October True Crime: Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Richard Speck was the worst of the worst.

A petty criminal-turned-drifter, Richard Speck fled Texas to avoid being sentenced to prison for his part in a grocery store robbery. He eventually ended up in Chicago, where he lived with his sister and her husband and found occasional work as a seaman. When he couldn’t get work on a boat, the alcoholic Speck supported himself by mugging and burglarizing. It’s not known when he committed his first murder, though it is suspected that it occurred back in Texas. It is known that, in July of 1966, Speck’s sister and brother-in-law finally got sick of dealing with him as a houseguest and Speck ended staying in a series of rooming houses and homeless shelters. On July 13th, the 24 year-old Speck mugged and raped at 53 year-old woman before then breaking into a townhouse that was occupied by nine student nurses. Over the course of the night, he raped and murdered eight of nurses. The only survivor hid underneath a bed until Speck left. She later told police that Speck spoke with a soft Southern accent, had an acne-scarred face, and a tattoo that read Born to Raise Hell.

It was the tattoo that led to his capture. Two days after the murders, with the city of Chicago in an uproar and the police launching a city-wide manhunt to catch the killer, Richard Speck attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrists. He was taken to Cook County Hospital, where Dr. LeRoy Smith saw Speck’s tattoo and called the police.

Though protesting his innocence, Speck was convicted of the murders and sentenced to die. He was spared the death sentence when the Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment. From prison, Speck eventually admitted that he had killed the nurses but he claimed that he was so drunk and high that he had no idea what he was doing. After Speck died of heart failure in 1991, a videotape would emerge of a cocky Speck telling his fellow prisoners that he knew exactly what he was doing and he never felt a bit of guilt. “Just wasn’t their night,” was Speck’s explanation for why the murders happened. Speck also said that if the public knew how much fun he was having in prison, they would have released him for sure. Richard Speck is the type of evil specter who seems to exist to specifically challenge those of us who are opposed to the death penalty. If anyone has ever deserved to be executed in the most painful way possible, it was Richard Speck.

The 2007 film Chicago Massacre stars Corin Nemec as Richard Speck and the film’s makeup department deserves a lot of credit for transforming the handsome and normally quite personable Corin Nemec into the horribly poc-marked Richard Speck. Sometimes, monsters truly do look like monsters and that was definitely the case of Speck. Nemec plays Speck as being a natural-born deviant, a soulless sociopath who has no control over his impulses and who never seems to understand why the world is so disgusted by his crimes. It’s a truly frightening performance.

The rest of the film is a flawed and heavily fictionalized account of Speck’s crimes, imagining that Speck was actually a casual acquaintance of one of the nurses that he killed and suggesting that she was the main reason why he broke into the townhouse to begin with. The history nerd of me cringed when a police chief (Tony Todd) announced that his lead detective (Andrew Divoff) only had two days to solve the murders because the Democratic Convention was coming up. (Speck committed the murders in 1966, two years before the Democrats came to Chicago for their ill-fated convention.) Todd’s police chief says that he’ll be forced to sweep the murders under the rug if they’re not solved quickly but I’m not really sure how that would happen, given the enormity of the crime and the panic that reportedly swept through Chicago as a result. As much as I hate to single out any one performer for criticism (because I usually assume that a bad performance has more to do with the director and the editor than the actor), Joanne Chew, cast in the role of the sole survivor of Speck’s rampage, delivers her dialogue so awkwardly that it sabotages what should have been some of the strongest moments of the film. (Then again, even the best actress would perhaps be challenged by a line like, “I will look the devil in the eye.”)

Filled with flashbacks to both the murder of the nurses and Speck’s life as Texas criminal, Chicago Massacre is an undeniably icky film but given that it’s about Richard Speck, it really should be. When it comes to a criminal like Richard Speck, it’s always tempting to try to look at his life for clues as how to prevent a future Richard Speck from committing a similar crime. But, with Speck, there’s little to be learned beyond the fact that he did what he did because he had no conscience or sense of guilt to mitigate his impulses. Speck had a terrible childhood but many people have had terrible childhoods without turning into mass murderers. Speck was mentally unwell but many people deal with their mental health without turning into mass murderers. In the end, he was a monster. Thankfully, he was also enough of a dumbass to get a tattoo that made it impossible for him to hide from his crimes.

Horror Film Review: Mothra vs. Godzilla (dir by Ishiro Honda)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1964 film, Mothra vs. Godzilla, opens with a beach in Japan getting hit by a typhoon.

It’s certainly not the worst disaster that has ever hit Japan, though a government bureaucrat does show up to take credit for the recovery effort. Instead of covering his speech, a reporter and a photographer stumble across a mysterious egg that has washed up on the beach. The egg is beautiful and a local entertainment company, Happy Enterprises, has decided that they are going to build an entire amusement park and center it around the egg.

Then, the Shobijin, two twin fairies, show up and inform everyone that the egg belongs to Mothra, a giant moth who has actually been a pretty good friend to humanity in the past. They explain that the egg was washed away from Mothra’s home on Infant Island. Mothra really needs the egg back because the current Mothra is coming to the end of her lifespan and the egg contains the larvae who will become the newest version of Mothra. Unfortunately, the Happy Enterprisises businessmen say that they’re going to keep the egg and that they really don’t care what Mothra wants. Mothra flies over to Japan and takes the faeries back to Infant Island. As they leave, the faeries say, “Goodbye, sorry you were so selfish!”

Unfortunately, shortly after Mothra and the faeries leave, Godzilla suddenly appears on the beach and starts destroying buildings and people with his radioactive breath. Realizing that the only way to stop one monster is to bring in another monster, the humans head out to Infant Island and ask Mothra to help them. When they arrives at Infant Island, they discover that the island itself has been turned into a wasteland by frequent nuclear testing. The natives tells their visitors that they have no desire to allow Mothra to help them out with Godzilla. The faeries say, “Tough.” However, in the end, it’s Mothra’s decision whether or not to save humanity and Mothra, being the kindest of all the monsters, takes off to stop Godzilla.

It’s not really October without watching at least Godzilla film and Mothra vs. Godzilla is a good example of an old school Godzilla film, one that was released by Toho before Godzilla was reimagined as being a friend of humanity. Indeed, a major message of Mothra vs. Godzilla seems to be that humanity doesn’t really deserve any friends. It takes some nerve to refuse to allow Mothra to have her egg and to then expect Mothra to battle Godzilla for you. That Mothra is willing to help is a reminder that, of all the big Japanese monsters, Mothra was the most friendly and willing to give humanity a second chance. Godzilla, meanwhile, is just in a permanent bad mood. In this film, he still represents the trauma of a nation that, less than 20 years previously, had been hit by two atomic bombs. Godzilla fully represents the destructive power of the atomic age while Mothra, who is continually sacrificing her life so that she can be reborn, represents the hope for some sort of renewal. In the end, both monsters fight their battle for the benefit of humanity and it’s exciting and fun to watch. For a giant moth, Mothra is an agile combatant. That said, most viewers will probably be Team Godzilla because he’s reminding humanity of the randomness of fate. Myself, I was just happy with the knowledge that, regardless of who won the fight, they would both be back for future films.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special William Castle Edition

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 lets 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 the one and only William Castle, who was as well-known for the gimmicks he used to promote his films as for the films themselves. It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 William Castle Films

The Tingler (1959, dir by William Castle, DP: Wilfred M. Cline)

House on Haunted Hill (1959, dir by William Castle, DP: Carl E. Guthrie)

13 Ghosts (1960, dir by William Castle, DP: Joseph F. Biroc)

Strait-Jacket (1964, dir by William Castle, DP: Arthur E. Arling)

The Three Covers of Ace Mystery Magazine

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Dazzling Erin

At the height of the Great Depression, many people escaped from the harsh realities of their economic situation through pulp magazines that highlighted the weird and lurid mysteries. Published by Periodical House, Ace Mystery Magazine was one such pulp magazine that was published in 1936. Though the magazine featured stories by popular writers, it never found its place in the crowded pulp marketplace and it was canceled after three issues. Today, the magazine is remembered for its creepy covers, which were done by three of the best artists of the pulp era. Here are the three covers of Ace Mystery Magazine.

May, 1936. Cover by Howard Sherman

July, 1936. Cover by David Berger

September, 1936. Cover by Rafael DeSoto

Horror Film Review: Night Feeder (dir by Jim Whiteaker)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This obscure 1988 film takes place in San Francisco.

Specifically, it takes place in the underground San Francisco art scene, a world where zoned out hipsters gather in a small clubs and listen to bands like Disease. Disease (played by a real-life San Francisco band that was called The Nuns) sings songs that encourage the listeners to slit their wrists. The police don’t care much for Disease and even several of the locals think that Disease is bad news. Rumor has it that three Disease groupies died under mysterious circumstances.

While Disease sings, their fans get hooked on the drug DZS, which is also pronounced Disease. (Yes, it gets a little bit hard to keep track of.) DZS was developed to battle schizophrenia but it can also be used as a party drug and cause overdoses.

Speaking of death, there’s people dying all over San Francisco and Inspector Bernardo (Jonathan Zeichner) thinks that it’s because Disease isn’t just a band but also a brain-stealing cult. Bodies are being found without huge sections of their brain. Apparently, the murderer gouges out its victim’s eye and then sucks the brain out through the eye socket. It does this while the victim is still alive. Ouch!

Also investigating the murders is a reporter named Jean (Kate Alexander). Jean has just recently left her husband so that she can be a member of the underground art scene. She’s currently living with the lead singer of Disease, though he insists that their relationship is totally casual and that there’s no commitment involved. Needless to say, Jean is not happy when Inspector Alonzo suggests that the band might be behind the murders. (For one thing, traces of DZS are found on the majority of the victims.) Jean’s investigation leads her to discover that not only is the city crawling with potential murderers but there’s also a mutant baby to deal with….

That’s right, a mutant baby.

Anyway, Night Feeder was shot on video and, from what I’ve been able to gather online, it was specifically sold in San Francisco video stores. It was a regional production, meaning that the cast was populated with local actors and the production crew was largely local as well. It was shot on location at clubs around the city, making the film into a bit of a time capsule if nothing else. Oddly enough, the movie somehow found its way to Poland, where it became something a cult hit among Polish horror fans. That’s just one of the many oddities of the film distribution. You never know where your low-budget, shot-on-video movie might become a hit.

But, you may be asking — is the movie itself any good? Eh …. it’s okay. I mean, it’s a low-budget film that was shot on video and, even more importantly, it looks like it was shot on video. It has the aesthetic quality of a student film. The majority of the actors deliver their lines stiffly, though I did appreciate the energetic performance of Kate Alexander. She did the best that one probably could with the material that she was given. That said, the special effects were done by a guy who was a part of the VFX crew for David Cronenberg’s The Fly and, even for a straight-to-video production, some of the imagery is memorably grotesque. So, if nothing else, the film has that going for it.

That said, I have a weakness for low-budget regional productions, especially ones that serve as a time capsule of a very particular time and place. Night Feeder definitely does that and, as such, it’s worth watching just for the chance to see how people once lived.

Horror Film Review: The Mummy’s Tomb (dir by Harold Young)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1942’s The Mummy’s Tomb picks up 30 years after the end of The Mummy’s Hand.

Archeologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) is now living a peaceful life in the small town of Mapleton, Massachusetts. As the film opens, he is telling his guests about the time that he and his friend, Babe Hanson (Wallace Ford), went to Egypt and discovered the tomb of an Egyptian princess. He tells them how Andoheb (George Zucco) tried to use the ancient mummy, Kharis, to protect the tomb. Steve assures everyone that Andoheb is now dead and Kharis is no longer a threat to anyone.

The film then travels to Egypt where we discover that Steve was not quite correct. Adoheb survived being shot at the end of The Mummy’s Hand. He’s now an old man, dying but still obsessed with getting revenge. He instructs his disciple, Mehemet Bey (Turhan Bey), to travel to America with Kharis (now played, under a bunch of bandages, by Lon Chaney, Jr.) and to get revenge on the remaining members of the Banning expedition.

Bey and Kharis travel to Massachusetts and soon, the entire town of Mapleton is gripped in fear as Kharis starts to murder people. Steve Banning is the first victim. Then Steve’s sister, Jane (Mary Gordon). Kharis even kills Babe Hanson, whose role in the previous film was largely comic relief. Seriously, not even Frankenstein’s Monster killed the comic relief. Kharis is a ruthless and unstoppable killer and, in a performance that is totally focused on his hulking physicality, Lon Chaney, Jr. makes for a frightening mummy. Kharis moves slowly, dragging one foot behind him. But when he does attack, he’s relentless. This movie reminded me of why the mummy has, to me, always been the scariest of the old Universal monsters.

Despite the fact that Kharis is leaving bandages and ancient mold all over the place, the authorities are not quite convinced that an ancient mummy has come to their small town. However, the townspeople have no doubt what’s happening and, since this is a Universal film, they are soon running around with torches and pitchforks. Meanwhile, Steve’s son, John (John Hubbard), tries to figure out how to destroy the mummy and how to protect his fiancée, Isobel (Elyse Knox). Bey has decided that he’s in love with Isobel and he orders Kharis to bring her to him. Even under all the bandages, Kharis’s facial expression still suggests that he knows this isn’t a good idea.

The Mummy’s Tomb suffers from the same problem that afflicted The Mummy’s Hand. It feels like it takes forever to actually get to the good stuff. This is only a 60-minute film and ten of those minutes is taken up with a flashback to The Mummy’s Hand. But no matter! Once Kharis arrives in America, the pace of the film picks up and it becomes an effective little horror film. Lon Chaney, Jr. is frightening Kharis. I wouldn’t want him following me down a dark alley!

Previous Universal Horror Reviews:

Horror on the Lens: Robot Monster (dir by Phil Tucker)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror film is a true classic of its kind, the 1953 science fiction epic Robot Monster.

Now, I should admit that this is not the first time that I’ve shared Robot Monster in October. I share it every year and, every year, YouTube seems to pull the video down in November. That sucks because Robot Monster is one of those weird films that everyone should see. So, I’m going to share it again. And, hopefully, YouTube will let the video stay up for a while.

As for what Robot Monster is about…

What happens with the Earth is attacked by aliens? Well, first off, dinosaurs come back to life. All of humanity is killed, except for one annoying family. Finally, the fearsome Ro-Man is sent down to the planet to make sure that it’s ready for colonization. (Or something like that. To be honest, Ro-Man’s exact goal remains a bit vague.)

Why is Ro-Man so fearsome? Well, he lives in a cave for one thing. He also owns a bubble machine. And finally, perhaps most horrifically, he’s a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet. However, Ro-Man is not just a one-dimensional bad guy. No, he actually gets to have a monologue about halfway through the film in which he considers the existential issues inherent in being a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet.

Can humanity defeat Ro-Man? Will Ro-Man ever get his intergalactic supervisor to appreciate him? And finally, why are the dinosaurs there?

Despite the film’s reputation for being borderline incoherent, most of those above questions actually are answered if you pay attention to the first few scenes of Robot Monster. In fact, one could even argue that Robot Monster is maybe a little bit more clever than it’s often given credit for. Of course, it’s still a zero-budget mess of a film but it’s also undeniably fun and, in some sections, unexpectedly dark. If you’ve never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to set aside an hour and two minutes in order to watch it. You’ve never see anything like it before.

Finally, I should note that Robot Monster’s hero was played by George Nader, who actually did go on to appear in several mainstream films. Despite his good looks and talent (which may not be obvious in this film but which he did have), George Nader struggled to get starring roles in Hollywood, where he was often dismissed as just being a member of Rock Hudson’s entourage. (It’s been theorized that Nader struggled because the studios feared that giving him too big of a role would lead to the gossip magazines writing about Nader’s relationship with Hudson, though the two were just friends. Nader was in a relationship with Hudson’s private secretary, Mark Miller, from 1947 until Nader’s death in 2001.) Nader finally left Hollywood and went on to have a pretty successful career in Europe. He was perhaps best known for playing secret agent Jerry Cotton in a series of films in the 60s.

Enjoy Robot Monster!

Artwork of the Day: Spicy Mystery Stories (by William Soare)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Dazzling Erin

by William Soare

This is from 1937. Be careful walking around cemeteries. Getting dragged to Hell is going to ruin that pretty dress.

Music Video of the Day: This Corrosion by The Sisters of Mercy (1987, directed by Stuart Orme)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

“It’s about the idiots, full of sound and fury, who stampede around this world signifying nothing. It’s about people who sing about the revolution while selling it short, about people who sing about the corrosion of things while they themselves are falling apart. People who miss the point… It’s also stupidly over-the-top bombastic, but rightly so.”

— Andrew Eldritch, on This Corrosion

Even more specifically, This Corrosion was written as a “take that” to two former members of the Sisters of Mercy who left the band in 1985 to form The Mission. Eldritch’s feeling was that The Mission was just a corrosive version of Sisters of Mercy.

Director Stuart Orme was one of the directors who worked with literally everyone. His video here is properly goth in the style of 1987.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Nightmare Café 1.2 “Dying Well Is The Best Revenge”

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Nightmare Cafe, which ran on NBC from January to April of 1992. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, Frank and Fay get involved in a case of ghost noir!

Episode 1.2 “Dying Well Is The Best Revenge”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on March 6th, 1992)

This week’s episode of Nightmare Café begins with Frank and Fay feeling pretty comfortable in their new roles of working at the café under the watchful eye of Blackie. I guess some time has passed since the pilot, as both Frank and Fay seem to be totally okay with the fact that they’re both dead and destined to spend the rest of their existence working as, respectively, a cook and a waitress.

Don’t get me wrong, of course. There’s nothing wrong with being a cook or a waitress. If I was a waitress, I would definitely want to work for Robert Englund and get to wear a cute uniform like Fay does. I think what is throwing me is that Fay and Frank seem to be so comfortable with the idea of being dead. It would take me a bit longer to accept that.

As for tonight’s episode, the action starts when a sultry woman named Angela (Beth Toussaint) enters the café and asks for a cup of coffee. Frank immediately starts flirting with her and Angela flirts back in typical film noir fashion. All of the flirting ends, though, when Angela’s husband, Edward (Justin Deas), stumbles into the café, his face bloodied from apparently being attacked outside while he was waiting for Angela. Angela and Edward leave but Angela later returns so that she can talk to Frank.

Angela claims that Edward is abusive. Frank leaves the café so that he can visit Angela at home and eventually sleep with her. (Fay and Blackie watch on the television.) Fay doesn’t trust Angela, especially after her previous lover — a country club tennis pro (Andrew Airlie) — is mysteriously run over by a hit-and-run-driver. As Fay puts it, she thinks that Frank could be putting his life at risk. But, the thing with that is that Frank and Fay are already dead. That was established in the pilot. So, if Frank is already dead, how is he putting his life at risk? For that matter, if Frank and Fay are dead and the Nightmare Café is basically a dimensional portal, how are they both able to casually leave the café and walk around town? I mean, are they dead and in purgatory or not? Seriously, what are the rules of the Nightmare Café?

Eventually, Edward confronts Frank and Angela and Frank …. SHOOTS HIM! Well, I guess since Frank is dead, he can be a murderer. Except, in a clever twist, it turns out that Edward was already dead and the Nightmare Café gave him a second chance to prove that Angela was the one who set up his murder. When Angela tries to put Edward in the trunk of her car, Edward suddenly gets out of the trunk and Angela shoots him several times. Edward pretends to die once again, allowing the police to arrest Angela for murder. The episode ends with Angela in prison, with Edward as her ghostly companion.

So, as I said earlier, I’m still not sure what the rules of the Nightmare Café are supposed to be and, in this episode, it felt like Frank and Fay could basically just do whatever was convenient to the plot. That’s a bit of a problem because, when there are no rules, there aren’t any stakes either. That said, this episode was helped immensely by the friendly charm of Robert Englund. Blackie didn’t really get involved in the storyline but he did break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience a few times and Englund delivered the lines with just the right amount of cheery sarcasm. Robert Englund definitely kept things entertaining!