I should start things off with a confession. This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens. I previously shared it during the 2013, 2015, 2020, ad 2022 Horrorthons and, each time, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.
However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again. Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made. And, honestly, who am I to disagree? (Though disagree, I do.) However, it’s also a film that simply has to be seen.
(As well, I love regional horror and there are a few films as regional as Manos, a film that was filmed in my home state of Texas and directed by a fertilizer salesman.)
By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds. What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped. So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.
It’s going to be a bit of a mini-October Positivity review tonight. I spent today helping my neighbors move then crying because my neighbors had moved, and then trying to talk my new neighbors into not getting rid of their new house’s hot tub. I’m tired, so I’m going to try to keep things relatively short tonight.
In 2023’s Before It Happened, Eli Jenkins (played by the film’s director, Andrew Jacob Brown) is such a hard-boiled cop and detective that, when he realizes that the Mayor of his town has been kidnapping children and holding them prisoner in his home, he literally forces his way into the house and puts that perverted public official in his place. Now, you would think that the Mayor of reasonably-sized town being arrested for kidnapping a child would be big news and Detective Jenkins would be on all of the Fox or Newsmax shows. Instead, Jenkins gets yelled at for not following procedure.
Uhhmm, guys — your mayor was abducting children and holding them prisoner in his home! His wife was helping him! Why does no one in this movie seem to think this is as strange as I do? I mean, seriously, I know that we’re no longer shocked when a public official is arrested but this still seems like a pretty big deal.
Anyway, Jenkins is given a new assignment. He needs to find his ex-partner, Bobby (Jason Haines), and bring him to meet with his brother, the chief of police (Brian Eberly) who happens to be dying. Jenkins tracks down Bobby but it turns out that Bobby, who was once a good and ambitious cop, is now totally irresponsible and in debt because he sold some valuable basketball cards to a comic book store. Jenkins has to get the cards back before he can even think of taking Bobby to see his brother. Since the original owner of the cards is holding Jenkins’s current partner (Christopher Shane Lowry) as a hostage, it is literally a matter of life-and-death. Bobby and Jenkins work together to try to make things right and, along the way, they confront their own demons. This leads to an increasingly complicated series of events. Meanwhile, almost everyone that Jenkins talks to tells him that the Biblical prophecies are coming true and that the world will soon end….
There were some good things about this film. I did smile a bit at just how complicated Eli’s relatively simple assignment became. He just couldn’t catch a break and no one was willing to help out until Eli did something for them first. That part of the film had a lot of potential. But, like so many faith-based film, Before It Happened suffers from amateurish acting and a script that often seems to be trying too hard to imitate the big budget blockbusters that inspired the film. Sometimes, you just have to be willing to admit that you don’t have the budget or the experience necessary to make a Hollywood-style crime drama. Before It Happened‘s story had potential but the execution failed to realize it.
First released in 1970, Herschell Gordon’s Lewis’s The Wizard of Gore tells the story of Montag The Magnificent (Ray Sager), a magician who has a rather macabre stage show.
After lecturing his audience about how everyone secretly wants to see blood and violence, he selects a female volunteer from the audience. Both the woman and the rest of the audience are hypnotized. Montag’s tricks all involve mutilating his volunteers. One volunteer is chainsawed. Another gets a metal spike driven into her brain. Another is drilled by a giant punch press. (Like seriously, how does one store a giant punch press?) The hypnotized audience only sees Montag using his various instruments of torture but they don’t see the wounds or the blood or the intestines. (The movie audience is a bit less lucky.) The victim is hypnotized into not realizing that she has essentially been murdered but, when the hypnosis wears off after the show, they promptly drop dead, mysteriously mutilated in the same way that everyone saw Montag miming on stage.
Naturally, the police arrest Montag and the movie ends.
No, actually, it doesn’t. Even though it’s obvious that Montag is the murderer and that he’s hypnotizing people, the police don’t arrest him because his hypnotized audience swears that Montag didn’t really hurt anyone during his stage act. However, television host Sherry (Judy Cler) and her lunkhead boyfriend, Jack (Wayne Ratay), both come to believe that Montag is the killer and they try set up a plot to expose him on national television, Montag can’t hypnotize people through the television …. can he!? And if he can do that, who is to say that he hasn’t hypnotized the people in the theater who would have been watching The Wizard of Gore when it was first released?
The Wizard of Gore appears to have been Herschell Gordon Lewis’s attempt to comment on his own status as a director who was notorious for making gory films. (His 1963 film, Blood Feast, is often referred to as being the first gore film.) Montag is a monster who appeals to his audience’s desire to see something extreme and forbidden. For all of Montag’s evil, he can only exist and get more victims because people are willing to watch him torture strangers. Lewis was not exactly known for being a particularly artful director but the shots of Montag’s victims screaming in terror while Montag’s audience silently and unemotionally watches are about as close to a genuinely powerful moment as you’re likely to find in a Herschell Gordon Lewis film. The Wizard of Gore, with its commentary on the gore genre that Lewis himself largely invented, is one of Lewis’s more self-referential films. And with it’s trick ending and shots of people suddenly collapsing with their intestines literally spilling out of them, it’s also one of Lewis’s stranger films and that’s saying something when you consider just how many odd films Lewis made over the course of the 60s and 70s. (There’s a reason why one of his better films was called Something Weird.) The Wizard of Gore is definitely a Lewis film, with his trademark stiff actors and non sequitur dialogue giving the whole thing a dream-like feel.
There’s a scene in Junowhere Jason Bateman tells the film’s title character that Herschell Gordon Lewis is a superior filmmaker to Dario Argento and that The Wizard of Gore is scarier than Suspiria. As soon as I heard that, I knew his character was going to turn out to be a sleaze and I was right. The Wizard of Gore is a historically interesting film, especially for those who love the old grindhouse films. But it’s no Suspiria.
In the 1956 film, The She-Creature, bodies are being discovered on the beach. The murderer appears to be a bizarre, humanoid creature with gills and scaly skin. It commits its dastardly crimes and then it disappears back into the ocean! What could it be? Is it a genuine monster? Is it a psycho diver in a rubber suit? Is it just some random murderer that hides in the shadows and stalks the night like a cat searching for mouse?
While bodies are showing up on the beach, Dr. Carlo Lombardi (Chester Morris), is trying to convince the world that his theories about reincarnation and the occult are correct. Usually clad in a tuxedo and accompanied by his assistant, Andrea (Marla English), Dr. Lombardi swears that everyone has lived a past life and that, when under hypnosis, people are capable of reliving all of their past lives. Dr. Lombardi theorizes that reincarnation has been going on since the beginning of time and, as a result, a hypnotized person could even relive their past life as a cave dweller or, presumably, a single-celled creature floating around in a lake. Actually, under Lomradi’s theory, I guess it’s possible that someone could have been a dinosaur in a past life.
(It’s probably best not to give that too much thought because most people would probably be disappointed to discover that they weren’t one of the cool dinosaurs but instead, they were one of those goofy green lizards that was always running out of the way of the cool dinosaurs. No matter how many times someone bangs a gong, not everyone can be a T-rex, sorry. Everyone wants to be the dinosaur that eats but no one wants to be the one that got eaten.)
The scientific community scoffs at Dr. Lombardi but when he puts Andrea under hypnosis, it’s enough for Timothy Chappell (Tom Conway) to want to go into business with him. The scientific community may scoff at Lombardi and his theories but Chappell sees him as the key to a fortune. Who cares if his powers are real or not? Well, Lombardi cares and he’s discovered that he can use hypnosis to cause Andrea to turn into a prehistoric monster who will kill his enemies!
(Actually, Dr. Lombardi is such a good hpynotist that he’s even able to convince a dog to kill his owner. Then again, maybe he just offered the dog a treat for being a good boy. Who knows how the canine mind works?)
An entertaining B-movie, The She-Creature benefits from the committed performance of veteran tough guy Chester Morris, the other-worldly beauty of Marla English (who was cast because it was correctly felt she resembled Elizabeth Taylor), and the noir-influence direction of Edward L. Cahn. The plot makes no sense but it hold your interest and the monster is a genuinely impressive creation.
On a personal note, I’ve never bought into reincarnation but if I was anyone in a past life, I was probably either Edie Sedgwick or Alice Roosevelt.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
Today’s director is the Godfather of Gore himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis!
4 Shots From 4 Herschell Gordon Lewis Films
Blood Feast (1963, dir by Herschell Gordon Lewis, DP: Herschell Gordon Lewis)
Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964, dir by Herschell Gordon Lewis, DP: Herschell Gordon Lewis)
Something Weird (1967, dir by Herschell Gordon Lewis, DP: Andy Romanoff)
The Wizard of Gore (1970, dir by Herschell Gordon Lewis, DP: Alex Ameri and Daniel Krogh)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents 1968’s Coogan’s Bluff, starring Clint Eastwood!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Coogan’s Bluff is available on Prime and Tubi! See you there!
Today’s horror film is a true classic of its kind, the 1953 science fiction epic Robot Monster.
Now, I should admit that this is not the first time that I’ve shared Robot Monster in October. I share it every year and, every year, YouTube seems to pull the video down in November. That sucks because Robot Monster is one of those weird films that everyone should see. So, I’m going to share it again. And, hopefully, YouTube will let the video stay up for a while.
As for what Robot Monster is about…
What happens with the Earth is attacked by aliens? Well, first off, dinosaurs come back to life. All of humanity is killed, except for one annoying family. Finally, the fearsome Ro-Man is sent down to the planet to make sure that it’s ready for colonization. (Or something like that. To be honest, Ro-Man’s exact goal remains a bit vague.)
Why is Ro-Man so fearsome? Well, he lives in a cave for one thing. He also owns a bubble machine. And finally, perhaps most horrifically, he’s a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet. However, Ro-Man is not just a one-dimensional bad guy. No, he actually gets to have a monologue about halfway through the film in which he considers the existential issues inherent in being a gorilla wearing a diver’s helmet.
Can humanity defeat Ro-Man? Will Ro-Man ever get his intergalactic supervisor to appreciate him? And finally, why are the dinosaurs there?
Despite the film’s reputation for being borderline incoherent, most of those above questions actually are answered if you pay attention to the first few scenes of Robot Monster. In fact, one could even argue that Robot Monster is maybe a little bit more clever than it’s often given credit for. Of course, it’s still a zero-budget mess of a film but it’s also undeniably fun and, in some sections, unexpectedly dark. If you’ve never seen it before, you owe it to yourself to set aside an hour and two minutes in order to watch it. You’ve never see anything like it before.
Finally, I should note that Robot Monster’s hero was played by George Nader, who actually did go on to appear in several mainstream films. Despite his good looks and talent (which may not be obvious in this film but which he did have), George Nader struggled to get starring roles in Hollywood, where he was often dismissed as just being a member of Rock Hudson’s entourage. (It’s been theorized that Nader struggled because the studios feared that giving him too big of a role would lead to the gossip magazines writing about Nader’s relationship with Hudson, though the two were just friends. Nader was in a relationship with Hudson’s private secretary, Mark Miller, from 1947 until Nader’s death in 2001.) Nader finally left Hollywood and went on to have a pretty successful career in Europe. He was perhaps best known for playing secret agent Jerry Cotton in a series of films in the 60s.
Death has been on my mind A LOT the past several months. I recently lost my Uncle and he was a lot closer to a Dad than what I was assigned. My uncle lived an authentic life and was OUT when it was not okay to be out, but in the words of the philosopher Bruce Springsteen- “Closets are for Hangers.” Sadly, he suffered a great deal, but he faced Death like a Man.
In this short, Death has a life- A really really really banal life. He acts out in school, gets drunk in college, marries, and gets run over by a car. Actually, how he died was the most interesting event that happened to Death.
I’m really trying to be nice here, but sometimes I just can’t. You might notice that I tagged Alex Magana; well, he makes terrible short films too and I feel like Alex should get a royalty when someone else spits out a crappy film. Apparently, Marcin won some awards for THIS??! So ugggghhh, I guess people like terrible things sometimes.
Where did the short go right? It had a beginning, middle, and an end. I can write that without a doubt that this was a film that was made. Also, this film had a script where words were written down. I can assume that real dollars were spent to make this…film, which is fine. I mean, well people can buy all sorts of things with cash. It should be noted that as a society we forbid people to spend money on certain things: murder/heroin; maybe, this could be considered to make that list…let’s not rule that out. He did murder my time and patience.
Where did it go wrong? It was boring. I really just did not care that Death had a boring life or that he had children. If anything, I thought it was tacky. I really didn’t find the writing really moving. I never cared about Death as a “Person”. I did Chuckle Out Loud COL once, but that’s it. You could say, Case, you’re down and grieving; of course, you’ll hate this, BUT I argue that this short-film is still crap and the filmmaker is not great and should do something else with his time. Decoupage? Extreme Couponing? Boxing? Whatever, just stop bothering us.
I once wrote that we could stop Alex Magana from making films – he can only be so strong and if we ganged up and brought a tall guy, we could taunt him by holding his camera up really high and make him futilely jump for it. There’s basically TWO Alex Magana’s now; so, we might have to bring more people into stopping them, but we can do this! Left, Right, Libertarian, or Vegetarian let’s stop them- TOGETHER!
A short film from 2009, Dialtone tells the story of Greg Pleasant (played by the film’s director, Brian Lohr.)
Greg is an attorney and apparently, a pretty successful one. He has a nice office in a nice building in downtown Seattle and his partners all respect him and trust him with the big clients. The big clients often ask Greg to do things that could be considered unethical and Greg says that he has no problem with it. When the mayor demands to know if Greg’s Christian faith is going to get in the way of being a cutthroat, amoral attorney, Greg tells a joke about about how, when he was in England, he saw a gravestone that said that a man had been “a lawyer and a Christian.” “They buried two people in that grave,” Greg’s tour guide said.
Four days after the death of his wife, workaholic Greg is back in the office and saying that he doesn’t need any time off. He’s back and ready to help the people of Seattle continue to exploit legal loop holes and get out of paying taxes. However, a mysterious man named Peter (Craig Munson) steps into the office and says that Greg needs to come with him, Peter explains that he has a phone that can be used to call people in the past. Greg is skeptical but, after getting an enigmatic phone call, Greg follows Peter to a warehouse. Peter gives Greg a list of everyone who will die in the next two days and tells Greg to call them. Greg isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say. Peter tells him that he’ll have to figure that out on his own.
As I said at the start of this review, Dialtone is a short film. It clocks in at a little over 45 minutes and the end credits run for several minutes so, in reality, Dialtone is the length of a typical sitcom. The short-length adds to the film’s dream-like feel. Since there’s not much time for Greg to have doubts or to argue with Peter, it seems like he manages to go from his office to the warehouse in the blink of an eye. (And perhaps he did….) As Greg calls the people who are going to die and encourages them to get both their material and spiritual affairs in order, he has flashback to the accident that cost his wife her life. The effect is entertainingly surreal. The film’s story is not always easy to follow. I assumed that Greg was having a hallucination for the majority of the film but the ending seemed to suggest that everything happened exactly the way that we saw it happen. The film’s message is clear enough, even if the story is sometimes muddled.
It’s a flawed film. The acting is frequently amateurish, which is definitely a recurring problem when it comes to faith-based films. But the weird imagery and the idea of a telephone that can call two days into the past were properly intriguing. Who would you call if you could call someone two days in the past? I’d probably call my neighbors and ask them to check if I left behind my favorite gold pen when I last visited.
Finally, as a sign of the times, I thought the film was being ironic by having Peter lead Greg to a landline phone. But then I realized that this film was made in 2009, back when it wasn’t quite as unusual for people to still have a landline as it is now. It’s amazing how quickly things change.
1960’s The Sinister Urge opens with a shot of a blonde woman running down a highway while clad only her underwear.
As I watched this scene unfold, I was reminded of a chapter in Hollywood Rat Race, a non-fiction book about the sordidness of the film industry that was written by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The chapter takes the form of a letter to aspiring young actresses who come to Hollywood, convinced that they’ll become stars. In the chapter, Wood asks what the innocent young ingenue will do if a director tries to force her to film a scene in just her underwear. Will you give in, Wood asks, or will you stick true to your values? Wood seems to suggest that the actress should say no, no matter how much pressure the director puts on her. Of course, Wood himself was a director, as well as a writer. In fact, he directed The Sinister Urge.
The Sinister Urge is about the dark side of the film industry. Police Lt. Matt Carson (Kenne Duncan) and Sgt. Randy Stone (Duke Moore) are investigating a series of murders. The victims have all been women and they’ve all been killed in the same park. Carson and Stone suspect that the murders might be connected. Gee, guys, ya think so?
The murders are being committed by Dirk Williams (Dino Fantini), a knife-wielding teenager who works for the local pornographic filmmakers, Johnny (Carl Anthony) and Gloria (Jean Fontaine). Dirk has become addicted to viewing pornography and it’s driven him crazy. Johnny, who laments that he was once a serious filmmaker before he found himself reduced to directing and distributing “smut” to make money, is full of guilt and self-loathing. Gloria doesn’t care about anything other than making money through selling smutty pictures and movies. She doesn’t care that she’s helping to produce a product that is inspiring the sinister urge that drives Dirk to kill.
Can Dirk be stopped before he attacks innocent Mary Smith (Jeanne Willardson), who has fallen into the clutches of Gloria’s smut syndicate? (That’s a great band name, by the way.) And how will Dirk react when he learns that both Johnny and Gloria are thinking about sacrificing him for the greater good of their evil organization?
The Sinister Urge is an over-the-top melodrama that is clearly an Ed Wood production. (Posters for Plan 9 From Outer Space and Bride of the Monster appear in Johnny’s office.) Some of the actors deliver their lines stiffly. Some of them delvier their lines with just a little bit too much emotion. The hard-boiled dialogue is full of cliches. The action sometimes comes to a complete stop so that the cops can discuss the threat of adult films. The film may be sordid but it’s all presented with such an earnest DIY style that it becomes rather fascinating to watch. At one point, Wood spliced in footage from a totally different film because why not? Wood had the footage. The Sinister Urge was running short. Why not pad out the length with something totally unrelated? That never surrender spirit is why Ed Wood remains a beloved figure 100 years after he was born in Poughkeepsie.
Sadly enough, this was Wood’s final “mainstream” film. After this film, he could only find work writing adult novels and writing and directing the same type of movies that are criticized in The Sinister Urge. (One has to wonder if The Sinister Urge was Wood’s attempt to satirize the moral panic of the time.) Sadly, Wood sank into alcoholism and died 17 years after this film was released. He was 54 years old. His films, however, live on.
Through the Shattered Lens 