As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1977’s Planet of Dinosaurs!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!
Planet of the Dinosaurs (1978, dir by James Shea, DP: Henning Schellerup)
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, we begin the second season! Welcome back to Springwood!
Season 2.1 “Dream Come True”
(Dir by George Kaczender, originally aired on October 8th, 1989)
The second season of Freddy’s Nightmares features Freddy getting involved in the action.
The first story features Freddy haunting the nightmares of teenager Randy Jennings (David Kaufman), who has only recently moved to Springwood with his mother, Cathy (Linda Miller). Randy is having nightmares about Freddy so his mother buys tickets to attend a talk show hosted by Stan Brooks (Jay Thomas). Stan’s guest is therapist Dr. Brandon Kefler (Scott Marlowe), who has written a book about nightmares. Cathy begs Brandon to see Randy and, after being pressured by Stan, Brandon agrees. Stan arranges for cameraman Garry Heath (Gerard Prendergrast) to film the session.
At the Jennings home, Brandon talks to Randy about his nightmares. Brandon’s therapy seems to work as, afterwards, Randy is able to sleep peacefully and without having any nightmares. However, it turns out that Freddy just jumped from Randy’s mind to Brandon’s! (Hey, didn’t almost the same thing happen in a movie, something about an exorcism….) Soon, Brandon is the one who is having nightmares and being driven mad by visions….
As for the second story, it deals with Garry the cameraman and his belief that Freddy Kruger is real. One reason why Garry believes that Freddy is real is because Freddy keeps showing up in footage that he’s filmed. Unfortunately, no one else can see Freddy, certainly not Garry’s boss (Charles Cyphers). Even more unfortunately, the body of Garry’s girlfriend is found in a dumpster and the police aren’t buying Garry’s story that Freddy did it….
This episode actually wasn’t that bad, especially compared to some of the episodes that aired during the show’s first season. Perhaps it’s because this episode was the first of the season and the production budget hadn’t gone dry yet but Dream Come True actually features some adequate production values. The house looks like a real house. The television studio looks like a place where something would actually be filmed. The abandoned warehouse with Garry tries to confront Freddy is actually an atmospheric location and the episode even manages to generate a little suspense, even if neither plot is particularly original. Both Scott Marlowe and Gerard Pendergrast give decent performances in their stories and, as always, Robert Englund is a properly evil Freddy.
(That said, the show did manage to misspell Charles Cyphers’s name in the opening credits, despite the fact that he was this episode’s big guest star. I did a double take when I saw “Charles Syphers,” on my screen. Seriously, the man was Sherriff Brackett!)
Despite getting Charles Cypher’s name wrong, this was still a good start to the final season. It’ll be interesting to see if the remaining episodes live up to it.
The original Dawn of the Dead, which was released in 1978 and directed by George Romero, is not only one of the most influential horror films of all time. (Even more so than Night of the Living Dead,Dawn was responsible for inspiring the Italian zombie boom.) It’s also a rather dark satire of humanity and commercialism. With the world ending, both humans and zombies head to the mall. Briefly, the humans manage to form their own peaceful society but, inevitably, they end up screwing it all up. The Dead may be slow and not particularly intelligent but, as poor old Steve discovered in that elevator, they’re absolutely determined to get what they want.
Dawn of the Dead ends with an apocalytpic combination of bikers, zombies, and one helicopter that has next to no fuel. Our two remaining survivors head off in search of some place safe but we all know that helicopter isn’t going to stay in the sky for long. In its way, the ending of Dawn of the Dead is even more bleak than the end of Night of the Living Dead. With the end of this film, Romero’s message is clear. Society is as dead as the creatures tearing it down.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 1988’s Waxwork!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, on what would have been his 83rd birthday, the Shattered Lens pays tribute to Texas’s own, Tobe Hooper!
The Austin hippie who redefined horror and left thousands of yankees terrified of driving through South Texas, Tobe Hooper often struggled to duplicate both the critical and the box office success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s only been in the years since his death that many critics and viewers have come to truly appreciate his unique and subversive vision.
Down here, in Texas, we always believed in him.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Tobe Hooper Films
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Daniel Pearl)
Eaten Alive (1976, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Robert Caramico)
The Funhouse (1981, dir by Tobe Hooper. DP: Andrew Laszlo)
Poltergeist (1982, dir by Tobe Hooper, DP: Matthew Leonetti)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1984’s The Initiation!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!
Today’s scene that I love is from the 1961 Roger Corman-directed Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Pit and The Pendulum!
Not only is that pendulum nightmarish as Hell but check out that set design! One can see that Corman definitely took some inspiration from the work being done in the UK by Hammer. Watching this scene, it is easy to see why Corman devoted so much of the early 60s to directing Vincent Price in various Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. 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 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? 1992’s Demonic Toys!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
John Carpenter is not only a great director but he’s also a brilliant composer. Today, in honor of Carpenter’s birthday, our song of the day is his haunting Theme From The Fog.
The brilliance of this scene is that it pretty much speaks for itself. It doesn’t need to be overanalyzed. It doesn’t need to be carefully explained. It works because it captures what almost everyone has always suspected, even if they didn’t necessarily have the courage to say so aloud.
Through the Shattered Lens 