To be honest, I think this song is more about the masks that people wear as a part of everyday life, as opposed to being specifically about Halloween masks. Just check out the lyrics:
Fashion magazines Anti-aging creams Tape measure around your waist Whitening toothpaste Behind this mask Lies an ugly face An entitled child dressed in lace
Halloween mask I wear it every day Halloween mask Beneath my skin is gray
Fashion magazines Anti-aging creams Tape measure around your waist Whitening toothpaste Behind this mask Lies an ugly face An entitled child dressed in lace
Halloween mask I wear it every day Halloween mask Beneath my skin is gray
Still, even if it’s not really a “horror” video, it’s a good song and I still think that Peach Kelli Pop should be hired to perform the Silver Shamrock jingle next Halloween.
After witnessing the murder of an informant, Kolchak finds himself being targeted by the mob!
Of course, after some of what Kolchak has been through, a simple Earth-bound threat like the Mafia would be a nice change of pace. However, Kolchak soon discovers that he’s also got a witch after him! With the help of a model (Lara Parker), Kolchak sets out uncover the witch at the heat of Chicago’s fashion industry!
This episode originally aired on January 24th, 1975.
In the 1971 film, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, Zohra Lampert played Jessica, a woman who is struggling to remain sane.
As the film begins, Jessica has just been released from a mental institution. As Jessica explains it, she’s been hearing voices ever since her father died. She struggles with depression and sometimes, she gets paranoid. Her husband, Duncan (Barton Heyman), has just purchased a farm in Connecticut, a place where he believes that Jessica can find some peace. Their friend, Woody (Kevin O’Connor), will be moving out to the farm with them. Woody is a bit of a hippie. Some people would say that Jessica and Duncan are hippies as well but honestly, both of them seem to be more like people who desperately want other people to believe that they’re hippies as opposed to genuine members of the counterculture.
Upon arriving at their new farm, Jessica is shocked to discover a woman named Emily (Mariclare Costello) standing in their farmhouse. When the shocked Jessica calls out for Duncan, he immediately assures her, “I see her, too!” Emily explains that she’s spent the last few months living in the deserted farmhouse. Though Emily offers to leave, Jessica insists that Emily have dinner with them and spend the night. When it becomes obvious that Woody likes Emily, Jessica suggests that Emily should be allowed to live with them.
Duncan agrees to let Emily stay and, much like Jessica, you immediately start to wonder about his motives. Is he merely letting Emily stay to keep Woody happy? Or is he agreeing with Jessica because he’s scared that disagreeing with her will cause her have another breakdown? Or is it possible that he’s attracted to Emily himself?
As the days pass, Jessica struggles to adjust to life in the middle of nowhere. The location is beautiful but, because it’s so remote, it’s menacing as well. The people in the nearby town are strangely hostile and they always seem to be wearing bandages on their necks. Jessica starts to hear voices in the distance, taunting her and telling her that she has no place out in the country. Are they real or is it just her imagination? Is Jessica trying so hard to convince everyone that she’s okay that she’s actually pushing herself to a relapse? And what about the mysterious blonde girl that keeps appearing in the distance, watching Jessica but running away whenever Jessica tries to approach her?
And then there’s the picture that Jessica finds in an antique shop. It appears to be a picture of Emily but the shop’s owner assures her that the picture is over 100 years old….
Apparently, the script for Let’s Scare Jessica To Death was originally called It Drinks Hippy Blood and it’s intent was satirical. You wouldn’t be able to guess that from watching Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, which is one of the creepiest and most dream-like horror films that I’ve ever seen. Unfolding at a leisurely pace and featuring hazy but gorgeous cinematography, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death keeps both Jessica and the audience off-balance. You’re never quite sure if Jessica is right about Emily and the town or if she’s relapsed and is drowning in a sea of her own paranoia. Duncan and Woody both treat Jessica as if she might fall apart at any second. At times, Duncan and his constant concern is so suffocating towards her that you feel that, if Emily hadn’t been there waiting for them, Jessica would have had to create her. As frightening as Emily may be, only Emily can set Jessica free from her domineering husband.
More than being just a character study of a woman struggling to remain above water, Let’s Scare Jessica To Death is also a portrait of the death of counterculture idealism. Jessica, Duncan, and Woody appear to have a chance to live the ideal hippy life on their Connecticut farm but that dream collapses under the weight of all the petty human emotions and foibles that they wrongly thought they could escape. Duncan treats Jessica like a child, gaslighting her whenever she questions anything that’s going on. Woody seems like a good guy but he’s so laid back that he refuses to stand against the tide. Jessica is betrayed by everyone around her. In the end, not even the mysterious blonde girl is willing to actually warn Jessica about what’s happening.
Zohra Lampert gives a wonderfully empathetic performance as Jessica and Mariclare Costello and Gretchen Corbett are well cast as the enigmatic strangers that Jessica can’t seem to escape. Let’s Scare Jessica To Death is a creepy and atmospheric dream of dark and disturbing things and it’s definitely one to see.
Give Charles Band a castle and a D-List celebrity and he’ll give you a movie!
In Spellcaster, which Band produced in 1988 but didn’t release until 1992, the castle is in Italy and there’s not one but three D-list celebrities. British DJ Richard Blade plays Rex, who is a VJ on R-TV, a cable station that only shows music videos. (A music station that actually plays music? Imagine that!) Bunty Bailey, who was the hot girl in Aha’s Take Me On video, is Cassandra, an alcoholic rock star. Finally, Adam Ant is Signor Diablo, who owns the castle.
The plot of the movie is that R-TV is hosting a contest where the winners get to go to Diablo’s castle and not only meet Rex and Cassandra but also search for a million dollar check. The contest winners are a snooty British woman, a sex-obsessed Italian, a sexy French woman, an overweight New Yorker, a blonde vegan, and a brother and a sister who could really use the money. They are a collection of clichés and none of them are very interesting, sympathetic, or smart. Not even the Italian notices that their host is named Mr. Devil.
The search for the money is a bust because the guests keep dying. For instance, the overweight New Yorker eats a stuffed pig, turns into a pig himself, and then gets shot by the snooty British woman, who just happened to bring a rifle with her because all snooty Brits enjoy hunting. Another person ends up getting eaten by a chair that has a lion’s head carved into it. When the lion comes to life and chomps down its jaws, the teeth are obviously foam rubber. It all has to do with Signor Diablo’s crystal ball, where he’s building a collection of souls.
With the casting Adam Ant and Bunty Bailey, Spellcaster tried to be a horror movie for the MTV generation but it came out several years too late. By the time Spellcaster was released, grunge had taken over MTV and both Adam Ant and the Take Me On video seemed like relics from another age. The film itself is a mostly dull affair, one that will be best appreciated by people who are nostalgic for the type of bad movies that used to show up on late night cable.
To be honest, when it comes to bad movies, 2010’s Birdemic is kind of overrated.
I mean, yes — it is such an amazingly inept film that you do have to watch it at least once. And yes, I do occasionally still find myself singing that “hanging out with my family” song to myself.
But compared to something like The Room or April Rain, Birdemic is actually a pretty dull film. I’ve watched it maybe four or five times and it’s always been with a bit of reluctance. The Room, on the other hand, is a film that you can watch over and over again.
(Or, at least you could until The Disaster Artist came out. As brilliant as The Disaster Artist was, I kinda lost interest in The Room after watching it. Incredibly, I haven’t gone to one showing of The Room this year. Actually. now I’m feeling guilty about that. I guess I’ll have to watch The Room sometime tonight. Anyway….)
That said, there are a few scenes from Birdemic that are always good for a laugh. Personally, I enjoy this one. Just watch those birds attack!
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.
Yesterday, we paid tribute to Jean Rollin. Today, we pay tribute to another master of Eurohorror with….
4 Shots From 4 Jess Franco Films
The Awful Dr. Orloff (1961, dir by Jess Franco)
Count Dracula (1970, dir by Jess Franco)
A Virgin Among The Living Dead (1971, dir by Jess Franco)
Today’s horror on the lens comes to us all the way from Canada!
In the 1990 film, The Final Sacrifice, a lot of stuff happens. In fact, the plot is almost as hard to follow as the plot of Raiders of the Living Dead. There’s a cult leader named Satoris, who is always wearing a suit. There’s a bunch of professional wrestlers who wear masks and are always running through the woods. There’s a teenager who looks like a cross between Anthony Perkins and Roddy McDowall. He’s being chased by the cultists but, fortunately, he meets a guy with a mullet. Together, they meet a wiley old prospector and they all work together to discover a lost city or something like that.
That said, The Final Sacrifice is kinda fun, especially if you’re a fan of Candian exploitation films like I am. It might not make much sense but at least it’s weird and that surely must count for something.
I have to admit that I was a little bit hesitant about watching the 2007 film, Diary of the Dead.
It wasn’t that I don’t like zombie movies. In fact, it was the complete opposite. I love zombie films and Night of the Living Dead is one of my favorites. George Romero, of course, went on to make several sequels to Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Land of the Dead are certifiable horror classics. However, I had heard mixed things about the two zombie films that Romero directed after Land of the Dead. Seeing as how Diary of the Dead was Romero’s second-to-last film before he passed away in 2017, I was worried that I would watch the film and discover that I hated it. I didn’t want experience anything that would tarnish Romero’s cinematic legacy. It didn’t help my expectations that Diary of the Dead is a found footage film and the conventions of the found footage genre tend to get on my last nerve.
(Seriously, nothing makes me throw a shoe at a screen quicker than the sound of someone in a horror movie saying, “Are you filming this?”)
But you know what?
I did watch Diary of the Dead and it’s actually not bad. It may not reach the heights of Romero’s other zombie films but it’s definitely a worthwhile companion piece. It opens with news reports about the start of the zombie apocalypse, meaning that Diary of the Dead is meant to take place at roughly the same time as Night of the Living Dead. (Never mind that Diary of the Dead is full of references to YouTube and blogs and other things that most people probably couldn’t even imagine when Night of the Living Dead first came out.) A group of film students are in the woods, filming a terrible mummy movie when they first hear reports of the dead coming back to life. Some say that there’s no way it could be true. Others say that something must be happening but surely the dead aren’t actually coming back to life. They soon discover that the dead have indeed returned.
We follow the students as they travel across Pennsylvania, trying to find a place that’s safe from the Dead and discovering that there’s literally no such place left in America. Along the way, they also discover that the government has no intention of telling the people the truth about what’s happening. In fact, a group of national guardsmen turn out to be just as dangerous as the zombies. In their efforts to survive, the students are forced to rely on an underground network of bloggers and video makers.
Diary of the Dead has all of the usual zombie mayhem that you would expect from a film like this but, at the same time, it’s got a lot more on its mind than just the dead returning to life. Much as he did with Land Of The Dead, Romero uses Diary of the Dead to comment on the state of America under the Patriot Act. With the government using the zombie apocalypse as an excuse to suspend civil liberties and increase their own power, the film’s characters are forced to depend on new and independent information sources. It’s not hard to see the parallel that Romero is making between the War on the Living Dead and the War on Terror. As well, making all of the characters film students allows for some discussion about whether or not horror films should simply concentrate on being scary or whether they should also attempt to deal with real-world issues. The film leaves little doubt where Romero came down on that issue.
On the negative side, Diary of the Dead struggles a bit to overcome the limitations of its low budget and none of the characters are as compelling as Ben in Night of the Living Dead or Fran in Dawn of the Dead. At times, you find yourself wishing that Diary of the Dead featured just one actor who was as into their role as Duane C. Jones or Ken Foree were in Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, respectively. But Diary of the Dead still features enough zombies and enough of Romero’s trademark political subtext to be an acceptable addition to Romero’s vision of the apocalypse.
What happens when an oil company discovers new, undefined organic matter in the arctic circle?
Well, first off, they mishandle it and it ends up turning into a prehistoric, killer ape-man.
Secondly, it’s time for a corporate cover-up!
Fortunately, the world’s greatest (if unluckiest) journalist, Carl Kolchak, is on the case!
Anyway, this is an okay episode of Kolchak. If I don’t seem as enthused about it as I’ve been about some of the previous episodes, it’s because a killer, prehistoric ape-man just isn’t as much fun as a Cajun demon or a killer robot. Still, this episode has a nicely done, underground tunnel-set climax. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with an underground tunnel.
This episode originally aired on January 17th, 1975.
Through the Shattered Lens 