Or maybe you don’t. Sometimes, I forget that not everyone can read my mind. Anyway, I used to do a weekly post of my favorite grindhouse trailers. Eventually, it went from being a weekly thing to being an occasional thing, largely due to the fact that there’s only so many trailers available on YouTube. Now, Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers is something that I usually only bring out on a holiday.
Like today!
So, here are 6 trailers for the last week of October!
Last House On The Left (1972)
“Two girls from the suburbs. Going to the city to have …. good time….” Wow, thanks for explaining that, Mr. Creepy Narrator Dude. That classic tag line about how to avoid fainting would be imitated time and again for …. well, actually, it’s still being imitated. This was Wes Craven’s 1st film and also one of the most influential horror films of all time.
2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Speaking of influential horror movies, the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is almost scarier than the film itself!
3. Lisa Lisa (1977)
I have actually never watched this film but I love the trailer. Can you guess why?
4. Ruby (1977)
Ruby, starring Piper Laurie! I’m going to assume this was after Piper Laurie played Margaret White in Carrie. Don’t take your love to town, Ruby.
5. Jennifer (1978)
Jennifer was another film that pretty obviously inspired by Carrie. In this one, Jennifer has psychic control over snakes. So, don’t mess with Jennifer.
6. The Visitor (1979)
Finally, this Italian Omen rip-off features Franco Nero as Jesus, so it’s automatically the greatest film ever made.
At this point, there’s been so many zombie films that I’m a bit burned out on the whole genre. I can still get enthusiastic for zombie films that attempt to put a new spin on the material and I still love the classic zombie films of the past. But, for the most part, new zombie films just leave me bored.
2018’s Day Of The Dead: Bloodline is technically a remake of George Romero’s Day of the Dead but, then again, almost every American zombie film that’s come out over the past twenty or so years has been a remake of something that Romero did earlier. The whole idea of an isolated military compound where soldiers plot to kill zombies (or rotters, as they’re called here) while scientists try to understand and maybe cure them has been done to death. Once again, we’ve got a fascist army guy (Jeff Gum) and, once again, we’ve got a dedicated scientist who doesn’t like taking orders from the military. The scientist is named Zoe (Sophie Skelton). She was a medical student when the zombie apocalypse began. Now, five years later, she’s trying to find a way to end it and blah blah blah, wake me when it’s over.
A good deal of the film centers around Max (Jonathon Schaech). In life, Max was a pervy stalker who was so obsessed with Zoe that he craved her name into his arm. In death, he’s a rotter who has retained some of his personality and bits of memory. For instance, he’s still obsessed with Zoe and spends a lot of time saying, “You are mine, you are mine….” However, Max’s blood potentially holds the cure for the zombie plague. And, to be honest, that’s kind of an interesting premise. In life, Max was the worst that humanity had to offer. In death, he might hold the secret for saving the world. Even as a rotter, he remains obsessed with Zoe and Zoe has to decide whether or not to destroy the man who tried to rape her or to keep him functional for the good of the world.
But …. eh. I mean, it’s intriguing but the film doesn’t really do much with it. It just becomes another zombie movie with a bunch of hardass soldiers and some scientists who don’t understand why the soldiers keep shooting everything. Who cares? We’ve already seen all of this in a hundred other movies, not to mention on shows like The Walking Dead. Neither the script nor the characters in this film are interesting enough to really justify seeing it again.
It’s same old song and dance. In the 60s, a hippie named Sid (Joey Belladonna) is accidentally killed during a hazing gone wrong. In the 90s, during another fraternity hazing, Sid (now played by Will Kempe, who, the same year that Pledge Night was released, played Rick Von Slonecker in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, a film that about as different from Pledge Night as a apple is from a banana) emerges from a toilet and kills everyone almost everyone at the frat house. His name is now Acid Sid now and he has more one-liners than Freddy Krueger. “That’s for Spiro Agnew!” he says as he dispatches one victim who probably didn’t even know who Spiro Agnew was. Other deaths include death by castration, an egg beater, and, of course, a radio dropped in a bath tub. Pledge Night is interesting in that it does occasionally have a sense of humor about itself. It starts out as a frat comedy and there is actually more time spent on the absurdity of pledges being hazed than on them being killed. Once Sid does arrive, it becomes your standard Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off, albeit one where the majority of the victims are male jocks instead of the usual victims who show up in slasher films. Most of the frat boys are fairly obnoxious so you’ll be on Sid’s side the entire time. The film certainly is.
If Pledge Night gets any attention today, it is probably because of a mix of Metropolitan fans who want to see Rick Von Slonecker kill frat bros and Anthrax fans who have heard that Joey Belladonna is in the movie. Belladonna is only in the movie for a few minutes, just long enough to get submerged in acid as a part of absurdly cruel fraternity prank. Anthrax also provided the film’s forgettable soundtrack.
Pledge Night is a typical 90s college slasher, clearly influenced more by Nightmare on Elm Street than Friday the 13th. If the movie had been made a few years later, it could have taken full advantage of the self-referential style of horror that was introduced to the slasher genre by Scream and Pledge Night probably would have been a better movie. Pledge Night does have a sense of humor about itself and the slasher genre but it often seems to be held back by the requirements of also trying to satisfy what horror fans were expecting to get in 1990. By trying to toe the line between horror and comedy, Pledge Night is never scary enough to work as horror or funny enough to work as comedy.
The time is Halloween, circa 1984. You are a newspaper reporter who has been invited to the annual Halloween costume party that is being thrown by your old friend, Veronica Ashcroft-Wellman. You show up, eager to find a story. You are dressed as a cowboy, complete with a lariat and a gun belt. Shortly after you arrive, Veronica goes to her office. Not long afterwards, Veronica is discovered dead. Around her neck is your lariat. Lying near her body is a bullet from your gun belt. You’re not only a suspect. In the eyes of the police, you’re the only suspect!
Infocom’s third and final murder mystery followed Deadline and The Witness. Just like those two games, you have a limited amount of time to explore your surroundings, find clues, and talk to the other people at the party. Run out of time and you’ll once again be approached by the trusted Sgt. Duffy. This time, though, Duffy is coming to take you to jail. The stakes have never been higher and the mystery has never been more complex. Not only is the house bigger than the houses in Deadline and The Witness but there’s also many more suspects, all of whom are in costume and all of whom move around at their own free will. Clues are not difficult to find but it can be a struggle to not only figure out how they link together but to also the convince the investigative detective that they are important. This is not an easy game to win. I played it several times and failed to solve the mystery every time. Finally, I did what anyone would have done in my situation.
I cheated.
I found a walk-through for the game and, following it step-by-step, I solved the murder and cleared my name. If I hadn’t used that walk-through, I probably never would have solved the case. This is not a game for casual text adventurers. This is for people who want to totally immerse themselves in a world and then spend hours working out a plan of attack.
It’s also an elegantly written game, with its fair share of Easter eggs for experienced gamers. Just count the number of guests who have come to the party costumed like characters from other Inform games. This game is tough but rewarding, even if you do end up having to cheat to win.
I love Craig T. Nelson’s delivery of the headstones speech. James Karen is staring at him the whole time like he’s thinking, “Is anyone going to say ‘cut?'”
On January 24th, 1989, Ted Bundy — then America’s most notorious serial killer — was executed by the state of Florida. Before he died, he confessed to all of his crimes and then gave an interview where he blamed it all on an addiction to pornography. It was all a part of a scheme to avoid the electric chair but it didn’t work and he was put to death while thousands stood outside the prison and cheered.
Or was he?
The 1992 novel, The Stranger Returns, suggests that Bundy — who was once as notorious for his ability to escape custody as for his murderous rampage — escaped one last time. A duplicate was sent to the electric chair while Bundy made his escape. I know that probably made no sense when you read it in this review. It really doesn’t make much sense in the book either. But I guess things had to start somewhere.
Now believed to be dead, Bundy is free to change his identity, romance a young mother, and once again resume his murderous ways. Only one man suspects that Bundy may have cheated the executioner, the father of one of his victims. While he tries to get someone to listen to his theory about Bundy being alive, Bundy continues to move across the landscape like a dark shadow of death.
Earlier this year, it seemed like the entire nation briefly went Bundy crazy. There was a documentary on Netflix. Zac Efron starred in a movie. It seem like almost every true crime show around did at least one episode on Bundy this year. 30 years after his execution, Ted Bundy was trending on twitter, a macabre testament to the power of celebrity.
I found myself thinking about Bundy’s morbid fame as I read The Stranger Returns. The book was well-written and it was a quick read but it was still a bit troublesome that the book was essentially a novel starring Ted Bundy. Too often, the book treated him like some sort of Hannibal Lecter-type character whereas Bundy was actually, by most accounts, an impotent drunk who was never as handsome, charming, or intelligent as he is frequently made out to be. What is this power that a loser like Bundy holds over the popular imagination?
The Stranger Returns is a testament to that power. I mean, how many other real-life serial killers have starred in a novel? That’s usually an honor reserved for vampire hunters like Abraham Lincoln. To be honest, I probably would have liked this book better if it had been about someone who thought he was Ted Bundy as opposed to being Ted Bundy himself. In fact, I probably would have enjoyed the book if it had featured Bundy’s ghost or if Bundy had used some other supernatural check to come back to life. But making Bundy into some sort of criminal genius was just a bit too icky for me.
Incidentally, I found this book in my aunt’s paperback collection. According to her, she found the book being sold in the “true crime” section of Half-Price Books. Fortunately, it’s not true crime. Ted Bundy is dead and good riddance.
Louise (Alexandra Pic) and Henriette (Isabelle Teboul) are two orphaned sisters. They’re both blind and, as the nuns at the orphanage explains to Dr. Dennary (Bernard Charnacé), innocent to the ways of the world. When Dr. Dennary adopts them, everyone tells him that he’s made the right choice. Never have there been two sisters as sweet and beatific as Louise and Henriette.
Of course, what neither the nuns nor Dr. Dennary know is that, when the sun goes down, Louise and Henriette’s vision returns. They sneak out of Dennary’s home, exploring the nearby cemeteries and meeting other beings who can only move freely during the night. The sisters tells each other stories of their past and we see memories that seem to suggest that they have been alive for centuries. But, the sisters also often talk about how they can’t remember their past and it’s suggested that their “memories” are just stories that they’ve created to give themselves a history that they don’t otherwise possess.
At times, you wonder if they’re even sisters. Perhaps they’re just two vampires who manged to find each other at some point over the past few centuries. Still, you can never doubt the strength of their bond. When one of them is weak from a lack of blood, the other allows her to drink from her neck. When they find themselves being pursued by angry villagers, they refuse to be separated. Even if it means dying, at least they’ll die together.
Throughout the film, the orphans eagerly await for night to fall so that they can see and sneak out of the house. But, at the same time, they know that their time is limited. When the sun rises, they will again lose their sight. These vampires don’t need to sleep in coffins. In fact, they don’t need to sleep at all. But they need the night to see the world around them.
Unfortunately, Dr. Dennary may be kind-hearted but he’s still not happy about the idea of the two orphans sneaking out of his house during the night. When the sisters go to drastic means to ensure their freedom, they find themselves in even greater danger….
First released in 1997, The Two Orphan Vampires is perhaps my favorite Jean Rollin film. Rollin, himself, once described it was being one of his best films because it was a film that told a story that went beyond his own personal obsessions. That may be true but this is definitely a Jean Rollin film. It’s not just the use of the vampirism or the fact that frequent Rollin co-star Brigitte Lahaie has a cameo. It’s that the film centers not just on the supernatural but also the way that our memories and our fantasies can provide comfort in an uncertain world, which was a favorite Rollin theme. Whether their memories are true or not is not important. What’s important is that the two sisters share them.
In typical Rollin fashion, the movie unfolds at its own deceptively leisurely pace. The imagery is frequently dream-like, with the orphan vampires discovering an underworld of paranormal creatures. The film also reflect Rollin’s love of the old serials, with frequent cliffhangers. By the final third of the movie, you can already guess what’s going to end up happening to the two orphan vampires but I still had tears in my eyes by the time the end credits started to roll up the screen.
For whatever reason, Two Orphan Vampires seems to get a mixed reaction from several Rollin fans, who perhaps are disappointed that it’s considerably less bloody and/or sordid as some of Rollin’s other vampire films. The film is one of Rollin’s more contemplative films and it has more in common with The Night of the Hunted and The Iron Rosethan some of Rollin’s other vampire films. That said, Two Orphan Vampires is my personal favorite of Rollin’s filmography. It’s a film that bring me to tears every time that I watch it.
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’re using 4 Shots From 4 Films to look at some of the best years that horror has to offer!
There are a lot of vampires and other cursed beings wandering through the 1994 film adaptation of Interview With A Vampire but Claudia (Kisten Dunst) is the only one for whom I have any sympathy.
Louis (Brad Pitt) may be the main character and the vampire giving the interview but it’s hard to have much sympathy for him. He’s just such a whiny little bitch. The Louisiana aristocrat is transformed into a vampire in 1791 and basically spends the next 200 years complaining about it. You want to have sympathy for him but sometimes, you just have to accept stuff and move on. It doesn’t help that Brad Pitt, who has always given his best performances when cast as men of action, is somewhat miscast as the effete and self-loathing Louis.
Lestat (Tom Cruise) may be the most charismatic of the vampires but he’s never exactly sympathetic. He turns Louis into a vampire and then spends years following him across Louisiana and Europe. Lestat is decadence personified and he never whines and, as a result, he’s far more enjoyable to spend time with than Louis. Cruise is as perfectly cast as Lestat as Pitt was miscat as Louis. Lestat is a star and Tom Cruise has always been one of the few true movie stars around. That said, Lestat is still far too self-indulgent and thoughtlessly self-destructive to really be a sympathetic character. Instead, he’s like Lord Byron, destroying happy families but at least writing a poem about it afterwards.
Armand (Antonio Banderas) runs the Théâtre des Vampires in Paris and he becomes Louis’s companion for a time. Louis is charismatic because he’s played by Antonio Banderas but, ultimately, he proves to be a rather ineffectual leader. Armand puts on a good show but, in the end, that’s all he has to offer. He’s a bit shallow, despite all of the theatrics.
Santiago (Stephen Rea) isn’t sympathetic at all but at least he really seems to get into being evil. Good for him!
And then there’s Daniel Malloy (Christian Slater), the journalist who conducts the interview with Louis. In the film, Malloy starts out as a cynic, the type of writer who theatrically pours himself a glass of whiskey before dramatically turning to his typewriter. All he needs is a fedora with a press pass tucked into the headband. It’s difficult to take him seriously.
But then there’s Claudia. Poor Claudia. In the book, Claudia was only five years old when she was turned into a vampire. In the movie, she’s played by 12 year-old Kirsten Dunst and it’s left ambiguous as to how young Claudia actually was when Lestat turned her into a vampire, though it’s still made clear that was too young to be cursed without her consent. Claudia becomes Lestat and Louis’s companion. Louis treats her like the daughter that he will never have. Lestart treats her like an apprentice, teaching her how to kill. Claudia grows up but is forever trapped in the body of a child. It’s impossible not to feel sorry for Claudia, who never asked to become a vampire, who indeed was just turned so that Lestat could use her as a pawn to keep control of Louis. Claudia spends a good deal of the movie in a rage and who can blame her?
Interview With A Vampire is a messy and uneven film. Brad Pitt is miscast and the whole film is oddly paced, with the New Orleans scenes taking too long and the Paris scenes going by almost too quickly. At the same time, Tom Cruise brings the proper joie de mort to the role of Lestat and Claudia and her fate will simply break your heart. Interview With The Vampire is not the best vampire movie that I’ve ever seen but it definitely has its pleasures.
Raymond (Dean Stockwell) has just escaped from a mental hospital and he has only one thing on his mind. Raymond wants revenge. Having looked over the past events of his life, Raymond has figured out that things started to go downhill for him when he failed a test in high school. He blames his failure on his old teacher, Mary Bloomquist (Jane Wyman).
At the same time that Raymond is escaping, Mary is planning her retirement. She’s decided that she no longer wants to teach. The job just doesn’t seem worth it anymore. But Raymond has other ideas. Raymond wants her to give him the same test that he failed ten years before. And this time, Raymond wants her to pass him or else.
The Failing of Raymond is a made-for-TV movie from 1971 and it features a good performance from Jane Wyman and a great one from Dean Stockwell. The film ultimately hinges on one question. Did Raymond really fail that test or did Mary fail Raymond?
Through the Shattered Lens 