Yearly Archives: 2018

Italian Horror Spotlight: Cannibal Apocalypse (dir by Antonio Margheriti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1980 film Cannibal Apocalypse begins in Vietnam.

Sgt. Norman Hopper (John Saxon) leads his troops into a Vietnamese village.  A dog approaches.  One of the soldiers starts to pet it.

“Watch it, asshole!” Hopper shouts.

Too late.  The dog explodes and takes the soldier with him.  That’s just the first of many explosive events in the film.  Minutes after the dog blows up, Hopper discovers two American soldiers being held prisoner in an underground cage.  One of them is named Charles Bukowski (yes, I know) and he’s played by the great Italian actor, Giovanni Lombardo Radice.  The other one is named Tommy (Tony King).

“Hey,” Hopper says, “I know these guys!  They’re from my hometown!”  He reaches down to help them out of the cage.  Charlie and Tommy promptly take a bite out of his arm….

Suddenly, Norman Hopper wakes up in bed, next to his wife.  He’s been having another nightmare.  In the years since returning from Vietnam, Hopper has married, started a family, and bought a nice house in Atlanta.  He seems to have his life together but he’s still haunted by what happened that day in Vietnam.

Charlie and Tommy are also still haunted.  Unlike Hopper, they haven’t been able to get their lives together.  Charlie’s a drifter and, when he shows up in Atlanta and calls Hopper at his home, Hopper isn’t particularly happy to hear from him.  After talking to Hopper, Charlie goes to a movie where he watches a couple make out in front of him.  Soon, Charlie is trying to eat the couple while panicked movie lovers flee the theater.  (“What type of cinema is this!?” one man cries out.)

Forced to eat human flesh while being held prisoner, Charlie and Tommy are both cannibals today.  However, as the film makes clear, cannibalism travels like a virus.  Anyone who gets bitten by Charlie and Tommy becomes a cannibal themselves.  That includes Hopper.  For years, Hopper has managed to resist the craving but, as soon as he gets that call from Bukowski, he finds himself tempted to take a bite out of his flirtatious neighbor.

With the authorities determined to eradicate not only the cannibalism plague but also those infected, Hopper finds himself forced to go on the run with Charlie, Tommy, and an infected doctor (Elizabeth Turner).  Eventually, everyone ends up in the sewers of Atlanta where people are set on fire, one unfortunate is literally chopped in half by a shotgun blast, and the rats turn out to be just as hungry as the humans….

And here’s the thing.  You’re probably thinking that this sounds like a really bad movie but it’s actually kind of brilliant.  I may love Italian horror but, for the most part, I’m not a fan of cannibal movies.  But, thanks to the performances and the energetic direction of Antonio Margheriti, Cannibal Apocalypse transcends the limits of the cannibal genre.   Obviously, gorehounds will find what they’re looking for with this movie but far more interesting is Cannibal Apocalypse‘s suggestion that war (represented by the cannibalism that Hopper, Tommy, and Bukowski bring back from Vietnam) is an infectious virus.  Once someone gets bitten, it doesn’t matter who they are or what type of life that they’ve led.  The infection cannot be escaped.

In an interview that John Saxon gave for the film’s DVD release, Saxon said that making this film actually left him feeling suicidal.  It wasn’t just the fact that the film itself presents a rather dark view of humanity.  It’s because it upset him to know that there was an audience that was as rabid for violence as Norman Hopper is for human flesh.  Saxon said that he had never seen the film and, in the interview, he had to be reminded what happened to Norman Hopper at the end of the film.  It’s a bit of a shame because Saxon gives a brilliant performance as Norman Hopper.  Saxon plays Hopper as being a sad man, a man who knows that he can’t escape his fate as much as he wants to.  There’s a tragic dignity to Saxon’s performance, one that gives this cannibal film unexpected depth.

Also giving great performances are Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Tony King.  As played by Radice, Charlie is a living casualty of war, a man who served his country and came home to be forgotten.  You understand Charlie’s anger and his resentment.  (When Bukowski finds himself in a stand-off with the police, one the cops explains away Bukowski’s actions by dismissively saying, “He’s a Vietnam vet,” a line of dialogue that not only explains Charlie’s anger at America but also calls out America for not taking care of its veterans,)  Meanwhile, Tony King gets one of the best scenes in the film when, seeing Hopper for the first time in years, he grins at him and yells, “Remember these choppers!?”

As strange as it may seem to say about a film called Cannibal Apocalypse, this is a film that will bring tears to your eyes.  It’s one of the classics of Italian horror.

4 Shots From 4 Evil Alien Invasions: Cloverfield, Battle Los Angeles, Skyline, 10 Cloverfield Lane

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.

Over the past few years, the idea of this planet being invaded by aliens has suddenly gotten very popular.  Now, I know that some films continue to suggest that the aliens would actually be benevolent explorers or that they would land here and order us to protect the environment.  However, I don’t really buy the whole idea of friendly aliens.  (Actually, I don’t really buy the idea of alien visitors in general but that’s something was can discuss in anothe post….)

So, in order to keep our readers from getting complacent, here are….

4 Shots From 4 Evil Alien Invasions

Cloverfield (2008, dir by Matt Reeves)

Battle Los Angeles (2011, dir by Jonathan Liebesman)

Skyline (2011, dir by The Brothers Strause)

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016, dir by Dan Trachtenberg)

Horror Film Review: A Quiet Place (dir by John Krasinski)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As a film viewer, I am sometimes guilty of taking sound for granted.

That was the first thought that I had while watching A Quiet Place, a horror film that came out earlier this year.  The film takes place in the near future, after the Earth has been invaded by aliens who track their prey by sound.  Lee Abbott (John Krasinski, who also directed), his wife Evelyn (Emily Blunt), and their children (including Millicent Simmonds) have learned that the only way to survive is to do everything in silence.  They communicate with sign lanague.  They walk carefully, knowing that even the sound of a footstep could lead to doom.

If ever the old cliché about echoing silence was true, it’s true while watching A Quiet Place.  Because Krasinski starts the film by showing us what happens when one forgets to be silent around the aliens, we know what will happen if Lee or his children make the slightest amount of noise and what’s interesting is that those of us watching find ourselves not making any noise as well.  Krasinski, Blunt, and Simmonds give such effective performances that you’re drawn into their story.  You don’t want them to get killed by the invaders so you make sure to remain quiet yourself.

That doesn’t mean that A Quiet Place is a silent film, of course.  Since Lee spends the majority of the film in the woods with his children, there’s the occasional sounds of nature.  And towards the end of the film, when someone finally speaks, it’s jarring both because we’ve gotten used to the silence and because we know what’s going to happen next.

My second thought while watching A Quiet Place was “Who knew John Krasinski was capable of this?”  I’ve always liked Krasinski as an actor but his previous films as a director leaned a bit towards the pretentious side.  There was nothing about his previous films that suggested Krasinski had it in him to direct one of the most creative and tension-filled horror movies of the year.  Krasinski proves himself to be an unexpected master of suspense.

But it’s more than horror that makes A Quiet Place effective.  A Quiet Place is a film about family.  Despite the circumstances, Lee and Evelyn have managed to create a safe household for their children.  It may be a silent household but it’s also a loving household and, with Evelyn being pregnant, it’s about to get bigger.  Blunt and Krasinski are married in real life and their chemistry is evident every time that they exchange a glance.  The film celebrates not only the love of family but the sacrifices that parents make for their children.  It’s probably the most pro-family of the year.

A Quiet Place is a short and efficient film.  At a time when the average film usually clocks over two hours, A Quiet Place is only 90 minutes long but it achieves so much in those 90 minutes!  A Quiet Place is a powerful movie, one that will make you appreciate both families and the noise that they make.

Horror on the Lens: Cast a Deadly Spell (dir by Martin Campbell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have a real treat!

Produced for HBO in 1991, Cast a Deadly Spell takes place in an alternate 1948, where magic is used regularly and zombies are used as slave labor but the streets of Los Angeles are just as mean as they’ve ever been.  Fred Ward gives a fantastic performance as Harry Phillip Lovecraft, a hard-boiled P.I. who refuses to use magic on general principle.  Lovecraft, however, may have no choice when he finds himself embroiled in a case involving a magic book, Julianne Moore, and Clancy Brown!

Enjoy!

(If you want to know more about the film, check out this review that I wrote for Horror Critic.)

Music Video of the Day: Rock and Roll All Nite By KISS (1975, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Do you remember what people used to think KISS stood for?

Knights in Satan’s Service.  Preachers and community leaders were told and actually believed that the band was trying to put teenagers under the thrall of Satan.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.  Paul Stanley came up with KISS and it was never meant to be anything other than a cool name.  As Peter Criss explained it, “”It really means a lot. It’s the first thing you do to a chick or anybody. It could also be the kiss of death. It’s a strong word. It’s easy to remember.”

Still, the members of KISS didn’t hesitate to play up their dangerous image.  Gene Simmons may have been a self-described “nice Jewish boy from Long Island,” but when he was on stage, he became the blood-drinking Demon.  (When Marvel published a KISS comic book in 1977, the red ink was said to contain drops of the band’s blood.)

What’s funny to me about old school KISS is that they would come out on stage, made-up to look like hardcore demons and monsters.  Fires would burn as they performed.  Blood would pour out of Gene Simmons’s mouth.  KISS went out of their way to look evil but their music was so radio friendly that it could probably be played at a church retreat.  The idea that anyone believed that they were “knights in Satan’s service” seems ludicrous today.

Rock and Roll All Nite was written by Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.  Their goal in writing the song was to come up with an anthem for their fans and no one can deny that they succeeded.  This video was a promo video that was released, along with the song, in 1975.  Like most music videos that were produced in the pre-MTV days, the video keeps things simple and focuses on KISS performing in front of an enthusiastic crowd.

Decades later, a second video would be released for Rock and Roll All Nite.  However, that video features KISS without their makeup and that just feels wrong.

Harrow County – Countless Haints, Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

HC

Happy Horrorthon!!! We are in the thick of it folks.  October is happening! We’re all eating things with pumpkin flavor, baseball’s in full swing (pun intended), and we all get into trying something scary.

There are few things that truly scare me as much as clowns do, but I’d rather sit on Bozo’s lap than live one solitary moment in Harrow County.  Harrow County is a comic series by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook published by Dark Horse.  Saying this comic is scary is like writing that Charles Lindbergh dabbled in flying planes.  After the first few pages, I was thoroughly creeped out and turned on all the lights in my home.

The story revolves around Emmy, a nearly adult woman, who is discovering that she is not an ordinary farmer’s daughter, but terrifyingly powerful witch.   Years earlier, Emma’s “mother” Hester was an evil witch with the powers of Satan.  The townsfolk weren’t too fond of all of her child sacrifices and dark arts so they decide to shoot, stab, hang, and burn Emma’s “mother”.

*Slight Spoiler*—- Emma learns that she is the born again version of Hester and not an actual daughter.  Emma was born from murder and vengeance and Harrow County is about to reap the whirlwind.

The art of this story is so off-putting and chill-inducing.  Their eyes pull you in as if you are one of the townsfolk being judged and co-opted by good or evil.  The story has a wide streak of ambiguity; it never allows you to fully see the true good or evil of any the characters after the first five pages.  In essence, the characters are real.  They are you neighbor, your brother, your sister: imperfect and conflicted.  This duality is exemplified by Emma’s only a friend a ghost or “Haint” who is actually bifurcated.  One half of the friend acts as Emma’s bodyguard: pure rage that is only muscle akin to the Human Body figures from biology class and the other half of her friend is a kind and scared bag of skin who acts as a guide for Emma.  The bifurcated friend is a great visual example of our rage that hides just under the surface of all people.

This story is scary as Hell.  Go Buy It!

hc skin friend

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 2.1 “Delusion” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond.…

A young woman (Suzanne Pleshette) desperately needs a blood transfusion.  Fortunately, the police have managed to track down one of the only people to share her blood type, an accountant named Harold Stern (Norman Lloyd).  Harold seems like a nice, rather mild-mannered guy and he has a long history of donating blood.  However, when the police approach him, Harold refuses to donate.

“What type of crumb are you!?” the police demand.

Harold explains that, whenever he gives someone blood, he develops a psychic connection with that person.  He can see their future.  And that’s simply a burden that he can no longer shoulder….

This episode of One Step Beyond originally aired on September 15th, 1959.  Norman Lloyd, who plays Harold, got his start as a member of Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and he also played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur.  (Speaking of Hitchcock, Suzanne Pleshette played the doomed school teacher in The Birds.)  When Lloyd appeared in this episode of One Step Beyond, he was 44 years old.

Today, Norman Lloyd is 103 years old and guess what?  He’s still acting!  He had a role in Trainwreck and still occasionally appears on television.

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Bait (dir by Kimble Rendall)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What happens when you take The Mist and combine it with Jaws?

Well, you’d probably end up with a movie that’s a lot more interesting than 2012’s Bait.

Bait opens in an Australian supermarket and it’s nice to see that supermarkets in other countries are just as bad as supermarkets in America.  Two teenagers make out in the underground parking garage.  A former lifeguard stocks the shelves.  (The lifeguard, incidentally, was previously traumatized when he saw a friend of his eaten by a shark.)  The sister of that friend who got eaten by a shark shops with her new boyfriend.  The store manager gives people orders.  Two masked men try to rob the place, which leads to shoot out with the police.  It’s just a typical day!

Until, of course, the tsunami hits!

Now, on the one hand, the tsunami hit at the perfect time because it kept the masked men from shooting anyone else.  On the other hand, the tsunami hit at absolutely the worst time because apparently, sharks can survive anything.  Not only is the supermarket flooded but now, there is now a giant shark swimming through the aisles!

Our survivors all scramble to the top of the aisles, where they find themselves stranded.  Not only is the water shark-infested but there is also the risk of being electrocuted by broken wires!  The survivors are going to have to set aside their differences and work together if they’re going to escape the deluge of sharks and bad feelings!

Of course, if you know anything about these type of movies, you know that a group of people can never set aside their differences and work together until at least a handful of them have been eaten.  At one point, our survivors attempt to escape by building a makeshift shark cage out of grocery carts.  That actually might not a bad idea but it just looks so silly!

Anyway, the main problem with Bait is that the film, much like the characters, has no place to go.  The idea of a shark invading a supermarket has potential but once everyone’s stranded on top of their aisles, the action slows down to a crawl and we spend way too much time listening to thinly drawn characters shout insults at each other.  The characters are trapped but, unfortunately, so is the audience.

I was actually far more interested in the couple that was stuck in the flooded parking garage.  Those scenes, of the two of them trying to figure out how to escape from their car, had a claustrophobic intensity that the scenes in the supermarket lacked.  Lincoln Lewis and Cariba Heine were fun to watch as they bickered with each other and debated who was more to blame for their predicament.  Perhaps because they were separated from all of the noisy drama in supermarket, Lewis and Heine actually seemed to be having fun with their roles.

Anyway, Bait is one of those films that tends to show up fairly regularly on the SyFy network.  It’s not a particularly good movie but it is a reminder that the cinematic legacy of Jaws will outlast us all.  To be honest, if the sharks ever get together and form some sort of anti-defamation league, the film industry is screwed.

Stay Out Of The Woods: Ticks (1993, directed by Tony Randel)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Don’t go in the wood alone, kids!  There are giant ticks out there that can attach themselves to you, lay their eggs under your skin, and then cause your face to explode when the eggs hatch!  It’s all because of the steroids that local farmer Jarvis Tanner (Clint Howard) has been using to enhance his marijuana crop.  The end result may be good weed but you will  be dead from a tick bite before you get to enjoy it.  That’s bad news for Jarvis, who keeps stepping in bear traps and who, at one point, has a dozen tick eggs drop on him.  It’s even worse news for the group of juvenile delinquents who have been sentenced to spend a weekend camping in the woods.

Mostly because the film featured the beautiful Ami Dolenz as one of the delinquents, Ticks used to be a mainstay on late night HBO.  It combines the basic features of a 50s monster movie with the gore-filled style of a 90s splatter film.  What Ticks may have lacked in originality, it made up for in scenes of people’s faces exploding.  Make no mistake about it.  This one is for splatter fans.

Ticks has an interesting cast.  If you have ever wanted to see Alfonso “Carlton” Ribiero play a gangbanger, this is the movie for you.  The nerdiest juvenile delinquent is played by Seth Green while TV regular Peter Scolari plays an idealistic social worker and Rance Howard (father of Ron and Clint) plays the local sheriff who loses his legs.  And finally, there’s Clint Howard, giving it his all in yet another straight-to-video horror film.  Clint suffers even more indignities than usual in Ticks but he never gives up hope.  Clint’s scenes were directed by the film’s executive producer, Brian Yuzna, and added after the first cut of the film was judged to be missing something.  That was a good decision on Yuzna’s part because Clint Howard is easily the best part of the film.

Today, the appeal of Ticks is mostly one of nostalgia.  This is the type of mind-warping stuff that we used to watch when we were growing up.  This is what we used to rent at Blockbuster while our parents were looking for the latest Oscar nominees.  This is what late night cable used to be all about.