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!
Today, we honor the legacy of a man who was not just a great horror star but also a great actor. period Christopher Lee worked with everyone from Laurence Olivier to Steven Spielberg to Peter Jackson to Martin Scorsese. Though he turned own the chance to play Dr. No, Lee later did go play a Bond villain in The Man with The Golden Gun. He was one of those actors who was always great, even if the film wasn’t.
That said, it’s for his horror films that Lee is best known. He was the scariest Dracula and the most imposing Frankenstein’s Monster. He played mad scientists, decadent aristocrats, and even the occasional hero. Christopher Lee was an actor who could do it all and today, we honor him with….
6 Shots From 6 Christopher Lee Films
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
Rasputin The Mad Monk (1966, dir by Don Sharp, DP: Michael Reed)
Count Dracula (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DP: Manuel Merino and Luciano Trasatti)
Horror Express (1972, dir by Eugenio Martin, DP: Alejandro Ulloa)
The Wicker Man (1973, dir by Robert Hardy. DP: Harry Waxman)
Hearing bumps in the night? Halloween is the favorite holiday of ghosts the world over. That was as true in the pulp era as today. Here’s just a few example of the spirits of the pulp age!
The 2016 film, Shut In, is yet another film in which Naomi Watts plays an intelligent woman who is forced to do stupid things because, otherwise, there would be no story.
This time, Watts is cast as Dr. Mary Portman, a psychologist who is taking care of her stepson, Stephen (Charlie Heaton). Stephen was left in a vegatative state by a tragic accident that not only killed Mary’s husband but which also totaled a brand new SUV. Mary and Stephen are in an isolated house so there’s no way anything could go wrong, right?
Mary has a lot on her mind. Not only does she have to take care of Stephen but she’s also starting to date again. Plus, one of her patients, a child named Tom (Jacob Tremblay), has disappeared. She’s worried about Tom. He disappeared near her house and no one has been able to find him. Mary occasionally thinks that she sees Tom but her psychologist (played by poor Oliver Platt, who looks embarrassed to be there) says that Mary is just seeing what she wants to see. And when two little hands come out of the darkness to keep Mary from entering a crawlspace, that’s just a coincidence, too.
Right.
Because it’s not like totally obvious, from the freaking start, that Tom is hiding out in her house.
Now, before anyone gets excited, this film does not feature Jacob Tremblay as an evil child who torments Naomi Watts. (Jacob Tremblay is 15 years old now, just in case you needed an excuse to feel old.) Instead, it turns out that Mary’s tormenter is….
What?
Spoiler alert?
Really, I have to give a spoiler alert before revealing the most obvious twist of all time? How is that fair?
Okay, fine. SPOILER ALERT! Stop crying, you babies.
Mary is being menaced by Stephen, who it turns out woke up from his coma long ago and is now faking his vegetative state. That seems like that would be a difficult thing to fake but, whatever. Anyway, it turns out that Stephen has really enjoyed having Mary all to himself and he’s not really happy about the idea of having to share her with Tom. So, Stephen’s idea is to trap Tom in the crawlspace and hold Mary hostage. Or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like Stephen’s really thought this out. Normally, that would be understandable because it takes a lot of planning to trap someone in a crawlspace while pretending to be in a coma. But Stephen spends all day lying around so he should have used that time to give a little more thought to his plan.
Eventually, Oliver Platt realizes that something strange is happening so he goes up the house to rescue her but — surprise! — Stephen kills him. Seriously, Oliver — you deserved better than this movie.
For that matter so does Naomi Watts. Watts is a good actress who can play both comedy and drama and yet, she keeps showing up in these movies where she basically spends the whole movie being held prisoner, either physically or mentally. She always does a good job in them and, when I first heard that Woman In The Window was being turned into a movie, she was my choice for the role played by Amy Adams but, still, Watts definitely deserves better than a by-the-numbers film like Shut In. Too often, the film requires Mary to act in a totally illogical, rather stupid manner. Watts does her best with the character but the script lets her down.
Along with being totally predictable, Shut In moves at a glacial pace. A lot of time is spent in an attempt to establish mood and atmosphere but again, the big twist is so obvious that no amount of mood and Kubrickian atmosphere is going to save it.. Shut In is a movie that very slowly takes us to exactly where we think it’s going to take us. Everyone involved deserved better.
Reviewing Fear The Walking Dead’s seventh and final season is going to be difficult for me.
You have to understand that I’ve only seen a few episodes of Fear The Walking Dead. I watched the first two or three episodes of the first season. Then I got bored. I tried to watch the second season. I got bored. I was determined to watch the third season but I changed my mind halfway through the season premiere. Again, I got bored Seasons 4, 5, and 6, I didn’t even try. I was exhausted with zombies and, even more importantly, I was exhausted with the world of The Walking Dead.
But I am going to try to watch season 7 because it’s the final season. With both The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead reaching their conclusions, a pop cultural era is coming to an end. And so, despite not having the slightest idea what’s going on or who the majority of the characters, I’m going to attempt to watch and review Fear The Walking Dead.
Fear the Walking Dead‘s seventh season premiered last Sunday. I only got around to watching it today because I may be determined but I’m not particularly enthusiastic. “What,” I asked myself, “can this show possibly provide me with that The Walking Dead and countless other zombie films haven’t?”
As if to answer my question, Fear the Walking Dead opened with several atomic warheads exploding. Certainly, there have been other zombie films that have opened with nuclear bombs going off. Fear the Walking Dead, though, may be the first television show to do so at the start of its seventh season. On the one hand, the people incinerated did not return as walkers. However, those who died of radiation poisoning did. Seriously, that’s a terrifying through. Radiation poisoning is a bad enough way to die without spending the entire time knowing that, once you do die, you’re going to return as a zombie.
The majority of the show’s regular cast did not appear in the first episode, which was fine with me since I don’t really don’t know who any of them are. Instead, the episode centered around Strand (Colman Domingo), a regular character who had kind of set himself up as a warlord over the radioactive landscape and Will (Gus Halper), a wanderer who was eventually picked up by Strand’s men. At first, Strand had little use for Will but then Strand discovered that Will knew Alicia. I, of course, don’t know Alicia but this is all stuff for which I’ll have a better understanding after a few episodes. What’s important is that it was obvious that Alicia was important to Strand.
Fortunately, I didn’t really need to understand all of the backstory in order to enjoy this episode. The Beacon, as the premiere was entitled, was a visual triumph, with the nuclear hellscape becoming as important of a character as either Strand or Will. The inevitable battle between Will, Strand, and a group of walkers was also nicely handled, with the shadowy walkers emerging from a dark mist in a style that brought to mind John Carpenter’s The Fog. In this episode, the walkers were frightening in a way that they rarely were in the recent episodes of The Walking Dead.
As for Strand and Will, Domingo and Halper did a good job playing opposite each other. They’re both intriguing characters. Unfortunately, the script was full of clunky dialogue, which seems to be an issue on all of the shows that make up The Walking Dead universe. Still, the episode was visually impressive and well-acted so I’m going to continue to watch the final season of Fear The Walking Dead and, after a few more episodes, I will hopefully actually know what’s going on.
Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the eleventh episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!
In this episode, a beekeeper (Art Hindle) uses killer bees to take out his enemies! AGCK! I have to admit that I am a little bit scared of bees, mostly because I’ve never been stung by one. There’s a part of me that will always be worried that I might be allergic to them. Plus, I think it’s kind of depressing that bees spend their whole life looking for someone to sting and then they die as a result. I feel bad for the bees, even as I fear them.
This episode originally aired on January 21st, 1989.
In this sex-filled take on The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Quarry leads a group of researchers to a haunted house. Amy Goldwyn (Brinke Stevens) is the smart psychic who knows the house isn’t safe but who still gets possessed by a demon and ends up hammering a nail through her palm. Beth (Kathrin Lautner) is the self-described “bitch” who has a lesbian past because this is a direct-to-video 90s film. Harry (Oliver Darrow) is the cocky womanizer who gets seduced by a succubus. The house is haunted by the spirit of a fallen priest and his demonic nuns. Only another priest, Father Anthony Vicci (Erik Estrada!), can save the researchers but that holy water that he’s carrying around is only going to work if he regains his faith and seeks forgiveness for his past sins.
As far as I know, Spirits is only available on VHS. So, if you do watch it, you’re going to need a VCR that works. Considering how easily an old VCR can break down and how it’s nearly impossible to get them repaired, you’re going to need to realize that Spirits could very well be the last tape you ever watch on the old machine. Do you want to take the risk? I took the risk and, for what it is, Spirits is not that bad. It’s a Fred Olen Ray films and it’s got Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer in it so you know what you’re going to get. Still, after I finished it, I realized that, if Spirits had been the last thing I ever watched on that old VCR, I would have been pissed. If my VCR is going to break, I’d rather it break while I was watching a tape full of hours of Must See TV from 1996.
Spirits has a few things to recommend it. Brinke Stevens was one of the best of the direct-to-video scream queens and she actually does give a “real” performance as Amy. The sight of Erik Estrada, playing a tortured a priest as if he was a character on a particularly racy telenovela, was certainly entertaining. Finally, there was Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry, as the main ghost hunter. Otherwise, Spirits is a typical direct-to-video Fed Olen Ray film, with cheesy music, terrible special effects, and laughable dialogue. There’s a lot of nudity, of course but you can find the same amount of nudity in films that you can safely watch on DVD or Blu-ray. If you’re going to risk the VCR, the movie is going to need to have more to offer.
Today’s scene that I love comes from one of the most underrated zombie films of the 70s, Shock Waves.
In this film, Nazi zombies have emerged off the coast of an island. When a group of stranded tourists explore the island, they come across Peter Cushing, who explains to them just what exactly is going on. Cushing totally steals this scene. It’s always interesting to me that Cushing could convincingly play such depraved characters when, in real life, he was supposedly a very gentle and somewhat shy man. In fact, if you listen to the commentary track that was recorded for Shock Waves’s video release, everyone who worked on the film talks about what a joy Peter Cushing was off-screen.
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!
Today, the Shattered Lens pays tribute to Peter Cushing, one of the great actors and horror stars of the previous century. By most accounts, an old-fashioned gentleman who enjoyed gardening and a little painting, Peter Cushing went from the stage to films to television and back again and, along the way, appeared in some of the most popular and beloved films ever made. He was often cast as a rival to Christopher Lee. In real life, the two men were the closest of friends.
Here are….
6 Shots From 6 Peter Cushing Films
Hamlet (1948, dir by Laurence Olivier, DP: Desmond Dickinson)
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965, dir by Gordon Flemyng, DP: Jack Wilcox)
Shock Waves (1977, dir by Ken Weiderhorn, DP: Reuben Trane)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977, dir by George Lucas, DP: Gilbert Talyor)
Tonight, for our horror on the lens, we have the sixth episode of the 2nd season of Friday the 13th: The Series!
In this episode, an actor uses a makeup case that was once owned by John Wilkes Booth to improve his looks! Unfortunately, the makeup is fueled by murder! This episode features horror and romance. Prepare to shed a tear for poor Micki. This episode also features a shout out to the great Boris Karloff.
Through the Shattered Lens 