Today’s horror scene that I love comes from the 1957 British film, Night of the Demon.
This is one of those films that deserves to be better known than it actually is. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, this is a moody and intelligent horror film, one that’s full of atmosphere and features a surprisingly effective demon. Reportedly, Tourneur didn’t want to show the actual demon in the film but he was overruled by the film’s producers. Typically, I usually side with the directors whenever it comes to stories of behind-the-scenes conflict but, in this case, I think the film actually works better with the demon as an actual physical presence.
For today’s horror on the Shattered Lens, we have 1980’s Without Warning.
In this horror/sci-fi hybrid, humans are hunted by an alien hunter who uses a variety of weapons and … what was that? No, we’re not watching Predator. We’re watching Without Warning. For the record, Without Warning and Predator may have almost exactly the same plot but Without Warning came out long before Predator.
(Interestingly enough, Kevin Peter Hall played the intergalactic hunter in both films.)
Anyway, Without Warning is probably the best film that Greydon Clark ever directed. Some would say that’s not saying much but seriously, Without Warning is a surprisingly effective film. It also has a large cast of guest stars, the majority of whom are killed off within minutes of their first appearance. That alien takes no prisoners! (I especially feel sorry for the cub scouts.)
Of course, the main characters are four teenagers. One of them is played by David Caruso, which I have to admit amuses me to no end.
That is the mystery that Professors Jim Tanner (George Hamilton) and Margery Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette) have to solve. Someone is using psychic powers to kill their co-workers in a research laboratory. The police think that Tanner is guilty but Tanner knows that one of his colleagues is actually a super human named Adam Hart. Hart is planning on using his super powers to control the world and, because Tanner is the only person who has proof of his existence, Hart is methodically framing Tanner for every murder that he commits.
The Power is underrated by entertaining movie, a mix of mystery and science fiction with a pop art twist. It was also one of the first attempts to portray telekinesis on film. Similar films, like Scanners, may be better known but all of them are directly descended from The Power. George Hamilton may seem like an unlikely research scientist but he and Suzanne Pleshette are a good team and The Power makes good use of Pleshette’s way with a one liner. Also keep an eye out for familiar faces like Arthur O’Connell, Nehemiah Persoff, Michael Rennie, Gary Merrill, Yvonne DeCarlo, Vaughn Taylor, Aldo Ray, and even Forrest J. Ackerman as a hotel clerk.
As our longtime readers know, I’ve seen my share of stupid movies but it’s hard for me to think of any recent film that’s quite as dumb as Rings.
It’s a shame, really. Rings, which came out in February of this year, is the second sequel to The Ring. Despite the fact that it’s been imitated by a countless number of inferior rip-offs and the film’s central premise of evil traveling through a VHS tape has become dated, The Ring actually holds up pretty well. But, Rings just does not work.
It should be said that Rings gets off to a good and chilling start, with passengers on an airplane asking if they’ve heard about “the tape that can kill you” and then Samara Morgan (Bonnie Morgan) suddenly appearing on every screen in the plane. It’s the film’s way of declaring, “Just because VHS tapes are a thing of the past, that’s not going to stop our Samara!” It’s a good opening but it’s also only five minutes and it’s followed by a “two years later…” title card.
Spoiler alert: two years later, everything goes down hill and the movie gets stupid.
The main plot of Rings deals with Holt (Alex Roe) and Julia (Matilda Lutz, who looks and sounds like Ellen Page but isn’t Ellen Page). They’re teenagers in love and when Holt leaves for college, they promise to skype each other every night. However, one night, Julia sits down in front of her laptop and discovers that Holt is not in his dorm room. Instead, there’s a woman demanding to know where Holt is.
HOLT HAS DISAPPEARED!
Julia goes to the college to find her boyfriend. She discovers that Holt has fallen in with a professor (Johnny Galecki) who apparently watched the infamous video tape. In order to avoid dying, the professor showed the tape to one of his students. And then he had that student find someone else to watch the tape and so on and so forth. I kept waiting for someone to ask the professor why he was ripping off It Follows but, apparently, no one at the college has ever seen a horror film.
Anyway, Holt has yet to force anyone to watch the video tape and he’s running out of time. In order to save her boyfriend’s life, Julia watched the video. Oddly, we don’t really get to see much of the video in Rings. I’m going to assume that the filmmakers felt that it would be pointless to show the whole video again since, presumably, the everyone in the audience has seen either The Ring or The Ring 2 or maybe even Ringu. But seriously, this is a Ring movie. Not showing the entire video without interruption feels almost disrespectful to the audience. It’s kind of like making a Friday the 13th movie and then refusing to actually show us Jason killing any of the counselors.
Anyway, after she watches the video, a weird symbol appears on Julia’s hand and somehow, all of this leads to Holt and Julia going to the town of Sacrament Valley, which is where Samara was buried after she was retrieved from that well at the end of the first Ring. Julia and Holt do some investigating, which basically means talking to a bunch of overacting character actors with inconsistent Southern accents. The film spends the majority of its time filling in Samara’s backstory, which is kind of pointless since we learned everything that we needed to know about Samara during the first two films. It’s enough to know that she’s a little girl who can pop out of your TV and kill you. She doesn’t really need the Ancestry DNA treatment that she gets from Rings.
Vincent D’Onofrio appears as a reclusive blind man, who might be the key to figuring out whatever’s supposed to be going on. D’Onofrio gives a performance that makes his work on Law and Order: Criminal Intent look subtle and nuanced. Normally, I wouldn’t mind an actor going over the top in a film like this but there’s nothing surprising about D’Onofrio’s character. Even when his big secret was revealed, I shrugged.
Rings is one of those worst movies of 2017, featuring bad acting, bad direction, and totally wasting whatever potential the franchise had left. The dialogue was so bad and the characters were so inconsistent that the movie actually made me angry. It doesn’t even work as a self-reflective parody.
For the sins of Rings, we all deserve to watch this:
For today’s horror on the lens, we have 1991’s Sometimes They Come Back.
Adapted from a Stephen King short story, this made-for-television film tells the story of a teacher (played by Tim Matheson) who returns to the New England town where he grew up. If he seems reluctant to do so, it’s because he has some bad childhood memories to deal with. In the 60s, his brother was murdered by a group of leather-clad greasers, all of whom subsequently died in a fiery car crash.
But, if all of them died in the 60s, why are they now showing up in his classroom? And why have none of them aged?
Could it be that … sometimes they come back?
And could it also be that the reason that they’re coming back is so they can finish the job that they started in the 60s and murder the last remaining brother?
This campy but enjoyable adaptation features good performances from both Tim Matheson and, in the role of the main dead guy, Robert Rusler. Why have they come back and what can be done to make them leave once again? Watch, find out, and enjoy!
Well, as Val already made clear with today’s music video of the day, it’s Friday the 13th!
(As I type this, I’m currently in my underwear and sitting in a wilderness cabin. If I here any strange noises outside, I’m going to grab a flashlight with a failing battery and go outside to investigate without putting on pants or letting anyone know that I’m leaving. I honor the traditions of this day.)
And you know what? It’s an even better Friday the 13th than usual because … IT’S OCTOBER!
I think this is the first time, since we started this site and our annual horrorthons, that we’ve had a Friday the 13th in October. It seems like today would be the perfect day to review every single film in the Friday the 13th franchise but … I ALREADY DID!
Back in 2012, I reviewed every Friday the 13th film. It was one of the first “review series” that I ever did and I’m still quite proud of how it went.
In 1986, nerds could build robots that displayed human feelings.
Angry old neighbors hate robots.
If a nerd can build a robot that displays human feelings, then he can also bring his girlfriend back to life by putting a computer chip from the robot in her brain.
Once brought back to life, the girlfriend will start to behave just like the robot.
Basketballs can be used to do anything.
Deadly Friend is best remembered for the scene where the newly revived Samantha (Kristy Swanson) throws a basketball with such force that it causes the head of her neighbor (Anne Ramsey) to explode. It is also remembered for BB, the big yellow robot that was built by Paul (Matthew Laborteaux). Deadly Friend starts out as the ultimate nerd fantasy: a beautiful girlfriend. a big robot, and a killer basketball. By the end of the movie, the fantasy has turned into a nightmare.
Deadly Friend was Wes Craven’s follow-up to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven intended for the film to be a dark love story between a teenage outcast and his zombie girlfriend, with a strong emphasis on the hypocrisy of the adults around them. Craven said that, in his version of Deadly Friend, people like Samantha’s abusive father were meant to be scarier than Zombie Samantha With A Microchip In Her Brain. Warner Bros. wanted a film that would appeal to teenage horror fans and demanded Elm Street-stlye nightmares and buckets of more blood. As a result, Craven practically disowned the finished movie and Deadly Friend is a tonally inconsistent, with sentimental first love scenes competing for space with heads exploding and necks being snapped. Despite good performances from Laborteaux and Swanson, the final film is too much of a mess to work. However, I know that I will never look at a basketball the same way again.
No, actually, they don’t. If anything, they cause crimes to happen.
First released in 1971 and directed by Al Adamson, Dracula vs. Frankenstein may not be a good film but it’s definitely an unforgettable film. Yes, it may be thoroughly inept but it’s also perhaps the strangest take on the Dracula/Frankenstein rivalry that you’ll ever see.
Plus, it’s one of the final films of Lon Chaney, Jr. Unfortunately, Lon doesn’t exactly look his best in Dracula vs Frankenstein...
Speaking of slumming celebrities, long before he played Dr. Jacoby and inspired America to shout, “Dig yourself out of the shit!,” Russ Tamblyn played a biker named Rico in this movie.
Also, like every other exploitation film made in 1971, Dracula vs. Frankenstein features hippies, leading to the age old question: who needs the supernatural when you’ve got LSD-crazed hippies running around?
Another age old question: Is Dracula vs. Frankenstein merely inept or is it a classic of bad filmmaking?
The movie known as Bloody Movie was originally filmed in 1987, under the title Terror Night. However, it was never released. There are plenty of rumors about why it wasn’t released. Some people say that it was because the film was produced with Mafia money. Some people say it was because it used a lot of footage that was lifted from other movies and the producers apparently didn’t bother to clear the rights. Of course, it’s also totally possible that the film wasn’t released because it wasn’t very good. I mean, that does happen.
Regardless of why, the film apparently sat on the shelf for 20 years. It was finally released by Fred Olen Ray’s Retromedia and retitled Bloody Movie. That said, the DVD that I own (and watched for this review) was released by Legacy Entertainment and still had the Terror Night title. The transfer on the Legacy DVD was notably bad. From what I’ve been told, the Retromedia release looks a lot better.
Now, there’s a lot bad things that can be said about Terror Night. It’s low-budget, which is one of those things that can be overcome by a clever director but, in this case, it just results in Terror Night looking cheap. It’s poorly written, full of one-dimensional characters who were shallow even by the standards of a late 80s slasher. This is also one of those movies where formerly respectable actors pop up for five minutes cameos. Whenever one of those actors shows up, all the action stops so that they can earn their paycheck. Aldo Ray is homeless and doomed. Cameron Mitchell is a cynical cop and doomed. Alan Hale, Jr. is an affable security guard and apparently not doomed. There’s no real reason for any of them to be there but there they are! There’s also a biker couple who show up for no particular reason, along with the typical collection of teenage victims.
But yet, there are moments when Terror Night goes from being bland to being almost transcendently odd.. There are moments of comedy mixed in with some surprisingly mean-spirited death scenes. Necks are snapped. Heads are chopped off. Bodies are split in half. It all gets rather messy and the presence of all those old time actors makes the sudden gore scenes feel all the more strange.
However, the main thing that distinguishes Terror Night from the other slashers of the era is the identity of the killer. (And, before anyone yells at me, this is not a spoiler. There is never any mystery about who the killer is.) Lance Hayward is not a zombie like Jason Voorhees or a silent symbol of evil like Michael Myers. He’s not seeking vengeance for some crime in the past. Instead, he’s a former silent screen star. (It seems like Hayward would have been close to 90 years old at the time of Terror Night. He’s still surprisingly spry.) Hayward commits his murders while wearing costumes from his old movies. Adding to the strangeness of the whole scenario is that actual silent footage is spliced into the murder scenes. Most of the footage comes from movies like The Thief of Baghdad, The Black Pirate, and the Gaucho. You have to wonder if Douglas Fairbanks cheated the director’s father or something.
(Since Hayward spends most of the movie in costume, I’m assuming that he was mostly played by stuntmen. When Hayward actually shows his face, he’s played by one-time Oscar nominee, John Ireland. At the height of his career, Ireland co-starred in films like All The King’s Men.)
As to why a silent scream star would be murdering teenagers … well, your guess is as good as mine. It’s a strange film, a mix of gore and nostalgia. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it but I still always appreciate anything this strange.
From start to end, the 1994 film Ed Wood is a nearly perfect film.
Consider the opening sequence. In glorious black-and-white, we are presented with a house sitting in the middle of a storm. As Howard Shore’s melodramatic and spooky score plays in the background, the camera zooms towards the house. A window flies open to reveal a coffin sitting in the middle of a dark room. A man dressed in a tuxedo (played to snarky and eccentric perfection by Jeffrey Jones) sits up in the coffin. Later, we learn that the man is an infamously inaccurate psychic named Criswell. Criswell greets us and says that we are interested in the unknown. “Can your heart handle the shocking facts of the true story of Edward D. Wood, Jr!?”
As streaks of lightning flash across the sky, the opening credits appear and disappear on the screen. The camera zooms by tombstones featuring the names of the cast. Cheap-looking flying saucers, dangling on string, fly through the night sky. The camera even goes underwater, revealing a giant octopus…
It’s a brilliant opening, especially if you’re already a fan of Ed Wood’s. If you’re familiar with Wood’sfilms, you know that Criswell’s appearance in the coffin is a reference to Orgy of the Dead and that his opening monologue was a tribute to his opening lines fromPlan 9 From Outer Space. If you’re already a fan of Ed Wood then you’ll immediately recognize the flying saucers. You’ll look at that octopus and you’ll say, “Bride of the Monster!”
And if you’re not an Ed Wood fan, fear not. The opening credits will pull you in, even if you don’t know the difference between Plan 9 and Plan 10. Between the music and the gorgeous black-and-white, Ed Wood is irresistible from the start.
Those opening credits also announce that we’re about to see an extremely stylized biopic. In the real world, Ed Wood was a screenwriter and director who spent most of his life on the fringes of Hollywood, occasionally working with reputable or, at the very least, well-known actors like Lyle Talbot and Bela Lugosi. He directed a few TV shows. He wrote several scripts and directed a handful of low-budget exploitation films. He also wrote a lot of paperbacks, some of which were semi-pornographic. Most famously, he was a cross-dresser, who served in the army in World War II and was wearing a bra under his uniform when he charged the beaches of Normandy. Apparently, the stories of his love for angora were not exaggerated. Sadly, Wood was also an alcoholic who drank himself to death at the age of 54.
Every fan of Ed Wood has seen this picture of him, taken when he first arrived in Hollywood and looked like he had the potential to be a dashing leading man:
What people are less familiar with is how Ed looked after spending two decades on the fringes of the film business:
My point is that the true story of Ed Wood was not necessarily a happy one. However, one wouldn’t know that from watching the film based on his life. As directed by Tim Burton, Johnny Depp plays Ed Wood as being endlessly positive and enthusiastic. When it comes to determination, nothing can stop the film’s Ed Wood. It doesn’t matter what problems may arise during the shooting of any of his films, Wood finds a way to make it work.
A major star dies and leaves behind only a few minutes of usable footage? Just bring in a stand-in. The stand-in looks nothing like the star? Just hide the guy’s face.
Wrestler Tor Johnson (played by wrestler George “The Animal” Steele), accidentally walks into a wall while trying to squeeze through a door? Shrug it off by saying that it adds to the scene. Point out that the character that Tor is playing would probably run into that wall on a regular basis.
Your fake octopus doesn’t work? Just have the actors roll around in the water.
The establishment won’t take you seriously? Then work outside the establishment, with a cast and crew of fellow outcasts.
You’re struggling to raise money for your film? Ask the local Baptist church. Ask a rich poultry rancher. Promise a big star. Promise to include a nuclear explosion. Promise anything just to get the film made.
You’re struggling to maintain your artistic vision? Just go down to a nearby bar and wait for Orson Welles (Vincent D’Onofrio) to show up.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that Ed Wood is Tim Burton’s best film. It’s certainly one of the few Burton films that actually holds up after repeat viewings. Watching the film, it’s obvious that Wood and Burton shared a passionate love for the movies and that Burton related to Wood and his crew of misfits. It’s an unabashedly affectionate film, with none of the condescension that can sometimes be found in Burton’s other film. Burton celebrates not just the hopes and dreams of Ed Wood, Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson and Criswell but also of all the other members of the Wood stock company, from Vampira (Lisa Marie) to Bunny Breckenridge (Bill Murray), all the way down to Paul Marco (Max Casella) and Loretta King (Juliet Landau). Though Ed Wood may center around the character of Wood and the actor who plays him, it’s a true ensemble piece. Landau won the Oscar but really, the entire cast is brilliant. Along with those already mentioned, Ed Wood features memorable performances from Sarah Jessica Parker and Patricia Arquette (one playing Wood’s girlfriend and the other playing his future wife), G. D. Spradlin (as a minister who ends up producing one of Wood’s films), and Mike Starr (playing a producer who is definitely not a minister).
For me, Ed Wood is defined by a moment very early on in the film. Wood watches some stock footage and talks about how he could make an entire movie out of it. It would start with aliens arriving and “upsetting the buffaloes.” The army is called in. Deep delivers the line with such enthusiasm and with so much positive energy that it’s impossible not get caught up in Wood’s vision. For a few seconds, you think to yourself, “Maybe that could be a good movie…” Of course, you know it wouldn’t be. But you want it to be because Ed wants it to be and Ed is just do damn likable.
As I said before, Ed Wood is a highly stylized film. It focuses on the good parts of the Ed Wood story, like his friendship with Bela Lugosi and his refusal to hide the fact that he’s a cross-dresser who loves angora. The bad parts of his story are left out and I’m glad that they were. Ed Wood is a film that celebrates dreamers and it gives Wood the happy ending that he deserved. The scenes of Plan 9 From Outer Space getting a raptorous reception may not have happened but can you prove that they didn’t?
I suppose now would be the time that most reviewers would reflect on the irony of one of the worst directors of all time being the subject of one of the best films ever made about the movies. However, I’ll save that angle for whenever I get a chance to review The Disaster Artist. Of course, I personally don’t think that Ed Wood was the worst director of all time. He made low-budget movies but he did what he could with what he had available. If anything, Ed Wood the film is quite correct to celebrate Ed Wood the director’s determination. Glen or Glenda has moments of audacious surrealism. Lugosi is surprisingly good in Bride of the Monster. As for Plan 9 From Outer Space, what other film has a plot as unapologetically bizarre as the plot of Plan 9? For a few thousand dollars, Wood made a sci-fi epic that it still watched today. Does that sound like something the worst director of all time could do?
Needless to say, Ed Wood is not a horror film but it’s definitely an October film. Much as how Christmas is the perfect time for It’s A Wonderful Life, Halloween is the perfect time for Ed Wood.
Who is Adam Hart?
Through the Shattered Lens 