Day 6 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is here. The theme? 666. El Dia De La Bestia: The more Satanic, the better. Well, this one is a Satanic movie made by a pornographer, so why not pile all of our sins in at once?
That pornographer is writer and director Gerard Damiano (Deep Throat). This film was originally intended to be a hardcore movie, but he saw it as a mainstream opportunity and decided to turn the film into a straight-up horror film. That said, that opportunity may have been suggested by producer Lou Parish, better known as Louis “Butchie” Peraino, a member of the Colombo crime family.
Shot on a tight budget and starring unknown actors, the film briefly ran in theaters before becoming part of a grindhouse double bill with The Texas Chainsaw Massacreand Blood (one assumes that Bryanston Distributing Company, which had rumored mob ties, had something to do with that).
Other than Sarah Peabody from Last House on the Left, who plays a cult member, there’s nobody recognizable in this tale of Maya, a young woman who a Satanic cult has picked to be their new leader. Fantasies overtake her daily existence, synthesizers play at the right time and everyone wears some wonderful 70’s clothes.
There are dream sequences, photos are burned between a woman’s thighs, a glowing sword appears, we witness a black mass, there are portentous (and pretentious) speeches and lots of gorgeous colors. But it’s all a mess. While filmed in 1972, it wasn’t released until much later. And Damiano would bring another better and more Satanic film — The Devil in Ms. Jones — to raincoaters soon.
Despite the budget, this movie looks way better than it should. There are a lot of gorgeous people on display but they really don’t do much for the hour plus running time.
If you want to watch it for yourself, it’s free with your Amazon Prime membership. You can find it right here.
On a rainy night, six priests battle the infamous Amityville House until a demon finds its way into a lamp. That lamp is later sold in a yard sale for $100 to Helen Royce (Peggy McCay, TV’s Days of Our Lives) and her friend Rhona. That very same lamp gives Helen deadly tetanus, killing her nearly instantly. If you’re still with me after that incredibly stupid beginning, well, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t get much better. But hey — that doesn’t mean this movie can’t be fun.
Originally airing on May 12, 1989 on NBC, this continuation of the Amityville Horror series doesn’t even need the house, not when it has that evil lamp, which is now in the home of Helen’s sister, Alice Leacock (first wife of Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyatt). Alice’s main character quality is that she is a bitter bitch who instantly judges nearly every single person in this film.
Her daughter Nancy (Patty Duke, who once lost control to a hot dog) and her three kids Amanda, Bria and Jessica have all moved in with Alice. The lamp causes some arguments in the family, but Jessica is drawn to it. Soon, it’s doing all sorts of incredible things, like putting birds into toaster ovens, cutting off boyfriend’s hands with the garbage disposal, drowning plumbers in tar and making their cars drive away, and vandalizing people’s bedrooms.
The police and the church get involved as they all battle the lamp. Let me remind you of that one more time — they all fight a lamp. This is also a movie where a small child nearly wipes out his family with a chainsaw. Of course, the lamp is destroyed, but it finds its way into the family cat. Such are the depths that the Amityville franchise has sunk to. Writer/director Sandor Stern might get some of the blame, as he also wrote the original. But let’s cut that dude a break. After all, he was behind one of the oddest films ever, Pin!
This one is hard to find. I got mine for $1 at an Exchange store, so you might get lucky, too. Or unlucky. It depends on your POV on bad sequels and made for TV films.
UPDATE: You can watch this on Amazon Prime or Tubi. Or, if you want the ultimate non-cannon Amityville experience, you can grab this movie as part of Vinegar Syndrome’s astounding Amityville: The Cursed Collection set, along with Amityville: A New Generation, Amityville: It’s About Time and Amityville: Dollhouse.
Stephanie Rothman was studying at UC Berkeley when The Seventh Seal made her want to become a filmmaker. She was the first woman to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship, which was one of the reasons why Roger Corman hired her as his assistant (selecting her over another applicant, the woman who became his wife Julie).
She directed It’s a Bikini World, which was not the kind of movie she wanted to do and was semi-retired until working on the film Gas-s-s-s. She then directed The Student Nurses, an exploitation film that she was not aware was an exploitation film, as she had carte blanche to explore political and social issues in the film that interested her.
She said, “I went and did some research to find out exactly what exploitation films were, their history and so forth, and then I knew that’s what I was doing, because I was making low-budget films that were transgressive in that they showed more extreme things than what would be shown in a studio film, and whose success depended on their advertising, because they had no stars in them. It was dismaying to me, but at the same time I decided to make the best exploitation films I could. If that was going to be my lot, then that’s what I was going to try and do with it.”
She wasn’t interested in making a sequel to The Student Nursesor making The Big Doll House, but her next movie was The Velvet Vampire. Moving to Dimension Pictures, she directed Terminal Island, The Working Girls and Group Marriage.
However, attempts to go mainstream were stigmatized by the films that she had made. Before ending her movie-making career, the rumor was that she reshot some scenes in Ruby and definitely wrote Starhops before taking her name off it, as it was not the film she wanted it to be.
It is, however, directed by Barbara Peeters, the only other female director from New World Pictures. She famously warred with Corman over the additions to Humanoids from the Deepand directed favorites like Bury Me an Angel and the TV series The Powers of Matthew Star.
But what about the movie itself? Well, it’s a trifle, about three waitresses, Danielle, Cupcake and Angel, who all work together to stop their fast food restaurant from going broke. Of course, Dick Miller shows up, as this is a Roger Corman-associated film.
What’s interesting about Angel is that she’s played by Jillian Kesner-Graver, who was not only Fonzie’s girlfriend Lorraine on Happy Days, but worked with her husband Gary to preserve the films and legacy of Orson Welles.
Starhops isn’t really funny. Or sexy. It’s just kind of there. But sometimes, you watch a bad movie and learn about some interesting people.
Also known as Stranger in Our House, Summer of Fear is based on Lois Duncan’s 1976 young adult novel. Duncan also wrote the books that the movies I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin were based on.
Originally airing on October 31, 1978 on NBC, this Wes Craven-directed film is all about Julia (Lee Purcell, Necromancy), who has lost her parents and housekeeper to a car crash. Her aunt Leslie (Carol Lawrence, ex-wife of Robert Goulet), uncle Tom (Jeremy Slate, The Dead Pit) and their kids Peter (Jeff East, the teenage Superman in the 1977 film), Bobby and Rachel (Linda Blair!). Rachel and Julie quickly become friends, which helps Julie escape her shyness and even get a makeover.
You know who doesn’t like Julia? Rachel’s horse Sundance. But everyone else seems to love her. However, stuff just doesn’t add up. Like why does she have human teeth in her room? Why did she steal a photo of Rachel, who suddenly gets hives (poor Linda, always having to be in makeup)? Why doesn’t she have a reflection? And oh yeah, why does she get away with stealing Rachel’s boyfriend Mike (Jeff McCracken, who wrote his own Wikipedia page obviously)?
To say that Rachel’s life turns into shit is putting it mildly. She loses her boyfriend. She loses her best friend (a young Fran Drescher). She loses her horse, which flips out in competition and needs to be put to sleep. And she even nearly loses her one confidant, Professor Jarvis (the man once known as the King of the B’s, Macdonald Carey), who believes her when she says that Rachel is into black magic. Oh, it gets worse. Julia is planning on getting with her father and killing her mother!
Of course, everything works out well and it’s revealed that Julia was really Sarah, the housekeeper. But perhaps more frightening is the fact that she survives another accident and becomes a nanny in a new household. Her evil isn’t finished yet.
This is a slow burner, but once the occult madness kicks in, it gets pretty fun. Then again, I’m a sucker for Linda Blair. Made a year after The Hills Have Eyes, it fits well into the 1970’s TV movie milieu.
After playing on NBC and CBS, this film was sold theatrically to Europe, where it got the title Summer of Fear. It was re-released in 2017 by Doppelganger Releasing.
You can also watch the entire movie hosted by the guys from New Castle After Dark right here.
The Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge for today is 1 2 3 4 CLIVE. Clive Barker was born on October 5th. Celebrate any of his gruesome cinematic deeds.
I decided to go with the unfairly maligned Nightbreed, a movie that I haven’t seen since it played in theaters in 1990. Directed by Clive Barker and based on his 1988 novella Cabal, this movie was a commercial and critical failure. Barker has always claimed that the producers tried to sell the film as a run of the mill slasher, when it is anything but. In 2014, he finally was able to release a director’s cut that fixed many of his issues.
Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer, Fire in the Sky) dreams of a place called Midian where monsters are accepted. His girlfriend Lori has convinced him to start seeing a psychotherapist named Dr. Phillip Decker, who is ably played by David Cronenberg of all people. All along, Decker has been setting Boone up for the murders that he’s been committing, giving his LSD instead of lithium and filling his head with details of the murders.
Decker urges Boone to turn himself in, but he’s hit by a truck and sent to the hospital where he meets Narcisse, another man who knows about Midian. He explains to Boone how to get to the hidden story while he cuts off his own face.
Boone makes his way to Midian, where he meets the creatures who make it their home like Kinski (Nicholas Vince, the Chattering Cenobite from Hellraiser) and Peloquin, a demonic creature who smells Boone’s innocence, letting him know that there’s no way that the murders could have been his doing. He bites Boone, who runs into a police trap led by Decker and is shot and killed.
He’d be dead if it wasn’t for Peloquin’s bite. Soon, he returns to life in the morgue while his girlfriend decides to come looking for Midian herself. Boone becomes part of the Nightbreed thanks to their leader Dirk Lylesburg (Doug Bradley, Pinhead himself) and from the touch of their god, Baphomet.
What follows is a battle between the police and clergy versus the Nightbreed, ending with Boone rallying the supernatural creatures and destroying their home to stop the attacks. Decker is stopped, Baphomet discusses that this was all part of the prophecy and he renames Boone Cabal.
There are two different endings of the film, depending on the original and director’s cut that change the story significantly. One raises Decker from the dead while another places Lori into the Nightbreed. Both set the stage for further adventures that never happened, sadly.
Barker wanted this to be the Star Wars of horror films and envisioned a trilogy of stories. But the film wasn’t marketed well and never made back its budget. Barker said that the producers expressed a concern that “the monsters are the good guys,” to which he replied, “That’s the point.”
Marvel’s Epic imprint put out several comic books and there were serveral video games, but soon the film slided away into obscurity, Luckily, with the excitement around the director’s and Cabal cuts of the film being released, SyFy, Morgan Creek and Barker have announced an entirely new series based on the movie.
Interestingly enough, Filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky spoked well of Nightbreed, calling it “the first truly gay horror fantasy epic”, as he saw the movie being all about the “unconsummated relationship between doctor and patient.”
There are plenty of music ties in this film, as the role of Ohnaka was first intended for singer Marc Almond and Suzi Quatro was in the film, but her scenes were cut. It’s also one of the first films that Danny Elfman scored after Batman. Barker stated that “The most uncompromised portion of that entire movie is the score.”
Nightbreed has more than held up, reminding me of the convention season of 1990 when you could see buttons and shirts of this movie everywhere. My excitement was at a fever pitch and I thought, “This is going to be huge.” Shows how smart I was.
If seeing the names Robert Urich, Joanna Cassidy, Susan Lucci and Wes Craven all together on one movie doesn’t get you interested, I have no idea why you’re reading this site. This movie is everything ridiculous and awesome and wonderful about why I watch these kinds of movies. To wit, Robert Urich donning a spacesuit so that he can see who is a demon and who isn’t as he descends to hell through the country club he probably shouldn’t have joined.
Originally airing May 24, 1984 on ABC, this is the kind of movie that starts with Susan Lucci’s character Jessica Jones getting run over by a limo driver distracted by bikini girls, rising to her feet and roasting the man alive. It gets better from there.
Just watching the credits is enough to make one get excited. Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Joe Regalbuto from Murphy Brown! Michael Berryman from, well, every 80’s direct to video movie and The Hills Have Eyes! The Bad Seed herself, Patty McCormack! And look — Punky Brewster herself, Soleil Moon Frye!
We’re not done yet! Here comes the hero of The Never Ending Story Barret Oliver! Sid Fields, who Jerry adopted on Seinfeld, also known as character actor Bill Erwin.
If this looks better than a run of the mill TV movie, that’s because it has Wes Craven in the director’s chair, during the same year he made A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hill Have Eyes Part II. It was written by Richard Rothstein, who also brought us Universal Soldier and Human Experiments. Dean Cundy was the cinematographer, so again, this makes the movie look way better than you’d think.
How did this all come about? Well, when Lucci renewed her contract with ABC in 1983, she was guaranteed a movie of the week in the hopes that after years of her gimmick of being always nominated for the lead actress daytime Emmy and not winning, she’d get to win a real Emmy. This film was specifically written just for her.
Whoever saw this movie as award fodder had to have been doing the best drugs that 1984 could produce. Aerospace engineer Matthew Winslow (Urich), wife Patricia (Cassidy) and their two young kids (Oliver and Moon Frye) are reaping the benefits of his big promotion for inventing a fireproof spacesuit that will take man to Venus.
So, of course, his family wants that good life, which includes the Steaming Springs Country Club that keeps you young forever, possesses young children to destroy their toy bunnies and turns wives into sex-crazed maniacs.
Lucci is Lucci in this, out of control and dressed like a character out of V, as Urich dons that suit — it’s actually a G.I. Joe figure for most of the effects — and battles her. That suit comes from the MGM Studio collection, the only one of its like that had official NASA suits at the time. The suit they got was missing a backpack, which had to be designed and made so that Urich didn’t overheat. For this and more insane behind the scenes stuff, this movie’s IMDB trivia page shames nearly every other IMDb trivia page.
Why would the Devil be Susan Lucci? Why would they put the gateway to Hell in a health club? Why wouldn’t Urich just leave his wife when she callously kills the family dog? Why is everyone close to him getting replaced and he’s just fine with it? Why doesn’t anyone realize that the grown up and more dangerous than Satan Rhoda Penmark is in their midst? Aren’t 80’s computer graphics the best?
Most importantly — why are you not rushing to Amazon to buy this?
You know what Deep Throat was about? Well, Chatterbox is the exact opposite — a woman who discovers that she has not just another voice, but a whole other personality inside her vagina.
Penelope (Candice Rialson, the inspiration for Bridget Fonda’s character in Jackie Brown and the star of Pets) is a hairdresser who learns that her vagina can speak after it makes fun of her lover’s lack of sexual skill.
Soon after, her lady business gets her in all sorts of trouble, like getting a lesbian client to tackle her at her hairdresser job (her boss is played by Rip Taylor, who is over the top and out of control, but why else would you hire Rip Taylor, you know?).
She then reveals her secret to her therapist, Dr. Pearl (Larry Gelman from TV’s The Bob Newhart Show and porn’s Alice in Wonderland). Soon, they both learn that she can sing from her hoo-hah and this leads her to become a big star. Oh yeah — her vagina is named Virginia and becomes more loved by her mother and more famous and in demand than its owner.
If you ever wanted to see someone sing showtunes and disco from their secret garden, then this is the film for you. I don’t know who you are, but I know they haven’t made all that many movies for you.
This is as 1977 as it gets. I mean, it has Professor Irwin Corey, the guy who accepted Thomas Pynchon’s National Book Award Fiction Citation for Gravity’s Rainbow with a pun-filled speech that confused many and was a frequent talk show guest that went on to panhandle for charity well into his 90’s.
Originally airing on February 2, 1974, on ABC, this Theodore Spurgeon adaptation presents a unique premise that answers the question we’ve all been asking: “Who would win in a fight to the death—a man or a bulldozer?” Sure, a mysterious meteorite is behind it all, but this one is all about machine-on-man violence.
This one boasts a stellar cast including Clint Walker (The Phynx, as well as TV movies like Snowbeast and Scream of the Wolf), James Wainwright (TV’s Beyond Westworld), Carl Betz (Donna Reed’s TV husband), Neville Brand (Eyes of the Night and Without Warning), James A. Watson Jr. and Vega$ star Robert Urich. They all face off against an alien aura-possessed Caterpillar D9 bulldozer that takes them out individually.
The story and movie were so popular that Marvel Comics published an adaptation in Worlds Unknown #6, which was released the same year as the film.
Thanks to Conan O’Brien, this film has become a punchline and the name of a somewhat famous band. But beyond these pop culture references, Killdozer is a product of its time—a 1970s TV movie on a low budget—that has managed to entertain and intrigue audiences, earning it a place in the pantheon of cult classics.
UPDATE: This cult classic is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber, offering a new generation of viewers the chance to experience it in high definition.
Day 4 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is Franchise Day. Pick something from any franchise that has four or more entries. Bonus points if it has a fast food eating scene in it – have it your way.
There was no choice other than 1988’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. I bought two collections of these films last year with the intent of doing a WATCH THE SERIES post of them (which I still fully intend to finish). I’ve often written off all of these films after the first three — one being the originator, two being a strange metaphor for growing up gay and the third being a bravura Dokken soundtrack sporting thrill ride that was amongst the first slasher films I ever watched.
The thing is, part four is slick and as commercial as it gets, but isn’t that what you want? Aren’t we all wistful for the movie theaters of thirty years ago, when films like Bad Dreams, the Chuck Russell remake of The Blob, Child’s Play, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Fright Night II, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Phantasm II, Poltergeist 3, Pumpkinhead and so many more graced the silver screen? This is a movie made for teenagers to devour in the same way that they chow down through a pizza — more on that in a bit.
After the final battle in the last film in this series — Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors — which was intended by Wes Craven to end the franchise. With original protagonist Nancy sacrificing herself to stop Krueger, the rest of the Dream Warriors have been released from the insane asylum and are back to being normal teenagers.
However, Kristen (Tuesday Knight, replacing Patricia Arquette) believes that Freddy isn’t dead, drawing Joey, Kincaid and Kincaid’s dog Jason into her dream, where they show her that Freddy’s boiler is cold. There’s been a rift between these former friends, as the boys are seen as freaks and Kristen has joined the popular crowd with her martial arts practicing boyfriend Rick (Andras Jones, Sorority Girls in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), Alice, Sheila and Debbie.
Soon, Kincaid has been killed in the junkyard from Dream Warriors, where Freddy comes back after a dog pisses fire onto him. Yes, that really happens. Then, Joey finds a naked girl swimming in his waterbed in a sequence that’s glossy, ridiculous and awesome all in equal measure. He’s soon dead and Kristen passes out when she finds out, bringing Freddy after her. She swears to get revenge, but once her mother gives her sleeping pills to ensure that she gets rest, she is felled by the “Bastard Son of a One Hundred Maniacs.” However, she is able to give her dream power to Alice which she’s gonna need because with each kill, Freddy gains the abilities and personalities of Alice’s dead friends.
Sure, these movies would get much worse, but if you’re looking for a movie that’ll make the middle of the night just fly past, you can’t go wrong with this one. I was surprised how much I liked it, which is kind of the point of this challenge, right?
This movie is filled with plenty of out there kill scenes and flip dialogue that finally makes Freddy the actual hero of the film. There’s a girl that gets turned into a cockroach and smashed into a Roach Motel. And then there’s the scene where Freddy shows Alice all of his victims on a “soul pizza” that must be witnessed to be believed.
Say what you will about Renny Harlin, but in this follow up to his American debut Prison, he really takes the series all the way into the surreal, basing each of the murders on actual nightmares that he had, as well as crazy moments that push the film into meta territory when Alice goes from a movie theater into an actual movie while the rest of the cast watches.
This was the highest grossing movie in the series until Freddy vs. Jason, which it earns with an all-star team of special effects artists, a soundtrack boasting bands like the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Blondie, and the Fat Boys, and an ending that boasts a twenty foot tall practical model of Freddy being destroyed by the souls of those he has taken.
For even more fun, here’s a video from fast food lovers The Fat Boys that features them getting Freddy’s house as an inheritance and having to spend the night there.
According to CBC, “In some circles, Ken Foster is a well-respected artist with a unique style and an international following. To others, he is known as the guy living in alleys who has been hawking his work on city’s streets for more than 20 years.”
For over eighteen months, documentary filmmaker Josh Laner followed Foster, known to locals as Vancouver’s Vincent Van Gogh, through the streets of the city’s rough and tumble Gastown.
Foster is incredibly prolific and while he has said he won’t sell a painting for other twenty dollars, in the same breath he says that he’s sold one for $2 to buy a Slurpee. That said, he’s also painting to support a crack habit that he feels keeps his schizophrenia under control.
The film starts moments before Ken enters Vancouver’s Art Battle competition, which is all about live competitive painting. It seems like everyone there is abuzz about Ken’s appearance, but they all seem to be more excited than he is to be there.
This film raises plenty of points — are the people buying Ken’s work supporters of art who supporters of his drug habit? Is the madness that Ken endures why he’s such an amazing artist? And can he move into becoming a legit fine artist and leave the street and the people of it behind? In fact, when asked, what would you give up, smoking crack or art, Foster is unable to decide until figuring that art is what he loves, but that question is inherently silly to him because crack is such a fundamental part of his life.
Foster doesn’t have a relationship in his life that doesn’t seem painful, from how he feels about his mother to how his girlfriend randomly disappears, only to come back and battle with him. Only art feels like a constant in his life, but he only feels like he has reached one percent of what he could have been. And he feels like he is nothing to his daughter, which kills him as he doesn’t even know if he wants to be alive. Trust me — this is a rough watch.
The hardest part of this movie to watch was Ken leaving one of the Art Battles, even as a viewer is telling him that he is a true artist, because he needs crack to set his mind right. Crack no longer makes him high, each toke only sets his brain as straight as it can be so he is no longer in a heightened state of anxiety. He hates what he has painted and it begins to send him into a downward spiral. This scene is animated instead of shown, so everything becomes heightened and more frightening as real life gives way to darkness and terror.
Going into the finals, Ken can’t even find his brushes and is losing control, even as he’s the crowd favorite. You can’t invent drama like this. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the film at this point, so you should really watch it for yourself. I wanted Ken to emerge from this saved, but I don’t truly know if that’s possible, so I realize that’s a spoiler, but it helps going into this movie knowing how harrowing it is. People genuinely love him and tell him but none of it ever gets through or fixes anything.
Want to still watch it? You should. Ken Foster is now available on Cable VOD and Digital HD, including iTunes, Google Play, Comcast, Cox, Verizon Fios, Dish Network and more.
Disclaimer: I was sent this film by its PR team and in no way did that impact my review.
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