Tag Archives: Horror

Retro Television Review: Baywatch Nights 2.17 “The Servant”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch Nights, a detective show that ran in Syndication from 1995 to 1997.  The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Mitch does not want to believe.

Episode 2.17 “The Servant”

(Dir by Georg Fenady, originally aired on April 12th, 1997)

There’s something strange happening at a warehouse that stores ancient artifacts.  The wealthy woman (Renee Suran) who owns the warehouse claims that someone wrapped in bandages killed both a security guard and her chauffeur.  She goes to Daimont Teague and, of course, Teague takes her to Ryan and Mitch.

“I want you to solve my murder,” the woman says, convinced that she’s destined to be killed by whatever it was that she saw in the warehouse.

The killer was wrapped in bandages and Mitch is stunned to discover that the killer apparently took four bullets without even slowing down.  In fact, one of the bullets is found on the ground and it doesn’t have a bit of blood or bodily tissue on it.  What could be going on?

Ryan and Teague suggest that the killer could be a mummy.

Mitch gets angry, saying that there’s no way a mummy has come back to life and is killing people and stealing artifacts from the warehouse.  Even when Ryan tells him about an ancient curse that may have been activated by the removal of the artifacts from a tomb, Mitch says that he doesn’t believe in mummies.  He’s a skeptic!

Okay, I’ve done this before but let’s do it begin.  Here are just a few things that have happened to Mitch since the start of season 2.

  1. Mitch has dealt with a huge number of sea monsters.
  2. Mitch has dealt with space spores that caused animals to explode.
  3. Mitch has witnessed Donna get possessed by the spirit of a serial killer.
  4. Mitch has been transported through time and has been chased by an axe-wielding maniac from the turn of the century.
  5. Mitch has battled a werewolf.
  6. Mitch has battled a vampire.
  7. Mitch has discovered that the world is secretly controlled by the Knights Templar.
  8. Mitch has witnessed two 800 year-old Vikings come back to life and immediately resume their blood feud.

And that’s just scratching the surface!  After seeing all of that, Mitch somehow cannot bring himself to believe that there is a mummy wandering around a warehouse that appears to only house cursed Egyptian artifacts.  Myself, I think just the stuff with the Vikings would have convinced me to believe just about anything.

My personal theory is that, much like the protagonist of a Lovecraft short story, Mitch does believe in the mummy but he’s insisting that he doesn’t because he know that accepting it as reality will lead to him losing his mind.

Fortunately, Ryan is not as skeptical as Mitch and she’s able to discover that the mummy and the missing artifacts are all a part of a plot to open up a mystical portal.  Fortunately, she and Mitch are able to thwart the plans of Dr. Kasan (Erick Avari).  Seriously, if everyone had listened to Mitch, Malibu would have been invaded by hundreds of mummies.

This episode was dull.  The cast was noticeably small, with regulars Griff and Donna noticeably absent from the proceedings, the warehouse and the mummy looked cheap, and the only think creating any atmosphere was an overuse of Dutch angles.  Angie Harmon was great as usual but, surprisingly considering that his signature brand is overwhelming earnestness, David Hasselhoff seemed bored with the whole thing.  This mummy should have been kept under wraps.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #ScarySocial for The Witch!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on twitter.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 9 pm et, Tim Buntley will be hosting #ScarySocial!  The movie?  2016’s The Witch!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag!  I’ll be there tweeting and I imagine some other members of the TSL Crew will be there as well.  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

The Witch is available on Prime!

See you there

Late Night Retro Television Review: Friday the 13th: The Series 2.16 “Scarlet Cinema”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Friday the 13th: The Series, a show which ran in syndication from 1987 to 1990. The show can be found on YouTube!

This week, a nerdy film students takes his love of a 1940s horror film too far!

Episode 2.16 “Scarlet Cinema”

(Dir by David Winning, originally aired on February 20th, 1989)

Darius Pogue (Jonathan Wise) is a nerdy film student who is obsessed with The Wolf Man.  When Darius steals an old antique movie camera, he discovers that, by looking through the camera’s view finder, he can bring The Wolf Man to life and send him to kill anyone who annoys him.  Darius kills a snooty antique store manager.  He kills a bully.  He kills his professor.  He even sends the wolf after Ryan and a girl that Darius likes.

However, as much as Darius enjoys sending the Wolf Man after people, he wants to be the Wolf Man himself.  After allowing the Wolf Man to scratch him, Darius shoots him with silver bullets.  Transforming into a werewolf himself, Darius goes after Ryan, Micki, and Jack.  Unfortunately, Darius didn’t consider that film stock is full of silver nitrate.  Live by the film, die by the film….

This episode was a case where the premise was pretty interesting but the execution didn’t quite work.  The episode mixes in archival footage from The Wolf Man with scenes of Darius’s victims meeting their fate.  So, for example, one sees Lon Chaney Jr. turning into the Wolf Man and then the viewer sees The Wolf Man killing one of Darius’s classmates.  The problem is that the Friday the 13th werewolf makeup doesn’t really look much like the Wolf Man makeup.  Regardless of how darkly lit each scene is, it’s pretty obvious that the Wolf Man from the film is not the same Wolf Man that is doing Darius’s bidding.  It not only negates the whole idea behind the cursed antique but it’s also pretty distracting for those of us just trying to watch the show.  And, again, it’s a shame because the idea behind this episode was actually pretty clever.

Myself, I’ve always liked the original Wolf Man.  Eventually, Larry Talbot got a bit too whiny for his own good and it’s pretty much impossible to buy the idea of the hulking, very American Lon Chaney, Jr. as the son of the sophisticated and very British Claude Rains.  But, even with all that in mind, The Wolf Man holds up as a classic American horror film, full of atmosphere and featuring a pretty impressive monster.  Friday the 13th deserves some credit for making Darius a Wolf Man fan because The Wolf Man, with its portrait of a man being driven mad by a curse that he cannot control, fits in perfectly with the main idea behind Friday the 13th.  Darius, like most of the villains on this show, isn’t really evil until he starts using the camera.  Each times he picks up the camera, his actions become progressively worse.  Just as Larry Talbott was cursed by the werewolf, Darius is cursed by the camera.  Much like a drug addict, Darius falls in love with the camera and he just can’t stop using it.  His addiction changes his personality as it becomes all-consuming,.  Eventually, it drives him to become the Wolf Man himself.

The episode ends with another cursed antique safely hidden away and Darius joining Larry Talbot in the cold embrace of death.  There was a lot of potential to this episode so it’s a shame that it didn’t quite work.

Another Halloween Has Come and Gone

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

Another Halloween has come and gone and another Horrorthon has come to a close.  We hope you have had a wonderful October and that the Thanksgiving month brings you much to be grateful for!

And remember, just because you didn’t see the Great Pumpkin this year, doesn’t mean that he won’t be there for you next October.  As always, Linus puts it best:

To all of our readers and from all of your friends at the Shattered Lens, thank you.

Bonus Horror Scene Of The Day: The End Of 10 To Midnight

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The scene below is a major spoiler for the film 10 to Midnight so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the film yet.  And, to be honest, you probably shouldn’t even read the rest of this post, as the post itself is probably a spoiler as well.  There’s no way to truly talk about this film without talking about the ending.  10 to Midnight is a film that’s been on my mind a lot this year, largely because Charles Bronson plays a character who reminds me of my Dad.  Bronson’s relationship with his daughter (played by Lisa Eilbacher) also reminds me of my own relationship with my Dad.  I doubt there’s many people who get sentimental over a relatively unheralded vigilante horror film from 1983 but, as I’m still processing losing my Dad earlier this year, I am one of those people.

If you have seen the film, you know that this is one of the best endings that Charles Bronson ever filmed.  Indeed, in today’s chaotic world, there’s some very satisfying about both Bronson’s final line and his no-nonsense style of dealing with problems.  And indeed, with all the bad vibes that seem to have been unleashed on the world over the past few years, this scene feels like an exorcism of sorts.

Serial killer Warren Stacy (Gene Davis) thought he could game the system.  He thought he had everything figured out.  He smugly assumed no one could stop his reign of terror.

Well, Bronson disagrees.

And with that one wonderful final line, Charles Bronson brings this year’s Horrorthon to a close.

Bonus Horror on TV: The Curse of Degrassi (dir by Stefan Brogren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is a special episode of my favorite TV show of all, Degrassi!  Originally airing on October 28th, 2008, The Curse of Degrassi features Degrassi’s main mean girl, Holy J Sinclair (Charlotte Arnold), getting possessed by the vengeful spirit of deceased school shooter, Rick Murray (Ephraim Ellis).  Chaos follows!  Fortunately, Spinner (Shane Kippel) is around to save the day.  As any true Degrassi fan can tell you, only Spinner has a chance against the forces of the undead.

What I like about this episode is that, in the best tradition of Degrassi, it goes there.  Holly J does get possessed.  Just about the entire cast end up dying horribly.  Spinner has to battle the undead spirit of Rick Murray and he has to do it without the help of Drake.  And, as far as we know, this episode is canon.  So, yes, Rick Murray’s ghost actually does haunt Degrassi Community School and yes, only Spinner can save us all.

Go Spinner!

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 3.36 “Eyewitness” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For this year’s horrorthon’s final episode of One Step Beyond, we have the …. final episode of One Step Beyond!

In this, the series’s very last episode, a Boston newspaper reporter in 1883 somehow manages to write a firsthand account of one of the greatest natural disasters in human history, the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa.  Making his accomplishment all the more amazing is that he not only filed the story the day before it happened but he also says that he has no memory of writing it!  What’s going on?  Take one step beyond and find out!

This episode originally aired on July 4th, 1961.

Here’s The Trailer For Presence

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Here’s the trailer for Presence, another horror film that could have taken advantage of the scary season but which is instead being released later next year.  Add to that, this is a Steven Soderbergh film.  When Soderbergh’s good, he’s great.  When he’s bad, he’s painfully self-indulgent.

Lucy Liu is cool, though.

 

Here’s The Trailer For The Damned

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The trailer for The Damned was dropped by Vertical Entertainment yesterday.

No, not the Visconti film!  This is a movie about ghost ships and sea creatures and fear in the arctic.  The trailer makes it look like the perfect film for the Halloween season so it’s kind of a shame that it’s instead being released in January of 2025.

Here’s the trailer:

Scenes I Love: I Got A Rock!

Posted on by Dazzling Erin

This scene is from It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!  It’s a crime that this wonderful and sweet animated special is no longer aired during the holidays.  No wonder the Great Pumpkin hasn’t been seen this year!

What I love about this scene is that you can actually see the rock getting tossed into Charlie Brown’s bag while all of the other trick-or-treaters got candy.  Everyone in the neighborhood knows which ghost is Charlie Brown and they’ve all decided to give him rocks!

Poor Charlie Brown!