Halloween 2026: October 6th

 

Scream 7 (2026)

Perhaps there will come a time when we can discuss "Scream 7" only within the context of being another sequel in a long-running franchise. Unfortunately, the circumstances around its production are impossible to ignore. How Michelle Barrera, the star of the last two entries, was fired after making pro-Palestine statements. How this led to an entire retooling of the next installment. How director Christopher Landon boarded the project and quickly left, amid harassment from fans. Whether it was even moral to go see the film was hotly debated in the months leading up to its release. With no other ideas on how to continue the story, I guess, series creator and now director Kevin Williamson went with the creatively bankrupt decision of focusing on Neve Campbell's Sidney. Simply put, "Scream 7" is a movie that shouldn't exist beyond the general reasons yet another slasher sequel probably shouldn't be made. None of this controversy stopped "Scream 7" from becoming the highest grossing title in the series' history. While all the bullshit had me skipping the film in theaters this past February, my dorky need to watch and review the entirety of a horror series has led me to finally judging "Scream 7" for myself. (And if you must know, I didn't pay to watch it, meaning the producers received no monetary gain from my viewing.) 

After years of being pursued by Halloween costume clad killers, the former Sidney Prescott has settled in Pine Grove, Indiana. She is now married to a cop named Mark and works at a local coffee shop. They have three kids, with teenage Tatum being the oldest. Despite having moved on, Sidney's history has led to tension between her and her daughter. This gets a lot worst when Sidney receives a video call seemingly from Stu Macher, one of the original Ghostfaces whose final fate has long been uncertain. Two of Tatum's friends are attacked and killed by a masked murderer at her school. After the town goes into lock down, a Ghostface sneaks into Sidney's home and attacks her and her family. Gale Weathers soon arrives in town, with "Scream VI" survivors Mindy and Chad in tow, to report on the breaking story. Sidney works with her old friend/rival to unravel this latest mystery and keep her daughter safe. Meanwhile, rebellious Tatum and her own friend group decide to take matters into their own hands. 

Aside from Ghostface's victims, another casualty of "Scream VI" was my interest in this series. It seems to me that, for quite some time now, "Scream" has been a series in search of a defining thesis. The original film is a deconstruction of the cliches of the eighties slasher movie. The second one does the same for the expectations around a slasher sequel, a phenomenon in its own right. Rather than evolve with the the times and take on whatever the current trend in horror was at any given moment, the later "Scream" movies have been content to simply eat their own tail. "Scream 3" was about nothing but "Scream's" own self-reflective nature. This was also true of "Scream 4," which gave some passing mentions to the found footage genre before inexplicably revealing itself to be about reality TV. While the fifth "Scream" found some relevance in discussing reboots and legacy sequels, while nodding at the "elevated" horror style, it wasn't about examining horror tropes and their relationship with the real world either. It was about "Star Wars" actually. The sixth film represented the series at its most self-indulgent yet. With the behind-the-scenes kerfuffle shifting seven's focus back to Sidney Prescott, there was almost zero chance of "Scream 7" on focusing anything other than the series' own backstory and unearned sense of self-importance. 

Well, I have some good news. "Scream 7" isn't another "Scream" movie about "Scream." Compared to sixth's masturbatory fixation on referencing past films, this one has fewer shout-outs. Unfortunately, "Scream 7" is also not a continuation of the original's premise of examining slasher stereotypes and the debatable effects fiction has on the real world. There's almost no mention of the "rules" or audience expectations, much less any mention of what is or isn't currently hot in the horror genre. All of which begs the question of what "Scream 7" is about. Well, I'm not sure it's about anything. However, that ever-present cultural boogeyman of "trauma" is mentioned. That Sidney's lingering scars from years of being targeted by serial killers might have had some effects on her own kids is brought up. This mostly manifests in limp arguments between our heroine and a typically temperamental teenager. Tatum resents living her life in the shadow of her mom's pain, which includes being named for the friend who had an unfortunate run-in with a garage door opener back in 1996. Generational trauma is certainly an idea worth discussing, especially as we millennials start to reach the same age our parents were when these movies first started getting made. However, I don't think the esteemed director of "Teaching Mrs. Tingle" has any interesting insight on this idea. The mother/daughter conflict in "Scream 7" mostly feels like petulant whining from Tatum. 

Instead, the only interesting idea inside the sequel revolves a lingering fear every parent has: That they can't protect their kids. Sidney has moved away from Woodsboro, stopped writing books about her life and disconnected from the true crime world. Neither that, nor marrying a cop or building a safe room in her house, does much to protect her daughter from the latest Ghostface. The only time the seventh film comes to life is when Sidney is desperately racing to the coffee shop, to save Tatum. Via an app in her phone, she can access the security cameras at the business. This is how she sees her daughter being stalked by a killer, while trying to talk her through it in a call. This recalls parents helplessly watching as news trickles in about a shooter at their kids' school, unable to do anything but watch or listen through phones and cameras. That's at least a reflection of our current world. "Scream 7" stubbornly resists developing this into coherent commentary. Instead, it merely exists alongside other indicators of modern anxiety, such as AI or the fear that your daughter's boyfriend might be a future mass shooter.  

"Scream 7" is uninterested in reinventing the wheel. The sequel seems to address, and hopefully bury, the incredibly dumb fan theory that Stu Macher somehow survived getting a big ass CRT TV dropped on his head thirty years ago. (While still bringing Matthew Lillard back for an easy pop from the fans.) That's in addition to a largely disconnected opening that sees the Macher house now having become a tacky tourist trap. Which could have been a commentary on the commodification of true crime or how all popular series are wrung out for every dollar until they are a pale imitation of themselves. Williamson doesn't do that either. The eventual reveal of who the Ghostfaces are this time, and the motivation for their murder spree, is somehow the least inspired element of the film, a thrown together twist that is delivered like a half-hearted sigh. 

This is the biggest problem with "Scream 7." At no point can it justify its own existence. I did not find myself caring about any of the new characters or cast members. Joel McHale is Sidney's husband and he shares some okay chemistry with Campbell. The script frustratingly leaves little room fie McHale's trademark sarcasm. Isabela May is mildly irritating but mostly uninteresting as Tatum, a mildly irritating but mostly uninteresting character. Most of her friends are of little note. The true crime fanatic next door or the boyfriend of debatable merit are nothing but obvious red herrings. Rising scream queen McKenna Grace shows some spark as Tatum's BFF but let's just say she exits the film early. The lack of energy behind the new cast would be somewhat forgivable if the script also wasn't so out of ideas of what to do with the old cast too. As has been the case since the third movie, Neve Campbell seems deeply bored with this character and her world. There's an attempt to build something between Sidney and Gale Weathers' relationship. Courtney Cox does what she can but you can't play off a brick wall much. When the film trots out a few more familiar faces, it feels like nothing more than a desperate attempt to spark another burst of dopamine from the dying, overstimulated synapses of an aging fan base by jingling familiar keys in front of our eyes. 

That a sense of franchise fatigue floats over all of "Scream 7" is disappointing. When taken as a simple slasher flick, it's at least got the required amount of gruel and grimness. Much like the sixth flick, there are some well engineered set pieces. The sequel is adapt at putting its characters in unfortunate situations. A young lady is suspended in a Peter Pan rig in a school auditorium while Ghostface lurks below. A cool shot sees the slow reveal of the killer's hiding place within Sidney's home. This proceeds a decently suspenseful sequence where the two final girls have to squeeze through a hollow wall while the attacker on the other side tries to pinpoint their location. That's a good demonstration of the laws of suspense, in showing the audience something the characters may or may not have figured out yet. A stalk-and-slash through the cramped kitchen of a bar, a plastic filled garage under repairs, a dangling from a chandelier, or the aforementioned coffee shop stand-off aren't bad either. You can tell Williamson studied Carpenter's "Halloween," as he emulates the trick of the villain's distinctive white mask slowly appearing in the shadows over someone's shoulders. From a gore hound's perspective, there's one or two amusing butcherings. A beer tap is used creatively. 

All of this implies that "Scream 7" might have been able to generate some suspense or more than a fleeting sense of same-old-same-old entertainment, if these sequences were attached to something other than a contractually obligated continuation. Instead, these scenes occur within a film with zero fresh or interesting ideas of how to stretch this story out for a seventh entry, anchored by a cast with little personality or desire to be there. The film made plenty of money, meaning an eighth installment is all but guaranteed. Such box office results suggest that the team behind "Scream" has no reason to give this series the drastic reinvention it obviously needs. I imagine Barrera will probably get invited back in time, that her storyline will continue in some form or fashion. However, if "Scream 7's" quality is anything to go by, I can't imagine a Sidney or Carpenter sisters-led future for "Scream" that has any actual guts or hot blood pumping through it. [5/10]

 

Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach (1970)
Lokis. Rekopis profesora Wittembacha

The idea of a short story that goes on a bit too much to be called "short" or a novel that maybe lacks a few hundred words feel like concepts as old as literary classifications are. However, the term "novella" actually was invented in 1829. By a Frenchman, of course, sticklers for detail that they are. Prosper Mérimée coined the term and this guy's Wikipedia article is wild, man. Best known today for the story that inspired the opera "Carmen," Mérimée was a real Renaissance man in his day. An influential figure in the Romanticism movement, he was also an archivist, an archeologist, the Inspector-General of Historical Monuments, a folklorist, a translator, a prisoner, a senator, the official advisor to the Empress of Napoleon III, and a catty bitch who loved to start beef with his fellow authors and bureaucrats. He also wrote horror stories sometimes, among which was "Lokis. A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach." Set in Lithuania and inspired by its local legends, the novella was adapted to film in Poland in 1970, by director Janusz Majewski. Since its inclusion in the big folk horror box set a few years back, the film has gained a lot more attention. 

The titular Professor Wittembach is a pastor and writer. He travels to Lithuania to study local folk customs and translate the Bible into Samogitian, an obscure dialect of the region. He is invited to the estate of Count Szemiot, whose library includes many useful old texts. The Count is eccentric, with a history of madness in his family. The family physician, Dr. Froeber, informs Wittembach that the Count's mother went insane following a bear attack, believing her son to be the offspring of the same animal. The professor officiates the Count's marriage to a beautiful young maiden but bad omens persist over the castle. Might Szemiot actually be a were-bear or is he merely a victim of his own beliefs?

Most of the Polish horror and fantasy films I've seen so far have been on the artsier side of the spectrum, usually with a heavy political bent. This remains true with "Lokis." (The title, by the way, is a misspelling of the Lithuanian word for bear.) The film seems especially concerned with the separation between man and beast, which the pastor clarifies as a distinction between our higher, spiritual calling and our more bestial nature. Usually, when were-beast movies delve into this, it's about savagery and sex. "Lokis" touches on that a little bit. The count's backstory seems to link the bear with unleashed sexual frenzy and the story comes to its climax on his wedding night. However, Majewski and his team approach the subject from a sociopolitical angle. "Lokis" frequently contrasts the nobility, and its interest in academics, with the peasantry, who are a more superstitious lot. One of the first scenes is Wittembach and some elegant ladies watching, from a train, a street performance with a bear. This sets up a distance between the haves and have-nots. While the film ostensibly adopts the more "high-minded," scientific perspective of the upper crust, this is a world fairly unambiguously at the mercy of otherworldly forces. For all its pomp and circumstances, the ruling class is as governed as much by animal desires and the whims of the hidden world as those they preside over.

“Lokis” was made three years before “The Wicker Man” but bares some resemblance to that watershed moment in folk horror history. Both films concern a Christian authority figure, quite secure in his monotheistic viewpoint of the world, being continuously challenged by pagan beliefs and rituals. Matching the more intellectual tone of the film, “Lokis” has Wittembach's understanding of a world governed by a logical God at odds with the otherworldly events he witnesses. A carriage driver warns him of the devils that haunt the forest. Only to have a wheel pulled right off their vehicle, the supernatural forces seemingly proving their own presence. Later, the pastor and the count encounter a self-styled witch in the woods. She comes across as merely an eccentric old woman at first before walking across the moss covered surface of a river as if it's a solid object. “Lokis” slots in nicely with the political and spiritual upheaval of the early seventies, when traditional structures were falling apart and a different, more daemon-haunted world was presenting itself. 

All of that probably sounds pretty interesting. And it kind of is, if you're into European folklore. Unfortunately, Majewski's film is almost unbearably slow. “Lokis” is a motion picture composed almost entirely of men standing around in stately rooms and talking to each other. When the back story of the Count's mother possibly having been assaulted by an ursine is delivered, it plays out as a conversation over some paintings and books. The climatic moment of the film occurs entirely off-screen. All of this is delivered with a stilted, mannered approach. The movie can summon a certain dreamy energy in its best moments, such as the sequence with the witch. The score ramps up a few times, to get the heart pumping. However, nothing much actually seems to happen. “Lokis” is a horror movie in theory but everything sinister is implied, not shown. Don't go in expecting any were-bear chaos occurring on-screen, is what I'm saying. 

That glacial pacing does seem to divide viewers of “Lokis.” I've seen some enthusiastic reviews of it, from people fully sucked into its folkloric dreaminess and not too bothered by the slowness. However, others have been seriously let down by how the movie focuses on ideas and ambiance over anything else at all. It's a nice looking film, with strong cinematography and eye-catching visuals. The settings, of a forest with sheltering branches and the strange looking castle, do make for a suitably surreal location. Ultimately though, I found myself fighting sleep before the relatively short runtime wound up. Maybe you'll find it a bit more compelling but, despite some interesting sights and more interesting ideas, “Lokis” was sabotaged for me by a plodding pace. The film did intrigued me enough to add the original novel to my reading list, though that might also be because Propser Mérimée's life story caught my eye too. [5/10]

 

Wednesday: You Reap What You Woe

Netflix didn't cast recognizable actors like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman as Morticia and Gomez only to use them for a bit in the first episode. And so Wednesday's mom and dad come into focus in "You Reap What You Woe." The episode reveals that, while attending Nevermore as teens themselves, Gomez seemingly ran through a romantic rival for Morticia with a sword and dropped him off a ledge. While investigating the recent suicide of the seemingly happy town mortician, Sheriff Galpin uncovers evidence that Gomez did commit murder all those years ago. (How he escaped this conviction originally doesn't come up.) While Wednesday's parents are visiting the school, her father is arrested for the decades old crime. Now their daughter must pause her investigation of the current strangeness plaguing the school to clear her pop's name. Meanwhile, the other students at the academy have their own mama drama to attend to. 

The early flashback reveals that Gomez and Morticia attended Nevermore in the year 1991. Which would put them both in their forties in this show, assuming it's set in the modern day. While the original series did assign specific ages to the Addams, the thought of these two being Gen-Xers doesn't sit well with me. The idea of Gomez growing up during the Reagan administration feels wrong. However, I will say that Guzman and Zeta-Jones are well cast in the part. Guzman even looks a lot like Charles Addams' original illustration. He's certainly capable of bringing the weird gremlin energy of John Astin or the unapologetic eccentricity of Raul Julia to the part. The episode doesn't give him a chance to do that but at least the "Wednesday" show-runners felt no need to subvert the undying devotion and passion the parents have for each other. Zeta-Jones certainly has the demure sensuality and fey glint of the eyes necessary for Morticia. The show continues to play some tension between Wednesday and her mom, which still feels contrived to me. "You Reap What You Woe," in general, heaps on the sentimentality between parent and child. A scene where Gomez and Wednesday talk it out while he's behind glass comes awfully close to being too precious. She has a heart-to-heart with Pugsley too, once again showing how "Wednesday" seems incapable of balancing both the loyalty that defines the family and the sadomasochistic bond between these siblings. 

Despite the program's insistence on sticking intentionally atypical characters into a standard dramatic arc, the guest stars do enliven "Wednesday" a lot. Once again, I like this show the most when it resembles the old sitcom. Gags like Pugsley munching on potpourri with his dad or fishing with hand grenades, or mother and daughter swapping tips on disinterring a corpse, genuinely made me snicker. Almost like this gang was invented to deliver simple visual jokes and not be involved in an elaborate mystery! Speaking of which... "You Reap What You Woe" pushes the ongoing narrative aside for a bit. Eugene was left in a coma by the monster attack, a very annoying reeling back of the previous episode's cliffhanger. The details of what happened back in 1991, that Wednesday uncovers piece by piece, are very stupid. If the solution to your mystery involves mind control potions, you've written a bad mystery. Still, at least the fate of characters we actually care about are at stake here. If the Addams Family must be at the center of some grand intrigue, Gomez having possibly murdered another man for Morticia's affection feels a lot more in-character than whatever bullshit the season is building towards. It also helps a lot that this particular story line is resolved in one hour, instead of being dragged out intermittently for an entire season. 

Actually centering an episode of an Addams Family series on the Addams Family feels like an obvious conclusion. However, it's something "Wednesday" clearly is struggling with, if the subplots of this installment are anything to go by. Enid has a guilting, heavy-handed mother. She eventually gives her daughter pamphlets for "werewolf conversion" camps that will supposedly help Enid embrace her lycanthropic nature. Using a classic monster condition as a metaphor for being gay is an age-old practice. However, I think the allegory falls apart very quickly here. Enid is being told to embrace her inner nature, not deny it. Unlike queer teenagers sent off to abusive "prayer the gay away" camps by bigoted parents, she actually is a werewolf. She also likes boys, in a very traditionally girlish manner, making any attempted parallels seem wrong-headed. Enid's mom is worried about her daughter because she's a late bloomer, not because her lifestyle disagrees with them. It's a weird choice but at least Emma Myers is charming. An additional subplot about the siren girl's mother being in a cult or something is absolutely impossible to care about. More bullshit grist to occupy the runtime with on the way to the A-plot's conclusion, that I'm sure future episodes belabor unnecessarily upon. Who on the writer staff for this show had unresolved mama drama and why did they feel the need to insert it into multiple subplots? [5/10]

 

 

 

Thriller: A Wig for Miss Devore
 

Through no intentional move on my behalf, there's the second classic horror anthology episode I've watched this month to feature John Fiedler. In “A Wig for Miss Devore,” he plays the agent for the eponymous Sheila Devore. A once promising actress, Miss Devore is already washed-up and her looks faded by the age of 31. She is plotting a comeback though and finds a perfect vehicle in the story of Meg Peyton, a 18th century woman hanged at the gallows for witchcraft. Legend has it that Peyton wear a wig woven from the hairs of her victims, which granted her eternal youth and fame as long as she kept it on. Studio head Max Quinke has been keeping the residuals to Sheila's past hits to himself, information Herbert uses to blackmail him into funding the actress' comeback vehicle. Devore secures Meg Peyton's actual wig for the production, wearing it and being as strikingly beautiful again as she once was. Filming goes off without a hitch and the movie is a hit. The director marries Sheila. Yet the men around her seem to keep dying mysteriously. First Max and then her new husband, both of them found with horrible scratches over their faces. Now, what could possibly be the link there, I wonder? 

“A Wig for Miss Devore” is about the fourth episode of “Thriller” I've seen that resolves around a cursed object. Several of those were written by Robert Bloch, while this one is based on a story from fellow Weird Tales graduate August Derlith. I suppose this speaks to the way the pulp writers of the forties and fifties placed classical gothic horror tropes in modern contexts. “A Wig for Miss Devore” has quite a contemporary context, taking place in the world of Hollywood. The story of an aging and somewhat delusional actress recalls both “Sunset Boulevard” and “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” The script doesn't seem to have much insight into the wages of fame or how the shallow film industry treats women though. The episode plays Sheila as both somewhat victimized by the men around her, like the scheming Max and the manipulative husband, while also having her be a femme fatale. (While also implying that she's not that talented, seemingly only known for her looks.) I suppose the idea is that revenge hardens the heart of everyone, even those with justifiable grievances. Or perhaps the story is simply speaking to the cut throat, ruthless nature of the motion picture business. A woman has to resort to witchcraft and murder if she hopes to claw her way back to the top, in an industry that discards any actress for the crime of simply getting a little older.

Trying to dig up too much deeper meaning here is difficult though. Instead, it's a pretty simple fable, of someone with an insatiable vanity that eventually proves to be their own undoing. Patricia Barry does give a fine performance in the titular role, striking the viewer at first as an airhead type before revealing her more calculating, vicious side. The men around her prove to be properly spineless or deceiving. I wish so much of the story's ironic pay-off wasn't shoved into its last minute. I've not read Derluth's story but this feels like an encapsulation of a longer tale. In my experience, what “Thriller” really excelled at was fantastic final shocks and a willingness to be surprisingly grim for the time. “A Wig for Miss Devore” does have a gory final image and, by the standards of 1962, it was probably fairly shocking. It's also not as good as the shock endings we got in “The Cheaters” or “The Hungry Glass.” However, there is a memorable image here. Whenever Miss Devore removes her wig, until the final minutes, all we see are aged, ghastly hands groping through the shadowy air. That's pretty cool. I do wish more episodes of this series had Boris Karloff doing both an intro and an outra, Hitchcock and Sterling style, cause I do enjoy his baroque monologues. [7/10]

 

 

Halloween 2025: October 16th

 

Kuroneko (1968)
Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko

Near the start of this year's Halloween Horror-fest Blog-a-thon, I talked a little bit about the history of scary movies about cats. In my typically Anglo-centric, ignorant American fashion, I completely forgot to mention that Japan devoted an entire fuckin' subgenre to scary cat movies. They are called kaibyo eiga and Japan has been making them since at least 1910. Ghostly cats obviously first appeared in Japanese folklore and stories about them first became popular in Kabuki theater. As a cinematic genre, these monster cat movies took off in the thirties, reoccurred in waves about every ten years, and finally died out in the sixties. That's when what is the best known example in English-speaking territory arrived. After making psycho-sexual Japanese folk tale “Onibaba” in 1964, director Kaneto Shindō would put his own spin on the ghost-cat movie with “Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko” – “A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove” – which is simply known as “Kuroneko” abroad. 

Set in the same Warring States era as “Onibaba,” the film begins with a similar set-up. Hachi is off at war. Yone and Shige, his mother and wife, have been left alone. A group of samurai descend on their house, raping and killing them both. Afterwards, both women are resurrected as predatory ghosts who can transform into black cats. They begin to lure every samurai that comes across the gate at Rajomon back to their lair, seducing each one and then tearing their throats out.  On the battlefield, Hachi kills an enemy general and presents his decapitated head to samurai governor, Minamoto no Raiko. Hachi is made a samurai himself and renamed Gintoki. Raiko then tasks him with the mission of killing the ghost cat women that have been knocking off samurai near-by. Shortly after encountering them, Gintoki recognizes the spirits as his wife and mother. Since they've pledged to kill all samurai, the spectral women are conflicted about what to do next. Passion, honor, and a thirst for vengeance ensue.

While “Onibaba” had some extremely moody black-and-white cinematography of its own, “Kuroneko” takes the same visual style much further. The opening sequence, devoted to the women's violation and murder, takes place entirely without dialogue. From the moment the ghostly cat-women appear, the film is arrested by a dream-like tone of other-worldliness. The spectres are dressed all in white, appearing in a shadowy world of high contrast darkness. Their abode is depicted almost as an expressionistic set, vague and square interiors that stretch on into infinity. Figures disappear with a look, their appearances change just as quickly. During confrontations, the ghost women tumble through the air like the bad guy in a kung-fu movie. By the final act, every inch of ground under the actors' feet is covered with swirling white fog. It looks fucking cool, is my point. 

Such stylized visuals immediately evoke the feeling of a traditional folk tale. And the characters in a folk tale don't know they are in a folk tale. There were no cell phones in 16th century Japan, so each samurai falling to the ghost women in the exact same fashion is understandable. When Gintoki comes across two ghostly maidens who happen to look exactly like his dead wife and mom, he must wait several minutes to mention that. When certain conditions of the ghostly curse are broken, this must be explained via extensive dialogue. Most egregiously, the climax involves a strange old woman knocking on Gintoki's door and him letting her in, buying her story when she goes “Oh yeah, I'm totally not the vengeful ghost that's been pursuing you the whole movie.” “Kuroneko's” script is well aware of its status as a traditional Japanese ghost story. Minamoto no Raiko was a real historical figure who is also the main character in a well known myth featuring some crazy monsters. He mentions this to Gintoki, assuring him that tall tales are more politically advantageous than the mundane truth. How this relates to the movie's own relationship with the stereotypical folk tale structure it invokes, I'm not sure. 

In fact, there's a great many things about “Kuroneko” of which I am not sure. Ghost stories about vengeful female spirits are very common all across Japan and Asia, if that wasn't already obvious. As it is any time a horror film features women using their sexuality as a weapon against men, using the desire they inflame in the opposite sex to destroy them, a feminist reading is likely to emerge. While all the samurai that came before him are total assholes who get what's coming to them, Gintoki seems to be a nice enough guy. He loves his wife, is faithful to her, and wants to be with her. Their romance is destined to be doomed and Gintoki's eventual fate, perhaps, is a commentary on the idea that even “good” men benefit from a patriarchal system that punishes women. Like so many revisionist samurai movies made in the fifties and sixties, the inevitable feeling to “Kuroneko”s ending once again suggests that the concept of Bushido honor was actually a self-destructive trap for all who believed in it. 

Whatever meaning can be taken from “Kuroneko,” one thing is for sure: Kaneto Shindō fuckin' hated samurai. If the same guy makes two separate movies in which a pair of women repeatedly lure in and murder a specific type of warrior from his country's past, that makes his feeling on that particular cultural figurehead unambiguous. Ultimately, I think I found the repressed sexual desires emerging as murderous instincts of “Onibaba” a more satisfying experience than the more straight-forward ghost story structure of “Kuroneko.” Nevertheless, it's certainly a gorgeous movie. Its images are striking and unlikely to be forgotten any time soon while its dream-like tone successfully puts a spell on the viewer. Not as much evil ghost cat shenanigans as the title might make you expect though. [7/10]

Spider (1992)
Zirneklis

From 1944 to 1991, the nation of Latvia was under occupation by the Soviet Union. This brought with it strict regulations over what could and could not be depicted in art. Latvian cinema absolutely existed during this time, with a number of historical epics and crime dramas being produced during those years. However, as in many other Soviet ruled nations, topics of the macabre and supernatural were off-limits. After the establishment of independence in 1991, the first Latvian horror movie would be produced. "Zirneklis," or "Spider" in English, was directed by Vasili Mass and would be released in 1992. It's an artsy fever dream full of nudity and weird sex. One imagines this must have felt like a release of pent-up, repressed fantasies and desires after forty years of Soviet censorship. 

Vita is a young, virginal maiden living in the Latvian countryside with her mother. While attending school, she is approached by Albert, a local artist that has been commissioned by a nearby church to paint a religious scene. He wants Vita to be his model for the Virgin Mary. Upon arriving at Albert's studio, she is met by other nude models, collections of spiders, and erotic paintings. The man begins to hold a strange sway over her, leading Vita to have vivid nightmares and erotic fantasies. While visiting a castle in the countryside, Vita meets a young man that also inflames her lust. As her dreams grow stranger, the young woman finds herself pulled between different men with different intentions for her. 

I suppose it says a lot about the nature of European horror films throughout the sixties and seventies that a movie as aggressively weird and willfully transgressive as "Spider" does not seem as unusual to me as it once might have. The film follows the tradition of erotic, dream-like, dark fairy tales about young women coming into maturity, discovering they are desired, and navigating a world that wants to own and control them while exploring their own budding imagination. "Valerie and Her Week of Wonders" and Borowczyk's "La bete" are the most obvious influences. A scene, where Vita imagines herself prone and naked on a gallows, might be inspired by Laraz' "The Coming of Sin." You can see traces of Vlacil, Franco, and Zulawski here. I fell into "Spider's" groove quickly, understanding immediately that this would be the kind of movie that traipses between dreams, fantasies, visions and reality without warning. 

Some of those dreams are quite a sight to behold, to be fair. The title of "Zirneklis" is presumably a metaphor for the various webs of desire that Vita finds herself entangled in. More literally, it refers to the big-ass spider that is the primary reoccurring figure in her erotic nightmares. We first see it holding her nude figure in its eight arms, almost tenderly. Later, it attacks her in bed and tries to spread her legs apart. This proceeds the film's most infamous sequence, where the girl and the Volkswagen sized arachnid consummate their relationship. When a pulsating ovipositor appears on-screen, the film officially straddles – so to speak – the line between the arthouse and a notorious subgenre of hentai. The audience is never entirely certain if the maiden is a willing participant or not as the giant sized creepy crawler takes her doggy style (spider style?), adding to the idea that she is adrift in her own stimulated fantasy. Say what you will about "Spider's" obvious relationship to the artsy-fartsy kinky Eurohorror freak-outs of the past, I've never seen that before. "Earth Vs. the Spider" sure didn't go there. The film showed me something new. 

The merits of whatever substance “Spider” has is debatable. The pacing is sleepy, the narrative is loose. Before the end, the grotesqury on-display gets a tad tedious. The story of a young girl defining her own sexuality, away from the wants of the men around her, still ends with her being molded by the fantasies of others. Choosing the right guy is her happy ending, not self-realization. Aurelija Anuzhite is gorgeous and wide-eyed, in such a way that you can project your own fantasies and feelings onto her easily. On the merits of style, “Spider” has a lot going for it. Gvido Skulte's cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. Almost every frame of “Spider” looks like it could be a painting. The lighting is perfectly composed in each shot to be warm, glowing, like a dream come to life. A moment when Vita imagines one of Albert's paintings coming to life is stunning, almost Bosch-ian in the depth of its color and the decadence on-screen. When the setting switches to an aged castle in the last half, the movie leans fully into a shadowy ambiance. Visually, “Spider” is fantastic.

I suppose “Spider” should also be commended for successfully capturing an older feeling. If not for a random appearance from a Walkman, there would be no way to know when exactly the film is set or made. It's in Russian but, drawing so much from other European films means it's hard to pinpoint the film as specifically Latvian. Not that I'd know what a Latvian movie would look like off-hand, I suppose. A couple of other horror films have been made in the country since this one, so “Spider” does not stand alone as the sole example of Latvian horror. The movie is absolutely worth seeing if only because there's no other film that shows you the mating habits of giant spiders and that gorgeous cinematography. The lack of depth in the rest of the film keep this from a higher recommendation, despite the strength of those images. [7/10]

Nite Tales: Ima Star

Despite being a self-taught musical prodigy who can play fifteen instruments, Flavor Flav will always be remembered as the goofy guy in Public Enemy who wore the big clock. Mr. Flav certainly did this perception no favors during his re-emergence into pop culture in the late 2000s. He parlayed an appearance on an embarrassing reality show and a brief relationship with Brigette Nielsen into several other embarrassing reality shows. After that but before his go at restaurant ownership, Flav would give being a horror host a shot. “Nite Tales” started life as a made-for-TV horror anthology film on BET, with the Public Enemy hype-man playing a macabre M.C. called “The Time Keeper.” The movie must have gotten decent ratings for the network, as “Nite Tales: The Series” followed shortly. The series presumably did not get decent ratings, as it lasted all of six episodes. Nobody has thought about this show in 16 years but my continued quest to find ever-more obscure horror anthology programs has led me here. 

The star of “Ima Star” is Ray J, best known for his appearance in the Kim Kardashian sex tape. He plays a wannabe rapper named Stormy O. His audition before some record execs go wrong when present big shot, Z Diddy – that's a reference that aged great! – dismiss his rhymes as whack. Dispondant, Stormy hits the club for a rap battle in hopes he'll regain his confidence. Instead, he looses the contest. Right as Stormy is about to give up on his rap dreams, he is met by an agent eager to sign him. What Stormy O doesn't know is that this agent is in deep with some sketchy types and has to make some money soon. The publicity stunt cooked up to make Stormy's record a hit – the rapper faking his own death – ends up going horribly wrong. 

The production values for “Nite Tales” were slightly higher than “Strange Frequency” and “Hollywood Off-Ramp.” This episode actually has about three different sets! The record executive's room, the rap club, and a funeral home. Either way, you'll probably notice that an awful lot of “Ima Star's” runtime is devoted to the main character showing off his rap skills. As the whitest of white boys, I have no ability to judge the abilities on-display but I did find this sequence mildly amusing. However, these moments being focused on suggest that there wasn't much of an idea for a narrative here. “Ima Star” doesn't really become a horror story until its very end. 

It's clear that “Ima Star” is more farcical than grim. The record execs repeatedly answering their cell phones during the audition, the goofy P. Diddy parody, a supporting part for Kel Mitchell: It all points towards comedy. The ending makes the entire episode feel like the wind-up for a punchline, which ends up being a simple gag about rapper's LPs selling better after their untimely death. The twist is extremely easy to predict and rather poorly pulled off. This is true of all of “Ima Star.” The cinematography is quite shaky, with multiple long montages of honies shaking their ass on the dance floor. Ray J's acting ability extends no further than goofy mugging. The host segments are devoted to Flavor Flav in a silly Dracula costume doing his typical shtick in front of a green screen. It's not very good. If I had been aware of this show when it aired, I probably would have watched every single episode and told all my friends about it. [6/10]

A Rose for Emily (1983)

 

Of all the trademarks that clarify the gothic tradition, none is more persistent than a fascination with death. A morbid fixation on the end of life and all the trappings around it is, most probably, the primary characteristic of the genre. This extends to what we call Southern Gothic, the local off-shoot of the same literary movement that draws from a distinctly American version of being obsessed with that which has passed and is no longer. Rather than the moldering tombs and churches of old Europe, it focuses on is the fading niceties and blatant racism of Antebellum and early Reconstruction life in the Southern states. William Faulkner is the scribe most associated with Mississippi, a really rather southern state. Naturally, that means he penned a few entries into the Southern Gothic subgenre himself, none more well-regarded than “A Rose for Emily” from 1930. 

You might have read the story in high school English class, where it's often used as a way to demonstrate shifting tenses and non-linear sequence of events. If you read the story as a teenager, you might have also watched the 1983 made-for-TV short film adaptation starring Angelica Huston. It follows the plot of Faulkner's story closely: A funeral director reflects on the life of Emily Grierson, the daughter of a rich old family settled in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha county, shortly after her passing. She was left traumatized by the death of her belligerent father upon her 30th birthday, refusing to give up his corpse to the mortician for several days. Afterwards, she became a recluse and a frequent topic of small town gossip, as the estate she lived in began to crumble and age. One of her few interactions with the outside world was the courtship of a Yankee foreman named Homer Barron. After a brief but seemingly intense romance, Homer is never seen again. It is widely assumed he skipped town. Searching through Emily's cobweb strewn home after her death, the far more unsettling truth is discovered. 

If the gothic story type reflects an inability to let go of the past and to linger on the dead and dying, that means themes of necrophilia commonly occur there as well. What better metaphor is there for being unable to move on from an event than continuing to treat a deceased lover as if they were still alive? This provides the final morbid twist in “A Rose for Emily” and it's quite easy to predict, even if you haven't read Faulkner's story. Director Lyndon Chubbuck – who went on to work largely in television after this – handsomely adapts Faulkner's text, maintaining a good deal of his lovely prose with a respectable degree of period costumes and set-dressing. Angelica Huston, with her perpetually forlorn face and raven hair, is well-cast as the title character. The last act of the twenty minute short is suitably spooky and unsettling. A slow motion shot of the bedroom door being knocked in has stuck with me since seeing this in school, a long time ago. Chubbuck's “A Rose for Emily” doesn't come close to capturing the sense of longing and feeling of decaying tradition that Faulkner's story did. Not that you could really expect such a humble production to. However, it is a decently executed little film and hints at the wider themes – a deep south longing for an idyllic past that never truly existed, a sickeness that persist to this day – of the source material well enough. [7/10]

Halloween 2025: October 13th

 

The Horror Show (1989)

If you are an American horror fan who grew up during the later stages of the video store era, for many years there was a question that gnawed at your mind. You'd look through the Hs and find “House,” “House II: The Second Story,” and then... “House IV!” Where was “House III?!” No store had a copy in stock and no clerk could locate it. Why did this franchise skip the number three? Eventually, the well-spring of all knowledge that is the internet would resolve any confusion. “House III” is “The Horror Story,” James Isaac's killer-returns-from-the-grave slasher from 1989. The film would begin life as the third installment in the wacky horror/comedy haunted house series, producer Sean S. Cunningham in tow. Partially due to “The Second Story's” box office take and simply because of how the script developed, the decision was made during production to turn “House III” into more of a serious horror movie. The result was so different in tone and story – including not featuring much of a haunted house – that it was released stateside as “The Horror Show.” Overseas, however, the film would maintain the “House” branding. Whether you call it “The Horror Show” or “House III,” either title is equally relevant to the plot. 

Police detective and family man Lucas McCarthy is finally the one to bring in “Meatcleaver Max” Jenke, a serial killer that has been terrorizing the country. That's only after Lucas sees Jenke murder his partner and decapitate a little girl. He continues to have nightmares about the killer, concerning his wife and two kids. McCarthy attends the execution of Jenke to make sure he's dead. Jenke takes two volts from the electric chair and threatens to get his revenge on Lucas. Afterwards, the horrifying dreams continue and McCarthy begins to see Jenke tormenting him throughout the day. When his teenage daughter's boyfriend is found dead in the basement, Lucas is the main suspect. Instead, a doctor studying the nature of evil reveals, the truth is far stranger: Evil exists as an electric frequency and, via micro-dosing himself with shocks throughout his life, Meatcleaver Max has returned from the grave as a phantasmic being.

Exploitation filmmakers were ready to leap on the success of “Halloween,” slashers full of masked murderers flooding cinemas by 1980. I guess they took longer to catch on to Freddy's status as the next horror icon. Whatever the reason, four separate movies released between 1987 and the end of the decade would be about vengeful killers returning from the electric chair to kill again. Two of them were blatant Freddy wannabes. Both Craven's “Shocker” and “The Horror Show” make a serious mistake in emulating the Freddy movies. Part of what gave “A Nightmare on Elm Street” a universal appeal was its simplicity. Freddy can only get you in your dreams and, if you die in the dream, you die for real. “The Horror Story” can't seem to make up its mind about what rules govern Max Jenke. Sometimes, like “Shocker's” Horace Pinker, he exists as a living electrical signal, jumping around various appliances. (And, in a blatant imitation of the “Nightmare” films, spends a lot of time in the basement furnace.) Other times, he seems more like a classic ghosts. Jenke also appears in Lucas' dreams and visions. At least once, something that happens in the dream rolls over to waking hours, a wound appearing on Lucas' chest. Jenke is also able to manifest in reality, becoming a physical threat again in the last act but still using some of his supernatural powers. The explanation cooked up, about the abstract concept of evil being an electric wavelength and volts being both Max's weakness and the source of his power, clears nothing up. 

Adding further to this confusion is “The Horror Show's” inability to pick a tone. The filmmakers clearly intended Max Jenke to be a wise-cracking Freddy-like figure. He has a trademark, a nasally chortle. At one point, he appears in the guise of a TV stand-up comic, cramming half-a-dozen lame one-liners into a single scene. At the same time, the script tries to make Jenke into a vile serial killer. He gruffly croaks out profanity at his enemies. I mean, he cuts off a little girl's head early on. That's fairly extremely. There's an obvious degree of sexual menace in his interactions with McCarthy's wife and daughter. When he drags Lucas' wife into his power plant lair at the end of the movie, the implication of what he plans to do to her are obvious. Other scenes, that focus on McCarthy being in court-appointed therapy or being investigated by internal affairs, feel like something from a grittier cop-versus-killer thriller. In general, “The Horror Show” feels pulled between wanting to be a farcical horror/comedy, a grim gore-fest, and something more like a typical eighties cop flick.

It's easy to imagine the script for “The Horror Show” beginning life as another “Dirty Harry” imitator, something closer to “Cobra” than “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Lance Henriksen stars as McCarthy, his voice as gravelly as ever. He grimly swears and pulls his gun when pursuing the killer, acting a lot how you'd expect Lance Henriksen to perform in such a role. Brion James, himself a vet of action flicks, is Meatcleaver Max. Like in many an action movie, the bond between hero and villain seems deeper than mere hate. Jenke is obsessed with Lucas, to the point that he returns from the grave for him. The two men make repeatedly references to “getting their ass” and “nailing” each other. In the last act, while holding McCarthy's wife hostage, Jenke demands the cop crawl over to him and kiss his feet. When paired with a scene where Jenke pretends to be his enemy's teenage daughter and tricks her boyfriend into stripping for him, or dresses in drag as McCarthy's wife, points towards a casual homoeroticism. This seems to be a natural side-effect of the movie's heavy-handed machismo, of the plot device of two men being totally obsessed with each other.

The manly longing Jenke has for his archenemy is more interesting than the movie's horror elements. Brion James goes way over the top as Jenke, in a way that straddles the line between fun and overbearing. Lance is a reliable hero. The cast playing his family play their notes at a cartoonish level, especially Aron Eisenberg as the would-be con artist son. The movie does cook up some memorable special effects gag. A noteworthy sequence has Jenke's face appearing in a roasted turkey, the cooked bird becoming some freakish Brion James/fowl hybrid. That was cool. An early scene, where Lance stalks the killer through a dinner littered with severed heads and hands, looks cool as hell. Mac Ahlberg, Stuart Gordon's regular D.P., does the cinematography and creates some moody, foggy, deep blue night shots. There's a lot of ingredients here that should work, simply put. 

Instead, as all too often happens: It's the Script, Stupid. “The Horror Show” simply doesn't have a compelling story. As a slasher flick, it never quite delivers, most of the beheadings happening off-screen. I guess because it's ostensibly a “House” movie, most of the film is confined to the McCarthy home. This limits the creativity of the set-pieces the movie can cook up. The inability to figure out what the villain can and can't do, as well as how the viewer is suppose to feel about what they are seeing, keeps this from being better. Despite making him look like Jason on the U.S. one-sheet and multiple advertisement's comparing the film to Freddy, Max Jenke did not become a Halloween costume. I guess the film is a little less annoying than “Shocker,” if not as gloriously camp, and not quite as generic as “Destroyer,” if you want to compare it to the other electric chair themed revenge-from-the-grave flicks. Ultimately, perhaps it's for the best that this was destined to be the “House III” most of us wouldn't know about. “The Horror Story” can't compare to the giddy heights of “House II” or the reliable creature feature fun of the original. [6/10]

Nightmares Come at Night (1970)

Les cauchemars naissent la nuit
 

Is there a single European country Jesús Franco didn't make a movie in? I mean, probably. However, there's no denying that ol' Jess sure did get around. He worked in Spain, Germany, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Portugal, and Liechtenstein. Yes, Liechtenstein, the semi-constitutional monarchy, all of sixty-two square miles wide, that is wedged between Austria and Switzerland. Despite its relative tininess, Franco would actually make a couple of movies within the country. Most of these fall more on the sexploitation side of his style but at least one is classified more as horror. That would be “Nightmares Come at Night,” which started out as a fragment Franco made sometime in 1970 that was then padded out to feature length with some additional scenes. It was one of Franco's more unseen film during his glory days but, like everything the prolific cult director touched, would eventually get DVD and Blu-Ray presentations far nicer than the grindhouses it was designed for.

Anna worked as an exotic dancer in a nightclub in Zagreb, often dissatisfied with her work and feeling a growing sense of de-personalization. That is until she notices a beautiful woman, visiting the club to watch her every night. The woman introduces herself as Cynthia and, after meeting Anne in her dressing room one night, the two began a passionate love affair. That was some time ago though. Now, Anna is in the grips of a serious mental health crisis. She has haunting dreams every night, which often seem to cross over into her waking hours. Her live-in doctor does not seem to be helping her fracturing psyche any. Growing increasingly frustrated and cold with Anna, Cynthia begins to bring home other lovers. Anna begins to have murderous dreams, beginning to wonder if she has taken a life in reality as well. Or is something more sinister going on?

I've had mixed feelings about the Franco flicks I've seen in the past, enjoying his gothic horror flicks over his trippier doses of erotica. “Nightmares Come at Night” falls squarely on the latter side of the equation. Franco's “Vampyros Lesbos” muse, Soledad Miranda, has a small role here as the often pantless next door neighbor. This film is also about a lesbian tryst between two strippers, another frequent reoccurring element in Franco's work. There's quite a lot of scenes of Diana Lorys and Colette Giacobine in stylish outfits, in various states of undress, lounging in bed, taking showers, or rolling around with various partners. These scenes play out against a smooth jazz score from frequent giallo composer, Bruno Nicolai. The story is extremely loose, the film operating more as a series of set pieces set at often undetermined points in the past. The pacing is languid, to say the least. 

Given the above description, you would expect me to find “Nightmares Come at Night” as tedious as I found “Vampyros Lesbos.” Actually, I ended up liking this one quite a bit. Partially because, unlike “Vampyros Lesbos” mixing of elements from “Dracula” and “The Awful Dr. Orloff” into its stew of dreamy eroticism, this one never pretends to have much of a plot. From the beginning, it's apparent that this film will be a wash of the main character's memories, dreams, and hallucinations. That “Nightmares Come at Night” centers so much on its main character is what, I think, made it work for me. The film features quite a lot of voice over from Anna, which further puts us in her mindset. As she recalls her time at the night club, she describes her feeling of being treated like an object. No wonder she is starting to lose her grip on reality. Everybody around her wants and desires her but nobody is interested in actually knowing her. When the complicated nature of her mental health makes itself known, Cynthia smacks her, yells at her, and starts sleeping with other people. When Anna finds brief solace with a man, it's because he makes her feel realized and doesn't seem to want anything from her. It's a ruse, of course, another person lying to Anna to use her. “Nightmares Come at Night” ends up getting a pass for its sleepy pacing and barely existent story by taking place solely inside the head of its fractured protagonist.

Considering it was one of the Franco productions to be somewhat cobbled together, that's another reason why “Nightmares Come at Night” borders incoherent at times. A subplot about a bank robbery emerges in the second half, that never amounts to much at all. Some characters come and go with little warning. A series of last minute plot twist makes one wonder if this was supposed to be a giallo at some point. As you'd also expect from Franco, the visual approach is quite slapdash at times. There's lots of handheld footage and some rough zooms. More than a few times, the camera actually goes out of focus as it roams around the lovers wrapping their arms around each other and kissing or while Lorys cries on a bathroom floor. I watched the Blu-Ray release and it is still overly dark in spots and quite grainy throughout. While normally these would be the elements that distract me when watching Franco's films, it all blends together to make an intoxicatingly dream-like brew here.

Existing within that nightmare headspace, when your mind is groggy and your memory is foggy, when dreams and wakefulness blend together, causes a lot of “Nightmares Come at Night's” bugs to become features. Perhaps I'm warming up to Franco's particular strain of bullshit. Or maybe the girls were extra sexy enough to keep me watching. Either way, the slowness and choppiness of “Nightmares Come at Night” actually worked its spell on me. Sometimes, you simply want to slip into a fuzzy, relaxed, sleepy world of sex and murder and madness. That cool score from Nicolai doesn't hurt either. I can't decide if the English title is mildly poetic or simply redundant. When else would a nightmare come but at night? [7/10]

 

Mostly True Stories: One Armed Killer

A very long time ago, before TLC became a non-stop freak show devoted to individuals of unusual physical dimensions, child beauty pageants, quickie marriages, family with lots of kids, or popping zits, those letters actually stood for something: The Learning Channel. If you turned on the channel around 2002 or so, you might actually acquire some knowledge. That's when the network starring airing “Mostly True Stories: Urban Legends Revealed,” a series all about exploring the likeliness, history, and meaning of those scary and ironic tales we call urban legends. Host Natasha Henstridge would present five stories, which where then presented as dramatic re-enactments. Experts and historians would then expound on whether there was any truth to the story and why such legends endure. The series had a good balance of spookiness, humor, rationality, and laid-back basic cable charm. In other words, I loved it and the show was surely a factor in heightening my fascination with modern folklore. 

Not every story explored on “Mostly True Stories” was macabre or horrific in nature. The third episode also discusses the story of an unfaithful husband being caught at a surprise party in his birthday suit. However, as urban legends often do, the tales tended to veer towards the horrific. The episode discusses the tale of a choking Doberman revealing the presence of a home invader, a woman buying a new coat and being bitten by the baby snakes that hatch within, an actual mummified corpse hanging up as a prop in a carnival fun house, and what is probably the most iconic urban legend of all: Teenage lovers driving their car to a secluded spot for a romantic evening only to be interrupted by news of an escaped killer with a metal hook for a hand, who might be closer than either of them realize. 

As an educational program, “Mostly True Stories” is well done. The segment on the Hook legend links its likely origins back to the infamous Moonlight Murders that plagued Texarkana in the forties. (The same case that inspired “The Town That Dreaded Sundown.”) It contains an interview with an actual doctor with a real prosthetic hook hand, who makes the case that the story propagates harmful stereotypes about the disabled. Most fascinating to me, the program gets into the cultural meanings behind this story. The Hook is deconstructed as a fable about teenage girls needing to be cautious with handsy boys and their own sexuality. My favorite part is when Dr. Susan Block, quite a colorful looking character, compares the hook itself to a “twisted phallic symbol,” pointing to the subtext of a premature withdraw and castration symbolized in the image of the car peeling out and the hook's bloody fate. All the other legends are given a similarly thorough reading. The facts of the mummy in the fun house – an actual true story – are detailed. An actual coat company CEO is brought in to debunk the snake eggs one. The show was always honest about the harmful elements of these stories too, pointing out the racist qualities of the Choking Doberman. 

As a make-shift horror anthology, your mileage may vary with “Mostly True Stories.” The production values for the dramatic re-enactments were extremely modest. The acting from the usually silent actors was often quite campy. However, that didn't stop the show from occasionally producing a striking image. The Hook sequence is actually kind of creepy. The silhouetted shot of the hook man lurking in the shadow or the boyfriend's own hand being replaced with a hook are actually quite well done. When discussing the Phantom Killer, the sudden appearance of a gun-wielding figure in a hood genuinely frightened me as a kid. The other segments are anywhere near as creepy as that one but shots of a cadaver in the lighting of a dark ride or baby snakes slithering out of a coat pocket aren't without their value. Henstridge's host segments are inessential but I do like the smoky, dark set she hangs out in. While most of the shows I watch this time of year are things I'm revisiting from childhood or seeing for the first time, I'll be totally honest and admit that “Mostly True Stories” is one I've re-watched quite frequently. Something about this show is extremely cozy to me. I love this stuff. [8/10]

 

Take An Easy Ride (1976)

As far as I know, nobody in the Year of Our Lord 2025 hitchhikes anymore. This is after nearly every pop culture recreation of the activity has depicted it as utterly fraught with danger. No matter what end of the wheel you're on, you are either getting picked up by a psycho or picking up a psycho, it seems. I guess teenage girls hitchhiking to rock concerts and never being seen again was a big problem in the seventies. “Take An Easy Ride” began life as a Public Information Film, those notoriously grim British educational films largely shown in schools, intended for television by director Kenneth F. Rowles. That's when exploitation producer David Grant offered to give the film theatrical distribution if lots of sex was inserted. This is how “Take An Easy Ride” took form as a cautionary pseudo-documentary about the dangers of hitchhiking and also a super sleazy sexploitation flick, with leering camera work and copious nudity. The film follows several storylines, of young women hitchhiking to a rock concert. Some of them are picked up simply by a creepy guy. Another is lured into a hotel room with alcohol. One pair is attacked and assaulted. While another set of young women prove as dangerous as the men picking them up.

This bizarre back-and-forth is what makes “Take An Easy Ride” an interesting cinematic experience. Man-on-the-street interviews, presumably staged, have random people being asked about whether they think hitchhiking should be banned. The film's intention is made repeatedly clear by the stern-voiced narrator repeatedly telling us how unsafe this activity is. As with any PIF, the presentation is stately and frills-free. The acting is often ropey, perhaps even amateurish. Cutting between multiple different scenarios so often furthers the feeling that this was a production by largely inexperienced newbies just happy to get the intended message out there. That's paired with documentary-like footage of the Isle of Wight rock festival, which gives us a fly-on-the-wall peek at seventies hippy culture as it was happening. 

This clumsy, if seemingly sincere, attempt to warn the youth at large not to go hitchiking, you friggin' dummies, is paired with an extremely sleazy approach. I think every single actress in the movie get naked on-camera, often for no particular reason. There's a stop over in a sex club, with a strip tease captured on-camera alongside lots of footage of porno tapes. When the sexual violence occurs, it's photographed with extremely pervy angles that glare at the actress' exposed body. The story of a woman intoxicated and manipulated by a charming man does not seem to show much sympathy to the victimized woman. When combined with the strict moralizing tone, the effect feels like the film is chastising the characters as much as it is any perspective viewers. It adds up to create a particular viewing experience, the dissonance between the intended message and the way it's delivered properly baffling the viewer. Sleazy and uncomfortable, “Take An Easy Ride” played in British grindhouses for years, where I can't imagine it informed too many people about the threats of hitchhiking but did provide them with the cheap thrills they were looking for. [6/10]

 

Halloween 2025: October 12th

 

Şeytan (1974)

 

A Turkish film industry has existed since 1914 and has, at various points in time, flourished. In the sixties, Turkey was actually the fifth biggest producer of films in the world. Things have slowed down considerably since then but Türkiye absolutely has cinematic traditions all its own. However, classic Turkish cinema remains extremely obscure outside of its borders. Instead, the films that tend to attract the most international attention are the rip-offs. A trend retrospectively known as “Turksploitation” emerged in the seventies, that blatantly copied Hollywood blockbusters, often using footage and music from these films on a strictly unofficial basis. Clips from “Turkish Star Wars,” “Turkish Rambo,” “Turkish Superman,” and that movie where Captain America and Santo fight Evil Spider-Man have circulated freely among the internet for years and years, mocked by dipshit nerds totally ignorant of other cultures. Among those infamous wannabes is what is commonly known as “Turkish Exorcist.” The actual title is “Şeytan” and, while I'm sure a knock-off of a horror classic probably isn't how Turkish horror fans would want their country represented, I'm simply too curious not to check this one out.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Somewhere in the Middle East, a wise old man of the cloth walks through the desert. He approaches a recently unearthed statue of a demonic figure, glaring at it expectantly. Far away, in Istanbul, Ayten is currently in the midst of a divorce. Her young daughter, Gül, doesn't seem too bothered by it. The family enjoys the comforts afforded to by her mother's rich lifestyle. However, she's also been messing with a Ouija board. Next, Ayten hears weird noises from the attic. While looking for the mice that the home's caretaker says aren't present, she comes across a book on the topic of the devil. It's been written by Tuğrul Bilge, an atheist author who lives near-by. It's a concerning appearance that seems to signal  Gül's behavior getting stranger. She sleepwalks, starts acting violently, her bed begins quaking at night. Science is helpless to diagnosis her. Soon, it seems her body has been entirely taken over by a spirit that claims to be Seytan himself. Tuğrul is asked to assist and, after the extraordinary evidence piles up, seeks out the help of the only man that can save Gül. A man that you could, convincingly, call an exorcist.

In the past, I have always seen “Şeytan” referred to as a shot-for-shot remake of “The Exorcist.” This is not true. First off, the Turkish film is over twenty minutes shorter than the Hollywood original. Secondly, a number of adaptational changes are apparent. Such as the Father Karras character being changed from a priest to an author or the mother seemingly no longer being an actress. However, it is true that “Şeytan” does directly copy all the most famous scenes from “The Exorcist.” Most of these scenes are laughably pale imitations of iconic moments. The candle going out in the attic, Reagan being thrashed around on her bed, the pea soup, the levitation, the “Power of Christ compels you!” It's all here, just in Turkish and done with a fraction of the budget and a lot less talent. Look no further than the recreation of the head-spinning sequence and the infamous bloody crucifix masturbation that proceeds it. The cross is replaced with a demonic dagger. The furniture moving across the room looks incredibly cheesy. The head twisting around on the shoulders looks a lot like an actor looking over the shoulder of a dummy body. 

A key difference in that scene between “Şeytan” and “The Exorcist” is that... In the Turkish version, the girl does not appear to be defiling a holy symbol. Instead, it looks like she's merely stabbing herself in the thigh with the demon-headed dagger. Part of what made “The Exorcist” such a shocking success in the seventies is that it had a ream of vile profanity coming out of an angelic young girl's mouth. One can only assume that something is lost in translation but, going by the subtitles on my copy, the worst swear Gül unleashes is to call someone “senile.” Similarly, the scars on the girl's face look like cheap Halloween make-up. Especially when combined with the green skin. The vomiting appears more like spat out globs of snot than vulgar streams of greenish puke. I don't know much about Turkish censorship standards. However, it would seem that, in order to make “The Exorcist” an appropriate story for Turkish audience, the filmmakers of  “Şeytan” ended up removing all the edge and danger from the material. In this telling, there's never any doubt that the girl's soul will be saved. The shock value isn't gone only because the audience has already seen this all before. It's as if the transgressive energy has been surgically removed.

That is to be expected, I suppose, when comparing the Hollywood original to the low-budget, international copycat. Presumably the value in a project like this comes from the cultural differences made evident in the retelling. Most obviously, Türkiye is another Muslim majority country. I don't know how familiar your average Turkish person is with the tenets of Catholicism. While the exact faith of the man called to exorcise the girl here is never actually specified, his prayers seem specifically Islamic in nature. He is presumably preaching from a Quran. Shifting the Karras figure from a priest whose faith has lapsed to a non-believer, who never had any faith in the first place, changes the meaning of the material in a serious way. Tuğrul Bilge accepting the existence of supernatural evil and sacrificing himself paints a more conservative image, of somebody atoning for questioning God's existence at all. One of the new additions to “The Exorcist” template is an epilogue, wherein the now demon-free little girl seems to receive a blessing from a holy man looking apparition. This removes all the ambiguity from the source material. “Şeytan” is not about the crisis of faith in the modern age or the question of whether a real source of good exists to challenge the evil in the world. It is, instead, a reaffirmation that God is good and all-powerful and none of this bad shit would've happened if people hadn't doubted that in the first place.

That is interesting. Is it interesting enough to make “Şeytan” worth watching, especially if you've seen “The Exorcist” fifty times? Probably not. The differences that do emerge surely reflect variations in beliefs. Does the scene of the rather goofy looking demonic figure appearing in the girl's bedroom, wherein the possessed victim visibly bows before it, reflect a difference in how Islam considers the figure of Shaitan in comparison to what modern Christian demographics think of Satan? You'd probably need to be better read in Turkish culture and Muslim beliefs than I am to say for sure. Nevertheless, whatever anthropological factors “Şeytan” reveals is overshadowed by it being a supremely fangless and rather dryly executed unofficial remake. I suppose I am glad I saw it but, ultimately, it's hard to justify watching more than a high-light as worthwhile in a world when you can simply watch “The Exorcist” instead. [5/10]

Watchers Reborn (1998)

For all its many and obvious flaws, “Watchers 3” could be commended for one element. It was something like an actual sequel to the previous entry in the series. While the second movie operated as another adaptation of the original novel, the third at least attempted to continue the story. It didn't do it well. The explanation provided for what happened to Paul Ferguson and Einstein the smart dog in-between movies was not satisfying. The new Outsider in part three was also implied to be the same monster from the last time, suggesting that some re-writing was done between installments. Still, having now set a precedent, you would expect a fourth “Watchers” to follow this pattern too, right? Unfortunately, someone decided to resume the original pattern by making “Watchers Reborn” another adaptation of the story Dean Koontz had written nearly two decades earlier at this point. Perhaps creature effects specialist and “Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College” auteur John Carl Buechler was simply a big fan of the book and wanted to do it right this time. More likely, nobody was expending the necessary creativity and thought process to think of a new story for the fourth “Watchers” movie. Still, there's enough familiar faces and names behind and in front of the camera for this fourthquel to catch my attention.

So, once more, with feeling: A government research facility blows up. A dog and a monster escape. The dog is smarter than the average canine. The monster likes to rip people's eyes out. Dr. Grace Hudson, a geneticist involved with the project, goes in search of the hound. A group of G-man assassins, led by Lem Johnson, are out to destroy both projects and eliminate any witnesses. This time, a traumatized police detective named Jack Murphy ends up with Einstein, the smart dog. It's not long before Grace finds him, the trio going on the run from both the federal agents and the monster. The doctor and the cop fall in love, as she seeks to protect Einstein and communicate with the Outsider before both are killed by the ruthless Lem.

As far as fourth entries in direct-to-video monster movie franchises go, "Watchers Reborn" has a fairly high profile cast. One suspects John Carl Buechler cashed in some favors he had built up through his years as a make-up and effects guy. Mark Hamill is the hero, Lisa Wilcox of "A Nightmare on Street 4" is the heroine, and Stephen Macht from "Monster Squad" and "Graveyard Shift" is the bad guy. The further down the guest list you go, the more random it gets. Perennial TV special guest star and talk show host Gary Collins is Hamill's ill-fated partner and Lou Rawls appears as a scientist. Kane Hodder has a cameo. Sadly, "Watchers Reborn" gives its eccentric cast little to do. Hamill looks amusingly disheveled and worn out but his character's tragic backstory is utterly routine. The script prioritizes his romance with Wilcox over his bond with the genius dog. The two have mildly interesting chemistry but their love story is no where compelling enough to devote this much screen time too. “Watchers Reborn” almost feels more like a boring romantic-comedy between these two than a proper horror film.

With a blue print provided by Koontz' novel and three previous movies, you wouldn't think “Watchers Reborn” would be as sloppily assembled as it is. The standard chase plot is routinely interrupted by weird digressions. An extended scene follows a couple in a bar, arguing with the mobster who wants to sell drugs in this establishment. As you begin to truly wonder what any of this has to do with the rest of the movie, the monster busts in. Another scene has Hamill hitching a ride with a random driver. This seemingly unimportant passer-by persists for a number of scenes afterwards. Far too many moments in “Watchers Reborn” are like that, allowed to ramble on for far longer than necessary. It creates a slapdash feeling with an incredibly unmotivated pacing, events changing depending on who was available that day and headed in no determined direction.

An element I liked a lot in Koontz' novel was the treatment of the Outsider. A frightening monster that routinely tears people apart, it was also driven to destroy through instincts cooked in by its makers. This was a Frankensteinian creature, made without its consent, designed to be unlovable, and so repulsed by its own hideousness that it was disgusted by the idea of anyone looking at it. The previous adaptations pulled from that a little bit.  Buechler's take begins with the Outsider being a mindless monster, that looks like a greasy-faced version of the werewolf from “Altered Beasts.” Slowly, it is revealed that the monster can talk. The last act suddenly plays up the monster's sympathetic aspects. It's not a bad idea but comes across as a random change made far into the runtime. Not to mention it's hard to feel bad for a monster that ripped a bunch of people apart earlier, in gorier fashion than the other “Watchers” films. 

Much of “Watchers Reborn” is set in forgettable looking apartments, barns, and warehouses. This does not dissuade the notion that the movie was made cheaply and hastily with whatever was available. Aside from a scene where he writes his name out in gravy on a newspaper, Einstein the dog doesn't get nearly enough to do either. How do you make a movie about a super-smart dog and not have most of the plot revolve around him? It's not any more faithful to the book than previous adaptations. I guess the “Reborn” subtitle is technically correct but the film certainly lacks the renewed energy you expect from a rebirthing. How can a book be made into a movie four times and each of them miss the mark on what made the original special? A decent cast was pulled together for this one but there's very little else about “Watchers Reborn” that justifies its existence. Maybe someone will give this story of brainy dogs and the monsters who hate them a proper shot some day... [5/10]

 

Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible: Scream Satan Scream!

As an ignorant American, I only know of Steve Coogan for his appearances as an actor in Hollywood movies of varying middlebrow-ness. I am vaguely aware of the Alan Partridge character that he's played many times for British television but that's about the extent of my knowledge about that. However, upon discovering that Coogan also created and starred in a series spoofing classic British horror movies, well, that's a lot more up my alley. “Dr. Terrible's House of Horrible” aired for six episodes on BBC Two in the fall of 2001. Coogan introduced each episode under heavy make-up as “Dr. Terrible,” a slightly senile seeming mad scientist type who would present stories from the fire side, like Roald Dahl in “Tales of the Unexpected.” As the title indicated, the Amicus anthology films was a primary source of inspiration but episodes also spoofed Hammer horror, “The Hands of Orlac,” and Yellow Peril stories. Sounds like a fairly niche idea for a series to me and I''m not surprised to read that audiences didn't warm up to it. But maybe I will...

The final episode to air, “Scream Satan Scream!,” is primarily inspired by “Witchfinder General.”  In it, Coogan plays Captain Slater: Witch Locator. He travels the countryside with his depraved dwarf assistant, Tygon, and looks for beautiful woman to accuse of being witches. It would seem that his methods of determining if a woman is consorting with the devil involves quite a lot of personal inspection of their naked bodies. At some point, Slater actually did burn a real witch at the stake. Now, her two sisters have placed a curse upon Slater and are determined to turn the hysterical, devil-fearing mobs that he riles up against him. Somehow, however, Slater keeps escaping being hoisted by his own placard. 

“Scream Satan Scream!” is, as far as comedies go, pretty dumb. It would be inaccurate to say that the episode only has one joke. However, it does revisit the central joke – that the pious witchfinder is just a horny bastard looking to get laid, using his witch-hunting techniques as an excuse – over and over again. This does lead to a few chuckles, namely the way the universe constantly stymies Slater's efforts. When presented with a pair of beautiful twins, they dead-pan answer each of his questions about witchcraft in the negative. A series of crude double entendres revolving around the town's name “Devil's Hole” is a gag beat so far into the ground that the repetition of the joke itself becomes the joke. Probably the moment that made me laugh the most is when Slater enters the cabin of a young lady he's prepared to accuse of witchcraft, only to discover that she has a giant crucifix up on her wall. 

The more surreal, absurd bits are the ones that made me chuckle a bit more consistently here. None other than Warwick Davis appears as Tygon, an obvious shout-out to the production company that made “Witchfinder General.” Davis never speaks but gets in a number of amusing physical gags, such as when he repeatedly stumbles into metal traps. A sequence in which Slater gets a branding iron all ready only for his intended victim to successfully dispel it, forcing him to brand Davis instead, made me chuckle. That weirdness persists throughout, especially in the climatic sequence where the devil itself appear. The show also attempts to draw humor from the conflicting elements of various witch lore, which is the first joke anybody makes about swimming a witch. I laughed a little but this is an odd one. What would the modern American equavelent to this be? Eric Andre convincing Adult Swim to fund comedic homages to Ray Dennis Steckler?  I think I admire the audacity of something like this actually making it to air more than I enjoyed it as a comedy. [6/10]

The Woman Who Powders Herself (1972)

La femme qui se poudre
 

Horror is one of the few cinematic genres that can entirely get by on mood and atmosphere. Furthermore, it often invokes the surreal and absurd, violating the natural order of the world, in service of unnerving the viewer. Because of this, horror and experimental film making sometimes cross paths. As is the case with "The Woman Who Powders Herself," an inexplicable fifteen minutes of nightmare imagery from French mixed media artist, Patrick Bolanowski. Through a shadowy, distorted, silent movie-like aperture, the short presents a number of bizarre scenes. People wearing dehumanizing, plaster masks motion to each other through the darkness. A woman cakes herself in dust while a man tends to her within a geometrical room. A figure moves across a desolate, surreal landscape. Someone pours a black liquid – Blood? Oil? – into a tea cup until it overflows and consumes the screen. Ominous figures advance on the woman while floating material assembles itself into a tower out in the distance. All the while, a discordant soundscape plays as the footage crackles, warps, and twists through filmic, photographic, and animated means. 

When a film wanders as far into the art house as "The Woman Who Powders Herself" does, what it all means is as much your guess as mine. The provided synopsis describes it as "a study of human anxieties about beauty, youth, and objectification." The actors' faces are twisted into crude caricatures of humanity, except for those who seem to wear a wreath of tumorous tissue around their heads. I suppose that relates to beauty. Is the titular woman meant to be elderly, fighting off her aging appearance by covering her face? Or is she hiding from the world that seeks to objectify her, which descends on her at the end? If that's the case, what does all the other weird shit mean? 

Trying to fashion a narrative out of almost purely experimental filmmaking like "The Woman Who Powders Herself" is hard to do. The desert-like landscape and warped faces gave me post-apocalyptic vibes. The increasingly cracked and popping visuals certainly feel like a depiction of a world falling into nonexistence. Though the touches of animation seem almost whimsical compared to the otherwise haunting imagery. The musical score is composed of mechanical shrieks, foghorn-like cries, and what sounds like water dripping into a sink. All together, the result is a total head scratcher that, nevertheless, summons up an eerie feeling in the viewer and presents our eyes truly with some things we haven't seen before. One wonders if a young David Lynch wasn't influenced by the film. “Eraserhead's” score and visuals share some similarities. While I have zero doubts that E. Elias Merhige swiped nearly the entire "Begotten" aesthetic from this. Nowadays, if you slapped some gnarly doom metal on top of "The Woman Who Powders Herself," you'd have a pretty fucked-up music video. [7/10]