6 Trailers For The Tuesday Before Halloween

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s a holiday and you know what that means!

Or maybe you don’t. Sometimes, I forget that not everyone can read my mind. Anyway, I used to do a weekly post of my favorite grindhouse trailers. Eventually, it went from being a weekly thing to being an occasional thing, largely due to the fact that there’s only so many trailers available on YouTube. Now, Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers is something that I usually only bring out on a holiday.

Like today!

So, here are 6 trailers for the last week of October!

Last House On The Left (1972)

“Two girls from the suburbs. Going to the city to have …. good time….” Wow, thanks for explaining that, Mr. Creepy Narrator Dude. That classic tag line about how to avoid fainting would be imitated time and again for …. well, actually, it’s still being imitated. This was Wes Craven’s 1st film and also one of the most influential horror films of all time.

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Speaking of influential horror movies, the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is almost scarier than the film itself!

3. Lisa Lisa (1977)

I love this trailer! Can you guess why?

4. Ruby (1977)

Ruby, starring Piper Laurie! I’m going to assume this was after Piper Laurie played Margaret White in Carrie. Don’t take your love to town, Ruby.

5. Jennifer (1978)

Jennifer was another film that pretty obviously inspired by Carrie. In this one, Jennifer has psychic control over snakes. So, don’t mess with Jennifer.

6. The Visitor (1979)

Finally, this Italian Omen rip-off features Franco Nero as Jesus, so it’s automatically the greatest film ever made.

Happy Weekend Before Halloween!

Horror Book Review: The Visitor by Christopher Pike

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1995 Christopher Pike novel, The Visitor, is a strange one, even by the very strange standards of Christopher Pike.

Mary is a high school student who has taken up smoking and general cynicism in response to the tragic death of her boyfriend Jerry. Jerry was shot and killed by a school security guard who, it is believed, then shot himself out of guilt for having accidentally killed Jerry. The truth of the matter is that the security guard came across Mary and Jerry while they were breaking into the school so that they could count the votes for homecoming queen to see whether or not Mary won. (And, of course, Mary totally won.) A struggle with the guard led to the guard shooting Jerry and then Mary shooting the guard! No wonder Mary is struggling with guilt and now spends her time lying, half-undressed, on Jerry’s grave.

An attempt to contact Jerry via a séance goes terribly wrong after a spirit says that Mary has “lived before” and that she used to claim to have God-like powers. Things get even stranger when Mary meets Tom, the new kid at school who has white-blonde hair and who has secrets of his own, all linking back to Mary’s past. What are those secrets? Well, let’s just say that it all links back to aliens and secret powers and there’s some “ancient astronauts as Gods” silliness and eventually, Jerry is brought back to life but he’s kind of whiny and leaking embalming fluid all over the place and Mary has to make a decision about how to deal with all of these weird complications. But it also turns out that there’s more to Mary’s situation than even Mary originally realized and the entire book ends with a mind-screw that leaves you wondering who killed who and who might be an alien and who might be human….

Seriously, this is one weird book! There’s a tendency among some to file Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine together but Pike’s books were always a hundred times darker and more macabre than Stine’s. Whereas Stine’s books usually involved good kids in bad situations, Christopher Pike specialized in writing about bad kids dealing with uniquely Hellish problems. If Stine’s books usually only featured one or two murders and a lot of misunderstandings, Pike specialized in books in which entire communities were destroyed and people really had absolutely no control over their fates. In The Visitor, no one escapes unscathed.

The world of Christopher Pike was a dark one and that’s certainly the case with The Visitor. Does the book always make sense? Not really. With its combination of aliens and zombies and ghosts and mysterious white-haired teenagers, the plot plays out like a uniquely demented dream. It makes for an entertaining read. And, in the end, the book provides an important lesson. There’s nothing wrong with waiting a day to find out how the homecoming election went. Don’t break into the school to count the votes yourself. Nothing good ever comes from that!

6 Trailers For The Sunday Before Halloween

Posted on October 27, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s a holiday and you know what that means!

Like today!

So, here are 6 trailers for the last week of October!

Last House On The Left (1972)

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Speaking of influential horror movies, the trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is almost scarier than the film itself!

3. Lisa Lisa (1977)

I have actually never watched this film but I love the trailer. Can you guess why?

4. Ruby (1977)

Ruby, starring Piper Laurie! I’m going to assume this was after Piper Laurie played Margaret White in Carrie. Don’t take your love to town, Ruby.

5. Jennifer (1978)

Jennifer was another film that pretty obviously inspired by Carrie. In this one, Jennifer has psychic control over snakes. So, don’t mess with Jennifer.

6. The Visitor (1979)

Finally, this Italian Omen rip-off features Franco Nero as Jesus, so it’s automatically the greatest film ever made.

Happy Weekend Before Halloween!

Horror Film Review: The Visitor (dir by Giulio Paradisi)

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Do you want to see a strange horror film?

Just check out The Visitor, a 1979 Italian film that has recently been re-released by Drafthouse Films and occasionally shows up on TCM. In many ways, The Visitor is a total and complete mess. But, as is so often the case with Italian horror films, that very messiness — combined with some genuinely imaginative narrative and directorial choices — serves to make The Visitor into one of the most memorable films that you (possibly) have never heard of.

Like many of the Italian exploitation films released in the 70s and 80s, The Visitor is a rather blatant rip-off of a successful American film. What makes The Visitor unique is the amount of different movies that it rips off. The Visitor takes films that you would assume had no connection and mixes them together to create something wonderfully odd.

Franco Nero as Jesus in The Visitor

Much like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Visitor opens with the idea that intergalactic beings have been visiting Earth for centuries and are subtly influencing the development of humanity. The Visitor literally opens with Jesus Christ (played by Franco Nero!) sitting on a satellite and telling a version of the creation story to a bunch of bald children. He explains that, long ago, he battled an evil intergalactic demon known as Sateen. Sateen (who, the film implies, is better known on Earth as Satan) was eventually blown up but his genes were spread throughout humanity. The bald children surrounding him are the descendants of Sateen. Whenever one of them is born, Jesus sends an old man named Jerzy Colsowicz (played by director John Huston) to Earth so that Jerzy can bring the child to the satellite. Of course, whenever Jerzy isn’t kidnapping kids for Jesus, he spends his time hanging out in a psychedelic dimension.

Yes, you did read that correctly.

This is where Jerzy lives.

Once you get past the intergalactic part of the story, The Visitor is a pretty obvious rip-off of both The Omen and Damien: Omen II, with the main difference being that the demon child here is not a cherubic little boy but instead is a rather bratty 8 year-old little girl named Katy (Paige Collins). However, Katy is not the Antichrist. Instead, her job is to mate with a male child who also has Sateen’s genes and then her baby will be the Antichrist. In order to get this male child, Katy is pressuring her mother (Joanne Nail) to have sex with businessman Raymond Armstead (Lance Henriksen, who was also in Damien II: The Omen) so that Katy can have a half-brother to mate with. (Ewwwwwwww!) Raymond is a follower of Sateen and, adding to the film’s already odd feel, he also happens to own a basketball team.

(So, along with everything else going on, The Visitor also features a lot of basketball footage, which I guess would be exciting if I knew anything about basketball.)

Despite being a pretty powerful figure in the Sateenist hierarchy Raymond is not the head Sateenist. No, the head Sateenist is played by Mel Ferrer, an actor who was once married to Audrey Hepburn and who will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched an Italian horror film. (You can spot Ferrer in Zombie Holocaust, for example.) Ferrer and the other Sateenists are all old, distinguished looking white men who spend all of their time meeting in an ornate corporate boardroom.

So, Jerzy comes down to Earth to, with the help of a nanny played Shelley Winters, try to kidnap Katy but, for some reason, he doesn’t just do that. Instead, he spends most of his time just watching Katy do destructive things.

Much as in The Omen, anyone who gets too close to discovering the truth about Katy ends up dying an elaborate and bloody way. Often times, their death involves black crows, who the film suggests might actually be all of those little bald kids in animal disguise. So is Jesus sending those crows to kill people? Seriously, this movie is weird.

Beware the Crows

Meanwhile, Katy’s mom is having doubts about both Raymond and her daughter. She even goes and talks to her ex-husband, an abortionist who is played by yet another film director, in this case Sam Peckinpah. Katy gets annoyed with her mom and, after happening to come across a gun hidden away inside of a birthday presents, shoots her in the back and leaves her paralyzed.

And did I mention that Katy is telekinetic, much like Carrie? That’s right! During my favorite scene, Katy goes skating at the local mall’s ice rink and, after a group of boys bully her, she uses her powers to send those bullies flying all over the mall. Oddly enough, nobody seems to notice this chaos. Except, of course, for Jerzy who just stands off in the corner and watches without doing anything…

Seriously, I love The Visitor. Along with being surprisingly well-acted and visually inventive, the film is just so weird! In many ways, it epitomizes everything that I love about the old Italian exploitation films. While it is rather shameless about ripping off other movies, the film still brings its own unique spin to everything.

Normally, I’d say that The Visitor is a good film for Halloween but you know what? Anytime is a good time for an Italian horror film!

Welcome

Film Review: Win Win (dir. by Thomas McCarthy)

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I watched the pilot episode of Game Of Thrones, I got very excited when I saw that Thomas McCarthy was credited as the director. Now, McCarthy isn’t a household name but chances are, you’ve seen him. He played the plagiarist journalist in the final season of The Wire. He was John Cusack’s romantic rival in 2012. He was nominated for an Academy Award for co-writing the Pixar film Up. However, McCarthy has received most of his critical acclaim as the director of low-key, character dramas like The Station Agent and The Visitor. I have to admit that I was shocked to see McCarthy’s name linked to Game of Thrones because, with the exception of Peter Dinklage, it appeared to have nothing in common with his previous films. Well, turns out that I wasn’t the only one who thought that because apparently, despite McCarthy being credited as the director, the majority of the pilot was actually reshot (quite well) by Tim Van Patten.

So, you might not be seeing Thomas McCarthy’s work on television but fortunately, you can still catch it in the movie theaters. McCarthy’s latest film is a surprisingly poignant comedy called Win Win.

InWin Win, Mike (played by Paul Giamatti) is an attorney who works and lives in small New Jersey town. Mike is married to Jackie (Amy Ryan), owns a big house, helps to coach the high school’s mediocre wrestling team, and can’t pay his bills. Rather than let his family know that he’s on the verge of going broke, Mike instead becomes the legal guardian of one of his clients, the increasingly senile Leo (Burt Young). In return to acting as Leo’s guardian, Mike receives a payment. He also promises to take care of Leo so that Leo doesn’t have to enter a nursing home. However, since Mike is played by Paul Giamatti, it doesn’t come as much of a shock that Mike promptly moves Leo out of his home and into the nursing home. Leo, however, is too senile to understand that he’s being taken advantage of and all of Mike’s second thoughts disappear as soon as he gets the first check.

However, things get complicated once Leo’s delinquent grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) shows up looking for his grandfather. Mike takes Kyle to see Leo and soon finds out that Kyle’s mother (and Leo’s daughter) Jill (Melanie Lynesky) is currently in drug rehab and Kyle has nowhere to go. Reluctantly, he and Jackie agree to allow Kyle to stay with their family until his mother gets out of rehab.

While Kyle, at first, seems to just be an inarticulate drop out, he quickly reveals to himself to actually be a very intelligent (if very angry) young man. Even better, from Mike’s point-of-view, Kyle is a former wrestling champion. Mike arranges for Kyle to enroll in the local high school and join the wrestling team. With Kyle now on the team, they actually start to win matches. Suddenly, everything is starting to look up for Mike. He’s a town hero, Jackie starts to bond with Kyle, and Leo remains unaware of how Mike is taking advantage of him.

And then, Kyle’s mom shows up and everything pretty much goes to Hell.

Win Win is the latest entry in the genre of film known as Paul Giamatti Has A MidLife Crisis. The fact that the film remains interesting despite being the thousandth time that we’ve seen Giamatti have a midlife crisis is a tribute to both McCarthy’s intelligent script and Giamatti’s excellent lead performance. Giamatti could play these roles in his sleep and the fact that he doesn’t is what makes him such a consistently interesting character actor. Giamatti gets strong support from Shaffer and especially Ryan. However, my favorite performance in the film came from Bobby Cannavale, who plays Giamatti’s loyal if somewhat dull-witted best friend. Cannavale shows that you can give a very smart performance playing dumb and hopefully, his performance here well lead to greater things for him.

Now, I have to admit — I know nothing about wrestling. Actually, I know less than nothing about wrestling. And, to be honest, I really don’t care if I ever know anything about it. Yet this film, which centered around wrestling, held my attention because McCarthy, as a director, uses the wrestling story to portray something universal. His direction here is never flashy nor is it technically perfect. (To be honest, I counted three appearances by the boom mic.) McCarthy isn’t a polished director but that lack of polish works to this film’s advantage. He may not have been the right director for Game of Thrones but he was obviously just what Win Win needed.