A Blast From The Past: None For The Road (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s Herk Harvey-directed Blast From The Past, we have the 1957 short film, None For The Road. Produced by Centron, this was a film that was meant to make motorists aware of the dangers involved in drinking and driving. It’s a good message and, for once, the judgmental tone of the film is deserved. This isn’t about telling people not to have fun in school. This is about teaching people not to kill people through their own drunken stupidity! It may not be quite as effective as some of the Australian anti-drinking and driving commercials that I’ve seen but still, it’s a worthwhile message.

It’s also about a scientist who gets rats drunk so he can test their balance. That’s kind of weird and seems unnecessary but I guess maybe people were less aware of the dangers of excessive drinking in the 50s.

On another note, even though some of the college students in this film drink too much, I do appreciate their attempts to dress up before going out. They’re making an effort to get used to wearing a tie voluntarily before being forced to wear one at the office and I respect both their initiative and their understanding that the course of their life is already so predestined that they might as well be supporting characters in a Paul Schrader movie.

Of course, I would be amiss if I didn’t point out that, in its portrait of the road as being a path that can lead to either happiness or death, this short film shares a theme with Herk Harvey’s one feature film, Carnival of Souls. The drunken college kids in this film could be the same people we see harassing Candace Hilligoss at the start of Carnival of Souls. We’ll be sharing Carnival of Souls on Saturday.

Horror Film Review: Hellraiser (dir by Clive Barker)

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Monday night, Dancing With The Stars did a horror night, in which “the stars” did dances that were inspired by horror films. One of the first to perform was a professional wrestler who is apparently known as The Miz. When the Miz performed, he was dressed in black and he had several fake pins attached to his face.

After he danced, host Trya Banks asked The Miz what scared him. Obviously seeing a chance to suck up to the judges and the audience, the Miz grandly announced, “This! Doing this every week terrifies me! Dressing up like Hellraiser and dancing terrifies me….”

Uhmmm, excuse me, Mr. Miz — the character’s name is Pinhead. The movie is called Hellraiser. You were dressed up as Pinhead.

Seriously, I felt that the Miz should have been eliminated from the competition at that exact moment but no. His sucking up worked. Everyone laughed. Everyone applauded. No one called him out on his error. It upset me a bit. I was like, “Who are you to do horror night when you don’t even know the difference between the movie and the character!?”

Really, they should all be forced to watch or rewatch Hellraiser. First released in 1987, the directorial debut of Clive Barker holds up pretty well as a blood-filled horror movie. It tells the story of Larry (Andrew Robinson), his daughter Kristy (Ashley Laurence), and his second wife, Julia (Clare Higgins). Larry’s ne’er-do-well brother, Frank (Sean Chapman), has died under mysterious circumstances so Larry moves into Frank’s old house and tries to renovate it. He hopes that this will somehow help his strained marriage to Julia, who was having an affair with Frank. Why Larry thinks this is a good idea is never quite clear. Larry seems to be a nice guy but it doesn’t take long for the audience to get the feeling that he might not be that smart.

Kristy, on the other hand, is much smarter than her father and she knows better than to trust Julia. In fact, Kristy refuses to even live in the same house as Julia. Still, Kristy does check in on her father occasionally and she quickly realizes that Julia is doing something strange. It turns out that Frank may be dead but his tortured, skinless spirit lives on. Julia has been picking men up in bars and bringing them back to the house so that Frank can steal their skin. On the one hand, you do have to feel kind of sorry for all of the people who die. On the other hand, Frank does look better with skin.

Frank ended up in his skinless state because he foolishly opened up a puzzle box. That’s where Pinhead (played by Doug Bradley) comes into the equation. Pinhead and the other Cenobites live in another demension and they’ve spent so much time “exploring” that they can no longer tell the difference between pain and pleasure. Pinhead’s face is covered in pins. (In fact, Pinhead started out as something of a fan nickname as Bradley is just credited with playing “the Lead Cenobite” in the film’s end credits.) The Cenobites are actually only in Hellraiser for a few minutes. The majority of the film is made up of Julia bringing strange men home and Frank attacking them. But it’s the Cenobites — and Pinhead in particular — who make the biggest impression. Beyond his bizarre appearance, Doug Bradley plays the character with such haughty arrogance that it’s hard not to be intrigued. He knows things.

Hellraiser holds up well. Andrew Robinson does his best but Larry is a bit of a moron. However, Clare Higgins has fun with her femme fatale role while Ashley Laurence is likable and sympathetic as Kristy. For the most part, the special effects hold up well and even the film’s slightly more cartoonish moments add to the feeling that the film takes place in a universe that is becoming increasingly unstable. The puzzle box is wonderful creation. It’s easy to say that you would never mess with something like that but most people would. The temptation would just be too great.

Watch Hellraiser and never get Pinhead’s name wrong again!

Horror on the Lens: The Last Man on Earth (dir. by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow)

Posted on October 27, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and Happy October 27th! For today’s treat from the ranks of horror films that have fallen into the public domain, I present to you one of the most important films in horror history. Though it wasn’t appreciated when it was first released back in 1964, The Last Man On Earth was not only the 1st Italian horror film but George Romero has also acknowledged it as an influence on his own Night of the Living Dead.

It’s easy to be a little bit dismissive of The Last Man On Earth. After all, the low-budget is obvious in every scene, the dubbing is off even by the standards of Italian horror, and just the name “Vincent Price” in the credits leads one to suspect that this will be another campy, B-movie. Perhaps that’s why I’m always surprised to rediscover that, taking all things into consideration, this is actually a pretty effective film. Price does have a few over-the-top moments but, for the most part, he gives one of his better performances here and the black-and-white images have an isolated, desolate starkness to them that go a long way towards making this film’s apocalypse a convincing one. The mass cremation scene always leaves me feeling rather uneasy.

The film is based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and no, it’s nowhere as good as the book. However, it’s a lot better than the Will Smith version.

If you have 87 minutes to kill, please enjoy The Last Man On The Earth.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Outlaw Blues (dir by Richard T. Heffron)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 film, Outlaw Blues, opens in Huntsville State Prison. An arrogant country music star named Garland Dupree (James T. Callahan) is about to perform for the prisoners. He’s hoping his Huntsville concert will do for him what playing at Folsom did for Johnny Cash. The warden insists that Garland listen to a song written and performed by a soft-spoken prisoner named Bobby Ogden (Peter Fonda). A visibly annoyed Garland agrees but he doesn’t actually listen while Bobby performs. Instead, Garland is too busy arguing with the manager of his record label, Hatch (Michael Lerner). However, the members of Garland’s backup band record Bobby as he sings.

Several months later, Bobby is about to be released from prison when he learns that Garland is performing his song. Not only has Garland made it a hit but he’s also taking credit for writing it! Garland and Hatch even copyrighted the song, something that Bobby was never able to do because he was in prison.

Released from prison, Bobby ends up in Austin. He wants to stay out of prison and get his life straightened out. He wants to pursue a career as a singer. And he wants Garland to admit that he stole Bobby’s song. Unfortunately, when Bobby confronts Garland, things escalate and Garland ends up accidentally getting shot. Garland survives but now Bobby has the police after him. With the help of one of Garland’s former backup singers, Tina Waters (Susan Saint James), Bobby tries to become a star while staying one step ahead of the cops. Like the outlaws of old, Bobby and Tina sneak around Texas, performing where they can. (Knowing that any publicity is good publicity, Tina often calls the cop just as Bobby finishes his show, all the better for her and Bobby to make a dramatic escape.) Hatch is eager to record and release a Bobby Ogden record but both Bobby and Tina know that he can’t be trusted. But with the cops closing in, what choice do they have?

For a film about criminals on the run, Outlaw Blues is a surprisingly loose and laid back movie. It’s definitely a product of the 70s. It celebrates rebellion and doing your own thing, it mixes drama and comedy and, because it was made in the 70s, you know there’s always a good chance that, regardless of how pleasant the majority of the film may be, everyone’s going to die at the end of the movie. That definitely adds some tension to the film’s story that might not otherwise be there. For the most part, though, this is an enjoyable little lark of a drive-in movie. It celebrates individualism while also finding time for a few songs and a car chase or two.

A good deal of the film’s charm is the result of the chemistry between the two stars. Peter Fonda and Susan Saint James just seem as if they belong together and they both play characters who are written with slightly more depth than you might otherwise expect from what was obviously meant to be a cheap, drive-in film. Tina may appear to be a hippie but, as played by Saint James, she eventually turns out to be a clever businesswoman and promoter. As for Peter Fonda, he definitely had his acting limitations but he also had a nice smile and a far more likable screen presence than you might suspect if you only know him from his remote performance in Easy Rider. In Outlaw Blues, Fonda’s inexpressive manner feels right for someone who has spent most of his life in prison and who is still adjusting to being on the outside. Fonda wins you over and, once his character falls in love with Saint James, Fonda starts to relax and you get the feeling that both he and Bobby Ogden are having fun.

Outlaw Blues may be a minor 70s film but it’s likable. It has an amiable spirit which makes it worth watching.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: The Naked Witch (dir by Larry Buchanan)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1964 film, The Naked Witch, opens with a prologue that explains the role of witchcraft throughout the ages. That, in itself, is not surprising. A lot of supernaturally-themed films opens with a prologue that’s designed to give the film some sort of historical basis. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. Give your cheap film some credibility by claiming that it’s “based on a true story.”

What sets The Naked Witch apart is that the prologue just goes on and on. For ten minutes, we stare at Bosch paintings while an officious sounding narrator discusses the history of witchcraft. The paintings are effectively macabre but it all goes on for so long that you can’t help but get the feeling that the prologue was mostly added to pad out the running time. It’s almost as if director Larry Buchanan was basically admitting that he didn’t really have enough of an actual story to justify a feature-length running time. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who is familiar with Larry Buchanan’s filmography.

Once the narration finally ends, we find ourselves watching The Student (Robert Short) as he drives through central Texas. The Student suddenly takes over the narration, telling us that he’s driving through the Texas German Counties. He’s visiting towns and counties that were founded by German settlers. The townspeople all have German names. Most of them still speak German in private. They all dress like they’ve just returned from a night at a Munich beer hall. Interestingly enough, these counties and towns do actually exist, though I’ve never seen anyone casually wearing lederhosen or a dirndl in Central Texas. Of course, this film was made a bit before my time so maybe that used to be a tradition back in 1964. Maybe people stopped doing it after The Naked Witch came out. Or, even more intriguingly, maybe people stopped doing because The Naked Witch came out. We’ll probably never know for sure.

Anyway, the Student is kind of an idiot because he manages to run out of gas while driving out in the middle of nowhere. I guess it didn’t occur to him to fill up the tank before trying to drive through a largely empty stretch of land. Leaving his car behind, he manages to walk to the real-life town of Luckenbach, Texas. He’s shocked to discover the none of the townspeople want to talk about long-dead witch that was supposedly buried in town. Why, it’s almost as if the people of Luckenbach understand that it’s not a good idea to brag about living under the threat of a supernatural curse.

Largely due to the Student’s stupidity, the Witch (played by Libby Hall) comes back from the dead. She’s naked, which I imagine was probably the film’s main selling point back in 1964. The Witch wants revenge on the descendants of the people who put her to death. The Students just wants to hook up with The Witch.

And that’s really pretty much it. Even by the admittedly low standard set by Larry Buchanan’s other films, the plot of The Naked Witch is pretty much impossible to follow. It’s incoherent and yet, strangely enough, that incoherence sometime works in the film’ favor. The atmospheric Texas landscape, when combined with the overly theatrical performance of Libby Hall, gives the film a dream-like feel. Even the fact that the film features three separate narrators all contribute to the movie’s surreal style. At its best, The Naked Witch is an existential mood piece. At its worst, it’s just a really bad, zero-budget drive-in movie.

The Naked Witch is an odd film but, if you’re looking for a ten minute history on witchcraft followed by a Texas travelouge, the film might be for you.

International Horror Film Review: The Bridge Curse (dir by Lester Hsi)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2020 Taiwanese film, The Bridge Curse, is …. well, I don’t quite know how to describe it. It’s a horror film. It’s a found footage film. It’s a ghost film. What it’s not is a particularly memorable film.

It opens with a reporter and her cameraman doing a story on five college students who disappeared after visiting a bridge that is reputed to be haunted by the vengeful spirit of a young girl. There’s a good deal of “found footage”, featuring shaky shots of the students either heading to the bridge or running around campus. And then there’s frequent flashbacks to what actually happened, which basically amounts to slightly less shaky shots of the students either heading to the bridge or running around campus. The important thing is that everything always seems to lead back to the same bridge. The bridge has a curse, by the way. The title is not a lie.

This is one of those films that’s so derivative of other horror films that, as you watch it, you really can’t bring yourself to believe that there isn’t some grand twist hiding somewhere in the film. I watched all 87 minutes of this film, waiting for something to happen that would take me by surprise. By the 20th minute, I was prepared to get on my knees and pray for a surprise. 30 minutes in, I was offering to donate 25% of my next paycheck to charity. After an hour, I was angry and I announced that I actually didn’t care whether the film was going to surprise me or not. 75 minutes in, I admitted that a surprise would be nice but if I didn’t get one, that would be okay. 81 minutes in, I yelled, “PLEASE! SURPRISE ME!” 82 minutes in, I took a break, grabbed a Coke, and played with the cat. 84 minutes in, I announced, “Surprise!,” hope in would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, the much hoped-for surprise never happened. Instead, this is just a standard stalker ghost film featuring a bunch of personality-lacking college students being chased around campus by a ghost who is soaking wet. Perhaps if someone would just offer the ghost a towel, a lot of trouble could be avoided.

However, despite the fact that the movie is about as predictable as the leaves changing colors in the fall, The Bridge Curse does have a few effective jump scares. The ghost looks creepy and it has a habit of suddenly appearing in the shadows. The ghost made me jump a few times. That said, the movie’s story certainly didn’t stick with me. It’s been about 30 minutes since I watched the film and it’s already disappearing from my memory. The ghost might grab you but the movie never does. It ends with the promise of a sequel but I can’t imagine what else there’s left to do with this story. I guess more students can go hang out on the bridge but, at some point, you would think people would notice that spending the night on the bridge is a one way ticket to terror. Personally, I’d probably just find a different bridge to visit, one that doesn’t have a history of tragedy and mystery. But that’s just me.

The Bridge Curse isn’t terrible as much as it’s just blandly forgettable. It can currently be viewed on Netflix.

Horror Film Review: Wishmaster (dir by Robert Kurtzman)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Do you all remember Wishmaster?

Played by Andrew Divoff, the Wishmaster was a genie (or a djinn) who made his film debut in the 1997 film of the same name. The Djinn’s schtick is to randomly approach people and say something like, “Would you like to be rich?” or “Would you like all of your enemies to suffer?” He grants wishes but he does so in ironic ways. So, if you say want to be rich, you might very well turn into someone named Rich who is on the verge of getting hit by a bus. If you say that you want to escape from your mundane life, you might end up in a straight-jacket under water, struggling to perform one of Harry Houdini’s signature escapes.

I rewatched Wishmaster a few months ago and what I immediately discovered was the the Djinn wasn’t really that good at his job. He pretended to be clever in the way that he would fool humans but, honestly, it often seemed less like he was tricking people and more like he really wasn’t playing fair. Take the security guard who made the mistake of wishing for an escape. As I just mentioned, The Djinn immediately put him underwater in a straight-jacket. But the guard’s wish was not to have to escape. The guard’s wish was to simply escape. So, putting him in a life-and-death situation and telling him to figure it out for himself wasn’t fulfilling the guard’s wish. It just seemed like the Djinn wanted to drown someone and he decided to use his wish-granting job as an excuse.

The guard, by the way, was played by Tony Todd, one of the many horror icons who appeared in small roles in Wishmaster. (Today, Tony Todd is best known for the Final Destination films but, when Wishmaster came out, he was known for playing the Candyman.) Among the other cameos:

From Phantasm, Angus Scrimm provided the narration while Reggie Bannister played an unlucky pharmacist.

From Friday the 13th, Kane Hodder played a security guard who made the mistake of saying that he wished he could see the Djinn try to walk straight through him.

Day of the Dead’s Joseph Pilato played a crane operator.

John Carpenter vet George “Buck” Flower played an angry homeless man.

Sam Raimi’s brother, Ted Raimi, showed up long enough to get crushed by a crate.

And finally, Robert Englund played the somewhat pretentious professor who was responsible for bringing the Djinn to America in the first place.

As you can probably guess by looking at all of the cameos, Wishmaster is not a film that’s meant to be taken seriously. It’s often deliberately campy. Wes Craven may have produced it and was undoubtedly responsible for recruiting many of the actors who appeared in it but the film’s direction was handled by special effects maestro, Robert Kurtzman and he puts more emphasis on the visual effects than on any sort of serious exploration of the somewhat random series of events that make up the film’s storyline. Of course, when seen today, the film’s special effects look a bit cheap but, for many viewers (like me!), that’s actually a part of the film’s grisly charm.

Wishmaster does have a plot but it’s not particularly important. The Djinn tries to make Alexandra (Tammy Lauren) make three wishes so that he can unleash the forces of Hell. Why he spends all of his time granting wishes to other people instead of just concentrating on Alex is never really explained. It may be an often dumb movie but it’s also undeniably entertaining when taken on its own terms. Andrew Divoff is enjoyably sinister as the Djinn, playing the character with a sarcastic wit to go along with his evil schemes. It’s a fun movie to watch, even if it does feel like it was basically slapped together in a handful of days.

You should always be careful what you wish for but Wishmaster is still an entertaining piece of 90s horror.

(Author’s Note: Wow, this is embarrassing. Right after I posted this review, I discovered that I previously reviewed Wishmaster in 2018! Whoops! Well, it’s nice to see that my thoughts on the film have remained consistent. — LMB)

Horror Scenes That I Love: “This is Halloween” From The Nightmare Before Christmas

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Okay, so it’s not Halloween yet.

But it is close! And, even more importantly, it’s Pumpkin Day! So, in honor of all of the holidays that we celebrate this week, here’s a classic song and scene from 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas!

A Blast From The Past: The Procrastinator (dir by Herk Havey)

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Goddammit, Jean let everyone down again!

Jean is at the center of The Procrastinator, a short educational film from 1952. Jean has a history of putting stuff off and letting down her friends, her parents, her peers, and probably the entire state of Kansas as well. Still, despite the fact that Jean has repeatedly shown that she can’t be trusted with any responsibility, her fellow students decide to give her some responsibility. When Jean continues to procrastinate, they all get mad at her but you know what? Is it really Jean’s fault that they gave her a job that she obviously couldn’t handle?

What I’m saying is stop being so judgmental! Everyone has their own way. Some people get things done early. Some people wait until the last minute. And then there are people like me who make plans to do everything early but who still end up waiting until the last second regardless. For example, my original plan for this year was to write all of my Horrorthon reviews in May and June and then spend October in a state of blissful relaxation. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. But, to be honest, I kind of enjoy the pressure of having to get things done at the last minute. I do my best work under pressure, I think.

Now, if you’re wondering why I’m sharing this video in October, it’s because this film was directed by Herk Harvey. Harvey made a career out of directing short educational films but, to horror audiences, he’s best known for directing a classic horror film called Carnival of Souls. Carnival of Souls is a film that I’ll be sharing in a few days. On the surface, The Procrastinator may not appear to have much in common with Carnival of Souls. However, I think you can compare Jean’s refusal to do things in a timely fashion to Candace Hilligoss’s refusal to accept the reason for why she keeps seeing ghosts following her everywhere she goes. So, in way, both of these films take place in the same universe. Call it the Herkiverse.

Watch and decide for yourself!

4 Shots From 4 Jess Franco Films

Posted on October 26, 2021 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 lets the visuals do the talking.

Today, we pay tribute to the enigmatic master of Spanish horror and suspense, Jesus “Jess” Franco! It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Jess Franco Films