Tag Archives: Horror

Horror on the Lens: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (dir by John S. Robertson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

394px-Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde_1920_poster

Ever since the birth of film, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has been a popular subject for adaptation.  Not only does the classic story of a good doctor who unleashes his evil instinct via potion serve as a potent metaphor for everything from sexual repression to drug addiction, but the dual role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has provides an excellent opportunity for an actor to show off.

The first film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is believed to have been made in 1908.  Two more version followed in 1912 and 1913 and then, suddenly, 1920 saw three different film versions.

The best known of the 1920 version is our film for today.  This version is best remembered for John Barrymore’s powerful performance in the title role but it also holds up remarkably well as a work of cinematic horror.

Music Video of the Day: The Writing On The Wall by Iron Maiden (2021, directed by Nicos Livesey)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

According to Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson, this song and video are “all wrapped up in a lot of messages about greed and the destruction of the planet, with the top one-percenters sitting in their shiny castles, leaving everyone else outside to rot on a dying planet. It’s meant to be pretty on the nose about the current planetary situation”.

Taking place in a dystopian future in which the British slavishly follow behind the Americans while other world leaders ride atop nuclear missiles that are pulled by their slaves, it is fair to say that this video is “on the nose.”  Fortunately, Eddie and the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse aren’t going to step to the side, especially not when there are people in ragged Iron Maiden shirts dying in the desert.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: Circle of Fear 1.18 “Legion of Demons” (dir by Paul Stanley)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Shy Beth (Shirley Knight) is now to the city and still struggling to make friends.  Fortunately, her friend Janet gets her a nice corporate job.  Unfortunately, Janet then vanishes and Beth discovers that her co-workers are more than just office workers,  I won’t spoil the twist, since the title of this episode already did that.

Legion of Demons aired on February 2nd, 1973 and it undoubtedly led to a lot of viewers saying, “I think they filmed that at my office!”

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The First Power (dir by Robert Reskinoff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1990 horror film, Lou Diamond Phillips plays Russell Logan, a Los Angeles police detective who specializes in capturing and sometimes killing serial killers.  (“So far,” a news reporter breathlessly tells us, “Detective Logan has captured or killed three serial killers!”)  His latest triumph is the capture of Patrick Channing (Jeff Kober), also known as the Pentagram Killer because he carves a pentagram on his victims.

Logan captures Channing thanks to a tip from a psychic named Tess (Tracy Griffith).  Tess specifically made Logan promise her that he wouldn’t push for Channing to get the death penalty.  However, after Logan captures him, he goes back on his word and Channing is sentenced to die in the gas chamber.  To be honest, I wasn’t aware that detectives had the power to decide whether or not to go for the death penalty when it comes to prosecuting murder cases.  As far as I’ve known, that’s always been the job of the district attorney’s office.  Maybe they do things differently out in California….

Anyway, Channing smiles when he’s sentenced to death and then he smiles again when he’s executed.  Logan shrugs all of that off but suddenly, the pentagram murders start up again.  The murderer is killing people in the exact same way that Channing did and he also appears to be targeting the people who were involved in Channing’s capture.  Meanwhile, Tess is running around angry because she specifically told Logan not to allow Channing to be executed.

Hmmmm …. have you figured out what’s going on, yet?

Of course you have!  That’s because you’ve seen a horror movie before.  From the minute that Channing was sentenced to die, you probably knew that Channing would eventually come back from the dead and start murdering people all over again.  It turns out that, by executing Channing, the state of California has granted him the first power, i.e. resurrection.  By committing more murders, Channing is hoping to unlock all of the other powers.  Those powers include the power to appear and disappear at will, possess other people, jump off of roof tops, and mockingly laugh at anyone who tries to stop him.

Apparently, Detective Logan is not a fan of horror movies because it takes him a while to figure all of this out.  (We should keep in mind that he’s a cop so his job is to be skeptical of claims of people returning from the dead.)  But once he starts hearing Channing’s disembodied voice and getting attacked by possessed priests and homeless women, he really has no other option but to accept the truth and work with Tess to try to end Channing’s reign of terror.

The First Power is one of those horror films that’s extremely predictable but effective nonetheless.  Lou Diamond Phillips manages to maintain a straight face, regardless of how outlandish this film gets and Jeff Kober seems to be having a blast as the flamboyantly evil Patrick Channing.  Channing jumps off of rooftops and through windows with a graceful aplomb and the film actually has some fun with the idea of Channing skipping from body to body.  The First Power is often dumb but always entertaining.

The China Lake Murders (1990, directed by Alan Metzger)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Officer Donnelly (Michael Parks) of the Arizona Highway Patrol has snapped.  One day, he doesn’t show up for roll call and instead drives out to the desert.  Sometimes, he pulls people over and tells them that they’ve violated a traffic law.  Sometimes, he stops to help a stranded motorist.  Every encounter ends with Donnelly killing someone.  When Donnelly reaches the town of China Lake, he flirts with a waitress (Lauren Tewes) and befriends Sheriff Sam Brodie (Tom Skerritt).  Brodie is investigating the mystery of why so many people are turning up dead in the desert and he slowly comes to realize that his new friend is the one responsible.

The China Lake Murders was produced by the USA Network and it used to air regularly throughout the 90s.  For a while, it held the record for the highest rated basic cable film.  One reason why so many people would watch it whenever it aired was because the movie started out with a warning that it contained strong violence and some sexual content.  That warning was all that it took to convince most people to watch the movie.  While the sexual content is tame (we see someone’s bare back at one point), the violence is indeed strong. 

So is the performance of Michael Parks, who plays Donnelly as the ultimate nightmare cop.  In many ways, Donnelly epitomizes everything that people hate about the police.  He’s a bully who hides behind his uniform and his badge.  The movie never explains why Donnelly suddenly snapped but watching him, it’s easy to guess that he’s always been a sadist.  He channeled his cruelty into law enforcement and now that he’s crossed the line and is killing random people, he still believes that his uniform will protect him.  Tom Skerritt, on the other hand, is the epitome of what most people would hope a cop would be, fair-minded and more concerned with helping the community than controlling it.

The China Lake Murders is a little slow.  Since it’s revealed early on that Parks is the killer, there’s not much suspense during the middle section of the film.  Things pick up, though, when Skerritt and Parks finally go after each other.  The two veteran actors bring a lot of gravitas to their roles and their final confrontation does not disappoint.

Game Review: Night Train (2022, Evan Farris)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this Twine game, you wake up in a train.  The train appears to be deserted, except for you.  Outside the windows, everything appears to be dark.  Do you explore the train and try to discover why you have become a passenger and just where exactly it is that you’re going?  Or do you go back to your compartment and wait for an answer?

This is a short and simple Twine game, written in the style of an old Choose Your Own Adventure book.  You are given various options that you can use to explore the train and hopefully learn what is going on.  Make the right choices and you’ll find the answers.  Make the wrong choice and you’ll fall victim to a fate of Lovecraftian horror.  The game takes less than ten minutes to play and I do wish there had been a few more options but the game’s story is intriguing and it does a good job of capturing the player’s attention.  This game really makes use of a classic Interactive Fiction scenario.  You wake up with no idea where or even who you are.  You spend the rest of the game trying to answer those questions.  There are a few typos in the game but, for all I know, there’s probably a few typos in this review.  None of them are serious enough to really interfere with the experience of playing the game itself.

Play Night Train!

Horror Scenes that I Love: Pennywise Visits The Library In It

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Admittedly, this scene from the 1990 version of It is a bit more goofy than scary but still, I love Tim Curry’s performance as Pennywise the Clown.  When the first part of the latest version of It came out, it was kind of fashionable to dismiss the 1990 version.  But then the second movie came out and everyone was like, “We waited a year for this!?  Give us back our Tim Curry!”

Anyway, in this scene, Pennywise shows at the Derry Public Library and offers Richie (Harry Anderson) some balloons.

Book Review: The Surprise Party by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last summer, after her boyfriend Evan apparently shot himself in Fear Street Woods, Ellen moved away from Fear Street and her friends were left to attend Shadyside High without her.  However, a few months have passed and Ellen now feels safe about returning to Fear Street, if just for a visit.  Her friend, Meg, is super excited!  Meg wants to throw Ellen a surprise party!  Great idea, Meg!  Meg wants to throw it in Fear Street Woods, at pretty much the same location where the dead body of Ellen’s boyfriend was found.  Wait, what?

Meg is shocked when she starts to get phone calls from a mysterious stranger, telling her to cancel the party.  She’s even more upset when someone destroys the invitations that she spent so long working on.  Meg does exactly what I would do in those circumstances.  She makes a list of all the people who she thinks might be responsible.  A few people are put on the list for understandable reasons, i.e., being near the invitations before they were destroyed.  The rest are listed because Meg dislikes them personally.  One kid is listed because he’s way into playing Wizard and Dragons.  Meg’s extremely petty suspect list is probably the most realistic thing about The Surprise Party.  My suspects lists are always a combination of people who have blocked me on twitter and celebrities that I’m sick of hearing about.  My Congressman is usually on the list because he supports the ProAct.

Anyway, it does turn out that there is more to Evan’s death than anyone originally realized.  And yes, the truth comes out at the surprise party.  And yes, all of the twists don’t really make that much sense.  First published in 1989, this was the second of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books and, to be honest, it’s a little bit disappointing.  There’s nothing supernatural about anything that happens.  Instead, it’s just one of those mysteries that can’t be solved because Stine doesn’t give us all the clues until the very last minute.  I spent the whole book thinking Meg was the culprit because throwing a surprise party in the woods where your friend committed suicide is just incredibly insensitive.  And, if this was a later Fear Street book, I have no doubt that Meg would have an evil twin or something.  But no, this is an early book and Meg’s just dumb.

Oh well.  That’s life on Fear Street!

Book Review: Haunted Places: The National Directory by Dennis William Hauck

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I’ve said before, you don’t necessarily have to believe in ghosts to have fun searching for them.

Myself, I don’t believe in Ghosts, UFOs, conspiracy theories, or Bigfoot.  But I still enjoy reading about them and occasionally visiting the places where they’ve supposedly been spotted.  In fact, I would say that being a skeptic makes it even more enjoyable to visit a haunted house.  On the one hand, you would think that, because you don’t believe in ghosts, you wouldn’t be frightened about the possibility of running into one of them.  However, from my own personal experience, I’ve found the opposite to be true.  Haunted houses are even scarier when you don’t believe because you’ve always got that voice in the back of your head saying, “What if you’re wrong?”

Haunted Places: The National Directory is just what the title on the cover says it is.  It’s a listing of places across the country that some believe to be haunted.  Some of the places are said to be inhabited by ghosts.  Some of the places are better known for the UFOs that have supposedly visited.  Some places have been visited by Bigfoot.  There’s a few lakes that are rumored to be home to underwater monsters.  It makes for interesting reading and, like many paranormal directories, it’s a treasure trove of potential inspiration for the aspiring horror writer.  The latest edition of the book as published in 2002 so don’t expect to find information of recent hauntings and some of the locations may have been torn down in the past twenty year.  It happens.  That said, Jeff and I used this book to plan a road trip a few years ago and we had a great time, even if we didn’t see any ghosts.