Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Nightmare Café 1.5 “Sanctuary For A Child”

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Nightmare Café, which ran on NBC from January to April of 1992. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

This week, the café goes country!

Episode 1.5 “Sanctuary For A Child”

(Dir by Armand Mastroianni, originally aired on March 27th, 1992)

On tonight’s episode of Nightmare Café, we learn a few things about the café. Apparently, the café is not just located in Los Angeles. It can materialize anywhere on the planet but it apparently does so on its own. Though Blackie (played by Robert Englund) claims to be the proprietor of the café, this episode suggests that he actually has no control over it. While Blackie apparently does know why the Nightmare Café does the things that it does, it would appear that the café still has a mind of its own. It decides where it is going and it decides when it is time to leave.

This episode, for instance, begins with the Nightmare Café materializing on a street in a small, country town. Soon after it materializes, both Frank and Fay also materialize inside the café. I’ve often wondered where Frank and Fay go whenever the café is closed for business. Frank and Fay, after all, are essentially ghosts. Do they need to eat or sleep? This episode suggests that they do, as Fay complains about having to get up early because “the café” has decided to open up the crack of dawn.

Soon enough, a young boy named Luke Wall (Brandon Quintin Adams) comes walking into the café. He and Frank immediately bond, with Frank realizing that Luke is trying to run away from home. What Frank discovers upon following Luke out of the café is that Luke’s home is in a hospital. Luke is in a coma and has been for quite some time. Frank also discovers that the café has materialized in his home town, the place that he left when he joined the Navy and to which he thought he would never return. Luke is the son of Frank’s former best friend, Tom (Vondie Curtis-Hall), and his ex-girlfriend, Evelyn (Angela Bassett). Frank explains to Fay that Evelyn was the love of his life but his racist father demanded that they break up. That was one of the main reasons why Frank left town and has never returned.

So, the Nightmare Cafe wants two things to happen. It wants Tom and Evelyn to make peace with Luke’s impending death and also with each other. And it wants Frank to deal with his past and his feelings towards his late father.

And that’s exactly what happens. It’s a sweet episode, even if it’s a bit predictable and heavy-handed enough to end with “The Living Years” playing on the soundtrack. In many ways, this felt more like an episode of Highway to Heaven than an episode of Nightmare Café but, as was so often the case with this show, the strong performances of the cast carried the narrative over any rough spots. In the end, Frank made his peace with the past, Luke moved on to the afterlife, and the Nightmare Café moved on to a new town.

Next week: the final episode of Nightmare Café!

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Bleach (dir by Michael Edmonds)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2022 film, Bleach, tells the story of Jonah Paxton (Mark Justice).

Born in Nevada, Jonah never knew his mother. He was raised in a trailer by his abusive father (Lorenzo Lamas), a degenerate gambler who molested Jonah and forced him to wear dresses in an attempt to shame him into “being a man.” When the mob threatened to come after Jonah because of his debts, he sold Jonah to his uncle, a drug dealer named Matthew (Eric Roberts).

In the mid-80s, grown-up Jonah has some issues. That’s not surprising. He’s haunted by his past and has hallucinations in which the devil is raping him from behind. (Yikes!) He also has visions of selling his soul to a mysterious woman (Mindy Robinson) who throws money at him. In what might be the real world, Jonah is hired by El Jefe (Robert LaSardo), who explains that he loves horror films but that the whole trope of the final girl upsets him. He gives Jonah a million dollars to film an actual snuff film. He tells Jonah that he wants high production values. He wants to watch Jonah become a monster. Jonah takes the money and films himself murdering two women who picked up at a bar and one woman who unfortunately entered the room at the wrong time.

While El Jefe waits for Jonah to bring him the tape, Jonah finds himself having even more violent hallucinations. He sees demons. He sees the devil. After he crashes his car in the desert, he has a vision of a woman (Tara Reid) who claims to be his mother and who encourages Jonah to commit suicide. While the police investigate Jonah’s crimes, Jonah is haunted by the ghosts of his victims and his already tenuous grip on reality continues to loosen. Soon, Jonah is drinking bleach and trying to purify himself with fire….

Bleach is a mess of a film, one that is occasionally surreal but which is more often just boring. The film’s tone is all over the place and certain scenes are so drawn out that they go from being disturbing to being dull. The moments of dark comedy fail to land but the glimpses inside Jonah’s mind are appropriately twisted and bizarre. By the end of the movie, Jonah’s scarred and blistered body is an undeniably shocking sight. Physically, he’s come to reflect the monster that he truly is. But, in the end, the film is too unevenly paced to be really effective and it ends with a shoot-out that is so clumsily choreographed that it’ll probably lead to more laughs than pathos.

Eric Roberts is memorably sleazy as the faux friendly Matthew. One gets the feeling that both and Lorenzo Lamas were only on set for a day or two but both of them make the most of their screen time. Both of them offer a glimpse into how to make a monster.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Horror on TV: Baywatch Nights 2.11 “Possession” (dir by David W. Hagar)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight’s bonus episode of televised horror is an episode of Baywatch Nights that deals with something that every lifeguard eventually has to deal with: demonic possession.

Well, actually, it’s not so much demonic possession as its dead serial killer possession but it’s still definitely not a good thing. That’s especially true when it’s a friend and/or co-worker getting possessed. I mean, it’s never fun to end a relationship but having to end it because someone managed to get possessed …. I just don’t see how you live that down.

And, before anyone gets the wrong idea, Hasselhoff is not the one who gets possessed. It would have been fun if he had been but no. Sorry.

This episode originally aired on February 2nd, 1997.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 6.19 “Secrets” (dir by Jacques Richard)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a woman and her lover attempt to collect her husband’s health insurance after his death. Unfortunately, for them, her husband might have something to say about that.

This episode originally aired on February 15th, 1991.

The TSL Horror Grindhouse: Ruby (dir by Curtis Harrington)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1977 film, Ruby, opens with a scene set in 1935. The Great Depression is still raging and the only people making money are industrialists like Joseph P. Kennedy and gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello. In the Florida swamps, gangster Nicky Rocco (Sal Vecchio) is betrayed by both his gang and his pregnant girlfriend, Ruby (Piper Laurie). As Nicky’s bullet-ridden body sinks into the bayou, Ruby goes into labor and gives birth to Leslie.

16 years later, Ruby owns her own drive-in. The theater employs several members of the old gang and Ruby is herself married to one of Nicky’s former partners, the crippled and blinded Jake Miller (Fred Kohler, Jr.). Ruby’s lover is another former member of the gang, Vince Kemper (Stuart Whitman). Leslie, meanwhile, is now 16 years old and has never spoken a word in her life. Ruby laments that she never made it as a lounge singer but she does a good job running the theater and it seems to be a popular place to see movies. She’s even able to show Attack of the 50 Feet Woman, even though that film came out in 1958 and Ruby is set in 1951. That’s the power of having mob-connections, I guess.

When strange things start to happen at the theater, it could just be a case of Ruby having bad luck and the former gangsters that she’s hired not being particularly good at their jobs. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that Nicky swore to get revenge on everyone with his dying breath. One employee is found hanging in a projection booth. Another is found hanging from a tree. Another is left in a cold drink machine and the lady who puts in a quarter to get a cup of tea instead gets a cup of blood. While Ruby might be in denial about the fact that her business is obviously cursed, Vince realizes that something has to be done so he brings a psychic/exorcist named Paul Keller (Roger Davis, who also provides some narration at the start of the film).

Of course, it’s not just ghosts that Ruby and the gang have to worry about. Leslie is acting strange as well! At one point, Leslie even speaks but it’s not with her voice. It’s with Nicky’s voice! Leslie has been possessed and soon, Nicky himself is appearing on the drive-in’s screens and repeating, “I love you, I love you.”

Ruby is a real mess of a film, one that attempts to rip-off The Exorcist while tossing a bit of Carrie in as well. Director Curtis Harrington plays up the campier aspects of the story and Piper Laurie gives a scenery-chewing performance that suggests that she realized it was pointless to try to take anything about Ruby seriously. Stuart Whitman plays Vince as being the most well-meaning but also the most clueless man in Florida while poor Roger Davis is stuck with the most earnest role in the film and, as such, gets the unenviable task of trying to explain what’s going on in a rational manner. There’s nothing rational about Ruby, which goes from being a film about gangsters to being a film about ghosts to being a film about possession without even stopping to catch its breath. It’s a deeply silly film but one gets the feeling that it was made to be silly. Ruby works as long as you just accept the weirdness of what you’re watching while you’re watching it and you don’t give it too much thought afterwards.

Retro Television Reviews: Miami Vice 1.8 “No Exit”

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, Bruce Willis comes to Miami!

Episode 1.8 “No Exit”

(Dir by David Soul, originally aired on November 9th, 1984)

Tony Amato is a complete monster.

He’s an arms dealer, one who is responsible for machine guns showing up all over Miami. When he’s not selling guns to drug dealers, he’s plotting to sell rocket launchers to terrorists. He’s a crude and a violent man who has suddenly gotten very wealthy and who likes to show off his money. He lives in a pink, art deco mansion. He has a beautiful wife named Rita (Katherine Borowitz), who he regularly abuses. Miami Vice wants to arrest him to get the guns off the street. The federal government wants to arrest him so that they can get their rocket launchers back. And Rita …. well, Rita just wants to hire someone to kill him.

Tony Amato is a memorable character because of just how thoroughly evil he actually is. He’s a criminal because he enjoys it and it doesn’t bother him that his weapons can lead to innocent people dying. Tony is also memorable because he’s played by Bruce Willis. This was Willis’s first credited acting role. (He had appeared as an extra in a few movies before this.) Willis got the role on the recommendation of Don Johnson, who remembered Bruce as being the bartender at one of his favorite New York bars. Though there’s not a lot of depth to the role, Willis does get to show off the cocky confidence that would later become his trademark.

As for the episode, it’s dark even by the standards of Miami Vice. The episode opens with a violent chase and gunfight in the streets of Miami and it ends, just as the previous episode did, with an abused spouse probably throwing their life away to get revenge. We watch as Tubbs, Crockett, and Lester (Julio Oscar Mechesco) sneak into Tony’s mansion and manage to bug the place before Tony returns home. They set up their survelliance operation on Crockett’s boat. Of course, things pretty much fall apart as soon as the federal agents show up and demand to be allowed to oversee the operation.

While the Miami cops and the federal agents fight over jurisdiction, Crockett tries to help Rita escape from her husband. He approaches her while she’s waiting to meet with a hitman and convinces her to let the cops handle it. He promises her that he will put Tony away, even though he knows nothing is ever that simple. Both Katherine Borowitz and Don Johnson do a good job in their scenes together. Deep down, Crockett knows that he’s giving Rita false hope but he can’t bring himself to admit it.

Tubbs, once again, gets to break out his Jamaican accent as he goes undercover as a terrorist who is in the market for Tony’s rocket launchers. Through Tubbs’s hard work, Tony is arrested but, on the steps of the courthouse, two new government agents demand that Tony be released because they’ve determined him to be a potential asset in their own Central American operations. Tony smirks as his handcuffs are removed. Rita appears on the steps, demanding to know why Tony is being set free. She pulls a gun from her purse. We got a freeze frame of Sonny shouting, “NO!” as a gunshot echoes on the soundtrack. Tony may be dead (and we never specifically see whether Rita’s aim was true or not) but his guns are still on the streets, the people he sold to are still free, and the only person going to prison is going to be an abused wife.

Like I said, this was a dark episode. This is one of those episodes that left the viewer to wonder why Cockett and Tubbs even bothered to make the effort. In the end, all their hard work added up to nothing. For Crockett, the case became about saving Rita but the government was more concerned about their own shady schemes that protecting its citizens. Of course, even if Tony had been sent to prison, someone else would have taken his place. That’s life in Miami.

Horror Book Review: The Dare by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If you were in high school and someone dared you to kill the school’s toughest teacher and then proceeded to tell the entire school that you were planning on killing the school’s toughest teacher, what would you do?

Me, I would probably pretend to be sick for a few days and stay home until everything blew over. Or maybe I’d transfer to a different school or send an anonymous note to the police or maybe I’d even suggest to the teacher that he should take advantage of my state’s open carry laws. What I’m saying is that I would do something other than consider the dare and agonize over whether or not I should actually kill the teacher. I would like to think that killing the teacher would not even be an option for me. You say to me, “Are you going to kill him?” and I reply, “No.” What I don’t do is be like, “I don’t know, I guess.”

In 1994’s The Dare, Johanna has a slightly different response. She knows that murder is wrong but the guy making the dare is Dennis Archer and Dennis is totally hot and rich and self-absorbed whereas Johanna is poor and kind of plain and a little bit insecure. Dennis and his friends enjoy daring each other to do things. All of their risk-taking actually does lead to one of Dennis’s friends accidentally getting shot. That would be enough to convince me not to hang out with Dennis but Johanna is a bit more forgiving of accidental shootings.

Mr. Northwood is a total badass who teaches History, which was always my favorite class in high school. Mr. Northwood doesn’t care whether or not Dennis and his family are planning on flying to the Bahamas for a week, he’s still not going to give Dennis a makeup midterm. If Dennis misses the midterm, he’ll fail the course and he might not get to run track and eventually make his way to the Olympics. But if Dennis stays for the midterm, he won’t get to go on a trip to the Bahamas that he could conceivably take any other time during the year. As you can guess, it’s a difficult decision but Dennis ends up going to the Bahamas. When Dennis discovers that Northwood was serious about not giving him a makeup midterm, Dennis starts flirting with Johanna and encouraging her to imagine all the different ways that they could kill Mr. Northwood….

YIKES!

As you can probably guess, the main problem here is that Johanna is kind of an idiot who can’t even find the strength to say, “No, I will not murder my neighbor and teacher, no matter how many times the hottest guy in school asks me too.” Johanna actually does have other friends, none of whom have ever asked Johanna to kill anyone. But Dennis is just so hot!

I guess it can be argued that this novel does capture the way that some students feel towards the tough teachers. When I was in high school, I always assumed that any teacher who was tough on me was doing so because they had a crush on me or they were jealous of me and my naturally red hair. I got mad at my teachers and I sometimes talked about how much I hoped they would quit or move away but I never made plans to kill them because I’m not psycho like that.

Anyway, The Dare is one of those R.L. Stine books where everyone was so consistently illogical, I assumed the entire thing was meant to be a dream. Seriously, a hot guy is not worth going to jail over, Johanna! This book suffered from a lack of likable characters and a lack of a believable plot. Mr. Northwood was cool, though. History teachers for the win!

October True Crime: Night of the Zodiac (dir by Susana Kapostasy)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2022 film, Night of the Zodiac, takes place in Detroit.

In its heyday, Detroit represented the industrial boom of America in the 20th Century. It was a city where cars were made and music was recorded and the future seemed bright. Today, of course, Detroit is viewed as being the ultimate symbol for just how much life has declined in the cities of America. It’s a city that is often used to epitomize the death of the American dream. It’s a city with a permanent atmosphere of decay and decline and, as a result, it’s a city that is practically begging for horror filmmakers to make use of it.

Richard Gantz (played by Philip Digby) is one such filmmaker. He lives in a small, one-room apartment. The walls are covered in posters for horror and action movies from the 1980s. Though he answers his landline phone with an authoritative, “Gantz Video,” Richard hasn’t had much luck as a filmmaker. He’s behind on his rent. He’s behind on his credit card payments. Even the local video store keeps ringing him up and demanding to know when he’s going to return his overdue tapes. Richard dreams of making his own movie but he can find neither the inspiration nor the money.

Then he gets a phone call, from an older gentleman who claims to be the infamous (and never officially identified) Zodiac Killer. The man who claims to be Zodiac offers Richard money if he’ll just just go to a park and accept a package from a homeless man. Richard does so and he discovers that Zodiac has sent him his very own cipher. He’s also sent Richard some cash. Solving each cipher leads to Richard finding his inspiration as a filmmaker. Soon, Richard is filming himself as he brutally murders random people across Detroit. He starts out by imitating the Zodiac’s crimes but soon, he starts to add his own spin to things. “I’m a psychopath!” Richard shouts at one point, apparently happy to finally have some sort of direction in his life.

Just as Richard speaks of his admiration for straight-to-video directors like Todd Farmer and shoots his film on an ancient video camera, Night of the Zodiac duplicates the grainy look of an old VHS tapes. The image is full of deliberate scratches and moments where the scene skips or goes out of focus. It’s actually rather artfully done, making the film feel like something that the viewer really might have found in the clearance section of their favorite used book store. It’s a cheap film that looks even cheaper but the filmmakers have enough self-awareness to turn that into an asset. Even the film’s meandering plot, amateurish acting, and moments of illogic feel more like an appropriate homage than a flaw. This was a film that was made by people who obviously love amateur horror films and that love shines through. Obviously, it’s not a film for everyone. Personally, I thought it went on for a bit too long and the film’s action often felt a bit repetitive. That said, it’s hard not to respect the filmmaker’s dedication to recreating the shot-on-videotape aesthetic of the later 80s and early 90s. As scummy a character as Richard was, I imagine many amateur directors will probably be able to relate to the scene where he looks over his footage and suddenly realizes that, for all of his work and effort, the film that he’s shooting doesn’t really have a point.

Of course, the most interesting thing about this film is that it imagine what happened to the Zodiac Killer after he left Los Angeles. A good deal of the reason why the Zodiac continues to intrigue people is the fact that he was never caught. I imagine that he’s probably dead by now. (In 1969, it was believed that he was already in his 30s or 40s.) But you have to wonder how someone can go from being the Zodiac Killer to being just some guy living in a house, mowing the lawn, and going to the grocery store every few days. How does one live an everyday life with the knowledge of being responsible for those crimes?

In the end, Night of the Zodiac is a film that has enough self-awareness to overcome its flaws.

Guilty Pleasure No. 69: Shocking Dark (dir by Bruno Mattei)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

1989’s Shocking Dark opens with shots of my favorite Italian city, Venice! Unfortunately, a voice-over informs us that, due to the rising sea levels, Venice will no longer be inhabitable in the near future and instead, most of it will be underwater by the year 2000.

(For the record, everything seemed fine when I was there. I went to Italy the summer after I graduated from high school and I absolutely loved Venice. My first night in Venice, there was a thunderstorm and I can still remember standing underneath an awning while it rained and watching as the lightening was reflected in the waters of the Venice canals.)

Something strange has happened at one of Venice’s undersea labs. The scientists who were working on a top secret project have almost all disappeared and the only known survivor is ranting like a maniac. The Tubular Corporation arranges for a group of Megaforce Marines (seriously, that’s what their called) to enter the lab and discover what has happened. The Megaforce Marines, which include a tough-talking woman from New York and a joke-making hick from down South, claim that there is nothing they haven’t been trained to handle.

The marines may start out cocky but they soon find themselves being attacked by metallic monsters that nest inside of their victims and appear to be unstoppable. The only survivor of the monster’s attack is a young girl named Samantha (Dominica Coulson) who bonds with Sara (Haven Tyler), a member of the expedition. The marines also discover that a member of the expedition is actually a killer robot who has been sent by the Tubular Corporation to protect its interests.

Does all of this sound familiar? Like a lot of Italian horror films, Shocking Dark was released under several different titles. Here’s a few of them: Terminator II, Shocking Dark — Terminator 2, Aliens 2, Alienator, and Contanimator. Shocking Dark sold itself as being a sequel to every successful film that James Cameron had directed up until that point and it did so despite the fact that Cameron had nothing to do with the film. (Indeed, Terminator 2: Judgement Day came out two years after the release of Shocking Dark.) Shocking Dark rips off both Aliens and The Terminator, with the first half of the film being dominated by the tough-talking Marines and the second half being dominated by a relentless cyborg killer. Even by the standards of the Italian film industry, Shocking Dark is utterly shameless in the way it blatantly rips off Cameron’s two previous films.

Not surprisingly the film was directed by Bruno Mattei and written by Claudio Fragasso, a pair who made a very lucrative career out of making cheap versions of expensive American sci-fi and horror films. (Fragasso would go on to achieve his own immortality by directing Troll 2.) As with many of the Mattei/Fragasso collaborations, the dialogue is crude, profane, and fequently nonsensical. (Fragasso’s idea of writing like an American was to have the characters randomly insult and threaten each other.) The plot has an appealingly ramshackle feel. Towards the end of the film, two characters just happen to stumble across a time machine because …. hey, why not!? At least it allowed for a few scenes to be shot in what was then modern-day Venice.

As with many of the Mattei/Fragasso collaborations, the saving grace here is that Bruno Mattei directs with the confident swagger of someone who truly believes that he can rip-off James Cameron with half the budget and come up with something better than either Terminator or Aliens. The fact that Mattei fails to better either of those films is beside the point. What’s important is that Mattei seems to believe that he has. Mattei’s direction is shameless and unapologetic and, as a result, the film is far more watchable than perhaps it should be. It’s a film that the viewer enjoys, even though they might not want to.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Horror Film Review: The Howling (dir by Joe Dante)

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1981 film, The Howling, takes place at The Colony.

The Colony is a lovely place, a nice resort out in the middle of the countryside. It’s a place that celebrity therapist George Waggener (Patrick Macnee) sends his clients so that they can recover from trauma. It’s a bit of a grown-up version of the ranch to which Dr. Phil used to send juvenile delinquents. Of course, the Colony is full of adults and they’re an eccentric bunch. I mean, one of them — named Erle Kenton — is actually played by John Carradine! That’s just how eccentric the place is. Sheriff Sam Newfield (Slim Pickens) keeps an eye on the place but everyone knows that there’s nothing to worry about when it comes to The Colony. Dr. Waggner does good work.

Karen White (Dee Wallace) is a Los Angeles news anchor who was held hostage by a serial killer named Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). While she was with Eddie, she was forced to not only watch videos of Eddie’s crimes but she also saw something happen with Eddie that terrified her to such an extent that she has blocked it from her mind. Karen was rescued by the police but she is haunted by nightmares. Dr. Waggner arranges for Karen and her husband, Bill Neill (Christopher Stone, who was married to Dee Wallace when they co-starred in this film), to spend some time at the Colony.

Bill loves the Colony, especially after he attracts the eye of Marsha (Elisabeth Brooks), the resort’s resident seductress. Karen, however, is less enamored of the place. The Colony feels off to her and she’s not happy about the howling in the distance or the fact that Bill has suddenly started to grow distant from her. Could it be that The Colony is actually crawling with werewolves and that Bill has become one of them? (It’s totally possible and, to The Howling‘s credit, it doesn’t waste any time letting us know that.) Karen’s friend, Terry Fisher (Belinda Balanski), and her boyfriend, Chris Halloran (Dennis Dugan), do some research of their own into Eddie Quist, The Colony, and whether or not werewolves exists and they meet a helpful bookstore owner named Walter Paisley (Dick Miller).

To understand the approach that director Joe Dante and screenwriter John Sayles take to The Howling, one needs to only consider the names of some of the characters. George Waggner. Bill Neill. Terry (which can be short for Terence) Fisher. Fred (or is that Freddie) Francis. Erle Kenton. Sam Newfield. Jerry Warren. All of these characters are named after horror film directors. This is the type of werewolf film where Chris Halloran has a copy of The Three Little Pigs sitting on his desk. Veteran actors like Kevin McCarthy, John Carradine, Slim Pickens, and Kenneth Tobey show up in small roles. Roger Corman mainstay Dick Miller plays yet another character named Walter Paisley and he kicks Forrest J. Ackerman out of his bookstore. Roger Corman himself plays a man making a phone call. After a werewolf is shot on live TV, the program immediately cuts to a dog food commercial and we see a blank-faced child telling his unconcerned parents that someone just turned into a wolf. The Howling was made by people who obviously love B-horror and that love is present in every frame of the film.

Like Dante’s Piranha, The Howling is a film with a sense of humor but it’s not a comedy. The werewolves are still impressive, even forty-two years after the film was first released. The character of Eddie Quist (“I’m going to give you a piece of my mind”) is a terrifying monster and the sight of his signature smiley face will fill you with dread, especially when it shows up in a place where it really shouldn’t be. The film cynically ends on a note of noble sacrifice that will apparently not make much difference, with the suggestion being that human beings are either too distracted or too jaded to realize that there are monsters among them. The Howling is a fast-paced and well-directed homage to B-horror and it’s still terrifically entertaining.