Category Archives: Horrorthon

Horror Film Review: The Return of Swamp Thing (dir by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What fresh Hell is this?

The 1989 film Return of Swamp Thing is one of the many bayou-set films that I’ve watched recently.  On most streaming sites, it is listed as being a “horror film” and there’s a few horror elements to be found in the film.  There’s mutants and hybrids and evil moonshiners.  There’s a lot jokes that are so corny that you might get scared just from hearing them.  I can accept the idea that this film is technically a part of the horror genre but the film is more of a comedy than anything else.  That’s not a complaint on my part, by the way.  I knew what I was getting into as soon as I saw that it was directed by Jim Wynorski.  Jim Wynorski has been poking fun at himself and his films for longer than I’ve been alive.

Return of Swamp Thing is a sequel to Wes Craven’s 1982 Swamp Thing, a film that I haven’t seen but which I’ve been assured was considerably more serious than the sequel.  (That’s the difference between Craven and Wynorski.)  The film features Louis Jourdan as Dr. Arcane, a mad scientist who lives in a mansion in Louisiana.  Dr. Arcane is obsessed with finding the secret to immortality, which he thinks lies in splicing together different strands of DNA.  As a result of Arcane’s experiments, the swamp is now crawling with bizarre human/animal hybrids.  The bayou is no longer a safe place but, fortunately, the bayou has a protector!  Swamp Thing (Dick Durock) is a human-plant hybrid who wanders around the swamp and beats up evil doers.  Swamp Thing is described as being a humanoid vegetable but he really just looks like a stuntman wearing a green costume.

Abby Arcane (Heather Locklear) is Dr. Arcane’s stepdaughter.  She thinks that Arcane had something to do with her mother’s death and, of course, he did.  Abby heads down to the swamp to confront Arcane but, unfortunately, it turns out that she’s in over her head when it comes to surviving in the bayou.  When she’s not being chased by the weird mutant creatures, she’s having to deal with toothless moonshiners.  Do you know what the worst bayou is?  Bayouself!  (Did I already tell that joke this month?)  Fortunately, Abby is not alone for long because Swamp Thing emerges from the water and protects her.  Abby quickly falls in love with Swamp Thing.

“I’m a plant,” Swamp Thing tells her.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she replies, which I guess means she’s going to cannibalize Swamp Thing after he’s no longer any use to her.  Yikes!  Look out, Swamp Thing!

Dr. Arcane wants to use Abby’s DNA for his experiments.  Swamp Thing decides to protect Abby and the two dumbass kids who keep following him around.  It’s time for a battle in the bayou!

Obviously, Wynorski does not approach this material seriously or with a hint of subtlety and that’s definitely the right approach to take.  The sight of Louis Jourdan in the Louisiana bayous is so ludicrous that you have no choice but to laugh at it.  That said, the film is never quite as funny as one might hope.  It’s easy to imagine it working as a 30-minute pilot for a Swamp Thing sitcom but, as an 90-minute film, it quickly runs out of gas.  Louis Jourdan looks bored but Dick Durock is amusingly earnest as Swamp Thing.  Heather Locklear shows a flair for comedy but the box office failure of The Return of Swamp Thing pretty much ended her film career before it began.

After this, I think I’m going to avoid the swamp for a while.

Horror Film Review: The Tingler (dir by William Castle)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1959 film, The Tingler, opens with a middle-aged man standing on a stage and speaking directly to the audience.

“I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say ‘certain members’ because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you’ve got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this—a scream at the right time may save your life.”

When this film was first released in 1959, William Castle wasn’t lying in this warning.  Certain audience members would feel the tingling sensation of fear because some theaters agreed to wire certain seats with buzzers that, when activated, would give the viewer a tingling sensation.  Castle also arranged for certain theaters to fake an attack by the film’s monster, complete with the houselights coming up, a woman screaming and pretending to faint, and the voice of Vincent Price encouraging everyone in the audience to scream because “the Tingler is loose in the theater!”

Uhmm …. that sounds like fun.  When it comes to William Castle’s gimmicks, there’s a lot of documentation concerning what Castle arranged but there’s not as much documentation about how people reacted to being buzzed while watching a movie.  Hopefully, everyone screamed, played along, and had fun.  Personally, I probably would have left the theater during the chaos and snuck into a showing of Anatomy of a Murder.

As for the film, it stars the great Vincent Price as Warren Chapin, a pathologist who is investigating the source of fear.  As he explains to his colleague, Dave Morris (Dwayne Hickman), he believes that the tingling that people feel at the base of their spine is actually a living creature that is formed by fear.  The only way to kill the creature is to scream.  If you don’t scream, the creature will eventually snap your spine.  Well, I guess you better scream then.

Anyway, Dr. Chapin confronts his wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) over the fact that she’s cheating on him.  He pulls a gun on her and, as she begs for his life, he fires.  She collapses but fear not!  The gun was loaded with blanks and Dr. Chapin just wanted to scare her so that he could x-ray her back and see if the Tingler was forming on her spine.  Dr. Chapin is overjoyed when the Tingler shows up on x-rays but now, he needs to bring a Tingler into the real world….

(I’m not sure why you would want a Tingler but whatever….)

One of Chapin’s friends is Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge) who owns a movie theater with his wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn).  Martha is deaf and mute and therefore cannot scream.  When Ollie deliberately frightens her, the Tingler appears on her spine and snaps it.  At the subsequent autopsy, Chapin is able to remove the Tingler from Martha’s spine.  The Tingler, which is a giant centipede that likes to crawl up people’s legs, gets loose and needless to say, all tingling heck breaks out.

Wow, this is a silly film!  There’s is absolutely nothing frightening about a plastic centipede being pulled across the screen by wires.  But, at the same time, it’s a Vincent Price film and Vincent knew exactly how to play his mad-but-not-evil scientist, delivering his lines with the perfect combination of snark and melodrama.  This film came out the same year as another Castle/Price collaboration, The House on Haunted Hill.  It’s nowhere near as good as The House on Haunted Hill but The Tingler is still a lot of fun in its silly way.  It won’t make you scream from fright but you might laugh really loudly.

Horror On The Lens: Tales From The Crypt (dir by Freddie Francis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Horror on the Lens, we have 1972’s Tales From The Crypt, a British anthology film which features The Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) informing five strangers of how they will die.  This classic, all-star film was based on stories that originally appeared in the Tales From The Crypt comic book.

In general, I’m not a huge fan of anthology films but Tales From The Crypt is an exception to that role.  It’s an entertaining collection of macabre stories and the cast is to die for …. maybe literally!

This Amicus-produced movie is probably best remembered for the segment in which Joan Collins is menaced by an evil Santa but the whole thing is good.

Horror On TV: The Hitchhiker 6.2 “Tough Guys Don’t Whine” (dir by Jorge Montesi)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s give some credit to whoever came up with the title of tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker!

In this episode, Alan Thicke plays a skeevy movie director who likes to pretend to be a tough guy.  When he hooks up with the girlfriend of a genuine tough guy, the director discovers that he’s not quite as streetwiswe as he thought he was.  The Hitchhiker doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for anyone involved.

This episode originally aired on September 28th, 1990.

October Hacks: Sleepaway Camp (dir by Robert Hiltzik)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

So much attention has been devoted to dissecting and discussing the ending of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, that I think people tend to overlook the bigger issue.  This film is the biggest argument against summer camp over filmed.

Seriously, don’t send your kids to camp!  Don’t get a job working at a camp!  Don’t live anywhere near a camp!  If someone tries to open a camp near your home, gather together a posse and run them out of town!  If you discover an abandoned camp within one hundred miles of your home, set the place on fire!  Camps are bad news.  They attract bullies and tragedy and murder.  If there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching the horror movies of the early 80s, it’s that summer camps mean trouble.

Consider the camp in Sleepaway Camp.  Even before the murders start, the place comes across as being a prison camp.  Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of summer camps in a lot of slasher films and it’s hard to think of any of them that look as shabby and dirty as the camp in Sleepaway Camp.  None of the campers appear to be happy to be there.  No one is allowed to leave.  The campers are divided into two groups, the bullies who rule the place like mini-tyrants and the poor kids who spend the entire summer being beaten up and taunted.  Not even the counselors are worth much.  Counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi) is best friends with the camp’s main mean girl, Judy (Karen Fields).  Meg is the type who tosses a camper in the lake, just because Judy tells her to.  Meanwhile, the owner of the camp is named Mel (Mike Kellin) and he’s just an old perv who doesn’t want to bothered with anyone’s problems.  What type of horrific world is this?

And then, let’s consider some of the murders at the camp.  The skeevy camp cook get scalded with boiling water.  (It’s debatable whether the cook actually dies or not.)  Kenny, one of the camp’s bullies, get drowned while playing a canoe-related prank.  Another bully is stung to death by bees.  That’s just three of the many deaths here and yet, the camp never closes.  It never occurs to the camp’s owner to send anyone home.  It never occurs to anyone that maybe they should send the campers to another camp.  None of the deaths lead to an increased police presence nor does it lead to any changes with the camp’s schedule.  None of the campers appear to be particularly upset by all the deaths.  It’s a disturbing world.

Everyone who dies at the camp earlier picked on Angela (Felissa Rose), an introvert who ends up getting targeted by Judy.  Angela’s cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), is very protective of Angela and, as a result, he becomes the number one suspect.  As the film’s ending reveals, the truth is something much different.  The film ends with a justifiably famous shot and it does stick with you as the end credits role.  It’s tempting to read a lot of meaning into the film’s ending but I imagine that’s giving the filmmakers a bit too much credit.  The film was made for 1983 audiences who were looking for a shock, not 2023 cultural critics.

Even before that ending, though, Sleepaway Camp is a bit more creepy than the average 80s slasher film.  The killer is relentless and ruthless and it’s disturbing that the victimized campers are played by performers who are close to the age of their victims as opposed to the usual 30 year-old who played teenagers in these type of films.  The scene with the curling iron is something that I can only watching through the fingers that I’m holding in front of my eyes.  It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it does definitely capture the feel of being at the worst summer camp imaginable (seriously, one can hear the flies buzzing and even smell the stale order of stopped-up plumbing) and it does stick with you after you watch it.  It’s nothing to lose your head over, it’s just too bad no one told that to the campers.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: I Drink Your Blood (dir by David E. Durston)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Put yourself in the shoes of the townspeople in 1971’s I Drink Your Blood.

Here you are.  You’re minding your own business.  Life isn’t great because of the economic downtown.  Your town is nearly deserted and is basically full of empty buildings.  In fact, it seems like there are currently more construction workers around then townspeople.  The workers are working on the dam.  Maybe a dam will help the area.  Maybe it won’t.

The sexist construction workers are kind of a pain but then, things get even worse when a bunch of hippies show up.  Led by the mysterious Horace Bones (played by dancer Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury), these are not your typical (if annoying) peace-and-love hippies.  These hippies have more in common with the Manson Family than they do with the commune folks from Easy Rider.  They are a remarkably diverse group of hippies.  Some of them are young.  Some of them are older.  Some of them really enjoy attacking other people.  Some of them are just along for the ride.  For his part, Horace is really into Satanism and human sacrifice and he encourages his followers to feel the same way.  Has anyone nice ever been named Horace Bones?

When the cultists assault a local girl named Sylvia (Arlene Farber), they are confronted in the abandoned building in which they are squatting by Sylvia’s grandfather, Doc Banner (Richard Bowler).  They proceed to beat up the kindly doctor and they force him to take LSD.  Sylvia’s younger brother, Pete (Riley Mills), get revenge by injecting the blood of a rabid dog into several pies and then selling them to Horace and his hippies.  Almost all of the hippies eat the pies and soon, they are foaming at the mouth and rampaging through the countryside, infected by and spreading rabies.  One of the hippie women ends up having sex with all of the construction workers, which leads to the rabies spreading even more.  Soon, it’s hippies vs hardhats as the fights happening across the real world are repeated in small town America.  Of course, there’s no police around to break up the fights and, thanks to the rabies, everyone is fighting to the death.  Heads are ripped off.  Electric knives are used to carve more than just food.  People are set on fire.  Blood is definitely drank.

Only one hippie didn’t eat the pies.  Andy (Tyde Kierney) was never a big fan of Horace’s Manson-like tendencies and he pretty much draws the line at human sacrifice.  Andy flees from Horace’s world and finds himself with Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred (Elizabeth Marner-Brooks), the owner of the local bakery.  The four of them struggle to survive in a world that has literally gone mad.

I Drink Your Blood was, not surprisingly, controversial when it was first released.  It was one of the few films to be given an X-rating for its violence as opposed to its sexual content.  It is definitely violent, though it’s really nowhere near as graphic as some of the R-rated horror films that have come out over the past few years.

I Drink Your Blood is a classic grindhouse film, one that takes a fairly ridiculous premise and works wonders with it.  The crazed hippies fighting the far more blue collar construction workers stand in for the fanatical soldiers in America’s cultural wars, with innocents like Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred caught in the middle with Andy.  Director David Durston mixes horror and satire with a deft hand, suggesting that the rabies is ultimately just allowing people to show their true selves.  I Drink Your Blood is an underground classic and thematically, it’s portrayal of a rabid world is just as relevant today as when it was first released.

Evil Obsession (1996, directed by Richard W. Munchkin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

11 models have been murdered in Los Angeles and Margo (Kimberly Stevens) fears that she could be next.  She’s been receiving threatening notes and feels as if someone is watching her and her boyfriend, Bill (Michael Phenicie).  She hires a private detective (Mark Derwin) to protect her but it might be too late because Homer (Corey Feldman), the man who has been sending her the notes, has already enrolled in the same acting class of Margo.  After Bill turns up dead, Homer is assigned to be Margo’s new scene partner.  Is Homer moving in for the kill or is someone else responsible for the murders?

This mix of erotic thriller and horror was one of those movies that used to show up on a late night Cinemax in the 90s, where it could be watched by teenagers who kept one eye on the screen and one eye looking out for their parents.  Corey Feldman starred in a lot of these films and in this one, he gives a twitchy and occasionally funny performance as the nerdy Homer.  Homer is the most obvious stalker imaginable and it’s hard to believe that Margo, who is so concerned about being stalked that she’s hired a private detective, would not look at Homer and immediately realize that he was the culprit.  Feldman overacts but he at least provides the film with the energy that is missing from the performances of Kimberly Stevens and Mark Derwin.  Even better is the performance of Brion James as the autocratic and pretentious acting teacher.  Watching him, I got the feeling that James probably could have based his performance on any number of Hollywood acting coaches.