Skulls and bones were a mainstay on the covers of pulp and especially horror related magazines. For this Halloween, take a trip back into the bony past with a few skeletal covers from the pulp era!
by Rudolph Belarski
by Rafael De Soto
by Robert Stanley
by Robert Gibson Jones
The intro looks terrible. It’s bad even for anything I have seen up to this point. We open with a meteor heading towards earth.
A bear watches the impact and goes to investigate because why not? The meteor was hiding a spaceship. Later, there is a cute couple taking a selfie during their camping trip. I wonder what will happen?
They enter a cave and hear growling. They are confronted by a MONSTER BEAR. A huge huge bear. I’m guessing the bear is part alien now. The monster bear attacks and kills the husband, but the wife escapes and has PTSD hallucinations.
The ending was not great. I would have ended in the cave rather than tack on this boring segment. So, when the angry mobs come to feed the AI creators to sharks, I would just let the sharks gnaw on this creator, but nothing terrible. It was bad though; so, know that and if the creator reads this, please stop doing this.
1962’s Carnival of Souls was the only feature film to be directed by Herk Harvey. It was made on a budget of $33,000 and was filmed in Kansas and Utah, often without permits. The film was also the feature acting debut of model Candace Hilligoss, cast here as a emotionally withdrawn church organist who is involved in a serious car accident and then finds herself haunted by pasty-faced ghosts and surreal visions.
When it was initially released, Carnival of Souls was dismissed by American critics. Indeed, it would a little over twenty years before the film started to be appreciated as both a classic independent film and also a truly eerie horror movie. Today, it’s recognized as a classic of the genre, an expressionistic ghost story that also works as a character study of a woman who is haunted by not just physical death but also emotional malaise.
Carnival of Souls is a Halloween tradition here at the TSL offices. This year, the tradition continues.
On October 30th, 1938, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater On The Air broadcast an adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds and, legend has it, they scared the ever-loving heck out of America.
Actually, there’s some debate as to just how panicked America got when they heard the Mercury Theater On The Air’s adaptation of War of the Worlds. There was definitely some panic but there are differing reports on just how wide spread it was. For our purposes, let’s assume that the entire country was terrified at the same time and that everyone was loading up a shotgun and planning to go out and look for aliens. With his adaptation of War of the Worlds, Orson Welles managed to invent the whole found footage genre that would later come to dominate horror cinema in the late 90s and the aughts. Every found footage horror film owes a debt to what Orson Welles accomplished with War of the Worlds. Ultimately, it’s just another example of how far ahead of his time Orson Welles was.
H.G. Wells, the original author of War of the Worlds, and Orson Welles only met once, while they were both in San Antonio, Texas in 1940. (Orson Welles and H.G. Wells hanging out in San Antonio? To be honest, that sounds like it would make a good movie.) They were interviewed for a local radio station. H.G. Wells expressed some skepticism about the reports of Americans panicking while Welles compared the radio broadcast to someone dressing up like a ghost and shouting “Boo!” during Halloween. Both Wells and Welles then encouraged Americans to worry less about Martians and more about the growing threat of Hitler and the war in Europe.
I’ve shared this before but this just seems like the time to share it again. Here, for Halloween Eve, is the 1938 Mercury Theater On The Air production of The War of the Worlds!
Haunting by Erin Nicole
“Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn’t there,
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away…”
I don’t know about you but, after Game 5 of the World Series, I am praying to the Great Pumpkin for a Halloween miracle.
The Blue Jays are one game away from winning the World Series. Game 6 will be played tomorrow, on Halloween night. I want to spend my Halloween handing out candy and dancing the monster mash. (It’s a graveyard smash.) I do not want to spend it watching my least favorite baseball team win the World Series. The Blue Jays deserve a lot of credit for how they’ve played this season but, until they fully exorcise the spirit of Jose Bautista and his bat flip from the team, I cannot support them.
I know people don’t like the Dodgers. I don’t care. They’re the only thing keeping the Blue Jays from winning the World Series.
Tomorrow’s game is pivotal. If the Dodgers win, Game 7 will be played on November 1st and, if the Blue Jays do take the Series, at least it won’t happen on a holiday. If the Blue Jays win Game 6, it’s all over.
I’m going to be make sure this household is the most sincere in the neighborhood so that the Great Pumpkin will give me what I want.
by Erin Nicole
Looking for someone?
In this video, Arnold Schwarzenegger is sent to the past to eliminate Guns N’ Roses but ultimately decides that it would be a waste of ammo. Obviously, he knew that fulfilling his mission would change history and the world would never get to hear Chinese Democracy.
This song (and this video) were used to promote Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Enjoy!
2007’s The List opens during the dying days of the American Civil War.
A group of wealthy plantation owners form a secret society. They pool together their fortunes and they each sign onto a list. Over the years, whenever a member of the Society passes away, their eldest male descendant replaces them on the List and also has access to the fortune that that the Society secretly holds.
In 2007, directionless attorney Renny Jacobsen (Chuck Carrington) is shocked when his father dies and leaves him next to no money. As Renny tells us over and over again, he really could have used some of his father’s fortune. However, his father does leave him a key the leads to Renny uncovering a tape that explains everything that he needs to know about the Society. All Renny has to do is sign his name to the List.
The Society is now run by Desmond Larochette (Malcolm McDowell) and we know that he’s evil because his name is Desmond Larochette and he’s played by Malcolm McDowell. Larochette seems to be more than happy to allow Renny to join the Society but he’s not quite as happy that another member of the group died and only left behind a female heir, Jo Johnston (Hilarie Burton). The members of the Society are faced with quite a quandary. Should they allow a woman to join their society? And, if not, what should they do now that she know about the Society’s existence?
When Jo goes to the mansion for the Society’s meeting, she spots a portrait of a gray-haired gentleman and asks who he is. Gus Eicholtz (Pat Hingle) explains that the painting is of John C. Calhoun, who served as Vice President under Andrew Jackson. “He looks angry,” Jo says and honestly, that was a piece of historical and artistic criticism that was so simple-minded that Jo really should have been disqualified from joining the Society at that very moment.
First off, how are you going to join a Southern secret society if you don’t know how John C. Calhoun is? Secondly, the portrait in question is actually a pretty famous one. George Alexander Haley painted it while Calhoun was Secretary of State. Even if you don’t know who John C. Calhoun is, chances are that you’ve seen the painting. Finally, there’s the claim that “He looks angry.” The painting was completed in 1845. Everyone looked angry in 1840s! Even the noted bon vivant Henry Clay looked angry in his 1848 State Department portrait. (And Clay actually had his picture taken for his official portrait. Imagine how furious he would look if someone had painted him?)
Anyway, Renny joins the society but Jo does not, But then Renny discovers that it’s not as easy to get his hands on the money as he thought and he spends the entire movie complaining about it. That’s pretty much it. There is some suggestion that Desmond might have demonic powers, but it’s not really explored. Another heir dies mysteriously and it seems like Jo is being targeted as well. Again, it’s not really clear why. In the end, Renny puts God before the money but it kind of comes out of nowhere. It’s a muddled story and, by the end of the film, it’s still a struggle to figure out what it all meant. At the very least, Malcolm McDowell seemed to be having fun, playing an evil character and speaking in an almost indecipherable accent.
For today’s horror on television, we’re very happy to present to you, Dead of Night!
From 1977, this television film is a horror anthology, made up of three stories directed by Dan Curtis and written by Richard Matheson. In the first story, a youngish Ed Begley, Jr. travels through time. In the 2nd story, Patrick Macnee plays a man whose wife is apparently being menaced by a vampire. And in the third story, Joan Hackett plays a mother who brings her dead son back to life, just to discover that sometimes it’s best to just let sleeping corpses lies.
The entire anthology is good, though the third story is clearly the best and the most frightening. Not only is it scary but it’s got a great twist ending.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 