Today would have been Peter Fonda’s 86th birthday.
This scene is from Roger Corman’s 1967 film, The Trip. Corman dropped acid himself before filming Peter Fonda doing the same thing in this film. Regardless of how one views Corman’s cinematic recreation of Fonda’s experience with acid, The Trip is considered to be one of the first nuanced drug films. While it doesn’t endorse drug use, it also doesn’t descend into the hysterics of a film like Reefer Madness. Interestingly enough, the script was written by Jack Nicholson.
Here is Peter Fonda, exploring the city on LSD, in The Trip:
4 Shots From 4 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!
Today, we celebrate the 122nd anniversary of the birth of the great British film director, Terence Fisher. Though Fisher worked in all genres, he is best remembered for the horror films that he directed for Hammer Studios. Along with proving that there was still an audience for horror, he also helped to make stars out of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
It’s time for….
4 Shots From 4 Terence Fisher Films
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Horror of Dracula (1958, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Mummy (1959, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960, dir by Terence Fisher, DP: Jack Asher)
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1980’s Prom Night, the greatest Canadian film ever! I picked it so you know it’ll be good.
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, find the movie on YouTube, Tubi, or Prime hit play at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! The watch party community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, for #ScarySocial, I will be hosting 1990’s The First Power!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime and Tubi! I’ll be there co-hosting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well. It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy!
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, more and more people are coming to Springwood.
Episode 2.3 “Welcome to Springwood”
(Dir by Ken Wiederhorn, originally aired on October 22nd, 1989)
Roxanne (Leah Ayres) and her husband, Doug (Michael Horton). have just moved to a new house in Springwood, Ohio. Doug, a lawyer, has to go to his office and he leaves Roxanne, who is recovering from a mental breakdown, alone with the boxes that the moves have already brought into the house. He tells her not to worry about opening them and promises her that they’ll unpack when he gets home.
Roxanne, however, opens the boxes. And she finds things that clearly don’t belong to her. She calls Doug at work. Doug says that there must have been a mix-up with the moving company and that he’ll call and make sure that their stuff gets delivered as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, at the house, Roxanne starts to see people who may or may not be there….
As surprised as I am to say this, the first segment of this episode of Freddy’s Nightmares was an enjoyably macabre story. Yes, the final twist is one that you’ll see coming but director Ken Wiederhorn does a great job creating and maintaining atmosphere and Ayres, Horton, and Todd Allen all give strong performances.
The second story isn’t close to be anywhere as interesting. Emily Jamison (Dey Young) has moved into a new home and she finds a hidden stack of letters that were written years before. The letters detail a doomed romance and Emily soon starts to see ghosts. The story isn’t terrible but it’s a bit bland.
Still, this was another good episode of Freddy’s Nightmares. So far, at least, the show appears to have found its footing during its second season. It’ll be interesting to see if that continues next week.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 9 pm et, Deanna Dawn will be hosting #ScarySocial! The movie? The original Halloween!
If you want to join us this Saturday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Freddy’s Nightmares, a horror anthology show which ran in syndication from 1988 to 1990. The entire series can be found on Tubi!
This week, two more people fall victim to Springwood, Ohio.
Episode 2.2 “Heartbreak Hotel”
(Dir by William Malone, originally aired on October 15th, 1989)
“Learn to use the proper pronouns …. OR DIE!” Freddy shouts at us this week and he has a point.
When tabloid reporter Roger Dittano (John Stinson) is sent to Springwood to write a story about an Elvis sighting at a local hotel, he discovers that everything he writes comes true. He writes about a woman having a demon child and, a few minutes later, a pregnant maid goes into labor and gives birth to a deformed stillborn baby. Roger writes about a man being electrocuted in a bathtub and, shortly afterwards, he’s nearly electrocuted while taking a bath.
When Roger discovers that a newspaper publisher (played by Stacy Keach, Sr., father of the better-known Stacy Keach) is staying at the hotel, he comes up with the following story. “Newspaper publisher leaves empire to reporter after he drinks poison.” Hey, Roger — who drank the poison!? The reporter or the newspaper publisher? As you can guess, Roger’s vague wording leading to him drinking arsenic and dying as the publisher laughs and says, “Oh, and I’m leaving my empire to you!”
That was actually a pretty clever story. For once, the show actually did the work to set up the twist. Roger spends the entire episode being told that he’s a sloppy writer. In the end, that sloppiness kills him.
The second story also has a twist but it’s nowhere near as interesting. An amnesiac named Jerry (Richard Cox) wakes up in a hospital after a car accident. A woman (Anne Lockhart) claims to be the Jerry’s wife. A teenage girl (Tammy Ames) claims to be Jerry’s daughter. Jerry goes home with both of them and is soon haunted by nightmares in which he sees himself killing a man. You can probably guess that Jerry is not married and he does not have a daughter. This story had a lot of noir atmosphere — right down to a saxophone wailing away on the soundtrack — but it was also pretty predictable.
The sad truth of the matter is that the Friday the 13th films haven’t done much for the New Jersey summer camp industry.
Seriously, Crystal Lake is such a pretty location. The lake looks beautiful with the sun rising over it and the water literally beckons you to toss off all your clothes and go for a swim. The woods feature green trees and are full of animals and mysterious shacks. The nearby town is home to people like Enos the Truck Driver, Ralph the Prophet, and a countless number of waitresses who will give you directions and gossip if you ask politely. And then you’ve got Camp Crystal Lake, which has cabins and a generator and an archery range and a lot of outdoor showers. Seriously, Camp Crystal Lake encompasses the natural beauty that New Jersey was once known for.
Unfortunately, none of that matters. A few stupid camp counselors managed to get themselves killed by Betsy Palmer and now, no one wants to go to New Jersey anymore. Before Friday the 13th, New Jersey was a state for the entire family. After Friday the 13th, it became a state for a different sort of family. My point is that the Friday the 13th films are directly responsible for the Mafia taking over New Jersey. I don’t care how much they blame Lucky Luciano. Jason Voorhees is responsible for organized crime.
Anyway, that’s my long-winded explanation for why no one wants to vacation at Camp Crystal Lake anymore. It’s now known as Camp Blood and no one wants to hang out at a place where they might get killed or, even worse, get lost in the Pine Barrens. Instead, people decide to vacation at much safer locations …. like Camp Murder!
2020’s Camp Murder takes place at the camp of the same nickname. Throughout the film, everyone talks about what a dump Camp Murder is but, from what we see of it, it looks perfectly pleasant. It might be a little isolated and a little neglected but it hardly seems like the Hellhole that everyone keeps describing. A group of people are vacationing at Camp Murder, secure in the knowledge that infamous murderer “Terrible” Tommy Heller (Jeff Kirkendall) has been safely locked away from 25 years. Except — uh oh! — Tommy’s escaped! Dr. Lewis (Noyes J. Lawton) is searching for him but will he be able to find him before Tommy has wiped out the majority of the cast?
Camp Murder is one of Mark Polonia’s cheerfully low-budget horror films. Polonia specializes in horror-on-budget. His films aren’t exactly good but they’re made and often performed with such enthusiasm that it’s easier to forgive their flaws than certain other low-budget entries in the genre. When it comes to a Polonia film, you know what you’re going to get so I’m going to focus on two positive aspects of the film.
First off, Terrible Tommy is actually a pretty effective villain. His mask is genuinely disturbing and Jeff Kirkendall is properly menacing and relentless in the role.
Second, there’s a shot of two women walking towards a deserted barn that is actually effectively creepy.
As for the rest of the film, the pace is slow and the acting is often amateurish. Some of the gore effects work. It’s a shot-on-video slasher film. You know what you’re getting into when you starting watching it. The tourism industry will survive Camp Murder and that’s a good thing.
In 1984’s The Initiation, Daphne Zuniga plays Kelly Fairchild, a college student who is haunted by a recurring nightmare in which she, as a child, watches a man get burned alive in her childhood home. Kelly, who can’t remember anything about her life before the age of ten, signs up for sleep study but her mother, Francesca (Vera Miles), strictly forbids it. Kelly is far too busy and far too rich to have her dreams analyzed.
And really, Kelly does have a lot going on in her life at the moment. She’s a student at SMU. She’s pledging to a sorority. Her father (Clu Gulager) owns one of Dallas’s biggest department stores and Kelly has the key so that the sorority pledges can spend the night inside the “deserted” building. Sure, a patient with extensive burn scars has recently escaped from a mental hospital but what could that possibly have to do with Kelly and her disturbing dreams?
The Initiation is a film that takes a while to really get going. The film spends a lot of time on just Kelly walking around the SMU campus and visiting her parents in Highland Park. Eventually, though, Kelly, Marcia (Marilyn Kagan), and Alison (Hunter Tylo) spend the night in that store, which is not quite as deserted as they were told. Not only is the president of the sorority there to play pranks but she’s invited along three goofy guys to add to the fun. Of course, there’s also the mysterious killer who proceeds to start picking everyone off, one-by-one.
The Initiation is a film that I like for a couple of reasons. One of them is that, whenever I watch this movie, I find myself shouting, “I’ve been there!” This film was set and filmed in Dallas and it accomplishes the near-impossible task of actually making the SMU campus look vaguely interesting. (SMU may be a top college but the campus has always been a bit on the dull side.) SMU is a college that I once wanted to go to, at least until I saw how much it would cost and my guidance counselor saw how unimpressive my grades were in high school. Instead, I went to UNT but I still spent a lot of time around the SMU campus because it was right next do to my favorite movie theater, the Dallas Angelika.
Meanwhile, the department store is played by Dallas Market Center. I can only imagine that trouble that the production went through to get permission to shoot there. That said, I have to admit that I found the “Vendors only” signs that appeared on several doors to be distracting. (The Dallas Market Center is largely used for trade shows.) Still, it was a good and atmospheric location for the slasher mayhem.
While it does take a while for that mayhem to start, the kills are all memorably nasty and bloody and actually rather frightening. I’ve always felt that, if you’re going to make a movie like this, you should go all out. There should just be blood and guts everywhere and The Initiation doesn’t shy away from that. The fact that the victims are largely played by likable actors only makes the deaths more effective.
Finally, The Initiation ends with one of those totally out-there twists that a viewer like me just can’t help but love. It’s a totally ludicrous twist but it’s just so weird and random that it was impossible not to enjoy.
Now, to be clear, The Initiation is not a lost classic. As I mentioned earlier, it takes a while for the action to really get started and there are a few early scenes that definitely drag. The film’s original director was fired after shooting began and, as a result, the film itself feels a bit disjointed. It’s obvious that the original director had a much different vision than the director who replaced him. But, even with all that taken into account, The Initiation is still a hundred times more effective than it probably has any right to be. It’s ultimately an effective and memorable slasher film.
1984’s Silent Madness opens in a mental hospital in New Jersey. In order to cut down on costs, the hospital’s administrators have been giving early release to some of their patients. Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) has only been on staff for a few months but even she knows that there’s a risk that a truly dangerous patient could be released. Dr. Gilmore’s worries come true when a homicidal patient named Howard Johns (Solly Marx) disappears from the hospital. Apparently, a computer errors led to Howard being released instead of a patient with a similar name.
Oh, someone screwed up big time!
Or, at least, that’s what Joan believes. In a scene that has to be seen to be believed, the arrogant Dr. Kruger (Roderick Cook) attempts to convince Joan that Howard Johns actually died a while ago and that’s why he’s not in the hospital anymore. Joan demands to see a death certificate. Dr. Kruger is like, “Oh, I don’t know where it is. We’ll have to look for it.” Yeah, that’s the same thing I used to say in college whenever I was running behind on my paying my credit card. “Really? I never received that bill. Can you send it again?”
Knowing that Howard was imprisoned after committing several murders at a sorority house in upstate New York, Joan theorizes that he’s heading back to the college so that he can pick up where he left off. Pretending to be a former member of the sorority, Joan meets the aging house mother, Mrs. Collins (Viveca Lindfors). Mrs. Collins — who often refers to younger women as being “whores” — tells a story of how a hazing ritual gone wrong led to handyman Howard grabbing a nail gun and wiping out a pledge class. When Joan actually spots Howard on campus, she tries to get the sheriff (Sydney Lassick) to do something about it. The sheriff replies that Joan must be seeing things because the hospital called and reported that Howard is deceased. The sheriff than has a beer because he’s the best character in the entire film.
Howard, needless to say, is not dead. He’s hiding out in the sorority house and he’s continuing in his murderous ways. We don’t really learn much about Howard. As the title suggests, he’s a silent killer. That works to the film’s advantage. A silent killer is far more intimidating than one who spends all of his time coming up with bad puns. Because Silent Madness was originally filmed in 3D, Howard enjoys throwing axes and firing nail guns, often straight at the camera.
Silent Madness is a thoroughly ludicrous film but it’s enjoyable as a product of its time. It’s hard not to smile at the thought of a theatrical audience ducking as Howard throws an axe at the camera in 3D. Howard is a properly intimidating killer but the film is totally stolen by Roderick Cook, Viveca Lindfors, and Sydney Lassick, three veteran actors who knew better than to even try to be subtle while appearing in a film like this. Lassick’s performance as the cowardly sheriff is especially enjoyable. We all know that law enforcement is useless in a slasher film. Lassick’s sheriff seems to understand this as well. He’d rather just stay in his office and who can blame him?
Silent Madness is silly and kind of dumb but it’s undeniably entertaining.
Through the Shattered Lens 