Tag Archives: Horrorthon

October True Crime: Into Thin Air (dir by Roger Young)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Originally broadcast in 1985, Into Thin Air is a made-for-TV movie that is based on a true story.  It’s film that brings to life the horror of every family’s nightmare.  Brian Walker (Tate Donavon) is an intelligent, soft-spoken, and somewhat naive college student in Ottawa.  He’s been accepted into a summer writing program in Colorado.  As he gets in the van that he will be driving to Colorado, he promises his mother, Joan (Ellen Burstyn), that he’ll call her when he reaches Nebraska and again when he reaches Colorado.

Brian drives away and that’s the last time that Joan ever sees her son.  Brian calls from Nebraska and talks to his brother, Stephen (Sam Robards).  Joan arrives home just as Stephen is saying goodbye.  Brian never calls from Colorado.  He has vanished, seemingly into thin air.

Joan, Stephen, and Joan’s ex-husband, Larry (played the great character actor Nicholas Pryor) travel to America to search for him.  At one point, Stephen thinks that he’s spotted Brian’s van on the road and chase after it, just to discover that it’s a different van.  Joan talks to cops in Nebraska and Colorado and discovers that different jurisdictions don’t work together or share information.  As the days pass, Joan keeps hoping that Brian is somehow still alive….

I was about ten minutes into this film when I started sobbing.  I pretty much cried through the entire film.  Some of that was because I knew that they were never going to see Brian again.  Some of that was because of the powerful, heartfelt performances of Ellen Burstyn, Nicholas Pryor, and Sam Robards.  Most of it was because this film did such a good job of capturing the feeling of hopelessness and the dread that comes with not knowing what has happened to someone who you love.  I found myself crying for Brian’s lost potential.  He was a writer and he was engaging in a time-honored writing tradition.  He was taking a road trip and he was discovering the world.  He deserved better than whatever happened to him.  He deserved see his novel sitting in a bookstore.  Instead, he ran into the wrong people.

It’s the little details that really got to me.  Stephen flies into a rage when he sees his younger brother wearing one of Brain’s sweaters.  Joan momentarily gets her hopes up when she discovers that Brian reported some lost traveler’s checks, just to have that hope shot down when she’s told that the bank can’t reveal where Brian called them from unless Brian himself gives permission.  When the van eventually turn up in Maine, it’s been totally trashed by whoever took it from Brian.

Eventually, Joan hires a private detective and Robert Prosky is well-cast as Jim Conway, a seemingly cynical ex-cop who dedicates himself to trying to provide closure for the Walkers.  The scene where he finally discovers what happened to Brian is one of the strongest in the film and one of the most upsetting.  So many people could have saved Brian if they only had the courage to speak up.

Into Thin Air is a powerful film.  No one should ever be forgotten.

Horror Film Review: The Ghoul (dir by T. Hayes Hunter)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some actors can make just about anything worth watching.  That’s certainly the case with Boris Karloff and 1933’s The Ghoul.

In The Ghoul, Karloff plays Prof. Henry Moriant.  The professor is an Egyptologist, a world-renowned expert on the dead.  Moriant is now facing death himself, sick in bed and ranting about how he wants to be treated after he passes.  Nigel Hartley (Ralph Richardson) stops by the mansion while pretending to be a vicar and offers to comfort Prof. Moriant in his last moments.  The butler, Laing (Ernest Thesiger), explains that Moriant has never had much use for traditional religion.  Instead, Moriant believes in the Gods of Egypt.

In death, Moriant wants to be buried with an Egyptian jewel in his hands.  He believes that, after he dies, he will exchange the jewel with the Egyptian God Anubis and he will be reborn with amazing powers.  However, when Moriant passes, Laing keeps the jewel for himself and attempts to hide it from the countess number of people who show up at the mansion, all seeking either the jewel or just information about Moriant’s estate.  Moriant may not have been loved in life but everyone clearly loves his money.

Boris Karloff is not actually in that much of The Ghoul.  He dominates the start of the film, ranting from his deathbed.  And then, towards the end of the film, he rises from the dead and attacks those who he thinks have betrayed him and stolen the jewel.  He’s only onscreen for a few minutes but he dominates those minutes.  Karloff’s screen presence is undeniable.  When he’s in a scene, he’s the only person that you watch.  When he’s not in a scene, you find yourself wondering how long it’s going to take for Karloff to return.

That’s not to say that the other actors in The Ghoul aren’t good.  The cast is full of distinguished names.  Along with Richardson and Thesiger, Cedric Hardwicke, Anthony Bushnell, Dorothy Hyson, and Kathleen Harrison all wander through the mansion and try to avoid getting caught up in Karloff’s vengeance.  Harrison provides the film’s comic relief and I actually enjoyed her flighty performance.  The film itself is so darkly lit and full of so many greedy characters that it was nice to have someone on a totally different wavelength thrown into the mix.  That said, the majority of the actors are stuck with paper-thin characters and aren’t really allowed the time to make much of an impression.  This is Karloff’s film, from the beginning to end.  And while the film itself is definitely a bit creaky, Karloff is always enjoyable to watch.

The Ghoul was made at a time when Karloff, having become a star with Frankenstein, was frustrated with the roles that he was being offered in America.  He returned to his native UK and promptly discovered that he was just as typecast over there as he was in the United States.  For a long time, The Ghoul was believed to be a lost film.  However, in 1968, a copy was discovered in Egypt of all places.  It’s unfortunate that the film itself isn’t better but there’s no denying the power of Karloff the performer.

 

Music Review: Pink Floyd — The Wall (dir by Alan Parker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1982’s Pink Floyd — The Wall is a film that I have mixed feelings about.

Some of that is due to my feelings about Pink Floyd.  On the one hand, I can’t deny their talent and I do like quite a few of their songs, if they do all tend to be a bit on the portentous side. On the other hand …. Roger Waters!  Bleh, Roger Waters. Waters was one of the founders of Pink Floyd and, for a while, the band’s de facto leader.  He’s also a rabid anti-Semite and a defender of Vladimir Putin’s.  That said, I’ve discovered that I can justify listening to Pink Floyd by remembering that the rest of the band hates Roger Waters as well and that Waters himself eventually left Pink Floyd.  Waters’s bandmate, David Gilmour, has flat-out called Roger Waters an anti-Semite.  Last year, when we had a total eclipse of the sun, I was happy to be able to play the last two tracks of Dark Side of the Moon while enjoying the early and temporary evening.  It just felt appropriate.

Outside of Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall is probably Pink Floyd’s best-known work.  (When I was younger, I can remember my Dad playing it whenever he was driving across the country.)  A concept album about how much it sucks to be a wealthy Englishman, The Wall is one of those albums and films that are beloved by people who consider themselves to be alienated.  Even more so than the average Pink Floyd album, The Wall was the brainchild of Roger Waters and, when the movie version was made in 1982, Waters wrote the screenplay.  That said, I think you can argue that, much as with Tommy, The Wall was ultimately more about the vision of the film’s director than that of the man who wrote the songs.

The Wall is definitely an Alan Parker production.  It’s big.  It embraces the sordid.  It’s stylish almost to the point of parody.  Every image has been carefully constructed by a director who got his start doing commercials and whose main goal was to get an immediate audience reaction.  Much like Parker’s Midnight Express or Evita, it’s a film that grabs your attention while you’re watching it and only afterwards do you stop consider that there really wasn’t much going on underneath the surface.

Pink (Bob Geldof) is a self-loathing rockstar who is haunted by his childhood in post-WWII Britain and whose marriage is failing.  He’s building a wall, brick-by-brick, to keep himself separated from pain but the price of becoming comfortably numb is to be so alienated that you imagine becoming a neo-Nazi who orders his followers to follow the Worm.  The imagery is powerful.  The animated sequences by Gerald Scarfe still make quite an impression, especially the marching hammers.  The score features songs like Another Brick In The Wall, Comfortably Numb, and Run Like Hell.  The film is relentless, full of downbeat imagery that is often excessive but which Parker understood would appeal to the film’s target audience.  Indeed, it’s such an overwhelming film that it’s easy to overlook the fact that, even before he transformed into a fascist, Pink is a drab character and his main problem seems to be that he can’t seem to find anything good to watch on television.

That said, I have to admit that, despite myself, I do like The Wall.  It’s just so shameless that it’s hard not to enjoy the silliness of it all.  Add to that, Comfortably Numb is a great song.  (Another Brick In The Wall is also a great song though perhaps not for the reasons that Waters thought it was.)  The Wall is a monument to the joys of cinematic excess.

Horror On The Lens: Invitation to Hell (dir by Wes Craven)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

There’s one rule in life that should never be forgotten.

Any movie that opens with Susan Lucci casting a hex that causes a man’s head to explode is going to be worth watching.

That’s certainly the case with Invitation to Hell, a 1984 made-for-TV movie that was directed by Wes Craven and which casts Lucci as Jessica Jones, an insurance agent who lives and works in an upper class suburb in Southern California. Jessica not only sells insurance but she also runs the ultra-exclusive Steaming Springs Country Club! Anyone who is anyone in town is a member of Steaming Springs!  That include Matt Winslow (Robert Urich) and his family.  Matt soon comes to suspect that something strange might be happening at the club.  Fortunately, Matt’s spacesuit comes with a flame thrower, a laser, and a built-in computer that can determine whether or not someone is actually a human being. (Wearing the space helmet means viewing the world like you’re the Terminator.) Soon, it’s science vs. magic as Matt dons the suit and tries to rescue his family from country club living!

Totally ludicrous and a lot of fun, this is a film that has a little bit for everyone — familiar television actors, flamethrowers, space suits, demonic possession, exploding cars, and even a little bit of social satire as the film suggests that living in the suburbs is a terror even without weird country clubs and chic spell casters.

 

Monday Live Tweet Alert: Join Us for Children of the Corn!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We snark our way through it.

Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 1984’s Children of the Corn!

If you want to join this watch party, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Children of the Corn on YouTube or Tubi, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag!

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: A Cold Night’s Death (dir by Jerrold Freedman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Horror on the Television, we have a made-for-TV movie from 1973.  As you can tell from the video below, it originally aired as a part of ABC’s Tuesday Night At The Movies.

A Cold Night’s Death tells the story of two scientists (Eli Wallach and Robert Culp) who are sent to a remote research station to investigate the apparent disappearance of another scientist.  They soon come to suspect that they may not be alone and soon, paranoia rears its ugly head.  With its frozen landscape and its ominous atmosphere, this movie feels like a distant cousin to John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The Hong Kong Film Corner – A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987), starring Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987) is a landmark film in the golden age of 1980’s Hong Kong cinema. While my primary interest in the cinema of Hong Kong centers around directors like John Woo, Ringo Lam and Johnnie To, as well as the actors Chow Yun-Fat, Lau Ching-Wan and Andy Lau, I’ve been aware of this film from the very beginning. It’s been a couple of decades since I watched it, so I felt I was well past due for a revisit.

Directed by Ching Siu-tung and produced by the legendary Tsui Hark, A CHINESE GHOST STORY follows Ling Choi San (Leslie Cheung), a naive young scholar who finds himself working as a tax collector. Overly timid and a complete failure at his job, Ling is completely broke, so he seeks shelter in the only place he can afford, a haunted temple on the outskirts of a remote village. That night he encounters Lip Siu Sin (Joey Wong), a ghostly maiden who is being forced to use her feminine wiles to lure unfortunate men to their doom at the hands, or shall I say tongue, of the millennium-old, shape-shifting Tree Demoness Lao Lao (Lau Siu-Ming), who devours the life essence of its victims. Ling’s unusual and genuine kindness towards Siu Sin causes her to have pity on the young man so she decides to protect him from Lao Lao. The two soon share a night of tender romance, where Siu Sin reveals her tragic past and Ling immediately pledges to do anything he can to protect her. As part of this protection, Ling seeks the assistance of the Taoist swordsman Yin Chek Ha (Wu Ma), who initially rejects his request but eventually becomes an unlikely and powerful ally in the young scholar’s quest to keep Siu Sin safe. Ling and Master Yin soon find themselves in the underworld, battling armies of the undead and writhing tongue-tentacles, in an attempt to save Siu Sin from the evil Tree Demoness. Will they free her, or will she spend eternity setting up horny guys to have their essences sucked away and turned into zombies? It’s the age old question that will be answered by the end of the film’s 96 minute runtime. 

Blending elements of horror, romance, comedy, and swordplay, while incorporating innovative special effects, A CHINESE GHOST STORY revitalized the Hong Kong fantasy film and kicked off a trend for folklore ghost films, including its own two sequels. At its core, the film is a timeless, love story, and even with all of the crazy stuff going on, that central theme kept me engaged to the very end. Director Ching Siu-tung is at the top of his game as his film contains a poetic energy that’s extremely rare in any nation’s cinema these days, including Hong Kong. Leslie Cheung, who plays the scholar Ling, had a tendency to overplay the annoying aspects of his characters at this point in his career in the 80’s (I’m looking at you A BETTER TOMORROW). Here, while I don’t love his character for the early sections of the film, I do enjoy it when he decides he’s going to do anything possible to save Siu Sin’s eternal soul and give her a chance to reincarnate. What he lacks in bravery, he makes up in sheer will and his character grows on me by the end. And then there’s Joey Wong as the ghostly seductress Siu Sin. What can I say about her other than this… if you don’t fall in love with Joey Wong in A CHINESE GHOST STORY, there’s probably something wrong with you. It’s a performance that helped propel Wong into her stardom across Asia. Her strong chemistry with Cheung elevates the film’s central love story and gives his character some much needed credibility. Wu Ma plays the cynical and brave Taoist swordsman, Yin, who gives Ling a fighting chance against the tree demoness. It’s a fun character and his mid-film, sword-training “rap” is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Lau Siu-Ming, a man, plays the tree demoness Lao Lao. It’s an interesting character. Siu Sin continually refers to the tree demon as an “old woman,” but the demon is actually gender fluid and when we see it, it looks more like a man, which seems to enhance its power. We also see the tree demon in its monster form, which is the biggest, longest and slimiest tongue you will ever see. It’s unique and gross at the same time!

I will admit that watching any film starring  Leslie Cheung, at this point in my life, is bittersweet. The man was a Canto-Pop superstar and over time, grew to become one of the best and most interesting actors from Hong Kong. That’s Cheung singing the theme song that plays over the opening credits of A CHINESE GHOST STORY. His work with John Woo and Chow Yun-Fat in the A BETTER TOMORROW film series and ONCE A THIEF are some of the first films I watched when I began my obsession with Hong Kong Cinema in the 90’s. In some ways, my love of Hong Kong movies is inseparable from Leslie Cheung. Suffering from depression, Cheung tragically took his own life on April 1st, 2003 by jumping from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which is located in the central district on Hong Kong Island. It was a horrifically sad end for an extremely talented man. 

Ultimately, in the world of Hong Kong Cinema, A CHINESE GHOST STORY is an easy recommendation in much the same way that movies like JAWS or STAR WARS are here in America. Its legacy of influence over the Hong Kong film industry has stood the test of time, making it a true classic!