Month: August 2020

It was June 2011. I was standing in front of a packed room in a Long Island hotel, leading a spirited panel on slasher films to celebrate the release of my then-latest anthology project Butcher Knives & Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film. Several of the book's contributors were in attendance, including novelist Stephen Graham Jones, Halloween (the holiday, not the film) expert Lisa Morton, Fangoria's Tony Timpone, and esteemed From Zombo's Closet blogger John Cozzoli, among others.

Everything was going swimmingly—I was in my element among my people waxing philosophical about slasher films. Seriously, what could be better than to be standing before a crowd hanging on my every word about a genre I love? Then someone asked a pretty pedestrian question: "So, what's your favorite slasher film?"

Everyone I've ever known expects me to say Halloween, largely because of my predilection for all things Jamie Lee Curtis. A few others might expect me to answer with Friday the 13th because that's always been right up there in my personal rankings; honestly, they're an interchangeable #1 and #2 depending upon my mood and the day—at least up to that point. And then I open my mouth.

"Curtains," I answer confidently and without hesitation.

Mouths in the audience hang agape at this stunning admission. I'm even a little stunned myself yet oddly relieved and even slightly empowered. I've just audaciously skipped perhaps the two most obvious and revered of the golden age slasher films—and at least a half dozen others infinitely more qualified—and picked one of the most overlooked, (technically) poorly made and edited messes of a box office bomb and proclaimed it my favorite.

In front of witnesses.

No one is more surprised as I am, but as I begin to speak in an attempt to elucidate just why this one-time slasher stinker has implausibly leaped over the handful of slashers that predictably land atop most film buffs' listicles, I've even managed to convince myself of an improbable truth: Curtains is a damn good slasher film. Here are my five favorite things that make this my truth:

1: The Element of Mystery: I've long held that the best slasher films are the ones that incorporate an element of mystery. Although Michael Myers stalking the leaf-strewn streets of Haddonfield never fails to elicit goosebumps, there's something to be said about not knowing who's committing the camp counselor carnage of Friday the 13th until the film's third act. Whodunit became as compelling a plot point as the method of execution in films like Happy Birthday to Me, Terror Train, Prom Night, Graduation Day, The Prowler, Urban Legend, and, of course, Scream. In Curtains, the set-up is pure Agatha Christie: Five actresses, all vying for the same coveted film role, converge at the remote home of the film's esteemed (and very sleazy) director to audition. A sixth actress never even makes it to the house, failing her audition with a knife to the gut. Before the first act is over, the cast is snowbound and someone in a hideous hag mask begins to systematically dispatch with the competition in true slasher style. It's tremendous fun trying to figure out who's behind the hag mask—and the third act reveal doesn't disappoint.

2: The Ice Skating Scene: Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day, and that adage holds true with the infamous ice skating sequence in Curtains. Despite the film's myriad flaws, horror buffs largely agree that Christie's kill is one of the most beautifully filmed and executed in all of slasherdom. From my own Butcher Knives & Body Counts essay "Paging Miss Marple":

"What makes the scene both audacious and unnerving for slasher fans is that it takes place in broad daylight, breaking long-standing slasher convention, and the killer comes after her on skates. Few diehard slasher films will argue that the sight of old hag face skating across the frozen pond in graceful strides toward an oblivious [Lesleh] Donaldson isn't one of the most genuinely chilling cinematic moments ever. There is a pure poetry to the scene, with the curve of the scythe that slowly emerges from behind the killer's back matching the artful curves of the skates as they cut through the ice towards Donaldson. The actress, who first blinks in confusion in the bright sunshine before that moment of amalgamated shock and terror, plays the scene to perfection."

3: That Creepy Doll: Curtains is notable for its use of creepy imagery. Case in point, the recurring use of a grim-looking doll—raven-haired, sunken eyes, mouth downturned into a frown—that shows up at the most inopportune times and seems to be a harbinger of bad things to come throughout the film. There are two scenes, in particular, in which creepy dolly is used to particularly good effect. In the first, Amanda (Deborah Burgess) is making her way to the audition, heading up a curving roadway in a rainstorm. She slams on her brakes: ‘Ole creepy dolly is standing in the middle of the road, arms outstretched. When Amanda gets out of the car, using her audition script as an ineffective umbrella, and crouches down in front of the doll to investigate its incongruous appearance in the middle of the road, creepy dolly latches onto her arm and Amanda screams. It's revealed to be nothing more than a nightmare, but the sequence is unnerving.

In the second scene, Christie finds creepy dolly buried in the snow at the side of the pond. She pulls it out and brushes the snow from its face. Even in broad daylight, the doll's visage is unsettling. As the film's hag-masked killer skates upon the ill-fated Christie, the ice-skating ingénue tries to block the killer's attack by thrusting the doll out in front of her—and poor creepy dolly's head gets lopped off with the killer's scythe.

4: The Prop Closet Final Chase: At the beginning of the film's third act, Tara (the late Sandee Currie)—after stumbling upon all the dead bodies in accordance with the slasher formula—finds herself in the enviable position of would-be final girl, which can only mean one thing: the protracted chase scene between her and the killer. Curtains makes champion use of its underlying thespian theme here by setting the climatic final chase in a theatrical prop closet. The setting is made creepier by its natural clutter—costume-clad mannequins, furniture, myriad stage props, eerily lit signage. It all serves alternately as camouflage for both hag-mask and Tara—well, at least until she climbs into that ventilation shaft…

5: Everything We Didn't See: What makes Curtains the true masterpiece this longtime horror nerd has come to appreciate is largely what we don't see on screen.

Wait…what?

No, you heard me correctly. Curtains is remarkable for all its lost potential. Watching it, one is struck by all the things the filmmakers could have done—hell, may have done. Curtains was a notoriously troubled, protracted production, worsened by multiple script rewrites, reshoots, and recastings that spanned nearly three years. Prom Night producer Peter S. Simpson conceptualized the film as an "adult" slasher that could be marketed toward older audiences and, by all accounts, the film's original director Richard Ciupka had begun to craft something of an arthouse thriller. But tensions between producer and director over the creative direction of the film led to the latter eventually detaching his name from the project—after only 45 minutes of footage had been completed. Simpson stepped in to complete the film, adding scenes, reshooting scenes, and excising some of Ciupka's material. The end product is something of a cinematic mishmash, which is why you'll note two separate sets of credits and a fictional director.

The lost Ciupka footage has become something of cinematic legend, with various cast and crew recollecting scenes that have never seen the light of day. In 2013, Synapse Films announced that it was planning on releasing Curtains on Blu-ray, with a new 2K transfer from the original prints, as well as a 5.1 surround sound audio remastering. Fans of the film began to buzz about the infamous Ciupka footage once again—but, alas, the fine gents at Synapse found none of the coveted footage when they received the original prints. Still, the remastered Curtains is a beauty to behold, with scenes previously unwatchable in their low-def blackness now popping with color and definition. The lost footage will remain the stuff of legend and speculation and the holy grail of slasher cinephiles, while Curtains, in all its glorious imperfection, will remain an unpolished gem in the canon of horror films.

Vince Liaguno is an award-winning writer, editor, and pop culture enthusiast. Visit his official author website HERE or his Slasher Speak blog HERE.

"Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is an ultra low budget fave from the early 70s that isn't often discussed. Receiving only a very limited theatrical release (the earliest I could document is 1974), it vanished until its director, Christopher Speeth, resurrected it for a DVD release in 2003, and its later inclusion on the "American Horror Project: Volume 1" from Arrow finally brought the 1973 film out of the shadows in stunning quality. Here are five reasons I love it:

5: Carnivals are awesome.
I wish everybody had the chance to go to a real rundown traveling carnival back in the carefree days of yesteryear, where drifters, con artists and possible convicted felons assembled carnival rides that you gladly paid to climb into, possibly to be hurled to your screaming death. "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" teaches us that any reservations we may have had were completely justified. The carnival is run by a skeezy creep named Mr. Blood, who turns out to be a real live (?) vampire. It seems to be staffed by a few normals, several of whom are an undercover family searching for their missing son/brother, whose last known whereabouts were the carnival grounds. These scenes in the rundown amusement park are pure vintage carny pleasure, including a rickety old wooden rollercoaster, a ferris wheel, a few midway style games of skill, and an indoor boat ride "tunnel of love".

4: It's a camper movie.
Some movies I love for the furniture and vintage decor (I'm looking at you, "Eegah!" and "Track of the Moon Beast"), and "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" falls into a similar category for me: the camper/RV movie. "Race with the Devil" and "Just Before Dawn" are two more examples, but this movie actually positions the family inside their camper quite frequently, including a great scene where they're shown cooking a delicious-looking fried chicken dinner on their tiny RV stove. Their sleeping arrangements are equally compact, sleeping three adults comfortably. It's the tiny house obsession before there was HGTV.

3: Hervé Villechaize is in it.
His role on "Fantasy Island" cemented him for a time as a cultural meme ("Ze plaaaane! Ze plaaaaane!"), and this usually overshadows the fact that he had an actual career as an actor, and not only in "The Man with the Golden Gun". His early role in "Malatesta's Carnival of Blood" is absolutely demented as evil carnival barker Bobo, who speaks in rhymes and uses the perceptions of his victims against them. He gets a lot of the film's best scenes, including one where he attacks a victim, loses the upper hand, and then disarms him again by comically pleading for his own life. The victim is murdered.

2: It's got zombies.
Aside from the film's willingness to go a little over the top with its gore, the "Night of the Living Dead" vibes are strong with this one. Underneath the carnival is a subterranean netherworld (total "Us" territory) full of tunnels lined with bubble wrap, inverted Volkswagens transformed into swinging hammocks, and a lagoon. The inhabitants of this secret underground space are a horde of zombies who shuffle around fighting with each other while watching silent horror movies projected on the wall. Dr. Blood and his employer, Malatesta, arrange for these zombies to have fresh victims to devour, preferably alive. One victim is somehow still moving after being skewered with a sharp implement by the park's evil custodian; dragged into the underground lair, he's still twitching when the zombies start eating him. Along with "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", this movie is one of the earliest to be directly influenced by Romero's movie.

1: It loves the old Universal monster movies.
Even though it's a small, independent production, this movie's roots are in the classic Universal monster movies. The freaked out zombies are seen watching Lon Chaney in "Phantom of the Opera" and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in their underground theater, posters are glimpsed for the original Universal "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" movies, and the whole film is really a monster rally like "House of Frankenstein". We get a vampire, zombies, some mad scientist elements, and the devil himself. The last segment of the movie really reminds me of Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses", except on a bubble wrap budget.

The movie is currently streaming for free on Tubi.

Bill Van Ryn is the editor of fanzine Drive-In Asylum and writer of film blog/Facebook page Groovy Doom. Buy the new issue of Drive-In Asylum HERE, or visit Forbidden Planet in NYC.

Hello wonderful, awesome people of Kindertrauma!

I'm Matt. Like many people here, I grew up on scary movie video rentals, along with USA's Up All Night and Saturday Nightmares, and have a special place in my heart for those films to this day. In the hopes that my other 728 favorite horror films will forgive me for not picking them, 1981's underrated slasher classic My Bloody Valentine deserves some love. It never reached the mass audience or popularity that the movies of my pals Jason, Freddy, Michael, and Leatherface did, but it's a terrific, fun, creepy film that's worth your time. Why should we believe you, internet stranger? you may ask. Well, I rocked hats and vests every day in high school like my teen hero Debbie Gibson. If that doesn't prove that I'm trustworthy, nothing does. Major plot and characters spoilers ahead!

1: The setting. The movie takes place in a small-town mining community. Director George Mihalka does an excellent job of showing the geography of the town. Everyone knows everybody. The people who live there have lived there forever.

But the real star is the dark, spooky, claustrophobic mine where the horror takes place. It's gloomy, sparsely lit, and easy to get lost in. The walls feel as if they could close in on you at any second. You never know who it is coming down the tracks at any moment, hidden amongst the shadows. You're trapped beneath the earth above you, with no cell phone or fancy electronics to call for help. (Ah, the 80s, when scary movies were much scarier because no characters had to pointedly say that there is no cell phone reception where they are.)

In the film's creepiest scene, Harry Warden methodically smashes the mine's only sources of light, far enough away from our protagonists so as not to be seen, but close enough for them to hear the shattering glass and realize something is off. The only person scarier to be stuck in a mine with would be Jon Gosselin or the Jersey Shore kids (shudder).

2: Harry Warden. Like a way crazier, scarier, more violent version of Scooby-Doo, Where are You!'s Miner 49er, Harry Warden is a rage-filled, intimidating psychopathic killer dressed in mining gear, complete with a gas mask and pick-axe. Harry warned the townspeople not to hold another Valentine's Day dance after what happened last time, but apparently everyone in Valentine Bluffs just loves Valentine's Day so much that they had to have one.

It's not that Harry hates disco music or Moosehead Beer. (It was filmed in Canada after all.) Twenty years ago, on the night of the Valentine's dance, there was a methane gas explosion in the mines that trapped several miners beneath the ground. By the time the rescue squad came to save the miners, only Harry was left – and he survived by eating his coworkers then killed the supervisors who were responsible for the accident.

It's easy to see why he went crazy. I was stuck in an elevator for 45 minutes once and I started sizing up who I would eat first if no help came. I get you, Harry, even though you're terrifying and I hope we never meet.

3: The characters (and actors). The characters feel like friends who have known each other forever. They're likable and relatable. They care about each other even before the blood starts flowing and have to save themselves.

The performances all feel genuine and authentic. Sarah, T.J., Axel, Hollis, Howard, Patty, John, Sylvia, Mike, Harriet, queen laundress Mabel, the whole gang – I love them all. They're real people with their own backstories, quirks, and feelings. Hollis looks like he'd be a great hugger. T.J. unironically sports an amazing bandana and makes it look good, something today's manly men should try more often.  

In a move that 90210's Kelly Taylor would make famous years later, Sarah chooses herself over her love triangle with T.J. and Axel. Kelly owes a debt to Sarah's second-wave feminism. Sarah isn't afraid to fight back either; in the grand tradition of slasher movie final girls, she isn't going to put up with Harry's deadly shenanigans. Kelly had a scary psycho that she had to confront as well, the waify loony Tara. Is there some cosmic link between Kelly Taylor and Sarah Mercer? You heard it here first.

Side note: Years ago, I contacted Paul Kelman (T.J.) and Thomas Kovacs (Mike) on Facebook, and they could not have been nicer or more willing to discuss the movie.

4: The nine minutes of cut gore. This movie's gorier scenes had been excised prior to release by the Puritans over at the MPAA. Thanks to the modern era of restoration and appreciation for this movie, nine minutes of grisly footage was added back into the film. The practical special effects for this film are nothing short of amazing and a testament to the hard work by the make-up effects artists, who made FX magic for little money before movie bloodshed was created by computers.

The death set-pieces are scary and inventive. The murders are graphic, unsettling, and nothing is played for laughs. I've seen Showgirls and Howard the Duck multiple times; I know terror.

5: The end credits song. "The Ballad of Harry Warden" is a sad, spine-chilling folk song that plays over the ending credits of the movie. Harry Warden has his own song! How many movie villains get their own ditty? Bughuul doesn't have one. Neither does The Babadook. Nor Ted Cruz. Paul Zaza's score and the song he wrote for Harry are memorable and haunting. The song caps off the movie perfectly.

Are you still with me? There are many more things I could say about this fantastic flick. Kindertrauma, I visit your site daily and always look forward to whatever magical words you will write about so many of my favorite movies. Thank you for reading!

For those unfamiliar, Alice, Sweet Alice is the story of a young girl named Alice (Paula Sheppard) who everyone thinks killed her little sister, Karen (a very young Brooke Shields), at her first communion because she was jealous of her getting more attention than her. As the story unfolds and becomes even more twisted and bizarre than we'd initially expected, the audience is constantly being thrown for a loop which brings me to my 1st favorite thing about the film…

The Unpredictability – Ask a newbie to watch the first 15 minutes of Alice, Sweet Alice and then ask them to predict how the movie is going to end. They're not going to get it right. Like many films from the 70's, there's a distinct aura of "anything goes" throughout Alice, Sweet Alice. Any film that has to guts to make its first victim a child isn't playing around and it's not interested in being nice. It wants to disturb you and rattle you to your core. You're never sure who's going to live and who's going to die and when the killer is going to leap out. The best horror movies make you feel like you're in the hands of a filmmaker who's a little bit dangerous and this one definitely does that.

The colorful cast – Alice, Sweet Alice is stuffed with unique and odd character actors who all seem like they might feel more at home than on stage which gives the whole film a vibe it wouldn't have if every performance was perfectly modulated and subdued. It appears as if everyone in the film is 4 seconds away from having a hair-pulling, face-scratching nervous breakdown and it puts you further on edge. Where else would you see a character like the wicked Aunt Annie who hates her niece to a disturbing degree or the odious morbidly obese pedophile landlord Mr. Alfonso who lives in squalor with his cats and his sweat and food-stained tank top and pants that look like he just urinated in them?

The cinematography – Alice, Sweet Alice drips with mood in every shot and, while its look owes a great deal to the Italian horror films of the 60's and 70's and Don't Look Now, it still doesn't emulate them exactly. Alice, Sweet Alice doesn't really look like any other movie and no other movie looks like Alice, Sweet Alice either. It makes great use of the Patterson, New Jersey locations and milks all the production value out of every set up it can. That's just smart low budget filmmaking.

The music score – Composer Stephen Lawrence created one of the most haunting scores in all of horror history that's a far cry from his child-friendly favorites such as "Free To Be You And Me." Spooky female voices sing and wail throughout as creepy pianos tinkle and it's another part of the film that knows how to put the viewer on edge. He even said the score was supposed to act as a black cloud that had descended on the entire town and you can hear and feel that throughout.

The ambiguous ending – What does the ending of Alice, Sweet Alice mean? Even though it's a movie that's over 40 years old, I still don't want to spoil it, but let's just say that things aren't tied up as neatly as some might have liked. What does the future have in store for Alice after everything she's been through? There are many theories and that's what makes it fascinating, because everyone will have a different interpretation.

Alice, Sweet Alice was never a movie that was hard to find considering there were seemingly dozens of releases from lousy budget VHS companies. It was, however, very hard to find with a cleaned up, decent looking print. Arrow Video just recently gave the film the royal treatment it deserves on Blu-Ray and seeing it looking like a million bucks is something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. If you've never seen it, pick up that release and, even if you have seen it, this release will make you think you're seeing it for the first time.

Note: Chris Moore's excellent film TRIGGERED is free to view on Tubi HERE!

The Legacy (1978) has been one of my favorite films since I first saw it almost 20 years ago. It's of a particular era and style that I really like. The Legacy is a combination satanic thriller and creepy old house film of the same vein as The Sentinel (1977) and Superstition (1982), two other personal favorites. The plot concerns Maggie and Pete, played by Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott, a couple visiting England on a working vacation, when a road accident leaves them stranded at the estate of the mysterious Jason Mountolive (John Standing, The Psychopath). Other guests (including Roger Daltry as Clive, a music manager, and Charles Gray as Karl, a former Nazi) soon arrive, but just as quickly start dying, and the American couple begin to expect that black magic is at work.

Here are my five favorite things about the movie:

1: The setting. Mountolive's estate, where most of the action takes place, is as sinister as it is elegant, as claustrophobic as it is sprawling. It's a haunted house without a haunting. Pools freeze over, fireplaces erupt with balls of fire, etc. These don't occur at the house's will, but at its master's. The filming location, Loseley Park in Surrey, England, exudes gothic atmosphere and is completely believable as a home to nefarious deeds and deaths.

2:Nurse Adams. I love cats. My partner and I share our home with several feline companions, and they're like children to me. And the next cat I get, I'm naming Nurse Adams. Nurse Adams spends part of the movie as Mountolive's caregiver and head of household and part of the film as his familiar, a pretty white cat with one yellow eye and one blue. (Side note: Growing up I had a cat that looked just like this one, right down to the differently colored eyes.) Nurse Adams acts as both protector of Mountolive's legacy and as a harbinger of doom to those fated to die before the weekend is out. She is the most interesting character in a film full of interesting characters.

3: The deaths. Specifically the death of Maria Gabrieli (Marianne Broome), an accomplished swimmer who drowns when the top of the swimming pool turns to glass, and she is trapped underneath the water. This is a visually stunning sequence, with shots from both outside the glass as Maria desperately bangs her fists on it and shots from within the pool as she runs out of breath and sinks to the bottom. Clive's death is also impressive, with Daltry really giving the scene is all as he chokes on a chicken bone, even though, as Karl reminds Maggie later, he'd been eating ham.

4:Maggie and Pete. I just discovered that Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross are married in real life. They met on the set of this film and fell in love. And you know what, I can see it. Elliott and Ross have excellent chemistry, and when watching the movie, you can easily tell how deeply the characters care for each other. Sure, Elliott's Pete is grumpy and spends the whole film being very, well, somewhat stereotypically American, and Ross's Maggie occasionally descends into nervous panic. But at the end of the day, these characters have each other's backs. Pete fights for Maggie when he believes she's in danger, but when she accepts her fate as the inheritor of Mountolive's satanic legacy, he's willing to share her happiness with her. Which brings to me to my final favorite thing:

5: The happy ending. I don't think I've ever seen a Satanic horror film end on such a positive note. Upon first watching this film, you really fear for Maggie and Pete's safety. You cheer for them as they try to escape the sinister Mountolive estate and worry for their lives as the other guests begin dying. But once you've seen the film once and know its ending, upon rewatching it, it seems like a different kind of movie. It almost seems like a fairytale, a Cinderella story even. Maggie, knowing nothing of her family's heritage, comes to England where she discovers herself and her history and inherits wealth and power beyond her wildest imagining. In the closing lines of the film, Pete asks Maggie what she's going to do with all her newfound power, to which Maggie replies, "Anything I want," as they stroll arm in arm across her new estate. It's an empowering ending unlike any other film of its kind. Satanism here is not Cinderella's wicked stepmother, but her fairy godmother, enabling her to actually live happily ever after.

Note: Visit Kathryngrace at Final Women for more of her perspective!