Tag Archives: Horror

Horror Film Review: X: The Man With X-Ray Eyes (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Floyd Crosby)

Eyes.  They’re one of the most important parts of our body but they’re also frightening easy to damage. Unlike the heart or the liver or the brain, they don’t have a protective covering of skin and bone.  They sit exposed and  are easily injured.  They can be ripped out of one’s head, which is a scary thought.  As well, they tend to grow weaker over time.  I love my multi-colored eyes and I think they’re one of my best features but I still spend a lot of time wishing that they weren’t quite as vulnerable as they are.  I often say that I’m blind without my contacts or my glasses.  That’s not quite true, of course.  I can see enough to get by if I forget to put in my contacts but I still have to do a lot of squinting, enough so that most people can take one look at me and say, “You forgot to put in your contacts, didn’t you?”  In my case, my eyesight has definitely gotten even worse over the past few years.  I’ve been told that’s normal but it still freaks me out.  I worry about waking up one day and not being able to see anything at all.

Director Lucio Fulci, a diabetic who was slowly going blind during the final years of his life, was infamous for including scenes of eyes being either pierced or gouged out in his films.  The New York Ripper even featured one scene where an eye was slit in half with a razor blade.  (This occurred in a close-up, no less!)  In Joe D’Amato’s Beyond the Darkness, there’s a scene where a mad taxidermist replaces the eyes of his dead fiancée with glass and for me, that’s one of most disturbing elements of the film.  Horror directors understand the vulnerability of the eyes and the sadness when life is extinguished from those eyes.  Eyes are said to be the windows to soul and when those eyes are lifeless, it’s a reminder that a living soul is a fleeting thing.

Perhaps that’s why 1963’s X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes is such an effective work of art.  Directed by Roger Corman, the film tells the story of Dr. James Xavier (Ray Milland), a doctor who has developed eye drops that, when taken, allow one to have x-ray vision.  Dr. Xavier claims that the eye drops will allow doctors to more easily diagnose their patients and certainly, he has a point there.  His friend, Dr. Sam Brant (Harold J. Stone), points out that the eyes are directly connected to the brain and that using experimental eye drops on them could potentially drive a person mad.  Dr. Xavier proves Dr. Brant’s point by losing his tempter and accidentally pushing him out of a window.

Ah, x-ray vision.  It all starts out fun.  Dr. Xavier is performing miracle surgeries and seeing what everyone looks like naked.  (The swinging jazz party scene is a classic example of how 60s B-movies teased audiences while never quite showing everything.) But once he’s forced to go on the run from the police, Xavier finds himself making a living as a carnival psychic while still trying to refine his eyedrops.  Xavier’s sleazy manager (Don Rickles) tries to turn Xavier into a faith healer but, with Xavier’s x-ray vision growing more erratic and more intense, Xavier ends up running off to Vegas with a former colleague, Dr. Diane Fairfax (Diana Van der Vils).

And again, it’s all fun and games as Xavier uses his powers to cheat at cards.  But then the megalomania kicks in and, after Xavier basically announces that he’s cheating, he finds himself being chased through the desert by a police helicopter and freaking out as more and more of the universe is revealed to him.  Much like a Lovecraftian protagonist who has been driven mad by the sight of the Great Old Ones, Xavier finds himself overwhelmed by the center of the universe.  At a tent revival, a preacher shouts, “If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out!”

The film’s final image is a shocking one and it stays with you.  (There were rumors that the film originally ended with Xavier shouting, “I can still see!” but Corman himself said that never happened.)  Even without that final image, this would be one of Corman’s best films, a surprisingly intelligent and rather sad story about a man who, in trying to see what is usually hidden, was driven mad by what he discovered.  Ray Milland was well-cast as Dr. Xavier and watching him go from being a somewhat stiff but good-hearted scientist to a raving madman at a revival is quite an experience, a testament to the vulnerability that all humans share.  In the name of science, Xavier goes from being a respected researcher to being chased through the desert by a helicopter.  The man who wanted to be able to see everything finds himself wishing to be forever blinded.  Sometimes, the film suggests, it’s best not to be able to see everything around us.  Sometime, the mysteries of the universe should remain mysteries and the rest of us should respect our own vulnerabilities.

Horror on the Lens: The Terror (dir by Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Dennis Jakob, and Jack Nicholson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, “I’d love to see a movie where a youngish Jack Nicholson played a French soldier who, while searching for a mysterious woman, comes across a castle that’s inhabited by both Dick Miller and Boris Karloff?”

Of course you have!  Who hasn’t?

Well, fortunately, it’s YouTube to the rescue.  In Roger Corman’s 1963 film The Terror, Jack Nicholson is the least believable 19th century French soldier ever.  However, it’s still interesting to watch him before he became a cinematic icon.  (Judging from his performance here and in Cry Baby Killer, Jack was not a natural-born actor.)  Boris Karloff is, as usual, great and familiar Corman actor Dick Miller gets a much larger role than usual.  Pay attention to the actress playing the mysterious woman.  That’s Sandra Knight who, at the time of filming, was married to Jack Nicholson.

Reportedly, The Terror was one of those films that Corman made because he still had the sets from his much more acclaimed film version of The Raven.  The script was never finished, the story was made up as filming moved alone, and no less than five directors shot different parts of this 81 minute movie.  Among the directors: Roger Corman, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and even Jack Nicholson himself!  Perhaps not surprisingly, the final film is a total mess but it does have some historical value.

(In typical Corman fashion, scenes from The Terror were later used in the 1968 film, Targets.)

Check out The Terror below!

Music Video of the Day: Karla The Strange by Maddy Ellwanger (2014, directed by Maddy Ellwanger)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“K is for Karla

Who likes to play dead”

Both this song and this artist were unknown to me until I searched YouTube for “scary music video.”  This video was one of the first that came up and I decided to go with it.  It’s a video that captures the spirit of Halloween and the importance of doing it all yourself.  Maddy Ellwanger not only wrote and performs the song but she also directed, produced, animated, filmed, and edited this video.

The video features Karla Partida in plenty of strange situations, whether she’s playing with an oversized brain or posing like Vampira.  According to the description of the video on YouTube, Karla Partida is not only Karla The Strange but also Miss Black Lagoon.

Enjoy!

Late Night Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.12 “Frozen Out Of Time”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

From Iceland to Malibu, you can’t keep a good Viking down.

Episode 2.12 “Frozen Out Of Time”

(DIr by Rick Jacobson, originally aired on February 9th, 1997)

After a volcanic eruption in Iceland, a frozen Viking boat is discovered floating in the ocean.  Inside the boat are two Vikings, who have spent the past 900 years in blocks of ice.  Under the orders of Dr. Lancaster (Edward Mulhare), the Vikings are transported to Malibu.  Lancaster’s plan is to thaw the Vikings out and see if they can be revived.  Daimont Teague, who has a habit of popping up anywhere that someone is trying to do something stupid, is not sure if Dr. Lancaster knows what he’s doing so he decides to call Mitch and Ryan to the lab.

Now, you can justifiably say, “What is Mitch going to do with a frozen Viking?”  It’s a legitimate question.  Of course, you can also wonder why Dr. Lancaster thinks that he’ll be able to revive the Vikings.  I mean, they’ve been frozen for 900 years!  That’s a long time to float around in a block of ice.

Of course, the Vikings are revived.  Unfortunately, it turns out that they were on that boat because they were trying to settle a blood feud.  The first Viking (Sven-Ole Thorsen) goes on a rampage through the lab and then runs around Malibu pier.  Mitch and Griff are able to capture him and bring him back to the lab.  Unfortunately, the other Viking (Nils Allen Stewart) has woken up and the two Vikings soon reignite their interrupted duel to the death.

I’m actually leaving out a few details but you can probably guess everything that happens in this episode from what I’ve told you.  It’s not really a shock when Mitch turns out to be an expert in Viking culture.  It’s also not a surprise when the two Vikings end up killing each other and Mitch gives them a traditional Viking funeral.  It’s not just that Mitch puts them on a wooden raft and then shoots a flaming arrow at it.  It’s that Mitch dramatically yells, “Valhalla!” while doing so.

Myself, I’m a bit curious about how the Vikings manage to go right back to fighting as soon as they thawed out.  It would seem like, after 900 years of lying prone in one position, they would be a little bit stiff.  I would imagine that there would at least be some backpain or maybe a touch of arthritis.  (I mean, I’m not even 40 and I’ve already got arthritis in my ankle.)  Also consider that the Vikings have no trouble breathing the air, despite the fact that Los Angeles’s polluted air is undoubtedly a lot different from what their lungs are used to.  And that’s not even to mention all of the germs that the Vikings have never experienced before.  It seems like the Vikings should have at least had a cold or something.

Was this episode a good one?  Hey, it featured David Hasselhoff, Angie Harmon, and two 900 year-old Vikings.  Of course, it was good!  Baywatch Nights is always at its best when it embraces the absurdity and there’s nothing more absurd than this episode.

“Documentary” Review: Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison? (dir by Joel Gilbert)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s a reason why I put the word Documentary is scare quotes when I titled this review.

Yes, 2010’s Paul McCartney Really Is Dead is listed as a documentary on Tubi, Prime, and probably every other streaming site in which it has appeared.

Yes, the film is full of archival footage of the Beatles and it opens with a lengthy discussion about the time that John Lennon said that group was bigger than Jesus.

And yes, the film does present itself as being a documentary.

That said, I don’t believe any of the claims made in this film and I doubt the filmmakers do either.  Much like that time travel documentary that I reviewed a few years ago, this film is obviously a mockumentary, a hoax that a few people online have taken seriously.  Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that as many people have taken this film seriously as they did with that Man From 3036 film.  I guess that counts as progress.

(I should note that, after writing the paragraph above, I looked up Joel Gilbert’s YouTube profile and saw that he has specifically stated that the film is a mockumentary.  So, good for Gilbert!)

As for Paul McCartney Is Really Dead, it opens with director Joel Gilbert explaining that his production company received several mysterious cassette tapes.  They were mailed from the UK.  The man on the tapes claims to be George Harrison and says that he’s recording the tapes on his death bed.  He explains that, in 1966, Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash.  A fake Paul (nicknamed Faul) was brought into the group and, for the next four years, the Beatles recorded with this imposter.  John Lennon, fearing that the fans would turn on the band if they ever learned of the deception, inserted clues throughout the Beatles’s album covers and in their songs.  A lot of those clues were only evident to those who played the song backwards.  Turn me on, dead man!

The conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was decapitated in a car accident and was replaced by a man named William Campbell has been around for a while.  It’s generally agreed that the rumor first started to circulate way back in 1966 and it’s been theorized that the Beatles themselves were aware of the rumor and they occasionally made references to it as a private joke.  Of course, it’s just as possible that the Beatles knew nothing of the rumor and all of the “clues’ were actually just coincidences that were overanalyzed by conspiracy theorists with too much free time on their hands.  For instance, one widely cited clue was a picture of Paul McCartney wearing a patch that apparently said “OPD.”  The theorists decided that OPD stood for “Officially Pronounced Dead,” whereas the patch was actually one worn by members of the Ontario Provincial Police and it actually read “OPP.”

Paul McCartney Is Really Dead features someone pretending to be George Harrison going over all of the clues on the album covers and in the songs.  He hits all the major points, including the famous Abbey Road cover.  However, the faux Harrison goes on to claim that the Beatles were forced to pretend that Paul was alive by a sinister MI5 agent named Maxwell.  Maxwell explained that word of Paul’s death would lead to a suicide epidemic amongst young British woman and it would also leave the UK vulnerable to the communists.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Of course, as unbelievable as that sounds, it’s really not that much different from a lot of “real” conspiracy theories that can currently find circulating online.  A spoof works best when its credible.  While the theory that Paul is dead may not be credible, the fact that people will believe the dumbest things is.

It’s easy to laugh at first, largely because the guy doing George Harrison’s voice doesn’t even seem to have a British accent.  While the Beatles looked at the dead Paul, Maxwell commented that the injuries Paul had sustained in the car crash had left him looking like a walrus.  “I AM THE WALRUS!” John supposedly shouted at Maxwell.  If you can’t smile at that, what can you smile at?  But then, towards the end of the documentary, it’s suggested that John’s assassination and the near fatal attack that George Harrison suffered in 1999 were actually due to John and George threatening to reveal the truth about Faul.  At that point, the whole thing gets rather offensive.  This could have been an enjoyably daft hoax if the filmmakers hadn’t tried to pass the tapes off as being from George Harrison.  (Personally, I would have used either Maxwell or Rita, the girl in blue who was supposedly with Paul at the time of the accident, as the narrator.)

As for myself, I love conspiracy theories but I don’t believe 99% of them.

AMV Of The Day: Godzilla (Dragonball Z)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In order to celebrate the first day of Horrorthon, how about an AMV?

Song: Godzilla – Eminem ft. Juice WRLD

Anime: Dragonball Z

Creator: Rangazee (as always, if you enjoyed this video, we encourage you to subscribe to the creator’s channel and give them lots of likes and nice comments)

Past AMVs of the Day

Horror on Television: One Step Beyond 1.1 “The Bride Possessed” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

During the month of October, we like to share classic episodes of horror-themed television.  That was easier to do when we first started doing our annual October Horrorthon here at the Shattered Lens because every single episode of the original, black-and-white Twilight Zone was available on YouTube.  Sadly, that’s no longer the case.

However, there is some good news!  Twilight Zone may be gone but there are other horror shows on YouTube!  For instance, there’s One Step Beyond, a supernatural-themed anthology show that claimed every story that it told was based on an actual incident.  This show ran on ABC from 1959 to 1961 and was scheduled to air opposite of Twilight Zone.

The very first episode of One Step Beyond aired on January 20th, 1959.  In this episode, a young bride (Virginia Leith) on her honeymoon suddenly starts to act differently.  (Not only does she become more outspoken but she also loses her Southern accent.)  Is it possible that she’s been possessed by the spirit of a murdered woman and now, she’s going to solve her own murder?

Watch to find out!

October Hacks: Death Rink (dir by Daniel Zubiate)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s time for the local roller rink to close for the night.  Manager Rachel (Katheryn McCune) and her crew are shutting the place down.  You might think that would be a relatively simple task but you’ve never seen people who do as little work as Rachel and her crew.  They probably could shut the place down in a matter of minutes and then go have fun somewhere else.  Instead, they sit around and talk and smoke some weak weed and then they play foosball and someone else plays pinball and then they talk some more and then someone calls on the phone so everyone gathers around to listen to Rachel talk to the guy and then Daley (Robert Posey) hits on Rachel and tells her, “You know I’m over 18, right?”  Considering that Daley looks like he’s about 50, I’m sure Rachel figured that out.  And then….

Did I mention this is a slasher film?  It’s easy to forget because the film is only 74 minutes long and we don’t even see the killer’s mask until the first murder occurs at the 44 minute mark.  Some of the killings — well, two of them — are creatively nasty but they still feel like an afterthought, as if the director suddenly remembered that he was making a slasher film and not a mumblecore epic about a bunch of losers working at a roller rink.

Death Rink is dull.  There’s no other way to put other than to say that Death Rink in one of the most mind-numbingly boring movies that I have ever sat through.  The pacing of this film makes you appreciate the power of a good editor.  The almost total lack of background music makes you appreciate a good composer.  The dark lighting will make you appreciate all the more the value of a cinematographer who understands the importance of setting the proper mood.  Everything about this film will make you appreciate films that at least manage to be mediocre.

Now, I will say this.  It’s hard for me judge because it’s not like I’ve ever had a real job but I imagine that this film does capture just how boring it would be to work at a small-town roller rink.  The total monotony of the character’s lives is absolutely believable.  If this film set out to be a portrait of what it’s like to have a dead end life in the middle of nowhere, it succeeded.  The film also captured the torture of listening to dumb people attempt to have a conversation.  It’s a movie that definitely reminded me of why I don’t like to listen to dumb people talk about their lives.

And I’ll also give the film this.  At the end of the film, one of the final living characters fights the killer with a broom and that was almost weird enough to work.  Of course, it would have been even better if the scene had been properly lit so that I could have actually seen the characters without squinting so hard that I was worried I was going to pop a blood vessel.  But I guess I can’t have everything.

As far as roller rinks go, I’ll stick with Skatetown USA.

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Without Warning (dir by Greydon Clark)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1980’s Without Warning opens with a father (Cameron Mitchell) and his gay son (Darby Hinton) on a hunting trip.  The father taunts his son about not being what the father considers to be a real man.  He says that his son would have no chance of surviving in the wilderness.

“Why does it always have to be like this?” the son asks with a sincerity that will break your heart.

Suddenly, a bloodsucking starfish flies through the air, lands on the father, and starts to suck out his blood with a phallic stinger.  The father dies while his son watches.  The son picks up his rifle and prepares to fight back.  This will be the son’s chance to prove that his father was incorrect.  This is the son’s chance to prove that he can survive in the wilderness and….

Just kidding.  The son forgot to load the rifle and promptly gets a starfish to the eye.

That’s the type of film that Without Warning is.  Characters are introduced.  The majority of them are played by B-actor who have seen better days.  They get a few minutes of character development.  Then, they die and the viewer is left feeling a bit depressed because they all seemed like they deserved just a bit more screentime than they received.  Larry Storch shows up as a boy scout leader who gets a starfish to the back while trying to light a cigarette.  Neville Brand, Ralph Meeker, and Sue Anne Langdon hang out in a bar and refuse to believe that the Earth has been invaded by blood-sucking starfish.  Jack Palance plays a hunter and gas station owner who wants to capture an alien as a trophy.  Martin Landau plays Sarge, an unbalanced Vietnam Vet who has been telling people for years that there are aliens out there.  Everyone laughed at old Sarge but they won’t be laughing for long!  At the time this film was made, Palance was a two-time Oscar nominee.  He finally won his Oscar for City Slickers, a decade after Without Warning.  Martin Landau, for his part, won his Oscar 15 years after Without Warning.  Good for them.  If nothing else, this movie should remind everyone who has dismissed Eric Roberts’s chances that there’s still time!

That said, none of these familiar faces are the stars of the film.  Instead, the majority of the film follows four teenagers on a road trip, Sandy (Tarah Nutter), Greg (Christopher S. Nelson), Beth (Lynn Theel), and Tom (David Caruso).  David Caruso as a sex-crazed teenager sounds more amusing than it actually is.  If anything, the sight of him wearing shorts and t-shirt is almost blinding.  (As a fellow redhead, I sympathize.  We burn but we don’t tan.)  Tom and Beth die early on, leaving Greg and Sandy to try to escape from the alien (Kevin Peter Hall) who is tossing around the starfish.  Both characters are pretty generic but Christopher Nelson is at least likable.

Without Warning has a reputation for being the best film that Greydon Clark ever directed and I would agree that it’s one of his better ones, though I prefer The Forbidden Dance.  Then again, when you consider some of the other films that Clark directed, it’s easy to see that Without Warning didn’t exactly have a huge bar to clear.  Though the script borrows a bit too much from nearly every other horror film ever made, Without Warning is nicely paced and the killer starfish are genuinely frightening and their bloodsucking is almost Cronenbergian in its ick factor.  Just as he would for John Carpenter, cinematographer Dean Cundey gives us some nicely eerie shots of the alien.  Landau and Palance go all out, understanding that subtlety has no place in a film like this.  Without Warning is a dumb B-movie but it’s definitely entertaining.

Without Warning (1980, dir by Greydon Clark, DP: Dean Cundey)