Produced by Gene Roddenberry and directed by Clive Donner, 1977’s Spectre was a pilot film for a television series about an occult detective (Robert Culp) who solved supernatural mysteries while dealing with a curse that had been put on him by the demon, Asmodeus.
In this film, Culp’s William Sebastian and his associate, Dr. Ham Hamilton (Gig Young) travel to the UK to investigate a supernatural case involving an old family. Despite the efforts of a succubus and a cursed airplane, Sebastian and Ham are determined to solve the mystery. John Hurt appears as a member of the cursed family.
This pilot was not picked up and developed into a series but it was popular enough that it was released as a theatrical film in Europe.
First released in 1957 and one of the films that put Britain’s Hammer Films on the map, The Curse of Frankenstein opens in Switzerland in the 19th century. It’s a time of superstitious villagers, judgmental priests, aristocrats who dabble in science, and lots of cleavage. It’s also a time when justice is harsh. That’s something that Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) has discovered as he sits in a cell in prison, awaiting his execution date.
Baron Frankenstein has been convicted of the murder of a maid named Justine and the public is eager to see this haughty and eccentric aristocrat put to death. Victor, however, claims that he is innocent of Justine’s murder. As Victor explains to a visiting priest (Alex Gallier), he is guilty of many things but he didn’t kill Justine.
The story that Frankenstein tells the priest is a familiar one. Victor inherited the Frankenstein estate when he was fifteen and, having always been interested in science, his hires a scientist named Paul Krempe (Robert Urquhart) to mentor him and ultimately collaborate with him on his experiments. Even as he falls in love with and become engaged to his cousin, Elizabeth (Hazel Court), Victor becomes obsessed with the idea of creating a human being from perfect parts collected from the dead.
Victor puts his creation together, piece by bloody piece. He has no trouble using a the body of a robber and the hands and eyes that purchases from the workers at the local morgue. But when it come time to pick a brain, he wants to use the mind of a distinguished scientist. Unfortunately, the scientist is still alive so Victor pushes him over a bannister. That kills the professor but the removal of the brain does not go quite as smoothly as Victor was hoping. The brain gets damaged when it’s removed. The Creature (an intimidating Christopher Lee) is eventually brought to life but, with that damaged brain, all it wants to do is destroy and kill. Victor isn’t happy about that but soon, he discovers that having a killer Creature has its uses.
As opposed to the well-meaning but obsessed version of the character that Colin Clive played in the original Frankenstein, The Curse of Frankenstein presents us with a Baron who is rather unstable from the start. It’s not just that the Baron is obsessed with bringing the dead back to life. It’s that he is fully willing to kill people for his experiment. Perhaps his only redeeming quality could have been his love for Elizabeth but he screws up even that by having an affair with the ill-fated Justine (Valerie Gaunt). From the start, the Baron’s main obsession is with his own power. Elizabeth is ultimately just another pawn for him to control.
Considering how evil this film’s version of Baron Frankenstein is, it’s a good thing that he’s played by Peter Cushing. Cushing gives an intense but charismatic performance as the Baron, capturing not only the character’s ruthlessness but also his fierce intelligence. The tragedy of the film’s version of the story is not that the Baron’s experiment goes wrong but that the Baron did actually have the potential to do a lot of good for the world. He’s smart and he’s determined but he’s lacking a conscience. If anything, the Creature he builds is a representation of his own dark thoughts and desires. The Baron is an aristocrat and the Creature is built out of common thieves and people who died in debt but they’re both different sides of the same coin.
Gory and fast-paced, The Curse of Frankenstein was a huge hit and it made stars out of both Cushing and Lee. I tend to prefer Hammer’s Dracula films to its Frankenstein film but The Curse of Frankenstein holds up well as a portrait of what happens when madness and science collide.
What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable or streaming? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!
If you were having trouble getting to sleep last night, you could have gone over to YouTube and watched 1978’s Once Upon A Midnight Scary.
Made for CBS and featuring Vincent Price as the sardonic, cape-wearing host, Once Upon A Midnight Scary was a special designed to encourage young viewers to pick up a book and read. Price introduced three different stories, each centering around ghosts and each based on a book. In the first story, based on the book The GhostBelonged To Me, a young farmboy discovers a ghost hiding in a barn and becomes a hero when the ghost warns him about an impending disaster. The second story is an adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and it features Rene Auberjonois as a rather neurotic Ichabod Crane, who finds himself being pursued by the headless horsemen. The third and longest story is an adaptation of The House With A Clock In Its Walls, featuring Severn Darden and a rather annoying child actor.
One thing you immediately notice about this show is that the special doesn’t actually reveal how any of the stories end. Instead, each story is basically a recreation of the most exciting or interesting parts of the larger story but, whenever it appears that we’re heading for a conclusion, Vincent Price suddenly appears and says, “What happened next, you ask? Read the book!” This special basically casts Vincent Price as the world’s most devilish book salesman and while that might be annoying if you’re watching the special because you want to see how the stories turn out, it’s a lot of fun if you’re just watching the show to watch Vincent Price act like Vincent Price. Vincent is not in the special as much as you might want but he still shows off his unique charm. It’s impossible to be in a bad mood while watching Vincent Price.
It’s a rather low-rent place, full of empty warehouses, vacant lots, and deserted streets. With the exception of the Sovereign Leader (David Krist), everyone seems to live in a bland apartment. It’s a world where people have neither personalities nor names. Instead, people are identified by their identification numbers. Few people can really remember what the world was like before the Sovereign Leader came to power but almost everyone seems to believe that it was not a good place to live. The Sovereign Leader says so and why would he lie? The people are united by one belief when it comes to their Leader. “If he is for us, who can be against us?”
There are a few people who refuse to accept the words of the Sovereign Leader. They hide in the wilderness and in the city and they read forbidden books. The Leader has his own fanatical, paramilitary force who spend their time tracking down and executing these so-called “Defiants.” This group of executioners is known as the Peace Team because, after all, that’s what they’re doing, right? They’re making sure that no one disturbs the peace.
This is the world of the 2019 film, Defiant.
Defiant tells the story of A51-317 (Luke Krist), who begins the film as one of the most fanatical members of the Sovereign Leader’s Peace Team. Perhaps the reason why A51-317 is so quick to announce his loyalty to the Sovereign Leader is because he is suffering from his own doubts. He has dreams and occasional flashbacks to a time before the Sovereign Leader comes to power and much of what he sees stands in contrast to what he’s been told about the old world. A51-317 wonders why he can’t remember much about his past. He wonders why so many people are willing to be executed rather than follow the Sovereign Leader. He wonders who he was before he just became a number.
And soon, he’s wondering why he’s been framed for the attempted murder of the Sovereign Leader. After the Leader is shot in the head, he’s believed to be dead for three days. Then, suddenly, the Leader reveals that he’s not only alive but he also announces himself to be the Supreme Leader. He makes it clear that all Defiants must now be executed. A51-317 find himself on the run as he becomes one of the people who he used to hunt.
It’s a familiar story, one that’s been featured in a countless number of faith-based “final days” movies. That said, Defiant is a well-made and surprisingly well-acted film, one that does a good job of creating a believable atmosphere of fear and paranoia. The Sovereign Leader has much in common with the dictators and megalomaniacs of today and the scenes in which the Peace Team track down the Defiants and accuse them of being insobordinate for not blindly supporting the policies of the Leader feel even more relevant today than they did in 2019. Whether one buys into the film’s faith-based message or not, Defiant is a film that feels undeniably relevant to today’s world.
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sunday, I will be reviewing the Canadian series, Degrassi Junior High, which aired on CBC and PBS from 1987 to 1989! The series can be streamed on YouTube!
This week, Degrassi goes there!
Episode 1.7 “Best Laid Plan”
(Dir by Kit Hood, originally aired on March 1st, 1987)
This week’s episode of Degrassi Junior High is cringe city. I mean that in a good way. Seriously, DegrassiJunior High may be close to 40 years old but awkwardness about sex, especially when you’re still trying to figure out what it’s all about, is a timeless subject.
Voula (Niki Kemeny), who is absolutely one of the worst characters in the history of Degrassi, pops up to once again whine about Stephanie not thanking her when she won the school presidency and to accuse Stephanie of being sleazy just because she doesn’t dress like a member of polygamous cult. SHUT UP, VOULA! Your father won’t even let you stay out past 9:00.
Stephanie gets even more excited when her mother (Pat Beaven) tells Stephanie that she has a date on Friday and she’ll be out of the house. Stephanie drops Wheels a note asking him to come to her house at 7:30. Soon, everyone is school is talking about how Stephanie and Wheels are definitely going to do it on their date. When the creepy twins ask Stephanie if she’s really going to have sex with Wheels, Stephanie shrugs in the fashion of someone trying to be more worldly than she actually is.
Meanwhile, Stephanie is still refusing to admit that Arthur (Duncan Waugh) is her brother. This annoys Arthur but at least his best friend Yick Yu (Siluck Saysanasy) has managed to get his hands on a VHS copy of Swamp Sex Robots. Yick wants to watch it but, this being the 80s, the only way to watch it would be to pop it in the living room VCR and his parents are always at home. Wait a minute! Arthur has a VCR and both his mother and his sister have dates!
Wheels, feeling insecure about sex, talks to his father (Timm Zemanek). (Of course, true Degrassi fans know that Wheels is actually adopted and his real father is a drunk living on the other side of Canada but it’ll be a while until we reach that storyline.) His father tells Wheels that it’s important to use protection so Wheels heads down to the local drug store and purchases some condoms. The pharmacist is concerned that someone as young as Wheels needs condoms and she gives him a bunch of sex safe pamphlets. What Wheels doesn’t know is that the pharmacist is also …. STEPHANIE’S MOTHER!
OH MY GOD! Seriously, cringe!
It’s Friday night! After embarrassing Stephanie and Arthur by giving them safe sex pamphlets at the dinner table, Stephanie’s mom is waiting for her date. Stephanie is trying to get ready for Wheels without her mom seeing the slutty outfit that she’s wearing. And Arthur wants everyone to get out of the house before Yick and his gang of pervs show up to watch Swamp Sex Robots. Stephanie’s mom’s date arrives on time. Unfortunately, Wheels shows up early and, when Stephanie’s mom opens the door, both dates are standing on the porch, holding flowers.
“You’re the boy from the pharmacy!” Stephanie’s mom says before yelling at Stephanie to come downstairs.
Stephanie’s hasty attempt to toss on a bathrobe as she comes downstairs doesn’t fool her mother. After seeing how her daughter usually dresses outside of the house, Stephanie’s mom sends her date home and then yanks Wheels into the house so that she can give both Stephanie and Wheels a lecture about being too young for sex. Unfortunately, before she can really get into that lecture, Yick and his friends show up wanting to watch their porn….
Seriously, this was a great episode and it represented everything that made Degrassi special. It was honest but it was funny and it had me cringing as I had flashbacks to my own days of wannabe wild youth. Like last week’s episode, Best Laid Plans (great title) proved to be too controversial for the UK and the BBC declined to air the episode.
Tonight, with Halloween only a few days away, The Shattered Lens is proud to present a bonus episode of televised horror! In this beloved episode of Baywatch Nights, two 900 year-old Vikings are causing chaos in Los Angeles! Who can stop them?
David Hasselhoff, of course!
This episode originally aired on February 9th, 1997!
On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a factory owner finds himself cursed after an undocumented worker dies in his factory. This is a Hitchhiker morality play. If you’re a businessperson who doesn’t take of your employees, the Hitchhiker is going to show up outside your factory and tell everyone what a terrible person you are.
The episode originally aired on January 25th, 1991.
The 1991 film, Popcorn, tells the story of what happens when an experimental film goes wrong.
In the late 60s, a freaked-out hippie named Lanyard Gates directed a short film called Possessor. Possessor featured footage of him apparently preparing to sacrifice a woman on an altar. Gates declined to film a third act conclusion to the film. Instead, he murdered his family on stage and in front of a terrified audience. The resulting panic caused a fire to break out, killing almost everyone at the Dreamland Theater. As a result, Possessor has become a legendary film, one that is believed lost. Of course, it’s not lost, as a group of film students and their professor find out over the course of Popcorn.
Years later, one of those film students, an aspiring screenwriter named Maggie (Jill Schoelen), has been having disturbing nightmares about being caught in a fire and being pursued by a madman. When she sees Possessor, she realizes that much of the imagery in her dreams comes from the film. When Maggie attempts to talk to her mother about all of this, Suzanne (Dee Wallace) denies knowing anything about Possessor or Lanyard Gates but it’s not hard to tell that she’s lying.
Still, Maggie does have other things to worry about. Her school’s film department has been hit by budget cuts and neither she nor her classmates will be able to make their student films unless they raise some money. One of the students, Toby (Tom Villard), suggests holding a fundraiser at the Dreamland Theater, where they could show old movies and even recreate some of the old gimmicks that were used to promote those movies. Professor Davis (Tony Roberts) thinks that is a great idea! Why, he could even control the giant, remote-controlled bug that was used to promote Mosquito!
Filmed in Jamaica (and featuring a somewhat random performance by a reggae band), Popcorn was originally offered to director Bob Clark. However, Clark didn’t want to return to the horror genre so, instead, it was Clark’s frequent collaborator, Alan Ormsby, who was hired to direct the film. Reportedly, Ormsby was replaced a few weeks into filming by Mark Herrier, with the assumption being that the producers felt that Ormsby was spending too much time on filming the three fake movies that are screened during the fund raiser. Those films are Mosquito, The Attack of the Electrified Man, and a dubbed Japanese film called The Stench. In the film’s credits, Ormsby is credited with directing the three fake film while Mark Herrier is credited with directing the “modern” scenes.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the three fake film are actually the best thing about Popcorn. If Alan Ormsby was taking a lot of time to shoot the fake films, it obviously paid off because all three of them perfectly capture the feel of the era when they were supposedly shot and all of them are filled with the type of details that only a true fan of old horror movies would think to include. Mosquito is a giant bug film that feels as if it could have come straight from 1957. The Amazing Electrified Man feels like one of the films that poor Lon Chaney Jr. would have found himself starring in after leaving Universal. And The Stench is the perfect import — slow-moving, a bit pompous, and terribly dubbed.
As for the rest of Popcorn, it’s a well-made slasher film. Mark Herrier did a good job directing the “modern” scenes, with a scene in which the killer’s face seems to literally melt after he kisses one of his victims being a definite creepy highlight. The kills are reasonably creative and, in one case involving electrocution, rather disturbing. Jill Schoelen is a likable heroine, Derek Rydall is cute as her hapless boyfriend, and Tom Villard’s uninhibited performance gives the film a much-needed jolt of energy. Though the old films may be the highlight of Popcorn, the “modern” scenes hold up as well.
The title of this 1972 film is definitely a case of truth in advertising.
Children definitely should not play with dead things! I don’t care how mature they are or how lenient of a parent you’re trying to be. When you see your child playing with a dead thing, it is on you to step forward and say, “Child, leave that dead thing alone unless you want to forever burn in Hell.” I know that type of language might be traumatic for some children but you’ll be glad you did it. You know who played with dead things when he was a child? Jeffrey Dahmer! And look how that turned out. He got a miniseries made about him and became an internet meme.
Now, it should be pointed out that they’re aren’t any children to be found in Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. The children of the title are actually a group of wannabe actors who are led by a pretentious douchebag named Alan (played by the film’s writer, Alan Ormsby). With his mustache and his long hair and his hip clothes and his vocabulary of psychobabble and buzzwords, Alan considers himself to be quite the chic 70s gentleman. He refers the other actors as being his “children,” and they let him get away with it. Personally, I would be kind of insulted but whatever.
One night, Alan and his theatrical troupe ride a boat off to an island that is sitting off the coast of Miami. The island is reputed to be haunted and Alan tells the actors several rather gruesome stories about things that have supposedly happened to the inhabitants of the island. According to Alan, the island is used as a cemetery for criminals who were so vile that no one wanted to collect their bodies.
Why are the actors on the island? Along with leading his theatrical troupe, Alan considers himself to be a bit of a warlock. He wants to perform a ceremony at midnight and he expects his actors to help him out. If they don’t help, they’ll lose their jobs. If they do help, they’ll probably lose their lives. Alan and his actors dig up the body of a man named Orville (played by the wonderfully named Seth Sklarey). The ceremony that Alan performs at midnight fails to bring Orville back to life but it does cause the dead who were left in their graves to rise from the Earth as zombies. The zombies are not happy that their island has been invaded and they’re especially not happy about Alan digging up Orville.
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is a mix of comedy and horror, with Alan’s pretentious foolishness dominating the first half of the film while the second features the zombies laying siege to a cottage. It starts out slow but, once the zombies come to life, the film achieves a surreal grandeur. For an obviously low-budget film, the zombie makeup is surprisingly effective and the zombies themselves are so relentless and determined in their pursuit of the living that they help Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things survive the inevitable comparisons to Night of the Living Dead. The film’s final scene, which plays out in near silence, has an undeniable horrific power to it.
Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things was the third film to be directed by Bob Clark. He also directed films like Deathdream, Black Christmas, Murder By Decree, and the infamous (and very financially successful) Porky’s. Of course, his most beloved film is the one that we’ll all be watching in a little less than two months, A Christmas Story.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 2001’s Return To Cabin By The Lake! It can be viewed on YouTube.
Stanley Caldwell (Judd Nelson) is back!
At the end of Cabin By The Lake, screenwriter Stanley had managed to escape from the police by faking his own drowning. Return to Cabin By The Lake finds Stanley using a variety of disguises and fake identities in his effort to once again become a part of the film industry. He is particularly interested in the fact that his previous murder spree is being turned into a movie. He’s considerably less happy about the fact that everyone involved in the movie continually disparages his work as a screenwriter. He’s even less happy when he hears them speculating that there was a sexual-motive behind Stanley’s murders or that Stanley was acting out against his mother. For someone who spent the previous movie drowning innocent women and then visiting their bodies in the lake, Stanley sure does seem to be shocked to discover that most people don’t have a high opinion of him. You’re a murderer, Stanley. People don’t like murderers.
Anyway, as a master of disguise, Stanley is able to work his way into the production of the film. Even though everyone on the set is spending 24 hours a day obsessing on and recreating the crimes of Stanley, no one is suspicious of the guy who looks just like Stanley and who keeps saying stuff like, “Stanley would never do that!” Stanley becomes obsessed with script writer Andrea (Dahlia Salem). He also comes to resent the film’s shallow director, Mike Helton (Brian Krause, giving the film’s best performance). Stanley decides that he would be a better director of the film so he buries Mike alive and then takes over direction.
Return To Cabin By The Lake is a bit more deliberately humorous than the first film. If Cabin By The Lake was full of pleasant townspeople and earnest police officers, Return To Cabin By The Lake is populated with caricatures of various Hollywood phonies. Everyone involved in Return To Cabin By The Lake‘s film-within-a-film is blithely unconcerned with the feelings of the the victim’s loved ones nor do they really care about telling the story accurately. Helton’s only concern is that the script have enough sex. That Stanley not only takes over as director but turns out to be a pretty good at it would appear to be Return To Cabin By The Lake’s ultimate statement on the film industry.
Judd Nelson is a bit more energetic in the sequel than he was in the first film. That said, Return To Cabin The By The Lake makes the mistake of asking us to buy the idea of Stanley being a master of disguise. Judd Nelson is always going to look and sound like Judd Nelson, regardless of whether he’s wearing a wig or not.
Though it’s a bit constrained by being a made-for-TV movie, Return To Cabin By The Lake is a marked improvement on the first film, one that has more humor and a better performance from its lead. The film ends with an opening for another sequel but it was apparently never to be.
Through the Shattered Lens 