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...

Snowglobe (A KFP Guest Review)

NetFlix 3.9/5

IMDB 5.9/10

My Rating: 5.5/10

Sincerity Factor: 5/10

Treacle Factor: 5/10

Angela finds a mystical snow globe that transports her into an idyllic Christmas winter wonderland. But, when her two worlds unexpectedly collide, Angela has to make a choice about what really defines her perfect Christmas.

(To help keep KFP updates on schedule, I've roped in another guest reviewer, my very own wife!  I think you'll find she gives a much more literate review than I do, not to mention being a hell of a lot nicer to things like this than I would be.  But then, this was a chick movie through and through, so let me present the wife's review...)

Review by Emily.

My ratings above pretty much sum up how I felt about this movie: it was fun, fluffy, and a perfect example of a middle-of-the-road, mostly predictable Christmas movie that will offend no one.  It might make one want to bang some of the characters' heads together....but I'll get to that in a moment.

Snowglobe wastes no time establishing that our lead character, Angela (played by Christina Milian), is unhappy with her life and where it's (not) going. We quickly find out that she works at her family's deli and lives in an apartment building managed by her family.  Noticed a theme yet?  Keep reading.

Before we're out of the credits we've seen the titular package arrive and met the latest likely young man that her family hopes to marry her off to – because, as the building managers, her parents can choose the top picks of the eligible prospective tenants.  So, as Angela complains to her co-worker, “they stock our apartment building like a single-guy fish pond,” and then wait for her to fall in.  She's wise to their ploy, but it's one more sticky spot in the tar baby of family involvement.

Her family, interestingly, is African-American on her father's side and Italian on her mother's, and overwhelming on all fronts.  In reading other reviews to get a sense of what people thought of this movie I ran across one that praised it for its accurate portrayal of  how families really behave, and my knee-jerk reaction was along the lines of “Oh, you poor dear....”  Within the first fifteen minutes of the film the viewer has a firm understanding of why Angela might find her situation both frustrating and intractable: her family has no boundaries and observes none, mows over objections like a combine harvester, and above all, knows what's best for everyone (particularly Angela) and says so.  Loudly.

So when her mother (played with cheerful vigor by Lorraine Bracco) says “Look at your sister – married, pregnant – you should be so lucky!” and sister Gina (Luciana Carro) looks intolerably smug, we aren't surprised that Angela snaps and orders them all out of her apartment forthwith.  We really expected her to do it earlier, perhaps with a sharp stick. 

Surrounded by people who think things are just fine the way they are, Angela is fighting an uphill battle to break out and do something different, represented in this case by her desire to have a traditional Christmas goose instead of green lasagna for the holiday feast.  A cliché?  Well, yes, but also a situation that most of us can relate to.

Once the stampeding horde is out of her apartment, our heroine unpacks the box she received earlier and finds the snow globe within, sans note or card to identify the sender.  Mystified but delighted, she places the globe on her bedside table, winds the key, and drifts off to sleep to the music it plays.....and wakes up in a snow-covered Christmas tree lot!  No, wait, there's a row of shops, a pond with skaters, a stone bridge, and a one-horse open sleigh!  And snow.  Lots and lots of snow.  Angela has stumbled into her perfect Christmas, and if it seems a little too much like the village from The Prisoner to some of us, take comfort in the fact that she's far too young to have seen that show and consequently won't be worried. 

Everyone around her is happily pursuing their winter- or Christmas-related tasks, but she doesn't have much chance to explore before receiving a knockdown from a shovelful of snow and meeting Douglas, the industrious shoveler.  He is happy to welcome her to the village and introduce her around, and if he seems a trifle....well, simple, it's only a dream, after all.  He is very cute and friendly – in fact, everyone is very friendly, though alert viewers will sense the hive mind in the chorus of “Merry Christmas!” that seems to smooth all awkwardness away.  Christmas dinner is roast goose, the presents are ready, and Angela wants to stay forever, but of course she wakes up.

Her first conclusion is that she's had a wonderful dream.  The following night, however, she finds herself back in the village – to her happy surprise – and she speedily discovers that she can return there whenever she wants just by winding up the music box and drifting off with the snow globe's tune.  And  since her real-world existence is so deeply unsatisfying, she begins to escape into the Christmas world more and more.  Her relationship with Douglas grows and she passes happy hours learning to ice skate and teaching the residents of the inn attractive package-wrapping techniques.  Meanwhile, her relationship with the real world suffers: she's late to work, she's distracted, she fails to show up for family dinner (!), and finally caps it off by forgetting about her sister's baby shower.  Her family stages an Italian-style intervention and sets up dinner in Angela's apartment, without telling her that they've invited Eddie, the eligible bachelor from the first paragraph (remember him?).  Angela is incapable of being rude to him and surprises herself by having a really enjoyable evening with this real person.  We can see the idea beginning to grow that maybe romance is possible outside of the snow globe.

It was at this point that the movie departed from the script – not its own script, clearly, but the script that I had created about how it would come out.  I'm not going to give away the twist (if you really want to know it you can easily find out by checking other reviews) but that was what made this movie stand out a bit from the “background noise” of other extremely predictable holiday fare.  Unfortunately both of us found Christina Milian's acting style somewhat wearing; I began to see Angela as more of a collection of head twitches and hair flips than an actual character after about an hour or so.  We still have another Christmas movie to watch that she stars in, so we'll see if she can play anything other than twenty-something attitude.

The message of “Snowglobe” was clear from the start: appreciate what you have, don't worry so much about not having perfection.  It's a message that most Christmas movies want to convey in one way or another; the best of them manage it without our noticing that we've been indoctrinated (for an excellent example, see the earlier review of “Midnight Clear”).  I was skeptical about “Snowglobe” at first because I thought I could see exactly where we were headed and how we'd get there.  I was wrong, at least about how we got there, and I appreciate a story that surprises me.  So overall I would recommend this as an enjoyable movie for most family members, although if you have a low tolerance for bickering I would suggest a nice, tough piece of leather to bite into before setting off.  After all, as Angela points out, “How can you have Christmas without any shouting?”

Altered (2006) - A Guest Blog review

Trying something new here - I've invited a friend to do a guest review for me.  This review was brought to you by Nathan of Lost on Monster Island.  Enjoy!

NetFlix 3/5
IMDB 5.8/10
My Rating: 6/10


Five high school buddies are abducted by aliens from a farm in Florida -- but only four of them survive. Fifteen years later, the friends -- whose lives have been altered ever since -- return to the farm to face their enemy and seek revenge.


"From the co-director of The Blair Witch Project" is not traditionally considered a good method of advertising a film. Unlike your regularly scheduled reviewer, however, I have only been around for two-and-almost-a-half decades and am still naive and optimistic to say "At least they tried" when watching a bad movie. I also actually enjoyed Blair Witch Project, inconsistent as it was - because I think sometimes you have to watch the movie that defined a cinematic style to appreciate the movies that came after it. Without Blair Witch Project, vastly superior movies like Cloverfield, [REC], and Paranormal Activity wouldn't exist. I'm also glad that Altered was made, because for viewers with more refined tastes, it has a lot going for it.

The movie focuses on four men who, at the start of the movie, have successfully kidnapped an alien in revenge for their own alien abductions as children. How they catch the alien is never explained, which is probably for the best. I can't imagine anything convincing the writers could have come up with - first they'd have to lure the alien out of its ship, then I guess they would try to tackle it, and these aliens are psychic so you would immediately blow your cover as soon as you thought "Okay, we're close to the alien ship. How do we kidnap one of the aliens?" This movie works a lot better if you don't think about it too much, and it's silly fun.

The big draw of this movie in my opinion isn't the acting (which is decent) or the writing (which is...subpar) but the special effects. The aliens are actually handled entirely using a man in a suit, a concept that works much better for films which involve a lot of physical contact between the protagonists and the monster. The characters have to continually restrain the alien, which eventually escapes, and the fighting and wrestling that take place in the film are much more convincing because the alien has a physical presence. It's heavy, it's actually doing the punching and biting, and when it picks things up, things are being lifted by an actual onscreen hand. This works in the movie's favor, because the movie has a very low budget to begin with and shoehorning in cheap CGI would have made it completely laughable.

A lot of big-name movies are full of missed opportunities: jokes or characters that could have been removed, scenes that play too long, or even story lines that start half an hour too soon (Skyline would have been a great film if it had been half an hour shorter at the beginning and half an hour longer at the end - or it least it wouldn't have been quite as terrible.), but Altered actually has the opposite going for it. It is a very small-scale film, with a low budget, no big-name actors, and a relatively localized plot. The aliens would theoretically retaliate if their kidnapped member was killed, but at no point do we see a fleet of ships surrounding Earth or hints at a global conflict between mankind and the angry green aliens who are evidently very easily kidnapped.

This movie is fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously, the actors are clearly doing their best and enjoying their roles, the special effects are almost all practical and therefore much more convincing than the ones in films like Transformers: Indistinguishable Shapes & Unbearable Noise, and there is an especially gory and amusing scene near the end of the film that I will always remember Altered for. This movie hits the right combination of gross, silly, dark, and cheesy, and though it's no Aliens (it's not even The Creeping Terror) it's an enjoyable one. Definitely an average movie with some great moments where it becomes good, and that's really all I ask of my films.