Anyway, here they are performing Buio Omega in concert. Buio Omega is the main theme of one of my favorite Italian horror films, Beyond the Darkness. Even if you haven’t seen the film — and, when it comes to movies about wealthy young men who dig up their dead girlfriends and eat hitchhikers, it doesn’t get much better than Beyond the Darkness — the music is wonderfully atmospheric. You just hear this music and you know that something really odd is about to happen.
Chicago gangsters are turning up dead! Is it a mob war or is it something else? Kolchak suspects the latter and, as you can guess from this episode’s title, he’s right. This episode features gangsters, numbers runners, and voodoo!
The 1958 film I Married A Monster From Outer Space tells the story of Marge (Gloria Talbott) and Bill Farrell (Tom Tryon).
Just one year ago, they seemed like the perfect couple. They were newlyweds, looking forward to starting a family and living in a nice house in the suburbs. Bill seemed like the perfect guy, warm, friendly, humorous, and loving.
However, things have changed. On their one-year anniversary, Bill is cold and distant. He certainly seems to have little interest in romance or anything like that. When Marge gives Bill a new dog as his anniversary present, he doesn’t seem to be sure how to react to it. When the dog later ends up dead, Bill gives her an implausible excuse.
Bill has changed but he’s not the only one. Marge notices that all of her friend’s husbands are acting strange as well. It’s as if something has magically turned every man into the neighborhood into a stiff, humorless jerk.
(Either that or it’s the 50s!)
One night, Marge decides to follow Bill into the forest and she sees something that challenges everything that she previously thought she knew about her husband. What does she discover? Well, it’s right there in the title. Marge has married a monster from outer space!
I imagine that most people’s natural instinct with a film like this is to make fun of the title and just go on from there but actually, I Married A Monster From Outer Space is an intelligent and well-done sci-fi film. Gloria Talbott does a great job in the lead role and Tom Tryon’s rather stiff screen presence is perfectly suited for the role of Alien-Bill. Gene Fowler, Jr. directs the film as if it were a film noir where the usual gangsters and bank robbers have been replaced by humanoid aliens who don’t like dogs.
Since this movie is from 1958, there’s all sorts of subtext creeping around. The most obvious, of course, is that America is being invaded from within. You don’t think your husband could be an alien? Well, Alger Hiss’s mother probably didn’t think her son was a communist spy! You think it’s a silly idea that normal seeming humans would be working to conquer the world? Have you not heard of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? When Bill and the other men turn cold and impersonal, it’s easy to see that they’ve embraced an ideology opposed to individual freedom and we all know what that means.
However, for me, this film works because it strikes at a very primal fear. How well do you really know the people who you love? Is he always going to be as perfect as he seems when you first start going out or is he going to totally change once he’s sure that you’re not going to leave him? Like many women who have tried to escape from abusive boyfriends and spouses, Marge discovers that no one believes her. She lives in a world controlled by men and all of the men have been taken over by the same thing that’s taken over Bill. Even if you’ve never married a monster from outer space, you know what Marge is going through.
So, don’t dismiss this film because of the melodramatic title. I Married A Monster From Outer Space is an intelligent sci-fi horror film, one that’s still relevant today.
Today’s Horror on the Lens is a classic film that really needs no introduction! Released in 1922, the German silent film Nosferatu remains one of the greatest vampire films ever made. It’s a film that we share every October and I’m happy to do so again this year!
For tonight’s excursion into the horrific side of television, we have the very first episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker!
The Kolchak of the title was a reporter named Carl Kolchak (played by Darren McGavin). Kolchak was kind of a nervous fellow because every story that he reported on seemed to involve some sort of terrible supernatural creature! Seriously, that would make anyone anxious.
In his first episode, Kolchak investigates a series of murders and comes to suspect that Jack the Ripper might be haunting the streets of 1970s Chicago.
This episode originally aired on September 13th, 1974.
In this 1981 slasher film, bad things are happening in the city of Miami.
There’s a serial killer on the loose. He’s chopping off heads and leaving bodies on the beach and basically just making a huge mess of things. Local new anchorwoman Jane (Lauren Tewes) is upset that there’s a killer roaming the streets of her hometown. She even talks about how upset she is during a local newscast, which takes everyone at the station by surprise. I don’t know why they’re so shocked. Don’t they know that Jane has a younger sister named Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and that Tracy’s been blind, deaf, and mute ever since she was attacked by a maniac?
One day, Jane is returning to the apartment that she shares with her sister. As she’s parking her car, she sees her neighbor, Stanley (John DiSanti), stuffing what appears to be a bloody shirt in a trash can. Oh my God, could he be the murderer!?
Well, yes, he is. The film actually makes no attempt to hide the fact that Stanley is the murderer. Stanley is one of those movie murderers who is either hyper competent or totally oblivious, depending on what the scene demands. For instance, despite being a rather heavyset, middle-aged man, he can still sneak up behind people without them ever hearing and chop off their head with one wave of a meat cleaver. On the other hand, when he kills a couple on the beach, his car ends up getting stuck in the sand.
Anyway, Jane is pretty much instantly convinced that Stanley is the killer and she immediately starts doing stuff like taunting him over the telephone. (Despite the fact that she’s on TV every night and her voice is apparently heard by everyone in Miami, she makes no effort to disguise her voice whenever she calls Stanley.) She also breaks into his apartment to look for clues.
As I watched this film, I found myself thinking about how much more interesting it would have been if Stanley hadn’t been the killer and if Jane felt so guilty about what happened to her sister that she ended up harassing a totally innocent bystander. But no, Stanley is the murderer so naturally all of this leads to an extended sequence where Stanley breaks into and then follows Tracy around Jane’s apartment.
So, Eyes of a Stranger is a fairly mediocre film, one that would probably be totally forgotten if not for the fact that it’s also the debut film of Jennifer Jason Leigh. While the film is obviously meant to showcase Lauren Tewes (a TV actress who gives a rather wooden performance), Jennifer Jason Leigh steals every scene in which she appears. Her total commitment to her character shines through and she even manages to sell a rather implausible plot twist that occurs towards the end of the film. John DiSanti also deserves some credit for his performance as Stanley. Again, it’s hard not to feel that the film would have worked better if it had tried to keep us guessing as to the question of Stanley’s guilt.
Eyes of a Stranger was directed by Ken Wiederhorn, who also did the far superior zombie movie, Shock Waves. It’s interesting to note that both Lauren Tewes and Jennifer Jason Leigh would subsequently appear in Twin Peaks: The Return, though Leigh’s role was significantly larger.
The town of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine has two new arrivals.
One is Ben Mears, a successful writer who, we’re told, even has his own FBI file. (Apparently, it only consists of a report that he once attended an anti-war rally.) Ben spent part of his childhood is Jerusalem’s Lot and, upon returning, he discovers a small but friendly town. Sure, there’s some drama going on behind closed doors. There’s the sleazy real estate agent, for instance. And then there’s the Catholic priest who, naturally, has lost his faith. And then there’s the unhappy teenage mother and, of course, there’s the usual collection of alcoholics, adulterers, and cranky bus drivers. Maybe Jerusalem’s Lot isn’t that friendly after all….
The other new arrival is Kurt Barlow. Barlow’s from Austria and he’s moved into the old Marsten House. (The Marsten House, like most old houses that you come across in Stephen King novels, used to belong to a notorious gangster.) Barlow’s going to be opening up an antique store. Interestingly enough, hardly anyone ever seems to see Barlow. His business partner, Richard Straker, claims that Barlow is often away on buying trips.
Anyway, the townspeople have a lot more to worry about than what’s going on with Kurt Barlow. For instance, a lot of people are disappearing. And even those who aren’t vanishing are growing ill and having a bad reaction to sunlight. Hmmm …. what could possibly be going on?
First published in 1975, ‘Salem’s Lot was Stephen King’s second published novel and it actually holds up better than most of his recent work. It’s interesting to read ‘Salem’s Lot after Carrie, just to see how much King grew as a writer in between the two books. Whereas King often seemed uncomfortable with the plot of his first novel and tended to hold Carrie White at a distance, he dives right into ‘Salem’s Lot. It’s not just that King is obviously more comfortable writing about a male writer than a teenage girl. It’s also that King creates a town that seems so real that we feel as if we could find it on a map. King tells his story with such enthusiasm and confidence that it doesn’t matter that ‘Salem’s Lot is a fairly predictable and traditional vampire story.
Clocking in at a briskly paced 440 pages, ‘Salem’s Lot is quite a bit longer and more detailed than Carrie without, at the same time, getting bogged down in the type of stylistic self-indulgence that has come to typify a lot of King’s recent work. (One gets the feeling that if King wrote ‘Salem’s Lot today, it would be a 1,200 page novel and that Barlow wouldn’t show up until page 900.) King does a good job of offering up little snippets of life in Jerusalem’s Lot, just enough to make sure we have enough knowledge to mourn the eventual death of the town. ‘Salem’s Lot takes Dracula, drops him in the middle of a small town melodrama, and the results are still entertaining to this very day.
If there’s anything be learned from 1988’s Aenigma …. well, actually, that might be giving the film too much credit. There’s probably nothing to learn from Aenigma. The film does start with a pretty cruel prank and that prank leads to some snail-related mayhem but really, you should have already learned the truth about pranks after Carrie burned down the prom.
The prank involves the cruel girls at St. Mary’s boarding school tricking their classmate, Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic), into thinking that she’s on a date with a gym teacher (Riccardo Acerbi) and then jumping out of the shadows and surprising her when Kathy and the teacher start making out in his car. This leads to a humiliated Kathy running out into the middle of traffic, where she’s promptly hit by a car and goes into a coma. While everyone agrees that sucks for Kathy, at least it means that no one will ever know the truth about the prank.
Then people start dying.
They die in a variety of weird ways and since only the people involved with the prank are the ones being targeted, it doesn’t take much effort to guess that the comatose Kathy is probably involved. It also doesn’t take much effort to guess that the newest student at the school, Eva (Lara Lamberti), has been possessed by Kathy and is mostly just hanging around to make sure that everyone’s dead.
What’s weird is that, in her coma, Kathy has so many different powers that you have to wonder why exactly she needed to possess Eva. For instance, the gym teacher is strangled when his own reflection jumps out of a mirror. One of the girls is killed when a statue in a museum suddenly comes to life and attacks her. Yet another girl is somehow killed by snails.
Yes, you read that right. She wakes up to discover that she’s covered in snails and this leads to her dying. Aenigma is regularly criticized for the scene with snails. “Why didn’t she just get out of bed and take a shower or something?” many a commentator has asked. I guess they have a point but, honestly, if I woke up and there were a few hundred snails on me, I would totally freak out.
Apparently, the main reason that Eva’s there is so she can try to seduce Kathy’s handsome doctor (Jared Martin) but the doctor is more interested in Jenny Clark (Ulli Reinthaler), who was involved in the prank but who, unlike everyone else, felt really bad about it afterward. I’m sure that would lead to any complications….
There’s kind of a sad story behind this rather forgettable if occasionally entertaining horror film. After making horror history by directing films like Zombi 2 and The Beyond, director Lucio Fulci entered into a career decline. Struggling with ill-health and having had a falling out with some of his former collaborators, Fulci found himself working with lower budgets and less interesting premises. That’s certainly the case with Aenigma, which was shot in Sarajevo with a largely unknown cast and which blatantly ripped off the plots of Carrie and Patrick.
Aenigma has got a terrible reputation among fans of Italian horror. Personally, I think it’s a very flawed film but I also think that it’s not quite as bad as some have made it out to be. I mean, the snails are ludicrous but they’re also so weird that you can’t help but kind of love it when they show up. For that matter, the coach being killed by his own reflection and the scene where the statue come to life are clever ideas, even if their execution leaves something to be desired. Even in his later years, Fulci still had his talent. Unfortunately, when it came to films like Aenigma, he rarely had the resources necessary to truly make his vision come to life.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a film that I’ve shared four times previously on the Shattered Lens. The first time was in 2011 and then I shared it again in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017! Well, you know what? I’m sharing it again because it’s a classic, it’s Halloween, and everyone should see it! (And let’s face it — it’s entirely possible that some of the people reading this post right now didn’t even know this site existed in 2017. Why should they be deprived of Caligari just because they only now arrived?)
Released in 1920, the German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of those films that we’ve all heard about but far too few of us have actually seen. Like most silent films, it requires some patience and a willingess to adapt to the narrative convictions of an earlier time. However, for those of us who love horror cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari remains required viewing. Not only did it introduce the concept of the twist ending (M. Night Shyamalan owes his career to this film) but it also helped to introduce German expressionism to the cinematic world.
My initial reaction to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was that it simply wasn’t that scary. It was certainly interesting to watch and I was happy that I was finally experiencing this film that I had previously only read about. However, the film itself was obviously primitive and it was difficult for my mind (which takes CGI for granted) to adjust to watching a silent film. I didn’t regret watching the film but I’d be lying (much like a first-year film student) if I said that I truly appreciated it after my first viewing.
But you know what? Despite my dismissive initial reaction, the film stayed with me. Whereas most modern films fade from the memory about 30 minutes after the end credits,The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has stuck with me and the night after I watched it, I even had a nightmare in which Dr. Caligari was trying to break into my apartment. Yes, Dr. Caligari looked a little bit silly staring through my bedroom window but it still caused me to wake up with my heart about to explode out of my chest.
In short, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari passes the most important test that a horror film can pass. It sticks with you even after it’s over.
For the curious with an open mind to watch with, here is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari!
Through the Shattered Lens 