kindertrauma

Blu-ray Review:: Madhouse (1981) (Arrow Video)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I don't always upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray but when I do, it's for a movie that I especially enjoy on a visual level. MADHOUSE is just such a film. I've already fawned all over this underrated gem way back HERE so I'll try not to repeat myself by focusing on this particular release from the always impressing folks at ARROW VIDEO. Not surprisingly, the movie (and its star TRISH EVERLY) looks more gorgeous than ever before thanks to a brand new restoration from the original camera negative (I usually don't remark much on something as superficial as an actress's looks but EVERLY is the most beautiful lady I ever did see and her character Julia should be sainted for the sweet way she delivers bad news to deaf children). My eyes can barely handle all of this candy: MADHOUSE's nights are darker, its stain glass windows shine brighter and suddenly tiny details I've missed before are popping up like daisies.

All of this beauty comes to a head in the film's final scene; the strings of glowing Christmas lights at Julia's gruesome birthday party look positively stunning and suddenly I'm spying a shelf of creepy baby dolls that I've somehow never noticed before. This is why I love MADHOUSE so much; it really digs the juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, the sacred and the profane, the cheery and the dismal. Plus I think it has something interesting to say about how organized religion may not always be rooting for the righteous team and how family ties can be excruciatingly difficult to sever. It rather neatly falls into the Kindertrauma spectrum since Julia was cruelly abused in her youth and no matter how she tries to spin a positive life for herself, that original bite continues to gnaw. I can almost see Julia's plagued twin sister Mary as a less scary precursor to PET SEMATARY's twisted Zelda as she is able to conjure up feelings of familial guilt and pity along with the terror.

Plus there's a commentary from the THE HYSTERIA CONTINUES! I usually shy away from commentaries because I hate to demystify a favorite film but this particular commentary was more like watching the movie with fellow horror fan friends. Actually, I was left with a strong feeling of camaraderie because they went and mentioned our old pal Amanda (buy her book HERE!), referenced my current new wave obsession CHINA CRISIS and spent time discussing their distaste for onscreen violence towards animals and their relief that MADHOUSE's dog death is clearly realized through puppetry. I've read they'll also be providing the commentary for ARROW's upcoming release of THE SLAYER and now I'm looking forward to that even more (if that's possible).

There is also an anecdotal interview with charming character actress EDITH IVEY (who went on to work with DAVID FINCHER), cinematographer ROBERTO D'ETTORRE PIAZZOLI who delivered MADHOUSE's sleek, glossy look and an informative short featuring producer/director OVIDIO G. ASSONTIS who reveals his three main inspirations were THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and THE SHINING. In addition, there's an alternate opening sporting OVIDIO's preferred title, THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL. I do seem to appreciate this movie more than some of its creators (it's certainly not PIAZZOLI's cup of tea) but that's what being a fanatic is all about.

And finally I have to give a special shout out to MARC SCHOENBACH's fetching new cover artwork! It's usually a fool's errand to try to improve upon the classic eighties poster art that we've all grown fond of but somehow he did it. Am I just a sucker for dark silhouettes with glowing eyes? I love this illustration! It reminds me of the poster art for THE CHILD (1977) or CHILLERS (1987). If MADHOUSE had this artwork on its VHS sleeve, I'm sure it would have been difficult to keep on the video store shelves. It really does do a superior job of conveying the movie's mood over previous attempts. I'm so glad I indulged myself with this ultimate upgrade. Now I can visit my lovely Southern Gothic MADHOUSE in its best possible condition whenever I like.

Dark Shadows (The Revival 1991) shouldn't have been cancelled! By Mickster

Posted on By unkle lancifer

UNK SEZ: Hey, it's our old pal Mickster! She's got some viewing advice and an axe to grind concerning a show she loved getting the hook! Take it away, Mickster…

MICKSTER: Twenty-six years ago, a show was canceled before being given a fair shake. Had the Internet, as we know it, existed at the time, no doubt people would have expressed their outrage at NBC for letting this gem go far too soon. I remember seeing the promos for the show and being thrilled because I felt cheated that I missed the original show. Darn being born too late! My older siblings spoke of it fondly. I was lucky enough to catch House of Dark Shadows on cable when I was about ten.

The revival of Dark Shadows did not disappoint me, and a big reason for that was Dan Curtis, who created the original show, produced it. The atmosphere and acting were spot-on. I will share a few of my favorite things about the show, and if you haven't seen it, I strongly suggest you head over to Hulu and watch all 12 episodes.

#1-Ben Cross as Barnabus Collins-Ben Cross had some big shoes to fill when taking on the role of Barnabus since Jonathan Frid made the role iconic. However, I found Cross's version to have the sex appeal that Frid lacked. I could completely understand all the women of Collinsport, including straight-laced Dr. Julia Hoffman, going wild over him. Dear Barnabus, I suggest picking victims at least a couple of towns over so not to throw suspicion in your direction.

#2 Barbara Steele as Dr. Julia Hoffman-Barbara Steele is very familiar to fans of the horror genre. She portrayed Dr. Hoffman as strong-willed and intelligent. She didn't allow herself to be intimidated by Barnabus, but at the same time, she showed vulnerability when she developed feelings for him. Dear Dr. Hoffman, Betraying a vampire is NOT good for your health!

#3 Joseph Gordon-Levitt as David Collins-A very young Joseph Gordon-Levitt displayed his acting chops early with his disturbed portrayal of David Collins. He was the ultimate "creepy kid" who scared away all his governesses before Victoria Winters came to Collinwood. Dear Governesses of Young Master Collins, Don't climb into your bed without checking it thoroughly first…you're welcome!

#4 Jim Fyfe as Willie Loomis-Now I adored John Karlen as Willie Loomis, but Jim Fyfe just melted my heart. I am a southern girl so I will say, "Bless his heart!" It is true that it is his fault that Barnabus was freed from his vault to wreak havoc on the people of Collinsport, but dang it, his simple-mindedness made me feel bad for him. Dearest Willie, When Barnabus yells, "WILLIE!" Run like hell because he is about to pound the crap out of you.

#5 Joanna Going as Victoria Winters-Now, I feel Joanna Going's Victoria Winters was far superior to the original. I enjoyed her as a wide-eyed innocent thrust into the chaos of Collinwood in the present and then the past. She made it all believable. Dear Victoria Winters, You look EXACTLY like the portrait of Josette du Pres. Coincidence? I think not!

#6 Lysette Anthony as Angelique-Okay, Lysette Anthony's Angelique was the epitome of the woman scorned. Unfortunately for Barnabus, she was a woman scorned with supernatural abilities. Dear Barnabus, You should have kept your pants on all those years ago! It became Fatal Attraction circa 1790!

#7 Time Travel-I love time travel, and on Dark Shadows, the time travel was most effective. Victoria Winters was thrown back in time when a séance to contact Sarah Collins (sister of Barnabus) went terribly wrong. Victoria found herself in 1790. Accusations of witchcraft soon plagued Victoria, and her life was in danger. The viewer also was able to witness the events leading up to Barnabus's transformation into a vampire. Dear Victoria Winters, Hide your clothing labels as the symbols for laundering may be misconstrue as signs of the Devil by a nosy bitch, um, I mean Collins family member.

–MICKSTER

UNK SEZ: Thanks for the tip Mickster! It looks like I've got some watching to do. Kids, as Mickster said above, the DARK SHADOWS revival is available on HULU for free! Watch it HERE before it disappears in a puff of smoke!

Sunday Streaming: Madman (1982) (Via Tubi TV)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I should probably be forcing myself to check out one of the many recent horror movies I haven't caught up with yet but instead I'm going to watch MADMAN for the millionth time. It's the perfect time of year for a summer slasher movie especially when that summer slasher movie completely ignores the existence of the sun by taking place exclusively at night and features characters dressed as if it were the dead of winter (when they're not in a hot tub). What says summer more than howling winds, rustling dead leaves, corduroy and flannel? I'm thinking the world of MADMAN is a perfect world- because it's a world where summer doesn't exist. Putting aside its strange, BOOGENS-esque climate, MADMAN never fails to satisfy all of my horror needs. Once upon a time I used to wish for a sequel but now I know it's better off with its mythology unmarred and its low budget purity intact. This movie has everything you could want in a horror movie; a truly formidable maniac, victims who make questionable survival choices, multiple grisly deaths and a jarring synth score complimented by a legendary theme song that should have been a number one pop hit across the country. And I have to say, the cat-and-mouse stalking scenes are still pretty darn effective. Sure, it has flaws but they are enjoyable flaws. Anyway, MADMAN is available to watch on Tubi TV for free anytime you like. If you haven't seen it before, be more adventurous than myself and check it out HERE.

Name That Movie on Comet TV!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

I hope you all have been doing your homework and watching plenty of COMET TV! Below are ten images from ten movies recently shown on COMET TV. How many can you identify? The stakes are high today because one lucky player will be randomly picked to win a fabulous secret prize from COMET TV!

Devil Times Chic:: The High Fashion of Devil Times Five

Posted on By unkle lancifer

DEVIL TIMES FIVE is the most fashionable film ever made and I've got the evidence to prove it. Look at these people! They should be world famous fashion icons. And these image captures are only a drop in the bucket- I had to restrain myself from including more. Whoever was responsible for the wardrobe in this movie should have won at least five Oscars!

Sunday Streaming:: Devil Times Five (1974) (Via Tubi TV)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974) is trying to hide from me on Tubi TV by wearing its alternative title THE HORRIBLE HOUSE ON THE HILL. It won't work! I see you DT5 and you look crisper, cleaner and more colorful than ever. The only proper way to combat a hot, humid and hellish summer day is by watching a winter set film- particularly if it's a winter set film featuring a gaggle of psychopathic youngsters bent on murdering every dopey adult they encounter in a groovy seventies lodge. I've always thought there was something singularly unsettling about this film and its weird vibe. Maybe that's a natural reaction to witnessing adorable freckle-faced Dodie from MY THREE SONS (DAWN LIN) dumping a bucket of killer piranha into the bathtub occupied by an unsuspecting woman (who happens to be DAWN's real life mom, CAROLYN STELLAR. BTW-DAWN's older sibling LEIF GARRET is also on board playing a like-minded murderous tyke). THE DUKES OF HAZZARD's Boss Hogg (SORRELL BOOKE) and WILL AND GRACE's Rosario (SHELLEY MORRISON) are exactly zero help in situations like these. My advice is: grab some hooch and a couch and sit back and take in the calamities while the air conditioner churns. Be prepared for moaning slow motion kills, corpses encased in snowmen, the greatest catfight ever put to film and a disturbing young woman in a nun's habit sporting psychedelic shades. DEVIL TIMES FIVE is playing on Tubi TV HERE. If you haven't registered yet, what the devil are you waiting for? You're missing a free horror movie treasure trove!

In Memoriam:: George A. Romero

Posted on By unkle lancifer

It's a pretty good bet that I'm going to spend the entire day thinking about GEORGE A. ROMERO and the better part of the evening watching his remarkable, groundbreaking films. If a bomb dropped across the street it would be of secondary interest. Like many in the horror community I'm sure, I feel shell-shocked, it feels like a favorite teacher, mentor or spiritual Godfather has departed. I have never met Mr. ROMERO but he surely had a big impact on my life. I was born the year NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was being filmed, DAWN OF THE DEAD rammed right up against my adolescence and DAY OF THE DEAD knocked me upside my teenage head. I don't have any personal anecdotes to share about him but allow me to indulge myself with some memories of some of the many times he fueled my love and (and genuine fear) of horror films. (The following is in the order of my own viewings rather than when the films were released).

DAWN OF THE DEAD

Somehow I saw DAWN OF THE DEAD before NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was in the earliest days of the VCR and nothing could prepare me for it. It certainly terrified me but it was also the coolest thing on earth! I was probably about 13 or 14 at the time and a big part of me was super ready for the entire world to drop dead and for me to live in a mall in which everything was free for the taking. You can probably see it coming a mile away these days but at the time, the helicopter zombie decapitation absolutely blew my mind and inspired many a rewind.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

For (I believe) several years, early MTV showed NOTLD on Halloween night. I was addicted to slashers at the time but it made it very clear to me that black and white movies could be just as frightening as the then modern fare I was devouring. Geez, that little girl (Karen) in the basement! The echoing screams of her mother! It's horror at its purest. In addition, NOTLD still has one of the strongest opening sequences I can think of and I feel right at home inside the screen having spent my earliest days on this planet right outside of Pittsburgh (shout out to Allison Park!).

KNIGHTRIDERS

I didn't have HBO as a kid but my friend did and it was always a blast to check out salacious flicks like TATTOO and VICE SQUAD while guzzling sodas that don't exist anymore and chomping on bags of garbage. I'm going to say that the ground zero of my puberty occurred sometime while watching KNIGHTRIDERS and leave it at that. This is yet another great example of ROMERO being completely original and marching to the beat of his own drum.

CREEPSHOW

This movie was a damn big deal in my house and my younger brother was an even bigger fan of it than myself. We collected horror movie posters at the time and that CREEPSHOW poster was certainly one of the most striking and I'll always be obsessed with that little rat crawling through the ghoul's burlap looking cape. CREEPSHOW is known for being a lot of fun but it sure as hell scared the bejesus out of me too. I will forever and always be freaked out by TED DANSON's submerged gurgling undead voice when he returns to exact his watery revenge. I need to also mention that the cover of FANGORIA with E.G. MARSHALL's bug filled face bursting on it is one of the best things ever and I still remember greedily reading that issue in our screened in back porch. The cover has separated itself from its staples but I still proudly own that poor mangled thing.

TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE

ROMERO's creatively creepy anthology series always had a knack of appearing at times when my brain was most susceptible to its shenanigans. Its opening narration and theme music were like a dog whistle alerting me that normalcy was about to jump out the window and be replaced by total unpredictability. Would it be funny, scary, weird, thoughtful or confounding or all of the above? You never knew what you were going to get, you just knew it would be far off the beaten track and a freaky good time.

MARTIN

I felt exactly as weird and ostracized as Martin as a teenager but looking back, he probably had it more together than I ever did. I was a big new wave music fan around this time and was so happy when I bought a SOFT CELL album that included a 12-inch song entitled MARTIN written in tribute to the film. I actually saw it a couple of weeks ago at a record store and I'm now going to hit myself in the face for not picking it because it may be the perfect song to annoy the neighbors…

DAY OF THE DEAD

Ack! Between you and me and the lamppost, I may own a copy of DAY OF THE DEAD and I may think it is brilliant but I've only truly watched it from beginning to end once (as far as I remember). My little brother and I happily went to see a midnight showing of it in Texas when it was first released and it left me with such a dire, hopeless soul-killing feeling that I never dared to watch it again. Maybe I was having mental problems at the time but it really clung to me like a morose, unshakable grimy cloud. I hereby promise to force myself to break the curse and watch it again soon to see if it still murders my precarious sense of well-being.

MONKEY SHINES

Aw, here's the perfect cure for DAY OF THE DEAD. I love this movie. Is it bad that MONKEY SHINES may well be my favorite ROMERO film? I can't help it.I‘ve got a soft spot for psychological thrillers and an even softer spot for that adorable monkey, Ella. Listen folks, there are very few movies that properly capture the complexities of an animal's personality or the intricacies of the loving relationship between a human and their pet. What ROMERO did with this movie and how he presents Ella is incredibly impressive. I don't care if there was more than one monkey; this has to be one of the greatest animal performances of all time. Also the strong emotional tie that is depicted in this movie totally reminds me of how I feel about my cats and how my cats (surely) feel about me so…now I know the power of representation!

LAND OF THE DEAD (plus DIARY and SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD)

By the time LAND OF THE DEAD came out I was a full grown fully dysfunctional semi-maybe adult (sorta, if you squint your eyes). Frankly after my experience with DAY OF THE DEAD I had some true trepidation mixed with my excitement to return to ROMERO's vision. I wasn't disappointed and I remember feeling particularly anxious during its zombies on the waterfront scene. DIARY and SURVIVAL came out over the last ten years while we've been doing this site. They are certainly stranger, more idiosyncratic takes on the DEAD and whether you like them or not, they also feel more personal. I'm so glad ROMERO got the chance to really experiment in his sandbox and I admire him for not taking the easy, more commercial route. He gave us horror fans, SO MUCH (and he gave us so much even after he was royally screwed on his rights to his unfathomably influential first feature film). He cut his own path and told us things that only he could. He made real art that whispered truths about humanity and culture that we'll be happily deciphering and unraveling for decades to come. He generously entertained us while making us think and if you don't agree, well then I'll just have to quote my pal Barbara, "You're ignorant".

Sunday Streaming:: Bad Moon (1996) (Via Shout Factory TV)

Posted on By unkle lancifer

Hey, it's been a while since we visited the fine folks over at the free streaming joint SHOUT FACTORY TV and it looks like they have a bunch of cool new stuff up! BAD MOON! That's a good one! Let's have a BAD MOON party!

I'm going to let you in on a little life hacking tip, if you are having a crappy day all you need to turn it around is a werewolf movie and an alcoholic beverage of your choice. In extreme cases, you might want to find a werewolf movie that stars a dog. BAD MOON is a werewolf movie that indeed stars a dog. In fact, it's based on a book entitled THOR, which tells the entire tale (haha) from the doggie's viewpoint (I don't recommend the audio book though – it's just a lot of barking). Honestly, I remember not being crazy about BAD MOON when I saw it in the theaters but it certainly has grown on me over the years. At first I could only see the missed opportunities but now that I've come to understand that MICHAEL PARE and MARIEL HEMINGWAY movies don't exactly grow on trees, I can appreciate it better. Plus, I just love the look of the werewolf in this movie. He's got that standing upright HOWLING-thing going on which I prefer to the simple fur-face or crawling-on-all-fours kind. All of the classic werewolf themes concerning our darker selves, loss of control and fear of hurting others are present and accounted for, plus you get a crispy new spin involving family loyalty and a mother having to learn to let go of her troubled sibling for the safety of her child (and there's no denying the abject kindertrauma of a ten foot tall werewolf grabbing a ten year old boy by the throat). BAD MOON was torn apart like an old shoe by critics back in the day but I think it was more of a bad timing thing than anything else. If you just imagine it's from 1986 rather than 1996 it starts looking a lot better, even charming.

As said above, BAD MOON is currently available to watch for FREE over at SHOUT FACTORY's pad HERE! If you enjoy it you should buy the Blu-ray too because it looks like they dug up a lot of interesting extra features including a commentary by director ERIC RED (who wrote the classic THE HITCHER!). Sure, at the end of the day, I wish BAD MOON showed a little more werewolf than it does but let's face it, there will never be enough werewolf for me. As is, it's a finer breed than it's usually given credit for and should provide a howling good time on a Sunday afternoon.

Name That Tom Holland Movie!

Posted on By unkle lancifer

The great TOM HOLLAND had a birthday this past week (July 11th) so let's say we celebrate his wonderful career. Below are twelve images from twelve movies (or TV episodes) that he either wrote or directed or in some cases, both! How many can you identify?