Eighties Stew.

Hello all! I am back with another VHS Friday. This next one on the pile was a title I'd been meaning to get to for a while - Bert L. Dragin's 1988 “sort-of” haunted house flick Twice Dead. Even though I had seen Dragin's other two efforts Summer Camp Nightmare & Suburbia in my youth I missed out on this one. It's a hell of a coverbox and not entirely misleading, as that character does bust out of a mirror, just not in the Die Hard way this picture below would insinuate.

A family moves in to an old mansion that happens to be haunted by Depression-era showbiz star.

Twice Dead is kind of a weird title in that it doesn't really refer to a character as much as the two different plots going on in this movie. Initially, the paranormal aspect is front facing, but it keeps taking a back seat to this secondary storyline about the two siblings Scott (Tom Bresnahan, of The Brain!) and Robin (Jill Whitlow who'll always be my Weird Science perfume counter girl) fighting off neighbourhood punks. It's not only until the climax that these two stories fully intersect.

Though both of these plots are fairly standard, this movie is populated with a ton of welcome faces. The aforementioned Bresnahan is as delightfully snarky and happy-go-lucky as he was in The Brain which put a smile on my face. He must have shot these two movies back-to-back and I wonder if he was aware of the similarities, playing a character who doubly likes pranks, is attacked by tentacles/spectral ropes and finds himself in a car chase. Jill Whitlow is lovely in this, and it was no surprise to me find out that her and Bresnahan were dating during filming. They played siblings here, but some of those bedside scenes had a tension that was a négligée photo shoot away from being Amityville 2.

Jill Whitlow and Tom Bresnahan in Twice Dead.

Also in the cast was Brooke Bundy (Kristin's mom from Nightmare 3), Todd Bridges as the doomed friend and much to the elation of my seventeen-year-old self, Charlie Spradling. A much welcome appearance, even if it was only to rock a jean jacket with no shirt, get nude and then promptly die by STE (Sexually Transmitted Electrocution). What an angel! Oh, and completely unrelated, this movie has a cat named Meow - which of course has Robin walking around calling out “Meow?” - that saw an unnecessarily brutal end. :(

J.C. + C.S.

Other than that, it is just filler between altercations with the aforementioned goons. The house is pretty cool and outfitted with some nooks and crannies (the dumbwaiter specifically being built for the movie) for our bodies to aimlessly search. Twice Dead is another one of those movies that seems to have trouble ending itself, not necessarily because they wanted to do another one, but perhaps there were a few cooks in the kitchen.

Anyway, I was glad to knock this one off and the trio of Bresnahan, Whitlow and Spradling kept me entertained throughout.

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.

Dudes and Nudes.

Ok, time to get back on the horse and fire up some languishing features here at THS. You can expect regular VHS posts on Fridays and also the continuation of the Horror Movie Guide log on Mondays going forward. Let's kick things off with a title that is a long time coming in Jon Irvin's go at gothic, 1981's Ghost Story.

Don (Craig Wasson) returns to his hometown for his twin brother's funeral and gets pulled into a mystery involving the elder statesmen of the village.

I gotta admit, this is totally not what I expected. I thought Ghost Story was going to be about moldy geriatrics sitting around a fire swapping stories - and to be fair, to a point, it is. The four old timers - who adorably call themselves The Chowder Society - do wax scary tales for a time, but then it goes off the chain in all kinds of fun ways. Before I knew it I'm seeing the face of a rotting corpse that I have a vague recollection of peeping on a Fangoria cover as well as some flying Wasson-peen. Okay, you have my attention.

There is a good collection of character actors here. Wasson no doubt carried this character's constant bewilderment with him into Body Double three years later and Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Melvyn Douglas match up well with John Houseman, who was already well versed at telling spooky stories from his stint in The Fog one year prior. I think the real heart of the picture of Fred Astaire as Ricky Hawthorne though. Alice Krige is great as the icy femme fatale and provides 100% more nudity than I was anticipating. This is not your mother's ghost story, folks.

In addition to the aforementioned, there are a few more gore gags that are pretty badass, especially that creep above that looks like something out of Creepshow. Oh, and also Moosehead sighting!

Man, they were really pushing their brand in the early eighties. Love to see it! Ghost Story feels like it is of two minds, as you have the fairly standard gothic haunt with a DePalma-like trashiness leaking through the cracks. I wager it's that mix that sets it apart from other haunting yarns of the time.

Nov 8th 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.

If you heard a title while at the last event and thought “oh that movie sounds cool, I should check that out”, here's a comprehensive list of all the films that were mentioned. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing.

For everyone else, maybe there's one or two here you have yet to catch. 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 often stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram.

His House (2020)

The Entity (1982)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Cobweb (2023)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

The Video Dead (1987)

Hell of a Summer (2023)

Don't Go In The House (1979)

Mazes & Monsters (1982)

I Drink Your Blood (1971)

Satanic Panic (2019)

House of the Devil (2009)

Evilspeak (1981)

We Summon the Darkness (2019)

The Devil's Rain (1975)

Angel Heart (1987)

The Babysitter (2017)

Race with the Devil (1975)

E is for The Entity (1982)

Going back in time today to a film I haven't seen in almost four decades, Sidney J. Furie's The Entity.

Single mother Carla Moran (Barbara Hershey) is repeatedly assaulted by a spectral force.

I'd been meaning to give this a re-watch for ages, as I feel it needs a re-evaluation. It was maligned at the time of its release with people flocking to the more digestible scares of Poltergeist that same year - much like E.T. overshadowed The Thing. Now I'm able to see this through adult(?) eyes and be fully aware of the thematic weight that went over my ten-year-old head.

Barbara Hershey as Carla in The Entity

 

The Entity is a solid thriller, then and now. Though it does have the air of a TV movie at times there are several things that elevate it, the powerful performance of Hershey chief among them. It was an emotional and physical role and she committed to it every bit as much as Linda Blair in the similarly structured The Exorcist. Actually, I'd say Hershey had double duty in this as mother AND victim. She played both the Blair and Ellen Burstyn's parts.

Next, there is that unforgettable score by Charles Bernstein. Those rape scenes are horrific by themselves, but when you put that pulsating noise over it, it's really well... assaulting, there's no other way to put it. The sound design overall is on point, as the lightning effects and breaking windows were blasting in my headphones.

Then there are the effects by legend Stan Winston and James Kagel. As an adult, I know how they did those spectral groping scenes, but it's still pretty impressive and the memory of how that blew my mind as a kid will never leave me. It's funny how the brain works, as my recollection of the frozen outline of the Entity was more jagged (like the Fortress of Solitude) but in reality it was more rounded and blobby.

This movie was based on a real case in the seventies. It's strange that you don't hear more about this kind of thing. Or I guess maybe it has evolved into what we now call sleep paralysis. It's pretty Goddamn spooky though and I imagine there were scores of women sleeping with the lights on in the winter of 1982.

D is for Deadstream (2022)

I've decided to switch it up this time and talk about something brand spanking new, Joseph & Vanessa Winter's found footage horror, Deadstream.

Disgraced YouTuber Shawn (co-director Joseph Winter) decides to hold his comeback livestream in the most haunted house in America. It does not go well.

This was a film that I missed while I was at Fantasia, but everyone who saw it said it was a blast, though there was some question about whether it would be as enjoyable outside of festival screening environment. However, after seeing the Winters' segment in V/H/S/99 at Midnight Madness, I was confident it would still slay in my living room. I was correct, Deadstream is wicked fun.

It had a very good setup, introducing us to an all-too-familiar YouTube-style personality who is a borderline d-bag, but at least not a total garbage human like the protagonist in last year's Dashcam. Shawn is genuinely witty and I was enjoying myself even before the shit hits the fan.

Joseph Winter as Shawn in Deadstream

 

Deadstream also wades through a lot of the usual found footage pitfalls quite adroitly, by not only using the character's fame and ego to keep him at the scene and filming now matter how bad things get, but also using his viewer comments to cleverly convey exposition. The Winters' also have a solid grasp of escalation, in that just when you think it is nearing its conclusion, it still has gas in the tank.

Much like V/H/S/99, the antagonists are abundant and well conceived and the gore is really well done. I find well executed set pieces in found footage extra impressive because of the heightened difficulty of timing. I also of course got a kick out of the Evil Dead nods - or I guess because this was POV, Resident Evil 7? 

Deadstream is perfect October viewing and the Winters' have now fully staked their claim as exciting new voices in horror.

They've Doomed Us All, Church Man!

This week's VHS is James W. Roberson's Superstition from 1982.

An old estate haunted by the spirit of an executed witch seeks revenge on all that cross her path.

I'd been waiting a long time to re-watch this, as it had been over twenty-five years since I had first seen it. I remembered it being pretty gory with a high body count – I was only five off the number of twenty I for some reason had in my mind as a reference point. I hosted a VHS double bill last weekend and paired this with the 1988 Lenzi flick Ghosthouse. I hadn't seen that one and was unaware what a fortuitous tandem they would make together.

James Houghton as Rev. Thompson in Superstition

Superstition was even more fun than I remembered it, with tons of gore, creative deaths and just the right amount of nonsensical storytelling. It got going right out the gate, spectacularly dispatching two unsuspecting goofballs. And in a clever switcheroo, this may be one of the only horror movies where the couple making out in their car at the onset actually lived. From then on, the special effects provided by Steve LaPorte & David B. Miller were on point.

At a brisk eighty-five minutes, this movie moves along at a good clip. My friend Jeff also made a good point when he said, “it really helps when you have a great location because you don't mind watching people wander around in the dark for entire scenes.” I would have to agree though, my muddy VHS notwithstanding, some scenes were indeterminably dark. When ubiquitous eighties kid Billy Jacobi met his end in the basement, we kind of had to go by his halted screams rather than anything we actually saw on screen.

I was surprised to find that Superstition was Canadian, even though it was shot in Los Angeles. I'm hoping that the Shout Factory Blu-ray – that I will no doubt be grabbing now that I have reaffirmed that this movie is, in fact, rad – will shed some light on this. People are finally discovering this movie due to that release and realizing that it is not just a pretty coverbox. To all those uninitiated, believe it.

Don't. Just Don't.

This week I reached for one of my clamshells, my VHS of Carlo Ausino’s Don’t Look in the Attic from 1982.

Several inheritants of an old mansion in Turin arrive only to realize that it includes a curse that has plagued their family for generations.

No matter how deep I dig into the annals of Italian film I can usually count on them to at least be interesting, but sadly Don’t Look in the Attic was the exception to this rule. This movie was dull as dirt. That said, I must concede that it was not helped by the hilarious dubbing that had characters speaking at what seemed like one-point-five speed. It gave me a wave of nostalgia from when I was renting bootlegs in the late nineties.

Seriously though, was there ever a lot of talking in this movie. I swear it was an hour before the protagonist Martha (Beba Loncar) even looked in the attic. I couldn’t understand what the hell she was doing there in the first place, as the movie previously had her dead mother calling to her from the other side “Don’t go to Turin! Don’t go to the villa!” Then cut to the next scene where Martha's mumbling “I wonder what she was trying to tell me… One ticket to Turin please!”

Beba Loncar as Martha in Don't Look in the Attic.

Again, full disclosure, this was another title that I found myself fighting sleep in the middle of. Maybe it's this long stretch of humidity we’ve been having lately. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Don’t Look in the Attic was not a total wash, as it did have two redeeming qualities.

First, everyone who ever rented a movie in the eighties knows that the coverbox was often a ruse to get your dollars, but surprisingly Ausino actually delivered the action on his - and in the opening sequence, no less. Second, the cinematography was decent, helped largely by the eerie mansion location. Though to be fair, a filmmaker friend of mine once made the valid point that you could point the camera anywhere in Italy and it'd look like the best movie ever made.

Don’t Look in the Attic was not a high point in the history of Italian horror, but I guess they can’t all be-llissima. At least I got to cross another film off my “Don’t!” list.

Eight-Sided Haunts.

Reaching onto my VHS shelf this week, I pulled out Armand Weston's 1981 film The Nesting.

A writer afflicted with agoraphobia named Lauren (Robin Groves) rents an old house in the country only to find that it may be haunted.

I was, of course, very familiar with the coverbox (that's probably what possessed me to pick it up from whatever convention vendor table it came from) but even after all these years I'd never actually seen this movie. I'm glad to say that it turned out to be a pretty decent haunted house flick. I had assumed this was Warner Bros trying to cash in on the success of Amityville, The Changeling and The Shining, but was pleasantly surprised by how well put together it was.

Fairly typical was the setup and I chose to overlook the arbitrary agoraphobia plot device that seemed to come and go whenever it was convenient, but the movie worked for the most part. Fortunately, Weston was able to procure the Armour-Stiner House, an octagonal Victorian-style home from the 1800's that has as much character as the iconic abode in Amityville.

Robin Groves as Lauren with her co-star Armour-Stiner.

The Nesting did feel like a TV movie sometimes, but that went away when the gore showed up. I was beginning to wonder why that sickle had been featured so prominently in both iterations of the coverbox art... and then I finally found out why. The other thing that stuck out to me was just how much of a wise-ass Lauren's friend, Mark (Chris Loomis) was. Almost everything out of his mouth was a sarcastic remark. It got exhausting though I have to admit, during a chunk in the middle where things got a little dry, I kind of missed him.

Shut the fuck up, Mark!

I was rewarded through this stretch with a solid climax though. It does play out like your classic ghost revenge piece, but it was well told and all of the weird dream sequences, flashbacks and fantastical deaths that seemed random before all came together when the full tale was revealed.

Well, that was unexpected.

After digesting almost fourty years of haunted house yarns, I saw the formula within The Nesting, but it had the benefit of a one-of-a-kind location, competent actors and enough gore moments to ensure its escape from obscurity. It is definitely worth a look if you dig the haunted house genre.

New England Gothic

Premiering exclusively on Shudder today is A.D. Calvo's atmospheric indie Sweet Sweet Lonely Girl.

While caring for her reclusive Aunt, Adele (Erin Wilhemi) strikes up a friendship with a townie named Beth (Quinn Shephard) and quickly falls under her influence.

Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl was a link that dropped in my inbox last month, so I had no idea what to expect, but I dug it quite a bit. It was the first time in a while that I'd seen that ever-popular retro-style done in a way that did not feel gimmicky. Calvo took great care to set the world in 1980 New England, but didn't feel the need to wave it in my face every scene.

Though I've heard it compared to Mario Bava's gothic oeuvre, I would offer that Lonely Girl shares more DNA with John Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica To Death. Not only were they both shot in Connecticut, but there were a few plot points – like the gravestone rubbing scene – that just have to be direct homages. With its setting and deliberate pace, it also reminded me of Oz Perkins' newest I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Thankfully, due to its multiple characters there was more for me to latch onto here. Not lost on me either was the similarity between the posters for Lonely Girl and 1976's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane.

Both leads were terrific in this. Wilhemi's virginal, straight edge was contrasted beautifully by Quinn Shephard sensual, dangerous energy. These two actresses have been in the business for a while, but this the perfect project to have them be front-and-center. Like I said before, I really felt the vintage style of the piece melted away as the film went on, making it really more about the relationship between Adele and Beth.

Erin Wilhemi (right) & Quinn Shephard in Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl.

Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl was a simple modern gothic tale that, within its less than eighty-minute run time, gets in and gets out. Its conclusion may leave you scratching your head for a moment, but I thought this was a solid indie. Needless to say, I am looking forward to seeing what comes next for Calvo, Wilhemi & Shephard in the future.

Trailer Tuesdays: Beyond The Door II

It's Springgggggggggg! Let's celebrate with a Mario Bava film about the joys of the coming season and also, you know, demonic possession.

This movie is a gas. It not only has perhaps one of the most brilliantly executed jump scares in horror history, it also has that fucking kid. I used to have a roommate named Mark and I sampled that intro line into our answering machine message -- “this is Jay, Brent and Marco, that's my name! Leave a message” -- much to his utter confusion. Ahh, good times.

2017 Preview.

We made it, guys! Here were are in 2017 with a new slate of horror films for which to look forward. Let's take a look.

Since it's January, we can first look to Park City and I see three possible winners in Damien Power's Killing Ground, Cary Murnion & Jonathan Milott's actioner Bushwick and the anthology XX.

The horror anthology has made a full-on comeback in recent years, so I'm hoping this female-centric affair keeps the momentum going. The pedigree is certainly there, as Karyn Kusama killed it with The Invitation last year and up-and-comers Roxanne Benjamin and Jovanka Vuckovic could really cement their reputations.

I am fully aware I may be the only one, but I'm super chuffed I get not only a new Resident Evil movie to start the year, but also an Underworld flick. I love these two ladies so much. I'll watch them dispatch monsters for as long they want to do it, God bless 'em.

#DontJudgeMe

It looks like last year's The Shallows performed well enough for this whole shark thing to keep going in 2017. Though the long-gestating Meg won't see the light of day until next year, there's a new found-footage shark tale called Cage Dive coming up. I'll be able to take the sensationalized affair of Meg, but the horrifying reality of this one, man? Honestly, I wimped out halfway through the trailer.

Some other A-list genre fare that looks decent are Gore Verbinski's Cure for Wellness and Colm Mcarthy's The Girl with All the Gifts. I saw a listing for Stefan Ruzowitzky's Patient Zero and was all like “yeah, this sure looks like a zer-- Natalie Dormer's in this??? Ok... I'll watch it (sigh)” More enticing I think, is Jordan Peele's take on horror with Get Out.

Then there's M. Night Shayamalan's Split. Fuck man, you never know what you're going to get with this guy. I enjoyed The Visit and thought it was a good bounce back from a series of misfires, but I don't know. This could be a solid thriller or a fucking trainwreck. I think it will depend on who M. Night thinks is the star here, him or James McAvoy.

Out of all the indies in this year's landscape, the most intriguing might be Monolith. The premise is delicious and of a new wave of horror that has sprung from our over-reliance on technology.

Looking through all the titles it was a veritable sea of remakes and sequels. I know this is par for the course these days, but holy... so many I don't give a shit about. I am reasonably receptive to It, or at least I have no desire to shut it out like Suspiria, F13, Flatliners et al.

These sequels though. I think the only one I'm actually upset about not being excited for is Alien: Covenant. I don't need more Prometheus. Every single Alien movie that gets made seems to get us further and further away from what made the first two remarkable. Anyway, I digress.

My parting words here would be to make sure you support Julia Ducournau's Raw and Greg McLean's The Belko Experiment when they hopefully hit theatres in 2017. These are the kinds of films that keep the genre fresh and exciting, not recycled tripe we've seen a million times before.

Renter's Remorse

The closing film at Blood In The Snow this year was Black Fawn's newest offering, The Sublet from John Ainslie.

Left alone with her baby in their rented sublet, Joanna (Tianna Nori) begins to suspect all is not right with their apartment.

I really liked this little thriller. I feel like a broken record at this point, but it seems like each release of Black Fawn's eight picture deal with Breakthrough Entertainment gets subsequently stronger. It may be the fact that The Sublet deals with more visceral and psychological terrors than some of their previous releases, but I felt that this was a top-to-bottom solid production. The construct, which shared thematic DNA with Roman Polanski's Apartment Trilogy (most notably 1976 film The Tenant) was some oft-travelled material, but it was the bits & pieces that Ainslie employed here that really made this work.

The first of these was the casting of Tianna Nori. She was terrific in this, as she not only sold the escalation of her insanity, but also the desperation as she slowly succumbed to it. I thought the scenes where she was pleading in vain to her husband (the also great Mark Matechuk) about wanting to leave were legitimately heartbreaking. Nori ended up taking home the Best Actress Award at BITS this year, and it was well deserved. The first movie I ever saw her in (Tricia Lee's Clean Break) played at this fest in 2013, so it's like things have come full circle.

Tianna Nori as Joanna in The Sublet.

I must admit that with some of these previous Black Fawn pictures, the dialogue was sub-par, but here I think there were some really powerful exchanges between the two main characters. Writers Ainslie & Alyson Richards were able to really mine common relationship issues and bring them up in those pivotal scenes.

I can't talk about The Sublet without mentioning the apartment itself, as it oozed with character. The rooms and hallways had substantial texture, with snags and grainy wood floors that seemed as much of a threat as anything else that was going on in there. What's more impressive was that it was built from scratch inside a warehouse. Never in a million years would I have guessed that it was not a real location. I can't fully describe how much it added to the proceedings.

Much like my comments regarding Let Her Out, I was really impressed with Shaun Hunter's special effects. His blood work was on point in this, with an especially cringe-worthy scene involving a razor blade.

The Sublet was a solid thriller. You may see where it's going, but how it gets there was really well put together. It also puts Tianna Nori one step closer to stardom because if she keeps putting in work like this, the sky's the limit.