Giant Monstershow: Night of the Lepus

The October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow carries on with one of the most ridiculous premises one can come across in film. Night of the Lepus, a terrifying tale of nature run amok after the arrogant interference of man, is about a plague of giant rabbits. Cute, cuddly, merciless and carnivorous rabbits. No matter how serious those involved treat this material, it’s impossible to get around the fact that the bad beasties in this flick are bunny rabbits. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Night of the Lepus”

October Horrorshow: Shock, aka Beyond the Door II

Beyond the Door II movie posterMario Bava was a giant of horror. His Black Sunday is an atmospheric horror classic that should be on any horror fan’s list of films to see. Shock, released in the United States as Beyond the Door II (it bears no relation to Beyond the Door — the title was strictly promotional), was Bava’s last film before his death. It’s not a bad way to go out, but it’s also a workaday horror film, missing the weirdness that made Bava’s other works, and Italian horror films in general, so special.

The film, released in 1977, follows the travails of the Baldini family. Things are going just fine at the start. Bruno Baldini (John Steiner), his wife, Dora (Daria Nicolodi), and Dora’s son from her first marriage, Marco (David Colin, Jr.), move to a new house. It’s not a new house for Dora, however. It’s the house in which she and her first husband used to live, before he killed himself. That tragedy sent Dora around the bend, ending in a stay at a psychiatric hospital. Despite this, after she has put her life back together and restarted a family, she agrees to move back into the house. It’s a nice place, but still…

Shock sets itself up as fairly standard ghost fair. For most of the movie, that’s what we get. Marco is the first to notice the spectral happenings, but being a child in a film like this, he is unconcerned, and strangely receptive. It’s Dora that becomes bothered by supernatural hallucinatory visions. Meanwhile, Bruno is the typical father figure in familial ghost flicks — skeptical and largely absent. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Shock, aka Beyond the Door II”

Giant Monstershow: Gorgo

What’s this? Orchestral soundtrack? Hand-illustrated title font? Technicolor? Hey, wait a minute…did this film have a respectable budget? Sacrilege!

The October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow carries on with Gorgo, Britain’s very own kaiju film. From 1961, Gorgo was directed by Eugène Lourié (making his third appearance in the Monstershow) from a screenplay by Robert L. Richards and Daniel James. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Gorgo”

October Horrorshow: The Being

What a gloriously stupid movie. From schlock producer Bill Osco and writer/director Jackie Kong, The Being walks on the wrong side of the line separating exploitation from good ole b-horror, but it’s also silly enough to satisfy one’s more mirthful desires from bad cinema.

Filmed in 1980, but shelved until three years later, The Being stars Osco, billed as both Rexx Coltrane AND Johnny Commander, as Detective Mort Lutz of the Pottsville, Idaho police. He’s investigating a rash of disappearances in the town. Also in the cast are Jose Ferrer as Mayor Gordon Lane, Ruth Buzzi as his wife, Virginia, and Martin Landau as Garson Jones, an engineer investigating the safety of a nuclear waste dump just outside of town. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: The Being”

Giant Monstershow: Reptilicus

The October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow carries on! After spending nineteen straight films in the 1950s, we have our first feature from after that defining decade of the monster flick, but all that’s changed is that today’s movie was filmed in color.

Reptilicus, from 1961, is a joint Danish-American monster flick that was filmed in two versions. One was shot in Danish, directed by Poul Bang, and that’s the version Danish audiences saw. The other version was directed by Sidney Pink, used most of the same performers, but was shot in English, for distribution in the United States. But, American International Pictures, which distributed the film in the US, didn’t like the English cut, and ordered substantial changes. The changes were enough for Pink, who was also the film’s producer and a credited screenwriter, to take AIP to court. It was a brief dispute, but an indication of divergence between the two versions of this film. I’m curious just how different the Danish version is from the English, but not curious enough to sit through this dog again, at least for now. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Reptilicus”

October Horrorshow: Dying Light

There are more good and great games out there than a person has the time to play — especially if they don’t get paid for the privilege. A good game can grab a player and immerse them in a story that takes just as long as a novel to resolve. The very best games allow a person to explore the reaches of the game’s construction and the player’s imagination, making playing it more than just play, but creative expression (I’m looking at you, Minecraft). Most games, like all things, fall into readily recognizable categories, breaking little if any ground. But, as with all things, it is not necessary for a game to be wholly original for it to be a good game, or fun to play. And isn’t ‘fun’ the whole reason for playing a game in the first place? Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Dying Light”

Giant Monstershow: Attack of the Giant Leeches

What a ridiculous movie. I loved just about every shitty minute of it.

Released in 1959, Attack of the Giant Leeches comes to viewers from the Roger Corman stable. He didn’t direct, but he was the executive producer. The movie was helmed by Bernard L. Kowalski from a screenplay by Leo Gordon (who had a prolific career as a television actor). Continue readingGiant Monstershow: Attack of the Giant Leeches”

October Horrorshow: Humanoids from the Deep, aka Monster

Humanoids from the Deep movie posterA viewer won’t find his name in the credits, but Humanoids from the Deep, an exploitative schlockfest from 1980, was produced by Roger Corman. He didn’t direct it and he didn’t write it, either. Barbara Peeters did the directing (with reshoots handled by an uncredited Jimmy T. Murakami), and Frederick James did the writing. But Corman’s hand is all over this film. It fits his demands at the time that cheap horror should be bloody, and feature some rape. Bloody is fine. Bloody is fun. Rape is really only useful in a horror flick if the mood a filmmaker is going for is revulsion. In a stupid monster flick, it’s overkill. Still, it doesn’t ruin too much of the fun of this putrid mess. Other stuff is responsible for that.

Humanoids from the Deep tells of the plight of the residents of a small fishing town in Northern California. The catch has been declining, but a fish cannery, called, I shit you not, Canco, is set to open a cannery in town, and also use shady science to increase the size of stock in the local fisheries.

Doug McClure plays the film’s hero, Jim Hill. He’s a local fisherman, along with Vic Morrow as gruff and bigoted Hank Slattery, and Anthony Pena as native fisherman Johnny Eagle. Before folks in this film know there are monsters lurking around, Hank and Johnny are at personal war with each other over the cannery, and their respective cultures. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Humanoids from the Deep, aka Monster”

Giant Monstershow: The Killer Shrews

Ray Kellogg returns! Just a day after the October Horrorshow Giant Monstershow featured Kellogg’s magnum opus, an ode to Bert I. Gordon entitled The Giant Gila Monster, we feature The Killer Shrews, also directed by Kellogg. In fact, it was filmed either immediately before, or immediately after The Giant Gila Monster (the internet is unclear on which, and I won’t be digging deeper to find out), and was released on the same day in 1959. This film is sibling to The Giant Gila Monster, but that doesn’t mean the two are identical. Well, they’re almost identical. Continue readingGiant Monstershow: The Killer Shrews”

October Horrorshow: It Stains the Sands Red

Back in 2011, The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz), wrote and directed Grave Encounters, which has become something of a yardstick by which all found footage ghost flicks have been judged the last few years. That film, while being largely unknown outside of horror’s Cul-de-sac, has been very influential, even more so than The Blair Witch Project — a film regarded by many as the definitive found footage horror flick (I disagree). All one has to do is load up the horror category on Prime or Netflix. There one will find dozens of found footage ghost flicks that use the same techniques and plot elements as Grave Encounters. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: It Stains the Sands Red”