Monthly Archives: October 2023

Insomnia File #64: Once Upon A Midnight Scary (dir by Nell Cox)

Posted on 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 streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1978’s Once Upon A Midnight Scary.

Made for CBS and featuring Vincent Price as the sardonic, cape-wearing host, Once Upon A Midnight Scary was a special designed to encourage young viewers to pick up a book and read.  Price introduced three different stories, each centering around ghosts and each based on a book.  In the first story, based on the book The Ghost Belonged To Me, a young farmboy discovers a ghost hiding in a barn and becomes a hero when the ghost warns him about an impending disaster.  The second story is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and it features Rene Auberjonois as a rather neurotic Ichabod Crane, who finds himself being pursued by the headless horsemen.  The third and longest story is an adaptation of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, featuring Severn Darden and a rather annoying child actor.

One thing you immediately notice about this show is that the special doesn’t actually reveal how any of the stories end.  Instead, each story is basically a recreation of the most exciting or interesting parts of the larger story but, whenever it appears that we’re heading for a conclusion, Vincent Price suddenly appears and says, “What happened next, you ask?  Read the book!”  This special basically casts Vincent Price as the world’s most devilish book salesman and while that might be annoying if you’re watching the special because you want to see how the stories turn out, it’s a lot of fun if you’re just watching the show to watch Vincent Price act like Vincent Price.  Vincent is not in the special as much as you might want but he still shows off his unique charm.  It’s impossible to be in a bad mood while watching Vincent Price.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House

6 Trailers For October 30, 2023

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse And Exploitation Film Trailers, we share some trailers from the maestro of Italian horror, Mario Bava!

  1. Black Sunday (1960)

After starting his career as a cinematographer and a visual effects engineer, Mario Bava made his directorial debut with 1960’s Black Sunday, starring Barbara Steele!

2. Black Sabbath (1963)

In 1963, Bava directed one of his most popular films, the horror anthology Black Sabbath.  The trailer put the spotlight on the great Boris Karloff.

3. Planet of the Vampires (1965)

One of Bava’s best films, Planet of the Vampires, was later cited by many as an influence on the Alien films.

4. Bay of Blood (1971)

One of the first slasher films, Bay of Blood was also a social satire that featured Bava’s dark sense of humor.

5. The House of Exorcism (1974)

When it was released in the United States, Bava’s Lisa and the Devil was re-titled House of Exorcism and, after new scenes were filmed, sold as a rip-off to The Exorcist.

6. Shock (1977)

Bava’s final film as a director was Shock, which starred Daria Nicolodi as a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of her first husband.

Music Video Of The Day: Women by Def Leppard (1987, directed by Doug Freel and Jean Pellerin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This music video represents the fantasy of almost every 80s kid, skateboard wherever you want, read a comic book about your favorite hero having an amazing adventure, and doing it all while your favorite band performs behind you.

Depending on what part of the world you were living in, Women was either the first or the second single to be released off of Dep Leppard’s best-selling album, Hysteria.  Hysteria was a great album that was helped immeasurably by MTV.  Fans of the band already knew that Def Leppard rocked but MTV gave everyone the chance to watch them as they did so.

This was the first Dep Leppard video to be filmed after Rick Allen lost his left arm.  A good deal of the video’s popularity comes from Rick showing that he was still one of the best drummers in the business.

Enjoy!

October Positivity: Defiant (dir by Stephen Krist)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to the future!

It’s a rather low-rent place, full of empty warehouses, vacant lots, and deserted streets.  With the exception of the Sovereign Leader (David Krist), everyone seems to live in a bland apartment.  It’s a world where people have neither personalities nor names.  Instead, people are identified by their identification numbers.  Few people can really remember what the world was like before the Sovereign Leader came to power but almost everyone seems to believe that it was not a good place to live.  The Sovereign Leader says so and why would he lie?  The people are united by one belief when it comes to their Leader.  “If he is for us, who can be against us?”

There are a few people who refuse to accept the words of the Sovereign Leader.  They hide in the wilderness and in the city and they read forbidden books.  The Leader has his own fanatical, paramilitary force who spend their time tracking down and executing these so-called “Defiants.”  This group of executioners is known as the Peace Team because, after all, that’s what they’re doing, right?  They’re making sure that no one disturbs the peace.

This is the world of the 2019 film, Defiant.

Defiant tells the story of A51-317 (Luke Krist), who begins the film as one of the most fanatical members of the Sovereign Leader’s Peace Team.  Perhaps the reason why A51-317 is so quick to announce his loyalty to the Sovereign Leader is because he is suffering from his own doubts.  He has dreams and occasional flashbacks to a time before the Sovereign Leader comes to power and much of what he sees stands in contrast to what he’s been told about the old world.  A51-317 wonders why he can’t remember much about his past.  He wonders why so many people are willing to be executed rather than follow the Sovereign Leader.  He wonders who he was before he just became a number.

And soon, he’s wondering why he’s been framed for the attempted murder of the Sovereign Leader.  After the Leader is shot in the head, he’s believed to be dead for three days.  Then, suddenly, the Leader reveals that he’s not only alive but he also announces himself to be the Supreme Leader.  He makes it clear that all Defiants must now be executed.  A51-317 find himself on the run as he becomes one of the people who he used to hunt.

It’s a familiar story, one that’s been featured in a countless number of faith-based “final days” movies.  That said, Defiant is a well-made and surprisingly well-acted film, one that does a good job of creating a believable atmosphere of fear and paranoia.  The Sovereign Leader has much in common with the dictators and megalomaniacs of today and the scenes in which the Peace Team track down the Defiants and accuse them of being insobordinate for not blindly supporting the policies of the Leader feel even more relevant today than they did in 2019.  Whether one buys into the film’s faith-based message or not, Defiant is a film that feels undeniably relevant to today’s world.

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Degrassi Junior High 1.7 “Best Laid Plans”

Posted on 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 Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989!  The series can be streamed on YouTube!

This week, Degrassi goes there!

Episode 1.7 “Best Laid Plan”

(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on March 1st, 1987)

This week’s episode of Degrassi Junior High is cringe city.  I mean that in a good way.  Seriously, Degrassi Junior High may be close to 40 years old but awkwardness about sex, especially when you’re still trying to figure out what it’s all about, is a timeless subject.

Stephanie (Nicole Stoffman) has had a crush on Wheels (Neil Hope) since the series began but their one date ended in disaster when Stephanie had too much to drink beforehand.  Still, she finally works up the courage to ask Wheels if he wants to do something on Friday night and Wheels says yes!  Yay!

Voula (Niki Kemeny), who is absolutely one of the worst characters in the history of Degrassi, pops up to once again whine about Stephanie not thanking her when she won the school presidency and to accuse Stephanie of being sleazy just because she doesn’t dress like a member of polygamous cult.  SHUT UP, VOULA!  Your father won’t even let you stay out past 9:00.

Stephanie gets even more excited when her mother (Pat Beaven) tells Stephanie that she has a date on Friday and she’ll be out of the house.  Stephanie drops Wheels a note asking him to come to her house at 7:30.  Soon, everyone is school is talking about how Stephanie and Wheels are definitely going to do it on their date.  When the creepy twins ask Stephanie if she’s really going to have sex with Wheels, Stephanie shrugs in the fashion of someone trying to be more worldly than she actually is.

Meanwhile, Stephanie is still refusing to admit that Arthur (Duncan Waugh) is her brother.  This annoys Arthur but at least his best friend Yick Yu (Siluck Saysanasy) has managed to get his hands on a VHS copy of Swamp Sex Robots.  Yick wants to watch it but, this being the 80s, the only way to watch it would be to pop it in the living room VCR and his parents are always at home.  Wait a minute!  Arthur has a VCR and both his mother and his sister have dates!

Wheels, feeling insecure about sex, talks to his father (Timm Zemanek).  (Of course, true Degrassi fans know that Wheels is actually adopted and his real father is a drunk living on the other side of Canada but it’ll be a while until we reach that storyline.)  His father tells Wheels that it’s important to use protection so Wheels heads down to the local drug store and purchases some condoms.  The pharmacist is concerned that someone as young as Wheels needs condoms and she gives him a bunch of sex safe pamphlets.  What Wheels doesn’t know is that the pharmacist is also …. STEPHANIE’S MOTHER!

OH MY GOD!  Seriously, cringe!

It’s Friday night!  After embarrassing Stephanie and Arthur by giving them safe sex pamphlets at the dinner table, Stephanie’s mom is waiting for her date.  Stephanie is trying to get ready for Wheels without her mom seeing the slutty outfit that she’s wearing.  And Arthur wants everyone to get out of the house before Yick and his gang of pervs show up to watch Swamp Sex Robots.  Stephanie’s mom’s date arrives on time.  Unfortunately, Wheels shows up early and, when Stephanie’s mom opens the door, both dates are standing on the porch, holding flowers.

“You’re the boy from the pharmacy!” Stephanie’s mom says before yelling at Stephanie to come downstairs.

Stephanie’s hasty attempt to toss on a bathrobe as she comes downstairs doesn’t fool her mother.  After seeing how her daughter usually dresses outside of the house, Stephanie’s mom sends her date home and then yanks Wheels into the house so that she can give both Stephanie and Wheels a lecture about being too young for sex.  Unfortunately, before she can really get into that lecture, Yick and his friends show up wanting to watch their porn….

Seriously, this was a great episode and it represented everything that made Degrassi special.  It was honest but it was funny and it had me cringing as I had flashbacks to my own days of wannabe wild youth.  Like last week’s episode, Best Laid Plans (great title) proved to be too controversial for the UK and the BBC declined to air the episode.

Seriously, Degrassi goes there!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Review: 10/23/23 — 10/29/23

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Halloween is almost here!  The weather has turned cold and it’s been raining for the past few days.  It’s totally possible that it could be storming on Halloween night.  This is my favorite time of year!

I can’t believe that our annual Horrorthon is almost over.  I’m very proud of everyone who contributed this year!  This has been our biggest horrorthon ever!  Of course, I’m also looking forward to getting a little rest in November.

Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week!

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (dir by Tommy Lee Wallace)

Films I Watched:

  1. Beginning of the End (1957)
  2. Blood Sucking Freaks (1976)
  3. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
  4. Cannonball (1976)
  5. Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972)
  6. The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
  7. Empire of the Ants (1977)
  8. Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)
  9. House of Dark Shadows (1970)
  10. The Neighbors Are Watching (2023)
  11. Once Upon A Midnight Scary (1979)
  12. Popcorn (1991)
  13. Return to the Cabin By The Lake (2000)
  14. A Shock to the System (1991)
  15. Sweet Sixteen (1983)
  16. The Tingler (1959)
  17. Trauma (1993)
  18. Two Evil Eyes (1990)
  19. White Zombie (1932)
  20. The Wolf Man (1940)

Television Shows I Watched:

  1. Big Brother
  2. Check It Out
  3. Degrassi Junior High
  4. Dragnet
  5. Dr. Phil
  6. Gun
  7. Highway To Heaven
  8. The Hitchhiker
  9. It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
  10. Jennifer Slept Here
  11. The Love Boat
  12. Monsters
  13. Nightmare Cafe
  14. T and T
  15. Toy Story of Terror
  16. The Vanishing Shadow
  17. Welcome Back Kotter
  18. Yes, Prime Minister

Books I Read:

  1. Best Friend (1992) by R.L. Stine
  2. Best Friend 2 (1997) by R.L. Stine
  3. The Dare (1994) by R.L. Stine
  4. Lights Out (1991) by R.L. Stine
  5. The Rich Girl (1997) by R.L. Stine
  6. The Stepsister (1990) by R.L. Stine
  7. The Stepsister 2 (1995) by R.L. Stine

Music To Which I Listened:

  1. Adi Ulmansky
  2. Annie Lennox
  3. Bauhaus
  4. Big Data
  5. Britney Spears
  6. The Chemical Brothers
  7. Creedence Clearwater Revival
  8. Dillon Francis
  9. Duran Duran
  10. Golbin
  11. John Carpenter
  12. Katy Perry
  13. Lynard Skynard
  14. Saint Motel
  15. Siouxsie and the Banshees
  16. Taylor Swift
  17. Warren Zevon

Live Tweets:

  1. Cannonball
  2. A Shock To The System
  3. Bubba Ho-Tep
  4. White Zombie
  5. Wolf Man

Horror on the Lens:

  1. The Blood Beast Terror
  2. Haunted House of Horror
  3. Tales From the Crypt
  4. Baffled!
  5. Messiah of Evil
  6. The Cloning of Clifford Swimmer
  7. At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul
  8. Silent Night, Bloody Night

Horror on TV:

  1. Geraldo Rivera Interviews Club Kids
  2. The Hitchhiker 6.1 “Fading Away”
  3. The Hitchhiker 6.2 “Tough Guys Don’t Whine”
  4. The Hitchhiker 6.3 “Riding the Nightmare”
  5. The Hitchhiker 6.6 “Toxic Search”
  6. The Hitchhiker 6.10 “Windows”
  7. The Hitchhiker 6.15 “Living a Lie”
  8. The Hitchhiker 6.16 “Made In Paris”
  9. Baywatch Nights 2.11 “Frozen Out Of Time”

News From Last Week:

  1. Actor Richard Roundtree Dies At 81
  2. Actor Matthew Perry Dies At 54
  3. Actor Richard Moll Dies At 80 

Links From Last Week:

  1. Tater’s Week in Review 10/28/23
  2. “Hitch Hiking” Is For “The Birds!” “Shocktober 2023” Has Alfred Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay Flying Horror!
  3. Vampyres, Witches, and Queen B’s Oh My::Kim Novak

Links From The Site:

  1. Leonard reviewed Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, and V/H/S/85!
  2. Erin wrote about the Halloween that nearly wasn’t!
  3. Erin counted down the days to Halloween: 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2!
  4. Erin shared The Five Covers of Amazing Detective Tales!
  5. Erin shared Ghost Stories, Burn Witch Burn, Terror Tales, Tales of the Zombie, Unhinged, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Cemetery!
  6. Erin shared: The Diamondbacks Tie Up The NLCS, The Rangers Are Going To The World Series, The Rangers Will be Playing The Diamondbacks In The World Series, The Rangers Win Game One of the World Series, and The Rangers Do Not Win Game Two of the World Series!
  7. Jeff reviewed Maniac Cop, Maniac Cop II, Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence, The Demolitionist, Evil Obsession, Bunni, and Big Freakin’ Snake!
  8. Jeff shared videos from Duran Duran, Kim Carnes, Dead Can Dance, Tool, Metallica, Iron Maiden, and The Fat Boys!
  9. I read and reviewed The Stepsister, Stepsister 2, Rich Girl, Best Friend, and Best Friend 2!
  10. I shared my October Oscar predictions!
  11. I shared my week in television and an AMV!  I also shared six horror-filled trailers from John Carpenter!
  12. I paid tribute to Herschell Gordon Lewis, Sam Raimi, Richard Roundtree, Jean Rollin, George Romero, Michele Soavi, Jacques Tourneur, and James Whale!
  13. I shared scene from Deep Red, Psycho, Masque of the Red Death, Halloween 4, Return of the Living Dead, The House on the Edge of the Park, and Carrie!
  14. I reviewed Degrassi Junior High, Miami Vice, Nightmare Café, Fantasy Island, Gun, The Love Boat, Monsters, Jennifer Slept Here, Highway to Heaven, T and T, Friday the 13th, Welcome Back Kotter, and Check It Out!
  15. I reviewed Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, Popcorn, Survival, The Monster of the Piedras Blancas, Silent Rage, Blood Harvest, The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, Party Monster, Blood Thirst, Sweet Sixteen, Patmos, The Giant Claw, Army of Darkness, Opera, Goodnight Sweet Wife, I Drink Your Blood, Sleepaway Camp, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, The Prodigal Planet, The Tingler, The Return of Swamp Thing, Two Evil Eyes, Trauma, The Return to Cabin By The Lake, The Perfect Husband, The Wave, Blood Sucking Freaks, Valentine, Jack The Ripper, The Black Phone, White  Zombie, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, The Neighbors Are Watching, The Mark, The Mark: Redemption, The Case Of The Hillside Stranglers, The Hillside Strangler, Black Wake, Old, The Raven, Judgment Day, Empire of the Ants, and Beginning of the End!

More From Us:

  1. At Days Without Incident, Leonard shared Team Assembly!
  2. At her photography site, Erin shared In A Very Odd House, Very Odd Things Will Happen, The Girl With No Shadow, Dracula’s Pub, Branches, Snowy Night, Snowy Night 2, and Snowy Night 3!

Want to see what did last week?  Click here!

Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.11 “Frozen Out Of Time” (dir by Rick Jacobson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, with Halloween only a few days away, The Shattered Lens is proud to present a bonus episode of televised horror!  In this beloved episode of Baywatch Nights, two 900 year-old Vikings are causing chaos in Los Angeles!  Who can stop them?

David Hasselhoff, of course!

This episode originally aired on February 9th, 1997!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 6.16 “Made in Paris” (dir by Rene Mazor)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a factory owner finds himself cursed after an undocumented worker dies in his factory.  This is a Hitchhiker morality play.  If you’re a businessperson who doesn’t take of your employees, the Hitchhiker is going to show up outside your factory and tell everyone what a terrible person you are.

The episode originally aired on January 25th, 1991.

October Hacks: Popcorn (dir by Mark Herrier and Alan Ormsby)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1991 film, Popcorn, tells the story of what happens when an experimental film goes wrong.

In the late 60s, a freaked-out hippie named Lanyard Gates directed a short film called Possessor.  Possessor featured footage of him apparently preparing to sacrifice a woman on an altar.  Gates declined to film a third act conclusion to the film.  Instead, he murdered his family on stage and in front of a terrified audience.  The resulting panic caused a fire to break out, killing almost everyone at the Dreamland Theater.  As a result, Possessor has become a legendary film, one that is believed lost.  Of course, it’s not lost, as a group of film students and their professor find out over the course of Popcorn.

Years later, one of those film students, an aspiring screenwriter named Maggie (Jill Schoelen), has been having disturbing nightmares about being caught in a fire and being pursued by a madman.  When she sees Possessor, she realizes that much of the imagery in her dreams comes from the film.  When Maggie attempts to talk to her mother about all of this, Suzanne (Dee Wallace) denies knowing anything about Possessor or Lanyard Gates but it’s not hard to tell that she’s lying.

Still, Maggie does have other things to worry about.  Her school’s film department has been hit by budget cuts and neither she nor her classmates will be able to make their student films unless they raise some money.  One of the students, Toby (Tom Villard), suggests holding a fundraiser at the Dreamland Theater, where they could show old movies and even recreate some of the old gimmicks that were used to promote those movies.  Professor Davis (Tony Roberts) thinks that is a great idea!  Why, he could even control the giant, remote-controlled bug that was used to promote Mosquito!

Filmed in Jamaica (and featuring a somewhat random performance by a reggae band), Popcorn was originally offered to director Bob Clark.  However, Clark didn’t want to return to the horror genre so, instead, it was Clark’s frequent collaborator, Alan Ormsby, who was hired to direct the film.  Reportedly, Ormsby was replaced a few weeks into filming by Mark Herrier, with the assumption being that the producers felt that Ormsby was spending too much time on filming the three fake movies that are screened during the fund raiser.  Those films are Mosquito, The Attack of the Electrified Man, and a dubbed Japanese film called The Stench.  In the film’s credits, Ormsby is credited with directing the three fake film while Mark Herrier is credited with directing the “modern” scenes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the three fake film are actually the best thing about Popcorn.  If Alan Ormsby was taking a lot of time to shoot the fake films, it obviously paid off because all three of them perfectly capture the feel of the era when they were supposedly shot and all of them are filled with the type of details that only a true fan of old horror movies would think to include.  Mosquito is a giant bug film that feels as if it could have come straight from 1957.  The Amazing Electrified Man feels like one of the films that poor Lon Chaney Jr. would have found himself starring in after leaving Universal.  And The Stench is the perfect import — slow-moving, a bit pompous, and terribly dubbed.

As for the rest of Popcorn, it’s a well-made slasher film.  Mark Herrier did a good job directing the “modern” scenes, with a scene in which the killer’s face seems to literally melt after he kisses one of his victims being a definite creepy highlight.  The kills are reasonably creative and, in one case involving electrocution, rather disturbing.  Jill Schoelen is a likable heroine, Derek Rydall is cute as her hapless boyfriend, and Tom Villard’s uninhibited performance gives the film a much-needed jolt of energy.  Though the old films may be the highlight of Popcorn, the “modern” scenes hold up as well.