The Carpenter is a 1988 Canadian horror film directed by David Wellington from a screenplay by Doug Taylor. It stars Pierre Lenoir, Lynne Adams, Wings Hauser, Beverly Murray and Barbara Ann Jones.

The film was released on DVD by Scorpion on November 11, 2011.

Plot teaser:

After being released from the institution she was placed in after suffering a mental breakdown, housewife Alice Jarett relocates to the country with her husband Martin, a professor. The house the couple moves into was never finished, so Martin hires a cheap construction crew to complete it.

One night, Alice is awakened by hammering in the basement, caused by a carpenter she had not seen with the rest of the crew. Unlike the other workers, this one has a pleasant demeanour and good work ethic, and while Martin is away one night, he stops another carpenter from trying to rape Alice by cutting the man’s arms off with a circular saw, sending the dazed Alice back to bed, and cleaning up the mess afterward…

Reviews:

“Wellington and company throw a lot of shit at the wall in an effort to see what sticks here — part comedy, part Lynchian absurdist nightmare, part gorefest, part low-grade soap opera, The Carpenter confidently, and nearly seamlessly, blends genres left and right in an effort that some may call haphazard, but others will appreciate for its sheer bravado and for the consistently ethereal tone it maintains throughout these numerous changes.” Trash Film Guru

“Those coming in expecting a balls to the wall slasher won’t be completely satisfied, but Ned does off his victims in gruesome ways (and takes out a few rats with his nail gun). Wings Hauser is fantastic in his role, playing a goofy psychotic spouting off one-liners when dealing with his foes, but being gentle and kind towards Alice. Their brewing romance could have been hokey, but the two had tremendous chemistry and it worked out well.” The Gentlemen’s Guide to Midnite Cinema

“Even though it wasn’t a blood-filled slasher flick with a ton of wicked death scenes like I originally thought it was going to be I still dug The Carpenter. I thought that it was different and just a very good movie in general. The only thing that I didn’t really like about it was the ending as I thought that it seemed really rushed and was poorly written…” Todd Martin, HorrorNews.net

” … this isn’t some long lost amazing gem that everyone has to see. But it isn’t another direct to video pile of steaming shit either. It’s a unique flick that doesn’t easily fit into most of the 80’s cliche sub genres. And for that reason it simply isn’t going to appeal to everybody. But if you’re like me and zombie flicks have grown stale and slashers are damn near a bore then I recommend The Carpenter. It’s a film that isn’t easily pegged and it’s got Wings Fucking Hauser in it.” Uncouth, Brutal as Hell

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Just when you thought it was safe to be dead.’

Return of the Living Dead Part II - also known as Return of the Living Dead II - is a 1987 American zombie horror comedy film written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn (Shock Waves; Eyes of a Stranger).

This sequel to The Return of the Living Dead reunites lead actors James Karen (Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster; Time Walker; Poltergeist) and Thom Mathews (Jason Lives! Friday the 13th Part VI; The Vampire Hunters Club) although, having been zombified in the original they play different characters here. It also stars Dana Ashbrook (Waxwork; Girlfriend from Hell), Marsha Deitlein, Philip Bruns (Silent Night, Bloody Night), Michael Kenworthy (The Blob - 1988).

The film was released by Lorimar Motion Pictures on January 8, 1988, and was a minor box office success, taking over $9 million at the box office in the USA against its $6 million budget. It is the second of four sequels to The Return of the Living Dead.

The film has a lighter tone as it was partially aimed at a teenage audience; however the misleading trailer suggested it was darker. The main protagonists, Jesse and Lucy, share the last name ‘Wilson’, suggesting that they are related to Burt Wilson, the main protagonist of the first film.

Plot teaser:

A military truck is transporting barrels of Trioxin when a barrel breaks loose and falls into a river. The next morning, a young boy, Jesse Wilson, is at the cemetery with two local bullies. The trio investigate the Trioxin tank, and Jesse warns them that they should not tamper with it. The bullies trap Jesse in a derelict mausoleum and leave him. They then return to the Trioxin tank and manage to release the toxic gas.

A van pulls up to the graveyard, introducing the characters Ed, Joey, and Brenda. Ed explains to Joey that they are there to rob graves; Brenda expresses her fears for cemeteries, but Joey assures her that it will be worth their time and leaves Brenda in the van. He heads into the cemetery with Ed. They decide to loot the mausoleum and open the locked doors, releasing Jesse, who immediately runs home…

Reviews:

“Even though the tone is a bit different from the original, the effects and overall look of the film is still intact. The zombie makeup and designs are just as grotesque as before, with decaying bodies and rotten faces looking especially devilish, while the atmosphere is locked in that foggy haze from right out of a nightmare. It’s interesting to see that same kind of visual potency that the original was able to conjure up, is intact in the sequel, and it’s a nice touch that lends to the credibility of the series.” The Lucid Nightmare

“I’m not some stodgy genre purist who frowns on the idea of tossing in some humor into the mix, but if you’re going to include comedy, make it funny. That’s why it’s called “comedy” and not…whatever Return of the Living Dead Part II serves up. All the suspense of the original has been sapped away, and the pacing shuffles around aimlessly. It also puts an annoying kid in a lead role, which is never, ever a good idea unless your target demographic is in junior high (which might explain why I liked this movie so much when I was in 7th grade). The writing’s poor. The acting’s lousy. The direction is uninspired. The closest thing to praise I can muster is that the poster art is pretty neat, but I wouldn’t pay $15 to get it.” Adam Tyner, DVD Talk

“Scenes are lifted, story arches are repeated and the same jokes are retold; though this time it’s all done with less emphasis on risqué black humour and more on keeping the Saturday night family-TV crowd entertained. Never is this more obvious that in the Michael Jackson Thriller-esque dead rising from the graves opener and whether it’s zombies putting their glasses on, or comically stepping on each one-another’s heads, it’s slap-stick comedy central and I honestly don’t think I’d have much problem letting my eight year watching it all.” Watching the Dead

Related: Return of the Living Dead | Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave

Wikipedia

In the lacklustre Milton Subotsky production The Uncanny, Peter Cushing plays a man desperate to expose a sinister cat conspiracy against the human race: ‘They prowl by night… lusting for human flesh!’ Seemingly laughable… but an idea that possibly strikes home more than a similar theory about, say, dogs? For cats have always had a singularly spooky quality to them that has seen them both revered and reviled throughout history.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats as gods: to kill one was punishable by death and if yours was killed then the owner would shave their eyebrows in honour! On the other hand, in the middle ages, cats were often seen as demons or devils. Thought to be the familiars of witches (by virtue of often being the only companion of the poor old wretches who would be accused of witchcraft), many unfortunate moggies were hung, burned and stoned to death.

Undeniably, cats are odd creatures, at least by domestic standards. Independent and aloof, they often seem to stare at their owners’ inscrutably, almost contemptuously, before disappearing into the night. Their amazing athletic abilities and disturbing nocturnal cries only add to their aura of mystery. And there remains something strangely sexual about the image of the cat. Many films have used the word “cat” to conjure up images of the exotic and the mysterious, whether it be the sexy and seductive Catwoman, arch nemesis of Batman, or the outer space cuties of Catwomen of the Moon. It’s no surprise then that horror filmmakers have found them to be a rich source of inspiration.

The earliest “cat” chillers didn’t, in fact, feature a cat at all. 1919 saw the German film Unheimliche Geschicten, an omnibus collection directed by Richard Oswald that included a story based on several Edgar Allan Poe tales, including The Black Cat. The first of many films to use either the title or the plot (rarely, oddly enough, both together) of Poe’s tale, it was remade by Oswald as a comedy using the same title (renamed The Living Dead for English speaking audiences) in 1932.

The Cat and the Canary - first filmed in 1927, and remade in 1939 and 1978 – was an archetypal “Old Dark House” film, where an escaped lunatic (known as The Cat) may or may not be responsible for a series of murders. It was 1934′s legendary sideshow shocker Maniac that first brought genuine feline fright frolic to the screen. Again “inspired by” The Black Cat, this ‘ghastly-beyond-belief’ cheapie from Dwain Esper threw in every shock image it could think of, including a scene where a cat’s eye is seemingly gouged out.

The same year saw a rather more intellectual adaptation of Poe’s story. Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat saw the first teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a whacked-out, Bauhaus-infused, expressionist nightmare that, brilliant as it was, had no connection with the original story (at one point, a black cat runs across a room and is killed by Lugosi, presumably as a token gesture justification of the title).

Poe was even less present in the next version of the story, made in 1941 by Albert S. Rogell. A passable attempt to cash-in on the success of Bob Hope’s comedy chillers (started, ironically, in 1939 with The Cat and the Canary), it also featured Lugosi, alongside Basil Rathbone and Gale Sondergaard. The Case of the Black Cat, made in 1936 had even less connection to the story, being a Perry Mason mystery.

For a while, it seemed that cats were only good for movie titles. Then, in 1942, Val Lewton’s Cat People appeared. Here at last was a movie that fully exploited the sensual and supernatural aspects of felines. Making use of chilling atmospherics and suggestion, Cat People is ambiguous in its approach: we never see the heroine/monster transformation, and the film never explains if she really could become a cat, or if in fact it was all a mental delusion. The film was popular enough to spawn a sequel, Curse of the Cat People (1944), which despite its lurid title was a gentle fantasy with little connection to the original film.

Most cat-themed horror films were rather less subtle than Lewton’s poetic tales, though. The Catman of Paris (1946) was a Lewton-inspired twist on the popular werewolf theme, and is more murder mystery than supernatural horror film, while Erle C. Kenton – who had brought us the humanimal Panther Girl in his 1932 version of The Island of Dr Moreau, Island of Lost Souls, made The Cat Creeps in 1946 (unrelated to the 1930 film of the same name, which was another Cat and the Canary remake), from the same year had a cat possessed by a dead girl… a theme that would crop up in more than one future pussycat production. Indeed, the strongest theme of cat movies is the idea of the feline avenger, persecuting and punishing those responsible for its owner’s death.

A variation on this possession theme – mixed in with a claw-back of Cat People - cropped up in the entertaining British shocker Cat Girl (1957), in which Barbara Shelley, resplendent in a black shiny mac, was cursed with a psychic link to a leopard, causing her to have sporadic attacks of possession when aroused!

Barbara Shelley obviously enjoyed feline thrills, and returned in 1961′s The Shadow of the Cat, an effective John Gilling chiller in which the cat of a wealthy murder victim causes no end of trouble for the killers. Gilling keeps things relatively ambiguous: it’s never clear if the cat is actually taking vengeance, or if its presence simply adds to the guilt of the murderers and drives them to madness and death.

1966 saw another version of The Black Cat, once again showing only few connections to the Poe story. Rather, this was a gore shocker, featuring axes in heads and violence, ala H.G. Lewis, albeit in black and white.

Roger Corman also tackled the story in his Poe anthology Tales of Terror (1962), playing the story as black comedy, with Peter Lorre as the cat’s persecutor/victim. Cats also featured in another Poe-inspired Corman project, The Tomb of Legeia (1964), in which Vincent Price’s dead wife returns as a cat.

1969′s Eye of the Cat was a textbook “vengeful cat” movie, directed by David Lowell Rich and scripted by Psycho writer Joseph Stefano. Michael Sarrazin and Gayle Hunnicutt play a scheming couple who do away with a wealthy aunt, only to fall victim to her hordes of cats. The implausible plot is given a slight twist by making Sarrazin a cat phobic.

Cats have played a role in Japanese horror cinema, most notably in 1968′s classic Kuroneko, in which the ghosts of two women brutally murdered return to take vengeance, assuming the form of a cat at times.

Also from Japan, bizarre Hausu (1977) features supernatural cats amongst its series of strange events and genuinely surreal visuals.

Cats made their way into the Italian giallo thrillers in the 1970s. While Dario Argento’s The Cat O’Nine Tails and Antonio Bido’s The Cat’s Victims might not have actually featured feline killers, 1972′s The Crimes of the Black Cat had the novel idea of featuring a cat as a murder weapon: a mad old woman has poisoned the claws of her pet with curare and induced it to cause mayhem and mischief when irritated by dousing yellow scarves – sent as gifts – with an irritant!

Human beings became unwilling cat food in Ted V. Mikels’ The Corpse Grinders (1971), in which unscrupulous pet food manufacturers add corpses to their cat food mix! Before long, cats are attacking people on the street and in their homes… Although the original has some macabre merit, Mikels went on to make a forgettable and entirely unnecessary belated shot-on-video sequel in 2000.

Cats with a taste for human flesh cropped up in Rene Cardona’s Mexican schlocker Night of a Thousand Cats (1972), where a mad killer women feeds his victims to his half-starved pets; inevitably, the tables are turned in the grisly end.

The Cat Creature (1973) was a slightly above-average TV film, directed by Curtis Harrington (Night Tide) and written by Robert Bloch (Psycho screenplay). Despite the stifling restrictions of American TV at the time, the film is a fairly solid story of the reincarnation of an Egyptian cat goddess.

Sergio Martino’s Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, aka Excite Me (1972), was another retread of The Black Cat, staying slightly closer to the original tale than most others, and starring Edwige Fenech as the eye-gouging, walling up villainess.

Another Italian production, directed by horror veteran Antonio Margheriti, was Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes, a bizarre late entry in the gothic-style tales of the 1960s involving a Scottish castle, a family curse and a gorilla! As the title suggests, whenever a murder is in the offing, the omnipresent cat is in attendance. The film’s eccentricities make up for its defects (chiefly its languid pace, a trait from the Sixties) and there are some memorably absurd images.

In Britain, Ralph Bates fell off the deep end through a combination of sinister feline activity and a domineering mother (Lana Turner) in Persecution aka The Terror of Sheba (1974). It was the first production from Hammer wannabes Tyburn, and the only one that was actually worth watching.

Más negro que la noche (“Blacker than the Night”) was a 1975 Mexican gothic horror about four women that move to a creepy house, inherited by one of them from an old aunt; as a condition, they must take care of the aunt’s pet, a black cat.

Once the pet is mysteriously found dead, a series of bizarre murders begins…

The Uncanny (originally titled Brrr during shooting!) was produced by Milton Subotsky in 1977, shortly after the demise of Amicus and using the same tax shelter deals that made many Canadian productions possible. It was another compendium film, obviously designed to follow in the footsteps of previous Subotsky winners like Tales from the Crypt. However, thanks to the dull direction of Denis Heroux, and a change in public tastes, the film was a total disaster. Each story dealt with spooky cats taking revenge on generally bad eggs, something that didn’t quite gel with the linking theme of cats wanting to take over the world. Subotsky had also featured an evil cat in his earlier Amicus anthology Torture Garden in 1967.

A white cat was up to mischief in the low budget British film The Legacy (1979), which tried to emulate The Omen with a series of bizarre deaths (including The Who’s Roger Daltrey choking to death on a chicken bone!), but failed to ignite the box office – although the paperback tie-in was a surprise best seller. Also in 1979, an unlikely space traveller was Jones the cat in Alien (and briefly Aliens) but he was a feline friend not intergalactic foe.

Lucio Fulci, on a cinematic roll with gore-drenched surreal horrors such as The Beyond and House By the Cemetery, made his version of The Black Cat in 1981. Shot in the UK, this take on Poe’s tale stars Patrick Magee and David Warbeck, and, although generally considered to be a minor addition to the director’s canon, is actually one of his best films, with the emphasis on supernatural atmosphere rather than gore for once.

The film also managed to incorporate a few elements of the original Poe tale into its plot, including the walling up of cat and victim (interestingly, Fulci had also used a similar idea in his 1975 thriller Murder to the Tune of the Seven Black Notes).

Director Paul Schrader updated Cat People with a glossy 1982 remake, but despite lashings of blood and eroticism, and the screen presence of Natjassia Kinski and Malcolm McDowall, the film doesn’t work as well as it should, coming across as little more than an expensive retread of the popular werewolf shapeshifter films of the previous year.

Far better, and considerable more honest in their treatment of the erotic aspects of cat mythology, were The Cat Woman (1988) and Curse of the Cat Woman (1991), two hardcore porn films from actor turned director John Leslie. While Cat Woman is merely above average, Curse… is quite startling, with unsettling but potent sex scenes as it delves deeply into the world of the cat people.

Somewhat less classy than Leslie’s film was Luigi Cozzi’s incredibly clumsy version of The Black Cat (1990), which attempts to bring Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy to a close. Filmed as a tribute to Argento (the plot concerns a film-makers attempts to make a sequel to Suspiria!), the film has nothing of Poe, and little of Dario Argento either. Argento himself, oddly, was also filming The Black Cat around the same time, as his contribution to the Poe film Two Evil Eyes. It was far from vintage Argento, despite a suitably deranged performance from Harvey Keitel, but it did follow the original story fairly closely, and benefited from being paired with George A. Romero’s truly awful The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.

Romero also produced Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, a feature film based on the lacklustre TV series. Nevertheless, this three story anthology was better than it should have been, and includes a tale about a Cat from Hell that leaves a trail of victims in its wake.

Evil Cat arrived from Hong Kong in 1986, the tale of a cat demon that possesses human bodies and has to be killed every fifty years by a member of the same family. Cheerfully trashy, it’s a fun horror romp. More deranged is 1992′s The Cat, directed by Ngai Kai lam, which features a cat from space and features – as far as I’m aware – the only dog-cat kung fu battle ever captured on film!

Greydon Clark’s amusing Uninvited (1987) features a mutant cat on the loose aboard a cruise ship, where it terrorises horny teenagers and gangsters, to no great effect. 1991 TV movie Strays tries to make a house full of killer cats seem scary, but fails miserably, and has human characters so dull that you are actually rooting for the cats by the end.

Stephen King has been attached to a handful of cat related horrors. As well as the underrated 1985 film Cat’s Eye – a trilogy of stories linked by a heroic cat, and directed with style and fidelity to the original stories by Lewis Teague (Alligator), there was the 1989 Pet Semetary, which sees a zombie cat brought back to life after being buried on cursed ground, and 1992 saw Sleepwalkers, a gory and sexy retread of the Cat People theme based on a somewhat incoherent King screenplay. Mick Garris’ film tells the story of demonic cat people (who fear real cats!) and is ludicrous enough to be throwaway fun.

A hand-drawn Ghanian poster for Sleepwalkers!

More recently, in 2011, Korean film The Cat featured a feline that was the only witness to a murder, a ghostly child and possible demonic possession, as bad things start to happen to the woman who is looking after the titular cat.

The aforementioned 1975 Mexican movie Más Negro Que La Noche (“Blacker Than the Night”) has just been remade in 2014, in 3D, as a full-blown gothic Spanish production with a focus, like the original, on murders that occur once a cat has been killed.

It seems certain that cats will continue to provide a steady flow of ideas for film-makers looking for sinister ciphers. Only Alien and Cat’s Eye has shown cats in a particularly positive light within the context of the horror film. Other than this, the best they could hope for was to be witches familiars in the likes of Bell, Book and Candle or I Married a Witch. This might seem like an outrageous slander against this innocent animal. But, even if the feline population were made aware of their sly image in the cinema, one imagines that they would simply stare at you for a while, yawn disinterestedly, and then walk away. Cats have better things to worry about…

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Ulula (“Howl”) is an Italian erotic horror comic book, known as fumetti, launched in October 1981 by Milan-based Edifumetto, with a print run that ran to 76 issues. Two 228 page special editions were issued in 1983 and the Ulula character also appeared in a fumetto named 40 Grandi. Some of the cover artwork was by celebrated comic artist Emanuele Taglietti.

The lurid stories in Ulula involve model Ulula Von Hagen who becomes a werewolf when the moon is full, having been given the blood of a wolf in a transfusion by her mad doctor uncle! she travels all over the globe having sexual adventures and fighting other monsters, like an Italian lupine version of Vampirella. Only her gay male friend Jo (later Joe) knows her dark secret…

Ulula stories were also issued in Spain, often using the same cover artwork, as part of the Hembras Peligrosas (“Dangerous Females”) comic book series.

Molto grazie to Comic Vine for images and to Fumetti Etruschi and HorrorCrime.com for some background info.

Related: Vampirella

‘Just when you thought it was safe down under…’

Dark Age is a 1987 Australian-made film concerning not just the battle between humans and a gigantic killer crocodile but conservationists and Aboriginal people versus the local authorities who just want the beast shot and everyone to be quiet. The film was directed by Arch Nicholson (second unit director on Razorback) and stars John Jarrett (Wolf Creek both 1 and 2), Ray Meagher (Alf in teeth-grinding soap Home and Away), Nikki Coghill and Burnham Burnham (The Marsupials: The Howling III). The stunning cinematography was provided by Andrew Lesnie who worked on all six of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films. The film is based on the novel Numunwari by Grahame Webb.

In the Northern Territory, Australia, a huge saltwater crocodile is patrolling the river system and, though held in almost God-like regard by the Native Australians, attracts less flattering comments when its journeys lead it near a remote town. More forgiving is park ranger, Steve (a youthful Jarrett), who represents the white man with a heart, determined to protect the local fauna but he finds himself fighting a losing battle as locals start to become meals for the hungry reptile. Obliged by the majority of the local populous, as well as his permanently angry boss, Rex (Meagher), to slay the beast to protect the dwindling locals as well as save their tourist industry, Steve opts for a safe middle ground, aiming to catch the crocodile and re-locate it somewhere less provocative.

Thrown into the stew are a glut of beer-swilling hunters, led by John (Max Phipps; Thirst; The Cars That Ate Paris) who, in the quest to find it, shoot any living thing in or near the water, as well as the Aboriginal people who recognise the reptile as a ‘Dreaming Crocodile’, a spirit which has existed long before Man. Less integral is Steve’s ex-girlfriend (Coghill) who returns to help in a manner not usually common in former partners.

Tensions between the gung-ho, racist, drunk poachers and the crocodile’s protectors reach fever-pitch when even more humans go missing, not least a small child. It takes the son of indigenous leader Oondabund (Burnham Burham), Adjaral (played by David Gulpill, Hollywood’s go-to Aborigine; Crocodile Dundee, The Proposition), to join forces with Steve to try for one last time to save the creature.

Australia’s fascination with its own wildlife and Man’s uneasy relationship with it can be seen in many films, from Long Weekend to Razorback and more recent efforts like Black Water. Here, the element of Native beliefs are also considered, though the monotone, pidgin soothsaying and ancient wisdom becomes rather cloying, to the extent that your sympathies are tempted to wander.

A perfect companion piece to Razorback, the film is refreshing in its treatment of the huge, scaly threat, the crocodile given no redeeming qualities as such, the scene in which is devours a small child both matter-of-fact and unnervingly realistic.

Equally eye-popping are the poachers’ culling of other reptiles, chunks of croc meat flying across the screen as their bullets hit, a surprise to those who assumed, as with most other films, the animals simply sink or gently flip over when shot. The boorish, sweating hunters are a perfect villain, their disdain for anything moving or less than 8% proof adding a certain claustrophobia to proceedings, the air of ultimate futility quite heady. The shooting locations of Alice Springs and Cairns are beautifully shot and their alien appearance, certainly lend a believability to a huge monster living in the waterways – you wouldn’t blink if a dinosaur came crashing through the undergrowth.

Though generally appearing only fleetingly, the crocodile is certainly realistic, especially as shots of the real thing are mixed into some shots. Less comfortable are some of the actors, the spirituality and violence leaving little middle ground; the hunters too obviously ‘evil’; the Aboriginal beliefs too thickly laid on; the heroic conservationist too earnest. You’re left rooting for the crocodile to eat everyone, not necessarily a failure in the film-making but presumably not the aim.

The film was denied a release in its native land for many years due to the collapse of the Australian distributor, Avco Embassy. The Australian executive producer was Antony I. Ginnane, a champion of Australian horror and genre films – of note are Patrick and Dead Kids. The American financier was RKO Pictures, one of their last projects before the company was (yet again) rejigged and sold on to new owners. The film finally received a public screening in Australia in 2011.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

The Devil’s Chimney is a limestone rock formation that stands above a disused quarry in Leckhampton, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England.

It is named for its peculiar shape, that of a crooked and twisted chimney rising from the ground. The Devil’s Chimney is a local landmark, but its origins are uncertain. In 1926 it survived a minor earthquake, but not without a few cracks. In 1985 it was repaired and protected from further erosion.

Legend holds that the Devil’s Chimney is the chimney of the Devil’s dwelling deep beneath the ground. Supposedly the Devil, provoked by the many Christian churches of the area, would sit atop Leckhampton Hill and hurl stones at Sunday churchgoers. However the stones were turned back on him, driving him beneath the ground and trapping him there so he could not further harass the villagers. Now he uses the mass of stones as his chimney to let free the smokes of Hell.

Visitors to the Devil’s Chimney would leave a coin on top of the rock as payment to the Devil in exchange for his staying in his underground home and not leaving to create mischief and spread evil in the local area.

The 19th-century geologist S. Buckman suggested that the strange shape of the Devil’s Chimney could be put down to differential erosion, involving the softer outer rock being worn away to leave only the inner harder rock remaining. However, this would require some explanation of why there was a column of harder rock there in the first place.

The truth is probably that the Devil’s Chimney was left behind by 18th-century quarry workers, who quarried around it as a joke.

The Devil’s Chimney in Gloucestershire should not to be confused with two other British landmarks, a rock cleft in the Isle of Wight and a rock formation at Beachy Head.

Wikipedia

“In an urban society, everything connects. Each person’s needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong also make it vulnerable”.

Threads is a 1984 British television drama, produced jointly by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. Written by Barry Hines (Kes) and directed by Mick Jackson (Volcano), it is a docudrama account of nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England.

The primary plot centres on two families, the Becketts and the Kemps, as an international crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts and escalates, mimicking the real-life tensions but allowing the threatened Cold War to escalate beyond the hypothetical and into a fully-blown attack.

As the United Kingdom prepares for war, the members of each family deal with their own personal crises, the rigors of family life, not least the unplanned pregnancy of Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher; 28 Weeks Later) and urgent requirement for some new wallpaper not halting, as a much larger-scale danger develops. As Ruth and her boyfriend, Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale, best known for his role opposite John Thaw in the deadly dull sitcom, Home to Roost), we observe the political angle, members of Sheffield City Council, on the orders of the Home Office, setting up northern headquarters in the basement of Sheffield Town Hall, closely monitoring news reports of an American submarine going missing off the coast of Iran and the mobilisation of Russian troops on the ground.

With the Americans launching a counter-offensive, occupying Iranian oil fields, tensions in the UK begin to spill over, the populous involving themselves in demonstrations (ironically, not just pro-CND but demanding more jobs) or looting shops and businesses. Nuclear exchanges are reported near the Russians’ base in Masshad, Iran, after which a flimsy truce is declared. The civil defence arrangements become increasingly panicked and stretched as it seems the worst scenario is looking evermore likely. After an American attempt at diplomacy is rebuffed, the conflict appears to quieten, though UK civilians fruitlessly attempt to withdraw their savings and take to the roads in a bid to find safe ground, the consequence being endless traffic jams and further unrest.

At 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C.) on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted, and Sheffield’s air raid sirens sound. A warhead air bursts over the North Sea, obliterating many communications systems, then another hits RAF Finningley, 20 miles away from Sheffield. Although the city is not heavily damaged, chaos breaks out. Jimmy is last seen attempting to reach Ruth. Shortly after the first strike, Sheffield is hit by a one megaton warhead over the Tinsley Viaduct, causing enormous destruction. A title card states that strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are attacked, with two-thirds of all homes being destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 17 and 30 million.

There is chaos at the Town Hall, partially demolished in the blast with the surviving civil servants trapped beneath, armed with little, though conflicting information, dwindling supplies and inevitable communication problems. We are also reminded that they too have loved ones on ‘the outside’, their fates unknown. Having witnessed the devastation of the blast; from melting milk bottles, to fires taking hold, to fried cats, we now see the nuclear radiation and its effects on the survivors, already struggling to escape the rubble but now faced with agonising illnesses, lack of running water and medical supplies and a fractured government authorising killing squads to shoot looters and deserters on-sight.

We re-visit the affected after a month, then a year, the dead remaining unburied, the country’s infrastructure almost non-existent, disease rife and the on-set of a nuclear winter, the perpetual dusk destroying crops. Later, the sun returns but only to highlight the squalor the remaining injured must endure. With much of the ozone layer decimated, cancer and other conditions are commonplace, the search for food and shelter remaining the overriding concern.
Many years later, Britain is depicted as having returned to the Dark Ages; ragged clothing, primitive farming techniques and a mangled version of language being employed by a population reduced from 11 million people to 4. The film ends with no redemption and little hope, the future bleak for all and life forever changed.

30 years on, Threads remains one of the most shocking and affecting film shown on British television. Coming 20 years after another nuclear parable, The War Game (ironically, originally not shown on the BBC under orders from the Wilson government), Threads is far more unflinching in its assessment of a nuclear attack, using a largely unknown cast (including many who weren’t recognised actors at all), an ‘anywhere’ location and the depiction of very real fears and logistics. To compound the unremitting tension, the action is interspersed with genuine news reports, Civil Defence announcements and public information films (Protect and Survive, an upsetting watch at the best of times), are a reminder that the mid-80’s were still shrouded in Cold War tensions, Threads serving as a stark picture of a very real possibility.

Mick Jackson was hired to direct the film, as he had previously worked in the area of nuclear apocalypse in 1982, producing the BBC Q.E.D. documentary A Guide to Armageddon. By undergoing rigorous research to capture the actual plans in place should such a catastrophe take place, the documentary feel overtakes the film from the very start, though some may find the later scenes of grey ruins and uneducated survivors a little too stretched and film-like. The film was shot on a budget of £250,000–350,000, much of the budget going on a rare depiction of post-attack scenes, the majority of previous efforts only showing up to and including the dropping of the bomb. Remarkably, Jackson went on to have mainstream success as the director of Hollywood smash, The Bodyguard.

Allegedly viewed after broadcast by then-US President Ronald Reagan, as well as Party Leaders in the UK, the initial screenings in Britain, America and Australia were accompanied by studio discussions, debating the issues raised in the film. Although distinctly anti-nuclear, the events are shown as being part of a much bigger picture, the lack of preparation and planning by the Government being as damning as the hopeless brinkmanship of the Americans and Russians. Threads was also shown in British schools, both as an example of storytelling and the use of documentary-style filming.

Daz Lawrence

Buy Threads on BBC DVD from Amazon.co.uk

The Addams Family is a group of fictional characters created by American cartoonist Charles Addams. The Addams Family characters include Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley, Pubert Addams, Cousin Itt and Thing.

The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal American family; an eccentric, wealthy clan who delight in the macabre and are unaware, or do not care, that other people find them bizarre or frightening. They originally appeared as an unrelated group of 150 single panel cartoons, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between their debut in 1938 and Addams’s 1988 death.

Addams’s original cartoons were one-panel gags. The characters were undeveloped and unnamed until the television series production.

Gomez and Pugsley are enthusiastic. Morticia is even in disposition, muted, witty, sometimes deadly. Grandma Frump is foolishly good-natured. Wednesday is her mother’s daughter. A closely knit family, the real head being Morticia—although each of the others is a definite character—except for Grandma, who is easily led. Many of the troubles they have as a family are due to Grandma’s fumbling, weak character. The house is a wreck, of course, but this is a house-proud family just the same and every trap door is in good repair. Money is no problem. — Charles Addams

The family appears to be a single surviving branch of the Addams clan. Many other “Addams families” exist all over the world. Charles Addams was first inspired by his home town of Westfield, New Jersey, an area full of ornate Victorian mansions and archaic graveyards.

Although most of the humour derives from the fact that they share macabre interests, the Addamses are a close-knit extended family. Morticia is an exemplary mother, and she and Gomez remain passionate towards each other.

The parents are supportive of their children. The family is friendly and hospitable to visitors, in some cases willing to donate large sums of money to causes, despite the visitors’ horror at the Addams’s peculiar lifestyle.

Characters:

Gomez – master of the Addams household and the Addams patriarch, married to Morticia and the father of Wednesday and Pugsley. In the original cartoons in The New Yorker, he appeared tubby, snub-nosed and with a receding chin.

In the 1960s television series, Gomez was portrayed as a naive, handsome, and successful man, although with a childlike, eccentric enthusiasm for everything he did. Though a peaceful man, he was known to be well-versed in many types of combat; he and Morticia fenced sometimes.

Gomez professed endless love for his wife, Morticia. He had studied to be a lawyer, but rarely practiced, one of the running jokes being that he took great pride in losing his cases. Gomez was depicted as extremely wealthy, through inheritance and extensive investments, but he seemed to have little regard for money.

Morticia Addams – matriarch of the Addams Family, a slim woman with pale skin, clad in a skin-tight black hobble gown with octopus-like tendrils at the hem. Her visual aspect suggested that of some kind of vampire. She adores her husband, Gomez, as deeply as he does her.

Gomez and Morticia had two children, a son called Pugsley and a daughter called Wednesday. In the television show she was a sweet-natured, innocent, happy child, largely concerned with her fearsome pet spiders.

The movies gave Wednesday a much more serious and mature personality with a deadpan wit and a morbid fascination with trying to physically harm, or possibly murder, her brother (she was seen strapping him into an electric chair, for example, and preparing to pull the switch); she was apparently often successful, but Pugsley never died. Like most members of the family, he seemed to be inhumanly resilient.

For his part, Pugsley was largely oblivious to the harm his sister tried to inflict on him, or an enthusiastic supporter of it, viewing all attempts as fun and games. In his first incarnation in The New Yorker cartoons, Pugsley was depicted as a diabolical, malevolent boy-next-door. In the television series, he was a devoted older brother and an inventive and mechanical genius. In the movies he lost his intelligence and independence, and became Wednesday’s sidekick and younger brother, cheerfully helping her in her evil deeds.

Fester is a bald, barrel-shaped man with dark, sunken eyes and a devilish grin. He seemed to carry an electrical charge, as he could illuminate a light bulb by sticking it in his mouth. In the original television series, Fester was Morticia’s uncle. In all subsequent animated and film media, Fester was Gomez’s older brother, save for The New Addams Family where Fester is portrayed as Gomez’ younger brother.

Grandmama is a witch who deals in potions, spells, hexes, and even fortune-telling. Her trademarks were her shawl and grey, frizzy hair. Charles Addams originally named the character Grandma/Granny Frump in his notes for the adaptation of the cartoons to television in 1965, thereby making her Morticia’s mother.

“Thing” as created by Charles Addams, was a shy creature mostly seen in the background of Addams’s drawings; however, the television series suggested it was a disembodied hand named “Thing“, and was Gomez’s friend since childhood. He (it is implied in the original television series that the character is male) often performed common, everyday tasks such as retrieving the mail, writing a letter, or just giving a friendly pat on the shoulder, appearing out of ubiquitous boxes or other convenient containers throughout the house. He communicated with the Addamses with a Morse-like alphabet, sign language, writing, and knocking on wood.

Lurch served as a shambling gravelly-voiced butler, unscarred yet reminiscent of Frankenstein’s Monster, and a funereal but obedient “jack of all trades”. He tried to help around the house, although occasionally he botched tasks due to his great size and strength, but is otherwise considered quite a catch by the Addamses for his skill at more personal tasks, such as waxing Uncle Fester’s head and amusing the children (to whom he was deeply devoted).

Surprisingly, Lurch was often seen playing the harpsichord or organ with great skill and uncharacteristic passion.

Cousin Itt, as so named by the television series producer, who frequently visited the family, was short-statured and had long hair that covered his entire body from scalp to floor. Although in the series he was shown wearing opera gloves, it is unclear what, if anything, is beneath the hair.

Buy The Complete 1960s TV series from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Addams family’s mansion had many different incarnations over the years. In one of Charles Addams’s cartoons. The house was depicted as being a dilapidated mansion that had been condemned (and was seemingly haunted, due to the strange creatures at the top of the staircase). Since then, it had become almost a character itself, and served as the main setting for the rest of the cartoons featuring the Addams family.

In the 1960s television series, the house was given an address: 0001 Cemetery Lane. Instead of being a dilapidated house, it was now practically a museum, filled with odd statues, trophies, and other interesting knick-knacks. The house also sported a playroom with medieval racks, nailbeds, iron maidens, pillories and stocks, used for family relaxation.

The house once again became a condemned mansion in the New Scooby-Doo Movies television show, in which the Addamses made a guest appearance. In the subsequent Addams Family 1970s cartoon, the mansion was mounted on a trailer and dragged all over the world with the globetrotting Addams clan.

The two Addams Family movies in 1991 and 1993, along with the second animated television series in 1992, resurrected the mansion’s original exterior design from the Charles Addams cartoons. The movie Addams Family Values had the mansion appearing exactly as it did in Charles Addams’s drawing of the family, about to dump boiling oil on a group of carollers from the roof (a gag that was acted out in the opening sequence of the previous film). The first film reveals the mansion to have a cavernous, pillared, vaulted-ceilinged canal system deep underneath it, traversable by gondola boat to reach the family vault, itself a cluttered room filled with childhood mementos, home movies, and a bar which revolves around to reveal vast halls filled with countless gold doubloons and other treasure.

Unlike The Munsters, which explicitly stated its characters’ supernatural origins, the exact nature of the Addamses is never established. They all seemed to share a bond with the occult and supernatural. Uncle Fester was often portrayed as something of a mad scientist, and Grandmama as a potion maker, and Morticia states that her study is spells and hexes in the 1991 movie The Addams Family but, these activities don’t really explain the Addams’s seemingly immortal state. Much of the food they live on is inedible or outright deadly to normal humans, and they take an interest in painful activities like walking across minefields or having a sharp pendulum cut them in half.

Television series, episodes, and films

In 1964, the ABC-TV network created The Addams Family television series based on Addams’s cartoon characters. The series was shot in black-and-white and aired for two seasons in 64 half-hour episodes.

The very wealthy, endlessly enthusiastic Gomez Addams (John Astin) is madly in love with his refined wife, Morticia (née Frump) (Carolyn Jones). Along with their daughter Wednesday (Lisa Loring), their son Pugsley (Ken Weatherwax – whom it was reported died of a heart attack the day after we posted this overview), Uncle Fester (Jackie Coogan), and Grandmama (Blossom Rock), they reside at 0001 Cemetery Lane in an ornate, gloomy, Second Empire-style mansion, attended by their servants: Lurch (Ted Cassidy), the towering butler, and Thing (billed as “itself”, but portrayed by Cassidy and occasionally by Jack Voglin), a disembodied hand that usually appears out of a small wooden box. Occasionally episodes would feature other relatives such as Cousin Itt (Felix Silla), Morticia’s older sister Ophelia (also portrayed by Carolyn Jones), or Grandma Frump, Morticia’s mother (Margaret Hamilton).

Much of the humour derives from their culture clash with the rest of the world. They invariably treat normal visitors with great warmth and courtesy, even though their guests often have evil intentions. They are puzzled by the horrified reactions to their own good-natured and normal behavior, since the family is under the impression that their tastes are shared by most of society. Accordingly, they view “conventional” tastes with generally tolerant suspicion. For example, Fester once cites a neighboring family’s meticulously maintained petunia patches as evidence that they are “nothing but riffraff”. A recurring theme in the epilogue of many episodes was the Addamses getting an update on the most-recent visitor to their home, either via mail, something in the newspaper, or a phone call. Invariably, as a result of their visit to the Addamses, the visitor would be institutionalized, change professions, move out of the country, or suffer some other negative life-changing event. The Addamses would always misinterpret the update and see it as good news for their most-recent visitor.

The tone was set by series producer Nat Perrin who was a close friend of Groucho Marx and writer of several Marx Brothers films. Perrin created story ideas, directed one episode, and rewrote every script. As a result, Gomez, with his sardonic remarks, backwards logic, and ever-present cigar (pulled from his breast pocket already lit), is sometimes compared to Groucho Marx.

The television series featured a memorable theme song, written and arranged by longtime Hollywood composer Vic Mizzy (who also wrote the score for William Castle’s The Night Walker). The song’s arrangement was dominated by a harpsichord, and featured finger-snaps as percussive accompaniment. Actor Ted Cassidy, in his “Lurch” voice, punctuated the lyrics with words like “neat”, “sweet”, and “petite”. Mizzy’s theme was popular enough to enjoy a release as a 45rpm single, though it failed to make the national charts.

Buy The Addams Family theme on MP3 from Amazon.co.uk

The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972)

The Addams Family’s first animated appearance was on the third episode of Hanna-Barbera’s The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which first aired on CBS Saturday morning September 23, 1972. Four of the original cast (John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, and Ted Cassidy) returned for the special.

The Addams Family characters were drawn to the specifications of the original Charles Addams cartoons. After the episode aired, fans wanted more animated adventures featuring the Addamses, and Hanna-Barbera obliged.

The Addams Family Fun-House (1972)

Meanwhile, in late 1972, ABC produced a pilot for a live-action musical variety show titled The Addams Family Fun-House. The cast included Jack Riley and Liz Torres as Gomez and Morticia, Stubby Kaye as Uncle Fester, Pat McCormick as Lurch and Butch Patrick (who had played Eddie Munster in The Munsters) as Pugsley. The pilot aired in 1973, but was not picked up for a series. Judging by the image below, we can see why!

The Addams Family  (1973–1975)

The first animated series ran on Saturday mornings from 1973–1975 on NBC. In a departure from the original series, this series took the Addamses on the road in a Victorian-style RV. This series also marked the point where the relations between characters were changed so that Fester was now Gomez’s brother, and Grandmama was now Morticia’s mother.

Although Coogan and Cassidy reprised their roles, Astin and Jones did not, their parts being recast with Hanna-Barbera voice talents Lennie Weinrib as Gomez and Janet Waldo as Morticia, while a ten-year-old Jodie Foster provided the voice of Pugsley. One season was produced, and the second season consisted of reruns. The show’s theme music was completely different and had no lyrics and no finger snaps.

Buy The Addams Family animated TV series from Amazon.com

A complementary comic book series was produced in connection with the show, but it lasted only three issues.

Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977)

A television reunion movie, Halloween with the New Addams Family, aired on NBC Sunday, October 30, 1977.

The Addams Family: The Animated Series (1992–1993)

The New Addams Family (1998–1999)

The New Addams Family was filmed in Vancouver, Canada, and ran for 65 episodes (one more than the original TV series) during the 1998–1999 season on the then newly launched Fox Family Channel. Many storylines from the original series were reworked for this new series, incorporating more modern elements and jokes. John Astin returned to the franchise in some episodes of this series, albeit as “Grandpapa” Addams.

The cast included Glenn Taranto as Gomez Addams, Ellie Harvie as Morticia, Michael Roberds as Fester, Brody Smith as Pugsley, Nicole Fugere (the only cast member from Addams Family Reunion to return) as Wednesday, John DeSantis as Lurch, Betty Phillips as Grandmama and Steven Fox as Thing.

Theatrical feature films

The Addams Family (1991)

In the 1990s, Orion Pictures (which by then had inherited the rights to the series) developed a film version, The Addams Family (released on November 22, 1991). Due to the studio’s financial troubles at the time, Orion sold the US rights to the film to Paramount Pictures. It took $191,502,246 at the box office.

Buy The Addams Family (1991) on Blu-ray from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Addams Family Values (1993)

Upon the last film’s success, a sequel followed: Addams Family Values. Loosened content restrictions allowed the films to use far more grotesque humour that strove to keep the original spirit of the Addams cartoons (in fact, several gags were lifted straight from the single panel cartoons). The two movies used the same cast, except for Grandmama, played by Judith Malina in the first film and Carol Kane in the second. A script for a third film was prepared in 1994, but was abandoned after the sudden death of actor Raúl Juliá.

Buy Addams Family Values on DVD from Amazon.com

Addams Family Reunion (1998)

Released direct-to-video on September 22, 1998, this time by Warner Bros. through its video division. It has no relation to the Paramount movies, being in fact a full-length pilot for a second live-action television version, The New Addams Family. The third movie’s Gomez, played by Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show; It), follows the style of Raúl Juliá.

Cancelled film

In 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment, in partnership with Universal Pictures, had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings. The film was planned to be a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’s original drawings. Tim Burton was set to co-write and co-produce the film, with a possibility to direct but it was eventually cancelled.

Reboot

On October 31, 2013 it was announced in Variety that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will be rebooting The Addams Family as an animated film with Pamela Pettler writing the screenplay, however this has not come to fruition, so far…

Adult features

Inevitably, as with The Munsters, there are adult-entertainment takes on the family’s exploits, namely The Maddams Family – with Ron Jeremy as Uncle Fester – and The Addams Family XXX. According to online reviews, the latter seems to be the better of the two…

Video games

Five video games released from 1989 to 1994 were based on The Addams Family.

• Fester’s Quest (1989) was a top down adventure game that featured Uncle Fester.

• In 1992, two versions of The Addams Family were released by Ocean Software based on the 1991 movie; an 8-bit version for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, as well as a 16-bit version released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Amiga, Atari ST and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. ICOM Simulations published The Addams Family video game for the TurboGrafx-CD in 1991.

• The games’ sequel, The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt (1993), also by Ocean Software, was based on the ABC animated series and was released for NES, SNES, and Game Boy (although the latter two were just 8-bit remakes of the first SNES game, swapping Pugsley and Gomez’s roles).

• Addams Family Values (1994) by Ocean was based on the movie’s sequel and returned to the style of gameplay seen in Fester’s Quest.

• A Game Boy Color game was released in the 1990s for promotion of The New Addams Family. The game was simply titled The New Addams Family Series. In this game, the Addams mansion had been bought by a fictional company called “Funnyday” that wanted to tear down the house and surrounding grounds to make room for an amusement park.

Pinball

Books

The Addams Family

This first novelization of the television series, written by Jack Sharkey, was released near the end of the show’s second season by Pyramid Books in 1965. The book details the family’s arrival in their new home, and explains how it got its bizarre décor. The arrival and origins of Thing are explained. Each chapter reads as a self-contained story, like episodes of the television show. The novel concludes with the Addams family discovering that their lives will be the basis for a new television series.

The Addams Family Strikes Back

“The Addams Family Strikes Back” by W.F. Miksch tells how Gomez plans to rehabilitate the image of Benedict Arnold by running for the local school board. The tone and characterizations in this book resemble the TV characters much more closely than in the first novel. Cousin Itt appears as a minor character in this story, but as a tiny, three-legged creature rather than the hairy, derby-hatted character seen on television and in the movies. The novel was published in paperback form by Pyramid Books in 1965.

The Addams Family: An Evilution

Merchandising: Games and Toys

The success of the 1960s TV series spawned a vast array of merchandising including a board game and target game, both from Ideal.

The success of the 1990s feature films led to further merchandising of all kinds, plus arcade games.

Advertising

In 1994, the actors cast as the Addamses in the first two films (sans the recently deceased Raúl Juliá) were in several Japanese television spots for the Honda Odyssey.The Addamses—most prominently Gomez (for whom a voice actor was used to impersonate Juliá while footage from Addams Family Values was seen) and Morticia—are seen speaking Japanese.

In 2007 and 2008, the Addams Family appeared as M&Ms in an advertising campaign for M&Ms Dark Chocolate.

Musicals

The Addams Family (2010 onwards)

More Addams Family merchandise…

Fancy dress costumes

Buy Addams Family Psychobilly t-shirt from Amazon.co.uk

Buy The Addams Family Barbie Doll Giftset from Amazon.com

Wikipedia | Related: The Munsters

The Creature Wasn’t Nice – also known as Spaceship and Naked Space - is a 1981 (released 1983) U.S. film written and directed by Bruce Kimmel. It purports to be a comedy that satirises extraterrestrial sci-fi horror monster movies such as Alien and includes clips from American and Japanese science fiction movies.

The film stars Leslie Nielsen (Forbidden Planet; Repossessed) in a role similar to his in the farcical comedy Airplane (1980). It co-stars Cindy Williams, Gerrit Graham, and Patrick Macnee (The Howling). It was released on VHS in 1983 under the title Spaceship to cash-in Nielsen’s connection to Airplane!, and released on DVD in 1999 to play up the connection to his Naked Gun comedies.

The movie is a low-budget comedy with simple sets and dialog wrapped around several musical numbers. In one of the scenes, the red slimy one-eyed alien monster performs a lounge-act style musical number called “I Want to Eat Your Face.”

Williams performs two musical numbers, one solo and one with Kimmel, who had previously appeared with and directed her in 1976 in The First Nudie Musical. Bizarrely, a soundtrack CD of the score by David Spear, plus Kimmel’s camp songs, was released on CD in 2007.

Plot teaser:

2012: The spaceship Vertigo and its crew encounter “an unknown and undiscovered” planet where they discover a small red jelly-like organism. Taking it on board their spaceship, they are are appalled to discover the alien life form is intent on eating the crew, whilst singing lounge numbers…

Reviews:

Half the film’s raison d’etre appears to have been to indulge director/star Bruce Kimmel’s apparent liking for song-and-dance numbers …The rest of the film is crass lowbrow humour. There is a plethora of bad taste gags, some of which are astonishingly awful in their loudness and its vulgarity.” Richard Scheib, Moria

“Whatever charm this might have had is obliterated by overacting (including Ron Kurowski as the monster), flat direction and utterly dumb writing. The major blame can be put on Bruce Kimmel, who wrote, directed and plays one of the crew. Eject it through the airlock, quick!” John Stanley, Creature Features

“Though some would be content with a spoof of Alien with obvious gags, and there was nothing here ever less than doggedly likeable, almost all of it fell flat with everyone else, that in spite of at least one moment of inspiration when the now-grown monster is hooked up to a translator and croons the memorable ballad ‘I Want to Eat Your Face’. Aside from that, which a surprising amount of people recall even if they don’t remember the film around it, it was all too mild to make an impression otherwise with an effects budget which would make an old episode of Star Trek look lavish and performances more appropriate to vaudeville.” Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image

“One of the worst movies ever made had three redeeming scenes which made the whole thing worth it. Because of these hilarious scenes as well as the overall ridiculous story with no attempt at making it believable, it has become a cult classic.” Someone Once Said…

Cast:

• Leslie Nielsen – Captain Jamieson
• Cindy Williams – Annie McHugh
• Bruce Kimmel – John
• Gerrit Graham – Rodzinski
• Patrick Macnee – Dr. Stark
• Ron Kurowski – The Creature
• Paul Brinegar – Clint Eastwood / Dirty Harry
• Broderick Crawford – Voice of Max the Computer (uncredited)

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Save the last dance… for Hell!’

Slash Dance – aka Slashdance – is a 1989 U.S. horror thriller written and directed by James Shyman (Hollywood’s New Blood). It stars Cindy Ferda, James Carroll Jordan, J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner, Jay Richardson, William Kerr, John Bluto, Dee Booher [as Queen Kong], Kelle Favara.

Plot teaser:

In Hollywood, a female cop goes undercover as a dancer at an old theatre to catch a serial killer who has been murdering women auditioning for a musical…

Reviews:

“There are a lot of red herrings tossed around, along with a lot of big hair, acid washed denim, horrible acting and downright retarded storytelling. This movie also tries to inject a lot of really unfunny, inappropriate humor throughout, which gives it a schizophrenic feel as it switches back and forth from wacky highjinks to musical montages to serious violence, all without batting an eyelash. The gore is at a minimum here, as well as the nudity, which is very brief at best.” Michael Monterastelli, CHUD.com

“Slashdance is an utterly avoidable effort that fails to deliver as a slasher, as a comedy or even as a dance movie. There’s really nothing to recommend here and its best avoided.” A Slash Above…

“Slash Dance is very bad, and I don’t really think it’s even much of a curiosity for slasher fans unless you really want to see shoot guns on a firing range, deliver dropkicks, and show off her high-heel throwing prowess. No matter how cool that sounds, it really isn’t. Trash it!” Brett Gallman, Oh, the Horror!

“It’s an absolutely horrendously bad film: it fails as a slasher flick, it fails as a crime thriller, and it fails as a horror-comedy – yes, there’s plenty of attempted intentional humor in Slash Dance. The intentional humor is so not funny that it totally travels full-circle and becomes funny again, which is very rare … Look, if you want a decent slasher set in the world of theatre, try Stage Fright or Curtains. But if you just want some fabulously bad direct-to-VHS ’80s-cheesy-style fun, I highly recommend Slash Dance, some friends, and a six-pack. Leotards are optional.” Final Girl

“Lots of dancing. Few thrills.” John Stanley, Creature Features

Choice dialogue:

“Ok, but if I end up looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame from sleeping on your couch, it’s your fault.”

“It’d like to tap dance, on his head.”

IMDb

Hell High aka Raging Fury is a 1986 (released 1989) U.S. slasher horror film directed and co-produced by Douglas Grossman from a screenplay he co-wrote with Leo Evans. It stars Christopher Stryker, Maureen Mooney, Christopher Cousins (Earth vs. the Spider; The Vampire Diaries), Millie Prezioso, Jason Brill (Office Killer).

The British PolyGram VHS release was cut 1 minute 36 seconds by the BBFC. The lurid sleeve artwork was later re-used for a Dutch release of Alice, Sweet, Alice. The U.S. Shriek Show DVD includes an enthusiastic commentary by Joe Bob Briggs.

Plot teaser:

A teacher still haunted by the death of two teens that she accidentally caused as a young girl goes beserk when four teens start harassing her and then attack her in her home…

Buy Hell High on DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Director Douglas Grossman uses some interesting camera angles to give the murders more impact. One of the best involves a recently lobotomized victim staggering down a flight of stairs with his eyes rolling back in his head and a Number 2 pencil protruding from his temple. Leo Evans, along with co-writer Grossman, gives the characters in Hell High more layers than one would expect in a low budget slasher. With the exception of the nihilistic Dickens, the teen characters have ambitions for life after high school.” Thomas Ellison, Retro Slashers

” … it’s definitely a pretty good horror movie in general. For starters, there’s an AMAZING 80’s pop soundtrack, coupled with a truly memorable and creepy main theme and some Carpenter-esque cues during the horror scenes. Someone needs to get me this soundtrack ASAP. Also, it’s almost a shame that the mask wearing folks aren’t the killers, because two of the masks they wear are pretty awesome.” Horror Movie a Day

“There’s a great money shot that was used on most covers and marketing material and it sees the teacher running down the stairs in silhouette with a knife in her hand a la Norman Bates. In fact, the photography from Stephen Fierberg is by far the best thing technically about the picture. The scenes in the swamp are particularly gloomy and atmospheric and superbly lighted. Kudos to the producers for making the most of a low budget and Hell High shows no obvious signs of being lesser funded than the Friday the 13th sequel developed the same year.” A Slash Above…

“A decent little slasher that breaks the mold of the typical theme we’re all used to seeing from the 80’s. Worth a check if you can sit through the story, but don’t expect a lot of deaths or gore.” Upcoming Horror Movies

Filming locations:

Scarsdale, New York
Westchester, The Bronx, New York

Wikipedia | IMDb

Ghosts ‘n Goblins (魔界村; Makaimura; “Demon World Village“) is a 1985 side-scrolling platforming game developed by Tokuro Fujiwara at Capcom, initially for video arcades and has since been released on several other platforms for the home market. It is the first game in what eventually became an entire franchise.

Ghosts ‘n Goblins is a platform game where the player controls a knight, named Sir Arthur – that’s where the suggestion of any link to Arthurian legend ends. Arthur must defeat zombies, ogres, demons, cyclops, bats, dragons and other monsters in order to rescue Princess Prin Prin, who has been kidnapped by Satan, king of Demon World. Along the way the player can pick up new weapons, bonuses and extra suits of armour that can help in this task.

The game is often considered very difficult by arcade standards and is commonly regarded as one of the most difficult games ever released. A unique aspect of the game is the knight’s vulnerability – he sets off on his quest wearing a full suit of armour but one touch from one of the enemies along the way relieves him of this, leaving him to continue clad only in his underwear. If Arthur is hit once more, the player must return right to the start of the level, regardless of any progress made. Armour can be replaced by picking up bonus suits, though these are few and far between. Furthermore, each life can only last a certain length of time (generally around three minutes), the clock being reset at the start of a level. If the clock does run out, the player instantly loses that life.

After defeating the final boss, but only with the cross weapon (if the player does not have the cross weapon, they will be prompted that it is needed to defeat the boss and restart at the beginning of level 5 and must repeat round 5 and 6 again regardless if the weapon is obtained immediately or not) for the first time the player is informed that the battle was “a trap devised by Satan”. The player must then replay the entire game on a higher difficulty level to reach the genuine final battle. It is likely the player will already have reached homicide levels of frustration by this stage.

Only a year after launching in arcades, the game found itself in many a household worldwide, having transferred to various consoles, most famously the Commodore 64 but also the ZX Spectrum, Amiga, NES, Atari ST and Nintendo Gameboy. The gameplay was changed somewhat, partially to make victory more achievable (though not in this reviewer’s case) and also to shrink down the expanse of the gameplay area to function on machines with little capacity. Other elements were also tweaked – Princess Prin Prin was often renamed, Guinevere, depending on the territory of release, whilst her kidnapper changed from Satan to Astaroth.
So successful was the port to home consoles that further games followed:

Ghosts ‘n Goblins (1985) (Arcade, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, IBM PC compatibles, Commodore 16, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NES, Xbox, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, iOS, Virtual Console)
Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1988) (Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Sharp X68000, Sega Saturn, Xbox, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, SuperGrafx, Master System, Genesis, Virtual Console, ZX Spectrum)
Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1991) (SNES, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network)
Choumakaimura R (2002) (Game Boy Advance) – An enhanced re-mixed version of Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts
Makaimura for WonderSwan (1999) (WonderSwan)
Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins (2006) (PlayStation Portable)
Gokumakaimura Kai (2007) (PlayStation Portable) – An enhanced re-mixed version of Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins
Ghosts ‘n Goblins: Gold Knights (2009) (iOS)
Ghosts ‘n Goblins: Gold Knights II (2010) (iOS)

The universe was now well-known enough for specific characters to break out and have their own game ranges, including Maximo and Gargoyle’s Quest. Some aspects of the game, from the knight’s iconic appearance (both armoured and undressed) to the score by Ayako Mori can be found in other gaming franchises, such as Dead Rising 2 and Marvel Vs. Capcom. The full cast can be seen below:

Grimm: The grim reaper who frees Maximo from limbo and aids him on his journey in exchange for killing Achille.

Firebrand: Known as The Red Arremer in Japan, Firebrand is the primary protagonist of the Gargoyle’s Quest series. He belongs to a race of gargoyle demons known as the Red Arremer Tribe, considered the elite warriors of the demon king Astaroth. He is considered a hero among his peers, and as such he has been nicknamed Red Blaze due to his bright red skin and prowess with fiery magic. The Red Arremer tribe appear as standard enemies in the main Ghosts ‘n Goblins series, while a fiery blue silhouette of a Red Arremer serves as the series’ logo.

Breager: A king of the demon realm that serves as a primary antagonist in the Gargoyle’s Quest series.

Astaroth: A demon king and the primary antagonist of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. When near death he transforms into the undead demon king Nebiroth, a separate entity and personality than Astaroth.

Arthur: A knight in the service of princess Prin-Prin. Arthur is the primary protagonist of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series.

Lancelot: One of Arthur’s knights with a unique jump attack. He is kidnapped and brainwashed to fight Arthur.

Lucifer: Translated as Rushifell in Gargoyle’s Quest and Gargoyle’s Quest II, and alternatively referred to as Loki (Ghouls ‘n Ghosts), Hades (Ultimate Ghosts ‘n Goblins), and Satan. Lucifer is an extremely powerful noble in the demon realm and serves as the end-game boss in many of the games in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise. In the Gargoyle’s Quest series he functions as both a rival and assist character, testing and then aiding Firebrand in reaching his full potential. Lucifer despises Astaroth (who he frequently overthrows to rule the demon realm) though, ironically, is an ally with Nebiroth.

Maximo: The primary protagonist of the Maximo series. Maximo is a king who is slain by his adviser Achille. He strikes a deal with Grimm, the grim reaper, in order to rescue his betrothed, Sophia.

Perceval: One of Arthur’s knights and a powerful short range fighter with a unique dash attack.

Prin-Prin: Princess Prin-Prin is the ruler of the human realm—Ghouls ‘n Ghosts specifies the Kingdom of Hus—and the last human with royal blood. She serves as the primary foil of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. Astaroth kidnaps her in order to use her royal blood to invade the human realm. Although always referred to as Prin-Prin in Japan, she has been called both Prin-Prin and Guinevere in the various American and UK releases.

Sardius: The primary demon antagonist and end-boss from Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts.

Sophia: The primary foil of the Maximo series. Sophia is Maximo’s betrothed, kidnapped at the beginning of Maximo: Ghosts to Glory.

Across all the home console formats, sales have exceeded 4.4 million copies and the franchise shows no signs of having run its course just yet.

Daz Lawrence

Tahkhana (तहखाना “Dungeon”) is a 1986 Bollywood Indian horror film directed by Shyam Ramsay and Tulsi Ramsay (Darwaza). It is a tale about two sisters separated at birth and the search for a hidden treasure which is guarded in a dungeon by a bloodthirsty monster.

It stars Hemant Birje, Arati Gupta and Kamran Rizvi, Narendranath, Puneet Issar Imtiaz Khan, Sheetal, Priti Sapru, Trilok Kapoor, Amarnath Chatterji, Huma Khan, Rajindernath and Shamsuddin. The soundtrack music was composed by Ajit Singh with songs sung by Amit Kumar, Anuradha Paudwal and Sushma Shreshtha.

Plot teaser:

Dying Thakur Surjeet Singh bequeaths his entire estate to his son, Raghuvir, disowning the other, Dhurjan, the family’s black sheep, who also indulges in black magic. The latter swears to use magical powers to usurp the estate, and even arranges the abduction of Raghuvir’s daughters, Sapna and Aarti. Mangal and his men manage to apprehend Dhurjan, imprison him in a dungeon, and rescue Aarti.

However, they are unable to locate Sapna, and Raghuvir is killed. Before dying, he informs Mangal that Sapna has one of two pieces of a locket around her neck, while the other is on Aarti’s, and when joined together will reveal the location of treasure buried in a dungeon.

Twenty years later, Aarti and her boyfriend, Vijay, along with several others, attempt to unearth the treasure – not realising that they not only face betrayal from one of their own, but will also release and fall prey to an ageless and indestructible entity…

Buy on DVD from Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Yeah, the monster looks like a busty Howard Stern with a skin condition and the obligatory comedic sketches are jarringly incongruous, but there is a lot of fun to be had with this picture.

The sets and cinematography are sensational, the music and acting are gleefully camp, the direction is quietly effective and the filmmakers don’t hesitate to knock off main characters with unexpected relish. If you are looking to expand your horror-fiend horizons or if you like a dose of levity with your fright-films, Tahkhana will not disappoint.” Terror Transmission

“A monster movie at its heart, the film wastes little time with unnecessary comedic relief, relying instead on action, thrills and a couple of prerequisite musical numbers to flesh out a familiar story that, at the time, Indian audiences could not get enough of. While rather straightforward in its delivery, there are thankfully plenty of “what the?” moments for those looking for something out of the ordinary to enjoy…” Jason McElreath, DVD Drive-In

“As slow as the monster may stalk, the pace of Tahkhana moves rather quickly, a stark contrast to many of its ilk. Sure, there’s some inconsequential padding tossed into the mix, but it’s almost always amusing, thanks to a cast of characters that are diverse and interesting. It’s also worth noting that the majority of the comedy present actually hits home; that isn’t to say it isn’t goofy and inappropriate as all hell though.” KamuiX, Infini-Tropolis

“Given the nature of Tahkhana’s Big Bad, the whole film feels more like an adventure movie with an added monster than the sort of silly yet loveable and enthusiastic scream fest I by now expect of a Ramsay film. That’s not to say Tahkhana is a bad film; it is entertaining enough. I just don’t think it shows the Ramsay Brothers at their best.” The Horror!?

Related: Darwaza

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Screams of terror… silenced only by the splintering of glass!’

Nightmares – aka Stage Fright – is a 1980 Australian horror film, co-produced and directed by John D. Lamond from a screenplay by Colin Eggleston (Long Weekend; Innocent Prey; Cassandra). It stars Jenny Neumann (The Girl in the Empty Grave; Hell Night), Gary Sweet (The Dreaming), Nina Landis (Komodo), Max Phipps (Thirst; Mad Max 2; Dark Age); Edmund Pegge (Scream – and Die!).

The Bernard Hermannesque score is by Brian May (Patrick; Thirst; Roadgames).

Nightmares was released in the US uncut and remastered on DVD by Severin Films on June 28, 2011.

Plot teaser:

A young girl named Cathy (Jenny Neumann) tries to keep her mother from making out with a man while driving one day, and she inadvertently causes her mother’s death in the ensuing crash.

Sixteen years later, Cathy is now named Helen and has become an actress. Since her mother died with a shard of glass in her throat, Helen begins hacking through the cast of her new play, “Comedy of Blood,” in similar fashion…

Buy Nightmares uncut and remastered on DVD from Amazon.com 

Reviews:

“Nightmares certainly lives up to its name. Unfolding like a delirious fever dream, its abrupt cuts and elliptical montages prevent rhythm and typical narrative coherency. It’s almost reminiscent of a female counterpart to Maniac in its study of obsession and psychological scarring, while its conflation of sex and death echoes the giallo tradition.

All of this, of course, makes it a twisted, demon spawn of Psycho, and Lamond wears that Hitchcockian influence on his sleeve in several shots. His take on the then-burgeoning slasher genre is a wickedly stylish tour-de-force of roving cameras and high-strung symphonic sound that often work in spectacular fashion.” Brett G., Oh, the Horror!

“It’s hilarious that Lamond plays it like a mystery. Not only does Helen have violent sexual hangups and a thing with broken glass, but after the alley couple are killed, her recurring nightmare starts featuring scenes from that murder. You know, because she did it. Yet even after this, the movie keeps the slasher’s face hidden from us till the very end, as if Lamond forgot he already told us who it was.” Eric B. Snider, Geek Nation

” … the film offers nothing to the genre, which is even sadder when you consider it came out before many of the other slasher films folks can name off the top of their head. In fact it’s almost more like a giallo at times, due to the loose plotting, excess of sex and assholes, and crazy flashback motifs, but it lacks style. If nothing else, a giallo should deliver some nice set pieces, but one of this film’s biggest issues is how shoddily constructed it is. There AREN’T any set-pieces, scenes just sort of come and go at random throughout the film, leaving the viewer without any clear indication of how much time has gone by since the last one (that they all fade in/out to black doesn’t help).” Horror Movie a Day

“Even if he may be an awful editor, as a writer, Eggeton excels himself and his hilarious dialogue and intriguing personas are brilliant. I’ve done quite a bit of theatre and can confirm that the featured characterisations are spot on. I once read that celebrities are some of the most non-confident people on the planet and the fact that they’re swimming in a pool of insecurities up on the world’s stage makes them self-centred and narcissistic.

The script most definitely touches on that and it means that we can have fun watching them get slashed. And get slashed they do. EVERY single one of them. The performances may not be earth moving and there’s no one really to bond with, but it’s still enjoyable enough to watch.” Luisito Joaquín González, A Slash Above…

“I also really enjoyed how the film, whether intentionally or not, provided an explanation as to why killers in slasher films tend to go after lovers in heat as their prime targets. It’s become a running joke that if you plan to get it on in a slasher flick, you’ll not likely to live long enough to achieve that happy ending. What Nightmares does is provide us with a backstory as to why Hellen hates sex and how she sees sexuality as the murderer of her mother and in order to avenge her she must eliminate any trace of it that she comes across.” Matthew Saliba, The Celery Stalks At Midnight

Interview with John Lamond on Mondo Stumpo!

Cast:

• Gary Sweet … Terry Besanko
• Jenny Neumann … Cathy/Helen Selleck
• Max Phipps … George D’alberg
• John Michael Howson … Bennett Collingwood
• Nina Landis … Judy

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image credits: Critical Condition

‘There’s no place like home. Bloody home.’

Next of Kin is a 1982 Australian horror film directed by New Zealander Tony Williams from a screenplay he wrote with Michael Heath. It stars Jacki Kerin, John Jarratt (Dark Age; Wolf Creek and sequel) and Alex Scott (The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Twins of Evil; The Asphyx).

The synthesizer soundtrack is by German composer Klaus Schulze.

The movie featured in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood where it was praised by Quentin Tarantino.

Plot teaser:

Linda Stevens (Jacki Kerin) inherits Montclare, a country mansion which was turned into a retirement home by her late mother and her sister, Aunt Rita. Strange events described in her mother’s diaries – lights and taps turning on by themselves, voices in the night – seem to be recurring. Linda suspects long-serving Montclare housekeeper Connie (Gerda Nicolson) and local physician Dr Barton (Alex Scott) of hiding details of Montclare’s finances and the death of Aunt Rita. Turning to boyfriend Barney (John Jarratt) for help, Linda attempts to unlock the mysteries of Montclare.

Reviews:

“Although it doesn’t quite deliver the full-blown terror the patient build-up promises, and the old folks in the house are used mainly for hit-and-miss comic effect, Next of Kin is a nifty little film with a consistently uneasy ambience and sturdy work by a cast including Jacki Kerin and a young John Jarratt of Wolf Creek (2005) fame. Technically polished and highly imaginative…” Richard Kuipers, Australian Screen

It sounds like a decent, suspenseful little movie the way I describe it, doesn’t it? Well don’t let me fool you. It should have been, but it is prevented from turning into one by a number of poor scripting and directorial decisions. First of all, what ought to have been the buildup, during which the evidence gradually accumulates that something is disastrously wrong at Montclare, never actually builds anything. The tone is so low-key during the first three quarters of the film that we in the audience can’t for the life of us understand why Linda is becoming so alarmed at the goings-on in the old mansion.” 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

Wikipedia | IMDb

Brian May (28 July 1934 – 25 April 1997) was an Australian film composer. His best known scores are those for Mad Max and Mad Max 2, though he composed for many genres, including several horror films. No doubt his name led to many instances of mistaken identity; for the record, there is no connection between the Australian composer and the guitarist for rock band, Queen.

May was born in Adelaide on 28 July 1934. He trained at the Adelaide Elder Conservatorium as a pianist, violinist and conductor. He joined the ABC Adelaide in 1957 and was asked to form and conduct the ABC Adelaide Big Band, a full-blown ensemble that was rated as the best of the ABC state-based bands. He moved to Melbourne when he was 35 to arrange and conduct the ABC’s Melbourne Show band. The Show Band made its radio debut on the First Network on 13 March 1969. Background music for Australian television had previously been taken from records and music library collections, the lack of investment in the Australian film industry demanding cut-backs wherever possible… May changed this by writing and arranging the themes for television programmes, including Bellbird, Return to Eden, The Last Frontier, A Dangerous Life and Darling of the Gods.

A breakthrough came with the drama series Rush (1974 – 1976), set on the 19th-century Victorian goldfields. The theme was composed by Australian George Dreyfus, but May’s arrangement of the theme was recorded by the Show Band and quickly reached the top of the Aussie charts, selling more than 100,000 copies. This type of success was usually reserved for pop groups such as Sherbert and Skyhooks. May also composed the Countdown theme and the Melbourne Show Band launched the highly successful Countdown television series. He left the ABC in 1984 and turned his interests solely to film scores.

Without any heritage of film composition in Australia to speak of, to some extent, May’s work was influenced by the Australian landscape; broadly sweeping strings and tight orchestrations which he insisted on arranging himself; a slightly impolite comparison might be to suggest he was similar to Riz Ortolani but on a much tighter budget, though some, fancifully, declared him the Southern Hemisphere’s Bernard Herrmann. Like Herrmann, May could also use string sections in a more angular manner for scenes requiring an injection of tension. A meeting with the director Richard Franklin in 1975, with whom he worked with on the score to sex comedy, The True Story of Eskimo Nell, lead to May’s first notable work for film, the score to Franklin’s Patrick (1978).

The most arresting aspect of May’s score to Patrick is the lack of a brass section; instead, various shades of violin work are married with chiming harps, lending a feeling of fragility and sadness. Drums are avoided where possible with vibraphones preferred to add to the textures of the melodies. As Patrick becomes angrier and more frustrated in the film, the strings become discordant and more frenzied – hardly a new technique but it’s skilfully done.

May followed up with his most widely-recognised work, the score to Mad Max, heavy on kettle drums, brass and strings but avoiding the trappings of synths, often used in post-apocalyptic fare. This was followed-up with less box-office-troubling work on Snapshot (retitled Day After Halloween in the US) and Thirst, the latter score being more successful, some strangled, spidery strings, blaring brass and a spot of chanting – it still comes across as a bit TV movie-ish but it’s fun enough.

May scored two Robert Powell-starring films – 1980’s Harlequin and the following year’s The Survivor. Harlequin relies on a great many short cues but throws in some disconcerting, warping synth patterns and staccato strings which show some understanding for the creation of tension and mystery. The Survivor has more of May’s favoured slushy strings, with some intervention of an oboe and a flute, as well as synthesisers, both of which give the score a sympathetic slant on the characters’ situation whilst also lending an atonality that suggested much without resorting to too many clichés.

When Franklin was given the job of directing Psycho II, a thankless task for many but one relished by a former associate of Hitchcock, it seemed natural that May would be given his major Hollywood debut but the injection of cash into the project by Universal meant broader scope in all fields, not least the scoring of the film, which was instead given to Jerry Goldsmith. This was not the first rejection of May’s talents – Patrick’s Italian distributors deemed it necessary to give the film a completely different score, much as Dawn of the Dead did. In common with the latter film, rock band Goblin injected their tried and tested prog sensibilities into the film, effective but losing the softness of the original and giving the film a more galloping, exploitative edge to what is essentially a very human story. Ironically, the sound of the film suffered yet further in an American cut that re-dubbed the Australian accents with more familiar tones.

Some of the most enjoyable of May’s music can be heard on the soundtrack to 1982’s Turkey Shoot, a surprisingly synth-centric affair (only 1990’s Bloodmoon uses a similar amount), interspersed with slave ship-like drums, not unlike the scores of Italian exploitation films, from which this film borrowed heavily. Work on films such as Road Games, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacey Keach kept May in with a chance of a Hollywood breakthrough but, though he scored the first two Mad Max films in the franchise, once again, when a major film seemed destined to land in his lap, it was snatched away; the score duties to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome going to Maurice Jarre.

Buy Mad Max 2 soundtrack CD from Amazon.co.uk

Even when American opportunities eventually appeared they were for lesser works or for long-in-the-tooth franchises; Dr. Giggles and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, both of which, as it turned out, displayed May’s skill but also the Hollywood system’s knack of sucking the vitality and uniqueness out of original ideas.

Mad Max won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Original Score. May won many other awards, including the Golden Award from the Australian Performing Rights Association. He spent many years in America working on film scores and was regarded as the finest of Australia’s screen composers. He died in Melbourne on 25 April 1997 at the age of 62 as a result of a heart attack.

Daz Lawrence

Filmography

• Patrick (1978)
• Mad Max (1979) – Won Best Original Music Score award by AFI.
• Snapshot (1979)
• Thirst (1979)
• Twenty Good Years ABCTV (1979)
• Harlequin (1980)
• Nightmares (1980)
• Gallipoli (1981) (additional music)
• Mad Max 2 (1981) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981)
• Road Games (1981) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• The Survivor (1981)
• Breakfast in Paris (1982)
• Kitty and the Bagman (1982)
• Turkey Shoot (1982)
• A Slice of Life (1983)
• Cloak & Dagger (1984)
• Innocent Prey (1984)
• Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985)
• Frog Dreaming (1986) – Nominated for Best Original Music Score by AFI.
• Sky Pirates (1986)
• Death Before Dishonor (1987)
• Steel Dawn (1987)
• Bloodmoon (1990)
• Dead Sleep (1990)
• Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)
• Dr. Giggles (1992)
• Hurricane Smith (1992)
• Blind Side (1993)

Buy Turkey Shoot soundtrack on CD from Amazon.co.uk

‘One Hell of a party!’

Saturday the 14th Strikes Back is a 1988 comedy horror film, written and directed by Howard R. Cohen and produced by Julie Corman for Concorde. It is a sequel to Saturday the 14th.

The film stars Ray Walston (Galaxy of Terror; Blood Salvage), Avery Schreiber, Patty McCormack (The Bad Seed; Crowhaven Farm; Silent Predators), Jason Presson, Julianne McNamara, Rhonda Aldrich, Daniel Will-Harris, Pamela Stonebrook, Joseph Ruskin. Horror icon Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes; The Devil’s Rejects; Self Storage) has a minor role as a mummy.

Plot teaser:

Eddie and his family have just inherited a spooky wreck of a house. What they do not know about the house is that it was built over an evil passage way, but they are soon to discover the wacky evil it releases…

Reviews:

A cynical Corman attempt to cash-in on the surprising video rental success of their already feeble 1981 comedy horror. Thematically, this is a throw-it-all-at-the-screen affair from Herman R. Cohen (who’d previously given the world Vampire Hookers, the original Saturday the 14th and Deathstalker). The self-reflective ending includes apocalyptic footage from previous Corman acquisitions and productions, including a bizarre one second shot of Johnny Ramone’s lower half and guitar from Rock ‘n’ Rock High School! Avoid, unless in a very charitable mood, or a die-hard Michael Berryman fan.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

“The film isn’t completely terrible though. There’s some cool looking puppets as well as entertaining stop motion throughout. There’s something moderately charming about the fact that the film never takes a second to stop. It’s one bad gag and bad joke after another. While the film doesn’t hold the same level of “so bad it’s good” praise that a Troll 2 or Plan 9 will receive it’s probably the only film where you get to see a werewolf spy on an olympic gold medalist in the shower.” Geekscape

” … few films are as entertaining as watching this movie try to be clever and fail. It’s simply that earnest and determined, and pity makes belly laughs deeper. Like a kid in socks trying to turn a corner on linoleum, like a drunken man hitting on a waitress, there is humor in watching repeated clumsy failure. For this, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back should be saluted.” Axel Kohagen, Slasher Studios

” … one of the most insane genre-related movies I think I’ve ever seen. If you’ve never experienced it for yourself, ST14SB basically makes Troll 2 look Oscar-worthy in comparison and yet, it’s really hard for me as a fan to hate on ST14SB because despite its numerous (and boy do I mean numerous flaws), you can tell it’s a movie with a horror-loving heart beating deep beneath its wacky surface and that’s something I can always appreciate as a fan.” The Misadventures of the Horror Chick

Cast:

• Ray Walston as Gramps Baxter
• Avery Schreiber as Frank Baxter
• Patty McCormack as Kate Baxter
• Jason Presson as Eddie Baxter
• Julianne McNamara as Linda Baxter
• Rhonda Aldrich as Alice
• Daniel Will-Harris as Bert
• Pamela Stonebrook as Charlene
• Joseph Ruskin as Kharis
• Riad as Takatiri
• Phil Leeds as Leonard
• Leo Gordon as The Evil One (as Leo V. Gordon)
• Tommy Rall as The Werewolf
• Michael Berryman as The Mummy
• Dave Workman as The Plumber

Wikipedia | IMDb

Fear was a UK full-colour magazine published by Newsfield between 1988 and 1991. It was edited by John Gilbert and as well as covering just horror films, it also provided a showcase for both established authors and first-timers with a section dedicated to short fiction.

Gilbert was formally deputy editor of the home computer magazine Sinclair User but as the console market was starting to leave behind the age of rubber keys and unreliable cassettes, he was keen to find a new niche in the magazine marketplace in which to set-up shop. Horror was to provide this and the first issue was a mix of both horror film and book reviews, news of forthcoming genre activity and a section towards the middle of horror, science fiction and fantasy fiction from a variety of writers.

Whilst this was a period when many of the more unusual, European or unreleased/banned films were receiving attention from a myriad of self-published fanzines, Fear provided information for eager horror fans to find out more about their passion on a monthly basis in many newsagents and shops on the high street. Sales were unremarkable but strong enough to ensure the magazine survived for the period Newsfield was operating. The equal coverage the magazine gave to authors was well-received by both readers and writers and the first works by the likes of Peter F. Hamilton sat alongside established masters of the art such as Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, James Herbert and Clive Barker (who, towards the end of the magazine’s life appeared with head-spinning regularity throughout).

So successful was the literary section that a spin-off magazine appeared, Frighteners, which solely served this purpose. Sadly, its success was short-lived; the first issue featured a story by Graham Masterton entitled, ‘Eric the Pie’ which saw a young chap discovering his fondness for eating live animals descending into more cannibalistic behaviour, all of which was a bit too much for WH Smith who pulled it from their shelves. Given that one issue of Fear had covered the Cannibal genre, specifically film, in some depth, you can understand the disappointment of both fans, author and publisher. The sticking point was the lack of any warning that the magazine was intended for an adult audience – such was the power of WH Smith at the time that this was financially ruinous for Newsfield who had little option to accept the first issue was a huge loss.

The covers to the magazine featured the stunning artwork of Oliver Frey, whose painted designs were often worthy of purchasing the magazine in themselves. Only a couple of issues featured images from films in lieu of his work. Oliver and his brother, Franco, as well as mutual friend Roger Kean, were actually the founders of Newsfield and had developed it to provide a platform for their ZX Spectrum magazine, Crash and later, Sinclair User. Crash also used Frey’s distinctive artwork on the cover. The ‘Eric the Pie’ fiasco naturally affected both magazines due to the financial impact of the magazines withdrawal, indeed the liquidators for Newsfield also pointed out that the other major national magazine retailer, John Menzies, had too refused to stock the magazine, after a customer complained about the content. In the face of adversity, a spirited defence was launched, with issue 33 of Fear (August, 1991) published an article supporting both the story and the decision to publish it, whilst a second issue of Frighteners also appeared, though now with the missing warning in place. Readers were invited to purchase the banned issue direct from the supplier for the cover price alone in an attempt to repair the damage but sadly, the end was nigh and only issues 2 and 3 of Frighteners appeared with issue 33 being the final issue of Fear.

Fear’s piece on the incident reveals Frighteners as being “withdrawn from sale after legal advice” and Fear editor, Gilbert, spoke to author Graham Masterton who describes ‘Eric The Pie’ as: “a satire to show the grisly realities of the human diet”, whilst going on to clarify that the tale, “is no more disturbing than the meat counter at Sainsbury’s”. Describing the story’s strongest scene featuring a still (not for long) breathing calf, Masterton says, “There is nothing in the scene that tends to deprave or corrupt, but it should rightly evoke outrage. ‘Eric The Pie’ is a serious story with a serious purpose. I hope very much that it will be taken as such.” He has since admitted it may have been a bit strong for many audiences.

As well as many of the authors who appeared within the pages, others, such as regular reviewer, Mark Kermode, went on to achieve great success after the magazine’s closure. Fortunately, Gilbert has remained determined to resurrect the hugely-missed magazine and a relaunch is planned at some point in 2015.

Daz Lawrence

Famous Monsters of Filmland is a horror genre-specific film magazine started in 1958 by publisher James Warren and editor Forrest J Ackerman.

Famous Monsters of Filmland inspired the creation of many other horror-themed publications, including Castle of Frankenstein, Fangoria and The Monster Times.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was originally conceived as a one-shot publication by Warren and Ackerman, published in the wake of the widespread success of the package of old horror movies syndicated to American television in 1957. But the first issue, published in February 1958, was so successful that it required a second printing to fulfil public demand. The success prompted spinoff Warren magazines such as Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.

Famous Monsters offered brief articles, well-illustrated with publicity stills and graphic artwork, on horror movies from the silent era to the current date of publication, their stars and filmmakers. Warren and Ackerman decided to aim the text at late pre-adolescents and young teenagers. Unfortunately, in doing so, he also elected to add supposedly amusing juvenile captions to the images and thereby denigrated the horror genre for fans and its detractors.

Forrest J Ackerman promoted the memory of Lon Chaney, Sr., whose silent works were mostly beyond the accessibility of fans for most of the magazine’s life, but were a great influence on his own childhood. He also introduced film fans to science fiction fandom through direct references, first-person experiences, and adoption of fandom terms and customs. The magazine regularly published photos from King Kong (1933), including one from the film’s infamous “spider pit sequence”, featured in Issue #108 (1974) that, until Ackerman discovered a photo of a spider in the cavern setting, had never been proven definitively to have actually been filmed.

FM‘s peak years were from its first issues through the late 1960s, when the disappearance of the older films from television and the decline of talent in the imaginative film industry left it with a dearth of subject matter acceptable to both editor and fan.

Bizarrely, Warren and Ackerman created a jump in issue numbering from issue 69, which was printed in September 1970, to issue 80 in October 1970. They did this (according to their editorial in issue 80) because it brought them closer to issue 100, justifying the numerical jump because of the publishing of ten issues of the short-lived companion magazine Monster World as issues that “would have been” Famous Monsters issues. Lazily, during the 1970s, the magazine came to rely heavily on reprints of articles from the 1960s.

In November 1974 and November 1975, New York City was host to the “Famous Monsters Convention,” a fan convention centered on FM, which featured such guests as Forrest J Ackerman, Verne Langdon, James Warren, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, Barbara Leigh, Catherine Lorre, Cal Floyd, and Sam Sherman.

In the early 1980s, the magazine folded after Warren became ill and unable to carry on as publisher, and Ackerman resigned as editor in the face of the increasing disorganisation within the Warren Publishing Company. The magazine stopped publication in 1983 after a run of 191 issues.

Famous Monsters of Filmland was resurrected in 1993 by New Jersey portrait photographer and monster movie fan Ray Ferry. After finding that the Famous Monsters of Filmland title had not been “maintained” under law, Ferry filed for “intent to use” for the magazine’s trademark, unbeknownst to Ackerman or the trademark’s owner and creator, Jim Warren. Ferry, poised to restart publication of FM on a quarterly basis, offered Ackerman the position of editor-in-chief for a fee of $2,500 per issue, which he accepted. Starting at issue #200, the new Famous Monsters acquired subscribers and over-the-counter buyers who believed they would be reunited with Ackerman in print. While Ferry tried to maintain Ackerman’s style in his own writings, he apparently heavily edited and rejected contributions from the man himself.

In an effort to help Ferry finance his full-time efforts, Ackerman agreed to a reduced editor’s fee of $1,500 per issue. With four consecutive unpaid issues and a continued rejection of his work, Ackerman resigned from his position. Aside from removing Ackerman’s name from the masthead, Ferry did not inform FM readers that they were no longer reading material by, or authorised by, Ackerman. Instead, Ferry infused his writing with Ackerman’s trademark puns, and mimicked his writing style, which led to legal action brought forth by Ackerman.

In 1997, Ackerman filed a civil lawsuit against Ferry for libel, breach of contract, and misrepresentation; Ferry had publicly claimed that Ackerman’s only connection with the new FM was as a hired hand and that Ferry “had to let Forry go” because he was no longer writing or editing for the magazine. Ferry also claimed rights to pen names and other personal properties of Ackerman. On May 11, 2000, the Los Angeles Superior Court jury decided in Ackerman’s favour and awarded him $382,500 in compensatory damages and $342,000 in punitive damages.

As of mid-2007, Ferry had been allowed to continue to publish issues of FM due to lack of efforts on the part of bankruptcy trustees and Ackerman’s lawyers to force the sale of the trademark or personal assets attached to his income. Ferry had also failed to pay any of the $720,000-plus cash judgment against him.

In late 2007, Philip Kim, an entrepreneur and a private equity investor, purchased the rights to the logo and title, entering into an agreement with Ackerman to use his trademarks to retain the magazine’s original look and feel. The new Famous Monsters of Filmland website was launched in May 2008 and on December 7, 2009, Kim announced the magazine’s return to print.

Ackerman died just before midnight on Thursday, December 4, 2008.

The revival of the classic horror magazine came in July 2010, with the publication of Famous Monsters of Filmland #251 at the Famous Monster Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. The success of the print magazine at the Famous Monster Convention and Comic-Con International in San Diego yielded the announcement of the magazine’s expansion in distribution and circulation into major bookstore chains and independent retailers throughout North America and select markets in the US, Canada, and UK. Publisher Movieland Classics, LLC announced concurrently that the magazine would be entering into a bi-monthly publication schedule to meet the significant increase in requests from captivated readers beginning with Issue 253.

Writer and filmmaker Jason V Brock created The Ackermonster Chronicles!, a 2012 documentary about Ackerman. The movie is billed as the definitive film about Ackerman’s life and cultural influence, and features in-depth interviews with Ackerman, Ray Bradbury, John Landis, Greg Bear, Richard Matheson, Dan O’Bannon, Ray Harryhausen, David J. Skal, and others…

Wikipedia | Image thanks: CoverBrowser.com

Brian Clemens (1931 – 2015) was a noted British screenwriter and producer.

Clemens is best known for his TV work, often in fantasy-based action series. His most famous creation is TV series The Avengers, which ran from 1961 to 1969, and was relaunched as The New Avengers in 1976.

He also produced action series The Professionals between 1977 and 1983 (with The New Professionals appearing in 1999) and Bugs between 1995 and 1999. As a writer, he contributed to the likes of popular TV productions Adam Adamant Lives, The Baron, The Champions, The Persuaders, Remington Steele and many more.

Yet, running throughout his career, was an involvement in the horror genre. In 1960, he wrote his first horror film, The Tell Tale Heart, based (very) loosely on the Poe story, and in 1965 he co-wrote Lindsay Shonteff’s Curse of the Voodoo.

In the early Seventies, he took a break from TV to concentrate on screenplay writing. His impressively low-key psycho thriller And Soon the Darkness (remade in 2010) was directed by Avengers alumni Robert Fuest, and he followed it with another psycho movie, Blind Terror, a year later.

These two films would ultimately form the template for his hit TV series Thriller, which ran from 1973 to 1976 and tended to specialise in ‘woman in peril’ stories, often treading the fine line between psychological thriller and horror, and occasionally crossing the line into outright supernatural stories.

For Hammer, he wrote Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, a film that belied its gimmicky title and somewhat subverted the Hammer gothic style, mixing Stevenson’s story with Burke and Hare and Jack the Ripper in a genre mash-up that was decades ahead of its time.

He followed this with Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter in 1972, which would be his only directorial credit. The film attempted to breathe new life into Hammer’s vampire cycle – by now flogged to death – by combining it with swashbuckling action courtesy of superhero-like Kronos. The movie blended humour, horror and action, and aside from a rather stiff central performance by Horst Jansen, proved to be tremendous fun.

It could’ve been a fresh start for Hammer, but they had no idea what to do with it and considered the film too weird. It was eventually slipped out as the bottom half of a double bill with last-gasp Frankenstein film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. Plans for further Kronos adventures were dropped, though the character did briefly live on, appropriately enough, as a comic strip in early issues of House of Hammer.

Between the Hammer films, Clemens wrote the Ray Harryhausen fantasy The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and in 1980 he was the screenwriter for Disney’s family-oriented horror / science fiction crossover The Watcher in the Woods, which mixed haunted house spookiness with alien invasion. John Hough’s film was badly edited (with a new ending) in initial release, but has since built a strong reputation.

In the 1980s, Clemens once again concentrated on TV, writing one episode of horror anthology The Dark Room (1981) and two instalments of Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984).

He wrote science fiction TV movie Timestalkers in 1987 and three episodes of supernatural anthology Worlds Beyond and one episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents around the same time. His final cinematic writing credit was for the story for Highlander II: The Quickening in 1991.

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