Category Archives: Film Review

Horror on the Lens: Bride of the Gorilla (dir by Curt Siodmak)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1951 film, Bride of the Gorilla, Raymond Burr plays a plantation manager who commits a murder.  Unfortunately, for him, the murder is observed by a witch who promptly puts a curse of Burr.  Now, every time the sun goes down, Burr transforms into a gorilla and goes wild in the jungle.

Basically, it’s kind of like The Wolf Man, just with a less sympathetic protagonist and a gorilla instead of a werewolf. Just in case we missed the similarities, Lon Chaney, Jr. plays the film’s nominal hero, a police commissioner who suspects that something weird might be happening with Burr.  Apparently, the plan was originally for Chaney to play the gorilla and for Burr to play the policeman but, because Chaney was dealing with a serious alcohol problem at the time, the roles were reversed.

Also in the cast, playing the role of Dina, is Barbara Payton, the tragic actress who is best known for being at the center of a love triangle involving actors Tom Neal and Franchot Tone.  In 195000, Neal attacked Tone and beat him so severely that Tone spent 18 hours in a coma.  Tone was notably shaky onscreen for the rest of his film career while Neal spent a few years in prison.  After the incident between Tone and Neal, Payton could only get roles in B-movies like this one.  Tragically, she would pass away, in 1967, of heart and live failure.  She was only 39 years old.

October Positivity: Time Changer (dir by Rich Christiano)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2002 movie, Time Changer, tells the story of Russell Carlisle (D. David Morin).  Russell is a bible professor who has written a book called The Changing Times.  The Changing Times encourages everyone to live a good, moral life but it doesn’t specifically state that they should live a good, moral life because Jesus says so.  Dr. Norris Anderson (Gavin MacLeod) argues that the book will actually not lead people to become better but will instead lead them away from Christianity by convincing them that all they have to do is be nice.  Carlisle disagrees.

Luckily, Anderson just happens to have a time machine in his basement!  When Russell comes over to discuss the book, Anderson suggests that Russell go into the future and see just how changed the world has become.  Mostly to humor Anderson, Russell agrees and steps into the machine.

And suddenly, Russell Calirlise is in the year 2002!

What does Russell discover?  He learns that even movies about good people still feature things that he finds objectionable.  He discovers that even people who go to church don’t always live a perfect life.  In 1890, Russell was shocked to learn that the divorce rate was 5% so you can only imagine how he reacts when he goes to 2002 and continually runs into people who talk about their ex-wives.  Russell also gets upset when he hears some teenage girls talking about sneaking out of the house and going on an unchaperoned date.  The horrors!

To be honest, there’s been a lot of movies that have told similar stories to Time Changer.  Someone from the past comes to the “present,” and is shocked to discover how much the world has changed.  Time Changer is unique that it’s totally on Russell’s side and essentially argues that we would all be better off if we still embraced the culture of the 1890s.  If that sounds a bit preachy, that’s because it is a bit preachy.  Interestingly enough, the film has no trouble having Russell explain how he, as someone from 1890, feels about dating, entertainment, and honesty but it leaves out how an 1890 man like Russell would have viewed women or people of color.  Russell is shocked by the casual use of bad language but, conveniently for the film’s efforts to make him a sympathetic character, he doesn’t raise an eyebrow at suddenly finding himself in a multiracial society.  It’s easy to argue for a return to 1890 morality when you ignore everything that was bad about the 1890s.

That said, the film has a few intentionally amusing moments, even if they’re exactly the type of moments that you would expect to see in a film about time travel.  (For example, Russell finds himself fascinated by a light switch.)  D. David Morin gives a likable performance Russell and the scene where Anderson hurriedly explains how time travel works as a nice little satire of the genre.  It’s far too preachy to really be effective but Time Changer is not a total waste of time.  That said, I would far rather live in 2022 than 1890.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Revealer (dir by Luke Boyce)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Taking place in 1980s Chicago, Revealer tells the story of two seemingly different women.

Angie (Caito Aase) is a stripper who spend most of her day in an incredibly sleazy peep show booth.  The men that she dances for are a collection of grotesque pervs.  (Keep an eye out and you’ll notice a sign warning that “wet dollar bills” will not be accepted.  Ewww!)  Angie is under no illusions about where she’s working or who is paying to watch her but she needs the money.  She’s putting up with a lot of crap in order to giver her nephew the type of stable life that she’s never had and, understandably, she doesn’t have much patience for anyone who would judge her for it.

Sally (Shaina Schrooten) is someone who spends almost all of her time judging.  For weeks, she has been leading protests in front of Angie’s place of employment.  As soon as Angie shows up for an extra shift, she is confronted by Sally.  Sally claims that Angie is “a harlot” who is leading people down the path of sin and damnation.  Angie says that Sally is just jealous because she’s never truly live her life.

Together …. they solve crimes!

No, actually, they don’t.  Instead, they find themselves forced to deal with some theological issues when a horned demon unleashes an army of snakes on the world.  Angie is trapped in her peep show booth, with no way to get out.  Sally, fleeing from the demons, ends up outside the same booth.  Sally is convinced that the apocalypse has begun.  Angie just wants to get back to her nephew.  Despite their differing views and their initially antagonistic relationship, Angie and Sally are going to have to work together in order to survive.  Along the way, hidden truths are revealed.  Angie and Sally learn that they’re not so different and they even start to become friends.  But does that matter, considering that the world apparently ended in 1987?

I had a mixed reaction to Revealer.  On the one hand, there’s something wonderfully subversive about setting a film about the end of the world in the distant past.  If nothing else, it keeps the viewer off-balance.  (I was reminded a bit of how 2001’s Donnie Darko predicted that the world would end in 1988.)  As well, the two leads both did a good job with their characters, adding depth and nuance to two roles that could have easily become clichés.  In the role of Sally, Shaina Schrooten gave an especially good performance.  I wasn’t particularly shocked when Sally revealed her big secret but Schrooten’s performance still made the scene effective.

On the negative side, the snakes were frightening but the demon who controlled them obviously fell prey to the film’s low budget and looked a bit less impressive.  As well, the script itself was often overwritten.  Sally and Angie’s constant debate over religion felt more than a little heavy-handed.  (I mean, it’s easy to win an argument when the screenwriter is on your side.)  Even more importantly, they tended to disrupt the flow of the film.  Too many scenes stopped dead in their tracks so that Sally could quote the Bible and Angie could get upset about it.  Since neither had anything to say about their beliefs that hadn’t already been said in a hundred other movies, their arguments were occasionally a bit dull, despite the best efforts of Caito Aase and Shaina Schrooten.

Revealer was uneven, though the ending was certainly effective and both of the lead actresses did a good job bringing their characters to life.  Watching the film, I wondered if maybe the world did end in 1987 and the rest of us just haven’t noticed yet.

The Fear (1995, directed by Vincent Robert)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Psychology student Richard (Eddie Bowz) wants to conduct a study.  After getting permission from the head of his department, Dr. Arnold (Wes Craven!), Richard gathers together a group of students and takes them to his family’s cottage.  He introduces the group to “Morty,” a life-sized wooden dummy who Richard has had ever since he was a child.  Morty, Richard explains, was carved by a Native American shaman and was then stolen by Richard’s grandfather.  Each member of the group is told to confess their greatest fear to “Morty.”  Even Richard takes part, confessing that he was scared of Morty when he was growing up.

File this one under “it seemed like a good idea at the time,” because the weekend quickly heads south.  Richard’s uncle (Vince Edwards) shows up unannounced with his new girlfriend, Tanya (Anna Karin).  Members of the group start to disappear and one of them is assaulted at a Christmas carnival, leading the group to suspect that one of them might be the rapist who has been attacking women on campus.  Morty starts to show up in an unexpected rooms in cottage and it appears that everyone’s fears are starting to come true!

The Fear is one of those films that used to show up on late Cinemax but I mostly remember it because it was one of those movies that always seemed to be on display at our local Blockbuster.  The VHS cover featured Morty giving someone the side-eye and looking dangerous.  Morty is the best thing about the movie.  Just looking at him is unsettling.  Why would Richard be stupid enough to tell people to confess their fears to Morty?

Morty is creepy but the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do with him.  Sometimes, Morty is evil and can move on his own and even seems to be capable of possessing someone.  Other times, the movie seems to suggests that everything that’s happening is just in Richard’s head and Morty is just a wooden dummy.  The story becomes impossible to follow as every member of the group is revealed to have a secret and Richard is finally forced to admit that there is something that he’s even more scared of than Morty.  (If, as the film suggests, Morty is mostly after Richard, why does Morty first waste so much time on the other members of the group?)  The Fear is not without ambition.  It takes the therapy scenes seriously and Eddie Bowz does seem like he’s trying to give a believable performance as Richard.  It seems like the people involved wanted to make a good movie.  But once everyone’s fears start to come true and the movie moves into a ridiculous subplot about Richard and his stepsister, the movie is too disjointed to work.  It doesn’t help that most of the fears are too mundane to really translate into an imaginative death scene.  By the end of it all, not even Morty’s that scary anymore.

International Film Review: Revenge in the House of Usher (dir by Jess Franco)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1982 Spanish horror film, Revenge in the House of Usher, Antonio Mayans plays Dr. Alan Harker.  Harker receives an invitation to visit the estate of his former mentor, Prof. Eric Usher (Howard Vernon).  Usher is elderly and in poor health.  He’s attended to by several mysterious servants, including his physician, Dr. Seward (Daniel White).  While trying to figure out what has led to Prof. Usher’s current state, Harker discovers that….

Well, here’s where it gets confusing, as things tend to do whenever one tries to discuss the later films of director Jess Franco.  There are actually three different versions of Revenge In the House of Usher and each one of them tells a totally different story.  In the first version, Usher is revealed to have been a decadent, Giles de Rais-style serial killer who has murdered hundreds of women through the years and who is now being haunted by their vengeful ghosts.  Apparently, that version didn’t go over well when it made its debut at the 1983 Festival Internacional de Madrid de Cine Imaginario y de Ciencia-ficción.  The audience booed and laughed and Franco couldn’t convince any distributors to purchase the film from him.

So, Franco filmed thee more scenes that established that Usher wasn’t just a serial killer but that he was also a vampire!  (This explains why two characters in this Edgar Allan Poe adaptation were suddenly given names from Dracula.)  This reception of this version was not considered to be much of an improvement on the reception of the version where Vernon was just a serial killer.

With the backing of Eurocine, Franco then put together a third version of the film.  This time, he turned it into another Dr. Orlof film, though Howard Vernon’s character was still referred to as being Prof. Usher.  In this version, Harker discovers that Usher and his elderly servant Morpho (Olivier Mathot) have spent years abducting women from the village and using their blood to keep Usher’s daughter alive.  This leads to a solid 15 minutes of flashbacks to Usher’s past activities, all of which are taken directly from The Awful Dr. Orlof.  Just as in the other two version of the film, Usher is haunted by the ghosts of his victims.  As his mental state deteriorates, so does his castle.

As far as I know, the third version of the film is the only one that currently exists.  The first version is now considered to be lost.  For his part, Franco claimed that the first version was a misunderstood masterpiece but he was still willing to turn it into another Orlof film so that he could at least make some money off of it.  Franco may have been an often frustrated artist but he was also a pragmatist.

Considering its production history, it’s not surprising that Revenge in the House of the Usher is a bit of a disjointed film.  It’s only 91 minutes long (and 15 of those minutes is taken up with black-and-white footage from The Awful Dr. Orlof) but this film still feels like it has several false endings.  There were so many times that I thought the film had to be over, just for it to keep going.  Watching the film, one can sense that Franco is willing to try almost anything to finally wrap the film’s somewhat incoherent story up.  That said, Howard Vernon brings the right amount of haughty decadence to the role of the decaying Usher and Franco’s decision to film in an actual castle (and to largely utilize natural light) does give the film perhaps a bit more atmosphere than one would expect.  This is a lesser Franco film but it does do a good job of capturing the bizarre logic of dreams.  The film is, at times, so incoherent that it’s actually rather fascinating.

Following this film, Vernon would play Dr. Orloff one final time, in Franco’s surprisingly entertaining Faceless.

Horror Film Review: Cabin Fever (dir by Eli Roth)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When this Boy Meets World
Boy Meets World
Wandering down this road, that we call life
Is what we’re doin’
It’s good to know I have friends that will always
Stand by me
When this Boy Meets World

I imagine that I should probably apologize to Rider Strong for starting this review by quoting the theme song from the final few seasons of Boy Meets World.  I’m sure that when Strong agreed to star in the original Cabin Fever, he was hoping that the playing Paul would take him far away from his best-known role of Shawn Hunter.  But I have to admit that whenever I think of Cabin Fever (which, admittedly, is not often) I always think of it as being Boy Meets Flesh Eating Virus.

Cabin Fever tells the story of a group of stupid college students, including Rider Strong, who decide to spend Spring Break at a remote cabin in the woods.  They’ve got weed, beer, and plans for a wild, sex-fueled weekend.  Unfortunately, the majority of them also end up with a flesh-eating virus.  It turns out the virus has been infecting people and animals all around the cabin.  People are going crazy as their flesh decays and peels off of their bones.  It’s a messy virus.  With the police struggling to contain the spread, a group of locals have decided that it’s up to them to kill off anyone who is infected.

One member of the group grabs the beer and runs off so that he can spend the weekend drunk and in isolation,  The other members of the group are stranded in the cabin and the surrounding woods.  Bodies are falling apart and dogs are eating their owners.  It’s Boy Meets Pandemic.

This was Eli Roth’s directorial debut and he didn’t hold back on the gore.  While we really don’t know much about the college students in the cabin (beyond the fact that they’re all dumbasses and one of them is played by Rider Strong), we learn everything that you could possibly want to know about what that flesh-eating virus does to its victims.  The film might as well be called “Nom nom nom,” because it’s all about eating flesh.  Roth is also shameless about paying homage (or ripping off, depending on how much you like Roth) to the horror films that influenced him.  Night of the Living Dead comes to mind, especially the ending.

(Personally, I like the fact that, with his first film, Eli Roth declared himself to be a lover of horror.  Cabin Fever was released in 2002, long before the current mainstream horror boom.  Eli Roth was openly celebrating horror at a time when many critics were still writing it off.)

Cabin Fever is a hit-or-miss affair, with the emphasis on miss.  The virus is scary because it’s so nasty but the characters themselves are so boring that most viewers won’t care when they get infected.  I did like Giuseppe Andrews’s performance as a weird deputy but otherwise, no one is the cast makes much of an impression until after they’ve lost their skin.  They’re walking down this road that we call life …. and now they’re dead.

Viewed today, of course, it’s hard not to compare the flesh-eating virus to COVID or Monkeypox or whatever the latest disease is.  If Cabin Fever were made today, the gun-toting locals would have been the heroes and the college students would have been the villains for daring to try to leave the cabin.  Yesterday’s villains and today’s heroes and vice versa.  For many, walking down this road that we call life has never felt more uncertain, even without a flesh-eating virus to worry about.

Horror on the Lens: Night of the Ghouls (dir by Edward D. Wood, Jr.)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

GhoulsdvdToday’s movie is Ed Wood’s sequel to Bride of the Monsters.  In Night of the Ghouls, con man Dr. Alcula (Kenne Duncan) moves into Bela Lugosi’s old mansion and pretends to talk to the dead.  What Alcula doesn’t realize is that the house is actually haunted (by Tor Johnson’s Lobo, among others) and real ghosts don’t appreciate pretend ghosts.

What can you say about a film like of Night of the Ghouls?  It’s an Ed Wood film, with all that suggests.  However, how can you resist a film that starts with Criswell sitting up in his coffin and providing commentary?

The role of Dr. Alcula was originally written for Bela Lugosi.  After Lugosi’s death, veteran actor and longtime Wood friend Kenne Duncan got the role instead.  Also of note, Wood appears twice in this film.  Not only does his picture appear on a wanted poster in the police station but Wood also plays one of the ghouls.

October Positivity: Pamela’s Prayer (dir by Dave Christiano)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1998 film, Pamela’s Prayer, opens with a title card that informs us that “Pamela Bucklin” got married in 1992 when she was 22 years old.  It’s a bit of an odd opening, because I imagine that there were a lot of 22 year-olds who got married in 1992.

The film then flashes back to the 70s and we learn that, after her mother died in childbirth, Pamela was raised by her father, Wayne (Rick Scheiderman).  Wayne works at the family business, a Christian film library which specializes in sending films (like this one!) to church groups and evangelical retreats.  Wayne prays with Pamela every night.  As Pamela grows up, he makes clear to her that she’s to wait until marriage.  From Wayne’s point of view, that means no dating, no kissing, no male friends at all.  Needless to say, once Pamela becomes a teenager, she starts to resent Wayne’s protectiveness but, since this is a faith-based film, Pamela’s rebellion is not only very chaste but it only lasts for one night and it leads to a sleazy boy spreading rumors about her.  Later, that same boy goes on a date with Jessica, who is also Pamela’s best friend, and things do not end well.  When Pamela informs Wayne about all of this, Wayne can barely suppress smirk.  It’s a real “I Told You So” moment.

Fortunately, there’s a nice boy working at the Christian Film Library and eventually, he and Pamela have one of those courtships where they don’t even hold hands.  After getting Wayne’s permission, they marry.  (Jessica, being the maid of honor, can only wonder why she has yet to find the one.)  Having waited 22 years to even kiss a boy, Jessica decides that she can wait for a few minutes more and she calls her father …. ON HER WEDDING NIGHT! …. so that they can pray together over the phone.

I think that I’ve proven over the years that I can be fair when it comes to judging faith-based films on their own merits but seriously, Pamela’s Prayer is exactly the type of faith film that drives other people crazy.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  Some people choose not to have sex before marriage and, if that’s their decision, that’s fine.  Personally, I think it’s a bit foolish to go into a commitment like marriage blind but whatever.  The problem with Pamela’s Prayer, though, is that its emphasis on purity feels rather cult-like and it’s never really Pamela’s decision not to date or to kiss.  Instead, it’s all due to Pamela’s father ordering her to wait.  One gets the feeling that Pamela spent the first 22 years of her life being controlled by father and now she’ll spend the next 60 or 70 years being controlled by her husband.  What does Pamela want?  The film seems to suggest that it really doesn’t matter.

Christian films always seem to struggle when it comes to dealing with sex.  I guess it’s understandable when you consider that, especially in the 90s, the majority of these films were made to be shown at church meetings and to youth groups.  An honest discussion about sex and attraction and the suggestion that sex can be more than just a marital obligation would probably have scandalized the film’s target audience.  That’s one reason why films like this always seem to resort to the best friend who gets “in trouble.”  In this film, it leads to a telling of the story of Jesus and the woman accused of adultery, with the emphasis being not on Jesus ordering people not to cast stones but instead on Jesus saying, “Go and sin no more.”  To me, that’s missing the most important part of the story.  Don’t throw stones, people!

In the end, Pamela’s Prayer is about as effective as an old purity ring.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Creature of Destruction (dir by Larry Buchanan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1967 film from venerable B-movie director Larry Buchanan, a psychic con artist uses hypnosis to bring back into existence a prehistoric, humanoid amphibian.

Wait?

What?

Okay, so the story doesn’t make much sense.  In fact, I would be lying if I said that I fully understood the film, despite the fact that I sat through all 88 minutes of it on Saturday night.  Basically, Dr. Basso (Les Tremayne) is a hypnotist and an occult historian.  He’s bitter about the fact that the world doesn’t appreciate him or take him seriously, despite the fact that he spends almost the entire film wearing a tuxedo and he has a head of silver hair that would have made even the great Criswell jealous.  So, Basso decides that the best way to prove his powers would be start predicting when people are going to die.  And the way he does that is by hypnotizing his assistant, Doreena (Pat Delaney).

Somehow, hypnotizing Doreena causes this prehistoric humanoid monster thing to rise out of the nearby lake so that it can kill whoever Dr. Basso wants dead.  It’s interesting that Dr. Basso could figure out how to bring an extinct creature back to life but he could come up with a less destructive way to prove his powers.  This is just my opinion but it seems like he could have just displayed the prehistoric monster and that would have proven his powers far more effectively than committing murders.  Dr. Basso’s plan is needlessly complicated.  Neither Dr. Basso nor the film ever seem to consider what would happen if he was asked to prove his powers while performing somewhere that wasn’t conveniently located near a lake.  If Dr.  Basso ever plays Vegas, he’s in trouble.

Anyway, it falls of Lt. Blake (Roger Ready) and Captain Dell (Aron Kincaid) to figure out how to stop Dr. Basso.  Captain Dell is not just an expert on the occult but he’s also an Air Force psychiatrist, so he goes through the entire movie wearing his uniform.  Dell being in the Air Force doesn’t really figure into the plot otherwise.  He could just as easily be in private practice.  One gets the feeling that he was made an Air Force captain just because someone had the uniform and it looked good on Aron Kincaid.

Creature of Destruction is a fairly confusing film.  Unfortunately, it’s also a rather boring film.  Larry Buchanan was a prolific director but he was never a particularly good one.  Some directors knew how to take advantage of a low budget and less than compelling actors.  Unfortunately, Buchanan really wasn’t one of them.  Still, the lake scenery is nice and it’s kind of fun to watch the monster waddle across the screen.  As  well, there are two musical interludes that come out of nowhere but which are amusing in a late 60s beach movie sort of way.  So, the film has that going for it.  Otherwise, not even hypnosis will help you get through Creature of Destruction.

Shrieker (1998, directed by David DeCoteau)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Six college students decide to stick it to the man by avoiding pricey dorm living and instead squatting in an abandoned hospital.  That makes sense because we all know that college is too damn expensive and that student housing is rip-off.  The students may have made a mistake picking the hospital, though.  Guess what?  That hospital was abandoned for a reason!  Years ago, a “shrieking” murderer killed all of the doctors and the nurses.  Some say the murderer was a crazed patient while others say it was a monster summoned by Satanists.  No sooner has mathematics major Clark (Tanya Dempey) moved into the hospital than everyone starts to hear the sound of shrieks coming from the basement.  Not only is there someone else already living in the basement but, somehow, the Shrieker has also been summoned!  Once people start dying, the suspicion is directed at Clark because she’s the newest resident.  But Clark thinks that, thanks to her skill with numbers and computers, she’s figured out who is actually responsible and how the Shrieker selects its victims.  She may have even figured out how to defeat the Shrieker but will she be able to get anyone to listen to her?

From Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment, this is one of those low-budget direct-to-video horror films that used to show up on late night Cinemax.  Unfortunately, it’s pretty tame, with none of the gore or anything else that we typically associate with Full Moon Entertainment.  The Shrieker itself looks good but it’s never around for long and too many of its attacks are just filmed as a sudden close-up of the Shrieker’s face.  The characters are all obnoxious but most of them die so it’s not a problem.  Alison Cuffe plays the role of the token communist with a lot of relish but it’s hard not to wonder what Linnea Quigley could have done with that role.  That would have been something to shriek about.