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October Positivity: Miles Between Us (dir by Andrew Hunt)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2017’s Miles Between Us is the story of a father and a daughter on a road trip.

Luke Duaer (Dariush Moslemi) is a hotshot Hollywood producer, the type who drives around Los Angeles in a nice car and who puts together the type of deals that lead to Hollywood blockbusters.  Luke is really intent on getting film star Chace Creed (Josten Rositas) to agree to being in his next movie but he can’t even get Chace’s people to return his calls.  Luke has a lot to deal with but that’s all going to have to be put on hold because his teenage daughter, Gabby (Anna Stranz) is about to start college on the other side of the country.

Luke and Gabby don’t have much of a relationship.  Since divorcing her mother, Luke has barely been in Gabby’s life.  In fact, Luke’s girlfriend is shocked to discover that Luke even has a daughter.  The road trip is a chance for some father-daughter bonding.  It starts out uneasily.  Luke doesn’t know how to talk to his daughter and finds it strange that she’s enrolled at a small Christian college in North Carolina.  When she asks him to stop at a church so she can worship on Sunday, Luke sits outside in the car while she does so.  Gabby has a lot of understandable resentment towards Luke.  He hasn’t been a great father.  That’s not something that’s easy to forgive, as much as one might try and want to do so.

There’s a lot that I could relate to in this film.  My Dad and I had our difficulties, especially after he divorced my mom.  For years, we barely talked.  He didn’t know how to communicate with me and I was so angry that I wasn’t going to open up and give him any help.  And yet, though I may not have always realized it, I never stopped loving my father.  No matter how many fights we had or how many words were exchanged in anger, I never stopped thinking that, someday, we would work it all out.  I’m happy to say that we did.  My Dad passed away last year.  He was in hospice care and in a coma during the final few days of his life but I believe he could still hear me when I spoke to him and I pray he heard me when I said that I was proud to be his daughter.  That said, I will always regret the years that we didn’t speak.  That was wasted time that I will never get back.

As you can probably guess, Miles Between Us feels like a film that was specifically engineered to get an emotional response from me and it did.  Inevitably, Luke and Gabby end up on the set of Chace Creed’s latest film.  (Gabby’s a fan.)  Chace asks Gabby for a date and, to the surprise of no one watching, he turns out to be a spoiled jerk.  Luke fights for his daughter, as any good father should.  It’s a bit melodramatic but I still smiled.

Miles Between Us is a film that got to me.  Now, you can probably argue that it got to me because of my own circumstances but that’s true of most films and most people.  Miles Between Us made me think about my Dad and how thanksful I am that we finally forgave each other.

Brad reviews SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE (2015)! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

The exploitively titled SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE opens up with employees of an “Arkansas Fracking” company causing such a disturbance underground that spiky, ancient sharks wake up and start swimming in our swamps and eating whoever they happen to come across. As a lifelong Arkansan, I’m guessing this would have to be set near the Louisiana line, but I don’t think it’s ever made clear. It doesn’t really matter because the movie is actually shot in the state of Florida. This shark awakening just happens to coincide with a group of hot, womens’ prison inmates, including Christine Nguyen and Cindy Lucas, getting into a van to go clear some stumps in that same shark swamp that’s just outside of the walls of the penitentiary that they’re currently residing in. We also meet Detective Kendra Patterson (Traci Lords) and her partner, who are looking for a group of criminals, led by Honey (Dominique Swain), who may have escaped into that same swamp that now contains our ancient, spiky sharks and our sexy Arkansas inmates! Before you know it, the trials and tribulations of every person involved will be put on the back burner as they try not to become the next victim of the Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre. 

SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE is pretty much the exact film that you’d expect it to be. It’s cheap, with terribly cheesy special effects, bad acting and some super-sexy women. It was made for the SyFy channel so it doesn’t really have graphic gore or nudity, which I’m sure is disappointing for those hoping for more bosoms and blood. I did enjoy a scene early in the film when the ladies are extremely warm from a tough day of clearing stumps so they start spilling water on their white T-shirts, while their faces contort in unbridled pleasures. The film is directed by Jim Wynorski who’s known for his low budget exploitation movies such as CHOPPING MALL (1986), BIG BAD MAMA II (1987), NOT OF THIS EARTH (1988), BODY CHEMISTRY 4: FULL EXPOSURE (1995), ALABAMA JONES AND THE BUSTY CRUSADE (2005), and COBRAGATOR (2015). For the director’s fans, this movie has much more in common with his classic PIRANHACONDA (2012) than it does his BUSTY WIVES (2007) series. 

The cast of SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE is pretty much top notch for a film like this. I can honestly say that I’ve never seen Traci Lords in one of her porn films, but I’ve always thought she was pretty good looking, and she is here. I did have Cinemax for a number of years as a young man so I’ve definitely seen some of Christine Nguyen’s work. I would come across titles like TARZEENA: JIGGLE OF THE JUNGLE (2008) starring Christine, and the man in me couldn’t help but stop and check out the story. Finally, as a huge fan of director John Woo’s FACE/OFF (1997), I remember liking Dominique Swain as Sean Archer’s rebellious young daughter in the film. In this film, she’s the queen of overacting as a lesbian outlaw who’s out to bust her lover out of jail when she finds herself in a life or death battle with deadly, ancient land sharks. It’s not exactly the performance of a lifetime, but it’s still kind of fun if you’re in the right frame of mind. 

At the end of the day, you’re either the kind of person who likes a movie like SHARKANSAS WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE or you’re not. There’s not a lot of in between. It’s personally not my favorite kind of film, but I’ll pretty much watch anything with an Arkansas connection, even though this one is “in title only.” For fans of the director, the film DINOCROC VS. SUPERGATOR, or some of the beautiful cast members, this film may be just what your looking for this October!

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Maniac (dir by William Lustig)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 First released in 1980, Maniac stars Joe Spinell as Frank Zito.

Frank lives in a run-down New York apartment.  The grimy walls are covered with pictures that appear to have been cut out of magazines.  The sheets on the bed look like they haven’t been washed in over a year and, for that matter, the sweaty and greasy Frank Zito looks like he could definitely use a shower as well.  Frank lives alone but he has several blood-stained mannequins.  He talks to the mannequins, cooing about how he just wants them to be nice to him and to stop abusing him.  Just looking at the apartment, one can imagine the nauseating odor of sweet, blood, and who knows what else that seeps out whenever Frank Zito opens his door.

Frank Zito is also a murderer.  The majority of the film is taken up with scenes of him stalking his victims.  One extended sequences features him stalking a nurse through a subway station.  Another scene features a rather nightmarish moment in which Frank, in slow motion, jumps on the hood of a car and shoots a man point blank with a shotgun.  (The man is played by Tom Savini, who was also responsible for the film’s gore effects.)  An innocent model is killed after Frank breaks into her apartment.  “I just want to talk to you,” he says and maybe he actually believes that at first.

Frank has a chance meeting with a glamorous and beautiful photographer named Anna (Caroline Munro, playing a role that was rejected by Daria Nicolodi).  Somewhat improbably, Anna is charmed by the socially awkward Frank and even agrees to go out with him.  She’s touched when Frank shows up at the funeral of the model that he killed.  “She didn’t have many friends,” Anna tells Frank.

Meanwhile, at the cemetery, Frank’s fate awaits….

Maniac is one of the most infamous and controversial grindhouse films ever made.  The film’s atmosphere and the bleak visuals are the equivalent of being forced to look at New York while wearing glasses that somebody found floating in the sewer.  The deaths are drawn out and Savini’s gore effects are disturbingly convincing.  It’s a nearly plotless film about a man who hates women and what makes it scary as opposed to just exploitive is the fact that there are men like Frank Zito out there.  Joe Spinell, who was one of the great character actors of the 70s, appeared in everything from The Godfather to Taxi Driver to Rocky but, in the end, it’s his performance as Frank Zito that he seems to be destined to be most-remembered for.  Spinell is frightening, convincing, and disturbing as Frank Zito.  Spinell was planning on doing a sequel before his untimely death, at the age of 52, in 1989.

(Spinell was a hemophiliac who bled to death after slipping in the shower.  According to Maniac director William Lustig, when the police entered Spinell’s apartment, the first thing they saw was a huge amount of blood.  The second thing they saw was a life-like replica of Spinell’s head sitting on top of the television.  The head was a prop from Maniac and so convincing that the police originally assumed someone had broken into the apartment and decapitated him.  Spinell’s death not only prevented him from playing Frank Zito for a second time but also kept him from reprising his role as Willie Cicci in The Godfather Part III.)

Maniac is not an easy film to defend but, if I had to, I would point out that Frank Zito is portrayed as being an unsympathetic loser throughout the entire film.  He’s not some evil genius like Hannibal Lecter.  He’s not a nonstop quip machine like Freddy Krueger.  He’s not even enigmatic or superhuman like Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees.  Instead, he’s a pathetic loser who can’t even win an argument with the voices in his head.  Horror films all too often glorify or make excuses for serial killers.  (Just look at all of the Ted Bundy films.)  Maniac does not present Frank Zito as being anything other than a pathetic and twisted man and, as such, it’s probably one of the most realistic portrayals of a serial killer to be found on film.  Frank Zito is not meant to be glorified, though I’m sure that went over the heads of more than a few people who saw this film when it first opened.  It’s an ugly film but it’s about an ugly subject.  It’s exploitive but ultimately it’s on the side of Zito’s victims.

The film was an early directorial credit of William Lustig, who worked as a production assistant on Dario Argento’s Inferno in order to see how Argento deal with shooting on location in New York.  It was while working on Inferno that Lustig met Daria Nicolodi and offered her the part of Anna in Maniac.  (Anna’s last name is D’Antoni, a clear nod to Nicolodi’s Italian roots.)  Nicolodi was disgusted by the script and turned it down.  (Caroline Munro accepted the role and was reunited with her Starcrash co-star, Joe Spinnell.  Interestingly enough, even after all of the controversy created by Maniac, Munro and Spinell went on to co-star in The Last Horror Movie.)  Lustig based his serial killer on David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz and named him after director Joe Zito, who would go on to direct Friday the 13th — The Final Chapter.

For all the controversy that has dogged Maniac over the years, it’s easy to forget that the film itself is surprisingly well-directed and acted.  Caroline Munro bring some much needed class to the proceedings, even if the script requires her character to make some truly dumb decisions.  And Joe Spinell was simply horrifying as Frank Zito.  It’s not a pleasant film and if you ever find yourself in a home where the owner has a Maniac poster on the wall, I would suggest leaving immediately.  It is, however, a landmark of grindhouse filmmaking.

(Be sure to read Arleigh’s thoughts on Maniac here!)

October Hacks: Tourist Trap (dir by David Schmoeller)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

1979’s Tourist Trap opens in the same way that many slasher films have opened.  A group of friends — young, attractive, and not particularly bright — are driving through a secluded, rural area when they have car trouble.

Now, I have to say that, if I was driving through a rural secluded area or even if I was just a passenger in the vehicle, I would totally freak out if the car broke down.  I mean, seriously, you’re in the middle of nowhere.  You have no idea who or what might be hiding behind those trees.  Even if you don’t get attacked by a bunch of inbred hillbilly cousins, you might get eaten by a bear or, even worse, you might get mauled by a deer and end up with Lyme Disease.  Or you might just end up with a bunch of flies buzzing around your face, which is really even worse than getting attacked by a wild animal.

(Pro-tip: One way to deal with flies is to combine the open flame of a lighter with a can of hairspray.)

I’ve seen enough slasher films to know that bad things happen when you get lost in the woods.  However, up until everything started getting all self-referential in the 1990s, old school slasher films were infamous for featuring characters who had apparently never seen a slasher film or really any other type of movie before.

Your car broke down in the woods?  One member of your party has already disappeared while looking for a gas station?  You have no way of letting anyone know where you are?  Sure, why not go skinny dipping?  For that matter, why not check out Slausen’s Lost Oasis, a run-down shack that is the home of a lot of wax figures and which is owned by the shotgun-toting Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors).  Mr. Slausen is pretty bitter about the new freeway.  It took away all of his business.

Of course, it turns out that there’s more to this tourist trap than meets the eyes.  For one thing, the mannequins often seem to randomly come to life and murder anyone who spends too much time alone with them.  Secondly, things in the tourist trap often move on their own, as if someone has psychic powers.  And then there the enigmatic man who wears a wax mask and likes to take people hostage before transforming them into wax figures….

Tourist Trap has a totally ludicrous plot but Slausen’s Oasis is such a creepy location and Chuck Connors plays his role with such unnerving intensity that it doesn’t matter that things don’t always make sense.  At its best, Tourist Trap plays out like a filmed nightmare, one in which the rules of normal physics often don’t seem to apply.  The victims are interchangeable (though I did like Tanya Roberts’s energetic performance as Becky) but the kills are imaginative and memorable gruesome.  Researching the film, I was surprised to discover that Tourist Trap was given a PG-rating, despite the skinny dipping and the blood and all of the terrifying wax figures.  Don’t let that rating fool you.  This is genuinely scary slasher film and one that everyone should see before going on an impulsive road trip to the middle of nowhere.

On-Stage With The Lens: Medea (dir by Mark Cullingham)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 431 BC, the Greek playwright Euripides premiered his latest play, Medea.  The story of a woman scorned who deals with her anger by murdering her ex-husband’s soon-to-be wife, future father-in-law, and finally her own children, Medea has lived on as one of Euripides’s most-performed plays.  Three actresses have won Tony awards for playing Medea on Broadway, setting the record for the most Tonys won for playing the same role.

Medea is a play that is open to a lot of interpretations.  Quite a few stagings of the play present Medea as being a sympathetic character, a victim of a misogynistic culture who was driven to extremes by the men around her.  I can see that argument and it is true that the play does emphasize that all the men in Medea’s life treat her terribly.  Creon plots to send Medea into exile so that his daughter can marry her husband.  Medea’s smarmy husband, Jason, says that he has no choice but to marry a princess because Medea is only a “barbarian,” fit to be his mistress but not his wife.  In many ways, Medea is a sympathetic character.  But, for me, all of that sympathy goes out the window as soon as she murders her children.  The fact that, in most stage versions of the play, the Gods then help her to escape makes her even less sympathetic in my eyes.  (Needless to say, it certainly doesn’t do much for the reputation of the Greek Gods.  Then again, one gets the feeling that even the ancient Gods didn’t particularly like their Gods.)

In 1983, Zoe Caldwell won a Tony for playing Medea.  (Interestingly enough, in this production, the Nurse was played by Judith Anderson, who also won a Tony for playing Medea, in 1947.)  A performance at the Kennedy Center was filmed for PBS.  The production, with its minimalist sets and atmosphere of growing dread, captures the nightmarish intensity of the story.  Zoe Caldwell gives a riveting performance as Medea, alternating between wild-eyed madness and subtle manipulation.

As the most horrific of the Greek plays, Medea is a production that just feels right for the Halloween season.  Here is Zoe Caldwell in 1983’s Medea.

The Barbarians (1987, directed by Ruggero Deodato)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a magical land of dragons and fierce warriors, the evil sorcerer Kadar (Richard Lynch) attacks a peaceful group of traveling entertainers, slaughtering the majority of them and kidnapping their queen, Canary (Virginia Bryant).  Canary has a magical ruby that Kadar hopes will increase his power.  Canary also has two sons who are each sold separately into slavery.  Years later, these muscle-bound twins, Kutchek (Peter Paul) and Gore (David Paul), will be reunited and will team up to save their mother, fight a dragon, and free the kingdom from Kadar.

An Italian-American co-production that was directed by Ruggero Deodato and distributed by Cannon, The Barbarians was a starring vehicle for the so-called Barbarian Brothers.  Peter and David Paul were twin bodybuilders who appeared in a handful of films and who are today best-known for getting cut out of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.  (In his director’s commentary, when explaining why their scene didn’t work, Stone said, “It was my fault.”)  Peter and David Paul were not natural-born actors.  They’re both pretty stiff in The Barbarians but their natural chemistry as brothers made up for a lot.  They spend most of their screentime in The Barbarians bickering and yelling at each other and you get the feeling that was something they had a lot of experience with.

The Barbarians starts slow.  It takes a while to get going and the plot has the ramshackle feel of many Cannon productions.  Richard Lynch, as always, is a great villain and familiar faces like Michael Berryman and George Eastman have small roles.  Trying to keep track of who is betraying who can require keeping a scorecard while watching the movie but The Barbarians does a good job of creating its fantasy world (and it looks really good for a film that was probably not made for much money) and once the action finally does get started, there’s enough of it to keep things entertaining.  The Barbarians battle not only Kadar’s sorcery but a dragon as well and they do it all while trash talking each other.  The film feels like a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and a regional wrestling production.  It’s entertainingly dumb.

Horror Scenes That I Love: Dr. Loomis Explains Michael Myers in the original Halloween

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

We’ve talked a bit about Donald Pleasence today.  Pleasence is one of my favorite actors, an intense performer with an eccentric screen presence who always gave it his all, even in films that didn’t always seem like they deserved the effort.  Pleasence was a character actor at heart and he appeared in a wide variety of films.  He’s absolutely heart-breaking in The Great Escape, for instance.  However, it seems that Pleasence is destined to be best-remembered for his horror roles.  For many, he will always be Dr. Sam Loomis, the oracle of doom from the original Halloween films.

In this scene from the original Halloween, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) attempts, as best he can, to explain the unexplainable.  I’ve always felt that Pleasence’s performance in the first film is extremely underrated.  People always tend to concentrate on the scenes where he gets angry and yells or the later films where an obviously fragile Pleasence was clearly doing the best he could with poorly written material.  But, to me, the heart of Pleasence’s performance (and the film itself) is to be found in this beautifully delivered and haunting monologue.

In this scene, we see that Dr. Loomis is himself a victim of Michael Myers.  Spending the last fifteen years with Michael has left Loomis shaken and obviously doubting everything that he once believed.  Whenever I watch both Halloween and its sequel, I always feel very bad for Dr. Loomis.  Not only did he have to spend 15 years with a soulless psychopath but, once Michael escapes, he has to deal with everyone blaming him for it.  Dr. Loomis was literally the only person who saw Michael for what he was.

Incidentally, Donald Pleasence nearly turned down the role of Sam Loomis.  He didn’t think there was much to the character.  (The role had already been offered to Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, neither of whom were interested.)  It was his daughter, Angela Pleasence, who persuaded Donald to take the role.  At that year’s Cannes Film Festival, Angela saw John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and she assured her father that Carpenter was a talented filmmaker.  Taking his daughter’s advice, Donald Pleasence accepted the role and, by all accounts, was a complete gentleman and a professional on set.  After making horror history as Dr. Sam Loomis, Pleasence would go on to appear in two more Carpenter films, Escape from New York and Prince of Darkness.

October True Crime: Dr. Crippen (dir by Robert Lynn)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen

In 1910, a homeopath named Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was executed by hanging in the UK.

An American by birth, Dr. Crippen had come to London in 1897 with his second wife.  (His first wife died of a stroke and Crippen sent his only son to live with his grandparents.)  Cora Crippen was a former music hall singer who hope to continue her career in London and who did manage to make friends with several prominent members of the city’s theatrical community.  Dr. Crippen was widely regarded as a meek man who was dominated by his rage-prone wife.  Crippen struggled to hold down a regular job and eventually ended up as a manager at the Druet Institute for the Deaf.  By at least 1905, Dr. Crippen was having an affair with a young typist named Ethel Le Neve.

Cora disappeared in early 1910.  When her friends stopped by the house to ask for her, Dr. Crippen said that his wife had left him for another man and had returned to America.  Later, he claimed that Cora had subsequently died in California.  When Ethel was spotted wearing Cora’s jewelry, the London police launched their own investigation into Cora’s disappearance.  After Crippen was interviewed by the police, he and Ethel fled to Brussels and then boarded an ocean liner heading for Canada.  After Crippen and Ethel disappeared, the police searched Crippen’s home and found a torso buried in the basement.  It was assumed that the torso was all that was left of Cora.

(As some have pointed out, it didn’t seem to make much sense for Crippen to dispose of Cora’s head, legs, and arms but to keep her torso.  Apparently, at that time, it was common for human torsos to show up in the Thames, the result of people jumping in the river and then having their body split apart by the current.  As such, the Thames also became a popular place to dump murder victims.  One wonders why Crippen wouldn’t have done the same.)

Meanwhile, on the ocean liner heading to Canada, the captain noticed that one passengers looked like a freshly shaven Dr. Crippen and that the “boy” he was traveling with was obviously a young woman in disguise.  The captain sent a wireless telegram to London.  Chief Inspector Walter Dew boarded a faster liner and actually managed to reach Canada before Crippen.  When Crippen and Ethel arrived in Canada, Walter Dew was waiting for them.

Fate simply wasn’t on Crippen’s side.  If Crippen had bought third class tickets instead of sailing first class, it’s probable the captain would have never seen him during the voyage.  If Crippen had taken a boat to his native United States instead of Canada (which was then still a British dominion), Dew would not have been able to take him back to the UK without an extradition hearing and it’s entirely possible that the evidence would have been ruled insufficient.  Instead, Crippen was promptly returned to London and put on trial for murdering his wife.

During the heavily-covered four-day trial, Crippen’s defense was that Cora had returned to America and that there was no way to prove that the torso was Cora’s.  Though the jury found Crippen guilty in just 22 minutes and he was hanged a month later, there were many who felt that Crippen was innocent or, at the very least, that his guilt had not been proven.  I imagine that one reason why so many people doubted Dr. Crippen’s guilt was because he just didn’t look or act like a murderer.  He wasn’t Jack the Ripper, a shadowy figure moving through the night.  Instead, he was a short, balding, and rather owlish looking man who wore glasses and who, in most photographs, has a quizzical expression on his face.

In short, Dr. Crippen seems as if he was literally destined to eventually be played by Donald Pleasence.

The 1963 film, Dr. Crippen, takes a rather straight-forward approach to telling the story of the doctor.  It opens with Crippen (Donald Pleasence, naturally) on trial for the murder of his wife and it largely tells the story through flashbacks.  Cora (Coral Browne) is portrayed as being a no-talent narcissist who regularly cuckolds her husband while Ethel Le Neve (Samantha Eggar) is portrayed as being a naive young woman who truly loves Dr. Crippen.  The film leaves open the question of whether or not Crippen killed his wife, though it seems to strongly suggest that Crippen was innocent of the crime and the only reason he fled London was because he wanted to be with Ethel.  Donald Pleasence is excellent as Dr. Crippen, playing him with just enough ambiguity that the viewer is left to wonder whether he did it or not.  Pleasence turns Crippen into a sympathetic figure while still holding back just enough to suggest that emotional darkness that could have led even the meek Dr. Crippen to becoming a murderer.  Nicolas Roeg’s black-and-white cinematography captures both the harshness of Crippen’s life in prison and the fleeting romance of his brief time with Ethel.

As for the real life Crippen, both his guilt and his subsequent execution continue to be controversial, with some claiming that DNA testing proved that the torso did not belong to Cora.  (Other have quite reasonably pointed out that the sample used had degraded quite a bit over a hundred years.)  There have been many attempts to win Dr. Crippen a posthumous pardon but all have failed and will probably continue to fail unless Cora’s remains are somehow discovered in a grave somewhere in California.

Shortly before his execution, in his final letter to Ethel Le Neve, Crippen wrote, “Face to face with God, I believe that facts will be forthcoming to prove my innocence.”  After Crippen was hung, Ethel spent three years in Canada before returning to London.  She changed her name, worked as a typist, and eventually married and had two children.  She died in 1967, fifty-seven years after Dr. Crippen.

Horror Film Review: I Like Bats (dir by Grzegorz Warchoł)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1986 Polish film, Katarzyna Walter stars as Iza, a young woman who lives in a small village and who appears to be happy with her quiet life.  Despite the efforts of her aunt (Małgorzata Lorentowicz) to set her up with a local bureaucrat (Edwin Petrykat), Iza says that she is happy being single.  Even though there’s a “sex murderer” on the loose, Iza still prefers to walk alone at night.  She is happy taking care of her bats and making pottery.

Iza, however, has a secret life that not even her aunt knows about.  Sometimes, she puts on dark glasses and a brunette wig and she goes to a nearby town.  She presents herself as being as prostitute but, once she’s alone with a man, she grabs him, bites his neck, and drinks his blood.  Iza is a vampire!

Iza seems quite happy with being a vampire or, at least, she does until she meets Dr. Rudolf Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz), a psychiatrist who visits her aunt’s shop and buys a tea set.  Jung is handsome and single and Iza’s aunt thinks that he would be a perfect match for her.  For once, Iza agrees.  When Iza sees Dr. Jung being interviewed on television about an experimental asylum that he operates out of an ancient castle, Iza goes to the castle and asks to be admitted as a patient.  The bemused Jung replies that there are no vacancies.  Iza replies that she’s a vampire and she wants Dr. Jung to cure her.  Jung, assuming that Iza is merely delusional, take her on as a patient.

Iza proves to be a difficult patient.  For one things, she’s immune to hypnotism, which is apparently Dr. Jung’s main technique.  Secondly, she doesn’t really seem to want to stop being a vampire.  Instead, she just seem to be attracted to Dr. Jung.  Why she’s so attracted to Dr. Jung is another question all together.  Dr. Jung is a condescending jerk who doesn’t really seem to care about any of his patients.  Just as Iza drinks the blood of her victims, Dr. Jung seems to thrive off of the delusions of his patients.  The main thing that Jung and Iza have in common is a belief that they were both destined to be forever alone.  Dr. Jung explains that he never had room for a wife or a family because he was too busy going to school and making a name for himself.  Iza, meanwhile, has always assumed she’ll be alone because she’s a vampire.

(Interestingly, even though the film clearly establishes that Iza is a vampire, none of her victim come back as vampires and she has no problem going out during the day.)

I Like Bats is an intriguing vampire film, one that mixes a creepy atmosphere with a liberal dose of dark humor.  The story itself meanders a bit and is not always easy to follow.  The motivations of Iza and Jung are often rather unclear.  Like a lot of films that were made in Eastern Europe during the period of communist domination, the most interesting thing about the film is the contrast between the beauty of old Europe, with its castles and its green countryside, and the brutal ugliness of the dominant Marxist-Leninist culture.  Though I Like Bats is not explicitly political, there’s still a healthy dose of paranoia running through the film, the type of paranoia that goes along with living in or near an authoritarian state.

I Like Bats is not always easy to follow but the dark ending carried a punch and it’s a film that will stick with you.

Horror Film Review: The Godsend (dir by Gabrielle Beaumont)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In The Godsend, a married couple, Alan and Kate Marlowe (played by Malcolm Stoddard and Cyd Hayman), have a chance meeting with a pregnant stranger (Angela Pleasence).  While Alan suspects that there is something wrong with the mysterious woman, Kate insists on allowing her to come have dinner with them.  At their rural home, the Stranger spends most of her time glaring at Alan and, when she’s left alone, she cuts the phone line.  When the Stranger goes into labor, Alan and Kate deliver her daughter.  The next morning, the Stranger has disappeared and Alan and Kate end up taking the baby — now named Bonnie — into their household.

Alan and Kate already have four other children but that soon starts to change.  First, baby Matthew is found dead in his crib.  As Bonnie grows up, the other children die.  Little Davey drowns in a creek and Bonnie is found with scratches on her hands.  Davey’s brother Sam says that he is scared to be left alone with Bonnie.  Alan and Kate tell him that he’s being silly.  Later, Sam is found dead in the barn.

With their neighbors flat-out accusing Alan and Kate of murdering their children and Bonnie doing strange things like attempting to give her father the mumps, Kate starts to have a nervous breakdown.  Meanwhile, Alan comes to fear that Bonnie may be the one responsible for the death of the other children and that she may now be targeting that last remaining child, Lucy (Angela Deamer).

First released in 1980 and based on a novel by Bernard Taylor, The Godsend is a British horror film that moves at its own deliberate pace.  The action unfolds slowly, with an emphasis on atmosphere and ambiguity.  While it certainly seems that Bonnie is responsible for the death of the other children, the first half of the film leaves room for doubt.  The viewer is left to wonder whether it’s possible that Alan himself is just being paranoid.  As the film progresses, one becomes aware that Bonnie is not only evil but she also has far greater powers than even Alan realizes.  The film ends on a properly dark note.  There really is no future in England’s dreaming.

The Godsend was a bit too slow.  As is so often the case with British horror films from the early 80s, the film was so determined to prove that it was better than the old Hammer bodice rippers that it allowed itself to get a bit too self-serious and stately.  That said, The Godsend is also undeniably creepy.  Viewers have been conditioned to believe that, no matter what else happens in a film, the children will survive.  Even though the children might very well be traumatized for life, it’s still generally accepted that they will somehow manage to make it to the end of the film.  The Godsend breaks that unofficial rule and it actually gets a bit depressing to watch.  Alan and Kate are going through the worst experience that a parent can can suffer.  Alan blames Bonnie while Kate clings to her as being one of the few things that she still has left.  It’s a sad movie that captures a very primal fear.

For the most part, the cast does a good if not spectacular job with the material.  The best performance comes from Angela Pleasence in the role of The Stranger.  Angela Pleasence was the daughter of Donald Pleasence, an actor who will always be best-remembered for playing Dr. Sam Loomis in the original Halloween films.  Dr. Loomis would have identified Bonnie as being evil from the start.  Unfortunately, no one would have listened to him until it was too late.