El espectro del terror

The deliriously grimy B-movie marvel 'El Espectro del terror' (1973) remains some sublimely sordid, girl-goringly grim, Giallo-esque Spanish Horror sleaze from midnight sinema's most decadent age. This pulse-poundingly perverse peep-show was perfectly perpetrated by malevolent muck maestro José María Elorrieta. A savagely psychopathic skell Charley (Aramis Ney) is daily tormented by a livid interior squall of murderous fantasies until he succumbs to the deviated demands of his blackened id, whereby Charley fatefully enacts these most diabolically degenerated dreams in Elorrieta's relentlessly unsavoury backstreet stalking Iberian insanity. This uncommonly grubby, low budget trawl through the mephitic mire of male toxicity is exotically electrified with the breathlessly beautiful presence of exquisite Euro-starlet Maria Perschy! As through violently wrested from the luridly disordered coils of a foully distempered brain, 'El Espectro de terror' garishly abounds with salacious discords; as once this slug-eyed,dementedly doll-tormenting, super-sweaty, hyper-introverted freak's orgiastic obsessions fully take over, the sin-soaked screen eerily erupts in a calamitously crimson conflagration of murderously misanthropic mania! No woman is EVER safe when monstrously malign deadbeat Charley is out on his bloody night beat hunting for hourglass street meat! The notable grindhouse grooves are provided by fabulous fear-funkers Frederico Contreras & Javier Elorrieta. The more corruptible celluloid sin seekers who secretly crave the more illicit late-night oeuvre of Jess Franco, Renato Polselli, and Michel Lemoine just might be more synchronized to dig on the darkly dissonant grindhouse grooves herein!

This movie begins with a young woman walking down the street and suddenly realizing that she is being followed. She runs to her home but the stranger still manages to gain entry and after a quick fight subsequently strangles her. The scene then shifts to a pretty stewardess named "Maria Preston" (Maria Perschy) coming in from a flight and upon getting to her car she sees an ugly man in it and she immediately runs away. She then sees him again while walking on the street and escapes from him by taking a taxi. Yet, when she tries to tell anyone about it they all think she is crazy. But the real craziness is only beginning. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this turned out to be an okay Spanish horror film which definitely benefited by the presence of the attractive Betsabe Ruiz (as Maria's roommate "Nicole") and the aforementioned Maria Perschy. In short, while this wasn't a great film by any means, I found it to be an adequate movie for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

In a Rear Window-style piece of amateur sleuthing, air stewardess Maria (Maria Perschy), the principal woman-in-peril in El Espectro Del Terror, follows the film's lank-haired, bug-eyed psycho killer Charly Reed (Aramis Ney), entering his home after he leaves (the door conveniently left wide open - a trap, perhaps?); however, Maria hasn't got James Stewart keeping an eye out for her. It's a really dumb moment that is frustrating to watch, but I might have been a little more forgiving had the rest of the film been any good. It's not.

A routine horror/thriller, the film's plot is predictable (the killer even fits that movie stereotype, the mentally unstable Vietnam veteran), scares and suspense are in short supply, and director José María Elorrieta fails to deliver those staples' of 70s Euro-horror, gratuitous nudity and bloody murders: the pretty women keep their clothes on, and Reed's modus operandi is to strangle his victims, meaning that gore is non-existent. The final act is so poorly lit that it's anyone's guess what happens to the killer: I heard a train, so I presume he got squished. Then again, maybe he hopped on board and embarked on a six month rail tour, taking in the landmarks and cities of Europe. Who knows?

Yet another maniac choking women as a substitute for normal sex. Below cheap, extremely sleazy and downbeat, the writer and director seems to have a problem with women. The bug-eyed Charlie is an insect of a man who is completely psychotic yet can function at his laundry delivery job. I'm sure the Spanish tourist board appreciated this film. The heroine is as a dumb a main character as could be written.

I liked this director's Curse of the Vampire, but Specter of Terror is lousy. It is a thriller that seems to have been written in a day, shot in a week, and released the week after.

A stewardess (Maria Perschy) returning from a flight finds a strange man hiding in her car. After fleeing from the parking garage, the stewardess tells both her best friend and her psychiatrist boyfriend, but both are skeptical of her story. Furthermore, the stewardess later spies this man following her. Then, one night she wakes up, and the man is trying to strangle her. A neighbor frightens the man away. Just when the viewer thinks this will be another no-one-will-believe-the-woman-in-jeopardy story, the plot changes focus. It begins to follow the psycho, Charly Reed, forgetting about the stewardess. Charly is a typical 70's movie psycho. He is a deranged Vietnam veteran (living abroad), a voyeur, a photographer, and even has dolls all over his apartment (why? I guess just because that was standard issue for movie psychos at the time). The film follows Charly being questioned by the police, taking home and murdering a prostitute, and meeting another Vietnam veteran, one who keeps needling Charly until he inevitably explodes.

At the finale, Charly kidnaps the stewardess after she has followed him to his hideout (!). There is a dark night finale that was quite frankly hard to see on my copy. The film leaves the fate of at least one major character unresolved, but I doubt the filmmakers were too concerned. This film has a by-the-numbers, slapped together feel, that, even with a short running time, makes the film feel tedious. Speaking of the running time, my copy ran about five minutes shorter than the 81 minutes listed here. The print I saw was light on exploitation goodies . I don't know if the print was cut, but I doubt anything missing would have helped the overall film.