Ghost Shark is a 2013 U.S. creature feature horror film co-scripted and directed by Griff Furst (Arachnoquake, Swamp Shark, Lake Placid 3). It stars Mackenzie Rosman, Richard Moll (Evilspeak) Dave Davis and Sloane Coe. The film debuted on the Syfy channel on August 22nd 2013.

Last Fourth of July, teenager Christy Bruce disappeared from a high school beach party. Her severed arm washed ashore a day later. Drunken sea captain Blaise Shaw became a hero to the small seaside community of Harmony after killing the great white shark that was deemed responsible, but the Christy Bruce murder was no shark attack. Blaise turns to ghost hunter Ava Conte, who is skeptical but intrigued by his ghost shark ramblings.

With preparations for a massive July 4th celebration rapidly approaching, they soon find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy of sex and murder involving the town’s wealthiest and most powerful citizens. Unprepared to contend with a Ghost Shark that can hunt on land, sea, as well as anywhere there is enough water or rain to sustain its phantom form, Blaise and Ava must uncover the truth about the towns dark past or fall victim to the Ghost Shark…

Related: 2-Headed Shark Attack | Great White | Jaws | Jaws 2 | Jersey Shore Shark Attack | Jurassic Shark | Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus | Psycho Shark | Sand Sharks |Shark Attack 3: Megalodon | The Shark is Still Working |Shark Week | Sharktopus | Snow Shark | Super Shark | Swamp Shark | Zombie Shark

IMDb

Bag of Bones or Stephen King’s Bag of Bones, is an American TV horror film adaptation of Stephen King‘s novel. Directed by Mick Garris from Matt Venne’s screenplay, it was first aired in 2011 on the A&E Network in two parts.

Best-selling novelist Mike Noonan and his wife Jo are unable to conceive children; Mike conceals that he has a low sperm count. Jo is killed by a bus while crossing a street; as she dies in his arms, Mike notices she bought a pregnancy test, and assumes that she may have been having an affair. Overcome by grief from her death, Mike develops a case of writer’s block. He suffers a series of nightmares about his wife and their summer home on Dark Score Lake in Maine. On advice from his brother Sid, Mike takes a trip to the summer house.

Once there, he meets a young widow named Mattie Devore and her six-year old daughter Kyra. Befriending them, he earns the ire of Mattie’s estranged father-in-law Max Devore. Max has been trying to get custody of Kyra since Mattie shot his son Lance (Lance was trying to drown the child). Despite the turmoil, Mike begins to write again, but visions and nightmares lead him to believe he isn’t alone. He finds that his wife’s spirit is with him. He also detects the spirit of a 1930s singer named Sara Tidwell who plays records of her music. Sara also appears in dreams that Mike has of her last day alive in 1939. Mike also learns about “Dark Score Crazy”, an apparent form of madness that caused several men in the town to murder their daughters by drowning them…

Wikipedia | IMDb

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Like most of the Stephen King telemovies, Bag of Bones is efficient but somewhat bloated – the determination to stick to the source material is admirable, but quite frankly, this would have been a better movie at half the length. It’s hard not to reach the conclusion that many scenes are stretched out or entirely included just for the sake of reaching the running time needed for a pair of two hour time slot episodes (the total running time here is 156 minutes). Garris is not, I might suggest, a good enough director to really keep this elongated version interesting.

That said, the central story is pretty good, and the second episode in particular, once the plot begins to unfold, is decent enough. There are moments that remind you other other works, some by King, others like Peter Straub’s Ghost Story (another tale where an old murder comes back to haunt the participants and that features rotting corpses rising from water), but it doesn’t seem derivative. Brosnan is a strong lead for the most part, being suitably tortured, drunk and angry – for much of the story, he harbours a suspicion that his wife was having an affair at the time of her death – though he is prone to the odd moment of hysteria that goes wildly over the top. The supporting cast (including Jason Priestly and Matt Frewer) are all decent enough in mostly thankless roles.

The TV origins keep the nastiness to a restrained level (though there’s one impressively brutal killing at the end), but the story doesn’t seem to call for much in the way of graphic content anyway, so this doesn’t feel compromised in the way that some other King telefilms have been. The horror is mostly lightweight supernatural stuff, with a few shocks thrown in for good measure, and like much of King’s work, there’s a level of sentimentality that is sometimes a bit too cloying.

In the end, Bag of Bones is a perfectly efficient slice of TV horror. There’s nothing exceptional about it and nothing particularly bad either. If you’re a fan of King’s work, you’ll probably find this entirely satisfying. If you’re not, this is not going to change your mind.

David Flint – Strange Things Are Happening

Bates Motel is a belated 1987 television movie spin-off of the 1960 suspense/horror film Psycho scripted and directed by Richard Rothstein (Human Experiments; Death Valley) The film was originally produced as a pilot for a TV series based around the Bates Motel; however, it was never picked up by any network. With the financial failure of Psycho III, Universal decided to continue the franchise as a television series; taking inspiration from the Friday The 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street TV series. Norman Bates is portrayed by Kurt Paul, who previously stood in as a stunt double for Anthony Perkins in Psycho II and Psycho III. Perkins declined involvement in the project and even heavily boycotted it. The film was subsequently released on VHS in various territories, including the UK, but has since vanished.

Alex West (Bud Cort) roomed with and became close friends with Norman Bates at the state lunatic asylum for nearly 20 years. After Bates’ death, Alex finds that he is named in Norman’s will as the inheritor of the Bates Motel, which has been vacant since Norman’s arrest. Alex travels to Bates’ California hometown (which this film has inexplicably renamed Fairville from the original film’s Fairvale) and with a little help from teenage runaway Willie (Lori Petty) and local handyman Henry Watson (Moses Gunn), Alex struggles to re-open the motel for business, only to have strange things happen.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

“Bates Motel is certainly an interesting curiosity, but not a very good one. It belongs in the discussion of worst follow-ups to a classic film, which means it joins the ranks of Jaws: The Revenge or your choice of later Halloween sequels (or remakes). It barely feels like a Psycho film and instead plays out like an inspirational story of how one can successfully renovate and reopen an establishment whose previous owner was a maniac. The tone is ultra-cheesy and sappy, with tender moments often accompanied by soft piano music that felt like it was ripped from an after-school special.” Brett Gallman, Oh, The Horror!

“Sincerely, this is a horrible, horrible movie that doesn’t even deserve to be aired on midnight television. It doesn’t even deserve to be called campy —  you have to earn that. This movie does not deserve to exist; it is lazy, stupid, and an insult to the brand of Psycho.” Charles Beall, Anti-Film School

Infected (2008), a genre derivative Canadian television adventure/science-fiction thriller, is also known as They’re Among Us and The Hatching. Stinkweed by any other name is still stinkweed.

An X-Files re-dux, which also borrows heavily from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a newspaper reporter and his ex-girlfriend (also a reporter, who won’t put it on the glass for him anymore), uncover an extraterrestrial plan to take over human bodies so that aliens can live more comfortably on this toilet Earth. Most of Infected is spent running, hiding, and uncovering proof of the colonisation. What little pay-off there is comes in the form of a naked humans wrapped in sheets that probably won’t be able to be cleaned and kept under alien sedation in a facility that looks suspiciously like my proctologist’s office.

Once the aliens have been outed their true selves emerge, looking like a cross between a lobster and black. The reporter risks his neck to save his ex, who previously did not want to put it on the glass for him anymore. But it’s amazing how alien intervention can mend broken glass. So does Infected end happily for the aliens or the humans? I am beyond caring. 

Jeff Gilbert, Drinkin’ & Drive-In

Monster Island is a campy 2004 made-for-MTV American horror film directed by Jack Perez (Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus) supposedly in the style of 1950s monster movies. It stars Carmen Electra (2-Headed Shark Attack),ZDaniel Letterle, Scream Queen Mary Elizabeth Winstead (The Thing, Black X-Mas, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) Adam West (Zombie Nightmare), C. Ernst Harth, and Chelan Simmons.

High school senior Josh (Letterle) is stunned to find that he has unwittingly won an MTV contest to see Carmen Electra, but it was actually his sister, Jen, who won the contest and she invites everyone they know in their school. Josh and his classmates arrive on an isolated island (which is later revealed to be in the Bermuda Triangle) where they have an enormous party.

After catching a quick glimpse of a flying ant, Josh and Jen get backstage passes to see Carmen Electra (who is revealed to be a Ramones fan, although their ‘Psychotherapy’ video was ironically banned by MTV in the 80s). Later on, at a concert featuring Carmen, the flying ant grabs her and Eightball, her bodyguard. Josh watches helplessly as the flying ant takes Carmen to a faraway mountain…

Wikipedia | IMDb

“Sadly, despite the potential for a fun teen-oriented sci-fi movie, Monster Island doesn’t really fall under the category of ‘homage’ or ‘good’, but instead is simply a bad movie that utilizes old tools to accomplish visual effects (and that, apparently, passes as ‘homage’ enough). The script is poor, the acting unbelievably bad, although Emmy worthy when compared to productions chummed out by the Asylum.” Ramblings of a Minnesota Geek

“Monster Island is a dopey genre flick. Low on budget, skill and all-round talent, it makes up for it in honesty, wit and cheesy charm. It’s clearly targeted at MTV viewers who have no idea what some of the in-jokes and homages to the 50s ‘atomic monster’ films are all about but for those of us who do know, there’s a few smiles to be had. Don’t watch if you’re offended by bad films.” Popcorn Pictures

Man-Thing is a 2005 US/Australian horror telefilm, directed by Brett Leonard and featuring the Marvel Comics creature created by Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. The screenplay by Hans Rodionoff is very based loosely on a storyline by Steve Gerber, who wrote the most well-known series of Man-Thing comics. It stars Matthew Le Nevez, Rachael Taylor, and Jack Thompson. The film had a budget rumoured to be $30 million but this seems inconceivable.

Most of the source material was altered. Among these are moving the setting from the Florida Everglades to Louisiana (though the film was actually made in Australia), and changing the creature’s powers from burning those who “know fear” to being able to manipulate the swamp’s vegetation. The movie also made no mention of A.I.M. or their attempt to steal the super soldier serum. The character is also represented in a significantly more antagonistic light than the comic-book version. Man-Thing’s former identity remained Ted Sallis, though in the film he is portrayed as a Native American shaman instead of a scientist. Consequently, the Man-Thing’s origin is somewhat different, though the Nexus of All Realities is still involved.

Two teenagers who have ventured deep into the swamp to have sex but the young man is killed by a plant-like monster.

The following day, young replacement sheriff Kyle Williams reaches Bywater and meets with deputy sheriff Fraser, who tells him that the previous sheriff was not the only missing person: At least forty-seven other people were missing, the first one having been shaman and Seminole chieftain Ted Sallis, since oil tycoon Fred Schist had bought the ancient tribal lands from Sallis himself to prospect. Schist claimed that Sallis had sold legally and escaped with the money, and asked the sheriff for help: Local protestors opposed to his perfectly legal activities, and mestizo scoundrel Renee Laroque was sabotaging his facilities. Williams investigated this while at the same time trying to find an explanation to the missing people, some of which were found brutally murdered with plants growing from inside their bodies. Weirdo photographer Mike Ploog and shaman Pete Horn tell Williams local legends about the guardian spirit, suggesting that it could be real…

“Brett Leonard turns in one of his best directing jobs to date, giving the movie an eerie feel that constantly holds the audience’s attention. Leonard also does a wise thing by moving the film along at a rapid pace that leaves little time for the audience to question the plausibility of what they’re watching. Comic book scribe Hans Rodinoff turns in an equally good screenplay, allowing for plenty of gory deaths and suspenseful moments. The titular Man-Thing gets a makeover, transformed from a little known comic book character from the 70′s into a frightening and powerful force…” Joseph Savitsky, Beyond Hollywood

“The director, Brett Leonard, tries for some jump-scares, but as with the rest of the film, they just fall flat, not even making for a startle. So not only does this film fail as a Marvel movie, it fails as a horror movie as well. He also tries to ram every Southern stereotype down our throat at any chance he gets (possibly to try and counteract the blaring Australian influences), while giving us some of the corniest and hackneyed dialogue you will ever hear. How can you not roll your eyes when a character yells out, “It’s the Man-Thing, man!”?”
Comic Book Revolution

“The filmmakers cannot seem to decide what Man-Thing is either. Throughout the film, it is implied that Man-Thing is a demigod sent by the vengeful ancestors of the wronged tribe. Or perhaps it’s a mutated Ted Sallis still alive for some odd reason. Or perhaps it’s a demonic ghost of Sallis, like a slimy version of The Crow. Or perhaps it is even a monster from another dimension that came into being from a Nexus of Realities that gets mentioned only in passing (How do you mention a dimensional portal in passing anyway?). The film never bothers to resolve this conundrum and because of their incompetence, it’s up to the viewer to take a guess at just what the hell is going on.” Scott W. David, Horror Express

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

Also known as She-Butterfly and The Moth (and indeed Лептирица in the original Serbian cyrillic), Leptirica is a 1973 former Yugoslav horror TV movie based on the story After Ninety Years (1880) written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić. Leptirica was the first Serbian horror film. The movie was filmed in the village of Zelinje, close to the city Zvornik.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Guest review:

Set in a poor, rural village, possibly yesterday, possibly in the 19th Century, an old flour miller is murdered at his rickety mill at night. His fellow superstitious villagers suspect foul play, the old man bearing bite marks and decide their best bet is to employ another miller, lest one of them suffer the same fate. Enter Strahinja (Petar Božović), even poorer than the rest of them and with the added problem of being unable to gain the blessing of his beloved girlfriend’s father (Radojka (Mirjana Nikolić) and Živan (Slobodan Perović) respectively), for her hand in marriage. Determined to impress him, he accepts the dubious offer.

Spending the night in the mill, he too is visited by the nocturnal beast, surviving by falling through a shaft and being buried beneath mounds of flour. Emerging in the morning, he informs the villagers of the creature’s name, ‘Sava Savanović’, a famous vampire in Slavic folklore, killing and drinking the blood of the millers when they came to mill their grains. The villagers set off to question a local (extremely deaf) old woman whom they believe may hold the answer as to how to kill Sava. After much shouting she directs them to a far-off ditch near an elm tree where she believes his grave to be; the hapless villagers, led by an ineffective priest in full garb, go to and fro, realising they need a stallion, holy water and a stake to cleanse the grave. Eventually locating it, the smash the coffin only for a butterfly (the spirit of the vampire) to flitter out, evading their clutches and disappearing out of sight. Thinking they are free of their nighttime threat, the villagers help to free Radojka from her father’s clutches and facilitate the wedding of the young couple. Sadly for Strahinja, a nasty surprise awaits him on his wedding night.

Leptirica is full of all the trappings of Eastern European and Slavic folklore; stick-in-the-mud fathers, love-struck youngsters and time-old monsters romping around in the forests. Sava Savanović works well, immediately recognisable as a vampire but accompanied in his appearances by oddly disturbing owl hoots and covered in black grime, highlighting the white feral nails and teeth. Sticking closely to the 1880 novel by Milovan Glišić, After 90 Years, written only 17 years after Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there are some genuinely sinister moments, heightened by the alien setting and unfamiliar actors, all of whom were professional, which is evident throughout. Although the ‘surprise’ ending is telegraphed very early in the film, there is something satisfying about it behaving like a traditional folk tale, the goodies, the baddies and the futility of interfering in the ways of the world Man is destined not to understand, all present and correct.

The humourous elements are used judiciously so that when night does fall the dread is that much keener. There is no attempt to titillate the viewer, only to scare them, something which is certainly achieved, the monster of the piece being both unique in appearance and habit. When first shown on Yugoslav television in the 1970′s, it was reported that a man died of fright whilst watching. Whether true or not, the film remains unreleased officially in any language, the grainy versions available to watch somehow making the tale even more spooky.

Daz Lawrence, Dazploitation

“Leptirica isn’t particularly well-made or well-acted, has an unsteady tone (comedy elements often seem forced or completely out of place) and it really lacks visual punch, though it’s watchable, has a few faintly eerie moments and the country setting provides an interesting backdrop to the action. The biggest problem is that the whole thing is just too predictable.” Bloody Pit of Horror

Malibu Shark Attack (aka Mega Shark of Malibu and, in Japan, Jaws Tsunami) is a 2009 TV film, directed by David Lister from a script by Keith Shore and produced for the Syfy channel. It is the 19th film in the Maneater Series.

Heather (Peta Wilson) is the head-lifeguard on a Malibu beach, alongside her ex-boyfriend Chavez (Warren Christie), Doug (Remi Broadway) and Barb (Sonya Salomaa). Also on the beach are Jenny (Chelan Simmons, also in Final Destination 3), a teenage girl who is reluctantly cleaning the beach for community service after she got caught shoplifting, and Bryan (Nicholas G. Cooper), Barb’s boyfriend who proposes to her.

Meanwhile, a tremor unleashes a group of prehistoric goblin sharks who begin to devour swimmers along the beach. A warning of a tsunami arises and Chavez returns to the beach, saving Heather who had been knocked into the water by a shark after being sent to investigate some people causing trouble in the water. Doug and Barb evacuate the beach, and take shelter in the lifeguard hut…

Wikipedia | IMDb

We’ve become used to all manner of silly shark movies in recent times. In fact producers seem determined to come up with more and more absurd situations and sharksploitation variations with Sand Sharks and Snow Sharks being particularly daft examples of this trend, but, hey, at least they’re tongue-in-cheek. Sharknado has often been cited as the nadir of the shark sub-genre but that film’s tweeting detractors missed that the point that although it’s beyond daft, it’s also highly entertaining. Whereas Malibu Shark Attack simply presents a bunch of unlikeable characters besieged by the most unlikely looking CGI sharks from prehistory and repeats itself ad nauseum. Things improve slightly with some power tools vs. sharks action in a semi-flooded house but it’s too little too late to save yet another inferior Maneater entry. Adrian J. Smith, Horrorpedia

Related: 2-Headed Shark Attack | Great White | Jaws | Jaws 2 | Jersey Shore Shark Attack | Jurassic Shark | Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus | Psycho Shark | Sand Sharks | Sharktopus | Snow Shark | Super Shark | Swamp Shark | Shark Attack 3: Megalodon | Shark Week

“Almost every shark attack suffers from a sense that it is completely random, without any suspenseful build-up, and the depictions of which quickly become visually repetitive. There appeared to be a finite number of goblin shark CGI visuals that kept getting looped over and over in accordance to the action of the scene. By the time the tsunami hit about a quarter of the way in, I was already bored…” Dread Central

“A badly executed idea. Wrong shark type, bad CGI, inexcusable shot non-continuity, and using way too many cliched horror tropes just buried this film.” Horror-Movies.ca

Goblin Sharks are:

• Prehistoric,
• Once thought to be extinct,
• Unseen for millions of years,
• “probably blind”, but have “electrosensory organs”,
• Not bothered by nail guns or rotary saws,

Goblin Sharks can:

• Eat anyone just by swimming towards them, no need to actually bite,
• Phase shift themselves through wood floors when convenient,
• Swim faster than a jet ski,
• Be blown up by bottles of Windex and a flare gun,
• Jump out of the water and grab people, despite being, ya’ know, blind,

Peter Hall, Horror’s Not Dead

Flying Monkeys is a 2013 made-for-television film produced by and for the Syfy Channel. The film is the first directed by Robert Grasmere, being better known as a special effects supervisor on films such as Prince of Darkness, Predator 2 and The Mothman Prophecies and stars Electra Avellan (Death Proof/Planet Terror), Vincent Ventresca (Mammoth, Morphman) and Maika Monroe (Bad Blood…The Hunger).

Aboard a small aircraft, exotic-animal smugglers are returning to base with their latest haul of contraband. Unfortunately for them, stowed away is an extremely upset flying monkey, Making short work of two of the smugglers, the pilot manages to land the plane and quickly sells on the feisty beast (which has now returned to standard monkey shape) to a small-town pet shop owner who has no qualms about what he sells or where it comes from. Elsewhere in the town, inevitably situated in Kansas, high school graduate Joan (Monroe) has been left to celebrate alone by her father who has a track record of finding other things to do at his daughter’s expense. In a bid to make amends, he purchases the cute little monkey we met earlier, because nothing says sorry quite like a caged primate. Jealous of the attention the monkey is getting, Joan’s boyfriend indulges in the pleasures of the school prom queen, only for them both to be torn to pieces by the flying monkey little Skippy turns into at nightfall.

Skippy starts making ever-more regular journeys out at night, fuelled by blood-lust and it isn’t long before locals, hunters and know-it-all’s are gathered together to save the town from an embarrassing demise. Sadly for them, shooting the beast only causes the creature to multiply Hydra-like and a mystical weapon is required to slay Skippy and his ever-growing offspring…

Syfy movies tend to veer from better than you’d expect (though still impossible to recommend whole-heartedly) to down-right awful and surprisingly this lands in the first camp. Despite a host of actors who make their living appearing in similar schlock, the story is told with an impressive disregard for sense and reason and doesn’t hang around trying to weave story arcs and tension or other trivial matters. The real saving grace is the extremely passable CGI effects which are made all the more acceptable by virtue of the fact that the monkeys only do their killing at night, hiding a multitude of sins. A nice change from the endless parade of sharks, it’s a harmless excuse to bring to centre-stage some of cinema’s creepiest creatures some 75 years after they first appeared. One word of warning – the line “no more monkey business” is uttered.

Daz Lawrence

Christmas is generally seen as a jolly old time for the whole family – if you are to believe the TV commercials, everyone gets together for huge communal feasts while excited urchins unwrap whatever godawful new toy has been hyped as the must-have gift of the year. It is not, generally speaking, seen as a time of horror.

And yet horror has a long tradition of being part of the festive season. Admittedly, the horror in question was traditionally the ghost story, ideally suited for cold winter nights, where people gather around the fire to hear some spine chilling tale of ghostly terror – a scenario recreated in the BBC’s 2000 series Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee reading M.R. James tales to a room full of public school boys. That series was part of a tradition that included a similar one in 1986 with Robert Powell (Harlequin) and the children’s series Spine Chillers from 1980, as well as the unofficially titled annual series Ghost Stories for Christmas than ran for much of the 1970s and is occasionally revived to this day.

A Christmas Carol

The idea of the traditional Xmas ghost story can be traced back to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, where miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in an effort to make him change his ways. It’s more a sentimental morality tale than a horror story, though in the original book and one or two adaptations, the ghosts are capable of causing the odd shudder. Sadly, the story has been ill-served by cinematic adaptations – the best version is probably the 1951 adaptation, though by then there had already been several earlier attempts, going back to 1910. A few attempts have been made at straight retellings since then, but all to often the story is bastardised (a musical version in 1970, various cartoons) or modernised – the best known versions are probably Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol, both of which are inexplicably popular. A 1999 TV movie tried to give the story a sense of creepiness once again, but the problem now is that the story is so familiar that it seems cliched even when played straight. The idea of a curmudgeon being made to see the true meaning of Christmas is now an easy go-to for anyone grinding out anonymous TV movies that end up on Christmas-only TV channels or gathering dust on DVD.

A Christmas CAROL (1999)

Outside of A Christmas Carol, horror cinema tended to avoid festive-themed stories for a long time. While fantasies like The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life and Bell, Book and Candle played with the supernatural, these were light, feel-good dramas and comedies on the whole, designed to warm the heart rather than stop it dead. TV shows like The Twilight Zone would sometimes have a Christmas themed tale, but again these tended to be the more sentimental stories.

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The only film to really hint at Christmas creepiness was 1945 British portmanteau film Dead of Night, though even here, the Christmas themed tale, featuring a ghostly encounter at a children’s party, is more sentimental than terrifying. Meanwhile, the Mexican children’s film Santa Claus vs The Devil (1959) might see Santa in battle with Satan, but it’s all played for wholesome laughs rather than scares.

Santa Claus vs The Devil

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the darker side of Christmas began to be explored, and it was another British portmanteau film that began it all. The Amicus film Tales from the Crypt (1972) opened with a tale in which murderous Joan Collins finds herself terrorised by an escaped psycho on Christmas Eve, unable to call the police because of her recently deceased hubby lying on the carpet. The looney is dressed as Santa, and her young daughter has been eagerly awaiting his arrival, leading to a suitably mean-spirited twist. The story was subsequently retold in a 1989 episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV series.

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This film would lead the way towards decades of Christmas horror. Of course, lots of films had an incidental Christmas connection, taking place in the festive season (or ‘winter’, as it used to be known). Movies like Night Train Murders, Rabid and even the misleadingly named Silent Night Bloody Night have a Christmas connection, but it’s incidental to the story. Those are not the movies we are discussing here. No, to REALLY count as a Christmas film, then the festive celebrations need to be at the heart of events.

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Two distinct types of Christmas horror developed. There was the Mad Santa films, like Tales from the Crypt on the one hand, and the ‘bad things happening at Christmas’ movie on the other. The pioneer of the latter was Bob Clark’s 1974 film Black Christmas, which not only pioneered the Christmas horror movie but also was an early template for the seasonal slasher film. Some critics have argued, with good cause, that this is the movie that laid the foundations for Halloween a few years later – a psycho film (with a possibly supernatural slant) set during a holiday, where young women are terrorised by an unseen force. But while John Carpenter’s film would be a smash hit and effectively reinvent the genre, Black Christmas went more or less unnoticed, its reputation only building years later. In 2006, the movie was remade by Glen Morgan in a gorier but less effective loose retelling of the original story.

Black Christmas

Preceding Black Christmas was TV movie Home for the Holidays, in which four girls are picked off over Christmas by a yellow rain-coated killer who may or may not be their wicked stepmother. A decent if unremarkable psycho killer story, the film was directed by TV movie veteran John Llewellyn Moxey.

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Also made for TV, this time in Britain, The Exorcism was the opening episode of TV series Dead of Night (no connection to the film of that name) broadcast in 1972. One of the few surviving episodes of the series, The Exorcism is a powerful mix of horror and social commentary, as a group of champagne socialists celebrating Christmas in the country cottage that one couple have bought as a holiday home find themselves haunted by the ghosts of the peasants who had starved to death there during a famine. While theatrical in style and poorly shot, the show is nevertheless creepily effective.

1980 saw Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out), a low budget oddity by Lewis Jackson that has since gained cult status. In this film, a put-upon toy factory employee decided to become a vengeful Santa, putting on the red suit and setting out to sort the naughty from the nice. It’s a strange film, mixing pathos, horror and black comedy, yet oddly it works, making it one of the more interesting Christmas horrors out there.

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Also made in 1980, but rather less successful, was To All a Goodnight, the only film directed by Last House on the Left star David Hess and written by The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar. This generic slasher, with a house full of horny sorority girls and their boyfriends being picked off by a psycho in a Santa outfit, is too slow and poorly made to be effective.

The most notorious Christmas horror film hit cinemas in 1984. Silent Night Deadly Night was, in most ways, a fairly generic slasher, with a Santa-suited maniac on the loose taking revenge against the people who have been deemed ‘naughty’. The film itself was nothing special It’s essentially the same premise as Christmas Evil without the intelligence), and might have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for a provocative advertising campaign that emphasised the Santa-suited psycho and caused such outrage that the film was rapidly pulled from theatres.

Buy Silent Night, Deadly Night on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Nevertheless, it had made a small fortune in the couple of weeks it played, and continued to be popular when reissued with a less contentious campaign. The film is almost certainly directly responsible for most ‘psycho Santa’ films since – all hoping to cash in on the publicity that comes with public outrage – and spawned four sequels.

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is notorious for the amount of footage from the first film that is reused to pad out the story, and was banned in the UK (where the first film was unreleased until 2009). Part 3 was directed, surprisingly, by Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and adds a psychic element to the story. Part 4, directed by Brian Yuzna, drops the killer Santa story entirely and has no connection to the other films beyond the title, telling a story of witchcraft and cockroaches, while Part 5 – The Toymaker – is also unconnected to the other movies.

Buy Silent Night, Deadly Night 3-disc set from Amazon.co.uk

Also made in 1984, but attracting less attention, Don’t Open Till Christmas was that rarest of things, a 1980s British horror film – and one of the sleaziest ever made to boot. Starring and directed by Edmund Purdom from a screenplay by exploitation veterans Derek Ford and Alan Birkinshaw, the film sees a psycho killer, traumatised by a childhood experience at Christmas, who begins offing Santas – or more accurately, anyone he sees dressed as Santa, which in this case includes a porn model, a man at a peepshow and people having sex. With excessive gore, nudity and an overwhelming atmosphere of grubbiness, the film was become a cult favourite for fans of bad taste cinema.

Buy Don’t Open Till Christmas on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

The third Christmas horror of 1984 was the most wholesome and the most successful. Joe Dante’s Gremlins is all too often overlooked when people talk about festive horror, but from the opening credits, with Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) belting out over the soundtrack, to the carol singing Gremlins and Phoebe Cates’ story of why she hates Christmas, the festive season is at the very heart of the film. Gremlins remains the most fun Christmas movie ever made, a heady mix of EC-comics ghoulishness, sentiment, slapsick and action with some of the best monsters ever put on film.

Buy Gremlins on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Gremlins would spawn many knock offs – Ghoulies, Munchies, Critters and more – but only Elves, made in 1989, had a similar Christmas theme. This oddball effort, which proposes that Hitler’s REAL plan for the Master Race was human/elf hybrids. When the elves are revived in a pagan ritual at Christmas, only an alcoholic ex-cop played by Dan Haggerty can stop them. It’s not as much fun as that makes it sound.

Family horror returned in 1993 stop-motion film A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced / co-written by Tim Burton. This chirpy musical see Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, leader of Halloween Town, stumbling upon Christmas Town and deciding to take it over. It’s a charming and visually lush movie that has unsurprisingly become a festive family favourite over the last twenty years.

Santa Claws

Rather less fun is 1996′s Santa Claws, a typically rotten effort by John Russo, with Debbie Rochon as a Scream Queen being stalked by a murderous fan in a Santa outfit. This low rent affair was pretty forgettable. It is one of several low/no budget video quickies that aimed to cash in on the Christmas horror market with tales of killer Santas – others include Satan Claus (1996), Christmas Season Massacre (2001) and Psycho Santa (2003).

1997 saw the release of Jack Frost (not to be confused with the family film from a year later of the same name). Here, a condemned serial killer is involved in a crash with a truck carrying genetic material, which – of course – causes him to mutate into a killer snowman. Inspired by the Child’s Play movie, Jack Frost is pretty poor, but the outlandish concept and mix of comedy and horror made it popular enough to spawn a sequel in 2000, Jack Frost 2 – Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

That might seem as ludicrous as Christmas horror goes, but 1998 saw Feeders 2: Slay Bells, in which the alien invaders of the title are fought off by Santa and his elves. Shot on video with no money, it’s a film you might struggle to get through.

Rather better was the 2000 League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, which mixes the regular characters of the series into a series of stories that are even darker than usual. Mixing vampires, family curses and voodoo into a trilogy of stories that are linked, Amicus style, it’s as creepy as it is funny, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Mark Gatiss would graduate to writing the more recent BBC Christmas ghost stories.

The League of Gentlemen

Two poplar video franchises collided in 2004′s Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, with the great-nephew of the original Puppet Master battling an evil organisation that wants his formula to help bring killer toys to life on Christmas Eve. Like most of the films in the series, this is cheap but cheerful, throwaway stuff.

2005′s Santa’s Slay sees Santa reinvented as a demon who is forced to be nice and give toys to children.Released from this demand, he reverts to his murderous ways. Given that Santa is played by fearsome looking wrestler Bill Goldberg, you have to wonder how anyone ever trusted him to come down their chimney and NOT kill them.

Santa’s Slay

Also in 2005 came The Christmas Tale, part of the Spanish Films to Keep You Awake series, in which a group of children find a woman dressed as Santa at the bottom of a well. It turns out that she’s a bank robber and the kids decide to starve her into handing over the stolen cash. But things take a darker turn when she escapes and the kids think she is a zombie. It’s a witty, inventive little tale.

A Christmas Tale

2006 saw Two Front Teeth, where Santa is a vampire assisted by zombie elves in a rather ludicrous effort. Equally silly, Treevenge is a 2008 short film by Jason Eisener, who would go on to shoot Hobo with a Shotgun. It’s the story of sentient Christmas trees who have enough of being cut down and displayed in people’s home and set out to take their revenge.

Treevenge

Recently, the Christmas horror has become more international, with two European films in 2010 offering an insight into different festive traditions. Dick Maas’ Sint (aka Saint) is a lively Dutch comedy horror which features a vengeful Sinterklaas (similar to, but not the same as, Santa Claus) coming back on December 5^th in years when that date coincides with a full moon, to carry out mass slaughter. It’s a fun, fast-paced movie that also offers a rare glimpse into festive traditions that are rather different to anything seen outside the local culture (including the notorious Black Peters).

Finnish film Rare Exports, on the other hand, sees the original (and malevolent) Santa unearthed during an excavation, leading to the discovery of a whole race of Santas, who are then captured and sold around the world. Witty and atmospheric, the film was inspired by Jalmari Helander’s original short film Rare Exports, Inc, a spoof commercial for the company selling the wild Santas.

Rare Exports

But these two high quality, entertaining Christmas horrors were very much the exception to the rule by this stage. The genre was more accurately represented by the likes of 2010′s Yule Die, another Santa suited slasher, or 2011′s Slaughter Claus, a plotless, pretty unwatchable amateur effort from Charles E. Cullen featuring Santa and the Bi-Polar Elf on an unexplained and uninteresting killing spree.

Slaughter Claus

Bloody Christmas (2012) sees a former movie star going crazy as he plays Santa on a TV show. 2009 film Deadly Little Christmas is a ham-fisted retread of slashers like Silent Night Deadly Night and 2002′s One Hell of a Christmas is a Danish Satanic horror comedy. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009) is the third in a series of pointless tits ‘n’ gore satires that fail as horror, soft porn or comedy.

And of course the festive horror movie can’t escape the low budget zombie onslaught – 2009 saw Silent Night, Zombie Night, in 2010 there was Santa Claus Versus the Zombie, 2011 brought us A Cadaver Christmas, in 2012 we had Christmas with the Dead and Silent Night of the Living Dead is currently in pre-production. None of these films are likely to fill you with the spirit of the season.

So although we can hardly say that the Christmas horror film is at full strength, it is at least as prolific as ever. With a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night, now just called Silent Night, playing theatres in 2012, it seems that filmmaker’s fascination with the dark side of the season isn’t going away anytime soon.

Silent Night

Article by David Flint

Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is a 1976 TV movie directed by Sam O’Steen, and a sequel to the 1968 film Rosemary’s Baby (which O’Steen edited). It has little connection to the novel by Ira Levin, on which the first film was based. It stars Stephen McHattie, Patty Duke Austin, George Maharis, Broderick Crawford, Ruth Gordon, Ray Milland and Tina Louise.

A coven are preparing for a ritual, only to discover that Adrian (Rosemary’s baby), who is now eight years old, is missing from his room. Knowing Rosemary must be responsible for this, the coven members use her personal possessions to enable the forces of evil to locate her. Rosemary and Adrian are hiding in a synagogue for shelter. While hiding there, supernatural events begin to affect the rabbis. However, as they are seeking sanctuary in a house of God, the coven is unable to affect them.

The next morning, Guy (George Maharis), who is now a famous movie star, gets a call from Roman Castevet. Roman informs Guy that both Rosemary and Adrian are missing and that Rosemary may attempt to contact him. Later that night, Rosemary and Adrian are sheltering in a bus stop. Rosemary makes a phone call to Guy, while Adrian plays with his toy car nearby. As soon as Guy answers the phone, Rosemary immediately issues instructions on how to send her money. Outside, some local children start teasing Adrian and bullying him by stealing his toy car. Suddenly, in a fit of rage, Adrian knocks the children unconscious to the ground. Attempting to flee, the pair are accosted by Marjean, a prostitute who was witness to the incident. Marjean offers them to hide the pair in her trailer…

“Everything involving Duke and her young child on the run from evil Satanists is cheaply done but automatically fun. Flash-forwarding the “action” years into the future is a mistake that the film should never have attempted in the first place. Lizard-faced Stephen McHattie is well cast as the adult demon seed Andrew/Adrien, but has little to do but act confused. Ray Milland is a great pick to take over for the deceased Sidney Blackmer as cult leader Roman Castevet, but it doesn’t make up for the sinful waste of a downgraded returning Ruth Gordon as wife Minnie, who rarely does more than echo her husband.” Kindertrauma

“Suffering from such maladies as a psychotic script, some stilted acting, and sub-par special effects (whenever such things are attempted) you may correctly assume that this sequel to Roman Polanski’s 1968 suspense film does not live up to its heritage. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find that this ultra-obscure sequel to a horror classic is a wacky 70s Doom film full of hallucinogenic images and a constantly downbeat tone.” Groovy Doom

“The acting, directing, writing, pacing, and climax where all horrendously bad. There is not one redeeming thing going for the film (and for a laugh, it tries to recreate the famous rape scene from the first film). It’s just sad to watch. Stick with the original, and count your blessings if you haven’t seen this.” Karmic Cop

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to VHS Collector for the video sleeve image

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories – and the ongoing industry spun off from them – have a curious connection to the horror genre. The image of the master detective, stalking the fog-bound streets of London, seem to be as much a part of the Victorian horror world as Dracula and Jack the Ripper, and it is no surprise that enterprising filmmakers and writers have chosen to pit Holmes against these infamous monsters.

But the original Holmes stories only occasionally flirted with the supernatural, and even then, a rational explanation for events would be uncovered by Holmes in the end – like Scooby-Doo, Sherlock Holmes always found an altogether human cause for seemingly demonic forces.

The most famous of the Holmes stories is one such horror tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Originally serialised in The Strand magazine between 1901 and 1902, it is one of only four novel-length adventures for Holmes that Conan Doyle wrote. It remains the most popular and widely adapted of the Holmes stories, even though for a large part of the novel, Holmes is absent, leaving his companion and assistant Dr Watson to carry the story. This tale of greed and murder sees Holmes and Watson investigating the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, apparently at the hands (or paws) of a gigantic supernatural hound, part of a family curse. It is down to Holmes to protect Sir Henry, the Baskerville heir, while unmasking the killer from a collection of suspects and red herrings.

This is the most widely adapted of the Holmes novels, the story for some time being the ‘go to’ Holmes adventure for filmmakers. With the current trend to bastardise the Holmes character and use original (or barely recognisable) stories, the frequency of film and television adaptations has slowed, but with Sherlock Holmes being as popular as ever (albeit in modernised and unrecognisable forms), it can’t be long before another film or TV version of the tale appears.

The first Hound… film appeared from Germany in 1914. Conan Doyle’s creation was hugely popular with German readers, and this first film was a four part silent movie based on both the novel and Der Hund von Baskerville: Schauspiel in vier Aufzugen aus dem Schottischen Hochland. Frei nach motiven aus Poes und Doyles Novellen (“The Hound of the Baskervilles: a play in four acts set in the Scottish Highlands. Freely adapted from the stories of Poe and Doyle”), a 1907 stage play. As you might expect, it played fast and loose with the original story. Three further German adaptation appeared in 1920, and Richard Oswald, who had shot the third and fourth parts of the 1914 version, had another go in 1929.

The first British film based on the story was made in 1921 by Maurice Elvey, and it would be subsequently filmed again in 1932 in what would be the first ‘talkie’ version of the story. Edgar Wallace worked on the screenplay.

1937 saw another German version of the story, and in 1939 the first American version was shot. This version, made by Sidney Lanfield, is still regarded as one of the best adaptations of the book, and was the first of fourteen Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel, but – bizarrely – due to copyright reasons, it is absent from the DVD box sets of the Rathbone Holmes movies.

After this flurry of Hound activity, it would be a decade and a half before the next version of the story, another German adaptation. But in 1959, Hammer films added The Hound of the Baskervilles to their series of gothic horror movies that had begun in 1957 with The Curse of Frankenstein. Starring Peter Cushing as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry, the film was a rather loose adaptation of the story – there is more drama and the horror elements are (unsurprisingly) emphasised. Yet thanks to Cushing’s performance (many consider him the definitive Holmes) and the sheer quality of Terence Fisher’s film, this remains a much loved version of the story.

A decade later, Cushing would reprise the role of Holmes in a BBC TV series, taking over from Douglas Wilmer. The Hound of the Baskervilles was adapted as a two part story in 1968. This was more faithful than the Hammer version, but the tight schedule and reduced budgets of TV showed in the production values. Nevertheless, for fans of Holmes and Cushing, it remains well worth seeking out.

Proving the global popularity of the story, the next version appeared in 1971 from the Soviet Union. Another Russian version appeared a decade later, as part of a TV series based on Holmes. This 147 minute adaptation adds some ill-fitting humour to the story and while handsomely mounted has some eccentric performances (Vasily Livanov’s Holmes is rather too laid back while other characters chew the scenery).

1972 saw a US TV movie version of the story, with Stewart Granger making for an unconvincing Holmes in a fairly lacklustre movie that co-starred William Shatner! But the worst was yet to come.

In 1978, Paul Morrissey made a disastrous attempt to make a British comedy version of the story, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore starring alongside a host of well known British names — Denholm Elliot, Joan Greenwood, Hugh Griffith, Irene Handl, Terry-Thomas, Max Wall and Kenneth Williams — none of whom could save the film. Crass, bad taste humour that was mishandled and sheer self-indulgence all round – it feels essentially like a vanity project for Cook and Moore – made this one of the worst comedy films you could imagine, devoid of laughs or any sort of coherent story. It even includes a parody of The Exorcist…

1982 saw a four part British TV adaptation, with a rather miscast Tom Baker as Holmes, and a year later another British TV film adapted the novel.

This was the first of what was planned as a series of Holmes TV movies to be co-produced with US producer Sy Weintraub. Unfortunately for him, the Holmes stories slipped out of copyright and Granada TV announced their own series with Jeremy Brett. Only this and The Sign of Four were eventually shot. With Ian Richardson as Holmes, it’s a solid though unremarkable effort from director Douglas Hickox (who was going for the visual feel of Dario Argento’s films) and suffers from Martin Shaw’s Sir Henry being obviously and unconvincingly re-dubbed by another actor.

The Granada TV series that had scuppered the planned film series eventually adapted 42 of the 60 Holmes stories, and finally got around to The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1988. While critics praised Brett’s nervy performance, the series was often overly stagey and perhaps a little too faithful to the stories to always work as drama.

Also in 1983, Peter O’Toole voiced the character in the animated version Sherlock Holmes and the Baskerville Curse, and this would be the last version for some time. Holmes and the Hound eventually clashed again in 2000, in one of four Canadian TV films with Matt Frewer, who was hopelessly unsuited to the role.

Equally unsatisfactory was a dull BBC version from 2002, with Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This version again made changes to the original story, but was ultimately rather flat and lifeless.

The most recent – and possibly most annoying – version of the story appeared in the second series of the BBC’s overly smug Sherlock. Titled ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’, it throws out Conan Doyle almost entirely, to tell a story of secret military research into mind-altering drugs. While Mark Gatiss’ screenplay retained the horror elements, it made the worst mistake possible when changing a familiar story – namely, that if what you come up with isn’t better than what existed to begin with, why bother? The end result of this is a version that is just as much a slap in the face as Paul Morrissey’s ‘comedy’ adaptation.

It’s to be hoped that someone will make a more faithful, full blooded horror version of The Hound of the Baskervilles soon. While the story might seem to have been done to death, there are always new generations unfamiliar with the story. And after so many ineffectual – or downright insulting – versions, we deserve a new version to match the Rathbone and Hammer versions. Meanwhile, the story still inspires writers, artists and others in a series of novels, comic books, video games and even music… as you can see in the rather unusual version of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid below!

Article by David Flint, Horrorpedia

Frankenstein: The True Story is a 1973 American made-for-television horror film loosely based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It was directed by Jack Smight, and the screenplay was co-written by novelist Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.

The film stars Leonard Whiting as Victor Frankenstein, Jane Seymour as Prima, David McCallum as Henry Clerval, James Mason as Dr Polidori and Michael Sarrazin as the Creature. James Mason’s wife, Clarissa Kaye-Mason also appeared in the film. The cast also includes Agnes Moorehead, Margaret Leighton, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, Tom Baker (The Mutations), Yootha Joyce, Peter Sallis (Taste the Blood of Dracula), Norman Rossington (Death Line) and Dallas Adams.

The character of Dr Polidori, who did not appear in the original novel, was based on the character of Dr. Pretorius from Universal Pictures Bride of Frankenstein, but named after the real-lifeJohn Polidori, an acquaintance of author Mary Shelley who was part of the competition that produced her novel. Polidori’s own contribution was the first modern vampire story The Vampyre (1819).

A notable feature of the production is that, instead of being ugly from the start, the Creature is portrayed as physically beautiful but increasingly hideous as the film progresses, similar to the plot line in Hammer Studios’ The Revenge of Frankenstein. The make-up was by Hammer horror veteran artist Roy Ashton.

It was originally broadcast in two 90-minute parts, but is often seen edited into a single film. Its DVD debut date was September 26, 2006. Included at the beginning is a short intro featuringJames Mason wandering through St John’s Wood churchyard, London. He suggests that this is where Mary Shelley is buried, which is incorrect (she is in fact buried in the family plot in Dorset), despite standing beside a gravestone bearing her name.

Victor Frankenstein is a man training as a doctor, engaged to Elizabeth Fanshawe. After Victor’s younger brother, William, drowns, Victor renounces his belief in God and declares that he would join forces with the Devil if he could learn how to restore his brother to life.

Shortly afterward, Victor leaves for London to train in anatomy. He immediately meets a scientist named Henry Clerval, who Victor later learns has discovered how to preserve dead matter and restore it to life. As Victor becomes fascinated by Clerval’s experiments Clerval reveals his ultimate plan: creating a new race of invincible, physically perfect beings by using solar energy to animate “the Second Adam” constructed from parts of corpses. Clerval is unable to complete it on his own due to a worsening heart condition. Frankenstein volunteers to help and the lab is completed.

Word reaches the pair that several peasant lads have been killed in a mine collapse. After their burial the doctors quickly dig up the bodies and stitch together a physically perfect human. The night before the creation, however, Clerval discovers in a most disturbing way that a reanimated arm set aside for weeks during the construction of the lab and of “Adam”, has become diseased, unsightly and deformed. Shocked and overcome, Clerval suffers what appears a heart attack, and unable to get his medication on time, dies in the middle of recording his horrible discovery in the journal.

The next morning, Victor finds Clerval’s body and misreads the incomplete journal entry (“The process is r–”) as meaning “the process is ready to begin” rather than the intended meaning of“reversing itself”. Since neither of them wanted the perfect body to have the brain of a peasant, Victor transplants Clerval’s brain into their creation and he is able to complete the experiment. Victor introduces his creation into high-class London society, passing him off as a friend from a far-off country with little grasp of English.

Victor’s sweet and guileless creation wins the admiration of London’s elite class, but Victor soon discovers the still-living but now repulsive arm in Clerval’s cupboard. He realises some flaw in the process causes it to reverse itself…

‘ … a misogynistic reading is clearly intended (with the two brides, Frankenstein’s and the monster’s, emerging as more treacherously villainous than either of their mates). For a while it comes on like bad Hammer, until the arrival of the monster – a handsome lad, but the process is reverting – perks things up considerably. Particularly memorable is a scene where the monster’s demurely virginal Bride sings ‘I Love Little Pussy, Her Coat Is So Warm’, before gleefully attempting to strangle a sleepy persian and lasciviously licking a drop of mauve blood from her scratched arm; and a glorious moment of delirium when the monster disrupts a society ball to collect his bride, ripping off her pearl choker to reveal the stitched neck, then annexing her head as his property.’ Time Out

‘The casting is another major point in this movie’s favor. Particularly by television standards, Frankenstein: The True Storyfeatures some impressive performances. Michael Sarazin’s monster is the most believable I’ve yet seen, Leonard Whitting hits just the right combination of drive and naivety as Frankenstein himself, Ralph Richardson invests Lacey with a humble species of dignity that only British actors seem to be able to pull off, and even daffy old Agnes Moorehead does a good job as daffy old Mrs. Blair. But even with so much competition, James Mason threatens to steal the entire show. His Dr. Polidori is smooth, smarmy, ruthless, and genteel all at the same time, and he gets many of the best lines in the whole film.’ 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting

‘The True Story is best enjoyed not as a straight adaptation, but as a different take on the same idea. It is not without flaws. The dialogue is occasionally stilted, no effort is made to make the animation of the two creatures look like anything but cheap science fiction, and Polidori’s skills as a hypnotist are practically a super power (one actually wonders why he would need Prima when he himself can place people under hypnosis almost instantly).’ Kim Bruun Dreyer, The Terror Trap

Wikipedia | IMDb | We are grateful to DVD Beaver for the lead image

Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators (also known as Alligator Alley) is a 2013 American made-for-TV horror film produced by Active Entertainment and directed by Griff Furst (Wolfsbayne, Lake Placid 3, Swamp Shark, Arachnoquake, Ghost Shark) from a screenplay by Keith Allan (11/11/11) and Delondra Williams (Rise of the Zombies, Zombie Night), based on a story by Rafael Jordan (Frost Giant, Dragon Wasps, Poseidon Rex). It stars Jordan Hinson, Victor Webster, Thomas Francis Murphy (Ghost Shark, Leprechaun’s Revenge) and Christopher Berry.

Louisiana: One of the local clans have been dumping bad moonshine laced with a toxic chemical into the bayou. This has created huge ‘red-necked’ mutant alligators with killer spines on their tails. When the members of a rival clan catch and cook gator meat they begin mutating into monsters too. To complicate matters and in a nod to William Shakespeare, there are two young lovers from each clan who are forbidden to date each other…

‘Barring the ending, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators.  It’s your typical Syfy flick that has enough silly humor and silly characters to keep you laughing and a surprisingly decent amount of gore in it as well.  You know what you’re gonna get with a title like this. Just sit back and have a laugh.’ Scott Shoyer, Anything Horror

‘As we’ve come to expect from Syfy, the special effects are eyesores, the acting ranges from broad-side-of-a-barn caricature to sheer catatonia, and the dialogue is unspeakable. But Redneck Gators commits the cardinal sin for this type of shlock: It’s incredibly boring. So much time is devoted to the star-crossed romance between Avery and Dathan, you’d almost think we’re supposed to care about it.  Meanwhile, the gator attacks are all very predictable and alike…’ Scott Von Doviak, The A.V. Club

‘I was looking forward to Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators for its title alone. But to find a Romeo and Juliet story set in the bayou, along with some funny scripting and gory deaths for most of the characters, I couldn’t have been happier.’ Doug in the Dark

‘The gator effects aren’t original – we’ve seen them in many other Syfy movies – but they do the job. I thought the close-up scenes of the gators, which may have been models in some cases, were well done. Though the Cajun caricatures are a little hard to take, the movie has plenty of gator-eating-man and man-eating-gator action.’ Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing

IMDb

Halloween with the New Addams Family was a 1977 comedy horror film. This NBC TV-movie was directed by David Steinmetz and George Tibbles from a screenplay by Davy Levy. It stars John Astin, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, Ted Cassidy, Lisa Loring, Ken Weatherwax, and Felix Silla and was a reunion of sorts with the actors reprising their roles from the original 1960s series The Addams Family. Blossom Rock was ill at the time of the production (she would die in early 1978, shortly after this special aired) causing her role of Grandmama to be portrayed by Jane Rose.

In 1989 GoodTimes Home Video released Halloween with the New Addams Family to VHS. The film has never been issued on DVD.

Gomez’s brother, Pancho, is staying with the family while Gomez goes to a lodge meeting in Tombstone, Arizona. Gomez is jealous of his brother, who once courted Morticia. Halloween is nigh, and Pancho tells the legend of Cousin Shy, who distributes gifts and carves pumpkins.

A gang of crooks have bugged the Addamses’ home and plan to take advantage of Gomez’s absence to steal the family fortune. The lead crook “Bones” Lafferty sends an associate named Mikey to investigate. Wednesday (Senior) is home from music academy, where she studies the piccolo (she breaks glass with it). Pugsley (Senior) is home from Nairobi medical school, where he is training to be a witch doctor. Mikey panics and flees after treading on the tail of the family’s pet lion Kitty Kat. The crooks have a fake Gomez and Morticia to help in their plans, along with two strong-arm goons, Hercules and Atlas…

‘The outcome was a decidedly “Un- Addams” like quality. There was no attempt to follow any continuity. Brothers, Mothers and new children family members were brought in only to serve as window dressing. The Halloween Special aired on October 30th, to a wide amount of well deserved criticism. Ted Cassidy was noted as saying that the only reason he was reprising his role was the money, and to work with the other stars one more time. The feature was such an abysmal failure that the new series was cancelled before it even started.’ The Lurch Files

Wikipedia | IMDb

Buried Alive (working title: Till Death Do Us Part) is a 1990 horror thriller television film directed by Frank Darabont (Tales from the Crypt TV series, The Mist, The Walking Dead TV series) from a screenplay by Mark Patrick Carducci, based on a story by David A. Davies. It stars Tim Matheson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, William Atherton and Hoyt Axton.

A sequel followed in 1997, titled Buried Alive II, starring Ally Sheedy and Stephen Caffrey. The film also was directed by and co-starred Tim Matheson, who along with Brian Libby were the only cast members from the original to return. The film followed a similar plot to Buried Alive, switching the genders of the leading characters.

Plot:

Clint Goodman is a successful contractor who has built his comfortable house and his construction company in his hometown through hard work. He loves his wife Joanna, but she is very resentful to him most of the time, they have been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby. Clint’s best friend is Sheriff Sam Eberly and every now and then they spend the night fishing in the lake.

Unknown to Clint, Joanna has been having an affair with the local doctor Cortland van Owen. The lovers plot to kill Clint and sell his company and his house, then move to Beverly Hills to buy a clinic. Cortland gives poison to Joanna, which is taken from a rare poisonous tropical fish. She is hesitant at first to go along with the idea but changes her mind; when they are having dinner she spikes Clint’s wine with the poison. Clint has a heart attack and dies. When the coroner asks if an autopsy should be done, Cort refuses. While Clint is at the morgue he shows signs of life and just before he is to be embalmed, Joanna gives him a quick and cheap funeral instead, skipping the embalming process. Clint is put in a cheap water-damaged coffin, varnished to look like new. After his funeral, Joanna and Cortland celebrate. During a stormy night, Clint, who has surprisingly survived the dosage, wakes up buried alive, and succeeds in escaping his grave…

Review Quotes:

‘Although the plot of Buried Alive is fairly predictable, the film benefits immensely from some inventive direction from Darabont, while a capable cast of familiar faces including Matheson, Leigh, Atherton and country singer Hoyt Axton also helps to elevate it above your typical TV movie standards.’ Flickering Myth

‘ … it’s aiming to blend elements of noir, zombie horrors, and the revenge thriller, which it does fine, to a degree. The only downside of all this is that it ends up feeling like a bit from Tales from the Crypt, (something Darabont went on to work on a couple of times) which then leaves you wondering why the whole thing isn’t just a romping 25 minutes long … All in all this is a weird one. As a TV movie from 1990, it’s a real winner. As a DVD, it’s great if you love Tales From the Crypt and Creepshow as much as I do, but it is heavy on the ham.’ Love Horror

‘ … what really sells the film are its performances, especially the brittle bitch Jennifer Jason Leigh creates for Joanna. She’s completely believable as a wealth-obsessed leech, whose garish lipstick and bombshell blonde hair perfectly exemplify her shallowness. The actress envelopes herself into the character, who is truly detestable. It’s not one of her best performances, but then her CV is packed with greatness. Matheson crafts an equally believable character, and he’s so likable that I often wondered how exactly this polar opposite couple had ended up together. It’s because of his nuanced everyman that I bought into the story, even when its twists and turns became a little silly. He roots the film, and we root for him. Atherton also impresses here, adding depth to the asshole persona he perfected with Ghostbusters (1984) and Die Hard (1988). The three actors have a great dynamic, and it’s a joy to watch them together.’ Michael Ewins, e-Film

Wikipedia | IMDb

The Woman in Black is a 1989 British TV movie, and is the first adaptation of the Susan Hill novel that is better known as the source for the hugely successful 2012 Hammer film. Interestingly, the screenplay is by Nigel Kneale, who of course had a long history with Hammer Films through the 1950s and 60s.

The story follows young solicitor Arthur Kidd (Adrian Rawlins), who is sent to a small English market town to attend the funeral of client Mrs Drablow, and deal with her estate at the remote Eel Marsh House, readying the property for sale. It becomes clear that the old woman had no local friends, and only Kidd and Mr Pepperall (John Cater), a local solicitor attend the funeral – though Kidd sees a mysterious third mourner, a woman. However, mention of her sees to unnerve Pepperall.

Upon visiting the house – cut off by high tides for all but a few hours a day – Kidd soon begins to understand why the locals were so frightened, as the mysterious Woman in Black (Pauline Moran) seen at the funeral is seen again, and clearly seems to be a ghostly figure. Investigation of Mrs Drablow’s papers and wax cylinder recordings suggest a family tragedy, and he hears the ghostly sounds of a horse and buggy, along with its passengers, vanishing into the marshes.

Through Sam Toovey (Bernard Hepton), a local landowner he met on the train up from London, Kidd hears of the curse of The Woman in Black – Mrs Drablow’s sister, Jennet Goss, had given birth to a son but was unable to raise him. The Drablows adopted the boy, but refused to allow his mother to ever reveal her true relationship to the child. Eventually, the desperate woman kidnapped the child, but was caught in the rising tides as she fled. Her ghost now haunts the house, and whenever she is seen, a local child will die soon afterwards…

The Woman in Black was first broadcast by ITV in the UK on Christmas Eve 1989. It was a popular and critical success, but has only been re-run once (in 1994, by Channel 4) and although released on VHS video has never been made available on DVD in the UK – a US DVD did appear but is long deleted. Oddly, no one seems to have thought to re-release it to cash in on the success of the more recent version.

Unlike the 2012 film, this version of the story stays fairly true to the original novel, save for a few curious changes – the dog Spider has been changed from female to male, the lead character’s name is changed from Kipp to Kidd, there is no phonograph in the novel (this change was presumably to help dramatise scenes of Kidd reading through paperwork) and there are several other small changes and one or two dramatic alterations towards the ending of the film. It is, however, much more of a faithful version of the story than the Hammer film, which makes a number of variations and goes for more cinematic shocks. As a result, this is a rather more low key affair than the better known recent version, aiming for a gradual creepiness than outright horror. There is only one, rather ineffective moment where the Woman in Black becomes a malevolent and upfront figure of horror rather than a haunting presence, a scene that director Herbert Wise unfortunately fluffs by allowing it to be too brightly lit and too long.

As such, the story is more realistic but perhaps less effective as a horror film for audiences raised on high-octane shockers. It is deliberately subtle and aims to be creepy rather than terrifying and explicit. As such, it fits well with Nigel Kneale’s other horror works. Although best known for his science fiction dramas such as the Quatermass series, Kneale had written several supernatural stories such as The Stone Tape in 1972 and the mid-Seventies TV anthology Beasts. The Woman in Black differs from these by being a period piece, but there is certainly a sense of connection between the works – the idea of ghosts being ‘recordings’ of the past that was explored in The Stone Tape seems to be again at play with the constantly replayed ‘recording’ on the tragedy on the marshes that is central here.

While this version of The Woman in Black seems destined to remain the most obscure adaptation, lost behind the 2012 film, the stage play and the original novel and currently unavailable from legal sources, it is nevertheless an interesting variant on the story that anyone who enjoyed the newer film – or admires the novel – would certainly find worth their while.

David Flint

Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (also known as Scooby-Doo 2 or Scooby-Doo 2: Curse of the Lake Monster) is a 2010 live action/CGI American television film directed by Brian Levant for Cartoon Network with a screenplay by Daniel Altiere and Steven Altiere based on the Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby-Doo by Hanna-Barbera. It is the fourth installment in the Scooby-Doo live-action film series, and a sequel to the 2009 film Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, whose cast reprise their roles again here. The film was shot in Santa Clarita, California and premiered on October 16, 2010. Dean Cundey (Halloween, The Thing, Jurassic Park) handled the cinematography. Michael Berryman has a minor role.

Plot:

School has just ended for the summer. Velma (Hayley Kiyoko), Shaggy (Nick Palatas), and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) meet up with Fred (Robbie Amell) and Daphne (Kate Melton) so they can go to meet Daphne’s uncle, Thornton “Thorny” Blake V, who has given them summer jobs at his country club in Erie Point.

That night at the club’s opening party, a huge frog-like monster suddenly appears and wreaks havoc. The gang decides to solve the mystery. They decide to investigate the only person who has ever taken a picture of the lake monster, Mr. Uggins, the lighthouse keeper. He then tells them the story of the lake monster: how when people were first settling Erie Point, an old woman named Wanda Grubwort warned them not to come onto her land. They paid no attention to her, so she used her magic staff – which used moonstones as the source of her power – to turn a frog into a horrible monster that attacked the villagers. Wanda was later tried for witchery and burnt at the stake…

Reviews:

‘If not for Scooby’s reduced role, Curse of the Lake Monster would be a substantial improvement over The Mystery Begins. A bit shaky in the earlier movie, Nick Palatas is more comfortable and natural as Shaggy the second time around, though his take on Norville Rogers is more vocal impersonation than full-bodied performance. Unburdened by uninteresting (and, frankly, unnecessary) exposition introducing characters that have been around for four decades, the movie is able to get down to the mystery right off the bat. The mystery itself is entirely predictable (and too reliant on the supernatural to be a classic Scooby-Doo story), but given that Curse of the Lake Monster is designed specifically for young audiences, that isn’t a deficiency worth getting hung up on.’ Judge Dan Mancini, DVD Verdict

‘The acting is subpar at best, the CGI horrid and the main freakin’ title character isn’t even in various and important scenes. While it’s not as bad as I had expected because I did manage to chuckle a couple of times and Hayley Kiyoko makes for a hot Velma that anyone can fall in love with, it’s still not wasting your time on either.’ Movieman’s Guide to the Movies

‘If you can get past the whole romance and movie not being subtle about who the villain is thing, your kids would enjoy it (though you’d might have to explain the whole relationship thing to them if they’re not aware of the birds and the bees). If you can’t, The Mystery Begins and the straight to video cartoons are your better bet.’ That Guy with the Glasses

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Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys is a 2014 American made-for-TV horror film produced by The Asylum (Sharknado; Zombie Night) directed by James Cullen Bressack (Pernicious; Squeal: Blood Harvest) from a screenplay by Anna Rasmussen and Delondra Williams. It stars Shannen Doherty, Christopher Lloyd (Piranha 3D; Piranha 3DD; Dead Before Dawn 3D), Jason Brooks, Zack Ward, Ciara Hanna, Rachel True, Susie Abromeit, Jody Barton.

The film premiered in the US on the Animal Planet channel on May 25, 2014.

Plot teaser:

After chomping through the fish population, thousands of starved lampreys begin attacking the citizens of a sleepy lake town, and the community scrambles to stay alive…

Reviews:

“Since I do believe Blood Lake is the very first film ever made about killer lampreys there is a freshness to the carnage and a definite yucky vibe watching these slimy little suckers drip out of faucets, slither out of toilets, swarm the swimming pool, latch onto people like vampiric serpents. A fisherman unintentionally ripping out his own eyeball trying to pry off a biting lamprey and a scene of swimmers fleeing the bloody lake waters coated in the blood of hundreds of fish getting slaughtered in a lamprey feeding frenzy are delightfully gory, surprisingly so for an Animal Planet flick. The ick factor has the potential to get so high it’s a bit of a shame budgetary and made-for-TV restrictions forced more campy yuks than nasty yucks.” Dread Central

“The story for this one is nothing new. In fact, this story is the same as the 1978 film Piranha. Which is kinda funny since Christopher Lloyd had a role in this one along with the Piranha remake. Finally, the film does have a great deal of on screen kills but the visual effects and CGI are horrible. This is something I have come to expect from The Asylum. Even though I expect it, it still doesn’t help my movie viewing experience. Overall, Blood Lake is a fun ‘when animals attack’ flick that has the blood but skips on the special effects. Check it out, it deserves at least one watch!” Horror Society

Choice dialogue:

“Nice pet, Michael – it looks like an anus with teeth.”

IMDb