For tonight’s televised horror, we have the tenth episode of Night Visions!
Night Visions was an anthology show that aired in 2001. Each episode featured two different stories and was hosted by Henry Rollins.
Our first story was directed by Thomas J. Wright and is called Hate Puppet. It’s about a man who can’t figure out why everyone hates him. In some ways, this story almost seems prophetic. In 2001, I imagine it was shocking to think of someone suddenly being hated by complete strangers. Today, we just look at that type of behavior and say, “Well, that’s 2017 for you…”
Our second story, Darkness, was directed by Ian Toynton and tells the story of a man who inherits a house but soon learns that maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t.
Like many anthology series, Night Visions was always an uneven show but I think these episode are always fun to watch in October.
“The film so shocking that apparently some theater chains distributed barf bags to patrons as they entered the theater!”
When I first heard about that, I figured that had to be a PR stunt, proof that the 70s grindhouse ethos was still alive in 2017. However, upon doing a little research, I came across several reports that some audience members actually had fainted and/or became physically ill while watching this French-Belgian cannibal film. Apparently, Raw was just too raw for them.
Now, I have to admit that I may be jaded as the result of spending the last few years watching countless Italian horror films. Whether the eating was being done by zombies or an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon Rain Forest, the Italians pretty much perfected the use of cannibalism of a plot device. And, with its vibrant color scheme and its emphasis on the blood, guts, and muscles that lay directly underneath the skin, Raw certainly does feel like a bit of an homage to those old Italian films. However, the film takes a rather clinical (though, at time, dryly humorous) approach to its subject. In that way, Raw has more in common with the sleek body horror of early David Cronenberg than the films of Umberto Lenzi or Ruggero Deodato.
It tells the story of two sisters, both of whom are attending a demanding veterinary school. At first, the two sisters might seem like opposites. Justine (Garance Marillier) is the younger of the two. She is driven to succeed and, as a result, has experienced little over the course of her short life. She is not only a virgin but she is also a lifelong vegetarian. She has never tasted meat, both literally and metaphorically. She has an awkward crush on her roommate, Adrien (Rabah Naït Oufella), despite the fact that Adrien is gay. Her sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf), appears to be the wilder of the two. The dynamic between Justine and Alexa is a familiar and it’s well-portrayed by Marillier and Rumpf. Anyone who has a sister will recognize it. Despite the strong bond that the two share, it’s obvious that a good deal of Justine’s drive is the result of feeling as if she has to make up for Alexia’s lack of direction.
Of course, Alexia and Justine are not total opposites. In fact, they have one thing very much in common. They both find themselves craving human flesh. At the start of the film, Justine freaks out when, as part of a hazing ritual, she is splashed with blood and forced to eat a rabbit kidney. It leads to her getting a nasty rash, the result of food poisoning. However, as her father tells her, once an animal has tasted blood, it will never be the same again. Soon, Justine is craving both meat and sex, which leads to everything from eating raw chicken to almost biting off a guy’s lower lip. And, of course, there’s the time that Alexia accidentally cuts off her finger…
Raw is a movie that mixes cannibalism with a coming-of-age story. Imagine Mona Lisa Smile if the cast ended up eating each other. (Actually, that’s a terrible and inaccurate comparison. I just liked the way it sounded.)
Yes, Raw is graphic. If you can’t handle the sight of blood then maybe you shouldn’t watch Raw because Raw is drenched in it. That said, for me, the scene that left me trembling was when Justine got a Brazilian wax. Seriously, that had me screaming in shared pain…
Raw is a well-acted, well-directed, and often a rather audacious film. For me, the most powerful part of the film is not the mix of flesh-eating and sexual awakening. It’s the relationship between Justine and Alexia. Garance Marillier and Ella Rumpf are totally believable as sisters and every detail of their relationship rings true. You may not agree with some of the choices that the sisters make in the film but they all ring true.
I recommend Raw. I’m sure some people will find it to be disgusting but, to me, this is a well-made and intelligent film that deserves to be seen.
Watching Ed Wood’s infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space is something of an October tradition here at the Shattered Lens! And you know how much I love tradition! (Add to that, with everyone currently so excited over the Last Jedi trailer, today seems like a good time to share the greatest sci-fi film of all time.)
Some people say that this film has a reputation for being the worst film ever made. Personally, I don’t think that it deserves that reputation. Is it bad? By traditional standards of quality, I guess it can be argued that Plan 9 From Outer Space is a bad movie. But it’s also a lot of fun and how can you not smile when you hear Criswell’s opening and closing statements?
(On another note: Watch this as quickly as you can because, over the least year or so, it seems like all the films of Ed Wood get yanked off YouTube as soon as they are posted. Copyright violations, they say. Personally, I think that’s shameful. First off, Ed Wood is no longer alive. Wood had no children and his widow died in 2006, having never remarried. Whatever money is being made off of his films is not going to support his family. Wherever he is, I think Ed would be more concerned that people see his films than some faceless corporation make money off of them.)
(It seems like, every year, someone threatens to either remake Plan 9 or produce a sequel. Again, the original is all that is needed.)
For tonight’s example of televised horror, we have another episode of Baywatch Nights!
In this episode, which originally aired on October 20th, David Hasselhoff rescues a young man from drowning and, before you can say X-Files, founds out that the man is connected to …. ROSWELL! That’s right, it’s UFO time!
As with all episodes of Baywatch Nights, The Strike is silly and … well, actually, silly is the best way to describe it. But it’s just so silly that it’s undeniably fun as well.
Plus, it’s take place on the beach! Y’all like the beach, don’t you?
For today’s horror on the lens, we have a 1973 made-for-TV movie called Satan’s School For Girls.
After her sister turns up dead, Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) refuses to accept that official conclusion that it was a suicide. Instead, Elizabeth is convinced that it was murder and that it has something to do with the exclusive school that her sister attended, the Salem Academy for Women.
Well, honestly, the Salem part is a dead giveaway. I think we can all agree on that.
Anyway, this movie features a Satanic cult, an old school clique, and plenty of early of 70s fashion choices. It may be silly but it’s also definitely entertaining.
For tonight’s horror on the lens, how about a chance to watch David Hasselhoff and Angie Harmon battle the forces of dark magic?
That’s right, it’s an episode of Baywatch Nights! This episode shows what happens when Angie and David investigate the burned book that they found at the scene of an occult gathering. It’s all a little bit silly but then again, that’s the charm of the show!
As I was watching the 1989 thriller-horror hybrid Dead Calm, I found myself wondering what I would do if I found myself in the same situation as Rae (Nicole Kidman)?
You’re stuck on a yacht that’s floating out in the middle of the ocean, trying to mentally recover from the death of your child in a horrific car accident. Your only company on the boat is your husband, an experienced sailor named John (Sam Neill), and a dog who always barks at the worst possible time. One night, you see another boat in the distance. The boat is obviously just drifting and appears as if it might be sinking. Suddenly, a frantic man in a row boat approaches your yachet. He says his name is Hughie (Billy Zane) and that he’s just escaped from the other boat. He says he’s a photographer. He says that everyone on the other boat is dead and he suggests that it was due to botulism. (In real life, I had to look that up to figure out what Hughie and John were talking about. However, in this scenario, you are Rae and you understand immediately.)
John has his doubts about Hughie’s story. John says that he is going to go over to the boat on his own and check things out. You nod and then watch as John rows away. Of course, Hughie was supposed to remain locked up below deck but that doesn’t last long. Soon, Hughie is free, he’s taken control of the yacht, and you are sailing away from both the other boat and John.
“Oh my God,” I thought as I watched, “what would I do if that happened to me!? I have no idea!”
However, I then thought about it some more and I realized that would never happen to me. I mean, let’s ignore the obvious fact that I’m terrified of drowning and would never be out in the middle of the ocean in the first place. I would like to think that my husband would be smart enough to say, “There’s no way I’m leaving my wife, who is still emotionally recovering from the death of our son, alone on a boat with a total stranger who might be totally insane!” And, if for some reason, my husband wasn’t that smart, I’d like to think that I would say, “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re not leaving me alone on a boat with a total stranger who might be totally insane!”
In the past, I’ve always defended horror movies where people do stupid things by arguing that people do stupid things in real life all the time. But Dead Calm really takes it a bit too far. Maybe I could buy it if John and Rae were the type of teenagers who inevitably end up working as a camp counselor at Camp Crystal Lake. But John is an officer in the Australian navy! And Rae is Nicole Kidman!
That said, if you can accept the stupidity of the film’s premise, Dead Calm is an effective and often scary thriller. There’s really only three characters in the entire film but Kidman, Neill, and Zane all give excellent performances, though their work is often undercut by the stupid things that the movie requires them to do. Once Rae is trapped on that boat with the Hughie, Rae has to both play up to Hughie’s delusions while also looking for a way to get him out of the way so she can turn the yacht around and go back to rescue John and most of these scenes only work because of Kidman’s fierce performance (though, again, that same fierceness makes it hard to believe that Rae would ever have acquiesced to John’s decision to leave the yacht in the first place). As for Zane, he is a bundle of nonstop, psychotic energy. When he loses control, he is genuinely frightening. This is probably the best Billy Zane performance that I’ve ever seen. Certainly, he’s far better here than he was in Titanic.
Still, you have to wonder why Rae didn’t just shoot Hughie with a harpoon or a flare gun whenever he turned her back to him. There’s even an extended sequence where Hughie dances on the deck, with no idea that Rae is watching him. Considering that, by this point, there was no doubt that Hughie was a crazy murderer, it seems like Rae could have just giving him a little push overboard. It seems like that could have saved everyone a lot of trouble…
Since yesterday’s horror on the lens was The Abominable Dr. Phibes, it only seems logical that today’s should be the sequel to that film,1972’s Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Would you believe that, before I actually found the film on YouTube, I thought this film was called Dr. Phibes Rides Again? Personally, I think Rides Again sounds better than Rises Again but what do I know?
The Twilight Zone wasn’t the only televised horror anthology show to air in the late 50s and early 60s! There was also a show called One Step Beyond, which ran for three seasons. It was hosted by a man named John Newland and each episode was supposedly based on an event that may have actually occurred … an event that defied rational explanation!
The episode features one of the icons of horror cinema, the one and only Christopher Lee! Lee plays a German soldier who, during World War I, enlists a local psychic to discover whether or not his lover is being faithful to him. When he discovers that she isn’t, he uses the psychic’s powers to get revenge. Afterward, when he wants to confess to his crime, he runs into a problem. No one believes him because he was over 800 miles away when the crime occurred.
To be honest, the main reason to watch this episode is to see Christopher Lee but isn’t that reason enough? Lee was one of the great gentlemen of horror and his performance in this episode helps to show why.
Before I say anything else about 1974’s The House on Skull Mountain, I just want to say how much I love the film’s poster. Seriously, that poster is everything that you could hope for from an exploitation film print ad. Everything about it, from the lightning to the giant skull to the mansion to the unfortunate person plunging to her doom is pure perfection. I especially like the question at the bottom of the poster: “Which of these five will come down alive?”
And, to be honest, it’s actually a fairly honest poster. The majority of the film really does take place in a house on a mountain that has features that look like a skull. Of course, the skull in the movie is not quite as prominent as the one in the poster. The house actually does look a lot like the one on the poster. There’s also a lot of lightning in the movie. It’s the same basic lightning stock footage that has appeared in almost every film ever produced by Roger Corman. In The House on Skull Mountain, it’s used as a transitional device. “Is that scene over?” you might find yourself wondering. Well, don’t worry. The lightning stock footage will let you know.
One reason that I’m focusing on the poster is because the film itself is kind of anemic. In the movie, the house on top of Skull Mountains belongs to Pauline Christophe, a direct descendant of the first king of Haiti. Upon her death, Pauline’s four great granchildren are invited to hear the reading of her will. None of the four have ever met Pauline or each other. Phillippe (Mike Evans) is an alcoholic who says stuff like, “Baby, what’s the scene?” Harriet (Xernona Clayton) is fragile and nervous and it certainly doesn’t help her nerves when she briefly sees a hooded skeleton sitting a few rows in front of her on her flight to Atlanta. Lorena (Janee Michelle) drives too fast but is otherwise responsible and mature. And then there’s Dr. Andrew Cunningham (Victor French), who shows up late and turns out to be white.
“You’re the wrong color!” Phillippe snaps at him.
Andrew shrugs and says that he’ll explain it all later. He does eventually tell a story about being abandoned on the front steps of an orphanage but the dialogue is so awkwardly-written and delivered that I’m not sure if he is being serious or if he is poking fun at Phillippe’s shock.
Because Andrew showed up late, the four of them have to stay in the house for a week until Pauline’s lawyer returns to read the will. Keeping them company is the butler, Thomas (Jean Durand), and Loutte (Ella Woods) the maid.
And that’s not all! It also appears that there is a robed skeleton wandering around the house as well! Add to that, the relatives start having visions. One falls down an elevator shaft. Another has a heart attack after someone stabs doll with a pin. Could all of this have something to do with the fact that Pauline and her servants were all dedicated practitioners of voodoo?
Sad to say but the House on Skull Mountain is pretty dull. The film does provide a brief history lesson concerning how Haiti was the only nation to be formed as a result of a slave rebellion and how the real-life Henri Christophe went from being a slave to a king but the film doesn’t really do much with the information. It’s tempting to look for some sort of subtext in the film’s plot but it’s really just not there. Much like Andrew being the only white member of a historically important black family, the history of Haiti and the actual origins of Haitian voodoo are elements that are brought up and then quickly abandoned. There is one good and lengthy voodoo ceremony but otherwise, the whole film is almost all filler. When it’s not showing us the same lighting stock footage, it’s showing us Andrew and Lorena wandering around Atlanta.
Through the Shattered Lens 