Category Archives: Horrorthon

Horror On The Lens: Silent Night, Bloody Night (dir by Theodore Gershuny)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1974 film Silent Night, Bloody Night is an oddity.

On the one hand, it’s pretty much a standard slasher film, complete with a menacing mansion, a horrible secret, a twist ending, and John Carradine playing a mute newspaper editor.

On the other hand, director Ted Gershuny directs like he’s making an underground art film and several of the supporting roles are played by actors who were best known for their association with Andy Warhol.

Personally, I like Silent Night, Bloody Night.  It has a terrible reputation and the film’s star, Mary Woronov, has gone on record calling it a “terrible movie” but I like the surreal touches the Gershuny brought to the material and the sepia-toned flashbacks have a nightmarish intensity to them.  The film makes no logical sense, which actually makes it all the more appealing to me.  As the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

Watch and decide for yourself!

Horrific Insomnia File #63: Hillbillys in a Haunted House (dir by Jean Yarbrough)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped on Tubi and watched a film from 1967 called Hillbillys In A Haunted House and it would have put you right to sleep.

Hillbillys In A Haunted House has some big names in the cast but, unfortunately, none of them get to do much.  Instead, the main characters are country singer Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky), his partner Boots Malone (a very pointy Joi Lansing), and their road manager, Jeepers (Don Bowman).  When we first see them, they’re driving to Nashville and even worse, they’re singing about the fact that they’re driving to Nashville.  They’re scheduled to perform in “the Jamboree.”  However, after they’re delayed by a bunch of cops having a shoot out with two spies, Boots announces that Jeepers is a nervous wreck and that they really need to stop and rest for the night.

Unfortunately, they’re in the town of Sleepy Junction and there’s not much to Sleepy Junction because everyone in town recently moved to Acme City.  As a result, there are no hotels or motels in Sleepy Junction.  But there is a big, deserted mansion that is rumored to be haunted.  With a storm approaching and Jeepers’s nerves even more on edge then before, they head to the mansion.  At the mansion Woody sings a song and then some neighbors stop by and they all sing another song.  Are you getting the feeling that there’s a lot of singing in this movie?  You’re right, there is.  It’s all studio-perfect singing too.  Woody lip-syncs like a pro.

Anyway, the mansion is also being used by four spies, played by Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, a hulking Lon Chaney, Jr., and Linda Ho.  The four of them live in the surprisingly clean basement of the mansion.  Living with them is a gorilla.  The spies planning on stealing a formula for rocket fuel from Acme City but first they need to do something about the hillbillys that are currently in the haunted house.  Carradine and Rathbone try to scare them out with some remote control ghost action.  Jeepers may be a coward and Woody may be a redneck and Boots may have atrocious taste in clothes but all three of them are Americans and they’re not going to stand for any spy nonsense!

If you think it sounds like this was stupid, you’re right.  Carradine and Rathbone both struggle to maintain a straight face.  Poor Lon Chaney Jr. often appears to be out of breath.  There’s way too much singing.  Seriously, couldn’t the hillbillies have just driven another few miles to Acme City and found a hotel?

The film will put you to sleep, though.  It has its uses.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator

6 Trailers For October 29, 2023

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we reach the conclusion of our annual Horrorthon, how about another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers?  Today, we pay tribute to the godfather of Halloween, Mr. John Carpenter!

  1. Halloween (1978)

Obviously, I was going to have to share the trailer for the original Halloween eventually.  This is still the best of the franchise.  In fact, all of the attempts by other directors to “improve” on it just serves to remind us of the fact that John Carpenter said everything that needed to be said in the first film.

2. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

How did Carpenter get the chance to direct Halloween?  Well, the producers were impressed with his previous film, Assault on Precinct 13.  Also impressed by this film was Angela Pleasence, who subsequently convinced her father, Donald, to read Carpenter’s script for Halloween.

3. The Fog (1980)

Carpenter followed up Halloween with The Fog, which featured several cast members of both Halloween and Carpenter’s next film, Escape From New York.

4. The Thing (1982)

Incredibly underappreciated when it was first released, Carpenter’s remake of The Thing has gone on to become one of his most popular and influential films.

5. Prince of Darkness (1987)

Speaking of underappreciated, it would also be several years before Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness started to receive the attention that it really deserved.

6. John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)

Finally, with Vampires, Carpenter mixed the horror genre with the western genre and came up with a hybrid that continues to be influential to this day.

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Neighbors Are Watching (dir by Haylie Duff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Your neighbors will always have your back,” Betsy (Elena Kent) tells Amy (Kabby Borders) while welcoming her to the neighborhood.

But will they?

That’s the question posed by the Lifetime film, The Neighbors Are Watching.  At first, it certainly seems like the neighbors are supportive of Amy as she starts her new job as a teacher and she tries to restart her life after ending a bad marriage.  And it certainly seems like a wonderful neighborhood.  Amy’s even got a surprisingly big house, considering that she’s a teacher.  I guess she lives in one of those states where teachers get paid a decent salary and don’t have to hand over half of it in union dues.  Either that or this is just another example of Lifetime understanding that it’s more fun to watch people in big houses than to watch people in small houses.

With the support of the neighborhood, Amy starts to date Henry (Will Holland), the guy who has just moved in across the street from her.  And, with the exception of one skeevy moment where he glances up at Amy’s bedroom window while she’s getting dressed, Henry seems like a great guy.  He says that he owns a home repair business and he even volunteers to fix her back door for her.

But strange things are happening and soon, the neighbors will turn against Amy.  It starts when someone leaves Amy strange messages and newspaper clippings about how her previous marriage ended because she killed her abusive husband in self-defense.  Then Henry starts to act strangely and Amy even thinks that she sees him at his house with another woman.  When Amy confronts him, Henry gaslights her and claims that she’s obviously seeing things.  All of the neighbors come outside to watch as Amy and Henry argue.  And when Amy thinks that she sees Henry putting a dead body in the trunk of his car, the police react as if Amy is the one who did something wrong by calling them.  Is Amy truly losing it, as Henry suggests, or is someone trying to frame Amy and make her look bad?  And will Amy’s neighbors, including Betsy, have her back?

The Neighbors Are Watching was one of those Lifetime movies that got better as it went along.  The first half, which featured Amy and Henry as a couple, featured a bit too much overwritten, cutesy flirting and a few too many scenes of Betsy trying to convince everyone to drink wine.  But, once it became apparent that Henry was a bad guy who was trying to make everybody think that Amy was going insane, the film became much more entertaining.  In fact, all of the cutesy dialogue made sense once you understood that Henry was trying to create the impression of a movie-perfect romance.  There’s a good twist towards the end and Lifetime regular Kabby Borders is likable and sympathetic as Amy.  This is the third film that Haylie Duff has directed for Lifetime and she definitely understands the importance of embracing the melodrama.  Despite the rough start, I enjoyed watching The Neighbors Are Watching.

Music Video of the Day: Are You Ready For Freddy? by the Fat Boys (1988, directed by Harvey Keith)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I always assumed that this song was specifically written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but actually, the Fat Boys were just fans of the movies and they decided to put a song about them on one of their albums.  The song was included in The Freddy Krueger Special, which aired on CBS in 1988.  That’s amazing to think that Freddy got his own primetime special.

This video, which features several of Freddy’s victims and Robert Englund himself, was written by Wes Craven and directed by Harvey Keith.  Keith directed a few films, including 1988’s Mondo New York and 1990’s Jezebel’s Kiss.

Enjoy!

V/H/S/85 (dir. by Various Artists)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The full list of directors for Shudder’s V/H/S/85 includes David Bruckner (The Night House), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Bingo Hell), Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone), Natasha Kermani (The Imitation Girl), and Mike P. Nelson (2021’s Wrong Turn).

I’m not completely familiar with the V/H/S series. I stopped after the very first one, with the “I Like You” segment rattling me enough to never want to delve into that found footage mayhem again. It only caught my interest because Scott Derrickson (and by extension C. Robert Cargill and Gigi Saul Guerrero were involved. Cargill and Derrickson have worked together since Sinister (as far as I know). Guerrero’s Bingo Hell was a fun watch, as horror films go. While the found footage format still bothers me when used in large doses, the effect here really makes sense. You’re working in the 80s, pre-cell phones and most major technology. Home movies were common back then as well.

The format for the film is similar to most horror anthologies (like Tales From the Darkside), where there are 4 or 5 mini tales and another that you see in between those. David Bruckner covers the main story with “Total Copy”, where a strange specimen in a lab is kept under close study. Of all the stories in the group, this one really didn’t hold me very well, though it does work well as filler between the other, stronger tales.

Mike Nelson’s “No Wake” starts us off with a camping trip to a nearby lake. Despite discovering No Trespassing signs, the crew of young adults set out for a nice time in the water. This ends up becoming rather treacherous and the result leaves them wanting to take revenge on their perpetrators. It was a strange and refreshing take on a familiar tale that I liked, though it was somewhat short.

We move on to Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death”, which I enjoyed. This tale follows a cameraman during an earthquake in Mexico, as a rescue crew tries to evacuate a collapsing building. Guerrero is in this piece as the reporter, Gabriella, and if you watch close enough, you’ll see a picture of her father on one the walls, looking like the Mayor of the town. I thought that was sweet. There’s quite a bit of blood and gore, as much as Shudder likes to give.

Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGOD” was the only one in the series that I didn’t care for. Not that I was bothered about the argument of God vs. Technology, but it felt more like those slam poetry sessions you find in Manhattan. I understand what it was trying to convey, and it does get somewhat chilling. Still, I kind of glossed over it and waited for the next entry. It was filmed well, at least. That I will give it.

“Ambrosia” brings us to a family reunion and celebration, though the family itself might not have the best intentions at heart. This one surprised me a bit and I liked the connection to earlier events.

And finally, we have a Sinister reunion of sorts with Director Scott Derrickson, writer C. Robert Cargill, and actor James Ransome (Deputy So & So himself) in “Dreamkill”. Working in a similar vein to Sinister, Dreamkill focuses on some deadly murders occurring in a town that also happen to be recorded on home video before the events take place. A detective (Freddy Rodriguez, Grindhouse’s Planet Terror) tries to piece together the clues before more victims are lost. This was the best of the bunch, by far, I felt.

Overall, if you can handle the shaky cam of the V/H/S films, 85 is a treat. While I personally wished some these weren’t using the cam, the film finds a way to keep the floating camera in the picture. It’s an interesting set of scares if you have the time to watch.

Horror on the Lens: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (dir. by Jose Mojica Marins)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about 1964’s At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.

It was something I caught on AMC or TCM about a decade ago very late at night. I was on the phone with a close friend when I saw this guy walking around a town in Brazil beating people with a cane. The film and it’s sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse were played back to back. I lost the name of the movie over time and searched what I could remember (“spanish movie man with cane”) to no avail. I found it again about a year ago via Youtube. It was one of those movies you wouldn’t really recommend to anyone, but you also couldn’t (or at least I couldn’t at the time) keep yourself from looking away. I low scored it because It’s not something I’d see myself running back to, but it was just weird.

The story focuses on Ze do Caixao, or Coffin Joe (Jose Mojica Marins), who is looking for the right girl to give him a “superior child”. Joe is clearly not a nice individual nor is he the hero of this story. He has a love of his own, but he soon takes an interest in one of the town girls, Terezinha. How can Joe get rid of his wife, Lenita (Valéria Vasquez) and get close to Terezinha (Magda Mei), despite the fact that she’s currently in a relationship with the town doctor? Apparently, it’s nothing a tarantula can’t fix in a particularly creepy scene.

The movie does get very dark, even by 1960s standards. There’s torture, random beatings, a possible rape and murders. Coffin Joe manages to continue his streak of bad deeds and finally does get to Terezinha by way of removing the doctor (Ilídio Martins Simões) from the equation. It all backfires on Joe, however, when a witch in the woods warns that by Midnight, his soul will be claimed. Not believing in the mystical or religious, Joe scoffs at this at first. He soon finds out that there’s a balance to things, leading to an ending that I particularly enjoyed.

A sequel to the film was made to the film in 1967 called This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, which is mostly the same, though it does offer some great use of color midway. The first film is currently available to watch on YouTube.

Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (dir. by Phil Roman)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Remembering Halloween as a kid, there were two animated staples that marked the season. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is indeed the one to never miss, but there was also Garfield’s Halloween Adventure. I was a Garfield fan growing up, and even had my own miniature plush Garfield named Nermal (which matched my older brother’s larger version, named Garfield, of course). Directed by Phil Roman and written by Garfield’s creator Jim Davis, it was a 30 minute special originally released under the name Garfield in Disguise, based off the comic version with the same title. I remember the skull and crossbones on Garfield’s pirate hat taking on different expressions in each frame – when Garfield was scared, it was too. I have to see if there’s any way to track down the original book. It was the one I always tried to catch, since it also included spooky pirates (much like John Carpenter’s The Fog). The Halloween Special can be found on NBC/Universal/Comcast’s Peacock streaming service, along with the Garfield & Friends channel on YouTube at the time of this writing.

We open on Halloween morning, with Garfield being lazy as usual. When he’s awakened by Binky the Clown’s morning broadcast, it’s business as usual – turn it off and go to sleep. Catching the word “candy” reminds him of the reason Halloween is so special. Garfield comes up with a plan to go trick or treating and bring home as much candy as he can. The idea is improved upon when Odie, the house’s ever faithful canine companion, is brought into the mix. Double the candy, all for Garfield.

Their first job is to find some costumes, and thankfully, everything they need is in the attic. Jon Arbuckle, the pets’ designated Human, kept boxes of clothes. Garfield and Odie manage to come up with OrangeBeard the Pirate and his first mate, Odie the Stupid.

The two begin to have their Trick or Treat, with some spooky (and musical) moments throughout, until Garfield has the idea to across the river for more candy treasure. Like true pirates, they find a boat and sail off until they find an old house. Inside, a old man tells of them of an ancient treasure that was buried on the island and a group of pirates who would return in 100 years on Halloween Night to reclaim it. Shortly after the old man finishes his tale, he disappears, stealing Garfield & Odie’s boat and leaving them to deal with the pirate ghosts.

One element missing from the show (but kept in the book) had the pair actually finding the treasure and stealing part of it in the form of a ring. In the animated piece, Garfield & Odie are chased by the pirates, and swim for their lives. Thankfully, they make it ashore to their side of town, discovering their stolen boat and the candy bags still on board. They finally arrive home and as thanks for saving his life, Garfield awards Odie with one of the candy bags. In the book, the pirates follow Garfield back home, where he gives them the ring. Either way, all is well, and it’s a Happy Halloween for all.

Again, the show is a fun watch for anyone of any age.