October Positivity: Exodus of the Prodigal Son (dir by Andy Rodriguez)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As you can tell from looking at the poster for this 2020 film, Eric Roberts is in Exodus of the Prodigal Son. Even though he’s given top-billing on the poster and is pictured as being at the center of all of the characters, Eric Roberts doesn’t really do much in this movie. This is one of those films where Eric Roberts probably shot all of his scenes in a day. Whenever we see him, he is relaxing behind his desk. I don’t think he even bother to change his clothes between scenes, despite the fact that the film plays out over a few days.

Eric Roberts is playing Chief Roberts, which really does contribute to the feeling that he just showed up on set and decided to be a part of the movie. Chief Roberts is always encouraging his detectives to go out and catch the bad guys. Apparently, there’s been a string of child murders and Roberts sure would like to capture whoever was responsible for them. But it also appears that the Chief mostly just wants an arrest. He really doesn’t seem to care if the people who are arrested are guilty or not. It’s a bit hard to know what to make of Chief Roberts. Then again, it’s difficult to know what to make of anyone in this movie.

The plot is damn near incoherent but, as far as I can tell, Jordan (Ronnie Alvarez) and Eddie (Pablo Nunez) are brothers who were raised in the church and taught to follow the straight and narrow path. But then Eddie stops going to church and starts hanging out with wannabe gangsters like Mark (Adam Mendoza). Mark is big into Santeria and his idea of flirting is to talk about how he gets good luck from sacrificing goats on an altar that’s built for La Santa Muerta. When Eddie’s friend, Steve (Samuel Warburton), stops by Jordan and Eddie’s place to talk to Eddie about returning to church, Mark gives Steve a drink that has been laced with some sort of drug. Steve overdoses. Eddie goes to the hospital with Steve. Meanwhile, Mark decides to pull a knife on Jordan which leads to a struggle in which Mark somehow stabs himself in the neck and dies. Now, with the help of his biker uncle, Jordan has to go on the run.

Who is the prodigal son in this scenario? I’m not really sure. The whole point of the parable of the prodigal son is that the prodigal chose to leave home on his own. He wasn’t fleeing the police or anything like that. So, Eddie would seem to be the prodigal son but he’s not the one who goes into hiding or learns a spiritual lesson. Instead, that’s what happens to Jordan but, again, Jordan didn’t leave home because he wanted to. He left home because the cops were after him. It’s probably best not to worry too much about it. The plot here was obviously not meant to be followed.

There’s a lot to criticize about this film but really, the thing that took this film from bad to terrible was the sound. Some of the dialogue is muffled. Some of it is unreasonably loud. In one of his first scenes, Eric Roberts keeps bumping his wristwatch against the sound of his desk and the effect is deafening. Later, in the hospital, the beeping of Steve’s EKG monitor is so loud that it’s impossible to understand what anyone is saying. People, I think, tend to underestimate the importance of clear sound in a movie. It’s something we take for granted but when it’s not there, it’s enough to make you want to throw something at the screen.

Finally — and this is a spoiler — the film commits the sin of ending on a “It was all a dream!” note. So, does that mean that Eric Roberts was a part of the dream or did he really exist? It’s a question that’s far more intriguing than anything else about this particular film.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Monsters 1.1 “The Feverman”

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Youtube.

Monsters was an anthology series that ran, in syndication, from 1988 to 1991. It was produced by Richard Rubinstein and Mitchell Galin, who had previously produced another anthology series called Tales From The Darkside. Monsters, unlike Tales, almost exclusively focused horror stories and, as the title suggests, each story featured at least one monster. As well, each episode opened with a family of monsters sitting around a television and looking for something to watch.

Sounds like fun! I’m looking forward to watching and reviewing this series for Through the Shattered Lens.

Episode 1.1 “The Feverman”

(Dir by Michal Gornick, originally aired on October 22nd, 1988)

Timothy Mason (John C. Vennema) is in a panic because his daughter (Michele Gornick) has a contracted a fever and is now on the verge of death. When Mason’s friend, Dr. James Burke (Patrick Garner), is unable to lower the girl’s fever, Mason decides to take her to see the Boyle (David McCallum), the feverman. A disreputable fellow who is never seen without a glass of liquor in his hand and a dingy crystal hanging out around his neck, Boyle claims that he can pull fevers out of those suffering. He charges a good deal of money for his services but he also claims that, unlike the doctors of the world, he’s never lost a patient. Indeed, Boyle claims that, if anyone brought to him died, he would die as well.

Burke goes with Mason to Boyle’s house and, when Boyle announces that he must be alone with Mason’s daughter in order to cure her, Burke denounces him as being a charlatan. Still, Mason agrees to leave his daughter alone with Boyle in Boyle’s basement. However, as Burke and Mason wait for Boyle to return from the basement, they grow impatient and Burke pressures Mason to disobey Boyle’s orders. Finally, Burke and Mason head into the basement and that’s where they catch Boyle wrestling with this thing….

It turns out that Boyle wasn’t lying when he said that he could literally bring the fever out of a patient. However, when Burke and Mason interrupt him, that allows the fever monster to once again reenter Mason’s daughter. The crystal necklace falls off Boyle’s neck. Boyle explains to Burke that he is now dying and he can no longer fight the fever. And, because it’s all Burke’s fault, it is now Burke’s obligation to wear the crystal and battle the fever.

Realizing that he’s at fault, Burke puts on the crystal and he wrestles with the fever monster. Burke manages to destroy the monster but, afterwards, he discovers that he cannot take the crystal off. As Boyle explains it, Burke is the new feverman and he will now wear the crystal until the day he dies. Mason, happy that his daughter is now cured, still refuses to stick around to talk to Burke afterwards. Burke is now an outsider. Resigned to his fate, Burke starts drinking and prepares to meet his next patient.

This was an effective episode, featuring a wonderfully dissolute performance from David McCallum as Boyle and plenty of grimy atmosphere. Maybe it’s just because I’m still getting over having the flu last week but the fever monster totally freaked me out. I imagine that creature probably is what a fever really would look like. This episode was the exact right way to start things off for Monsters!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 4.7 “The Legendary Billy B” (dir by Chris Thomson)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the tail end of the 60s, the so-called king of acid rock, guitarist Billy Baltimore (Brad Dourif) was assassinated on stage. Or was he? When tabloid journalist Jane L. (Kirstie Alley) is told by her morally conflicted photographer, Hodie (Andy Summers of the Police), that he believes Billy Baltimore faked his own death and is actually living in a mansion and plotting his comeback, Jane L. decides to break into the mansion and find out for herself.

That turns out to be a big mistake. But, as badly as things go for Jane L. and Hodie, this is an entertaining episode that features Kirstie Alley at her most neurotic and Brad Dourif at his most off-beat. The ending might not make much sense but the journey is still worth it. For the record, the Hitchhiker (Page Fletcher) really does not like tabloid reporters.

The episode originally aired on March 31st, 1987.

October Hacks: Sorority House Massacre (dir by Carol Frank)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film, Sorority House Massacre, tells the story of two people who share a psychic bond.

Beth (Angela O’Neill) is a college student who can’t remember anything about her childhood and who was raised by her aunt. After her aunt dies, Beth joins a sorority and moves into their house. Almost from the minute that she arrives, Beth starts to have disturbing visions and dreams of a man with a knife and blood dripping from the ceiling. With most of the members of the sorority leaving for the Memorial Day weekend, Beth ends up staying with Linda (Wendy Martel), Sara (Pamela Ross), and Tracy (Nicole Rio). The other girls want to have a fun weekend but instead, they find themselves dealing with Beth and her glum attitude. Linda and Sara sincerely want to help. Tracy is a bit annoyed with the whole thing and I don’t blame her.

Meanwhile, a man named Bobby (John C. Russell) is a patient at a mental asylum. He’s been a patient ever since he was arrested for murdering almost his entire family. Bobby has been in a rage for the past few days, beating his head on the walls and attacking anyone who enters the room. Just as Beth finds herself having visions of Bobby, Bobby has visions of Beth. When Bobby does finally manage to escape from the hospital, the first thing he does is break into a hardware store and steal a hunting knife. (He uses the knife to take care of the owner of the store.) Then he steals a car and promptly drives off towards Los Angeles and the sorority house.

Sorority House Massacre was produced by Roger Corman and, just as he did with Slumber Party Massacre, he hired a woman to both direct and write the film. As such, while Sorority House Massacre has all of the usual scenes of sorority girls taking showers, trying on clothes, and running around in states of undress, it’s still never as misogynistic as some other slasher films. Beth, Sara, Linda, and Tracy all come across as being fully-rounded characters and the viewer doesn’t want anything bad to happen to any of them. If anything, in this film, it’s the various boyfriends who are portrayed as being somewhat disposable and easily victimized. Certainly, not a single one of the guys proves to be particularly useful once Bobby shows up at the sorority house and starts his massacre.

Why is Bobby fixated on the sorority house and Beth in particular? Director Carol Frank does a good job of portraying the killer’s mental state, with a good deal of the film’s scenes being shot from his own point of view. (Perhaps the scariest moments are not the ones featuring blood and knives but the ones in which the killer moves from location to location and we see, through his point of view, just how relentless he is.) Frank also takes us straight into Beth’s mind, showing us her vivid hallucinations as they happen and the end result is that Sorority House Massacre often has an unexpectedly surreal feel to it. It’s a low-budget slasher film that plays out like a filmed nightmare and it sticks with you, even after the end credits.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Combat Shock (dir by Buddy Giovinazzo)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the late 80s, Staten Island was the worst place on Earth.

That was one of the takeaways that I got from watching the 1986 film, Combat Shock. The film was shot on location on Staten Island and, indeed, it’s a grim viewing experience. Frankie Dunlan (played by Rick Giovinazzo, the brother of the film’s director, Buddy Giovinazzo) is a Vietnam war vet who, having spent time in a coma as a result of his war injuries, has returned home to a country that doesn’t have much use for him. He lives in a run-down and dirty apartment with his wife (Veronica Stork) and their gray, constantly-crying mutant baby. (The baby’s mutation is explained by Frankie’s exposure to Agent Orange.) Because Frankie has no skills, he can’t get a job. Because he can’t get a job, he has no money and his wife keeps yelling at him to call his father. But Frankie doesn’t want anything to do with his father, who was apparently a jingoistic racist and who currently believes that Frankie was killed in Vietnam.

(And perhaps Frankie was. There’s a part of me that wonders if the whole film was meant to be Frankie’s end-of-life vision as he lay dying in Vietnam.)

The television at the apartment only show static but Frankie and his wife watch it anyways. The milk in the refrigerator is expired but Frankie drinks it regardless. Frankie gets a note announcing that he and his family are about to be evicted but he doesn’t seem to be particularly upset about it. Frankie, who has the 1,000-yard stare of a man continually woken up by nightmares and the ever-present dirty stubble of a meth addict, is too trapped in the horrors of the past to fully comprehend the horrors of the present.

Leaving his apartment, Frankie wanders around the dirtiest and most depressing areas of Staten Island. The buildings are abandoned. Every wall is covered in graffiti. Gangs roam the streets. Frankie runs into a desperate drug addict who is later seen ripping open his arms so that he can sprinkle heroin into his flesh. Outside an employment office, a mysterious blonde on a motorcycle looks at Frankie and appears to invited him to join her but Frankie refuses to move. Inside the employment office, Frankie’s case worker speaks in non-sequiturs. “Life is hot, and because life is hot, I must take off my jacket,” the case worker says while Frankie stares at him with a blank look on his face.

Frankie has visions and hears voices. His flashbacks to Vietnam are filmed in haunting slow motion, all the more to make us wonder if he’s actually seeing what happened in the past or if he’s hallucinating an entirely different existence for himself. Combat Shock is a horror film but it’s the horror of Frankie’s fractured mind. Frankie served his country but now his country views him with disgust. The film ends on a dark note, one that is not pleasant to watch but one that equally feels pre-destined.

Combat Shock is a film that is so grim and dark that it’s developed a semi-legendary reputation. Watching the film, I respected the filmmaker for staying true to his dark vision and essentially refusing to compromise or let up in the least. At the same time, I have to admit that I got a little bit bored with film’s nonstop darkness. As a character, Frankie is not particularly compelling. (The film has been frequently compared to David Lynch’s Eraserhead but Combat Shock has none of that film’s quirky humor and Frankie is nowhere near as sympathetic as Jack Nance’s Henry.) The film succeeds by staying true to itself but, in the end, it’s not a film that most people will want to watch a second time. And perhaps that’s the point. Frankie may be too desensitized to be angry but the film is outraged at way the country treats men like Frankie, who carry the scars of serving their country but who have simply been pushed to the side by a society that doesn’t want to be reminded of the bad times. Much like An American Hippie In Israel, Combat Shock is a film that demands that we stop pushing buttons and take care of each other.

A Blast From The Past: The Fourth Man (dir by Joanna Lee)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Blast From The Past comes to us from 1990 and it’s a scary one.

In The Fourth Man, Peter Billingsley (yes, the kid from A Christmas Story) plays Joey Martelli, an insecure high schooler who thinks that he’ll be more attractive to girls if he becomes more like his best friend, friendly jock Steve Guarino (Vince Vaughn, making his film debut and already physically towering over everyone else in the cast). With Steve’s encouragement, Joey tries out for the track team and, to everyone’s surprise, he makes it!

Joey is now an athlete. He finally has friends. Girls (including Nicole Eggert) are talking to him. His father (Tim Rossovich) is finally proud of him. But Joey soon discovers that staying on the track team is not an easy task. His coach tells Joey that he has to pick up his speed. Feeling desperate, Joey does what so many other television teenagers before him have done. He starts taking steroids! (Dramatic music cue!) Soon, the kid from A Christmas Story is breaking out in pimples, throwing temper tantrums, and becoming a rage-fueled monster! Joey only took the steroids because he wanted to be as cool as Steve but, unfortunatey, Joey learns too late that Steve’s success and popularity are not due to how big and strong he is but to the fact that he is played by a young Vince Vaughn.

(Myself, I was fortunate enough to go to a high school where the emphasis was placed more on the arts and intellectual pursuits than athletic success. My school didn’t even have its own football field. We had to share with the high school down the street! Anyway, as a result, I don’t think knew anyone in high school who was abusing steroids and I never had to deal with anyone suddenly flying into a rage and punching a hole in a wall or any of the other stuff that always happens whenever anyone abuses steroids on television.)

The Fourth Man was written and directed by Joanna Lee, who is perhaps best known for playing Tanna the Alien in Ed Wood’s Plan Nine From Outer Space. (Lee, it should be noted, had a very long and respected career as a writer and director of television dramas. In many ways, she had the career that Ed Wood imagined that he would someday have.) Along with Billingsley and Vaughn, the cast includes horror mainstay Adrienne Barbeau as Joey’s mother and football player-turned-horror-actor Lyle Alzado as a man who has his own history with steroids. The film has good intentions and a good message about not taking shortcuts and being happy with who you are but I imagine that most people will just want to watch it to see Peter Billingsley descend into roid rage. And I will say that, for all the film’s melodrama, there is something a little bit disturbing about watching fresh-faced Peter Billingsley turn into a physically aggressive bully.

From October of 1990 (and complete with the commercials than ran during the program’s first broadcast), here is The Fourth Man.

Blood Vessel (2019, directed by Justin Dix)

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

In the waning days of World War II, a group of Allied soldiers and reporters find themselves floating in a lifeboat, having survived the torpedoing of the troop transport on which they were previously traveling. A mix of Australians, Brits, Russians, and Americans, the survivors are on the verge of giving up when they spot an apparently abandoned German boat floating in the middle of the ocean.

The survivors board the boat and discover that the crew is missing or dead. The only survivor on the boat is a little girl (Ruby Isobel Hall) who hungrily eyes any open cut. The survivors discover that the boat was supposed to be shipping art that had been stolen by the Nazis but that the boat instead picked up some unexpected passengers who wiped out the crew and who are still hungry for blood. While one weaselly survivor resorts to trying to contact the Germans for help, the others try to stay alive in an environment that they can’t control.

Blood Vessel owes an obvious debt to the Alien franchise, with the survivors roughly corresponding to the space marines who failed to stop the Xenomorphs in Aliens and the ship acting as a water-bound version of the rickety spaceships that have appeared throughout all of the Alien films. There’s no real surprise to the nature of the monsters that have taken over the boat. The film’s entire premise is right there in the title. But Blood Vessel is claustrophobic and the monsters, when they do make their eventual appearance, are frightening in both their ruthless savagery and the mocking joy that they take in their activities.

All the more memorable for having been shot on an actual boat, Blood Vessel is effective low-budget horror.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 3.9 “Trial Romance/Never Say Goodbye/A New Woman”

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986! The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, the Love Boat gets a new member of the crew!

Episode 3.9 “Trial Romance/Never Say Goodbye/A New Woman”

(Dir by Gordon Farr, originally aired on November 3rd, 1979)

This episode is a big one for Captain Stubing so let’s quickly get the non-Stubing storylines out of the way.

First off, Barney Briscoe (Louis Nye) and Rose Kennycott (Gale Storm) are two older passengers who board the ship looking for love. Since they’re both kind of old-fashioned and not a fan of public displays of affection, Julie thinks that they would be perfect together. Unfortunately, while Barney does like Rose, he also thinks that Julie is hitting on him while Rose thinks that the man Julie says likes her is Doc Bricker! Rose decides to take matters into her own hands and heads to Doc Bricker’s office. Thinking that she’s feeling ill, Doc tells her to go in the exam room and remove her clothes. Rose, fearing that things are moving too quickly, flees from Bricker’s cabin. Fortunately, she and Barney do end up together but Barney is always in such a cranky mood that you can’t help but feel that Rose is going to get tired of dealing with him after a week or two.

Meanwhile, Harry Stewart (Vic Tayback) boards the ship, fresh from getting finished with jury duty. He was a part of jury that heard a case that drew national attention. A woman was accused of poisoning her husband and the trial ended with a hung jury. Harry explains to Gopher and Isaac that 11 men were ready to convict but the one woman on the jury refused to vote guilty. That woman is Ann Noyce (Jo Ann Pflug) and — surprise! — she’s also a passenger. Harry and Ann spend the entire cruise arguing the facts of the case before eventually falling in love. It’s a typical Love Boat storyline and Tayback and Pflug don’t exactly have the greatest romantic chemistry. It’s easy to believe them when they’re arguing but not quite as easy to buy them as sudden lovers.

But really, the only storyline that matters is the one involving Captain Stubing and his daughter Vicki (Jill Whelan, who is listed as a guest star for this episode but joins the regular cast next week). Now 11 years old, Vicki has been writing to Stubing on a regular basis and telling him about how much she wishes she could see him again. However, Stubing tells Bricker that he has resolved never to see Vicki again because it would be too painful for him to have to say goodbye to his daughter all over again. However, Vicki has discovered that Stubing is her father and she decides to take matters into her own hands by running away from home and boarding the ship in Acapulco. Stubing finally admits that he is Vicki’s father but he still feels that a ship is not the right place for a child. He returns her home to her aunt, just to discover that her aunt is in the middle of a divorce and she feels that Vicki should be with her father. Stubing and Vicki return to the ship, where Vicki will now live.

Awwwwww!

Actually, I’m not totally sure how this thing with Vicki living on the ship is supposed to work. She’s 11 years old, which is a bit young to be working on a cruise ship. Does the Love Boat have a school on one of its decks? Is Vick really going to be happy living on a boat that is largely populated by elderly people? There’s a lot of questions to be considered but it really doesn’t matter. Gavin MacLeod gives such a sincere and emotional performance that it feels almost churlish to obsess on the specifics of how Vicki is going to be raised. Captain Stubing has always been more interesting of character than one might assume. Though he’s often a bit goofy and it’s hard not to cringe whenever he gets a storyline that requires him to flirt, Gavin MacLeod always did a wonderful job of showing Stubing’s more vulnerable side. Whether he was talking about Vicki’s mother or his own struggles with alcoholism, there was always an undercurrent of melancholy with Captain Stubing and MacLeod always seemed to make the most of those scenes that allowed Stubing to open up about his life and regrets.

In the end, the viewer is just happy that Captain Stubing has finally been reunited with his daughter.

Next week: The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders board the ship!

Horror Scenes I Love: Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A true American success story, Bruce Campbell first met and befriended Sam Raimi when the two of them were high school students in Michigan. Campbell first gained attention in Raimi’s Evil Dead films and he’s been a mainstay in Raimi’s films ever since. He’s also been a favorite of the Coen Brothers, Don Coscarelli, William Lustig, and scores of other director. Few actors can balance both drama and comedy with the adroitness of Bruce Campbell.

Campbell, of course, is best-known for his performance as Ash Williams, the S-Mart store clerk who lost his hand while spending the weekend at a cabin, spent some time in the past, and later earned the right to tell us all to say “hail to the king, baby.” Campbell’s ability to do often violent slapstick comedy, along with his ability to deliver the most absurd of dialogue with a straight face, came together to make him into a true pop cultural icon. Though Campbell has since announced his retirement from playing Ash (saying that, at his age, he can no longer physically spends hours a day getting beaten up), he remains a beloved actor to horror fans everywhere.

Today’s scene that I love comes from 1992’s Army of Darkness and it features Bruce Campbell at his best. All Ash has to do is remember three simple words and say them before taking the Necronomicon from its place. Of course, Ash being Ash, things don’t quite work out that simply….

Horror Novel Review: Dead End by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1995, Dead End begins with Natalie making what seems like the right decision.

Realizing that her boyfriend, Keith, has had way too much to drink at a party, Natalie refuses to ride home with him. Instead, she joins her friends Carlo, Gillian, and Todd in getting a ride from their sweet and responsible friend, Randee. Seriously, Keith has already fallen down a flight of stairs and made the party awkward by throwing up all over the place. Drunks are so annoying!

Anyway, Randee is driving everyone home when a sudden fogs rolls in and makes it difficult to see the road ahead of her. Uh-oh! Better pull over until that fog clears up or your might — AGCK! Randee smashes into a car! And then she drives off, without even bothering to get out of the car and make sure that the other driver is okay! Natalie freaks out but all of her friends explain to her why they can’t run the risk of going to the police. I mean, Randee wasn’t even supposed to be driving the car! Someone else has a relative in the hospital! Todd’s father has just started a new job and it would be really awkward if his son got arrested for being a passenger in a car! Natalie eventually agrees to keep quiet about the accident.

But then, the next day, she discovers that the car they hit belonged to the mayor’s sister. And now the mayor’s sister is dead! Can Natalie and her friends keep the secret, even though there now appears to be someone stalking them and doing stuff like leaving spoiled meat around as a warning that they’re dead meat as well? Can Natalie figure out who the mysterious stalker is before all of her friends are killed? And will she be able to work out her relationship issues with Keith? Seriously, priorities!

If this sounds familiar, it’s because R.L. Stine pretty much just transported the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer to Shadyside and he really didn’t bother to add any surprising twists or turns. The end result is one of the more forgettable entries in the Fear Street series. There is one nicely macabre death scene in which someone basically loses their face but otherwise, this is Stine on autopilot.

In the end, I guess the important thing is that the book reminds its readers not to drink and drive and that’s a good thing. As well, if a sudden fog rolls in, pull over. It’s just not worth the risk!