Category Archives: Horror

Music Video of the Day: See You In Hell by Grim Reaper (1982, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Grim Reaper was so hardcore that they ever had Satan himself watching over their concerts!

See You In Hell is probably best remembered for Beavis and Butt-Head’s epic takedown of both the video and the singer.

Unlike certain other musicians — Winger — Grim Reaper was actually a good sport about Beavis and Butt-Head’s mockery.  Mike Judge once told David Letterman that one of the scariest moments of his life was when he ran into Grim Reaper’s lead guitarist while backstage at a concert.  Judge was expecting the guitarist to be angry with him but instead, he said that the band enjoyed and agreed with Beavis and Butt-Head’s critique.  He also sent Judge copies of the band’s other two videos so that the boys could take a crack at them.

Enjoy!

Horror on Television: One Step Beyond 1.1 “The Bride Possessed” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 One Step Beyond was a supernatural-themed anthology show that claimed every story that it told was based on an actual incident.  This show ran on ABC from 1959 to 1961 and was scheduled to air opposite of Twilight Zone.

The very first episode of One Step Beyond aired on January 20th, 1959.  In this episode, a young bride (Virginia Leith) on her honeymoon suddenly starts to act differently.  (Not only does she become more outspoken but she also loses her Southern accent.)  Is it possible that she’s been possessed by the spirit of a murdered woman and now, she’s going to solve her own murder?

Watch to find out!

Warlock: The Armageddon (1993, directed by Anthony Hickox)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The Warlock is back!

Or, at least, Julian Sands is back and he’s once again playing someone who is in league with the Devil. The first sequel to Warlock reimagines the character as being the literal son of Satan. Every millennium, Warlock is reborn and sets about trying to find the six stones that, when put together, will allow him to set his father free from Hell. The druids used to do a pretty good job of keeping the Warlock from finding the stones, but eventually they all died out. When Warlock is reborn in 1993, it falls to Kenny Tavis (Chris Young) and Samantha Ellison (Paula Marshall), as the two youngest Druid descendants, to stop him. Unfortunately, neither Kenny nor Samantha knows much about their heritage. Kenny is murdered by his own father, but it’s just so Kenny can be resurrected as a Druid warrior. Kenny uses a baseball to train with, making this one of the least likely baseball movies of the past 30 years.

Warlock: The Armageddon looks and feels like a rush job, complete with CGI that looks bad even for the 90s. Julian Sands is the only person who returns from the surprisingly entertaining first film, and he’s really the only reason to watch the sequel. The Warlock is much more quippy in the sequel, and the kill scenes are more elaborate. (Just watch as Julian Sands uses a finger gun to take out his enemies.) But the only scene that’s really stays with you is the messy moment when the Warlock is reborn and quickly grows up. The movie suffers because the Warlock doesn’t have a worthy opponent. Chris Young may have been good in PCU, but he’s still no Richard E. Grant. Julian Sands is the only member of the cast to deliver his lines with any relish, probably because he was getting paid the most money to appear in the film.

Watching the movie, I was mostly confused as to why the six stones existed in the first place. If Satan’s already locked up, why not throw away the key instead of expecting a bunch of druids to look after it?

The Warlock would return for a third movie. Julian Sands would not.

Happy Birthday To It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Sixty years ago today, on October 27, 1966, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired on CBS!

I used to love watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown every October and I still haven’t forgiven CBS for selling it and all of the other Peanuts specials to Apple TV.  We do subscribe to Apple TV so I can still watch the special every year but it just feels unfair to me.  Watching Linus wait for the Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown getting a rock while trick-or-treating is something that brought people together.  It was a shared experience and now, it’s not.  That still really bothers me.  Where’s the sincerity in taking away a beloved communal experience and making people pay to enjoy it?  No wonder the Great Pumpkin never shows up.

(Even though it’s not in the same league, I’m also not happy with Disney for yanking Toy Story of Terror! off the air either.  Sometimes, I feel like we’re heading towards a world without holidays or any celebrations whatsoever.)

Here are some of my favorite scenes from It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  I’ll have at least two more to share on Halloween!

 

Brad reviews the South Korean horror film BEDEVILLED (2010)!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I made an impulse purchase of the blu-ray for the South Korean horror film BEDEVILLED many years ago. I enjoy the films of South Korea, especially the action films, but as I read about this one online, it piqued my interest as a movie that had the potential to be a truly disturbing experience. I’m not saying I had buyer’s remorse, but by the time it arrived at my house, I had lost my nerve, so it sat on my shelves for a good 4 or 5 years. Today, in my quest to watch as many new films for this year’s Horrorthon as I can, my courage came back, and I finally cracked open the package and pressed play.

The story follows Hae-won (Ji Seong-won), a young woman who needs a break from the stresses of her life in Seoul, so she travels to the remote Moo-do Island where she grew up. Once there, she reconnects with her childhood friend Bok-nam (Seo Young-hee), who lives there with her husband, daughter, mother-in-law, and a handful of other people. We soon learn that things are very wrong on the island and that Bok-nam is abused, physically and sexually, on a daily basis and subjected to every kind of humiliation imaginable. In her desperation, Bok-nam sees her friend as a last chance to escape the island with her daughter. When Hae-won doesn’t believe some of the things that her friend tells her, and when it seems that all hope is lost, Bok-nam snaps and picks up the sickle that she uses every day to harvest potatoes. But this time, the blade has a different purpose, with everyone on the island a target of her vengeance.

If you’ve watched very many South Korean films, you know that they’re not known for being short. Based on that industry norm, BEDEVILLED is allowed the time it needs for an extended buildup that forces us to experience Bok-nam’s suffering so we can fully understand her transformation. On the surface, Bok-nam should be appreciated for the woman that she is. She works hard, she earns the family money through the honey from her bee hives, and she’s a good mother. Unfortunately, that’s not how the gender dynamics play out on this island. The men we meet on the island have no talent and provide nothing. Rather, they loaf around all day and chew on “Bozo leaves,” the type of leaves that make you act like a bozo when you eat them. Her husband takes the money she earns and even uses it to bring a prostitute there for his own personal gratification. There’s a telling scene early in the film where her husband says he’s taking their daughter fishing and Bok-nam wonders how a guy who grew up on an island is so bad at fishing. Disgustingly, we eventually come to suspect that those trips were never about the possibility of catching fish.

The older women are no help either. They witness horrible things happening to Bok-nam and either tell her it’s her own fault or they say she just needs to shut up and get back to work. As the audience, it’s extremely hard to watch her being raped, beaten, dismissed, and lied about for over an hour. That’s one of the worst things about Hae-won’s actions and attitudes as the story plays out. She’s the one person that Bok-nam thought she could count on, but she really can’t and that’s when we know things are about to get ugly. So, when the one thing Bok-nam truly loves is taken away from her, it’s more than a relief when she finally picks up that sickle. This isn’t an evil woman; this is a woman that has been treated with inhumane cruelty for years with no hope of escape. The cruelty is hard to watch, and so is the revenge, but there’s no doubt that it has been earned. It’s violent, brutal, graphic, and very understandable.

Seo Young-hee is terrific in the lead role of Bok-nam, giving us an initially likable character whose suffering is heartbreaking long before it becomes violent. Through her performance, we can see her retribution as a natural culmination of the horrific things we’ve witnessed, rather than simply a series of bloody scenes designed for shock value. I also have to give credit to director Jang Cheol-soo for trusting the power of his story and never losing sight of the human tragedy at its center. Ji Seong-won has a tougher job with Hae-won, whose preoccupation with her own problems and reluctance to believe her friend make her seem shallow in comparison.

I’m not going to pretend that BEDEVILLED is an easy movie to watch, and I’m certainly not going to say it was an enjoyable piece of entertainment, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s too cruel and disturbing for that. But it’s a great piece of horror, one that understands that cruelty should have consequences. Bok-nam’s breaking point might be hard to watch, but the true horror is everything that happens to her before she reaches it.

Horror Film Review: Curse of the Stone Hand (dir by Jerry Warren, Carlos Hugh Christensen, and Carlos Schlieper)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1965’s Curse of the Stone Hand, a dilapidated mansion sits deserted. Two men explore the grounds of the estate and one of them mentions that this house was once the finest in “Kent” but now the locals feel that it is cursed. There are mysterious stone sculptures of hands throughout the house. Some inhabitants think that the hands are the source of the curse. The first inhabitant of the house was a degenerate gambler named Robert Braun (Carlos Cores), who gambled himself into debt and, as a result, joined the Suicide Club as a way to try to win back his money. The hands, we are told, are somehow to blame for this, though it sounds like it’s more of a case of Robert needing to join Gamblers Anonymous. Once Robert was no longer in the house, the estate was claimed by another rich family. The family’s son was a sadist who had the power of hypnotism, which he used to torment his sister’s fiancé. Again, in my opinion, it’s open to debate as to whether or not the hands are to blame. To me, it seems more likely that the hypnotist is just a spoiled wastrel who wasn’t properly raised by his parents. The message seems to be less “Beware of the hands” and more “Don’t let your child grow up to be a hypnotist.”

If all of this sounds disjointed, that’s because it is. American film distributor Jerry Warren purchased two Chilean films and then edited them together to form what would become Curse of the Stone Hand. He dubbed over the dialogue to create some false connections between the two films and then he shot a few extra scenes with Katherine Victor and John Carradine. Victor and Carradine served to provide exposition, filling in the blanks that had been created by Warren’s mash-up. John Carradine’s character is especially interesting because he’s credited as being “The Old Drunk” but his character doesn’t ever appear to be drunk. Instead, he appears to just be one of the many people who works on the estate and who has opinions about the family that lives there. Carradine only has about two minutes of screen time. (Of course, Jerry Warren gave him top billing.) He’s not onscreen long enough to really give a performance that could be considered either good or bad. That said, it’s impossible not to smile whenever John Carradine shows up in one of these films. It’s always a little amusing how John Carradine effortlessly went back and forth from working with John Ford to working with people like Jerry Warren. Before there was Eric Roberts, there was John Carradine.

Curse of the Stone Hand is pretty much an incoherent film. It’s possible that the original Chilean films were good. Some of the shots do feature a bit of atmosphere. But, ultimately, it’s impossible to tell while watching this film, with its dubbed dialogue and its incomprehensible plot. That said, I’ll always have a spot in my heart for the shamelessness of filmmakers like Jerry Warren. Warren knew that you could get a lot out of a melodramatic title and a cameo from a name performer. Curse of the Stone Hand stands as a tribute to his never give up, never surrender spirit.

Bonus Horror On The Lens: Night Tide (dir by Curtis Harrington)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1961 and directed by Curtis Harrington, Night Tide stars a young Dennis Hopper as Johnny, an awkward sailor.  Johnny meets Mora (Linda Lawson), who works as a “mermaid” on the pier.  For Johnny, it’s love at first sight.  However, the more that Johnny pursues her, the more he learns about both her mysterious past and the dark fate of her previous boyfriends.

Night Tide is low-key and atmospheric gem of a movie, one that serve as an inspiration for low-budget filmmakers every where.  Lawson is perfectly cast as the enigmatic Mora but the film really belongs to Dennis Hopper.  Hopper’s naturally off-key presence made him perfect for the role of Johnny.

Night Tide is one of those low-budget movies that, because it’s in the public domain,  has been released on DVD (often in inferior form) by dozens of different companies.  Often times, films like this turn out to be fairly forgettable.  Night Tide, however, is an exception.