For today’s horror on the lens, we have one of Vincent Price’s most popular films, 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes!
This is Price at his considerable best. Be sure to read Gary’ review.
And watch the film below!
Enjoy!
Category Archives: Film Review
Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (dir by Milos Forman)
Technically, the 1975 film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is not a horror film.
Though it may take place in a creepy mental hospital, there are no ghosts or zombies. There’s no masked killer wandering the halls. The shadows do not leap off the walls and there are no ghostly voice in the night, unless you count the rarely heard voice of Will Sampson’s Chief Bromden.
Admittedly, the cast is full of horror and paranormal veterans. Michael Berryman, of the original Hills Have Eyes, plays a patient. Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for playing the role of Nurse Ratched, went on to play intimidating matriarchs in any number of low-budget horror movies. Vincent Schiavelli, a patient in this film, played the angry subway ghost in Ghost. Another patient, Sidney Lassick, played Carrie’s condescending English teacher in Carrie. Brad Dourif, who received an Oscar nomination for playing the meek Billy Bibbit, has become a horror mainstay. Will Sampson appeared in the Poltergeist sequel. Both Scatman Crothers and Jack Nicholson would go on to appear in The Shining.
Nicholson plays Randle Patrick McMurphy, a career criminal who, hoping to get out of prison early, pretends to be mentally ill. He ends up getting sent to an Oregon mental institution, where his rebellious ways upset the administrators while, at the same time, inspiring the patients to actually try to take some control over their lives. The film is, in many ways, a celebration of personal freedom and rebellion. The only catch here is that, in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, being a little bit too rebellious can lead to not only electroshock treatment but also a lobotomy. Those in charge have a way of making you permanently compliant.
And really, to me, that’s what makes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a horror film. It’s about the horror of conformity and bureaucracy. The film may start out as something of a comedy and Nicholson brings a devil-may-care attitude to the role of McMurphy but then, eventually, you reach the scene where McMurphy is tied down and given electrical shocks to make him compliant. You reach the scene where Ratched coldly informs Billy Bibbit that she will be telling his mother that Billy lost his virginity to a prostitute and Billy reacts by slicing open his wrists. Finally, you reach the scene where McMurphy returns to the ward having had a bit of his brain removed. In those scenes, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest becomes a horror movie. The monster is not a ghost or a demon or a serial killer. Instead, it’s a system that is determined to squash out any bit of rebellion or free thought.
What makes Nurse Ratched such a great villain is the fact that, as opposed to being some sort of a maniacal force of evil, she’s really just someone doing her job and refusing to question her methods. She’s the ultimate symbol of bland authoritarianism. Her job is to keep the patients from getting out of control and, if that means lobotomizing them and driving one of them to suicide …. well, that’s what she’s going to do. For all the time that Ratched spends talking about therapy, her concern is not “curing” the patients or even helping them reach a point where they can leave the hospital and go one with their lives. Ratched’s concern is keeping everyone in their place. As played by Fletcher, Ratched epitomizes the banality of evil. (That’s one reason why it was so silly for Ryan Murphy to devote his most recent Netflix series to giving her an over-the-top origin story. Ratched is a great villain because she doesn’t have any complex motivations. She’s just doing whatever she has to do to keep control of the people are on her ward. Part of keeping control is not to allow anyone to question her methods. Everyone has had to deal with a Nurse Ratched at some point in the life. With the elections coming up, we’re about to be introduced to whole new collection of Nurse Ratcheds.)
I like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, even though it’s an undeniably dated film. That said, it’s not as dated as the novel on which it’s based, nor is it as appallingly misogynistic. Jack Nicholson’s rough but charismatic performance holds up wonderfully well. (I don’t know if an actor has ever matched a character as perfectly as Nicholson does with McMurphy.) Louise Fletcher brings a steely resolve to the role of Nurse Ratched. Fans of spotting character actors in early roles will probably get a kick out of spotting both Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd as patients. The movie skillfully combines drama with comedy and the ending manages to be both melancholy and hopeful.
When it comes to the 1975 Oscar race …. well, I don’t know if I would argue that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest deserved to win Best Picture over Nashville, Dog Day Afternoon, or Barry Lyndon or Jaws. Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville feel as if they were ahead of their time, with their examination of the media and politics. Jaws set the template for almost every blockbuster that would follow and it’s certainly one of the most influential horror films ever made. Barry Lyndon is a stunning technical achievement. Compared to those films, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest seems rather simplistic. Watching it today, you’re very much aware of how much of the film’s power is due to Jack Nicholson’s magnetic screen presence. Nicholson definitely deserved his Oscar but it’s debatable whether or not the same can be said of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest as a whole.
So no, I wouldn’t necessary say that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the best of the films nominated that year. Still, it’s an entertaining film and a helluva ride. It’s a great film to watch whenever you’re sick of faceless bureaucrats trying to tell you what to do. And, in its own odd way, it’s a great film for Halloween season.
Cleaning Out The DVR: Fury To Freedom (dir by Erik Jacobson)
It’s that time of year again! It’s the time when entertainment hoarders like me take a look at our DVR and discover, to our horror, that we’ve only got about 3 hours of space left. When that happens, it means that it’s time clean out the DVR and hopefully make some space before 2021 brings a whole new collection of shows and movies to be recorded.
Yesterday, I got a start on cleaning out my DVR by watching the 1985 film, Fury to Freedom. I originally recorded it back in August and I’m going to guess that I did so because I liked the title. Fury by itself is good. Freedom is even better. Put them together and you’ve got something I’m definitely going to record!
As for the movie itself, it was obviously a low-budget and independently made movie. I’m guessing that it was specifically made to be shown to church groups. It’s one of those films that tells the true story of a sinner who becomes an evangelist. It ends with preaching but, before you reach that point, you’ve got about an hour or so of sinning. It’s the old Cecil B. DeMille method.
The film tells the story of Raul Ries (Tom Silardi), a teenager who grew up in an abusive home and constantly finds himself in a conflict over whether or not to do the right thing. His girlfriend, Sharon (Joy Vogel), always pushes him to follow the right path. All of Raul’s friends are always pushing him to follow the wrong path. As for Raul, he just wants to earn a black belt in karate but the local sensei doesn’t think he’s ready to learn.
After Raul loses his tempter at a party and slashes someone’s face (agck!), he ends up joining the Marines and getting trained to fight in Vietnam. (I was pretty sure that, during the basic training scene, I spotted a young Jon Favreau as one of the Marines but, according to the imdb, it was someone else.) Anyway, Raul actually does pretty well in basic training but then he fakes a breakdown to get out of serving in Vietnam. He returns home, knocks up his girlfriend, gets stuck in a go-nowhere job at a grocery store, and eventually he somehow opens up his own dojo.
Anyway, after about an hour or so of Raul being a jerk and hitting Sharon, he reaches the point where he’s contemplating committing a murder/suicide but then he sees a preacher on TV and, the next thing you know, he’s going to his old high school and preaching. “Yo! Listen up!” he yells at the students.
It was kind of a predictable film but it was also sincere in its goals and nowhere near as preachy as you might expect given the subject matter. Tom Silardi and Joy Vogel both gave good performances as Raul and Joy and the film deserve some credit for resisting the urge to use Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth as an easy way to establish that it was taking place in the 60s. Probably the most interesting thing about this film is that it was obviously made in the wake of the success of The Karate Kid because it spends as much time on the karate as it does on the religion.
Fury to Freedom was an effective, low-budget, and very sincere film. And now, it’s off of my DVR.
A Blast From The Past: What About Juvenile Delinquency? (dir by Herk Harvey)
Well, what about it!?
Today’s Blast From The Past comes to use from 1955. In this short film, a group of no-good 30 year-old high school students attack a middle-aged man who was just trying to drive home. That man just happens to be the father of a member of the gang! Now, due to the violence, the city council is considering a curfew! That’s not fair to the good kids but what can be done about juvenile delinquency?
Watch and discuss.
This film was shot in Lawrence, Kansas and it was directed by Herk Harvey. Harvey directed a ton of educational short films like this but horror fans will always know him before for directing Carnival of Souls. I’ll be sharing Carnival of Souls soon. For now, give some thought to delinquents!
Dead On: Relentless II (1992, directed by Michael Schroeder)
Still struggling to recover from having to act opposite Judd Nelson in the previous Relentless film, Los Angeles homicide detective Sam Deitz (Leo Rossi) finds himself investigating another string of seemingly random murders. This time, the killer is Gregor (Miles O’Keeffe), a master of disguise who hangs his victims, decorates the crime scene with Satanic graffiti, and takes a lot of ice baths. Deitz is forced to team up with a condescending FBI agent named Kyle Valsone (Ray Sharkey), who has his own reasons for wanting to capture Gregor and who might not have the best interests of the case in mind. As if having to deal with killer Russians and crooked FBI agents isn’t bad enough, Deitz is also having to deal with the collapse of his married to Meg Foster and the everyday irritations of being an intense New York cop in laid back Los Angeles.
Relentless II is a better than the first Relentless, mostly because Miles O’Keeffe is a better villain than Judd Nelson. Whereas Nelson was too twitchy to be taken seriously in the first Relentless, O’Keeffe is cold as ice and believably dangerous. He’s a worthy opponent for Rossi and Sharkey. How much Keeffe was in this movie? Just enough to make it work.
Whenever O’Keeffe isn’t doing his thing, the movie focuses on Deitz and Valsone. To a certain extent, their relationship mirrors the relationship that Deitz had with Malloy in the first Relentless except, this time, the mentor turns out to be just as bad the killer. Ray Sharkey was a good actor whose career nosedived because of his own addictions. He was always at his best playing streetwise bad guys, like Sonny Steelgrave in Wiseguy. He’s good as Valsone, giving a performance that indicates that, even if mainstream Hollywood wasn’t willing to take a chance of him, he could have carved out a direct-to-video career as a poor man’s Michael Madsen. Unfortunately, Sharkey contracted HIV as a result of his heroin addiction and he died of AIDS just a year after the release of Relentless II.
Leo Rossi gives another good performance as Sam Deitz. Rossi was usually cast as abusive boyfriends and low-level mobsters and it’s obvious that he enjoyed getting to play a hero for once. Meg Foster may not get to do much as Deitz’s wife but her otherworldly eyes are always a welcome sight.
Relentless II was the high point of the Relentless films. It made enough money to lead to a sequel. Sam Deitz’s days of hunting serial killers were not over.
Horror on the Lens: Baffled! (dir by Philip Leacock)
Baffled! is an entertaining little made-for-TV movie from 1973. Leonard Nimoy plays a race car driver who suddenly starts to have psychic visions of a woman who lives in what appears to be a gothic manor. The woman is in some sort of danger. Nimoy, of course, would rather just race cars but a parapsychologist (Susan Hampshire) convinces him that he has to figure out what his visions mean.
Now, to be honest, Baffled! is not a particularly scary movie. Some of Nimoy’s visions are spooky but there’s nothing in this movie that’s going to give you nightmares. Though it may not be horrifying, Baffled! is a lot of fun. Apparently, it was meant to be a pilot for a TV series. If it had been picked up, I guess Nimoy and Hampshire would have been helping out a new guest star every week. Nimoy seems to be having a lot of fun playing a psychic race car driver and he and Susan Hampshire have a really sweet and enjoyable chemistry.
Enjoy!
The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Alien Dead (dir by Fred Olen Ray)
This 1978 film takes place in Florida.
No, not in Miami. Not Jacksonville. Not Ft. Lauderdale. Certainly not Orlando. No, this film takes place off the back roads of Florida, where people are honest country folk and some folks live in a houseboat and you should always be careful when walking around the bayous because there might be some alligators lurkin’ about. Of course, in this part of Florida, they call them gators. Anyone who says alligator obviously thinks they’re too good for downhome country living.
Anyway, it turns out that there’s more to worry about in Florida then just alligators. There’s also the chance that your houseboat might get struck by a meteor. And then, everyone on the houseboat might be transformed into a zombie and, after they’ve eaten all the alligators, they might start eating all the humans.
When a sudden zombie outbreak occurs, you have to hope that you’ll get a good law enforcement response. Unfortunately, law enforcement in these parts means an elderly sheriff and a bearded deputy who is always trying to catch a peek of the local women skinny dipping. The sheriff, by the way, is played by Buster Crabbe. In the 20s and 30s, Crabbe was an champion swimmer who won Olympic medals and went on to play Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers. At the height of his popularity, he was known as “the King of the Serials.” In The Alien Dead, the 70-something Crabbe plays Sheriff Kowalski and, if nothing else, it seems like he was enjoying himself. Really, that’s important thing when it comes to a movie like this.
The Alien Dead is an extremely-cheap looking film and, with the exception of Crabbe, none of the actors appear to have done much before or after appearing in The Alien Dead. There are some scenes that are so dark that it’s next to impossible to actually tell what’s going on. Despite being a rather short film, the pace is still slow and there are certain scenes that seem to drag on forever. There’s a lot of perfectly valid criticisms that one can make about The Alien Dead.
But you know what?
I like the film.
Seriously, in a strange way, the film actually does work. Yes, the acting is pretty bad and the dialogue is often rather clunky and the plot doesn’t make sense and blah blah blah. Those are all true facts. But, there are isolated moments where The Alien Dead achieves a dream-like intensity. For instance, there’s a lengthy scene where the zombies attack and all of the action is shown in slow motion. I realize that may have been done to pad the film’s running time but strangely enough, it works. Even more oddly, the film’s cheap gore effects add to the movie’s already dream-like feel. Finally, if nothing else, the film captures the humid atmosphere of the Florida bayou. Watching the film, you can feel the sweat and hear the buzzing of mosquitos. At its best, The Alien Dead works as a piece of outsider art.
Finally, The Alien Dead is one of those films that had been released and re-released a few times on video. As you can see below, one of those releases was apparently inspired by the success of Evil Dead.
Relentless (1989, directed by William Lustig)
Buck Taylor (Judd Nelson) is the son of an LAPD cop who has never gotten over the bitterness he feels over being rejected by the force himself. Determined to get revenge on a world that refuses to look beyond the dark circles under his eyes, Buck becomes a serial killer. He picks his victims at random from the phone book. Because his father was a cop and he studied to join the force, Buck knows all the tricks of the trade.
Pursuing Buck are two cops. Bill Malloy (Robert Loggia) is a veteran detective who is supposed to be laid back though Robert Loggia was one of those actors who never seemed like he had been laid back a day in his life. Malloy’s new partner is Sam Dietz (Leo Rossi). Dietz has just transferred to Los Angeles from New York and he’s having a hard time adjusting. Everyone is just too laid back.
When Buck starts to target the two cops who are investigating him, the case gets personal and relentless.
Relentless is a movie that I’ve been meaning to review for five years now. In the past, I’ve always been deterred by the fact that reviewing Relentless would mean rewatching Relentless. But, having just spent two weeks watching all of the Witchcraft films, I now feel like I can handle anything. Relentless is a movie that I always remember as being better than it actually is. The murders are creepy but Judd Nelson gives such a one-note performance as the killer that it’s impossible to believe that he could have gotten away with them. As played by Nelson, Buck Taylor is such an obvious serial killer that I’m surprised that he wasn’t already in jail, having been accused of every single unsolved murder on the books. There’s nothing compelling about this killer and films like this pretty much live and … ahem … die based on the quality of their villain.
Why do I always remember Relentless as being better than it is? Most of the credit for that probably goes to Leo Rossi, an underappreciated character actor who gives such a good performance as Sam Dietz that he makes the entire movie better. Rossi even got a brief franchise out of his performance in Relentless, as Dietz returned for three sequels. Robert Loggia is also good as Malloy and it’s unfortunate that the movie doesn’t do as much with the character as it could have.
Rossi and Loggia aside, Relentless doesn’t live up to its potential. But it was still popular enough to launch a direct-to-video franchise. Tomorrow: Relentless 2.
International Horror Review: Kung Fu Beyond The Grave (dir by Chiu Lee)
I watched the 1982 film, Kung Fu From Beyond The Grave, on Prime earlier today. It was an enjoyable film from Hong Kong. It starred many of the same people who appeared in Kung Fu Zombie and both films had a similar attitude, mixing horror and family drama with martial arts and juvenile comedy and topping it all off with a random vampire. As I said, it was fun to watch and I was certainly never bored.
That said, I would be lying if I said I actually understood everything that happened in the film.
That’s not really the fault of the filmmakers or, at least, I don’t think it is. The version that I watched was badly dubbed into English and it was obvious that, during the film’s trip from Hong Kong to the grindhouse theaters of New York City, some pretty heavy editing was done. That’s pretty much par for the course when it comes to the martial arts films of the 70s. In fact, for many Americans, a good deal of the appeal of these films is the fact that the plots are often incoherent. Who needs a detailed plot when you’ve got so many great fight scenes, right?
The film opens with a narrator explaining that, every couple of months, the Gates of Hell are opened and the dead can wander the Earth. (The film — or at least the dubbed version of the film — seems to be pretty sure that everyone who dies ends up in Hell.) Chun Sing (Billy Chong, star of Kung Fu Zombie) is visited by his dead father, who informs Chun that he was killed by an evil wizard (Chin-Lai Sung) who works for a local crime lord named Kam Tai Fu (Lieh Lo). Chun now has to avenge his father’s death and what I liked about this film is that, much as with Kung Fu Zombie, it suggested that Chun is a bit annoyed to be bothered with it. One gets the feeling that Chun was perfectly fine with not knowing who was responsible for his father’s death but, now that the annoying old man has wandered through the Gates of Hell, Chun is now obligated to do something about it.
Unfortunately, it’s not going to be easy to revenge because Kam’s wizard is not only an expert martial artist but he’s also capable of summoning super natural help. In this case, that help comes in the form of a vampire. What is Chun to do!? Wait a minute — the Gates of Hell are still open! Why not just get some friendly ghosts to help him take on Kam, the wizard, and the vampire!?
And that’s really pretty much the movie for you. For 87 minutes, people yell at each other, people fight, vampires pop up, and occasionally a large group of pasty ghosts appear and swarm on their enemies. There’s also a subplot about people getting their hearts ripped out of their bodies while visiting the local brothel which …. well, I know it had something to do with Kam’s wizard but I’m not really sure why it needed to be done. Still, the scenes of heart theft add to the film’s already chaotic atmosphere. They just seem to belong.
Which one is better, Kung Fu Zombie or Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave? The fight scenes were actually better in Kung Fu From Beyond the Grave but Kung Fu Zombie had a far more clever sense of humor. I personally would have to give the victory to Kung Fu Zombie. That said, they’re both wonderfully berserk films and if you want to add a little martial arts to your Halloween horror, these two films make the perfect double feature! And they’re both on Prime so ….. enjoy!
Horror Film Review: You Should Have Left (dir by David Koepp)
Oh, the high hopes I had for You Should Have Left.
Not only was this horror film reuniting one of my favorite actors with the man who directed him in one of his best performances but it also featured what appeared to be the perfect casting of Amanda Seyfried as Kevin Bacon’s daughter. When I heard that the film featured Bacon trying to protect his family from an evil spirit, I was totally ready to watch a film that would feature ghosts trying to grab Amanda while Kevin yelled, “Leave me daughter alone!”
Of course, then I found out that Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried were not playing father and daughter. They were playing husband and wife. And listen, I love Kevin Bacon. I think he’s a great actor and he seems like a nice guy and I always appreciate the fact that he’s willing to make fun of himself and his up-and-down career. But seriously, Kevin Bacon is 28 years older than Amanda Seyfried and hearing that they would not only be playing husband and wife but that they would also be playing the parents of a young girl …. well, I wasn’t expecting much.
To the film’s credit, it doesn’t attempt to ignore the age difference between Bacon and Seyfried. This isn’t like one of those films where Michael Douglas is married to someone who just graduated from high school and everyone just shrugs it off as if there isn’t anything weird about it. Instead, the age difference is a major plot point of the movie. Kevin Bacon plays Theo, a retired, wealthy banker. Amanda Seyfried plays Susanna, an actress. From the start of the film, Theo obviously feels insecure about whether or not his much younger wife loves him. When he has trouble gaining access to a film set where she’s acting, he gets a bit paranoid. When he finds out that she was filming a love scene, he gets even more paranoid. Throughout the film, Theo worries that Susanna is gong to leave him for a younger man.
Meanwhile, Susanna struggles with how to explain to their daughter why no one likes Theo. It turns out that Susanna is Theo’s second wife. Theo’s first wife drowned in a bathtub. Theo was accused of murdering her but he was subsequently acquitted. As Susanna explains what happened, it becomes a bit obvious that she has her own doubts about her husband and his innocence.
When they receive an invitation to stay at a house in Wales, both Theo and Susanna assume that the other one arranged it. Actually, neither one of them arranged it! Still, it’s a really nice house and it seems like the perfect place for them to repair their strained marriage and work on their trust issues …. except for the fact that there’s obviously somebody or something inside the house with them!
Now, really, You Should Have Left should have worked. As I said before, I like Kevin Bacon and I think Amanda Seyfried is a far better actress than she’s actually given credit for being. Add to that, You Should Have Left was directed by David Koepp, who previously directed Bacon in Stir of Echoes. Remember how good that movie was? And yet, while You Should Have Left has a few creepy moments, it ultimately falls flat. What happened?
I think some of the problem is that, regardless of how much you may like the actors playing them, nether Theo nor Suzanna is a particularly compelling character. Theo, in particular, keeps a meditation journal. Stir of Echoes Kevin Bacon would have kicked the ass of You Should Have Left Kevin Bacon. Seriously, the minute you break out the meditation journal, that’s the minute I stop taking you seriously as a protagonist. The film also cheated a bit when it came to the issue of whether or not Theo murdered his wife. Instead of saying yes or no, the film tried to keep things ambiguous and it just didn’t feel right.
In the end, the film just didn’t work. The pacing was off. The visual style was bland. For all the build-up, there was nothing particularly interesting about the house’s secret. For all the talent involved, the film just fell flat.
It happens.
Through the Shattered Lens 