Monthly Archives: January 2022

Joshua and the Promised Land (2003)

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Wow.

This film was created almost entirely over four years by one person, somehow named Jim Lion* and if you think God plays dice with the universe, well, I offer you this movie.

Joshua Carter and his guardian angel, Christopher Andrew Eugene Bozioni, escape the sadness of Joshua’s home life and go back to the Old Testament to relive the life of the real Joshua. Except that, you know, everyone is a lion and no one has paws, a tail or manes. They all look unfinished. They all look incredibly harrowing, to be be frank. I guess maybe the guardian angel is a wolf? And what’s with the narrator and floating demon purple blobs?

I mean, this is the kind of movie that interrupts combat to have a soldier use a mallet like a video game character and then reminds us, in the midst of all this fun, that Moses had to die in the desert because he struck a rock instead of speaking to it, so God told him that since he didn’t listen, he’d never see the promised land. Perhaps this needs to be better explained to children than by floating characters that aren’t properly synched to their dialogue. Also, Moses made his followers drink wet cement when he was mad at them, so perhaps that also needs some discussion with the little ones this is intended for.

What a fun trip Chris has taken Joshua on, one in which he faces death, learns how to kill other lion people, is alone for forty days and nights before wandering for forty years in an unforgiving desert before he finally goes home to cut a demon in half. Also: mass murder is justified by a child.

Despite the promise of an angel, Joshua is still late for dinner.

If you come to my house after the pandemic, you will be forced to watch this movie.

Until that happens, you can watch this on YouTube.

*There’s a Joshua and the Promised Land: Reanimated coming soon. I can’t wait.

Black Neon (1991)

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A pretty much lost Ozploitation movie — thanks YouTube! — Black Neon is the story of Tom Maranta, a bouncer who finally decides to give up a life of crime at the same time that Pharoah, his biggest enemy, is released frm jail for stabbing him. A showdown has to happen.

Day and Strike of the Panther actor James Richards directed, co-wrote (with Edward John Stazak) and appears in this movie as Jack Coburn (Stazak produced, executive produced and stars in it as Tom Maranta), making it a brawling auteur film.

You have to admire whoever made the box art for this movie, because they claim that it has the intensity of “..ROAD HOUSE” when none of that is on screen. That said, it does have lots of neon signs and Bava-lit nightmares of when Pharaoh stabbed Tom. Also, this is just about dealing with what it’s like to be in a fight and the PTSD after as it is fighting, which it’s not as, but you should probably know that. Were it made by better filmmakers, perhaps it’d be a movie worth discussing. As it is, it’s a lot of hanging out, sitting on bikes, arguing, dudes being dudes and yeah, that big fight at the end.

Perhaps you’re a James Richards uber fan and you can set me straight on what I missed.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Adam Chaplin (2011)

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Directed, written, scored and starring Emanuele De Santi — I imagine he also made sandwiches for everyone — this movie is billed as the most bloody movie ever and lives up to that in buckets and buckets of non-stop plasma.

Heaven’s Valley is controlled by a mob boss named Denny Richards, who has killed our hero Adam’s wife. So Adam does what any of us would do in a place where the cops are the criminals and he has no power. He gives himself over to a demon and starts punching gigantic bloody holes inside people that spray gore all over the camera.

There’s a sequel — here’s a page about it — from Hotel Inferno (and uncredited co-director and co-writer) Giulio De Santi and Hotel Inferno 2: The Cathedral of Pain director Tiziana Machella in production.

Basically, imagine if The Crow had a few drinks with Riki-Oh and they decided that a movie that’s a non-stop fight scene punctuated with upside down crosses was a good idea. Well, let me tell you, it’s a great idea. Sure, there’s no story, but when has that ever stopped us before?

The Darkness Beyond (2000)

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A copy of the Necronomicon — the fake book* that H.P. Lovecraft used for his book — has brought dark forces to our plane and allowed them to wage war against humanity within the bodies of their long-dead family and friends.

The Darkness Beyond — also known as L’altrove — was one I found on a list of Italian movies made after the days of Filmirage. Shot on digital video by director and writer Ivan Zuccon — who followed this with Unknown Beyond — this has a lot of style despite its budget and untrained cast. Zuccon has continuted making Lovecraft-themed movies like Colour from the Dark and Herbert West: Re-Animator.

Look — it’s not perfect. It’s not anywhere near the visions of Fulci or Bava, but I’m excited that Italian filmmakers — yeah, I realize that this is 22 years old, but Zuccon has a movie in production now — are still out there making movies.

*Two members of the Magickal Childe scene — a New York City book store that was the major focal point for American magic/magick from the 70’s until the 90’s — Khem Caigan (the Necronomicon‘s illustrator) and Alan Cabal claimed that the book is a known hoax. My theory has always been that Peter Levenda, an occult author who wrote the book Unholy Alliance, is Simon, as the copyright notice for this book is in his name.

Scum of the Earth! (1963)

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The first roughie and the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman, Scum of the Earth! tells the story of Kim Sherwood (Vickie Miles, AKA Allison Louise Downe, who was also in several other Lewis movies like She-Devils on Wheels), a college girl She-Devilshe wrong way and ends up trying to pay her tuition with glamour photos. But you know how the road to hell goes. It ends up going deeper and deeper, with Kim getting blackmailed into doing more and more explicit photos and dealing with sexualized violence, which is pretty insane for 1963.

Shot in six days and filmed in the same Miami locations that Blood Feast stained, it was made in black and white so that it would look filthy, like some kind of smoker film that would start turning on some old cigar smoking men before turning on them and shocking them with its willingness to make its sex violent. There’s also the matter of Sandy, another older girl, and her willingness to put the young Kim through all this so that she herself can escape.

Lewis — and Friedman — were the kings of talking you into the theater. They blessed this movie with some of the best taglines ever, like “Hell is their only address and they offer you a cheap substitute for fulfillment … in exchange for your soul!” and “Depraved. Demented. Loathsome. Nameless. Shameless. These are the Scum of the Earth!”

Lewis also knew how to write some dialogue, with stuff like “All you kids make me sick! You act like little Miss Muffet and down inside you’re dirty, do you hear me? Dirty! You’re greedy and self-centered and think you can get away with anything. You’re no better than the girl who sells herself to a man, you’re worse because you’re a hypocrite. And now little Miss Muffet is in trouble and she’s all outraged virtue. Well you listen and you listen well, you’re damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale.” 

This was beyond hot stuff in the early 60s. Now you can stream it into your home. Times have changed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Hotel Poseidon (2021)

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David reluctantly pretends to be the manager of Hotel Poseidon, a place with fungus-covered walls. As he wanders the corridors like a zombie, he becomes a passive spectator to what happens around him. As clients stumbled around without money to pay and his family members haunt him, David begins to slowly lose his mind and disappear within the Hotel Poseidon.

Director and writer Stefan Lernous is committed to keeping it weird, what with a closed hotel that still has squatters hiding inside, all prepared to make David’s life a hassle. Everyone is covered in white makeup, dead bodies are disposed of in shocking ways and the entire inside becomes a jungle for our protagonist to get as lost as some viewers may be by this movie.

There’s not a lot of direction, but the whole thing is gorgeously ugly. Hotel Poseidon is financed by the Belgian avant-garde theater company Abbatoir Fermé and feels like a short that was given more moments of weirdness all around it. I didn’t fall in love with it, but in no way was I bored or upset that I watched it. It looks way better than it plays, if that makes sense.

You can watch Hotel Poseidon on the Arrow Player. Just visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer (1999)

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Ira Einhorn (Kevin Anderson) created Earth Day, but yeah, he also killed his girlfriend and kept her in a trunk for a long time. She was found, he never came back home and he was convicted of killing Holly Maddux (played by Naomi Watts) in absentia. Her dad (Tom Skeritt, for the ladies) works hard to bring him to justice in this story of hippie values gone wrong.

Strangely, this is like the fifth William Graham TV movie I’ve watched in the last few days. I’m not complaining. He also made Elvis’ last narrative movie effort, Change of Habit.

This is a typical late 90s ripped from the headlines TV movie about someone who somehow stayed ahead of the law for decades and kept working on being released until he died in jail.

You know, someday I may add up all the hours of TV movies I’ve watched and wonder what I’ve done with my life, but it isn’t going to be today.

 

Gigi Graham’s Deucember Picks!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Our friend Gigi Graham — whose site Midnight Movie Monster is an ongoing inspiration to our site — has selected a different movie for every day of December, or Deucember. We want more people to read the awesome stuff that she writes, so here’s everything about this annual month of movie madness from Gigi herself:

Deucember is a yearly event from the crew over at The Grindhouse Cinema Database. Anyone can participate, and the goal is simple. Watch at least one exploitation film per day, and share it with the rest of the community via the hashtag #Deucember on social media. Unlike a lot of other monthly movie events, there are no scavenger hunt conditionals or specific subgenre restrictions. Skin, sin, and splatter are all fair game, in a choose your own adventure journey to the heart of the discarded and disreputable corner of cinema. With participants checking in from all over the world, it’s also a great opportunity to discover new titles from the fringes.

As someone who finds the winter holiday season stressful, Deucember is the perfect chance to check out of the usual festive folderol and take a deep dive into my ever expanding watch lists, and choose 31 films to watch and review over 31 days. Each year I agonize over the perfect playlist like I’m making a crush a mixtape, and in a certain sense, I kind of am. What could a certified midnight movie monster love more than obscure cinema? Not much. 

Here’s a compendium of my Deucember reviews for 2021, and where you can watch each title. The holidays come but once a year, but discovering the perfect piece of oddball cinema is forever.

DAY 1: Cry for Cindy: For 2021’s big opening, we’re going hardcore. Porno chic, censorship battles and the (double) life and times of a beautiful blond disco queen in 1976’s high class call girl opus Cry For Cindy.

Available on disc as part of Vinegar Syndrome’s Peekarama line, as an Anthony Spinelli triple feature with Touch Me and Act Of Confession.

DAY 2: The Nesting: A porn director makes a bid for the mainstream, and ends up with a Section 3 video nasty. Gothic novels, ghost hookers and Gloria Grahame in 1981’s The Nesting.

Streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi, also on disc via Blue Underground.

DAY 3: Sweet Trash: A criminal syndicate run by a super computer forces a hard drinking, debt ridden longshoreman on the lam. Hookers, headhunters and old New York in 1970’s Sweet Trash.

Available on double feature disc with The Hang Up, as part of the Vinegar Syndrome Drive-In Collection.

DAY 4: The Black Room: A sexy swingers’ pad in the Hollywood hills draws a married couple into a tangled web of kink, infidelity & vampirism in undeservedly obscure 1982 sex & death classic The Black Room.

This hasn’t had a home release since the VHS era, prints occasionally pop up on popular streaming sites from time to time.

DAY 5: Bonnie’s Kids: A pair of sultry sisters shoot their abusive stepfather & flee to L.A. only to find bigger problems in the big city. Mobsters, closet cases and bickering hitmen….EVERYONE is looking for Bonnie’s Kids (1972).

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

DAY 6: The Hard Road: Pretty Pamela spirals from unplanned pregnancy to the most perilous depths of sex, drugs & rock and roll in Gary Graver helmed tower of teen peril…1970’s The Hard Road.

Available as a digital download from Something Weird Video

DAY 7: Madness: A weekend getaway turns from holiday to horror when an escaped convict launches a home invasion to recover his hidden $300 million lira. Warhol superstar Joe D’allesandro stars in 1980’s Madness.

Streaming on Kanopy and an edited cut is on Amazon Prime.

DAY 8: Night of 1000 Cats: Time to take a trip south of the border for some Mexican horror. Pretty beaches! Pretty women! Sociopathic playboys with murderous house pets! It’s time for Night Of 1000 Cats (1972).

Streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime and Pluto TV.

DAY 9: Room 43/Passport of Shame:An innocent French waitress gets entangled with a vice racket. A London cabbie & his friends are the only ones who can save her. Gutter noir & blonde bombshell Diana Dors in Passport To Shame (1958).

Streaming on BFI Player Classics.

 

DAY 10: Francy’s Friday: A beautiful blonde turns the suburbs into a swinging place in this 1972 oddball softcore “couples” adult film. Not just any Friday, It’s… Francy’s Friday.

Available as a digital download from Something Weird Video.

DAY 11: Naked Massacre/Born for Hell: A shellshocked Vietnam vet gets stranded in Belfast, his obsessive nature & fractured mind about to spell terrible tragedy for a house full of nurses. It’s time for 1976’s bleak, based on a true story terror Naked Massacre.

Available as Born From Hell uncut and on disc from Severin, edited Naked Massacre cut streaming on Amazon Prime.

DAY 12: Common Law Wife: When a wealthy oilman wants to swap his live in girlfriend for a sexy stripper, a cavalcade of double crosses and sleazy secrets lead to murder. Lust in the Texas dust aside, it isn’t easy to get rid of a Common Law Wife (1963).

Available as a digital download from Something Weird Video

DAY 13: Mad Foxes: An aging Spanish playboy goes to war with a Nazi biker gang in left field rape revenge meets martial arts meets softcore meets heavy metal manic mess of a movie….. its the genre hopping 1981 sleazefest Mad Foxes.

The uncut version is available on DVD from Full Moon, the 69 minute edit is streaming on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

DAY 14: New York After Midnight: Betrayal, bisexuality and blood on the (disco) dance floor in pornographer Jacques Scandelari’s stylish exercise in exploitation thriller, 1978’s New York After Midnight.

This also hasn’t had a home release since the VHS era, prints occasionally pop up on popular streaming sites.

DAY 15: Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century: It’s the credited collie, fishbone comb, Italian/Canadian monster mash of copyright infringement cinema….1977’s Yeti: Giant Of The 20th Century.

Streaming on Tubi and Night Flight.

DAY 16: The Night God Screamed: Murder, men of God and a faux Manson family torment a former Old Hollywood star making a genre turn in 1971’s regional exploitation grab bag The Night God Screamed.

Hasn’t had a proper home release since the VHS era. As always, keep an eye on the popular streaming sites.

DAY 17: She Shoulda Said No!: Art imitates trash imitates life as moral panics and double standards destroy a beautiful blonde’s life in the marijuana mad meta, ripped from the headlines 1949 exploitation cheapie She Shoulda Said No!

Streaming on Amazon Prime, Direct TV and Paramount+, available on disc via Something Weird and Kino Lorber.

DAY 18: The Meatrack: A beautiful bisexual hustler can’t escape his past, even when immersed in the thriving gay underground culture of bathhouses, bawdy theaters and adult bookstores in 1970’s The Meatrack.

Available as a digital download from Something Weird Video.

DAY 19: She Mob:

A badass butch lesbian leads an all girl gang on a caper that leads to kink, blackmail and a kidnapped gigolo. Hold on to your bullet bras and black stockings, it’s 1968’s She Mob.

Available on disc from Something Weird and the American Genre Film Archive.

DAY 20: Horror Safari:

Deception and death follow a band of fortune hunters looking for a lost stash of gold in 1982 jungle jamboree Horror Safari.

Available on disc from Severin, streaming with an edited cut and its original title (Invaders Of The Lost Gold) on Amazon Prime.

DAY 21: Cover Girl Killer: Wow! is a popular pin up magazine….beautiful young women are just dying to be on the cover. There’s a psycho loose in the Soho streets, can Scotland Yard stop him before it’s too late? Find out in 1959’s Cover Girl Killer.

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

 

DAY 22: Evil Come, Evil Go: Street preacher Sarah Jane is going to cure the world of casual sex & sinful men, one stab at a time. She’s even indoctrinated a new Sister into her bloody order. It’s 1972’s sleazy, softcore slash fest Evil Come, Evil Go.

Available on disc from Vinegar Syndrome as part of The Walt Davis Collection triple feature disc, alongside Oh! You Beautiful Doll and Widow Blue.

DAY 23: Lady, Stay Dead: Sun, sand and a sex obsessed handyman spell doom for a diva. Too bad her sister proves much harder to kill. It’s sun drenched Ozsploitation sleaze in 1981’s Lady, Stay Dead.

Available on a Code Red disc that is now out of print, but pretty easy to find on the secondary market.

DAY 24: Teenage Seductress: A writer becomes dependent on his pretty new secretary. Will he discover her dark secret before he finds his life destroyed by a Teenage Seductress (1975)?

Available on disc from Vinegar Syndrome, as a double feature with Little Miss Innocence.

DAY 25: Test Tube Babies: It’s a Christmas miracle…of life. Can a newfangled medical procedure save a married couple from booze, bickering and boredom? Find out in 1948 white coater Test Tube Babies.

Available as a digital download from Something Weird Video, there’s also an edited cut streaming on Amazon Prime.

DAY 26: Stunts: Stuntpeople know putting their lives on the line is an occupational hazard, but it’s not usually a murderer that they have to worry about. Death follows the crew of an action film in 1977’s Stunts.

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

DAY 27: Shanty Tramp: A Southern fried slattern leaves murder and mayhem in her wake with her conniving machinations. A landmark of regional hicksploitation sleaze, can anyone survive the night with Shanty Tramp (1967)?

Available for digital download via Something Weird Video and streaming on MUBI.

DAY 28: Lurkers: You can never go home again, which beautiful cellist Cathy learns the hard way. Let the bridge & tunnel kids call them ghosts, in Roberta Findlay’s New York City we call them Lurkers (1988).

Available on a double feature disc with Prime Evil from Vinegar Syndrome.

DAY 29: Lady Cocoa: When a gangster’s moll goes state’s evidence, both the cops and the criminals get way more than they bargained for. The impossibly lovely Lola Falana stars in Lady Cocoa (1975).

Streaming on Tubi, Brown Sugar and The Film Detective. Available on a double feature disc from Vinegar Syndrome with The Candy Tangerine Man.

DAY 30: The Love Statue: LSD Experience: Bohemians, big doses & bitchy brunettes all plague a painter in New York City’s Greenwich Village. But did they drive him to murder? Or was it just a bad trip? It’s David Durston’s The Love Statue: LSD Experience (1965).

Available on a Secret Key DVD that is currently out of print, but still available on the secondary market.

Day 31: Hollywood Horror House/Savage Intruder: An aging actress makes a handsome stranger into her personal gigolo. A familiar story…..except this time it involves miniature drug dealers, a lot of colorful checkerboards, and electric knife dismemberments. To see 2021 out, it’s regional hagsploitation/hippie hangover hybrid Hollywood Horror House (1970).

Available on disc from Vinegar Syndrome.

Crowhaven Farm (1970)

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The ABC Movie of the Week for November 24, 1970, Crowhaven Farm embraces two trends of the 70s. One, the feeling that the hippy movement was over and a return to some small town normlacy was the only way to heal after the last few tumultuous years — indeed, it seems like several decades pass between 1963 and 1969, with tentpole events like the Tate-LaBianca murders and Woodstock occurring a week apart. And the second, and for our purposes most critical piece of the 70s was that the occult was no longer saying mantras and lighting candles and enjoying white witch magic. The true black arts were here, they wanted your soul and they would crush you using your elders. Remember that ironic pin you wore, “Don’t trust anyone under thirty?” Now you’re living it.

Maggie and Ben Porter (Hope Lange, who had an Oscar for Peyton Place and years of TV fame on a much friendly visit into the world of the supernatural, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; Paul Burke, the lead on ABC’s 12 O’Clock High and Naked City, as well as Lyon Burke in Valley of the Dolls, later found innocent of a racketeering scheme with Harry Connick Jr.’s dad and after that the grandfather of Arrested Development‘s Alia Shawkat) inherit a farm in New England, a place that another family member wants so badly that he heads up before them, nearly hits a ghost girl with his car and dies in a fireball.

Aren’t the young meant for the city? Well, Ben’s been trying to get his art career off the ground. Crowhaven Farm just seems to inspire him. But Maggie can’t stop seeing the past of that town and the 15th century seems even more restrictive and oppressive than the white picket fence Eisenhower America that the Love Generation was running from and now to.

The last remnants of that Love Generation, the weekenders as they call themselves, come to town and use it for a place to swing, baby. And while it seems like Maggie is barren, taking care of a girl named Jennifer (Cindy Eilbacher, who is in Shanks, but also between this movie, Bad Ronald, The Death of Richie, The Force of Evil, City in Fear and The Ghost of Cypress Swamp can lay claim to some degree of made for TV movie royalty) seems to make up for their lack of family.

But ah, Crowhaven Farm is an odd place. And as soon as Old Hollywood shows up, much less John Carradine as an eerie handyman, you know that Maggie is doomed. So while Jennifer attempts to become more than just a daddy’s girl and really daddy’s girl, she’s haunted by the spirits of Satan loving Puritans that she sold out for a child centuries ago, which makes her willing to release herself of her marriage and rush back to the city with the child she wants and without the husband too quick to believe that one of those swingers knocked her up or that she’s been giving it up to her boss.

All this plus a blink and you’ll miss it cameo by Willaim Smith as a policeman!

Director Walter Grauman filmed quite a few TV movies in the 70s, including Daughter of the Mind, The Old Man Who Cried Wolf and Are You In the House Alone? Writer John McGreevey’s career started back in 1951, writing two episodes of Lights Out and included movies like Hot Rod Girl and TV like eighteen episodes of The Waltons (my own personal hellscape), Charles & Diana: A Royal Love Story, Night Crossing and The New Adventures of Heidi.

This is the perfect example of what a TV movie can do, providing sinister feelings and true fright within a tight, taunt under two hour runtime.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The House That Would Not Die (1970)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Melanie Novak writes about the Golden Age of Hollywood, infusing her weekly movie reviews with history, gossip, and the glamour of the studio era.  You can read her reviews at www.melanienovak.com and follow her on Instagram @novak_melanie.

Barbara Stanwyck was a legend of the golden age of Hollywood.  From 1929-1964, she starred in 81 feature films, earning four Academy Award nominations for Best Actress and eventually receiving an Honorary Oscar for her lifetime body of work in 1981.  She’s at number 11 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 50 Greatest Female Screen legends.  Her film Double Indemnity (1944) is number 29 on the AFI’s list of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, and her films The Lady Eve (1941) and Ball of Fire (1941) are numbers 55 and 92 on the AFI list of the 100 Funniest American Films of All Time.  She was beloved by audiences, directors, co-stars, and especially film crews, who called her The Queen.

In the 1960s, she turned her attention to television, where she won a pair of Emmy Awards for her work on The Barbara Stanwyck Show and her role as the beloved matriarch Victoria Barkley on the western series The Big Valley.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that by the 1970s, when Stanwyck was nearing her mid-sixties with a mane of pure white hair she refused to dye and nothing left to prove, she’d ride off into the sunset and enjoy a life of leisure.

But if you thought that, you don’t know Barbara Stanwyck.  The orphan from Brooklyn who’d been supporting herself since she was fourteen was not about to go gently into that good night.

Jacques Tourneur, her director on The Barbara Stanwyck Show summed her up when he said, “She lives only for two things, and both of them are work.”1

In October 1970 ABC premiered The House That Would Not Die as their movie of the week, the first of three films Stanwyck would make with producer Aaron Spelling. 

Stanwyck gets top billing as Ruth Bennett, a woman who inherits a two-century old house that’s reputed to be haunted.  She and niece Sara (Kitty Winn) move in, and soon the neighbors are coming to get a look inside the beautiful old house.

Ruth and Sara make fast friends with a pair of potential suitors in Professor Pat McDougal (Richard Egan) and Stan Whitman (Michael Anderson, Jr.)  As a bit of a lark, Ruth allows two of the neighborhood busybodies to host a séance in the house, which sets the ghost story in motion.

The house starts to get creepy—doors open and close without warning, the wind blows wildly, and Ruth has disturbing dreams.  Pat turns unexpectedly violent for a moment, then forgets what he has just done.  Sara’s behavior is the most bizarre of all, and when she attacks and nearly strangles Ruth in the middle of the night, it’s clear she was possessed by a ghost during the séance. 

The pedestrian plot unspools as Ruth, Pat, Sara, and Stan try to unravel the mystery of who is possessing Sara and why.  There’s the requisite visit to the Hall of Records to research untimely deaths in the house, trips to the attic to read through old diaries and family history, and a climactic scene in a dank cellar hiding a secret grave where both Pat and Sara are possessed and turn murderous.

In the end, the ghost’s murderer is identified, justice is done, and Sara is set free as her possessor can finally rest in peace.

It pains me to pan a Barbara Stanwyck film, but this is one to miss.  It doesn’t contain enough scares or twists to disturb or surprise the audience, yet Stanwyck’s professionalism prevents it from being corny enough to enjoy as camp.  Her follow-up film with Spelling, A Taste of Evil (1971) is more entertaining, and Stanwyck really gets to let loose in the final act.

But even if these late additions to her towering resume aren’t worthy of her talents, Stanwyck was still in the game, the top-billed star in these made-for-television movies when most of her contemporaries were sidelined, dead, or relegated to cameo appearances.

Even in schlock like The House That Would Not Die, the Queen stays Queen.

 

Notes

1 Smith, Ella.  Starring Miss Stanwyck.