July Horror Trivia Watchlist

To all those who came here from the event or the FB or Instagram 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.

Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Dracula 1972 A.D. (1972)

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

Vampire (1979)

Dracula (1973)

Lifeforce (1985)

The Night Stalker (1972)

Blacula (1972)

Wolfen (1981)

Full Moon High (1981)

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Monster Squad (1987)

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Silver Bullet (1985)

My Mom's A Werewolf (1989)

Terror Train (1980)

Crimewave (1985)

Daybreakers (2009)

Possession (1981)

Predestination (2014)

Maniac (1980)

The Void (2016)

Chopping Mall (1986)

Cuckoo (2024)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Nov 27th Horror Trivia Screening Guide

To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow trivia'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.

Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Night of the Living Dead (1990)

Shocker (1989)

Apartment 7A (2024)

Oddity (2024)

Overlord (2018)

Terror in the Aisles (1984)

Vampires (1998)

30 Days of Night (2007)

Last Voyage of Demeter (2023)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Let the Right One In (2008)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Anna & The Apocalypse (2017)

Santa's Slay (2005)

Christmas Evil (1980)

Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 (1991)

Blood Beat (1983)

Trick r' Treat (2007)

July 12th 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.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Skinamarink (2022)

The Shining (1980)

Scream VI (2023)

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Crawl (2019)

Rogue (2007)

The Shallows (2016)

Lake Placid (1999)

American Psycho (2000)

Videodrome (1983)

Black Christmas (1984)

Resident Evil - Apocalypse (2004)

Urban Legend (1998)

Jason X (2001)

Mimic (1997)

Wrong Turn (2003)

Deadly Eyes (1982)

In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Black Swan (2010)

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Land of the Dead (2005)

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Halloween II (1981)

Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

The Innkeepers (2011)

Nosferatu (1922)

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

Martin (1977)

The Lost Boys (1987)

Fright Night (1985)

Cronos (1992)

30 Days of Night (2007)

Interview With A Vampire (1994)

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

The Hunger (1983)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Horror Movie Guide: Bloodsuckers

The next title in the Guide was 1971's Bloodsuckers aka Incense For The Damned. This was a title that I had no knowledge of - not even the coverbox rang any bells - but it did have some prestige talent involved with the likes of Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee so I was cautiously optimistic?

To avoid scandal, colleagues of an Oxford student Richard (Pat Mower) travel to Greece where he has apparently fallen in with a weird hippie cult.

Unfortunately, Bloodsuckers was a bit of a slog and definitely reeked of something that had issues behind the scenes. Imdb mentions money problems and re-shoots and that tracks. When your first act consists largely of voiceover narration - basically just explaining what happens in the following scene I might add - it sadly shows how much confidence the filmmakers have in their product. I guess it makes sense that director Robert Hartford-Davis wanted his name taken off the project.

Sadly, that prestige I mentioned hardly matters, as Cushing was likely on set for no more than two days. MacNee has decidedly more to do, going full John Steed bad-ass for a bit before getting knocked off a cliff by some ridiculously fake looking boulders. What were left with is this weird pent-rangle between Richard, his friend Tony (Alex Davion), his pupil (lover?) Bob (Johnny Sekka), his betrothed Penelope (Madeleine Hinde) and his vampire dominatrix Chriseis (Imogen Hassall). I know, it's a lot to take in, but trust me; it sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is.

This is not what it looks like, I assure you...

Apart from the lazy narration, it didn't start out all that bad. While we see our heroes travel to the beautiful locale of Greece, Richard & Chriseis drop some acid and a six-minute psychedelic orgy ensued. As Kevin Nealon used to say, “I was interested.... interested... VERY interested...”

I was beginning to think that Bloodsuckers might be a soft porn that they tricked Cushing into appearing in, but then it was over and it became clear this was likely added after when the filmmakers realized most of their movie was dull as dirt. This would have been around the time of the hysteria surrounding hippie culture so I can see why those scenes got played up, as well.

Also, for a movie called Bloodsuckers - though admittedly that was one of many titles - it has a noticeable lack of vampirism. I appreciated the angle of sado-masochism and its relation to male impotence explained in a scene with a welcome appearance by Edward Woodward, but I also would have liked a little more Rollin if you know what I mean. Hassall was a unique beauty (who sadly died young) and I would've liked to seen her do more in this than just die from a 10-foot fall off some steps. I COULD'VE SURVIVED THAT!

Imogen Hassall as Chrisies in Bloodsuckers

Then to my disdain, after this movie should be done, it goes on for another TWENTY MINUTES. Oh well, at least its final moments are more like the vampire story it is purported to be. The Guide seemed to hold it in higher regard. Perhaps they were familiar with the source material - a old tome called Doctors Wear Scarlet.

Horror Movie Guide: The Blood Spattered Bride

Okay, now I've been unceremoniously freed from distraction, I can get back to plugging through the Guide. The next entry was Vicente Aranda's 1972 film The Blood Spattered Bride, for which I of course knew the title - even before it showed up in Kill Bill chapter card - but was quick to find that I didn't know thing one about its actual subject matter.

Newly hitched Susan (Maribel Martin) moves into her husband's (Simón Andreu) family estate where she begins having nightmares about a former denizen who murdered her husband on their wedding night.

For some reason, I always figured this was a rape revenge film, something like I Spit On Your Grave or They Call Her One Eye, and the first five minutes with the apparently imagined assault didn't really steer me away from that assumption. Not having any knowledge of the Carmilla novella on which this movie was based, I thought I might be watching a more rape-y version of And Now The Screaming Starts, until the bloodsucking started finally happening around an hour in.

I initially thought this movie was Italian, not only because of the names and Mario Bava aesthetic, but who else would shotgun a poor fox in the FUCKING FACE on camera? The Spanish apparently. That was a hell of a jolt, in amongst all the nakedness and lascivious behaviour. I recognized Andreu from his work with director Luciano Erconi, but everything else was foreign to me.

Just one of Blood Spattered Bride's many memorable images.

I read that The Blood Spattered Bride gained notoriety in part due to its rejection of fascism, but to me it seems more of a “smash the patriarchy” kind of joint. I don't think they are the same thing... right? The Guide seemed to think this movie palatable, at least for a Gorgon Video title anyway.

Horror Movie Guide: The Black Room (1982)

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you, there are indeed TWO movies logged in The Guide called The Black Room, this one helmed by Norman Thaddeus Vane & Elly Kenner from the early eighties. Apart from the vague recollection of the coverbox, I had about as much knowledge of this one as I did its thirties namesake.

A married man named Jason (Stephen Knight) rents a room to use as a secret sex den, but doesn't realize his landlord Larry (Jimmy Stithis) has his own nefarious plans.

This Black Room is an odd duck. I can't say that I've ever seen anything quite like it. 

I guess what I found most baffling were the character reactions. First off, there's Jason who when viewing the room doesn't seem to bat an eye that the room is totally blacked out and only lit with candles. I mean, I GUESS he's only there to fuck, and his landlord does offer to pre-pour the wine and put on smooth classical jams. How about some Chopin this time?  

But then, there's the wife (Clara Perryman) who seems to oh pshaw her husband every time he openly talks about his sex den. It's only when she finds the keys in Act Two, she's like “wait, he was being serious”? And her reaction? “Well, I'm gonna start using it too”. I'm going to take a wild guess and say the whole Swingers movement was in full swing in 1982. :P

However, the joke's on them because Larry and his sister Bridget (Cassandra Gava) are murdering their visitors ala H.H. Holmes and harvesting their blood to treat his aggressive anemia. I was onboard with this movie's unique take on vampirism (not unlike Romero's film Martin five years earlier), but they sure did get their money's worth out of those transfusion scenes.

This film probably cost very little to make and they did a few things to up their game, like finding a nice Hollywood Hills house location and some well shot Steadicam footage. They unfortunately couldn't afford that Super camera from Barry Lyndon because that would've helped with those Black Room scenes. I'll blame some of this on my muddy YT rip, but this movie was dark as hell, to the point I had to take the moans and groans as proof the characters were having sex.

I also kept waiting for Linnea Quigley to show up - she was seventh billed at the hop - only to find that she had even less to do in this than she did Silent Night, Deadly Night and Graduation Day.

The Black Room was palatable fare, but this may be the first time that the Guide liked a movie more than I did. I'm willing to bet they were sick of the overabundance of the slashers flooding the market at the time and they found this “adult” material a breath of fresh air.

It Came From The Archives 31.3

Hey all! Here's the last archives post of this most recent trio. This one is mainly newspaper and magazine clippings of upcoming nineties releases, but there are a few other nuggets in here too, like this Aliens door hanger. 

During a visit to the UK in 1990, I went into an Athena and they had all this Aliens shit. I bought the above along with two posters that hung on my bedroom wall for years.

If there's one standee I wish we'd had at our store, it's this one above. I mean, I still do have my “Sorry Jack, Chucky's Back” standee stored away so I guess I can't really complain.

You know, all I really remember from that play above is that the “devil” accidentally gave his co-star a bloody nose during the climactic struggle at the end.

So, that's it. I hope these clippings have brought back a fond memory or two. For more goodies, check out my full archive by going here. Until next time, stay safe kiddies. 

Gifrific: Ire Walk With Me.

I just re-watched John Carpenter's Vampires. And realized why I hadn't done so since it came out. All I kept thinking was, “man, Sheryl Lee is too good for this movie.”

Short of the Week #79: Tick

Been a while since I've linked to a short here, but my friend Ashlea Wessel's 2018 short film Tick premiered on Alter today so here it is below.

While Wessel has been trying to get a feature version of Tick off the ground, she also found time to make another short called Daughter of Babel. For more info, click here.

Short of the Week #74: Deathbox

This week I give you my pal Mike Pereira's newly posted short Deathbox from 2015.

Look out for his upcoming debut feature Shout For The Devil to be unleashed next year.

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.

Short of the Week #68: B(l)ackstage

Here is a short film by Austrian filmmaker Daniel Limmer entitled B(l)ackstage that I programmed at last year's Toronto Smartphone Film Festival.

Yes, this was filmed entirely on an iPhone. This year's TSFF runs June 21-23. For more info, click here.

Back To Jerusalem.

This week's flick is Larry Cohen's 1987 vampire flick A Return to Salem's Lot.

An anthropologist (Michael Moriarty) and his son (Ricky Reed) visit an quiet Maine town not realizing it is populated by vampires.

I've been watching a lot of old Stephen King movie adaptations lately in preparation for a podcast I'm sitting in on this weekend. I'd never seen the Tobe Hooper-helmed teleplay either so I had to seek that out, as well. That's almost five hours of Salem's Lot and I was pretty happy with the ride.

Michael Moriarty in A Return to Salem's Lot.

As one might expect, the differences between the two iterations are vast. Hooper's take was a TV miniseries and though it would've been revolutionary in 1979, it's pretty tame by today's standards. I did chuckle at the nods to Texas Chainsaw and that scene where Danny (Brad Savage) was floating outside his brother's window was creepy as hell. There's so much of it that oozed into the vampire films of the next decade like The Lost Boys and Fright Night. I also couldn't help but think of Evil Dead while watching that aforementioned scene, as well.

Anyway, moving onto A Return to Salem's Lot, it was Cohen through and through, especially due to the presence of regular collaborator Michael Moriarty. Some things just go together. Peanut butter and jam. Rye and ginger. And Cohen and Moriarty. Apparently, this was shot back-to-back with It's Alive III so everything worked out well, didn't it?

Anchored by Moriarty, Return has everything else you would expect from a Cohen joint, including foul-mouthed children, quirky characters (including a Nazi hunter played by famed director Sam Fuller) and random creature effects. It also didn't hurt Cohen had the immeasurable talents of cinematographer Daniel Pearl – who coincidentally also shot Hooper's 1974 masterpiece – at his disposal.

Return's script was written by Cohen himself and though it has no real connection to King's work whatsoever – Barlow does not even appear in the movie despite the cover box – it did present some interesting story threads, most intriguingly the idea of the vampires wanting their existence to be documented by Moriarty's character. It also took me a few scenes to recognize a super young Tara Reid in her first role.

Tara Reid in A Return to Salem's Lot.

I still regard Cohen's New York stories to be his best works, but A Return to Salem's Lot was still an entertaining venture made just before he shifted his focus to screenwriting.

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.

100 Fathoms Below

Today, I give you a rare book review (yes, I still read sometimes). Several months ago, Blackstone Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy of Steven L. Kent & Nicholas Kaufmann's new book 100 Fathoms Below with a premise so intriguing I couldn't say no.

Deep under enemy waters during the Cold War, the crew of the USS Roanoke realize that a vampire has slipped aboard. With no sunlight to protect them, how long can they survive?

The first thing I noticed when reading 100 Fathoms Below was how cinematic it felt. Kent & Kaufmann's descriptive voice facilitated a world that required very little effort on my part. I would not be surprised if this were adapted at some point because most of the heavy lifting's already done. Despite vampires being the most prolific baddie in movie history, this story was rather unique, the closest thing I can recall being David Twohy's underrated 2002 effort Below.

As cool as the “vampires on a submarine” tagline is, there's actually more to the book than just bloodsuckers. Kent & Kaufmann must have done exhaustive research about submarines, as you get really got a sense of the confined spaces and routines. In fact, so well studied were they that I actually found the parts where the USS Roanoke attempted to stay undetected by Soviet vessels even more intense than the stuff that comes later.

100 Fathoms Below also has a large cast of characters made of up of officers and enlisted men that was balanced in such a way that you didn't immediately know who was going to make it to the end, if any. Jacket comparisons to The Thing were somewhat apt, although I felt like there could've been more mystery involved in who was turned and who wasn't. It's not really a complaint, just more of an acknowledgment of a missed opportunity. 100 Fathoms Below's back half played out more like a zombie plague than John Campbell's Who Goes There?

100 Fathoms Below was an extremely brisk and entertaining read that delivered on its delicious premise. For those looking to dive in, the book releases tomorrow (Oct 9th) through Blackstone Publishing.

2018 Preview

It's 2018 folks! Not the greatest start considering man baby numero uno just basically tweeted “my missiles are bigger than yours”, but let's try and forget we're a button push away from living post-apocalypse Bruno Mattei style and talk about some upcoming horror flicks, shall we?

I'm happy that two of genre's hottest directors, Robert Eggers and Jeremy Saulnier, have projects coming out this year. Eggers is following up his brilliant 2015 debut The Witch with an ambitious retelling of Nosferatu. I wouldn't blame you for being skeptical, but if there is anyone who can do justice to this vampire touchstone, it's him.

On the strength of Blue Ruin (2013) and Green Room (2015), we should all be very excited about Saulnier's newest project Hold the Dark. Adapted from the William Giraldi book, it stars Riley Keough & Alexander Skarsgård and takes place in the Alaskan wilderness.

I'm going to offer the theory that due to the strength of TV's Legion and last year's mega-hit It, horror has bled into the superhero genre and given us The New Mutants. Not that I wouldn't have seen this already with Anya Taylor-Joy & Maisie Williams in the cast, but with a trailer like this, I'm so in.

It looks like we get some promising giant monster movies this year - and I'm not talking Jurassic whatever. After almost two decades of attempts, the giant shark flick The Meg is finally coming to fruition as a Jason Statham action vehicle. Any port in a storm I say.

Perhaps a little bit more respectable is Alex Garland's Annihilation with Natalie Portman & Jennifer Jason Leigh. I like the trailer, even though it does have that whiff of disposable sci-fi. However, some of us probably thought the same way about Ex Machina at first glance.

Then there is A Quiet Place. I find the “silence is survival” hook really intriguing, but it's heartbreaking that the first thing I thought about after seeing the trailer was not “man that is going to be intense” but “all I'll be able to hear during the tense bits is fucking mouth breathers chewing their popcorn”.

In terms of the A-list creepers, Winchester has potential. The scares in the trailer look old hat, but I'm counting on the production design of the house and Helen Mirren and company to add the necessary gravitas.

Out of the sea of sequels, two stick out as promising. Even though I don't really need it, I'll check out Strangers 2. They've had a decade to work on it, so hopefully it's good.

Then there's Halloween. I'm gonna give it a chance for three reasons - John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jordan Peele. No, I know Peele isn't involved, but when I heard about who was doing this new iteration of Halloween - or the Pumpkin Express I remember calling it - I thought what the fuck do these comedy guys know about horror? Then Get Out dropped like a fucking culture bomb. 

So okay guys. Thrill me.