Halloween 2025: October 16th

 

Kuroneko (1968)
Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko

Near the start of this year's Halloween Horror-fest Blog-a-thon, I talked a little bit about the history of scary movies about cats. In my typically Anglo-centric, ignorant American fashion, I completely forgot to mention that Japan devoted an entire fuckin' subgenre to scary cat movies. They are called kaibyo eiga and Japan has been making them since at least 1910. Ghostly cats obviously first appeared in Japanese folklore and stories about them first became popular in Kabuki theater. As a cinematic genre, these monster cat movies took off in the thirties, reoccurred in waves about every ten years, and finally died out in the sixties. That's when what is the best known example in English-speaking territory arrived. After making psycho-sexual Japanese folk tale “Onibaba” in 1964, director Kaneto Shindō would put his own spin on the ghost-cat movie with “Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko” – “A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove” – which is simply known as “Kuroneko” abroad. 

Set in the same Warring States era as “Onibaba,” the film begins with a similar set-up. Hachi is off at war. Yone and Shige, his mother and wife, have been left alone. A group of samurai descend on their house, raping and killing them both. Afterwards, both women are resurrected as predatory ghosts who can transform into black cats. They begin to lure every samurai that comes across the gate at Rajomon back to their lair, seducing each one and then tearing their throats out.  On the battlefield, Hachi kills an enemy general and presents his decapitated head to samurai governor, Minamoto no Raiko. Hachi is made a samurai himself and renamed Gintoki. Raiko then tasks him with the mission of killing the ghost cat women that have been knocking off samurai near-by. Shortly after encountering them, Gintoki recognizes the spirits as his wife and mother. Since they've pledged to kill all samurai, the spectral women are conflicted about what to do next. Passion, honor, and a thirst for vengeance ensue.

While “Onibaba” had some extremely moody black-and-white cinematography of its own, “Kuroneko” takes the same visual style much further. The opening sequence, devoted to the women's violation and murder, takes place entirely without dialogue. From the moment the ghostly cat-women appear, the film is arrested by a dream-like tone of other-worldliness. The spectres are dressed all in white, appearing in a shadowy world of high contrast darkness. Their abode is depicted almost as an expressionistic set, vague and square interiors that stretch on into infinity. Figures disappear with a look, their appearances change just as quickly. During confrontations, the ghost women tumble through the air like the bad guy in a kung-fu movie. By the final act, every inch of ground under the actors' feet is covered with swirling white fog. It looks fucking cool, is my point. 

Such stylized visuals immediately evoke the feeling of a traditional folk tale. And the characters in a folk tale don't know they are in a folk tale. There were no cell phones in 16th century Japan, so each samurai falling to the ghost women in the exact same fashion is understandable. When Gintoki comes across two ghostly maidens who happen to look exactly like his dead wife and mom, he must wait several minutes to mention that. When certain conditions of the ghostly curse are broken, this must be explained via extensive dialogue. Most egregiously, the climax involves a strange old woman knocking on Gintoki's door and him letting her in, buying her story when she goes “Oh yeah, I'm totally not the vengeful ghost that's been pursuing you the whole movie.” “Kuroneko's” script is well aware of its status as a traditional Japanese ghost story. Minamoto no Raiko was a real historical figure who is also the main character in a well known myth featuring some crazy monsters. He mentions this to Gintoki, assuring him that tall tales are more politically advantageous than the mundane truth. How this relates to the movie's own relationship with the stereotypical folk tale structure it invokes, I'm not sure. 

In fact, there's a great many things about “Kuroneko” of which I am not sure. Ghost stories about vengeful female spirits are very common all across Japan and Asia, if that wasn't already obvious. As it is any time a horror film features women using their sexuality as a weapon against men, using the desire they inflame in the opposite sex to destroy them, a feminist reading is likely to emerge. While all the samurai that came before him are total assholes who get what's coming to them, Gintoki seems to be a nice enough guy. He loves his wife, is faithful to her, and wants to be with her. Their romance is destined to be doomed and Gintoki's eventual fate, perhaps, is a commentary on the idea that even “good” men benefit from a patriarchal system that punishes women. Like so many revisionist samurai movies made in the fifties and sixties, the inevitable feeling to “Kuroneko”s ending once again suggests that the concept of Bushido honor was actually a self-destructive trap for all who believed in it. 

Whatever meaning can be taken from “Kuroneko,” one thing is for sure: Kaneto Shindō fuckin' hated samurai. If the same guy makes two separate movies in which a pair of women repeatedly lure in and murder a specific type of warrior from his country's past, that makes his feeling on that particular cultural figurehead unambiguous. Ultimately, I think I found the repressed sexual desires emerging as murderous instincts of “Onibaba” a more satisfying experience than the more straight-forward ghost story structure of “Kuroneko.” Nevertheless, it's certainly a gorgeous movie. Its images are striking and unlikely to be forgotten any time soon while its dream-like tone successfully puts a spell on the viewer. Not as much evil ghost cat shenanigans as the title might make you expect though. [7/10]

Spider (1992)
Zirneklis

From 1944 to 1991, the nation of Latvia was under occupation by the Soviet Union. This brought with it strict regulations over what could and could not be depicted in art. Latvian cinema absolutely existed during this time, with a number of historical epics and crime dramas being produced during those years. However, as in many other Soviet ruled nations, topics of the macabre and supernatural were off-limits. After the establishment of independence in 1991, the first Latvian horror movie would be produced. "Zirneklis," or "Spider" in English, was directed by Vasili Mass and would be released in 1992. It's an artsy fever dream full of nudity and weird sex. One imagines this must have felt like a release of pent-up, repressed fantasies and desires after forty years of Soviet censorship. 

Vita is a young, virginal maiden living in the Latvian countryside with her mother. While attending school, she is approached by Albert, a local artist that has been commissioned by a nearby church to paint a religious scene. He wants Vita to be his model for the Virgin Mary. Upon arriving at Albert's studio, she is met by other nude models, collections of spiders, and erotic paintings. The man begins to hold a strange sway over her, leading Vita to have vivid nightmares and erotic fantasies. While visiting a castle in the countryside, Vita meets a young man that also inflames her lust. As her dreams grow stranger, the young woman finds herself pulled between different men with different intentions for her. 

I suppose it says a lot about the nature of European horror films throughout the sixties and seventies that a movie as aggressively weird and willfully transgressive as "Spider" does not seem as unusual to me as it once might have. The film follows the tradition of erotic, dream-like, dark fairy tales about young women coming into maturity, discovering they are desired, and navigating a world that wants to own and control them while exploring their own budding imagination. "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" and Borowczyk's "La bete" are the most obvious influences. A scene, where Vita imagines herself prone and naked on a gallows, might be inspired by Laraz' "The Coming of Sin." You can see traces of Vlacil, Franco, and Zulawski here. I fell into "Spider's" groove quickly, understanding immediately that this would be the kind of movie that traipses between dreams, fantasies, visions and reality without warning. 

Some of those dreams are quite a sight to behold, to be fair. The title of "Zirneklis" is presumably a metaphor for the various webs of desire that Vita finds herself entangled in. More literally, it refers to the big-ass spider that is the primary reoccurring figure in her erotic nightmares. We first see it holding her nude figure in its eight arms, almost tenderly. Later, it attacks her in bed and tries to spread her legs apart. This proceeds the film's most infamous sequence, where the girl and the Volkswagen sized arachnid consummate their relationship. When a pulsating ovipositor appears on-screen, the film officially straddles – so to speak – the line between the arthouse and a notorious subgenre of hentai. The audience is never entirely certain if the maiden is a willing participant or not as the giant sized creepy crawler takes her doggy style (spider style?), adding to the idea that she is adrift in her own stimulated fantasy. Say what you will about "Spider's" obvious relationship to the artsy-fartsy kinky Eurohorror freak-outs of the past, I've never seen that before. "Earth Vs. the Spider" sure didn't go there. The film showed me something new. 

The merits of whatever substance “Spider” has is debatable. The pacing is sleepy, the narrative is loose. Before the end, the grotesqury on-display gets a tad tedious. The story of a young girl defining her own sexuality, away from the wants of the men around her, still ends with her being molded by the fantasies of others. Choosing the right guy is her happy ending, not self-realization. Aurelija Anuzhite is gorgeous and wide-eyed, in such a way that you can project your own fantasies and feelings onto her easily. On the merits of style, “Spider” has a lot going for it. Gvido Skulte's cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. Almost every frame of “Spider” looks like it could be a painting. The lighting is perfectly composed in each shot to be warm, glowing, like a dream come to life. A moment when Vita imagines one of Albert's paintings coming to life is stunning, almost Bosch-ian in the depth of its color and the decadence on-screen. When the setting switches to an aged castle in the last half, the movie leans fully into a shadowy ambiance. Visually, “Spider” is fantastic.

I suppose “Spider” should also be commended for successfully capturing an older feeling. If not for a random appearance from a Walkman, there would be no way to know when exactly the film is set or made. It's in Russian but, drawing so much from other European films means it's hard to pinpoint the film as specifically Latvian. Not that I'd know what a Latvian movie would look like off-hand, I suppose. A couple of other horror films have been made in the country since this one, so “Spider” does not stand alone as the sole example of Latvian horror. The movie is absolutely worth seeing if only because there's no other film that shows you the mating habits of giant spiders and that gorgeous cinematography. The lack of depth in the rest of the film keep this from a higher recommendation, despite the strength of those images. [7/10]

Nite Tales: Ima Star

Despite being a self-taught musical prodigy who can play fifteen instruments, Flavor Flav will always be remembered as the goofy guy in Public Enemy who wore the big clock. Mr. Flav certainly did this perception no favors during his re-emergence into pop culture in the late 2000s. He parlayed an appearance on an embarrassing reality show and a brief relationship with Brigette Nielsen into several other embarrassing reality shows. After that but before his go at restaurant ownership, Flav would give being a horror host a shot. “Nite Tales” started life as a made-for-TV horror anthology film on BET, with the Public Enemy hype-man playing a macabre M.C. called “The Time Keeper.” The movie must have gotten decent ratings for the network, as “Nite Tales: The Series” followed shortly. The series presumably did not get decent ratings, as it lasted all of six episodes. Nobody has thought about this show in 16 years but my continued quest to find ever-more obscure horror anthology programs has led me here. 

The star of “Ima Star” is Ray J, best known for his appearance in the Kim Kardashian sex tape. He plays a wannabe rapper named Stormy O. His audition before some record execs go wrong when present big shot, Z Diddy – that's a reference that aged great! – dismiss his rhymes as whack. Dispondant, Stormy hits the club for a rap battle in hopes he'll regain his confidence. Instead, he looses the contest. Right as Stormy is about to give up on his rap dreams, he is met by an agent eager to sign him. What Stormy O doesn't know is that this agent is in deep with some sketchy types and has to make some money soon. The publicity stunt cooked up to make Stormy's record a hit – the rapper faking his own death – ends up going horribly wrong. 

The production values for “Nite Tales” were slightly higher than “Strange Frequency” and “Hollywood Off-Ramp.” This episode actually has about three different sets! The record executive's room, the rap club, and a funeral home. Either way, you'll probably notice that an awful lot of “Ima Star's” runtime is devoted to the main character showing off his rap skills. As the whitest of white boys, I have no ability to judge the abilities on-display but I did find this sequence mildly amusing. However, these moments being focused on suggest that there wasn't much of an idea for a narrative here. “Ima Star” doesn't really become a horror story until its very end. 

It's clear that “Ima Star” is more farcical than grim. The record execs repeatedly answering their cell phones during the audition, the goofy P. Diddy parody, a supporting part for Kel Mitchell: It all points towards comedy. The ending makes the entire episode feel like the wind-up for a punchline, which ends up being a simple gag about rapper's LPs selling better after their untimely death. The twist is extremely easy to predict and rather poorly pulled off. This is true of all of “Ima Star.” The cinematography is quite shaky, with multiple long montages of honies shaking their ass on the dance floor. Ray J's acting ability extends no further than goofy mugging. The host segments are devoted to Flavor Flav in a silly Dracula costume doing his typical shtick in front of a green screen. It's not very good. If I had been aware of this show when it aired, I probably would have watched every single episode and told all my friends about it. [6/10]

A Rose for Emily (1983)

 

Of all the trademarks that clarify the gothic tradition, none is more persistent than a fascination with death. A morbid fixation on the end of life and all the trappings around it is, most probably, the primary characteristic of the genre. This extends to what we call Southern Gothic, the local off-shoot of the same literary movement that draws from a distinctly American version of being obsessed with that which has passed and is no longer. Rather than the moldering tombs and churches of old Europe, it focuses on is the fading niceties and blatant racism of Antebellum and early Reconstruction life in the Southern states. William Faulkner is the scribe most associated with Mississippi, a really rather southern state. Naturally, that means he penned a few entries into the Southern Gothic subgenre himself, none more well-regarded than “A Rose for Emily” from 1930. 

You might have read the story in high school English class, where it's often used as a way to demonstrate shifting tenses and non-linear sequence of events. If you read the story as a teenager, you might have also watched the 1983 made-for-TV short film adaptation starring Angelica Huston. It follows the plot of Faulkner's story closely: A funeral director reflects on the life of Emily Grierson, the daughter of a rich old family settled in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha county, shortly after her passing. She was left traumatized by the death of her belligerent father upon her 30th birthday, refusing to give up his corpse to the mortician for several days. Afterwards, she became a recluse and a frequent topic of small town gossip, as the estate she lived in began to crumble and age. One of her few interactions with the outside world was the courtship of a Yankee foreman named Homer Barron. After a brief but seemingly intense romance, Homer is never seen again. It is widely assumed he skipped town. Searching through Emily's cobweb strewn home after her death, the far more unsettling truth is discovered. 

If the gothic story type reflects an inability to let go of the past and to linger on the dead and dying, that means themes of necrophilia commonly occur there as well. What better metaphor is there for being unable to move on from an event than continuing to treat a deceased lover as if they were still alive? This provides the final morbid twist in “A Rose for Emily” and it's quite easy to predict, even if you haven't read Faulkner's story. Director Lyndon Chubbuck – who went on to work largely in television after this – handsomely adapts Faulkner's text, maintaining a good deal of his lovely prose with a respectable degree of period costumes and set-dressing. Angelica Huston, with her perpetually forlorn face and raven hair, is well-cast as the title character. The last act of the twenty minute short is suitably spooky and unsettling. A slow motion shot of the bedroom door being knocked in has stuck with me since seeing this in school, a long time ago. Chubbuck's “A Rose for Emily” doesn't come close to capturing the sense of longing and feeling of decaying tradition that Faulkner's story did. Not that you could really expect such a humble production to. However, it is a decently executed little film and hints at the wider themes – a deep south longing for an idyllic past that never truly existed, a sickeness that persist to this day – of the source material well enough. [7/10]

Halloween 2025: October 15th

 

Clearcut (1991)
 

Two years after Canada became an independent nation, the chief of the Kanesatake Mohawk nation led a small armed group against the Catholic seminary that had claimed nine square miles of land promised to indigenous people for themselves. The rebellion was crushed by local authorities. In 1936, the land was sold against the Mohawk's wishes. In 1956, a golf course was built on the land, right next to an ancient site of burial mounds. In 1989, plans were made to expand the golf course and clear the contested wooded area. Mohawk protesters built a barricade to block access to the land. Early in the morning on July 11th, police deployed tear gas and concussion grenades against the protestors. This was the first of several violent interactions and stand-offs between protestors and police, that lasted for 75 days and ended with heavily armed military forces being sent in. By the time what became known as the Oka Crisis was over, two people were dead and a little girl had been stabbed with a bayonet. Around the same time in Ontario, a project with some startlingly similar themes was being filmed. Upon release in 1991, “Clearcut” would receive little attention. After many years in obscurity, the film was recently released in a collection of folk horror films, beginning the recognition of this overlooked motion picture and what is, I think, of it acquiring the reputation of a classic. 

Peter Macquire arrives in the Canadian woods, where First Nations protestors are trying to stop a logging operation from completely clearing the area of trees. Peter is a lawyer representing the tribe and he's come to tell them that they've lost the case blocking the company from building on the land. Peter plans to appeal but feels hopeless and angry at Bud Rickets, the logging CEO. After participating in a sweat lodge ceremony, Peter meets a mysterious First Nations activist named Arthur. After violently attacking loud partiers at Peter's hotel, Arthur coerces Peter in accompanying him on a mission to kidnap Bud Rickets. Peter is dragged along as Arthur captures and ties up the CEO, before taking them all deep into the woods. Arthur – who seems linked to the legendary trickster spirit Wisakedjak – grows more erratic, making it clear that he intends to follow through on his promise to skin Rickets alive. Peter feels increasingly conflicted about his loyalties. 

“Clearcut” is based on a novel by M.T. Kelly and directed by Polish filmmaker Ryszard Bugajski, neither of whom have any Indigenous blood, as far as I know. Despite that, it is one of the angriest films I have ever seen. An early scene has a protester, after being beaten by a cop, scream profanity at the “white man.” Throughout, police and white authorities refer to the local tribe as “Indians” or “chief.” Meanwhile, the scenes of lumberjacks hacking down trees with chainsaws are shot with a vicious fury, as if we are watching innocent kids cut up. The film returns to the image of blood, or blood-like sap, running down the bark of trees, as if the land itself was gushing from a grievous injury. When Arthur acts against the hicks at the hotel or Rickets, he wraps them in duct tape, notably covering their eyes and mouths. It robs the white people of their visual identity, much the same way all Indigenous people have been treated for centuries. Arthur usually speaks calmly, matter-of-factly going about his gruesome business. As if he has been living with his rage for so long, that it has subsided into silence. That's the kind of fury “Clearcut” shows at all who violate the Earth and disrespect the ancient ways. 

Peter is notably not exempt from that rage. All throughout the film, Arthur is chastised by white men for not doing things “the right way.” Such as when he improvises some spear-fishing. In the last third, during a second steam house ritual, Peter begins to cough and say that Arthur has done it wrong. This seems to point towards the lawyer's true intentions in helping the First Nations people. He claims to be an ally and shows repeated anger and frustration towards the CEO. However, when ultimately forced to choose between helping the “Indian” and helping his fellow white man, who do you think he picks? As a weepy white guy myself, I feel an anger at the injustices persecuted races and minorities have faced from my awful government. Is this an attempt by my psyche to displaced some degree of guilt? Do I care only because it makes me feel better? There's a lot of films out there about brown people suffering, seemingly made primarily to make white folks feel bad. “Clearcut” attacks this attitude head-on, daring to ask its white audience to examine the true origins of their sympathies. 

I'd like to think I'm utterly sincere in my very cool and woke convictions, in my outrage at environmental and social injustices. Maybe I'm full of shit though because I found Graham Greene terrifying in “Clearcut.” When he casually suggests blowing up the paper factory or skinning the CEO alive, it's with the exact sort of tone that makes you completely uncertain of if he's joking or not. The way he refers to himself as an “Indian” or suggests he scalps someone, it speaks to such a clear anger at the treatment of his people and his Earth. When he moves towards violence, all of that tightly contained anger bursts forward into physical action. You have no doubt that he's capable of all the things he says. When he does bellow in rage during the second steam house ritual, it continues that undercurrent of dark humor alongside a frightening intensity. The implication that Arthur truly is some otherworldly spirit of mischief exists strictly at the film's margins. Nevertheless, Greene perfectly captures that feeling. He is violently unpredictable and quietly funny. All of his behavior in accordance with a grand plan that definitely exists even if only he can see it.

“Clearcut” is one of those films that, despite its lack of supernatural events or standard genre conventions, still can't be classify as anything but horror. François Protat's cinematography is gorgeous, looking out over the trees and mountains with an appropriate awe. He creates a real eeriness with simple images, such as Greene's hands outstretched over a lake or Peter's vision of a tree branches reaching out like hands or antlers. Despite the natural beauty of the locations, “Clearcut” feels more and more like you are descending into Hell as you watch it. Michael Hogan's increasingly delirious cries as he goes into shock, combining with the certainty that Peter isn't getting out of this unscathed, adds to a growing sense of intensity throughout. 

Ultimately, “Clearcut” is one of those movies that leaves you stunned in silence afterwards. It feels like a blow to the head, an expression of a primal anger at a list of injustices that has been growing for thousands of years. It does not let its own audience off the hook, forcing the viewer to consider some very unflattering things about themselves. Or maybe that's just me. Either way, “Clearcut” is a hell of a right. A thriller of such intensity that it almost becomes unbearable in parts, it features Graham Greene giving the performance of a life time and some awfully striking imagery. I'm glad the film is getting recognized now. And thirty-four years later, it's hard to say if anything has gotten truly better for Indigenous people. Maybe we need some people like Arthur in real life... [9/10]

The Talisman (1987)
Al Ta'awitha

Last year, on my stop in Egypt during my Horror Around the Wolrd tour, I took in Mohamed Shebl's “Fangs.” Despite commonly being referred to as the Egyptian “Rocky Horror,” I found the film to be a bit more than that. It was a charmingly home-made Halloween party with a highly specific perspective that I found interesting. While a handful of Egyptian horror movies exist, Shebl seems to have been one of the few filmmakers who truly specialized in scary stories. His latter most films, 1989's “Nightmares” and 1992's amusingly entitled “Love and Revenge... With a Meatcleaver,” seem to be completely unavailable to Western horror fans. However, I was able to dig up a subtitled copy of his follow-up to “Fangs,” 1987's “Al Ta'awitha.” Generally, that title is translated as “The Talisman” though the alternate title of “The Curse” seems to be a little more accurate within the context of the actual movie.

Mahmoud is a simple family man, living in a modest Cairo home. The cramped residence houses himself, his wife Rawya, their young son, their teenage daughter Nadia, his mother, and his sister Faten. The family is often having money struggles. When a mysterious man appears, willing to buy the house and give the family a spacious apartment by the Nile in exchange, Rawya is eager to take it. Mahmoud does not want to give up his home though. Little does his wife realize but this eager buyer is actually an evil sorcerer. He really wants their house too. Determined to drive the family out, the villain puts a curse on everyone in the residence. Poltergeist activity, fires, distressing visions, deadly accidents, bleeding faucets, and a visit from a demonic goat all plague the family. They seek out the help of a mystic woman but will it be enough to stop the presence haunting them?

If “Fangs” represented Shebl remixing “Rocky Horror,” “Dracula,” and half a dozen other flicks via a distinctly Egyptian perspective, “The Talisman” sees him doing the same with a number of American horror film. The general premise of  “Al Ta'awitha” plays a bit like “Poltergeist” or “The Amityville Horror.” A cameo from a creepy clown doll, the bleeding plumbing, and the evil extending its influence over a vehicle seems likely seems probably inspired by those blockbusters. A sequence where Rawya's bed starts to rock wildly is obviously a quote from “The Exorcist.” A scene where she's seemingly sexually assaulted by the evil spirit in an elevator brings “The Entity” to mind. The way the evil spirit causes improbable accidents, like a sheet of glass nearly crushing Mahmoud or a scientist accidentally cooking up a poison gas in the lab, suggests a heavy influence from “The Omen” as well. The film is very heavy on roaming point-of-view shots from its malevolent presence suggests “Evil Dead” made its way to Egypt as well. 

As with “Fangs,” the fun here arrives from seeing these familiar moments mashed up in such a free-wheeling style and then paired with hokey, low-fi special effects. A sequence where a black goat projects a star-like shape from its eyes is so low-budget in its construction that the moment borders on abstract art. The car crash is created by seemingly pushing a toy car into a wall. The film saves its wildest special effects for the last few minutes, when the villain tears his own skin off and a towering classical demon with red skin and horns appears. All of this stuff is pure camp but those “Evil Dead”-like perspective shots are genuinely kind of eerie. The film's soundtrack is mostly pilfered from “Psycho II,” alongside a number of American pop songs that the producers definitely didn't pay a license for. The score works though, managing to make an otherwise very silly horror film feel a bit spooky at times. 

Sadly, “The Talisman” is not quite as fleet-footed in its wackiness as “Fangs” was. Much more time is spent on the family's daily strife here. An extended subplot involves a police officer asking for Nadia's hand in marriage. There's several scenes of the family watching movies on television and criticizing them as too violent or addictive. More scenes than were probably necessary focus on Faten's work situation. It's all a bit more pedestrian than I think I would prefer. In general, Shebl's attention wanders from time to time. A sequence set in a disco features a lengthy montage of dancers set to James Brown's “Living in America.” The same setting has a plus-size drag singer lip-synching to Divine's “You Think You're a Man,” once again suggesting the queer undercurrent in “Fangs” was no mistake. These scenes definitely aren't necessary to the plot. Nor is the lengthy moment devoted to a dance-like ritual being performed in the house to ward off the evil spirit. I can appreciate the energy of these moments but they all go on way too long.

Speaking as someone with zero insight into the Egyptian mindset circa 1987, it's hard to read a cultural significance into “The Talisman.” Faten is outspoken in her left-wing politics, much to the chagrin of the traditionalist grandmother. The word of Allah is invoked many times in hopes of driving out the demon. A Sheikh appears to give the family a blessing, assuring them that faith in Allah is all that is needed to overcome evil. It simultaneously feels fairly conservative in its religious messaging, not unlike how any number of American Satanic Panic flicks do, while also being more open-minded than you'd probably expect from Egypt in the late eighties. I'm intrigued but also too ignorant to draw any concrete conclusions here. Still, “The Talisman” is too fascinating to dismiss. I know Shebl's films are unlikely to ever gain official distribution in the west but hopefully his other two movies crop up online eventually. Flawed though it is, I liked “The Talisman” enough to want to see those too. [6/10] 

 

 

Master of Science Fiction: A Clean Escape

“Masters of Horror” was a beautiful dream, despite never living up to the potential of its concept. The dream was so grand that Mick Garris actually envisioned the program as the first in a whole series, in which masters of different genres would be assembled and allowed to run amok. (As long as it was within a television budget.) The first proposed of these spin-offs, and the only to make it to air, was “Masters of Science Fiction.” The masters, in this case, would not be the directors but the authors, famous sci-fi writers having their work adapted into hour-long episodes. It was a good idea and the production team – which, Mick Garris claims, barely involved him – got Stephen Hawking to be the host. I remember being intrigued by “Masters of Science Fiction” in the lead-up to its debut... And then there was nothing. About a year later, when a DVD release came along, I learned that four episodes of the series aired as a summer replacement on ABC with zero promotion. While “Masters of Horror” remains something like a cult favorite, “Masters of Science Fiction” has been entirely forgotten. Well, not by me but I remember everything. I figured I can squeeze an episode into the Blog-a-Thon so I can finally give it a look.

“A Clean Escape,” the debut episode, is about two people. Deanna is a psychologist. Every day, a man named Havelman enters her office for a session. Every day, Havelman has no memory of their previous sessions together. In fact, he thinks he just left home from his wife and kids, that he has to leave early to see his daughter's play at her school. As a result of a trauma of inexpressible grandness, Havelman has retreated entirely into his memory. Deanna is determined to bring him out of it... To face the consequences of what he's done. Because there is nowhere else to go, as the two are actually hundreds of feet underground in a top-secret bunker. Because everyone above is dead. Because Deanna is determined to make the man who killed the world face the gravity of what he's done.

“A Clean Escape” is adapted from a short story by John Kessel. As I was watching the episode, I found it to be rather play-like in its construction, only to learn that Kessel himself had previously adapted the story as just that. I imagine “A Clean Escape” would work a little better as a play. “Masters of Science-Fiction's' version lays the cards down too early. We see flashbacks of Deanna being picked up by the military and taken away from her family, the last time she saw them. Or of people at a weapon manufacturer company discussing some grave course of actions. There are repeated scenes of her in other parts of the underground facility, talking with other high-ranking agents. All of this gives the audience a vague notion of what this situation is exactly, that the planet above has perished in nuclear hellfire. Any time the camera cuts away from Deanna and her patient, the tension flags a little. There are still surprises awaiting in “A Clean Escape,” about the exact identity of these players. However, I imagine this story would be more compelling and satisfying if we went in knowing absolutely nothing, simply that it's about two people in a room.

Those two people are Judy Davis and Sam Waterston. Davis, with a wild fringe of hair that makes her look totally exhausted and on the verge of collapse, gives a complex performance as a doctor who feels sympathy for her client but also demands he face justice for his crimes. The moment where Waterston finally realize who he is and what he's done is a powerful one, a man reduced to screaming and crying like a child. The grim moral of the episode is that those in power tend to be shielded from the consequences of their actions, even if by their own mind. However, for one moment – when “A Clean Escape” crosses over the most into horror, thanks to the grim sights of nuclear annihilation – the guilty are allowed to feel the weight of what they've done. A good hour of television. It's a shame “Masters of Science-Fiction” was never given a proper chance. [7/10]

 

Haunted Indiana (1981)
 

Public access television has a bad reputation, associated with amateur productions made with a complete lack of budget or production values. While this is true, the low barrier to entry for local television meant the kind of people who maybe didn't normally get to make movies and TV shows managed to sneak onto television anyway. That brings with it a natural, home-made charm all of its own. That is readily apparent with “Haunted Indiana,” a nineteen minute Halloween special made for Bloomington, Indiana television station, WTTV4. It tells five urban legends, collected from the Indiana University Department of Folklore: A professor is chased through the woods by the ghost of a hanged murderer. A motorist on Cable Line Road near Elkhart, Indiana encounters the Sasquatch-like Cable Line Monster, which costs him his life and leaves his face imprinted on a near-by tree. A group of kids on a camping tree awaken within a ghostly cemetery. A devout Catholic woman decides murdering her husband is not as big of a sin as divorcing him, burning their house down and sealing her own fate instead. The final tale involves a little boy named John hearing strange noises from the stairs outside his bedroom at night, proceeding a grisly fate. 

I've never been to Indiana but the stories and backwoods locations displayed here seem universal to me. The production values in “Haunted Indiana” are non-existent. Co-writer Stephen White provides the narration, speaking in plain-voiced tones that aren't spooky at all. The narration plays over all the footage, doing little to distract from the extremely cheesy acting. Shot entirely on video tape, the whole short has a grainy, washed-out, backyard look to it. All the music is stolen from recognizable scores, with the “Night of the Living Dead” and “Psycho” themes being notably reused. Most prominently, the special effects are deeply unconvincing. A “ghost” is a Halloween store prop with pixelated vector graphics overlaid. A monster is a pimply mask with bright red stage-blood dripping from his mouth. The fourth story is mostly composed of shots of the woods and trees in the surrounding area. 

If all of the above sounds like criticism, then I'm afraid you've misread my tone. “Haunted Indiana' is exceedingly charming exactly because of its lack of professional sheen and flashy special effects. The corny acting pairs perfectly with these well-trotted ghost tales, capturing the exact kind of community theater vibes you want from local legends such as these. The special effects further seal this “let's-put-on-a-show” atmosphere, the efforts of inexperienced craftsman doing the best they can with the extremely limited resources available to them. I doubt those involved with “Haunted Indiana” made much, if any, money from its production. This is the result of people doing it strictly for the love of the artform, motivated by the desire to tell a story and have a good time than any businessman-like concerns. Pure cinema, in other words, as it should be. 

As for the stories themselves? The Cable Line Monster segment is so dark, as to be barely perceivable. The shot of a face appearing on a tree at the end is extremely goofy. The third and fourth stories are so minor as to barely register, counting as underwhelming examples of horror. The first and fifth segments, however, kind of rock. There's a campfire story creakiness to both rendition. The highly energetic sequence of a cheap spectre chasing a balding professor through the woods is exhilarating. The finale, of a little boy haunted and claimed by an hideous beast, is the exact kind of scary story youngsters pass around the playground. Threadbare as the production values may be, there is a certain zest to the telling that makes it invigorating anyway. Unlike most public access productions, that air once and are never seen again, “Haunted Indiana” re-run on local TV for many years. During all those showings, it is said to have spook more than one young viewer. That's exactly the way it should be, as this brief anthology persists entirely on the same kind of barreling-ahead youthful energy that an impromptu exchange of urban legends does. Overflowing with lo-fi Halloween vibes, it now survives forever as a blurry internet upload. [7/10]

Halloween 2025: October 14th

 

Song at Midnight (1937)
Ye ban ge sheng 

When it comes to the international perception of Chinese cinema, the filmmakers of Hong Kong tend to dominate the conversation. That's where all the “cool” stuff comes from, right? They've got the wuxia, the kung-fu movies, the heroic bloodshed, the types of films that tend to excite film nerds. Of course, mainland China has its own film industry, which has been growing in leaps and bounds in recent years. However, historically, horror has rarely been a popular genre on the mainland. Since 2008, depictions of ghosts and the supernatural have technically been banned by the government, making macabre stories much trickier to tell. There are exceptions though. If you go way back to 1937, you'll find “Song at Midnight.” It's often credited as the first Chinese horror movie, a local variant of “Phantom of the Opera” that is regarded as a classic film in its home country. It's been remade multiple times but, ya know me, I wanna go back to the beginning.

While Gaston Leroux's classic novel is an obvious influence, “Song at Midnight's” plot also contains elements of “Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and a random shout-out to “The Invisible Man.” The setting is an abandoned theater soon to be demolished. A traveling group of actors known as the Angel Theatre Trope arrive at the location, deciding to refurbish it enough for one last round of performances. Leading man Xiao'ou is having trouble with the lyrics of the opening song though. That is when an unseen voice from the shadows begins to coach him. He soon learns that this is the voice of Song Danping. A great stage actor and veteran of the Second Chinese Revolution, he would have his face horribly disfigured with acid by a rival. He claimed to be dead, a shock so horrible that it drove his lover, Xiaoxia, into muteness. Xiao'ou agrees to pose as Danping to assuage Xiaoxia's shattered mind. As a thank you, Danping gives him a revised version of one of his old plays. It proves to be a hit but attracts the attention of the owner of the theater, the same man responsible for scarring Danping's face.

As someone who has watched a decent number of old monster movies, I'm well aware that melodrama is a common feature in them. “Phantom of the Opera” is already a story about a love triangle, dark secrets, lost romance, and dramatic declarations. “Song at Midnight” – good pun in the title there – amplifies these elements considerably. This is the kind of story where, after Danping and Xiao'ou have known each other for months, the teacher suddenly learns that his student has a girlfriend. This breaks Danping's heart, who hoped that his apprentice would take his place as Xiaoxia's lover. The idea of a girl going mute after hearing of her beloved's death or said man keeping his fate a secret to spare her feelings are further examples of the kind of events that usually only happen in narratives such as these. The climax revolves around someone stepping into a room at just the right moment. It's all fairly contrived and overheated, the kind of storytelling you have to be prepared for.

“Song at Midnight” is also very much a product of its place and time. Given the setting and story, there's quite a lot of singing here. Whether the style of Chinese ballad popular in the thirties will resonate with modern ears is entirely a matter of taste. I thought they were okay. It's certainly an indicator of the then-political climate that its disfigured anti-hero is a former man of the revolution. His writing is openly political and that topic seems to resonate with the crowds Xiao'ou sings to. I don't know much about this period in time in Chinese history. However, it's obviously significant that Danping would ultimately be silenced for his outspoken politics. When his identity is revealed in the last act, the classic horror cliché of the angry mob with torches takes on a new political dimension, of a dissident being pursued by the conformists of the day. That is what's fascinating about international variations of well known stories. They reconfigured elements we are familiar with into something culturally specific. That's interesting. 

Classic horror fans will have to be patient with this one. The dilapidated old theater does make for a cool setting. When Xiao'ou is invited into Danping's lair, there's some very cool ambiance of spider webs and fog. The shots of the phantom's shadow cast huge on the wall are classical stuff. When Danping's deformed face is revealed, it represents the most blatantly horrific content in the film. That is a very strong scene, a slow zoom-in on the make-up, that still looks quite grotesque. The scenes of Danping wrapped up in bandages are always kind of cool. However, as far as phantoms go, this one is fairly benevolent. His intentions are ultimately good, he is genuinely only misunderstood, and he doesn't kill anyone until the very end of the movie. The phantom figure is not the story's villain at all, despite hiding out in a secret room in the theater. As far as movie “monsters” go, I think Song Danping would only count on a technicality. 

The prints of “Song at Midnight” currently in circulation do not seem to be in the best condition. The version I watched is very dark and murky, with a few scenes difficult to decipher. Scratches, grain, and dust are present throughout. The sound quality is not great either. A couple of times the dialogue is sped up, as if everyone was suddenly voiced by the Chipmunks. It's entirely possible that I would've gotten more out of “Song at Midnight” if a clearer, restored print was available. Either way, I imagine the film will be of most interest to historians. As a “Phantom” fan, it is fascinating to see such a version of the story filtered through another culture's sensibility. At the same time, it is slow, extremely melodramatic, and greatly in need of a little more classic horror trappings. [6/10]

 

 

 

House IV (1992)

Through no intentional planning on my behalf, all of the film series I've been watching this October have featured little to no link between the movies. These are “franchises” in the truest sense, in which the name brand is the star. “Warlock” was about warlocks, “Watchers” was about watchers, and “House” was about houses. The haunted home that was a gateway to Roger Cobb's Vietnam War trauma and the wacky mansion full of alternate dimensions, ghost cowboys, and crystal skulls of the first two “House” movies had no connection, while “The Horror Show” was barely a haunted house movie at all. Seemingly to piss me off, the fourth “House” – sometimes seen with the subtle “The Repossession,” to match part two's equally punny “The Second Story” – bucks this trend. Kind of. Let's get into it.

Yes, “House IV” returns to the Cobb family, though it makes no mention of Roger's son Jimmy, his ex-wife Sandy, his career as a horror author, his history in the war, or the haunted house he previously resided in. Instead, the film sees Roger and his new wife Kelly, alongside their teenage daughter Laurel, debating what to do with the old family home. His brother, Burke, wants to sell it and develop the land. Roger insists the home stay in the family. Driving away from the mansion that night, there is a car wreck. Laurel is left paralyzed from the waist down and Roger is left a burnt skeleton. Kelly makes the hard decision to take her husband off life support and he passes. Now a widow with a daughter in a wheel chair, Kelly is still being pestered by Burke to sell the house. This is when weird stuff begins to happen around the home. Kelly discovers that the building sits atop an ancient Indian gateway to the spirit realm, which must be guarded. Burke begins to send enforcers from the Mafia, to which he owes money, in order to convince Kelly to change her mind.

 

Beyond the general concept of a haunted house, the first two “House” movies were connected by their weirdo creature effects. The films sought to bring the ghost movie idea into the eighties by packing the houses full of vividly created monsters. If nothing else, “The Repossession” continues this trend towards wacky, rubbery critters. Probably the high-light of the sequel, and the most “House”-like sequence, involves a pizza developing a singing human face, which Kelly attempts to dispose of. Another highlight has the mobsters suddenly becoming the insect and snake masks they wore earlier in the film, giving the movie an excuse to include a twitching, elaborate homage to “The Fly” in its last third. There's also a decent gag where the dog-shaped lamp Laurel is fond of transforms into an actual snarling Rottweiler, with a lampshade still attached to its head. It's clear that “House IV” doesn't have the budget of previous installments and uses its creature effects much more sparingly. However, these scenes are still the sequel's most memorable. 

Unfortunately, such antics do not occupy most of the motion picture's runtime. Instead, “House IV” feels entirely too much like a maudlin family drama about trying to move on from loss. The focus is definitely on the mother/daughter relationship, Melissa Clayton being utterly wholesome and precious as Laurel. At times, when paired with the clownish henchman, the sequel feels a bit like a family-friendly TV movie. (Despite a scene where Kelly takes a shower, the camera lingering on Terri Treas' body-double as blood sprays from the shower head on her breasts.) The reoccurring scenes where Kelly is haunted by the memory of pulling the plug on Roger puts to fine a point on the theme of survivor's guilt. The repetitiveness of these flashbacks is more frustrating since the script, otherwise, isn't interested in exploring the depths of grief. Kelly and Laurel are sad about their husband/dad dying. They feel bad about it for a while and then they stop feeling bad. It should be a bit more complicated than that, don't you think?

It's hard to avoid the idea that “House IV's” creative team – the only directorial credit from Sean S. Cunningham's “DeepStar Six” writer Lewis Abernathy, working from a story by four people plus Jim Wynorski – only had a vague outline for a motion picture here. To fill it up, they incorporated some random ideas. Such as the evil half-brother being beholden to a short-staturesd mob boss, who has quite a lot of toxic waste to dispose of. That points towards some sort of environmental angle, which would've been trendy in 1992. Also trendy at the time was Native American mysticism. This element appears whenever Ned Romero's character is on-screen. However, the film doesn't seem aware of actual indigenous folklore, using this element as seasoning on an otherwise underdeveloped story. At least Romero's role isn't too patronizing or stereotypical, beyond the debatable merits of the “Wise Old Indian helping out the White Folks” trope.

“House IV” was released direct-to-video in January of 1992. Having watched a lot of early nineties, DTV sequels this month, I have found that the format could be a place where creative types were free to get a little loose, a little messy, to rewarding results. Video stores were also, sometimes, the last refuge for series that weren't quite popular enough for theatrical releases. Examples of films that the producers wanted to churn out for the sake of a quick buck without expending any real money or good ideas on it. “House IV” is, sadly, mostly the latter. It has one or two funny ideas and some alright make-up effects but it overwhelmed by a feeling of disinterest from those behind the scene. It's okay, we'll always have “The Second Story.” [5/10]

The Twilight Zone (2002): Night Route

It is time for my yearly attempt to see if there are any decent episodes of the 2002 version of "The Twilight Zone." "Night Route" is about Malina, an English teacher who is engaged to Adam, a hunky and kind guy. While out walking her little white dog Vigo one night, she is nearly hit by an ominous black car. Afterwards, a bus stops on her street, the driver and riders looking at expectantly at her. Malina continues to see the bus, despite there being no route on her street. She starts to hallucinate that she's bleeding from the forehead. She can no longer remember how her and Adam met and he seems uncertain too. People she's never met before claim to know her. She begins to suspect a sinister and impossible seeming conclusion: That she died the night the black car nearly hit her and all of this is a dying fantasy. 

The writers of 2002's "Twilight Zone" seemed determined that each episode must have a twist ending. Unfortunately, it seems they couldn't come up with a twist besides "what if this thing was actually another thing?" From the minute Malina is almost hit by the car, it's obvious what is happening here. She has visions of a head wound, not unlike what a fatal strike from a speeding vehicle would look like. One of her students reads Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death," with the creepy bus clearly being a modern update of the poem's deathly carriage. The "Dead All Along" ending is such a hacky trope that "Night Route" feels it can only use it by acknowledging how common it is. Malina herself recognizes what is happening and mentions "Jacob's Ladder" to her boyfriend. This does not stop "Night Route" from ending the exact way you expect it to. It does cause the episode to obnoxiously tagged on an additional twist, that Malina's dying dream is a vision of the life she could have led if she hadn't simply watch the world go by. See, like a bus passing through! We know this is the intended meaning of "Night Route" because the characters explain all of this right before the credits roll. 

Since we all see the ending coming, "Night Route" becomes a mostly tedious experience of waiting for the twist to reveal itself. Ione Skye plays Malina and gives a flat, unconvincing performance. When paired with writing that blatantly draws attention to itself, you get the impression that nobody was much convinced this episode could be good. Forrest Whittaker seems sleepy and bored in the host segment too. Which I know is kind of his style but it contributes to "Night Route" being an underwhelming experience. The dog is pretty cute though. I liked the scene where he jumps up on the bus and looks at Malina, as if questioning what her deal is. [5/10]

Beneath the Skin (1981)

Sometime in 1977, influential environmental activist Ira Einhorn murdered his ex-girlfriend, Holly Maddux. He kept her decomposing body, wrapped in plastic and shoved into a trunk, in his apartment for two years. Though questioned by police, Einhorn wouldn't emerge as a suspect until neighbors began to complain about the smell. During that time, Einhorn dated filmmaker Cecilia Condit, who was unable to sense the odor due to the medication she was on. After Einhorn fled to Europe, and before she made viral favorite “Possibly in Michigan,” Condit would sum up her feelings about the ordeal in “Beneath the Skin.” The eleven minute short recounts a stream-of-consciousness recollection of the events leading up to and following the murder along with Condit's complicated emotions surrounding having dated a notorious killer. This is accompanied by imagery of a woman lying in bed or swinging on a swing, photo projections upon sleeping faces, and rotting bodies. 

“Beneath the Skin” occupies the artsy-fartsy end of the horror genre. It is a deeply personal reflection by a woman upon the fact that, no matter how honest and respectable her boyfriend may seem, that the odds he's going to kill her is never zero. The narration, recounted in a distinctively nasally voice, shares deeply personal thoughts and feelings on such an emotion. Much like Condit's “Possibly in Michigan,” there's a musical tone to the rambling, non-stop dialogue that eventually does burst into a song that feels improvised. The visuals are abstract and shadowy, fleeting images distorted and projected atop each other. Brief glimpses of rubber corpses exist alongside shaky hand-held footage of skulls and a woman pulled from her bed by an unseen force. When contrasted with the imagery of the same woman sleeping or playing on a swing, it draws attention to the free-floating sense of anxiety all women feel existing in a world made more for men than them. 

The narration, one assumes, are Condit's personal reflections on the Einhorn case. Her words are equally humorous, coming off as almost dismissive of the murder that happened, while also slowly causing a chill to creep up your spine. Just taken as an audio-visual experience, “Beneath the Skin” gives the impression of your mother informing you of some traumatic, horrible event that happened to her as casually as she would would recall the evening's pot luck. Inevitably, the free-form narration eventually has Condit admit that she sometimes feels like it could have easily been her rotting in that closest, a chilling thought that is delivered with the same flippant relaxedness as the rest of the short. Weird and somewhat annoying, “Beneath the Skin” is nevertheless a fascinating peek into the mind of an artist and her brush with an unhinged killer. Einhorn, by the way, claimed the CIA murdered Maddux and framed him. He remained at-large for seventeen years before finally being caught, extradited back to the U.S., and dying in prison in 2020. Condit could not be reached for comment but we have “Beneath the Skin” to tell us how she felt. [7/10]

Halloween 2025: October 13th

 

The Horror Show (1989)

If you are an American horror fan who grew up during the later stages of the video store era, for many years there was a question that gnawed at your mind. You'd look through the Hs and find “House,” “House II: The Second Story,” and then... “House IV!” Where was “House III?!” No store had a copy in stock and no clerk could locate it. Why did this franchise skip the number three? Eventually, the well-spring of all knowledge that is the internet would resolve any confusion. “House III” is “The Horror Story,” James Isaac's killer-returns-from-the-grave slasher from 1989. The film would begin life as the third installment in the wacky horror/comedy haunted house series, producer Sean S. Cunningham in tow. Partially due to “The Second Story's” box office take and simply because of how the script developed, the decision was made during production to turn “House III” into more of a serious horror movie. The result was so different in tone and story – including not featuring much of a haunted house – that it was released stateside as “The Horror Show.” Overseas, however, the film would maintain the “House” branding. Whether you call it “The Horror Show” or “House III,” either title is equally relevant to the plot. 

Police detective and family man Lucas McCarthy is finally the one to bring in “Meatcleaver Max” Jenke, a serial killer that has been terrorizing the country. That's only after Lucas sees Jenke murder his partner and decapitate a little girl. He continues to have nightmares about the killer, concerning his wife and two kids. McCarthy attends the execution of Jenke to make sure he's dead. Jenke takes two volts from the electric chair and threatens to get his revenge on Lucas. Afterwards, the horrifying dreams continue and McCarthy begins to see Jenke tormenting him throughout the day. When his teenage daughter's boyfriend is found dead in the basement, Lucas is the main suspect. Instead, a doctor studying the nature of evil reveals, the truth is far stranger: Evil exists as an electric frequency and, via micro-dosing himself with shocks throughout his life, Meatcleaver Max has returned from the grave as a phantasmic being.

Exploitation filmmakers were ready to leap on the success of “Halloween,” slashers full of masked murderers flooding cinemas by 1980. I guess they took longer to catch on to Freddy's status as the next horror icon. Whatever the reason, four separate movies released between 1987 and the end of the decade would be about vengeful killers returning from the electric chair to kill again. Two of them were blatant Freddy wannabes. Both Craven's “Shocker” and “The Horror Show” make a serious mistake in emulating the Freddy movies. Part of what gave “A Nightmare on Elm Street” a universal appeal was its simplicity. Freddy can only get you in your dreams and, if you die in the dream, you die for real. “The Horror Story” can't seem to make up its mind about what rules govern Max Jenke. Sometimes, like “Shocker's” Horace Pinker, he exists as a living electrical signal, jumping around various appliances. (And, in a blatant imitation of the “Nightmare” films, spends a lot of time in the basement furnace.) Other times, he seems more like a classic ghosts. Jenke also appears in Lucas' dreams and visions. At least once, something that happens in the dream rolls over to waking hours, a wound appearing on Lucas' chest. Jenke is also able to manifest in reality, becoming a physical threat again in the last act but still using some of his supernatural powers. The explanation cooked up, about the abstract concept of evil being an electric wavelength and volts being both Max's weakness and the source of his power, clears nothing up. 

Adding further to this confusion is “The Horror Show's” inability to pick a tone. The filmmakers clearly intended Max Jenke to be a wise-cracking Freddy-like figure. He has a trademark, a nasally chortle. At one point, he appears in the guise of a TV stand-up comic, cramming half-a-dozen lame one-liners into a single scene. At the same time, the script tries to make Jenke into a vile serial killer. He gruffly croaks out profanity at his enemies. I mean, he cuts off a little girl's head early on. That's fairly extremely. There's an obvious degree of sexual menace in his interactions with McCarthy's wife and daughter. When he drags Lucas' wife into his power plant lair at the end of the movie, the implication of what he plans to do to her are obvious. Other scenes, that focus on McCarthy being in court-appointed therapy or being investigated by internal affairs, feel like something from a grittier cop-versus-killer thriller. In general, “The Horror Show” feels pulled between wanting to be a farcical horror/comedy, a grim gore-fest, and something more like a typical eighties cop flick.

It's easy to imagine the script for “The Horror Show” beginning life as another “Dirty Harry” imitator, something closer to “Cobra” than “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Lance Henriksen stars as McCarthy, his voice as gravelly as ever. He grimly swears and pulls his gun when pursuing the killer, acting a lot how you'd expect Lance Henriksen to perform in such a role. Brion James, himself a vet of action flicks, is Meatcleaver Max. Like in many an action movie, the bond between hero and villain seems deeper than mere hate. Jenke is obsessed with Lucas, to the point that he returns from the grave for him. The two men make repeatedly references to “getting their ass” and “nailing” each other. In the last act, while holding McCarthy's wife hostage, Jenke demands the cop crawl over to him and kiss his feet. When paired with a scene where Jenke pretends to be his enemy's teenage daughter and tricks her boyfriend into stripping for him, or dresses in drag as McCarthy's wife, points towards a casual homoeroticism. This seems to be a natural side-effect of the movie's heavy-handed machismo, of the plot device of two men being totally obsessed with each other.

The manly longing Jenke has for his archenemy is more interesting than the movie's horror elements. Brion James goes way over the top as Jenke, in a way that straddles the line between fun and overbearing. Lance is a reliable hero. The cast playing his family play their notes at a cartoonish level, especially Aron Eisenberg as the would-be con artist son. The movie does cook up some memorable special effects gag. A noteworthy sequence has Jenke's face appearing in a roasted turkey, the cooked bird becoming some freakish Brion James/fowl hybrid. That was cool. An early scene, where Lance stalks the killer through a dinner littered with severed heads and hands, looks cool as hell. Mac Ahlberg, Stuart Gordon's regular D.P., does the cinematography and creates some moody, foggy, deep blue night shots. There's a lot of ingredients here that should work, simply put. 

Instead, as all too often happens: It's the Script, Stupid. “The Horror Show” simply doesn't have a compelling story. As a slasher flick, it never quite delivers, most of the beheadings happening off-screen. I guess because it's ostensibly a “House” movie, most of the film is confined to the McCarthy home. This limits the creativity of the set-pieces the movie can cook up. The inability to figure out what the villain can and can't do, as well as how the viewer is suppose to feel about what they are seeing, keeps this from being better. Despite making him look like Jason on the U.S. one-sheet and multiple advertisement's comparing the film to Freddy, Max Jenke did not become a Halloween costume. I guess the film is a little less annoying than “Shocker,” if not as gloriously camp, and not quite as generic as “Destroyer,” if you want to compare it to the other electric chair themed revenge-from-the-grave flicks. Ultimately, perhaps it's for the best that this was destined to be the “House III” most of us wouldn't know about. “The Horror Story” can't compare to the giddy heights of “House II” or the reliable creature feature fun of the original. [6/10]

Nightmares Come at Night (1970)

Les cauchemars naissent la nuit
 

Is there a single European country Jesús Franco didn't make a movie in? I mean, probably. However, there's no denying that ol' Jess sure did get around. He worked in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Portugal, and Liechtenstein. Yes, Liechtenstein, the semi-constitutional monarchy, all of sixty-two square miles wide, that is wedged between Austria and Switzerland. Despite its relative tininess, Franco would actually make a couple of movies within the country. Most of these fall more on the sexploitation side of his style but at least one is classified more as horror. That would be “Nightmares Come at Night,” which started out as a fragment Franco made sometime in 1970 that was then padded out to feature length with some additional scenes. It was one of Franco's more unseen film during his glory days but, like everything the prolific cult director touched, would eventually get DVD and Blu-Ray presentations far nicer than the grindhouses it was designed for.

Anna worked as an exotic dancer in a nightclub in Zagreb, often dissatisfied with her work and feeling a growing sense of de-personalization. That is until she notices a beautiful woman, visiting the club to watch her every night. The woman introduces herself as Cynthia and, after meeting Anne in her dressing room one night, the two began a passionate love affair. That was some time ago though. Now, Anna is in the grips of a serious mental health crisis. She has haunting dreams every night, which often seem to cross over into her waking hours. Her live-in doctor does not seem to be helping her fracturing psyche any. Growing increasingly frustrated and cold with Anna, Cynthia begins to bring home other lovers. Anna begins to have murderous dreams, beginning to wonder if she has taken a life in reality as well. Or is something more sinister going on?

I've had mixed feelings about the Franco flicks I've seen in the past, enjoying his gothic horror flicks over his trippier doses of erotica. “Nightmares Come at Night” falls squarely on the latter side of the equation. Franco's “Vampyros Lesbos” muse, Soledad Miranda, has a small role here as the often pantless next door neighbor. This film is also about a lesbian tryst between two strippers, another frequent reoccurring element in Franco's work. There's quite a lot of scenes of Diana Lorys and Colette Giacobine in stylish outfits, in various states of undress, lounging in bed, taking showers, or rolling around with various partners. These scenes play out against a smooth jazz score from frequent giallo composer, Bruno Nicolai. The story is extremely loose, the film operating more as a series of set pieces set at often undetermined points in the past. The pacing is languid, to say the least. 

Given the above description, you would expect me to find “Nightmares Come at Night” as tedious as I found “Vampyros Lesbos.” Actually, I ended up liking this one quite a bit. Partially because, unlike “Vampyros Lesbos” mixing of elements from “Dracula” and “The Awful Dr. Orloff” into its stew of dreamy eroticism, this one never pretends to have much of a plot. From the beginning, it's apparent that this film will be a wash of the main character's memories, dreams, and hallucinations. That “Nightmares Come at Night” centers so much on its main character is what, I think, made it work for me. The film features quite a lot of voice over from Anna, which further puts us in her mindset. As she recalls her time at the night club, she describes her feeling of being treated like an object. No wonder she is starting to lose her grip on reality. Everybody around her wants and desires her but nobody is interested in actually knowing her. When the complicated nature of her mental health makes itself known, Cynthia smacks her, yells at her, and starts sleeping with other people. When Anna finds brief solace with a man, it's because he makes her feel realized and doesn't seem to want anything from her. It's a ruse, of course, another person lying to Anna to use her. “Nightmares Come at Night” ends up getting a pass for its sleepy pacing and barely existent story by taking place solely inside the head of its fractured protagonist.

Considering it was one of the Franco productions to be somewhat cobbled together, that's another reason why “Nightmares Come at Night” borders incoherent at times. A subplot about a bank robbery emerges in the second half, that never amounts to much at all. Some characters come and go with little warning. A series of last minute plot twist makes one wonder if this was supposed to be a giallo at some point. As you'd also expect from Franco, the visual approach is quite slapdash at times. There's lots of handheld footage and some rough zooms. More than a few times, the camera actually goes out of focus as it roams around the lovers wrapping their arms around each other and kissing or while Lorys cries on a bathroom floor. I watched the Blu-Ray release and it is still overly dark in spots and quite grainy throughout. While normally these would be the elements that distract me when watching Franco's films, it all blends together to make an intoxicatingly dream-like brew here.

Existing within that nightmare headspace, when your mind is groggy and your memory is foggy, when dreams and wakefulness blend together, causes a lot of “Nightmares Come at Night's” bugs to become features. Perhaps I'm warming up to Franco's particular strain of bullshit. Or maybe the girls were extra sexy enough to keep me watching. Either way, the slowness and choppiness of “Nightmares Come at Night” actually worked its spell on me. Sometimes, you simply want to slip into a fuzzy, relaxed, sleepy world of sex and murder and madness. That cool score from Nicolai doesn't hurt either. I can't decide if the English title is mildly poetic or simply redundant. When else would a nightmare come but at night? [7/10]

 

Mostly True Stories: One Armed Killer

A very long time ago, before TLC became a non-stop freak show devoted to individuals of unusual physical dimensions, child beauty pageants, quickie marriages, family with lots of kids, or popping zits, those letters actually stood for something: The Learning Channel. If you turned on the channel around 2002 or so, you might actually acquire some knowledge. That's when the network starring airing “Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed,” a series all about exploring the likeliness, history, and meaning of those scary and ironic tales we call urban legends. Host Natasha Henstridge would present five stories, which where then presented as dramatic re-enactments. Experts and historians would then expound on whether there was any truth to the story and why such legends endure. The series had a good balance of spookiness, humor, rationality, and laid-back basic cable charm. In other words, I loved it and the show was surely a factor in heightening my fascination with modern folklore. 

Not every story explored on “Mostly True Stories” was macabre or horrific in nature. The third episode also discusses the story of an unfaithful husband being caught at a surprise party in his birthday suit. However, as urban legends often do, the tales tended to veer towards the horrific. The episode discusses the tale of a choking Doberman revealing the presence of a home invader, a woman buying a new coat and being bitten by the baby snakes that hatch within, an actual mummified corpse hanging up as a prop in a carnival fun house, and what is probably the most iconic urban legend of all: Teenage lovers driving their car to a secluded spot for a romantic evening only to be interrupted by news of an escaped killer with a metal hook for a hand, who might be closer than either of them realize. 

As an educational program, “Mostly True Stories” is well done. The segment on the Hook legend links its likely origins back to the infamous Moonlight Murders that plagued Texarkana in the forties. (The same case that inspired “The Town That Dreaded Sundown.”) It contains an interview with an actual doctor with a real prosthetic hook hand, who makes the case that the story propagates harmful stereotypes about the disabled. Most fascinating to me, the program gets into the cultural meanings behind this story. The Hook is deconstructed as a fable about teenage girls needing to be cautious with handsy boys and their own sexuality. My favorite part is when Dr. Susan Block, quite a colorful looking character, compares the hook itself to a “twisted phallic symbol,” pointing to the subtext of a premature withdraw and castration symbolized in the image of the car peeling out and the hook's bloody fate. All the other legends are given a similarly thorough reading. The facts of the mummy in the fun house – an actual true story – are detailed. An actual coat company CEO is brought in to debunk the snake eggs one. The show was always honest about the harmful elements of these stories too, pointing out the racist qualities of the Choking Doberman. 

As a make-shift horror anthology, your mileage may vary with “Mostly True Stories.” The production values for the dramatic re-enactments were extremely modest. The acting from the usually silent actors was often quite campy. However, that didn't stop the show from occasionally producing a striking image. The Hook sequence is actually kind of creepy. The silhouetted shot of the hook man lurking in the shadow or the boyfriend's own hand being replaced with a hook are actually quite well done. When discussing the Phantom Killer, the sudden appearance of a gun-wielding figure in a hood genuinely frightened me as a kid. The other segments are anywhere near as creepy as that one but shots of a cadaver in the lighting of a dark ride or baby snakes slithering out of a coat pocket aren't without their value. Henstridge's host segments are inessential but I do like the smoky, dark set she hangs out in. While most of the shows I watch this time of year are things I'm revisiting from childhood or seeing for the first time, I'll be totally honest and admit that “Mostly True Stories” is one I've re-watched quite frequently. Something about this show is extremely cozy to me. I love this stuff. [8/10]

 

Take An Easy Ride (1976)

As far as I know, nobody in the Year of Our Lord 2025 hitchhikes anymore. This is after nearly every pop culture recreation of the activity has depicted it as utterly fraught with danger. No matter what end of the wheel you're on, you are either getting picked up by a psycho or picking up a psycho, it seems. I guess teenage girls hitchhiking to rock concerts and never being seen again was a big problem in the seventies. “Take An Easy Ride” began life as a Public Information Film, those notoriously grim British educational films largely shown in schools, intended for television by director Kenneth F. Rowles. That's when exploitation producer David Grant offered to give the film theatrical distribution if lots of sex was inserted. This is how “Take An Easy Ride” took form as a cautionary pseudo-documentary about the dangers of hitchhiking and also a super sleazy sexploitation flick, with leering camera work and copious nudity. The film follows several storylines, of young women hitchhiking to a rock concert. Some of them are picked up simply by a creepy guy. Another is lured into a hotel room with alcohol. One pair is attacked and assaulted. While another set of young women prove as dangerous as the men picking them up.

This bizarre back-and-forth is what makes “Take An Easy Ride” an interesting cinematic experience. Man-on-the-street interviews, presumably staged, have random people being asked about whether they think hitchhiking should be banned. The film's intention is made repeatedly clear by the stern-voiced narrator repeatedly telling us how unsafe this activity is. As with any PIF, the presentation is stately and frills-free. The acting is often ropey, perhaps even amateurish. Cutting between multiple different scenarios so often furthers the feeling that this was a production by largely inexperienced newbies just happy to get the intended message out there. That's paired with documentary-like footage of the Isle of Wight rock festival, which gives us a fly-on-the-wall peek at seventies hippy culture as it was happening. 

This clumsy, if seemingly sincere, attempt to warn the youth at large not to go hitchiking, you friggin' dummies, is paired with an extremely sleazy approach. I think every single actress in the movie get naked on-camera, often for no particular reason. There's a stop over in a sex club, with a strip tease captured on-camera alongside lots of footage of porno tapes. When the sexual violence occurs, it's photographed with extremely pervy angles that glare at the actress' exposed body. The story of a woman intoxicated and manipulated by a charming man does not seem to show much sympathy to the victimized woman. When combined with the strict moralizing tone, the effect feels like the film is chastising the characters as much as it is any perspective viewers. It adds up to create a particular viewing experience, the dissonance between the intended message and the way it's delivered properly baffling the viewer. Sleazy and uncomfortable, “Take An Easy Ride” played in British grindhouses for years, where I can't imagine it informed too many people about the threats of hitchhiking but did provide them with the cheap thrills they were looking for. [6/10]