October Hacks: Out of the Dark (dir by Michael Schroeder)

Posted on October 9, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1989’s Out of the Dark, a man dressed in a clown costume is killing phone sex operators. He lurks in the darkness and jumps out of the shadows to commit his dastardly crimes. Especially during the first hour or so, the film has its share of both suspense and gruesome moments. In the style of Italian giallo and pre-Halloween American slasher pics, the film actually tries to create some mystery about who the killer could be. Lt. Frank Meyers (Tracey Walter) suspects that the killer might photographer Kevin Silvers (Cameron Dye). Kevin and his girlfriend, Kristi (Lynn Danielson-Rosenthal), think that the police should be taking a closer look at David Stringer (Bud Cort), an accountant who has an office in the same building as the phone sex company. Meanwhile, Detective Langella (Divine) thinks that the murders might be linked to a serial killer who is targeting prostitutes.

The main problem with Out of the Dark is that it’s pretty obvious from the start who the killer is and it’s hard not to judge the people who can’t figure it out for themselves. The movie doesn’t really offer up enough viable suspects to keep you guessing and than it spends so much time trying to make it look like one of the suspects is guilty that any experienced film watcher will automatically know that he isn’t. The viewers are supposed to be shocked by the killer’s identity but there’s nothing shocking about it. It’s pretty obvious.

On the plus side, Out of the Dark does have a one-of-a-kind cast. Divine and Tracy Walter play detectives. Bud Cort is intense and nerdy as the bitter accountant. Cameron Dye is vacuously handsome as the photographer. Geoffrey Lewis shows up as an alcoholic. Lainie Kazan plays an aging prostitute. Tab Hunter drives a car. Paul Bartel manages a motel and gets upset when he sees the blood pooling in one of his rooms. And finally, Karen Black plays the owner of the phone sex company and gives a far better performance than the material actually deserves. Black brings some much needed emotional reality to the film.

As I said at the start of this review, Out of the Dark has its moments. The clown costume is truly creepy and the opening murder is all the more disturbing because it happen outside and in a public park. (You do have to wonder how no one noticed a weirdo dressed like a clown wandering around.) A scene in which the clown attacks a phone sex operator who has agreed to serve as bait is also well-done and genuinely frightening. The story moves at a quick and steady pace and it deserves some credit for ending on a definitive note as opposed to trying to copy the ambiguity that was so popular with other slasher films of the era.

If only the identity of the killer had actually been a surprise, Out of the Dark would probably be considered a classic. As it is, it’s just another well-made slasher film.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: The Amityville Murders (dir by Daniel Farrands)

Posted on May 25, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ronald DeFeo, Jr. may not be a household name but he’s someone who was indirectly responsible for a lot of cinematic schlock.

Of course, that’s the least of DeFeo’s crimes. When the 69 year-old DeFeo passed away in March, he was serving a life sentence in the state of New York. That’s because, back in 1974, the 23 year-old DeFeo grabbed a rifle and killed his entire family while they slept. When he was brought to trial, DeFeo claimed that he heard Satanic voices that urged him to kill his parents and his siblings. His lawyers tried for an insanity defense, though the prosecution successfully argued that DeFeo was lying about the voices and that he was in full control of his actions on the night that he killed his family. After being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, DeFeo sometimes claimed that he had been possessed by the devil and sometimes said that he committed the murders in self-defense and then other times, he said that he did it because he was hoping to inherit his father’s money. Out of all the excuses that he gave for his brutal crimes, DeFeo’s claims of being demon-possessed were the claims that everyone remembered.

Years later, the DeFeo house — which sat in Amityville, New York — was purchased the George and Kathy Lutz. The Lutzes made a small fortune by claiming that the house was haunted and that they had been forced to leave their new home by demonic spirits. (Their claims were apparently supported by paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren of Conjuring fame.) The Lutzes told their story to Jay Anson, who wrote a book called The Amityville Horror. That book was later turned into a movie and the success of that movie led to a series of sequels and spin-offs. At last count, there’s been at least ten books written about the Amityville case and there have been 30 films that, in one way or another, claim to be connected to the Amityville haunting. Few of those films share much, other than a haunting and the word “Amityville” in the title. There’s not a great deal of continuity to be found in the Amityville films.

One of the latest of the Amityville films, 2018’s The Amityville Murders, deals with the actual murders that supposedly started off the whole cycle of possession and violence. (1982’s Amityville II: The Possession also dealt with the murders, albeit with Ronald DeFeo renamed Sonny Montelli. Two of the stars of that film — Burt Young and Diane Franklin — appear in The Amityville Murders.) John Robinson plays the bearded and withdrawn Ronald DeFeo, Jr. Chelsea Ricketts plays his concerned sister. Paul Ben-Victor plays their abusive father. The film covers the general facts of the DeFeo murders while trying to have it both ways as to whether or not Ronald was in control of his actions. Ronald DeFeo is portrayed as being genuinely unbalanced but, at the same time, potentially demon-possessed as well. The talented John Robinson does a good job of playing Ronald and there’s a few effective shots of his looking unbalanced but, for the most part, there’s nothing here that you haven’t seen in a dozen other Amityville-influenced horror films. As well, since you know from the start that Ronald is going to end up murdering his family, there’s really not any suspense to be found in the film. Instead, the entire movie is just about waiting for Ronald to pick up that rifle and start shooting people, including two children. It’s more than a bit icky, to be honest.

Whenever it comes to an Amityville prequel, the main question is always just how stereotypically the DeFeos are going to be portrayed. It only takes five minutes for DeFeo, Sr. to admonish Ronald with, “Oh! Watch how you talk to your mother!” Every cliché about Italian-American family life is present in The Amityville Murders, from the father hulking around in his undershirt to the mother decorating the house with religious iconography to the superstitious grandmother. Watching the film, I found myself imagining Tony Soprano watching a cheap Amityville film and exclaiming, “Oh! The mouth on this fucking kid over here, like he’s possessed by the devil or something!” The Amityville Murders hints that the DeFeos themselves may have had mafia connections. Indeed, before he decided to blame demonic possession for his crimes, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. claimed that his family had been taken out by hitmen from New York.

This film was directed by Daniel Farrands, who also directed The Haunting of Sharon Tate and The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. The Amityville Murders is neither as well put-together as the Sharon Tate film nor as offensive as the Nicole Simpson film. It’s somewhere in between, just another link in the endless chain of Amityville films. I will say that I personally think Farrands is a talented director and I’d like to see what he could do with a budget and a decent script. The Amityville Murders has its share of impressive shots, even if the end result isn’t exactly the last word in Amityville horror.

A Movie A Day #356: The Delta Force (1986, directed by Menahem Golan)

Posted on December 31, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Last year, at this time, I set a goal for myself.

I decided that, in 2017, I would review a movie a day and I nearly succeeded. I didn’t review a movie on the day Chris Cornell died. I missed a few days in March due to a sinus infection. Including the review that I’m posting below, I reviewed 356 movies in 2017. According to the year-end stats, my most popular reviews were for Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Slaughter, Body Chemistry 3, Body Chemistry 4, and Beatlemania.

Since tomorrow will be the start of a new year, this is going to be the end of my A Movie A Day experiment. In 2018, I’ll still be watching movies and posting reviews on this site but this is my final daily review. For my final Movie A Day, I picked the greatest movie of all time, The Delta Force!

Produced by Cannon Films, The Delta Force starts in 1980, with a helicopter exploding in the desert. America’s elite special missions force has been sent to Iran to rescue the men and women being held hostage in the embassy. The mission is a disaster with the members of Delta Force barely escaping with their lives. Captain Chuck Norris tells his commanding officer, Col. Lee Marvin, that he’s finished with letting cowardly politicians control their missions. Chuck heads to Montana while Lee spends the next few years hitting on the bartender at his local watering hole.

In 1985, terrorists led by Robert Forster hijack an airplane and divert it to Beirut. Among those being held hostage: Martin Balsam, Shelley Winters, Lainie Kazan, Susan Strasberg, Kim Delaney, and Bo Svenson. The great George Kennedy plays a priest named O’Malley who, when the Jewish passengers are moved to a separate location, declares himself to be Jewish and demands to be taken too. Jerry Lazarus is a hostage who spends the movie holding a Cabbage Patch doll that his daughter gave him for luck. Former rat packer Joey Bishop plays a passenger who says, “Beirut was beautiful then. Beautiful.” Fassbinder favorite Hanna Schygulla is the stewardess who refuses to help the terrorists because, “I am German!”

In America, General Robert Vaughn activates The Delta Force to rescue the hostages and take out the terrorists. As Lee Marvin prepares everyone (including Cannon favorite, Steve James and, in a nonspeaking role, Liam Neeson) to leave, the big question is whether Chuck Norris will come out of retirement for the mission. Of course, he does. Even better, he brings his motorcycle with him.

Anyone who has ever seen The Delta Force remembers Chuck’s motorcycle. Not only did it look incredibly cool but it was also mounted with machine guns and it could fire missiles at cowardly terrorists. It didn’t matter whether you agreed with the film’s politics were or whether you even liked the movie, everyone who watched The Delta Force wanted Chuck’s motorcycle. As the old saying goes, “You may be cool but you’ll never be Chuck Norris firing a missile from a motorcycle cool.”

The Delta Force is really three different films. One film, shot in the style of a disaster film, is about the hostages on the plane and their evil captors. The second film is Lee Marvin (in his final movie role) preparing his men to storm the airplane. The third movie is Chuck Norris chasing Robert Forster on his motorcycle. Put those three movies together and you have the ultimate Cannon movie. The Delta Force was even directed by Cannon’s head honcho, Menahem Golan. (Years earlier, Golan also directed Operation Thunderbolt, an Israeli film about the raid on Entebbe, which features more than a few similarities to The Delta Force. Golan received his first and only Oscar nomination when Operation Thunderbolt was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.)

The Delta Force is also the ultimate 80s movie. It opens with the Carter administration fucking everything up and it ends with the Reagan administration giving Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris the greenlight to blow up some terrorists. There is not much nuance to be found in The Delta Force but it still feels good to watch Chuck beat the bad guys. Top that off with a shameless score from Alan Silvestri and you have one of the greatest action movies of all time.

At the end of The Delta Force, as cans of Budweiser are being passed out to rescued hostages, an extra is clearly heard to shout, “Beer! America!” Then everyone sings America The Beautiful.

That says it all.