Category Archives: Horrorthon

Horror Film Review: Hounded (dir by Tommy Boulding)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this British film from 2022, Leon (Nobuse Junior) is the head of a crew of thieves.  Yes, he spends his time breaking into people’s houses and stealing their stuff but the film insists that he’s not that bad.  He’s just trying to raise the money to send his younger brother, Chaz (Malachi Pullar-Latchman) to a university.  Working with the two brothers are the perpetually angry Vix (Hannah Traylen) and the perpetually religious Todd (Ross Coles).  To be honest, none of the really seem like they should be hanging out together but I guess crime makes for unexpected partnerships.  Still, you really do have to wonder in what world would Vix and Todd even say “hi” to one another, let alone work together as a part of a burglary crew?

An antique dealer (Larry Lamb) hires the crew to beak into the estate of the Katherine Redwick (Samantha Bond, best-known for playing Ms. Moneypenny in the Timothy Dalton Bond films) and steal a valuable ceremonial knife.  Unfortunately, it turns out that it’s all a set up and soon, the four thieves are being chased across the estate by Katherine and her family.  If the thieves can make it back to civilization, they’ll be safe.  If they can’t, then they’ll have to face the ceremonial knife.  Yes, they’re playing a most dangerous game, with Count Zaroff’s isolated island being replaced by a posh British country estate.  The film is called Hounded because, just as in a fox hunt, the Redwicks use dogs to chase down their prey.  The dogs are cute and fear not, no harm comes to them.  This is a 2022 film and everyone knows better than to harm a dog.  The humans on the other hand….

There’s a lot of class struggle commentary to be found in Hounded.  The thieves are all working class and angry about not being given the same opportunities as the rich.  The Redwicks are so posh and refined that they basically come across as Monty Python-style caricatures.  They may be hunting people for sport but they’re very polite and proper about it and Katharine spends a lot of time talking about how the Redwicks always hunt with honor.  Unfortunately, while Samantha Bond is entertaining as the main villain, the rest of the characters are not particularly memorable and some of the actors playing the thieves give performances are downright embarrassing.  As such, you never really care much about whether the thieves are going to escape or if the Renwicks are going to face justice.  All you care about is whether or not the dogs are going to be okay.  If your film is going to feature a lot of scare scenes featuring dogs, try not to cast cute Dalmatians.  Seriously, I found myself rooting for the dogs because I knew that, no matter what they did, they would be adorable while doing it.

For the most part, Hounded is a predictable film.  It’s short but it seems much longer.  The version of The Most Dangerous Game just isn’t dangerous enough.

Horror on the Lens: Mesa of Lost Women (dir by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Horror on the Lens is the infamous 1953 film, Mesa of Lost Women.  Off in the middle of the desert, Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) is conducting dangerous experiments that are resulting not only in giant spiders but also a master race of superwomen who Aranya is planning to use to conquer the world or something.

Mesa of Lost Women is a bit of a disjointed film.  It was originally filmed by a German director named Herbert Tevos, who claimed to be an associate of Erich Von Stroheim’s and a former collaborator of Marlene Dietrich’s.  However, despite his claims of being well-connected, no one was particularly impressed with Tevos’s first cut of the film so Ron Ormond was brought in to film additional scenes, the majority of them featuring Jackie Coogan as the insane Dr. Aranya.  Jackie Coogan was, at the time, still best-known for playing The Kid in the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name.  After Mesa, he would go on to play Uncle Fester on the original Addams Family.

Anyway, Mesa of Lost Women is one of those B-movies that simply has to be seen and heard to be believed.  (Lyle Talbot provides the narration, which is judgmental even by the standards of the 1950s.)  Enjoy Mesa of Lost Women!

Music Video of the Day: Preacher Man by Fields of Nephilim (1987, directed by Richard Stanley)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

A cemetery, an atomic wasteland, a chainsaw, a preacher with a bunch of mutant worshippers, it doesn’t get more 80s gothic than this.

Director Richard Stanley directed several gothic music videos but he’s best-known for his feature films, including Hardware and Dust Devil.  (In many ways, the video for Preacher Man feels like a dry run for both Hardware and Dust Devil.)  He was also the original director of the infamous The Island of Dr. Moreau until his conflicts with both the studios and actors Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer led to him being replaced by John Frankenheimer.

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 5.3 “Dark Wishes” (dir by John Liang)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a nurse (Tammy Lauren) decides that the best way to win the husband of her patient is to indulge in a little black magic.  Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned.  And yes, The Hitchhiker definitely has something to say about it!

Seriously, I would so freak out if I ever saw The Hitchhiker commenting on anything that I’ve ever done in my life.  “Lisa Marie Bowman thought she could escape real-life horror by writing about fictional horror.  But sometimes, that which we think is fiction, turns out to be real….”  AGCK!

This episode originally aired on July 1st, 1989.

October Hacks: Blood Theatre (dir by Rick Sloane)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have watched my share of not-good films but, as I sit here typing this, it’s hard for me to think of anything quite as mind-numbingly bad as 1984’s Blood Theatre.

Blood Theatre is a horror film without scares and a comedy without laughs.  It starts at some point in the past, when a lovelorn movie theater owner (played, as a young man, by David Milbern) has a nervous breakdown upon discovering that the ticket girl doesn’t love him.  So, he stabs her to death and then sets the theater on fire, killing the majority of the patrons inside.  Years later, Mr. Murdock (Rob-Roy Fletcher) decides to increase his chain of Starlite Theaters by purchasing the old theater.  He sends three of his employees over to get the place in shape.  What he doesn’t stop to consider is that the theater owner (now played, as an old man, by Jonathan Blakely) is still haunting the old theater and killing anyone who shows up.  Is the owner a ghost or a human killer?  The film never quite makes up its mind, as sometimes he appears to have control of electricity and time and space and other times, he’s just an old geezer with a knife.

But the motives of the killer really aren’t that important because, oddly enough, he’s not really in the much of the film.  Instead, the majority of the film is a broad comedy about the people working at the theater, none of whom are particularly funny or even likable.  Selena (Joanna Foxx) gets mad when someone fails to pay for their popcorn so, for some reason, she follows them into theater and rips of her bra in front of them.  I’m not really sure how that is supposed to get back at them for not paying for their popcorn but it does lead to a riot in the theater as everyone demands that she sit down so that they can enjoy the movie.  Amazingly, this somehow does not lead to Selena getting fired but instead, she and her friend Darcy (Stephanie Dillard) are transferred to the new theater, much to the irritation of their co-worker, cheerleader Jennifer (Jenny Cunningham).  Jennifer, Selena, and Darcy are all supposed to be in high school but they also all appear to be in their 30s.

Mary Woronov is also in this film.  She’s totally wasted in the role of Murdock’s administrative assistant.  She spends the entire movie answering the phone in the office and rolling her eyes and then making sarcastic comments about the fact that Murdock has gone to a theater owner’s convention but he hasn’t returned yet because he’s been mugged.  For reasons that aren’t really clear, she hates Murdock and she hates everyone that she works with but then again, no one in this movie seems to like anyone else.  Everyone in this movie dislikes everyone else and, as a result, it’s not as if any of the people are particularly pleasant to hang out with.

This is one of those comedies where every joke is repeated ad nauseum, to the point where it becomes impossible to watch the film without wanting to throw something at the screen.  It would help, of course, if the jokes were funny but none of them are.  It would also help if there was a shred of charisma to be found in the cast but, with the exception of Mary Woronov, everyone delivers their lines stiffly and without personality.  Clocking in at 75 minutes but feeling much, much longer, Blood Theatre is one of the most incredibly dull films that I’ve ever seen.  This is the slasher film that answers the question, “Just how bad can these films get?”

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Sweet Kill (dir by Curtis Hanson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As the saying goes, everyone has to start somewhere and, for Curtis Hanson, that somewhere was with 1973’s Sweet Kill.

Curtis Hanson, of course, would go on to become one of Hollywood’s top genre directors, directing films like The River Wild, Bad Influence, Wonder Boys, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, 8 Mile, and the Oscar-nominated L.A. Confidential.  But, in the early 70s, he was just one of the many recent film school grads who approached Roger Corman for a job.

Having previously worked on the script for the Corman-produced Dunwich Horror, Hanson approached Roger and told him that he had an idea for a Psycho-inspired movie about a female serial killer.  Corman replied that he would help finance the film if Hanson made the killer into a man.  Hanson did so but Corman still ended up only putting up a third of the film’s budget as opposed to the two/thirds that he had originally offered.  Hanson ended up convincing his parents to take out a mortgage on their home to help finance the movie.

Hanson shot the film in 1971.  Corman said that the film showed promise but that it needed more nudity and a better title if it was going to be successful.  Corman re-edited the film and additional nude scenes were shot and inserted into the film.  Despite this, Sweet Kill was a box office disappointment when it was originally released.  Corman re-titled the film Kisses For Eddie but it didn’t help at the box office.  Finally, the film was released under a third title, The Arousers.  Despite a lurid ad campaign built around “the arousers,” the film once again failed at the box office.  It wouldn’t be until years later, when Hanson started to achieve some mainstream success, that Sweet Kill would be rediscovered.

After all of the drama that went into post-production, it would be nice to be able to report that Sweet Kill was some sort of overlooked masterpiece but, to be honest, it’s pretty bad.  The film stars Tab Hunter as Eddie Collins.  When Eddie was a kid, he used to hide in the closet and watch as his mother lounged around her bedroom in lingerie.  Now that Eddie is a grown-up and working as a high school gym coach, he is still so haunted by his mother that he’s impotent.  As a result, Eddie spends his time breaking into apartments, stealing underwear, and having a prostitute dress up like his mother so that he can undress her while sobbing.  After a chance meeting with a hippie girl leads to Eddie once again failing to get it up, he shoves the girl hard enough to kill her.  The film implies that this act of violence leads to Eddie getting aroused for the first time and soon, Eddie is killing people and …. well, that’s pretty much the whole movie.  There’s not really a plot, beyond Eddie looking confused and trying to keep his sympathetic neighbor from finding out that he’s a serial killer.

Sweet Kill has gotten some attention because of the casting of former teen idol Tab Hunter in the role of psycho Eddie.  Tab Hunter has the right blonde look for Eddie, who is basically a homicidal beach bum, but otherwise, Hunter’s performance is fairly dull.  Watching the film, it’s obvious that he wasn’t particularly comfortable with the role of Eddie and, as such, he sleepwalks through the performance.  (Ironically, Eddie was based on Norman Bates, who was played by Hunter’s former partner, Anthony Perkins.)  There are a few creepy moments where Hunter stares off into the distance with a blank look on his face but otherwise, this isn’t a particularly memorable performance nor is Sweet Kill a particularly interesting film.

That said, Curtis Hanson went on to have quite a career so, on that level, Sweet Kill‘s bland badness is inspiring.  If the director of Sweet Kill could still go on to direct and produce some of the best films of the past 50 years, there’s hope for everyone looking to achieve their dreams.  Don’t let one failure get you down.

Death Metal (2023, directed by Michael Kuciak)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Abyssinister is a death metal band that has seen better days.  Lead singer Ivan (Nico Zahniser) is a perfectionist who has alienated most of the members of the group with his abrasive personality.  Their records aren’t selling.  Their European tour was a disaster.  Hardly anyone can pronounce the band’s name and those who can think that Abyssinister broke up.  And the band is on the verge of breaking up for real until Ivan announces that he’s hired the famed Norwegian producer, Fleming (Ray Goodwin), to produce their next album.

Agreeing to give stardom one last shot, Abyssinister travels out to Fleming’s isolated farm and recording studio.  After they arrive, Ivan announces that he has a copy of a supposedly cursed concerto that he wants the band to record.  The band records the piece and it sounds great but what neither the band nor their manager, Shadia (Shadia Martin), knows is that Ivan had made a deal with the Devil and now, there is a price to pay.

Full of inside jokes about the death metal scene and featuring some surprisingly realistic gore, Death Metal turned out to be much better than I was expecting it to be.  The first half is a humorous satire of every cliché about the Death Metal scene while the second half is full of effective jump scares and frightening scenes.  Every member of the band and their groupies get a chance to make an impression before the concerto is recorded and you actually do worry about them once everything starts to fall apart.  I especially liked the performance of Chris Richards, as the otherwise mild-mannered drummer who legally changed his name to Baphomet.

Death Metal is both an effective satire of the hysteria surrounding death metal music and an effective horror movie.

Horror Scenes I Love: Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ah, Robert Englund.

By most accounts, Robert Englund is one of the most affable men in Hollywood, someone who is so talkative and friendly that people are often stunned to remember that he’s best known for playing Freddy Krueger.  Indeed, in his pre-Nightmare on Elm Street films, Englund was usually cast as quirky and often shy characters.  It was rare to see him play a villain.

That all changed when he was played Freddy Krueger in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.  (Interestingly enough, director Wes Craven wrote the role with David Warner in mind.)  In the role of Freddy, Englund became a horror icon.  Freddy himself became such a quip machine in the later films that it’s easy to forget just how terrifying a figure he was in the first film.

In this scene, we see just how scary Robert Englund’s performance truly was in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Horror Novel Review: College Weekend by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1995 YA novel, College Weekend, opens with Tina in a superexcited mood.

She is going to be spending the weekend up at Patterson College, where she’ll finally be reunited with her boyfriend, Josh!  Josh is a year older than Tina and, while she’s finishing up her senior year at Shadyside High, Josh has been busy in college, collecting rocks and studying geology.  Tina is so excited to have the chance to spend the weekend with Josh that she’s even willing to agree to her parents’ demand that she take her boy-crazy cousin Holly with her.

Awwwwwwwwww!  Long distance relationships are so sweet!

Unfortunately, when Tina arrives on campus, she is met not by Josh but instead by Josh’s roommate, Chris.  Chris explains that Josh is up in the mountains on a Geology field trip.  He thought he would be home in time to pick up Tina but apparently, he had car trouble.  Chris volunteers to show Tina and Holly around the campus and Tina agrees, even though she can’t help but feel that there’s something that Chris isn’t telling her.  (This is one of those books that could only have been written in the days when everyone was dependent on landline phones.)  Chris, Tina, Holly, and some others go to a party that night and …. HOLLY DISAPPEARS!

Tina is definitely concerned but Chris tells her not to worry about it.  In fact, having heard that Tina is an aspiring model, Chris explains that he’s related to a famous photographer and that he has his own studio.  In fact, Chris is willing to take some professional-quality pictures of Tina.  He even has some clothes for her to wear, clothes that belonged to a former girlfriend who just happened to look a lot like Tina …. yikes!

You can probably guess where all of this is leading.  Let’s just say that this turns out to be one truly traumatic college weekend and I have a feeling that Tina will probably want to apply to a different university.  That said, this book does a really good job of capturing just exciting visiting a college campus can seem when you’re still in high school and you’re plotting out your future.  My sisters and I visited a lot of campuses, both during their senior years and mine.  I always enjoyed getting to see all of the different campuses and getting to imagine what it would be like to live on each one.  Of course, I eventually ended up at a school that had a boring campus but a fun student body.

In the end, College Weekend is a fast-paced and entertaining trip to the campus of your nightmares.