13 for 13: Witchouse (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I first started writing for Through the Shattered Lens, I wasn’t sure how long my reviews should be.  I went over to Rotten Tomatoes and I read their guidelines for reviews and I discovered that a review should be, at minimum, 300 words long.

300 words? I thought,  I can do that!

Truth be told, sometimes I can’t.  Sometimes, you see a movie where it’s a struggle to even come up with 300 words.  When that happens, I resort to filler.  I’ll tell you about my weekend.  I’ll tell you about a funny thing that happened to me in high school.  I’ll give you a long-winded story about my early days as a TSL reviewer.  I’ll do whatever I need to do to make sure that I can reach at least 300 words.

The importance of filler was clearly on the mind of David DeCoteau when he directed the 1999 film, Witchouse.  (And yes, that’s how the title is spelled.)  Typically, a film has to run a minimum of 65 to 70 minutes for it to be considered a feature film.  Witchouse features three minutes of opening credits, three minutes of closing credits, and a lot of stock footage from a film called Dark Angel: The Ascent.  In fact, the film uses the Dark Angel stock footage not once but twice.  The finished film runs 72 minutes so obviously David DeCoteau and Full Moon Pictures got what they needed out of all that filler.  Fortunately, the audience gets what it needs as well.  Witchouse is a film that announces from the start that it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

The film takes place at a mansion in Dunwich, Massachusetts on a stormy night.  Elizabeth (Ashley McKinney) has gathered together a group of friends for a party.  When her friends arrived, I assumed they had all gone to high school together.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that the characters were all supposed to still be in high school!  Elizabeth wants to hold a seance so that she can contact the spirit of her ancestor, a witch named Lilith (Ariauna Albright).  Centuries ago, Lilith was burned at the stake.  Elizabeth is hoping to bring Lilith back from the dead and she’s willing to sacrifice her friends to do it.  Her friends, for the most part, just want to have sex in a big creepy mansion and who can blame them?

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s probably because the story itself was largely lifted from Night of the Demons, with the horribly burned Lilith even resembling the decaying Angels from Kevin Tenney’s classic shocker.  Witchouse is never quite as much fun as Night of the Demons.  For instance, there’s nothing in Witchouse that can match the subversive oddness of the lipstick scene from Night of the Demons.  At its best, Witchouse is occasionally atmospheric and it features decent performances from Ashley McKinney and Monica Serene Garnich.  At its worst, the film is kind of boring.

That said, I will give Witchouse credit for totally frustrating my autocorrect.  How does one pronounce Witchouse?

13 From 13: Totem (dir by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1999’s Totem opens with a young woman named Alma Groves (Marissa Tait) running through the wilderness.

She runs until she reaches an isolated cabin.  Entering the cabin, she finds five other people have already arrived.  She doesn’t know who they are and they don’t know her.  In fact, she doesn’t even know why she suddenly felt the need to stop eating lunch and to run until she found the cabin.  She’s not even sure how she found herself in the wilderness to begin with.  Everyone else at the cabin has a similar story.  They were all going about their day until, suddenly, an image of the cabin entered their mind and they felt compelled to run until they found it.

At first, Paul (Jason Faunt) comes across as being a chivalrous and friendly jock type.  Leonard McKinney (Eric W. Edwards) is a cocky womanizer who is upset that he was compelled to leave in the middle of having sex (or so he claims).  Robert Cole (Tyler Anderson) is the angry rebel who is reluctant to talk about his past.  As for the other women, Roz (Sacha Spencer) is sarcastic while Tina (Alicia Lagano) is a seemingly innocent high school student.  Along with Alma, the six of them are trapped in the area by an invisible force field.

While trying to determine where the invisible barriers have been placed, the six of them come across a cemetery and three sinister-looking statues.  As the night continues, it becomes clear that, whenever someone dies, one of the statues comes to life.  But why are there six people and only three statues?  “Three to be killed and three to kill!” Robert says.

Directed by David DeCoteau and produced by Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures, Totem is about as incoherent as you would probably expect from this production team.  However, it’s a cheerful sort of incoherence, one where the confusing story is at least told with some energy and the entire thing has a “make it up as you go along” sort of feel to it.  It’s remarkable how the people in the cabin keep figuring out all of the extra rules that determine how the three killer statues work.  Myself, I sat through all 68 minutes of this film and I’m still not quite exactly sure what was going on.  That said, the confusing nature of the story works to the film’s advantage.  At its best, Totem manages to achieve a sort of dream-like intensity.  Who hasn’t had that dream about finding yourself in the middle of nowhere with absolutely zero clue how you got there or how to get home?

You know what else works to this film’s advantage?  That 68 minute running time.  The film essentially feels like an extended episode of an old horror anthology show.  Think of it as being a bloody episode of something like Night Gallery or Tales From The Crypt.  It’s a piece of gory fun that doesn’t really require too much of the audience.  It’s cinematic junk food and that is definitely meant as a compliment.

13 For 13: Cellar Dwellar (dir by John Carl Buechler)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1987’s Cellar Dweller opens with Jeffrey Combs playing an artist.

Sitting in his art studio (located in the cellar of his home), Combs draws a picture of a monster and he adds a few Lovecraftian occult symbols and — uh oh! — the monster comes to life and start to destroy everything that Combs holds dear.  Combs discovers that he can stop the monster by setting his drawings on fire but, in the process, Combs also destroys himself.

This ten minute prologue features Jeffrey Combs at his best, bringing his neurotic Re-Animator energy to the role of the artist who discovers just how dangerous an active imagination can be.  One reason why Combs is a horror icon is that he can win your sympathy even while playing a character who does some objectively stupid and terrible things.  Unfortunately, once the prologue is over, so is Jeffrey Combs’s role in the film.  He may be first-billed but he doesn’t appear after the opening credits.

The film jumps forward to 1987.  Cartoonist Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino) is the latest artist to take residence at Mrs. Briggs’s Institute For The Arts, which just happens to be in the same house that was once home to Jeffrey Combs’s artist.  Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne DeCarlo) is a noted critic of modern art.  In fact, Whitney and Mrs. Briggs disagree so vehemently about art that you really do wonder why Whitney would apply to the Institute in the first place.

There’s a few artists at the Institute.  Norman (Vince Edwards) is a tough guy writer.  Philip (Brian Robbins) is a bad boy artist.  Amanda (Pamela Bellwood) is a former rival of Whitney’s and the two still hate each other.  (Whitney seems to rub a lot of people the wrong way.)  Best of all, there’s a performance artist named …. LISA!

Lisa is played by Miranda Wilson.

Frustrated with Amanda, Whitney gives into her worst instincts and draws a cartoon the features a monster killing her rival.  Uh-oh.  Soon, the monster has reemerged from the cellar and Amanda has disappeared.  One-by-one, the other residents are picked off and their deaths appear in Whitney’s cartoons.  The monster claims that he dwells wherever there is imagination but Whitney is convinced she’s figure out a way to destroy him and bring everyone back.  Has she?  You’ll have to watch the film to find out!

Produced by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, Cellar Dweller is an enjoyably macabre little tale.  It’s only 77 minutes long and the fast pace makes the film feel like an extended episode of a horror anthology series.  The monster and the plot feel like they could have been lifted from a 50s horror comic and the other artist are all memorably eccentric.  The cast appears to be having a ball.  It’s a fun treat for horror fans like you and me.

Cellar Dweller was directed by special effects specialist John Carl Buechler and he does a good job with the monster.  It’s both intimidating and kind of goofy at the same time.  A year after Cellar Dweller, Buechler directed his best known film, Friday the 13th Part VII — The New Blood.  That film too was likably goofy.

13 for 13: The Sleeper (dir by Justin Russell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who is the Sleeper and why is he stalking the girls of the Alpha Gamma Theta sorority?

That’s one of the many questions raised by 2012’s The Sleeper, an unexpectedly diverting homage to the classic slasher films of the 80s.  The Sleeper doesn’t really worry too much about answering that question.  This is a film that understands that the old slasher films were effective precisely because they rarely provided any answers.  All one really needs to know about the Sleeper (effectively portrayed by Jason Jay Crabtree) is that he’s got a collection of tools, he’s surprisingly quick on his feet, and he can do a lot of damage with a little hammer.

The Sleeper takes place in 1981, a smart choice for a number of reasons.  1981 was one the biggest years when it came to the American slasher boom and The Sleeper does a good job of recreating the aesthetics of the era, right down to a freeze frame final shot.  Setting the film in 1981 is also an admission that most of the old school slasher films wouldn’t work in an era in which people are not dependent on landline phones.  As if to emphasize this point, the film has the Sleeper calling his victims before attacking.  It’s 1981.  There’s no way to block the number!  By setting the film in 1981, the filmmakers are able to avoid having to come up with an awkward excuse for why no one has their phone with them.  Even better, none of the characters are influencers.  Instead, they’re just college students who are trying to enjoy their night.

For the most part, the potential victims are all likable.  You don’t want to see harm come to any of them, which definitely builds up the suspense once the Sleeper starts doing his thing.  Because the characters are all college students with active social lives, it’s believable that people wouldn’t freak out about them suddenly disappearing.  I remember that, when I was in college, I would go several days without seeing some of my best friends and only occasionally did I suspect that they had fallen victim to a hammer-wielding killer.  I especially liked the character of Ava (Ali Ferda), who was sarcastic and outspoken but who, most importantly, never became a caricature.  Indeed, all of the characters seem refreshingly human and multi-faceted, even if they do conform to certain slasher stereotypes.

This film also wins major points for including a disco line dnace that comes out of nowhere but which is charmingly awkward.  The song playing is definitely more 90s techno than 80s disco but still, watching the cast doing their best on the dance floor was one of the film’s more unexpected treats.

Finally, towards the end of the film, Joe Bog Briggs (credited by his real name, John Bloom) makes a cameo appearance as a doctor and yes, he wears a bolo tie.  It’s impossible not smile at the sight of him.

Bloody but also witty, The Sleeper was a diverting slasher surprise.

13 For 13: The Turnpike Killer (dir by Evan Makrogiannis and Brian Weaver)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In college, my best friend Evelyn and I came up with the “Extra Person Rule for Road Trips.”

The Extra Person Rule stated that no matter how many people we were traveling with, we would always remember to invite one extra person, someone who was pleasant but to whom we really didn’t really have a particularly close personal connection. That way, if we got kidnapped by a serial killer, we would have someone around who could heroically sacrifice herself while giving the rest of us an opportunity to escape. She needed to be likable so she wouldn’t get on our nerves during the trip but also not someone who we would feel guilty about losing if worst came to worst.  We quickly learned that the secret to making the Extra Person Rule work was to make sure that the extra person didn’t know she was the extra.  As such, you would usually have to invite a decoy extra as well.  It could get complicated.

Fortunately, Evelyn and I never actually got abducted by a serial killer whenever we went on a road trip but it was still something for which we felt we should be prepared. It’s a scary world out there. You have to be ready for anything.

I found myself thinking about the Extra Person Rule while watching 2009’s The Turnpike Killer. Jon Beest (Bill McLaughlin) is the film’s title character, a serial killer from New Jersey who crosses into New York and kills several people over the course of 88 minutes. If I ever ran into Jon Beest, I would definitely want to have an extra person around, though I’m not sure it would have helped.  Jon Beest is about as determined a killer as a big bald man named Beest can be. As for why Jon Beest is known as the Turnpike Killer, he apparently dumps some of his victims’ bodies along the New Jersey turnpike.

What to say about The Turnpike Killer? It’s an odd little film.  It has too much of a misogynistic streak for me to recommend it but, at the same time, I do have to admit that it is effectively filmed and acted.  It creates and maintains a convincing atmosphere of grit and sleaze. The images are grainy and the gore is often disturbingly realistic. There’s a twist at the end that comes from almost out of nowhere and it’s hard not to wonder if that twist is the reason why this otherwise simple film has two credited directors.  Almost despite myself, I appreciated the weirdness of it.

I will give the film unreserved credit for one thing. Bill McLaughlin is absolutely terrifying as Jon Beest and the film wisely does not turn him into a Freddy Krueger-style quip machine. He’s not some clever, erudite man with an amazing, if twisted, brain. Instead, he’s …. well, he’s pathetic. The same can be said of most real-life serial killers. If you look at most real-life serial killers, you’ll see that they’re much more likely to be someone like Jon Beest than Hannibal Lecter. When the film works, it’s because Jon Beest seems like the killer that you actually could find waiting for you on a dark road or in the shadows of a New York apartment.

And if you do run into him, you better hope you have an extra person.

13 For 13: Teacher Shortage (dir by Troy Escamilla)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2020’s Teacher’s Shortage starts off with a genuinely disturbing suicide scene.

In a high school classroom, the teacher hands out the yearbooks.  Everyone, including the teacher, has a good laugh when they see that one of their classmates has been labeled an “ugly skank,” in her class photo.  The only person who doesn’t laugh is the victim of the prank.  She runs from the classroom, hides in a bathroom stall, and eventually smashes a mirror and slits her wrists.

It’s disturbing because this is something that actually does happen.  This is especially true in the age of social media, when it’s so important to fit in and say the right thing and have a certain number of people following you and liking whatever it is that you’re offering up.  With the rise of AI and the increase of people stupid enough to fall for AI, this is something that is only going to get worse.  In our efforts to create a better and more connected world, we’ve actually created a world where there’s even more incentive to be a bully.

The rest of the film never quite duplicates the power of its opening.  It’s a slasher film in which the killer is tracking down and murdering teachers from the high school.  The film was directed by Troy Escamilla, who also did Party Night.  Party Night was a not-bad homage to the slasher films of the 80s.  The main thing that made Party Night work was Escamilla’s obvious love for the genre and it should be noted that the kills in Teacher Shortage are effectively done.  I could have done without the red-tint that the film uses whenever the killer attacks but I can understand what Escamilla was going for.  In those scenes, his love for the genre comes through.

Unfortunately, the non-kill scenes are extremely slow.  I have no doubt that the film is accurate in its portrayal of burned-out veteran teachers and overly earnest rookies but, whenever there’s any scene featuring more than three or four lines of dialogue, the viewer will probably find themselves checking the clock.  This is one of those films that felt far longer than its 86 minutes, largely because the editing (with the exception of the kill scenes) was so poorly realized that every scene just seemed to drag on for an eternity.

The other problem with the film is that I wasn’t particularly shocked by the identity of the killer.  In the best giallo tradition, Escamilla attempts to generate some suspense about who is actually underneath the killer’s mask but it’s not hard to figure out.  By process of elimination, it’s easy to note who is accounted for and who isn’t during each kill.  There was really only one suspect.  I guessed the killer after about 15 minutes of watching and I was hoping that I was wrong.  I was hoping there would be some sort of out-of-nowhere, totally bonkers twist that wouldn’t make any sense but which would at least add some life to the movie.  Unfortunately, there was not.

For horror fans, there’s a lot of blood and there’s also Brinke Stevens.  That said, there’s not a lot of suspense.  This is ultimately a pretty forgettable slasher film.

Scenes That I Love: Amy Steel Confuses Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part II!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is the second Friday the 13th of 2026, it only seems appropriate that today’s scene that I love comes from Friday the 13th Part II.  In this scene, Ginny (Amy Steel) proves herself to be the only camp counselor in history to be smart enough to confuse a backwoods vagrant who wears a flour bag over his head.  This scene is one of the reasons why Ginny is one of the franchise’s most popular characters.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Henry Hathaway Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens celebrates director Henry Hathaway, born 128 years ago today!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Henry Hathaway Films

Kiss of Death (1947, dir by Henry Hathaway, DP: Norbert Brodine)

Call Northside 777 (1948, dir by Henry Hathaway, DP: Joseph MacDonald)

Niagara (1953, dir by Henry Hathaway, DP: Joseph MacDonald)

True Grit (1969, dir by Henry Hathaway, DP: Lucien Ballard)

 

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix for Death Wish 3!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties.  On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday.  On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix!  The movie?  1985′ Death Wish 3!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Death Wish 3 on Prime or Tubi, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  I’ll be there happily tweeting.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

See you there!