Enjoy!
Category Archives: Horrorthon
Here’s The Trailer for The Empty Man!
The Empty Man is an upcoming horror film about a spirit that is vengeful because …. well, it’s empty, I guess. I mean, I guess that would make me angry too. No one wants to be shallow.
Anyway, here’s the trailer. How many clichés can you count?
Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.18 “Symbol of Death” (dir by Richard Friedman)
The 17th episode of Baywatch Nights was called The Servant and it featured Mitch and Ryan fighting a mummy! Unfortunately, it’s also one of the few episodes to not be available on YouTube, or at least not in watchable form. (There’s a sped-up version where the image is so oddly cropped that it’s basically unwatchable but that’s about it.)
So, we’ll have to skip The Servant and instead move onto Symbol of Death which features an apparent alien abduction. If nothing else, this episode shows what a debt Baywatch Nights owed to The X-Files.
This episode originally aired on April 19th, 1997!
Enjoy!
The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Ninja III: The Domination (dir by Sam Firstenberg)
This 1984 film is brilliant.
Basically, it tells the story of Christie Ryder (Lucinda Dickey), who appears to have everything that someone could want out of life. Not only does she have a really nice place to live but she also repairs phone lines for a living! (That might not sound glamorous but she lives in California, which means that there’s always a nice view when she’s working.) She also teaches an aerobics class because this film is from 1984 and, in 1984, everyone taught their own aerobics class. At least, that’s the impression that I’ve gotten from watching movies of the era.
Christie only has one problem. She’s been possessed. She hasn’t been possessed by any ordinary old demon, either. Instead, she’s been possessed by a dead ninja. Hanjuro (David Chung) came to America because there were some people on a golf course who needed to be killed. Unfortunately, no sooner had he killed everyone on the back 9 then he found himself surrounded by cops. It took a lot of bullets to take down Hanjuro but down he went. However, his spirit went up and entered Christie’s body.
Now, Christie spends her time teaching aerobics, working on phone lines, and murdering everyone who Hanjuro feels has wrong him. Hanjuro wants to kill all of the cops who shot him. Unfortunately, one of those cops, Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett), is now dating Christie. Once Billy finally figures out why Christie is acting so strangely, he takes her to an exorcist (James Hong) who explains that it’s going to take more than just an ordinary exorcism to defeat the ninja lurking within Christie. It’s going to require the help of another ninja, the noble Goro Yamada (Sho Kosugi). It’s time to go to Japan!
I may not be a huge ninja movie fan (unless, of course, they feature Franco Nero) but I have to say that I absolutely loved Ninja III. That really shouldn’t come as a surprise. This film is such an utterly weird mishmash of tones and genres that there’s no way that I couldn’t love it. It starts out as a typical kung fu film, just to suddenly turn into The Exorcist before then becoming Flashdance before returning to being The Exorcist. Finally, for the last few minutes of the film, it transforms back into a kung fu film. As I watched the film, I found myself thinking about all of the other films throughout history that could have been livened up by a demonic or spiritual possession subplot. For that matter, think about how much more crazy The Exorcist would have been if Father Karras and Father Merrin had been Ninja Karras and NInja Merrin.
Anyway, in all seriousness, Ninja III is exactly what an exploitation film should be. It’s unapologetically strange and over-the-top and it makes absolutely no apologies for being what it is. It’s a film that says, “I’m here to tell a story about a woman possessed by a dead ninja and if that’s not good enough for you, you need to figure out what’s wrong with your heart.” Ninja III is brilliant, wonderful, and definitely a film that you must watch this October. It’s on Prime so go watch it. Do it now.
Witchcraft VIII: Salem’s Ghost (1996, directed by Joseph John Barmettler)
Having killed off long-suffering hero Will Spanner in the previous installment, the Witchcraft franchise attempted to chart a new course with Witchcraft VIII: Salem’s Ghost.
In this movie, we meet an entirely new group of people who manage to raise the spirit of another dead and pissed off warlock. Trying to repair their strained marriage, Sonny (Lee Grober) and Mary Anne (Kim Kopf) have moved to Massachusetts and have purchased a house that’s existed since colonial times. Sonny and Mary Anne celebrate their first night in the house by getting covered in chocolate. That’s one way to fix a marriage, I guess.
They soon meet their pushy new neighbors, Mitch (David Wells) and Gayle (Anthoni Stewart). Mitch is so helpful that he even takes it upon himself to try to fix a leaky pipe in the basement. However, when Mitch busts a hole in the wall, it not only leads to the basement getting flooded by a strange red light but Mitch also ends up possessed by the spirit of the warlock who previously owned the property.
Other than the presence of a dead warlock and all of the usual softcore sex scenes (which, in the 90s, were pretty much a mainstay of any direct-to-video horror film franchise), there’s nothing in Witchcraft VIII to really link it to any of the previous Witchcraft films. (I did read that the house in Witchcraft VIII also appears in one of the other films but I’m too lazy and too sick of the Witchcraft films to go back and look for it.) There’s no Will Spanner and no Detectives Lutz or Garner. Instead, the entire film owes more to the Amityville franchise than the previous Witchcrafts. Apparently, when the film went into production, it wasn’t even intended to be a Witchcraft film but instead, it was added to the franchise after filming was completed.
With all that in mind, Witchcraft VIII is not that bad, especially as far as low-budget, direct-to-video horror is concerned. It doesn’t waste any time getting the action started and the actors actually do the best that they can with the material they’ve been given. The dead warlock is played Jack van Landingham, who comes across as if he’s auditioning for a role in a pirate film, which is exactly the right approach to take when you’re appearing in a film like this. Even the terrible special effects are more likely to inspire nostalgia than contempt. Witchcraft VIII is dumb fun, even if it doesn’t include Will Spanner. In fact, it’s nice to watch people deal with a warlock without having to listen to Will complaining all the time.
Financially, Witchcraft VIII failed to do as well as the previous Witchcraft films, which led to the end of plans to continue the franchise with a series of stand-alone films. Instead, despite being dead, Will Spanner would return for Witchcraft IX.
Game Review: Minor Arcana (2020, Jack Sanderson Thwaite)
This game is an entrant in 2020 Interactive Fiction Competition. All of the entries can be found here.
Minor Arcana is probably not the first game to center around Tarot cards but it is probably the first one to actually be written from the point of view of the cards themselves. You are the cards and, as you wait to reveal your next fortune, you think about your past and maybe your future. Who created you? Who gave you power and why? Are you going to help the people who seek your insight or are you going to destroy them? Are you a force of chaos or a force of peace? These are the decisions that you, as the player, can make as you point and click your way through the story.
Like a lot of works done with Twine, Minor Arcana is more of a short story than a game. While it’s true that you control several elements of the story and that your decisions will determine the type of story that’s told, it would be a mistake for anyone to play Minor Arcana thinking that it’s going to be a traditional IF game where you solve puzzles and examine rooms and decide whether to move north, west, or, if you’re really lucky, northeast. Instead, Modern Arcana is more of a well-written mood piece, designed to make the player meditate on issues of fate, fortune, and the future.
Horror Scenes That I Love: The Mark of Satan Is Upon Them from The Witchfinder General
Today’s horror scene that I love is from 1968’s The Witchfinder General, a film that featured Vincent Price in one of his greatest roles.
Book Review: The Eternal Enemy by Christopher Pike
The 1993 YA novel, The Eternal Enemy, starts out with a typical Christopher Pike situation.
Rela is a teenager. Rela is adopted. Rela doesn’t know much about her past. Rela has a crush on my boy whom she’s too shy to ask out but luckily she has a confident best friend who is willing to do it for her. She also has another male admirer, who she just considers to be a friend. It’s all standard Pike.
However, the twist of this particularly novel is that Rela has a VCR and apparently, the VCR can tell the future! Whenever she tries to record an old horror movie, she instead ends up with a recording of a future news broadcast. At first, Rela uses this to her advantage. She makes money betting on a football game. She heads to Vegas to make even more money and then she goes to San Francisco and saves the lives of a bunch of window washers! Other than offering up a crisp picture, allowing viewers to easily skip around in a movie, and not eventually becoming an obsolete artifact of a past age, there’s absolutely nothing that this VCR can’t do.
However, even while Rela is having fun making money and saving lives, she’s also having disturbing dreams which seem to indicate that there are strange things hidden in her past. (Well, of course. It’s a Christopher Pike book.) A mysterious and creepy older man appears to be stalking her. Maybe she should stop messing with the VCR….
Then she sees a news report about her own death.
The Eternal Enemy is one of Pike’s more uneven books. It starts out nicely, with the promise of YA horror, but then it turns into this sort of Looper/Terminator sci-fi thing. As the story reveals more about the actual identities of Rela and the creepy old man, it gets bogged down trying to explain how everything works and, if you’re not already into science fiction, it becomes a bit of chore to read. It’s hard not to get annoyed that the book starts with an interesting premise and then kind of waves it all way by using the “It’s science!” excuse.
Probably the most interesting thing about The Eternal Enemy is that the entire narrative revolves around the mystical and complex powers of a VCR. If only Rela had been born a decade later, she wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.
International Horror Review: Lips of Blood (dir by Jean Rollin)
Few directors were as obsessed with memory as the great French filmmaker Jean Rollin and the 1975 cinematic memory poem, Lips of Blood, is one of his most personal works.
Frederic (played by Jean-Loup Philippe, a frequent Rollin collaborator) is at a reception for the launch of a new perfume. After discussing how certain fragrances can bring back subjective memories of the past, Frederic notices a poster hanging on the wall. The poster is a photograph of an old castle sitting on the beach. As Frederic stares at the poster, he has a vision of himself as a child, approaching the same castle and meeting a young woman named Jennifer (Annie Belle). Jennifer, who was apparently unable to go beyond the castle’s gates, allowed Frederic to get some sleep in the castle. When Frederic woke up, he left the castle but he promised Jennifer that he would return and that he would help her to leave the castle.
Years later, Frederic is haunted by the vision. He’s not sure if it’s dream or if it’s something that really happened. When he discusses it with his mother (Nathalie Perrey), she insists that it was just a dream and that Jennifer doesn’t exist. Even when Frederic says that he can’t remember anything about his childhood, his mother insists that he’s just imagining things.
But when Frederic starts to have visions of Jennifer beckoning him to come find her, is he imagining things or is she really trying to contact him? When she leads Frederic to a cemetery, is Frederic going mad or is Jennifer trying to tell him something? And, if this is all just in Frederic’s mind, why is he being followed by two mysterious girls who both have fangs and a taste for blood? Why are strangers trying to kill him? Even when Frederic is ruled to be mad and forcefully taken to an insane asylum, he remains obsessed with returning to the beach and finding that castle….
Lips of Blood has all the typical elements of a Rollin film. Yes, there are vampires. Yes, there is an old castle and yes, it’s on the same beach where it’s speculated that Rollin himself spent most of his childhood. (That beach makes an appearance in nearly every Rollin film.) Yes, the imagery is frequently sensual and erotically charged. And yes, the film plays out as its own dreamlike pace. Rollin is often described as being a director of vampire films but, at heart, Rollin was a surrealist and each one of his films creates its own unique world. The world that Rollin creates in Lips of Blood is a rather melancholy one, one tinged with love, regret, and existential angst. Frederic is wealthy and successful and leads what most people would consider to be a glamorous lifestyle. Yet, he’s empty. He’s haunted by the past and a promise that he failed to keep.
Indeed, throughout the film, there’s a palpable yearning for a simpler and more innocent world. It’s present in every frame of Lips of Blood. When Frederic visits the photographer who took the picture of the castle, the walls of her studio are decorated with vaguely political images, reminding us that the modern world can be a frightening and confusing place. The world is full of people who are not only threatened by what Frederic saw in the castle but also by Frederic’s refusal to share their fear. Frederic refuses to conform and therefore, society conspires to destroy not just him but also the glimpse he got into a world beyond our own. By the end of the film, as he and another talk about getting in a coffin and allowing themselves to be swept out to sea in the hope of finding an isolated island, it’s impossible not to hope that they make it.
Lips of Blood is one of Rollin’s best and most personal films. Never forget it.
4 Shots From 4 Michael Reeves Films: Intrusion, The She Beast, The Sorcerers, The Witchfinder General
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!
This October, we’ve been using 4 Shots From 4 Films to pay tribute to some of our favorite horror directors! Today would have been the 77th birthday of Michael Reeves, the brilliant British director who died of an accidental drug overdose in 1969, when he was only 25 years old. It only makes sense that today, we honor Michael Reeves with….
4 Shots From 4 Films
Intrusion (1961, dir by Michael Reeves)
The She Beast (1966, dir by Michael Reeves)
The Sorcerers (1967, dir by Michael Reeves)
The Witchfinder General (1968, dir by Michael Reeves)
Through the Shattered Lens 