I have a love/hate relationship with short films because there isn’t a middle ground. Film school is starting to look like a place to go to get in from the rain. When they’re done well, it’s so moving and amazing because in this short period of time, I cared about these characters and was sad to see them fail or overjoyed to see them win. What a lot of filmmakers fail to understand about the short is how challenging they are and really it should inform them that maybe they should try something else. Painting? Sculpting? Insurance? Mail Carrier? Many terrible short-filmmakers will evolve into terrible feature-length story tellers. They have to be stopped!
The short film becomes the proving ground for their bad habits: trading a shocking shot for narrative, trading grittiness for character likeability, trading story structure for a lazy jumbled mess masquerading as realism.
ORIGIN is the worst short that I’ve ever seen. It’s good in that it shows what NOT to do. The story is derivative and boring. The characters are unlikeable, which might trick a teacher into saying great realism, but in reality – banal unlikeable characters lower your stakes and destroy your final act. The dialogue is predictable. The emotion is stilted and unbelievable. Sadly, it was thirteen minutes too long (runtime 13 minutes).
ORIGIN depicts a banal and horrible family dealing with their son being attacked and slowly transforming into a monster. The son doesn’t speak and we learn nothing about him; so, I didn’t care when he died. The father was gross, boring, and annoying; so, I didn’t care when he had to put his monster son down. The mom was a boring/cheating whiner. Her dull and uncaring boyfriend was just sort of there sometimes like a mailbox. The mom and her boyfriend added nothing and slowed an already terrible story down.
What was really insulting was the hamfisted violins at the end that were way too loud to let me know- this is where you should feel……sad. Well, I didn’t and no one should. Don’t tell me how to feel. You have to earn concern. You have to earn stakes. Just having a bunch of unlikeable people running around is boring. We need a show on TLC called filmmaker intervention! This person must be stopped!
This is from 1968. Though the identity of the artist behind this poster is unknown, I like that the poster announces that this film is in “frenzied color!”
Originally released in 1988, Pumpkinhead has always struck me as being one of those films that more people remember hearing someone else talk about it than have actually sat down and watched.
I think that’s because it has such a great title. Pumpkinhead! That’s not a title that you’re going to forget and it conjures up all sorts of scary images. If you hear someone mention that title, it stays in your head. It’s an easy title to remember and it’s also an easy title to turn into a macabre joke. If, on Halloween night, you and your friends hear a sound in the house, you can always say, “It must be Pumpkinhead!” Everyone will laugh, regardless of whether they’ve seen the film or not. It’s kind of like how everyone knows what the Great Pumpkin is, even if they’ve never actually watched the old cartoon.
As for the actual film, it’s a mix of monster horror and hick revenge flick. It’s one of those movies where a bunch of dumb city kids do something stupid while driving through the country and, as a result, they end up having to deal with a curse and a monster.
Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) is a widower who owns a grocery store that is pretty much sitting out in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, you look at his little store sitting off the side of a country road and you wonder how he makes enough money to feed his family. Of course, the store’s location isn’t the only problem. The other problem is that Ed seems to instinctively mistrust the few people who do stop off at the place. Even if I lived near there, I probably wouldn’t want to shop at that store because I know Ed would glare at me and make me feel like I was doing something wrong.
However, a group of dumbass dirt bikers do stop off at the store. And then they decide to drive their dirt bikers around the store while another member of the group takes pictures. Unfortunately, the dirt bikers run over Ed’s son, little Billy. The dirt bikers flee the scene, heading to their cabin. Ed meanwhile goes to the local witch and asks her to summon …. PUMPKINHEAD!
After a lengthy ceremony, Pumpkinhead shows up. Because Pumpkinhead was directed special effects maestro Stan Winston, he’s a very impressive creature. He looks something like this:
You may notice that Pumpkinhead doesn’t actually have a pumpkin for a head but no matter! It’s still a good name and when your monster looks like that, he can call himself whatever he wants.
Anyway, Pumpkinhead tracks down and starts to kill the people responsible for the death of Billy. Unfortunately, it turns out that Ed experiences each murder along with Pumpkinhead and he quickly has a change of heart. The witch tells him it’s too late. Pumpkinhead will not stop until everyone’s dead and if Ed tries to interfere, Ed will die as well.
It’s a clever-enough idea, a filmed version of one of those old legends that you occasionally hear about in the country. It’s a good thing that the monster is really, really scary because his victims are pretty much forgettable. Some of them feel bad about killing Ed’s son and some of them don’t but it’s hard to keep straight which is which. They’re just too bland. As a result, their deaths don’t really generate any sort of emotion, good or bad. They’re just there to be victims. The only person your really care about is Ed but that’s mostly because he’s played by Lance Henriksen and Henriksen is one of those actors who can bring almost any character to life, regardless of how thinly-drawn that character may be. Henriksen has a built-in authenticity. Since he’s clearly not a product of the Hollywood publicity machine but is instead someone who obviously lived an interesting life before he ever auditioned for his first film, you believe in Henriksen’s performance even when the script betrays him. You believe that he owns that store, even though the store seems to be in the worst location ever. When he mourns Billy, you believe it. When he tries to stop Pumpkinhead, you believe that as well. What little humanity that there is to be found in the film is almost totally the result of Henriksen’s performance.
So, give it up for Lance Henriksen and give it up for the scariness of Pumpkinhead and also give it up for director Stan Winston, who came up with enough horrific visuals that it almost made up for his apparent lack of interest in the film’s human characters. Give it up to for a little-known character actress named Florence Schauffer, who is properly creepy as the local witch. Pumpkinhead is a good film to watch with your friends on Halloween, even if the title monster doesn’t really have a pumpkin for a head.
Billy (Marina Zudina) is an FX makeup artist who is working on a movie in Moscow. The movie is a cheap slasher, directed by Andy (Evan Richards), who is dating Billy’s sister, Karen (Fay Ripley). One night, after shooting on the slasher film has ended for the day, Billy stumbles upon another film crew shooting what she initially thinks is a porno. Instead, it turns out to be a real-life slasher film as the film’s star is brutally murdered while Billy watches. Though Billy manages to escape from the killers, the police refuse to take her claims seriously. Working with a private detective named Larsen (Oleg Yankovsky), Billy tries to prove that she saw what she saw while also trying to avoid being killed the snuff film crew and the Russian mob.
Mute Witness is an intense, clever, and suspenseful thriller from the mid-90s. It has never got as much attention as it deserves, despite an intriguing premise, a sympathetic protagonist, and an international setting. The film was shot on location and Moscow proves to be the perfect setting for a chilling story about greed, corruption, and murder. When Mute Witness was filmed, the collapse of Soviet communism was still a recent event and there were still a lot of questions about what type of country the new Russia was going to become. The Russian mob was still a relatively new concept to many people. In Mute Witness, post-Soviet Moscow is a dark and menacing place where no one is who they say they are. It’s a city where people can easily disappear, money can buy immunity from scrutiny, and where the horrors of a slasher film can’t begin to compete with the horrors of reality. Though the film was made when Boris Yeltsin was still in charge of Russia, it feels very much like a prediction of the Putin era.
Alec Guinness makes a cameo appearance in Mute Witness. He only appears in one scene but he makes an undeniable impression. His scene was filmed in Germany, months before the rest of the film was shot. (Due to his busy schedule, it was the only time that Guinness was available.) Guinness reportedly did the scene as a favor to director Anthony Waller and offered to do it for free. Genuine class, indeed!
Though Mute Witness was overshadowed by the success of Scream, it was still enough of a critical and cult success that Waller was offered a studio picture. Unfortunately, that film turned out to be An American Werewolf in Paris. Waller has only directed two films since American Werewolf in Paris. That’s a shame as Mute Witness was an auspicious debut and stands the test of the time as one of the better horror thriller to come out of the 90s.
102 years ago today, the great actor Donald Pleasence was born.
Pleasence is, of course, best-known for playing Dr. Loomis in Halloween. He’s so identified with that franchise that it’s always seemed appropriate that he celebrated his birthday in October. And usually, to celebrate his birthday, we would share a scene of Dr. Loomis yelling at or shooting Michael Myers.
This year, though, I’m going to do something a little different and share a scene from a different type of horror movie, 1971’s Wake in Fright. In this Australian film, Donald Pleasence plays Doc Tydon, an alcoholic doctor who lives in the Australian outback and who befriends John Grant (Gary Bond), a naïve school teacher who has become stranded in a town full of people who don’t have much respect for Grant’s intellectual pursuits. Actually, befriends is perhaps the wrong word. Tydon allows Grant to stay with him but it soon become apparent that Tydon, like almost everyone else in this movie, might have a less-than-friendly agenda of his own.
Wake In Fright features what may be Pleasence’s best performance. In the scene below, Tydon and Grant meet for the first time and Pleasence shows that he was capable of far more than just playing Blofeld and Dr. Loomis.
What if in Alien the xenomorph was really easy to kill? This is a question most filmmakers never cared to answer, but you would not be fancy then like Benjamin Farry! Nope, you would not be fancy, not….fancy…at…all! Benjamin Farry, unlike you, is super fancy because he answered that question- that’s just science! Like that song, She blinded ME… with Bacon Grease… or science or something like that. Bacon is scientifically delicious! I’m very hungry.
Speaking of being hungry, what if you were a space ship janitor and got infected by a parasite that made you hallucinate and go full-on cannibal and head toward earth? Well, you’d rapidly remember that you were a space janitor and blow up your space ship before humanity became a snack! That’s pretty much the entire short.
I don’t want to be too cruel about this short because it did have a beginning, middle, and end like you would have in an interesting story. I cannot write that this wasn’t filmed because it definitely was filmed…and I think they used props… From party city. I also cannot write that it wasn’t a short because it was really really easy for the protagonist to achieve his quest; therefore, it was a short or even a brief. I cannot write that “The Mayflower” didn’t win an award because that did happen….somehow. Maybe it was like everyone got a turn to win like an honorary degree?
If you’re bored and want to take that boredom to another level, this is the short for you! Think of it like watching Alien if it were on cheat mode and made for 30 bucks.
4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films is just what it says it is, 4 (or more) shots from 4 (or more) of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Today, we wish a happy and nice 69th birthday to writer and occasional director Clive Barker! Barker’s stories have provided the basis for several films and Barker himself attempted to build a career of his own as a filmmaker. Though he pretty much retired from directing after the box office failure of Lord of Illusions, he still has a better directorial track record than Stephen King.
Today, we honor the birthday of Clive Barker with….
4 Shots From 4 Clive Barker Films
Hellraiser (1987, dir by Clive Barker, DP: Robin Vidgeon)
Nightbreed (1990, dir by Clive Barker, DP: Robin Vidgeon)
Candyman (1992, dir by Bernard Rose, DP: Anthony B. Richmond)
Lord of Illusions (1995, dir by Clive Barker, DP: Ronn Schmidt)
For today’s horror on the Lens we have a made-for-TV movie that, like yesterday’s The Norliss Tapes, was produced and directed by Dan Curtis.
Trilogy of Terror, which aired in 1975, is an anthology film, featuring three segments that were each based on a short story from Richard Matheson. What makes this particular film special is that each segment features Karen Black playing a radically different character from the previous segment. The film really is a showcase for this underrated actress, though Black herself later said that the film ruined her career because it typecast her as a horror actress.
The third segment is the one that gets all the attention. That’s the one with the killer doll. I like all of the segments, though. The first one is often considered to be the weakest but anyone who has ever been through a similar situation will appreciate it as tale of revenge. The second segment has a playful vibe that I liked. And yes, the third segment is genuinely frightening.
Tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series finds Micki, Ryan, and Jack investigating a series of slashings that might be connected to a renowned surgeon named Vincent Howlett (played by Cliff Gorman, who also played an actor based on Dustin Hoffman in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz). Howlett has a 100% success rate and he owes it all to his antique scalpel. Unfortunately, it turns out that there’s a deadly and bloody price for Howlett’s success in the operating room….
This episode was written by Marc Scott Zicree, who also wrote the definitive guide to the original Twilight Zone. The plot — with its theme of a man doing great evil so that he can do great good — certainly feels like it wouldn’t have been out of place as an episode of Rod Serling’s classic anthology series.
This episode originally aired in 1987, on November 9th (hey, that’s my birthday!)
Through the Shattered Lens 