Demons (1985, dir by Lamberto Bava)
For today’s horror song of the day, we have Demon, a track from the soundtrack for the 1985 film, Demons. This song was composed and performed by Claudio Simonetti, who is best known as the keyboardist of Goblin.
The music video, incidentally, was directed by Michele Soavi, who also appeared in Demons as the mysterious masked man handing out free movie tickets.
Today’s horror scene that I love comes from one of my favorite films, 1953’s Creature From The Black Lagoon. In this scene, Julie Adams goes for a swim. Little does she realize that, under the water, the Creature is following her every move. Wonderfully directed by Jack Arnold, this creepy yet oddly lovely scene is one of the best of the 50s.
(Today also would have been the 100th birthday of Julie Adams, one of the best — and in my mind, most underrated — actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age.)
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!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972, dir by Bob Clark, DP: Jack McGowan)
The Last House On The Left (1972, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Victor Hurwitz)
The Killing Kind (1973, dir by Curtis Harrington, DP: Mario Tosi)
The Brood (1979, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)
Coward has A LOT going on, but it’s fun! The protagonist is reading the woods next to Baby Yoda (yes, really), Baby Yoda flees, and our protagonist dies.
Hear me out, this story has a beginning, middle, and end. Also, it made me laugh. Kerron Andrews has skills to make a quick compelling story – FOR CHEAP! Industry people – Take Note- If I were looking for a man to make my low budget horror film, I’d DM him right away.
I couldn’t find Kerron Andrews on X, but I left him a kind comment on his YT.
by Frank R. Paul
This cover is from 1953.
It’s just a normal night as Danzig’s house in the video for Braineaters. Everyone comes for dinner and the chef comes out with a pot full of brains. If nothing else, this video is about as literal an adaptation of a song’s title as you are ever likely to see.
Enjoy!
What was the Siberian fireball?
One of the more intriguing mysteries of history is investigated in this episode of In Search Of…. Leonard Nimoy narrates!
(It’s always strange to me that there hasn’t been hundreds of movies made about the Tunguska event. I know that the current popular theory is that it was a comet or, at the very least, a really big asteroid. Personally, I like the theory that it was Nikolai Tesla testing out a death ray.)
On tonight’s episode of FreakyLinks, Derek and the team head down to New Mexico to investigate reports of a tentacle-bearing desert creature! If not for the tentacles, I would say it was probably a chupacabra. Seriously, if you ever see a chupacabra coming at you, run!
This episode originally aired on November 3rd, 2000!
Enjoy!
After Nightcrawler (Alan Cumming) causes a national security crisis by teleporting into the White House, Colonel William Stryker (Brian Cox) is given the authority to invade Professor Xavier’s School and investigate its connection to the mutants. Stryker, who not only wants to investigate the mutants but also destroy them by manipulating the same technology that Xavier uses to find them, just happens to be an old enemy of Logan’s (Hugh Jackman). In fact, Stryker is responsible for Logan fusing the adamantium to his bones. That’s a hell of a coincidence.
A sequel to X-Men, X2 tells a bigger and more complex story than the first film. Professor Xavier’s students are spread out by the chaos. Rogue (Anna Paquin) sees prejudice firsthand when Bobby Drake (Shawn Ashmore) is betrayed by his own family. Pyro (Aaron Stanford) is tempted to reject the X-Men’s philosophy of coexistence. After being underused in the first film, both Scott (James Marsden) and Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) are key players here. Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) return, this time temporarily allying with Professor X (Patrick Stewart) to stop Stryker. Logan has his own reasons to go after Stryker. Surprisingly, X2 is not only bigger than the first film but it’s also better. The actors are more convincing in their roles, the action is more exciting, and director Bryan Singer capably juggles all of the different parts without losing the plot. He even manages to ably set up the Dark Phoenix Saga. In the first film, the X-Men had it almost too easy when it came to battling opponents like Toad and Sabretooth. This film has not only Brian Cox’s William Stryker but also Kelly Hu’s Deathstrike.
Those of us who were shocked when X-Men turned out to be good were even more shocked when X2 turned out to be even better. For a little while, it seemed like there would never be a bad X-Men movie! Later, that’s the way a lot of us would also feel about the Marvel movies. Those were good days.
The crew of an icebound ship witnesses two men on dogsleds, apparently trying to kill each other. The sicklier of the men boards the ship and explains that his name is Victor Frankenstein (Patrick Bergin) and that he should not have tried to bring the dead back to life. As he tells the story of how he brought his Monster (Randy Quaid) to life, the film becomes a series of flashbacks.
Produced for TNT and playing up the costumes and the scenery at the expense of the story, this version of Frankenstein is the one that people forget about. This version emphasizes the psychic bond between the Monster and Victor. Whenever the Monster gets injured, Victor feels it, and that’s a problem because the Monster gets injured a lot, and Victor is already in ill health. Patrick Bergin plays Victor as a grandly romantic figure, which doesn’t make him particularly believable as a sickly and obsessed scientist. Randy Quaid is better as the Monster, especially in the scenes after the Monster is first brought to life and he’s still learning the basics. (I actually think Quaid’s performance is superior to Robert De Niro’s take on the character in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.) Finally, John Mills is memorable as the blind man who shows the Monster some kindness.
One thing that I will always remember about Frankenstein is the scene where the Monster tells Victor, “Ah wanna woman!” For months afterward, my friends and I would imitate Randy Quaid’s delivery of that line. Many actors have played the Monster in the years since, but none have topped “Ah wanna woman!”
