The Sound of Horror (1965)

Professor Andre (Antonio Casas), along with archeological assistant Stravos (Francisco Piquer) and Andre’s niece Maria (Soledad Miranda), are blowing up cave walls in a secluded Grecian valley.  They discover some petrified, prehistoric eggs which just so happen to hatch (as these things do), and unleash an (mostly) invisible horror from out of time.

José Antonio Nieves Conde’s The Sound of Horror (aka El Sonido de la Muerte aka Sound from a Million Years Ago aka The Prehistoric Sound) is a cozy little creature feature.  It has a small cast of victims, an interesting take on an old premise, and some surprising black and white gore effects.  It deals, as just about all monster/science fiction films from the Fifties and well into the Sixties did (and much further back, to be sure, but there was a pointedness to the object lessons during this era), with the consequences of tampering with Nature and/or God’s domain.  Andre and his crew are destroying these caves to find a treasure (they use dynamite, which boggles the mind, especially if they want to find what they’re looking for intact).  Aside from the eggs, they also discover a very well-preserved Greek mummy, indicating that the caves were once an ancient burial ground (was there anything not buried in this cave?).  By uncovering these things, they offend the Powers That Be and incur their wrath.  These things were meant to stay buried, even though the process of discovery insists that they be dragged into the light.  This is the same paradigm at work with atomic-age horrors; For all the value culled from splitting the atom, it brought with it heavy negatives, and there are also the aspects we have not or cannot comprehend about these “breakthroughs” which may come back to bite humanity in its collective ass.  

More than this, the excavators’ motives are not completely pure.  Andre is hellbent on finding this supposed treasure, and at first blush, he appears to be doing this for the sake of historical exploration (“we cannot allow superstition to block the way of progress,” according to Andre; a line uttered by many a mad scientist).  However, it quickly becomes apparent that his true motivation is avarice.  Andre’s two buddies from World War Two, Asilov (James Philbrook) and Dorman (José Bódalo), show up with the second half of the map Andre has been using incorrectly up to this point.  This introduces Andre’s ulterior motives for his dig.  There is booty supposedly hidden in the caves by an ancient gang of international thieves, and the professor and his buddies plan to split it and live the high life (“a beautiful villa, fine clothes, and limousines”).  These three feel entitled to this loot from what they had to endure during the war, spending their youth “dancing to bullets.”  

Contrasting the old men’s cupidity are Stravos and Asilov’s driver/guide Pete (Arturo Fernández).  Stravos is content merely with the archeological discovery of the mummy.  To him, that’s “treasure enough,” and he ignores Andre and company’s further searching for the money in order to study the corpse in detail and sketch it (I suppose, like in many museums, flash photography is not allowed in archeological dig sites).  That the body is left lying disdainfully in the middle of the cave is further evidence of the disrespect that calls down the proverbial thunder on the heads of these people.  While everyone else talks about all the material things they want to buy with the money, Pete only wants to expand his tour guide business.  He is satisfied just polishing his truck (which he has dubbed Diana) and making time with Maria (can’t blame him for that).  Only the three old men have dollar signs in their eyes, but it is their actions that periclitate the group as a whole.

The film’s most unique aspect is right there in its title.  It makes excellent use of sound to convey menace and delivers frights.  The monster emits a high pitched skirl that rises and falls as it closes in on its prey.  This device, of course, has two purposes.  On a practical production level, it covers for budgetary restrictions in the costume department.  The only time we see the monster is at the very end, and then it’s shot from far away, and it is thankfully indistinct enough to not completely ruin everything that’s been built up beforehand (honestly, it does not look like it would impress if seen clearly).  Otherwise, there is a brief glimpse of the monster’s outline in double exposure, and the appearance of its footprints in flour.  That’s it.  Everything else is left to the viewer’s imagination, and while there’s something to be said for giving the audience what it wants, there’s equally something to be said for holding back and making the audience engage their minds in the creation of the fantasy.  On a stylistic level, it maintains the mystery of the creature, and it creates tension, because you never know precisely where the beast is (other than that it’s near you).  Additionally, the fact that the monster shrieks like a banshee is unnerving (and it should be noted, it is a very human shriek, almost as if the creature were mocking its victims).  

The clear pinnacle of the use of sound in horror is Robert Wise’s The Haunting, which was released two years prior to The Sound of Horror.  The major differences between these films and their aural displays are twofold.  One, Conde’s film uses a simple sound with slight variations on it.  Wise’s film used various sounds to exude the notion that the entire house is alive.  Two, whereas Wise combined his audio approach with a visual flair, Conde’s film is fairly static in feel.  His camera does move around some, and it’s usually well-motivated, but his aesthetic is still very staged and more economical than Wise in many ways (never uninterestingly, but certainly not innovatively).

Despite what the film gets right, however, its middle sags a bit more than it should after it becomes something of a siege movie.  At this point, what tensions there are between the characters melt away, and the film simply waits for the next attack.  It fills this time with characters sleeping and chatting idly.  Funnily enough, there are just enough moments of action to pep things up occasionally, so it’s not a total loss.  That being said, this is a damned good low budget horror film.  I’m surprised The Sound of Horror isn’t brought up more often among genre enthusiasts, because it really deserves to be.  Seek it out (it’s on Youtube in full, if you’re interested).

MVT:  I appreciate the conceit of the film, largely because it’s something that wasn’t done often at the time, and even if it were, wasn’t consistently successful enough to be noteworthy.

Make or Break:  The first kill of the film works in spades.  The unsettling cry of the monster along with the rather well done gore effects actually captured my full attention.

Score:  7/10 

The Devil Came from Akasava (1971)

AKA: Der Teufel kam aus Akasava
Director: Jess Franco
Starring: Fred Williams, Soledad Miranda, Horst Tappert

Jess Franco is a looming monolith that casts a long shadow over the cinematic landscape, a monolith constructed purely out of sheer force of volume. This Spanish-born director, who has worked in Spain as well as Italy, France, Germany, and on occasion, the United States, made roughly seventy-three million films. If you break down the cinema of the world based on number of productions per nation, Jess Franco alone qualifies as a sovereign film-producing state. Like any good European cult film director, Franco has worked in every genre conceivable, and perhaps more than a few you of which you wouldn't want any conception whatsoever. There's really no effective way to describe Jess Franco to the uninitiated. He is something they will simply have to discover on their own, in small bits and pieces, perhaps completely unaware of the fact that they are learning things about Jess Franco, until the day they wake up and realize they understand him, though they may not like him, and they certainly won't be able to articulate their comprehension to others. If anyone tries to puzzle you with one of those Zen koans, your reply should be to simply show them a Jess Franco film.

Coming out in 1971, The Devil Came from Akasava (which is based on a story by mystery writer Edgar Wallace) was a bit late to jump the Eurospy bandwagon of the 1960s, which Franco had previously entered with his thoroughly ridiculous and highly entertaining Danger! Death Ray. Still, when a movie is this utterly strange, we can forgive it showing up to the dance a little late, especially since it shows up looking like Soledad Miranda clad in silver boots and a see-through black tunic.

Our action, if you want to call it that, begins in the fictional country of Akasava, where a geologist discovers the fabled Philosopher's Stone that can turn any metal into gold. The only problem with the stone is that exposure to it causes one's face to fry. Oh, and it also turns you into a zombie. So, right away, we're going to have zombies, spies, and Soledad Miranda striptease performance art? I guess you can see why Franco has his admirers. No sooner has the geologist found the stone than he is getting shot at. He manages to deliver the stone to Doctor Thorrsen (German cult movie mainstay Horst Tappert, who would work with Franco on a regular basis during the 1970s), but it isn't long before someone show sup to off the assistant geologist and steal the stone. Then Thorrsen himself mysteriously vanishes while, at the same time, back in London, a mysterious man is lurking behind the curtains in Thorrsen's office, just long enough to kill a man sneaking in to try and crack a safe. How's that for intrigue?

It's enough to get sexy British intelligence agent Soledad Miranda assigned to the case, and like any good female operative, she ascertains that the best way to approach the case would be to travel to Akasava and immediately get a job as a stripper in one of those arty, weirdly-lit strip-jazz clubs that only exist in Jess Franco films yet exist in every Jess Franco film. Here is the first, most noticeable, and most enjoyable of Franco's reoccurring obsessions. It kills the man to go ten minutes without inserting a performance art striptease at a jazz club full of swirling lights and candy colors. He should have made a Bollywood film, because he shares the same affection for cutting to the musical number and the hot dancing girl, regardless of whether or not it has anything at all to do with the scene before or after it, or with the movie in general. Though these scenes were often gratuitous asides, it's obvious that Franco (himself an avid jazz fan and musician) adores them. They are shot and choreographed beautifully, and Franco's taste in groovy sixties cocktail lounge jazz is impeccable. I've certainly had worse times at the movies than watching Soledad Miranda dance (if you want to call it that; it's more a series of stylized poses -- "voguing," I suppose) while breezy lounge music from some of Europe's most accomplished composers of swanky bachelor pad music go wild.

Miranda teams up with Fred Williams as Rex Forrester, a detective from Scotland Yard, who all things considered, seem a little out of their jurisdiction operating in a fictional African nation, but jurisdictional squabbles are really the least of anyone's concerns in a movie with magic stones, Lugers, zombies, and avant-garde jazz-strip clubs. Together, at a very languid and meandering pace, they get around in one way or another of working on the case at hand, tracking down Thorrsen and recovering the stone.

Like most Franco films, The Devil Came from Akasava walks to its own idiosyncratic beat, and it takes its sweet time getting anywhere, allowing Franco to linger on whatever catches his fancy. Luckily, more times than not, that's Soledad Miranda. Franco populates his film with a cast of experienced B-movie actors, all of whom turn in exactly the performance you expect from a band of such professionals -- which is to say, some are good, and some are just weird. Besides, Soledad, the real star of the film is the zoom lens, which Franco employs with almost gleeful abandon, zooming slowly, zooming rapidly, on any and every thing that happens to catch he camera's eye. It gets disorienting after a while, as the mere act of walking down a hallway seems to justify Franco zooming in and out. The end result is that a rather run-of-the-mill trashy James Bond knock-off like The Devil Came from Akasava becomes suddenly hallucinatory. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere is the primary goal in many European cult films, but while we expect it from a vampire or zombie or ghost film, seeing the same technique applied to a straight-forward spy thriller is really odd. Pleasant, though, and along with Soledad Miranda, it's that quirky approach to filmmaking that saves an otherwise dull spy film from going on the scrapheap.

The action, when it does come, is pretty clumsy and not the least bit thrilling. The espionage isn't particularly engaging, either. But the film appeals to me never the less, perhaps because I can sympathize and relate to Franco's weird pacing and personal quirks. There are times when I simply can't struggle through one of his films, but The Devil Came from Akasava is much breezier, eye-catching and fun, helped in large part by Franco's dwelling on Soledad Miranda, a goofy spy plot, and some really good Euro-lounge cocktail music, which gets better when it's employed at really inopportune times that should be tense and exciting save for the breathless "la de do za zu!" female vocals accompanying the action.

Make or Break: I hope you like long, arty stripteases to cocktail jazz and featuring a stunningly beautiful woman, because this movie is going deliver them.

MVT: Soledad Miranda. She possesses not just the beauty but also a hypnotic charm and an incredible array of pop-art outfits.