The Return of Joe Bob

So as some of you may know, streaming channel Shudder brought back Joe Bob Briggs for a 24 hour marathon of new movie hosting for Friday the 13th.  So far, this has pretty much been a technical disaster... Joe Bob has been great fun when you could catch him playing, but for a lot of folks, the majority of the time has been spent staring at the loading screen as Shudder's drastically overloaded servers screamed and died, one by one.

Shudder's computer issues aren't what spurred me to post, though - I'm a night owl by nature and was up late last night and thus able to enjoy watching his presentation of 80's drive-in classic The Prowler, followed by Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl-a-rama (Yes, it's a real movie, and a fun one at that).  Shudder chose to broadcast this Joe Bob marathon live, which was an experience.  A lot of people on their boards are complaining that it should be added to the Shudder video library for on-demand streaming, and yet...

It's been a long time since I experienced the feel of a late night movie playing in real time. 

And I'd forgotten how much fun it was.

With instant streaming, ANY movie, no matter how great, is your plaything.  "Ehh, I'll watch a few minutes of this and see if it keeps my interest", you think, as you browse a library of five million movies.  On-demand streaming elevates you, the viewer, above every movie.  It's just something available at your whim.  Broadcast showings, however, are another story, and suddenly I miss them.  The movie isn't your toy, it's ON, right now, and if you want to see it you have to respect its unmutable sense of timing.  There's no pausing to go to the bathroom or get another snack, unless you have commercial breaks and that's what they were for. 

When I dropped in on the showing of The Prowler, I suddenly found myself...

... in the middle of the movie.  Remember that?  It was a rare thing to catch a full movie from opening credits to end titles.  Usually you came in somewhere in the middle, thought, "Hey, this looks interesting", and had to figure out what the hell was going on from there.

... TENSE.  Which was a funny thing, because hardly any movies scare me anymore, and horror movies are particularly impacted by the "Pause any time, take a break" technology.  To work their best, they require a certain level of inescapable immersion, and only cinema and broadcast TV offer that.  You can't pause, you can't go get cookies, you're just THERE - glued to the creepy inside of the old dark house along with the protagonists as they wander slowly from room to room.  If you can pause, it's boring.  If you can't pause... it's immersion.  The Prowler isn't by any stretch a scary movie, but I was more into the climax than I've been in any other horror flicks for some time, because of that sheer "I can't look away or I'll miss something" feeling.

... Accepting.  You know you can't stay up to see all of the next movie.  Remember that?  Some movies you only knew by their first 15 minutes, because they came on late and you really wanted to watch them but there was just no way, so you watched the first fifteen minutes and then it was gone... into the ether, lost just like all the other movies that aired before the days of video stores and on-demand viewing.  

... Accompanied.  Face it, horror hosts were great just because they talked to you.  Those of us up watching monster movies at 3am are usually doing so alone - the kids are in bed, the wife is in bed, or the parents have gone to bed.  Either way, it's you and a dark room and a quiet house and a guy or gal on TV, introducing the movie and telling you some trivia about it and giving you the sense that he's right there with you, watching and enjoying.  Streaming isn't the same, even when you stream hosted movies - the immediacy just isn't there. 

... You can't pick the movie.  Maybe it'll be good, maybe not.  With streaming, you filter everything but the best.  Good and bad cease to have meaning.  There's no rush, no thrill of finding out that the next flick coming on is Phantasm instead of Leprechaun 5. Whatever's coming on, you're watching it, but greatness is rare and suddenly fully appreciated again.

Maybe it'll go somewhere, this "broadcast non-pausable TV" concept.  I know that I certainly enjoyed the ride.

The Five - A Book Review

The Five by Robert McCammon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tough to review this one. I've enjoyed many other MacCammon books and "Boy's Life" is an all-time favorite of mine. This book is well-written, almost poetically so, and thoughtful and introspective and life-affirming and ultimately inspirational.

And yet...

It's too goddamned long.

The audiobook was 20 hours, and waaay too much of that time goes pretty much nowhere. The basic plot is simple - 5 bandmembers on their farewell tour fall afoul of a deranged ex-military sniper who begins stalking them across the American heartland. What initially looks to be the act of a lone gunman gradually takes on larger, possibly supernatural proportions.

There's a whole lot of insight and exploration here into the world of the indie rock band, playing from club to club and just making enough for gas money. Our heroes have been at this for years without ever getting The Big Break, and a lot of the meat of the character and world-building comes from their burned-out, seen-it-all attitudes toward the music they used to love. The fact that their Big Break comes in the form of media attention because a maniac is trying to kill them, that only adds an extra level of bitter irony to the situation.

So, we've got cool characters, some soulful observations on art and commerce, some great thriller moments when the badguy strikes, and what I felt was an absolutely wonderful ending that nearly redeemed the entire book... and yet I'm still giving it a 3. My main complaints are that it just takes too long for anything to happen (I was something like 6 hours+ into the book - the full running time of many other audiobooks - before the plot even started) and it drifts too wantonly in too many different directions that ultimately go unresolved. If I want endless random side quests and distracting situations that lead me nowhere and leave me frustrated, all I have to do is get up in the morning.

It was a good book. I don't regret reading it. However, I think it needed a lot more editing and tightening to become a great book. If it had run 10 hours instead of 20, I bet it would have been another 4 or 5 star joy.

View all my reviews

Purging John Carpenter

Warning - This post is rife with spoilers!

 

I'm a big fan of the Purge movies, and am looking forward to seeing the newest one, Election Day.  When I watched the first film, I remember thinking, "This is the most John Carpenter-like film I've seen of the new John Carpenter wannabes."  I thought the same thing about the even-better sequel.  They carry on Carpenter's great strengths - pounding synth scores and completely batshit-insane, yet brilliantly simple, central concepts.  On reflection, though, I realized it wasn't just the music or the stories that reminded me of Carpenter films... They're actually remarkably step-by-step remakes, with new titles. 

Consider:

Assault on Precinct 13 - A traumatized man seeks shelter inside a fortified station which comes under waves of attacks from subhuman gang members. There is a focus on race relations as the black captain and the white convict must cooperate to survive, gaining mutual respect in the process.

The Purge - A traumatized man seeks shelter inside a fortified home which comes under waves of attacks from subhuman Young Republicans. There is a focus on race relations as the white family must decide whether to sacrifice the black victim to save themselves.  

In neither movie do we learn much of anything about the primary target - He's simply there as a magnet to draw down the wrath of the horde.  Assault gives us a middle-class Average White Guy, who attracts the gang's attention by shooting one of their members in anger over the death of his daughter.  We don't know who he is, why he was there, and he's virtually mute for the rest of the film.  The Purge is even simpler - We're given zip about the main target except that he's a black man of lower social class, and presumably that's all that's needed to make him a target for the rich kid psychopaths.  

 

The interesting thing is the total inversion of the villains. In Assault, it's two working class men defending the middle class against the zombie-like attacks of a subhuman street gang - Characterless, near-mindless killing machines that are invading the safe neighborhoods. In Purge, it's wealthy people with consciences defending the lower class and themselves from the psychotic attacks of... their own young. Assault fears the street gangs consuming the working class, Purge fears the upper class consuming itself and the lower class both.  It's a testament to the times and the decades between the films that there simply is no middle class in the Purge movies.  Everyone is either the wealthy or the working poor or homeless. 

Also diverging are the final messages - Assault is ultimately a much more positive film, despite its grimness.  In Assault, the black guy and the white guy, the hardworking policeman and the "gentleman criminal", come together in understanding and realize that their values are far closer than the creatures they're fighting.  When Bishop insists that Napoleon not be chained, and that they walk out to meet the dawn together, it's a triumphant moment.  The values of hardworking decency have been defended, and even though Napoleon is going back to jail, you understand that the day is won for civilization, for the moment.

Purge is very similar in structure - The black man sides with the white family and in the end, saves those who sheltered him.  The victorious survivors walk out to meet the new day in an almost identical ending scene, except... in Purge-Land, there is no victory.  The chasm between the wealthy family and the poor guy remains, and now the wealthy family realizes the depth of the hate and loathing and jealousy that their own "kind" have for them also.  They've survived the night, but they're living in a nest of people who all want to kill them, just because they're perceived to have a little bit more than the next wealthiest household.  There's no real victory, and only a thin veneer of icy smiles and cocktail parties will cover the seething violence that's being held in check until the next Purge Night.

They make for a fascinating comparison, back to back.  If time and interest permit, look for a follow-up post to this on the virtually identical storylines of The Purge 2: Anarchy and Escape from New York.

Mad Max - Fury Road

NetFlix NA
IMDB 8.2/10
My Rating: 6/10


The internets have been going crazy with gaga reviews of this for some time now, and I finally got to see it last night.  Sadly, I'm going to have to go with the counter opinion.  I thought it was entertaining but overdone, and like way too many modern movies, instead of presenting an absorbing story it just tried to pummel you into submission with constant action, which to me is actually boring when I don't really care much about any of the characters.  Which I didn't, really, because I thought Hardy's Max was a poor substitute for Gibson's, and I also wasn't particularly engaged by the fact that he was the sidekick in his own movie. 

Before I get into specifics, I want to point out that it seems like every review I've read has either been glowing praise about it for its theoretical "feminist narrative", or hostile MRA guys complaining that a chick was the star.  I don't give a shit about either of these political hoophole positions, I just wanted it to be good, but for me it was lacking.   Like, I don't care that Max took a backseat to a woman, but I was annoyed that Max had no arc, no skills, and basically contributed virtually nothing to the movie other than to be a victim and tag-along passenger, all to a secondary character who was not the character I sat down with popcorn to see.  It was like going to a Batman movie and having the whole movie be about Commissioner Gordon instead. 

My #1 complaint was the constant barrage of action.  Stuff happening constantly, all over the screen, and I just tuned out after a while.  Good action films have rhythm like music, with lulls and plot and just normal stuff that makes the action stand out when it happens.  This was all action, and the result was much like the hour long battle in Man of Steel - I just stopped caring much about what was happening because it was constantly "EVERYTHING IS EXPLODING AND EVERYONE IS ALMOST DYING IN ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME!!!"

It's entirely possible my opinion may be influenced because I just recently rewatched the original Mad Max and then Road Warrior, in anticipation of seeing Fury Road. 

Lots of spoilers to follow...

OK, I've often said the original Mad Max was kind of bleh, in that it's a generic revenge story and really only has two great action scenes, at the start and at the end.  On rewatch, though, it's disturbing in a way the sequels aren't.  It's apocalypse-in-progress rather than post-apocalypse, and there's something quite unsettling about the weird combination of society clearly falling apart at the edges, and normal people still trying to carry on normal lives.  Roadside diners are open, garages work normally, families go on vacation, etc, yet at the same time, the bikers are free to maraud and there are No-Go zones within easy reach.  Anyway, it was better than I remembered.  Also, it's all clearly about Max, whose arc IS the narrative.  He's the best driver in the MFP and a happy family man with friends untill things go bad and he becomes a cold-hearted killer.

Road Warrior still has Max as the central guide, and this time his arc goes from being an empty, soulless husk to actually wanting to help out other human beings again. 

The fundamental difference between Gibson's Max and Hardy's Max is that Gibson's has the skills to make him a heroic protagonist.  He suffers a lot of shit but ultimately he's still the best driver on the road, summed up handily in RW when, even mangled and battered and barely standing, he tells Papagello, "I'm the best chance you've got" for driving the rig.

Compare:

Fury Road opens with a traumatized Max being immediately chased down, easily wrecked and captured and victimized.  He spend the first half hour of the movie tied to a bumper, and has no personality at all.

Road Warrior opens with Max being pursued by superior numbers, and using his excellent driving skills ("RE-flexes, that's what you've got!"), he dispatches every car that's after him.  Then, in the same running time, we see that he has a heart (buried) via the wind-up music box, that he's cunning (His encounter with the Gyro Captain), ruthless, very intelligent, and basically an all-around cool character. 

This is better Max:

 

By the point in the running time when Fury Road is still showing us big CG landscapes and vistas and constant action, Road Warrior has given us a relatable hero with a plan, a sense of conscience, and a lot of skill to back it up.  Fury Road's Max was a steering wheel holder, a guy who just got stuck in the middle of someone else's story and clung on for dear life, and didn't bring any particular skills to the story.  RW's Max was a guy with a plan who was the only dude who could help the refinery people, and his determination and stupid-fast driving skill ended up making him an accidental hero.  Like Eastwood's Man with No Name, he's in it for himself, but still gets the good guy job done.

Voila:

Finally, I missed the humor.  RW is actually a fairly funny movie, often unexpectedly so, and yeah it's black humor but it still has laughs.  Particularly the Gyro Captain and the running gag with Max's shotgun:

Bottom line - I did enjoy Fury Road.  I didn't think it was as good as Road Warrior, though, nor was it "the ultimate action movie ever made" as many of the reviews have claimed.  

Doc Savage - Skull Island

My Rating: See Below

After King Kong's deadly fall from the Empire State Building, Doc and crew are contracted to remove the body, leading Doc to narrate the account of his first encounter with the giant ape.  Many years before Doc was "Doc", he and his father discovered Skull Island and King Kong while searching for his lost grandfather, Stormalong Savage.

In recent years, writer & fan Will Murray has brought Doc Savage & crew back to life in the form of newly released adventures "written in the style of Lester Dent".  I'll get back to that point in a moment because I had some issues with the writing, but first up, HEY, it's Doc Savage meeting King Kong!

It's the most natural pairing of pulp fiction era characters ever, really, given that Doc's headquarters was the Empire State Building's top floor(s), a 30's-style setup that nicely predated the Baxter Building.  The book kicks off just after Kong's death drop, as Doc and his men arrive on the scene.  While Renny coordinates the massive engineering task of removing a giant ape from the street, Doc sadly recognizes Kong from an earlier encounter, and the story segues into the classic "fireside chat" motif as Doc gathers his friends and tells the story of his first encounter with Kong.

Doc wasn't Doc yet, though he'd already picked up the nickname - Instead, we get the adventure of a 20 year old Clark Savage Jr. on an ocean voyage with his domineering father, the man who shaped Doc's entire life by having him raised by scientists.  The two Savages are looking for Doc's grandfather, the amusingly-named Stormalong Savage, who was presumed lost at sea.  In the course of their search, they butt up against a vicious tribe of headhunters, discover Skull Island and Kong, and fight dinosaurs and natives all the way to a blood-curdling climax.

So, that's the plot.  I've been looking forward to this book for some time, ever since reading about it in Famous Monsters magazine, and was delighted when it became available on audio. And overall, it's a win, though there were some elements I wasn't crazy about.  First and foremost would be its prequel status - It isn't really a Doc book, per se, it's more of a "Young James Bond"-style story.  The Fabulous Five are absent except from the wrapping chapters, and Doc isn't quite the character that fans are familiar with.  Young Doc is still the superman, but he's both brasher and more obedient, usually following his father's orders instead of commanding the adventure himself.  He's also a hell of a lot more ruthless about killing, and we get intimations throughout the story of how and why Doc will eventually eschew guns and lethal force, as well as a few excellent moments where key bits of Doc canon are first established.  So, my hopes of reading a full-bore "Doc & the Fabulous Five on Skull Island" story were somewhat disappointed.

There is also the issue of Will Murray's writing style.  In a nutshell, he takes ten pages to tell what Lester Dent could tell in one.  This may be the result of trying to serve a modern audience that's more accustomed to getting character insights and inner turmoil than the original pulp fans, but whatever the case, I thought it was a little unnecessarily long... The first half is a bit of a slog as you travel around the Indian Ocean watching young Doc tinker with his machinegun pistol and get repeatedly shut down by his bossy dad, who is the very archetype of the cold, commanding military father.  Dent, by contrast, would have taken the crew straight to Skull Island, probably in a flaming dirigible that was collapsing under them.

The audiobook is also read in an "old time radio" voice.  This is fun but distracting at times, and becomes a little wearing over the course of the book as EVERYTHING is read as if it was a case of life or death!!  Radio shows were a half hour, so the effect gets a little overwhelming in an eight hour book.  It IS enjoyable and the action scenes are downright terrific, it just gets a bit much after a while.

My final demerit is the role of Kong - He overshadows the island but isn't in the book very much, and his final encounter is disappointing.  The story winds up to a dynamite conclusion that's action from start to finish, but Kong's role is minor where I'd hoped for something more involving (In truth, it reminded me of Bane from Dark Knight Rises - a powerful presence through the first part of the story that fades out by the end).

Despite these caveats, it was still a whale of a good time - Doc gets to try on his Tarzan swings, Doc fights raptors, there are several classic "Doc is more human than human" moments, and a certain explosive rescue scene is easily Indiana Jones' level of awesome.  It's hard to give such mixed reactions one single rating, so I'll split it up:

As a fun adventure book: 7/10  (Action, dinosaurs, headhunters, what more could you ask?)

As an intro to Doc: 3/10 (The personality differences, the lack of experience, the absence of the Five... all these make it a very un-Doc-like Doc story.  The cues and motifs tucked throughout that resonate for longtime fans will be completely overlooked by new readers)

As a Kong story: 5/10 (Good atmosphere but limited use of Kong)

As an audio presentation: 4/10 (The radio-style reading was enjoyable to a point, but just got tiring after a while)

Despite my somewhat-mixed comments, I would still recommend it, as it is an intriguing look into what Doc's younger life was like, what his relationship with his family was like, and for Pete's sake, it's a new Doc Savage novel!  We need more!  Even 80 years later, the Doc Savage creed is still worth living by:

Let me strive every moment of my life, to make myself better and better,
to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it.
Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it,
with no regard for anything but justice.
Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage.
Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do.
Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.

You're Next

NetFlix 4/5
IMDB 6.6/10
My Rating: 7/10

When shy Erin joins her new boyfriend at a family reunion to commemorate his parents' anniversary, the tense gathering is horrifically interrupted by a gang of masked invaders who brutalize the celebrants ... until someone starts fighting back.


MAJOR kudos for this one! I'd read tons of excellent magazine reviews praising this movie up and down, but I kept putting off watching it because the concept just didn't grab me... It sounds bleak, grim, and non-fun, and I was confused by some of the descriptions of this as a comedy-horror. Well, it is, but only in the way that Evil Dead 2 is. What it really is, though, is a marvelous deconstruction and reconstruction of a slasher/giallo film - It's like watching a modern take on Black Christmas as directed by 70's John Carpenter from a script written by Joss Whedon. In other words, really clever and really well put-together. It's also stuffed to the gills with sneaky little homages to classic horror of the past, with wink-winks to Halloween, Black Christmas, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and even Night of the Living Dead.

The basic plot is this - All the scions of a wealthy 1%er family are getting together for their parents' anniversary, for the first time in years. The setting is excellent. It's a HUGE, classic Tudor-style mansion out in the boonies, and the fact that its these folks' vacation house only underscores the class tensions in the film. They're your basic clan of wealthy WASPS, classic Mitt Romney supporters, and the father even works for a defense contractor. Also, they all pretty much hate each other in typical passive-aggressive family ways, and this is their first big chance for everyone to bring home their various SOs to meet each other. This produces some funny scenes as old-money yuppies are forced to mingle with gothoid girlfriends, artsy students, etc.

Artsy boyfriend of family daughter: "I make films. My last film was a documentary that aired at the Underground Film Festival in Toronto."
Fratboy eldest son: "Underground? What, do you mean you ... watch the movies in a cave or something?"

We also get introduced to our heroine Erin, a working class Australian girl in the states for college. Soon enough, however, things turn very dark as the isolated family is besieged by a group of mystery killers in animal masks, who are creepy as fuck:

I loved the direction and style of this movie. It's all very slow, creeping, handheld camera long shots, very much in the style of Halloween or Black Christmas. In fact, the Black Christmas nods are all over it, as it's obvious that at least some of the killers have already gotten into the immense house and it plays much like the sorority house in BC - A huge, mostly empty building where we keep getting killer POV shots as masked figures quietly wander the halls and watch the family cook, chat, and sleep.

Where it really gets going, though, is when the killers start picking off the family and it becomes obvious that heroine Erin is WAY more than anyone expected. Erin isn't just a blue collar toughgirl, she was raised by a family of crazy survivalists in the Australian outback and someone on IMDB accurately described her as Crocodile Dundee's daughter. This is the film at its most Whedon-esque, because the bulk of the film is the crazy ongoing battles between the attacking killers and this absolutely vicious Buffy who keeps turning the tables on them.

It's absolutely loaded with, "Fuck YEAH!" moments for longtime horror fans, as Erin is absolutely NOT the girl who will stick a knife in an attacker and then turn and walk away, assuming he's dead...

Most of the black humor is in the second half and it's very Evil Dead in style. Some people complained that it was a jarring tonal shift, but I found it fun and enjoyable, mostly because if it had just been a straight horror all the way through, it wouldn't have been nearly as unusual or distinctive. We've all seen so many of these "home invasion by masked killers" films now that it's a real joy to see one where you end up not knowing WHO is really the biggest threat... It really does play out like the "Scream" guys accidentally picked on Buffy (or more accurately, Faith) by mistake.

Space Monsters ATTACK!

Sadly, this is NOT the title of a great new movie I'm reviewing, but maybe it's something even better - An all-new magazine devoted to classic science fiction and fantasy films!  The style and look should be familiar to everyone who grew up on battered issues of Starlog, way back when, and I suspect that diving into it will provoke more than a few happy childhood memories.  Even better, Yours Truly has a couple of articles in the first issue and a little comic strip, so if you want to help support my writing in a printed mag, be sure and head over to their website to order a copy!

To celebrate this occasion and help promote this venture, I put together a little interview with Space Monsters publisher Richard Gladman on his favorite films, his love of this genre, and why he felt crazy enough to take on a project like this...

For starters, tell me a little bit about your existing blog(s), your Cyberschizoid page, etc.  How long have you been doing this?

I started writing the Cyberschizoid blog way back in 2008 then added the Cyberschizoid group on Facebook and a Twitter account to build the brand. The word “cyberschizoid” is even in the Urban Dictionary! After this I started the Classic Horror Campaign to try and encourage the BBC to bring back their iconic horror double bill seasons and bring classic sci-fi and horror films to a wider and younger audience. This led to the successful Frighten Brighton classic horror film festival in my home town co-hosted by Horror Host and scream queen Emily Booth. 

So, you decided to create your own magazine.  What was the big nudge that pushed you into this?  And what is your plan to make it successful, given how many print magazines seem to be dying off these days?

I’ve always wanted to have my own magazine ever since I was a little kid drawing my own comics and monster magazines. When I was 10 years old I didn’t want to be a train driver, I wanted to be Dez Skinn (British magazine editor and publisher famous for House of Hammer and Starburst magazines)! I was encouraged by my friend Eric McNaughton who publishes We Belong Dead magazine and is a fellow classic horror enthusiast. The thing about print magazines is that in terms of numbers and variety, horror fans have never had it so good; there are more horror and sci-fi magazines being published now than ever before so print is not dead yet! For Space Monsters to be successful we need to have a good mix of articles, interviews, reviews and original artwork and to get the word out there that it exists! 

In connection to that last question, do you have plans for a digital version, perhaps for the iTunes subscription model?

Yes, there is a digital version in the works that should be available from Dead Good Newsstand soon. (http://deadgoodnewsstand.blogspot.co.uk/).

I'm sure putting together the first issue has been a learning experience.  What was the biggest pleasant surprise, and what was the most unexpected and/or unpleasant discovery?

The biggest pleasant surprise was the amount of help and goodwill I have received from talented people all across the world – in many ways making Space Monsters a joy to produce. Unpleasant discoveries? To be honest I try not to focus on the negatives so I can’t think of any off the top of my head.

I had a friend in the states who single-handedly published an award winning horror mag for many years (Deathrealm magazine, for whomever might be interested).  It pretty much ate his life.  Have you got plans for dealing with this?  Are you going to have a staff, or try to do it all yourself? Are you looking at this as a hobby project, or a future career?

I already have a whole bunch of people helping me so I don’t feel I’m coping with the project alone. Who knows what will happen in the future? I guess it depends on the success of the magazine and all the other pies I have my fingers in at the moment. Watch this space….

Tell me about why you chose to devote the magazine to classic SF and fantasy.

There are already so many magazines devoted to horror in all its forms and current sci-fi films and television but none that focus on classic sci-fi. Personally I prefer the classic eras and am becoming bored with the unimaginative CGI trash that comes from Hollywood these days so as a fan I’d rather read about the sci-fi movies and TV shows that I love.

What's your favorite spaceship if you had to pick one from movies between the years 1950 and 1980?  And is that roughly the year range you'll be focusing on in the magazine?

My all-time favourite spaceship is the Eagle from the Space:1999 TV show – a truly iconic design – beautiful! Space Monsters magazine will cover the silent era to the mid-eighties but I think the fifties thru the seventies will be concentrated on more as the true golden age of classic film and television sci-fi. 

On the same note, which classic SF alien would you LEAST want to be trapped on a spaceship with?  

The Blob! There’s just no escape or reasoning with that evil mound of jello is there?

Finally, the question everyone asks -  Name your top 5 classic SF films, and tell me why for each.

OK, in no particular order –

1. GOJIRA (1954) – I am obsessed with giant monster movies and kaiju in particular. This film introduced the world to a legend and begat so many fun sequels – and I just love sequels! Unlike most of the films that followed, Gojira is a very serious and sombre piece with a message; very moving and incredibly well shot. I simply cannot fault this film.
2. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1978) – When all the other kids were still crazy about Star Wars I was much more intrigued by this much scarier, more grown-up science-fiction film. Typically, I loved the film that my friends and the public weren’t quite so keen on – always supporting the underdog!
3. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) – Combining horror and sci-fi, my two favourite genres, I found this film really scary when I was a kid and the story is still frightening now. I think they could remake it every decade until the end of time and it would always be relevant.
4. THE THING (1982) – I never tire of watching this movie for its astonishing special effects, great acting and terrifying story. I have fond memories of seeing this on the big screen in London when I was very underage; my friends couldn’t get in as they didn’t look old enough so I think they went to see Indiana Jones instead!
5. PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) – I love anything cheesy and trashy and Ed Wood was a genius! This film is so iconic and entertaining and I had the pleasure of seeing this on a late night show at the gorgeous Duke of Yorks cinema in Brighton. Happy days….

There are so many others that probably could have made the list – Forbidden Planet, Alien, THEM!, Planet of the Apes, The Time Machine…so many classic movies! 

Annnd... That's a wrap!  Now all Richard's mates know to get him an Eagle model kit for Christmas and to chase him around in Blob costumes every Halloween.  I hope you've enjoyed this little peek behind the scenes, and be sure to - 

ORDER a COPY!

The Bay

NetFlix 3.5/5
IMDB 5.5/10
My Rating: 7.5 /10

A Wikileaks-style found footage assembly tells the story of a small bayside town that experiences a rash of horrific infections which eventually are revealed to be something much more terrifying.

Watched this last night. Holy SHIT. Terrifying and creepy and deeply disturbing. It is, IMO, even worse than Contagion for making you never want to touch anything or leave the house ever again. It is also apparently a movie that people have wildly different reactions to, because its IMDB comments all devolved into either 1 star reviews that hated it or high ratings that loved it. It only has a 5.5 on IMDB but IMO it's a 7.5/10, easily. It was just recently added to Netflix streaming.

It's a found footage movie, so I was prepared to hate it. We started watching it basically just to see if it was tolerable, and planned to de-queue it and watch Spiral instead if it was another shakeycam barf-athon. 30 minutes later, we were totally hooked. It's directed by the fellow who did Rain Man and a bunch of other big budget films, but he did this as a personal project for $2 million with unknown actors. The fact that he is a professional director with decades of experience shows, because the found footage format is a lot more stable and better arranged than the usual jiggly-crazy camcorder movies. In fact, at times he shrugs and blows off the whole idea of it being found footage by including background soundtrack, but by the times that happens you're so immersed in the story that it's more funny than distracting. And at least there's a good reason for the footage assembly because it's been assembled and ordered by professional editors into the form that we see.

A lot of the low reviews came from horror fans who thought it was boring because there weren't enough "stalk and jump" scares. It is NOT that kind of movie, though. The fear here is more like in Contagion - not individual people being chased around by slashers, but in the overall look of the looming epidemic and the vast repercussions it's going to have as the scale of it becomes clear. It's eco-horror at its best. The whole thing is presented in a Wikileaks-style format, as a series of video clips and footage that's been obtained by whistleblower types to inform the world about what happened. So, you don't get a movie with a few characters and a story, you get a movie that is presented documentary-style and which is a sequence of events that get more horrifying as they progress.

The whole thing is narrated by this young intern reporter and we follow her through it in much the same way as the young woman in [REC]. She's assigned to cover the town's July 4th festival as a puff piece when things start going wrong. As folks begin piling up in the hospital with blistering rashes, the movie moves between footage of her, a family recording their vacation visit, some police footage, and a pair of experts studying mass fish die-offs. The whole found footage angle is utilized really well here, as there are logical reasons for most of the footage (Expert exposition for the record, police car cameras, TV news footage of events, etc). Ergo, you don't get a lot of the, "Why are they still filming this monster as it attacks them?" effect of some other found footage films. It gradually becomes obvious that there's something in the water as polluted run-off from chicken farms has bred steroid-enhanced isopods. I don't want to tell any more of the plot as half the fun is in the dawning realization of the sheer horribleness of the situation and how hideous things are going to get.

See it. It will stick with you long after viewing. In fact, I'm still thinking about it a day later. It's a "1 tick from reality" sort of film, where the horror is not in evil slashers or vampires but in the daily news. It becomes more horror-film-like by the end but it still retains this very real feeling. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Cloverfield - Not in the giant monster sense, but in the style of how it looked at the widescale impact of this sort of environmental disaster from a very human, very limited viewpoint.

My final comment -  I was going to post the trailer but naturally, it spoilers a couple of the best shock scares of the film, so I would advise against watching the trailers online. They completely blow one of the best moments of the movie - My wife jumped so much she fired the cat off her lap.  Some things are definitely best left to jump at you from out of the dark.

Pacific Rim

IMDB 7.9/10
My Rating: 7/10

When giant monsters start appearing in the Pacific ocean and destroying cities, humanity must band together and fight back with giant piloted robots. 

I love giant monster movies.  Ever since the days of Godzilla and Ultraman, the kaiju genre has been my thing, so the idea of a big budget, all-original robots vs monsters movie has always been high on my wish list.  And Pacific Rim is clearly a labor of love by a fellow fan of Toho's creations... which is why it pains me to not *quite* be able to give it the glowing review I'd like to.  Nonetheless, it's a marvelous film and thus far is the only summer movie that's actually been able to motivate me to the theater - Man of Steel and Star Trek and Iron Man 3 are more, "Wait for it on DVD" for me, whereas Lone Ranger is strictly, "I'll watch this when I'm forced to on a long plane flight."

In Pacific Rim, giant monsters are attacking the world.  One after another, they are popping out of a dimensional gate under the Pacific and laying waste to civilization.  Humans build giant robos called Jaegers to fight them off, and our hero is a former hotshot Jaeger pilot who inevitably had his fall from grace and now seeks redemption.  That's about all of the plot I can reveal without spoilers, but that's also about all the plot there is - Don't be expecting a complex storyline because, like the classic kaiju pics of old, it's basically, "Giant Robot, Giant Monster, FIGHT!"

Overall, I'd probably give this one a B+  -  It's an A+ for big screen spectacle, a B for cool robots and beasties, a C for characters, an A for homages and wink-wink moments, and a C for action scenes. The action scenes were my biggest complaint. As advertised, they were better than Transformers, yes, but where Transformers got an F for utter failure, Pacific Rim just gets a C because at least 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, it was impossible to tell what the hell was going on. Wall-to-wall CGI, everything is moving, everything has a million moving parts, the camera is flying all over the place, and it's all happening in raging seas at night in the rain. When you could see what was happening, it was totally awesome, and some of the fights kicked ass all over because of how great they looked when there was actual lighting and visual coherence, but others (specifically the opening fight and the big battle in the bay later, AND the climax) were just gibberish overload to me - a screen full of moving pixels that I tuned out of and just ended up waiting until the scene settled down enough to see who had won. In this respect, Pacific Rim was a big step down from last year's Avengers, which also had a metric fuckton of CGI at the end but it was all lit and staged so well that I never once had any problem telling what was happening or visually understanding what I was seeing. When it's completely impossible to follow what's happening on screen, something has been done wrong.

Example - Here is a Godzilla fight at night:

 

You can clearly see what is happening and clearly see what each monster looks like, and have no problem following the action.

By contrast, this is what half the fight scenes in Pacific Rim looked like:

The above is much harder to follow in motion, too. The experience is like - Lots of rain, Lightning. A flash of claw. Something blows up. Splashing everywhere. Brief glimpses of monster parts. That gets me to my other big complaint, which is that you never get to see the monsters for shit. Some of the designs looked cool, but as is the modern way, they're usually way too overdone with too many opening mouth parts and arms and you never, ever are allowed a good look at any of them.

Typical Godzilla movie monster view:

Typical Pacific Rim monster view:

It's all the more frustrating because when they do the action scenes good, they're REALLY good. Some in-city fight scenes are way cool, and when they let you see what's actually happening, there are some great moments and many big fist-pumping, "HOO-RAH!" cheers for the giant robots. It ticks me off because this could have been an A-level movie if they had resisted giving in to "Too much moving CGI shit" overload.

Other negative points are smaller. The ending is the next biggest one, as it's basically a scene-for-scene reshoot of the ending of one of LAST summer's big blockbuster flicks. The two leads are not very interesting. Virtually everyone is a stereotype cliche.

That's all the bad stuff.

NOW, the good stuff is that it's a freaking overwhelming cinematic experience. Despite the visual overload, when it rocks, it ROCKS. It's a big budget giant monster movie and that alone is cause for celebration. The Jaegers are cool and at least somewhat different - Again, the designs are overcomplicated such that we never get a good look at any of them, but at least they are visually distinctive unlike the Transformers. My favorite was the battered, heavy-metal low tech Cherno, a Russian robot piloted by Ivan Drago and Brigitte Nielson.

While the star dude is a charisma-free plank whose job in the movie is to fill screen space while standing around with his shirt off in every possible scene, pretty much everyone around him manages to be likable and interesting. There's Maverick, of course, and Grizzled Veteran. Idris Elba does a terrific job of showing what a great James Bond he would make. Ron Perlman is hilarious in a cameo part. Even normally hideously unlikable Burn Gorman (of Torchwood, otherwise known as Rat-Face) seems to be having fun playing Blimey Codswallop, the most overdone foreign scientist ever. In fact, the two geek scientists were the best part of the movie, IMO - Whenever we went back to them bickering in their lab filled with equation-covered chalkboards, they were always a hoot. They also checkmarked many geek references, including a nod to Buckaroo Banzai. There was a lot of this stuff in the movie and it was always cool - Moves from a Toho kaiju film, a line from War of the Worlds, a name reference here and there, etc. In general, the whole thing showed a huge love of the genre and I commend them for it.

Verdict - I really wish I could give this an unqualified cheer because when it works, it works REALLY WELL. Also, my demerits probably would not make any difference to the videogame generation who are already used to having two million things moving around on the screen, and see that as normal. For myself, the problem was driven home when I later that same evening watched an episode of Wild Wild West about a mad scientist who was creating explosive robot duplicates of the heroes to kill the president. It had a Frankenstein lab, killer robots, a huge fencing scene, Mardi Gras in New Orleans, various fights, etc, and I never once found myself in the situation of tuning out because I couldn't follow what was happening, or just having to twiddle my thumbs and wait until the scene was over so I could see who won. It's the main drag on an otherwise fucking awesome movie.

7/10

Worth seeing in the theater? Yes.
Worth buying on Blu-Ray? Yes.
Worth buying the toys? Definitely yes, if only to see what the monsters actually looked like.

I want a Cherno on my desk to face off with my Baragon.

The Tall Man (2012)

NetFlix 3.5/5
IMDB 5.9/10
My Rating: 7/10

In a depressed and dying mining community, a mysterious figure called "The Tall Man" begins abducting the neighborhood children. When a mother's young son is taken, she plunges headfirst into a deeper mystery.


The Tall Man, like a movie I reviewed earlier, Triangle, is a tough flick to write about.  There's a plot on top of a plot on top of a plot, and my hope is to encourage folks to watch the film without actually spoilering what makes the film so excellent.  And it is excellent, in my opinion - It's clever, very tense, well acted, and well told.  What it is not is a horror film.  I notice on IMDB it has received a number of negative reviews from people disappointed that it wasn't a slasher or a supernatural scare flick, and I think the promotional material I've seen for it does lead one to think that they're in for stabbings and Paula Deen-level terror.  Nope.  It's more a mystery/thriller, the sort of movie I'd recommend to my parents even.  "The Tall Man" is certainly a menacing figure and the child theft theme amps up the tension factor, but it's not a film that leaves a trail of bloody bodies.

What is does have is several great genre actors - The X Files' Cigarette Smoking Man makes an appearance (and when he turns up on YOUR side, you know you're screwed) and it's also lucky to have Stephen McHattie in a small part as the lead investigator.  McHattie has been a favorite of mine ever since I saw him in that most unusual zombie film, Pontypool - One of my personal favorites of the last ten years.  He's a good actor with a great stare... Manic, intense, and with a lot of screen presence that is aided by the fact that he resembles a sort of ambulatory mummy, as if Karloff strolled out of the sarcophagus and threw on a trenchcoat.

So what exactly IS this movie about?  In a small, dying mining town, the children are being abducted by a seemingly magical figure called the Tall Man.  Atmosphere is a big part of the story and the depiction of a crumbling, formerly middle class town, with boarded storefronts and broken windows and even more broken lives, is a familiar sight in these modern times.  Unemployed citizens are everywhere, sitting by roadsides, yelling at their spouses, and generally living dead-end lives in a community that's slowly spiraling into inevitable decay.  The additional sense of doom from having their children literally vanishing adds to the overall despair.  Police seem helpless to solve the crimes or find the kids.  When our heroine, a young mother of a rather odd looking child, interrupts his abduction, the chase is on... and what a chase it is!  The bulk of the film is in constant motion as we follow her through twist after twist.

Be braced for some confusion midstream - Unlike so many movies that are good right up to a disappointing finale, this one can be vexing and seem overly twisty until the final reveal, which makes all the preceding events fall into place for an unnerving and thoughtful conclusion that asks some big questions about society as a whole.  I loved it, personally.  Definitely recommended!

And the bad?  The unfortunate title means that forever after, our Google searches are going to confuse THIS Tall Man for the REAL Tall Man, and as every loyal Phantasm fan knows, the wrath of the Tall Man is not a thing to take lightly...

Grave Encounters

NetFlix 3.5/5
IMDB 6.1/10
My Rating: 6/10

For their ghost hunting reality show, a production crew locks themselves inside an abandoned mental hospital that's supposedly haunted - and it might prove to be all too true.

Anyone who's ever done any business traveling is probably familiar with those "ghost hunting" shows that litter cable TV.  You know the drill - You're in a strange city, it's after hours, there's nothing to do and you don't want to blow $45 sitting in the hotel bar looking pathetic.  Instead, you flip through the TV channels and are reminded instantly of why no one pays $85 a month for cable TV anymore... It's wretched.  200 channels of reality shows and commercials will illustrate in a heartbeat just how out of touch that HBO exec was who claimed that cord-cutting was just "a passing fad".  And as you channel surf, one type of program you're almost bound to stumble over is the "ghost hunting" show... They seem to be on every frickin' channel now.  

These things are all the same, whether they're hunting ghosts, aliens, or Bigfoot.  A bunch of eager young 20-somethings go to a remote location and stumble around in the dark uttering lines like, "I feel something.  I definitely feel something here." and, "I just sensed a cold presence move through the room."  You know going in that they're not about to discover anything remotely provable or you'd already have heard about it on the real news, so instead you suffer through a half hour of Blair Witch wannabes freaking out over house-settling noises and random breezes.  I can usually stand about five minutes of these shows before I flip over to watch the infomercial about treadmills.

Grave Encounters, then, is both a clever idea and a "ghost hunter" hater's wet dream - A horror movie built around the cast of a ghost hunting show being driven insane and slaughtered by discovering very real ghosts.  "Grave Encounters" is the title of their ghost hunting program and it's just like all the real ones - They go to a "haunted" location, slip the locals a few bucks to dramatize some stories about past encounters, and then hole up inside the haunted spot for a night of jumping at shadows and generally making fools of themselves. And it's blackly funny, too - The cast and crew make no bones about how much they're going to have to "sex up" the location to make their show scary, and wearily laugh off any pretense that what they're selling on video might be true.

The movie is a recording of what happens when the Grave Encounters crew goes to investigate a haunted asylum.  They get the usual dire warnings from the caretaker, they set up their cameras and "ghost detecting" equipment, and then we're off...  And that's where the movie really gets good.

(I should point out that this is another "found footage" movie.  I tend to dislike these things because the handicam shakes make my stomach gurgle, but this is definitely a superior example of the sub-genre.  Static camera positions give us welcome relief from the constant bobbing of hand cams, and it's really less frenetic and jump cut-ish than many traditional moves I've seen lately.  Quantum of Solace, anyone?)

For dramatic reasons, they lock themselves in for the night, then regret it as it becomes obvious that for once, this isn't just another haunted house fake.  Things go bump in the night, indeed.  And this is what I loved about the movie - You get to see the cocky TV ghost hunters come absolutely unglued by encountering an actual horror... It's like the episode of "ghost hunter" TV that you've always wanted to see.  And it's beautifully subtly done, too - For the majority of the movie we're in Haunting territory, where the quiet click of a door closing by itself is far creepier than any CGI monster.  I give the film high praise in bestowing the "Made the hair on my arms stand up" award... Several times, in fact.  As the crew become increasingly unhinged, you're pulled right along with them through this Very Long Dark Night via their camera recordings and flash photographs.  It's a really terrific experience.

And then you hit the final act.

The last 20 minutes or so drops the movie at least 2 points on my ratings scale, because it jumps its own shark.  After a wonderfully creepy middle section, it seems to lose track and can't decide if it wants to be [REC], Blair Witch, or Lord of the Flies.  Chilling "Did you just see that?" moments become screaming ghost attacks and the scare factor vanishes like a pebble into the well of Donald Trump's ego.  It's entertaining right to the end, mind, and I'd certainly recommend it for anyone looking for a fun haunted house movie with some quality shocks... It's just a bit frustrating because it came so, SO close to being a really great film.  Still, you get to see a "ghost hunter" cast go insane and die, and who wouldn't enjoy that?

Happy Holidays!

Now that we've hit December, it's time for the yearly KFP holiday greeting card!  For the full-size version, click HERE.

Ready Player One (A Book Review)

My Rating: 8/10


A change of pace for a moment - I just finished reading this and wanted to post a review because I suspect it's a book that will tickle any KFP reader. "Ready Player One" was terrific. I listened to the audiobook read by Wil Wheaton and I don't even know where to begin in describing it. If you're my age (40-something), if you like 80's movies or music, if you like anime, if you're a MMORPG gamer, if you're a tabletop gamer, if you're ANY of these things, then you will probably really enjoy it. It is an unbelievable mixer of geek culture references.

It's about a grim future where most of the planet spend their time inside the Oasis, an endless MMORPG universe which is user-modifiable, so custom-created planets exist for pretty much anything one can imagine or ever liked (There are entire planets based on Ultraman lore, for instance). The creator of all this has died and left his virtual empire (and trillions of real dollars) to whoever can figure out his ultimate puzzle, an adventure laid out in riddles, gates, and pop culture references from the 70's-90's. Young hero Wade is an avid but poor gamer who has a manic fixation on the riddle, and who manages to unravel the first part of the clues to start him onto the long path to the prize. Along the way, it references everything you can think of, seriously.

Seriously.


Ultraman Godzilla Rush Highlander Ghostbusters Nostromo TRS-80s Adventure Colossal Cave Tabletop D&D Tomb of Horrors Pat Benatar Defender Shogun Warriors... Hell, I could be typing all night. Suffice to say that if you like the idea of running through a virtual Tomb of Horrors to track down the priests of the temples at Syrinx to find Alex Lifeson's guitar embedded in an altar stone waiting to be drawn and played with the right notes to summon the Schoolhouse Rock spirits, then you'll probably enjoy this book. And not all of that is in the book, I made parts of that sentence up so as not to spoiler things, but it's actually about 1/100000th the level of geek culture overload that the book will hit you with.

It's great. Funny, very clever, and always in motion. Wade has to not only compete with his in-game friends but also stay a step ahead of the requisite Evil Corporation that is intent on winning the prize and then monetizing the hell out of the Oasis (Why NOT have to pay for every login and sit through 15 minutes of McDonald's commercials before your gaming session starts?).

Oh, and a non-spoiler to give some of the flavor of the ideas involved - The Oasis is not just for gaming, Wade goes to school there also, on a non-PvP planet dedicated to education by the government. The gov can create school after school so no more budget limitations, which means the in-game schools are majestic cathedrals. A class consists of students logging in and appearing in the school, then assembling in their classroom which can then become the surface of Europa, if the lesson of the day is on other planets. They can walk across computer models of Venus and Pluto, tour the bottom of the ocean, or step directly into recreations of classic literature to experience the stories firsthand. This is the virtual campus of the book's future. After school, you can hang out on planetary recreations of Ringworld, Middle Earth, Star Trek starbases, or spend your time kicking back in Buckaroo Banzai's lab.

Negatives?  There isn't a lot of character depth aside from the geek reference avalanche.  Wade and his friends are basically young, virtuous good guys and the romantic subplot is fairly standard, as is everyone and everything about EvilCo Inc.   Age-wise, it's appeal is a tough guess. People 35-50 will probably enjoy it the most, and anyone much younger will probably miss a lot of the in-references... BUT they'll be more familiar with the SF VR gaming culture of the story, so it might even out. Hell, there were references in this that I didn't get, and I caught the comments about the original "Chainmail" editions of pre-D&D. You will appreciate this the most if you have an exhaustive knowledge of everything 80's and can quote movie lines from "Wargames". If you can't hum at least 4 or 5 Schoolhouse Rock songs off the top of your head, you'll probably be lost.  These are minor complaints, though, because this is not a book about the depths of the human heart - It's a wild vacation through Nostalgia Land and reading it is like spending an evening pumping quarters into an arcade machine at the pizza parlor all over again.

West of House

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

The Norliss Tapes (1973)

NetFlix 2.9/5
IMDB 6.5/10
My Rating: 7.5/10

I haven't featured a guest review in a while, so I thought it was time for another - Especially since I've been so incredibly busy lately with work and the KFP web comic that I haven't had time to keep up with the movie reviews as I'd like.  This KFP guest review comes to you from my friend Joel Schama, and he managed to pick one of my favorite 70's made-for-TV horror flicks to kick off with.  I'll drop in a few comments of my own, and put my commentary in green...  and now, over to Joel!

The Norliss Tapes, circa 1973, directed and produced by William F. Nolan of Dark Shadows fame (and directed by my childhood favorite, Dan Curtis!), is a Night Gallery meets Kolchak: The Night Stalker pastiche. The story begins with David Norliss (Roy Thinnes) being unable to even begin a book he has been commissioned to write one year prior. Following David’s disappearance, his publisher finds stacks of tapes upon which David recorded the events of his investigation. Hoping these will provide clues as to Norliss’s whereabouts, his publisher begins to listen to the first tape.

The story unfolds following David’s descent into the realm of attempting to debunk certain paranormal activities, only to find himself within a situation that his skeptical mind finds most difficult to believe. Norliss’s character narrates the film throughout, juxtaposed with scenes of the actual events. Much in the same way Kolchak: The Night Stalker presents itself.

(The key...and unfortunate... difference for me between this and Night Stalker is in the main characters. Norliss Tapes was a terrific movie but it never had the cultural impact of Night Stalker, and I put a lot of that down to Norliss vs Kolchak - Roy Thinnes gives a good performance in a fairly dry and serious role, and that's his problem.  Kolchak the character was one of horror's all-time greats.  He was a loud, raucous, scenery-chewing loser you just had to cheer for, and IMO that made him a lot more fun to watch than Norliss, alas...)

In his attempt to debunk the occult, his research leads him to a wealthy widow (played by Angie Dickinson) who believes her husband no longer resides within the crypt within which his body was entombed. Her husband’s final wish was to be buried with the scarab ring of Osiris; a ring bought from an antique dealer specializing in the occult, which he believed would help grant immortality. Left only with Norliss’s tapes, his publisher continues to search for reasons for David’s disappearance.

Throughout the movie, the widow Ellen’s undead husband is seen only by his victims; victims later found by the sheriff (Claude Akins) to have a pale pallor, the explanation of which can only be attributed to the complete and total lack of blood!

The scarab purchased by Ellen’s husband, it is later shown, was for the purpose of allowing him to rise from the dead in order to finish his sculpture of Sargoth. By combining the blood of his victims with the clay, the Sargoth would gain entrance into our world and grant him immortality. Or so he believes.

(And just as an addendum, I saw this when it first aired, when I was only a wee little 7 year old Kentucky Fried Popcorn.  It scared me senseless.  One of my most frightening memories of the film was the underground tunnel lair of our vampire, which was strewn with the pale corpses of his victims - Heady stuff for a TV movie!)

We, as viewers, are left at the end not knowing what really happened to David Norliss, or what was to come after the Sargoth was brought forth into our dimension. However, if you enjoy 70’s made for television horror movies, and don’t mind an ambiguous ending, then this is one you must not miss.  

Ask me for my favorite 70's TV horror films and you'll get a list of three - Night Stalker, Norliss Tapes, and Spectre.  There were plenty of other good ones, but those are the Big Three to my mind, and every one is something I can watch again and again and still enjoy.  In fact, I think I'll go dig out my DVD of this now...