The poster above pretty much epitomizes everything that I love about old B-movies. Between the aliens and the poster’s promise that we’re being given the chance to “SEE (the) night the world nearly ended…!,” it’s hard to resist the temptation to give Invasion of the Saucer Men a chance.
First released in 1957, Invasion of the Saucer Men is, in many ways, a standard alien invasion film. Aliens land in a small town and cause a lot of inconvenience for a bunch of all-American teenagers who are just looking for a place to make out. What sets Invasion of the Saucer Men apart is that it’s meant to intentionally humorous and the aliens totally kick ass.
So, here is today’s edition of Horror On The Lens: Invasion of the Saucer Men!
Since this October began, we have featured ghosts, vampires, a sadist, and some Cambodian zombies. Therefore, it makes sense that, for our latest horror film on the Lens, we should feature a werewolf.
In The Werewolf of Washington, a manic Dean Stockwell plays an aide to the President of the United States who, during an assignment in Hungary, meets some gypsies, and ends up getting attacked by a werewolf. Soon, Stockwell is back in Washington and turning into a wolf under the glow of the full moon…
The Werewolf of Washington features a memorable performance from Stockwell and the werewolf effects are fairly effective. However, The Werewolf of Washington is mostly memorable as a document of its time. The film was first released in 1973 and it’s meant to be a social and political satire along with being a traditional werewolf movie. Admittedly, this is a low-budget and frequently uneven film but it’s worth seeing just for the scene where Stockwell gets his finger stuck in a bowling ball.
Today’s horror movie is an early take on one of the most iconic of all monsters. First released in 1936, Revolt of the Zombies tells the story of what happens when the French discover that the secret to creating zombies is located in Cambodia. Naturally, they organize an expedition to track down that secret and destroy it.
Simple, right?
Unfortunately, when it comes to the French and zombies, nothing is ever simple…
Revolt of the Zombies was directed by Victor Halperin, who had previously directed the atmospheric classic White Zombie. Unfortunately, Revolt of the Zombies is hardly a classic. However, I still find the movie interesting as an example of what a Hollywood zombie film looked like before George Romero revolutionized the genre with Night of the Living Dead. The zombies in Revolt of the Zombies are not the undead cannibals that we’ve all been conditioned to expect. Instead, they’re closer to the original zombies: brainwashed servants without a will of their own.
One final note: the eyes that are frequently superimposed over the action belong to Bela Lugosi.
As scary as all the stories of zombies and vampires may be, the most frightening monsters in the world are the ones that walk among us. I may look away when a monster shows up halfway through a movie but what truly scares me is what my fellow human beings have proven themselves capable of doing.
Today’s movie is all about man-made horror. Released in 1963, The Sadist is a dark and rather brutal film about what happens when three teachers have car trouble and find themselves wandering around a seemingly deserted junkyard. They quickly discover that they’re not alone. Watching them and eventually terrorizing them is Charlie (Arch Hall, Jr.), an inartciulate sociopath who quickly proves himself to be a lot more clever than his smugly complacent hostages. This bleak film is memorable for both its starkly effective cinematography and Hall’s disturbingly plausible portrayal of the title character.
Today’s horror movie is from Hammer films and, needless to say, it’s lot of fun. In The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, an ennui-stricken Count Dracula (James Forbes-Robertson) leaves his castle and travels all the way to China. Once in China, he resurrects the legendary 7 golden vampires and uses them to raid a nearby village. One villager (played by David Chiang) goes to the legendary Prof. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, of course) for help. Van Helsing, along with his son (Robin Stewart) and a wealthy widow (Julie Ege, who decorated several Hammer films), goes to the village to battle the vampires. Providing protecting for Van Helsing’s group is Chiang’s sister (Szu Shih) and six other brothers.
First released in 1974, The Legend of the 7 Vampires was Hammer’s attempt to revive the failing fortunes of their most iconic monster by collaborating with Hong Kong film producer Sir Run Run Shaw. The result is an entertaining hybrid of a traditional Hammer vampire film and a Hong Kong kung fu movie. While James Forbes-Robertson makes for a poor replacement for Christopher Lee, Cushing is perfect as always.
Traditionally, October is a very special month here at the Shattered Lens. October is the month that we devote the majority of our attention to the horror genre. This month, along with all of the reviews that you’ve come to expect from the Shattered Lens, I will also be attempting to share a horror movie a day with all of our wonderful readers.
Let’s start things off with an odd little B-movie from 1946, Strangler Of The Swamp, a story of love, revenge, and ghosts. A group of swamp men hanged an innocent man. Now, the ghost of that man is having his revenge by strangling the descendents of the people who killed him. One of those descendents is Chris Sanders (played by future director Blake Edwards) who just happens to be in love with Maria (Rosemary La Planche), the granddaughter of the vengeful ghost.
Clocking in at little less than an hour, Strangler Of The Swamp tells a familiar story but it’s still worth watching. Charles Middleton is effective as the strangler and the German-born director Frank Wisbar deals with the restrictions imposed by a minsicule budget by emphasizing the film’s expressionistic atmosphere. While it would be a mistake to call Strangler Of The Swamp a lost masterpiece (as some critics have done), it’s still an interesting example of low-budget, B-filmmaking.
Late last night, I watched an original Lifetime movie called The Cheating Pact.
Why Was I Watching It?
It was on Lifetime. How could I not watch it?
What Was It About?
The Cheating Pact is yet another Lifetime movie about upper middle class high school girls murdering each other. The girls also refuse to appreciate or listen to the advice offered up by their mothers and, in typical Lifetime fashion, the movie doesn’t seem to be certain whether it’s worse to be a murderer or a spoiled brat.
(Personally, I was occasionally accused of being a spoiled brat when I was in high school and I turned out just fine…)
Heather (Daniela Bobadilla) and Kylie (Laura Ashley Samuels) are both feeling pressured to get high scores on the College Entrance Test. Fortunately, Heather’s former best friend Meredith (Laura Wiggins) is a genius. (Just in case anyone is doubting Meredith’s intelligence, she wears glasses. So there.) Meredith agrees to take their tests for them and soon, she’s getting paid thousands of dollars to help her peers get into college.
However, Kylie isn’t happy with her score and feels that Meredith deliberately did poorly on the test. And so, as often happens in these films, Kylie shoves Meredith to her death and then tries to frame Heather for the murder,
What Worked?
Whenever you watch a Lifetime movie about a teenage girl doing something wrong and then not going to her mom for advice (or, even worse, ignoring her mom’s advice), you always know that the worst possible thing is going to happen as a result. In these uncertain times, a film like The Cheating Pact is so predictable that it’s actually rather comforting.
I also love how Lifetime movies always present high school as being ruled by an erratic matriarchal society that’s dominated by secret organizations and melodramatic conspiracies, If anything, I think Lifetime movies probably offer the most realistic depictions of high school that I’ve ever seen.
What Did Not Work?
Hey, it was a Lifetime movie. Therefore, it all worked.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
Much like Kylie, I once accidentally shoved someone over a stairway railing. But shhhhhh …. don’t tell anyone.
Lessons Learned
I missed the opportunity to make a lot of easy money in high school.
Rush, the latest film from Ron Howard, is the type of film that I usually hate.
It’s big, bombastic, and so extremely mainstream that it actually features Chris Hemsworth uttering the line, “This is what I was born to do,” without a hint of irony. This is a film about rich boys playing with expensive toys and the movie’s portrayal of women manages to make Aaron Sorkin look enlightened by comparison. Finally, the film is about a sport that I previously knew nothing about and, after having spent two hours watching this film, I still know very little about.
And yet, I didn’t hate Rush. In fact, I really enjoyed it and I think the reason why comes down to one thing.
I have a weakness for hot guys who drive fast cars.
Rush tells the true story about the rivalry between two Formula One racers, the flamboyant Englishman James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and the extroverted German Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). The film follows them from their first meeting in 1970 until they both find themselves competing for the Formula One championship in 1976. Along the way, we watch how both of them deal with the temptations that went along with being a rich celebrity in the 1970s. (Lauda resists the majority of them. Hunt does not.) Along the way, one of them struggles to recover after a horrifying accident and both of them try to maintain a balance between their personal lives and the fact that each race they run could potentially be their last. (In one of the film’s best scenes, Niki explains that he’s prepared to accept a 20% chance of dying during a race but not a point more.)
Plotwise, Rush is pretty much a standard sports film, full of men talking about the importance of being men while women stare up at them with adoration. Inspirational speeches are delivered and everything comes down to one final race. If, like me, you’re not into Formula 1 racing, the film can occasionally be difficult to follow. During one extended montage of cars racing across the world and occasionally crashing, I found myself seriously wondering how many races could possibly be run in a Formula One season. As the film reached its conclusion, James and Niki started talking about which racers have the most points. Their conversation would have undoubtedly been easy to follow for someone who was into Formula One but for me, it took a few minutes to figure out what they were going on about.
However, none of that matters.
Rush works.
There’s a lot of reasons why Rush works. The film’s glossy recreation of the 1970s (in all of its frequently tacky glory) is enjoyable to watch and Hans Zimmer’s score is properly loud and majestic. Both Hemsworth and Bruhl give good performances, with Hemsworth coming across as properly flamboyant and Bruhl bringing some much-needed humor to a character who, in the hands of a lesser actor, could have been insufferable. Both Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara do good work bringing seriously underwritten characters to life.
However, the film’s ultimate success belongs to director Ron Howard.
Ever since Frost/Nixon prevented The Dark Knight from getting a best picture nomination in 2009, there has been a certain loud element of the online film community that has used Ron Howard as a go-to example of a safe and thoroughly commercial director. He is often dismissed as being the epitome of a mainstream, conventional filmmaker.
However, as mainstream as Howard’s sensibility may be, Rush proves that he still knows how to craft an exciting scene. I may have occasionally had trouble keeping track of who was and wasn’t in each car but that didn’t make the races any less thrilling or the accidents any less horrifying. During the film’s best sequences, you feel the thrill of being in control of the uncontrollable and you understand why Niki and James are willing to risk death just so they can experience being alive.
Early this morning, after waking up and walking into a wall, I watched The Omega Code, an evangelically-themed film from 1999.
Why Was I Watching It?
Earlier this year, my friend Evelyn and I watched a film called Megiddo: The Omega Code 2.We were both oddly amused by Megiddo so, when I saw that the first Omega Code film was going to be on one of the religious stations, I set the DVR to record it and made plans to watch it at some point in the future.
Last night, I happened to wake up around 3 in the morning. I got out of bed, I took a few steps forward, and I walked straight into a wall. After that, I turned on the lights and I was relieved to discover that my nose had protected the rest of my face from the wall.
So there I was at 3 in the morning with my red nose and my bruised pride and, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get back to sleep. What’s a girl to do, right? So, I decided that since I was awake anyway, I would go ahead and watch The Omega Code.
What Was It About?
The world is ending. People are starving. Nations are going to war. Fortunately, the President of the European Union, Stone Alexander (Michael York) has a plan to save us all. Unfortunately, Stone Alexander also happens to be the Antichrist.
In order to get all of humanity to accept his plan, Stone recruits the world’s most famous motivational speaker (Casper Van Dien). However, Van Dien find out about the Omega Code, a secret code that uses the bible to predict the future. And, as Van Dien discovers, the future looks positively apocalyptic….
What Worked?
When I reviewed Megiddo: Omega Code 2, I mentioned that if you’ve got a naturally villainous name like Stone Alexander, you might as well be evil. The same remains true of The Omega Code. Stone Alexander is so evil and Michael York is obviously having so much fun playing him that the fun is almost contagious.
Michael Ironside plays Dominic, Stone Alexander’s henchman. In a rather offensive moment, Alexander reveals that Dominic is both gay and a former priest and the implication (which was probably popular with the film’s target audience) is that Dominic’s villainy is the direct result of both his Catholicism and his sexuality. But, regardless, Ironside gives a memorably menacing performance.
It’s interesting how the villains in religious films are often more compelling than the heroes…
What Did Not Work?
Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was spoiled by getting the chance to see the 2nd Omega Code before I saw the first one. Omega Code 2 was the epitome of a so-bad-that-it’s-good type of film but the first Omega Code was just bad. Not even the combined villainy of Michaels York and Ironside could make The Omega Code entertaining.
(Add to that, Megiddo: Omega Code 2 featured cameos from both Franco Nero and Udo Kier, while The Omega Code featured … well, no one.)
No review of The Omega Code would be complete without mentioning that, in the lead role, Casper Van Dien gives perhaps one of the worst performances ever captured on film. It’s oddly fascinating to watch and try to figure out how anybody could give such an incompetent performance.
As I watched the film, one question kept nagging at me. The Omega Code makes the argument that biblical prophecy should be taken literally. Therefore, if the bible is itself a literal document that tells you everything that you need to know than why hide a secret code between the lines? And, if you’re going to go through all the trouble to come up with a secret code, why use that code to then hide cryptic phrases that could literally be translated to mean anything? It just seems a bit overly complicated.
(That, incidentally, is the same reason why I don’t have much use for anything that Dan Brown has ever written.)
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
None. Seriously, there was not a single moment in this film to which I could relate. Some of that may be because this film was obviously made to appeal to an evangelical audience, as opposed to a free-thinking fallen Catholic like me.
Then again, it could also be that The Omega Code just wasn’t a very good movie.
Under the Skin, which is directed by Jonathan Glazer, features Scarlett Johansson as an alien who preys on Scottish hitchhikers. After Escape from Tomorrow, this is probably my second favorite trailer of 2013.
