Horror on the Lens: Dr. Phibes Rises Again (dir by Robert Fuest)

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since yesterday’s horror on the lens was The Abominable Dr. Phibes, it only seems logical that today’s should be the sequel to that film, 1972’s Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Would you believe that, before I actually found the film on YouTube, I thought this film was called Dr. Phibes Rides Again? Personally, I think Rides Again sounds better than Rises Again but what do I know?

All that matters is that Vincent Price is back! Be sure to check out Gary’s review of Dr. Phibes Rises Again when you get the chance.

And watch the movie below!

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The House on Skull Mountain (dir by Ron Honthaner)

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before I say anything else about 1974’s The House on Skull Mountain, I just want to say how much I love the film’s poster. Seriously, that poster is everything that you could hope for from an exploitation film print ad. Everything about it, from the lightning to the giant skull to the mansion to the unfortunate person plunging to her doom is pure perfection. I especially like the question at the bottom of the poster: “Which of these five will come down alive?”

And, to be honest, it’s actually a fairly honest poster. The majority of the film really does take place in a house on a mountain that has features that look like a skull. Of course, the skull in the movie is not quite as prominent as the one in the poster. The house actually does look a lot like the one on the poster. There’s also a lot of lightning in the movie. It’s the same basic lightning stock footage that has appeared in almost every film ever produced by Roger Corman. In The House on Skull Mountain, it’s used as a transitional device. “Is that scene over?” you might find yourself wondering. Well, don’t worry. The lightning stock footage will let you know.

One reason that I’m focusing on the poster is because the film itself is kind of anemic. In the movie, the house on top of Skull Mountains belongs to Pauline Christophe, a direct descendant of the first king of Haiti. Upon her death, Pauline’s four great granchildren are invited to hear the reading of her will. None of the four have ever met Pauline or each other. Phillippe (Mike Evans) is an alcoholic who says stuff like, “Baby, what’s the scene?” Harriet (Xernona Clayton) is fragile and nervous and it certainly doesn’t help her nerves when she briefly sees a hooded skeleton sitting a few rows in front of her on her flight to Atlanta. Lorena (Janee Michelle) drives too fast but is otherwise responsible and mature. And then there’s Dr. Andrew Cunningham (Victor French), who shows up late and turns out to be white.

“You’re the wrong color!” Phillippe snaps at him.

Andrew shrugs and says that he’ll explain it all later. He does eventually tell a story about being abandoned on the front steps of an orphanage but the dialogue is so awkwardly-written and delivered that I’m not sure if he is being serious or if he is poking fun at Phillippe’s shock.

Because Andrew showed up late, the four of them have to stay in the house for a week until Pauline’s lawyer returns to read the will. Keeping them company is the butler, Thomas (Jean Durand), and Loutte (Ella Woods) the maid.

And that’s not all! It also appears that there is a robed skeleton wandering around the house as well! Add to that, the relatives start having visions. One falls down an elevator shaft. Another has a heart attack after someone stabs doll with a pin. Could all of this have something to do with the fact that Pauline and her servants were all dedicated practitioners of voodoo?

Sad to say but the House on Skull Mountain is pretty dull. The film does provide a brief history lesson concerning how Haiti was the only nation to be formed as a result of a slave rebellion and how the real-life Henri Christophe went from being a slave to a king but the film doesn’t really do much with the information. It’s tempting to look for some sort of subtext in the film’s plot but it’s really just not there. Much like Andrew being the only white member of a historically important black family, the history of Haiti and the actual origins of Haitian voodoo are elements that are brought up and then quickly abandoned. There is one good and lengthy voodoo ceremony but otherwise, the whole film is almost all filler. When it’s not showing us the same lighting stock footage, it’s showing us Andrew and Lorena wandering around Atlanta.

But seriously, that movie poster is to die for.

A Movie A Day #272: Mirror Mirror (1990, directed by Marina Sargenti)

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Following the death of her husband, Susan Gordon (Karen Black) relocates to Los Angeles with her teenage daughter, Megan (Rainbow Harvest). An angry goth girl who always wears black and bears a superficial resemblance to Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, Megan struggles to fit in at her new school and quickly attracts the unwanted attention of the school’s main mean girl, Charlene Kane (Charlie Spradling). Fortunately, Megan has an old and haunted mirror in her room that can not only bring her rotting father back to life but which Megan can also use to kill all of her tormentors.

Of the many rip-offs of Carrie, Mirror Mirror is one of the best and I am surprised that it is not better known. The plot, with a teenage girl using paranormal powers to get revenge on all of the bullies at her school, may be familiar but Mirror Mirror is better executed than most of the other films of its ilk. The script is full of snappy dialogue and, despite the low budget, the special effects are effectively grisly. There’s a scene that does for garbage disposals what Jaws did for the water. One thing that sets Mirror Mirror apart from similar films is that Megan is sometimes not a very sympathetic character. Unlike Carrie, who was scared of her powers and only used them once she was pushed over the edge, Megan is initially very enthusiastic about using the mirror to get revenge for every slight, real and perceived.

The cast also does a good job, with Karen Black giving one of her least restrained performances. Keep an eye out for Yvonne DeCarlo playing a realtor and William Sanderson as Susan’s strange new boyfriend. The best performance comes from Rainbow Harvest, a talented actress who appeared in a handful of movies in the 80s and 90s and then appears to have vanished from the face of the Earth. Believe it or not, Rainbow Harvest was her real name.

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Monster Meets The Blind Man In Bride of Frankenstein

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror scene that I love comes from 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein!

In this scene, directed by James Whale, the Monster (Boris Karloff) meets his first friend, a blind hermit played by O.P. Heggie. It’s a scene that features Karloff at his best and it’s still touching, even if it is kind of hard to watch it without thinking about Peter Boyle accidentally burning down Gene Hackman’s shack in Young Frankenstein.

Horror Film Review: Flatliners (dir by Niels Arden Oplev)

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jeff and I are currently on a little road trip but we’re not going to let something like that prevent us from seeing the latest bad movies.

For instance, last night, we saw the remake of Flatliners at the AMC 8 in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Ardmore is a lovely little town. When I was six years old, my family briefly lived in Ardmore and I can still remember this deserted barn that was sitting right at the edge of our property. My older sisters all told me that it was haunted and I can still remember sneaking over to the window in the middle of the night and staring at that dilapidated barn, searching for ghosts. Even though I was only six at the time, it’s still an incredibly vivid memory and I still have dreams about that barn. That’s the power of a good scare and that is exactly what’s missing from Flatliners. This is seriously one of the most forgettable films that I’ve ever seen.

I did get a little excited when I discovered that the film co-starred Nina Dobrev. Most people know her as Elena from The Vampire Diaries but, for me, she’ll always be Mia Jones on Degrassi. (Mia was not only a high school student and a star on the spirit squad. She was also: a single mother, a model, a drug addict, and J.T.’s girlfriend during the show’s sixth season.) She’s one of many Canadians in the cast of Flatliners. There’s also Ellen Page and Kiefer Sutherland.

That’s right, Kiefer Sutherland returns in the new version of Flatliners. But don’t get too excited. He’s not playing the same character. If he had been playing the same character, this film would have been a lot more interesting and he could have told the new cast, “Your sins have returned in physical form … and they’re pissed off!” Instead, he’s just playing a clueless doctor with really weird hair. I think we’re just supposed to be impressed by the fact that he agreed to appear in the remake and I guess I would be if the first one was some sort of award-winning classic or something. It’s not like the original Flatliners is the defining role of Kiefer Sutherland’s career. Now, if they had gotten Oliver Platt to come back…

ANYWAY, it’s pretty much the same story all over again, just told with a lot less visual flair. (Say what you will about Joel Schumacher as a director, he understood that the first Flatliners needed a lot of neon.) This time, it’s Ellen Page who convinces her friends to let her die and then revive her after two minutes. The remake does add an interesting wrinkle in that, when Page returns from being dead, she is now suddenly super smart and has total recall. At the very least, this explains why all the rest of her friends are then so eager to try it out for themselves. Even though it feels like a Limitless knock off, it’s still an interesting idea and I think that if the entire film had been about the students obsessively killing themselves and coming back, all in an effort to achieve some sort of Godhood, it would have made for an intriguing movie.

But that whole angle kind of gets abandoned. Soon, it’s time for everyone’s sins to start showing up. That means that Ellen page has to deal with her dead sister. Nina Dobrev has to deal with a dead patient. Another doctor has to deal with a girl she bullied. The movie tries to make you wonder whether or not they’re just having hallucinations but why would a hallucination feel the need to sneak around a room while its target isn’t looking?

Plus, I have to wonder: there are real people out there who have been clinically dead, just to have been brought back to life. Some of them have reported seeing the bright light and all the rest. If you follow this movie’s logic, are they all now secretly smart and being chased around by their past sins? If that’s the case then I’m looking forward to the sequel to Heaven Is For Real.

It’s a forgettable movie. The first Flatliners had its own stupid charm but the remake just falls flat.

Horror Film Review: Flatliners (dir by Joel Schumacher)

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Our sins have come back in a physical form … and they’re pissed!”

That one line pretty much sums up the original 1990 version of Flatliners. It’s a good line in that it’s one that you remember and it’s a line that you can use in almost any situation.

Have you gotten a phone call from an unknown caller? “Our sins have come back in physical form … and they’re pissed!”

Have you and your boyfriend recently been driving across Texas and suddenly noticed that a car has been following you all the way from Lake Dallas to the border of Oklahoma. “Our sins have come back in physical form … and they’re pissed!”

Have you ever had a stranger fail to hold a door open for you? There’s only one possible reason for that rudeness. “Our sins have come back in physical form .. and they’re pissed!”

And don’t even get me started on people who leave negative comments under my reviews. We all know what’s going on with that! “Our sins have come back in physical form … and they’re pissed!”

It’s a line that is both oddly memorable and also deeply stupid. The same description can be applied to Flatliners. It’s a film about a group of medical students (played by Julia Roberts, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon) who help Kiefer Sutherland investigate whether or not there’s actually an afterlife. Sutherland believes that there is but he needs an atheist to be a part of the group, that’s where Kevin Bacon comes in. And he needs a potential love interest and a Baldwin brother to be a member of the group as well, that’s why Julia Roberts and William Baldwin are there. And, of course, someone has to provide comedic relief whenever things start to get too dark. Say hello to Oliver Platt! Anyway, Sutherland’s plan is to die for a minute or two and then have his fellow medical students bring him back to life. It sounds like kind of a dumb idea but everyone agrees to it.

Anyway, it turns out that the afterlife looks a lot like an overproduced student film, full of weird camera angles, tinted lighting and disembodied voices. When Sutherland dies, he sees a boy that he used to bully. Julia Roberts sees her father, who committed suicide when she was younger. Kevin Bacon sees a little girl that he used to bully. (There are a lot of bullies in this movie.) William Baldwin, a sex addict who is chronically unfaithful to his fiancée, sees hundreds of women, all saying, “But you said you loved me.” Oliver Platt never actually gets to die and therefore, he sees nothing. He does make a joke about how his vision would probably involve an angry babysitter. I laughed.

What happens next? “Our sins have come back in physical form … and they’re pissed!”

Flatliners has an intriguing premise but oh my God, is it ever a silly film. It’s not really a spoiler to tell you that all of these returned sins want the characters to either atone for their mistakes or make peace with their past. For Kevin Bacon, this means tracking down the girl that he used to bully and allowing her to bully him. For Julia Roberts, it means getting an apology from her Dad and understanding that he was addicted to heroin. For William Baldwin, it means making peace with never being as well-known as either Alec or Steven. As for Kiefer … well, things are a bit more complicated for Kiefer Sutherland.

Flatliners starts out as a horror film but then it turns into a squishy movie about letting go of bitterness and learning how to forgive oneself. It’s kind of annoying that the film couldn’t just stick to being scary because the first half of the film does have some effectively tense moments. However, it all gets lost as the film’s plot sinks into sentimental, New Age-y quicksand.

Flatliners was directed by Joel Schumacher, who generally does well with shallow films that 1) don’t really mean anything and 2) don’t involve super heroes. And really, the only film that I can think of that’s more shallow than the original Flatliners is the remake. (But we’ll talk about that later…) Schumacher’s direction here is not particularly bad — everyone looks good and the film is never boring. It’s a very, very pretty film and one that doesn’t add up to much.

I would suggest watching it with your sins, especially after they take physical form. Maybe they’ll be a little less pissed off afterward.

Horror On The Len: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (dir by Robert Fuest)

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s really not October until you’ve watched at least one Vincent Price film and, for today’s horror on the lens, we have one of his 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!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Killer Party (dir by William Fruet)

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film Killer Party is one of those late 80s slasher films that somehow has developed a cult following. Up until recently, there was a fairly active fansite devoted to the history of Killer Party and Killer Party still regularly shows up on TCM Underground.

So, apparently, Killer Party has fans.

I’m just not sure why.

Some of it, I suppose, could have to do with the first ten minutes of the film, which are genuinely clever. It starts out with a young woman being menaced at a drive-in theater and, just when you’ve gotten invested in her story and have started to wonder whether or not she’ll survive the entire movie, it is suddenly revealed that we’ve actually been watching a movie-within-a-movie. And that movie-within-a-movie then turns out to be part of an incredibly silly music video, featuring a band that is so 80s that you find yourself expecting them to stop performing so they can do a line of coke and play the stock market. At one point, the band even performs while standing on the drive-in’s concession stand.

It’s all marvelously silly and kind of clever. The problem is that the rest of the film never lives up to those ten minutes. In fact, you spend the rest of the movie wishing you were still watching that movie about the girl trapped at the drive-in.

I also suppose that some of the film’s cult reputation has to do with the fact that Paul Bartel has a small supporting role. Bartel plays the same basic role that he played in almost every horror film in which he appeared. He’s a pompous professor who says a few dismissive lines and is then promptly killed off. Maybe it’s the Bartel factor that has led to this film developing a cult following.

Who knows?

Killer Party is essentially four movies in one. The first movie is that part that I’ve already talked about. The opening is clever but it only lasts for ten minutes.

After the opening, the film turns into a rather standard college comedy. Three girls want to join the wildest sorority on campus but it won’t be easy! Everyone on this campus is obsessed with playing pranks. And by pranks, I mean stuff like locking a bunch of people outside while they’re naked in a hot tub and then dumping a bunch of bees on them. Of course, that prank gets filmed and the footage is later shown at a meeting of stuffy old people. That’ll teach those uptight members of the World War II generation! You may have made the world safe for democracy but that was like a really, really long time ago! So there! It’s time for a new generation, one that will make the world safe for pranks!

During this part of the film, there are only a few hints that we’re watching a horror movie. For instance, the sorority wants to have a party in an abandoned frat house. Their housemother goes by the frat house and kneels in front of a grave. She speaks to someone named Alan and tells him that it’s time to move on. Then she promptly gets killed and no one ever seems to notice.

The comedy part of the movie segues into a remarkably bloodless slasher movie. The cast assembles at the forbidden house. They have a party. Someone in a diving mask shows up and kills off the majority of the cast in 20 minutes. Almost everyone dies off-screen so there’s really not even any suspense as far as that goes.

Then, during the last few minutes of the film, the slasher film suddenly turns into a demonic possession film and that seems like that should be brilliant turn of events but it just doesn’t work in Killer Party. Usually, I love movies that are kind of messy but Killer Party is a rather bland and listless affair. If you’re going to combine a campus comedy with a slasher film and a demonic possession film, you owe it to your audience to really go totally over the top and embrace the ludicrousness of it all. Instead, Killer Party rolls out at a languid and rather dull pace.

I would not accept an invitation to Killer Party.

A Movie A Day #271: Spellbinder (1988, directed by Janet Greek)

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Jeff Mills (Tim Daly) is an attorney who might be unlucky in love but who still owns a copy of every movie that Frank Capra has ever directed. (There is even a scene where two of his friends are seen looking at his movie collection and saying, “He’s got every movie Capra ever made!”) Miranda (Kelly Preston) is the beautiful and mysterious woman who Jeff saves from an abusive boyfriend. Within minutes of meeting her, Jeff invites Miranda to say with him in his apartment. For Jeff, it is love at first sight but his friends (Rick Rossovich and Diana Bellamy) worry that Jeff is getting in over his head with a woman about whom he knows nothing. Weird things start to happen in Jeff’s apartment and a woman (Audra Lindley) shows up in his office, taunting him about how she dug up his mother’s bones and used them in a black magic ceremony. Eventually, Miranda confesses that she is on the run from a Satanic coven that was planning on sacrificing her but is she telling the whole truth?

Spellbinder is an enjoyably daft movie, especially if you are a fan of Kelly Preston. It’s not that the rest of the cast isn’t good but this really is Preston’s show and her mix of All-American beauty and otherworldly sexiness is put to good use as the enigmatic Miranda. It is easy to believe that Jeff would fall in love with her despite not knowing much about her. The movie also has a few good scare scenes, like one in which the faces of all the members of the coven suddenly appear crowded around a window, staring in. A slickly made example of how Hollywood made money off of the Satanic panic of the 1980s, Spellbinder is essentially The Wicker Man set in Los Angeles and is more entertaining than Neil LaBute’s actual remake. (Even if it doesn’t have any bees.)

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Monster Lives in Frankenstein

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror scene that I love comes from the 1931 Universal classic, Frankenstein!

Though it’s been parodied to death and often used out of context (for example, a few years ago, it was used in a freaking car commercial), the “It’s Alive!” scene from Frankenstein is still a classic piece of horror history. Colin Clive is often unfairly criticized for going overboard in this scene but let’s be honest here: if you ever reanimated a corpse, you’d probably get pretty damn excited about it.