UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: The Wicker Tree (2011)

Posted on by

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: Sequel

The Wicker Man is a classic, a film I watch several times a year and one that I get something new out of with each viewing. There’s a reason why I’ve never seen the sequel, but I finally powered my way through it and somehow, it’s even worse but strangely better than I thought it would be. Then again, in Ecclesiastes 7:15, the very idea of such conundrums is brought to light: “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.”

Directed and written by Robin Hardy — yes, the very same man who made the original — this is about “Cowboys for Christ” Betty Boothy (Brittania Nicol) and her boyfriend Steve Thompson (Henry Garrett) bringing their born-again evangelical Christian music to the godless in first Glasgow and then Tressock, where a nuclear power plant has made everyone infertile.

The couple are barely there for a moment when Steve neglects their promise rings and swims nude, then makes love to Lolly (Honeysuckle Weeks), a village girl who reveals that most of the town worships the ancient god Sulis.

As the town prepares for May Day, a detective named Orlando (Alessandro Conetta) is investigating the cult, which is run by town elder Sir Lachlan Morrison (Graham McTavish). Our protagonists agree to be the Lady and Laddie of the May Day Parade, which means that Steve is chased by the entire village and torn apart by naked men while the music sounds like a remix of “Can You Read My Mind” from Superman while Beth attempts to escape. She ends up stuffed in a case, Lolly has Steve’s child and the village is saved.

While Christopher Lee was to play Morrison, he was injured on a film set. He does, however, appear in a flashback to a mentor of Morrison, who Hardy said was Lord Summerisle. Lee disagrees with this and said that the characters are unrelated. Joan Collins was to play his wife, which is dream casting, but when the younger McTavish was cast, so was Jacqueline Leonard as Delia Morrison. The cook Daisy, however, is the same Daisy from the first movie, also played by Lesley Mackie.

The title was changed several times — The Riding of the Laddie, May Day, and Cowboys for Christ, which is the name of the book that it came from — but ended up with The Wicker Tree, hoping viewers would connect the two movies. Before he died, Hardy was still trying to make one more movie in this cycle, The Wrath of the Gods.

It’s almost like this movie was trying to be a sequel to the Nicholas Cage film instead of Hardy’s own film, with a bombastic score, near digital direct to video looking cinematography and characters that are more stupid than misguided. I really can’t believe I watched this the whole way through. I’d say that it felt like an Italian ripoff of the first, like the Patrick Still Lives to Patrick, but then it would be a good movie. This is anything but.

I HOPE YOU SUFFER OCTOBER FILM CHALLENGE: Amityville Toybox (2016)

Posted on by

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.

Did this poster just put one of those horrifying wind-up monkeys in the windows of the house at 112 Ocean Avenue? Well, that’s just not fair. If this movie came out when I was seven, I would have defecated in my pants to such a level that you would be about to smell it, even nearly four decades into a thankfully feces-smell free future.

Yes, a cursed monkey is purchased from the DeFeo garage sale and makes its way across the country to Nebraska, where it wreaks havoc. If this sounds like the plot of the mid-90’s Amityville films like It’s About Time, A New Generation and Amityville Dollhouse, the filmmakers are very aware of those films and specifically pay tribute to them.

According to the film’s official Facebook page, this movie has been acquired by Wild Eye Releasing and will soon have a new Amityville-related title, as well as a sequel called Amityville: Evil Never Dies. Is Mumm-Ra in that one? I’m not sure, but do you know who is? Mark Patton, who played Jesse in the criminally underrated second A Nightmare on Elm Street film.

This was directed by Dustin Ferguson, who also made Nemesis 5: The New Model, Silent Night, Bloody Night 2: Revival, a remake of Die, Sister, Die! and is now working on a remake of Umberto Lenzi’s Ghosthouse. The sheer chutzpah of that last move either makes me love this guy or despise him. Don’t screw that one up.

Somehow — well, Ferguson has worked on their music videos — this movie has “Spooky Tricks” by My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult on its soundtrack. That’s more than I can say for most Amityville movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Burn, Witch, Burn (1962)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Burn, Witch, Burn! was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, November 5, 1966 at 11:20 p.m.; Saturday, June 28, 1969 at 11:30 p.m.; Saturday, October 31, 1970 at 1 a.m.; Saturday, July 17, 1971 at 1:00 a.m. and Saturday, May 13, 1972 at 1.m.

Based upon the 1943 Fritz Leiber novel Conjure Wife, this movie was called Day of the Eagle in the UK before getting a title that sounded more like a horror movie for American audiences. The book had already been adapted once before as Weird Woman in 1944 and then one more time afterward in 1979 as Witches’ Brew.

The American version also has an opening in complete blackness where the voice of Paul Frees reads a spell intended to protect the audience from the evil within the film. Filmgoers also were given a special pack of salt and the words to an ancient incantation. Man, going to the movies used to be awesome. American-International Pictures knew how to sell an occult movie!

Written by a combination of Charles Beaumont (The Masque of the Red Death, several great Twilight Zone episodes), Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, Duel) and George Baxt (Shadow of the Cat, The City of the Dead), this is the story of Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde, Klytus from Flash Gordon), a man who discovers that all of his career success is due to the magic skills of his wife. As soon as he demands that she burns all of her magical ephemera, everything in his life goes wrong

By the end of the movie, his rational view of the world must confront the fact that magic truly exists. It also posits that women are the magic workers of the world and that men just stumble through, a view I can completely agree with.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Little Shop of Horrors was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, May 23, 1964 at 11:10 p.m.; Saturday, August 14,1965 at 1:00 a.m.; Saturday, March 9, 1968 at 11:10 p.m. and Saturday, January 17, 1970 at 1:00 a.m.

Drected by Roger Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith and made under the name The Passionate People Eater, this movie was made in two days for $28,000 on the same sets as A Bucket of Blood. Playing double features with Black Sunday and Last Woman On Earth, it became a cult film and that continued once it aired repeatedly on TV.

Gravis Mushnick (Mel Welles) and his two employees, Audrey Fulquard (Jackie Joseph) and Seymour Krelboined (Jonathan Haze), run a flower shop that seen better days. When Seymour screws up an order for dentist Dr. Phoebus Farb (John Shaner), he’s fired until he shows his new plant, which he claims he grew from a seed that he was given by a Japanese gardener over on Central Avenue. He names it Audrey 2 and before you know it, it lives on human blood and then people. Yet it brings people into the store and becomes famous. Gravis calls Seymour son now.

Of course, Gravis eventually sees Seymour feeding a dead homeless man — it was an accident, but still — to Audrey 2 and then Dr. Farb, who he killed in self defense. But the crimes are getting worst and the police — named Fink and Stoolie — and the Society of Silent Flower Observers of Southern California wants to give Seymour an award. All he wants is the original Audrey, but the plant hypnotizes him and makes him continue bringing him food.

The movie was actually written at a coffee house. Corman said, “We ended up at a place where Sally Kellerman (before she became a star) was working as a waitress, and as Chuck and I vied with each other, trying to top each other’s sardonic or subversive ideas, appealing to Sally as a referee, she sat down at the table with us, and the three of us worked out the rest of the story together.”

This is also an early Jack Nicholson movie — the actor said that “I went in to the shoot knowing I had to be very quirky because Roger originally hadn’t wanted me. In other words, I couldn’t play it straight. So I just did a lot of weird shit that I thought would make it funny.” — and as you know, went on to become even bigger when it was made into a musical and remade in 1986. There was even a cartoon, Little Shop, that was on Fox Kids and had Corman as a consultant. As for this one, Corman was so sure it wouldn’t do well that he never got a copyright and let it go into public domain.

Dick Miller really did eat that flower.

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Night of the Demon (1957)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of the Demon was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 11, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, March 18, 1967 at 1 a.m.

Night of the Demon was a movie that scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. That iconic shot of the demon from the end was always in books about horror and issues of Famous Monsters. I’d always hide my eyes from it while still being fascinated.

Little did I know that the issue of the demon being in the film was a major point of argument between producer Hal E. Chester versus director Jacques Tourneur (I Walked with a Zombie, Cat People) and writer Charles Bennett (The 39 Steps) on the other. Chester ended up jamming in the special effects monster over the objections of the writer, the director, and lead actor Dana Andrews.

Even worse, 12 minutes were removed from the British version of this film and it was renamed to Curse of the Demon. Tourneur later said, “The scenes where you see the demon were shot without me…the audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon.” Bennett, also about the changes to the script, said “If Chester walked up my driveway right now, I’d shoot him dead.”

Based on the M.R. James story “Casting the Runes,” the story begins with Dr. Julian Karswell being visited late in the night by a rival who begs him to remove the curse he’s placed. After learning that the patchment he gave the man was destroyed, Karswell rushes the man from his house just as a giant demon materializes in the trees, a shocking effect even today. The professor tries to escape but his car crashes into powerlines and he’s electrocuted.

Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews, Airport 1975) arrives in England to attend the convention where the dead professor had intended to expose Karswell and his Satanic cult. Holden believes that there’s no such thing as the supernatural while the dead professor’s niece (Peggy Cummins, Gun Crazy) believes the opposite.

Later, when a windstorm destroys a party, Karswell takes the blame and Holden mocks him. The older man grows angry and predicts Holden’s death within three days. Soon, the same parchment of protection is found by our hero and he slowly becomes convinced that the demon is on his trail as well.

The end of the film, where the demon changes his target from Holden to Karswell, is harrowing. As he runs up the train tracks, the demon manifests itself and chases the magician. When his corpse is discovered, the police believe that it was a train dragging him, not the demon.

Holden goes to inspect the body, but the professor’s niece tells him that that sometimes, “it’s better not to know.” He walks away with her.

In the movie The ‘Burbs, Ray finds a book called The Theory and Practice of Demonology in the basement of the Klopeks. Its author? None other than the villain of this film, Julian Karswell. It’s also mentioned in “Science Fiction Double Feature” in the Rocky Horror Picture Show: “Dana Andrews said prunes gave him the runes, but passing them used lots of skills.”

According to BrightMidNight on the Sinister Screen, “This movie is a true Satanic classic because it exposes the devil worshiper for what he is. Anytime you have to rely on someone or something else to help you to be a success in life, you’re diminishing your own self-worth. People who do this are basically saying, “I’m not good enough to get these things on my own; I need some kind of outside force.””

They go on to say: “Satanists viewing this movie should understand that YOU are in charge of your own destiny — and no one else. Asking some devil or some imaginary demon for favors only causes problems in the end. Satanism strives on individualism. The Satanist is his or her own God. There is no need to ask other entities for help.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

2024 Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge Day 1: Moonrunners (1975)

Posted on by

1. JUMP-OFF POINT: Kick off the Challenge festivities by watching a movie that inspired a TV series.

The first time I watched Moonrunners, it was a strange realitization halfway through that I was watching The Dukes of Hazzard, except instead of being silly, it was depressing. I learned later — years later, the internet had to be invented — this was reworked four years later into the show that ruled childhoods in the late 70s.

The Balladeer (Waylon Jennings) sings to us about Grady (James Mitchum, who was in a movie with his father that influenced this, Thunder Road) and Bobby Lee Hagg (Kiel Martin), who run moonshine for their Uncle Jesse Hagg (Arthur Hunnicutt) in Shiloh County. A Baptist preacher, Jesse makes the same bootleg booze that his relatives have created since the Revolutionary War.

The two are lovers of fast cars and faster women, often getting arrested for fighting at The Boar’s Nest, the local bar. Grady has a stock car, #54, which is named Traveler for General Robert E. Lee’s horse.

The drama in this comes from Jake Rainey (George Ellis), the boss of the town, who sells liquor to the New York mob. He wants Jesse’s moonshine and he refuses to sell it, knowing he will mix it with poor booze to maximize profits. As he owns the local cops, he uses Sheriff Rosco Coltrane (Bruce Atkins) to railroad the boys, but they fight back.

Here’s where the sadness comes in. Uncle Jesse dies after a moonshine run and in anger, Grady and Bobby Lee take some explosive arrows and blow up all the stills of their enemies.

Directed and written by Gy Waldron, this was based in part on the life of ex-moonshiner Jerry Rushing, who was also a technical advisor. In 1977, Waldron was asked to create a nine episode replacement for CBS’ The Incredible Hulk and to develop a series based on Moonrunners.

Obviously, Bobby Lee and Grady became Bo and Luke Duke, with Uncle Jesse needing hardly any makeover other actor Denver Pyle taking over the role. Boss Jake Rainey, who is called a hog in the movie, because Boss Hogg yet kept Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, down to almost the exact same dialogue that introduces him in the film and the first episode of the series, “One-Armed Bandits.” Daisy Duke, a female cousin, was added, as was a different mechanic character named Cooter who was played by Ben Jones, who was a revenue agent in Moonrunners.

The series that resulted would be the number two show on network TV and last seven seasons. A movie that feels a lot like a Roger Corman movie would be the perfect inspiration for people who conceived children at the drive-in and were now stuck at home on Friday nights, their stock cars traded in for station wagons.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: The Mummy’s Curse (1944)

Posted on by

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: Universal Horror

The fifth entry in Universal’s original Mummy franchise, this is a direct sequel to The Mummy’s Ghost, as Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) and his beloved Princess Ananka (Virginia Christine ) remain in the swamp, even if the swamp has moved from Massachusetts to Louisiana — even if the accents don’t always sound right.

The Southern Engineering Company — one of those TVA or New Deal kind of public works projects — wants to drain the swamp, but the locals are afraid of even going there. Sure, they’re poor, but would you want to deal with a mummy, much less two?

Scripps Museum sends Dr. James Halsey (Dennis Moore) and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab (Peter Coe) to investigate, just as a worker is killed with all the handmarks — literally of Kharis. But never trust science, as Zandaab is really a priest of the pharaohs and is working with Ragheb (Martin Kosleck) to fully return the Egyptian royalty to life within the mucky confines of this deep southern bog.

Thus follows brewing the tea leaves and killing a monk as Kharis rises, filled with power anew. Ananka also rises, being found by a bulldozer and washing herself clean. She’s found by beloved local Cajun Joe (Kurt Katch) and, of course, taken to the local bar before Kharis busts in and starts killing people. She’s found by Halsey and Betty Walsh (Kay Harding) and are shocked how much she knows about Ancient Egypt. Me, I was shocked finding out how much English she could speak.

Of course, it ends as it always does, with evil scientists pushing their luck and the Mummy being dead all over again.

Directed by Leslie Goodwins, this had a huge list of writers attached, including Bernard Schubert, Leon Abrams, Dwight V. Babcock, Ted Richmond and Oliver Drake, who would go on to make another mummy movie, many years later and somehow with an even lower budget, The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals which, outside of the Las Vegas setting, feels like it could be the lost sequel for this film.

Universal had one left — Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy — but Joe Dante in Famous Monsters Vol. 4 No. 3 wrote that this was one of the most disappointing horror films the studio would release, packed with footage from The Mummy and The Mummy’s Hand instead of new scenes. Between the stock footage and stunt men stand-ins for the occasionally drunk Chaney Jr., The Mummy is played by at least three people, including Boris Karloff and Tom Tyler.

I kind of love this, as the swamp is a fun place, and if we follow the timeline of these movies, with The Mummy’s Tomb being set in 1970, The Mummy’s Ghost two years later and this twenty five years after all that, this should be 1997. It does not feel like 1997 at all.

I HOPE YOU SUFFER OCTOBER FILM CHALLENGE: Amityville Death House (2015)

Posted on by

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.

Mark Polonia also made Empire of the Apes, so it stands to wonder why he waited so long to make a cash-in on the Amityville series. I mean, this is the man who also made Sharkenstein, Bigfoot vs. Zombies and multiple Camp Blood movies. Just so you know what you’re getting into — these are shot on video films intended for DVD distribution to maniacs like me in Walmart (or today, on Amazon Prime).

For the eleventh overall Amityville movie, a young woman and her friends — on their way back from helping with hurricane relief efforts in Florida, keeping it topical — stop in the town of Amityville to check in on a sick grandmother.

That’s when they run into an ancient witch and her spells, which turn one of them into a spider. This is more about a curse on the townsfolk than 112 Ocean Avenue. But hey — Eric Roberts turns up as The Dark Lord. What does Roberts do, show up in rural Pennsylvania and put out a beacon to tell directors that he’s available for work?

You can watch this on Tubi.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Swamp of the Lost Monsters (1957)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Swamp of the Lost Monsters was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 20 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday, January 2 at 1 a.m.

A small Mexican village is dealing with not just the death of a man, but the fact that his body has disappeared too. Now, his brother and a cowboy detective friend (Gaston Santos, who played the same role of a cowboy against the unknown in The Living Coffin, Los Diablos del Terror, La Flecha Envenenada and El Potro Salvaje) head out to battle the gang that killed the man and now want his insurance money.

There’s one complication: a man-fish who is just swimming around town.

Seriously, I would have never watched this movie if it wasn’t for the look of this humanoid fishy man. He’s amazing and every moment he’s on screen elevates this movie from typical sagebrush adventure to the realm of absurdity.

Also known as Swamp of Lost Souls, it was directed by Rafael Baledon, who also brought us Orlak, el Infierno de Frankenstein.

CHILLER THEATER MONTH: Before I Hang (1940)

Posted on by

EDITOR’S NOTE: Before I Hang was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, June 4, 1966 at 11:20 p.m. and Saturday June 14, 1969 at 11:30 p.m.

Another in the series of mad scientist movies starring Boris Karloff for Columbia, this was directed by Nick Grinde and written by Robert Hardy Andrews.

Karloff is Dr. John Garth and he’s on trial for mercy killing a friend, predating the right to die controversy by decades. He had been trying to invent a cure for aging but it was too late to give it to the patient. He asks the judge to allow him to live as he’s close to this medication, but he is due to be hung in three weeks. Yet with support from the warden (Ben Taggart) and Dr. Ralph Howard (Edward Van Sloan), he is able to take the blood of an executed murderer and turn it into a serum that reverses the effects of aging just in time to be saved from the gallows.

If you’re wondering, “Will that killer’s blood make Dr. Garth a killer?” you don’t have to wait all that long to find out. He kills Dr. Howard and a fellow prisoner, which looks like he was the hero, and he’s soon released to live with his daughter Martha (Evelyn Keyes).

Dr. Garth then tries to convince each of his elderly friends to let him help them escape the ravages of age. When they refuse, his evil blood takes over and he kills them. Convinced that he could even kill Martha, he runs back to the prison and is killed trying to get back inside, in effect killing himself to protect his friends and daughter.

There are nearly five similar movies in a year starring Karloff as a scientist driven to murder. I’d watch them all and more.