Apparently, the world’s ending but, fortunately, your boyfriend’s built an underground bunker!
Unfortunately, you now have to live down there with them and I don’t care how much you love someone, you still occasionally need some alone time. Perhaps if he had built a bigger bunker, you wouldn’t be going as stir-crazy but, as usual, no one asked you how big the bunker should be. Instead, they just said, “Get down there in case the world ends!”
And so, you flee. You break out. You confront the brave new world that is rising from the ashes of the old one.
Of course, a few weeks later, you lose all your hair and you die a slow and agonizing death from radiation poisoning. Fortunately, your boyfriend will probably die too. That’ll teach him to try to put you in a corner.
Anyway, this is an absolutely great video, both wonderfully directed and acted. That’s Cori Benesh and Hill Hudson as the couple in the bunker and they’re so empathetic and believable that you really do cringe when you realize how radioactive the sand between their toes probably is.
I think it’s fairly safe to say that wax museums are inherently creepy.
I mean, don’t get me wrong. If I see a wax museum off of the side of the road, I’m definitely going to visit it, if just so I can find the Hall of Presidents and give the finger to FDR. (It’s a long story.) But that said, wax museums are definitely not some place where you would want to get accidentally locked in.
Well, in tonight’s episode of Suspense, that’s exactly what happens to one unfortunate college student. AGCK!
This episode originally aired on October 4th, 1949 and it has a very impressive cast that will be familiar to anyone who has ever spent a few hours watching TCM: Anne Francis, Hume Cronyn, Ray Waltson, Evelyn Varden, and Mike Kellin are all featured.
So, here’s the thing about Lisa, a horror-thriller from 1990 that shows up occasionally on This TV.
It’s got a great title.
Seriously, this film has got one of the greatest titles of all time. I would almost say that you really don’t even have to pay attention to the movie because the title itself is so perfect that the plot doesn’t even matter. The only thing that would make this title even better would be if they had added a “Marie” to the end of it but oh well. You can’t have everything.
This is a movie about a girl named Lisa and, speaking as a girl named Lisa, I have to say that it’s incredibly true to life. Lisa (Staci Keanan) is a smart and amazingly talented 14 years old and not alllowed to date by her incredibly overprotective mother, Katherine (Cheyl Holland). So, instead of dating, Lisa spends her time stalking a serial killer. See, Katherine thought she was protecting her daughter but instead, she’s only inspired her to take an even greater risk. That’s why you need to let the Lisas in your life do what they want.
Admittedly, Lisa doesn’t know that Richard (D.W. Moffett) is a serial killer. She doesn’t even know that he owns a successful restaurant. All she knows is that he looks like a model and he drives a nice car and it’s fun to follow him around Venice Beach. When she jots down his license plate numbers, she hacks the DMV to get his name, address, and phone number. Soon, Lisa is calling him up and having flirtatious conversations with him.
It’s all good fun, except for the fact that Richard is also known as The Candelight Killer and he’s got a thing about calling people and leaving them messages right before he kills them. It’s all very ritualized. For instance, it’s very important that his victims be in the process of listening to his message when he kills them. To be honest, though, that sounds like he’s taking a lot of risks. I mean, what if someone came home and didn’t immediately check their messages? Would Richard just have to hide behind the drapes for hours until the did? Of course, Richard would be even more out of luck if this movie were made today because who has an answering machine anymore?
Anyway, Richard is obsessed with discovering who is stalking him and Katherine is obsessed with keeping Lisa out of danger and Lisa just wants to actually be allowed to full celebrate having the greatest name ever. Did you know, for instance, that Lisa may have started out as a shortened form of Elizabeth but that it became so popular on its own that it was one of the most popular names in both the United States and the United Kingdom for several decades? And, even though it’s no longer in the top ten as far as names are concerned, being named Lisa is still one of the greatest honors that can be bestowed upon anyone? Lisa means God’s Promise by the way. And….
What? Oh yeah, the movie.
Well, anyway, it all leads to pretty much what you’re expecting it to lead to. Plotwise, the movie may be predictable but the Staci Keanan, Cheryl Ladd, and D.W. Moffett all gives good performances and director Gary Sherman keeps the action moving at a steady pace. It’s dumb but entertaining, kinda like cinematic junk food. Plus, it has a great title. What more do you need?
Because her husband’s a dick who spends too much time working and not enough time taking the day off, Cassie (Mia Sara) grabs her five year-old daughter, Samantha (Kayla Buglewicz) and heads off for her sister’s house. When Cassie stops at a gas station to fill up the car, she’s spotted by seedy Roy Scudder (Burt Reynolds!). Roy puts down his cigar long enough to tamper with her car. When it breaks down a few miles down the role, Roy drives up and offers Cassie and Samantha a ride back to his place, where he can fix her car or where she can at least call for hep. Not realizing that she’s in a direct-to-video horror movie, Cassie accepts.
Big mistake! Roy’s wife, Georgina (Angie Dickinson!), has not been the same since the mysterious death of her son and Georgina and Roy’s other child, Jill (Candace Huston, daughter of the film’s director and granddaughter of John Huston), needs a playmate. Roy has decided that Samantha fits the bill. Cassie is locked in a room while Samantha is turned into Jill’s slave and Roy deals with the angry ghost of his abusive father (William Hickey!).
You have to feel bad for Burt Reynolds. He made this film at a time when his career was in decline. His TV show was no longer on the air. Boogie Nights was still two years away. The man had bills to pay. Can you blame Burt for accepting any role that came his way, especially if it meant a chance to co-star with Angie Dickinson and be directed by the son of John Huston? Reynolds was famous for hating even his good films so you can only imagine what he must have thought about The Maddening. Fortunately, since Burt was playing a total psycho in The Maddening, he could at least channel his feeling into the role. Throughout ever minute of The Maddening, Burt is totally and thoroughly unhinged and angry in the way that only the former number one star in America could be upon having to settle for a role in a direct-to-video horror film. He yells at his ghost father. He slits throats. He beats people into unconsciousness. He does everything that a normal movie psycho does but, when he does it, it’s even more memorable because he’s Burt Reynolds. Burt and Angie Dickinson playing the type of role that Bette Davis would have played for Robert Aldrich in the 60s are not just the main reasons to watch this movie. They’re the only reasons.
This was Burt’s only horror film and it’s too bad that it couldn’t have been a better one. But if it helped Burt keep the lights on during the lean years of the early 90s, good.
This piece of interactive fiction is a strange game. I’m not quite sure how else to describe it.
The premise is a simple one. Each night, you try to sleep. Every night, you are awoken by someone or something pounding on your door. Every. Single. Night. In Choose Your Own Adventure fashion, you are given a set of options. Do you try to go back to sleep or do you go to the door? Do you look through the peephole or do you return to bed? Open the door or hide? Left or right? At every step, you’re given the option to explore further or to try to return to safety. The problem is that if you make the wrong choice, you might make it back to your apartment in one piece but you’re still going to be woken up the following night. Make the right choice and something bad might still happen to you but at least you’ll no longer be woken up in the middle of the night.
What makes the game so strange is the way that it constantly loops back to the beginning, until you finally make the “right” choices. The only thing that changes is the number that lets you know how many nights you’ve been woken up by someone pounding at your door. Is someone really knocking at your door or are you stuck in some sort of time loop or permanent dream state? Having played the game and gotten to the end, I am still not sure.
The game itself is well-written and vivid enough to justify its placement in the horror genre. It can be played here.
Last night, I was so excited about watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown that I even missed the first 30 minutes of the World Series so that I could watch it! (Go Astros!)
I really love It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. (I even wrote about it!) There are a lot of scenes that I love in this special but I think my favorite moment is when Lucy, Charlie Brown, Pigpen and the rest are trick or treating. I love the spooky music in the background. I love that almost everyone’s a ghost and that Charlie Brown had trouble with his costume. And I especially love that, if you watch for it, you can actually see the rocks getting thrown into Charlie Brown’s bag.
Someday, Charlie Brown will get real candy on Halloween and Linus will see the Great Pumpkin. Until then, happy early Halloween!
Up until a few years ago, every episode of the original Twilight Zone was available on YouTube.
That always made me really happy in October because, really, what better way to end each day of the Halloween month than by watching a classic episode of The Twilight Zone, right? To Serve Man, The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, It’s A Good Life, that episode with William Shatner freaking out on the plane and that other one with the guy entering his bedroom only to discover a lion waiting to eat him, these were all great episodes to watch in October!
Sadly, once Hulu started carrying Twilight Zone, all of the old episodes got yanked off of YouTube. And now that the Twilight Zone is on Netflix, there’s no way the show will ever show up YouTube again. We can still watch the episodes, of course. Even if you don’t have Netflix for some reason, SyFy does regular marathons of the original show and, of course, there’s the Jordan Peele revival for those who watch old episodes of the Twilight Zone and say to themselves, “This is good but I just wish it was a little more heavy-handed.”
Well, I may not be able to embed any episodes this October but I can recommend that you order Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion, which is an indispensable guide to the original show. Every episode is covered, with credits, plot synopsis, and anecdotes about the production. Since a lot of important directors, actors, and writers did at least a little bit of work on Twilight Zone, the anecdotes are all very interesting and very much worth reading. Even more importantly, Zicree takes a look at the life of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling and also some of the key people involved behind the scenes. The tragic story of Charles Beaumont will move you to tears.
So, if you’re a fan of the original show, you need this book! Order it and enjoy!
1971’s Requiem for A Vampire opens with a car chase.
In one car, there’s a male driver and then there’s Michelle (Mirelle Dargent) and her girlfriend Marie (Marie-Pierre Castel). Who is pursing them? Who is shooting at them? Why are both of the girls wearing clown makeup? These are all good questions and they’re never clearly answered in the film. We shouldn’t be surprised about that, however. This is a Jean Rollin film, which means that the imagery is far more important than the storyline. In the end, the girls are wearing clown makeup because Rollin often worked clown imagery into his films. And they’re fleeing together because Rollin’s films often celebrated female friendship. As for why they’re being chased, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear some mention of a murder but it’s never made clear who was murdered or why or even by whom. It’s not important. This is a Jean Rollin film. You either get it or you don’t.
After the car crashes, the girls wash off their clown makeup, change clothes, and set the car on fire. They also set the driver on fire. They claim that the driver was killed in the car accident but the actor playing the driver visibly twitches while they pour the gasoline on him. Was that simply a mistake on the actor’s part or did Michelle and Marie essentially burn a man alive? Does it really matter? Michelle and Marie survived, that’s what’s important.
Marie and Michelle walk through the French countryside, stealing food and avoiding detection. As always, Rollin’s camera loves the the beauty of the countryside. They explore the forest. They go down to the cemetery. Michelle nearly gets buried alive. It’s a dangerous world out there.
Eventually, they stumble across a gothic castle and, as you might guess from the title and the fact that this is a Jean Rollin film, the castle is full of perverse vampires who take Marie and Michelle prisoner. It’s here that film reaches a level of peak Rollin as we’re confronted with scenes of dungeons, dark hallways, and vampires transforming into bats while (literally) going down on their victims. The castle is ruled over by a vampire woman who plays an organ and a male vampire who wants to use Marie and Michelle to continue his bloodline, specifically because neither has ever been with a man. Michelle is totally happy with the idea of living forever but Marie is a bit less enthused and starts looking around for a random male.
What’s interesting is that, for a vampire film, the vampires themselves are largely red herrings. For that matter, so is the car chase and the cemetery and almost everything else that Michelle and Marie have to deal with over the course of the film. Instead, the film is really about their relationship and whether or not it will survive all of the challenges that it faces. Marie and Michelle may both have differing views on whether or not to become a vampire but what’s the most important is that nothing be allowed to come between the bond that they share. This was a theme to which Rollin would often return. Dargent and Castel are both perfectly cast as Marie and Michelle, who reminded me of myself and my BFF. If I ever get into a car chase while wearing clown makeup, I would definitely want my best friend at my side. She makes stuff like that fun.
Especially during the film’s early scenes. Requiem for a Vampire plays out almost like a silent film. The dialogue is kept to a minimum and the emphasis is put on the imagery with Rollin emphasizing the beauty of the countryside and the stately menace of the imposing castle. The film is a visual poem, a celebration of friendship, and one of Rollin’s best.
As the 1999 film Stir of Echoes shows, ghost don’t only haunt the rich and famous. Sometimes, they haunt ordinary guys who live paycheck to paycheck and just want to be able to take some pride in having a home that’s free of secrets and evil spirits. “Ghosts, they’re a real pain the ass sometimes, y’know what I’m saying?”
For instance, in Stir of Echoes, Kevin Bacon plays Tom Witzky. Tom is a phone lineman who lives in Chicago. Tom wishes that he could have been something more than a phone lineman. He wishes that his band could have taken off and he could have been a rock star. But, now Tom’s reached his 40s, he’s got a wife named Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), a son named Jake (Zachary David Kope), and another child on the way. So, he works hard and then he comes home and he has a beer and sometimes, he might go to a high school football game. It’s not a glamorous life but at least it’s something with which Tom can be happy.
Of course, then Tom makes the mistake of going to a party that’s being given by his friend, Frank (Kevin Dunn). When Maggie’s sister-in-law, Lisa (Illeana Douglas), says that she knows how to hypnotize people, Tom scoffs and challenges her to hypnotize him. Lisa does so and, the next thing that Tom knows, he’s sitting there with tears in his eyes and everyone laughing at him. Even though it was only a few seconds to Tom, he was apparently under hypnosis for quite a while. He talked about being bullied as a child. He stuck a safety pin through his hand. He even accepted Lisa’s suggestion that he “try to be more open-minded.” Upset over being revealed to be vulnerable, Tom leaves the party.
Tom soon learns what it means, in his case, to be more open-minded. Soon, Tom is hearing voices and seeing what appears to be the ghost of a teenage girl in his house. He starts to have disturbing and violent visions. When Tom tries to pretend that nothing’s wrong, Jake tells him that it’s okay because he can see the ghost as well.
Growing obsessed with his visions, Tom is soon tearing his own house apart in an attempt to discover what the spirits are trying to tell him. Is Tom truly seeing ghosts or, as so many in the neighborhood suspect, is he losing his mind?
When I first started rewatching Stir of Echoes for this review, I have to admit that I was a little bit concerned. Kevin Bacon is one of the most likable actors on the planet and this film is usually cited as featuring one of his best performances but, in the first few scenes, he seemed to be almost going a little overboard with the whole “I’m just a working class guy” routine. But, as the film progressed, I actually came to realize that Kevin Bacon was giving a brilliant performance. The fact that he played Tom as being so rational and almost boring during the first half of the movie made it all the more effective when he started tearing his house apart during the second. During those scenes, Bacon plays Tom as not only someone obsessed with discovering the truth but also as someone who just wants his life to be normal again. If he has to destroy his life to get it back, that’s what he’s going to do.
(That said, my favorite character in the film was Lisa, mostly because we share the same name and she was played by the brilliant Illeana Douglas. The thing I loved about Lisa is that, when she was informed that she had messed up Tom’s mind, she was both sorry and proud of herself at the same time.)
Stir of Echoes is still a frightening film, one with plenty of jump scares and a subtext of paranoia as it’s revealed that both the neighborhood and Tom’s friends are full of secrets. Because they both came out in 1999, it often gets compared to The Sixth Sense. I like The Sixth Sense but I actually prefer Stir of Echoes, just because it’s not quite as self-important as M. Night Shyamalan’s film. The makers of Stir of Echoes didn’t set out to change the world. They just wanted to make a scary ghost story and they succeeded.
Today’s horror on the lens is the 1957 Roger Corman-directed, sci-fi “epic,” Not of this Earth.
Paul Johnson (Paul Birch) may seems like a strange character, with his stilted way of speaking and his sunglasses and his overdramatic reaction to any and all loud noises. Paul could us be an eccentric. Or, he could be …. NOT OF THIS EARTH! Actually, his habit of draining people of their blood and sending weird, umbrella-like creatures out to attack his enemies would seem to suggest that the latter is probably true.
Listen, it’s not easy being a blood-sucking alien. I mean, sure, there’s always seems to be people stupid enough to show up at your mansion so that you can drain their bodies. Paul is lucky that he doesn’t exactly seem to be surrounded by brain surgeons. But sometimes, things happen. For instance, someone might show up from your home planet and demand an immediate transfusion! What is an alien to do?
Watch this low-budget but undeniably entertaining film to find out! And be sure to especially keep an eye out for the great Dick Miller, who reportedly improvised his role as a vacuum cleaner salesman. (Before going into acting, Miller actually did sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door.)
Through the Shattered Lens 