Horror on the Lens: The Brain Wouldn’t Die (dir by Joseph Green)

Posted on October 15, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I hate to say it but it’s getting more and more difficult to find public domain horror films on YouTube that we have yet to share on this site. I mean, the fact of the matter is that we’ve been doing these horrorthons for ten years now and there’s definitely a limited supply of films to choose from. (For the most part, I try to pick films that I know aren’t going to get yanked down because of a copyright claim. For instance, you might be able to find something like Hereditary or Midsommar on YouTube but I can guarantee you that it won’t be there long.)

Last night, I was really happy when I came across The Brain That Wouldn’t Die on YouTube. “Finally!” I said, “A film were haven’t used yet!” Then I did some research and I discovered that we did share it, way back in 2011.

Well, guess what. We’re sharing it again. After all, it’s always a good time to watch a movie about a disembodied head, a monster in a closet, and a man losing his arm in a scene that’s surprisingly graphic for 1962. To me, the best thing about this film is just how pissed off that head is at being brought back to life.

So, for a second time, enjoy The Brain That Wouldn’t Die!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Disconnected (dir by Gorman Bechard)

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Disconnected, an independent and low-budget horror film from 1984, is an odd one.

Actually, odd might be too mild of a description of this film. It’s about Alicia (Frances Raines, niece of Claude) who works in a video store and who keeps getting strange phone calls. Alicia has a boyfriend named Mike (Carl Koch) and a twin sister named Barbra Ann (Raines, again) and, one night, she answers her landline phone and suddenly hears Mike and Barbara Ann talking about the affair that they’re having! She then starts having nightmares in which Mike and Barbara Ann team up to kill her.

At the same time that Alicia is dreaming about being murdered, Franklin (Mark Walter) actually is murdering women all over town. Franklin also keeps asking Alicia for a date and, after she discovers that Mike has been cheating on her, Alicia finally says yes. One morning, Franklin wakes up in bed, grabs a knife, and attempts to stab Alicia, just to discover that she’s already left for the day. Franklin just ends up stabbing a pillow, which is unfortunate because it was a nice pillow.

Meanwhile, Detective Tremaglio (Carmine Capobianco) is trying to figure out the identity of the serial killer. For some reason, Detective Tremaglio spends a good deal of the film talking directly to the camera, as if he’s being interviewed. Tremaglio is quick to point out how cheap the police station looks and he also says, at one point, that he feels like he’s in a low-budget horror film.

It creates a rather odd atmosphere. On the one hand, you’ve got Franklin wandering around town, hitting the bars and searching for new victims. On the other hand, you’ve got Alicia isolated in her apartment, dealing with the phone constantly ringing and basically having a Repulsion moment. Who is calling Alicia? It’s hard to say. It’s definitely not Franklin. Is Alicia imagining the phone calls? Or is it some sort of a supernatural force? And how is it connected to the mysterious old man who keeps wandering through the film at certain points, popping up like a red herring from the 2nd season of Twin Peaks?

Disconnected raises a lot of questions but it doesn’t answer many of them. And while it’s tempting to suggest that this is just a case of sloppy storytelling, there’s enough intentionally arty moments in the film that I actually think that Disconnected was intentionally designed to be a riddle wrapped in an enigma. For instance, there’s a scene where Alicia answers the phone. For some reason, the camera is placed directly in front of a window. The sun is streaming in through the window, which leads to an almost blinding lens flare. The viewer is vaguely aware of Alicia moving around the room and answering the phone but, due to that lens flare, it’s impossible to actually make out any real details. It sounds like an error in camera placement and yet the scene goes on for so long that there’s no way it wasn’t intentional. (It should also be noted that the scene itself wasn’t particularly important so, if that lens flare was an honest mistake, there’s no reason why the scene couldn’t have been left on the cutting room floor.) Obviously, the director liked the effect and just decided to go with it. And yes, it’s kind of annoying but it’s kind of fascinating too.

The entire plot of Disconnected has a kind of “let’s make this up as we go along” feel to it and it’s hard not to appreciate the film’s enthusiastic incoherence. At its best the film achieves a sort of dream-like intensity. In the end, it all means nothing and yet, thanks to Frances Raines’s better-than-average performance, you are invested in what happens to Alicia. You want to know what it all means, even if it only adds up to the ringing of that cursed phone.

So, does that means I’m recommending Disconnected? Kinda. As I’ve said many times in the past, I have a weakness for low-budget, amateur films. This one was filmed out in the middle of Connecticut and most of the actors were obviously not professionals. There’s something oddly likable about a film like this, one that makes no sense but, at the very least, was still made and — 36 years later — is still being watched and reviewed. So …. yeah, I am kind of recommending this film. It’s weird enough to be worth at least one viewing.

Witchcraft V: Dance with the Devil (1993, directed by Talun Hsu)

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Warlock-turned-attorney William Spanner is back and he’s getting dumber all the time.

In this, the fifth film of the improbably long-running Witchcraft sage, William Spanner is no longer played by Charles Solomon. A considerably more bland actor, Marklen Kennedy, has taken over the role. William is still an attorney and he’s still dating Kelli (Carolyn Taye-Loren). He’s also still in denial about how impossible it is for a former warlock to live a normal life.

Usually, franchise heroes get smarter with each film but William gets progressively dumber. This time, he allows his girlfriend to take him out to yet another club that’s secretly a front for Satanism. Though he should know better than to put himself in the situation, William allows a hypnotist to call him on stage. The hypnotist is Cain (David Huffman), who uses his power to take control of William’s mind and use him to kill his enemies. In order to keep William from breaking free, Cain’s servant, Mala (Nicole Sassaman), frequently sneaks into William’s house in the middle of the night so that they can take part in the type of softcore sex scenes that would, for most people, eventually come to define the future entries in the Witchcraft franchise..

Realizing that something is wrong, Kelli goes to her minister, Rev. Meredith (Lenny Rose). Rev. Meredith sends over a white witch who is played by Aysha Hauer, the daughter of Rutger Hauer. The white witch doesn’t do much but the Hauer connection is cool. Another cool thing is that Greg Grunberg has a small, uncredited role as a bartender, proving that everyone had to start somewhere.

Although the first four Witchcraft films were passably entertaining, Witchcraft V is too dumb to be believed. For someone who doesn’t want to be a warlock, William has a really bad habit of getting involved in stuff that only a warlock could get involved with. Given his long history of dealing with Satanists and sleazy club owners, there’s no way that William should have been dumb enough to allow someone named Cain to have a chance to hypnotize him in the first place.

Probably the best thing that the previous Witchcraft films had with them was the idea of William being both an attorney and warlock. He had the potential to be an interesting character. Unfortunately, in Witchcraft V, William is not just stupid but also reduced to being a supporting character. He doesn’t get to do much, which seems unfair to the three or four people who might actually be invested in his story. Instead, most of the movie focuses on Cain and, strangely, Reverend Meredith. Neither one of them is really interesting enough to carry a movie.

William Spanner would return, albeit played by a different actor, in Witchcraft VI.

Horror Film Review: The Grudge (dir by Nicolas Pesce)

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Eh, who cares?

Released way back in January (and, in fact, I think it may have been the first horror movie released in 2020), The Grudge is the latest film to tell the story of a house where ghosts compel inhabitant after inhabitant to kill themselves and their families. Look, we all know how it works. We’ve all seen Ju-on. We all know that it begins with someone dying while extremely angry or extremely sad and then a curse being passed on from person to person. The original Japanese films are frightening while the American versions tend to get bogged down in all of the usual horror clichés. We all know how these things work.

Anyway, this version of The Grudge takes place, for the most part, at 44 Reyburn Drive, where a number of people die over the course of the film. The Grudge is told in a nonlinear fashion, so we hope back and forth in time. We meet a lot of different people and sit through a lot of different stories but none of them are particularly interesting. Two real estate agents discover that their unborn child is going to have a rare genetic disorder. An elderly couple prepare for an assisted suicide. A nurse is haunted by the things that she saw while she was working in Japan. A detective obsesses on all of the murders. In the present day, another detective (Andrea Riseborough) tries to figure out why so many murders are connected to the house. It’s difficult to really get caught up in her investigation because we already know the answer.

It’s all pretty dull. Maybe if I had never seen any of the other Grudge films, I would have found this movie more interesting but The Grudge doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. All it really does is remind you of how formulaic the American version of franchise has always been. Of course, everyone’s going to die and, of course, there’s going to be a shock ending. (Interestingly enough, the international version has a different ending.) It’s all rather boring and it’s hard not to get annoyed that the film assembled a truly amazing cast and then basically didn’t anything with them. Consider some of the people in this film: Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Lin Shaye, Jacki Weaver, William Sadler, Frankie Faison. Wasting a cast with that much talent really does amount to cinematic malpractice. It seems like it should be an impossible mistake to make but The Grudge somehow manages to do it.

The film’s nonlinear format doesn’t add much to the story. I mean, you know everyone’s going to die eventually so having the story told in random chunks and pieces doesn’t really add any sort of suspense. One could argue that the film does deserve some credit for being as dark as it is. I mean, it does kill the type of sympathetic characters who, normally, would survive other horror films. But, even with that in mind, it’s all just kind of boring. I don’t hold a grudge against anyone for trying to reboot the franchise but this film just doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Horror on The Lens: Invitation to Hell (dir by Wes Craven)

Posted on October 14, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is a made-for-tv movie directed by Wes Craven.

First televised in 1984, Invitation to Hell is a wonderfully over-the-top depiction of what happens when an engineer (Robert Urich) sells out and goes to work for a big evil corporation. Long story short, Satan (in the form of Susan Lucci) takes over his family. Admittedly, this film does start slowly but, in the end, it’s a lot of fun.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: 2001 Maniacs (dir by Tim Sullivan)

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A lot of people die over the course of this 2005 film but none of them are particularly likable so who cares.

A remake of the Herschell Gordon Lewis classic (though Lewis’s film only featured Two Thousand Maniacs!), 2,001 Maniacs is about a small town called Pleasant Valley in Georgia. During the Civil War, Union soldiers killed 2,001 of the residents of Pleasant Valley so, as a result, the angry spirits of the town will not be happy until they’ve killed 2,001 Northerners. Luckily, for them, some yankee college students come driving through on their way to Daytona Beach for Spring Break. That means it’s time to bring out the hooks, the blades, the flames, and all the other things that can be used to dismember people on screen. It’s a bloody good time in Pleasant Valley.

The mayor of Pleasant Valley is played by Robert Englund and, if nothing else, Englund brings a lot of demented glee to the role. One thing that I’ve always liked about Englund is that, even though he could probably get away with it, he’s always refused to coast on the fact that he’s a horror icon. No matter the quality of the film in which he’s appearing, Englund always goes all out and gives a memorable performance. As played by Englund, the mayor comes across as being an affable and welcoming guy, or at least he does until he starts killing people. The viewers automatically know that the mayor’s a bad guy because they know the type of role in which Robert Englund typically gets cast. But, and this is the important, you can at least understand why the film’s victims didn’t automatically run in fear as soon as they met him. The mayor is all about hospitality. (That, and bloody revenge.)

Anyway, it’s tempting to view 2,001 Maniacs as being some sort of statement about Confederate war memorials but …. eh. I mean, again, it’s tempting but I think it’s ultimately kind of pointless. This is not a subversive film. This is not a film that’s attempting to scratch the surface of any major issues. This is just another gory film that examines the amount of ways someone’s body can pulled apart. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a lot of classic horror films that are centered around people dying in gory ways. The problem with 2,001 Maniacs is that, since none of the people dying are particularly interesting, you don’t really care about how they die or even the fact that they’re dead. “Oh hey,” you find yourself saying, “at least I won’t have to listen to that guy talk anymore.”

Despite being a bit on the dull side for most of its running time, 2,001 Maniacs does have an effective final few minutes. There’s a big battle between a survivor and a ghost that is surprisingly well-directed and would have been exciting if we actually cared about whether or not the survivor was actually going to …. well, survive. As for the film itself, it ends on a properly macabre note. I actually laughed at the film’s ending, even though perhaps I shouldn’t have. Again, it all comes down to not really caring that much about anyone in the movie.

Anyway, 2,001 Maniacs didn’t do much for me. The Lewis version is still the version to go with. Thank God for Robert Englund, though. That man can act.

Witchcraft IV: The Virgin Heart (1993, directed by James Merendino)

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Witchcraft IV continues the endless story of William Spanner, warlock-turned-attorney.

When this movie begins, William is no longer working for the public defender’s office. Instead, he now handles insurance law. He comments that it’s been years since he last used his powers and he’s happy that he is, once again, living a normal life. However, when Lily Wild (Lisa Jay Harrington) shows up at his office and tells him that her 17 year-old brother, Pete Wild (Orien Richmond), has been arrested for a murder that he didn’t commit, William agrees to serve as Pete’s attorney.

The police are convinced that Pete not only murdered his girlfriend but that he’s also a serial killer who has been responsible for killing at least six other women and removing their hearts. With the police refusing to be of much help and also apparently withholding evidence so that it doesn’t inspire a copycat killer (?), William decides that the only way to defend Pete is to solve the murder on his own.

Searching the scene of the crime, William finds a matchbook with the word “Coven” on it. Coven is a club and William’s investigation leads him to both a stripper named Belladonna (Julie Strain) and Santara (Clive Pearson), the club owner who makes aspiring rockers famous in return for their immortal soul. Santara has not only a very famous father but also a connection to William. No matter how much William tries to escape his past, he keeps getting pulled back in.

Witchcraft IV is unique among the franchise in that it features William narrating his story. William obviously learned how to narrate by watching old film noirs but it’s appropriate because Witchcraft IV is more of a direct-to-video neonoir than a horror film. The horror and supernatural elements are there, of course. But Witchcraft IV is more interested in the mystery aspect of the story than the horror aspect. Unfortunately, the mystery itself isn’t particularly challenging and it seems as if William, given his past, should have been able to figure things out quicker than he did.

The best thing that Witchcraft IV has going for it is Julie Strain in the role of Belladonna. Strain gives a typically uninhibited and forceful performance, one that suggests that, if she had been born many years earlier, she could have had a good career as a noir femme fatale.

Witchcraft IV was directed by James Merendino, who later achieved cult success with SLC Punk! This would also be the last time that Charles Solomon would play the role of William Spanner. In Part V, the role would be played by Marklen Kennedy.

International Horror Film Review: Dark Forces (dir by Bernardo Arellano)

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How one reacts to this film from Mexico will depend on what one prioritizes when it comes to watching movies. Do you watch movies for their plot or do you watch them for their style? Do you care about what the filmmaker has to say or do you just want to see how they say it?

Of course, this doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. Just because a film is heavy on style, that doesn’t mean that it’s thematically shallow. At the same time, just because a film has something to say, that doesn’t mean that it has to be dry and boring. It’s just that, in the case of Dark Forces, the film is almost all style and that seems to be by design.

The plot of Dark Forces is not always easy to follow and what can be followed is often pure nonsense. A former (or maybe current, it’s never really clear) criminal named Max (Mauricio Aspe) is searching for his sister, who is being held hostage by a gangster. Max checks into a hotel and searches for clues to where he sister is being held. There are a variety of eccentric people living in the hotel, some of whom appear to be supernatural in origin and some of whom are probably just sleazy hotel denizens. There’s a mysterious, femme fatale-style waitress. There’s an albino who is also a psychic because movies like this always seem to feature an albino psychic. And then there’s this mysterious man played by transgressive filmmaker Nick Zedd. Zedd’s character is named Demonio and he says that he can help Max for a price and can you guess what’s going on?

So, if you’re watching for a coherent plot, you’ll probably be disappointed. If you allow yourself to get in any way emotionally invested in Max’s quest, you’ll probably be disappointed. Narratively, Dark Forces somehow manages to be both totally incoherent and totally predictable at the same time. That’s such an accomplishment but I can’t help but think that it was somewhat intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

Where Dark Forces succeeds is as an exercise in pure style. Between the Argento-inspired lighting scheme, the combination of neon and shadows, the constantly skewed camera angles, and the dream-like mix of flashback and the present (or, at least, I assumed some of what I saw in the movie was meant to be a flashback), Dark Forces plays out like an extremely flamboyant dream. Visually, it’s enjoyable to take in and, at 81 minutes, it ends right before all of the stylistic excesses gets exhausting. Unfortunately, all of that style doesn’t make it any easier to follow the plot but at least there’s always something to look at.

Anyway, Dark Forces is a film that I obviously had mixed feelings about. The plot annoyed me but the film’s visual style held my attention. At its best, the film is vibrant pop art. At its worse, it’s an empty exercise in tilting the camera. As to whether or not you enjoy this film, it all depends on what matters the most to you, style or coherence.

Horror Film Review: Night of the Lepus (dir by William F. Claxton)

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s really only one lesson to be learned from the 1972’s Night of the Lepus.

There is absolutely no way to make a rabbit look menacing.

Oh sure, you can film them in slow motion. And you can add a lot of weird sound effects and you can do a lot of extreme close-ups to make them look bigger than they actually are. You can do a lot of stuff as a part of your effort to make a rabbit into a scary monster but you’ll pretty much be wasting you time. Rabbits are simply not intimidating. There’s a reason why the idea of a killer rabbit was so funny in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m enough of country girl that I know the damage that wild rabbits can do. They eat crops. They eat bark. They chew on irrigations lines. If you’re a farmer or even just someone who wants to maintain a nice garden, you know that rabbits can be a nuisance.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing really menacing rabbits. Rabbits are cute and, for the most part, they’re fairly timid. They’re aware that, in the brutal world of nature, they’re designated prey and, as a result, they try to stay out of the way. Rabbits are shy and they hop around and there’s absolutely nothing frightening about them.

(We actually have quite a few rabbits in my neighborhood. It’s not unusual for me to see one hopping through the front yard. Whenever I go for a run in the early evening hours, it’s not unusual for me to see several rabbits hopping through a nearby park.)

Night of the Lepus is a strange film that attempts to make rabbits frightening. It takes place in the southwest and it features a bunch of mutated, giant rabbits who hop around the desert in slow motion and who savagely kill everyone that they meet. The plot makes it sound like a spoof but Night of the Lepus takes itself very seriously, which needless to say is a mistake. It even opens with documentary footage that’s designed to make sure that we understand that rabbits are actually very dangerous. It’s all very odd and you have to wonder why, out of all the wild animals in the southwest, the filmmakers decided to go with the least intimidating creature possible. I mean, there are coyotes and Gila monsters in the desert. Imagine having a giant coyote coming at you. That would be scary!

Instead, we get giant rabbits, attacking a cast of actors who definitely deserved better. Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, DeForest Kelly, they’re all talented actors and, in this film, they’re reduced to fighting a bunch of giant rabbits. No one comes across particularly well, though just about everyone in the cast does manage to keep a straight face. Still, the problem is that the rabbits are just too damn cute. Even after they’ve killed half the cast, you still don’t want anything to happen to them. When Whitman and Calhoun opened fire on a group of rabbits and killed a few of them, I actually found myself getting mad at the humans. Leave the rabbits alone! I thought. You humans have had your chance! This the land of rabbits now!

Anyway, Night of the Lepus is silly but it’s kind of fun, just because the giant rabbits are cute. They’re kind of like the giant guinea pigs that attacked South Park a few seasons ago. They’re murderous but they’re adorable!

Horror on the Lens: Satan’s School for Girls (dir by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, we have a 1973 made-for-TV movie called Satan’s School For Girls.

After her sister turns up dead, Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) refuses to accept that official conclusion that it was a suicide. Instead, Elizabeth is convinced that it was murder and that it has something to do with the exclusive school that her sister attended, the Salem Academy for Women.

Well, honestly, the Salem part is a dead giveaway. I think we can all agree on that.

Anyway, this movie features a Satanic cult, an old school clique, and plenty of early of 70s fashion choices. It may be silly but it’s also definitely entertaining.

Enjoy!