Tag Archives: Horror

6 Trailers For October 29, 2023

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we reach the conclusion of our annual Horrorthon, how about another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers?  Today, we pay tribute to the godfather of Halloween, Mr. John Carpenter!

  1. Halloween (1978)

Obviously, I was going to have to share the trailer for the original Halloween eventually.  This is still the best of the franchise.  In fact, all of the attempts by other directors to “improve” on it just serves to remind us of the fact that John Carpenter said everything that needed to be said in the first film.

2. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

How did Carpenter get the chance to direct Halloween?  Well, the producers were impressed with his previous film, Assault on Precinct 13.  Also impressed by this film was Angela Pleasence, who subsequently convinced her father, Donald, to read Carpenter’s script for Halloween.

3. The Fog (1980)

Carpenter followed up Halloween with The Fog, which featured several cast members of both Halloween and Carpenter’s next film, Escape From New York.

4. The Thing (1982)

Incredibly underappreciated when it was first released, Carpenter’s remake of The Thing has gone on to become one of his most popular and influential films.

5. Prince of Darkness (1987)

Speaking of underappreciated, it would also be several years before Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness started to receive the attention that it really deserved.

6. John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)

Finally, with Vampires, Carpenter mixed the horror genre with the western genre and came up with a hybrid that continues to be influential to this day.

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Neighbors Are Watching (dir by Haylie Duff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Your neighbors will always have your back,” Betsy (Elena Kent) tells Amy (Kabby Borders) while welcoming her to the neighborhood.

But will they?

That’s the question posed by the Lifetime film, The Neighbors Are Watching.  At first, it certainly seems like the neighbors are supportive of Amy as she starts her new job as a teacher and she tries to restart her life after ending a bad marriage.  And it certainly seems like a wonderful neighborhood.  Amy’s even got a surprisingly big house, considering that she’s a teacher.  I guess she lives in one of those states where teachers get paid a decent salary and don’t have to hand over half of it in union dues.  Either that or this is just another example of Lifetime understanding that it’s more fun to watch people in big houses than to watch people in small houses.

With the support of the neighborhood, Amy starts to date Henry (Will Holland), the guy who has just moved in across the street from her.  And, with the exception of one skeevy moment where he glances up at Amy’s bedroom window while she’s getting dressed, Henry seems like a great guy.  He says that he owns a home repair business and he even volunteers to fix her back door for her.

But strange things are happening and soon, the neighbors will turn against Amy.  It starts when someone leaves Amy strange messages and newspaper clippings about how her previous marriage ended because she killed her abusive husband in self-defense.  Then Henry starts to act strangely and Amy even thinks that she sees him at his house with another woman.  When Amy confronts him, Henry gaslights her and claims that she’s obviously seeing things.  All of the neighbors come outside to watch as Amy and Henry argue.  And when Amy thinks that she sees Henry putting a dead body in the trunk of his car, the police react as if Amy is the one who did something wrong by calling them.  Is Amy truly losing it, as Henry suggests, or is someone trying to frame Amy and make her look bad?  And will Amy’s neighbors, including Betsy, have her back?

The Neighbors Are Watching was one of those Lifetime movies that got better as it went along.  The first half, which featured Amy and Henry as a couple, featured a bit too much overwritten, cutesy flirting and a few too many scenes of Betsy trying to convince everyone to drink wine.  But, once it became apparent that Henry was a bad guy who was trying to make everybody think that Amy was going insane, the film became much more entertaining.  In fact, all of the cutesy dialogue made sense once you understood that Henry was trying to create the impression of a movie-perfect romance.  There’s a good twist towards the end and Lifetime regular Kabby Borders is likable and sympathetic as Amy.  This is the third film that Haylie Duff has directed for Lifetime and she definitely understands the importance of embracing the melodrama.  Despite the rough start, I enjoyed watching The Neighbors Are Watching.

Music Video of the Day: Are You Ready For Freddy? by the Fat Boys (1988, directed by Harvey Keith)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I always assumed that this song was specifically written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but actually, the Fat Boys were just fans of the movies and they decided to put a song about them on one of their albums.  The song was included in The Freddy Krueger Special, which aired on CBS in 1988.  That’s amazing to think that Freddy got his own primetime special.

This video, which features several of Freddy’s victims and Robert Englund himself, was written by Wes Craven and directed by Harvey Keith.  Keith directed a few films, including 1988’s Mondo New York and 1990’s Jezebel’s Kiss.

Enjoy!

V/H/S/85 (dir. by Various Artists)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The full list of directors for Shudder’s V/H/S/85 includes David Bruckner (The Night House), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Bingo Hell), Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone), Natasha Kermani (The Imitation Girl), and Mike P. Nelson (2021’s Wrong Turn).

I’m not completely familiar with the V/H/S series. I stopped after the very first one, with the “I Like You” segment rattling me enough to never want to delve into that found footage mayhem again. It only caught my interest because Scott Derrickson (and by extension C. Robert Cargill and Gigi Saul Guerrero were involved. Cargill and Derrickson have worked together since Sinister (as far as I know). Guerrero’s Bingo Hell was a fun watch, as horror films go. While the found footage format still bothers me when used in large doses, the effect here really makes sense. You’re working in the 80s, pre-cell phones and most major technology. Home movies were common back then as well.

The format for the film is similar to most horror anthologies (like Tales From the Darkside), where there are 4 or 5 mini tales and another that you see in between those. David Bruckner covers the main story with “Total Copy”, where a strange specimen in a lab is kept under close study. Of all the stories in the group, this one really didn’t hold me very well, though it does work well as filler between the other, stronger tales.

Mike Nelson’s “No Wake” starts us off with a camping trip to a nearby lake. Despite discovering No Trespassing signs, the crew of young adults set out for a nice time in the water. This ends up becoming rather treacherous and the result leaves them wanting to take revenge on their perpetrators. It was a strange and refreshing take on a familiar tale that I liked, though it was somewhat short.

We move on to Gigi Saul Guerrero’s “God of Death”, which I enjoyed. This tale follows a cameraman during an earthquake in Mexico, as a rescue crew tries to evacuate a collapsing building. Guerrero is in this piece as the reporter, Gabriella, and if you watch close enough, you’ll see a picture of her father on one the walls, looking like the Mayor of the town. I thought that was sweet. There’s quite a bit of blood and gore, as much as Shudder likes to give.

Natasha Kermani’s “TKNOGOD” was the only one in the series that I didn’t care for. Not that I was bothered about the argument of God vs. Technology, but it felt more like those slam poetry sessions you find in Manhattan. I understand what it was trying to convey, and it does get somewhat chilling. Still, I kind of glossed over it and waited for the next entry. It was filmed well, at least. That I will give it.

“Ambrosia” brings us to a family reunion and celebration, though the family itself might not have the best intentions at heart. This one surprised me a bit and I liked the connection to earlier events.

And finally, we have a Sinister reunion of sorts with Director Scott Derrickson, writer C. Robert Cargill, and actor James Ransome (Deputy So & So himself) in “Dreamkill”. Working in a similar vein to Sinister, Dreamkill focuses on some deadly murders occurring in a town that also happen to be recorded on home video before the events take place. A detective (Freddy Rodriguez, Grindhouse’s Planet Terror) tries to piece together the clues before more victims are lost. This was the best of the bunch, by far, I felt.

Overall, if you can handle the shaky cam of the V/H/S films, 85 is a treat. While I personally wished some these weren’t using the cam, the film finds a way to keep the floating camera in the picture. It’s an interesting set of scares if you have the time to watch.

Horror on the Lens: At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (dir. by Jose Mojica Marins)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about 1964’s At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul.

It was something I caught on AMC or TCM about a decade ago very late at night. I was on the phone with a close friend when I saw this guy walking around a town in Brazil beating people with a cane. The film and it’s sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse were played back to back. I lost the name of the movie over time and searched what I could remember (“spanish movie man with cane”) to no avail. I found it again about a year ago via Youtube. It was one of those movies you wouldn’t really recommend to anyone, but you also couldn’t (or at least I couldn’t at the time) keep yourself from looking away. I low scored it because It’s not something I’d see myself running back to, but it was just weird.

The story focuses on Ze do Caixao, or Coffin Joe (Jose Mojica Marins), who is looking for the right girl to give him a “superior child”. Joe is clearly not a nice individual nor is he the hero of this story. He has a love of his own, but he soon takes an interest in one of the town girls, Terezinha. How can Joe get rid of his wife, Lenita (Valéria Vasquez) and get close to Terezinha (Magda Mei), despite the fact that she’s currently in a relationship with the town doctor? Apparently, it’s nothing a tarantula can’t fix in a particularly creepy scene.

The movie does get very dark, even by 1960s standards. There’s torture, random beatings, a possible rape and murders. Coffin Joe manages to continue his streak of bad deeds and finally does get to Terezinha by way of removing the doctor (Ilídio Martins Simões) from the equation. It all backfires on Joe, however, when a witch in the woods warns that by Midnight, his soul will be claimed. Not believing in the mystical or religious, Joe scoffs at this at first. He soon finds out that there’s a balance to things, leading to an ending that I particularly enjoyed.

A sequel to the film was made to the film in 1967 called This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, which is mostly the same, though it does offer some great use of color midway. The first film is currently available to watch on YouTube.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 6.15 “Living a Lie” (dir by Bruno Gantillon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When a bartender steals one of his customer’s credit cards, he learns that credit fraud can lead to …. HORROR!  Let that be a lesson to everyone.

This episode originally aired on January 18th, 1991.

Maniac Cop 2 (1990, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Maniac Cop 2 picks up where the first Maniac Cop ended.

The NYPD thinks that the undead maniac cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) has been destroyed but he is actually still alive and killing civilians and cops in New York.  He has even teamed up with a serial killer named Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi, ranting and raving like a pro).  Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) and Theresa Malloy (Laurene Landon) both return from the first film but both of them are killed by Cordell before the movie is even halfway over.  Maniac Cop 2 is not playing around.

With Jack and Theresa gone, it falls to Detective Sean McKinney (Robert  Davi) and Officer Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) to discover what the rest of the audience already knows, that Cordell is seeking revenge against the system that abandoned him in prison.  The new police commissioner, Ed Doyle (Michael Lerner), is determined to cover up what happened but Cordell is even more determined to have his vengeance.  Working with Turkell, Cordell heads to the prison where he was unjustly incarcerated and murdered.

Maniac Cop 2 is a marked improvement on the first film.  Cordell is no longer a lumbering and slow monster.  He is now a ruthless, Terminator-style executioner who, in the film’s best-known scene, wipes out an entire police precinct in a matter of minutes.  Cordell is so ruthless that he won’t even stop when he’s on fire.  His partnership with Turkell adds a new twist to the Maniac Cop saga.  Turkell views Cordell as his partner-in-crime but Cordell is only interested in getting his revenge.  (Turkell was originally meant to be Frank Zito, the main character from Lustig’s Maniac.  When Maniac star Joe Spinell died before shooting began, the role was changed to Leo Rossi’s Steven Turkell.)

Stepping into the shoes of the main investigation, Robert Davi gives one of his best performances.  As opposed to the boring heroes of the first film (sorry, Bruce!), Davi’s Sean McKinney is just as obsessive and ruthless as Cordell.  Cordell sets fire and McKinney uses those fires to light his cigarettes.

William Lustig has described Maniac Cop 2 as being his best film and he’s probably right.  It is definitely the best of the Maniac Cop films and the only one to fully take advantage of its premise.

Horror Scenes I Love: Giovanni Lombardo Radice in The House At The Edge of the Park

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I miss Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

The Italian writer/actor passed away earlier this year, on April 23rd.  He is missed, both for his wit and charm and for his talent.  He was great storyteller and always had the best anecdotes to share about the films in which he appeared, even though he himself often expressed amazement that people were still watching his movies.  Giovanni Lombardo Radice was an artist and a gentleman.

I’ve shared this scene before but I’m going to share it again because it’s Giovanni at his best.  Giovanni, incidentally, is dancing with his frequent co-star and friend, Lorraine de Selle.

From 1981’s The House On The Edge of the Park:

October True Crime: The Hillside Strangler (dir by Chuck Parello)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2004’s The Hillside Strangler opens with a woman stepping into a dressing room with several tops.  She removes all of the tags.  Then she puts all of them on and finally covers them with the sweater that she was wearing when she first stepped into the dressing room.

What she doesn’t realize is that she’s being watched by a security guard named Kenneth Bianchi (played by C. Thomas Howell, with a thin mustache).  Bianchi isn’t the type of security guard who relies on cameras.  Instead, he sneaks around in the store’s heating ducts and stares down into the dressing room.  Bianchi manages to get out of the duct quickly enough to stop the woman as she walks out of the store.  He takes her back to his office and orders her to remove each layer of stolen clothing while he watches.

Agck!  Seriously, as a former teen shoplifter, this scene totally freaked me out.  Beyond the creepiness of seeing Bianchi in the air ducts, this scene also captures the authoritarian mindset.  As soon as we see Bianchi, we know that his job is about more than just a paycheck to him.  His job is about wielding power and giving orders.  Wearing his uniform, Bianchi feels that he’s untouchable.

Bianchi dreams of being a real cop but the Rochester Police Department rejects his application to join because his test scores were too low.  Sick of having to listen to him whine, Bianchi’s mother sends him to Los Angeles so that he can stay with his cousin, Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro).  Maybe Angelo can knock some sense into him.  Maybe Angelo can teach him about being a man.

Instead, Angelo soon gets as tried of Bianchi as everyone else.  Still, he is impressed when Bianchi orders a fake diploma from Colombia University and sets up a practice as a sex therapist.  When Angelo attempts to set himself up as a pimp, he makes Bianchi is partner.  When Angelo and Bianchi fail at being pimps, they start picking up women and strangling them.  Angelo and Bianchi start out by stalking sex workers but soon, they’re using a fake LAPD badge to prey on anyone that catches their interest.

Based on the true crimes of Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler is a grim and frequently trashy film, a portrait of two misogynists who can only feel confident when they’re hurting others.  Bianchi is the type who wears a t-shirt that reads, “Official Local Sex Instructor.”  Buono has a doormat that reads, “Italian Stallion” and a sign on his wall that announces, “Candy is Dandy But Sex Won’t Rot Their Teeth.”  Turturro and Howell give two disturbing performances as two losers who feed on each other’s sadism and anger.  Bianchi is desperate for Bouno’s approval.  Buono finds Bianchi to be annoying but he still enjoys being the younger man’s idol.  Would Bianchi and Buono have committed their crimes if they had never met?  The film leaves you wondering.  As a viewing experience, it’s effective and disturbing.

In real life, Angelo Buono died in prison in 2002.  Kenneth Bianchi continues to serve his life sentence.