It's a Horror to Know You: Burl of Ha Ha, it's Burl!
What is the first film that ever scared you?
Ha ha, well that would be an all-time classic of Kindertrauma I'd expect: Trilogy of Terror! I was three years old and snuck down to watch the Zuni doll segment from around a corner where my parents couldn't see me! Then later he appeared in my dreams, having grown to adult size, and was chasing me through the Maurice Sendak bedroom forest from Where the Wild Things Are! Ha ha, talk about traumatic!
What is the last film that scared you?
Like many of your respondents I don't get spooked all that often from movies anymore, but it happens now and again! Ha ha, [Rec] is probably the last such occurrence!
Name three horror movies that you believe are underrated.
Well, let's see! I watched one recently that I would call underrated: Ghost Dance! It's a ghost/possession/slasher movie from the early 80s set in the deserts of New Mexico, and it's not that great, but it has some good moments and a few dynamite images courtesy of future Freddy Vs. Jason cinematographer Fred Murphy! It's not so much underrated as simply not rated at all! Ha ha, except by me!
Maybe I'll put in a word here for Malpertuis, the Harry Kümel adaptation of the great Jean Ray book! It's a flawed picture for sure, but it looks great and has a heavy atmosphere of dread and weirdness! It's certainly got its fans, but not enough of them! And Orson Welles is in it, ha ha!
And then maybe I'll pick Supernatural, the witch-gore movie from 1982 or so! That one is a great example of how goopy low-budget 80s horror can sometimes be really, truly scary! Again, it's not a brilliant movie precisely, but it has a certain something that makes me feel it should get slightly more recognition than it seems to! But ha ha, ask me this same question in five minutes and I'd pick three completely different movies!
Name three horror movies that you enjoy against your better judgment.
There are many, many of these! I'll have to pick three almost at random, so here it goes! The Power is one goofy movie, ha ha, but it really tries hard, and its almost completely shapeless narrative means you can watch any ten-minute sequence and be perfectly satisfied! Plus there's lots of silly makeup effects!
Primal Rage is a pretty good one! This is the story of a rage virus affecting test apes, college students and a ponytailed Bo Svenson! It has a great Halloween party climax and provides maximum entertainment while engaging not one single brain cell in your head!
And lastly, I'll pick The Devonsville Terror! There's nothing objectively good about this picture, but I really like the autumnal atmosphere and the fact that very little actually happens! I only saw this one for the first time last fall, but I could see it being a semi-regular fall tradition for me, ha ha!
Send us to five places on the internet!
I suppose you've been sent to Bleeding Skull many times before, but here you go again! I really enjoy reading those reviews, and so many of them are just exactly the obscure VHS non-classics that I enjoy so well myself!
Hollywood Gorilla Men is a fine blog about the guys who wore the gorilla suits in olde-tyme Hollywood to keep us all entertained, thrilled and on the edge of our seats!
Another informative blog is Matte Shot, which is about the marvelous matte paintings that have put us in crazy fantasy worlds over many years of movie watching! Great stuff, ha ha!
There's a young fellow named Raculfright_13 who reviews movies in a strangely charming way, and he certainly likes his mexi-trash! But I'm pretty partial to his enthusiastic if ungrammatical notices, and he provides plenty of pictures too!
Lastly I must point people towards Canuxploitation, the great website showcasing all the fine Canadian genre movies out there! There are lots of them, and this is the place to go if you want to learn about them! Which reminds me: it's June, so that means it's time to watch Funeral Home once again, the perfect summer movie! Ha ha!
You hit on a couple I really dig Burl! Devonsville Terror and Primal Rage! I caught The Power back in the day in a double feature but I really need to reacquaint myself with it.
Plus thanks for schooling me on those obscurities! I've never heard of Ghost Dance, Malpertuis or Supernatural and they all look very interesting. That last one was really hard to find much info on
which is really weird considering it's from the director of "Horror Express"! It looks like my type of movie and something I need to track down! Much appreciated!
The last ten minutes of [rec] might be the freakiest stretch of horror film that I have ever seen – psychic venom for the next generation of Traumaniacs. It was one of those rare moments in horror films where I was left wondering "What the hell am I looking at?"
First of all, that Zuni-Where-the-Wild-Things-Art is genius!
Secondly, I really enjoy Burl's blog.
Also, I've been wanting to see Ghost Dance. I have to get on that! And why is everyone bringing up Primal Rage all of the sudden. I NEED to find my copy ASAP!
I'd also like to say that the Zuni Doll / Sendak image is fantastic. And Malpertuis is a movie well worth checking out.
I too was traumatized by "Trilogy of Terror" when I was eight. I had nightmares for weeks after it and no one could even mention that film around me until I was thirteen. The fact that I had GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) didn't help. About fifteen years ago, a friend of mine and I rented the film, drank some beers and watched it. First time I'd seen it since I was eight. This was really cathartic, because I could see how hokey the first two tales in the film were, I could fully appreciate Karen Black's genius in this film as an adult, and I could see just how primitive some of the special effects were. Very cathartic – but I'm not sure I'd ever want to watch it again!