Today’s Horror on the Len is 1955’s Dementia, an experimental horror film without dialogue. The film follows a young woman (Adrienne Barrett) over the course of one surreal and nightmarish night on Los Angeles’s skid row.
Despite an opening endorsement from no less a Hollywood luminary as Preston Sturges, audiences in 1955 were not sure what to make of this dream-like film. However, it has since been rediscovered and reappreciated by audiences who appreciate the film’s surreal vision.
by Rudolph Zirm
I guess the rat needed some toys. This cover is about as nightmarish as you can get.
In the music video for Mirror Man, Philip Oakley plays a ghost who is haunting a theater. A few years after this video came out, Oakley mentioned in an interview that the song wasn’t actually about a ghost but was instead about Adam Ant.
Director Brian Duffy was best-known for his work as a fashion photographer.
Enjoy!
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing Monsters, which aired in syndication from 1988 to 1991. The entire show is streaming on Youtube.
This week, on Monsters, a creepy robot gets a bit too possessive of its operator. How monstrous is this robot? Read on and find out!
Episode 1.2 “Holly’s House”
(Dir by Theodore Gershuny, originally aired on October 29th, 1988)
This week’s monster is Holly.
Holly is a robot. (Sitting inside the Holly costume was actor Michael J. Anderson, who is best known for playing the backwards-talking Man From Another World on Twin Peaks and The Man Who Secretly Controlled Hollywood in Mulholland Drive.) Holly is the star of an incredibly corny and kind of annoying children’s show called Holly’s House. Every day, Holly deals with her friends, Early Bird and Mike the Mailman.
Mike the Mailman is actually an actor named Lenny (Perry Lang). Lenny is the sometime boyfriend of Katherine (Marilyn Jones), the actress who not only provides the voice of Holly but also controls the robots movements during filming. Katherine has been the star of Holly’s House for four years but she has just discovered that she is pregnant. Katherine wants to quit the show, marry Lenny, and raise her child. Holly, however, has other ideas….
This episode was basically a variation on the old idea of the ventriloquist being taken over by their dummy. Is Holly the one who is being rude to Lenny and deliberately ruining the show or is it Katherine acting through Holly? And when Holly snaps and starts attacking people, is Holly the one doing it or is it Katherine acting out through Holly? Unfortunately, regardless of whether Holly is acting on her own or not, Katherine is still the one destined to take the blame for all of her anti-social behavior.
Holly was indeed creepy but this episode was still a bit of a let down. I think the main problem was that there was no way that Holly’s House would have been a success. I understand that the show’s portrayal of Holly’s House was probably meant to be a commentary on how vapid most children’s shows were but, even at their most vapid, most children’s shows are still somewhat cute. Holly’s House only has three cast members — an ugly bird, a creepy robot, and an overly cheerful mailman. There’s not a kid around that would watch that. Holly obviously wasn’t happy about Lenny encouraging Katherine to quit the show but seriously, the show was probably on its last legs as it was.
One final note: This episode was directed by Theodore Gershuny, who was the ex-husband of cult film star Mary Woronov and who also directed Silent Night Bloody Night and wrote the excellent book, Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture. While his direction of this episode didn’t really work for me, I do recommend his Christmas film and the book.
On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, Robert Carradine plays a corrupt diplomat in France whose life falls apart when all of his dark secrets are revealed. This is another Hitchhiker episode in which The Hitchhiker takes an obvious glee in revealing the hypocrisy of someone who holds himself up as being moral and perfect. Keep an eye out for Lucio Fulci’s favorite actress, Catriona MacColl, in the role of Carradine’s long-suffering wife!
This episode originally aired on July 7th, 1989.
Things is a low-budget, independently-made horror film from 1989.
Things tells the story of Don (Barry J. Gillis) and Fred (Bruce Roach), two gentlemen with mullets who decide to drop by the house of Don’s brother, Doug (Doug Bunston). When they arrives at the house, they’re surprised to find that Doug is nowhere to be seen.
“Doug, are you here?” Don asks, “Doug, are you alive?”
Don and Fred decide to raid the refrigerator in search of beer. Inside the refrigerator, they find a book by Aleister Crowley and a tape recorder. They decide to listen to the tape, which was a huge mistake because, when you’re starring in a crappy horror film, the last thing you want to do is remind the viewer of a different, better horror film. As they played the tape, I thought to myself, “Don’t mention Evil Dead, don’t mention Evil Dead….”
“Hey,” Don said, “this is like that movie where those weird things happened….”
Anyway, Doug finally makes an appearance and orders them to stop making so much noise. His wife is trying to sleep. She’s been exhausted because she and Doug have been working with the mad Doctor Lucas (Jan W. Pachul) in an attempt to conceive a child. Unfortunately, Lucas’s experiments have led to Susan giving birth to several insect-like monsters, which promptly attempt to eat Doug, Don, and Fred.
Things is such a Canadian film that I actually had to pause the movie after about ten minutes so that I could put on one of Jeff’s hockey jerseys and watch the film in proper style. Don and Fred are just two regular guys who want to show off their guts and drink some beer. Indeed, it’s debatable whether or not Don and Fred are as upset about the killer monsters as they are about the fact that Doug doesn’t have much beer left in the refrigerator. For his part, Don sports both a formidable mullet and truck driver mustache. He looks like he can’t wait to head back to Toronto as soon as the problem with all of the killer monsters are taken care of.
Things has a reputation for being one of the worst horror films ever made and …. well, it’s certainly not a good film. The film takes a few stabs at Robocop-style social commentary by casting porn star Amber Lynn as a news reader who appears at random moments and announces that there’s been a power failure in New York and that George Romero is heading to the Supreme Court in his attempt to establish his ownership of Night of the Living Dead. We’re also promised a story about the presidency of George H.W. Bush and the growing possibility of nuclear war. Unfortunately, these scenes don’t add much to the film but they do provide a diversion from listening to Don and Fred attempt to have an articulate conversation. Even if one can accept the bad acting (and sometimes, when it comes to indie horror films, you have to be ready to accept a few awkwardly delivered lines), the film itself is so poorly lit that it’s often difficult to tell what’s actually happening on screen. Perhaps Things’s biggest problem is that, unless you really enjoy listening to two grown men argue about whether or not there’s any beer left, Things is just a boring movie. It’s developed a cult reputation, largely due to being riffed on by the Rifftraxx crew, but I would be shocked to find anyone who has actually watched the film more than once. Things is not The Room. It’s not even Birdemic.
That said, the film did end with the suggestion that the whole thing might have just been a dream and I appreciated that. It was a solution that made about as much sense as anything else in the film.
In the Old West, four outlaws are trying to keep one step ahead of the posse when they comes across an isolated cabin sitting the middle of nowhere. The oldest of the outlaws say that they should stay away from the cabin because it is too far away from civilization and whoever lives there is trying to hide something. He is outvoted by the other outlaws, who are hungry and hoping the cabin will have some food.
It turns out that cabin belongs to a bearded man who claims to be a pilgrim of some sort. He lives with his mute wife. He welcomes the men and gives them food. Two of the outlaws repay him by murdering him and then raping his wife. They decide to take the wife with them as they make their way to Mexico. The wife silently follows but the men soon start to die, one-by-one. Are the men unlucky or is the woman they kidnapped somehow causing it all to happen? Given the film’s title, it’s not hard to guess.
The Devil’s Mistress is a mico-budget, independently-produced mix of the western and horror genres. The film looks cheap and the actors playing the outlaws are all pretty inexpressive but Joan Stapleton’s otherworldly beauty is perfect for the role of the abducted woman who turns out to be far more clever and dangerous than the outlaws assumed. With a good deal of philosophical dialogue about life, death, and guilt, the film has a lot more on its mind than the average indie western, with each outlaw forced to confront their own mortality as they are punished for their sins.
For today’s Horror Scene That I Love, let’s take a minute or two to show some respect to one of the world’s greatest (and longest-lived) film stars, Godzilla! Whether he’s attacking humanity as the literal representation of atomic age anxiety or if he’s saving Earth from a bunch of aliens, Godzilla has always been a superstar.
In this scene from 1973’s Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla shows just how much of a star he is by taking a stand against bullying and saving his friend, Jet Jaguar. In this scene, Godzilla shows that he was an anti-bullying activist even before it was cool. Megalon and his friend thought they could just taunt poor old Jet Jaguar. Not as long as Godzilla’s around!
2012’s House on the Hill is loosely based on the true story of Leonard Lake and Charles Ng, two of the worst serial killers to ever haunt California.
Two former Marines who met after Ng placed an advertisement in a survivalist magazine, Lake and Ng lived together on an isolated tract of land. Underneath their cabin, they constructed a dungeon. Over the next year, they murdered a countless number of people in their dungeon and buried their remains. Lake and Ng killed anyone they came across, including several people who had previously been friends of Lake’s. (Ng apparently didn’t have any friends to kill.) Though they were officially accused of committing eleven murders, it’s felt that the number was probably much higher. The two of them videotaped their crimes. Ng kept a detailed and graphic journal in which he gloated about all of the people who he had killed. Lake made videos in which he explained his philosophy and expounded on why he felt that he deserved a slave. Eventually, Lake committed suicide after he was arrested on a shop lifting charge. Ng fled to Canada but was eventually sent back to the United States. He currently sits on California’s inactive death row.
In the film, Sonia (Naidra Dawn Thompson) is visited at her home by Paul (Kevin McCloskey), a detective. Paul explains that he knows that Sonia was the only survivor of Ng and Lake’s rampage. She survived by being the slave that Leonard Lake desired, filming Ng and Lake’s crimes. Paul wants to know if Sonia remembers one of Lake and Ng’s victims, a woman named Karianna (Shannon Leade). Paul says that his clients want to know the circumstances that led to Karianna’s death. After some hesitation, Sonia tells Paul about her experiences as Lake and Ng’s prisoner. The film is a mix of black-and-white scenes involving Paul and Sonia and color flashbacks to the crimes of Lake (Stephen A.F. Day) and Ng (Sam Leung). While Sonia and Karianna are both fictional, the audience is shown footage of the real Leonard Lake, talking about his “philosophy” of life.
At first, it feels a bit tasteless to include the actual footage of the real Leonard Lake but, by the end of the film, I was glad that it had been included because, physically, the real-life Leonard Lake and Charles Ng were both considerably less attractive than the actors who played them in the film. This is especially true of Charles Ng. The real life Ng was pudgy and nerdy. Sam Leung, on the other hand, is undeniably handsome and muscular. Meanwhile, Stephen A.F. Day has the looks and manner of a friendly social worker so it was good to have actual footage of Lake so that the audience could see that, in real life, Leonard Lake was an overweight, loser incel whose spoke like someone who was desperately trying to convince the listener that he was smarter than he actually was. (Leonard Lake was the type to stumble over any word that had more than one syllable.) Probably the best thing that a serial killer film can do is remind the audience that most killers are not erudite and clever. They’re not Hannibal Lecter. Instead, they’re losers who are striking out at a world in which they have no hope of succeeding.
As for the film itself, it does capture the horror of being trapped but it’s hard not to feel that it made a mistake by focusing on the fictional Sonia and her conversation with Paul. Indeed, by having the film narrated by a fictional character who managed to escape, the film does a disservice to to the real victims who weren’t so lucky. With all of the flashbacks and flashforwards, the narrative itself feels too jumbled to really tell us anything about how or why Lake and Ng not only committed their crimes but how they managed to get away with it for over a year. In the end, the scariest thing about Lake and Ng is that, if not for that one shoplifting incident, their reign of terror could have continued uninterrupted for even longer than it did.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!
Today’s director is one of the most influential figures in American film history, the one and only Roger Corman!
4 Shots From 4 Roger Corman Films
Not of this Earth (1957, dir by Roger Corman, DP: John Mescall)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Archie R. Dalzell)
X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)
The Masque of Red Death (1964, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Nicolas Roeg)
Through the Shattered Lens 