The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Bleach (dir by Michael Edmonds)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2022 film, Bleach, tells the story of Jonah Paxton (Mark Justice).

Born in Nevada, Jonah never knew his mother. He was raised in a trailer by his abusive father (Lorenzo Lamas), a degenerate gambler who molested Jonah and forced him to wear dresses in an attempt to shame him into “being a man.” When the mob threatened to come after Jonah because of his debts, he sold Jonah to his uncle, a drug dealer named Matthew (Eric Roberts).

In the mid-80s, grown-up Jonah has some issues. That’s not surprising. He’s haunted by his past and has hallucinations in which the devil is raping him from behind. (Yikes!) He also has visions of selling his soul to a mysterious woman (Mindy Robinson) who throws money at him. In what might be the real world, Jonah is hired by El Jefe (Robert LaSardo), who explains that he loves horror films but that the whole trope of the final girl upsets him. He gives Jonah a million dollars to film an actual snuff film. He tells Jonah that he wants high production values. He wants to watch Jonah become a monster. Jonah takes the money and films himself murdering two women who picked up at a bar and one woman who unfortunately entered the room at the wrong time.

While El Jefe waits for Jonah to bring him the tape, Jonah finds himself having even more violent hallucinations. He sees demons. He sees the devil. After he crashes his car in the desert, he has a vision of a woman (Tara Reid) who claims to be his mother and who encourages Jonah to commit suicide. While the police investigate Jonah’s crimes, Jonah is haunted by the ghosts of his victims and his already tenuous grip on reality continues to loosen. Soon, Jonah is drinking bleach and trying to purify himself with fire….

Bleach is a mess of a film, one that is occasionally surreal but which is more often just boring. The film’s tone is all over the place and certain scenes are so drawn out that they go from being disturbing to being dull. The moments of dark comedy fail to land but the glimpses inside Jonah’s mind are appropriately twisted and bizarre. By the end of the movie, Jonah’s scarred and blistered body is an undeniably shocking sight. Physically, he’s come to reflect the monster that he truly is. But, in the end, the film is too unevenly paced to be really effective and it ends with a shoot-out that is so clumsily choreographed that it’ll probably lead to more laughs than pathos.

Eric Roberts is memorably sleazy as the faux friendly Matthew. One gets the feeling that both and Lorenzo Lamas were only on set for a day or two but both of them make the most of their screen time. Both of them offer a glimpse into how to make a monster.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.11 “Possession” (dir by David W. Hagar)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s bonus episode of televised horror is an episode of Baywatch Nights that deals with something that every lifeguard eventually has to deal with: demonic possession.

Well, actually, it’s not so much demonic possession as its dead serial killer possession but it’s still definitely not a good thing. That’s especially true when it’s a friend and/or co-worker getting possessed. I mean, it’s never fun to end a relationship but having to end it because someone managed to get possessed …. I just don’t see how you live that down.

And, before anyone gets the wrong idea, Hasselhoff is not the one who gets possessed. It would have been fun if he had been but no. Sorry.

This episode originally aired on February 2nd, 1997.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 6.19 “Secrets” (dir by Jacques Richard)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a woman and her lover attempt to collect her husband’s health insurance after his death. Unfortunately, for them, her husband might have something to say about that.

This episode originally aired on February 15th, 1991.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Ruby (dir by Curtis Harrington)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 film, Ruby, opens with a scene set in 1935. The Great Depression is still raging and the only people making money are industrialists like Joseph P. Kennedy and gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello. In the Florida swamps, gangster Nicky Rocco (Sal Vecchio) is betrayed by both his gang and his pregnant girlfriend, Ruby (Piper Laurie). As Nicky’s bullet-ridden body sinks into the bayou, Ruby goes into labor and gives birth to Leslie.

16 years later, Ruby owns her own drive-in. The theater employs several members of the old gang and Ruby is herself married to one of Nicky’s former partners, the crippled and blinded Jake Miller (Fred Kohler, Jr.). Ruby’s lover is another former member of the gang, Vince Kemper (Stuart Whitman). Leslie, meanwhile, is now 16 years old and has never spoken a word in her life. Ruby laments that she never made it as a lounge singer but she does a good job running the theater and it seems to be a popular place to see movies. She’s even able to show Attack of the 50 Feet Woman, even though that film came out in 1958 and Ruby is set in 1951. That’s the power of having mob-connections, I guess.

When strange things start to happen at the theater, it could just be a case of Ruby having bad luck and the former gangsters that she’s hired not being particularly good at their jobs. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Nicky swore to get revenge on everyone with his dying breath. One employee is found hanging in a projection booth. Another is found hanging from a tree. Another is left in a cold drink machine and the lady who puts in a quarter to get a cup of tea instead gets a cup of blood. While Ruby might be in denial about the fact that her business is obviously cursed, Vince realizes that something has to be done so he brings a psychic/exorcist named Paul Keller (Roger Davis, who also provides some narration at the start of the film).

Of course, it’s not just ghosts that Ruby and the gang have to worry about. Leslie is acting strange as well! At one point, Leslie even speaks but it’s not with her voice. It’s with Nicky’s voice! Leslie has been possessed and soon, Nicky himself is appearing on the drive-in’s screens and repeating, “I love you, I love you.”

Ruby is a real mess of a film, one that attempts to rip-off The Exorcist while tossing a bit of Carrie in as well. Director Curtis Harrington plays up the campier aspects of the story and Piper Laurie gives a scenery-chewing performance that suggests that she realized it was pointless to try to take anything about Ruby seriously. Stuart Whitman plays Vince as being the most well-meaning but also the most clueless man in Florida while poor Roger Davis is stuck with the most earnest role in the film and, as such, gets the unenviable task of trying to explain what’s going on in a rational manner. There’s nothing rational about Ruby, which goes from being a film about gangsters to being a film about ghosts to being a film about possession without even stopping to catch its breath. It’s a deeply silly film but one gets the feeling that it was made to be silly. Ruby works as long as you just accept the weirdness of what you’re watching while you’re watching it and you don’t give it too much thought afterwards.

A Halloween Blast From The Past: Halloween Is Grinch Night (dir by Gerard Baldwin)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, we all know that the Grinch once tried to steal to Christmas and then his heart grew a few sizes but did you know that apparently, the Grinch also tried to steal Halloween?

Until a few years ago, I did not. I was going through YouTube, searching for horror films that I could share here on the Shattered Lens, and guess what I came across?

A TV special from Halloween, 1977 entitled Halloween is Grinch Night!

Unlike How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Halloween is Grinch Night apparently never became a holiday classic. Perhaps that’s because Halloween is Grinch Night is not exactly the most heart-warming of holiday specials. Whereas How The Grinch Stole Christmas tells us about how the Grinch learned the true meaning of Christmas, Halloween is Grinch Night gives us a Grinch who has no redeeming features. There is no hope for this Grinch. This Grinch will steal your soul and probably drink your blood. This Grinch is pure Grinchy evil.

This is the Grinch of our nightmares.

Check out Halloween is Grinch Night below and hope the Grinch doesn’t capture you this Halloween….

Billy The Kid Versus Dracula (1966, directed by William Beaudine)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Jedadiah Leland

Dracula comes to the old west!

The count (John Carradine) has been traveling across the frontier, feasting on settlers and stagecoach riders. When he comes to a town in the middle of nowhere, he poses as the uncle of saloon owner Betty Bentley (Melinda Plowman). Using the name Mr. Underhill, Dracula hopes to make Betty into his latest bride. Everything about Mr. Underhill indicates that he is a vampire but Betty refuses to believe it. Even when she’s told that Mr. Underhill doesn’t cast a reflection, Betty dismisses it as just being “the old vampire test.” Two German servants recognize her uncle as being a vampire and Betty again refuses to believe them. Betty’s fiancé, Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney), realizes that there is something wrong with Mr. Underhill but can he save his future wife?

The idea of vampires in the old west is one that has inspired a surprising number of movies, most of which are considerably better than Billy The Kid Versus Dracula. In this movie, Chuck Courtney plays one of the old west’s most notorious outlaws but he’s portrayed as being one of the most upstanding members of his community. John Carradine plays the world’s most notorious vampire but just comes across as being a grouchy old man. Chuck Courtney is a convincing westerner but not a very interesting actor. John Carradine sleepwalks through the role and later said Billy The Kid Versus Dracula was the only one of his many films that he actively disliked. The movie was shot in 8 days and it looks like it.

This was also the final film of director William Beaudine, who had directed his first film 51 years earlier. The film was released on a double feature with Beaudine’s Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. Everyone ended up in the old west eventually.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Barbara Steele in Black Sunday

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The British-born actress, Barbara Steele, became a star in Italy in the 60s, working with directors from Riccardo Freda to Mario Bava to Federico Fellini. One of Steele’s defining roles was in Bava’s 1960 film, Black Sunday.

In this scene, Steele’s witch is sentenced to be executed and, since this is a Bava film, it won’t be a quick execution. What makes this scene stand-out is Steele’s defiance. It’s hard not to admire her refusal to give those judging her what they want. You watch this scene and you have no doubt that if you get cursed by Barbara Steele, it’s going to be a curse for life.

Horror Book Review: The Dare by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were in high school and someone dared you to kill the school’s toughest teacher and then proceeded to tell the entire school that you were planning on killing the school’s toughest teacher, what would you do?

Me, I would probably pretend to be sick for a few days and stay home until everything blew over. Or maybe I’d transfer to a different school or send an anonymous note to the police or maybe I’d even suggest to the teacher that he should take advantage of my state’s open carry laws. What I’m saying is that I would do something other than consider the dare and agonize over whether or not I should actually kill the teacher. I would like to think that killing the teacher would not even be an option for me. You say to me, “Are you going to kill him?” and I reply, “No.” What I don’t do is be like, “I don’t know, I guess.”

In 1994’s The Dare, Johanna has a slightly different response. She knows that murder is wrong but the guy making the dare is Dennis Archer and Dennis is totally hot and rich and self-absorbed whereas Johanna is poor and kind of plain and a little bit insecure. Dennis and his friends enjoy daring each other to do things. All of their risk-taking actually does lead to one of Dennis’s friends accidentally getting shot. That would be enough to convince me not to hang out with Dennis but Johanna is a bit more forgiving of accidental shootings.

Mr. Northwood is a total badass who teaches History, which was always my favorite class in high school. Mr. Northwood doesn’t care whether or not Dennis and his family are planning on flying to the Bahamas for a week, he’s still not going to give Dennis a makeup midterm. If Dennis misses the midterm, he’ll fail the course and he might not get to run track and eventually make his way to the Olympics. But if Dennis stays for the midterm, he won’t get to go on a trip to the Bahamas that he could conceivably take any other time during the year. As you can guess, it’s a difficult decision but Dennis ends up going to the Bahamas. When Dennis discovers that Northwood was serious about not giving him a makeup midterm, Dennis starts flirting with Johanna and encouraging her to imagine all the different ways that they could kill Mr. Northwood….

YIKES!

As you can probably guess, the main problem here is that Johanna is kind of an idiot who can’t even find the strength to say, “No, I will not murder my neighbor and teacher, no matter how many times the hottest guy in school asks me too.” Johanna actually does have other friends, none of whom have ever asked Johanna to kill anyone. But Dennis is just so hot!

I guess it can be argued that this novel does capture the way that some students feel towards the tough teachers. When I was in high school, I always assumed that any teacher who was tough on me was doing so because they had a crush on me or they were jealous of me and my naturally red hair. I got mad at my teachers and I sometimes talked about how much I hoped they would quit or move away but I never made plans to kill them because I’m not psycho like that.

Anyway, The Dare is one of those R.L. Stine books where everyone was so consistently illogical, I assumed the entire thing was meant to be a dream. Seriously, a hot guy is not worth going to jail over, Johanna! This book suffered from a lack of likable characters and a lack of a believable plot. Mr. Northwood was cool, though. History teachers for the win!

October True Crime: Night of the Zodiac (dir by Susana Kapostasy)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2022 film, Night of the Zodiac, takes place in Detroit.

In its heyday, Detroit represented the industrial boom of America in the 20th Century. It was a city where cars were made and music was recorded and the future seemed bright. Today, of course, Detroit is viewed as being the ultimate symbol for just how much life has declined in the cities of America. It’s a city that is often used to epitomize the death of the American dream. It’s a city with a permanent atmosphere of decay and decline and, as a result, it’s a city that is practically begging for horror filmmakers to make use of it.

Richard Gantz (played by Philip Digby) is one such filmmaker. He lives in a small, one-room apartment. The walls are covered in posters for horror and action movies from the 1980s. Though he answers his landline phone with an authoritative, “Gantz Video,” Richard hasn’t had much luck as a filmmaker. He’s behind on his rent. He’s behind on his credit card payments. Even the local video store keeps ringing him up and demanding to know when he’s going to return his overdue tapes. Richard dreams of making his own movie but he can find neither the inspiration nor the money.

Then he gets a phone call, from an older gentleman who claims to be the infamous (and never officially identified) Zodiac Killer. The man who claims to be Zodiac offers Richard money if he’ll just just go to a park and accept a package from a homeless man. Richard does so and he discovers that Zodiac has sent him his very own cipher. He’s also sent Richard some cash. Solving each cipher leads to Richard finding his inspiration as a filmmaker. Soon, Richard is filming himself as he brutally murders random people across Detroit. He starts out by imitating the Zodiac’s crimes but soon, he starts to add his own spin to things. “I’m a psychopath!” Richard shouts at one point, apparently happy to finally have some sort of direction in his life.

Just as Richard speaks of his admiration for straight-to-video directors like Todd Farmer and shoots his film on an ancient video camera, Night of the Zodiac duplicates the grainy look of an old VHS tapes. The image is full of deliberate scratches and moments where the scene skips or goes out of focus. It’s actually rather artfully done, making the film feel like something that the viewer really might have found in the clearance section of their favorite used book store. It’s a cheap film that looks even cheaper but the filmmakers have enough self-awareness to turn that into an asset. Even the film’s meandering plot, amateurish acting, and moments of illogic feel more like an appropriate homage than a flaw. This was a film that was made by people who obviously love amateur horror films and that love shines through. Obviously, it’s not a film for everyone. Personally, I thought it went on for a bit too long and the film’s action often felt a bit repetitive. That said, it’s hard not to respect the filmmaker’s dedication to recreating the shot-on-videotape aesthetic of the later 80s and early 90s. As scummy a character as Richard was, I imagine many amateur directors will probably be able to relate to the scene where he looks over his footage and suddenly realizes that, for all of his work and effort, the film that he’s shooting doesn’t really have a point.

Of course, the most interesting thing about this film is that it imagine what happened to the Zodiac Killer after he left Los Angeles. A good deal of the reason why the Zodiac continues to intrigue people is the fact that he was never caught. I imagine that he’s probably dead by now. (In 1969, it was believed that he was already in his 30s or 40s.) But you have to wonder how someone can go from being the Zodiac Killer to being just some guy living in a house, mowing the lawn, and going to the grocery store every few days. How does one live an everyday life with the knowledge of being responsible for those crimes?

In the end, Night of the Zodiac is a film that has enough self-awareness to overcome its flaws.

The Films of Dario Argento: The Stendhal Syndrome

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Stendhal Syndrome is a real thing.

First noted by the author Stendhal, Stendhal Syndrome is something that happens when one is confronted by a sight that they never expected to see in person. Usually, it’s a work of great art that triggers the condition and the viewer becomes so overwhelmed by the sight of it that they’re left disorientated and even dizzy. People have reported it happening while visiting museums or historical cities. Recently, a few teenagers made the news when they claimed to have felt the syndrome’s symptoms while at a Taylor Swift concert.

I know that it’s a real thing because I’ve actually experienced Stendhal Syndrome. I was in Florence, the summer after I graduated from high school. One minute, I was fine and even feeling a little bratty, as one does when they’re 18 and they have their entire future ahead of them. But then I looked up at the sky and I saw the skyline of Florence, with its mix of the ancient and the modern and I suddenly became aware that I was in one of the oldest cities in the world and that I was standing on a street that had existed for centuries and I was looking at buildings and statues and paintings that most people would never get a chance to see in person and suddenly, the entire world seemed to be spinning around me. I had to actually sit down for a few minutes to catch my breath because I was so overwhelmed with emotion. My sisters assumed I was having an asthma attack but, even then, I understood that I was feeling something far different. At that moment, history become very real for me and I understood that I existed in the same universe as every great artist and writer. We were all a part of the same existence.

Dario Argento’s 1996 film, The Stendhal Syndrome, also takes place in Florence and features Asia Argento as Anna Mani, a police detective who is sent to the city to capture a serial killer. When Anna visits a museum, she is overwhelmed by what she sees. When she looks at Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, she hears the wind that blows Venus’s hair. When she views Bruegel’s Landscapes With The Fall Of Icarus she, perhaps significantly, becomes Icarus and flies through the air before crashing into the water below, where she shares a passionate kiss with a fish. In the museum, Anna faints. She drops her purse, giving Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann) time to not only steal her gun but also the key to her hotel room.

Dazed and not even sure of who she is, Anna returns to her hotel. A copy of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch turns into a doorway, which she steps through. Finding herself on a rainy city street, Anna is reminded that she’s a detective and that she’s in Florence to catch a vicious killer. When Anna steps back into her room, she discovers that she’s not alone. Alfredo grabs her, rapes her, and abducts her. Anna manages to escape and runs through the streets of Florence while a naked and blood-covered Alfredo screams in the night, which is one of the most disturbing scenes that Dario Argento has ever given us. Alfredo continues to stalk Anna while Anna goes through some changes herself, buying a blonde wig and pursuing a relationship with a French art student (Julien Lambroschini).

The Stendhal Syndrome was the first of Argento’s film to feature CGI, not just in the scenes in which Anna enters the paintings but also in scenes where were literally follow the pills that she’s taken down her throat and where a bullet is seen to enter the face of one of Alfredo’s victims. (Alfredo looks through the resulting bullet holes and winks at Anna on the other other side.) Sometimes, the CGI is effective and sometimes it’s a bit too cartoonish for its own good. At its most effective, the CGI inspires us to wonder if Anna is seeing reality or if she’s still trapped in her Stendhal Syndrome-inspired fantasy world. The scene where disturbing graffiti comes to life may not exactly look real but it’s still undeniably effective. At other times, the special effects just come across as being a bit self-indulgent on Argento’s part.

The film is at its best when it concentrates on the cat-and-mouse game between Anna and Alfredo. As played by Thomas Kretschmann, Alfredo is one of the most terrifying characters to ever appear in an Argento film, a handsome and seemingly charming man who is actually fueled by pure evil and hate. Alfredo is a villain who takes a definite pride in his ability to hide his true nature from the rest of the world. At first, Anna seems almost too physically frail and emotionally open to be believable as a police detective but she soon proves herself to be far tougher than anyone realizes. Anna, it turns out, has secrets of her own. Shot roughly around the same time that Asia Argento was being victimized by Harvey Weinstein, the scenes where Alfredo attacks Anna are difficult to watch, as they should be. Dario Argento took a lot of criticism (particularly from his former partner, Daria Nicolodi) for casting his daughter in a role where she is assaulted but the film itself is fully on Anna’s side.

The second half of the film loses its way a bit, though I can’t go into too much details without spoiling the plot. Several of the first half’s intriguing ideas are abandoned. Asia Argento gives a strong performance during the second half of the film, one that features some of her bravest and most revealing work. That said, despite the strength of Asia’s performance, many of Anna’s actions still don’t make sense no matter how much the film tries to convince us that they do. That said, the final scenes still carries an impact.

In the end, the film uses Stendhal Syndrome as a gimmick. If you want to see a realistic film about Stendhal Syndrome, you’re probably out of luck because it’s not a condition that’s easy to capture cinematically. But, as a thriller, The Stendhal Syndrome holds up well. This is an uneven film but ultimately, what does work outweighs what doesn’t.