Daily Archives: October 27, 2023

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Black Wake (dir by Jeremiah Kipp)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this film from 2018 (which is largely made up of “found footage”), authorities are confused by a series of mysterious, beachside deaths.  The dead seem to have little to no connection with each other, besides having died near the Atlantic Ocean.  Some think that the murders are the result of a cult.  However, Dr. Luiza Moreira (Nana Gouvea) is convinced that the death are being caused by some sort of parasite that is transferred from host to host.  Her boss (Eric Roberts) doesn’t buy it and he thinks that Dr. Moreira is becoming unhinged in her obsession with her theory.  But soon, the streets are full of zombiefied killers, all of whom seem to be determined to reach the ocean.

As for Dr. Moreira, her boss may actually have a point about her behavior.  Much of the film is made up footage of Dr. Moreira speaking straight to the camera, explaining her theory and also discussing how everyone that she works with is either too foolish or too in denial to understand that its right.  Soon, she almost seems to be taking a bit of joy in just how out-of-control the situation has become.  Meanwhile, she finds herself suffering from terrible headaches and occasional hallucinations.  Two government agents follow her and watch her every move, ominously talking about how she doesn’t realize what is really happening.  When she tries to go to her family to warn them about what is happening, she discovers that the situation is even more extreme than she originally thought.

Black Wake is a low-budget slice of Cthulhu-style horror, one that works because it embraces its low budget and basically tosses in every weird twist and situation that it can come up with.  It’s an enjoyably weird movie and, if nothing else, it captures the extent to which some people will go to pretend that there’s nothing strange happening around them.  My favorites were the dumbass frat guys who just had to pick up a hitchhiker, despite the fact that she was obviously homicidal and disturbed.  One of the frat guys points out that it might not be a good idea to pick up a stranger while there’s a wave of mass murders occurring at the beach, one of his friends rationalizes the decision by saying, “She’s a chick.”  Drunk frat boys so desperate to get laid that they’ll risk being murdered?  That’s probably the most realistic moment in the entire film.

Eric Roberts appears in three scenes, playing an unsympathetic bureaucrat.  (Is there any other type?)  He’s not the only actor making a cameo here.  Chuck Zito plays a sheriff.  Vincent Pastore plays a doctor who memorably says, “Fuck this!” when confronted with the walking dead.  And Tom Sizemore has two effective scenes as an unstable homicide detective.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

  1. Star 80 (1983)
  2. Blood Red (1989)
  3. The Ambulance (1990)
  4. The Lost Capone (1990)
  5. Love, Cheat, & Steal (1993)
  6. Love Is A Gun (1994)
  7. Sensation (1994)
  8. Dark Angel (1996)
  9. Doctor Who (1996)
  10. Most Wanted (1997)
  11. Mr. Brightside (2004)
  12. Six: The Mark Unleased (2004)
  13. Hey You (2006)
  14. In The Blink of an Eye (2009)
  15. Enemies Among Us (2010)
  16. The Expendables (2010) 
  17. Sharktopus (2010)
  18. The Dead Want Women (2012)
  19. Deadline (2012)
  20. Miss Atomic Bomb (2012)
  21. Lovelace (2013)
  22. Self-Storage (2013)
  23. This Is Our Time (2013)
  24. Inherent Vice (2014)
  25. Road to the Open (2014)
  26. Rumors of War (2014)
  27. Amityville Death House (2015)
  28. A Fatal Obsession (2015)
  29. Stalked By My Doctor (2015)
  30. Joker’s Poltergeist (2016)
  31. Prayer Never Fails (2016)
  32. Stalked By My Doctor: The Return (2016)
  33. The Wrong Roommate (2016)
  34. Dark Image (2017)
  35. Stalked By My Doctor: Patient’s Revenge (2018)
  36. Clinton Island (2019)
  37. Monster Island (2019)
  38. Seven Deadly Sins (2019)
  39. Stalked By My Doctor: A Sleepwalker’s Nightmare (2019)
  40. The Wrong Mommy (2019)
  41. Exodus of a Prodigal Son (2020)
  42. Free Lunch Express (2020)
  43. Her Deadly Groom (2020)
  44. Top Gunner (2020)
  45. Deadly Nightshade (2021)
  46. Just What The Doctor Ordered (2021)
  47. Killer Advice (2021)
  48. The Poltergeist Diaries (2021)
  49. A Town Called Parable (2021)
  50. My Dinner With Eric (2022)

Horror Film Review: Old (dir by M. Night Shyamalan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

An odd film, Old.

Seriously, 2019’s Old is so odd that I feel the need to point out repeatedly just how strange it is.  As I watched the film, I respected it’s dedication to being odd but, at the same time, I was a bit surprised that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  For all of the fame that he’s gained for his twist endings and his suspenseful films, Shyamalan has always aspired to being a member of the Hollywood mainstream.  As such, his films are usually twisty without being transgressive.  He’s usually careful about alienating the audience.

But then, he makes something like Old, which features a group of people going to the beach and aging a year every 30 minutes.  This group includes middle-aged people (and wow, are they ever in trouble) but it also includes young children who quickly become teenager and then quickly become adults and, by the end of the film, are middle-aged and walking around in ill-fitting swim suits.  Along the way, there’s a 10-minute pregnancy, a baby that only lives for a few seconds because it’s aging too quickly, and a blood infection that kills within seconds.  Eyesight and hearing fades.  Bones snap.  Bodies quickly decay.  Aging sucks.

It’s not a happy film at all.  Yes, the movie does end with a minor victory but it still leaves the remaining characters in a sort of mental and emotional limbo, the type that you know they’re never going to escape.  The majority of the characters die and often, they die graphically and painfully.  Under normal circumstances, they would have died over the course of several years and, at the very least, people would have time to grieve in between.  On the cursed beach of Old, people die one after the other and there’s no time to grieve.  Two character do manage to make some sort of peace with themselves before they age to death but the majority of the characters go out railing against that dark night.  One of the most disturbing things about the film is that the characters have no control over what is happening to them.  Even when they try to leave the beach, they pass out and reawaken on the sand, a few years older.  I guess it’s like life.  There is no escape and there’s no way to prevent getting older.  Some will age well and live a full life.  Others will randomly get sick and die and, in the end, there’s no way to control which will be which.

Seriously, that’s depressing!  I’m not used to M. Night Shyamalan being that depressing!  But then I discovered that this movie was based on a French-language graphic novel and it all made sense.

The people on the beach are played by a talented group of actors, with several different performers playing the rapidly aging children over the course of the film.  Rufus Sewell gives a good performance as a surgeon who cracks under the pressure.  I was happy to see one of my favorite actors, Ken Leung, on the beach but I wasn’t particularly happy with what happened to his character.

It’s a strange film.  Say what you will about Shyamalan and his career has definitely been uneven, he can still deliver when he has the right material.

Horror Film Review: The Raven (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Shall I ever see the rare and radiant Lenore again?” — Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Prince)

“How they Hell should I know?” — Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre)

This exchange comes from Roger Corman’s 1963 film, The Raven, and it pretty much epitomizes the film.  Very loosely based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven was one of the many Poe adaptations that Corman did with Vincent Price.  As opposed to the other films in Corman’s Poe cycle, The Raven was a flat-out comedy, one that parodied the other films in the cycle.  Reportedly, Peter Lorre improvised his response to Vincent Price’s question about Lenore.  In fact, Lorre improvised a good deal of his performance and his jokes sometimes even took Corman by surprise.  As a result and despite the fact that Richard Matheson did write a script for the film, The Raven is one of those films that feels like it was made up while the camera was rolling.

The Raven is a film about three sorcerers who are always fighting and arguing with each other.  Dr. Erasmus Craven (Vincent Price) spends his time mourning the late Lenore.  The evil Dr. Scarabus (a frail-looking Boris Karloff) has his own castle where he lives with the ghost of the late Lenore (Hazel Court).  Dr. Adolphus Bedlo (Peter Lorre) is a sarcastic ne’er-do-well who saw Lenore in Scarabus’s castle and was transformed into a talking raven as a result.

In raven form, Dr. Bedlo flies over to Craven’s castle and convinces Craven to transform him back into human form.  After informing Craven that Scarabus has Lenore’s ghost in his castle, the heart-broken Craven decides to head over to Scarabus’s castle and get some answers.  Accompanying the group is Craven’s daughter, Estelle (Olive Sturgess) and Bedlo’s son, Rexford (Jack Nicholson, looking somewhat lost in the role of a boring young man).

At the castle, Scarabus puts on an act of being a friendly and gracious host but the opposite soon turns out to be true.  In fact, the entire castle is full of secrets and it quickly turns out that hardly anyone — with the exception of Estelle and Rexford — are who they actually claim to be.  It leads to a battle in magic between Craven and Scarabus.  I nearly described their battle as being “epic” but that’s probably not the right world.  It’s epic by the standards of Roger Corman but actually, the big battle is just as jokey as the rest of the film.

The Raven is definitely not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously.  One gets the feeling that Corman knew that the presence of Price, Karloff, and Lorre would make the film a success no matter what the film was like so he decided to have some fun with it.  (Price and definitely Lorre appear to have been in on the joke while Karloff was perhaps a bit less so.)  To be honest, the film’s only earnest moments come courtesy of Oliva Sturgess and Jack Nicholson but, because Nicholson is Nicholson, you watch those earnest moments waiting for Rexford to arch an eyebrow or flash that devilish grin.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t.  Jack is pretty boring here.

The Raven, if we’re going to be honest, is probably too jokey for its own good but it’s still hard to resist the charm of Price, Lorre, and Karloff.  The film is a chance to see three horror icons acting opposite each other and, as a result, it’s a fun film for horror fans.  Vincent Price breaks the fourth wall at the end of the film and it’s hard not to love it.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Bubba Ho-Tep!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and 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, #FridayNightFlix has got 2002’s Bubba Ho-Tep, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Bubba Ho-Tep is available on Prime!  See you there!

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002, dir by Don Coscarelli)

Horror On The Lens: Messiah of Evil (dir by Willard Huyck)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

MOE Mariana HillWith only five days left until Halloween, I wanted to make sure that I continued an important tradition here at the Shattered Lens by sharing this film with our faithful and wonderful readers.  Messiah of Evil was first released in 1973 and, since it’s in the public domain, it has since been included in a countless number of bargain box sets from Mill Creek.

I can still remember the first time that I saw Messiah of Evil.  It was on a Monday night, many years ago.  I had recently picked up a 10-movie DVD box set called Tales of Terror and I was using the movies inside to try to deal with a bout of insomnia.  I had already watched The Hatchet Murders (a.k,a. Deep Red) and The House At The Edge of the Park and, at two in the morning, I was faced with a decision.  Should I try to sleep or should I watch one more movie?

Naturally, I chose to watch one more movie and the movie I chose was Messiah of Evil.  So, there I was at two in the morning, sitting at the edge of my bed in my underwear and watching an obscure horror movie while rain fell outside.

And, seriously — this movie totally FREAKED me out!

Messiah of Evil tells the story of Arletty (Marianna Hill), a neurotic woman who drives to an isolated California town in order to visit her father.  Her father is an artist who specializes in painting eerie pictures of large groups of black-clad people.  However, once she arrives at his home, Arletty discovers that her father has vanished and left behind a diary where he claims that a darkness has overtaken the town.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Thom (Michael Greer) is wandering about town with two groupies (played by Anita Ford and Joy Bang) and interviewing random townspeople.  One crazed man (Elisha Cook, Jr.) explains that “the dark stranger” is returning.  After meeting Arletty, they all end up moving into her father’s house.

But that’s not all.   There’s also an odd albino man who shows up driving truck and who eats mice….

Messiah of Evil is literally one of the strangest films that I’ve ever seen.  It’s shot in a dream-like fashion and the much of the film is left open to the viewer’s interpretation.  There are two classic scenes — one that takes place in a super market and one that takes place in a movie theater and the movie’s worth watching for these two scenes alone.

Messiah of Evil is a film that will be appreciated by all lovers of surrealism and intelligent horror and I’m happy to share it with you today.