Video Eyeball

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Alligator

Alligator
1980
89 minutes
Lionsgate
R

Cast • Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Henry Silva, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Michael V. Gazzo, Perry Lang, Jack Carter
Writes • John Sayles
Director • Lewis Teague

Today is Day Thirty of VE's CreepFest!

THE LAST GASP FOR THE GIANT MONSTER MOVIE (until Tremors in ’90 and The Host in 2005), Alligator is a wickedly clever action-thriller with a political bent that never forgets its primary purpose—to deliver maximum mayhem with its title creature. John Sayles, still in the Roger Corman phase of his career, taps the popular urban legend of alligators in the sewers for his script, which unleashes a king-sized gator on the inhabitants of a nameless Midwestern city.

Cop Robert Forster, who’s already struggling with the death of his partner and male pattern baldness, discovers the monster after it gobbles up a rookie patrolman (Perry Lang) and an unscrupulous pet store owner (Sydney Lassick). The latter provides an important clue in the alligator’s growth spurt—seems he’s been kidnapping pet dogs for a big pharmaceutical company (run by nasty old man Dean Jagger) to use as test subjects for a new growth hormone. Lassick also dumps the corpses into the sewers (played by Los Angeles’ forbidding sewer system, already famous for housing Them!, 1954), where the toxified mutts transform an abandoned baby gator into an El Dorado-sized eating machine. Jittery mayor Jack Carter (who’s in Jagger’s pocket) and police chief Gazzo call in SWAT teams, the Army, and Great White Hunter Henry Silva (hilarious), but ultimately, it’s up to Forster and comely herpetologist Robin Riker to eliminate the monster. MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Halloween TV Specials

Halloween TV Specials
Roseanne: Halloween Edition, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, Mad Monster Party, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special

Today is Day Twenty-nine of VE's CreepFest!

THE FIRST FAMILIES OF TV HALLOWEEN (not counting the Browns and Van Pelts) are the Conners of Langford, Illinois and the Simpsons of Springfield... wherever. The first Halloween episode of Roseanne aired October 31, 1989 in its second season and became an annual event, with ever-escalating pranks and costumes. Anchor Bay has collected the first seven Halloween episodes on its Roseanne: Halloween Edition so apparently they, like a lot of us, would prefer to believe that Season Nine never happened.

The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror is a great collection of the show's annual trilogy of terror installments (which, curiously, often aired just after Halloween each year), and includes "The Thing and I" (Bart's "evil" twin), "The Genesis Tub" (Lisa creates a miniature world with her tooth), "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores" (Springfield ad icons come to life), and "Mr. Kang Goes to Washington" (Kang and Kodos assume the identities of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole) among its 21 episodes. These are Treehouse of Terrors V, VI, VII and VIII, and it seems strange that TOTs I, II, III and IV are still unavailable in this type of collection.

Mad Monster Party is a regrettably overlooked full-length (95 min.) 1969 Rankin and Bass animated feature (the  same "Animagic" process that brought us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) that has beautiful, elaborate sets and classic monsters as re-imagined by Mad magazine artist Jack Davis. Boris Karloff supplies the voice of Baron von Frankenstein, who calls on all of the world's most fiendish monsters—and Phyllis Diller—to convene at his castle. Cool jazz/spy soundtrack, too.

Some things sound more fun on paper. The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976) was a legendary VHS bootleg that finally made it onto DVD just a few weeks ago. Paul's guests included Margaret Hamilton and Billie Hayes (Witchipoo from H.R. Pufnstuf) as his witchie sidekicks with appearances by Tim Conway, Donnie and Marie, Billy Barty, KISS, Florence Henderson, Roz "Pinkie Tuscadero" Kelly, and Betty White. A trainwreck, but not quite the kind I'd hoped for. Lots of terrible jokes (Bruce Vilanch and Ronny Graham are among the ten credited writers), a grind to a halt number by Flo, three—count 'em—three numbers by KISS (who make their television debut), and Paul gets into the act too, singing the old Halloween favorite "Kids" from Bye Bye Birdie (he played Harry MacAfee in the film version). Scariest part: the entire ensemble shakes their booty to "Disco Lady" as Pinkie sings "Move it in/move it out" in a voice that could wake the dead. And at the end, the cast stands around like it's a live show and they need to fill up time. Still, you might have to experience it for yourself. • DAVE YOUNT

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Feast

Feast
2005
95 minutes
Weinstein Company
R

Cast • Balthazar Getty, Henry Rollins, Navi Rawat, Judah Friedlander, Josh Zuckerman, Jason Mewes, Jenny Wade, Krista Allen, Clu Gulager, Eric Dane, Diane Goldner
Writers • Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan
Director • John Gulager

Today is Day Twenty-eight of VE's CreepFest!

HOLED UP IN A MIDDLE-OF-NOWHERE Texas bar, a ragtag group of regulars is suddenly besieged by a nasty pack of cannibalistic monsters. Mixing humor, gore, blood-slicked breasts, monster sex, suspense, gunfights, and toxic vomit, Feast is an admirably executed, low-budget schlockfest.

Directed by John Gulager and written by screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, Feast is the third movie to come out of the Matt Damon-Ben Affleck-Chris Moore Project Greenlight competition.  Unlike its two predecessors, Feast has no highbrow aspirations or red-carpet celebrity stars—unless you count Henry Rollins as an earnest but unconvincing motivational speaker named Coach whose idea to taunt the monsters with one of their dead backfires in a bad way. Sharp-eyed viewers will recognize the stoner beer-delivery guy as Judah Friedlander (30 Rock, American Splendor, Wonder Showzen); the aging, unflappable boozehound as veteran actor Eileen Ryan (Sean Penn’s real-life mom); and the swaggering macho man character Hero as Balthazar Getty (Alias, Brothers and Sisters, oil heir). Feast is also a family affair, with Gulager’s veteran actor father Clu (Return of the Living Dead) as the crusty bartender and wife Diane Goldner as the tough Harley Mom who is forced to endure some frightening interspecies fellatio. MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • The Val Lewton Horror Collection

The Val Lewton Horror Collection
1942-46
5 discs 
Turner Home Entertainment
Not Rated

Films • Cat People, The Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, Bedlam, The Leopard Man, The Ghost Ship, The Seventh Victim, Shadows in the Dark

Today is Day Twenty-seven of VE's CreepFest!

BETWEEN 1942 AND 1946, Val Lewton produced some of the best B-movies ever turned out on low budgets and quickie schedules for a Hollywood studio. His subtle use of the power of suggestion left much of the terror to the viewer’s imagination. By withholding shots of the source of terror in favor of foreboding shadows and sounds, and offering stories that usually took place in a contemporary, realistic setting, Lewton forged a distinctive mix in his RKO chillers. The Val Lewton Horror Collection boxed set that brought these movies to DVD is hardly a perfect collection, especially with all the audio commentaries by film historians who wallow in tiring minutia. But some of its most noteworthy content is on the two discs available only within the five-disc boxed set.

The Leopard Man and The Ghost Ship, which share one of the two discs available only within the set, are cases in point. The first is director Jacques Tourneur’s rendering of Cornell Woolrich’s novel, Black Alibi, about what happens when a deadly black leopard gets loose in a New Mexico town. It’s surely more uneven than Tourneur’s two previous Lewton movies, the more famous Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie). Yet it, too, has great set pieces, especially when the cat stalks a teen who’s been sent to the store by her mother. Before the DVD set came out, The Ghost Ship was one of the most elusive Lewton movies, as it was pulled from release by RKO after a writer filed a plagiarism lawsuit, claiming the movie took elements from a script he had submitted to Lewton’s office. Although Lewton never saw that script, RKO lost the case and pulled the movie. As with Robert Wise's Curse of the Cat People, the perceptive child's-eye-view drama which Lewton made just after it, Ghost Ship comes up with something much better than the mere horror film RKO wanted.

Its conflict between the idealistic new third officer (Russell Wade) and the power-mad captain (Richard Dix) on a freighter doesn’t just recall The Caine Mutiny, which Herman Wouk hadn’t written yet, it also turns into an exploration of authority run amok, an anti-Fascist parable for its wartime audience. • PAUL SHERMAN

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Basket Case

Basket Case
1982
91 minutes 
Something Weird
R

Cast • Kevin Van Hentenryck, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, Robert Vogel, Diana Browne, Lloyd Pace, Bill Freeman, Joe Clarke, Ruth Neuman, Richard Pierce
Writer • Frank Henenlotter
Director • Frank Henenlotter

Today is Day Twenty-six of VE's CreepFest!

A LONGTIME FAVORITE of the college crowd and 42nd Street audiences alike, Basket Case is a rank little Tale from the Crypt about a disturbed young man (Kevin Van Hentenryck, a wigged-out Greg Brady) who seeks revenge on the doctors who separated him from his horribly deformed (and telepathic) lethal twin brother Belial, whom he carries around in the title basket. The pair carry out their bloody mission while residing in a tenderloin flophouse, where a young woman (Terri Susan Smith) comes between them and initiates their downfall.

Basket Case aspires to nothing more than the same Karo syrup-soaked excesses of Herschell Gordon Lewis' amazing output (and the picture is quite rightly dedicated to the Godfather), which it achieves with buckets of gleeful gallows humor and abject bad taste (Belial's assault on the sleeping and naked Smith being the rankest example of this). Two sequels followed (the first, Basket Case 2, is now out on DVD from Synapse); both are fitfully amusing and gross but never scrape the bottom of the exploitation barrel with such gusto as the
original. MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Curse of the Demon

Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon
1957
95 minutes, b&w
Columbia/TriStar
Not Rated

Cast • Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummings, Niall MacGinnis, Reginald Beckwith, Athene Seyler, Maurice Denham
Writers • Charles Bennett, Hal Chester
Director • Jacques Tourneur

Today is Day Twenty-five of VE's CreepFest!

FEW FILMS CAPTURE the power of supernatural with such power, conviction, and subtlety as Night of the Demon (1957), released in the U.S. in truncated form as Curse of the Demon. While director Jacques Tourneur worked in nearly every genre, many of his finest moments occur in horror films made under RKO producer Val Lewton: Cat People, Leopard Man, I Walked With A Zombie.

Producer Hal Chester’s decision to override Tourneur’s Val Lewton-derived aesthetic by disclosing the monster in the first reel has been decried both by Tourneur fans and the director himself. Nonetheless, I favor Chester’s judgment; the colossal, slavering fire demon, swathed in smoke and flame, creates the sense of impending danger that propels the film through to its infernal crescendo.

As the Aleister Crowley-like devil worshiper Dr. Karswell, Niall MacGinnis (Jason and the Argonauts) radiates a corruption born of absolute power—an evil so profound that to him, a genteel facade is something of an amusement. The repartee of skeptic Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews, cast in the British production to assure Stateside sales) and the more credulous Joanna Harrington (Welsh-born Peggy Cummins, who set the screen afire in 1949’s Gun Crazy) fails to generate the spark of a Mulder and Scully. But the supporting cast is impeccable: Athene Seyler as Julian Karswell’s dotty mother; Irish actor Reginald Beckwith as the psychic Mr. Meek; Brian Wilde’s convulsive performance as a cultist under hypnotic interrogation.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Faust

Faust
1926
116 minutes, b&w, silent with orchestral score
Kino Video
Not Rated

Cast • Gösta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn, Frida Richard, William Dieterle, Yvette Guilbert, Eric Barclay, Hanna Ralph, Werner Fuetterer
Writers • Gerhart Hauptmann and Hans Kyser
Director • F.W. Murnau

Today is Day Twenty-four of VE's CreepFest!

THOUGH FRIEDRICH WILHELM MURNAU is best known to horror enthusiasts for Nosferatu (1922), Faust may be the director’s supreme achievement. With art directors Walter Röhrig (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Fritz Lang’s Destiny) and Robert Herlth (Destiny, The Last Laugh), Murnau constructed a mythical universe as impressive as the supercity of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The simultaneous production of Faust and Metropolis nearly bankrupted the UFA studio.

Faust opens with one of the silent screen’s most unforgettable images: a titanic, horned, winged presence, casting its pestilential shadow over a medieval German village. The film’s ultimate message of the power of Love is encoded in the opening sequence’s beams of celestial light that blind the Devil amidst smoke and flame.

Played by Emil Jannings (The Last Laugh, The Blue Angel), Mephisto manifests in three forms: first as the winged beast; then as an impish mendicant with luminous eyes; then as a fatuous dandy who guides Faust through a life of dissolute indulgence. Jannings’ Expressionistic acting style is perfectly suited to the first two incarnations, but prove grating in the third, comic characterization. Swedish actor Gösta Ekman (Faust) and Camilla Horn (as Faust’s innocent love) provide a dramatic gravity that prevents the human element from being overpowered by either Jannings’ antics or Murnau’s monumental imagery. MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath
1964
92 minutes
Starz / Anchor Bay
Not Rated

Cast • Boris Karloff, Michele Mercier, Lidia Alfonsi, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen, Massimo Righi, Glauco Onorato, Rika Dialina, Jacqueline, Pierreaux, Milly, Harriet Medin
Writer • Alberto Bevilacqua
Director • Mario Bava

Today is Day Twenty-three of VE's CreepFest!

VIA THE DVD MEDIUM, the baroque, darkly erotic fantasies of Italian horror auteur Mario Bava (1914-80) have begun to receive the presentation they deserve. Charting a solitary path between the European art film and Grand Guignol horror, Bava invested his work with a visual primacy that continues to influence such eminent stylists as Dario Argento, Tim Burton, and David Lynch.

Released earlier this year as part of Anchor Bay’s Mario Bava Collection Vol.1, this disc presents the original European version of an anthology film conceived as I tre volti della paura (“The Three Faces of Fear,” 1963), repackaged as Black Sabbath by American International Pictures. Compounding the indignity of an American premier on a double bill with McHale’s Navy, AIP shuffled Bava’s deliberately structured story sequence, replaced Roberto Nicolosi’s lean, moody soundtrack music with a Les Baxter score, and rewrote the opening episode to eliminate a lesbian motif. (The editorial changes were supervised by Salvatore Billitteri, whose distinguished post-production credits include Yog: Monster from Space, The Wonderful World of Puss ’n Boots, and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off.) This uncensored, Italian-language version of the film restores Bava’s intended narrative symmetry, Nicolosi’s deftly understated music, and a prologue with Boris Karloff.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
1922
104 / 76 minutes, b&w
Criterion Collection
Not Rated

Cast • Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppidan, Elith Pio, Oscar Stribolt, Tora Teje, John Andersen, Benjamin Christensen, Poul Reumer
Writer • Benjamin Christensen
Director • Benjamin Christensen

Today is Day Twenty-two of VE's CreepFest!

THE LEGENDARY SCANDINAVIAN FILM Häxan (“The Witch”) brings life to a medieval world of superstition and fear with a searing intensity that forces a reassessment of the power of silent cinema. Häxan’s unflinching images of the terrors of the Inquisition linger for years after a single viewing.

Producer/writer/director Benjamin Christensen (1879-1959) undertook two years of research in preparation for this film, drawing incidents from the Malleus Maleficarum, (The Witches’ Hammer, 1487) a witch-hunter’s manual of unparalleled paranoia and cruelty. A filmmaker well in advance of his era, Christensen harnessed scientific curiosity with an unerring affinity for the irrational workings of the subconscious.

Employing a fragmented narrative that the director characterized as “a mosaic,” Häxan (pronounced hek-sen) blurs the line between historical fact, dramatization, and fantasy. (An essay titled “Some Surrealist Advice,” in Paul Hammond’s The Shadow and Its Shadow, recommends Häxan as an example of surreal cinema.) Christensen apparently reveled in artifice, performing both the roles of Satan and (in a nun’s vision) Christ.

Häxan begins as an illustrated lecture on superstition, then interleaves stories of two accused witches with harrowing visions of the practice of witchcraft. It’s left to the viewer to determine if the infernal imagery is to be interpreted as the fearful imaginings of superstitious characters, or actual events within the reality of the film. For example, an accused old hag’s confession of consorting with the Devil is clearly a desperate attempt to survive the Inquisition; yet Christensen’s portrayal of midnight revels is so vivid as to be readily interpreted as a flashback.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CreepFest DVD of the Day • Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls
1962
83 / 78 minutes, b&w
Criterion Collection
Not Rated

Cast • Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney Berger, Art Ellison, Stan Levitt, Tom McGinnis
Writer • John Clifford
Director • Herk Harvey

Today is Day Twenty-one of VE's CreepFest!

A haunting, dreamlike tale of a young church organist caught between the worlds of the living and the dead, Carnival of Souls is an exquisitely photographed variation on Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Lucille Fletcher’s radio play, “The Hitch-Hiker.” Director/producer Herk Harvey (1924-1996) and cinematographer Maurice Prather elicited Gothic black and white imagery from local settings: the decrepit Saltair Pavilion, site of the climactic danse macabre; the cathedralesque organ factory; a Hitchcockian, vortex-like stairwell.

At the distributor’s behest, Carnival of Souls was sheared of five minutes by B-horror journeyman Herbert Strock, director of Carnival’s co-feature, The Devil’s Messenger. Criterion’s lavish double-disc set presents both the 78 minute theatrical version and the 83 minute director’s cut. Strock tightened the pace and (perhaps unintentionally) intensified the film’s liminal air by cutting expository dialog and prioritizing the protagonist’s point of view. While this may strike a note of heresy, I find the theatrical version superior to the director’s cut.  MORE AFTER THE JUMP