Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for Troll!

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and 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 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 1986’s Troll!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Troll is available on Prime!

See you there!

Horror On The Lens: The Devil Bat (dir by Jean Yarborough)

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1940 film, The Devil Bat, the owners of a company in the small town of Heathville are super-excited because they’re going to be given their head chemist, Dr. Paul Carruthers (Bela Lugosi), a bonus check of $5,000. However, since Carruthers’s inventions have made millions for the company, he is offended by the small check and decides that the best way to handle this would be to sue in court and demand fair compensation …. just kidding! Instead, Dr. Carruthers sends his army of giant bats to kill the families of his employers.

The Devil Bat was produced by Production Releasing Corporation, a poverty row studio that specialized in shooting quickly and cheaply. Going from Universal to PRC was technically a step down for Lugosi but The Devil Bat is actually an excellent showcase for Lugosi and he gives one of his better non-Dracula performances as the embittered Dr. Carruthers. Indeed, one can imagine that Lugosi, who played such a big role in putting Universal on the map, could relate to Carruthers and his bitterness over not being fairly rewarded for the work he did to make others wealthy.

Enjoy The Devil Bat, starring the great Bela Lugosi!

Artwork of the Day: Locked Doors (by Barye Phillips)

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Dazzling Erin

by Barye Phillips

Some doors are best left locked, I guess.

Music Video of the Day: How You Gonna See Me Now? by Alice Cooper (1978, directed by Bruce Gowers)

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

How You Gonna See Me Now? is one of the songs to cite if anyone ever says that Alice Cooper was only capable of writing gimmicky songs. This is one of Alice’s best ballads, asking his former companion how she is going to see him when he returns to her life.

Of course, the video features Alice in jail and getting what appears to be electroshock therapy, in between writing a letter home to his wife. As with many of Alice Cooper’s videos, this video is memorable because of the contrast between the heartfelt and sincere lyrics and the macabre, sometimes bordering on campy imagery.

Director Bruce Gowers has also directed videos for Prince, Fleetwood Mac, Rush, Supertramp, and really just about anyone who was anybody in the 70s and 80s.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Friday the 13th 1.1 “The Inheritance”

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th, a show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

Despite the name of the series and the fact that producer Frank Mancuso was responsible for both the films and the show, Friday the 13th: The Series did not involve Camp Crystal Lake or Jason Voorhees. Instead, it was a supernatural-themed show about two cousins, Micki (Robey, who has red hair like me!) and Ryan (John D. LeMay), who inherited a cursed antique shop from their uncle, Lewis. When they discovered that Lewis spent the last few years of his mortal life selling cursed antiques, they realized that it was up to them to track down the evil items before they could cause too much harm to the world. Working with them was Lewis’s former partner, Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins).

Episode 1.1 “The Inheritance”

(Dir by William Fruet, originally aired on October 3rd, 1987)

On a rainy night, antique store owner Lewis Vandredi (R.G. Armstrong) is literally dragged into the depths of Hell, the result of a long-ago deal that he made with the devil. The store is inherited by Lewis’s niece and nephew, Micki Foster (Robey) and Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay).

Micki and Ryan, at first, don’t seem to have much in common. Ryan is a practical joker whose first reaction upon entering the store is to put on a rubber mask and wait for his cousin to show up so that he can startle her. The much more responsible Micki just wants to sell off whatever is in the store so that she can return home to her fiancé, an attorney who really doesn’t understand why she has to waste her time with any family stuff at all. The only thing that Micki and Ryan have in common is that neither one of them knows that their uncle made a deal with the devil to sell cursed antiques. That changes when Lewis’s former business partner, Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), shows up and not only tells them about Lewis’s supernatural activities but also finds the ledger where Lewis recorded all of his sales.

Uh-oh, it turns out that Micki herself has sold something from the shop. She sold an extremely ugly doll to Mr. Simms (Michael Fletcher), who in turn gave it to his bratty daughter, Mary (played by a 7 year-old Sarah Polley). Yes, the doll is cursed and yes, Mary is already using it to get revenge on anyone who annoys her. First, she uses the doll to kill her stepmother. Then, she uses the doll to kill the sweet babysitter who asked Mary to be polite about asking for snacks. When Micki and Ryan show up to retrieve the doll, Micki chases Mary to playground, where Mary uses the doll to make a statue breathe fire and a merry-go-round to spin dangerously fast. Fortunately, while Mary is tormenting Micki, Ryan walks up and snatches the doll away from her….

…. and that’s it!

Seriously, it’s kind of an anti-climatic ending but I get it. This was the first episode and, obviously, it was more important to establish why Micki and Ryan were the new owners of an antique store than to really offer up a complicated story of the supernatural. This was a pilot and it got the important part of the job done, introducing the premise and the characters. Robey and John D. LeMay were instantly likable as Micki and Ryan and the antique store was an intriguing location. The story with the doll may not have been anything special but the pilot did leave me looking forward to next week’s episode. And personally, I kind of liked how simple the solution was this week. Mary was an awful brat so there was something really satisfying about Ryan just snatching that doll away from her. Take that!

Next week: Ryan and Micki go to a monastery!

Horror On TV: The Hitchhiker 4.12 “Secret Ingredient” (Dir by Colin Bucksey)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, Dean Paul Martin (son of Dean) plays a vitamin salesman who discovers that competition can be deadly! This episode features a wonderfully sleazy turn from Dean Paul Martin and enjoyably macabre ending. Sadly, this would be one of Dean Paul Martin’s final appearances before his death in a 1987 aviation accident.

This episode originally aired on May 5th, 1987.

October Hacks: Savage Vows (dir by Bob Dennis)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Savage Vows is a shot-on-video slasher film from 1995.

It tells the story of what happens when Mark (Armand Sposto) loses his wife in a car accident and six of his friends decide to spend the weekend with him. Some of his friends sincerely want to help him. Some of his friends just want to hang out for the weekend and a funeral is as good an excuse as any to do so. Some of his friends are wondering how much money Mark is going to get from the insurance company and whether or not he might be willing to give them some of that money. To be honest, they’re not the most likable group of friends.

For his part, Mark just wants to sit on the couch and spend the entire weekend watching movies. In one of the few scenes in the film that doesn’t take place in Mark’s house, everyone heads down to the local, indie video store. Mark rents the Lion King. His friends insist on renting a bunch of horror films in order to keep Mark from being corrupted by a Disney cartoon. I mean, Mark may be in mourning and he may have just lost his wife and he might be very generously allowing everyone to stay in his rather small house but that doesn’t mean that he just gets to rent whatever movie he wants to rent! He’s got friends to think about!

Anyway, Mark is so depressed and he spends so much time either watching movies or running blindly through his neighborhood that he doesn’t even notice that there’s a black-gloved killer murdering his friends. Who could the killer be? The natural suspect would seem to be the redneck neighbor who keeps talking about how he’s a sign of the apocalypse but then that neighbor gets killed down at the cemetery so I guess it wasn’t him. The identity of the killer is eventually revealed but don’t ask me to explain what exactly was motivating this particular person to kill. I assume that an explanation was given but, for me to have heard it, this film would have had to have done a much better job of holding my attention. I’ve only got a three-minute attention span.

I was going to be even snarkier than I’m currently being when it came to describing this film but, to be honest, it feels a bit churlish to be too critical of a film that was obviously made over a weekend by a group of friends who had access to a video camera. This was a direct-to-video film that was shot in someone’s house with a semi-amateur cast and an obvious eye towards selling it in the type of video store that shows up in the movie. That doesn’t make Savage Vows any sort of secret masterpiece or anything like that. To be honest, it’s a pretty inept film and it barely even qualifies as a work of outsider art. But, in the end, you have to admire the fact that the film not only got made but, nearly 30 years later, it can still be viewed on sites like Tubi. Good for the people who made this film!

That said, Savage Vows still sucks.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Snuff (dir by Michael Findlay, Horacio Frederiksson, and Simon Nuchtern)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For a film that has a reputation for being one of the most controversial ever to be released, Snuff is incredibly boring.

Filmed in Argentina in 1971 as Slaughter, the majority of this film deals with a cult leader whose name is Satan (Enrique Larratelli). Satan pronounces his name with the emphasis on the second syllable, so that it sounds less like the name of the Lord of the Darkness and more like, “Sah-TAN.” I guess even he understood that the importance of not being too obvious when it comes to naming yourself. That said, everything about Satan indicates that he worships the Devil so I’m not really sure why he felt the need to get all fancy with the pronunciation of his name. Interestingly enough, Satan does not have a last name. I imagine that if he did have a last name, he would be one of those pretentious people who would try to spruce up his last name with a “von” or “de,” like Satan von Smith or Satan de Jones.

Anyway, Satan has a group of followers. They’re all young women who ride motorcycles and who look like hippies but they’re actually knife-wielding murder groupies. Over the course of the film, they seduce several men and then kill them. One of them carries a knife in the waistband of her panties, which is not something that I would ever have the courage to do because, seriously, if you sit down at the wrong angle or trip and fall, you’re probably going to have blood everywhere.

An actress named Terry London (Mirta Massa) comes to Argentina with her boyfriend and producer, Max Marsh (Aldo Mayo). They’re going to be making a movie but mostly, Terry just wants to sleep and hang out around their mansion. Some of Terry’s decadent Hollywood friends show up for the carnival. Someone dies and I assume he was a friend of Terry’s. Satan and his followers start plotting to attack and kill all of the Hollywood phonies and their rich friends. Satan is especially offended that one of them is the son of an arms dealer. Satan is about world peace, don’t you know.

Anyway, if you’re dumb enough to actually get caught up in the story of Satan and his followers, prepare to be disappointed because that story ends abruptly and without resolution. Instead, some woman that we’ve never seen before suddenly declares that the movie is turning her on and an actor who is supposed to be the director of the movie proceeds to dismember her while the cameras roll. The idea is that the crew of the movie actually murdered a woman, filmed it, and then decided to release the move into theaters because it’s not like people get prosecuted for murder or anything….

Of course, the murder footage was faked. It’s painfully obvious that it was faked, just as its obvious that the footage was shot long after filming was completed on Slaughter. It’s not even the same film stock. But, in 1976, when Slaughter was released under the name Snuff, there were actual protestors who showed up at the theaters and claimed that the footage was real. Some of those protestors were hired by the film’s distributor but reportedly, some of them were actual grass roots activists who believed what they had heard. As a result, this extremely dull film became a box office success. In New York City, it was the number one film in theaters for three weeks.

Controversy sells and Snuff will always have a place in the history of grindhouse films. That said, the film itself is pretty much unwatchable. If you’re going to watch it, hire someone to come march outside of your house with a sign to keep things interesting. Otherwise, prepare for boredom.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Dark Image (dir by Chris W. Freeman)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2017’s Dark Image tells the story of two twins.

Jessica and Jayden Browne (April Eden) were two musical prodigies who spent their entire youth either practicing or performing under the guidance of their mother, Phyllis (Leslie Easterbrook). One night, while Phyllis was at the opera with her brother, Alex (John Aprea), someone broke into the house and murdered one of the twins. The surviving twin had a nervous breakdown and soon found herself in a mental hospital, where she was watched over by her uncle Alex.

Assigned to investigate the case was Detective Billy Watts (Thomas Downey), who quickly came to believe that the murderer was the groundskeeper, Ogden Edwards (Ed O’Ross). After one particularly grueling interrogation, Ogden left the police station, got drunk, and then drove to Watts’s home to confront him. Unfortunately, the drunk Ogden not only crashed his car on Billy’s lawn but he also ran over Billy’s son, who only wanted to stay up late so he could watch fireworks. When Ogden was acquitted of murder, Billy swore vengeance and was quickly suspended from the force by Captain Fanning (Eric Roberts).

Now, the surviving twin has finally stopped hearing voices and is planning on spending the weekend at the house where the murders took place. She’s hoping that staying at the house will lead her to remember something. Alex sends his daughter, Lindsey (Eve Mauro), along to keep an eye on the twin but that turns out to be a bit of a mistake as Lindsey is kind of a drunk. Alex also asks Billy to keep an eye on the house but, again, that plan falls apart when Billy sees Ogden Edwards stumbling around the property.

From the minute she and Lindsey arrive at the house, the surviving twin starts to hear voices and see shadows moving in the dark. When she and Lindsey go out to a bar, everyone in the place briefly appears to be a faceless demon. Could it perhaps be connected to a mysterious note that the twin found in the house, the one that featured a reference to Dante’s Inferno and suggested that the house itself might be a gateway to Hell? Well, that’s always a possibility!

There are plenty of things about Dark Image that don’t make much sense. For instance, the twin is continually freaking out and screaming about her visions but nobody around her ever seems to view that as being particularly strange. The twin’s plan for going back to the house doesn’t make much sense (though, to the film’s credit, it does offer up an explanation as to just why exactly the twin actually did decide to return) and it also doesn’t make sense that Lindsey would agree to accompany her. As soon as Lindsey arrives at the house, she’s drinking wine and joking about picking up men at the bar and you have to wonder why she’s apparently not creeped out about the idea of spending the weekend at the house where one her cousins was brutally murdered by a killer who was never captured. The fact that Lindsey’s an alcoholic can only excuse so much.

That said, though, Dark Image is entertaining as long as you don’t spend too much time worrying about the film’s logic. If you just watch it for the atmosphere and for April Eden’s intense performance, Dark Image is a perfectly serviceable horror thriller that has a decent number of twists and one effectively creepy scene where Eden is menaced by a shadowy figure while taking a shower. Ed O’Ross does a good job playing Ogden Edwards and the ending of the film is properly macabre. It’s an effective film when taken on its own terms.

As for Eric Roberts, he only appears in two scenes but it’s always fun to see him. He plays the somewhat sarcastic police captain who is constantly telling his detectives to do it by the book. Eric Roberts is always entertaining when he’s playing a character in a bad mood.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Zombex (2013, directed by Jesse Dayton)

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the residents of New Orleans are suffering from PTSD. Chandler Pharmaceuticals introduces a new pill called Zombex that they claim can conquer the symptoms of PTSD. Because of the crisis, the pill is given rushed approval by the government and introduced to the citizens of Louisiana.

Zombex has one unfortunate side effect. If you take too many of them, you turn into a zombie and start eating all of the people around you. With New Orleans besieged by zombie drug addicts, the government closes the airspace. Even though there are reports of a cure that has been developed in Austin, no one can catch a plane. A group of people, including an annoying talk show host named Aldous Huxley (Lew Temple), get in their cars and head off for Austin.

Zombex is a zombie film with a message. Don’t trust big pharma. Don’t trust mood-altering drugs. Don’t trust the government. They’re all good messages but the film’s execution is lacking, with thinly drawn characters and action that moves slowly. The character of Aldous Huxley is especially hard to take, as he never stops talking, even though all of his talking often seems to slow down the effort to get to Austin. Since the only cure for the zombie apocalypse is in Austin, it seems like our heroes should be in more of a hurry to get there. Instead, they stop ever chance they get. Even though they always seem to get attacked by zombies whenever they stop off somewhere, they still keep doing it. It doesn’t make much sense.

As is typical of films like this, there are plenty of familiar actors in small roles. Malcolm McDowell plays the man who developed the drug. His name is Prof. Soulis, which is pronounced “soul-less.” (Tell us how you really feel, movie.) Corey Feldman shows up for a minute as one of Soulis’s co-workers. Sid Haig plays a big bad army man. Kinky Friedman plays a guard. Even Slayer’s Tom Araya gets a blink and you’ll miss it appearance.

Zombex takes on Big Pharma, which it should, but the film doesn’t live up to its intentions.