The Terror Review

It’s not often you get to see a young Jack Nicholson alongside one of the greats of horror, Boris Karloff. Add to the mix being directed by Roger Corman (at least partially) and if you still have not seen this movie you are truly missing out. Jack’s signature brow line and voice combined with Karloff’s equally recognizable appearance do a lot to keep you starring at the screen for more than just the twisting storyline in this 1963 AIP film.

Shot on leftover sets from previously made films, including Vincent Price’s The Haunted Palace, The Terror tells the story of Baron Victor Von Leppe (Karloff) and his deceased wife, Ilsa. At the start, a French Lieutenant by the name of Andre Duvalier (Nicholson) is separated from his regiment and washed up on a shoreline. Upon awakening, Andre spots a beautiful young woman by the name of Helene (Sandra Knight). He follows Helene, both for water and conversation.

Helene, who bares a striking resemblance to the dead Ilsa, is a pawn in an old witch’s plan for revenge. The witch Katrina is the mother of the now dead lover of Ilsa, Eric, and believes the Baron killed her son. She is using Helene to try to sway the Baron to commit suicide, thereby damning his soul for eternity; a fitting punishment for his crime in her eyes. Andre, sensing something is wrong, decides to try and figure out exactly what is going on. In his discoveries though, he finds that not everyone is who they say they are. All this deception does a tremendous job of making the last 20 minutes of this movie hard to turn away as everything becomes revealed.

A motley crew of other characters including Stefan (the Baron’s butler) and Gustaf (the old witch’s handyman) have small parts in trying to help or hinder Andre from saving both Helene and the Baron. A bird, also controlled by the witch, makes a few appearances as well. In one scene it pecks out the eyes of Gustaf, sending him walking blindly over a cliff wall. Re-used castle sets from Corman’s The Raven, which had just finished filming days earlier with Vincent Price, can be seen throughout and add a lot to the atmosphere.

Nicholson is one of my all time favorite male actors, second only to the late Lorne Greene, however he is truly young in this film and not very convincing in his authoritative role of a Lieutenant in Napoleon’s army. The best performance has to be Boris Karloff playing the aged hermit, the Baron. He outshines everyone even at 76 years old of age. Karloff’s line “You think I’m mad, don’t you?” is the films most memorable. His tone and facial expressions throughout the movie are still visible in your mind long after the movie ends.

The Terror is an excellent movie that is both chilling and suspenseful. It is a must-see film for fans of Jack Nicholson that want to see him in his youth, and is a great example of a horror film that focuses on story over scares and effects.

This is a public domain film and we have included the full version of the movie below. For a better quality version, check out the Blu-ray/DVD combo edition of The Terror that was released this year.

Tombs of the Blind Dead Review

It is not unlike me to watch a subtitled foreign film. In fact, one of my favorite films ever is Run Lola Run, a German film subtitled in English (the English dub version is just horrible and ruins the movie, skip if you can) starring Franka Potente.

It can be hard to find a good foreign horror film at times when the mood for one hits; they are either before my time or just never show up in top 10 lists of foreign films anywhere for me to come across. That being said, I was very glad to come across the Spanish language Blind Dead tetralogy just by chance.

The first installment of this series is entitled ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’, written and directed by Amando de Ossorio in 1971. Originally called ‘La Noche del terror ciego’(‘The Night of the Blind Terror’), this film focuses on the Knights Templar (only referred to as Knights of the East in the film, yet they wear the Templar uniform), a real-life order who were charged with witchcraft and executed. They were left hanging on the gallows so birds could peck out their eyes and their corpses eventually return to life when anyone dares venture into their abandoned village and monastery of Berzano after dark.

The plot is that Virginia, Betty, and Roger decide to take a vacation by train. Enroute, Virginia, sensing interest between Betty, her long time best friend, and Roger, her boyfriend, and having seen a village outside the train window, jumps off the moving train to have some time alone. She attempts to spend the night in the village, only to have the knights awaken and come after her, killing her. Later, Betty and Roger, after arriving at their destination, rent some horses to go back to the village to try tofind Virginia. Like the knights, Virginia’s corpse soon starts walking as well, out on the hunt of humans.

As the story continues, Betty and Roger go to a librarian to learn of the knights, finding out at the librarians brother, Pedro, is a smuggler in the area of Berzano. It is thought that Pedro could be using the knight legend to cover his activities, hiding from prying eyes. After going to see him, Betty and Roger manage to convince him to go with them to Berzano, to spend the night there in hope of finding out what happened to Virginia. Soon, the church bells sound and the knights awaken once again, closing in.

The knights look very much like out of a Tolkien novel, arms outstretched, slow to walk, but able to ride ghostly horses. Even Virginia walks at a slow pace. These are not your fast moving primal zombies (the director didn’t even like them being referred to as zombies, but rather that they resembled mummies). Blind, they hunt by sound and can follow anything making noise, including heartbeats. The wonderful soundtrack is by Antón García Abril, showcasing well placed screams, groans, creepy music, and Templar chanting to do wonders to add to the atmosphere of the abandoned village from a long time ago. The ghostly horses footsteps are shown in slow motion and have a nice echo to them in the still air. The Spanish women and countryside also add to the visual appeal of the movie.

Most of the time the subtitles stand out and are easy to read, I counted only a handful of scenes where this was not the case, where the background color blended in with the subtitle color washing them out. That aside, however, subtitles also means that non-native speakers miss a lot of the nuances of the actors expressions and body language while they are speaking on screen. Despite this, María Elena Arpón (Virginia) and José Thelman (Pedro) come across as very charismatic, they have a good screen presence, and are memorable characters. Francisco Sanz as Prof. Candel (the librarian) is well cast, his look is the stereotypical scholarly type role with the glasses and peppered hair and goatee, and he’s instrumental in explaining the background story of the knights to both Betty and Roger as well as the viewers.

If terror build up (as opposed to in your face destruction and gore) and nice cinematography interest you, this is definitely a film worthy of a viewing or two, if not a place on your shelf. Eurohorror at its finest.

A Retrospective on Retro Horror

It can easily be said that with the advent of technology such as 3-D, Dolby Digital, and even the newest D-BOX, what is the point for a horror genre fan to return to the heyday of early horror films? Silent or black & white films, rubber monster suits, cheap effects (by today’s standards), zero to no gore, combined with the plethora of new horror films still being released every year do not make a very good case for wanting to be nostalgic.

The first horror movie on record was filmed in 1896 by the name of ‘Le Manoir Du Diable’ (‘The Devil’s Castle’), directed by Georges Méliès. Since that time, over 10,000 horror films have been made with everything from vampires and werewolves, Satan and demons, murderers and deformed humanoids, to oozes, talking brains and even rampaging dinosaurs. The first sequel saw its way into production in the early 1930’s and reintroductions, reboots, reimaginings, versus movies, and even 3rd’s, 4th’s and on have become the norm; I think ‘Witchcraft’ has the most number of sequels chiming in at 11, with ‘Friday the 13th’ at 10.

With all this going on today, why again should I go back to the 1920’s or 30’s and watch these old films? Simply put, horror is not simply about slashing and eye gouging. Horror (adjective) is defined by Webster as “calculated to inspire feelings of dread or horror”, similar to bloodcurdling, “arousing fright or horror”. That is all. If you think about the modern horror film, it would seem they want you to believe that visuals is what brings horror to the table, the blood splatters, open wounds, and amputations, when in fact, a simple stare, shadow or long period of silence can give the same reaction. It’s about fear after all, not budget, isn’t it?

Facial expressions, complete silence, slow tension build-up, and the viewer’s imagination were used to generate horror, and they succeeded well at it. The work done to accentuate Bela Lugosi’s eyes in his portrayal of Dracula, the makeup of Cesare in ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, the long shadows in ‘Nosferatu’, are all ways early filmmakers captured an essence of horror using the tools they had at hand. The most frightening scene I’ve ever seen involves nothing but a moonlit hillside and a killer’s silhouette; it had no music and only lasted a few seconds but I still remember it over 20 years and hundreds of movies later.

Like most things in society, I feel horror has joined the ranks of profanity, nudity, and violence, and is now at a point where going back is probably impossible; you can’t take away the visuals now and bring the same level of fear as it once had over 50 years ago just as you can’t slow the adoption of the F-word into everyday vernacular. However, to call yourself a true fan of horror and only having experienced modern filmmaking is doing the genre as well as yourself a great disservice as well. It is not very difficult to “put yourself in the period” of an older movie and try to experience it as it was experienced by those who viewed it first and in person. Sit back, turn the lights down and the volume up. The monster is still a monster after all, it’s not that important that it’s a man in a rubber suit as opposed to a 50 million dollar CGI creation. That’s part of the fun, anyway, just ask any Godzilla fan.

The Keep Review

The 1997 film The Keep directed by Michael Mann, based on the novel of the same name by F. Paul Wilson, has always been a memorable movie for me. Everything from the movie poster, the Romanian countryside and village, to the visuals within the keep itself has stuck with me for years. Add in such actors as Jürgen Prochnow, Scott Glenn and Ian McKellen, as well as a hard to come by soundtrack by Tangerine Dream and you have something that definitely stands out as a unique experience.

The movie focuses on a Romanian keep just outside a small village that is newly occupied by the Germans in World War II, led by Captain Klaus Woemann, awesomely played by Jürgen Prochnow (Jürgen’s next role is as Duke Leto Atreides in David Lynch’s Dune, my favorite role of his),probably the best character in the entire film; his speeches alone are worth seeing. The keep is not a fortress, but a prison and imprisons a demon, who through negligence on the part of two German soldiers, is released. Each day new German soldiers are killed and the villagers are blamed for it, and even executed, in an attempt to stop the killings. When later a mysterious message is found written on a wall, a Jewish historian, currently in a death camp, is brought in to decipher it in a further attempt to stop the killings.

The demon however deceives the historian, played by Ian McKellen, after saving his daughter from an attack by two German soldiers, and convinces the historian to help him, to take the talisman that keeps him imprisoned within the walls of the keep, outside it and into the mountains where it is to be hidden, thereby forever freeing him from his prison.

A stranger, played by Scott Glenn, is the only one who can stop the demon, he senses the release and sets off for the keep to stop the demon from ever being allowed to step outside. The ending confrontation has two endings, one in the theatrical release, and one longer sequence only seen in the extended edition released on LaserDisc. Sadly, this movie has yet to see a DVD release.

The soundtrack is a unique one for this type of movie which is part gothic horror, part WWII, and the melodious tracks heard very obviously in certain scenes, seem both appropriate and somewhat inappropriate at the same time, part of the Mann envisioning. Only 3 of the 16 tracks on the soundtrack actually appear in the film.

The effects are on par for the time, very similar to those you would find in other sci-fi and space movies such as Return Of The Jedi and Krull, which were released earlier the same year.

It is unfortunate this movie has not seen its full directors cut, at over 3 hours in length, ever released, so a reading of the book is helpful to fill in some gaps. An excellent fan site can be found at http://www.the-keep.ath.cx/default_en.htm.

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari Review

‘The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari’ was a very interesting and attention keeping film. I found myself just staring at the actors as well as the very well done German Expressionist set design and painting; some of the scenes were simply amazing to look at.

Being a silent film from 1920 this movie will not appeal to everyone, but it is a good starting place for newcomers to the era and genre. Personally I preferred the restored edition however the original edition would work just as well for this purpose.

That said, Caligari is a movie where almost the entirety of the film is a large flashback, a frame story, being told by a man named Francis. Francis is a key player in the story itself. The story is of a doctor, or mountebank in this case, who travels around from town to town appearing in festivals. His exhibit is that of a prophetic somnambulist (sleepwalker) named Cesare. Their latest stay is in the town of Holstenwall.

Soon after their arrival, a series of mysterious murders start taking place, seemingly unrelated. Later, Cesare’s is giving out his prophecies at the festival. Francis’ friend Alan asks the question of how long he has to live, and Cesare answers with “You die at dawn.” The following morning this comes to pass, infuriating and sending Francis on a mission to find the killer of the now two dead. Fingers almost immediately point to Cesare since he prophesized the killing, however a botched murder attempt elsewhere in the city puts a criminal behind bars and despite claims he had nothing to do with the first two mysterious murders, he’s assumed to be the culprit regardless.

All seems to be back to normal, until Cesare, for reasons explained in the film, is sent out after Francis’ fiancée Jane. Upon setting eyes on her, Cesare instantly becomes infatuated with her beauty and kidnaps her. Cesare’s later death starts the investigation into who really is Dr. Caligari, which is a whole sequence of events in itself.

‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’ is credited as being the film that introduced the twist ending, admittedly though it took another viewing before I figured out exactly what it was. Just like during the ending, a few times in the film you struggle to understand what’s going on simply because there are so few intertitles strewn throughout to help reveal the story; pantomime only goes so far to convey its message.

With no gore at all, the suspense can be accredited mostly to the soundtrack, but also to the makeup and exaggerated expressions of the cast, they are done remarkably well. Still, Conrad Veidt does a great job of Cesare, and if you don’t count the sets, was the biggest scene stealer in the movie with his makeup and thin frame. Him opening his eyes for the first time in the film is one of the best single scenes in Caligari. Werner Krauss also was great as Dr. Caligari, especially with his hair done up like it was, a gem on screen.

There is plenty to keep your eyes busy all around and this film is definitely a must see for anyone wanting to delve into the history of horror filmmaking.

The movie, in its entirety, is embedded below for your viewing.

Creep Review

I’ve always been a huge fan of Franka Potente, her and Fairuza Balk are my two favorite female actresses. I was browsing available movies to watch and possibly review, and I just by chance came across Creep, this wonderful gem of a movie starring Franka, which is definitely one of the better ones I’ve seen in recent months.

During the intro credits a girl is seen as well as blood splatters, not too well shown on purpose. After the credits, cut to two sewer tunnel workers, down in the sewers below London, who come across an opening in a wall leading to a new section of tunnel not yet explored by them. George, who can’t swim, stays behind while Arthur goes forward. The single biggest terror scene occurs here, involving only a flashlight and a quick circle of the room. After some unexplained sounds, George reluctantly follows, only to find Arthur injured and in a complete state of shock. Queue a jump scene with the girl from the credits.

Kate, brilliantly played by Franka, is attending a party where her and a friend are planning on going to yet another party being attended by George Clooney. When she finds out her friend has already left, she’s forced to take public transit, and having no luck with taxis she sets off to the subway. The rest of the movie will take place below ground.

After falling into a drunken stuppor at the terminal and missing the last train, Kate finds herself locked in the station for the night, assumingly by herself but she soon finds her “friend” Guy happens to be there as well. High on drugs, he tries to rape her, during which our friendly neighborhood antagonist makes an appearance.

Subways could almost have their own subgenre of horror, just like haunted houses, farms, and caves, and the usual players, dark lighting, endless twisting and turning tunnels, dampness, and rats are all in attendance.

The antagonist is the only vaguely original part here. Craig is the lone survivor of an abandoned underground, most likely illegal, abortion clinic. With the Doctor no where in sight, Craig has survived underground since he was a kid (a photo of him and the Doctor is later found by Kate), he has no real talents except his own mock abortions that he performs on female victims (one of which is the films most disturbing scene), imitating what other people say, and, naturally, killing people for most likely food, survival, and maybe even for fun.

A few other characters come into play, a very unhelpful security manager, druggies Jimmy and Mandy and their ever present dog Ray, and a not-dead-yet George from the movies intro. Together they try and survive the night, although most are not very successful.

The soundtrack done by The Insects did its job in heightening many scenes, as well as the environment. Better to watch this in the dark at a moderate volume with little distractions. Franka and Paul Rattray did the best acting jobs, and as much as I hate to say it, the dog.

I watched this movie twice in the same day, to feel the chill during the intro scenes mostly, Franka’s performance secondly, and for the fun it brings thirdly.

Session 9 Review

The name Session 9 refers to 9 tape recorded sessions of Mary Hobbes, a patient at the abandoned Danvers State Hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts, who suffered from dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities.

The film starts with the Hazmat Elimination Company winning the bid for the job of removing all the asbestos from this abandoned hospital. Five guys, Phil, Gordon, Mike, Hank and Jeff set out to complete it in only one week to gain a $10,000 bonus, which is a make or break deal for the owner, Phil, who will have to close up shop if they don’t succeed.

Filmed at the actual abandoned Danvers State Hospital location, the building and location bring most of the initial tension throughout the first half. Most of the props and elements used throughout the film existed at the Bonner Medical Building there on the campus before shooting began. Even the soundtrack by Climax Golden Twins does many wonders to add suspense when the story has yet to evolve enough to bring its own.

As work continues in the hospital, Mike stumbles across a box marked “Evidence”. Sparking his curiosity, he pulls out the tapes and starts listening to them on an old reel-to-reel system. They are for former patient number 444, Mary Hobbes, and as Mike listens he hears stories told by Mary, and others by two of her personalities, a young and innocent Princess, and an overly protective Billy. Both personalities mention someone named Simon, but they do not like talking about him.

Quirks exists in all the workers, from severe nyctophobia in Jeff, Phil smoking marijuana after losing his girlfriend to Hank, and Hank himself filled with dreams of quitting his job and running a casino. Gordon opens up privately to Phil that he, in a fit of rage, hit his wife and he is very depressed by this, currently staying in a motel. Several times Gordon makes phone calls to his wife asking for forgiveness.

The suspense kicks up when Hank comes across a stash of Morgan Dollars within a hole in a hall, apparently from a cremation that took place. He returns later that evening to steal them and is ambushed by an unseen assailant. With Hanks disappearance, Gordon begins to suspect Phil is behind it as he had wanted to fire Hank earlier, basically calling him unreliable, as well as the fact that Hank stole his girlfriend and loves to tease Phil about it; however Phil is adamant he ran off to Miami to a casino.

Work continues for some time and later Jeff sees Hank in an upper floor, facing a wall with possible blood on his hands. He runs down to let everyone know causing everyone to separate out in hopes of finding him, since naturally he is not where Jeff saw him and now they are determined to find him.

The ending took me two viewings to understand, it was not readily apparent at first since it relies on flashbacks and your ability to put together a chain of events in proper order to make sense of it all.

For a movie with no gore at all, relying on atmosphere mostly, it makes for a great example of horror but does have to rely heavily on soundtrack and scenery to accomplish it, as the acting does not always get you there. There are no startles, no real jump scenes to speak of. If you are not focused on being immersed into the film, or the volumes too low it may not do a lot towards scaring you. I dare say if you are watching the film while doing household chores, it may appear to be a movie about nothing but asbestos work, so do not do that, as you would be losing all of this films purpose. Phil (David Caruso) and Mike (Stephen Gavedon) do the best acting jobs but all were believable in their roles. This film was directed by Brad Anderson, who can also be seen on Showtime’s Masters of Horror series.

Ending Spoilers

The last personality of Mary, Simon, is a protective (or destructive, take your pick) entity within the building itself. Just as Mary killed her brother and her family, it has taken up residence inside Gordon. One of the flashbacks is Gordon, not calling his wife to ask for forgiveness for hitting her, but killing her. He proceeds to hunt each member of the crew down one at a time while they are all out looking for Hank, phasing in and out of his psychosis, one minute thinking Phil has killed Hank, the next killing Phil himself over Hank’s body he previously killed. The film ends with Simon, on the 9th taped session of Mary, answering the question of where he lives with the answer “I live in the weak and wounded, Doc.”