by Henry Fox
Where would be without science? We would have less mad scientists and Halloween would be much less interesting! The pulp ere was full of men and women of science who had been driven crazy by the search for knowledge. Today, we pay tribute to the terrifying scientists of the pulp era!
by David Berger
by Frank R. Paul
by George Menendez Rae
by Herman Bischoff
by John Doolin
by Rafael DeSoto
by Rafael DeSoto
by Ralph Joiner
by Robert Fuqua
by Sol Immerman
by Graves Gladney
Poor Mabel.
In the 1981 slasher film, My Bloody Valentine, Mabel (played by Patricia Hamilton) is the sweet old woman who has convinced the mayor of Valentine Bluffs to reinstate the annual Valentine’s Day dance. The dance had been a tradition, up until the great mine explosion of 1960. Harry Warden was the only miner to survive the explosion, which everyone agreed wouldn’t have happened if the two mine supervisors hadn’t left their post to attend the dance. (Why two middle-aged men were so eager to attend a teenage dance party is a question that is never really explored.) Harry went mad in the mine and resorted to eating the other miners to survive. AGCK! The next year, Harry killed the two supervisors and was promptly sent off to mental asylum. Meanwhile, the annual dance was canceled because I guess it was easier to blame the dance than the mining company or the corrupt union bosses.
Mabel, however, has brought the dance back and it’s probably not a minute too soon because the town of Valentine Bluffs is one of the most depressing towns I’ve ever seen. The sky is permanenlyt overcast. Everyone spends all day down in the mine, getting covered in soot and trying not to die. At night, they go to the bar and get drunk and argue with each other. If the men need to talk about their feelings, they have a drink at the local junkyard. Among the slashers films that came out in the early 80s, My Bloody Valentine is unique for taking place in an authentically blue collar milieu. These aren’t upper class teenagers who are about to be targeted by a demented killer. These are tough men who work hard all day and who are apparently really into Valentine’s Day dances.
Unfortunately, we all know that it’s impossible to move on from a decades-old murder. No sooner has the Valentine’s Day Dance been announced than some old drunk starts telling everyone that they’re doomed. People start to get strange and bloody packages in the mail. A man dressed up like a miner kills Mabel and stuffs her into a washing machine, which seems like an overreaction on the part of The Miner. It does, however, make one thing very clear. If even sweet old Mabel can die, then anyone can die.
After Mabel’s death, the mayor and the sheriff announce that the dance is off but those miners are really into Valentine’s Day so they decide to throw a party anyway. A few of them go down into the mine, which is not necessarily what I would want to do at a party but whatever. I just don’t like soot. Unfortunately, our brave heroes go down into the mine at the same time that the Miner shows up at the party and starts killing people.
The assumption, of course, is that the Miner is Harry Warden but most member of the audiences will have seen enough slasher movies to know better. There’s two obvious suspects. There’s Axel (Neil Affleck), who has a temper and knows how to use a pickax. And then there’s TJ (Paul Kelman), who also has a temper and knows how to use a pickax. Axel and TJ are both in love with Sarah (Lori Hallier) but only one will get to ask her to be his “bloody valentine.”
Among horror fans, My Bloody Valentine is notorious for having been heavily edited to get an R-rating. Supposedly, cuts were made to every single death scene and, even with the cuts, this is still a notably gruesome film. The scene involving the showerhead impalement is especially macabre, even if it has obviously been edited. The Miner is not one of those talkative, quippy, fun-loving murderers that eventually became a staple of the genre. Instead, he’s notably cruel. The murders he commits feel personal and calculated. He’s not one of those movie slashers who just kills anyone unlucky enough to discover Camp Crystal Lake. Instead, he has a plan. In the end, the Miner is one of the more frightening of the killers to come out of the early 80s slasher boom.
My Bloody Valentine works far better than it has any right to. The mine is a notably creepy location and the film does a good job of creating an atmosphere where you really do believe that anyone could die at any minute. The film plays out like a nightmarish urban legend come to life and it provides an example of the giallo-inspired thrillers that slasher films used to be. Despite being a Valentine’s Day film, it’s one that your really should watch for Halloween.
When you’re watching either this film or the 2009 remake, be sure to offer up a prayer to Mabel. With her love of Valentine’s Day, she made it all possible.
For today’s horror on the lens, we’ve got a sci-fi shocked from 1956.
In Earth vs. The Flying Saucers …. well, the plot is right there in the title. In a semi-documentary style, this film tells the story of what happens when a bunch of flying saucers come to Earth. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of those flying saucers aren’t looking to open up a new trading route. Instead, they want to enslave humanity and, as always, it falls to America to save the world.
This film is probably best known for the scenes of the flying saucers crashing into monuments and buildings in Washington, D.C. The special effects were done by Ray Harryhausen.
The film was originally black-and-white. The version below is colorized. I’m not a huge fan of colorization in general but I do have to say that they did a pretty good job with Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. While the film may not be as deeply philosophical as Plan 9 From Outer Space, it’s still pretty enjoyable.
Keep watching the skies!
Artist Unknown
This movie poster is from 1987. Something seems to be distracting the rocking horse.
On tonight’s episode of Friday the 13th: The Series, Ryan’s attempt to live as a member of a cult leads to him being framed by the group’s leader!
This is the second part of the story started in yesterday’s episode. It originally aired on May 14th, 1988.
Legend has it that Steven Seagal’s film career was the result of a bet. The story goes that, in the late 80s, superagent Michael Ovitz, who was then the most powerful man in Hollywood, bet a studio exec that he could make the least appealing man he knew into a movie star. That man was Ovitz’s self-defense instructor, Steven Seagal.
I don’t know if that story is true but it’s as good an explanation as we’re going to get at to why Seagal was ever asked to star in a movie. Despite being a terrible actor who was universally disliked by everyone who worked with him, Steven Seagal was briefly a star in the 90s. Along with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, he was one three top B-action stars around. Lundgren’s appeal was that he could actually act. Van Damme’s appeal was that he was a true athlete and actually could do all of his own stunts. As for Seagal, he was packaged to be a star. He appeared in movie with actors who were talented enough to carry the drama while Seagal whispered his lines. He also worked with talented action director like Andrew Davis. For a while there, Seagal had it all.
It fell apart, of course. Seagal was his own worst enemy, fabricating details of his biography and acting like an ass whenever the cameras weren’t rolling. He was notorious for being difficult and every young actress trying to make it in the 90s had at least one horror story about Seagal harassing them at an audition. His appearance on Saturday Night Live was so bad that it’s still talked about as an example of what can happen when the show gets stuck with a terrible host. According to the show’s then-cast members, Seagal insisted that the writers come up with a skit in which he would play a therapist who raped his patients. (Check out Tom Shales’s Live From New York for the details on Seagal’s time as host.) He directed two awful movies. Audiences cheered when his character was blown up in Executive Decision. People stopped showing up for his movies and, for the past few years, Seagal has been better known as a tireless advocated for Vladimer Putin than for his work as a direct-to-video action star.
Against The Dark is one of Seagal’s many direct-to-video movies. It’s also his first horror movie. The movie takes place in the future, when vampire/zombie hybrids have taken over the city. The film misses a major opportunity by not casting Steven Seagal as the head vampire. When this film was made, Seagal was nearly 60, overweight, and out-of-shape. He had the right look to play a decadent vampire king but instead, he was just plays his regular Seagal role. He and his squad patrol the city with samurai swords, hacking up any vampires that they come across. Seagal’s not actually in much of the film and his stunt double does most of the work. When Seagal does appear, he looks like he’s trying to catch his breath. It’s obvious that this film was just a paycheck for him. There’s no speeches about protecting the environment. He doesn’t even get out his guitar and sing.
Most of the movie deals with a separate group of survivors, who are stranded in a hospital and who are trying to find a way to escape before the military blows up the city. Some of the fight scenes, especially the ones that don’t involve Seagal, are not terrible but the film itself is so badly lit that you usually can’t tell who is fighting whom. There is one memorably weird scene of a female vampire filing down her fans so that she can pass as human but the movie doesn’t really follow up on it. The movie doesn’t do much with any of it ideas. Its obvious that vampires and zombies were used because they were hot and someone figured out that even Seagal’s fans were getting bored with him just fighting drug dealers and mercenaries.
Against the Dark is bad, even by the standards of late era Seagal. Shortly after the movie was released, Seagal tried to reinvent himself as a reality TV star with Steven Seagal: Lawman. When that and a subsequent threat to run for governor of Arizona didn’t do much for his career, Seagal went to Russia and, after receiving Russian citizenship, declared that he considered Vladimer Putin to be “like a brother” to him. When asked about Seagal’s claim, Putin’s spokesman replied, “”I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s a huge fan, but he’s definitely seen some of his movies.” Hopefully, the movie was Under Siege and not Against The Dark.
How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland is an entrant in 2021 Interactive Fiction competition. Browse and experience all of the games by clicking here.
The world has ended. Chaos reigns. Only savagery remains. At the start of this game, you and your partner are in your hovercraft, making your away across the wasteland, when you’re attacked by a crew straight out of a Mad Max film. From the start, there’s more to do than to just sit down in gunner’s seat and open fire. The hovercraft has been damaged and it’s up to you to make the repairs as quickly as possible. Once you do start shooting, the game’s not over. Ammo is limited and your pursuers are relentless.
How The Monsters Appeared In The Wasteland is a game devoted to the best part of any action movie, the chase. Though the game sounds simple, some of the puzzles do require some attention to detail. There’s more to winning than just being a good shot. This is a well-written Twine game that puts your right at the heart of the action.
The Fly (1958, D: Kurt Neumann)
One of the great things about the original, 1958 version of The Fly is that, even though it starred Vincent Price, Price didn’t play the Fly. Instead, for once, Price was allowed to be the voice of reason, the guy who said, “Maybe don’t mess around with the laws of time and space.”
Today’s scene that I love is from the ending of the original Fly. Supposedly, Price had a hard time filming this scene because whenever he heard the recording of David Hedison crying out, “Help me!,” he would start laughing. Still, if you know what spiders actually do to the flies that they capture, you can’t help but sympathize with our misdirected scientist in the web. Destroying him with a rock was probably the most merciful thing that anyone could do.
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 lets the visuals do the talking!
I woke up today to discover that Vincent Price was trending on Twitter. He was specifically trending because someone did a thread about Price’s political activism. This was something that I already knew about but most people on Twitter are stunned to discover that people actually did good things before the creation of social media.
Once I got over feeling elitist and superior, I thought to myself that it was actually kind of nice that people still love Vincent Price. He’s definitely one of my favorite actors. He started out as a mainstream studio actor, reading for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Window and being considered for Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life. But he found his true stardom as a horror actor, bringing life to films that often would have been dead without his wonderful presence.
There’s no way that we can do Horrorthon without paying tribute to the great Vincent Price. Here are….
4 Shots From 4 Vincent Price Films!
House on Haunted Hill (1959, dir by William Castle, DP: Carl E. Guthrie)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964, dir by Roger Corman, DP: Nicolas Roeg)
Witchfinder General (1968, dir by Michael Reeves, DP: John Coquillon)
Scream and Scream Again (1969, dir by Gordon Hessler, DP: John Coquillon)
Today’s horror movie on the Shattered Lens is both a classic of silent era and one of the most influential horror films ever made. It’s one that I previously shared in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2108, 2019, and 2020 but it’s such a classic that I feel that it is worth sharing a second (or fifth or even a sixth or perhaps a seventh) time.
First released in 1925, The Phantom of the Opera is today best known for both Lon Chaney’s theatrical but empathetic performance as the Phantom and the iconic scene where Mary Philbin unmasks him. However, the film is also a perfect example of early screen spectacle. The Phantom of the Opera was released during that period of time, between Birth of the Nation and the introduction of sound, when audiences expected films to provide a visual feast and Phantom of the Opera certainly accomplishes that. Indeed, after watching this film and reading Gaston Leroux’s original novel, it’s obvious that the musical was inspired more by the opulence of this film than by the book.
This film is also historically significant in that it was one of the first films to be massively reworked as the result of a poor test screening. The film’s ending was originally faithful to the end of the novel. However, audiences demanded something a little more dramatic and that’s what they got.
Through the Shattered Lens 