Anyway, here they are performing Buio Omega in concert. Buio Omega is the main theme of one of my favorite Italian horror films, Beyond the Darkness. Even if you haven’t seen the film — and, when it comes to movies about wealthy young men who dig up their dead girlfriends and eat hitchhikers, it doesn’t get much better than Beyond the Darkness — the music is wonderfully atmospheric. You just hear this music and you know that something really odd is about to happen.
Chicago gangsters are turning up dead! Is it a mob war or is it something else? Kolchak suspects the latter and, as you can guess from this episode’s title, he’s right. This episode features gangsters, numbers runners, and voodoo!
The 1958 film I Married A Monster From Outer Space tells the story of Marge (Gloria Talbott) and Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon).
Just one year ago, they seemed like the perfect couple. They were newlyweds, looking forward to starting a family and living in a nice house in the suburbs. Bill seemed like the perfect guy, warm, friendly, humorous, and loving.
However, things have changed. On their one-year anniversary, Bill is cold and distant. He certainly seems to have little interest in romance or anything like that. When Marge gives Bill a new dog as his anniversary present, he doesn’t seem to be sure how to react to it. When the dog later ends up dead, Bill gives her an implausible excuse.
Bill has changed but he’s not the only one. Marge notices that all of her friend’s husbands are acting strange as well. It’s as if something has magically turned every man into the neighborhood into a stiff, humorless jerk.
(Either that or it’s the 50s!)
One night, Marge decides to follow Bill into the forest and she sees something that challenges everything that she previously thought she knew about her husband. What does she discover? Well, it’s right there in the title. Marge has married a monster from outer space!
I imagine that most people’s natural instinct with a film like this is to make fun of the title and just go on from there but actually, I Married A Monster From Outer Space is an intelligent and well-done sci-fi film. Gloria Talbott does a great job in the lead role and Tom Tryon’s rather stiff screen presence is perfectly suited for the role of Alien-Bill. Gene Fowler, Jr. directs the film as if it were a film noir where the usual gangsters and bank robbers have been replaced by humanoid aliens who don’t like dogs.
Since this movie is from 1958, there’s all sorts of subtext creeping around. The most obvious, of course, is that America is being invaded from within. You don’t think your husband could be an alien? Well, Alger Hiss’s mother probably didn’t think her son was a communist spy! You think it’s a silly idea that normal seeming humans would be working to conquer the world? Have you not heard of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? When Bill and the other men turn cold and impersonal, it’s easy to see that they’ve embraced an ideology opposed to individual freedom and we all know what that means.
However, for me, this film works because it strikes at a very primal fear. How well do you really know the people who you love? Is he always going to be as perfect as he seems when you first start going out or is he going to totally change once he’s sure that you’re not going to leave him? Like many women who have tried to escape from abusive boyfriends and spouses, Marge discovers that no one believes her. She lives in a world controlled by men and all of the men have been taken over by the same thing that’s taken over Bill. Even if you’ve never married a monster from outer space, you know what Marge is going through.
So, don’t dismiss this film because of the melodramatic title. I Married A Monster From Outer Space is an intelligent sci-fi horror film, one that’s still relevant today.
Today’s scene that I love comes from the 1922 silent film, Haxan!
Haxan is a documentary, one that recreates the history of witchcraft throughout the ages. In this scene, the film examines the belief that the devil is everywhere. Apparently, the Devil has a lot of free time on his hands.
Directed by Benjamin Christensen, Haxan was a Swedish film that was released in its native country in 1922 but which took 7 years to make it over the United States. Though contemporary audiences were a bit confused by it, it was popular with the surrealists and it quickly became one of the first true cult movies. It was even re-released in 1967 with a narration provided by Beat writer William S. Burroughs.
Haxan, like many silent films, exists in many different forms. Needless to say, the censors were not kind when this film originally made its way over to the United States. It wasn’t until 2001 that Haxan was fully restored and released as a part of the Criterion Collection.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Horror is one of the oldest genres around and just to prove it, here are….
4 Shots From 4 Silent Horror Films
The Golem (1920, dir by Paul Wegener)
Haxan (1922, dir by Benjamin Christensen)
The Student of Prague (1926, dir by Henrik Galeen)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, dir by Jean Epstein)
Today’s Horror on the Lens is a classic film that really needs no introduction! Released in 1922, the German silent film Nosferatu remains one of the greatest vampire films ever made. It’s a film that we share every October and I’m happy to do so again this year!
For tonight’s excursion into the horrific side of television, we have the very first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker!
The Kolchak of the title was a reporter named Carl Kolchak (played by Darren McGavin). Kolchak was kind of a nervous fellow because every story that he reported on seemed to involve some sort of terrible supernatural creature! Seriously, that would make anyone anxious.
In his first episode, Kolchak investigates a series of murders and comes to suspect that Jack the Ripper might be haunting the streets of 1970s Chicago.
This episode originally aired on September 13th, 1974.
In this 1981 slasher film, bad things are happening in the city of Miami.
There’s a serial killer on the loose. He’s chopping off heads and leaving bodies on the beach and basically just making a huge mess of things. Local new anchorwoman Jane (Lauren Tewes) is upset that there’s a killer roaming the streets of her hometown. She even talks about how upset she is during a local newscast, which takes everyone at the station by surprise. I don’t know why they’re so shocked. Don’t they know that Jane has a younger sister named Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and that Tracy’s been blind, deaf, and mute ever since she was attacked by a maniac?
One day, Jane is returning to the apartment that she shares with her sister. As she’s parking her car, she sees her neighbor, Stanley (John DiSanti), stuffing what appears to be a bloody shirt in a trash can. Oh my God, could he be the murderer!?
Well, yes, he is. The film actually makes no attempt to hide the fact that Stanley is the murderer. Stanley is one of those movie murderers who is either hyper competent or totally oblivious, depending on what the scene demands. For instance, despite being a rather heavyset, middle-aged man, he can still sneak up behind people without them ever hearing and chop off their head with one wave of a meat cleaver. On the other hand, when he kills a couple on the beach, his car ends up getting stuck in the sand.
Anyway, Jane is pretty much instantly convinced that Stanley is the killer and she immediately starts doing stuff like taunting him over the telephone. (Despite the fact that she’s on TV every night and her voice is apparently heard by everyone in Miami, she makes no effort to disguise her voice whenever she calls Stanley.) She also breaks into his apartment to look for clues.
As I watched this film, I found myself thinking about how much more interesting it would have been if Stanley hadn’t been the killer and if Jane felt so guilty about what happened to her sister that she ended up harassing a totally innocent bystander. But no, Stanley is the murderer so naturally all of this leads to an extended sequence where Stanley breaks into and then follows Tracy around Jane’s apartment.
So, Eyes of a Stranger is a fairly mediocre film, one that would probably be totally forgotten if not for the fact that it’s also the debut film of Jennifer Jason Leigh. While the film is obviously meant to showcase Lauren Tewes (a TV actress who gives a rather wooden performance), Jennifer Jason Leigh steals every scene in which she appears. Her total commitment to her character shines through and she even manages to sell a rather implausible plot twist that occurs towards the end of the film. John DiSanti also deserves some credit for his performance as Stanley. Again, it’s hard not to feel that the film would have worked better if it had tried to keep us guessing as to the question of Stanley’s guilt.
Eyes of a Stranger was directed by Ken Wiederhorn, who also did the far superior zombie movie, Shock Waves. It’s interesting to note that both Lauren Tewes and Jennifer Jason Leigh would subsequently appear in Twin Peaks: The Return, though Leigh’s role was significantly larger.
Today’s horror scene that I love comes from 1976’s Carrie.
This scene starts out on a note of happiness with Carrie (Sissy Spacek) and Tommy (William Katt) being named as Queen and King of the Prom. Things, however, get a bit ominous when Sue (Amy Irving) notices that bucket of pig’s blood and Nancy Allen and John Travolta hanging out underneath the stage. Things get even worse when the coach (Betty Buckley) refuses to listen to Sue and tosses her out of the gym.
And then suddenly, there’s blood everywhere and Piper Laurie’s chanting, “They’re all going to laugh at you …. they’re all going to laugh at you….”
Is everyone really laughing at Carrie? I believe some of them are. Norma is definitely laughing because I think the shot of the coach laughing is included to let us know that some of the laughter is strictly in Carrie’s mind. Nothing about the character would lead us to suspect that the coach would laugh. In fact, seeing as how the coach just threw out Sue, it’s debatable whether she would even be back among the crowd by the time the pig’s blood came down.
(Plus, would everyone be laughing even with Tommy, the most popular kid in school, lying dead on the stage?)
Anyway, regardless of whether they were all laughing or not, we all know what happens next!
