The Sizzlin’ Something Weird Summer Challenge 2024: El Charro de las Calavera (1965)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Bleeding Skull’s Top 50 (July 7 – 13) The middle-brow champions of low-brow horror, Bleeding Skull has picked out some of their favorites from the SWV catalog. They neglected to put I Drink Your Blood or EEGAH! on the list, but I think I can forgive them since they included Ship of Monsters.

El Charro de las Calaveras (The Rider of the Skulls, played by Dagoberto Rodríguez) is a Western superhero, like Santo on a horse. Also like the man in the silver mask, he battles monsters.

The first movie directed by Alfredo Salazar, who wrote Herencia Diabólica, Una Rata en la Oscuridad, Frankestein el Vampiro y Compañía, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein, Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dracula and the Wolf Man, Santo en el Tesoro de Drácula, The Panther Women, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy and so many more films, this combines two of my favorite genres, the Mexican lucha-style horror film and Western horror.

It’s made in three episodes, starting with El Charro fighting a werewolf, as well as a zombie doing the narration and a witch showing up. The second has a rubber bat, a vampire and El Charro allowing the woman he’s to protect to get bit. Then again, he also screwed up and the werewolf killed a woman in the first movie, so maybe he’s not as good at his job as Santo. The last story — now in the present — has El Charro battling a headless horseman whose head keeps showing up in a box owned by a rich woman. Once he gets the head back, he and our hero have a sword fight.

At least El Charro adopts the son of the first woman — Perico (Alfonso Ortiz) — and somehow also adopts a full grown man named Cléofas (Pascual García Peña). Now he has sidekicks. His costume is really cool, so he has that going for himself. It’s like a dress outfit with skulls on the pockets and a nice black mask. He’s a great fighter, too, but that’s because he’s Fernando Osés in the stunt scenes. Osés was one of many luchadors that played Huracan Ramirez.

The three parts of this — they were shot as shorts originally — are El Lobo Humano, El Vampiro Siniestro and El Jinete Sin Cabeza. The masked vampire in this might be my favorite monster in all of Mexican cinema. I wish there were fifty of these movies, just like my favorite luchadors.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Just Before Dawn (1981)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

EDITOR’S NOTE: Just Before Dawn was on the CBS Late Movie on October 10, 1988.

Man, if all Jeff Lieberman did was make Squirm and Blue Sunshine, he’d already be way ahead of the horror game. But no, he also made this contribution to the slasher genre, which owes a major debt to Deliverance (it was called Survivance in France).

Shot in the Silver Falls State Park in Sublimity, Oregon as Mt. St. Helens erupted, this film reminds you of one very important fact: if George Kennedy tells you to stay away from the woods, you better listen.

After that encounter — and seeing the survivor of the movie’s first attack by the mountain family saying that he’s seen demons — a fivesome of teens still head into the woods for what they hope will be a fun time away from the rest of the world. Chris Lemmon — yes, Hulk Hogan’s Thunder In Paradise co-star — is in this, as is Gregg Henry from Body Double.

There’s more than just a killer in the woods — there’s a set of identical twins and an inbred girl and a strange church and crickets that seem to know how to get quiet every time a character shows up.

While the original script’s heavily religious themes were cut out — it was to end with the family forcing the final girl to handle snakes in a ritual — it’s still a pretty great take on a slasher, one more based in something that could happen, with little to none of the supernatural getting in the way of all that murder. And the way that the last bad guy is taken out — wow. Talk about visceral.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: Night of Dark Shadows (1971)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night of Dark Shadows was on the CBS Late Movie on June 13, 1977.

After the success of 1970’s House of Dark Shadows, MGM wanted a sequel. The show was off the air and Curtis thought that this would be the perfect time to bring back Barnabas Collins, but Johnathan Frid was fearful of being typecast.

To his credit, Curtis didn’t recast the role and worked on an all-new story, originally called Curse of Dark Shadows. They even hired spiritualist Hans Holzer — yes, the guy who wrote one of the Amityville books — to be on set and loosely followed the parallel world sequence of the show, focusing on the popular Quentin Collins.

With just 24 hours notice, MGM forced Curtis to cut over 35 minutes from the movie, which makes it pretty incoherent. The film that was to be was much darker and more intense.

While this movie did fine, it didn’t have the magic or box office of the last one. Which is a real shame, because I love it.

Quentin Collins (David Selby, also of the Dark Shadows TV show) has arrived at Collinwood with his wife Tracy (Kate Jackson) and is mesmerized by the portrait of Angelique (Lara Parker, also reprising her role from the show).

John Karlen and Nancy Barrett show up as Alex and Claire Jenkins, two horror novelists who have moved into one of the guest houses. They’re about to learn just how crazy Collinwood can get, what with the housekeeper Carlotta (Grayson Hall, who played several Dark Shadows characters, but foremost amongst them Dr. Julia Hoffman) revealing that nearly everyone here is reincarnated from the past of the house, with herself as Sarah Castle and Quentin as Charles Collins, who once was the love of, yes, Angelique, who was hung as a witch. Seeing as how Charles was having an affair with her — the wife of his brother, no less — he was buried alive next to her corpse.

Hijinks, as they say, ensue. Hijinks like murder, possession, women hung in the trees and a girl holding a doll.

You also get Dark Shadows regulars Jim Storm as Gerard Stiles, Diana Millay (whose role as the phoenix-like Laura Collins was the first supernatural character on the show), Christopher Pennock as Gabriel Collins, Thayer David (who again, played many characters on the show) and Clarice Blackburn, who missed the last Dark Shadows film.

I spent years hunting this down on DVD and it was worth the effort. Perhaps the best viewing I’ve enjoyed of this film was in a rainy and foggy drive-in, late into the night. Does life get any better than that?

Tales from the Crypt S4 E3: On a Deadman’s Chest (1992)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Was William Friedkin actually making a joke by naming the heavy metal band in this episode Exorcist?

“Don’t be cool. Greetings poison girls. Are you ready to rock and roll? Good. Then slip into your gore jacket and prepare to sing along. Can’t carry a tomb? That’s okay. I’m just playing by ear myself. Tonight’s terror tune concerns a young headbanger who lets a woman get a little too far under his skin. I call this decomposition “On a Deadman’s Chest.””

Danny Darwin (Yul Vazquez) is the lead singer of that outfit, along with Richard Danielson as his drummer, Paul Hipp as guitarist Nick Bosch and Rudy Sarzo as the bass player. Steve Jones is their roadie and Gregg Allman is the owner of the place they’re playing. Danny hates his guitarist’s wife, Scarlett (Tia Carrere), thinking that they she will break the band up. So for some reason he gets a huge chest tattoo of her from Farrouche (Heavy D) under the advice of groupie Vendetta (Sherrie Rose, Mary Jo from American Rickshaw).

Another episode written by Larry Wilson, who wrote four other episodes, as well as Beetlejuice and The Little Vampire, this one is a lot of fun. You have to love a tattoo that comes to life and ruins someone’s life.

This is based on “On A Dead Man’s Chest!” from The Haunt of Fear #12. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig.

B&S About Movies podcast episode 38: The End of Bruno Mattei

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Everyone has to die sometime even if I never wanted Bruno Mattei to leave. This is about his last few movies which totally live up to what I want from his films.

Watch Island of the Living Dead on Tubi and Zombies: The Beginning on Tubi.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, I Heart Radio, Amazon Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Longest Night (1972)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Longest Night was on the CBS Late Movie on November 14, 1974; April 19, 1977 and January 2, 1978.

Based on the 1968 Barbara Mackle kidnapping by Gary Steven Krist, this was the ABC Movie of the Week, airing on September 12, 1972.

Karen Chambers has been kidnapped and placed in an underground coffin with an air supply and water while the criminals try and get the money. Karen is played by Sallie Shockley, which is kind of interesting because The Candy Snatchers is pretty much the same movie — well, this is made for TV and doesn’t get quite so rough — and the female protagonist of that movie was played by another alliteratively named actress, Susan Sennett.

This was directed by Jack Smight, whose resume includes The Illustrated Man, Damnation Alley, The Traveling Executioner, No Way to Treat a Lady and Airport 1975, which is the very definition of an eclectic resume. He’s working from a script by Merwin Gerard, whose TV movie credits are The Screaming Woman, The Victim, She Cried Murder and The Invasion of Carol Enders. He also created the series One Step Beyond.

The cast is great. There’s David Janssen as the father, Phyllis Thaxter (Ma Kent from the Superman movies) as the mother, James Farentino as the lead kidnapper, Skye Aubrey as his partner and Mike Farrell as an FBI agent.

Beyond being referenced in the aforementioned The Candy Snatchers, this was also filmed in 1990 as 83 Hours ‘Til Dawn. There’s also an episode of Quincy M.E., “Tissue of Truth,” that is ripped from these headlines. This movie only aired once, as there were issues with who owned the rights to the story.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: Strange Darling (2023)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Director and writer JT Mollner — working with producer and cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, who shot this in 35mm — has created a twisty tale that is “one day in the twisted love life of a serial killer” yet also one that unfolds in the narrative technique that Tarantino used in Pulp Fiction. Read that as time doesn’t matter and expectations are continually dashed.

Told in six out of order chapters and an epilogue, this is the cat and mouse survival battle between The Demon (Kyle Gallner) and The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald), as well as the people pulled into their storyline, often at the cost of their lives, such as Genevieve (Barbara Hershey) and Frederick (Ed Begley Jr.).

An opening text explains that — just like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre — that we’re about to see a real story. Except just like that film, this sets us up for a true crime experience that isn’t. There’s even Jason Patric’s voice narrating a true crime story later in the film. The truth in every frame of this movie, every single moment in fact, is subjective and ever-changing.

It even knows when to slow down, as the leads discuss a sexual encounter before it happens. The Lady says, “Do you have any idea the kind of risks a woman like me takes every time she decides to have a little bit of fun?” She declares that women love casual sex just as much as men. The difference is, they don’t die more often when they have it.

While I’d love to tell you more, I want you to go into this as cold as I did. Just let me tell you, it combines giallo style lighting, as well as the forms embrace of kink and ambiguous motivations. Some may be put off by the fact that it narratively takes such wild jumps, almost feeling like a totally different film from moment to moment. Yet that’s the joy of this, a movie that is going to win over audiences if they give it just 15 minutes.

It’s as close to perfect cinema as I’ve seen this year with Fitzgerald making the kind of star turn that young actresses often only dream about.

Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival: Possession: Kerasukan (2024)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

This is a hard movie to review. Possession is one of my favorite movies of all time, a movie that I described by writing “They should attack you. They should change your consciousness. They should take your psyche like a rock tumbler and slam you against the walls over and over until you emerge better.”

It seems like director Razka Robby Ertanto and writers Lele Laila and Andrzej Zulawski have set up an impossible task to remake this movie. Yet Indonesian and world cinema often takes films that have existed before — America does the same — and puts their own spin on the film. Sometimes, it works. Often, it doesn’t.

The title “Official Indonesian Remake” was interesting, because I remember the days that things could just be ripped off and no one knew. But now the internet exists.

The other person who has a huge mountain to climb is Carissa Perusset, who plays Ratna, the Anna (or Helen, right?) of this movie is always going to be compared to Isabelle Adjani, the only actress I know to win Best Actress at Cannes for a movie that ended up on the Video Nasties list. She shares the burden with Sara Fajira, who plays Mita, the actress who gets to re-enact Adjani’s spectacular subway freakout moment. Ah, who knew 2024 would be the year that more than one more would cover Possession? Unlike The First Omen, this one had to have that scene or we’d be upset, like when a band doesn’t play its biggest hit.

If you’re looking for that strange octopus creature that wormed its way between Adjani’s thighs, well, it’s been replaced by a pocong, a ghost that looks like a person wrapped in a funeral cloth. In Islamic funerals, dead bodies must be covered in white fabric tied over the head, under the feet and on the neck, as well as being firmly tied at multiple junctures to maintain its position during the journey to the grave. Upon placement into the grave, it is believed that the knots must be undone or the corpse will animate and haunt friends and family as a pocong.

Faris (Darius Sinathrya) is a soldier who has just returned home. Instead of his wife Ratna reacting with joy, she demands a divorce. She’s been acting strange for some time, a fact that his son Budi (Sultan Hamonangan) can see when he isn’t speaking in the third person, directly to the audience or screaming that both of his parents are demons. Faris has an easy answer, thinking she’s cheating with the movie director she scripts for, Wahyu (Nugie). Or at least that’s what Mita thinks. Then again, she’s always wanted Faris.

This movie is, well, horny. Where the original had sex — cold and horror-filled sex — this is clad in deep reds and mixes giallo-esque danger and furtive alleyway couplings mixed with stab wounds and bodies sailing downward onto cars. By the end of the film, Perusset’s moans have nearly become the soundtrack. Everyone is so overloaded with lust that even the exorcist, Toni (Arswendy Bening Swara) is more interested in making love to the tied up Ratna than saving her.

Żuławski made Possession instead of killing himself after his divorce. I wonder what these filmmakers had in mind, as the original seems to be so effusive that it’s hard to say who is to blame. Here, it’s definitely every man who appears on screen except for Budi, who literally pulls the curtain back at the end, telling us that he’s too young to watch this movie.

The only downer is that this descends into jump scares and possession scenes at the end, forgetting that while the title of the movie does reference that element of the supernatural, it’s truly about the emotional gulf that happens when love goes away.

I don’t regret the time I spent watching this, but it won’t replace the film I already own.

Announcing the Pigeon Shrine FrightFest UK 2024 line-up

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Pigeon Shrine FrightFest 2024, the UK’s No.1 horror & fantasy film festival, will, for the first time, present its five-day extravaganza at The ODEON Luxe Leicester Square, London, taking over all seven screens, including the two ODEON Luxe West End screens.

Running from Thursday August 22 – Monday 26 August, Pigeon Shrine FrightFest will showcase sixty-nine features from across the world, including twenty-five main screen premieres and forty-five Discovery Screen titles, embracing the famed ‘First Blood’ strand, the latest genre documentaries, and some exciting restorations and retrospectives. Plus, there’s the regular short-film showcase (to be announced later), panels, and some surprise 25th edition extras. This year there are twenty-eight world premieres, with eleven countries represented, spanning four continents.

Co-director Alan Jones comments: “FrightFest, the Dark Heart of Cinema, has been beating loud and proud now for an amazing 25 years. An incredible quarter of a century that has seen major challenges and transformations to the global film industry that FrightFest has embodied, embraced and emblazoned. Our past 25 glorious years have shown FrightFest in a state of continuous evolution, something we are determined will never, ever stop. So let the 25th Anniversary FrightFest begin”.

The festival opens with the World premiere of Broken Bird, the directorial debut feature from actress/filmmaker Joanne Mitchell. Based on an original story by Tracey Sheals and Mitchell’s subsequent award-winning short Sybil, this is an absorbing and disturbing tale about a mortician (played brilliantly by Rebecca Calder), whose dark desires are becoming more insatiable and progressively out of control.

The closing night film is the English premiere of The Substance, the second thrilling shocker (after Revenge) from French writer/director Coralie Fargeat. The Cannes 2024 award-winning sensation is a Visionary Feminist Body Horror, starring a fearless Demi Moore as fading celebrity Elizabeth Sparkle who uses a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Also putting in a fearless performance is actress and singer Bella Thorne, who shines as the serial-killing teenager in the UK premiere of Saint Clare. FrightFest will also be showing the UK premiere of Bella’s short film Unsettled, her directorial debut.

This year FrightFest celebrates a host of our past alumni and showcases their latest offerings. In the main screen we have Bookworm which gloriously reunites the Come To Daddy team of star Elijah Wood and director Ant Timpson, Azrael: Angel of Death, the wordless flesh-eating creature feature from E.L. Katz, the director of Cheap Thrills; the lean, mean jolt of true crime horror Invader from director Mickey Keating (Psychopaths), haunted house thriller Ghost Game, the latest from Jill Gervargizian, director of The Stylist and André Øvredal (Troll Hunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) brings us his stunning Dracula adaptation, The Last Voyage of the Dementer, never shown in the UK before.

Other main screen attractions include the International premieres of An Taibhse (The Ghost), the first Irish Language horror film ever made, and The Death Thing, a stunning neo-realist take on The Invisible Man for the online dating era. Then there are European premieres for JT Mollner’s twisty serial-killer chiller Strange Darling, A Desert, the powerful feature debut from Joshua Erkman and Cold Wallet, a witty, cyber suspense thriller presented by Steven Soderbergh. Plus, there is a World premiere for sci-fi high of the year Test Screening, and UK premieres for the twisty, engrossing Dead Mail, gripping Luxembourgish drama The Last Ashes and post-apocalyptic thriller Survive.

Tales of supernatural terror are given contemporary twists this year with the dread-filled Traumatika, the hilarious male stripper caper Member’s Club, with Steve Oram and Peter Andre, queer ghost story anthology Hauntology, the visually haunting paranormal thriller Shelby Oaks and Ladybug, where a gay artist (Anthony Del Negro) is haunted by a homophobic serial-killer. Then there is DW Medoff’s I Will Never Leave You Alone which explores personal mental health themes, and Dark Match, where wrestling champion Chris Jericho, comes up against some pretty hefty demons in the latest from Wolfcop director Lowell Dean.

The main screen also plays host to The Invisible Raptor, the monster hit of this year’s FrightFest Glasgow event and genre icon Christopher Lee is intimately brought back to life in the World premiere of innovative documentary The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee.

This year’s Discovery strand once again reflects the festival’s legacy in championing emerging and established voices from across the world and sees the return of many talented filmmakers discovered over the years. Graham Skipper is back with his heart-felt post-apocalyptic tale The Lonely Man With the Ghost Machine, which he directs and stars in. Carnage for Christmas is another signature fun, gory shocker from 19-year-old, transgender filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay, who brought us T Blockers and Brian Hanson, director of The Black String, returns with The Bunker, an alien invasion shocker, which stars horror icons Tobin Bell and Tony Todd

The UK is richly represented this year with seventeen Discovery screen gems, including the World premieres of Jonathan Zaurin’s unflinching crime thriller Derelict, Cinderella’s Curse, Louisa Warren’s blood-spiling twist on a familiar fairytale, pitch-black female avenging psycho-dramas Cara and Charlotte, vampire road movie Bogieville, Damon Rickard’s cat-and-mouse horror Never Have I Ever, Elliott Léon’s eerie adult fairytale The Flights of Fancy and Warren Dudley’s unsettling terror tale Fright. Also showing, twenty-five years after its release, is a 4K restoration of Jake West’s playfully subversive vampire gore-fest Razorblade Smile.

Then there is FrightFest’s first blood strand, which continues to shine the spotlight on emerging british talent and this year there are six world firsts – Sophie Osbourn’s The Monster Beneath Us, Aled Owen’s Scopophobia, Joy Wilkinson’s 7 Keys, Tony Burke’s Protein, Benjamin Goodger’s Year 10 and Josephine Rose’s Touchdown.

The range of documentaries on show further proves how important to film historians the genre strand has become with subjects such as exploration of tech-centric genre cinema (So Unreal), the rise of boutique specialty collector labels (Boutique: To Preserve And Collect), and the huge wealth of early millennial genre films (Generation Terror). Then there is Children of the Wicker Man, where Robin Hardy’s sons Justin and Dominic journey through the complex nature of independent filmmaking and fatherhood.

There are three Discovery screens this year and the range of films on offer truly displays the rich vein of emerging global talent within the genre. From the USA we have, evil rising The Daemon, traumatic time-bending The A-Frame and Things Will Be Different, the grisly Happy Halloween, Dean Alioto’s The Last Podcast, the unique and experimental Agatha, Jeff Daniel Phillips trippy Cursed In Baja, scary Retrotech romance Video Vision, hellish road movie Drive Back, and the slasher maniac is back in Mutilator 2.

Then, from Canada, there is wild creature feature Scared Shitless, from Iceland the mythical haunter From Darkness, from Sweden the unholy In the Name of God and the tormenting Delirium, and from France there is avenging thriller Schlitter: Evil In The Woods and Aurélia Mengin’s shocking visual extravaganza Scarlet Blue.

From Japan we have the kiss-ass, time-altering A Samurai In Time, and, to celebrate its 40th Anniversary, there is a screening of Mermaid Legend, a rare exploitation cult movie that has never played any film festival outside of its native Japan.

Finally, FrightFest has once again teamed up with Warner Bros to celebrate the 40th anniversary of A Nightmare On Elm Street, Wes Craven’s classic shocker that re-energised the teens-in-terror stalk-and-slash cycle and proved getting a good night’s sleep can severely damage your health.

The festival guest line-up and full details for the Short Film Showcases and other events will be revealed soon.

Passes on sale from Sat 13 July, noon

Single tickets on sale from Sat 20 July, noon

https://www.frightfest.co.uk

CHATTANOOGA FILM FESTIVAL 2024 WRAP UP

Posted on July 12, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies

Man, what a ride. I made it through 118 movies and shorts in less than a week. My eyes are beat! Seriously, Chattanooga Film Festival is my favorite of all fests and the highlight of my movie watching year. You can check out all of the films on this Letterboxd list or just click on the links below.

Shorts

Dangerous Visions