Point of Terror

Point of Terror huh? I don't think so. Maybe Point of No Return or Pointlessness, or even Point Blank - but Terror - NO WAY! This is one of those cheesy, sleazy seventies offerings that are known for real bad acting, virtually little plot, and lots of skin. Point of Terror has all that, and it has so much more. I knew what this film was going to be like right from the beginning when Pete Carpenter, the male lead, dances in the foreground of a ridiculous bright red background ala a poor man's Tom Jones in red attire from head to toe. Things then move to Carpenter, perhaps having one of the biggest self-inflated egos I have seen in any film, play with a girl who loves him but can not offer him any career advancement. Carpenter then lies on a beach, finds an older but beautiful woman(the lovely, buxom Dyanne Thorne), realizes she happens to be married to the man in charge of a recording company that could give him his big break, and you can imagine where things go from there. The story is not overly inventive at all, the acting is quite pedestrian with Carpenter doing a less than workmanlike job parading shirtless and wearing pants made for adolescents. Carpenter, who is credited with writing this as well, even feels compelled to show his backside and then act - with his "skill" and the script - like he is doing all of womanhood a huge favour. One big Yikes! and Yawn. Despite all of this film's problems - and they are legion, Point of Terror is easily very watchable, laughable, and fun in a so bad its good way. And as an extra bonus, there is a scene, probably the best in the film, where Ms. Thorne disrobes and show us why she was in so much demand during those years. Her attributes easily overshadow her unconvincing yet somewhat credible acting style. As for the rest of the thespians, everyone does an OK job. None of the actors are real good nor real bad. The story, although obvious from the beginning, is also at least handled with some flair from the director Alex Nichol. Terror surely was misused in the title as there is virtually no horror at all in this film - a couple of rather tame deaths, though one is with a man in a wheelchair being goaded like a bull with "Ole" into a pool. You will only find something like that in the seventies for sure!

Point of Terror (1971)

BOMB (out of 4)

I need to admit that I have no idea what this film was about or what it was trying to say but here's the so-called plot. Tony (Peter Carpenter) is a nightclub singer at the Lobster Lounge where he's hoping to catch a break but most of the time he ends up in the beds of older women. Lately Tony has been having grisly nightmares of women being brutally murdered. Soon, one of these older woman (Dyanne Thorne of Ilsa fame) offers him a record contract. Tony, thinking he's going to get popular, starts acting like a star, which upsets the older woman.

Make any sense? I really don't know what the horror elements are doing in this film because it's mostly about Tony and his record contract. The horror elements are mainly shown through the nightmare images but trust me, hearing Tony sing is a lot scarier than anything we see violence wise. I kept watching this movie and expecting it to turn into a horror film but it remained a record contract film with a few doses of mystery, which were just downright boring and hard to follow as well.

The director at least knew to make the women get naked and yes boys, that includes Ilsa herself. Dyanne Thorne might not be the best actress around the block but she's got a lot of what the others don't have, if you get my drift. There's also another silly sex scene on a huge boulder (wouldn't that cause bad scratches to the back?) that the director shows using split screens. The film is bad enough to get a few laughs, especially the look at the bar, which seems to be decorated out of colored tin foil. Point of Terror fails on all other levels but I'd recommend you giving the soundtrack to someone you really hate.

Like its earlier companion feature "Blood Mania," 1971's "Point of Terror" was plainly a vanity piece for writer-producer-star Peter Carpenter, a Vegas hoofer whose death remained shrouded in mystery for decades, dates as varied as late 1970, late '71, even the late 70s-early 80s, finally confirmed as 1996, resulting from AIDS. As an actor, he displays neither emotion nor charisma, and appears to be miming his three songs, all non hits from (believe it or not) Motown! ("Lifebeats" was actually recorded by The Supremes, minus Diana Ross). Imagine a singer so bad he has nightmares on the beach about his singing, and his apartment looks like his decorator was 'Bela Lugosi!' Another surprising name prominently featured in the opening credits is future Oscar winning editor Verna Fields, who earned her Academy Award for her work on Spielberg's "Jaws" just a few years later. The director is Alex Nicol, who at least had a genuine horror title on his slim resume behind the camera, 1958's "The Screaming Skull" (he had far more credits as an actor). Leslie Simms fondly recalls her working with Peter Carpenter, who may have been a likable fellow off camera, but insisted on playing lowdown sleazeballs in his own films. He juggles three different women in this picture, even flirting with the attractive Miss Simms, yet insists on rushing off to get married even after one girl announces she's pregnant! Dyanne Thorne (whom I first saw in STAR TREK's "A Piece of the Action") had already appeared with Carpenter in 1970's "Love Me Like I Do," here playing the man hungry wife of wheelchair bound record mogul Joel Marston, best remembered by genre buffs for 1957's "The Disembodied," plus his film debut in the 1949 Charlie Chan finale "The Sky Dragon" ("Blood Mania" had featured Jacqueline Dalya, from 1941's "Charlie Chan in Rio"). For all the wildly misleading ads depicting this as a horror film, the only scene that qualifies is Dyanne's bloody murder of Marston's first wife, just a brief flashback. Considering all her misdeeds, her character just isn't as maniacal as she should be, as one reviewer commented, the whole thing remains curiously tame, rather than outrageously lurid (it's never boring however). "Point of Terror," being part of Crown International's television package, debuted on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater on Feb 26 1977, broadcast twice more over the next 4 years ("Blood Mania" earlier debuted on Nov 27 1976).

Tony Trelos is a club singer at a seaside bar. Wanting more out of his career, he is approached by a woman on a beach who owns a record label with her crippled husband. Tony's involvement and exploits with her are more dangerous than he's aware of, however, as she's guilty of a murder, and capable of another.

The second piece of celluloid sleaze that Peter Carpenter wrote and starred in after the atmospheric (and underrated) "Blood Mania," "Point of Terror" is a significantly less thrilling picture—far more talky and significantly less moody. It also seems to be cribbing elements of "Blood Mania" in a lot of ways, as it follows borderline identical plot arcs that have been minutely tweaked: Man becomes involved with wealthy woman. Woman is unstable and a murderess. Family member enters the picture and complicates matters further. Same formula, different canvas.

The film is peppered with some of the most ridiculously "seventies" musical numbers you'll ever see, and also boasts a significant amount of skin from a buxom Dyanne Thorne and the hunky Carpenter. There is a nice doubled-over twist at the end of the film that is clever but rather cheap, and the general impression I got after it was over was that Carpenter seemed to have wanted to do-over "Blood Mania," but this time invoke as much of Jess Franco's "Succubus" as he could.

All in all, "Point of Terror" is a middling thriller that, while mildly amusing, is more or less a rehash of Carpenter's prior (and better) film. It is, like "Blood Mania," relatively well-shot, but it lacks the performances and moodiness that made the former so watchable. For a piece of grindhouse sleaze, "Point of Terror" is watchable, but it's lacking both in spirit and inventiveness. 5/10.

Get a group together to witness POINT OF TERROR which, as others will have noted, is not a horror movie (but *is* pretty horrible!). The film is, rather, a sexploitation melodrama about a ruthless, ladder-climbing lounge singer, Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter) who gets involved both intimately and professionally with Andrea (Dyanne Thorne), the sex-starved, alcoholic wife of a wheelchair-bound music industry mogul. Everything about this film is a howler: script, acting, production values (tin-foil sets), and the music...the music...oh, those songs! On top of everything else we have a protagonist who likes to "drop trou" and show off his humpy bod (and there ain't nuthin' wrong with that!). Peter Carpenter must have an ego the size of Mount Rushmore to flash us a lingering butt-shot when he emerges from a shower as well as a fully nude side-angle shot where his leg just barely hides the family jewels from view. WOOF!!! Did he ever do a Playgirl spread? It certainly would have been up his alley... Tempestuous blonde bombshell co-star Dyanne Thorne is a force to be reckoned with (and how!) with a rack that won't quit, and her buoyant topless scene in a swimming pool is one of the film's highlights (along with her many excursions into overacting). Watch for scenes with Joel Marston as the wheelchair-bound husband who can't seem to sit still (although he's supposed to be utterly incapacitated from the waist down), and in one poolside scene catches himself just before crossing his legs! Leslie Simms in a supporting role as one of Andrea's lush friends is a scene stealer, while Paula Mitchell as Sally turns in a tragically robotic performance. It just keeps getting better and better...! The film's cinematography is often laughably blurry when "focusing" on Carpenter during his lounge act at The Lobster House (yes, The Lobster House, I kid you not), or else it's bizarrely "creative" (as happens during a moonlit, beach-side sex scene involving select points of view shown in split-screen). Oh, and the wardrobe...and hair!!! Look, if you're not a fan of "bad cinema", don't bother with this title since you won't even be able to appreciate the astonishing epic quality of this carefully crafted bomb. But if you're like me, and get sick chuckles out of films that tried really hard but totally missed the mark, then rent this one immediately or buy it (Rhino DVD released POINT OF TERROR as part of a multi-film set titled HORRIBLE HORRORS in October of 2004). This one gets a whopping 8 out of 10 just because its so terribly awful that it's engagingly entertaining in repeat viewings (and how cool is that!?!) -- how often does a "bad" film come along that still yields new stuff to ridicule on repeat viewings? POINT OF TERROR is a winner! And speaking of winners, what EVER happened to a talent like Peter Carpenter??? Enquiring Minds Want To Know!!!