HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: City of The Dead (1960)

Well, because of illness, it does look like the Horrorfest will be going into overtime.  After this, there are two more films, both of which are sponsored, so you’ll have to wait until early November to experience some pulpy adventure horror and one of the more...regrettable...sequels in a landmark super-slasher franchise.

But first, The Randomizer spat out today’s feature, a black and white story of witchcraft that features Christopher Lee, was directed by the director of both my favorite episode of The Avengers and The Night Stalker and, surprisingly, was co-produced by Milton Subotsky of Amicus fame.  So now I’m super interested!

We’ve encountered a couple of films during the Horrorfest which were designed to make American filmgoers think they were watching a British horror film.  Well, this is a film made in Britian featuring British actors performing on a hallowed British soundstage that is trying its damndest to make us think it’s an American production set in a creepy New England small town.  And, like most of these films, it fails utterly in its conceit.

Nan Barlow (a thoroughly wooden Venetia Stevenson) is doing her term paper on witchcraft, and goes to Whitewood on the recommendation of her professor, Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee).  Shortly after checking into the rather suspiciously named Raven Inn, Nan disappears.  This prompts her brother Richard (Dennis Lotis) and her boyfriend Bill (Tom Naylor) to visit the town to discover what really happened, joining forces with recent arrival Patricia (Betta St. John) to uncover a sinister cult with a penchant for sacrificing young girls.

I remember reading in a couple of books about this film.  In those books, I recall them mildly praising it for its atmosphere.  Now that I have seen it, I am confounded as to why it received praise.  It is so full of artificiality that it seemed like a product of an earlier era--hell, it seemed more like said product than some of the films I covered that were produced earlier than its 1960 release date.   It didn’t help that, save for Lee and the great character actor Valentine Dyall, none of the cast seemed capable of maintaining a convincing American accent.  Every time Lotis opens his mouth, sounding for all the world like he’s working on a particularly stale jawbreaker, I can’t take him seriously.  It’s obvious that this was shot on a series of sets, and the crew’s attempts to disguise the artificiality of the Whitewood ‘exteriors’ by dousing the whole place with a smoke machine so overzealous I was wondering if there was a brushfire perpetually going on offscreen was silly.  The villains are so cartoonish that Nan comes off as a real oblivious clot as she stumbles into her fate.  And the climax, where we learn that the shadow of the cross causes witches to burst into flame, is really silly.

I will give this film credit for one thing, though--and I’m about to enter into spoilers for a film I am not going to recommend.  So please tread carefully this next paragraph.

You see, Nan is the point of view character from pretty much the jump, and all indicators are that she will be the heroine, or at least the girl school screamer that her brother and boyfriend would have to save.  But after the forty minute mark, she is killed (after a really puzzling scene where she shows off a set of lingerie that would seem to indicate she was looking to hook up).  At first, I thought writer George Baxt was ripping off Psycho, except that Psycho was only released two months before!  I wouldn’t call it a surprising twist, as Nan is horridly oblivious to the witch coven that is planning to drive a sword through her breasts, but I will call it pretty gutsy.  If some time had been spent building up Patricia as the real female lead, I would have been really impressed.

Thankfully, Milton Subotsky decided not to follow the Anthony I. Ginnane route and ended up co-founding Amicus, a studio that I have infinite fondness for because of their series of horror anthology films...all of which embrace their Britishness instead of concealing it.

As I mentioned before, I cannot recommend this movie.  Even at 77 minutes, my attention was diverted and my nerves gotten on.

Next time (I hope I may have the energy to do both of the final films tomorrow), our sponsor is Evan from The Lurking Transmission horror anthology podcast!  Evan has chosen for me 2011‘s The Devil’s Rock, a pulpy Kiwi yarn about WWII soldiers fighting Nazi-summoned demons!

Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and the Halloween audio chapbook Wings of Fame), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

IF EVERYBODY’S DOING IT, WHY CAN’T WE: A Patreon Halloween Present

I hope everyone has been enjoying the 2019 Halloween Horrorfest.  I know my illness has caused me to stumble, but I will finish it even if the climax happens in early November.

Now the thing about doing the Horrorfest is that I haven’t been paying attention to the rest of the Domicile.  I have not recorded any podcast segments, although most of you will not notice the difference (well, those of you waiting for Thomas Deja’s Watching Episodes 2 and 4 might be a little miffed).  Even though I’ve gotten the next segment of Liberty outlined, I’ve not been writing much of anything that isn’t related to the movies I’ve featured this month. 

And my Patreons haven’t gotten anything in October, either.  Not that I don’t love everybody who reads and listens to my handiwork--I do--but these people actually back their love with money that helps keep my head above water during some rough times.  So I feel they deserve a little something extra.

So last week, I dug up ‘Wings of Fame,’ one of my dark fantasy stories that I wrote during the 90‘s (According to my notes, it was sold to an online magazine called Sinister Element, but I do not know if it actually saw publication) and sat down to record a reading of it.  To keep with the Halloween Horrorfest, it’s a film-related story.   I then reached out to Des Reddick, who is right this minute providing a score.   And this little ‘audio chapbook’ will be free to the Patreons of both the Dread Media and Domicile of Dread Patreons!

Wings of Fame will be available for download sometime in the next few days.  Anyone who is a Domicile of Dread Patron or a Dread Media Patron will be able to download it.  So if you sign up at any level before this audio chapbook drops, you’ll get it as well!

If you are interested in getting this collaboration but don’t want to sign up as a Patreon, it will be available in a couple of weeks for a dollar.  If you can’t wait, contact me through Twitter and we’ll work something out. 

This will be only the first of what I’ve been referring to as ‘Dread Domicile Productions, items that will be available jointly through both Patreons, including the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto...and wait until you see what Des and I have in store for you as a Christmas Present!

So if you’re thinking of joining either--or both!--Patreon, now’s the time!  We’ll be waiting for you....

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: Cat People (1982)

Our sponsors

Okay, sorry about the delay--as you all know, I suffer from Bipolar and Explosive Mood Disorder, and I had a bit of a problem with the low point of my bipolar cycle.  I know I have only two days left and three films to view, but I will get to them....even if that means the essay on the final film is posted on November 1st.

I’ve known one of today’s sponsors for close to thirty years, when he was kind enough to write a letter thanking me for talking up his inking on a Superman story.  Now he is part of one of comicdom’s Power Couples, a writer/artist combo that has produced not only great original works through their Paper Films Imprint but put their mark on some of the iconic characters over at DC, including Power Girl, Harley Quinn (all you guys who swoon over Margot Robie in Suicide Squad owe these guys a debt you cannot repay), Jonah Hex and Wonder Woman, who they’re presently writing for the 100 Page Walmart Monthly line.  They’re also about to team Harley with the Birds of Prey in an upcoming miniseries this February.  I’m talking about my pals Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner.

Jimmy and Amanda made an interesting choice for this leg of my marathon.  It’s a remake of a film I covered last Halloween Horrorfest most positively.  Its director is someone I have great admiration for.  And it has what is, in my mind, the Greatest Theme Song Ever Written.  We’re talking about Paul Schrader’s 1982 interpretation of Cat People.

I usually am very grumpy when it comes to modern remakes--but there are times when I accept that the reason for remaking the property is valid, and this is one of them because Schrader chooses to focus this film not on Oliver (John Heard), in this incarnation the curator of the Audobon Zoo in New Orleans, but on Irena (Nastassja Kinski at the height of her Nastassja Kinski-ness).  As such, this film becomes less about sexual jealousy and more about accepting your sexuality, no matter how fucked up it may be.

Schrader makes several changes to the original, but for the most part they work in amplifying his themes.  Utilizing New Orleans, which has both a slower pace and a more sensual reputation, was a wise choice and changing the main location from an engineering firm to a zoo nicely collapses some of the running around that the original had.  And introducing a new character in Peter (Malcolm MacDowell, who actually looks similar enough to Kinski that you buy them as supernatural siblings) allows him to do the majority of the mayhem, allowing us to be sympathetic to Irena for almost the entire two hour running time.  The changes work so well, in fact, that the one major sequence that Schrader insists on being faithful to the original actually feels--justifiably so--like it came from another movie and doesn’t seem to make any sense in this Irena’s character arc.

The cast is pretty much top notch, even though Heard’s Oliver sometimes comes off as a creeper--when O’Toole said, “I’ve never seen you this obsessed before,” I just vigorously nodded my head.  In addition to some of people I’ve already mentioned, there are great turns by Ruby Dee, Ed Begley Jr. and Frankie Faison.  Lynn Lowery, who I adore, is also in it....but she seems to be there to strip and get her breasts out, so I don’t think this is one of her prouder moments.

I should probably mention the nudity.  There is loads of nudity, and it seems like every woman below a certain age (and Heard and MacDowell) was required to take off their clothes if they wanted to be in this movie.  In most cases, it’s kind of clinical.  Schrader seems to make a connection between how frequent Irena gets nude and how in tune she is with her true nature--in fact, the most disturbing thing in the film to me is a sequence that ends with a glimpse of a dirty, nude Kinski with blood all over her mouth screaming at Heard, ‘Don’t Look At Me!’.  Oddly enough, this film has a fairly notorious topless scene with Annette O’Toole--and yet, I found the scenes of her in her zookeeper outfit with her hair done up in braids far sexier than seeing her in her panties (of course, to be fair, this happens in the middle of that scene I mentioned where Schrader emulates a famous sequence from the original, so I was kind of out of the film already wondering what that sequence was doing here...).

Of course, this being the 80‘s, Schrader takes full advantage of practical effects, although I liked some sequences where the transformation is handled more prosaically.  He wisely holds off the full money shot of man-into-panther until the last act and, while it’s not up to American Werewolf or The Howling, it is cool.

I know the ending has been pilloried in the past, but I think people might have misinterpreted it.  There’s a specific choice Irena makes, and Oliver’s final solution is not some perverse ‘have my cake and eat it too’ but him moving on and making a life with someone he can sleep with without worrying about being mauled by a panther.

It also has the Best Theme Song Ever for a film.  You can keep your Queen, your Dokken, your Burt Bacharach...David Bowie’s ‘Cat People (Putting Out Fire)’ is Da Greatest Shit, and I will fight people over it.

This is a case, like the 1988 Blob, where a remake uses the original story as a framework to explore another aspect of the scenario.  It’s well done, well acted and doesn’t feel its two-hour length.  I recommend it.

There’s no sponsor for the next film, so the Randomizer presented to me 1960‘s City of The Dead, known primarily in the States as Horror Hotel.  This film was directed by the guy who directed The Night Stalker, John Llewellyn Moxey, so I'm fairly interested in this tale of modern day witchery.

Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: The Exorcist III: Legion (1990)

Today’s sponsor is a man who’s familiar to lovers of adventure, movies and the seven-year wonder that was Better In The Dark, someone I’m proud to call my brother, the one and only Derrick Ferguson!  Derrick has way too many laurels for him to rest on, but you can learn all about him and his prodigious body of work on Ferguson Ink!

Derrick chose for me a sequel to a film we covered earlier in this year’s Horrorfest, The Exorcist III: Legion.  This film has quite a rep as being as scary as the original, and was the second of only two features directed by the man who wrote the novel this film was based on, William Peter Blatty...so I was intensely curious.

Here’s the thing...there are moments where I think it’s a shame Blatty didn’t make more films because he’s amazing, and there are moments where I think Blatty is legitimately insane because of some of his choices.

The film follows Lt. Kinderman (George C. Scott, taking over from Lee J. Cobb in the original) as he investigates a series of murders that reflect the M.O. of the Gemini Killer, who was executed fifteen years ago.  Well, that execution apparently happened concurrent to the death of Father Karras (Jason Miller), and certain forces planted the Killer’s soul in Karras’ body.  Now having repaired himself, the Gemini Killer (Brad Dourif) is killing again, targeting people connected to that exorcism and tormenting Kinderman with rambling monologues....except he’s been confined to a mental hospital and bound in a straitjacket.  How is he getting out to commit these murders, and how did he get ahold of those scary-ass bone shears?

There’s a lot I like in this film.  It’s very quiet, relying on its actors to establish its increasingly unsettling mood.  With the exception of one body in the third act, there’s no on screen violence; it’s all described in dialogue, mostly by Scott and Dourif who know how to deliver some of these lines.  There is almost nothing in the way of jump scares, to the point where the soundtrack sounds way out of place with its music stings.  And there is an overwhelming sense of watching a man’s last nerves torn apart, something Scott effectively conveys throughout the film’s running time.  Blatty knows that violence itself isn’t what scares us, but that the violence happens to someone we know; by the time Nurse Keating (Tracey Thorn) is attacked in what is arguably the most famous scene of this film, we’ve seen her several times before and have gotten attached to her--which makes the shot of the Gemini Killer coming after her with those bone shears all the more upsetting.

But then there’s stuff like that dream sequence that’s partially shot in Grand Central Station where Patrick Ewing doles out tarot cards and the kid who was murdered in the first act tells Kinderman he misses him, or the scene of the woman crawling across the ceiling of the hospital, or that wackdoodle exorcism that was apparently added at the behest of the studio.  Those scenes seem to come from an entirely different film, and they disrupt this atmosphere of bleakness and despair that Blatty skillfully created.  The final twenty minutes in particular seems not to belong with the first ninety, as we’re treated to Nicol Williamson (who appears out of nowhere) being covered in snakes, holes opening up in the floor and Scott being flung around the room like a rag doll.

I should mention Brad Dourif, who shows up as the real inhabitant of Father Karras’ body halfway through, stares down Scott and proceeds to take possession of this film.  Sure, some of his monologues are the kind of Movie Ka-Razy that make me cringe, but the bulk of it is fascinatingly creepy.  He is the MVP of this film, hands down.

I should also mention the appearance of one Zohra Lampert, who plays Kinderman’s wife.  To me, Lampert will always be the Goya Lady, the spokesman for a company that sold a variety of Latin foods.  I don’t know if those commercials were anything other than regional, but they imprinted on me something fierce.  Everytime she was on-screen, I thought ‘Goya, oh boya!’

Even though some of those weirder touches infuriated me, but the majority of the film fascinated me.  I am certainly interested in the Director’s Cut that emerged in 2016, and I think it’s sad that Blatty’s experience making this soured him on filmmaking.  It is very recommended...just be ready for some unintentional silliness.

Our sponsors for tomorrow is the comic book writer/artist team who has brought to life such iconic characters as Jonah Hex, Power Girl and Harley Quinn, the masterminds of Paper Films, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  They’ve chosen for me a remake made by a favorite director of mine that also features one of the Best Theme Songs Of All Time, Paul Schrader’s 1982 version of Cat People!

Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#635

The last week of Triple Feature Month is full of regret!  First, Des and I revisit a movie I saw once in 1990 and thought was really good--but is the forgotten Jeff Goldblum serial killer/satanic thriller Mr. Frost a lost classic or a case of nostalgia buffering the pain?  Then Rich The Monster Movie Kid concludes his journey through Vincent Price Obscurities with From A Whisper To A Scream.  Then I go against my instincts and look at the sequel to Death Bell, 2010‘s Death Bell 2: Bloody Camp (Spoilers: there is no camp in any sense of the word).

The trailers are below, as are Jeff Goldblum hawking beer, Vincent Price presenting old trailers, a feature on a Korean horror game set in a school and music from August Burns Red and The Offspring!

Listen to Dread Media #635 here

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

No sponsor today, so the Randomizer has stepped in to present me with a film I’ve seen a couple of times.  I know a lot of people love it, some calling it the last great film John Carpenter ever made.  All I know is I’ve never understood why people like it so much.  It’s not that I hate it, or even dislike it more than mildly; the only Carpenter film I do not like a’tall is his ill-advised remake of Village of the Damned.  I just feel, much like Escape From L.A. or Ghosts of Mars or Prince of Darkness, that they either don’t succeed in what Carpenter intended on doing or they’re Carpenter giving us what he thinks we want rather than what he wants to give us.

So this is my third visit to Hobbs End since its release.And...I still don’t get it.

By that I mean I understand what Carpenter was trying to do.  This film is a commentary on how belief can warp reality (something that’s really relevant in this time of ‘Fake News’), and how there is really very little separating what is considered sane from insane.  And the cast, which is pretty impressive, is game, even if Sam Neill’s slipping into his native accent from time to time distracted me.  It’s just that I think Carpenter missed something in building his thesis and maybe gave us what he thought he needed to present to make his case rather than stick with what was working in the beginning.

Look at it this way...Carpenter is primarily a visceral director.  His best work is kinetic and active and full of action.  Even something like the original Halloween, which isn’t the showiest in terms of action, has a certain deliberate energy that slowly slathers the tension on until you can’t stand it.  Hell, he has freely admitted that he is a western director at heart, and his best works takes the western paradigm whole or in part and recontextualizes it into a new genre or story form.

But In The Mouth of Madness...this is unapologetically his love letter to H.P. Lovecraft much as Prince of Darkness is his love letter to Nigel Kneale.  Lovecraft’s prose is all about the fear of not knowing your place in the world and having no control over what happens to you, and there are moments in In The Mouth of Madness that convey that sense--for me, the look on Julie Carmen’s face as she returns from Sutter Cane’s cathedral or the sequence in the first act at the cafe, give me that sense that these characters know they’re thoroughly lacking in self-determination.  Carmen, in fact, is pretty damn good in the beginning of the second act, where she is slowly realizing she’s not the hero of her own story.

But Carpenter’s tendency toward visceral wins out in the end, resulting in a cavalcade of creature effects that don’t work for me.  When some of it is suggested--like when Neill believes he’s seeing Carmen sprout tentacles on the other side of the door, or the reveal that Mrs. Pickman has her...husband(?) handcuffed to her ankle--I’m down with it.  But then we get the lizard/octopus thingie in the greenhouse and Neill being chased down a long corridor by Howard Berger and Greg Nictero’s craziest creations, and he lost me.  It made the implied obvious, and just like with the last two viewing, I started to check out.

There’s also the last fifteen minutes and the payoff to the framing sequence.  The weird momentum of the film slows to a stop once we find our hero on the empty road he started his odyssey on.  As much as I appreciate the presence of John Glover and David Warner, two character actors I can never get enough of, I wonder if we really needed these elements.  The point has already been made by this time, and that last stretch is akin to Carpenter nudging you in the ribs repeatedly so you Get The Message.  And Hell, I don’t see the point of us watching Neill watching the movie based on the book that is actually the movie we’ve been watching.

I know I’m in danger of receiving a flood of replies and tweets and emails telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about and I am an Ignoramus when it comes to horror in general and Carpenter specifically.  I know I am in the (very small) minority here.  I still will recommend this film, but I also accept I may very well be on the wrong side of pop culture history here.  It’s a cross I have already accepted I am bearing.

Tomorrow’s sponsor is one of my best friends, my brother in all respects except blood, the man who shared the mike with me on Better In The Dark, Derrick Ferguson.  Derrick has chosen the sequel to a film I expounded upon earlier in the Horrorfest, 1990‘s The Exorcist III: Legion or, as I’m sure William Peter Blatty referred to it, Legion.  I’ve never seen this one, and I’m actually kind of excited to visit this.

There is only one slot left for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: The Prowler (1981)

Our Sponsor

Today’s sponsor hails from Croatia and is a man who loves spreading the love of horror around, krešimir zvonarić! 

Kresimir has chosen a film that was made just as the slasher film was making its mark on pop culture and features some legendary effects from Tom Savini, The Prowler. 

This film has something of a reputation, partially due to Savini’s effects (which are pretty Savini-esque, although Tom saved the best effect for last), and partially due to the striking appearance of its slasher, dressed as he is in an army uniform and a camouflage hood, dragging a Fuck-Off Pitchfork around.  But there are other things that I think makes it stand out from the other low-budget slashers that flooded theaters in 1981.

A big part of it is its overall look.  The film was shot in Cape May, New Jersey, and director Joseph Zito takes full advantage of the distinctive Victorian architecture of the town.  The film just looks better than its million dollar budget would indicate, and it really pulls off its WWII-era prologue well.  As such, it has a classier feel than some of its slasher film contemporaries. 

I also think some of it is just Joseph Zito’s direction.  Zito--who will go on to direct some fondly remembered actioners--has a sense of style and enlivens what could have been some derivative stuff.  Some of his choices are engaging and energizing....

....which is much needed because the script is...well, a lil’ silly.  It’s as if writers Glen Leopold and Neal F. Barbera (with three other people credited with additional dialogue and a fourth writing the ‘dear John’ letter than spurs on the initial murder) just looked at earlier slashers and said ‘let’s do that’ without thinking ‘why?’  This is the kind of film where you can identify the killer within the first fifteen minutes based solely on his/her intention as to what they’re going to do that evening.  There is a feeling of incompleteness and a sense of missed opportunities--why make the Graduating Dance an inciting incident when the killer never gets closer than the pool outside?  Why establish the importance of Major Chatham (Lawrence Tierney, of all people!) when he has one blink-and-you-miss-it nonsensical scene?  why did the killer dig up his former lover's grave and dump one of the designated victim in there instead?--that nagged at me throughout.  Luckily, the other elements were able to prevent that nagging turning into a continual dislike.

I also have to admit I got invested in some of the performances....some because they’re just out-and-out appealing actors, and some because they make good choices.  Cindy Weintraub has more charisma than is necessary for her designated victim role, and that makes Lisa a lot more alive than she needs to be...which, in turn, makes her death about halfway through a little more impactful.  Leads Vicky Dawson and Christopher Goutman bear a resemblance to P.J. Soles and Kevin Sorbo respectively, but after a few minutes they disappear into their characters and manage to breathe some life into what could have been real cardboard types.  And I would be remiss if I did not mention Bill Nunnery, who relishes his comic relief role as the Hotel Clerk so much that it made what could have been a terrible scene real good.

The Prowler is an example of how tired material can be given a lift by good choices.  It may not be inherently special, but the choices made by the director and actors, the simple decision as to where to shoot it (I shudder to think of how generic it would seem if it was shot in California as originally intended), can make it so.  I do recommend this.

Tomorrow, it’s back to the Randomizer, which has presented me with one of those films I’ve seen in the past and just not understood what everybody sees in it....so I’ll be traveling back to 1995 and walking straight into John Carpenter’s Lovecraftian love letter In The Mouth of Madness!

There is only one slot left for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: The Beast With Five Fingers (1946)

Once again, we’ve got no sponsor, so the Randomizer has dragged me back to the 40‘s again...although, thankfully, this is a film that has a reputation of being kind of good.  Of course, that reputation is as probably the best among the small lot of ‘severed hand’ horror films.

This film has a pretty decent pedigree--It’s directed by Robert Florey from a script by the great Curt Sidomak, which explains how pretty much everyone in this movie is so damn eloquent.  But I think the real star of this rodeo is Peter Lorre, who is third billed and pretty much owns this film from the moment he appears.  People are so used to the parodies of Lorre, which have permeated the culture, that they don’t realize that the man was a pretty decent actor who was slotted into certain roles because of his looks.  In this film we do see the hysterical, bug-eyed Lorre we all know in the third act...but the measured, intense performance he gives in the first two acts is what’s really impressive.

Now, to be fair, calling this a horror movie is kinda fudging a bit.  This is a mystery with a spooky element added to it by the killer to muddle the waters a bit; think of it as an adult, less frenetic and more cerebral episode of Scooby-Doo.  It also plays fair with the viewer--the two times we see the hand attack someone, we see an arm attached--so that when our heroine (Andrea King’s Julia) puts it all together, we don’t feel cheated. 

And while we’re speaking of our heroine....I want to give Sidomak credit for that character.  In the first act, Julia just seems to be the regulation girl school screamer, there to move the plot along and be saved by Robert Alda’s Bruce (he’s called Bruce throughout, even though the cast lists his character as ‘Conrad Ryler).  But it’s Julia who figures out what’s going on, confronts the killer and, when threatened, finds a way to get herself out of trouble.  I was not impressed with Andrea King up until this point, but Sidomak gives her an aspect sorely missing from other female leads, and she rises to the occasion.

Wisely, Florey keeps the severed hand offscreen until roughly the one hour mark, and the special effects are effective for the time.  There are some moments when the hand is obviously a rubber prop, but there are other moments where it scuttles along in a pretty creepy way.  As always, I can see some horror fans used to CGI and extreme gore laughing at this stuff, but it works in the context of this film.

This is a very interesting feature that shows two notable figures in the Golden Age of Studio Horror at their best and has a remarkable performance from Lorre.  I definitely recommend it.

Tomorrow our sponsor is my Croation Brother krešimir zvonarić.  He has chosen the 1981 slasher film featuring special effects by Tom Savini and shot in New Jersey, where life is cheap, The Prowler!

There is only one slot left for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon  at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: Ticks (1993)

Our Sponsor

Today’s sponsor is horror boffin and fellow New Yorker Mondo Vulgare, who expounds on all things scary at his website, Mondo Vulgare.  He also asked me to invite all of you to follow him on Twitter at @MondoVulgare! 

Mondo's choice provided me with something I haven’t had a chance to talk about so far in this year’s Horrorfest...a Giant Bug Movie in the form of 1993‘s Ticks.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: Ticks is a Rock Stupid Film, and it’s because of its Rock Stupidness that I enjoyed it.  I take great joy in films like this that acknowledge their low-brow intentions and revel in them, being proud of what they are without winking at the audience or nudging them in the ribs.  Tony Randel, Doug Beswick, and Brent V. Friedman know they’re a low budget monsta movie, don’t try and pretend it’s being done ‘ironically,’ have fun without demeaning the fans watching it, and as such, succeed in what they set out to do.

Tyler (a very young, floppy haired Seth Green) was traumatized by being lost in the woods when he was eight...so his father signs him up for a program for troubled youth run by Holly (Rosiland Allen, whose part consists mainly of tugging clothing on over her sleepwear) where they spend time in what appears to be an abandoned campsite.  This particular campsite is a little too near a pot farm which has been using a herbal steroid to grow its crop faster....and has inadvertently mutated the local wood tick population into embiggened monstrosities that eat Clint Howard, and are still hungry.

There is a peculiar cast for such a film; in addition to Green, we’ve got Alfonso ‘Carlton’ Ribiero playing the Tough Kid From The Hood, Peter Scolari playing the...Adult I Guess Goes Along To Fuck Holly, Ami Dolenz (Mickey’s daughter, who was poised to be something of a scream queen for about a minute in the 90‘s) as The Spoiled Rich Kid Who’s Stuck In The 80‘s, and Clint’s dad Rance as the local sheriff.  They’re all playing broad types (I haven’t even mentioned Ray Oriel’s Latino Stereotype Guy, who I wanted to see et by ticks something fierce), and they wisely play everything more or less straight--which I think helps make the film land better than if they decided to camp everything up.

Doug Beswick conceived of this film, and it’s obvious that his special effects for the film are the true star.  It’s slow going before we start seeing these mega-ticks, but by the time we’ve gotten to a Giant Fuck-Off Tick bursting out of one of cast members like a stripper out of a birthday cake our monster itch has been scratched.  The effects are all practical--most of the ticks seem to be stop-motion except when handled by the actors, which are puppets--and that warmed my blackened little heart.  The one thing that is strange, though, is that if you removed a couple of swear words and some sloppy gore effects, I could see this being a ‘Gateway Horror’ film like The Gate or Gremlins.

...or maybe it’s not so strange given that the film was directed by Tony Randel.  Randel’s biggest claim to fame is not only his first feature, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, but the films he contributed visual effects to prior to him becoming a director, like Escape From New York and the one-two punch of Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World.  Hellbound is justifiably considered an exceptional horror film...but instead of moving forward, Randel dove right into the depths of direct-to-video filmmaking with titles such as Children of The Night (the first film, if I recall, released by the short lived Fangoria Films), Amityville 1992: It’s About Time and the notoriously, gloriously violent Fist of The North Star before slowly reinventing himself as a specialist in kid’s pictures like A Doggone Adventure and The Hybrids Family.  Knowing where Randel ended up makes the tone of this film make sense.  If we keep in mind that he has interest in a younger audience, some of the choices in this film are logical.

I was pleasantly surprised by Ticks.  It is not a serious film, nor was it meant to be.  It’s a fairly quick watch at ninety-two minutes, has acting that is appropriate for its broad nature, and has some good special effects.  I enjoyed my time with it and, while I’m not going to recommend it as enthusiastically as Pontypool or The Exorcist, I certainly recommend it.

We’re without a sponsor tomorrow, so the Randomizer is dragging me back to the 40‘s.  Unlike Voodoo Man, however, I’ve heard of this film and know it has a bit of a rep as a pretty good film. Join me as I delve into arguably the most famous film in the small but distinctive ‘severed hand’ horror subgenre, 1946‘s The Beast With Five Fingers.

There are still two slots open for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: Pontypool (2008)

There’s no sponsor today, so the Randomizer coughed up a Canadian zombie(?) film that I never got around to seeing, but that I’d been told several times that I might like a lot.

Well, all those people who told me that were very right.

Grant Mazzy (Stephen  McHattie) is conducting his morning radio show as usual, pissing off his producer Sydney (Lisa Houle) with his provocative ways.  Mazzy is on the way down, was recently fired from a bigger position elsewhere in Canada, and apparently suffers from Seasonal Affective Disorder.  During the course of this broadcast, he finds himself reporting on a viral outbreak where the victims are compelled to kill somebody, then themselves...a virus that is transmitted through the understanding of the English language.

This is very much a two-hander between McHattie and Houle--there are other characters, most notably a doctor who provides expository dialogue (Hrant Allanak) and a young engineer who gives us a rather...graphic demonstration of how the virus develops (Georgina Reilly)--and the charm of it is how it’s focused more on the effects of surviving such a disaster than the disaster itself.  I was reminded a lot of the opening sequence of the original Dawn of The Dead writ small, and its effectiveness comes from its intimacy.  Director Bruce McDonald goes out of his way not to give us any violence, keeping the one acts committed by our heroes just offscreen enough that we don’t see their blows land, and perhaps the most unsettling scene is composed of a succession of black and white portraits that flash by as McHattie reads their obituary.  The only real special effects occur when one of our characters gets infected, sickens and ultimately dies from the virus.  MacDonald and writer Tony Burgess (adapted from his novel) know we can let our imagination--and the reactions of their actors--do all the work, since our imagination comes up with the best special effects.

I can’t emphasize enough how great the acting is.  I’ve been a fan of McHattie’s since catching the (to the best of my knowledge lost) sleazy erotic thriller Call Me in the 80‘s, and this is a magnificent performance by him.  One sequence is composed of a tight close-up of McHattie’s eyes as he listens to a live report of the carnage....and that’s all you need, because the man’s gaze tells you enough.  There’s not a bad performance in this flick, which is vital considering that Pontypool is all about cerebral, rather than visceral, chills.*

There are some who might say too cerebral--that it’s nothing but an intellectual’s wet dream of what Night of the Living Dead could be.  But given how this is a film driven by cognition, by language, I can’t see it going any other way.  This is a great horror tale that--like our earlier entrant The Haunting--knows you can appeal to the other four senses to scare us.  I definitely recommend it.

Tomorrow our sponsor is Mondo Vulgare, who maintains a webpage of the same name.  He’s chosen for me 1993‘s Ticks, directed by Tony Randel, a director with a peculiar career trajectory, in which the titular vermin become large killing machines due to some experiments performed by pot farmers.

There are still two slots open for this year’s Halloween Horrorfest.  Anyone who joins the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 or more slot not only gets bits of writing and exclusive podcasts (like the upcoming Pacific Rim Rialto and maybe a little surprise at the end of this month), but can sponsor one of those slots and choose the film I have to watch and report on!

*--No.  I have no fucking clue what that post-credit scene was all about.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2019: All About Evil (2010)

Our sponsor

Today’s sponsor is a great podcaster, a good friend and fellow Queens resident Patrick K. Walsh.  Patrick’s podcast, Scream Queenz is an amazing listen, addressing horror films and television from an LGBTQ perspective and I’ve been enjoying it for years.  Right now Patrick is neck deep in his annual Countdown To Halloween Pod-A-Thon to benefit New Alternatives NY, a great organization that helps homeless LGBTQ teens find housing, get job training, and otherwise provide emotional and physical support.  Please go to the Official Funraising Page and donate.  It’s a good cause, and you’ll be getting a lot of entertainment!

Patrick chose All About Evil, a 2010 film about a very unstable woman who inherits a movie theater.  Now, in full disclosure, I am in the process of writing a script with a movie theater as a back drop, but I suspect this has little to nothing in common with mine.  For one, this film stars Natasha Lyonne.

I really, really have a thing for Natasha Lyonne, years before a lot of people got into her for Orange Is The New Black and/or Russian Dolls.  So there may be some gratuitous squidging here.

Patrick could not have chosen a better film for this day, as it’s a natural companion piece to Theater of Blood.  but whereas Theater uses Shakespeare as its hook, All About Evil embraces Herschell Gordon Lewis.  And much like yesterday’s entry, this film exists in a slightly heightened--one could almost say ‘theatrical’--reality that dances nimbly on the line between camp and tatt.  This is close enough to what a Theater reboot would be like if the medium was film and not Shakespeare as we'll ever get and have me happy with it..

Debbie (Lyonne) has just inherited her father’s old theater, The Victoria...at least she has after she murders her mother who tried bullying and torturing her into signing a document selling it to a developer.  The murder was caught by the security cameras on a night the theater is showing Blood Feast and is accidentally shown before the feature...and the sparse audience of gorehounds think it’s an underground film.  As word of her ‘art’ spreads through San Francisco’s Midnight Movie scene, Debbie transforms herself into ‘Deborah Tennis’ (pronounced De-BOR-ah TEN-nees) and begins making snuff films with the aid of the equally bloodthirsty projectionist Mr. Twig (Jack Donner).  Before you know it, Deborah has created a whole ‘film crew’ that includes a creepy drifter (Noah Segan) and a bloodthirsty set of Wednesday Addams-esque twins (Jade and Nikita Ramsey)...and has brought suspicion on young gorehound (Thomas Dekker), who has been getting flack for his attraction to extreme horror from his school, his maybe-girlfriend (Ariel Hart), and his mother (Cassandra Peterson of Elvira fame...who is still very hot at the age of 59 when this was made).

This movie was made by Joshua Grannell, perhaps better known as the drag queen Peaches Christ, and this is his only feature film, which is a pity because he is very good.  It manages to be well shot while still remaining close enough to emulate the HG Lewis esthetic.  Grannell seems to know the best way to be camp is to take things seriously; there’s none of that winking 'it’s all in fun’ bullshit attitude that is rampant in the neo-grindhouse subgenre.  Characters that could have been parodic and wince-worthy end up being dramatic and grand in a way I really found intriguing.  Somewhere around the end of the second act, I got the sense that Debbie and her Pals were the ghoulish inheritors of The Ed Wood /John Waters Tradition of an Outsider Family Making Movies.

The gore is not surprisingly over the top and operatic, so I never took it seriously--except for the one sequence where Deborah sews shut the lips of her old co-worker Evelyn (John Waters mainstay Mink Stole) which is uncomfortable to watch.  The cast is all uniformly good; I particularly like how the relationship between Steven and his mother develops, as she initially is following the trope of ‘Da Parent Who Don’t Get It’ but does make attempts to understand her son’s fascination with this genre.  It’s a very horror-positive film, while also acknowledging negative views of the genre in a respectful way through the character of Ariel Hart’s Judy. 

And yes, Natasha Lyonne is Two Barrels of Smoking Hotness once she remakes herself as Deborah.  Supposedly she utilized bits of classic Hollywood actresses like Mae West, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis to come up with her moviemaking persona, and you can see some of that in some of her acting choices.  Lyonne wears a succession of flashy-to-the-brink-of-gaudy dresses and looks magnificent with an increasingly wide streak of white in her bronze hair.  She is definitely of the same mold as Edward Lionheart and Anton Phibes (it’s a shame there’s no possibility of a crossover, because Lionheart and Deborah would make a perfect Murder Marriage).

I suppose I should also mention that after seeing the Ramsey Twins’ deadpan performance, I am writing a movie in my head where there’s a turf war between them and Electra and Elise, the Crazy Babysitter Twins of Robert Rodriguez film fame.  Maybe I can get the Great and Powerful Soska Twins to direct!

This is what neo-grindhouse should be--it doesn’t try to cram far too much stuff into its hour and three quarters running time and nudge us in the ribs so we get every reference; it tells a coherent story that utilizes those elements of grindhouse cinema that can be used to enhance the story they’re telling.  It is a great example of what this subgenre should be.  Grannell should make more of these films--I’d particularly like to see some of the mock-movie posters that roll during the closing credits made into features.  I enthusiastically recommend it.

Tomorrow as we move into the final stretch of this year’s Horrorfest, there is no sponsor.  I have turned to the Randonizer, which chose 2008‘s Pontypool.  On one hand, it’s a zombie film...but on the other, it’s a rather unusual zombie film headed by Stephen McHattie, who I’ve always liked.

If you want to join the Patrick, Theresa and Jim Moon, Nicholas Kauffman and other great Horror Luminaries in getting me to watch a movie of your own choice during the Halloween Horrorfest, please consider joining the Domicile of Dread Patreon at the $3 Tier or greater.  Each new patron gets a free slot in this Gauntlet of Ghoulishness!  There are still two open slots left, so act fast!