Tag Archives: Horrorthon

Horrific Insomnia File #63: Hillbillys in a Haunted House (dir by Jean Yarbrough)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have jumped on Tubi and watched a film from 1967 called Hillbillys In A Haunted House and it would have put you right to sleep.

Hillbillys In A Haunted House has some big names in the cast but, unfortunately, none of them get to do much.  Instead, the main characters are country singer Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky), his partner Boots Malone (a very pointy Joi Lansing), and their road manager, Jeepers (Don Bowman).  When we first see them, they’re driving to Nashville and even worse, they’re singing about the fact that they’re driving to Nashville.  They’re scheduled to perform in “the Jamboree.”  However, after they’re delayed by a bunch of cops having a shoot out with two spies, Boots announces that Jeepers is a nervous wreck and that they really need to stop and rest for the night.

Unfortunately, they’re in the town of Sleepy Junction and there’s not much to Sleepy Junction because everyone in town recently moved to Acme City.  As a result, there are no hotels or motels in Sleepy Junction.  But there is a big, deserted mansion that is rumored to be haunted.  With a storm approaching and Jeepers’s nerves even more on edge then before, they head to the mansion.  At the mansion Woody sings a song and then some neighbors stop by and they all sing another song.  Are you getting the feeling that there’s a lot of singing in this movie?  You’re right, there is.  It’s all studio-perfect singing too.  Woody lip-syncs like a pro.

Anyway, the mansion is also being used by four spies, played by Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, a hulking Lon Chaney, Jr., and Linda Ho.  The four of them live in the surprisingly clean basement of the mansion.  Living with them is a gorilla.  The spies planning on stealing a formula for rocket fuel from Acme City but first they need to do something about the hillbillys that are currently in the haunted house.  Carradine and Rathbone try to scare them out with some remote control ghost action.  Jeepers may be a coward and Woody may be a redneck and Boots may have atrocious taste in clothes but all three of them are Americans and they’re not going to stand for any spy nonsense!

If you think it sounds like this was stupid, you’re right.  Carradine and Rathbone both struggle to maintain a straight face.  Poor Lon Chaney Jr. often appears to be out of breath.  There’s way too much singing.  Seriously, couldn’t the hillbillies have just driven another few miles to Acme City and found a hotel?

The film will put you to sleep, though.  It has its uses.

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk
  33. The Comedian
  34. The Minus Man
  35. Donnie Brasco
  36. Punchline
  37. Evita
  38. Six: The Mark Unleashed
  39. Disclosure
  40. The Spanish Prisoner
  41. Elektra
  42. Revenge
  43. Legend
  44. Cat Run
  45. The Pyramid
  46. Enter the Ninja
  47. Downhill
  48. Malice
  49. Mystery Date
  50. Zola
  51. Ira & Abby
  52. The Next Karate Kid
  53. A Nightmare on Drug Street
  54. Jud
  55. FTA
  56. Exterminators of the Year 3000
  57. Boris Karloff: The Man Behind The Monster
  58. The Haunting of Helen Walker
  59. True Spirit
  60. Project Kill
  61. Replica
  62. Rollergator

6 Trailers For October 29, 2023

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As we reach the conclusion of our annual Horrorthon, how about another edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers?  Today, we pay tribute to the godfather of Halloween, Mr. John Carpenter!

  1. Halloween (1978)

Obviously, I was going to have to share the trailer for the original Halloween eventually.  This is still the best of the franchise.  In fact, all of the attempts by other directors to “improve” on it just serves to remind us of the fact that John Carpenter said everything that needed to be said in the first film.

2. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

How did Carpenter get the chance to direct Halloween?  Well, the producers were impressed with his previous film, Assault on Precinct 13.  Also impressed by this film was Angela Pleasence, who subsequently convinced her father, Donald, to read Carpenter’s script for Halloween.

3. The Fog (1980)

Carpenter followed up Halloween with The Fog, which featured several cast members of both Halloween and Carpenter’s next film, Escape From New York.

4. The Thing (1982)

Incredibly underappreciated when it was first released, Carpenter’s remake of The Thing has gone on to become one of his most popular and influential films.

5. Prince of Darkness (1987)

Speaking of underappreciated, it would also be several years before Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness started to receive the attention that it really deserved.

6. John Carpenter’s Vampires (1998)

Finally, with Vampires, Carpenter mixed the horror genre with the western genre and came up with a hybrid that continues to be influential to this day.

Cleaning Out The DVR: The Neighbors Are Watching (dir by Haylie Duff)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“Your neighbors will always have your back,” Betsy (Elena Kent) tells Amy (Kabby Borders) while welcoming her to the neighborhood.

But will they?

That’s the question posed by the Lifetime film, The Neighbors Are Watching.  At first, it certainly seems like the neighbors are supportive of Amy as she starts her new job as a teacher and she tries to restart her life after ending a bad marriage.  And it certainly seems like a wonderful neighborhood.  Amy’s even got a surprisingly big house, considering that she’s a teacher.  I guess she lives in one of those states where teachers get paid a decent salary and don’t have to hand over half of it in union dues.  Either that or this is just another example of Lifetime understanding that it’s more fun to watch people in big houses than to watch people in small houses.

With the support of the neighborhood, Amy starts to date Henry (Will Holland), the guy who has just moved in across the street from her.  And, with the exception of one skeevy moment where he glances up at Amy’s bedroom window while she’s getting dressed, Henry seems like a great guy.  He says that he owns a home repair business and he even volunteers to fix her back door for her.

But strange things are happening and soon, the neighbors will turn against Amy.  It starts when someone leaves Amy strange messages and newspaper clippings about how her previous marriage ended because she killed her abusive husband in self-defense.  Then Henry starts to act strangely and Amy even thinks that she sees him at his house with another woman.  When Amy confronts him, Henry gaslights her and claims that she’s obviously seeing things.  All of the neighbors come outside to watch as Amy and Henry argue.  And when Amy thinks that she sees Henry putting a dead body in the trunk of his car, the police react as if Amy is the one who did something wrong by calling them.  Is Amy truly losing it, as Henry suggests, or is someone trying to frame Amy and make her look bad?  And will Amy’s neighbors, including Betsy, have her back?

The Neighbors Are Watching was one of those Lifetime movies that got better as it went along.  The first half, which featured Amy and Henry as a couple, featured a bit too much overwritten, cutesy flirting and a few too many scenes of Betsy trying to convince everyone to drink wine.  But, once it became apparent that Henry was a bad guy who was trying to make everybody think that Amy was going insane, the film became much more entertaining.  In fact, all of the cutesy dialogue made sense once you understood that Henry was trying to create the impression of a movie-perfect romance.  There’s a good twist towards the end and Lifetime regular Kabby Borders is likable and sympathetic as Amy.  This is the third film that Haylie Duff has directed for Lifetime and she definitely understands the importance of embracing the melodrama.  Despite the rough start, I enjoyed watching The Neighbors Are Watching.

Music Video of the Day: Are You Ready For Freddy? by the Fat Boys (1988, directed by Harvey Keith)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I always assumed that this song was specifically written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies but actually, the Fat Boys were just fans of the movies and they decided to put a song about them on one of their albums.  The song was included in The Freddy Krueger Special, which aired on CBS in 1988.  That’s amazing to think that Freddy got his own primetime special.

This video, which features several of Freddy’s victims and Robert Englund himself, was written by Wes Craven and directed by Harvey Keith.  Keith directed a few films, including 1988’s Mondo New York and 1990’s Jezebel’s Kiss.

Enjoy!

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 6.15 “Living a Lie” (dir by Bruno Gantillon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When a bartender steals one of his customer’s credit cards, he learns that credit fraud can lead to …. HORROR!  Let that be a lesson to everyone.

This episode originally aired on January 18th, 1991.

Maniac Cop 2 (1990, directed by William Lustig)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Maniac Cop 2 picks up where the first Maniac Cop ended.

The NYPD thinks that the undead maniac cop Matt Cordell (Robert Z’Dar) has been destroyed but he is actually still alive and killing civilians and cops in New York.  He has even teamed up with a serial killer named Steven Turkell (Leo Rossi, ranting and raving like a pro).  Jack Forrest (Bruce Campbell) and Theresa Malloy (Laurene Landon) both return from the first film but both of them are killed by Cordell before the movie is even halfway over.  Maniac Cop 2 is not playing around.

With Jack and Theresa gone, it falls to Detective Sean McKinney (Robert  Davi) and Officer Susan Riley (Claudia Christian) to discover what the rest of the audience already knows, that Cordell is seeking revenge against the system that abandoned him in prison.  The new police commissioner, Ed Doyle (Michael Lerner), is determined to cover up what happened but Cordell is even more determined to have his vengeance.  Working with Turkell, Cordell heads to the prison where he was unjustly incarcerated and murdered.

Maniac Cop 2 is a marked improvement on the first film.  Cordell is no longer a lumbering and slow monster.  He is now a ruthless, Terminator-style executioner who, in the film’s best-known scene, wipes out an entire police precinct in a matter of minutes.  Cordell is so ruthless that he won’t even stop when he’s on fire.  His partnership with Turkell adds a new twist to the Maniac Cop saga.  Turkell views Cordell as his partner-in-crime but Cordell is only interested in getting his revenge.  (Turkell was originally meant to be Frank Zito, the main character from Lustig’s Maniac.  When Maniac star Joe Spinell died before shooting began, the role was changed to Leo Rossi’s Steven Turkell.)

Stepping into the shoes of the main investigation, Robert Davi gives one of his best performances.  As opposed to the boring heroes of the first film (sorry, Bruce!), Davi’s Sean McKinney is just as obsessive and ruthless as Cordell.  Cordell sets fire and McKinney uses those fires to light his cigarettes.

William Lustig has described Maniac Cop 2 as being his best film and he’s probably right.  It is definitely the best of the Maniac Cop films and the only one to fully take advantage of its premise.

Horror Scenes I Love: Giovanni Lombardo Radice in The House At The Edge of the Park

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I miss Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

The Italian writer/actor passed away earlier this year, on April 23rd.  He is missed, both for his wit and charm and for his talent.  He was great storyteller and always had the best anecdotes to share about the films in which he appeared, even though he himself often expressed amazement that people were still watching his movies.  Giovanni Lombardo Radice was an artist and a gentleman.

I’ve shared this scene before but I’m going to share it again because it’s Giovanni at his best.  Giovanni, incidentally, is dancing with his frequent co-star and friend, Lorraine de Selle.

From 1981’s The House On The Edge of the Park:

October True Crime: The Hillside Strangler (dir by Chuck Parello)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2004’s The Hillside Strangler opens with a woman stepping into a dressing room with several tops.  She removes all of the tags.  Then she puts all of them on and finally covers them with the sweater that she was wearing when she first stepped into the dressing room.

What she doesn’t realize is that she’s being watched by a security guard named Kenneth Bianchi (played by C. Thomas Howell, with a thin mustache).  Bianchi isn’t the type of security guard who relies on cameras.  Instead, he sneaks around in the store’s heating ducts and stares down into the dressing room.  Bianchi manages to get out of the duct quickly enough to stop the woman as she walks out of the store.  He takes her back to his office and orders her to remove each layer of stolen clothing while he watches.

Agck!  Seriously, as a former teen shoplifter, this scene totally freaked me out.  Beyond the creepiness of seeing Bianchi in the air ducts, this scene also captures the authoritarian mindset.  As soon as we see Bianchi, we know that his job is about more than just a paycheck to him.  His job is about wielding power and giving orders.  Wearing his uniform, Bianchi feels that he’s untouchable.

Bianchi dreams of being a real cop but the Rochester Police Department rejects his application to join because his test scores were too low.  Sick of having to listen to him whine, Bianchi’s mother sends him to Los Angeles so that he can stay with his cousin, Angelo Buono (Nicholas Turturro).  Maybe Angelo can knock some sense into him.  Maybe Angelo can teach him about being a man.

Instead, Angelo soon gets as tried of Bianchi as everyone else.  Still, he is impressed when Bianchi orders a fake diploma from Colombia University and sets up a practice as a sex therapist.  When Angelo attempts to set himself up as a pimp, he makes Bianchi is partner.  When Angelo and Bianchi fail at being pimps, they start picking up women and strangling them.  Angelo and Bianchi start out by stalking sex workers but soon, they’re using a fake LAPD badge to prey on anyone that catches their interest.

Based on the true crimes of Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, The Hillside Strangler is a grim and frequently trashy film, a portrait of two misogynists who can only feel confident when they’re hurting others.  Bianchi is the type who wears a t-shirt that reads, “Official Local Sex Instructor.”  Buono has a doormat that reads, “Italian Stallion” and a sign on his wall that announces, “Candy is Dandy But Sex Won’t Rot Their Teeth.”  Turturro and Howell give two disturbing performances as two losers who feed on each other’s sadism and anger.  Bianchi is desperate for Bouno’s approval.  Buono finds Bianchi to be annoying but he still enjoys being the younger man’s idol.  Would Bianchi and Buono have committed their crimes if they had never met?  The film leaves you wondering.  As a viewing experience, it’s effective and disturbing.

In real life, Angelo Buono died in prison in 2002.  Kenneth Bianchi continues to serve his life sentence.