The Killer, Short Film Review by Case Wright

Posted on October 14, 2025 by casewright

Once again, I have been thwarted from putting a title card from IMDB in my post. In this case, I think they are kind of shy. I was not even able to provide a link.
It’s called The Killer and it was created by OTP_tv.

The premise is what if a killer really needs to go to the bathroom after the murder? Funny things happen – that’s what! I would almost describe this short as pure comedy, until the end. I was the first person to watch the short because it dropped today and I coincidentally was around at the time. The short is simple and does not try to be too many things, but it does achieve humor and that’s a good thing.

The short begins with a couple bantering about wine and poo….as you do. Then, it appears the wife is bothered by the joke. The husband is stabbed in the bathroom and hilarity ensues. This is a fun short and does not take itself too seriously. If you have 3 or 4 minutes to spare, let it be The Killer.

I reached out to the creators on YouTube and if they get back to me, I will update the review with additional details.

Horror On The Lens: Scream of the Wolf (dir by Dan Curtis)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s horror on the lens, how about a little werwolf action?

In the 1974 made-for-TV movie, Scream of the Wolf, Peter Graves is a writer who is asked to help solve a series of mysterious murders. The fact that both human footprints and wolf tracks have been found at each murder scene has led some people to assume that the killer must be a werewolf! Will Graves be able to prove them wrong or will it turn out that they are right? Graves calls in a famous hunter (Clint Walker) to help track down the killer but it turns out that the hunter has secrets of his own.

Scream of the Wolf features a screenplay from Richard Matheson and it was directed by television horror specialist, Dan Curtis. It feels like it was probably meant to be a pilot in which Peter Graves would deal with a supernatural mystery on a weekly basis. Even if the movie didn’t lead to a series, it’s still enjoyably atmospheric.

Artwork of the Day: Thrilling Mystery (by Rafael DeSoto)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

by Rafael DeSoto

This pointed cover is from 1936.

Music Video of the Day: Killed By Death by Motorhead (1984, directed by Rod Swenson)

Posted on October 14, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Back in the day, this music video was banned by MTV for what the channel considered to be “senseless and excessive violence.” Lemmy driving and giving everyone the finger really upset them.

Director Ron Swenson was best-known for being the manager of the Plasmatics.

Enjoy!

Horror On TV: Hammer House of Horror #11: Visitor From The Grave (dir by Peter Sasdy)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For tonight’s horror on television, we have the 11th episode of Hammer House of Horror! This atmospheric episode features Kathryn Leigh Scott as a woman who fears that she is being haunted by the ghost of a would-be rapist that she earlier killed. Simon MacCorkindale plays her husband, who has secret of his own.

This episode originally aired on November 22nd, 1980.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: 2 Bedroom 1 Bath (dir by Stanley Yung)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 2014 shocker, a young couple moves into what seems like a perfect 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment. Rachel (Michele Hooks) and Kevin (Andrew W. Walker) are hoping to start a family in their new apartment. Their landlady (Dee Wallace) is very happy to hear that. In fact, it’s hard not to feel that she’s a bit too happy to hear it….

In many ways, 2 Bedroom 1 Bath is a typical “is it haunted or not?” thriller. From the minute that they move into the apartment, Kevin starts to have strange and nightmarish visions. He imagines himself trying to pick up a baby, just for it to fall to the ground and shatter like a doll. Dark shadows move in the background while pale faces are reflected in the windows. After taking a shower, Rachel doesn’t notice that ghostly figure in the mirror behind her. Things get creepier and stranger after Rachel gets pregnant and Kevin finds himself not only tempted by student but also taunted by mysterious messages that appear in the mail box.

It’s a bit predictable but Hooks and Walker both give strong performances and director Stanley Yung does a great job of creating an ominous and dream-like atmosphere. This is a film that features several dozen jump scares and just about everyone of them is effective. It’s an effective piece of haunted apartment horror.

As for Eric Roberts, his role is a small one. He plays the fertility specialist and he has three scenes with Rachel and Kevin. When Roberts first appeared, I assumed his character was going to be revealed to be a part of the supernatural conspiracy but no. He was just a well-intentioned doctor with two patients who had no idea how much trouble they were about to face. To be honest, I’m so used to seeing Eric Roberts playing villains that it was kind of nice to see him playing a sympathetic professional for once.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Made-For-TV Horror Review: Mind Over Murder (dir by Ivan Nagy)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 1979 made-for-TV movie, Mind over Murder, Deborah Raffin stars as Suzy.

Suzy is a model and an actress. She has a nice apartment, which she shares with her football-loving boyfriend, Ben (Bruce Davison). She has a best friend (Penelope Willis), who is constantly looking to get laid. Her latest job requires her to dance with a man who is dressed up like a giant hamburger. It would seem that, by the standards of 1979, Suzy has the perfect life.

However, her life is turned upside down when she suddenly starts having visions. All of the action around her will either switch to slow motion or stop altogether while Suzy has a vision of a scary-looking bald man (Andrew Prine) stalking her. Her most disturbing vision involves Suzy hearing the sound of a pilot begging for help while his airplane crashes. Ben tells her that she’s probably just working too hard but, the next morning, Suzy looks at a newspaper and immediately sees a headline about a plane crash.

With Ben dismissing her concerns, Suzy takes it upon herself to meet with the two detectives (David Ackroyd and Robert Englund — yes, Robert Englund!) investigating the plane crash. They are surprisingly sympathetic to Suzy’s story of hearing the plane crash before it happened. They arrange for her to meet a psychic researcher, who explains that Suzy must have some sort of mental connection to whoever was responsible for the crash. While Ben continues to be skeptical and jealous of all the time that she’s spending with one of the detectives, Suzy keeping having disturbing visions of the bald man….

Considering its origins as a made-for-TV movie, Mind Over Murder is a surprisingly frightening film. This is a film that proves that slow motion can make just about anything creepy and Deborah Raffin does a good job of showing us just how much Suzy dreads those moments when everything starts to slow down and she realizes that she’s about to get hit with another vision. That said, what truly makes this film frightening is the performance of Andrew Prine, who plays the bald man as being every woman’s nightmare. He’s a misogynist, the type who is convinced that every woman should be in love with him and that those who aren’t should be punished. Whether he’s appearing in Suzy’s visions or stepping into her reality, Andrew Prine is never less than terrifying.

Along with featuring a scary performance from Prine, this film also features a genuinely likable one from Robert Englund. Englund is playing a nice guy here. In fact, before he made horror history in A Nightmare in Elm Street, Englund almost always played nice guys. It’s interesting to watch him here, with his friendly manner and his polite style, and to imagine the roles Englund would have ended up playing if he hadn’t gotten typecast as a horribly scarred serial killer.

The first hour of Mind over Murder is brilliant. The final 30 minutes, unfortunately, find the film turning into a far more conventional thriller, as Suzy’s visions are replaced by the Bald Man actually coming after her. That said, this is still an effective horror thriller and one that deserves to be rediscovered this Halloween season.

Doctor Who — The Brain Of Morbius (1976, directed by Christopher Barry)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

The Time Lords once again decide that they need the Doctor to do their dirty work for them. The TARDIS, with the Doctor (Tom Baker) and Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) on board, is sent to the rocky planet Karn.

On Karn, the crazed Dr. Solon (Phillip Madoc) lives in a castle and is kidnapping shipwrecked travelers and using their limbs to build a body for Morbius (Stuart Fell with the voice of Michael Spice). Morbius was once a Time Lord but, after being found guilty of war crimes, his body was destroyed but his disembodied brain survived. It now sits atop a makeshift body that has been constructed out of several different alien races. Solon takes one look at the Doctor’s head and decides that it would be the perfect house for the brain of Morbius.

There’s a subplot about the Sisterhood of Karn and the Elixer of Life but make no mistake. This is Doctor Who‘s take on Frankenstein, with the Baron reimagined as a mad scientist on a distant planet and the Monster reimagined as being not at all sympathetic. When I was a kid and first watching these episodes of PBS, The Brain of Morbius was one of my favorites because of the Frankenstein connection and also the look of Morbius. The original Doctor Who was known for its often-shoddy monsters but Morbius was a definite triumph. The brain sitting in a transparent bowl atop a stitched together body was one of the defining images of classic Doctor Who.

The Brain of Morbius is also known for a controversial moment during the final episode, where the Doctor and Morbius engage in a battle of the minds. On a view-screen, the faces of the three former Doctors appear, followed by several faces that had never been shown before. It was actually an in-joke on the part of production. The faces were all members of the Doctor Who crew. For decades, though, this in-joke led to a fierce debate whether or not William Hartnell was actually the first Doctor. This, of course, was back when it was still believed that a Time Lord could only regenerate 12 times. The Doctor Who revival tossed out that idea, along with a lot of other good ideas.

All these years later, The Brain of Morbius still remains one of my favorites of the Fourth Doctor’s adventures. This serial was the Tom Baker/Elisabeth Sladen era at its best.

Hercules (1958, directed by Pietro Francisci)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

In ancient Greece, Hercules (Steve Reeves) saves the life of the princess Iole (Sylva Koscina) when she nearly loses control of her chariot. Iole tells Hercules about how her father, Pelias (Ivo Garrani), become the ruler of the kingdom after the murder of the previous king and the exile of the rightful heir to the throne, Jason (Fabrizio Mioni).

Hercules accompanies Iole back to the kingdom, where he proves himself by doing typical Hercules things like defeating both a lion and a bull. When Hercules’s discovers that his best friend, Chiron (Alfo Poli) is the number one suspect in the murder of the previous king, he goes on a quest with Jason to recover the Golden Fleece, which will reveal the truth.

All sorts of Greek myths are crammed together as Hercules and Jason search for the Golden Fleece, fight a dragon, and are briefly held prisoner by Amazon Queen Antea (Gianna Maria Canale). (The dragon’s roar was lifted from a Godzilla film.) Hercules was the first of several Italian film to be made about Hercules. American bodybuilder Steve Reeves had the right physique for Hercules but the wrong voice and, even in the English language dub, it’s obvious that we are not actually hearing Reeves when he speaks.

Hercules has a deserved reputation for being campy but it’s not as bad as you might think if you’ve only seen the washed-out and heavily edited version that was used for Mystery Science Theater 3000. (I say that as someone who loves MST 3K and who dreamed of being one of their writers when I was growing up.) If you can actually see a restored print of the film, ancient Greece actually looks pretty good and the the deep colors go a long way towards establishing the grandeur of a mythological age. It’s easy to laugh at Steve Reeves and his expressionless acting but he had the right look for Hercules. The only thing really required of Hercules in this movie is that he be strong and Reeves was definitely that.

Distributed in America by Joseph E. Levine, Hercules was a worldwide success and there would be 18 sequels, with Reg Park eventually taking over the role. Steve Reeves, having been seriously injured while filming The Last Days of Pompeii in 1959, eventually retired from acting and spent the rest of his life running a ranch in Valley Center, California and promoting drug-free bodybuilding. Arnold Schwarzenegger frequently cited him as an inspiration for his own acting career. Steve Reeves passed away at the age of 74 in 2000.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Barbara Steele in Black Sunday

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The British-born actress, Barbara Steele, became a star in Italy in the 60s, working with directors from Riccardo Freda to Mario Bava to Federico Fellini. One of Steele’s defining roles was in Bava’s 1960 film, Black Sunday.

In this scene, Steele’s witch is sentenced to be executed and, since this is a Bava film, it won’t be a quick execution. What makes this scene stand-out is Steele’s defiance. It’s hard not to admire her refusal to give those judging her what they want. You watch this scene and you have no doubt that if you get cursed by Barbara Steele, it’s going to be a curse for life.