First released in 1927, The Unknown tells the story of circus performer Alonzo the Armless (Lon Chaney, Sr.). As you might guess from his name, everyone thinks that Alonzo is armless. Of course, he’s not. He’s just a contortionist who pretends to have no arms. People thinking that he has no arms gives him the perfect alibi whenever he has to strangle someone.
However, Alonzo has fallen in love with Nanon (Joan Crawford), his beautiful circus assistant. Unfortunately, Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry) is also in love with her and there’s no way that Alonzo could allow her to get too close because then she might discover that he not only has arms but that his hand has an unusual deformity that would identify Alonzo as the man who strangled Nanon’s father.
Alonzo’s solution? Maybe he could just get someone to amputate his arms for real! But will that be enough for him to win Nanon away from Malbar? Or will he pursue an even more macabre plan to get Malabar out of the picture?
The Unknown was, for years, considered to be a lost film. In 1968, a 49-minute print of the film was found in France. That’s the version that I’m sharing here. Reportedly, several early scenes were missing but those scenes were not important to the overall story. Even in truncucated form, The Unknown is a wonderfully surreal and atmospheric film and it’s widely considered to be the best of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney’s collaborations. Since this film was made in the age before CGI, whenever Alonzo hides his arms, Chaney was having to do the same thing. This is one of Chaney’s best performances. Alonzo is both frightening and rather sad in his way. Having won the role over Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford was 18 when she played Nanon.
Happy Horrothon! “I know you’re gonna say, this isn’t horror! This is Thor singing the blues!” I hear your critique and I reject it! The greatest horror stories especially in science fiction have trauma, fear, and hope. Alien, for example, terrible things happen to this crew of…. I guess…. miners, but at the end – there’s hope because Ripley overcomes. I always have a bit of anxiety at the end of the New “Outer Limits” or films like “Life” because it’s a good twist, but everyone is now dead and the heroes failed- that’s too much like life!
In “Rain”, a woman is alone and there appears to be a guy in the friendzone who REALLY wants to be with her and can sing and looks like Thor. For the interest of Horrorthon, we’re going to presume that- I don’t know this lady’s name but I’ll call her Susan- that Susan’s previous guy was eaten by a …got it…. a werewolf! Take that doubters told you I could contrive this into a horror review- BWAHAHAHA!
Side note: Susan, you’re being too picky. I’m sure that youhad a rough time, but this guy even wrote a song for you, looks like Thor, and sounds like Otis Redding reincarnated. Maybe your standards are just WAY too high?
Susan’s boyfriend was werewolf puppy chow and Thor is trying to tell her that it will be okay. He has felt her pain because there is probably at least another werewolf in town that probably ate his girlfriend too. Can you imagine that support group? They must hate Iams and Doggy costumes! The line “Is that rain or are you crying again?” gets to me because when you’re broken-hearted – it’s like the tears can’t stop. “A soul with no face is a lonely embrace” this line is all about not seeing your soulmate again- Fucking Werewolves, we gotta do something about them, but then this song wouldn’t exist; so, I’m torn!
As they try console each other, “now’s there clouds between us all”; so, they likely hooked up, but they also have to worry about the full moon coming- probably. I like that at the end of the song – he says – “You ain’t gonna be ain’t gonna be alone” and notice, he doesn’t say- With me – Wonderful me. He’s left her better off and maybe he will be alone and live out his days as a werewolf hunter?
The 1980 film, Heaven’s Heroes, is a cop film that takes place in Des Moines, Iowa!
Now, it’s tempting to make a joke about a film taking place on the “mean streets of Des Moines” and I know that I did when the film started and I saw that it was another Russell S. Doughten production. In the late 70s and early 80s, Doughten directed several low-budget faith-based films, most of them shot on location in Iowa. (I previously reviewed Doughten’s Nite Song, among others.) Though Doughten is only credited as executive producer on Heaven’s Heroes, it features all the hallmarks of Doughten’s other films. The budget is low, some of the actors are a bit amateurish, and the ultimate message is undeniably heartfelt. What Doughten’s film may have lacked in technical polish, they made up for sincerity.
To its credit, Heaven’s Heroes doesn’t try to present Des Moines as being any more edgy that it actually is. But the film makes the point that a cop’s life can be dangerous, even in a relatively quiet town like Des Moines. In fact, the film opens with police responding to the shooting of Officer David Hill (played by David Ralphe). His wife, Cindy (Heidi Vaughn), is taken to the hospital where she talks to the comatose David until he dies. The doctor explains that if the bullet had entered David’s head just a few inches higher, his life probably could have been saved.
The rest of the film is taken up with flashbacks to David’s life before he was shot. We watch as he and Cindy meet each other in college. A helicopter hovering over a Des Moines mall leads to a flash to David’s service in Vietnam. His partner (James O’Hagen) remembers the training that he went through with David. Through it all, David comes across as the ideal cop, the type who treats everyone fairly and who doesn’t draw his gun unless it’s absolutely necessary. (At one point, David does fire at a man who is holding a shotgun, just to miss. Later, he discovers that the man was only holding the shotgun for self-defense.) David saves the life of a child who has swallowed a button but later finds himself unable to help another child who has been hit by a drunk driver. Some people thank David and some people call him a pig. A lot of the film deals with David and his partner trying to deal with the stress of their job. There’s an interesting scene, early on, in which a lecturer at the Academy explains that a good cop has to be able to deal with the frustrations of the job without taking those frustrations out on the public. He warns about giving into paranoia and assuming that everyone is looking to commit a crime. David struggles with stress but never gives in. Of course, it’s a religious film so David gives all the credit for his success to God and, when he’s later shot, his wife takes solace in the idea that David has gone to Heaven. Your mileage may vary on that but no one can deny the sincerity of the film’s simple message. The film, which was based on a true story, was shot on location in Des Moines and featured a lot of actual Des Moines police officers. The acting is sometimes amateurish but they all bring an authenticity to their roles.
It’s interesting to compare the cops in this 1980 film to the cops of today. None of the cops in Heaven’s Heroes wear body armor. None of them patrol the streets in modified tanks. They don’t shout at suspects or bark orders at bystanders. They’re not bulked-up gym rats with shaved heads. Though both David and his partner did serve in the military, both of them understand that they’re not fighting a war on the streets of Des Moines. Instead, they are there to protect the citizens. They’re the ideal cops and sadly, they’re almost unrecognizable when compared to much of what we see today.
First released in 1982, Madman takes place on the last night of camp.
Max (Carl Fredericks), the jovial and beloved owner of the camp takes his senior counselors and his campers on one last outdoor adventure. As they sit around the campfire, he tells them the story of a farmer named Marz who, years before, went crazy and hacked up his family with an axe. The local townspeople attempted to hang Marz but somehow, he escaped from the noose and disappeared into the wilderness, along with the bodies of all of his victims. The locals say that Madman Marz is still out there in the wilderness, waiting for someone to shout his name so that he can return to life and kill again. Max tells his campers that it’s very important that they only whisper the name of Madmam Marz.
“MADMAN MARZ!” Richie (Jimmy Steele), one of the campers, shouts.
Everyone tells Richie not to shout his name so Richie shouts it again.
Max announces that it’s time to return to camp. He specifically tells none of the campers to deviate from the path back to the camp. He tells everyone to follow their counselor. He makes the directions very specific and clear.
So, of course, Richie decides to wander off by himself. As he wanders through the wilderness, he comes across Madman Marz’s old cabin and he breaks a window….
Now, if you’ve ever seen a slasher film before, you are probably expecting Richie to be the first victim of rejuvenated Madman Marz. Well, you would be incorrect. In fact, Richie turns out to be a bit of a Karma Houdini because, while Madman Marz does return with his axe, he never actually goes after Richie. Instead, Madman Marz just stalks the various counselors who go into the woods in search of Richie. Don’t get me wrong. Richie is definitely a bit traumatized by what he sees inside of Madman Marz’s cabin. But it’s still hard not to feel that Richie got off pretty easy when compared to everyone else.
But that’s really what makes Madman a superior slasher film. It defies our expectations when it comes to who dies and who doesn’t. Though it was obviously inspired by the camp-centric horror of Friday the13th, Madman isn’t afraid to break the rules of the genre. It’s one of the rare slashers where it feels like anyone could fall victim to the killer depending on how their luck goes that night. As opposed to slashers where it sometimes seems that the victims are being punished for having sex or doing drugs or going against the rules of society, the victims in Madman tend to just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Marz doesn’t really have a complicated motivation. He’s a madman and he’s so ruthless and relentless that he becomes a genuinely frightening monster.
Madman Marz is not only genuinely frightening but so is the film featuring him. Madman was a low-budget, non-union production, with the majority of the cast and crew credited under pseudonyms. (Dawn of the Dead‘s Gaylen Ross, who appears as one of the counselors, is credited as Alexis Dubin.) But that low budget does prevent Madman from being an atmospheric and suspenseful slasher film, one that will not only inspire nightmares but also probably cure most people of any desire to go camping.
Ugh. It’s hard for me to think of any film that left me feeling as icky as the 1972 film, I Dismember Mama. Seriously, who would have guessed that a film with a title like I Dismember Mama would be disturbing and offensive?
Zooey Hall stars as Albert, a puritanical young man who idealizes the Victoria Age, when “men were gentlemen and women were pure.” Albert has tried to murder his rich mother three times for being “a whore,” and he’s now living in a minimum security mental hospital where he spends his time watching pornographic movies. When Albert escapes from the mental hospital, he heads straight to his mother’s house. His mother isn’t there but Alice (Marlene Tracy), the maid, is. After raping and murdering Alice, Albert heads down to the living room where he meets Alice’s 9 year-old daughter, Annie (Geri Reischl, who would later take on the role of Fake Jan onthe Brady Bunch Variety Hour). Albert doesn’t know Annie but Annie instantly recognizes Albert from the pictures that his mom has up around the house.
Suddenly enchanted by Annie and her innocence, Albert lies and tells Annie that Alice has been taken ill and had to go see a doctor but she asked Albert to keep an eye on Annie until she got back. (Is there a reason why everyone’s name starts with an A? My ADD is going crazy just trying to type this up.) Albert then takes Annie for a ride around town, telling her about how much he loves the Victoria era and eventually checking into a motel with her. (Ewwwwww!) When Albert murders a woman that he picked up at a bar, Annie runs away from the hotel and Albert, suddenly convinced that Annie is now a harlot, chases after her. It all leads to a properly violent conclusion. Say what you will about the film but the final five minutes make great use of slo mo of doom as Albert and Annie run through a mannequin factory in slow motion.
My favorite character in this film was the police detective played by Greg Mullavey. When Albert’s liberal doctor (Frank Whiteman) argues that even Albert can be cured with the right amount of treatment, the detective just smirks and complains about how his tax dollars are being used “to baby murderers.” Normally, I would argue that the doctor has a point but Albert is such a creep and his fixation on Alice is so disturbing that I was totally on the Detective’s side. Whether he could be cured or not, Albert deserved a bullet in the head.
It’s a competently-made and well-acted film and Zooey Hall deserves a lot of credit for making Albert into an all-too plausible madman. It’s also a thoroughly icky film, the type of film the features flashbacks to scenes of rape and violence that occurred mere minutes before. This is one of those grimy films that leaves the viewer feeling as if they’re going to need to take multiple showers after watching.
The film is today is best remembered for the gimmicks that were used to promote it. Theater patrons were given an upchuck cup, in case the film proved to be too intense for them. And, of course, the film’s famous trailer featured people who had been driven insane by watching the film.
Director Paul Leder and Greg Mullavey would reunite for another grindhouse horror film, My Friends Need Killing. Look for my review of that film tomorrow!
In a remote army base, three busty scientists create a busty robot named Raquel (Melissa Brasselle). General Griffin (Arthur Sellers) is impressed that Raquel has mastered all forms of combat but he is not happy by her dominatrix outfit because, according to him, America’s enemies don’t fear cleavage.
One night, while the scientists all have hot dates, Raquel escapes from the base and goes to a nearly deserted desert town, where she kills a leering gas station attendant and a busty diner owner. Meanwhile, a group of busty teenagers and their boyfriends run out of gas while driving through town and find themselves being stalked by Raquel.
This is a Jim Wynorski film so you know what you’re going to get, a lot of cleavage (though, for once, no actual nudity), a splattering of blood, and some deliberately corny humor that is sometimes self-aware enough to be funny. Murderbot was originally named Killbot, a reference to Wynorski’s first film, Chopping Mall. Murderbot even duplicates that film’s famous exploding head scene, though it’s the entire body that explodes this time.
This is pretty dumb but Wynorski fans should be happy. Even though no one will be watching this movie for the acting, I actually did like the performances of Walker Mintz and Sylvia Thackery, playing respectively a trumpet player and the girl that he likes. As Raquel, Melissa Brasselle is no Arnold Schwarzenegger but she still handles dreadful one-liners like “You’ve been deleted,” with enough aplomb to make them tolerable.
Murderbot is proof that, no matter how much things change, Jim Wynorski will always by Jim Wynorksi.
The 2010 film, Freeway Killer, opens with a desperate woman named Ruth (Debbon Ayer) visiting a man named William Bonin (Scott Anthony Leef).
Bonin, who has a quick smile and a mustache that makes him look like a wannabe porn star, is an inmate on California’s Death Row. In just a few days, Bonin is scheduled to be the first man to be executed by lethal injection in the state of California. Ruth explains that she has done everything that she can to try to save Bonin’s life. She has written to the review board. She had written to the governor. She has asked that Bonin be spared and she’s even used the exact words that Bonin suggested that she use in her letters. However, she’s gotten no response. Still, she now wants Bonin to uphold his side of the bargain. She wants to know if her son was among the thirty-six men that Bonin is suspected of having murdered.
William Bonin merely smirks and points out that he never actually agreed to tell Ruth anything. He suggested that Ruth write the letters but never did he say that he would actually do anything in return. That was just something that he allowed Ruth to assume. Even while sitting on Death Row and facing an inevitable execution, Bonin enjoys the power that he gets from manipulating people. Instead of telling Ruth about her son, he tells the story of his life as a serial killer.
The film flashes back to 1980, when William Bonin has already started his career as a murderer. A Vietnam vet who has a war story for every occasion, he cruises the freeways of California and picks up young hitchhikers. Sometimes, he is accompanied by an accomplice. Vernon Butts (Dusty Sorg) is a self-styled occultist who wears a wizard hat at home and who knows more about Dungeons and Dragons than real life. When they’re not killing hitchhikers, Bonin and Vernon tend to bicker. Vernon constantly points out that Bonin was not the great war hero that he claims to have been. Bonin makes fun of Vernon’s hobbies. At times, they seem to genuinely despise each other but one of the few times that Bonin shows any emotion is when Vernon tries to kill himself in a pique of hurt feelings.
One night, Bonin sees a teenager named Kyle (Cole Williams) being yelled at by both his boss and his girlfriend. As he does with all of his victims, Bonin pulls up in his van and asks Kyle if he wants a ride. However, when Kyle gets in the van, it turns out that Bonin doesn’t want to kill him. Instead, he sees Kyle as a kindred spirit and soon, he’s recruited Kyle as his second accomplice. Unlike Vernon, Kyle believes all of Bonin’s stories. However, Kyle grows more confident with each murder and soon, he’s even suggesting that Bonin should kill Vernon. Frustrated with both Kyle and Vern, Bonin search for a third accomplice, an act that ultimately leads to his downfall.
Watching Bonin, Vern, and Kyle, I was reminded of a creepy group of older men who always seemed to be hanging out on campus when I was in college. Though none of them were enrolled in classes and all of them were notably older than the majority of the people on campus, they still spent all of their time hanging out around the student union, smoking cigarettes, and trying to impress people who were half their age. They approached me and my friend a few times, making awkward comments about whatever we happened to be talking about or studying at the moment. One thing that I quickly learned was that being rude would not get rid of them. Instead, you had to literally stand up and walk somewhere else to get away from them. (They had no problem approaching people but were too lazy to follow after them.) At the time, my friends and I used to joke that they were probably serial killers. Most realistically, they were probably just three losers who didn’t want to have to grow up. Still, they definitely gave off a bad vibe.
Based on a true story, Freeway Killer focuses on the relationship between Bonin, Vernon, and Kyle. Though he’s their self-declared leader, Bonin is incapable of doing anything without the help of Vernon and Kyle. At the same time, the film leaves us to wonder if Vernon and Kyle would have become killers if they hadn’t fallen under William Bonin’s influence. One gets the feeling that if Bonin and Vernon had never met each other, they both would have spent the rest of their lives as obscure losers, living alone and working a dead-end job. Certainly, if Bonin and Vernon had never met, Bonin would never have subsequently felt the need to recruit Kyle into their activities. But, because they did meet, at least 30 innocent people were murdered in California. The film is unsettling, not just because of the murders (of which only a few are discreetly portrayed) but because of the feeling that the murders themselves would never have happened if only William Bonin had not served an earlier prison sentence at the same time as Vernon Butts.
Scott Anthony Leet gives a good performance as William Bonin, playing him as man whose quick smile is just a cover for the raging feelings of inadequacy that are churning just below the surface. Dusty Sorg and Cole WIlliams are also well-cast as, respectively, Vernon and Kyle. Sorg, especially, makes Vernon into a monster who is frightening because it’s very easy to imagine running into him (or someone like him) in everyday life. Michael Rooker brings his quiet intensity to a small role as the detective who investigates the Freeway Killer murders.
The real-life William Bonin was executed in 1996. I’m against the death penalty because I don’t think we should normalize the idea of the government killing anyone but that still doesn’t mean that the world isn’t better off without William Bonin in it.
First released in 1973 and also known as The Hanging Woman, Beyond The Living Dead is a Spanish horror film that is just incoherent enough to be intriguing.
Having inherited the estate of his uncle, Serge Chekhov (Stelvio Rosi) arrives in the town of Skopje and is stunned to discover that, even though it’s only 6:00 in the evening, there’s no one in the streets. Everyone has retired to their homes. Even after Serge stumbles across a woman hanging in the cemetery, no one is willing to open their doors when he pounds on them. Serge finally finds his uncle’s place, where he discovers that the hanging woman was the daughter of his uncle’s widow, Countess Nadia Minalji (Maria Pia Conte). While Serge speaks to the police (who seem to view Serge as being the most likely suspect), Nadia retreats to her room, performs a black magic ceremony, and sends out a mental summons to Igor (Spanish horror great Paul Nashcy), a gravedigger who is also a necrophile and who has a huge collection of photographs of naked corpses in his shack.
Once Serge is finally able to convince the police that he’s not a murderer, he helps them when they chase Igor around the village. Later, Serge returns home and is promptly seduced by Nadia. The next morning, Nadia’s servant, Doris (Dyanik Zurakowska), begs Serge not to fire her and her father, Prof. Droila (Gerard Tischy). It turns out that Prof. Droila has a laboratory in the house’s basement where he’s been doing experiment on how to reanimate the dead. Serge has Doris undress for him and then, once she’s crying, he tells her that he already talked to the professor and agreed to allow him and his daughter to remain. WHAT THE HELL, SERGE!?
Got all that? I hope so because the film only gets stranger from there, with multiple murders occurring and Serge falling in love with Doris just as quickly as he fell in love with Nadia. As Igor stumbles around the village and peeps through people’s windows, Nadia holds a séance and eventually, a few decaying zombies show up. The plot is nearly impossible to follow, which is actually something that I tend to find to be true with a lot of Spanish horror films that were released during the Franco era. Making movies full of murder and nudity under a puritanical regime leads to a certain narrative incoherence. That said, the film plays out at such a strange pace and contains so many bizarre red herrings that it does achieve the feel of a particularly vivid dream.
Today, Beyond The Living Dead is best-remembered for Paul Naschy’s memorably weird performance as Igor. Naschy originally turned down the role, thinking that it was too small. The director allowed Naschy to rewrite the script to make Igor more interesting and it was Naschy who came up with the idea of making Igor not just a grave robber but also a necrophile. For English-speaking audiences, it can be hard for us to judge Naschy as an actor because we usually only see him in poorly dubbed films. (The English-language version of Beyond The Living Dead was apparently dubbed by a group of cockney voice actors.) But Naschy definitely had an imposing physical presence and this film makes good use of it.
Full of atmospheric visuals and surprisingly effective gore effects, Beyond The Living Dead does capture the viewer’s imagination, as long as one is content to not worry too much about trying to make much sense of it!
The 1986 film, Invaders from Mars, opens with a dark and stormy night.
12 year-old David Gardner (Hunter Carson, son of actress Karen Black and filmmaker L.T. Kit Carson), who dreams of growing up to become an astronaut, witnesses something strange happening outside of his bedroom window. He watches as a spaceship lands on a nearby hill and apparently drills itself into the ground. The next morning, David convinces his father (Timothy Bottoms) to go out to the hill and see what he can find. When his father returns, he says that he didn’t see anything strange at the hill. However, he is now acting strangely, no longer showing emotion.
Soon, everyone in the small town is also acting strangely, from David’s mother (Laraine Newman) to his teacher (Louise Fletcher). David notices that everyone has a mysterious mark on the back of their neck. Even more alarmingly, he walks in on his teacher eating a mouse. Investigating the hill himself, David discovers that his father was lying about nothing being there. Instead, there’s a cavernous spaceship that is patrolled by aliens! A creature with a giant brain has taken control of almost everyone in David’s life. David discovers that the hill right outside of his house is now the headquarters of an intergalactic invasion. It’s a war of the worlds and David is stuck right in the middle.
Fortunately, David does have a few allies. The aliens have not managed to take control of everyone. The school nurse (Karen Black) believes David and helps him explore the spaceship. The surprisingly nice General Wilson (James Karen) is not only willing to launch a military operation on the advice of a 12 year-old but he also doesn’t have any problem allowing that 12 year-old to take de facto command of his soldiers. Can David save his community from the Martians?
A remake of the 1953 sci-fi classic, Invaders from Mars was directed by Tobe Hooper, the Texas-born director who was best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. At first, the deliberately campy Invaders from Mars might seem like an unexpected film from Hooper but actually, it has quite a bit in common with Hooper’s other credits. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it plays out like an increasingly surreal dream, one with an emphasis on isolation. Like Poltergeist, it’s ultimately a satire of suburban and small town conformity. (Indeed, one could argue that Invaders From Mars is Poltergeist without the interference of Steven Spielberg.) If the original Invaders From Mars was about the dangers of communism, the remake is about the danger of losing your childhood imagination and just becoming a mindless drone.
Invaders From Mars is often a deliberately silly film. Sometimes, it’s definitely a bit too silly for its own good, hence the guilty in guilty pleasure. That said, whenever I see it, I can’t help but smile at how quickly General Wilson starts taking orders from David. (James Karen plays the role with such earnestness that General Wilson seems to be less concerned with David’s age but instead just happy that he has someone around who can tell him what he needs to do.) But it makes sense when you consider that the film is meant to be a child’s fantasy of what would happen if there was an alien invasion. Who wouldn’t want to be the one telling the adults how to save the planet? For all the aliens and the mind control, this is a rather innocent film. Featuring entertaining performances from Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms, Karen Black, and the great James Karen, Invaders From Mars is an entertaining daydream of interstellar conquest.
The 1983 film, The Being, takes place in the town of Pottsville, Idaho.
Pottsville is a small town with a quaint downtown, a drive-in that shows violent slasher films, and a group of neighborhood activists who have come together to take a stand against smut. (Maybe they should start with that drive-in….) It’s home to a quarry, several potato farms, a trailer park, a diner, a church, and a …. ahem …. nuclear waste dump.
Strange things are happening in town. The young son of Marge Smith (Dorothy Malone) has vanished and Dorothy has become a familiar sight, wandering around the town in the middle of the night and searching for her child. One person loses his head while fleeing an unseen assailant. Two rednecks are killed while smoking weed at the drive-in theater. People are dying and Detective Mortimer Lutz (Bill Osco) is determined to find out who (or what) is doing the killing. He’s particularly concerned about the fact that a mysterious green slime is found at all of the crime scenes.
Meanwhile, Mayor Gordon Lane (Jose Ferrer) is more concerned with just covering up the crimes and the history of nuclear waste disposal because he’s got potatoes to harvest and he also hopes to be the first potato farmer in the White House. (George Washington already beat him to that, though one could point out that Washington never actually lived in the current White House.) While his wife (Ruth Buzzi) encourages everyone in town to take a stand against smut, Mayor Lane calls in a chemical safety engineer named Garcon Jones (Martin Landau) to investigate.
The Being is a bit of an oddity. On the one hand, the title character is grotesque and the scenes in which the creature attacks its victims are notably gory. On the other hand, the film has a strangely off-center sense of humor, starting with Bill Osco’s opening narration, which Osco delivers in the teeth-clenched rat-a-tat style of Rod Serling. Halfway through the film, the action stops so that Lutz can have a rather bizarre dream in which he sees Garcon fall out of an airplane while the mayor’s wife flies by on a broomstick with blood flowing from her eyes. This is the type of film in which the notably bloody conclusion is followed by satiric title cards that tell us what happened to each of the survivors. The Being is a horror film that seems to be cheerfully aware of its budgetary limitations and, as a result, it’s full of moments in which it seems to wink at the audience and say, “Hey, don’t worry so much. Sit back and have fun.”
For a low-budget, often poorly lit film about a killer mutant, The Being has an impressive cast. Dorothy Malone, Jose Ferrer, and Martin Landau were all Hollywood veterans and all three of them give admirably straight-faced performances in their smallish roles. (Ferrer and Malone won Oscars long before appearing in The Being. Landau won his Oscar a decade after.) Ferrer, in particular, does a good job of portraying the mayor’s irritation at having to actually deal with the people that he governs. I also liked the performance of Ruth Buzzi. Buzzi plays someone who should be very familiar to anyone who has ever lived in a small town, the person who has found a small amount of power and who is determined to never give up.
Low-budget aside, The Being is just odd enough to be watchable.
Through the Shattered Lens 