For today’s Horror on the Lens, we have 1972’s Tales From The Crypt, a British anthology film which features The Crypt Keeper (Ralph Richardson) informing five strangers of how they will die. This classic, all-star film was based on stories that originally appeared in the Tales From The Crypt comic book.
In general, I’m not a huge fan of anthology films but Tales From The Crypt is an exception to that role. It’s an entertaining collection of macabre stories and the cast is to die for …. maybe literally!
This Amicus-produced movie is probably best remembered for the segment in which Joan Collins is menaced by an evil Santa but the whole thing is good.
Let’s give some credit to whoever came up with the title of tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker!
In this episode, Alan Thicke plays a skeevy movie director who likes to pretend to be a tough guy. When he hooks up with the girlfriend of a genuine tough guy, the director discovers that he’s not quite as streetwiswe as he thought he was. The Hitchhiker doesn’t seem to have much sympathy for anyone involved.
This episode originally aired on September 28th, 1990.
So much attention has been devoted to dissecting and discussing the ending of 1983’s Sleepaway Camp, that I think people tend to overlook the bigger issue. This film is the biggest argument against summer camp over filmed.
Seriously, don’t send your kids to camp! Don’t get a job working at a camp! Don’t live anywhere near a camp! If someone tries to open a camp near your home, gather together a posse and run them out of town! If you discover an abandoned camp within one hundred miles of your home, set the place on fire! Camps are bad news. They attract bullies and tragedy and murder. If there’s anything that I’ve learned from watching the horror movies of the early 80s, it’s that summer camps mean trouble.
Consider the camp in Sleepaway Camp. Even before the murders start, the place comes across as being a prison camp. Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of summer camps in a lot of slasher films and it’s hard to think of any of them that look as shabby and dirty as the camp in Sleepaway Camp. None of the campers appear to be happy to be there. No one is allowed to leave. The campers are divided into two groups, the bullies who rule the place like mini-tyrants and the poor kids who spend the entire summer being beaten up and taunted. Not even the counselors are worth much. Counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi) is best friends with the camp’s main mean girl, Judy (Karen Fields). Meg is the type who tosses a camper in the lake, just because Judy tells her to. Meanwhile, the owner of the camp is named Mel (Mike Kellin) and he’s just an old perv who doesn’t want to bothered with anyone’s problems. What type of horrific world is this?
And then, let’s consider some of the murders at the camp. The skeevy camp cook get scalded with boiling water. (It’s debatable whether the cook actually dies or not.) Kenny, one of the camp’s bullies, get drowned while playing a canoe-related prank. Another bully is stung to death by bees. That’s just three of the many deaths here and yet, the camp never closes. It never occurs to the camp’s owner to send anyone home. It never occurs to anyone that maybe they should send the campers to another camp. None of the deaths lead to an increased police presence nor does it lead to any changes with the camp’s schedule. None of the campers appear to be particularly upset by all the deaths. It’s a disturbing world.
Everyone who dies at the camp earlier picked on Angela (Felissa Rose), an introvert who ends up getting targeted by Judy. Angela’s cousin, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten), is very protective of Angela and, as a result, he becomes the number one suspect. As the film’s ending reveals, the truth is something much different. The film ends with a justifiably famous shot and it does stick with you as the end credits role. It’s tempting to read a lot of meaning into the film’s ending but I imagine that’s giving the filmmakers a bit too much credit. The film was made for 1983 audiences who were looking for a shock, not 2023 cultural critics.
Even before that ending, though, Sleepaway Camp is a bit more creepy than the average 80s slasher film. The killer is relentless and ruthless and it’s disturbing that the victimized campers are played by performers who are close to the age of their victims as opposed to the usual 30 year-old who played teenagers in these type of films. The scene with the curling iron is something that I can only watching through the fingers that I’m holding in front of my eyes. It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination but it does definitely capture the feel of being at the worst summer camp imaginable (seriously, one can hear the flies buzzing and even smell the stale order of stopped-up plumbing) and it does stick with you after you watch it. It’s nothing to lose your head over, it’s just too bad no one told that to the campers.
Put yourself in the shoes of the townspeople in 1971’s I Drink Your Blood.
Here you are. You’re minding your own business. Life isn’t great because of the economic downtown. Your town is nearly deserted and is basically full of empty buildings. In fact, it seems like there are currently more construction workers around then townspeople. The workers are working on the dam. Maybe a dam will help the area. Maybe it won’t.
The sexist construction workers are kind of a pain but then, things get even worse when a bunch of hippies show up. Led by the mysterious Horace Bones (played by dancer Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury), these are not your typical (if annoying) peace-and-love hippies. These hippies have more in common with the Manson Family than they do with the commune folks from Easy Rider. They are a remarkably diverse group of hippies. Some of them are young. Some of them are older. Some of them really enjoy attacking other people. Some of them are just along for the ride. For his part, Horace is really into Satanism and human sacrifice and he encourages his followers to feel the same way. Has anyone nice ever been named Horace Bones?
When the cultists assault a local girl named Sylvia (Arlene Farber), they are confronted in the abandoned building in which they are squatting by Sylvia’s grandfather, Doc Banner (Richard Bowler). They proceed to beat up the kindly doctor and they force him to take LSD. Sylvia’s younger brother, Pete (Riley Mills), get revenge by injecting the blood of a rabid dog into several pies and then selling them to Horace and his hippies. Almost all of the hippies eat the pies and soon, they are foaming at the mouth and rampaging through the countryside, infected by and spreading rabies. One of the hippie women ends up having sex with all of the construction workers, which leads to the rabies spreading even more. Soon, it’s hippies vs hardhats as the fights happening across the real world are repeated in small town America. Of course, there’s no police around to break up the fights and, thanks to the rabies, everyone is fighting to the death. Heads are ripped off. Electric knives are used to carve more than just food. People are set on fire. Blood is definitely drank.
Only one hippie didn’t eat the pies. Andy (Tyde Kierney) was never a big fan of Horace’s Manson-like tendencies and he pretty much draws the line at human sacrifice. Andy flees from Horace’s world and finds himself with Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred (Elizabeth Marner-Brooks), the owner of the local bakery. The four of them struggle to survive in a world that has literally gone mad.
I Drink Your Blood was, not surprisingly, controversial when it was first released. It was one of the few films to be given an X-rating for its violence as opposed to its sexual content. It is definitely violent, though it’s really nowhere near as graphic as some of the R-rated horror films that have come out over the past few years.
I Drink Your Blood is a classic grindhouse film, one that takes a fairly ridiculous premise and works wonders with it. The crazed hippies fighting the far more blue collar construction workers stand in for the fanatical soldiers in America’s cultural wars, with innocents like Sylvia, Pete, and Mildred caught in the middle with Andy. Director David Durston mixes horror and satire with a deft hand, suggesting that the rabies is ultimately just allowing people to show their true selves. I Drink Your Blood is an underground classic and thematically, it’s portrayal of a rabid world is just as relevant today as when it was first released.
11 models have been murdered in Los Angeles and Margo (Kimberly Stevens) fears that she could be next. She’s been receiving threatening notes and feels as if someone is watching her and her boyfriend, Bill (Michael Phenicie). She hires a private detective (Mark Derwin) to protect her but it might be too late because Homer (Corey Feldman), the man who has been sending her the notes, has already enrolled in the same acting class of Margo. After Bill turns up dead, Homer is assigned to be Margo’s new scene partner. Is Homer moving in for the kill or is someone else responsible for the murders?
This mix of erotic thriller and horror was one of those movies that used to show up on a late night Cinemax in the 90s, where it could be watched by teenagers who kept one eye on the screen and one eye looking out for their parents. Corey Feldman starred in a lot of these films and in this one, he gives a twitchy and occasionally funny performance as the nerdy Homer. Homer is the most obvious stalker imaginable and it’s hard to believe that Margo, who is so concerned about being stalked that she’s hired a private detective, would not look at Homer and immediately realize that he was the culprit. Feldman overacts but he at least provides the film with the energy that is missing from the performances of Kimberly Stevens and Mark Derwin. Even better is the performance of Brion James as the autocratic and pretentious acting teacher. Watching him, I got the feeling that James probably could have based his performance on any number of Hollywood acting coaches.
Anthony Perkins did not start his career as a horror icon. A talented young actor, Perkins started his career on Broadway and eventually, he started to appear in films. From the start, he was usually cast as nervous young men, the type who awkwardly smiled and struggled to talk to people. Perkins was promoted as a romantic lead, with the Studios and his agents making sure that Perkins was regularly photographed dating Hollywood starlets like Natalie Wood. As witty off-screen as he was nervous on-screen, Perkins was a popular figure in Hollywood. He received his only Oscar nomination for his performance as a young Quaker in 1956’s Friendly Persuasion.
Perkins’s entire career changed when Alfred Hitchcock cast him as the seemingly timid motel owner in 1960’s Psycho. Perkins was reportedly Hitchcock’s first choice for the role, with Hitchcock saying that he felt only Perkins or Dean Stockwell was capable of bringing Norman to life. Perkins was not nominated for Best Actor but the role pretty much defined him in the eyes of many. Perkins spent the rest of his career trying to first escape the shadow of Psycho and then eventually embracing his status as an icon of horror.
Perkins’s performance has been imitated so many times that there’s a tendency to forget just how good he is in the role. In this episode, Perkins-as-Norman discusses his mother with Janet Leigh.
Yes, the annoying family from R.L. Stine’s The Stepsister returns in The Stepsister 2. First published in 1995, The Stepsister 2 picks up a year after The Stepsister. Hugh and Mrs. Wallner are still married and Hugh is still a blowhard. Stepsister Emily and Jessie are now as close as can be, though Emily has yet to fully recover from the events of the previous book and Jessie is still sensitive about the death of her friend Jolie. Jessie’s brother Rich has moved on from reading Stephen King and is now a Clive Barker fan who shoots his own horror movies with his friends. Rich is considerably more rebellious and bratty in this book than he was in the first one. And, of course, Emily is still dating Josh.
As for Emily’s sister, Nancy, she’s spent the last year in a mental hospital, working on the issues that previously led to her killing the family dog and trying to kill her sister as well. (For the record, Nancy blamed Emily for the death of their father and she also never forgave Emily for going out with her ex-boyfriend. Seriously, sisters should not share boyfriends.) However, Nancy is coming home and Emily is a little bit nervous about it.
And really, why wouldn’t Emily be nervous? When Nancy first enters the house, she’s carrying a knife! Nancy explains that she just found the knife in the bushes and that it was left there by Rich’s film crew but seriously, if you had just spent the year in a mental hospital because you tried to kill the members of the your family, would you chose to step through the front door while carrying a bloody knife? Later, Nancy wraps her hands around Emily’s throat but claims that she was only doing so to make Emily realize that she’s still scared of Nancy and that she hasn’t forgiven her. Again, it seems like there are other ways to make that point. I’m going to be scared of anyone wrapping their hands around my throat.
Nancy’s behavior, though, really isn’t as strange as a scene where Emily and Josh go on a date and they end up ice skating on frozen Fear Lake. Didn’t we establish, in the previous book, that Emily’s father drowned in Fear Lake while Emily watched helplessly? I mean, isn’t she worried that she’s going to look down at the ice and see her father’s gray corpse floating by?
Anyway, as you can probably guess, weird things start happening around the house and the stepsisters feels threatened. Is it Nancy? Is it the increasingly angry Rich? Or is it Jessie’s best friend, Cora-Anne? You’ll have to read the book to find out, but I’m going to tell you right now that it’s pretty much the same story as the first Stepsister so you probably won’t be surprised by the final revelation. The first time, you can accept people making dumb decisions. The second time, no one really has an excuse. Personally, after all this drama, I think the Wallners should maybe look for a home away from Fear Street.
Through the Shattered Lens 