EDITOR’S NOTE: Battle In Outer Spacewas on Chiller Theater on Saturday, December 11, 1965 at 11:20 p.m. It also aired on December 23, 1967 and December 21, 1968.
Directed by Ishirō Honda, written by Shinichi Sekizawa and special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya, Battle In Outer Space starts with disaster all over the world. Major Ichiro Katsumiya, Professor Adachi and Dr. Richardson think that it’s aliens and they are soon proved right by Dr. Ahmed, the Iranian scientist in the group, who starts sabotaging everything.
The Earth is going to become part of the planet Natal, unless Earth can get it together and do what we do best: kill things. Some of the biggest cities are turned into models and blown up real good, but don’t worry. We know how to vaporize things. We have the technology.
The exterior of the Science Center is the National Sports Center, which was made as part of the Tokyo Olympiad. I love that Japanese filmmakers decide to just blow up their own country more often than anyone else’s, but when the Cinerama Dome in Tokyo gets zapped, I did get depressed.
When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Eiji Tsuburaya watched and said, “We were right, our special effects team did a great job. Now, we can hold our heads before the public.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fan was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 4, 1983 at 2 a.m.
Today, Ed Bianchi is famous for his work on TV series like Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire, but he also has two movies to his credit. This one and the bizarre 1991 movie Off and Running, where Cyndi Lauper plays a mermaid-themed lounge singer whose boyfriend is murdered in front of her before she hooks up with a professional golfer.
It’s produced by Robert Stigwood, who in addition to managing the Bee Gees and Cream, produced the films Jesus Christ Superstar,Grease, Tommy, Saturday Night Fever, Bugsy Malone, Moment by Moment, Grease 2 and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. As you can tell, the success of these films gradually declined as time moved on.
The Fan received plenty of negative media attention, due to being released a few months after the murder of John Lennon, who lived in The Dakota, the same building where legendary actress and star of this film Lauren Bacall had been living for many years. She wasn’t pleased with the final film, however.
“The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script. The movie I wanted to make had more to do with what happens to the life of the woman–and less blood and gore.”
You have to admire the audacity of people who will take a legend like Lauren Bacall — someone who had only made one Robert Altman movie since last appearing in the Duke’s last movie, The Shootist — and put her in a slasher.
Douglas Breen (Michael Biehn!) is obsessed — and that’s putting it mildly — with star of stage and film Sally Ross (Bacall). No matter how many autographs he gets or curt replies or even outright silence, it’s never enough. He must have her, he must own her, he must consume her.
Sally doesn’t even know he exists. She’s acting in a Bob Fosse-like musical and reconnecting with her ex-husband Jake Berman (James Garner!). But after the letters become more carnal — yes, this is how we sexted in the 1980s, I was 9 when this was made, so I know — her assistant Belle (Maureen Stapleton!) starts to worry. She should — Douglas is stalking her every single move. And when he figures out that Belle is the reason why his letter didn’t get through, he slices her up with a straight razor.
She survives, but Elsa the maid doesn’t. Soon, Sally is under protection courtesy of Inspector Raphael Andrews (Hector Elizondo) and is asked if she’d like to have conjugal relations with a meat cleaver. Of note, the 2002 Paramount DVD release of this film re-edited this line to be much less profane.
Our heroine leaves town but that’s when Douglas gets smart. He gets cruised in a gay bar and in the midst of some oral delight, murders the man and sets him ablaze, faking that the body was his. Oh, the 1980’s, when DNA didn’t exist and these things happened all the time.
Finally, Sally comes back for opening night, but despite how amazing her performance is and even getting to reconcile with her ex, Douglas is waiting. He kills her costume designer and a guard before coming after her. But finally, he offers her an embrace and she responds by stabbing him in the neck before presumably leaving for the cast party at Sardi’s.
Look for Anna Maria Horsford from the Friday films as a female cop, Reed Jones (the original Skimbleshanks in Cats), a young Dana Delaney working in the record store alongside Douglas, Dwight Schultz as the director, Griffin Dunne as his production assistant and Liz Smith as herself.
The Golden Raspberry Awards nominated the song “Hearts, Not Diamonds” for Worst Song the year this came out. My ire for these awards and the wonderful films that they deride knows no bounds. Who are they to scoff at the abilities of Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice? How dare you insult Ms. Bacall! Why, why, why — I should write a letter just like Douglas did! That turned out alright!
There’s a rumor that this film was originally intended to be a straightforward thriller starring Elizabeth Taylor and directed by Jeff Lieberman. Yes, America’s favorite actress in the twilight of her career, being directed by the maker of Blue Sunshine. How did this not happen? How can we get to the parallel Earth where it did?
Much respect to Shout! Factory for finally releasing this insane blast of end of the last century star power-driven slasher on blu ray. It’s going to sit in a place of honor, right next to the other movies that I’m so happy they finally released, like The Lonely Lady.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cosmic Monsters was on Chiller Theater on Sunday, October 5, 1963 at 11:10 p.m. It also was on the show on December 26, 1964.
Also known as The Strange World of Planet X, this film has scientists Dr. Laird (Alec Mango) and Gilbert Graham (Forrest Tucker) goofing around with magnetic fields and working with Brigadier Cartwright (Wyndham Goldie) and Michele Dupont (Gaby Andre) to solve their issues of needing massive amounts of energy to do their work.
While the military is interested in how they can use this research, the magnetic field gets so messed up that it causes brain wave disruptions and makes men into killers and bugs into giant monsters. Humanity must be saved by Mr. Smith (Martin Benson), an alien being with his own flying saucer, as Dr. Laird has lost it, sending giant spiders after Dupont and endlessly making magnetic mayhem.
At least it has a good tagline: “Shock by incredible shock this ravaging death overruns the earth…menacing mankind with overwhelming chaos!” The poster is pretty fun with the giant spider being the main thing and who doesn’t enjoy monstrous bugs? I once dated a scientist who would do experiments like seeing how long bugs could live without their heads and I referred to movies of this genre to warn her of the dangers. She refused to hear me.
Since it’s the Halloween month of October, Deaf Crocodile is thrilled to announce its acquisition of 3 rarely-seen Eastern European genre classics for release in 2024 in newly-restored versions, co-presented with Seagull Films:
The fourth release by legendary Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko following Ilya Muromets, Sampo and The Tale of Tsar Saltan: his final film Ruslan and Ludmila, a 2-part, 2-1/2 hour epic fantasy in a gorgeous new 4K restoration.
Belarusian director Valeri Rubinchik’s long-unseen folk horror masterpiece The Savage Hunt of King Stakh, in a new restoration of the 2-hour director’s cut.
Georgian filmmaker Georgiy Daneliya’s surreal, comic sci-fi gem Kin-Daz-Dza!, available for the first time ever in North America.
Deaf Crocodile plans to release the 3 films in Spring – Summer 2024:
Ruslan and Ludmila – 1972, Mosfilm, 150 min. The final film from Russian fantasy master Aleksandr Ptushko (ILYA MUROMETS, SAMPO), Ruslan and Ludmila was a glorious and magical summation of his career: a 2-1/2 hour greatest hits package filled with the sweeping lyricism, bejeweled visual F/X and mythic storytelling that put him on par with Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen and Mario Bava. Based on an epic fairy tale written in 1820 by Alexander Pushkin (Ptushko had previously adapted Pushkin’s The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and half-jokingly said they were related), the film opens with the seemingly-joyous marriage of bogatyr (warrior) Ruslan (Valeri Kozinets) to Ludmila (Natalya Petrova), the daughter of Prince Vladimir. (Like his earlier Ilya Muromets, the action of the film is set during the legendary era of the Kyivan Rus’ culture that pre-dated both modern Ukraine and Russia.) On their wedding night, Ludmila is spirited away by the long-bearded wizard Chernomor (Vladimir Fyodorov), and taken to his sinister palace where she’s held prisoner. On their epic quest to rescue her, Ruslan and his three rivals encounter some of Ptushko’s most unforgettable imagery: a giant’s monstrous, decapitated head slumbering on an open plain, magic rings and stone warriors, sorcery and sacrifice, all in the hope of reuniting lost lovers. Newly restored by Mosfilm for release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.
“One of Ptushko’s richest works, a compendium of all the techniques and special effects he had developed in previous films. His miniature work reached its peak here, especially in the model of Chernomor’s icy kingdom with its gloomy castle perched atop a craggy cliff. Just as memorable are the sequences of Ruslan riding through the haunted woodlands at sunset …” – Alan Upchurch, Video Watchdog.
The Savage Hunt of King Stakha (1980, Belarusfilm, 126 min. Dir. Valeri Rubinchik): “We have more ghosts than live people,” murmurs the pale, haunted mistress of the mansion of Marsh Firs (Elena Dimitrova) to a scholar of ancient folklore (Boris Plotnikov) who has arrived at her castle to research the bloody legend of King Stakh, a murdered 15th century nobleman whose spirit supposedly thunders through the local woodlands. (The Wild Hunt is a fixture of northern European folklore in which a sinister figure leads a chase followed by ghostly companions.) Part folk horror, part supernatural mystery, King Stakh is a melancholy, chilling mixture of Terry Gilliam, Italian Gothic Horror, 1960s Hammer Films and The Wicker Man – and a major rediscovery for genre fans. The longer the young scholar stays in this mysterious house of “shadow, gloom, madness and death,” the more strange and surreal the imagery becomes: a mad widow in a white wig; a man bleeding spontaneously from his skull; a dwarf hiding in a decayed doll’s house; screeching ravens and maniacal puppet shows. Based on the novel by Belarusian writer Uladzimir Karatkievich, the long-unavailable King Stakh has recently been restored from the original film elements in its extended 126 min. Director’s Cut by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films for its first-ever U.S. release. (In Russian with English subtitles.)
Kin-Dza-Dza! (1986, Mosfilm, 135 min. Dir. Georgiy Daneliya.): Imagine Andrei Tarkovsky circa Solaris directing Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and you’ll come close to the existential weirdness of the wonderfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy Kin-Dza-Dza! Two average Muscovites – a plainspoken construction foreman (Stanislav Lyubshin) and a Georgian violin student (Levan Gabriadze) – encounter an odd homeless man on the street who asks, “Tell me the number of your planet in the Tentura?” In a flash, they’re teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy – a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative (their main words are “ku” for good and “kyu” for very bad) and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable. A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett and Jodorowsky’s never-made Dune where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF? than our own, the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you’re living under – or what planet you’re living on. Recently restored by Mosfilm for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile and Seagull Films. In Russian with English subtitles.
“Possibly the most underrated science fiction film of the past 50 years … A collapsed Ferris wheel provides a home for destitute desert dwellers. Graves are marked by balloons containing the deceased’s final breath. The colour of your trousers signifies social status, so they are powerful barter items… There is no convoluted plot, but instead a convoluted universe, and its incredulous victims ready to point out the farcicality therein.” – Joel Blackledge, Little White Lies
Somewhere in Maine, Julie (Angelina Danielle Cama) has grown up with foster parents Todd (Sean Whalen) and Janelle (Maria Olsen), but at this point, she can’t wait until she’s eighteen. Despite how close she is to being free, she keeps running away from home, which alerts a social worker named Rebecca (Kaiti Wallen) to her case.
The supernatural part of this story — the one that ties it into the flashback that opens the film — is that Julie has found a pendant and a secret Viking burial ground that holds Frey (Yan Birch), a monstrous killing machine that has been buried alive for hundreds of years. She feels for the creature and hides it in a shed, bringing it food when she can. But as you can imagine, that won’t be enough and he’s soon feeding on her neighbors.
Beneath Us All mixes up social issues, Rebecca’s workaholic nature and the growing vampiric bond between Frey and Julie, as well as the money issues that are getting to Todd and Janelle. At the same time, Detective Booker (Harley Wallen) is investigating the murders that keep growing and soon destroy two of the foster kids Sarah and Erica (Hanna and Emilia Wallen). Now only Stephen (Malachi Myles) is left and he’s fearing for his life while his foster parents refuse to leave their refuge.
This movie touches on things without hitting you over the head with them, like how Todd and Janelle have had so many problems yet continue to foster kids for fifteen years. Do they love them? Does it make them happy? The film is ambiguous in the right way, the way that life can be at times. The fact that natural nurturer Julie is turned to the side of Frey also feels that way. It’s the first time she’s had power and she’s going to use it.
The entire Wallen family seems to have put their lives into this movie, as Harley directed from a script by Bret Miller. I’ve enjoyed past movies I’ve seen by the director (Ash and Bone,Tale of Tails, A Bennett Song Holiday) but this is the most complete and intelligent work I’ve seen from him yet.
The Damned House of Hajn is about Soňa Hajnová (Petra Vančíková), who now has all of the money and power of the Hajns, a noble Czechoslovakian family with soap business. She is married to Petr Svejcar (Emil Horváth), who wants to grow in social circles no matter how crazy his new bride’s family is. That includes Uncle Cyril (Petr Čepek), who lives in the attic and wants everyone to think he can’t be seen, which is hard when he keeps showing up out of every curtain and door while trying to bed his much younger niece, who is married and oh yeah, his niece.
Based on Jaroslav Havlíček’s novel Neviditelný, this movie takes place inside a giant mansion that feels like it was made for a Mario Bava movie, filled with mazes of hallways, a spiral staircase and so many places to get scared in.
After the uncle finally gets what he wants — sexual assault with Soňa — he and his strange paintings are sent to the sanitarium and she assumes the true place at the head of the family. And that role is someone out of their mind, seeing waking nightmares of sexual encounters with Cyril throughout the never-ending gigantic house she will never leave. Now in love with the ghost of the man who destroyed her life, she even believes that the infant in her womb belongs to him.
There are also very real monsters in this, as the money and power are always for the stealing. Conspiring to murder relatives and the curse being passed to the next generation are just a few of the issues this family will deal with.
This is the type of movie that needs its own genre: Czech gothic noir horror that’s a mediation on the impossibility of human happiness.
14. AKA: The same great show by a name you didn’t know.
I might not be the biggest fan of Scream but I’m going to watch the Bollywood remake.
Directed by Pavan S. Kaul and written by Arshad Ali Syed, this starts just like its American inspiration with two teens — Malini Gujral and Sunny — murdered. The difference is that instead of having a mask that looks like Edvard Munch’s work, it looks like a clown.
Malini’s sister Mahek and her friends Rocky, Gehna, Rajat, Rhea, and Nikhil are all going to Simon College and are stalked by the killer just like her sister. In fact, whoever it is, the clown-faced slasher keeps calling Mahek. There’s also new love, perhaps, from Suraj Rai, who has just moved to campus.
As Mahlek is chased repeatedly by the killer, one of the teachers, Mrs. Roy, is killed inside a bathroom — Scream 2, right? — thinking a man has been staring at the girls there. The bloody tracks left behind have the cops thinking that it’s Rocky but while the foot size is close, the actual print is different. It’s closer to Suraj’s shoes, but by now, Mahek is interested in this stranger but then she discovers that the killer also has the same watch as him.
Everyone decides to get away and go on an island vacation, so this movie becomes I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Nearly everyone gets killed and twist after twist happens, including one taken from Scream and adding on even more family tragedy between the killer and Mahek.
This has tons of kills, some good locations and is filled with songs which pushes it to more than 2 and a half hours. But hey, that’s Bollywood. What’s strange is that it doesn’t refer to any other horror movies and the meta nature of the inspiration is what set it apart. Instead, this is nearly a slasher based on a movie making fun of slashers without any of the comedic elements. The telephone calls aren’t even a part of this movie. Just a mask, a cloak, a similar poster and a heroine who has a single mom. Well, they do get the arguing love interests who may or may not be Ghostface. Or the Joker, as he’s known in this.
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: Physical media
John Ebony (David Hemmings, who also produced this) is an idealistic young teacher who arrives at Chantrey School for Boys to fill the shoes of the recently fallen-off a-cliff Pellham. Yet this somewhat of a dream job is anything but, as he lives on the school’s grounds with his wife Sylvia (Carolyn Seymour), who feels trapped. She struggles to fit in with the older wives who have been there for decades, just as John is challenged by the juvenile delinquents he must somehow teach.
Directed by John Mackenzie and written by Simon Raven and based on a radio play by Giles Cooper, this movie gets dark when the boys in his class tell John that they killed the last teacher and they’ll do the same if he doesn’t do exactly what they say. No one believes him, not even his wife.
She makes the mistake of thinking that she can connect with the boys much more than she can with the much older teachers and their wives, even sharing a cigarette with her. Yet she’s defiant in the face of them threatening her with gang rape, which luckily is stopped at the last moment.
I’d never seen this movie, but it really gets across the way that British schools can lead to a legacy of brutal men who do the same thing in real life that they did in class. Seymour is also incredible in this. I’d never seen her in a movie before and now I’m seeking out other roles that she performed in.
The Arrow blu ray release of Unman, Wittering and Zigo contains a new audio commentary by Sean Hogan and Kim Newman; an appreciation by Matthew Sweet; a featurette with several of the cast members looking back at the movie; an original 1958 recording of Giles Cooper’s radio play; a trailer; an image gallery; a double sided fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Eric Adrian Lee, which also appears as a reversible sleeve and book with writing by Kevin Lyons and Oliver Wake. You can get it from MVD.
Alicia Seaborne (Nichelle Hines) has come to South Carolina to interview Alex Murdaugh (Chris McGarry) as he’s in jail awaiting trial for the deaths of his wife Maggie (Amy Parrish) and son Paul (Joshua Whichard) in this new Tubi original. I’m happy that this exists because one of the things that I miss from the 70s and 80s made-for-TV movies are ripped from the headlines stories that are actual movies and not just episodes of Dateline or 20/20.
A lot of true crime gets watched in our home, so I know the Murdaugh case quite well. Maggie and Paul were found dead at the family’s home on June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh was from a legendary South Carolina family of attorneys who ran the town. Three generations served consecutively as circuit solicitors for South Carolina’s 14th judicial district between 1920 and 2006. This led to the five-county district to be renamed Murdaugh Country by frustrated citizens.
The last generation has been charged with murder, wrongful death, corruption, fraud, witness intimidation, theft, and drug and alcohol-related charges, including Paul being party to a fatal boat accident that he was never punished for and the murders. Alex was also accused of embezzlement from his law firm, taking millions from locals and blaming it all on a drug addiction. There’s also the murder of nursing student Stephen Smith, who may have been killed by Alex’s son Buster, and the death of housekeeper Gloria Satterfield, who slipped, fell and died with no coroner investigation, no death certificate and a lack of a death certificate.
Alex’s cousin Curtis Edward Smith also conspired with him to shoot him on a country road so that Buster would get the insurance money.
Jason Winn, who directed this, also was behind the Tubi original Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl. If you know the story — if you have watched any true crime stories at all you are beyond in deep — this has everything that you expect with the characters actually being in a story and not just a re-enactment. It also adds Charlie Boggs (Aaron Gillespie), a prisoner whose family was taken advantage of by Alex and who is trying to murder him while they are in the same prison. As far as I know, he’s not an actual person and someone the movie has made to be everyone that got screwed over by Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth & Detrick, the family law group.
Who am I fooling with? If you know about the Murdaughs, you already watched this movie.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Death Curse of Tartu was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, July 2, 1977 at 11:30 p.m. It also aired on March 11, 1978.
If you didn’t have enough of teenagers in the Everglades screwing with forces they didn’t quite comprehend in Grefe’s Sting of Death — which was the other part of a double bill with this film — then good news! Four students on an archaeology assignment decide that it would be a great idea to have a shindig on the grave of Tartu, an ancient Native American medicine man.
Frank Weed, who played Sam in this, owned all of the animals that Tartu comes back from beyond within. He did not own the stock footage that was also used for some of these animals, nor his own voice, as he was dubbed for this movie.
Somehow, Tartu has the power set of your average mummy villain, except you know, he turns into animals. One of those animals is a “lake shark,” which I had to look up, and learned that true freshwater sharks can be found in fresh water in Asia and Australia, as well as bull sharks, which can swim in both salt and fresh water and are mostly found in tropical rivers. Actually, bull sharks have been found as far north as Illinois. Yet another reason why the Everglades are totally terrifying.
Why Tartu’s weakness is mud — when he makes his home in the Florida swamps — is beyond me. Man, who knows? This is kind of a nature film, you know, except for all the killing of teens after they dance. It’s got a great name, an awesome poster and really, isn’t that all it needs?
B&S About Movies 
You must be logged in to post a comment.