Monthly Archives: October 2019

2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge: Day 27: The Case of the Hillside Stranglers (1989)

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Day 27 Special Presentations: Made for TV movies from the ‘70s, classic era of the bronze screen

The writing is so fast n’ furious at B&S Movies for “Slasher Month” and the “Scarecrow Challenge” that Sam and I had a communication snafu and we both ended up writing reviews for this fantastic TV movie. He reviews it for “Day 28: A Loreless Yarn: One based on a true story.”  It’s a slasher. It’s a TV Movie. It’s based on a true story. And it’s a friggin’ Richard Crenna movie . . . all rolled into one!

Watch the VHS trailer.

My three-for-one review of Gene Roddenberry’s post-Star Trek series pilots Genesis II, Planet Earth, and Strange New World (1973 to 1975) would have been perfect for “Scarecrow Challenge Day 27,” but I reviewed them for B&S Movies’ “Post-Apocalypse Month” (see our September “Dustbin” roundups Part 1 and Part 2). If you’re a frequent visitor to B&S Movies, you know we’re always jonesin’ for a fix of the “Big Three” over-the-air U.S television network movies from the good ‘ol days before the VHS and cable television boom. B&S Movies’ love for the now network-eschewed format is obsessive to the point that it took three tribute weeks: “Lost TV Week,” “Week of Made for TV Movies,” and “Sons of Made for TV Movies Week,” to contain it.

I’ve chosen a movie for Day 27 that was on my shortlist for “Day 17 Evil in Broad Daylight” (I reviewed 1988’s In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I Murders with David Soul and Michael Gross as serial-killing bank robbers) that, in my opinion, is one of the finest TV movies ever made. And it stars Richard Crenna. And, as with the entire In the Line of Duties series, this was also made by NBC-TV, the undisputed kings of TV Movies. So, double bonus. Now, let’s get on with the show.

As with ex-Army Rangers Bill Matix and Mike Platt terrorizing the streets of Miami, Florida in 1986, with their eventual murder of two F.B.I agents, Angelo Buono (Dennis Farina of TV’s Law and Order) and Kenneth Bianchi (Billy Zane of The Titanic and The Phantom) were blatant, cruel, and just didn’t give a fuck as they cut a swath through Los Angeles between October 1977 to February 1978 with the murders of 10 women. It wasn’t until a disagreement between the two cousins that led Bianchi to go out on his own, that their spree began to unravel.

While I’ve watched this telefilm every time it pops up on TV, the same can’t be said for the two tried-to-be-grittier direct-to-video attempts trying to improve upon what the Richard Crenna-version did to perfection.

It was the tutelage of C. Thomas Howell (The Outsiders) and Nicholas Turturro (brother of John, the current on-the-air U.S TV series Chicago P.D) starring as Bianchi and Buono that led me to rent The Hillside Strangler (2004). Regardless of its claims of being “a more accurate portrayal,” the stellar quality of Crenna’s 1989 TV movie left me feeling this Howell-fronted version worked as a fiction piece plotted around two (dark) historical figures.

The second attempt was the even lower-budgeted Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006). It starred the very competent and always deservingly working character actors Tomas Arana (The Dark Knight Rises) and Clifton Collins (Pacific Rim, HBO’s Westworld) as Buono and Bianchi. I’ve seen the DVDs tossed in the $5.00 bins at Walmart, and it’s never been on cable, as far as I can tell; so I’ve never seen it. However, based on its 4.2/10 IMDb rating, it sounds like Rampage’s use of the ‘ol killer-tells-his-story-in-flashback-to-a-prison-psychologist (female, natch) didn’t work out so well.

The scribe behind the Crenna-version: Steve Gethers, writing in television since the mid-‘50s for The Kraft Theatre and The DuPont (Network) variety shows, along with a Jackie Kennedy TV movie and LaVar Burton’s (Star Trek: TNG) Billy: Portrait of a Street Kid (1977) amid his long list of credits.

Gethers intelligently took the high road from the flinching reality depicted in true crime novelist Darcy’ O Brien’s best-selling non-fiction document of the case, Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers (1985), and decided to go for the psychological and not the shocking. It is Gethers character-subjective approach to the material that allows us to see inside the minds of the killers instead of being objectively-bludgeoned to numbness watching their deeds—and that makes Buono and Bianchi ‘s deeds all that more shocking. And it’s accomplished without any blood or actual murder or rape shown.

Also replacing the bloodshed: In addition to seeing into the minds of the killers, we see the affect the killers not only have on the families of the victims, but the personal affect it has on Crenna’s Sgt. Bob Grogan (and that’s a personal touch you don’t see in the big-studio cop vs. serial killer romps Cobra and D-Tox). And that’s what this 1989 telefilm version has that the 2004 and the 2006 direct-to-videos do not: Showing us the “humanity” of those affected by the “inhumanity” of others is what heightens the fear and dread.

Do you need more Richard Crenna TV movies? In addition to his work as Sgt. Bob Grogan, he portrayed Frank Janek in a series of films: Double Take (1985), Internal Affairs (1988), Murder in Black and White (1990), Murder Times Seven (1990), Terror on Track 9 (1992), The Forget Me Not Murders (1994), and Janek: The Silent Betrayal (1994). You can watch The Case of the Hillside Stranglers, which looks like they’re the post-VHS DVD rips issued by MGM, on You Tube HERE and HERE.

Don’t be duped. It’s a completely different movie. Oh, why, Maria? Why?

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.

2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 27: Someone’s Watching Me! (1978)

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DAY 27. SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS: Made for TV movies from the ’70s, classic era of the bronze screen.

John Carpenter was hired by Warner Bros in 1976 to write a script based on the true story of a woman who had been spied on inside her Chicago apartment. The script, High Rise, ended up become a TV movie that Caroenter was also given the chance to direct.

“I thought it was a really, really good idea,” said Carpenter. “So I had my first experience with television. And my first union experience. I got into the Director’s Guild through that. I had a real good time on it, I have to tell you. I met my wife.”

This eighteen-day shoot allowed Carpenter to test many of the techniques that he’d use weeks later when he started work on Halloween.

Originally airing on November 29, 1978 on NBC, this movie concerns Leigh Michaels (Lauren Hutton), who has moved to Los Angeles to escape New York City. As she begins her new career at television startion KJHC with new friend Sophie (Barbeau) and a relationship with college professor Paul Winkless (David Birney, who went on to be quite the reader of audio books).

However, she’s soon dealing with phone calls and strange gifts from Excursions Unlimited. She calls the police, but there’s nothing she can do except wait for the voyeur to come to her.

Fans of Halloween take note: Charlie Cyphers shows up as a cop.

Shout! Factory released this on blu ray last year, replacing the four movie multipack that I used to watch this on, where it sat alongside Eyes of a Stranger, Deadly Friend and The Hand.

Deranged (1974)

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Man, Alan Ormsby has done so much. In addition to working with Bob Clark on Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Death Dream, he wrote My Bodyguard and the remake of Cat People. Plus, he was the original director of Popcorn and the man behind Kenner’s Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces action figure. 

He’s the man behind Deranged, along with Jeff Gillen, who played Jeff in Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and who you can see every Christmas Eve as Santa Claus in A Christmas Story. 

Deranged is filmed as if it were a true story, with reporter Tom Simms (Leslie Carlson, Black Christmas) appearing within the events and narrating them. The whole thing was based on Ed Gein, the infamous real life Butcher of Plainfield, Wisconsin that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Psycho are both based on.

It was produced by producer Tom Karr, a concert promoter for bands like Led Zeppelin and Three Dog Night who had been fascinated with Ed Gein and dreamed of making a film about his story.

Ezra Cobb (Roberts Blossom, Old Man Marley in Home Alone, how’s that for a scary tie-in role?) is our Ed Gein stand-in, running a midwest farm with his mother Amanda (Cosette Lee, who played Raxl, Daughter of the Priestess of the Serpent on Strange Paradise, a Canadian occult soap opera created in the wake of Dark Shadows). Since he was a boy, she’s taught him to hate women.

Once she dies, it takes a year for him to come out of his shell. When he finally snaps to it, he does what any loving and grieving son would do: he digs his mom up and puts her body together with fish skin and wax.

Ezra gets involved with an eccentric older woman who claims she’s psychic named Maureen Shelby (Marian Waldman, Mrs. MacHenry from Black Christmas, and if you don’t know who that is, please stop reading and start watching). They have a fumbling sexual encounter that ends with Ezra killing her and we’re off to the races.

Ezra’s next target is Mary Ransum (Mickie Moore, who is also in The Vindicator and is one of the Believers in, yes, The Believers), a waitress who he lures home, knocks out and dresses in just her underwear for dinner. Their nice meal is ruined by her trying to run, so he smashes her head with a femur bone. And then he takes out young Sally, which leads the police to his home, where they find him in the kitchen, enjoying a bowl of blood after skinning her.

Deranged is not an easy watch, as its subtitle, Confessions of a Necrophile, will tell you. It’s also the second movie — after Deathdream — that Tom Savini ever worked his special effects magic on.

You can get the blu ray of this film from Kino Lorber.

Slasher Top Tens: Ted Lehr

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ted Lehr runs the site Super No Bueno, which is a pop culture/entertainment blog established in 2016 that includes reviews of movies, music, comic books, pro wrestling, and much more. We’ve been friends for a while, so I’m excited that Ted is sending this for the site.

Halloween (1978): The prototype for every successive film in the genre, Halloween is the gold standard of slasher flicks. Anchored by a career-defining performance by a young Jamie Lee Curtis, the 1978 classic is chock full of gore, scares and punch. It is entirely re-watchable and equally effective with each successive viewing. Halloween is royalty of the category.

Psycho (1960): If Halloween is atop the proverbial heap of slasher films, then Psycho is its lineal grandparent. Based on the 1959 novel by Robert Bloch, Psycho follows Norman Bates; a perverse, angry and broken young man who wants nothing more than to please his mother. Anthony Perkins simply stuns as Bates. And the Janet Leigh shower scene is the stuff of Hollywood legend. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): Much like Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is loosely based on the real-life murders committed by Ed Gein. Gritty, intense and utterly unsettling, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre feels more akin to the lurid porno films of the era rather than any horror movie ever previously produced. Director Tobe Hooper created an undeniable classic. 

Child’s Play (1988): There is something about a foul-mouthed murderous doll that has always appealed to me. Released in November of 1988, I was a freshly-minted 14-year-old at the time Child’s Play premiered. The film follows the blood-soaked adventures of a wise-cracking serial killer (“Charles Lee Ray”), who, via a Haitian voodoo spell, transfers his spirit from his dying body into the inanimate shell of a gentle “Good Guy” stuffed doll. Ray as “Chucky,” leaves a swath of dead bodies, bad jokes and numerous sequels of negligible quality in his homicidal wake. The Child’s Play franchise is a not-so-guilty pleasure.

Bride of Killer Nerd (1992): To keep in line with the horror/comedy genre, up next is Bride of Killer Nerd. Shot in nearby (to me) Ravenna, Ohio, the story details the deadly adventures of unpopular couple “Harold Kunkle” and “Thelma Crump.” After being made fun of by the “popular girls,” the star-crossed lovers go on a revenge-filled rampage. Starring Toby Radloff (of MTV and American Splendor fame), Bride of Killer Nerd is a rare example of a sequel being better than the original. 

The Stepfather (1987): One of my first jobs out of high school was at a local video store. Though I was only paid minimum wage, the real perk of the job was free access to literally all the movies I could watch. In the era of Netflix, Hulu, Shudder and a litany of other streaming services that modern viewers have access to, this might not sound like much—but in the early-90s, I had the keys to the kingdom. I’d pour through everything I could get my greedy little hands on. Horror was always a favorite for my brother and me. This is how I discovered The Stepfather. 

Starring Terry O’Quinn as the affable—yet maniacal—titular character, The Stepfather chronicles the exploits of identity-morphing “Henry Morrison” as he ingratiates himself to a single mother and her teenage daughter. All is well until the thin pretense of his actual background comes into question. It is then that the Stepfather, under a fresh guise, sets up a new life with a different woman, and, oh yeah, must slaughter his old family before moving on. Good stuff.

Black Christmas (1974): A group of sorority girls are stalked and killed one-by-one during the holiday season at a sleepy college campus. This Canadian-produced classic simmers and taunts through its 98-minute runtime. Much like Halloween, Black Christmas is credited with defining the tropes of the genre.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982): A group of teenage girls having a slumber party is menaced and horrified by an unexpected guest, an escaped mental patient with a taste for blood and a drill! Yikes! Rife with nudity, gore and some unexpected humor, The Slumber Party Massacre is a solid entry in the ranks of the category. 

Chopping Mall (1986): While I’m not sure Chopping Mall is a slasher film, per se, it is so much damn fun that unquestionably belongs on the list. Mixing elements of horror, sci-fi, comedy and adventure, the movie is the story of three security robots that malfunction and begin to kill employees who are in the mall afterhours. At times Chopping Mall can be a bit silly and clunky, but it’s overall charm outweighs any shortcomings. 

Sleepaway Camp (1983): I’ve always been a sucker for a film with a good twist ending— the original Planet of the Apes, anyone? —so it is no surprise that Sleepaway Camp anchors this list. Both cheeky and subversive, it has been a personal favorite of mine since I discovered it years ago. A cult film of the highest order, Sleepaway Camp is the story of a teenage girl who goes to summer camp. Shortly thereafter, a series of grisly murders begin. Shot for $350,000 and raking in a whopping $11 million at the box office, the film still packs a strong punch 36 years after its release. I had the privilege of catching a screening of it years ago at the famed Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio. The audience appeared to be 75% uninitiated to the film because when the ending came, the place went bonkers. It was an electric live experience. 

Don’t Go Near the Park (1979)

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Cannibalism. Incest. Pedophilia. Yes, folks, Don’t Go Near the Park has it all. That’s why it made it to the category 2 video nasty list, a feat for a director who was just 19.

I also have no idea what Aldo Ray’s deal is in this movie. As Taft, he’s an older man who just so happens to make friends with the young Nick and takes him, Bondi and Cowboy home to live with him — and sleep half-naked while he smiles on — as special friends.

That’s the good guy! What is this movie!?!

Let’s see if we can make sense of it.

Thousands of years ago, Petranella cursed her children Tra and Gar (Barbara Bain played both female roles here under the fake name Barbara Monker while the male is Robert Gribbin under the nom de plume Crackers Phinn) to live for 12,000 years eating the flesh of humans. If one of them has a baby after that long stretch, they can live forever.

Fast forward to 1965 and the siblings are killing kids in California. Gar decides to work on the babymaking, reinventing himself as the human Mark and knocks up Linnea Quigley and has a kid named Bondi, who he cares about way more than his marriage. We see years pass in the span of minutes, which is how I’d think immortals perceive time and also really shoddy filmmaking all at the same time.

On Bondi’s sixteenth birthday, Mark gives her an ancient amulet, which finally causes his wife to leave him. Bondi runs away and is nearly raped in a van before she calls on her father to kill them with that amulet.

Bondi wanders into an abandoned house near the park, where her aunt Tra, who now goes by the name Patty, is starting to die. That’s when she makes friends with Nick and Cowboy, who sell flowers in the street and make friends — like I said before — with Aldo Ray.

There’s a whole lot of weirdness that happens — swallowed amulets, corpses rising from the dead to kill out former cave people and a twist ending that throws everything else in the trash. Little Nick is played by Meeno Paluce, who was all over the 80’s with stuff like Voyagers and appearing in the original The Amityville Horror.

I have a soft spot for this film. It’s not perfect, but I want to hug it and protect it from the mean reviewers who say things like it makes no sense and it has shoddy camerawork. What do you want? A classic every time?

Psychotronic Challenge 2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge: Day 26: Rituals (1977)

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DAY 26. THERE’S SOMETHIN’ IN THEM THAR HILLS: Twangy cringers from the backwoods and by-waters. 

After seeing Joe Bob Briggs “How Rednecks Saved Hollywood,” the entire B&S About Movies team mobilize and celebrated these films, from a Letterboxd list to making our own picks for top 70’s good ol’ boys movies. But to be honest, we watched so many of these movies, where would we find something new to answer the Scarecrow Challenge for one more day?

Canada, with your tax shelters and movies that are far north of odd, remains our constant bastion and perhaps place to run to after next November.

Director Peter Carter also made a movie called High-Ballin’ and it wasn’t a porno, instead a trucking film, so we need to respect the artist coming in.

Five doctors go on vacation deep in the Northern Ontario wilderness. Every year, one of them gets to pick where they go and this time, it’s D.J. who gets to be travel agent. He takes the guys to the Cauldron of the Moon, which was a practical location that had been created by a fire a few years earlier.

According to the natives, this is where the earth collided with the moon and it hsould be a place of magic, but it’s really just a place for the doctors to get drunk and argue about their lives, their ethics and, well, just argue.

As our guys wake up for another day of cutting up, they end up getting cut up in a much different way. That’s because everyone’s boots have been stolen. I guess these guys never listened to Iron Maiden or cowboy lore.

D.J. had said, time and again, being a backup pair of boots, and he ended up being the only one that did so. That means he has to go back alone through he dangerous woods and bring back four pairs of boots. As the guys wait for their friend, they’re soon confronted by the carcass of a dead deer before they also discover a severed head. That’s a real dead deer, by the way, in case you think the Italians are the only ones willing to sicken you with autentic snuffed out animals on celluloid.

Harry (Hal Holbrook) takes charge, but it seems as if the past — and all the mistakes with it — have come back to haunt the rest of the group.

While this movie was obviously inspired by Deliverance, it’s also a proto-slasher, with a killer setting traps in the woods that predates the work of Cropsey, Madman Marz and Pamela Vorhees’ little man.

You have a lot of options if you want to see this movie. You can watch this on the Internet Archive for free. Or you can allow our friends at Mill Creek to help with either their Drive-In Movie Classics: 50 Movie Pack or Horror Classics: 100 Movie Pack. However, the best version is available from Ronin Flix, who have the Scorpion Releasing blu ray re-release of this.

Dark Ride (2006)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Craig Edwards is an award-winning blogger as well as a self-proclaimed Media Guy and a consumer of pop culture for a lot of years. He also writes a great blog called Let’s Get Out of Here!

We start out in 1989 New Jersey, watching as twin sisters take a trip through a “Dark Ride” – aka an amusement part attraction where you ride a roller coaster-like train through a dark and spooky environment – and not to shock you – but they don’t finish the ride and go for cotton candy. No, instead they get killed by a hulking goon who is promptly arrested, charged with the murders of the fourteen bodies found scattered about the place, and taken off to the booby hatch. This Dark Ride goes truly dark. Someteen years later, a group of five college students and one unstable but easy on the eyes female hitchhiker decides to take a trip to the amusement park, reopening after all those years. And wouldn’t you just know it? The psycho escapes from the asylum and heads right back to where it all began – the same Dark Ride the kids have decided to break into and party in. Who will survive, and what will be left of them?

Dark Ride ends up a meh misfire of a movie. The ingredients are sorta there – you have a mostly unknown but  adequate cast, with Sigler proving an adequate lead for what she’s asked to do here; you have a big creepy killer; you have a smidge of nudity; and you have some fairly gruesome and gory kills, including two that are undeniably awesome in their graphic nastiness. But there are some pretty big problems, and to mention them I’m going to need to whip out The Sword of Spoiler! First off: big ol’ killer Jonah. He’s deformed and wears a babyface mask for the bulk of the movie. We hear about his disfigurement a few times. But when he’s maskless for a brief interval in the middle of the movie — in admittedly poor lighting conditions — his face seems mostly okay. And then, come the end of the movie – they “forget” to show us what’s under that mask — not even a Final Jump reveal. WTH?

And, while we’re on the subject of our Psycho du Jour – it turns out ol’ killer Jonah is really just a big kid with the mind of a child in the body of the Hulk. My co-watchers and I had a discussion about this during the movie – what’s scarier? A big dumb guy who doesn’t realize what he’s doing but wants to recreate the gory scenes of the Dark Ride he lives in using your body? Or a confident and intelligent nutjob who wants to kill you because 1. he likes it. 2. he wants to. and 3. because he can? Well, having seen this movie — I have to go with the latter — the sick fear of knowing someone is working hard to get you into position to slaughter you – creeeeeppppyyyy! Wandering into a place and having a big goon grab you and mindlessly mash you into hamburger – well, don’t get me wrong – it still seems like it would make for a lousy afternoon – but it’s not really as scary.

Oh, and another problem with the movie – it’s slow enough that my co-watchers and I could have the above discussion about the movie during the movie and not feel like we were missing the movie. Yep, some big slow patches in that middle section lead to wandering attentions and off-screen anecdotes a flyin’. The filmmakers take no care to clue us in on the layout of the Dark Ride, so in the later reels there’s no sense of where anyone is at any time, and the place seems as big as a small town, which adds nothing to the suspense bank at all. There are also weird stylized directorial touches by Singer that bring nothing to the table, like the sped-up patty cake game in the van, and Sigler being front and center while the background spins around her twice. Dial it back there, Hitchcock Junior!

And the script has problems as well – giving us characters who are mostly at best unlikable and sometimes really annoying, and plot holes – I thought I heard something about a trip from California to New Orleans — by way of New Jersey? Worst navigation ever! Finally, and this is a big one — there’s a big twist near the end — turns out one of the college kids had a secret agenda all along. Well, okay, during the final minutes of the movie I’m not going to say I was surprised, but I went with it. But now, having thought about it – this character was working overtime to get everyone into that funhouse – but the subplot of Jonah’s escape plainly shows it to be a random bad luck thing involving a stupid choice on the part of his guards. And not in a “planning to escape first chance I get ah here it is now” kind of way either. You got Jonah sitting in catatonia in a room, followed by the guards blatantly breaking one of the cardinal food rules of his incarceration — yes, much like a Gremlin — followed by this event winding Jonah back up to his old murderous ways and putting him on the path to walking out and heading back to the Dark Ride. What incredible luck; that happening right on the same night when the plotter in the amusement park just happened to get several new victims lined up inside the joint. That’s a key point of storytelling that these filmmakers totally tried to gloss over. And I’m calling them on it. Shenanigans indeed.

So, in the end, this one might be worth a look for desperate slasher junkies in need of a fix, but they could save a lot of time and check out a death scenes compilation on YouTube. Everyone else? Your tickets to the Dark Ride are revoked. You can thank me later.

Editor’s Note: Screenwriter Robert Dean Kline has since given us David DeCoteau’s The Wrong Valentine and the 2021 horror entry, 6:45.

2019 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge: Day 25: Open House (1987)

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DAY 25 Vanishing Cities: One with gentrification or real estate development as the setting, also known as a Slasher Month two-kills-with-one-swipe-of-the-blade-studded-plunger entry

You’re David Mickey Evans: A budding screenwriter that wants to break into the business with two, deeply personal screenplays—Radio Flyer (1990) and The Sandlot (1993)—that enrapture the innocence of your childhood and lifelong love of baseball.

Yeah, right kiddo. It’s time for a Hollyweird reality check.

You’re trying to “make your break” during the slasher ‘80s. And this is the movie business—the operative word being business—and La-La Land stands at the foot of Mount Lee to make money, kid. And they’re not here to give people the warm fuzzies about their lost childhood.

So you come to the realization you’ll have to write “for the marketplace,” which means you end up as a writer-for-hire on a WarGames (1983) knock-off. . . .

“Kids and computers, kid. Kids and computers. Smart-ass teen hackers and kiddie tech nerds sell tickets,” stogie-belches the studio fat cat as he perches his wing-tipped spats on his ostentatious oak desk. “But give me a My Science Project (1985) or The Manhattan Project (1986), kid; not a shit-storm Prime Risk (1985). And none of that personal childhood crap. You want to relive your baseball dreams, go play a pick-up game in Griffith Park and gander at The Hollywood Sign from afar. And I want action with those smart-ass remarks and no introspective statements about man losing his humanity to technology, either. Now get out of here, kid. I have a ‘nooner’ coming in, I mean, I’m casting a part.”

And the executive cheeses that script with a “design” for the poster of what becomes Terminal Entry (1987): Black-clad terrorist dudes superimposed-running across and attacking an IBM PC, complete with a Tom Cruise Risky Business-inspired smart ass wearing a chef’s hat in the background.

“Give me Risky Business with a computer, kid.”

But Terminal Entry worked out reasonably well on cable and home video, so you’re hired to complete uncredited re-writes on a sci-fi clunker, Class of 1999 (1990; sequel to the superior Class of 1984). Again, the end product wasn’t so great, but it did reasonably from a financial, if not critical, standpoint.

So now the wing-tipped fat cats are willing to take a look at those two “personal” screenplays. And you’ve become the toast of Hollywood as one of the highest paid screenwriters of the ‘90s, with sales of over $1 million for each script.

You gotta start somewhere as a screenwriter.

Yes. The million-dollar scribe behind two of the ‘90s highest paid, and most brilliant, fresh screenplays broke into the business with his screenwriting debut: a slasher script, Multiple Listings. And since were talking David Mickey Evans: I’ll roll the benefit-of-the-doubt dice and gamble his screenplay was once an intelligent statement on class struggle inspired by the literary classics The Grapes of Wrath, Great Expectations, and The Great Gatsby: a statement—with horror overtones—regarding the plight of the homeless and their harsh treatment against the materialistic, narcissistic ignorance of L.A’s high society. (A concept that is not that far off the mark of what 1974’s Homebodies—see my upcoming “Scarecrow Challenge Day 31” review—tried to accomplish, only regarding the plight of the elderly vs. real estate greed.)

And if Open House was lensed by John Carpenter and washed in a stylized Dario Argento giallo color palate or went the Umberto Lenzi trashy-scuzzy route of Nightmare Beach and Hitcher in the Dark (both 1989). And maybe if William Lustig of Maniac (1980) fame got a hold of Multiple Listings as a precursor to his home video slasher-classics Relentless and the Maniac Cop series. Maybe then we’d have a stylized-slasher romp that, like Maniac, left such a strong impression on the rental market, it’d be the subject of a remake, like Maniac (2012), and all of the 21st century Halloween inversions.

But alas: Your screenplay falls into the hands of Indian-American exploitation writer-director Jag Mundra. And it becomes his first American feature film résumé bullet in a long list of exploitive horror and erotic thrillers that he churned out for the U.S direct-to-video market: Hack-o-Lantern (1988; aka Halloween Night; ugh, you can’t fool us), The Jigsaw Murders (1990), and Night Eyes (1990; Andrew Stevens and Tanya Roberts—you see where that ditty is going). And Mundra’s soft-core pseudo-porn roster, tailor made for Showtime late-night cable viewing, goes on and on: Last Call, Legal Tender, Wild Cactus, Tropical Heat, Improper Conduct, Irresistible Impulse, etc.

Now Mundra’s propensity for exploitive, late night soft-core pseudo-porn is important to note: While his films had a profitable “niche” and met a market demand, they are none-the-less, poorly (over) lit, cinematographically-flat productions. Yeah, the quality of Mundra’s oeuvre is analogous the porn movies shot by John Howard; himself an innovator of injecting extended bondage scenes into erotic adult films featuring fleshed-out characters and extended out-of-the-norm-for-porn plots. (See Spine, Howard’s ‘80s SOV slasher; newly reviewed for B&S Movies’ “October 2019 Slasher Month,” coming soon.)

Granted, Open House isn’t exactly an SOV frolic, and it’s not a Howard-lensed erotic potboiler or a porn film—but yikes—it is damn close to it. And David Mickey Evans deserved better. And star Joseph Bottoms (The Black Hole, The Intruder Within)—who fell from winning a 1975 Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year and working with Meryl Streep in the Emmy Award-winning mini-series, Holocaust (1978)—deserved better. And Carpenter’s then ex-wife, Adrienne Barbeau (Creepshow, The Fog; used to full marketing advantage on Open House), deserved better. (According to interviews, she took the film to “pay the bills,” in this case, her son’s tuition fees; god knows what financial straits Joe was in that made him take this real estate slasher.)

I know. I know. R.D, you’re off-the-rails, again. The truth is: This is a case of where the pre-production history of the off-the rails celluloid madness that is Cobra, Tango & Cash, and D-Tox is more interesting than the actual movie itself.

Another truth: The only reason I rented this real estate stinker is because it was set inside a radio station and, because of my career choice, I’m obsessed with radio station depictions in cinema. And I am a stuck up snob in regards to the inaccurate technical depictions of radio stations in film. And outside of A Matter of Degrees, FM, and Outside Ozona (which aren’t technically perfect themselves), most of those radio flicks are epic fails. (Eric Bogosian’s Talk Radio (1988) and Kevin Costner’s The Upside of Anger (2005) are the exceptions to the rule.)

Thankfully, Sam B’s talk radio psychologist, Dr. David Kelley, unlike most movie jocks, wears a set of headphones when he opens a microphone—and doesn’t pick up an actual phone to take on-air calls (it creates a “feedback” loop that’ll squeal-your-ears-to-bleed). It seems the production benefited from some free technical advice, courtesy of the staff of KRTH 101.1 “K-Earth 101” Los Angeles that rented out a spare studio to the shoot—so Open House has its realistic studio depictions going for it. But that technical accuracy isn’t enough to overlook the film’s porno-rate acting. It’s bad. Like pick-an-SOV ‘80s horror film, bad. Like Blood Cult inept. Like Spine awful.

Uh, plot please, R.D?

So, Los Angeles, instead of being plagued by Lawrence Aston’s (of Spine) nurse-hating spine-ripper behind “The Linda Murders,” we have a faceless, scruffy hulk-of-a-homeless man, dubbed “The Open House Killer,” who likes to chow down at the to-be crime scenes on a can of dog food (he leaves the can as a “calling card”) before he gives the agents a taste of his razor blade-adorned plunger-to-the-face. But he’s not against changing up his M.O with an electrocution, a hanging, an axe decapitation, and a good ‘ol fashioned neck snap by bare hand (each utterly lacking in suspense or shock).

And what’s Ms. Barbeau have to do with all of this? She runs the real estate office supplying the bodies—and the “kill list” via a real estate listing callously dumped into the back alley trash. And Harry the Homeless (Darwyn Swalve, who’s actually very good here; he went toe-to-toe with Paco Querak! as Anatola Blanco in Hands of Steel!) calls his kills into Dr. Dave’s show, “Survival Line,” on KDRX radio because Barbeau is Dr. Dave’s squeeze. (Hey, Snake is the one who called her a “squeeze,” first.)

“I got something to say. I want to make a statement, man,” smacks the dog food-caked lips of Harry the Homeless slasher, he of the razor blade-adorned plunger.

Not in this movie, Harry. Not in this movie. Alas, you’re not a slasher-champion for social injustice, a la Tom Joad, Pip Pirrip, or Nick Carraway. And your statement is that, while you were an intriguing David Mickey Evans-penned antagonist-cum-protagonist on paper, you ended up being just another misunderstood, Grade-Z slasher.

Welcome to the house of tedium that you’re dying to get out of. Close the door on this open house. Watch the full film at your own peril.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.

Slasher Top Tens: Jesse Berberich

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jesse Berberich is a media critic and regular contributor to online publications and the retro zine, Drive-In Asylum. He is also the co-curator and host of Disreputable Cinema, a cult genre film screening series at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NYC. For Halloween this year, Disreputable Cinema will host RetroActive — five cult classics from the 1980s drenched in blood and nostalgia from 10/26 to the finale on Halloween night.

1. Maniac: A film that drips and oozes with grit and sleaze is the film for me, and none is as sleazy as Bill Lustig’s notorious 1980 classic. It’s a viewing experience like none other with a relentlessly bleak atmosphere, stunning Savini effects, and a standout performance from Joe Spinell. It’s the kind of film that’ll make you think twice about riding the subway or walking home alone. Also, this was the debut film in Disreputable Cinema, followed by a stellar Q&A with Bill Lustig, and I’ll always have fond memories of sitting in the back of the Museum of the Moving Image’s theater, watching on proudly as a packed house screamed in bloody terror at the gory mayhem.

2. Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker: Speaking of sleazy…wow. Sleazy is when a young high school teen is caught in the middle of a screwy aunt with incestual intentions played by Susan Tyrell and a deeply homophobic detective played by Bo Svenson who bullies and uses the bad “F” word, all while bodies pile up around him. It’s creepy, icky in all the right ways, and a captivating film with a straightforward style that just arrests you and never lets go.

3. Sleepaway Camp: Excuse the pun, but it doesn’t get campier than this. Makes me glad I never went to summer camp as a kid! I love how outlandish and charmingly quirky this film is. It’s endlessly re-watchable for these reasons. The dialogue is sharp with a wicked sense of humor, and the production has a trashy mystique to it that absorbs you like a proper low budget video store gem, which, indeed, it was. I remember hanging out in my local video store (oddly called West Coast Video since it was located in Queens, NYC) when I was still in middle school and just being mesmerized by this one’s box art. 

4. Hello Mary Lou, Prom Night II:I have such an affinity for high school horror because I think the genre is at its purest when it appeals directly to teenagers, traditionally its largest audience, and engages in their fears about growing up and their burgeoning sexuality. For my money, this is the most perfect example of that subgenre because the titular supernatural slasher is the ultimate expression of teenage desires to act out and “be bad,” but also the fear of what that change could actually do. And, oh how I LOVE Mary Lou. She’s witty, sultry, and rebellious — one of my favorite horror villains of the 80s.

5. Pieces: This is one NASTY gore-fest! It’s relentless from the start. The mystery of the psycho-sexual slasher in this film may be investigated by possibly the most hopelessly incompetent police force in film history, but like any good b-movie shlock, that’s actually part of the appeal, as are, of course, the kill scenes. The violence is perpetrated by a proper giallo villain in all black and composed without logic but with a dreamlike artistic separation from reality.

6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge: The second entry in this franchise is less gory than the first and nowhere near as wide in scope as the other sequels, but I love it for that. It’s a self-contained, tense picture that subverts and plays around with tropes of the slasher genre at a time it was beginning its decline. There’s something quite creepy about the idea of a slasher not simply killing his victims, but imposing his will and controlling their bodies and minds. It goes back to the appeal of horror for teenagers, and how they are terrified of their own changing bodies.

7. Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter: I’m a big Jason fan, and I find the good in all the films, even the ones hated by most, but I think this one is truly the best. It may not have the tension of the original, but Jason is more imposing and menacing than previously seen, the kill scenes are thrilling and uninhibited, thanks to the returning Tom Savini, and the cast is full of likable, or delightfully dislikeable, characters that serve their purpose in lining up for the slaughter. Also, find me a better dance scene in a horror movie!

8. Drive-In Massacre: One of the finest early slashers. It’s grimy and has a taut, almost documentarian tone thanks to its low budget. It also sleazes up the great American tradition that is the drive-in theater. In fact, having a slasher stalk the grounds of a drive-in is quite ingenious when you think about it, because it represents a loss of safety in a place of social fun that quite effectively mirrors the constant loss of safety and innocence in American society.

9. Terror Firmer: Some may dispute this inclusion on my list, but there’s no denying that this trashy Troma classic has the right atmosphere and all the tropes of a traditional slasher flick. We’ve got a mystery, a workable location, colorful characters, and one hell of a messed up villain. Sounds like a slasher to me. The effects are cheesy, low budget fun and underneath the madness, one will find a rebellious attitude that demands us to resist the mainstream and always fight for what we think is art. It’s the most punk rock and sincerest slasher flick of all time.

10. Halloween: No list of slasher favorites would be complete without the one that set the standard and inspired a whole generation of filmmakers. Every film above owes its creation to the tale of the night Michael Myers came home. This film remains unmatched in its innovation, spine-chilling scares, and enduring legacy. It’s always a pleasure to return to this classic in the month of October because there’s nothing like watching the best film during the year’s best holiday season.

Exploring: The Halloween That Never Was

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As much as we love the Halloween series — give or take a few Halloween remakes and quasi-sequels — the idea that there were unmade films in the series makes us both giddy at the prospect and simultaneously sad at the loss of what we never got to see. Join us as we share several of the Halloween movies that never got made.

A totally different version of Halloween II: When Carpenter and Hill were both lured back to the nascent franchise — well, as much of a franchise as one film and a proposed sequel can be — an early script had Laurie Strode living in a massive apartment complex years after the original murders. They even discussed filming it in 3D!

Unnamed Halloween anthology films: 1982’s Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is a definite break in the saga of Michael Meyers, as creators John Carpenter and Debra Hill intended the end of the second film to be the actual end. The goal for this third film was to use the brand name to create a whole new series of annual films. Director and co-writer Tommy Lee Wallace told Fangoria, “It is our intention to create an anthology out of the series, sort of along the lines of Night Gallery, or The Twilight Zone, only on a much larger scale, of course.” Sadly, this never came to pass.

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers: After their 1986 release of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Cannon Films approached Carpenter and Hill to write and possibly direct this movie. Carpenter worked with Dennis Etchison, who had written the novelizations of the second and third films under the nom de plume Jack Martin, to create a script that Moustapha Akkad rejected as too cerebral. That script involved a Haddonfield where Michael Meyers and Dr. Loomis are dead, parents have banned the holiday of Halloween and Tommy Doyle and Lindsay Wallace drawn to one another by fate, as the phantom spirit of Meyers soon shows that he is stronger than even death itself. There’s even a drive-in setpiece that has Carpenter’s The Fog and Christine playing before The Shape emerges and sets the screen ablaze during a screening of a Friday the 13th sequel. Despite discussions with Joe Dante to direct, Carpenter and Hill would finally sell off their rights to the film and leave the series behind.

Another take on Halloween V: As messy and bad as this movie got, the proposed sequel script by Robert Harders (De Palma’s Home Movies) had The Shape brought back to life by lightning after being blasted down a mineshaft and down a river. All of the evil would have been taken out of him and by the end of the film, Dr. Loomis would unsuccessfully defend him against an angry mob.

Could Halloween 6 be worse? Maybe: For all of the chances that this series has — and hasn’t — taken, this insane script by Phil Rosenberg might be the craziest of all. It starts with The Shape as a homeless man, hiding out for five years before a Chicago TV reporter named Dana comes to Haddonfield to do a story on the town’s history with Halloween. Before you know it, she learns that she’s a forgotten sister of Laurie Strode, Tommy Doyle is able to view Hell and its Samhain festivals through the Matrix and Dr. Loomis shows up as a patient in Smith’s Grove. You can read it right here if you want.

Pinhead vs. The Shape? Say it isn’t so. OK, it isn’t: Doug Bradley, Pinhead himself, told Your Move Magazine that “I was told that the year before Freddy vs. Jason was released, Dimension Films rejected two scripts for a Hellraiser–Halloween crossover, which was obviously where they would go because they owned both franchises. I was told the reason they turned it down is because they didn’t think it would work. They predicted that Freddy vs. Jason would bomb, but it opened at the top of the box office and stayed there for a second weekend – I think I’m right in saying that it was the first movie that year to do so. After its success, Dimension wanted a Hellraiser–Halloween movie made immediately, so it was certainly going ahead. I had a couple of phone conversations with Clive Barker about it and I was getting quietly excited. Clive said he would write it and I heard reports John Carpenter would direct. The Akkad brothers, who produced Halloween, retained control of the sequels and didn’t want the crossover to be made. I guess they didn’t want Michael Myers hanging around with the likes of Pinhead.”

Halloween H2O + Carpenter: Carpenter was originally in the running to be the director for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later since Jamie Lee Curtis wanted to reunite everyone from the original film. Carpenter agreed, but his starting fee as director was $10 million, which he felt was proper compensation for revenue he never received from the original film. When Akkad refused that offer, Carpenter walked away.

Halloween 3D? Not with Rob Zombie: The director’s cut of Zombie second — and most divisive take on Haddonfield — ends with The Shape, Dr. Loomis and Laurie Strode all dead. Where can you go from here? Dimension gave writer Todd Farmer and director Patrick Lussier (the remake of My Bloody Valentine and Drive Angry) an entire week to figure that out. He emerged with a script that changed the ending, with Laurie stabbing Loomis and her running away from the police with Michael, who disappears and leaves her to be committed to Smith’s Grove and a new head doctor, played by Tom Atkins. At the end, Laurie would commit suicide to free herself and Michael revealing that his face had actually become the mask. Sadly, even though the script went over well, the team had already committed to Drive Angry.

Halloween by way of Saw: There was also 2015 movie that was almost made by the team of Saw IV-VII, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton. It would have had Michael of a rampage in Russellville, a neighboring town of Haddonfield, on the night of his execution. Officer Hunt, played by Hunter von Leer in Halloween II, would return to protect his daughter. The film would have taken place in 1988 and had some really gory kills in the script, but Dimension lost the rights to Blumhouse.

Did I miss anything? Is there a script that you know about that didn’t get made? Do you want to talk about the demonic teenager who originally nursed The Shape back to health before it was switched to the old man in Halloween V? Wouldn’t a movie about the Cult of Thorn be awesome? Let me know!