HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Random Acts of Violence (2020)

Our sponsors this time around is one of the true Power Couples of Comics, a writer and an artist who have united on several landmark characters in pop culture (there’s a certain version of Harley Quinn that I bet some of you crush on that’s all their work) and now work hard on some projects of their own over at Paper Films....namely Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  Please go over to their website and check out their upcoming projects and maybe pick up some merch!

Jimmy and Amanda have also had a hand in some film and TV projects, like today’s flick directed by Jay Baruchel, Random Acts of Violence!

Todd (Jesse Williams) is a comic creator well known for a very violent, graphic comic called Slasherman.  As he struggles to find the perfect ending for his series, he embarks on a road trip with his wife Kathy (Jordana Brewster), business partner Ezra (Baruchel) and assistant Aurora (Niamh Wilson) down to a comics convention in New York.  Kathy is presently researching a book on the I-95 Slayer, a serial killer who inspired Todd to create Slasherman...and a random encounter has apparently triggered a man (Simon Northwood) to emulate some of the more gruesome murders in the comic.

And that’s the premise, and there’s a bunch more in this film’s eighty minute run time.  Baruchel is interested in something a little deeper--something that actually makes what people would assume is an obvious reveal part of this film’s theme.  At its core, if we take away the gruesome set pieces (and trust me, some of this stuff is pretty gross, especially the third act), this is about the old school argument about whether art inspires violence or the other way around...and Baruchel’s answer is ‘yes’ to both.  This is why what people will assume is a twist that’s easy to see isn’t a twist at all; this film is an oroborous, telling us that there is no pat, easy answer to this question, that it’s not a cause-and-effect but a cycle, and trying to stop one will not stop the other.

I liked how Todd is portrayed by Jesse Williams and the script as being uncomfortable and conflicted with his creation.  In fact, I don’t think there is one person in our central quartet who is made out to be enthusiastic about violence; quite the contrary, they are justifiably horrified when real bodies show up...although for me, one of the most uncomfortable moments comes at a comic book signing, where a fan presents a model based on the comic--complete with victims--and starts raving about the comic being his life (I wonder if Baruchel consciously cast a redheaded actor in this role; we know from a previous scene that this isn’t the killer, but our director sort of knows in a conventional slasher he would be an obvious red herring); it’s the enthusiasm this fan displays that is truly sickening and not the decapitated heads or the Hannibal-style sculpture of dead bodies on the side of the road.

There are a number of good performances--I’ve always thought Brewster was a much better actor than the roles she ended up in gave her, and I was really taken with the slightly manic but grounded performance by Wilson.  I appreciate that the script gives us moments with everyone so that they’re not just volunteers for the body count--even a family about to be slaughtered is given a little silent tableau of harmony that says something about these future victims.  You’ll notice that one thing Baruchel does avoid is turning every character into a jerk...we feel the carnage because we don’t hate them, even if we don’t love them.  We know just enough to know they don’t deserve the carnage about to rain down on them.

My one fear about this film is that people will take it for what’s on its surface and not look at what lies beneath its celluloid skin.  It’s got something else on its mind and, as such, there’s more an emphasis on our main protagonist and what he and his friends are going through rather than the kills.  I think it works in a weirdly meta-way, and I would recommend it.

Well, as mentioned in earlier essays, Halloween Horrorfest Is Going Into Overtime for at least two more days, and our sponsor for tomorrow is our pal Mike Blanchard of Geekcast Radio, who has chosen for what would have been the finale, the Curtis Hanson cautionary tale for expecting rich jerks, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle.  Then stay tuned to find out what horror film would be chosen by...my mother!

You can make things last beyond this Monday, folks! Just choose one of four options:
 
1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Another Kind (2013)

Our sponsor today...well, yesterday, since I’m a day behind...is one of my Domicile of Dread Patreons, a woman who I bonded with over Ranking Roger and I still suspect might be a blood sister who was separated from me through time and space by nefarious means, Angie Bulkeley!  Angie represents Horizons For Homeless Children, a Massachusetts-based organization that provides support, education and services to homeless kids and their families!

Angie chose a film from 2013 I had not heard of prior to her recommending it, Another Kind.

Patrick (Patrick Woodall) is a self-important hipster doofus who bullies his hipster doofus girlfriend Jamie (Jamie Law) and hipster doofus friend Nate (Nate Miller) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Ramedei) into embarking on a weekend-long snowshoe hike around the Catskills.  Patrick doesn’t have to worry about the fact he hadn’t planned things out or didn’t bring a map; he’s got the best equipment.  But then Jamie takes off to a hotel--back in New York City, apparently--and then they get lost, and then strange lights start appearing in the sky, then Patrick ends up in a coma with a weird wound under his hipster doofus sherpa cap, and...well, let’s just say I was surprised that the closing credits didn’t reveal that the film’s real title was Another Cloverfield.

You know, I could just run you off a list of things this film did that you shouldn’t be allowed to do anymore in low budget ‘indie’ horror films.  You shouldn’t start with a big shock sequence, then followed with a title telling us we’re going back ‘___ hours earlier’. You shouldn’t give your characters the same first name as the actors to ‘increase veracity.’ You shouldn’t make all your characters annoying--except maybe one, who you know the director is going to assume we will assume will be the final girl when she’s not.  You shouldn’t have someone taking our cast into the woods not bother with something as basic as maps, and you shouldn’t have the rest of the cast go any further with him...especially since they outnumber that lead doofus three to one.  You shouldn’t have your cast’s cell phone work except, you know, when it’s convenient for it not to.  You shouldn’t drop little crumbs of weirdness without thinking how to draw those crumbs into a semi-logical whole.  You shouldn’t do found footage style shots even though the film is a conventional narrative.  Most importantly, you shouldn’t let your last survivor be one of those hipster doofuses (doofi?) that you hated and never explain what happened to the one character you didn’t hate.

Just like The Raven earlier, this film is a microcosm of what people thought would go over with the public at the time, only this time it’s low budget hipster horror instead of big budget blockbuster horror...and this one is better.  I mean, yes it annoyed the crap out of me to the point where I checked out very early, but at least it seemed sincere.  This felt like a story that director Jonathan Biltstein wanted to tell, not a story that he thought people would eat up...it’s just that I suspect he was influenced by the state of low budget filmmaking at the time.  You can see those echoes of found footage--we all seem to forget how hard it was to kill that cinematic fad back then--prompting Biltstein to make so many of the mistakes he makes.  As such, it emphasizes how little there is brought to the table in this story that’s not new; I did not make that Cloverfield joke lightly, folks.

Still, I think the film could have been salvaged if the actors rose above the material, but they can’t give the nuance needed to indicate to me they weren’t just jerks.  Laura Ramadei almost manages to do this, and Nate Miller tries in the final act, but they can’t get their characters out from under the shadow their first few scenes cast over them.  Jamie Law’s character is underwritten to the extreme.  I know this is not Biltstein’s fault, but the fact that Patrick Woodall looks uncomfortably like notorious alt-rock asshole David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven made it hard to even consider seeing things from his super-privleged point of view.

But at least the film isn’t bloated at an hour and sixteen minutes, and I got a thrill from recognizing that the footage in the first act was definitely shot on the New York State Thruway (I used to go to that rest stop when my family would drive up to Albany to see my grandmother!).  I can’t recommend this, but it’s far from the worst offender on this year’s Halloween Horrorfest Menu.

Our sponsor tomorrow/today is a man I’ve known for about thirty years and his wife, who together are one of the Power Couples of Comics, Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner!  Jimmy and Amanda have chosen a film from this year directed by Jay Baruschel, Random Acts of Violence!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest.  Right now it looks like it’ll wrap up November 2nd....but I’m open to going longer if you want.  Just choose one of four options:
 
1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

(Psst...and don’t forget tomorrow to check out the Two True Freaks Network tomorrow to check out a special Halloween Treat from the Ocadecagonagon Theater Group, Public Domain Comics Theater: Monster of The Bayous!)

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Stuff (1985)

In an unprecedented move in the history of the Halloween Horrorfest, my beloved Patreon Sean Foster decided to sponsor a second slot...and good thing, considering the utter garbage I endured yesterday, because Sean chose a film from one of my heroes and featuring one of his collaborations with New York-based actor turned right wing wackadoo, Michael Moriarty.  So let’s dive into Larry Cohen’s 1985 flick The Stuff!

David ‘Mo’ Rutherford (Moriarty with a deliciously over-the-top southern accent) has been hired by a consortium of ice cream manufacturers to discover what the hell is going on with the all-natural dessert sensation called The Stuff.  Now, we saw in the opening teaser that this white, gloopy gelatin bubbled up from the ground in a mine down in Georgia and is instantly addictive...but what we learn alongside Mo, a young boy whose family has become ‘Stuffies’ (Scott Bloom) and the ad executive who put together The Stuff marketing campaign (Andrea Marcovicci), this ‘benign bacteria’ is anything but benign; it’s actually a parasitic organism that first takes over its host’s mind, then consumes it from the inside out.  

Even though Larry Cohen was one of the writers for what would eventually become Abel Ferrera’s Body Snatchers, this is his version of the Don Seigel classic. Just as Seigel used his monster to represent Communism and the Philip Kaufmann remake covered new age thought, Cohen’s chosen as his bugaboo...well, we could say ‘consumerism,’ but let’s be honest, we’re talking Capitalism itself!  Larry’s taking both barrels of his satiric mind on the corporate greed and dishonesty that dominated the Reagan era.  Throughout the film, Mo encounters different types who could have asked the questions he’s asking now but didn’t bother; all that they cared about was that people would buy it in droves.  The executive who manufactures The Stuff (Patrick O’Neal) even admits that the people who brought this substance to his attention were already too far gone, and only thought of the profits!  This is a story not about a killer yogurt, but about how willing we are to just take anything at faith about something we want if we’re told we want it enough.

I think that’s why Cohen pointedly does not reveal what the Stuff is or what it wants...or why it looks like a certain, ummm, biological substance common to humans, or why when we see its ‘source,’ it seems to coagulate into certain phallic symbols. It’s almost as if our entropic element is the ultimate avatar of the ‘subliminal advertising’ panic that gripped the country in the late 70‘s; it wants us to think of it as the ultimate sex symbol.  The way that the commercials seen throughout the film’s ninety three minute running time are all sort of sexually charged (well, except for the one with Abe Vigoda and Clare Peller that will not be comprehensible to anybody who didn’t live through the ‘Where’s The Beef’ fad) are just being blatant about what we should already know--Capitalism is more than willing to sell you something dangerous to you by telling you using it will make you hotter, sexier and more popular.

A word about the commercials.  You might think they seem a little...forced into the film, and there’s a good reason for that: Cohen never intended them to appear in the film.  The four or five clips were intended to be broadcast on TV prior to the film’s release without any word that it was connected to a movie, which would be revealed as the release date grew closer.  New World Pictures, who financed the production didn’t felt the public would be ‘too confused’ by this advertising campaign and nixed it, so Cohen put them in the film when he was ordered to re-edit it to make it less ‘philosphical and dense.’

This is the second time Cohen worked with Moriarty (Q The Winged Serpent being their first collaboration), and while I do think it’s not their best collaboration, I think Mo Rutherford is Moriarty’s best portrayal of the four he made in Cohen's films.  There’s a line of dialogue where Mo assures one of the corporate types who is hiring him that ‘no one can be as stupid as I seem,’ and that’s the key to this performance.  In this film, Rutherford is consciously counting on those around him underestimating him to get the work done, and his personality on getting him what he wants.  The fact that he basically convinces a psychotic militia leader (Paul Sorvino having a ball and a half) to help him, even gets him to allow a former African-American cookie magnate (Garrett Morris at his most Garrett Morris-iness) to testify on his right wing radio station in spite of him being not white is indicative of the charm.  After seeing it numerous times, I’m still not sure if Mo’s broad accent is real or a calculated affection to get people to lower their guard.  It’s a bravura performance, which makes it all the sadder that he has become such a gross person in real life.

The special effects are of their time, sometimes being truly spectacular in their grotesqueness (the post-Stuff broken apart bodies are truly icky), sometimes being regretfully dated (some clumsy green screen effects), but mostly being...okay, I guess.  But then, the special effects are secondary to what Cohen has in mind; after all, if one of the people up the line questioned what the Stuff actually was, this film would never have happened.

For New Yorkers like me, there are a couple of surprising Easter Eggs, including an uncredited cameo by monologist Eric Bogosian (who goes on to star in my favorite Cohen film, Special Effects).  It almost upset me that so little of the film takes place in New York City, as Cohen was a New Yorker at heart.

I love this film like I love almost all of Larry Cohen’s productions, especially the ones set in our shared home town.  It may not be among his absolute best, but that great performance from Moriarty and the satiric grace notes make it more than viewable.  I recommend it!

Tomorrow, the last of my beloved Domicile of Dread Patreons to step into the spotlight, Angie Bulkeley, has chosen chosen for me the 2013 survival horror story Another Kind.  I know nothing about this film, so I am intrigued!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, and if you want it to go longer into November, there are other options besides becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon:
 
1) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

2) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

3) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Raven (2012)

I think we have found the one that broke me this year.  This is awful.

And to think it took almost the entire Horrorfest for me to want to tap out.

I’m serious.  I started watching this yesterday evening and got to approximately the 47 minute mark (right after John Cusask’s Edgar Allan Poe’s fiancee was teased with being buried alive by his serial killer nemesis...don’t worry, we’ll get to it), and I just couldn’t be bothered anymore; I turned off the film and devoted my energies to other, more significant actions...like lying in bed with my cat, Tabitha Da Movie Cat.

This is purportedly the story of Poe’s last couple of days, which ‘remain a mystery.’  Poe has just proposed to his rich-familied-girlfriend (Alice Eve) when he’s sent for by Inspector Fields (Luke Evans).  It seems that Poe’s fiction has inspired a serial killer, and said serial killer is fashioning his murder after mayhem in Poe’s stories, and Fields wants him to consult so they can catch the culprit.  Of course, once Poe’s girlfriend is kidnapped by the killer, the maniac forces the writer into a game--Poe has to decipher clues left for him on future bodies and print his efforts to unravel this mystery or his girlfriend dies.

This film may be set in the 19th century, but it is so 2012.  That drab-ass color palette, the ridiculously super-genius serial killer with unlimited resources and a really obvious red herring to hide behind, a minor-but-significant character whose only purpose is to be ‘shockingly’ killed at the end of the second act, a female lead who’s decorative but plucky enough to try and defy the killer, the weird lingual anachronisms (the killer is referred to as a serial killer in the headlines, even though the phrase wasn’t coined until the 1970‘s), the CGI blood and bullets whizzing towards the camera, even that last sequence that was obviously meant to run after the initial closing credits sequence featuring an abstract CGI raven and a pop song by UNKLE--it’s all of the time of its production.  Even though it’s meant to be Baltimore, the setting is generic ‘old-timey,’ with Serbia and Hungary subbing for Maryland.  I was never less than annoyed by this film, and frequently was actively angry at it.

I suppose I should mention John Cusack’s ‘star turn’ as Poe, which is...not good.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of Cusack, particularly because he is able to appeal to both male and female audiences and is, at least according to Danny Trejo, a legitmate bad-ass who doesn’t feel the need to present as a bad ass.  But it might not be that he comes off as miscast as the script by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare miscasts Poe as an action hero.  By the time this legitimate literary figure is riding a horse and engaging in a gun battle with the dark-garbed murderer, I was thoroughly checked out.  It’s a ludicrous portrayal, and it’s not over the top enough that I could laugh at it.

Oh, and the villain?  The villain sucks, a Jigsaw-manque who seems to have enough resources to build a freaking pendulum but is supposed to be a humble typesetter.

The worst thing about this is that the whole ‘serial killer inspired by Poe stories’ has been done several times, and every time these attempts have stunk on ice.  I point you to the low, low budget flick The Descendant, where the serial killer is played by Jeremy ‘Party of Five’ London and the heroine was a young Katherine ‘I Have A Stupid Face’ Heigl.  Yes, it’s just as bad, but it doesn’t pretend to be ‘lit’ry’ by setting it in period and has the good sense to be only ninety minutes--not this film’s bloated hour and fifty minutes!  Or I could point you to The Following, the ‘cult’ series that featured James Purefoy (who is Joe R. Lansdale’s Hap to me) as the killer and Kevin Bacon, wanting some of the television cash his wife got from The Closer, as the sad and pathetic hero....and that was created by Kevin Williamson, who mocked so much of the serial killer tropes he was using in that series in Scream.  Either one may be awful, but at least they’re honest about what they are....this, this is just pretentious emo doofus blockbuster shit.

I guess I’m particularly annoyed because this film was directed by James McTiegue, whose adaptation of V For Vendetta I loved.  I expected more from him, and got less...so, so, so much less.

Fuck this movie.  Just fuck it in whatever orafice would be the most painful for it.  It goes without saying that this is Not Recommended.

Our sponsor tomorrow is....well, Sean Foster bought me another Ko-Fi so I can watch a film from one of my true heroes, the great Larry Cohen.  I am so relieved that I will be watching Cohen’s second collaboration with Michael Moriarity, The Stuff...which, by the way, is the second film of this Horrorfest featuring Brooke Adams.

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, and not just because this fucking film screwed with me.  I’ll probably be doing this until November 2nd....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: Vampyr (1932)

Our sponsor today is Rich Chamberlain, maintainer of KC Cinephile, although if you’re a regular listener to Dread Media, you’ll know him as Rich The Monster Movie Kid!  Go to his site to see his own October-long celebration of horror, focusing this year on horror radio programs (be sure to check out his entry for October 25th, which presents one of the goofiest horror programs ever made, ‘The Spawn Of The Subhuman’!).

Rich has chosen Susan G. Komen, conducting research into breast cancer and providing support and help for survivors.  If you donate to SGK within the next four days, your donation will be tripled by Komen's sponsors and partner--plus you get to extend my Overtime by one more day and choose a film I will be forced to watch (see below)...that's a pretty neat deal!

Rich chose a classic that I don’t think has been seen very much, the strange, surreal Danish film by Carl T. Dreyer, Vampyr!

Allan Gray (Julian West, who looks uncannily like a pre-War Oscar Issacs) is staying at Courtempierre during his wanderings while he studies the occult.  He is having some strange dreams which, among other things, includes a dignified old man (Maurice Schutz) entrusting him with a package to be opened upon the man’s death.  The man turns out to be the Lord of a nearby estate, where Allan arrives just as he is mysteriously murdered.  The package turns out to be a book on vampirism, and Allan begins to piece together the cause for one of his daughters’ mysterious illness as the work of a vampire and her pawns.

Now, I say Allan has a dream, but the fact is Dreyer seems to willfully want to obscure whether all or part of this film is a dream--and that might be the film’s strength.  The opening sequence features some strange images like shadows moving independent of the people that are casting them, but also features some scenes that Allan should not be privy to, even though he is undisputably our POV character.  And once we get into the meat of the story, Dreyer still indulges in strange images and sequences, especially one where we see Gray witness his own funeral--from the casket!  I almost want to say the entire film is a dream, but I just can’t tell.

Now I’ll let you know upfront that the reconstruction that Critereon cobbled together from pieces of other prints is...iffy.  There are scenes that are sharp and clear, and scenes that are muddy and blurry.  And those of you who complain about slow paced films you have to read, you might want to avoid this, as there is a large section of the film composed of people reading a book of vampirism.  But there is some wonderfully weird stuff hidden within Dreyer’s hour and a quarter.  Hell, I’m willing to bet this is the only film where you will see someone buried alive in flour.

While this is a foreign language film (I think it was shot in German), the dialogue is so minimal that you can follow the story by itself...well, save for those ‘let’s read all the background about vampires, maybe this particular vampire and how to kill her’ scenes.  It could almost be considered a silent film, and a silent film that is easy to follow.

I do like how the vampire in this film is just an old woman, totally removing the sexuality aspect.  All too often, people forget vampires are parasites because they’re hella hot.  I like my vampires savage, thank you very much.

This is certainly recommended for its bizarre imagry and storytelling.  It’s one of those landmark films that is so rarely seen.  It is certainly not for everyone, but those open to a more languid tale might be satisfied.

Tomorrow is the last day we’re without a sponsor, and The Randomizer, remembering you all like it when I suffer, chose for me 2012‘s The Raven, where John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe who teams up with a detective to solve murders based on his own stories--and it’s almost two. hours. long.  Expect me to bring up a nothing little film called The Descendant (starring Katherine ‘I Have A Stupid Face’ Heigl) when discussing this one.

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, as my mother made a request that I’ll be doing on November 1st....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Creeping Flesh (1973)

It’s the penultimate no-sponsor day, so the Randomizer decided to feed my enjoyment of films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing together.  Last year I was blessed with the viewing of 1972‘s Horror Express, and this year we travel forward one year for The Creeping Flesh....and, well....sigh....

Dr. Emmanuel Hildren (Cushing) is a Victorian-era scientist who has seen better days--his daughter Penelope (Lorna Heilburn) has had to reduce staff and cut corners to keep his home solvent--but has hope he will win the Richter Prize because of the gigantic skeleton he has found in New Guinea.  Judging from the strata in which it was found, this skeleton pre-dates neanderthal man...and yet apparently had a larger brain capacity than its descendant.  An accident involving water and some New Guinean folk tales leads him to believe that the creature this skeleton derived from is the source of all evil...and he can use the flesh that has grown on a portion of the skeleton to create an anti-evil vaccine.  Unfortunately, he acts rather impulsively when Penelope discovers the truth about her father, which leads to Emmanuel and his rival/half brother James (Lee) to cross swords over the ethics of science and the source of madness.

Now, that’s the bare bones, and it’s one of these films which leads us up to what it believes is One Great Scare.  But between that set-up and that ‘One Great Scare’ (notice the irony parentheses) there’s a lot of wheel spinning and pointlessness.  You have to understand that the early 70‘s was a time where the Golden Age of British Horror panicked to avoid its obsolesence while the...Bronze Age?...of British Horror, a movement embodied by people like Pete Walker, Gordon Hessler and Norman Daniels were rapidly approaching to eat their lunch.  Some of these attempts to revitalize the Gothic, Only Lurid Aesthetic of the Golden Age resulted in some truly remarkable results, like The Blood on Satan’s Claw and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter....but sometimes it resulted in some mediocre to purely awful stuff, and this is in the later category.  There is a rather clumsy attempt to inject (no pun intended) some extra sex and violence but it does not phase the main story at all.

It’s fairly obvious early on that the emphasis of this story is the Hildren brothers and Emmanuel making this discovery, abusing it for altruistic reasons, and James trying to exploit that for his ends.  But there’s this subplot about an escaped mental patient--James runs an asylum, you see--who, of course, is a sex maniac and his crossing paths with the now inoculated Penelope, who is just a maniac, that...well, goes nowhere.  It’s as if writer Peter Spenceley realized he was running twenty minutes short and made up this guy, Lenny (Kenneth J. Warren, who reminded me of a thin Buster Bloodvessel from Bad Manners) on the spot...or maybe he created Lenny just so we could see how morally evil Penelope has become (but then, considering she goes on to strangle a maid with her manacles, it’s a moot point).  Either way, it’s a waste of time.  

For that matter, most of the Penelope subplot is pointless.  Penelope’s mother Margarite (who I thought was also played by Heilburn, but apparently was played by Jenny Runacre) went insane--which really meant she liked to sleep with people who weren’t Emmanuel--so Emmanuel had her committed.  He gives her the anti-evil vaccine to Penelope because he fears she’s become ‘insane’ as well, which prompts Penelope to let down her hair, put on her mother’s red dress and act all maniacal.  I kept expecting this development to play into the larger plot, but it doesn’t really, save for a throwaway line of James blackmailing Emmanuel.  It’s just more nothingness in a film that needed to be leaner and meaner, even at ninety-one minutes.

I should also mention that this, like The Oblong Box, is another film from this time frame that teases we’re going to see two of The Titanic Three of the 70‘s acting off each other, yet Lee and Cushing only have two fairly brief scenes together, one at the beginning and one at the climax of act two.  I was very disappointed that these two amazing actors who had amazing chemistry through collaborating personally and professionally, didn’t get more screen time as a duo.

There is a ‘One Great Scare’ that the film teases throughout its first two acts, and it’s...okay, I guess...but it’s underwhelming because director Freddie Francis stretches. it. out.  We are fairly certain what’s going to happen once we hear the first clap of thunder, but what we’ve been promised doesn’t manifest until fifteen minutes later.  Instead we watch Lee escaping with the skeleton in a carriage, then Cushing following on horseback, then the carriage getting into an accident, then Lee running to his asylum for help, and on and on and on.  It is a definite ‘Get To The Fucking Monkey’ moment and I was profoundly annoyed by it.  I was equally annoyed by the twist in the tail that was telegraphed in the first scene.

The Creeping Flesh has a really intriguing idea at its core, but like other products from this time, it falls flat with an inflated balloon of an unnecessary subplot.  I can not recommend it.

Our sponsor for tomorrow--well, today, as this is being posted late--is Rich Chamblerlin from KC Cinephile, who also contributes to Dread Media under the name Rich The Monster Movie Kid!  Rich has chosen the surrealistic Carl Dreyer classic Vampyr!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, as my mother made a request that I’ll be doing on November 1st....and if you wish to make overtime longer, you have four options:

1) You can become a Domicile of Dread Patreon at any level.  Patreons always get a free slot, as well as advance access to podcasts and other goodies!

2) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

3) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

4) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.

Meanwhile, Over At Dread Media....#687

Get ready to live through someone else’s eyes, as Des and Duane check out Brandon Cronenberg’s latest epic, Possessor.  Then Des comes back with a Dread Media Top Five of Films that influenced it!

The trailer is below, as is an interview with Brandon Cronenberg, Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott about the film, a speech on brain implants and mind reading, a documentary on corporate espionage, the Amazing Randi (RIP) discussing the debunking of the ‘paranormal’ and music from Possessor and Daybreak!

Listen to Dread Media #687 here