Horror On TV: Fear Itself 1.1 “The Sacrifice” (dir by Breck Eisner)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Produced by Mick Garris, Fear Itself was an attempt to bring the Masters of Horror format to network television. Each week, a different director would present a tale of terror. The series aired on NBC. 13 episodes were filmed but only five were broadcast before the show was put on hiatus for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The Olympics eventually ended but Fear Itself never returned.

The first episode of Fear Itself featured Jesse Plemons as one of four criminals who finds themselves holed in an isolated fort with three mysterious women. The women are not what they seem and the criminals soon find themselves fighting for their lives.

The Sacrifice first aired on June 5th, 2008. It was directed by Breck Eisner, who went on to direct the 2010 remake of The Crazies.

October Hacks: Slashlorette Party (dir by Paula Ragsdale and Angelica de Alba)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 2020, Slashlorette Party is a decent indie slasher. It isn’t totally successful, but it deserves credit for respecting the rules of the genre while using those rules to explore something more than the usual hacking and slashing. This is a film that never apologizes for being a slasher, and I appreciated that. I’m tired of horror movies made by people who think they’re better than the genre. At the same time, this is a film that not only has blood on the floor but thoughts in its head. There’s something to be said for that.

Molly Souza plays Brie, who is engaged to Dolph (Andrew Brown). The wedding is just around the corner, but there’s one big problem: Brie has just realized that she doesn’t really like Dolph that much. In fact, Dolph is such a jerk that he almost feels like a parody of the bad boyfriend who always shows up in romantic comedies so the sweet, sensitive guy will look even better as he encourages the female lead to dump him. (Strangely, no one ever asks, “What did you ever see in someone like that to begin with?”) Brie’s therapist (Ginger Lynn Allen) thinks Brie should consider ending the engagement. Meanwhile, Brie’s friends Alexa (Brooke Morris) and Nia (Nina Lanee Kent) want her to stay engaged at least long enough for them to throw her a bachelorette party at a remote cabin in the woods. You know who else loves parties in remote cabins in the woods? Homicidal maniacs!

Slashlorette Party is about more than just people being murdered in the woods. Absolutely no one in the film seems to believe that Brie should marry Dolph. Dolph is such a jerk that even when Brie disappears in the woods, he responds by sitting around and drinking a beer. Brie can barely stand Dolph, but she feels that she’s obligated to marry him because he asked and that otherwise she’ll run the risk of being forever single. Meanwhile, Dolph and his friends spend their time talking about how easy they believe women have it compared to men. In their worldview, all women are teases and all men are victims. (Ironically, the dumbest and most outspoken of the men actually does end up getting teased by one of the women shortly before getting his hand cut off by someone who is even more misogynistic than he is. His prediction of being both teased and victimized comes true, even if he’s too stupid to appreciate it.) When the deaths occur, they feel like a commentary on incel self-pity. Brie and her friends are targeted because of the male gaze. The men fall victim because they’re too hopelessly whiny and beta to defend themselves.

Slashlorette Party is a low-budget indie horror film. At first I didn’t have much hope for it. It seemed like just another movie that would feature a lot of bad acting and maybe some semi-decent gore. For the first half, the pace does feel off, and I spent a lot of time wondering if anyone was actually going to die. In the second half, though, things pick up. There are a few memorably bloody deaths. There are a few interesting twists. It becomes obvious that the film is meant to be more than a typical wilderness slasher. There’s some bite to the dialogue. There’s a funny joke about a male stripper who shows up as a policeman and finds himself stumbling onto a real crime scene. When the film started, I thought Dolph was too much of a lout to be believed, but the movie has a few surprises up its sleeve when it comes to his character. It ends with a final twist you will either love or hate. I always appreciate a film that’s willing to risk being hated.

I’ve been to enough bachelorette parties that I could relate. It isn’t really a bachelorette party until at least one person has said something they shouldn’t have and the bride-to-be is locked in the bathroom having a panic attack. If nothing else, this film captures the feeling of a bunch of people realizing their friend is about to make the biggest mistake of her life and deciding to throw a party to celebrate.

SOV Horror: Psycho Scarecrow (dir by Steve Galler)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In an alley in the middle of a big city, a junkie puts a human-sized mirror on the ground so that he can snort one tiny line of cocaine. Suddenly a disturbing image is reflected in the glass: a young woman (Tracy Rankin) plunges to the ground and crashes straight into the mirror. The mirror is shattered. So is the woman. The cocaine? Presumably it’s scattered to the wind. There’s probably a lesson for us all there.

So starts Psycho Scarecrow, a surprisingly enjoyable shot-on-video horror film from 1996.

The woman is named Sheila Murphy. When two detectives (Tim Vince and Joe Parro) arrive at Sheila’s apartment, they debate whether she committed suicide or was thrown to her death. The veteran detective thinks it is a clear case of suicide. It’s late, and he just wants to wrap up the investigation and go home. The younger detective, however, insists that they listen to the message Sheila tape-recorded before her death.

The rest of the film switches back and forth between the past and the present. Sheila’s final message tells the story of how she and her friends decided to go camping for the weekend and, after their car broke down, ended up spending the night in a cornfield. When one of the friends was accidentally killed, they decided to cover up the death by dressing him up as a scarecrow and leaving him in the field. Unfortunately, the field was cursed. Soon Sheila and her friends found themselves being stalked by a heavy-set scarecrow that had a pumpkin for a face. He also rides a motorcycle.

Psycho Scarecrow took me by surprise. This is a low-budget, shot-on-video horror film that actually features clever dialogue, a lot of atmosphere, and a villain who should be silly but is actually pretty creepy. Psycho Scarecrow pokes fun at the conventions of the horror genre while also showing that it understands how to use those conventions to tell an effectively spooky story. It plays out like a story you might hear while sitting around a campfire, or maybe in your living room when a storm is raging outside and the electricity is out. (Sheila’s taped narration definitely helps as far as that’s concerned.) It’s a story that will occasionally make you roll your eyes or even laugh, but it’s still told effectively enough that you’ll look over your shoulder before walking off on your own.

What makes this film so effective is that the filmmakers obviously understood the limitations of the shot-on-video (SOV) genre and, instead of being imprisoned by those limitations, used them to their advantage. The majority of the film is shot at night. Actually shooting at night is a dangerous thing. I’ve seen so many SOV films where the night scenes were so dark that you couldn’t even see what was happening on screen. (There’s a reason Hollywood developed the day-for-night shot.) In Psycho Scarecrow, the night scenes are dark but still lit enough that you can actually see who is in the scene. The background darkness becomes a character of its own. Characters emerge from and disappear into the darkness, and we’re always aware that there could be anything hiding in the shadows.

I assume the cast was made up of amateur and local actors, but everyone does a good job of bringing their characters to life. Even the scenes with the two detectives don’t slow down the action, and it’s hard not to smile at how the veteran detective refuses to accept that Sheila was murdered despite all of the evidence his partner easily uncovers.

Ultimately, what makes the film work is its rural atmosphere, which is both intriguing and ominous at the same time. Watching the film, I was reminded of the times I’ve spent in the country. I remembered walking through fields of high grass in shorts and a T-shirt and freezing in place because I heard what sounded like a snake slithering nearby. I remembered stopping to use my inhaler and trying not to think about how easy it would be for someone or something to hide behind the round bales of hay that decorated the landscape. I remembered the feeling that anything could be out there. It was scary and exciting at the same time.

Psycho Scarecrow is an enjoyably creepy SOV production. It’s the type of film that deserves to be rediscovered this Halloween.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Amityville A.I. (dir by Matt Jaissle)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s give some credit to the Amityville franchise. It simply does not stop.

In November 1974, 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr., a heroin user, murdered his entire family in their home at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York. After realizing no one was going to buy his original claim that the Mafia killed everyone but left him alive, he eventually said a demon had possessed him. Some people believed that story because some people will believe anything that involves demonic possession.

A family called the Lutzes moved into the Amityville murder house, lasted a few weeks, then fled and claimed they’d been haunted by the same demons that drove DeFeo to kill. It was a stupid story, but it fed the 1970s obsession with the apocalypse and demonic possession. That was the decade of The Exorcist and The Omen. A “non-fiction” novel was published and became a bestseller. In 1979 a movie was made and became a hit. In the years since, there have been dozens upon dozens of films with “Amityville” in the title. Some are actual Amityville films. Most are generic low-budget horror that just borrowed the name. What they all have in common is the claim that DeFeo was possessed by Satan and that the Lutzes weren’t lying about the house being haunted. If there really is an Amityville Demon, it’s probably furious by now. These films do not make it look good.

In 2024’s Amityville A.I., Stuart Birdsall (William Childress) is the latest person to move into a house in the Amityville area. (It doesn’t appear to be the original house, though a few shots suggest they share the same attic windows.) Stuart is developing an A.I. and he’s convinced he’ll get the work done in the new place. Unfortunately the house is possessed, and soon so is his program. Even worse, the demon starts possessing the other electronic devices in the neighborhood. Stuart’s neighbor owns a sex doll that is soon running around saying, “Do you want to have sex?” while flashing a knife.

Amityville A.I. mixes demonic possession with the current moral panic around artificial intelligence and data centers. To be honest, Stuart’s A.I. doesn’t seem particularly practical. Its name is VIC 3000 and it is clearly riffing on HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Setting Vic up means lugging around a lot of bulky equipment. There are several scenes of Stuart staring at diagrams on his laptop, and it’s never quite clear what any of it has to do with VIC or why anyone would pick VIC over the other A.I. options out there. Perhaps that’s why the demon starts messing with him. Hubris, not artificial intelligence, will be the downfall of .… well, it feels a bit too dramatic to say humanity. How about Amityville? Hubris will be the downfall of Amityville.

That said, I actually enjoyed Amityville A.I. It’s a low-budget movie that looks like a low-budget movie, but it commits to the bit. The sight of Stuart being chased by a psychotic, smiling sex doll belongs in the Amityville Hall of Fame. Whether it’s the demon, the A.I., or just his own twisted mind, Stuart is put through the wringer, and the film does tap the fear a lot of people have right now: that A.I. is both convenient and destined to destroy us.

If the first Amityville film’s message was that you should just leave the house, this one suggests you should consider disconnecting. Good luck with that.

Previous TSL Amityville Reviews:

Great Moments In Television History #43: The Premiere of Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

71 years ago today, Alfred Hitchcock Presents premiered on CBS. Produced and hosted by Alfred Hitchcock, this series featured stories of suspense and real-life horror and set the standard for the anthology shows that followed.

Revenge, the first episode, was directed by Hitchcock himself. Elsa Spann (Vera Miles) is a housewife who is recovering from a mental breakdown. When a man breaks into her home and assaults her, the police struggle to come up with any leads. Elsa’s husband, Carl (Ralph Meeker), takes Elsa on a vacation to try to help her heal. While they’re driving through town, Elsa spots a man in a gray suit and says that he is the man who attacked her. Carl stalks the man and then murders him, beating him to death in a motel room. Later, while driving through another town, Elsa spots another man and says that he was the one who attacked her. Carl realizes that he may have murdered an innocent man. He turns himself in to the police and goes to jail while Elsa is sent to a mental asylum.

When I was a kid, one of the local stations used to air a nightly block of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. I think I was ten or eleven when I first saw Revenge and it made such an impression on me that I still haven’t forgotten it. The scariest thing about this episode? The man who attacked Elsa and started all of this was probably still out there, walking free.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran for ten seasons. It all started 71 years ago, on a night in October.

Previous Moments In Television History:

Steel (1997, directed by Kenneth Johnson)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

John Henry Irons (Shaquille O’Neal) is one of the Army’s top weapons designers but, after a malfunction at a demonstration leads to the death of a senator and the crippling of Irons’s closest friend, Sparky (Annabeth Gish), Irons resigns and goes to work at a steel mill. Irons wants nothing more to do with violence and destruction, but then he discovers that a former colleague, Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson), has set himself up as an arms dealer and is selling Irons’s weapons to the local street gangs. With the help of Sparky and his Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree), Irons descends into the local junkyard and returns with a clanky suit of armor and an electromagnetic hammer.

“Hammer time!” Irons announces.

“I love the shaft!” Uncle Joe says.

Now known as Steel, Irons sets out to save Los Angeles from Judd Nelson.

Steel is a good example of what comic-book movies used to be like. In DC Comics, John Henry Irons was a steelworker who became a hero when it appeared that Superman had been killed by Doomsday. He wore a cape in honor of Superman and fought to keep Superman’s ideals alive. In the movie version, Steel is a former weapons designer who doesn’t wear a cape and looks really silly in his clunky suit of armor. The special effects are noticeably cheap and the villain’s plan is simplistic. Burke wants to sell weapons and, coincidentally, he does it in the same neighborhood his former coworker moved to. Watching the movie, I had to keep reminding myself that this was actually released in theaters. (I saw it in a theater!) The whole thing has a made-for-TV feel.

Of the cast, Richard Roundtree gives the best performance and appears to be having a good time as Uncle Joe. Judd Nelson is hammy as the villain, but that’s the way the role was written, and at least Nelson didn’t try to pretend Steel was something it wasn’t. Shaquille seems to be trying really hard as Irons. Shaq has never been a great actor, but he’s got enough natural likability to carry him through. Unfortunately, he looks ridiculous in the armor. In a comic book, donning a costume is what transforms an average person into a superhero. But Shaq is already 7’1″, so the costume doesn’t even feel necessary. Just give him the hammer and let him call himself Thor.

Released at the same time as Batman & Robin, Steel was a box-office bomb and contributed to the general feeling that, unless a film featured Batman or Superman, the public didn’t care about comic-book movies. Three years after Steel came and went, the first X-Men film would prove the doubters wrong.

Legion (1998, directed by John Hess)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 2036 and the world is at war. Col. Flemming (Troy Donahue) assigns his protégé, Major Agatha Doyle (Terry Farrell), to infiltrate a facility with a group of specially selected soldiers. All of the soldiers were previously on death row and will be given a full pardon if they complete their mission. Siegal (Corey Feldman) is the neurotic hacker who was convicted of desertion. Cutter (Trevor Goddard) is a straight-up psycho. Ryan (Rick Springfield) wishes he had Jessie’s Girl… no wait, he’s a demolitions expert. Sorry, my mistake. Dr. Jones (Audie England) is a doctor who is also a religious fanatic. Koosman (Richmond Arquette) is probably on death row for having an embarrassing name. Captain Aldrich (Parker Stevenson) is the most competent officer on death row and also the only one of the soldiers who isn’t a complete lunatic. Poe (Elston Ridgle) is the soldier who initially gets blamed when members of the team start dying inside the facility. It’s actually not Poe’s fault. There’s something in the facility and it’s not human.

Though the movie starts out as a rip-off of Aliens, with its collection of cocky soldiers coming up against an enemy that’s greater than all of them, it soon settles into being an Alien rip-off, with plenty of scenes of people being stalked while walking down dark, pipe-lined hallways. Not surprisingly, it fails to capture both the kinetic energy of Aliens and the heart-pounding suspense of Alien. The entire film feels very familiar, and the decision not to show the monster until the final few minutes feels cheap.

The cast is probably the most interesting thing about the movie, with Audie England, Rick Springfield, and Trevor Goddard actually committing to their roles. Parker Stevenson looks embarrassed, and Terry Farrell is one of the least convincing military officers that I’ve ever seen. (Her dialogue largely consists of shouting “MOVE!” whenever one of the convicts tries to get out of being sent to their death.) Corey Feldman overacts as Siegal, making him so nervous that you wonder why he was selected for the mission.

Legion steals the plots of Alien and Aliens but not the quality.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.13 “To Tell The Truth”

Posted on October 2, 2026 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 Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Daily Motion.

Has John Doe finally discovered his real identity?

Episode 4.13 “To Tell The Truth”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on January 15th, 1986)

Last week’s episode ended with an abortion protester hiding a bomb in a custodial cart. The majority of this episode features various characters pushing that cart around the hospital, leaving us to wonder if and when the bomb is going to go off. At one point, even Dr. Craig gives the cart a frustrated shove. When the bomb finally does go off, it’s sitting outside the hospital gift shop. The hospital survives. An orderly is seriously injured. And Morrison gets to yell at the bomber (Rob Garrison).

Fiscus isn’t in the hospital when the bomb goes off. Instead, he’s out doing his Westphall-mandated community service. Fiscus is sent out on house calls, visiting elderly patients in their homes and doing follow-up exams. Fiscus hates it, and it’s easy to see why. For the most part, the old people are stereotypes. This episode is a rare case of St. Elsewhere trying too hard to be sentimental.

(And yes, when Fiscus complains, you can be sure that Westphall is ready with a long monologue about the time he spent in Ethiopia.)

The Valeres (George DelHoyo and Deborah May) are both getting frustrated with their inability to conceive. With Dr. Turner currently visiting her hometown in Mississippi, Ehrlich and Chandler have taken over the case. Ehrlich recommends that the Valeres consider adoption. Chandler, however, tells them that they should continue with IVF.

After a long day in court, Lucy slaps Helen, declares them to be even, and then drops her lawsuit.

Finally, Ramsey Headley (Ellis Rabb) and Lucinda Ferrare-Headley (Carrie Nye) show up at the hospital and claim that John Doe No. 6 is their long-lost brother and the heir to their family’s fortune. John Doe No. 6, who had been experimenting with being Shakespeare, says that he knows them and that he now realizes that he is Thomas Headley of New Orleans. Auschlander is happy that John has found his identity, but he’s still sad to see him go. (Auschlander does not seem to notice that the Headleys all speak like characters in a bad Tennessee Williams play.) After John leaves, the hospital gets a call from a “New Orleans sanitarium,” informing them that two of their patients have escaped and are heading to Boston. Yikes! If John returns next week, this will be a funny little incident. If he doesn’t, I’m never going to forgive Auschlander for letting him leave with two obvious charlatans.

This week’s episode was .… well, it was okay. It had its good moments, like the suspense with the custodial cart and the John Doe storyline. But it also got a bit too sentimental with the old people, and I’m at the point where I’m going to scream if I have to listen to another Westphall lecture about life in Ethiopia.

Let’s just be happy that the show didn’t kill Santa Claus again.

Horror Villain of the Day: Pinhead (Hellraiser)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Arleigh

“Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others.” — Pinhead

Doug Bradley’s Pinhead remains one of horror cinema’s most enduring villains because he does not behave like a conventional monster. He is not a snarling animal, a mute slasher, or a madman driven by simple revenge. Instead, Pinhead arrives with the bearing of an officiant: calm, articulate, composed, and utterly certain of his authority. His voice is measured, his movements deliberate, and even his cruelty is administered with the ceremonial gravity of a sacred rite. That contrast is the essence of the character. Pinhead is demonic, certainly, but he is also refined—a figure who makes damnation sound almost like an invitation to an exclusive, terrible experience.

Bradley’s performance gives Pinhead a distinctly British quality of restraint and formality. His diction is elegant, his tone often dry or even faintly courteous, and he approaches his victims with the manners of a gentleman receiving guests. Yet this refinement does not soften him; it makes him more disturbing. Pinhead’s civility is separated from human empathy. When he speaks of pain and pleasure, he does not sound lustful in an ordinary sense, nor does he appear personally enraged. He speaks as someone explaining the rules of a world beyond ordinary morality, where sensation has become the only remaining truth. The politeness becomes a mask not for kindness, but for a cold and absolute spiritual corruption.

In that sense, Pinhead almost feels like an amalgamation of British refinement transformed into an avatar of excess—of emotion, sensation, obsession, and infernal desire. His leather-and-flesh regalia evokes bondage, ritual, military uniform, and religious vestment all at once, while the geometric precision of the pins in his head makes him look less like a chaotic demon than a meticulously designed icon. He represents a kind of order within depravity. The Cenobites are not merely monsters who enjoy hurting people; they are explorers of sensation who have traveled so far beyond human limits that pleasure and agony have become inseparable. Pinhead embodies their philosophy with an eerie dignity: damnation is not random violence, but transcendence through unbearable experience.

That philosophical quality separates Pinhead from many horror antagonists. He is frightening not simply because he can kill, but because he challenges the victim’s understanding of desire and consequence. The puzzle box does not just summon a predator; it opens a door for those willing—or foolish enough—to seek forbidden experience. Pinhead’s most memorable lines carry this sense of judicial finality. He is not usually chasing people through hallways; he is passing sentence on those who have crossed a threshold they cannot fully comprehend. Even when later entries in the series pushed him closer to a more familiar slasher role, Bradley’s portrayal retained the character’s most compelling feature: the feeling that Pinhead is not merely evil, but the representative of an alien moral order.

This is why Pinhead became such an iconic horror villain. Doug Bradley turned a visually extreme creature into a character of intelligence, poise, and dreadful charisma. The design is unforgettable, but the performance is what gives it permanence: the soft, resonant voice; the ritualistic stillness; the sense that every word has been chosen with precision. Pinhead is terrifying because he makes hell seem cultured, disciplined, and seductive. He offers not mindless destruction, but an abyss dressed in ceremony—an infernal gentleman who promises wonders, suffering, and revelation in the same breath.

Villain of the Day

Brad reviews WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU (1980), directed by Tsui Hark!

Posted on October 2, 2026 by Bradley Crain

WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU (1980) is the story of Agent 999 (Norman Chu), an agent of the Central Surveillance Agency, who comes to a remote island to catch the notorious criminal, Rolex (Melvin Wong). Once he gets there, he discovers that the island is overrun by crazed cannibals and is ruled over with an iron fist by a power mad Chief (Eddy Ko). Chief hoards the human meat of unsuspecting travelers who happen upon the island for himself and his soldiers, leaving the villagers to starve. As Agent 999 continues his investigation and tries to avoid becoming lunch, he finds out that the repentant criminal Rolex has become the Chief’s aid in order to expose the evils of the island to the authorities on the mainland without having to go back to jail himself. When Rolex’s plans don’t work out, Agent 999 must then team up with a goofy thief (Hon Kwok-Choi) to fight off the cannibals, save his newfound love (Michelle Kim), and get the hell off of the island in one piece!

The second film to be directed by Hong Kong icon Tsui Hark, WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU is a wild hybrid film that leans heavily into horror, comedy and martial arts. It’s an odd mix that contains jarring shifts in tone, a staple of Hong Kong Cinema of the 80’s. One minute we’re watching men have their arms cut off and their guts ripped out, only to immediately shift to slapstick rape humor, before shifting to badass martial arts / roller skating kung fu action choreographed by a young Corey Yuen. Completely unpolished in terms of production values, it’s acquired somewhat of a cult classic status due to its raw energy, gory subject matter, directorial pedigree, and anti-communist political themes. I thought Norman Chu was good as Agent 999, even if his charismatic agent isn’t always as observant as we’d hope he’d be. Eddy Ko, who is in one of my favorite Hong Kong films, THE MISSION (1999), can be both menacing and goofy as the Chief who will pretty much do anything to preserve his power and supply of meat. The island village puts off its own scary vibes with its creepy slaughterhouse and masked cannibals, always at the ready to hack off a body part. It adds up to a rather unique viewing experience.

While WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU is certainly not for everyone due to its subject matter, those who appreciate the frenetic action of Hong Kong cinema will enjoy this film. It will also fit the bill for those who like kung fu action mashups served with sides of gory gore and silly giggles. Just don’t expect it to have the polished look of Hark’s later films such as PEKING OPERA BLUES (1986) and ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA (1991).