Cataclysm – 1980, US, 94m.
House of Whipcord – 1974, UK, 102m.
Zoltan, Hound of Dracula – 1977, US, 87m.
CATACLYSM (1980) (AKA: The Nightmare Never Ends) A Holocaust survivor (Marc Lawrence) is convinced one of his Nazi tormentors (Robert Bristle) has returned, but his ageless appearance baffles Lawrence’s cop neighbor (Cameron Mitchell). After Lawrence is found dead with his face torn off, his body is taken to the morgue where the devout wife (Faith Clift) of a controversial atheist writer—whose newest book is titled “God is Dead”—works and becomes tormented by nightmares about demons and Nazis. Bristle reappears in the form of a wealthy playboy (who dresses like Hugh Hefner), and from the many visions of monsters and hellfire supplied by the filmmakers, it doesn’t come to any surprise to learn he’s the Devil in disguise, plotting to use Clift’s husband (Richard Moll) to spread the word of evil. Talky and meandering, and with a particularly awful performance by Clift, Cataclysm was later truncated, re-edited, and segmented into the anthology vehicle Night Train to Terror (1985), where it plays out slightly better, but not much. Screenwriter Philip Yordan co-wrote the classic 1954 Joan Crawford western, Johnny Guitar. D
HOUSE OF WHIPCORD (1974) A man named Mark E. Desade (Robert Tayman) takes new French girlfriend Penny Irving to the British countryside to meet his parents at the family estate—but Irving is shocked to discover the family manse is actually an old jailhouse run by Mark’s sadistic mother (Barbara Markham), who serves punishment to morally lax women she feels have escaped the justice system. Upon arrival, Irving is stripped naked by the demented lesbian warden (Shelia Keith) and thrown into a cell with another “prisoner.” After an attempted escape, Irving is put into solitary confinement and her cohort is whipped by Keith. Markham’s twisted views spiral out of control, along with her hatred for pretty French women and her desire to send Irving to the gallows. Irving’s London roommate (Ann Michelle) gets wise to her capture and tries to rescue the poor girl only to get imprisoned herself. Probably British exploitation filmmaker Pete Walker’s most famous title (and at the time most controversial), House of Whipcord isn’t going to win any awards for quality—there are more graphic and entertaining women’s prison films of the era—but it’s well acted enough and suspenseful in places to sustain interest throughout. B–
ZOLTAN… HOUND OF DRACULA (1977) (AKA: Dracula’s Dog) A squad of Romanian soldiers unearth the Dracula crypt, awakening not only a zombified family servant named Veidt (Reggie Nalder) but Dracula’s loyal vampire Dobermann, Zoltan. Needing a master to remain a functioning member of the undead, Veidt and Zoltan travel to America to find Michael Drake (Michael Pataki), the last living descendant of the Dracula bloodline. Once in town, Zoltan turns a hitchhiker into mincemeat before biting a number of dogs and creating a small army of vampire mongrels. One of schlockmeister Albert Band’s slicker efforts, but that isn’t saying much—Zoltan is entertaining but way too silly to be taken seriously, making it all the more ridiculous when Dracula expert José Ferrer enters the picture and starts spouting cockamamie dialogue, the best upon entering a fishing cabin: “It’s not the Hilton in Bucharest, but it’ll do.” Pataki does double duty as Drake and great granddaddy Count Dracula, who in flashback turns into a bat and sinks tiny fangs into Zoltan. A howler in more ways than one. C+