Hi, everyone. If today’s horrorthon seemed to be missing some of the usual contributions, that’s because today has been a crazy day. It’s been raining in Dallas since last Friday and it’s supposed to continue to do so for the next week. This morning, the storms brought lightning and that lighting struck a building and set it on fire. The building’s roof proceeded to collapse. That building belonged to AT&T and it’s destruction let to what those of us in Dallas have christened the Great ATT Outage of 2018.
Basically, for the past 11 hours, the Texas Bureau of the Shattered Lens has had no internet access! So, I’m sorry to say that I was not able to write and post all of the reviews that I wanted to post today. I’ll have to play catch up later this week. I do want to say thank you to Gary, Jeff, and Case for their contributions today! It’s nice to know that you can depend on your partners in crime!
Fortunately, things are back up and running once again. And just in time for me to share the fifth episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. In this one, our favorite nervous reporter deals with a — you guessed it! — a werewolf! This episode originally aired on November 1st, 1974.
The Psycho Cop is Officer Joe Vickers (Robert R. Schaffer), who upholds the law with the help of Satan and the occult. When he overhears two office mates talking about a party that they’re going to be throwing for a friend, Officer Vickers decides to stop by and dispense a little Hellish justice. After killing the security guard, the Psycho Cop spends the rest of the money stalking white-collar workers and strippers. He’s an efficient killer with a police-related pun for nearly every occasion but he meets his match when he goes after an accountant. As much as he tries, Psycho Cop cannot catch the accountant. He can catch security guards. He can catch strippers. He can catch low-level executives. But an accountant? That’s just a bridge too far.
Psycho Cop seems like he should be a good horror villain and, for the first half of the movie, he seems like he’s unstoppable. But then he easily gets outwitted by both the nerdiest of the office workers and an accountant and you end up losing respect for him. The idea of a demonic policeman will always have possibilities but Psycho Cop Returns never reaches the heights of Maniac Cop or even Kevin Bacon’s crazed sheriff in Cop Car. For everything that you could do with the character of a policeman who is in league with the devil, Psycho Cop Returns just turns him into a one-liner spouting maniac. Robert R. Schaffer does okay as the title character and he has the right look to play a psycho cop but he’s still no Robert Z’Dar.
As you can tell from the title, this is a sequel. I haven’t seen the first Psycho Cop so I don’t know if it does a better job at exploiting the whole killer cop angle. Psycho Cop Returns has potential and a sense of humor but, ultimately, there’s little to distinguish it from the countless other manic-on-the loose films that went straight to video in the 90s.
Well, we are halfway through October and, traditionally, that’s when all of us in the Shattered Lens Bunker gather in front of the television in Arleigh’s penthouse suite, eat popcorn, drink diet coke, and gossip about whoever has the day off.
Of course, after we do that, I duck back into my office and I watch the classic 1962 film, Carnival of Souls!
Reportedly, David Lynch is a huge fan of Carnival of Souls and, when you watch the film, it’s easy to see why. The film follows a somewhat odd woman (played, in her one and only starring role, by Candace Hilligoss) who, after a car accident, is haunted by visions of ghostly figures. This dream-like film was independently produced and distributed. At the time, it didn’t get much attention but it has since been recognized as a classic and very influential horror film.
This was director Herk Harvey’s only feature film. Before and after making this film, he specialized in making educational and industrial shorts, the type of films that encouraged students not to cheat on tests and employees not to take their jobs for granted. Harvey also appears in this film, playing “The Man” who haunts Hilligoss as she travels across the country.
Today’s music video of the day is from Thom Yorke’s soundtrack for the upcoming Suspiria remake or rehash or reboot or whatever the Hell it’s supposed to be.
I may not be particularly happy about the idea of a new version of Suspiria (especially one that apparently doesn’t involve a single Argento) but I do like what I’ve heard of the soundtrack. Of course, nothing can improve on Claudio Simonetti’s work on the original but still….
The second week of horrorthon comes to a close and I think it’s going pretty well this year! We’ve got two and a half more weeks to go and then it’ll be the first of three great holidays, Halloween!
As for me, I have a cold so I’m a little bit out-of-it right now. It’s been raining raining the entire weekend and apparently, we’re about get hit by another storm, one that should last for a few days. There’s also a cold front coming in so I guess fall has finally arrived!
Have a great week, everyone! Be sure to buys lots of candy ahead of time so you’re not that house that’s forced to give out nutrition bars on Halloween. Seriously, kids hate that! Just look at this one here:
Kolchak is on assignment in Los Angeles and he’s shocked to discover that the town is turning into a city of vampires! This episode is a sequel to the made-for-TV movie that first introduced to Carl Kolchak to the world. Not only does this episode feature a vampire but it also features the great character actor, William Daniels. William Daniels is one of those actors who plays astonishment quite well so his scenes with Kolchak are a lot of fun.
This episode originally aired on October 4th, 1974.
Charles Durning plays Otis P. Hazelrigg, a postman in a small town who has an unhealthy interest in a ten year-old girl named Marylee (Tanya Crowe). When Marylee is mauled and nearly killed by a dog, Otis decides that she was attacked by Bubba Ritter (Larry Drake), a mentally challenged man who has the mind of a child. With Otis and his redneck friends looking to lynch him, Bubba’s mother disguises him as a scarecrow and tells him to stand out in a field and not move. When Otis and his friends discover Bubba hiding, they all shoot him until he’s dead. Otis puts a pitchfork in Bubba’s hands and tells the police that Bubba was attacking them and they didn’t have any choice but to shoot him.
Otis thinks that he’s gotten away with murder but he’s wrong. After Marylee sings a song in the same field where Bubba was killed, Otis’s friends start dying. One is suffocated in a grain silo. Another falls into a thresher. Before each one dies, they report seeing a scarecrow on their property. Otis thinks that Bubba’s mother is behind the murders but what if Bubba has actually come back to life?
Dark Night of the Scarecrow will mess up your mind, give you bad dreams, and leave you with a lifelong phobia o scarecrows. It’s that scary. I remember that they used to frequently show this movie on TV when I was growing up and even the commercials were scary. (The part of the movie that always messed with me were the shots of Bubba’s frightened eyes darting around underneath the scarecrow mask.) Scarecrows are naturally creepy and the movie’s atmosphere is unsettling but the most frightening thing about Dark Night of the Scarecrow is Otis and the redneck lynch mob that he puts together. Otis is a thoroughly loathsome character and Charles Durning goes all out playing him. Otis is a civil servant, which gives him some prestige in the town but he uses that prestige to bully Bubba and harass Marylee. His concern with Marylee especially feels wrong and the movie does not shy away from the subtext of his interest. The scarecrow might frighten you but you will absolutely loathe Otis and everyone who follows him.
Dark Night of the Scarecrow was made for television but it’s just as good as any theatrical release. It is also might be the first movie to feature a killer scarecrow. Several have been made in the years since but Dark Night of the Scarecrow was the first and it’s still the best.
In this scene from the original Halloween, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) attempts, as best he can, to explain the unexplainable. I’ve always felt that Pleasence’s performance in the first film is extremely underrated. People always tend to concentrate on the scenes where he gets angry and yells or the later films where an obviously fragile Pleasence was clearly doing the best he could with poorly written material. But, to me, the heart of Pleasence’s performance (and the film itself) is to be found in this beautifully delivered and haunting monologue.
In this scene, we see that Dr. Loomis is himself a victim of Michael Myers. Spending the last fifteen years with Michael has left Loomis shaken and obviously doubting everything that he once believed. Whenever I watch both Halloween and its sequel, I always feel very bad for Dr. Loomis. Not only did he have to spend 15 years with a soulless psychopath but, once Michael escapes, he has to deal with everyone blaming him for it. Dr. Loomis was literally the only person who saw Michael for what he was.
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.
Earlier today, I reviewed Terror Train, a horror film set on a train. There’s actually be quite a few horror films set on trains. In fact, there’s been so many that’s it’s the topic of today’s 4 Shots from 4 Films!
4 Shots From 4 Train-Set Horror Films
Horror Express (1972, dir by Eugenio Martin)
Terror Train (1980, dir by Roger Spottiswoode)
The Midnight Meat Train (2008, dir by Ryuhei Kitamura)
How else do you explain the prank that begins the 1980 slasher film, Terror Train? At a party, awkward pledge Kenny (Derek MacKinnon) is told that Alana Maxwell (Jamie Lee Curtis) is waiting for him in an upstairs bedroom and she totally wants to have sex with him! Poor Kenny. Really, he should have been able to figure that this was a prank but I guess he’s just naive. Anyway, he goes upstairs, strips down to his underwear, and listens as Alana says, “Don’t be shy …. kiss me!”
Kenny thinks that Alana is waiting for him in the bed but actually, she’s hiding behind a curtain. So, what’s in the bed? Well, as Kenny soon discovers, it’s a limbless corpse! Oh, those wacky pre-med students! Under the direction of Doc (Hart Bochner), they’ve stolen a cadaver from the medical school and they’ve used it to play the joke of the century! Everyone bursts into the room, laughing.
Ha ha! Funny joke, right?
Well, not to Kenny. Kenny totally freaks out and starts spinning around and gets all wrapped up in the sheets. Needless to say, Kenny does not get laid that night.
In fact, Kenny ends up losing his mind. And that’s unfortunate but, as they say, life goes on. Three years later, the pranksters are all due to graduate so they’re going to throw a costume party on a train! The conductor (Ben Johnson) watches as these rich, costumed college kids get on his train and you can just tell that he’s thinking, “There better not be no funny business.” He need not worry! Alana is on the train and she still feels so bad over what happened to Kenny that you can be sure that there won’t be any pranks during this graduation party!
Unfortunately for everyone else, Kenny’s decided to get on the train as well. While his former classmates are smoking weed, getting drunk, dancing to the best disco music of 1980, and taunting a magician (David Copperfield), Kenny is killing people and stealing their costumes.
Kenny’s first victim actually dies before the train leaves. When he comes staggering up to everyone with a sword sticking out of him, everyone assumes that it’s just another joke. Nope! Turns out the sword is real but everyone’s too busy boarding to notice as the guy collapses to the ground and is promptly dragged underneath the train. In a scene that always makes me cringe, the train slowly crushes him as it starts to move forward. I mean, seriously …. Agck!
So, now Kenny is wandering around the train, dressed like Grouch Marx and killing people. It takes people a while to notice because we’re not exactly dealing with the smartest group of college graduates. And, once they do realize …. well, what are they going to do? They’re stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere! Even if they do get off the train, it’s snowing and below freezing outside! I mean, it’s almost as bad as Minnesota in January out there….
Of the many slasher films that Jamie Lee Curtis appeared in after Halloween, Terror Train is definitely the best. After making his directorial debut here, Roger Spottiswoode went on to become one of the busiest directors in Hollywood and you can tell why when you watch this movie. Spottiswoode’s makes great and atmospheric use of the train and Kenny’s habit of constantly changing his costume keeps you guessing just where he might be at any given time. Even more importantly, Spottiswoode takes the time to develop the characters so that they become more than just cardboard victims. Jamie Lee Curtis, Hart Bochner, Sandee Curris, and Timothy Webber all give excellent performance as the objects of Kenny’s wrath while old veteran Ben Johnson brings some gravitas to the film as the wise conductor.
(My only objection is that the worst of the pranksters is named Doc, which happens to be the name of our cat. And let me just say that Doc the cat would never pull as cruel a prank as Doc the medical student.)
As we all know, Jamie Lee Curtis will be returning to the horror genre later this month. She’ll be playing Laurie Strode in David Gordon Green’s Halloween remake or reboot or sequel or whatever it is. Famously, Curtis refused to appear in horror films for several years, saying that she didn’t want to be typecast. That was understandable on her part and, as much as I love horror movies, it was probably a smart career move. That said, the slasher films that Curtis appeared are some of the best of the genre. Halloween, Terror Train, and even Prom Night are all classics of their kind. Terror Train is a suspense masterpiece, perfect for any cold and snowy night when you want to scream a little.
Psycho Cop is back!
Through the Shattered Lens 