Tag Archives: Horror

Music Video of the Day: First Date by Danko Jones (2006, dir by Micah Meisner)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s music video of the day brings us a little more vampire action.  I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised.  Vampires always seem to inspire musicians in a way that werewolves don’t.  This video came out two years before Twilight and it basically tells a less romanticized version of the same story….

Still, there is an odd romance to vampirism, though that might not be obvious from this video.  In this video, the vampire just comes across as being a pervy stalker but, in the popular imagination, there’s usually nothing sexier than a centuries-old vampire.  Maybe it’s all the ennui.

To be honest, I just like the bottles of blood in the refrigerator.  That makes me laugh every time I see it.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 3.5 “If You See Sally” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s epiosde of One Step Beyond, we visit the legend of the ghostly hitchhiker.

Will Sally ever make it home?

This episode originally aired on October 18th, 1960!

Horror Scenes I Love: The Poltergeist Face Peeling Scene

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is from the original, 1982 version Poltergeist.

It’s just a ghost movie about a mother’s love, suburban conformity, and a guy’s face falling into the sink.  For whatever reasons, the ghosts just seemed to take a really intense dislike to this guy.

“The house is clean.”

Not bloody likely.

“You moved the headstone but you left the bodies!?  WHY!?  WHY!?”

Whoops, different scene.

Anyway, let’s watch Marty lose face:

4 Shots From 4 Films: Anaconda, The Devil’s Advocate, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 1997 Horror Films

Anaconda (1997, dir by Luis Llosa)

The Devil’s Advocate (1997, dir by Taylor Hackford)

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, dir by Jim Gillepsie)

Scream 2 (1997, dir by Wes Craven)

Horror on the Lens: The Terror (dir by Roger Corman)

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: Life As A Vampire by 8-Bit Heroes (2018, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Wow.  Apparently, life as a vampire is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

This video reminds me of the classic Andrew Parkinson film, I, Zombie.  That film followed a young man who is forced to deal with the fact that he’s slowly turning into a zombie.  Apparently, being a vampire is just as depressing as becoming a zombie.  Maybe it would be best to avoid fraternizing with the living dead all together.

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.7 “The Open Window” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond seems familiar, that’s because it’s a remake of a story that was originally filmed as an episode of The Veil. 

This time, instead of witnessing a murder occurring in another apartment, it’s a suicide that is witnessed by artist Anthony March (Michael Higgins).  Of course, when he investigates, he discovers that the apartment in empty.  Is Anthony hallucinating or has he gone one step beyond and is he seeing the future?  Watch to find out!

By the way, that’s future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher playing Anthony’s model.

This originally aired on November 3rd, 1959.

Enjoy!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: The Children (dir by Tom Shankland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Poor Casey (Hannah Tointon)!

As 2008’s The Children opens, all she wants to do is celebrate New Year’s with her friends.  Instead, her mom and her stepfather are dragging her off to some stupid house in the middle of nowhere, where she’ll have to hang out with her aunt and her dorky uncle and she’ll also be expected to look after not only her two much younger cousins but her two half-siblings as well!  Even worse, once they arrive at the house, all of the young children start to complain about feeling sick.  One of them even throws up.  Everyone assumes it’s just car sickness but could it be something worse?

(Of course.  There’s always something worse!)

In fact, perhaps the only positive thing about the holiday is that it’s snowed!  All of the snow sure does look pretty and it’s a lot of fun to play in.  Once the kids get over being sick, they can’t wait to go outside and have some fun!  One of the adults accompanies them.  While he’s sledding, the kids use a garden rake to kill him.  They even disguise it to look like an accident…

Yep, there’s definitely something going on with the children.  At first, Casey is the only one who understands that the children have turned evil.  (Of course, her first clue comes when they attack her in the woods.)  All the adults are either in shock or denial.  At first, they refuse to even consider that their children are trying to kill them.  Of course, once the children lay siege to the house, the adults are in for a rude awakening…

This is actually the second film called The Children that I’ve reviewed for this site.  The first one was a film from the early 80s that featured a school bus driving through a toxic cloud with the end result being a bunch of homicidal, radioactively-charged children.  In the second version, it’s left a bit more ambiguous as to why the children have suddenly turned homicidal.  While it’s established that that they’re suffering from a virus, the film never tells us where the virus came from or even how it was contracted in the first place.  In fact, until the film’s last few minutes, the audience is never quite sure just how far the infection has spread.  That ambiguity is what gives this film its power.  There’s nothing scarier than not being sure what’s going on.

The Children is a grim and disturbing horror film, one the features very little humor and which ends on an ominous note.  It’s a film that exploits something that we all know but rarely want to admit, which is that children can be incredibly creepy.  We tend to idealize children, which is exactly what the children in this movie use to their advantage.

The Children is also a very well-acted horror film.  Hannah Tointon is sympathetic in the lead role while all of the killer children are played with a proper combination of savagery and innocence.  This may very well be the best killer children film ever made.

6 More Paranormal Creatures Who Deserve Their Own Movie

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier this month, I listed 6 paranormal creatures who I felt were just as worthy of a movie as Bigfoot.

Of course, by limiting myself to 6, I ended up leaving out some very worthy possibilities.  So, just to keep things fair, here are 6 more paranormal creatures who I think deserve their own horror film franchise!  Hopefully, I’ll be writing about some of these creatures during the 2021 horrorthon!

1. Spring-Heeled Jack

Oh, Spring-Heeled Jack!  Jack terrorized London from 1832 to 1901, with numerous people claiming that they saw this mysterious figure not only harassing other Londoners but also leaping away when spotted or confronted.  Just what exactly Spring-Heeled Jack looked like depended on who you asked.  Some people said that he appeared to be a normal English gentleman, until of course he started leaping up into the air.  Others said that he had claws and eyes that glowed like red balls of fire.  Some people said that Spring-Heeled Jack could speak English while others claimed that he only communicated with animal-like grunts.  Some said that he was a ghost and others said that was the devil.  Sometimes, he was described as being a trickster and, other times, he was described as being a violent monster who attacked young women while they slept.  Some people even claimed that he was Jack the Ripper.

Of course, some people also claimed that Spring-Heeled Jack wasn’t a supernatural creature at all.  They claimed that he was an elaborate hoax, started by a bunch of bored aristocrats who decided to have a bit of fun with the commoners.

Well, no matter!  Whether Spring-Heeled Jack was the devil or just the Marquess of Waterford, he deserves his very own movie!

2. The Hammersmith Ghost

Spring-Heeled Jack wasn’t the first paranormal being to haunt London.  There was also the Hammersmith Ghost.  In 1804, it was said that there were a ghost attacking people in the Hammersmith area of London.  It was said that the white-clad ghost was the spirit of a man who had committed suicide and, because he had been buried in consecrated ground, his soul could not find peace.  Several people reported being attacked by the ghost, leading to citizens setting up patrols to try to hunt the ghost down.  Tragically, this also led to a totally innocent bricklayer being mistaken for the ghost and killed by a night watchman.  Having turned Londoner against Londoner, The Hammersmirth Ghost appears to have faded away.  However, both the story of the Ghost and the real-life tragedy that it caused seems tailor-made for a great film.

3. The Headless Nun

We’ve all heard of the Headless Horseman but how about the Headless Nun?  In the 1700s, a Canadian nun named Sister Marie Inconnue lost her head.  Some say that it was chopped off by a mad trapper.  Others say that it was done by two sailors who were convinced that the nun knew the location of a treasure.  Regardless of how it happened, the Headless Nun is now said to wander the Canadian wilderness, searching for her head.

4. The Mare

Ever wondered why people have nightmares?  Well, according to Germanic mythology, it was because this evil little creature was sitting on their chest while they were sleeping!  AGCK!

5. Ozark Howler

The Ozark Howler is a giant cat that apparently lives in the Ozarks.  They say that the Ozark Howler has horns and glowing eyes and I assume that you wouldn’t want to make it angry.  Most people insist that the Ozark Howler is just a legend but I’ve spent enough time in Arkansas to know that anything is possible.

6. Robert

If we can do a hundred movies about Annabelle, surely we can do one about Robert!  This doll, which used to belong to a painter named Robert Eugene Otto, is said to move on its own and apparently it occasionally giggles.  Robert is currently in a Florida museum and it’s said that museum visitors that didn’t show proper respect to Robert have subsequently suffered from all forms of misfortune: car wrecks, job loss, divorce, broken teeth, and just about anything else that you can think of.  So, why not pay Robert the respect of letting him star in his very own movie?