THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER (1991)

[Update 03/28/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Co-written by Dario Argento and directed by Michele Soavi, the man behind the clever CEMETERY MAN, THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER is kinda like ROSEMARY'S BABY except that there is no sense of doom.  It's set in the country and the woman isn't raped by a big demon, but instead a large pelican-buzzard looking thing that eats worms out of the gaping hole on the woman's neck.

The film opens in 1970 with members of a Satanic cult killing hippies off screen. We then move to 1991 where an old codger is nearly run over by a woman. Being an idiot, the woman takes the man to her house where as soon as she falls asleep he implants an icky bug in her nose! What the fuck?! The bug does some freaky stuff inside her and a killer handkerchief (yes, you read that correctly) starts running around possessing people. People die and the devil worshipers set up shop in the girl's basement. They pass the time by chasing people around and eventually use some hooks to rip a different woman's face off. That part isn't as exciting as it sounds.

Soavi made this between the barely entertaining THE CHURCH and before his masterpiece CEMETERY MAN. It has it moments, but overall I was pretty bored. The biggest problem I had was I couldn't determine if the main girl was just a complete idiot or her future was already predestined, either way removes any chance of the movie being suspenseful. No gore, long-winded story that really went nowhere, only one painted hippie boob exposed, low body count and a nearly two hour running time. I wanted to like it, since I enjoy Satanic cult movies, but I can't recommend it. Just watch ROSEMARY'S BABY again instead.

TICKS (1993)

A group of twenty-year-old looking teenage city slickers go out to the woods with two social workers as part of a wilderness retreat. The group is your standard early 1990's horror movie teenager cliches: brooding dude, quiet girl, wannabe gangbanger and so on. Luckily for the viewer none of them are annoying and their banter is kinda funny. Like when the gangbanger keeps loudly lamenting that he should have brought his piece. At first, things go alright, but then our heroes find out that the patch of woods they're in is about to be taken over by very large ticks!  Nasty.

TICKS, or Infested as it was originally released, is an alright movie.  No real ups or downs, steady pace, okay special effects, tolerable acting, mild violence, zero nudity, zero tension.  Overall, it's an alright time-waster, but just too bland for it's own good.  There's never any shocking or stand out moments.  The movie just plugs along and then it's over.

Worth a nostalgic watch for fans of 90's horror, but others will probably be bored.

CANDY (1968)

Very hit-or-miss string of surreal vignettes about a sexy teenage girl who comes from space and ends up messing with a whole bunch of dudes. That might sound like the plot to a porno, but unfortunately CANDY is very tame.  There's not even any nudity!

A wiggly light comes down from outer space and lands in the desert. It takes the form of an attractive teenage girl. Then bam! She's in high school.  A great poet (Richard Burton) shows up and before long she's half naked on the pool table in her basement kissing Ringo Starr while Burton gets busy with a mannequin on the floor.  Suddenly Gomez Addams walks in! And that's just the first few minutes of the movie! It only gets weirder, much weirder, from there on. Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in and somehow it actually works for the most part, especially the final few minutes which, I thought, were pretty awesome.

Some people might complain that it's bewilderingly incoherent mess and they would be 100% correct, but looking at it from a historical viewpoint, CANDY is a remarkable look into whatever kind of weird counter-cultural bullshit was going on back in 1968. If you are at all curious about the stranger, more psychedelic corners of 60's cinema then you should check it out.  Also, Richard Burton's crazy hair looks a lot like Bill Murray's crazy hair at the end of KINGPIN.