The next episode of Hammer House of Horror is The House That Bled To Death but I’ve decided not to share it for this Halloween because it features the death of a kitty and I’m kind of tired of pets dying in horror films. It’s an effective and scary episode, though. It’s on YouTube so if you want to watch it, feel free.
Moving right along, tonight’s episode is CharlieBoy. Graham (Leigh Lawson) and his wife Sarah (Angela Bruce) inherit an statue that they don’t realize also doubles as a really big voodoo doll. After stabbing the statue a bit too many times, Graham comes to realize that he’s accidentally condemned almost everyone he knows to death, including both him and his wife. Thanks to the fast-paced director of Robert Young and the committed performances of the cast, this is an entertainingly macabre episode. It originally aired on October 18th, 1980.
In 1975’s Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary, Cristina Ferrare plays Mary, an American painter who lives and works in Mexico.
Mary seems to be living her ideal life. She paints. She travels. Her work is popular. She has glamorous and wealthy friends. She has her independence. Even when she starts a relationship with a young American diplomat named Ben (David Young), he seems like a genuinely nice guy who respects her need to have a space of her own.
However, Mary has a secret.
Mary is a vampire. She doesn’t have fangs, she doesn’t sleep in a coffin, and she can go out in the daylight. But she has an obsessive need to drink blood. Whenever she can get away from Ben, she’ll pull out a knife and slit the nearest throat. On the beach, a pushy, middle-aged man falls victim to her. Back in the city, she kills her former lover (Helena Rojo), who is not happy that Mary is now dating a man. Mary does her best to hide her murderous inclinations from Ben, even as she finds herself tempted to taste his blood.
However, someone else has recently arrived in Mexico and he appears to be looking for Mary. The Man (John Carradine) dresses in black and wears a mask over his face. The Man also carries a blade and, like Mary, he drinks the blood of his victims. When Mary reads a newspaper story about a murder that she didn’t commit, she realizes that she’s not the only vampire in Mexico. At the film progresses, we learn that Mary and the Man share a very close connection and Mary is forced to confront whether or not she can be both in love and a vampire.
One thing that I appreciated about Mary, Mary Bloody Mary is that it didn’t leave much ambiguity as to whether or not Mary was actually a vampire. At first, it seemed like the movie was going to play the “Is-she-or-isn’t-she” game and maybe suggest that Mary was just mentally disturbed, But instead, the film makes it clear that Mary is dependent upon drinking the blood of others. It’s suggested that vampirism is something that was passed down to her, much like how I inherited my red hair from my father’s side of the family. But, in the end, there’s no doubt that Mary actually is a vampire. Cristina Ferrare occasionally seems miscast as a ruthless killer but, ultimately, she brings the right amount of sophistication to the role and John Carradine is, as always, a nice addition to the cast.
Unfortunately, the majority of Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary is very slowly paced. I can appreciate a film that takes it time but the first 45 minutes of Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary really does sometimes feel like an endurance test. Once The Man shows up, the film’s pace starts to pick up and Mary is very quickly forced to confront the truth of her cursed existence. At times, I got the feeling that the director was trying too hard to convince me that there was more to Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary than there actually was. The film is littered with scenes that suggest the story was meant to be a statement on the human condition but …. nah. Ultimately, it’s just a film about a woman who drinks blood.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This week, we start the fifth and final season of Miami Vice.
Episode 5.1 “Hostile Takeover”
(Dir by Don Johnson, originally aired on November 4th, 1988)
The fifth and final season of Miami Vice gets off to a good start with this episode. After opening with some appropriately glitzy scenes of the drug-fueled Miami nightlife, the episode then shows us that Sonny Crockett is still convinced that he’s Sonny Burnett. He has now returned to Miami and, along with Cliff King (Matt Frewer), he is one of the key advisors to drug lord Oscar Carrera (Joe Santos).
Carrera is at war with El Gato (Jon Polito), the brother of Sonny Burnett’s former employer, Miguel Manolo. El Gato, who wears gold lamé, cries over the body of one of his henchmen, and flinches when forced to deal with direct sunlight, is a flamboyant figure. In fact, he’s so flamboyant that it’s initially easy to overlook how determined he is to get revenge for the death of his brother. That means taking down the Carreras family and Sonny Burnett as well.
The Vice Squad knows that Sonny is moving up in the drug underworld but Castillo is firm when asked what they should do about it. Sonny has an active warrant out for murdering a corrupt cop. “Sonny’s not Sonny anymore,” Tubbs says at one point and Castillo seems to agree.
Tubbs goes undercover, making contact with the Carreras cartel. When Sonny meets Tubbs, Tubbs introduces himself as “Ricardo Cooper” and starts speaking in his terribly unconvincing Jamaican accent and that was when I said, “Miami Vice is back!” Sonny doesn’t trust Cooper from the start. “Maybe you’re a cop,” Sonny says. “Not I, mon,” Tubbs replies.
People are dying and, while Sonny doesn’t have a problem with that, the show is also careful to show that Sonny only shoots in self-defense. (It appears the most of the cold-blooded murders are farmed out to Cliff King.) When Oscar Carreras dies, it’s because his poofy-haired son (Anthony Crivello) accidentally shot him when Oscar discovered him with his stepmother. When the son dies, it’s because he was about to shoot Sonny after he caught Sonny with …. his stepmother, again. The Carreras family is so dysfunctional that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sonny steps up to take it over.
After promising Castillo that he’ll take out Sonny if necessary, Tubbs meets up with Sonny at beach-side tower. Tubbs looks at Sonny and suddenly says, “Sonny, it’s me, Rico.” Sonny stare at Tubbs. “Do you remember me?” Tubbs asks.
“Sure,” Sonny suddenly says, “You’re Tubbs.”
Three gunshots ring out as the episode ends.
OH MY GOD, DID SONNY KILLS TUBBS!?
We’ll find out next week. For now, I’ll say that — after a disappointing fourth season — this was exactly how Miami Vice needed to start things off for Season 5. Seriously, if you’re going to have Sonny get hit with amnesia, you might as well just go for it and take things to their logical extreme.
I’ve always loved the interview with the chief of police in the original Night of the Living Dead. I love the delivery of that classic line. “….they’re all messed up.” Yes, they are. The chief doesn’t seem to be particularly perturbed by the fact that the dead are coming back to life. Instead, his attitude is very straight-forward. To quote Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder, “Let’s go clean ’em up.”
When we first see this interview, it’s easy to laugh at the sight of the chief’s posse and everyone’s odd confidence that the dead will somehow just go away. (Death, after all, is the one thing that is guaranteed to happen to everyone eventually.) Once you know how the story’s going to end, though, this scene becomes much more ominous.
How dumb can one movie be without becoming unwatchable?
1985’s Evils of the Night is here to answer that question!
Three space alien vampires (John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and Tina Louise) have led an expedition to Earth. They’ve taken over a hospital and they’re stealing the blood of their patients so that it can be sent back to their dying planet. They especially want young blood, which is why they specifically came to a college town. Unfortunately, their intelligence was faulty and they arrived during the summer, when the campus was closed. (I guess this is one of those rare colleges that don’t offer a summer term.) There’s actually a very lengthy scene in which Carradine explains the faulty intelligence to Newmar and Louise and then Newmar complains about how the alien intelligence service just isn’t that good. What makes this scene so special is that Carradine delivers his lines with a straight face and Newmar actually seems to be sincerely annoyed. Aliens — they’re just like us!
Just because college is out of session, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any young people hanging out down at the lake. There’s actually quite a few, though all of them look to be a little bit too old for high school or college or whatever they’re supposed to be attending. Several of them are played by veterans of the adult film industry, including Amber Lynn and Jerry Butler. Everyone wants to get laid down at the lake, which is probably the most realistic thing about Evils of the Night. However, John Carradine needs their blood so he has Julie Newmar hire two slovenly mechanics, Kurt (Neville Brand) and Fred (Aldo Ray), and sends them out to kidnap any young people that they find. Kurt and Fred are very good at their job. Newman pays them and mocks them for caring so much about coins. Little do the mechanics realize that the aliens are planning on shooting them with their space laser as soon as they leave the planet.
Evils of the Night is a good example of a bad movie that is oddly watchable just because the viewer finds themselves curious as to just how stupid things can get. The answer here is very stupid and very nonsensical It never seems to occur to anyone just go to a different lake or maybe just do their skinny dipping in a pool somewhere. The plot has a “make it up as you along” feel to it and that, at the very least, keeps things vaguely interesting. The actors playing the “teen” victims are enthusiastic without being particularly good while most of the veterans in the cast are all obviously just there for the paycheck.
That said, John Carradine. Wow. What a career. A trained Shakespearean actor who made his stage debut in 1925 and went on to appear in a countless number of movie, Carradine was a favorite of both John Ford and Fred Olen Ray. Carradine appeared in hundreds of a theatrical films. In fact, his final film was released seven years after Carradine’s death. Carradine was one of the great actors, with that deep voice and that commanding stare. But he was also one of those actors who was apparently willing to appear in just about anything and that’s one reason why he’s still such a beloved icon. Playing an outer space vampire-turned-doctor was definitely not the strangest role that Carradine ever played. Carradine handles his scenes like a pro!
Evils of the Night is dumb but I dare you to look away.
This 1979 true crime drama opens in Los Angeles in 1963.
Rookie Detective Karl Hettinger (John Savage) has just joined the Felony Squad and met his new partner, Ian Campbell (Ted Danson, making his film debut). Ian is a tall, somewhat eccentric detective, the type who practices playing the bagpipes in the basement and who takes Hettinger under his wing.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Smith (Franklyn Seales) has just been released from prison. The nervous and easily-led Jimmy almost immediately runs into Gregory Powell (James Woods), a small-time hood with delusions of grandeur. Powell is the type who talks a big game but who really isn’t even that good of a thief. Smith and Powell form an uneasy criminal partnership. They are easily annoyed with each other but they also share an instant bond. Though the film doesn’t actually come out and say what most viewers will be thinking, there’s a lot of subtext to a brief scene where Powell appears to caress Smith’s shoulder.
One night, Hettinger and Campbell are kidnapped by Smith and Powell. Smith and Powell drive them out to an onion field. Because he’s misinterpreted the Federal Kidnapping Act and incorrectly believes that he and Smith are already eligible for the death penalty because they kidnapped two police officers, Powell shoots and kills Campbell. (The close-up image of Campbell falling dead is a disturbing one, not the least because he’s played by the instantly likable Ted Danson.) Hettinger runs and manages to escape. He saves his life but he’s now haunted by the feeling that he abandoned his partner.
The rest of the film deals with the years that follow that one terrible moment in the onion field. Treated as a pariah by his fellow cops, Hettinger sinks into alcoholism and eventually becomes a compulsive shoplifter. Smith and Powell, meanwhile, use a variety of tricks to continually escape the death penalty and to keep their case moving through the California justice system. Powell, for instance, defends himself and then later complains that he had incompetent counsel. Smith, meanwhile, is defended by the infamous Irving Karanek, a legendary California attorney who specialized in filing nuisances motions. (Later Karanek found a measure of fame as Charles Manson’s attorney. Eventually, he had a nervous breakdown in 1989, lived in his car, and was briefly suspended by practicing law.) While Smith and especially Powell quickly adjust to being imprisoned, Hettinger spends the next decade trapped in a mental prison of guilty and bitterness.
Based on a non-fiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, The Onion Field is a compelling look at a true crime case that continue to resonate today. The film can be a bit heavy-handed in its comparisons between the two partnerships that define the story. Both Hettinger and Smith are young and neurotic men who find themselves working with a more confident mentor. The difference is that Hettinger’s mentor is the cool, composed, and compassionate Ian Campbell while Smith’s sad fate is to be forever linked to the erratic Gregory Powell. While the film may have the flat look of something that was made for television, it’s elevated by the performances of its lead actors. James Woods give an especially strong performance as the cocky Powell, a loser in the streets who becomes a winner behind bars. Over the course of the film, he goes from being a joke to being the prisoner that others come to for legal advice. John Savage, meanwhile, poignantly captures Hettinger’s descent as the trauma from that night leaves him as shell of the man that he once was.
The film’s supporting cast is full of familiar faces. Christopher Lloyd and William Sanderson show up as prisoners. Ronny Cox plays the detective in charge of the onion field investigation. David Huffman plays a district attorney who is pushed to his breaking point by the obstructive tactics of Smith’s attorney. Priscilla Pointer play Ian Campbell’s haunted mother. All of them do their part to bring this sad story to life.
The Onion Field is a chillingly effective true crime drama and a look at a murder that was inspired by one man’s inability to understand federal law.
Today’s horror song comes the hypnotic soundtrack of Paul Schrader’s Cat People. This song was so good that it later showed up and was used to equally strong effect in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 Shots From 4 Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Is this a book about an island that is populated by the twenty or so people who actually refer to twitter by it’s “new” name of X?
No, actually, it’s not. X-Isle was published in 2002, in the days before social media and ever-present phones. X-Isle is a slasher story, one in which a group of good-looking teens end up hanging out at the exclusive Spinnaker Lodge, a luxury resort on an isolated island. It’s like that island that Kim Kardashian took all of her friends and employees to during the COVID epidemic? Remember that? Everyone else was locked inside or wandering around triple-masked while Kim went to an island and then scolded everyone else for not taking proper precautions.
(Sorry to get off topic there but seriously, the COVID era was messed up in ways that people are still struggling to full comprehend.)
Reading X-Isle, I found myself wandering if you really could write an effective, non-ironic, old school slasher story nowadays. The whole key to the slasher genre is that people have to be isolated and there has to be no way of reaching out for help. Every slasher movie now has to come up with some extended to reason to explain why no one can call the police. Whenever a horror movie starts with someone saying, “Give me your phone, you’ll get it back after the weekend,” I roll my eyes a little just because it’s become such a cliche. At this point, I imagine even Camp Crystal Lake has free wi-fi. It’s easy to imagine a camp counselor tweeting out, “Help! There’s a murderer at Crystal Lake!” and someone replying, “Whatever, Jussie.”
X-Isle gets off to a good start with a collection inner-office dossiers that introduce us to the main characters. What the memo reveals is that the main requirement to work at the resort is a handsome face or a good body. Once the story kicks in, we meet our group of potential victims and, unfortunately, none of them really live up to all the hype in the introduction. We spend a good deal of time with Carter, a womanizer who, at one point, feels the need to tell us that he’s not psychotic despite the fact that his behavior is often manipulative and narcissistic. When you actually have to tell people that you’re not a psycho, you probably are. Of course, in this book, Carter is one of the heroes.
Someone is killing guests and employees. It’s a YA book so we don’t actually see the kills but the aftermath is described in properly grisly fashion. The reveal of who the killer was doesn’t make much sense but, given that the book ends with a cliffhanger, that was perhaps deliberate.
Anyway, I’ve always kind of enjoyed the slasher genre, even with all of its cliches and its issues towards anyone who shows the slightest spark of independence. X-Isle was a fast and entertaining read. None of the characters were particularly likable which made it a lot less stressful to read about them being put in danger. In the end, the main lesson is to stay away from mysterious islands. That’s probably good advice.
Through the Shattered Lens 