13) Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)

"Don't worry. No one will suspect what goes on here at Falcon Rock Castle."

Director
Al Adamson, Jean Hewitt (uncredited)

Cast
Alexander D'Arcy - Count Dracula
Paula Raymond - Countess Townsend
John Carradine - George the Butler
Barbara Bishop - Liz Arden
Gene Otis Shane - Glen Cannon
Robert Dix - Johnny


Imagine walking into a haunted Halloween attraction. We'll call it "Dracula's Castle." It's a little cliche, but maybe it's still worth checking out. The façade of the attraction looks scary and enticing enough. It seems like it could be a fun and thrilling experience.
You walk into a dark hallway, and you're greeted with a dopey looking, poor man's Gomez Addams, just standing there. He tells you in a normal, yet tawdry voice that he's a vampire, and he drinks blood through a unique, updated, scientific way rather than biting people's necks.
He has an older, jewel-studded lady standing next to him, holding a glass of wine. There's absolutely nothing threatening in her demeanor. She tells you that she's also a vampire.
You then follow them into a room with two coffins on the floor. They wish you a goodnight, climb in, close the lid, and...that's it. The experience is over. There's the exit. Go home!
That's this movie - an underwhelming, effortless, and uninspired experience.
I found this movie in one of those movie collection packs called "Gorehouse Greats," which I stumbled upon in an antique store. Lucky me! The title seemed enticing. With blood and Dracula in the title, Blood of Dracula's Castle seemed like a movie right up my alley.
Count Charles Townsend and his wife, Countess Townsend, live in Falcon Rock Castle...in Arizona! Sunny, sunny Arizona. So, that part is different in the mythos of vampires. It's a poor decision in setting, but different none the less.
The castle's owner dies, and the property is passed to a photographer named Glen.
Though he decides he wants to live in Falcon Rock Castle with his fiancee, Liz, little does he know that Count Townsend and his vampire wife are not only living there, Count Charles Townsend is really County Dracula! And they also keep young pretty women shackled in the cellar so they can siphon their blood whenever they need to quench their thirst for blood.They also sleep in coffins because they're vampires and...it's as cliche as it can be.
Horror movie icon, John Carradine, plays the castle's butler, George, who lives in Falcon Rock as well, along with the standard castle hunchback, Mango. His purpose is pretty much being the muscle who kidnaps these women for the Townsends.
Not only do they keep these women for their blood, they occasionally sacrifice a girl to the "Great God Luna."
Meanwhile, a guy named Johnny shows up. It turns out Johnny turns into a serial killer when the moon is full. Evidently, there's a TV version of this flick where it's hinted that he actually becomes a werewolf. Anyhow, he's suddenly in cahoots with the Townsends. His allegiance to them is rather unclear. Still, he ends up staying with them, and participating in their sacrifice.
Once Glen and Liz find the women in the basement, rather easily I'll add, the Townsends reveal everything to them, even that Count Townsend is really Count Dracula. This moment of exposition is delivered in the most mundane and non-threatening way possible. In fact, everything in this "horror" movie just lacks any emotion. The actors seem to only care about making sure they get their lines out. Even the girls chained to the wall don't seem to mind much they're chained against their will. They just stand in the background, nonchalant and certainly not struggling. They're just a group of women, chained to the wall, making sure they don't move off their mark, and maybe just happy to be a part of things. It's completely laughable. The acting is ridiculous.
Glen and Liz soon get the upper hand, and Dracula and his wife turn into bats- real bats! And that's about the extent of the producer's efforts.
This was the most non-threatening, non-frightening (except for the amount of exposition the filmmakers could pack in 84 minutes) horror film I've seen to date.
John Carradine was the only actor trying to be scary.
The choice to cast Alexander D'Arcy as Dracula makes sense as his screen persona was always smooth, suave and sexy.Unfortunately, in this particular role, that didn't save his performance.
Somehow, I paid attention throughout the entire movie, but it was a complete struggle to do so. Nothing interesting was ever taking place. I mean, when Carradine was on screen it was cool to see him. Otherwise, nothing.
There's no gore. There's no scare other than scenes of Dracula and Mrs. Dracula laying in their coffins. No fangs. No biting. Just two upper-class people saying "we're vampires."
Count Charles, Mango, and Johnny are loosely based on Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, and the Wolfman. It's painful to watch such a lousy rip-off.
With a movie bearing the word "blood" in the title, I would think there would be at least some of it splattered on walls, or pooled on the floor, or even dripping from Dracula's mouth. Nope! Any blood is daintily sipped out of pretentious beverage receptacles.
This flick isn't even accidentally interesting.
This felt so amateurish to me. The dialogue plays out like an old EC Comic such as Tales from the Crypt or Vault of Horror. Unlike the comics, it gets boring. Very boring!

12) The Mangler (1995) - Obscure Stephen King flick #1

"There's a little bit of me in that machine, and a little bit of it in me. We are the life blood of this town. We all have to make sacrifices." 

Director
Tobe Hooper

Cast
Ted Levine - John Hunton
Robert Englund - Bill Gartley
Vanessa Pike - Sherry Ouelette
Daniel Matmor - Mark Jackson


I know this movie about a possessed laundry press, housed inside the steamy, sweaty, Gartley's Blue Ribbon Laundry Service, was trying to be scary and suspenseful. But other than that, I really don't know what this movie was setting out to do.
A film about a demonic press is, without saying, over the top. It just wasn't the movie that the three horror icons who's names are attached to it (Director Tobe Hooper - Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist - Robert Englund, Freddy Krueger himself, and of course Stephen King - everything Stephen King has ever written) should have done together. Oh, and it has Ted Levine from Silence of the Lambs.
I'm baffled a little that this would be the movie for these horror giants to come together on.
King's original story of the same name can be found in his collection of short stories called Night Shift. He wrote it from his experiences, and from I read somewhere, as a bit of a payback for lousy work conditions as he worked in a laundry facility. Maybe as a short story, it could be a fun read.
I'll add here that when it comes to creative writing, King himself said in a lecture that writers should write for themselves, and write for fun. Case and point - The Mangler.
Bill Gartley (Robert Englund) operates a laundry service. And we see how insanely uncaring and, ooooh, evil he is when his own niece, Sherry, severely cuts herself on the machine. She drips blood onto its tread as she tries to dodge an old refrigerator some movers are doing a poor job of carrying. Both her hand and the fridge touch the machine, giving the press both a demon and a taste for blood.
Later on, one of Gartley's employees, the elderly Mrs. Frawley, gets stuck onto the tread as she tries to open a container of antacids which spill onto the machine while it's on. Rather than letting them go, or asking to have the machine turned off, she struggles to pick them up.
She get's pulled in, and what comes out on the other end is a bloody, folded mess that was once Mrs. Frawley. 

In comes Police Investigator John Hunton (Ted Levine) who, despite being the standard tough, no-nonsense cop, can't stomach the remains of Frawley.
To me, this is were the ridiculousness comes in. I understand that if such a horrific accident had taken place in real life, obviously police would be present to investigate the situation.
For all practical purposes, and as far as witnesses go, such a death would be considered accidental.
Hunton, however, really delves into an investigation, while his brother-in-law, Mark, (a demonologist) tries to convince him that something supernatural is at play. It really starts to become forced by this point.
It's hard to take Levine's character seriously. Just what his drive is into an investigation that looks completely accidental on the surface is unclear. He doesn't believe in demons and such. And no fowl play is involved. But Hunton is determined to dig something up.
During the investigation, Mark figures out that the icebox may be what was possessed by demons. And sure enough, it was. So, the demons are expelled from the ice box, but the work isn't finished.
They both learn that Gartley and other people in town have been sacrificing their virgin daughters to the press on their 16th birthdays for wealth and power. How this little tradition came to be isn't explained. Nothing is explained. Anyhow, Gartley had plans to do just that to Sherry.
Meanwhile, Mark discovers that the antacids that Frawley was taking (and Hunton is taking, too, because he stole them out of Frawley's purse during the investigation) contains deadly nightshade.
Nightshade, according to Mark's Book of the Occult, is just the ingredient to feed the demons and bring the machine to life. Hunton and Mark proceed with an exorcism which is as ridiculous as it is intense.
The machine then comes to life, and chases the pair around the facility. Unfortunately, the money must have run out by this point, because what's supposed to be the climax is more like the last few seconds of a deflating balloon.

Robert Englund as Bill Gartley

Just like the flatulating sound of a balloon sputtering through the air, the last act is enough to make anyone laugh. It's hilarious to watch grown men perform an exorcism over a machine, and then watch terrible depiction of a laundry press chase people around, breathing fire.
It doesn't seem like any of the actors are really enjoying their roles. Robert Englund does make a great villain. His character is the embodiment of the machine itself - uncaring, unsympathetic, and completely self-interested. Englund's acting makes the most sense. He's playing it in just the right amount of exaggeration - a caricature of exaggeration itself - that's suitable for a movie about a demonic laundry machine.
But nothing about the story or the climax impressed. It just went from silly to painful.
This movie was trying to be too many things at once. With Stephen King's name behind it, The Mangler tried to raise itself on the pedestal where other King movies have been placed, with its want of respect for being a story written by an author who's often taken as a serious writer. Meanwhile, it was trying to be an over-the-top film. In short, it was taking itself seriously while at certain points, it didn't want to be taken seriously. And the dialogue was all over the place.
None of the actors could work off each other. It was a mish-mash of styles with none of them very convincing, save for Englund who seemed to be the only one who understood just what kind of a movie this was. Three masters of the horror genre (and Ted Levine) had one chance to make a laundry machine scary, and what was left was a forgettable mess. Nothing dazzled. Nothing left its marked.
How this flick spawned two sequels is a testament to Hollywood clearly not understanding what audiences want...or don't want.
The Mangler mangled a perfectly good Friday night for me, leaving me with no real scares.

Ambiguous King: Looking at 10 Obscure Films by the (Sometimes) Master of Horror

Stephen King had a bit of a renaissance in the movies and on TV since 2017, though he never actually disappeared. After quite a pause of King movies since, I think, the terrible mess that was Dreamcatcher (2003) there’s really nothing that stands out after that.

And suddenly several King adaptations popped up.

A remake of the 1990 movie It was released last year, based on his novel. It received a lot of praise, and marketing, and made Pennywise a Halloween sensation overnight. The sequel is already highly anticipated with fans online asking when they’ll get to see the trailer.

It came out just a few months after Dark Tower was released, based on his popular series of the same name. Dark Tower wasn't as well received unfortunately.

The Hulu series 11/22/63, based upon King's novel from 2011, was fantastic.

Gerald’s Game on Netflix was also a well done series (wow - two TV series with King’s name that are actually good! Has that ever happened before?) It seemed like it would be a difficult story to put on film. but it managed to do so pretty well.

The Netflix movie 1922 was enjoyable and entertaining. And the trailer for the upcoming remake Pet Sematary can be seen on YouTube, and it looks pretty King-tastic!

And to top off this mountain of Stephen King goodness was the cherry - an original series based on the fictional town common in King stories called Castle Rock wrapped up its first season with positive reviews. It's like a sort of King-y Sgt. Pepper album with all sorts of famous faces from King films gone by, and King-y Easter Eggs.

And in 2019, King fans got a remake of his darkest story, Pet Sematary - something to tide us over until It: Chapter 2 comes out in September.

The King is back! But, again. he never really went away.

There are so many other movies based off Stephen King novels, novellas, and short stories that have flown under the radar, have been forgotten about, or are just really obscure. So, I’m picking out 10 of those less-remembered movies from the king of horror to see if they deserve to be forgotten. 
Creepshow 2 will not be one of them! Nor will the made-for-TV remake of The Shining- Stephen King's claim to Stanley Kubrick that he can do it better, but somehow didn't. I think they've garnered plenty of attention. Just throwing that out there.

What are some of these hidden King movies? Well, there's a movie based on a story about a possessed laundry press. There's also the movie Graveyard Shift based on the story that King wrote before writing his first published novel Carrie.

Oh, speaking of Carrie, there are actually two - YES TWO - remakes of the 1976 classic film. And the second remake spawned a sequel. Gross, right?

There's a few of these obscurities trying to grab audiences attention by throwing Stephen King's name into the opening credits.

I've read some of the stories these movies are based on. But it really doesn't matter here.

Though I think movies should respect the source material, I'm not taking into consideration just how similar or not they are to their respective stories. For most of the movies, if not all, the screenplays were written by someone other than King. And like snowflakes that gently careen down from the frosty winter skies, no two stories are alike. Each movie title might as well say "as told by" because for any movie based on a book, that's exactly what it is. "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, as told by Peter Jackson."

So, here we go... let us dip our feet, or brush our teeth, or wash our hands...or whatever turns you on... in the pool of obscure King cinema! I'll be posting them at least once a month.

1) The Mangler 

2) Riding the Bullet

3) Mercy

4) Dolan's Cadillac

5) Quicksilver Highway

6) The Dark Half

7) Disciples of the Crow & The Boogeyman

8) Segmented Stories

9) Cell

10) Desperation

11) A Christmas Carol Films - Who Scrooges the Scroogiest?

Forward

(Christmas and horror are two genres that modern cinema has glued together several times. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, it's just a novelty. But A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is a ghost story depicting just how far heaven will go just to change a single person. And it's a story that fits in this blog about obscure horror films as there's ghosts, and some freaky stuff in there. A ghost story is a ghost story, no matter when it was written. With so many movies based on this one novella by Charles Dickens, I wanted to narrow it down to one. And that one movie is an underrated one. - Mike)

Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge in 1951's A Christmas Carol

The story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his night of ethereal redemption by not one, not two, not three...but four Christmassy apparitions has been told again, and again...and again.
I think if I Google'd how many movie adaptations there are of Charles Dicken's story A Christmas Carol, I wouldn't get an accurate answer. There's probably a new one every minute. 
There's the 1938 version with Reginald Owen. There's the more famous 1951 British film Scrooge with the superb performance by Alastair Sim. Sim also did an animated version for TV in 1971. There's the iconic Mickey Mouse version, which has a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. There's the musical version, too, with Albert Finney. Then there's a version with Patrick Stewart. And there's the Muppet version with Michael Caine. And the one with George C. Scott from 1984. 

In 2009, Disney came out with a computer animated story starring Jim Carrey as Scrooge. Oh, I can't forget the Bill Murray comedy movie Scrooged which is Bill Murray-y. That movie takes place in present day, with Murray playing Frank Cross who's basically the same character as Scrooge.
I suppose whatever sort of character Ebenezer Scrooge is outside of Charles Dicken's novel is up to anyone's interpretation. 

And which ever film adaptation of the story is the best is up to the person in the audience.
Every few years during the Holidays, I read the story. Being familiar with Dicken's tale, I've formed my own version of Scrooge in my head.
I've seen most of the movies I've mentioned above. When Scrooge is portrayed, he's played as an angry man shouting at everyone and just blurting out his catchphrase "humbug!" Too many actors seem to smother on the anger.

Scrooge is played out as being just bitter and hatful of Christmas, and then he's redeemed. His dislike for Christmas is important, sure. If he didn't hate Christmas, there'd be no story. He could still be the squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. But once he hates on Christmas? Nope! Send in the spirits!
Dicken's describes his character immediately in the story as "hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steal had ever struck out a generous fire, secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."
He also writes that, "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed noise, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, made his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice." 
When it comes the coldness of winter around him, Dickens says "External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintery weather chill him." 
Scrooge is a proud man, to say the least. He's a man of business. And as the story takes place in mid 1800s England, there was a standard of etiquette and manners even Scrooge wouldn't forego so lightly.
Scrooge is often portrayed as angry, which he was. As the story indicates, it's an anger that stems from childhood experiences, especially in regards to his father.
But, though he carried his anger with him for decades, to portray him as constantly yelling, and turning his bitterness into a caricature all its own, is rather off to me. There's nothing dignified in a English man of prominence of the mid 1800s (as Scrooge was) yelling and carrying on in front of others. People didn't dislike him because he yelled all the time. They stayed away from him because he was uncaring and cold. He didn't have to shout to convey his bitterness. Besides, a man who shouted all the time would probably be deemed a lunatic. When it comes to business, being a staunch, cold, and unmoving is one thing. Being looked upon by others as crazy is something no self-respecting man of business, as Scrooge was, would want. It would be counter productive in his world of business, and it goes without saying Scrooge would have known that. No person would take them as competent enough to perform business with.
Scrooge is a man of dignity and wealth. In his mind, he's right about Christmas being a wasteful time.  He's absolute certain of it. The rest of the world is wrong, and blinded by their own overblown sense of need. He points the finger at them for being greedy. No doubt he sees his own greed in others at Christmas time, and despises what he sees. So, Christmas, therefor, is a "humbug."
"What is Christmas but a time for buying things," Scrooge says.
This over exaggerated sense of importance, especially in regards to his conclusion about Christmas (a time were he sees his ugly greed in others) has Scrooge seeing himself better than the rest. If he just yelled at everyone, then he'd be that crazy old man who yells at everyone...like that one guy you see in the subway station each morning.
I see this portrayal in the 1984 TV movie A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott.

George C. Scott as Scrooge.

My dad found a copy of this movie on VHS several years ago. At first, I wasn't impressed by Scott as Scrooge. He didn't seem angry enough. That is, he was more collected, yet proud of himself in his dislike for Christmas. But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that Scott's Scrooge is a bulls-eye.
His portrayal is just as I described. Rather than yell and scream, and shout "humbug" randomly at each beggar, or each child singing carols on the street corner, his attitude is more like "I'm the only one who sees Christmas time for what it is...and it's a humbug because greed and waste!"
When it comes to really showing anger, it's the ghost of Christmas Present who does it best as seen in the movie.
Christmas Present is a jolly ghost immersed in the spirit of the moment- that moment being Christmas. So, to see him raise his voice in anger at Scrooge is a scene that stayed in my memory. I have yet to see that in other versions of the story.
Scrooge's humanity was always inside him, buried beneath his anger and frustrations. It just needed to resurface again.
There's one moment in the Scott version that stands out to me. When Scrooge goes to his nephew Fred's house to accept an invitation to Christmas dinner, Fred's wife tells Scrooge he's made them happy. And Scrooge's response is "Have I?" It's a quick scene. Still, when was the last time someone told Scrooge they've made them happy? He clearly hasn't heard a compliment like that in... who knows how long? He can still bring joy to others, and it didn't take much to do so at that particular moment.
There's also a scene where Scrooge sees his father during his visit to the past. The look Scott gives as he (playing Scrooge) sees his harsh and strict father is an indicator all on its own to show where Scrooge's anger stems from. No words are needed to be said in that scene. Scrooge's look said what the audience needed to know. It's small instances like those in Scott's performance that make him the best Scrooge that I've seen.
I haven't yet seen Scrooge's dad show up in other movies. He's been referred to, and talked about, in other movies. But he wasn't seen.
The 1951 Alastair Sim film A Christmas Carol is a version I watch each year. Sim's performance has a lot of passion in it. His Scrooge has an underlying tone of pitifulness, but he still captures the pride and pretentiousness of Scrooge. However, his laughing and silliness at the end, when he realizes he hadn't missed Christmas after all, is over the top when compared to Scott's performance. I get it, however. He throws his dignified manner out the window, and lives for the moment just as Christmas Present taught him to.
As for the worst Scrooge portrayal I've seen - Michael Caine's in the Muppet version. I enjoyed the movie overall. The songs are memorable. The jokes are funny. I saw this movie when it was released in theaters. And it was a tradition to watch this movie the night before flying home for Christmas break during my high school years. There's some personal nostalgia with the The Muppet's Christmas Carol.
But Caine just phones his performance in. His Scrooge is bland. He's just about being bad because that's what audience expects. When his Scrooge becomes good, Caine is unconvincing. He tells the audience in so many words that he's a good now, does some ridiculous dancing, and then - the end. Caine is a great actor, but his role in The Muppet's Christmas Carol has a lot of room for improvement.
And by the way-one last question. Why did it take so long for heaven to send down three spirits to turn old Scrooge around? In fact, why did heaven even bother at all? I think it has to do with one simple act of kindness Scrooge performs even after he takes a few more verbal shots at Christmas, calling it a poor excuse to pick a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December. Scrooge, nevertheless, lets his employee, Bob Cratchit, take the day off despite his own views. One small spark of kindness was all it took. After Dickens went on and on about how cold and tight fisted, etc., Scrooge was, and he gives Bob a day off for a holiday he despises! Sure, it could be argued that closing his business up on Christmas like all other businesses would saved him money. But Scrooge indicates he doesn't see it that way.

"I suppose you must have the whole day," Scrooge tells Cratchit just after telling him an entire day off is not convenient, and not fair. Regardless, Bob gets his request from his grasping, covetous sinner of a boss. In the Alistair Sim version, we see a Christmas Eve in the past where Cratchit again asks for the whole day, and Scrooge refuses, giving a little emphasis on just how unselfish the act we saw in the beginning of the story was.
I'm sure other portrayals of Scrooge get one thing or another right. They're obviously not all bad. George C. Scott's version is one that's underrated, and really stands out to me. If it's not on your list of Christmas movies to watch each year, it's absolutely worth giving it a view.


And according to Google, there's 20 film versions of A Christmas Carol. 

UPDATE: 9/29/2021
As I approach my 100th review, looking back I realized I skipped an 11th review. And I thought I was keep things consistent all this time. 
So, rather than go back through all my posts and re-number them, leaving my 96th review really my 95th, I'm numbering this post as my 11th review. And rather than review any given film adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, I'll use my review card to pass judgement on the best Ebenezer Scrooge. 

10) The Gate (1987)

"Demons aren't going to ring the doorbell!"

Director
Tibor Takacs

Cast
Stephen Dorff - Glen
Christa Denton - Al
Louis Tripp - Terry Chandler

The Gate - a story about a young boy named Glen and his best friend, Terry, who  accidentally open a gate to hell releasing a horde of demons upon Glen's house. It sounds like a cookie-cutter horror film, but the visuals really make up for the simplistic story line. It's a scary movie for sure.
This movie was actor Stephen Dorff's first role. Dorff later went on to star in Blade, and in 2003's Cold Creek Manor among other roles.
The tree in Glen's backyard is a favorite of his. But he has a dream where it's struck by lightening and collapses. He wakes up to find his nightmare come true. As a result, workers are hired to uproot the tree revealing some kind of geode in the hole left in the ground.
Glen calls Terry over to check it out. In the meantime, Glen accidentally cuts his finger spilling a little blood onto the crystal.
Meanwhile, Glen's parents head out of town for a few days, and his sister, Al, is left to watch him.
Al throws...like...a totally rad party as most 80s movie teens often do when mom and dad are off screen. During the party, Terry and Glen go to study the geode some more.

Louis Tripp and Stephen Dorff

They decide to break it open.
It also happens that some words are left by the rock which the kids innocently speak.
This is when the film gets really dark, and visually freaky.
That night, Glen starts seeing his bedroom walls stretching. And Terry, who is sleeping over that night, hears his mom, who previously passed away, calling him from down stairs.
In a scene that doesn't hold back, he follows the call and sees his mom in the front entrance. Terry runs to her and embraces her, but realizes it's actually Glen's dog who falls dead in his arms.
The next day, Terry turns to the only logical place to go for an explanation on paranormal, demonic encounters - a heavy metal album.
The album, which is based on something called "The Dark Book", leads them to the conclusion that they indeed opened a gate to hell in Glen's backyard. Bummer!
The design of the demons is really underrated among the rogues gallery of movie monsters. They should be as memorable with other iconic 80s monsters. In fact, I think the entire movie is underrated.
The stop-motion is great and well done for its time. The Gate might lack in story, but its intention is to scare, and leave something in the audience's memory. It doesn't fail in that regard.

If I had seen this movie when I was a kid, I know it would have made a huge impression and kept me up a few nights in the process.
The character, Terry, does get annoying as he acts as the narrative constantly explaining everything to Glen.
Being a movie that depends so much on its visuals, it should have maintained the "Show! Don't tell" aspect of story-telling.
Otherwise, if movies like Evil Dead and Child's Play can remain at the surface among mainstream audiences, this movie deserves to be at that same level, too. It's a fun film for "horror night."

9) Horror High (1974)

"You've got your killer. I've got my classes to attend."

Director
Larry N. Stouffer

Cast
Pat Cardi - Vernon Potts
Austin Stoker - Lt. Bozeman
Rosie Holotik - Robin Jones
Joye Hash - Miss. Grindstaff
John Niland - Coach McCall

A white and nerdy push-over high school student taking on a small rogues gallery of stereotypical, unreasonable and intolerant high school authority figures and bullies makes for a quintessential drive-in style popcorn slasher flick.
Horror High (aka Kiss the Teacher...Goodbye) is that kind of film. It seems very loosely based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It's almost a poor man's Toxic Avenger, which came out ten years later.
Horror High is as campy as the title suggests. And it's just as predictable. The weird angles, the light and dark scenes, and the right amount of cringe moments makes it satisfying horror movie. The acting and cutaways make the movie come across as a high school or college freshman film project. And the music is as good as a low budget movie from the 1970s can be. The best way I can describe it is spooky rock. It's something a teenage Alice Cooper cover band would play in a garage.
Horror High can easily be looked at as an anti-authoritarian movie, but somewhere among the slashing and fear is a scene of generational differences. The David Bowie quote as seen in the beginning of The Breakfast Club comes to mind.
"...And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consultations. They are quite aware what they're going through." (I'm probably reading way too much into this) Still, that's more or less the case with this movie's protagonist, Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi).
Pott's is not a bad student nor a bad kid. He's really too good. He's actually too good to be true, even for a social outcast which is what he is.
Potts takes his studies seriously. He's not anti-authority. I mean, the kid is every teachers fantasy come true. His ambition is in his biology class.
Nevertheless, teachers push him in unreasonable ways. His literature teacher, Miss. Grindstaff rips apart his biology report simply because Potts accidentally turned it in to her instead of his report on Robert Louis Stevenson. Potts has been preoccupied in trying to develop a chemical proving people can change physically and not just mentally, at a rapid pace. He's been experimenting on a guinea pig he dubbed "Mr. Mumps". For some reason, educators find that problematic. Pursuing a goal and utilizing your education while in school, Potts? How dare you!
So, Potts simply handed her the literature report by accident, but to "teach him a lesson" that literature is just as important as biology, she tears up his biology assignment right in front of him. Then she gives his other report an "F" even though he finished it.
Later, Mr. Griggs, the janitor, threatens to kill him because Potts scared Grigg's cat which was roaming around the biology lab and getting too close to Mr. Mumps.
His bullish P.E. teacher laughs in his face when Potts requests to skip P.E. to work on his project in the biology lab. And the bullies in the school call him "Creeper" which evidently people found insulting in the 70s.

Amidst all the torment, his classmate, Robin Jones (Rosie Holotik) feels bad for him because she's really into him. Aside from her love interest, she doesn't serve much of a purpose. He confides in her, but her interest in him doesn't change anything.
Potts decides to consume the chemical he's been brewing, and it turns him into a violent maniac seeking revenge on the teachers and bullies that made his school life hell. The moment he takes his anger out on his lit teacher is pretty freaky, though over the top.
After the first kill, the police waste no time investigating.And the murders continue on under their nose.
Lt. Bozeman (Austin Stoker) is heading the investigation. His intro to the audience is accompanied by music probably found in most 1970s black exploitation (blaxspotation) movies. I mean, c'mon. It shouldn't be that funny when it plays! But his scenes and music don't match.
It's not the first time Stoker and Cardi were in a movie together. They also acted together in Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).
Bozeman laughably tells Potts a lot of information about the case. He's not initially a suspect in the murders. So, it doesn't make much sense why Bozeman would confide so much in this one white and nerdy student.
The ending is just a quick tie-up to a movie that really did try to some extent to tell a tragic, yet simple horror story.
It was over all entertaining. Entertain is what it pretty much set out to do in the end. It's funny in some instances, and a couple times not where it was supposed to be. At other times, it delivers in horror as best it could with its simple budget.

8) The People Under the Stairs (1991)

"Sometimes in is out"

Director
Wes Craven

Cast
Brandon Adams - Fool
Everett McGill - Father
Wendy Robie - Mother
A.J. Langer - Alice
Ving Rhames - Leroy


When I wrote that I'd be posting about "obscure" horror movies on this blog, I meant obscure in general - not necessarily among other horror film fans. I mean, what horror movie would be obscure among horror movie enthusiasts?
Perhaps, The People Under the Stairs isn't as obscure as other movies I've written about, or will write about. It's a movie I really wanted to talk about when the idea for this blog was just a young, fledgling thought in the ankle-deep pool of other...things...I have in my head.
I get a strange enjoyment for movies that take place in run-down unsettling homes set up like a giant maze. Other movies such as the Nothing But Trouble (which happened to come out the same year as this movie) and The Boy come to mind. What's inside the walls? What's behind all those doors? It's an imagination's playground. The People Under the Stairs brought that affinity on for me.
This is a underrated gem of a Wes Craven movie that deserves a little more attention. And like his more well known A Nightmare on Elm Street, this movie is based on true events.
Back in the 1970s, Craven read a news article about two burglars who broke into a Los Angeles home and stumbled upon two children who had been locked up by their parents.
The story of something or someone(s) scary or even just unsettling, that didn't belong in a home, sucking up all the comfort a home brings, and living in an unlivable part of that house like underneath the stairs drew me in. I could relate as the home I grew up in had a stair case that went to the garage. The basement was underneath the stairs. There was a hole in the wall at the bottom of the stair case that looked into the dirt area adjacent to the basement. My boyhood imagination often pictured someone peering through that hole.
I didn't get to see this movie until years after its release. I recall the desire (forbidden pleasure or morbid curiosity?) to get inside a theater and see what these people under the stairs were all about, and more importantly, what they looked like.
Incidentally, speaking of Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street 6 - Freddy's Dead; The Final Nightmare also came out in 1991, and happens to be the first horror movie I saw in a theater. I was 10 years old then. And even back then, I knew I reached a milestone that day, getting to watch an actual horror movie inside a theater rather then sneaking out to watch it with some of my brothers while my parents were in bed. And what was even better, it was a Freddy Kreuger movie! I mean, why swim on the shallow end when I can just dive off the board into the deep end.
Incidentally, part six was terrible, but I didn't care at the time. To its credit, it does have one of the best lines in horror movie history, "The map says we're fucked!" Yes...it did!

Everett McGill and Brandon Adams in The People Under the Stairs.

In The People Under the Stairs, former child actor Brandon Adams plays Poindexter Williams, nicknamed "Fool," who lives with his mother and sister, Ruby, in a ramshackle complex in the middle L.A's ghetto. As they're two days late paying the rent, their landlord raises the rent, or they have to move out the next day. His mother is bedridden with cancer, and none of them can afford medication or hospital visits.
Ruby's boyfriend, Leroy (Ving Rhames), tells them their landlords are getting rich off the poverty of their tenants. Those landlords, the Robesons, are an unsavory pair, and not just because of their greed. Plus, Fool and his family are the last tenants in the apartment, and the landlords want them out so they can build larger, more expensive apartments.
They own several properties including a building that has a liquor store. After the store gets robbed, Leroy learns that the Robesons have gold coins in their possession somewhere in their home. And as they're rich, and the ghetto is poor, he devises a plan to break into their home, find those coins, and give the money back to the ghetto (or so he says.)
Leroy gets his friend, Spencer, in on the plan, along with Fool, to scope out Robeson's huge house with padlocks on the outside of the windows.
Once they get inside, they can't get out. Eventually, it all comes down to Fool who finds himself alone. He discovers people caged in the basement underneath the staircase. He also finds a young girl wandering around the house named Alice (A.J. Langer.) She's the Robeson's daughter, and tries to save Fool all while enduring her parents abuse and torment in fear and constant trepidation. They also get help from Roach (Sean Whalen) - one of the boys who was trapped in the basement, but escaped into the walls. He has a small but crucial role in helping Fool achieve what he came to do.
The only thing that's saving them is Mr. Robeson's fear of going inside the walls because he doesn't know what's in there. So, he has a Rottweiler named Prince to do that for him.
The appearance and behavior of the guys in the basement shows that they haven't seen the light of day in who knows how long? They've been reduced to cannibalism, and the audience really doesn't know what their demeanor is. Are they good? Or are they evil?
As Fool tries to escape, running through the walls of the house while Mr. Robeson tries to hunt him down, he learns more and more about what has been going on inside.
There's certainly a satirical tone in the movie. The rich versus the poor. The rich of course being immersed in the sludge of their own desires which leads to absolute, sadistic insanity. The audience is seeing it from the outside looking in. We catch them at the point were they're so far gone, with their minds so rancid, that we discover who the Robersons really are. That moment is just cringe-worthy to say the least.
Adams is not annoying as most other child actors tend to be. He's perhaps best known for playing a young Michael Jackson in the "Badder" segment seen in the movie Moonwalker. Instead, Adams seems sincere, relateable and taking his role seriously. He's not trying to pull off more than he is by not letting the fact that he's a motion picture go to his head - a vibe I sometimes get from other child actors.
And what's more, he plays off the main antagonists, played by Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, really well.

Wendy Robie and Everett McGill as the Robesons.

McGill and Robie both starred together in Twin Peaks. With the three being the most unlikely kind of people to face off against each other, they do it fantastically.
And speaking of McGill, he has such a menacing on-screen presence that lingers from beginning to end. He portrays a man with no compassion, no mercy, nor even the slightest bit of sympathy. The audience just has to look at the dead look in his eyes to see a character so far immersed in his own greed and desires. And the ending with just him and young Fool, who's only threat to Mr. Robeson is exposing him and his deeds for all to see, is played with such tension and intrigue, it makes the movie a real gem of a horror film.
Wendy Robie isn't necessarily bad, but she's a bit over the top as she portrays her part of the sick couple. It's not necessarily a distraction, but it is at times a little too ridiculous. Then again, it is considered a horror-comedy, so it certainly fits.
On top of that, the visuals in this movie are memorable. I say "unsettling" a lot, but that's exactly what it is. The People Under the Stairs offers a story that pulls the audience in, scares them and keeps them locked inside, and finally lets them go on a satisfying and "what's next" ending.