Tag: Supernatural Flick

October Horrorshow: God Told Me To

God Told Me To movie posterDetective Peter Nicholas (Tony Lo Bianco) of the NYPD has himself a bear of a case. Massacres have been happening all over the city, all carried out by different people, and all at random. There’s only one thing each of these awful events has in common: each of the perpetrators has said that God told them to do it. How is he supposed to stop that?

God Told Me To comes to us via writer, director, and producer Larry Cohen. This isn’t Cohen’s first appearance in the Horrorshow, having helmed the execrable film The Stuff . Whereas that film felt rushed, this earlier effort, from 1976, feels much more meticulous.

As much cop flick as horror, the film follows Detective Nicholas as he tries to find the common thread, other than the bizarre pronouncements from the perpetrators, that connects such disparate killings. It turns out that these killers aren’t suffering from some hallucination. There really is someone telling them to kill. Why they become so convinced that this person is God is one of the mysteries that Nicholas must solve. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: God Told Me To”

October Horrorshow: The Dead Pit

One would be hard-pressed to find a horror film that takes as much inspiration from the works of Dario Argento as The Dead Pit, the 1989 film from first-time director Brett Leonard.

From a screenplay by Leonard and the film’s producer, Gimel Everett, The Dead Pit stars Cheryl Lawson as Jane Doe, a patient at a mental hospital suffering from amnesia. Only she claims it isn’t amnesia at all. She says that a mysterious doctor removed her memories surgically. Her therapist, Dr. Swan (Jeremy Slate), doesn’t believe her, of course. He thinks some traumatic event in her past has welled up in the present and caused her brain to lock away her memories. Although, he of all people should listen a little more closely to her claims. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Dead Pit”

October Horrorshow: The House of Seven Corpses

The House of Seven Corpses movie posterBy 1974, gothic horror films were falling out of fashion. The year saw the last gasps from the major franchises of Hammer Film Productions, with the releases of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. The genre had come a long way, but by the time this film, The House of the Seven Corpses, was released, seriously bloody slasher horror was making its presence felt. If a filmmaker was going to do gothic horror, it needed to have a twist.

Paul Harrison wrote (with Thomas J. Kelly) and directed The House of Seven Corpses. It stars John Ireland as filmmaker Eric Hartman. He has assembled a cast and crew to shoot a gothic horror flick at the old mansion of the Beal family (the mansion is played by the Utah Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City). And there’s the twist. It’s a gothic horror movie within a horror movie.

The Beals are all dead by the time Hartman begins shooting his movie, and they all died violently. There being no more Beals, the house is watched over by Edgar Price (John Carradine), a caretaker. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The House of Seven Corpses”

October Horrorshow: The Ritual

A creepy cabin in some lonely woods. A small cast. A mysterious monster that stalks them. Most of us film fans have seen this movie many, many times. Such a broad outline has spawned hundreds of horror films over the years. Some are good, some are awful, and most are just mediocre. In that, these horror films are like every other film that features well-worn tropes. One can’t expect too much originality, which makes it all the better when something new is to be found. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Ritual”

October Horrorshow: They’re Watching

It just doesn’t feel like the October Horrorshow until the first review of a found footage flick has been posted. This year the honor goes to They’re Watching, the 2016 film from writing and directing duo Jay Lender and Micah Wright.

The film follows the crew of a home improvement reality show. They are going back to Moldova six months after the subject of an episode, Becky Westlake (Brigid Brannagh), bought and began to rehab a dilapidated house in the woods. The place looked like a total lost cause. It had been empty for decades. All the glass had been broken. Walls and floors had been exposed to wind, rain, freezing, thawing, vandalism, and everything else that causes an abandoned building to slowly fall apart. The best thing would have been to knock it down and start over. But, when the crew arrives on site, after a somewhat harrowing journey to the house, they find that Becky appears to have done a top-notch job. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: They’re Watching”

October Horrorshow: It (2017)

It, the 1986 novel from Stephen King, clocks in at over 1,100 pages. It’s a massive tome, from a part of King’s career in which it seemed he was abusing his editors. 1,100 pages is a huge commitment for a reader to make — one in which they are prepared to spend weeks or months with a book. How does one translate such an expansive work to the big screen? Peter Jackson might have some thoughts on that.

It, the 2017 film from director Andy Muschietti, is the first in a planned two movies that cover the source material. The novel has two main parts, as well, and this movie covers the first. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: It (2017)”

October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula

Here we are. October 31st. Halloween. The end of the October Horrorshow. The final film in this look back at Hammer Film Productions is a departure from type. If there’s one thing I’ve picked up on from watching 31 Hammer films in a row, it’s that Hammer basically made the same film over and over and over again. That’s not negative criticism on my part. Hammer had a style, in the same way that a musician like John Lee Hooker had a style or an artist like Willem de Kooning had a style. Listen to an album or see a painting hanging on a wall and it becomes immediately clear who is responsible. Hammer films followed a theme. They developed over time into something that was very much their own. Towards the end, though, they began to switch things up in search of a new formula. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Satanic Rites of Dracula”

October Hammershow: The Kiss of the Vampire

Hammer saw much success with its version of Dracula in 1958. Of course they wanted to cash in further. For reasons beyond the scope of this review, they couldn’t nail down Christopher Lee for a sequel until 1965. But that didn’t stop Hammer. In 1960 they released The Brides of Dracula, which featured neither Dracula nor any vampire that appeared with him in the previous film. It was misrepresentation, plain and simple. In watching it, it becomes clear Brides was meant to be a Dracula film, with Lee in it, but the script had been reworked to put a different baddie in the lead. The Kiss of the Vampire has similar origins, although with this film Hammer had the decency to release it without a false pedigree. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Kiss of the Vampire”

October Hammershow: Dracula A.D. 1972

There aren’t very many Hammer horror flicks that take place in contemporary times. For this month, only six of the films I’ve watched up to this point take place around the time in which they were filmed. Only one film from the franchise flicks, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, breaks away from its gothic setting. Until now. Continue reading “October Hammershow: Dracula A.D. 1972″

October Hammershow: The Curse of the Werewolf

The Curse of the Werewolf, from 1961, is the tragic tale of a beggar who is imprisoned by a cruel marquis. Then it is the tragic tale of a mute servant girl. Then it is the tragic tale of a young boy who grows up in a rich household with the loving attention of a pair of surrogate parents. Then it is the tragic tale of a young man attempting to make his own way in the world, who falls in love with a woman he cannot have. Then, finally, it is the tragic tale of a man cursed with lycanthropy. I have seen some films with long setups, many of them this month, but the setup in this film is so long and rambling compared to the promise of the title that I was wondering at times if I was watching the wrong movie. Continue reading “October Hammershow: The Curse of the Werewolf”