Okay, so I guess you can question whether or not this should be considered an official video.
But it’s close enough, in my opinion! This video features footage of Crud performing their song Reality at Detroit’s Theater of the Bizarre. I’ve never been to The Theater of the Bizarre or to Detroit, for that matter. But it does look like it would be a kickass place to spend Halloween.
Actually, isn’t Detroit where they burn down empty buildings on the night before Halloween?
Anyway, enjoy!
Awwww, that poor pumpkin! Well, hopefully, he’s smiling now!
This animated special originally aired on Halloween night in 1979. I would imagine that the crying pumpkin probably traumatized children across America. Hopefully, all the kids were out trick or treating when this aired. Myself, I remember that when I was a kid, I would help my mom carve a pumpkin every year. And then I would get so depressed when we later had to throw it out. Seriously, I would get really attached to those jack o’lanterns.
Anyway, this cartoon is before my time but I have a feeling that, if I had been around to watch it, I would have been depressed for a whole year afterwards.
Enjoy!
As Jeff reported earlier today, the famed Hollywood producer Robert Evans passed away this weekend. As a student of both Hollywood and history, I have to say that I always found Evans to be a rather fascinating figure. It seemed inevitable that his name would pop up whenever I read a book, an article, or even just an interview concerning the films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Robert Evans was nice enough to follow me on twitter and we even exchanged tweets on occasion.
As a producer, Robert Evans is probably more associated with gangster movies like The Godfather and The Cotton Club than horror films. But Evans was involved in a few “scary” and horror-adjacent films, both as an actor and a producer. So, tonight’s edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse Trailers is dedicated to Robert Evans.
As an actor, Evans began his career by playing Irving Thalberg in this biopic of Lon Chaney, Sr. Evans was specifically chosen for the role by Thalberg’s widow, Norma Shearer. Not surprisingly, the trailer below concentrates on James Cagney’s performance as legendary horror star, Lon Chaney, Sr.
2. The Fiend Who Walked The West (1958)
One of Evans’s rare starring roles was in this western-horror hybrid. Yes, that’s Robert Evans as the “kooky killer.”
3. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
As head of production at Paramount, Evans was responsible for greenlighting this classic horror film, starring Mia Farrow. Reportedly, Evans arranged for his friend, Jack Nicholson, to screen test for the role of Rosemary’s husband.
4. Marathon Man (1976)
Evans produced this film. Technically, Marathon Man was a thriller/spy movie. But the scenes of Dustin Hoffman in the dentist chair definitely qualify as horror.
5. Sliver (1993)
After spending the 80s financially bereft and an almost forgotten figure, Evans made a comeback by producing this incredibly silly “erotic” thriller.
6. Jade (1995)
Sliver did well enough at the box office that Evans followed it up with another, similarly silly thriller.
Of course, while it’s tempting to laugh at films like Jade and Sliver, it should be remembered that Evans was also involved with some of the best and most important films of all time. Next time you watch The Godfather, be sure to say a little thank you to Robert Evans.
R.I.P.
From the 2006 remake of The Wicker Man.
Actually, I don’t know if love is quite the right word. I’m actually kind of annoyed that The Wicker Man has gone from being one of the best horror films of the 70s to being known for the remake’s bees scene. That’s one reason why remakes, in general, are not a good thing. That said, for the record, I don’t like bees either.
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!
This October, we’re using 4 Shots From 4 Films to look at some of the best years that horror has to offer!
4 Shots from 4 2016 Horror Films
The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016, dir by Andre Ovredal)
The Belko Experiment (2016, dir by Greg McLean)
The Neon Demon (2016, dir by Nicolas Winding Refn)
What We Become (2016, dir by Bo Mikkelson)
First published in 1948 by the American Comics Group, Adventures Into The Unknown was the first regularly published horror comic book and it’s success led several other comic book companies, most notably EC Comics, to start publishing horror comics of their own. Because Adventures Into The Unknown‘s content was never as explicit as some of the comics that it inspired, Adventures became one of the few horror comics to survive the anti-comic book moral panic that erupted in 1954. Unlike Tales From The Crypt and The Vault of Horror, Adventures Into The Unknown continued to be published after the creation of the Comic Book Code. In total, it enjoyed a 20-year run of 174 issues.
Below are some of the many covers of Adventures Into The Unknown. As you can tell, the covers went from emphasizing horror to emphasizing science fiction and adventure after the creation of the Comic Book Code.
I should start things off with a confession. This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens. I previously shared it on both October 8th of 2013 and October 15th of 2015 and, both times, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.
However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again. As I pointed out two years ago, Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made. And, honestly, who am I to disagree? However, it’s also a film that is so bad that it simply has to be seen.
By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds. What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped. So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.
And be sure to enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate!
Carmilla by D.H. Friston
“You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after.”
— J. Sheridan La Fanu Carmilla
It’s been an exhausting week so the list below may be a bit perfunctory. I apologize for that. Last week started with a tornado touching ground just two miles away from my house and it’s ending with me coming down with a cold as the temperatures plunge outside.
Oh well! At least it’s nearly Halloween!
Film I Watched:
Television Shows I Watched:
Books I Read:
Music To Which I Listened:
Links From Last Week:
Links From The Site:
More From Us:
Want to see what I did last week? Click here!
Oh, Glass. We all had such hopes for you.
Glass, as you may remember, came out in January and was one of the first big cinematic disappointments of the 2019. People were certainly excited about it before the film was released. Glass was a sequel to not only Split but also Unbreakable. James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson, and Bruce Willis would all be returning to the roles that they played in those original films. Glass was viewed as being the film that would establish whether director M. Night Shyamalan was truly back after the critical and commercial success of Split or if he was going to return to being the kinda hacky director who we all remembered from the mid to late-aughts.
Actually, it can probably be argued that, as a director, M. Night Shyamalan managed to go from being slightly overrated to being wildly underrated. Even his worse films aren’t exactly terrible. Even the incredibly silly The Happening had a few effective scenes. Shyamalan wasn’t a bad director as much as he was a director who, at times, seemed to be way too convinced of his own cleverness. The Shyamalan twist became both his trademark and his curse. I can still remember an entire theater audibly groaning during The Village, not because the twist was necessarily bad as much as just because it was so expected. Was Shyamalan capable of making a film that didn’t end with a gimmicky twist? Interestingly, for most of its running time, Split seemed like a straight forward story about a psychotic man with multiple personalities. It was only at the last minute, when Bruce Willis showed up in that bar, the people realized that Split had a Shyamalan twist.
Glass has a few twists of its own, most of them dealing with how Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) became the killer known as The Beast. It’s all connected to Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who is also the supervillain named Mr. Glass. Kevin, Elijah, and David Dunn (Bruce Willis) all end up in a mental asylum together. Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) insists that the three of them do not have any super powers and instead, they’re all suffering from a shared delusion. Of course, Dr. Staple has an agenda of her own. It’s not a particularly interesting agenda but then again, who cares, right? I mean, the main reason people are going to watch this movie is so they can watch James McAvoy and Bruce Willis square off against each other, right?
Well, those people are out of luck. The audience may not care about Dr. Staple’s agenda but Shyamalan certainly does and, as a result, McAvoy, Jackson, and Willis often seem to be bystanders in their own film. When the long-promised confrontations between our three main characters finally do occur, it all leads to a finale that leaves a rather sour aftertaste. You can’t help but feel that the characters (and their actors) deserved better. What ultimately happens to David Dunn in Glass feels almost like an extended middle finger to anyone who has ever defended Unbreakable. One gets the feeling that Shyamalan was so eager to work in one of his trademark surprises that he never stopped to consider whether the film’s storyline was strong enough to support his ambition.
The other problem is that Bruce Willis’s David Dunn and James McAvoy’s The Beast really don’t belong in the same movie together. Willis gives an understated and rather haunted performance as David but McAvoy is so flamboyantly evil as the Beast that it destroys whatever gritty reality Willis had managed to develop. Both McAvoy and Willis give good performances but they appear to be performing in different films. As for Jackson, nobody glowers with the power of Samuel L. Jackson. But, oddly, he never seems to have much to do. Glass may be named after his character but Mr. Glass often feels superfluous to the overall plot.
Glass is ultimately a rather forgettable movie. One gets the feeling that Shyamalan was truly trying to say something profound about heroism and pulp mythology in the final part of the trilogy that began with Unbreakable. But, ultimately, Glass‘s message is too muddled to have much of an effect. In the end, Glass leaves Shyamalan’s ambitions unfulfilled.
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