April 28: Alan Smithee — IMDB has 115 movies credited to the Alan Smithee pseudonym, which was created by the Directors Guild of America for use when a director doesn’t want their name on a movie.
This movie’s Alan Smithee is the combination of Terry Windsor, who had only directed Party Party when this was made, and his replacement Paul Aaron, who was unhappy with the final movie. Arron also wrote The Octagon and directed A Force of One, which doesn’t prepare one for comedy.
Morgan Stewart (Jon Cryer) is the son of Republican Senator Tom Stewart (Nicholas Pryor) and has spent most of his childhood at a boarding school while his mother Nancy (Lynn Redgrave) manages the family life, all with a plan of increasing the elder Stewart’s chance to be President. Yet when the Senatorial race gets hard, the idea of a son looks good in the media, so Morgan comes back home.
Morgan is really into horror movies, wearing a shirt for The Undead and putting posters for House of Wax, Dial M for Murder, The Mole People and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Curse of Frankenstein, Attack of the Puppet People, Psycho and Tales of Terrorup in his room. I mean, he even has a Zombie poster, a Day of the Dead shirt and goes to the mall to meet George Romero. We never see George’s face, he seems too small and he doesn’t have on a giant fishing vest, so I think it’s not him.
Seeing how Tom’s campaign manager is played by Paul Gleason, you know that something bad is going to happen. It’s pretty rote, but I mean, what did you expect?
But Morgan seems pretty cool. He has a Tobe Hooper-signed chainsaw, right? I was kind of hoping he’d use it on his mother after she takes down and tosses all his amazing posters. But man, even in today’s world where women go to horror conventions — I’m married to a lovely one! — the fact that Morgan meets Emily (Viveka Davis) while waiting to get The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh: The Films of George A. Romero signed seems a bit like a science fiction film.
April 28: Alan Smithee — IMDB has 115 movies credited to the Alan Smithee pseudonym, which was created by the Directors Guild of America for use when a director doesn’t want their name on a movie.
Alex L’Hiboux (Adrian Paul, Highlander: The Series) — his last name is the owl, get it? — is a vigilante who is known as The Owl because he hasn’t slept since his wife and daughter were killed eight years ago. Thanks to a young girl named Lisa (Erika Flores), he takes on a case to find her father and reconnects with the policewoman who helped him on the night of the tragedy that changed his life, Danny Santerre (Patricia Charbonneau).
Originally broadcast as a television pilot on CBS from 10:45 p.m. to 11:45 p.m. on Saturday, August 3, 1991 — this is what we call burning off a pilot — this was a 48-minute episode. When it was released on home video, every single shot ever filmed was reused and padded to make it 84 minutes long. Director and writer Tom Holland asked for his name to be taken off the home video.
Brian Thomson, who plays the bartender who is The Owl’s frenemy, was the Night Slasher in Cobra, Bozworth in Fright Night 2(which Holland did not work on) and Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Oh yeah, speaking of people in Cannon movies, Rick Zumwalt — Bull Hurley from Over the Top, Joshua in Penitentiary III and Boom Boom in Rockula — also shows up. And holy Canadian crap, there’s Alan Scarfe, the dad from Cathy’s Curse!
You know why people liked the Punisher back before his logo became a Nazi flag for cowards? Because you could have empathy for what he’s been through. The Owl seems like such a jerk that it’s hard to ever feel anything for him.
Deaf Crocodile Films, in association with distribution partner Comeback Company, has restored this little seen in the U.S. late 1960s Czech occult/horror anthology. Prazske Noci (Prague Nights) is inspired by Black Sabbath and features episodes directed by Milos Makovec, Jiri Brdecka and Evald Schorm.
I love how they referred to this movie: “a gorgeous and supernatural vision of ancient and modern Prague: caught between Mod Sixties fashions and nightmarish Medieval catacombs, and filled with Qabbalistic magic, occult rituals, clockwork automatons and giant golems.”
I mean, I’m already in love.
Filmed during the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague, Prague Nights begins with a businessman named Willy Fabricius (Milos Kopecky), lonely and lost in a foreign city, but looking for not love but some form of lust. And then he encounters the much younger, more gorgeous and way more mysterious Zuzana (Milena Dvorská), they travel through the sleeping city in her vintage limousine. As her driver Vaclav (Jiríi Hrzan) pulls into a cemetery, she begins to tell him the three stories that make up this movie:
In Brdecka’s chapter “The Last Golem,” Rabbi Jehudi Löw (Josef Blaha) has already created and used a golem, a gigantic silent homunculus from living clay. Emperor Rudolf II (Martin Ruzek) hears of this and wants to use the supernatural being for his own aims and even when told it can’t be revived, a less moral young rabbi named Neftali Ben Chaim (Jan Klusak) claims he can make it happen. But will his lust for the mute servant (Lucie Novotná) and need to inspire her be his undoing?
“Bread Slippers” — directed by Schorm — introduces us to a countess (Teresa Tuszyńska) who indulges all of her passions, whether for kisses from the maids, the sweetest of cakes or affairs that would scandalize her town. She’s pushed twin brothers into a duel for her heart that killed them both and now she’s led Saint de Clair (Josef Abrham) into death at his own hand. And all because he couldn’t get her the shoes she asked for, shoes made of — you read the title — bread. While the peasants go hungry, the countess literally steps upon what they yearn to eat.
Yet a strange shoemaker (Josef Somr) can and once he delivers them, he steals her away to an abandoned mansion, a place filled with mechanical servants, dust and cobwebs. A place where she will dance forever with her many victims.
Makovec’s “Poisoned Poisoner” shares the adventures of a murderess in the Middle Ages who kills off sex-crazed merchants set to the music of 60s Czech pop star Zdeněk Liška. Yet what happens when a woman who kills men and takes not only their money and jewelry but their hearts falls for one of her victims?
Prague Nights ends with the truth of Zuzana and why she needed the businessman so badly on this — and only this — night. What we have experienced is pure gorgeous cinema, a world that is so unlike so much of what we’ve seen that it very nearly feels animated. Colors change from black and white to monochromatic to more colors than we can nearly stand; cars drive into graves; lovers can be trapped in Hell forever. Yet it all makes your heart and mind and eyes sing. This film is pure magic and yet another film that Deaf Crocodile has put in front of me and won over every fiber of my being with.
There’s also another Czech anthology, Pearls of theNight, that I now need to track down!
You can get this from Deaf Crocodile, whose blu ray release has a new video interview with Czech film critic and screenwriter Tereza Brdečka on her father, Jiří Brdečka (co-director and co-writer of Prague Nights, covering his famed career as a filmmaker, animator and screenwriter; new audio commentary by Tereza Brdečka and Czech film expert Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company; two superb and haunting Jiří Brdečka animated short films: Pomsta (Revenge) and Jsouc na řece mlynář jeden (There Was a Miller On a River); a new essay by Tereza Brdečka on the making of the movie and new art by Beth Morris.
V chorniy, chorniy kimnati is directed and written by Denis Sobolev and tells the story of Volt (Artur Novikov), Tomcat (Anton Sokol), and Petiunia (Illia Vyshnevetskyi), three teens explore an abandoned archaeological dig site of a pagan origin in their small hometown. Inside, they find an amulet and get the idea to start wishing upon it. Volt asks for what’s in his heart: he wants to want wild dogs tear his history teacher to bloody chunks.
The substitute teacher that replaces her, Gottlib (Rei Yeremii), is more than just someone able to teach a class. He’s been after this group of pagans for decades, swearing revenge for the curse they placed on his mother. And yes, while the three teens hide in the woods, ashamed and fascinated by their wishes, everyone learns that this small Ukranian town has been filled with witches for hundreds of years and that hasn’t changed.
The main issues most reviewers have had with this movie are that it takes big leaps back and forth in time which makes it seem quite disjointed. And, well, if you don’t speak Ukrainian, the subtitles aren’t going to help you at all.
That said, I enjoyed seeing a movie that doesn’t depend on being set in the past to be a folk horror film. The Ukraine is a country that so many of us have thought about and the idea of a long-forgotten horror being so close to Kyiv is incredibly intriguing. The lure of wishes fulfilled exists everywhere, in every time, and rarely leads to positive ends.
Directed and written by Scott Goldberg and produced by Kevin Smith, The Forest Hills follows Rico (Chiko Mendez), who has been battling mental health issues since he was struck on the head somewhere in the middle of the Catskills. He has no idea what is a dream and what is reality, but he’s sure of one thing: he’s a werewolf. And Billy (Edward Furlong) keeps trying to convince him to transform.
The cast is the real draw here, as the film brings together werewolf actress par excellence Dee Wallace, slasher queen (and mangled dick expert) Felissa Rose, scream queen Debbie Rochon, Stacey Nelkin (Halloween III), Marianne Hagan (Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers) and, most amazingly, Shelley Duvall, who returned to acting to be in this movie to play Rico’s mother. Marc Summers from Double Dare even shows up!
With a mix of both psychological and actual horror, The Forest Hills is an intriguing movie filled with practical effects. Goldberg also made a short film by the same name in 2007 in which content creators Michelle and Elaine Torrance — do you think he likes The Shining? — seek the urban legend of the Forest Hills in Prestonsfield, Kentucky.
You can learn more at the official site for the movie.
Thanks to Esteban De Sade for reminding me — twice — that I confused Shelley Long and Shelley Duvall. I’m quite embarrassed.
There are only seven episodes left in the second season of this show and here’s hoping that there’s some magic in this journey into the Night Gallery.
“Lindemann’s Catch” was directed by Jeff Corey and written by Rod Serling. In anyone else’s hands, the end of this story would be like the comedy moments that litter this series. Yet there’s a lot of sadness in this story of Captain Hendrick Lindemann (Stuart Whitman), a fisherman who finds a mermaid (Annabelle Garth). The rest of his crew dreams of the money they’ll make by exploiting her. He dreams of love. He wants her to be able to live on land with him and even magic can’t make that happen.
“A Feast of Blood” is directed by Jeannot Szwarc and written by Stanford Whitmore. The teleplay is based on “The Fur Brooch” by Dulcie Gray and that title refers to the strange gift that Sheila (Sondra Locke) has been given by the much older Henry Mallory (Norman Lloyd). She’d rather be with someone younger and handsome, anyone but Malloy. “I’d sooner die than stay with you,” she yells and she gets her wish.
“The Late Mr. Peddington” has Thaddeus Conway (Harry Morgan) meeting with the widow Cora Peddington (Kim Hunter, Planet of the Apes) to plan the funeral of her husband. She needs the cheapest affair possible, as her husband left her just a $2,000 life insurance policy to live on for two years before she is given his substantial wealth. Randy Quaid makes an appearance as the embalmer in a story that really goes nowhere, but what do you expect from Jack Laird? This was based on “The Flat Male” by Frank Sisk and directed by Jeff Corey.
This episode feels like it’s kind of stalled out. I’m holding out hope that there will be a few great stories. I know “The Sins of the Fathers” is coming and that’s the thing keeping these reviews coming. That said, “Lindemann’s Catch” has a cold and dreary feel and at the end, when the captain dives into the water, ready to choose death over a life without a love that he feels as if he has connected to, Serling shows power even in an episode with some of the silliest special effects. One should be upset or frightened at the end instead of feeling the urge to laugh. Otherwise, that’s the bright spot of this Night Gallery.
Really easy. Just pour alcohol together over ice, then top with cranberry juice.
Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show or use these links:
April 28: Alan Smithee — IMDB has 115 movies credited to the Alan Smithee pseudonym, which was created by the Directors Guild of America for use when a director doesn’t want their name on a movie.
The Alan Smithee here is Jerrold Freedman, a director who also made a lot of TV before ending his career with this, including episodes of The X-Files, Night Gallery and movies and TV movies like Kansas City Bomber, A Cold Night’s Death, Unholy Matrimony, The Boy Who Drank Too Much and The Comeback.
Written by Stephen Harrigan, who also write a John Denver TV movie, this movie has to decide when OJ is a good guy and when he’s, well, a monster who beat and killed his second wife.
Bobby Hosea is Simpson and he was a former football player, which helped. Jessica Tuck is the doomed Nicole Brown Simpson. If you’re looking for famous people, well, there’s Terence Howard as young AC and Bruce Weitz as Robert Shapiro. But otherwise, one imagines that actors really avoided being in thsi cash-in movie, which was filmed in 1994 and not aired until after there was a jury for the trial.
The one thing I learned is that the biggest fight that OJ had with his wife, the one that led to the 911 call when he attacked her, was over her saying that he’d never win an Oscar being in a movie called The Naked Gun. Now, I’m not saying OJ was right, but I love The Naked Gun and Nicole nearly kept the world from seeing Nordberg going down the steps in a wheelchair. He’s still wrong and a murderer, but for that moment, for the first time ever, I understood a bit of how he felt. That’s filmmaking.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
When I first saw The Hitcher, I was probably 14 years old and saw it as a straight-ahead story of violence on the highway. I probably cheered at the end when Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) blew a hole into John Ryder (Rutger Hauer). But age and the miles wear on every man and now when I watch it, it does more than make me raise my fist in the air and shout. It makes me ruminate on the journeys life has taken me and how I’d rather be launched through a window and blasted down a hillside than live a slow, tedious and quiet death.
Halsey starts the film with the kind of confidence that someone at the end of their teens has. He picks up Ryder, who immediately confides to him that he’s killed someone else. But he says something else. Something we don’t expect. “I want you to stop me.”
That’s the whole point of this film. Ryder will transform Halsey into the empty man he is, whether through attrition or forcing him to blast him into oblivion. This road only goes one way.
What does it take to get Halsey to realize this isn’t a nightmare, but reality? Of course, it’s easy to think that this could all be a dream, in the same way that long stretches of drives with no one speaking seem to be visions that last and last. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m still driving and every moment up until here, up until this realization, is just me imagining my life and any moment now, I’m going to wake up with my fiancee asleep next to me.
For our hero, it takes seeing trucks plow into truck stops, station wagons filled with the blood of all American families and the typical movie love interest torn in half by two semis.
Halsey is stripped of his identity, not just because his license and keys — let’s face, the manhood of most red-blooded boys — have been taken away. Everything he may have believed was true — the goodness of giving someone a ride when they need it, that love can conquer fear, even that the role models and lawmakers that society sets up can protect us against one lone man who isn’t just unafraid to die but willingly chases it — is a lie.
Not even suicide can save our hero.
So who is at fault for all the crimes that come out of this spree? If Halsey just shot Ryder in the truck, while Nash (Jennifer Jason Lee, looking like the gorgeous girl who surely will survive all of this madness, right?) is tied between it and another, life would be different.
Look, when a killer says, “I want you to stop me,” you listen.
Eric Red wrote this story while traveling across America, wondering about the lyrics to The Doors “Riders On the Storm.” Pretty simple, really: “If ya give this man a ride, sweet memory will die. Killer on the road, yeah.”
Critics hated it. Both Siskel and Ebert gave it zero out of four stars, with Ebert even decrying the film by saying, “I could see that the film was meant as an allegory, not a documentary. But on its own terms, this movie is diseased and corrupt. I would have admired it more if it had found the courage to acknowledge the real relationship it was portraying between Howell and Rutger, but no: It prefers to disguise itself as a violent thriller, and on that level it is reprehensible.”
Whatever.
The end of this film, as Halsey stands against the sunset and smokes as we process what has just happened just attacks the viewer. The credits just stand there as we feel no celebration or victory. Maybe not even relief, because while it seems like this is over, there’s no way it is over.
The fact that this movie spawned a sequel and a Michael Bay remake are two things that I have added to the many things that I have tried to forget so that I can keep on living my life*. Kind of like how director Robert Harmon makes the Jesse Stone TV movies for Tom Selleck now instead of getting to create more movies like this (that said, I’ve heard good things about They, a movie he did with Wes Craven and I kind of don’t mind his Van Damme film Nowhere to Run). Red would move on to write a few other films that break the mold and are on my list of favorite films: Near Dark and Blue Steel.
The last thing that this movie makes me feel is loss. Rutger Hauer is such an essential part of my film nerd stable of actors, someone who always makes a movie way better than it seems like it will be just by his presence. Nighthawks is so intense because of him. Films like Wanted Dead or Alive, The Blood of Heroesand Buffy the Vampire Slayer (with Hauer getting to finally play the vampire lord that Anne Rice, who always wanted him as Lestat, saw him in) are actually great because of Hauer. And Blade Runnermeans nothing without him as Roy Batty.
Hauer astounded the stunt people in this movie, pulling off the car stunts by himself. And he also intimidated Howell, scaring him even when they weren’t acting. He even knocked out a tooth when he flew through the windshield himself. There is no one who could have played this character quite so well and stayed with me so long after the film was over.**
*The fact that René Cardona III made a Mexican version of this called Sendero Mortal does give me the energy to keep on living. I’d also like to recommend the absolutely insane Umberto Lenzi in America Hitcher In the Dark, which makes me wish that more Italian directors made their own versions of The Hitcher.
**Hauer said in his autobiography, All Those Moments, that Elliott “was so scary when he came in to audition that Edward S. Feldman was afraid to go out to his car afterward.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie was watched as part of Salem Horror Fest. You can still get a weekend pass for weekend two. Single tickets are also available. Here’s the program of what’s playing.
Held in conjunction with the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies’ presentation of Alexandra West’s multimedia lecture The Cat Came Back: Feline Familiars in the Horror Genre, the new 2K restoration of Bakeneko: A Vengeful Spirit screened this weekend at Salem Horror Fest.
Also known as Ghost Cat of the Cursed Pond, this explains what happens when Nabeshima Naoshige murders Ryuzoji Takafusa in an attempt to get his land, his power and his wife Lady Takafusa, who would rather drown herself and her cat familiar in a swamp than suffer underneath this man. Also: Takafusa is killed by being sealed up in clay.
Years later, Naoshige has learned nothing and tries to assault another woman, Yukiji (Kyoko Mikage), then claims that he will behead her entire family if she doesn’t leave her fiancee Yuki Jonosuke (Kotaro Satomi) for him. The young lovers are faced with a horrible choice before they find Lady Takafusa’s cat mud-caked cat on the shore. It has not forgotten the past and is thirsty for blood and ready to take revenge for the lives stolen by the rich and powerful. You get what you ask for when you anger the spirits of the swamp during the festival meant to appease them. As Yukiji and Yuki die in the swamp, the cat drinks deep of their plasma and sets into motion its horrific reprisal.
Soon, one of the many wives of Naoshige, Lady Hyuga (Machiko Yashiro) has clawed hands — yes, like a cat — and is feasting on the many severed arms of her victims.
Director and writer Yoshihiro Ishikawa covers this film in inky darkness and by the end, unleashes severed arms crawling for the dead, beheadings, psychotic freakouts and the entire family of Noashige paying for his behavior. Ishikawa also directed The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond and wrote Mansion of the Ghost Cat if you need more Kaibyo — ghost cat — films. There’s also Kuroneko, Blind Woman’s Curse and Hausu.
This one has a truly hateable villain, doomed heroines and that ghost cat whose eyes cast a shadow across everything in this film. A magical exploration of myth and cinema; one that I can’t wait to watch again when Severin releases it this year.
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