Hellraiser VII: Deader began life as a spec script called Deader, from screenwriter Neal Marshall Stevens, purchased by Miramax when every production company in Hollywood was still looking for the next Seven. Like with the two previous films in the Hellraiser series, the script was reworked into a Hellraiser movie, by adding the iconic puzzle box and Pinhead (Doug Bradley, as always) to scenes here and there. It’s rarely a good sign when it is obvious to viewers that a movie is a rework. Miramax, the company that owns Hellraiser, has been a poor steward for the property, shunting it off to direct-to-video releases utilizing reworked red-headed stepchild screenplays and miniscule budgets. All atmosphere and nuance from the first film have been totally excised, leaving the series anonymous and dull. What a shame. Continue reading “Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Hellraiser VII: Deader”
Tag: Psychological Horror Flick
October Horrorshow: Color Out of Space
Filmmaker Richard Stanley has had something of a checkered career. His first feature, Hardware, which he wrote and directed, was a success, but he was successfully sued for plagiarism, the story having too many similarities to a strip published in a Judge Dredd annual. Then, a few years later, Stanley was fired as the director of the doomed Island of Dr. Moreau adaptation less than a week into filming (firing him was never going to save that mess of a film, honestly). That was in 1995. It would be more than two decades before Stanley sat in the director’s chair for a feature film again, and it was for 2019’s Color Out of Space, an adaptation of the short story by H.P. Lovecraft. But, the trials and tribulations don’t end there. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Color Out of Space”
Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker
Hellraiser V: Inferno, the neo-noir psychological horror script turned into an ersatz direct-to-video Hellraiser flick, must have been a success for Miramax and Dimension Films, because they chose to squeeze blood from a stone once more.
Written as a standalone film by Carl V. Dupré and Tim Day, some light rewrites were done to shove in Hellraiser staple bad guy Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and original series heroine Kirsty (Ashley Laurence). Then the package was handed off to Rick Bota to direct. Continue reading “Attack of the Franchise Sequels: Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker”
October Horrorshow: Hellraiser V: Inferno
After a four-year layoff, Bob and Harvey Weinstein wanted another Hellraiser flick. They also didn’t want to pay a lot of money for it, so they optioned a direct-to-video film. That meant no big stars, no big budget, and a script that was clearly written as a different film and reworked to insert iconic Hellraiser bad guy Pinhead (Doug Bradley) into some scenes.
From 2000, Hellraiser V: Inferno was directed by Scott Derrickson, from a screenplay by Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman. Craig Sheffer stars as police detective Joseph Thorne. He’s the protagonist of this film, but he’s not that good of a guy, which he admits in the film’s narration. He has a wife and kid at home, but rather than spend his off hours with them, he can be found trolling the streets of Denver, shaking down dealers for cocaine and paying for hookers with money stolen from the wallets of murder victims.
All of this catches up with Thorne when he’s assigned to a bizarre murder case wherein the victim was engaging in an occult ritual of some kind. Veterans of the Hellraiser franchise will know where this is going. One of the accoutrements of the ritual was, of course, the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box featured in the film series that summons demons to our plane of existence. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hellraiser V: Inferno”
October Horrorshow: The Night Eats the World, aka La nuit a dévoré le monde
Ah, zombie flicks. So many possibilities, and so many variations. The basics are always there, with tweaks as required by the storytellers. It’s a subgenre of horror that’s so versatile that filmmakers have to truly work hard to make something that’s unwatchable. No worries, there, with 2018’s The Night Eats the World. This is a fine entry into the oeuvre of the undead.
Adapting a novel by Pit Agarmen, The Night Eats the World comes to us from screenwriters Jérémie Guez, Guillaume Lemans, and Dominique Rocher, with Rocher directing. From that list of names, one can guess that this film hails from France. It does, but it was filmed in English. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Night Eats the World, aka La nuit a dévoré le monde”
October Horrorshow: The Similars, aka Los Parecidos
It was a dark and stormy night in early October, 1968. Like, really stormy. So stormy that, according to radio broadcasts, the entirety of North America, and possibly the world, was enveloped in cloud and heavy rain. At a bus station a few hours drive from Mexico City, a man, Ulises (Gustavo Sánchez Parra), is frantic as he awaits the delayed bus into the city. He’s anxious because his wife has gone into a difficult labor, and he wants to be by her side. But, the rain has made travel impossible.
Ulises harangues the station agent, Martin (Fernando Becerril), who is set to retire and is uninterested in any of Ulises’s nonsense. Ulises calls the hospital in Mexico City, and the garbled call he has with his father-in-law does nothing to allay his fears. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Similars, aka Los Parecidos”
October Horrorshow: Scared to Death (1947)
What could 135,000 bucks buy one in 1947? It could buy 79 Ford Super Deluxe automobiles at base sticker price; 11 houses at the median home value; yearly tuition for 257 students at Harvard University; or one shitty movie, filmed in glorious Cinecolor.
Scared to Death, from screenwriter Walter Abbott and director Christy Cabanne, is a poverty row flick that got picked up by Screen Guild Productions for distribution. If that name is unfamiliar to you, dear shitty movie fan and loyal reader, just know that a year after this film was released, Screen Guild changed its name to Lippert Pictures, after its founder, Robert L. Lippert. And, if that name is unfamiliar to you, then you need to watch more shitty movies.
Scared to Death is more notable as being the only starring role from Bela Lugosi filmed in color. If one could call it color.
Technicolor’s much cheaper (and also more practical) competitor, Cinecolor is like looking at the world through a pair of barely effective sunglasses. In a film as old and poorly cared for as Scared to Death, it looks as if the world is in the middle of a solar eclipse. But, bad prints of old films can add much charm to a dog of a movie. And this flick is a mangy mutt. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Scared to Death (1947)”
October Horrorshow: Mara
Sleep paralysis is a real condition that up to half of the people on Earth suffer at least once in their lives. Wikipedia describes it as, “…a state, during waking up or falling asleep, in which a person is aware but unable to move or speak.” That’s creepy enough as it is, but sleep paralysis can also be accompanied by hallucinations, which the sufferer may interpret as supernatural. Again, from the Wikipedia article on sleep paralysis:
Sleep paralysis may include hypnagogic hallucinations, such as a supernatural creature suffocating or terrifying the individual, accompanied by a feeling of pressure on one’s chest and difficulty breathing. Another example of a hallucination involves a menacing shadowy figure entering one’s room or lurking outside one’s window, while the subject is paralyzed.
My sympathy goes out to those who have gone through this, but that is great fodder for a horror flick. I’m surprised there haven’t been more.
Mara, from 2018, is the first film from director Clive Tonge, from a screenplay by Jonathan Frank. In it, Olga Kurylenko stars as Kate, a psychiatrist working with the local police (filming was on location in Savannah, Georgia). Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Mara”
October Horrorshow: The Rizen: Possession, aka The Facility
An older, rarely-used maxim here at Missile Test is that we have never met a movie we wouldn’t watch…for at least fifteen minutes. It’s a test. Sometimes a movie is so bad early on, so clear that it’s an unwatchable mess, that fifteen minutes is all it takes for one to know it’s not worth spending any more time with. I managed to make it through an hour of this piece of shit before abandoning it, but that was only because of my own stubbornness. This awful movie failed the fifteen-minute test.
From writer/director Matt Mitchell, The Rizen: Possession is the sequel to his 2017 film, The Rizen. I haven’t seen that flick, so the fact that Possession is an incomprehensible mess might be due to missing some important backstory. However, no sequel should be so opaque that viewers who haven’t seen what came before would be hopelessly lost. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Rizen: Possession, aka The Facility”
October Horrorshow: Crucible of Horror, aka The Corpse
There is more content out there than one can possibly experience, and this was true in the days before the web, as well. That’s how an odd psychological horror flick like Crucible of Horror can become largely forgotten, its prints left to decay, its copyright allowed to lapse. The film hasn’t been completely forsaken by the entertainment biz, however. There is a fully restored Blu-Ray version out there, but most versions consist of dismally cared for prints on VHS and older DVDs, formatted for CRT televisions, and with much footage missing. The version I watched for this review had the picture and missing footage restored, but is a 1.33:1 print cropped to widescreen. Maybe someday the version used in the Blu-Ray will become available to stream, but for now this less-than-perfect version is the best streamers can get. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Crucible of Horror, aka The Corpse”