Hairmetal, blood, freezing titties, avalanche in the snowy hills that have eyes, and a dude that looks like George Lucas. Here we go!
This obscure little odd The Hills Have Eyes ripoff from söta bror Sweden starts off with some mean drunk guy who, one late night, comes home to beat his wife and four kids. And this is not the first time as the wife finally has had enough and stabs him to death with a kitchen knife. The wife takes the kids with her as they run away into the thick ’80s movie fog.
Then we jump to forty years later in the year of 1985 where a random narrator says: For the next 40 years, the family hid out in the middle of nowhere. Now, intruders are on their way. Uuhm…ok. We’re at the snowy mountains in Sweden where the glam rock band, Solid Gold, are about to shoot some scenes for a music video. And what’s the title of this song? Take a guess.
― ♪ The horror you fear, You can’t let it go, It’s already there, You’re all much too slow, BLOOD TRAAACKS..!♫
And if a hair metal band with stagefright could cause an avalanche, I’d bet that Motörhead would cause Mount Everest to collapse like a house of cards. And as the title suggests, there are no blood tracks to be seen here, at least not in the snow. A couple who has some sex in a volvo gets snowed in. The woman eventually gets pulled out, buck naked. Brrr! I’m gonna freeze my tits off! So, now that the scenes have been wrapped up, what’s next? The band, roadcrew and the groupies take shelter in a cabin. The soundguy from the filmcrew goes for an exploration where he enters a big abandoned factory. And in that place lives the mother and the group of children we saw at the beginning, who’s ready to kill anyone who dares to enter. The mother hasn’t aged a day during the four decades though. She must have some great genes, like a certain Sweeney. Couldn’t say the same thing about some of her kids, who looks like pizza-faced mutants from Tromaville. As the soundguy goes missing, the rest of the crew starts looking for him, which eventually leads them, one by one, into the factory to be bodycounted. So there you have it. A dumb premise for a dumb formulaic slasher which we have seen a thousand times already, even in 1985. But fun dumb, at that.
Blood Tracks, or Blodspår, is written and directed by Mats Helge Olsson, Sweden’s answer to Claudio Fragasso/Bruno Mattei, if you will ― the same guy who made The Ninja Mission(1984), Russian Terminator (1989) aka The Russian Ninja and Spökligan (1987), a very early childhood favorite of mine. And just like some of his other films, this one is dubbed to English by some wooden legs. It’s not as fun/bad as some of the films mentioned, but you’ll have your chuckles.
Solid Gold is played by the Swedish band Easy Action, and if you expect them to be the heroes, last boys standing cuz you can’t kill rock n’ roll, you’d be disappointed. The band members are barely acting here though. They’re mostly shoved in the background where they get drunk on whisky as alcohol was a demand to have on set because of nervousness… or because that’s just rock n’ roll, baby! Some of them were lucky enough to shoot some quick sex scenes, where I wouldn’t be too surprised if they were so wasted and coked-up that they, at some point, thought they were in a porn film. Nu ska vi knulla! Oh, well. The little we hear of the themesong could be a catchy fat ’80s earworm which was never fully recorded to be released to one of the albums, like Dokken’s Dream Warriors or Alice Cooper’s The Man Behind the Mask, since they seem to be more ashamed to be a part of this film. Boohoo…
And yeah, we have some fun kills here, which includes a severed head, bodies impaled on spikes, a bitten-out eyeball, death by fire, a woman getting sliced in half, some cheesy bear-hugging wrestling fights, and more. Fun fluffy drunk ’80s schlock from start to finish. And of course, then we have the bizarre George Lucas-lookalike, as if he was still location scouting for the Hoth scenes. Wrong country, bud. Blood Tracks is available on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome/DiabolikDVD. Even though I don’t have a copy, as for now, it’s fair to mention that there have been some angry complaints about the audio on that release, so… just be aware. And if you follow the right blood tracks on Tubi, you may also be lucky.
Director: Mats Helge Olsson Writers: Mats Helge Olsson, Anna Wolf Country & year: Sweden/UK, 1985 Actors: Jeff Harding, Michael Fitzpatrick, Naomi Kaneda, Brad Powell, Peter Merrill, Harriet Robinson, Tina Shaw, Frances Kelly, Karina Lee, Helena Jacks IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088827/
We start off with some strange voodoo ritual of some kind, where a couple seems to be participating in a ritual involving their son. What the purpose of this ritual is remains to be discovered, as we quickly go further ahead in time, where we meet Cal Jamison. He is a psychologist who seems to live a perfect and happy life together with his wife Lisa and their young son Chris. Until he and their son both witness her gruesome death by an everyday object, Final Destination-style. After this traumatizing incident, he relocates with his son to New York City where he starts working as a police psychologist. And he quickly gets busy with work, as the city has been plagued by what appears to be some occult and ritualistic murders, involving the deaths of young children. A policeman named Tom Lopez is in total hysteria mode when he claims that the ones behind the murders has gotten their hands on his badge, a personal item which he thinks might give them power over him and make terrible things happen.Cal is, of course, called to examine the superstitious and terrified policeman, but he soon finds out that there really is some nasty occult shit happening around here by some kind of Hispanic cult. And what’s worse…it’s all getting way too close to both him and his son.
The Believers is a neo-noir thriller horror film directed by John Schlesinger with screenplay by Mark Frost. It is based on a novel by Nicholas Conde from 1982, called The Religion.
Even though Hollywood seemed to have lost interest in Satanic-themed horror movies after the 70’s (which gave hits like The Exorcist and The Omen), there was still the Satanic Panic in full bloom where people literally thought there were ritualistic murders and abuse all over the place. While this movie does not portray the hysteria over those conspiracies of Satanic ritual abuse, it’s still a movie that came at a time when these (unfounded) fears were the real shit. And just mix it in with some kind of Caribbean voodoo religion instead, and with the classic message of how wealthy “yuppies“ would be willing to call upon dark forces in order to achieve even more wealth, then you have a typical occult film about sacrifices and evil people committing to evil gods.
Already from the get-go, you realize that this isn’t going to be one of those easy happy-going movies. The opening with Lisa’s death comes quite unexpected, with what was initially such a feelgood happy moment. I was wondering if this was something the movie would pull off more often, lulling you into a sense of peace while whamming you with some unexpected death or horrific event. And to be honest, while nothing similar happens later on, the movie does manage to surprise you a little bit with some of the upcoming events. There’s several characters that we are getting introduced to, which keeps us guessing as to what their intentions are. The power this cult seems to have over everyone carries a little bit of the “curse“ formula in horror movies, where once you’ve been touched by it, you’re doomed. And they don’t need much in order to make you suffer, it’s enough for them to get their hands on a personal items of yours, and you’ll suddenly be having snakes slithering around in your guts. Yes, literally. While this movie is by no means any kind of bloody gorefest, there are some nasty scenes here and there. My favorite is the one that involves a hexed makeup powder puff. Ugh!
There is a bit of slow pacing here and there, but nothing serious as it quickly picks it up again. Some of the drama between father and son does come off as a little bit much at times and I didn’t really care much for it, but that’s just my opinion. Overall the movie manages to keep you engaged throughout, despite a runtime of nearly two hours. And one thing I really liked was how the movie often used shots from obvious lower class suburban areas, giving it a more realistic feel in regards to how one could imagine a Santeria cult operating in the outskirts.
The Believers could have been much more gritty and dark than it is, and it often appeared that it wished to be without really hitting that mark. Still, it’s an entertaining supernatural thriller, which fits well in with the Satanic Panic of the 80’s.
Fun fact: the film influenced the “Narcosatanist“ cult leader Adolfo Constanzo (Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo) who ran a drug-smuggling cult in Mexico that practiced human sacrifice. Apparently, the movie was used to indoctrinate new followers.
Director: John Schlesinger Writer: Mark Frost Country & year: USA, 1987 Actors: Martin Sheen, Helen Shaver, Harley Cross, Robert Loggia, Elizabeth Wilson, Harris Yulin, Lee Richardson, Richard Masur, Carla Pinza, Jimmy Smits, Raúl Dávila, Malick Bowens IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt0092632/
– 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/
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/
If there is a beast inside every man, he meets his match in the beast inside of every woman.
Rosaleen is a young girl who, in her bed wearing her big sister’s makeup (used without permission, of course) dreams that she lives in an 18th century fairytale world. There, her sister Alice is killed, and while her parents are struggling with their grief, Rosaleen is sent to stay with her grandmother (played by Angela Lansbury). She kits a red shawl for her granddaughter, and tells her a tale in order to warn her to never stray from the path and never trust a man with eyebrows that meet. Can’t have been fun to have a unibrow in that village…oh, and if you haven’t taken the hint already: this is of course a Little Red Riding Hood inspired story. Rosaleen returns to her little village, where one of the boys is constantly trying to get her interest. The village’s cattle have also been attacked by what appears to be a wolf, and the village men set out to hunt it down. They manage to kill it, but right before their eyes the wolf’s corpse transforms into a man. Later, when Rosaleen is going to visit her Grandmother, she encounters a handsome huntsman in the forest…one with eyebrows that meet…
The Company of Wolves is a Gothic fantasy horror film from 1984, directed by Neil Jordan with screenplay by Jordan and Angela Carter, adapted from her short story of the same name from 1979, which had earlier been adapted into a radio dramatization in 1980. It was filmed in Shepperton Studios in England.
Already from the start you know that you’re not in for an ordinary story here. The movie is told in a narrative that consists of one main story, with embedded tales that ties in with the overall plot of the film, which is a coming of age story where female sexuality is the dominant theme, presenting it in an adult Little Red Riding Hood version. The stories blend in with Lil’ Red’s life, or Rosaleen as she’s called here, except granny’s warnings seem to evoke more curiosity in her than scaring her. She’s one of those! A female embracing her own sexuality without shaming herself and everyone else over it! Oh goodness me. Maybe it’s really the wolf who should be afraid.
The movie’s strongest asset is how it looks, as it lays it all heavily down on the dreamy visuals and slightly surreal fairytale landscape with its giant mushrooms and crooked trees. The sets are really visually enchanting, perfectly belonging in a dreamy fairytale setting. Jordan said he tried to eroticize the forest, and you won’t really have to put too much effort into seeing some obvious phallus-like symbols in all the mushrooms…
The Company of Wolves is not a gory film, but it does actually have some scenes with true body-horror werewolf transformations, and there’s also a chopped off head and a severed arm. The werewolf effects themselves are actually really good, with transformations shown in full practical glory! Ah, the 80’s. There are also a lot of wolves in the film, so the title surely fits. Most of them are not actually wolves of course, both because of the low budget but also due to cast safety. Most of them are in fact Belgian Sheperd Dogs with dyed fur. Note I said “most of them“, though…because there were indeed some real wolves here, in which Jordan was impressed over young Sarah Patterson (who plays Rosaleen) when she was acting amongst the genuine ones and didn’t fear them. I guess there really might have been a bit of Lil’ Red in her.
The Company of Wolves is a horror fairytale with very obvious erotic undertones. It’s an adult and dreamlike version of Little Red Riding Hood, playing into the obvious terms of a woman’s sexual awakening, the loss of so-called “innocence“ while embracing one’s true self.
Director: Neil Jordan Writers: Angela Carter, Neil Jordan Country & year: UK, 1984 Actors: Angela Lansbury, Sarah Patterson, David Warner, Graham Crowden, Brian Glover, Kathryn Pogson, Stephen Rea, Tusse Silberg, Micha Bergese, Georgia Slowe IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087075/
The year was somewhere in the late 1980s where the exciting news had spread in Italy that none other than Klaus Kinski was writing, directing and playing the main role in an upcoming biopic of the legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini. Since Klaus Kinski was still a crowd magnet, director Luigi Cozzi, expected Kinski’s film to be such a hit that a horror film based on Paganini could piggyback on its success. Instead, we have a nonsensical and laughable shiny turd of an amateur hour spectacle that could easily have been sharted out by Claudio Fragasso in a short week. Not that Kinski Paganini was a much better film, but that’s a whole other story, in a different genre.
Paganini Horror starts in the city of Venice with a girl who plays her violin through “The Witches Dance“ from a rare sheet of paper. These notes are of course cursed that makes the girl become possessed, then goes into the bathroom where her mother is taking a bath to drop a hair dryer in her water. FZZZZZZT, FZZZZZZT, added with some old-school cheesy hand-drawn electric effects.
Then we jump to our group of protagonists, an all-female rock n’ roll band (except for the drummer) who’s in the studio and recording. And no, the singer is not Peter Burns. The producer isn’t much impressed as she calls it the same old stuff and nothing original. She wants them to make something mind-blowing and sensational. Well, we’re still in the good ole’ 1980s, so that shouldn’t be that hard. The drummer, Daniel, then meets a mysterious man named Mr. Pinkett to exchange a black suitcase that holds the sheet of notes for… Paganini Horror! The combination of the suitcase is of course six, six…six. OoOoh… This Pinkett guy is played by Donald Pleasance where it’s hard to tell whether he’s completely buzzed-out or high as a kite.
Daniel plays the tune on a piano. The producer is finally impressed even though it fits way more in an Elton John ballad. Daniel says that the unpublished notes were written by Niccolo Paganini. Do you mean Paganini, the famous Italian violinist?, she ask like a braindead imbecile. No, Eilerti Paganini Pilarmi, who else? So let’s rock! The legend says that Paganini used these magical notes in a secret ritual while he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and wealth. According to the real legend, Paganini did sell his soul to Dr. Satan but for talent and not for fame and wealth. Maybe not the best choice as he died piss-poor at age 57. Anyway, a light bulb flicks over their airheads as they believe that these tunes can bring the same success to them. The mind-numbingly bad acting as they look as excited and enthusiastic as some broken NPCs mixed with the stiff dubbing, is enough to give this extra cheese-filled spaghetti clown show a watch. And it gets better/worse.
Our girl band rents a remote castle to shoot a horror-themed music video. Meanwhile, we see this Pinkett guy throwing all the money from a tower while he’s mumbling
go, go, go, go all you little demons. Little demons. Yes, fly away, little demons, so that the real ones can take your place, so that what happened to Paganini will repeat itself this time as well. Let the price for fame be extracted by the one to whom it belongs, his majesty, Satan.
OK. So, uhm, the ghost of Paganini rises from the grave, I guess, to stalk and kill our female rockers one by one with a dagger that sticks out from the bottom of his small violin. Here he’s dressed more like a cheap cosplay version of the phantom of the opera, and is not even close to the awesome-looking ghoulish skeleton we see in the poster. There’s full-on nonsensical dream logic from here on where people randomly fall through green neon-lighted sinkholes, and…well, as we say in showbiz: The show must go on. Don’t have a script, you say? Then improvise! What follows is more retarded acting, cheap effects, cheaper costumes, baffling dialogue delivery and so on. You know the drill..
But to be fair though, the director Luigi Cozzi is not all to blame here. Cozzi was in constant fights with producer Fabrizio De Angelis, who always demanded Cozzi to cut as many gory scenes from the script as possible. Which is pretty odd considering that Fabrizio was also producer on the goriest films of Lucio Fulci throughout the 1980s. It sounded more like pure sabotage when Cozzi got this demand just a few days before the shooting started. He also planned an eight-minute long sequence with scenes of planets, galaxies and parallel dimensions that were supposed to give the movie a stronger “science fiction touch“. Paganini in space? Yeah, why not. This animated short film from Gobelins isn’t that far from the idea.
Cozzi picked the script apart until it was nothing more left to shoot, and most of the script had to be rewritten. Daria Nicolodi (the fresh ex-girlfriend of Dario Argento) then came into the picture to help him with the rewrite, and the next is Italian Trash Cinema history. Nicolodi also plays one of the main characters and she looks as brainfarted as the rest. If the original script and the overall technical aspects would be much better if hadn’t it been for the iron fist of De Angelis, we’ll never know. But if the acting was still as amateurish as in the version that got made, I hardly think so. Some fewer laughs, maybe.
Director: Luigi Cozzi Writers: Luigi Cozzi, Daria Nicolodi, Raimondo Del Balzo Country & year: Italy, 1988 Actors: Daria Nicolodi, Jasmine Maimone, Pascal Persiano, Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, Michel Klippstein, Pietro Genuardi, Luana Ravegnini, Roberto Giannini, Donald Pleasence IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095812/
The movie opens with the nightmare of Glen, a 12 year old boy. He dreams that his home is abandoned, and he goes out to the backyard to enter his tree-house, where is gets struck by lightning. He wakes to a somewhat uncanny coincidence as he sees that some workers in the backyard have cut down the same tree. He and his friend Terry later discovers that the removal of the tree has unearthed a large geode, and at the same time Glen is catching a splinter and leaves a little bit of blood behind. And of course we know that this little detail is going to have some sort of significance later on…and yup, shortly afterwards some strange things start happening.
Then Glen’s parents are going to leave town for three days, and Glen’s older sister Alexandra (whom he refers to as Al for short) will look after him. Al, being a 15 year old girl, immediately gets in contact with her friends to make proper use of the situation and throws a party. While she’s partying with her friends downstairs, Glen and Terry are in Glen’s room. Terry’s brought with him his LP of a heavy metal band called Sacrifyx, as he found a booklet inside the vinyl album that describes some eerie resemblances to the hole in Glen’s backyard and the strange events that followed. They play the record backwards, which of course ends up opening the gate fully. Good work, lads. Downstairs, Glen and Terry discovers that Al and her friends are playing some sort of levitation game, and wants Glen to try it. At this point I was surprised they didn’t bring out a ouija board too just to out the cherry on top. Supposed to be just a silly game, Glen starts levitating for real, causing everyone to freak out. And that’s only the beginning. Something has started a chain of supernatural events, all of it in preparation for something bigger to come…
The Gate is a supernatural horror film from 1987, directed by Tibor Takács and written by Michael Nankin. The movie was a co-production between Canada and the United States, and has since its release gotten itself a cult following.
There are always some films you watch at an older age, and think “oh boy, I wish I’d seen that one when I was a kid“. The Gate is definitely one of those. It’s got all the perfect ingredients for a spooky movie that can be watched and enjoyed by a younger audience. The plot is somewhat simple: children discover that a gate to hell has opened in their backyard, and they must try to close it before all hell literally breaks lose. The kid characters are your typical “smarter than average and definitely smarter than the adults“ kind, which were often a thing in movies like this. Most interactions are between the protagonist Glen, his buddy Terry, and the sister Al, and their chemistry is fine. None of the characters are especially memorable, but they work for the setting.
The movie is using several techniques for the visual effects, including some good old-fashioned stop-motion animation, forced perspective, and of course the classic rubber suits. Ah, the good old 80’s. Towards the ending we get some really crazy scenes with all kinds of demonic and otherworldly elements, including tiny demons (which reminded me a bit of the subspecies in Subspecies), a zombie, and of course a big, big bad. And all of it because of a heavy metal band! Fits right in with the 80’s Satanic panic.
The Gate is a fun 80’s horror with lots of cool practical effects and the typical whimsical 80’s tone, filled with heavy metal, demons, practical and stop-motion effects. It’s one of those light-horror movies speckled with a lot of whimsical fantasy and fun times, never getting heavy in the gore or anything that could be considered particularly scary, which makes it work pretty good as a gateway horror. Fits fell with the title too, I guess.
In 1990, a sequel called The Gate II: The Trespassers was released. A 3D-remake was also scheduled to have a release in 2011, but nothing ever came of that.
Director: Tibor Takacs Writer: Michael Nankin Country & year: Canada, 1987 Actors: Stephen Dorff, Christa Denton, Stephen Dorff, Louis Tripp, Kelly Rowan, Jennifer Irwin, Deborah Grover, Scot Denton, Ingrid Veninger, Sean Fagan, Linda Goranson IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093075/
It’s the fine year of 1925 and the place is a chronic depressive England where it’s always gloomy and misty and extra cozy by the fireplace. Arthur Kidd (played by Harry Potter’s dad, Adrian Rawlings) is a young solicitor in his early 30s. He’s married and has two children who he has to kiss goodbye for a while when his boss sends him from London to a small sleepy Greendale’ish coastal town. The first assignment is to attend the funeral of the mysterious upper-class woman Alice Drablow. And she was not the most popular person in town as only three, or so, is taking the last ta-ta before she gets lowered six feet under. RIP. The townsfolk refuse to talk about her as if she was some Voldermort.
Now the tedious work starts. And that is to visit Drablow’s gothic mansion, called Eel Marsh House, located by itself on an isle with a tidal causeway, and go through a mountain of papers. The old mansion, overgrown with vines and frozen in time, looks more welcoming than it should, but it doesn’t take long before the bad vibes creep in.
We don’t see much of the woman in black, but we absolutely feel her stone-cold presence, although most of the film happens during the daytime. And it actually works as the surroundings are bleak and ghostly by itself, where it doesn’t matter much if you spot a ghost at night or in broad daylight. That’s England for you.
The woman in black is played by Pauline Moran, who could as well be the sister of Jean Marsh. When we first see her outside the house where she gets the first direct eye contact with Arthur, she eyeballs him right through his sorry soul with sadness and burning radioactive hatred. She has that look as if someone just bent over and gave a big, bubbly, wet bean fart straight at her face. And once you’ve got eye contact with her, you’re, more or less, marked for life and will never be the same again, somewhat similar to a certain cursed Asian VHS tape from the 1990s.
There’s also a family graveyard by the house. Not subtle at all. So, of course, this place is haunted. But there’s work to do. Arthur gets a cute little dog, Spike, to keep him company as he dives more and more into her papers, going through cryptic tape recordings, to finally settle down the Eel Marsh House.
Then the good boy gets worried, runs out and disappears in the thick fog. As Arthur runs after him, he only hears screams coming from everywhere and the sounds of horses galloping. So what’s he gonna do? Take the train back to London and tell his cigar-smoking boss with a straight face that he got spooked away by ghosts? Of course not. And when the work is done it will finally be time to go back home to London, and hopefully forget about that creepy woman in black. But she won’t forget about you. Never. And no, nothing bad happens to the dog, so chill down.
The film is directed by Herbert Wise, based on the novel by Susan Hill. The script is written by Nigel Kneale, one of the most prolific screenwriters in the UK at the time. This is not your typical ghost ride with jump scares, loud music and so on, and certainly not for TikTokers with a half-second attention span. The Woman in Black is a classy ghost story, a tragic one as well, told in the old-fashioned style as the mystery of this Alice Drablow is basically told via letters and eerie tape recordings.
The film is very slow-burn’ish at times where we have some slick and elegant long one-shot takes so we can get a real sense of the place. The mood and the somber, gloomy cold atmosphere are the strongest elements here where with clever use of sound design, especially during the thick fog scenes. I also find it more effective that we see most of the woman in black at a distance where her sickly face is more blurred and obscured, which makes her look way more ghostly and mysterious. Makes me think of the cover of the first Black Sabbath record.
The film is also known for “that scene“ which alone was enough to ruin the whole Christmas for the Brits when it aired on the telly. The scene that really got me though, was the ending. So simple yet so damn chilling. As a low-budget movie made for TV, it surely looks impressive, still after 30-plus years, and the performances are solid.
Susan Hill was, of course, not particularly happy with the adaptation for small, eye-rolling nitpick reasons. One of which is that the screenwriter, Nigel Kneale, actually had the nerve to change the gender of Arthur’s dog! Ooof, oh my. Stephen King gives a pat on the shoulder as he relates.
After the film was shown on Christmas Eve in England 1989, followed by a quick VHS release, it disappeared, poof, like a ghost itself. It wasn’t until the 2000s that a DVD was released in Canada, a copy I bought myself before it eventually got out-of-print. The film finally got an official Blu-ray release in 2024 after a long, long, long copyright dispute. The rights were not owned by Susan Hill herself, but by a trinity of holy ghosts technicians: a make-up artist, a costume designer and an assistant director. What a headache.
The Woman in Black is also one of Guillermo Del Toro’s favorite haunted house films, which should be enough of a selling point. So don’t listen to me. The 2012 version, produced by Hammer Films with Daniel Radcliffe in the main role, is also a good one.
Director: Herbert Wise Writer: Nigel Kneale Country & year: UK, 1989 Actors: Adrian Rawlins, Bernard Hepton, David Daker, Pauline Moran, David Ryall, Clare Holman, John Cater, John Franklyn-Robbins, Fiona Walker, William Simons IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098672
Two college students, Sarah and China, have a strange encounter with an odd gentleman who owns a mysterious wax museum and invites them to have a look at the exhibit. Later, they bring along with them some of their friends: Mark, Gemma, James, and Tony. The museum has a lot of morbid displays, but nothing suspicious about that, it’s just the perfect ghoulish fun any horror wax museum should have. But of course, there’s something sinister at play…and the college students soon find out that if they get too close to an exhibit, they will end up in a pocket dimension where the scene unfolds in real life. Tony ends up in a werewolf exhibit where he encounters a hunter and his son, who is there to kill the creature. There’s no surprise that this doesn’t end well for Tony. China is sent to a castle where none other than Count Dracula himself turns her into a vampire. Mark and Sarah, however, never gets too close to any of the exhibits, and leave the museum while wondering where the hell their friends are at. Soon, they both realize something is very wrong with the museum, and they even try to make the police intervene. You can probably guess how that goes. Still, the museum has a lot more in store for its visitors…a lot more!
Waxwork is a comedy horror film from 1988, written and directed by Anthony Hickox in his directorial debut. It is partially inspired by Waxworks, a German silent film from 1924.
Waxwork is a very good mix of horror and comedy, where the tone is overall very whimsical but also offers a nice amount of decent gore scenes. It’s quite campy at times, but that only works in the movie’s favor. The practical effects here are pretty good, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when Bob Keen was brought on board to work on the visuals effects. His special effects can also be seen in other horror movies like Hellraiser (1987), Lifeforce (1985), among several more. Like a typical teen-slasher, though, the movie is set up with a lot of teen characters you couldn’t really give a fiddle about. So don’t expect any great in-depth personalities or anything…most of them are just there to get killed off by the exhibits. There is also a pretty bonkers finale, filled with chaos and absurd fun!
Some familiar faces can be seen here, including Zach Galligan as Mark, who is most known for his role in Gremlins (1984), David Warner as the Waxwork man, known for his roles in many films and series, including Omen (1976), In the Mouth of Madness (1994), Ice Cream Man (1995) and many more. And there’s also Mihaly ‘Michu’ Meszaros who is most known for a full-body costume role where you’d never recognize him: ALF aka “Gordon Shumway“! Aside from some well-known actors, the movie includes a ton of references to many horror icons among the exhibits “coming to life“: there’s a werewolf, vampires, a Golem, a mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster, Jack the Ripper, and so much more! Even Marquis de Sade, a real-life french nobleman who was, and still is, notorious for his writings and from where the term Sadism stems from. Whether or not he was just a depraved monster or a misunderstood genius in a whole other debate, though, but in this movie he’s one of the major villains.
Waxwork is one of those 80’s horror movies where you just sit back, and more or less nods to yourself and thinking “yup, this is one of those movies that could only have been made back in the day“. Easily a typical comfort-horror. A nice 80’s horror film filled with nonsense of the fun and ghoulish kind!
Writer and director: Anthony Hickox Country & year: USA, 1988 Actors: Zach Galligan, Jennifer Bassey, Joe Baker, Deborah Foreman, Michelle Johnson, David Warner, Eric Brown, Buckley Norris, Dana Ashbrook, Micah Grant, Mihaly ‘Michu’ Meszaros, John Rhys-Davies IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096426/
Hairmetal, blood, freezing titties, avalanche in the snowy hills that have eyes, and a dude that looks like George Lucas. Here we go!
