Christ on a (Ben) Cross!

With all these religious horror movies coming out recently, it seems like a good time to pick out 1988's The Unholy from the pile and give it a go. This was another one that I have no explanation for never watching back in the day, as it was a video store mainstay. Let's chomp that wafer and get down to business.

Shortly after arriving at his new parish, Father Michael (Ben Cross) discovers that the last two priests who held his position were brutally murdered at his altar. Will he be next?

Yeah, this one isn't bad. I learned that this script was originally written in the seventies to capitalize on the success of The Exorcist and The Omen, but was then shelved. I can see that, as the characters and societal underbelly that Father Michael encounters does feel more of that decade.

Ben Cross - who would have made one of my faves Paperhouse around this time - is solid here and a good sport about having his junk covered in snakes. He's also surrounded by a bevy of character actors in this including Ned Beatty, Hal Holbrook, Peter (Profiler FTW!) Frechette and Will Russ. The score by Roger Bellon is terrific, even by eighties standards.

Ben Cross as Father Michael in The Unholy.

I found it amusing how nonchalantly the clergy talk about Church cover-ups in this movie when in hindsight, a few dead bodies and some indiscretions with the opposite sex were the least of their dirty laundry. Just another indication of how different things were some fourty years ago.

Can you keep a secret?

I do have to admit, The Unholy does get a bit bogged down with exposition and I found myself nodding off in the middle. However I perked up for the finale which is definitely worth the price of admission. The effects provided by Bob Keen, who worked on Clive Barker's films among others, fucking brings his A-game. Full creature suits, giant animatronics, exploding midgets, you name it!

 

In fact, I'd say that guy looks like the love child of The Brain and Syngenor. Oh, I didn't even mention the sexy negligee-d demon played by Nicole Fortier. Let's just say that ol' Father Michael was made of stronger rosary than I. 

Shock Stock 2024!

After a five-year absence I finally got my self up the 401 to London last weekend to re-acquaint myself with Shock Stock. I was glad to find that it is still as crazy and greasy as ever. I got there around noon on Saturday and said my hellos to all the usual suspects - James, Jake, Carlos, Luis, Brett, Brad et al. 

True to form, I walked out with a haul VHS tapes.

AND this cool little piece of art, from whom I do not know as the floor map isn't online anymore. Dang!

I sadly didn't realize the white was on the outside of the glass so I scuffed it up a bit in transport. Lesson learned!

During the afternoon, I sat in on the Q&A's Italian actress Silvia Collatina (House by the Cemetery, Murder Rock). She was delightful, and one of the last people standing who can talk about what Lucio Fulci was actually like. I also learned that I need to watch Sergio Martino's The Great Alligator.

Actress Silvia Collatina

Then, it was time for the always affable and entertaining Bill Moseley. This guy has had a career! And is apparently a hockey fan. Who knew?

Actor Bill Moseley

The real reason I was there was the Joe Bob Briggs live show that ended up being a 16mm screening of Just Before Dawn with director Jeff Lieberman Q&A following the show. Both Joe Bob and Leiberman didn't seem too thrilled about the presentation considering there is a restored Blu-ray available, but hey, that's the Shock Stock way!

Darcy & Joe Bob with director Jeff Lieberman

There was a debate about whether Just Before Dawn is a slasher, because it was made in 1979 before the term and tropes were coined, but, much to the chagrin of Lieberman, the consensus was, if it walks like a slasher and talks like a slasher - it's a slasher.

I met Lieberman many years ago at a TIFF party after complimenting him on his Satan's Little Helper and talked to him at length (mostly about of all things, UFC) and I was glad to see he had remained his usual acerbic self.

And then we partied the night away. I was happy to have spent my evening with Joe, Darcy and Jeff and not that pitiful excuse for a Game 7. I'm learning.  So, until next year... keep it greasy!

Apr 24th Horror Trivia Screening Guide

To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's the selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.

Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do occasionally stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.

Let The Right One In (2008)

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane (1976)

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction (2009)

ABC's of Death (2012)

Wizard of Gore (1970)

Hatchet (2006)

Cat's Eye (1985)

Hereditary (2018)

The Witch (2015)

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Veronica (2017)

You're Next (2011)

Suspiria (2018)

All Hallow's Eve (2013)

The Final Hex

Hello all. I know I've been slacking off recently, but my festival duties have been eating into my play time of late. I did want to make a point of saying good-bye to a fest near and dear to my heart though.

The Hexploitation Film Fest is calling it quits after fifteen years. After our last hurrah in Feb 2020, Hex head honcho Aaron Allen has decided to throw dirt on the coffin as it were. BUT not before going out with some kick-ass events collectively dubbed The Final Hex.

I took in Here For Blood a few weeks ago, starring "Wesker" himself Shawn Roberts. It's actually quite fun and I think the local FX crew The Butcher Shop's best work to date. Earlier this week though, I went to an absolutely delightful screening of the 80s Canadian banger Murder By Phone.

I have sung in praise of this film after discovering it during the pandemic, but seeing it with a crowd was a real hoot. Aaron also cooked up a little game with it, as well. Everyone in attendance gave him their phone number before the show, and when someone in the movie got a call, someone in the audience also did. Then you were DEAD. I sadly got offed at the same time as Lenore Zann, but I still made out like a bandit with all these runner up prizes courtesy of The Hearty Hooligan and Blood Opera.

A terrific evening. I wish Aaron the best, and hope the Crypt Cinema at Doors Pub (who hosted the screening) keep the horror flame alive in Hamilton.

Insert Bonnie Tyler Song Here.

My Girl Wants To Party All The Time!

Next VHS off the pile was the 1988 slasher Party Line. I certainly recalled the coverbox, but never got to it back in the day because it was one of a SLEW of titles that almost seemed interchangeable. Let's pick up the phone and call! I hear it's private, confidential, one-on-one and discreet!

Crazy sibling serial killers Seth (Leif Garrett) & Angelina (Greta Blackburn) cruise telephone chat lines for victims, while hothead detective Dan (Richard Hatch - the Battlestar one, not the gay Survivor one) remains one body behind.

Party Line was amusing, but this was admittedly not top-tier stuff. For those who were not alive in the eighties, there were all kinds of call-in services available, some not even for degenerates. I remember calling one called Dial-A-Joke a few times, until my father confronted me with the subsequent phone bill. Hell, there was even one to hear Freddy Krueger.

Anyway, I digress. For a movie called Party Line, the phone sex stuff actually makes up little of the movie. Characters would disappear for chunks at a time, tagging out for stretches of police procedure and generic nightclub revelry. I was being generous when I used the word slasher earlier. I guess technically it's accurate as the killer's weapon of choice is a straight razor, but it's really more of a tame erotic thriller. Save for a few slit throats, it is fairly anemic too.

We do get a lot of weirdo scenes with the "complicated" shenanigans of Seth & Angelina. It's a lot of simping and leering from the former and the latter slapping him around for it. It's... awkward. It sure was a banner year for Garrett, who also appeared in Cheerleader Camp in '88. 

Imdb tells me that viewers thought Hatch was miscast. I don't know if I agree, I think it more that the detective character as a whole was miscast. Everyone knows the "hard boiled cop who doesn't play by the rules" trope, but this was ridiculous. He pulled his gun out so much in this movie, he might as well have had fused to his hand ala Videodrome. And, since when do District Attorney employees visit crime scenes? Seems like a conflict of interest, but I guess Dan & Stacy (Shawn Weatherly) had to meet somehow.

Speaking of conflicts, when the teen using the party line in the beginning finally reappears again, Dan actually has the brilliant idea to have said sixteen-year-old help them in their investigation. Does any of this sound like it would hold up in court, people? However, after the inevitable plot twist and kidnapping of Stacy, I was happy that she didn't need to be saved at the end. She made short work of Mama's boy Seth, even with her hands tied. You go, girl!

Call me Nancy Lew-d.

Party Line was run-of-the-mill fare that needed more of a hook than just the passing fad it hung its hat on. Hider in the House had the wild card magic of Gary Busey and Fear had Ally Sheedy's psychic superpowers. This just has well, people perving on and off the phone. I want more for my dollar-ninety-five per minute, ya know?

Horror Movie Guide: The Brain That Wouldn't Die

The next film in the Guide is perhaps one of the most recognized B-movies in existence, and yet one I had never seen - Joseph Green's 1962 movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die. I, and I am sure you, at least know the iconic image of actress Virginia Leith's head in a tray hooked up to various amounts of rigging and equipment. I feel I must have seen the MST3K episode at some point, but it was so long ago now, who knows?

After his girlfriend Jan (Leith) is decapitated in a road accident, a maverick surgeon Dr. Cortner (Jason Evers) keeps her head alive using his new experimental transplant procedure.

So yes this is primarily what I expected. I find the majority of these weird curiosities of the atomic age are "come up with a good hook or title" and then just pad the rest to make it feature length. What am I saying, that is the nature of most B-movies in general, isn't it? Nevertheless, The Brain That Wouldn't Die does go back and forth between lab scenes to mostly superfluous burlesque shows and beauty pageants that the good Doctor is cruising for new subjects.

Virginia Leith as Jan in The Brain That Wouldn't Die.

As good a surgeon as Cortner must have been, he was a shit driver, as that inciting accident was totally avoidable and not even serious from what I could tell. Then I had to chuckle that Cortner's first reaction to seeing his dead girlfriend was to pick up her head and run with it. Then again, that is the inherent nature of TBTWD really. Run with it. I mean, that cat fight scene? You might as well had Jerry Lewis come in and mug to the camera.

It makes me sad that Leith - whom was actually "the Girl" in Stanley Kubrick's debut film Fear & Desire that I saw for the first time recently - had such a terrible time on this picture that she wouldn't even come back for post. That may explain the ghoulish fake head that appears in the long shots of the lab.

I have to admit that I was shocked to see boobies in a film from the early sixties, but I guess that is what Tubi meant by "uncensored". With my expectations tempered, I guess my only disappointment was that after all that talk of the abomination locked behind the door, it turned out to just be a dude in a mask -  think Richard Kiel crossed with Michael Berryman. And that ending - quite abrupt!

The Guide didn't seem to think much of it, but that is to be expected. 

Mar 27th Horror Trivia Screening Guide

To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's the selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.

Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do occasionally stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.

American Psycho (2000)

Skinamarink (2022)

Vacancy (2007)

Cutting Class (1989)

He Knows You're Alone (1980)

Return To Horror High (1987)

Troll (1986)

Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990)

They/Them (2022)

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Poultrygeist (2006)

Frankenhooker (1990)

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS (1975)

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

Slugs (1988)

The Greasy Strangler (2016)

Class of Nuk 'Em High (1986)

Troll 2 (1990)

The Devil's Honey (1986)

Complications?!

The next VHS on the pile was Brian Thomas Jones' 1988 flick The Rejuvenator. This was a movie I'm kind of shocked I never got to because the coverbox was omnipresent during my youth. Let's see what I missed out on...

A doctor (John MacKay) looking to reverse the aging process finds a willing test subject in wealthy over-the-hill actress Elizabeth Warren (Vivian Lanko, not the US Senator). As you would expect, things go awry.

With experimental treatments really hitting the public eye in the eighties there were a glut of B-movies about mad scientist's work spiralling out of control. However, the floodgates really opened with the cult success of Re-Animator in 1985 and The Rejuvenator was no doubt a by-product of this boom.

As you can see by the cover, this movie presents itself as an FX picture and thankfully they had Ed French there to steer that ship. French worked on a ton of notable pictures from the eighties, including The Stuff, C.H.U.D & Creepshow 2 so he was well versed in bringing creatures to the screen. The evolution of the effects in The Rejuvenator is fun to watch and kudos to Lanko because she was a trooper. Acting with what must have been at least ten pounds strapped to the back of her head for hours on end must have been unpleasant to say the least.

And that's not even mentioning the air bladders galore, or the bonus mutant rats throughout. Also, in the positive column we have a pan flute accompanied sex scene, an elongated club sequence with the delightful female punk band, The Poison Dolly's and an optional drinking game involving the oft-said phrase "synthesize the serum".

Katell Pleven & John MacKay in the Rejuvenator.

Despite our good doctor's insistence that "the science is sound", Elizabeth starts leaving a trail of bodies in her wake, including the dutiful assistant, Stella (Katell Pleven) - whom I'm sure was only named that so the doctor could yell that over her dead body Brando-style. By this point, Lizzie was sucking the brain juice right out of people's heads, cutting out the middle man so to speak. Soon after, the place is raided by the authorities, half of whom look like mob goons and cab drivers rather than detectives, and you can guess what happens next....

No one would say The Rejuvenator is top tier stuff, but despite being pretty dry for the first half-hour, it does have a lot of what you look for in an eighties FX picture so it's worth checking out if that's your bag - and you're reading this so I assume it is.

Halloween Meets Three-Mile Island.

I just wanted to post about something really cool I discovered recently. I think a few sites wrote about this last year, but I didn't hear about until a friend of mine told me about a treasure trove of unproduced movie scripts over at archive.org.

So legend has it that circa 1977, John Carpenter took a job writing a script for a project called Prometheus Crisis. This screenplay, which was later called Meltdown, is essentially "Halloween in a nuclear power plant".

This script is fascinating for a few reasons. If you read it (you can find it here), you can see elements that would later end up in his future projects. The characters arriving and exploring the abandoned facility echoes that of MacCready and Doc Copper at the Norwegian camp in The Thing and there is a sequence that would be lifted verbatim a decade later for Prince of Darkness. I even saw a shot or two that would end up in Halloween II, but that could just be coincidence.

Perhaps most impressive is that the technical jargon sounds accurate - at least from my rudimentary knowledge watching Chernobyl and a few Netflix docs - even though it was written at a time when I can't imagine information of nuclear energy was readily available. Carpenter wrote this before meltdowns were a reality, as Three Mile Island or even the film The China Syndrome wouldn't happen for another two years. It's basically like when Stanley Kubrick made 2001 before anyone actually went to space. 

Aside from that though, Meltdown is  a pretty brutal slasher script with an atmospheric and unique location and some really good set pieces - one kill I've still never seen even to this day! It's a bummer this was never made. Carpenter & Co were trying to get it done as recently as 1997, but things just never came together. Oh well, at least we have the script. 

Horror Movie Guide: The Boogeyman

The next title in the Guide is one of the more infamous and possibly surprising I'd never seen up until this point; Ulli Lommel's The Boogeyman. I mean, I was aware of the coverbox of this and its 1982 sequel to be sure, but I guess it just slipped through the cracks for two reasons. First, there was the dull-as-dirt 2005 version that I probably incorrectly assumed was a remake, and second my actual introduction to Lommel was through his shit parade of direct-to-video serial killer flicks in the mid 2000s. Neither of these occurrences incentivized me to check out the original 1980 one until now...

A brother and sister's (real life siblings Nicholas & Suzanna Love) traumatic event in their childhood comes back to haunt them through a cursed mirror. That's the best I got...

I struggled to come up with a place to start on this one because I have so many questions. Does every house in New England have those Amityville windows? What is the purpose of the brother in this story? Which one of the filmmakers had a thing for pantyhose?

Suzanna & Nic Love as Lacey & Willy in The Boogeyman.

Paramount among my queries while watching The Boogeyman though was how was this not an Italian production? Even without the tremendous score by Tim Korg (which truth be told is the best thing about this movie), you also have the inherent incoherence of the story. I mean, what are the rules here? Lommel must have been subscribing to Argento's "things just are." credo here. Apart from that, it seemed like he was mashing up The Exorcist and Amitville Horror, with a dash of proto Final Destination. 

What you get is something that feels long, even at eighty minutes, padded out by scenes with low budget royalty John Barrymore - who they likely had for a day - and the glowering of the aforementioned superfluous brother character.

At the end of the day, it's a somewhat entertaining watch, but there are other films of this ilk that offer way more bang for your buck (1982's Superstition for instance), but I can't deny that I did see its influence. The last scene in the kitchen did remind me of a similar sequence in 1983's Blood Beat. Lommel also was able to carve out a prolific career for himself, working regularly all the way up until his death in 2017. Not many maestros can say that. The Guide was surprisingly generous with this movie.

I find it weird they would praise the colour lighting as if this wasn't something the Italians hadn't been doing since the mid sixties. Oh well, I'm at least glad I was able to finally cross this one of the list.

Horror Movie Guide: Bog

Next up in the Guide was Don Keeslar's 1978 movie Bog. I had no previous knowledge of this movie, but wagered I knew what to expect, as everything by appearance screamed Z-grade. But hey, maybe I'd be lucky and get something orbiting the oeuvre of Don Dohler.

An aquatic prehistoric beast is awoken by fisherman using dynamite and starts to pick off the townsfolk.

Sadly, Bog was a bore. It kind of plays like a PG version of Humanoids From The Deep, where the beast is killing dudes and using the ladies to lay its eggs. Although, that is merely heresay, as absolutely none of it is onscreen. You get the ol' zoom-in-to-screaming-face and cut to red time and time again.

This movie has many similarities to Bigfoot, a film from the Guide I watched about this time last year. It's a lot of people talking and walking, is largely bloodless and has one recognizable character actor keeping things mildly interesting - in Bog's case, Aldo Ray. They both also have a pleasing theme song, as well.

Aldo Ray as Sheriff Rydholm in Bog.

You do at least get more shots of the creature, even if it does look like it came from the set of Pertwee-era Dr. Who. I'll also give credit to Gloria DeHaven who I never clued in to that in addition to playing the scientist, was also the forest hag, Adrianna. I also have a question - this movie was shot by Wings. Like Paul McCartney's band Wings??? I assume that can't be true otherwise the end credits would've spooled out to Live & Let Die...

In Bigfoot's defense, it had a few buxom ladies in swimsuits. Bog gives us a couple of harpies off the hop that I couldn't wait to get slimed. It also featured the most unappealing middle-aged make-out scene this side of Nightbeast. 

Yes, my reaction to this scene too.

Overall, I give the edge to Bog, but they are both pretty joyless affairs. The Guide would seem to agree with me, although they make it sound way more extreme a movie than it actually is. Hell of a font though!

Feb 28th Horror Trivia Screening List

To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's the selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.

Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do occasionally stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.

Street Trash (1987)

Cabin Fever (2002)

Watcher (2022)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) 

House of the Long Shadows (1983) 

The Sacrifice Game (2023)

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

In A Violent Nature (2024)

Creep (2004)

Creep (2014)

The Exorcist III (1990)

Piranha II: The Spawning (1981)

Beyond Re-Animator (2003)

The People Under the Stairs (1991)