As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasion ally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be Vampirella, from director Jim Wynorksi!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Vampirella on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!
The 1978 film, Killer’s Delight, opens with the usual beautiful shots of San Francisco in the 70s. It’s a lovely city, full of attractive people with their entire lives ahead of them. The camera lingers on the Golden Gate Bridge. If your movie doesn’t feature the Golden Gate Bridge, is it really set in San Francisco?
A van drives through the city and into the countryside. My first instinct was to think, “Oh, that’s definitely a rape van,” and yes, it is. (Seriously, don’t ever accept a ride from someone with a van. Actually, you shouldn’t be hitchhiking to begin with! Shame on you!) The owner of the van, Danny (John Karlen), pulls over to the side of the road and tosses a naked woman’s body over the side of a cliff.
AGCK!
Now, I have to admit that Killer’s Delight (which is known by about a dozen other titles, including The Dark Ride) is a film that I’ve tried to watch several times but I’ve always struggled to make it all the way through. That’s not because of the subject matter, though as a woman who once thought of herself as being invincible, I could certainly relate to many of the women who appeared in this film and made the fatal mistake of getting in that van. No, the reason why I’ve always struggled with Killer’s Delight is because it’s a slow movie. It’s not necessarily a bad film but it’s not one to watch if your eyelids are already starting to feel heavy.
This is an early serial killer film, made before it was decided that every killer should be portrayed as being an erudite and witty anti-hero. Instead, the film’s killer is a loser named Danny (John Karlen) who has never gotten over his childhood and who, when he’s not killing, is busy sobbing. It’s certainly a more realistic portrayal of a serial killer than anything that one might find in any of the films or books about Hannibal Lecter. Danny has two skills. He’s good at disguising himself and he’s fairly good at getting rid of bodies whenever there’s no one else around to see him. Otherwise, he’s a total loser. This realistic portrayal actually makes Danny into a very scary character. You’re never going to meet Hannibal Lecter in real life. That’s one reason why it’s so easy for some people to accept his crimes. However, there are hundreds of people just like Danny out there. There’s probably at least a few in your city right now.
The majority of the film is taken up with Sgt. Vince De Carlo (James Luisi) and his attempts to prove that Danny is the killer. Vince is married and very protective of his daughters. He’s also having an affair with a psychiatrist (Susan Sullivan) who runs the potential of becoming one of Danny’s victims. Vince becomes obsessed with Danny but, much like Charles Bronson in Ten To Midnight, he knows that the justice system does not know what to do with a monster like Danny.
As I said, it’s a slow film but it is well-acted and, if you stick with it, it does cast an ever-growing atmosphere of doom. It’s the type of film that will make you double-check the locks before you go to bed.
As for why this is a true crime film, it’s loosely based on the crimes of Edmund Kemper and Ted Bundy. At the time the film was made, Bundy was still at large. Killer’s Delight was the first film to be based on Bundy’s crimes, though Danny ultimately has more in common with Kemper than with Bundy.
At the start of 1994’s Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla, our favorite big green radioactive monster isn’t asking for much. Mostly, he just wants to live on his island and be left alone. He’s busy raising Baby Godzilla and he’s minding his own business. That’s one thing that people tend to forget when it comes to Godzilla. With the exception of the very early films, Godzilla is usually just minding his own business until he’s forced to go on a rampage by either aliens or humans. In this film, Godzilla has to deal with both.
There’s a SpaceGodzilla heading towards the Earth. Apparently, Godzilla cells were released into space during the epic battles that were featured in both Godzilla vs. Biollante and Godzilla vs Mothra. Those cells were exposed to the radiation of a black hole and the end result was SpaceGodzilla. SpaceGodzilla is coming to Earth to not only dethrone Godzilla as King of the Monsters but also to transform Earth’s core into a power source that it can use to do whatever it is that SpaceGodzillas do in their spare time.
After being warned by those two annoying little faeries that follow Mothra around everywhere, psychic Miki Saegusa (Megumi Okada) and some members of G-Force head to the island that Godzilla calls home. Unfortunately, the Yakuza follows them because the want to capture Miki so that they can use her psychic powers to control Godzilla and use him to …. well, I don’t know. I mean, yes, Godzilla is an awesome weapon but he’s really big and there’s always a lot of collateral damage whenever he gets into a fight and it seems like using him to commit any sort of Yakuza-style crimes would be a bit counter-productive. I mean, you can’t really extort businesses if they all get destroyed by Godzilla, can you? Plus, I just don’t see Godzilla agreeing to chop off the tip of his finger or get all of those Yakuza tattoos.
But listen, I’m thinking too hard about the plot here. Yes, there’s some stuff that goes on with the humans but that’s all forgotten as soon as SpaceGodzilla lands and abducts Baby Godzilla. Grown-up Godzilla is out for vengeance and it leads to some very dramatic fights. This film gives us a chance to see Godzilla fight, more or less, himself and it’s an entertaining sight. This is a bit of a campy film, even by Godzilla standards. It even ends with a warning that SpaceGodzilla might return if human don’t stop polluting space. (Uhmm …. talk to Mothra, she’s the one who sent all those cells up there.) But the important thing is that the battles are fun to watch and Baby Godzilla is adorable.
Who needs the Son of Godzilla when you’ve got this?
Opening with a montage of scenes from Night of the Living Dead mixed in with actual footage of civil unrest from the 60s, Festival of the Living Dead imagines a world where a zombie outbreak actually did occur in 1968.
Humanity survived. All of the zombies were apparently put down by human hunters and the plague of the living dead was ended. In order to commemorate the night of the living dead, a Festival of the Living Dead is held every year at the sight of the zombie outbreak. Over the past 55 years, the Festival has become a high-priced event that can only be attended by people who are willing to spend a lot of money for the honor to stay in tents, listen to live music, and set fire to a giant wicker woman. Essentially, the Festival of the Living Dead is Burning Man but instead of basing the festival of new age nonsense, the Festival is based on a zombie outbreak.
Unfortunately, those who attend the Festival have lost sight of what the party is supposed to be about. Now, instead of celebrating the survival of humanity and paying honor to those who lost their lives (sometimes more than once in one night!), the people attending the Festival are just influencers who are hoping to go viral. Early on in the film, Iris (Carmen Bicondova) point out how weird and tacky it is to have a festival celebrating an event where so many people died.
This year, the folks at the Festival of the Living Dead are going to be reminded about what the entire festival is supposed to be about! When one vlogger films himself snorting what he claims to be a crushed meteorite, everyone assumes that he’s just another person looking for online fame. But soon, he’s foaming at the mouth, throwing up, and then savagely attacking the festival staff. Of course, those who have seen the original Night of the Living Dead will remember the much-ridiculed scene in which a news reporter is heard to speculate that the dead are coming back to life due to space dust that was brought back to Earth by NASA. It turns out that reporter knew what he was talking about. It’s not just a case of Hell no longer having room for the dead. It’s the meteorites!
Ash (Ashley Moore) and her friends try to survive the Festival of the Living Dead, which turns out to not be an easy task. Not only are zombies famous for being relentless in their pursuit of the living but the living are famous for reacting to living dead outbreaks in the dumbest ways possible. Ash has one cool friend, that would be Iris. Unfortunately, the rest of her friends are nowhere near as smart. Fortunately, Ash has zombie hunting in her blood. Though the film doesn’t specifically state it, it’s suggested that her grandfather was Ben, the hero of Night of the Living Dead.
Festival of the Living Dead is a loving homage to Night of the Living Dead and its sequels. It’s undeniably derivative but it’s also made with so much love for the genre that it doesn’t matter that you’ll be able to guess who is going to live and who is going to die from the minute they first appear onscreen. Ashley Moore, Carmen Bicondova, and Christian Rose (as the film’s bravest character) all give strong performances and the film’s central joke — which is that everyone at the Festival is either too stoned or too stupid to initially notice the zombie outbreak — is one that works because it’s rooted in fact. Do you seriously think anyone at Burning Man would notice the living dead?
I have to admit that I’ve never been a huge fan of anthology films. Anthology films are almost always a bit uneven. Some filmmakers are better suited to making short films than others and, as anyone who has ever sat through one can tell you, sitting through a boring short film is actually worse than having to watch a boring long film. Too often, anthology films are just a collection of boring short films. If you get lucky, there might be a good segment hidden amongst all of the bad segments. But even so, that often means sitting through 30 minutes of bad filmmaking for 15 minutes of something that’s moderately entertaining.
1962’s Tales of Terror is an anthology horror film. Directed by Roger Corman, the film is a part of his Poe cycle and features adaptations of three Poe short stories, Morella, The Black Cat, and The Facts In The Case of M. Valedemar. While it definitely suffers from the flaws that afflict many anthology films, Tales of Terror is saved a bit by the presence of Vincent Price. Price not only appears in all three of the films but he also provides the narration that links each film. As I mentioned when I reviewed The Premature Burial, one cannot underestimate the importance of Vincent Price and his unique style of acting when it comes to discussing Corman’s Poe adaptations. With his dramatic flourishes and his theatrical style of speaking, Price was the perfect star for these films. As an actor, he perfectly complimented Corman’s flamboyant and colorful direction. It also helps that Price himself seems to be truly enjoying himself in all of these films. His eccentricity brings the film’s to life.
As for the separate stories that make up Tales of Terror, things get off to a rather macabre start with Morella. Leonora (Maggie Pierce) returns home to visit her father (Vincent Price), who is now a drunken wreck who continues to blame Leonora for the death of her mother, Morella (Leona Gage). Morella died while giving birth to Leonora. Leonora is shocked to discover that her father is keeping her mother’s decomposing body in the mansion. Leonora, who is suffering from a terminal illness, tries to take care of her father. However, Morella’s spirit remains in the house, leading this story to a rather depressing and unsettling ending. This story was effectively done, playing out like a particularly morbid companion to The Fall Of The House of Usher.
The Black Cat is presented as a comedy, starring Peter Lorre as a man who becomes convinced that his wife is cheating on him with a snobby wine taster who is, of course, played by Vincent Price. This overlong segment did not work for me and I have to admit that a lot of that is because I love cats, black cats in particular. Beyond that, the humor is a bit too broad. Corman could do comedy, as he showed with Little Shop of Horrors, but he seems to be trying a bit too hard here.
Finally, the third segment is The Facts In The Case of M. Valdemar, in which Vincent Price plays the title character. The dying Valdemar employs a hypnotist (Basi Rathbone) to put him in a trance to help relieve his suffering. However, the hypnotist hopes to marry Valdemar’s wife (Debra Paget) and, after putting Valdemar into a trance, he leaves the dying man there. Valdemar, whose body starts to decay, cannot die. But, once he becomes angry enough, he can still rise from his bed to seek revenge even as his body putrefies. This segment was the best of the three, featuring Price’s best work in the film and also a wonderfully villainous turn from Basil Rathbone. The makeup effects that were used to capture Valdemar’s decay remain effectively frightening today.
Tales of Terror is two good stories and one mediocre one, which is better than the usual anthology film. Still, not surprisingly, the main reason watch is for the wonderful Vincent Price.
For today’s horror on the Lens we have a made-for-TV movie that was produced and directed by Dan Curtis.
Trilogy of Terror, which aired in 1975, is an anthology film, featuring three segments that were each based on a short story from Richard Matheson. What makes this particular film special is that each segment features Karen Black playing a radically different character from the previous segment. The film really is a showcase for this underrated actress, though Black herself later said that the film ruined her career because it typecast her as a horror actress.
The third segment is the one that gets all the attention. That’s the one with the killer doll. I like all of the segments, though. The first one is often considered to be the weakest but anyone who has ever been through a similar situation will appreciate it as tale of revenge. The second segment has a playful vibe that I liked. And yes, the third segment is genuinely frightening.
Today’s song of the day is Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Barry Adamson.
This instrumental work appeared on the soundtrack for David Lynch’s 1997 film, Lost Highway, and its one of my favorite pieces of music. It’s amongst the songs that I tend to play whenever I’m dealing with writer’s block or if I just need an extra boost of energy to finish up a project. This song also seems like the perfect way to kick off the second half of October and our annual horrorthon!
I also have to say that the video below, which was put together by Jessie Essex, is amazingly cool.
This video definitely has a decadent Halloween sort of feel to it. One gets the feeling that it’s actually about an ancient pagan priestess come back to life, to the appreciation of her adoring fans.
Through the Shattered Lens 