Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: Photograph by Def Leppard (1983, directed by David Mallett)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This video was controversial when it was first released with some people wondering if the video would promote violence with its story of a Marilyn Monroe look-alike being photographed while a killer tossed around a knife and newspaper headlines announced that a movie star had been murdered.  Controversy sells and the video was put in heavy rotation on MTV, helping Photograph to reach number one on the charts and to stay there for several weeks.

Director David Mallet is one of those directors who has done videos for just about everyone, from AC/DC to Olivia Newton-John to Peter Gabriel.

Enjoy!

Donner Pass (2011, directed by Elise Robertson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A bunch of teenagers hang out in a house during one snowy weekend.  It’s just too bad that the house is located near Donner Pass, the infamous Colorado location where George Donner ate several people while trapped by a blizzard.  Legend has it that Old Man Donner is still out there, his spirit tracking down others dumb enough to get lost in the snow and eating them.  And even if Old Man Donner doesn’t get them, what about the escaped criminal who is currently missing somewhere in the Colorado wilderness?

As far as the types of film are concerned, Donner Pass is okay.  There is one creative kill, the film does feature an unexpected twist or two, and probably enough gore to keep the gorehounds happy.  For those of us looking for something more than just gore, Donner Pass suffers from a lack of sympathetic characters.  Other than Kaylee (played by Desiree Hall), all of the characters are either wimpy or just alcoholic jerks.  There are some atmospheric night shots of the blizzard and the house is a great location but, since you don’t care about any of the characters it’s hard to get invested in the film.  The Donner Party is one of those true stories that is so creepy that its true horror defies even the bloodiest of films.

Music Video of the Day: Shadows Follow by Metallica (2023, directed by Tristan Zammit)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In today’s music video of the day, Metallica proves themselves to be the band that is so powerful that they can bring out a solar eclipse, just by rocking out.

Animator Tristan Zammit is also credited with doing videos for Tory Lanez and XXXTentacion.

Enjoy!

Enchantress (2022, directed by Ladon Whitmire)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Henry (Daniel Charles DesVerges) has been depressed ever since he was in a car accident that left one woman dead.  His three friends — Phil (Akam Khiziryan), Elizabeth (Kerri Smith), and Amanda (Baylee Vidal) — try to lift his spirits by taking him on vacation to a cottage in a small town.  It doesn’t work because Henry keeps having violent dreams and visions of a ghostly woman walking around the cottage.  While his friends try to help Henry come to peace with the past, Henry fears that the spirit of the woman who died the night of the accident will never stop stalking him.

The main problem with Enchantress is that Henry is such an annoying sad sack of a character that it doesn’t take long to get bored with watching him feeling bad for himself.  The movie doesn’t add up too much but it does leave you appreciating the patience of Henry’s friends, who deserve a gold medal for putting up with him.

The actors are okay and usually, they manage to make their dialogue sound naturalistic.  Movies like this always feature at least one D-List celebrity cameo and for this one, it’s Daniel Baldwin, who plays Henry’s father in a scene that lasts a minute.  Daniel is the forgotten Baldwin brother, though I will always remember him as Detective Beau Felton during the first seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets.

Music Video of the Day: Killed By Death by Motorhead (1984, directed by Rod Swenson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Though it’s hard to believe now, this music video was actually banned by MTV for what the channel considered to be “senseless and excessive violence.”  I guess Lemmy driving through that wall and giving everyone the finger really upset them.

Ron Swenson, the director of this controversial video, was best-known for being the manager of the Plasmatics.

Enjoy!

Billy The Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987, directed by Alan Clarke)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This is the story of two rival snooker players and their grudge match.

Billy The Kid (Phil Daniels) is an up-and-coming snooker player.  Cocky and cockney, Billy is arrogant but he is also beloved by the working class.  His manager, The One (Bruce Payne), has fallen into debt to a loan shark known as The Wednesday Man (Don Henderson).  The Wednesday Man agrees to release The One if he can convince Billy The Kid to play a 17-frame snooker match against Maxwell Randall (Alun Armstrong).

Maxwell Randall is the reigning world champion snooker player.  Supported by the upper class, Randall has been playing snooker for centuries.  He’s known as the Green Baize Vampire, both because of his resemblance to Bela Lugosi and also because he actually is a vampire, complete with fangs, a casket that doubles as a snooker table, and a London mansion that looks like a castle.

With the help of an unscrupulous tabloid reporter (Louise Gold), The One generates a generational and class rivalry between Billy The Kid and the Green Baize Vampire.  The two agree to meet in a snooker match, with the requirement that the loser of the match never play another game of snooker.

Billy The Kid and the Green Baize Vampire is many things.  It’s a satire of sports films and the British class system and it is certainly no coincidence that the upper class is represented by a vampire.  It’s also a musical, with the cast performing Brechtian songs about how snooker is life.  Unintentionally, it’s a tribute to the ability of the British to get caught up in some of the most boring sports even invented.  At first, it seems like the last thing that you would expect to be directed by Alan Clarke, though the film does feature his usual political subtext and a few of his trademark tracking shots.

The film is memorably strange and it features strong performances from Phil Daniels, Alun Armstrong, and Bruce Payne but, at times, it can be a chore to sit through.  If you’re not already a fan of snooker, this film won’t change your mind.  (However, if you are a fan of snooker, you’ll probably enjoy the match between Billy and Maxwell.)  For me, the main problem was the songs, none of which are really good enough to justify their inclusion in a film that already felt too self-indulgent even without being a musical.  I can understand why this film has a cult following but it didn’t really work for me.

Music Video of the Day: Braineaters by The Misfits (1983, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

It’s just a normal night as Danzig’s house in the video for Braineaters.  Everyone comes for dinner and the chef comes out with a pot full of brains.  If nothing else, this video is about as literal an adaptation of a song’s title as you are ever likely to see.

Enjoy!

Demonoid (1981, directed by Alfredo Zacarias)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Demonoid has a great title and it had a good one sheet but don’t be fooled.  The sword-wielding devil is barely in the move and the women at his feet may have appeared on the cover of every heavy metal album in the 80s but they’re not in the movie.

Exploring a recently uncovered tomb in Mexico, Jennifer (Samantha Eggar) and Mark Baines (Roy Jenson) are intrigued by a number of bodies that are missing their left hand.  Their guide explains that, centuries ago, men, women, and children were sacrificed to the Devil by having their left hands cut off.  When Mark and Jennifer discover a casket with a severed hand, they decide to take it back to the hotel with them.  Of course, the hand is not dead.  It springs from its casket and possesses Mark.  This leads to Mark fleeing back to the United States, trying to find a way to get rid of his possessed hand.  Unfortunately, the hand has a mind of its own and, even after Mark ends up getting set on fire, the hand continues to live and possess one person after another.  Jennifer teams up with Father Cunningham (Stuart Whitman), trying to bring an end to the hand’s reign of terror and giving the audience a chance to wonder how these two actors went from being Oscar nominees to co-starring in Demonoid.

Demonoid is a strange film that starts out as a leisurely travelogue of Mexico and then suddenly turn into a cinematic Grand Guignol, with person after person trying to figure out how to chop off their left hand without doing permanent damage to themselves.  Because the hand is immortal, it has no problem trying to kill whoever it is currently attached to, which leads to not only several scenes of actors fighting with themselves but also several detached hands running across the screen.  A detached but moving hand is creepy the first time you see it but it becomes progressively less so the more time that you spend with it.  The plot is ridiculous enough to be initially intriguing but ultimately, Demonoid is a handsy bore.

Music Video of the Day: Spirit by Bauhaus (1982, directed by Christopher Collins)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this video, the Bauhaus perform their song Spirit for actual spirits.  Spirit was the seventh single to released by Bauhaus.  It peaked at Number 42  on the UK Singles Chart.

Director Christopher Collins is directed with overseeing three other videos, all for Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Mask, and In The Flat Field.

Enjoy!

KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park (1978, directed by Gordon Hessler)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In 1978, KISS appeared to have it all.  The band was famous for both their makeup and their anthemic stadium rock.  They had just released not only a new studio album but also four solo albums.  They had starred in their own Marvel comic and gained notoriety for supposedly allowing their blood to mixed in with the comic’s ink.  Teenagers loved KISS and parents and religious leaders feared that the band’s name stood for Knights In Satan’s Service.  KISS had everything except for motion picture stardom.

KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park was supposed to change that.  The film starred Anthony Zerbe as Abner Devereaux, an engineer and an expert at animatronics who loses his job at Magic Mountain and seeks revenge by using robot versions of KISS to drive the audience of their concert to riot.  Fortunately, the real members of KISS are not just rock stars but also alien beings who descend from the heavens and shoot lightning bolts from their eyes.  (Gene Simmons can breathe fire.)  The real KISS isn’t going to allow their fan to be manipulated by a robot version of the band, which leads to a battle between KISS and the robots that protect Abner’s underground lair.

KISS Meets The Phantom of the Park aired on NBC on October 28th, 1978.  It was later given a theatrical release in Europe, where it was re-edited and retitled Attack of the Phantom.  Since then, it has become a very difficult film to see.  (On Amazon, old VHS copies go for several hundred dollars.)  One reason why the movie is so hard to see is because the members of the KISS hated the movie and felt that they were portrayed as being clowns instead of super heroes.  Even though the members of the band have since mellowed out about the film (with Gene Simmons suggesting it should be viewed on a double bill with Plan 9 From Outer Space), KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park is still a film that is more talked about than actually watched.

While looking for clips of the movie on YouTube, I came across an upload of the entire film.  The only problem was that all of the dialogue was dubbed into German and that’s not a language that I speak.  Still, figuring that you have to take your opportunities when they’re available, I decided to watch.  I figured that the dialogue might not actually be that important and it wasn’t.  I was able to follow the plot just fine.  (The only weird thing about watching the move in German was listening to the members of the band speak in something other than a New York accent.)  Fortunately, there’s actually more singing than talking in Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park and the songs are untouched and in English.  KISS plays Magic Mountain in the film and they actually performed a real concert for filming.  Those are real fans of the band going crazy whenever Gene Simmons sticks out his tongue.

The movie itself is definitely a product of its time and not meant to be taken seriously.  The members of KISS are both aliens that descend from the heavens and rock musicians and they are never seen without their makeup.  Even when they’re hanging out at a hotel pool, they are in full costume and they’re wearing their makeup. When the members of the band enter the Phantom’s underground lab, they have to fight a series of very 70s robots, including some that know karate and two who have lightsabers.  For better or worse, it’s a very silly move that epitomizes an era.  The special effects are cheesy, the members of the band often look straight at the camera, and the rest of the cast does what they can with what they’ve been given.  Anthony Zerbe plays the Phantom with a hint of empathy while Deborah Ryan is the ingenue who searched for her missing boyfriend while Beth plays on the soundtrack.  Keep an eye out for Brion James, playing a security guard.

Overall, the band probably would have been smarter to just release a concert film but then the rest of us wouldn’t have the fun of watching Paul Stanley face off against a robot version of Bruce Lee.  KISS Meets The Phantom of The Park is worth watching at least once, even in German!