On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, Marc Singer plays a real loser, a deadbeat husband who spends almost all of his time talking to a phone sex operator named Liz (Paulina Mlynarska). When Liz suggests that the husband murder his wife (Katrine Boorman), who is left to wonder whether he should follow her advice or if she even exists to begin with.
This episode, featuring a wonderful turn from Marc Singer, originally aired on July 21st, 1989.
Some films are a hundred times more entertaining than they have any right to be and that’s certainly the case with 1974’s Abby.
A blaxploitation take on The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, Abby opens with Bishop Garrett Williams (William Marshall, star of Blacula) taking a peaceful stroll with his students at seminary. Garrett talks about how he will miss them all when he is off on archeological dig in Nigeria. One of his students asks him some questions about Eshu, one of the spirits of the Yoruba religion. Bishop Williams explains that Eshu is a trickster and a force of chaos and carnal excess. Yes, the Bishop explains, he does believe that demons are real.
And indeed, no sooner has the Bishop gone to Nigeria and opened up a small puzzle box adorned with the symbols of Eshu than a demon claiming to be Eshu travels from Africa to Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville is the new home of the Bishop’s son, Reverend Emmett Williams (Terry Carter). Reverend Williams is a good and god-fearing man and his new wife, Abby (Carol Speed), is a devout Christian who sings in the choir, speaks out against drugs, and never curses. That changes, however, once the demon claiming to be Eshu gets inside of her. Soon, Abby is speaking in a very deep voice, laughing at inappropriate moments, demanding constant sex, and plunging a knife into her arm. When the now possessed Abby disappears into the sordid nightlife of Louisville, Reverend Williams and his brother-in-law, Det. Cass Potter (Austin Stoker), try to find her. Eventually, Bishop Williams joins them in their search, knowing that even if they find Abby, it will fall to him to perform the exorcism to save her life and soul.
Abby has so much in common with The Exorcist that Warner Bros. actually ended up suing the film’s producers and distributor for plagiarism. That lawsuit is one reason why it’s not particularly easy to see Abby today. Indeed, I had to resort to watching a washed-out upload on YouTube. Of course, Abby was hardly the first or the last film to rip off The Exorcist. Almost every horror released in the wake of William Friedkin’s classic shocker owes something to The Exorcist. Abby, however, was one of the more finanically successful rip-offs of the film, or at least it was until the lawsuit led to it being removed from theaters. It’s unfortunate that Abby is so difficult to see because it’s actually one of the more entertaining Exorcist rip-offs out there.
A lot of that is due to the confrontation between the dignified and stately William Marshall and the far more hyperactive Carol Speed. Carol Speed gives a performance of amazing energy, whether she’s happily cackling after a woman drops dead of a heart attack or if she’s kicking her husband in the groin. Carol Speed holds nothing back and basically tears through every scene like a force of uncontrollable nature. She provides the perfect counterbalance to Marshall’s more measured performance as the Bishop. Marshall delivers his lines with such authority and conviction that the viewer has no doubt he could probably scare the devil out of everyone. Carol Speed, meanwhile, is so good at playing wild that the viewer wonders how, even if they can get Eshu out of here, Abby will ever be able to go back to being a demure preacher’s wife. Setting Marshall and Speed loose in the seedy nightclubs of Loiusville leads to an occasionally horrific, occasionally silly, but always entertaining between good and evil.
Abby is an entertaining horror film. It’s just unfortunate that we will probably never get to see a good print of it. But then again, maybe that’s for the best. The graininess of the version that I saw actually added to the experience of watching the film. It made me feel like I was in some small theater in the middle of nowhere, watching a print of the film that had taken a long and difficult journey just so it could be seen and appreciated.
Cray (Blair Kelly) has spent his entire life convinced that his father is a famous horror actor. When he sees the actor sitting on a bench and reading a newspaper, Cray introduces himself as the actor’s son. The actor politely explains that he was rendered sterile in a motorcycle accident and cannot be Cray’s father. Cray beats the actor to death and then heads over to another movie site so he can stalk the actor’s former co-star, Janey Romero (Carol Lynn Fortin).
This low-budget, straight-to-video horror film tries to make fun of the whole process of making other low-budget, straight-to-video horror films but the dialouge is never as funny as the movie seems to think and none of the actors appear to have a semblance of comedic timing. There have been many instances of horror stars, especially women, getting stalked by obsessive fans so the story does have some root in reality. It is something that particularly seems to happen to the final girls from the Friday the 13th films, with Adrienne King literally putting her career on hold because of an obsessed stalker. Some people really do take their fandom too far. But Fan Base doesn’t do much with the idea and never finds a way to balance both the bad comedy and the bad horror.
I always feel a bit sorry for Duane Jones, a talented actor who did much of note but still found himself defined by one iconic role.
He studied at the Sorbonne and had degrees from both the University of Philadelphia and New York University. He volunteered with the Peace Corps. and was working as an English teacher when he auditioned for a film called Night of the Living Dead. At a time when it was rare for any black actor (outside of Sidney Poitier, who certainly wasn’t going to appear in a low-budget film about the dead returning to life) to get a lead role, Duane Jones was given the starring role as Ben. Jones gave a performance of such authenticity and authority that it would be years before many people were willing to admit that Ben had actually been incorrect about not going in the cellar. Jones final scenes, in which Ben is gunned down by a posse of rednecks, gave Night of the Living Dead a political jolt that it would not have had without him and his powerful performance.
Jones acted in other films, including starring in another acclaimed horror film, Ganja and Hess. But he reportedly always worried that people would only know him as Ben from Night of the Living Dead. Even while acting, Jones continued to work as an academic, heading up the literature department at Antioch College and working as the executive director of the Black Theater Alliance. He was also an in-demand acting teacher. He passed away at the far-too early age of 51 in 1988.
In this scene, from Night of the Living Dead, Ben talks to the catatonic Barbara about what is happening in the outside world. Jones’s intensity brings the scene to life and gives Night of the Living Dead the momentum to continue to enthrall audiences to this day.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
The clock is ticking throughout the 1961 film, The Beast of Yucca Flats. There’s only so much time left for someone who is trying to escape from a repressive, communist regime. There’s only so much time that one can spend wandering through the desert before he starts to succumb to the heat and has to remove almost all of his clothes. There’s only so long that the police can search before they get trigger happy and go after the wrong guy.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
The Beast of Yucca Flats opens with a woman stepping out of the shower and getting attacked and strangled by someone hiding in her house. Who attacked her and why? How does it relate to the rest of what we see in this film? Was this a flashback or a flashforward? I’ve watched The Beast of Yucca Flats a few times and I don’t know. Perhaps it’s just a sign of the randomness of fate. Who knows how to control the whims of the universe? Or maybe director Coleman Francis was just looking for an excuse to bring some nudity into the film. As enigmatic a figure as Coleman Francis may have been, he undoubtedly understood that importance of selling tickets.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson is perhaps best known for his work with Edward D. Wood, Jr. He was Lobo in Bride of the Monster. He was the police detective who was raised from the dead in Plan 9 From Outer Space. By most accounts, Tor was a nice guy with a good sense of humor but he was also a hulking and intimidating physical presence and he had a difficult time delivering dialogue. However, Ed Wood was not the only director for which Tor Johnson worked. He also worked with Coleman Francis, playing Joseph Javorsky in The Beast of Yucca Flats.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
Joseph Javorsky is a Russian scientist who has defected to America and who is carrying a briefcase full of not just nuclear secrets but also evidence that the Russians have already landed on the Moon. Russian agents follow Javorsky out to Nevada and assassinate his American contacts and his bodyguard. Javorsky wanders into the desert and, due to the heat, he has to remove his clothing to survive. This film allows you to see more of Tor Johnson that you’ve probably ever wanted to see. Unfortunately, Javorsky wanders into an American nuclear test and is mutated into a monster who is motivated by rage.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Javorsky, who seemed to have the best motivations when it came to defecting to America. He’s turned into a monster and finds himself being pursued through the desert by the police and a father who worries that Javorsky has kidnapped his children. Tor Johnson is thoroughly miscast as a nuclear scientist but if you can overlook the fact that he’s Tor Johnson wandering around the desert, he actually is a sympathetic figure. His niceness comes through, even after he starts to turn into the beast.
Tick …. tick …. tick …. tick
The Beast of Yucca Flats is not a film that makes any sort of sense, not in the usual way. It works if one views it as being a filmed dream but let’s not give director Coleman Francis too much credit. While the dubbed dialogue and the narration and the odd performances all create a surreal atmosphere, there’s nothing to indicate that any of that was deliberate on Francis’s part. If anything, one gets the feeling that Coleman Francis mostly made this movie so he could fly his airplane over the desert. The Beast of Yucca Flats may not be good but that final scene of poor old Tor reaching out to the rabbit still brings tears to my mismatched eyes.
Ed Gein was a farmer who lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin in the 1950s. Everyone in town agreed that Ed was a bit of an eccentric. He had been something of a recluse ever since the death of his mother in 1945. Having never married, he spent most of his time on his farmhouse, where he had a collection of pulp magazines and literature about Nazi war crimes. Ed supported himself by doing odd jobs around town. He was quiet and a little weird but he was considered to be harmless enough.
Or, at least, he was until November of 1957.
That was when Bernice Worden, the owner of the local hardware store disappeared. Her son told the police that Ed Gein has been the last person to talk to her the night before she disappeared and that Gein had specifically said that he would return to the store the next morning. When the police searched Gein’s property, they discovered that Gein’s house was full of body parts. Among other things, they found several skulls, a trash can made out of human skin, bowls made out of skulls, leggings made out of skin taken from human legs, nine vulvae in a shoe box, four noses, masks made from the skin taken from human heads, a corset made out of human skin, a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring, and the bodies of Bernie Worden and tavern owner Mary Hogan. The police who discovered Gein’s home were reported to have been haunted by nightmares for years afterwards. The officer who interrogated Gein later died of heart failure when he was informed that he was going to have to testify at Gein’s trial and relive the experience of hearing Gein’s story.
Gein confessed that he had started digging up graves after the death of his mother, collecting recently deceased women who he thought resembled her. Gein also confessed to murdering both Bernie Worden and Mary Hogan, though most observers felt that Gein had killed many more. Judged to be legally insane, Gein spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital, where he was said to be a polite and friendly patient. He died of cancer in 1984.
The story of Ed Gein has inspired many writers and filmmakers. Psycho was inspired by Gein’s crime, with the book’s version of Norman having far more in common with the real Gein. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s house of horrors was also inspired by Gein and so was The Silence of the Lambs‘s Buffalo Bill. The 1974 film, Deranged, featured Roberts Blossom in the role of Ed Gein, whose name was changed to Ezra Cobb.
In 2007’s Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield, Kane Hodder plays Ed Gein. Best-known for playing Jason Voorhees in several Friday the 13th films (and for providing a great DVD commentary for Friday the 13th Part VII: New Blood), Hodder plays Gein as being a hulking and awkward farmer who, after losing his mother, comes to believe that death is the only thing that’s real in life. With his friend Jack (Michael Berryman), Gein digs up bodies from the local graveyard. When Jack finally says that he’s tired of digging up bodies and that he thinks Gein needs to get professional help, Gein responds by murdering Jack and dragging the body behind his pickup truck. Interestingly enough, Gein drives by Deputy Bobby Mason (Shawn Hoffman) who doesn’t even notice the body being dragged because he’s too busy fooling around with his girlfriend, Erica (Adrienne Frantz).
Bobby, in short, is a bit of a dumbass and that’s unfortunate for the people of Plainfield because Ed Gein is about to go on a rampage. First, he abducts the owner of the local tavern. Then, he abducts Bobby’s own mother, Vera (Priscilla Barnes)! And, to top it all off, he abducts Erica just a few hours later. This leads to a lot of scenes of Bobby running around, searching for his mother and then his girlfriend and managing to screw up just about everything that he attempts to do. Bobby being a total idiot wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that Bobby is also supposed to be the hero of our story.
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield features a lot of gore and discarded body parts, to the such an extent that I had to actually look away from the screen more than a few times. That said, the story itself is only loosely based on the facts of the case. (For instance, Ed Gein never kidnapped the girlfriend of a deputy and instead, he reportedly never even tried to flee once it became obvious that the police were on to him.) The film is so haphazardly edited that it’s often difficult to keep track of how many days or night have passed from one scene to another and there’s quite a few scenes that feel as if they’ve been included to pad out the running time. That said, Kane Hodder gives a good performance as this film’s version of Ed Gein, proving that he can be just as intimidating when wearing a mask of human skin as when wearing a hockey mask.
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 is the master of Canadian horror, the one and only David Cronenberg!
4 Shots from 4 David Cronenberg Films
Scanners (1981, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)
The Dead Zone (1983, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)
The Fly (1986, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Mark Irwin)
Dead Ringers (1988, dir by David Cronenberg, DP: Peter Suschitzky)
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, for #ScarySocial, Deanna Dawn will be hosting Sam Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell!
If you want to join us on Saturday night, just hop onto twitter, start the film at 9 pm et, and use the #ScarySocial hashtag! The film is available on Prime. I’ll probably be there 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.
Drag Me To Hell (2009, dir by Sam Raimi)
Viewing Plan 9 From Outer Space during October is a bit of a tradition around these parts and here at the Shattered Lens, we’re all about tradition. And since today is the 97th anniversary of the birth of Ed Wood, Jr., it just seems appropriate to watch his best-known film.
Speaking of tradition, this 1959 sci-fi/horror flick is traditionally cited as the worst film ever made but I don’t quite agree. For one thing, the film is way too low-budget to be fairly judged against other big budget fiascoes. If I have to watch a bad movie, I’ll always go for the low budget, independent feature as opposed to the big studio production. To attack Ed Wood for making a bad film is to let every other bad filmmaker off the hook. Ed Wood had his problems but he also had a lot of ambition and a lot of determination and, eventually, a lot of addictions. One thing that is often forgotten by those who mock Ed Wood is that he drank himself to death and died living in squalor. The least we can do is cut the tragic figure some slack.
Plan 9 From Outer Space is a ludicrous film but it’s also a surprisingly ambitious one and it’s got an anti-war, anti-military message so all of you folks who have hopped down the progressive rabbit hole over the past few years should have a new appreciation for this film. I mean, do you want the government to blow up a Solarnite bomb? DO YOU!?
Also, Gregory Walcott actually did a pretty good job in the lead role. He was one of the few members of the cast to have a mainstream film career after Plan 9.
Finally, Plan 9 is a tribute to one man’s determination to bring his vision to life. Ed Wood tried and refused to surrender and made a film with a message that he believed in and, for that, he deserves to be remembered.
Now, sit back, and enjoy a little Halloween tradition. Take it away, Criswell!
Can you prove it didn’t happen?
WELL, CAN YOU!?
Spellbound was the lead single off of Siouxsie and the Banshee’s fourth studio album, Juju. In later interviews, Siouxsie would describe Juju as being an accidental concept album as all of the songs dealt with dark themes and subject manner. Juju was a horror-themed album but the horror was psychological and not supernatural. As a sign of that theme, Spellbound was named after an Alfred Hitchcock film about a man who is troubled by disturbing dreams.
Clive Richardson directed several videos from Siouxsie and the Banshees. He also worked with Depeche Mode, Steve Winwood, Big Country, and Tears for Fears.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 