Category Archives: Horrorthon

Book Review: David Warbeck: The Man and His Movies by Raymond J. Slater and Harvey Fenton

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

David Warbeck

Anyone who is a fan of Italian exploitation films will knows the name and the face of actor David Warbeck.  Warbeck was the handsome, rugged, and surprisingly likable New Zealand-born actor who went from studying at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to appearing in films that were directed by everyone from Russ Meyer to Antonio Margheritti to Lucio Fulci.  He played a small but pivotal roles in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dynamite and then went on to star in The Beyond, The Black Cat, The Last Hunter, Rat Man, and so many others.  While his films may never have been critical favorites at the time of their release (though several have been positively reevaluated), Warbeck’s movie did well enough at the box office that he was even considered for the role of James Bond,  Warbeck was one of those actors who was consistently good, regardless of the quality of the film in which he was appearing.

Sadly, Warbeck passed away in 1997, before many of his films were rediscovered.  It’s a shame because — as the commentary track that he and Catriona MacColl recorded for The Beyond shows — he was a charming raconteur who had a way with a story.  Fortunately, in 1996, Warbeck did sit down and gave a lengthy interview to Jason J. Slater, in which he discussed his career and shared many anecdotes about his life as an international exploitation superstar.  That interview is at the center of a short but interesting book called David Warbeck: The Man And His Movies.

The book not only features the interview with Warbeck but it also takes a detailed look at his filmography, reviewing some of his more interesting (and, in some cases, infamous) films.  The reviews are well-written by people who obviously love these often underappreciated films.

If you’re a fan of Italian exploitation, this book is simply a must-have.  Admittedly, it’s not an easy book to find.  I ordered a copy off of Amazon and it wasn’t cheap.  But it was worth it!

International Horror Film Review: The Iron Rose (dir by Jean Rollin)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Let’s go to the cemetery.”

That line is actually from another Jean Rollin film, Requiem for Vampire, but it also perfectly sums up the plot of his 1973 masterpiece, The Iron Rose.

A man (Hugues Quester) meets a woman (Francoise Pascal) at a wedding party.  They agree to go on a date, one which includes a railway station, a picnic, bicycling, and finally a walk that leads to a seemingly deserted cemetery.  On what seems to be a whim, the two of them enter the cemetery.  The woman seems to be fascinated with the place.  The man is dismissive, saying that funerals are an expensive, waste of time.  The woman believes that there is something after death.  The man is cynical, saying that once you’re dead, you’re dead.  As any couple would do after having a theological conversation, the two of them enter a crypt and make love.

While they’re busy making love, we discover that there actually are others in the cemetery.  There’s a clown that places flowers on a grave.  There’s a mysterious man who has been watching the couple as they walk among the graves.  (In the credits the man is called “Le vampire,” though he never actually does anything in the film that would indicate that he’s a bloodsucker.)  And then there’s the old woman who, as night falls, promptly closes the cemetery gates.

When the man and the woman emerge from the crypt, they discover that they are trapped.  There’s no way to open the gate and there’s no way to get out of the cemetery.  The two of them start to walk around, searching for either an exit or, at the very least, some sort of shelter for the night.  As they walk, strange things start to happen and we’re forced to reconsider our previous assumptions about not only the man and the woman but also the cemetery itself.  Did they enter the cemetery on a whim or did one of them specifically lead in the other?  As the night progresses, the feeling of impending doom only grows.  It all leads to a rather macabre fate for one of our lovers and a dance among the tombstones for another.

The Iron Rose is one of Jean Rollin’s best films and, sadly, it’s also one of his most unjustly obscure.  Even by the standards of Rollin’s early vampire films, The Iron Rose is a surreal film, one that is far more interested in creating a haunting atmosphere than in telling a traditional story.  What is the real reason that leads to the man and the woman entering the cemetery?  The Iron Rose is full of hints but, for most part, it’s left to the audience to answer that question for themselves.  The film’s haunting final scenes force us to reconsider everything that we previously assumed by the characters and their actions.  Are they obsessed with love or are they just in love with death?  There are no easy answers.

Obviously, a 90-minute film about two people walking around a cemetery is going to have some slow spots but, in this case, those occasional moments just add to the film’s ennui-drenched atmosphere.  As filmed by Rollin, the cemetery becomes as important a character as both the man and the woman and a reminder that the present is always going to be tied to the past.  The Iron Rose is Rollin at his dream-like best.

Horror Film Review: The Plague of the Zombies (dir by John Gilling)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

One of the best (and scariest) zombie films of all time came to us from Hammer Studios.

The 1966 film, The Plague of the Zombies, takes place in a small, fog-filled English village.  The village has been hit by a plague, one that is wiping out all of the inhabitants.  Unable to combat or even diagnose the mysterious illness, Dr. Peter Tomlinson (Brook Williams) calls in his friend, Sir James Forbes (Andre Morrill) for help.  Sir James arrives with his daughter, Sylvia (Diane Clare) and suggests that the graves of the recently deceased should be dug up so that he can examine the bodies himself.

Sounds like a reasonable idea, right?  There’s only one problem.  ALL OF THE COFFINS ARE EMPTY!  Now, before anyone asks, they weren’t empty when they went into the ground.  There were dead bodies in them when they were originally buried.  But now the coffins are empty, the bodies are missing, and that can mean only one thing — ZOMBIES!

And since this is a Hammer film, that also means that a squire is to blame!  Seriously, if there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching British horror films, it is to never trust a squire.  Squires always seem to end up practicing some sort of black magic.  In this case, Squire Clive Hamilton (Jack Carson) has just returned from Haiti, where he apparently spent some time researching the art of zombie creation.  Squire Hamilton has a tin mine to manage and undead workers are apparently far less demanding than living workers.

(Of course, today, Squire Hamilton could have just automated the mine and brought in robot workers, who would probably be even less demanding than zombie workers.  In fact, with the march of progress, there may soon be no need for zombie workers at all.)

This is a Hammer film so, needless to say, Sylvia eventually gets kidnapped and it’s up to Dr. Tomlinson and Sir James to put an end to the Squire’s evil plans before Sylvia is transformed into a zombie herself.  That’s not going to be as easy as it seems, because there’s zombies everywhere!

The Plague of the Zombies is one of Hammer’s best films and it’s also one of the few that, even to a modern viewer, remains frightening.  The village is a wonderfully atmospheric location, mixing all of the usual gothic tropes that we’ve come to expect with Hammer films with a very real feeling of decay.  Even before the whole zombie plague started, one gets the feeling that the village was already dying a slow, economic death.  The tin mine may be the only way to keep the village alive but, at the same time, killing the village is also the only way to keep the tin mine open.  The Plague of the Zombies is a moody and rather sad film, one that has a bit more on its mind than just supplying the usual Hammer combination of cleavage and blood.

Speaking of blood, Plague of the Zombies has one of the scariest zombie scenes of all time, in which one of our heroes finds himself wandering through a mist-covered cemetery while the dead rise around him.  At one point, he literally steps over a pool of blood.  Of course, the scene itself turns out to be a dream but it’s still effectively frightening.  Also frightening are the zombies themselves, with their pasty, decaying flesh and their blankly hostile faces.  It has been suggested that Plague of the Zombies was an influence on Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and you can definitely see that in its portrayal of the zombies as being a threat not because they’re fast but because they’re so relentless and pitiless.

The Plague of the Zombies is one of the best Hammer films out there so watch it this Halloween!

Horror on the Lens: Dante’s Inferno (dir by Henry Otto)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens comes to us from 1924!  In Dante’s Inferno, a businessman visualizes Dante’s trip to Hell while little realizing that his behavior is going to lead him to the same destination.

There’s a lot different prints of this film floating around.  The original version ran for 60 minutes.  The version below was a 49-minute version that was released on VHS.  At the time of its release, it’s vision of Hell was considered to be so frightening and definitive that clips of this film were actually used in other films that depict Hell.  In fact, Ken Russell used clips from this film in 1980 to depict a drug-induced hallucination in the film, Altered States.

The quality of the upload is not the best (again, largely because it was taken from an old VHS tape) and it’s impossible not to cringe at the character of the butler (whose portrayal, sadly, is typical of how African-Americans were regularly portrayed in films up until the 1960s) but this is still a bit of cinematic history.

Music Video of the Day: First Date by Danko Jones (2006, dir by Micah Meisner)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day brings us a little more vampire action.  I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.  Vampires always seem to inspire musicians in a way that werewolves don’t.  This video came out two years before Twilight and it basically tells a less romanticized version of the same story….

Still, there is an odd romance to vampirism, though that might not be obvious from this video.  In this video, the vampire just comes across as being a pervy stalker but, in the popular imagination, there’s usually nothing sexier than a centuries-old vampire.  Maybe it’s all the ennui.

To be honest, I just like the bottles of blood in the refrigerator.  That makes me laugh every time I see it.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 3.5 “If You See Sally” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s epiosde of One Step Beyond, we visit the legend of the ghostly hitchhiker.

Will Sally ever make it home?

This episode originally aired on October 18th, 1960!

International Halloween Review: All Monsters Attack! (a.k.a. Godzilla’s Revenge) (dir by Ishiro Honda)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Godzilla says that I have to learn to fight my own battles.”

Well, good for you, Minilla, son of Godzilla.  It’s good to see that Godzilla’s raising you well!  But can your monster advice possibly contain any useful life lessons for the human world?  Let’s watch 1969’s All Monsters Attack and find out!

You may have noticed that I’m specifically calling this a “Halloween review” as opposed to a “horror review.”  That’s because it’s just not Halloween without a Godzilla movie or two but, at the same time, it would be really stretching things to describe any of the Godzilla films of the 60s and 70s as being horror films.  Certainly, the original, black-and-white Gojira was a horror film, even if it no longer scares audiences.  But, by the time the 60s rolled around, Godzilla had gone from being the living equivalent of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to becoming a cuddly friend of children everywhere.

All Monsters Attack, for example, is clearly a film made for children and stock footage aficionados.  Ichiro (Tomonori Yazaki) is a little kid who has no friends but he does have an active imagination.  Whenever he falls asleep, he goes to Monster Island where he watches as Godzilla beats up various monsters.  Why exactly does Godzilla stay on Monster Island, I wonder.  Like literally everyone else on the island seems to hate his guts and they’re constantly trying to kill him.  If I was advising Godzilla, I’d suggest he move to another island.

Anyway, it turns out that Godzilla’s son, Minilla, is being bullied by a red-headed lizard named Gabara.  Minilla is a monster who always seems to get a mixed reaction from Godzilla fans.  When I first saw him, I was like, “AGCK!  BURN IT!  KILL IT WITH FIRE!”  But actually, Minilla is kind of cute and he does this adorable thing where he breathes radioactive smoke rings at his enemies.  Godzilla could protect Minilla but instead, he tells Minilla that he has to fight his own battles.

OH MY GOD, JUST LIKE ICHIRO!  Ichiro is so moved by Godzilla’s advice that he decides to stand up to the bullies.  But first, he’s going to have to stand up to some bank robbers as well,  The bank robbers take Ichiro hostage so he promptly takes a nap so he can hang out on Monster Island with Godzilla and Minilla.  Good plan, kid!

Anyway, All Monsters Attack is considered by many to be the worst of the old Godzilla movies and, in many ways, it is.  While all of the later Godzilla movies were aimed at kids, most of them at least had a decent fight or two.  All Monsters Attack is basically just 69 minutes of the kid getting in trouble and then taking a nap.  In fact, Godzilla’s barely in the movie at all.  Minilla gets most of the monster screen time.  That said, the film’s heart is in the right place and if it made any bullied children feel better then it did some good.

(Listen, I’m always going to give any movie starring Godzilla the benefit of the doubt, okay?)

That said, it does kind of seem like the ultimate message of the film’s final scenes is that the best way to deal with a bully is to pull a mean prank on someone else and then join the bully’s gang.  So maybe All Monsters Attack! did more harm than good.  I don’t know.  As long as Godzilla’s okay, that’s all that really matters.

 

Snakes On A Vacation: Curse II: The Bite (1989, directed by Frederico Prosperi)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Clark (J. Eddie Peck) and his girlfriend, Lisa (Jill Schoelen), are vacationing in New Mexico.  It’s a romantic getaway, except for all of the snakes.  Clark manages to save Lisa from one snake through the use of his trusty rifle but then he himself gets bitten once they go to a motel.  Luckily, traveling salesman Harry Morton (Jamie Farr!) has a suitcase that’s full of anti-snake venom antidotes.  Unfortunately, the one that Harry gave to Clark doesn’t do much good because not only does the bite on Clark’s arm get worse but it starts to turn into a snake!  In fact, his entire body is full of snakes, just trying to slither out!  It’s a vacation from Hell as Lisa tries to find a cure for Clark, Clark tries to control his serpent-like instincts, and Harry tries to find the young couple so that they don’t sue him.

This is an unrelated sequel to a film called The Curse.  In fact, it’s probable that this film was just called The Bite until the first Curse did slightly better at the box office than anyone expected.  The two films share not a single character or plot point in common.  There’s not really even a curse in this so-called sequel!  Clark’s problems are all due to the snake being radioactive.  (Once again, science is to blame.)  It’s a typically cheesy, low-budget 80s horror film but it does have a few things to recommend it.  The special effects range between being enjoyably cheap and effectively gross.  Jamie Farr is entertaining as Harry Morton and seems to be happy to not be playing Klinger again.  The truckers that Harry enlists to help him search for Lisa and Clark are all colorful characters and they are a little more interesting than the usual horror movie canon fodder.  Bo Svenson also has a good cameo as the sheriff.

Best of all, the film features one the greatest scream queens of the late 80s and early 90s, Jill Schoelen.  Schoelen is best remembered for her role in The Stepfather but she actually appeared in several horror movies between 1987 and 1993.  As she was in almost all of her roles, Jill Schoelen is both sexy and believable in The Bite.  She had a talent for making even the worse dialogue sound natural and that was a talent that The Bite gave her many chances to display.

The Bite is hardly a great film but, by the standards of late 80s cable fare, it’s undeniably entertaining.

 

Silent Hill Memories

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I was sixteen when Silent Hill first came out for the Playstation.

From the first minute I played it, I was hooked and Silent Hill would go on to become the first video game that I ever seriously got into.  I would study the game.  I would go online, in those early days of the world wide web, to read the theories of other players and visit the occasional Geocities-hosted fan page.  I actually got very upset when innocent nurse Lisa Garland was lost to the town’s curse.  I was also amazed to discover that the game’s storyline and ending could change depending on whether or not I saved Cybil Bennett.  A video game with multiple endings that went beyond just “good” and “bad?”  This was a big deal back in 1999!

Looking back after all these years, there are four main things that I remember about Silent Hill.

First off, and I know I’m not alone,I remembered the opening and especially the music that played during the scenes of Harry Mason driving down that foggy road:

Secondly, I remember the scenes that played after the game’s ending, which featured all of Silent Hill‘s characters blowing their lines, missing their cues, and laughing about it.  Today the animation may look primitive but back in 1999, seeing this at least provided some comfort if you got one of the bad endings, especially the “bad” ending where you defeated the monster but your daughter died (“Thank you, Daddy … goodbye.”) and then you ended up dead in your car.

I remember the nearly legendary fifth ending of the game, in which Harry Mason ended up getting abducted by aliens.  In the days before YouTube, when you had to trust word-of-mouth, there were some people who insisted that this ending was just an urban legend while there were others who couldn’t stop bragging about how they had gotten the alien ending while the rest of us just had to settle for the “saved the world and your daughter” ending.  When I finally managed to get the UFO ending, I was so happy that I felt like I was the one who had been abducted by aliens.

Finally, the main thing I remember about Silent Hill is that I was never very good at it.  I was the player who always ended up getting lost and walking around in a circle.  I can’t remember how many times I played before I managed to not die in the diner.  As soon as I heard the radio static that indicated that I was about to get attacked, I started to run because I know I wasn’t a good enough shot to fight off any of the game’s monsters.  Harry Mason was searching for his daughter and I was probably the worst possible person to lead him in that search because I somehow always managed to get Harry killed.  It didn’t matter how many times I played the game, I never really got good at it.  Even when I finally managed to get the best ending possible, it was only after saving and reloading the game a countless number of times.

I may have never been good at the game but I still enjoyed leading Harry to his death and occasionally to one of the good endings.  Silent Hill is what taught me that there was more to video games than just jumping and shooting and for that, I will be forever thankful.

Horror Scenes I Love: The Poltergeist Face Peeling Scene

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is from the original, 1982 version Poltergeist.

It’s just a ghost movie about a mother’s love, suburban conformity, and a guy’s face falling into the sink.  For whatever reasons, the ghosts just seemed to take a really intense dislike to this guy.

“The house is clean.”

Not bloody likely.

“You moved the headstone but you left the bodies!?  WHY!?  WHY!?”

Whoops, different scene.

Anyway, let’s watch Marty lose face: