Horror Film Review: All The Kind Strangers (dir by Burt Kennedy)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This 1974 made-for-television movie opens with photojournalist Jimmy Wheeler (Stacy Keach) driving down an isolated country road. He’s driving across America, heading towards California. However, when he sees a young child walking on the side of the road and struggling to carry two bags of groceries, Jimmy pulls over and offers the child a ride.

That’s a big mistake. As Jimmy soon discovers, the child lives on an isolated farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. He resides with his six brothers and sisters. The family is led by Peter (John Savage), the oldest sibling. Jimmy discover that there’s only one other adult on the farm. The children refer to her as being their mom and Carol Ann (Samantha Eggar) certainly does seem to be busy, cooking dinner and keeping the house clean. It’s only when the children leave the kitchen that Carol Ann finally tells Jimmy the truth. She’s not related to the children. Instead, she is someone who made the same mistake that Jimmy did. She gave one of the kids a ride home and she’s never been allowed to leave.

It turns out that the children’s parents died a few years ago but, because the family lives so far away from town, no one has ever noticed. Peter has been in charge of the family but he’s reaching the point where he no longer wants to spend his entire life on the farm. He wants to experience Mardi Gras and then visit California. So, Peter has been sending out the children to tempt random adults to come to the house, where Peter auditions them to see if they would be good parents. Peter has decided that Carol Ann can be the mother. Now, he just needs to find someone to serve as the father.

Jimmy seems like a good candidates, except for the fact that he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in the middle of nowhere and raising a bunch of odd children. Unfortunately, Jimmy soon discovers that it won’t be easy to escape. The farm is guarded by a pack of dogs and Peter has a way of taking care of all the kind strangers who fail their audition….

Even though it’s only 75 minutes long, All The Kind Strangers is a bit of a slow film and often, it seems like it can’t decide whether it wants to be a straight horror film or a family melodrama. Add to that, one of the kids is played Robby Benson, who showed up in a lot of 70s films, always playing awkward teenagers. Benson gives such a bizarrely over the top performance that it’s hard to take him or any situation in which he’s involved seriously. (Benson also sings the film’s easy listening theme song.) That said, the film still manages to create and maintain an effectively creepy atmosphere and Stacy Keach, Samantha Eggar, and John Savage all give good performances. The fact that the kids aren’t evil as much as they’re incapable of understanding the consequences of their actions actually serves to make them even creepier than the typical demented children who appear in films like this.

All The Kind Strangers has its moments, even if it doesn’t make a huge impression.

Retro Television Reviews: Hang Time 2.3 “Harvest Moon” and 2.4 “The Sure Thing”

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Hang Time, which ran on NBC from 1995 to 2000. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

Season 2 continues with the search for victory on the court and love off of it!

Episode 2.3 “Harvest Moon”

(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 21st, 1996)

It’s time for the Harvest Moon dance, which I guess is an Indiana thing. Danny is all excited because Sam is going to be coming home from college so that she can attend the dance with him. But then Sam sends Danny a letter, telling him that she’s fallen in love with an anthropology student and that they are heading down to Mexico! Danny gets whiny, which is kind of annoying to watch. Honestly, why would you want to date someone in high school when you’re in college?

Anyway, Danny gets a rebound date with girl named Veronica. Veronica has red hair, just like Sam. Amy even mistakes Veronica for Sam, despite the fact that Amy wasn’t even on the show last season. Everyone talks about how much Veronica looks like Sam while Veronica is standing right there. It’s kind of rude.

Meanwhile, Teddy DJ’s the dance while Julie and Josh find excuses to abandon their dates and dance with each other. Vince and Mary Beth also end up poking fun at each other’s dates and then they end up soulfully staring at each other when Teddy announces the last dance, which leads me to worry that Vince and Mary Beth are going to become a couple. Don’t do it, Mary Beth! You deserve better!

Danny steals the team bus and tries to drive it to Chicago. For some reason, Julie and Josh go with him. They talk him out of driving to Chicago and then they kiss while Danny drive them back to Indiana. So, Danny is heart-broken but at least Julie and Josh are happy.

Finally, during the dance, another real-life basketball player drops by to visit with Coach Fuller. I have no idea who the guy was but the audience went crazy as soon as he showed up. Fuller, however, kicked him out of the gym for scuffing the floor.

Josh and Julie seems like they’ll be a cute couple and I guess I should accept that the Mary Beth/Vince thing is going to happen because opposites attract. Danny is now single and kind of whiny so hopefully, that will only last episode or two. As far as school dance episodes go, this one could have really used either the Zack Attack or the California Dreams.

Episode 2.4 “The Sure Thing”

(Directed by Patrick Maloney, originally aired on September 28th, 1996)

The Tornadoes have lost six straight games so Fuller demands that the members of his team carry basketballs around with them everywhere that they go. If that doesn’t work, I guess the season’s over and Fuller’s out of a job.

Teddy is more concerned about asking out Tracy, the new cheerleader. However, as Teddy explains to his new friends, he’s never asked a girl out before because he’s always been “the fat kid who is everybody’s friend” and you know what? Anthony Anderson totally sells it! “You don’t know what it’s like to ask someone out and have them laugh and then you have to laugh too!” Anderson says at one point and my heart was totally breaking for him. Seriously, watching this episode, you fully understand why Anderson went on to have the busiest career of the many actors who appeared on this show.

Vince and Danny decide to help Teddy out by stalking Tracy and discovering everything that she’s interested so that Teddy will feel confident talking to her. Couldn’t Teddy just mention that, as was established during the first episode of the second season, his father is an NBA superstar and probably has a lot money? That’d be a good icebreaker.

Meanwhile, Josh and Julie are dating but Josh is tired of the cutesy way Julie talks to him. I don’t blame him as, up until this point, there’s been absolutely nothing about Julie’s personality that suggests she would talk to her boyfriend in baby talk. Eventually, Julie reveals that she’s only been talking that way because she thought Josh liked it and she actually hates doing it as much as Josh hates hearing it.

During this week’s game, the Tornadoes are losing but Teddy finally asks out Tracy and gets the confidence he needs to lead the team to a comeback victory. Yay! It was kind of sweet.

Horror Film Review: King of the Lost World (dir by Leigh Scott)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Produced by the Asylum, this 2005 film opens with a plane crashing on a remote island. The plane splits apart on impact, leaving the back part of the plane on the beach and the cockpit lost somewhere in the jungle. With the reluctant help of the mysterious Lt. Challenger (Bruce Boxleitner), the survivors attempt to find the cockpit and a way to radio for help. What they discover is that the island is not only crawling with dinosaurs and giant bugs but there’s also a really big ape lumbering about. There are also natives, who want to sacrifice the survivors to the ape. Apparently, a sacrifice a day keeps the ape away, which is something that’s good to know if you ever find yourself stranded on an unchartered isle.

This may sound a lot like King Kong and, definitely, the film did borrow more than a little from both those films and Jurassic Park. However, King of the Lost World has even more in common with TV show Lost. The scenes of the survivors on the beach and often feel as if they were lifted from the show’s pilot. (And let’s not forget that a lot of the pilot’s action actually did center around trying to find where the plane’s cockpit had ended up.) Lt. Challenger, who carries a mysterious briefcase with him and who refuses to explain the full details of why he’s on the island, feels like he could have been one of the enigmatic Others. Technically, though, the film is actually an adaption of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, which one of a series of novels that Doyle wrote about Professor Challenger and his adventures as an explorer. Prof, Challenger, it should be said, was a bit more of a sympathetic character than Lt. Challenger.

Unfortunately, King of the Lost World doesn’t really live up to any of its influences. The giant ape and the dinosaurs are all neat in their cheap but goofy way but they are also barely in the movie. Instead, the majority of the movie is about people wandering through the forest and arguing about whether or not they should go left or right. When the survivors get captured by the natives, there is a slightly fun sequence where two of them get hypnotized and “go native” but even that’s only interesting for a scene or two. If a movie promises a giant ape, it needs to deliver the giant ape for more than a minute at the start and five minutes at the end.

Usually, I am proud and not at all ashamed to defend the Asylum and their low-budget mockbusters but King of the Lost World is not one of their better films. The movie ended with a hint of a possible sequel but, as far as I know, it never happened. Fortunately, even if King of the Lost World didn’t lead to a franchise, the Asylum would go on to give us the Sharknado films and a lot of other fun movies as well.

Horror Film Review: Terror at London Bridge (dir by E.W. Swackhamer)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On a foggy London night in 1888, the shadowy killer known as Jack the Ripper is pursued by a combination of police and citizens. Cornered and facing certain execution if captured, Jack jumps off of London Bridge and disappears into the murky waters of the Thames.

Jump forward to the late 80s. London Bridge has been transported, brick-by-brick, to a town in Arizona and it now serves as a somewhat tacky tourist attraction. Unfortunately, it turns out that Jack the Ripper’s spirt is inside in the bricks and transporting the bridge has also transported Jack. Considering that Jack died in the Thames, I’m not really sure why his spirit will still be trapped in the bricks of the bridge. It seems like his spirit should still be in the river but whatever. Let’s just go with it. One tourist accidentally cuts her finger while walking across the bridge. Her blood hits the wrong brick and suddenly, Jack the Ripper is alive and killing in Arizona! Can the murders be stopped before they interfere with the tourist season!?

Only Detective Don Gregory (David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff) thinks that Jack the Ripper has returned to life. His captain (Clu Gulager) doesn’t believe him. The sleazy city councilamn (Lane Smith) doesn’t believe him. His potential girlfriend, Angie (Stepfanie Kramer), has doubts about Don’s theory. His own partner (Randolph Mantooth) doesn’t buy it. Even Angie’s best friend, a librarian named Lynn (Adrienne Barbeau), doesn’t think that there’s any connection between Jack the Ripper and the handsome Englishman (Paul Rossilli) who has recently been stopping by the library and flirting with her.

And really, why would anyone believe Don? His theory makes no sense, even if it does turn out to be true. Indeed, Don is remarkably quick to accept the idea of Jack the Ripper traveling through time. Of course, what also doesn’t make sense is the city council’s refusal to shut down the bridge until the killer’s been caught. It’s the tourist season but seriously, it seems like a serial killer — whether he’s Jack the Ripper or not — would be bad for business!

This 1985 movie was made for television. The premise is intriguing but the execution is a real let-down. It’s a 90 minute film and the Hoff doesn’t really seem to get serious about trying to hunt down Jack the Ripper until 60 minutes in. This is the odd Jack the Ripper film in which the Ripper is often treated as an afterthought. Instead, the majority of the film is taken up with Don flirting with Angie and trying to come to terms with an accidental shooting that occurred when Don was a cop in Chicago. The whole Jack the Ripper subplot is almost treated like a red herring, which is an odd way to treat a 19 century villain who can travel through time. I mean, sometimes, romance has to wait until the time-traveling serial killer has been taken care of. It’s all about priorities.

In the end, this one is for hardcore Hasselhoff fans only. Those who want to watch a Jack the Ripper time traveling movie would be better served by watching Time After Time, featuring David Warner as the Ripper and Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells.

Horror Film Review: Cyborg Cop (dir by Sam Firstenberg)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In this 1993 film, John Rhys-Davies plays Professor Kissel. The professor is a mad scientist with a German accent who has taken over a small island in the Caribbean. From his compound, he has developed a process by which he can turn anyone into a cyborg! The cyborgs follow his orders and …. well, it’s never quite clear what exactly Professor Kissel plans to do with the cyborgs. I guess he just wants to keep them around so that they can do random evil things.

DEA agent Philip Ryan is captured by Kissel and transformed into one of those cyborgs! However, Philip has a brother named Jack (played by martial artist David Bradley). Jack used to work for the government until he was disillusioned when one of his investigations went terribly wrong. However, Jack is willing to come out of retirement to save his brother. Teaming up with a journalist named Cathy (Alonna Shaw), Jack infiltrates Kissel’s compound and battles the cyborgs. Along the way, Cathy falls in love with Jack. I’m not sure why that happens as Jack tends to be a bit surly and self-absorbed. Indeed, he and Cathy somehow manage to have not just zero but less than zero romantic chemistry.

Does this movie sound dumb? Well, that’s because it was pretty dumb. It was directed by Sam Firstenberg, who directed the first two American Ninja films. And it stars David Bradley, who starred in the last three American Ninja films. The American Ninjas were fun but Cyborg Cop just kind of drags. A huge part of the problem is that David Bradley was a good martial artist but he was a less than impressive actor. Seeing as how Jack is trying to save his brother from being turned into an emotionless robot, Cyborg Cop calls for a bit more acting than the American Ninja films did. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a film about human emotions when your lead actor isn’t capable of showing them. It doesn’t help that Jack is written as being someone who is always in a rather foul mood. Also, from the minute he lands in the islands, he wears a fanny pack around his waist and it just looks so utterly ridiculous. It’s hard to take a fight seriously when one of the combatants is wearing a leather fanny pack. The other big issue is that it takes forever to actually get to the cyborg action. For some reason, the film tries to generate some suspense about what Kissel’s plan is, despite the fact that the word “cyborg” is right there in the title!

On the plus side, the film does feature John Rhys-Davies playing a mad scientist and he’s just the type of cheerfully theatrical actor who can do justice to the role of someone who spends most of his time ranting about how much smarter he is than everyone else in the world. Rhys-Davies, who is best known for playing Indiana Jones’s friend Sallah and for playing both Gimili and the talking tree in The Lord of the Rings, appears to have had a lot of fun as Prof. Kissel and it’s fun to watch him in the role. This is a case where most people watching the film will proudly cheer for the bad guy because the bad guy is so much more entertaining than the good guy.

Cyborg Cop somehow led to two sequels. The work is never done.

Horror Film Review: Last Shift (dir by Anthony DiBlasi)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh no, it’s the cops!

The 2014 film, Last Shift, tells the story of Jessica Loren (Juliana Harkavy). Like her father, Jessica’s a cop. Unlike her father, Jessica is hoping that she’ll survive her shift without becoming the victim of some weird cult leader and his followers. Good luck with that, Jessica!

Jessica’s first assignment is to take the last shift at a police station that is in the process of being shut down. All Jessica has to do is stay at the front desk for the entire night and answer the phone. All of the 911 calls have been re-routed to the new station so Jessica’s job is mostly to make sure that no one enters the station who shouldn’t be there. She’s also told to stay out of the way of a HAZMAT crew, which is showing up to clean out the station’s evidence lockers.

Unfortunately, it turns out that just sitting at the front desk is one of those things that sounds easier than it actually is. For one thing, a drunk homeless man keeps showing up and, eventually, Jessica is forced to put him in one the station’s cells. Secondly, the station keeps getting calls from a woman named Monica. Monica says that she’s been kidnapped by a cult. Jessica tells Monica to call 911 and tell the police where she is but Monica replies that she is calling 911. But how can that be if all of the calls have been rerouted to the new station?

On top of all that, Jessica keeps hearing strange singing and seeing out-of-place shadows in the hallways. Is it just her imagination or is there someone — or something — in the station with her and the HAZMAT team? A mysterious woman appears, smoking a cigarette outside of the station. She tells Jessica that, years ago, the same cult that killed her father committed mass suicide in the station. Shortly afterwards, Jessica is visited by another cop who claims that he knew her father and that he was present when the cult died….

Largely taking place in one location and over the course of one long night, Last Shift is an effectively atmospheric horror film. The nearly deserted station is creepy and Juliana Harkavy gives a good and sympathetic performance as Jessica. To a certain extent, the film is a perhaps a bit too quick to make it clear that something supernatural is happening at the station. I would have liked it if the film had played a little bit more with the idea of all of the strange events just being in Jessica’s head. (Early on, the film does play with that possibility.) Instead, by making it a little too obvious what’s happening, this is one of those films that does leave you wondering why Jessica stays in the station for as long as she does. Every bit of common sense would say to leave and deal with the professional consequences once you’ve escaped from the supernatural horror looking to destroy you. Losing your job sucks but it’s still preferable to losing your life. But, if you can overlook that one flaw, Last Shift is a genuinely frightening horror film, one that plays out like a filmed nightmare and which builds up to a surprise ending.

This is one to save for the next time you feel like watching something really scary. Don’t watch alone!

Horror on the Lens: Night of the Living Dead (dir by George Romero)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!)

A Blast From The Past: A Trip To The Moon (dir. by Georges Melies)

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On October 1st, Case reviewed Moon. What better way to celebrate October 31st than taking a trip to the moon with classic film that came out 120 years ago?

Directed and written by Georges Melies, A Trip to The Moon is often cited as the first sci-fi film and the image of the capsule crashing into the eye of the man in the moon is one of the most iconic in film history. Seen today, the film seems both charmingly innocent and remarkably ahead of its time.

For me, it always takes a minute or two to adjust to the aesthetic of early films. We’ve grown so used to all the editing tricks that modern filmmakers use to tell their stories that these old silent films, with their lack of dramatic camera movement and obvious theatrical origins, often take some effort to get used to. Still, the effort is often worth it.

Here then is Georges Melies’s 1902 science fiction epic, A Trip To The Moon.

October Positivity: God’s Club (dir by Jared Cohn)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 2015 film, God’s Club, Stephen Baldwin stars as Michael Evens.

Michael is a teacher at the local high school. His wife is also a teacher and it is quickly established that she is quite a bit more religious than her husband. In fact, she’s the sponsor of the after-school Christian club. This club is very controversial because God’s Club is one of those films that takes place in a community where everyone is not only an atheist but also a total jerk about it. It’s like everyone learned how to be an atheist by watching Richard Dawkins YouTube videos. At a school board meeting, parents shout about separation of church and state and warn that they are not going to sit by while their children are brainwashed. Principal Max Graves (Corbin Bernsen, giving the film’s best performance as the sole voice of reason at the high school) explains that no one is being forced to attend the club. Michael, for his part, remains quiet. Later, as they’re driving home, Michael and his wife are in a serious accident. Michael survives. His wife asks him to pray with her and then promptly dies.

Weeks later, a guilt-stricken Michael returns to school. It turns out that most of the students are just as jerky as their parents. When Michael opens his class with a moment of silence for his dead wife, one of his students reports him for praying in class. This leads to the parents demanding that Michael be fired. Spencer Rivers (played by Lorenzo Lamas) is especially adamant that Michael should not be allowed to teach and he even goes so far as to insult the memory of Michael’s dead wife. Making things even more tense is Michael’s decision to restart God’s Club himself. Needless to say, this leads to even more controversy but it also gives Michael a chance to make peace with both himself and his guilt over his wife’s death.

Christian teachers being persecuted by atheist parents and mindless government enforcers is a recurring theme when it comes to faith-based films. Perhaps the best-known example of this is God’s Not Dead 2, in which Ray Wise literally cackles with delight as he thinks about ruining Melissa Joan Hart’s life. (“We are going to prove that God is dead,” Wise explains to his legal team, none of whom point out that it would be smarter to just settle the case and move on.) The debate over whether or not religion should be allowed in schools is a legitimate one but films like God’s Club (and God’s Not Dead 2) tend to approach the subject in such a melodramatic that it’s difficult to really pay much attention to their arguments. It’s not enough that the parents in God’s Club are perhaps being a little bit paranoid in their belief that their children are going to be preached to. Instead, the parents are portrayed as being so evil that they can’t even show the least bit of kindness to a man who has just lost his wife in a sudden tragedy. One thing that all of these films have in common is that they take place in world in which there are no polite atheists.

Stephen Baldwin, who is usually the only lively thing about the films in which appears, gives a rather stilted performance as Michael. According to the film’s IMDb page, Baldwin was dealing with some health issues while filming God’s Club and perhaps that’s why he seems to be so disinterested in the film. Baldwin seems to be just as depressed when his wife is alive as he is after the car accident. At the end of the film, everyone seems to be excited about God’s Club except for him. It’s hard not to think that maybe Michael would be better off just retiring and maybe moving to Florida. By the end of the film, he’s earned some time on the beach.

Bonus Horror on TV: Highway to Heaven 4.5 “I Was A Middle-Aged Werewolf” (dir by Michael Landon)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Because it’s nearly Halloween, here’s a special bonus television episode!

After I reviewed I Was A Teenage Werewolf, this episode was recommended to me by Mark, one of our regular readers in Australia. Highway to Heaven was a TV show about an angel and a human who traveled across the country and helped people out. It aired for 5 seasons in the 80s and it’s pretty much achieved immortality via syndication and streaming. It starred Michael Landon who also starred in I Was A Teenage Werewolf. As you call from this episode, he obviously had sense of humor about his early film career.

This originally aired on October 28th, 1987. The series was a bit silly but this episode is kind of fun.

Happy Halloween!