Tag Archives: movie

A Blast From The Past: Manners in School (dir by Herk Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this short film from 1958, a terrible little kid named Larry is given detention because he’s a terrible little kid.  He’s supposed to clean the chalkboard but instead he draws a cartoon character, which promptly comes to life and probably traumatizes Larry for life.  Larry does learn a little something about behaving at school but at what cost?  Seriously, Larry may have had bad manners but you know who I blame?  The parents.  That’s who the stick figure should be tormenting.

Now, believe it or not, there is a reason why I’m posting this in October.  This short film — like many educational films from the 50s — was directed by Herk Harvey.  Harvey spent the majority of his long career making industrial and educational films.  However, horror fans will always know him as the man who directed 1962’s Carnival of Souls!  I’ll be sharing Carnival Of Souls next week but for now, enjoy Manners in School!

And remember …. good manners are good for everyone!  And if you don’t believe me, a stick figure is going to lecture you and give you nightmares.

International Horror Film Review: Veronica (dir by Paco Plaza)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Agck!  Seriously, dear readers, don’t mess with Ouija boards.

That’s really the main lesson that’s to be learned from the 2017 Spanish film, Veronica.  Taking place in 1991 and based on a true story (No, it really is!), Veronica tells the story of a 15 year-old girl named …. well, Veronica (Sandra Escacena).  Veronica lives in a nice but cluttered apartment with her three younger siblings and her mother.  Ever since the death of her father, Veronica’s life has pretty much centered around going to school and looking after her siblings.  While her friends get to experience life and mature and develop, Veronica seems to be trapped in that one apartment with her responsibilities.  Veronica is a good babysitter and she appears to puts up with a lot without losing her temper.  You can’t help but sympathize with her.

One day, during a solar eclipse, Veronica and two friends sneak into the school’s basement.  While all of the other students watch the eclipse while under the strict supervisions of the nuns, Veronica and her friends use a Ouija board in an attempt to hold a séance.  Veronica wants to talk to the spirit of her father.  Instead, a very different spirit shows up and Veronica faints.

When Veronica wakes up, things have changed.  Her friends now seem scared to be around her and they refuse to talk about what happened during the séance.  When Veronica returns home, she feels like she and her siblings are not alone in the apartment.  She starts to have disturbing dreams, in which the children are in danger and a dark shadow is stalking her.  Veronica becomes convinced that an evil creature is after her and her family.  A blind nun known as Sister Death tells Veronica that the only way to get rid of the spirit is “by doing right what you did wrong.”  Cryptic advice is always the best advice, right?

Veronica knows that she has to do something but what?  With the children starting to suffer from mysterious injuries, Veronica tries to figure what she did wrong so that she can fix it.  But, as you probably already guessed, she’s not going to like the answer….

Veronica is an effectively chilling horror film.  I’ve seen it described as being “the scariest film on Netflix” but I wouldn’t quite go that far.  It didn’t make me jump, though it did make look over my shoulder a few times just to make sure there wasn’t anything sneaking up behind me.  Veronica is, however, a film that very much gets under your skin.  If you’ve ever had to look after a child (let alone three children) and feared that you might not be up to the task, you’ll be able to relate to Veronica and her terror.  It’s not just about bringing a bad spirit into the world.  Nor is it just about the fact that Ouija boards are inherently creepy.  Instead, it’s all about protecting those children and the gradual realization that, despite all of your best efforts, there are some bad things in the world that you can’t just wish away.  The evil spirit that follows Veronica into the world is not just a paranormal monster.  Instead, it’s a metaphor for every fear that anyone has ever had while growing up.  It’s the fear of not being good enough.  It’s the fear of missing out on life.  It’s the fear and resentment that comes from living in a world that is inherently unfair.

Veronica is an intelligent and thoughtful horror film, one that is blessed with a great performance from Sandra Escacena in the title role.  It’s on Netflix.  Just look for the blind nun.

Lifetime Film Review: The Pom Pom Murders (dir by Tom Shell)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Cheerleading is dangerous!

Of course, if you’ve been watching Lifetime for the past month or so, you know that.  Lifetime has spent most of October showing movies about cheerleaders who are either killing or being killed.  Now that Lifetime has decided to show Christmas movies for the rest of the year, the deadly cheerleader movies have moved to the Lifetime Movie Network.

For instance, last night saw the premiere of The Pom Pom Murders!  Now, I was co-hosting the #ScarySocial live tweet last night so I missed The Pom Pom Murders but, fortunately, my sister Erin had the foresight to set the DVR for me.  Thank you, Erin!

As I always do whenever there’s a killer cheerleader movie on the DVR, I tried to get Erin to watch it with me.  Erin was a cheerleader in high school and I always feel it’s good to get an expert opinion on whether or not these films accurately reflect the cheerleading experience.  (I always refused to try out for cheerleader in high school, mostly because two of my sisters had done it and I wanted to establish my own identity.  Of course, since I was a teenager at the time, establishing my own identity meant writing a lot of emo poetry.)  Erin, however, declined because no one was murdered while she was a cheerleader.  I guess she has a point.

Anyway, The Pom Pom Murders is about Audrey (Anna Marie Dobbins), who tries out for a spot on the cheerleading squad of the Los Angeles Renegades basketball team!  She makes the squad and she even gets a charming new boyfriend when star player Walter Wilson gives her a ride home!  Everything seems to be perfect, until the murder of Bailey (Grace Patterson), a member of the squad and Walter’s ex-girlfriend!  Bailey is strangled while her dog watches, just in case you needed any more evidence that this killer is ruthless.

With Walter as the number one suspect and an apparent killer stalking the Renegade Girls, can Audrey cheer the team to victory without losing her life?  One would normally think so, seeing as how this is a Lifetime film and most Lifetime films do, eventually, have a happy ending.  However, this film also features a rather snarky voice-over from Audrey, one which suggests that this story might not have a happy ending.  Of course, Audrey also suggests that she might just be saying that to make you watch so one huge reason to watch the film is to see if Audrey’s an honest narrator or not!

The best Lifetime films always mix the melodrama with a healthy dose of self-awareness.  These are films that go cheerfully over the top and make no apologies for doing so and that’s certainly the case with The Pom Pom Murders, which features an enjoyably eccentric group of suspects.  Is the murderer the pervy janitor or the intense coach or the strange owners?  Is Audrey going to be able to solve the case or is she going to end up the latest victim?  Is she going to become the newest star cheerleader or is she going to finally listen to her mother and go to law school?

You’ll have to watch the film to find out!  This is a fun movie.  If you’re into Lifetime movies, you’ll be doing some cheering yourself.

4 Shots from 4 Brian De Palma Films: The Phantom of Paradise, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out

Posted on 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 honor the one and only Brian De Palma!

4 Shots From 4 Brian De Palma Films

Phantom of Paradise (1974, dir by Brian De Palma)

Carrie (1976, dir by Brian De Palma)

Dressed To Kill (1980, dir by Brian De Palma)

Blow Out (1981, dir by Brian De Palma)

Horror Film Review: Final Destination 2 (dir by David R. Ellis)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

After I rewatched Final Destination, I watched it’s sequel, 2003’s Final Destination 2.

Final Destination 2 is not only one of the best horror sequels ever made but it’s also the film that, even more than the first installment of the series, established what we consider to be a typical Final Destination film.  The characters are far more eccentric and the deaths are far more elaborate.  Death itself shows a sense of humor that wasn’t present in the first Final Destination film.  If you manage to escape Death the first time, Death isn’t just going to track you down.  It’s going to play without and have some fun before it finally fills its quota.

Final Destination 2 opens with Kimberly Corman (AJ Cook) having a vision of a crash on the interstate.  She’s so freaked out by her vision that she blocks the entrance ramp.  This may save the life of everyone stalled behind her but it also ends up killing all of her friends when a truck smashes into her SUV.  Fortunately, Kimberly survives because she had gotten out of the vehicle to talk to a policeman named Thomas Burke (Michael Landes).

So, the bad news is that all of Kimberly’s friends are dead.

The good news is that Kimberly has a whole new group of friends, all of the people who were supposed to die on that highway but who are now alive and on Death’s do-over list as a result of Kimberly’s actions.

Along with Kimberly and Thomas, Death now has to take care of lottery winner Evan Lewis (David Paetaku), stoner Rory (Jonathan Cherry), neurotic chainsmoker Kat (Keegan Tracy Connor), teacher Eugene Dix (T.C. Carson), and Nora (Lynda Boyd) and her son, Tim (James Kirk).  It turns out that Death is not only after them because they didn’t die on the highway but also because they all have a connection to the deaths that occurred in the first Final Destination.  It’s actually a pretty clever idea and it also provides an excuse for Clear Rivers (Ali Larter) to return from the first film and act as a sort of death guru.

Needless to say, the deaths are elaborate.  In fact, they’re so elaborate that Final Destination 2 occasionally feels like a satirical take on the first film.  It’s not just that Nora loses her head in an elevator accident.  It’s that there just happens to be an old man carrying a box full of claws on the elevator.  In another scene, Rory looks inside a closet and sees hundreds of things that could possibly kill him, my favorite being the bowling ball that just happens to be precariously balanced on the top shelf.  When Clear Rivers returns, she doesn’t just explain how death works.  She also gives them a list of safety precautions that make her sound like an overly protective parent, looking at her son or daughter’s apartment and freaking out over how many appliances have been plugged into one outlet.

Final Destination 2 is a clever film with an appropriately dark and macabre sense of humor.  On the one hand, all of the characters are well-written and the cast is so likable that you don’t want to see any of them die.  On the other hand, Death is so inventive that it’s hard not to want to see what it has up its sleeve.  And, like the first film, the sequel works because it gets at a universal truth.  You can avoid death but can never truly escape it.

Horror on the Lens: Manos: The Hands of Fate (dir by Harold P. Warren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

torgo

I should start things off with a confession.  This is actually not the first time that I’ve shared Manos: The Hands of Fate here on the Shattered Lens.  I previously shared it on both October 8th of 2013 and October 15th of 2015 and, both times, I even used the exact same picture of Torgo.

However, Manos proved to be such a popular choice that I simply had to post it again.  As I pointed out two years ago, Manos has a reputation for being one of the worst films ever made.  And, honestly, who am I to disagree?  However, it’s also a film that is so bad that it simply has to be seen.

By the way, everyone who watches Manos ends up making fun of Torgo, who was played by John Reynolds.  What they may not know is that Reynolds committed suicide shortly after filming on Manos wrapped.  So, as tempting at it may be to ridicule poor Mr. Reynolds’s performance, save your barbs for Torgo and leave John Reynolds alone.

And be sure to enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate!

Belatedly, Here’s The Trailer for Mank

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With all of the excitement of Halloween and horrorthon, it can sometimes be hard to keep up.  For instance, Mank is one of the films that I’m really looking forward to seeing this year and yet somehow, the release of the first trailer went straight over my head.

So, belatedly, here it is:

Now, I will admit that I have one huge concern.  From what I’ve heard, this film is based on Pauline Kael’s claim that Herman Mankiewicz deserved more credit for Citizen Kane than Orson Welles.  That’s an argument that’s been widely discredited.  (It’s also why Welles included a barely disguised version of Kael in The Other Side of the Wind.)  As someone who is pro-Welles to the point of being a snob about it, I’m not sure how I’m going to react to a perhaps less than charitable portrayal of him.

As well, if this was a theatrical release, I would probably make fun of the film for having such a terrible title.  Fortunately, Netflix exists.  That said, I get the feeling that — if the script had been written by anyone other than the director’s father — the title would have been the first thing to change.  Those of who love movies know who Herman Mankiewicz was but I can guarantee you that the rest of the world is going to say, “What’s a Mank and why should I care?”

That said, I love Gary Oldman and I love the look of the trailer.  Plus, it’s directed by David Fincher!  I hated what he did to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but still, Fincher’s one of most interesting directors around.

I’m looking forward to seeing Mank in November.

Here’s The Trailer for Porno!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

My friend Jason says this is a great film so I’ll share the trailer, despite the fact that YouTube is probably going to start recommending some crazy stuff to me now.

The film is apparently about some theater employees who watch a cursed pornographic movie and then have to deal with a succubus.  These things happen.  One the one hand, moving to video from film did adversely effect the quality of the films being released by the adult film industry.  At the same time, it also led to less supernatural curses.  Everything has a price.

Anyway, here’s the trailer.  Google’s recommending porn to me now.

Here’s The Trailer for News of the World!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier this year, I think almost everyone in America was thrown into a moment of panic when it was announced that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had been diagnosed with COVID-19.  Not only did it show us that anyone could get the disease but it also forced to consider the fact that Tom Hanks is just as mortal as the rest of us.  At that moment, we stopped taking Tom Hanks for granted.

Fortunately, both Tom and Rita recovered from the Coronavirus.  When the previously unheralded Greyhound premiered on AppleTV+, it was an unexpected hit and many observes assumed that it was all due to people suddenly remembering just how much they loved Tom Hanks.  This December, Hanks has another movie coming out and there’s some speculation that his role in News of the World could lead to Hanks picking up another Oscar nomination.

In News of the World, Hanks stars as a Civil War veteran who has been tasked with delivering a girl back to her aunt and uncle.  The catch is that the girl doesn’t want to return back home.  News of the World reunites Hanks with his Captain Phillips director, Paul Greengrass.  Captain Phillips featured what was perhaps Tom Hanks’s best performance to date.  Strangely enough, Hanks did not receive an Oscar nomination for that performance.  At the time, it was felt that the Academy was guilty of taking Hanks for granted.  If this year has taught us anything, it’s that you should never take anyone or their talent for granted.

Here’s the first trailer for News of the World, which will be released in December: