Horror on the Lens: Mesa of Lost Women (dir by Herbert Tevos and Ron Ormond)

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s Horror on the Lens is the infamous 1953 film, Mesa of Lost Women. Off in the middle of the desert, Dr. Aranya (Jackie Coogan) is conducting dangerous experiments that are resulting not only in giant spiders but also a master race of superwomen who Aranya is planning to use to conquer the world or something.

Mesa of Lost Women is a bit of a disjointed film. It was originally filmed by a German director named Herbert Tevos, who claimed to be an associate of Erich Von Stroheim’s and a former collaborator of Marlene Dietrich’s. However, despite his claims of being well-connected, no one was particularly impressed with Tevos’s first cut of the film so Ron Ormond was brought in to film additional scenes, the majority of them featuring Jackie Coogan as the insane Dr. Aranya. Jackie Coogan was, at the time, still best-known for playing The Kid in the Charlie Chaplin film of the same name. After Mesa, he would go on to play Uncle Fester on the original Addams Family.

Anyway, Mesa of Lost Women is one of those B-movies that simply has to be seen and heard to be believed. (Lyle Talbot provides the narration, which is judgmental even by the standards of the 1950s.) Enjoy Mesa of Lost Women!

October Positivity: Prayer Never Fails (dir by Wes Miller)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2016 film, Prayer Never Fails, tells the story of Aiden Paul (Nick Lashaway). Having survived a traumatic childhood that was full of abuse, Aiden is now the beloved basketball coach at the local high school. (The fact that he never shaves or gets his hair out of his face does not seem to be a problem as far as this school district is concenred.) When one of his players approaches Aiden and tell him that he’s being abused by his father (Lorenzo Lamas), Aiden suggests that the player pray on it. When the player says that he doesn’t know how to pray (because his father is not just abusive but also a hardcore atheist, of course), Aiden takes him into a classroom and teaches him how.

Unfortunately, another teacher sees Aiden and the player praying and reports Aiden to the principal. Aiden is fired from his position. Though Aiden says that he’s just going to give up and find another job, his players demand that Aiden fight to be reinstated. Aiden decides to take the school to court!

Unfortunately, there aren’t any lawyers that Aiden can afford. (And most lawyers would hopefully be ethical enough tell Aiden that, regardless of his good intentions, he doesn’t have a case.) Finally, a chance meeting at a diner leads to Aiden hiring Michael Brown (Clifton Davis), an agnostic lawyer with a gambling problem. Michael takes the case but he soon finds himself going up against master litigator Joseph T. Harrington (Corbin Bernsen). Can Michael somehow win the case?

This is another one of those Christian courtroom films where no one does anything that makes sense. For instance, it seems like, instead of ducking into an open classroom for a quick prayer, Aiden could have reported that one of his students was being abused by a parent, which is something that, as a teacher, he would have been required to do in the first place. (Instead, that subplot is abandoned after Aiden is fired.) As well, to win the case, all Joseph T. Herrington had to do was 1) point out that Aiden had admitted to leading a prayer in school and 2) call to the stand a Constitutional law expert to explain the establishment clause. Instead, Herrington puts the entire concept of prayer on trial and tries to argue that praying doesn’t work. It’s an argument based purely on emotion and bias, which allows Michael to make a counter-argument that’s based purely on emotion and bias. At one point, Michael interrogates the school’s principal as to why he was willing to defend a transgender teacher but not Aiden’s right to pray. The correct answer, of course, is that whether or not another teacher is transgender has nothing to do with Aiden’s case and that the Supreme Court has ruled that prayer is not allowed in public schools. That’s really all anyone needed to say to any of Michael’s arguments but no one does because, if they did, it would be a very short film.

(Along with the dubious legal arguments, this film annoyed me because Aiden didn’t ever bother to shave or comb his hair before the trail began. I mean, seriously, did someone tell him that it was a good strategy to go to court looking like you spend the previous week sleeping in the back of a pickup truck? I would not want him coaching my school’s basketball team.)

On the plus side, Eric Roberts is in this movie. He plays the judge and goes through the film with a bemused smile on his face, as if even he can’t believe the legal arguments that he’s hearing. It’s always nice to see Eric Roberts picking up a paycheck.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Late Night Retro Television Reviews: Gun 1.2 “Ricochet”

Posted on October 10, 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Gun, an anthology series that ran on ABC for six week in 1997. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

This week, on Gun, Martin Sheen plays a cop who might be investigating the final murder of his career!

Episode 1.2 “Ricochet”

(Dir by Peter Horton, originally aired on April 19th, 1997)

The second episode of Gun opens with the death of a Japanese businessman. He’s found shot on a cliffside that overlooks the ocean. The gun that shot him is discovered and taken by a homeless man named Lazy Eye Pete (Bud Cort). Pete is a cheerfully eccentric type, one who sings for money and who is dedicated to taking care of his pet dog, Chester. But, as soon as Pete gets that gun, his personality starts to change and he even ends up pulling the gun on a group of teenagers who were attempting to mug him. In the end, Pete sells the gun to a friend of his.

Also searching for that gun is Detective Van Guinness (Martin Sheen). Guinness, who suffers from ulcers and who takes his job very personally, has promised his girlfriend (Tess Harper) that he will retire from the force. However, he doesn’t want to go out on a simple or an unsolved case. Fortunately, for Guinness, he’s assigned the complicated case of the dead businessman. Unfortunately, for him, his girlfriend is not at all amused by his refusal to retire.

Van’s partner (Kirk Baltz) thinks that the businessman was killed during a robbery but Guinness disagrees. Guinness thinks that the businessman was murdered by either his wife (Nancy Travis) or his amoral attorney (Christopher McDonald). The wife and the attorney are sleeping together and they’ve also come up with a plan to somehow fix the California state lottery. (I couldn’t really follow what their plan was but then again, I’ve also never played the lottery.) The attorney thinks that the wife is the murderer. The wife thinks that the attorney is the murderer. The truth is a bit more complicated but, in order to full understand what happened, Van Guinness is going to have to find that gun.

Though the plot was a bit too complicated for its own good (Seriously, what was going on with the whole lottery subplot?), the second episode was a definite improvement over the first episode, with director Peter Horton keeping the action moving at a steady pace and establishing the consistent tone that the previous episode lacked. Ricochet played out like a true ensemble piece, splitting its attention between Martin Sheen, Bud Cort, Nancy Travis, and Christopher McDonald. All four of the actors did a good job bringing their characters to life. I especially liked Christopher McDonald’s amoral attorney. Nobody plays a crooked attorney with quite the style and wit of Christopher McDonald!

Next week: Rosanna Arquette and James Gandolfini appear in an episode directed by the show’s co-creator, James Steven Sadwith.

Horror on TV: The Hitchhiker 5.3 “Dark Wishes” (dir by John Liang)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On tonight’s episode of The Hitchhiker, a nurse (Tammy Lauren) decides that the best way to win the husband of her patient is to indulge in a little black magic. Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned. And yes, The Hitchhiker definitely has something to say about it!

Seriously, I would so freak out if I ever saw The Hitchhiker commenting on anything that I’ve ever done in my life. “Lisa Marie Bowman thought she could escape real-life horror by writing about fictional horror. But sometimes, that which we think is fiction, turns out to be real….” AGCK!

This episode originally aired on July 1st, 1989.

October Hacks: Blood Theatre (dir by Rick Sloane)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have watched my share of not-good films but, as I sit here typing this, it’s hard for me to think of anything quite as mind-numbingly bad as 1984’s Blood Theatre.

Blood Theatre is a horror film without scares and a comedy without laughs. It starts at some point in the past, when a lovelorn movie theater owner (played, as a young man, by David Milbern) has a nervous breakdown upon discovering that the ticket girl doesn’t love him. So, he stabs her to death and then sets the theater on fire, killing the majority of the patrons inside. Years later, Mr. Murdock (Rob-Roy Fletcher) decides to increase his chain of Starlite Theaters by purchasing the old theater. He sends three of his employees over to get the place in shape. What he doesn’t stop to consider is that the theater owner (now played, as an old man, by Jonathan Blakely) is still haunting the old theater and killing anyone who shows up. Is the owner a ghost or a human killer? The film never quite makes up its mind, as sometimes he appears to have control of electricity and time and space and other times, he’s just an old geezer with a knife.

But the motives of the killer really aren’t that important because, oddly enough, he’s not really in the much of the film. Instead, the majority of the film is a broad comedy about the people working at the theater, none of whom are particularly funny or even likable. Selena (Joanna Foxx) gets mad when someone fails to pay for their popcorn so, for some reason, she follows them into theater and rips of her bra in front of them. I’m not really sure how that is supposed to get back at them for not paying for their popcorn but it does lead to a riot in the theater as everyone demands that she sit down so that they can enjoy the movie. Amazingly, this somehow does not lead to Selena getting fired but instead, she and her friend Darcy (Stephanie Dillard) are transferred to the new theater, much to the irritation of their co-worker, cheerleader Jennifer (Jenny Cunningham). Jennifer, Selena, and Darcy are all supposed to be in high school but they also all appear to be in their 30s.

Mary Woronov is also in this film. She’s totally wasted in the role of Murdock’s administrative assistant. She spends the entire movie answering the phone in the office and rolling her eyes and then making sarcastic comments about the fact that Murdock has gone to a theater owner’s convention but he hasn’t returned yet because he’s been mugged. For reasons that aren’t really clear, she hates Murdock and she hates everyone that she works with but then again, no one in this movie seems to like anyone else. Everyone in this movie dislikes everyone else and, as a result, it’s not as if any of the people are particularly pleasant to hang out with.

This is one of those comedies where every joke is repeated ad nauseum, to the point where it becomes impossible to watch the film without wanting to throw something at the screen. It would help, of course, if the jokes were funny but none of them are. It would also help if there was a shred of charisma to be found in the cast but, with the exception of Mary Woronov, everyone delivers their lines stiffly and without personality. Clocking in at 75 minutes but feeling much, much longer, Blood Theatre is one of the most incredibly dull films that I’ve ever seen. This is the slasher film that answers the question, “Just how bad can these films get?”

Retro Television Reviews: Fantasy Island 3.18 “Aphrodite/Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde”

Posted on October 10, 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 Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1986. Almost entire show is currently streaming is on Youtube!

This week, Aphrodite comes to Fantasy Island, along with Marcia Brady!

Episode 3.18 “Aphrodite/Dr. Jekyll and Miss Hyde”

(Dir by Rod Holcomb, originally aired on February 2nd, 1980)

This week, Maureen McCormick returns to Fantasy Island!

The former Marcia Brady is playing Jennifer Griffin, the younger sister of renowned psychiatrist Melanie Griffin (Rosemary Forsyth). Jennifer is dating a total lout named Ross Hayden (Don Stroud) and Melanie’s fantasy is to understand why women like her sister are irresistibly drawn to bad boys.

(Because bad boys are sexy rebels who don’t let anyone tell them what to do and just need the right woman to bring out their sensitive side. It’s not that complicated!)

Roarke gives Melanie a vial of a blue serum that he claims is the same serum that Dr. Henry Jekyll used to transform himself into Edward Hyde. Roarke warns Melanie that she should only drink two drops of the serum at a time. Melanie does so and is transformed into the sexy Lilah, who dances up a storm at a nightclub and wins the attention of Ross, who is there with Jennifer. Somehow, Jennifer does not realize that Liliah is her old sister, despite the fact that Lilah is essentially just Melanie wearing a wig and a little more makeup than usual.

Ross, however, does figure out that Melanie is actually Lilah. Ross confronts Melanie in her cabin and forces her to drink the ENTIRE serum, as opposed to just the two drops. Melanie is transformed into an growling old woman with bad teeth. She ends up chasing Ross through the jungle, carrying a knife and growling at him until Mr. Roarke suddenly pops up and uses his magic powers to transforms Melanie back to her normal self. Roarke suggests that Melanie should think about why she has so much anger towards men and …. wait a minute. Does Roarke not realize that Ross basically just drugged Melanie and tried to force himself on her? Why is it suddenly on Melanie to figure out why she doesn’t like men like Ross?

Anyway, Jennifer dumps Ross and she and Melanie leave Fantasy Island together. We don’t see Ross leave Fantasy Island so I’m going to guess that he’s still somewhere in the jungle.

Speaking of the jungle, that’s where Professor Alan Blair (George Maharis) finds the lost temple of Aphrodite!

Alan’s fantasy is to find the perfect woman, who he believes to be Aphrodite despite the fact that anyone who is at all TV savvy knows that the perfect woman for Alan is actually his colleague, Minnie Hale (Belinda Montgomery). No sooner does Alan find the temple than a statue of Aphrodite comes to life. Alan and Aphrodite (played by Britt Ekland) make love all night and the next morning, Alan announces, “Aphrodite and I are getting married!”

However, it soon turns out that Aphrodite — much like that mermaid who tried to down John Saxon a few episodes ago — is all about destroying her lovers. Soon, Alan is flying into a rage whenever anyone so much as looks at Aphrodite and Aphrodite is trying to convince Alan to stay with her in her temple forever. Fortunately, Mr. Roarke shows up at the temple and announces that Aphrodite isn’t real because she’s just Alan fantasy. Mr. Roake isn’t even phased by the lightening bolt that Aphrodite tosses at him. Aphrodite is transformed back into a statue and Minnie reveals that her fantasy was that Alan would fall in love with her.

This was an extremely campy and silly episode, which also means that it was a lot of fun. Between Britt Ekland inviting every man to come to her cave and Rosemary Forsyth chasing Don Stroud with a knife, this episode was a nonstop parade of weirdness and it’s hard not to wish that it had served as a template for every episode of Fantasy Island. This week, the trip to the Island was definitely worth it!

Horror Novel Review: College Weekend by R.L. Stine

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1995 YA novel, College Weekend, opens with Tina in a superexcited mood.

She is going to be spending the weekend up at Patterson College, where she’ll finally be reunited with her boyfriend, Josh! Josh is a year older than Tina and, while she’s finishing up her senior year at Shadyside High, Josh has been busy in college, collecting rocks and studying geology. Tina is so excited to have the chance to spend the weekend with Josh that she’s even willing to agree to her parents’ demand that she take her boy-crazy cousin Holly with her.

Awwwwwwwwww! Long distance relationships are so sweet!

Unfortunately, when Tina arrives on campus, she is met not by Josh but instead by Josh’s roommate, Chris. Chris explains that Josh is up in the mountains on a Geology field trip. He thought he would be home in time to pick up Tina but apparently, he had car trouble. Chris volunteers to show Tina and Holly around the campus and Tina agrees, even though she can’t help but feel that there’s something that Chris isn’t telling her. (This is one of those books that could only have been written in the days when everyone was dependent on landline phones.) Chris, Tina, Holly, and some others go to a party that night and …. HOLLY DISAPPEARS!

Tina is definitely concerned but Chris tells her not to worry about it. In fact, having heard that Tina is an aspiring model, Chris explains that he’s related to a famous photographer and that he has his own studio. In fact, Chris is willing to take some professional-quality pictures of Tina. He even has some clothes for her to wear, clothes that belonged to a former girlfriend who just happened to look a lot like Tina …. yikes!

You can probably guess where all of this is leading. Let’s just say that this turns out to be one truly traumatic college weekend and I have a feeling that Tina will probably want to apply to a different university. That said, this book does a really good job of capturing just exciting visiting a college campus can seem when you’re still in high school and you’re plotting out your future. My sisters and I visited a lot of campuses, both during their senior years and mine. I always enjoyed getting to see all of the different campuses and getting to imagine what it would be like to live on each one. Of course, I eventually ended up at a school that had a boring campus but a fun student body.

In the end, College Weekend is a fast-paced and entertaining trip to the campus of your nightmares.

October True Crime: Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck (dir by Michael Feifer)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Richard Speck was the worst of the worst.

A petty criminal-turned-drifter, Richard Speck fled Texas to avoid being sentenced to prison for his part in a grocery store robbery. He eventually ended up in Chicago, where he lived with his sister and her husband and found occasional work as a seaman. When he couldn’t get work on a boat, the alcoholic Speck supported himself by mugging and burglarizing. It’s not known when he committed his first murder, though it is suspected that it occurred back in Texas. It is known that, in July of 1966, Speck’s sister and brother-in-law finally got sick of dealing with him as a houseguest and Speck ended staying in a series of rooming houses and homeless shelters. On July 13th, the 24 year-old Speck mugged and raped at 53 year-old woman before then breaking into a townhouse that was occupied by nine student nurses. Over the course of the night, he raped and murdered eight of nurses. The only survivor hid underneath a bed until Speck left. She later told police that Speck spoke with a soft Southern accent, had an acne-scarred face, and a tattoo that read Born to Raise Hell.

It was the tattoo that led to his capture. Two days after the murders, with the city of Chicago in an uproar and the police launching a city-wide manhunt to catch the killer, Richard Speck attempted to kill himself by slitting his wrists. He was taken to Cook County Hospital, where Dr. LeRoy Smith saw Speck’s tattoo and called the police.

Though protesting his innocence, Speck was convicted of the murders and sentenced to die. He was spared the death sentence when the Supreme Court briefly outlawed capital punishment. From prison, Speck eventually admitted that he had killed the nurses but he claimed that he was so drunk and high that he had no idea what he was doing. After Speck died of heart failure in 1991, a videotape would emerge of a cocky Speck telling his fellow prisoners that he knew exactly what he was doing and he never felt a bit of guilt. “Just wasn’t their night,” was Speck’s explanation for why the murders happened. Speck also said that if the public knew how much fun he was having in prison, they would have released him for sure. Richard Speck is the type of evil specter who seems to exist to specifically challenge those of us who are opposed to the death penalty. If anyone has ever deserved to be executed in the most painful way possible, it was Richard Speck.

The 2007 film Chicago Massacre stars Corin Nemec as Richard Speck and the film’s makeup department deserves a lot of credit for transforming the handsome and normally quite personable Corin Nemec into the horribly poc-marked Richard Speck. Sometimes, monsters truly do look like monsters and that was definitely the case of Speck. Nemec plays Speck as being a natural-born deviant, a soulless sociopath who has no control over his impulses and who never seems to understand why the world is so disgusted by his crimes. It’s a truly frightening performance.

The rest of the film is a flawed and heavily fictionalized account of Speck’s crimes, imagining that Speck was actually a casual acquaintance of one of the nurses that he killed and suggesting that she was the main reason why he broke into the townhouse to begin with. The history nerd of me cringed when a police chief (Tony Todd) announced that his lead detective (Andrew Divoff) only had two days to solve the murders because the Democratic Convention was coming up. (Speck committed the murders in 1966, two years before the Democrats came to Chicago for their ill-fated convention.) Todd’s police chief says that he’ll be forced to sweep the murders under the rug if they’re not solved quickly but I’m not really sure how that would happen, given the enormity of the crime and the panic that reportedly swept through Chicago as a result. As much as I hate to single out any one performer for criticism (because I usually assume that a bad performance has more to do with the director and the editor than the actor), Joanne Chew, cast in the role of the sole survivor of Speck’s rampage, delivers her dialogue so awkwardly that it sabotages what should have been some of the strongest moments of the film. (Then again, even the best actress would perhaps be challenged by a line like, “I will look the devil in the eye.”)

Filled with flashbacks to both the murder of the nurses and Speck’s life as Texas criminal, Chicago Massacre is an undeniably icky film but given that it’s about Richard Speck, it really should be. When it comes to a criminal like Richard Speck, it’s always tempting to try to look at his life for clues as how to prevent a future Richard Speck from committing a similar crime. But, with Speck, there’s little to be learned beyond the fact that he did what he did because he had no conscience or sense of guilt to mitigate his impulses. Speck had a terrible childhood but many people have had terrible childhoods without turning into mass murderers. Speck was mentally unwell but many people deal with their mental health without turning into mass murderers. In the end, he was a monster. Thankfully, he was also enough of a dumbass to get a tattoo that made it impossible for him to hide from his crimes.

Horror Film Review: Mothra vs. Godzilla (dir by Ishiro Honda)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1964 film, Mothra vs. Godzilla, opens with a beach in Japan getting hit by a typhoon.

It’s certainly not the worst disaster that has ever hit Japan, though a government bureaucrat does show up to take credit for the recovery effort. Instead of covering his speech, a reporter and a photographer stumble across a mysterious egg that has washed up on the beach. The egg is beautiful and a local entertainment company, Happy Enterprises, has decided that they are going to build an entire amusement park and center it around the egg.

Then, the Shobijin, two twin fairies, show up and inform everyone that the egg belongs to Mothra, a giant moth who has actually been a pretty good friend to humanity in the past. They explain that the egg was washed away from Mothra’s home on Infant Island. Mothra really needs the egg back because the current Mothra is coming to the end of her lifespan and the egg contains the larvae who will become the newest version of Mothra. Unfortunately, the Happy Enterprisises businessmen say that they’re going to keep the egg and that they really don’t care what Mothra wants. Mothra flies over to Japan and takes the faeries back to Infant Island. As they leave, the faeries say, “Goodbye, sorry you were so selfish!”

Unfortunately, shortly after Mothra and the faeries leave, Godzilla suddenly appears on the beach and starts destroying buildings and people with his radioactive breath. Realizing that the only way to stop one monster is to bring in another monster, the humans head out to Infant Island and ask Mothra to help them. When they arrives at Infant Island, they discover that the island itself has been turned into a wasteland by frequent nuclear testing. The natives tells their visitors that they have no desire to allow Mothra to help them out with Godzilla. The faeries say, “Tough.” However, in the end, it’s Mothra’s decision whether or not to save humanity and Mothra, being the kindest of all the monsters, takes off to stop Godzilla.

It’s not really October without watching at least Godzilla film and Mothra vs. Godzilla is a good example of an old school Godzilla film, one that was released by Toho before Godzilla was reimagined as being a friend of humanity. Indeed, a major message of Mothra vs. Godzilla seems to be that humanity doesn’t really deserve any friends. It takes some nerve to refuse to allow Mothra to have her egg and to then expect Mothra to battle Godzilla for you. That Mothra is willing to help is a reminder that, of all the big Japanese monsters, Mothra was the most friendly and willing to give humanity a second chance. Godzilla, meanwhile, is just in a permanent bad mood. In this film, he still represents the trauma of a nation that, less than 20 years previously, had been hit by two atomic bombs. Godzilla fully represents the destructive power of the atomic age while Mothra, who is continually sacrificing her life so that she can be reborn, represents the hope for some sort of renewal. In the end, both monsters fight their battle for the benefit of humanity and it’s exciting and fun to watch. For a giant moth, Mothra is an agile combatant. That said, most viewers will probably be Team Godzilla because he’s reminding humanity of the randomness of fate. Myself, I was just happy with the knowledge that, regardless of who won the fight, they would both be back for future films.

Horror Film Review: Night Feeder (dir by Jim Whiteaker)

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This obscure 1988 film takes place in San Francisco.

Specifically, it takes place in the underground San Francisco art scene, a world where zoned out hipsters gather in a small clubs and listen to bands like Disease. Disease (played by a real-life San Francisco band that was called The Nuns) sings songs that encourage the listeners to slit their wrists. The police don’t care much for Disease and even several of the locals think that Disease is bad news. Rumor has it that three Disease groupies died under mysterious circumstances.

While Disease sings, their fans get hooked on the drug DZS, which is also pronounced Disease. (Yes, it gets a little bit hard to keep track of.) DZS was developed to battle schizophrenia but it can also be used as a party drug and cause overdoses.

Speaking of death, there’s people dying all over San Francisco and Inspector Bernardo (Jonathan Zeichner) thinks that it’s because Disease isn’t just a band but also a brain-stealing cult. Bodies are being found without huge sections of their brain. Apparently, the murderer gouges out its victim’s eye and then sucks the brain out through the eye socket. It does this while the victim is still alive. Ouch!

Also investigating the murders is a reporter named Jean (Kate Alexander). Jean has just recently left her husband so that she can be a member of the underground art scene. She’s currently living with the lead singer of Disease, though he insists that their relationship is totally casual and that there’s no commitment involved. Needless to say, Jean is not happy when Inspector Alonzo suggests that the band might be behind the murders. (For one thing, traces of DZS are found on the majority of the victims.) Jean’s investigation leads her to discover that not only is the city crawling with potential murderers but there’s also a mutant baby to deal with….

That’s right, a mutant baby.

Anyway, Night Feeder was shot on video and, from what I’ve been able to gather online, it was specifically sold in San Francisco video stores. It was a regional production, meaning that the cast was populated with local actors and the production crew was largely local as well. It was shot on location at clubs around the city, making the film into a bit of a time capsule if nothing else. Oddly enough, the movie somehow found its way to Poland, where it became something a cult hit among Polish horror fans. That’s just one of the many oddities of the film distribution. You never know where your low-budget, shot-on-video movie might become a hit.

But, you may be asking — is the movie itself any good? Eh …. it’s okay. I mean, it’s a low-budget film that was shot on video and, even more importantly, it looks like it was shot on video. It has the aesthetic quality of a student film. The majority of the actors deliver their lines stiffly, though I did appreciate the energetic performance of Kate Alexander. She did the best that one probably could with the material that she was given. That said, the special effects were done by a guy who was a part of the VFX crew for David Cronenberg’s The Fly and, even for a straight-to-video production, some of the imagery is memorably grotesque. So, if nothing else, the film has that going for it.

That said, I have a weakness for low-budget regional productions, especially ones that serve as a time capsule of a very particular time and place. Night Feeder definitely does that and, as such, it’s worth watching just for the chance to see how people once lived.