The younger daughter hangs with a rough crowd of bikers, but she’s the roughest of them all and seems to have inherited her mother’s love of killing.
The father is the weakest excuse for a patriarch ever. And his other daughter is barely holding it together, trying to keep her half-sister out of trouble while also trying to curb her stepmother’s hunger for flesh.
Meanwhile, there are some investigators working on a series of murders, which soon leads them in the direction of the family.
It’s a bizarre film with several violent and brutal scenes, but there’s no one in particular to connect with because they’re all dysfunctional messes in their own way. Sheila Keith from House of Whipcord is back as the meat-eating mother, and she is definitely the highlight. She was born to be a horror queen.
HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN (1976)
Now this is how you flip a finger to the mainstream with horror. House of Mortal Sin is simply loaded with plot points defining how religion fucks people up. Oh, and the psycho killer is a priest. Yay!
You know a movie isn’t going to go easy on God when the opening has a distraught girl read the Bible then take a dive out a window.
Next we meet our main girl. She finds out her male friend has become a priest. She wants to talk to him about being forced into an abortion by her asshole boyfriend, but in confessional she spills the beans to some old priest instead.
Turns out this old priest is a nut who wants people to pay for their sins. He makes her life miserable while targeting those around her and making it look like she’s going insane.
Best of all, the message here is that religion is like an infection that spreads. This dude was messed up by his now invalid mother, who forced him to dump a woman and choose a life of celibacy in the priesthood, which totally messed up his moral compass. Awesome.
Pete Walker brings Sheila Keith back yet again as a sinister maid, and he also makes it clear that his thing is to avoid happy endings…
SCHIZO (1976)
The interesting thing about this film is that despite the title and the presentation of the condition as described in the opening narration, the killer seems to actually be suffering from split personality. If you’re a nitpicker about technical psychological terms, you’re going to have to overlook that if you want to enjoy this for the simple stalker/slasher that it is.
The concept is pretty creepy. A weirdo sees the announcement of a figure skater getting married then starts stalking her.
He begins by dropping a bloody machete by her wedding cake, and it just escalates from there, as she’s terrorized by the appearance of bloody weapons wherever she goes.
Along the way, anyone who tries to help her figure out who is stalking her and why meets a gruesome and bloody end.
Unfortunately, for a 110-minute movie, there just aren’t enough of those people.
And to make things all out odd, there’s a scene near the end of the film with a psychic medium getting all bug-eyed and demon-voiced!
It’s definitely out of left field for what is otherwise a basic psychological slasher.
THE COMEBACK (1978)
It is astounding that Pete Walker isn’t considered one of the pioneers of slashers, especially with his final flick of the 70s, which came out the same year as Halloween.
A fricking killer in a creepy granny costume gruesomely hacks up victims with a variety of sharp weapons!
The problem with the film is that it runs too long considering the great kills are few and far between. It begins with a woman showing up at her ex-husband’s house and being brutally slaughtered. Throughout the film, we are occasionally reminded her dead body is still there, slowly rotting and becoming covered with bugs. Icky cool.
Meanwhile, the ex, played by pop singer Jack Jones, also known for singing the theme to The Love Boat, plays…a pop singer.
He is sent by his manager (Bosley of Charlie’s Angels) to record a new album at an old house run by a gardener and maid couple (if you guessed that the maid is played by Sheila Keith, you’d be right).
The pop singer keeps having frightening episodes in the house, from hearing screams to catching glimpses of dead bodies.
And that’s it for a majority of the film. The second kill isn’t until an hour in, and it’s even better than the first kill. And finally, the pop singer faces off against the killer…which leads to a pretty laughable motive involving the killer believing his perverted pop music has a negative effect on young people. A good reminder that adults have been hating on popular music for decades…even music by the guy who sings The Love Boat.
