Crypt of Dark Secrets

A Vietnam vet gets shot and is revived by an Aztec swamp witch (Maureen Ridley) who then... I'll stop here because the only thing that matters is Maureen Ridley as the witch. She levitates, gyrates and discombobulates in complete and utter nudity. She occasionally turns into a snake, and sometimes her amazing eyes glow via a shaky matte. She is a real beauty, with no apparent plastic surgery marring her natural, lithe hotness. She looks like Julie Christie, but prettier...and nuder. The dripping swamp locale, and the short running time (71minutes) are nice pluses, but in all honesty, I ended up fast forwarding to the scenes of Maureen Ridley dancing. If this film had been more widely seen, this swamp witch would have gone on to some kind of career. As it is, this is her one and only credit. Shame.

This rural low-budgeter was pretty shocking for something coming from the Something Weird DVD line, in the fact that it doesn't look or feel like some softcore porn, like probably 90% of their output. Of course, Damballa is pretty hot without her clothes (which you get to see in ample amount)! The film is fairly well-made under the conditions, with some rich color photography and it moves along at a good gallop, being only 71 minutes, and could have probably gotten away with some editing out of the overly-long ritual and dancing sequences. Granted, the acting is pretty poor, but that's to be expected in something like this. All in all, worth a look if you buy a copy.

CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS may not have any crypts or really dark secrets, but this southern-style 1970s B-grade drive-in fare has a little something for everyone: A story of greed, revenge and destiny...a sultry witch woman that dances in the nude and turns into a snake...greedy evil-doers...and even a touch of homoeroticism.

This is best viewed late at night with a pile of junk food and no high expectations, and delivers just enough passable entertainment to find it worthwhile. It's a simple story of a Vietnam Vet who retires to "Haunted Island" and is murdered by three locals who want his money. A supernatural woman named Damballa ressurrects the man to fulfill his destiny with her, and for her to pass punishment on those who have done wrong.

While many men will want to give it a look to see Maureen Ridley dancing naked, this film at least doesn't base itself around the naked scenes to pass itself off as a legitimate movie just so guys can drool at the bare skin. It offers a silly story with sub par acting and B-grade charm to be enjoyable enough as a guilty pleasure. It also offers a little something for the gals (and some men too *wink-wink*), as Ronald Tanet (the character of Ted the Vietnam vet) has that 1970s masculine gay porn look: Bearded, hairy chest always bare, with hip-snug denims, looking right out of a porn film from the Gage Brothers or P.M. Productions. It's rare to see a "B-grade, second billed drive-in production" that offers a little bit of everything like that, including a score that rises above the low, low budget. I still giggle when I see the local voodoo woman smirking in her heavily powdered hair!

Clocking in at a brief 1 hour 11 minutes, CRYPT OF DARK SECRETS doesn't wear out its welcome and ends after just enough silliness has paraded by. It is currently available on DVD as the second feature along with 1964's THE NAKED WITCH from Something Weird Video. For collectors of the low, low budget obscure drive-in fare, this is a delightful flick to obtain.

Vietnam vet Ted Watkins (Ronald Tanet) lives deep in the swamp on a place called "Haunted Island." Local legend has the spirit of shape shifting Damballa (Maureen Ridley) living there. After three crooks hear of Watkins' small cash fortune (he is overheard telling the town banker "I keep all my money in my bread box"), they sneak onto his land and kill him. But Damballa (which everyone pronounces as Damn-bella) does a naked dance and brings him back to life, setting out a plan for revenge.

Should I be angry this has no crypt and no dark secrets? This regionally-produced snoozer from writer-director Jack Weis doesn't really offer much unless you are looking for some swamp photography. Well, Ridley, who has a British accent for some reason, does get naked a few times. Weis handles everything with a dull "point and shoot" style and the make up consists of some blood dripping on money. He went on to do MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978). I looked up Damballa on Wikipedia and it is indeed a voodoo God that can transform into a snake. But it is a male, so you have to give Weis points for at least recognizing some exploitation value.

This is the "b-side" of a disc with Larry Buchanon's "The Naked Witch". And it very much resembles the more well-known film. After three swamp rats murder and rob a Vietnam vet in a Lousiana bayou, he is found and revived as a zombie for some reason by a strange witch name "Dambala", and he proceeds to take undead revenge on his murderers.

This is the kind of regional, low-budget film-making that they really don't do anymore. (There are, of course, the modern-day, internet-savvy fan-boys with digital cameras who might pull off something like "The Blair Witch Project" once in awhile , but that's really a different thing). Texas-based Larry Buchanon was one of the first of these filmmakers, but these guys had their real heyday in the 1970's when they took advantage of things like the bigfoot craze (i.e."The Legend of Boggy Creek") and the explosion of "sexploitation" films. The director of this, Jack Weiss, was obviously more interested in the sex films then PG-rated bigfoot "docu-dramas" (although the two things weren't necessarily mutually exclusive--there were actually some "bigfoot sex" films in the 70's). His most famous film was "Mardi Gras Massacre", a much more graphic film both in terms of sex and blood, but this movie (believe it or not) has more of a plot and is more enjoyable simply because it is not so tediously repetitive. The down-home characters are pretty endearing too (despite the generally inept acting).

This is better than "Mardi Gras Massacre", but inferior to its co-feature "Naked Witch". Since this was a 70's film though, the witch "Dambala" is certainly a lot more NAKED than the one in the earlier Buchanon film. Maureen Ridley, who plays "Dambala", has an incredible body and was obviously some kind of professional dancer--it's actually not hard to believe her nude dancing could raise the dead (and a lot of other things). I would recommend this if you enjoy low-budget regional film-making, especially as two-for-one feature with "The Naked Witch"