Today’s Horror on the Lens is a classic film that really needs no introduction! Released in 1922, the German silent film Nosferatu remains one of the greatest vampire films ever made. It’s a film that we share every October and I’m happy to do so again this year!
Enjoy!
1972’s Murder Mansion (which is also known as Maniac Mansion) is an enjoyable Italian/Spanish co-production. It’s been included in a few dozen Mill Creek box sets and it’s usually advertised as being a zombie film. While I don’t want to give too much away about the film’s twisty plot, I do feel obligated to let our readers know that it is most definitely NOT a zombie film. Instead, it’s an old-fashioned gothic giallo.
Murder Mansion opens with various people separately traveling across the countryside. A few minutes is devoted to allowing us to get to know them and we quickly discover that they are all familiar giallo types. There’s the cold businessman, the lecherous man with the beard and the driving gloves, and, of course, the free-spirited young lovers who have just met. There’s also the emotionally unstable, Elsa (Analia Gade).
When a huge fog rolls in, Elsa is the first of the travelers to find herself stranded outside of a foreboding mansion. She thinks she sees two shadowy figures in the fog — a woman and a hulking man dressed like a chauffeur — pursuing her. As she runs through the fog, she runs into the young lovers, who are also similarly stranded. They decide to seek refuge inside the mansion and … guess what? It turns out that all the other travelers have decided to seek refuge there as well!
Well, it turns out that the mansion is looked after by a housekeeper named Martha (Ida Galli, a.k.a. Evelin Stewart). Martha explains that the former owner of the mansion was killed years ago in an automobile accident, along with her chauffeur. (Hmmm….) Martha also goes on to explain that the village around the mansion is deserted because the villagers became convinced that the woman and her chauffeur were vampires. Martha then invites everyone to spend the night.
As everyone prepares to turn in for the night, they can’t help but notice a few strange things. First off, why is every bedroom decorated with a disturbing painting? And why does the painting of the former, now deceased, owner of the house look so much like Martha?
As you probably already guessed, a mysterious figure soon starts to prowl around the house, killing the travelers one-by-one. Meanwhile, Elsa continues to have her nervous breakdown and soon starts to have flashbacks to some unspeakable acts that were committed by her father…
Murder Mansion is an enjoyable little giallo, one that is full of creepy atmosphere, twisty plot developments, and memorably strange characters. It’s actually a lot of fun to watch as our heroes creep around the mansion and try to put together all of the clues. (It made me want to go out and solve mysteries!) As far as blood, gore, and nudity are concerned, Murder Mansion is actually remarkably tame by the standards of Italian (and, for that matter, Spanish) thrillers, which makes it an appropriate introduction to the genre for people who may not have previously seen a lot of giallo films.
(Trust me. I tried to introduce my aunt to giallo by showing her Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood and she made me stop the movie after the double impalement. If I had been smart, I would have started with Murder Mansion and then worked my way up.)
All in all, Murder Mansion is a lot of fun and great Halloween treat!
The new horror film, The Inhabitants, opens with a series of black-and-white clips of the various guests at the March Carriage Bed and Breakfast. The clips appear to have been recorded by a hidden camera and what’s disturbing is that none of these guests — as they undress, sleep, brush their teeth, make love, and do everything else that you might do while staying at a hotel for the night — are aware that they are being recorded and that they are being watched.
I have to admit that one reason why this opening got to me is that I’ve spent the night in places like the March Carriage Bed and Breakfast. In fact, I love staying in and exploring hotels whenever I’m traveling or on vacation. I think that anyone who has ever stayed at a hotel is aware of that feeling that you sometimes get, in the middle of the night, that someone might be watching you. I mean, think about it. You’re in a town where nobody knows you. You’re in a bed that’s not your own. You have no idea who slept in that bed before you and you don’t know who will sleep in that bed after you. You don’t know who is sleeping in the room next to you. And you don’t know what might or might not be happening in the rest of the hotel. At that moment, you are probably more vulnerable then you’ll ever be. Would it surprise me to learn that I had secretly been filmed while staying at a hotel? Actually, it would surprise me if I hadn’t.
But, the thing is, we force ourselves not to think about those possibilities. Because, honestly, what else can we do? Sleep in our car? Sleep on the street? Camp in the wilderness where we’ll be even more vulnerable? So, we tell ourselves that there’s nothing to worry about and we force ourselves to believe it and we hope that nothing will happen that will force us to realize how wrong we are.
I think that’s why haunted house films are so effective. We all know what it’s like to find ourselves in a new or strange place and we’ve all had that experience of wondering whether that sudden feeling of fear is legitimate or if it’s just a case of our imagination going wild. We watch a haunted house film knowing and fearing that moment when the characters (and, by extension, us) are going to be forced to realize that their fear was legitimate.
From the start, with that hidden camera footage of people at their most vulnerable, The Inhabitants is a haunted house film that works. When we first meet married couple Dan (Michael Reed) and Jessica (Elise Courture), we like them immediately. They’re young, attractive, and obviously in love. From the minute that we learn that they’re going to buy the March Carriage Bed and Breakfast, we find ourselves wanting to yell, “Don’t do it!” because we know that we are watching a haunted house film and these things never end well.
And really, it’s the likability of Dan and Jessica that make this film effective. We relate to them and we don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. The frequent complaint about characters in horror movies is that they’re always doing something stupid but neither Dan nor Jessica does anything that the viewer wouldn’t do in a similar situation. They’re just trying to move into their home and get the unpacking done. But, of course, what they don’t realize is that, way back in the 17th century, the March Carriage Bed and Breakfast was occupied by a witch. And, as quickly becomes apparent, Dan and Jessica are not alone in the house.
So, I’m not going to spoil the movie in this review by giving you too many plot details. The Inhabitants is an atmospheric throw-back to the haunted house films of the past. The fog-covered landscape, the haunted inn, and a creepy cellar all served to remind me of Lucio Fulci’s classic Beyond trilogy while the film’s dream-like atmosphere and its haunted heroine reminded me of the classic, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death. The Inhabitants, distinguished by the empathetic performances of Michael Reed and Elise Couture, is a worthy addition to the genre.
The Inhabitants will be released on VOD on October 13th!
What the hell did I watch here?
Okay, I think I know what happened here. Jay Raskin took Ousmane Sembene’s Mandabi (1968), Jacques Rivette’s Celine And Julie Go Boating (1974), threw in some revenge, and topped it off with the appearance of a vampire near the end of the movie. Seriously, I think this guy was fresh out of film school when he made this. It even directly references Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) at the end when they go to see it in a theater.
I guess I need to try and explain this stupid thing so I can go back to recovering from hernia surgery.
The movie begins with Viola (Rachel Golden) telling her parents named Morris (David Dunton) and Doris (Kathryn Karnes) that she is married to a vampire. Now we cut back to when she first came to the city in order to tell us how she ended up with a vampire.
One of her first encounters is with a guy who tells her he wants to put her “on Fire Avenue”. That’s a new pickup line for me, but maybe people did talk like that back in 1983 when this movie was actually shot. Now she needs to find a place to live.
Turns out this lady lives in the same building.
Now she tries to find a job, but all the positions she calls about are filled. That’s when she runs into a member of MBC. That stands for Mohammad Buddha Christ. She attends one of the meetings.
Now she is brainwashed and when Mr. Fire Avenue asks her again, she trusts that an amulet she was given will protect her. Go figure, it doesn’t, and she gets raped. Luckily, this kind rapist has a job for her cleaning floors.
Wondering where the vampire is? Well, 50 minutes into this 90 minute movie is when we meet our vampire Robespiere (Brendan Hickey). Of course, he isn’t like any other vampire we know from other movies such as he leaves a reflection in a mirror.
Now we get the exciting cleaning 1983 computers and playing the arcade game Gravitar scenes. Then this happens.
Isn’t this almost the same way that Celine and Julie met in Celine And Julie Go Boating? Been too long since I watched it. Anyways, I don’t think this has anything to do with anything.
The rest of the movie is just Viola and the vampire going back to the people that wronged her and seeking revenge on them. I didn’t even mention the lawyer named Leachman. At least the rapist gets his comeuppance.
Then we cut back to Viola and her parents meet the vampire. THE END.
The idea of her being fleeced by everyone she meets reminded me of Mandabi. All the cinematography made me think of Celine And Julie Go Boating. I don’t know why there had to be any revenge and nor do I know what the hell a vampire was doing in this movie.
I know this is the kind of movie that some people will latch onto and love, but I’m not one of them. It really just felt like someone who threw together elements from movies they watched in college in an attempt to both deliver some social commentary while encouraging people to watch art films. And no, I’m not pulling that last bit out of my ass. The movie actually has several parts that put down slasher movies, but then when things are right again, they go see Dreyer’s Vampyr. One of the dumbest things I’ve watched all year.
Oh, and this damn poster is so misleading.
She looks nowhere near as hot as that. And does that look like a vampire to you? It looks like the guy from the cover of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the NES.
I haven’t seen a poster that misleading since the one for After Sex (1997) AKA Post Coitum.
Steer clear of this one.
So, it’s that time of year! 2015 is nearly over and soon, it will be time for me to make out my best-of and worst-of lists. That means that now is the time that I look over all the films that I have watched up to this point, I realize how many of those films I have yet to review ,and I think, “Oh my God, how did I get this far behind?”
So, here are 6 capsule reviews, designed to help me get caught up!
Ant-Man (dir by Peyton Reed)
Ant-Man has already been reviewed twice on this site, once by Leonard Wilson and once by Ryan The Trashfilm Guru. Leonard liked it. Ryan did not. As for me, my reaction was somewhere in between. I enjoyed Ant-Man, though not as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the previous Marvel films. Ant-Man was better than the second Thor film but nowhere close to being as good as Captain America: Winter Soldier.
What I did like about Ant-Man were the performances of Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, and Michael Pena. I even enjoyed Michael Douglas’s performance, which is saying something when you consider the fact that, as of late, Michael Douglas has really been making my skin crawl. I also thought that the film did a good job creating Ant-Man’s microscopic world, even if I’m still not totally sold on the character as a dynamic hero. I do wish that the film had a stronger villain. Corey Stoll is such a good actor and capable of doing so much and it was hard not to regret that he was stuck playing such a generic bad guy.
Cinderella (dir by Kenneth Branagh)
Oh, how I loved Cinderella! The film, a live-action retelling of the Cinderella story, was a gorgeous fairy tale and a wonderful reminder that a film doesn’t have to be dark and depressing to be good. (In many ways, Cinderella serves as an antidote to not only Into The Woods, but countless Tim Burton films as well.) Lily James is beautiful in the title role, Richard Madden is wonderfully charming as the prince, and Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter are perfectly cast as the stepmother and the fairy godmother.
Jurassic World (dir by Colin Trevorrow)
Jurassic World was previously reviewed by Ryan the Trashfilm Guru. I hate to admit it but I was, initially, one of those people who watched Jurassic World and got annoyed because the film was predictable and the script was a bit clunky. Traditionally (and, if you doubt me, just read my review of Avatar), it bothers me when a film devotes so much time special effects that it can’t seem to be bothered with character development and clever dialogue.
But then I thought about it somewhat and I thought to myself, you know what? This movie had Chris Pratt and it had some very convincing dinosaurs! And, especially when it comes to a summer blockbuster, that is sometimes all you need.
(Why I enjoyed Jurassic World while disliking Avatar largely comes down to the difference between Chris Pratt and Sam Worthington.)
Magic Mike XXL (dir by Gregory Jacobs)
Oddly enough, I had the roughly the same reaction to Magic Mike XXL that I had to Jurassic World. Yes, there are certain things — mostly concerning the film’s script — about which I could nitpick but what’s truly important is that Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, and most of the original cast of Magic Mike is back and they’re stripping again. Magic Mike XXL is a huge (heh heh) crowd pleaser, a film that delivers exactly what it promises.
Though Steven Soderbergh served as cinematographer for Magic Mike XXL, he did not return to serve as director and perhaps that’s why Magic Mike XXL feels like a far less pretentious film than the first Magic Mike. Out of the original cast, both Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer both declined to appear in the sequel. McConaughey is missed, Pettyfer less so.
The Man From UNCLE (dir by Guy Ritchie)
The Man From Uncle is one of the many stylish spy films to be released this year. Henry Cavill is an American spy, Armie Hammer is a Russian spy, and Hugh Grant is the Englishman who tells them both what to do. The Man From Uncle was entertaining. It took place in the 60s, so there was a lot of wonderful retro fashion and the whole movie moved at a nice, breezy pace. Ultimately — and I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t exactly fair — The Man From UNCLE suffered because it was released in the same year as Kingsman and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Man From UNCLE was entertaining but rather generic. At no point did it reach the lunatic high of Kingsman’s Free Bird sequence.
Terminator: Genisys (dir by Alan Taylor)
You can read Ryan’s review of Terminator: Genisys here. I have to admit that Terminator: Genisys confused the Hell out of me. Not being a huge fan of the entire Terminator franchise (though, yes, I do know what Skynet is and I have seen the first two films), I do have to admit that I sometimes felt lost while watching Genisys.
But you know what? If you just sit back and relax and try not to think about the film too much — if you just accept it as an action film and watch for the stunts and the explosions — Terminator: Genisys is not the disaster that many critics made it out to be. I mean, let’s just be honest here. Most critics would die before they gave a good review to any film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Just check out all the negativity that greeted the brilliant zombie film, Maggie.) After all, Schwarzenegger is an outspoken, confident, cheerfully arrogant Republican and most film critics can only relate to the arrogant part. (And even then, they don’t ever seem to be very cheerful about it…) Terminator: Genisys is a well-made and perfectly adequate action film, one that works as long as you don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. It’s cinematic junk food and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My friend, the writer Tammy Dowden, claims that 1961’s The Beast of Yucca Flats is the worst movie ever made.
Well, technically, she may be right. The Beast of Yucca Flats is a thoroughly inept film that makes next to no sense and has massive continuity errors. It’s a film that also features the legendary Tor Johnson as a Russian scientist who gets mutated by radiation and becomes a monster, but not before taking off almost all of his clothes while walking through the desert. For that matter, it’s also a film about a family that comes together though adversity — namely, being shot at by the police after the family patriarch is somehow mistaken for Tor Johnson. And finally, it’s the story of how a dying monster can find comfort from a rabbit and that’s actually kind of a sweet message.
Here’s the thing — yes, The Beast of Yucca Flats is bad but you still owe it to yourself to watch it because you will literally never see anything else like it. Plus, maybe you’ll be able to figure out what the whole point of the opening scene is.
Because I’ve watched this film a few times and I still have no idea!
Enjoy!
This 1980 Belgian film is quite possibly the worst film that I’ve ever seen.
That’s something that I have to be careful about saying because there’s always a chance someone is going to say, “Oh my God! If it’s really that bad, it must be a lot of fun to watch! I have to track this movie down!”
Well, it’s not that hard to track down Mama Dracula. It’s been included in countless Mill Creek box sets. It’s in the public domain so you can probably find it on YouTube. But seriously, when I say this movie is bad, I don’t mean that it’s so bad that it’s good. This is not an Ed Wood film. It’s not even a Herschell Gordon Lewis. Instead, it’s just a really bad and tedious movie. How bad is it? It’s so bad that I originally suspected that maybe Bret Ratner had something to do with it. That’s how bad it is.
Anyway, I guess I should tell you what the film is about so that way, I can at least say that I’ve reviewed this damn thing. Professor Van Bloed (Jimmy Schuman) gets an invitation to attend a special conference on blood research. The conference is being held in a small village in Transylvania and it’s being hosted by Countess Dracula. And yes, she actually does sign the invitation “Countess Dracula” and no, Professor Van Bloed finds nothing strange about it.
Anyway, it turns out that Countess Dracula is played by Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher. And yes, she’s a vampire. But also, she’s the infamous Countess Bathory, who remains young by bathing in the blood of virgins. But if she’s a vampire, wouldn’t she remain young regardless? (And, add to that, Louise Fletcher doesn’t look particularly young in this film so you have to wonder how old she was when she first started bathing in blood.) Countess Dracula also has twin sons and they are vampires with fangs and all that. Apparently, they don’t have to bathe in blood to stay young.
Anyway (and you end up saying anyway a lot when you watch a film like Mama Dracula), the Dracula Twins run a clothing store called Vamp and, whenever a virgin steps into the changing room, she is promptly kidnapped and whisked away to the castle. But everyone in the village seems to know what the twins are doing so you have to wonder why they don’t just stop going into the store.
Anyway, it turns out that there’s not many virgins left in the world and the villagers are encouraging their daughters to get laid as soon as possible. So, Countess Dracula is willing to set Prof. Van Bloed with a special laboratory so that he can … do something.
ANYWAY, after about an hour, the film realizes that it’s going to have to end at some point so Prof. Van Bloed ends up falling in love with Nancy Hawaii (Maria Schneider), who I guess is supposed to be a virgin, though the film never seems to be quite sure…
But … yeah, this was an amazingly bad film. Bleh on you, 1980 filmmakers!
Bleh. On. You.
It’s that time of the month again!
No, not that time! I mean that it’s time for me to, once again, attempt to guess which films and performers will receive Oscar nominations next January!
This year’s Oscar race is shaping up to be an interesting one. Even though some favorites have finally started to emerge, there doesn’t yet seem to be any true consensus choices. For instance, last year, from the moment the film premiered at Sundance, we all knew that J.K. Simmons was going to win an Oscar for Whiplash. There was never any doubt. This year, however, has yet to see any such certainty.
Up until a few days ago, I thought a best picture nomination for Carol was about as close to a sure thing as we could hope for. But now, word is coming in that American audiences are not reacting quite as enthusiastically to the film as the audiences at Cannes. Much like last year’s Foxcatcher, it’s starting to sound as if Carol might be a film that people respect more than they like.
Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies has been getting positive but not exactly rapturous reviews, which is pretty much what I was expecting. Spotlight seems to be becoming more and more of a certainty. A lot of self-appointed award divas are going crazy over Cate Blanchett in Truth, a film that looks incredibly tedious. Myself, I’m hoping that Suffragette turns out to be great and gets all sorts of nominations. Unfortunately, this means that I’m now in the rare position of actually agreeing with Sasha “I am the game” Stone of AwardsDaily.
And who would have thought that The Room would suddenly emerge as an Oscar front runner!? Way to go, Tommy Wiseau! Oh, wait. It’s a different Room?
Well, never mind then.
Anyway, below you can find my predictions for October and no, I’m still not hopping on the Revenant bangwagon, I don’t care how great the damn trailer is! (Actually, the trailer is really good…but I made my choices for this month and I’ll live with them.)
Be sure to check out my previous predictions for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September. (Daaaaaaaaaaamn…that’s a lot of predictions!)
Best Picture
Brooklyn
Room
Son of Saul
Suffragette
Best Director
Danny Boyle for Steve Jobs
Tom McCarthy for Spotlight
Laszlo Nemes for Son of Saul
David O. Russell for Joy
Denis Villenueve for Sicario
Best Actor
Michael Caine in Youth
Bradley Cooper in Burnt
Johnny Depp in Black Mass
Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs
Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett in Carol (and not Truth, so fug off with that commie crap!)
Brie Larson in Room
Jennifer Lawrence in Joy
Saoirse Ronan in Brooklyn
Lily Tomlin in Grandma
Best Supporting Actor
Paul Dano in Love and Mercy
Benicio Del Toro in Sicario
Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation
Kurt Russell in The Hateful Eight
Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies
Best Supporting Actress
Joan Allen in Room
Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight
Rooney Mara in Carol (though I’m sure Noomi Rapace would have been even better in the role)
Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl
Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs
Who is the world’s worst director?
That’s a question that can really lead to lot of conflict. First off, it’s a deceptively simple question. The more you think about it, the more you realize how fragile concepts like good and bad truly are. Some of the greatest films ever made were critical flops. Some of the films that have been embraced by contemporary critics will definitely be less acclaimed by future viewers. There’s a lot to take into consideration when it comes to determining whether or not a filmmaker is good, mediocre, or one of the worst of all time. It’s something that requires a lot of careful thought and consideration and research.
Of course, if you don’t have time for all that, you can just say that the world’s worst director is Ulli Lommel and save yourself the trouble.
This German director has been making movies for longer than I’ve been alive. He got his start in the early 70s, as an actor who frequently collaborated with the great German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With Fassbinder as his producer, Lommel made a few surrealistic (and, it should be stated, critically acclaimed) films in Germany and then, in 1977, he moved to the U.S, and became friends with Andy Warhol. He also married Suzanna Love, an actress who was the heiress to the Standard Oil Fortune and who starred in a handful of Lommel’s early films.
Today, Lommel’s reputation for being the world’s worst director is largely the result of an endless series of low-budget, straight-to-DVD films that he’s made about various real-life serial killers. I’ve seen quite a few of these movies (and I reviewed Lommel’s Curse of the Zodiac three years ago) and they are truly bad. Normally, I can find something to love about almost every movie that I watch but Lommel’s serial killer films are beyond terrible. They’re so bad that they are almost impossible to review. I mean, how many different ways can you find to say that a movie sucks so much that it will make you question whether Eadweard Muybride should ever have filmed Sallie Gardner at a Gallop in the first place?
But here’s the thing with Ulli Lommel and this what makes it especially so frustrating to see him currently doing a thousand variations on Curse of the Zodiac. His first two horror films — both of which were filmed in the early 80s and starred Love — are not that bad. Don’t misunderstand me. They’re not particularly good but they still feature enough hints of genuine talent and inspiration that you have to wonder just what the Hell happened.
The first (and best known) of Lommel’s horror films was 1980’s The Boogeyman, an incredibly stupid film that still featured some good atmosphere and a few memorable deaths. Lommel followed The Boogeyman with 1983’s The Devonsville Terror.
The Devonsville Terror may not have the same cult status as The Boogeyman but it’s actually a far more interesting film. The film opens in the 17th Century. In the Massachusetts town of Devonsville, three women are executed for being witches. After the final witch is burned, her spirit appears in the sky and announces that the town is now cursed.
We then jump forward 300 years. Dr. Warley is researching the Devonsville curse. By researching, I mean that he continually invites citizens in Devonsville into his office and hypnotizes them, which leads to them having flashbacks to 1683 and those of us in the audience having to continually rewatch the first few minutes of the movie. The spirit of the witch curses Dr. Warley and soon, he’s having to pull maggots out of his arm. It doesn’t add up too much but Dr. Warley is played by Donald Pleasence so he’s at least entertaining.
Meanwhile, a new school teacher, Jenny (played by Suzanna Love), has moved into town and she’s teaching the kids to think for themselves and even goes as far as to suggest that God might be a woman! The town leaders are shocked and more than a few of them start to suspect that she might be a reincarnated witch…
At the same time, a loser named Walter (Paull Wilson) has just murdered his wife and soon finds himself having nightmares where Jenny allows him to drown in a swamp. “The legend’s true!” Walter shouts in his dream, “You are a witch!”
On top of that, two other liberated women have recently moved into town, which leads to a panic as the townfathers realize that their town — best known for executing three witches — is now home to three feminists!
Of course, it all leads to an attempt to duplicate the executions of 1683. Heads explode. Faces melt. Don’t mess with the witches, y’all. That’s all I’m saying.
The Devonsville Terror is a huge mess but, much like The Boogeyman, the film has a lot of atmosphere and features a good performance from Suzanna Love. (As well, just as The Boogeyman features John Carradine not doing much of anything, Devonsville Terror features Donald Pleasence not doing much of anything.) But the main thing I liked about The Devonsville Terror was its feminist subtext, which is not something you would typically expect to find in a horror film from the early 80s.
You have to ask yourself — how did the director of The Devonsville Terror ends up becoming the guy who directed Curse of the Zodiac and Mondo Americana? One huge clue is probably found in the fact that Suzanna Love is nowhere to be found in any of Lommel’s later films. According to the imdb, Lommel and Love divorced in 1987.
With Suzanna Love, Ulli Lommel was an occasionally interesting, if uneven, filmmaker.
Without her, he’s just the guy who directed Curse of the Zodiac.
Today’s Horror on the Lens is The Norliss Tapes, a 1973 made-for-TV movie that was also a pilot for a television series that, unfortunately, was never put into productions.
Reporter David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) has disappeared. His friend and publisher, Stanford Evans (Don Porter), listens to the tapes that Norliss recorded before vanishing. Each tape details yet another paranormal investigation. (Presumably, had the series been picked up, each tape would have been a different episode.) The first tape tells how Norliss investigated the mysterious death of an artist who apparently returned from the grave.
For a made-for-TV movie, The Norliss Tapes is pretty good. It’s full of atmosphere and features a genuinely menaching yellow-eyed zombie monster.
Enjoy!
