Prime Time: House Of The Long Shadows (1983)

Despite the cast, I was never in a rush to watch this horror movie, the final feature directed by Pete Walker. I knew I would get to it eventually though. It's old-fashioned, creaks under the weight of the baggage being moved across every wooden floor, and also has a ridiculous framing device. I couldn't bring myself to dislike it though.

Desi Arnaz Jr. plays Kenneth Magee, a writer who makes a bet with his agent (Richard Todd) that he can hole himself up in dark and isolated house for 24 hours and come out with a novel akin to something produced by the Brontë sisters. It's handy for Magee that his agent has a key to such a location, and the bet is on. The house ends up being populated by a strange mix of characters though. Sheila Keith and John Carradine appear, claiming to be the housekeeping staff. Julie Peasgood appears, claiming to want to keep our lead from danger. Then along come Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, and Christopher Lee. It's a veritable cornucopia of horror movie legends.

Based on a novel, "Seven Keys To Baldpate" by Earl Derr Biggers, which had also been adapted into a successful play by George M. Cohan, the screenplay here, from Michael Armstrong is really just an excuse to make room for the many iconic actors to interact with one another here. This doesn't make for a great movie, necessarily, but it's impossible to watch this as a horror fan and not get some pleasure from it. And I'd argue that any scene involving the bigger names is better than any scene that focuses on Arnaz Jr. (who isn't terrible, but never feels like a good enough leading man).

Walker directs without any real relish, instead seeming to take on the role of mediator responsible for ensuring that all of the performers get their individual moments to shine. The film is about familiarity and comfort ahead of any actual scares, although there is some enjoyable atmosphere created by the central location. Will you care about the actual plot, or what dangers crop up around our "hero"? I doubt it, but that's not really the point anyway.

If you have read this far then you know why you will want to watch this. It's all in the second paragraph. This film allows you some time with some true genre greats, and that's the main thing going for it. Cushing may have to work with a strange speech affectation that stops him from being at his best, but he's still Peter bloody Cushing, a legend and a damn fine actor. Lee is as calm and quietly menacing as he so often could be, and Keith, Carradine, and Price all enjoy delivering an endearing helping of ham. Peasgood is decent enough, and Louise English and Richard Hunter turn up in time to provide more potential victims as the titular house aims to reveal some deadly secrets.

I was hoping this would be a bit better, but I was also aware of it not being beloved by many. It's a decent enough way to kill 102 minutes though, especially if viewed (as it should be) as a loving tribute to a number of the main cast members.

6/10

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Prime Time: Shock Waves (1977)

If ever there was a film I should have seen before being in my mid-40s then Shock Waves is it. Underwater Nazi zombies that seem to be powered by their goggles. A big “ghost ship”. Peter Cushing in a small role. A lead turn from Brooke Adams. There’s nothing here that I dislike.

The feature directorial debut of Ken Wiederhorn, who only has a handful of features to his name (although all of them seem designed to appeal to me), Shock Waves is fully explained by my first paragraph. You should already know whether or not you want to see it. It’s ridiculous, but it’s ridiculous AND well handled.

Things begin with some general spookiness. A boat is struck by another, larger, boat, during the night and everyone is bemused the next morning by the disappearance of the captain. Heading off to a nearby small island, because action is required due to the small boat being damaged, people start to wander around and get themselves noticed by a threat they could never have imagined - underwater Nazi zombies.

Aside from the small roles for Cushing and John Carradine (as the captain who goes awol), the main recognisable star here, for most people, will be Adams, playing a woman named Rose. Adams has to be bemused and afraid for most of the runtime, Cushing provides the explanation for all of the horror, and everyone else is there to be stalked and (possibly) murdered by the waterlogged baddies.

The screenplay, credited to John Harrison and Wiederhorn, works much better than you would think. The central idea is treated in a straightforward way that allows the movie to avoid feeling campy, and the expository moments are kept to a minimum, leaving plenty of time and space for the effective sequences that show characters being terrorised.

Alongside the script and eerie visuals, and kudos for keeping the eerie atmosphere throughout a film set largely on a sun-bathed island, there is an enjoyably odd score from Richard Einhorn. The entire soundscape helps to maintain the consistent spookiness, and I will keep my ears open for the other soundtracks that Einhorn worked on (not many, but he did work on Don’t Go In The House, which I will revisit one day with the aim of being more attentive to the score, and fans of Blood Rage and The Prowler will already know some of his work).

As odd as the premise is, I struggle to think of any part of Shock Waves that I disliked. It’s a brilliant little horror movie, and one that I suspect many people, like myself, may have decided not to prioritise on any viewing list. If you are one of those people, please change that situation. You won’t (or shouldn’t) regret it.

8/10

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Prime Time: The Monster Club (1981)

An Amicus anthology horror movie in almost every way, apart from the fact that it came along a few years after Amicus was no longer active, The Monster Club is a mixed experience for fans of these films, and fans of the stars involved.

John Carradine plays a horror writer who has some blood drawn from his system by a polite vampire (Vincent Price) before the grateful drinker invites him along to the titular club. There, in between a number of stage acts, he is told three spooky stories. The first is all about a creature known as a Shadmock (played by James Laurenson), the second is a comedic tale about a vampire (Richard Johnson), and the third is all about a village full of ghouls.

Carradine may be playing an onscreen version of R. Chetwynd Hayes (the author of the source material, even if the stories changed a fair bit from book to screenplay form, the latter written by Valerie and Edward Abraham), and there may be some obvious winks and gags for horror film fans (such as a character named Lintom Busotsky, a crude and simple play on the name of producer Milton Subotsky), but it's a great shame that the majority of the film avoids other opportunities for some meta humour. What we get, instead, are some moments that show director Roy Ward Baker doing his damnedest to prove that he could supply entertainment for modern horror audiences who had turned their backs on the comforting bloodshed supplied by the likes of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon, etc. I might find it amusing to watch a song performed by B. A. Robertson, and there's a great gag involving a stripper (although the film is a pretty tame affair with no nudity shown), but it's hard to imagine anyone viewing the film in 1981 leaving the cinema with anything other than a sense of disappointment. I have always had a soft spot for it, but that's because I first saw it as a pre-teen.

Price is as much fun as he usually is, Carradine spends most of his time looking around in mild bemusement (no surprise, considering the strange assortment of masks being worn by the people pretending to be monsters in the club), and the best performance in the three tales comes from Laurenson, playing a sweet and tragic, but also dangerous, creature. Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward are also involved in his story, and both do well enough to make it the most consistently enjoyable one. The second tale, featuring Johnson, is a big step down, with Britt Ekland and Donald Pleasence wasted in their supporting roles, although it's at least fun to see Pleasence given much lighter material in the genre than he was usually given. Stuart Whitman, Lesley Dunlop, and Patrick Magee star in the third, and final, tale. They do well enough, but it's more about the atmosphere, with the main village feeling like a small British counterpart to the location features in The City Of The Dead.

The execution of the material is fairly clumsy, the humour is a lot more childish than viewers may expect (making this a surprisingly okay choice for a family viewing), and it's a far cry from the past glories of the British horror movie industry. Having said that, you get to spend time with some enjoyably familiar faces, the penny-pinching doesn't remove the sheer sense of fun, and there's actually a pretty good punchline to round it all off. It's not a good movie, but it has a charm to it that may lead to you occasionally thinking as fondly of it as I do.

5/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Shudder Saturday: The Bees (1978)

I love a good, fun, creature feature. And I love movies that can make your skin crawl as some of our smallest critters become some of our biggest enemies, be it in terms of attitude (this movie, the magnificent Phase IV, Arachnophobia) or in terms of size (Empire Of The Ants, The Giant Spider Invasion, ummmmmm . . . Night Of The Lepus). Many of these movies aren't actually any good, but I have a soft spot for them nonetheless. I either saw them when I was young enough to enjoy the thrills without feeling scared (okay, I was maybe a little scared the first time I saw Empire Of The Ants) or they always simply amused me, despite lacking the real thrills or scares that they were supposed to have. None of that really applies to this movie though. This movie is just bad.

The basic plot concerns a strain of more dangerous bees that are smuggled into America by corporate agents who have a plan for them that probably won't put the entire world in danger. Unfortunately, things soon get out of hand and the entire world is put in danger. Oh dear. It's up to an elderly doctor (John Carradine) to save the day. Not just him. It's also up to John Saxon, playing a character who feels like it was written in the script as "anyone as tough and cool as John Saxon", and Angel Tompkins (playing Sandra Miller). Bees buzz around, people flap their hands and fall over, and it all leads to a finale that you wouldn't believe was real if I described it to you right now.

Written and directed by Alfredo Zacarias, it's very hard not to think that he was, well, taking the piss. The Bees starts off quite silly and then just keeps on getting sillier and sillier. Scenes that should be tense are either incompetently staged (any major moments showing the creatures attacking tend to have them as dots passing the screen and small swarms drawn on to each frame) and the plotting is childishly slapdash and careless.

Fair play to Saxon, Tompkins, and Carradine, dlivering some of the most risible dialogue that I've heard in any movie from this subgenre. Saxon, in particular, deserves some kind of award for keeping a straight face during a final act in which he tells people in power exactly what he has managed to surmise from his time trying to understand the bees. And anyone involved in a scene that has lots and lots of actual bees around them also deserves some praise. The bees may have all had their stingers removed (not sure how that affected the poor little buggers) but my instincts would still be telling me to get the hell out of that buzz-filled environment.

It's entertaining during individual moments, but for all the wrong reasons, and that is why I score it as high as I do. Even the score is so bad that it feels as if it has been created that way for comedic effect. I advise people to avoid this one. But you'll chuckle at times if you force yourself to sit through it.

3/10

There's a surprisingly decent looking disc for this here.

Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972)

AKA Night Of The Dark Full Moon.

It's funny what you discover on a never-ending journey through the years of cinema. For example, I'm a HUGE fan of Halloween. It's one of my favourite movies of all time, and my favourite horror movie. But I admit, as much as I love Carpenter, that it was hugely influenced by many films to come along beforehand. People argue over the real starting point of the slasher movie subgenre, from Agatha Christie adaptations to Mario Bava's Blood And Black Lace, but there are some who quickly cite Bob Clark's work in Black Christmas as a way to undermine the classic created by Carpenter. Strange that few of those people seem to then explain that Clark MAY have been influenced by this movie, a slasher set around Christmastime (albeit without obvious decorations and seasonal details everywhere) that features a lot of POV camerawork.

Mary Woronov plays a young woman named Diane, who ends up in the middle of a very dangerous situation. It's all to do with a house that was once owned by Wilfred Butler. His grandson, Jeffrey Butler (James Patterson), is arranging to sell the house, offloading it at a bargain price, but it seems that someone, perhaps even Jeffrey himself, wants a number of people to die before the house is handed over to a different family. Diane is the daughter of Mayor Adams (Walter Abel), one of a number of people drawn to the house by the scheming killer, and she ends up teaming up with Jeffrey, despite her suspicions, while she tried to figure out exactly what is going on.

Written by Jeffrey Konvitz and Ira Teller, this is an enjoyably twisty and twisted tale that simply undoes a lot of good work by being a bit too convoluted and reliant on the backstory, a backstory revealed in the third act via a flashback that lasts for quite a while. If the writers had found a way to spread this backstory throughout the movie, instead of throwing it in there in one big lump, then things would have been greatly improved.

The cast isn't chock full of great actors, but genre fans will enjoy Woronov in a lead role. Patterson is quite good, suitably shifty and sweaty while viewers decide whether he's good or bad.

Director Theodore Gershuny keeps things dark and grimy, which is both a plus and a minus for the movie. He does well, and the film does deserve to be seen by a wider audience, but there are a lot of minor flaws that add up to detract from the overall experience.

6/10

Unfortunately, I don't know the actual quality of the disc, so try to pick this up as cheaply as possible, until it (maybe) gets special treatment one day - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Night-Bloody-DVD/dp/B00096J1KA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388174003&sr=8-2&keywords=silent+night%2C+bloody+night

The Sentinel (1977)

If Michael Winner was anyone else he'd surely have a bit more recognition from people. But he's Michael Winner. He's the annoying windbag who went from directing movies to critiquing restaurants and telling people in the most patronising manner to "calm down, dear" while advertising insurance. And he had the cheek to do that after "glorifying" vigilante justice with a the first few Death Wish movies. Here's the thing that's easy to forget. Death Wish was a very good film. As was The Mechanic. And The Jokers. The Sentinel is an unfairly neglected horror that manages to throw in some real mystery, real shocks and some great performances. Unfortunately for those who hate him, it was developed into a screenplay (based on the Jeffrey Konvitz novel) by Michael Winner, produced by Jeffrey Konvitz and Michael Winner and directed, of course, by Michael Winner.

The Sentinel is all about a beautiful young woman who moves into an apartment and then starts to worry about her sanity as she starts to see stranger and stranger things happening around her, things involving her strange and creepy neighbours. Maybe it's all tied in to the old man who lives upstairs, the one that she never sees out and about because he never goes out and about. He seems to just sit there, gazing out of his window, like some kind of sentinel.

The script and direction don't really seem to be all that spectacular here but as the movie builds towards a fantastic and horrific climax it becomes easier to see that, in fact, everything is almost perfectly crafted. The film has a real sense of mystery and develops the plot beautifully. Even if you remain a step ahead of the film, it's a pleasure to see how every detail is revealed and how the unreal horror continues to pile up in a surprisingly realistic manner.

Another pleasure here is the cast. Winner managed to get himself a superb cast here, with some big names even in small roles. There's a fleeting appearance by Jeff Goldblum before he became a well-known actor, Christopher Walken gets a bit more screentime but was also in the very early days of his career and then you also get to see Ava Gardner, Beverly D'Angelo, Burgess Meredith, Eli Wallach, John Carradine, Jose Ferrer, Martin Balsam, Sylvia Miles, William Hickey and Jerry Orbach. Each and every one is a great actor, with Burgess Meredith being one of the very best. Then there's Chris Sarandon in a main role, doing an okay job, and the beautiful Christina Raines playing Alison Parker, the beautiful young woman. Heck, Tom Berenger even appears in the last minute or so for perhaps the smallest role of his career.

There was (and, indeed, still is . . . . I suppose) quite a controversy regarding the decision made by Winner to use people with real deformities during a scene in which "denizens of Hell" appear but, for some reason, I didn't find this bothersome. Perhaps I should have, and future viewers have been forewarned, but I didn't. In fact, that sequence felt as strange and disturbing as the rest of the movie, which meant that it felt as if it belonged right where it was.

I really like The Sentinel and I encourage others to at least check it out. It might be fashionable to automatically dislike and mock any Michael Winner movies but it's a lot more enjoyable to give them a chance and maybe even be entertained by them.

8/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sentinel-DVD-Chris-Sarandon/dp/B00149XOVI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1350167969&sr=8-2