On tonight’s episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker, wealthy women are dying in Chicago and Carl Kolchak is on the case! It turns out that it’s all connected to priceless jewels and a legendary monster known as the Diabelro, a creature has been cursed to roam the Earth and search for gems.
The Diabelro is played by Richard Kiel, who might be best known for playing Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
This episode originally aired on November 29th, 1974.
Enjoy!
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.
Today, we acknowledge the release of David Gordon Green’s Halloween with….
4 Shots From 4 Halloween Films
Halloween (1978, dir by John Carpenter)
Halloween III: Season of The Witch (1982, dir by Tommy Lee Wallace)
Halloween H20 (1998, dir by Steve Miner)
Halloween (2007, dir by Rob Zombie)
When an abandoned car is found in the desert, Deputy Langely (Franc Luz) is dispatched to the scene. While Langely investigates, a man suddenly rides by on horseback and takes a shot at him. Searching for the man, Langely comes across an old ghost town. After he passes out in a seemingly abandoned building, he wakes up and discovers that he’s surrounded by old-timey western folks. There’s a barmaid and a blind gambler and a blacksmith. They are all spirits who are being held hostage by an undead outlaw, Devlin (Jimmie Skaggs), who long ago made a pact with Satan that gave him control over the souls of all the people in the town. Now, Devlin has kidnapped Kate (Catherine Hickland), a woman from the modern world, and it’s up to Langely to not only rescue her but also set free the spirits that are trapped in the ghost town.
There’s nothing unexpected about this hororr/western hybrid, which was produced by Charles Band’s Empire Productions. The combination of two different genres leads to double the clichés but the film itself is still entertaining in its own cheesy way. The town is atmospheric and spooky, Franc Luz is a passable lawman, Jimmy Skaggs is a devilish villain, and Catherine Hickland shows that she deserved to be known for more than just being David Hasselhoff’s first wife. Despite a troubled production that went through three different directors, Ghost Town is a decent B-movie that should be enjoyed by anyone who ever played cowboys and zombies.
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN was Universal’s first Monster Mash-Up, and in my opinion the best of the lot. From here, things got a little crowded, but by spotlighting just two supernatural terrors, we get a spooky, atmospheric ‘B’ film that really works. Lon Chaney Jr. returns to his signature role of Lawrence Talbot, suffering from the curse of lycanthropy, and he’s even better than in the original (which I reviewed in 2015 ). And The Monster is played by 60-year-old Bela Lugosi , in the part he rejected twelve years earlier. Bela’s interpretation is… interesting (but more on that later).
The eerie opening scene features two graverobbers under a full moon, breaking into the Talbot family crypt. Opening the lid of the late Larry Talbot’s coffin, they find the body is covered in wolfbane, and one of them recites that familiar “Even a man who’s pure in heart…” poem…
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It’s really not Halloween without at least one mummy film!
With that in mind, here’s a 1957 film called Pharaoh’s Curse. In this film, a team of archeologists foolishly enter a mummy’s tomb and you can probably guess the rest. Honestly, you would think that archeologists would eventually learn that it’s never a good idea to test a curse but apparently, it never happened.
Anyway, if you’ve got an hour to kill, enjoy Pharaoh’s Curse!
I know, I know.
This song isn’t really about the Frankenstein that we all know and love, the one who reanimated the dead and who declared himself to be God.
Oh well, no matter!
It still feels appropriate for October.
Enjoy!
1965’s Attack of the Eye Creatures is an odd little movie.
It starts, as so many bad sci-fi movies do, with Peter Graves narrating about how the government has been keeping an eye on a flying saucers that’s apparently been hovering over the Earth for quite some time. However, a quick visit to Project Visitor reveals that the soldiers assigned to protect us are more interested in using their monitoring equipment to spy on teenagers making out in their cars!
Agck!
EWWWWWW!
Total invasion of privacy!
Of course, what’s particularly sad about the whole thing is that you know that’s totally what would happen in real life as well. Give a group of people the power to spy on anyone in the world? Of course they’re going to end up spying on people fooling around in cars! That’s one reason why Earth is just as doomed today as it was in 1966.
Anyway, the flying saucer does eventually land. Unfortunately, our government is too incompetent to do anything about it. The aliens inside turn out to be …. well, not that impressive. For one thing, they don’t speak. There are none of the grandiose threats to conquer the world that we’ve come to expect from aliens. At the same time, we also don’t have to hear about how the rest of the universe is disappointed in us for polluting our planet and blowing each other up so that’s a good thing. So often, intergalactic visitors can be so judgmental! Anyway, these aliens are lumpy and gray and they’ve got several eyes. They don’t really look that impressive. Seriously, check this jerk out:
As I said, the government turns out to be pretty useless when it comes to battling the aliens and the local police are skeptical that any intergalactic visitors would bother to land in their crappy little town. Fortunately, as always happens whenever the controlling legal authorities fail to do their job, there are teenagers and they’re willing to do what needs to be done to protect the world!
Of course, if Stan (John Ashley) and Susan (Cynthia Hull) are going to rally the troops against the aliens, they’re going to have to borrow someone’s phone. That’s going to mean convincing the local old man to let them use his phone. The old man, who has had enough of those crazy kids with all their kissing and the jazzy lingo, is more interested in using his shotgun to keep people off his lawn.
Meanwhile, two drunks decide that they want to get in on all this alien business. They both later die and no one in the movie seems to care. That’s just the type of movie that this is….
….and if it sounds familiar, that’s probably because you’ve seen the 1957 drive-in classic, Invasion of the Saucer Men! Basically, in the mid-60s, American International Pictures commissioned Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan to remake some of their most successful drive-in films. Apparently, the plan was to sell them to television. So, Buchanan took the script for Saucer Men, tossed in some scenes of the government spying on people (Buchanan was a noted conspiracy theorist who previously directed The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald), and called his film Attack Of the Eye Creatures!
Yet, while Invasion of the Saucer Men was a genuinely clever sci-fi satire, Attack of the Eye Creatures is done in by Buchanan’s inability to keep his story moving at a steady pace and it doesn’t help that the iconic Saucer Men have been replaced by men who appear to be wearing trash bags. Attack of the Eye Creatures is an unfortunate remake and one that should be viewed only after you’ve watched Invasion of the Saucer Men and maybe every other public domain sci-fi film that’s currently on YouTube.
The Babysitter, directed by McG- Lethal Weapon, Supernatural, Aim High, and Citizen Cane. Ok fine, the last one was a bit of a fib, but he’s had an amazing career known for shows that are action heavy, pop, and have a lot of humor. I did watch this one on the elliptical as a to refresh my memory, but I first watched it on a date night for a Netflix and Chill session. The Babysitter was so fun; it doesn’t take itself seriously, until it has to. Like Supernatural, the movie balances the horror with the character arcs to pull you into the story. By the end, you genuinely care about how these characters end up.
Horror is often treated as the stepchild of film because people are attracted by the low budget/high profit payoff potential and think anyone can do it: so wrong. In fact, there are times you have an immensely talented director, but he or she is not meant for this genre – see- https://unobtainium13.com/2018/10/01/all-the-boys-love-mandy-lane-aka-all-the-bland-love-blandy-lane-review-by-case-wright/
Also, writing horror can create masterpieces like 28 Days Later- https://unobtainium13.com/2016/10/24/28-days-later/ . Horror screenwriters can also create misery-inducing steaming piles of terribleness for me or for whomever will have the excruciating experience of having to review it- see- https://unobtainium13.com/2016/11/20/channel-zero-welcome-home-season-1-ep-6-alt-title-so-very-boring/ In The Babysitter, Brian Duffield (Quarantine and soon to be released Vivian Hasn’t Been Herself Lately) delivers a fun popping script with fast moving acts, clear arcs, humor, gore, and clever buildups and payoffs. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of his art and you should too! The Babysitter is not in the Oscar worthy category of The Shining, but it is still brilliant because it succeeds in doing what is most important – it entertains. You care about the protagonist and where he’s going and amazingly sometimes root a little for the villain because she is acted by the uber-talented Samara Weaving.
The film is basically Satanic Home Alone; in fact, they reference Home Alone in the film. Cole, the protagonist, is a bullied awkward 12 year old with a heart of gold and no self-confidence. Yes, I know that reads like a fairly common protagonist, but his nerdiness is so authentic and the dialogue is so real that you buy it. Trust me, I’ve never led you wrong before. Cole has a quasi-friend in the Girl Next Door- Melanie, but Cole’s true friend (seemingly) is Bee (Samara Weaving) his babysitter. She genuinely likes movies and nerdy things just like Cole and we learn she was also an awkward teen herself prior to meeting Cole.
Bee seems to be perfect, but she is a satanic worshipper who wants to sacrifice one nerd, harvest some of Cole’s blood, and read from I guess the Necronomicon to be granted a wish of her choosing from Satan. Then again, we all have our faults. We get to see and not be told how close Bee and Cole have become over the years. They love film and goofy dancing. Cole stays up past his bedtime to spy on his beloved Bee to see what she is up to after he purportedly asleep. Sadly, he watches Bee commit an over the top murder of a seduced nerd. The deaths in this film are Final Destination awesomepants! Watch The Babysitter just for the deaths alone! Bee has cohorts: Robbie Amell who is very good in this. He plays the murderous jock expertly and if you’re so inclined he’s shirtless A LOT with aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabs. There’s also a lot of great humor with the somewhat bumbling satanic worshippers that are also out to get Cole and his sweet sweet AB Negative.
They need to harvest Cole’s blood to finish the evil wishing spell because he’s an obvious virgin, but he fights back. It’s not corny like Home Alone; he mostly gets lucky or barely survives by finding weapons along the way- No booby traps. The lack of traps and gags during the fight scenes keeps the story in the horror realm with the comedy sprinkled like a Mrs. Dash that doesn’t make you want to vomit.
There is a eventually a final battle between Bee and Cole. She offers to make him part of the wish and live with him forever. Now, I’m not saying he should’ve immediately taken her up on this offer. Maybe some negotiating would’ve been worthwhile, but really Cole…not even taking one beat to consider this pretty awesome offer. I think that would’ve been fun as an alternate ending, but without fighting the final battle, Cole would not have realized his story arc as a true hero. I have to admit if I were the 12 year old nerdy boy and Bee had made the same offer to me, I would have just been trying to figure out how many sock pairs I needed for our evil journey!
I want to make a special note here for the amazing performance of Samara Weaving. She played the heck out of this role. She could believably turn from evil to seductress to friend to good on a dime. With the right opportunities, Samara Weaving will be the next Nicole Kidman! Really!
Happy Horrorthon! Please check out my other stuff and tell your friends to read it as well!
Tonight’s episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker is a fun one!
In this episode, Kolchak investigates a series of mysterious deaths that seem to involve one very ambitious politician (played by Tom Skerritt). Kolchak’s investigation leads him to believe that not only has the politician made a deal with the devil but that the politician also has the ability to transform himself into a killer dog!
Agck!
That’s Chicago-style politics for you, I guess.
This episode originally aired on November 15th, 1974.
Enjoy!
Way back at the end of August, in anticipation of the TSL’s Horrorthon, I went down to my local Half-Price Books and I explored their collection of old horror paperbacks. Among the books that I pulled off the shelf was the 1981 horror novel, The Beast Within by Edward Levy.
The book opens, in the 1920s, on the Arkansas farm of Henry Scruggs. Henry is a cruel religious fanatic, one who views fornication as being such a sin that he refuses to even have sex with much younger wife, Sarah. (Sarah, for her part, was practically sold to Henry by her father.) One day, an Englishman named Connors shows up at the farm. He’s a traveling bible salesman who specializes in seducing farm girls. When he attempts to do just that to Sarah, they both end up getting caught by Henry. Henry sets his wife on fire and then chains up Connors in the basement. That’s where Connors spends the next 20 years, while Henry prays for his soul.
By the time Henry dies and Connors manages to escape, Connors is no longer human. He’s been turned into a savage beast, who lives in the woods and eats anything that he comes across. The beast eventually attempts to catch a snake and ends up getting a poisonous bite as a result. However, before it dies, the Beast rapes Carolyn McCleary.
When Carolyn subsequently gives birth to a son named Michael, both she and her husband, Eli, convince themselves that Michael is Eli’s child, even though there’s no physical resemblance. As a child, Michael has a terrible temper and is sometimes violent. He has terrible dreams and sometimes wakes up covered in the blood of other animals. After Eli and Carolyn are forced to resort to extreme measures to control Michael’s impulses, it seems as if Michael has recovered. He grows up to be a relatively normal boy.
But then puberty hits….
The Beast Within is a grim, dark, and occasionally depressing little book. It’s also compulsively readable. Though many of the scenes between Henry, Sarah, and Conners verge a bit too much towards the cartoonish side, the book picks up once Henry’s out of the way and the focus shifts to the McClearys. You find yourself hoping the best for Eli, Carolyn, and Michael, even though you know it’s doubtful that this story is going to have a happy ending. The Best Within is short, sordid, pulpy as can be, and undeniably effective.
