Today’s music video of the day brings us a little more vampire action. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. Vampires always seem to inspire musicians in a way that werewolves don’t. This video came out two years before Twilight and it basically tells a less romanticized version of the same story….
Still, there is an odd romance to vampirism, though that might not be obvious from this video. In this video, the vampire just comes across as being a pervy stalker but, in the popular imagination, there’s usually nothing sexier than a centuries-old vampire. Maybe it’s all the ennui.
To be honest, I just like the bottles of blood in the refrigerator. That makes me laugh every time I see it.
“Godzilla says that I have to learn to fight my own battles.”
Well, good for you, Minilla, son of Godzilla. It’s good to see that Godzilla’s raising you well! But can your monster advice possibly contain any useful life lessons for the human world? Let’s watch 1969’s All Monsters Attack and find out!
You may have noticed that I’m specifically calling this a “Halloween review” as opposed to a “horror review.” That’s because it’s just not Halloween without a Godzilla movie or two but, at the same time, it would be really stretching things to describe any of the Godzilla films of the 60s and 70s as being horror films. Certainly, the original, black-and-white Gojira was a horror film, even if it no longer scares audiences. But, by the time the 60s rolled around, Godzilla had gone from being the living equivalent of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to becoming a cuddly friend of children everywhere.
All Monsters Attack, for example, is clearly a film made for children and stock footage aficionados. Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki) is a little kid who has no friends but he does have an active imagination. Whenever he falls asleep, he goes to Monster Island where he watches as Godzilla beats up various monsters. Why exactly does Godzilla stay on Monster Island, I wonder. Like literally everyone else on the island seems to hate his guts and they’re constantly trying to kill him. If I was advising Godzilla, I’d suggest he move to another island.
Anyway, it turns out that Godzilla’s son, Minilla, is being bullied by a red-headed lizard named Gabara. Minilla is a monster who always seems to get a mixed reaction from Godzilla fans. When I first saw him, I was like, “AGCK! BURN IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!” But actually, Minilla is kind of cute and he does this adorable thing where he breathes radioactive smoke rings at his enemies. Godzilla could protect Minilla but instead, he tells Minilla that he has to fight his own battles.
OH MY GOD, JUST LIKE ICHIRO! Ichiro is so moved by Godzilla’s advice that he decides to stand up to the bullies. But first, he’s going to have to stand up to some bank robbers as well, The bank robbers take Ichiro hostage so he promptly takes a nap so he can hang out on Monster Island with Godzilla and Minilla. Good plan, kid!
Anyway, All Monsters Attack is considered by many to be the worst of the old Godzilla movies and, in many ways, it is. While all of the later Godzilla movies were aimed at kids, most of them at least had a decent fight or two. All Monsters Attack is basically just 69 minutes of the kid getting in trouble and then taking a nap. In fact, Godzilla’s barely in the movie at all. Minilla gets most of the monster screen time. That said, the film’s heart is in the right place and if it made any bullied children feel better then it did some good.
(Listen, I’m always going to give any movie starring Godzilla the benefit of the doubt, okay?)
That said, it does kind of seem like the ultimate message of the film’s final scenes is that the best way to deal with a bully is to pull a mean prank on someone else and then join the bully’s gang. So maybe All Monsters Attack! did more harm than good. I don’t know. As long as Godzilla’s okay, that’s all that really matters.
Clark (J. Eddie Peck) and his girlfriend, Lisa (Jill Schoelen), are vacationing in New Mexico. It’s a romantic getaway, except for all of the snakes. Clark manages to save Lisa from one snake through the use of his trusty rifle but then he himself gets bitten once they go to a motel. Luckily, traveling salesman Harry Morton (Jamie Farr!) has a suitcase that’s full of anti-snake venom antidotes. Unfortunately, the one that Harry gave to Clark doesn’t do much good because not only does the bite on Clark’s arm get worse but it starts to turn into a snake! In fact, his entire body is full of snakes, just trying to slither out! It’s a vacation from Hell as Lisa tries to find a cure for Clark, Clark tries to control his serpent-like instincts, and Harry tries to find the young couple so that they don’t sue him.
This is an unrelated sequel to a film called The Curse. In fact, it’s probable that this film was just called The Bite until the first Curse did slightly better at the box office than anyone expected. The two films share not a single character or plot point in common. There’s not really even a curse in this so-called sequel! Clark’s problems are all due to the snake being radioactive. (Once again, science is to blame.) It’s a typically cheesy, low-budget 80s horror film but it does have a few things to recommend it. The special effects range between being enjoyably cheap and effectively gross. Jamie Farr is entertaining as Harry Morton and seems to be happy to not be playing Klinger again. The truckers that Harry enlists to help him search for Lisa and Clark are all colorful characters and they are a little more interesting than the usual horror movie canon fodder. Bo Svenson also has a good cameo as the sheriff.
Best of all, the film features one the greatest scream queens of the late 80s and early 90s, Jill Schoelen. Schoelen is best remembered for her role in The Stepfather but she actually appeared in several horror movies between 1987 and 1993. As she was in almost all of her roles, Jill Schoelen is both sexy and believable in The Bite. She had a talent for making even the worse dialogue sound natural and that was a talent that The Bite gave her many chances to display.
The Bite is hardly a great film but, by the standards of late 80s cable fare, it’s undeniably entertaining.
I was sixteen when Silent Hill first came out for the Playstation.
From the first minute I played it, I was hooked and Silent Hill would go on to become the first video game that I ever seriously got into. I would study the game. I would go online, in those early days of the world wide web, to read the theories of other players and visit the occasional Geocities-hosted fan page. I actually got very upset when innocent nurse Lisa Garland was lost to the town’s curse. I was also amazed to discover that the game’s storyline and ending could change depending on whether or not I saved Cybil Bennett. A video game with multiple endings that went beyond just “good” and “bad?” This was a big deal back in 1999!
Looking back after all these years, there are four main things that I remember about Silent Hill.
First off, and I know I’m not alone,I remembered the opening and especially the music that played during the scenes of Harry Mason driving down that foggy road:
Secondly, I remember the scenes that played after the game’s ending, which featured all of Silent Hill‘s characters blowing their lines, missing their cues, and laughing about it. Today the animation may look primitive but back in 1999, seeing this at least provided some comfort if you got one of the bad endings, especially the “bad” ending where you defeated the monster but your daughter died (“Thank you, Daddy … goodbye.”) and then you ended up dead in your car.
I remember the nearly legendary fifth ending of the game, in which Harry Mason ended up getting abducted by aliens. In the days before YouTube, when you had to trust word-of-mouth, there were some people who insisted that this ending was just an urban legend while there were others who couldn’t stop bragging about how they had gotten the alien ending while the rest of us just had to settle for the “saved the world and your daughter” ending. When I finally managed to get the UFO ending, I was so happy that I felt like I was the one who had been abducted by aliens.
Finally, the main thing I remember about Silent Hill is that I was never very good at it. I was the player who always ended up getting lost and walking around in a circle. I can’t remember how many times I played before I managed to not die in the diner. As soon as I heard the radio static that indicated that I was about to get attacked, I started to run because I know I wasn’t a good enough shot to fight off any of the game’s monsters. Harry Mason was searching for his daughter and I was probably the worst possible person to lead him in that search because I somehow always managed to get Harry killed. It didn’t matter how many times I played the game, I never really got good at it. Even when I finally managed to get the best ending possible, it was only after saving and reloading the game a countless number of times.
I may have never been good at the game but I still enjoyed leading Harry to his death and occasionally to one of the good endings. Silent Hill is what taught me that there was more to video games than just jumping and shooting and for that, I will be forever thankful.
This is from the original, 1982 version Poltergeist.
It’s just a ghost movie about a mother’s love, suburban conformity, and a guy’s face falling into the sink. For whatever reasons, the ghosts just seemed to take a really intense dislike to this guy.
“The house is clean.”
Not bloody likely.
“You moved the headstone but you left the bodies!? WHY!? WHY!?”
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, we’re using 4 Shots From 4 Films to look at some of the best years that horror has to offer!
4 Shots From 4 1997 Horror Films
Anaconda (1997, dir by Luis Llosa)
The Devil’s Advocate (1997, dir by Taylor Hackford)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, dir by Jim Gillepsie)
Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”
Of course you have! Who hasn’t?
Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue. In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever. However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon. (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.) Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual. Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman. That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.
Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven. The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie. Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself! Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.
(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)
Wow. Apparently, life as a vampire is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
This video reminds me of the classic Andrew Parkinson film, I, Zombie. That film followed a young man who is forced to deal with the fact that he’s slowly turning into a zombie. Apparently, being a vampire is just as depressing as becoming a zombie. Maybe it would be best to avoid fraternizing with the living dead all together.
If tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond seems familiar, that’s because it’s a remake of a story that was originally filmed as an episode of The Veil.
This time, instead of witnessing a murder occurring in another apartment, it’s a suicide that is witnessed by artist Anthony March (Michael Higgins). Of course, when he investigates, he discovers that the apartment in empty. Is Anthony hallucinating or has he gone one step beyond and is he seeing the future? Watch to find out!
By the way, that’s future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher playing Anthony’s model.
Through the Shattered Lens 