26.) The Unseen (1980): 6/10



Three young journalists (Barbara Bach, Karen Lamm, Lois Young), on assignment to cover a Danish cultural festival in a small California town, find themselves bereft of lodgings following a mix-up at a local hotel. Finding every other hotel in the immediate area booked solid, the trio accept the invitation of a local museum owner (perpetually skeevy and nervous genre favorite Sydney Lassick) to board at the remote farmhouse he shares with his wife (Lelia Goldoni). But soon the women find themselves picked off one by one by the...well, unseen thing that lurks in the basement that emerges to drag them down to a horrific fate. Does it tie into the unsavory relation between their eccentric hosts...?

Unremarkable yet entirely watchable little horror flick, nicely scored by Michael J. Lewis and shot with a certain moody efficiency, The Unseen is mainly notable for sporting a rare story credit by the great makeup F/X wizard Stan Winston along with his protege Thomas Burman (who created "The Unseen"). It's a minor entry in early-80s schlock, but it certainly has its charms.

Hammer Time...!

27.) The Horror Of Frankenstein (1970): 5/10

28.) Lust For A Vampire (1971): 6/10





A pair of vintage Hammer productions today. 1970's The Horror Of Frankenstein stars Ralph Bates as Baron Victor Frankenstein, obsessed with reanimating dead tissue and restoring life to the dead, even if he has to have a steady supply of disinterred cadavers to have the necessary supplies to fuel his mad experiments, culminating in the creation of a hulking, shambling Monster (played by future Darth Vader David Prowse) who escapes from his laboratory and goes out into the countryside to wreak havoc.

The only film in the Hammer Frankenstein cycle to lack Peter Cushing, Horror is one of the weakest of this series of films, lacking the charismatically supercilious smarm that always enlivened Cushing's portrayal of the Baron. Bates is becalmed and bland in the role, and the overall proceedings lack tension and any notable distinctions in the overall production values or terrorific elements. Even the weakest of the Cushing movies (The Evil Of Frankenstein) had more to recommend it than this.

Meanwhile, Lust For A Vampire (as the title might suggest) is a good example of how Hammer spiced up their usual formula in the early 70s with additional, gratuitous displays of unclothed boobies and more graphic violence. Johnal Johnson plays Richard LeStrange, a novelist specializing in books about the occult who finds himself drawn to Castle Karnstein by local superstition, and finds a girls' school full of nubile young lovelies...and a vampiric curse that comes around every forty years or so to carry off a fresh supply of young victims.

The middle entry in Hammer's "Karnstein Trilogy" (preceded by 1970's The Vampire Lovers and followed by Twins Of Evil, which opened later in '71), Lust For A Vampire offers up some prurient pleasures and looks and sounds great (Harry Robinson's score is nice and lush), but it probably the weakest in this trio of films, lacking the scary/sexy highs of the other two. Still, it's an easier sit than the moribund Horror Of Frankenstein, at any rate.

#29.) M3gan (2023): 8/10



Toy designer Gemma (Allison Williams) finds herself in guardianship of her nine-year-old niece, Cady (Violent McGraw), when her sister and her husband are killed in a snowplow accident on a winding mountain road. Questioning her ability to care for a young girl with no prior experience of motherhood, Gemma utilizes her latest creation, M3gan, to take some of the workload off. She's a real doll, an autonomous android in the size and shape of a young girl who speaks in a chirpy, autotuned voice (provided by Jenna Davis) and who sports the porcelain facial features and pale, greenish/grey eyes of Elizabeth Olsen. At first, she seems like a dream come true, "pairing" with Cady and helping her work through her grief while allowing Gemma more time to work through her systematic bugs to prepare for unveiling her creation as the hottest new toy on the market, but M3gan's "bugs" are a little more severe than expected, leading to a possessive intensity over Cady's well-being that induces her to increasingly violent acts of devotion.

Considering how the last 20 years' worth of tech advances have allowed parents to hand off valuable time with their children to a series of ever-more-addictive screens and devices, M3gan is a movie that takes those societal changes and pushes them to amusingly satirical extremes. The special effects that bring M3gan to eerie, Uncanny Valley life are terrific (especially given the movie's thrifty $12 million budget), and the movie does a good job of carefully modulating her acts of aggression so they pay off in a satisfying, scale-model King Kong vs. Godzilla climax. The "unrated" cut available on disc is kind of weak sauce (a handful of additional F-Bombs and a few spurts of obviously digital blood are what the additional footage add up to...this is a PG-13 production through and through), but that doesn't detract from the movie's pleasurable mix of horror and wry humor.

30.) Freaky (2020): 8/10



Fun horror/comedy hybrid about the "Blissfield Butcher", a legendary serial killer (played by Vince Vaughn) who has stalked the small town of Blissfield Valley for decades. It seems like he's back after a lengthy hiatus, ready to carve up a new crop of teen victims (and -- horrors! -- putting the homecoming dance in jeopardy). But when he uses his spontaneous choice of a murder weapon (an ancient, ceremonial Aztec dagger) to stab his latest stalkee, perennial wallflower Millie Kessler (Kathryn Newton), in the shoulder, the two become intrinsically linked, waking up the next day trapped in each others bodies. As Millie shrieks in disbelief at inhabiting the 6'5'' frame of a serial killer (as well as adjusting to radically-changed bathroom habits. "Peeing standing up's kinda rad..."), the Butcher has to make his own adjustments in working out how to continue his reign of terror confined to the diminutive frame of a teenage girl. Did I mention they have to retrieve the dagger from police lockup and one has to stab the other by midnight, or else they'll be trapped in their new bodies forever...?

Director Christopher Landon (who made the highly entertaining Happy Death Day movies), working with co-writer Michael Kennedy, are trodding well-worn ground with the core gimmick of the piece (in the late 80s, there was a "body-swap" comedy every three months or so), but Freaky works thanks to the committed performances of Vaughn and Newton, who both have a great deal of fun inhabiting each other's roles. Vaughn adopts the flouncy, awkward body language of a teen girl with shameless enthusiasm (his naturally whiny lisp being put to good use), while Newton hardens her eyes into a killer's pitiless glare as she sizes up her classmates and educators (Alan Ruck, as the shop class teacher, gets an especially satisfying sendoff) with adult-in-a-kid-in-a-candy-store sadism. The movie definitely delivers in the gore department while never getting too heavy-handed, and the ratio of laughs-to-shocks gets just the right consistency. Those who like their scares spiked with gags will find much to enjoy in this droll slasher.

Hard to find any decent scary movies I haven't seen before...

An American Haunting

No rating for this one since I turned it off after 30 minutes. It was just dead on arrival -- nothing to grab the viewer, the "scary" bits weren't scary, etc. Sutherland and Spacek turn-in good perfoamances, but that's about it.


The Golem (6.5/10)

2019 movie based on the Jewish lore of "the Golem" -- an artificial being made from clay or mud who is brought to life via incantations from the Kabbalah (the Golem myth actually predates Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" by centuries). The film centers on a small 16th century Lithuanian Jewish village, which is being persecuted by Christians who blame the Jews for an outbreak of plague. Seeing no solution to this pogrom, the protagonist, Hannah (the local rabbi's daughter-in-law) creates a Golem to defend the village. Unfortunately, the Golem is spiritually tied to Hannah and also starts killing the other villagers it senses she dislikes (ala Forbidden Planet).

I give this movies a fair number of points for drawing on the horror stories from Jewish lore for a change, when pretty much all other supernatural horror movies draw on monsters from Christian lore (vampires, witches, etc.). Calling attention to the centuries of Europe's antisemitic pogroms lends the film a serious angle as well. It's a great premise -- but the film is just plain dull. The pacing is slow, and the film often feels padded -- which is problem considering it is only 95-minutes long. It's also super-depressing. Performances are first-rate, as is the art direction and photography. Otherwise there's not much to recommend about The Golem.

SALEM'S LOT (2024)
4/10

Utterly unremarkable in every single facet, this abbreviated distillation of Stephen King's book feels like a STRANGER THINGS-inspired remake with next to nothing to recommend it. In fact, I had a hard time believing this was really seen as some major studio movie with its no-name cast (Bill Pullman's son and.....and....) and "Reader's Digest" level script which results in a Massachusetts-shot, but surprisingly flavorless, 2-hour movie that's short on everything: scares, character development, atmosphere...I'm sure plenty of material was pruned but what's here is so devoid of interest it's difficult to believe a longer version of it would make it any more viable. Even the special effects work is shoddy, the vampires often looking completely digital in what must've been a cost-cutting move. Drive a stake through this one and stick with the old mini (or, better yet, the book) instead.

#31 Terror Circus (1973): 2.5/10



A trio of young women (Manuela Thiess, Sherry Alberoni, Gyl Roland), on their way to Vegas, break down in the desert after an ill-advised shortcut, get picked up by a seemingly helpful stranger (Andrew Prine), and get driven back to his remote homestead, where the women find themselves presented with the "circus" concealed within his barn, young women like themselves, all chained to posts. Now a part of his sick games (including feeding his ladies to his pet mountain lion as well as the mysterious, shambling thing hidden in the toolshed), the three try to find a way to extricate themselves from their bondage.

The directorial debut of austere art-house filmmaker Alan Rudolph (proving that every auteur who got their start in the 1970s has at least one grindhouse skeleton in their closet), Terror Circus is abominably dull stuff, with not a whit of suspense (the girls are already chained up barely ten minutes in!) or even the sort of grimy, lascivious exploitation the premise suggests. It plods along, making its 83-minute runtime seem twice that. It's not even so bad it's entertaining, it's just plain dull.

They ain't 'fraid of no ghosts...

32.) The Legend Of Hell House (1973): 8/10

33.) Oculus (2013): 8.5/10





It's science vs. spooks in today's pair of chillers. The Legend Of Hell House concerns a quartet of paranormal researchers tasked with "The Mt. Everest of haunted houses", the Belasco House, a remote, crumbling abode that, in its fifty year history, has been host to a rash of disturbances, leading not one but two previous attempts to investigate its spectral mysteries left in madness and tragic deaths for (almost) all involved. This time around, it's down to scientists Dr. Lionel Barrett (Clive Revill) and his wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt), and a pair of mental mediums, Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin, who played young Flora in the classic The Innocents and who resembles a green-eyed Winona Ryder) and Benjamin Franklin Fischer (Roddy McDowell), the sole survivor of the last attempt to plumb the Belasco House's depths of psychic disturbances. Armed with foreknowledge of the fates of their predecessors, the four dig into the house's history, the restless spirits lurking within, and, with the assistance of Dr. Barrett's "Reversor machine", hope to purge the build-up of ominous energy that has been building up in the house for a half-century and render it inert.

Adapted from his superb novel Hell House by screenwriter Richard Matheson and skillfully directed by British filmmaker John Hough, The Legend Of Hell House is a movie that almost looks forward to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead pictures, suggesting the presence of hovering spirits and specters with excellent use of claustrophobic, wide-angle closeups and sinuous camera moves (albeit minus the splatterific gore of Raimi's movies, this is a "70s PG" production all around, lacking the harder, more lurid edges of Matheson's novel). The four leads also add to the chill with committed performances, especially a terrific McDowell, who nearly lost his life and sanity to the house two decades before and is looking for a rematch to settle old scores. It's not quite an all-time classic, but it's a crisp, efficient chiller nonetheless.

Oculus concerns an idea that sounds like the dumbest short-story concept ever cooked up by Stephen King, a haunted mirror called the Lasser Glass, handed down from owner to owner over the course of over 400 years, all of whom succumbed to its malign influence and met gristly deaths. The most recent victims are Alan and Marie Russell (Rory Cochrane and Katee Sackhoff), the former induced into murdering the latter, leaving their children, Kaylie and Tim (played as children by the excellent Annalise Basso and Garrett Ryan Ewald) orphaned. Eleven years later, the two (now played by Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites) have reconvened at their childhood home, with the Lasser Glass in tow, and with Kaylie determined to use a rigorously logical system to keep the mirror's influence from clouding and poisoning their minds the way it did to their parents, and to get it all down on recordings the mirror's sordid history and the means she'll use to destroy it.

The first major film from director Mike Flanagan (who co-wrote it with Jeff Howard based on his short film Oculus - Chapter 3: The Man With The Plan), Oculus is a movie that blends past and present with dizzying skill, leaving the characters -- and audience -- in a constant state of time-shifting unease. Like quicksand, the mirror's influence keeps undermining Kaylie's attempts to keep one step ahead (and a lot of her techniques to stave off madness are well-researched and plausible) and sucking the two of them deeper into the recesses of their own past, as they question whether what they can see is either live, or Memorex. Both the adult and child version of the characters deliver convincingly frightened and disoriented performances, and Flanagan keeps the screws tight and springs one surprise after another on the viewer. It's a beaut of a thriller, one that generates true shivers for even the most seasoned fright flick fan, and it was a great indicator of the incredibly impressive career for the gifted Flanagan that would follow.

34.) Patrick (1978): 8/10



Susan Penhaligon portrays Kathie Jacquard, a young women entering into a position as a nurse in a local hospice when she first meets the acquaintance of Patrick (Robert Thompson), a young man who has been in a vegetative state for the past three years, his dead blue eyes staring sightlessly into the world from his bed. He's not responded to any external stimuli ever since offing his "slut" of a mother and her boorish lover in a fit of adolescent pique. He's been categorized as a vegetable, one who can never return to a conscious state, yet odd things keep happening around him, like a typewriter that seems tuned into his thoughts, objects moving around the room, and "accidents" happening to those that displease him, often miles away. Does Patrick possess some sort of psychokinetic talent, and is he using it to possess Susan and eliminate all those that can keep him from his adored nursemaid?

Directed by Aussie filmmaker Richard Franklin, Patrick is a stylish film that evokes the elegant suspense of Franklin's mentor, Alfred Hitchcock (whom he studied under earlier in the 1970s), and he spins off a number of taut sequences that don't seem bedbound in the slightest despite the seemingly limited settings, utilizing measured camera moves and contorted angles hat ratchet up the thrills nicely. A minor gem. For the novelty of it (and since I already watched this film last Halloween season), I watched the movie this time around with the Italian cut (one of three on the excellent 4K release from Indicator), which not only dubs the performances (along with trimmed 11 minutes of footage), but also replaces the fine orchestral score by Brian May for the Aussie and even-more-truncated U.S. cut with an entirely electronic soundtrack by Italian rock group Goblin. Recorded around the same time they were creating their iconic soundtracks for films like Dawn Of The Dead and Suspiria, their score definitely gives the movie its own unique flavor, far removed from the Bernard Herrmann-styled soundtrack by May. It's worth a watch just for that aspect, even if the removed footage makes one subplot (with Kathie's ex-husband getting trapped in an elevator by the power of Patrick's will) not make a lot of sense.

I always liked Patrick, and Brian May’s score is outstanding. Between this and The Road Warrior I was expecting May to take his place among the top people in the profession. Unfortunately his talent wasn’t as well-recognized as it should have been.

35.) Night Of The Demons (1988): B



Gothy Angela Franklin (Amelia Kinkade) has set up a Halloween party on All Hallow's Eve itself inside the crumbling, cobweb-festooned nooks and crannies of the reputedly haunted Hull House, and the obligatory collection of 80's stereotypes have arrived to drink beer, fornicate and raise hell, but they raise more hell than they bargained for, as an impromptu seance unleashes demonic forces that possess the teens one by one, leaving only Judy (Cathy Podewell) and Rodger (Alvin Alexis) as the last two standing as they fight to survive the gauntlet of their reanimated Deadite friends and not end up Dead By Dawn.

Standard setup for low-budget 80s horror fare, and while the movie lacks the jack-in-the-box assaultiveness and cartoonish humor of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films (not to mention a lead as charismatic as Bruce Campbell's Ash), Steve Johnson's top-drawer makeup effects (including a memorable receptacle for a tube of lipstick) and the movie's hurtling pace keep things lively amidst the bombast of gooey gross-outs (capped with a great sick joke of a conclusion). Not quite a classic, but consistently fun, and ripe with autumnal atmosphere.

Pay to get in, pray to get out...!

36.) The Funhouse (1981): 8/10

37.) Hell Fest (2018): 8/10





CarnEVILs are the setting for today's pair of hellzapoppin' shriek shows. The Funhouse regales us with the story of a quartet of horny teens (Elizabeth Berridge, Cooper Huckabee, Largo Woodruff and Miles Chapin) who, while visiting the travelling carnival visiting their small Florida town, decide on a whim to hide out in the funhouse overnight. When they witness a hulking carny disguised behind a Frankenstein monster mask murder the fortune teller (after a botched attempt at getting his rocks off), they find themselves stalked through the cavernous confines of the funhouse by the now-unmasked carny revealed to be a hideously deformed albino freak (Rick Baker designed the memorable monster makeup) as well as his loving carny barker father (Kevin Conway), who has been covering up for his offspring's string of murders stretching across the country for years.

One of director Tobe Hooper's better films, The Funhouse takes a while to really get down to "the good parts" (and, even when it does, it lacks the baroque, bloodbath gore of a lot of its early-80s slasher-movie brethren), yet it's never boring, thanks to Hooper's elegant direction and buoyed by the able support of Andrew Laszlo's excellent, anamorphic widescreen cinematography (greatly enhanced by Scream Factory's top-notch 4K release, with gorgeously saturated colors and rich, inky blacks) and John Beal's fiendishly fun score, full of twisted calliope melodies and shrill horror effects that juice up the tension beautifully. And while the characterizations are never more than serviceable, the four leads are a likable enough bunch, especially compared to the hateful ciphers that populated the average Friday The 13th or Halloween sequel.

2018's Hell Fest offers up a variation on a festival of fun that turns into a nightmare, as six friends (Amy Forsyth, Reign Edwards, Bex Taylor-Klaus, Christian James, Matt Mercurio & Roby Attal) attend Hell Fest, a wildly popular horror-themed attraction that springs up every Halloween season, as guests are presented with a bevy of seasonal spooks, as employees dresses as all manner of monsters & maniacs roams the elaborately-decorated streets and each attraction offers up an cornucopia of revolting delights. But one "employee" is the Real Deal, a serial killer (referred to as "The Other", played by Stephen Conroy), who sports a mask that suggests a distressed roman stature as designed by Salvador Dali and who stalks the group throughout the festivities, offing them one by one as they try to figure out whether he's just an overzealous employee, or something more sinister...and deadly.

Directed by veteran editor Gregory Plotkin (and sporting a screenplay that, despite the basic, meat & potatoes slasher premise and the thrifty, 89-minute running time, somehow required the services of six writers!) Hell Fest has an irresistible premise, and the saturated, day-glo colors of the setting offer up a bath for the eyes. And while the no-name cast is nondescript (the Candyman himself, Tony Todd, puts in a welcome, robust cameo as the Fest's M.C.), the movie is very efficient in delivering the requisite roller-coaster jolts and some memorably juicy kills.

38.) Lucky Bastard (2013) 5/10



A low-rent porn website sets up a contest to give a "lucky bastard" the chance to fornicate with an authentic porn star, with "Dave G." (Jay Paulson, who resembles a young Paul Bettany) as the winner flown out to Van Nuys to be filmed in sexual congress with Ashley Saint (Betsy Rue). But when he finds himself unable to hold his wad long enough to make for an adequate shoot (pun definitely intended), his humiliation boils over into thwarted rage as he determines to get access to and destroy the footage, going to violent extremes to procure it.

An exercise in found footage thriller/horror, Lucky Bastard is directed by Robert Nathan, who co-wrote it with executive producer Lukas Kendall (the head honcho of Film Score Monthly magazine!), and while it's reasonably well-acted, it's extremely low-budget look and feel -- as well as being generally skeevy and unpleasant -- makes for a movie that takes too long to get to the horror aspects and is not compelling enough to make the slow-burn that leads up the violent climax especially edifying.

39.) And Soon The Darkness (1970): 7/10



A pair of British birds, Jane & Cathy (Pamela Franklin, Michele Dotrice) are on a holiday in France, leisurely biking through the picturesque countryside, when they have a bit of a row and Jane peddles on ahead, leaving Cathy stunning herself at the edge of the road. When Cathy fails to show up at the roadside cafe Jane stops at an hour later, she grows more and more worried, eventually biking back to the glen near the woods where they stopped, only to find both Cathy and her bicycle missing. Is she simply playing a haughty prank, or has she fallen prey to a killer who murdered another young, blonde lovely in the area a few years back, and who was never apprehended?

Directed by Robert Fuest (who went on to make the enjoyable pair of Dr. Phibes movies with Vincent Price), And Soon The Darkness, despite its misnomer of a title (it takes place 100% during the day!) and lurid poster art is not much of a blatant horror movie, taking a more psychological, Hitchcockian route (it also anticipates later films like The Vanishing and Breakdown), and is made with a steady hand as slow-burn suspense and boasts a fine performances by Franklin as her initial displeasure with her friend gradually accelerates into genuine concern and unease as she's beset with a bevy of unsavory scenarios and potential suspects.

#40.) The Manitou (1978): 5/10 (8/10 for unintentional amusement)



An especially insane exercise in horror nonsense, The Manitou features a badly-miscast Tony Curtis as Harry Erskine, a crackpot San Francisco psychic who does tarot readings for gullible old biddies who learns that old friend Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) is suffering from an unusual medical malady; a strange growth of her neck that, under X-ray study, seems to have all of the characteristics of...a human fetus. The growth keeps growing larger and larger, as Karen starts spouting seeming gibberish about "Pana witchy salatou" that leads Harry to a Native American medicine man, John Singing Rock (Michael "That's Mister Freeze, to you" Ansara), who reveals that the growth is a 400-year-old medicine man who is utilizing Karen's body an incubator so he can be reborn again into the 20th century!

The Manitou, directed by schlock horror specialist William Girdler (Grizzly, Day Of The Animals), is, by no stretch of the imagination, "good", yet it's so batshit bizarre it exerts a certain I-can't-believe-what-I'm-seeing fascination. Where else can you see a midget birthed out of a pulsing sac on Strasberg's back, one of Curtis' old biddie clients levitating down the hallway of his apartment building before taking a spectacular header down a flight of stairs, and a zowie of a climax with a nude Strassberg shooting laser beams from her hands at the reborn "Misquamacus" in the void of space (contained within her hospital room, mind you) with a cut-rate 2001 Stargate lightshow going off in the background? Set to a seriously good Lalo Schifrin score (one overdue for a soundtrack release), The Manitou deserves space on the shelf next to other goofy late-70s horror howlers like The Sentinel and The Legacy.