This song is off of Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album, 2021’s Senjutsu. Directed by Swedish animator Gustaf Holtenäs, the epic music video for Stratego imagines an battle in ancient Japan. Thematically and visually, it goes along with the cover of the album, which featured Eddie dressed as a samurai and holding a katana.
Enjoy!
The old west could be a dangerous and haunted place, as was revealed in this episode of HBO’s Tales From The Crypt! Outlaw Billy Quintaine (Neil Guintoli) enters a saloon and discovers that the spirits of his victims have been waiting for him!
This episode originally aired on August 1st, 1992. Along with being directed by The Omen‘s Richard Donner, it was written by Frank Darabont.
Enjoy!
Oh, poor Veronica Lake.
In the 1940s, Veronica Lake was undoubtedly a star. She appeared in Preston Sturges’s classic comedy, Sullivan’s Travels. She played the femme fatale in a series of classic film noirs. She proved herself to be just as capable of playing comedy as she was playing drama. By wearing her hair down and often allowing it to fall over her right eye, she created the peek-a-boo hairstyle. She was briefly a star and a fashion icon but she also developed a reputation for heavy drinking and being difficult to work with. During World War II, the U.S. government actually requested that Lake change her hairstyle in order to decrease incidents of women, many of whom were working factories as a part of the war effort, getting their hair tangled in the machinery. Lake did so, cutting her long hair and going for a more practical look. Her career never recovered.
The years following her 1940s heyday would not easy ones for Veronica Lake. Along with multiple divorces, she also struggled with alcoholism and with the IRS. Lake spent much of the 50s in England. When she returned to the States in the 60s, she was arrested several times for public drunkenness and eventually took a job as a waitress to pay the bills. A news story about her life as a waitress renewed some interest in Veronica Lake, as did the publication of her memoirs in 1969. As so often happened with former stars who fell on hard times, she considered taking roles in the type of low budget films that she wouldn’t have even been offered when she was at the height of her fame.
That brings us to Flesh Feast.
In Flesh Feast, Veronica Lake is cast as Dr. Elaine Frederick. Living in a dilapidated mansion in Florida, Dr. Frederick believes that she has discovered the perfect way to not only look younger but to also reverse the aging process itself! It involves maggots, lots and lots of maggots. For just a few dollars, Dr. Frederick will apply maggots to your skin and, like magic, they’ll suck away the years. That may sound disgusting but, whenever the viewer is show Dr. Frederick working in her laboratory, it’s obvious that the maggots are instead grains of rice.
Dr. Frederick is approached by a group of South American neo-Nazis who want Dr. Frederick to use her maggots to make their leader young again. They refuse to tell her the name of their leader but you can guess who it is, right? I mean, he’s living in Argentina. He’s in hiding. The rest of the world thinks that he’s dead. He’s German. He used to be involved in the government …. oh, okay, I’ll tell you. It’s Hitler. The group wants Dr. Frederick to use her maggots to make Hitler young again. Dr. Frederick agrees but it turns out that she’s only interested in getting revenge!
There’s a lot of negative things you can say about Flesh Feast but it’s perhaps the only film to feature Veronica Lake laughing as a bunch of maggots eat Hitler’s face. Don’t get me wrong. It takes forever to actually reach that moment. There’s a whole subplot about a journalist trying to investigate Dr. Franklin’s experiments. As well, Dr. Franklin’s assistant is an undercover government agent and she keeps stumbling across dead bodies at inopportune times. The first 70 minutes of Flesh Feast are about as draggy and boring as any movie that I’ve ever seen. But, after all that, you get to see Veronica Lake kill Hitler. Some would say that’s definitely worth the price of admission!
Flesh Feast was Veronica Lake’s final movie. (She not only starred in the film but she co-produced it as well. Director Brad Grinter was also responsible for Blood Freak.) It was filmed in 1967 but not released until 1970, after the publication of her memoirs renewed interest in her career. Unfortunately, Flesh Feast didn’t exactly do well at the box office. Lake would die just three years later, at the age of only 50. But her films and her performances will live forever.
Back in frontier times, a warlock named Walter Machden (John Carradine) terrorized the citizens of the town of Oakmoor Crossing so they tracked him down and lynched him. Before he was hung, Machden cursed the town. A demon with a jack-o-lantern for a head terrorized the town until the Kelly Family defeated him and buried him underneath a cross.
Jump forward one hundred years. It is Halloween night and some drunk teenagers knock over the cross. Jack-O comes back to life and kills the teenagers. Jack-O sets out to get revenge on the Kelly family but, for some reason, he decides to kill their neighbors, some more teenagers, and a TV cable guy before going after his targets. It’s up to young Sean Kelly (Ryan Latshaw) to figure out how to defeat Jack-O for a second time.
The most interesting thing about Jack-O is that it features John Carradine, even though he died a full seven years before the movie was released. That either means that Jack-O had an unusually long post-production period or the Carradine scenes were shot for another movie and were clumsily inserted into Jack-O. Carradine was not the only deceased star to make an appearance in Jack-O. Cameron Mitchell, who passed away in 1994, also makes an appearance as a horror movie host. Because you can’t have a movie with Carradine and Cameron Mitchell without including Linnea Quigley, she appears as a babysitter who takes a lengthy shower. Fortunately, Linnea Quigley is still with us.
Overall, Jack-O is regrettable. The demon, with his Jack-O-Lantern head, is more likely to inspire laughs than screams and it never makes sense that Jack-O would take so much time to kill everyone except for the people that he is actually looking to kill. The best death involves a toaster but Jack-O doesn’t do anything with the toaster. Instead, someone just slips and sticks a utensil in the toaster, leading to a shocking death. Combine the poor acting with the poor special effects with notably ragged editing that often makes it unclear how much time has passed between scenes and you have a Halloween film that is no holiday.
You were just a traveler, passing through Power, Montana, when your car broke down. Temporarily stranded, you were thankful when a local farmer offered to let you stay in his guest room for the night. But then something terrible descends upon Power and you find yourself running through the town, fearful for your life.
The objective of Power, MT is straight-forward. Make your way through town and hopefully, find some sort of protection before you are captured by the strange, apparently supernatural storm that is pursuing you. To be able to do this, though, you’re going to need the flashlight on your phone to see where you are going. And, with each turn, that flashlight drains your battery and leaves you that much close to being plunged into a darkness from which there is no escape. It’s a simple and relatable premise. Who hasn’t hit the panic button while searching for a place to recharge their phone? The game is well-written and there are a lot of places to explore, even if there’s not always a lot of time to reach them. Power, MT captures the feeling of running for your life. It’s a challenging game (so be prepared to die a few times while figure it out) but it’s also not impossible to win.
Today’s scene that I love comes from one of the best horror films of the past ten years, 2012’s Cabin In The Woods. The party starts just a little bit early….
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 lets the visuals do the talking!
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 (or more) Shots From 4 (or more) Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Today, we take a look at 2011 and 2012!
6 Shots From 6 Horror Films: 2011 — 2012
Insidious (2011, directed by James Wan, DP: John R. Leonetti)
The Whisperer in Darkness (2011, directed by Sean Branney)
Dracula 3D (2012, dir by Dario Argento, DP: Luciano Tovoli)
Sinister (2012, directed by Scott Derrickson, DP: Christopher Norr)
Silent House (2012, dir by Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, DP: Igor Matrinovic)
The Cabin In The Woods (2012, dir by Drew Goddard, DP: Peter Deming)
In 1958’s Queen of Outer Space, four rather dumb men take off in a spaceship from Earth.
There’s Lt. Larry Turner (Patrick Waltz) and Lt. Mike Cruze (David Wilcox), both of whom come across like they like to spend the weekend hanging out at their old frat house, playing beer pong. And then there’s Prof. Konrad (Paul Birch), who is smart because he knows what the word “atmosphere” means. And finally, in charge of the flight, is Captain Neal Patterson (Eric Fleming), who is upright and kind of dull.
The four men are supposed to be going to a space station but they get knocked off course by an animated laser beam and the ship crash lands on a mysterious planet that’s covered with cardboard rocks and plastic trees. Prof. Konrad takes one look at the planet and says that they’re on Venus.
Uh-oh! That’s not good! Isn’t Venus like a really bad place for human beings to find themselves?
Well, apparently not, because soon the four men are casually walking around the planet without so much as wearing a space suit or bringing along an oxygen supply. They even stop to get some sleep among the cardboard rocks. That’s when they’re captured by Venus’s inhabitants.
To the men’s shock, they discover that Venus is exclusively populated by women! The men are all like, “Hey, how you doing?” And the women are all like, “Silence, we have ray guns!”
Anyway, long story short, it turns out that Venus is ruled over by a disfigured queen (Laurie Mitchell), who hates men in general and Earth men in specific. She’s built a giant space laser that she’s planning to use to destroy Earth and it’s up to the men to stop her! Fortunately, they’ve got some help from Talleah (Zsa Zsa Gabor), a Venusian courier who has a wardrobe that’s to die for and who has apparently been waiting her entire life for men to come to Venus. When the Queen flirts with the captain, Talleah jealously exclaims, “I hate the Queen!” and that’s pretty much all it takes to start a revolution.
Needless to say, this is an incredibly sexist movie but, at the same time, it’s so goofy (in a 1950s sort of way) that you really can’t get too outraged by it. Instead, you just kinda cringe when Turner and Mike suggest that the captain needs to “turn on some of that old black magic” and invite the Queen out for a midnight stroll. Prof. Konrad quickly adds that Venus actually has several moons, though not all of them can be seen. I mean, it’s dumb but, at the same time, it’s just so 1958.
It’s really is a thoroughly ludicrous movie but, watching it, you get the feeling that the entire cast understood that it was ludicrous and they adjusted their performances accordingly. I mean, this is a movie that features Zsa Zsa Gabor putting on a mask and attempting to imitate the Queen while making absolutely no attempt to hide her trademark Hungarian accent. This is also a movie that features a giant rubber spider that pops up out of nowhere and for nor particular reason. I guess they just had the spider on set for the day and they decided to toss it in.
Queen of Outer Space is an incredibly silly movie but it’s entertaining in it’s own stupid way. Don’t take it too seriously. It’s only 80 minutes. Watch it for the experience.
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!
by Virgil Finlay
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
Through the Shattered Lens 