by Oliver Babbins
This ominous cover is from 1949.
Artwork of the Day: Gripping Terror! (by Oliver Brabbins)
Tag Archives: Horrorthon
Music Video of the Day: You Could Be Mine by Guns N’ Roses (1991, directed by Andy Morahan, Stan Winston and Jeffrey Abelson)
In this video, Arnold Schwarzenegger is sent to the past to eliminate Guns N’ Roses but ultimately decides that it would be a waste of ammo. Obviously, he knew that fulfilling his mission would change history and the world would never get to hear Chinese Democracy.
This song (and this video) were used to promote Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Enjoy!
Late Night Retro Television Review: Hunter 2.5 “Killer In A Halloween Mask”
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Hunter, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1991. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!
This week, Hunter faces off against a scarred killer wearing a mask! Pretty scary, kids!
Episode 2.5 “Killer In A Halloween Mask”
(Dir by Sidney Hayers and Michael Peerce, originally aired on October 26th, 1985)
After getting the bill for yet another high-speed chase involving Hunter and McCall, Captain Wyler (the great Bruce Davison) decides that they need to take a week off from causing trouble. He assigns them to work as technical advisors for a cop show called Street Heat.
At first, everything seems fine. Hunter hits on the publicity woman. The star of the show, J.J. Hendrix (Stephen Shortridge), asks McCall out to dinner. But then, one night, a man in a cheap plastic mask breaks into Hendrix’s house, bashes in his skull in with a fireplace poker, and sprays acid on the star’s face! (I guess he wasn’t a fan of the last season of Welcome Back Kotter.)
A masked killer is targeting the cast and crew of Street Heat! Hunter and McCall suspect that it might be Dave Tolan (Gary Graham), the former star of the show whose career ended when he set himself on fire while freebasing. The horribly scarred Dave now works at a wax museum and has access to all sorts of chemicals and acids. Plus, Hendrix was dating Dave’s ex-girlfriend….
And, of course, Hunter and McCall are correct. We know that they’re correct because we see Dave plotting the murders at the start of the episode. I have to admit that I spent the entire episode waiting for some sort of twist. I thought Dave would have an accomplice or something similar. But nope, it’s just Dave. It all leads to a confrontation in the wax museum. During a struggle with Hunter, Dave gets impaled. Hunter doesn’t say, “Works for me,” but you can tell that he’s thinking it.
There weren’t any big surprises in this episode but I still enjoyed it. It aired on October 26th and it was obviously produced with Halloween in mind. The late Gary Graham gave an appropriately unhinged performance as Dave. The scenes on the set of Street Heat also served as a commentary on Hunter as a show. After watching Hendrix “shoot” a suspect in a scene that felt like it could have been lifted from any episode of Hunter, McCall and Hunter commented that Street Heat wasn’t very realistic.
Fans of washed-up politicians will be happy to see Jesse “The Body” Ventura in this episode. He shows up at the start of the show. He’s been arrested for attacking his dentist. Ventura complains about his toothache. Hunter knocks the tooth out of his mouth. Ventura thanks him. Whenever I see Jesse Ventura in an old TV show or movie, I always regret that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the only other future governor that he co-starred with. If Fred Dryer had later been elected governor of California, this episode would have been legendary.
Governor Dryer. It has a nice ring to it.
Horror On Television: Fear Itself 1.8 “Skin and Bones” (dir Larry Fessenden)
On tonight’s episode of Fear Itself, Doug Jones plays a rancher who disappears on one snowy night. After ten days, he returns but there’s something different about him. This episodes is a good example of rural horror. Don’t go hunting unless you’re sure you can get back.
This episode originally aired on July 31st, 2008. It was the last episode to air before Fear Itself went on hiatus for the Summer Olympics. The show never returned, though the remaining five episodes were subsequently released on DVD.
Brad reviews URBAN LEGEND (1998), starring Alicia Witt!
I’m not always successful, but I spend a fairly large part of my life trying to make my wife happy. One of the ways I do that is I try to find movies for us to watch that she will enjoy, and that I will have at least some interest in. So anytime I can find a movie starring Alicia Witt, most notable in our household for her voluminous work with the Hallmark Channel, I’m definitely heading in the right direction. I was looking through her filmography on IMDB the other day and noticed she was in URBAN LEGEND. I remember the movie coming out in the late 90’s, but I had never seen it, and I had no idea she was the primary lead! It being the spooky season, I thought now was the perfect time for the two of us to cuddle up on the couch with some popcorn and enjoy the show!
Alicia Witt is Natalie Simon, a student with a dark, secretive past, who begins to suspect that a series of gruesome murders on the campus of Pendleton College are being committed by a killer obsessed with “urban legends.” Each murder seems to take a cue from those scary stories that pretty much all of us grew up hearing, and maybe even believing. As her friends are being picked off one by one, Natalie must do everything to find the killer before she becomes the next victim!
I must admit I had fun with this one. We watched it on a night where we just wanted to relax and see a bunch of obnoxious college students getting whacked in a variety of ways while we try to figure out who the killer is. I remember when SCREAM came out back in 1996 when I was 22 years old. Like so many others, I saw it in the theater and loved it. URBAN LEGEND is in that same tradition. It gives us some suspicious characters and some interesting murders inspired by stories I heard as a kid, and that late-90’s nostalgia kicked right in for me.
It was also fun looking back at the popular young cast whose careers have gone a variety of ways since the movie was made. Along with Witt, our cast of potential killers and victims include Jared Leto, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, and Tara Reid. I really enjoyed seeing veteran genre actors pop up as the movie goes along. The opening scene with Brad Dourif is very effective and lets us know immediately that we can’t trust our normal expectations. Robert Englund is also on hand to provide a creepy and suspicious professor. Heck, Danielle Harris is also in the cast, which was right at the beginning of her extensive career in horror movies.
Until I watched this movie, I didn’t realize just how universal some urban legends really are! A couple of freaky ones I remember as a kid include the story of the gang initiation where potential members drive around with their lights off just waiting for someone to flash their lights at them. Even more disturbing is the one where someone hides under your car ready to slice your Achilles tendon. Each of those stories are represented here. Building a scary movie around those legends, and many more, is a darn clever idea, and I enjoyed seeing what the filmmakers might come up with next.
URBAN LEGEND isn’t a horror masterpiece. It’s not very original, and it’s full of dumb characters making dumb decisions. But I still had a good time with it. For me, it’s a fun little slasher that takes an interesting premise and provides a few cheap scares. And most importantly, it made my wife happy, and that means a lot!
The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Point of Terror (dir by Alex Nicol)
In the 1971 film Point of Terror, Peter Carpenter plays Tony Trelos. Tony is a hip, cool, swinging hep cat. He’s got a job singing at the Lobster House in Santa Monica, California. Everyone wants a piece of Tony because he has got the swagger of Sinatra and the voice of Tom Jones. When he meets Andrea (Dyanne Thorne), it’s lust at first sight. Andrea is married to Martin (Joel Hilliard), a wealthy and bitter record producer who is confined to a wheelchair. When Andrea murders Martin, it brings Martin’s daughter, Helayne (Lori Hansen), back to Santa Monica, and soon Tony is sleeping with her too. However, Tony has reason to be concerned because it appears that there might be another murderer stalking all of them. Or maybe there isn’t. The plot of this Crown International production is not always easy to follow.
Who was Peter Carpenter? I am honestly not sure, but this film appears to have been some sort of vanity production for him. He gets to sing several songs, and everyone he meets either wants to sleep with him or hang out with him. He gets a lot of big dramatic scenes, the majority of which he really didn’t have the acting ability to pull off. Tony is meant to be charismatic, mysterious, and a little bit dangerous, but as played by Peter Carpenter, he comes across as a second-rate lounge act who got lucky. Carpenter both co-produced the film and came up with the story. To be honest, you almost have to respect the amount of confidence in his own abilities that Carpenter apparently possessed. One can just imagine Carpenter turning to someone like Wayne Newton and telling him to scream, because there was only one actor/singer who was good enough to star in Point of Terror. Carpenter apparently died shortly after this film was released, and that is indeed a shame. Who knows how many ego-driven projects he could have given us?
Point of Terror is definitely a film of its time, which is to say that there’s a lot of polyester and a lot of nudity that was probably considered daring in 1971 but which is just kind of tame in 2026. The film does attempt to play around with the audience’s sense of perception and encourage them to wonder whether Tony is truly seeing what’s happening or if he’s just imagining things. For that reason, it sneaks across the line dividing psychological horror and neo-noir. It’s one of those films that’s probably more entertaining than it should be, just because it is such a film of its time. Someone could probably retitle this film 1971 and re-release it as a Paul Thomas Anderson-style satire.
Point of Terror was distributed by Crown International Pictures. Whenever I see the Crown International logo on an old movie, I know I’m in for a good time. Dyanne Thorne, it should be said, does a pretty good job as the femme fatale. That said, the true star of this film is definitely 1971.
G.I. Joe: Arise, Serpentor, Arise! (1986, directed by Ray Lee)
“G.I. Joe is the code name for America’s daring, highly trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world!”
With their numerous victories over Cobra, the Joes have been getting pretty cocky. When they’re nearly defeated in a surprise Cobra attack, General Hawk brings in Sgt. Slaughter to whip them into shape. Sgt. Slaughter, the wrestler? More or less. He’s never identified as being a wrestler. Instead, he’s supposed to be a real, tough-as-nails drill sergeant. But he’s voiced by the wrestler, and he looks just like the wrestler so he is the wrestler whether he admits it or not.
Meanwhile, some members of Cobra think that it might be time for a change in management, seeing as how Cobra Commander has yet to launch a single successful operation. Dr. Mindbender decides to steal DNA from the tombs of the world’s greatest conquerors and use it to create a Cobra Emperor. Since this is the ’80s, it requires a full-scale military operation to get DNA. The Joes can’t stop Cobra from getting the DNA of Napoleon, King Tut, and Rasputin, but they do keep them from getting Sun Tzu’s. The new Cobra Emperor has determination, strength, and whatever Rasputin was supposed to provide, but he doesn’t have Sun Tzu’s patience. He still manages to briefly take over Washington, D.C., which indicates that Sgt. Slaughter was right about G.I. Joe needing to shape up.
G.I. Joe is being commanded by a pro wrestler, and Cobra has perfected human cloning? What the hell is going on? It’s a cartoon about soldiers and battles where no one ever gets injured or killed. I guess they can get away with the Cobra Emperor. I liked that, even though the Cobra Emperor was loud and determined, he didn’t know the basics, like how to keep from running out of fuel and weapons in the middle of a battle. It turns out Cobra Commander was more on top of things than anyone noticed.
Who joins Cobra anyway? There are always hundreds of them, even though they never win a battle. This episode features Zartan recruiting new members. Cobra must have a good dental plan.
The Werewolf of Woodstock (1975, directed by John Moffitt)
Shortly after the end of the famous Woodstock music festival, a hippie-hating local (Tige Andrews) goes out to the now-deserted festival grounds and attempts to destroy the stage. Since the stage is still attached to the power lines, he ends up getting electrocuted. He survives, but now, whenever there’s an electrical storm, he turns into a hippie-hating werewolf. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the world’s most clean-cut hippie band has shown up in town so that they can say they performed at Woodstock.
The plot of The Werewolf of Woodstock sounds like a comedy, but the movie takes itself fairly seriously. Most of the film’s campiness appears to be unintentional. Producer Dick Clark was able to rope a fairly respectable cast into appearing in this short film. Along with Tige Andrews as the werewolf, Andrew Stevens appears as a member of the band, while Belinda Balaski plays a groupie who gets kidnapped by the werewolf. Michael Parks and Meredith MacRae show up as two big-city cops who are called in to deal with the town’s werewolf problem. I believed that Tige Andrews really did hate the hippies with every fiber of his being, but otherwise, no one seems that invested in their roles.
Is the movie worth watching? It is, just because it’s short and there’s a scene where the werewolf steals a dune buggy. I watched it on a Russian site, though it wasn’t a very good upload. It doesn’t appear that it’s even been released on DVD or Blu-ray. I’m surprised. I would think some company would have released it just for the title alone.
Retro Television Review: Area 57
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! This Thursday, I will be reviewing Area 57, which was produced for NBC in 2007. The show can be found on YouTube!
Episode 1.1 “Pilot”
(Dir by Dean Parisot, filmed in 2007, never aired)
Col. Steven Isaac (Matthew Lillard) has been assigned to Area 57, a military base in the Nevada desert. Isaac is excited to read his orders and discover that Area 57 is home to an extraterrestrial. He arrives at the base. He meets by-the-book Lt. Irene Maloof (Jane Lynch). He meets the plain-spoken General Keller (Bruce McGill). He meets head scientist Dr. Annabelle Fermi (Kelly Hu). Finally, Isaac announces that he really wants to meet the alien.
Suddenly, Dr. Fermi emerges from her laboratory and says that the alien has died. General Keller announces that Area 57 is being shut down. All of the soldiers cheer. The general explains that the alien wasn’t always popular. Isaac still insists on seeing the body. With Dr. Fermi at his side, he gets his first look at the alien and accidentally spills his coffee on him. The alien (played by Paul Reubens) comes back to life. It turns out that he was just going through a sleep cycle. General Keller announces that Area 57 is not closing and no one is going home.
With the entire base still angry with him, Isaac still insists on meeting the alien. The alien asks him about his education. Isaac says that he attended college through an endowment. The alien says that many of the soldiers like Dr. Fermi. Isaac agrees that she’s attractive. The alien then announces to Irene that Isaac was making crude comments about Fermi and bragging about how endowed he was.
Isaac realizes the truth. The alien is a jerk. He also learns that the alien has been at Area 57 for 40 years and that, so far, the government has learned nothing from him.
That’s the plot of Area 57. NBC thought enough of the idea to commission a pilot, but the network never aired it. It’s available on YouTube. Watching it, you can see what the problem was. The alien is established as such a jerk that it’s hard to imagine anything else that could have been done with the character. Paul Reubens plays the role under a good deal of makeup, and he’s more off-putting than intriguing. That said, Matthew Lillard was genuinely funny as the earnest and idealistic Col. Isaac. He was so excited about meeting an alien that it was impossible not to feel sorry for him when the alien turned out to be a jerk.
If we ever do meet aliens, I have a feeling that something like Area 57 might be seen as prophetic. There’s a tendency to assume that alien visitors will be interesting, erudite, and worth knowing. I think that if there are aliens out there, they’re just as likely to be as annoying as the average human.
Area 57. The truth is out there!
October On Lifetime: A Deadly Grudge (dir by Nigel Thomas)
Yes, the movie has multiple titles.
In 2021’s A Deadly Grudge, Lindsey (Annika Foster) owns a restaurant with her fiancé Gavin (Jonathan Stoddard). (It’s a Lifetime film and, in the world of Lifetime, there’s nothing easier than owning your own restaurant or opening your own art gallery.) Her father, Jim (Patrick M.J. Finerty), is internet-famous for his cooking videos. And her mother… well, she’s dead. She dies while she’s out jogging and a car runs her over. What’s odd is that she doesn’t bother to get out of the way of the car despite having several minutes in which to do so. It’s always strange to me how people in Lifetime films always seem to end up jogging in the middle of the road. I start nearly every morning with a jog and I usually manage to stay on the sidewalk. It’s just safer that way.
At her mother’s funeral, Lindsey is shocked to see Jim hugging a younger woman. Lindsey immediately assumes that Jim is having an affair, because why else would you hug someone at a funeral? Jim explains that the younger woman is actually Sarah (Aubrey Reynolds). Sarah is not his mistress. Sarah is his daughter. It turns out that Lindsey never learned that she had a half-sister. Lindsey also didn’t know that her parents never actually got married. Instead, Jim was legally married to Sarah’s mother because Sarah’s family would have disowned her if she had a child out of wedlock. To be honest, not a single part of Jim’s story makes any sense, but somehow Lindsey accepts it.
To continue being honest, it’s pretty obvious that Sarah was the one who ran over Lindsey’s mother. If you’ve ever seen a Lifetime film, you know that Sarah’s guilty, because long-lost siblings are always guilty. In typical Lifetime fashion, Lindsey is immediately suspicious of Sarah, but everyone else loves her. Jim is especially happy when he discovers that Sarah knows how to bake. Whoops — Sarah put some cinnamon in one of her recipes! Lindsey is deathly allergic to cinnamon! It never ceases to amaze me how every Lifetime film seems to feature at least one person with a deadly food allergy. I always get the feeling that Lifetime studios must be full of discarded EpiPens.
The title refers to Sarah, who definitely does have a grudge against Lindsey. However, it could also refer to Lindsey, who takes an immediate dislike to her half-sister and who spends the entire movie getting mad about the fact that not everyone else seems to hate her as much as she does. More like Two Sisters’ Grudges, to be honest. (The film was also released as A Sister’s Grudge, which is closer, but still only counts one of them.) It actually gets kind of amusing after a little while. Every time someone says anything nice about Sarah, Lindsey scowls and dramatically rolls her eyes. Occasionally, she gasps in disbelief. She’s so vocal about her dislike of Sarah that you actually end up feeling a little bit sorry for Sarah. I mean, Sarah is the one who grew up with an unstable mom and the knowledge that her father had another family that he loved more than her.
Anyway, this is pretty much a standard Lifetime melodrama. Unfortunately, no one in the film is particularly sympathetic. Lindsey comes across like someone who would talk about you behind your back. Sarah comes across like she would try to poison you with cinnamon. I’ll let you decide which is worse.
