Tag Archives: Horrorthon

Horror on the Lens: Svengali (dir by Archie Mayo)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this atmospheric film from 1931, sinister singing teacher Svengali (John Barrymore) used hypnotism to not only turn Trilby O’Ferrall (Marian Marsh) into the most popular singer in Europe but he also takes control of her mind.  Trilby’s former boyfriend, Billie (Bramwell Fletcher) attempts to break Svengali’s hold over her, with results that are …. well, you’ll have to watch the movie.

And really, you should watch the movie!  There are moments of dream-like beauty to be found in Svengali, with my favorite being an extended sequence in which the camera seems to float above the streets of Paris.  John Barrymore gives one of his best performance as Svengali, playing the role with a mix of menace and sly humor.  The film keeps you guessing as to how much of Trilby’s actions are of her own free will and how many of them are due to Svengali’s influence.

(Interestingly enough, Barrymore’s Svengali is a dead ringer for the infamous Rasputin.)

With its dark humor and its “arty” style, Svengali struggled with audiences but it has since been recognized as one of the best of the early psychological thrillers.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Candy by The Killer Barbies (2002, directed by Oliver Sommer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day comes from the Spanish punk rock group, The Killer Barbies.  Silvia Superstar buys a comic book featuring an animated version of Dracula who starts to speak directly to her.  Not coincidentally, this video was released at the same time that the band was preparing to star in a film called Killer Barbys vs. Dracula, which was directed by Jesus Franco.

(For the film, the band changed their name from the Killer Barbies to the Killer Barbys to avoid being sued by Mattel.)

This video was directed by Oliver Sommer, who is one of the busiest and most prolific music video directors out there.  At this point, it would probably be easier to keep track of who, in Europe, Sommer has not worked with than with who he has.

Enjoy!

AMV Of The Day: Haunted House (Various)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s October 3rd and that means it’s time for our first horror-filled AMV of the month!  Enjoy!

Song: Neoni — Haunted House

Animes: 0:11 Death Parade 0:16 Angels of Death 0:21 Demon Slayer 0:24 Attack on Titan 0:32 Tokyo Ghoul 0:43 Akame ga Kill! 0:48 Parasyte 0:55 Kakegurui 1:05 High School of The Dead 1:13 Fire Force 1:20 The Future Diary 1:36 Vinland Saga 1:49 Chainsaw Man 2:02 Jujutsu Kaisen 2:06 The Ancient Magus Bride 2:23 Deadman Wonderland

Creator: BAN AMVS (as always, please subscribe to this creator’s channel)

Past AMVs of the Day

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 4.4 “Why Are You Here?” (dir by Chris Thomson)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker is an early example of found footage horror.

Jerry Rulack (played by the star of Midnight Express, Brad Davis, in one of his final performances) is a smarmy TV host who, along with his camera crew, goes from nightclub to nightclub and asks the clubgoers, “Why are you here?”  Eventually, Jerry runs into a rich girl named Donette (Helen Hunt), who turns the question around and leaves Jerry to wonder why he’s there.  Donette and her friends are rich, decadent, and ultimately dangerous.  Eventually, Jerry discovers that there is a price to pay for asking too many stupid questions.  Brad Davis does an adequate Geraldo Rivera impersonation while Helen Hunt seems to be having fun playing someone who literally cares about nothing.  As the Hitchhiker, Page Fletcher is wonderfully judgmental while introducing Jerry and later while considering his fate.

This episode originally aired on March 10th, 1987.

October Hacks: Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone (dir by James Byran)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t watch this movie …. alone.

Or with a group.

Don’t do it!

Seriously, this is probably going to be the worst and most rushed review that I’ve ever written because I spent 80 minutes watching this film and I really don’t want to spend another 80 writing about it.  First released in 1981, Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone is the story of a maniac (Tom Drury) who looks like some sort of crazed Barbarian cosplayer and who spends his time hunting people in the Rocky Mountains.  He’ll kill just about anyone that he comes across and he’ll laugh while he does it.  We don’t even find out much about why he’s killing but he certainly seems to enjoy it.  Ten minutes into the film, he’s already killed a woman running in a creek and a bird watcher wearing a bow-tie.

The Rockies are full of campers.  The Maniac takes out a painter.  The Maniac takes out a honeymooning couple who thought it would be a good idea to stop their van in the middle of the woods.  He follows a group of campers.  Craig (James Haydn) is an experienced camper and he gets to utter the film’s title.  His girlfriend (Angie Brown) likes to play surprisingly mean-spirited pranks.  Of course, Craig’s idea of a good time is trap his girlfriend in a sleeping bag and hang her from a tree until she cries uncle.

And then there’s Peter (Jack McClelland), who is not an experienced camper.  Peter is about as close as this film has to a hero but he’s a remarkably unlikable hero.  He spends way too much time screaming and whining and crying.  Peter’s girlfriend is Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and she’s the type of girlfriend who screams, “Peter!” while Peter tries to hide from the maniac.

It’s an oddly paced film.  The film really ends around the 50 minute mark but there’s about 30 minutes of filler afterwards which pads out of the film’s running time.  The final third of the film is basically footage of the sheriff and his idiot deputies wandering around the Rockies and talking about how they haven’t been able to find anything.  How have they not been able to find anything?  The Maniac makes absolutely no effort to hide his existence.

It’s poorly acted and terribly written and the cinematography is so dark and grainy that it’s sometimes hard to see what’s happening on the screen.  That said, the film features a lot of blood and I imagine that’s why it has something of a cult following.  This is one of those slasher films where it’s obvious that the majority of the budget went to purchasing fake blood and entrails.  Limbs are cut off.  Blood splatters all across the countryside.  The Maniac is truly savage when he attacks and, if the film itself wasn’t so inept, he would be a truly terrifying character.

Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone was amongst the film that were banned in the UK for being too violent.  I’ve never understood why the censors felt it would be a good idea to refer to these films as being on the “video nasty list.”  Who wouldn’t want to watch a movie called a video nasty?  In the end, the attempts to ban this film are probably the main reason why the film is still remembered today.  It’s certainly not for the film’s quality.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: My Friends Need Killing (dir by Paul Leder)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 1976’s My Friends Need Killing, Gene Kline (Greg Mullavey) and his wife, Laura (Meredith MacRae) lie in bed together.  Gene can’t sleep.  He’s haunted by the sounds of gunfire and explosions and people barking out orders at him.  A Vietnam vet, Gene has been seeing a Dr. MacLaine (Eric Morris) for help with dealing with his wartime PTSD but it hasn’t done him much good.  Without telling Laura, Gene has been sending letters to the former members of his platoon, letting them know that he will soon be visiting them in each of their home cities.  Gene says that he’s just dropping by for a visit but the reality is that Gene has decided that his friends need killing.

Without telling his wife, Gene leaves home in the morning and heads to San Francisco.  While Laura is looking at old pictures of Gene and having flashbacks to their perfect wedding day, Gene is stalking the people with whom he committed an atrocity in Vietnam.  Like Gene, the former members of his platoon have struggled to adjust to returning home.  One lives in Texas, loves to hunt, and brags about how he never thinks about the war.  Another has found work as a trucker.  Another has a nice big house and a pregnant wife and still suffers from flashbacks of his own.  Perhaps the most tragic of Gene’s friends is Les Drago (Roger Cruz), who is now a performance artist and an anti-war activist and who recites Lady MacBeth’s “out damn spot” speech while discussing his activities during the war.

My Friends Need Killing is a short but intense movie.  It may only have a 73-minute running time and a portion of that running time may be taken up with filler but Gene pursues his mission with a relentless and ruthless determination that is ultimately very unsettling to watch.  As played by Greg Mullavey, Gene wanders through the film with the thousand-yard stare of a man who has truly snapped.  Years after the war, he can’t forgive anyone, including himself.  To him, it doesn’t matter that someone like Les returned from Vietnam and decided to dedicate his life to preventing another pointless war.  What matters to Gene is getting vengeance on those who he blames for his sins.  Even though the film makes clear that Gene’s actions are due to his experiences during the war, Gene himself never becomes a sympathetic figure.  He’s too vicious in his murders, even targeting the wife of one of his platoonmates.

Adding to the film’s unsettling and grim atmosphere is the film’s rather ragged editing.  Scenes begin and end abruptly, sometimes in mid-conversation.  Each murder is followed by a shot of an airplane landing in another city as Gene continues his mission.  Scenes of Gene having flashbacks are haphazardly mixed with scenes of Laura and Dr. MacLaine trying to figure out where Gene has disappeared to.  One is tempted to smile at the film’s score, which sounds more appropriate for a 70s cop show than a movie about a murderous vet, but even the score ultimately adds to the film’s off-center feel.  The score feels as out-of-place as the happiness of his friends does to Gene.  My Friends Need Killing ultimately feels like a film about a world that is spiraling out of control.  The film ends on a truly odd note, one that suggests that there is hope for the future, even if there’s no place for Gene in it.

Much like Bob Clark’s Deathdream, My Friends Need Killing suggested that mainstream America would never be ready to fully accept what happened in Vietnam.

Ghost Track (2022, directed by Jason M.J. Brown)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Years ago, a teenager named Morris died when he was run over by a train while five of his friends helplessly watched.  Even though they did not mean for him to die, Morris’s friends grow up feeling guilty.  Years later, all of Morris’s now-adult friends find themselves being stalked by a ghostly presence who slips notes under their door telling them that they are going to die.  Marcus (Adam Probets) thinks that Morris is responsible for the disappearance of the school bus that was carrying his son (along with many other children).  Can Morris’s friends put his soul to rest before he kills all of them?

I will give this movie some credit.  Considering that it wasn’t made for much money, the scenes around the train tracks are effectively shot and feature vivid cinematography.  The inside scenes are too darky lit but the movie looks fine whenever the action moves outside.  Ghost Track also had one good twist towards the end.

For the most part, though, Ghost Track was poorly acted with some of the least convincing death scene that I’ve ever seen.  I think part of the problem is that I never felt like a knew who the characters were either before or after the accident with the train so I never knew how their lives had been effected by Morris’s death.  Plus, the subplot about the missing school bus felt like an unnecessary distraction.  Maybe if we had actually seen the kids on the school bus before it disappeared, it would have been different but instead, the school bus is something that we hear a lot about with really having the context to know what to think about it.

Ghost Track felt like a feature-length version of one of those public information films that the BBC used to air, warning children not to play on the railroad tracks. It’s just not as scary as The Finishing Line.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Doug Bradley Makes His Debut As Pinhead in Hellraiser

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Born in Liverpool, actor Doug Bradley is a longtime personal friend to author Clive Barker and appeared in Barker’s short film Salome, playing the role of King Herod.  When Barker was making his feature directorial debut with 1987’s Hellraiser and he needed someone to play the head Cenobite, he turned once again to Bradley and the result was one of the most iconic horror characters of all time.

While the Cenobites may have all had disturbing physical features, what truly made them frightening was their arrogant disdain for anyone who was foolish enough to summon them.  Bradley perfectly portrayed Pinhead’s haughty arrogance, starting with his very first appearance in Hellraiser.

When Bradley as Pinhead says, “We’ll tear your soul apart,” the viewer has no doubt that he means every word of it.

Horror Book Review: Haunted by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1990, Haunted tells the story of Melissa, a teenager who would seem to have the perfect life.

No only does she come from a wealthy family and live in a nice, big house that is located right in the middle of Fear Street but Melissa is also a popular student at Shadyside High and she has a boyfriend named Buddy.  Plus, she’s just celebrated her birthday and, as a present, she got a brand new car!  The only thing that Melissa really has to worry about is the possibility of her house being broken into by the elusive Fear Street Prowler and the fact that a bitter ghost named Paul keeps materializing in front of her and claiming that she killed him and he’s come back from the dead to get revenge.  Paul is not only a revenge-seeking ghost but he also taunts Melissa for being rich.  Perhaps the only thing worse than being haunted is by being haunted by a ghost from the lower classes.  I mean, seriously, I don’t even want to think about it….

(Usual disclaimer: I do NOT believe in ghosts.)

Melissa is not only annoyed by Paul’s bad manners but also by the fact that he claims that she killed him when she has absolutely no memory of who he is.  In fact, when she does some simple research to see if anyone recently killed Paul, she discovers that no one named Paul has been murdered recently.  Paul himself admits that his memory is a little bit fuzzy, as well.  Accusing someone of murdering you when you’re really not sure isn’t a cool thing to do, Paul.  Stupid ghost.

Then, one night, Melissa sees Paul hanging out with his other less-than-wealthy friends.  Only, this Paul is alive and he’s even more of a jerk than his ghost!  Melissa realizes that Paul’s ghost is from the future and  that therefore, Paul has not died yet but will and apparently, she’s going to be the one responsible!  But how can that be when Ghost Paul is turning out to be not that bad and actually kind of sweet?

(Myself, I’m more concerned with how Living Paul and Ghost Paul both existing at the same time seems like one of those things that would cause the universe to split open or something.  I mean, it just doesn’t seem right.)

This is one of R.L. Stine’s stranger books.  The plot doesn’t really make much sense but you have to kind of admire the fact that Stine just went with it and didn’t even bother to try to make any of it seem plausible.  Sometimes, it’s best just to embrace the silliness of it all and that’s what Stine does here.  The book’s attempts to deal with class differences were fairly shallow but then again, when you’re a teenager, you’re always at you’re most shallow when talking about who is rich and who is poor so, on that level, Stine did a good job writing for his target audience.  The important thing is that Melissa was a relatable and sympathetic character and she definitely deserved a less petulant ghost.