EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.
Directed and written by Nick Box and Stuart Fitzsimmons, this was originally released in 2018 as Strange Vibes. It’s the tale of Alana (Jade Mason), a young woman who is a horrible employee and who can’t find a new job, leading to her being about to be evicted. To learn how to get a better job, she watches videos by Job Search Guy (Shawn C. Phillips) and 80s Popstar (Chan Walrus), thereby allowing two people to iPhone in their contribution to the movie.
This keeps going back to the job interview with Clare (Georgina Burford) and Ms. Vil Bitch (Sihona Robbins), each time with slight differences, as Ms. Vil is increasingly meaner and meaner to Alana and Clare. The footage also goes from black and white to color for no reason.
There are also numerous New Wave music videos that have nothing to do with the plot either. And if they do, I have no idea how. All I know is that Ms. Vil gives Alana a vibrator to kill her roommate and then asks her to shoot herself to prove her loyalty, which she does, and gets the job. She somehow survives this, too. It’s a spoiler but the ending is twenty minutes before the movie ends, so it doesn’t matter.
This also has nothing to do with Amityville, but when has that ever stopped these movies?
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Vampire Bat was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 9, 1967 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, August 22, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. This episode was a welcome return, as the week before Chiller Theater was preempted for Adios Stakes Race at the Meadows and Midnight Put-On! Teenage Dance Party.
In the village of Kleinschloss, bats are draining people of their blood. Dr. Otto von Niemann (Lionel Atwill) has come to care for a young woman named Martha Mueller (Rita Carlisle) who has been attacked by a bat. She’s also visited by Hermann Gleib (Dwight Frye), who tells her not to worry about bats, as they are as soft as cats. In fact, he lives with the bats that he collects at night.
Karl Brettschneider (Melvyn Douglas), the law in this town, doesn’t believe the other villagers that vampires are behind all the blood-related deaths. Well, later that night, when Martha dies from two bite marks in her neck, he starts to. And as for Gleib, he runs from the dead girl screaming as a mob chases him off a cliff.
The truth? It’s the doctor, who has kidnapped Karl’s love Ruth (Fay Wray) and plans to feed her to the monster that he’s created, a beast that lives on blood.
Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray had a big movie with Dr. X and had just finished a follow-up, Mystery of the Wax Museum. That was a huge production, so in the time it was being finished, Majestic Pictures got them to make this quick and get it out a month before their much bigger film. It doesn’t look as cheap as the budget, as it uses the sets from Frankenstein and The Old Dark House. They also went in and hand animated the torches in color, which adds something different.
Fay Wray sure was busy in 1933. She made eleven films that year: Mystery at the Wax Museum, King Kong, The Vampire Bat, Below the Sea, Ann Carver’s Profession, The Woman I Stole, Shanghai Madness, The Brain, The Bowery, One Sunday Afternoon and Master of Men.
EDITOR’S NOTE: First Spaceship On Venus was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 23, 1976 at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, July 19, 1980 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, September 5, 1981 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, March 27, 1982 at 1:00 a.m.
Also known as Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply, this is really the East German/Polish film Milcząca Gwiazda / Der Schweigende Stern, which would mean The Silent Star in English. It’s based on Stanislaw Lew’s 1951 novel The Astronauts. The author — who also was the man behind Solaris — was critical of the final film, saying, “It practically delivered speeches about the struggle for peace. Trashy screenplay was painted; tar was bubbling, which would not scare even a child.”
So how did it make it to America? Out old friends at Crown International Pictures, who In 1962 released a cut-down and American-friendly dub of the movie — along with two other cuts under the aforementioned Planet of the Dead and Spaceship Venus Does Not Reply titles. Domestic audiences wouldn’t see the original, uncut version of the film until it was re-released by the DEFA Film Library of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as The Silent Star.
Scientists discover that the Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused by an alien craft and not a meteor, which sends them to Venus, where they discover that the inhabitants of that planet want to irradiate the Earth and take it over. More precisely, they would have, had they not nuked themselves into oblivion.
If you watched this and thought, “Have I seen this movie somewhere else?” that would be because it’s the movie within a movie in Galaxina. If you listened to it and felt the same way, that’s because it liberally borrows — steals — music from Destination Moon, This Island Earth and The Wolf Man.
You can watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this movie on Tubi or the original on YouTube:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Zontar, the Thing from Venus was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 7, 1968 at 11:20 p.m., Saturday, April 18, 1970 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, November 27, 1971 at 1:00 a.m.
Zontar, the Thing from Venus is one of the many remakes of Roger Corman movies — this one is It Conquered the World — directed by Larry Buchanan.
This starts at a dinner party. That’s where NASA scientist Dr. Keith Ritchie (Anthony Huston) reveals to Dr. Curt Taylor (John Agar) that he’s been secretly meeting with an alien from Venus named Zontar who is coming to solve all of Earth’s issues. A dinner party would not seem to be the time to do this.
Zontar ends up being a three-eyed, bat-winged, skeletal black creature and I don’t want to be one of those people that judges people by their outside appearances, but I don’t think Zontar has any intention of making the world a better place.
Not even when Zontar starts possessing people with lobster injecto-pods does Ritchie think this friend is a horrific alien monster. No, it takes his wife Martha (Patricia De Laney) dying before he does something about it. Scientists are really smart and also so dumb.
27. MAN & MACHINE: When one interacts with the other, both are forever changed.
Originally airing on NBC on April 7, 1986, Annihilator was an unsold pilot for a TV series that would never be made.
Robert Armour (Mark Lindsay Chapman, Arcane from Swamp Thing the TV series) is dating Angela (Catherine Mary Stewart), another reporter. But when she returns from a girls only Hawaiian vacation with her friend Cindy (Lisa Blount), she’s not the same. That’s because their flight was taken by aliens and they’ve been replaced by killer androids who will destroy the human race.
Director Michael Chapman directed The Clan of the Cave Bear the same year this was released and shot The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Hardcore, Raging Bull, The Lost Boys, Ghostbusters II and so many more films. So this looks way better than it should. It was written by the father and son team of Roderick and Bruce Taylor, who also created the series Otherworld and Super Force. Roderick wrote Gator and Bruce, well, he wrote Elves so he’s good in my mind. More than good.
Oh yeah: These aliens — known as Dynamatars — are also super Satanic.
So anyways, Robert ends up killing Angela after she murders their dog and then comes after him. He rams her with a Jeep and then goes on the run from both the alien androids and the police, setting this up like The Fugitive versus Terminator with a bit of The Invaders.
We also get Nicole Eggert as a teenage robot killer, Geoffrey Lewis as her plot explaining professor father, an appearance by Earl Boen to really hammer that TerminatorHome Edition point home, Brion James as a biker and the hints of an alien leader in the shadows who carries around some kind of spell book.
Somehow, this had the budget to have “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie play repeatedly, no complaints.
With a cast full of scream queens I had crushes on, a weird Miami Vice-like music video way of shooting the show and a conspiracy plot, I wish this had become a series. It would have lasted 11 of 12 episodes with the last one only airing in Europe as a TV movie edited together from several of the stories.
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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: The Sweetest Taboo
In the book The Sweetest Taboo An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills In Film, author Erica Shultz says that this movie doesn’t just have dead children, but “100 of them being smashed in a hydraulic press so their blood can be used to awaken a demon.”
So if you’re charged with writing about a movie with kid kills, this would be the one to go for.
Lam Ngai Kai also made Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, so you know that he has no problem with blowing your mind and making you kind of excited with all the non-stop gore.
Based on Ni Kuang’s series of novels Dr. Yuen — Ni Kuang also narrates this and make an appearance — this has Dr. Yuen Chen-hsieh (Chin Siu-ho) rescuing a girl named Bachu (Chui Sau-lai) from being sacrificed by the Worm Tribe. However, he has Seven Curses which she heals him from for one year, but they cause his legs to bleed and when all seven curses happen, he will die. So he goes back to Thailand to battle the cult of worms and their leader Sorcerer Aquala (Elvis Tsui) one more time.
He’s joined by reporter Tsui Hung (Maggie Cheung), Black Dragon (Dick Wei) and his friend Wisely (Chow-Yun Fat) on this adventure. In the books this comes from, Wisely is the hero and Dr. Yuen the sidekick, but there’s so much happening in this movie that you don’t have to concern yourself with that.
Imagine a movie that starts with Dr. Yuen in the middle of a SWAT assault then turns into an Indiana Jones movie, but if Indiana Jones had karate, tons of nudity, skeleton fights, way over the top gore and even a flying monster baby. Also a giant stone god, an Alien end boss, a coven of devil worshippers, lighting out of Bava and Chow Yun-Fat blowing a demon up real good twice with a rocket launcher.
I don’t know that there’s another movie that’s quite as strange or as good as this. Writing about it makes me want to watch it all over again.
The Piper is about Mel (Charlotte Hope), a composer who steals a concerto from the home of her dead mentor Katharine (Louise Gold) — which is told is her only option by conductor Gustafson (Julian Sands) — all in the hopes that it will allow her to make it in the competitive world of writing classical music and take care of her deaf daughter Zoe (Aoibhe O’Flanagan).
That song is supposedly cursed, but Mel needs money. When played, the song brings The Piper (Boyan Anev) to life. Yes, a glowing eyed beast who wouldn’t even allow the music to be burned in the first place. By the end of the film, The Piper crawls out of the body of the flute player who starts the song off when it is played live and Mel and her daughter have to grab instruments of their own and battle the final boss, causing a rat to literally crawl out its mouth.
Director and writer Erlingur Thoroddsen based this on the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who played his flute to lure the rats away from the city. When he wasn’t paid, he did the same to the children and depending on the story, he drowned them or took them to a cave. The film looks good, has CGI that isn’t all horrible and has some gory moments.
The plot reminded me of Paganini Horror but one assumes that more people will have seen this than that. Sands is good in this and the film is dedicated to him, as he died not long after making it.
InSurprise, David Gamble (Will Coleman) thought that his wife Jenna (Nunu Thurman) was having an affair with his business partner and best friend Greg (Lemastor Spratling), so he took things so far that he ended up paying for his best friend to be killed and then seemingly having a heart attack.
In Surprise 2, David woke up in the hospital, still alive, with Greg clinging to life as the killer that our protagonist hired is waiting to murder him. The killer went to jail and ended up being killed by his cell mate.
Surprise 3 starts with David digging a grave.
Directed by the same team of Rockey Black and Jhayla Mosley, Greg is finally clear to get out and back to his old ways, asking out the nurse taking care of him, Kelly (Marietta Elliott). David is losing his mind and Jeanna still has no clue what’s going on as she’s on vacation. David is still dealing with Lisa’s (Amerrah Garrison) murder as his wife asks him to watch her home.
Meanwhile, Detectives Rogers (Grover McCants) and Johnson (DeJuan Ford) are on their way to the hospital as they build their case just in time for Greg losing his phone and the evidence of what has happened to him. The cops want him to wear a wire while Jeanna comes home wondering where Lisa is. In fact, everyone wants to know where Lisa is.
By dealing with Lisa’s murder, I mean that David soon starts waking up to her angry ghost crying in his bedroom and telling him that he will pay. If it can get worse, it can, because the evidence disappeared thanks to the hitman hookup from the first movie, who is angry that the blood of one of his best men is in — not on — David’s hands. David threatens him, which is not a good idea.
David and Jeanna are staying at Lisa’s house when Greg visits. He gets there before David and tells his wife to not trust him. Just after, Jeanna is visited by Lisa’s mother, who wants to know where her daughter is. We get a flashback of Lisa telling her mother that she thinks that David is her boss but also someone she doesn’t trust.
Greg screws everything up by knocking out David, just in time for Lisa’s mother to go to the police and get a search warrant, sending them looking through the house. After a night at the bar, someone shoots at David and a mysterious envelope is left for him at his house that says “I know what you did.” David’s company is being audited and they find where Lisa’s body is buried. Things are not looking good for him, but I’ve been through two of these movies so far.
Spoilers below…
Except that this time, David doesn’t get out of things. He’s finally gets caught and goes to jail, sent there when the police find the dead body of Lisa. In prison, he gets killed by the same person who killed the other killer, under the employ of the man David hired, paid for by Greg, who is now making love to Jeanna.
Great ending, right? Well…
It was all a dream.
That’s right, three movies, all a dream.
There’s even a graphic that says: SURPRISE. IT WAS ALL A DREAM.
Readers were angry about the end of the last two movies. I can’t wait until I start getting letters and comments complaining about this one.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The I Hope You Suffer podcast said that “Since everybody is doing these movie challenges now, we made the only one worth doing.” Bring the pain.
Nick Box has also made Amityville Frankenstein, Amityville Elevator and Amityville Job Interview. I have seen all of these movies and feel like I escaped with my sanity, so when I found out there was another film in his Amityville cycle of movies. This was originally on his YouTube site and now, all that remains is a trailer.
The claim is that this is about an European art house film I Drink Tea and Watch You Die Slowly that is broadcast on Amityville TV and people die as a result. But this has no watches on Letterboxd and no one has reviewed it on IMDB. So I’ll bite the bullet and say, Nick Box, if you want to send this to me, I’ll wade out into it and report back. Let’s do this.
Just a few months after the TMZ special The Downfall of Diddy, there’s a follow-up that has the TMZ crew get into the indictment against the former Bad Boy.
Sean “Puffy” Combs has been with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. The charges claim that he abused, threatened and coerced women and others, and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.
These are not small crimes.
According to the legal records, his “sexual abuse of women included causing them to engage in frequent, days-long sexual activity with male commercial sex workers, some of whom were transported over state lines. These events, which Combs referred to as “Freak Offs,” were elaborate sex performances that Combs arranged, directed and often electronically recorded. To ensure participation in Freak Offs, Combs used violence and intimidation, and leveraged his power over victims — power he obtained through obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, exploiting his financial support to them and threatening to cut off the same and controlling their careers. Combs also threatened his victims, including by threatening to expose the embarrassing and sensitive recordings he made of Freak Offs if the women did not comply with his demands.”
According to Texas attorney Tony Buzbee, he is representing more than 120 men and women whose allegations against Combs include violent sexual assault or rape, facilitated sex with a controlled substance, dissemination of video recordings and sexual abuse of minors. There are nearly more cases by the day.
Just this past week, Combs’ lawyers have asked for a gag order on all New York media, as they claim that the government has an illicit partnership with the press that will ruin Combs’ ability to get a fair trial. This is in regards to the video of him abusing partner Casandra “Cassie” Ventura that he claims was leaked to CNN.
This doc even has an interview with Combs’ legal team, claiming that this is all about an attack on a successful black man. I’ve never felt right about Combs since the early incident where he oversold a concert leading to deaths, but I must remember that you are innocent until proven guilty. I wonder if Combs will ever get to trial.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.