The year is 1799, and Ichabod Crane is a New York police constable who has been dispatched to Sleepy Hollow: an upstate Dutch hamlet where there have been a lot of brutal murders involving people getting their heads chopped off. He is welcomed by the town elders, including the wealthy businessman Baltus Van Tassel who has a beautiful young daughter named Katrina, who immediately shows an interest in Ichabod. And vice versa. Once he starts his investigation, he hears the story about what the locals believe to be the cause of all the decapitations: the Headless Horseman, who was once a Hessian mercenary from the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod just scoffs of such superstitious nonsense, but his skepticism is put to the test over and over again as more people keeps dying.
Sleepy Hollow is a dark fantasy horror film from 1999, directed by Tim Burton and loosely based on the 1820’s short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It stars Johnny Depp in the role as Ichabod Crane, and Christina Ricci in the role as Katrina. Christopher Lee also has a supporting role here, as the Burgomaster, among some other well-known faces. The development of the movie started in 1993, where Kevin Yagher was originally set to direct the film as some kind of low-budget slasher horror film. There were some disagreements, causing Paramount to demote Yagher to prosthetic makeup designer instead, and Tim Burton was brought on board in 1998.
Originally, the character Ichabod Crane is described as a very unattractive man in the novel, and Johnny Depp offered to wear prosthetics on his face to carry on those appearance traits. Paramount didn’t want any of that, though (hmmm….I wonder why…) so the character is more based on Ichabod’s squeamishness and eccentricity, but turning him into a skeptic. A rather big contrast to the animated Disney film from 1949 where he’s kind of a dick, and superstitious to the core.
The relationship between Ichabod and Katrina is handled in a completely different way here, and the characters are given much more depth and backstory, and we are also getting the backstory of the headless horseman himself. Especially grim is the story of Ichabod’s childhood and his mother’s death, which gives us a very grisly scene involving an iron maiden. Speaking of grisly scenes, there’s actually a fair amount of them so I think they decided to keep a little bit of that slasher flair from the original idea. There’s bloody and visceral decapitation scenes, and one scene where the headless horseman decapitates the parents of a child hiding under the floorboards, where the kid makes eye contact with his dead mother’s head before meeting the same fate himself, is a particularly vicious scene.
Tim Burton also included some scenes which are homages to the animated Disney movie The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad from 1949. This includes the scene where Ichabod crosses the bridge and hears the frogs croaking his name, and the scene with the flaming pumpkin. There’s a mix of fairytale and gothic horror in a perfect balance, where the slumbering and spooky village of Sleepy Hollow consists of beautiful periodic sets with crooked, twisted trees and old buildings which is a mix of Northern European and American colonial architecture. And while most of the movie was filmed in Leavesden and Shepperton studios, they actually built the village at the Hambleden estate at Lime Tree Valley. Compared to the Disney movie which was very colorful, this one is bleak and misty and kicks up the gothic atmosphere to eleven, perfectly complemented by Danny Elfman’s score.
Sleepy Hollow is a fun gothic horror story that oozes Tim Burton from start to finish, and while very much removed from the original Irving classic, it’s an inventive and fun reimagined version of the story. It is peak Tim Burton, and a perfect Halloween watch!
Director: Tim Burton Writers: Kevin Yagher, Andrew Kevin Walker Country & year: UK/USA/Germany, 1999 Actors: Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien, Jeffrey Jones, Richard Griffiths, Ian McDiarmid, Michael Gough, Christopher Walken, Lisa Marie IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162661/
♫With a hip-hip and a clippity-clop He’s out looking for a head to swap So don’t try to figure out a plan You can’t reason with a headless man
The year is 1790, and the goofy, scrawny scarecrow-like Ichabod Crane is arriving at Sleepy Hollow. The place is a small picturesque village outside Tarrytown, New York, and Ichabod is going to be the place’s new schoolmaster. Upon arriving, everyone in the small village is curious about this strange fellow with his odd appearance and strange mannerisms. Despite this, he’s able to form good relationships with the women, who loves his singing voice, voiced by crooner Bing Crosby. No wonder the women were swooning. Bing Crosby is actually the narrator and singer for the entire film, making for some unforgettable songs from Disney’s prime time.
Now, as Ichabod Crane settles well into the little sleepy town, he meets the beautiful Katrina, daughter of Van Tassel who is the richest farmer there. A guy named Brom, a typical brutish dude, is Katrina’s fiancé and is not exactly happy about Ichabod’s advances on Katrina. Ichabod’s biggest weakness is how he is extremely superstitious, something Brom decides to take advantage of on Halloween. As they are all at the annual frolic at the Van Tassel house, Brom sings the tale of the Headless Horseman and scares the bejesus out of Ichabod. It is said the spirit is traveling through the woods of Sleepy Hollow every year on Halloween, searching for a new head to replace the one he’s lost. And Ichabod needs to travel back through the woods after the party to get back home…
The Adventures of Ichabod (and Mr. Toad) is an animated Disney movie from 1947. It began development in 1940, and originally was meant to be a feature film based only on The Wind in the Willows. It went through several production delays, until it was cut down to a short film and merged with another short film based on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which was also originally meant to be a full length feature. This review will focus on the Sleepy Hollow inspired segment.
Immediately from the opening of the short film, there’s a Halloween atmosphere all over it: the beautifully painted backgrounds which starts with a graveyard just to set the tone right away, deep in a dark forest, until the camera shifts focus out of the gloomy forest scenery and introduces us to Ichabod Crane himself, walking towards the village with his nose (literally) in a book. We see him entering Sleepy Hollow which is filled with beautiful autumnal colors, and in the pure good old-fashioned Disney style, we immediately get a song number once Brom and his other beer-drinking buddies notices him. Yes, this was from the time when Disney still portrayed the use of alcohol and cigars.
Also, like many of the classic Disney movies from their golden era, the songs are catchy and spirited. While the story progresses with some of the familiar good-humored Disney slapstick, the main story is very much about a love triangle of sorts, where Ichabod is craving Katrina’s affection and does everything he can to flirt with her, making her fiancé jealous. Katrina, on the other hand, is obviously enjoying Brom’s jealousy and is only using Ichabod to fuel his anger…“that little coquette Katrina“ isn’t as sweet on the inside as on the outside, it seems. Then again, this isn’t really a story about the sweetest and most sympathetic characters. Ichabod comes off as a selfish, ruthless gold-digger who yearns more for Katrina’s wealth than her, literally daydreaming of when her father will die (!), and Katrina herself only plays along to tease Brom which makes her a bit of an attention-seeking bitch.
The best part of the movie begins, of course, once Brom starts singing one of Disney’s darkest songs: Headless Horseman. This is such a perfect Halloween banger and sets such a dark mood and foreshadowing of what is to come. Which is, of course, Ichabod’s travel back home where he gets to meet the infamous ghost that haunts Sleepy Hollow every Halloween night. Here the animators really excels with use vibrant colors and contrasts to make an eerie and spooky atmosphere!
The Adventures of Ichabod Crane and Mr Toad is a fun double-feature from Disney’s lesser known classics. Both segments are fun, but the Ichabod Crane segment still stands as one of Disney’s darkest, filled with a great autumn and Halloween vibe together with some catchy songs. Another perfect gateway horror film!
Directors: James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney Writers: Erdman Penner, Winston Hibler, Joe Rinaldi, Ted Sears, Homer Brightman, Harry Reeves Country & year: USA, 1949 Voice actor/narrator: Bing Crosby IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041094/
– Funerals, bad marriages, lost loves, lonely beds. That’s our diet. We suck that misery and find it sweet. We search for more, always. ― Mr. Dark
As the 1980s came, The Walt Disney Mouse had reached the puberty/goth phase and wanted to break free from the family-friendly image to focus on more “mature“ films. Mickey pulled pretty much a Miley Cyrus, you might say. The mouse still kept the tongue in its mouth though. And after the mouse dipped its toes into the more dark fantasy territory with The Watcher in the Woods (1980), he decided to take it a step further with Something Wicked This Way Comes, based on the novel by Ray Bradbury. Also, this time, a director with a horror background, Jack Clayton, got hired who directed the box-office success The Innocents back in 1961. Bradbury himself wrote the screenplay.
This was the first and last genuine horror film from Disney, although I’d say that Return to Oz (1985) is pretty close to being in the same category.
Something Wicked This Way Comes starts with a wicked foreshadowing and sinister tone as the title suggests, where we see a locomotive in the dark distance coming towards us during the opening credits, heavily spiced-up with a wicked score by James Horner. Something wicked is on its way, that’s for sure. This was my very first gateway horror, so yeah, that opening scene alone made an impression on my early ghoulish childbrain.
It’s October, the weather is crisp, the year is 1920 and the place is the quiet and peaceful little Green Town in Illinois, shot in the beautiful countryside of Vermont. We meet the two young boys, Will Halloway (Vidal Peterson) and Jim Nightshade (Shawn Carson), who’s been best friends even before they were born. Nothing much happens in the town, until one October night a train can be heard in the distance. But that’s not just a train; it’s the train of Mr. Dark’s Pandemonium carnival. Will and Jim eagerly run after the train, which miraculously has turned into the carnival itself in a matter of some seconds. Uhm…did we miss something? Yes, we actually did, which I’ll come back to. The exploration gets cut short when the boys get spooked away by a big spider in one of the trailers, where also the Dust Witch (Pam Grier) sits in the shadows.
As they return the next day, it all just looks like a plain, ordinary boring carnival. I agree. Cuz where’s the haunted house, The Satan’s Den? There’s a mirror-maze over there. So? I wanna see some ghosts, not a bunch of mirrors! Oh, you will see some spooky shit soon, just you wait. The whole town is there, even Will and Jim’s mousy old teacher Miss Foley. When they sneak into a closed area to discover the classic horse carousel, they get grabbed by Mr. Cooger and handed over to Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) ― a charismatic British magician who fits his name, just like Ritchie Blackmore. If he was a German, his name would be Herr Dunkel! And there’s nothing shady about him. Just look at his kind eyes and the cheerful smirk. Well, he’s kind enough to let them go with a warning and gives them a free ticket to the horses when it gets reopened.
The boys hide to see what’s going on after closing time, and spies on Mr. Dark and Cooger as they do a test run on the horses. And what in the actual tarnation… the carousel goes backwards and reverses Cooger into a little boy that would fit right in with the children of the corn. And, well… this is just a taste of Mr. Dark’s shenanigans. It’s also been ages since I read the book, but I can say that there’s some striking similarities to find in Stephen King’s Needful Things (1993). Townspeople there start to disappear after they’ve made some of their deepest, delusional wishes and unfulfilled desires, buried by time and dust, to come true ― granted by none other than Mr. Dark. And with the wishes comes a price/curse. Old Miss Foley wishes to be young and beautiful again. As she looks in the mirror and transforms into a twenty-five-year-old blonde, she loses her sight where “Looks can be deceiving“ gives a new brutal, ironic twist. And like the hardcore malignant narcissist that Mr. Dark is, who feeds on other people’s suffering, what’s better than to grant someone wishes and, at the same time, make them handicapped to live in a mental prison so they can never enjoy the magical fix? How wicked! A porn-addict would get a collection of all the porn magazines, but have both hands paralyzed so he can’t masturbate. Oof. The ultimate endgame is that it will be a thousand years to next Christmas. Fine with me, as long as we have Halloween.
We also have the son/dad relationship between Will and his dad, Charles (Jason Robards), who’s getting eaten alive by guilt and shame when he couldn’t save his son from drowning in a river when he was little. Instead, Jim’s dad had to step in. An incident that broke him as he talks much about death and dying, and that three AM is The Soul’s Midnight, where many people die. And then he means old people, of course. He’s the town’s librarian and maybe reads a lot of Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, dad is depressed while he smokes cigars like a chimney, has a bad heart, and Will just wishes he could be happy. But the thing is that he’s pretty old, and cutting the cigar and not smoking yourself to emphysema would be a nice start before you say to your son that Just tell me that I will live forever. Then I’ll be happy. But if dad couldn’t save his son back then, he gets a new chance when Will and Jim is getting caught in the web of Mr. Dark.
So, what we have here is a mix different layers like coming-of-age, on both sides, acceptance of mortality, to the bitter and shallow greediness where only thing counts in the end: What’s inside. Too mature for the kids to fully grasp and not so scary for the older audience. Caught between a rock and a hard place. That said, on the surface, there’s a lot to enjoy in Something Wicked. The overall atmosphere reeks of dead leaves where the crisp colorful autumn scenery is like watching a classic oil painting coming to life. Jason Robards, and at the time a relatively unknown Jonathan Pryce as Mr. Dark does a great combo as Good vs Evil, where their scene in the library is pretty intense just on a psychological angle alone. And no one rips books apart in a more classy way than Mr. Dark as each glowing page represents one lost year after the other of Mr. Halloway’s life. It’s also worth mentioning that Stan Winston is an uncredited effect-maker here, where he was behind a memorable scene at the end where Mr. Dark is having an extreme ghoulish makeover. Unfortunately, some of it was cut as it got too realistic. Well, that’s Stan Winston for you. Man, I hope we get to see all these deleted scenes one day, but I think that train has vanished into the lost media realm a long time ago.
Several other scenes that included some of the earliest uses of CGI combined with animation were cut from the film. Such as the scene where Mr. Dark’s carnival train arrives and becomes the carnival as it enfolds and builds itself up while the boys are witnessing the paranormal spectacle. The effects were made by the team who had recently worked on Tron (1982). But since it wasn’t convincing enough, we just have to use the imagination like when one of the boys says but how could it…
And then we have the scene where Mr. Dark uses his magic to make a green-glowing mist follow after the boys. The original idea was to have a big ghostly disembodied hand to reach for the boys inside their house. Since the effect wasn’t realistic enough, there was plan B: Spiders! A lot of spiders. Of course. And there’s no surprise that the two young actors would prefer the ghost hand instead of a chaotic shoot with 200 tarantulas. But like we always say: that’s showbiz.
Speaking of showbiz: Something Wicked This Way Comes was a pretty wicked production filled with bumps, hiccups and fights, that makes for some juicy stuff for the trivia section. Writer Ray Bradbury and director Jack Clayton wanted to stay as faithful to the novel as possible, while Disney wanted a more accessible, family-friendly film. And there you already have the door wide open for conflicts, bullshit and headaches. Jack Clayton was also notoriously hard to work with, and I doubt that working with drunk madman Sam Peckinpah would be much easier, who was considered to direct the film in the 1970s. After a disastrous test-screening, Disney fired the original editor, got rid of the original score by Georges Delerue, amped up the budget of 4 million, spent several months of polishing and hired James Horner to make a new score. A new narration was inserted, and the whole third act was re-shot along with the opening. The original score was scrapped because it was too dark — which is pretty baffling considering that Disney decided to keep the shot where we see one of the boys getting his head chopped off by a guillotine, with blood and all. And what could be too dark when you already have a villain called Mr. Dark? Huh… Disney Mouse was surely in an identity crisis here, but that comes with puberty. While all this sounds just like a normal day at the Marvel Studios (from the last five, six years), these movies from the Disney-after-dark era actually turned up to be surprisingly good that still holds up, despite the behind-the-scenes turmoils and bad box-offices. Bradbury also referred to the film’s final cut as “not a great film, no, but a decently nice one.“
Something Wicked is on Blu-ray, but from I’ve heard, it’s the same quality from the DVD’s, with no bonus content. The film has been a rarity for many years and got just recently its first streaming release on Disney+. Another rarity I have to mention, is the bizarre, zero-budget and somewhat trippy amateur film adaptation from 1972, made by the British underground filmmaker Colin Finbow. Watching this on LSD with headphones is maybe the best way.
Director: Jack Clayton Writer: Ray Bradbury Country & year: USA, 1983 Actors: Jonathan Pryce, Jason Robards, Vidal Peterson, Shawn Carson, Royal Dano, Pam Grier, Mary Grace Canfield, Bruce M. Fischer, Richard Davalos, Jake Dengel, Ellen Geer, Diane Ladd IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086336/
We’re in the year 1957, at Alpine Lake Camp during the winter. A girl is making a call from a phone booth placed nearby the camp’s frozen lake, a conversation that later proves to be an important part of the movie’s plot. Then we head further ahead in time, to October 1982. It’s now been a while since Finney Blake was able to kill his abductor, the serial killer called the Grabber, and is trying to cope with the trauma in his own ways. Which seems to involve beating the hell out of other students who dares to even glance at him the wrong way, and smoke a ton of pot. It goes without saying that the kid is basically just spiraling further down the darkest misery-filled rabbithole at this point, but I guess he didn’t exactly grow up with the best role models for how to cope with shit in healthy ways as his father kept drowning his sorrows with whiskey and beer, causing him to often be abusive and mean towards his children.
In this movie, however, it is revealed that the father has reached a three year milestone of sobriety, but is still struggling with urges that he determinedly resists. All the power and kudos to him for that. Another character who is struggling is Finney’s sister Gwen, who keeps having strange dreams…all of which lead to a clue about their mother having worked at Alpine Lake Camp. Together with Gwen’s date Ernesto (the brother of Robin Arellano who was one of the Grabber’s victims in the first movie), they travel to the camp which is a Christian youth camp. Upon arrival, a heavy blizzard traps them at the place where there are only a handful of other people, which are only staff. And the phone booth back from 1957? It’s still there, of course, just not in a working order…but we all know that ghosts don’t need things to work in order to make use of them for communication. It doesn’t take long before Finney receives phone calls from the dead, including the Grabber who vows revenge. And it also seems that there were some grisly murders of a group of young boys at the camp sometime back in the day…and their bodies still haven’t been found.
Black Phone 2 is a supernatural horror movie directed by Scott Derrickson, co-written with C. Robert Cargill and produced by Jason Blum. It’s a sequel to Black Phone, and stars several of the actors from the first film reprising their roles. The first movie, which was based on a short story by Joe Hill, became a success and a sequel was soon in the works. Hill mentioned that his inspiration for a sequel was the “iconic imagery“ of the Grabber’s masks. And while Hill didn’t write a story for the film, he did provide the concept for it which was simply put into this sentence: “A phone rings, Finney answers, and it’s The Grabber calling from hell“. Plain and simple.
While the first movie’s plot was primarily about a real and living serial killer, the supernatural aspects were also present as the character Finney was able to communicate with the killer’s earlier victims through a disconnected black phone. In that regard, it’s not much of a surprise that the Grabber has now turned into a vengeful ghost, and the movie doesn’t need to invent some kind of explanation for how it turned into something supernatural. Those themes were already totally present in the first. And while Finney was the protagonist in the first film, this sequel leans its narrative a lot more on Gwen’s character with her nightmares meshed with visions of the past. The siblings both have the gift (or curse, depending on your point of view) of being contacted by the dead, but while Finney’s contact is restricted by phone calls, Gwen gets contacted while she’s asleep, often causing her to sleepwalk while having the nightmares.
And speaking of the nightmares: I really love the grainy look of those scenes, which were primarily shot on 8mm film using a Super-8 camera. Not only does it give the viewer an immediate heads-up when we’re in dreamland, but it also gives those scenes such a haunting vibe. The dreams also don’t work as some kind of tease or false threat like so often in many other horror movies. The threat here is very real once Gwen falls asleep, where the Grabber has become some kind of Freddy Krueger entity that can kill you in your dreams. Hmmm…a camp, and a dead serial killer threatening to kill you while you’re dreaming? Yeah, you don’t really need to be a horror buff to notice the obvious Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street references here. However, that doesn’t mean the film ventures into some kind of rip-off territory, it’s very much its own nightmare set in the coldest, bleakest wintertime, but with some nods and references to horror classics and 80’s horror. Oh, and the ice skating scene? Yup, Derrickson confirmed that this was a nod to Curtains from 1983.
The synthwave-infused music score by Atticus Derrickson (the director’s son) layers the movie with a perfect dreamlike mood, often more calm and brooding than fast-paced and aggressive, which gives it a slightly hypnotic flair. There’s also many effectively creepy scenes, including the vicious killings of the boys from the camp. The winter setting with all the snow and ice helps setting a more isolated and trapped feeling, and there’s even a scene with a snowman that manages to deliver a spooky moment.
Black Phone 2 is a strong sequel filled with supernatural and bloody carnage. It’s a new addition to the formula of serial killers and the dead refusing to stay dead, but a fun and gory one where I wouldn’t really mind if they decide that death won’t be final this time around either. Serial killers rarely stay dead in horror anyway (like Dexter‘s son also realized recently) so perhaps we’ll see a Black Phone 3 sometime in the close future.
Director: Scott Derrickson Writers: C. Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson Country & year: USA, 2025 Actors: Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Jeremy Davies, Anna Lore, Madeleine McGraw, Demián Bichir, Arianna Rivas, Miguel Mora, Graham Abbey, Maev Beaty IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29644189/
It’s Halloween in 2003. All that Jeremy wants to do is go trick-or-treating but his overbearing parents won’t let him go. So, he decides to sneak out with his friends. His decision leads to a sinister chain of events, leading to the tragic demise of many.
Our Halloween Marathon is running (where we update with new reviews daily during October!), but we’re still having the weekly Horror Short Sundays of course. And for this last horror short of October we’re taking a look at Just Stay In, a Halloween themed horror short where a boy named Jeremy isn’t allowed to go trick or treating by a control-freak mother and a dad who agrees with it all. So what do you do? You sneak out, of course, parents like that can go fuck themselves! Still…while things seem to go fine at first, Jeremy is soon to find out that he would actually have been better off if he’d just stayed in…
Director: Noah J. Welter Writer: Noah J. Welter Country & year: USA, 2024 Actors: Randall Cole, Lucas Dunaway, Wesley Heverly, Aero Rae, Julia Silverman, Brad Stephenson, Kelly Trumbull, and a lot more IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt33307445/
In Tokyo, there lives a teenage girl whose name is Gorgeous. And yes, of course she is beautiful, and of course she’s also got a wealthy father and appears to be living a harmonious life with nothing to complain about. Her life turns upside down when her father, who has been widowed for a time, announces that he’s married a woman named Ryoko Ema. Who seems to be a very nice woman, by the way, ready to be the best stepmother she can. Gorgeous, on the other hand, throws a temper tantrum like a little, spoiled brat and hurries to her room, where she writes a letter to her aunt, whom she has never met, asking to come visit her. Gorgeous receives a letter back almost instantly. Of course lonely, old auntie is ready to welcome her! Gorgeous brings six of her friends along with her: Sweet, who is of course sweet as candy and with a personality as gentle as a lamb, Kung Fu whose specialty is martial arts (who would’ve guessed), Fantasy, who is constantly daydreaming and having her head in the clouds, Melody, who plays the piano like a maestro, Prof, who is an academic and intelligent girl, and Mac, who…loves to eat. And is of course “fat“ (she isn’t, really, but that’s Asian beauty standards for you).
On the way to auntie’s house they bring along a white, fluffy cat, who appears to the aunt’s harbinger of sorts. Prior to getting to the aunt’s cozy country house, they meet a watermelon seller who could’ve more or less been the “don’t go to the house“ kind of guy, but which does the opposite and tells them exactly how to get there. Greeting the girls in a wheelchair, the aunt seems to be very happy to welcome them. The always hungry Mac had of course bought a Watermelon from the seller they met earlier, and brings it as a gift which they leave in a well to keep it cold. And from now on, it doesn’t take long before everything inside the house turns into a spookfest of the purest insanity! It all starts with Mac going out to retrieve the watermelon, and doesn’t return. Worried, Fantasy goes to check on her, only to find Mac’s disembodied head which flies into the air and bites Fantasy in the butt. Nobody believes her, of course, but soon all kinds of supernatural shenanigans are happening all around the house, which is all so gaga loony that nothing can really prepare you for the enchantment of the House and its white fluffy kitty!
House aka Hausu (Japanese: ハウス) is a Japanese comedy horror film from 1977, directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi.
Toho Studios contacted Obayashi because they wanted to make a movie like Jaws and needed ideas. Okey-dokey then. If Obayashi was an Italian he would probably gone ahead and urged Toho to make a shark film and call it Jaws 2, but we’re in Japan, where the craziest ideas are allowed to take form! So he went to his pre-teen daughter Chigumi for ideas, under the presumption that adults only think about things they understand, so everything stays on a boring human level while children can come up with the strangest things that defy explanation. Thus, sharks and beaches were replaced with a fluffy white cat and a spooky country house that eat girls. Obayashi also used some of his childhood as inspiration for some of the key elements in the movie. He was born in Hiroshima, and during the atomic bombings he lost all his childhood friends. He decided to use these themes into the plot of the film, by creating a plot element of a woman’s ghost waiting for her love to return back home from World War II, a wait that lasted forever since her lover died, and this turned her into an evil spirit. The ideas were given to Chiho Katsura, who then wrote the script for the film.
Now that the big cooking pot had boiled and simmered into this psychedelic brew, the project was green-lit. Except…it had to be put on hold for two years, because no one at Toho wanted to direct it as they all thought it would be a disaster that would ruin their career. Obayashi himself originally proposed to direct it, but he was turned down since he wasn’t amongst the staff at Toho. He kept promoting the film until the studio finally caved in and said “alright then, since we can’t get anyone else to touch this thing with a 10-foot pole, go ahead and do your thing.“ And together with a bunch of amateur actors and a lot of pep, history was made.
If Toho Studios hoped for a critically acclaimed hit like Jaws, they were in for a nosedive on House. It mostly received negative reviews, but despite this, it ended up becoming a box office hit in Japan. Ironically, when the movie got a wider release in North America in 2009 and 2010, it was met with a much more favorable response and it was from here on that it gained a cult following.
Obayashi had, prior to this film, mostly worked in commercials and independent films, so the majority of the cast in House were not established actors. It was a mix of people he had worked with before, and some friends and family. His daughter even has a small role as the little girl in a shoemaker’s shop, and the shoemaker himself was played by the production designer. While being filmed in one of Toho’s largest sets, Obayashi made sure to have a playful attitude which caused everyone to have fun. The Toho crew felt the film was utter nonsense, but let’s be honest…it kind of is. But it’s the good kind of nonsense! The overall mix of complete nonsense, childish and upbeat tone with the horror elements reminiscent of the nightmare logic of a 5-year old, is what makes this movie such a unique experience, accompanied with a fitting score which was performed by a rock band called Godiego.
Visually, the movie leans towards a little kitsch and European fairytale vibe. There’s a lot of experimentation with practical effects, and insane imagery. There isn’t a single frame that looks uninspired or boring. The visuals fit so well together with all the spooky things happening all the time, as the girls are attacked by all kinds of things in the house: flaming logs, mattresses, and a finger-hungry piano…and something about a guy turning into a bunch of bananas. Because why not.
Nothing can really prepare you for the childish and golden insanity of House. Just sit back and enjoy the trip!
Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi Writers: Chiho Katsura, Nobuhiko Ôbayashi Country & year: Japan, 1977 Actors: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba, Ai Matsubara, Mieko Satô, Eriko Tanaka, Masayo Miyako, Kiyohiko Ozaki, Saho Sasazawa, a white fluffy persian cat IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076162/
Moon’s fuller than usual tonight, says the old alcoholic uncle Ned, as he and his nephew Larry are driving the big Satan’s Den truck to a carnival. The same night, we also see a man running through the woods from a group of Satanic cult members with three ghoulies trapped in a sack bag. He hides in an empty gas station where he dumps the ghoulies in a gallon of toxic waste. The man falls down into the waste himself when he suddenly gets attacked by a bat ghoulie. Not only one or two, but FOUR ghoulies rise from the toxic waste, just because, to make sure that we’ll have a fun, cheesy and entertaining sequel for the whole family. And the kids should know by now that there are no monsters in the toilet, unless you happen to live in Australia. We also get introduced to a new type of ghoulie here, the Toad Ghoulie. Uncle Ned and Larry stop by the station where the little rascals hide in the truck, and something wicked this way comes to a carnival not so far away.
The carnival is an economic crisis, and all the attractions that don’t make any profit during the upcoming weekend will be closed down. And all of us ghouls can agree that a carnival without a haunted house is not a carnival. And if The Satan’s Den goes, it will be replaced with a ladies’ mud wrestling tent. Meh. The young and smug businessman, Philip Hardin, who owns the carnival with his company and thinks he’s Tom Cruise from Risky Business, will make sure of that. The trio who runs the haunted house, Uncle Ned, Larry and the littleman Sir Nigel, has a lot of work to do. Well, that goes for Larry and Nigel, as Uncle Ned is drunk all the time and believes everything will be solved by magic. Try black magic instead. Oops, someone already did. And that leads us to the ghoulies who are hiding somewhere in the Den, waiting eagerly for the audience to show up so they can have some kill counts.
Ghoulies II is this time directed by Albert Band, the dad of Charles and composer Richard, and this is probably the most polished film in the franchise. There’s also a couple of known faces here like veteran Royal Dano as drunk Ned, and Phil Fondacaro as Nigel, who looks like a shrunken Frank Miller in his older years. Even though the acting here is better than the first one, the rest of the cast are NPC’s, and the romance sideplots are just dead meat to flush down the toilet for the sewer rats. The good news is that the ghoulies themselves have far more screentime here both in form of puppetry and stop-motion by David Allen. The tone is also way more consistent with its blend of comedy and light-hearted silly horror where the carnival-setting amps up the fun-factor and some extra cozy/charming nostalgic atmosphere.
The film also works fine as an isolated watch as it has no connections with the first. The same can be said about Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College. And that one is actually what it sounds like: the ghoulies gets drunk on a college campus, filled with cringe humor and as little horror elements as possible where the only one missing is Pauly Shore. Haven’t seen the fourth one yet.
Director: Albert Band Writers: Danny Bilson, Dennis Paoli Country & year: USA, 1987 Actors: Damon Martin, Royal Dano, Phil Fondacaro, J. Downing, Kerry Remsen, Dale Wyatt, Jon Pennell, Sasha Jenson, Starr Andreeff, William Butler, Donnie Jeffcoat, Christopher Burton IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093091/
Let’s get high, have some good laughs, and unleash the Ghoulies!
This 1980s nonsensical and messy chees-o-rama fest from none other than Charles Band’s Empire Pictures starts pretty much how you’d expect, or maybe not: with a bizarre Satanic Illuminati-like ritual in Rob Zombie’s Halloween-basement dungeon where the baby boy, John, is ready to be sacrificed. The baby gets put on an altar where a demonic-looking dude with green-glowing eyes, Malcolm Grave, is about to kill the baby with a dagger. Among the small group of cult members, we also have the small grotesque troublemakers that are the Ghoulies who seem to enjoy the show. The ritual gets stopped by his wife because it turns out that the boy is actually their child. Ok, that’s some fucking dark shit! Whore! He’s mine, he says. A talisman is put around the boy’s neck so he can’t be touched by evil. Now that the baby is useless, it gets taken away and saved by Wolfgang, one of the cult members. Malcolm instead sacrifices the wife with his Satanic powers by bursting her chest open, off-screen, of course. And for what purpose? Who knows.
Then we jump to many years later where John has grown up, and has inherited his father’s mansion with his girlfriend Rebecca. And he was, of course, too young to remember what once happened in the basement. But one who clearly does is Wolfgang, who raised him and now works as a traumatized caretaker. Nothing much has been done with the place as it’s filled with rats and cobwebs. Down in the basement which the caretaker Wolfgang should have been clever enough to seal off already a long time ago, John finds the old ritual outfit of his dad and a Satanic diary. Nothing bad can happen now, nothing at all.
John and Rebecca are supposed to be in their college year, yet they look to be in their mid 30s. Rebecca wants to throw a party where we meet a bunch of goofy characters. The ones who stick out are the two stoned nutbrains, who must have been completely strung out for real during the making of this schlockfest. Can’t blame them. After some breakdancing and retarded pickup lines such as They call me…DICK! But you can call me…DICK! (go and fuck a cactus, dick, without rubber). John has an idea: Let’s do a ritual. But you, unfortunately, have to wait a little longer for the Ghoulies to show up, because… well, I guess he has to grow his Satanic powers up a few levels.
The original story for the Ghoulies was supposed to be very different from the final product, with a much darker and serious tone. But when director Luca Bercovici first saw the ghoulies in motion, he spat out his red wine, laughed and said: this movie should be a comedy! John Carl Buechler, who designed the cute little monsters, actually took offense. Because how dare you call these monster creatures, which I’ve worked so hard on, funny?! So, the script got rewritten to a comedy, a script that looks like it was made up as they went along while the cocaine floated in the air, and actors were recast. So yeah, it’s no surprise that the tone is all over the place at most times. In the midst of filming, the production got sued when some illiterate at Warner Bros claimed that the title Ghoulies was too like Gremlins, which was in production at the same time as Ghoulies. WB, of course, lost. The messy and bumpy history behind the film is enough to fill a whole book.
And if you’re expecting something like the aforementioned Gremlins or maybe Critters, you’d be disappointed. The ghoulies themselves are more of a sideshow here that pops up now and then just to show off some decent old-school puppetry effects. Here we have Clown Doll Ghoulie, the Fish Ghoulie (aka the Toilet Ghoulie), Bat Ghoulie, Rat Ghoulie, and then we have our personal favorite: the adorable Cat Ghoulie (heart emoji). The few scenes we have with the ghoulies are fun enough, and we get to see more of them in the sequel. Because here we also have to make room for… a dwarf warrior couple, from Nelwyn, I guess, because the script just said so. Malcolm the dead Satanist, who’s the main villain, rises from his grave outside the mansion. He then shapeshifts into a blonde milf to seduce Dick and strangle him with her tongue. No blowjob for Mr. Dick. The film finally gets flushed straight down the toilet by a bullshit ending that would fit more in a filler episode of Goosebumps. Not that it would make more sense, but still.
And speaking of toilets: the poster, which is way more iconic than the film itself, and had the first tagline They’ll Eat Your Ass!, caused some uproar when it scared the kids from using the toilet. Jaws made people afraid of swimming, Psycho made people afraid of showers, and Ghoulies made kids shit in buckets and stink out the whole neighborhood instead of sitting on the toilet. A mob of angry parents wrote letters to Charles Band’s office to let them know, in the middle of the Satanic Panic storm and all. Priceless! All these letters should have been added in the ending credits just to put the icing on the cake.
Director: Luca Bercovici Writers: Luca Bercovici, Jefery Levy Country & year: USA, 1984 Actors: Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance, Peter Risch, Tamara De Treaux, Scott Thomson, Ralph Seymour, Mariska Hargitay, Mariska Hargitay, Keith Joe Dick, David Dayan IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089200/
Dr. Henry Jekyll is a man who has decided to dedicate his life to curing all illnesses, but he’s about to lose a bit of his determination after his a-hole friend, Professor Robertson, remarks that his experiments are taking such a long time that he will end up dead before he manages to achieve anything of importance. Ouch. Thanks for the encouragement, buddy. Jekyll lets this remark get to his head, and he starts to obsess over the thought of some kind of elixir of life. He ends up using female hormones which he takes from fresh cadavers supplied to him by the duo Burke and Hare (obviously not caring too much about how they got their hands on these corpses in the first place). He reasons that since women, at least traditionally, lives longer than men, this will help him prolong his own life.
Above his apartment, there lives a family consisting of an elderly mother, her son Howard and daughter Susan. And Susan is head over heels attracted to Jekyll, who returns her affections in somewhat awkward ways. Too bad he’s so obsessed with work that there’s no time for romance…he’s too busy making his life-extending serum, and once he’s ready to take a sip and test it, he finds that it’s got a peculiar side effect: it changes him into a woman. And he seems to become quite fond of his female alter ego, which he calls Mrs. Edwina Hyde and claims she is his sister. While Jekyll is getting more and more in touch with his feminine side (literally), Susan becomes jealous of the mysterious woman in Jekyll’s apartment (at least until learning that she’s his “sister“), and Howard starts lusting after her. And there’s a big problem for Jekyll: in order to keep making more of the serum, he needs a steady supply of female hormones…and when his suppliers Burke and Hare are lynched by a mob once people find out what they’ve been doing, Jekyll must take matters in his own hands…with the help of Sister Hyde, who is taking over both his body and mind gradually.
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a British Hammer horror film from 1971, directed by Roy Ward Baker and based on the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s notable for having a female version of Hyde, and also for implementing several historical incidents like Jack the Ripper and the Burke and Hare cases. There have been numerous adaptions of the well-known novella, including the 1931 film Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And while both the original novella and many of its adaptation are often allegories for alcoholism/drug dependency, this is the only one I’ve seen thus far that gives it a gender-bending theme.
Through modern eyes I guess it’s easy to see it as an allegory for being trans. In the first transformation scene, where Jekyll (Ralph Bates) transforms into Hyde (Martine Beswick), the reaction is one of near euphoria where the initial moment of surprise quickly transcends into one of pure joy and relief, where she touches herself and examines her new body. The Hyde persona easily becomes the most dominant, where they both try to fight for control. Just like in the original story, where Dr. Jekyll could have just stopped taking the serum and be rid of Hyde, he becomes dependent on it and just can’t stop. Martine Beswick, who earlier played a role in two James Bond movies (From Russia With Love from 1963 and Thunderball from 1965) first laughed at the premise of the film when being offered the role, but after thinking it over a bit she found the idea of a male/female inside the same person as an interesting theme to explore.
Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a stylish Hammer horror film, where the scenery and sets create a convincing Victorian London era, with a misty, gloomy and gothic atmosphere. Totally Hammer-style, for sure, with it’s blood and boobs formula which where their forte at the time.
In 1995, a remake of the film was released under the title Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, which received a Razzie Award for Worst Remake/Rip-Off. And the trailer for that one pretty much speaks for itself.
Director: Roy Ward Baker Writer: Brian Clemens Country & year: UK, 1971 Actors: Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick, Gerald Sim, Lewis Fiander, Dorothy Alison, Neil Wilson, Ivor Dean, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Philip Madoc, Tony Calvin IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068502/
Li Tung is sleep deprived and near a mental breakdown from the constant noise his neighbor is making, hammering all night. He decides that enough is enough, time to deal with this noisy neighbor! He confronts the man, and when getting a little peek into his neighbor’s apartment, Li Tung notices that there’s a beautiful young woman inside, holding a fluffy black cat. Aww. The next day, Li Tung witnesses his neighbors departing in a moving van. Well, at least now he can get some peace and quiet at night.
Curious, he decides to enter the ex-neighbor’s empty apartment, only to notice it’s…not so empty, after all. There’s a pile of newspaper on the floor…bloodied. Underneath he discovers what appears to be human guts, and he freaks out and calls the police. Plot twist: the police deducts that they were not from a human, but fresh cat intestines. And then they laugh at silly Li Tung for the false alarm. Uhm…encountering a pile of cat intestines in an apartment is a laughing matter…? What the actual fuck.
Li Tung is then having dinner with police inspector Wang Chieh-Mei, the adventure novelist Wisely, and his partner Pai So. Wisely is convinced that the girl and her black fluffy cat are aliens. And who are they, exactly? Wisely has no proper clue (yet) but we learn that the girl and the cat who is called The General are indeed aliens, and the man with them is Errol, the girl’s protective knight. They need to obtain some octagonal artifacts which will help them defeat “The Star Killer“, which is a large, fungus-blob monster with some kind of electricity superpower. The problem is: these octagons are in museums, so they need to steal them…and The Star Killer tries to hunt them down while killing everything that stands in its way in the most gruesome ways possible, zombiefying them in the process and taking control over their bodies, making them its minions. Wisley might be the only one who can help the aliens…
The Cat (衛斯理之老貓 Wèisīlǐ Zhī Lǎomāo, lit. “Wisely’s Old Cat“), aka The 1000 Years Cat, is a Hong Kong science-fiction action horror film from 1992. It was directed by Lam Ngai Kai (known for Riki-Oh: Story of Ricky which we have yet to see but looks just as bonkers as this one), and based on a novel called Old Cat which is an installment in the Wisely series by Ni Kuang, which consists of sci-fi adventure novels with the character Wisely as the protagonist. Ni Kuang actually has a cameo in this film, as a dog owner named Mr. Chen.
If you want some crazy Hong Kong sci-fi action horror, then look no further. The Cat delivers and more than lived up to our expectations! An extraterrestrial feline with kung-fu powers that aids a pretty alien girl in battling a cosmic blob monster that turns its victims into controlled zombies? Yeah, you already know you’re in for a ride! Whenever the fluffy black cat is on screen, you know there will be some pure goodness to witness. It’s either something totally cheesy (like the scene where the girl and the cat are “playing around“ by levitating around in the street), something cute like the cat snuggling the actress, or there’s some wild creature feature effects mostly followed by even wilder gore scenes. The cute and the macabre in such a balanced unison!
As the story progresses, and Wisley teams up with the aliens, The Star Killer manages to control even more bodies. One of The Star Killer’s controlled bodies is that of the cop Wang, who turns on a full Terminator-mode and gets himself a load of guns and blasts the hell out of everything. As if this wasn’t wild enough we also get a scene at the end of the movie with some of the craziest giant blob monster effects, where our protagonists are on the rooftop to fight it off.
If you’re still not sold in on this movie, then at least watch it for the most legendary fight scene in all of movie history. Yes, I’m talking about the Cat vs. Dog fight. I’m even struggling with how in the hell I could possibly describe this scene and make you realize just how intensely insane it actually is, but no…you just gotta see it for yourself. And it was just as hard to pull off this fight scene as it looks…it took a whole six months to complete it, with seven trained cats. The special effects director who was originally hired to create these scenes was fired after just three days due to animal endangerment, and instead they got Japanese effects artist Shinji Higuchi onboard.
The Cat is a wild ride with so many insane and crazy elements that the day after watching it you may find yourself wondering if you just dreamt up the entire thing. It’s really that bizarre. From the one crazy scene to the other, with puppetry, inspired practical effects, absurd fight scenes and overall cozy tone that adds to the already bizarre vibe, this movie is sure to stick with you as one of the weirdest things you’ve witnessed.
The Cat is available on 2K restored blu-ray from 88 Films.
Director: Ngai Choi Lam Writers: Gordon Chan, Hing-Ka Chan, Kuang Ni Original title: Lo mau Country & year: Hong Kong, Japan, 1991 Actors: Gloria Yip, Waise Lee, Christine Ng, Yee Cheng, Yuk-San Cheung, Liang Chiang, Lam Chua and a big solid black fluffy cat IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105796/
The year is 1799, and Ichabod Crane is a New York police constable who has been dispatched to Sleepy Hollow: an upstate Dutch hamlet where there have been a lot of brutal murders involving people getting their heads chopped off. He is welcomed by the town elders, including the wealthy businessman Baltus Van Tassel who has a beautiful young daughter named Katrina, who immediately shows an interest in Ichabod. And vice versa. Once he starts his investigation, he hears the story about what the locals believe to be the cause of all the decapitations: the Headless Horseman, who was once a Hessian mercenary from the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod just scoffs of such superstitious nonsense, but his skepticism is put to the test over and over again as more people keeps dying.
