Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Tobe Hooper!

Back in 1955, Operation Samson had Brian (Brian Bremer) and Peggy Bell (Stacy Edwards) be exposed to a massive nuclear explosion to see how their immune system would work. Well, it works great, because they survive, become national heroes and have a child, David (who grows up to be Brad Dourif) while his parents go up in flames. Yes, spontaneous human combustion, which always showed up in those Ripley’s Believe It or Not books you bought at the book fair and got grossed out over.

David grows up to be a teacher named Sam Kramer and somehow meets Lisa Wilcox (Cynthia Bain), a woman whose parents went through the same death as his. Is it fate? No, it’s another government experiment, and for now, our hero can shoot fire and electricity out of his body.

Made four years after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the same year as I’m Dangerous Tonight, this has me rooting for Tobe, even if I know that this isn’t good. But maybe it could have been. Dourif told Fangoria, “You see me playing my heart out in scenes that are not working, and the reason they’re not working is that the movie doesn’t make sense. It’s almost funny. As a matter of fact, the better my acting was in some of the later scenes, the funnier the film was. I found myself at the mercy of people who didn’t know what they were doing. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but my feeling is that the producers destroyed it. Tobe could have made three different movies with the material he had, and each one would have worked. But by the time he got it, it had changed from a love story to a suspense thriller about my character’s paranoid fantasy, to a guy goes crazy film about this insane killer who becomes a destructive force that’s going to wipe out mankind. We went back and kind of restructured it as a love story, but it didn’t really help. The beginning of the film was great, and a certain portion of my stuff was fine, but then it became stupid when all the flame stuff started happening.”

At least John Landis gets his head set on fire.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Tobe Hooper!

About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.

Being a fan of Freddy Krueger led me to this, and I was very intrigued seeing this in Tobe Hooper’s late output. Surely this will be a compelling feature.

Night Terrors is a direct to video effort that Tobe Hooper was asked to direct after Gerry O’Hara left the project. Featuring Robert Englund as the Marquis de Sade and a slew of actors familiar to the direct to video scene (including William Finley), it follows a young woman visiting her father in Egypt (it’s really in Israel) as she gets wrapped up in a cult run by de Sade’s descendant.

If you read that and thought “what the fuck?” to yourself, you’d be correct! How de Sade’s family ends up in Egypt is never explained, nor is the formation of his cult. The film reeks of unexplained bullshit thrown in just to happen. Naked dude on a horse? Painted snake lady? Exorcisms during an orgy featuring snakes? Cool, I guess. I’m ok with weirdness, but after a certain point it needs to make some sense.

Another choice is to intercut the modern day storyline with de Sade’s ramblings from his prison cell. I’m all for giving Robert Englund more screentime, and to his credit he is very fun to watch. But the back and forth makes no sense; it would work better as a straight period piece like it was originally intended.

Englund’s performance excluded, the acting from most of the cast is questionable at best. Zoe Trilling as Genie (a play on Eugenie, ha ha) overacts and screams a lot. I don’t like that her character is constantly a damsel in distress and is saved by forces outside her control, but she doesn’t make it any more watchable. Most everyone else phones it in. No one, not even Englund or Finley, truly attempts to elevate this nonsensical script; they all just play into its absurdity (intentionally or not). Combined with the silly premise, it’s really quite fun to watch.

The whole movie looks cheap. 90s DTV has a certain charm that I find irresistible, but even with the on location filming, the budget is painfully clear. The dungeon/basement settings are particularly hard to look at. A 4:3 ratio does nothing to help the film, and there is a distinct orange tinge over everything, likely indicative that this needs a restoration. 

I feel bad not liking this. Tobe Hooper, Robert Englund, and de Sade should have been a match made in heaven (or hell, depending on what you believe). Turns out none of them can help a lousy script. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but watching this is akin to watching a car crash. At least it was fun.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: KNB

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

Screenwriter Joe Augustyn (Night of the Demons) uses the legendary character of Lilith for Night Angel, the story of a centuries old succubus who is planning on infiltrating the minds of men via the cover of a magazine (yes, we are back in the 1990s folks).

As the story goes (in the Talmud), Lilith was Adam’s first wife before the creation of Eve. She was banished from the Garden of Eden for not being subservient to Adam. This disobedience allegedly included refusing to lie in the missionary position. Depending on the source, once Lilith leaves the Garden, she gives birth to hundreds of demons, many of whom die daily. In retaliation, she kills the infants of the Jewish people.

In Night Angel, Lilith is a demon herself, a succubus posing as a high fashion model, hoping to bring death and destruction to anyone who comes across her. It appears that humanity’s only hope for Pearl is 227 (Helen Martin), a woman who lost the love of her life to Lilith years ago, and may be the only person who has a way to destroy her forever.

In one of their earliest efforts, the special effects team of KNB provides the effects for Lilith’s transformation into her true demonic form at the end of the film. As always, great work by them.

Personally, I’m always fascinated by the incorporation of Jewish folklore into horror movies. We just do not see it enough in my opinion, although the source material is ripe for exploration. I will have another film that bases its plot on an aspect of this folklore for my 1980s pick. Stay tuned.

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: KNB!

About the Author: Parker Simpson is a writer and podcaster focusing on cult films and their social impacts. They currently cohost Where Is My Mind, a podcast focusing on underappreciated films from a variety of genres and countries. They have also held panels, chartered local organizations, and written articles to their blog. When not writing or studying, they like to spend time with their pets and go outside. Check out the podcast Linktree and blog.

Dude, I don’t know how to begin this write up. This fucking movie is so bizarre I highly recommend you watch it before reading on. It’s on Prime and Tubi. Go in cold, like nature intended.

If you’re being insolent and reading on… alright then. Doppelganger centers on Holly Gooding, a woman who moves across the country after her implication in her mother’s murder. She moves in with Patrick, a struggling writer trying to break into Hollywood. They begin a strange relationship, but Holly’s sanity increasingly comes into question as “doppelganger” commits violent acts she’s accused of.

I know this thing covers a lot of ground. It’s very cliche and riffs on many sources, ranging from Truman Capote to Brian De Palma. It also combines multiple genres: comedy, neo-noir, romance, horror, erotic thriller, it’s all there. It’s paced in a way that you wouldn’t think would be able to fit in everything, but surprise! It works, and it’s for the best most of the time.

Like all good 90s horror movies, Doppelganger throws in a heavy dose of offbeat comedy that is either hilarious or beyond annoying. You have multiple side characters that are so damn entertaining, but pushed aside to focus on the leads (more on that later). Patrick’s writing assistant is close to insufferable, yet she has fantastic one-liners that attempt to snap him back into reality. In terms of plot twists and visuals, it wants to be a De Palma movie so badly, yet it cannot shake the trends of the time. This leaves me no other choice but to place it in a special category known as camp: a film that in spite of its silliness, is seemingly aware of what it’s doing and doesn’t mind winking back to the audience (a normally hated trait of mine).

The casting of Drew Barrymore is simultaneously genius yet a terrible mistake. Holly Gooding’s struggles with mental health (that feels too kind to put here) and rough relationship with her family closely resemble Barrymore’s; I wouldn’t be shocked if this role was written with her in mind, like how Marilyn Monroe was Truman Capote’s inspiration for Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The issues are 1. Barrymore is rather young to be playing the female lead in a film with several erotic moments (including a topless shower scene) and 2. She is a charisma vacuum. I couldn’t buy her as sultry, just a weird edgy girl who needed an apartment. Pairing her with George Newbern, a frequent Superman voice actor, threw me off. Newbern, bless his heart, also has no real magnetism and is playing a wannabe screenwriter. Director/writer Avi Nesher tried channeling his best Hepburn/Peppard pairing and ended up with a mentally ill girl and dollar store Quentin Tarantino. Which isn’t terribly far from the source material, but trying to put that in an erotic thriller/horror film just doesn’t work. That being said, the clusterfuck is very fun to watch.

Where the camp comes in is found in other choices. My god, this movie looks far better than I expected. There are times you can tell it’s a soundstage with walls; other times the locations are immersive. This whole thing looks like it had a much higher budget than it likely did, a common trait of 90s B-rate horror films. Then there’s the editing… Nesher knows his pacing is quick considering most of his content is pretty mundane. How to spice it up? Quick cuts from everyone and everything! I broke my neck watching. Also, the score is insane. Too much. Too dramatic. Too anxiety inducing for regular everyday things. And yet it works. This film has no right to position itself as such a moving piece and yet it assures the audience that it is. There’s a certain nerve to be found and it’s really quite entertaining to watch.

Up to this point the reason for the season, KNB EFX has yet to be mentioned, or even considered to why it should be put in relation to the film. Hello spoilers! Go watch the movie. Please, it’s worth your time.

For most of the film, it’s just a regular thriller with flashes of grotesqueness, ranging from bloody showers to distorted reflections to a couple of murders. It’s not enough to warrant Kurtzmann, Nicotero, and Berger’s involvement, but a gig is a gig. Then the finale happens, and a gooey transformation of a singular woman into two skinless ghouls (her dual personalities) ensues, killing her psychiatrist who has taken advantage of her before morphing back. It’s the last thing you would expect from a film like this (that’s becoming a running theme here, isn’t it?).

Even before the final twenty minutes, before realizing  it was a riff on Capote, before connecting Drew Barrymore’s childhood to it, I knew Doppelganger was deeply rooted in abuse, mental instability, and the loss of identity as it pertains to show business. Barrymore’s past closely mirroring the events of the film adds a subtle layer of meta, one welcome in a world pre-dating Scream’s takeover of the genre. Within that lies the dual personalities of Holly – one that acts on her violent impulses, and one that goes about her day, frightened of what the other will do next. Having developed due to her troubled childhood, she can’t form particularly healthy relationships, the most prominent being with Patrick (I believe the kids call this a situationship). The disturbing reveal that she has been taken advantage of by her psychiatrist also follows this trend. Paired with Patrick’s concurrent storyline of being a struggling writer in the entertainment industry, and a plot mixed with insecurity arises, not long before David Lynch tried his hand at similar themes. And just like my initial watches of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, I know I’ll need a few more tries to fully unpack… this.

This is definitely one of my favorite watches of the month so far. Thanks to Lance and Erica of Unsung Horrors for putting myself and many others onto this little movie last year! Glad I could finally watch it.