Horror Film Review: The Craft (dir by Andrew Fleming)

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1996 film tells the story of four witches, all of whom attend the same very judgmental high school.

Nancy (Fairuza Balk) is their leader, the one who is most dedicated to worshiping the ancient deity “Manon.” Nacy dressed in black, like all good people. She also lives in a trailer park with her pervy stepfather and her chainsmoking mother. Sarcastic and quick with an insult, Nancy is an outcast and she’s proud of it.

Bonnie (Neve Campbell) is the quiet witch. She’s the one who wears baggy clothes and hardly ever seems to wash her hair. She’s insecure because her back is covered in scars, the result of a car accident. Bonnie follows Nancy’s orders.

Rochelle (Rachel True) is the witch who never seems to get to do much. As one of the only black students at the high school, she faces constant discrimination. She likes to swim. To be honest, we don’t find out much about Rochelle beyond that.

And then there’s Sarah (Robin Tunney). She’s the new girl at school, having just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Bonnie is the first one who notices that Sarah has powers of her own. Even though Sarah is, at first, freaked out by Nancy’s talk of Manon, she eventually joins the group after a male student, the loathsome Chris Hooker (Skeet Ulrich), starts to spread rumors about her.

Together …. they solve crimes!

No, actually, they don’t. Instead, they cast spells. Fortunately, now that Sarah has joined the group, they’re finally powerful enough to actually make their spells mean something. Soon, each girl is getting exactly what she wants but they’ve forgotten the Rule of Three — every action returns to you threefold.

And, even worse, Nancy’s starting to act just a little bit crazed….

I love The Craft. In fact, to be honest, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love the film. That doesn’t mean that the film is flawless, of course. There’s actually a whole lot of things that I could point out that don’t quite work about this film. For instance, the character of Rochelle is totally underdeveloped. Robin Tunney, as good an actress as she is, sometimes seems to be miscast as Sarah. (It’s hard not to feel that she and Neve Campbell should have switched roles.) The film starts out as a clever and sharp-tongued satire but it kind of loses its way towards the end, becoming a far more conventional supernatural thriller.

But no matter! Sometimes, the flaws just don’t matter. The Craft works because anyone who has ever felt like an outcast — and, let’s just be honest, that’s pretty much everyone — can relate to the film. At some point in their life, everyone has felt ostracized. Everyone has felt like they were on the outside looking in. Everyone has wished that they had the ability to cast a spell whenever they wanted. Everyone has felt like Sarah, Bonnie, and Rochelle and, even more importantly, everyone has felt like vengeful Nancy.

Perhaps appropriately, it’s the actress who plays Nancy, Fairuza Balk, who steals the entire film. It’s not that the other actors are bad. Indeed, the strong and likable cast is one of this film’s main strengths. But no one can quite match Balk’s intensity as Nancy. Balk manages to remain believable even while going totally over the top. In the end, Nancy is the most compelling character in the film. She may be a villain. She may kill a few people. But she’s also the only character willing to stand up for herself. Sarah’s magic may be powerful but she never seems to be having much fun with it. Nancy, on the other hand, is all about showing off what one can do with enough power.

I rewatched The Craft a few Halloweens ago and I’m glad that I did. It provided the perfect conclusion to that year’s October holiday. I look forward to watching it again in the future.

Horror On The Lens: Mark of the Witch (dir by Tom Moore)

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is Mark of the Witch, a little oddity that was filmed in 1969 and released in 1970. It’s a film about what happens when the spirit of an executed witch possesses a college student.

This is an admittedly low-budget and, some would say, amateurish production but certain scenes have a nice dream-like feel and, in the role of the witch, Marie Santell doesn’t leave a bit of scenery unchewed. I especially enjoy her speech at the start of the film.

Plus, Mark of the Witch was filmed in my hometown of Dallas, Texas!

Enjoy!

October Positivity: Senior Year (dir by Bruce Lood)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1978 and undoubtedly played at dozens of church youth group retreats for years afterwards, Senior Year tells the story of Steve and Angie.

Steve and Angie are both high school seniors. (Hence, the name….) They’re also both Christians. Steve used to be a jock who enjoyed drinking and having a good time. However, over the summer, he decided to give all that up and dedicate his life to Christ. The rest of his classmates aren’t sure how to deal with this. They all wonder what happened to the Steve that they used to know. They’re all worried that this new Steve is going to constantly try to preach to them. Steve confirms their suspicions by constantly trying to preach at them. As he quickly discovers, it can be awkward forcing your beliefs on people, especially when they’re just trying to make it from class to class. Still, the local young minister encourages Steve to keep trying.

Joe has no interest in what Steve is saying. Joe is a jock who doesn’t get all of that Christian stuff and kind of takes it personally the Steve is now religious. Joe decides that he’s going to date a Christian girl, just to upset Steve! Joe’s a real jerk. However, Joe starts to develop real feelings for her. He even trades in his van for a sports car, all in an effort to seem more respectable. Anyway, as things often go in these type of movies, it all leads to a tragedy that leaves one person in wheelchair but which also inspires everyone in the high school to start reading their bible. Steve finally manages to successfully witness to one of his coworkers. At no point does it seem to occur to anyone that maybe there was another way that message could have been spread that didn’t involve paralyzing someone for life.

Senior Year is a pretty typical faith-based high school film. One thing that I’ve noticed about these films is that they always take place in these upper middle class suburban high schools where nearly the entire student body is vehemently anti-Christian. I went to an upper middle class suburban high school and my experience was markedly different. That could just be because I’m from Texas but still, there was an element of paranoia to this film that felt more than a bit forced. It wasn’t enough for Joe to just not be interested in reading the Bible or going to church. No, Joe had to be a full-on sociopath who specifically tried to ruin a girl’s reputation just because she was a Christian. It’s all a bit melodramatic. It also doesn’t help that Steve comes across as everything that Joe claims he is. Despite the film’s intentions, Steve does come across as being preachy and a bit self-righteous. The actor playing him is believably awkward but also kind of creepy. Anyone who has ever had the experience of having a complete stranger start grilling you about your religious beliefs will empathize with those who don’t want to get trapped in a conversation with Steve.

After watching this film, I checked out its imdb page. I found two pieces of trivia. I have no idea if either of these are correct but, for the record, imdb claims that John Travolta was offered the role of the youth minister. That’s possible, I suppose. Though the film was released in 1978, it features a theater marquee advertising Marathon Man and Two-Minute Warning, which both came out in 1976. If the film was shot in 1976 than it was probably in pre-production in 1975. If the film was in pre-production in 1975, it’s totally possible that a relatively unknown John Travolta may have been offered the part. The other piece of trivia is that Kevin Costner appears as an extra during a high school basketball game. Costner was 21 in 1976 and was studying acting in college so, again, its possible. I certainly didn’t see him but, then again, I wasn’t looking.

Anyway, regardless of whether Costner is lurking in the background or not, Senior Year is forgettable. Today, it’s best viewed as being a time capsule of the era in which it was made. I mean, selling a van is a major plot point! This film couldn’t be more 70s if it tried.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Killer Shrews (dir by Ray Kellogg)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Genetic modification. Sure, it sounds like a good idea. But are the results ever worth it?

Dr. Marlowe Cragus (Baruch Lumet) thought it was a good idea. That why he and his daughter, Anne (Ingrid Goude), and Anne’s boyfriend, Jerry (Ken Curtis), all moved to an isolated island. Dr. Cragis though he could perform some experiments on some shrews and that he would unlock the secret of how to …. well, who knows what Dr. Cragis thought he was actually doing. (I mean, to be honest, who is really sure what a shrew really is?) Cragis claims that he was trying to end world hunger but that sounds like a convenient excuse. To be honest, it seems like Dr. Cragis was just experimenting for the sake of experimenting.

Unfortunately, Cragis’s experiments somehow led to the shrews turning into giant and carnivorous beasts. At first, the doctor kept them locked up. But then Anne broke up with Jerry and Jerry got drunk and he let all the shrews go free. Yep, it’s a mess. Now, the shrews are running around the island and the doctor and everyone else is trapped in the lab. Boat captain Thorne Sherman (James Best) has arrived to take everyone back to the mainland but, unfortunately, there’s a hurricane approaching. The humans will have to survive one more night on the island of …. THE KILLER SHREWS!

Directed by Ray Kellogg, The Killer Shrews was filmed in 1959. It was a regional production, filmed just outside of my hometown of Dallas and released to local drive-ins. It did well enough to get national distribution and it continues to be popular among aficionados of bad cinema. The main problem with The Killer Shrews is that the shrews themselves are obviously just dogs that are wearing shrew masks. For the most part, the dogs seem to be happy to be there. I’m pretty sure that I saw a few of them wagging their tails shortly before launching their attack on the humans. We’re told that the shrews are killers but they don’t look like they’ve ever killed anything. Instead, they look like very good boys. One gets the feeling that they were a lot of fun to play with between filming.

That said, The Killer Shrews is entertaining if you’re looking for a short movie that will inspire a good laugh or two. James Best and Ken Curtis play romantic rivals and the fact that they both attempt to give serious performances only serves to highlight the absurdity of a group of people being held prisoner by a pack of shrews. Baruch Lumet, the father of director Sidney Lumet, acts up a storm in the role of Dr. Cragis, yelling all of his dialogue like the stage veteran that he was. And, of course, the dogs playing the shrews appear to be having the time of their lives. Hopefully, someone tossed around a tennis ball with them after they finished their scenes because they definitely earned the reward.

The Killer Shrews is not exactly a killer movie but at least the dogs are cute!

International Horror Film Review: The Night Digger (dir by Alistair Reid)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1971 British film, The Night Digger, revolves around three people.

Maura Prince (Patricia Neal) lives in a dilapidated mansion out of London. She has never married and spends almost all of her time taking care of her blind mother, Edith (Pamela Brown). Edith goes out of her way to make sure that Maura will never have the courage to leave her and find happiness on her own. However, with the mansion falling apart around them, it’s becoming obvious that Maura cannot take care of the entire place on her own. That’s when a mysterious but handsome man named Billy Jarvis (Nichols Clay) rides up on his motorcycle and asks if the women need a handyman.

Billy has a dramatic story about his past, claiming that he lost almost everything that he owned as the result of a fire in a barn, one which also led to the death of his mother. Billy is charming and handsome and he ride a really impressive motorcycle and he looks good in a leather jacket. He represents youth but he’s also the epitome of the rebel without a cause, the sensitive but inarticulate Marlon Brando of The Wild One or the biker played by Peter Fonda in The Wild Angels. Some may look at him and only see a somewhat seedy character on a motorcycle but others look at him and see someone who is running from something and needs someone to take care of him. They see the soul of poet within the body of a drifter, someone who needs to escape from his past and who can also provide a better future. He’s the rebel without a cause, the one that everyone dreams about, even if some of those dreams are dreamt in secret. Though one may have rode a bicycle and the other was knight of the round table, there is much Nicholas Clay’s future performance as Lancelot in John Boorman’s Excalibur to be found in his performance in The Night Digger. Much like a groundkeeper in a D.H. Lawrence novel, he represents the secret and potentially dangerous earthy sensuality of Britain.

As a result, You certainly can not blame Maura for starting to fall in love with him. Nor can you blame Edith for wanting to have an athletic young man around as there have been stories about a madman who stalks the night, killing women. The Traveling Maniac, some have taken to calling him. Complicating the matter, though, is the fact that Billy just happens to be The Traveling Maniac. With Maura falling in love with him, will she discover the truth or will she become his next victim?

The Night Digger took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting much from this film when I watched it last year but it turned out to be rather clever and suspenseful thriller, one that told its story with a good combination of black humor and emotional honesty. Atmospherically directed by Alistair Reid and featuring a trio of excellent lead performances, The Night Digger was compelling compelling thriller, a gothic horror story with a great ending. This is definitely one to keep an eye out for!

Horror Film Review: I Walked With A Zombie (dir by Jacques Tourneur)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1943 horror film I Walked With A Zombie tells a zombie story that would probably seem strange to modern zombie fans. There’s no cannibalism. There’s no feasting on brains. There’s no talk about how the only way to stop a zombie is to shoot them in the head. In fact, the zombies in I Walked With A Zombie may be referred to as being the “living dead” but they’re not actually dead. Instead, if anything, they’ve been cursed. Maybe they’re possessed. Maybe they’ve been brainwashed. Maybe they’re lobotomized. Who can say for sure?

Instead of being the type of zombies that were made famous by George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, the zombies in I Walked With A Zombie hew closer to the zombies of Haitian legend. These zombies suffer from a sort of mental paralysis. Unable to think for themselves, they wander about in a sort of permanent limbo, trapped between life and death and under control of the voodoo priests who transformed them.

This moody and, at time, rather dream-like film deals with Besty Connell (Frances Dee), a Canadian nurse who has been hired by Paul Holland (Tom Conway), who owns a sugar plantation on a Caribbean island. Paul’s wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon) has apparently been taken ill and, as a result, is behaving strangely. Often, she wanders about with a glazed look in her eyes, almost as if she’s trapped in a sort of dream-state. Paul believes that it’s the result of the severe fever that Jessica previously suffered with. The locals, meanwhile, gossip that, right before Jessica was taken ill, she was having an affair with Paul’s alcoholic half-brother, Wesley (James Ellison). Betsy’s attempts to care for Jessica and understand her condition will lead to Betsy exploring not only the island’s voodoo culture but also …. walking with a zombie!

I Walked With A Zombie is a deliberately paced film, one that focuses more on creating and maintaining an ominous mood than on going for the type of jump scares that we’ve come to expect from most horror movies. I Walked With A Zombie is all about atmosphere and ambiguity. Indeed, it’s never determined for certain whether or not Jessica’s condition is due to a voodoo curse or if perhaps it really is just due to her earlier fever. It’s left to the audience to decide.

Directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton (the same time team behind the original Cat People), I Walked With A Zombie is an effective and well-acted film, one that also features some gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and an interesting subtext about colonialism. (Upon arriving on the island, Betsy discovers that the Holland family made their fortune through the slave trade and that they still have the figurehead of an old slave ship displayed in their courtyard.) It may not be frightening by today’s standards but it is still a thought-provoking film and one that should be seen by anyone who is a serious zombie fan.

Horror On The Lens: Monstroid: It Came From The Lake (dir by Kenneth Hartford)

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, we have a little indie film from 1980. This film was released under several names, including Monster. However, I prefer the title under which it has been included in several Mill Creek box sets: Monstroid: It Came From The Lake!

Monstroid tells the story of what happens when a monster emerges from a lake and starts killing people in Columbia. Superstitious villagers blame a local woman whom they believe to be a witch. Even though the town priest (and no horror fan should be surprised to discover that the priest is played by John Carradine) claims that he can exorcise the evil spirits that have possessed her, the villagers would rather burn her at the stake. Meanwhile, the local Big Evil Corporation has sent in Travis (James Mitchum) to take care of the monster!

And what a monster! Listen, there’s a lot of negative things that I could say about this low-budget film but the monster is simply adorable and must be seen by anyone who appreciates the rubber monsters that populated horror films in the days before CGI.

Plus, how can you resist a film that features not only Robert Mitchum’s son but John Carradine as well?

Enjoy Monstroid: It Came From The Lake!

October Positivity: You & Me, Us, Forever (dir by Dave Christiano)

Posted on October 14, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A 2008 film with an incredibly unwieldy title, Me & You, Us, Forever, tells the story of Dave (Michael Blain-Rozgay). Dave is an advertising exec. Originally from New York, he now lives in North Carolina. He has only recently gotten divorced and he’s still struggling with his feelings. His ex-wife makes it a point to call him from her new boyfriend’s house so that his name will appear on Dave’s caller ID. Dave’s teenage daughters only spend a limited amount of time with him and, even if they are surprisingly open to playing Scrabble with him, it’s obvious that they’re growing up without him. Dave’s business partner says that Dave needs to move on and just put his faith in God. Dave, however, would rather think about Mary (Sandi Fix).

Mary was the girl that Dave dated during his senior year of high school. He broke up with her while he was in college and he’s always regretted it. He starts to think that maybe his life would have been perfect if he had just married Mary. Dave’s business partners points out that God didn’t want Dave to marry Mary. (But did God want Dave to marry the woman who cheated on him and now taunts him by calling him from her boyfriend’s house?) One thing that no one mentions is that neither one of his daughters would exist if he had married Mary.

Even after Dave starts attending a Christian support group for divorced people and meet a single woman named Carla (Stacey J. Aswad), he can’t stop wondering about Mary. Even after he finds out that she is now married and has a very good life with her husband and her family, Dave cannot stop thinking about Mary. Even though everyone tells Dave that it’s a bad idea, he is determined to go to New York and see her.

The main problem with Me & You, Us, Forever (other than that really long title) is the fact that Dave’s dilemma is presented as being a crisis of faith when, in reality, he’s just an immature and selfish man who is having a midlife crisis. Everyone keeps telling Dave that God doesn’t want him to try to get back together with Mary but really, you don’t have to be a Christian to realize that Dave’s plan isn’t a good one. You just need common sense! I’m sure that a Muslim would have been just as quick to tell Dave that seeing Mary was a bad idea as Dave’s Christian business partner was. For that matter, I imagine many atheists would have had the same opinion. Dave’s a jerk, regardless of his religious beliefs.

This is a Dave Christiano film so, not surprisingly, there’s some talk about how divorce is the work of the devil. In reality, it’s sometimes best for people to get divorced. Good people get divorced for a lot of reasons and it’s not always as simplistic as one person screwing up while the other essentially remains blameless. (For instance, Dave never considers that his wife may have left him because she could tell he was still obsessed with an old high school girlfriend.) My parents got divorced and it wasn’t necessarily easy for me and it led to me acting out in a lot of ways when I was younger but, all these years later, I’m now mature enough to understand that it was exactly what they needed to do.

This film is a long 91 minutes. There are conversations that just seem to go on forever. That said, I do think that Christiano did an okay job with the scene in which Mary and Dave finally talk about their past and their present. That scene was handled with a sensitivity that’s missing from most of the movie. As well, I think Stacey J. Aswad gave a good performance as Carla. She made Carla into a sympathetic character. I couldn’t help but feel that she deserved a better friend than Dave.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Planet of the Dinosaurs (dir by James Shea)

Posted on October 14, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1977 film begins with a bunch of goofy-looking astronauts crash-landing on a desert planet. After their spaceship slowly sinks into a lake, the astronauts try to set up camp so that they can wait to be rescued. Unfortunately for them, there’s some dinosaurs living on the planet and the astronauts soon find themselves being stalked by prehistoric predators!

Now, it’s true that I said that this was unfortunate for the astronauts. However, it’s very fortunate for us the viewers because the dinosaurs are a hundred times more adorable than the astronauts. Indeed, the astronauts tend to be out-of-shape and the men have made some truly unfortunate hair decisions. The female astronauts, meanwhile, all seems as if they should be posing in front of a car at an auto show. Everyone delivers their lines with a good deal of forced drama, destroying the myth of the calm and cool astronaut. Sorry, Tom Wolfe, but there’s no right stuff to be found amongst this crew. Again, we are fortunate that this is one of those low-budget sci-fi films that made use of model dinosaurs and stop motion animation. There’s something just undeniably fun about watching a bunch of hammy, unknown actors pretend to be terrified of what appears to be a child’s toy. (The most menacing of the dinosaurs is a dead ringer for the dinosaur from the Toy Story films.) Planet of the Dinosaurs is a deeply silly movie but, if you’re a fan of dinosaurs and old timey special effects, you’ll find a lot to enjoy. Just don’t make the mistake of taking anything about it seriously. Of course, the fact that the majority of the astronauts look like they should be dancing under a disco ball instead of exploring space will probably ensure that you stop taking the film seriously long before even the first dinosaur shows up.

In fact, my only real complaint about this film is that there simply aren’t enough dinosaurs. Yes, there’s a T-Rex. And yes, there’s that one-horned dinosaur that looks like a really dangerous armadillo. There’s a few other dinosaurs as well but, to be honest, I feel like a Planet of the Dinosaurs should just be crawling with them. Instead, it appears that there were only six or seven dinosaurs on this planet. I guess it’s possible that there could have been more dinosaurs on the other side of the planet but still, the planet seemed to be pretty sparsely populated. Maybe the other dinosaurs were hibernating.

Now, you might be wondering how all these dinosaurs showed up on the planet. Early on, one of the astronauts establishes that the planet is on the same “evolutionary track” as Earth, it’s just several years behind. So, apparently, there are dinosaurs on every Earth-like planet. I guess that’s fine but I was hoping for a Planet of the Apes-style reveal, with the Statue of Liberty or some other monument suddenly showing up. A planet where dinosaurs evolved from men? That would have made the movie a true classic!

Even without the Statue of Liberty, Planet of the Dinosaurs is fun. Silly, but fun.

A Blast From The Past: The Vanishing Lady (dir by Georges Méliès)

Posted on October 14, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this short film from 1896, Georges Méliès shows off not one magic trick but actually four. He makes a woman disappear. He makes a skeleton appear. Then he makes the skeleton disappear and then he brings the vanishing lady back. Today, of course, we all know how these tricks were done but just imagine how audiences in 1896, many of whom were still amazed that movies could exist at all, would have reacted to this short film. This film provides a look into a simpler and more innocent time. Watching this film, I found myself wishing that I could feel the wonder at a movie that someone in 1896 would have. Sadly, audiences are far more jaded today.

Personally, I liked that both Méliès and the Vanishing Lady stepped back onstage to take a little bow. Even in those early days of cinema, they understood the importance of connecting with the audience.