Filmed in 1957 for a television program called Westinghouse Studio One, The Night America Trembled is a dramatization of the night that Orson Welles terrified America with his radio adaptation of War of The Worlds.
For legal reasons, Orson Welles is not portrayed nor is his name mentioned. Instead, the focus is mostly on the people listening to the broadcast and getting the wrong idea. That may sound like a comedy but The Night America Trembled takes itself fairly seriously. Even pompous old Edward R. Murrow shows up to narrate the film, in between taking drags off a cigarette.
Clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes, The Night America Trembled is an interesting recreation of that October 30th. Among the people panicking: a group of people in a bar who, before hearing the broadcast, were debating whether or not Hitler was as crazy as people said he was, a babysitter who goes absolutely crazy with fear, and a group of poker-playing college students. If, like me, you’re a frequent viewer of TCM, you may recognize some of the faces in the large cast: Ed Asner, James Coburn, John Astin, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty all make early appearances.
It’s an interesting little historical document and you can watch it below!
Kayla Anderson (Lindsey McKeon) wants to give her daughter, Kerry (Cathryn Dylan), a sweet 16 party that she’ll never forget. She hires a party planner but unfortunately, Lindy Shores (Katrina Begin) is a psycho party planner! Lindy only gets the job because she murdered the party planner that Kayla really wanted to hire and then she starts trying to corrupt Kerry. Lindy is who she says she is. This party is going to be murder!
You know what’s really psycho? Throwing a big 16th birthday party when you’ve still got an 18th birthday party, a high school graduation party, a college graduation party, an engagement party, a wedding reception, and a divorce party to plan for. Save your money! My 16th birthday, I got a cake with one candle and I had to beg my sisters to at least let me have the part with my name on it. And I was happy to have it! I didn’t a planner to know how to party.
I liked Psycho Party Planner because the daughter looked like she was 30 but she was still only celebrating her 16th birthday. It’s good to start denying your age early. Even though the Psycho Lindy turned out to have a lot of bad things up her sleeve, Kerry still got to have a party. It didn’t look like a great party to me but it was planned by a psycho party planner so I guess it was as good as it could be. The high school drill team performed and they were terrible. They’re not going to get to State with those moves. “If you can’t handle a birthday party, how are you going to handle the pressure of keeping everyone’s spirits up when our guys are losing to Lake Highlands?” as my old cheerleading coach used to say.
Psycho Party Planner was dumb but fun in a “What did I just watch?” way. Who would have guessed planning a party could be so dangerous? I’m going to plan all of my future parties myself so if they turn out to be psycho parties, I’ll know exactly who to blame!
DEAD TONE (2007), also known as 7EVENTY 5IVE, opens with a group of kids entertaining themselves while their parents are drinking and partying downstairs. The kids are playing a prank-calling game called “Seventy-Five,” where the goal is to place a random phone call and tell such a believable story that the person who answers will stay on the line at least 75 seconds. One guy seems particularly upset with the kids when they call him. Later that night, while everyone is sleeping, a psycho with an axe comes in the house and brutally murders all the parents while the kids hide and watch in terror. Jump forward ten years and most of the kids who survived the night of terror are now college students. Invited to a weekend party at a wealthy classmate’s mansion, the group resumes their prank-calling game. Needless to say, when the maniac from ten years earlier answers the phone, the members of the group find themselves being stalked and murdered again. Hopefully Detective John Criton (Rutger Hauer), who worked the original murders 10 years earlier, and his partner Anne Hastings (Gwendoline Yeo), will figure out who killer is and stop him before everyone dies!
DEAD TONE is directed by Brian Hooks and Deon Taylor, who also star in the film. They’ve created a gory, low-budget slasher that blends elements of ‘80s and ‘90s horror films with an urban twist. For a guy who did his share of prank calls as a kid, I think the “psycho on the receiving end of a prank call” storyline is pretty cool. And the opening scene where the kids watch as their parents are killed because of their phone calls is horrific and pulls you right into the story. Unfortunately, once we get past the interesting open, there’s nothing that special about the rest of the movie. The characters aren’t particularly memorable or likable, and they sure as hell aren’t very smart. Call me crazy, but I’m thinking that I would never make another prank call again if I survived a mass murder event that was brought on by prank phone calls. These folks have no such qualms, which may not make any sense in the real world, but I guess is necessary if you need more axe murders for your plot. I will admit that there are a few awesome kills in the film, especially if you enjoy a good beheading. I won’t spoil the scenes, but the ones I’m specifically thinking of are both surprising and jarring at the same time. I’m also the kind of guy who will watch anything featuring the legendary Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. DEAD TONE’s Detective John Criton isn’t a character highlight of his career, but I still enjoy watching him go through the motions of investigating the crimes both in the present and in the past. It’s a part that he could have completed in his sleep, but this movie would have benefited from more “Hauer time.”
Overall, DEAD TONE is the kind of movie to watch with little to no expectations. My wife and I enjoyed the film as we cuddled up on the couch and watched it a couple of nights before Halloween. It’s not great, but if you’re in the mood for a slasher movie with jump scares, silly characters, some decent gore, and even an acting legend thrown in for good measure, you could do a lot worse than DEAD TONE!
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
2022’s Holy Spider opens in the Iranian city of Mashahd. We follow a woman as she spend her night as a sex worker, standing on a street corners, going off with any man who stops for her, and hiding in the shadows whenever the infamous morality police are nearby. There’s nothing glamorous about her work. The men who pick her up are brutes who treat her like property and there’s little about the city that is beautiful or aesthetically pleasing. If anything, it looks bombed-out, as if no one could be bothered to repair any of the obvious cracks that are stretching across the city ancient’s facade. Towards the end of the night, the woman is picked up by a man who, in a harrowing scene, proceeds to choke her to death.
Journalist Arezoo Rahimi (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) arrives in the city to investigate the recent murders of several sex workers and immediately discovers that the authorities have no interest in discussing the case. When she pushes them, they taunt her about her private life and they snap at her for not properly covering her hair. Whenever she steps out into the street, she’s told that she’s going to get in trouble if she’s spotted by the Morality Police. (The attitude appears to be that it’s a greater crime for a woman to fail to fully cover her hair than for a man to kill a woman, whether her hair is properly covered or not.) Eventually, she teams up with a newspaper editor named Sharifi (Arash Ashtiani). Sharifi has been receiving letters from the murderer, ones in which he explains that he is cleansing the city in the name of Imam Reza, the eighth Shia Imam.
The murderer is a construction worker named Saeed Azimi (Mehdi Bajestani), a middle-aged man who previously served in the Iraq-Iran War and who it is suggested might be suffering from PTSD. On the outside, Saeed seems almost normal. He has friends. He has a family. He is very religious. To the outside viewer, he might not look like a killer. But, every night, he prowls the streets and he searches for potential victims. When Rahimi goes undercover as a sex worker, she comes close to becoming one of them.
More than just a recreation of a serial killer’s crimes, Holy Spider examines the misogynistic attitudes that allowed Saeed that get away with so many murders. Saeed himself becomes a folk hero amongst many Iranians, who are quick to say that they agree with his mission to cleanse the city. Even when on trial, Saeed is approached by members of the government who promise him his safety, though it soon becomes clear that their promises don’t necessarily mean much. The more that his crimes are celebrated, the more smug Saeed becomes. Even when his sentence comes down, Saeed remains convinced that he will be protected. Afterall, everyone seems to agree with him that the victims, and not the murderer, are to blame for their deaths.
Dark, disturbing, and ultimately infuriating, Holy Spider is a powerful film. The film’s power can be seen in the fact that it was not only banned in Iran but that the government also announced that anyone involved in the filming would also be censured. (Russia, a longtime ally of Iran, also banned the film.) Saeed is a hateful figure but even more hateful are the misogynists who celebrated him and nearly allowed him to get away with his crimes. Holy Spider may have been banned in Iran but it can still be seen in the rest of the world.
“You want to put some kind of explanation down here before you leave? Here’s one as good as any you’re likely to find. We’re bein’ punished by the Creator…”— John “Flyboy”
George A. Romero’s 1985 film Day of the Dead stands as an unflinching and deeply cynical meditation on the collapse of society amid a relentless zombie apocalypse, intensifying thematic and narrative complexities first introduced in Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Originally, Romero envisioned the film as an epic, describing it as “the Gone with the Wind of zombie films.” His screenplay featured above-ground scenes and a more expansive narrative, but budget cuts halved the original $7 million budget to $3.5 million, forcing a drastic paredown. While much grandiosity was lost, the trimming resulted in a tighter narrative and heightened the nihilistic tone, deepening the film’s focused exploration of humanity’s darkest aspects during apocalypse.
Set after civilization has collapsed, Day of the Dead places viewers in the suffocating confines of a missile silo bunker in Florida, where scientists and soldiers struggle for survival and solutions amid encroaching undead hordes. The claustrophobic atmosphere—born partly from the abandonment of Romero’s broader original sequences—intensifies the tension between the hopeful scientific pursuit of salvation and the harsh pragmatism of military authority. These competing ideologies escalate into authoritarian violence, embodying the fractured microcosm of a dying society.
Within this claustrophobic world, a third group—composed of characters Flyboy and McDermott—emerges as a stand-in for the rest of humanity. They observe the scientists and soldiers—institutions historically symbols of security and innovation—but witness how these deeply entrenched ways of thinking only exacerbate problems instead of solving them. This third faction characterizes humanity caught between rigid orders and doomed pursuits, reflecting Romero’s broader commentary on societal stagnation and fragmentation.
Central to this conflict are Dr. Logan, or “Frankenstein,” a scientist obsessed with controlling the undead through experimentation, and Captain Rhodes, the hardened soldier who believes survival demands ruthless control.
Logan’s controversial research seeks to domesticate and condition zombies, notably through his most celebrated subject, Bub—the undead zombie capable of rudimentary recognition and emotion—challenging assumptions about humanity and monstrosity.
Here the film benefits greatly from the extraordinary practical effects work of Tom Savini, whose contributions on Day of the Dead are widely considered his magnum opus. Savini’s makeup and gore effects remain unsurpassed in zombie cinema, continually influencing horror visuals to this day. Drawing from his experience as a combat photographer in Vietnam, Savini brought visceral realism to every decomposed corpse and violent injury. The close-quarters zombie encounters showcase meticulous practical work—detailed wounds, biting, and dismemberment—rendered with stunning anatomical authenticity that predates CGI dominance.
Bub, also a masterclass in makeup and animatronics, embodies this fusion of horror and humanity with lifelike textures and movements that blur the line between corpse and creature, rendering the undead terrifyingly believable.
The film captures the growing paranoia and cruelty as resources dwindle—food, ammunition, and medical supplies—and the fragile social order begins to shatter. The characters’ mounting desperation illustrates Romero’s thesis that humanity’s real enemy may be its own incapacity for cooperation.
The moral and social decay is vividly portrayed through characters like Miguel, whose mental breakdown sets destructive events in motion, and Rhodes, whose authoritarian survivalism fractures alliances and moral compass alike. Logan’s cold detachment and experiments push ethical boundaries in a world on the brink.
Romero’s direction combines claustrophobic dread with stark psychological terror, further amplified by Savini’s effects. The cinematography’s low lighting and tight framing create an oppressive environment, while graphic violence underscores a world irrevocably broken. The unsettling sound design—moans, silences, sudden outbreaks—immerses viewers in a relentless atmosphere of decay and fear.
Romero described Day of the Dead as a tragedy about how lack of human communication causes chaos and collapse even in this small slice of society. The dysfunction—soldiers and scientists talking past each other, eroding trust, spirals of paranoia—serves as a bleak allegory for 1980s America’s political and cultural fragmentation. Failed teamwork, mental health crises, and fatal miscommunication thrive as the bunker metaphorically becomes a prison of fractured humanity.
Though not as commercially successful as its predecessors, Day of the Dead remains the bleakest and most nihilistic entry in Romero’s Dead series. Its overall grim tone, combined with mostly unlikable characters, establishes it as the most desolate and truly apocalyptic film of the series. The characters often appear fractured, neurotic, and unable to escape their own destructive tendencies, making the story’s world feel even more hopeless and devastating.
Far beyond a simple gore fest, Day of the Dead serves as a profound social critique infused with psychological depth. It explores fear, isolation, authority abuse, and the ethical limits of science, reflecting enduring anxieties about society and survival. The film’s unsettling portrayal of humanity’s failings, embodied in broken relationships and moral decay, presents a harsh reckoning with what it means to be human when humanity itself is the ultimate threat to its own existence. This thematic complexity, combined with Romero’s unyielding vision and Savini’s unparalleled effects, crafts a chilling and unforgettable cinematic experience.
1962’s CarnivalofSouls was the only feature film to be directed by Herk Harvey. It was made on a budget of $33,000 and was filmed in Kansas and Utah, often without permits. The film was also the feature acting debut of model Candace Hilligoss, cast here as a emotionally withdrawn church organist who is involved in a serious car accident and then finds herself haunted by pasty-faced ghosts and surreal visions.
When it was initially released, CarnivalofSouls was dismissed by American critics. Indeed, it would a little over twenty years before the film started to be appreciated as both a classic independent film and also a truly eerie horror movie. Today, it’s recognized as a classic of the genre, an expressionistic ghost story that also works as a character study of a woman who is haunted by not just physical death but also emotional malaise.
Carnival of Souls is a Halloween tradition here at the TSL offices. This year, the tradition continues.
2007’s The List opens during the dying days of the American Civil War.
A group of wealthy plantation owners form a secret society. They pool together their fortunes and they each sign onto a list. Over the years, whenever a member of the Society passes away, their eldest male descendant replaces them on the List and also has access to the fortune that that the Society secretly holds.
In 2007, directionless attorney Renny Jacobsen (Chuck Carrington) is shocked when his father dies and leaves him next to no money. As Renny tells us over and over again, he really could have used some of his father’s fortune. However, his father does leave him a key the leads to Renny uncovering a tape that explains everything that he needs to know about the Society. All Renny has to do is sign his name to the List.
The Society is now run by Desmond Larochette (Malcolm McDowell) and we know that he’s evil because his name is Desmond Larochette and he’s played by Malcolm McDowell. Larochette seems to be more than happy to allow Renny to join the Society but he’s not quite as happy that another member of the group died and only left behind a female heir, Jo Johnston (Hilarie Burton). The members of the Society are faced with quite a quandary. Should they allow a woman to join their society? And, if not, what should they do now that she know about the Society’s existence?
When Jo goes to the mansion for the Society’s meeting, she spots a portrait of a gray-haired gentleman and asks who he is. Gus Eicholtz (Pat Hingle) explains that the painting is of John C. Calhoun, who served as Vice President under Andrew Jackson. “He looks angry,” Jo says and honestly, that was a piece of historical and artistic criticism that was so simple-minded that Jo really should have been disqualified from joining the Society at that very moment.
First off, how are you going to join a Southern secret society if you don’t know how John C. Calhoun is? Secondly, the portrait in question is actually a pretty famous one. George Alexander Haley painted it while Calhoun was Secretary of State. Even if you don’t know who John C. Calhoun is, chances are that you’ve seen the painting. Finally, there’s the claim that “He looks angry.” The painting was completed in 1845. Everyone looked angry in 1840s! Even the noted bon vivant Henry Clay looked angry in his 1848 State Department portrait. (And Clay actually had his picture taken for his official portrait. Imagine how furious he would look if someone had painted him?)
Anyway, Renny joins the society but Jo does not, But then Renny discovers that it’s not as easy to get his hands on the money as he thought and he spends the entire movie complaining about it. That’s pretty much it. There is some suggestion that Desmond might have demonic powers, but it’s not really explored. Another heir dies mysteriously and it seems like Jo is being targeted as well. Again, it’s not really clear why. In the end, Renny puts God before the money but it kind of comes out of nowhere. It’s a muddled story and, by the end of the film, it’s still a struggle to figure out what it all meant. At the very least, Malcolm McDowell seemed to be having fun, playing an evil character and speaking in an almost indecipherable accent.
For today’s horror on television, we’re very happy to present to you, Dead of Night!
From 1977, this television film is a horror anthology, made up of three stories directed by Dan Curtis and written by Richard Matheson. In the first story, a youngish Ed Begley, Jr. travels through time. In the 2nd story, Patrick Macnee plays a man whose wife is apparently being menaced by a vampire. And in the third story, Joan Hackett plays a mother who brings her dead son back to life, just to discover that sometimes it’s best to just let sleeping corpses lies.
The entire anthology is good, though the third story is clearly the best and the most frightening. Not only is it scary but it’s got a great twist ending.
Hey, hey, wait just one second. Lifeforce is a movie everyone treasures. Here’s Arleigh’s take on the film. Check that out first and then double back here if you like.
Lifeforce (1985, dir by Tobe Hooper)
Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce is one of those films that had a lot of play in my Grandmother’s house, primarily because of my younger Aunt, Puddin. Puddin was the other movie lover on my Dad’s side of the family, the youngest of his generation. While she couldn’t fully make the connections between actors or directors the way my father could, she loved films all the same. With films like Marnie, West Side Story, Conan the Barbarbian, she spent most of her free time immersed in movies. If you wanted to see her swoon, mention Sean Connery, Tyrone Power or Arnold Schwarzenegger in her presence. She had a habit of using movies she watched often as white noise when cleaning around the house. As a result, we saw Lifeforce a lot growing up. She adored the film mainly because the two heroes in it barely made any mistakes, but most importantly for Henry Mancini’s score. Besides, It’s a Cannon film. You know it’s good.
Lifeforce is the story of one of the greatest buddy pairings in of the 1980s. Yeah, Beck and Gallagher did awesome stuff in The Hidden. Riggs and Murtaugh solved the cases no matter how thin the leads were, and even with all his technology, Alex Murphy still needed Lewis for backup. These all pale in comparison to Lifeforce‘s Colonel Carlsen (Steve Railsback, Helter Skelter) and Colonel Caine (Peter Firth, The Hunt for Red October). The two characters’ laser focus and quick thinking help to keep the film moving, despite how crazy things can and do get. They also manage to have each other’s back in nearly every situation. They aren’t without troubles, however. Poor Carlsen is plagued with nightmares of making out with naked space vampires.
Halley’s Comet returns close to Earth. With it comes an incredibly large umbrella shaped ship that is discovered by the crew of the Churchill. Col. Carlsen, along with the other astronauts, find a series of sleeping humanoid bodies inside and bring 3 (two males and one female) on board. When the Churchill’s signal is lost, the Columbia is sent out to retrieve them. The crew is lost, Carlsen is missing, but the 3 alien bodies are brought back home to Earth for study. This goes about as well as one would hope, with the Space Girl (Mathilda May, Becoming Collette) waking up and causing havoc throughout the local Space Institute before walking away naked, into the night. Anyone she comes into contact with and kisses becomes an energy vampire, requiring a transfusion, else they shrivel and turn into dust.
Since we’re dealing with space vampires, I should inform you now that there’s quite a bit of nudity and maybe just a wee bit of sexual tension in Lifeforce. The lines between Rabid and Showgirls comes kind of close in all this. When Carlsen forces a possible suspect to divulge the location of the Space Girl, slapping her up a bit, he tells Caine he should leave. Caine’s response is that he’s “a natural voyeur”. Does much of it make sense? No. Was it entertaining? Sure. The third act of Lifeforce is the best part, with all of London just a mess. Despite all this, Carlsen & Caine split up to save the day.
The cast for the film is nice. In addition to Railsback and Firth, we’ve got a Dune crossover with both Freddie Jones and Patrick Stewart on hand. We also have a small cameo with Dragonslayer’s John Hallam as a nurse. The best role other than the leads go to Frank Finlay and to Mathilda May. Finley’s Doctor Fallada is kind of a Van Helsing like character, piecing together all of the clues so our heroes can take the proper action. May, though she’s not given a lot to say (or to wear, for that matter) makes for an impressive villain that talks with her eyes.
The effects for Lifeforce came by way of John Dykstra, who worked on Firefox and The Empire Strikes Back. He’d later go on to work on Invaders From Mars for Hooper. Musically, Henry Mancini’s score helps to carry the film along. Honestly, I’ve only ever known him from the Pink Panther scores, so I quite enjoyed it. I always let the end credits play through for the music. Overall, Lifeforce is a great watch if vampires are your thing and nudity isn’t too much of a problem. In my mind, The Adventures of Carlsen & Caine would rival some of the best supernatural tales.
In examining this, I also found that there are some connections between this and Hammer Films’ Five Million Years to Earth (a.k.a. Quatermass and the Pit). I’m still on the look out for that one.
In Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, Col. Carlsen & Col. Caine aren’t playing around.
Through the Shattered Lens 