Happy Halloween everyone!
Well, as another horrorthon draws to a close, it’s time for another Shattered Lens tradition! Every Halloween, we share one of the greatest and most iconic horror films ever made. For your Halloween enjoyment, here is George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead!
(Be sure to read Arleigh’s equally famous review!)
Happy Halloween everyone!
Here to help you get in the mood for the best day of the year is Christopher Lee reading Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher. Listening to this will require 40 minutes of your time but it’s totally worth it. Christopher Lee had an amazing voice and was a wonderful reader and one imagines that it was his voice that Poe heard in his head as he first wrote this short story.
Here is the wonderful voice of Christopher Lee….
2019’s The End of Days: Global Catastrophe (a.k.a. The Crossroads of Hunter Wilde) opens with a voice-over from Hunter Wilde (played by Chuck’s son, Mike Norris). Hunter explains that the world is in pretty bad shape and it’s for all the usual reasons. Hunter explains that Hollywood destroyed America’s moral fabric. The fake news media promoted a liberal agenda and set Americans against each other. Eventually, disease, war, and pestilence spread across the world.
Hunter and his daughter, Jo (Kat Rowland) are now living in a Christian survivalist compound. Hunter is one of the leaders of the compound but he suffers from frequent wanderlust. Whenever he starts to suffer from doubts or life in the compound starts to become too stressful, Hunter jumps in his jeep and drives off for a few days. Sometimes, he returns with supplies and refugees. As Jo points out, Hunter puts his life in danger every time that he leaves. The world outside the compound is full of terrorists and infected, zombie-like scavengers. Fortunately, Hunter is a good shot with a gun and he also knows some fairly effective karate moves. I mean, would you expect anything less from Chuck Norris’s son?
What Hunter does not fully understand is that there is currently a war raging inside of him. His doubts and his frustrations have left him vulnerable to a demon named Dagon (Jordan DragonKing). Dagon lives in another dimension, one that exists alongside our world but which is still separate. When Dagon drags Hunter into his world, it leads to an otherworldly battle.
Actually, calling it an otherworldly battle is perhaps overselling it. Actually, Hunter and Dagon exchange a few kicks in front of a white fence and eventually, Dagon comes at Hunter with a sword. As far as fight scenes go, it’s not bad but it’s not spectacular either. Mike Norris is a trained martial artist who has starred in various straight-to-video action films. He looks convincing with when he throws a punch or kicks someone in the face. At the same time, Mike Norris was also in his late 50s when this film was made and, as such, it can be forgiven that he doesn’t move quite as quickly as he probably did in the past.
Though the film opens with verses from the Bible and it features a battle between Mike Norris and a literal demon, the film itself feels more like a prepper film than a typical faith-based apocalypse film. Yes, the film seems to be saying, the world is ending and our heroes failed to be raptured so they’re now going to have to deal with the tribulation but thank God they stocked up on canned vegetables and hoarded weapons beforehand. Otherwise, they would really be in trouble! The opening montage feels like it could have been lifted from one of those, “Invest in Gold” infomercials. When the film discusses the end of the world, less emphasis is put on the Book of Revelation and more is instead devoted to the type of news stories that one would expect to see on Breitbart. As such, the film offers a chance to view the world through the eyes of someone who is convinced that society is about to collapse, with the main subtext being, “I was smart enough to prepare but the rest of you all are screwed.”
As you may have guessed, The End of Days has the potential to be an enjoyably bonkers film but, unfortunately, there’s a bit too many slow spots for the film to really hold one’s interest. There’s also a few subplots that don’t really lead anywhere, which occasionally makes the film feel like it’s an episode in a Walking Dead-style television series as opposed to a stand-alone story. That said, Mike Norris may not be as intimidating as his father but he still has a definite screen presence and Jordan DragonKing is enjoyably over-the-top in his performance as Dagon. If the world’s going to end, it might as well go out with jump kicks and swordplay.
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 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:
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
