Tag Archives: Horror

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Scissors (dir by Frank De Felitta)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The plot of the 1991 film, Scissors, is not easy to describe. That’s not because the plot is particularly clever as much as it’s because it doesn’t make much sense.

Basically, Sharon Stone plays a woman named Angela Anderson. She is oddly obsessed with scissors and terrified about getting close to anyone. She’s been getting hypnotherapy from Dr. Carter (Ronny Cox) in an effort to understand why she’s so repressed but she doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. This could possibly have something to do with the fact that Dr. Carter is continually distracted by the adulterous activities of his wife, Ann (Michelle Phillips).

Angela lives in a lonely but surprisingly big apartment with only her cat for company. Her cat is named Midnight and he’s a black cat so he automatically became my favorite character in the film. Living next door to her are two twin brothers. Alex (Steve Railsback) is a soap opera star. Cole (Railsback, again) is an artist in a wheelchair who continually paints cartoonish pictures of Angela being attacked by a man with a big red beard.

Then, one day, Angela goes out to buy some scissors. When she returns and gets on the elevator to head back up to her apartment, she’s attacked by a man …. A MAN WITH A RED BEARD! Fortunately, Angela is able to stab him with her scissors. After the man with the red beard runs off, Angela is discovered in the elevator by Alex and Cole. Alex and Angela fall in love. Cole’s not too happy about that.

Following so far?

Angela get a call about a job interview, one that requires her to go to a stranger’s apartment. Despite the fact that the film has spent nearly an hour setting up Angela as being intensely agoraphobic, she has no problem going to this apartment. However, once she enters the apartment, she finds herself locked in! She also discovers that the red-bearded man is also in the apartment. Fortunately, he’s dead. Unfortunately, it appears that he was killed by Angela’s scissors. There’s also a raven in the apartment. The raven continually taunts Angela, saying, “You killed him!” Let’s just be happy that Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t around to see this.

Trapped in the apartment, Angela has flashbacks to her past. Is Angela the murderer? Is all of this just happening in her mind? Or is someone trying to drive her over the edge?

Though Scissors is set up as a psychological horror film, it’s really more of an extended acting exercise for Sharon Stone. Stone wanders around the apartment. She talks to herself. She had a nervous breakdown or two. She discusses life with a puppet. Every single scene seems to be designed to make audiences go, “Wow, she really can act!” but, despite all of the histrionics on display, Angela is still a very one note character. By making her obviously unstable from the start, the film doesn’t really leave the character with much room to develop or take us by surprise. The film attempts to end on a bit of an ambiguous note as far as Angela’s character is concerned but that type of ambiguity has to be earned. There’s nothing to Stone’s performance to indicate that there’s anything about Angela that isn’t totally on the surface. To suggest that there was more to her than originally appeared is to insult the audience’s ability to discern hidden depths.

The film does eventually wrap up its mystery and present a solution of sorts. Unfortunately, it’s a totally unsatisfying solution and one that’s dependent on otherwise intelligent people coming up with a ludicrously overcomplicated scheme to deal with one not particularly complicated problem. It’s all pretty forgettable but at least the cat survives.

The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977, directed by Gordon Hessler)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Miriam Oliver (Karen Black) is a prim housewife who always keep her hair in a tight bun and who wears eyeglasses.  After she starts to have dreams about going to her own funeral, Mrs. Oliver’s personality starts to change.  Her husband, Greg (George Hamilton), can only watch as Mrs. Oliver puts on a blonde wig, ditches her eyeglasses, and starts to dress in revealing clothes.  Greg wants to concentrate on starting a family but the new Mrs. Oliver only cares about going out and partying all night.  She also wants to move into a new house, one that was previously owned by a woman named Sandy.  Sandy, who was a student of the occult, died in a mysterious fire.

The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver is a good made-for-TV movie that gives viewers two Karen Blacks for the price of one!  Black is undeniably sexy, whether she’s playing the prim Mrs. Oliver or the wild Sandy.  But she also delivers a really good performance as she switches back and forth from being Mrs. Oliver and being Sandy.  Richard Matheson provides an intelligent script while Gordon Hessler’s direction keeps you guessing as to whether Mrs. Oliver is truly possessed or if she’s just having a mental breakdown of some sort.  This is an enjoyably twisty thriller with a good ending and a knockout performance from Karen Black.

Horror Game Review: Friends? (2022, MBoone)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

One night, Natt is woken up by his friends Josh and Stan.  Josh and Stan want Natt to step outside and have a drink.  Natt has not seen or checked up on Josh and Stan for a while.  Natt can be a friend and have a drink or he can go back to sleep.  Either way, he is going to end up in a bad situation.  Are Josh and Stan friends?  Natt soon discovers that there are consequences for not keeping up with people.

Friends? is a choose you own adventure style horror game.  You decide how Natt reacts to things and then you discover what happens as a result of Natt’s decisions.  The majority of the decisions appear to lead to Natt dying a horrible and gruesome death.  If you make the right choices, Natt can survive but it’s very difficult to get through the game without Natt taking on some damage, both physically and mentally.

A few typos aside, Friends? is well-written and the endings are gruesome and twisted enough to keep most horror game players happy.  It doesn’t take long to discover that there are very real consequences to making the wrong decision.  The game features multiple endings and multiple paths to those endings, making it a game that can replayed several times.

Play it and then check up on your friends.  They would probably love to hear from you.

Play Friends?

Horror Scenes I Love: Gnahgi and the Head from Dellamorte Dellamore

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This scene is from the 1994 Italian film, Dellamorte Dellamore.  Gnaghi is upset that a girl upon whom he had a crush has been killed in a terrible bus accident.  But then Gnaghi remembers that the dead come to life when they are buried in the town’s cemetery.

Novel Review: The Overnight by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Did you know that Fear Street had a Fear Island?

It’s does.  It’s sitting right in the middle of Fear Lake.  It’s a bit of an isolated place.  For whatever reason, it’s never occurred to anyone to actually make commercial use of Fear Island, even though that seems like the most obvious thing to do.  There are rumors that Fear Island is cursed and overrun with mutants and ghosts….

Unfortunately, even though the majority of the book takes place on Fear Island, there are no mutants or ghosts to be found in The Overnight.  First published in 1990, The Overnight was the third of the Fear Street books and it’s one of those books where nothing supernatural happens!  What a let down!

Instead, it tells the story of what happens when the members of Shadyside High’s Outdoors Club (really?  What a lame club) sneak off and spend some time on Fear Island without adult supervision.  One of the members of the club is approached and then attacked by a strange man who eventually ends up at the bottom of a ravine.  The members of the club leave his body there and return home, determined not to tell anyone.  They’re less concerned with getting accused of murder than they are of their parents finding out that they went on an unsupervised trip.  Soon, the phone calls begin.  “I know what you did,” the voice on the other end rasps.  Next, two of club members are chased by a mysterious car.  Who could it be?

While the members of the Outdoor Club try to figure out who is stalking them, their faculty advisor makes an announcement.  They’re going on an overnight trip and they’ll be camping on …. FEAR ISLAND!

AGCK!

I will admit that I laughed out loud when the club found out that they were returning to Fear Island and that there was no way that they could avoid it.  I think it’s because, by the point I reached that point in the book, I already started to imagine The Overnight as being an episode of Saved By The Bell. 

“We’re going to Fear Island!” Mr. Belding announces.

“TIME OUT!” Zack says, before looking at the audience and saying, “I can’t go back to Fear Island!  They’re going to hack Zack!”

Anyway, as I said before, this book is disappointing in that there are no ghosts or monsters and it’s a bit difficult to really relate to anyone who would want to join something as dorky as the Outdoors Club.  (Shadyside High has a club for everything!)  That said, it’s hard not to be amused by the fact that there’s apparently a Fear Island sitting in the middle of Fear Lake.  Apparently, Fear Island was mentioned in a few other Fear Street books, some of which I do remember reading.  So, I guess I just blocked the island’s existence from my memory.

Anyway, the important thing is that everything work out in the end.  Fear Island?  More like Love Island, right?

Non-Fiction Review: Disaster Movies by Michael Rose and Glenn Kay

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s the only thing scarier than being trapped in a real-life disaster?

Being trapped in a disaster movie!

First published in 2006, the full name of this guide to the disaster genre is Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer Bees, and Alien Attacks In The Cinema.  That title tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this affectionate but likably snarky look at all the movies that have been made about earthquakes, fires, torandoes, and …. well, basically all the stuff listed in the title.  

On a movie-by-movie basis, this guide reviews disaster movies that are both well-known and obscure.  All of the big ones — Airport, Towering Inferno, Titanic, Independence Day, Poseidon Adventure — are listed here but, even more importantly, so are the obscure ones.  In fact, the book features a lot of films that you might not have heard about but will probably want to track down after you’ve read about them.  The reviews are respectful to the conventions of the genre while also acknowledging the obvious, i.e., a lot of these are not good films.  But the authors understand that sometimes, a bad disaster film can be even more enjoyable than a good one.  The Poseidon Adventure is a classic of sorts but how about Beyond The Poseidon Adventure?  How about Flood!, a film so exciting that it even has an exclamation mark in the name?  How about Avalanche, the best of the snowy disaster films?  What about Meteor?  If love The Swarm but you can’t appreciate Meteor, I don’t know what to tell you.  

Disaster Movies is a well-written guide.  Most readers will discover the existence of at least one film that they previously knew nothing about.  And, hopefully, they’ll be inspired to watch a few of the film reviewed in this book.  In a disaster, it’s always helpful to be prepared.

International Horror Film Review: The Sister of Ursula (dir by Enzo Milioni)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1978 Italian giallo tells the story of two sisters.  Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi, who is best-known for playing Olga in Argento’s Suspiria) is high-strung and prone to nightmares.  She claims that she can see people for who they really are.  Dagmar (Stefania D’Amario) is a year or two older.  She looks after her sister and makes sure that Ursula takes her pills.  Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Dagmar would like to be free of having worry about Ursula.

After the death of their father, Ursula and Dagmar check into a hotel in an Italian resort town.  Ursula wants to find their mother, a prostitute who left their father shortly after Ursula was born.  Dagmar, for her part, seems to just want to take a vacation and maybe meet a few men.  Ursula gives Dagmar a hard time for being promiscuous.  Dagmar gives Ursula a hard time for being neurotic and not having any fun.  It’s a typical family vacation.

Unfortunately, there’s also a homicidal lunatic on the loose, one that kills the promiscuous.  In typical giallo fashion, he wears black gloves and, often, all we see of him is his madness-filled eyes.  Unlike a lot of other giallo killers, he does not use a knife.  Nor does he strangle his victims.  Instead, he uses a big wooden dildo to beat people to death.  Believe me, I’m probably making it sound more interesting than it actually is.  For a film that wallows in sleaze, The Sister of Ursula doesn’t focus too much on the killer’s use of a dildo as a murder weapon, beyond showing its shadow on a wall at one point.  It’s an odd piece of directorial restraint that feels at odds with the rest of the movie.

Describing The Sister of Ursula as being a sleazy film doesn’t begin to describe just how sleazy this film is.  There’s not a single character to be found in the film who is not, in some way, perverse and the frequent soft-core sex scenes seem to exclusively take place in locations that don’t appear to have been cleaned anytime recently.  (One such scene features a picture of Donald Duck hanging on the wall over the bed.  That’s one of those weird but fun decorating choices that always seems to occur in giallo films.)  There are many films that leave you feeling like you need to take a shower afterwards.  This is one of the few films that I can think of that will leave you feeling like you need to take a shower every fifteen minutes or so.  

As for the film’s mystery, it plays out at a languid pace.  The story gets bogged down with a subplot about drug dealers.  One would be tempted to say that the film cultivates an atmosphere of ennui but I think that’s giving The Sister of Ursula too much credit.  This film was not made by a subversive artist like Jean Rollin or Jess Franco.  Instead, it’s just a poorly directed and paced giallo film.  That said, the Italian scenery is often lovely to look at and Barbara Magnolfi and Stefania D’Amario are believable as sisters.  This is a minor giallo that’s not so much terrible as it’s just forgettable.  

6 Shots From 6 Horror Films: 1994 — 1996

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 1994, 1995, and 1996!

6 Shots From 6 Horror Films: 1994 — 1996

Dellamorte Dellamore (1994, dir by Michele Soavi, DP: Mauro Marchetti)

In The Mouth of Madness (1994, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Gary B. Kibbe)

New Nightmare (1994, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Mark Irwin)

Lord of Illusions (1995, dir by Clive Barker, DP: Ronn Schmidt)

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Giuseppe Rotunno)

Scream (1996, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Mark Irwin)

Horror Film Review: Halloween Ends (dir by David Gordon Green)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Halloween Ends?  Not likely.

It is true that, with this movie, David Gordon Green does close out his version of the Halloween trilogy and, for that, we should all be thankful.  For all the critical acclaim that the film received, none of Green’s Halloween films seem destined to stand the test of time.  I like almost all of David Gordon Green’s work except for his Halloween films and, unfortunately, I find his version of Halloween to be so self-important and annoying that it overshadows what I previously liked about his other movies.  (Don’t even get me started on the news that he will next be rebooting The Exorcist.)  Watching the Green Halloween trilogy, you find yourself wondering why Green made the films at all since he seems to consider the whole slasher genre to be beneath him.  Say what you will about Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, Zombie at least loves the horror genre.  Green, like so many Blumhouse filmmakers, only seems to make horror films so that he can remind us that he’s better than them.

But I doubt that this will be the final Halloween film.  It will be the last Halloween film produced under Blumhouse, as the rights to the story and the characters now revert back to Malek Akkad.  And, as long as there is money to be made off of the franchise, there will be new Halloween films.  Someone else will come along and reboot the franchise and hopefully wipe out the Green continuity just as ruthlessly as Green wiped out the previous franchise’s continuity.  In an age of franchises and prequels and cinematic universes, the Halloween franchise is proud to say, “Ha!  You mean you actually kept track of what happened in all the other movies!?  Sucks to be you, dumbass.”

But let’s talk about Halloween Ends.

As you may remember, Halloween Kills ended with Michael killing Laurie Strode’s daughter and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) grabbing a shotgun and heading out to get  revenge.  Well …. ha ha, joke’s on you.  Laurie never got her revenge.  Michael vanished.  Four years later, Laurie has gone from being a badass survivalist to being a cheerful, cookie-baking grandma because she had to let go of the anger.  Laurie spent forty years preparing for Michael to return and then, when Michael does return and brutally murders her daughter, Laurie decides that she has to let go of her anger.  Laurie’s main concern is that the town of Haddonfield is now a traumatized and angry place.  Maybe she can spread positivity by writing a memoir about her life.  Sadly, this means that we also have to listen to passages from Laurie’s memoirs.  Laurie Strode is good at fighting psychotic killers but she sucks as a writer.

Unfortunately, whenever Laurie leaves the house that she shares with her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), she runs the risk of being accosted by all of the angry people who all lost a relative or a friend to Michael Myers.  All of them view Laurie as being a reminder of the pain caused by Michael.  They actually do have a point and you have to wonder about Laurie’s claim that she’s staying in Haddonfield to help the town heal.  First off, I don’t know why Laurie would have so much loyalty to what appears to be a fairly generic suburb.  Secondly, the townspeople are so traumatized that is actually seems a bit a selfish for Laurie to remain in Haddonfield and to continually remind everyone of the worst night of their lives.  I mean, Laurie could move.  You know who can’t leave?  The wheelchair-bound woman who was paralyzed while Michael was killing everyone in town because he wanted to find Laurie.

Michael disappeared after killing Laurie’s daughter.  No one knows where Michael is.  Michael is a big and fearsome serial killer who nearly wiped out an entire town and he’s out there somewhere and apparently, no one is looking for him.  That’s what one has to assume because, according to the film, he’s spent the last four years living underneath a bridge.  He’s still wearing his mask.  He looks and acts exactly the same way as he did previously.  He’s still killing people.  He’s just doing it under a bridge.  How, in four yeas time, has it not occurred to anyone in law enforcement to not check under the bridge?  It’s the most obvious hiding spot in town but no one looked under the bridge.  And why, if Michael is obsessed with killing Laurie, has he spent four years under a bridge as opposed to going to Laurie’s house?

Michael is pretty much treated as a supporting character in Halloween Ends.  For that matter, so is Laurie.  The majority of the film centers around a new character named Corey (Rohan Campbell).  Corey was a college student with a bright future until a terrible babysitting accident led to the death of a boy named Jeremy.  Corey was blamed for the death, even though it really wasn’t his fault.  (The scenes with Corey and Jeremy open the film and are so well-handled that it leaves little doubt that Green was far more emotionally invested in Corey’s storyline than he was in any of the Michael/Laurie nonsense.)  Even though Corey was acquitted of manslaughter, he is now the town pariah.  Corey meets and falls in love with Allyson but, unfortunately, the town’s constant taunting and suspicion causes him to snap.  He becomes a disciple and then a rival of Michael’s.

Corey is the type of damaged character who has been at the center of many of David Gordon Green’s non-Halloween films.  One gets the feeling that Green wanted to make a movie about Corey but, since he’s abandoned indie films in order to spend his time screwing up venerable horror franchises, Green and co-writer Danny McBride instead jammed Corey’s story into a Halloween film.  While Corey has the potential to be an interesting character, he doesn’t belong here.  Making Corey into a killer means reducing Michael’s powers.  Michael goes from being a fearsome symbol of pure evil to being some guy in the sewers who gets beaten up and mugged by a nerdy guy who previously couldn’t even stand up to the members of the school band.  It not only goes against the spirit of the original Halloween films but also against everything that was previously established in the Green Halloween films.  I mean, Corey beats up Michael after Corey gets beaten up by a bunch of band kids.  Maybe if the posse in Halloween Kills had been made up of the high school marching band, Laurie’s daughter would still be alive.

It all gets to be a bit annoying.  There are so many little things that don’t make any sense.  My favorite is that the family of that hired Corey to babysit moves out of their house after the death of their son.  Corey continues to break into the now abandoned house, which has sat empty for four years.  And yet, the abandoned house is remarkably well taken care of.  For some reason, the family took all of their furniture but left behind a grand piano.  Why wouldn’t they take the piano with them?  In the drawing room, there’s a book shelf that is empty except for three books.  Why would the family leave those three books behind?  When Green rebooted the Halloween franchise, he ignored all of the sequels because, according to him, the sequels weren’t any good and didn’t make sense.  But Halloween Ends feels as rushed and nonsensical as any of the films that featured Danielle Harris as Laurie’s daughter.

The film ends with the community of Haddonfield coming together once again.  It’s a scene that I wish I could describe but to do so would mean spoiling the end of the movie.  Let’s just say that it’s incredibly dumb and it almost feels like a parody of the previous Green films.  One of the worst thing about the Green films is the insistence of presenting Haddonfield as being some sort of iconic location as opposed to just being a generic anytown USA.  The whole reason why the original Halloween films were so effective was because Haddonfield could have been anywhere.  Green tries to turn Haddonfield into another Twin Peaks and it’s another sign that he never really understood what made John Carpenter’s original film work in the first place.  Ironically, a lot of what happens during the final moments of Halloween Ends would make more sense if Michael was Laurie’s brother but, again, the Green films did away with all that.

Halloween Ends is not necessarily the worst film of 2022.  As a director, Green is still capable of coming up with an effective shot or two.  But, considering the hype that accompanied it, it is one of the most disappointing.  And it also has the most unintentionally funny ending of any film you’re likely to see in 2022.  Whenever I feel down, I just think about that solemn procession to the auto yard and it cheers me right up.

As I said at the start of this review, Halloween will never end as long as there is money to be made.  So, in another few years, we’ll get another reboot and, once again, we’ll discover with Laurie, Tommy Doyle, Linsdey, and Sheriff Brackett have been doing since the night Michael came home.  My idea for a reboot is that they should make Michael and Laurie into siblings.  That would be interesting.