Red-Barracuda Despite its reception, which seems to have been quite negative from what I have read, Ruby made an absolutely huge profit at the box office. Made for $600,000 it went on to rake in $16million. That's serious commercial success for sure. But it appears to have been one of those movies which made big waves on initial release but then kind of fell off the radar immediately afterwards. In 1935 a man is gunned down by his fellow gangsters. Sixteen years later his wife, now the mother to a disturbing mute girl, runs a drive-in theatre that specialises in horror movies. She employs all the men responsible for the earlier murder and soon they all start winding up dead, victims of a mysterious supernatural entity. It soon transpires that the young daughter is possessed by her dead father's spirit and he's out for some serious pay-back.This one was directed by Curtis Harrington who was responsible for the subtle off-kilter chiller Night Tide (1961) which featured a young Dennis Hopper in an unusually restrained role. Ruby is a decidedly more standard horror offering combining elements of a trio of big-hitting horror hits of the day including Carrie (1976) with Piper Laurie as a demented mother, The Exorcist (1973) with the spider-walking possessed young girl and The Omen (1976) with its series of elaborate death scenes - victims are impaled high up on cinema screens, choked to death on film reels, hung from trees and left bloodied in...a Coke machine. It's a combination that basically works though, with enough incidents occurring to ensure it's never a boring watch. I think its possession movie element is the one that works best though, with Janit Baldwin perfectly cast in the role of the demented daughter. With her saucer eyes and creepy smile she is genuinely unsettling and the scenes with her possessed by her father are actually kind of scary. Perhaps if the various death scenes had been executed with a little more verve and detail, the film would be better but the weird killings still do add a further macabre detail to the overall whole never-the-less. The drive-in setting is actually a pretty good one and gives the film a bit of distinct character and I did enjoy the interspersing of the featured film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman into things even if it was a movie released seven years after events depicted on screen were supposed to be happening - ah, the trifling details film-makers could so easily get away with in the days before the internet! Anyway, events do dovetail to an ending which was a little odd. I don't think the general idea of it was especially bad – quite decent in actual fact – but it was just far, far too abrupt. All-in-all though, this forgotten box-office smash is actually well worth seeking out if you like 70's horror movies, it's a little ropey in places for sure but it does have a bit of atmosphere, originality and legitimately scary moments.

Coventry Raw and gritty horror/exploitation movies from the glorious '70s decade simply can't start any better than "Ruby" does… With a fuzzy and soundless flashback, set in the mid-1930s, and witness the promenade of two young lovers in a Florida swamp area. Suddenly a car drives up and the four passengers that come out relentlessly execute the boy, Nicky, who apparently was an over-ambitious mobster. Now that's what I call an opener, and it even gets better, as we fast-forward to the year 1951 at a typical drive-in theater where a projectionist guy in his cabin inexplicably gets killed by his own film reel! Great stuff, but then of course the script has some explaining and character drawings to do, and the whole thing quickly crumbles apart like a cookie! It turns out that the murdered mobster's girlfriend Ruby now runs a drive-in and actually employs the retired assailants. Apparently Nicky extracts his vengeance from beyond the grave and to obtain this he also possesses the mind and body of their now 16-year- old daughter Leslie that he never saw getting born. So basically what we have here is a miscellany of gangster movie with revenge-flick and spiritual possession elements, and all this is served to us by an over-the-top bizarrely behaving Piper Laurie who was clearly asked to come across as unnerving as she did in last year's box office hit "Carrie"! I will gladly admit that I personally stopped paying attention to the incoherence and numerous holes in the script, and simply tried to enjoy the crazy murder sequences and wonderfully trashy atmosphere and scenery as much as I possibly could. Quite frankly I can't explain why little Leslie walks around like a spider just as Linda Blair did in "The Exorcist", or what exactly is the added value of Roger Davis' character, or even whether or not it gets revealed that Ruby did betray her lover all those years ago. Fact remains, however, that "Ruby" contains a handful of awesome moments that are simultaneously odd, cheesy and disturbing! Mobster bodies' are being tossed around and smashed against trees, the flamboyant Ruby spies on her drive-in employees through a telescope whilst being drunk and one poor sucker even ends up hacked up in a soda vending machine. Perhaps director Curtis Harrington ("Queen of Blood", "Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?") and his crew could have done even more with the smart drive-in setting, but they already include a couple of atmospheric moments, like for example when Ruby finds herself all alone in the middle of the drive-in parking and haunted by her murdered lover's voice coming out of all the separate speakers. In conclusion, "Ruby" most certainly isn't a good movie if you analyze or review it thoroughly, but it contains multiple strong moments and memorable details to make it a must-see for admirers of 70s horror cinema (drive-in classics and otherwise)

ashley wetherall Ruby is one of those film that should be filed under so dumb its fun. Made by the great cult director Curtis Harrington Ruby makes very little sense in the terms of plot but for some reason and god only knows why is very entertaining.The story line goes something like this. In the Mid thirties gangster bad boy Nicky Rocco is shot dead in front of his pregnant girl friend Ruby. His assassins are members of his own gang. As he dies Nicky swears vengeance on his killers as his girlfriend Ruby goes into labour. From then the movie moves on 16 or so years with Ruby running a drive in movie theatre that shows films that haven't been made yet? (Attack of the 50 foot woman was made in 1958) but who cares.But guess what, shes hired all her dead boyfriends down on there luck killers to run the place.. Why.. Who really knows. But here's what we do know. Something very nasties going to happen to them. Then theirs the fact that ruby now has a mute doe eyed daughter who acts very strangely and some old blind dude in a wheel chair who live with Ruby.The film is quite incoherent, so you might ask yourself why is it so much fun... Well its down to another great unhinged performance from Piper Laurie in the title role. Add to that some great character actors to back her up including the ever reliable Stuart Whitman and Janit Baldwin as Ruby strange daughter and you have a gem of b movie with enough plot holes to drive a bus through. just enjoy the crazy plot don't take it seriously.

MARIO GAUCI The title of this film and Piper Laurie's presence clearly derive from CARRIE (1976) – though I was misled into thinking that Ruby was the possessed child rather than the mother. While I'm not sure the EXORCIST trappings were really necessary, these actually extend to only a couple of scenes…and one has to understand that the notorious 'spider walk' from the 1973 classic – depicted here (but more on this later) – wasn't officially a part of the film until its 2000 re-edit! Incidentally, the irate-father-speaking/murdering-through-his-child angle was also seen in Mario Bava's contemporaneous SHOCK (1977).RUBY, therefore, is silly but quite effective scene-by-scene and, anyway, it certainly provides a unique mixture of supernatural horror with the typical gangland milieu. The drive-in theater element (showing ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN [1958] years before it was actually made; the story is ostensibly set in 1951!), then, renders the proceedings even trashier (especially with the participation of a sluttish habitué) – while, at the same time, serving as a comment on the genre itself.The swamp (and period) setting supply the requisite atmosphere: Laurie's bitter but still-attractive torch singer/aspiring film-star/gangster's moll dominates her associates (the very same gang that killed her lover at the start of the picture!) but obviously clings to the past – linking the film to Harrington's earlier horror outing WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1971). The odd-looking Janit Baldwin is perfectly cast as the mediumistic girl, especially creepy when the dead gangster – through her – confronts Laurie with his suspicions that the latter set him up. Stuart Whitman is a likable ageing hero, and Roger Davis rises to the occasion as a paranormal expert.Unfortunately, the special effects and gore are cheaply done and the ending (different from Harrington's original conception) somewhat abrupt; though the version on the VCI DVD I purchased is credited as being the "Director's Cut", it's still missing some footage…but, at least, is free of other additions requested by the producers (reportedly the work of Stephanie Rothman) for the film's Network TV showings.The disc includes an hour-long career overview with director Harrington and film critic David Del Valle, which is extremely interesting: it touches upon some of the films I watched in tribute to his recent passing, but also a number of others (including the TV stuff) which are still very rare to come by. Besides, he fondly reminisces about his encounters with several film legends such as Alfred Hitchcock, Josef von Sternberg, Orson Welles and James Whale (let's not forget that Harrington is the man responsible for saving the latter's delightful THE OLD DARK HOUSE [1932] from oblivion) – all of whom, incidentally, are among my own personal favorites!The Audio Commentary is similar to the one for Harrington's NIGHT TIDE in that, apart from denoting locations where specific scenes were shot (which would mean very little to a foreigner like myself!), the director seems to be fuzzy on many production details. However, what he didn't forget – or forgive, for that matter – is his strained relationship with the film's executive producer, Steve Krantz (whom Harrington even describes as "evil"): he never misses an opportunity to put him down – berating Krantz for his stinginess, for imposing a mediocre cameraman on him and, needless to say, for ruining his 'poetic' ending! The director also remarks about the remarkable longevity of horror classics vis-a'-vis mainstream productions from Hollywood's Golden Age, and recalls the Karloff/Lugosi vehicle THE RAVEN (1935) as having been his introduction to the genre. Incidentally, the RUBY Commentary is a lot more animated than that of NIGHT TIDE – thanks to the enthusiastic contribution of star Piper Laurie, even if she's critical of her own performance at this juncture (and blames the tight schedule for it). As for the 'spider walk', it emerges that this eerie contortionist effect wasn't borrowed from THE EXORCIST at all – but rather from a Salvador Dali painting about a psycho-physiological condition known as the Hysterical Arch!