4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, I am proud to pay homage to a director from my home state, a man who changed the face of horror and the movies but who was treated terribly by a jealous film industry. I am talking, of course, about Texas’s own Tobe Hooper. Hooper redefined horror with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Though his later films were never quite as critically or financially successful as that classic, many of them have since been rediscovered by audiences who now better appreciate Hooper’s quirky sensibility. Hollywood may not have known how to handle Tobe Hooper but horror fans like me will always appreciate him.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Daniel Pearl)
Eaten Alive (1976, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Robert Caramico)
Salem’s Lot (1978, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Jules Bremmer)
The Funhouse (1981, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Andrew Laszlo)
Today’s horror on the lens is a British 1967 science fiction film, featuring the team of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and directed by Terence Fisher!
This film is based on a novel that came out in 1959. It was originally meant to be a movie for British television but, after the script was written, it was decided to instead turn it into a theatrical film. The film was originally called Night of the Big Heat but, when it was subsequently released in the United States, the title was changed to Island of the Burning Damned.
It’s not October without Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee!
In this film from 1977, the great Piper Laurie plays Ruby, a former gun moll who owns her own haunted drive-in theater!
2. Drive-In Massacre (1976)
Ruby was not the only 70s horror film to be sent at a drive-in. There was also 1976’s Drive-In Massacre!
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
And what were they all watching at the drive-in? Depending on the year, they could have very well have been watching the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre!
4. The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
Another drive-in of the 70s was this documentary about the search for the Fouke Monster.
5. The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
The Legend of Boggy Creek was such a hit that director Charles B. Pierce was able to follow up withThe Town That Dreaded Sundown.
6. The Evictors (1979)
The Town That Dreaded Sundown was a bit enough hit that Charles B. Pierce was able to follow it up with The Evictors.
2014’s The War Within takes place in two worlds, one on the outside and one in the inside.
The film opens with Michael Sinclair (Brett Vavrel), a cartoonist who is struggling to deal with both the death of his daughter and the subsequent collapse of his marriage. Though he still has his good memories of when he first met and fell in love with Amy (Rebecca Reid), those are running the risk of fading and disappearing as neither one can forgive themselves for the accident that took away their daughter. Michael has even found himself questioning his once firm faith in religion. Amy, meanwhile, was never particularly religious, something that worried her daughter in the days before her death. When Michael gets a phone call informing him that his syndicated comic strip has been cancelled due to him missing too many deadlines, Michael trashes his studio and wonders why he is being so punished.
The film takes us inside of Michael’s head, where Heart (Brett Vavrel, in a duo role), Will (Gary Vavrel), Conscience (Daron Day), Mind (Terry Vavrel), Emotion (Drew Vavrel), and Memory (Bruce Crum) all battle for control of Michael’s decisions and his future. At first, it appears that only Emotion wants to reject both Amy and his faith. But then Heart starts to realize that both Mind and Will are slipping over to Emotion’s side. Heart and Conscience have to work together to search the realms of Michael’s mind so that they can retrieve the memory orbs that have been stolen by the other traits. Otherwise, Michael will never find peace and he’ll lose his wife….
Okay, this probably sounds a bit weird and I guess it kind of is. I mean, on the one hand, you’ve got Michael and Amy trying to come to terms and find some sort of meaning in the worst tragedy that a parent can experience. There are frequent flashbacks, finally explaining the heartbreaking reason why Michael blames himself for their daughter’s death. And there’s a moment of incredible coincidence, in which Amy discovers how the accident that took her daughter’s life also effected one of the new students in her class. I mean, it’s an amazing coincidence but it’s still a rather sweet plot development and it’s well-acted by Rebecca Reid.
While that’s going on, you have a bunch of people wearing vaguely medieval costumes battling in a shadowy realm that is meant to represent Michael’s subconscious. There’s some crudely effective CGI, in which Emotion attacks the other traits with …. well, emotions. There’s a lot of talk about memory orbs and hidden realms and it’s all a bit corny but it’s also all so earnest that it’s hard not to get some enjoyment out of it. I especially liked the fact that Emotion looked and sounded like the type of emo kid that I would have had a crush on back when I was 16 years old. Watching those scenes made me think about the type of war that’s probably going on in my own mind right now. Heart says to stay up for a month straight just watching and reviewing movies. Mind says, “Get some sleep and stay healthy!” Emotion has yet to chime in.
Anyway, this was one of those film that was so weird that it was pretty much impossible not to enjoy it. Count that as a victory for Heart.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewingthe Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, Howard has a chance to get the heck out of Canada!
Episode 1.3 “No Cause For Alarm”
(Dir by Gary Plaxton, originally aired on October 16th, 1985)
The workers at Cobb’s Grocery are reluctantly preparing for another theme week at the store. It’s a Switzerland theme week, which I assume will be very popular in Canada. All of the cashiers are dressed like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Assistant manager Jack Christian is wearing lederhosen. Christian is really excited because he’s managed to borrow an expensive cuckoo clock with which to decorate the store.
Store manager Howard Bannister has a bit more on his mind, though. He has an interview coming up with an international hotel chain and, if he aces the interview, he’ll get to manage a hotel in Venice. As Howard puts it, this has been his dream for about 15 years. Unfortunately, it’s going to be difficult for Howard to ace that interview because the store’s alarm system keeps malfunctioning and the police finally tell Howard to just turn off the alarm so that they’re not bothered anymore. However, that expensive and borrowed cuckoo clock is still hanging on the wall so Howard ends up having to sleep at the store. Needless to say, the exhausted Howard falls asleep in the middle of his interview and doesn’t get the job. As Christian resigns himself to still being the store’s assistant manager, Howard accepts that he’s not going anywhere for a while.
This is an odd episode of Check It Out. For one thing, there’s a totally different stockboy (played by Jason Warren) from the kid who appeared in the previous two episodes. He’s a bit older than the usual stockboy, he wears rather thick glasses, and everyone acts as if he’s always been at the store. Meanwhile, the store’s electrician (played by Gordon Clapp) is referred to as being “Mr. Matthews” even though his name was Viker in his previous (and future) appearances.
Perhaps the oddest thing about the episode is that everyone is given very backstory-dependent dialogue. For instance, Edna has a long conversation with cashier Jennifer (Tonya Williams) in which she explains the history of her relationship with Howard. Whenever Christian enters a room, everyone is quick to mention that he’s the assistant manager, as if this is information that has never been mentioned before. The relationships between the characters also feel a bit off. For instance, there hasn’t been any hints of deep friendship between Edna and Jennifer in the previous two episodes.
My guess is that this episode was originally the pilot for Check It Out. Apparently, it worked well enough to sell the show but the show’s producers decided not to use it as the first episode. Instead, it aired as the third episode, despite the fact that the episode was essentially a rough draft of what the show would become.
As for the episode …. eh, it’s okay. Gordon Clapp was funny as the confident but incompetent electrician. Jeff Pustil had a few funny moments as Christian. Don Adams overacted a bit as Howard, as if the show still wasn’t sure how obnoxious or sympathetic the character should be. My main issue with the episode was the idea of Howard going from managing a grocery store in Canada to managing an international hotel in Venice. I mean, can Howard even speak Italian?
Next week, everyone at the store is required to get a physical!
TV!? Who has time for TV in October! I’m going to have so much to catch up on in November, I swear. Here’s some thoughts on what I did watch over the previous week!
ALCS Game One (Sunday Night, FOX)
I watched this baseball game, between the Rangers and the Astros, on Sunday night with my sister, Erin. The Rangers won, which made Erin happy and that made me happy.
ALCS Game Two (Monday Afternoon, Fox)
I watched a bit of this with Erin on Monday. She was happy that the Rangers won so I was happy too.
Find someone who loves you as much as Dr. Phil loved saying “Sugar Daddy web sites” in 2017. The episode that I watched on Sunday was from 2017 and Phil said either “Sugar Daddy” or “Sugar Baby” over a hundred times in 40 minutes. It all came across as being a bit silly.
On Monday, I watched an episode in which a woman and her 81 year-old fiancé accused her ex-husband of being abusive. Phil didn’t believe a word that the woman had to say and the woman proceeded to have a meltdown on stage.
On Saturday, I watched the first part of an interview with a young woman who thought she was pregnant with Jesus (as in literally Jesus). Special guest star Dr. Stork from The Doctors visited to tell her that she wasn’t pregnant. She accused him of lying. The audience gasped.
On Tuesday morning, I watched an episode about young teenage girls who dated older teenage boys. The youngest of the girls was like 13 and she was dating a 17 year-old. Jenny got extremely flustered while interviewing the idiots on her stage.
On Saturday morning, I watched a 1988 interview with director Brian De Palma where he came across as being about as confident as could be. That’s probably because the interview was filmed after The Untouchablesand before The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Our serial continued with chapter two, which I watched on Friday night. Having escaped using the Invisibility Ray at the end of the previous chapter, our hero spent this chapter being chased by villains who were carrying a Death Ray. It was a fun 30 minutes.
This week’s episode as Yes, Prime Minister was very, very British as it resolved around Prime Minister Hacker selecting a new bishop. The entire episode was full of jokes about how the Church of England was less of a church and more of a social club. As someone of an Irish/Italian Catholic background, I had a good laugh.
On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, Joan Severance stars as both a film star and a woman who is stuck in a go-nowhere marriage. Neither one is happy with her life and looking for an escape. Murder turns out to be a convenient solution. This episode has a bit of a strange ending, one that really doesn’t make a lot of sense if you think about it too much. But, fortunately, The Hitchhiker is there to impart a lesson.
(It’s a bit unfortunate that they apparently never did an episode that explored the Hitchhiker’s origins. I mean, the guy just pops up everywhere.)
This episode originally aired on November 25th, 1989.
The 1975 film, Lord Shango, takes place in a small, rural town in the Deep South, where the population appears to be firmly divided between those who worship at an evangelical Christian church and those who follow the Yoruba religion.
(To answer the obvious question, I have no idea how faithful this film is to the realities of the Yoruba religion.)
Jenny (Marlene Clark), who is a waitress at a local restaurant, is a member of the evangelical church, largely because her boyfriend is a member and he thinks that her attending the church will help her to get pregnant. Her daughter, Billie (Avis McCarther), is in love with Femi (Bill Overton), who is a follower of the Yoruba religion. One Sunday morning, while all the church people sings hymns, a series of baptisms are held in a nearby river. When it is time for Billie to baptized, Femi rushes into the water and objects. After he shoves her out of the river, the men of the church grab Femi and announce that the evil must be taken out of him through what appears to be a forced baptism. They force him under the water but, with Femi struggling, the end up holding him down for too long and Femi drowns.
Traumatized, Billie sinks into depression and Jenny grows disillusioned with the church, especially when the men who held Femi down refuse to take any responsibility for their actions. She also learns that her boyfriend, Memphis (Wally Taylor), had sex with Billie after Billie mistook him for being the spirit of Femi. When she finds Memphis praying in the church, she proceeds to yell and curse at him while he pathetically apologizes.
The next morning, Jenny wakes up to discover that Billie has run away, leaving behind a note that simply reads, “I can no longer live in your house.” When the men of the church again prove to be insensitive and ineffectual when it comes to finding out where Billie has gone (and instead are more concerned about why Jenny and Memphis has not been coming to the prayer meetings), Jenny turns to Femi’s friend, Jabo (Lawrence Cook). Under Jabo’s guidance, Jenny offers up a series of sacrifices to the local Yoruba priest (Maurice Woods) and asks for her daughter to return home.
The sacrifices appear to work. Billie returns home and reveals that she’s pregnant with a baby that she believes to be Femi’s and which Jenny believes to be Memphis’s. Jenny, now firmly under the control of Jabo, continues to make sacrifices and bad things continue to befall the men that she holds responsible for Femi’s death….
A frequently surreal film, Lord Shango is an interesting, if not always easy-to-decipher, portrayal of the battle of two different belief systems. While the evangelical Christianity that Jenny first followed could only promise an eventual reward, Jabo’s tribal religion offers her immediate reward and revenge. (Significantly, even though Billie was in love with Femi and wants to have his child, she has no interest in following his religion.) The film is often edited to provide a direct contrast between the staged cermonies of evangelical Christianity and the sensuality of the Yoruba religion. The film is full of Southern gothic atmosphere and is well-acted, particularly by Lawrence Cook and Marlene Clark. That said, the film is also frequently very difficult to follow. At times, one gets the feeling that the film is being surreal simply to be surreal and it’s hard to find a coherent message in the film’s collection of odd scenes and strange dialogue.
Lord Shango is a frequently intriguing film, as long as you’re willing to accept a little incoherence.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Welcome Back Kotter, which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!
This week, Gabe’s father comes to visit!
Episode 2.16 “Kotter and Son”
(Dir by Bob LaHendro, originally aired on January 20th, 1977)
January 20th, 1977. While many Americans was celebrating the inauguration of Jimmy Carter and others were laying the groundwork for the election of 1980, teenagers all across America were tuning into ABC so that they could see what Barbarino was going to do this week.
The first image they saw on that Inauguration Day was Gabe and Julie sitting in the apartment and reading the newspaper.
“Know who this guys looks like?” Gabe asks, pointing to a picture in the paper.
“One of your relatives?” Julie replies, as if she’s already dreading what’s to come.
“My cousin, Sidney Kotter!” Gabe announces.
Cousin Sid was so stupid that he once locked his keys in the car. He called the auto club (the auto club again!) and they said they would be there in an hour. Sid replied, “Well, you can’t come here in an hour because it’s raining outside and my car’s a convertible and I left the top down.”
At school, Gabe teaches about World War II but he’s obviously distracted, not even acknowledging a joke told by Epstein. After the bell rings and the rest of the class leaves, Gabe tells the main four Sweathogs that he’s having problems at home. Everyone assumes that Julie has left him again but Gabe eventually confesses that he’s nervous because his father is coming for a visit from Florida. Barbarino says that Gabe has nothing to be nervous about.
“Vinny,” Gabe says, “Imagine your father is coming 14,000 miles to see his son! Imagine that!”
Barbarino tries to imagine. “Is he coming on a bus or a train?”
Gabe then compares his father the iceberg that hit the Titanic, which leads to the Sweathogs singing a song about an iceberg wearing a sports shirt.
The next morning, at the apartment, Julie struggles to convince Gabe to get out of bed and get ready for his father’s visit. While Gabe and Julie try to figure out why his father would come all the way to New York from Florida, the man himself, Charlie Kotter (Harold Gould), knocks on the front door. Charlie enters the apartment and tells Julie that she’s beautiful and then orders Gabe to “wash your teeth.” Charlie declares that the cab that picked him up at the airport was Gabe’s apartment and says that he’s glad that he’ll be staying with Gabe’s brother, Melvin. “Remember your brother, Melvin?” Charlie asks before then asking if Gabe has found a real job yet.
You may have guessed that Charlie and Gabe have a strained relationship and they do. Charlie thinks that Gabe is wasting his life, teaching remedial classes at his old high school in New York. Gabe thinks that he’s doing a good thing by teaching the Sweathogs. Charlie says that he wants Gabe to come back to Florida with him and join him in selling coconut-themed souvenirs. “Kotter and Son!” Charlie announces. Charlie then says that he’s going to school with Gabe so that he can finally see what Gabe does for a living. Gabe is not happy about this but finds himself powerless to stop his elderly father from following him out of the apartment.
Cut to the school, where Charlie has made friends with Mr. Woodman. As Mr. Woodman looks at the coconut paperweight that Charlie has given him, Charlie says, “I just want to see what my son does for a living.” Woodman asks Charlie to let him know if he ever figures it out.
In class, Gabe tries to teach but is nervous with Charlie constantly interrupting him. Finally, Charlie agrees to remain quiet so that he can observe and Gabe teaches about the Great Depression while pretending to be Walter Winchell doing a radio report. Gabe pretends to be a stockbroker who has lost everything. He pretends to be a bitter worker. He pretends to be Herbert Hoover. Charlie is skeptical of Gabe’s techniques but then Gabe proves that the Sweathogs now know and understand far more about the Great Depression than they did at the start of the class. Even Barbarino had debatably picked up some knowledge!
(“What did the Stock Market crash do to the price of products?” Gabe asks Barbarino. “What products?” Barbarino replies.)
Charlie asks Gabe to step out in the hallway and tells Gabe that he knows Gabe isn’t going to move down to Florida.
Gabe says, “Pop, I’m 30 years old. Just tell me your proud of me!”
“You should hear how much I talk about in Florida,” Charlies replies, “People down there are sick of hearing about you! Now, go teach your Sweathogs.”
Realizing that he’s not going to get anything better than that, Gabe returns to his classroom. As Gabe closes the door, Charlie says, “I’m proud of you, my son.”
Gabe opens the door and says, “I heard you.”
Awwwwwwww!
Back at the apartment, Charlie asks Julie if she ever heard about what happened to his brother, Saul Kotter. Julie is a bit more tolerant of Charlie telling jokes than she is when Gabe does it. Anyway, Saul was hit by a truck while crossing the street. A policeman put his jacket under Saul’s head and asked him if he was comfortable. Saul replied, “I make a good living.” As Charlie finishes his joke, Gabe steps in the apartment and asks, “Julie, have I ever told you about my Uncle Saul?”
This episode definitely worked, mostly because Harold Gould and Gabe Kaplan were totally believable as father and son. There were not a lot of Sweathog shenanigans this episode but the scenes between Gabe and his father were well-acted and ultimately rather sweet.
Next week: Gabe takes a second job to pay for dental work! Julie thinks that he’s having an affair with someone who actually likes his jokes.
A true scene stealer, the character actor Dick Miller was a Navy veteran who went to City College of New York, Columbia University, and New York University and eventually earned a Phd in psychology. Even as Miller was earning his degree, he was already appearing on stage. In 1952, he moved to California to pursue a career as a writer and ended up becoming one of the most beloved members of Roger Corman’s stock company. Famously, in 1952’s Apache Woman, he played both a Native American and the townsperson who shot him.
The many directors who started their careers under Roger Corman continued to cast Dick Miller in their own films, keeping Miller busy as a character actor. Miller worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese to Joe Dante to James Cameron to Steven Spielberg to Jim Wynorski. Miller often played characters named Walter Paisley, a reference to his first starring role in Corman’s A Bucket of Blood.
In this scene from 1981’s The Howling, Dick Miller lets us know what’s truly going on with the werewolves.
Through the Shattered Lens 