April 29: Regional Horror — A regional horror movie. Here’s a list if you need an idea.
Released regionally as False Face in 1977 through United International Pictures (a joint venture of Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures that distributes their films outside the United States and Canada; it started as Cinema International Corporation) and was made on a $400,000 budget in Atlanta and Covington, GA. Most of it is shot in Covington’s antebellum Turner mansion, one of the few Southern mansions spared by General William Tecumseh Sherman during the Civil War.
In 1979, it was re-released by AVCO Embassy, cut to PG and called Scalpel.
Phillip Reynolds (Robert Lansing) is both a plastic surgeon and a sociopath. He’s probably already killed his wife and when he watches his daughter Heather (Judith Chapman) make love to her boyfriend, he becomes so upset that he kills the boy and makes it all look like an accident. Heather runs away, which is inconvenient, as Phillip’s dead wife’s father gives his fortune to her instead of Phillip or Bradley (Arlen Dean Snyder), the old man’s ne’er do well son.
What does one do at this point?
Find an exotic dancer whose face has been beaten into nothingness, train her to be his daughter and collect the estate.
Everyone is convinced of the ruse except Bradley, who is killed while Jane — and Heather, who has returned — watches in horror. Of course, by this point, Phillip is dating his fake daughter, which is another level of strangeness that we expect from regional films. At this point, the women find one another and set upon making things right.
Directed and co-written (with Joseph Weintraub, who usually was an editor) by John Grissmer (who also directed Blood Rage and wrote The Bride, which is so worth watching), this is a slice of Southern Gothic by way of horror but yet made, as all regional greatness is, outside of the traditional system.
Electric Wizard is a band that either gets people into movies or finds people who loves those films, finds out that the band referenced them and starts to enjoy their music. It’s perfect for people who love occult-based music and film, as well as no small amount of, well, substances. I don’t think leader Oborn would disagree with me, as he told Kerrang! about a period in th eband’s history: “At the time, we were pretty bad people. I got arrested for arson of a car, outside a police station. Tim went to nick a crucifix off a church roof so we could use it onstage, then slipped, fell off through the window and sliced his arm open. He got community service for that. Then Mark got nicked for robbing an offie. He smashed the window, nicked a bottle of whiskey, then sat there drinking it outside! We weren’t very nice people, to be honest. We were feeding off that shit at the time. It made us feel like we were more of a heavy metal band.”
Started by singer, guitarist and lyricist Oborn in 1993, along with bassist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening, Electric Wizard takes its name — and sound — from Black Sabbath. Two of Black Sabbath’s songs, “Electric Funeral” and “The Wizard” were combined for their name.
Their albums Come My Fanatics… and Dopethrone pretty much are everything that speaks to me in doom metal, followed by the just as exciting We Live, Witchcult Today and Black Masses after drummer Justin Greaves, guitarist Liz Buckingham and bassist Rob Al-Issa joined. While they haven’t released an album since 2017’s Wizard Bloody Wizard, I listen to them every day.
How important are movies to Electric Wizard? Oborn told VICE, ““We love exploitation and sleaze movies in general. We dig Women-In-Prison films, Giallos, Rape/Revenge dramas, Erotic thrillers, Philippine exploitation etc… I’m also a big collector of 60s and 70s porn. Honestly—it was better, with professional performers. I’m actually working on a book dedicated to 60s/70s porn in Europe at the moment, but it’s been a very hard book to write. Many people involved in the industry are dead or on the run. Others who survived AIDS and the “witch hunts” are unwilling to talk about it any more. I have a few contacts but mostly performers, and they tend to be a little bit more crazed and unreliable. Unlike the U.S. porn stars of the 70s and 80s, the European and British industry is almost completely unknown. My favorite directors tend to be horror directors though: Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Mario Bava, Jose Larraz, Robert Hartford-Davies, Andy Milligan, Paul Naschy. I guess I can always relate to the macabre, to the unusual. We actually have a script for a movie with Electric Wizard in it! It’s kinda like the Beatles movies… except ours is fuckin’ macabre and morbid. I can’t say much… you gotta keep these things ambiguous, but it’s more of a violent rape revenge sleaze exploitation film than a horror film.”
Here are just a few of the movies sampled and referenced in their music.
“Incense for the Damned” on Time to Die: Richard Fountain, a scholar of Greek mythology at the University of Oxford, is attracted to Chriseis, a mysterious Greek woman who is a vampire in this 1971 British horror movie Incense for the Damned that is also known as Bloodsuckers, Freedom Seeker and Doctors Wear Scarlet. As the lyrics say, “We wanna get high before we die.”
“Venus In Furs” on Black Masses: Obviously, this is a song all about not just the book, but the Jess Franco movie. “Queen of the night swathed in Saturn black, your ivory flesh upon my torture rack… to your leather boots I offer prayer, you rise like a Cobra, evil, dressed in furs.”
“Dunwich” on Witchcraft Today: “Your mother’s witches, burnt at the stake for sorcery. You were conceived upon the altar, rites obscene.” I can only imagine how many times the band has watched The Dunwitch Horror.
There’s also a sample from this movie in the song “We Hate You:”
“You see man as a rather dismal creature.”
“Yes. Why not? Look around, you’ll see what’s there. Fear and frightened people who kill what they can’t understand.”
“House of Whipcord” from Let Us Prey
I only wish the band was around when Pete Walker was making movies so that stuff like House of Whipcord could have their droning heavy riffs haunting every frame.
“The Living Dead at The Manchester Morgue” from We Live
“Living dead arise from the morgue at night. Silently we strike. Cower from the night, yeah.” Any band could write about a zombie movie. Electric Wizard go for the best, a movie with as many titles as it has incredible scenes. Oborn told Bloody Disgusting, “Probably one of my favourite films ever and a huge influence on the band. Even though it’s an Italian/Spanish co-production it captures the bleak loneliness of the English countryside perfectly. Even anti-hero Georges dodgy Cockney accent…haha.”
The band also used a sample from the film in the song “Wizard In Black”:
The Inspector : You’re all the same, the lot of you, with your long hair and faggot clothes. Drugs, sex, every sort of filth! And you hate the police. Don’t you?
George : You make it easy.
“The Hills Have Eyes” from Dopethrone
Obviously, Wes Craven’s film is basis for this instrumental.
Officer: Something must have forced him over. Did you get anything out of the witnesses?
Officer: Yes sir. Exactly the same story from all of them. Two motorcyclists jabbing at his tire with a knife.
Officer: Any identification?”
Officer: Yeah, the living dead again
The Sinful Dwarf
The band played this movie when they curated Roadburn 2013.
The Electric Grindhouse Cinema
They also played Mark of the Devil Part II (under the German title Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequältwhich means Witches Raped and Tortured to Death), Janie, Erotic Witchcraft, Take An Easy Ride, Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave, Hunchback Of The Morgue and the Lasse Braun shorts Perversion-Violence, The Vikings Trilogy, Lady M, Hooked!, The Maniac and Psycho Doll.
“Son of Nothing” on Come, My Fanatics…
The sample that ends this song is from Beneath the Planet of the Apes: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”
The Satanism speech in “Vinum Sabbathi”
This comes from an episode of 20/20: “When you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple of ways you can get out. One is death. The other is mental institutions.” The band also used another sample from the show: “Look if this happens to your kid, or if you look at this and you have children you say: Could this happen to my child out of some kind of rebellion? How would a parent be aware? Many youngsters are into it, teenagers and younger The clues are there, the satanic symbol 666. If you see that written on your child’s notebook, if they’re into heavy metal music, if they are associating with strange characters or drifting off to ceremonies and not explaining where they’re at, it’s well worth it for parents to look deeper and ask: What exactly are you up to? And with whom. Because this is serious. It could be harmless, it could just be a diversion. But it could also be deadly serious Absolutely” on “Mind Transferal” on the album Dopethrone.
“Wizard of Gore” on Supercoven
While this song references the Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, the sample comes from another moive that was inspired by that film Bloodsucking Freaks.
Sardu: “Good, good, good, good, good. What a marvelous, wonderful, attentive audience you are. And now may I add, a brave one, too. Now those of you who are weak-willed or cowards would have fled by now or regurgitated over the seats in front of you. Tonight we begin with torture. Again I warn you that if you find what you see is a little upsetting to your stomachs, then just pretend we’re playacting. But if you are skeptical or bored, then just pretend that what you see is real. Magic? Then let Mr. Silo explain our next trick… dismemberment.”
“Return Trip” on Come, My Fanatics…
“Get off my case, motherfucker” comes from Cannibal Ferox.
“The Satanic Rites of Drugula” is obviously a play on Hammer’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula, while Thriller is referenced on the cover of Legalise Drugs and Murder, The Devil Rides Out‘s poster was used for Witchcult Today and “Night of the Shape” has a sound from — and is about — Halloween.
Movies mentioned in the book Come My Fanatics: A Journey into the World of Electric Wizard
There are so many more references that I am sure that I am missing. I am indebted to the band and the sources below that found so many that I didn’t know. If you know one, post in the comments and I’ll credit you.
John Talbot (Barry Newman, Vanishing Point) shows up in a small Louisiana town and nearly immediately starts a fight with some cops, goes to jail and it’s soon discovered that he is wanted for killing a policeman and robbing a bank. He then escapes, abducting Sarah Ruthven (Suzy Kendall), who just so happens to be the daughter of a millionaire. But nothing in this movie is as it seems.
Directed by Michael Tuchner with stunt sequences coordinated by Carey Loftin (Bullit, The French Connection), Fear Is the Key is really about Talbot faking his way into becoming a criminal in order to find out who killed his wife and son, going the whole way to the depths of the ocean to get the answers and retribution that he craves.
It’s also Ben Kingsley’s first movie, although he would only work on the stage on on TV for a decade until he was in his next movie, Ghandi.
As exciting as the book that this was based on, written by Alistair MacLean, there’s nothing like getting a twenty-minute car chase that features Newman driving a 1972 Ford Gran Torino. Loftin was the king of scenes like this, as well as being the driver of famous car scenes in Duel and Christine. That chase happens at the beginning of the movie, which may seem like a strange way to structure a movie, but sometimes, you give it your best shot right from the starting flag.
The Arrow release of Fear Is the Key has tons of extras, including new audio commentary by filmmaker and critic Howard S. Berger, a visual essay by film critic and author Scout Tafoya, an appreciation of the movie’s composer Roy Budd by film and music historian Neil Brand, a making of, an interview with associate producer Gavrik Losey and a trailer. It’s all inside a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh, along with a double-sided foldout poster and a booklet with new writing by filmmaker and critic Sean Hogan.
Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin, who was in Meteor, The Day the Clown Cried and Raise the Titanic) can’t pay the rent — he’s a starving artist, you know? — so he tries to sneak into a woman’s bedroom and steals money off her nightstand. He thinks that she’s sleeping, she thinks he’s a rapist and this comical misunderstanding ends with her popping out his eye with a spoon and knocking him out a window.
Arthur pulls himself back up and decides that he’s going to keep being an artist but to do so, he’s going to kill people and use their eyeballs in his art.
It was produced by porn luminary Henri Pachard and distributed by J.E.R. Pictures as a double feature with The Ghastly Ones. The director and writer? Kent Bateman, who was the father of Jason and Justine, and would one day produce Teen Wolf Too.
Back to that porn connection, it has adult actors Larry Hunter (who was also in The Amazing Transplant with another actress from this movie, Mary Lamay) and Linda Southern. Another actress, Ann Wells, was also in Anything Once, Career Bed and The Detention Girls, was married to Bateman but is not the mother of his famous children.
Don’t be confused by the poster. This is not a movie about eyeballs moving on their own. No, it’s a movie about a man with an eyepatch saying “My eye!” and “I’m twisted!” while plucking other eyeballs out of their sockets. Over and over. Sometimes even in focus. Also: set to music stole from the Cecil Leuter and Georges Teperino albums TV Music 101 and TV Music 102.
This is the kind of movie that as soon as it starts, you’re either going to love or despise it.
Prince Mccoy (director, writer and star Michael Worth) has lost out on all the dreams he once had as he grew up in the small town of Apple Seed. His childhood bank foreclosed on everything his father owned, which he blames for his father’s death. And now, he has no home, no girlfriend and no hope. So he decides to drive across the country in his 1967 Mustang — which is all he owns — and make that bank pay for what they’ve done.
He picks up an old man named Carl Robbins (Rance Howard), a strange senior who has a bucket list on a napkin and a mission to lead Prince on a journey that will change both their lives, meeting a variety of people, like the love that Prince let get away, as they also confront the errors they’ve made in their own lives.
That’s because just like Prince wants to, Carl also robbed a bank. And despite his advanced age, he’s facing a prison sentence that will last for the rest of his life. Is Carl’s past going to be Prince’s future? And what happens when they make it to Apple Seed?
This is the last film that Rance Howard was in, released two years after his death. It also has a role for his son Clint.
There’s also an appearance by Robby Benson that echoes the movie Ode to Billie Joe, based on the song of the same name.
Worth told Diversions LA, “I did a film with Rance in Flagstaff, Arizona and I knew I had to do a film for him. It was just one of those things I wanted to get made. We completed the project just before Rance passed away.”
As I get older, I’ve been thinking of the journey of my life. This movie made me reflect on things and wonder when I will go from Prince to Carl in my experience.
This VCI Entertainment and MVD release has extras like an audio commentary by director and star Michael Worth, an alternate longer cut, a making-of, a short about the movie’s premiere, deleted and extended scenes, and a Rance Howard memorial video.
Julia Sweeney created the character Pat O’Neill Riley for Saturday Night Live but it wasn’t intended to be a mystery as to the character’s gender. Sweeney said, “I’d been an accountant for like five years, and there was one person I worked with in particular who had a lot of mannerisms like Pat. This person sort of drooled and had the kind of body language of Pat. I started trying to do him. I was testing it out on my friends and they were just like, “Yeah, it’s good, but it doesn’t seem like a guy that much.” Like I couldn’t quite pull off being in drag convincingly enough. So then I thought, maybe that’s the joke. I’ll just have one joke in here about how we don’t know if that’s a man or a woman just to sort of cover up for my lack of ability to really play a guy convincingly.”
First appearing on December 1, 1990 and showing up in twelve other episodes, Pat is of another era, a time when non-binary and transgender people were seen mostly as someone to joke about. Let’s be honest, they still are and even worse today. But for a time, Pat was the first character of its type.
Sweeney said about this film — yes, everyone from SNL was getting a movie at this stage — “I wrote It’s Pat with Jim Emerson and Steve Hibbert. We had a great time writing and a lot of fun making the film. The movie didn’t do well at the box office, not by a long shot. In fact, It’s Pat became a popular example of a film so despised that it got a zero percent Rotten Tomatoes rating! I guess in that way, it’s sort of a badge of honor. But I can’t help it, I love this film. It has so many people in it who I love, and loved. Many are dead: Charlie Rocket, who played Kyle, and Julie Hayden who played his wife (who died of cancer a couple of years after the film premiered,) my dad who played the priest who married us, and my brother Mike who had one line at the wedding shower of Pat and Chris. And there are so many good friends in the film too: Kathy Griffin and Dave Foley and Kathy Najimy and Tim Stack and Tim Meadows. And the band Ween! We had so much fun together.”
Yes. Ween is in this. It still makes me laugh that they show up.
Pat (Sweeney) and Chris (Dave Foley, who continually has played women in nearly every show that he’s been part of) have met, found out that they both like to eat and become engaged. Yet Pat can’t get her life together, she has a neighbor (Charles Rocket) obsessed with her and an appearance on America’s Creepiest People turns her into a celebrity, which causes the couple to break off their engagement. The entire free world then becomes obsessed by whether or not Pat is a man or a woman while Pat tries to get Chris back.
Sweeney didn’t want to make the film. She said, “I resisted it completely. I just didn’t know how we could make it last for two hours. But 20th Century Fox was really keen; our producer was really keen. So we thought, OK, we’ll write the script. And after three months, we fell madly in love with the script. Unfortunately, Fox did not.”
This was made by Touchstone Pictures instead of that studio.
It also has an uncredited writer.
Quentin Tarantino.
Playboy: You were hired to do a rewrite of It’s Pat. As one now familar with the perspiring androgyne from Saturday Night Live, is Pat a he or a she?
Tarantino: The androgyny aspect is only a part of Pat’s appeal. What I love about the character is that Pat is so fucking obnoxious. To tell the truth, I don’t know what Pat is. But I know what I want Pat to be: I want Pat to be a girl. There was only one sketch that Julia Sweeney, the actress who plays Pat did on Saturday Night Live that gave a clue to what Pat is. It was the sketch that Pat did with Harvey Keitel. They’re stranded on a deserted island and they have sex — and Harvey still doesn’t know what Pat is. And the thing is, they kissed in it. At one point they were thinking of taking the kiss out of the sketch. But Harvey, being Harvey, demanded they keep it in, that there’d be no integrity without the kiss. So that was the first time we’d seen Pat in an intimate situation — a smooch. There is a certain way that you hold your head, the way you come in for a kiss. And sitting there, watching it, I thought that Pat didn’t kiss like a guy. Pat kissed like a girl.
Sweeney was so upset after this that she never wanted to play the Pat character again. However, she had previously agreed for Pat to be honored as mayor for the day”in West Hollywood on Halloween. She would play Pat one last time on October 31, 1994, but claims that it was “halfhearted and pathetic.”
In this film, Mary Pickford plays not one, but two roles in a movie different from anything she had ever done before. One is beautiful, rich, but crippled Stella Maris and the other is deformed and abused orphan Unity Blake. For one of the first times in film, one actress would play two roles using double exposures and complex editing from director Marshall Neilan and cinematographer Walter Stradling.
Based on William John Locke’s 1913 novel, this begins with Stella Maris trapped in her London mansion bedroom. Unable to walk since birth, her wealthy family tries to keep her from the horrors of the world, such as World War I. There’s a sign on her door which tells anyone entering, “All unhappiness and world wisdom leave outside. Those without smiles need not enter.”
Unity Blake is an uneducated orphan who has been abused to the point that she is afraid of every person she meets. She’s been hired by Louisa (Marcia Manon) to work in the mansion.
John (Conway Tearle) may be married to Louisa, but it’s never been happy. He frequently visits Stella, who he has never told that he is married. Instead, he wants her to think that he is as perfect as her worldview.
One night, Unity loses the food she is delivering and as a result, a drunken Louisa beats her senseless. Louisa is arrested and jailed, while John decides to adopt Unity, who soon falls in love with him. Stella’s family wants her kept from the rich girl, as seeing another woman so broken will let her know that the world is a horrible place.
Unity decides to become educated, learning from her new guardian Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell), as Stella gets an operation which allows her to walk. She agrees to marry John, just as Louise gets out of jail, telling the young girl the truth about the man she is in love with.
That night, Aunt Gladys is overheard telling others that Louise will never allow John to live the life he deserves. Unity, realizing that John will only love Stella, murders Louise and kills herself, freeing John and allowing Stella to believe that there may be sadness, but there can also be joy afterward.
What I love about the golden age of media that we live in now is that movies like this, that may otherwise not be seen and could even be lost can now exist in my collection.
According to MVD, who released this film, “The Mary Pickford Foundation and the Paramount Film Archive partnered to access all elements available in the Pickford collections both at the UCLA Film & Television Archive and at the Library of Congress. Even though the archives were shut down during the pandemic, all parties cooperated to send the film elements to Paramount so they could be scanned in 4K resolution and commence work on the restoration.”
Using a 1967 35mm B&W Dupe Negative and an incomplete 1925 35mm Tinted Print, this has new digital inter-titles, repaired damaged to the prints, a stabilization of the actual playing of the movie and a frame rate that closely matches how audiences would have seen the movie in 1918.
Extras include a commentary track by Marc Wanamaker, author and film historian, as well as a pictorial book created by the Mary Pickford Foundation, a photo gallery and The Mountaineer’s Honor, an American Biograph short that has been newly mastered in HD with an original score by the Graves Brothers.
April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 26 and 27, 2024. 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 but get there early and learn more here.
For a list of all of the movies that have ever played the Monster-Rama, click here.
Here are the two drinks I’ll be bringing!
1985 Zombie (The Return of the Living Dead)
1 oz. Malibu rum
1 oz. Hurricane Proof rum
1 oz. spiced rum
.5 oz. peach schnapps
.5 oz. 99 Bananas
1 oz. orange juice
1 oz. lemon juice
1 oz. lime juice
.25 oz. grenadine
Do you ever wonder about all the different ways of dying? You know, violently? And wonder, like, what would be the most horrible way to die?
Mix all of this in a shaker with ice, then pour it into a big glass. Lose your brains.
Point Dume Sunset (Messiah of Evil)
1 oz. vodka
1.5 oz. Malibu rum
1.5 oz. peach schnapps
.5 oz. grenadine
2 oz. orange juice
2 oz. pineapple juice
Maraschino cherries are optional
Fill a glass with ice, then pour in this order: vodka, rum, schnapps then the juices. Then, pour your juices, then add cherries. Finally, pour the grenadine down the side of the glass, so that you get the “sunset” effect.
Then, sit in the sun and wait. And sleep. And dream. Each of us dying slowly in the prison of our minds.
“Welcome aboard, fright-seers! Looking for a little hell-iday fun? You’ve come to the right place! We specialize in all sorts of hackage tours! (cackles) So what will it be? A few days in a scream park? Or would you like me to book you into a nice, quiet dead and breakfast? Or perhaps you’d like to go treasure haunting like my friend, Red. He wants to steal a priceless black pearl in a tasteless tidbit I call: “Dead Wait.””
Red Buckley (James Remar) and his partner Charlie (Paul Anthony Weber) have been planning to steal a black pearl from plantation owner Emilie Duvall (John Rhys-Davies). There’s not much time, because the island where Duvall lives is about to be taken over by a revolution. So Red kills Charlies as they argue and decides to get the pearl for himself. He then meets Emilie at a bar — he’s pretty sickly, as he’s filled with water worms that have carved tunnels through his skin — along with the man’s much younger wife Kathrine (Vanity), who seduces the crook and they decide to kill her husband and split the pearl. The problem? Emilie has a worker named Peligre (Whoopi Goldberg) who does voodoo and plans on taking care of Red.
If you’re wondering how gross this one is going to get, well, Emilie has swallowed the pearl and Red has to dig through his worm-filled corpse to find it. That’s what you get when Tobe Hooper directs! But seriously, this is an intriguing episode.
There’s also a scene afterward where the Crypt Keeper has a talk show and interviews Whoopi.
Crypt Keeper: Oooh. Talk about being headed off at the pass. We’ve got a guest, kiddies. Whoopi! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I want you to know that I loved your movie The Killer Purple.
Whoopi: That’s Color Purple, Crypt Keeper.
Crypt Keeper: Oh! Right. Well, um, congratulations on winning that Academy A-weird.
Whoopi: Well thanks, but it’s actually called an Academy Award.
Crypt Keeper: Whatever. Look, it’s a pleasure to meet a big star like you.
Whoopi: Now, you’re a pretty big star. I mean, I’d love it if you would be in my next film.
Crypt Keeper: Really?
Whoopi: (pulls out a machete) Yeah, it’s just a bit part.
Crypt Keeper: I’m flattered!
Whoopi: But you don’t know what bit I want.
Crypt Keeper: Well, as long as I don’t wind up on the cutting room floor!
Whoopi: (Points the machete at him) Okay!
Crypt Keeper: (Gasps)
Whoopi: (Smiles at the camera)
This episode is based on “Dead Wait!” from Vault of Horror #23. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Davis.
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.