During the month of October, we like to share classic episodes of horror-themed television. That was easier to do when we first started doing our annual October horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens because every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube. Sadly, that’s no longer the case.
However, there is some good news! Twilight Zone may be gone but every episode of Degrassi is currently available on YouTube!
Yay!
Now, I know what you’re saying. “But Lisa, I thought you said there were classic episodes of horror-themed television?”
Degrassi is a classic!
“No, Lisa, the horror part….”
Believe it or not, Degrassi wasn’t always about kids going to school in Toronto. Quite a few episodes of Degrassi actually touched on the horror genre.
For instance, there’s this episode of Degrassi High, which originally aired on February 6th, 1990. (Degrassi High was one of the forerunners to the Degrassi that we all know and love.) In this episode, aspiring filmmaker Lucy Fernandez (played by Anais Granofsky) uses the school and her classmates to shoot a “feminist horror film” called It Creeps!! And while her fellow students may have been dismissive of Lucy’s goal to make a slasher film in which only boys are slashed, modern audiences will immediately see that Lucy was ahead of her time.
Of course, while Lucy is making her movie, Spike (Amanda Stepto) is having to deal with her former boyfriend and the father of her child, Shane (Billy Parrott). Shortly after the birth of his daughter, Shane went to a concert, dropped acid, and then literally dropped off a bridge. Of course, if you’ve seen Degrassi: The Next Generation, you know that Shane and Spike’s daughter grew up to be Emma Nelson, the lead character for that show’s first few seasons. You also know that Spike ended up marrying Snake, one of the co-stars of Lucy’s movie.
(Of course, Lucy herself ended up getting blinded and crippled in an auto accident that was the fault of Wheels, yet another costar in It Creeps!!)
It’s been a while since we did an AMV of the day here at the Shattered Lens, which is unfortunate because an appreciation anime was one of the main reasons why this site was started. What better time to restart this site’s AMV tradition than during our other great tradition, the annual October Horrorthon.
Don’t get me wrong. Whether we call him a Sasquatch or a Yeti, we all love Bigfoot. For a few centuries now, people have been spotting him and yet, to the best of my knowledge, he’s never actually attacked anyone. He seems to have a good attitude towards his place in the world. There may be multiple Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) or maybe there’s just one extremely old missing link wandering around out there. But regardless, they seem to be harmless.
That said, there’s been so many movies about Bigfoot that it’s easy to forget that there are other cryptids out there. Here are 6 paranormal beings who may (or may not) exist and who, in my humble opinion, all deserve to star in a film of their own.
1. The Goatman of Maryland
Who is the Goatman of Maryland? He used to be a scientist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltstville, Maryland. He did experiments on goats until, one day, karma intervened and he was transformed into a being that was half-man and half-goat. Grabbing an axe, the Goatman disappeared into the woods and now haunts the backroads of Beltsville. He’s been described as being a hermit but he apparently has a strong hatred of the teenagers who foolishly hang out in the woods. Seriously, how has Goatman not starred in a major film yet? Get on it, horror filmmakers! I want to review a Goatman movie next October.
2. Champ
Champ is America’s very own version of Nessie. It ia said to live in Lake Champlain, a body of water that’s shared by New York, Vermont, and Quebec. Since at least 1819, people have wrote about spotting a giant sea serpent swimming around Lake Champlain. In 1873, the famous showman P.T. Barnum offered a monetary reward to anyone who could capture Champ and bring the creature to me. To me, that’s the plot of your movie right there. Get on it, all of you aspiring screenwriters! Champ needs a film worthy of a champion.
3, Ludwig the Bloodsucker
Ludwig was an urban legend in New York City back in the 1860s. He was said to be an undead creature from Eastern Europe who haunted the back alleys and the bars of the Bowery district. As you might guess from his name, he had a taste for blood. (In all probability, Ludwig’s legend was probably the result of a combination of Know Nothing and Anti-Saloon League propaganda.) Ludwig has been described as being “America’s first vampire” and that right there is why he needs to start in a movie of his very own. I think Christoph Waltz would make a great vampire.
4. Dark Watchers
Who are the Dark Watchers? Reportedly, they hang out in the Santa Lucia Mountains in California. They wear wide-brimmed hats and carry walking sticks and they’re described as being giants. They never emerge from the shadows but many people have reported spotting their silhouettes while hiking through the mountains. What are they watching for and where do they live? Are they dangerous or are they merely observers? You know what would answer those questions? A movie!
5. Jackalope
One of the biggest disappointments of my life was when I learned that jackalopes apparently don’t actually exist. How can you not love a rabbit with antlers!? Seriously, if any creature has earned the right to star in a PIXAR film of its very own, it’s the mighty jackalope.
6. Wicked Wanda
Wicked Wanda was the ghost who supposedly lived on the top floor of my dorm during my first semester of college. I never found her, though I did go searching a few times. There really wasn’t much to her legend, beyond the fact that she was supposedly up there and she was wicked. Still, if they can make a thousand movies about Annabelle, how about one movie about Wanda?
The 1980 film, Fiend, is a movie that should be viewed by every aspiring indie filmmaker. I’m going to tell you why in a few paragraphs but first, allow me to tell you what Fiend is.
Fiend opens with ominous music and a shot of a seemingly deserted cemetery. While the camera tracks it’s way from headstone to headstone, we become aware of a red light that seems to be floating above the ground, as if it’s searching for something. The light suddenly plunges into a grave. A few seconds later, the man who was in the grave claws his way to the surface. Just one look at him reveals that he’s been dead for quite some time. However, you might be distracted from the facial decay by the fact that the man is glowing.
The man staggers about, eventually coming across a young woman who has been abandoned in the cemetery by her jerk of a boyfriend. The man grabs her from behind and wraps his hands around her neck. Briefly, the man’s glow seems to pulse and then it fades away. The man is no longer a decaying corpse. Now, he’s just a middle-aged guy with a huge mustache. He looks like he should be teaching a remedial math class.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, Don Leifert, the actor playing our living corpse, actually was a teacher.)
Now calling himself Eric Longfellow, the man moves into a nice house in the suburbs and establishes himself as a music instructor. Longfellow tends to keep to himself, which certainly makes the neighbors a bit curious about him. Longfellow would probably be more sociable if not for the fact that, every few days or so, he starts to decay. For that reason, he has to have a constant supply of victims so that he can suck out their life force and renew himself. Helping him out with this issue is Dennis Frye (played by George Stover, who was apparently a civil servant when he wasn’t acting), who is kind of squirmy and owns some of the ugliest suits ever tailored. (I assume that Dennis Frye’s name is an homage to Dwight Frye, who played Renfield in the Bela Lugosi-version of Dracula.)
Now, of course, you can only suck the life force out of so many people before people start to notice that something strange is going on. Longfellow is unfortunate enough to live next door to Gary Kender (Richard Nelson), who is a plain-spoken, beer-drinking guy who just happens to have a mustache that’s almost as huge as Longfellow’s. Gary doesn’t trust Longfellow so he starts to do some research on his mysterious new neighbor….
Now, here’s the thing to remember about Fiend. It was made foe $6,000. That would translate to about $18,000 today. Either way, it’s a tiny budget. And yet, it’s an effective (if occasionally goofy) little film and, more often that not, it’s effective precisely because it was shot for next to nothing. The grainy images give the film a feeling of immediacy. Though the majority of the murders may have happened in broad daylight because day is easier to light than night, all those daytime murders contribute to the sense of unease, the feeling that no one’s safe at any time. Even the amateur quality of the performances contribute to the film’s overall dream-like feel. Director Don Dohler may not have been able to afford expensive special effects or realistic gore but, as a result of that, his direction emphasizes atmosphere over jump scares. I mean, don’t get me wrong. This is definitely an amateur film, full of clunky dialogue and the occasional slow scene. But so what? Even those flaws add to the film’s nicely surreal atmosphere.
I mean, consider this. Don Dohler made this film nearly 40 years ago and he spent less money on the entire production than most films spend during one day of shooting. It was released in only a handful of theaters and I imagine it probably didn’t get rave reviews from the mainstream critics. And yet, here we are, decades later, and Fiend still has a growing cult of admirers. It’s available on YouTube and, if you do watch it, I encourage you to read the comments posted underneath the video. Several of them are from people who either worked on the film or who knew Don Dohler and Don Leifert. For the most part, everyone seems to have fond memories of both this film and the filmmakers.
Fiend works because, instead of surrendering to the film’s low budget, Don Dohler used it to his advantage. There’s a lesson there for us all.
In Wolfman, you are David. You wake up one morning in your tiny bedroom and you realize that something bad has happened.
A few commands later and you discover that you are covered in blood.
You are a werewolf! You’ve already killed and you know that it’s going to happen again unless you find a cure for your condition. For the rest of this challenging text adventure, it is up to you to figure out how to get out of town and find the cure. Along the way, you will have to find ways to fight off your urges to kill.
Assuming that you get David out of the village, the game will switch gears and you’ll play from the viewpoint of Nadia, a young woman who falls in love with David and who, for David to continue on his journey and ultimately be cured of his condition, has to spend the night with David without becoming his latest victim.
If you pull that off, the game then switches back to being told from David’s point of view as he attempts to solve the final few puzzles that will lead him to the cure.
Wolfman is one of the many horror-themed text adventures that were written by Rod Pike in the 1980s. Though the majority of the game is text, there are some graphics, mostly still shots of the werewolf’s victims. In 1988, the graphics were considered shocking enough to get it an 18 certificate from the British Board of Film Censors.
The first challenge of playing a game like Wolfman today is getting into the right mindset to play a 1980s text adventure. The game’s vocabulary and list of commands is impressive for 1988 but still extremely limited when compared to what we are used to today. I spent several turns trapped in my bedroom and growing increasingly frustrated until I finally realized that the game considered “look” and “examine” to be two very different commands.
Once you get passed that, though, it’s an engrossing, well-written, and challenging game, one that puts you right into the mind of both a werewolf and one of his potential victims. It’s available at the Internet Archive. And, if you’re like me and you usually have to cheat to solve the puzzles in games like this, a walk-through is available here.
Universal Pictures kicked off the horror trend of the early 30’s with DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN , and soon every studio in Hollywood, both major and minor, jumped on the terror train. Paramount was the first to hop on board with an adaptation of Stevenson’s DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE , earning Fredric March an Oscar for his dual role. Soon there was DR. X (Warners), THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (RKO), FREAKS and THE MASK OF FU MANCHU (both MGM), and THE MONSTER WALKS and WHITE ZOMBIE from the indies. Paramount released ISLAND OF LOST SOULS at the end of 1932, a film so shocking and perverse it was banned in Britain for over a quarter century, and still manages to frighten even the most jaded of horror fans today.
Based on the novel The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, the film begins with shipwrecked Edward Parker being rescued…
The 1959 film, Plan 9 From Outer Space, is famous for a lot of reasons. There’s the low budget. There’s the acting. There’s the script. There’s Tor Johnson and Vampira and Bela Lugosi’s much taller stand-in. There’s the string that’s visibly tied to all of the UFOs. But let’s just be honest. None of that would matter without the perfect introductionary scene!
And that’s where Criswell comes in!
Criswell was a self-proclaimed psychic and a friend of the film’s director, Edward D. Wood, Jr. Criswell liked to sleep in a coffin and he also liked to make predictions. The majority of the predictions were so outlandish that it didn’t matter that they were rarely accurate. (Jeff wrote a whole post about this, a few years back.) When Wood needed someone to vouch for the authenticity of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Criswell was the obvious choice. Criswell even wrote his own lines.
Say what you will about the film but Criswell’s monologue — incoherent as it may technically be — is the perfect introduction and this seems like the perfect scene to use on the first day of our annual Horrorthon.
From 1959’s Plan 9 From Outer Space, here’s a horror scene that I love:
So, it’s October 1st and you know what that means!
It’s time to put together a Halloween reading list!
(Actually, to be honest, you’re running behind. You should have started selecting the books for your October reading list way back in July. Really, what have you been doing all this time? Well, anyway….)
When it comes to putting together a Halloween reading list, there’s no better place to start than with Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks From Hell!
First published in 2017, Paperbacks From Hell is a compulsively readable and fun overview of the horror-themed paperbacks that scared readers in the 70s and the 80s. Every genre of paperback horror is covered, from the demonic possession novels that came out after the success of The Exorcist and The Omen to the “based on a true haunting” ghost novels to the extremely gory and rather unpleasant serial killer stories of the late 80s. Along with discussing the best sellers of that era, Paperbacks From Hell also includes hundreds of wonderfully sordid and often rather bizarre paperback covers. Have you ever wandered what a bunch a Nazi dwarves would look like? Well, just check out the cover of The Little People:
I mean, seriously — AGCK!
Paperbacks From Hell isn’t just a book about scary paperbacks, however. It’s also a social history. So many of these books were designed to appeal to whatever was scaring suburbanites at the moment and, as a result, the history of horror paperbacks is also a history of moral panics. From Satanic cults to dirty music to environmental catastrophe and evil children, there’s a paperback for every one of them and, in all probability, the cover of that papeprback can be found in Paperbacks From Hell.
Paperbacks From Hell is a definite must-have for anyone who loves history and horror. After I read it, I decided that I would read every single paperback that was mentioned in Paperbacks From Hell. That turned out to be a bit more difficult than I thought it would be because, sadly, a lot of those classic old paperbacks are out-of-print and being sold for hundreds of dollars on Amazon. I mean, I would love to read Satan Sublets by Jack Younger but I don’t know if I want to spend four hundred dollars to do so. That said, even if some of the books that scared our parents and grandparents are no longer readily available, at least we have Paperbacks From Hell.
If you don’t already have a copy of Paperbacks From Hell,order it. It’s addictive reading at its best.
Indeed. Despite the fact that Bergman’s bleak imagery and existential themes undoubtedly influenced any number of horror filmmakers (Wes Craven’s Last House On The Left was essentially a remake of Bergman’s The Virgin Spring), the 1968 film, Hour Of The Wolf was Ingmar Bergman’s only official horror film.
Of course, it’s also an Ingmar Bergman film, which means that it’s also a meditation on relationships, regret, the difficult of ever knowing what’s truly going on inside someone else’s head, and the artificiality of the artistic process. It tells the story of a painter named Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow) and his pregnant wife, Alma (Liv Ullman) and their life on an isolated island. Alma is worried about Johan’s feelings towards his former muse and ex-lover, Veronica Vogler. Johan is haunted by nightmarish visions of menacing figures and the feelings that demons are pursuing him.
The film opens with a title card, informing us that the story that we’re about to see is true and that it’s an attempt to reconstruct the final days of Johan’s life before his mysterious disappearance. Of course, as anyone who has seen enough found footage films can tell you, the title card is a lie and there never was a painter named Johan Borg, or at least not one who mysteriously vanished while living in an isolated house on an island. Instead of being meant to convince us that we’re about to see a true story, the title card instead establishes that what we’re about to see can be considered to almost be a dark fairy tale. The title card is the film’s way of saying, “Once Upon A Time…..” It’s also a reminder that most fairy tales are considerably more grim than what those of us raised on Disney might expect.
(No coincidentally, the title Hour of the Wolf came from Swedish folk lore. The Hour of the Wolf is the time between 3 and 5 in the morning, during which it is said that most births and deaths occur.)
While the opening credits flash by on a dark screen, we hear the sounds of men working and anyone who has any experience in theater will immediately realize that we’re listening to a set being built. As the opening credits come to an end, we hear Bergman shouting out, “Action!” Our next shot is Alma standing outside of the house that she shared with Johan. Alma looks straight at the camera as she tells us that she still doesn’t know what happened to Johan. She tells the unseen Bergman that she’s revealed to him everything that she knows.
It’s an interesting opening, one that reminds the audience that what they’re seeing is merely a recreation of what might have happened on Johan and Alma. When Alma speaks to Bergman, there’s an interesting subtext to her words and her tone and one gets the feeling that Alma and the director are meant to have a history of their own. It’s almost as if the film is saying that the story’s meaning can only be found in what we can’t see, in what’s going on behind the camera. That seems especially true when you consider that, when Hour of the Wolf was filmed, Liv Ullman, who played the pregnant Alma, actually was pregnant with Bergman’s child and that Bergman himself later said that Johan Borg’s nightmares were recreations of Bergman’s own nightmares. It’s perhaps a little too easy to imagine that the demons that inspire Johan’s art are the same demons that inspired Bergman’s films and that this film is both an apology to Ullman for his own neurotic tendencies and a tribute to her willingness to put up with him.
Hour of the Wolf is a bleakly effective film, one that works as both a dissection of an unstable relationship and a portrait of a man who may be losing his mind. Von Sydow plays the haunted Johan as a charismatic but introverted artist, a troubled individual who can only truly express what’s happening in his mind through his art. Indeed, Johan’s tragedy seems to be that the joy he gets from creating can only come from the pain that he suffers from imagining and dreaming. Ullman is heart-breaking as she tries to keep her husband from succumbing to his own darkness while, at the same time, trying not to get sucked into the darkness herself. About halfway through the film, Johan confesses to committing a shocking crime and, like Alma, you don’t know whether to believe him or to believe that he’s reached the point where he can’t tell the difference between reality and his nightmares. Ullman plays the scene with the perfect combination of fear and sadness, sympathy and revulsion. As for Von Sydow, he brings to life both the natural arrogance of an artist and the terror of someone who suspects that he has no control over his own existence.
Visually, this film is bleak by even the standards of Bergman. The black-and-white cinematography plays up not just the shadows of the night but also the brutal desolation of Johan and Alma’s life on the island. It reminds us that Johan is an artist living in a world without color. Bergman views Johan and Alma through a detached lens, recording the collapse of their lives but, at the same time, keeping his distance as if to protect the audience from getting trapped inside of Johan’s madness.
Hour of the Wolf may have been Ingmar Bergman’s only official horror film but it’s definitely an effective thriller, one that manages to explore both Bergman’s signature themes while also keeping the audience off-balance and wondering what might be lurking in the darkness. It may not be one of Bergman’s “best-known” films but it’s definitely one for which to keep an eye out.
Horror can make a political statement, it can make you reflect on your status in society, or it can just entertain. The first two types are good, but it’s also nice to just have fun! “Sorority Row” written by Josh Stolberg & Peter Goldfinger and directed by Stewart Hendler is a 1990s throwback. It had a real “I Know What You Did Last Summer” feel to it. Honestly, the reviews are not fair to this film. A lot of people want horror to be all things, but it’s supposed to be fun too. So, just relax and have a good time. Also, it doubled its money, which is what a movie is supposed to do- especially horror. It’s one of the few genres left that can produced by mere mortals.
What I liked mostly about the film was the writing. It had a lot of great humor without it being campy. I’ve gotten to know Josh Stolberg on twitter the script has quite a bit of his personality: clever and quick-witted. I especially enjoyed Jessica (Leah Pipes). As a man who went a Greek dominated college, she was very realistic. Her character and one-liners gave the story a mix of comic relief and reality. I practiced Criminal Law for waaaaay too long and I can tell you that even honest people can turn to something wicked if they feel threatened. People will invariably choose themselves over a possible life ending punishment.
The plot is similar to the original House on Sorority Row: a prank run a muck. The girls belong to Theta Pi and they to love to party, prank, and get murdered. Garrett a brother of the Sister “Chuggs” cheated on Megan another Theta Pi, which is not okay! So, the sisters have her fake an overdose so that Garrett believes he killed Megan. The sisters: Jessica, Ellie, Cassidy, Claire, Megan, and Chugs are all in on the prank are a little too convincing because they make Garrett believe that they need to hide Megan’s body in a mine shaft or their lives will be ruined. The sisters say they have to get rid of the air in Megan’s lungs or she’ll float back up. So, Garrett takes the initiative as a true go-getter and uses a tire iron to stab Megan to death. Jessica decides very quickly that they need to hide Megan’s body for real. When Cassidy refuses to participate, they wrap the corpse in Cassidy’s coat and throw it down the mine shaft. Jessica really thinks fast on her feet.
I don’t know about you, but I think Jessica would be good marriage material. Hear me out: she’s determined, quick-thinking, has a college degree, and is ruthless to protect her goals. Also, Cassidy tried to be all above it, but as Jessica said- “you could’ve called the police, but you didn’t!” Agreed. You don’t get to benefit from something wicked and then look down on everyone else. Jessica made her choice and stuck to it. She made a good point as to protecting everyone’s future and ran with it. Cassidy kept Hamletting over her bad choices. Do it or Don’t. Jessica, don’t listen to the haters.
All seems fine a year later. They’ve all moved on except for Garrett who has become a wreck over his humiliation and accidental murdering. Then, they all receive a threatening group text on their very old timey looking phones- 2009 was just ten years ago and these phones look like museum pieces.
This technology allowed for some extra suspense because reception and tech wasn’t that great then; therefore, the characters can be cutoff from help. I really think horror shouldn’t be set any time after 2009 because it’s just too easy to get help now. This lack of tech added a nice layer of suspense. The text sender stalks and murders them one by one.
The kills were pretty clever: an electrocution, death by chardonnay, tire iron throwing, and a good ol’ fashioned stabbing or three. It also had a fun twist at the end like the 1990s horror films of my youth. I recommend this film. Read my past reviews- I don’t just recommend anything. I’m an iconoclast and can tell you that this was a lot of fun. Happy Horrorthon!
Through the Shattered Lens 