Category Archives: Horror

Film Review: The Initiation (dir by Larry Stewart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1984’s The Initiation, Daphne Zuniga plays Kelly Fairchild, a college student who is haunted by a recurring nightmare in which she, as a child, watches a man get burned alive in her childhood home.  Kelly, who can’t remember anything about her life before the age of ten, signs up for sleep study but her mother, Francesca (Vera Miles), strictly forbids it.  Kelly is far too busy and far too rich to have her dreams analyzed.

And really, Kelly does have a lot going on in her life at the moment.  She’s a student at SMU.  She’s pledging to a sorority.  Her father (Clu Gulager) owns one of Dallas’s biggest department stores and Kelly has the key so that the sorority pledges can spend the night inside the “deserted” building.  Sure, a patient with extensive burn scars has recently escaped from a mental hospital but what could that possibly have to do with Kelly and her disturbing dreams?

The Initiation is a film that takes a while to really get going.  The film spends a lot of time on just Kelly walking around the SMU campus and visiting her parents in Highland Park.  Eventually, though, Kelly, Marcia (Marilyn Kagan), and Alison (Hunter Tylo) spend the night in that store, which is not quite as deserted as they were told.  Not only is the president of the sorority there to play pranks but she’s invited along three goofy guys to add to the fun.  Of course, there’s also the mysterious killer who proceeds to start picking everyone off, one-by-one.

The Initiation is a film that I like for a couple of reasons.  One of them is that, whenever I watch this movie, I find myself shouting, “I’ve been there!”  This film was set and filmed in Dallas and it accomplishes the near-impossible task of actually making the SMU campus look vaguely interesting.  (SMU may be a top college but the campus has always been a bit on the dull side.)  SMU is a college that I once wanted to go to, at least until I saw how much it would cost and my guidance counselor saw how unimpressive my grades were in high school.  Instead, I went to UNT but I still spent a lot of time around the SMU campus because it was right next do to my favorite movie theater, the Dallas Angelika.

Meanwhile, the department store is played by Dallas Market Center.  I can only imagine that trouble that the production went through to get permission to shoot there.  That said, I have to admit that I found the “Vendors only” signs that appeared on several doors to be distracting.  (The Dallas Market Center is largely used for trade shows.)  Still, it was a good and atmospheric location for the slasher mayhem.

While it does take a while for that mayhem to start, the kills are all memorably nasty and bloody and actually rather frightening.  I’ve always felt that, if you’re going to make a movie like this, you should go all out.  There should just be blood and guts everywhere and The Initiation doesn’t shy away from that.  The fact that the victims are largely played by likable actors only makes the deaths more effective.

Finally, The Initiation ends with one of those totally out-there twists that a viewer like me just can’t help but love.  It’s a totally ludicrous twist but it’s just so weird and random that it was impossible not to enjoy.

Now, to be clear, The Initiation is not a lost classic.  As I mentioned earlier, it takes a while for the action to really get started and there are a few early scenes that definitely drag.  The film’s original director was fired after shooting began and, as a result, the film itself feels a bit disjointed.  It’s obvious that the original director had a much different vision than the director who replaced him.  But, even with all that taken into account, The Initiation is still a hundred times more effective than it probably has any right to be.  It’s ultimately an effective and memorable slasher film.

And it was filmed in my home town!

Film Review: Silent Madness (dir by Simon Nuchtern)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1984’s Silent Madness opens in a mental hospital in New Jersey.  In order to cut down on costs, the hospital’s administrators have been giving early release to some of their patients.  Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) has only been on staff for a few months but even she knows that there’s a risk that a truly dangerous patient could be released.  Dr. Gilmore’s worries come true when a homicidal patient named Howard Johns (Solly Marx) disappears from the hospital.  Apparently, a computer errors led to Howard being released instead of a patient with a similar name.

Oh, someone screwed up big time!

Or, at least, that’s what Joan believes.  In a scene that has to be seen to be believed, the arrogant Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook) attempts to convince Joan that Howard Johns actually died a while ago and that’s why he’s not in the hospital anymore.  Joan demands to see a death certificate.  Dr. Kruger is like, “Oh, I don’t know where it is.  We’ll have to look for it.”  Yeah, that’s the same thing I used to say in college whenever I was running behind on my paying my credit card.  “Really?  I never received that bill.  Can you send it again?”

Knowing that Howard was imprisoned after committing several murders at a sorority house in upstate New York, Joan theorizes that he’s heading back to the college so that he can pick up where he left off.  Pretending to be a former member of the sorority, Joan meets the aging house mother, Mrs. Collins (Viveca Lindfors).  Mrs. Collins — who often refers to younger women as being “whores” — tells a story of how a hazing ritual gone wrong led to handyman Howard grabbing a nail gun and wiping out a pledge class.  When Joan actually spots Howard on campus, she tries to get the sheriff (Sydney Lassick) to do something about it.  The sheriff replies that Joan must be seeing things because the hospital called and reported that Howard is deceased.  The sheriff than has a beer because he’s the best character in the entire film.

Howard, needless to say, is not dead.  He’s hiding out in the sorority house and he’s continuing in his murderous ways.  We don’t really learn much about Howard.  As the title suggests, he’s a silent killer.  That works to the film’s advantage.  A silent killer is far more intimidating than one who spends all of his time coming up with bad puns.  Because Silent Madness was originally filmed in 3D, Howard enjoys throwing axes and firing nail guns, often straight at the camera.

Silent Madness is a thoroughly ludicrous film but it’s enjoyable as a product of its time.  It’s hard not to smile at the thought of a theatrical audience ducking as Howard throws an axe at the camera in 3D.  Howard is a properly intimidating killer but the film is totally stolen by Roderick Cook, Viveca Lindfors, and Sydney Lassick, three veteran actors who knew better than to even try to be subtle while appearing in a film like this.  Lassick’s performance as the cowardly sheriff is especially enjoyable.  We all know that law enforcement is useless in a slasher film.  Lassick’s sheriff seems to understand this as well.  He’d rather just stay in his office and who can blame him?

Silent Madness is silly and kind of dumb but it’s undeniably entertaining.

 

Film Review: Scream (dir by Byron Quisenberry)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Friday the 13th, I decided to review a film called Scream….

No, not that Scream.

This Scream came out in 1981.  It’s a slasher film but instead of featuring the usual collection of teenage victims, the victims in Scream are largely a collection of middle-aged tourists who are played a motely collection of former sitcom stars and western veterans.  Even Ethan Wayne, the son of John Wayne, makes an appearance, playing a potential victim named Stan.

The film imagines what would happen if a bunch of tourists who were exploring the Rio Grande decided to spend the night in an apparently deserted ghost town.  Speaking for myself, I would have never decided to sleep in a deserted town, especially one that isn’t even on a map.  I mean, those places are called ghost towns for a reason.  Even if they’re not haunted by ghosts, they are probably home to snakes, spiders, and all sorts of bugs.  Considering that these people have camping gear with them, I’m not sure why they decided it would be smart to just sleep in an abandoned building.  This is where the film’s use of adult victims really backfires.  It’s easier to accept teenagers and 20-something doing something stupid.  When it’s a bunch of people heading towards 40 and 50 (and even older in some cases), you can’t help but feel that they have no one but themselves to blame.

The murders begin on the first night.  Needless to say, the survivors decide to find somewhere else to sleep but they discover that their rafts have been cut apart.  They’re trapped in the town.  Some of them leave to try to find a nearby ranch.  Everyone else stays in the town and tries not to fall victim to the unseen killer.

And then Woody Strode shows up.

Oh, poor Woody Strode.  Woody Strode was in his late 60 when he appeared in this film.  In his youth, he was one of the first black men to play in the NFL.  When he went into acting, he became a favorite of John Ford’s.  In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, he was John Wayne’s best friend.  In Sergeant Ruteledge, he had a rare lead role as man falsely accused of murdering a white woman.  In Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, he was the gladiator whose defiant death sparked Spartacus’s rebellion.  In Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West, he was one of he gunmen waiting for Charles Bronson at the train station.  Woody Strode had a long career and he broke a lot of barriers.

In Scream, Woody Strode plays Charlie, who claims that he’s spent forty years searching for the invisible killer who is currently terrorizing the tourists.  It must be said that Strode gives the best performance in the film.  He delivers his dialogue with a natural authority and, if you needed someone to defend you from an invisible killer with a scythe, Charlie is definitely who you would want to call.  That said, Charlie wanders off for a good deal of the film.  We never really find out where Charlie went off to.  He returns eventually but not before the remaining survivors have managed to do several stupid things.

Scream is a pretty dull film, one that doesn’t even take advantage of its potentially atmospheric location.  Watching it, one gets the feeling that everyone involved just made it up as they went along.  It’s interesting to see a slasher film in which the victims are not a bunch of teenagers or camp counselors but otherwise, Scream is nothing to scream about.

 

Scenes That I Love: Jason Emerges From The Lake In Friday the 13th

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1980, when director Sean S. Cunningham offered Ari Lehman a role in his new movie, he asked only one question. “Can you swim?”

At the age of 14, Ari appeared in Friday the 13th.  He didn’t get much screen time but his performance and appearance as the young Jason Voorhees created a moment of fright that lives on today.

Scenes I Love: Lon Chaney, Jr. Learns The Facts Of Werewolf Life

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On this date, 116 years ago, Lon Chaney, Jr. was born in Oklahoma City.  At the time, Oklahoma wasn’t even a state.  His father was the actor Lon Chaney Sr.

Originally named Creighton Chaney, Lon Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps.  Like many sons of famous men, he often struggled to escape his father’s shadow.  While he would never be mistaken for a man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, Jr. did make a name for himself, first as Lenny in the Oscar-nominated 1939 film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and then as Larry Talbot, the unfortunate man who found himself cursed to turn into the Wolf Man whenever the moon was full.  Chaney spent the majority of his career appearing in horror films and, later, westerns.  Not only did he play The Wolf Man but he was also one of the many actors to take a shot at playing both Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula.  Later, he would appear in a series of low budget horror films that were often a far cry from his best-known films.  In his later years, he was a favorite of producer/director Stanley Kramer, who cast him in both High Noon and The Defiant Ones and who once said that Chaney was one of the finest character actors in Hollywood.  His deep voice and craggily face made an undeniable impression in those later films.  Looking at him, you could see had lived a tough life but he had the heart of a survivor.

In today’s scene that I love, Larry Talbot learns the facts about being a werewolf.  From 1941’s The Wolf Man, here is Lon Chaney, Jr in his signature role.

Live Tweet Alert: Watch The Planet of Dinosaurs With #ScarySocial!

Posted on 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, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1977’s Planet of Dinosaurs!

If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  The film is available on Prime and Tubi!  I’ll be there co-hosting 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!

Planet of the Dinosaurs (1978, dir by James Shea, DP: Henning Schellerup)

 

Late Night Retro Television Review: Freddy’s Nightmares 2.1 “Dream Come True”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!

This week, we begin the second season!  Welcome back to Springwood!

Season 2.1 “Dream Come True”

(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on October 8th, 1989)

The second season of Freddy’s Nightmares features Freddy getting involved in the action.

The first story features Freddy haunting the nightmares of teenager Randy Jennings (David Kaufman), who has only recently moved to Springwood with his mother, Cathy (Linda Miller).  Randy is having nightmares about Freddy so his mother buys tickets to attend a talk show hosted by Stan Brooks (Jay Thomas).  Stan’s guest is therapist Dr. Brandon Kefler (Scott Marlowe), who has written a book about nightmares.  Cathy begs Brandon to see Randy and, after being pressured by Stan, Brandon agrees.  Stan arranges for cameraman Garry Heath (Gerard Prendergrast) to film the session.

At the Jennings home, Brandon talks to Randy about his nightmares.  Brandon’s therapy seems to work as, afterwards, Randy is able to sleep peacefully and without having any nightmares.  However, it turns out that Freddy just jumped from Randy’s mind to Brandon’s!  (Hey, didn’t almost the same thing happen in a movie, something about an exorcism….)  Soon, Brandon is the one who is having nightmares and being driven mad by visions….

As for the second story, it deals with Garry the cameraman and his belief that Freddy Kruger is real.  One reason why Garry believes that Freddy is real is because Freddy keeps showing up in footage that he’s filmed.  Unfortunately, no one else can see Freddy, certainly not Garry’s boss (Charles Cyphers).  Even more unfortunately, the body of Garry’s girlfriend is found in a dumpster and the police aren’t buying Garry’s story that Freddy did it….

This episode actually wasn’t that bad, especially compared to some of the episodes that aired during the show’s first season.  Perhaps it’s because this episode was the first of the season and the production budget hadn’t gone dry yet but Dream Come True actually features some adequate production values.  The house looks like a real house.  The television studio looks like a place where something would actually be filmed.  The abandoned warehouse with Garry tries to confront Freddy is actually an atmospheric location and the episode even manages to generate a little suspense, even if neither plot is particularly original.  Both Scott Marlowe and Gerard Pendergrast give decent performances in their stories and, as always, Robert Englund is a properly evil Freddy.

(That said, the show did manage to misspell Charles Cyphers’s name in the opening credits, despite the fact that he was this episode’s big guest star.  I did a double take when I saw “Charles Syphers,” on my screen.  Seriously, the man was Sherriff Brackett!)

Despite getting Charles Cypher’s name wrong, this was still a good start to the final season.  It’ll be interesting to see if the remaining episodes live up to it.

Scenes I Love: The End of The Original Dawn of the Dead

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The original Dawn of the Dead, which was released in 1978 and directed by George Romero, is not only one of the most influential horror films of all time.  (Even more so than Night of the Living Dead, Dawn was responsible for inspiring the Italian zombie boom.)  It’s also a rather dark satire of humanity and commercialism.  With the world ending, both humans and zombies head to the mall.  Briefly, the humans manage to form their own peaceful society but, inevitably, they end up screwing it all up.  The Dead may be slow and not particularly intelligent but, as poor old Steve discovered in that elevator, they’re absolutely determined to get what they want.

Dawn of the Dead ends with an apocalytpic combination of bikers, zombies, and one helicopter that has next to no fuel.  Our two remaining survivors head off in search of some place safe but we all know that helicopter isn’t going to stay in the sky for long.  In its way, the ending of Dawn of the Dead is even more bleak than the end of Night of the Living Dead.   With the end of this film, Romero’s message is clear.  Society is as dead as the creatures tearing it down.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special George Romero Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 would have been George Romero’s 86th birthday.

Now, those of you who have been reading us since the beginning know how important the work of George Romero has been to this site.  A mutual appreciation of Night of the Living Dead is one of the things that first brought many of us together.  It’s a film that we watch ever Halloween and Arleigh’s review of the original remains one of our most popular posts.  If this site had a patron saint, it would probably be George Romero.

And yet, Romero wasn’t just a director of zombie films.  He made many films, dealing with everything from hippie lovers (There’s Always Vanilla) to wannabe vampires (Martin) to government conspiracies (The Crazies) and eccentric bikers (Knightriders).  George Romero was one of the pioneers of independent films and today, on his birthday, we should all take a minute to consider and appreciate the man’s cinematic legacy.  It’s not just horror fans who owe George Romero a debt of gratitude.  It’s lovers of cinema everywhere.

With that in mind, here are….

4 Shots From 4 George Romero Films

Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir by George Romero, DP: George Romero)

The Crazies (1973, dir by George Romero, DP: S. William Hinzman)

Martin (1978, dir by George Romero, DP: Michael Gornick)

Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir by George Romero, DP: Michael Gornick)

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for Waxwork!

Posted on 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, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  1988’s Waxwork!  

If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

The film is available on Prime and Tubi!