Happy Halloween! This is the end to an awesome horrorthon! I will have some more posts today. I will try to find at least one good thing to review for Halloween. It’s not easy and will likely NOT be done by AI because they’re terrible.
The Book Chose Him answers the question: What if Harry Potter sucked and was ninety seconds long?
The film opens with a realistic teenager in a library and magical glowing book starts to open in front of him. I suppose this is the whole “choosing him thing.” Why though? Why stick around to look at a radioactive book? Then, the main character becomes a cartoon, but race swaps from Indian teenager to a eight year old white kid. Why couldn’t he have been Indian the time? It’s confusing and unnecessary.
The protagonist is walking around a fancy library library with glowing candles that are an obvious fire hazard and he switches nationalities 6 more times from white to Indian and back again. It’s super weird. Was there another kid in the library? The protagonist goes to another world where gravity is just not “in” anymore. This is just horrible in every way. This creator should go to the sharks! This is the worst. Don’t even bother.
Witchboard (1986, dir by Kevin S. Tenney, DP: Roy Wanger)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly watch parties. On Twitter, I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday and I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday. On Mastodon, I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, I will be hosting #FridayNightFlix! The movie? 1986’s Witchboard!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, find Witchboard on Prime, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! I’ll be there happily tweeting. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Mac is a Southern lawyer, even though it’s been a while since he practiced. After his wife and children were killed in a car accident, Mac decided to retire from practicing law but he never surrendered his license. A judge (Rance Howard) reaches out to him, asking him to serve as a public defender for Pete Thomason (Randy Wayne), a young man who has been accused of murdering his girlfriend. The evidence is stacked against Pete and there are plenty of wealthy people who, for various reasons, want Pete to quickly be convicted. Mac takes the case because he can tell that Pete is being railroaded. When he discovers that Pete will possibly be facing the death penalty if he’s convicted, the case becomes very personal for Mac.
The prosecuting attorney (Bob Gunton) has managed to find a doctor (Brett Rice) who is willing to testify that Pete is a sociopath. (The doctor has a reputation for finding just about anyone on trial to be a sociopath.) Mac finds a doctor of his own, Dr. Anne Wilkes (Clare Carey), his testifies that Pete is nowhere near being a sociopath. The problem is that Pete has no memory of what happened the night of the murder. Mac may believe that Pete is innocent but can he convince the jury when the evidence all seems to suggest otherwise?
Like The List, The Trial was based on a novel by Robert Whitlow and it was directed by Gary Wheeler. I was pretty hard on The List in last night’s review but I actually rather enjoyed The Trial, which was a solid and well-made legal thriller. (The film’s status as a faith-based film largely comes from a scene in which Mac quotes the Book of Provers in regards to how, during a trial, it’s easy to believe the first person who speaks but it’s equally important to listen to how the accused replies.) I enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot and the film’s ending worked well. Though the film had a a made-for-television feel to it (despite having been a theatrical release), it still held and rewarded my interest.
It helped that the cast was well-selected and everyone gave good performances. Matthew Modine, in particular, gave a strong performance as Mac, playing him not as being a saint but instead as being someone who was just determined to give his client the defense he deserved and to ultimately do the right thing. Robert Forster played Mac’s brother-in-law and lead investigator and he brought his own brand of world-weary determination to the part. Nobody plays a smug prosecutor as well as Bob Gunton, though it should be noted that the character himself never became a caricature. Rance Howard was the ideal judge, tough but fair. Randy Wayne was sympathetic as the confused Pete. The cast really brought the film’s world to life.
I always enjoy a good legal thriller and The Trial was certainly that.
Filmed in 1957 for a television program called Westinghouse Studio One, The Night America Trembled is a dramatization of the night that Orson Welles terrified America with his radio adaptation of War of The Worlds.
For legal reasons, Orson Welles is not portrayed nor is his name mentioned. Instead, the focus is mostly on the people listening to the broadcast and getting the wrong idea. That may sound like a comedy but The Night America Trembled takes itself fairly seriously. Even pompous old Edward R. Murrow shows up to narrate the film, in between taking drags off a cigarette.
Clocking in at a brisk 60 minutes, The Night America Trembled is an interesting recreation of that October 30th. Among the people panicking: a group of people in a bar who, before hearing the broadcast, were debating whether or not Hitler was as crazy as people said he was, a babysitter who goes absolutely crazy with fear, and a group of poker-playing college students. If, like me, you’re a frequent viewer of TCM, you may recognize some of the faces in the large cast: Ed Asner, James Coburn, John Astin, Warren Oates, and Warren Beatty all make early appearances.
It’s an interesting little historical document and you can watch it below!
Kayla Anderson (Lindsey McKeon) wants to give her daughter, Kerry (Cathryn Dylan), a sweet 16 party that she’ll never forget. She hires a party planner but unfortunately, Lindy Shores (Katrina Begin) is a psycho party planner! Lindy only gets the job because she murdered the party planner that Kayla really wanted to hire and then she starts trying to corrupt Kerry. Lindy is who she says she is. This party is going to be murder!
You know what’s really psycho? Throwing a big 16th birthday party when you’ve still got an 18th birthday party, a high school graduation party, a college graduation party, an engagement party, a wedding reception, and a divorce party to plan for. Save your money! My 16th birthday, I got a cake with one candle and I had to beg my sisters to at least let me have the part with my name on it. And I was happy to have it! I didn’t a planner to know how to party.
I liked Psycho Party Planner because the daughter looked like she was 30 but she was still only celebrating her 16th birthday. It’s good to start denying your age early. Even though the Psycho Lindy turned out to have a lot of bad things up her sleeve, Kerry still got to have a party. It didn’t look like a great party to me but it was planned by a psycho party planner so I guess it was as good as it could be. The high school drill team performed and they were terrible. They’re not going to get to State with those moves. “If you can’t handle a birthday party, how are you going to handle the pressure of keeping everyone’s spirits up when our guys are losing to Lake Highlands?” as my old cheerleading coach used to say.
Psycho Party Planner was dumb but fun in a “What did I just watch?” way. Who would have guessed planning a party could be so dangerous? I’m going to plan all of my future parties myself so if they turn out to be psycho parties, I’ll know exactly who to blame!
DEAD TONE (2007), also known as 7EVENTY 5IVE, opens with a group of kids entertaining themselves while their parents are drinking and partying downstairs. The kids are playing a prank-calling game called “Seventy-Five,” where the goal is to place a random phone call and tell such a believable story that the person who answers will stay on the line at least 75 seconds. One guy seems particularly upset with the kids when they call him. Later that night, while everyone is sleeping, a psycho with an axe comes in the house and brutally murders all the parents while the kids hide and watch in terror. Jump forward ten years and most of the kids who survived the night of terror are now college students. Invited to a weekend party at a wealthy classmate’s mansion, the group resumes their prank-calling game. Needless to say, when the maniac from ten years earlier answers the phone, the members of the group find themselves being stalked and murdered again. Hopefully Detective John Criton (Rutger Hauer), who worked the original murders 10 years earlier, and his partner Anne Hastings (Gwendoline Yeo), will figure out who killer is and stop him before everyone dies!
DEAD TONE is directed by Brian Hooks and Deon Taylor, who also star in the film. They’ve created a gory, low-budget slasher that blends elements of ‘80s and ‘90s horror films with an urban twist. For a guy who did his share of prank calls as a kid, I think the “psycho on the receiving end of a prank call” storyline is pretty cool. And the opening scene where the kids watch as their parents are killed because of their phone calls is horrific and pulls you right into the story. Unfortunately, once we get past the interesting open, there’s nothing that special about the rest of the movie. The characters aren’t particularly memorable or likable, and they sure as hell aren’t very smart. Call me crazy, but I’m thinking that I would never make another prank call again if I survived a mass murder event that was brought on by prank phone calls. These folks have no such qualms, which may not make any sense in the real world, but I guess is necessary if you need more axe murders for your plot. I will admit that there are a few awesome kills in the film, especially if you enjoy a good beheading. I won’t spoil the scenes, but the ones I’m specifically thinking of are both surprising and jarring at the same time. I’m also the kind of guy who will watch anything featuring the legendary Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. DEAD TONE’s Detective John Criton isn’t a character highlight of his career, but I still enjoy watching him go through the motions of investigating the crimes both in the present and in the past. It’s a part that he could have completed in his sleep, but this movie would have benefited from more “Hauer time.”
Overall, DEAD TONE is the kind of movie to watch with little to no expectations. My wife and I enjoyed the film as we cuddled up on the couch and watched it a couple of nights before Halloween. It’s not great, but if you’re in the mood for a slasher movie with jump scares, silly characters, some decent gore, and even an acting legend thrown in for good measure, you could do a lot worse than DEAD TONE!
Released in 1958, How To Make A Monster is a clever little horror satire from American International Pictures in which the stars of Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein are hypnotized into believing that they actually are the monsters that they played! The main culprit is a movie makeup artist (Robert H. Harris) who has been deemed obsolete by the new bosses at AIP.
In this scene, Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy) explains not only the origins of Halloween but he also discusses how he’s going to make Halloween great again. This scene is probably the best in the film and it’s almost entirely due to O’Herlihy’s wonderfully menacing performance as Conal Cochran.
Through the Shattered Lens