Thursday, August 30, 2012

Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972)

After Mark's uncle dies in an accident, he brings his hippie friends to the Wild West town he's inherited.  The narrator informs us that Mark must make the ranch, i.e. ghost town, profitable within six months or ownership will revert to the creepy caretaker Solomon who lives on the property.

Mark and his friends fix up the town and put together a show for tourists, while creepy Solomon warns them about a man on a horse who rides through town looking for a head.  Mark ignores this talk, but makes sure to keep on all the gunfighters who worked for his Uncle so that they can entertain the tourists.

The film has lots of padding.  There is a long sequence in the theater where most of the group sits in the audience while they take turns heading up on stage to sing songs, do yo-yo tricks, and perform improv comedy.  If this is an indication of what the tourists are going to see, they're going to be very disappointed.

There's a whole lot of talk about nothing and the first kill doesn't happen until fifty minutes into the film.  The foley is questionable, especially when a girl hit by a truck on a dirt road sounds like it's a car on cobblestones.  Watch for the adult female tourist carrying the Superman lunchbox.   This was done by the same guy who did Carnival of Blood.

Ridiculous dialogue:

"It's a super generation gap."

"Try as he could to save her life, he could only fail."

"All these people have been splattered with real blood?  Who but a doctor would have access to that much blood?"

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