Billy Colton (Derek Rydall) is a teenager who has a reputation for exaggeration. Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed) is his next door neighbor, a high-priced prostitute who does not mind if Billy spies on her. When Billy tries to tell everyone about his wild new neighbor, no one believes him. Billy decides to prove his story by grabbing his camera and sneaking next door. Instead of getting proof that she’s a prostitute, Billy witnesses his neighbor being murdered by a robed Satanist, who just happens to be Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield), Billy’s hated science teacher! Billy goes to the police with his camera but Captain Crane (Richard Roundtree) points out that Billy forgot to take off the lens cap.
What can Billy do? He knows that Zachary and his strange brother, Stanley (Michael J. Pollard), are sacrificing prostitutes to Satan but he can’t get anyone to believe him. Working with his best friend (Teresa Van der Woude) and a burned out ex-cop (Elliott Gould), Billy sets out to stop the Willard Brothers.
Combine Rear Window with late 80s Satanic conspiracy theories and this is the result. Not as bad as it sounds, Night Visitor is an unfairly obscure movie about Satanism in suburbia. While it has its share of dumb moments (like when Billy uses a watermelon to end a car chase), it also has enough good moments that suggest that Night Visitor is deliberately satirizing the excesses of the Satanic panic that, at the time of filming, was sweeping across the nation. It also has a once in a lifetime cast. Along with those already mentioned, keep an eye out for character actor extraordinaire Henry Gibson and future adult film star Teri Weigel. Allen Garfield is especially good as the evil Mr. Willard. Any actor can say, “I sacrifice you in the name of Satan.” It takes a good actor like Allen Garfield to say it without making anyone laugh.
One final note: this movie was originally called Never Cry Devil, which is a much better title than Night Visitor.
Today’s horror scene that I love is from 1992’s Candyman.
For the record, after watching this film, I stood in front of a mirror and I said Candyman three times. I’m waiting until I have something to be mad about before I say it two more times.
Voodoo Island is an early text adventure from Angelsoft, Inc. Angelsoft was Infocom’s only serious competitor when it came to creating challenging and rewarding text adventures. Typically, both an Angelsoft and an Infocom game would require the player to solve puzzles and search for clues. What made Angelsoft unique was that the results of solving the puzzles were frequently randomized. You could solve a puzzle and still die, just due to the luck of the draw. That may be why Infocom outlasted Angelsoft by several years.
In Voodoo Island, you are the sole survivor of a shipwreck. You wake up on the beach, confused but with the feeling that someone has been watching you. The game’s introduction establishes Voodoo Island‘s tone early:
Spend enough time exploring the island and eventually, you will find a hotel. Exploring the hotel leads to scenes like this:
The first time I tried to play the game, it took me a while to make it to the top floor of the hotel. That is where I discovered not only Doctor Beauvais but also Sharleen, who the game describes as being “buxom” and “blonde.” Considering the target audience of this game, I assumed that buxom and blonde was going to be a good thing. I turned out to be wrong:
Your goal is to get off the island and avoid joining the living dead. It is not easy but I have discovered a few things that might help: examine everything, grab everything that you can, and remember that just because you don’t see something the first time you look, that doesn’t mean you won’t see something the second time.
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 is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
This October, I am going to be using our 4 Shots From 4 Films feature to pay tribute to some of my favorite horror directors, in alphabetical order! That’s right, we’re going from Argento to Zombie in one month!
Today’s director is one of the most important names in the history of American horror cinema, George Romero!
4 Shots From 4 Films
Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir by George Romero)
Can you figure out what’s going in today’s horror on the lens, the 1965 film Monster A Go Go?
This sci-fi/horror hybrid details what happens when an astronaut lands on Earth and promptly disappears. Much like The Creeping Terror, this film makes frequent use of a narrator. I always appreciate it when movies like this come with a narrator.
Anyway, Monster A Go Go was reportedly started by Bill Rebane in 1961. When he ran out of money, the film sat unfinished for four years. That’s when Herschell Gordon Lewis bought the film, added some additional scenes, and then released it on a double bill with one of his own films. Hence, if Monster A Go Go seems like two different movies crammed together … well, that’s pretty much what it is.
Along with its interesting production history, Monster A Go Go is also well-remembered for its amazingly nonsensical ending. I imagine that this film led to a few drive-in riots.
In tonight’s episode of Thriller, Boris Karloff not only hosts but also stars!
An adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe short story, this episode is about a man (Sidney Blackmer) who has very good reason to fear that he might end up being buried alive! Karloff appears as his loyal physician, who might be Blackmer’s only hope to avoid being murdered by his wife and her lover.
Hell of the Living Dead, a 1980 Italian zombie film, is a movie known by many different names. Some of these names are more memorable than others.
For instance, it’s known as Virus, which isn’t a very good name. It’s kind of boring. Plus, a virus could lead to anything. Sure, a virus could turn someone into a zombie but it could also just mean a week in bed. Plus, there’s already a thousand movies called Virus.
Night of the Zombies is a bit more specific, though still rather generic. Just about every Italian horror film that came out in 1980 was about zombies and most of them took place at night.
Island of the Living Dead, at the very least, let’s you know where the majority of the movie takes place. That said, it’s kind of a dishonest title. The island isn’t just occupied by the living dead. There’s also a primitive tribe, the members of which pop up occasionally to throw spears at a group of soldiers and a journalist.
I absolutely love the title Zombie Creeping Flesh. Seriously, I don’t know why they bothered to come up with so many alternate titles when they already had Zombie Creeping Flesh.
However, this film is best known as Hell of the Living Dead and, actually, I guess that’s a pretty good title. I mean, it’s totally and completely over the top. Add to that the title almost feels like a challenge being specifically issued to the fans of George Romero’s zombie films. It’s as if the film is saying, “If you can’t handle the Night or the Dawn, the Hell is absolutely going to kill you!”
Anyway, this is an extremely low-budget film from director Bruno Mettei and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso. The team of Mattei/Fragasso were famous for producing some of the most ludicrously silly horror films to ever come out of Italy. (Outside of his collaboration with Mattei, Fragasso is best known for directing Troll 2.) A typical Mattei/Fragasso film is entertaining without being particularly good. They were never ones to allow a thing like a lack of money to stand in the way of their narrative ambitions.
For instance, in Hell of the Living Dead, there’s one isolated scene that’s supposed to take place at the United Nations. The scene appears to have been filmed in a lecture hall at a small university. One delegate angrily declares that he is sick of everyone exploiting his zombie-occupied country. Someone else suggests that maybe they should take a break until tomorrow. It’s an incredibly inauthentic scene that adds nothing to the story but that didn’t keep the team of Mattei and Fragasso from including it in the film. They were determined to have a UN scene and they weren’t going to let a lack of money or access stop them.
Anyway, the majority of the film deals with a zombie outbreak on a small tropical island. The island is almost exclusively made up of stock footage. A typical scene will feature a character like journalist Lia (played by Margit Evelyn Newtown) standing in the middle of the frame. She looks to the right and we get some grainy stock footage of a bat or something similar. She looks to her left and we get some faded stock footage of a tiger.
As I mentioned previously, the island also has primitive natives. Whenever you hear the drums in the distance, it’s important to toss off your shirt, paint your face, and start jogging. Otherwise, you might get killed. You know how that goes.
And then there’s the zombies, of course. The zombies get an origin story, something to do with an accident at top secret chemical plant. At the start of the film, a rat attacks a scientist. I’m assuming the rat was carrying the virus but it’s just as possible that Mattei just decided to throw in a random rat attack. (His best film was literally just 90 minutes of rat attacks.) Regardless, the zombie effects actually aren’t that bad but the problem is that whenever the zombies show up, they have to compete with all of the stock footage. When the zombies aren’t dealing with animal footage that was originally shot for a mondo film, they keep busy by eating nearly everyone that they meet. A group of soldiers have been sent to take care of the zombies but since none of them are particularly bright, they don’t have much luck.
Hell of the Living Dead has a reputation for being one of the worst zombie films ever made. I don’t know if I would go that far. It’s watchable in a “what the Hell did I just see?” sort of way. And in the end, isn’t that kind of the point of a film like this?
Personally, I could go either way as far as curses are concerned. I went through a period of time when, though I kinda kept it to myself, I was really into learning about the history of magick and trying to learn how to cast hexes and all the rest of that but then I realized that I could continue to wear black without necessarily having to tap into any supernatural powers. As well, I’ve never bought into the idea that karma’s going to get anyone. To me, the universe is a pretty random place. Not everything happens for a reason. That said, I would never say that I’m a complete unbeliever. A rational world is a boring world. If I had to choose between hanging out with teacher at Hogwarts or Neil DeGrasse Tyson, I’m going with the wizard.
I may not completely believe in curses but I do find them interesting to read about. That’s why I’ve always enjoyed reading Hollywood Hex, a copy of which I found at Recycled Books in Denton, Texas. (This was during the same shopping trip that led to me finding and buying A Taste of Blood and House of Horror. It was quite a productive trip for this lover of all things horror!)
Hollywood Hex is a tour through the history of morbid Hollywood, providing details on not only the death cults that have sprung up around certain ill-fated actors but also the films that have, for whatever reason, come to be known as cursed. Many of these films, like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, were originally sold as being cursed as a publicity stunt before real-life events caused even the most sober of minds to wonder if maybe there really were demonic forces at work. (The chapter that covers both the production of Rosemary’s Baby and the crimes of Charles Manson is especially creepy.) Some of the other films — like Twilight Zone — The Movie and The Crow — were cursed by onset negligence. And, finally, there’s the incredibly tragic stories of the Poltergeist franchise. If any films could truly claim to be cursed, it would be those films.
Hollywood Hex is fascinating reading for both the morbidly and cinematically-minded.
Ever since I made the mistake of watching Wolves at the Doora few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the 2008 home invasion film, The Strangers.
I’ve always struggled with my feelings towards The Strangers. On the one hand, this is a horror film that actually scared me. Considering the amount of horror films that I’ve watched (not to mention the number of home invasion films), that’s really saying something. Since a horror film is meant to frighten, The Strangers has to be considered a success. At the same time, The Strangers always leaves me so upset that, after watching, I inevitably swear to myself that I’ll never watch it again. And yet, whenever I see it playing on cable, I can’t help but watch at least a little of it. Even knowing what’s going to happen and how the film is going to end, The Strangers retains a hypnotic power.
The Strangers is a simple film. There’s a house out in the middle of nowhere. Having just left a wedding reception, James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and his girlfriend, Kristen (Liv Tyler), arrive at the house. James and Kristen are not having a good night. James asked Kristen to marry him. Kristen turned him down. That’ll make any night awkward, regardless of how nice the house is.
James and Kristen settle into the house for the night, both of them eager to get away from each other in the morning. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. A young woman (Gemma Ward) is looking for someone named Tamara. When told that there is no Tamara in the house, she replies, “See you later.”
The girl’s not lying. Later, while James is out sulking, Kristen realizes that she’s not alone. There are three strangers, all wearing masks. They’re watching. They’re waiting…
The rest of the film details, in excruciating detail, the rest of the night. What makes the film particularly disturbing is that neither James nor Kristen are dumb but they’re still powerless against those three strangers. Just as the strangers hide their faces, they also hide their motive. The closest that Kristen and James get to an explanation for why they’re being targeted is that “You were home.” To the strangers, it’s a game. They’re like three cats, playing with a cricket. They’re not going to back off until they’ve removed at least one leg.
(James and Kristen, I should add, are not the only potential victims in The Strangers. There’s also Mike, who is James’s best friend and who is supposed to pick him up in the morning. Of everyone in the movie, I always feel the worst for Mike. For one thing, he was just trying to do his friend a favor. For another, he’s played by Glenn Howerton. Has It’s Sunny In Philadelphia done a The Gang Plans A Home Invasion episode?)
The Strangers is an absolutely terrifying film, specifically because it’s so easy to relate to Kristen and James. They remind the viewers of their friends. They remind the viewers of themselves. Watching them, we’re reminded of every time that we’ve heard a strange sound in the night and tried to tell ourselves that it was nothing. We live in an increasingly unstable world and The Strangers perfectly captures the feeling of living under the shadow of death. It’s a bit like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, without any “it’s just a movie” moments to provide us with any sense of security. The film starts with a message telling us that we’re about to see a true story. Even though we know that might just be hyperbole, we also know that what we’re seeing could very well have happened. In fact, it could happen to us as soon as the movie ends.
Billy Colton (Derek Rydall) is a teenager who has a reputation for exaggeration. Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed) is his next door neighbor, a high-priced prostitute who does not mind if Billy spies on her. When Billy tries to tell everyone about his wild new neighbor, no one believes him. Billy decides to prove his story by grabbing his camera and sneaking next door. Instead of getting proof that she’s a prostitute, Billy witnesses his neighbor being murdered by a robed Satanist, who just happens to be Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield), Billy’s hated science teacher! Billy goes to the police with his camera but Captain Crane (Richard Roundtree) points out that Billy forgot to take off the lens cap.
Through the Shattered Lens 