Tag Archives: Horror

Horror Film Review: Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah (dir by Kazuki Omori)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Godzilla has been erased from time …. but now, King Ghidorah is here!”

Whoops!  I guess you all shouldn’t have traveled back in time and kept that dinosaur from mutating into Godzilla then!

1991’s Godzilla vs King Ghidorah was the 18th film in the Godzilla franchise and, because the Back To The Future franchise was very popular in Japan at the time that the film was made, it has a plot that revolves around time travel.  A group called The Futurians appear in 1990s Japan.  They explain that, by the year 2204, Godzilla will have destroyed all life in Japan.  However, they have a plan.  They’ve built a time machine and they will be going back to 1944 so that they can remove Godzilla from his island home before the nuclear testing begins.  For some reason, the Futurians take a few people from the 90s back with them.

After witnessing a dinosaur stepping on a World War II American army platoon, the Futurians arrange for the dinosaur to be transported to the Bering Strait, where it won’t get doused with radiation.  Meanwhile, they secretly leave behind three adorable baby dragons that, once nuclear testing begins, will end up being transformed into King Ghidorah.

It turns out that Futurians are liars!  I’m shocked too.  In 22o4, Japan is actually the most powerful country in the world and it is so economically strong that America, Russian, and Europe are dependent upon it for their survival.  The Futurians were just jealous of what a great country Japan was destined to become so they decided to get rid of Godzilla and instead allow King Ghidorah to destroy the country.

Now, if the Futurians were smart, they would have actually destroyed the dinosaur.  Instead, they just sent it to the Bering Strait.  And if the Futurians were really smart, they wouldn’t have allowed people in 1991 to know what they were doing.  To be honest, all of the mistakes made by the Futurians were self-inflicted.  By taking people from the 90s back to the past and letting them see where the dinosaur was sent, they basically ensured that those people would immediately go to the Bering Strait in 1991 and give the dinosaur a dose of radiation so that it would become Godzilla and then battle Ghidorah….

WHAT!?

Yeah, I know.  It makes no sense.  This is one of the least logical Godzilla films that I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something.  Godzilla vs Biollante was loved by critics but it was considered to be a disappointment at the box office.  For the follow-up, the producers not only brought back a classic Godzilla opponent (and I did smile when the three-headed Ghidorah showed up because he really was the most awesome member of Godzilla’s supporting cast) but they also came up with a plot that was considerably more juvenile than the previous film.  The end result is a film that makes no sense from a narrative point of view but it does at least feature a few good fights between Godzilla, Ghidorah, and a robot version of Ghidorah.  And it was also a film that did well enough at the Japanese box office to guarantee that Godzilla would return.

Previous Godzilla Reviews:

  1. Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1958)
  2. Godzilla Raids Again (1958)
  3. King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)
  4. Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964)
  5. Ghidorah: The Three-Headed Monster (1964)
  6. Invasion of the Astro-Monster (1965)
  7. Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster (1966)
  8. Son of Godzilla (1967)
  9. Destroy All Monsters (1968)
  10. All Monsters Attack (1969)
  11. Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971)
  12. Godzilla vs Gigan (1972)
  13. Godzilla vs Megalon (1973)
  14. Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla (1974)
  15. The Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)
  16. Cozilla (1977)
  17. Godzilla 1985 (1985)
  18. Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989)
  19. Godzilla vs. Mothra (1992)
  20. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995)
  21. Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)
  22. Godzilla (2014)
  23. Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (2017)
  24. Godzilla, King of the Monsters (2019)
  25. Godzilla vs Kong (2021)
  26. Godzilla Minus One (2023)

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: Special Roy Ward Baker Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Today’s director is Roy Ward Baker, one of the masters of Hammer and Amicus horror!

4 Shots From 4 Roy Ward Baker Films

Quatermass and the Pitt (1967, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Arthur Grant)

The Vampire Lovers (1970, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Moray Grant)

Scars of Dracula (1970, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: Moray Grant)

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974, dir by Roy Ward Baker, DP: John Wilcox and Roy Ford)

Horror Film Review: Cult Killer (dir by Jon Keeyes)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What a stupid movie!

Released earlier this year, Cult Killer stars Alice Eve as Cassie Holt, a former librarian who is now a private investigator in Ireland.  Cassie has a tragic backstory, which we hear about from several people along with hearing about it from Cassie and then getting to see most of what we’ve already heard about in a series of flashbacks.  Cassie was sexually abused by her grandfather, dropped out of university, learned Brazilian ju-jitsu, became an alcoholic, went to AA, and is now a private investigator.

Her mentor is Mikael Tallini (Antonio Banderas, looking embarrassed).  When Mikael is murdered by a woman who pounces on him and then steps him to death, Cassie sets out to solve his murder and get revenge.  She discovers that her sleepy Irish village is actually the home of a cult of sex abusers and Jamie Douglas (Shelley Hening) has been killing everyone who either abused or betrayed her, though Mikael apparently was just killed because he had been hired to find out what she was doing.  Soon, Jamie is calling Cassie on the phone and telling her about all the details of her crimes, encouraging Cassie to help her while also acknowledging that Cassie will eventually have to arrest her or kill her or do something to avenge the death of her mentor at Jamie’s hands.  “We not do different, you and I,” Jamie says without a hint of irony.

Antonio Banderas gets top-billing in Cult Killer and he’s prominently featured on the film’s poster.  His character is killed off after the first ten minutes but he then reappears in flashbacks as Cassie remembers him training her and all the times that she told him about her tragic backstory.  There’s a lot of flashbacks in Cult Killer and they don’t exactly show up at the most logical of moments.  They’re rather randomly sprinkled throughout the film and often, there’s no real indication that we’ve entered flashback territory until Banderas shows up.  I know and understand that it’s currently totally melvin to tell a story in chronological order.  Everyone wants to be Christopher Nolan.  But the thing is, Christopher Nolan is a genius.  Most directors are not.  The director of Cult Killer is not.

Along with the jumbled timeline, the other big problem with this film is that Shelley Hening’s performance as Jamie is absolutely atrocious.  Some of it is the script, which forces all of its worst lines onto Jamie.  But, beyond that, Hening plays Jamie as being a somewhat mischevious brat while the film needs her to be a charismatic maniac.  Throwing a skull into a room and then calling Cassie to tell her that you just did some “Monster shit,” doesn’t make you into an intriguing anti-hero or a compelling villain.  It just makes you into the equivalent of a pre-teen tossing eggs at the house of a hated teacher and then bragging about it the next day.  Jamie’s relationship with Cassie never rings true and neither Eve nor Hening really seem to have much idea what’s going on with their characters either.  It takes a lot of effort to make two sex abuse survivors come across as being incredibly annoying but this film manages to do it.

The film features Jamie targeting the members of a cult of wealthy sex abusers.  That story had potential, especially when you consider that Epstein didn’t kill himself.  But the film gets so bogged down in flashbacks that it never creates a proper feeling of paranoia or, for that matter, any narrative momentum.  It all just feels rather pointless and confused, as if the film itself isn’t quite sure what it’s trying to say.  The best film to be inspired by the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein remains The Scary of Sixty-First.

Horror Film Review: Dark Intruder (dir by Harvey Hart)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1965 film, Dark Intruder, takes place in San Francisco in 1890.

Murders are being committed on the foggy streets of the city that was once known as Yerba Buena.  Women are being stalked through allies and attacked by a caped figure who seems to thrive on the darkness.  At each murder, a hideous statuette is left behind.  The statuette seems to depict a winged demon emerging from the back of a man’s head.  With each murder, the demon appears to be growing closer and closer to fully escaping from the man.

The police are baffled and the press is suggesting that London’s infamous Jack the Ripper has come to California.  (Well, where else would he go?  I kid, California, I kid!  I love you, California.  Well, I love some parts of California, at least.)  As the police often due when they have a case with supernatural overtones, they turn to local socialite and bon vivant, Brett Kingsford (Leslie Nielsen).

Brett lives in a mansion, where he wakes up nearly every morning with a hangover.  He enjoys life but he’s also found time to become an expert on the occult.  He even has a giant plant in his library that perks up whenever there’s a paranormal presence nearby.  Brett is engaged to Evelyn Lang (Judi Meredith), who speaks in an annoyingly high voice.  When the police bring the statuettes to Brett, he takes them to a psychic named Chi Zeng for advice.  Chi Zeng (played by Peter Brocco, who you may have guessed was not Chinese) reveals that the statuette represent a Sumerian demon that is inhabiting the body of a human.  The demon has to commit seven murders so that it can freed from its host and then allowed to commit as many terrible acts as it wants.

Who is the demon possessing?  Brett’s friend, Robert Vandenburg (Peter Mark Richman), fears that it could be him.  Brett tries to assure Vandenburg that he has nothing to worry about but as Brett continues his investigation, he comes to realize that Vandenburg actually may have a lot to worry about….

Dark Intruder is a short film, clocking in at a little under an hour.  It was originally developed as a pilot for a television series that would have featured Leslie Nielsen solving occult crimes on a weekly basis.  Unfortunately, the series wasn’t picked up (it sounds like it would have been fun!) and Dark Intruder was given a theatrical release as part of a double feature with William Castle’s I Saw What You Did.  It’s an effective little film, full of gothic atmosphere, misty streets, and a frightening (and clawed) villain.  The murder that opens the scene seems as if it would have been quite graphic by the standards of 1966 television.  Perhaps that’s why the pilot didn’t lead to a series.

Of course, for a lot of people, the main appeal here is Leslie Nielsen, playing one of his “serious” roles.  Usually, it’s difficult to watch Nielsen’s dramatic work because it’s impossible not to be amused at his signature deadpan line delivery.  But he’s actually very good in Dark Intruder.  It helps that Brett Kingsford was written as being someone who had a sense of humor, as opposed to the stiff characters that Nielsen usually played in his dramatic roles.  Nielsen appears to be having fun in the role, which is not something you can say about most of Nielsen’s dramatic work.  Again, it’s a shame that Dark Intruder was apparently too ahead of its time for 1965.

Horror on the Lens: The Last Man on Earth (dir. by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and Happy October 8th!  For today’s treat from the ranks of horror films that have fallen into the public domain, I present to you one of the most important films in horror history.  Though it wasn’t appreciated when it was first released back in 1964, The Last Man On Earth was not only the 1st Italian horror film but George Romero has also acknowledged it as an influence on his own Night of the Living Dead.

It’s easy to be a little bit dismissive of The Last Man On Earth.  After all, the low-budget is obvious in every scene, the dubbing is off even by the standards of Italian horror, and just the name “Vincent Price” in the credits leads one to suspect that this will be another campy, B-movie.  Perhaps that’s why I’m always surprised to rediscover that, taking all things into consideration, this is actually a pretty effective film.  Price does have a few over-the-top moments but, for the most part, he gives one of his better performances here and the black-and-white images have an isolated, desolate starkness to them that go a long way towards making this film’s apocalypse a convincing one.  The mass cremation scene always leaves me feeling rather uneasy.

The film is based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and no, it’s nowhere as good as the book.  However, it’s still a worthy adaptation and one that stays true to the tone of the text, including the fact that Price’s main tormenter was also once his neighbor and best friend.  This is one of those films that just hits differently in the wake of 2020’s COVID hysteria.

If you have 87 minutes to kill, please enjoy The Last Man On The Earth.

Music Video of the Day: Poison by Slaughterhouse (2023, directed by Meriel O’Connel and Anna Tse)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Because I’m getting old and I still don’t want to admit that the music I grew up with is now considered to be “classic” rock, this South Bay band is new to me but I like their sound and I like this video, which feels like a throwback to the days before music got boring and corporate.

I found an interview in which the lead singer (and director of the video) Meriel O’Connel had this to say about Poison:

The song is about society being subjected to constant overwhelming stimulus on our phones, devices, etc that creates this culture of comparison, disposability, and lack of fulfillment in our daily lives. There’s another component where these companies and corporations who push apps, social media, etc aren’t making these things just for fun, it’s all for profit. To keep us searching for more rather than being satisfied by ourselves and our immediate surroundings, and ultimately them knowing & tracking everything about us algorithmically.

It’s this lack of escapism that makes it more difficult for us to turn inwards & go into our own internal lives and spaces, and makes us place value on what we’re putting out externally rather than consider how we can be internally fulfilled, fill up our own cups.

That’s not bad!

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: One Step Beyond 1. 16 “The Burning Girl” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 16th episode of One Step Beyond was called The Burning Girl and it dealt with a teenage girl (Luana Anders, who would later star in Dementia 13 and appear as a hippie in Easy Rider) who, whenever she got upset, could apparently cause fires to spontaneously erupt.  It was written by Catherine Turney and directed by host John Newland himself.

It was originally broadcast on May 5th, 1959 — presumably long before Stephen King even had the idea to write about a girl named Carrie.

Can you prove this didn’t happen!?

October Hacks: Party Night (dir by Troy Escamilla)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s prom night!

Except these students aren’t going to prom.  Instead, they’re going to have a party all their own.  They’re heading out to a house with quite a history, the perfect place to have a night that they’ll never forget.  And a night that they’ll be lucky to …. SURVIVE!

There.  Was that cheesy enough?

If my introduction was a bit over-the-top, it fits the general mood of 2017’s Party Night.  Party Night is a deliberate throwback to the slasher films of the 80s and the early 90s, before the genre started to take itself a bit too seriously.  (The worse thing that ever happened to the slasher genre is that a few of the films started to get positive reviews from critics who praised them for being subversive.  The end result of all that was David Gordon Green changing Michael Myers from a nightmarish boogeyman to just another buffoon living in a sewer.)  As such, Party Night is a film where a bunch of attractive young people go to a place that common sense say they shouldn’t go to.  And then they proceed to the dumbest things possible, like wander off by themselves.  The joy of the film comes from yelling at the screen, “Don’t do that, you idiot!” and then discovering that you were right to warn them not to do what they did.

I’ve made this point before but it is worth repeating.  The common complaint with most old school slasher films is that they feature characters who do stupid things.  That’s a valid comment but, to be honest, most people are pretty stupid.  And when you’re a teenager and it’s prom night and you’re hanging out with your best friends, you’re going to be even more stupid than usual.  In my case, when I sit there and roll my eyes at the girl in a slasher movie who wanders around outside in her underwear in the middle of the night, it’s because I’m trying to forget about all the times that I’ve walked up and down the alley in my sleepshirt, socks, and bathrobe while looking for the cat at two in the morning.  The fact of the matter is that we all do stupid things.  Some people do stupid things because they’re stupid.  Some people do stupid things because it’s just easier and takes less effort.  (In my case, it was more convenient to just throw on a bathrobe before I went out to look for the cat as opposed to actually taking the time to put on …. well, clothes.)  We recognize our stupidity in the characters who populate the slasher films of the 70s and 80s.  And the reason why so many people instinctively make fun of those films is because they know they would not survive an old school slasher film.  Myself, I’d probably be dead within the first fifteen minutes.

As for Party Night, it’s a low-budget film with a simple plot and an enthusiastic cast and an obvious love for the genre.  Fans of old school slasher films will appreciate the way the story pays homage to the films of the past.  It’s a film that understands that, at a certain age, everyone’s too stupid to survive a horror movie.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: The New Kids (dir by Sean Cunningham)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, this movie is awesome!

Within the first five minutes, the film features not only a training montage but also a scene where a family cheering good news immediately gets a phone call delivering bad news.  (“SHUT UP!” our hero yells at his friends and family.)  By the time the film hits the five minute mark, it has managed to denounce communism, terrorism, laziness, and drunk driving!  And that’s even before James Spader shows up as a cocaine-sniffing teenage crime lord!

First released in 1986 and directed by the same guy who did the first Friday the 13th, The New Kids tells the story of Loren (Shannon Presby) and his sister, Abby (Lori Loughlin).  Their father (Tom Atkins) was a badass army colonel who fought communists, received commendations from the President (and that President was Ronald Reagan so you know those commendations were for doing something cool and not just for posting memes on twitter), and who taught his children self-defense.  Every morning, he exercised with them and drilled into their heads the importance of being disciplined and willing to stand up for themselves.  Sadly, their father and mother were both killed in a car accident after meeting with President Reagan at the White House.

Though they’ve been taught how to survive in the world by an expert, Loren and Abby are both teenagers and the law says that they need adult supervision.  They move down to Florida and stay with their Uncle Charlie (Eddie Jones),  Charlie owns a run-down amusement park that he’s decided to call Santa Land.  He figures that tourists who are driving to “Walt Disney World and Epcot” will want to stop off at Santa Land.  Personally, I think the tourists will probably want to keep driving to where they actually want to go but who knows?  Uncle Charlie does have a petting zoo and there is something oddly charming about the idea of Santa hanging out in the bayous of Florida.  I mean, there’s a reason why Santa Claus And The Ice Cream Bunny is beloved by viewers all over the world.

At the high school, everyone notices Loren and Abby.  Abby gets  a dorky boyfriend named Mark (Eric Stoltz …. no, really!) and Loren starts dating the sheriff’s daughter, Karen (Paige Lynn Price).  Unfortunately, the new kids have been noticed by Eddie Dutra (James Spader) and his gang of inbred rednecks.  Dutra and his gang deal drugs and have a pit bull who they’re hoping to enter into dog fights.  (“Went straight for the jugular,” one gang member says at one point.)  Dutra decides that he likes Abby, which leads to Loren getting protective, which leads to Dutra and the boys waging their own war on Abby and Loren and everything eventually comes to a deeply satisfying Straw Dogs-style conclusion at Santa Land.

The New Kids is one of those films that succeeds by being thoroughly absurd and over-the-top.  Dutra and his gang aren’t just evil.  Instead, they’re downright Satanic in their determination to destroy the new kids.  The gang is fearsome enough, especially Gordo (Theron Montgomery), who is the fat future forklift operator from Hell.  But what really makes this gang memorable is the fact that their leader is James Spader, with bright blonde hair, a smooth Southern accent, and moves that are so assured that he sometimes seem to be dancing across the screen.  Dutra’s evil and the cocaine that he snorts leads to him making some bad decisions but he’s got style.  As for the New Kids, Shannon Presby is a bit bland as Loren but that blandness actually provides a nice contrast to Spader’s more flamboyant performance.  Lori Loughlin is likable and kicks Gordo in the balls, which is pretty cool.  (Gordo more than deserved it.)

Cheerfully sleazy and unapologetically ridiculous, The New Kids is 80s exploitation cinema at its best.