Category Archives: Film

Insomnia File #64: Once Upon A Midnight Scary (dir by Nell Cox)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1978’s Once Upon A Midnight Scary.

Made for CBS and featuring Vincent Price as the sardonic, cape-wearing host, Once Upon A Midnight Scary was a special designed to encourage young viewers to pick up a book and read.  Price introduced three different stories, each centering around ghosts and each based on a book.  In the first story, based on the book The Ghost Belonged To Me, a young farmboy discovers a ghost hiding in a barn and becomes a hero when the ghost warns him about an impending disaster.  The second story is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and it features Rene Auberjonois as a rather neurotic Ichabod Crane, who finds himself being pursued by the headless horsemen.  The third and longest story is an adaptation of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, featuring Severn Darden and a rather annoying child actor.

One thing you immediately notice about this show is that the special doesn’t actually reveal how any of the stories end.  Instead, each story is basically a recreation of the most exciting or interesting parts of the larger story but, whenever it appears that we’re heading for a conclusion, Vincent Price suddenly appears and says, “What happened next, you ask?  Read the book!”  This special basically casts Vincent Price as the world’s most devilish book salesman and while that might be annoying if you’re watching the special because you want to see how the stories turn out, it’s a lot of fun if you’re just watching the show to watch Vincent Price act like Vincent Price.  Vincent is not in the special as much as you might want but he still shows off his unique charm.  It’s impossible to be in a bad mood while watching Vincent Price.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator
  63. Hillbillys In A Haunted House

6 Trailers For October 30, 2023

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse And Exploitation Film Trailers, we share some trailers from the maestro of Italian horror, Mario Bava!

  1. Black Sunday (1960)

After starting his career as a cinematographer and a visual effects engineer, Mario Bava made his directorial debut with 1960’s Black Sunday, starring Barbara Steele!

2. Black Sabbath (1963)

In 1963, Bava directed one of his most popular films, the horror anthology Black Sabbath.  The trailer put the spotlight on the great Boris Karloff.

3. Planet of the Vampires (1965)

One of Bava’s best films, Planet of the Vampires, was later cited by many as an influence on the Alien films.

4. Bay of Blood (1971)

One of the first slasher films, Bay of Blood was also a social satire that featured Bava’s dark sense of humor.

5. The House of Exorcism (1974)

When it was released in the United States, Bava’s Lisa and the Devil was re-titled House of Exorcism and, after new scenes were filmed, sold as a rip-off to The Exorcist.

6. Shock (1977)

Bava’s final film as a director was Shock, which starred Daria Nicolodi as a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of her first husband.

October Positivity: Defiant (dir by Stephen Krist)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to the future!

It’s a rather low-rent place, full of empty warehouses, vacant lots, and deserted streets.  With the exception of the Sovereign Leader (David Krist), everyone seems to live in a bland apartment.  It’s a world where people have neither personalities nor names.  Instead, people are identified by their identification numbers.  Few people can really remember what the world was like before the Sovereign Leader came to power but almost everyone seems to believe that it was not a good place to live.  The Sovereign Leader says so and why would he lie?  The people are united by one belief when it comes to their Leader.  “If he is for us, who can be against us?”

There are a few people who refuse to accept the words of the Sovereign Leader.  They hide in the wilderness and in the city and they read forbidden books.  The Leader has his own fanatical, paramilitary force who spend their time tracking down and executing these so-called “Defiants.”  This group of executioners is known as the Peace Team because, after all, that’s what they’re doing, right?  They’re making sure that no one disturbs the peace.

This is the world of the 2019 film, Defiant.

Defiant tells the story of A51-317 (Luke Krist), who begins the film as one of the most fanatical members of the Sovereign Leader’s Peace Team.  Perhaps the reason why A51-317 is so quick to announce his loyalty to the Sovereign Leader is because he is suffering from his own doubts.  He has dreams and occasional flashbacks to a time before the Sovereign Leader comes to power and much of what he sees stands in contrast to what he’s been told about the old world.  A51-317 wonders why he can’t remember much about his past.  He wonders why so many people are willing to be executed rather than follow the Sovereign Leader.  He wonders who he was before he just became a number.

And soon, he’s wondering why he’s been framed for the attempted murder of the Sovereign Leader.  After the Leader is shot in the head, he’s believed to be dead for three days.  Then, suddenly, the Leader reveals that he’s not only alive but he also announces himself to be the Supreme Leader.  He makes it clear that all Defiants must now be executed.  A51-317 find himself on the run as he becomes one of the people who he used to hunt.

It’s a familiar story, one that’s been featured in a countless number of faith-based “final days” movies.  That said, Defiant is a well-made and surprisingly well-acted film, one that does a good job of creating a believable atmosphere of fear and paranoia.  The Sovereign Leader has much in common with the dictators and megalomaniacs of today and the scenes in which the Peace Team track down the Defiants and accuse them of being insobordinate for not blindly supporting the policies of the Leader feel even more relevant today than they did in 2019.  Whether one buys into the film’s faith-based message or not, Defiant is a film that feels undeniably relevant to today’s world.

October Hacks: Popcorn (dir by Mark Herrier and Alan Ormsby)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1991 film, Popcorn, tells the story of what happens when an experimental film goes wrong.

In the late 60s, a freaked-out hippie named Lanyard Gates directed a short film called Possessor.  Possessor featured footage of him apparently preparing to sacrifice a woman on an altar.  Gates declined to film a third act conclusion to the film.  Instead, he murdered his family on stage and in front of a terrified audience.  The resulting panic caused a fire to break out, killing almost everyone at the Dreamland Theater.  As a result, Possessor has become a legendary film, one that is believed lost.  Of course, it’s not lost, as a group of film students and their professor find out over the course of Popcorn.

Years later, one of those film students, an aspiring screenwriter named Maggie (Jill Schoelen), has been having disturbing nightmares about being caught in a fire and being pursued by a madman.  When she sees Possessor, she realizes that much of the imagery in her dreams comes from the film.  When Maggie attempts to talk to her mother about all of this, Suzanne (Dee Wallace) denies knowing anything about Possessor or Lanyard Gates but it’s not hard to tell that she’s lying.

Still, Maggie does have other things to worry about.  Her school’s film department has been hit by budget cuts and neither she nor her classmates will be able to make their student films unless they raise some money.  One of the students, Toby (Tom Villard), suggests holding a fundraiser at the Dreamland Theater, where they could show old movies and even recreate some of the old gimmicks that were used to promote those movies.  Professor Davis (Tony Roberts) thinks that is a great idea!  Why, he could even control the giant, remote-controlled bug that was used to promote Mosquito!

Filmed in Jamaica (and featuring a somewhat random performance by a reggae band), Popcorn was originally offered to director Bob Clark.  However, Clark didn’t want to return to the horror genre so, instead, it was Clark’s frequent collaborator, Alan Ormsby, who was hired to direct the film.  Reportedly, Ormsby was replaced a few weeks into filming by Mark Herrier, with the assumption being that the producers felt that Ormsby was spending too much time on filming the three fake movies that are screened during the fund raiser.  Those films are Mosquito, The Attack of the Electrified Man, and a dubbed Japanese film called The Stench.  In the film’s credits, Ormsby is credited with directing the three fake film while Mark Herrier is credited with directing the “modern” scenes.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the three fake film are actually the best thing about Popcorn.  If Alan Ormsby was taking a lot of time to shoot the fake films, it obviously paid off because all three of them perfectly capture the feel of the era when they were supposedly shot and all of them are filled with the type of details that only a true fan of old horror movies would think to include.  Mosquito is a giant bug film that feels as if it could have come straight from 1957.  The Amazing Electrified Man feels like one of the films that poor Lon Chaney Jr. would have found himself starring in after leaving Universal.  And The Stench is the perfect import — slow-moving, a bit pompous, and terribly dubbed.

As for the rest of Popcorn, it’s a well-made slasher film.  Mark Herrier did a good job directing the “modern” scenes, with a scene in which the killer’s face seems to literally melt after he kisses one of his victims being a definite creepy highlight.  The kills are reasonably creative and, in one case involving electrocution, rather disturbing.  Jill Schoelen is a likable heroine, Derek Rydall is cute as her hapless boyfriend, and Tom Villard’s uninhibited performance gives the film a much-needed jolt of energy.  Though the old films may be the highlight of Popcorn, the “modern” scenes hold up as well.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (dir by Bob Clark)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The title of this 1972 film is definitely a case of truth in advertising.

Children definitely should not play with dead things!  I don’t care how mature they are or how lenient of a parent you’re trying to be.  When you see your child playing with a dead thing, it is on you to step forward and say, “Child, leave that dead thing alone unless you want to forever burn in Hell.”  I know that type of language might be traumatic for some children but you’ll be glad you did it.  You know who played with dead things when he was a child?  Jeffrey Dahmer!  And look how that turned out.  He got a miniseries made about him and became an internet meme.

Now, it should be pointed out that they’re aren’t any children to be found in Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.  The children of the title are actually a group of wannabe actors who are led by a pretentious douchebag named Alan (played by the film’s writer, Alan Ormsby).  With his mustache and his long hair and his hip clothes and his vocabulary of psychobabble and buzzwords, Alan considers himself to be quite the chic 70s gentleman.  He refers the other actors as being his “children,” and they let him get away with it.  Personally, I would be kind of insulted but whatever.

One night, Alan and his theatrical troupe ride a boat off to an island that is sitting off the coast of Miami.  The island is reputed to be haunted and Alan tells the actors several rather gruesome stories about things that have supposedly happened to the inhabitants of the island.  According to Alan, the island is used as a cemetery for criminals who were so vile that no one wanted to collect their bodies.

Why are the actors on the island?  Along with leading his theatrical troupe, Alan considers himself to be a bit of a warlock.  He wants to perform a ceremony at midnight and he expects his actors to help him out.  If they don’t help, they’ll lose their jobs.  If they do help, they’ll probably lose their lives.  Alan and his actors dig up the body of a man named Orville (played by the wonderfully named Seth Sklarey).  The ceremony that Alan performs at midnight fails to bring Orville back to life but it does cause the dead who were left in their graves to rise from the Earth as zombies.  The zombies are not happy that their island has been invaded and they’re especially not happy about Alan digging up Orville.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is a mix of comedy and horror, with Alan’s pretentious foolishness dominating the first half of the film while the second features the zombies laying siege to a cottage.  It starts out slow but, once the zombies come to life, the film achieves a surreal grandeur.  For an obviously low-budget film, the zombie makeup is surprisingly effective and the zombies themselves are so relentless and determined in their pursuit of the living that they help Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things survive the inevitable comparisons to Night of the Living Dead.  The film’s final scene, which plays out in near silence, has an undeniable horrific power to it.

Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things was the third film to be directed by Bob Clark.  He also directed films like Deathdream, Black Christmas, Murder By Decree, and the infamous (and very financially successful) Porky’s.  Of course, his most beloved film is the one that we’ll all be watching in a little less than two months, A Christmas Story.

Lisa Marie’s Oscar Predictions For October

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, it’s that time of the month again!  Here are my Oscar predictions for October!  To be honest, I’ve been so busy with Horrorthon that I haven’t given the Oscar race as much thought as usual.  As of right now, it still appears to be a Killers Of The Flower Moon vs. Oppenheimer vs. Barbie race.

The Bikeriders, which seemed like a strong contender, seems to be in limbo right now.  It was scheduled to be released on December 1st but it was taken off the schedule until the SAG-AFTRA strike is resolved.  (The studio wants the actors to be able to promote the film, which is understandable given the subject matter.)  So, for now, I’m moving The Bikeriders off of my list of predictions.

I’m also pretty confident that The Color Purple will not be the major Oscar contender that many expected, if just because of Alice Walker’s long history of anti-Semitic rhetoric.  (Seriously, Alice Walker is a huge supporter of David Icke, the conspiracy theorist who claims that the world is controlled by a group of shape-shifting aliens and Zionists.)

Below are my predictions for October.  Be sure to also check out my predictions for March and April and May and June and July and August and September!

Best Picture 

Air

American Fiction

Barbie

The Holdovers

Killers of the Flower Moon

Maestro

May/December

Oppenheimer

Poor Things

The Zone of Interest

Best Director

Greta Gerwig for Barbie

Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest

Cord Jefferson for American Fiction

Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

Martin Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon

Colman Domingo in Rustin

Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction

Best Actress

Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon

Natalie Portman in May December

Margot Robbie in Barbie

Emma Stone in Poor Things

Kate Winslet in Lee

Best Supporting Actor

Willem DaFoe in Poor Things

Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon

Robert Downey, Jr. in Oppenheimer

Ryan Gosling in Barbie

Dominic Sessa in The Holdovers

Best Supporting Actress

Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer

Sandra Huller in Zone of Interest

Julianne Moore in May December

Cara Jade Myers in Killers of the Flower Moon

Da’Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers

Maniac Cop III: Badge of Silence (1992, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Despite finally getting his burial with honors at the end of Maniac Cop 2, Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) returns for one last outing.  Raised from the dead by a voodoo houngan (Julius Harris), Cordell invades a hospital to seek vengeance for a comatose policewoman named Katie Sullivan (Gretchen Baker).  In a coma due to the wounds she received while thwarting a convenience store robbery, Katie is being framed by unscrupulous reporters and attorneys who claim that Katie was a bad cop who killed a clerk in cold blood.  Cordell sees Katie as being a fellow victim of anti-cop bias and he is not going to let anyone treat her with disrespect, which is something that two doctors (Robert Forster and Doug Savant) are unfortunate enough to discover.  Sean McKinney (Robert Davi) and Dr. Susan Lowery (Caitlin Dulany) try to figure out how to bring peace to the souls of both Cordell and Katie.

As opposed to the first two films, Maniac Cop III had a troubled production.  Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen wanted to set the film in a Harlem hospital and bring in an African-American detective to investigate Cordell’s activities.  The film’s Japanese producers insisted that Robert Davi return as the lead, even though the script’s lead character had little in common with the way Sean McKinney was portrayed in Maniac Cop 2.  Larry Cohen then refused to do any rewrites on the script unless he was paid more.  William Lustig filmed what he could and ended up with a 51-minute movie.  Extra scenes were directed by one of the film’s producers and the film was also padded out with outtakes from Maniac Cop 2.

The film is disjointed and there’s too much time devoted to Jackie Earle Haley playing a character who has much in common Leo Rossi’s serial killer from the second film.  (Haley’s performance is fine but the character feels superfluous).  But the movie’s hospital setting leads to some interesting kill scenes and Z’Dar and Davi both give good performances as two different types of maniac cops.  The supporting cast is full of good character actors like Haley, Forster, Savant, Julius Harris, Bobby Di Cicco, and Paul Gleason.  Despite the film’s flaws, Maniac Cop III is a solid ending for the trilogy.

Retro Television Reviews: Return To Cabin By The Lake (dir by Po-Chih Leong)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 2001’s Return To Cabin By The Lake!  It  can be viewed on YouTube.

Stanley Caldwell (Judd Nelson) is back!

At the end of Cabin By The Lake, screenwriter Stanley had managed to escape from the police by faking his own drowning.  Return to Cabin By The Lake finds Stanley using a variety of disguises and fake identities in his effort to once again become a part of the film industry.  He is particularly interested in the fact that his previous murder spree is being turned into a movie.  He’s considerably less happy about the fact that everyone involved in the movie continually disparages his work as a screenwriter.  He’s even less happy when he hears them speculating that there was a sexual-motive behind Stanley’s murders or that Stanley was acting out against his mother.  For someone who spent the previous movie drowning innocent women and then visiting their bodies in the lake, Stanley sure does seem to be shocked to discover that most people don’t have a high opinion of him.  You’re a murderer, Stanley.  People don’t like murderers.

Anyway, as a master of disguise, Stanley is able to work his way into the production of the film.  Even though everyone on the set is spending 24 hours a day obsessing on and recreating the crimes of Stanley, no one is suspicious of the guy who looks just like Stanley and who keeps saying stuff like, “Stanley would never do that!”  Stanley becomes obsessed with script writer Andrea (Dahlia Salem).  He also comes to resent the film’s shallow director, Mike Helton (Brian Krause, giving the film’s best performance).  Stanley decides that he would be a better director of the film so he buries Mike alive and then takes over direction.

Return To Cabin By The Lake is a bit more deliberately humorous than the first film.  If Cabin By The Lake was full of pleasant townspeople and earnest police officers, Return To Cabin By The Lake is populated with caricatures of various Hollywood phonies.  Everyone involved in Return To Cabin By The Lake‘s film-within-a-film is blithely unconcerned with the feelings of the the victim’s loved ones nor do they really care about telling the story accurately.  Helton’s only concern is that the script have enough sex.  That Stanley not only takes over as director but turns out to be a pretty good at it would appear to be Return To Cabin By The Lake’s ultimate statement on the film industry.

Judd Nelson is a bit more energetic in the sequel than he was in the first film.  That said, Return To Cabin The By The Lake makes the mistake of asking us to buy the idea of Stanley being a master of disguise.  Judd Nelson is always going to look and sound like Judd Nelson, regardless of whether he’s wearing a wig or not.

Though it’s a bit constrained by being a made-for-TV movie, Return To Cabin By The Lake is a marked improvement on the first film, one that has more humor and a better performance from its lead.  The film ends with an opening for another sequel but it was apparently never to be.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Sissy Spacek in Carrie

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sissy Spacek hasn’t appeared in many horror movies but the one in which she did appear is such a classic and Spacek’s performance was so strong that she qualifies as a horror icon regardless.  In 1976, Sissy Space played poor and victimized Carrie White, the shy high school student who ended up burning down the prom.  Her performance became one of the few horror performances to be Oscar-nominated and Carrie launched a series of Stephen King adaptations.

In one of the best scene from the film, Carrie is forced to deal with both an insensitive principal and a brat on a bicycle.

October True Crime: Jack The Ripper (dir by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1888 and London is a city in fear.

A mysterious, cloak-wearing serial killer know as Jack The Ripper is stalking the fog-strewn streets and killing prostitutes after asking them if they know the whereabouts of Mary Clark.  The newspapers are full of stories about the murders and editorials condemning the failure of Scotland Yard to capture the killer.  The citizens of London’s Whitechapel district are resorting to vigilante justice and any stranger is liable to be accused of being the Ripper.

When an American policeman named Sam Lowry (Lee Patterson) shows up in Whitechapel, he is accosted by a group of suspicious citizens.  Fortunately, before one of them can stab Sam, he’s saved by his old friend, Scotland Yard’s Inspector O’Neill (Eddie Byrne).  Sam explains that he’s come to London to not only help his old friend O’Neill catch the killer but to also study how the city of London has responded to the horror of the Ripper’s crimes.  O’Neill introduces Sam to both the world weary coroner, Sir David Rogers (Ewen Solon), and to Anne Ford (Betty MacDowell), the liberal-minded ward of Dr. Tranter (John Le Musurier).  As Anne shows Sam around London and speculates about why the Ripper has managed to avoid being caught by the police, O’Neill tries to discover the Ripper’s identity before he can strike again.

As you may have guessed from the plot description, this 1959 film doesn’t exactly stick to the historical fact when it comes to the murders of Jack the Ripper.  For instance, the names and the number of victims have been changed and, needless to say, the NYPD didn’t loan any of its detectives to Scotland Yard.  Then again, there’s very few films about Jack the Ripper that actually stick to the facts of the case.  (Murder By Decree came perhaps the closest, though it still insisted on pushing the ludicrous Royal Ripper theory.)  When one watches a Jack the Ripper film, it’s with the understanding that the story is probably going to be fictionalized.  Considering that there’s probably no chance of the Ripper’s identity ever being conclusively established, it’s to be expected.

As for the film itself, it actually has quite a few effective moments.  The heavy fog and the black-and-white cinematography creates the properly ominous atmosphere and the murders themselves are surprisingly brutal for a film from 1959, leaving no doubt that this film’s Ripper is a cruel sadist regardless of what other motives he may have.  The film itself ends with a properly macabre twist.  Patterson, Byrne, and MacDowell aren’t particularly interesting in the lead roles (and Patterson’s pompadour looks a bit ludicrous on a Victorian-era policeman) but the suspects, victims, and witnesses are all well-played by a cast of very British character actors.

There are apparently several versions of Jack the Ripper out there.  Though the film was a British production, it was filmed with an eye towards the international market and, as a result, there were several different edits depending on what the film could get away with in each country.  Apparently, one version actually switched from black-and-white to color whenever blood was spilled and certain European countries got a version that featured a few fleeting moments of nudity.  The version edited for American audiences, not surprisingly, doesn’t feature any of that but it’s still a watchable and entertaining Jack the Ripper film.

One final note: my personal opinion is that Jack the Ripper was some guy that no one has ever heard of.  He was probably not a doctor.  I doubt he was a Freemason.  He certainly was not a part of a Royal conspiracy or any of that other nonsense.  He may have been a butcher but it’s just as possible that he could have been a hatmaker or a carriage driver or a petty criminal who paid for his drinks through mugging.  He was probably never suspected at the time and I imagine he died without ever telling anyone what he had done.  People find comfort in conspiracies and elaborate cover-ups but often, the simplest solution is the correct one.

(That said, every time that Jeff and I go to London, we do the Jack the Ripper walking tour.  It’s always interesting to hear the weird theories that people come up with.)