A Blast From The Past: The Procrastinator (dir by Herk Havey)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Goddammit, Jean let everyone down again!

Jean is at the center of The Procrastinator, a short educational film from 1952. Jean has a history of putting stuff off and letting down her friends, her parents, her peers, and probably the entire state of Kansas as well. Still, despite the fact that Jean has repeatedly shown that she can’t be trusted with any responsibility, her fellow students decide to give her some responsibility. When Jean continues to procrastinate, they all get mad at her but you know what? Is it really Jean’s fault that they gave her a job that she obviously couldn’t handle?

What I’m saying is stop being so judgmental! Everyone has their own way. Some people get things done early. Some people wait until the last minute. And then there are people like me who make plans to do everything early but who still end up waiting until the last second regardless. For example, my original plan for this year was to write all of my Horrorthon reviews in May and June and then spend October in a state of blissful relaxation. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. But, to be honest, I kind of enjoy the pressure of having to get things done at the last minute. I do my best work under pressure, I think.

Now, if you’re wondering why I’m sharing this video in October, it’s because this film was directed by Herk Harvey. Harvey made a career out of directing short educational films but, to horror audiences, he’s best known for directing a classic horror film called Carnival of Souls. Carnival of Souls is a film that I’ll be sharing in a few days. On the surface, The Procrastinator may not appear to have much in common with Carnival of Souls. However, I think you can compare Jean’s refusal to do things in a timely fashion to Candace Hilligoss’s refusal to accept the reason for why she keeps seeing ghosts following her everywhere she goes. So, in way, both of these films take place in the same universe. Call it the Herkiverse.

Watch and decide for yourself!

Horror On The Lens: House On Haunted Hill (dir by William Castle)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The original The House on Haunted Hill is a classic and one that we make it a point to share every Halloween. And since October is nearly over, now seems like the perfect time to do so!

Be sure to check out Gary’s review by clicking here!

Enjoy Vincent Price at his best!

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Mulberry Street (dir by Jim Mickle)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Rats are the freaking worst, aren’t they?

Seriously, I can see the good in almost all of the creatures of the world but I hate rats and I hate cockroaches and I hate both of them for the exact same reason. They’re just so dirty! I mean, they are two of the filthiest animals on the planet. Look up the source of any plague that nearly wiped out humanity in the pre-modern era and rats are somehow going to be to blame. I’m very proud to say that there has never been a single rat or a mouse in any home in which I’ve ever lived. (When I was in college, however, I did once see a mouse running from classroom to classroom. Consider that. I keep my home cleaner than the average college.)

Mulberry Street is a horror film from 2006 that gives us an entirely new reason to dislike rats. Not only do they spread the Bubonic Plague but they also turn people into human/rat/zombie hybrids! At least, that’s what happens in this film. Set in New York City during one very long and very hot summer day, Mulberry Street imagines a world in which the rats get tired of hiding in the subways and they finally take over Manhattan. People are bitten. People are transformed into humanoid rats. People go crazy and attempt to infect other people. It get wild out there. They say you can see anything in New York and apparently, you can. Unfortunately, the cost of seeing is turning into a rat. That kind of sucks.

Casey (Kim Blair) has just returned from serving her country in Iraq and she would rather not be turned into a rat. Her father, Clutch (Nick Damici), is an ex-boxer and he would also rather not turn into a rat. In a world dominated by rats, what are the ratphobic to do? Clutch, Casey, and a handful of others barricade themselves inside their apartments and they try to survive the night while the rats scratch at the door.

Yes, Mulberry Street is yet another zombie film. I mean, they may be rat hybrids as opposed to being the undead but, in the end, they might as well be a zombies. However, Mulberry Street works better than the average zombie film because it was shot guerilla-style on the streets of New York City. There’s a raw authenticity to Mulberry Street, with its jittery camerawork and it’s cast of talented but unknown actors. The threat feels real. The struggle to survive feels real. The fears feels real. At no point are you confident that Casey, Clutch , and their friends are going to survive the night. Mulberry Street feels as real as any film featuring human/rat hybrids can. Even before the rats attack, Mulberry Street presents us with a New York that feels sick and dying. In the end, the rats are just the next logical step. The city has devolved to such an extent that an attack of zombie rats feels predestined.

Mulberry Street was well-directed by Jim Mickle. Mickle would go on to direct Cold in July, one of the best modern noirs to be released over the past few years. Be sure to check out both films.

The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974, directed by Jud Taylor)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Jedadiah Leland

Because of recent electrical surges aboard its aircrafts, the commander of the Whitney Air Force Base 458th Radar Test Group sends a four-man crew up in Flight 412 to try to figure out what’s happening. Colonel Pete Moore (Glenn Ford) and Major Mike Dunning (Bradford DIllman) assume that it will just be a routine flight. Instead, they find themselves at the center of a government cover-up when Captain Bishop (David Soul) and the other members of the crew spot what appears to be a UFO. When two jets are sent out to intercept the object, the jets vanish.

Suddenly, Flight 412 is ordered to land at a seemingly deserted military base in the desert. When they do, the airplane is impounded and the crew is forced to undergo an 18-hour debriefing led by government agents. The agents demand that the crew members sign a statement saying that they didn’t see anything strange in the air before the jets vanished. Until all four of the men sign the release, the crew of Flight 412 are officially considered to be missing and will not be released until they agree to deny what they saw.

Meanwhile, Col. Moore tries to learn what happened to his men but the government, led by Col. Trottman (Guy Stockwell), is not eager to tell him.

This movie was made-for-television, at a time when people claiming to have been abducted by aliens was still a relatively new phenomenon. It was also made during the Watergate hearing and in the wake of the release of the Pentagon Papers, so the film’s sinister government conspiracy probably felt relevant to viewers in a way that it wouldn’t have just a few years earlier. I appreciated that the movie took a semi-documentary approach to the story but that it tried to be serious and even-handed. The film shows how witnesses can be fooled or coerced into saying that they saw the opposite of what they actually did see. Unfortunately, The Disappearance of Fight 412 is ultimately done in by its own cheapness. The overreliance on familiar stock footage doesn’t help the film’s credibility and there’s too many familiar faces in the cast for the audience to forget that they’re just watching a TV movie. The Disappearance of Flight 412 doesn’t really succeed but it is still interesting as an early attempt to make a serious film about the possibility of alien abduction and the government covering up the existence of UFOs.. Three years after this film first aired, Steven Spielberg would introduce these ideas to an even bigger audience with Close Encounters of The Third Kind.

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Final Scene of The Birds

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

From 1963’s The Birds and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this is one of the best horror endings ever.

The birds have won. Or, at least they have until Birdemic….

International Horror Review: The Mark of the Wolfman (dir by Enrique López Eguiluz)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1968 Spanish film, The Mark of the Wolfman, is a strange one.

Just try to keep this straight:

In Eastern Europe, two gypsies accidentally bring back to life a feared werewolf named Imre Wolfstein. (Beware any supernatural creature who has an ironic name.) Wolfstein proceeds to terrorize the countryside, attacking both the good and the bad alike. He also finds the time to attack a Polish nobleman named Waldemer Danisky (Paul Naschy). Danisky survives the attack but now he’s a werewolf! Unlike Wolfstein, Danisky is not happy about being a werewolf, especially when he discovers that he’s been killing innocent people while transformed. So, Danisky decides to go to a local scientist named Dr. Janos Mikhelov (Julian Ugarte). Unfortunately, it turns out that Dr. Mikhelov is a vampire and so is his wife! They’ve got special plans for both of the werewolves!

The Mark of the Wolfman was the first of many films in which Naschy would play Count Danisky. They were extremely popular in Europe and Paul Naschy became a big star in Spain. In fact, he was sometimes called the Spanish Lon Chaney and given that Naschy often talked about how The Wolf Man (starring Lon Chaney, Jr.) was one of his favorite films when he was a child, that undoubtedly brought him a lot of pleasure. And indeed, Naschy’s performance as Danisky did owe a bit to Lon Chaney Jr’s performance as Larry Talbot. They’re both tortured souls, desperately seeking an escape from their curse and continually being brought back to life against their will. The main difference between the two was that Danisky never got quite as whiny as Talbot. Whereas Lon Chaney Jr. played Larry Talbot as being just a big dumb lug, Naschy played Danisky as being a far more aggressive character. Danisky wasn’t just depressed over being a werewolf. He was pissed off about it.

The plot of Mark of the Wolfman may sound complicated but, by the standards of Naschy’s other films, it’s actually rather straight-forward and uncomplicated. Of course, it can be difficult for an American to judge Naschy’s films because many of them were never released here in the United States and those that were can usually only be found in poorly dubbed and crudely edited versions. For instance, Mark of the Wolfman was released in the United States as Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror, despite the fact that neither Frankenstein nor his monster were anywhere to be found in the original film. However, the distributors needed a film to go on a double bill with another Frankenstein movie. To justify the title change, narration was added to the start of the film that established that Wolfstein was a descendant of Frankenstein. Apparently, the price for playing God was to be cursed with lycanthropy. It’s actually kind of charming in a drive-in sort of way.

Even if you know nothing about the subsequent career of Paul Naschy or the many sequels that followed this film, The Mark of the Wolfman holds up well as an entertaining horror film. It’s only 88 minutes long and it manages to pack drunken gypsies, tortured werewolves, devious vampires, and a dungeon into its brief running time. As a result, it’s never boring. Visually, the film is a treat, with the camera swiftly moving across the wilderness or tracking through gothic castles. (Mark of the Wolfman was originally filmed in 3D and, watching the film, I found myself thinking that it probably looked pretty damn impressive to audiences in 1968.) Because the version that I saw was badly dubbed into English, it wasn’t always easy to judge the performances but Naschy played Danisky with a properly haunted look.

The Mark of the Wolfman is an enjoyable work of Spanish horror, one that undoubtedly helped to revitalize Spanish horror just as assuredly at the Blind Dead and Jess Franco.

Insomnia File #50: Zola (dir by Janicza Bravo)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or Netflix? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep around two a.m. on Monday morning, you could have turned over to Showtime 2’s west coast feed and watched Zola.

Zola tells the story of Zola (Taylor Paige), a Detroit waitress and part-time stripper who is invited to go down to Florida by another stripper, Stefani (Riley Keough). Stefani assures Zola that they’re just going to have a good time and make some money dancing in the clubs. Instead, it turns out that they’re going to Florida with Stefani’s roommate, X (Colman Domingo, showing compelling flashes of charisma and danger), and her simple-minded but loyal boyfriend, Derrek (Nicholas Braun). It also turns out that X is actually a Nigerian named Abegunde Olawale and that he is Stefani’s pimp. It doesn’t take long for Zola to grow annoyed with everyone else on the road trip but, unfortunately, she’s already stuck in Tampa with them. That’s the problem with going on a road trips with perfect strangers. The trip grows stranger and more violent with each passing hour. In fact, it gets so strange that, when Zola eventually tells her story on twitter, the thread goes viral. And then this movie is made, with a disclaimer that states that most of the story is based on fact.

Zola made quite a splash when it premiered at Sundance in 2020. Audiences either loved or hated its extreme stylization and rather crass cast of characters. While the film was originally scheduled to be released in 2020, that release was delayed by the COVID pandemic. At a time when people were scared to go outside and be near even their closest relatives or friends, I guess someone decided that it wasn’t the right time to release a movie about going on a cramped road trip with two morons and a psychotic pimp. The film was finally released earlier this year. It got good critical notices, though audiences seemed to be slightly less enamored with it.

Speaking for myself, I was both impressed and annoyed with Zola. On the one hand, you have to respect a film that’s willing to run the risk of alienating the audience in order to tell its story. Zola is violent, vulgar, and frequently funny. It’s also frequently disturbing, with Zola continually finding herself in a bad situation from which she can’t escape. Taylour Paige brings a lot of inner strength to the role of Zola. When Zola gets annoyed, she doesn’t hide it. When Zola says she’s not going to do something, she means it and she says it with such confidence that even X respects her. She and Stefani also have an interesting relationship, one that will ring true to anyone who has ever had that one friend who simply cannot stop messing up her life. The film embraces its characters and their activities, refusing to pass judgment or to sentimentalize. You have to admire the film’s commitment. At the same time, the film is occasionally a bit annoying. It’s so extremely stylized and Stefani is so loud and crass that it can sometimes be tough to take. This is a film that benefits from being watched at home as opposed to in theater, if just because you can hit pause whenever you feel a migraine starting to come on. (Poor Zola, meanwhile, is stuck in the back of X’s car, listening to Stefani and Derreck and realizing that she’s pretty much stuck with all of them.) Zola was produced and distributed by A24 and it is indeed very much an A24 film, loud, frustrating, paranoia-inducing, and occasionally compelling.

Zola is only 90 minutes long but it packs a lot into those minutes. It’s not a boring film. At the same time, it’s never quite as subversive as something like Spring Breakers. Instead, it’s just an energetic recreation of the road trip from Hell.

Previous Insomnia Files:

Suspense Film Review: Rope (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Rope, an odd little 1948 experiment from Alfred Hitchcock, opens with a murder.

Two wealthy young men, Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger), invite their friend, David Kentley (Dick Hogan), up to their apartment. When David arrives, they strangle him and hide his body in a wooden chest. As quickly becomes obvious, Brandon and Philip killed David largely to see if they could pull off the perfect murder. Brandon is sure that they did and, that by doing so, they proved the concept of Nietzsche’s Übermensch, The alcoholic Philip is less sure and starts drinking.

Brandon and Philip don’t just have murder planned for the day. They’re also planning on throwing a little dinner party and, among those on the guest list, are David’s parents, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s former boyfriend. Also attending will be Brandon and Philip’s former teacher and housemaster, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). In fact, Brandon regularly claims that he got the idea to commit the perfect murder as a result of discussing philosophy with Rupert. Apparently, Rupert turned Brandon onto Nietzsche….

AGCK! JIMMY STEWART LEADING YOUNG MEN TO FASCISM!? SAY IT’S NOT SO!

Well, fortunately, the dinner party conversations reveals that Brandon and Philip misunderstood what Rupert was trying to tell them. They assumed, using the same type of logic that currently fuels most debate today, that just because Rupert mentioned something that meant that he approved of it. As it becomes clear that Rupert would not approve of what his students have done and as Rupert himself starts to suspect that something bad has happened at the apartment, Brandon and Philip start to plot against their former mentor….

Now, it can be argued that Rope is not a horror movie. And indeed, if your definition of horror is ghosts, vampires, werewolves, or any other type of paranormal creature than yes, Rope has none of those. Instead, the horror of Rope is the horror of human cruelty. It’s the horror of two privileged young men who have so twisted the words of their mentor that they’ve become monsters. The horror in Rope comes from the fact that, in 1948, Brandon and Philip have embraced the same philosophy that, only a few years earlier, had plunged the entire world into war. While families mourned their dead and Europe struggled to rebuild, Brandon and Philip showed that they had no understanding of or concern for the trauma that humanity had just suffered. And making it even more disturbing is that they found the justification for their crimes in the lessons taught by the epitome of American decency, Jimmy Stewart. The idea of that is more terrifying than any Hammer vampire flick.

Of course, Rope is best known for being a bit of an experiment. Hitchcock edited the film to make it appear as if it was all shot in one take and events, therefore, played out in real time. It’s an interesting idea and, as always, you have to admire Hitchcock’s ingenuity and, even in a film as grim as this one, his playfulness. At the same time, Hitchcock’s technique makes an already stagey story feel even stagier. Some of the actors — like James Stewart, John Dall, and Cedric Hardwicke in the role of David’s father — are able to give naturalistic and convincing performances despite the staginess of the material. Others, like poor Farley Granger, find themselves overshadowed by the film’s one-shot gimmick.

Rope is an experiment that doesn’t quite work but flawed Hitchcock is still a pleasure to watch. The final few minutes, with Stewart and Dall finally confronting each other, are among the best that Hitchcock ever put together. I appreciate Rope, even if it doesn’t quite succeed.

Horror on the Lens: The Lodger (dir by Alfred Hitchcock)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A serial killer known as “The Avenger” is murdering blonde women in London (which, once again, proves that its better to be a redhead). And while nobody knows the identity of the Avenger, they do know that the enigmatic stranger (Ivor Novello), who has just recently rented a room at boarding house, happens to fit his description. They also know that the lodger’s landlord’s daughter happens to be a blonde…

Released in 1927, the silent The Lodger was Alfred Hitchcock’s third film but, according to the director, this was the first true “Hitchcock film.” Certainly it shows that even at the start of his career, Hitchcock’s famous obsessions were already present — the stranger accused of a crime, the blonde victims, and the link between sex and violence.

Also of note, the credited assistant director — Alma Reville — would become Alma Hitchcock shortly before The Lodger was released.

What Lisa Watched Last Night #216: The Danger Next Door (dir by Bill Corcoran)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched the latest Lifetime film, The Danger Next Door!

Why Was I Watching It?

Because it was on Lifetime, of course! It’s been a while since I’ve gotten a chance to watch a Lifetime film on the night that it aired. Seriously, my DVR is full of Lifetime films right now and waiting for me to dig into them come November.

What Was It About?

After getting mugged, pregnant Robin (Hannah Emily Anderson) and her husband, Ben (Jake Epstein) move to a small town. At first, the town seems perfect but it’s hard not to notice that their next door neighbors, Guy (David Ferry) and Sharon (Kyra Harper), are a little bit too friendly. Anyone who has watched a Lifetime film knows that no one that nice can be trusted and that’s certainly the case here.

What Worked?

I always love a good “small towns are evil” Lifetime film so, in that regard, The Danger Next Door delivered exactly what I wanted. The town was pretty, the houses were big, and the melodrama was embraced. Yay!

The film also featured Jake Epstein, playing a sympathetic character for once! Epstein previously played Craig Manning on Degrassi. I’ve seen him in a lot of other movies and shows since then but he’ll always be Craig to me! Craig was one of the best characters on Degrassi, a bipolar musician with drug problems and a habit of breaking everyone’s heart. I always hoped that Craig and Ellie would get together, though I do think Ashley was Craig’s soul mate. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Jake Epstein was in this movie and it was good to see him!

What Did Not Work?

Towards the end of the movie, there were a few plot twists that demanded a lot of suspension of disbelief, even for a Lifetime film.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I have never been mugged but, when I was 16 years old, the house that I was living in was burglarized. My mom, my sisters, and I woke up one morning to discover that the garage door was open, the microwave was missing, and someone had emptied out my mom’s purse. Even more than that, though, they stole our feeling of being secure in our home. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards and I even took to sleeping with a baseball bat next to my bed. However, the bat was a bit heavy so, after a few days, I switched it out for a golf club.

One night, I thought I heard someone creeping outside my bedroom door at 3 in the morning. I got up, grabbed my golf club, and creeped over to the door. I took a deep breath, raised the club over my head, threw the door open, and swung at the first dark shadow that I saw.

“What the Hell, Lisa Marie!?” Erin exclaimed, as she (rather easily) avoided the club.

Looking back at it, I’m glad that I didn’t hit my sister in the face with a golf club. I would have felt bad about that. But there’s no worse feeling than having some stranger invade your personal safe place. All these years later, I’m still a fanatic when it comes to locking all the doors, checking all the windows, and making sure I’ve got a golf club near the bed.

The movie did a good job of capturing that trauma. I could definitely relate to Robin’s fears.

Lessons Learned

Never move to a small town. No matter how bad and scary the city gets, it’s still safer than living in a small town.