Today’s horror scene that I love comes from the 1994 Italian film, Dellamorte Dellamore.
Viewed out of context from the rest of the film, this is not an easy scene to explain. My suggestion is enjoy it for the beauty of the images and Rupert Everett’s mournful performance. And, if you haven’t seen it, watch Dellamorte Dellamore as soon as possible.
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.
This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!
Today’s director: the brilliant Michele Soavi!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Stage Fright (1987, dir by Michele Soavi)
The Church (1989, dir by Michele Soavi)
The Sect (1991, dir by Michele Soavi)
Dellamorte Dellamore (1994, dir by Michele Soavi)
When it comes to bad movies from the 70s, you have to love a movie like 1976’s Track of the Moonbeast. This film takes place in New Mexico and tells the story of Paul (Chase Cordel), a slow-talking mineralogist who gets a chunk of moon rock lodged into his brain. As a result, he turns into a gigantic lizard and goes around killing people. His only hope appears to be his old friend, the stoic Profession Johnny Longbow (Gregorio Sala), who knows all sorts of indian lore. He also knows how to make stew and early on in the film, he gives a world-weary monologue about what ingredients he puts in his stew. (Onions, mostly). Anyway, this is an awful, awful film that’s full of bad acting, bad special effects, and dumb dialogue. It’s also a lot of fun and it features the guy pictured below singing a song called California Lady that totally got stuck in my head. I loved Track of the Moon Beast.
Enjoy!
(Lisa is not just watching horror movies! She is also trying to clean out her DVR! She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st! Will she make it? Keep checking here to find out! She recorded One Small Indiscretion off of Lifetime Movie Network on September 2nd!)
I learned a few things from watching One Small Indiscretion.
First off, and most importantly, I learned that there is no such thing as a “small” indiscretion. In this film, Caroline (Ashley Winters) has a brief affair while separated from her husband, Sam (Cru Ennis). When Caroline and Sam get back together, she tries to forget that the whole thing even happened. Six years later, Caroline tells her best friend that she isn’t even sure what eventually became of her former lover. However, we know that he ended up killing both himself and his alcoholic wife. For Caroline, it was a small indiscretion but, for a little girl named Elle, it was a tragedy that took away her parents.
Secondly, if you work hard and marry well, you can eventually live in a really big house that has a pool, a jacuzzi, and a guest house. However, if you work too hard, all of the romance will go out of your marriage and soon, you won’t even be using the pool after a couple of years.
Third, if you own a guest house, you are required by the laws of plot contrivance to rent it out.
Fourth, if you do rent out your guest house, there’s a good chance that it will lead to someone from the past tracking you down. In this case, it’s Elle (Tiera Skovbye). Elle is now 21 years old and eager to avenge the death of her parents but destroying Caroline’s life. Though she may be young, Elle is already an evil genius.
Actually, I guess it’s debatable as to whether or not Elle is that smart. It’s entirely possible that Elle only seems smart because everyone else in the movie is incredibly stupid. From the minute Elle moves into that guest house, she’s manipulating and seducing. She’s taking naked midnight swims. She’s encouraging Caroline and Sam’s son, Logan (Johnny Visotcky), to skip college. She doesn’t make much of an effort to hide what she’s trying to do and yet, Caroline soon decides that Elle is going to be her new BFF. It’s actually kind of hard not to be on Elle’s side. Elle’s methods may be extreme and she does get more and more psycho as the movie unfolds but Caroline and Sam are so bourgeois that it’s difficult to have much sympathy for them. Add to that, Elle’s an artist. She draws. If you side with the non-artists over the the artist, that means you’re doing life wrong.
But back to what I learned from One Small Indiscretion:
Fifth, it’s not that difficult to bug a house.
Sixth, search engines are like magic.
Seventh, it’s easy to knock people out.
Eighth, Canada is a beautiful country.
Anyway, One Small Indiscretion is a thoroughly predictable Lifetime film. The best role in these films is always the psycho and Tiera Skovbye plays Elle as if even she can’t believe how stupid everyone else in the film is. Elle is having so much fun being evil that you can’t help but be happy that she received the opportunity. She may be the villain but you’ll totally be Team Elle when you watch One Small Indiscretion.
Today’s horror scene that I love is from 1992’s Candyman.
For the record, after watching this film, I stood in front of a mirror and I said Candyman three times. I’m waiting until I have something to be mad about before I say it two more times.
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.
This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!
Today’s director is one of the most important names in the history of American horror cinema, George Romero!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir by George Romero)
Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir by George Romero)
Day of the Dead (1985, dir by George Romero)
Land of the Dead (2005, dir by George Romeo)
Can you figure out what’s going in today’s horror on the lens, the 1965 film Monster A Go Go?
This sci-fi/horror hybrid details what happens when an astronaut lands on Earth and promptly disappears. Much like The Creeping Terror, this film makes frequent use of a narrator. I always appreciate it when movies like this come with a narrator.
Anyway, Monster A Go Go was reportedly started by Bill Rebane in 1961. When he ran out of money, the film sat unfinished for four years. That’s when Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the film, added some additional scenes, and then released it on a double bill with one of his own films. Hence, if Monster A Go Go seems like two different movies crammed together … well, that’s pretty much what it is.
Along with its interesting production history, Monster A Go Go is also well-remembered for its amazingly nonsensical ending. I imagine that this film led to a few drive-in riots.
Enjoy!
(Lisa is not just watching horror movies! She is also trying to clean out her DVR! She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st! Will she make it? Keep checking here to find out! She recorded New York Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell off of Lifetime on April 23rd!)
“That is some hard wood.”
— Joyce Mitchell (Penelope Ann Miller) in New York Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell (2017)
Why would Joyce Mitchell, a middle-aged wife and mother, help two convicted murderers escape from a prison in upstate New York?
That was the question that everyone was asking in 2015, even though everyone already knew what the answer probably was. (Bad boys are sexy. Murderers are the ultimate bad boys. Plus, Joyce Mitchell appeared to be a little bit crazy and a little bit stupid.) After breaking out of Clinton Correctional Facility, both Richard Matt and David Sweat spent several weeks on the run while Joyce Mitchell was briefly both the most hated and the most ridiculed woman in America. Interestingly, Joyce Mitchell was not the only prison employee to help out the two convicts. She was just the only woman.
During the manhunt for Sweat and Matt, I did what I usually do. I made a joke. I can’t even remember what the joke was but I do remember that it really ticked off some random people on twitter. Seriously, the way these randos reacted, you would think that I was the one who had helped two killers to escape from prison.
“Certain things are not funny!” they shouted, “CERTAIN THINGS YOU DO NOT JOKE ABOUT!”
(Seriously, can you believe that people could actually get that mad at little old me? What is this world coming to?)
Anyway, I have to wonder if any of those self-righteous losers watched New York Prison Break: The Seduction of Joyce Mitchell and, if they did, how they reacted to it. New York Prison Break may sound like a standard Lifetime true crime film but it takes a satiric approach to the material. If certain people found my relatively innocuous comments to be triggering, I can only imagine how they reacted to a made-for-TV movie that opened with a bloody recreation of Matt and Sweat’s crimes and then segued to a scene of Joyce making breakfast while listening to a trashy romance novel on tape.
As played by Penelope Ann Miller, Joyce is somehow sympathetic, pathetic, annoying, and frightening, all at the same time. She has a nice house with a perfect kitchen and a husband, Lyle (Daniel Roebuck), who is utterly clueless as to how bored and dissatisfied Joyce has become with her very safe life. It leaves her open to being manipulated by both David Sweat (Joe Anderson) and Richard Matt (Myk Watford), both of whom drew her into aiding their escape by feigning a romantic interest in her. While they both encourage Joyce to fantasize about running off with them and starting a new life in Mexico, Lyle’s idea of adventure is to go out for Chinese food. For Joyce, helping Sweat and Matt escape is like a real-life version of one of her novels.
Though it’s a true story, it’s also a very absurd story. New York Prison Break emphasizes the strangeness of it all. Scenes of Joyce and Lyle discussing the ins and outs of fabric softener are mixed with scenes of Sweat and Matt bickering over whether they should go to Canada or to Mexico. Joyce’s desperate attempts to cover up her own involvement in the escape are contrasted with Sweat and Matt bonding outside of the prison. Joyce may have been in love with both of them but, as the film makes clear, Sweat and Matt only loved each other. And, as it eventually turns out, they didn’t even love each other that much…
“Mrs. Mitchell,” one detective asks, “you knew these men murdered and tortured a man and you gave them the means to escape from prison?”
“Everyone says I’m too nice,” Joyce explains.
New York Prison Break is a superior and well-made Lifetime film, distinguished by a quartet of strong performances. Penelope Ann Miller, Daniel Roebuck, Joe Anderson, and Myk Watford are all at their best and it makes for very compelling viewing.
Hell of the Living Dead, a 1980 Italian zombie film, is a movie known by many different names. Some of these names are more memorable than others.
For instance, it’s known as Virus, which isn’t a very good name. It’s kind of boring. Plus, a virus could lead to anything. Sure, a virus could turn someone into a zombie but it could also just mean a week in bed. Plus, there’s already a thousand movies called Virus.
Night of the Zombies is a bit more specific, though still rather generic. Just about every Italian horror film that came out in 1980 was about zombies and most of them took place at night.
Island of the Living Dead, at the very least, let’s you know where the majority of the movie takes place. That said, it’s kind of a dishonest title. The island isn’t just occupied by the living dead. There’s also a primitive tribe, the members of which pop up occasionally to throw spears at a group of soldiers and a journalist.
I absolutely love the title Zombie Creeping Flesh. Seriously, I don’t know why they bothered to come up with so many alternate titles when they already had Zombie Creeping Flesh.
However, this film is best known as Hell of the Living Dead and, actually, I guess that’s a pretty good title. I mean, it’s totally and completely over the top. Add to that the title almost feels like a challenge being specifically issued to the fans of George Romero’s zombie films. It’s as if the film is saying, “If you can’t handle the Night or the Dawn, the Hell is absolutely going to kill you!”
Anyway, this is an extremely low-budget film from director Bruno Mettei and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso. The team of Mattei/Fragasso were famous for producing some of the most ludicrously silly horror films to ever come out of Italy. (Outside of his collaboration with Mattei, Fragasso is best known for directing Troll 2.) A typical Mattei/Fragasso film is entertaining without being particularly good. They were never ones to allow a thing like a lack of money to stand in the way of their narrative ambitions.
For instance, in Hell of the Living Dead, there’s one isolated scene that’s supposed to take place at the United Nations. The scene appears to have been filmed in a lecture hall at a small university. One delegate angrily declares that he is sick of everyone exploiting his zombie-occupied country. Someone else suggests that maybe they should take a break until tomorrow. It’s an incredibly inauthentic scene that adds nothing to the story but that didn’t keep the team of Mattei and Fragasso from including it in the film. They were determined to have a UN scene and they weren’t going to let a lack of money or access stop them.
Anyway, the majority of the film deals with a zombie outbreak on a small tropical island. The island is almost exclusively made up of stock footage. A typical scene will feature a character like journalist Lia (played by Margit Evelyn Newtown) standing in the middle of the frame. She looks to the right and we get some grainy stock footage of a bat or something similar. She looks to her left and we get some faded stock footage of a tiger.
As I mentioned previously, the island also has primitive natives. Whenever you hear the drums in the distance, it’s important to toss off your shirt, paint your face, and start jogging. Otherwise, you might get killed. You know how that goes.
And then there’s the zombies, of course. The zombies get an origin story, something to do with an accident at top secret chemical plant. At the start of the film, a rat attacks a scientist. I’m assuming the rat was carrying the virus but it’s just as possible that Mattei just decided to throw in a random rat attack. (His best film was literally just 90 minutes of rat attacks.) Regardless, the zombie effects actually aren’t that bad but the problem is that whenever the zombies show up, they have to compete with all of the stock footage. When the zombies aren’t dealing with animal footage that was originally shot for a mondo film, they keep busy by eating nearly everyone that they meet. A group of soldiers have been sent to take care of the zombies but since none of them are particularly bright, they don’t have much luck.
Hell of the Living Dead has a reputation for being one of the worst zombie films ever made. I don’t know if I would go that far. It’s watchable in a “what the Hell did I just see?” sort of way. And in the end, isn’t that kind of the point of a film like this?
Ever since I made the mistake of watching Wolves at the Door a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the 2008 home invasion film, The Strangers.
I’ve always struggled with my feelings towards The Strangers. On the one hand, this is a horror film that actually scared me. Considering the amount of horror films that I’ve watched (not to mention the number of home invasion films), that’s really saying something. Since a horror film is meant to frighten, The Strangers has to be considered a success. At the same time, The Strangers always leaves me so upset that, after watching, I inevitably swear to myself that I’ll never watch it again. And yet, whenever I see it playing on cable, I can’t help but watch at least a little of it. Even knowing what’s going to happen and how the film is going to end, The Strangers retains a hypnotic power.
The Strangers is a simple film. There’s a house out in the middle of nowhere. Having just left a wedding reception, James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and his girlfriend, Kristen (Liv Tyler), arrive at the house. James and Kristen are not having a good night. James asked Kristen to marry him. Kristen turned him down. That’ll make any night awkward, regardless of how nice the house is.
James and Kristen settle into the house for the night, both of them eager to get away from each other in the morning. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. A young woman (Gemma Ward) is looking for someone named Tamara. When told that there is no Tamara in the house, she replies, “See you later.”
The girl’s not lying. Later, while James is out sulking, Kristen realizes that she’s not alone. There are three strangers, all wearing masks. They’re watching. They’re waiting…
The rest of the film details, in excruciating detail, the rest of the night. What makes the film particularly disturbing is that neither James nor Kristen are dumb but they’re still powerless against those three strangers. Just as the strangers hide their faces, they also hide their motive. The closest that Kristen and James get to an explanation for why they’re being targeted is that “You were home.” To the strangers, it’s a game. They’re like three cats, playing with a cricket. They’re not going to back off until they’ve removed at least one leg.
(James and Kristen, I should add, are not the only potential victims in The Strangers. There’s also Mike, who is James’s best friend and who is supposed to pick him up in the morning. Of everyone in the movie, I always feel the worst for Mike. For one thing, he was just trying to do his friend a favor. For another, he’s played by Glenn Howerton. Has It’s Sunny In Philadelphia done a The Gang Plans A Home Invasion episode?)
The Strangers is an absolutely terrifying film, specifically because it’s so easy to relate to Kristen and James. They remind the viewers of their friends. They remind the viewers of themselves. Watching them, we’re reminded of every time that we’ve heard a strange sound in the night and tried to tell ourselves that it was nothing. We live in an increasingly unstable world and The Strangers perfectly captures the feeling of living under the shadow of death. It’s a bit like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, without any “it’s just a movie” moments to provide us with any sense of security. The film starts with a message telling us that we’re about to see a true story. Even though we know that might just be hyperbole, we also know that what we’re seeing could very well have happened. In fact, it could happen to us as soon as the movie ends.
That’s the hypnotic dread of The Strangers.
Through the Shattered Lens 