What would you do if your friend confessed to committing a murder?
That’s the dilemma that is at the heart of R.L. Stine’s 1996 YA horror novel, The Confession.
No one at Shadyside High likes Al. He used to be kind of nice but, as of late, he’s been dressing in all black, drinking beer, and picking fights. Plus, he’s got a really bad habit of blackmailing his friends. Al is the type who will sell you the answers to a test and then threaten to tell everyone that you were cheating unless you keep him supplied with cash. (Fortunately, my sister was a year ahead of me so I could just go through her old tests if I needed the answers in advance.) Al is a real jerk and no one is that upset when he turns up dead and with a rollerblade stuffed in his mouth!
Who killed Al!? Well, nerdy Sandy tells his friends that he did it. At first, everyone’s okay with the idea of covering for Sandy because it’s not like Al was a nice guy and Sandy did promise not to kill anyone else. But then Julie (who also discovered Al’s body) starts to have nightmares about Sandy and she finds it difficult to keep covering for him every time that she speaks to the police. Julie also notices that Sandy has been acting a little bit differently since confessing to the murder. Sandy seems to be a little bit more aggressive now, almost as if he might want to try to kill someone again….
AGCK!
Listen, if I was in Julie’s shoes …. well, I don’t know what I’d do. On the one hand, I have always been against murder and violence in general. On the other hand, Al was a real jerk and it was kind of obvious that he would have eventually ended up killing someone if someone hadn’t gotten to him first. I would not want to be the person who sent a friend to death row. So, in this case, R.L. Stine came up with a plot that actually made me think. At the same time, he also added a last-minute twist that let almost all of the characters off the hook. I guess that’s to be expected. I mean, we’re talking R.L. Stine here, not Dostoevsky, Still, I was a bit disappointed with the final few pages of the book. Things worked out …. BUT AT WHAT COST?
Again, there was no cost. This is R.L. Stine. All the trauma in the world is worth it as long as you’re dating a cute guy and speaking in quips by the end of the book. That, after all, is the appeal of Fear Street.
Cregar was born in Philadelphia in 1913 and spent a good deal of his youth in England. That was where he first appeared, as a child actor, with the Stratford-Upon-Avon theatrical troupe and it was also where he developed the English accent that would serve him well later in life. Cregar once said that, from the age of eight, all he wanted to do was be on stage.
For most of the years that followed, Cregar never stopped performing. Cregar went from acting on stage to eventually making his way to Hollywood. He first appeared on the big screen in 1940 and he went on to appear in 16 films. He appeared in nearly every genre of film, from comedy to film noir to even a western. As frequent viewers of TCM can tell you, he played a surprisingly charming devil in 1943’s Heaven Can Wait. But he was probably best-known for playing a mysterious man who might be Jack the Ripper in 1944’s The Lodger and for his role as the possibly mad pianist, George Henry Bone, in Hangover Square, obsessively playing the piano while his room burned down around him. Sadly, that will be his final role.
Cregar was an actor who had the talent to be a leading man but, because he weighed over 300 pounds, he found himself used as a supporting player in Hollywood. He was a character actor who yearned to be a romantic star and who feared he would be forever typecast as a villain. Perhaps because Cregar disliked playing villains, his villains often seemed to be conflicted about their actions. (Indeed, there was a vulnerability to Cregar that made it difficult not to feel some sympathy for his characters.) Determined to change his image, Cregar embarked on a crash diet that was aided by amphetamines. He lost over a 100 pounds but he also put his health in jeopardy. On December 9th, 1944, Cregar died after suffering a heart attack. He was 31 years old. His friend Vincent Price delivered the eulogy at Cregar’s story. Cregar’s final film, Hangover Square, was released four months after he died.
Gregory William Mank’s biography, Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy, not only tells the story of Cregar’s short life but it also examines how Cregar took his frustrations and his insecurities and used them in his performances. In Mank’s biography, Cregar comes across as being a kind and generous man who wanted so desperately to be a star that it destroyed him. The book serves as not only an examination Cregar and his talent but an indictment of a studio system that set very rigid rules for who could and who couldn’t be a star. The book also features details about Cregar’s extensive and successful stage career. If you’re a history nerd like me, you’ll appreciate all of the detail that Mank goes into while discussing who co-starred with Cregar and their subsequent careers. Mank explores Cregar’s childhood and his career. The resulting biography pays tribute to a star who deserved better.
Directed by the great Mario Bava, the 1972 Italian film, Baron Blood, tells a story of gothic horror.
During the 19th century, there was no one as feared in Austria as Baron Otto Von Kleist. Much like the infamous Gilles de Rais, the Baron was a sadist who used his noble background as a cover for his macabre activities. In his castle, he murdered hundreds of villagers and, for that, he was nicknamed Baron Blood. He also had an accused witch burned at the stake. As she died, she cursed the Baron, saying that he would continually rise from the dead just so he could be killed again and again. When you think about it, that’s actually a pretty badass curse.
One hundred years later, the Baron’s American descendant, Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora), arrives in Austria to check out the family castle. The castle is being converted into a tacky hotel where tourists can stay in the same rooms where the Baron used to kill his victims. However, Peter is not particularly concerned with what’s about to happen to the castle. Instead, he’s in Austria because he’s discovered a parchment that contains an incantation that will bring the Baron back to life. He wants to give it a try, more for his own amusement than anything else. Neither her nor Eva (Elke Sommer), a college student who is studying the hotel’s architecture, really think that they are going to bring the Baron back to life by reading the incantation at midnight. Of course, they’re wrong.
It’s easy to make fun of Peter and Eva for being so naïve as to think that it wouldn’t be a big deal to cast a magic spell but it’s not like they realize that they’re characters in an Italian horror film. They don’t know that their lives are being directed by Mario Bava. To be honest, if I was there, I probably would have joined them in reading the spell. Sometimes, it can be fun to tempt fate.
That said, in the case, fate should not have been tempted. People are soon dying. When the man behind the hotel project is murdered, a wheelchair-bound millionaire named Alfred Becker (Joseph Cotten) shows up and purchases the castle for himself and announces plans to restore it. Will restoring the castle bring peace to the village or is the witch’s curse too powerful to defeat?
Baron Blood is often described as being one of Bava’s lesser films and is it true that it feels a bit conventional, particularly when compared to the subversive and satiric Bay of Blood and the surreal Lisa and the Devil.Baron Blood was a film that Bava himself was reportedly not enthused about making, one that he took on only because his last few films had struggled at the box office and he didn’t feel he would get any better offers. Perhaps that’s why a definite strain of melancholy and disillusionment runs through Baron Blood, a film in which a beautiful castle is destined to be turned into a tacky tourist trap by a businessman who could hardly care less about either history or aesthetics.
Though the story is a bit predictable (and you’ll have little trouble guessing which character is the Baron in disguise), I actually like Baron Blood. Not surprisingly, considering that it was a Bava film, Baron Blood is heavy on gothic atmosphere, so much so that it feels almost like an extra-bloody Hammer film. Both the castle and the village are full of shadows, from which anyone or anything could emerge at any moments and the cold grandeur of the castle is nicely contrasted with the garishness of 70s Europe. A visually striking scene where Eva flees from an attacker is especially well-directed and the film ends on a properly macabre note, one that once again feels as if it’s putting a distinctly Italian spin on a situation one would usually expect to find in a Hammer production.
Antonio Cantafora is a bit of a stiff but Elke Sommer gives an energetic and committed performance as someone who is torn between preserving the past and embracing the modern world. She doesn’t get to do as much in this film as she did in Lisa and the Devil but she’s still a sympathetic lead and someone to whom most viewers will be able to relate. We care about her character and, as a result, we care about discover just what exactly the Baron has in store for her.
Baron Blood may not have been a critical or a box office success when it was originally released but it has achieved a certain immortality. In a development that could have been lifted from one of Bava’s films, the sounds of the Baron’s victims screaming were later lifted from this film, remixed, and sold as being a recording that had apparently been made of sinners screaming from behind the gates of Hell. To this day, there are sites that insist that this recording is genuine. One hopes that Bava would have appreciated the admittedly dark humor of it all.
In 1956’s Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, the aliens have finally decided that it’s time to land their ships and meet with the Earthlings. Believe it or not, the aliens are coming in peace. They even send a coded message down to Dr. Russell Marvin (Hugh Marlowe) as he’s driving through the desert with his wife, Carol (Joan Taylor).
Unfortunately, that turns out to be a mistake because Russell totally fails to decipher the message. The flying saucers land at a local military base and, instead of being greeted in peace, they’re fired upon by a bunch of soldiers. After the aliens vaporize most of the soldiers, they kidnap Russell’s father-in-law (Morris Ankrum) and they send out another message. The citizens of Earth have 56 days to negotiate a surrender or the planet will be destroyed!
It’s now falls to Russell to not only figure out a way to defeat a superior invading force but to also build the weapon that will save Earth. And really, seeing as how this is all his fault, that’s the least that Russell could do.
Despite the campy name and the low-budget, Earth vs. The Flying Saucers actually takes itself fairly seriously. This movie was made at the start of the big UFO boom, when newspapers were still full of stories about people claiming that they had spotted something strange in the air. The legendary Ray Harryhausen based his UFO designs on actual reports of what people claimed that they had seen in the sky. As a result, this is the film that, for many, first solidified the idea of what a flying saucer should look like.
One of the most interesting things about this film is that the aliens, themselves, are rather reasonable. Oh sure, they end up killing a lot of people and trying to destroy the planet but really, it’s all just a big misunderstanding. The aliens came in peace and, even after they get mad, they still give humanity time to negotiate a surrender. Of course, that being said, we still have to blow them out of the sky because they are trying to conquer the world and, as always seemed to happen in 50s sci-fi films, it’s pretty much up to America to do all the work.
Though director Fred Sears keeps the action moving quickly and both Marlowe and Ankrum give good performances in their stock roles as, respectively, the scientist and the military leader, Ray Harryhausen is the real star of this movie. The stop-motion animation special effects are still a lot of fun to watch today. Plus, if you don’t applaud when that flying saucer crashes into the Capitol dome, there may be no hope for you.
Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is one of the better alien invasion films of the 50s. If nothing else, it’s a film that will inspire you to keep watching the skies!
(It’s tradition here at the Lens that, every October, we watch the original Little Shop of Horrors. And always, I start things off by telling this story…)
Enter singing.
Little Shop…Little Shop of Horrors…Little Shop…Little Shop of Terrors…
Hi! Good morning and Happy October 24th! For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic. From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!
When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.” Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage. And you know what? The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me. So there.
Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film. Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson. However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage. Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.
The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way). However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.
So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…
Ten years after Nikki Cominskey had the world’s most awkward dinner date with Jesus (played by Jefferson Moore), Nikki’s daughter is flying to Portland.
Having just graduated from high school, Sarah (Ruby Lewis) wants to attend an exclusive art school but she fears that she may not get the scholarship that she would need. If that wasn’t stressful enough, she’s also not getting along with her parents. She never thought that her mom and dad were actually seriously about all that church stuff but it turns out that they were and now they are scandalized to discover that Sarah doesn’t even consider herself to be a believer! The night before Sarah’s trip, Nikki sat her daughter down and told her about the night that she had dinner with Jesus. Now, Sarah is worried that her mother has lost her mind.
Because Sarah is flying the least efficient airline in existence, there’s a layover in Dallas on the way to Portland. That leaves Sarah a lot of time to get to know the man who is sitting next to her on the airplane. His name is Yesh and he says that he comes from a small town in the east. He also says that he’s a counselor and that he works with his father. When Sarah asks what Yesh’s father does, Yesh says that it’s not easy to explain but that his father has a lot of responsibility. He’s in charge of many things. Sarah thinks that Yesh is a friendly stranger but, since he’s played by Jefferson Moore, the audience knows who he actually is.
Yesh and Sarah discuss religion. Sarah says she hates religion. Yesh says that he agrees, because people have twisted religion to satisfy their own base desires. Sarah says that she can’t understand her parents. Yesh says that her parents love her just as his father loves everyone. Sarah says that she wants to be an artist. Yesh tells her to be sure not to fall asleep during art history class. (Hold on, Yesh! I majored in art history! Art history rocks!) Sarah assumes that Yesh is an atheist and gets a little annoyed when Yesh reveals that he’s actually not. Yesh reads her a poem and explains that it was written by his father and that it’s in the Bible. Sarah is amazed because she thought the Bible was just full of rules. She doesn’t seem to notice that Yesh said that his father wrote the Bible but that’s because Sarah doesn’t really come across as being that smart.
You can pretty much guess where all of this leading. With the exception of one surprisingly well-handled scene in which Sarah discusses the trauma that turned her away from religion, Another Perfect Stranger follows the same storyline as The Perfect Stranger. The main difference is that Sarah is a teenager and the conversation takes place on a plane instead of at a restaurant. Once again, Yesh wins every argument because the screenwriter is on his side and Sarah is incapable of coming up with any counterpoints that aren’t easily dismissed. Unfortunately, this film is also 20 minutes longer than The Perfect Stranger and pace is much slower. The majority of Sarah’s dialogue sounds like it was written by a computer program designed to basically approximate the speaking habits of someone under the age of 30. On the plus side, Sarah is not quite as humiliated by Jesus as her mother was.
This was followed by one more Perfect Stranger film, which was only 61 minutes long and which I’ll take a look at tomorrow.
This is a special episode of my favorite TV show of all, Degrassi! Originally airing on October 28th, 2008, The Curse of Degrassi features Degrassi’s main mean girl, Holy J Sinclair (Charlotte Arnold), getting possessed by the vengeful spirit of deceased school shooter, Rick Murray (Ephraim Ellis). Chaos follows! Fortunately, Spinner (Shane Kippel) is around to save the day. As any true Degrassi fan can tell you, only Spinner has a chance against the forces of the undead.
What I like about this episode is that, in the best tradition of Degrassi, it goes there. Holly J does get possessed. Just about the entire cast end up dying horribly. Spinner has to battle the undead spirit of Rick Murray and he has to do it without the help of Drake. And, as far as we know, this episode is canon. So, yes, Rick Murray’s ghost actually does haunt Degrassi Community School and yes, only Spinner can save us all.
That may sound like the set up of a 1960s beach movie but actually, Teenagers From Outer Space is an oddly somber little movie from 1959. Now, just to be clear, somber does not necessarily equal good. There’s a lot of humor to be found in Teenagers From Outer Space but next to none of it’s intentional. Instead, this attempts to be a serious-minded movie that happens to be about intergalactic teens.
The teenagers are named Thor (Bryan Grant) and Derek (David Love). They’ve been sent down to Earth so that they can raise Gargons, which are these lobster creatures that are considered to be a gourmet delicacy on their own world. Thor is the arrogant and insensitive alien who thinks that he’s too good for Earth and reacts to nearly every social situation by pulling out his ray gun and firing. (Whenever Thor vaporizes anyone, a perfectly white skeleton — the type that you’d expect to see hanging in a classroom — is left behind.) Derek is sensitive and moody. He’s got the soul of a poet. He doesn’t want to vaporize people. Instead, he wants to explore Earth and maybe hang out in a coffee house while reading Kerouac. Though Derek may never actually say it, it’s obvious what’s going through his mind whenever he looks at the other teenagers from outer space. “The scene is totally squaresville, man,” Derek thinks, “Real melvin. Exploring planets with peaceful intentions is where it’s at!”
Anyway, Derek decides to run away and explore Earth on his own. He ends up renting a room in a boarding house owned by Grandpa (Harvey B. Dunn) and his daughter, Betty (Dawn Bender). Betty is immediately attracted to Derek, despite the fact that she already has a boyfriend (who is played by the film’s director, Tom Graeff). She’s not particularly surprised when Derek tells her that he’s from outer space. Nor is she upset when he reveals that, shortly after arriving on Earth, Thor vaporized her dog. (Judging from her nonplussed reactions to everything, I’m assuming that Betty was an avid reader of both Sartre and Camus.)
As for Grandpa, he spends most of his time hanging out on the front porch and talking to strangers. For instance, when Thor comes by and demands to know where Derek is, Grandpa cheerfully tells him. This, of course, leads to a lot of innocent people being vaporized but Grandpa never seems to feel particularly bad about it. Certainly, no one in the movie ever takes the time to point out how much trouble could have been avoided if Grandpa wasn’t so talkative.
Derek really just wants to stay on Earth but Thor knows that Derek is secretly the son of their planet’s leader and therefore, cannot be allowed to run away. Why doesn’t Derek know this? I have no idea. It’s possible the movie explained this turn of events while I was busy wondering why no one seemed to be upset about all the skeletons that were turning up around town.
Anyway, as I said, there aren’t many intentional laughs to be found in Teenagers From Outer Space but there’s plenty of unintentional ones. Between Betty’s calm acceptance of everything that Derek tells her and David Love’s continually confused stare and blank line readings, it’s impossible not to smile while watching this movie.
Teenagers From Outer Space was written, directed, and produced by Tom Graeff. Shortly after this film came out, Graeff took out an ad in the Los Angeles Times and proclaimed himself to be the second coming of Christ. Hey, why not? After you make a movie like Teenagers From Outer Space, I suppose it seems like anything could be possible. Unfortunately, Graef committed suicide in 1970 and he didn’t get to see his misbegotten little film find a second life as a cult favorite.
Teenagers From Outer Space. It’s not very good but it certainly is watchable.
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 1978’s Summer of Fear. It can be viewed on YouTube!
In this made-for-TV movie from 1978, Linda Blair (fresh from the first two Exorcist films) plays Rachel. Rachel is a teenager who lives on a ranch in California. She loves horses and she loves her boyfriend and she’s especially happy that her cousin, Julia (Lee Purcell) is coming to live with her. Julia recently lost both of her parents in a tragic auto accident. Though neither Rachel nor her parents have ever met Julia before, they’re all planning on welcoming her into their very nice home.
The only problem is that, once Julia arrives, she seems to be a little bit strange. She speaks with a strange accent that no one on the ranch has ever heard before. The horses all seems to be terrified of her. After Rachel discovers that Julia has stolen minor personal possessions from her new family, Rachel starts to suspect that Julia might be witch and that she might be casting spells! Of course, by this point, Julia is no longer as shy and awkward as she seemed when she first showed up. Instead, she’s now glamorous and every man who meets her becomes intrigued, including Rachel’s boyfriend!
Based on a best-selling novel, Summer of Fear originally aired on NBC. If it were made today, it would probably air on something like Lifetime and it would have a title like, “Deadly Spell” or “Dangerous Seductress.” Seen today, it’s a bit of a slow movie and Linda Blair occasionally seems to be trying too hard to come across as being wide-eyed and innocent in her role but it’s entertaining as long as Lee Purcell is giving people strange looks and chewing up the scenery. The more out-of-control Pucell becomes, the more entertaining the film. Summer of Fear does build to a satisfying conclusion but it’s still hard not to wish that the story itself had moved just a bit quicker. Jaded audiences in 2022 are no longer as shocked at the idea of witch coming to visit as audiences in 1978 may have been. In the end, probably the most interesting thing about Summer of Fear is that it was an early credit for horror master, Wes Craven. This was his third film and his first “major” production, one that he made in order to show that, after directing two independent films, he could be trusted with a mainstream, studio production. As such, you can argue that, without this film, Craven never would have gone on to do Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. Modern horror would be very different without Summer of Fear.
Ultimately. the film’s a bit too slowly paced to really be successful but if you’re a fan of Wes Craven’s or even Linda Blair’s, you’ll probably want to watch it at least once.
The 2021 French film, The Deep House, tells the story of Tina (Camilla Rowe) and Ben (James Jagger). Originally from New York, Tina and James are driving across Europe and filming themselves as they explore haunted houses. They have recently learned of a submerged house in France. With the help of a local guide named Pierre (Eric Savin), they track down the lake that Pierre claims is the location of the house. Tina and James put on their diving gear and jump into the water. Pierre, on the other hand, stays on dry land. In fact, Pierre seems like he might have an agenda of his own.
Tina and James find the underwater house and they continue to film themselves as they explore it. (In fact, with their eagerness to go travel the world and film themselves disrupting their surroundings, you might be tempted to think that this film has something on its mind about American interventionism.) Interestingly enough, the house is in surprisingly good shape despite having been underwater for a few decades. In fact, the house is full of posters, photographs, and graffiti, all of which one would expect to be destroyed by exposure to water. Why, there’s even a fake clown head just kind of sitting there. However, Tina and James are a bit more concerned about why their equipment suddenly seems to be malfunctioning. And then, of course, there’s the two dead bodies that are chained to the walls inside the house.
Now, you may be wondering why Tina and James don’t just leave the house. Believe it or not, they try to leave as soon as they come across the bodies. (Most of my friends would probably immediately try to leave as soon as they saw that clown. You have to feel bad for all the misunderstood and misjudged clowns of the world.) But suddenly, the window that they previously swam through has been blocked by a brick wall. In fact, the house seems to be constantly changing and rebuilding itself, all to keep Tina and James from finding a way out. With their air supply running out, Tina and James try to figure out how to escape the house and, even more importantly, how to escape the zombie that has suddenly shown up.
Oh, did I forget the mention the zombies? Well …. there’s a zombie.
Well-directed by Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo, The Deep House is an atmospheric horror film, one that doesn’t waste any time launching into its story. While there have been plenty of horror films about people exploring haunted houses and accidentally filming their own demise, The Deep House adds a new wrinkle by having almost all of the action occur underwater. Even if Tina and James manages to escape the house and the zombies, you still have to wonder if they’ll have enough air left to make it to the surface. Maury and Bustillo do a good job of generating suspense and the film has more than enough jump scares to keep most horror fans happy. The Deep House is worth the dive.
Through the Shattered Lens