Category Archives: Film

Horror Book Review: Ed Wood: Nightmare of Ecstasy (The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.) by Rudolph Grey

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Beware all who open this book!

Nightmare of Ecstasy is an oral history of the life of Ed Wood, Jr., the man who has unfairly been declared the worst director of all time.  Not only does it include interviews with people who knew and worked with Wood at all the stages of his life and career but it also includes plenty of details about what went on behind the scenes during the making of Wood’s most famous films.

And, make no mistake, a lot of it is fascinating and hilarious.  Wood truly did surround himself with a collection of eccentrics and, fortunately for this book, several of them were very verbose eccentrics.  (Sadly, since this was book was originally published way back in 1992, some of the most notable interviews are with people who have since passed away.)  Wood was a storyteller so it’s perhaps not surprising that he was drawn to other storytellers.

Nightmare of Ecstasy is credited as being the basis for Tim Burton’s film, Ed Wood and it serves as a nice companion piece.  Since Ed Wood was highly fictionalized, Nightmare of Ecstasy is a good resource for setting the record straight.  Some of the more memorable moments in Ed Wood come across as being rather mundane in the book.  Meanwhile, some of the book’s more flamboyant passages did not make it into the film.  For instance, only by reading the book can you discover that one of Ed Wood’s frequent actors, Kenne Duncan, was nicknamed Horsecock.

At the same time, it’s a sad book because it follows Wood all the way to his final days.  Wood is such a legendary figure that I think it’s sometimes forgotten that he was also a human being.  Reading the book, you admire Wood for never giving up but, at the same time, you discover that he wasn’t the eternal optimist that Johnny Depp played in Burton’s film.  At the end of his life, he was a rather sad man, an alcoholic who sometimes pawned his typewriter so he’d have enough money to buy a drink.  He was reduced to working on the fringes of the adult film industry, even trying to convince his Plan 9 From Outer Space co-star, Vampiram to appear in a hardcore film.  At one point, Dudley Manlove (who played Eros in Plan 9) quotes a drunk and angry Wood as using a racial slur to describe his neighbors and it’s a shock because that’s just not the way that most of us like to think about Ed Wood.

Though the book may ultimately be rather sad, it’s also a valuable resource.  At the end of the book is a list of all of the films and TV shows that Wood is believed to have worked on.  (Wood has more credits than you might expect, though sadly some of them appear to be lost.)  Even more importantly, there is a list of every “adult” novel that Wood wrote, along with a plot description and even a few excerpts.  Longtime fans will be happy to learn that, just as in his films, Ed Wood the novelist always took the time to mention angora.

Ed Wood, in his later years.

Horror Film Review: Cape Fear (dir by Martin Scorsese)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

And I beheld as Scorsese remade a classic movie and, Lo, there was De Niro, decorated in india ink and speaking in tongues…

In 1991, Martin Scorsese remade the 1962 horror thriller, Cape Fear.  Both versions deal with the same basic story but each tells it in a very different way.  If the original Cape Fear was straightforward and to the point, Martin Scorsese’s version is so stylized that occasionally, it’s tempting to suspect that Scorsese might be parodying himself.  Zoom shots, negative shots, sweeping camera movements, Scorsese’s Cape Fear is full of all of them.  When a storm rolls in for the film’s operatic finale, the red clouds look as if their on fire.  Hell is coming to North Carolina, the film appears to be announcing.

While the plot largely remains the same, there are a few significant changes to the characters involved:

In the first Cape Fear, Robert Mitchum’s Max Cady was an arrogant, swaggering brute.  In the remake, Robert De Niro’s Cady is still an arrogant, swaggering brute but he’s now also an evangelical who is tattooed with bible verses and who speaks in tongues.  Cape Fear‘s approach to Cady’s religion is so over-the-top that it almost makes Stephen King’s approach to religious characters seem subtle and nuanced.  De Niro also speaks in a broad Southern accent.  Occasionally, De Niro gets the accent right but most of the time, he sounds like he’s in a Vermont community theater production of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.

In the first Cape Fear, Gregory Peck’s Sam Bowden was a lawyer who caught Max while Max was attacking a woman and who then testified against Max in court.  That’s not the case with the remake’s version of Sam Bowden.  Despite being played by Nick Nolte, the remake’s Sam Bowden is such a wimp that you can’t help but dislike him.  His wife (Jessica Lange) doesn’t trust him.  His teenage daughter (Juliette Lewis) resents him and his attempts to control her life.  In this version, Sam didn’t testify against Max in court.  Instead, Sam was Max’s lawyer and withheld evidence that could have secured Max’s acquittal.  What Sam didn’t realize is that Max would spend his time in prison studying the law and that Max would eventually figure out what Sam did.

As in the original film, Max shows up in North Carolina and proceeds to stalk the Bowdens.  Unlike Mitchum, who was all quiet menace, De Niro plays Max as being loud and obnoxious, the type who will sit in a theater, light a cigar, and intentionally laugh at the top of his lungs.  Max knows enough about the law that he knows exactly what he can get away with.  He poisons Sam’s dog.  He rapes Sam’s associate, Lori (played, in a heart-breaking performance, by Ileana Douglas).  In one of the film’s most unsettling scenes, he pretends to be the new drama teacher and toys with Sam’s daughter.

With the help of a private eye (Joe Don Baker), Sam tries to get Max out of his life.  Eventually, Sam pretends to be out-of-town, all as part of a ruse to get Max to break into his house so that he can be shot in self-defense.  It’s here that Nolte’s wimpy performance becomes an issue.  It’s impossible not to laugh at the sight of Sam, all hunched down and desperately trying to run from room to room without being spotted through any of the windows.

To a certain extent, I suspect that were meant to see Sam as being a rather pathetic figure.  Scorsese doesn’t really seem to have much sympathy for him or his dysfunctional family.  If anything, the film seems to argue that Sam has been a bad lawyer, a bad husband, and a bad father and Max has been sent as a type of divine retribution.  Only by defeating Max can Sam find forgiveness and hope to have the type of life that Gregory Peck enjoyed in the first movie.

Scorsese’s Cape Fear is an uneasy mishmash of styles.  Is it an art film, a religious allegory, a horror film, or just a generic thriller?  It doesn’t seem to be sure.  Cape Fear‘s a Scorsese film so, of course, it’s always going to be worth watching.  But there are times when the film definitely runs the risk of overdosing on style.  Sometimes, Scorsese seems to be trying too hard to remind everyone that he’s a legitimately great director and ends up getting so invested in the film’s visuals that he runs the risk of losing the story.  De Niro has some scenes in which he is genuinely chilling but then he has other scenes where he is basically just a live action cartoon character.  The same can be said of the film itself.  It’s always watchable.  At times, it’s rather frightening.  But other times, it’s just too cartoonish to be effective.

If anything, this remake proves that sometimes, it’s best to keep things simple.

Horror Film Review: Cape Fear (dir by J. Lee Thompson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There are two versions of Cape Fear out there.

The one that most people seem to know and which regularly shows up on cable is the 1991 version.  This version was directed by Martin Scorsese and features Oscar-nominated performances from Robert De Niro and Juliette Lewis.  This is the version that has De Niro speaking in a broad Southern accent and attacking people while speaking in tongues.  If you’ve ever watched a rerun of an old sitcom and wondered why the laugh track was going wild at the sight of a tattooed prisoner lifting weights in a cell while portentous music boomed in the background, it’s because you were watching a parody of Scorsese’s Cape Fear.

That, however, is not the first version of Cape Fear.

The first version of Cape Fear came out in 1962.  It was a black-and-white film that was directed by J. Lee Thompson.  In this version, the recently released rapist, Max Cady, is played by Robert Mitchum.  Sam Bowden, the attorney that Cady blames for his incarceration, is played by Gregory Peck.  Whereas the Scorsese version was highly stylized, the original Cape Fear is brutally straight forward.  (While Scorsese’s Cape Fear goes on for over two hours, the original Cape Fear tells its story in a brisk 100 minutes.)  While I think that Scorsese’s Cape Fear has its strong points, the original Cape Fear is superior in almost every way.

The original is certainly far more frightening than the remake.  What the original may lack in stylization, it makes up for in plausibility.  It’s scary because you can imagine everything in the film actually happening.  Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck may both be iconic film stars but they’re also believable as human beings.

For modern audiences, it’s easy to smirk at Peck with his upright image and his sonorous voice but what made Peck a great actor was his ability to make it all seem natural.  Peck never seemed like he was acting like an honest man who always tried to do the right thing.  Instead, he simply was that man.  It’s perhaps significant that Peck played Sam Bowden the same year that he played another honest lawyer, Atticus Finch, in To Kill A Mockingbird.  The only real difference between them is that, whereas Atticus was always confident and sure of himself, Sam is frequently helpless.  He knows that Max is stalking him and his family and he’s just as aware that there’s nothing he can do about it.  When Max rapes a woman (Barrie Chase) that he meets at a bar, she refuses to testify against him.  When Sam’s dog turns up dead, everyone knows that Max killed him but there’s no way to prove it.  When Sam hires three men to intimidate Max, Max beats them up and promptly tries to get Sam disbarred.  When Sam finally resorts to plotting Max’s murder, we’re seeing Atticus Finch pushed beyond his limit.

As for Robert Mitchum, his animalistic performance is frightening precisely because it feels very real.  Everyone has known a Max Cady, even if they didn’t realize it at the time.  Max gives a fiercely physical performance, often appearing shirtless and strutting through his scenes with a sexual arrogance that’s both frightening and, at times, far more tempting than anyone would want to admit.  The scenes in which Max attacks Barrie Chase and Polly Bergen (who plays Peck’s wife) are absolutely terrifying but, for me, the most disturbing moments in Cape Fear are the moments when Max is silent.  Even when he’s not speaking, Mitchum allows you to see every depraved thought going through is head.

What’s the scariest moment for me?  When the camera catches Max watching Sam’s teenage daughter (Lori Martin).  It’s not just that I know what’s going on in Mitchum’s mind as he stares at her.  It’s because I know what it’s like to be watched.  It’s a scene that’s unsettling because it makes me consider just how many Max Cadys are out there right now.

The battle between Max and Sam is a fascinating one.  In prison, Max studied enough law to become as knowledgeable about how to manipulate it as Sam.  Under pressure, Sam grows more violent and more willing to circumvent his oath to uphold the same law that Max is now using against him.  It makes for a frightening  film, one that will stick with you long after you watch it.

A Movie A Day #294: Ghost In the Machine (1993, directed by Rachel Talaly)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Karl (Ted Marcoux) is a serial killer who works in an electronics store and who steals address books and uses them to pick his victims.  His latest stolen address book belongs to Terry (Karen Allen).  Before Karl can start killing Terry’s family and friends, he is killed in a car accident.  Because there is a lightning storm going on at the same time, the dead Karl is able to transfer his evil soul into the electrical grid.  Traveling from appliance to appliance, Karl starts to kill all of Terry’s friends and co-workers.  A microwave oven.  A hand dryer.  A dishwasher.  If it is electrical, Karl can use it to kill.  Fortunately, Terry knows a legendary hacker (Chris Mulkey) who can help her fight back.

Like Prison, Destroyer, and The Horror Show, Ghost in the Machine is another dumb movie about a psycho who gets his soul transformed into electricity.  Ghost In The Machine was also obviously influenced by The Lawnmower Man and the entire movie is full of early 90s paranoia about the internet and computers in general.  Rachel Talaly, who got her start with the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and who has recently directed some of the best received episodes of Doctor Who, does a good job with the deaths but cannot do anything with the lousy script and unlikable characters.  Nearly everyone who dies is killed because they know Terry but that never seems to bother her.

I think every 90s kid, or at least every 90s male, watched Ghost In The Machine on HBO and had a crush on Shevonne Durkin.

Halloween Havoc!: THEM! (Warner Brothers 1954)

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

The iconic, bloodcurdling scream of little Sandy Descher heralds the arrival of THEM!, the first and best of the 50’s “Big Bug” atomic thrillers. Warner Brothers had one of their biggest hits of 1954 with this sci-fi shocker, putting it up there with Cukor’s A STAR IS BORN, Hitchcock’s DIAL M FOR MURDER, and Wellman’s THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY as their highest-grossing films of the year. Not bad company for director Gordon Douglas , previously known for his work with Our Gang and Laurel & Hardy! THEM! was also Oscar nominated that year for its special effects (and should’ve been for Bronislaw Kaper’s terrific score).

The movie begins with the look and feel of a noir mystery courtesy of DP Sidney Hickox’s (DARK PASSAGE, THE BIG SLEEP  , WHITE HEAT) brooding shadows and sandstorm-battered landscape. New Mexico policemen Ben Peterson and Ed Blackburn come across a little girl wandering…

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Horror Film Review: From Hell (dir by The Hughes Brothers)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Who was Jack the Ripper?

That’s a question that people have been asking for 129 years.  Arguably the world’s first famous serial killer, Jack the Ripper killed at least five prostitutes in the Whitechapel section of London.  Some claim that he killed as many as twenty.  He may have also written several taunting letters to the police.  Again, some say that the letters are authentic and some say that they were hoaxes.  Hell, there’s even some people who say that Jack the Ripper himself is a myth and the five murders attributed to him were actually five unconnected crimes.  It was speculated that Jack the Ripper was a butcher, a surgeon, or maybe a midwife.  Just as suddenly as the murders began, they ended.  The London police claimed that he had committed suicide by jumping into the Thames.  Few people believed them then and even less now.

The reason that there is so much uncertainty is because Jack the Ripper was never caught.  He was never identified.  There were stories of confessions, though many of them came from the mentally infirm or they were heard by someone who was a friend of someone who claimed to be the Butcher of Whitechapel.  At one point, there was even a claim that Jack’s diary had been found.

As a horror fan, a true crime fanatic, and a lover of history, I’ve read quite a few theories about who Jack the Ripper was.  Nearly every prominent (or, at the very least, remembered) Victorian has been accused of having been Jack the Ripper.  Oscar Wilde has been accused of hiding a confession in The Picture of Dorian Gray.  Various members of the Royal Family have been fingered as the culprit.  Even Lewis Carroll could not escape accusation.  The true crime author Patricia Cornwell wrote an entire book where she (wrongly) accused the painter Walter Sickert.  Cornwell’s case could basically be summed up as follows: “Walter Sicket’s paintings were weird.  Walter Sickert must be Jack the Ripper.”  Apparently, she managed to destroy one of Sickert’s paintings while looking for clues.

The truth of the matter is that Jack the Ripper was probably some guy who no one has ever heard of, most probably one of the unknown men who lived and worked in the shadows of Whitechapel.  For all the talk of Jack being a doctor, it can be argued that the surgical precision of his murders has been overstated.  He didn’t get away with murder because he was particularly clever.  Instead, he got away with it because, in 1888, even fingerprinting was considered to be a radical science.

But, honestly, that’s not very intriguing.  For those of us who have researched the case, it’s far more interesting to speculate that Jack the Ripper was either a famous person or that the murders were all the result of a huge conspiracy.

That’s certainly the appeal of From Hell, the 2001 film from The Hughes Brothers.  Making the same basic case as Bob Clark’s Murder By Decree, From Hell argues that the Jack the Ripper murders were the result of a royal conspiracy.  In reality, that theory has been discredited but it certainly is the most cinematic of all the possibilities.

And, speaking of cinematic, it must be said that From Hell is very stylish movie.  Though the title comes from one of Jack the Ripper’s letters, From Hell also could just as easily be used to describe the film’s vision of Whitechapel.  Whitechapel is full of shadows and secrets and the blood flows freely.  If Mary Kelly (Heather Graham) isn’t killed by Jack the Ripper, it’s just as likely she’ll be killed by one of her clients.  Even as the murders are committed, life and business in Whitechapel goes on.  What other choice is there?  It’s either risk being killed or starve.

It falls to Frederick Abberline (Johnny Depp) to solve the murders.  The real-life Abberline was an almost legendary detective who lived for decades after the final Jack the Ripper murder.  The movie’s Abberline is an opium addict who always seems to be on the verge of a breakdown.  When he and Mary Kelly fall in love, you’re not really sure if it’s something to be happy about.  Abberline seems just as likely to go crazy as everyone else.

From Hell is an uneven and somewhat overlong movie but I like it.  Heather Graham and Johnny Depp give somewhat odd performances but the oddness fits right in with the Hughes Brothers’s vision of a world that’s been turned permanently upside down.  It’s a movie that’s full of atmosphere and the story is intriguing even if it’s never exactly convincing.  For obvious reasons, I can’t reveal who plays Jack the Ripper but I will say that he gives a very good performance.  When he says that, “One day, men will look back and say that I gave birth to the 20th century,” you believe him.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special James Whale Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.

This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order!  That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!

Today’s director: James Whale!

4 Shots From 4 Films

Frankenstein (1931, dir by James Whale)

The Old Dark House (1932, dir by James Whale)

The Invisible Man (1933, dir by James Whale)

Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir by James Whale)

Horror on the Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

(It’s tradition here at the Lens that, every October, we watch the original Little Shop of Horrors.  And always, I start things off by telling this story…)

Enter singing.

Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…

Hi!  Good morning and Happy October the 29th!  For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic.  From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.”  Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage.  And you know what?  The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me.  So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film.  Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson.  However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage.  Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way).  However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Scarehouse (dir by Gavin Michael Booth)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One night, a college student named Brandon died.

While two sorority pledges painted his face and then posed for selfies with his unconscious body, Brandon choked to death on his own vomit.  The pledges were named Corey (Sarah Booth) and Elaina (Kimberly-Sue Murray) and when they were put on trial for manslaughter, they claimed that it was just a prank gone wrong and that the other members of the sorority put them up to it.  Of course, no one was willing to back up their stories.  Instead, the president of the sorority, Jacqueline Gill (Katherine Barrell), just went on television and said that she hoped the two would ask God for forgiveness.  Corey and Elaina were convicted and sent to prison.

Two years later, Corey and Elaina have been released and now they’re looking for revenge.  However, a simple revenge will not do.  Elaina is an engineering genius and Corey … well, Corey’s just really angry.  They’ve set up an elaborate haunted house and they’ve sent a private invite to each member of the sorority…

Two girls seeking revenge for a sorority prank gone wrong sound like either the set up for a Lifetime movie or the world’s worst Lime-a-rita commercial.  (“So, this happened: we thought we were going to a haunted house but then it turned out we were actually being invited to our violent doom.  Yep, it was a Lime-a-rita night.”)  However, The Scarehouse is neither.  Instead, it’s a rather grisly horror film with a streak of extremely dark humor.

But is it any good?

Let’s start with what works.  Both Sarah Booth and Kimberly-Sue Murray give very good performances as the two girls.  Even when the script lets them down, Booth and Murray keep the movie from dying.  The film actually does some interesting things with the two characters.  It keeps us guessing about which one of them is really the driving force behind the whole revenge plot.  No sooner do you think that you’ve figured out their power dynamic then something will happen or words will said that force you to reconsider what you previously assumed.

Though I had a hard time believing that such an elaborate death trap could have been designed by just two people, the haunted house was a memorable and creepy location.  It was full of atmosphere and the promise of doom.  If I ever found myself in there, I’d probably be scared.

Finally, you always have to admire a horror film that doesn’t shy away from pursuing things to their darkest conclusion.  Once one enters the Scarehouse, there is no escape and everyone’s worst nature will be exposed.  There is no exit and Hell is other people.

At the same time, I’ve grown tired of movies that feature lengthy scenes of people being tortured.  After nearly two decades of Saw films and Hostel rip-offs, whatever shock value those scenes may have once had are gone.  The tortures in The Scarehouse are elaborate and sadistic and thoroughly unpleasant to sit through.  A girl with an eating disorder has her corset tightened until she literally splits in half.  A forced pillow fight leads to corrosive chemicals eating away at flesh.  Some of it is clever but, far too often, these scenes go on too long.  There’s only so long you can spend watching someone being tortured until you mentally check out.

As well, The Scarehouse uses a nonlinear time line.  In between the scenes of Corey and Elaina getting their revenge, we see flashbacks to the prank that led to death of Brandon.  But, since we already know what happened because it’s all Corey and Elaina ever talk about, there’s not really anything new to be discovered in the flashbacks.

Obviously, my feelings about The Scarehouse are mixed.  I was pretty dismissive immediately after I watched it but the movie has definitely stuck with me.  It has its flaws but it also has two memorable and frightening performances.  Watch at your own discretion.