Garden of the Dead (USA, 1972) 58 min color DIR: John Hayes. SCR: Jack Matcha, Daniel Cady. PROD: Daniel Cady. MUSIC: Jaime Mendoza-Nava. DOP: Paul Hipp. CAST: Philip Kenneally, Duncan McLeod, Virgil Frye, Susan Charney. (Millennium Productions)
Rather loosey-goosey Southern chain gang snorts so much formaldehyde that they survive execution/burial and go on a pasty-faced killin’ spree of their own. Odd, clunky, featuring virtually no characterization or plotting or action or gore or budget, yet it has a hypnotic pull. Hayes keeps the modestly competent line readings to a hard minimum, more often devolving into muttering and grunts and long, alienated tableaux. The fume-slurping scenes are more lurid for their sluggishness. The wildly inaccurate pickaxe rampage keeps giving up haunting images. The female lead does almost nothing but stand over the action and cry, and somehow it’s just the touch this movie needed. Nothing makes sense, yet it keeps reminding me of Carnival of Souls reminding me of Cocteau; I’ll take that over making sense. Joe Blasco, who made the little gross things crawl around in Shivers, cut his teeth here. (Premiere VHS)
JC Culp
JC Culp is a collage filmmaker and the founder of Unpopular Arts, which provides media production, preservation and presentation.