AMV Of The Day: Haunted House (Various)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s October 3rd and that means it’s time for our first horror-filled AMV of the month! Enjoy!

Song: Neoni — Haunted House

Animes: 0:11 Death Parade 0:16 Angels of Death 0:21 Demon Slayer 0:24 Attack on Titan 0:32 Tokyo Ghoul 0:43 Akame ga Kill! 0:48 Parasyte 0:55 Kakegurui 1:05 High School of The Dead 1:13 Fire Force 1:20 The Future Diary 1:36 Vinland Saga 1:49 Chainsaw Man 2:02 Jujutsu Kaisen 2:06 The Ancient Magus Bride 2:23 Deadman Wonderland

Creator: BAN AMVS (as always, please subscribe to this creator’s channel)

Past AMVs of the Day

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 4.4 “Why Are You Here?” (dir by Chris Thomson)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker is an early example of found footage horror.

Jerry Rulack (played by the star of Midnight Express, Brad Davis, in one of his final performances) is a smarmy TV host who, along with his camera crew, goes from nightclub to nightclub and asks the clubgoers, “Why are you here?” Eventually, Jerry runs into a rich girl named Donette (Helen Hunt), who turns the question around and leaves Jerry to wonder why he’s there. Donette and her friends are rich, decadent, and ultimately dangerous. Eventually, Jerry discovers that there is a price to pay for asking too many stupid questions. Brad Davis does an adequate Geraldo Rivera impersonation while Helen Hunt seems to be having fun playing someone who literally cares about nothing. As the Hitchhiker, Page Fletcher is wonderfully judgmental while introducing Jerry and later while considering his fate.

This episode originally aired on March 10th, 1987.

October Hacks: Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone (dir by James Byran)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t watch this movie …. alone.

Or with a group.

Don’t do it!

Seriously, this is probably going to be the worst and most rushed review that I’ve ever written because I spent 80 minutes watching this film and I really don’t want to spend another 80 writing about it. First released in 1981, Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone is the story of a maniac (Tom Drury) who looks like some sort of crazed Barbarian cosplayer and who spends his time hunting people in the Rocky Mountains. He’ll kill just about anyone that he comes across and he’ll laugh while he does it. We don’t even find out much about why he’s killing but he certainly seems to enjoy it. Ten minutes into the film, he’s already killed a woman running in a creek and a bird watcher wearing a bow-tie.

The Rockies are full of campers. The Maniac takes out a painter. The Maniac takes out a honeymooning couple who thought it would be a good idea to stop their van in the middle of the woods. He follows a group of campers. Craig (James Haydn) is an experienced camper and he gets to utter the film’s title. His girlfriend (Angie Brown) likes to play surprisingly mean-spirited pranks. Of course, Craig’s idea of a good time is trap his girlfriend in a sleeping bag and hang her from a tree until she cries uncle.

And then there’s Peter (Jack McClelland), who is not an experienced camper. Peter is about as close as this film has to a hero but he’s a remarkably unlikable hero. He spends way too much time screaming and whining and crying. Peter’s girlfriend is Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and she’s the type of girlfriend who screams, “Peter!” while Peter tries to hide from the maniac.

It’s an oddly paced film. The film really ends around the 50 minute mark but there’s about 30 minutes of filler afterwards which pads out of the film’s running time. The final third of the film is basically footage of the sheriff and his idiot deputies wandering around the Rockies and talking about how they haven’t been able to find anything. How have they not been able to find anything? The Maniac makes absolutely no effort to hide his existence.

It’s poorly acted and terribly written and the cinematography is so dark and grainy that it’s sometimes hard to see what’s happening on the screen. That said, the film features a lot of blood and I imagine that’s why it has something of a cult following. This is one of those slasher films where it’s obvious that the majority of the budget went to purchasing fake blood and entrails. Limbs are cut off. Blood splatters all across the countryside. The Maniac is truly savage when he attacks and, if the film itself wasn’t so inept, he would be a truly terrifying character.

Don’t Go In The Woods …. Alone was amongst the film that were banned in the UK for being too violent. I’ve never understood why the censors felt it would be a good idea to refer to these films as being on the “video nasty list.” Who wouldn’t want to watch a movie called a video nasty? In the end, the attempts to ban this film are probably the main reason why the film is still remembered today. It’s certainly not for the film’s quality.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: My Friends Need Killing (dir by Paul Leder)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 1976’s My Friends Need Killing, Gene Kline (Greg Mullavey) and his wife, Laura (Meredith MacRae) lie in bed together. Gene can’t sleep. He’s haunted by the sounds of gunfire and explosions and people barking out orders at him. A Vietnam vet, Gene has been seeing a Dr. MacLaine (Eric Morris) for help with dealing with his wartime PTSD but it hasn’t done him much good. Without telling Laura, Gene has been sending letters to the former members of his platoon, letting them know that he will soon be visiting them in each of their home cities. Gene says that he’s just dropping by for a visit but the reality is that Gene has decided that his friends need killing.

Without telling his wife, Gene leaves home in the morning and heads to San Francisco. While Laura is looking at old pictures of Gene and having flashbacks to their perfect wedding day, Gene is stalking the people with whom he committed an atrocity in Vietnam. Like Gene, the former members of his platoon have struggled to adjust to returning home. One lives in Texas, loves to hunt, and brags about how he never thinks about the war. Another has found work as a trucker. Another has a nice big house and a pregnant wife and still suffers from flashbacks of his own. Perhaps the most tragic of Gene’s friends is Les Drago (Roger Cruz), who is now a performance artist and an anti-war activist and who recites Lady MacBeth’s “out damn spot” speech while discussing his activities during the war.

My Friends Need Killing is a short but intense movie. It may only have a 73-minute running time and a portion of that running time may be taken up with filler but Gene pursues his mission with a relentless and ruthless determination that is ultimately very unsettling to watch. As played by Greg Mullavey, Gene wanders through the film with the thousand-yard stare of a man who has truly snapped. Years after the war, he can’t forgive anyone, including himself. To him, it doesn’t matter that someone like Les returned from Vietnam and decided to dedicate his life to preventing another pointless war. What matters to Gene is getting vengeance on those who he blames for his sins. Even though the film makes clear that Gene’s actions are due to his experiences during the war, Gene himself never becomes a sympathetic figure. He’s too vicious in his murders, even targeting the wife of one of his platoonmates.

Adding to the film’s unsettling and grim atmosphere is the film’s rather ragged editing. Scenes begin and end abruptly, sometimes in mid-conversation. Each murder is followed by a shot of an airplane landing in another city as Gene continues his mission. Scenes of Gene having flashbacks are haphazardly mixed with scenes of Laura and Dr. MacLaine trying to figure out where Gene has disappeared to. One is tempted to smile at the film’s score, which sounds more appropriate for a 70s cop show than a movie about a murderous vet, but even the score ultimately adds to the film’s off-center feel. The score feels as out-of-place as the happiness of his friends does to Gene. My Friends Need Killing ultimately feels like a film about a world that is spiraling out of control. The film ends on a truly odd note, one that suggests that there is hope for the future, even if there’s no place for Gene in it.

Much like Bob Clark’s Deathdream, My Friends Need Killing suggested that mainstream America would never be ready to fully accept what happened in Vietnam.

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.17 “Playgirl/Smith’s Valhalla”

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986. Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Leslie Nielsen returns to Fantasy Island!

Episode 3.17 “Playgirl/Smith’s Valhalla”

(Dir by Michael Vejar, originally aired on January 26th, 1980)

This week, Tattoo is super excited because one of the guests is Erica Clark (Barbie Benton), a famous centerfold for Rooster Magazine! Erica, however, no longer models. As she explains to Mr. Roarke, she grew tired of men treating her as just being a sex object. Indeed, her fantasy is to be able to treat men the same way! (Today, of course, Erica could save however much money she spent for the fantasy by simply watching clips of Magic Mike on YouTube.)

In perhaps the simplest fantasy that Mr. Roarke has ever put together, he sends Erica to the Island’s famed Jackrabbit Club, where men dance while women watch. Again, to be clear, all Mr. Roarke had to do was send her to the island’s version of Chippendales. I mean, Erica could have just done that on her own. Anyway, Erica witnesses one of the dancers, Walter Wilde (Fabian Forte), getting fired for refusing to go along with being sexually harassed by one of the women in the audience. Relating to Walter, his desire to go to medical school, and his life as a single father to Dinah (Heather McAdam), Erica agrees to come out of retirement and pose (in a bikini with a big rooster tail hooked on the back) for the club’s owner, Big Earl Sanderson (Denny Miller). However, when Big Earl demands that Erica do more than just pose, Walter is there to punch him out.

Anyway, it turns out that Dinah’s fantasy was for Walter to fall in love and Roarke combined her fantasy with Erica’s, presumably to save some money. So, Erica, Walter, and Dinah leave the island together and I guess Erica learns that …. well, I’m not sure anyone learned anything. This was a pretty weak fantasy that claimed to be about treating men as sex objects but spent the majority of time looking for excuses to put Barbi Benton in a bikini. Seriously, Jackrabbit was the tamest male strip club I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, the Island finds itself in what should be an international incident after a group of dirty commies hijack a plane and make it land at an abandoned Fantasy Island airport. The communists say that they are doing this because they have to get people to pay attention to their cause but it’s hard not to notice that there’s next to no media coverage of the events, there are no soldiers or police surrounding the airport, and Mr. Roarke merely shrugs it off.

The only person who does care is Jason Smith (Hugh O’Brian), whose fantasy is to lead a combat mission. The fantasy becomes personal for Jason when he discovers that his wife (Emily Banks) is one of the hostages! Mr. Roarke arranges to Jason to work with three combat experts.

Buck Tanner (Sean Garrison) is an explosives expert who suffers from war flashbacks.

“Weasel” Forbes (Charlies Dierkop) is a wild sniper.

And French soldier of fortune Emile Bouvier is …. LESLIE NIELSEN!

Yes, this episode of Fantasy Island features Leslie Nielsen is one of the last of his “serious” roles, playing a French mercenary by wearing a red beret and not even attempting an accent. Bouver is tough and no-nonsense, as we learn when he catches Buck drinking on the job.

Anyway, Jason is able to rescue his wife and the other hostages and the communists are all arrested and hopefully sacrificed to the Fantasy Island mermaid. Bouvier sacrifices his life to save Jason’s but Mr. Roark explains that it was no big deal because Bouvier was dying anyways and his fantasy was to end his life doing something heroic. Once again, it appears that Mr. Roarke saved some money by combining fantasies. Was Fantasy Island feeling the effects of the Carter recession? Perhaps.

Other than Leslie Nielsen playing a serious role, probably the most interesting thing about this episode is that Mr. Roarke and Tattoo barely spoke to each other over the course of it. There was none of the usual comedic banter or anything like that. Indeed, even in the scenes greeting and saying goodbye to their guests, Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaize refused to every look at each other. Obviously, it wasn’t all happy days on Fantasy Island.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Doug Bradley Makes His Debut As Pinhead in Hellraiser

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Born in Liverpool, actor Doug Bradley is a longtime personal friend to author Clive Barker and appeared in Barker’s short film Salome, playing the role of King Herod. When Barker was making his feature directorial debut with 1987’s Hellraiser and he needed someone to play the head Cenobite, he turned once again to Bradley and the result was one of the most iconic horror characters of all time.

While the Cenobites may have all had disturbing physical features, what truly made them frightening was their arrogant disdain for anyone who was foolish enough to summon them. Bradley perfectly portrayed Pinhead’s haughty arrogance, starting with his very first appearance in Hellraiser.

When Bradley as Pinhead says, “We’ll tear your soul apart,” the viewer has no doubt that he means every word of it.

Horror Book Review: Haunted by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

First published in 1990, Haunted tells the story of Melissa, a teenager who would seem to have the perfect life.

No only does she come from a wealthy family and live in a nice, big house that is located right in the middle of Fear Street but Melissa is also a popular student at Shadyside High and she has a boyfriend named Buddy. Plus, she’s just celebrated her birthday and, as a present, she got a brand new car! The only thing that Melissa really has to worry about is the possibility of her house being broken into by the elusive Fear Street Prowler and the fact that a bitter ghost named Paul keeps materializing in front of her and claiming that she killed him and he’s come back from the dead to get revenge. Paul is not only a revenge-seeking ghost but he also taunts Melissa for being rich. Perhaps the only thing worse than being haunted is by being haunted by a ghost from the lower classes. I mean, seriously, I don’t even want to think about it….

(Usual disclaimer: I do NOT believe in ghosts.)

Melissa is not only annoyed by Paul’s bad manners but also by the fact that he claims that she killed him when she has absolutely no memory of who he is. In fact, when she does some simple research to see if anyone recently killed Paul, she discovers that no one named Paul has been murdered recently. Paul himself admits that his memory is a little bit fuzzy, as well. Accusing someone of murdering you when you’re really not sure isn’t a cool thing to do, Paul. Stupid ghost.

Then, one night, Melissa sees Paul hanging out with his other less-than-wealthy friends. Only, this Paul is alive and he’s even more of a jerk than his ghost! Melissa realizes that Paul’s ghost is from the future and that therefore, Paul has not died yet but will and apparently, she’s going to be the one responsible! But how can that be when Ghost Paul is turning out to be not that bad and actually kind of sweet?

(Myself, I’m more concerned with how Living Paul and Ghost Paul both existing at the same time seems like one of those things that would cause the universe to split open or something. I mean, it just doesn’t seem right.)

This is one of R.L. Stine’s stranger books. The plot doesn’t really make much sense but you have to kind of admire the fact that Stine just went with it and didn’t even bother to try to make any of it seem plausible. Sometimes, it’s best just to embrace the silliness of it all and that’s what Stine does here. The book’s attempts to deal with class differences were fairly shallow but then again, when you’re a teenager, you’re always at you’re most shallow when talking about who is rich and who is poor so, on that level, Stine did a good job writing for his target audience. The important thing is that Melissa was a relatable and sympathetic character and she definitely deserved a less petulant ghost.

October True Crime: Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story (dir by Peter Levin)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Made for television in 1992, Overkill: The Aileen Wuronos Story opens with Aileen (Jean Smart) and her friend, Tyria Moore (Park Overall), hitchhiking their way through Florida. Aileen is outspoken and unpredictable, quick to lose her temper with anyone who doesn’t give her a ride or money and also very possessive of Tyria. Tyria is naïve and a bit spacey, though she is smart enough to have figured out that Aileen is financing their trip through sex work.

Of course, if you’ve seen Monster, you already know the story of Aileen and Tyria and you also know that Aileen is eventually going to end up in a lot of trouble and Tyria is going to be pressured to betray her. Monster made it clear that Aileen and Tyria were a romantic couple and it even suggests that, for all of her crimes, Aileen sincerely loved Tyria. Overkill, probably due to being a made-for-television movie from the 90s, treats Aileen and Tyria’s relationship a bit more ambiguously. While Aileen is portrayed as being very possessive and very protective of Tyria, their relationship is portrayed as being more of a roommate situation than a romantic one. Indeed, Aileen is often portrayed as being almost stalkerish in her behavior towards Tyria. Aileen comes across as being much more interested in Tyria than Tyria is in Aileen.

While Aileen and Tyria travel across Florida, men are turning up dead up and down the interstates. The victims were all shot and they were all middle-class, white professionals. Most of them are found in circumstances that suggested that they had picked someone up and that person subsequently shot and then robbed them. When Detective Brian Munster (Brion James) suggests that all of the men could have fallen victim to a female serial killer, his colleagues are skeptical. Everyone knows that serial killers are always men. But Munster continues to insist that the murderer must be a woman and soon, he comes to suspect that the killer could be Aileen. However, all of the evidence that Brian has is circumstantial and it won’t be enough to get a conviction. He and the member of his investigative team start to watch Aileen, waiting for her to make a mistake that will give them what they need to make an arrest….

After she was convicted of murdering seven men, Aileen Wournos claimed that the police always knew that she was the one committing the murders but that they didn’t arrest her because they wanted to reap the publicity from pursuing America’s first female serial killer. As evidence, she cited this movie and it must be admitted that this movie does feature a lot of scenes of Munster and his detectives waiting for Aileen to make her next move. That said, one would think that Overkill would be the last movie that Aileen would want to bring attention to because the film essentially presents Aileen Wournos as being a petulant and trashy psychopath who turned to crime because she was too stupid to do anything else with her life. If Monster portrayed Aileen as being someone who had been so damaged by society that she could no longer function, Overkill portrays Aileen as being someone who uses her childhood trauma as a convenient excuse for her own antisocial tendencies.

Overkill is a considerably more simplistic portrayal of Aileen’s crimes than Monster. That said, Jean Smart does a good job in the role and is convincingly angry at the world. Overkill is more about the effort to catch Aileen than Aileen herself and character actor Brion James, who usually played villains over the course of his career (like Leon in Blade Runner and the killer in The Horror Show), makes for a convincingly no-nonsense cop. Overkill is a well-made and well-acted film, even if it does ultimately feel a bit shallow in its storytelling.

Horror Film Review: Lake of Dracula (dir by Michio Yamamoto)

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

All of her life, Akiko (Midori Fujita) has been haunted by a dream in which, as a little girl, she followed her dog into an abandoned house and ran into a pale man (Mori Kishida) who had golden eyes and fangs for teeth. Even living a somewhat idyllic life on the shores of a lovely lake and dating a handsome young doctor (Osahide Takahashi), Akiko cannot shake the feeling that what she has been telling herself was a dream may have actually happened to her.

One day, a large crate is sent to a nearby boat operator. When the man opens the crate, he discovers that it contains a coffin. Can you guess what’s in that coffin? Soon strange things are happening all around town. Bodies start to show up at the hospital with bite marks on their necks. Akiko’s dog disappears and the formerly friendly boat operator suddenly starts to act in an aggressive manner. Even worse, Akiko’s sister, Natsuko (Sanae Emi), vanishes. Akiko comes to believe that it is somehow all linked to her dream, which might not have been a dream at all. She and her boyfriend head back to her hometown, searching for the house from her dreams so that they may finally find out the truth about the pale man with the golden eyes and fangs and…. well, I don’t know why exactly they think they have to find out the truth. It’s pretty obvious that he’s a vampire, right? I mean, the fangs were kind of a dead giveaway.

When I came across the 1971 film, Lake of Dracula, on Tubi, my initial response was to say, “Oh, cool! A Japanese Dracula film! I wonder what that’s going to be like!” Having watched the film, I can say that, along with being a Japanese Dracula film, Lake of Dracula is also an extremely conventional vampire film. This is one of those films where it’s so obvious from the start that the villain is a vampire that you can’t help but get a bit annoyed at the other characters for not figuring it out as quickly as you did. While I’m not really sure if the vampire in the film is meant to be the Dracula (and, despite the title, I’m actually pretty sure that he’s not), the character is obviously a vampire and, beyond the golden eyes, this film doesn’t really bring anything new to the vampire mythos. If you’re hoping that this film will feature the hopping vampires that made films like Kung Fu Zombie so memorable, you’re destined to be disappointed.

That said, it’s a lovely film to look at, full of vibrant colors and properly ominous shadows and the golden eyes are definitely a memorable effect. The film is full of nicely creepy locations, with the house from Akiko’s dream being exactly the type of place that would inspire a lifetime full of nightmares. It’s a conventional film but it’s full of genuine melancholy and a good deal of ominous atmosphere, all of which keeps the film watchable even if it never quite takes the viewer by surprise.

4 Shots From 4 Horror Films: Special Roy Ward Baker Edition

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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 Roy Ward Baker, one of the masters of Hammer and Amicus horror!

4 Shots From 4 Roy Ward Baker Films