UNSWEET DREAMS

All of the above.

PUT IT ON - GO NUTS - KILL! (II)

The Mask, d. Julian Roffman (1961)

Eleven years ago, I posted some shots from one of the incredible 3D sequences of this overlooked Canadian horror film. I still like it, so here's some more.

MEANWHILE, IN LYNCHLAND...

Absurd Encounter With Fear, d. David Lynch (USA, 1967)

David Lynch's enigmatic debut film is a mere two minutes long, but manages to be packed with his characteristic mix of horror, humour and unknowable oddness. In it, a blue faced man lumbers across a meadow towards a frightened looking girl. Drawing close to her, he fiddles with his fly and pulls out handfuls of dandelions. The girl is oblivious to what he is doing. When he is finished, he turns to gaze directly at the viewer, and he then collapses, presumably dead. 

Lynch died on the 16th of January last year. This world is lousy without him.

DANCE AWAY

 

Hepcats get hip in The Horror Of Party Beach (1964), a genuinely terrible film made all the worse by having some quite good elements, not least some of the music and the editing, which is excellent. 

In it, a radioactive waste spill on the ocean floor turns the skeletons of long dead sailors into rubbery looking monsters with big googly eyes and a grudge against teenagers. As there are hundreds of them constantly frugging on the beach, the monsters assume someone has laid on a buffet and proceed to kill as many as they can. Only sodium can stop them, and lots of it. It's quite gory, really, but the monsters are made unscary by looking exactly like our old mate the Soup Dragon from The Clangers.

Anyway, there's a lot of dancing (see above).

THIRSTY WORK

I Drink Your Blood, d. David E. Durston (1970)

When a satanic hippie cult descend on a small town and make a nuisance of themselves, a small boy gives them a tray of meat pies he has injected with the blood of a rabid dog. The consequences of this unusual but totally understandable action (they assaulted the boy's sister and forced his Grandpa to take LSD) are rapid and irrevocable: madness, cannibalism and an orgy of infection and bloody death ensues. It's a terrible film, really, which is why I only ever watch it once or twice a year.

Happy Halloween, people. Trick, treat, eat, drink and be merry - but maybe give the pies a miss, who knows what might be in them?

BRIGHT STAR

 

Fear No Evil, d. Frank LaLoggia (1981)

An atmospheric, slightly hysterical movie teling the hitherto untold tale of the son of the Devil's troubled teenaged years in in the suburban hell of Rochester, New York, Fear No Evil has a great punk / new wave soundtrack, an often unwholesome blend of sex and violence, and a genuinely exciting, partially animated climax in which Lucifer Jr. is destroyed by the coruscating, cleansing light of a processional cross to semi-psychedelic and eye rubbing effect.

WHERE SCIENCE & THE OCULT CLASH!

Nothing But The Night, d. Peter Sasdy (1973)

Nothing But The Night is a bit of a one off, which is wholly appropriate given that it was the sole product of Charlemagne Films, a company set up to make intelligent horror films but lost so much money that they folded before they could make a follow up.   

The narrative takes a while to come together but, ultimately, it turns out to be a curious mix of (to paraphrase the US poster) science and the occult, with some lovely Highlands and Islands scenery and a great cast, including Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Kathleen Byron, Keith Barron, Fulton Mackay and Cassandra out of ‘Only Fools & Horses’ as a kid who WILL-NOT-STOP-SCREAMING and, ultimately, will utter the greatest lines ever spoken on film by a child:

"You've destroyed my dreams. I curse your cruel God"

At its core is a rather disquieting tale of child abuse in a remote orphanage, but perhaps not in the way that you might immediately think. There’s also a marvellous sequence in which dear old Diana Dors (playing a crazy, shouty clairvoyant) goes feral, running around the countryside evading the authorities like a chocolate munching Ray Mears in a ginger wig and red leatherette rain coat.

Little seen, somewhat neglected, this film always reminds me of a pleasing mix of ‘The Damned’ and ‘Scream and Scream Again’, and although it’s no kind of masterpiece, it nevertheless has strange ideas and weird horror at its core, and that’s like Turkish Delight on Toast for me. 

DEMONS OF THE PSYCHEDROME

Issue 94, week ending August 4th, 1976.

Obviously inspired by the incorporation of Dracula Lives into the Planet Of The Apes comic in issue 88, this cover gleefully ramps up the usually neglected gothic horror aspect of the series to exhilarating effect.

A PICTURE YOU CANNOT FORGET

 

Carnival of Souls (1962) is one of my favourite films, so I've seen it lots of times. Up until yesterday, however, I hadn't seen the colorized version, from which this screenshot is taken. The finished product reminds me of the makeup morticians apply to corpses.

THREE (MORE) SHOTS

 

A brief (final) press of the Return button for Ghost In The Machine. Yes, that's Karen Allen.

PC GONE MAD

Ghost In The Machine, d. Rachel Talalay (1993) 

Have you ever wondered what might happen if, at the point of his own death, a serial killer was absorbed into a powerful computer network and then continued his murderous career using microwave ovens, hand driers, dish washers and ATM machines? No, me neither, or no yo tampoco, as they say in Spanish. 

The main issue with this film is that it is just so creaky and stilted, with the actors clearly being unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the 'state of the art' (see above) effects they were supposed to be reacting and responding to*. Nowadays, of course, movies use CGI for even mundane things, so actors have got much  better at this sort of pretending. 

Ghost In The Machine cost $12m, made less than half of its budget back and would have been pretty much completely out of date before the credits finished rolling. Oh, well, mas que nada, as they say in Portugese.

* The dialogue is also awful, and the lead kid is annoying.