Since today would have Tor Johnson’s birthday, it only seems appropriate to share a bonus Horror On The Lens. This is the one film in which Tor Johnson starred, 1961’s The Beast Of Yucca Flats.
The Beast of Yucca Flats is a thoroughly inept film that makes next to no sense and has massive continuity errors. It’s a film that also features Tor Johnson as a Russian scientist who gets mutated by radiation and becomes a monster, but not before taking off almost all of his clothes while walking through the desert. For that matter, it’s also a film about a family that comes together though adversity — namely, being shot at by the police after the family patriarch is somehow mistaken for Tor Johnson. And finally, it’s the story of how a dying monster can find comfort from a rabbit and that’s actually kind of a sweet message.
Here’s the thing — yes, The Beast of Yucca Flats is bad but you still owe it to yourself to watch it because you will literally never see anything else like it. Plus, maybe you’ll be able to figure out what the whole point of the opening scene is.
Because I’ve watched this film a few times and I still have no idea!
Agck! I hate spiders and today’s movie has got a lot of them!
Fortunately, it also has William Shatner and some lovely Southwestern scenery.
Still, if you have a thing about spiders, this film will probably scare the Hell out of you, which makes it perfect for October. Fortunately, William Shatner gives a very William Shatenerish performance and therefore provides some relief from all of the tarantula horror.
This short film was not on IMDB; so, I used a graph from my amazing post on Alien Earth. Wasn’t that a great review? The math was perfect! This another AI short film, but you have to dig around to determine that a robot made it. I gotta say, it looks good. Maybe this will be how films are going to be made from now on?
A pale lady is walking down a hallway and then the wall starts bleeding…. motor oil? Maybe, they’ll ask me to drill a well there? I WOULD! The motor oil starts rippling and the pale lady is about to put her hand in it… for some reason. Then, a hand reaches from the motor oil puddle. She runs to an …. apartment? I can’t tell what is going on. Without any lead up, a monster appears out of nowhere and nothing happens.
This is NOT good. I have no idea what is going on and I don’t care. Maybe AI will takeover, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to have a story. You will still need a story or your short will be terrible. What else can I say about this short?
2022’s MiracleatManchester tells the story of a high school community that is brought together by one potential tragedy.
Brycen Newman (Kory Getman) is a high school student and an all-around athlete, a star on both the baseball and the football teams. But when he faints during baseball practice and also suffers a sudden nosebleed in the middle of class, his father (played by director Eddie McClintock) rushes Brycen to the hospital. He’s told that there’s nothing wrong with Brycen, beyond the typical teenage growing pain. Take a Tylenol and don’t worry about it, he’s told. That night, Brycen is woken up by a blinding headache. Another trip to the hospital reveals that Brycen has got a tumor in his brain. Brycen is continually given hope, just to have it snatched away. At first, he’s told that the tumor has been removed. But then the tumor comes back. Brycen goes through chemotherapy and even prepares to be sent to Florida so that he can take part in an experimental treatment. No one has much faith that Brycen is going to survive but Brycen’s fellow students rally around him. The football teams shaves their head in honor of Brycen. A priest leads a prayer ceremony in the stands. Journalist Miles Himmel (Nick Avila) follows Brycen’s story and reports all the details, even though he firmly does not believe in miracles. (He even snaps at his young daughter when he hears her talking about a miracle.)
While this is going on, a local mechanic named Ed Hanson (a nice performance from Daniel Roebuck) is fixing cars and, for veterans, charging on a dollar. His wife, who happens to be a nurse at the hospital, tells Ed that he need to get more rest and he needs to come up with a better financial plan than only charging people a dollar for thousands of dollars worth of work. Ed replies that he has no choice. He does it for the veterans and the needy. Good for Ed. We need more people like Ed in the world.
Miracle at Manchester is the type of low-budget, overly earnest filmmaking that typically brings out my cynical side but I have to admit that I actually teared up a bit while watching this film. Some of that is for strictly personal reasons. I lost my mom to cancer in 2008. Last year, I lost my Dad to Parkinson’s. Right now, I’m still in a state where even seeing a hospital room in a film will trigger my tears. But beyond that, it was a heartfelt story and also one that was (perhaps loosely, I don’t know) based on a true story. The film ended with the footage of the actual Brycen. It got to me.
Speaking of my father, after he died, I was organizing his estate and I was surprised to discover that he used to regularly give money to Make-A-Wish. Two representatives of Make-A-Wish appear in this film. Again, I can be cynical when it comes to various charities but Make-A-Wish seems like a good group of people. I’m proud of my Dad for supporting them.
In Fear is a movie about two people who get lost while trying to drive to a festival in Ireland. Tom (Iain De Caestecker) and Lucy (Alice Englert) have only been dating for two weeks and Tom is already inviting her to a festival and going behind her back to make reservations at a hotel. Tom says, “It’s our two-week anniversary,” and that should have been red flag city. Two weeks is only 14 days. That’s a lifetime for some creatures but not humans.
Tom and Lucy drive up and down a country road, trying to find the hotel but they keep on ending up back at the same location, sitting in front of run-down fence with a sign that says “KEEP OUT” sitting on it. Lucy thinks that she sees someone following the car but Tom isn’t so sure until someone actually tries to grab Lucy. They meet a bloody man named Max (Allen Leech), who says that there are a group of madmen who are stalking Tom and Lucy because of an earlier altercation at a pub.
In Fear was scary for the first half and then, during the second half, there were some things that happened that didn’t really make much sense to me. Some of the twists felt half-baked and sometimes, the characters behaved in ways that didn’t make much sense. Of course, speaking of making sense, I wouldn’t go on a road trip with someone who I had only been dating for two weeks. Road trips are the ultimate relationship test so you better make sure that you and your partner are really compatible before you even attempt one! Tom and Lucy were sweet together but they should have waited before going to the country together. And Tom definitely shouldn’t have made hotel reservations without talking to Lucy first. A lot of trouble could have been avoided if Tom hadn’t been so eager to celebrate that two-week anniversary.
Despite those inconsistencies, In Fear was scary enough to make me jump. It’s the type of horror movie that you should not watch in the dark. I locked all the doors as soon as it was over.
Industrial spy Harry Trent (Matt Mitler) escapes from two security guards by hiding in a space shuttle. He accidentally launches himself into orbit. As soon as he’s in space, Harry witnesses a bunch of pigmen attacking Earth. Harry spends five years exercising, eating frozen dinners, and drawing pictures of naked women on the walls o0f the space shuttle before finally returning to Earth, eager to defeat the pig men. After hooking up with Dana (Denise Crawford), Harry heads to Richmond to investigate rumors of an underground weapon that can defeat the pig people. Harry and Dana meet and team up with a biker named named Mad Dog Kelly (Joe Gentissi), who looks a lot like Sylvester Stallone in Nighthawks.
A micro-budget science fiction film that doesn’t make a shred of sense, Battle For The Lost Planet is just barely redeemed by its lack of pretension. It doesn’t take itself seriously and neither should anyone else. Nobody in the movie view Harry as being any sort of hero and even Harry admits that he’s more interested in getting laid than actually battling for the lost planet. The movie is narrated by Old Man Harry, who is writing his memoir and who has decided to title the manuscript, How I Saved The World. It looks like he’s writing his story in a ten-page notebook so saving the world was apparently very simple. Just find a super weapon and turn it on. It’s too bad no one thought of that when the Earth was being invaded!
Battle For The Lost Planet is a stupid movie but I like it.
I’ve had the Hong Kong horror flick RIGOR MORTIS (2013) sitting on my shelf for quite a few years. I remember reading a lot about it when it first came out in Hong Kong back in 2013, so I just went ahead and bought it. There was a lot of talk about it resurrecting the Hong Kong “hopping vampire” genre of films that was very popular in the 80’s, led by movies like the MR. VAMPIRE series and ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPOOKY KIND 2. My personal favorite Hong Kong films are the “heroic bloodshed” gangster films featuring actors like Chow Yun-Fat, Lau Ching-Wan and Andy Lau, but I do enjoy the idea of hopping vampires. In the spirit of October and Halloween, I decided to tear open the plastic wrap and finally give it a go!
Actor Chin Siu-Ho (portrayed by Hong Kong actor Chin Siu-Ho in a Meta version of himself) is suicidal after his wife leaves him and takes away their young son. He moves into a huge, dilapidated apartment building and immediately hangs himself. As his hung body is convulsing and jerking around, the supernatural story immediately kicks in and a pair of twin sister ghosts, who just happened to die tragically in the same apartment, emerge and take over his body. Out of nowhere, Yau (Anthony Chan), a neighbor, busts through the door, cuts the noose, and smashes Chin against a wall, saving his life and driving the ghosts out in one fell swoop! Yep, there are strange things afoot in this apartment complex and Yau decides to fill Chin in on a couple of items. First, he’s a vampire hunter, but there aren’t really any vampires left in Hong Kong, so he mostly just cooks rice these days. Second, there are a lot of ghosts hanging around the building that won’t leave, but there’s really no reason to be that scared of them because most of them aren’t trying to possess anyone, with the twin sisters being a notable exception. Wouldn’t you know it though, around the same time they’re having this conversation, an older neighbor named Tung (Richard Ng) slips and breaks his neck. Rather than just letting him die, his devastated wife Mui (Hee Ching Paw) goes to see her neighbor Gau (Fat Chung), a master practitioner of the blackest of black magic. Soon Gau has Tung’s dead body covered in dirt, wearing a mask made of Chinese coins and being fed crow’s blood. In seven days, Gau tells the wife, your husband will be back. I won’t go into all the details, because there are a bunch, but soon people will start dying, a vampire will be hopping, Yau will be living up to his family’s vampire hunting legacy, and Chin will be fighting ghosts and vampires, only this time without a director yelling “CUT” when things get dangerous!
I truly appreciate a movie like RIGOR MORTIS. Actor-director-producer-singer Juno Mak was only 29 years old when he directed this film that truly does pay lots of respect to the popular MR. VAMPIRE series of films from the 80’s. His casting goes a long way in bringing back those nostalgic memories. Actors Chin Siu-Ho, Anthony Chan, Billy Chau, Richard Ng, and Fat Chung all appeared in the MR. VAMPIRE series, along with tons of other films during the golden age of Hong Kong cinema, and its fun for me to see them all here. Chin Siu-Ho especially sticks out to me because of the film he made with Chow Yun-Fat in 1986 called THE SEVENTH CURSE. And the image of a slow-motion Richard Ng, decked out in full Hong Kong vampire regalia, hopping his way towards some serious trouble, is pure fan service. That part had me sitting up with a smile on my face.
While the tributes to the Hong Kong vampire genre are all here, the tone of RIGOR MORTIS is decidedly different. Completely foregoing the elements of slapstick and comedy that existed in the 80’s films, Mak has made a moody, supernatural film that’s full of emotionally damaged characters in need of some sort of purpose or redemption. Most of the characters are incapable of dealing with the difficult events of their life even remotely in a positive way, and it’s their collective bad decisions that lead to so much of the death and destruction in the film. Chin doesn’t know how to deal with his divorce, so he tries to kill himself, unleashing the twin sister ghosts. Auntie Mui so hates the prospect of being alone that she wants to bring back her dead husband, unleashing the vampire. And when the vampire and twin sister ghosts join forces, things get really crazy! Now that I write out the things that Chin and Mui are dealing with, Yau’s situation doesn’t really seem that bad. Sure, he may not get to fight vampires like his dad did, but is that any reason to mope around? Chin tells him that he makes the best glutinous rice in Hong Kong, and since Chin has been a successful actor, I’m sure he’s had a lot of the best glutinous rice around. The compliment doesn’t move Yau in any way, with the man brushing it off as meaningless. It’s actually kind of sad that Yau finding his purpose requires a supernatural unleashing of evil and many tragic victims. Come on Yau!
Since Director Mak is going for melancholy horror, to be truly successful, a movie like RIGOR MORTIS really needs good performances from its cast, and it needs to be somewhat scary. Chin Siu-Ho is good as the former actor whose life has turned into a dumpster fire. He’s introduced to us wearing shades that would have been perfectly at home on Chow Yun-Fat’s face in the Hong Kong Classic A BETTER TOMORROW (1986). I enjoyed that nod to Hong Kong’s legacy of cool action stars. Thinking back on it now, I may have criticized his character’s moping around, but Anthony Chan’s performance as the vampire hunter Yau is probably my favorite performance of the film. He’s a man who doesn’t care, until he does, and then he’s all in. I also liked Kara Hui as a woman whose life was destroyed in the same apartment that Chin now lives in, and who now just kind of wanders around the building with her son Pak. Her character is somewhat peripheral to the main story, but there is definitely something appealing about her performance. Heck, it may just be that she’s really pretty. Old veterans like Richard Ng, Fat Chung, and Hee Ching Paw give solid, professional performances just as you’d expect them to.
So, the performances in RIGOR MORTIS are good, but is the film scary? I will say that if there would be any criticism I would level at the film, it’s the fact that I just didn’t find it very scary, or really even that spooky for that matter. The setting, the dilapidated apartment building, seems like a perfect background for jump scares, yet there are very few. Mak seemed to prioritize special effects driven visuals over sending shivers down our spines. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because Mak does find some true horror in his story. For example, one of the most horrific scenes in the film is our first real image of the dangerous vampire, whose fingernails grow in front of us as it sets its sights on a truly innocent young victim, a scene that proves that no one is safe in the world of this film. However, if you’re looking for a movie that’s going to make you jump throughout its hour and forty-five-minute runtime, this film did not have that effect on me.
Ultimately, I would give RIGOR MORTIS a solid recommendation to any person who might appreciate a modern take on Hong Kong horror films of the 1980’s. I’d also recommend it to people who enjoy visually impressive horror films that rely more on mood than outright scares. I probably would not recommend it strongly to those who insist on lots of gotcha moments in their horror films. For me personally, I enjoyed it very much, and I’m glad I finally got around to watching it. It may be time to pull out my old DVD of MR. VAMPIRE for a revisit!
In 1957, the Commission — the governing board that regulated organized crime in America — seemed like it was on the very of collapsing. Bugsy Siegel was dead. Lucky Luciano had been exiled to Sicily. Meyer Lansky was more concerned with running his casinos in Cuba than with keeping track of who was angry with who in America. The ruthless Vito Genovese was moving in on everyone’s business and was suspected of being behind the assassination of Albert Anastasia and the shooting of Frank Costello.
Genovese, looking to solidify his control and perhaps bring some peace to the warring factions, called for a summit in upstate New York, at the estate of Joseph Barbara. Bosses from across the country gathered in Apalachin, New York. It started out as a nice weekend, with stories being told and fish being grilled. But then, suddenly, the cops showed up and 50 of the country’s most powerful mobsters made a run for it. Many of them ducked into the woods, where they were subsequently rounded up by the cops.
In the end, several mobsters were arrested and convicted of various crimes. All of those convictions were overturned on appeal. However, the arrests revealed to America that the Mafia wasn’t just an urban legend. Up until the bust at Apalachin, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover insisted that there was no such thing as the Mafia. After the bust, Hoover not only acknowledged that the Mafia existed but he also started a special division of the FBI to deal with it.
(Not that it did much good, of course. Being exposed still didn’t stop the Mafia from fixing the vote in Illinois during the 1960 presidential election.)
The 2019 film Mob Town details the events leading up to the Apalachin Conference. Robert Davi is properly intimidating as the ruthless Vito Genovese. The film’s director, Danny A. Abeckaser, plays Joseph Barbara while Jami-Lyn Sigler plays Barbara’s wife, tasked with putting together a dinner for a growing list of guests. Josephine Barbara goes from being happy about her husband working his way up the ranks of the mob to growing increasingly frustrated as the number of expected bosses rises from 30 to 50 and I have to say that I could very much relate to Josephine. Finally, David Arquette plays Edgar Croswell, the New York state trooper who figured out that something big was happening at the Barbara place. Croswell spends most of the film trying to get people to take him seriously. At the end of the film, he gets a congratulatory call from President Eisenhower. I’m enough of a history nerd that I appreciate any film that ends with a congratulatory call from President Eisenhower.
Mob Land was obviously made for a low-budget and it doesn’t always move as quickly as one might like. When Croswell isn’t trying to expose the mob, he’s pursuing a romance with Natalie (Jennifer Esposito) and Arquette’s permanently dazed expression doesn’t always make him the most convincing state trooper. It’s an uneven movie that traffics in almost every mob cliche but I can’t be too critical of it. Robert Davi was a more convincing Genovese than Robert De Niro was in Alto Knights. I appreciated the scenes of the Barbaras trying to get their place ready for the meeting. That was mob action to which I could relate.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have 1958’s The Brain Eaters!
In this noir-influenced tale of science fiction horror, a con-shaped ship crashes near a small town. Soon, the residents of the town are vanishing, just to return as mind-controlled zombies! This one clocks in at 61 minutes and it’s an enjoyable little B-movie. Like many films from the 50s, the main message seems to be that you should never totally trust anyone. They could be a communist. They could be an alien. They could be a Brain Eater!
Keep an eye out for Leonard Nimoy in an early role. Or actually, it might be better to keep an ear open. Nimoy isn’t easy to spot but you’ll recognize his voice towards the end of the film.
Can AI be used to make an entertaining horror short? We have a parking garage security guard searching the property because he hears a noise. He finds his coworker slain. A zombie starts rewiring the fuse box and turns off the lights in the garage. The zombie is smart He encounters the zombie and starts shooting and shooting, killing more and more zombies to heavy metal and that is the whole film. I enjoyed it. So, AI can make a fun horror short and actors will become a thing of the past. If you have 2.6 minutes to spare, check it out.
Through the Shattered Lens 