Tag Archives: Horrorthon

Guilty Pleasure #86: The Horror at 37,000 Feet (dir by David Lowell Rich)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I imagine that it should go without saying that, if you’re on an airplane and you’re flying high above the ground, the last thing that you want to deal with is a bunch of angry ghost druids.

And yet, that’s exactly what happens in this made-for-TV horror film from 1973.

The ghost druids are upset because two architects (played by Roy Thinnes and Jane Merrow) have traveled to England, specifically so that they can supervise the deconstruction of ancient druid altar. Now, they’re flying the pieces of the altar back over the ocean so that the altar can be reconstructed in the United States. The spirits of the ancient druids aren’t happy about being moved so they start doing everything they can to make the journey difficult.

First, they attempt to freeze the plane. When that doesn’t work, they decide to rip it in half. One of the passengers, Mrs. Pinder (Tammy Grimes), suggests that maybe the druids will settle down if they’re offered a sacrifice. When the druids reject an offer of a doll, the passengers start to wonder if maybe the spirits would be happier with a human sacrifice.

Although some of the passengers are reluctant to buy into the whole sacrifice thing, a few of them do start to come around. For instance, there’s a perpetually angry businessman who is played by Buddy Ebsen. Once he realizes that the druids aren’t going anywhere, he has no problem with the idea of a human sacrifice. There’s also a cowboy played by Will Hutchins. If sacrificing a human is what he has to do to have another chance to ride the range, that’s what he’s going to do. Paul Winfield plays a distinguished doctor who tries to keep everyone calm while Chuck Connors is stuck in the cockpit, trying to keep the plane in the air while his passengers and crew debate the ethics of human sacrifice.

And then there’s William Shatner.

Shatner plays a former priest who has lost his faith. From the minute he gets on the plane, he starts drinking and he doesn’t stop for almost the entire movie. It doesn’t matter what’s happening on the plane, Shatner always has a glass in his hand. Playing a character who never has anything positive to say, Shatner smirks through the entire film. Shatner delivers all of his lines in his standard halfting and overdramatic fashion and it’s something of a wonder to behold. Shatner has said that The Horror At 37,000 Feet may be the worst movie in which he ever appeared and just one look at his filmography will show why this is such a bold statement.

The Horror at 37,000 Feet is definitely a film of its time. The plane comes complete with a swinging cocktail lounge, William Shatner wears a turtle neck, and all of the flight attendants wear boots and miniskirts. Everything about this film screams 1973. It’s an incredibly silly but undeniably fun movie. With a running time of only 73 minutes, the pace is fast and the druids don’t waste any time getting down to business. The film’s on YouTube so check it out the next time you’ve an hour and 13 minutes to kill.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

  1. Half-Baked
  2. Save The Last Dance
  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
  4. The Jeremy Kyle Show
  5. Invasion USA
  6. The Golden Child
  7. Final Destination 2
  8. Paparazzi
  9. The Principal
  10. The Substitute
  11. Terror In The Family
  12. Pandorum
  13. Lambada
  14. Fear
  15. Cocktail
  16. Keep Off The Grass
  17. Girls, Girls, Girls
  18. Class
  19. Tart
  20. King Kong vs. Godzilla
  21. Hawk the Slayer
  22. Battle Beyond the Stars
  23. Meridian
  24. Walk of Shame
  25. From Justin To Kelly
  26. Project Greenlight
  27. Sex Decoy: Love Stings
  28. Swimfan
  29. On the Line
  30. Wolfen
  31. Hail Caesar!
  32. It’s So Cold In The D
  33. In the Mix
  34. Healed By Grace
  35. Valley of the Dolls
  36. The Legend of Billie Jean
  37. Death Wish
  38. Shipping Wars
  39. Ghost Whisperer
  40. Parking Wars
  41. The Dead Are After Me
  42. Harper’s Island
  43. The Resurrection of Gavin Stone
  44. Paranormal State
  45. Utopia
  46. Bar Rescue
  47. The Powers of Matthew Star
  48. Spiker
  49. Heavenly Bodies
  50. Maid in Manhattan
  51. Rage and Honor
  52. Saved By The Bell 3. 21 “No Hope With Dope”
  53. Happy Gilmore
  54. Solarbabies
  55. The Dawn of Correction
  56. Once You Understand
  57. The Voyeurs 
  58. Robot Jox
  59. Teen Wolf
  60. The Running Man
  61. Double Dragon
  62. Backtrack
  63. Julie and Jack
  64. Karate Warrior
  65. Invaders From Mars
  66. Cloverfield
  67. Aerobicide 
  68. Blood Harvest
  69. Shocking Dark
  70. Face The Truth
  71. Submerged
  72. The Canyons
  73. Days of Thunder
  74. Van Helsing
  75. The Night Comes for Us
  76. Code of Silence
  77. Captain Ron
  78. Armageddon
  79. Kate’s Secret
  80. Point Break
  81. The Replacements
  82. The Shadow
  83. Meteor
  84. Last Action Hero
  85. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

A Blast From The Past: A Trip To The Moon (dir. by Georges Melies)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s celebrate October by taking a trip to the moon with classic film that came out 123 years ago?

Directed and written by Georges Melies, A Trip to The Moon is often cited as the first sci-fi film and the image of the capsule crashing into the eye of the man in the moon is one of the most iconic in film history.  Seen today, the film seems both charmingly innocent and remarkably ahead of its time.

For me, it always takes a minute or two to adjust to the aesthetic of early films.  We’ve grown so used to all the editing tricks that modern filmmakers use to tell their stories that these old silent films, with their lack of dramatic camera movement and obvious theatrical origins, often take some effort to get used to.  Still, the effort is often worth it.

Here then is Georges Melies’s 1902 science fiction epic, A Trip To The Moon.

The Unominated #21: Southern Comfort (dir by Walter Hill)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Though the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claim that the Oscars honor the best of the year, we all know that there are always worthy films and performances that end up getting overlooked.  Sometimes, it’s because the competition too fierce.  Sometimes, it’s because the film itself was too controversial.  Often, it’s just a case of a film’s quality not being fully recognized until years after its initial released.  This series of reviews takes a look at the films and performances that should have been nominated but were, for whatever reason, overlooked.  These are the Unnominated.

1981’s Southern Comfort takes place in 1973.  While America tries to wind down its presence in Vietnam, a squad of nine National Guardsmen take part in war games in the Louisiana bayous.  The squad is led by the ineffectual Sgt. Crawford Poole (Peter Coyote) while other members include the trigger-happy Lonnie Reece (Fred Ward), the weed-smoking Tyrone Cribbs (T.K. Carter), the cowardly Private Simms (Franklyn Seales), and the tightly-wound Coach Bowden (Alan Autry).  Poole may be in charge but most of the members of the squad seem to look up to the laid-back and friendly Private Spencer (Keith Carradine).  The newest member of the squad is Charles Hardin (Powers Boothe), a sober-minded transfer from Texas who doesn’t seem to get along with anyone but Spencer.

With the exception of Poole and Hardin, no one takes the weekend maneuvers seriously until they find themselves lost in the bayou and it becomes obvious that Poole has no idea what he’s doing.  When they come across some canoes that belong to some Cajun trappers, they decide to “borrow” them.  When the trappers protest, Reece fires his weapon at them.  Reece’s gun is loaded with blanks but the trappers don’t know that.  They fire back, killing Poole.

The national guardsmen now find themselves lost and being stalked by the trappers, a largely unseen force that always seems to attack out of nowhere.  The men have no idea where they are.  The trappers, on the other hand, have lived in the swamps their entire lives.  The guardsmen bicker and argue over the best way to respond.  Some want to fight back and some just want to get back to civilization.  One-by-one, the men are picked off until only two remain.

Though the film is a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for the Vietnam War, Southern Comfort is still a deeply affecting and suspenseful mix of horror and action.  Director Walter Hill keeps the action moving at a quick pace and the film, which was shot on location and featured scenes shot during an actual Cajun celebration, perfectly captures the languid yet ominous atmosphere of the bayous.  As soon as the men see those canoes unattended, we know that they’re going to steal them and that they are making the biggest mistake of their lives.  Keith Carradine and Powers Boothe both give powerful performances in the lead roles and the members of the supporting cast — especially Alan Autry and Fred Ward — make a strong impression as well.  I especially liked the performance of Brion James, who has a small role as a one-armed Cajun who is more crafty than he looks.

Being a mix of horror and action, it’s probably not a shock that Southern Comfort was ignored by the Academy.  At the very least, I would have found room for Ry Cooder’s original score and Andrew Laszlo’s haunting cinematography.

Previous Entries In The Unnominated:

  1. Auto Focus 
  2. Star 80
  3. Monty Python and The Holy Grail
  4. Johnny Got His Gun
  5. Saint Jack
  6. Office Space
  7. Play Misty For Me
  8. The Long Riders
  9. Mean Streets
  10. The Long Goodbye
  11. The General
  12. Tombstone
  13. Heat
  14. Kansas City Bomber
  15. Touch of Evil
  16. The Mortal Storm
  17. Honky Tonk Man
  18. Two-Lane Blacktop
  19. The Terminator
  20. The Ninth Configuration

Horror On TV: Hammer House Of Horror #8: Children of the Full Moon (dir by Tom Clegg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Children of the Full Moon, a married couple on holiday has some car trouble.  They find a large house that is looked over by Ms. Ardoy (Diana Dors) and inhabited by a multitude of children, who may or may not be werewolves.  This episode starts out somewhat light but the tone eventually shifts and things end on a memorably dark note.  Diane Dors gives a wonderful performance as the mysterious Ms. Ardoy.  Be careful about where you take your vacation.

This episode originally aired on November 1st, 1980.

October Hacks: Silent Night, Bloody Night (dir by Theodore Gershuny)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Filmed in 1972 and subsequently released in 1974, Silent Night Bloody Night is a real treat, an atmospheric thriller that has a wonderfully complicated plot that will keep you guessing.

Silent Night Bloody Night opens with attorney John Carter (Patrick O’Neal) arriving in a small town on Christmas Eve.  He’s traveling with his assistant and mistress, Ingrid (Astrid Heeren).  He’s been hired by Jeff Butler (James Patterson) to oversee the sell of his grandfather’s home.  When Carter arrives, he finds that the town is run by a group of elderly eccentrics, including the mute Charlie Towman (John Carradine).  Charlie communicates by ringing a bell and he’s the editor of the town newspaper.  Carter convinces the town council to buy the Butler mansion.  Then, Carter and Ingrid go to the mansion, make love, and are promptly brutally hacked to death by an unseen assailant with an axe.  It’s a shocking moment because, up until their death scene, Carter and Ingrid seemed to be our main characters.  Much as with Marion Crane’s shower in Psycho, their murder leaves an absence at the heart of the film.

That night, our new hero, Jeff Butler (James Patterson) comes to the isolated town to check on how the sale is going.  He finds the mansion locked up and no one willing to talk about John Carter.  With the help of local girl Diane (Mary Woronov), Jeff investigates his grandfather’s death and discovers that the town is full of secrets and people who are willing to kill to maintain them.  As we discover through some wonderfully dream-like flashbacks, Jeff’s grandfather died nearly 40 years ago when he was set on fire in his own home.  Those aren’t the only flashbacks to the film.  In an extended sepia-toned flashback, we learn about the previous inhabitants of the house.  They are all played by former Warhol superstars, including Candy Darling, Ondine, Tally Brown, Charlotte Fairchild, Lewis Love, Harvey Cohen, George Trakas, Susan Rothenberg, and Jack Smith.  (Mary Woronov was, herself, a former member of Warhol’s entourage.)

Silent Night Bloody Night has a terrible reputation.  Mary Woronov, who was married to director Theodore Gershuny at the time she made the film, later described it as being “lousy.”  Personally, I think the film’s reputation has more to do with all of the grainy, bad copies of the film that have turned up in various Mill Creek box sets over the years than the quality of the film itself.  (Silent Night Bloody Night is in public domain.)  The film itself is atmospheric, memorably bloody, and — for those who have the patience to deal with the occasional slow spot — effectively creepy.  Mary Woronov is a likable lead and the Warhol superstars definitely make an impression.  The film plays out at its own deliberate pace and, at its best, it duplicates the feeling of a particularly macabre holiday dream.

Director Theodore Gershuny uses the low budget to his advantage and the sepia-toned flashbacks are truly disturbing and haunting.  Ultimately, Silent Night Bloody Night feels like a dream itself and the mystery’s solution is less important than the journey taken to reach it.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Messiah of Evil (dir by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I can still remember the first time that I saw the 1973 film, Messiah of Evil.

It was on a Monday night, many years ago. I had recently picked up a 10-movie DVD box set called Tales of Terror and I was using the movies inside to try to deal with a bout of insomnia. I had already watched The Hatchet Murders (a.k,a. Deep Red) and The House At The Edge of the Park and, at two in the morning, I was faced with a decision. Should I try to sleep or should I watch one more movie?

Naturally, I chose to watch one more movie and the movie I picked was Messiah of Evil. So, there I was at two in the morning, sitting at the edge of my bed in my underwear and watching an obscure horror movie while rain fell outside.

And, seriously — this movie totally FREAKED me out!

Messiah of Evil opens with a man (played by future director Walter Hill) stumbling through the night, obviously trying to escape from something.  A mysterious woman appears and kills him.  We’re left to wonder who the man was supposed to be as the film doesn’t ever really return to his murder.  In most films this would be a weakness but it feels appropriate for Messiah of Evil, a film that plays out with the visual style and fragmented logic of a particularly intense nightmare.

The rest of the story tells the story of Arletty (Marianna Hill), a neurotic woman who drives to an isolated California town in order to visit her father. Her father is an artist who specializes in painting eerie pictures of large groups of black-clad people. However, once she arrives at his home, Arletty discovers that her father has vanished and left behind a diary where he claims that a darkness has overtaken the town.  Meanwhile, it sometimes appear as if the people in the paintings are moving or threatening to come out of the walls.

Meanwhile, one crazed man (Elisha Cook, Jr.) explains that “the dark stranger” is returning.  An albino (Bennie Robinson) drives a truck up and down the street and talks about how he likes to listen to “Wagner.”  The back of the truck is full of blank-faced people staring at the sky and the Albino eats a rat.  Finally, a mysterious man named Thom (Michael Greer) is wandering about town with two groupies (played by Anitaa Ford and Joy Bang) and interviewing random townspeople.  After meeting Arletty, they all end up moving into her father’s house.

Messiah of Evil is literally one of the strangest films that I’ve ever seen. It’s shot in a dream-like fashion and the much of the film is left open to the viewer’s interpretation.  Joy Bang goes to see a Sammy Davis, Jr. western and doesn’t notice as the theater slowly fills up with pale, red-eyed townspeople.  Anitra Ford goes to a grocery store late at night and discovers the townspeople indulging in their appetites.  If the film was only distinguished by those two scenes, it would still be worth saying.  However, Messiah of Evil is a total and complete experience, a film where every scene matters and the audience is tasked with putting the puzzle together.

This film was directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, two longtime associates of George Lucas.  (They wrote the screenplay for American Graffiti and Huyck directed Howard The Duck.)  There’s absolutely nothing else in their filmography that is as surreal as Messiah of Evil, leading me to suspect that the film itself might be a very fortunate accident.  Apparently, the production ran out of money before Katz and Huyck finished principal photography, which is what led to the film’s disjointed nature.  Accident or not, Messiah of Evil is a masterpiece of surreal horror.

Messiah of Evil (1973, directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz)

Aliens (1986, directed by James Cameron)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When I learned that today was Sigourney Weaver’s birthday, I flashed back to the first time I saw Aliens.

I was just a kid, probably too young for the movie.  My father rented Aliens from the local Blockbuster.  It had been years since the movie had first come out but my father, who went to every Star Trek movie premiere and who still knows the lore of Star Wars better than I do, had never seen it and he was planning on correcting that oversight.  My family gathered in the living room.  We turned out all the lights.  The tape was slipped into the VCR.  Play was hit.  Our boxy television turned into a movie screen and Aliens began.

And it scared the Hell out of me.

Today, I think people forget just how scary both Alien and Aliens are the first time that you watch them.  After the first time, you at least know when the aliens are going to jump out at people and you also know who is going to survive.  Today, if I rewatch Aliens, I know not to get to attached to the any of the Colonial Marines.  I also know not to trust Carter Burke, even if he is played by Paul Reiser.  I watch the movie in anticipation of Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man,” instead of dreading it.  When I first watched it, all I knew is that the screen suddenly went dark, the soundtrack was full of screeches and the deaths of the Marines, and that the only thing scarier then being confronted with one alien was being confronted with a hundred of them at once.  When I watch today, I know Bishop (Lance Henriksen) is going to prove to be a good android.  I didn’t have the assurance when I first watched the movie.  For all I knew, he was going to just abandon Ripley (Weave), Newt (Carrie Henn),and Hicks (Michael Biehn) on the planet.

Sigourney Weaver was the heart of that film.  She went from being angry and bitter over what happened during then first Alien to still being angry and bitter but willing to risk her life to save Newt.  From the start, she alone understood the Xenomorph threat and she was ultimately victorious because she was not only as determined and ruthless as the Queen but she actually had the heart that her opponent lacked.  Ripley won because she was actually fighting for something more than just conquest.  She was fighting to save Newt from becoming an incubator.

I usually think of Aliens as being the last Ripley film.  I don’t acknowledge the third film because I find the idea of killing Newt and Hicks to be a betrayal of what made the first Aliens more than just a scary action movie.  The fourth film, I don’t acknowledge because it asks me to believe that Winona Ryder would still be acting like Winona Ryder in the 23rd century.  Aliens is a scary movie but it’s also a movie that ends with the promise of hope.  After all that she’s been through, Ripley finally has a chance to start again with Newt, Hicks, and Bishop.   That hope is something that is too often missing from the follow-ups.

Happy birthday, Sigourney Weaver!  I’m going to go watch Aliens.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Ripley’s Last Stand in Alien

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Since today is Sigourney Weaver’s birthday, I think it’s probably a given that today’s scene of the day would feature her defeating an alien.  In this scene from 1979’s Alien, Ripley shows why she is the last human survivor of the Nostromo.

(As cool as Ripley is, she’s still nowhere close to being as much of a badass as Jonesy the Cat.  Jonesy just had to hiss and the alien knew better than to mess with the ship’s cat.)