Craze (1974)

Memorable, crazy movie

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Dreadfully Boring

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Jack Palance as an insane antiques dealer who worships an African deity in his basement and offers it human sacrifices? That's the kind of film that just can't lose! And it doesn't, although the copy I watched tries it's best with the worst sound ever, forcing me to up the volume on the DVD player to max and still struggle to hear some of the dialogue.Now Jack can do these off-kilter roles in his sleep and this NOT being a spaghetti western, he's actually required to be there on screen for most of the film. It's a joy to see him in his Primark devil robes with his coven, worshipping this African statue while a chick dances nude and then cuts herself. It's all harmless fun until some ex-coven member turns up and accidentally impales herself on the statue's trident, and the subsequent windfall gets Jack all thinking that maybe he should be upping his game when it comes to demented statue worshipping.In his non-insane life, Jack owns a shop with a weedy assistant who knows what he's up to but doesn't want to turn Jack in and lose his job (because he'd have his benefit cut when trying to claim Unemployment Benefit as technically he would have quit) so he just goes with the flow while Jack stuffs American tourist's heads into his Argos basement oven. By this point the cops are sniffing around and Jack isn't exactly putting them off the trail.So just when you're thinking we're getting a stalk and slash film Craze takes a side road into an elaborate plot to bump off Jack's rich Aunt which involves getting Diana Dors drunk and him jumping out of a cupboard wearing a Poundland horror mask. Will Jack get away with his plan to continually offer sacrifices to his statue? Or will his assistant get fed up being paid minimum wage? Will David Warbreck do anything when he finally shows up near the end of the film? I ain't saying, but it's as daft as you would expect.I seem to own rather a lot of Jack Palance films (Man in the Attic, It can Be Done Amigo, Brothers Blue, Portrait of a Hit-man, Welcome to Blood City etc) and he's a lot more animated than usual in this one. Not an essential film, but a good time waster thanks to the daft plot.

Well, well, well. Craze. I am assuming a GOOD print does not exist. Caught this on Amazon Prime(I also know I have a copy of it somewhere on VHS). It is indeed grainy. The lighting is of a poor quality, and the sound is abysmal. Real abysmal. I had it turned WAY up and still had trouble understanding all the lines. I guess this was shot with a very small budget indeed which is somehow inexplicable when you take the talents involved in total. We have producer Herman Cohen - essentially his last full producer film. Very able Hammer/Amicus director Freddie Francis is aboard to direct - but not with his usual flair for cinematographic vistas. Remember grainy, bad sound, etc... The acting department has Jack Palance in the lead role as an antiques dealer by day/night-time cult worshiper who prays to an idol called Chuku and which looks like a few prop guys put it together with a very small budget and with the aid of alcohol. A very superior supporting cast with the likes of Michael Jayston(Nicholas in Nicholas and Alexandra), cameos by Trevor Howard and Hugh Griffith, and three beauties with Suzy Kendall(To Sir with Love), drop-dead(no pun intended) Julie Ege, and bountiful, curvy, still lovely, in my opinion, Diana Dors as victims present. AND a brief cameo by Dame Edith Evans as well. Well, this brings this picture up a few notches though it truly is not very good. Palance wildly over-acts(OK, I know no one is surprised with that). But the film is workmanlike if nothing else and oddly held my attention. Of course with Diana Dors and Julie Ege in the film, the cards were STACKED in its favor. Craze is not a horrible film at all, just not a good one. It made me laugh quite often which I know was most assuredly not its intent. Notwithstanding all that, I would give it a peek just for its bizarreness.

Jack Palance plays an antique dealer Neal Mottram,who worships creepy looking statue of African God Chuku.Chuku is supposed to bring wealth and good fortune,but it also demands human sacrifices.Neal starts killing sexy British ladies to satisfy Chuku."Craze" by Freddie Francis features an over-the-top performance of the great and sadly missed Jack Palance.There are some comedic moments as well as plenty of suspense.Sexy Suzy Kendall of "Torso" and "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" shines as a hooker/dominatrix."Craze" is based on Henry Seymour's book,but I found that Chuku was a creator deity of the Ibo people of Nigeria.Diana Dors is superb in a supporting role here and also in "Nothing But the Night",a horror film which was the only movie ever made by Christopher Lee's own production company.7 out of 10.

I have this film on the "Slasher Cinema" box-set with some other films. I found it extremely hard to watch and had to turn off after a while. That's because the sound is too hard to hear clearly, and the picture is very murky. The film also seemed very boring during the 'talky' bits so I thought I'd fast-forward through a lot of them. From what I can gather, Craze seemed to be about the crazy antiques dealer who prays to an African statue and sacrifices people to it. The statue itself looked very weird and creepy and I liked it when the camera zoomed up towards its eyes. However, I cannot really recommend this film at all, unless you can find a copy with decent sound quality. A tolerance for early 70's films will also help.