Tag Archives: movie

Horror on the Lens: Destroy All Planets (dir by Noriaki Yuasa)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Aliens are trying to conquer Earth.  It’s a pretty good thing that we’ve got a giant, fire-breathing turtle to protect us!

In Japan, this film was released as Gamera vs Viras.  In 1969, when it aired on American television, the Japanese actors were dubbed and the title was changed to Destroy All Planets, presumably to try to capitalize on the success of Destroy All Monsters.  As any true kaiju fan can tell you, Gamera and Godzilla exist in different cinematic universes but that’s not something that the average American was worried about, especially in 1969!  Myself, I love both Gamera and Godzilla.  That said, my favorite remains Jet Jaguar.  Whatever happened to that robot?

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is today’s Horror on the Lens!  Enjoy Destroy All Planets!

 

 

Horror Song of the Day: The Winner by Lance Owg, Gabriel Rohels, and David Cole

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s song of the day comes from the 1981 slasher classic, Graduation Day!

Just try not to sing along!

Everybody wants to be the winner….

Horror Scene That I Love: Charlton Heston And Woodstock In The Omega Man

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today would have been the 103rd birthday of actor Charlton Heston.

This scene that I love comes from one of the few horror films in which Heston appeared.  An adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, 1971’s The Omega Man featured Charlton Heston as Robert Neville.  By night, Neville protects his house against the mutant horde.  By day, he tracks those sleeping mutants down and watches Woodstock over and over again.

“They don’t make them like that anymore,” Neville says.

This scene gets a lot of attention because of the contrast between the conservative Heston and the hippies in the film.  To me, the reason that it works is because Woodstock is a documentary.  Neville isn’t watching an actor pretending to be a character in a film.  He’s watching an actual human being who went to the Woodstock music festival and who is presumably either now a mutant or dead.  Imagine being the hippie interviewed by this scene and seeing yourself in The Omega Man and knowing you didn’t survive the apocalypse.  For that matter, we also have to assume that all of the Woodstock performers have been turned into mutants as well.  Write a song about that, Country Joe.

(I choose to believe that Arlo Guthrie made it to safety.  Sha Na Na, though?  Doomed.)

Neville’s right.  They don’t make them like this anymore.

 

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Anne Rice Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More 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 lets the visuals do the talking!

Today would have been the 86th birthday of author Anne Rice.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Anne Rice Adaptations

Interview With A Vampire (1994, dir by Neil Jordan, DP: Phillippe Rousselot)

Exit to Eden (1994, dir by Garry Marshall, DP: Theo van de Sande)

Queen of the Damned (2002, dir by Michael Rymer, DP: Ian Baker)

The Young Messiah (2016, dir by Cyrus Nowrasteh, DP: Joel Ransom)

 

October Positivity: In Gramps’ Shoes (dir by Chip Rossetti)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s In Gramps’ Shoes opens with Ty (Donald James Parker) praying that his daughter, Amy (Francine Locke), will finally call him.  It’s been 20 years since they last spoke.  Amy felt that Ty — or “Gramps” as he’s eventually known — was too controlling when she was growing up.  He didn’t approve of her music.  He didn’t approve of the man she married.  When she left home, she went to Tennessee and promised herself that she would never look back.

However, Amy is now in some trouble.  Her husband has left her.  Her teenage son, Scott (Andrew Wilson Williams), is a slacker who smokes on the porch with his loser friends and who refuses to even consider getting a part-time job to help pay the bills.  Her daughter, Sally (Brittany Blades), is a bit more responsible but she’s been reading Harry Potter and that could lead to her becoming a witch.  Amy is also nearly broke.  She finally swallows her pride and calls Gramps to ask for help.

Soon, Gramps has moved down to Tennessee.  At first, Scott and his friends are dismissive of Gramps.  But then they watch as Gramps beats Scott in a two-mile race.  They watch as Gramps does pull-ups at a local park.  They all marvel at how athletic Gramps is.  Scott decides that he wants to run just like Gramps.  But first, Scott is going to have to work on his attitude and start going to church….

This film has a lot of problems, from the poor ADR to the bad acting to the script that allows certain scenes to drag on without end.  This film is nearly two hours long and you will definitely feel every one of those 115 minutes.  Even the running scenes are a bit disappointing because no one really looks like they’re in good enough condition to be a track star.  Everyone in the film talks about how good Gramps looks but Gramps actually spends the majority of the film looking like he might collapse at any moment.

The main problem with the film is Gramps is a kind of a jerk.  From the minute he shows up in Tennessee, he’s giving orders and we can tell why his daughter thought he was too controlling.  He moves in and immediately starts to tell Amy how to raise her son.  Because Gramps goes to church, he demands that his grandchildren come with him.  (Keep in mind, he doesn’t ask them to go to a church.  He tells them that they have to come to his church.)  He makes it clear that his grandchildren won’t be watching anything fantasy-related (like a Harry Potter movie) as long as he’s around.  Gramps isn’t just opinionated.  Instead, he comes across as being angry and rather aggressive.  And yet, everyone just loves to be around him.

In this film, Parker appears to be playing the same character that he played in Gramps Goes To College.  However, there’s a plot development that makes it impossible for this to be a prequel to Gamps Goes To College.  At the same time, Gramps first gets his nickname in this film which means that Gramps Goes To College also couldn’t be considered a sequel.  It’s not the film’s biggest problem but it is something that bothers a continuity nerd like me.

Despite all of those problems, this film does end with a priceless final line.  Is Scott going to go prom with his new girlfriend?  Actually, Scott might “lead a protest against Harry Potter …. because it’s what Gramps would have wanted.”  The film is almost worth watching just to hear that one line.

Almost.

Made-For-TV-Movie Review: The Execution of Gary Glitter (dir by Rob Coldstream)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Made for British television, 2009’s The Execution of Gary Glitter opens with disgraced former rock star Gary Glitter (played by Scottish actor Hilton McRae) returning to the UK after serving a three-year prison sentence in Vietnam. When he was younger, Glitter was one of the most popular men in the UK, a rock star who was liked by both parents and — ahem — their children. His song “Rock and Roll Part 2,” with its chorus of “Hey!”, became a mainstay at sporting events. However, everything fell apart in the late ’90s when he was arrested and subsequently convicted of possessing child porn. After he was released from prison, Glitter went abroad and swore he would never return to Britain. In 2005, while living in Vietnam, he was convicted of having sex with underage girls. While he could have faced the firing squad as a result, he was instead given a three-year prison sentence. When he was released, he attempted to relocate to Hong Kong and Taiwan, only to be told that he was not welcome. Eventually, he had no choice but to return to the UK because every other country banned him from entering.

That’s all a matter of public record. The Execution of Gary Glitter imagines what would have happened if Glitter — or Paul Gadd, to use his real name — returned to a UK that had recently reinstated the death penalty. In this film, as soon as Gadd arrives in the UK, he’s placed under arrest. He’s been out of the country for so long that he totally missed the fact that Britain is once again hanging people. He’s also surprised to hear that he can be tried for crimes that were committed outside of British territory and that he can be executed if found guilty of the same crimes for which he was convicted in Vietnam.

The Execution of Gary Glitter is a mix of dramatic scenes and mockumentary-style interviews with people who were involved in Glitter’s criminal case. Though Gary Glitter is played by Hilton McRae, a few British journalists and politicians appear as themselves and talk about their feelings concerning the reinstatement of the death penalty. British MP Ann Widdecombe appears and makes the case for bringing back hanging. (Seventeen years after this special aired, Widdecombe would be brutally murdered in her own home, a victim of the political violence we’re always told isn’t actually occurring.) The film ends with a title card saying that, in 2009, polling showed that 53% of Britons supported bringing back capital punishment. It’s interesting how people always want the opposite of whatever it is they have. In America, the anti-death penalty movement is having a moment, but I can guarantee that, if capital punishment ever was outlawed here, you’d have people demanding that it be brought back within a month.

As for this film, it’s weird. Making a film like this about an actual person is weird. I honestly can’t tell you whether this film is for or against the death penalty. On the one hand, the scenes featuring the hangman and the gallows are rather cold and disturbing. The cold mercilessness of hanging is emphasized and with it, the idea that people who support the death penalty run the risk of becoming just as cold.  (Of course, considering what’s currently happening in Tennessee as a result of the botched lethal injection of Christa Pike, some viewers would today undoubtedly appreciate the cool precision of a hanging.) On the other hand, Gary Glitter is about as unsympathetic a character as you can imagine and, in the film, he’s portrayed as being someone who lacks the self-awareness to understand why people are even upset at him. He makes plenty of excuses but they all ring hollow. At one point, the film mentions that Europe is uniformly condemning and sanctioning the UK for bringing back the death penalty. That would probably be a big deal in the UK. In America, we really don’t care what Europe thinks. Annoying Brussels is our national pastime.

What the film definitely does get right is the carnival atmosphere that would accompany the execution of a celebrity. The film imagines people selling T-shirts outside of the prison, macabre remixes of Glitter’s song playing on the radio, and Glitter himself receiving letters from people who continue to be fans despite the crimes for which he’s been convicted. Hilton McRae does a good job in the lead role. He starts out as arrogant and cocky and then gradually, as the reality of his situation dawns on him, he grows more and more desperate.

As for the real-life Gary Glitter, he was not amused by this film and tried to keep it from airing. Six years after the film aired, he was arrested and convicted of several more sex crimes that came to light as a result of the inquest into Jimmy Savile’s crimes. He was sentenced to a 16-year prison term. Just this year, the still-incarcerated Glitter was charged in a new set of historic sex crimes. He has pled not guilty.

Horror Film Review: Trap (dir by M. Night Shyamalan)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2024’s Trap, Cooper Abbott (Josh Hartnett) is a Philadelphia fireman taking his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert. Riley has been having a difficult time at school after recently falling out with two other girls, so seeing her favorite singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan, daughter of the film’s director), should be just the thing to cheer her up.

However, when Cooper and Riley arrive at the stadium, Cooper is surprised by all the police officers and FBI agents milling around. After some checking, he discovers that the FBI believes a serial killer known as The Butcher will be at the concert. Under the leadership of profiler Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), the authorities plan to check out every male at the show. As one helpful vendor puts it, “the entire show is a trap.”

Cooper is not happy to hear this because he is The Butcher. In fact, his latest victim is currently tied up in a basement somewhere. (Cooper occasionally uses his phone to check on how he’s doing.) However, Cooper is also a good father and wants to make sure Riley enjoys the concert. Can Cooper find a way to escape the stadium without ruining Riley’s special day?

That’s a pretty good premise for a suspense thriller, and the first hour of Trap works like a charm. Even though Cooper is a serial killer and the viewer knows he’s not someone they should root for, it’s hard not to be impressed with the way he skillfully manipulates everyone at the concert. He manages to steal a vendor badge. He learns the codeword venue employees are supposed to use to identify themselves to the police. He even steals a police radio so he can listen to Dr. Grant give orders to the cops. And he does it all while Riley enjoys the show. He’s just so diabolically clever that it becomes rather fascinating to watch.

Unfortunately, the film suffers a bit during the second hour. That’s when Lady Raven goes from being a figure performing on stage to an important supporting character. (Unfortunately, it turns out Saleka Night Shyamalan is a much better singer than actress.) Both Lady Raven and Cooper end up making some decisions that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t make much sense. The film is still entertaining, but the second half is not as tightly plotted as the first. Considering that M. Night Shyamalan is famous for his twist endings, it’s a bit strange that it ultimately feels like he never really figured out how he wanted Trap to end.

That said, the first hour of Trap is an enjoyably macabre mix of suspense and dark humor. That first hour is strong enough to make up for the weaker second half. Josh Hartnett puts his everyman charm to good use as a friendly family man who just happens to be a deranged serial killer. At its best, Trap is all about people trying to disguise their true nature. Cooper puts on an act of being a loving father while trying to find a way to continue killing. Lady Raven’s mentor (played by Kid Cudi) is friendly to his fans but a spoiled diva backstage. Even Lady Raven spends the second half of the film pretending to know less than she does. Probably the only character in the film who is truly genuine is Riley. She just wants to see her favorite singer.

Trap may not be Shyamalan’s best. It doesn’t hit you emotionally like The Sixth Sense and it’s nowhere near as icky as Old or Split. But it’s still an entertaining little thriller.

October Hacks: Bikini Guillotine (dir by Jamie Grefe)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2025’s Bikini Guillotine is a slasher film that features plenty of bikinis but not one guillotine. The motiveless killer is a man who wears a mask that was put together with duct tape. He’s definitely a bad guy, but the true villain of this film is whoever was responsible for recording the dialogue.

The first half of this 65-minute movie is made up of footage of several bikini-clad girls hanging out in a pool. They’re all carrying red Solo cups, which they pretend to drink from despite the fact that they’re obviously empty. Every few minutes, they all hold up their Solo cups and go, “Whoo!” The majority of the dialogue is incoherent. Either you can’t hear a word that they’re saying, or you can hear the sound of their voices but you still can’t make out what they’re actually saying. Occasionally, there’s a strange echo effect that does nothing to make the dialogue any more legible. Strangely, we can hear the Solo cups. One girl taps a finger against her Solo cup and it’s suddenly the loudest thing in the movie. Whenever anyone puts their Solo cup down, the sound of the cup hitting the tile reverberates. The weird soundtrack gives certain moments a dreamlike feel, but for the most part, it just feels incredibly shoddy.

(On a personal note, it was impossible for me to look at all of these Solo cups without thinking about the Flipadelphia episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Flip! Flip! Flipadelphia!)

A coherent, non-muddy soundtrack is something that filmgoers tend to take for granted. It’s not until you watch a film like this that you really appreciate just how important sound actually is. I sat through this entire film, but I couldn’t tell you the names of any of the characters or how they even knew each other. Maybe that was revealed in the dialogue. Maybe it wasn’t. I’m not sure what anyone was actually talking about.

As for the killer, who knows why he was even there or why the word “guillotine” is even in the title. The killer does not carry a guillotine. Instead, he carries what appears to be a chakram with a bunch of rubber worms attached to it. A chakram is a flying disc that is supposed to have sharp edges. Traditionally, one uses a chakram by throwing it. Our killer uses his chakram like a knife. Or at least, I think he does. There are many scenes in which he’s seen plunging the chakram down, but apparently there wasn’t any money in the budget for fake blood, so who knows what he’s actually supposed to be doing with it.

The killer also has the power to hypnotize his victims just by looking at them. As such, every victim simply stops moving as soon as he looks at them. Not only does it rob the victims of their agency, but it also makes for a pretty boring slasher film. It’s just one victim after another, with no personality or variety. That said, at least we can actually understand the dialogue inside the house. “Hello?” “Are you guys here?” Spellbinding stuff, as I’m sure you can tell.

Whatever else one might say about it, this film does offer two important lessons to the aspiring filmmaker. Don’t promise a guillotine if you can’t deliver. Hire someone who knows how to record sound.

SOV Horror: Hollow Gate (dir by Ray Di Zazzo)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1988’s Hollow Gate begins with a Halloween party that almost goes terribly wrong. When he feels that his son Mark is not properly bobbing for apples, a drunken father (Richard London) shoves Mark’s face into the water and yells at him for embarrassing the family. Mark nearly drowns, and hopefully the family learns an important lesson about being overly competitive.

Ten years later, Mark (Addison Randall) is working at a gas station on Halloween night. An obnoxious man drives up with his girlfriend. The man wants some gas put in his car and he hands Mark his girlfriend’s panties. (I guess that’s how you tip in New Jersey.) Mark proceeds to stuff the panties into the car’s gas tank and then set them on fire. The man laughs as he drives away. However, he’s not laughing when the car blows up.

Two years after that, Mark harasses a woman at a Halloween shop. Everyone in town agrees that Mark has obviously been driven mad by the incident at the Halloween party, but nothing can be done about it because Mark’s wealthy grandmother (Pat Shalsant) owns the entire town. Mark is released to her care.

The next Halloween, four teenagers are invited to a party at Mark’s mansion. They discover that Grandma has been murdered and that Mark wants them all to put on some costumes that he ordered. When they are understandably reluctant to play Mark’s game, Mark decides that he’ll just wear each costume and kill his guests, one by one….

As far as SOV horror films are concerned, Hollow Gate is not a bad one. Director Ray Di Zazzo is able to capture a few memorable images. If none of the performances are exactly convincing, a few of them are so over-the-top that they’re entertaining. The gore is splattery enough to be effective, even if it’s not particularly realistic. The plot is not particularly original, but there are still enough scenes of lawyers and police officers discussing how Mark would be in prison if not for his wealthy family that you can at least argue that the film pretended to have something more on its mind than just cheap kills.

What truly makes this film memorable is the flamboyant killer. Mark not only changes costumes, but his methods are a bit more original than the typical hack-and-slash killer. Yes, he can use a knife and an axe, and he does just that in one scene. But he can also run you over with a thresher while dressed as a cowboy. Or he can dress up like an English gentleman and have two golden retrievers maul you to death. The dog scene is probably the most memorable one in the film, if only because the dogs themselves are very cute and seem to be having great fun as they lick their unfortunate victim to death. They’re the adorable canines of doom!

It’s a cheap movie with a predictable plot, but it also appears to be a film that is truly in love with Halloween and all of the customs that go along with it. The owner of the local costume store is ultimately just as important as the killer. In the true Halloween tradition, the story ends on an ambiguous note. Was that the boogeyman? Perhaps he was.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Psychomania (dir by Don Sharp)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1973’s Psychomania, Tom Latham (Nicky Henson) is the leader of The Living Dead, a motorcycle gang identified by their skull masks, their bad attitude, and their bizarre love of folk music. Under Tom’s leadership, the members of The Living Dead terrorize the small English town in which they live. They also spend a lot of time hanging out at the cemetery. Tom is death-obsessed. While talking to his girlfriend, Abby (Mary Larkin), Tom suggests that they should kill themselves. “Not that again, Tom,” Abby sighs.

One of the more clever aspects of Psychomania is that, for all of his attempts to be a nihilistic rebel who refuses to conform to the demands of society, Tom is actually a spoiled rich kid who is devoted to his mother (Beryl Reid) and who is still looked after by his butler, Shadwell (George Sanders). Tom’s followers may all be from the lower classes, but Tom most definitely is not. Instead, Tom is very much aware that his mother and Shadwell worship a toad god that can give its followers eternal life, but only if they kill themselves first. After Tom does kill himself, the members of The Living Dead bury him sitting on his motorcycle. He later bursts out of the ground on that same motorcycle and leads his followers on a rampage. Soon, nearly every member of The Living Dead has committed suicide and come back to life as an immortal. The only holdout is Abby.

Psychomania is an enjoyable, chaotic combination of genres. When they first appear, Tom and The Living Dead feel as if they came straight over from one of the many British films about the ’60s rivalry between the rockers and the mods. The Living Dead love their motorcycles and their leather jackets, and they’re not going to let anyone tell them what to do. They’re the type of characters who have appeared in countless biker films. It’s easy to imagine Tom looking at himself in a mirror and trying to imitate Marlon Brando as he says, “What have you got?” However, the film then adds a dash of the witchcraft films popularized by Hammer and Amicus in the late ’60s. Indeed, Tom’s fussy mother and the urbanely sinister Shadwell almost feel like parodies of the type of characters who appeared in those films. (It’s impossible not to smile when the giant toad appears.) The Living Dead then literally become the living dead and prove themselves to be just as relentless as the zombies in the films of George Romero. (That said, the self-amused bikers have more in common with the sanity-deprived characters in Romero’s The Crazies than with the shambling corpses of Night of the Living Dead.) The film ends on a note of sudden reversal, one that brings to mind countless Roger Corman films that featured villains who just didn’t know when to quit.

With all those different genres mashed together, it’s no surprise that Psychomania’s tone is all over the place. Moments of humor and parody are mixed with scenes of the resurrected Living Dead terrorizing their small town and Tom’s mother worrying, along with Shadwell, that perhaps Tom was too immature to be given immortality. Between the suicide montage, the giant toad, and the sight of Tom being buried while sitting on his motorcycle, Psychomania is relentlessly strange and all the more enjoyable for it. Director Don Sharp doesn’t let the action lag, and the film’s mix of bright color, biker imagery, and campy magic combine to make it a truly enjoyable work of pop art.

George Sanders committed suicide shortly after completing this film. He left behind a note that reportedly read, “I’m bored.” He doesn’t have a huge role in Psychomania, but his performance is one of the most memorable things about the film. He imbues Shadwell with a wonderful sense of arch disdain. He may have raised Tom, but that doesn’t mean he has to like him.