Category Archives: Horrorthon

Game Review: How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland (2021, V. Dobranov)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland is an entrant in 2021 Interactive Fiction competition.  Browse and experience all of the games by clicking here.

The world has ended. Chaos reigns. Only savagery remains. At the start of this game, you and your partner are in your hovercraft, making your away across the wasteland, when you’re attacked by a crew straight out of a Mad Max film. From the start, there’s more to do than to just sit down in gunner’s seat and open fire. The hovercraft has been damaged and it’s up to you to make the repairs as quickly as possible. Once you do start shooting, the game’s not over. Ammo is limited and your pursuers are relentless.

How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland is a game devoted to the best part of any action movie, the chase. Though the game sounds simple, some of the puzzles do require some attention to detail. There’s more to winning than just being a good shot. This is a well-written Twine game that puts your right at the heart of the action.

Play How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland.

MeNA, Short Film Review, By Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

Hulu….Why? I have to educate Hulu or stop them; it takes a Village or The Village. A short needs a Beginning, A Middle, and an End. It should NOT be a teaser for a longer film that you could not get a budget for or a story that you couldn’t figure out. I’m not watching any more of Hulu’s garbage trash. They should stick to being the depository of re-runs. Yes, I’m mad.

Me.N.A features, Jeff, an office-worker-drone who really wants to be special, but isn’t. I’ve worked with these office workers: their cubicles are bare or their cubicles are overly ornate. They are desperate to be noticed. *Sigh* I remember one lady who had all these figurines; she liked to make fun of deaf people and when I called her out, she just glared at me…for months. Well, she ate a lot of fast food; so, maybe she’s had a coronary by now? *I look up to the skies to an indifferent God who doesn’t know my name.*

Jeff decides that the best way to be special is to get his DNA tested. This isn’t the worst idea. I mean, a DNA test confirmed the family rumors that we were Italian and that was an awesome day! Maybe the lifechanging moment for Jeff could be located in his GATC. Who knows? This short was getting kinda good. Then, the rails came off. Fencers, I guess, show up and cart Jeff off to a large …. I guess … gerbil cage. Anyway, that’s it. No conclusion. No ending. Matthew Epstein, the writer/director, didn’t know what a short was. I wish that he had called me first.

The short is NOT a teaser. It’s a brief self-contained story and anything else is a total cheat and garbage because anyone can leave something unfinished. Now, we have a story without an ending like a shitty version of Quantum Leap. Hulu, you are dead to me.

Scenes That I Love: “Help me!” from The Fly

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Fly (1958, D: Kurt Neumann)

One of the great things about the original, 1958 version of The Fly is that, even though it starred Vincent Price, Price didn’t play the Fly.  Instead, for once, Price was allowed to be the voice of reason, the guy who said, “Maybe don’t mess around with the laws of time and space.”

Today’s scene that I love is from the ending of the original Fly.  Supposedly, Price had a hard time filming this scene because whenever he heard the recording of David Hedison crying out, “Help me!,” he would start laughing.  Still, if you know what spiders actually do to the flies that they capture, you can’t help but sympathize with our misdirected scientist in the web.  Destroying him with a rock was probably the most merciful thing that anyone could do.

4 Shots From 4 Vincent Price Films

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

I woke up today to discover that Vincent Price was trending on Twitter. He was specifically trending because someone did a thread about Price’s political activism. This was something that I already knew about but most people on Twitter are stunned to discover that people actually did good things before the creation of social media.

Once I got over feeling elitist and superior, I thought to myself that it was actually kind of nice that people still love Vincent Price. He’s definitely one of my favorite actors. He started out as a mainstream studio actor, reading for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Window and being considered for Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life. But he found his true stardom as a horror actor, bringing life to films that often would have been dead without his wonderful presence.

There’s no way that we can do Horrorthon without paying tribute to the great Vincent Price. Here are….

4 Shots From 4 Vincent Price Films!

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


The Masque of the Red Death (1964, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Nicolas Roeg)


Witchfinder General (1968, dir by Michael Reeves, DP: John Coquillon)


Scream and Scream Again (1969, dir by Gordon Hessler, DP: John Coquillon)

Horror On The Lens: The Phantom of the Opera (dir by Rupert Julian)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror movie on the Shattered Lens is both a classic of silent era and one of the most influential horror films ever made.  It’s one that I previously shared in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2108, 2019, and 2020 but it’s such a classic that I feel that it is worth sharing a second (or fifth or even a sixth or perhaps a seventh) time.

First released in 1925, The Phantom of the Opera is today best known for both Lon Chaney’s theatrical but empathetic performance as the Phantom and the iconic scene where Mary Philbin unmasks him. However, the film is also a perfect example of early screen spectacle. The Phantom of the Opera was released during that period of time, between Birth of the Nation and the introduction of sound, when audiences expected films to provide a visual feast and Phantom of the Opera certainly accomplishes that. Indeed, after watching this film and reading Gaston Leroux’s original novel, it’s obvious that the musical was inspired more by the opulence of this film than by the book.

This film is also historically significant in that it was one of the first films to be massively reworked as the result of a poor test screening. The film’s ending was originally faithful to the end of the novel. However, audiences demanded something a little more dramatic and that’s what they got.

 

Horror on TV: Friday the 13th: The Series 1.19 “The Quilt of Hathor” (dir by Timothy Bond)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series, it appears that Ryan might be tempted to abandon searching for haunted antique when the quest to find a cursed quilt leads him to a religious cult that has rejected “modern” society.

Honestly, at this point, a religious cult that has rejected social media could probably win over a lot of adherents.  However, I think things are a bit more sinister in this case.

Tonight’s episode first aired on May 7th, 1988.  Fear not the “To be continued” ending!  We’ll have the second part of this story tomorrow night!

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Grindhouse: The Last Laugh (dir by Jeremy Berg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Myles (Steve Vanderzee) is a once-hot comedian whose career has been going downhill ever since 1) his wife died in a car accident and 2) he started taking medication to control his moods. Myles has now gone from playing packed comedy clubs to appearing in sleazy dives where he’s regularly cheated out of getting paid.

However, it appears that Myles finally has a chance to get back up on top! He’s been booked as the opening act for an egotistical comedy superstar! All Myles has to do is deliver one good set and his life will no longer be a joke. The only problem is that there’s a dead body in Myles’s dressing room and the staff of the theater is disappearing one-by-one. There’s a murderer stalking the theater and, at times, it seems like only Myles can see him. Is Myles — who hasn’t taken his pills — losing it or is there really a killer in the wings?

That’s the question asked by 2020’s The Last Laugh. It’s an intriguing question and the premise has a lot of promise but, unfortunately, the execution leaves even more to be desired. Not only are the victims rather generic but you also never really feel as if you know Myles. The film doesn’t show us much of his act so you really don’t know if the guy’s even all that funny. Since a lot of the movie hinges on whether or not Myles is willing to blow his shot at stardom in order to expose the murderer, it would be helpful to actually care about whether or not Myles becomes a star or not. Unfortunately, Myles isn’t really that likable or interesting of a character so who cares?

I did like the fact that the people behind The Last Laugh paid homage to some classic Italian horror films. Several of the shots of the killer creeping through the theater appeared to pay homage to Michele Soavi’s StageFright and there’s also a clever shout out to the Short Night Of The Glass Dolls at the end of the film. Unfortunately, there’s not really enough to the plot of The Last Laugh to make it memorable and the ambiguous ending will probably leave most viewers angry rather than intrigued. (Personally, I usually like ambiguous endings but, in this case, it just felt a little lazy.)

The Last Laugh has promise but it doesn’t really live up to it.

The Cost of Living, Short Film Review by Case Wright

Posted on by casewright

I would’ve put up a poster pic for this, but they were all terrible- Much like this short film. Sometimes an artist just gets in her own way and forgets that you need a story first and not just adapt a Bazooka gum wrapper joke to film. I get it- doing things IS hard. BUT, why bother me with your terrible terrible work? What did I do to you? I’m just a humble math-oriented-handsome-Italian with a love of film and artists, but more importantly, I like to be entertained. I don’t sit down and take time from my busy life to groan.

This short is boring, corny, overdone, and cost WAY too much to make because I’m assuming that production cost over 50 dollars or….. pounds. It’s about a hipster couple who pays the rent by letting their “Bloodsucking Landlord” drink the boyfriend’s blood because…get this… the landlord’s a vampire…see what they did there? *Eye Roll so hard that eye is now at Trader Joe’s 2 miles away*

UGHHHHHHH. I never thought that I’d watch something that made me long for the days of watching Sabrina on Netflix because at least post-season one the lighting was so dark that I could pretend that I wasn’t watching. Plus, I watched it with Lisa, which was fun. Whereas this horrible garbage trash is neither fun, nor good.

Maybe if you had gas-station-sushi or drank the month old chocolate milk because hey…chocolate and you brought your phone with you on your emergency run…maybe it’s worth a watch? Maybe?

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Redrum Scene From The Shining

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a happy 49th birthday to Danny Lloyd, the child actor who — at the age of 6 — brought Danny Torrance to life in Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining. After appearing in one made-for-TV movie after The Shining, Lloyd retired from acting. (He did make a cameo appearance in Doctor Sleep.) He went on to become a teacher. Somewhat sweetly, it’s been reported that, during the filming of The Shining, Kubrick went out of his way to keep Lloyd from knowing that he was appearing in a movie about killer ghosts and a father attempting to kill his family.

In honor of Danny’s birthday, here’s a scene that I love from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining!