15. HALLYUWOOD: It’s time to dig up the onggi and watch yourself a South Korean joint, the saltier the better.
Gipeun bam, gapjagiis a South Korean horror film directed by Ko Young-nam. It all starts with Kang Yu-jin (Yoon Il-bong) hiring a new housekeeper, Mi-ok (Lee Ki-seon). They couldn’t be further apart, as he’s a wealthy biology professor conducting a study of butterflies and she’s a simple village girl who is the daughter of a recently dead shaman priestess.
While Kang Yu-jin and his wife Seon-hee (Kim Young-ae) enjoy having the girl in their home, it doesn’t last. Mi-ok keeps a wooden doll with her that has shown up in Seon-hee’s nightmares. She also thinks that she’s having an affair with her husband, which is an even more powerful reason to hate her. When things finally come to blows, the rich woman accidentally kills the maid, then becomes haunted by her.
This is as close as Korean cinema will get to a giallo, as color theory — Seon-hee appears in conservative purples while Mi-ok is in revealing white clothes — while the neon hues scream Bava and some scenes appear to be shot underwater or within a kaleidoscope. It all starts so simply but by the end, the score is literally bashing you in the face while a storm rages throughout the film.
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.
Leung Chang (Yuen Biao) has been studying kung fu without any hard work. That means that when he fights people and defeats them, it’s because his wealthy father has given money to his servant Yee Tung-choi (Chan Yung) which he uses to pay off his opponents.
Three of Chang’s friends go to see the Lok Fung Lin Chinese Opera troupe. One of them asks out the lead actress and is turned down. He gets insistent and she reveals that she is a man, Leung Yee-tai (Lam Ching-ying). The friends try to attack him, but he’s a Wing Chun expert. Chang, thinking that he’s a great fighter, wants to avenge his friend. Yee Tung-choi tries to bribe Yee-tai, but that fails and Chang discovers just how bad of a battler he is.
Chang asks Yee-tai to teach him Wing Chun but he wisely refuses, as the rich kid would just use it the wrong way. Chang’s father buys the Lok Fung Lin troupe and gives his son a job as Yee-tai’s personal assistant. Now, he follows him everywhere and begs to be taught. And by the end, another prodigal son — Ngai Fei (Frankie Chan) — will teach Chang where he was wrong.
Directed by Sammo Hung, who wrote the movie with Barry Wong, The Prodigal Son is a martial arts movie that actually has a lesson to be learned. I loved it.
The Arrow Video blu ray of this movie has so much! Start with the 2K restorations from the original elements by Fortune Star of both the original HK theatrical and home cuts, then get into extras like two commentary tracks — one by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng and actor Bobby Samuels and the other with action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema — as well as featurettes on Wing Chun and Sammo Hung, as well as a double-sided poster, trailers, a reversible sleeve with art by Joe Kim and an illustrated book. You can buy it from MVD.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part 2 was on USA Up All Night on August 13, 1993 and May 13, 1994.
Of course, there was going to be a sequel. Sean S. Cunningham refused to direct it because he was against the studio plan to bring Jason back from the dead. He said that it was too stupid and would never work. Hmm.
Beyond a plan to be an anthology of stories on Friday the 13th (which sounds a lot like the plans for Halloween), another thought was that Alice would be a reoccurring hero in this series, continually facing off against Jason again and again in sequel after sequel (again, think Halloween and Laurie Strode). Sadly, after was stalked by a fan, she said she wanted out (she even stayed out of acting for a long time).
That’s why this movie starts with her death. I always wondered why this happens, because it invalidates all of the emotional investment that you put into the last film!
So of course, everyone decides that re-opening Crystal Lake would be a great idea. We’ve got Ginny (Amy Steel, April Fool’s Day), Sandra, Jeff, Scott, Terry, Mark, Vickie and Ted, who sit around a campfire and listen to the legend of Jason. Even Crazy Ralph from the last movie shows up to warn everyone before getting killed.
Here’s my problem with this sequel: it rips a lot off. Jason doesn’t have his trademark hockey mask, so he steals the look of the Phantom of The Town that Dreaded Sundown. And then there’s the issue of taking two murders shot for shot from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. A machete to the face and a couple stabbed together by a spear? Attention director Steve Miner: Bava did it first and better. Miner would go on to direct Halloween H20, so his sins are many.
Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Except Ginny. She discovers Jason’s altar to his dead mother and ends up stabbing him in the should with a machete. And then the movie does another shock ending, making you think Jason survived. He, of course, did not. Or he did. You know how these things go.
My question is: Did Jason rise from the dead? Or was he alive in the forest all these years? And how did he learn how to use a telephone? Let’s just stop asking questions.
Shot in Lake Tahoe, California which is supposed to be Scotland and featuring the Nessie puppet that would return to the screen to play Jack the Ripper in the “Bullshit or Not?” section of Amazon Women on the Moon, this Larry Buchanan movie is, well, complete junk and I say that in the best of ways.
The Loch Ness Monster is wilding out on swimmers while waiting for her egg to hatch, all while a World War II German bomber lies beneath the freshwater loch and Scottish scientist George Sanderson (Sandy Kenyon) and American sonic expert Spencer Dean (Larry’s son Barry) hunt it down. Also: Jack Stuart (Doc Livingston), the person to first take a photo of the monster and he’s not George Spicer, who did that in our reality, has a daughter named Kathleen (Miki McKenzie) who Spencer falls in love with. And yes, Professor Pratt (Stuart Lancaster) and his team are looking for the German bomber, finds the egg and every one of Pratt’s crew gets eaten by the monster. Pratt won’t give the egg back and soon kidnaps Kathleen.
Every time the monster shows up it’s awe-inspiring just how bad it looks, which makes me love this movie even more. I can’t believe how cheap this movie is, that the creature bites necks and that it’s set in the 40s and yet no pains were taken to make it look that way. Well done all around.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Northern Kicks, Southern Fists aired on USA Up All Night on September 28, 1990.
Xin nan quan bei tui was also released in the U.S. as The Secret Rivals 3 and Assignment to Kill. It has “Northern Kick” Shao Yi-Fei (John Liu) is looking for the murderer of his younger brother and his friend “Southern Fist” Shen Yin-Wai (Alexander Rei Lo) is the killer. They must work together to find out who really did it — he’s played by choreographer Robert Tai — which means ninety minutes of fights.
Directed by Hsin-Yi Chang and Sung Yee Cheung and written by Chien-Chi Chang, this really has nothing to do with Ng See-yuen’s 1976 movie Nan quan bei tui AKA Secret Rivals AKA Northern Leg, Southern Fist AKA Silver Fox Rivals.
This movie feels like it would be more at home on USA’s Kung Fu Theater which I may have watched just as much as USA Up All Night.
After mutilating and murdering a family, George Tatum has been jailed for years. Now, he has been given the opportunity to be reprogrammed and returned to society. That said — he still has nightmares of his childhood and a trip to a Times Square peep show unlocks flashbacks that make him a killer all over again.
En route to Florida — where his ex-wife, daughters and son live, George follows a woman home and kills her. Meanwhile, his doctors have no clue that he’s left the city.
Imagine his wife’s surprise when she starts getting all manner of threats over the phone. All she wants to do is carry on with her new boyfriend, Bob. She has enough to deal with, as her son C.J. is the worst of all horror movie kids. He often plays pranks that go way past the line of good taste, like covering himself in ketchup and pretending to be dead. So when the kid says that a man is following him, everyone thinks he’s just up to his normal young serial killer in training mischief.
After killing some of C.J.’s fellow students, George breaks into their house and kills the babysitter while mom is at a party. But C.J. calmly and cooly deals with it — he shoots his father with a revolver while dad has a flashback of catching his dad engaging in BDSM games with his mistress before he decided to kill them both with an axe.
The movie closes with C.J. sitting in a police car, mugging for the camera, while his mother returns to see her ex-husband’s body being removed from the house. How does C.J. know the camera is there? Has he learned how to break the fourth wall? Will he soon be able to hear his own theme song, much like Michael Myers? And when I’m asking questions, isn’t the full title, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain, way better than just Nightmare?
Director Romano Scavolini started his career in porn, which might explain the incredibly casual nudity in the film and its devotion to giving the viewer exactly what they want from a slasher. It knows exactly why you’re here and gives you what you need. He stated about the film that he wanted to tell a story that has roots in reality and not just fantasy. A story of no hope, because mankind is at the mercy of its own demons. And, perhaps most importantly, a story where a young boy is unable to deal with the fact that his parents might just happen to be down with BDSM.
According to Matthew Edwards’ Twisted Visions: Interviews with Cult Horror Filmmakers, Scavolini claimed that prior to receiving distribution through 21st Century Film Corporation, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures had both wanted to buy the film, but only if the gore was cut down. Scavonli refused, feeling that “the strongest scenes had to remain uncut because the film should be a scandalous event.” Yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit.
This is a scummy, down and dirty affair. C.J. is an annoying kid, but who can blame him, He has the worst parents possible — one’s a serial killer and the other would rather party on down with Bob than deal with the wretched fruits of her ex-husband’s loins. Remember those 20/20 exposes on how horrible slasher movies were? This is one that lives up to those warnings.
Nightmare is part of the Popcorn Frights Film Festival. You can get a virtual pass to watch the festival from August 10 to 20. To learn more, visit the official site. To keep track of what movies I’ve watched from this Popcorn Frights, check out this Letterboxd list.
I’ve really been getting into the Unsung Horrors podcast and was overjoyed to discover a remake remix rip-off movie that I never knew about. Even better, it’s based on one of my favorite movies: The Living Dead at Manchester MorgueAKA No Profanar el Sueño de los Muertos (Don’t Disturb the Sleep of the Dead), Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, The Living Dead, Breakfast at Manchester Morgue and Don’t Open the Window.
Kang Myeong — the George Meaning of this movie — gets a ride from Soo-ji — Edna Simmonds — on his way to a seminar on the environment while she’s traveling to check up on her sister Jyun-ji. — Katie — and her husband Yeong-tae Jeong — Martin — only to learn that he’s dead.
Well, not for long.
One of Kang Myeong’s American teachers is now working at a supersonic transmitter that is removing insects in a more humane way, but it’s also animating the nerves of the newly dead. We learn this when the town drunk — who has been dead for several days — attacks Soo-Ji.
What’s different here is that nearly everyone has had their sharp edges smoothed off. Kang Myerong is never as mean to Soo-Ji as Geroge was to Edna, but then again, he isn’t as gorgeous as Ray Lovelock. But otherwise — up until three-quarters of the way through this movie — this is the same movie that you know and love under so many titles. It’s also missing the gore and when a movie is known for just how upsetting its moments of violence are, that’s a pretty big loss.
The other thing you might miss is that the cops come around a lot faster and the head officer is in no way as much of a real cop as Arthur Kennedy was.
Yet what makes up for this is just how weird it is that we have an alternative reality version of this movie and that the zombies are basically all painted silver, which is again in contrast to the very realistic dead bodies that populated Jorge Grau’s horror masterpiece. It attempts to make up for this with shocking photos of actual birth defects, as the movie goes further than its inspiration by stating that the machine is turning new babies into monsters.
Another title for this South Korean zombie xerox is Strange Dead Bodies, which is a fabulous alternative and one that would get me into the theater (or, you know, in front of my TV).
You can watch this on the Korean Film Archive YouTube channel.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Omen III: The Final Conflict was on the CBS Late Movie on October 17, 1986.
Directed by Graham Baker (Alien Nation) and written by Andrew Birkin (Slade In Flame), this was released in Germany and Hungary as Barbara’sBaby, as if the third Omen movie wasn’t enough of a reason to get people into theaters.
It starts with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom killing himself, setting Damian Thorn (Sam Neill) up for his father’s old job and his final path toward taking over the world. Yet Father DeCarlo (Rossano Brazzi) has found the Daggers of Megiddo from the ruins of the Thorn Museum that burned back at the end of Omen II, While Damian romances reporter Kate Reynolds (Lisa Harrow) and tries to take over her son Peter (Barnaby Holm), the priest and six other holy men attempt to destroy him.
Oh yes — after the alignment of stars in the Cassiopeia constellation on March 24, 1981, a second Star of Bethlehem appears and Damien orders his followers to kill all boys born in England on the morning of March 24, 1981, as one of them may be Jesus Christ. One of the followers even kills her own son with an iron.
But man, the end of this movie? Jesus himself shows up to kick Damian’s ass. I can only imagine that some audiences found this inspiring, others found it over the top and a lot just stayed home. I kind of love this movie for just how wild it gets, but it’s so far removed from the other films in the series. I can’t wait to see the fourth.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Evil Stalks This House was on the CBS Late Movie on January 8, April 29 and August 4, 1987.
This was a pilot for a horror anthology that would be called Tales of the Haunted. According to IMDB, this series was broadcast in syndication as 30-minute episodes shown over five consecutive nights. That means that each story would be a five-parter and then edited down to a 96-minute film.
Sadly, the initial syndicated run of this episode didn’t get great ratings.
Who knows if whatever would have emerged if this had become a series and if it would have been as deliriously weird as this movie, but one could hope, because wow — this one really goes for it.
Hosted by Christopher Lee — that part doesn’t appear on many of the roughly taped YouTube videos that are all the evidence that remains of this show — this tells the story of Stokes (Jack Palance), who drifts into two with two kids in tow who may or may not be his. After their car breaks down in a downpour, they make their way to the home of Maggie and Dody (Helen Hughes and Frances Hyland), who seem to be two easily conned older ladies taking care of a mentally handicapped man.
Stokes learns that there are valuables all over the house, so despite promising to leave, he never does, even stealing the ladies’ heart medicine to keep them enslaved to him. They’re not so helpless, however, and the house is filled with horrifying traps like a quicksand pit in the basement, a deadly spider and a witch coven in the attic that bedevils Stokes and another grifter who also comes to take advantage.
The end of this movie totally steals the shock ending from The Baby and I could not love it any stronger.
Nearly a stage play that’s been shot on video, this was directed by Gordon Hessler (Cry of the Banshee, Pray for Death, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die) and written by Louis D. Heyward (Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Planet of the Vampires, The Crimson Cult), I’ve seen this written up quite dismissively in reviews. But why? This is such a lost moment of strangeness with Palance absolutely snarling and hissing out every line with so many nightmare moments for impressionable kids who stayed up way to late to watch it on the CBS Late Movie.
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