Halloween 2026: September 24th

Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma (2026)

The golden age of the slasher movie was short-lived. By 1984, over-saturation had been reached, the style was burnt out, and Jason Voorhees was dead. They kept making them. They'll keep making them forever, because something about the subgenre seems to imprint on every subsequent generation of horror fans. Which is to say: It's been four decades since "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" lit the fire, and three since "Scream" popularly deconstructed it, and people are still finding things to say about these movies. Whether the irony-enriched eighties slasher regurgitation premise is totally played out or not is irrelevant. A certain breed of filmmaker will keep thinking about it. Deeply personal reflections on media seems to be Jane Schoenbrun's thing. "We Are All Going to the World's Fair" and "I Saw the TV Glow" were the director's post-mortems on getting too deep into the internet and substituting real life experiences with television, respectively. Now "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" has this extremely distinctive voice considering the often-considered camp slasher framework. 

"Camp Miasma" was a popular eighties slasher film. It concerned Little Death, a transgender revenant wearing an air vent on their head and wielding a spear. The killer regularly rose from a lake to massacre the people at the summer camp next door. The original was a hit and beget a long line of sequels, until the premise was thoroughly run into the ground. Now, up-and-coming filmmaker Kris Williams has been contacted to pitch a reboot. Kris knows the studio singled her out because she's queer and they are hopeful she can untangle the "Camp Miasma" series from its problematic origins. She genuinely loves the films though. In particular, she's enamored of Billy Presley, the star of the original film that has since disappeared from public life. Kris tracks Billy down at her home, which turns out to be the camp grounds where the first movie was shot. Billy has a deep connection to "Camp Miasma" as well. Her and Kris explore what the film means to them, and their own sexuality, until the border between reality and fiction are totally blurred. 

The impression I got from Jane Schoenbrun's previous films is that they put a lot of themselves into the protagonists. A young person losing connection to reality as they go deeper into an internet rabbit hole and a pop culture-obsessed, deeply closeted loner perhaps represented dark "what-ifs" for the auteur. "Camp Miasma" is Schoenbrun's most personal work yet. By which I mean, Kris Williams definitely seems to be a self-insert for the director. Hannah Einbinder is even made up to look a bit like Schoenbrun. The plot thread of Kris being asked to make a "woke" reboot of a transphobic summer camp slasher, specifically because of their queer identity, makes me think Schoenbrun got asked to reboot "Sleepaway Camp" at some point. (Both that film and its beloved-by-me sequel are mentioned by name.) That must be weird, being offered a job only because your identity lines up with the murderous villain's. If "Camp Miasma" is a reflection of the director's feelings, Schoenbrun has little respect for typical Hollywood smoozers. Kris' agent and the execs are obsessed with meaningless buzz words like "origin story" and "elevated." While the "Queer Assistant" present is depicted as utterly apathetic. If brainless industry people are a target of the story, the script doesn't spare its protagonist either. Kris' past films that "explore queerness as monstrous otherness" and her obsessive film fandom are treated as immature defense mechanisms, to cover up real insecurities she feels about herself and sex. When asked to talk about herself, Kris talks about her films instead. As if that's all there is to her, as if cinema is more real than reality.

And maybe it is, at least for these characters. The film leans on the surreal borderland between the real and the imagined early on. As soon as Kris arrives at the camp, elaborate matte paintings are being used to create a sense of cinematic dreaminess. The brand names of junk food are highlighted, as if to the emphasize the importance of shiny, disposable commercial products to these people. Dipping sauce for chicken fingers is sensually lingered on, only the first of many scenes connecting food and sex. This is because, as the title indicates, this movie is almost entirely about sex. That's why the killer is Little Death, why they penetrate with a spear, and why they strikes as their victims are on the verge of orgasmic rapture. Some of these symbolic touches are obvious, even trite. But this is ultimately a film about how the pop culture we consume gives us the words to express our desires, our fantasies. The shadow play of the movies are absorbed as erotic nightmares, through which we can then describe our own thoughts and feelings. If the amount of Jason-themed erotica I've seen is any indication, Kris is far from the only person whose sexual awakening was entwined with an old horror movie. Finding sensual satisfaction from watching naked, stereotyped teenagers get killed is acknowledged as #Problematic but, the film seems to say, our fantasies tend to be a little fucked-up. That's why they only exist in dreams and on the big screen. 

It's an interesting, highly personal re-contextualization of the slasher concept.  Schoenbrun has said that the film is as much about learning to enjoy sex after transitioning as it is riffing on Jason movies. I exist in too cis of a head-space to, perhaps, understand that element. A sequence where Kris talks about watching a horror movie and wanting to be the fleeing bimbo on the screen is pretty obviously important. The symbolism of the spiraling, interlocking lines of Little Death's vent mask were a little lost on me. I'm sure someone with a degree in Gender Studies would have something to say about the discussion around the role watching and being watched, being both within and outside the body during sex, plays in the film. 

I don't know much about that kind of thing. What I do know lots about is eighties slasher movies. The opening credits depict a litany of poster art, VHS boxes, Fright Flicks-style trading cards, merchandise, and industry articles about the long-running series. Clearly, Schoenbrun is as faithful to the marketing aesthetic of the “Friday the 13th” series as they were to the look and feel of nineties television in “I Saw the TV Glow.” The first glimpses we get at the “Camp Miasma” films, a sequence where Billy is humping with her male co-star when Little Death is reflected in her eye, is striking. When we finally get an extended look at the film-within-the-film, the results are dishearteningly not as faithful. As much as the film draws specific cues from “Sleepaway Camp” or “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter,” the characters within the film are never less than utterly cartoonish. Including a female stoner with a huge mohawk, which feels a bit anachronistic for the early eighties. The sequence grows more exaggerated as it goes on, with every kill being followed by a massive geyser of blood. It is, simply put, quite bad, playing less like the creation of a loyal fan of the genre and more like a shitty “Saturday Night Live” sketch or something. The filmmaker clearly knew what the films they were paying homage to looked and felt like, so I can only assume that these moments of obnoxiously dumb parody are intentional. 

Moments this grating are especially baffling when other parts of the movie work so well. The filmmaker remains especially talented at unexpected needle drops, especially when pairing them with unexpectedly lyrical violence. The cinematography and visuals are interesting throughout.  Hannah Einbinder gives a thoughtful performance as Kris. Gillian Anderson adopts a kind of silly country twang as Billy, which takes some getting used to. However, she has fine chemistry with Einbinder and the acting choices eventually win me over. In other words, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is messy, too self-aware at times, and doubtlessly self-indulgent. At first, I was disappointed in it. As far as recent self-aware “Friday the 13th” homages go, I preferred “In a Violent Nature.” However, thinking about it, the film captivated me for its entire runtime and transported me. I suspect I will think about it a lot more in the future. [7/10]

Cry of the Banshee (1970)

You can get a good sense of the shifts the horror genre went through as the sixties became the seventies by looking at Vincent Price's career. The previous decade was defined by the classy chills of the Poe Cycle. Ten years later, his trademark films were about mad villains seeking elaborate, often gory revenge on those who wronged him. The transitional film between these two styles was, of course, the intense and violent "Witchfinder General." American International Pictures would attempt to replicate that one's success a few times. Most directly with 1970's "Cry of the Banshee." It was Price's 100th film and that would normally be a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, he hated making the movie, often citing it as one of the least favorite of his career. His relationship with AIP and Sam Z. Arkoff was on the skids at the time, no doubt contributing to Price's ire towards the film. All of this makes "Cry of the Banshee," despite its low standing in its star's career, something of the end of an era. It is often cited as Price's last gothic horror film, which is close enough to the truth. 

Lord Whitman is a rich magistrate, his grand manner overlooking a simple village. He is obsessed with stamping out the local witch community. Alongside his two sons and henchman Bully Boy, he often raids and terrorizes sabbaths and rituals. One such coven is led by a witch named Oona, who places a curse on the Whitman family in retaliation. An otherworldly spirit takes over the body of Roderick, the servant boy that both Whitman's daughter and wife are sleeping with. The supernatural activity increases: The eerie howl of a banshee is heard outside the castle at night. A demonic black dog begins to attack the locals. An inhuman beast prowls the grounds. Both Lady Patricia and Maureen Whitman have visions of madness. The Lord only increases his witch-hunting shenanigans in response to these events, seeking out Oona to end the curse.

Scholars of folk horror, or at least the people who made that long-ass documentary on the subject, refer to the three films that kicked off the modern iteration of the subgenre as the Unholy Trinity: 1968's "Witchfinder General," 1971's "Blood on Satan's Claws" and "The Wicker Man." "Cry of the Banshee" represents something of the bridge between those first two titles. It's a blatant imitation of Michael Reeves' film, featuring Vincent Price again in period garb and performing medieval torture on supposed witches. There's a branding, some stocks, a burning at the stake, and a spin on the breaking wheel. There's also some rape and coerced confessions. The rebellious witches frolic in nature with flowers in their hair, clearly drawing parallels to the hippy movement. The end credits go so far as to separate the cast into two opposing groups, the Witches and "The Establishment." "Blood on Satan's Claws" was going for more of a Manson family vibe than a flower power angle but both movies clearly look to the witch hunts of the past as a way to comment generational conflict of the early seventies.

Unfortunately, “Cry of the Banshees” seems uncertain about which side of this conflict we should root for. Now, obviously Lord Whitman and his raping, torturing cohorts are vile people who deserve our scorn. His wife and daughter, meanwhile, are largely innocent bystanders caught up in things. While the film certainly focuses on the cruelty of the witchhunters, it also takes place in a world where witchcraft is real and dark, magical powers do exist. This muddles the waters a bit. It's also simply another symptom of the film's inability to focus on one idea for too long at all. “Cry of the Banshee” has entirely too many characters, few of them being that distinct from one another or memorable. Forgive me if I couldn't always recall which of these guys is Whitman's evil son and which is merely his evil henchman. At one point, a random grave robber wanders into the story to drop some key information before wandering back out. The nature of the supernatural threat changes often too. The movie cycles through witchy curses, a black-coated demon dog, and an off-screen unearthly shriek before finally deciding on becoming a werewolf movie in the last third. It's all over-the-place, unfocused, and often hard to follow.

That doesn't leave the viewer much to enjoy. The interrogation and execution sequences lack the brutality and indignation of “Witchhunter General's” similar scenes. None of the film's other horrors are that intriguing. “Cry of the Banshee” was filmed at W.S. Gilbert's manor and that's a cool location. There's some okay use of shadow and colors. The glimpses we get of the werewolf make it look like a moldy-faced gorilla costume, making the choice to keep it to the shadows likely for the best. Price might not have thought much of the project but he is still doing his best to make it entertaining. There's a cool shot of him dressed like Henry VIII in that famous portrait. He doesn't play the character as only a cold-blooded villain, allowing the lord to show his fondness for his family and his steadfast belief in his own, wicked quest. Mostly, Price is at his campy best when showing wide-eyed panic and fear. Also, he gets to wield a blunderbust in a few scenes and that's fun too. 

“Cry of the Banshee” exists in two versions. Director Gordon Hessler's original cut runs 91 minutes long, features an animated opening credits sequence from Terry Gilliam, and a score by Wilfred Josephs. Before releasing the movie domestically, A.I.P cut out most of the nudity and some of the violence in order to receive a GP rating, taking the runtime down to 87 minutes. They also ditched the animated opening and had Les Baxter compose a new score. (AIP also slapped Edgar Allen Poe's name all over the posters, utilizing the same trick that turn “Witchfinder General” into “The Conqueror Worm” by briefly including some lines from one of Poe's poems – in this case, “The Bells” – at the beginning.) Neither cut of the movie features a banshee at all. Which is kind of disappointing. That would be a cool, underutilized monster to built a film around. While the director's cut is a slight improvement over the U.S. edit, “Cry of the Banshee” is subpar in any version. Vincent Price's theatrical vamping has elevated middling material before but this one mostly feels reheated from superior work. Also, the devil dog looks a little like my dog, presumably because all black German Shepherd mixes kind of look the same. [5/10] 

The Ray Bradbury Theater: A Sound of Thunder

It’s probably the most famous of Ray Bradbury’s short stories, to the point that it would eventually receive a (very bad) feature film adaptation. The premise, of dinosaurs and time travel from a futuristic society, are also quite ambitious. That’s probably why the low-budget “Ray Bradbury Theater” didn’t adapt it until the third season. For those who don’t know, “A Sound of Thunder” begins in a sci-fi future, where time travel has become common technology. Following an election where a fascist dictator nearly became President, big game hunter Eckels heads into the offices of Time Safari Inc. He pays an exorbitant cost to go back in time to the Mesozoic and hunt a T-Rex. His guide Travis gives him strict rules to follow: He must stay aboard a floating platform and can only kill animals already destined to die. Any other disturbance to the environment may have horrifying effects on the future... Rules that Eckels inevitably breaks. 

I honestly don’t know how famous Bradbury’s story is among people who don’t read science fiction. However, the central twist the story leads up to – that seemingly the most inconsequential of changes in the past can unknowingly have enormous effects on the future – has long since entered common knowledge. Bradbury’s story isn’t the origin of the term the butterfly effect but is often mistaken as such, because Ray also used a mere Lepidoptera as the symbol of how little things can set off chain reactions with massive consequences. Unfortunately, this has the downside of making any adaptation of “A Sound of Thunder” leading to a foregone conclusion. The minute the story introduces the idea of a strict set of rules that must be follow in the past, it’s only a matter of time before they are broken and birth a strange new future. 

If anything, I think the future that the death of one butterfly 65 million years ago sets off might be too similar to the one already established. The future the cast arrives in at the end isn’t that different from the one they left. It’s effectively the same except for two key changes: Language and writing is kind of fucked-up and the heavily foreshadowed crypto-fascist running for president has won, birthing an era of American Nazism. (Something that, ya know, could never happen.) Anything more elaborate than that was also probably outside the show’s budget. It’s also faithful to Bradbury’s story, likely because he wrote the script himself. Still, more extreme changes would probably be a better, more surprising illustration of simply how much that little butterfly – a species that really does date back to the Cretaceous – actually did matter to history. 

Then again, maybe Ray accidentally predicating the butterfly effect isn’t the point of the story so much. “A Sound of Thunder” is mostly a simple tale of hubris. Its big game hunter goes in search of dinosaurs because he believes he’s killed every dangerous creature alive. The sight of the tyrant lizard king, however, sends him into a panic. It turns out there is something bigger than himself and the idea terrifies him, leading to his downfall. I’m always happy to see shitty hunter types get what’s coming to them. Kiel Martin plays Eckles as properly haughty and then spineless, a good contrast to the ice cold but fearless take John Bach provides to his guide. The idea is simple: History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man. A focus on that moral over what ends up happening would’ve resulted in a more satisfying pay-off, I think. Or perhaps that’s simply my familiarity with the source material and this episode featuring a mediocre animatronic dinosaur influencing my opinion. Still a better take on the story than the 2005 movie. [6/10]

Friday the 13th: The Series: Vanity's Mirror

Mirrors are objects loaded with symbolism, certainly when it comes to the topic of vanity, which makes it unsurprising that “Friday the 13th: The Series” would devote an episode to one. This one begins with a ragamuffin flower vendor attempting to convince the guy in a nice suit that buys roses from her every day to love her. When that doesn’t work, she reflects light from a compact in his eyes, magically inducing a powerful infatuation. This has deadly consequences. In the aftermath, homely high school student Helen Mackie picks up the compact. She quickly deduces its magical mechanics. She uses it to make the jocko friends of her sister’s handsome boyfriend – who, of course, Helen has a crush on – fall in love with her. And this show being what it is, all of those sudden love spells result in death too. When Micki showing up at the girl’s door is unsuccessful, Ryan goes undercover as a high school student to find out more. 

Auditioning for the part of an “ugly” girl, only to win the role, must be demoralizing for an actor. That unfortunately sets up what is the rather fucked moral of “Vanity’s Mirror.” The script never considers that unfair social pressures placed on young women to make themselves stand up to an impossible beauty standard might deserve any blame for this situation. The woman in the first scene is simply a villain. Helen is not much more sympathetic. A few hours after figuring out how the mirror works, she is already callously engineering the gruesome death of somebody. She becomes fully ruthless right after that, never once being shocked or unsettled by the violence she is reaping. The unusually down-beat end of the episode is similarly pitiless to the girl. This one ends without any sense of “justice” being served and seems to come to the conclusion of “Well, some people are just ugly, inside and out, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” 

I, for one, do not agree with this. I believe it’s cartoonishly unfair to a sixteen year old girl to turn her into a remorseless serial killer and then off her in such a callous way, for the crime of being “ugly.” Whatever happened to the idea of beauty being subjective? Let’s not take the side of the high school bullies here. I get that “Friday the 13th: The Series” only has forty-five minutes to tell its story and is, on the best of days, still a fairly dumb or silly show. However, this one left me feeling depressed in a decidedly un-satisfying fashion. Using demonically infused mundane objects to make someone fall in love with you is bad, as “Obsession” already hammered into our heads this season. But, I dunno, maybe making a young girl with an ungainly nose and some acme into a serial killer simply because she has a crush on her sister’s boyfriend is kind of shitty. 

Outside of all of that, I suppose this episode has one or two moments. The instantly recognizable Zack Ward – not exactly a traditionally handsome fella himself and the episode doesn’t shit on his looks – appears as the first of Helen’s victims. His demise occurs off-screen but, by the standards of broadcast television in the eighties, is still quite gruesome. The second death is bloody too. Nebulous as its connection to Jason’s rampages was, this show was definitely doing its best to bring some Hollywood style gore to the small screen. However, the plot point of Ryan going undercover as a teenager is laughable. Moreover, he spends a large fraction of this episode unconscious on a floor. In fact, I’m pretty sure this is an episode of “Friday the 13th” where the Curious Goods crew have almost no effect on the plot at all. I guess Jack does save the sister from an unfortunate death trap but, otherwise, all of these events would have played out in the exact same manner without their involvement. Odd episode. [5/10]

CHUCK'S ROUNDHOUSE: Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

If you are reading these words, I probably don't have to explain any of the following. Indulge me, please: Rising oil prices in the seventies led to the U.S. government enforcing a national speed limit of 55 miles-per-hour. This was very unpopular with long haul truckers, under strict deadlines to make big deliveries. The drivers would employ citizen band radio to inform each other of where to find the best prices, how to avoid the highway patrol, and other such things truckers would need to know. Rather unexpectedly, this would make truck drivers, of all professions, cool. These blue collar workers were now anti-establishment types, sticking it to the man and fighting the powers that be. Or maybe it was just because of the goofy trucker's slang used over CB air waves, full of baffling jargon specifically designed to confuse authorities, began to penetrate into the wider culture. It then, essentially, became the seventies version of a modern meme. Today, the kids say “Six seven!” Fifty years ago, they said “Ten four!” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Also much like today, the ever opportunistic entertainment industry figured they could make a little money off the latest stupid fad. The pioneer of this new trucker-sploitation movement was a very silly, very catchy song performed by the mascot from a series of bread commercials. A blockbuster film franchise and a semi-popular TV show would follow in C.W. McCall's exhaust. However, plenty of low budget also-rans and sleazy knock-offs were also there to feed America's newfound appetite for big rigs. Filmmakers already catering to drive-in audiences with B-movies about rednecks and good ol' boys were more than happy to include a truck or two to take advantage of what was hot at the moment. 

Enter: Chuck Norris. The karate pro would claim, years later, that he had been offered other martial arts movies since getting kicked in the face by Bruce Lee. He turned them all down because, quote, he "wanted to do films that had a story and where the action would take place when it is emotionally right." Surely, the directorial debut of the composer of "They Saved Hitler's Brain!" would provide the kind of story-driven, emotionally nuanced film making Chuck was looking for with his star debut. Whatever the reason behind its production, "Breaker! Breaker!" would roll out into theaters two months before "Smokey and the Bandits" went into wide release. It was the right time and place, the low budget flick making a sturdy little profit and proving that Chuck could carry a whole motion picture on his burly, hairy shoulders.

When not practicing meditation, getting into bar room brawls, or perfecting that sweet Laurel canyon sound, J.D. Dawes is a truck driver by trade. He loans his little brother, Billy, his truck and lets him have a go at the family business. Billy is led by a deceptive C.B. broadcast into the obscure town of Texas City, California. Ruled over by the eccentric Judge Trimmings, whose maniacal whims are enforced by an alcoholic town sheriff, the village extorts and harasses any villages that pass through its boundaries. When Billy tries to escape, he's held captive. J.D. heads out in his van with a bitchin' eagle painted on the side in search of his brother. He tracks the trail to Texas City, where a local shoots the tires out of his vehicle. On his quest to rescue his brother, J.D. uncovers the criminal activities the town authorities are running and seeks to free those forced to live under their rule with all the spin punches and high kicks he can muster.

While “Breaker! Breaker!” was obviously trying to capitalize on the seventies trucker fad, the film is actually a weird-ass fusion of several different genres that were prominent in grindhouses and drive-ins. The film is set mostly in California. However, the sweaty faces, greasy overalls, poor dental hygiene, and exaggerated accents of the locals bring the deep south to mind. The antagonistic residents of Texas City – which, aside from the judge and the cop, include a wild-eyed mechanic swinging a tire iron – are clearly cut from the same cloth as the bucktoothed, inbred attackers of “Deliverance” and its many imitators. The narrative, of civilized outsiders stumbling into some savage hick town, brings these kind of killer redneck stories to mind. 

However, these kind of good ol' boys are also the heroes of the story. J.D. also meets an ambiguously mentally disabled younger brother of one of the locals, who also speaks with a stutter and is extremely friendly in that childish manner that typically characterizes patronizing depictions such as these. JD also shacks up with a local single mom. An earlier scene has our hero playfully participating in bar room brawls and getting pointers from his wild-eyed, cowboy hat wearing pal. (Played by none other than Jack Nance!) In its last half-hour, “Breaker! Breaker!” remembers its supposed to be a trucker movie. J.D. calls in his long-haulin' friends to smash their 18-wheelers through the buildings, vehicles, and armaments of Texas City's corrupt authorities. It's a joyful explosion of mayhem, scored to hillbilly banjo music and the inanest of inane C.B. radio chatter. This inexplicably makes “Breaker! Breaker!” both flavors of hicksploitation, in which the simple country folk are both hostile freaks attacking outsiders and underclass anti-heroes striking back at the cops, lawmen, and all other enforcers of the system that oppress them. 

This does not represent the end of “Breaker! Breaker!'s” eccentric mixing of genres. Judge Trimmings dresses like Boss Hogg but behaves almost like a cult leader, enrapturing his followers with his words and shouting condemnation at his enemies. You wouldn't have to change much to turn this into a horror movie, of weirdo backwoods rednecks sacrificing outsiders unlucky enough to stumble into their territory. Obviously, the story of a lone hero wandering into a beleaguered town to clear out the corrupt boss in control recalls “A Fistful of Dollars.” The climax even zooms in on Chuck's eyes, like he's in a Sergio Leone movie. Said climax is also a one-on-one showdown between the hero and villain, with roundhouse kicks and a broken liquor bottle standing in for six-shooters. This also draws attention to how the ramshackle wooden sets look like a western ghost back lot. 

That final fight, by the way, ends with a freeze frame of a horse leaping over a face. It is a melodramatically shot moment, that seemingly has little connection to both this specific scene and the movie around it. Which points towards the most endearing thing about “Breaker, Breaker!” It's fucking goofy. Trimmings is played by experienced character actor George Murdock, who invests the villain with far more sinister intent and diabolic style than the material called for. He also randomly quotes Shakespeare and seems to be having some sort of puppet-based romantic role play with a doll-obsessed woman in town. This plays out against ridiculous images like Chuck's shaggin' wagon, a number of underwhelmingly choreographed vehicle chases, or a random redneck emerging to fight Chuck with a pitch fork. The film somehow manages to repeatedly top itself in terms of silly bullshit and I, for one, welcome that. 

The one thing “Breaker! Breaker!” never quite feels like is a martial arts movie, perhaps solidifying Norris' claim that he chose the project because it wasn't a mindless fight flick. Don't think that means there aren't plenty of high kicks and punches here. The script seems to inject an excuse for Chuck to fight some guys about every fifteen minutes, no matter how out-of-place it might seem. This builds to a joyously silly extended sequence midway through the film, where Norris battles his way through a succession of rednecks after the other. Though this was only his first starring role, J.D. Dawes does seem to be the prototypical Chuck Norris hero in many ways. He's a soft-spoken guy who is seemingly found by violent circumstances, rather than seeking them out. Though Chuck never puts on a cowboy hat or boots, his character undeniably has that kind of rustic, western hero energy. This stands at odds with his embracing of Asian mysticism. In fact, the character seems to be teaching zen yoga techniques to some of the random rednecks he meets at a truck stop before using his meditation skills to, seemingly, heal a wound later in the film. He's a cowboy, a karate master, a mystic and a warrior monk all at once.

He's also, like many heroes played by Norris and others, kind of gay. J.D. gets a female love interest and an implied romantic night with her, sure. At the same time, his need to find his little brother is what motivates the entire plot. To the point that he has traumatic nightmares about losing the boy. When he finally does rescue Billy, he softly caresses the kid's face before pulling him into an embrace I thought for sure was going to turn into a kiss. The bond between the two is also introduced with some on-the-ground, in-the-dirt roughhousing, that ends with both of their blue jean clad asses up in the air. Maybe these two are brothers in more of a communal sense, if you get my meaning. That's when you notice the contrast between muscular, hirsute Norris and the smaller, skinnier, hairless Terry O'Conner as the brother, making me wonder how in on the joke the producers were. Who knows what kind of stuff two strapping bucks might get up to during those long, lonely nights on the road? 

In other words, I went into “Breaker! Breaker!” expecting a standard seventies redneck car chase movie that starred Cordell Walker in the fetal stages of his career. Basically, “Convoy” but with Chuck Norris kicking people intermittently inserted. While that isn't an entirely inaccurate description of the film, it's also much wackier than I expected. This is the kind of fast and loose B-movie the seventies ran on, where the audience never misses the feeling that the filmmakers would randomly make up a new set piece every day. I mean that as a compliment, as it lends the motion picture a giddy, unhinged quality that makes it ridiculously entertaining for its entire runtime. The MST3k boys riffed on it recently for a RiffTrax special but I honestly can't imagine the film being funnier or sillier than it already is. In other words, quality drive-in entertainment. Zack says check it out. [9/10]

 

[THE CHUCK OF NORRIS: 3 outta 5]
[] Facial Hair
[X] Jumps or Kicks Through a Window or Wall
[X] Performs Spin Kick or Spin Punch to Enemy’s Face
[X] Shows Off His Hairy Chest
[] Sports Some Cowboy Getup

 

Halloween 2025: September 14th

I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

You can debate whether this new decade has produced any horror franchises of its own with real staying power. "M3GAN" seems to have slipped on her second run. Ti West's "X" trilogy was more of a niche thing. While the 2020s struggles to find their own monsters, studios certainly remain determined to resurrect the slasher stars of previous decades. Recent relaunches of "Halloween" and "Scream" have made the "legacy sequel" – a fusion sequel/reboot/remake that brings back old characters, introduce new ones, and tell suspiciously familiar stories – the hot trend in studio horror. That concept might have jumped the shark this past summer when Columbia Studios applied the legacy sequel treatment to "I Know What You Did Last Summer." Ah yes, the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" trilogy with its iconic characters like... The "Party of Five" chick and... That guy. Ya know, the beloved slasher villain. The, uh, Gordon's Fisherman or whatever. Yes, I do believe someone greatly overestimated the public's investment in this particular nostalgia property. I know what I did nearly a decade ago and that was review the previous three films in this crappy series. I might as well give the new crappy one a shot too. 

We return once again to the seaside town of Southport, North Carolina during the 4th of July weekend. Ava and Milo's best friends, Danica and Teddy, are celebrating their engagement. They pick up an old friend, a recovering addict named Stevie, and drive out to a winding mountain road to watch the fireworks. That's when Teddy, fooling around in the road, causes a car to drive off the edge. Rather than go to the police, Danica talks the group into keeping it a secret and Teddy's influential father provides additional cover-up. One year later, Ava returns home to attend a second engagement party Danica is having with her new boyfriend, Wyatt. At the party, Danica receives a letter simply reading “I know what you did last summer.”  That night, Wyatt is murdered by a killer in a fisherman slicker. It becomes quickly apparent that Ava and all her friends are being stalked by the same hook-wielding maniac, eager to deliver vengeance upon them for their misdeeds. The group seek out the help of Julie James and Ray Bronson, survivors of a killing spree with the exact same M.O. from over thirty years ago. 

The script, which director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson co-write with Sam Lansky, makes sure to inform us that Ava is bisexual, that all the characters are into social media or drugs, without making these seem like real defining characteristics. Everyone is hot and toned and unblemished and often swapping romantic partners. These elements exist alongside all of them being rather unlikable people. Danica never once apologizes for being an accessory in the death of a bystander, coming across as largely vapid. Everyone seem entitled to a bright future without once grappling with the consequences of what they've done. At first, I figured the brainless Teddy or the shallow Danica were meant to be the villains of the film, intentionally unlikable rich kids who believe they are always beyond reproach. Instead, by the film's end – when everyone is trading catty dialogue like “Fuck the 4th of July!” –  it's apparent that we are actually suppose to find these traits endearing. Truthfully, the film isn't about guilt or responsibility at all. These events happen to these people and I never once believed they were learning anything.

Something else that is severely lacking is a sense that any of the main characters are in danger. Despite the killer ostensibly being after Ava and her friends, everyone around them seems to be dying instead. The ensemble is fruitlessly chased while a handful of unimportant side players wander in to be speared upon the Fisherman's hook. Danica's pointless second fiance or a random cemetery groundskeeper are two of the bystanders introduced to be fodder. Much like the original film, Robinson's “Last Summer” suggest there truly aren't that many ways to kill someone with a big hook. There's a decent neck impaling but, otherwise, the gore proves totally forgettable. Another example of the sequel's lack of creativity is present in two separate scenes where someone can't hear a victim's cries for help and screams of agony because they are listening to music too loudly. Ya know, a slasher flick can get away with that gag once but twice is simply egregious. 

Occasionally, the film seems like it might possibly be gesturing at some form of social commentary. One of the Fisherman's earliest victims is a true crime podcaster obsessed with the murder spree from the original film. When she's at the end of the killer's hook, she says she's “a fan” of their work. If this is meant to be a commentary on the callousness of the true crime industry or the gross type of celebrity our culture affords to murderers, it never develops into an actual point. (Considering 2018's “Halloween” and “Terrifier 3” also did something like this, it's quickly become an abused trope in modern slashers.) Similarly, Teddy's rich dad is a real estate developer, who bought up Southport property after its value plummeted following the original murders. Despite the obvious crassness of these actions, Ted's dad isn't depicted as especially ruthless. That would require the film actually giving any of its characters' actual defining characteristics at all. The sequel wants to invoke vague notions of relevancy without commenting on these issues in any way. 

The annoyingly trendy characters or bloodless attempts at meaning are, somehow, not the element of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” that bugged me the most. David Gordon Green's “Halloween” trilogy connects to the original via Michael Myers and Laurie Strode. The new “Scream” sequels make sure to introduce the kids and relatives of the established cast members. Ava and her friends have no connection to the 1997 ensemble. They are simply being pursued by a killer with the same costume and gimmick. When the identity of the villain is revealed – in a moment that definitely feels more “Scream” than “Last Summer” – no justification is given for continuing with the fisherman get-up. Julie James is brought back into the story, because the new group seems to think she can help them. Now, why would that be? Having survived an unrelated murderer in the same town thirty years ago does not give her any special insight into this new batch of unconnected killings. A more desperate, less sensible reason is introduced as a cheap twist but it feels like nothing but an excuse to have Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prince Jr. in the movie. Hewitt, for whatever it is worth, is probably the most personable and interesting performer in the film. This is more by a lack of any other options, as the new recruits are completely indistinguishable. 

Robinson claims to be a big fan of the original films. This is apparent in shout-outs to the superiority schlocky “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and two very dumb scenes that bring back additional cast members from the nineties. (The former is a dream sequence and the latter is a post-credit scene, both feeling like last minute additions.) Notably not referenced is “I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer,” the very bad direct-to-video third entry. As lame as that movie was, introducing a supernatural element to the Fisherman at least kept a logical link to the original. This reboot goes through all the legacy sequel steps without finding what was unique or interesting about these characters and their world originally. I mean, that's probably because “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was always lame bullshit but those older movies at least had a little more meat on their bones than this meager stab at a revival. The film technically turned a profit – 64 million at the global box office against a 16 million budget – but the complete lack of enthusiasm it was received with makes further follow-ups unlikely. I guess we won't be getting reboots of “Urban Legend” or “Cherry Falls” then, which is probably no great loss either. [4/10]

The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957)

Cult movie aficionados recall the Italian peplum craze of the late fifties and early sixties with a great deal of fondness. It is one of the defining flavors of cinematic mozzarella, cheap and cheesy flicks churned out by the Italians. Less discussed is a similar but distinctly different sub-genre that occurred around the same time. That would be the viking movie, low budget sword-and-sandal epics set on the other side of the European continent. A handful of these, a lot of which starred Cameron Mitchell or Gordon Mitchell, arrived at the same time gladiators and Hercules were filling drive-ins. Most of these arose in the wake of Kirk Douglas swashbuckler “The Vikings.” Roger Corman, ever the savvy businessman, attempted to beat that movie into theaters by quickly throwing together his own take on the Norse sagas. The result was a motion picture now most recalled for its hilariously long-winded title, “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent.” Ol' Rog really wanted this one to get its deserved space on the marquee, didn't he?

Some time ago, the brave Viking men of Stannjold left on a journey across the sea. They have yet to return. The women of the community, with only an errand boy named Ottar to keep them company, are starting to get antsy. They assemble their own longboat and set out on a rescue mission, While crossing the ocean, they are attacked by a great sea serpent and tossed aside by a vortex. The women – leader Desir, the dark-haired and mysterious Enger, the young and naive Asmild – wash up on the beach. They are soon abducted by Stark, the cruel leader of the local Grimaults tribe. Captured and imprisoned, the women eventually discover that their men are being used as workers in a near-by cave. Attempted burnings at the stake, boar hunts, sword fights, ritual funerals, and another appearance from that pesky sea serpent all follow. 

“The Saga of the Viking Women” was born of an ambitious pitch from special effects guys Irving Block and Jack Rabin. We can only speculate on why these two conceived of a story about viking women, rather than viking men. However, one assumes that the commercial potential of a poster filled with gorgeous, Nordic beauties was a factor. Populating an adventure story largely with female characters does, however unintentionally, make “The Great Sea Serpent” a somewhat unusual film for its time period. The story necessitates that women take charge, seeking to rescue their men. They are the ones who fling spears, slay a boar, and sail the boats. One sequence features Desir besting the Grimnaults prince in an arm wrestling contest. Almost as if the writers realized they had accidentally made a feminist motion picture, the film immediately backtracks the minute the viking men are introduced back into the story. At that point, the guys start leading the story, getting to fight the titular sea monster, clang swords with the villain, and rescue the now cowering women.

Up until that second half, I thought for sure that “The Saga of the Viking Women” was some writer allowing his Amazon fantasies out to play. All the statuesque women, while doing acts of strength, spend the early scenes bossing Ottar around. The character is played by Jonathan Haze, “Little Shop of Horror's” Seymour, and he's a hairless little twink here. Exactly the type of slave-boy that would submit to towering women. You can tell the film has lost the thread when Ottar is the one who saves the day during the climax, this slave-boy having become a slave-man. Despite the frantic attempt to undo any feminist reading the material might have had, there is an impossible to ignore queer vibe floating all throughout “Viking Women.” Jay Sayer plays Senya, the Grimnaults prince, as a swishing fairy desperate to prove his clearly lacking manhood to his barbarian father. There is, no doubt, something subversive in the depiction of weak men and powerful women. 

Ultimately, the kinky and gay undercurrents in “Viking Women” are the most interesting things about a film with not a lot else going for it. Obviously, Corman and his crew did not have the budget necessary for a proper fantasy epic. The sea serpent mentioned in the title only appears briefly in two scenes. It appears to be a rather floppy jawed hand puppet in a bathtub somewhere. There's also a moment of someone being struck down when lightning connects with their sword. Otherwise, “Waters of the Great Sea Serpent” is a bit of a nothing movie. The script attempts to mine some tension from Enger's lust for Desir's bare-chested boyfriend but it doesn't amount to much. The boar scene clearly never has the actors interacting with stock footage of a wild pig. There are long sequences of the viking guys breaking rocks in a cave, the women standing around and talking about what they should do, and the bad guys lecturing them about their greatness. Not the most compelling strain of schlock. 

There is, in fact, a good reason why “The Voyage of the Viking Women” turned out the way it did. The writers won Corman over with some gorgeous concept art, claiming they had all the special effects expertise necessary to bring these images to life within. They did not, a difficult situation made far more stressful by a typically tight budget. Production was a disaster, with the boat prop falling apart and some actresses nearly drowning. No wonder Corman decided the rest of the movie would be mostly composed of interior shot, dialogue driven scenes. The result is a fairly tedious B-movie. Corman does keep it fast paced and short, wrapping up the whole thing in a little over an hour, and the cast is lovely. Nevertheless, it's no surprise that the hilarious overwrought title emerges as the most memorable element of this one. I wonder if they could've made the title more of a run-on sentence? “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, Wherefore They Braved the Perilous Vortex, Fought the Fearsome Barbarians, Slew the Mighty Boar, and Angered the Gods of Thunder and Lightning” does have a nice ring to it... [5/10]

Thriller (1973): A Coffin for the Bride
 

A full decade after Boris Karloff's “Thriller” came to an end, a program with an identical title began airing on the other side of the ocean. This “Thriller” was produced for British network ITV, created by influential screenwriter Brian Clements, and ran for six seasons. Unlike most other English anthology series of the time, which wouldn't develop fans in America until years later, a select number of “Thriller” episodes aired over here as part of “ABC's Wide World of Mystery” program. One such episode was “A Coffin for the Bride,” supposedly Clements' favorite. It follows Mark Walker, a former merchant marine who suffered psychological damage after falling to a dock. In the years since then, he's developed an eccentric habit. He hangs out in bars and hotel lobbies, looking for women who are perhaps a little older, whose looks have faded it a bit. He seduces them, convinces them to marry him, murders them via drowning, and then compulsively starts the cycle again. He has set his sights on two targets recently: Stella, a costume designer who is significantly younger and prettier than his usual targets, and Angela, a vulgar older broad that is more his style. A detective is on his trail but danger is much closer to Mark than that. 

“A Coffin for the Bride” plays a bit like a made-for-TV version of “Frenzy.” The second scene introduces Michael Gwynn as a detective certain of Walker's guilt but unable to prove anything. We follow him for a little bit as he fruitlessly tries to stop the murderer before another body piles up. He then becomes Max's next victim at the end of the first act. (Or "End of Part One," as a title card informs us.) From that point on, the literal lady killer is the story's protagonist. "A Coffin for the Bride" obviously can't get as perverse or explicit as Hitchcock's last masterpiece but it does take some measures to humanize the psychopath. Mark is clearly driven to kill by an uncontrollable impulse, the result of a traumatic brain injury. He makes plans with Stella for the night but, after meeting a perfect target in the form of Angela, quickly cancels them. As if he can do nothing to stop himself from enacting the cycle again. More than once, he seems to slip into a fugue state of sorts before a kill or while deep in thought. The script never quite goes so far as to make Mark a sympathetic character. Never once does he express a desire to want to stop killing. In the first scene, he makes a misogynistic comment after drowning a portly woman. His obsession with his own fitness, or the ease with which he slips into a manipulative mode the minute he's around a vulnerable lady, all seem to suggest that this guy is a bit like the masculine id run amok. As if "A Coffin for the Bride" is taking the leisure suited, seventies lothario concept to its most extreme conclusion. However, merely suggesting that a serial killer's violent nature could be caused by a medical program or that he is also a victim of his own twisted psychology is a lot more than you'd expect from a seventies TV show. 

Like many episodes of British television from this time, "Thriller" is a bit flat in its presentation. There's little music and the framing can be rather stage-like. A lot of the hour takes place in the same hotel lobby set. The attraction is clearly in the writing and acting. The epilogue reveals a twist that I probably should have seen coming but that genuinely caught me off-guard, a solidly constructed piece of misdirection. As the fuzz starts to close in on Mark, the killer caught in a web of his own making, some tension is engineered. Michael Jayston does a good job of balancing the seemingly contradictory features of the sociopath. That he is both outwardly charming while remaining nothing but cold to his victims, totally self-centered and manipulative as he works towards making his homicidal fantasies a reality. You can actually believe that Stella, played by a young Helen Mirren in all her purring sensuality, could be attracted to this guy and willing to overlook his obvious eccentricities. Mirren is compelling in the role and the mystery over whether Stella knows more than she lets on is part of what makes the episode successful. This "Thriller" isn't as scary as the other British genre anthologies I've seen but it is a well written and composed affair. [7/10]

 

The Addams Family: Portrait of Gomez

While out moon-bathing one night, the Addams family is interrupted by the phone ringing. It turns out to have been a missed call from Strife Magazine. The family immediately assumes that Gomez has been selected to be the publication's Man of the Year. After an extensive look, Morticia uncovers the perfect photograph for the cover... Only for Cleopatra to gulp it down. The couple next head to the storefront of Gomez' favorite photographer, only to see the man has closed up shop. Dismayed, they hire a private detective to locate the guy. Turns out he's now snapping the driver's license photos for the Department of Motor Vehicles! Gomez realizes that learning how to drive a car might be the easiest way to get the photo portrait he so desires. But, ah, what about the magazine that started off this series of events in the first place? 

If the above plot synopsis didn't make it obvious, “Portrait of Gomez” is an especially rambling episode of “The Addams Family.” It feels like the writers wanted to do an episode about Gomez attempting to get his driver's license, resulting in many wacky scenarios. Rather than build the entire teleplay around that incident, they worked backwards from there and constructed a suitably bizarre chain reaction. The incident that lends the episode its title is something of an afterthought, only occurring after the family is done with going through these bizarre hoops. That makes this entire episode a delivery machine for one oddball visual gag after another. Such as Grandmama being buried alive, the reveal of Gomez' baby picture, the happy couple trying to wrestle the photo away from Cleopatra, the Addams father using Fester's head as a brake pad, and the inevitable results of the driving test. Needless to say, it doesn't go well and, as you'd expect, the Addams are as upbeat about the results as they ever are. 

I enjoyed all of these jokes. Especially the bit about Fester attempting to take a photograph, which gets sillier and sillier as it goes on. It also amused me that the driving test instructor at the DMV is more annoyed than freaked out by the Addams' macabre antics. However, what I found interesting about this one was the deep depression Gomez falls into when he can't locate his favorite photographer. His head sinks low, covered by his hat, and he then suspends himself from the chandelier and won't come down for three days. Wow, we don't often see Gomez in that bad of a funk. I sort of wish the episode explored that more before getting right back to the gaggery. (Which includes a good joke upon Gomez realizing he needs to shave.) One can easily predict that the entire situation with the magazine has been a misunderstanding but that's okay. This is an episode where getting to that conclusion is an amusingly silly ride. [7/10]

Halloween 2024: September 30th

Achoura (2018)

To the 1.9 billion people who identify as Muslims, the concept of the djinn is a well-known one. These invisible creatures, with insubstantial bodies made of smokeless fire, are mentioned 29 times in the Quran. They remain a consistent presence in the folklore of Muslim majority countries. Though the Quran is clear that djinn have free will, as capable of good or evil as human beings, myths usually portray them as mischievous or sinister figures that possess or trick people. In the Anglo world, the concept is still best known through the bowdlerized idea of the wish-granting genie. The morally ambiguous, spirit-like djinn of traditional lore has been making more in-roads in pop culture lately though. In the last decade, they've been the subject of a big budget Hollywood movie and multiple low budget horror flicks from around the world. An example of the latter is "Achoura," advertised as the first monster movie made in Morocco. French-Moroccan director Talal Selhami's film was completed in 2015, released locally in 2018, and found wider distribution in the English-speaking world in 2021. 

Long ago, during the Islamic festival of children, a young girl named Bashira was abducted by an otherworldly creature. Decades after that, a group of four kids – Nadia, Ali, Stéphane, and Samir – were lured into an abandoned house by her spirit. There, they unknowingly unleashed a child-eating djinn known as Bougatate. Samir was made the unwilling host for the creature, taken by the man devoted to keeping it trapped. Years pass and the four grow up. Ali becomes a cop, marries Nadia, and fathers a son with her. Stéphane uses his childhood horrors as inspiration for his career as a painter. When Bougatate is unleashed and Samir comes back into the group's life, they band together again to stop the monster before it takes Nadia and Ali's son. 

The opening scene of "Achoura" shows Bashira, who looks no older than twelve, being the child-bride of a much older man. Ali's specialty in the police department seems to be hunting down child molesters and pedophiles. This does not prevent him from being cold, or physically violent, towards his own son. Stéphane, meanwhile, remains locked in the headspace of his childhood trauma, painting the monster that attacked him over and over again. The anomalous antagonist is unleashed when a young boy approaches Samir, who has been reduced to a crouching, slurring vagrant after years of carrying an evil spirit in his belly. This scene obviously brings scenarios of kids being abducted or abused by random weirdos to mind. The way the script constantly references how the evil creature preys on and devours children – clearly inspired by the Bouchenka and other boogeymen of Morrocan lore – makes the intentions clear. "Achoura" is a film about how our childhood trauma molds us, how it creates both our strengths and our weaknesses. The ending makes it clear that the heroes hope to break this cycle, of abused kids turning into abusers themselves, before it is too late. Wrapping such a premise in fairy tale-like terms is a potent idea. 

It's also a story that bears more than a passing resemblance to Stephen King's "IT." "Achoura" was filmed before the release of the hugely successful 2018 adaptation of King's book. However, the similarities are still hard to ignore. Both stories are about adults reuniting with their tight-knit group of childhood friends, in order to banish the child-eating monster they faced before in their youths. Both groups forget about the horror they fought as kids, except for one who becomes an expert in the subject. King's eldritch terror taking on the form of a clown brought obvious suggestions of kid-diddling perverts to mind, a subtext "Achoura" engages with in ways both more and less direct. King's book, its cinematic adaptations, and "Achoura" all have the heroes entering into a spooky old house to confront the beast. Most obviously, "Achoura" and the literary "IT" cut back and forth between the protagonists' current adulthoods and their childhood days to tell their stories. This presents the biggest problem for Selhami's film. King's book is a sprawling epic that spans over a thousand pages. It has more than enough room to develop its wide cast of characters, digging into their backstories and histories. "Achoura," meanwhile, is only a little over ninety minutes long. It doesn't have time to properly establish its cast as either adult or kids, as well as tell its story of confronting a demon. The result is a film full of thinly developed characters facing off against a mythic villain who never seems to be more than a vague concept. I almost always believe that horror films are best kept short but this is one that very much needed a longer runtime to properly tell its story. 

Since the characters are never more than archetypal, it's difficult to be invested in which ones live and die. Stéphane is only a neurotic artist. Ali is only a hard-ass cop, while Nadia is nothing but a wife and mother dealing with a difficult husband and son. Samir's bizarre circumstances leave him as a walking plot device. Without characters we can attach to, "Achoura" is unable to create any foreboding ambiance. Selhami and cinematographer Mathieu de Montgrand create some decent looking gothic atmosphere, especially once the creepy old house becomes the primary location. However, the central monster is mostly brought to life through CGI of wildly varying quality. Sometimes the creature – whose face resembles a plague doctor mask, a rabbit skull, or an insect with especially yonic mandibles – looks okay. When lurking in a dark corner or under a bed, it's a decent effect. Other times, however, the beast appears as a deeply unconvincing computer-generated model, that never seems to be on the same plain or existence as the performers or sets it interacts with. Instead of keeping the thing in the shadows, the filmmakers thrust it into the light far too often, leaving little chance for it to spook or unnerve the viewer. 

Dismissing "Achoura" as a foreign knock-off of King's work isn't fair. It is steeped in too many culturally specific ideas for that to be the case. However, it seems unlikely that King's book didn't at least inspire center aspects of the movie. Aiming for that universality means the film isn't as distinct as it could have been either. Mostly, a script that doesn't develop its characters enough and some truly mediocre special effects keep this otherwise decently produced motion picture from being more enjoyable. Selhami and his team are talented and I look forward to what they might do in the future, provided they focus less on middling CGI. Ultimately, "Achoura" left me hoping that the next monster movie that gets made in Morocco is better. [5/10] 

The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955)

Earlier this year, we lost a titan of the genre. I can only be referring to Roger Corman, the man whose ability to spot talent while always understanding what an audience wanted made him a pioneering independent filmmaker and a grand elder statesman of the genre. Of course, that's not what Corman is truly famous for. Instead, his ability to stretch a penny as far as he could and crank out B-movies at an astonishing rate was his most notorious talent. Corman's first movie as producer was “Monster from the Ocean Floor” and his first horror movie as director was “Day the World Ended.” Officially anyway. After making his first two pictures of a three picture deal for the nascent American Releasing Company –  not yet known as American International Pictures – the still learning Corman overspent a little on “Five Guns West.” This left the third movie, “The Beast with a Million Eyes,” only 29,000 dollars to work with. Running into issues with the unions, Corman took over directing from credited filmmaker, David Kramarsky, to get the flick in the can. This gives “The Beast” the somewhat dubious distinction of being Corman's technical first horror movie.

Somewhere in the Coachella Valley, Allan Kelley and his family – nervous wife Carol, tomboy daughter Sandy – reside on his struggling date farm. The only other people for company is a strange, mute workhand who only goes by “Him” and the family dog, Duke. The tensions in the household peek when a strange aircraft passes overhead, shattering all the glass in the house. Afterwards, Carol notices that Duke is acting violently. All the animals in the area are behaving strangely. Both Sandy and Him start to wander off into the desert in trances. Allan becomes increasingly convinced something has landed near-by. He's right: An alien entity without form and driven only by a cruel intelligence has arrived, observing the humans through the eyes of all the animals it can possess. 

Within the realm of vintage drive-in monster flicks, "Beast with a Million Eyes" is notorious for featuring a grotesque creature on the poster that never actually appears in the film. Knowing this still did not prepare me for how low-key exactly this particular motion picture is though. For most of its short 77 minute runtime, "Beast with a Million Eyes" is less of a monster movie and more of a suffocating melodrama about an isolated family on the verge of collapse. Father Allan begins the movie with an internal monologue about the crushing failure of farming dates. Shortly after being introduced, mother Carol admits she resents her own daughter for having youth and beauty. Later, when she's forced to kill Sandy's beloved dog, it's easy to believe that the woman would do it only to punish the daughter she despises so much. "Him," by far the strangest character in the movie, is introduced glaring at the women through the window of his shed. He decorates his walls with cut-outs of pin-up girls and clutches a girly magazine. Later, when teenage Sandy takes a dive in the local swimming hole, he climbs into a date tree and spies on her. Despite how obviously uncomfortable this creepy guy makes the women, Allan laughs it off and ignores the concerns of his wife and daughter. Lorna Thayer plays Carol as barely holding it together, a hysterical and overdone performance, while Paul Birch is nothing but a bland, stately voice of authority as Allan. The wife is losing her mind, the husband is clueless, the daughter needs someone to genuinely care about her, and the hired help seems minute away from committing a sex crime. You find yourself really wishing a monster would show up already, simply so you can get away from this dysfunctional, miserable family for a few minutes.

Not that the scenes of sci-fi/horror are much better than the plodding, miserablist melodrama. Every attempt the film makes to be scary or suspenseful proves to be underwhelming. The Beast seizing control of animals could've been an interesting premise. The scenes of simple black birds pelting a car or the family dog turned into a killer subvert commonplace creatures into objects of fear. However, the actors rarely interacting with the animals. When Duke the dog is terrorizing Carol, the actress never seems to be in the same room with the canine. A scene where a docile milk cow becomes vicious is similarly awkward in its construction, mostly composed of closeup on the heifer's face cut with people cowering on the ground. When the cast actually does touch the animals, the results are no more impressive. A scene where Carol is attacked by leaping chickens produces laughter rather than shivers. A brief opening narration explains how the titular beast has a million eyes, a desperate attempt to justify a lurid title in a film that couldn't afford a real monster. Instead, the "beast" is mostly represented by a twirling device in a cave that makes an annoying noise. When Sam Arkoff saw the finished movie, he reportedly insisted an actual monster be hastily inserted. Paul Blaisdell, in the first of his many jobs for AIP, was given all of two hundred bucks to whip something up. The result is a snarly faced miniature that appears in one blurry sequence near the end, never stepping outside of the (unconvincingly tiny) spaceship as it glares at the humans. Blaisdell said the entire scene was shot in ten minutes, so I suppose the results are actually decent considering those circumstances. 

Tom Filer's script obviously can't shine much when surrounded by such meager production values. The story is largely composed of the family bickering in their home or people wandering around the desert. Allan comes to some surprising leaps of logic concerning the threat at hand, which seems far beyond his mundane skills of observation. One attack sequence takes place entirely off-screen, Carol unenthusiastically explaining the events that brought them back to that damn farm house. Incidental dialogue from Sandy's boyfriend or the cattle rancher is mind-numbingly inane. Repeated references to a "plane" or all the glass in the house shattering are attempts to pad the script out. "Him's" backstory, the reason the dad tolerates the obvious creep's behavior, is dropped on us in one maudlin monologue. The biggest indicator of the film's cheapness is the climax, which takes the form of Allan and the family arguing with the psychic voice of the invader. How the dialogue keeps circling back to themes of love and togetherness, concepts the alien intelligence can't comprehend, quickly becomes hilariously overwrought. Those unearned pretensions continue into a philosophical postscript, which seems to add some vague religious context to all that has occurred. It is, to say the least, underwhelming. (And no "what is this thing you call love?" rambling could cover up that Flier's premise isn't much more than a rip-off of "It Came from Outer Space.")

I'm a fan of cheapie monster movies and my tolerance for B-movie tedium is higher than most. "The Beast with a Million Eyes" still had me fighting sleep, the finished film feeling much longer than it actually is. When you read about the behind-the-scenes struggles of the production – much more interesting than the actual movie, it must be said – I suppose it's impressive that a presentable motion picture was assembled at all. Clearly, Roger Corman's abilities to simply get the footage in the can, no matter how meager that budget was, were honed during shoots like this. That doesn't mean "The Beast with a Million Eyes" is good though. We were a while off from ol' Rog being able to toss together a cult classic like "A Bucket of Blood" or "Little Shop of Horrors" within a weekend. Instead, "The Beast with a Million Eyes" is largely dull, filled with off-putting characters and desperate attempts to add some depth to a story where little actually happens. An overwhelming shoddiness infects the entire picture, with little of the charm or cleverness that would characterize AIP's later monster quickie. That a nightmare production like this, resulting in such a lame movie, didn't put Corman off filmmaking forever – instead kicking off an astonishingly prolific, nearly seventy year long career with an immeasurable legacy – is a testament to his skill, talent, and sheer passion for the medium. "The Beast with a Million Eyes" mostly blows but Roger Corman will always be a hero of mine. [4/10]

The Ray Bradbury Theater: The Coffin 

Out of the roughly ten thousand stories Ray Bradbury wrote – about 9,000 of which are fucking phenomenal – 65 would be adapted for "The Ray Bradbury Theater" over the course of six seasons and two networks. "The Coffin" is one such episode. Charles Braling is a very rich, brilliant, and reclusive inventor and roboticist. His younger brother, Richard, is greedy and broke. The two had a falling out over a woman some time ago. Richard visits his brother's mansion, maintained by robotic butlers, and discovers him building an elaborate coffin. Charles, in poor health, passes away after the two have an argument. Richard is willed the house and everything within it. Shortly before his death, Charles hid his entire fortune somewhere inside the building. Having ignored his brother's wishes, Charles left the mechanical coffin in his lab. He soon deduces that the money must be hidden there, fulfilling a plot of revenge from beyond the grave. 

For its first half, "The Coffin" is essentially a two-man play between beloved character actors Dan O'Herlihy and Denholm Elliot. O'Herlihy's deep voice and commanding presence makes Richard Brasling immediately seem like the wiser, more upright of the brothers. Elliot, meanwhile, brings an appropriate weaselly quality to Charles, a cad if there ever was one. That the two stars can so quickly establish who these characters are is good, since we only have 22 minutes to tell this story. Bradbury's precise dialogue sounds extremely good coming out of O'Herlihy's mouth. After his character dies, that voice is still put to good use. Even if watching Denholm Elliot by himself, entertaining a performer as he may be, isn't as compelling as seeing these two eighties genre icons verbally spar. 

If you haven't read the original story – I haven't gotten to this one yet – it's still fairly easy to deduce where all this is headed. However, it's certainly still a ride worth taking. The robots represent the past's version of the future, meaning they are incredibly charming to see now. That's an example of "The Ray Bradbury Theater's" limited budget actually working in its favor. The climatic booby trap plays out as both black comedy and surprisingly chilling horror. As he's trapped inside the coffin, Charles is berated by a demeaning message from his late brother. The episode cuts between the panicking Charles inside the glass case and the view outside, in which his cries are totally unheard behind the sound-proof material. Unsettling! The very final image pairs the fear of being buried alive with a sense of bitter justice, a bastard done in through suitably ironic means by a lesser bastard. Exactly the kind of sci-fi tinged but deliciously macabre fables Bradbury specialized in, brought to life faithfully by some fine actors. [7/10]

The Addams Family: The Addams Family in Court

Gomez Addams' rarely utilized profession as a lawyer takes center stage in "The Addams Family in Court." While Morticia and her husband were out bat hunting, Granmama has taken up her old habit of fortune telling again. She's successful enough to attract the attention of the police, who take Granmama away to prison for a municipal code violations. It's a simple ten dollar fee but Gomez decides to take the case, his loophole heavy defense thoroughly baffling and irritating the straight-laced judge. 

Despite appearing in the opening credits of every episode, Blossom Rock hasn't gotten much to do as Granmama over the course of these first twenty episodes. "The Addams Family in Court" is a rare Granmama-centric episode. Previous installments mostly portrayed her as a wild old woman fond of battle axes and darts. That characterization continues here, in amusing scenes of Rock clanging a tin cup against her jail cell bars only because she saw it in a prison movie once. This episode also established Granmama's more common attribute as an old witch with a mischievous streak. Her powers of precognition seem quite genuine but her fortuneteller act still feels like a con job. I imagine she likes it that way. Rock does get several laughs here, whenever asked to display an innocent seeming face or where enthusiastically practicing what amounts to her carnival act. 

For the most part though, this is another episode devoted to the Addamses Freakin' Out the Squares. Gomez' tactics as a lawyer seems to mostly be confusing the judge with as much nonsense as possible, while throwing around wild accusations. This is presumably why he has a perfect record of no wins or losses. A lot of the expected gags – Thing popping out of an unusual place, Fester sticking a lightbulb on his mouth – show up, while the judge looks on in shock. Hal Smith makes for a fairly tedious straight man. He's then driven off to some obscure corner of the world by his experience with the Addams, as usual by now.  However, there are some good gags in this episode. How the court case concludes is amusing enough. The discussion of bat hunting at the beginning made me chuckle, as did the cop's reaction to Uncle Fester's bald head. The episode's final scene features a cute double headed teapot, one of the many amazing props for this show that disappeared after its cancelation. [6/10]