Kane Hodder was a veteran stuntman when he first played Jason Voorhees in 1988’s Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood. He would go on to play Jason three more times. He also played Leatherface in Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and, when Freddy Krueger’s gloved hand appeared at the end of Jason Goes To Hell, that was Kane Hodder’s hand grabbing the famous Jason mask and taking it to Hell.
Sadly, when Freddy vs. Jason went into production, Hodder was replaced by another stuntman. (Ironically, Hodder had been considered for the role of Freddy in the original Nightmare on Elm Street.) Still, for Friday the 13th fans, Kane Hodder will always be Jason Voorhees.
In the scene from Friday the 13th Part 7, Hodder shows off the physicality that made him the ideal zombie Jason.
First released in 1974, Deranged tells the story of Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom).
In the 1950s, Ezra is a shy and withdrawn farmer who lives in Wisconsin with his elderly mother (Cosette Lee). Ezra’s mother has raised Ezra to view all other women as being evil and to view sex as being sinful. The end result is that the middle-aged Ezra is absolutely devoted to his mother but he also has no idea what to do with himself after she dies and is buried in the nearby cemetery. After a year of being alone in the farm house, Ezra starts to hear voices telling him to dig up his mother. Ezra does so but, disappointed to see how much her body has decayed over the past few months, he decides that he should start digging up fresher bodies so that he can “rebuild” his mother.
Eeeek!
Yes, it’s a creepy story and it’s all the more creepy for being true. Ezra Cobb is based on Ed Gein, the farmer, grave robber, and serial killer whose actions not only shocked the town of Plainfield but which also inspired Robert Bloch to create the character of Norman Bates. Psycho was based on Ed Gein’s crimes. So was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with the bone-strewn home and Leatherface’s habit of wearing other people’s faces lifted directly from some of the more sordid details of what was found at Gein’s home. By the time the police discovered what had been happening at the farm, Ed Gein had moved on from grave robbing to committing murders. It’s known that Ed Gein killed at least three people. It’s suspected that he was responsible for more. Interestingly enough, Ed Gein was described as being very friendly and helpful after he was captured. He spent the rest of his life in various mental hospitals, where he was described as being a model patient.
A low-budget Canadian production, Deranged plays out in a documentary fashion, featuring enough gore that the film was actually banned in some countries. That said, as bloody as certain scenes are, there’s a strong strain of dark humor running through Deranged. As played by character actor Roberts Blossom, the dazed but always polite Ezra never makes much of an attempt to hide his activities. When Ezra’s friend, Harlan (Robert Warner), reads aloud an article about a missing barmaid, Ezra replies that the barmaid is over at his place. Harlan has a good laugh at the idea and Ezra responds with a somewhat shy smile. No one in town suspects Ezra, largely because he doesn’t hunt and he always seem to be so quiet and mild-mannered. Even when Ezra points a rifle at a store clerk, she laughs and asks, “What are you doing, Ez?” and, given that Ezra looks so harmless, it’s easy to understand why. Ezra? Why, he wouldn’t hurt a fly! Interestingly enough, everyone around Ezra is far more openly violent and misogynistic than Ezra. Harlan brags about his ability as a hunter. A man in a bar makes misogynistic comments about the bar maid who has become Ezra’s latest obsession. Though Ezra is the one who acts on his impulses, the film suggests that Ezra isn’t that different from the other men in town.
In a rare starring role, Roberts Blossom gives a strong performance as Ezra, playing him as someone who is so far divorced from reality that he actually seems to be genuinely offended when one of his victims tries to escape from the barn. Blossom plays Ezra as someone who alternates between being a violent madman and someone who has an almost childlike need for approval.
Ed Gein was one of the first serial killers to become national news and Deranged acknowledges this by featuring a newsman (Leslie Carlson) who not only serves as the film’s narrator but who also occasionally shows up in Gein’s farmhouse, speaking directly to the camera and explaining what was going on in Gein’s life at the time. It’s actually an effective technique, one that acknowledges the media obsession with the crimes of men like Ed Gein. That obsession, of course, led to movies, including Deranged. In many ways, Deranged’s use of the newsman is prophetic. It predicted a future in which the media would play their part into turning serial killers into almost mythological figures, sneaking their way through the more shadowy parts of American history.
Deranged is an effective film. For a long time, it was also believed to be a lost film. After the film’s 1974 run, all prints of the film disappeared. Fortunately, in the mid-90s, a copy was found in Florida and both the film and Roberts Blossoms’s performances got the reevaluation and appreciation that they deserved.
In this twisty Italian thriller from 1975, George Hilton plays one of his signature roles. Hilton is cast as Giorgio Mainardi, a handsome and superficially charming man who is actually a soulless cad. Giorgio is a womanizer who is unhappily married to Norma (Tere Valazquez). Giorgio doesn’t love Norma but he does love her money and he’s eager to get his hands on it.
One night, after an argument with Norma, Giorgio goes for a late night drive so that he can call his mistress from an isolated phone booth. While Giorgio is making the call, he witnesses another man pushing his car into the nearby harbor. The man, who is simply identified as the Killer (Antoine Saint-John), is a serial rapist and murderer whose latest victim was in the car. Giorgio approaches the man and the two strike up an unlikely partnership. Giorgio agrees not to go to the police about what he saw if the Killer agrees to kill Norma for him.
A few days later, while Giorgio is at a party, the Killer drives out to Giorgio and Norma’s house. He breaks into the house and strangles Norma. He then places the body in the trunk of his car. The Killer goes back in the house to make sure that he hasn’t left anything behind. When he comes back outside, his car is gone. Realizing that his car has been stolen, with Norma’s body in the trunk, The Killer steals someone else’s car. Of course, in doing so, he sets off a car alarm and the police are called. By the time Giorgio returns home, both the Killer and the car are gone but the police are waiting for him with the news that Norma has apparently become the latest victim of Rome’s kidnapping epidemic!
(At the time this movie was made, Italy’s terroristic Red Brigades were regularly kidnapping anyone who was considered to be wealthy.)
The Killer’s car has been stolen by Luca (Alessio Orano) and his girlfriend, Laura (Cristina Galbo), who are driving to the beach. Of course, what they don’t know is that there’s a dead body in the trunk and that the Killer is tracking their every move. When they reach the beach, Laura soon finds herself fighting for her life when the Killer manages to track her and Luca down.
The Killer Must Kill Again starts out as a Hitchcock-inspired giallo, with the super-sleazy Giorgio hiring the Killer to kill his wife and apparently assuming that he’ll be able to outsmart anyone who investigates the case. However, once the Killer starts following Luca and Laura, it becomes a thriller with the Killer stalking the two clueless car thieves. Fortunately, director Luigi Cozzi is able to pull off the massive shift in tone without the story falling apart. Cozzi delivers a genuinely suspenseful film, one that will keep you guessing until the final moment. In much the same way that Brian De Palma was often criticized for his obvious love of Hitchcock, Cozzi has often been unfairly dismissed as just being an disciple of Dario Argento’s. But, with The Killer Must Kill Again, Cozzi brings his own unique spin to the giallo genre and shows himself to be a much stronger director than he was often given credit for being.
One final note: The Killer Must Kill Again features one of the scariest psycho killers that you’re ever likely to see. Antoine Saint-John is chilling as the nameless Killer. Later, he would give another excellent performance when he played the doomed painter in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond.
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 the great Wes Craven!
4 Shots From 4 Wes Craven Films
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. by Wes Craven, DP: Jacques Haitkin)
Deadly Friend (1986, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Philip H. Lathrop)
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994, dir by Wes Craven, DP: Mark Irwin)
When last we checked in with Kharis the Mummy, he was running into a swamp in Massachusetts, carrying the reincarnation of Princess Ananka with him. Chasing after him were the standard towns people with torches and guns. It’s not a Universal horror film without angry villagers, even if the movie itself is taking place in Mapleton, Massachusetts.
Upon entering the swamp, both Kharis and Ananka sunk under the water, traumatizing Ananka’s boyfriend but apparently bringing Kharis’s reign of terror to an end.
Well, not so fast!
The 1944 film, The Mummy’s Curse, opens with the townspeople talking about how Kharis continues to haunt the old swamp, so much so that most of the locals refuse to work in the swamp. Oddly enough, though, the townspeople are suddenly a mix of Cajuns and gypsies. (The film even opens with a gypsy woman singing a song in a bar.) The swamp has now become a bayou. We are repeatedly told that the film is taking place in the same location as the previous Mummy films but suddenly, that location has changed from Massachusetts to Louisiana.
As for the plot of The Mummy’s Curse, it all centers around the swamp. The Southern Engineering Company (and that really doesn’t sound like a Massachusetts company) is draining the swamp. The locals are worried that draining the swamp will bring back the curse of the mummy. Two representatives from the Scripps Museum show up and announce that they want to search the drained swamp for the remains of the mummies. Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) is typical of the archeologists who tend to show up in these Mummy films. Meanwhile, his associate is Dr. Ilzor Zandeeb (Peter Coe) who — surprise! — is that latest Egyptian high priest to come to America to try to recover the bodies of Kharis and Princess Ananka.
Ananka (Virginia Christie) is the first to emerge from the swamp, though she has no memory of who she is. When she is discovered on the side of the road by Prof. Halsey and his love interest, Betty (Kay Harding), they allow her to stay at their camp on the edge of the swamp. Everyone is really impressed by the fact that this amnesiac knows so much about ancient Egypt. Eventually, Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr., again tightly wrapped in bandages) eventually emerges from the swamp as well, determined to protect Ananka.
The Mummy’s Curse was the final film to feature Lon Chaney, Jr. as Kharis. Unfortunately, it’s pretty forgettable and certainly not a satisfying conclusion to the story of one of Universal’s original monsters. A good deal of the film’s 60-minute running time is taking up with flashbacks to previous Mummy films and it seems like it takes forever for Kharis to actually get around to spreading the usual mummy mayhem. Though it may be too much to ask for too much continuity from these films, the sudden switch from Massachusetts to Lousiana is distracting for those of us who have actually invested the time to watch the previous Mummy films. One gets the feeling that, by the time this film went into production, no one involved really cared that much about poor Kharis and his never-ending mission to protect his princess.
When we last checked in with Kharis the Mummy, he was trapped in the middle of an inferno in Massachusetts. Having come to America to kill the members of the expedition that discovered the Tomb of Ananka and who brought Princess Ananka’s body to the United States, Kharis (Lon Chaney, Jr.) was trapped by the citizens of the town of Mapleton who, in the best tradition of Universal horror, cornered Kharis in a house and then set the place on fire.
1944’s The Mummy’s Ghost begins with the revelation that Kharis did not die in that inferno. Somehow, he managed to escape and, rather improbably, he’s spent the last few years wandering around town without anyone ever noticing him. The film presents Kharis as being largely a nocturnal creature but, even if he is only coming out at night, it still seems strange that no one would notice a mummy wandering around, especially since the entire town was traumatized by Kharis’s previous reign of terror. As well, it’s also been established that Kharis owes his eternal life to an ancient Egyptian plant. One reason why Kharis has always needed a “minder” is because Kharis needed someone who could keep him supplied with the plant. So, if Kharis has been wandering around Massachusetts for the past few years, from where has he been getting the plant?
The Mummy’s Ghost also established that, in Egypt, High Priest Andoheb (Georg Zucco) is still alive. This is somewhat surprising, considering that Andoheb died in both The Mummy’s Hand and The Mummy’s Tomb. But no matter! Andoheb is apparently still alive. He’s really old and his hands shake but he’s still alive and he’s still determined to bring both Kharis and Princess Ananka back to Egypt. This time, he sends Yousef Bey (John Carradine) to Massachusetts.
Yusef Bey takes over managing Kharis and he’s even able to supply Kharis with more of the special plant the keeps him alive. However, Kharis grows upset when it discovers that Bey has tracked down the reincarnation of Ananka in the person of Amina (Ramsay Ames) and that, rather than return her safely to Egypt, Bey wants to give her eternal life with the help of the plant and then marry her. This leads to Kharis going on a rampage and carrying Amina into a nearby swamp while Amina’s boyfriend, Tom Hervey (Robert Lowery), chases after them.
Full of plot holes and inconsistencies, The Mummy’s Ghost is about as silly as a mummy film can be. If the previous films about Kharis managed to create a feeling of tragic inevitability as Kharis tracked down all of the people who had entered Ananka’s tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost presents Kharis as being something more akin to Frankenstein’s Monster, an inarticulate and easily frustrated creature who does things with little rhyme or reason. That said, the film does make good use of Lon Chaney Jr’s hulking physicality as Kharis. He’s still an intimidating figure when he goes after someone. And John Carradine’s pained expression as Yousef Bey is memorable as a reminder of how much Carradine disliked most of the Universal monster films in which he found himself. Otherwise, The Mummy’s Ghost is fairly forgettable.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We tweet our way through it.
Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1991’s Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, starring Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson!
If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag! It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is available on Prime! See you there!
Today’s horror film on the lens is Edward D. Wood’s 1955 epic, Bride of the Monster.
(Much like Plan 9 From Outer Space, around here, it is a tradition to watch Bride of the Monster in October.)
The film itself doesn’t feature a bride but it does feature a monster, a giant octopus who guards the mansion of the mysterious Dr. Vornoff (Bela Lugosi). Vornoff and his hulking henchman Lobo (Tor Johnson) have been kidnapping men and using nuclear power to try to create a race of super soldiers. Or something like that. The plot has a make-it-up-as-you-go-along feel to it. That’s actually a huge part of the film’s appeal.
Bride of the Monster is regularly described as being one of the worst films ever made but I think that’s rather unfair. Appearing in his last speaking role, Lugosi actually gives a pretty good performance, bringing a wounded dignity to the role of Vornoff. If judged solely against other movies directed by Ed Wood, this is actually one of the best films ever made.
Obviously, I had to start things off with the trailer for the original Friday the 13th! This trailer puts a lot of emphasis on Marcie’s dream about the rain turning into blood. I have to say that is a pretty intense dream.
2. The Burning (1981)
After Friday the 13th, there were many movies about the dangers of going to camp. The Burning is one of the best-remembered. Seriously, I’m so glad that I never did the camp thing.
3. Madman (1982)
I reviewed Madman earlier this month but I’m going to share the trailer again. Seriously, camping is bad but yelling, “Madman Marz!” is apparently even worse.
4. Sleepaway Camp (1983)
As bad as those camps are, they’re a picnic compared to Sleepaway Camp!
5. Without Warning (1980)
Of course, it’s not just camps that are dangerous. As the trailer for Without Warning shows, you never know what you might run into in the woods.
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!
Last night, if you were having trouble getting to sleep, you could have logged onto Tubi and watched the 1996 film, Rollergator! Of course, you would have had to watch the Rifftraxx version but, trust me, that would have been for the best. There are some films that demand a certain amount of snarkiness in order to be survived and that’s certainly the case with Rollergator.
P.J. (Sandra Shuker) is a teenage girl who has just moved to Los Angeles. There’s not much to do so P.J. spends her time either hanging out at a local carnival or relaxing on the beach. It’s while she’s on the beach that she hears a voice calling out to her from a nearby cave. Of course, she enters the cave to see who is calling for her because, when you’re otherwise alone and only wearing a bikini, it would only make sense to wander into a strange and dangerous location just because a totally unfamiliar voice asks you to.
Anyway, the voice belongs to a purple alligator who is kind of obnoxious. The alligator can talk. He says that he’s just escaped from the carnival and now Chico Dennis (Joe Estevez) has sent out a mysterious ninja (Lisa Kaake) to bring him back. The alligator just wants to be reunited with his former owner, The Swamp Farmer (played by Conrad Brooks, who was a member of the Ed Wood stock company back in the 50s and the 60s). After giving the alligator a hard time about always being rude and sarcastic, PJ tosses him in her backpack and takes him to …. THE CARNIVAL! The alligator has a great time at the carnival until he and PJ run into Chico and the alligator realizes that they’re at the same carnival from which he previously escaped! How many carnivals are in Los Angeles?
Anyway, the majority of the movie is PJ rollerblading around Los Angeles with a talking alligator puppet in her backpack. The Dark Ninja pursues them on a skateboard but fortunately, a karate instructor (Bobbie Blackford) and a runaway named Slingshot (Jenette Lynne Hawkins) decide to help out PJ and the alligator. Occasionally, the alligator puppet raps but he’s not very good at it. Still, everyone loves the talking alligator. Oddly, no one ever questions the fact that the alligator can talk. Then again, no one manages to deliver their lines with the least bit of emotion, suggesting that everyone in Los Angeles is fairly blasé when it comes to talking alligators and skateboarding ninjas.
Rollergator is perhaps the only movie ever made about a rapping alligator and, watching it, it was kind of easy to see why there haven’t been any other movies featuring rapping alligators. This is one of those films that features an alligator puppet for the kids and a lead actress who spends the entire movie in either a bikini or a sports bra for the adult males watching the movie with the kids but what about the women — the underpaid babysitters and the extremely helpful aunts and the exhausted mothers — who would have, if the film had been successful, been forced to watch Rollergator over the years? The only thing we get is Joe Estevez, bulging his eyes and looking like Martin Sheen on meth. It doesn’t seem quite fair!
Anyway, did I mention that you could watch this if you were having trouble getting to sleep? Well, you definitely can but be warned, you may have Rollergator-inspired dreams as a result. Those are the risks you take.
Through the Shattered Lens 