Book Review: The Eternal Enemy by Christopher Pike

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1993 YA novel, The Eternal Enemy, starts out with a typical Christopher Pike situation.

Rela is a teenager. Rela is adopted. Rela doesn’t know much about her past. Rela has a crush on my boy whom she’s too shy to ask out but luckily she has a confident best friend who is willing to do it for her. She also has another male admirer, who she just considers to be a friend. It’s all standard Pike.

However, the twist of this particularly novel is that Rela has a VCR and apparently, the VCR can tell the future! Whenever she tries to record an old horror movie, she instead ends up with a recording of a future news broadcast. At first, Rela uses this to her advantage. She makes money betting on a football game. She heads to Vegas to make even more money and then she goes to San Francisco and saves the lives of a bunch of window washers! Other than offering up a crisp picture, allowing viewers to easily skip around in a movie, and not eventually becoming an obsolete artifact of a past age, there’s absolutely nothing that this VCR can’t do.

However, even while Rela is having fun making money and saving lives, she’s also having disturbing dreams which seem to indicate that there are strange things hidden in her past. (Well, of course. It’s a Christopher Pike book.) A mysterious and creepy older man appears to be stalking her. Maybe she should stop messing with the VCR….

Then she sees a news report about her own death.

The Eternal Enemy is one of Pike’s more uneven books. It starts out nicely, with the promise of YA horror, but then it turns into this sort of Looper/Terminator sci-fi thing. As the story reveals more about the actual identities of Rela and the creepy old man, it gets bogged down trying to explain how everything works and, if you’re not already into science fiction, it becomes a bit of chore to read. It’s hard not to get annoyed that the book starts with an interesting premise and then kind of waves it all way by using the “It’s science!” excuse.

Probably the most interesting thing about The Eternal Enemy is that the entire narrative revolves around the mystical and complex powers of a VCR. If only Rela had been born a decade later, she wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.

Here’s The Trailer for Jungleland!

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The upcoming film Jungleland features a trio of underrated actors: Charlie Hunnam, Jack O’Connell, and Jonathan Majors. It’s a film about a bare knuckles boxer who travels across the country with his brother, who also happens to be his manager. I assume that they solve crimes or something. The important thing, though, is to remember the friends that everyone made along the way.

Anyway, Jungleland is due to be released on November 6th and here’s the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj1jVcy_FY4

International Horror Review: Lips of Blood (dir by Jean Rollin)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Few directors were as obsessed with memory as the great French filmmaker Jean Rollin and the 1975 cinematic memory poem, Lips of Blood, is one of his most personal works.

Frederic (played by Jean-Loup Philippe, a frequent Rollin collaborator) is at a reception for the launch of a new perfume. After discussing how certain fragrances can bring back subjective memories of the past, Frederic notices a poster hanging on the wall. The poster is a photograph of an old castle sitting on the beach. As Frederic stares at the poster, he has a vision of himself as a child, approaching the same castle and meeting a young woman named Jennifer (Annie Belle). Jennifer, who was apparently unable to go beyond the castle’s gates, allowed Frederic to get some sleep in the castle. When Frederic woke up, he left the castle but he promised Jennifer that he would return and that he would help her to leave the castle.

Years later, Frederic is haunted by the vision. He’s not sure if it’s dream or if it’s something that really happened. When he discusses it with his mother (Nathalie Perrey), she insists that it was just a dream and that Jennifer doesn’t exist. Even when Frederic says that he can’t remember anything about his childhood, his mother insists that he’s just imagining things.

But when Frederic starts to have visions of Jennifer beckoning him to come find her, is he imagining things or is she really trying to contact him? When she leads Frederic to a cemetery, is Frederic going mad or is Jennifer trying to tell him something? And, if this is all just in Frederic’s mind, why is he being followed by two mysterious girls who both have fangs and a taste for blood? Why are strangers trying to kill him? Even when Frederic is ruled to be mad and forcefully taken to an insane asylum, he remains obsessed with returning to the beach and finding that castle….

Lips of Blood has all the typical elements of a Rollin film. Yes, there are vampires. Yes, there is an old castle and yes, it’s on the same beach where it’s speculated that Rollin himself spent most of his childhood. (That beach makes an appearance in nearly every Rollin film.) Yes, the imagery is frequently sensual and erotically charged. And yes, the film plays out as its own dreamlike pace. Rollin is often described as being a director of vampire films but, at heart, Rollin was a surrealist and each one of his films creates its own unique world. The world that Rollin creates in Lips of Blood is a rather melancholy one, one tinged with love, regret, and existential angst. Frederic is wealthy and successful and leads what most people would consider to be a glamorous lifestyle. Yet, he’s empty. He’s haunted by the past and a promise that he failed to keep.

Indeed, throughout the film, there’s a palpable yearning for a simpler and more innocent world. It’s present in every frame of Lips of Blood. When Frederic visits the photographer who took the picture of the castle, the walls of her studio are decorated with vaguely political images, reminding us that the modern world can be a frightening and confusing place. The world is full of people who are not only threatened by what Frederic saw in the castle but also by Frederic’s refusal to share their fear. Frederic refuses to conform and therefore, society conspires to destroy not just him but also the glimpse he got into a world beyond our own. By the end of the film, as he and another talk about getting in a coffin and allowing themselves to be swept out to sea in the hope of finding an isolated island, it’s impossible not to hope that they make it.

Lips of Blood is one of Rollin’s best and most personal films. Never forget it.

A Blast From The Past: The Innocent Party (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this education film from 1959, two dim teenage boys decide to take a trip to the big city. They pick up two girls, the engage in behavior “condemned by society,” and the next thing you know, everyone’s got Syphilis.

Yes, this is another educational film from the 50s, where the emphasis is less on practical advice (i.e., use a condom when having sex, especially with someone who you just met) and more on passing judgment on those who transgressed society’s norms. I have to admit that one of the things that I like about these old films is just how bleak their worldview was. If you screw up once, your life is over. There’s nothing you can do to fix the problem. There’s nothing you can do to redeem yourself. You stepped out-of-line and now, you’ve got the same disease that killed Al Capone. Take that, teenager! The message of this particular film was considered to be so important that it was even filmed in color, which is quite a contrast to the harsh black-and-white aesthetic of most educational films of the period. That, along with the smooth jazz on the soundtrack, is designed to let the target audience know that sex with random people is totally squaresville and not something that a responsible member of society does. Why go to the city when you could join the student council or take part in any number of wholesome school activities?

This film was one of the many educational films to be directed by the great Herk Harvey. In a career that spanned decades, Harvey directed hundreds of short, educational films that were designed to show “young people” how to properly behave. Even if he wasn’t directing a film about VD, then he was probably doing a film about why gossip can be destructive to school spirit.

Harvey also directed one feature film and it’s one of the most important and influential horror films ever made, 1962’s Carnival of Souls. We’ll be sharing that film here on the Lens later this month. Until then, please enjoy The Innocent Party!

4 Shots From 4 Michael Reeves Films: Intrusion, The She Beast, The Sorcerers, The Witchfinder General

Posted on October 17, 2020 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!

This October, we’ve been using 4 Shots From 4 Films to pay tribute to some of our favorite horror directors! Today would have been the 77th birthday of Michael Reeves, the brilliant British director who died of an accidental drug overdose in 1969, when he was only 25 years old. It only makes sense that today, we honor Michael Reeves with….

4 Shots From 4 Films

Intrusion (1961, dir by Michael Reeves)

The She Beast (1966, dir by Michael Reeves)

The Sorcerers (1967, dir by Michael Reeves)

The Witchfinder General (1968, dir by Michael Reeves)

Insomnia File #46: Enter the Ninja (dir by Menahem Golan)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

It’s been nearly a year since I did my last Insomnia File. To be honest, as much as I enjoy writing these posts, I feel like the idea behind the Insomnia File format has become obsolete. The days of people dealing with insomnia by randomly flipping through movies and infomercials have pretty much come to an end. Now, if someone has insomnia, they’re more likely to binge an old show on Netflix.

That said, if you had insomnia at one in the morning last night and you didn’t feel like binging The Office for the hundredth time, you could have turned over to TCM and watched the 1981 film, Enter the Ninja.

What would you have gotten out of Enter the Ninja? Five words: France Nero as a ninja. Seriously, what more do you need? Nero plays Cole, a former mercenary who goes off to Japan, trains to become a ninja, and then heads off for the Philippines, where his old mercenary friend, Frank (Alex Courtney), owns a farm. Frank and his wife, Mary-Ann (Susan George) are having problems because evil businessman Charles Venarius (Christopher George, chewing up the scenery as the bad guy) is determined to force them off of their land. Add to that, Frank is a pathetic drunk.

Soon, Cole is putting on his white ninja suit and fighting to protect the farm and also dealing with Venarius’s ninja, who just happens to be an old rival of Cole’s. Cole is also carrying on an affair with Mary-Ann but that’s not big deal because Frank isn’t much of a man. One of the most interesting things about Enter the Ninja is that it may be a martial arts film but it’s also a modern western and a domestic drama. Cole could just as easily be a gunslinger, protecting the homesteaders. Frank and Mary-Ann could just as easily be a couple on a daytime drama. Instead, they’re all in a ninja film.

The main appeal of Enter the Ninja is Franco Nero, an actor who — in his prime — was one of the sexiest men to ever appear in the movies. He spends a good deal of the film with his face covered but the important thing is that you can still see those beautiful blue eyes. As usual, Nero gives a good performance with so-so material. Nero brings his trademark intensity to the role and he does actually seem to care about whether or not his friends lose their farm.

Enter the Ninja was directed by the legendary Menahem Golan, a filmmaker who understood the importance of never letting the action slow down. Enter the Ninja is dumb, over the top, and entertaining. Plus, it’s got Franco Nero! What else do you need at one in the morning?

Previous Insomnia Files:

Horror Film Review: The Green Slime (dir by Kinji Fukasaku)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Green Slime is here and it’s adorable!

The 1968 film, The Green Slime, is meant to be a hybrid of a horror movie and a sci-fi film. One might even call it a forerunner to Alien if one wanted to run the risk of being ridiculed for the rest of one’s life. It’s about an alien life form that manages to sneak into a space station. Once it’s inside the space station, it starts to rapidly multiply and it turns out that everything that the humans do to try to stop it just causes more of the monsters to show up!

Seriously, that should be some major nightmare fuel but instead, the monsters are just too cute to believed.

Okay, maybe cute is the wrong word. When Jeff and I watched this movie, I asked him if he could come up with a better term to describe the monsters than “cute.” He suggested “cheap.” And yes, the monster do look rather cheap. It’s obvious that the monsters are made out of rubber and, half the time, their arms just seem to flail around at random. That’s actually one of the things that makes them so cute!

It’s also one of the things that makes The Green Slime memorable. Today, we tend to take it for granted that anything can be done via CGI so it’s interesting to see a film like this. The Green Slime was originally released 52 years ago, long before CGI. The special effects may look cheap but there’s an undeniable appeal to their quaintness. The special effects are a lot like the monsters themselves. They’re cheap. They’re not particularly convincing. But, in their own weird way, they’re definitely charming.

Of course, they’re not at all scary. That’s a bit unfortunate as far as the film is concerned. Remember how, in the Alien movies, you’re always scared to death that the alien is going to jump from out of nowhere because 1) the alien is absolutely terrifying to look at and 2) anyone caught by the alien is destined to die a terrible and agonizing death? Well, that’s not the case with The Green Slime. The Green Slime just kind of runs around and looks …. well, cute.

That said, The Green Slime cannot be allowed to make its way to Earth so the folks on the space station are going to have to figure out how to defeat it. That’s not going to be easy because the two rival commanders (payed by Robert Horton and Richard Jaeckel) are currently both in love with the same woman. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi) is the space station’s doctor and needless to say, she’s going to have her hands full. If you’re a Bond connoisseur, you might recognize Luciana Paluzzi from Thunderball. Myself, I was just happy that the doctor was a redhead named Lisa. I could automatically relate to her. Plus, there’s nothing more entertaining than hearing your name repeated over and over again.

The Green Slime was an American-Japanese co-production. The cast is a mix of American and European actors while the film’s crew was predominantly Japanese. Originally, The Green Slime was envisioned as being an American/Italian co-production and Antonio Margheriti was in talks to direct. When that plan fell through, MGM moved the production to Japan and teamed up with the Toei Company. One can only imagine what the film would have looked like if it had been directed by Marheriti. One imagines that the aliens would have been a bit less cute.

Fortunately, cute they are! The Green Slime fails as both a horror and sci-fi film because the aliens themselves never seem like a legitimate threat but I still like the film. If nothing else, it pays tribute to the name Lisa and that’s definitely something that I can get behind.

Plus, the aliens are just adorable!

Horror on the Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(It’s tradition here at the Lens that, every October, we watch the original Little Shop of Horrors. And always, I start things off by telling this story…)

Enter singing.

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

Hi! Good morning and Happy October the 2nd! For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic. From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.” Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage. And you know what? The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me. So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film. Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson. However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage. Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way). However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…

What Lisa Watched Last Night #213: Is There A Killer On My Street? (dir by Jake Helgren)

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the latest “premiere” on the Lifetime Movie Network, Is There A Killer On My Street?

Why Was I Watching It?

I have to admit that Lifetime fooled me. I thought this was a brand new movie, largely because it was listed as having been released in 2020. When I saw that, I was like, “Well, there’s no way I’m going to miss a new Lifetime movie! Especially one that isn’t a sentimental Christmas film!”

Well, it turns out that Is There A Killer On My Street has been around for at least two years. It was originally released under the title The Neighborhood Nightmare, way back in 2018. When Lifetime aired the movie, they changed the title and apparently, that was enough for this movie to reclassified as a 2020 release.

That said, I’m not angry at Lifetime. The COVID-19 outbreak shut down a lot of productions and I can only imagine how many Lifetime movies were put on indefinite hold earlier this year. So, Lifetime picked up an old movie and changed the title. Big deal. It was still new to the network, right?

Don’t worry, Lifetime. I’ve got your back.

What Was It About?

It’s time for another round of sex and sin in the suburbs! Having escaped from an abusive marriage, Lindsay Porter (Julie McNiven) and her teenage daughter have settled down in a beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood. (Seriously, there’s never been an ugly house in a Lifetime movie.) Lindsay even starts to date her new neighbor, Dr. Stephen Lane (Trevor Donovan). However, when strange things start to happen and eventually someone shows up dead, Lindsay is forced to consider how much she knows about not just Stephen but her neighbors as well!

What Worked?

I always love a good Lifetime sin-in-the-suburbs film and Is There A Killer In My Street had all the right ingredients. Melodrama, murder, yoga, swimming pools, a good-looking cast, and a director who was willing to let everyone go just a little overboard. This was an entertainingly sordid movie and that’s exactly what I was looking for on Friday night.

I will say that the film also did a surprisingly good job of keeping you guessing. I thought I had figured out who the murderer would be just to then discover that I was totally wrong. I’m usually really good at predicting who the murderer is going to be in a Lifetime whodunit so I have to give this film a lot of credit for keeping me on my toes. I’ve seen a lot of these films and it’s always nice to discover that I can still be surprised.

What Did Not Work?

I could nitpick but screw that. This movie was too much fun for nitpicking. I mean, let’s be honest. We’re all pretty much going to be stuck in our current bizarre situation for the forseesable future. Films like Is There A Killer On My Street are going to be essential for keeping us entertained.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I appreciated that Lindsay and I both have red hair. I share her struggle.

Lessons Learned

If you even have to ask whether or not there’s a killer on your street, you’re already in trouble.