Romania is still an inexpensive place to film a horror movie (just ask Charles Band, Elvira or Bruce Campbell), as well as place to stage more prestigious work; it has doubled for the Appalachians in Cold Mountain, and for India in the upcoming Youth Without Youth by Francis Ford Coppola. Their native film industry is far less known in the US. According to the Pacific Film Archives' Jason Sanders, Romania only makes six films a year. They're doing something right, or at least the Cannes Film Festival thinks so: Romanian films have won two Un Certain Regard awards, one Camera d'Or, and one Palme d'Or in the last three years.

At the Archives at UC Berkeley -- relatively central to the seven million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area -- the PFA is assembling a six-night program of Romanian films. If they have anything in common, it's telling about the trauma of the almost science-fiction evil of the Ceausescu dictatorship, and the tale of his hideo-comic downfall on Dec 22, 1989. The Paper Will Be Blue by Radu Muntean (Dec 2) stages the fear and excitement of the revolution in Romania as an urbane thriller; the Scorsese/Wim Wenders executive-produced The Way I Spent the End of the World (above) by Catalin Mitulescu (Nov 3) takes a more impressionistic, nostalgic approach.

Also making its California debut on Nov. 3 is California Dreamin' (Endless). It isn't called Endless because of a 155 minute running time, but rather because the director Cristian Nemescu died before the final edit. Armand Assante, recently the best part of American Gangster, if you ask me, plays a NATO Army Captain immobilized in a one-horse town by bureaucrats and hustlers. The Great Communist Bank Robbery (2004, Nov 25) concerns a really memorable Communist atrocity. After a 1959 bank robbery, the six who were arrested (guilty or not) were made to act in a reenactment film designed to show the Romanians that crime didn't pay; they were executed afterwards. Director Alexandru Solomon investigates this lost bit of history. Occident (Nov 17) is the first film by director Cristian Mungiu, whose still unreleased in our area 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days copped the Palme D'Or at Cannes 2007. And a series of short films on Nov 25 includes early work by Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, a Cannes winner in '05), and Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, Camera d'Or winner 2006). Pretty soon you'll be able to have a quick answer to the question, "What's your favorite Romanian film?"

Although I didn't plan it this way, these last three episodes of Elvira's Movie Macabre from Shout Factory DVD (see part 1 for the first three) represent early 70s exploitation versions of the three biggest Universal movie monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein and the werewolf. Also, interestingly enough, two of these flicks feature the late Michael Dunn, a dwarf actor, probably most memorable for his performance as Alexander in the "Plato's' Stepchildren" episode of the original Star Trek, and as a recurring villain on TV's Wild Wild West.

Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974)
The Elvira sequences on this disk are of poorer video quality than the rest of the series, with a vertical line pattern present throughout the episode. The film itself is quite sharp, except for minor speckling that gets pretty bad at reel changes. The movie is full to the brim with "WTF" moments, which make this a fascinating and fun train wreck of a film. Shot in Italy, but set in a nameless 19th century European country, the film introduces us to Count Frankenstein who, as Elvira points out, has been a Baron in nearly every other Frankenstein film, so why is he now a Count? For no good reason that I can discern, there are several Neanderthal men living in the countryside surrounding Castle Frankenstein. One of these cavemen is beaten to death by angry villagers (and it's just not a Frankenstein movie without angry villagers, God bless 'em), making him a prime candidate for Frankenstein-ian shenanigans.

Younger folks may know Elvira as that vampire chick with the cleavage from all those beer commercials, but the character originated on Movie Macabre which premiered on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles in 1981. The show featured Elvira-Mistress of the Dark (a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson) introducing schlocky horror films while sporting a gothic gown with a plunging neckline and an industrial strength push-up bra. Horror movie hosts were once a staple of local television, but In 1982 Elvira became the first nationally syndicated horror host, bringing Movie Macabre to stations all across the U.S.

Shout Factory DVD has recently released six episodes from the series, with all of Elvira's introductions, quips, and corny jokes preserved. The original broadcast versions used edited-for-TV prints of the films, while the DVD versions retain all the gore and nudity that B-movie hounds demand. This is interesting, because Elvira often uses clips from the films while doing her schtick, and these clips are drawn from the broadcast versions, allowing viewers to compare and contrast the two different prints. The host segments look quite good for two-decade old video tape, while the quality of the film prints varies widely. Personally, I like the fact that the scratches and bad splices have been preserved. Many films deserve a pristine digital transfer; Doomsday Machine is not one of them. I think keeping the imperfections of these old prints helps seal in the schlocky goodness. The host segments are full of campy fun, but, as in the case of The Devil's Wedding Night, can be a bit long-winded. While the series sports no extras, it does allow the viewer to choose between watching the entire episode with Elvira's intros, or to watch just the film itself. As for the movies: