Tag Archives: Horror

Jack-O (1995, directed by Steve Latshaw)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Back in frontier times, a warlock named Walter Machden (John Carradine) terrorized the citizens of the town of Oakmoor Crossing so they tracked him down and lynched him.  Before he was hung, Machden cursed the town.  A demon with a jack-o-lantern for a head terrorized the town until the Kelly Family defeated him and buried him underneath a cross.

Jump forward one hundred years.  It is Halloween night and some drunk teenagers knock over the cross.  Jack-O comes back to life and kills the teenagers.  Jack-O sets out to get revenge on the Kelly family but, for some reason, he decides to kill their neighbors, some more teenagers, and a TV cable guy before going after his targets.  It’s up to young Sean Kelly (Ryan Latshaw) to figure out how to defeat Jack-O for a second time.

The most interesting thing about Jack-O is that it features John Carradine, even though he died a full seven years before the movie was released.  That either means that Jack-O had an unusually long post-production period or the Carradine scenes were shot for another movie and were clumsily inserted into Jack-O.  Carradine was not the only deceased star to make an appearance in Jack-O.  Cameron Mitchell, who passed away in 1994, also makes an appearance as a horror movie host.  Because you can’t have a movie with Carradine and Cameron Mitchell without including Linnea Quigley, she appears as a babysitter who takes a lengthy shower.  Fortunately, Linnea Quigley is still with us.

Overall, Jack-O is regrettable.  The demon, with his Jack-O-Lantern head, is more likely to inspire laughs than screams and it never makes sense that Jack-O would take so much time to kill everyone except for the people that he is actually looking to kill.  The best death involves a toaster but Jack-O doesn’t do anything with the toaster.  Instead, someone just slips and sticks a utensil in the toaster, leading to a shocking death.  Combine the poor acting with the poor special effects with notably ragged editing that often makes it unclear how much time has passed between scenes and you have a Halloween film that is no holiday.

Horror Game Review: Power, MT (2017, Phil Strahl)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

You were just a traveler, passing through Power, Montana, when your car broke down.  Temporarily stranded, you were thankful when a local farmer offered to let you stay in his guest room for the night.  But then something terrible descends upon Power and you find yourself running through the town, fearful for your life.

The objective of Power, MT is straight-forward.  Make your way through town and hopefully, find some sort of protection before you are captured by the strange, apparently supernatural storm that is pursuing you.  To be able to do this, though, you’re going to need the flashlight on your phone to see where you are going.  And, with each turn, that flashlight drains your battery and leaves you that much close to being plunged into a darkness from which there is no escape.  It’s a simple and relatable premise.  Who hasn’t hit the panic button while searching for a place to recharge their phone?  The game is well-written and there are a lot of places to explore, even if there’s not always a lot of time to reach them.  Power, MT captures the feeling of running for your life.  It’s a challenging game (so be prepared to die a few times while figure it out) but it’s also not impossible to win.

Play Power, MT

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Work Party From Cabin The Woods

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s scene that I love comes from one of the best horror films of the past ten years, 2012’s Cabin In The Woods.  The party starts just a little bit early….

6 Shots From 6 Horror Films: 2011 — 2012

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films.  I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.

Today, we take a look at 2011 and 2012!

6 Shots From 6 Horror Films: 2011 — 2012

Insidious (2011, directed by James Wan, DP: John R. Leonetti)

The Whisperer in Darkness (2011, directed by Sean Branney)

Dracula 3D (2012, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luciano Tovoli)

Sinister (2012, directed by Scott Derrickson, DP: Christopher Norr)

Silent House (2012, dir by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, DP: Igor Matrinovic)

The Cabin In The Woods (2012, dir by Drew Goddard, DP: Peter Deming)

Horror Film Review: Queen of Outer Space (dir by Edward Bernds)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1958’s Queen of Outer Space, four rather dumb men take off in a spaceship from Earth.

There’s Lt. Larry Turner (Patrick Waltz) and Lt. Mike Cruze (David Wilcox), both of whom come across like they like to spend the weekend hanging out at their old frat house, playing beer pong. And then there’s Prof. Konrad (Paul Birch), who is smart because he knows what the word “atmosphere” means. And finally, in charge of the flight, is Captain Neal Patterson (Eric Fleming), who is upright and kind of dull.

The four men are supposed to be going to a space station but they get knocked off course by an animated laser beam and the ship crash lands on a mysterious planet that’s covered with cardboard rocks and plastic trees. Prof. Konrad takes one look at the planet and says that they’re on Venus.

Uh-oh! That’s not good! Isn’t Venus like a really bad place for human beings to find themselves?

Well, apparently not, because soon the four men are casually walking around the planet without so much as wearing a space suit or bringing along an oxygen supply. They even stop to get some sleep among the cardboard rocks. That’s when they’re captured by Venus’s inhabitants.

To the men’s shock, they discover that Venus is exclusively populated by women! The men are all like, “Hey, how you doing?” And the women are all like, “Silence, we have ray guns!”

Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Venus is ruled over by a disfigured queen (Laurie Mitchell), who hates men in general and Earth men in specific. She’s built a giant space laser that she’s planning to use to destroy Earth and it’s up to the men to stop her! Fortunately, they’ve got some help from Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor), a Venusian courier who has a wardrobe that’s to die for and who has apparently been waiting her entire life for men to come to Venus. When the Queen flirts with the captain, Talleah jealously exclaims, “I hate the Queen!” and that’s pretty much all it takes to start a revolution.

Needless to say, this is an incredibly sexist movie but, at the same time, it’s so goofy (in a 1950s sort of way) that you really can’t get too outraged by it. Instead, you just kinda cringe when Turner and Mike suggest that the captain needs to “turn on some of that old black magic” and invite the Queen out for a midnight stroll. Prof. Konrad quickly adds that Venus actually has several moons, though not all of them can be seen. I mean, it’s dumb but, at the same time, it’s just so 1958.

It’s really is a thoroughly ludicrous movie but, watching it, you get the feeling that the entire cast understood that it was ludicrous and they adjusted their performances accordingly. I mean, this is a movie that features Zsa Zsa Gabor putting on a mask and attempting to imitate the Queen while making absolutely no attempt to hide her trademark Hungarian accent. This is also a movie that features a giant rubber spider that pops up out of nowhere and for nor particular reason. I guess they just had the spider on set for the day and they decided to toss it in.

Queen of Outer Space is an incredibly silly movie but it’s entertaining in it’s own stupid way. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s only 80 minutes. Watch it for the experience.

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: And Fools Shine On by Brother Cane (1995, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Brother Cane’s And Fools Shine On is best-known for appearing on the soundtrack of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.  No matter what else people say about that movie, the general consensus seems to be that at least the music was good.

The video is slightly horror-themed, though Michael Myers doesn’t show up.  Instead, the video feels like an homage to the expressionistic cinema of F.W. Munrau and Fritz Lang, as if someone tried to combine Nosferatu with Metropolis.

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: Tales From The Crypt 3.7 “The Reluctant Vampire” (dir by Stephen Hopkins)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Reluctant Vampire was the 7th episode of the 3rd season of HBO’s Tales From The Crypt!  It stars Malcolm McDowell as a vampire who is a little bit too nice for his own good.  Seriously, you can’t go wrong with Malcolm McDowell as a vampire.

The Reluctant Vampire originally aired on July 10th, 1991.

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Day Time Ended (dir by John “Bud” Cardos)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 1980’s The Day Time Ended, the Williams Family has relocated to the desert!  

(Why the desert?  I have no idea.  I’ve been told that the hot air of the desert would be ideal for my asthma but then I’d have to live in the desert and, from what I’ve seen in the movies, bad things always happen in the desert.  If it’s not aliens, it’s zombie cowboys.)

Grandpa (Jim Davis), Grandma (Dorothy Malone), Richard (Christopher Mitchum, looking a lot like his father, Robert), Beth (Marcy Lafferty), and their young daughter, Jenny (Natasha Ryan) have moved into a very nice ranch house that appears to be sitting in the middle of nowhere.  The house comes with a barn, a few horses, and …. ALIENS!

At first, Jenny is the only one to notice the strange blue light that keeps glowing behind the barn.  But soon, the rest of the family is seeing UFOs and weird (but kind of cute) creatures are knocking on the front door and saying hi.  Lizard men appear in the distance and beckon for the family to follow them.  Soon, the house itself is being zapped through time and space….

This is going to be a short review but, then again, The Day Time Ended is a short movie.  With a running time of only 75 minutes (not including the end credits), The Day Time Ended feels less like a movie and more like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone.  That said, if it was an extended episode of The Twilight Zone, it would be considered to be one of the more enjoyable episodes of the series.  While none of the characters are particularly complex or deeply written, the cast is believable as a family and everyone does a good enough job that the viewer won’t want to see anything bad happen to any of them.  (I’m also happy to say that all of those horses are really pretty and — fear not! — for once, no harm befalls any of the animals.)  The motives of the aliens are kept ambiguous throughout the film, leaving the viewers as confused and intrigued as the family and the final shot is somehow both silly and tremendously satisfying at the same time.  The Day Time Ended is a B-movie but it’s an entertaining B-movie.

Directed by B-movie specialist, John “Bud” Cardos, this is one of those movies where the cheapness of the special effects add to the film’s charm.  Initially, the UFOs are represented by lights darting through the sky.  (Residents of Texas will immediately think of our beloved and yet unexplained Marfa Lights.)  When the UFOs are finally seen in close-up, they are obviously plastic models but, in this age of excessive CGI, there’s something undeniably charming about the idea of going to the trouble to build plastic models.  The claymation aliens are adorable!  Seriously, there are some films that you just can’t help but kind of love and, for me, The Day Time Ended is one of those films.