Entries Tagged 'Reviews' ↓

I know, I know. You probably saw the title Death Rage and thought "Oh dip! You're telling me there was a Ju-on precursor made in 1976?" I thought the same thing! But no, this movie has nothing to do with Ju-on or people dying in the grip of rage and becoming curses. And quite frankly, we were both idiots, you and I, for thinking that it might! Yes, definitely the both of us. Yes.

The worst thing of all is that Death Rage has nothing to do with horror at all. It's another Bloody Brood--a public domain crime flick that must have had Mill Creek Entertainment execs (I use that term very loosely) (very) saying "Eh, who's gonna know it's not a "chilling" "classic"? It's not like anyone's gonna watch all fifty of the movies anyway, throw her in the box!"

It's disappointing, but on the bright side Death Rage isn't gouge-your-eyes-out disappointing. It's...fine. Although maybe that's worse? I don't know. It's muggy out there today, and it's got my brain feeling all ten kinds of gauzy!

Yul Brynner (!) is retired hitman Peter Marciani, who heads to Naples for a little revenge when he gets a hot tip about the mafioso who killed his brother years prior. Marciani was so notorious, apparently, that his rumored presence in Italy has the mafia scrambling and the polizia (headed up by Martin "Arbogast" Balsam) (!) trying to stave off a bloodbath in the streets.

Marciani kills and avoids getting killed as he searches for his target, taking some time to indulge the admiring gangster-wannabe Angelo (Massimo Ranieri) and have a little romance with nudie dancer Anny (giallo queen Barbara Bouchet). 

Again, this is a largely serviceable film: a by-the-numbers spaghetti crime thriller that doesn't particularly deliver any thrills, no matter how much its score (courtesy of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, aka "Oliver Onions") tries to liven things up. We get a lot of men--mostly mustachioed--looking at each other across long distances, sometimes imparting "I am going to kill you" and sometimes imparting "Let's go kill that other guy." We get shootouts and foot chases, and we get the kind of car chases you've seen a hundred times before: overlong and accompanied by the distinct wailing of a European police siren; speeding through a street market and crashing into stalls, sending boxes and vegetables flying; boop-boop-booping down the wide staircases of a palazzo. 

If Death Rage is interesting at all, it's thanks to the cast. This is Brynner's last film before he returned to the stage as King Mongkut for endless revivals of The King and I, a performance he would give literally thousands of times over the course of his career. Marciani is tough guy-cool, always clad in black and looking like he was crafted from leather. They sure don't make 'em like ol' Yul any more. 

Balsam, who appeared in a number of these sorts of poliziotteschi flicks throughout the 70s, is of course always welcome. There's the glimmer of one of those "cop and bad guy have a mutual respect" relationships hinted at between the commissario and the hitman, but unfortunately Death Rage devotes more time to Marciani's relationship with two-bit up-and-comer Angelo...not to mention the inexplicable romance between Marciani and Anny. Bouchet is charming and lights up the screen (as you'd expect if you've seen, say, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times), but the "love story" here feels as formulaic as those vegetable-busting car chases.

But hey, like I said, you won't want to gouge your eyes out over this one. But there are surely better ways to spend your time with each of the stars of this cast than watching Death Blah.

Spanish delight Horror Express chugga choo-chooed into my heart during that mysterious time known as "2010." I didn't watch the Mill Creek version at the time, but I'm sure the quality was about on par with the Chilling Classics edition: it was one of those $0.79 DVDs you find at your Dollar Trees and your Odd Lots. Essentially they're Chilling Classics-grade films sold individually in cardboard sleeves, real bargain bin stuff, right down to the muddy transfers. Well let me tell you that even under such circumstances it was love at first squint between me and Horror Express, and we've renewed our vows to each other many times over the years known as "since 2010." But I won't lie to you: now I feast my eyes solely on the Arrow Blu-ray over any bargain bin editions, even when it's Chilling Classic Cthursday. Go figure!

I've written about this movie before--right after that initial viewing--in more synopsis-y detail, and covered it in episode 167 of Gaylords of Darkness a couple of years ago, so hey: If you want more narrative tidbits and expansive insights, check those out. As for the here and now, I'm just a girl standing sitting in front of a blog telling you some of the reasons why I love and adore this movie about a frozen fossil ape-man who thaws out on a trans-Siberian train in 1906 and causes deathly havoc.

-- It's about a frozen fossil ape-man who thaws out on a trans-Siberian train in 1906 and causes deathly havoc! What's not to love about that?

-- That's only the start of it. He is so much more than a frozen fossil ape-man! He is what Dolly Parton sang about in "Coat of Many Colors," okay? And also what Chaka Khan and Whitney Houston sang about in "I'm Every Woman." He contains multitudes. 

-- The "deathly havoc" he wreaks includes causing people to bleed out of all of their head holes as their eyes turn white. It's so cool.

-- Yes, that is Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in that pic up top. Two of the greatest tastes to ever be tasted together! It's especially nice to see them together in Horror Express because here they are sorta rivals but mostly colleagues instead of confined to their usual vampire-vampire hater relationship. Also I love it when Christopher Lee has a moustache.

-- Eventually Telly friggin Savalas shows up as a crazed Cossack and he just...sounds like Telly Savalas and I love it because he's really in his own film here.

-- The train is clearly a model train in some shots and it only serves to make everything better

-- Model or no, this is a train full of characters, baby! These folks have all come aboard: 

-- a mad monk who pulls what we political pundits* call "a JD Vance" as he goes from denouncing the monster as Satanic to worshipping it

-- a couple of sheltered aristocrats who I bet are probably swingers

-- a hot international spy, who is just sort of a spy for no reason and it's the best

-- a doctor's assistant who strikes so many blows for women's rights and has the power of a good...mmm, three to four Julia Sugarbaker monoologues

-- I dig the "1906 science" of it all. Many autopsies are performed and we get many a dubious insight, like pee is stored in the balls memories are stored in brain wrinkles and visions are preserved in eye fluid.

-- Horror Express chugs through many a subgenre. It's a period piece structured like a slasher at times, it's a monster movie, it's a body-hopping sci-fi flick, it's got touches of an Agatha Christie-inspired mystery, it's got Hammer vibes, and it even busts out some zombies. Again, she is every woman!

-- Though this movie is clearly ludicrous, the cast plays it completely straight (even Savalas, in his Savalas-centric way) and it's the only reason why, as "out there" as it all is, it kinda works. 

Horror Express is simply theee perfect Saturday afternoon Creature Double Feature monster kid movie, and like me, you can cram that notion right into one of your brain wrinkles.

*people who read headlines

They say that the only constant is change, so I'm starting with the man in the attic. I'm asking him to change his ways. No message could've been any clearer: if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and don't be Jack the Ripper!

Yes, dear reader, Man in the Attic is indeed an adaptation of Marie Belloc Lowndes's groundbreaking 1913 novel The Lodger, the first fictionalized take on the 1888 murders in Whitechapel and the Ripper himself. It's rather classy as far as Chilling Classics go, and were it not for the shadows cast by previous adaptations I dare say it might have garnered a bit more attention over the years.

You're probably familiar with the tale by now: When several murdered women are found nearby, a couple begins to suspect that their recently-arrived lodger may indeed be Jack the Ripper. 

But is he? The lodger has some dubious quirks to be sure, but they're all explained away--sometimes even plausibly. Sure, he goes out late at night to "do work." But that's when things are quiet! Yes, he fits the description of the Ripper, what with his small black bag and Ulster and all. But doesn't every man have a small black bag and an Ulster? He has a habit of burning things at odd hours, like pieces of clothing that seem to have blood all over them. But he's a pathologist who does experiments! It's all business as usual.

But is it? Of course not! The lodger is played by Jack Palance in one of the busiest years of his nascent career. He's cutting up people with his magnificent cheekbones.

Palance, of course, had a long and storied filmography and earned his place in Valhalla with his legendary speech and one-armed push-ups after winning the Oscar for City Slickers. There's always something vaguely sinister and potentially unhinged lurking just beneath the surface of a Palance performance, no matter the genre he was working in. He could make Dracula both sympathetic and intimidating, and he could make ostensible family fare like Ripley's Believe It or Not! inexplicably terrifying. (Or was that just me?) This vibe is prevalent even in his earliest roles, including one of my faves, opposite Joan Crawford in the 1952 noir thriller Sudden Fear. If you've never seen it, well, you have some homework to do. It's stylish as all get out and Crawford is terrific, giving one of her career-best performances, while Palance exudes both mance and charm. 

This quality is why he's perfect for Man in the Attic, a film that wants to leave you questioning  the truth about the lodger Slade until you can't question no more. From the moment he arrives on the Harleys' doorstep, you might be as suspicious as the missus...

But as his fumbling romance with Lily, an actress and the Harleys' niece, progresses, you might see him as she does: an awkward, shy, and inexperienced young man who needs a woman to take a chance on him.

But then it's not long before he's talking about his harlot mother and sweating everywhere and you're like yeah, no, he definitely hates and murders women.

It's rather interesting to see the sort of game of telephone that's occurred over the course of each filmic adaptation of Lowndes's novel--not only how far each may or may not stray from the source material, but how much changes are passed from movie to movie, beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927). Studio interference added the love story and dictated that the film's popular star, Ivor Novello, must be proven an unequivocally innocent lodger by the picture's end. In a (sadly) less shocking change, Hitchcock made it a point that the killer purposefully targeted blonde women.

In the 1944 film The Lodger, the victims are no longer prostitutes but actresses, a profession against which the lodger harbors long-standing grudges.

Man in the Attic hews closest to the 1944 iteration, but holds on to some of the proto-feminist and political aspects of Lowndes's work. 

We don't see the women get murdered, nor the aftermath of it. Instead, we watch as they react to their approaching killer. One striking sequence employs an actual POV shot as the Ripper closes in; the execution is a bit clunky given the era, but it was wholly unexpected and cool as heck. The victims throughout Man in the Attic aren't afforded intricate stories or a surplus of development to be certain, but they're all unique and each gets her moment to shine. That can still feel like a novelty in the more slasher-end of the horror spectrum, never mind in media that dips into true crime territory. But it was an unheard-of hallmark of Lowndes's novel, so it's fantastic to see it here, where one might expect the full focus to be on one of history's most notorious serial killers. 

It's also a reminder to me that I really ought to read Hallie Rubenhold's lauded The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (it's been on my library to-read list since it was published in 2020), but I know I'll probably keep putting it off because I just know it'll be depressing.

Then, of course, there is the matter of Mrs Harley (or Bunting in the novel), she who suspects Slade from the start and puts all the pieces together long before Scotland Yard does (although to be fair, Scotland Yard was busy chasing down every one of Queen Victoria's bonkers mandates: It couldn't have been a married man, investigate every bachelor! It couldn't have been an Englishman, investigate every foreigner!). She's shut down at every turn by her exasperated husband, but, you know, nevertheless she persisted. Even better, the comedic banter and bickering between the Harleys is one of the best things about the movie.

And then and then, there is their niece Lily, who shares a kind, wonderful, sad scene with a former actress fallen on hard times, who is moments away from being the Ripper's next victim. It shows what Lily's all about, it humanizes a woman who could have been a throwaway horror thrill, and it encapsulates what sets Man in the Attic apart from your standard serial killer fare.

Sure, Lily makes too many concessions for Slade's behavior because she's got hearts in her eyes. But when push comes to shove and sweaty Slade is like "Quit your job and run away with me so we can be alone together" she refuses because hey, she loves being an actress and she's got stuff she wants to do. If this kind of attitude still felt revolutionary with Olivia Hussey as Black Christmas's Jess in 1974, imagine how revolutionary it felt in a 1953 that is supposed to be 1888. Go on, imagine it! I'll wait.

Ain't it grand? Even better, we get to see Lily do her thing in a full number--like, a full number that takes up a not-insignificant amount of screentime--and another number that quite literally triggers Slade with its can-can action.

To be honest, I mightn't have ever seen this film were it not for this wild Cthursday endeavor. Despite the Jack Palance of it all, I could see myself thinking "oh great, another Jack the Ripper movie" but I'm sure glad I saw it. Perhaps it doesn't have the style and technique of Hitchcock's The Lodger, but Man in the Attic director Hugo Fregonese did just fine, thank you, from the evocative, wet and foggy Whitechapel streets and alleys to the rather thrilling carriage chase during the film's climax. And it may not have the star power of Merle Oberon and George Sanders in the 1944 movie, but Jack Palance already had IT and the supporting cast is engaging as well. (Shout out again to the Harleys!)

Well, here we are, halfway through the Mill Creek Chilling Classics 50-pack. They sure grow up so fast, don't they? And hey, Man in the Attic marks three weeks in a row that Chilling Classics Cthursday has given me something surprisingly...really good. Surely that streak will continue and continue for the next 25 installments, right?!

Got a li'l treat this week with The Devil's Hand, a film that would be at home as the superior half of a drive-in double feature with another Chilling Classic, I Eat Your Skin. The two share a kind of early 60s feel, although The Devil's Hand keeps any beach blanket vibes contained to its surf tune-flavored opening credits.

One thing I really appreciated about this film is that it's a lean 71 minutes and it wastes no time before it gets to the goods. There's no fat on this baby, no useless scenes full of, like, character development, it's just boom-boom-boom laying it all out there. 

Rick and Donna (Robert Alda--father of Alan!--and Ariadna Welter--excuse me, how cool is the name "Ariadna") are engaged to be married, but Rick's been having dreams about a sultry blonde in a diaphanous gown...and the dreams have got him all stirred up.

One day Rick spies a doll that looks just like the dream woman in the window of a shop--and hey, there's also a doll that looks like Donna in the shop. What gives? 

I'll tell ya what gives: this is no ordinary doll shop. It's a doll shop by day, but by...well, also by day but sometimes by night, it's home to a cult that conducts their ceremonies and sacrifices and the such in the basement, all in service to The Great Gamba, Highest Executioner Supreme, Devil-God of Evil. (But you can just call him Gamba.)

One contrived doll delivery later, Rick meets Bianca (Linda Christian), literally the woman from his dreams. Again, The Devil's Hand eschews any coyness around what's what with all of this, as Bianca tells Rick Hey, I'm in a Satanic-adjacent cult, I used mental projection to lure you to me, I want your bod, but you have to convert to the cult before we can Do It.

Rick asks no questions, says Absolutely!, and promptly ghosts Donna, who oh by the way is laid up in the hospital after a voodoo attack from the cult's high priest. This sounds like some terrible behavior from Rick, and it is. Donna's great! And she's in the hospital! But on the other hand--the devil's hand, you might say--Bianca is a sultry babe who can traverse the planes and engages in witchcraft. Donna never stood a chance.

FUN FACT BREAK: Ariadna Welter was the younger sister of Linda Christian, and her acting career was largely based in their native Mexico. Christian, however, was persuaded to abandon her dreams of becoming a doctor (yay?) and give Hollywood a shot by none other than Errol Flynn, who also gave her the "Christian" surname after his performance as Fletcher Christian in a production of Mutiny on the Bounty.

I'm thanking my big bowl of lucky stars that it took me until this very week to get around to the 1976 film Haunts, because I'm sure I wouldn't have given it a fair shake. Given it's a film from Herb Freed and Anne Marisse (the husband-and-wife duo behind Graduation Day, the masterpiece featuring the football-with-a-sword-attached and the mostly-rollerskateless roller skating party) and pitched as something of a slasher flick featuring a maniac-with-scissors-attached scissor-wielding maniac, well, that's what I would have hunkered down to see. Instead, Haunts is an unabashed women's (horror) picture that's all about loneliness, isolation, and unchecked trauma. (Apparently they made horror movies about that stuff before A24 came along...? Weird.) I stand (well, truth be told I am sitting) before you today to spread my Haunts agenda. "Criminally underseen" may be an overstatement--though really, how could it not be underseen when it's pretty much only available as a Chilling Classic with potato-levels of picture quality? But the right audience for this film is out there, and that audience needs to get eyeballs on this one.

Sigh. Honestly, when I read the synopsis on the sleeve of this week's Chilling Classic, I should have said "no thank you, taking the week off, everyone!" 

In Belfast, a group of eight nurses share a home while working at various hospitals and clinics throughout the city. Entering into their lives is a crazed Vietnam veteran with a hatred for women who decides to take out his hatred on them. Stalking them one by one, the killer terrorizes and tortures the women while the authorities attempt to track him down.

If you said "Oh, so it's Richard Speck? But Belfast and Vietnam?" you get some kind of prize because you're right on the money! Except this movie--also known as Born for Hell because the killer has a "Born for Hell" tattoo, you know, kinda like Speck's "Born to Raise Hell" tattoo--features more sexual assault than Speck's 1966 spree. 

But I though, this is the covenant I entered with Mill Creek Entertainment and a horror blog, so buck up, girlie, and do your duty.

I didn't make it, sorry.

To tell the truth, Naked Massacre (sigh part deux) begins as something that almost wants to be interesting, or at least it wants us to think it does. A Vietnam vet on his way home after scamming his way out of service winds up in Belfast during "The Troubles," as Protestants and Catholics and the IRA and British forces clash in the streets. A bomb goes off in a church, children "play" by reenacting firing squad executions, and our nurses get their first taste of death. The vet makes a point about how he "swapped one Hell for another" and while that's not exactly a profound point, I felt for a second like maybe I'd end up surprised that the synopsis wasn't giving the movie proper credit. You know, something about governent-sanctioned violence and so on.

It got even more interesting when the vet formed a quasi-friendship with his fellow flophouse denizen, a fey Viet refugee, who seemed to clock the vet as perhaps a kindred spirit, or perhaps just a woman-hater.

But any potential Somethings to Say flew out the window when he arrived at the house and the film heads into exploitation territory, its true destination all along. Armed with a large switchblade, and sets about terrorizing, raping, and murdering the young women, and that was where I bid the film a middle-fingered adieu. 

I decided to read some other reviews and thoughts, though; I had no intention of going back to finish the movie (life is short, I could be watching...anything else), but maybe there would be some attempt at a point to all of it. Doesn't seem so, and if you'd like to read the descriptions of what the girls are forced to endure, then you are welcome to go find it as I'm not going to waste the energy typing all that abhorrent shit out.

But there were also comments I saw from exploitation fans who were bummed the movie didn't go far enough, that the "naked chicks" were the best part of it and that, as one hilariously-phrased gripe put it, there were better movies to watch if you wanted to watch "people/women" be terrorized. 

No one ever comes here looking for hot exploitation tips (or if they do, they must leave quickly) as it's not my purview nor my bag. I dabble on the rare occasion (a girl sometimes has cannibal feelings, okay), but I'll never see the point in sexual assault as titillation fare ever. But hey, this movie is another in the Mill Creek to Fancy Blu-ray pipeline, so.

There sure are all kinds of horror fans around.

When it was decided by a roll of the click of the mouse on a random number generator that this week's Chilling Classic would be the anthology film The House of the Dead, I had a big, profound thought. That big, profound thought was "Oh yeah, I mostly remember that one." For you see, I reviewed it from the hallowed halls of Final Girl Manor all the way back in 2007. 2007! Doris, were we ever so young?

Then I continued to think. "I bet readers will get tired of reading about how much my sensibilities as a viewer have changed since those naughty aughties, how I like things I didn't used to like and vicey versy. Self, I will wager with you right now that I did not enjoy this movie when I originally reviewed it but I surely will enjoy it now! After all, back then I was not a girl, but not yet a woman. My glass used to be filled with MD 20/20 Strawberry Kiwi and a splash of Celestial Seasonings Berry Zinger but now, now she only holds the Zinger. I am no longer a girl gone wild. Rather, I am a dowager gone mild."

Or something like that. But I held off on reading my old-ass thoughts about The House of the Dead until I finished watching it for this reassessment. I had not seen it in the interim. How did it hold up after all that time? 

Well, I can't say I enjoyed it more than I did in 2007. It surprised me, though, to find that I was mostly into its weirdness back then. Because it sure is weird! I mean, this film also goes by the title Alien Zone, and it hails from Oklahoma. Weird should be expected. 

So what I'm gonna do, see, is sometimes post a few of my ~*~vintage~*~ thoughts and see how those thoughts stack up today. Think of it like it's one of those "You won't believe what they look like now" slide shows you see advertised from Tabooly or whatever that spam site is, and one time you think "hmm, I would like to know what Small Wonder looks like now" so against your better judgment you clicked the link and you get completely trapped in that slide show, you click and click and click and you're like "What the fuck, I'm on slide 83, where is old Small Wonder?" and you want to stop but the sunk cost fallacy kicks in and you click more and more until you finally give up around slide 123. "All that time wasted! Another step closer to carpal tunnel!" you think. "And I never even got to see old Small Wonder!" 

Okay, maybe that's just me. Anyway!

SEGMENT THE FIRST

I can say with enthusiasm that I was into this segment, wherein a misanthropic schoolteacher goes home, gets scared, and is attacked by children who are not actually children I guess? It's simple and stupid as hell and it makes no sense (that's the running theme of The House of the Dead, really) but it was the right kind of dumb. And hey, if you watch the Vinegar Syndrome blu-ray--because of course it exists--or the Tubi version the kids' masks pop way more than they do in the Mill Creek version (shocking) and they look great.

I need to post this look again because it's obviously my favorite:

SEGMENT THE SECOND

A weird man who loves photography sets up a motion picture camera in his living room and films himself killing blind dates. The mortician tells us he was caught and executed a year or so later.

YES, THAT'S IT!

And don't go thinking this was some sort of interesting Peeping Tom-style story, either, because it was positively dreadful. DREADFUL. We see everything through the camera the dude sets up, which means one stationary shot for the entire segment. It made me feel like I was back in acting class, sitting through everyone's boring-ass scene studies. Let me tell you...that's not a feeling I enjoy.

Well, I agree it was pretty dull and the non-ending ending was awful. But! This time the stationary camera idea made me go "ooh, proto-found footage!" so that's something.

SEGMENT THE THIRD

Ye olde thoughtes about this story, wherein "Britain's Number One Sleuth" goes head-to-head in crime-solving against "America's Greatest Detective":

There's really no way to describe this segment beyond calling it just plain stupid. Did I like it? Well, yes, I did- it had me laughing my head off. It totally reminded me of something I would have written in 7th grade for a mystery-writing assignment. 2 "great" detectives, the worst police procedurals ever, magnifying glasses, 3 twist endings, and Rolling Stone magazine. I would have called it World's Greatest Murder, and my "author's bio" would have consisted exclusively of "STACIE PONDER #1".

Totally agree, and I'm still super into Britain's Number One Sleuth, who looks exactly how I feel inside:

SEGMENT THE FOURTH

Ah yes, an a-hole office worker has nothing but disdainful thoughts about his co-workers, panhandlers, store clerks, and probably you and me. Well, you at least. *nail polish emoji* He gets trapped in an empty building in kind of a Saw-like scenario, for some reason, and by the end of the segment he's a full-on wino, which may lead one to conclude that the building--though the reasons why are still unknown--was actually a wino factory.

The big draw of this story is when the a-hole's co-worker suggests lunch at a new hamburger place that features 23 different kinds of hamburgers. I am just as fascinated by and as pragmatic about this idea as I was in 2007:

I don't know why, but I was really into the idea of 23 different hamburgers. I mean, it sounds incredible, right? Hardly believable, even. In reality, though, we all know that "23 different hamburgers" simply means 23 different combinations of hamburger toppings...then it doesn't seem so incredible.

My overall feelings have maybe ebbed a little, but they still hew pretty close to the first time:

House of the Dead didn't disappoint. I mean, it did, because it sucked, and yet there I was, enjoying it and all its inexplicablies. Maybe when the suckage is restricted to 15-minute segments I become more forgiving. 

Actually, no, scratch that. One new development on this second viewing is that I realized that The House of the Dead was actually directed by (gasp) a woman! Sharron Miller! Who also directed several episodes of a short-lived early-aughties sitcom starring Danielle Harris (!), Debi Mazar (!!), Ellen Burstyn (!!!), and Heather Dubrow of The Real Housewives of Orange County (!!!!!!!!). So yeah, I guess you could say my feelings about The House of the Dead have changed since 2007. It's obviously perfect. 

Because I am a simple creature, when I saw that today's Chilling Classic was called "The Bloody Brood" I thought "Oh, well, Bloody Birthday was about killer children and The Brood was sort of about killer children. So it only makes sense that The Bloody Brood is also about killer children, hooray!" 

If you're thinking "That's not how things work, dumbass," well, congratulations to you for being so smart and worldly wise because no, The Bloody Brood isn't about killer children. It's about killer adults! One of whom is a young Peter Falk, which is really as good as like four killer children combined, so.

Yes, straight outta Toronto, Canada comes a cautionary tale of gangsters, beatniks, and other assorted ne'er-do-wells ne'er doing well. Falk, in only his second film role, stars as Nico, a small-time wannabe mobster and current psychopath, whose charisma has the whole bongo madness crowd hanging on his every word.

When a nameless local geezer keels over of a heart attack in the bar one night, Nico has an epiphany. "Did her die," he asks, "Or was he murdered by life?" He then suggests to his sidekick Francis (Ron Hartmann) that they go out and kill someone. It's a natural progression! You see, dying from a heart attack is pointless and random. But dying from murder, now that's really something, a real intellectual kick. And Nico makes it a point that he doesn't just talk his kicks, he does 'em, see? 

Side note: please don't so a shot every time someone says "kick." You will die within five minutes.

Other side note: shout-out to the nameless old geezer, who is a total drama queen when dying of a heart attack. For a moment I had visions of sugarplums Paul Reubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer dancing in my head as he made the most of it.

When a messenger boy shows up at their beatnik house party, Nico and Francis see a perfect opportunity to get their murder on and they feed the young man a hamburger filled with ground glass. That is hardcore! Nico and Francis are now bound by their secret crime, like Leopold and Loeb but no homo. No homo, honest! Okay, Francis at least seemed quite a bit yes homo for Nico to me, but don't take my word on it. There's probably someone out there whose word you can take on it, though.

The young man's brother Cliff (prolific character actor and spaghetti western vet Jack Betts, in his film debut) is convinced the glassburger was no accident. The police aren't much help, so Jack takes matters into his own hands and investigates, eventually diving into the seedy beatnik underbelly to find out what happened. But Cliff's a real square, see, and he may end up getting a glassburger of his own--or worse.

Incidentally, A Glassburger of One's Own is my favorite work by Virginia Woolf.

With its scant 68-minute runtime, its no-nonsense flatfoots, and its squares-vs-deviants story, The Bloody Brood feels like an extended episode of Dragnet. Now maybe you're a deviant, a hippie, or a weirdo out there doing heaven knows what to get your kicks and "an extended episode of Dragnet" sounds like a one-way ticket to Dullsville. Well, if the promise of bongos-a-go-go isn't enough for you, there's the whole this is Peter Falk in only his second film thing, which, be ye a daddy-o or otherwise, should have you buying not only that one-way ticket but the whole damn train to Dullsville. You dig? Yes, that sentence was tortured, but there's a case for The Bloody Brood as a time capsule curio that starts with some discount Saul Bass opening credits, segues into ahhh it's Peter Falk, and ends with this guy, just a pure beatnik right outta central casting:

Funny, isn't it, how variations on "is the square life really the only life?" emerges like a cicada into the conversations and movements of all generations of post-WWII American youths? Sure, it manifests in different ways, from tuning in, turning on, dropping out, and rolling around in the mud at Woodstock to "no one wants to work anymore." (Gen X is perhaps the outlier, taking on a depressive/detached sort of "it sucks, but it is what it is" slant.) Nico and his friends sitting around opining about life on "the treadmill" and how The Man will make you go to the dentist for your own good and then send you to war wouldn't be an unfamiliar scene amongst the kids today...I mean, on their tiktoks or whatever it is they do. 

It's interesting to see the cultural responses to this, both satirical and sincere. It's the stuff of media theses, I suppose. But films like The Bloody Brood seem to be squarely on the side of...the square. There's little difference to be found between the amoral Nico and the random gal at the bar who just wants to dance (and who makes uncomfortable 4th wall-breaking eye contact with us throughout her whirling dervish bit).

Make no mistake, Cliff is the real hero of this show, extolling True American Values like getting a good job and living that white picket life. He wins over Ellie, a young woman who hung out with beatniks  because she wanted more from life than simply becoming her (perfectly fine) parents. They're smooching each other by the end of this show, while Nico and friends decidedly are not. (Sorry, Francis!)

Ultimately, The Bloody Brood isn't more than the sum of its parts, but the parts are so notable that it doesn't matter. I mean, it's got Peter Falk enjoying some spontaneous beat poetry, what more do you need?

Hmm, I wonder what surprise the 50-pack will puke up for me next week. You know, Nico once said that "death is the last great challenge to the creative mind" but I'm pretty sure that by "death" he meant "Mill Creek's Chilling Classics."

I tells ya, grabbing the ol' 50-pack every week for Chilling Classics Cthursday is a bit of a thrill. The anticipation as I dig through the box-o-movies! The moment of truth when RNGesus's selection is revealed! It feels like coming down the stairs on Christmas morning as a yoot, or reaching into the bowl at a Saturday night neighborhood key party as an elder. The movie itself may be garbage or it may be gold, of course. It might even be gold-garbage or garbage-gold. But no matter; I make high-pressure executive decisions about what to watch or not watch six days out of the week, so my seventh day of rest is appreciated. And I doubly--nay, triply--appreciate that this whole endeavor puts movies in front of my eyeballs that I may otherwise have never encountered. 

Like this week's movie, Virus (1980)...although it's strange this was not on my radar because on paper, at least, it seems like it was absolutely made just for me. So much so, in fact, that I'm pretty sure you could play Final Girl Mad Libs at a key party (that's what you do at key parties, right?) and easily end up with Virus's story and cast. 

Over in East Germany, some shady types abscond with a vial of MM88, a virus so virulent and deadly that it freaks out the scientists behind it. Unfortunately for...well, the world, the shady types crash their getaway plane and MM88 art loosed. Dubbed the "Italian Flu," the virus wipes out millions and millions of people all over the globe, including US President Glenn Ford and Senator Robert Vaughn!

Researchers at all the international antarctic research stations are safe, not only because of their isolation, but because the virus becomes dormant in below-zero temperatures. As if figuring out what the hell they're going to do as the presumed last survivors wasn't enough, they also must contend with another terrifying development: one of the scientists predicts that an earthquake is about to fuck shit up back in Washington, DC, which will surely trigger the automated nuclear response system that was armed by a hotheaded US general before he croaked. It's got to be deactivated before there's global nuclear armageddon, which means a likely one-way trip into VirusLand for some someones.

Virus is a curiosity, indeed: a Japanese disaster movie with an all-star, mostly English-speaking cast, directed by Kinji Fukasaku of Battle GD Royale fame. At the time of its production, it was reportedly the most expensive Japanese film ever made, one that producers hoped would break through in the western market. Instead, it flopped both at home and abroad, where its 156-minute runtime was chopped down to 108 minutes, its widescreen visuals were chopped down to pan-and-scan, and it was chopped plopped down into the public domain, where it landed in cheapie releases like Mill Creek's Chilling Classics. According to the legends, the full version of the film is only available in a random Sonny Chiba 3-pack (Chiba appears in the western cut for all of maybe five minutes). Essentially, they excised as much of the Japanese content as possible for the truncated cut, including the collapse of Tokyo in the wake of the virus, whole-ass backstories for major characters, and a denouement that is perhaps a bit less bleak than the one we get. They even cut the subtitles for the handful of Japanese scenes that remain. Madness. 

Also madness: that so many of the obscure Chilling Classics Cthursday messterpieces (like Drive-In Massacre, say) have received the fancy Blu-ray treatment while something like Virus, with its stacked crew and cast, is crying out for one.

Because honey when I say stacked cast, I mean a DISASTER MOVIE STACKED CAST that would make Irwin Allen proud. At the risk of sounding like imdb, can I just say:

• Glenn Ford
• Robert Vaughn
• Sonny Chiba
• Henry Silva
• Edward James Olmos
• Chuck Connors
• Bo Svenson
• Janis Ian provides the end credits song??
• OLIVIA HUSSEY
• GEORGE KENNEDY

I will admit, when I saw the little (1990) on the cardboard sleeve holding this week's Chilling Classic Metamorphosis, I flinched so hard that I got cramps in places I didn't even know I had. Yeah, there's, like, The Exorcist III, but horror-ly speaking, there ain't much from that year to get excited about. But! When a credit for Joe D'Amato's production/distribution company FILMIRAGE appeared alongside writing and directing credits for George Eastman (aka Luigi Montefiori), I was cramping anew, but with curiosity. After all, Eastman co-wrote the 1987 giallo/slasher StageFright and co-wrote and starred in D'Amato's cannibal...err, classic?...Anthropophagus. Ah, so Metamorphosis is an Italian joint from these folks? Well, said I, this film should be a weirdo, perhaps gory, perhaps sleazy journey.

Spoiler alert: IT'S NOT. 

Dr. Peter Houseman (Gene LeBrock) is a brilliant, hot professor and genetic scientist who wears an obligatory 1990 mock turtleneck and is working on some top-secret project having to do with eradicating aging, disease, and death. 

It's always that with these geneticists, isn't it? Immortality! Who needs it, I say. Certainly no one in horror movies, because it never goes well.

And it's not going well for Peter, that's for sure. Not only does he keep killing his test subject monkeys (their alpha and beta waves go nuts after he injects too much glucose!), there's a suit from New York on the scene, as the folks in charge want to know where all the grant money Peter's department gets is going. Accountability! Who needs it, I say. On the bright side, the suit in question isn't "some hysterical old maid in menopause" as Peter fears, but rather a hot woman named Sally who makes eyes at him and is 29 years old. Or so she claims!

I know that style can affect someone's perceived age and there's that weird phenomenon where People Who Came Before You always seem older than they were Back Then. But 29? To that I say: hmm. One thing is for certain, though, and that's that Sally is a fucking drip. But that's okay, so is Peter! They are a couple of absolute drips who are part of the reason why Metamorphosis ends up being a near-total slog, so of course they fall in love. They even get a blue-lit, saxophone-filled 1990 sex scene that our more puritanical audiences of today would find "unnecessary" as it "doesn't move the plot forward." 

I find the whole conversation that's happening around cinematic sex scenes interesting, honestly. I can see why actors might say "no more sex scenes, please and thank you." I think intimacy coordinators are a good thing. It's awfully weird to think that sex scenes have historically been quasi-obligatory, especially in certain dramas, and we all just...accepted that. You paid your dues with surprise sex scenes when watching movies with your parents, either going to get a snack or suddenly paying a lot of attention to the family pet or simply sitting in the silent, mortifying awkwardness. It is rare, I think, for anyone to find these scenes "turn-ons" or even interesting--like I don't know who is getting off to these two loaves of crustless white bread having a go at it in Metamorphosis, but I'd like to meet them, theoretically. But I don't know, sex scenes were accepted like a...like a...like a new skin tag, maybe. You're not really a fan of it, it's not worth creating a fuss or going to the doctor over, but keep an eye on it. I'm not sure if that makes sense. 

It's the "not essential to the plot" aspect of the no sex scenes, please argument from audiences that bugs me because a movie filled with only scenes or interactions that are "essential" and "move the plot forward" sounds positively dreadful. (And really, even films where you could (should?) claim that the sex scenes are essential to the plot, such as Park Chan-wook's The Handmaiden, are still denigrated so is that even really the argument?) 

Anyway! 

At risk of losing his funding and his laboratory, Peter takes drastic measures and decides to dose himself with his serum, which requires an injection in the eye!  

Let me tell you, by this point in the proceedings I had a feeling that Metamorphosis was going to be a stinker, but that injection machine briefly raised my hopes that I would at least get to experience a truly squirm-inducing moment. Surprisingly, however, Eastman stops short of going there, cutting the shot juuuuust as the needle is about to go in. Injectus interruptus! I was left imagining what barf-inducing injectinanigans someone like Lucio Fulci might have brought to the moment. Hmm, maybe there's a more explicit cut of Metamorphosis out there...? I don't care enough to find out, but maybe you do.

After this process, which is supposed to rewrite his genetic sequence or something, Peter sweats and gnashes his teeth sometimes, and has blackouts during which he goes out, beats up, and, it is implied, sexually assaults women. This was a groan-worthy development, but thankfully Eastman is restrained here as well and we don't see much. 

It's noteworthy, perhaps, that one of Peter's victims, a woman named, uh, "Prostitute," is played by frequent D'Amato/Eastman/Bruno Mattei collaborator/exploitation star Laura Gemser of the Black Emanuelle series in one of her final roles. More noteworthy, perhaps, is that she was also the film's costume designer, credited as Laurette Gemser. She moved away from acting, as she couldn't get any roles outside of exploitation pictures, and transitioned towards costume design in the late 80s before retiring from the public eye altogether in the early 90s. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is that she also designed the costumes for Troll 2. Oh my gooooooooood!

Peter finally begins an actual, you know, metamorphosis, but into what? At first, it involves some contact lenses and one scene of him writhing on the floor.

He soon starts turning into a reverse Benjamin Buttons, which is to say that he gets really old and thinks he's dying. Hmm now that I think about it, aren't we all reverse Benjamin Buttons? I've never seen the movie so I could be wrong, but who cares when it feels right!

Peter gets kind of gross but we can't really see it, and Sally is worried. He breaks out of the hospital and kills a few people but we don't really see that either--just some brief shots of the bloody aftermath. Now look, I'm not a gorehound by any means but sometimes gore is what a movie needs. And let me tell you, Metamorphosis needed gore! This is as gross as it gets, and it's not nearly gross enough to liven up the joint:

Eventually Peter makes his way back to his laboratory with the cops in hot pursuit. (Note: temper your expectations about the word "hot." And the word "pursuit," really, as the cops are just sort of at the lab all of a sudden.) Peter busts down a door from the inside, and we get the big reveal that we've been waiting for for 90 excruciating minutes.

A kind of t-rex? It's a pretty fun and decidedly unexpected moment no doubt. It immediately instills one--or me, anyway--with so much anticipation. Imagine a rampage by a man who is now a kind of t-rex and it's obviously a rubber kind of t-rex outfit! Heaven, right? Well, we don't get that because yet again,  Eastman plays it safe. Peter-rex stands there in the doorway, flailing his arms a little and going RARR while the cops shoot him a hundred times. Then we see a puddle of goo on the floor that we are to infer are the remains of Peter. I do not have the words to describe what a let down this is!

The whole damn thing was a let down of astronomical proportions. 

Okay, that might be an exaggeration. But Metamorphosis is a let down nonetheless, no matter how hard the score from PAHAMANIAN tries to add some pizazz. It's not good enough to be good, and it's not bad enough to be good. It's just sort of there, which is really the worst thing any movie can be. It was such a slog and a drag that I will say something I never imagined I would say: A close-enough version of this same story was told more entertainingly in another Chilling Classic...Track of the Moon Beast! At least that movie has Professor Johnny Longbow's quasi-recipe for Professor Johnny Longbow's chicken and corn stew, as well as Frank Larrabee's "California Lady." 

Oh well, next week we'll be on to another Tale from the 50-Pack and when asked about the lousy Metamorphosis, I'll describe it the way some guy in the movie described Peter-rex: "It was a nightmare...from the past."

From its basic-ass title to its basic-ass plot, the 1963 Italian gothic horror film The Ghost (aka Lo spettro) ain't much we ain't seen many times before. But that's okay! After all, something about the journey being the destination and that's just super, you know? It's doubly super since this journey features Barbara Steele. Like would you care if a movie's plot was "ten years after a prank gone wrong leaves one of their friends dead, eight youths head to the woods for a weekend of partying before all but one are stalked and killed by a mask-wearing, knife-wielding maniac" if it starred Barbara Steele? No, you would not care. In fact, you would probably be psyched! Especially if she were playing the maniac. Or one of the youths. Or even the very woods themselves. 

And so it is with The Ghost. It's a tale as old as What Beckoning Ghost?, a song as old as EC Comics. (But) Barbara and the Steele.

And honestly, I was rather glad the story of The Ghost was so by-the-numbers, because I saw the name "Carol Bennet" in the opening credits, misread it as "Carol Burnett," and so long marveling, wondering, and questioning why and how Carol Burnett was in an Italian gothic horror film from 1963 that I am sure I burnt out a few synapses in my brain. I would not have been able to handle anything that made me think. I'm not even going to attempt another Mulholland Dr rewatch for 4-6 weeks.

Picture it...Scotland, 1910. Dr Hichcock (Elio Jotta) is wheelchair-bound but slowly regaining mobility thanks to the treatment he's come up with, which is a nice injection of two poisons followed by a swig of the antidote. If you ask me it sounds like perfectly good science, kind of like something a certain former President would have suggested as a cure for COVID.

Anyway, these treatments are administered by his friend and doctor, Charles Livingstone (Peter Baldwin), who is secretly--or maybe not-so-secretly--having an affair with Hichcock's wife Margaret (Steele). Margaret acts like a doting spouse, but she secretly--or maybe not-so-secretly--hates her husband. She convinces her lover to kill him, promising they'll inherit all the monies and be together forever. Besides, Hichcock isn't all that happy to be alive, and he hosts regular séances (with his trusty governess Catherine acting as a medium) so he can get a sneak peak at the other side. Would it really be so bad to just...not give him the antidote after a poison injection?

They go through with the plan, but there's no happily ever after for Charles and Margaret. The assumed riches never materialize, but Hichcock's ghost does. Or maybe he's not dead? Surely he's dead!

As the random blood drips appear and ghostly voices call out, the lovers begin to distrust each other. Their decline from bliss to...bloss...is reflected in the undo of Margaret's updo.

As I said, The Ghost doesn't really tread float over any new ground, but it does boast a fairly violent and bloody climax, a lot of delicious double-crossing, and more skulls than I could count (again, me brain hurt). While the dubbing isn't great, Steele sure is. By turns scared, sexy, evil, mad and more, (Chaka Khan voice) (or Whitney Houston voice, if it pleases you) she's every woman, they are all in her. Hichcock's house is home not only to the occasional spooky vibe, but also to more crap and clutter than like 50 TGI Fridays combined. It's so full of gewgaws and stuff and linens and things, it makes Hill House look positively minimalist.  

A few scenes are a bit painstakingly slow and it's maybe 25 minutes of story rolling around in a generous 95 minutes, especially considering we know where this is all going. Like, you can't fool us by calling yourself The Ghost, movie, we've seen Dominique and Diabolique and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotteique. We know there's no ghost! But again, who cares. WHO CARES I SAY.

For those of you who read "Dr Hichcock" and got to wondering, yes, The Ghost is indeed related to the 1962 Italian horror film The Horrible Dr Hichcock in all ways and in no ways. While the movies really have nothing to do with one another, each film was directed by Riccardo Freda, stars Barbara Steele as women married to a Dr Hichcock, Harriet Medin as a housekeeper/governess, and characters named Margaret and Margaretha. 

So all that and they also both have "not featuring Carol Burnett" in common. And yet The Ghost isn't considered a sequel? Why, that's the most surprising thing about it!

At last! This week brings us the first of several Chilling Classics from the multi-pack auteur himself, Wisconsin's own Bill Rebane. To call Rebane an acquired taste is...well, I cannot decide if that's an oversell or an undersell. Let's just call it a sell, shall we? The films of Bill Rebane are, in a word, weird. They're often dull affairs only sporadically livened up by some left-field choices that can only be explained with a "Forget it, Jake. It's Rebane-town (Wisconsin)." The more bonkers moments of his films remind me of William Girdler's The Manitou, but with 98% less budget and 100% more crew members with the last name "Rebane." (Seriously, don't make a drinking game out of this, do not do a shot every time a Rebane family member pops up in the end credits, you will die long before they are over.) To the more--or the way less, I suppose--discerning among us, these movies are home-grown, home-cooked charmers. I'm a big fan of another Chilling Classic that'll be covered whenever RNGesus makes it so, but today's flick, The Alpha Incident, was new to me and reader, it did not disappoint! Except in all the ways it's disappointing. But hey, that's Rebane-town, baby!

A space probe returns from Mars, arriving with a guest: a "disease organism" that leaves scientists baffled but yours truly delighted as this laboratory uses hamsters for some reason? I don't understand the science of this decision but I do understand the cuteness of it.

As they try to figure out what they've got on their hands, vials of the stuff are put on a train bound for Colorado. When the government agent assigned to escort the package (Stafford Morgan) decides to take a nap, a nosy train worker (George "Buck" Flower, last seen in Chilling Classics Cthursday's Drive-In Massacre) messes with a vial and drops it.  He cuts his hand on broken glass and unknowingly gets infected with a mystery...well, no one knows yet.

The train stops at a small station in Moose Point to switch engines. The agent and George "Buck" Flower, apparently the only two people on a whole long-ass train, disembark to wait. The agent finds out what George "Buck" Flower done did, and they, along with three train office employees, end up quarantined at the station as the scientists at the lab race to find a "counter-agent." Eventually the survivors are told one thing only: don't fall asleep under any circumstances because...something bad will happen.

Side note, about 25 minutes into the picture, a buzzing began, so loud that it drowned out the dialogue. For a moment I thought it might be a new addition to the film's Casio-flavored sci-fi "soundtrack," but then I realized that it was the disc and that the buzzing may never end so, full disclosure: I watched the rest of it on Tubi. On the downside, I had to suffer through some commercials for diapers and psoriasis medication. On the upside, Tubi has what I assume is the transfer from the Arrow Blu-ray release (can you believe it??), so I got to see it in its correct aspect ratio and in colors that Mill Creek would never allow me to dream up. I felt like Dorothy stepping into Oz when I got a load of the pinks and blues and a whole Skittles' worth of rainbow in the laboratory and the office of Lieutenant General Poor Man's Raymond Burr in Rear Window! (Please note that his official name is "The Official.")

Now, a movie full of people sitting around talking doesn't sound very exciting, I'll admit ("Unless it's written by Aaron Sorkin!!" -- you, probably haha lmaoooo). But the dialogue, courtesy of screenwriter Ingrid Neumayer, is rife with that patented Bill Rebane weirdness that had me invested in the small-town drama of Moose Point, as centered on its train station office. Give me a Moose Point night soap stat!

The drama centers around a woman named Jenny (Carol Irene Newell) who comes in to "do the books" at the station every Friday. Yes, it is truly a cosmic joke that she is there today of all days, the day when the train full of space stuff is due. 

After she arrives, her co-worker Charlie (Ralph Meeker) watches her pour herself some coffee and we get this shot, accompanied by what can only be described as "floozy music." Not raucous burlesque or nudie film-esque music. Floozy music. It's...quaint. Which is fitting, in my opinion.

I'm not sure if this is "Bill Rebane film" lascivious or strictly "Moose Point" lascivious, mind. But either way, it introduced what would become the true saga of The Alpha Incident; no, it's not about any "disease organism"s from Mars. It's about the sexual politics and love games of the Moose Point Train Station, which I have yet to figure out, quite frankly. I doubt I ever will. 

By the way, Ralph Meeker, who is ostensibly the closest thing The Alpha Incident has to a "name" actor, isn't given much to do or more than a handful of lines of dialogue until the final ten minutes of this thing, when it all goes off the rails (get it?). We'll get to that, of course. The important thing to note now is that through the whole movie he reminded me of Wilford Brimley as Blair in John Carpenter's The Thing.

Okay, but hear me out: Charlie's co-quarantined co-worker Jack is played by John F. Goff, who was Al Williams (aka Mr Janet Leigh) in The Fog. George "Buck" Flower was also in The Fog. Clearly John Carpenter is a fan of The Alpha Incident and did, in fact, model Blair after Ralph Meeker. Right? RIGHT?! 

In further red string conspiracy board news, John F. Goff was also in Drive-In Massacre AND John Carpenter's They Live, both alongside George "Buck" Flower. Maybe it's not so much that John Carpenter is a fan of The Alpha Incident as he is a fan of The Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection 50 Movie Pack from Mill Creek Entertainment. Right? Or maybe...maybe...I'm John Carpenter? Hmm, I sure do love video games...the evidence grows and grows.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, Moose Point After Dark.

So we've got Charlie ogling Jenny's gams--which go all the way up to here her tasteful knee-length hemline, and Jack incessantly making lewd comments at her. Sometimes she tells him to knock it off, other times she drapes herself all over him. But she insists she's not interested, as she has a big weekend date with Ted Sheffield, a man whom she's been seeing on-and-off. Jack is unbothered and continues to hit on her relentlessly.

For her part, Jenny takes an interest in the government agent, Sorensen, who does not take an interest in her. Not even when she decides to change her clothes and put on makeup! The nerve. The space infection that may or may not be coursing through her veins is bad enough, imagine getting rejected by the man who has been in town for five minutes and is also infected and Jenny, please remember that you are all quarantined and maybe dying?

In light of all of this, she decides to go have sex with Jack in an empty train car. What! It seems that Jenny's phone number is 867-53-OH NO amirite?

She immediately regrets the decision to sleep with Jack, but don't worry, it's not because she feels bad about maybe-cheating on Ted Sheffield. She later reveals that Ted Sheffield doesn't even exist?? He's like a George Glass...? Again I say: WHAT.

See, the Jenny storyline is just part of where the Bill Rebane weirdness comes in.

The quarantined group must stay awake, right? That's part of the whole space infection deal. Well, they can barely pull one single all-nighter before they start coming apart at the seams and Jenny has--or tries to--have sex with most of the men. But no worries: the government very helpfully air drops some amphetamines to them, along with some Slim Jims and plastic bags to poop in. (We don't want the infection seeping into the environment, do we?) It all leads to those final ten minutes I mentioned earlier, ten minutes which are kicked off by poor Charlie starting to doze and...well, let's just say that it's too bad Nancy Thompson hadn't been invented yet, for perhaps she could have reminded him: Don't. Fall. Asleep.

Oh man, that last screenshot really sends me! It's not the end of the sequence, mind you. Trust me when I say that it gets way grosser, but no more realistic. The "Wait...what?" that starts running through your mind won't stop until the whole thing ends on a lousy freeze frame ten minutes later. 

To those of you who are not partial to the character actor-laden cast list or the task of parsing Jenny's sad, small-town love (?) story or Bill Rebane in general, I don't know if those final ten minutes would make sitting through all of The Alpha Incident worth it.  

But as for me, John Carpenter, well. Maybe it's just the "disease organism" talking but I loved it? I can't wait until the next time we get to partake in some Wisconsin weirdness on a Cthursday. I'm a bona fide Rebane-iac and proud of it!

When I tell you how simultaneously pumped and confused I was when Funeral Home's number came up for this week's CHILLLING installment! (And yes, before you ask: Pumped and Confused is my favorite Linklater film.) 

Pumped because it's Funeral Home, duh. I love it. Like the Millennium Falcon, she ain't got much but she's got it where it counts, kid. Confused because I thought surely I have written about Funeral Home before. But after some furious computer hacking, I discovered that I haven't. Nary a mention to be found. Not even in Final Girl's earliest days, when this place was solely about slasher films and I reported on every one I could lay my greasy eyeballs on, like I was a horror blog version of Cynthia Rothrock as the lady reporter in that movie Lady Reporter. Okay, yes, I could never dare to dream that I am like Cynthia Rothrock on any level. However, should I ever hit my head on a tree, I do hope it results in my becoming psychic as happened to Cynthia Rothrock in Sworn to Justice.

You know what, let me course correct before I end up talking about Cynthia Rothrock all day. I am here to discuss Funeral Home, a film that features a lot but does not feature Cynthia Rothrock. But if it did! Can you imagine--

Funeral Home (aka Cries in the Night) does boast bona fide Canadian slasher royalty in star Lesleh Donaldson of Curtains and Happy Birthday to Me, and director William Fruet, who brought us Death Weekend and most importantly a little something called Killer Party. Talk about a movie I love! And with any Killer Party mention, I am legally and morally obligated to post the movie's theme song, as sung by Jennifer, Phoebe, and Vivia.

Not to get off track again, but what if Cynthia Rothrock sang the theme song to any one of her movies...?

Writer/director Del Tenney's Zombie Bloodbath was shot in 1964 and sat unloved on a shelf until exploitation producer/distributor extraordinaire Jerry Gross snatched it up, changed its title to I Eat Your Skin, and put it on one of horror's most famous drive-in double bills alongside I Drink Your Blood in 1971. I Drink Your Blood boasts satanic hippies, Lynn Lowry, contaminated meat pies, and gore enough to warrant the MPAA's first X-rating. I Eat Your Skin boasts...that it was the movie that played alongside I Drink Your Blood.

Writer/cad/Real Man's Man/Clive Cussler wet dream Tom Harris is content with sleeping with every woman in Miami Beach, but his mega-downer publisher wants Tom to get to work on his next novel--and he's got the perfect location to provide lots of inspiration: a remote place called Voodoo Island. As its name indicates, it's an island where people do voodoo. Also there's a scientist set up there, making use of the island's bountiful venomous snake population to help his development of a cancer cure. Oh, and a hurricane wiped away a lot of the island's men, so there are a shitton of women just waiting for a man like Tom to come along and sex them.

When Track of the Moon Beast's number came up for this week's Chilling Classics, I was surprised by how immediately gotdang pumped I was to watch it again for the first time in about 15 years. It's a terrible movie as far as, you know, movies go, but I don't care. I saw it at some point during my youth--it must have been on Creature Double Feature or something--and it deeply terrified me. I can't imagine it ever terrified anyone else, particularly anyone over the age of "child." But as a result, it's one of...well, I don't want to say it's one of my "favorite" movies, because that doesn't quite feel right. It's more accurate to say simply that it's one of my movies. Corny to say, maybe, but I'll say it: it's special to me, this tale of a dude who got hit in the head with a piece of the moon and subsequently turned into a lizard monster on occasion.

(Say what you will about Track of the Moon Beast, but the poster is lit!)

(Also, I'm not sure if it strictly qualifies as "a poster" because it never got a theatrical release. That's how bad it is! It was shot in 1972 but no one picked it up for distribution; it finally started playing on The Tee Vee in 1976 and has been somewhat ubiquitous ever since.)

Whenever I ask for your favorite horror movies for SHOCKtober, there are a few entries that may seem a bit out of left field. Usually, those are the movies that imprinted upon someone in some major way. Perhaps it was the circumstances it was seen a particular time: a bonding experience with mom or dad, a too-much-sugar sleepover, a first date. More often, it has to do with the film, no matter how cheesy or Z-grade, scaring one silly. We can all talk about how The Exorcist or Jaws or Halloween or Some Other Masterpiece kept us awake at night. But what of the Messterpieces that did the same? 

I think it's cool as heck that at for at least one person, this movie--this two-point-something on imdb, mercilessly roasted on MST3K movie--achieved its intended effect. It hit the right notes, and it worked. 

Watching it now, I go full gramma-in-a-rocking-chair-on-the-porch, shaking my head fondly and wistfully as I remember all Pepperidge Farms-style. Dare I say, though, it still has some value?...maybe?...as a curio. 

The 1970s saw a lot of films on the earnest end of redspolitation, and Track of the Moon Beast certainly counts among their number. No longer portrayed solely as the savages of 1950s westerns, indigenous characters now served to be wise and noble stewards of the land (crying over pollution in PSAs, for example) or wise and noble advisors to white men who are trying to figure stuff out. It's Frank Redbear teaching our caucasian hero about moldy corn in Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. And it's Johnny Longbow helping the police solve some murders in Track of the Moon Beast by showing them "400 year old" "paintings" of an "Indian legend" where someone also turned into a lizard monster. That's right, it's a 400-year-old painting, and definitely not a quick pencil sketch someone did on a pad they bought at CVS!

It's amusing (?) to watch all the ways Track of the Moon Beast does so wrong by Native Americans by trying to do right. Like our heroine Cathy, who heads to a Reservation to take photos of religious artifacts, only to then take one of the artifacts to use in a practical joke. It's all a bit like that frogurt bit from Treehouse of Horror on The Simpsons, you know?

Also I don't know how many indigenous religious artifacts are made out of tin, but I am not an expert so this could totally look like the real deal!!!! Just like the painting.

Also curious: this movie was co-written by Bill Finger, the man who co-created Batman. If you squint, you can see some shared DNA between Track of the Moon Beast and the formative comics and comic characters of yore. "A guy gets hit in the head with a moon rock ("Moon rock, oh wow" -- Cathy) and transforms into a lizard monster" is a premise that easily could have earned a 24-issue run at DC or Marvel in the 70s under the title Moon Beast. (I mean, Moon Knight's first appearance was in an issue of Werewolf by Night in the 70s, it's really not far-fetched at all.) 

The big show-stopper of the film, undoubtedly, is Albuquerque's own Frank Larrabee performing "California Lady" at a Ramada Inn. I love that it was a Ramada Inn. I love that Larrabee was actually performing there and they just...threw it in the movie. And you know what? Justice for Frank Larrabee! "California Lady" sounds like some discount Don McLean and it would absolutely be right at home on the 1972-1973 CD from Time-Life's Singers and Songwriters series. Sadly for Mr Larrabee, the 70s were chock full of sensitive men playing the acoustic guitar sensitively and singing sensitive songs and he never popped off beyond a 6-song EP. But "California Lady" is really theee thing that people take away from Track of the Moon Beast, which is more than Don McLean could ever boast.

Of course, I take away much more than that from it, despite the fact that it boasts some of the most wooden acting you will ever see, dialogue spoken at what feels like 75% speed, and a climactic "explosion" that looks like this: