May 29th 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.

Hell House LLC (2015)

Puppet Master (1989)

The Witch (2015)

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

The Final Terror (1983)

Body Count (1986)

Backcountry (2014)

Pyewacket (2017)

The Ritual (2017)

The Crazies (1973)

Shakma (1990)

Stopmotion (2023)

Alice Sweet Alice (1976)

Dead Snow (2009)

The Voyeurs (2021)

Nocturne (2020)

The Perfection (2018)

Invitation to Hell (1984)

House of Usher (1960)

The Terror (1963)

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Forbidden World (1982)

Humanoids From the Deep (1980)

Piranha (1978)

N is for The Nest (1987)

When Lisa Langlois was at Horror-rama, she talked about this film and I was reminded that I had never actually seen it. So I dug deep into “the pile” and pulled out the DVD with that instantly recognizable cover art.

Sheriff Johnson (Richard Lansing) and old flame Elizabeth (Lisa Langlois) battle super cockroaches on the picturesque island of North Port.

The Nest was a typical Roger Corman joint. This Piranha template (which was lifted from Jaws, the granddaddy of all animal attack pictures) was utilized many times over his career from Up From The Depths to Humanoids From the Deep. Speaking of the latter, I'm pretty sure that truck driving off the bridge scene in The Nest was lifted from HFTD. Oh well, I guess at least the lead actresses should be thankful the cockroaches weren't as amourous as the the cover would have you believe.

Richard Lansing and Lisa Langlois in The Nest.

The first half of the movie is pretty standard, as we see roach-POV shots chomping their way up from cats & dogs to people. We get introduced to the characters, some of which are garbage humans like Dr. Hubbard (Terri Treas) who wasted no time announcing themselves as the villain. Oh sure, she'll say her misdeeds are in the name of science, but this chick is clearly a masochist. Or is a sadist? I get them mixed up. Langlois has talked at length about her bad experiences filming this picture, but she does her job like a pro.

To be honest, this movie doesn't get good until the third act, when all the gnarly creature effects appear. Though there are no giant cockroaches, there are some pretty awesome hybrids, including a cat and the Queen, which gave me Blair-Thing vibes. Cockroaches are gross to be sure, but the hybrid effects here by James Navarra are truly top notch.

Overall, The Nest didn't knock my socks off, but I'm glad I can cross it off the list.

More Frankenstein Than Dracula

With the recent passing of Sid Haig, I dived into his early career for this week's pick. Since I posted about Spiderbaby – the obvious choice – back in 2010, I went with 1966's Blood Bath.

A string of disappearances in a seaside town may have something to do with an eccentric artist named Sordi (William Campbell) known for painting portraits of “dead red nudes”.

At just over an hour long, Blood Bath was an entertaining enough slice of cult Americana. It featured all the hallmarks of Roger Corman & Jack Hill's sixties oeuvre, along with sprinkles of House of Wax and H.G Lewis' Color Me Blood Red, the latter of which was released a year previous. I also detected perhaps the finale may have inspired Bill Lustig when it came to end his seminal flick Maniac. Additionally, I was struck by the scenery and locale that I later learned was Yugoslavia. This was one of the few times that I have wished a black & white picture was filmed in colour.

I found it funny that even in the sixties, people were making fun of the art world's latent pretentiousness. It was amusing to watch and you can tell they were having fun with it. However, I cannot fail to mention that a good chunk of the movie is scantily clad women running around on the beach. Because, you know, it is a Corman/Hill production. Those swimsuits on Lori Saunders were hanging on for dear life, but truth be told what made more excitable was watching her try to cut bread.

I was a little taken aback when the vampire showed up, as it seemed to come out of nowhere. Of course, I found out later that this picture was really three movies in one. Originally, it was an unreleasable picture from Yugoslavia called Portrait of Terror, for which Jack Hill then shot new scenes (including the stuff with Sid Haig) and became Blood Bath. Then, Corman employed a director named Stephanie Rothman to add in all the vampire stuff. This all resulted in it being a somewhat disjointed, yet still watchable affair.

Sig Haig (2nd from left) in Blood Bath.

The House of Lords.

This week it's another VHS from my recent Horror-Rama haul in Jim Wynorski's 1988 sci-fi flick Not Of This Earth.

An alien (Arthur Roberts) from a dying planet comes to Earth in search of blood to rejuvenate his race.

When the opening credits first came on, I was like, “wow this is amazing, if the rest of the movie is half this good--” then my eyebrow raised when I saw something very familiar. This being a Roger Corman production, I realized that this opening was a greatest hits reel of some of his most memorable pictures including Humanoids From The Deep and Galaxy of Terror. It's a bit of a cheat, but it also made for one hell of an opening.

It took me a while to clock into this movie because as it felt like two distinct sensibilities mixing together into some kind of primordial soup. First, you had the strange genre picture that would've been camp if it wasn't played so straight. It was like John Waters – though I've only seen like two of his movies so it's more like what I think his movies are like – with tons of random nudity. Then put over top of that was a weird noir where people – especially the exchanges between Nadine (Traci Lords) and her co-worker Jeremy (Lenny Juliano) - talk like they're from the fifties. Imagine if a bunch of topless dancers showed up to the station in the second act of Howard Hawks' The Thing.

Traci Lords as Nadine in Not Of This Earth.

Looking up the movie afterwards – this is definitely one I'd love to hear the commentary track – and seeing it was a remake of Corman's own picture from 1957, it all made sense. He & Wynorski updated the movie with an eighties aesthetic, visual effects and gratuitous T&A, but didn't change the cadence of the dialogue. Now I get it. It's actually kind of a marvel when you take into account that – in regular Corman fashion – the movie was shot in under twelve days. It was also helped by Chuck Cirino's score, even if the best bits sounded like riffs off his earlier score from Chopping Mall.

Arthur Roberts as Mr. Johnson in Not Of This Earth.

Not Of This Earth is also known for being Lords' first non-porn role and the last picture she played in her birthday suit. She's actually pretty good in this, but it is hard to tell sometimes with all the abstract dialogue. Lords isn't the only familiar face either, as Kelli Maroney from Chopping Mall shows up, as does Roger Lodge, the guy from that Blind Date show. I'd also love to know if there is a story why Dick Miller wasn't the vacuum salesman. Michael DeLano did a fine job, but I couldn't help but wonder if he wasn't a last minute replacement.

So, though Not Of This Earth may not be the caliber of Wynorski's more appreciated works, it's still an interesting anomaly. By the third act I was invested enough to want to know how this crazy tale was going to finish up.

VHS Nite Part VI: Killbots!

It took over two years, but I was able to orchestrate another VHS Nite at my abode last weekend. This time around, I planned a VHS double-bill featuring killer robots, the first being Jim Wynorski's 1986 flick Chopping Mall. 

It had been many, many years since I'd watched this movie and had been meaning to revisit it ever since I snagged a VHS copy from The Vault a while back. I remember digging this film when I first saw it, mainly because of the nudity, solid head explosion scene and cool looking robots. Watching it again, I was happy to discover that it was even better than I remembered.

This movie has so much going for it and is fully entrenched in that happy-go-lucky exploitation feel that a lot of low-budget, but well-produced, horror movies from the eighties had. Being older I was able to fully appreciate all the references and cameos (like Dick Miller, Gerrit Graham as well as Mary Woronov & Paul Bartel reprising their roles from 1982's Eating Raoul) that Wynorski put in there.

I was now even more awestruck by the practical robot effects. With the exception of the laser beams (with added War of the Worlds foley), all of the Protectors actions were done in camera by way of remote control. It may not seem like much now, but in 1986 that must have been a pretty ambitious undertaking for a project that cost under a million to make. And the robots also shit-talk, which only adds to the levity.

But, let's not take away from our colourful cast of characters, including the lovely Barbara Crampton as Suzie, Tony O'Dell as the quintessential nerd Ferdy and John Terlesky as the perpetually gum-chewing Mike.

This movie is super fun, and at a brisk seventy-five minutes, runs at a great pace for almost the entire movie.

Moving on from this, I fired up 1995's Evolver, a thrifty acquisition from Amazon.com. I came across this movie when I heard about the robot design being somewhat similar to that of the Protectors in Chopping Mall. And you know what? It is.

The premise here is that Ethan Embry (inexplicably credited here as Ethan Randall) wins a robot in a video game contest, which then goes ape-shit after a few rounds of Laser Tag. And all this while the robot's creator played by John “Q” DeLancie glowers in disbelief that his creation has somehow reverted back to its original military programming. And like the Protectors in Chopping Mall, Evolver also has a mouth on him, which funnily enough is voiced by William H. Macy. I know, right?

What is kind of hilarious is how tiny the thing is when it first rolls out of its crate. From the cover, I was expecting it to be a giant, but it barely comes up to the actors' waists. Still, once it switches out its Nerf ammunition for ball-bearings, knives and then lasers, things get a little more interesting.

Also, there are some pretty crazy virtual reality scenes that take place in an arcade. I love watching nineties films because of their nonsensical grasp of hacker and video game culture. I mean look, here we are twenty years later, and we STILL don't have a consumer product VR headset. Sure, developers are messing about with the Oculus Rift, but I'm still not able to walk into a Best Buy and grab one, am I?

In addition to the characters being somewhat irritating or douchey, (Embry's character has one of the worst cases of Dawson Leery Syndrome I've seen in quite some time – in that the female lead Cassidy Rae is basically throwing herself at him and he's too much of a nerd to realize it) so is the robot. Evolver is not only homicidal, he's also kind of a dick about it.

Ethan Randall (aka Ethan Embry) in 90's garb.

However, as with Chopping Mall, I was also impressed with the design by FX guru Steve Johnson. There was a lot of articulation in the head, neck and arms, which gave him a lot of range. I kept expecting him to get larger at some point, but nope. Even when he morphs into military grade “Level 4” badass, he is still pretty toy-sized.

So, Evolver wasn't quite as good as Chopping Mall, but still serves as an entertaining banner of its decade.

It was another successful movie night in the Western frontier. Now, I have to start scouring for two more suitable titles to play together. Although, if frequency holds, I've got plenty of time.

Trailer Tuesdays: Humanoids From The Deep.

It's been a while since I've posted a Roger Corman trailer, so why not go big with one of the most infamous.

Trailer courtesy of ShoutFactoryTV

The mass procession of girls screaming and/or various stages of undress in between shots of huge explosions was basically the template of how to sell a genre film in the eighties. Of course, this iconic poster didn't hurt either.

It Came From The Archives 23.2!

So, let's continue with my small collection of rental inserts. To see my introductory post from yesterday, click here. 

Come back tomorrow for Part 3.

Trailer Tuesdays: “X” The Man With The X-Ray Eyes

After a small hiatus, The Laser Blast Film Society podcast is back on track. Last weekend was all about celebrating genre icon Roger Corman, and thus...

In addition to X, we also watched Attack of the Crab Monsters and Rock All Night. Here below, is the episode.

For past episodes, including the Canadiana double bill of The Brain & Rituals from a few months ago, check the Pod-O-Matic page by clicking here.