EVIL DEAD - (1983; USA)

Five young people go to a secluded cabin in the woods. They find and play a recorded transcript of the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. This results in them battling, and becoming, the Evil Dead. The setup is standard, to say the least. Of course, there's nothing wrong with using horror picture clichés as long as you do something with them. (In fact, you're more apt to screw up by trying to make horror flicks too artistic, forgetting that they are supposed to provoke very simple responses from the audience.) First time director Sam Raimi delivers the goods in spades, with an unrelenting series of grotesque set pieces laced with an undercurrent of very black humor. Made on the proverbial shoestring, Evil Dead was released when the showcasing of gore effects was the entire rationale behind the production of most horror films. This resulted in the film being victimized by the kind of Bored Critic ‘it's-only-a-horror-movie’ reviews that have plagued almost every low budget horror pic ever released (90% of the time with good reason). Evil Dead’s heavy ladlings of gore only made the movie that much easier to pigeonhole and ignore. As usual with films, genre ones in particular, it took some time to look back and separate the wheat from the chaff. With an early championing by Stephen King leading the way, a critical reexamination of Evil Dead began. By the time Raimi's superior follow up, Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn, came out, Evil Dead was being hailed as an underground classic. The picture smartly moves too quickly to allow us to question the inevitable lapses in logic, and Raimi really shows a fine sense of what is disturbing. After all, how many of us are ever going to be be threatened by an axe or chainsaw? But seeing a character mercilessly attacked with a pencil really heightens the ugggh factor. Also inherently revolting is being forced to dismember your girlfriend (the only way to stop the Dead). Even the title is representative of the film, with the cut-to-the-chase quality of, say, Night Of The Living Dead. The most vivid memory I have in relation to the film, however, comes from an interview with Raimi on the British TV series Incredibly Strange Film Show, shown here on cable. Raimi was asked whether, in retrospect, he regretted the inclusion of the film's most controversial sequence, where a woman is raped by the possessed vines and branches of the surrounding woods. Nine times out of ten, when a filmmaker (who inevitably seem to consider themselves the new Welles or Hitchcock) is asked such a question, their sneered reply ends up being a variation on "Look, bub, I'm an Artist, and anyone who wants me to censor my vision is a Nazi Philistine!". The remaining guy would readily admit that they should have changed the film, but for purely commercial reasons, falling back on what they portray as a hip cynicism: "Look, man, everyone's a whore in this business, it's just that I'm not about to lie about it". Raimi didn't rely on either of these stock answers, advancing the novel notion that he actually wanted his audience to have a good time watching his film. If the scene crossed the line for some viewers, reducing their enjoyment factor, he was indeed sorry. Don't doubt his passion for his work though. Raimi and his friends (including Evil Dead star and high school chum Bruce Campbell) spent years lugging around their sample short film In the Woods (an embryonic version of Evil Dead), screening it for local doctors, store owners, whoever might have enough money to invest in the film. The rest is history. In spite of second thoughts on the rape scene, though, perhaps the best news is that Raimi, as Evil Dead II shows, is still willing to offend some people for the amusement of others. It might be a bizarre distinction to say that dismemberment can be hilarious, while rape is always offensive, but some are happy to draw that line. Fans should be sure to pick up the nifty deluxe edition Evil Dead DVD, which presents the film in letterbox along with two Commentary Tracks, one featuring Raimi and the other a oft-hilarious Bruce Campbell.

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EVIL DEAD II: DEAD BY DAWN - (1987; USA)

Sam Raimi's sequel to his own The Evil Dead is the most fun horror flick of the '80s, a hilarious over the top, in your face masterpiece. Whereas Evil Dead was basically a bloody horror film with a strong undercurrent of black humor, Evil Dead II is a very black comedy with a strong undercurrent of bloody horror. It's kind of a Three Stooges on acid crossed with The Exorcist. As George Miller's The Road Warrior was to the earlier Mad Max, Evil Dead II is really a (much) more assured and (slightly) better funded remake of the original movie than a sequel. Bruce Campbell returns to play Ashe again (or Ashe II, since there is no continuity between the first film and the second) and again fights for his life and sanity against Dark Forces. Said Forces being unleashed when a tape recording of transcribed portions of the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead, is played. This time Ashe himself is the one to play the tape, so at least he's a bit more responsible for what happens to him. While everything from whole scenes to individual shots from The Evil Dead are redone here, just enough has been changed so that having seen the first film makes this even more nail biting. In spite of its considerable gore and horrible events, only the most conservative will find it offensive. This movie has what has to be the funniest dismemberment scene in film history, and its innovative introduction of the ‘flying-eyeball cam’ seems sure to earn it a place in cinema history. Besides, considering how far gore has pushed the envelope since the ‘70s, it could be that the intentionally humorous, over-the-top gore of this film, Re-Animator and Basket Case, which probably culminated with Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, might have been the last fresh direction ultra-graphic violence could have taken. By the way, is it just me or does George Harrison's video for his song "Got My Mind Set on You", where he's sitting surrounded by dancing furniture and stuffed animals and such, seem awfully similar to Evil Dead II's scenes of possessed furniture and animal heads tormenting the inhabitants of the besieged cabin? The more overtly comical Army Of Darkness was the third, and so far last, film in the series.

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EVIL TOONS - (1991; USA)

Director Fred Olen Ray attempts to reproduce the success of his cheeseball camp triumph Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, and partially succeeds. Evil Toons isn't great, but it delivers enough self-conscious laughs with the obligatory plentiful T & A to make this better than average late night cable fare. Up 'n' coming Scream Queen Monique Gabrille and three of her stacked friends are hired to spend the weekend in a spooky house, cleaning up before the new owners arrive on Monday. They find a trunk containing an evil looking book (complete with a horrible face), a dagger and a blanket. Gabrille reads one of the book's incantations, releasing an "evil toon" (only one, despite the title). Said Toon, due to budget constraints, makes only a few short appearances. It mostly possesses some of the girls, thus holding down animation expenditures. The Toon is kind of a Tasmanian devil type, and has some amusing cartoon reactions when he sees his first victim undress. The girl's humorously self-aware dialogue makes it clear that they know they're in a horror movie, or maybe that they’ve just seen too many of them. Let me point out that this was made years before hundreds of millions of dollars were raked in with the similarly themed Scream series. The film also provides roles for cult figures Dick Miller (who spends one scene watching himself in Roger Corman's Bucket Of Blood!), David "Kung Fu" Carradine, and Arte Johnson (!!). One wonders if they're embarrassed to end up in such cheap-jack direct-to-video stuff, or just glad to get some work. Scream Queen Hall of Fame'r Michelle Bauer also shows up for about thirty seconds, long enough to pull her top off and let her fans know she's staying in shape. One thing that I found interesting was that when the girls got their clothes ripped off while being attacked, I found it much more exploitative than when they just "undressed". Nudity is part and parcel in films like these, but I was much more comfortable watching them strip for such plot contrivances as getting ready for bed (surprisingly, there are no shower scenes here). And a happy ending removes some of the stigma. The face on the evil book is a well done puppet that ‘comes to life’ occasionally to comment on the action. So if you're looking for some good looking naked women, some fairly restrained violence and a couple of guffaws, you could certainly do worse. Best line, after the heroine helps destroys the demon: "You bitch, I'll get you in the sequel for this".

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THE EXORCIST - (1973; USA)

A twelve year old girl turns against her mom, starts swearing, throwing up on the rug, and masturbating with a crucifix. Kind of the whole Sixties thing wrapped up in one package. After Animal House came out this kind of material was used in comedies, but this is a horror movie. Max von Sydow stars as the title character, a priest attempting to expel the girl's demons. This amazingly successful film opened the floodgates for horror flicks. More to the point, aside from kicking off the inevitable deluge of low budget rip-offs, it also alerted the major studios that there was serious cash to be made with horror movies. In the old days, when Mom and Dad chose what movies to see, the major studios were better off making movies with a broad appeal, letting the small guys grab the nickel and dime niche markets. The growing teen market created in the 1950s, aided and abetted by the emergence of drive-in movie theaters, eventually changed all that. Horror flicks had always been a staple for the independent film maker. Cheap to produce and having a large yet undemanding guaranteed audience (mostly teens who grooved on seeing things that scandalized their parents), the independents also had the lure of being a bit more graphic in matter of sex and violence. After films like The Exorcist gave the big studios a whiff of large profits, however, they stopped being quite so fastidious. They started turning out pictures just as graphic as the independents, but with better effects and production values, and hyped with major ad campaigns. A small ‘Blaxploitation’ film like Abbey, for instance, could never hope to find the audience of sleazy major studio offerings like The Omen. The independent market was partially revived in the early ‘80s by the video market, when anything on tape was guaranteed to sell ‘X’ amount of units (again, with genre staples like horror movies doing a bit better). Therefore, a film produced on the right budget was once more seemingly guaranteed to turn a profit. However, the novelty of video is gone, the once lucrative cable market has gone flat, and again the big studios are in the driver’s seat. (Until they get killed by the Internet, anyway.) In any case, The Exorcist isn't as shocking as it once was (what is?). One of the first horror movies to sport a big name cast, it stars not only von Sydow but also Lee J. Cobb and Ellen Burstyn. Meanwhile, the role of Regan, the possessed little girl, made Linda Blair an instant pop icon. She's still active in the business, turning out the occasional cheesy item like Roller Boogy or Hell Night or Repossessed, a fairly lame parody of The Exorcist starring the inevitable Leslie Nielsen as the priest . The film also spawned perhaps the worst sequel in history, the Richard Burton epic Exorcist II (wow, good title, though), as well as major bombola Exorcist III. The film is available on DVD in both a bare bones and ‘deluxe’ version.

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FACE AT THE WINDOW, THE - (1939; UK)

Tod Slaughter, still quite obscure here in the States, was in the ‘30s and '40s Britain's answer to America's Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Well, actually Lugosi was Hungarian, and Karloff was himself British, but you know what I mean. Having seen Slaughter at work, I'd have to say he's more reminiscent of second string horror star Lionel Atwill, both being pudgy faced and exceedingly hammy. (Atwill, like George Zucco, starred in the horror films that couldn't afford or procure the services of Lugosi or Karloff). One of the reasons Slaughter has probably remained so unknown in this country is that the English Government at the time was extremely skittish about horror movies. In fact, they basically outlawed them for a period in the late ‘30s. This is one of the main reasons Hollywood's Universal Studios stopped producing their trademark monster movies during that period (yes, there was a time when those old-fogie horror flicks were considered too scary to be shown). So needless to say, the films Slaughter made in the UK were pretty tame, pretty much just melodramas with a few gothic touches thrown in. As an example, think of the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. It’s a murder mystery that uses the legend of a ghastly supernatural hound as a backstory, but ultimately provides a more mundane solution. In other words, enough to provide a slightly spooky mood but not enough to incur the wrath of the censures. Set in 1880s France, The Face at the Window showcases Slaughter as a prominent citizen who is actually The Wolf, a mysterious murderer who has been terrorizing Paris. After a wolf's cry rings out, dying victims are invariably found who with their dying breath repeat "The Face at the Window!" Slaughter wants to wed a banker's beautiful daughter, and so frames her lover, one of her father's clerks. The lover escapes, and finally, after some fairly preposterous adventures, uses a electronic gizmo that supposedly reanimates the dead to expose the real killer. The story is played broadly, to say the least, and Slaughter is so hammy as The Wolf that I was honestly surprised that he didn't twirl his mustache in the manner of Snidely Whiplash. Such is his performance that he occasionally makes Bela Lugosi seem subtle. All in all, I enjoyed it, but could only recommend it to fans of that time period.

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FIEND WITHOUT A FACE - (1958; USA)

A cult classic! Invisible monsters are on the loose in Canada, causing problems for a nearby U.S. Air Base. The beasties are sucking the brains out of their victims, accompanied by loud slurping sounds. Gross! It turns out the monsters were created by the IDiotic experiments of a mad scientist exploring the possibilities of telepathy. In the awesome conclusion, the monsters turn visible and lay siege to the surviving characters. This part of the film is filled with great FX, the kind that make fourteen year-olds laugh and yell "Sick!" while pointing at the TV screen. Even before the monsters materialize, we are treated to some pretty cool scenes of the invisible beasties tearing through screens and cutting across puddles to reach their victims. Some have mocked the film, and it does have its problems (you don’t shut down an out-of-control nuclear reactor by blowing it up, for instance). Still, those interested will note the care taken with lighting and such to create as spooky an atmosphere as possible. They certainly put a lot more effort into it than most other independents of the period would have. Tim Burton paid homage to this fan fave in BEETLEJUICE, and it's exactly the type of film you'd think he grew up on. Great stuff.

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THE FOG - (1980; USA)

John Carpenter's follow-up to Halloween. The film opens on a nighttime beachside campfire. Old salt John Houseman begins one last scary tale to frighten the young campers. It's almost midnight, and at 12:00 it will be the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Elizabeth Dane, a sailing vessel that sank on the rocks of Spiney Cove. Houseman relates the legend detailing how the sailors of the doomed ship will rise on the hundredth anniversary of their deaths to seek others to share their fate. Meanwhile, in local Amity Bay, folks are preparing to celebrate the founding of the town, also one hundred years ago today. As midnight strikes, bizarre happenings occur, and out at sea three men are brutally slain by the resurrected crew of the Elizabeth Dane. Things quiet down at the end of the witching hour, but some residents learn dark secrets about the founding of the town that indicate the deaths will continue. While not as good a flick as Halloween, and although it does lose steam before the finish, this is an underrated picture that has a nicely elegant backdrop, as all ghost stories should, and makes fine cinematic use of the rolling fog. Carpenter has a cameo as a church janitor. Typical of Carpenter's in-jokes is the naming of characters after friends, and the fact that the local medic is listed in the credits as Dr. Phibes. Good cast: Tom Atkins, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jamie's mom Janet Leigh, Carpenter's then wife Adrienne Barbeau, and Hal Holbrook as the town minister, the type of part Donald Pleasance would usually play in Carpenter's stuff. Carpenter also provided, as usual, the film’s fine musical soundtrack, one that in my opinion ranks right up there with his music for Halloween. Unfortunately, Carpenter’s films are more vulnerable than most to being radically diminished by ‘pan and scanning’ (also known as ‘standard’ and ‘full frame’ formatting), the technique whereby the sides of the movie are clipped off so as to ‘fit’ squarely on a television screen. Therefore, it’s a shame that many of his films, including this one, aren’t yet available on DVD, which tends to provide a letterboxed presentation. Keep an eye out, though, and when the film appears, grab it.

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FRANKENSTEIN - (1931; USA)

First off, let's get something straight, once and for all: Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who created the Monster, not the name of the Monster itself. Got that? OK. As soon as Universal Studios got a gander at the profits that Tod Browning's Dracula had rolling in, they began production of this movie, which was released later the same year. Bela Lugosi refused to play the mute monster, and English actor William Platt, who used the screen name Boris Karloff, got the part. Karloff was a smash, and Lugosi never regained the ground he had lost. The movie begins with Edward Van Sloan, who played Van Helsing in Dracula and here played Frankenstein's mentor, coming out to warn the audience about the "weird tale" they are about to see. The film proper begins in an improbably gothic cemetery, with Doc Frankenstein and his obligatory hunchbacked sidekick Fritz skulking around waiting to grab a corpse or two. The rest is pretty well known, with Frankenstein treading where Man was not meant to go. Fritz, played by Dwight Frye, who played the nutty Renfield in Dracula, is sent to retrieve the brain of an eminent scientist and humanitarian for Frankenstein's creation. He ruins it by mistake and grabs the convenient "criminal brain" near by. The rest is cinema history. Colin Clive as Frankenstein has the great scene where, watching the body of the Monster stir after bombarding it with lightning, he starts hysterically yelling, "It's alive! Alive!". However, the controversial line where he shouts that he now knows what it feels like to be God was cut from later presentations. It was at last restored on the utterly marvelous DVD of the film. The Monster escapes (after being tormented by Fritz and avoiding surgical dismemberment by Sloan), kills some people and is finally hunted down by the old villagers with rakes and torches (though to be fair, at this point they were the new villagers with rakes and torches). The Monster also, in perhaps the film’s most famous scene, accidentally drowns a little girl with whom he had been tossing flowers in a lake. When they ran out of flowers, he tosses her in, thinking she will float also. Oh, well. Karloff, who strove to make the Monster sympathetic in spite of his crimes, hated the footage where he actually threw the girl in the lake. He thought that it been shot in such a manner that the audience would think the Monster had purposely killed her. In any case, the scene was considered so horrifying at the time of initial release that it was cut out anyway. However, the scene has been restored on video and DVD, and I don't think Karloff had anything to worry about. His acting is accomplished enough that you understand that the Monster tossed the girl into the lake with innocent intent. Karloff is nothing short of tremendous as the Monster, bringing genuine pathos to a part that in lesser hands might have floundered. His range while working under 40+ pounds of makeup and gear is incredible. Of special note is the famous image of the Monster futilely reaching to grasp the warm rays of the sun after Frankenstein opens a skylight. Karloff went on to play the Monster in two more pictures before retiring from the part, feeling that the Monster was being turned into a mindless parody of his former screen self. The Monster supposedly meets his maker (well, his heavenly one anyway) in a burning windmill, but survived to return in the all-time classic The Bride Of Frankenstein. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who is interested in horror films should run to pick up the DVD of the film. Aside from the best presentation of the film to be found, it includes a simply smashing documentary on the film, as well as an expert Commentary Track by film historian Rudy Behlmer. Part of a package of five films (along with Karloff’s The Mummy, Lugosi’s Dracula, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man) featuring copious extras assembled by ace horror historian David J. Skal, these are some of the first DVDs to really exploit the possibilities of the format.

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FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN - (1943; USA)

Taking place after events from Universal's The Ghost Of Frankenstein and The Wolfman, this was the first of the studio's monster team-up pictures. Fearing audiences were getting bored, the studio started giving fans more fang for their buck (get it? I thought of that myself) by using multiple monsters. Though none of these films were as good as the best of the solo pictures, they still retain their share of charm. We open in England, years after the tragic events portrayed in The Wolfman. Grave robbers break into the Talbot family crypt, lured by tales of riches buried with the dead. Unfortunately for them, the full moon is shining brightly through a mausoleum window when they flip the top off of Larry Talbot's stone casket. This is a genuinely eerie sequence and is the best thing in the picture. After reviving, Talbot realizes that for all intents and purposes he is immortal. Racked by guilt for his crimes, and fearful of those he knows he will commit, Talbot seeks death. To this end he tracks down Minerva, the old gypsy woman. Minerva was the mother of the werewolf that bit Talbot in the first place. She suggests that they go see a certain Dr. Frankenstein, a scientist on the continent who has a reputation as a miracle worker. However, they find upon arriving in Frankenstein's home village that he is dead, and that the local folk don't take kindly to those asking about the Frankensteins (who can blame them - it's like asking people in Tokyo where Godzilla was last seen). While searching for Frankenstein's papers, Talbot comes across the Monster in the ruins of the laboratory. Eventually another scientist agrees to help Talbot and also destroy the Monster, who is as immortal in his way as Talbot. Of course, the scientist ultimately decides he can't destroy the greatest scientific miracle of the age. He revives the Monster instead, setting the stage for the climatic battle. This is a pretty good movie, and Chaney shines with his most famous character. Bela Lugosi, however, finally playing The Monster (a role he rejected when the first Frankenstein was made), is another matter. Lugosi was in his sixties here, well too old to convincingly play the part. As well, his career was in a shambles, while drug related health problems were already plaguing him. So it’s hardly surprising that his performance here is at best lackluster. Even giving Lugosi some slack, though, watching this makes you realize what a disaster Frankenstein might have been had Boris Karloff not ended up with the part. Chaney had played the Monster in the previous The Ghost Of Frankenstein, and the original plans for Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman had Chaney playing both Talbot and the Monster. That, however, proved too complicated. Meanwhile, The Ghost Of Frankenstein ended with the Monster receiving the brain of the murderous Ygor, played by Lugosi. One assumes this is why Bela got here. My favorite scene takes place at a generic Bavarian Wine Festival, ala Hollywood. During this big production number, the lead singer happens to serenade Talbot's table with the wish that they live eternally. Larry fails to appreciate the gesture.

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FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE - (1991; USA)

By the time this flick rolled around, pledged to be the last appearance of Freddy Krueger on the big screen, Wes Craven's original and truly frightening creation was starting to look a little threadbare. The main reasons: overexposure and the tendency of hands lessor than Craven's (who created but didn’t own Freddy) to highlight Krueger's wisecracking over the his power as a subtle and demonic manipulator of his victim's dreams. This films suffers from both tendencies. First, Freddy had already, in less than ten years, appeared in five earlier films as well as starring in his own weekly TV series (!) Freddy's Nightmares. Second, writing lame one-liners for Freddy was easier than the kind of intuitive and horrifying dream analysis Craven was capable of. So this is a particularly tired effort, whose only apparent point was to squeeze a couple more bucks out of the Krueger franchise by promising that this time we would really, truly get to see Freddy finally get whacked. The problems are apparent from the beginning. Whereas Craven created vast amounts of tension by having ‘dream reality’ slowly leak into our ‘real’ reality, here pretty much the entire film is set in the dream world. Freddy hunts down a couple of more kids, but the film is even more overtly comical (and less funny) than the previous entries, and Freddy is thus weakened, becoming a vaguely ridiculous figure. And there was yet another running problem with the series. Each new film would screw around with Freddy’s backstory, in ways that contradicted the earlier films and which would then be ignored in the next film. Needless to say, this made things a little hard to follow for fans of the series (assuming there were any left by this time). Still and all, this is by far the silliest and worst entry, relying on gimmicks like having the ending shot in 3-D (which is flat, of course, on video anyway) and having a truly pointless cameo by Rosanne and Tom Arnold. Genre pro Yaphet Kotto is around mainly to figure out a scheme to get Krueger. Amazingly, however, he ends up with the same plan that Nancy, Freddy's original nemesis in Nightmare On Elm Street, used. We know it didn’t work for her, so why would it work now? Of course, Freddy did return (just like Jason did after his ‘last’ appearance in Friday The 13th V: The Final Chapter) in Wes Craven's New Nightmare. However, since New Line Cinema was able to convince Freddy's creator to come back one more time, Freddy was brought back in a totally original concept that even avoided damaging the continuity of the original film series. In fact, the smart way to truly enjoy the Elm Street films is to stick to the ones Craven worked on: the first Nightmare On Elm Street, Nightmare On Elm Street III: Dream Warriors (for which he provided the story, but didn't direct), and WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE. These three films stand on their own as a unit, although for those who can't get enough, chapters IV & V aren't entirely bad.

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FRIDAY THE 13TH - (1980; USA)

While a total piece of crap from any artistic standpoint, one could make a good case for this being the most influential film of the ‘80s - it certainly ‘inspired’ more rip-offs than any other single film of the decade. Not bad for a film that itself is a rip-off of HALLOWEEN, minus talent and wit in any department. Same basic setup as the other eight (!) of these: mindless secluded teens have sex and get slaughtered. Jason's mom is the culprit in this one, thinking she's avenging the death of her mutant son years ago. When she ended up beheaded at the end of this one, the I'm-not-dead-yet Jason basically took over for the rest of the series. Some older viewers were surprised when the murderer was revealed as Mrs. Voorhees - she was played by wholesome early TV performer Betsy Palmer. Bing's son Harry Crosby is also in this. The film was gory, stupid and way, way profitable (which was kind of an embarrassment to the Paramount film studio, which released this dreck - not that that kept them from churning out sequels like sausages). The best thing about Friday The 13th was the poster: a ring of counselors sitting around a campfire, with the legend ‘They are Doomed’. This garbage is only for those looking for a real no-frills gorefest. Even though it's been a while since the last one of these came out, sooner or later they're bound to revive the series, which like Jason is too evil and stupid to die. In fact, they've been kicking around the idea of a Jason/Freddy Krueger movie for over a decade now. Talk about Freddy's Nightmares!

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FRIGHT NIGHT - (1986; USA)

The best vampire flick of the last thirty years! Teenager Charlie Brewster is distracted from trying to get into his girlfriend's pants when he begins to suspect his new neighbor (played by The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Chris Sarandon) of being a vampire. Unfortunately for him, he’s right. Charlie eventually enlists the help of local horror movie host Peter Vincent (the late Roddy McDowell is his best part in a very long time), who had once starred in a series of Hammeresque vampire hunter films. Vincent thinks Charlie is nuts, of course, and only goes along when Charlie offers to pay him. To his horror, Vincent realizes that Sarandon really is a vampire, and spends a large part of the rest of the movie hiding in his apartment. He finally emerges and helps Charlie save his girlfriend. Fright Night has a good grasp of traditional vampire mythology: the vampires can't enter a home without being invited in, etc. They are also properly presented as figures of corruption, rather than just threatening death; Charlie's outcast friend Evil Ed isn't converted into a vampire until he allows it to happen, seduced by promises that no one will ever be able to hurt him again. My favorite scene, though, has to be when Charlie, whose girlfriend (Amanda Bearse, later the uptight neighbor from TV’s Married with Children) broke up with him when he ignored her, tries to convince her that there are vampires on the loose. At first she stares at his incomprehensibly, wondering if he's insane. Then she slyly grins and asks "Is this some trick to get me back?"! Sarandon's vampire sister was to came after Brewster and Vincent in the quite decent sequel, Fright Night II. Fright Night is currently available in a widescreened (as well as a ‘standard’ version for those who like watching 60% of a movie) presentation on DVD.

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THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN - (1966; USA)

Between stints on The Andy Griffith Show and Three's Company, Don Knotts made a bunch of generally obscure comedies, two of which are TV repeat classics. One is The Incredible Mr. Limpet ("I wish I was a fish"), this is the other. Knotts is Luther Heggs, a small town copy boy who aspires to become a reporter. He also wants to win the affections of a sweet local girl. However, she’s also being courted by a pushy reporter (one of those guys who played Darin on TV's Bewitched) who lords it over Luther at the town newspaper. The town contains a mysterious mansion where an unsolved murder occurred years ago. When Luther spends the night there he witnesses ghoulish happenings which send him fleeing. He becomes a local celebrity, then a laughingstock, and finally a hero as he helps to solve the old mystery. He also wins the girl, played by 1958 Playboy Playmate Joan Staley. Way to go, Luther! Good for the kids and Knotts fans, and not a bad Halloween feature for those in a nostalgic mood.

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For those not in the know, Bob Hope was the funniest solo film comedian of the ‘40's. This was the second of two spook comedies he made with Charlie Chaplin's wife, Paulette Goddard (the first being The Cat and the Canary). Hope plays Larry Lawrence, a Walter Winchell-esque radio personality whose show features inside info on local gangsters. They normally get a kick out of the publicity, but when Hope crosses a line, he barely makes it out of town alive. He ends up, after suitably improbable events, fleeing to Cuba in Goddard's steamer trunk. Goddard has inherited a purportedly haunted (of course) mansion there, and Hope's determined to help her safely collect her inheritance. Ghosts, zombies and murder all play a part before the climax. Watch for a very young Anthony Quinn playing a dual role. Goddard is quite sexy, particularly for a film made in 1940, spending much of her time in her slip or a swimsuit, generally showing a lot more leg than was usual for the time period. Many viewers, meanwhile, will be made uncomfortable by Black actor Willie Best's role as Hope's valet. However, while the role certainly appears to be the rather stereotyped Black servant we would expect, it’s worth noting that Best's character proves to be a stalwart aide for Hope and Goddard. And while he does do the obligatory eye-popping at the sight of ghosts, his character is no more cowardly than Hope's. Anyway, I always thought it was silly (and potentially dangerous) to judge old media purely by a modern idea of what's politically correct. It also seems unfair that Best, already forced into such a narrow range of roles, should now suffer the additional penalty of having his work dismissed by modern audiences. He was an accomplished comedian in his own right, once being praised by Hope as "having the best natural timing I've ever seen." Of course, the real star here is Bob Hope. For those acquainted with his movie work, it’s interesting to see Hope's regular screen persona still evolving in this early effort. While Hope's Larry Lawrence plays at being the kind of total coward Hope regularly portrayed in his later films, he's actually pretty capable. Whether hanging out with gangsters, hunting for ghosts, or dodging potentially fatal falling objects, Lawrence remains much more competent and aggressive than Hope's later characters. In such films as My Favorite Blonde, Hope always had to be dragged against his will into dangerous situations, or would bobble a gun around nervously. Lawrence, in contrast, sneaks out to the haunted mansion ahead of Goddard to shield her from danger, and handles his gun like a regular Bogart or Cagney. Hope was just starting to hit his stride here, one of his first ‘A’ pictures. It’s a shame that modern audiences generally only know of Hope from his admittedly cheesy TV specials. He was a great film comic and it's unfortunate that, outside of the Road Pictures he made with Bing Crosby, few people are aware of Hope's screen work. Before Woody Allen turned serious, Hope was as much of a model for Allen's film work as Ingmar Bergman was to become later. Those looking for some laughs with their spookiness will find few better.

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GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE - (1943; USA)

There must be something comical about the word ‘ghost’ because these last three films are all comedies. This is one of the two Bowery Boys films to feature Bela Lugosi. Here the boys start cleaning up a house, mistaking it for the future home of Leo Gorcey's soon to be wedded sister (future star and already ex-Mrs. Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner). The house appears haunted, but it is really the work of Bela's Nazi spy ring trying to scare them off. Of course the boys round up the Natzies by the end of the picture, making things safe for Democracy. While kind of dopey, this and the earlier SPOOKS RUN WILD are OK for kids, and of course remain a must for fans of either the Bowery Boys or Lugosi.

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HALLOWEEN - (1978; USA)

The title alone makes this a candidate for the perfect Halloween Flick, but it's the brilliant craftsmanship of director John Carpenter that clinches it. The plot's pretty minimal, but so what? In 1963 we witness, through the eyes of the killer, the brutal slaying of a teenaged girl. It turns out the murderer is her six-year old brother, Michael Myers (which is revealed in one of the cinema’s more famous shots). Incurably insane, he's locked up in an asylum for life, but breaks out fifteen years later on the night before Halloween. He makes his way back to his (fictional) hometown of Haddenfield, IL, to continue his murderous ways. He robs a hardware store, steals his sister's tombstone, and then goes on a murder spree. The spree is centered on first time movie actress Jamie Lee Curtis (daughter of Janet Leigh, the woman in the shower in Alfred's Hitchcock's Psycho), first knocking off Curtis' friends, then going after her. Coming after Michael is the film's best character, Dr. Sam Loomis, played by Carpenter regular Donald Pleasance. Loomis was Michael's doctor at the institution, and after realizing what Michael was, he devoted himself to keeping Myers locked away forever. Loomis knows that Michael is Evil with a capitol ‘E’ and is willing to do whatever it takes to stop him now that he's out. Pleasance takes a great part and runs with it. Almost every line out of Loomis' mouth is terrific, always referring to Michael as something other than human, and showing constant impatience with others who insist on treating Myers as if he were, well, a man. Loomis is named Janet Leigh’s lover in Psycho, a typical Carpenter in-joke. Oddly, Christopher Lee had first been offered the part, only to turn it down. While I can see him as Loomis, it would have been a radically different characterization, and I can’t believe it would have served the film as well. Even better than Curtis and Pleasance, though, is Carpenter himself, the real star of the picture. Though this was only his second theatrical movie, he displays a level of craftsmanship here that few others ever master. A good example of this occurs at the end of the movie. After blowing Michael off a second story balcony with repeated shots from his .357 Magnum, Loomis looks down from the balcony to find Michael's body just...gone. This is really creepy. (It was Pleasance’s idea, however, for Loomis to evince little surprise upon find Michael missing. He plays it like Loomis knew that Myers wouldn’t be there.) While such scenes are rather cliché at this point, the understated uneasiness created by just finding the body gone beats hands down a more blatant approach. So we are spared the last second "surprise" lunge-into-the-camera or "shocking" opening-of-the-eyes shot (with a lame blare of music, of course) which a lesser director might have used (and which dozens and dozens did). Carpenter's restraint makes a coda that was to be rehashed over and over in the coming years actually seem kind of fresh. His confidence that what you imagine can be more unsettling that what you actually see comes from his knowledge of earlier horror directors like Jacques Tourneur. Of course, most would-be Carpenters don't have his command of technique or his knowledge of film. For that matter, few would want to make an "unsettling" film when they can more easily make a conventionally (and crassly) "shocking" one. Like many great horror films, Halloween is invariably remembered as being more graphic than it actually is. In fact, there's literally no blood spilled in the film, much less anything that could be called gore. Carpenter's score for this film is a modern classic, as well known as Bernard Herrmann's music for Psycho. Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th movies is Michael Myers taken to the crassest degree. So it's truly reprehensible that in the later movies in the series Michael was to become a clone of Jason, as Jason was nothing but a moronic clone of Michael in the first place. As ever, the bad drives out the good. By the release of the vomitus Halloween 5 (which is subtitled "The Revenge of Michael Myers". What does that even mean? Myers is a demonic evil force, who would he need "revenge" against?) the transition was complete, and Myers had basically become Jason, unidentifiable as the Michael of the first movie. For instance, in clear violation of the ‘rules’ set up in the first Halloween, Myers spends about the entire film hunting down children, including a repulsive sequence where he chases a little girl with a car, trying to run her over. Boy, that's entertainment, huh? It wasn’t until Halloween: 20 Years Later (or "H:20") that someone made a film even close to matching the first one. Ironically, it was directed by Steve Miller, who had directed some of the Friday the 13^th movies. Luckily, he tuned the gore down (although the film is quite bloody), and did a good job with a script developed from Kevin "Scream" Williamson’s outline. Jamie Lee finally came back for this one, her first appearance in the series since the already horrendous second film. Unfortunately, Donald Pleasance, who appeared in all the lame sequels, had by this time passed away. Still, Williamson was aware of his importance to the series, and the film’s credit sequence features the classic Halloween theme overdubbed with Loomis’ lines from the first film. Fittingly, one of these lines ties into the final bit of the movie, a very nice touch. The film also featured a couple of gags revolving around the appearance of Jamie’s mom, Janet Leigh. The smart play is to go for the first movie and the last movie and ignore all the others (although Williamson uses’ Jamie’s ‘death notice’ from Halloween 4 to nice effect here). Useful in this regard is that both of these are available on DVD, including a gorgeous transfer of the first movie on Anchor Bay’s deluxe edition set. This includes a second disc presenting a version of the film that includes the extra footage shot for Halloween’s first television broadcast on NBC. While none of this footage really adds much, a lot of it features Pleasance, so it’s nice to have it available. Also included is a rather decently done documentary on the original movie that includes interview footage with both John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. Only those with the most casual interest in the film should hesitate to spring the extra couple of bucks for the deluxe DVD. For the trivia minded, according to Carpenter's music score titles, Michael's ‘monster’ name is The Shape.

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THE HAUNTING - (1963; USA)

Here it is! This is my choice for the best horror movie ever made, though it's more of a chills-up-the-back and hair-standing-on-end picture than a shrieking and starting one. At least in Halloween John Carpenter allowed himself some violence (if not gore) and a killer maniac to work with. Here veteran director Robert Wise (The Sound of Music [!]) works with not much more than bizarre camera angles, sound effects, a talented cast and a marvelous score to make a movie that positively scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it. Adapted from a novel by Shirley Jackson, this story of a para-psychologist and his control group investigating a reputedly haunted manor, Hill House, is the ultimate ghost movie. It blows away blatant and obvious efforts like the horribly lame Ghost Story. Wise shows that if you know what you're doing, you can get across to a thinking audience that death isn't the most frightening thing you can be threatened with. A film for adults (by which I mean that it’s intelligent, not laden with sex and violence), it features four of the best drawn and most interesting characters ever featured in a horror movie. The Professor is a kindly fellow, but so enrapt by the possibilities that Hill House presents that he never really notices the effect that it’s having on the others. This include Eleanore (brilliantly played by Claire Bloom), a woman whose dreadful life mirrors that of a past occupant of the House. Eleanore has reportedly also manifested telekinetic phenomena in the past. Another woman, Theo, has empathic abilities. A lesbian (a plot line handled with admirable subtlety here, but sure to be shoved in our faces when they get around to a remake [Future Ken: Gee, how did I guess that right?]), Theo is attracted to Eleanore, who herself is nursing a crush on the oblivious Professor, not knowing that he’s married. The last member of the team is actor Russ Tamblyn as Luke, a young cardsharp due to inherit the House. A professional cynic, he’s brought along to add a Scully-ish perspective to the team. Things are going along swimmingly (more or less), until the Professor’s wife pops up. Considering her husband’s field of endeavor to be childish, she purposely challenges the House’s power to prove that there’s nothing to all this malarkey. Needless to say, this doesn’t turn out the way she planned. As with all great ghost stories, we never really find out if the spooky events are real, or the product of a disturbed mind. In this case, the House could actually be calling out to Eleanore, but it’s also possible that she’s subconsciously causing the various events to occur with her implied physic abilities. After all, she has as much reason to be threatened by the Professor’s wife as Hill House does. Even the minor characters here are impressively drawn. Spending just a few minutes with Eleanore’s sister and brother-in-law, in whose house she lives, we fully understand her desperation to find her own place in the world. Also, the resentful couple that caretake the house are expertly delineated, with the wife having a particularly nice scene when trying to spook Eleanore and Theo. At first, she’s annoyed when Theo doesn’t take the bait, but her subsequent smile denotes the fact that she wasn’t bluffing when speaking of their danger. I’ve personally always suspected that Steven King’s character Carrie was largely based on Eleanore. Both, for instance, experienced as children an episode of stones raining from the sky upon their houses. I don't want to give away too much about this unfairly overlooked film, just watch it. Unlike some other horror movies, this one should really be viewed alone, late at night and in a dark quiet room, where the tension can grow unimpeded. Grotesquely, Hollywood keeps threatening to remake this as a special effects extravaganza. Apparently, Steven Spielberg (a man I thought would know better), is quite keen on producing such a film. And since his company Dreamworks now owns the rights to a remake, chances are that this will become a reality. Ugh. (Future Ken: As we now know, my fears proved all too well founded, with the remake proving every inch the disaster that I suspected it would be.) Unfortunately, at the time I write this The Haunting is only available as an un-letterboxed video tape. Like many great films, the excision of a large percentage of the picture has had quite a negative effect on it. Hopefully, it’ll soon appear on DVD (perhaps when the benighted remake is released), and perhaps come with a documentary or Commentary Track that pays the film its due. Highest recommendation.

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HIDEAWAY - (1995; USA)

Like fellow horror scribe Stephen King, the work of author Dean Koontz has been often adapted, but seldom to good effect. For instance, check out Watchers with Corey Haim. Yuck! This decent effort is easily the best Koontz adaptation to this point, even though Koontz still hated it for the inevitable dumbing down that seems to occur whenever a book is turned into a movie. The film opens with a teenage boy killing his mother and sister in ritualistic fashion, and then impaling himself on a knife before a satanic alter. We then segue to protagonist Jeff Goldblum and his wife and snotty teenage daughter (Alicia Silverstone). The family is on vacation, attempting to deal with the earlier death of a younger daughter. On the way home, they are involved in a car accident with a semi-trailer truck (semis are seldom harbingers of good things in a horror flick). Goldblum drowns when their car ends up submerged in a river. However, the local hospital has a unit that specializes in resuscitations, and Goldblum is brought back after almost crossing over into the afterlife (represented by computer effects). Problems develop when Goldblum begins having visions wherein he gruesomely murders teenage girls. He learns that he has somehow established a psychic link with a killer, and is seeing actual events through the murderer's eyes. Things get worse when it turns out the link is a two-way street, and soon the killer is after Goldblum’s daughter. While hardly spectacular, Hideaway has a solid cast (particularly Goldblum) and handily exploits the classic horror movie trope of the person who knows that something awful is happening and cannot get anyone to believe them. Here, Goldblum knows the killer is going to come after his family. Yet every effort he takes to protect them (such as buying a gun) further convinces his wife and daughter that Goldblum has himself gone nuts, and that he is the one who is dangerous. The audience soon comes to share Goldblum's frustration. The more he tries to convince his family that they're in danger, the more they ignore him and the further they place themselves in peril. The films is fairly predictable, and the savvy audience member will immediately be able to identify who's going to get knocked off. For instance, there's a psychic, and as horror fans know, psychics always get bumped off, proving that being one is no great shakes. Even more predictable was the imminent death of a doofus Private Eye (who while on stakeout keeps one of his PI business cards on the dashboard of his car!). This guy was so obviously going to get killed that both I and the person I saw the movie with literally burst out laughing the moment he appeared on screen. The film's major weakness, however, is its climax. Completely out of nowhere, Goldblum and his opponent shoot mystical entities of Good and Evil out of their respective bodies for a spiritual battle. Since this was in no way set up, and since the way the plot was set up it’s totally unnecessary, you can only go "Huh?" I assume that the spirits are included purely to provide an excuse for a ‘cool’ big special f/x ending. It doesn't really hurt the film, but it’s pointless in the extreme. Make sure to sit through the credits for an epilog that appears to be one of those stupid ‘Its not really over’ endings, but instead turns out to be a takeoff of one instead.

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HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS - (1988; USA)

A rare accomplishment: a cheesy film that manages to turn its weaknesses (shoestring budget, bad acting) into strengths. This is done by the simple expedient of not taking itself too seriously, while also delivering the goods: plenty of cartoonish gore and lots of pretty women taking off their clothes. This is the kind of flick where they come up with the title first and then make the movie. You might think it would be darn near impossible to screw up a movie with such a great camp moniker, but in the '70s somebody made a dreary, totally serious klinker with the glorious title of Satan's Cheerleaders! I mean, how do you come up with a title like that and then blow it? Take those guys out and shoot them! Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers stars the premiere Scream Queens of the ‘80s, Linnea Quigley and Michele Bauer. Scream Queens started out being actresses who did a lot of horror films, where they basically did little more than look pretty and scream a lot. Like, say, Evelyn Ankers in the ‘40s. By the eighties they had become actresses who do a lot of horror films, usually direct to video stuff, where they basically do little more than look pretty, scream a lot, and, most importantly, spend much of their screen time naked. They're also as likely (almost) to be the killer as to be killed. Modern Scream Queens often have their own fan clubs and Internet websites. A grade-Z Philip Marlowe clone is hired to find a runaway girl (Linnea) and stumbles across an Egyptian cult who sacrifice men by, well, see the title. Said cult is led by Gunnar Hansen (!), who was Leatherface in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The film is funny, the women are good looking (and usually naked), and the violence is hilarious: when a chainsaw bites into a victim, stagehands throw literal buckets of fake blood, chicken bones, whatever, into camera range. The film also features Linnea performing the Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws, while attired in a G-String and a body tattoo. Network censures must have thought the tattoo was clothing, because I once saw this footage, featuring the barechested Linnea, telecast on NBC during a ‘news’ report on Scream Queens! I'm certainly not maintaining that this is a great film or anything, but it's just about anything you could hope for in this type of flick. I don't want to blow any of the jokes, but here are the three best punch lines: "But she really wasn't!", "There were the Chainsaws of the Gods!", and "How do you know this?"

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HORROR HOTEL - (1960; UK)

Quite decent and nicely creepy black & white effort about students stumbling onto a coven of immortal witches at an old New England inn, with unfortunate results. It also shares a rather shocking plot twist with the then contemporaneous Psycho. Christopher Lee (sporting a very serviceable ‘American’ accent) heads a strong cast. A great atmosphere of copious fog and shadows leads to an absolutely terrific ending. Fun, cheesy ad line read ‘JUST RING FOR DOOM SERVICE’. This is one of a handful of really good witchcraft and sorcery movies, a sub-genre that is usually ignored in favor of vampires, werewolves and unstoppable killers, probably because they usually sought to raise goose bumps in the audience rather than manipulated shrieks. So if you prefer mood and tension more than violence and gore, witchcraft movies like this one, Rosemary's Baby, Curse Of The Demon, Burn, Witch, Burn and The Devil's Bride (a.k.a. The Devil Rides Out) might be more your cup of tea. Check it out. (It’s available on DVD as well as on a very nice remastered widescreen video edition put out by the invaluable Anchor Bay folks.)

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HORROR OF DRACULA - (1958; UK)

The best Dracula movie ever. Christopher Lee is the evil Count and Peter Cushing is the heroic Dr. Van Helsing, vampire hunter. This was produced after the smash hit Curse Of Frankenstein. Along with that film, it catapulted obscure British studio Hammer Films into being the horror studio of the late ‘50s and '60s, taking the crown from Universal Studios. Hammer remade most of the Universal horror series, adding what was then considered graphic displays of sex and blood. Lee was also the first screen Dracula to wear fangs. Blood ran from his mouth and women welcomed their doom by him. Jonathan Harker here is a vampire hunter who goes undercover. He poses as a librarian come to index Count Dracula's library, but botches his attempt to destroy his undead host. Though he finishes off Dracula's bride, he falls victim to the Count himself. Dracula then travels to Harker’s homeland (the film telescopes locales to keep the tempo quick) to claim Harker's fiancée as a replacement for the mate whom Harker destroyed. From there on in it's a battle with Van Helsing, cumulating in one of the most thrilling sequences in horror film history. Lee and Cushing starred in many, many films together but this one is the best, bestowing upon both actors roles that show them to full advantage. Lee's Dracula is about as far from Lugosi's as one could imagine, as physically dynamic as Lugosi's Count was static. Tall, virile and with a great booming voice, Lee naturally dominates every scene he's in. An even greater contrast is Cushing's Van Helsing, a younger man whose drive mirrors the increased physicality of Lee's Dracula. Cushing's Van Helsing functions as much as a priest as a scientist. He fuses the logician's rationality with which he maps out the limits of a vampire's abilities (who here can't assume other shapes, though they could in later Hammer films) with a cleric's determination to oppose Evil. Lee and Cushing are a charismatic pair, and worthy opponents. It’s especially a tribute to Lee’s charisma that his presence so permeates the film, given that his total screentime runs under five minutes. Yet, despite that fact that the extremely talented Cushing spends ten times as much time onscreen, Lee’s Count still drives the film. Cushing's Van Helsing next showed up the Dracula-less but still quite worthy Brides Of Dracula, Lee's Count in the Van Helsing-less but fairly decent Dracula - Prince Of Darkness.

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THE HOUSE OF DRACULA - (1945; USA)

The second of Universal's gang monster movies (see House Of Frankenstein below), both of which were advertised as having "Five Times the Chills - with Frankenstein [well, his monster, anyway], Dracula, the Wolfman, Mad Scientist, Hunchback". OK, so the last two are pretty lame ‘monsters,’ especially a hunchback. Just think if you tried calling a ‘hunchback’ a monster today. You'd have anti-defamation leagues all over you! The ‘Hunchback’ here is really a rip; she's a sweet nurse who gets bumped off, anyway. At least House Of Frankenstein's Hunchback was a homicidal maniac. This film's not quite as good as it's predecessor (lacking Boris Karloff, for one thing), but it's good fun anyway. Returning from House of Frankenstein are John Carradine as the Count, Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, the Wolfman, and Glen Strange as the Monster. Drac and Talbot both show up at the house of Dr. Edelman, an eminent scientist, hoping to be cured of their more antisocial tendencies. However, the Count backslides after getting a gander at the Doc's foxy head nurse, and ends up contaminating Edelman with his tainted blood. This turns him into, that's right, a Mad Scientist. Both vampirism and lycanthropy are given scientific rationales here, and Edelman does succeed in curing Talbot (at least until Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein). Talbot later has to kill the crazed Edelman, the man who freed him from his curse. As in the prior film, the Monster doesn't do much. And even though it's called House Of Dracula, Carradine again gets an extreme sunburn about half way through the picture. Well, that's showbiz!

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THE HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN - (1945; USA)

Taking place after the events of Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman, House of Frankenstein begins with mad scientist Boris Karloff in prison. His crime was in performing grotesque experiments ala Dr. Frankenstein, though Karloff's were even more antisocial. A convenient lightning blast frees him and touchy hunchbacked nutcase J. Carrol Naish. They murder a traveling sideshow owner and head for the castle where the Monster and the Wolfman snuffed it due to a dynamited dam. Along the way Karloff revives Count Dracula, whose skeletal body was one of the sideshow exhibits, by removing the stake in his chest. Dracula is assayed here for the first time by horror icon John Carradine. As in the follow-up House Of Dracula, the Count gets bumped off pretty early in the proceedings. Afterward Karloff and Naish (waiting for Karloff to give him a better body) find and revive the ice entombed Monster and Larry Talbot. Larry, of course, is none too pleased to be called back to the land of the living and again spends the rest of the film seeking permanent rest. Various happenings occur, until the obligatory torch and rake wielding villagers show up to put things right. Fun, fluffy stuff.

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THE HOUSE OF USHER - (1960; USA)

The first in Schlockmaster Roger Corman's series of profitable Edgar Allen Poe ‘adaptations’, usually starring Vincent Price and scripted by Richard Matheson. Poe's titles were usually the only things to survive the ‘adapting’ process, though this retains more of his original plot than most. Made for a sumptuous (for Corman) $200,000, on an expansive (for Corman) fifteen day shooting schedule, this drive-in blockbuster put Corman on a new level of filmmaking. Price is as hammy as ever, playing Roderick Usher, a man whose senses are so acute that any type of sensory input - bright light, loud noises, being touched, etc., pains him. Price and his sister live in seclusion at their family estate. Until, that is, the sister's fiancée shows up. Price disapproves of the impending wedding in the extreme. A strain of madness runs though the Usher family, and he is adamant that he and his sister remain the last of their line. The fiancée, of course, has other ideas. Still, it soon appears that the disagreement has become moot. The fiancée is informed that the sister has died of a heart attack (another family trait) and was immediately interred in the family crypt under the mansion. However, he subsequently begins to suspect that maybe she wasn't quite dead when they entombed her. The climatic destruction of the Usher Mansion provided some of the most borrowed stock footage in movie history, still being used as late as 1985 in the ‘female commando’ epic Hell Squad (a.k.a. Commando Girls). Good gothic stuff, with Price playing the first of his many Poe characters, usually mad, invariably doomed by some dark secret.

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HOUSE OF WAX - (1953; USA)

This isn't a great film (nor is it a bad one), but it is one of those flicks where future stars and cult figures appear in surprising number. It's primarily of interest for being Vincent Price's first horror movie. It's also the first in his seminal ‘House’ horror trilogy (see House of Usher above and House on Haunted Hill below). Along for the ride are female lead Carolyn Jones (the future Morticia on TV's The Addams Family) as well as Phyllis Kirk (the future Lois Lane on TV's Superman), who ends up as a wax figure Joan of Arc. Meanwhile, in the pivotal role of a mute psycho is Charles Buchowski, later (and better) known as Charles Bronson. In a role that visually pre-figures Price's greatest role, Dr. Anton Phibes, Vincent plays a Wax Museum sculptor who is trapped in a fire set by his money grubbing partner. Price survives, but is horribly scarred ala Phibes (also check out the death by hot wax sprayer bit at the end, which resembles the acid trap at the climax of The Abominable Dr. Phibes. For that matter, scarred fedora wearing characters such as Freddy Krueger and Sam Raimi's Darkman might well have been partly inspired by Price in this flick). Vincent wreaks revenge on his traitorous partner and (rather pointlessly) the partner’s girlfriend, then kind of goes completely bonkers: since his crippled hands can no longer sculpt, he instead coats dead bodies with wax to make his figures. This is the same kind of stuff that happens in pretty much all ‘wax museum’ movies, but this easily the best of what is otherwise a pretty lame lot. I'm not sure what the film looks like ‘flat’, because I saw it in a theater in the most sumptuous and amazing 3-D I've ever saw in my life. It's probably diminished on a flat screen, so if you get a chance to check it out in 3-D, go for it. The film largely passes over the throw-things-into-the-camera stuff to utilize instead an incredible depth of picture, although there is an amusingly cheesy sequence with a paddle ball artist that more than makes up for the lack of other obvious effects. The most interesting fact regarding the film's 3-D is that the movie's director was blind in one eye, and so could only see in ‘2-D’! While not one of Vincent's best, this remains an absolute must for all Price-o-philes.

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THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL - (1958; USA)

When people thing of Vincent Price, they tend to think of the Edgar Allen Poe films he made with Roger Corman. However, the two earlier films (this and The Tingler) that he made with Schlockmeister William Castle were also essential to the development of his gloriously hammy screen persona. Castle as a director had no shame, willing to use any old chestnut to make his crowd-pleasing films spooky. Here Castle uses a walking skeleton, blood mysteriously dripping from the ceiling, the old hand-on-the-shoulder bit, decapitated heads, and one of those convenient acid baths in the cellar that were all the rage back then. Just about everything but the kitchen sink, and Castle probably would have used that if he thought it would get a reaction from the audience. The gimmicks that Castle used to sell his films (for instance, a $1,000 insurance policy for any audience member who died of fright while watching his first horror movie, Macabre) are generally considered more interesting than his movies themselves, but Castle's purely hokey films remain a hoot long after many other horror pictures have dated beyond repair. In fact, the older his films get, the more hokey they appear, so the more fun they get. The gimmick for The House on Haunted Hill was ‘Emergo’, a skeleton on a wire that would fly over the audience when the previously mentioned walking skeleton made his appearance. The House on Haunted Hill is a high water mark for Castle as well as Price (at least as a director; he later produced the sublime Rosemary’s Baby). The film opens with the disembodied heads of Price and minor cult actor Elisha Cook, Jr. giving the film's set up. Price plays Frederick Loren, an insanely jealous millionaire who maintains a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with his fourth wife, Annabelle. His other three wives either died or disappeared in mysterious fashion, and Annabelle fears she will meet with a similar fate. On the other hand, she refuses to divorce her husband in exchange for a cool million dollars, and had once apparently tried to poison him. The twosome’s mutually loathing yet urbane dialog is perhaps the film’s highlight, with the couple coming off like a Nick and Nora Charles who intensely hate one another. Price has commandeered the wife's idea of having a ‘haunted house’ party by inviting five diverse people at random: a psychiatrist, a gossip columnist who's a lush, the owner of the haunted house (Cook, who spends the whole film talking about the how the ghosts are going to kill everybody), a pretty woman picked from among Loren's thousands of employees because she especially needs the dough, and a jet pilot. They all need money, and the deal is that if they stay the night (after midnight the house is locked up, and they're trapped until morning) they'll each receive $10,000. As party favors, Price presents each with a little coffin containing a loaded pistol! Castle's films usually revolved around purportedly supernatural events that would turn out to be some horribly contrived scheme, like old Scooby Doo episodes. In fact, the plots are so elaborate and silly that the it-was-all-a-scheme resolutions seem more unlikely than if the supernatural was really involved. This film's incredible silliness is actually it's strength. In fact, you can use it as a combination movie/party game. Watch and laugh at the movie, then sit in a circle and point out dopey plot points. For instance: one character plans for another character to be shot. An innocent third character is driven hysterical (they've all been provided with guns, remember), then the intended victim is manipulated into being in the wrong place at the wrong time. So the whole point is setting up the murder to look like an accident, right? Then why would the plotter show up after the shooting and go to throw the victim's body into the acid pit? Doesn't that blow the whole accidental shooting thing? Anyway, the film's full of stuff like that, so run with it. Great fun.

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THE HOWLING - (1981; USA)

The best of the mini-boomlet of werewolf movies of the early 1980s, The Howling has chills, laughs, and great transformation sequences. Made by genre pros Joe Dante (director) and John Sayles (script), this is a affectionate film that punches all the buttons missed by John Landis in An American Werewolf In London. A TV reporter is almost slain, and her recurring visions of the dead assailant (shot by the police before he got to her) turning into a beast result in her going to a meditation spa to recover her faculties. Unfortunately for her, though, the resort town is populated entirely by werewolves. The film's many in-jokes and clever references to wolves and werewolves in popular culture, along with a series of cameos by people well known by horror movie nuts, helps quickly separate the monster movie dilettante from the true movie freaks. Recommended. However, if you ever want to see one of the funniest things ever put on film, rent this and the supposed sequel (starring Christopher Lee!) The Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf. There they ‘recreate’ the ending of The Howling, only on about a six dollar budget. Believe me, you won’t believe your eyes.

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IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS - (1995; USA)

The year 1995 kept delivering the horror movie goods, following up the superior Demon Knight with this gem. I went to the film fearing that director John Carpenter had lost his knack for low budget but hardcore horror flicks. Carpenter had turned out about one wonderful film per year during the 1980s, but had only made one film in the four or five years proceeding this one, and that was the lame Memoirs of an Invisible Man (which lameness really shouldn't be laid at Carpenter's feet - it was a Chevy Chase movie). There was no need to fear, however, for Carpenter is at the top of his form here, his most complex and arguably best film yet. In The Mouth of Madness is a horror flick of the H.P. Lovecraft school. Lovecraft was a writer in the 1920s who created what is now known as the Cthulhu Mythos, a mythological structure concerned with the Old Ones, evil gods that were banished from the Earth but which are constantly trying to break back in. Stories set in the Mythos usually revolve around someone finding some obscure town or street where the walls holding the Old Ones back are wearing thin, causing the rules of reality to be rather horribly in flux. People who stumbled into one of these locations seldom came out of the situation in very good shape. Thus, Lovecraft is the father of a lot of modern horror, with some of his more prevalent themes reflected in films ranging from, for example, Demon Knight (Old Ones-type beings trying to break back into the world), David Cronenberg's The Fly (the human body metamorphosing into something inhuman) and the Freddy Krueger series (the walls of Realty and Unreality breaking down). However, straight Lovecraftian horror was something I never thought would work well on the screen. One of the tenants of Lovecraft's Old Ones was that they were so far beyond human comprehension that to become aware of them would result in death or insanity. Thus the problem of trying to use film, a much more literal medium than the printed word, to portray this kind of story. After all, if you try to let the audience actually see an Old One (as in, say, The Dunwich Horror or the otherwise marvelous Cast A Deadly Spell) and the viewer doesn't go insane or die, you're obviously diminishing what Lovecraft had in mind. Carpenter, however, who had earlier (with less success) experimented with Lovecraftian themes in Prince Of Darkness, here develops a cinematic equivalent of the reading experience. The film shows enough to freak you out while leaving enough not shown that your imagination fills in the gaps and you get even more freaked out. Carpenter avoids the inherit mistake of centering on the Old Ones themselves, and thus either wimping out by not showing them or else showing them and getting a "so what?" reaction. Instead, the movie centers on the time just prior to their possible return, a time which may well prove to be Man's last on the Earth. Sam (Jurassic Park) Neil plays an insurance inspector, John Trent. He’s hired to hunt down Sutter Kane, the author of Lovecraftian novels so scary that they cause some of their readers to go mad. Kane has disappeared, leaving an unfinished manuscript that could cost the insurance company millions of dollars if Kane isn't found to complete it. Neil and Kane's editor work out clues hidden in the books themselves to Hobb's End (a typical Carpenter in-joke, a reference to the great sci-fi classic Five Million Years to Earth). They ultimately discover that Kane's books aren't fiction at all, but are the key to the possible return of the Old Ones. Carpenter maintains a careful edge here, for while the film has more than its share of shocking and startling moments, its real strength lies in the fact that it's just plain creepy. You spend the entire movie on edge because you literally have no idea what's going to happen next; no matter how bad things get in a particular moment, you always get the feeling it could get worse. The reason that so few films are ‘creepy’ in this way is because it's the hardest atmosphere to sustain, and most directors aren't up to it. One nice bit involves Trent, the quintessential skeptic, who manages to maintain at least a tenuous grasp on his sanity no matter what horror he's presented with. He finally loses control when, after a dream where Kane mentions his favorite color is blue, he wakes up and finds that everything is now blue. The idea that this comparatively innocuous experience would be the one that finally pushes him over the edge seems real somehow. Carpenter assembles a fun cast here, including familiar faces Charlton Heston, John Glover and genre pro David Warner. One problem with the film when seen on video, which is how most people will see it, is that as always Carpenter uses the entire rectangular cinema screen to achieve his full effect. This is unlike most directors now, who intentionally shoot most of the action in the middle of the screen so that cutting it down for the square TV screen will effect things as little as possible. Carpenter, however, continues to make films meant to be seen in a movie theater, which is a central part of what makes him such a great (if under appreciated) director. Madness is shot widescreen, and there is constant movement from side to side, background to foreground. Carpenter is a master, practically a magician, in his ability to draw your attention to one part of the screen and then shocking you with something suddenly jumping up on another part of the screen. This means the video viewer, watching maybe 60% of the entire film at any given time, is going to lose a lot of the movie's impact. The moral: Anytime you get a chance to see Carpenter's work in a cinema, take it. Your best alternative: A DVD copy of his work with a letterbox option. Unfortunately, many of Carpenter’s works aren’t yet available on disc, including this one. I wait with baited breath, however.

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INNOCENT BLOOD - (1992; USA)

Director John Landis merges two of his earlier films, the Mob comedy Wise Guys and the horror comedy An American Werewolf In London to produce this Vampire/Mobster flick. French bombshell Anne (La Femme Nikita) Parillaud stars as a vampire who hunts only evil men to sustain herself, focusing on Mob guys in the film's generic "City". After she’s done, she makes sure to cause central nervous system damage (to the brain or the spine) in order to keep her prey from coming back as vampires also. After dining on head gangster Sid "The Shark" (played by character acting pro Robert Loggia), she's interrupted, thus allowing Sid to come back as one of the Undead. Sid proceeds to use vampirism as a new weapon in his Mob arsenal, converting his underlings into vampires as well. So the guilt stricken Parillaud teams up with undercover cop Anthony LaPaglia to bring down Sid's "family" before it’s too late. The film's fairly solid, but falls prey to the regular Landis faults, such as an inability to deal with the issues he raises in an adult fashion. For instance, Parillaud twice shows self disgust at viewing her bloody face after feeding, yet at the end of the movie tells LaPaglia that "I died a long time ago". One would think if she's been taking lives for such a long time now she'd be able to deal with it better, or else have killed herself long before. Besides, in the beginning of the film we hear her ruminate on the pleasures of existence: Food and Sex. Since she places such a high regard on her dining, it seems unlikely that she would also have such a problem with it. One also wonders at her placing such a premium on fulfilling physical appetites, whether culinary or sexual. Certainly, this reflects a typically Hollywoodian view of the best things in life. Still, given how few mere mortals find such a purely hedonistic emphasis to be fulfilling for any length of time, would these be the things that would keep an immortal being occupied? Furthermore, we get the usual juvenile equation of matters of the heart and matters of the genitals here: after experiencing bodacious sex with Parillaud, LaPaglia later informs her that he loves her, even though we haven't really seen anything to indicate this kind of deep emotional attachment. As usual in this kind of emotionally and intellectually stunted movie, good sex equals love. Still, for what it’s worth, this is probably better than the seemingly similar Vampire in Brooklyn, which I haven’t seen.

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INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE - (1994; USA)

After almost twenty years in ‘Development Hell’, the bestseller that kicked off Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles was finally brought to the screen. When it did, most of the buzz focused on the casting (or mis-casting, if you prefer) of all-American superstar Tom Cruise as Lestat, the feral vampire that makes the long suffering Louis a vampire. Rice herself was quite vocal about it (although during one abortive attempt to adapt it to film, Cher [!!] was considered for Lestat, and Rice made little complaint), only to apologize after seeing the finished film. The film follows the various travels and adventures of Louis, a sensitive young lad in 19th century New Orleans, who is turned into a vampire by the much elder Lestat. Louis has trouble casting off his humanity in order to become an effective predator of humans, much to Lestat's annoyance. Lestat, who has existed centuries as a vampire after less than twenty years as a man, has no such qualms, and is constantly attempting to get Louis to relish his new power. In an attempt to build a family, Lestat horribly vampirizes Claudia, a girl of maybe twelve, who is then cursed to exist forever in that young body. (In the book, Claudia is even younger, around eight. Rice had lost her young daughter to leukemia, and the book was a way to help her deal with her loss.) Resentful of Lestat's power over them, the sly Claudia and the hesitant Louis affect Lestat's demise, and then travel the world together. In France, they meet up with a society of vampires. Their leader, Armand, wishes to become Louis's new mentor and companion, while the society itself wishes to destroy them for killing Lestat, as one vampire killing another is the only ‘crime’ among their kind. The movie ends with Louis in the present, back in the States, and with the reappearance of the "I'm not dead, yet" Lestat, paving the way for further adventures. Interview is actually about the best big budgeted horror movie I've yet seen, perhaps because unlike, say, Francis Ford Coppola with Bram Stoker's Dracula, director Neil Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game) isn't trying to reinvent, ‘advance’ or art up the horror genre. In fact, he's filmed Interview more as a film than as a horror film, perhaps sacrificing a little scariness but installing more intelligence and characterization than in the average horror flick. Particularly well conveyed is the irony wherein a character implores to turned into a vampire in order to achieve immortality, only to be almost immediately destroyed. The cast does pretty well. Brad Pitt's Louis is handsome (well, pretty, actually) and nicely portrays Louis' ambivalence with his new ‘lifestyle’, even to the point of being annoying sometimes with his hand-wringing over is new dietary regimen. Cruise's Lestat is actually pretty good, though he really isn't the Lestat of Rice's novels. He's OK with the seductiveness and the animalistic side of Lestat. However, acting like a has-it-all teenager on a power trip, Lestat never really seems to have answers to Louis' questions, never seems like he's superior in his understanding of the Vampiric Condition. So when Louis meets the more sophisticated Armand and realizes that Lestat is perhaps older but not wiser, it seems too obvious to be much of a revelation (which it was in the novel). Still, Cruise by no means embarrasses himself. The end of the novel also works better than the film's version. The Reporter (who's conducting the "Interview") in both versions asks be vampirized by Louis, only to be turned down. In the book, he refuses to take no for an answer. The novel ends with the Reporter intending to track down the now decrepit Lestat (who, unlike Louis, has not adapted well to the modern world) via Louis' account of a recent encounter with him. It’s nicely implied that by acting as a guide to the modern world, the Reporter would facilitate the return of the withered and frightened Lestat as a player. However, in the film Lestat is played by a bigger star than the Reporter (Christian Slater, who got the part when the previously cast River Phoenix died), so Lestat is the one who dramatically appears to the Reporter, even though this makes less sense. The film does a good job translating Rice's conception of vampires to the screen. Vampires remain popular (check out the number of cheezy vampire novels and movies that have come out in the last ten years) because they are adaptable as metaphors. Once they represented spiritual corruption, tempting us with earthly power and immortality, but at the cost of eternal damnation. Indeed, this more subtle concept can still carry a lot of power, even in modern times, as Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot and the film Fright Night show. However, in an age where the idea of damnation is more or less ignored or scoffed at, the vampire symbolically has changed to keep up with these secular times. Now vampirism is purely attractive, a physical phenomena rather than a spiritual one, promising raw power and eternal youth and invincible sex appeal, and costing at best a little guilt about killing people (though generally less than, say, vegans would feel about eating meat or an egg). Vampires are cool now, their attractiveness no longer a dark one, but openly to be lusted after. Rice is the most successful purveyor of this brand of vampirism, where instead of the reader fearing to become a vampire he wants to become one, so that the vampire functions as the protagonist of the story instead of the antagonist. The movie does seem inconsistent in regards to one of the vampires' powers, with the vampires shown levitating and flying around. Since Interview's conception of the vampire has no element of the supernatural attached, we are left to wonder why they can defy gravity (Yeah, I know, because it looks neat). Well worth a look.

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INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS - (1956; USA)

This Science Fiction classic is one of the creepiest movies ever made. Small town M.D. Kevin McCarthy is bewildered by an epidemic of townsfolk claiming that people in their families aren't really, well, the people in their families. It turns out that they have fallen victim to large space "pods" that replicate you when you sleep, replacing you with an emotionless, cold hearted duplicate (insert your own ‘Republican’ joke here). Pretty soon most of the town has been replaced, but who's human and who's a pod person? Paranoia galore in a film that is pretty grim indeed for something made in the fifties. It would have been grimmer still, but the studio demanded that director Don Siegel tack on a new ending with McCarthy able to convince the authorities about the threat. The original ending had McCarthy run onto a highway, with faceless cars screaming past, yelling "You're next! You're next!", a warning obviously meant for the film's audience as much as the passing drivers. The film has been much analyzed by academics and such, with the pod people being identified as both right-wing conformity freaks like Joe McCarthy or as repressive Godless Communists, depending on the political stripe of the reviewer. Great, great movie. Remade in 1978 by Phil Kaufman, who did a pretty good job, but why bother?

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THE INVISIBLE MAN - (1933; USA)

Yet another Universal classic! Claude Rains made his largely vocal debut in this film as Jack Griffin, a scientist obsessed with the concept of invisibility. He discovers a chemical compound (Monocane, for trivia nuts) that makes him invisible, but can't find an antidote. The drug is also driving him mad. He becomes convinced that an Invisible Man could rule the world, and as the first step begins to terrorize the population. "Even the moon is frightened of me. Frightened to death!", he rants in one of his less lucid moments. Another great horror film with tons of black humor from director James Whale, who also made Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. Contains the classic line "'E's all eaten away!". Best part is watching the police come up with ingenious, and workable, ideas to catch an Invisible Man. One big error - as the necessarily nude Griffin (clothes of course would be visible) runs through the snow, he leaves shoe prints! First of a series of Invisible Man movies (with one Invisible Woman), ending with the inevitable Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man.

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ISLAND OF LOST SOULS - (1933; USA)

Perhaps the best film to be taken from the work of H.G. Wells. Ironically, Wells hated it, saying it was vulgar and missed the point of his story, which he meant as an anti-vivisection tract. One wonders what he would have made of Empire of the Ants or Food of the Gods II (or, dare I say it, the Marlon Brando remake of this, The Island of Dr. Moreau). Here Charles Laughton is Dr. Moreau, a scientist living on a private island retreat. Shipwrecked sailor Richard Arlen washes up on the island, ala The Most Dangerous Game. Taken in, he learns that Moreau's servants are actually surgically altered animals. They were created by Moreau himself in his "House of Pain", words that send the animal-men scurrying each time they are uttered. Moreau plans to mate Arlen with his beautiful panther-woman, in order to see whether his creations are, uh, fully functional. Bela Lugosi has one of his better screen parts as the animal-man Sayer of the Law ("Not to kill - that is the Law - are we not Men?", etc.). Laughton is completely over the top in a great performance as the evil Moreau, always dressed entirely in white. This is the movie that first used the line "The natives are restless tonight." Considered quite gruesome in its time, and still pretty eerie. Highly recommended. As mentioned, it was re-made (why do they always do that?) in pretty lame fashion both in 1977 and 1996 as The Island of Dr. Moreau.

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IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN - (USA)

The best of television's Halloween shows, perhaps the best holiday special period. Do I even need to describe the action? The Peanuts go trick-or-treating, and Charlie Brown ends up collecting a great big collection of -- all together now -- rocks. Later there's a Halloween Party where Lucy, Violet and Patty (not Peppermint Patty, the original one) draw graffiti on Charlie Brown's head. Snoopy, suffering from a bout of Post Traumatic Combat Syndrome, has a flashback to the War. Linus awaits the coming of the Great Pumpkin in his sincere pumpkin patch.  Then he makes a fatal grammatical error, ruining his chances for visitation by his pagan god. Sally misses "tricks and treats" and gets pissed off at Linus, predating themes of 1991's Thelma and Louise by over two decades. Linus vows greater fealty to his vegetable deity the next year. All this is baby boom folklore. However, few people remember, or were ever aware, that the special was originally telecast as a late-night, full-length animated horror movie. It seems that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was a closet Hershall G. "Blood Feast" Lewis fan.  With the help of macabre cartoonist Charles "Addams Family" Addams, Schulz wrote the screenplay as an homage to Lewis, using the Peanuts characters. CBS was horrified by the violent and graphic scenario, but was also frightened of losing the rights to broadcast the other lucrative Peanuts specials. They agreed to a one-time showing of Schulz's concept, and promised to run it as a yearly prime time special, as were the other Peanut cartoons, providing the telecast did not provoke any "unusual outcry from the public." Schulz, apparently much overestimating the black humor capacity of his fans, agreed, and even offered to allow CBS to recut the cartoon in accordance with the other Peanuts specials if the feared reaction occurred. Did it ever. CBS, who had discretion of the time slot, ran the show unpublicized at midnight on Tuesday, October 30th. Though an incredibly small amount of viewers saw the show, fully titled It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown...Worship It Before It Destroys You, the viewer reaction was overwhelmingly negative and virulent..  This prompted Schulz to vow never to stray from the traditional focus of the Peanuts again. The public reaction was so negative, in fact, that in spite of the fact that not more than a couple of thousand people nationwide were estimated to have even seen the program, CBS still almost chose not to re-edit it and rebroadcast it as the show we all know and grew up with. The storyline of the show was amazingly prophetic in terms of the plot structure used in most splatter films of the 1980's, though perhaps this is less surprising when you consider that bootleg copies of the original script are floating around film schools and the like to this day. The first portion of the show pretty much follows the cartoon we know and love. The major split occurs during the party scene at Violet's. Charlie Brown's name gets on the 'invite' list by mistake, and so Lucy and Violet decide to make Charlie Brown the butt of one of their cruel jokes. First, as in the subsequent version, Lucy and Violet 'model' a Jack O'Lantern on Charlie Brown's head, using a wax pencil. This is where the two versions part ways. In It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown...Worship It Before It Destroys You, Charlie Brown is then led to the apple-bobbing tub. This is supposed to be spiked with a chemical that will turn his entire head orange, except for the black Jack O'Lantern marks on the back of his head. However, after forcing Charlie Brown to bob for the apples, and then dunking his head deep in the tub, Charlie Brown rises screaming from the contaminated water with horrible smoking scars and the flesh melting from his face. He runs to a window and, mad with pain, smashes through it into the night. It turns out that acid had mistakenly been added to the water instead of orange dye. After a search by the Peanuts gang fails to turn up any sign of Charlie Brown, Lucy calls them together. Yelling "I'm not going to prison for that blockhead, Charlie Brown," Lucy swears the others to silence. A few protest, but Lucy gives them "five good reasons" not to go to the police. After Charlie Brown fails to make an appearance in the next few days, it is concluded that, frenzied from his agony, he jumped into the river, where he drowned and his body was carried out to the ocean. The action then switches to the next year, again Halloween night. At this year's party the various Peanuts are one by one attacked by an enshrouded assailant (whose sheet features a bunch of "eye holes" cut out, like Charlie Brown's ghost costume from the previous year) and killed in the types of horrible manners that teens in the ‘80s were to become all too accustomed to. Violet has a machete smashed into her face. Pigpen is garroted. Sherman is pinned to a tree with a pitchfork. Patty is stabbed with a butcher knife after finding Pigpen's head in the refrigerator. All the deaths were surprisingly gruesome, though Schulz's script provided just enough dark humor to make them watchable - the best bit had Freida scalped alive after more of her interminable preening and boasting about her "naturally curly hair." Then after she's scalped, her brains were scooped out, in a macabre reenactment of the show's opening scene (which remains in the regular version) where Linus watches in horror as Lucy "kills" the pumpkin he brought home from the pumpkin patch. Finally, only Schroeder, Lucy and Sally are left, hiding in the party room with Schroeder’s piano, where the whole thing started. Sally is a complete basket case, crying and screaming the "Big Brother is coming to get us, he'll kill us all!" Lucy agrees that Charlie Brown is the culprit, but insists that "no blockhead like Charlie Brown will get Lucy Van Pelt!" However, Schroeder has a confession to make (told in flashback). Last Halloween, when the gang was searching the woods for Charlie Brown, Schroeder found his horribly disfigured corpse and dragged it down to the river and disposed of the body. The killer isn't Charlie Brown after all! Just as Lucy remarks that "I knew Charlie Brown was too much of a blockhead to kill everyone like that," they notice that the crazed-with-fear Sally, having heard her name whispered, is unlocking the door to the room, crying that "Big Brother won't hurt me!" Schroeder and Lucy yell, but it's too late as a sword penetrates Sally's torso. As the killer stands looking down at Sally's dead body, Schroeder grabs his piano stool and smashes the maniac in the back of the head. As he totters, the hood falls from his bloodied head, revealing the face of Linus! Though horrified, Schroeder prepares to bludgeon the prostrate Linus before he can recover. However, just as he's raised the stool for the death blow, he's strangled from behind by Lucy with one of his spare piano wires. Lucy explains to Schroeder’s dead body that she knew the murderer was Linus all along, but that nobody was going to hurt her little brother. Particularly someone "who didn't buy a pretty girl a present on Beethoven's stupid birthday." Linus had killed them all because he believed that the Great Pumpkin would never appear while so many "heathens" were around. Lucy calls the police, pretending to be hysterical, and blames the killings on Schroeder. She then drags her out-of-it brother home and puts him to bed, another scene that remains in the present show. The last scene shows Linus leaning on a stone fence, talking to a decayed apparition of Charlie Brown, predicting that "next year, I'll get them all, and the Great Pumpkin will appear unto me, and reward his faithful one!" One assumes this is supposed to be a dream, at least the living corpse of Charlie Brown part. Strong stuff. Though only shown once, and then destroyed, filmmakers from John Carpenter to Sean Cunningham to John Landis have cited this as a inspiration for their later work.