To be honest, I was under the impression that this film had already been released, just because it seems like I’ve been hearing about it for years. But no, actually, it won’t be coming out until next month, on November 24th. Personally, I would think that a Ghostbusters sequel would be a natural Halloween release but I think this film is going more for the family film audience than the horror spoof audience.
Well, regardless, here is the international trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife!
Years after “The Accident,” the Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The surface is controlled by Gargoyles, scaly monsters with big claws and a rampaging libido. The few human survivors hide out in underground bunkers, trying to find a cure for “the Plague,” which I guess came about as a result of the Accident. That still doesn’t explain the Gargoyles, though. It doesn’t matter, though. This is a Roger Corman-produced cheapie, one that what so obviously made to exploit the success of Alien, Aliens, Insemenoid, and Day of the Dead that I hope Corman at least had the decency to buy Christmas presents for Ridley Scott, James Cameron, Norman Warren, and George Romero.
The plot kicks into high gear when a group of human scientists discover a pregnant woman on the surface. They take her into their bunker, where she gives birth to a garoyle/human hybrid. The hybrid baby quickly grows into an adult gargoyle and is soon running through the air ducts, killing all the men, and attempting to mate with all the women. It’s actually pretty offensive, not that anyone complained when the movie used to show up on late night Cinemax in the 90s.
It’s up to the humans to stop the terror within. Unfortunately, the humans are interchangeable and easily killed. The only two that you’ll remember are Andrew Stevens and George Kennedy. Stevens, you’ll remember because he’s the star and has the ability to somehow survive while everyone around him is dying. You’ll remember George Kennedy because he’s George Kennedy, an Oscar-winning actor picking up some extra money by barking orders in a few scenes. I doubt Kennedy listed this film high on his list of accomplishment but, because he manages to deliver his lines with a straight face, he’s one of the best thing about the movie. The other thing that partially redeems this film is that the monster, once it reaches adulthood, looks far more convincing than I think anyone would expect it to. Corman may not have spent a lot of money on this film but he was smart enough to invest in a convincing monster.
The Terror Within has a cult following, mostly made up by people like me who saw it when we were kids and were too dumb to realize that it’s really not a very good movie. The main problem is that, though the film may be based on Alien, the director is no Ridley Scott or James Cameron. He’s not even a Fred Olen Ray or Jim Wynorski. There’s no suspense or humor or anything that would really distinguish the film. The Terror Within was still successful enough to lead to a sequel. Fortunately, Andrew Stevens took over as director for The Terror Within II.
“What is your greatest fear?”
That’s a question that I found myself discussing on Saturday night as I joined a group of friends to watch the 2019 film, Halloween Party.
“What is your greatest fear?”
It seems like a simple question but it can be so difficult to answer. I know that a lot of people, at this very moment, would probably say COVID-19. Others would probably say climate change or creeping authoritarianism or Greta Thunberg’s disapproving stare. On Saturday night, a few people identified clowns as being their greatest fear. Leonard said that he didn’t like spiders.
Myself, I struggled to come up with one. It’s not that I’m not scared of things. I hate heights. I have a fear of drowning. I’m not a fan of dogs. But when it comes to my greatest fear, that’s a difficult one to answer. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that most of my fears were more abstract as opposed to being physical. I fear being at the mercy of pitiless and chaotic universe, the type that Werner Herzog always talks about. I fear having to listen to a boring conversation. I fear discovering that I picked the wrong confirmation name. In fact, I spent a lot of time on Saturday bragging about how my fears were so much more interesting than everyone else’s fear.
Then, on Sunday, I watched the original Poltergeist and I remembered that my greatest fear is actually accidentally eating spoiled food. Which could totally happen! I mean, what if they put the wrong expiration date on the package? What if you’re refrigerator stopped working while you were away and then started working at the exact moment that you returned home? You would never know that the food had been sitting there, unrefrigerated, for hours.
Seriously, I think it’s a pretty justifiable fear.
Halloween Party is all about being forced to face your greatest fears. It’s about a cursed internet meme. When it shows up in your email, you’ve got only a few seconds to type in your greatest fear and then hit return. Tell the truth and hit return in time and you’ll get a cute little dancing ghost. Lie or don’t hit return in time and an evil witch appears and announces that you will soon meet your greatest fear. Everyone laughs the meme off but then their fears actually do start to show up, killing not only the person who received the meme but also anyone unlucky enough to get in the way.
College students Grace (Amy Groening) and Spencer (T. Thomason) attempt to investigate the meme and try to figure out how to stop it. It all has something to do with the fact that horribly disfigured children were once housed in their dorm. Apparently, the children got walled up and have been after revenge ever since. To be honest, I couldn’t really follow all of the stuff about the kids and the fact that the kids were made up to appear to be kind of grotesque made it a bit difficult for me to really watch any of the scenes involving them. I kind of wish the film had just concentrated on the meme and the fears. That’s fun part of a film like this.
(For the record, Spencer is afraid of bears. Personally, I think he just needs to watch Grizzly Man a few times and he’ll get over it. Grace is scared of “vagina spiders” and that’s actually a perfectly reasonable fear to have because spiders are almost as frightening as spoiled food and they do tend to get everywhere. I did some research and discovered that, thankfully, spiders cannot lay eggs under your skin but still, whether they’re laying eggs or not, there are certain places that a spider just has no place being.)
Halloween Party is a fairly derivative horror film, as anyone who has seen any of The Ring films will quickly notice. That said, it has a sense of humor about itself and Grace and Spencer are appealingly quirky protagonists. There are more than enough creepy scenes to make up for the familiarity of the story. Halloween Party is a film made for horror fans by horror fans. Watch it at your next party but be prepared to confess what you’re greatest fear is. Don’t say spoiled food, though. That’s already taken.
You are supposed to studying English and building your vocabulary but you keep getting distracted by the man standing outside your window. It can be difficult to guess the right definition when you know that someone is hiding behind a tree and trying to get into your house. You text your friend. They suggest you call your mom. Is that the solution or is there another way to survive a visit from the man outside?
This is a simple but atmospheric game. There are three endings. It was pretty easy to get the good ending. I had to make some effort to trigger bad ending but it’s worth it because the bad ending is creepier than the good ending. Other than clicking on the right (or wrong) definitions of the words, there’s really only one decision to be made but make the wrong one or do bad enough on your vocabulary quiz and you’ll soon be getting a visit from the man outside!
Since today is Peter Boyle’s birthday (he would have been 86), it seems only appropriate that today’s scenes that I love should come from 1974’s Young Frankenstein. Here, for your viewing and listening pleasure, are Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle….
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
95 years ago today, Klaus Kinski was born in Poland. Kinski was a brilliant actor who, by all accounts, was an absolute monster in his private life. Werner Herzog worked with him on several films and reportedly considered murdering him on more than a few occasions. Herzog, himself, wrote about the time that he had spent in a mental asylum and the time that was diagnosed as being a psychopath. Because of his talent, he appeared in many great films. Because of his reputation for being a literal madman, he also missed out on a lot of great roles and spent much of his career appearing in low-budget exploitation flicks. Many of those films were in the horror genre.
Today, on the anniversary of Kinski’s birth, TSL presents….
4 Shots From 4 Klaus Kinski Films
Count Dracula (1970, dir by Jess Franco, DPs: Manuel Merino and Luciano Trasatti)
Jack the RIpper (1976, dir by Jess Franco, DPs: Peter Baumgartner and Peter Spoerri)
Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979, dir by Werner Herzog, DP: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein)
Venom (1981, dir by Piers Haggard, DPs: Denys Coop and Gilbert Taylor)
Last night, I watched Poltergeist on TCM and I found myself thinking about how much I’ve always liked James Karen’s performance in that film. Karen plays Craig T. Nelson’s boss, the guy who moved the headstones but left the bodies. Karen also appeared in Return of the Living Dead and, up until his death a few years ago, he was a busy character actor. He almost always seemed to play slightly sinister executive types. If you saw him in a film, you knew he would probably be a crooked businessman, a corrupt lawyer, or a politician on the take. And yet, even though he often played less than savory characters, he always played them not as being evil but instead, at worst, merely misguided. Anyway, as I watched him get yelled at by Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist, I decided that our next horror on the lens would be a James Karen film.
Today’s horror on the lens is the 1965 film, Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster. This film features not only the debut of James Karen but it also gave him a rare lead role. For once, james Karen gets to the hero! Though he’s much younger than he was when he appeared in films like Poltergeist and Return of the Living Dead, you’ll know James Karen as soon as you see him.
Despite the movie’s title, it’s not about Frankenstein. Instead, it’s about an astronaut named Frank who is actually an android. When his latest mission into space goes wrong, Frank ends up crashing in Puerto Rico. Now malfunctioning, Frank causes some major chaos. Can his creator, Dr. Adam Steele (James Karen), track Frank down and put an end to his reign of terror?
And what about the Martians? Android Frank isn’t the only threat in Puerto Rico. A group of Martians have landed and are determined to kidnap any girl wearing a bikini so that they can use them to repopulate their race. We’re told that every woman on Mars — with the apparent exception of Princess Marcuzan, played with evil haughtiness by Marilyn Hanold — has been killed as the result of an atomic war. Assisting Princess Marcuzan is Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell), a short, bald Martian with pointy ears.
One of the oddest things about Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is that, despite being a standard — if wonderfully nonsensical — low-budget B-movie, it features a great soundtrack! Just try to get “That’s The Way It’s Got To Be” out of your head.
Enjoy!
I’m going to ask the obvious question here. What the Hell is a beast creature and how is it different from a regular beast or a regular creature? It’s hard to tell from the poster but I think it’s going to take more than a pitchfork to hold back these things, whatever they are.
This is from 1985. The identity of the artist is unknown. If you are the artist or know who the artist was, leave a comment and let us know!
Tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series is the finale of the first season. When the spirit of Uncle Lewis (R.G. Armstrong) attempts to re-enter the world of the living, it leads to Micki and Ryan reliving some of their worst memories.
The episode originally aired on July 25th, 1988.
A former boxer and phone sex addict (played by real-life boxer Gary Stretch) is picking up women in Los Angeles, taking them to cheap motels, and beating them to death. Detective Matt Dickson (Michael Madsen, with blonde hair) is a burned out homicide cop who finds himself investigating the murders. It doesn’t take Dickson long to figure out that the killer is using the names of former boxing champs when he checks into the motels. He also figures out that the boxer has phone sex before and after the killing. That’s a lot but it’s not enough to solve the case. To do that, he’ll have to team up with a journalist (played by Lisa Bonet) who has personal reasons for wanting to take down the killer.
Back in the 90s, the main reason that I watched Dead Connection was because I had a hopeless crush on Parker Posey and she was listed as being one of the stars of the film. Parker does appear early on in the film and is just as funny and appealing in her small role as she was in bigger parts in other movies. Unfortunately, Parker gets killed pretty early on in the movie. That traumatized me the first time I saw the movie.
After Parker dies, the main reason to watch the movie is to see what Michael Madsen can do with his clichéd role. It turns out that Madsen can do a lot, even though there’s nothing unusual about the character on paper. Madsen just had the right look and the right style of acting for neo-noirs like this one. Even in a movie like this one, Madsen makes the whispering and the arched eyebrow seem cool and natural. Judging from her performance here, Lisa Bonet should have been a bigger star too. Just as with Madsen, there’s nothing unusual about her role but she still plays it with a lot of conviction.
The main problem with Dead Connection is that it reveals the identity of the killer in the first few minutes and it’s hard to believe that it would take the police a particularly long time to track him down. The minute it was learned that he was using the names of boxers to check into motels, that should have been the end of it for him. Instead, the movie dithers around for a good 90 minutes before finally ending on a predictable note. Despite the script’s flaws, Dead Connection is competently directed by Nigel Dick, who was also responsible for several music videos in the 80s and the 90s. Perhaps that explains why Tears for Fears’s Curt Smith has a tiny role as a desk clerk.
In the U.S., the film was released under the title Dead Connection, playing up the phone sex angle. In Europe, the focus was instead put on the killer’s boxing career and the film was called Final Combination, which made it sound like it was a movie about safecrackers. Neither title is really great but I prefer Dead Connection.
Through the Shattered Lens 