In this scene below — which does count as a spoiler, in case you’re one of those annoying toaduckers who complains about stuff like that — the House finally gets its revenge on the obnoxious family that’s been living inside of it. Now, taken out of context, it may seem a bit harsh to describe the scene as being a crowd pleaser but, if you’ve sat through the entire film, it’s hard not to cheer a little when the chimney comes down.
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!
This October, we’re using this feature to recognize and honor some of our favorite horror directors! Today, we honor the one and only Steve Miner!
4 Shots from 4 Films
Friday the 13th Part II (1981, dir by Steve Miner)
This 1976 film is about a family so obnoxious that their own house tries to kill them!
Well, maybe it’s not entirely the family’s fault. The film suggests that the house would have tried to kill anyone who lived there because the house itself is possessed by ghosts or Satan or something of that nature. Still, you can’t help but feel that the house took some extra joy out of destroying the Rolf family. I know that I got some extra joy out of watching them get destroyed.
Ben (Oliver Reed) is a writer. Ben’s wife, Marian (Karen Black), is a flake who becomes obsessed with the house as soon as she sees it. Their son 12 year-old son, Davey (Lee Montgomery), is …. well, there’s no nice way to say this. He’s a brat. He’s the type of kid who you would be terrified of your kid befriending at school because then he’d want to come hang out at your house all the time. The movie doesn’t seem to realize that he’s a brat but the audience does. And finally, Aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) is Bette Davis, which means that she spends most of the movie delivering her lines in the most overdramatic and arch way possible.
The Rolfs are renting the house for the summer. The owners of the house are the Allardyces (Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart) and you would think that people would know better than to rent a house from Burgess Meredith. I mean, how many horror films in the 70s specifically featured Meredith as some sort of emissary of the devil? The Rolfs are asked to do two things: look after the house and look after Mrs. Allardyce, who lives on the top floor and never wants to be disturbed. The Rolfs are assured that they’ll never see Mrs Allardyce and the Rolfs are like, “Sure! That makes sense!”
Anyway, as soon as the Rolfs move in, the house starts to make weird noises and shingles start flying off the roof and, at one point, Ben nearly drowns his son in the pool. And while it’s kind of understandable, considering how annoying his son is, it’s still not a good look.
Yep, it’s pretty obvious that the house is evil but Marian loves it, almost as if she’s becoming …. possessed! Meanwhile, Ben keeps having visions of a sinister looking chauffeur (Anthony James, whose creepy smile is the only memorable thing about this film) and Davey keeps standing too close to the outside chimney. You don’t want to do that when a house hates your guts.
It all leads to the inevitable ending, which involves people getting tossed out of windows and *ahem* crushed by chimneys. The family’s so obnoxious that you can’t help but cheer when that chimney comes down. In fact, to be honest, as little as I think of this movie, I always specifically watch it just to see that chimney come down on one certain character. Things might not work out well for the Rolfs or anyone else watching this rather slow and predictable movie but at least the house survives.
Fly, baby, fly!
Now, I will admit that I do own this film on DVD, simply because I love the commentary track. Director Dan Curtis, star Karen Black, and the film’s screenwriter, William F. Nolan, watch and discuss the film and it quickly becomes obvious that none of them remember much about making it. While Karen Black tries to keep the peace, Curtis and Nolan bicker over who is most responsible for the parts of the film that don’t work. When Anthony James shows up as the creepy chauffeur, Dan Curtis says that he doesn’t remember his name and then gets visibly annoyed when Karen Black spends the next few minutes talking about what a good actor Anthony James is. It’s all enjoyably awkward and, as someone who has hosted her share of live tweets, I couldn’t help but sympathize with everyone’s efforts to find something positive to say about Burnt Offerings.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have a 1974 made-for-TV movie about what happens when a family comes down from the mountains and discovers that everyone’s disappeared.
On Shackle Island, there’s a somewhat dilapidated-looking mansion. And inside that mansion, there’s a friendly and talkative scientist by the name of Dr. Gangrene (played by Larry Underwood). If you need shelter from the rain, Dr. Gangrene will be more than happy to accommodate you. Of course, if you do accept Dr. Gangrene’s hospitality, you’ll have to visit the lab and take a look at the doctor’s truly impressive collection of brains. For every brain, there’s a different story. In the new horror anthology film, Tales From Parts Unknown, Dr. Gangrene introduces four of those stories.
The first brain, Tailypo, tells the story of a hunter and his dog and what happens when their prey escapes from them but loses its tail in the process. Let’s just say that some creatures don’t take well to losing their tails and that, if you ever do happen to come across a tail out in the middle of the wilderness, it’s probably best to just leave it where you found it. I originally reviewed Tailypo back in 2015 and it was interesting to get a chance to rewatch it. (From my review:Tailypo is the first in a series of short films that McCasland is planning to put together for an anthology film that I hope I will someday get a chance to review.) Tailypo holds up well to a second viewing. Not only does David Chattam give a good and sympathetic performance as the Hunter but Tailypo really does capture the feel of being the type of story that someone would tell while sitting in front of a campfire.
The second story was Retrieval Service, which told the tale of two gravediggers who eventually make the mistake of trying to rob the dead. Retrieval Service had a nice Southern gothic feel to it. It was set (and filmed) in Tennessee and it really captured the unique feel of the region. The two grave diggers (played by Kenneth Garner and J.D. Hart) got some good lines and had some enjoyably surreal nightmares on their way to digging up graves in search of treasure. Don’t disturb the dead, the story tells us, no matter how much jewelry they’re wearing.
For The Prisoner of Perdition, we take a trip back to the old west. In the small town of Perdition, an outlaw named Thorne (John Wells) waits in jail. An angry mob wants to play jury and executioner but Marshal Tom Clanton (Rusty James) is determined to keep him safe. However, Thorne has plans of his own and, as becomes apparent throughout the night, he’s also very good at manipulating people. In fact, he’s a little too good at it. It’s almost as if he’s not quite human….
The Prisoner of Perdition may not be the most historically accurate western ever made but that’s actually accounts for a good deal of the segment’s charm. It’s not taking place in the real old west as much as it’s take place in the public’s popular imagination of what the old west was like. As a result, you’ve got panicky townspeople, women posing on the saloon’s balcony, a tough-talking marshal, and a coldly manipulative prisoner. The Prisoner of Perdition looks like it was an enjoyable segment to film, which makes it an enjoyable segment to watch. John Wells does a good job as the charming but evil Thorne.
The Prisoner of Perdition is followed by my favorite story, The Rider. The Rider is about a greedy writer (Wendy Keeling), her henpecked husband (Wynn Reichert), and the Biker (Lee Vervoort) that the writer accidentally runs over while she’s trying to drive and yell at her husband at the same time. In its way, The Rider provides a nice tail-end to Tailypo, though the greedy writer is a far less sympathetic character than the unfortunate hunter. Like Tailypo, The Rider has a lot of atmosphere and an appropriately dark conclusion.
Tales From Parts Unknown is a horror anthology that has an enjoyably retro feel to it. Larry Underwood (a.k.a. Dr Gangrene) is a veteran horror host and he’s a lot of fun to watch as he holds up each brain to the camera and as he explains why the viewer can’t leave the laboratory just yet. Tales From Parts Unknown is an entertaining film, perfect for the Halloween season.
In tonight’s episode of televised horror, it’s David Hasselhoff vs. a mermaid. Basically, the mermaid wants to procreate but it also wants to kill and that leads to all sorts of conflicts and….
Well, listen, this episode is pretty silly. To be honest, they’re all pretty silly. But that’s kind of the fun of it all, isn’t it?
This episode of Baywatch Nights originally aired on October 6th, 1996.
The 2019 film, Girl on the Third Floor, tells the story of Dan Koch (Phil Brooks), a former criminal who says that he’s trying to turn his life around. Phil is married to Liz (Trieste Kelly Dunn) and they’ve not only got a baby on the way, they’ve also got a new house! It’s a surprisingly big house and you have to kind of wonder why no one else has bought it. Maybe it’s because there’s an Episcopalian church right across the street. That definitely would have kept me from moving in.
Still, despite the presence of Anglicans in the neighborhood, Phil moves into the house. He wants to get the house ready before his pregnant wife comes out to join him. Helping Phil out are his dog Cooper and his best friend, Milo (Travis Delgado). Ellie (Karen Woditsch), the rather judgmental pastor who lives in the church, also comes by and visits.
Of course, any old house is going to have its issues. There’s the mysterious sludge that pours out of the walls. There’s the mysterious marbles that keep rolling through the house. There’s the mysterious bumps in the nights and the fact that Cooper seems to be weary of the new home. Dogs can always pick up on evil. Of course, along with being a bit of an idiot, Don is too busy banging his new neighbor, Sarah (Sarah Brooks), to notice.
Don, if you haven’t guessed, is a bit of a jerk. Even though he swears that he feels guilty for cheating on his wife, he still does it. When his friends mysteriously disappear while helping out around the house, Don doesn’t make much of an effort to find them. When Don thinks that there’s a chance his wife might find out what’s been going on at the house, he goes to extreme methods to try to cover everything up. Don thinks that he can control every situation but Sarah and the House both appear to be intent to prove him wrong.
Girl on the Third Floor is a deliberately-paced …. well, I guess you’d call it a haunted house story. I was tempted to call it a ghost story but the film is frequently ambiguous as to whether or not the house is haunted by ghosts or by something far worse. Eventually, we do learn a bit about the house’s past but Girl on the Third Floor is at its best when it leaves you wondering what exactly is going on. Not all questions have to be answered, especially not in a horror movie. In fact, the key to most successful horror tales is the knowledge that some questions will never be answered, no matter how effort we put in to searching for a solution.
Phil Brooks, who wrestled under the name CM Punk, is well-cast as the frequently brutish Don. Brooks convinces us that he does want to be a better person while also showing that he doesn’t really have the inner strength necessary to do so. Trieste Kelly Dunn also does a good job as Don’s wife, who seems like she really does deserve better. Not surprisingly, the film is stolen by Sarah Brooks as the mysterious neighbor. Not only does she get to wear all the best clothes but she also gets all of the best lines and her confidence that Don will fail whatever test she puts before him is both chilling and understandable.
Despite being a little bit slow-paced (especially early on in the film), Girl on the Third Floor has enough atmosphere to hold one’s attention and the final third of the film is enjoyably surreal. Girl on the Third Floor is currently on Netflix. Watch it the next time you’re wondering whether or not to start a home improvement project.
In this interactive fiction game, you are put in the role of a child who, after having what you believe to be a nightmare about being abducted, wakes up to discover that you actually have been abducted. You are now one of several children, living in an isolated mountain cabin and subject to the unpredictable and often cruel whims of your abductor. Escape seems impossible and survival is going to mean making some truly grim choices.
Bogeyman starts out with a dark premise and then it just gets progressively more dark from there. Whenever you think that the story can’t get any more unsettling, it does. It’s not a game where you always get as many choices as you would like. Often, you have to decide between doing a bad thing or doing an even worse thing. It’s also not a short game but it grabs your interest from the very first line and I played all the way to the end because, after spending just a few minutes experiencing life in that cabin, I had to know how it would all end.
Bogeyman is a Twine game and it actually makes good use of the format. White text slowly appears against a black background while subtle but spooky music plays in the background. Your choices are in all caps, highlighting the desperation of your situation. There are a few graphics but most of the game takes place in your head. The game does such a good job of describing the cabin and the situation that you feel like you’re there.
Well-written and carefully put together, Bogeyman is an IF game that sticks with you. You can experience it here.
Through the Shattered Lens 