For tonight’s televised horror, here’s another episode the Boris Karoloff-hosted anthology series, Thriller!
This episode, Well of Doom, shows what happens when two demons kidnap two men on their way to a bachelor party and force them to slog across the moors, to a mysterious castle. This episode is full of atmosphere and it also features great work from Henry Daniell and Richard Kiel as the two demons.
Enjoy!
Michael Bower (Edward Furlong) is a 15 year-old loser who walks with a limp and still has nightmares about the night his mother was killed in a car wreck. Brainscan is the new PC game that Michael makes the mistake of playing. In the game, Michael is encouraged by The Trickster (T. Ryder Smith) to kill both his friends and complete strangers. When Michael starts finding body parts around his house, he realizes that whenever he kills someone in the game, he kills them in real life too.
Though it may be forgotten now, Brainscan was heavily promoted when it was first released. I think the producers were hoping to turn The Trickster into the new Freddy and get a new horror franchise out of it. Like most films from the 90s that dealt with computers and gamers, Brainscan is now as dated as dial-up internet. T. Ryder Smith does ok as the Trickster but it is difficult to take him seriously because he has a big red mohawk skullet and he dresses like the keyboard player in every new wave band that has ever synthesized. As for Furlong, he had apparently already entered the I-no-longer-give-a-shit phase of his career when he made Brainscan. Add to that one of the worst endings that I have ever seen in a horror movie and Brainscan is one film that is easy to forget.
It is easy to say what Brainscan is lacking: suspense, gore, and horror. It is less easy to say what would have made it better. Considering its suburban setting, I think Brainscan would have been improved by cameos from the stars of Shattered If Your Kid’s On Drugs.
With Burt Reynolds and Judd Nelson around to serve as mentors, Eddie Furlong never would have gotten addicted to playing video games in the first place.
Right, Burt?
Today’s horror scene that I love is from George Romero’s 1978 zombie masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead.
The first time I saw this film, I was so upset when Roger died. Not only was Roger my favorite character but I also knew that if Roger — who was so funny and so charismatic and so competent — couldn’t survive then that meant that no one was going to survive.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!
Today’s director: the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock!
4 Shots From 4 Films
The Lodger (1926, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
Psycho (1960, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
The Birds (1963, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
Frenzy (1972, dir by Alfred Hitchcock)
For today’s horror on the lens, we have 1973’s The Night Strangler.
This is the sequel to The Night Stalker and it features journalist Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) in Seattle. (After all the stuff that happened during the previous movie, Kolchak was kicked out of Las Vegas.) When Kolchak investigates yet another series of murders, he discovers that paranormal murders don’t just occur in Las Vegas and aren’t just committed by vampires.
I actually prefer this movie to The Night Stalker. The Night Strangler features a truly creepy villain, as well as a trip down to an “underground city.” It’s full of ominous atmosphere and, as always, Darren McGavin is a lot of fun to watch in the role in Kolchak.
Enjoy!
by Joshua Hoffine
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If last night, at 1:30 in the morning, you were having trouble getting to sleep, you could have turned on the TV, changed the channel to your local This TV station, and watched 1982’s Still Of The Night.
Still of the Night actually tells two stories. The first story deals with Dr. Sam Rice (Roy Scheider), a psychiatrist who is living a perfectly nice, mild-mannered, upper class existence in Manhattan. His patients are rich and powerful and his sessions with them provide him with a view of the secrets of high society.
One of Sam’s main patients is George Bynum (Josef Sommer), who owns an auction house and who is a compulsive cheater. George tells Sam that he’s haunted by strange nightmares and that he is also worried about a friend of his. George says that this friend has murdered in the past and George fears that it’s going to happen again. When George is murdered, Sam wonders if the murder was committed by that friend. He also wonders if that friend could possibly have been one of George’s mistresses, the icy Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep).
The second story that Still of the Night tells is about our endless fascination with the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Still of the Night is such an obvious homage to Hitchcock that it actually starts to get a little bit silly at times. Almost every scene in the film feels like it was lifted from a previous Hitchcock film. At one point, there’s even a bird attack! (Add to that, Scheider’s mother is played by Jessica Tandy, who previously played Rod Taylor’s mother in The Birds.) Meryl Streep is specifically costumed and made up to remind viewers of previous Hitchcock heroines, like Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Tippi Hedren.
Unfortunately, considering the talent involved, Still of the Night never really works as well as it should. Both Scheider and Streep seem to be miscast in the lead roles. If Still of the Night had been made in the 50s, one could easily imagine James Stewart and Grace Kelly playing Sam and Brooke and managing to make it all work through screen presence along. However, Scheider and Streep both act up a storm in the lead roles, attacking their parts with the type of Actor Studios-gusto that seems totally out-of-place in an homage to Hitchcock. Scheider is too aggressive an actor to play such a mild character. As for Streep, she’s miscast as a noir-style femme fatale. Streep’s acting technique is always too obviously calculated for her to be believable as an enigma.
That said, there were still some effective moments in Still of the Night. The majority of the dream sequences were surprisingly well-done and effectively visualized. I actually gasped with shock while watching one of the dreams, that’s how much I was drawn into those scenes.
According to Wikipedia, Meryl Streep has described Still of the Night as being her worst film. I think she’s being way too hard on the movie. It’s nothing special but it is an adequate way to kill some time. Certainly, I’d rather watch Still of the Night than sit through Florence Foster Jenkins.
Previous Insomnia Files:
For tonight’s episode of televised horror, we have the tenth episode of the Boris Karloff-hosted anthology series, Thriller!
In this episode, Boris Karloff not just hosts but also plays the main role, a mentalist named Clayton Mace. Mace has always been a self-admitted fake but suddenly, he starts to have real visions, all dealing with the death of people that he knows. Even worse, his predictions keep coming true…
As we all know, Karloff’s was the best and he definitely elevated this episode!
Enjoy!
Check out the poster for 1974’s The Terminal Man.
Look at it carefully. Examine it. Try to ignore the fact that it’s weird that George Segal was once a film star. Yes, on the poster, Segal has been drawn to have a somewhat strange look on his face. Ignore that. Instead, concentrate on the words in the top left corner of the poster.
“ADULT ENTERTAINMENT!” it reads.
That’s actually quite an accurate description. The Terminal Man is definitely a film for adults. No, it’s not pornographic or anything like that. Instead, it’s a movie about “grown up” concerns. It’s a mature film. In some ways, that’s a good thing. In some ways, that’s a bad thing.
Taking place in the near future (and based on a novel by Michael Crichton), The Terminal Man tells the story of Harry Benson (played, of course, by George Segal). Harry is an extremely intelligent computer programmer and he’s losing his mind. It might be because he was in a serious car accident. It may have even started before that. Harry has black outs and when he wakes up, he discovers that he’s done violent things. Even when he’s not blacked out, Harry worries that computers are going to rise up against humans and take over the world.
However, a group of scientists think that they have a way to “fix” Harry. It’ll require a lot of brain surgery, of course. (And, this being a film from 1973, the film goes into excruciating details as it explains what’s going to be done to Harry.) The plan is to implant an electrode in Harry’s brain. Whenever Harry starts to have a seizure, the electrode will shock him out of it. The theory is that, much like Alex in A Clockwork Orange 0r Gerard Malanga in Vinyl, Harry will be rendered incapable of violence.
Of course, some people are more enthusiastic about this plan than others. Harry’s psychiatrist (Joan Hackett) fears that implanting an electrode in Harry’s brain will just make him even more paranoid about the rise of the computers. Other scientists worry about the ethics of using technology to modify someone’s behavior. Whatever happens, will it be worth the price of Harry’s free will?
But, regardless of the risks, Harry goes through with the operation.
Does it work? Well, if it worked, it would be a pretty boring movie so, of course, it doesn’t work. (Allowing Harry’s operation to work would have been like allowing King Kong to enjoy his trip to New York.) Harry’s brain becomes addicted to the electrical shocks and, as he starts to have more and more seizures, Harry becomes even more dangerous than he was before…
The Terminal Man is a thought-provoking but rather somber film. On the one hand, it’s a rather slow movie. The movie does eventually get exciting after Harry comes out of surgery but it literally takes forever to get there. The movie seems to be really determined to convince the audience that the story it’s telling is scientifically plausible. On the other hand, The Terminal Man does deal with very real and very important issues. Considering how threatened society is by people who cannot be controlled, issues of behavior modification and free thought will always be relevant.
Though the film may be slow, I actually really liked The Terminal Man. Judging from some of the other reviews that I’ve read, I may be alone in that. It appears to be a seriously underrated film. As directed by Mike Hodges, the film is visually stunning, emphasizing the sterility of the white-walled hospital, the gray blandness of the doctors, and the colorful vibrancy of life outside of science. Though he initially seems miscast, George Segal gives a good and menacing performance as Harry.
The Terminal Man requires some patience but it’s worth it.
If you love horror films, you have to love Hammer Films, the British studio that was responsible for some of the best horror films of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. It was Hammer who brought Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy back to life and who introduced a splash of color to the formerly black and white world of horror. It was Hammer that first brought horror together with pop art. And, of course, it was Hammer that made stars out of actors like Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
House of Horror was originally published in 1973, as a tribute to Hammer in its waning days. The copy that I own is a revised edition, one that was published in 2000. I found it at Recycled Books in Denton, Texas. (That was quite a shopping trip, by the way. Not only did I buy House of Horror but I also bought A Taste of Blood: The Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis.)
Anyway, if you’re a fan of Hammer Films, then this is one of those books that you simply have to own. Not only does it contain interviews with the big four of Hammer (Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Terence Fisher, and Michael Carreras) but it also provides a in-depth analysis of Hammer’s Dracula series, its Frankenstein series, and its lesser known science fiction productions.
At the end of the book, there are biographies of some of the members of Hammer’s stock company. There’s also not only a full list of every film that Hammer ever produced but even a list of Hammer project that never reached the filming stage. If, as I am, you’re obsessed with film trivia, this book is a must have.
Through the Shattered Lens 