The Devil’s Mistress (1965, directed by Orville Wanzer)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

In the Old West, four outlaws are trying to keep one step ahead of the posse when they comes across an isolated cabin sitting the middle of nowhere. The oldest of the outlaws say that they should stay away from the cabin because it is too far away from civilization and whoever lives there is trying to hide something. He is outvoted by the other outlaws, who are hungry and hoping the cabin will have some food.

It turns out that cabin belongs to a bearded man who claims to be a pilgrim of some sort. He lives with his mute wife. He welcomes the men and gives them food. Two of the outlaws repay him by murdering him and then raping his wife. They decide to take the wife with them as they make their way to Mexico. The wife silently follows but the men soon start to die, one-by-one. Are the men unlucky or is the woman they kidnapped somehow causing it all to happen? Given the film’s title, it’s not hard to guess.

The Devil’s Mistress is a mico-budget, independently-produced mix of the western and horror genres. The film looks cheap and the actors playing the outlaws are all pretty inexpressive but Joan Stapleton’s otherworldly beauty is perfect for the role of the abducted woman who turns out to be far more clever and dangerous than the outlaws assumed. With a good deal of philosophical dialogue about life, death, and guilt, the film has a lot more on its mind than the average indie western, with each outlaw forced to confront their own mortality as they are punished for their sins.

Music Video of the Day: Preacher Man by Fields of Nephilim (1987, directed by Richard Stanley)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

A cemetery, an atomic wasteland, a chainsaw, a preacher with a bunch of mutant worshippers, it doesn’t get more 80s gothic than this.

Director Richard Stanley directed several gothic music videos but he’s best-known for his feature films, including Hardware and Dust Devil. (In many ways, the video for Preacher Man feels like a dry run for both Hardware and Dust Devil.) He was also the original director of the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau until his conflicts with both the studios and actors Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer led to him being replaced by John Frankenheimer.

Enjoy!

Death Metal (2023, directed by Michael Kuciak)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Abyssinister is a death metal band that has seen better days. Lead singer Ivan (Nico Zahniser) is a perfectionist who has alienated most of the members of the group with his abrasive personality. Their records aren’t selling. Their European tour was a disaster. Hardly anyone can pronounce the band’s name and those who can think that Abyssinister broke up. And the band is on the verge of breaking up for real until Ivan announces that he’s hired the famed Norwegian producer, Fleming (Ray Goodwin), to produce their next album.

Agreeing to give stardom one last shot, Abyssinister travels out to Fleming’s isolated farm and recording studio. After they arrive, Ivan announces that he has a copy of a supposedly cursed concerto that he wants the band to record. The band records the piece and it sounds great but what neither the band nor their manager, Shadia (Shadia Martin), knows is that Ivan had made a deal with the Devil and now, there is a price to pay.

Full of inside jokes about the death metal scene and featuring some surprisingly realistic gore, Death Metal turned out to be much better than I was expecting it to be. The first half is a humorous satire of every cliché about the Death Metal scene while the second half is full of effective jump scares and frightening scenes. Every member of the band and their groupies get a chance to make an impression before the concerto is recorded and you actually do worry about them once everything starts to fall apart. I especially liked the performance of Chris Richards, as the otherwise mild-mannered drummer who legally changed his name to Baphomet.

Death Metal is both an effective satire of the hysteria surrounding death metal music and an effective horror movie.

Music Video of the Day: This Corrosion by The Sisters of Mercy (1987, directed by Stuart Orme)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

“It’s about the idiots, full of sound and fury, who stampede around this world signifying nothing. It’s about people who sing about the revolution while selling it short, about people who sing about the corrosion of things while they themselves are falling apart. People who miss the point… It’s also stupidly over-the-top bombastic, but rightly so.”

— Andrew Eldritch, on This Corrosion

Even more specifically, This Corrosion was written as a “take that” to two former members of the Sisters of Mercy who left the band in 1985 to form The Mission. Eldritch’s feeling was that The Mission was just a corrosive version of Sisters of Mercy.

Director Stuart Orme was one of the directors who worked with literally everyone. His video here is properly goth in the style of 1987.

Enjoy!

Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin (1997, directed by Greg Griffin)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Johnny Blake (Justin Gorence) is a demon slayer and vampire hunter who is so pure of heart and intention that he is known as The Monk. However, when Sister Avarice (Lara Daans) puts a hex on him, the Monk finds himself being tempted as never before. Sister Avarice wants the Monk to track down her two older sisters and take their pieces of the fabled demon stone from them. Once the three pieces of the demon stone are put together, the demon Asmodeus will return to the world of the living. Because of the hex, the Monk and his secretary, Karen (Heather Lea McIntyre) have no choice but to do find the other stones. Will the Monk and Karen be able to resist Sister Avarice’s final temptation?

This is pretty dumb but I think most people will guess that as soon as the words “Torma Presents” appears on the screen. It turns out that Sister Anger (Alisa Christensen) owns a gym and Sister Lust (Jenna Johns) owns a brothel. Sister Anger tries to seduce Karen while Sister Lust tries to seduce the Monk. There’s a lot of talk about bringing The Monk and Karen over to the dark side and revealing their true nature but it’s mostly just an excuse to have nearly every woman in the film go topless at some point. (Admittedly, 14 year-old me would have thought this was the best movie ever made.) There is one good fight scene between The Monk and a group of muggers who come across him while he’s spying on Sister Anger making out with Karen. Otherwise, Sisters of Sin get boring pretty quickly.

The film is also known as Sisters of Sin, which make much more sense than Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin, as only one of the sisters is a lesbian. But Troma had Troma had a film to sell and I guess Blood Sisters of Lesbian Sin tested better than just plain Sisters of Sin.

Music Video of the Day: Nemesis by Shriekback (1985, directed by Tony van den Ende)

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Just try to get that chorus out of your head after listening to Nemesis. Everybody happy as the dead come home!

Director Tony can den Ende has also done music videos for The Proclaimers, Meat Loaf, Melissa Etheridge, Joe Cocker, Thomas Dolby, Manic Street Preachers, and Guns N’ Roses.

Enjoy!

The McPherson Tape (1989, directed by Dean Alioto)

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

A found footage film, The McPherson Tape (which is also known as UFO Abduction) opens with a title crawl that tells the viewer that what they are about to see is both and also the most compelling evidence to date that aliens are visiting Earth.

On October 8th, the Van Heese family gathers to celebrate the fifth birthday of Michelle. Michael, the youngest of the Van Heese brothers, is home from college and he’s brought his new video camera with him, which he uses to film the party. At first, his brothers give him a hard time about both his new beard and his camera but soon, everyone has bigger things to worry about. When the power suddenly goes out, Michael and his brothers go outside to investigate. While doing so, they stumble across what appears to be a spaceship and three humanoid aliens standing outside of it. The brothers run back to the house and, eventually, the aliens follow.

The McPherson Tape was one of the first found footage films and it stays true to the rules of the genre to an extent that more recent examples have not. That means that the 66-minute film plays out in real time. There’s no background music. The sound quality is poor. The footage is grainy and sometimes out of focus. This is one found footage film that actually looks like found footage, with the only thing giving the game away being the rubber alien masks worn by the actors playing the invaders. Just as in real life, it’s not always exciting. There are moments of dead space where both the audience and the McPhersons are waiting to see what happens next. But because the film feels authentic and it features a cast of unknowns who do a good job of acting scared and confused, it’s much more effective than some of the slicker examples of the genre that have come out in recent years.

Director Dean Alioto later remade The McPherson Tape with a bigger budget professional actors. In 1998, the remake aired on the UPN under the title Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County and supposedly caused a panic when some viewers though it was an actual documentary. For my money, though, the original is still the best.

Music Video of the Day: Anxiety (Get Nervous) by Pat Benatar (1982, directed by Mark Robinson)

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

If you’re suffering from anxiety, it is nothing to be ashamed of. As today’s music video of the day shows, even Pat Benatar can get nervous! Of course, when your dentist is named Dr. Pain, who can blame you for getting nervous?

This video was directed by Mark Robinson, who also did videos for The Pretenders, Tina Turner, and Eddie Money.

Enjoy!

Great Moments In Comic Book History #35: Tomb of Dracula #49

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula #49 (October, 1976) finds Dracula in a foul mood. Not only does he have the pesky vampire hunters still chasing him but also the leader of his cult, Anton Lupeski, is obviously plotting against him. Dracula just wants to spend some time with his wife but instead, he finds himself suddenly transported to the mansion of Angie Turner.

Angie is a recluse who has the ability to bring fictional characters into existence. She spends her time with the Frankenstein’s Monster, D’Artagnan, Tom Sawyer, and Injun Joe. Her favorite fictional character, though, is the title character from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The real Dracula is stunned and angered to discover that he’s been summoned by a woman who thinks that he’s the same as what calls the “inferior” who is featured in Stoker’s novel. Angie watches as Dracula not only kills all of her companions but also kills Robin Hood and Zorro when she summons them. Angie realizes that Dracula is not the tragic figure that she imagined but instead a vicious monster.

Dracula, who truly was a monster in Tomb of Dracula, taunts Angie and prepares to attack her, just to suddenly find himself back in his lair. Dracula may have claimed to have been real but Angie was not only able to wish him out of her mind but, as the final panels show, she was also able to bring back to life all of her other companions. The story ends by revealing that Angie is a mental patient who has been in a padded room ever since losing her family.

If this issue just featured Dracula dismissing Stoker’s novel, it would be an important part of Marvel’s vampire mythology. What makes the issues a classic is the suggestion that even the “real” Dracula is just a figment of Angie’s imagination. Since Tomb of Dracula regularly featured guest appearances by other Marvel character, one could argue that this one issue suggests that the entire Marvel Universe might just be an elaborate fantasy in the mind of a woman mourning the loss of her husband and children. Either way, this issue is a strong portrait of the power and comfort of imagination. Angie stands in for every comic book reader over the years.

Tomb of Dracula #49 (October, 1976)

“And With The Word Shall Come Death”

Writer — Marv Wolfman
Penciler — Gene Colan
Inker — Tom Palmer
Colorist — Michele Wolfman
Letterer — John Costanza
Editor — Marv Wolfman

Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:

Horror Game Review: Weird Texts From An Unknown Number (2023, Mark Sample)

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

When you get a weird text from an unknown number saying that all of your secrets will soon be revealed, you assume that it is your brother Matt, pulling another stupid prank while traveling around Europe.

But what if it isn’t?

That’s the question at the heart of Weird Texts From An Unknown Number, a short but creepy Interactive Fiction game in which how you respond to the texts can lead to five completely different but equally disturbing endings.

This is a short game that can be played in under five minutes but, because each answer leads to an entirely different ending, it is also a game that can frequently be replayed. I found myself replaying this well-written game several times because I not only wanted to see every ending but also just how bad things could get the for the main character. The answer is very bad. The lesson? Some numbers are best left unknown.

Play Weird Texts From An Unknown Number.