Lifetime Film Review: The Pom Pom Murders (dir by Tom Shell)

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cheerleading is dangerous!

Of course, if you’ve been watching Lifetime for the past month or so, you know that. Lifetime has spent most of October showing movies about cheerleaders who are either killing or being killed. Now that Lifetime has decided to show Christmas movies for the rest of the year, the deadly cheerleader movies have moved to the Lifetime Movie Network.

For instance, last night saw the premiere of The Pom Pom Murders! Now, I was co-hosting the #ScarySocial live tweet last night so I missed The Pom Pom Murders but, fortunately, my sister Erin had the foresight to set the DVR for me. Thank you, Erin!

As I always do whenever there’s a killer cheerleader movie on the DVR, I tried to get Erin to watch it with me. Erin was a cheerleader in high school and I always feel it’s good to get an expert opinion on whether or not these films accurately reflect the cheerleading experience. (I always refused to try out for cheerleader in high school, mostly because two of my sisters had done it and I wanted to establish my own identity. Of course, since I was a teenager at the time, establishing my own identity meant writing a lot of emo poetry.) Erin, however, declined because no one was murdered while she was a cheerleader. I guess she has a point.

Anyway, The Pom Pom Murders is about Audrey (Anna Marie Dobbins), who tries out for a spot on the cheerleading squad of the Los Angeles Renegades basketball team! She makes the squad and she even gets a charming new boyfriend when star player Walter Wilson gives her a ride home! Everything seems to be perfect, until the murder of Bailey (Grace Patterson), a member of the squad and Walter’s ex-girlfriend! Bailey is strangled while her dog watches, just in case you needed any more evidence that this killer is ruthless.

With Walter as the number one suspect and an apparent killer stalking the Renegade Girls, can Audrey cheer the team to victory without losing her life? One would normally think so, seeing as how this is a Lifetime film and most Lifetime films do, eventually, have a happy ending. However, this film also features a rather snarky voice-over from Audrey, one which suggests that this story might not have a happy ending. Of course, Audrey also suggests that she might just be saying that to make you watch so one huge reason to watch the film is to see if Audrey’s an honest narrator or not!

The best Lifetime films always mix the melodrama with a healthy dose of self-awareness. These are films that go cheerfully over the top and make no apologies for doing so and that’s certainly the case with The Pom Pom Murders, which features an enjoyably eccentric group of suspects. Is the murderer the pervy janitor or the intense coach or the strange owners? Is Audrey going to be able to solve the case or is she going to end up the latest victim? Is she going to become the newest star cheerleader or is she going to finally listen to her mother and go to law school?

You’ll have to watch the film to find out! This is a fun movie. If you’re into Lifetime movies, you’ll be doing some cheering yourself.

Horror Film Review: Final Destination 2 (dir by David R. Ellis)

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I rewatched Final Destination, I watched it’s sequel, 2003’s Final Destination 2.

Final Destination 2 is not only one of the best horror sequels ever made but it’s also the film that, even more than the first installment of the series, established what we consider to be a typical Final Destination film. The characters are far more eccentric and the deaths are far more elaborate. Death itself shows a sense of humor that wasn’t present in the first Final Destination film. If you manage to escape Death the first time, Death isn’t just going to track you down. It’s going to play without and have some fun before it finally fills its quota.

Final Destination 2 opens with Kimberly Corman (AJ Cook) having a vision of a crash on the interstate. She’s so freaked out by her vision that she blocks the entrance ramp. This may save the life of everyone stalled behind her but it also ends up killing all of her friends when a truck smashes into her SUV. Fortunately, Kimberly survives because she had gotten out of the vehicle to talk to a policeman named Thomas Burke (Michael Landes).

So, the bad news is that all of Kimberly’s friends are dead.

The good news is that Kimberly has a whole new group of friends, all of the people who were supposed to die on that highway but who are now alive and on Death’s do-over list as a result of Kimberly’s actions.

Along with Kimberly and Thomas, Death now has to take care of lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetaku), stoner Rory (Jonathan Cherry), neurotic chainsmoker Kat (Keegan Tracy Connor), teacher Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson), and Nora (Lynda Boyd) and her son, Tim (James Kirk). It turns out that Death is not only after them because they didn’t die on the highway but also because they all have a connection to the deaths that occurred in the first Final Destination. It’s actually a pretty clever idea and it also provides an excuse for Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) to return from the first film and act as a sort of death guru.

Needless to say, the deaths are elaborate. In fact, they’re so elaborate that Final Destination 2 occasionally feels like a satirical take on the first film. It’s not just that Nora loses her head in an elevator accident. It’s that there just happens to be an old man carrying a box full of claws on the elevator. In another scene, Rory looks inside a closet and sees hundreds of things that could possibly kill him, my favorite being the bowling ball that just happens to be precariously balanced on the top shelf. When Clear Rivers returns, she doesn’t just explain how death works. She also gives them a list of safety precautions that make her sound like an overly protective parent, looking at her son or daughter’s apartment and freaking out over how many appliances have been plugged into one outlet.

Final Destination 2 is a clever film with an appropriately dark and macabre sense of humor. On the one hand, all of the characters are well-written and the cast is so likable that you don’t want to see any of them die. On the other hand, Death is so inventive that it’s hard not to want to see what it has up its sleeve. And, like the first film, the sequel works because it gets at a universal truth. You can avoid death but can never truly escape it.

Horror Film Review: Final Destination (dir by James Wong)

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I was recently rewatching the 2000 film, Final Destination, and a few things occurred to me.

Number one, no one ever really thanks Devon Sawa for getting them off that plane before it explodes. Final Destination opens with a group of high school students boarding a plane so that they can go on their senior class trip to Paris. (I wish I had gone to their high school. Our senior class trip was to …. well, we didn’t get one.) When Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) has a vision of the plane exploding, he freaks out and he, his teacher, and a few other students are kicked off the plane. Needless to say, everyone’s pretty upset with Alex but then, just a few minutes after taking off, the plane does explode. Alex was right. He saved everyone’s lives.

And yet, no one ever says, “Thank you, Alex!” Instead, everyone is still like, “Hey, that’s the weirdo that ruined our trip to Paris!” No, the plane exploding is what ruined your trip to Paris. Alex saved your life! Poor Alex. And yet, it kind of makes sense. In the face of inexplicable tragedy, people need someone to blame and Alex is a convenient scapegoat.

That scapegoating continues once the survivors of the flight start to mysteriously die. No one wants Alex near them, even though Alex has managed to figure out that Death is stalking them because they messed up its plans by getting off of that plane. Then again, Alex doesn’t always come across as if he’s the most stable person in the world. Gaunt and hallow-eyed, Sawa portrays Alex as someone who haunted by survivor’s guilt even before it became obvious that he and his former friends were being targeted. Sawa, it should be said, gives a remarkably good performance in Final Destination.

Another thing that occurred to me as I rewatched Final Destination is that, in this film, Death doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. The Final Destination sequels are notorious for their elaborate and often ironic death scenes, the majority of which seem to indicate that Death might be a little bit too clever and precocious for its own good. However, in the first Final Destination, Death is a lot more direct and, in some ways, a lot more sadistic. Terry Chaney (Amanda Detmer) steps out in the street and gets run over by a bus. Goofy Billy Hitchcock (Seann William Scott — why two n’s Seann!?) makes the mistake of standing too close to the railroad tracks and he loses the top half of his head. Death really only get creative when it comes to taking out Todd Waggner (Chad E. Donella) and Ms. Lewton (Kristen Cloke) and, even then, it’s methods are nowhere near as elaborate as they would eventually become.

The final thing that I noticed is that Final Destination holds up really well. It’s hard to remember now but, when Final Destination first came out, a lot of critics dismissed it as just being a slasher film with a slightly clever twist. But actually, that twist is far more than just “slightly” clever and the film really does a lot more with the idea than it’s often given credit for. Final Destination is a film full of thrills and chills — I still freak out at some of those death scenes — but it’s also a film that always makes me think about mortality. Has our destiny already been written? Can we defeat death? Or are we just pawns with our fates predetermined? In the end, that’s what makes Final Destination so effective. We all know that we can’t escape death, both in real life and in the movies. The one thing that everyone has in common is that death is eventually going to come for all of us. It’s the one enemy that we can’t defeat or laugh away. Instead, all we can do is try to hold it off for a while. Final Destination taps into the fears that we all have.

The plot is clever. The script is frequently witty. I liked the fact the characters were all named after horror movie icons. Plus, you got Tony Todd dominating the entire film with just a brief role. Final Destination is a classic.

Horror on the Lens: Manos: The Hands of Fate (dir by Harold P. Warren)

Posted on October 25, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I should start things off with a confession. This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens. I previously shared it on both October 8th of 2013 and October 15th of 2015 and, both times, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.

However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again. As I pointed out two years ago, Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made. And, honestly, who am I to disagree? However, it’s also a film that is so bad that it simply has to be seen.

By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds. What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped. So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.

And be sure to enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate!

Witchcraft 15: Blood Rose (2016, directed by David Palmieri)

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

I’m nearly done reviewing Witchcraft films and it’s not a moment too soon. Because nearly every single installment has shared the same weaknesses (and the same “strengths”), I’m running out of things to say about them. Even though I appreciate the franchise’s attempts to maintain a loose continuity over the course of 16 films and nearly 20 years, it can still be difficult to remember which Witchcraft was which. When did Lutz go to London? I think that was Witchcraft X. When was Will dead? That was Witchcrafts VII, VIII, and IX. But don’t ask me what happened in Witchcraft V or VI. It’s all just one big blur of softcore sex and needlessly complex rituals.

Witchcraft 15 picks up right where Witchcraft 14 ended. Witchcraft 15 even opens by reshowing us the final ten minutes of Witchcraft 14, albeit with scenes of a lesbian witch ritual spliced in. Samuel, the warlock yoga instructor, has been vanquished. Sharon (Noel VanBrocklin) has taken over the yoga coven and, because Sharon’s managed to convince everyone that she wasn’t really that involved with Samuel’s attempts to bring the Angel of Death out of Hell, young witch Rose (Molly Dougherty), takes a job at the studio. However, Sharon is still up to her old tricks so she occasionally possesses Rose’s body so that she can steal the souls of other witches and ultimately bring Samuel back to life. It makes no sense but, after you’ve seen enough of these movies, you learn to tolerate incoherence.

Detectives Lutz and Garner (Berta Roberts and LeRoy Castanon) are again investigating all of the mysterious deaths that are occurring because of the latest witch scheme. Will (Ryan Cleary) shows up to help them with the investigation. Will is no longer conflicted about his heritage or his past and he now moves around and talks like he’s the star of his own show on the CW. It all leads to another needlessly complex ceremony and a magical showdown.

Witchcraft 15 is stupid and trashy but it’s a Witchcraft film so that’s to be expected. Ryan Cleary is still not a convincing Will and even Lutz and Garner’s trademark banter feels forced. I do think that Rose and the yoga studio could have been interesting if the film was actually interested in any of that but Witchcraft 15 is ultimately just about getting the witches naked and cashing in on whatever nostalgia direct-to-video hounds might have for the Witchcraft franchise.

I’ve got one one more of these to go. Tomorrow — Witchcraft 16!

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Finale of The Howling

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

From Joe Dante’s 1981 werewolf masterpiece, The Howling:

(Canadian) Guilty Pleasure No. 49: Heavenly Bodies (dir by Lawrence Dane)

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“She’s reaching the top …. with everything she’s got!”

That’s the tag line of the 1984 Canadian film, Heavenly Bodies. It’s a perfectly vapid tagline for an entertainingly vapid movie. It was on TCM last night and I just finished watching it. It takes a lot to get me out of my horror film habit in October but how could I resist a movie about Canadian gym rivalries?

Now, even though this isn’t a horror film, it is a Canadian film from the 80s which means that it features a lot of performers who will be familiar to fans of old school slasher films. For instance, the film stars Cynthia Dale, who was also in the original My Bloody Valentine. Cynthia plays Samantha, an administrative assistant who quits her job and opens up her own independent gym, Heavenly Bodies. Samantha is an aerobic dance instructor, perhaps the best in all of Ontario. Samantha is also a single mother but there’s no better way to find a lover than to teach him aerobics.

Heavenly Bodies was also directed by a veteran of Canadian exploitation, Lawrence Dane. Remember Happy Birthday To Me? He plays the father in that movie. I’d love to know the story of what led to Lawrence Dane not only directing but apparently also helping to write the script for a movie about an independent health club. I mean, to go from working with David Cronenberg and winning Genie Awards to directing Heavenly Bodies seems like quite a career trajectory. As a sidenote, how much more interesting would Heavenly Bodies be if it had been directed David Cronenberg? I imagine that all the leg cramps would be a bit more graphic.

Samantha is selected to host her own exercise show on Canadian TV and a bigger Canadian gym decides that the only way to deal with this upstart is to destroy Heavenly Bodies by buying out their lease …. or something. To be honest, I really couldn’t follow half the plot of Heavenly Bodies. I just know that there was a lot of dancing and lot of exercising and a lot of shots of Samantha walking around Toronto. The film came out a year after Flashdance and all of the scenes of Samantha walking around the city are basically filmed in exactly the same way as the shots of Jennifer Beals walking around Pittsburgh. (There’s even a scene where Samantha stands in front of a poster for Flashdance, trying to convince people to join her gym.) Whereas you kind of admired the way that Jennifer Beals handled herself on the dangerous streets of Pittsburgh, you never really worry about Samantha because …. well, it’s Toronto. As I watched the film, I started to think about the fact that Canada consistently sends its best actors to the U.S. while those of us in the States consistently send our bad movies up north. I’m not sure if that’s really a fair trade.

Anyway, the two gyms decide to settle their differences with an exercise marathon that is televised on Canadian TV. (I’m going to assume that the film takes place in-between hockey seasons.) Basically, the exercise marathon is one of those things where you have two teams and everyone just keeps exercising until they drop. The last person standing is the winner and their gym gets …. I don’t know, bragging rights? I mean, I’m not even how they were able to convince anyone to put an exercise marathon on TV. I guess it was an 80s thing.

Can you guess who wins the exercise marathon?

Listen, Heavenly Bodies is technically a bad movie but I still like it because there’s a lot of dancing and everyone in the cast is so enthusiastic about whatever it is that they think they’re doing. There’s something to be said for enthusiasm. Add to that, the exercise marathon just has to be seen to believed. This is a film of the 80s and its Canadian to boot so how can it not be a guilty pleasure of sorts?

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Horror Film Review: Special Effects (dir by Larry Cohen)

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this rather odd horror film from 1984, dumb-as-mud Keefe Wateran (Brad Rijn) travels from Dallas to New York City, hoping to bring his wife back home. Andrea (Zoe Tamerlis, the star of Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45) abandoned both Keefe and their son because she wants to be a star. When the film opens, she’s posing topless in a replica of the Oval Office. Keefe is not too happy when he discovers that his wife is apparently appearing in politically-themed nude photo shoots.

And the thing is, you feel like you should feel sorry for Keefe, seeing as how his wife abandoned not only him but also their child. But Keefe is just such a self-righteous know-it-all that you really can’t blame Andrea for leaving him. As soon he starts going on and on about how she’s abandoned her family just to be a tramp in New York, you’re pretty much automatically on Andrea’s side.

Unfortunately, when Andrea turns up dead at Coney Island, the police automatically suspect that Keefe’s responsible. When they show up to arrest Keefe for the murder, he’s only wearing his boxer shorts. One of the detectives comments that, if he was going to commit murder, he would at least wear interesting underwear. And, again, you may want to sympathize with Keefe but the detective has a point. You need to dress for the job you want, not the one you have. I have an entire drawer full of murder thongs, just in case I ever decide to go for a career change.

Keefe is bailed out of jail and provided a high-priced attorney by Christopher Neville (Eric Bogosian). Neville is a big-time Hollywood director …. or, at least, he was until he directed a huge flop. (Apparently, the film had over $30,000 worth of special effects, which I guess was a lot back in 1984.) Neville, whom Andrea was supposed to have a meeting with on the night that she died, says that he’s fascinated by Keefe and Andrea’s story. In fact, he wants to turn it into a movie and he wants to hire Keefe as a special consultant.

However, what we know (but what Keefe doesn’t know, though he’d be able to figure it out if he wasn’t such a total and complete freaking moron), is that Neville murdered Andrea! He strangled her when she objected to him filming them while they were having sex. Now, Neville wants to make a movie about the murder. He even hires Elaine Bernstein (Zoe Tamerlis, again) to play Andrea in the film, despite the fact that Elaine has no acting experience. What’s important is that Elaine looks like Andrea. Neville also manages to manipulate the rather stupid Keefe into playing himself in the film. Soon, Neville is suggesting that perhaps they need to film a scene of Keefe and Andrea having rough sex and maybe Keefe should choke her during the scene….

And it just gets stranger from there. Special Effects is Hitchcock-style thriller from director Larry Cohen, one that’s got a bit more on its mind than just murder and a few heavy-handed jokes about the film industry. Neville may be smooth and manipulative while Keefe may be loud and a bit on the dumb side but, ultimately, they’re both obsessed with turning Elaine into Andrea. Neville wants to transform Elaine into the Andrea that he victimized while Keefe wants to turn Elaine into his idealized version of Andrea, the version that never wanted anything more than to be his wife and the mother of his children. In the end, they’re both creeps. (Admittedly, only one of them is murderer.)

Adding to the film’s strange tone are the three memorably eccentric lead performances. All three of the actors do unexpected things with their characters. Bogosian is wonderfully smug and smoothly manipulative as Neville while Brad Rijin goes all out in making Keefe one of the stupidest characters ever to appear in a leading role in a motion picture. (He’s like Bruce Campbell, without the comedic timing.) And finally, Zoe Tamerlis does a great job playing four different characters — Andrea, Neville’s version of Andrea, Keefe’s version of Andrea, and finally Esther.

Special Effects is an intriguing mix of thrills, horror, and satire with an undercurrent of anger. One gets the feeling that Neville is a stand-in for many of the soulless directors who had the type of career that Cohen felt he deserved. Track it down and check it out.

Horror On The Lens: Night Tide (dir by Curtis Harrington)

Posted on October 24, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1961 and directed by Curtis Harrington, Night Tide stars a young Dennis Hopper as Johnny, an awkward sailor. Johnny meets Mora (Linda Lawson), who works as a “mermaid” on the pier. For Johnny, it’s love at first sight. However, the more that Johnny pursues her, the more he learns about both her mysterious past and the dark fate of her previous boyfriends.

Night Tide is low-key and atmospheric gem of a movie, one that serve as an inspiration for low-budget filmmakers every where. Lawson is perfectly cast as the enigmatic Mora but the film really belongs to Dennis Hopper. Hopper’s naturally off-key presence made him perfect for the role of Johnny.

Night Tide is one of those low-budget movies that, because it’s in the public domain, has been released on DVD (often in inferior form) by dozens of different companies. Often times, films like this turn out to be fairly forgettable. Night Tide, however, is an exception.

All Joking Aside: Movie Preview, Poster and Trailer

Posted on October 24, 2020 by paddiesthoughts

From the PR release:

From acclaimed director Shannon Kohli, and starring Raylene Harewood in an unforgettable performance, the exceptionally inspirational All Joking Aside – coming this November from Quiver Distribution

Review First:

This movie documentary broke me in a way few have. Director Shannon Khol put Charlene in a light few can. Vulnerable, yet Powerful at the same time. Given her circumstances, and watching this movie, I am empowered now!

Preview:

Raylene Harewood, best known for her role on Netflix’s “The Healing Powers of Dude”,stars in the acclaimed ALL JOKING ASIDE. The film, released from Quiver Distribution November 13, tells of a young woman in New York City that pursues her dream of becoming a stand up comic.

Where Can You See All Joking Aside?

Check your VOD services on November 13, 2020… And I highly recommend watching!

If you are not still convinced, Here is the official trailer!