Halloween Movie Marathon: Night Gallery

Rod Serling was one of the writers who shaped my own fiction. (He was only 50 when he died, but he'd packed a lot of living into those 50 years.)
I loved Twilight Zone so much and even today rarely miss the hoiday episode marathons they show here in L.A., even though I know most of the episodes they show by heart. I was never that huge a fan of Night Gallery, but the pilot episode (available as part of the first season DVD) has three stories that are scary in very different ways.
The famous segment, "Eyes" starred Joan Crawford and is notable because it was a young Steven Spielberg's break-out directing gig. For me it was kind of a knockoff of the famous Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall." The other two stories gripped my imagination in a much stronger way. The first episode was about a greedy man in the south who is scared to death by paintings showing relatives coming out of their graves. Roddy McDowall and Ossie Davis starred in the episode and I remember Ossie Davis' character was named "Portifoy." That episode was directed by Boris Sagal, father of Sons of Anarchy's Katy Sagal.
For me the most powerful of the pilot's episodes was "Escape Route," starring Richard Kiley as a Nazi war criminal who imagines himself into a painting of an idyllic scene, only to discover someone's moved the painting and he's now trapped in a living hell. It was not a subtle story, but was really effective.
The first season of the show was the strongest, and the disk is something to watch over a long weekend when all the broadcast channels are showing cheesy made-for-television horror movies and theatrical films with the profanity and sex cut out.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Poltergeist

I used to be afraid of the dark. When I was little, we lived in a house with a great back yard filled with trees that were perfect for climbing. But one of those trees had branches that would rattle against my bedroom window whenever the wind was up and I always felt like it was going to break the window and come in after me.
So when I saw Poltergeist and that kid-eating tree in it, I knew that I was not alone in my fear, and I totally bought into what happened next.
I really liked JoBeth Williams as the mother in this movie, and found Craig T. Nelson a very sympathetic suburban dad. both actors are still working, but JoBeth's career as a leading lady never really blew up the way it should have. 
It's really sad to think that two of the three kids who played the children in the movie are dead--Heather O'Rourke at twelve from cardiac arrest and intestinal stenosis and Dominique Dunne murdered by her abusive boyfriend. One of the last hard-news stories I covered as a reporter was a meeting of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC) where Dominique's mother Ellen was a speaker.
Ellen was in a wheelchair then, gaunt from the disease that finally killed her and still regally beautiful. John Van De Kamp, who was then the California Attorney General, was also a guest and his law and order platitudes fell on deaf ears and unsympathetic hearts. It was a tough room.
Zelda Rubenstein's Tangina was a terrific character, and the character was a highlight of the veteran character actress' career, which also included an ongoing gig as the narrator of a show called The Scariest Places on Earth.  (I didn't know this, but before Zelda turned to acting, she earned a degree in bacteriology and worked for years as a lab technician at various blood banks.)

Poltergeist was directed by Tobe Hooper, whose big claim to fame before that was directing the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot, starring David Soul, Lance Kerwin (the James at 15 star turns 50 next month--don't you feel old?) and James Mason. (There's one heart-stopping moment in that mini that scared me to death and I knew the book really well and was expecting it.)
Poltergeist came out 30 years ago (the same year as E.T., actually) and it would be interesting to see if it still has the power to scare.

Happpy 25th birthday Princess Bride

I was listening to an interview with Mandy Patinkin today and he was talking about how people still come up to him and ask him to say Inigo Montoya's deathless lines, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."  Those are good lines, but I'm fond of "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line."
I really liked The Princess Bride and have seen it several times since it came out 25 years ago.  I just saw Robin Wright in the English version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and she is still lovely, with the kind of beauty that will be with her until she's 100.
And wasn't Cary Elwes perfect as Westley?  He turns 50 later this month. Hard to believe. He still works all the time, IMDB shows he has eight different movies in release this  year.
My best friend is actually related to the "Dread Pirate Roberts," the Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts, who raided off the coast of America and Africa from 1719 to 1722.  His death (in battle with the English Navy) is often seen as the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. I get an enormous kick out of that association. (Family lore has often said that my family had connections to Sir Thomas More, but you know, I'd much rather have a pirate than a saint in my background.)
I read William Goldman's novel, The Princess Bride, and didn't really like it very much. I am a huge fan of the man, though, and think he's written some absolutely flawless screenplays, and this is one of them.
There are so many great lines in The Princess Bride that are still wonderfully quotable. ("I do not think that word means what you think  it means.")
This is a year for anniversaries--the 30th anniversary of E.T., the 50th of James Bond, and this, the 25th anniversary of The Princess Bride, the best fractured fairy tale since Jay Ward closed up shop.

Halloween Movie Marathon: What Lies Beneath

This is a ghost story that's subtle enough to really be more of a psychological thriller. I saw it at a screening with a friend who, as it turns out, has an almost pathological fear of drowning. She had to leave the theater during the most suspenseful and nerve-wracking scene in the movie and it was harrowing enough  I was thinking of joinging her.
I really liked Michelle Pfeiffer in this movie. She was incredibly sympathetic.
The movie poster (as you can see) features a bath tub. Creepy bathtub/shower scenes are a staple of horror movies. (Let's talk The Shining, or Psycho for that matter.)  There's something extra menacing about something supernatural lurking around when you're totally naked. (I used to rent a house that had one of those makeup mirrors bolted to the tile by the sink. If you caught it at just the right angle, the image it reflected was upside down. Imagine how scary that would be the first night you used the bathroom and caught a glimpse in the moonlight of SOMETHING upside down.) 
I liked all the cast in the movie--from Miranda Otto and James Remar as the neighbors to a blink-and-you-missed-her Amber Valletta.  (I have really liked her in other movies where she had a chance to show some acting chops, like Hitch and Transporter 2.)  Harrison Ford made a good villain.
The scares in this movie are atmospheric, designed to come to a slow build and leave you wondering what's real and what's spooky.
The movie was written by Clark Gregg, who is also an actor. (He played Agent Coulson in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.) He also wrote and directed the screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke (starring Sam Rockwell, who was also in Iron Man 2). 

The movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has actually produced a lot of horror movies in his partnership with Joel Silver, including Ghost Ship, Thirteen Ghosts and Gothika. I didn't find any of those movies particularly scary although there's a moment in Ghost Ship with a wire that's flinch-producing.  Still, Bob Z directed one of my favorite movies, Romancing the Stone, so who am I to complain about the scare-factor of his other movies?  (And I also liked the poster for Ghost Ship, which was in the same vein as Cabin Fever, which I thought was...wretched.)
On the other hand, Cabin Fever was made for $1.5 million and earned $30 million worldwide, so clearly mine is a minority opinion.
What Lies Beneath is not like either Ghost Ship or Cabin Fever, which would probably work well as a double feature movie night if you're feeling nostalgic for old school horror that's heavy on gore and not really offering much else.  (The best thing about Cabin Fever is Ryder Strong, who was from Boy Meets World. One of his costars was Jordan Ladd, daughter of Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd.)
If you're looking for something you can watch in "mixed company" (that is, with people who aren't necessarily horror movie fans), What Lies Beneath is a good choice. Just make sure no one's afraid of drowning.

Halloween Movie Marathon: The Omen

There's a scene in The Omen (I am speaking about the original, Richard Donner-directed version, the other one isn't really worth mentioning) where I was suddenly very, very uncomfortable and I couldn't figure out why. And then I realized it was because I was looking at the scene from an unknown point of view. And then moments later, I realized I was watching the scene from the POV of those devil dogs who were watching over Damien. And long before I knew what "subjective point of view" was, I was experiencing it. And it was creepy.  Twelve years after being scared to death by the movie, I ended up working for Donner and his producer wife Lauren Shuler Donner. And all these years later, I'm still working for them as a freelancer. They are the best kind of Hollywood people and I hope to work for them forever.
But I was talking about The Omen.
Movies about creepy and evil kids are often very effective. There's the original Bad Seed, of course, but the first really creepy movie about children I ever saw was The Other, based on the best-selling book by Thomas Tryon. (The Other got extra points for being an evil twin story as well.)  There was something truly perverse about The Other.  (I read all of Tryon's books and thought the most effective was Harvest Home, which was made into a terrifically cheesy miniseries called The Dark Secret of Harvest Home. Bette Davis starred as the creepy matriarch of a small town where men had just one use. But more about that on another day.)
Elijah Wood, who starred in Donner's movie Radio Flyer and would later become everybody's favorite hobbit, starred in another creepy kid movie, The Good Son. The star was Macauley Culkin (as the title character) and though Culkin is a good actor, Elijah just acted him right off the screen. Check out the trailer.
The Omen was a classy horror movie, like the original Haunting or the Sixth Sense. It depended on atmosphere and intensity for its shocks and above all it was intelligent. Timing was everything--like the moment where you know David Warner's character is going to be decapitated by that sheet of glass and there's nothing he can do about it. You can't look away and yet instead of lingering on gore, the way a lot of torture porn horror movies would have, we're on to the next moment. There was something ... elegant about the horror and the understated nature of the story helped to sell it. The Omen was a great horror movie precisely because it was rooted in the familiar, in the very realest of real-world settings. It was much creepier than Rosemary's Baby, at least in my opinion. (I saw Rosemary's Baby at a midnight show when I was in college and I was bored. I thought the book was a lot scarier.)
I saw The Omen again a few years ago ad it holds up.  the acting (by Gregory Peck, Lee Remick, David Warner, and Dr. Who's Patrick Troughton) is first rate. This movie should definitely be on your playlist for the holiday.

Halloween Movie Marathon: The Crawling Hand

I saw this movie as a kid, probably on the horror movie show hosted by Richmond's answer to Elvira, a guy who called himself the Bowman Body. He wore Dracula drag and had a bandaid on his forehead. (As it turns out, I'm not the only one who remembers Bill Bowman fondly, a documentary about "the Bowman Body" called "Hi there horror movie fans" is having a run at the Byrd Theater in Richmond, VA on October 28. For more infomation, check the Bowman Body's official site.)
The movie was from 1963, a black and white horror tale about an astronaut's disembodied hand that crept around choking people. (How the hand/arm survived the re-entry process was, not as I remember, explained.)
I don't remember very much about the movie but I do know it scared the bejesus out of me. I remember hearing scuttling noises while taking a bath after I'd seen it and I knew, I just KNEW that there was a disembodied arm in a silvery astronaut suit sleeve just waiting, waiting for me. 

I looked the movie up on imdb and it looks like the only version of The Crawling Hand still available is one that MST3K has worked over. I find Mystery Theater kind of hit or miss, but again, this is the kind of movie that you throw on when you've had a couple of hard ciders and are jacked up on sugar  cookies shaped like pumpkins.  I think it's the kind of movie that you really need to see in a crowd so the snark can flow.
Peter Breck, who most notably played one of the sons on The Big Valley (and who died earlier this year at the age of 82) was the star and other names of note in the cast were  Alan Hale, Jr. (the "Skipper" in Gilligan's Island) and Richard Arlen, who did a lot of genre films, including Island of Lost Souls. He also seems to have been a guest star on every single western made in the 50s and 60s, including some now almost forgotten, like Yancy Derringer.  (An actor named Jock Mahoney starred in the series and he's notable now because he was Sally Field's stepfather.)
The movie was written and directed by Herbert L. Strock, who did a lot of television (77 Sunset Strip, Highway Patrol) and a lot of genre movies, including I Was a Teenage Frankenstein. That movie starred the original Lois Lane herself, Phyllis Coates, Whit Bissell and Gary Conway.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Sixth Sense

I used to walk my dog with a neighbor who was a union reader (aka "story analyst") at Paramount and inevitably, we talked about scripts we were reading, both good and bad. She'd been on the job longer than I had and was fairly jaded. But one morning she was full of praise for a script she'd read the night before and she told me the story. It sounded good to me too (especially since I'd just read the script for yet another misbegotten remake), but I didn't really think about that conversation until a summer night several years later when I was in Arizona and at a drive-in where Sixth Sense was showing. The moment it started I remembered hearing the plot and so I knew all the way through that Bruce Willis' character was dead.
I liked the movie anyway.
I liked the movie enough to see it again (something I rarely do) with my sister (who was not really a big movie fan). Several minutes into the movie, she leaned over to me. "Bruce Willis is dead," she said.
"How do you know?"
"When he opened the door there was no reflection in the doorknob."
I hadn't noticed that, but she was right.
And so she knew the twist of the movie all the way through and still liked it.
The movie doesn't really have a lot of scares in it. There's a shock moment when we see a girl who was murdered by her mother (the late Brittany Murphy) and another near the very, very end when the boy sees a dead person who's wandered off from an accident up ahead. What works in the movie is the relationship between Bruce Willis' character and the boy's, played by Haley Joel Osment. (Haley Joel Osment is 24 now, does that make you feel old? He was just 11 when he appeared in Sixth Sense.)
This is a movie you'd put on at the end of a marathon of Halloween movies to mellow everyone out before they head home.