Awaiting the Premiere....

Between a Rick And a Hag Place.

Our next tape off the pile is Igor Auzin's Aussie teleplay Night Nurse from 1978. Yet another distinct coverbox from back in the day. What was it about wheelchairs that makes them so creepy? From a horror marketing perspective anyway. Let's find out!

Looking for a clean break from her domineering boyfriend Rick (Gary Day), Prudence (Kate Fitzpatrick) takes a job as a live-in caregiver of a former opera singer known only as “The Diva” (Davina Whitehouse). Her employer seems welcoming enough, but the other servant of the house Clara (Kay Taylor), makes it clear she does not want to share.

Night Nurse is a fairly entertaining yarn. I did not know going in it was a TV movie, but in retrospect it makes sense. It has the clean, straightforwardness of a teleplay with barely any sharp edges to speak of. Despite that, it is still quite engaging. Prudence is a likeable character, even if she does come across as a doormat initially. Her artist boyfriend Rick is a douche of the highest order, yet she continues to bend to his will, even letting him weasel his way into the estate to paint the Diva's portrait.

Davina Whitehouse (left) & Katefitzpatrick in Night Nurse.

I feel her pain though, because once she's finally gotten away, she has to deal with the repeated abuse from her co-worker, Clara. Nothing she does is right, and something as simple as remembering the marmalade will get your pet goldfish murdered. Yet, she perservers because she knows going back to Rick is a step backwards.

Prudence & Clara (Kay Taylor) face off.

The story unfolds and once The Diva names Prudence as her new heir, that really gets Clara's blood boiling. It all ends in the cellar where Clara has a freak “ax-ident” and Prudence makes her escape. I was thinking of that Rube-Goldbergian end to the former help and that sequence is probably the one that stuck with young children who saw it on television. You know, “scary” TV movies that played in the seventies and eighties were pretty tame for the most part, but they usually had that one scene you never forgot.

Night Nurse was the fourth of ten films that Australia's Channel Seven commisioned from this production company so they were deep into pumping out content at this point. Whitehouse would later go on to appear in Peter Jackson's Braindead, and Kate Fitzpatrick has had a long, storied career that still continues to this day.

To conclude, this movie isn't going to get your blood pumping or anything, but it's still a decently acted and executed mystery. 

Aug 28th 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 a 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.

Cuckoo (2024)

Humane (2024)

Uncle Sam (1996)

Midsommar (2019)

The Brood (1979)

Under Paris (2024)

Fall (2022)

Becky (2020)

Under The Skin (2013)

Creepers (1985)

Demons (1985)

Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008)

Studio 666 (2022)

The Lure (2015)

Duel (1971)

Trilogy of Terror (1975)

Ghostwatch (1992)

Salem's Lot (1979)

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010)

Threads (1984)

Someone's Watching Me! (1978)

Babysitting Two-fer.

Hello all! This week's VHS Friday hits right before my yearly pilgrimage to Montreal for the Fantasia Film Festival. I had recently noticed that I had two babysitter-centric tapes in the pile so I figured I would knock them off together. I have a fascination with the concept of the babysitter. I wager it is from the horror trope, and not any real experience since my brother was seven years older and the time we actually had one was very narrow (she was a family friend that I remember vaguely; her name was Dorothy). However, the idea of leaving a young non-family member with your children alone obviously stuck for me to make my own rendition in 2013. But, I digress. Our first title is the 1980 teleplay The Babysitter.

The Benedict's (Bill Shatner & Patty Duke) hire a live-in babysitter named Joanna (Stephanie Zimbalist) for their daughter Tara (Quinn Cummings) but are unfortunately unaware of her nefarious intentions.

As I stated, this was a TV movie, but off-the-hop you could be forgiven for thinking this was an Italian thriller based on the score and how the opening was shot. Imdb says some stock music was used so I wouldn't be surprised if the theme was lifted from a 70's giallo I can't quite place.

 

Will Shatner & Stephanie Zimbalist in The Babysitter.

Directed by Peter Medak, The Babysitter was made right around the time he did the far superior The Changeling, but the former is still quite watchable and riddled with recognizable character actors. Set in Washington, but almost surely shot north in BC, the locale is pretty, with no shortage of exorbitant mansions to plot your employer's demise.

Zimbalist (doing the ever popular exercise of playing a teen in their mid-twenties) carries herself well, projecting a certain unpredictability that made we wonder at times what her actual endgame was. I mean, ultimately I knew because this is a story I've seen many time before (The Hand That Rocks The Cradle comes to mind) so sadly I was waiting at least a half-hour for John Houseman to go find her previous family dead in their bed. It's funny, I could see the image in my head like a crystal ball. It was still a hoot, after watching many episodes of Remmington Steele as a kid, to see her in a role like this.

Moving on, I checked out my tape of the 1975 film Wanted: Babysitter.

A young woman (Maria Schneider) doing babysitting jobs to make ends meet in Rome finds herself kidnapped with her charge in a ransom plot.

It's funny that The Babysitter was an American movie that I first thought was Italian, and Wanted: Babysitter is an Italian film that I assumed was American. I didn't know babysitting was even a thing in Europe, I mean, admittedly I don't know why I figured it was confined to North America. I just would've expected a more appropriate title like The Babysitter Wore Red, or The Babysitter Knocked Twice.

John Whittington & Maria Schneider in Wanted: Babysitter.

The final picture directed by journeyman René Clément, Wanted: Babysitter isn't really a horror film, it's more of a Euro-crime thriller with some character actors from outside of Italy like Vic Morrow and Robert Vaughn (damn, he looks young in this, maybe it was the eye make-up) sprinkled in. Also, I didn't realize until I looked her up after, but Schneider was the actress in that infamous scene in Last Tango In Paris. It now makes more sense why she went for the jam during the breakfast sequence here. 

This movie is a serviceable thriller, though I have to admit I was confused about the kidnap plot for the first half-hour or so. I didn't catch that the boy (who is inexplicably named Boots?!) had been moved to a new location so my geography and how Schneider found herself involved was disorienting. It could've been that my tape's quality rapidly declined as it went on to the point I could barely make out the bathtub scene towards the end. It definitely has that Italian feel, right down to the comic relief subplot with the boyfriend (Renato Pozzetto) who I'm certain improvised most of his dialogue.

A nice little find after all, and a counterbalance to The Babysitter, where the title character was protagonist instead of antagonist. That's it for the babysitting two-fer. Hey, does that mean I get paid double time??

2023 Wrap-up.

Greeting kiddies. We made it through another one. The Big C is finally on the run, or at least ignored for the time being while we deal with more pressing atrocities. Me, I've been trudging along, making regular visits to the Revue Cinema to soak in my gal pal Serena's terrific programming.

The trivia business is booming. At one point, Pat & I were doing it three times monthly at two different venues. We've now amassed a pretty decent roster of regulars as well as constant walk-ins. In the New Year, we're going to strive to make streaming the event a more common thing so those of you outside the Big Smoke can partake. On the Rue Morgue side of things, I have taken over the Short Cuts column from the exiting Bryan Christopher. With me already watching a thousand short films a year for various film festivals, it made sense for me to slide in there. My first go at it is in the Jan/Feb 2024 issue hitting stands (or your mailbox/inbox) imminently. I have another couple of things I'm cooking up for 2024, but maybe I'll leave them unsaid for now...

As for absorbed media, I think it was more quality over quantity this year. Don't get me wrong, there are many things I enjoyed in 2023, but I'm just going to leave you with the Top 5, because I'm lazy. See you in 2024!

A masterpiece, the gold standard of adaptation.

The rawest realization of waking from a nightmare I've ever seen.

This guys get what makes ED great & what it needs to be going forward.

Nostalgic, yet topical. And so, so intense.

Flanagan's Netflix swan song is up there with his best.

2022 Wrap-up

Well, here we are again at the end of another trash fire year. All things considered, while the world burned, I had a decent year. Fantasia & TIFF are returning to their regular scheduled programming (I managed to duck the Rona outbreaks at both) and actually picked up a new pre-screening position while schmoozing at the former.

I also acquired two new gigs through Rue Morgue. If you read the mag, you may have noticed that list of Morbid Facts & Weird Stats at the hop, which are now - since the summer - being penned by me. Additionally, in the before times, my buddy Tal used to host horror trivia nights at Storm Crow Manor. In the fall there was talk of bringing it back and since he was unavailable, my trivia partner Pat & I - who used to win those events more often than not - took over the hosting duties. We just had our third edition and it's going very well.

Anyway, as Tal used to say, “enough about me, let's talk about me”.  I had no shortage of media to enjoy this year. The Boys cemented itself as my favourite TV show, Prey gave the Predator franchise its best entry in thirty years and, God love him, Sam Raimi introduced a little Evil Dead to the MCU.

On the gaming side of things, Stray and The Quarry were tremendous fun, and as soon as I find a partner for The Devil In Me, I'll get on that too.

As for horror, I actually think it was a pretty strong year. Of course, there were some stinkers, but even mainstream fare like Smile and Black Phone seems to be well favoured - though I've seen neither. Here were my highlights;

Ti West returned to form in a big way in 2022, first with X and then Pearl. I loved the sexy, grimy sleaze of the former, and the fairy-tale boisterousness of the latter. The unveiling of Maxxine at Midnight Madness blew the roof of the house, making it my most anticipated of 2023.

Barbarian was a breath of fresh air, a two-part mystery, both as hair-raising as they were entertaining. It was definitely the best communal experience I've had since last year's Spidey. I can't wait to see Zack Cregger's next project.

Expectations exceeded. Once you clock into its tone, this one is a riot. William Brent Bell somehow, SOMEHOW gives us a twist every bit as outrageous as its predecessor. And lovely to see Isabelle Fuhrmann again, she should be in more stuff.

The “sleeper” of this group. I was super impressed by this movie at Fantasia. A great lead, a solid concept and the best use of Covid-19 in a horror picture I've seen so far.

More of a black comedy than a horror I suppose, but I adore this movie. It's one of those scripts I wish I'd written. It's also the only film this year I saw twice in the theatre (2 and a 1/4 if you count when I ducked in to watch the last half-hour while waiting for Avatar to start).

Honourable mentions to Nope, which was truly spectacular in IMAX and The Watcher, a tense thriller starring Maika Monroe (who should also be in more stuff). I also really dug Joe Begos' Christmas Bloody Christmas, a weird hybrid of Silent Night, Deadly Night, The Terminator and, of all things, High Fidelity. Riley Dandy is fire and I can totally see this becoming a holiday watch regular. Lastly, even though it's more of a true crime procedural than a horror picture, Holy Spider is very, very good.

Okay, that's it. This is a recording... May 2023 be better than the last. Take care and stay safe, kiddies.

Alphabet Slop!

I'm gonna try a new experiment here for the month of October. It's called Alphabet Slop. A review a day for the remainder of the month going from A to Z.

I thought about doing that 31 days of Halloween thing, but they're so complicated. Hey, today watch a movie you saw when you were six, now watch a movie standing on one foot, now watch a movie that will make you piss yourself. So, yeah decided to keep it simple. It also gives me a chance to watch some random tapes & discs that have been sitting on my shelf for years. All twenty-six movies to come will either be first watches or at least ones I haven't seen in decades. Here we go... A is for Are You In the House Alone?

High schooler Gail (Kathleen Beller) is receiving threatening notes and phone calls, but by who?

The first thing that struck me, from the antagonist POV camera and Carpenter-esque musical sting was, man this guy loves Halloween, amirite? Then I realized this movie actually played on television a month before Halloween came out. In fact, if Imdb is to be believed Dennis Quaid was originally supposed to play Bob, but said no to do this film. Eep! Although I guess it worked out for him regardless.

So, what I should be saying is, man this guy loves Black Christmas, amirite? You throw in the fact that the antagonist keeps crank calling Gail, the influence becomes all the more glaring. But to be honest, this movie is all over the map, shifting back and forth between horror and straight up drama. It even turns into fucking Grease for a second.

The aftermath of Gail's rape is dealt with seriously and her parents talk at length about their own problems. Blythe Danner (who God damn looks like her daughter Gwyneth in this) is especially strong. The cast is actually quite stacked, with the aforementioned Quaid - who is pretty fucking lucky he didn't get typecast after this role - and Tony Bill who later went on become an accomplished director.

Sprinkled in are the horror tropes, Gail is receiving obscene phone calls asking if she is alone - Spoiler, she never is so the title is BS - and notes with questionable punctuation are being left in her locker. 

Red herrings abound, as her old boyfriend is a douche, her new one seems to have intermittent fits of jealousy and her photography teacher is all kinds of ick.

 

The oddest part of the movie is at the climax where it utilizes this giallo-style conceit where Gail sets up her camera take a picture every few seconds to catch who is leaving notes in someone's locker. Now, I'm not up on my seventies photo-tech, but wouldn't that require a shit-ton of film, like thousands of photos that would then have to be individually developed???

SD card by Kodak.

Are You In The House Alone? was half of a Shout Factory TV Terrors double bill disc with The Initiation of Sarah (which may or may not come up later) and I can't help but feel this was a weird pairing.  Even though it is a decent enough movie, I still feel a bit duped. I was expecting a movie of the week version of When A Stranger Calls, but instead got a glorified after school special about how the system fails rape victims. Fun times.

Gifrific: Sometimes the Old Ways...

Source: Archive 81

2021 Wrap-up.

As we all know, this year was basically the sequel to 2020 that no one wanted. Having said that, here are some of the bright lights that maintained my sanity.

Marvel kept me constantly entertained with five(!) TV series this year, and I was just so elated to finally get my eyeballs on Black Widow. And that Spidey flick, man talk about over-delivering!

Now that's out of the way, onto the genre stuff.

Honourable mentions go out to The Deep House, Midnight and the impressive debut Caveat. I did not see Malignant, but those close to me seem to think I will dig it. I'm sure I will catch it eventually.

Lastly, YouTube continued to be a big help to me in 2021. To the dozen or so content creators that I watch on a weekly basis, I salute you.

Well, I hate to be a broken record here, but here's hoping 2022 is the year we break out of this perpetual funk.

Gifrific: Mood

Source: The Woman in Black (1989)

Stand Rant Below aka TL/DR

As you may have noticed, reviews of horror media have been scarce over the last year. To be honest, it has been due to a lack of inspiration and not that I haven't been absorbing noteworthy content. Bly Manor and The Last of Us Part II were extremely treasured experiences for me last year, but I was not able to type through the funk that has hung over me for what seems like ages. Until now;

The Stand show recently finally became available to Canadians through Amazon Prime and the day after I finished on Mikey's shoot I binged it in one sitting. Before I get to that though, a little history.

Stephen King's The Stand was the first novel I ever read and still remains my favourite book. In my teenage years, it was essentially my bible and I could even recite some passages from memory. Decades later, even the smallest details (like Stu's Guinea pig roommate while in captivity was named Geraldo) are still rattling around in my brain. I haven't revisited the 1994 mini-series since my original watch, but I remember being lukewarm on it. It was a serviceable adaptation, but it just really felt sanitized for network television. Up to this point, I think the best representation was the comic series a decade back.

A well weathered copy.

So now you may understand why I had to battle through and just put my thoughts of this newest adaptation to digital paper. Onward and upward!

First off, was I happy with Josh Boone's go at it? Overall, not really. So many odd choices constantly took away from my enjoyment of the show, but let me try and break it down.

In any adaptation, dealing with the changes to the source material is just a fact of life. However, what irks me is when said changes detract from the experience. Paramount of these for me was the disjointed structure. The Stand lends itself to a linear narrative, as it's all about character arcs. If a character's journey goes from A to Z, and you start at M unnecessarily, it affects it as a whole. Two examples of this are how Harold Lauder (Owen Teague) and Nick Andros (Henry Zaga) are treated in this series.

I think a huge misstep was making Harold the entry point in the story (and not James Marsden's Stu who is the obvious everyman – his name is literally RED MAN) and seemingly attempting to make him a sympathetic character. The whole invented bit about saving Frannie (Odessa Young) from suicide was another gaffe that encouraged the idea that she owed him something. This is not only annoying, but also a little tone deaf. Perhaps the bigger crime was the neutering of Nick's character. He was one of the book's main protagonists and his eventual sacrifice was one of its most shocking moments. Here, he was basically just given a few scenes and his death doesn't land because of it.

Harold Lauder, horror's first incel?

But it wasn't all bad, as strong casting choices were Stu, Fran, Glen (Greg Kinnear), Tom (Brad William Henke), Mother Abigail (though considering Whoopi Goldberg had been waiting thirty years to play this role I would hope so) and, for the most part, Larry (Jovan Adepo), although more on that last one in a bit. I first wanted to touch on the handling of the Captain Trips superflu itself. Making everything all take place over a shorter amount of time and have our character's introduced while the outbreak was happening around them was a smart choice – and a prophetic one considering those early days of Covid-19. Hamish Linklater's appearance as a renamed Dr. Ellis was the first time I thought “oh, things are looking up” during my watch through. And points for the King and Mick Garris cameos, they made me chuckle.

One of my favourite sections of the book is Larry's escape from New York, but this version glazed over a lot of that too. It started decently with him dealing with his dying mother and his conversation with the “Yankee yanker” – though he by no means should have been a replacement for the Monster-Shouter – but past his great first interaction with Rita Blakemoor (Heather Graham) it goes awry. When I visited NYC, I made sure to drive through the Lincoln Tunnel because that was how much that section of the book affected me. Presumably for budgetary reasons, this whole bit was replaced by regular old sewers. It was kind of like being sold Jason Takes Manhattan and getting Jason on a boat in Vancouver instead. Wait, what am I saying? Jason 8 is still great. This, not so much. Also, Rita's death was reduced to her lamenting in the rain, as opposed to the nightmare fuel of the book. 

More tragic is the curtailing of Larry & Nadine's relationship. Forget the fact that their meeting was cut down to a ten-second flashback, it's that there isn't enough material to properly set up their last scene together in Boulder. I do want to preface this by saying that Amber Heard's portrayal of Nadine was one of my faves in this series and a lot of it was due to her actually being given a decent amount of screen time, just unfortunately not with Larry. The complete omission of Lucy Swann doesn't really give Larry any reason to not accept Nadine's advances. Sure, you could make a case that he had moved on and he did have something he needed to do right that second, but on the other hand, if Amber Heard is on your doorstep and ready to go...

The defense rests.

That's enough about the Boulder Free Zone, let's move West to New Vegas and a whole new set of grievances. I was talking to a friend a few days before about the show and he had heard that people were saying Alex Skarsgård was miscast as Randall Flagg. I'd say he was the least of this show's problems and a damn-sight better than the mulleted Jamey “rub-a-dub-dub-thanks-for-the-grub” Sheridan from Garris' version. I actually thought the idea of Flagg taking power from the fear of his followers was one of the few interesting slants that this show posed.

I had more of an issue with some of the Dark Man's underlings. Nat Wolff's portrayal of Lloyd was far more flamboyant than necessary. I get the idea of someone being in over their head, but there needed to be a level of restraint (more like Miguel Ferrer's turn in the mini-series) as everyone else was off the charts, namely the actresses crushing as Julie Lawry and the gender swapped Rat-woman (Katharine McNamara and Fiona Dourif respectively). Though nothing was more cringe-worthy than the show's treatment of The Trashcan Man (Ezra Miller) who was essentially boiled down to a Gollum-like entity.

As for New Vegas itself, the higher production value made the landscape impressive and there were several scenes showing the debauchery of its citizens, but later occurrences flew in the face of this setup. These denizens were apparently okay with public crucifixions, but then horrified when Flagg beat Bobby Terry (Clifton Collins Jr.) to death and Lloyd executed Glen. You can't have it both ways, guys. I also wasn't real sweet on Nadine's exit either. Admittedly, the Hand of God climax was less clumsy than the mini-series, but I'm not sure we needed to see Flagg dance.

So, the story ended, but there was still one episode left. It turns out there's a new epilogue written by Stephen King for the show. I swear, you give him any opportunity and he'll just keep adding and adding. This last episode, which mainly features Stu and Fran going back to Maine, doesn't really need to be there, but I can appreciate wanting to give Fran her moment in the sun and an opportunity to interact with the Dark Man. I did like those scenes between them.

I think that's the meat and potatoes of it. I wanted to like this, but I think I'm just too married to the source material. As I said before, I'm okay with cutting out bits like The Kid (who I hear was originally supposed to be Marilyn Manson so excellent call in hindsight) and Ray Flowers, but when you interfere with the actual DNA of the story, you SCROOOOOOOWED IT UP!

it Came From The Archives 31.2

Hey all! Today's archives clippings feature articles and interviews with some of horrors greatest icons. Behold! Click images to enlarge.

Those Freddy articles crack me up. Innocent times when we still believed each subsequent horror sequel was absolutely, definitely, certainly, for sure the last one. As for Robert Englund's “Freddy-less future”, I'm sure he wasn't sweating it.

Tomorrow, I wrap things up with some random clippings and release posters from various nineties releases.

To further dive into the archives, click here