Ten Days of Terror!: Return of the Living Dead III

Film: Return of the Living Dead III
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The original The Return of the Living Dead did the seemingly impossible. It was a spoof of a horror classic (the George Romero Living Dead classics) and actually made not only a watchable film, but added to the lore in a significant way. The trope that zombies like to eat brains comes from this series, not Romero’s. The second movie in the RotLD series was a huge step down in quality, mainly because the comedy didn’t work. The third film, Return of the Living Dead III (or Return of the Living Dead Part III if you prefer) is kind of a return to form. There are a lot of changes, though, the biggest being that this third and final film in the series doesn’t really attempt the comedy.

We do have to stick with the series, though, so we’re going to pick up five years after the previous film. Young Curt Reynolds (J. Trevor Edmond) and his girlfriend Julie (Melinda “Mindy” Clarke) steal his father’s access key card to the military base he works on, and the two go exploring. While there, they discover that Curt’s father (Kent McCord) is in charge of experiments that involve re-animating the dead. However, the experiment goes wrong, and because of this, Curt’s father is reassigned.

Ten Days of Terror!: Ju-On: The Grude 2

Film: Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (Ju-on 2)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Horror movies always reflect the fears of the time and of the culture. It’s not shocking that post-9/11 a lot of American horror films were like Hostel and Turistas: extremely xenophobic. A great deal of Japanese horror was of the atomic variety (Gojira and the like) for obvious reasons, but a lot of Japanese horror is ghost-based as well. Japanese horror stories have involved ghosts for centuries; often the ghosts are there to impart morality lessons to the living. Modern Japanese ghosts, though, are often about bringing up the sins of the past—the people of the present are still paying for the crimes that happened years ago. That’s certain the them of the Ju-on films, and it’s the major throughline of Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (or just Ju-on 2 if you prefer).

While this does tell a particular story, it does so in a non-linear structure that isn’t easy to follow. It jumps around a lot and we see the same thing from several different perspectives at different times. The conceit of the original movie is continued here. That original conceit is that when someone dies in extreme sorrow or extreme rage, those emotions linger, generating a curse. Anyone who encounters that curse dies from it and lingers themselves, continuing and expanding the curse in an ever-widening circle. That’s where we started in the first movie, where we ended when the first movie ended, and where we will pick up here.

Ten Days of Terror!: Paranormal Activity 3

Film: Paranormal Activity 3
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

Years ago, when I reviewed Paranormal Activity 2, I commented that I was one day going to have to watch the third installment because it had been added to the They Shoot Zombies list. I don’t like this series at all, so I was dreading this and putting it off. But, eventually, you have to take the plunge, and so here we are with Paranormal Activity 3.

The first movie in the series was a fantastic example of a very smart filmmaker filming very stupid characters. The second movie at least gave us characters whose motivations could be understood. They did the wrong thing over and over, of course, but at least it was understandable. It was also a prequel to the first movie. This, the third installment in the series, is a pre-prequel, dipping further back into the history of the characters from the first movie, going all the way back to the 1980s.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Devil Bat

Film: The Devil Bat
Format: Streaming video from Pluto TV on Fire!

I don’t go out of my way to reference Mystery Science Theater 3000, but there are times when I find it necessary. The Devil Bat is one of those cases. This movie didn’t actually appear on MST3K, but it definitely feels like it could have. Movies very much like it did appear on the show. I am put in mind of a Bela Lugosi clunker called The Corpse Vanishes that has a fairly similar plot in a lot of respects. The Devil Bat is no worse than that one, and certainly not a whole lot better.

This is yet another in a series of films that gives us Bela Lugosi as a respected scientist of some sort who is secretly completely insane. Lugosi in this case is Dr. Paul Carruthers, a chemist who lives in a small town called Heathville and who works for a cosmetics company. What we will learn eventually is that the company has made a fortune off of the formulas of Carruthers for which he took a $10,000 payoff (it’s worth noting that in today’s dollars, that’s close to a quarter million). Anyway, now that the company has made bank from his ideas, Carruthers decides he is being disrespected and wants revenge.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Devil-Doll

Film: The Devil-Doll
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!

In The Bride of Frankenstein, there’s a section where we learn that the doctor that Frankenstein has thrown in with is obsessed with making tiny people. Tod Browning might have taken a page out of the screenplay for The Devil-Doll, a film that is virtually entirely based on the idea of miniature people doing bad things. There are a surprising number of films that feature this idea to the point that there’s a Wikipedia page devoted to films that feature miniature people.

The Devil-Doll starts with a prison break. Marcel (Henry B. Walthall), a mad scientist and Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore) escape from Devil’s Island. Marcel wishes to get back to his wife and experimentation while Lavond is looking for revenge. A former banker, he was convicted of robbing his own bank and killing a night watchman, and has served 17 years of a life sentence. However, Lavond is innocent; his partners Coulvet (Robert Greig), Matin (Pedro de Cordoba), and Radin (Arthur Hohl) framed him after stealing the money themselves.

Ten Days of Terror!: Corridors of Blood

Film: Corridors of Blood
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I do love horror movies, and while there are plenty of modern horror movies that I enjoy a great deal, there’s a part of me that is drawn to the classics, the pre-gore films that have that Gothic flair to them. Despite the name, Corridors of Blood is exactly this sort of film. It’s arguably terribly misnamed, because there’s not a great deal of blood here, and perhaps not even that many corridors. The truth is, though, that if it were actually named for what the film is about, a film called The History of Anesthesia isn’t going to put a lot of butts in the seats.

It really is what the film is about, though. Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff) works in a hospital in the 1840s in London. Dr. Bolton is frustrated, not because he lacks skill. In fact, he is noted as being a very good and successful surgeon because of his speed. No, what frustrates him is that the common expression of the time suggests that the surgeon’s knife and pain in the patient are inseparable. His goal is to find a way to prevent pain in the patient during surgery—too many of his patients lose their minds or die from shock thanks to the pain. He begins experimenting with ways to handle thing, mildly assisted by his son Jonathan (Francis Matthews) and his niece Susan (Betta St. John).

Ten Days of Terror!: The Mad Magician

Film: The Mad Magician
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There’s a part of me that realizes Vincent Price had a career before he started doing horror movies in the mid-‘50s. If memory serves, House of Wax was his first true horror movie, which makes The Mad Magician from 1954 his second. It’s interesting to see him this early in his career, still clearly the great Vincent Price, but also still feeling his way in the genre. To be fair, The Mad Magician is barely a horror movie. Additionally, while it conjures up thoughts of magician suffering from insanity, in truth he’s really just angry.

Price plays Don Gallico, who makes a living creating illusions for other magicians. He’s gotten an itch to perform on the stage, though, and calling himself Gallico the Great, he decides to put on a show featuring a new trick. This trick is a version of sawing a lady in half, but features a huge buzzsaw set up to behead the assistant.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Cursed

Film: The Cursed
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There’s a certain art to naming a movie or a book, or really any project. The right name piques interest while the wrong name puts people off or doesn’t get anyone thinking about anything. Case in point is The Cursed. I struggle to think of a more generic title for a horror movie; there certainly can be one, but I don’t know off-hand what it would or could be. This is especially true when you discover that the original name of this project was Eight for Silver, which is at least evocative of something, or has the potential to get the audience thinking.

The curse in this case is going to come from a group of Romani people (called “Gypsies” throughout the film as a slur, because it is one), and the cursed of the title are going to be the men who slaughter them and their families. We’re going to start in the future, though, at the battlefield of the Somme in World War I, where a man is treated for bullet wounds—and an additional bullet of non-German design is found in his body.

Ten Days of Terror!: Medusa (2021)

Film: Medusa
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!

I grew up in the church. It was a liberal church, to be sure, but still in the church. I have long since given up religion as well as religious belief. It’s my position that religion, as a rule, makes things worse, a notion probably put into my head by the title of a Christopher Hitchens book, but one that I stand by. I’m in mind of Hitchens as I look at Medusa, a recent film out of Brazil. This is a film that is clearly referencing Jair Bolsonaro in a lot of respects, at least in terms of its approach to the effects of extreme belief.

Hitchens tells an anecdote of an interview with right-wing whackaloon Dennis Prager where Prager asks him if he were in a foreign city and was approached by a group of young men, would he be more or less nervous if he knew they had just come from a prayer meeting. Hitchens responds by saying that, staying only with the letter B, he’s had that experience in Baghdad, Belgrade, Bosnia, Bombay, and Belfast, and if you were ever in any of those cities and you saw men leaving a prayer meeting, you knew exactly how fast you had to run in the other direction. Thanks to Medusa, we can add Brazil to the list.

Ten Days of Terror!: Let the Wrong One In

Film: Let the Wrong One In
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

It’s not easy to do horror-comedy. Most fall into the trap of being comedy-forward instead of dealing with anything that genuinely approaches horror. There are some solid exceptions, of course. Shaun of the Dead is the template for solid horror-comedy as it should be done. It’s actually funny and there are some genuine horror elements in it. Let the Wrong One In, clearly meant to reference Let the Right One In, attempts to do for vampires when Shaun did for zombies.

Average Dubliner Matt (Karl Rice) deals with his mother (Hilda Fay) and his drunken, junkie brother Deco (Eoin Duffy) as best he can. What he doesn’t know is that Deco was recently attacked by a vampire named Sheila (Mary Murray), who was turned at her bachelorette party near Transylvania. Deco is persona non grata at home, but, guilted into helping him, Matt invites him into the house to keep him safe from the sunlight. Wanting to help, he calls for a doctor, but instead gets Henry (Anthony Head), Sheila’s fiancé, who has sworn vengeance against all of the vampires in Ireland, all of which are being created by Sheila and her bridal party.

Ten Days of Terror!: A Haunting in Venice

Film: A Haunting in Venice
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Sometimes, an actor falls in love with a character and they can’t walk away from that character. Kenneth Branagh appears to have become entranced with the character of Hercule Poirot. A Haunting in Venice is the third Branagh Poirot movie; he got through the two classics in A Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile. In that respect, A Haunting in Venice is treading a little bit of new ground. It’s nice to see some new Poirot stories on the big screen rather than the same two over and over. That said, it’s probably inevitable that Branagh will eventually adapt Evil Under the Sun.

Right now, there are two mystery franchises that have large budgets and attract a good number of stars. Branagh’s Poirot films are one of them; the second is the Knives Out series with Daniel Craig. Branagh’s films are period pieces and are adapted from Agatha Christie stories. If you’re going to adapt a mystery, you could do a lot worse than the grande dame of whodunnits. Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films are modern and original. Both include a star actor who clearly loves the role. And if you ask me to put my money on one, I’m going with Knives Out.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)

Film: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When I was a kid, I was given a collection of H.G. Wells stories. It’s hard to call them actual novels because of the length; they are more or less novellas. These are classic stories, though, and they have been made into excellent movies more than once. Included in the collection are The Time Machine, The Food of the Gods, The First Men in the Moon, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. All six of these stories run less than 700 pages combined. What this means is that they are easy to adapt accurately. This doesn’t, however, mean that they are easy to adapt well. The 1977 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau is evidence enough of that.

My guess is that you know at least the basics of the story—a man named Braddock (Michael York) is shipwrecked on a faraway island where he meets the mysterious Doctor Moreau (Burt Lancaster) and his assistant Montgomery (Nigel Davenport). Also on the island are a number of bestial men who seem sub- or half-human. There is also a woman named Maria (Barbara Carrera), who claims to have been brought to the island by Moreau.

Ten Days of Terror!: White Dog

Film: White Dog
Format: DVD from personal collection on basement television.

I admit that I am someone who puts a lot of stock into verisimilitude in movies. I need to be able to see that something could happen in the world that is shown to us for me to be involved in the story. I can accept magic, and spaceships, and laser guns. I can even accept all of those in the same movie if I’m given a consistent world. When a film breaks with that, when it breaks the rules of the world that it presents, it tends to lose me a little bit. Samuel Fuller’s White Dog, a film so notorious that it was not officially fully released for more than two-and-a-half decades, is a rare exception to this. In this case, the message is more important than the fact that the people involved act in ways that don’t specifically make sense.

The notorious nature of White Dog is enough that it makes sense for me to offer a trigger warning on it: this is a movie that is directly about racism. This is not sanitized “racism is bad” like Driving Miss Daisy or even the “racism infects everything” of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. This is vicious and brutal, and while the film isn’t remotely pro-racism, it is shocking and unflinching and brutal. So, this being the case, you’ve been warned. Click on the link to continue reading if you’re up for it. If you’re not, no shame.

Ten Days of Terror!: Eaten Alive

Film: Eaten Alive
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

Certain directors do certain things really well. Hitchcock did suspense like no one else, and early Spielberg is rife with absent fathers. In the horror world, backwoods psychopaths come in a lot of flavors, and you have to give some credit to directors like Wes Craven for films like The Hills Have Eyes. But no one really does true hillbilly psychopathy like Tobe Hooper did. Don’t get me wrong; Craven wrote and directed a good psycho, but there’s a real touch of nastiness to Hooper’s work. You can see it in a film like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where it genuinely feels like he found a family of inbred mutants. Eaten Alive has the same feeling. There’s something about this film that feels legitimately dangerous, like we’re seeing people who aren’t acting.

Eaten Alive is not long on plot, but it doesn’t really need to be. It’s not the sort of movie that trades on its plot in general. It trades specifically on the idea of the audience wanting to see people get eaten by a crocodile. We’re going to ignore the fact that this takes place in Texas so it should be an alligator. To the person being dined upon, that difference is going to be pretty low on the list of concerns.

Ten Days of Terror!: Frogs

Film: Frogs
Format: Streaming video from Pluto TV on various players.

It’s a legitimate question to ask who had the bigger fall from grace, Ray Milland or Joan Crawford. Before sliding into a number of television appearances, Milland appeared in both Frogs and The Thing with Two Heads in 1972. Joan Crawford’s storied film career ended with her starring role in Trog, playing an anthropologist who tries to connect with a cave-dwelling troglodyte. I think this is a competition that could go either way. I bring it up only because I watched Frogs today, and it’s something truly unlike anything I expected. The be fair, I had no idea what to expect.

Amazingly movie-named Pickett Smith (an un-mustachioed Sam Elliott) is a wildlife photographer taking pictures around an unnamed island in an unnamed (but clearly Southern) part of the country. He discovers a significant amount of evidence indicating pollution probably stemming from their use on the island plantation owned by the Crockett family. His canoe is swamped by Clint Crockett (Adam Roarke) and his sister Karen (Joan Van Ark). As a sort of reparation, they bring him to the family home where a celebration is soon to be taking place.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Diabolical Dr. Z

Film: The Diabolical Dr. Z (Miss Muerte)
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

I don’t typically watch a movie twice before writing a review, but I found that it was necessary for The Diabolical Dr. Z (or Miss Muerte if you prefer). There is a plot to this movie, but it goes in a lot of directions, and a lot of what is happening feels like it’s here specifically to get the running time to feature length. Co-screenwriter and director Jesús Franco has a story that he wants to tell here, but seems to have needed an editor to trim out some of the fat.

The truth is that The Diabolical Dr. Z should be called Dr. Z’s Diabolical Daughter. Our titular character, Doctor Zimmer (Antonio Jiménez Escribano) doesn’t make it all the way through the first act. We see him doing some experiments on an escaped felon. Eventually we come to learn that Zimmer’s experiments are in mind control, a process that appears to involve pushing large nails into people’s temples and spines. From here, Zimmer and his daughter Irma (Mabel Karr) arrive at a conference on neurology. Zimmer makes the claim that he can find the genetic roots of good and evil and that he should be permitted to experiment on human subjects (although he’s already been doing so). Rebuffed by a trio of doctors, Zimmer suffers an attack and dies.

Ten Days of Terror!: Body Melt

Film: Body Melt
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There’s something about the gross out movie that is both repellent and fascinating. That’s exactly what Body Melt is, and there’s no other way to categorize it. This is an Australian movie very much in the same vein as Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, but there are going to be a lot of other influences from the 1980s tossed in here as well. There are going to be elements that feel like Videodrome, The Stuff, Society and even a direct reference to The Thing at one point.

Body Melt, in addition to making reference to all of those other films, is another in the long list of movies about an evil corporation. In this case, the company makes a dietary supplement called Vimuville. They’ve been putting these supplements in the mailboxes of a neighborhood called Pebbles Court in Melbourne as a sort of test run of what the supplements can do. These are designed to produce people who are perfectly healthy, but of course there are terrible side effects. These start with hallucinations and end with, well…body melt.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Hands of Orlac

Film: The Hands of Orlac
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There are times when the order in you see something affects the way that you understand them. The 1930s film Mad Love is a remake of the silent film The Hands of Orlac, trimmed down, sexed up, and starring Peter Lorre. I saw that remake before seeing the original, which means that while watching The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände if you prefer the original German), I had to remind myself that what I remember from Mad Love was done her first. The things that felt derivative were, in fact, not so at all.

The basic idea of The Hands of Orlac involves a sort of super-science that smacks of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel. Concert pianist Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt, a silent horror staple) is in a terrible train accident and his hands are crushed. Knowing that his hands are his entire life, the doctor transplants new hands onto Orlac. Naturally, those hands didn’t just come from anywhere or anyone. They are the hands of Vasseur, a recently executed murderer.

Ten Days of Terror!: Hands of the Ripper

Film: Hands of the Ripper
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I went into Hands of the Ripper completely blind. Based on the title, I expected this to be a giallo along the lines of The New York Ripper. It’s not, though. While the title is lurid enough, this is a Hammer film, and one of the last of Hammer’s Gothic horror movies, and close to the end of Hammer’s productions until they were brought back in the mid-2000s. Knowing that this is a film that takes place in that time period, and given that this is a British production, your first thought is almost certainly that this is referencing Jack the Ripper. Your first thought is going to be right.

To get things going, we’re going to see Jack the Ripper pursued by a mob (an uncredited Danny Lyons). He arrives home to a wife who realizes who he is and murders her in front of their young daughter. We jump a good 15 years into the future and that young girl is now Anna (Angharad Rees), living with Mrs. Golding (Dora Bryan), who does séances in her home. Anna, more or less, plays the spirits. At one such séance, we are introduced to Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter) and his son Michael (Keith Bell). We also meet Dysart (Derek Godfrey), a member of Parliament.

Ten Days of Terror!: Subspecies

Film: Subspecies
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The vampire movie has changed a lot since the originals. Many modern vampire movies play with the standard vampire myth in a lot of ways. Some can’t transform into bats or other creatures, or are vulnerable only to some things. There’s always been a sense of romance around the vampire, though. While there are exceptions (say, 30 Days of Night), typically vampires are as tragic as they are terrifying, at least in theory. Subspecies is a vampire film that dives back into the roots of the subgenre. We’re not hanging out in Alaska or Louisiana. No, we’re going to be spending our time in the OG vampire capital: Transylvania.

We need to start, as we often do, with setting up the bad guy. In Transylvania, around the town of Prejmer, the vampire king (Angus Scrimm) lives in peace and solitude. He possesses an artifact called the Bloodstone, which constantly drips the blood of the saints, meaning he doesn’t need to hunt and kill to survive. King Vladislav has two sons, Radu (Anders Hove) and Stefan (Michael Watson). Radu looks undead—long, skeletal fingers, fangs, unnaturally pale skin. Stefan looks human and poses as a researcher studying nocturnal animals. Desiring the Bloodstone, Radu murders his father, and in the process creates a quartet of little demon-like creatures to do his bidding.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Last Man on Earth

Film: The Last Man on Earth
Format: Streaming video from FreeVee on Fire!

Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend” has been adapted to film three times. The latest time was called I am Legend and was a massive blockbuster featuring Will Smith. Before that was The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. The first version was The Last Man on Earth from 1964, featuring Vincent Price. In my opinion, the adaptations have gotten steadily worse; The Last Man on Earth is not only the best of the three adaptations, it’s in many ways the one most loyal to the novel, in no small part because the screenplay was co-written by Matheson himself, even if he was disappointed enough in the result to asked to be listed under a different name.

In 1968, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) lives by himself in the ruins of a city devastated by a terrible plague. We learn through a series of extended flashbacks that Morgan was a scientist working on finding a cure for a bacterial plague that has wiped out the planet’s population. However, he is not entirely alone, as it were. Those who have died of the plague have returned, and while physically and mentally weak, the bear all of the other classic hallmarks of vampires. They avoid their own reflection in mirrors, are repelled by garlic, and heal from wounds quickly, forcing Morgan to kill them by staking them. Because there are things that need to be discussed in detail, consider the rest of this under a spoiler warning—this movie is 60 years old, but that doesn’t change the fact that you may not want it spoiled.

Ten Days of Terror!: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Film: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When I started this blog at the end of 2009 (Jeez…2009!), I knew I would be going to some places that were going to move me out of my comfort zone. I would watch directors I’d never heard of, movies that took me places I hadn’t conceived of, and would see sights that would stick with me for good or ill. But of all of the places I have gone with this project, I could not have foreseen something as singularly bizarre as Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

The title of this one doesn’t contain any secrets. We’re literally going to see William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney) facing off against Count Dracula (John Carradine) in the Wild West. Dracula is going cross-country for some reason, and it’s not explained. Honestly, that’s probably for the best. It doesn’t matter how Dracula crossed the Atlantic or why he, a creature who depends on a population to feed on and protection from daylight, is crossing a huge wilderness thinly inhabited by settlers and otherwise populated by an almost certainly hostile native population. It also doesn’t really explain how he manages to travel by night when the average stagecoach traveled through the day. These are things better left unexplored, honestly.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Brainiac

Film: The Brainiac (El Baron del Terror)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

One of the great horror movies of the 1960s is Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. In the opening sequence, a woman is accused of worshipping Satan, which she freely admits to doing. She suffers a terrible punishment (including having a spiked masked hammered onto her face), but before she dies, she swears she will return and revenge herself on the descendants of those who are sentencing her to death. I bring this up because this is pretty much the same plot as The Brainiac (or El Baron del Terror if you want the original Spanish).

In the opening sequence of The Brainiac, Baron Vitelius d’Estera (Abel Salazar) is accused of a host of crimes by the Mexican branch of the Inquisition. As he is about to be burned at the stake, he vows to return when the (extremely fake-looking) comet that is overhead returns, in 300 years. Since all of this takes place in 1661, you can guess that the Baron is coming back in 1961, essentially the film’s present day. And, because this is aping Black Sunday, the Baron has vowed to wipe out the lineages of all of his accusers.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Virgin Spring

Film: The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

For those who are movie snobs, certain genres lie at the shallow end of the swimming pool. Comedies, especially rom-coms, are a good example of this. Another is horror. Horror movies don’t get a lot of respect from the clove cigarette crowd, with a few exceptions. Show them a classic American low-budget grindhouse film like The Last House on the Left and they are likely to turn up their nose. However, if you present essentially the same story in black-and-white and have it directed by Ingmar Bergman, and we’re talking about a Criterion Collection mainstay, The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan).

This is not a film that goes long on plot, but it doesn’t have to. It’s about the drama and terrible nature of the events that happen in its 90-minute running time. Young Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is sent by her parents Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) and Töre (Max von Sydow) to take candles to the local church. Karin is pampered, in contrast to her half-sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom).

Ten Days of Terror!: Mill of the Stone Women

Film: Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra)
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

I tend not to love Italian horror, since a great deal of it is frequently incomprehensible to me, at least in terms of plot. That’s different for the older Italian horror, though, and a movie like Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra) is a case of an Italian filmmaker doing something in the more Gothic style. Gothic horror is always a lot of fun. It’s overblown and weird and dramatic to a fault. It also has great costuming and sets and is gorgeous to look at. That’s certainly the case here.

I thought, for a very long time, that the name of this movie was Mill of the Stone Woman, meaning a singular gorgon-like creature. It’s not, though. The reference is to a collection of moving statues held in an old windmill. Hans van Arnhim (Pierre Brice), heads to a remote Dutch island to do research on a story about the mill in question. Once an actual grain mill, it has been turned into an art installation by a sculptor named Gregorious Wahl (Herbert A.E. Bohme). The machinery of the mill now acts as a carousel, displaying the sculptures.

Ten Days of Terror!: Anatomy

Film: Anatomy(Anatomie)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

There’s something inherently disturbing to me about secret societies. Anything that is shrouded in that kind of deliberate mystery is something that gets my hackles up. Add in the idea of medical malfeasance and the exploration into the world of forbidden research, and you’ve got something that is almost certainly going to be something I find disturbing. That’s where we’re going with Anatomy (Anatomie in the original German). I often find medical things difficult to watch. Once I started this up, I knew it was going to be something of a rough ride for me.

Paula Henning (Franka Potente) is a medical student with a long pedigree—her father is a doctor and her grandfather had a long tenure as a medical professor. She is accepted to a prestigious summer course at the University of Heidelberg where her grandfather taught. On the train there, she saves the life of a young man named David (Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey), who claims to have a serious heart condition. A few days later, David shows up on one of the slabs in Paula’s class.

Ten Days of Terror!: The House by the Cemetery

Film: The House by the Cemetery( Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero)
Format: Streaming video from AMC on Fire!

I’ve made no secret of how I approach Italian horror films on this blog. While there are some true standouts like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, I remain convinced that the majority of Italian horror films come about because the director envisions a particular scene or a couple of scenes and then plans the movie around getting those scenes on camera. Because of this, there are often bizarre plot holes or things that happens specifically because of the need to get to those key scenes. Suspiria is a great example of this. There’s some of that in The House by the Cemetery (or Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero if you prefer the Italian), but for once, it feels like this might have actually started with at least an elevator pitch of a plot.

We open with the sort of classic slasher movie opening. We have a young woman (Daniela Doria) looking for her boyfriend in a house. She finds him dead and then is quickly dispatched herself. This is the house by the cemetery that is going to be the focus of much of the rest of the film. We switch to New York where we meet the main human characters of the film. These are Norman and Lucy Boyle (Paolo Malco and Catriona MacColl) and their son Bob (Giovanni Frezza), who makes a strong case for the most annoying child in any movie. It’s not so much the kid as the dubbed voice, which can cut glass.

Ten Days of Terror!: Coming to a Theater Near You!

Typically, I have about 40 reviews ready to go for the days up to and including Halloween. This puts me in the position of having to cobble together “groups” of movies for themed days. This year, I had more than 40, so I had a little more leeway in creating those groups.

As with past Octobers, I will be posting 40 reviews over the next ten days, starting tomorrow morning at 1:00 AM. Reviews will post automatically at 1:00 and 7:00, both AM and PM through Halloween. Here's what’s coming over the next week and a half.

Watching While the Planet Burns

Film: The Last Winter
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

For the last few years, I’ve been on my local environmental commission, doing what little I can to at least try to make my farm town more environmentally aware (I had to leave in February for personal reasons). It’s always an uphill battle, especially when monetary issues are placed above environmental ones—and with a few massive corporations adding warehouses and facilities in the area, this has happened a lot lately. Personal issues are forcing me to step back for a time, but the concern is still there. We’re going to start seeing this more and more in our media—the environmental concern I mean. The future of horror is climate horror, and films like The Last Winter are the start of this. The fact that this is almost 20 years old and things have only gotten worse is concerning.

There are a lot of places where a horror movie focused on climate catastrophe could take place. Putting this in an oil drilling camp in Alaska is one of those obvious places. Our oil drilling team from a fictional company called North is looking to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and needs to build ice roads to bring in the equipment. The problem is that the permafrost is melting and they don’t have enough of a sustained freeze to get the roads built. The camp is facing a great deal of stress because of this. The leader of the expedition, Ed Pollack (Ron Perlman) is obviously pro-drilling, and butts heads with the required environmentalist, James Hoffman (James LeGros). Further complicating things are that Ed’s previous sexual partner Abby Sellers (Connie Britton) has taken up with James during Ed’s absence from the camp.

More Style, Less Substance

Film: Beyond the Black Rainbow
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I am not by nature a contrarian. I do sometime take a contrary position on movies, though. Sometimes, that’s liking a movie that most people don’t like--Soldier, Pootie Tang, and Kung Pow are good examples of this. And, of course, there are films that are highly acclaimed that I don’t like. Under the Skin and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are examples that come to mind. To that list we’re going to add Beyond the Black Rainbow, a film that most people seem to like, and I can’t figure out why.

I’d love to do my normal here and give you a blow-by-blow discussion of what happens in the film, but not a great deal happens in this film. Ultimately, my problem with Beyond the Black Rainbow is that virtually nothing happens in it. This is a movie that has a massive synopsis on Wikipedia but could genuinely be summed up in a couple of sentences. A researcher driven insane by an experiment imprisons a young psychic who he becomes obsessed with while she does her best to escape her imprisonment. There, I did it in one.

Where Exactly is "Beyond Space"?

Film: It! The Terror from Beyond Space
Format: Streaming video from Pluto TV on Fire!

I genuinely love 1950s science fiction in general, and space-based science fiction far more. It believed in us, and had hopes and dreams for humanity. In It! The Terror from Beyond Space, we have successfully landed a team on Mars in 1973. In reality, of course, we haven’t been back to the moon in about half a century and Mars is still a pipe dream. Movies like this, though, just knew that we’d be living in a scientific society and that we would be exploring the cosmos and encountering the weird, strange, and deadly.

When the movie begins, a nuclear-powered spaceship lifts off from Mars, headed back toward Earth. On board is the crew, naturally, as well as Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson), the lone survivor of the first manned trip to Mars. Carruthers is suspected of murdering the other nine members of his crew. After all, he had no way of knowing that a rescue was coming. With 10 people, there was only one year’s worth of food. With just one, he’d be able to survive a decade.

Airbnb Has Gone Downhill

Film: The Haunting (1999)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

From a creative perspective, I fully understand the desire for someone to want to remake a story that they like and know well. Over and over, though, great films are frequently remade badly. Consider, for instance how few American remakes of Japanese horror movies are actually worth watching. The Ring, surely, possibly The Grudge, and maybe a few others, but most of them are trash. There’s a reason that every now and then, a meme will surface about remaking terrible movies with good plots to give them another chance. Sadly, with the 1999 remake of The Haunting, we’re instead getting a shabby retelling of a classic story.

Unfortunately for this film, it’s competing against two masterpieces. The original filmed version of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is an amazing horror film, terrifying in places and surprising because it is rated G. Today, this is also competing with the made-for-NetFlix miniseries that is arguably the best horror-themed short-form series ever made, and at least in the conversation. I’m not going to bury the lede—in comparison, this is a cheap knock-off.

Change, Changing Places

Film: You Are Not My Mother
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla on Fire!

There is a long tradition of the changeling child in folklore. A young child suddenly “changes,” and it’s attributed to the actual child being spirited away by the fae or by some other supernatural creature and replaced with something that looks like the child but is clearly different. It’s actually pretty good evidence that there were autistic people a thousand years ago. It’s also a particular trope in folklore that has been sadly underused in movies. The closest we have is something like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is the alien invasion version of a changeling story. You Are Not My Mother is a film that dives head-first into the idea of a changeling child, and does so with good effect.

The film opens with us watching Rita Delaney (Ingrid Craigie) taking her infant granddaughter to the forest and placing the baby on the ground. She lights a ring of fire around the baby, and the film cuts just as we start to hear the baby crying. I promise, despite what it looks like, the baby is not lit on fire.

In Russia, Victim Murders You

Film: Botched
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

A lot of horror movies have given us protagonists who are criminals, either intentionally or forced to be so as the premise. Crime movies are a pretty easy sell in general, as are horror movies, so it makes sense to combine them. The entire premise of a crime/horror movie is that the criminals end up trying to commit a crime in a place that is cursed or haunted or against someone who is worse than they are. From The People Under the Stairs to this year’s Abigail, a criminal plot is an easy transition to horror. And so we have Botched.

Richie (Stephen Dorff) is a thief working for Mr. Groznyi (Sean Pertwee), a Russian mob boss. Richie works for him because Groznyi smuggled Richie into the U.S. years before, which means that Richie is in his debt. The film opens with a diamond heist that goes well until a freak car accident followed by another one causes Richie to lose the diamonds. Now, with nothing to show for his work, Richie needs to pull off a new heist to repay his boss.

What I've Caught Up With, September 2024 Part 2

On the television front, I finished White Collar near the end of September, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm hopeful that the rumors of a White Collar reboot are true, and that as many of the original cast will return. I also finished Arrested Development, and let me tell you, the last season or two is a slog to get through. I also watched His Dark Materials, which I liked pretty well. Finishing White Collar opened up a spot for new workout show, which I filled temporarily with the Korean zombie series All of Us are Dead, but I finished that on Friday, so once again, I need a new workout show.

What I've Caught Up With, September 2024 Part 1

I spent more than a week sitting on my daughter's couch, grading papers and watching her dog while she and her fiancé were at a destination wedding. That being the case, despite it being finals week for me, I actually watched a few more movies than normal for that part of the month. There was a lot of good in September, and while there were a couple that I ended up not being too fond of, there were several that I enjoyed quite a bit, and may well end up in the regular rotation. More tomorrow.

Want to Know How I Got These Scars?

Film: The Man Who Laughs
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

There are a few truly iconic comic book characters. One of those is Bat-Man. Of the Caped Crusader’s vast and colorful rogue’s gallery, his most infamous and deadly opponent is the Joker. Anyone with even a little knowledge of comic book history can tell you that the Joker was based, at least visually, on Gwynplaine, the hero of The Man Who Laughs, a novel by Victor Hugo and one of the most influential silent films ever made.

In the late 18th century, near the end of the reign of King James II (Sam DeGrasse), the king is informed by his evil jester Barkliphedro (Brandon Hurst) about the capture of Lord Clancharlie (Conrad Veidt), who refused to kiss his ring. Clancharlie has returned for his son, and is informed that his son has been given to Hardquanonne (George Siegmann), who has carved a permanent smile on the boy’s face. Clancharlie is executed, and to get rid of the boy, the king orders all of the “Comprachios,” people of folklore who cripple children as a way to create circus performers, ordered out of England. They leave, but the boy, Gwynplaine (Julius Molnar as a child, then Conrad Veidt as an adult), is left behind.

The Title is the Best Part

Film: The Blood-Spattered Bride (La novia ensangrentada)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

One of these days, I need to finish the Karnstein Trilogy from Hammer Studios. I’ve seen the first two movies, The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire, but I’ve yet to finish the story. I was reminded of this when I watched The Blood-Spattered Bride (or La novia ensangrentada) today. It didn’t specifically feel like the same story until, in an old family estate, our characters find a portrait of a woman named Mircalla Karnestein.

The reason for this is that both the Karnstein Trilogy and The Blood-Spattered Bride are based on the novella Carmilla, written by Irish author Sheridan le Fanu about 25 years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula. These are not unique in finding Carmilla to be influential in their story telling—aside from Dracula itself, it is by far the most referenced vampire work around, having some impact on films like Dreyer’s Vampyr, on Dracula’s Daughter, Blood and Roses, Crypt of the Vampire, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust and others, and that’s just looking at film.

Chaos Gremlin

Film: Nimona
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Of all of the Oscar categories that I actively pursue, none seems more willing to go off the beaten path for a nomination than Best Animated Feature. While a NetFlix movie is not “off the beaten path,” Nimona feels a great deal like it is. This is a movie that I haven’t actually heard a great deal about, and I’m kind of surprised. Based on the story that we get and the way that story unfolds, I struggle to believe that this wasn’t the subject of a series of protests from dudes wearing mirrored sunglasses while recording vertical videos in the cab of their oversized trucks.

What do I mean by that? I mean that Nimona is gay, and I mean that in the literal sense, not in the sense that grade school kids used it 20 or 30 years ago. Our main character, Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed) is in an openly same-sex relationship with the ridiculously-named Ambrosious Goldenloin (Eugene Lee Yang). There are also implications that our title character Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz) is female-presenting but essentially genderless and attracted to women. So, like 60-70% of the main characters are somewhere in the LGBTQIA+ continuum, which is similarly true of the cast.

Player One Has Entered the Game

Film: Boy Kills World
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I remember seeing the trailer for Boy Kills World and thinking that it’s exactly the kind of mindless bullshit that I want to watch on a big screen. If I’m paying for the movie, I’m very much a bread-and-circuses kind of guy. Give me over-the-top stunts and gun-fu, and I’m happy to fork over my $10 or more to watch. But Boy Kills World came and went almost immediately. I don’t know if it even opened within 15 miles of where I live. That’s not always a bad sign for a film, but it frequently is.

This is an action movie from start to finish, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Boy Kills World is the sort of action movie that gets the adrenaline junkie excited. Think The Raid: Redemption as a similar film with the same sort of simple plot and relentless action montages. The plot is high concept—in an oppressive society, a young boy’s family is murdered as an example by the ruling class. The boy (Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti) is left for dead, but is rescued by a man called the Shaman (Yayan Ruhian, who was in The Raid) and trained to hunt down the family that rules the area.

Bed, Bath, and Way Beyond

Film: What Lies Beneath
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.

I’m a sucker for people playing against type. Give me Dennis Hopper playing a good guy, or Henry Fonda playing a complete bastard, and I’m in. It’s catnip for me, as is watching someone known for doing comedy excelling at a serious role. So, give me a movie where Harrison Ford is playing a professor who has had an affair with a student who has since gone missing and you have my attention. That movie is What Lies Beneath, which was somehow co-written by Clark Gregg, best-known as Agent Coulson from the Marvel Universe. It’s a big old world, but it’s folded over a lot.

Norman Spencer (Ford) is an accomplished scientist living in the shadow of his mathematician father. He and his wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) live in Vermont in a large and fairly idyllic house, but the relationship is strained. A large part of this strain comes from Claire’s daughter Caitlin (Katharine Towne) going off to college, leaving Claire and Norman as empty nesters.

Assume the Title is Ironic

Film: Joy Ride (Roadkill)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

For whatever reason, there are actors who don’t have the career they deserve. One such actor is Steve Zahn, who is frequently the best thing in the movie he is in and just as frequently is in a movie that is beneath his talent. I’ll put it out there that of our three primary actors in Joy Ride (also known as Roadkill), Zahn is better than the film. Co-star Paul Walker is exactly as good as the material, and love interest Leelee Sobieski, also known as the very poor man’s Helen Hunt, is punching above her weight.

Anyway, Joy Ride is a film that, depending on how serious you are about horror movies and thrillers, is one that you have absolutely seen at least once before. A substantial part of this movie is Duel for the Millennial generation, the main difference being that rather than happening seemingly at random, our heroes bring at least a little of what follows on themselves. There are also a number of similarities here to the original version of The Hitcher (I don’t know about the remake, since I haven’t seen it). If you want to go more obscure, there’s a lot here that is similar to the early-‘80s Aussie film Road Games.

Each Story a Flower

Film: Torture Garden
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

We’re going to dive head-first into a horror subgenre that I’ve attacked before with Torture Garden. This is not torture porn, despite the name. Its 1967 pedigree would put it before even the torture porn-like films of the early and mid-‘70s. No, this is a (sigh) horror anthology film, a film that will give us a framing story and four tales of various levels of scary. Truthfully, they aren’t going to be that scary for the most part. As frequently happens in an anthology like this one, the stories are essentially little morality tales that cause people to realize their own “sins,” perhaps before it is too late.

There are some pros and cons for this one going in. On the positive side, these are all tales written by Robert Bloch, who also wrote Psycho, so at least we’re going to have some quality when it comes to the writing. We’ve also got some classic actors from the era including Peter Cushing and all-time champion scenery chewers Burgess Meredith and Jack Palance. On the downside, this is still very much in the classic Gothic style in a lot of ways. It wants to be more modern, and it can’t quite pull it off.

The Real Dracula's Daughter

Film: Abigail
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

Sometimes, you see a trailer and you know you’re going to watch the movie in question. That was certainly the case with Abigail, a movie that ruins the big surprise in the trailer, and demonstrates that it ultimately doesn’t matter. To be fair, the big reveal in Abigail doesn’t happen at the end of the film, but is the driving force of the second act, so it’s not that much of a loss. So, I’m going to naturally talk about that reveal. Since it’s something that literally shows up in the trailer, this is not going to be anything like a spoiler.

As the film begins, we see a young girl performing ballet. Meanwhile, there is a group of people who are clearly planning something and that something is clearly kidnapping the girl. It all goes off without a hitch. The team of six kidnappers takes the girl to a huge secluded house with the plans to wait for a day for what will be a huge payout of millions for each person. All of this comes from the direction of a man named Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito).

...And Neither Are Their Cubs

Film: Tigers are not Afraid (Vuelven)
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

Every year, I spend about a week in St. Louis petsitting my daughter’s dog. While I generally have to work (and this year it happened during a finals week), it’s also a chance for me to catch up on movies. I showed up with more than a dozen discs, knowing that once finals week was over, I’d have two or three days in a strange city without a lot to do. Sure, there’s stuff to do in St. Louis, but the dog does need tending, and he can’t be alone for too long, so a couple of movies per day was on the docket. Of the many I brought with me, Tigers are not Afraid (or Vuelven) is one that I was most interested in.

Tigers are not Afraid takes place in Mexico in the heart of the war between drug cartels. Thousands of people have been killed or gone missing, leaving behind thousands of children forced to fend for themselves or become victims. In terms of the narrative, this is clearly a film that has connections to City of God, but there are also real connections to The Devil’s Backbone, not merely because of it being in Spanish. This is a film that is very much a dark fairy tale, a grittier version of what Guillermo del Toro does best, creating a connection to Pan’s Labyrinth as well.

Their Cross to Burn Bear

Film: Soft & Quiet
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I try to keep politics out of this blog, but there are times when the movie in question prevents that from happening. At the recent presidential debate, one of the more memorable moments was, “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the dogs.” This is in reference to an incredibly racist trope about Haitian immigrants in Ohio. And it is purely racism, something that the American right wing seems to like to bank on. There is a frequent undercurrent of racism in American politics from the right, from Willy Horton to birtherism, to Haitians eating pets. And it’s where we’re going to live for 92 minutes with Soft & Quiet, a film that is unbelievably difficult to watch.

It's also worth saying off the top here that if you look up reviews for Soft & Quiet, you’re going to find a lot of negative reviews. A lot of them. The reason is twofold. One is that this is a difficult movie to watch and an unpleasant one, and a lot of people are going to have a negative and visceral reaction to it. Part of it, though, is an attempt to pull people away from the film by the people whom the film is essentially about. It’s the same reason why Bud Light got a bunch of negative reviews all at once—if there are enough bad reviews, people will stay away.

What I've Caught Up With, August 2024

August was a difficult month, involving some travel and dealing with my dad, which is always fun. But, no complaints--I knocked out a few from the big list, including a couple that I put up as full reviews. On the television front, I finally caught up on Doctor Who, having completed the first Ncuti Gatwa season. I've also finished Farscape, and watched all of the short Brit-com series Black Books. White Collar is still my workout show for a couple more weeks. It's also worth saying that everyone who told me that Arrested Development dropped off after season 3 was absolutely correct.

But Are You Worth Saving?

Film: No One Will Save You
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Genre mashups always have the potential to be interesting. That’s especially the case with subgenre mashups, at least in my opinion. No One Will Save You is just such a case. To say that this is a horror/science fiction film is to name it in a group of hundreds and thousands of other films. More specifically, though, this is an alien invasion movie and a home invasion movie. It’s like the final confrontation from Signs mixed with Mike Flanagan’s Hush, with a bit of Invasion of the Body Snatchers tossed in for good measure. That’s a combination that has a lot of potential.

The reality of No One Will Save You is that it lives up to at least some of that potential, although not all of it. There are some really interesting ideas presented in this, but there are some serious questions that are left unanswered. I don’t always mind a few unanswered questions, but in this case, those are very plot-central. Because of this, the film feels oddly unfinished and unsatisfying.

Are All Summer Camps This Dangerous?

Film: Madman
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When a particular genre movie makes a lot of money, it immediately spawns imitators trying to cash in on the formula. Asylum is an American film company that produces what are kindly known as “mockbusters,” films that are clearly derived from major pictures and made on the cheap. Pacific Rim becomes Atlantic Rim for Asylum, and why remake I am Legend when you can just call it I am Omega. Madman is like that, although it wasn’t made by Asylum. This is a film that is clearly derived from Friday the 13th, and it’s not shy about its source material.

That being the case, it’s not a shock that this begins like The Fog, with people around a campfire telling scary stories. However, rather than this being about an important anniversary for a town, we’re at a summer camp, listening to the head counselor Max (Carl Fredericks). What Friday the 13th discovered, either by genius or by chance, is that summer camps are the natural habitat of what Siskel and Ebert used to call “dead teenager” movies. The kids in question are isolated, horny, unsupervised (since they are the counselors), and vulnerable.

Wide Awake

Film: Come True
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t remember his dreams. I can recall glimpses of them now and then, but in general, I recall virtually nothing from wherever my mind goes at night. Dreams are fascinating, though, because it seems like anything can happen in your dreams. You can be back in high school, or chased by a chainsaw-wielding clown…or both. Come True is a movie that explores that place and posits the possibility of things from the real world moving into the dream world, and vice versa. As someone who has struggled with insomnia in the past, that world of dreams is both a desired destination and a little terrifying.

Sara Dunn (Julia Sarah Stone) is a high school student who is essentially homeless. She avoids her mother, but sneaks into the family home to steal food. At night, she sleeps rough in a sleeping back or in the homes of friends. Her situation causes her to frequently fall asleep in class, and when she does fall asleep, she is plagued by dreams of a maze and a shadowy figure with glowing eyes.

Hail! Hail!

Film: Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on basement television.

I think I’ve mentioned before that a lot of my musical tastes come from my older brothers. You pick up what you hear, naturally, and I grew up around a lot of prog rock and yacht rock from the ‘70s. What this means, though, is that the artists I discovered on my own are going to in many ways be much more important to me. Ike Reilly, and now the Ike Reilly Assassination, is one of those artists. I first heard him on the big Chicago alt-rock station, WXRT a couple of years after the release of his first album, Salesmen and Racists. I missed the name of the artist and had to call the station to find out who he was, and I’ve loved him ever since.

Ike (Michael) Reilly is one of those artists that has somehow managed to elude fame and popularity outside of a crop of dedicated fans. I have a fondness for songwriters who are storytellers more than anything else. There’s a lot of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, Woody Guthrie, and Warren Zevon in his work (as well as lesser known writers like Eef Barzelay, Freedy Johnston, and Dan Bern). He’s the type of artist who, if you ask 1000 people if they have heard of him, 999 will look at you with their head cocked like a dog hearing a sound it doesn’t know. But that one person who does know him is going to be someone who knows their stuff. His fans include people like Penn Gilette, David Lowrey from Cracker, and fellow Libertyville, IL alum, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello, who is also the film’s executive producer.

Stop Me if You've Heard this One

Film: Count Dracula (Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on various players.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the great books of the end of the 19th century. Seriously, if you haven’t read the book, seek it out, because it really is fantastic. It’s also a book that has been adapted as much or more than pretty much everything else out there aside from the Bible. The 1970 Count Dracula, also known by its German title of Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht, which sounds badass in German (and means “Nights, when Dracula awakens”) is, I believe, the 8th adaptation of Dracula I have seen--Nosferatu and its remake from the ‘70s, the Bela Lugosi version and the Spanish language version of the same vintage, Christopher Lee’s first Hammer horror film, the Frank Langella version, and Coppola’s from the mid-‘90s. So yes, this is the eighth one. It’s like a Batman original story; it just keeps showing up.

Because of this, I’m not going to spend a great deal of time discussing the plot. If you really need my take on the narrative, well, there are literally seven other versions of this basic story that I have already written up. Go to one of those.