Category Archives: Horror

Creepshow 2 (1987)

Posted on October 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

creepshow2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories of terror.

Due to the success of the 1982 installment Stephen King and George Romero got together to write a second script based on three of King’s short stories and directing duties were turned over to Michael Gornick who had been the cinematographer on the first one. The budget was much lower than the first, which hampered the special effects and critical reception though it still made $14 million at the box office and has garnered a cult following amongst contemporary audiences.

The first, which is the weakest, stars George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour, in her last film appearance, as owners of a small-town general store that’s no longer making any profit. An Indian tribe elder (Frank Selsado) gives the couple a bag filled with jewelry as repayment for a debt and then later that night three hooligans lead by the long-haired Sam (Holt McCallany) rob the store and kill the couple. The three think they’ve gotten off scot-free, but then the cigar store Indian that stood in front of the store comes to life and avenges the couple’s deaths by murdering the three boys one-by-one.

This segment takes a while to get going and really doesn’t get interesting until the robbery happens, which should’ve occurred sooner. While the effects of showing the wooden Indian moving around is impressive as it really looks like he’s made of wood and not just somebody in a costume it would’ve been more intriguing had it not given away who the killer was. Simply shown the three being hacked by some mysterious, shadowy figure and then only at the very, very end alluded to it being the Indian.

The second story is better and deals with four college friends (Paul Satterfield, Jeremy Green, Daniel Beer, Page Hannah) going for a swim on a remote lake. They leave their car running and then all dive into the water and swim out onto a wooden raft, but then notice a black, gooey substance that surrounds them. The four feel trapped and when one of the young ladies puts her hand into the water the blob sucks her in and drowns her. The blob then seeps its way through the cracks of the raft and kills another one leaving only two left.

This one is genuinely creepy and I liked how it’s shot under a bright sunny sky making the area appear inviting and no need for anyone to be guarded until it’s too late. The constant shots of the running car sitting on the beach not far from where the swimmers are on the raft, but still unable to get to it, heightens the tension as well as the fact that there’s never any answer to just what this substance is, which in this case accentuates the intrigue. The only thing that I didn’t like is that after being stuck on the raft for an entire day the guy holding the sleeping girl lays her down onto the raft floor, but then uses the opportunity to undress her and admire her breasts, but I’d think with the situation they were in he’d be too exhausted and frightened to think about sex. The ‘twist’ at the end, which shows a No Swimming sign posted in a grove of trees, which the young adults hadn’t spotted, doesn’t totally work because if there’s no swimming in that lake then why would there be a wooden raft in the middle of it and who put it there?

The third story is the best and features a middle-aged woman, played by Lois Chiles, who goes on a drive late one night and accidentally kills a hitchhiker (Tom Wright) when her car goes spinning out-of-control. Instead of offering aid to the man she just drives-off, but then becomes plagued by visions of him constantly reappearing during the rest of her trip making her panic as she attempts to ‘re-kill’ the man, so she can be rid of him once and for all.

Initially this one seemed like a redo of the classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episode that featured actress Inger Stevens who went on a car trip and kept seeing the same hitch-hiker at various intervals on her drive, but this one takes it a step further by having Chiles use her car to literally smash the guy again and again, which gives it a gruesome over-the-top quality that deftly mixes in gore and black humor perfectly.

The film was set to have two other stories, ‘Cat from Hell’ and ‘Pinfall’, but due to budgetary limitations it was decided not to proceed with those and they were never filmed. In the ‘Cat from Hell’ one a hitman gets paid $100,000 to kill a cat that’s supposedly killed three other people. The ‘Pinfall’ one deals with competing bowling teams where the one team kills the other one, by tinkering with the van they ride in, and then the dead team coming back to life as zombies and killing the other team in unique ways by using things only available in a bowling alley, which sounded really cool and it’s a shame this segment wasn’t made as it would’ve been the best of the bunch.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 1, 1987

Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Gornick

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Pluto TV, Tubi, Roku, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies with Nudity

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Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Posted on October 20, 2024 | 1 comment

fright2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Vampire’s sister stalks teen.

Charley (William Ragsdale) is now in college and having been convinced by his therapist (Ernie Sabella) that the ordeal he went through when he was in high school with his next-door neighbor Jerry Dandridge really wasn’t about a vampire, but instead the man had simply been a serial killer. In order to celebrate his successful ‘conversion’ he takes his new girlfriend Alex (Traci Lind) over to visit Peter (Roddy McDowall) who had been instrumental in helping Charley defeat Jerry. While there Charley looks out a window and sees movers hauling in three giant crates that look similar in size to coffins and he begins to fear the old ordeal is starting all over again. He begins dreaming that beautiful woman named Regine (Julie Carmen) visits him in his apartment one night and bites him on his neck and soon he begins showing odd traits like having to wear dark glasses because he no longer likes the sunlight. After going to a party with Peter where Regine is also in attendance, he becomes convinced that she’s really just a performance artist and no longer fears her until Peter takes out his trusty hand-held mirror and notices that he can’t see her reflection. Once Regine realizes that Peter’s on to her she admits that she really is a vampire and out for revenge over what he and Charley did to Jerry who happened to be her brother.

As sequels go this one isn’t bad though there’s quite a few things that are different from the first one, which is mainly a who slew of new faces. Amanda Bearse, who had figured so prominently as Charley’s original girlfriend is nowhere to be seen as she was working on the TV-show ‘Married With Children’ and not able to reprise her role while Stephen Geoffreys, who played Charley’s friend Ed was busy starring in 976-Evil and thus not available.  Director Tom Holland and Chris Sarandon, who had played Jerry Dandridge in the first, were involved in Child’s Play, and thus unable to commit though purportedly Sarandon did visit the shoot in order to offer emotional support.

Tommy Lee Wallace, who was best known for having directed Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a film that was a critical and commercial failure when first released, but has through the years gained a cult following, got tabbed to direct this one and his background doing music videos can be clearly sensed here as it features a lot of quick edits and a moody vibe, which I really liked. Regine and her vampire clan that constantly surround her dress almost like a kitschy 80’s rock glam band, which is silly looking and campy, but also in a weird way creepy. Despite the low budget the special effects are still good particularly the monstrous transformations and the climactic sequence that takes place inside an elevator.

While Sarandon was highly impressive in the first version and there was simply no way that any other actor could’ve topped his performance Carmen is an adequate replacement. Too many times when producers can’t get a certain actor they then go out of their way to find someone similar, but here they wisely took the other route by finding someone who was quite the opposite. Instead of being verbally intimidating like with Jerry she does her stalking through being sexually alluring and the result is just as scary.

It’s also great seeing McDowall return as his presence in the first installment had been quite entertaining and his character here remains just as fun and I felt his hair looked better too. In the original the white in his hair appeared to have been sprayed on similar to how a white Christmas tree would look while in this one it’s a more natural looking gray with the white appearing on the edges, but the top part of his head still having a brownish color. I was though confused about how he was able to afford such a spacious pad in a ritzy apartment building that resembled a castle since in the first film he had been living in a cramped, dingy apartment that he was being evicted from and still working at the same job, so where he found the influx of cash to being able to move-up to a new swanky place is not explained.

The two things though that I didn’t care for was having Charley so easily convinced that what he had seen with his own eyes, Jerry being a vampire, was somehow not real, which made the character come-off as weak, easily influenced, and not reliable and like someone you really didn’t feel like rooting for if they could be brainwashed to that effective a degree. Also, having him slowly start to turn into a vampire wasn’t interesting in the least and having the bite mark continue to bleed even after it was bandaged didn’t make sense. Even if the puncture is created by a vampire the blood should still clot like it would with any other wound and not just turn the victim into a hemophiliac, which is what it kind of started to appear like.

The attempts at humor were misguided and genuinely got into the way of the scares and the whole thing would’ve been more effective had it been played straight. Overall though I felt was an effective follow-up and in certain ways even a bit better than the first. Finding a print of it though may be challenging as it’s never been released onto Blu-ray and the DVD issue, which came-out in 2003, is now out-of-print. It’s also not streamed anywhere. Even on its initial release it was only seen at select theaters for a brief time before falling off into obscurity. The main reason for this is that was produced by a production company run by Joseph Mendez, who while the movie was being filmed, was murdered along with his wife by their two teenage sons, which sent the company into bankruptcy and hampered the film from getting out. It also hurt the production of Part 3, which had already been in the planning stages. Infact both McDowall and Holland had a meeting with Mendez about moving forward with the third installment on the morning of his murder. That meeting though had proved to be a bit contentious, so when McDowall heard about the murder the next day he then immediately called Holland and said: “I didn’t do it, did you?”

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 8, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 43 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Studio: New Century/Vista

Available: DVD (out-of-print)

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Fright Night (1985)

Posted on October 18, 2024 | 1 comment

fright1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Vampire moves next door.

Charley (William Ragsdale) is a teen making-out with his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) in his bedroom one night when he looks out his window and sees movers carrying a coffin into the home next door. Throughout the proceeding days he becomes convinced, after eyeing what’s going on over there, that his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (Chris Sarandon), is a vampire. With the police refusing to believe him he feels his only option is to elicit the help of an actor named Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) who has starred in a lot of old movies about vampires and hosts a horror TV-show called ‘Fright Night’. Peter does not believe Charley at first, but when they go over to Jerry’s house for a visit he becomes convinced that Charley is telling the truth when he can’t see Jerry’s reflection in a mirror. Knowing that he’s now been found-out Jerry immediately goes on the offense by turning Charley’s friend Ed (Stephen Geoffreys) into a vampire and then setting his sights to do the same to Amy who closely resembles a woman he was once deeply in-love with.

The film became a surprise runaway hit despite the studio feeling it had no chance and pumped more money into the John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis film Perfect that was being shot at the same time. Because the execs were putting more focus on that one they left writer/director Tom Holland alone allowing him full directorial control and not forcing him to have to deal with the usual studio meddling. Holland, who had started out as an actor during the 50’s and 60’s before eventually moving into screenwriting during the late 70’s when his acting offers began to dry up, came up with the idea for this film while working on his Cloak & Dagger script and since he had won accolades for some of his earlier horror scripts that had gone onto success including Psycho II, he was offered the chance to make his directorial debut with this one.

The film has a wonderful tongue and cheek approach, which keeps it consistently entertaining and lively throughout. While it’s funny at times it also has some really impressive special effects done well before the advent of CGI, but in many ways better. The best one and possibly best moment of the whole movie is when Ed morphs into a wolf and attacks Peter and Peter is able to pierce the dogs heart with a broken chair leg forcing the injured and dying Ed to slowly return to human form, which is both gory and realistically handled and creepy visually. If there’s definitely one part to watch again and again and never get tired of it would be that one.

The acting is stellar particularly Sarandon who displays a casual and very frightening menacing quality that makes all of his scenes unnerving. Supposedly he attempted to try and humanize his character by adding in certain traits that were not in the script like him eating apples to show how he was using it to help ‘cleanse his pallet from all the blood he had sucked’, but to me he just came off as this constant evil presence and one of the scarier film villains in horror movie history. Bearse, who has become better known for her work in the TV-show ‘Married with Children’, is entertainingly feisty as the teen girlfriend despite being already 28 at the time of filming though you really couldn’t see it.  Though not as well known Dorothy Fielding is very amusing as Charley’s daffy mom and I wished she had been in it more and of McDowall is absolutely perfect in a role that was originally intended for Vincent Price.

While the film has a lot going for it I did find its logic to be problematic. I found the fact that Amy so closely resembles Jerry’s past love from long ago to be too much of a coincidence and felt there should’ve been more of a backstory. The idea that these kids would choose some two-bit actor in their quest to defeat this vampire made no sense as an actor is just reading words off of a script and would have no more insight into vampires than your local junkman. Having Peter be some self-promoting vampire hunter and advertise his ‘vampire eradicator services’ in TV-ads, even if he was just a huckster, would’ve at least been a better choice than expecting someone starring in low budget movies from years ago to be the solution that will ‘save them’. Also, him bringing along a gun that he used in a past movie, in order to deploy it to shoot Jerry’s bodyguard, played by Jonathan Stark, is another head-scratcher because movie guns are props that shoot blanks instead of real bullets.

The use of the cross to ward off vampires gets confusing. When Peter attempts to use it on Jerry it isn’t effective and yet when Charley tries it it works. Jerry says this is because ‘you have to have faith’, but what type of faith? Faith that it will work, or faith in a deity? To help clarify this Charley should’ve been shown earlier, even briefly, as having some spiritual leanings, or just a quick shot showing the Holy Bible in his room would’ve been enough. Also, when Peter uses the cross against the vampire Ed it’ works, so why is this, or does Peter’s ‘faith’ go flip-flopping back-and-forth?

Spoiler Alert!

Having Amy transform into a vampire and to be advised by Peter that if Jerry gets destroyed before dawn  the process will reverse seems like its making up rules as most vampire movies I’ve seen seem to say the opposite like once they’re bitten there’s no going back. Having the two then go back just a few nights later after the big ordeal is over and be snuggling together in his room didn’t seem believable to me. Personally if I were Charley I don’t care how deep my feelings were for her I’d still be frightened to be alone with her especially after seeing her face turn into such a scary bloodthirsty monster. In the back of my mind I’d be paranoid it could happen again and who’s to say it wouldn’t. I realize American audiences are conditioned to expect everything to ‘work-out’ in the end and if it doesn’t they get cranky, but having things here go back to normal was too quick and seamless. Psychologically there would’ve been post traumatic stress by all and this overly smooth resolution is phony.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 2, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Tom Holland

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Brainwaves (1982)

Posted on October 16, 2024 | Leave a comment

brainwaves

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Transferred brainwaves cause nightmares.

Kaylie (Suzanna Love) is a married mother of a young child living in San Francisco. One day while running out to the grocery store she gets the heel of her shoe caught in a trolley car track and this causes her to get hit by a car and suffer severe brain damage. Dr. Clavius (Tony Curtis) is heading experimental surgery that can transfer brainwaves from one victim to another. Kaylie’s husband Julian (Kier Dullea) agrees to the procedure in an effort to bring his wife back to her former state. Unbeknownst to him the other victim was a woman named Leila (Corinne Wahl) who was murdered in her bathtub by an unknown assailant. When Kaylie receives the brain transfer she begins having nightmares about the murderous incident. They then go on a search to try and unravel the mystery, but inadvertently get the attention of the killer who now begins stalking Kaylie in order to silence her before anymore oppressed memories come to light, which could identify him.

The film was directed by Ulli Lommel with a script that he had co-written with Love, who was also his real-life wife. The two had success a couple of years earlier with The Boogeyman and thus it inspired them to attempt another horror film. The concept is great and could’ve created an excellent plot, but the second-half labors too much in the recovery phase inside the hospital, which losses all the tension. The killer, whom we only see from the back, disappears from the story completely during the middle-half to the point you forget about him only to have him finally return by the third act, but by then it’s too late.

Dullea, as the concerned husband, is excellent even though acting here was a major comedown as he was getting leading man roles in major studio productions back in the 60’s, but now was relegated to low budget horror films though with that said he still makes the most of it. The same unfortunately can’t be stated for Tony Curtis, who only got the role because John Huston, who was the original choice, was too ill. Curtis had been a leading man in the 50’s and 60’s, so having to accept a part in such a minor production where he wasn’t even the star was certainly taxing on his ego and it shows as he appears grouchy and irritable throughout and seems like he wanted to be anywhere else, but in this movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The opening murder is okay though you know once she walks into the bathroom and turns on a portable radio that it’s most likely going to end up in an electrocution, so when it does finally occur it’s no surprise. The trolly car incident is nicely shot as well, but the ‘big reveal’ of who the killer is, which turns out to be non other than the victim’s boyfriend, which is the first person you would’ve suspected and thus is a complete letdown. The film should’ve had a wider array of suspects to choose from and played this part out more. The climactic sequence, done near the Golden Gate Bridge, gets shot in slow motion, which gives the proceedings a really tacky look.

The final twist features the dead body of the killer being wheeled into the doctor’s lab where it will apparently be used as a brain donor to another crash victim is cool, but the film then ends when it should’ve continued on with the psycho now chasing after Kaylie inside whatever body his brainwaves got transferred to. By having writer/director Lommel not take full advantage of the myriad plot twists as it could’ve is what really hurts it making it no wonder that it’s box office proceeds was a disastrous $3,111 out of a budget that had been $2.5 million.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 19. 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ulli Lommel

Studio: Motion Picture Marketing

Available: VHS, DVD-R (out-of-print)

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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Psycho III (1986)

Posted on October 15, 2024 | 1 comment

psycho3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Norman gets a girlfriend.

The story begins a month after the one in the second installment ended with police searching for the whereabouts of Emma Spool (Claudia Bryar) whom Norman (Anthony Perkins) killed and now keeps her preserved body in his home and yet curiously the police don’t suspect him. Meanwhile a roving journalist named Tracy Venable (Roberta Maxell) does and she keeps trying to get interviews with Norman in an effort to weed-out the truth while also snooping around his property any chance she gets. Maureen (Diana Scarwid) is a nun who’s lost her faith and thus left the convent and rents a room at the Bates Hotel. She closely resembles Marion Crane, one of Norman’s earlier victims, which sets off his desire to kill again, but when he goes into her room in an attempt to stab her he finds that she’s already slit her wrists and bleeding profusely, which sets off his emotional senses to help her and thus he takes her to the nearest hospital, which in-turn gets her to fall for him and the two begin a romantic relationship once she gets out. Norman also hires a wanna-be music artist named Duane (Jeff Fahey) to help out around the hotel as an assistant manager, but Duane becomes aware of Norman’s mother fixation and tries to use it against him just as an assortment of strange murders reoccur on the premises.

The third installment of the franchise is by far the weakest and it’s no surprise that it didn’t do as well at the box office and pretty much nixed anymore sequels getting released with the Part IV one, which came out 4 years later, being made as a TV-movie instead of a theatrical one. Perkins, who made his directorial debut here, starts things off with some intriguing segues and a good death scene of showing a nun falling off of a high ledge, but the storyline itself is getting quite old. Watching the ‘mother’ committing murders is no longer scary, interesting, or even remotely shocking. The script offers no new intriguing angles and things become quite predictable and boring very quickly.

Perkins gives another fun performance, which is pretty much the only entertaining element of the film, and Scarwid is compelling as a young emotionally fragile woman trying to find her way in a cold, cruel world. Maxwell though as the snooping reporter is unlikable and thus if she is meant to be the protagonist it doesn’t work. Fahey’s character is also a turn-off as his sleazebag persona is too much of a caricature and having him predictable do sleazy things as you’d expect from the start is not interesting at all.

The whole mystery angle has very little teeth and the way the reporter figures out her the clues comes way too easily. For instance she goes to Spool’s old apartment and sees a phone number scrawled out several times on a magazine cover sitting on the coffee table, so she calls it and finds out it’s for the Bates Motel and thus connects that Norman most likely had something to do with her disappearance, but wouldn’t you think the police would’ve searched the apartment before and seen that same number and made the same connection much earlier? Also, what kind of landlord would leave a place intact months later after the former tenant fails to ever come back? Most landlords are in the business to make money and would’ve had the place cleaned-out long ago and rented it to someone new.

The fact that the police don’t ever suspect Norman particularly the town’s sheriff, played by Hugh Gillin, is equally absurd. Cops by their very nature suspect everybody sometimes even when the person is innocent. It’s just part of their job to be suspicious and constantly prepare for the worst, so having a sheriff not even get an inkling that these disappearances could have something to do with Norman, a man with a very hefty and well known homicidal past, is too goofy to make any sense and starts to turn the whole thing especially the scene where a dead corpse sits right in front of him in a ice machine, but he doesn’t spot it, into a misguided campiness that doesn’t work at all.

I didn’t like the whole ‘party scene’ that takes place at the hotel, which occurs when a bunch of drunken football fans decide to stay there. I get that in an effort to be realistic there needed to be some other customers that would stay there for the place to remain open, though you’d think with the hotel’s well-known history most people would be too afraid to. Either way the constant noise, running around and racket that these people put-on takes away from the creepiness and starts to make the thing resemble more of a wild frat party than a horror movie.

Spoiler Alert!

The death by drowning scene is pretty cool, but everything else falls unfortunately flat. The final twist where it’s explained that Spool really wasn’t his mother after all sets the whole narrative back and makes the storyline look like it’s just going in circles and not moving forward with any revealing new information making this third installment feel pointless and like it shouldn’t have even been made. Screenwriter’s Charles Edward Pogue’s original script had Duane being the real killer while the Maureen character would be a psychologist who would come to visit Norman and who would be played by Janet Leigh, who had played Marion Crane in the first film. Her uncanny resemblance to one his earlier victims would then set Norman’s shaky mental state to go spiraling out-of-control, which all seemed like a really cool concept, certainly far better than what we eventually got here, but of course the studio execs considered this idea to be ‘too far out’ and insisted he should reel it back in with a more conventional storyline, which is a real shame.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: July 2, 1986

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Anthony Perkins

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Psycho II (1983)

Posted on October 13, 2024 | 2 comments

psycho2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Norman Bates comes home.

After 22 years of being confined to a mental institution over the murders of 5 people Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is now deemed to be no longer a menace to society much to the protest of Lila Crane (Vera Miles) whose sister Marion was one of his victims. With nowhere else to go Norman returns to the old house that he shared with his mother and tries to restart his hotel business that had been run while he was incarcerated by Warren (Dennis Franz) who had allowed the place to be turned into a flophouse for drug users and is immediately fired. To help bring in an income he gets a job at a nearby cafe as a cook where he meets Mary (Meg Tilly) who works there as a waitress. The two quickly start-up a friendship and when Norman learns that she’s broken-up with her boyfriend and no place to stay he offers a bedroom in his house for her to sleepover, but soon Norman starts receiving notes and even phone calls from someone perpetuating to be his mother and then murders begin occurring by someone dressed as an old lady. Has Norman gone back to his old homicidal ways, or is it someone else trying to make it look like it’s him, so that he’ll be rearrested and sent back to prison?

The attempt to make a sequel to the Hitchcock classic had been discussed for years and apparently even the master himself had considered it, but the studios generally nixed the idea figuring there was just no way to upstage the first one. Then Robert Bloch, who written the novel that the first one was based on, came out with a second installment also called ‘Psycho II’ that was published in 1982 that helped spark new interest in the franchise. However, the book’s plot was far different than this one. In the novel version Norman escapes from the mental institution while dressed in a nun’s outfit and then hitches a ride with another nun whom he kills and then rapes. After absconding with her van he then picks up a males hitch-hiker whom he plans to kill and then use his body to fake his own death. Police later find the burning van and charred remains, but are unable to identify who it is. Meanwhile across town a movie is being made about Norman’s life and Norman’s psychiatrist fears that Norman is going to go there to kill everyone in the production, so he decides to become a ‘technical advisor’ to the film to help watch out for the crew, but while there he starts to become more worried about the film’s director who’s a spitting image of Norman from 20 years earlier and he reveals an unhealthy infatuation with the actress playing Marion Crane.

While I found the book to be highly creative the studio execs disliked its satirical elements regarding the movie business and discarded it while hiring Tom Holland, who had some success with the 1978 horror TV-Movie ‘The Initiation of Sarah’ and also the screen adaptation of The Beast Within to write a script with a more conventional storyline. While this story isn’t bad, I personally liked the Bloch version better, this one does have some logic holes mainly around releasing someone who’s killed several people from well published crimes and clearly suffering from a severe mentally ill state and yet somehow convincing the parole board and public at-large that he’s now ‘cured’, which really pushes the plausibility meter. The film also portrays Norman as being a likable guy just trying to find his way, which is awkward since the viewer is technically supposed to be fearing him, but half the time ends up sympathizing with him instead and this dueling dichotomy doesn’t work.

The acting though is terrific especially Perkins who makes his portrayal of Norman into an almost art form and the most enjoyable element of the movie though he initially was reluctant to recreate the role complaining that it hurt his career playing the part in the first one and it had caused him to become typecast, but when he found out that they were planning to cast Christopher Walken in the part if he rejected it he then decided to come-on board. Dennis Franz is also a delight as nobody can play a brash, blue-collar out-of-shape ‘tough guy’ quite like him and his taunting, loud-mouth ways help bring an element of dark humor to the proceedings.

Spoiler Alert!

My favorite though was Meg Tilly who helps tie all the of the craziness around her together by being the one normal person of the whole bunch. Reportedly she and Perkins did not get along and she refused to attend the film’s premiere though the frostiness of their relationship doesn’t show on the screen and the two end-up working well together. The only thing that I didn’t like was the misguided twist of her turning out to being the daughter of the Vera Miles character and in cahoots with her in her attempt to drive Norman crazy. For one thing if this were true then it should’ve been Meg instigating the idea of her moving into the house with him versus Norman coming up with the idea and her seeming reluctant.

The film has some good creepy camera angles of the home, which seems even more frightening here especially with the way it’s isolated desert setting gets played-up. There’s also a couple of gory killings, which I liked, but the second-half does drag and the movie could’ve been shortened by a good 20-minutes. However, the film’s conclusion where Norman learns the his mother’s sister, played by Claudia Bryar, is actually his real mother and she was behind the recent murders was a perfect ironic angle that took me by surprise and I loved it. Why he would then proceed to kill her with a shovel I didn’t really get as it seemed they could’ve started-up some weird bond and became a homicidal couple, which would’ve been more frightening, but still it’s a cool twist either way and helps make this a decent sequel.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 3, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 53 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Franklin

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Psycho (1960)

Posted on October 11, 2024 | 3 comments

psycho

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Don’t take a shower.

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who works as a secretary at a real estate firm, steals $40,000 in cash from her boss (Vaughn Taylor), who trusted her to take the money to the bank, in order to help her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) pay off his debts. As she’s traveling to where he lives she encounters a rainstorm causing her to take the nearest exit. There she drives into the lot of a isolated lodge called Bates Motel, run by a young man named Norman (Anthony Perkins) who’s still living with his mother in an old rundown house that sits ominously on a hill behind the hotel rooms.  Norman becomes immediately smitten to the woman, who signs the hotel ledger under an assumed name, and invites her to have dinner with him in the hotel office. Marion, who sees him as a awkward, but otherwise harmless guy who’s still dominated by his mother, agrees. After they eat she departs back to her room and takes a shower when what appears to be his mother, who considers all women to be ‘whores’, stabs and kills her. Norman then cleans-up the evidence by submerging the dead body and her car in a nearby swamp. Soon a private detective named Arbogast (Martin Balsam) begins investigating the case and what he finds out leads Marion’s boyfriend Sam and her sister Lila (Vera Miles) to the property where they’ll unravel a shocking secret.

The film, which at the time was considered ‘too tawdry and salacious’ to be made into a movie and thus the studio refused to give director Alfred Hitchcock the required funding and forcing him to use his own funds and crew to produce it, was based on the novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. Bloch began writing it in 1957 when coincidentally in the neighboring town not more than 35 miles from his came to the light the criminal activities of Ed Gein who killed two people while also digging up dead bodies and then skinning them in an effort to create a ‘woman suit’ he could wear so he’d ‘become his dead mother’ who had dominated him for the majority of his life. Rumors were that Gein’s crimes had inspired the book, but Bloch insisted that he had almost finished with the manuscript before he became aware of the real-life case and then became shocked with how closely it resided with his story.

While the film follows the book pretty closely there are a few differences. In the book the Marion character dies from decapitation while in the movie it’s from stab wounds. The Norman character is described as an overweight man in his 40’s while in the movie he’s thin and in his 20’s, which I felt was an improvement as it made more sense why Marion would feel less guarded around him and put herself in a more vulnerable position than she might otherwise as she still viewed him as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ kid. It also helps explain why Norman blunders his interview with the detective and virtually incriminates himself because he was too sheltered and not worldly-wise enough to handle pressure situations.

The film is full of a lot of firsts. It was the first to show a toilet or use the word transvestite, but what I really liked though is that it takes a different spin on the character of the victim. Typically, even today, victims are portrayed as being virginal and angelic beings particularly women, but here it works against that. Right away with the opening scene in the hotel room we see she’s definitely no virgin and what’s more she’s having sex outside of wedlock in an era where ‘good girls saved themselves for marriage’. Having her then be susceptible to corruption by stealing from her employer, or not feel frightened initially by Norman and even superior to him further works against the grain of the ‘sweet, fragile damsel in distress’ cliche and makes her seem more human since she’s not perfect and vulnerable to the same vices as everyone else, which in-turn gives the more an added darker dimension.

The film’s hallmark though is its memorable camera work from a close-up of the victim’s unblinking eye, still not sure how Leigh could’ve kept her eyes open for as long as she does, to the interesting way the house gets captured from the ground looking upward on a hill towards the sky with the creepy night clouds floating behind it.  My favorite one though is the tracking shot showing Norman walking into his mother’s room and then having the camera stop right at the top of the door frame and then spin around towards the hallway as he then leaves the room and carries his mother down the stairs. The only shot that I didn’t care for is when the Martin Balsam character gets stabbed at the top of the stairs, but instead of immediately falling over backwards and then rolling down the stairs, which is what would happen 99% of the time, he instead somehow ‘glides’ down an entire flight of stairs backwards while remaining upright and only finally falling to the floor once he hits the bottom, which goes against the basic laws of physics and to me looks fake and goofy, but other than that it’s a classic and still holds-up amongst the best horror movies made.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: June 16, 1960

Runtime: 1 Hour 49 Minutes

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Classic, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a Hotel setting

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Cat’s Eye (1985)

Posted on October 30, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Three stories involving feline.

With a screenplay written by Stephen King the film is made up of three of his short stories with two of them taken from his 1978 novel ‘Night Shift’ while the third one was penned directly for the screen. The only connecting thread is a stray cat and actress Drew Barrymore who appear in all three tales though only have major parts in the third one.

The first segment is called ‘Quitters, Inc.’ and involves James Wood playing the part of a man named Dick Morrison who is trying to quit smoking and enters an agency that boasts a high success rate of getting their clients to stop. It’s run by Vinny (Alan King) who tells Dick that if he doesn’t stop smoking instantly that they’ll kidnap his wife (Mary D’Arcy) and put her into a room where she’ll receive electrical shocks. To prove his point he puts the cat in the cage and then through a glass partition Dick witnesses the feline getting shocked, which is enough to scare him into quitting on the spot. Yet as the days progress Dick finds himself constantly getting the urge to light-up, but Vinny warns him that he has people who’ll be watching him and if he does dare to backtrack they’ll immediately grab his wife and bring her into the cage. Eventually though the compulsion to have a cigarette gets to be too much and he sneaks a puff only to then face the dire consequences.

This segment tries for black comedy, but doesn’t go far enough with it. While Woods, who usually excels as the twisted types, is quite good as the straight man, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t go the police when his wife gets taken, or why any of the other clients didn’t either, which should’ve gotten the business quickly shut down and the owners prosecuted for running an unethical operation. Famously brash comedian Alan King isn’t given enough leeway to allow his cantankerous persona to go full throttle though watching him wearing a white leisure suit and lip synch the words to the song ‘Every Breath You Take’ makes it almost worth it. It’s interesting seeing James Rebhorn in a bit part as a drunken business man at a party as he later had a prominent role in the movie The Game, which had a very similar storyline to this one involving a business that overtakes their client’s lives and is constantly watching them.

The second segment called ‘The Ledge’ involves a man named Johnny (Robert Hays) who must walk across a thin, outdoor ledge along a penthouse wall many feet above a busy street. If he succeeds then the penthouse owner, Cressner (Kenneth McMillan), will grant his wife a divorce and allow her to marry Johnny whom she’s been dating.

This story is the best one mainly because it has McMillan who is one of the finest character actors of all time and supplies his role with an amazing amount of energy and dark campiness. The scenes of watching Hays trying to maneuver his way on the ledge while being simultaneously attacked by a pigeon and at times McMillan who throws things at him out his window, is really terrifying. You feel like you’re on the ledge with him and I cringed all the way through this one, but in a good way as I really got swept up in it though the twist ending is a letdown.

The third and final segment called ‘The General’ involves a young girl living in North Carolina, named Amanda (Drew Barrymore) who takes in a stray cat much to her nagging mother’s (Candy  Clark) chagrin as she feels the animal may attack Amanda’s pet bird named Polly whom she keeps in a cage in her room. Amanda though likes the cat, whom she’s named General, because he scares away the evil troll, who’s the size of a rat and sneaks into her bedroom at night through a small opening in the wall to steal away her breath while also attacking Polly.

This segment has some interesting special effects, but it’s hard to tell if this is intended to be scary, or comical. It’s probably supposed to be a mixture of both, but I wished it went more for the scares since the movie, which gets billed as being a ‘horror’ doesn’t really have much of them otherwise. This segment also doesn’t really have any twist to it other than the parents finally believing that a troll really does exist in their daughter’s bedroom, but then telling her not to tell anyone about it, but why? It seems like if there’s one of them there could be others and the whole home should be inspected and fumigated and if I were the homeowner I wouldn’t want to spend another minute in there until it was, so having this family just forget about it and go back to normal didn’t seem like a normal response. The troll is also too reminiscent of the devil doll in Trilogy of Terror, which was far more frightening.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1985

Runtime: 1 Hour 34 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Lewis Teague

Studio: MGM/UA

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies Based on Short Stories, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies that take place in the South

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The Baby (1973)

Posted on October 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Family harbors man-baby.

Ann (Anjanette Comer) is a social worker who, still tormented by the car accident that has left her husband severely brain damaged, decides to throw herself into her work by focusing on a bizarre case in which a mother (Ruth Roman) and her two daughters (Marianna Hill, Susanne Zenor) take care of a third sibling (David Mooney, but billed as David Manzy) that is a grown man, but permanently trapped in an infant state. As Ann meets with the family she becomes convinced that ‘the baby’ has potential for intellectual capacity and it’s only because of the abuse that he receives from his embittered mother, who harbors a grudge for men after her husband walked out on her and is now taking out that anger on her son, that is holding him back. She devises a plan to kidnap the son, so that she can take him out of that toxic environment in order to help him, but when she does the mother and her two daughters plot a violent revenge in order to take him back.

It took many years for screenwriter Abe Polsky to get his friend Ted Post, who appears onscreen during the party scene, to agree to film his script as he insisted that it was, in his words, ‘too negative’. His ambivalence for the material shows as visually it’s given the TV-movie treatment that lacks atmosphere, or a visually provocative approach the would help accentuate the darkly quirky elements of the story. While this has still attained a cult following it’s mainly because of the offbeat story and might’ve gotten more fans and attention had the direction been equally offbeat instead of so basic.

The acting on the other hand is a stand-out. Ruth Roman, a one time leading lady during Hollywood’s Golden Age, but by the 70’s was relegated to low budget horror, is terrific with her raspy voice and chain smoking making her like a snarly version of Suzanne Pleshette. The caustic confrontations between her and Comer, who initially seems like the angelic, law abiding one, helps accentuate their contrasting personalities. Comer of course is quite good too. She’s played many offbeat characters, but here comes-off as the noble, straight one and does so convincingly, which is detrimental for pulling off the stories plot point. Hill, as Roman’s twisted amoral daughter, is interesting as well though there was no need for two daughters as they both shared seemingly the same personality and could easily have been merged into one and since Hill gives her part a little better nuance she should’ve been cast while Zenor cut out completely.

Mooney as the man-child though is the scene stealer. He got into his part by observing special needs children and his infant mannerisms is on-target to the extent it’s creepy. Having him put into a crib though that he supposedly couldn’t get out despite being a grown man physically doesn’t really gel as even toddlers can ultimately figure out a way to get out of one. Putting him into a big cage that would sit in the middle of the ‘nursery’ would’ve been more sinister visually as well as realistic. The source of his infantile state, that he’s seemingly been abused by a cattle prod all these years to not grow up, or to even learn to talk, or walk, is equally ridiculous. Explaining that his condition was caused by being in a car accident when he was an actual baby, which then trapped him in that state forever due to brain damage would’ve been far more easier to swallow while also tying it in to Comer’s husband’s condition that eventually becomes a key element.

The scene with the young babysitter, played by Erin O’Reilly, didn’t make sense either. She’s portrayed as being just this average teen taking care of the baby like she would a real one for extra money, but there’s no way any teen would be comfortable changing the diaper of a grown man, as it’s still a man’s body no matter how he behaves, and not come away feeling sick and perverse. by doing it Thus the part should’ve been played by some kooky older woman, perhaps a friend or cousin to the mother, who was lonely and liked taking care of the ‘baby’ due to sharing the same man-hating instincts, or had a secret quirk where she enjoyed having a male in a subservient condition.

Spoiler Alert!

The third act had holes in it as well as Comer kidnaps the ‘baby’ and brings him home with her, but the mother and sisters don’t call the police to get him back. Supposedly this is because the mother is afraid the years of abuse, that Comer has become aware of, would come to light, but it would still be her word against theirs and I felt they should’ve responded more aggressively maybe even hiring a lawyer to take the case to court and then becoming impatient with the slow legal process and then finally deciding to take matters into their own hands, but just having them sit around the house for several days/weeks waiting to see what Comer does next doesn’t really jive.

The ultimately twist though I did like and took me by surprise. I’m usually able to guess where movies are going and can get it right most of the time, but this one is novel and for that gets high marks despite its other issues.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1973

Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Ted Post

Studio: Scotia International

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Fandor, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Horror, Kidnapping Movies

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Who can Kill a Child? (1976)

Posted on October 26, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Children kill the adults.

Tom (Lewis Fiander) and Evelyn (Prunella Ransome), who is pregnant, travel to an island off the coast of Spain in order to find some peace and quiet while on vacation. Once they arrive they find the place conspicuously devoid of any adults with many of the shops and bars looking like they’ve been abandoned. The only people around are children who behave strangely and will not talk to Tom, or Evelyn even when spoken to directly. They then come upon an adult survivor named Padre (Antonio Iranzo) who describes to them how the night before the children suddenly went crazy and began killing all the adults on the island without any provocation. Can Tom and Evelyn escape, or will they become yet another victim?

While there’s been other movies detailing children, or even groups of kids, who murder the adults around them this one is considered the granddaddy of all of them and, though not ever verified, the possible inspiration to Stephen King’s Children of the Corn. The film’s creepiness comes not so much with scares, as there’s very little of that, but more through its quiet atmosphere and isolation that grows increasingly more ominous as it goes. Violence-wise it’s scarce with only the minimum of gore though the sequence done over the opening credits, which has grisly real-life footage of victims of the Holocaust as well as both the Korean and Vietnam Wars is not for the squeamish and may be too explicit and grim for some to sit through.

The script was written in only a matter of 4 short days and it shows with character motivations that aren’t particularly well thought out. For instance I didn’t understand why Tom wouldn’t tell Evelyn about what he saw, in regards to the child beating up and eventually killing an old man, and wanted to somehow play down and even lie about what was going on. This is a pregnant woman who has a right to know about the dangers lurking about. Shielding her from the horrifying realities isn’t going to help her be alert and put up her defenses and if anything just make her more vulnerable to be taken advantage of by the kids. What kind of husband lies to his wife about such urgent matters? Does he think because she’s female she won’t be ‘strong enough’ to handle the truth? If so it makes him sexist and not particularly likable because of it.

Tom also is too slow to respond to things. Even after witnessing first hand the children’s atrocities he doesn’t immediately try to arm himself, get off the island, or board him and his wife off in some sort of safe room with a fortified door. Instead they remain pretty much out in the open in an abandoned hotel with both the entrances and exits wide open for anyone to come into. At one point he even gives his wife a sedative and tells her to take a nap inside one of the hotel rooms while leaving the door open as he goes downstairs to speak to the male survivor, but how does he know a kid won’t sneak into the room while he’s gone?

It’s strange too how the children kill a Dutch woman and even strip off her clothes, but when Tom walks in they all scurry away. If they’ve already killed a vast number of adults why would they fear Tom when he comes in and instead not just attack him too? For that matter why does Tom feel so emboldened to walk in on these kids to begin with? He’s seen what terrible things they can do, so why does he risk exposing himself to them? These clearly aren’t normal kids, so he should remain at a safe distance and view what they’re doing from a hiding spot.

While there’s creepy moments and imagery it all mainly comes during the third act and some more scares and action earlier could’ve helped. The special effects aren’t too great either with the shot of the bloodied old man, whose supposedly just been killed, clearly still breathing as his chest heaves up and down, though Tom carries him away like he’s now nothing more than a corpse. Having Padre describe the violent attacks of the children onto the adults from the previous night was disappointing as this should’ve been played out visually, even if through flashback, as it would be much scarier to see this instead of just being told about it.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending has its fair share of suspenseful moments, but again more logic loopholes. When Tom and Prunella are trapped in a room behind a wooden door a small child crawls through the window space and tries to shoot at them, but Tom manages to hit the kid with a bullet first with a rifle he’s found. The other kids then quit trying to break the door down the couple are in once they hear the shot and all go filing away. Tom says this is because none of the other adults responded with aggression and violence towards them like he did. Once they realized, by hearing the gunshot, that Tom meant business they all backed off knowing that he might kill them as well. However, the kids could not see through the door, the tiny window on it was too high up for them to look through, so for all they knew the gunshot was the sound of the small kid shooting the couple with his gun and therefore they should’ve continued the attack and not immediately stopped.

The children are also able to somehow brainwash their peers into doing their evil bidding by simply looking into their eyes, which somehow puts them under a spell. They even use this power to get the fetus inside Evelyn’s womb to attack her, but where do they get this power from? What kind of entity is behind all of this? Nothing gets answered, which leaves too many questions open and thus not as effective as it could’ve been.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 26, 1976

Runtime: 1 Hour 53 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Narciso Ibanez Serrador

Studio: Penta Films

Available: DVD (Region 0), Blu-ray (Region B/2)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies with a Hotel setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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