Tag Archives: Horror

Horror on the Lens: Plan 9 From Outer Space (dir by Edward D. Wood, Jr.)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Viewing Plan 9 From Outer Space during October is a bit of a tradition around these parts and here at the Shattered Lens, we’re all about tradition.  And since the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ed Wood, Jr. is just a five days away, it just seems appropriate to watch his best-known film.

Speaking of tradition, this 1959 sci-fi/horror flick is traditionally cited as the worst film ever made but I don’t quite agree.  For one thing, the film is way too low-budget to be fairly judged against other big budget fiascoes.  If I have to watch a bad movie, I’ll always go for the low budget, independent feature as opposed to the big studio production.  To attack Ed Wood for making a bad film is to let every other bad filmmaker off the hook.  Ed Wood had his problems but he also had a lot of ambition and a lot of determination and, eventually, a lot of addictions.  One thing that is often forgotten by those who mock Ed Wood is that he drank himself to death and died living in squalor.  The least we can do is cut the tragic figure some slack.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is a ludicrous film but it’s also a surprisingly ambitious one and it’s got an anti-war, anti-military message so all of you folks who have hopped down the progressive rabbit hole over the past few years should have a new appreciation for this film.  I mean, do you want the government to blow up a Solarnite bomb?  DO YOU!?

Also, Gregory Walcott actually did a pretty good job in the lead role.  He was one of the few members of the cast to have a mainstream film career after Plan 9.

Finally, Plan 9 is a tribute to one man’s determination to bring his vision to life.  Ed Wood tried and refused to surrender and made a film with a message that he believed in and, for that, he deserves to be remembered.

Now, sit back, and enjoy a little Halloween tradition.  Take it away, Criswell!

Can you prove it didn’t happen?

WELL, CAN YOU!?

Music Video of the Day: Foxy, Foxy by Rob Zombie (2006, directed by Rob Zombie)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The cliche view of Rob Zombie is that he is a shock rocker who branched out into horror filmmaking.  With the song and the music video for Foxy, Foxy, Zombie shows that he is just as much a descendant of Lynard Skynard’s as he is of Alice Cooper’s.  And though the video may not have the horror themes that most people expect from a Zombie production, the song itself was at least partially inspired by a Lon Chaney film, He Who Gets Slapped.

Yes, that is Sheri Moon Zombie showing up at  the outdoor concert.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.12 “The Playhouse”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

Agck!  Stranger danger!

Episode 2.12 “The Playhouse”

(Dir by Tom McLoughlin, originally aired on January 28th, 1989)

Mike and Janine Carlson (played by Robert Oliveri and Lisa Jakub) are two young siblings living in the suburbs.  They don’t have much of a life.  Their mother (Belinda Metz) is neglectful and continually complains that her children are the reason why she can’t find a rich boyfriend.  Mike and Janine don’t appear to have any close friends.  Children are vanishing all over town and parents are telling their kids, “Don’t go off with strangers!” but no one seems to care enough about Mike and Janine to even check to make sure that they haven’t been kidnapped.

Mike and Janine have a playhouse, a gift that was given to them by one of their mother’s former boyfriends.  The playhouse is the only place where they feel happy.  It’s a place where they literally get anything that they wish for.  But sometimes, the door to the playhouse is locked.  When that happens, Mike and Janine have to convince someone else to go into the playhouse.  Once someone enters the playhouse, they find themselves trapped in a nightmarish world that is full of evil clowns and other circus figures.  Mike and Janine have to chant, “I hate you!  I hate you!” while the playhouse claims its victims.

Agck!  Seriously, this is a disturbing episode!  Not only are Mike and Janine terribly abused but almost all of their victims are children.  Perhaps because of the age of the people involved, this is the only episode of Friday the 13th: The Series in which no one dies.  They’re held prisoner in the playhouse and probably traumatized for life but they don’t die.  Fortunately, that means that they can be freed once Jack convinces Mike to chant, “I love you!” instead of “I hate you!”

Yep, this episode is all about the power of love but you really have to wonder if all of Mike and Janine’s problems can be solved by chanting, “I love you!”  I mean, aren’t the other kids going to remember that Mike and Janine held them prisoner in a nightmare universe?  The episode may end with the playhouse defeated by Mike and Janine are still living in that terrible suburb and their mother is still a resentful alcoholic.  Even though this episode has what would most would consider to be a happy ending — the kids are free! — it’s still incredibly dark.

This episode definitely left me feeling a bit shaken.  I hate seeing children in danger and that’s what this episode was all about.  Even things that sound kind of silly — like Mike chanting “I hate you!” while the playhouse does its thing — are actually rather disturbing when viewed.  The child actors are almost too convincing in this episode.  In the end, Jack says that all you need is love but this episode leaves you wondering if he’s correct.

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond Episode 1.4 “The Dark Room” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond, Cloris Leachman plays Rita Wallace, an American photographer in France.  She’s looking for a model whose face will serve as the ultimate symbol of the country.  One day, a haunted-looking man (Marel Dalio) shows up at her apartment.  She thinks he’s a model.  The truth, needless to say, is something quite different….

This episode features good performances from both Leachman and Dalio.  In real life, Dalio was an icon of French cinema and a favorite of Jean Renoir’s.  When the Nazis invaded France, the Jewish Dalio fled Paris and, after a harrowing journey, eventually made it to America.  In America, he played the croupier in Casablanca and appeared in several other films.  Tragically, the rest of his family did not escape and were murdered by the Nazis.  Dalio returned to France after the end of the war and remained an in-demand character actor for several more decades, making his final film appearance in 1980.

The Darkroom originally aired on February 10th, 1959.

October Hacks: Splatter University (dir by Richard W. Haines)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we started to watch 1984’s Splatter University, Jeff warned me that, “This is not a great movie.”

I laughed.  “Hey,” I said, “I just watched Satan’s Children.  How bad can it be?”

I looked at the screen and was immediately confronted by a poorly animated picture of the New York Skyline.

“Oh crap,” I said.

Four words appeared on screen: “A Troma Team Release”

“Oh, no!” I shouted….

Still, I’m not one to stop watching a film once it starts so I watched the entirety of Splatter University.  Fortunately, it was only 78 minutes long and, regardless of what else one might say about it, it did not waste much time getting to the murders.  Within the opening few minutes, an orderly in a mental hospital got stabbed in the crotch, with the camera zooming in on the blood spurting out from his groin,  The patient who stabbed him took the orderly’s clothes (which, quite frankly, should have been covered in blood so I’m not sure that they would actually be the ideal disguise) and makes his escape.

Three years later, a sociology professor is brutally stabbed to death in her classroom at St. Trinian’s College and again, the camera zooms in on the spurting blood, as if to make sure that no one accuses the film of lying about the “splatter” part.  Her quickly-hired replacement is Julie Parker (Forbes Riley), who soon notices that someone seems to be murdering her students.  Being a good teacher, Julie decides to protect her students by figuring out who the murderer is at St. Trinian’s College.  Fortunately, there aren’t that many suspects, for two reasons.  Number one, the students and faculty die with such frequency that it’s easy to guess who is responsible by process of elimination.  Number two, it appears that the makers of this film could only afford a handful of actors.  St. Trinian’s appears to have about twenty students and most of them appear to be in their early forties.

On the one hand, as I mentioned previously, Splatter University does live up to its name.  It’s obvious that the production didn’t have a huge budget but it appears that the majority of what the filmmakers did have was spent on fake blood and entrails because a lot of blood is spilled and one particularly gruesome scene even involves intestines spilling out of a body.  Agck!  (Seriously, the sight of the large intestine always freaks me out.)  I really can’t fault the film as a slasher flick, even if the killer’s identity is obvious.  That said, this was still a Troma release and, as such, there’s a lot about it that sucks.  Apparently, the original film was too short so Troma added some badly acted, “comedic” scenes of the students acting stupid.  Those scenes pad out the film’s length but they also screw with the pacing and they distract the viewer from what is otherwise a crudely affective, low-budget American giallo film.  But that’s Troma for you!

(And, let’s be honest — how can you not love Lloyd Kaufman?)

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Satan’s Children (dir by Joe Wiezycki)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1974 film, Satan’s Children, tells the story of unfortunate Bobby Douglas (Stephen White).

Bobby is a teenager who lives in a hideous suburban house with his stepfather (Eldon Mecham) and his stepsister (Joyce Molloy), who looks old enough to be Bobby’s mother.  Bobby’s a rebellious kid who doesn’t understand why he should always have to cut the grass while his stepsister hangs out by the pool.  Bobby is sick of the whole scene, man.  When his stepfather yells at Bobby for having a small stash of marijuana in his room, Bobby decides to run away from home.  Seriously, that scene was totally melvin so I don’t blame Bobby.

Bobby goes to a bar, where an old man tries to talk to him until Jake (Bob Barcour) tells the old man to get lost.  Jake tells Bobby that he has to be careful because there are perverts all over the place.  Bobby nods and laughs because Bobby’s not a square.  He knows what’s up.  Jake invites Bobby to come hang out at his place and Bobby is like, “Cool, way too friendly stranger, I’ll get you in your rape van.”  Bobby goes home with Jake and is promptly raped.  With Bobby naked and bound, Jake calls all of his friends over and Bobby is then gang raped.  The scene where Jake and his friends drive the bound Bobby around is pure nightmare fuel and I can only imagine how audiences in 1974 reacted to it.

The next morning, a group of hippies found Bobby lying in a field and they take him back to their commune.  Of course, these folks aren’t just hippies.  They’re also Satanists!  Sherry (Kathleen Marie Archer) wants to let Bobby stay with them while she nurses him back to health.  Joshua (John Edwards), an older member of the group, says that Bobby isn’t welcome because Bobby is probably “queer.”  Simon (Robert C. Ray II), the turtleneck-wearing leader of the group, is also hesitant to allow Bobby to stay and again, it’s because Simon assumes Bobby must be gay.  Simon also makes it clear that he doesn’t want any lesbians in his Satanic cult either.  He just wants people who are prepared to carry out a blood sacrifice….

(I swear, that Satan.  Not only is he the ruler of Hell and the tormenter of souls and the fallen angel responsible for getting Adam and Eve kicked out of the Garden and bringing sin into the world, he’s also apparently a massive homophobe!)

While the Satanists torture Sherry for displeasing Simon, Bobby tries to figure out a way to escape.  Fair warning: the majority of the film’s finale involves Bobby running around in tighty-whities, which get progressively more and more mud-stained as the movie goes on.  Seriously, ew!  On the other hand, not one but two people manage to die as a result of accidentally wandering into quicksand.  If nothing else, it’s a reminder that Bobby isn’t the only incredibly stupid person in the movie.

This is a weird movie.  I imagine it was made to capitalize on the notoriety of the Manson Family but, with its extended opening scenes in the suburbs, it instead becomes an ennui-drenched look at how far people will go to escape conventional society.  Despite all the of the truly terrible things that happen to him, Bobby is not a sympathetic or likable character.  In fact, he comes across as being just the type of idiot who probably would get sucked into a cult.  That said, the film is truly a unique (if rather slow) experience and the brutal ending took me totally by surprise.  Like many grindhouse film, Satan’s Children is an oddity that you truly can’t look away from.

In The Shadow of Guilt (2022, directed by Keven Russell)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

An alcoholic writer is driving drunk when she runs over a little girl.  At first, she gets out to help but when she sees that the girl is dead, she just apologizes and drives off.  Later, she and another writer are at a rustic retreat.  The drunk writer has writer’s block.  The other writer has a secret.  A neighbor tells a story about another little girl who was killed mysteriously.  Eventually, a ghost shows up because the alcoholic has been living in the shadow of guilt.

I liked the idea behind this one but the action moved slowly and the two main actresses were not convincing.  It’s only a 62 minute film but it seemed like an eternity.  The ghost special effects were effective enough, though there were a few times when it looked like the ghost’s mask was about to fall off.  Brian Stewart, as the neighbor, did a good job in his one big scene.  They should have made the entire movie about him.  Main message: Don’t drive drunk and things like this movie won’t happen to you.

Scenes That I Love: Anthony Perkins in Psycho

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

You have to feel a bit bad for Anthony Perkins, who was an Oscar-nominated star of film and Broadway and something of a teen idol before he was cast as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho.  Perkins was so convincing in the role that he pretty much spent the majority of his career either playing variations of the character or appearing in small roles where his macabre screen image would not be too much of a problem.  Perkins gave one of the best film performances of all time and his career never really recovered from it.

Unfortunately, there’s a tendency to overlook just how good Anthony Perkins was in this first Psycho.  People look at his later, less-compelling performances and they make the mistake of thinking those performance were the best that Perkins was capable of giving.  Perkins was a fine actor and never better than when he played Norman.  The scene below highlight how Perkins managed to make Norman Bates both poignant and creepy at the same time.

October True Crime: Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released this year, Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door tells the story of two neighbors in the 70s.

Bobby (Mason McNulty) is a typical 7os teenager, with long hair and a laid back attitude.  He’s what my grandparents used to call a “good kid.”  He helps out his neighbors and he only charges 50 cents an hour.  When he sees someone new moving in, he immediately offers to help the man unload all of his furniture.  He gets along with his parents.  He’s popular with his friends.  Bobby seems destined to grow up to become the type of guy who you would want living next door to you.

His new neighbor is named John (Mike Korich).  John is a small businessman with local political ambitions.  He entertains at parties under the name Pogo the Clown.  He has a loud and, if we’re going to be honest, somewhat grating laugh.  He’s a dorky guy but he seems to be super-friendly.  In fact, he’s a bit too friendly.  He’s very quick to invite young men like Bobby to come home with him.  Bobby can’t help but notice that John’s new friends enter the house but they don’t ever seem to leave.

“I’ve never met anyone named John Wayne before,” Bobby says, when he first meets John.

“My mother named me after a cowboy,” John Wayne Gacy replies.

Soon, Bobby’s curiosity gets the better of him and he starts investigating Gacy on his own.  He comes to believe that Gacy is murdering the men that he brings home and then keeping their bodies in the house.  Unfortunately, no one wants to believe Bobby.  John, a murderer?  Friendly, clownish, buffoonish John?  “He works for the Democrats!” Bobby’s mother says at one point, a line that genuinely made me laugh.

There’s a lot of laughter to be found in Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door.  John Wayne Gacy loves to put on his clown makeup, kill people, and laugh.  The laughing gets old pretty quickly, to be honest.  The real-life John Wayne Gacy was executed after less than 20 years on Death Row.  If his real-life laugh was anything like his laugh in the movie, I’m surprised that they weren’t any quicker about doing away with him.

The real-life John Wayne Gacy was one of the worst serial killers in American history.  He killed dozens, so much so that he’s still considered to be a suspect in several unsolved murders.  He tortured his victims in the worst ways imaginable.  And he never even bothered to fake any sort of remorse for his crimes.  Instead, after he was jailed, he sold Gacy merchandise to morbid collectors.  His last words, before being put to death, were reportedly, “Kiss my ass.”  John Wayne Gacy is the type of murderer who makes people like me, who are against the death penalty in general, seriously reconsider their feelings.

Considering how terrible Gacy and his crimes were, it’s a bit odd that Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door almost plays out like a comedy at time.  The film portrays Gacy as being so openly evil that it’s hard  not to smile whenever an adult refuses to believe Bobby’s claim that there might be something wrong with the man who enjoys wearing clown makeup and carrying around a set of handcuffs.  A scene where Gacy comes over to Bobby’s house and asks if he can use the phone is pure cringe comedy.  The problem is that I don’t think that the scene was meant to be comedic.

Gacy: Serial Killer Next Door is a bit of a misfire as a true crime film, as it gets the majority of the facts wrong.  (That said, it was correct about John Wayne Gacy being a Democrat.)  It works as a comedy but one could argue that a film about John Wayne Gacy should not be a comedy, even if it is largely unintentional on the part of the filmmakers.  Mason McNulty gave a good and sympathetic performance as Bobby and Mike Korich was properly creepy as Gacy.

In the end, we should probably just be happy that John Wayne Gacy is dead.