First released in 1970, Equinox is a low-budget film about a bunch of kind of dumb teenagers who find a book and end up getting chased around the woods by a bunch of angry monsters.
Equinox is a fun little movie. The acting may not be the greatest and this is one of those films where everyone always seems to do the stupidest possible thing at the worst possible time but there’s a lot of charm to be found in the monsters. This film is thought, by many, to have inspired the Evil Dead and there are some definite similarities.
To be honest, it’s a bit of a struggle to say what exactly the 1992 film Hellmaster was actually about but I think it definitely had something to do with the end of the world. John Saxon plays Prof. Jones, a sadistic eugenicist who, in the late 60s, developed a drug that he claimed would — I kid you not — “cure homelessness.” Apparently, the drug would make the homeless so strong that they would be able to build a house or something. Anyway, a reporter (David Emge, best known as the helicopter pilot in the original Dawn of the Dead) discovered what Jones was doing and that the drugs were actually turning the homeless into mind-controlled zombies. Jones responded by murdering the reporter’s wife and then vanishing.
Are you following the story so far?
20 years later, the reporter is having nightmares about the homeless so he decides to start hanging out around the Kant Institute for the Gifted. We’re told that the Kant Institute is a college. There only appears to be one professor and a handful of students, the majority of whom appear to be in their early 30s. I’m not really sure what’s being taught at the school. (The only class we see features two white people debating whether or not Malcolm X hated the homeless.) One of the students, Shelley (Amy Raasch), is apparently clairvoyant and she keeps having visions of the school’s chapel bursting into flames.
Meanwhile, there are shots of an old church bus driving down various deserted roads. “Have a nice day” is written across the cross that hangs on the front of the bus. On top of the bus, someone’s painted a smiley face. The bus itself is occupied by four deformed followers of Prof. Jones. Apparently, they’ve spent the last 20 years driving around the country and killing people. One of them is dressed like a nun and carries several hypodermic needles. They come across a stalled motorist and promptly kill him. The man’s daughter (Sarah Barkoff) escapes and flees to the nearby Kant Institute.
It turns out that the bus is also heading to the Kant Institute! Eventually, Prof. Jones pops up and explains that it took God six days to create the world but Jones believes that it will only take him one night to transform the world into Hell. Why does Jones want to do this? That’s not really clear. Actually, it’s not even clear how showing up at the Kant Institute will even help Jones accomplish that goal.
Anyway, the rest of the movie is basically Shelley and the reporter and a handful of friends attempting to not get transformed into zombies by Prof. Jones. This is easier said than done because, as we quickly discover, everyone in this movie is an idiot.
Hellmaster is one of those low-budget horror films that shouldn’t work and yet somehow, it does. Yes, the plot makes absolutely no sense and, with the exception of genre vets Saxon and Emge, the performances are almost all terrible. But no matter! At its best, the film — which is full of dark hallways and deserted roads and twisty camera angles — achieves a dream-like intensity. The zombies, with their hypodermic needles and their joyful savagery, are genuinely creepy and John Saxon is properly menacing as Prof. Jones. It’s a relentless film, one that leaves you feeling as if anyone can die at any time and, when they do die, it’s often in the most macabre ways possible. A crippled student is beaten to death with his own crutch. Another is doused with acid. And you may be asking yourself, “But why was there a big vat of acid just sitting around?” but oddly, it works within the surreal dream logic of the film. It makes no sense and yet, it happens. If anything, the lack of a coherent plot and the low-budget aesthetic help this film create and maintain its nightmarish atmosphere.
For all of its flaws, Hellmaster is a thousand times more effective than you might expect.
Hi, everyone! Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s October and we’ve pulled the string here at the Shattered Lens! Welcome to the annual TSL Horrorthon! For the next 31 days, TSL is going to be home to everything that makes October our favorite month of the year!
So, here’s Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda, performing the opening ceremony of the season:
This October, along with with everything else, I want to highlight Italian horror! Today, we start things off with a look at 1988’s Ratman!
Terry (Janet Agren) has come to a Caribbean island, not for a vacation but instead to collect the remains of her sister, Marlis (Eva Grimaldi). Marlis was an up-and-coming model who came to the island with a photographer named Mark (Werner Pochath) and another model named Peggy (Luisa Menon). Marlis had her entire life ahead of her but apparently, someone murdered her on the island and then left her body in an abandoned building where it was eaten by a rat.
Obviously, identifying a dead sibling would be a difficult task for anyone. Fortunately, no sooner has Terry arrived on the island than she runs into Fred (David Warbeck). Fred is a true crime writer, a man who knows the island and who is always ready with a quip or a joke. For reasons that are never quite clear, Fred invites himself to accompany Terry down to the morgue. Why does Terry allow a complete stranger to go with her to identify her sister’s body? Who knows? Maybe it’s because Fred is played by David Warbeck, who was one of the more likable actors to regularly appear in Italian horror films.
It turns out to be a good thing that Fred came along because, when they arrive at the morgue, it turns out that the police don’t actually have Marlis’s body! Instead, they have Peggy’s body. Peggy was murdered while wearing Marlis’s dress, which led to a case of mistaken identity. But, if Marlis isn’t dead, where is she?
Could she and Mark have gone deeper into the jungles of the island, hoping to find the perfect place to take the pictures that will turn Marlis into a superstar? Of course, they have! Unfortunately, what they did not take into account is that the island is also the home of the Ratman!
Who is the Ratman? Well, his name is actually Mousey (Nelson de la Rosa), despite the fact that he doesn’t really act like a mouse. Mousey was created a mad scientist who wanted to see what would happen if he crossed the genes of a monkey and a rat. The end result was a 2’4 sociopath with really sharp teeth and an insatiable urge to kill. The scientist thinks that he’ll win the Nobel Prize for this creation but Mousey seems to be more concerned with killing people. As soon as he gets out of his cage, he goes on a killing spree….
Mostly because of the presence of Nelson de la Rosa (who, until his death in 2016, was the world’s shortest man), Ratman has a cult following. And it must be admitted that de la Rosa makes for a memorable ratman. Unfortunately, he’s not really in the film that much. The majority of the film is made up of filler. For instance, we spend a lot of time watching Mark take pictures. A lot of time is also devoted to Fred and Terry having to deal with the incompetent island police. (The police are convinced that Marlis is dead and are apparently willing to force Terry to look at every dead body on the island to prove it.)
Fortunately, this film also features David Warbeck and, as any fan of Italian horror can tell you, Warbeck was one of those actors who improved any film in which he appeared. Warbeck always approached his roles with a sense of humor and a likable joie de vivre and he’s probably as convincing as anyone could hope to be when appearing in a film like Ratman. Warbeck delivers his lines with just enough of a smile to not only let you know that he’s in on the joke but to also invite you to play along with him.
Reportedly, Ratman was a troubled production and the film’s producer stepped in to take over from the credited director. That perhaps explains why the film itself sometimes feels rather disjointed. There is one undeniably effective sequence, in which a model is stalked by a knife-wielding maniac just to then be attacked by Mousey instead. Otherwise, by the standards of most Italian horror films, it’s a visually bland movie. I would have liked to have seen what someone like Lamberto Bava and Lucio Fulci could have done with Ratman.
Ratman exists in several different version. The version I saw was dubbed into French and it was obvious that a good deal of gore had been cut from the film. (The “official” Italian version has a running time of 82 minutes. The version I saw only ran 76 minutes.) Still, even in an edited form, this film has an undeniable “What did I just see” appeal to it and it’s always worth watching anything that features David Warbeck.
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.
Since I just reviewed 1973’s Don’t Look Now, here are 4 shots from 4 other horror films that were released the same year.
Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie in Don’t Look Now (1973)
I have to admit that I’m actually a bit embarrassed to say that Venice is my favorite city in Italy.
I mean, it’s such a cliché, isn’t it? Tourists always fall in love with Venice, even though the majority of us really don’t know much about the city beyond the canals and the gondolas. I spent a summer in Italy and Venice was definitely the city that had the most American visitors. Sadly, the majority of them didn’t do a very good job representing the U.S. in Europe. I’ll never forget the drunk frat boys who approached me one night, all wearing University of Texas t-shirts. One of them asked, “Are you from Texas?”
“No,” I lied.
“You sound like you’re from Texas!” his friend said.
“No, ah’m not from Texas,” I said, “Sorry, y’all.”
I mean, that’s not something that would have happened in Florence or even Naples! In Rome, handsome men on motor scooters gave me flowers. In Venice, on the other hand, I had to deal with the same assholes that I dealt with back home!
That said, I still fell in love with Venice. And yes, it did happen while riding in a gondola. At that moment, I felt like I was living in a work of art. I can still remember looking over the side of the gondola and watching as a small crab ran across someone’s front porch. That’s when I realize that, by its very existence, Venice proved that anything was possible.
I’ve often heard that Venice is slowly sinking. That Venice has a reputation as being a dying city would probably have come to a surprise to the drunk Americans who were just looking for a girl from Texas that summer. And yet, Venice has always been associated with death. Just consider Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and the subsequent film adaptation from Luchino Visconti. Consider the controversial Giallo in Venice. And, of course, you can’t forget about the 1973 film, Don’t Look Now.
Oh my God, Don’t Look Now is a creepy movie. It’s probably best known for two things: the lengthy sex scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland (which was apparently quite controversial back in 1973 but which seems rather tame when viewed today) and the film’s shock ending. It’s one of the best and most disturbing endings in the history of horror and I’m not going to spoil it in this review. The first time I saw the movie, the ending caught me totally off guard and gave me nightmares. Admittedly, it’s not hard to give me nightmares but what’s remarkable is that, upon subsequent viewings, the ending is still just as frightening and disturbing. In fact, knowing what’s going to happen makes the film even more chilling.
The film’s story is actually a rather simple one. After their daughter, Christine, accidentally drowns, John (Donald Sutherland) and Laura Baxter (Julie Christie) take a trip to Venice. Though they’re in Venice so that John can restore an ancient church, both John and Laura are mostly trying to escape their grief. Laura meets a blind woman, Heather (Hilary Mason), who claims to not only be a psychic but who also says that she can see Christine in the afterlife. Laura believes Heather and is concerned when Heather says that Christine wants them to leave Venice. John, on the other hand, believes that Heather is a fake.
When the Baxters get a phone call informing them that their son has taken ill, Laura flies back to the UK. Or does she? One day, John spots his wife riding on a boat with Heather and her sister. Has Heather abducted or brainwashed his wife? When John goes to the police, they are as skeptical of him as he was of Heather. In fact, they start to suspect that John may have something to do with a recent rash of murders.
Confused, John searches Venice for his wife but, instead of finding her, he spots a figure in the distance. It appears to be a young child, one who is wearing the same red coat that Christine was wearing when she drowned….
It’s a simple story but it’s told in a very complex fashion. Director Nicolas Roeg is best known for his fragmented narrative style. Roeg often mashes together scenes from the past, present, and future and leaves it up to the viewer to put it all together. (For instance, in Don’t Look Now, scenes of John and Laura making love are intercut with scenes of them getting dressed afterward.) Roeg’s style that can often come across as being pretentious but, in Don’t Look Now, it works perfectly. The audience is kept off-balance and is always aware that that’s more than one possible interpretation for everything that is seen. Is Laura in the UK or is she on a boat in Venice? Is Heather seeing Christine or is she just trying to con a grieving mother? Is John chasing the figure in the red coat or is she actually the one pursuing him? Is John chasing the figure because he believes that she’s his daughter or because he wants to prove, once and for all, that Christine is gone and never coming back? Roeg keeps you guessing.
Death seems to permeate every frame of Don’t Look Now, whether it’s Heather’s cheery descriptions of the afterlife or the sight of a bloated corpse being pulled out of the canal. Even when John is working in the church, he still nearly slips off a scaffolding. While John restores ancient buildings to the vibrant glories of the past, the present seems to grow more and more ominous and menacing. John and Laura may have traveled to Venice to escape their grief but their grief follows them. How they deal with that grief — both as a couple and as individuals — is what determines their fate. For a film that is full of mysteries, none is as enigmatic as Julie Christie’s smile when she’s on the boat.
I’m probably making Don’t Look Now sound like an incredibly grim film and, to a certain extent, it is. After all, early 70s cinema is not known for its happy endings. And yet, as dark and disturbing as this film may be, it’s impossible to look away from. Roeg does a fantastic job capturing both the beauty and the decay of Venice while Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are so sympathetic as John and Laura that you find yourself rewatching and hoping that somehow, they don’t end up making the same mistakes that they made the last time that you watched.
Don’t Look Now is an essential horror film and one that’s as timeless as the sight of a crab running across someone’s front porch.
This is our favorite time of the year here at the Shattered Lens because October is horror month. For the past five years, we have celebrated every October by reviewing and sharing some of our favorite horror movies, shows, books, and music!
A part of the tradition of Horrorthon is that we begin every day in October by sharing a free movie. Now, I should warn you that most of these movies will come from YouTube and you know how YouTube is about yanking down videos. So, if you’re reading this in 2024 and wondering where the promised movie disappeared to … well, you should have watched it in 2018!
Let’s start things off with the 1993 made-for-television movie, The Tower!
Have you ever asked yourself what Die Hard would have been like if it had starred Paul Reiser and the Alan Rickman role had been played by an overzealous automated security system? Well, watch The Tower to find out! This is one of those movies where the hero, played by Paul Reiser of all people, manages to get almost everyone in the movie killed and yet we’re not supposed to hold it against him.
By the end of the movie, you’ll totally be on The Tower’s side!
In 1984, Lisa McVey was seventeen years old and working at a doughnut shop in Florida. When she wasn’t working, she was having to deal with her dysfunctional home life, including regular sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. One night, after ending her shift at work, Lisa hopped on her bicycle and rode off. At the time, she was fully intending to kill herself. Instead, she found herself being chased and eventually abducted by a man in a car. That man was Bobby Joe Long and, though Lisa didn’t know it at the time, he has already killed at least ten other women in the Tampa Bay area.
After kidnapping her, Long held Lisa prisoner for 26 hours. Keeping her bound and blindfolded, Long raped her repeatedly and planned to kill her. Lisa, however, managed to talk him out of it. By her own admission, she used the same techniques that she had previously used to survive the years of abuse that she suffered when she was a child. She promised him that she wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened. She told him that she understood that he wasn’t a bad guy and that she would even be his friend if he just let her go.
And that’s just what Bobby Joe Long did. He set her free. Lisa ran for home, not realizing that her family had reported her missing and that the police were looking for her. However, once Lisa reached her house, she discovered that neither her family nor the cops believed her. They assumed that she had run off with a boy and, when things didn’t work out, she came home and made up the kidnapping story to get out of trouble. The more Lisa tried to explain, the more the police doubted her….
That’s the story that was told in tonight’s Lifetime premiere, Believe Me: The Abduction of Lisa McVey. Usually, I tend to take a humorous (some would say “snarky”) approach when reviewing Lifetime films but that really wouldn’t be appropriate with this film. My friend, the writer Trevor Wells, compared this film to Cleveland Abduction and he’s absolutely right. Much like Cleveland Abduction, Believe Me tells the true story of one strong and underestimated woman who survived the worst experience possible and who, against all odds, managed to create light in the darkness. It’s not a pleasant film to watch but it is an inspiring one, one that offers up strength to any woman who has ever had to fight to be believed.
Katie Douglas gives a strong and empathetic performance as Lisa McVey. While the film doesn’t shy away from showing both what she experienced and her struggle with PTSD afterward, it also showcases the strength that helped her to survive both her Hellish childhood and Bobby Joe Long. It’s that same strength that caused her to never stop demanding that both the police and her family believe her.
Thanks to Lisa McVey, Bobby Joe Long was eventually captured. He’s currently sitting on Florida’s death row. As for Lisa, she is now a school resource officer and a motivational speaker.
I recorded Conrad & Michelle off of Lifetime on September 23rd.
In 2014, 18 year-old Conrad Roy committed suicide in Massachusetts, poisoning himself with carbon monoxide fumes while sitting in his truck.
Conrad was an outstanding athlete and a good student but he has also struggled with social anxiety and depression and had reportedly often insisted to various therapists that he wanted to die. Some reports stated that Conrad had attempted suicide at least once before, with an attempted drug overdose when he was 17. Any suicide, regardless of the circumstances, is a tragedy but making Conrad’s story all the more disturbing was that, minutes before his death, he was texting with an acquaintance named Michelle Carter. Supposedly, a few years earlier, Michelle had talked Conrad out of a suicide attempt. This time, however, she insisted that he grow through with it. Even when he texted her that he was scared and that he had gotten out of his truck, Michelle texted back that he needed to get back in truck and go through with what he was planning.
After Conrad’s death, Michelle reportedly used the tragedy to generate as much attention for herself as possible. She described herself as being Conrad’s girlfriend and his soulmate. At the same time, Conrad’s friends and family said that Conrad had only met Michelle face-to-face a handful of times and that their relationship was almost entirely conducted online. Some friends went as far as to say that they had never even heard Conrad mention Michelle’s name and that Conrad had actually been doing better before Michelle started sending him text messages in which she goaded him into committing suicide.
When Michelle was arrested and put on trial, it made national headlines. Attorneys for the defense argued that Conrad had a history of suicidal behavior and that he was ultimately responsible for his own actions. The prosecution, on the other hand, argued that Michelle was a narcissist who heartlessly manipulated a vulnerable acquaintance. In the end, Michelle’s was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Specifically, she was convicted because of the text in which she told Conrad to get back in the truck. In August of 2017, she was sentenced to serve 30 months in prison.
Given the sensational nature of the case and the fact that the trial made national headlines, it’s not particularly shocking that Lifetime would make a movie about it. Starring Bella Thorne as Michelle and Austin P. McKenzie as Conrad, Conrad & Michelle does a good job of presenting the basic facts of the case. We watch as Michelle and Conrad first meet while on vacation on Florida and then we follow along as both of them spend the next few years texting each other, taking different psychiatric medications, and attending various therapy groups. Conrad struggles with his depression while Michelle deals with, among other things, an eating disorder. After Conrad’s death, we watch as Michelle awkwardly forces herself into the lives of his friends and family.
Some people will probably complain that the film never solidly takes a side as to whether or not Michelle was truly responsible for Conrad’s suicide. Though we see Michelle texting Conrad to get back in the truck, the film leaves it ambiguous as to whether it was specifically Michelle’s text that caused Conrad to follow through with his suicide. Still, after Conrad’s suicide, the film leaves no doubt that Michelle relished her new-found fame and her status as a self-declared tragic heroine. (After learning that Conrad’s suicide note was addressed to her, Michelle brags to her friends that Conrad didn’t write a note to anyone else. Later, when Michelle sets up a charity softball game in Conrad’s memory, she breathlessly reminds everyone that it was her idea and worries that someone else might try to take credit.) Bella Thorne does an excellent job in these scenes, playing Michelle as an unstable narcissist who is incapable of understanding why no one else is as excited for her as she is. In these scenes, Michelle’s monstrous selfishness is revealed and Thorne gives a chilling performance.
Like the story that inspired it, Conrad & Michelle is a sad and disturbing movie and one that I would recommend catching the next time that it’s on.
The first Creed was a boxing film that was so good that even a non-boxing fan like me could enjoy it!
Will the second Creed be as effective? It’s hard to say. Michael B. Jordan is returning. Sylvester Stallone is returning. You know who isn’t returning? Ryan Coogler. And while Jordan and Stallone were both a huge part of Creed‘s success, Ryan Coogler’s contribution — as both a director and a writer — cannot be underestimated.
Creed II is based on a screenplay by Stallone. (Reportedly, Stallone came close to directing it as well, before hiring Steve Caple, Jr. for the job.) This time, Adonis Creed battles the son of the man who killed his father. Apparently, Rocky survived the illness that was threatening his life in the first Creed because he’s back and once again offering up punch-drunk advice.
Will the second Creed live up to the first? It’s hard to say but the trailer certainly looks effective. Creed II will be released on November 21st. While I don’t think anyone is expecting Creed II to be an Oscar contender, the film could potentially help Michael B. Jordan’s supporting actor campaign for his role in Black Panther. And if Creed II is a failure …. well, who knows?
Through the Shattered Lens 