The Creation of the Humanoids (1962, dir by Wesley Barry)
What makes us human? What does it mean to have free will? What is love? What is freedom? The questions and more are asked in the low-budget (and rather odd) science fiction epic The Creation of the Humanoids, which you can view below!
Now, I should warn that Creation of the Humanoids is an extremely talky film. And the plot is occasionally difficult to follow. There’s a lot of ennui to be found in this particular film, both from the humans and those who have been built to serve them However, I find it impossible not to love this one because it’s just such a strange movie. I love it for the colorful set design, the contrast between the resentful robots and the paranoid humans, and the fact that the film — despite being made for next to nothing — actually has more ambition than anything ever made by several of the more successful directors working today. And, while it may not really be a horror film in the way that some of our other October films are, it still feels appropriate for the Halloween season. It just has the perfect holiday atmosphere.
First released in 1962, Creation of the Humanoids was reportedly one of Andy Warhol’s favorite films. Keep an eye out for Plan 9 From Outer Space‘s Dudley Manlove.
Three Dog Night was a band that was prominent in the days before music videos but fortunately, they left us with a wealth of live performances that were captured for television. I don’t know what show this was filmed for, just that it’s from 1975. For our purposes, the MVP of this video is the keyboardist who goes out of his way to bring some Halloween flavor to the proceedings.
Originally written and performed by Leo Sayer, this cover of The Show Must Go On was Three Dog Night’s final Top 10 hit in the United States. The best part of the song, the intro, was severely shortened for the song’s radio edit but it still became a hit.
First released in 2007 and produced by The Asylum, The Apocalypse opens in much the same way as many Asylum films. An asteroid is hurtling towards the Earth. It crashes into our planet without warning, destroying the town of Monterey. (“And nothing of value was lost!” says the old timey Borscht Belt comedian.) Then more asteroids strike the planet, causing mass panic. The power goes out. People desperately try to reach their loved ones.
And then a tornado hits out of nowhere.
And then the state of California is suddenly hit by torrential rainfall.
And then….
Well, you get it. Things are not going well in California or in the rest of the world. As I said at the start of this review, the Earth being bombarded with asteroids is a pretty common theme when it comes to the Asylum. Indeed, anyone who has watched more than a handful of Asylum films is probably already picturing the stock footage of the asteroid hurtling through space with Earth in the distance. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen that rock start to burst into flames as it enters the atmosphere.
What sets The Apocalypse apart from other Asylum asteroid films is that, after the first asteroid hits, people start to vanish. They’re not crushed underneath an asteroid, or at least they aren’t as far as we can tell. Instead, they just seem to vanish into thin air, as if they’ve been taken to another place. Those who do not vanish can only stand around and wonder why they didn’t go to church more often….
“I’ve been left behind,” one character says and yes, this is indeed a mockbuster version of the Left Behind films. I guess it makes sense. The Asylum has produced mockbuster versions of every other genre out there. Why shouldn’t they also try to cash in on the end times. Really, one has to respect the fact that the Asylum managed to make its own Left Behind film without abandoning the idea of the world being bombarded by asteroids.
(And, if we’re going to be honest, the idea of God using asteroids to destroy humanity actually makes a lot more sense than the usual story that these films tend to tell. I mean, asteroids have to be good for something, right?)
The Apocalypse follows Jason (Rhett Giles) and Ashley (Jill Stapley), a divorced couple who are trying to make their way through the state of California so that they can see their daughter Lindsay (Kristen Quintrall) before the world ends. Along the way, Jason and Ashley discuss their own failed marriage and their guilt over the death of their son. Though Jason and Ashley do have to deal with some unexpected weather and asteroid events, the film itself is surprisingly somber for an Asylum film. There’s far less self-referential humor than in the usual Asylum film. The pace is deliberate, thoughtful, and, to be honest, a bit too reverential for its own good. The world ends but it ends very slowly. This is probably the talkiest film that the Asylum has ever produced.
That said, the film does create a believable portrait of the type of desperation that would accompany the end of the world, with the various characters all attempting to find some sort of peace before everything ends. The special effects may be a bit cheap but the images of deserted streets and desolate countryside are far more effective than what one might expect from an Asylum film. This is a case where the mockbuster, flaws and all, is still superior to the original.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!
This week, things get a little bit sad on the highway to Heaven.
Episode 2.19 “Heaven on Earth”
(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on February 26th, 1986)
Now, this episode made me cry!
While visiting an amusement park on their day off, Jonathan and Mark come across a lost six year-old girl named Sarah (Morgan Nagler). Jonathan offers to take Sarah to the park’s security office but Sarah says that she’s not allowed to go anywhere with a stranger. After explaining that he’s a former cop and knows how to deal with lost children, Mark asks Sarah for the name of her mother. After learning that Sarah’s mother is named Nancy, Mark goes to the security office and has them page her. Soon, Sarah and Nancy are reunited. Yay!
Later, as they drive through the desert, Mark and Jonathan are nearly run off the road by a drunk driver. A few moments later, they come across an auto accident. The owner of a jeep swerved to avoid the drunk and instead crashed into a station wagon. Jonathan suddenly tells Mark that they should leave but Mark walks up to the overturned car and discovers that it was being driven by Nancy. Nancy survived the accident but Sarah did not.
Broken-hearted, Mark blames himself. He tells Jonathan that, if he hadn’t been so eager to show off, Sarah and Nancy wouldn’t have left the park when they did and they wouldn’t have been in the car accident. Mark pulls the car over to the side of the road and tells Jonathan to get out. Jonathan reluctantly does so and Mark drives off.
Mark drives until the car runs out of a gas on the outskirts of a small town. The proprietor of a local store tells Mark that the town’s pretty much been dead since the new turnpike was built. There are two gas stations but they’re both closed on Wednesday because the owners like to go fishing together. Reluctantly, Mark goes to the local boarding house and asks for a room for the night.
Mark is shown his room by a helpful girl named Wendy (Alyson Croft). Inside his room, Mark spots a picture of Wendy with Sarah and realizes that Jonathan led him to the boarding house. Later, at dinner, Mark meets Wendy’s father, a divinity student named Tom Ward (Michael Anderson, Jr.) When Wendy goes to call her friend Sarah to find out how the amusement park was, Mark can only sit in silence as Wendy tells her father that Sarah’s family wants to speak to him. Without telling Wendy why, Tom says that he has to go to Sarah’s house. He tells Wendy to get to bed early and then he leaves with his wife and their infant son.
Mark goes back to his room. Wendy pops in and to give him a heater because the furnace is broken. Unfortunately, the heater is also broken and makes an annoying clicking sound. Mark angrily kicks it over before going for a walk.
While standing outside of a church, Mark hears the sirens of fire engines. The Ward house is on fire! The firemen manage to get out Wendy’s grandmother but they say there’s no way to rescue anyone else. Mark rushes into the house, determined to save Wendy. And …. he promptly faints.
When he awakens, he’s with Jonathan. Jonathan says that “the boss” has decided to give Mark the chance to play God. Mark says that he wants everything he wishes to be true and that he wants all of his mistakes to be corrected as if they never happened.
As a result, the town is suddenly thriving but the proprietor of the now 24-hour gas station is dead as a result of having worked himself to death. Wendy is alive but, because Mark wished for her to have everything she ever wanted, she’s now a spoiled brat. And Sarah….
When Mark demands to see Sarah, Jonathan takes him to the cemetery and shows him that Sarah is still dead. Jonathan explains that Sarah’s death was not his fault. It was the fault of the drunk driver and there was nothing Mark could have done to save her.
Mark awakens in the burning house. Not only does he manage to save Wendy’s life but, once he’s released from the hospital’s burn unit, he and Jonathan once again hit the highway….
This was a good episode, though I have to say that the Wards were a lot more forgiving about Mark burning down their house than I would have been. This episode worked largely due to Victor French’s heartfelt performance as Mark. Watching him, it was impossible not to feel his pain. In the end, the message was a good one, though I do think it would have been nice to see the drunk driver punished for his actions.
Tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond features Jocelyn Brando (sister of Marlon) as a purported psychic who warns a skeptical man that he will soon be traveling by train, that he will meet a woman with an usual, snake-design ring, and that she will end up chasing him with a knife.
The man laughs her off. Why, he never travels by train! Sure, he has a trip coming up but he’s already paid for his plane tickets. This just proves what the man has always suspected, that psychic’s are all phony! But then he gets a message that his flight has been cancelled and he’s going to have to travel to his destination by …. TRAIN!
CAN YOU PROVE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN!?
This episode originally aired on February 3rd, 1959.
Whoa! Hold your horses! This isn’t the only review for The Hunger. Take a look at Lisa’s Review and if you’re so inclined, feel free to double back here.
It seems fitting that we start our descent towards Halloween with Tony Scott’s first feature film, The Hunger. As a fan of Vampires in general, it may not be a great film, but I feel like it does have a place in history where creatures of the night are concerned.
When I think of Whitley Streiber, Wolfen comes to mind and anyone who knows me also knows how much I adore that film. I don’t usually associate him with Vampires, but 1983’s The Hunger is pretty interesting. To me, there’s a nice beauty and mystery to the film as the undead involved could just be regular people asking the same questions about mortality we do, all to some beautiful movie throughout. They are practical vampires. There’s no real explanation as to how John and Miriam move about through the day. Rather than biting, they use small knives to acquire blood. The powers they wield are subtle, putting the story on par with Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark when it comes to avoiding vampire cliches. Additionally, this film also never mentions the word ‘vampire’.
Miriam (Catherine Deneuve, Belle de Jour) and John Baylock (David Bowie, Labyrinth) are vampires living in present day Manhattan. Enjoying their existence as any member of the undead would, they spend their nights mingling among the living and discarding bodies by dawn. What seems like a great unlife takes a turn when John finds himself unable to sleep. This restlessness escalates as he finds he’s losing his hair and gaining more wrinkles. The pair stumble on the Park West Sleep Clinic, and Dr. Sarah Roberts’ (Susan Sarandon, Blue Beetle) studies on sleep and aging. For me, one of the best scenes of the film was a parallel between John’s rapid aging while waiting in the Clinic alongside a lab monkey that is also suffering a similar issue. Sarah doesn’t really get to check in on John (who ages a quick 15 years during the wait), but their meeting does eventually introduce her to Miriam.
Miriam eventually loses John after he falls into a near mummified state. Although he becomes incredibly old, he’s still far from death’s touch. I love her explanation for him: “Humankind die one way, we another. Their end is final. Ours is not. In the earth, in the rotting wood, in the eternal darkness, we will see and hear and feel.” We also learn that this has happened with all of Miriam’s former lovers over the ages. Miriam then turns her sights on Sarah, which blossoms into a mix of a romance at first. Trivia fans will recognize the piano piece Miriam plays for Sarah (Lakme by Delibes), which Scott reused for True Romance. That was a nice touch. Needing a new partner, Miriam’s approaches become more predatory after Miriam’s true nature is revealed.
The cast in The Hunger all do well, but let’s face it, the real draw here was always Bowie (at least for me, anyway). It’s a shame his character doesn’t stay on screen for long, but he makes good use of the scenes he has and he’s there for at least half the movie. The film essentially belongs to Deneuve, who brings some charisma to Miriam’s character. Whether she’s being playfully flirtatious or deadly serious, she seems to be in control. I don’t have anything particular against Susan Sarandon as an actress. She’s quite good in this, but part me kind of imagined Lesley Ann Warren (Clue) doing all this a bit better.
Tony’s directing style is beautiful but slightly disjointed, with flashbacks giving an idea to Miriam’s past. On the one hand, they aren’t enough to be too revealing, but they’re also accompanied with some strange sound zingers that could be a bit off-putting. He moves quickly between scenes, but the general ideas of immortality and her longevity are suggested. Cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt (Outland) would go on to work on the Lethal Weapon films and Schumacher’s Batman films. There are some good uses of shadow and light here.
The music a mix of classical pieces, mixed with what sounds like either wind chimes and synth keyboards. The classical music stands out. The score, not so much. It’s not a terrible thing by any means, but it’s a strange selection of sounds. Other than the music, I was bothered by the film’s ending. What occurs seems like it could have happened at any time, and why it does is never explained in any way. I guess it worked. By the end, though, I felt like I watched something where the first 3 acts were fully thought out and the production team threw a dart at a board full of possible endings.
Overall, The Hunger is a interesting film to watch if you catch it late at night. Every director has to start somewhere, and while it’s a little sketchy in the end, there’s some style and grace to it all.
A young woman has been murdered and her friends, who are all kind of in mourning but not really, have retreated to a villa near London. The villa is owned by one of their mothers, who is very Italian. She is also very protective of her son and hopeful that she can teach him and his friend some proper etiquette lessons. To accomplish this, she has invited a TikTok etiquette expert to come lecture the group. (The expert turns out to be an alcoholic.)
Needless to say, the majority of the group is not interested in learning about etiquette. They want to drink. They want to party. Some of them want to have sex. Lily (Eleanora Bindi) is interested in the villa’s reputation for being haunted and she especially has an eye for Charles (Christian Vit), the enigmatic and taciturn groundskeeper. Mostly, everyone just wants to have a wild weekend …. including the stranger in the mask who not only killed their friend but who has apparently followed them to the villa!
Released this year, Behave is one of the most mind-numbingly boring films that I’ve ever seen. For a slasher film that doesn’t even run for longer than 80 minute, it’s an amazingly talky film. Being talky is not necessarily a bad thing for a horror film, as long as the characters are interesting and the dialogue is witty. It also helps if the cast is talented enough to hold your interest even when they’re just sitting around and shooting the breeze. Unfortunately, Behave doesn’t have any of that. The characters are all so thinly drawn and their conversations are so entirely devoid of wit that listening to them try to communicate is the equivalent of torture. One gets the feeling that this movie could be used to force people to confess to committing crimes that they didn’t actually commit because it would be preferable to go to prison than to listen to another line of the film’s dialogue.
What’s behind the talkiness that seems to have infected so many recent low-budget horror films? Personally, I blame the drawn-out television shows and miniseries that dominate the streaming era. People have become so used to shows that are full of filler and which take forever to actually go anywhere that the pleasure of a well-paced story is in danger of becoming a distant memory. When even a 79-minute film like this one features scenes of people talking about things that have nothing to do with the overall plot, it’s obvious that there’s a problem.
The killer shows up throughout the film, though mostly mostly just so it can stand outside of a window and look …. well, not really menacing. We don’t actually see the killer in action until about 65 minutes into the film. For a slasher film, that’s way too long to wait. If the filmmakers wanted to make an indie comedy-drama about a bunch of friends spending the weekend at a villa, that’s what they should have done. If you’re going to make a horror movie, you have an obligation to work in some scares before your movie is nearly over.
Filmed in 1982 but not released until 1984, Boogeyman II is — as the name implies — the sequel to 1980’s The Boogeyman.
What’s that, you say? You don’t remember anything about The Boogeyman and you don’t want to take the time to read my review of it? Well, don’t worry. It’s not necessary to have seen the original Boogeyman to follow the sequel, largely because the sequel is full of flashbacks to the first film. Boogeyman II is only 79 minutes long and 30 minutes of that running time is taken up with footage from the first Boogeyman. Indeed, if you want to see the good parts of Boogeyman without having to deal with any of the filler, I would recommend just watching the first 30 minutes of Boogeyman II.
There is a plot to Boogeyman II, kind of. Having survived the massacre of her family at the farm, the now-divorced Lacey (played by Suzanna Love, the then-wife of director Ulli Lommel) goes out to California to visit her friends, actress Bonnie (Shannah Hall) and her husband, director Mickey (Lommel). How is it that Lacey, who was portrayed as being a simple and not particularly worldly farm wife in the first film, happens to be friends with a wealthy actress and director? It’s never really explained.
Bonnie and Mickey ask Lacey whether or not the people who killed her family were ever caught. Lacey replies that they can’t be caught because they’re spirits. Over dinner, Lacey tells Bonnie and Mickey the story of the shattered mirror and the killer whose spirit was trapped in the broken glass. Bonnie and Mickey listen sympathetically, though they both think that Lacey’s crazy. (Perhaps they noticed that Lacey’s flashbacks include scenes in which she wasn’t even present. Or maybe they’re wondering why Lacey would take the time to apparently describe a lengthy, bondage-themed nightmare that she had during the first film. Or maybe they’re just amazed by the presence of John Carradine in the flashbacks.) Bonnie and Mickey also think that Lacey’s story would make a great movie!
For some reason, Lacey is still carrying around a piece of the haunted mirror. This is the mirror that contains the spirit that possessed her during the first film and which killed the majority of her family. I would throw that piece of the mirror away but I guess Lacey’s more sentimental than I am. A creepy butler named Joseph (Sholto von Douglas, a rather stiff actor who still had a fascinatingly menacing screen presence) steals the piece of the mirror and soon, Hollywood phonies are dying.
Boogeyman II was directed by the late Ulli Lommel, a German director who got his start as an associate of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s and who eventually came to America, where he hung out with Andy Warhol, directed some documentaries about the American punk scene, and married heiress Suzanna Love. Love bankrolled Lommel’s early films, including The Boogeyman. With Lommel, it was always a challenge to figure out how seriously he took any of his films. In interviews, he would joke about being an exploitation filmmaker while, at the same time, claiming that his films were designed to expose the hypocrisy of American society. Boogeyman II is full of phony Hollywood types and there’s a scene where Mickey comments that, in America, “exploitation is a genre.” It’s probably not a coincidence that it’s the servant, Joseph, who uses the mirror to take out the film’s wealthy victims. The opening credits of Boogeyman II appear to literally be written in magic marker. Is Lommel mocking expensive Hollywood productions or could Lommel only afford a box of magic markers? I suppose both could be true.
The best parts of Boogeyman II are the flashback to the first film, which was a genuinely atmospheric horror film with some serious pacing issues. The rest of Boogeyman II is dull, though you do have to appreciate the sense of ennui that Lommel brings to the proceedings. Was the ennui intentional? That’s the mystery of Ulli Lommel.
As for Lommel, he and Love eventually divorced and Lommel ended his career making trashy true crime films that went direct-to-video. As usual, Lommel claimed that his crime films were meant to be a serious critique of everything that was wrong with America. Lommel’s true crime films have none of the atmosphere or occasional flashes of wit that distinguished Lommel’s earlier films. Was Lommel an incompetent director or was he a subversive artist? Again, both could be true. Lommel died in 2017, bringing to close an enigmatic career.
After someone is obviously meant to be Henry Kissinger (played by Ron Moody) is assassinated when he loses his diary and extends the wrong greeting to a welcoming party in the Middle East, someone claiming to be a direct descendant of the infamous Prof. Moriarty sends a letter to the U.S. President (Joss Ackland) taking responsibility and claiming that it’s the first step in a plan to control the world.
Who better to stop the descendant of Moriarty than the descendant of Moriarty’s greatest enemy? Arthur Sherlock Holmes (John Cleese) operates out of Baker Street with Dr. Watson (Arthur Lowe), who is bionic, and their housekeeper, Miss Hudson (Connie Booth). Holmes solution to bringing out Moriarty is to host a gathering of the world’s greatest detectives and to dare Moriarty to try to take them out with one fell swoop. Soon, everyone from Sam Spade to Columbo to McCloud is showing up at Baker Street.
This is a joke-a-minute comedy. The jokes that work are funny but, unfortunately, there aren’t many of them. Some bits, like Joss Ackland’s impersonation of Gerald Ford, start off well and then go on for too long. Other bits, like the famous TV detectives showing up at Baker Street, have potential but fail due to poor execution. Unfortunately, much of the humor is just not that clever to begin with, which is not something that anyone would expect from a script co-written by John Cleese. As an actor, John Cleese is funny but underused, playing Sherlock Holmes as being an even denser version of Basil Fawlty. Arthur Lowe’s comedic befuddlement is consistently amusing but I wish the script has done more with the idea of him being bionic. Connie Booth is both funny and sexy and the best reason to watch this misfire.
Through the Shattered Lens