“You see! You see! You’re stupid minds! Stupid!”
You tell ’em, Eros!
And for that matter, way to go with that punch, Jeff! We don’t have to take that type of talk from someone who wasn’t even born on this planet!
In case you somehow didn’t know, the scene below is from Ed Wood’s 1959 science fiction epic, Plan 9 From Outer Space. And if you’ve never seen Plan 9 before, watch it now! The future of the universe may depend upon it…
Hi there! It’s time for yet another October edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers! I gave the trailer kitties the weekend off and I recruited a whole new group of mythical animals to go find this week’s trailers. Let’s see what they came back with!
1) Corruption (1968)
2) Frightmare (1974)
3) Curtains (1983)
4) Hungry Wives (1973)
5) Incubus (1981)
6) The Unseen (1980)
What do you think, Contemplative Jackalope?
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!
In this episode of The Twilight Zone, a Confederate soldier (Gary Merrill) meets an old man (Vaughn Taylor) who claims that, through magic, he can help the Confederacy win the Civil War. However, as often happens when it comes to weird old men and magic, there’s a price that must be paid.
I like this episode, largely because I’m obsessed with three things: history, the Civil War, and magic. And this one has all three!
It originally aired on November 24th, 1961.
First released in 2010, The Last Exorcism is one of the best films of the past 5 years.
I know that a lot of people are going to disagree with that statement. When The Last Exorcism was released, a lot of people were so angered by the way the film ended that they dismissed the entire movie. Add to that, The Last Exorcism is yet another found footage horror film and that genre has produced a lot of truly terrible movies. Whether fairly or not, a lot of people have judged The Last Exorcism on the basis of the sins committed by films like The Devil Inside. With all that taken into consideration, it’s perhaps not surprising that The Last Exorcism only has a rating of 5.6 on the IMDb.
However, those who casually dismiss The Last Exorcism are making a mistake. The Last Exorcism is a hundred times better than it has any right to be. If nothing else, it’s probably one of the best found footage horror films ever made.
Produced by Eli Roth and directed by Daniel Stamm, the film opens with footage of the Rev. Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) leading a revival meeting. We quickly see that Marcus is a showman, a born actor who knows how to manipulate and control an audience. In interviews with a mostly unseen film crew, Rev. Marcus also explains that he’s both a highly successful exorcist and a complete fraud. As he explains it, he has lost his faith and is participating in a documentary to reveal how he and other evangelical exorcists con and exploit their followers. He’s agreed to perform one last exorcism, specifically so he can reveal just how much of a fraud that he really is.
One of the more interesting aspect of this setup is that it’s based on an actual documentary. Released in 1972, Marjoe followed a former child evangelist named Marjoe Gortner as he conducted his last revival tour. Talking directly to the camera, Marjoe would explain the tricks that he and other preachers would use to cheat the faithful out of their money. The documentary, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1973, painted an intriguing picture of a con artist and The Last Exorcism does the same thing.
Marcus and the documentary film crew go out to a small rural community where farmer Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) claims that his daughter, Nell (Ashley Bell) has been possessed by a demon. Nell’s brother, Caleb (Caleb Landry Jones) is openly hostile to both Marcus and the documentary film crew. Marcus, meanwhile, is convinced that Nell is faking.
However, as both the film and the exorcism progress, we are given reasons to suspect that Nell might actually be possessed. While a good deal of the film’s scares will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a found footage horror film (there’s the usual loud noises in isolated parts of the house and the menacing shadows glimpsed in the corners), the question of whether or not Nell is possessed is given extra importance by what the answer means to Cotton Marcus. If Nell is faking, then Marcus’s own loss of faith will be justified. However, if it turns out that Nell actually is possessed than it will mean that Marcus hasn’t merely been a con artist for his entire life. If Nell actually is possessed, it’ll prove the existence of a God that Marcus claims to no longer believe in.
Indeed, it’s the character of Cotton Marcus who elevates The Last Exorcism over other entries in the found footage horror genre. Much like Father Karras (as played by Jason Miller) in the original Exorcist, Marcus is a conflicted protagonist, a former man of faith who isn’t quite as ready to give up on his belief as he originally seems. As played by Patrick Fabian, Cotton Marcus is an intriguingly ambiguous hero. At the beginning of the film, Fabian is spell-binding and believable as a fire-and-brimstone evangelist. (In perhaps his best scene, he impishly sneaks a recipe for banana bread into his sermon.) As the film progresses, Cotton Marcus goes from being an arrogant charlatan to being a very vulnerable and scared man and Fabian is both believable and compelling throughout the entire film. Patrick Fabian elevates The Last Exorcism from being just an average (if effectively atmospheric) horror film to being a truly intriguing piece of pulp art.
As for the film’s ending, I may be in a minority but I think it works. The most common complaint about the film’s final 15 minutes is that they tend to contradict everything that came before them. I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. You have to remember that we’ve only seen the film’s events through the perspective of the documentarians and we’ve only heard Marcus’s admittedly biased interpretation of what’s going on. Perhaps the worst possible thing that you can really say about the ending is that it reveals that Marcus wasn’t as clever as we previously assumed him to be.
The Last Exorcism was followed by a far less successful sequel, which I reviewed here.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have the 1957 science fiction film, Attack of the Crab Monsters!
About a month ago, I watched this film along with Patrick Smith and all of our friends in the late night movie gang. To be honest, everyone else seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I did. It was a fun little movie but … well, maybe I was just having a bad night.
Here’s why you should take 62 minutes out of your Saturday and watch Attack of the Crab Monsters on the Shattered Lens. First off, it’s a Roger Corman film and anything directed by Roger Corman automatically needs to be watched. Secondly, it’s about giant crabs that communicate through telepathy. And when was the last time you saw that!?
(“Last night,” someone in the audience shouts, “as the sun went down over the crab-covered beaches of Denmark!” I pretend not to hear.)
Anyway! Here, for your viewing pleasure, is Attack of the Crab Monsters!
In this episode of The Twilight Zone, a thief is shot by the police and finds himself in the afterlife. After a life of struggle and crime, the thief finally finds himself with the opportunity to have everything that he’s ever wanted. Even if you’ve never seen this episode before, you’ll probably be able to guess the twist after a minute or two. But it’s still a pretty good episode, featuring good performances from Larry Blyden and Sebastian Cabot and an typically fun script from Charles Beaumont.
A Nice Place To Visit originally aired on April 15th, 1960.
Nicholas Worth in Don’t Answer The Phone
AGCK!
As a self-described lover of grindhouse and exploitation films, I have seen my share of truly icky films. But Don’t Answer The Phone, a 1980 mix of police procedural and serial killer horror, is in a class all by itself. It is not only exceptionally icky but it’s distressingly effective as well.
After I watched Don’t Answer The Phone, I actually checked to make sure all the doors were locked. Before I got into bed, I searched all the closets to make sure there wasn’t anyone hiding in there. And, as I fell asleep, I found myself thinking that maybe I should follow the advise of both Arleigh and my sister. Maybe it was time for me to finally get a gun of my own and learn how to use it.
Seriously, Bowman, I thought as I waited for sleep to come, you live in Texas. It’s totally legal to carry a gun down here so you need to take advantage of the law and make you’re ready to blow any pervert losers away! Even if you shot the wrong person, you’re cute. The jury would never convict…
That’s the type of effect that Don’t Answer The Phone had on me. It’s not necessarily a good film. With one notable (and important) exception, most of the acting is terrible. The film’s few attempts at intentional humor largely fall flat. Even with a running time of only 94 minutes, Don’t Answer The Phone feels overlong and full of unneeded padding. And yet, this is a very effective film. It did freak me out, largely because it was so crude and heartless. It strikes at the most primal fears of the viewer, that feeling that — even within the security of our own home — we may not truly be safe.
As Don’t Answer The Phone opens, Los Angeles is a city being stalked by a madman. That, in itself, is not surprising. Just taking a quick look at Wikipedia will reveal that Los Angeles has been home to a large number of serial killers. In fact, if there is anything shocking about Don’t Answer The Phone, it’s the suggestion that Kirk Smith (played by Nicholas Worth) is the only serial killer in town.
Who is Kirk Smith? He’s an overweight, bald photographer who always wears an army jacket and is obsessed with candles, body building, and strangulation. He also enjoys calling up a local talk show host, Dr. Linsday Gale (Flo Gerrish). (One wonders if Dr. Gale’s name was specifically meant to make the viewer think of The Wizard of Oz.) “Hello,” he says in an outrageously fake accent, “this Ramon!” He tells Dr. Gale that he has frequent headaches and bad urges. When he’s not pretending to be Ramon, Kirk can usually be found staring at himself in a mirror and yelling, “Do I measure up, Dad!?”
Kirk is killing women across Los Angeles and it looks like he might never be caught because Don’t Answer The Phone features some of the most incompetent cops ever! These are the type of cops who smirk at the victims and shoot anyone who doesn’t get on the ground fast enough. These are the type of cops who open fire and then say, “Adios, creep.” Civil liberties!? BLEH, THESE COPS DON’T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR RIGHTS! Of course, they do end up shooting and killing the only witness who can identify Kirk Smith as the murderer. Whoops!
If there’s anything that sets Don’t Answer The Phone apart from all the other serial killer films, it’s the performance of Nicholas Worth. Far more than the slick and erudite serial killers who dominate contemporary thrillers, Nicholas Worth is a frighteningly believable lunatic. He’s scary because we’ve all seen his type wandering the streets. We’ve all felt his stare linger for a few seconds too long and we’ve all had the same feeling of dread when we saw him approaching us. Reportedly, Worth did a lot of research on actual serial killers before taking on the role of Kirk Smith and his performance is terrifying because it is so real.
It’s icky to watch but, at the same time, it do serve to remind us that there are real life Kirk Smiths out there.
Agck! Seriously, it makes me shake just thinking about it.
I’m getting a gun…
For today’s horror on the lens, we present Don’t Go To Sleep!
In this TV movie from 1982, a little girl is killed in a horrific car crash. Her family blames themselves for her death and they really should. The father (Dennis Weaver) was drunk. The mother (Valerie Harper) didn’t keep her drunk husband from driving. Finally, the girl’s brother (Oliver Robins) and sister (Robin Ignico) were playing a prank on her when the car crashed. By tying her shoe laces together, they made it impossible for her to get out of the car.
However, they’re not the only ones who blame themselves. The dead girl blames them as well. When the family moves out to the country and attempts to heal, the girl’s ghost goes with them. And soon, she is encouraging her sister to kill the other members of the family.
And that’s just what happens.
Seriously, this movie took me by surprise. For a movie that made for network television in 1982, it’s a surprisingly dark film that doesn’t shy away from graphically killing off most of the cast. It’s a surprisingly effective little film and you can watch it below!
(Thank you to my wonderful cousin, Toni Posados, for recommending this film!)
Through the Shattered Lens 