Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN (1972)

Gotta say, The Witches Mountain was one film in the ol' Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection that I was really looking forward to seeing again. Yes, I say this despite the fact that back in 2010 I deemed it "...so, so bad. So bad. Bad. Bad movie." In recent times I'd felt in my heart-place that the problem likely wasn't The Witches Mountain--not completely, anyway--but 2010 me. (Well, 2010 me and the atrocious picture quality standard flowing through the waters of the ol' Mill Creek.) Bits of it that couldn't possibly be bad lingered in my memory, such as the knife-on-wig violence of the film's opening moments, and the leading man's incredible moustache. But more, it's that I know 2010 me rarely appreciated a weird Euro sleaze-adjacent movie that's all about vibes. But 2026 me is so much more cultured, you know? My capacity for continental delights is no longer limited to heat lamp eggs and a corn muffin at the Hampton Inn! Vibes are my vibe!

So, armed with the Mondo Macabro blu-ray edition of The Witches Mountain, I settled in and prepared myself to be sail away into a pure mood (cue the "Orinoco Flow"). 

Knowing in advance that this is a vibes flick helped immensely, as did...you know, being able to actually see (mostly, anyway) what was going on thanks to the power of high definition. All of this made the story, such as it is, a bit more scrutable: To avoid his recent ex-girlfriend, photographer Mario (Cihangir Ghaffari) and his moustache accept an assignment that will take them deep into the Pyrenees. Soon Mario has a meet-creep when he takes photographs of an unaware sunbathing beauty named Delia (Patty Shepard of the 1988 gross-out funfest Slugs). In true 1972 fashion, Delia agrees to accompany Mario for the rest of his adventure. Such is the power of the 'stache!

The pari quickly runs afoul of all kinds of weird happenings, including but not limited to:

-- fog that comes and goes

-- Mario's car getting stolen

-- Victor Israel (from FG fave Horror muthafucking Express!) as a sinister-seeming innkeeper

-- hooded figures spying on Delia in particular

-- a caveman dream...?

-- an old woman who sure seems like a witch living alone in an abandoned village on the mountain

-- creepy goat herders that come and go

Eventually they find the place in the woods where the witches get together and do witch stuff. If you've seen The Witch or Suspiria you know what I'm talking about: They are dancing and singing and holding induction ceremonies! 

Thanks to that there high-definition, I now know the fate of all the characters. I know that Mario's ex is in the witch gang. I know that they had their designs on Delia. And I know that Mario will be shackled in the caveman cave, presumably to be the coven's boy toy.Yes, it's true, thanks to the lousy Mill Creek transfer I was clueless for pretty much all of that back in 2010. No wonder I thought it was bad!

Truthfully, even in 2026 I wouldn't say it's great. The early scenes where we see the aforementioned knife-on-wig violence and Mario's ex sets a child on fire (to be fair, the child killed her cat and then was shit-talking like "You suck and your cat sucked!" so...okay, I'm not exactly saying the child deserved it but I'm also not not saying it!) remain absolutely batshit and baller, but they're also kinda just glommed on to things and don't fit with the rest of The Witches Mountain. I also found that I wanted more vibes from the film--more surreality, maybe, or more eerie atmosphere. The landscape does a lot of the atmospheric heavy-lifting, and I think director Raúl Artigot could have done a lot more with everything that wasn't a pan across the Pyrenees. 

Unfortunately, my mind still wasn't blown by The Witches Mountain, even though I was hoping it would be. But hey, it's not a bad movie by any stretch! At least I get it now, unlike that total uncultured rube who wrote this blog back in 2010.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT (1975)

Ah, a new year. What a time! Saying goodbye to 2025 and its respective Chippendales wall calendar, saying hello to 2026 and its respective Chippendales wall calendar. It's a time for promises and hope (I know things are hellish out there, just go with it) as we refresh and reflect. I've been doing a lot of reflecting since the ol'...uh, ball dropped and during my reflectin' times I've had some major realizations. The first is that although my brain had me thinking the contrary, I have not, in fact, finished up my Chilling Classics Cthursday journey through the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. Somewhere, someway, somehow, I'd crossed it off the to-do list of my mind. Should I be concerned I'd given it the signed-sealed-delivered-up yours! treatment when the finish line is actually still around 13 films away? It's possible. Likely, even! But hey, I can't be held accountable for lapses like that. It's hellish out there, in case you didn't know. 

My second realization is this: Today is Friday! But you know what, who cares? Do "days" and "time" even matter anymore? I would argue NO they do not, and I'm not just saying that as some weird way to cover up the fact that I am posting a Cthursday post on a Cfriday. Besides, when you take into account Realization #1, this post going out on the wrong day makes total sense. It's a theme, okay.

On the bright side of these Memento moments: hey, Chilling Classics Cthursday is back, hooray! And I'm kicking off my grand return with a little curio called The Legend of Bigfoot (1975), which brings me to my next major realization: 

I think I love Bigfoot?

Honestly, it might not be strictly true, but I can't deny the facts, which are as follows:

-- I've been to the International Cryptozoology Museum on more than one occasion! There I was absolutely delighted by exhibits like...someone's painting of a Bigfoot, or a glass case with a hairball in it and a little placard saying, like, "Bigfoot fur?"

-- I think about that scene in the 1980 film Night of the Demon where the Bigfoot grabs two Girl Scouts by the arms and makes them stab each other to death rather often

-- I watched some documentary a couple of years ago about a Bigfoot maybe committing some murders...? Look I don't remember the name of it but it was good 

-- I finally saw Willow Creek! As a found footage aficionado I was prone to like it and I sure did, especially the scene that seems to be the most divisive: The long sequence in the tent where we just listen to stuff maybe happening outside of the tent. It was intense and a terrific example of how found footage's ability to put the viewer in the midst of the action (or in this case, the anticipation of the action)

-- When RNGesus chose The Legend of Bigfoot for this week's movie, I thought "oh neat" or something along those lines 

So you see, Your Honor, while I never really thought about it all that much, the evidence strongly points to the incontrovertible truth that I love Bigfoot. Again I say: What a time!

As a certified Bigfoot lover (not in a weird way), how did The Legend of Bigfoot stack up? Well, first of all, let's make sure we're talking about the right movie here. Please do not confuse The Legend of Bigfoot with any of these other films:

• The Bigfoot Legend...Lives
• Bigfoot: Beyond the Legend
• Beyond the Legend: Bigfoot Gone Wild
• Bigfoot: The Legend is Real
• On the Trail of Bigfoot the Legend
• Bigfoot: Still Tracking a Legend
• The Legend of Billie Jean

Now that we've established that...The Legend of Bigfoot is a...documentary? Hmm, can a film be a documentary if the approach is straight-up sincere but the subject matter is less so? It's not a mockumentary, but is it then a pseudo-documentary? Is the taxonomy dictated by the proven scientific veracity of the topic? Hold on while I take another huge bong rip and think about it.

Let's just call it a cryptodocumentary for anti-simplicity's sake. In this cryptodocumentary, a wildlife tracker named Ivan Marx finds some big-ass footprints and a ball of unidentifiable hair (gross) and decides to put his skills to the test to search for Bigfoot. 

Marx and his wife Peg hit the road in their red VW Bug and travel all up and down the west coast chasing leads, listening to tales from hunters, "Eskimos," and "Indians" (it was the time, okay), and trying to capture irrefutable evidence that ol' Sassy exists. Yes, somehow the scientific community didn't just give Marx an "oh dip, I guess Bigfoot is real!" when presented with the hairball and plaster casts of the footprints. The nerve! And these same people think I should be vaccinated?? Please. 

Looks super real to me for sure! Science is the worst.

Marx nabs some genuine, bonafide Bigfoot footage in Washington--footage that the scientific community once again refuses to verify. Jerks.

Marx draws Xes and circles on a map that correspond to sightings and stories, and the patterns lead him to conclude that Bigfoot is a migratory creature, and our intrepid couple takes off in pursuit. They travel from the desert to the Redwood forest to the tundra. They hit Oregon, Wyoming, Alaska, and head all the way up into the Arctic Circle. 

Things get trippy at times as Marx temporarily abandons his scientific methods in lieu of a more folklore approach to finding the elusive cryptid; after an aurora light show (the screen kind of oscillates between white and red...?) Marx gets a hot tip from a phantom white raven that eventually leads to a long-distance nocturnal encounter with Bigfoot's bright, shining eyes. They are definitely not headlights!! Nor are they superimposed!! They are Bigfoot eyes. Sadly, Marx is unable to get a better look because come morning, the Bigfoot eyes have "disappeared behind a rainbow."

This causes Marx to wail (à la James Brolin-as-George Lutz) "I feel like I was coming apart at the seams!" and get back to his tracking roots...and man, there is a huge payoff! We are eventually treated to so much Bigfoot footage it's nuts. With extended sequences of a Bigfoot and a juvenile Bigfoot eating grass and kind of splashing in some water, Marx totally dunks on the brief Patterson-Gimlin footage. And believe me (yes, I'm talking to you, science) this is definitely a Bigfoot and a juvenile Bigfoot. It is not a man and his wife in costumes! Sure, the Bigfoot seems more regular-man-sized and not the 8-foot-tall, 500-pound beast that leaves 18-inch footprints as Marx describes. That's just a...uh...a trick of the film. Everyone knows that the camera subtracts 350 pounds and a few feet!

Yeah those vaguely humanoid-shaped black blobs are the Bigfoots. The transfer is pretty terrible ("In the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection?" you shriek. "Say it ain't so!"), reminiscent of the atrocious AI upscaling of Roseanne that's currently on Peacock, wherein no text is legible, background elements are frequently but smears, and elements occasionally look superimposed. And don't even get me started on the extreme cuts and editing! Two minutes have been excised from each episode, which is a-fucking-lot considering the episodes are only 22 minutes to begin with. Jokes are gone, characters are magically transported from one room to another, conversations end mid-conversation, and there are jarring close-ups and framing. Haven't I suffered enough over the years as a Roseanne fan? Does Grok have to take this, too??

Anyway, while it reminds me of that AI upscaling, for the most part the blobby blurring of imagery actually works to The Legend of Bigfoot's benefit as the fakery comes off as less fake if you can't, you know, make out any details. Not that this stuff is fake of course!

The majority of this film--the entirety of which is narrated in voiceover by Marx himself--is nature footage. Some of it is distressing and I'm thankful for that blobby blurring: Goats committing ritual suicide, an injured squirrel limping along, a squirrel mourning its dead mate, animals hunting other animals, the scene of a caribou slaughter by human hunters. None of it is explicitly graphic, but that doesn't make it any less impactful. At other times, the blobby blurring is a bummer because the footage would probably be terrific under more highly-defined circumstances. I want to see the majesty of the massive and metal AF antlers on the caribou and the moose!

"Curio" is indeed the right word for The Legend of Bigfoot. It's an entirely self-serious endeavor composed of equal parts Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, the Tippi Hedren film Roar, and found footage sometimes-almost-but-not-horror. It's as much about Marx and his journey as it is about Bigfoot itself, as his tale weaves in and out of science and folklore and touches on 70s newly-hot topics like environmental awareness, colonialism, and violence against indigenous people. At times, this results in the sense that the entire affair is a little padded on occasion, but there is all that big, beautiful, blurry, blobby Bigfoot footage at the end. Footage, I might add, that the scientific community still refuses to verify! As a certified Bigfoot lover (not in a weird way), I find this completely unacceptable and just more evidence that science has never done anything good more me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to finish this big glass of room temperature raw milk and watch Roseanne! Season 10 I mean!

Crazy trips, must be 2026!

Boy oh boy, you’d think that it’d be some kind of prerequisite to see every notable vintage slasher movie that centers around a specific date or holiday—you know, the most stereotypical kind of slasher movie—if, say, one wanted to start a blog about slasher movies or write/draw a comic about slasher movies or go around telling everyone they encounter about how much they love slasher movies. YOU’D THINK THAT, RIGHT.

Well, you wouldn’t be wrong to think that, but of course thinking that would not take into account my fast-paced and cutting-edge busy lifestyle, planetary/solar alignments over the years, a woman’s prerogative, etc. 

Yes, that’s right, I was referencing myself, specifically about how I only just saw the 1980 slasher film New Year’s Evil in the last 24 hours even though 1) it came out 45 years ago, 2) Final Girl came out 20 years ago, 3) I came out (of my mom)…hmm I’m not exactly sure when, to tell you the truth, because I was mummified in 2009 and I don’t really know how mummy years work. The point is, New Year’s Evil is so basic it's like Slashers 101, and yet I made a comic literally called Slashers 101 without having seen it! This despite the fact that it’s the only slasher movie that stars Roz “Pinky Tuscadero” Kelly...as far as I know. See? "As far as I know"? Man, where do I get off even having this blog!

(PS, yes, Leather Tuscadero was always way cooler but I will take any Tuscadero I can get, especially in a horror movie!)

On the bright side, I’ve now seen New Year’s Evil. On the less bright side, it was only okay. On the even less bright side, it was only okay sometimes. 

It started so promising, too, when the words “Cannon Group” and “Golan/Globus” appeared. If you are anything like me, all of that will get you pumped over the possibilities for action and horror and, though it’s admittedly a long shot, Lucinda Dickey with a can of V8 (where are my Ninja III: The Domination homies at!). I continued to be pumped as the movie began and there was Roz “Pinky Tuscadero” Kelly as Diane “Dee” Sullivan, aka “Blaze,” a DJ/proto-VJ with magenta eyebrows and magenta blush so thick it looked like a couple of magenta Colorforms slapped on her cheeks. Yes, I was immediately drowning in a wave of New Wave: Blaze with her magenta madness, men with black lipstick, women with pink bangs, studded bracelets and chokers everywhere—New Year’s Evil was looking to be the New Wave big sister slasher counterpart to the Eurotrash New Wave gross-out Demons and the naked Trash (get it) New Wave zombie delight Return of the Living Dead. I clutched New Year’s Evil to my magenta bosoms (don’t ask) and told it that while it took us forever to find one another it didn’t matter because our forever was only just beginning.

In case you didn’t know, Blaze is so hot and so cool she was dubbed “The First Lady of Rock” and as such, her duties included rocking in the new year with a live edition of her show Hollywood Hotline in a Los Angeles hotel. She is very busy and important (much like me!) and therefore she has no choice but to kind of ignore her son Derek, who wants to tell her about a part he just won on a television series. Derek is pretty strange, to be honest. And oh, it seems that his father (and Blaze’s husband), who has been “sick” and is supposed to be in Palm Springs, can’t be reached. HMM. 

We are then treated to the musical stylings of a group called Shadow. We will also be treated to the musical stylings of a group called Made in Japan. We will be treated to both musical stylings often, and some songs will repeat repeatedly. What initially seems like a somewhat unique gimmick that renders New Year’s Evil into a quasi-concert film will likely wear on you as you wait for some slasher in your slasher.

Behind her on the stage there are a few seated ladies answering telephones, like some younger, hipper version of a Jerry Lewis telethon wherein viewers can call in and…uh…say stuff, like what they think the #1 song of the year will be. A few moments into the show, Blaze answers a call from someone who goes by the name “Evil” because he’s…you know, evil. He says he’s going to kill someone that Blaze knows whenever midnight hits in all the time zones across America—and the new year is about to ring in for folks on the east coast, oh no!

I would be remiss were I not to mention that Evil uses a voice changer that is so ludicrous I can’t tell whether or not it’s supposed to be funny. Whatever the intent, Evil and the dude from Fulci’s New York Ripper should have teamed up. And yes, I kind of wish I were talking about this on Final Girl After Dark rather than writing about it on Final Girl because I would love to imitate Evil’s phone voice for you.

So in quick order we meet Evil in person, and he looks like a Dollar Tree Jeffrey Combs. He poses as a doctor so that—in a shocking twist of typical horror movie events—he can break into a sanitarium. There he meets a nurse who looks like a Dollar Tree Lisa Kudrow. They find a quiet room, decide to Do It, and then when things get hot and heavy, Evil busts out a switchblade and kills Dollar Tree Lisa Kudrow. He records the murder, and when midnight strikes he plays the tape over the phone for Blaze; he’s all (Evil voice) “See? I told you!” and promises to call with another murder update in an hour.

The police initially dismiss Blaze’s concerns, but when the body of Dollar Tree Lisa Kudrow is found, they decide to let no one else into or out of the hotel. You know, for safety. Meanwhile, Evil digs deeper into his bag of costumes and dons a fake moustache. It makes him look like a Dollar Tree Tom Sandoval, which is really saying something (where are my Vanderpump Rules homies at!). He picks up some girls in a bar, there’s a chase, some switchblade poppin’, some murder, he puts on a priest costume, cure more musical performances.

Derek, meanwhile, has been alone in his hotel room downing pills for his “headaches” (though the actor doesn’t actually swallow said pills and you can see them in his mouth which kind of ruins the movie magic illusion) and getting weird with fabrics and hat pins.

Evil makes his way to the hotel and surprise as completely expected from the moment he is mentioned, he is the killer. Why? What could possibly drive a man to murder, to torment his wife and eventually try to kill her? Well you see, he broke into that sanitarium because he used to be a patient there…but also simply because he hates women! Especially his wife, who has emasculated both Evil and his son Evil Jr Derek! “You castrated me,” says Evil, “And that is not nice.”

Again, I am not sure whether or not New Year’s Evil is meant to be funny…? 

What I am sure of, however, is that this film gets occasionally weird but steadfastly refuses to lean all the way into it, which is a big shame. It leaves people like me a-wonderin’ in a puzzled way when I should be a-wonderin’ in an awestruck way, you know? The slasher bits aren’t compelling—it’s tough to make a “regular guy” an interesting killer in this genre, as made evident by films like The Slumber Party Massacre, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, and He Knows You’re Alone. I’m not saying you have to have a mask, but if you don’t wear one I think you need to go full wackadoodle, like Billy in Black Christmas. I love a bag o' costumes and a fake moustache as much as the next lady, but Evil was way creepier in the few moments when he sported a grotesque Stan Laurel mask.

New Year’s Evil is full of bits-n-bobs that may have been marginally refreshing in 1980, but they’re so rote nowadays that it’s tough to get excited. A killer who spent time in a mental hospital? A killer who hates women? A survivor not finding safety in an ambulance? Honk shoo honk shoo! (That’s a snoring sound, by the way.) There were no shocks, no scares, no surprises, no suspense. Not even any interesting kills to jazz the place up.

Maybe it would have dazzled me if I’d seen it decades ago, who knows. In its opening moments, with all the magenta and studded accoutrements everywhere, I did think that I probably would have loved this movie if I’d brought it home from the video store or seen it at a sleepover or something. But alas, alack, those days are gone and New Year’s Evil is really just something that I’ve seen, if you know what I mean. (“It’s about time, poser!” — you, probably)

Da Doo Meow Meow

Okay yes, I know that technically today should be Chilling Classics Cthursday but Your Honor, circumstances compelled me to move in a different direction. Those circumstances, you see, began with a text message from a pal asking if I'd seen a little 1991 made for TV horror movie called Strays. I had not--in fact, I wasn't even aware of its existence, lawd have mercy--but I was immediately sold on it and wantonly cast aside the movie I was about to watch, which was indeed a Chilling Classic. 

The fact that I was not all that enthusiastic about said Chilling Classic mattered little, such was the powers of the premise, poster, and (p)credits of Strays:

The premise: Feral cats want to fuck shit up! And hello, as I mentioned, it's made for TV. 

Then, there is the cast: Kathleen Quinlan (she's always terrif!), Timothy Busfield (my mom loved him on Trapper John, MD!), and Claudia Christian (she voices a shitton of characters in Skyrim!)

Then, there is the fact that it was written by 70s teen heartthrob pop star/Hardy Boy Shaun Cassidy. I know he's created and/or produced more television series than you could shake a feathered hairdo at, but still!

And finally the poster, which I guess is supposed to be terrifying but if a cat coming at me like that was the last thing I ever saw, I would die so happy.

To that tagline, I say: I sure hope so!

So you see, Your Honor, how could a Chilling Classic stand a chance against this sure-to-be titan of television cinema? I rest my case.

If I were the family in a made for TV horror film, I would definitely not move from the city to country in order to "get away from it all." This is the impetus in many of these movies and it never works out well for the family. After reiterating their hopes (and one spouse's doubts), they spend a day moving and settling in. Then it's a couple of weeks later, and stuff starts happening. Before you know it, the newly-transplanted family runs afoul of witches/Satanists/fertility cults/ghosts/robots/possessed floor lamps/bad children/whatever flavor of evil happens to permeate the bucolic locale. Then, a random handyperson/worker shows up and gets killed by the evil; This is either chalked up to an accident or the death isn't discovered until much later. Later, a tertiary character will be killed by the evil; This is a member of the extended family or a dear friend. Stuff comes to a head, the family makes it out alive. But they must abandon the property, and would likely be financially ruined for years to come. Yay!

It is practically a blueprint for these pictures and I love it. So I was not at all mad when Kathleen Quinlan, Timothy Busfield, and their little kid went chugging down a dirt road in their station wagon. Wife: Excited for the move, ready to get away from that big city living! Husband: Dubious!

Side note, the child was one of those rare child actors who was clearly not actually a child actor. I don't mean this in an Esther kind of way, but rather the kid was barely understandable and just kind of blurbed out her "lines." So it would be like:

Child: Brbbashmleh

Kathleen Quinlan: That's right, honey! It's a blue car.

The house looks so nice and the realtor, Kathleen Quinlan's sister Claudia Christian (I didn't learn any names okay!!) gives them a good deal because the previous owner died. Timothy Busfield is acting as her divorce attorney, so clearly this family likes to keep it (business) in the family.

What none of them seem to know, however, is that the previous owner died 1) by cat attack and 2) wearing a terrible wig. WE SHOULD ALL BE SO LUCKY.

So these things go as these things go. The people we expect to die, die. The people we know will live, live. As always, though, no matter how predictable it may be, it's about the journey--and Strays is a predictable journey! Filled with angry cats.

There is a lot of (absolutely delightful) nonsense involving water and trying to stop the cats with pillows. I don't want to spoil all this absolutely delightful nonsense because it's dumb fun to watch and if you want to watch it for yourself, it's all on the YouTube.

I would have been happy if this movie was ten hours long. It's literally just pissed off feral cats yelling and running and jumping and scratching, aka it was HEAVEN. Strays featured a lot of cat POV shots and also one of my favorite film conceits, which is actors flailing around holding a stuffed animal that's "attacking" them.

Side note, the leader of the cats really did look mean! And I will bet my life savings (almost $7) that the role was played by one (or more) of the cats who played Church in the original Pet Sematary, which released a couple of years earlier.

I wouldn't go near that cat but oh, how I'd want to.

What's that, Your Honor? I'm acquitted and being given the key to the city because of my decision to watch Strays instead of whatever it was that bubbled up from Mill Creek? I knew it! Brbbashmleh.

That's right, honey! If there's one thing we can always believe in, it's the fairness of the US justice system.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE DEMON (1981)

Whether it's because yes, I'm still in the grip of this grippe or whether it's because it is simply his nature, RNGesus did me a kindness this week by selecting The Demon, a South African slasher curio that stars 50-pack King Cameron Mitchell as a psychic ex-Marine. It is the pleasures of life such as this that will see me through this time of plague.

Dig a little and you'll see that The Demon has a plethora of dates attached to it: 1979, 1981, 1982, 1985...for simplicity's sake I'd call The Demon a relic from The Age of Macramé, but a few in situ pop culture cameos put its filming squarely in 1979: namely a marquee showing The Amityville Horror and disco dancers getting TF down to the Lipps Inc tune "Funkytown" (which, incidentally, still slaps). The rest is a matter of release dates and the such, and I leave those kinds of decisions up to the courts, thank you very much.

By the way, those disco dancers are getting TF down at a place called Boobs Disco and I don't know...things weren't perfect but surely society was a little better when your average white folk got TF down regularly, sublimating their troubles by stepping all over a light-up floor instead of all over the lives of everyone else? 

Anyway. A heavy-breathing, hulking maniac breaks into a suburban home, ties up the mother and puts a plastic bag over her head, then absconds with the teenage daughter. The mother survives, but when police have no leads on the daughter after two months, the parents do the only thing they can: they call for the services of retired Marine Colonel Bill Carson, psychic. 

Move over, Sylvia Browne

Carson humbly explains his ESP powers ("Sometimes I get feelings--vibes, as the kids would call them") and gets to work touching objects in the daughter's bedroom. He sketches a few of his related visions and the dad somehow decides they are a good enough lead to go searching for the maniac, whom Carson super helpfully describes as "less than a man, and more than a man."

Most movies would follow this main plotline that features their main star, but not The Demon! Writer/director Percival Rubens dedicates the bulk of the film to a B-plot concerning a teacher I christened 1979 Amy Poehler (Jennifer Holmes) and her cousin as they navigate their love lives while sort-of being stalked by our resident Less-n-More Than a Man. 

Yes indeed, The Demon likes to show off both its Black Christmas influences and its Halloween influences. I'm not really complaining.

Nor am I really complaining about that bulk of the film that many a viewer would likely call "boring." I'm not saying I'm not calling it that, necessarily, but I didn't hate it. In fact, I was rather curious to see how the two plotlines would converge.

Spoiler: they do not! The only thing linking them together is our resident Less-n-More Than a Man, who seems to choose his victims at random. Of course, the majority of his victims are women and his motivations seem to come down to "woman-hating." 

While this and the random excuses for nudity put The Demon squarely into the realm of typical slasher stuff, the film does manage to hide a few surprises up its billowy sleeves. Rubens wisely employs a restrained hand when it comes to showing our Less-n-More Than a Man, but unfortunately this is your standard Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection transfer; The glimpses we do get of the killer are often too dark to really enjoy. It's a shame because he sports some bitchin' gloves that are like Giallo Freddy Krueger specials and I wanted to see 'em in action.

I don't think The Demon rises even to the level of Great Value Slasher, but its surprises and left turns and last ten minutes push it to the level of Hey Maybe Slasher Aficionados Should Check It Out. That's something, right? I mean, a psychic Cameron Mitchell! Boobs Disco! Not even the mighty Halloween can boast that stuff.

Just what the doctor ordered

There has been something "going around" my li'l city and reader, I have caught it! It is some version of A Cold, but I have not been sick in years (nail polish emoji) and this Cold on Steroids is whipping my ass something good. I am vaccinated (and masked) to the high heavens (or the high hells, depending on which news channels you watch) and I know this does not make me impervious like John Travolta as the boy in the plastic bubble in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, but it does add insult to this injury. The same goes for my "treatment plan," which includes mainlining my late gramma's patented home remedy: onion sandwiches. (Great at driving away germs and paramours alike!) They ain't done shit except inflate my onion budget more than is reasonable!

(Edited to add: I tested negative on Friday but after noticing an actual fever I tried again a bit ago for funsies and sure enough, at long last I have finally been caught in Miss Covid's evil web. Fuck this shit! I'm so annoyed. Perhaps this--and only this, surely!--is the reason those onion sandwiches are failing in their duty.)

Last night, I sat upon my couch all wrapped up and a-wondering what to do with my time. I've been too tired to stay awake, too messed up to sleep; freezing cold and burning up simultaneously; trying to think with a head full of cotton wool and prone to bouts of vertigo. And then, in this time of trouble, Mother Tubi came to me, speaking words of wisdom:

Howzabout an early-aughties made-for-cable horror film that reunites LA Law alums Harry Hamlin and Susan Dey?

So I said sign me the eff UP and gave Disappearance (2002) a whirl and you know what? Mother Tubi never misses. 

I fully cop to the fact that all the onion fumes floating around my apartment may have influenced my already illness-addled brain, but I was so into this movie. Then again, it was written and directed by Walter Klenhard, who also wrote an directed another of my favorite made-for-TV thrillers (Baby Monitor: Sound of Fear starring Josie Bissett of television's Melrose Place) so chances are it literally is just that good.

Pater Harry Hamlin and step-mater Susan Dey are hauling the kids through the Nevada desert for a little family bonding time. They make a stop at a time-honored horror movie location: the dusty gas station with a vaguely menacing attendant, then have some lunch at another time-honored horror movie location: the dusty diner full of flies and sun-burnt weirdos. They are in search of a town called Weaver, a long-abandoned mining village that is no longer shown on maps. In an unexpected twist, the sun-burnt weirdos deny they've ever heard of this "Weaver," never mind that it used to exist.

But this doesn't stop our family, who fires up their brand-new Ford Excursion™ (this shit must have been sponsored by Ford, I swear, it feels like a commercial for the Excursion™ at times) and head down a long, dusty road deep into the desert--despite being warned to "stick to the roads, lads pavement." 

Why stick to the pavement when the Ford Excursion™ can handle any tough terrain

Sure enough, they eventually find Weaver, which indeed seems to be a tiny ghost town. They explore a bit, taking photos of musty, dusty buildings while noting that it's like all the people who live there...wait for it...disappeared. You know, food left on the tables, calendars from the 1940s, etc. They also find some footage that gives us a wee found footage moment of previous visitors to Weaver being pursued by someone...or something, dun dun dunnn.

Spooked, they go to leave but their Ford Excursion™ won't start. They stay the night in one of the buildings and I will admit: It was my turn to be spooked. In the middle of the night, Harry Hamlin grabs a flashlight and heads upstairs to investigate a noise down a dark hallway and it was a surprisingly effective sequence. I've said it time and time again, noises in the dark are all I really need for a horror movie to scare me and dagummit this worked. 

The next morning, the Ford Excursion™ is missing altogether. Was it stolen by a someone...or something? The group splits up, and Harry Hamlin and A Boy take off across the desert, hoping to find help back at the dusty diner. Things get a little weird from here with more and more added to the mystery. Susan Dey falls down into a mineshaft and is pursued by someone...or something: We get a lot of heavy breathing and POV shots, but we never see what exactly it is. A Boy disappears after cresting a sand dune. There's a rundown cemetery that looks like the one outside Goodsprings in Fallout: New Vegas but there are fresh graves. The dusty town clearly has a secret, so I just kept falling deeper and deeper under Disappearance's spell.

Ultimately there are a bunch of theories as to what is what. 

Is the mutated offspring of neutron bomb testing site victims living under Weaver like some kind of southwestern CHUDs? (Side note, in the pits of this grippe I can totally hear a commercial now, boasting that we should "Come try our brand-new southwestern CHUD sauce, only during 2-for-1 Fiesta Days at Applebee's!") 

Is it the ol' "haunted ancient Indian burial ground" gag? (That is literally what they call it, so don't @ me!)

Is it aliens?

In the end, I don't think it makes a lick of sense. But 1) Maybe my soft-n-silky smooth sickness brain simply couldn't parse what was going on, and 2) Whether it made any sense or not, I do not care.

Because I had a great time! The tropes at work, as well as a passing nod to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, mean it hits many a-beat you've heard before but you know what? That's okay In fact, that's more than okay when you are feeling like CHUD crud. Tropes? Susan Dey? Harry Hamlin? A Town with a Secret? That is pure comfort, a better balm than even onion sandwiches sorry, gramma) or the freedom and safety you feel while driving a Ford Excursion™. As always, Mother Tubi knows best.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: SLASHED DREAMS (1975)

Given its title and the fact that the DVD's cardboard sleeve boasts "Starring: Robert Englund," I was surprised that I'd never given Slashed Dreams a go. However, now that it's in my rearview mirror I see that skipping it was my past self doing me a kindness. Thanks, me!

I came down with a big case of the uh-ohs right away, with the title card looking like something added hastily in iMovie when production realized they'd forgotten to include an opening credits sequence.

Turns out, I wasn't so far off the mark. The film was released in '75 as Sunburst, but Englund's Elm Street fame and the rise of the home video market gave an enterprising distributor a bright idea circa 1985: Give it a quasi nightmare-slasher title and slap some salacious artwork on the VHS box. With this cover, one wonders how many horror fans nabbed it at the video store with, you know, expectations.

Would those same horror fans have rented it if the cover still bore the art from the film's original poster?

At least their expectations might have aligned with what they got: a holdover hippie flick about finding yourself, feeling feelings, and, uh, learning how to simply be mind over matter about things, even if one of those things is rape. Yes folks, we've got another Chilling Classics outlier (à la Death Rage and Medusa), a not-horror movie that's been dumped in yon Creek de Mill. 

Mind you, even if you were to watch Sunb--uh, Slashed Dreams knowing what it actually is, there's a good chance you'd still end up disappointed. It is a slog-and-a-half, padded beyond belief with full five-minute scenes of people walking, or driving, or sitting. It's not so much "poorly paced" as it is "not paced." Like, somehow it completely defies everything we know about time as it moves ever-forward. It's kind of admirable, in its own way.

We begin at A College, where Jenny receives a letter from her old friend Michael, who has ditched the trappings of The Man to go live in the woods as many a headstrong young fellow has done throughout the ages. Unlike those headstrong (and ultimately doomed) young fellows you read about in non-fiction, Michael seems to be thriving. After breaking up with her boorish, wealthy boyfriend Marshall, Jenny goes on a trip to find Michael along with Robert, another childhood friend who might turn out to be her One True Love. 

During their journey, they make a pit stop at a small town general store, where they find The Proprietor (that's his name in the credits!) performing for an audience of no one in his back room. He then sings them a song, which is because The Proprietor is portrayed by the legendary 1920s crooner Rudy Vallée, and if you're going to get a Rudy Vallée cameo in your film you'd might as well let him sing.

Jenny and Robert continue on their way and we get so many scenes of them hiking and walking. SO MANY. There is a brief brown bear encounter, and then more walking and hiking. All of these types of scenes are set to ENTIRE tunes...warbled...by Roberta Van Dere. These songs sound like something that didn't make the cut on any volume of the Time-Life Singers and Songwriters series, but you might find them on, say, a "Songwriters and Singers" compilation CD sold for $5.99 at a truck stop. You know, they're like the musical equivalent of the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. When they do feature a singer you know by name, the song is a z-side of the absolute shittiest quality imaginable. No I would never buy one or more of those CDs why do you ask!!!

The point is, these songs will make or--oh hell, they're just gonna break you.

Also I love that the picture quality is so bad, this screencap looks like an impressionist painting.

They arrive at Michael's cabin, but Michael is nowhere to be found. Also, calling it a "cabin" feels generous, as this place is literally made of sticks and it's got giant, gaping holes in the roof. It kind of makes Jason's lean-to in Friday the 13th Part 2 look positively luxurious. 

As Robert and Jenny are engaging in a little platonic skinny-dipping (they are truly an iconic will they-or-won't they couple!!!) when they're happened upon by two local Cletuses, Danker and Levon, played by Sunburst co-writers David Pritchard and James "not Stacy" Keach. (Fun fact: James "not Stacy" Keach was once married to Holly "not Judy" Collins!)

They're cartoonish and vaguely menacing in the way all post-Deliverance local Cletuses are, making threats to Robert and weird, leering threats to Jenny ("I'd like to dive for her sponge!"). Sure enough, they show up at the cabin later that night and slap around and rape Jenny. Then we get lengthy scenes of Jenny crying and traumatized while Robert goes outside to be sad that he couldn't/didn't do anything to help her.

Finally, Michael comes home to his cabin and hey, it's the actor everyone who rented Slashed Dreams was waiting for: Robert Englund!

He comforts Jenny by offering her some homemade herbal tea and drawing an analogy between her sexual assault and his poison oak: The best way for him to not go crazy because of the itching is to move beyond it and ignore it. Or hey, maybe this traumatic ordeal was just her fate and she can learn something from it! Errrr, he gets points for actually talking to her and trying to help, I suppose, which is more than we can say for Robert. But it's sure something to watch him dole out this "advice." It's even worse to see Jenny say "I feel so--" and get interrupted by Michael with "LET IT GO."

Robert then decides he's going to go after the Cletuses, and I bet all those video renters were expecting the "revenge" part that horror movies of this ilk deliver. Well, he finds the Cletuses arguing whether or not they should head back to the cabin, he gets in a tussle with Levon...Michael and Jenny show up (seems like a great idea for her to be there), the Cletuses run off, and Robert is like "Well, that was dumb." 

We get another song, another skinny dip (by all three pals this time), Jenny reading a bit of Khalil Gibran to perk herself up, and then she and Robert merrily walk off into the...you know, the sunburst.

Do I recommend Slashed Dreams? Fuck no! And yet...

And yet I find it to be a fascinating little curio. As I mentioned, it's some holdover hippie shit--I mean, the director's end credit is "Created by James Polakof" for fuck's sake--but it's decidedly a 1975 take on those remnant late-60s peace and love ideals, rendering them all about loving yourself. The self-help movement emerged into the mainstream and was a bonafide boom in the 70s, and if nothing else, Sunburst comes off as an earnest (if severely misguided) attempt at joining the conversation. 

In terms of actual cinema, it's difficult to parse what, exactly, the filmmakers (that is, the creators) were trying to do. By '75, Deliverance, Straw Dogs, and The Last House on the Left were all a couple of years old--was this feeble effort meant to be a self-help rebuttal to those? That the way to resolve these kinds of terrible events is not through violence and revenge, but through self-reflection? Is it simply a cash-in mash-up? Is it an outta left field bridge between those films and 1978's I Spit on Your Grave? 

Even more interesting, perhaps, is the way it predicts some tropes of the slasher boom that would arrive before long, but it does so in a sort of negative-image light. There's a scene in the small, sorta run-down country grocery store, but it's a wholesome place instead of a decrepit place you're wary of, à la The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. We get a Crazy Ralph-type doomsayer in The Proprietor, who warns Robert and Jenny to beware of "strange things" in the woods and advises them not to go...but he's also wholesome and nice, and he sings for them and offers them licorice candy. Early on, there's a classroom scene that predicts what themes the movie will touch on, reminiscent of the "FATE!" classroom scene in Halloween and others. Robert and Jenny are literally headed to a cabin in the woods--not to drink and screw (though they do consummate their relationship eventually!!!!) like proper horror youths, but rather to be closer to nature and "find themselves." There's even a tiny handful of first-person POV shots as the local Cletuses spy on our skinny-dipping heroes that would have been at home in Friday the 13th.

Again, it's impossible to decide whether or not any of the slight (and I do mean SLA-HIGHT) whiff of horror in this thing was even intentional beyond the awful plot device that leads to Jenny being immediately healed by the power of positive thinking. If nothing else, against all odds Slashed Dreams is the worst movie I'll be contemplating for some time to come.

Chilling Classics Cthursday: THE REVENGE OF DR. X (1967)

The last thing I expected to happen whilst watching the 1967 film The Revenge of Dr. X is that I'd quickly begin asking myself some of life's deepest, most philosophical questions. You know, stuff like "Would it be better to be dead than to have to watch this movie?" and that sort of thing.

Mind you, it didn't start that way. In fact, when I read the synopsis on the cardboard Chilling Classics sleeve, I was immediately looking forward to it as it sounded like it might be "fun."

A NASA scientist is ordered to take a vacation due to showing signs of stress whiule working on his latest missile project. Traveling to Japan, the scientist decides to indulge in his botany hobby and begins experimenting on a Venus Flytrap he brought along on the trip. Using radical techniques and falling into madness, the scientist eventually creates a plant creature that feeds on flesh and blood, which then sets off to find food in the form of the people of a nearby community.

See? "Fun," right? And technically, the description is totally accurate. But descriptions and descriptions realized can often be leagues apart, and in the case of The Revenge of Dr. X, there are leagues and leagues and leagues separating the two. I think I knew this the moment the title screen appeared, when I immediately had what was a decidedly sinking feeling:

On the bright side (???) of things, the opening credits are actually for another film entirely: a 1969 Philippine film called The Mad Doctor of Blood Island. None of the actors in the credits are in the movie that follows. In fact, the film I watched has such a convoluted shit-show of a history that it took a while to figure out exactly which film I watched. It's sometimes called Venus Flytrap, it's sometimes called Body of the Prey, sometimes The Devil's Garden. The release year might be 1967 or perhaps 1970. It's purported to be based on a lost Ed Wood story, and whether that's true or not the very idea that it might be ought to give you a clue about the nature of this thing.

Of course, none of that would matter a lick if this movie was enjoyable to watch and not a turgid plod. I could easily get over the lack of any revenge or any doctors X if it wasn't about 3 minutes of good stuff trapped within 94 minutes of dullness so dull that again, left me wondering if I'd be better off dead than trying to get through it.

The soundtrack, if such a term even applies, is library stock music trash. One moment it's Bach's Toccata and Fugue (you know, the classic Dracula's castle organ shit), then we get ten minutes of xylophone madness followed by some of the worst stereotypical "Japanese" music imaginable followed by a toddler day care marching band. It's all over the place, and the place is hell.

But the stock footage isn't restricted to your ear holes! There is plenty for your eyes to feast on, including NASA mission control and the same footage of a rocket blasting off that MTV started with and used forever. Hey man, don't get me wrong--stock footage can be cheeky fun! And this is, for about five seconds.

I was rather surprised to find that our leading man James Craig had a lengthy career and massive filmography (dating back to the 1930s) because as Dr. X Bragan he delivers one of the worst performances I can recall. He's boorish, shouting virtually every line and often facing away from the camera completely. The "madness" he supposedly descends into doesn't feel any different than his days in the office at NASA. Maybe I'm missing the point and it's a brilliant performance showing that stress is stress and it's all the same, no matter if you're talking about rockets in Florida or plants in Japan. Yeah, that must be it! At any rate, the most positive things I can say about him are 1) he kind of looks like the guy at the office you think looks like a Silly Putty Clark Gable, and 2) his voice sorta reminded me of Charles Napier, whom I love.

A fucking hour into this padded-as-no one's-business crap we get the world's saddest attempt at a Frankenstein lab scene,  complete with a "lightning" storm, an open roof, a body-hoisting, and the best thing about it, a couple of bzzt bzzt machines.

Bragan has been trying to prove that all human life originated with plants, and to do this he splices a Venus Flytrap with some deep sea plant that is only a deep sea plant so the movie can work in a scene with some topless ladydivers. Say what you will about Bragan's ideas/methods/everything, he does create a plant creature that we finally get to see after the hour mark comes and goes, taking all of our joy and hopes and dreams with it. The plant monster has giant Venus Flytraps for hands and feet, and it kind of waves its arms around sometimes and makes weird noises. 

This movie, whatever it's called, was distributed by Japan's Toei Company, so a dude standing there in a bad costume waving his arms around sometimes isn't completely unexpected. But even so, it's bottom of the bottomest-barrel stuff. I will say that the plant creature accounts for about two minutes and fifty seconds' worth of the three minutes of fun in this disaster. The other ten seconds belongs to one of the shots near the very end, which is a goat standing on what is supposed to be the edge of a volcano.

As you can tell from all the screencaps, especially the color of the sky in that last one, this movie lingers in the depths of public domain heck, which is how it ended up one of the worst offerings in the Mill Creek Entertainment 50 Movie Pack Chilling Classics 12-DVD Collection. (Honestly, typing out her full name gives me more happiness than this film did.) I'd say it's theeeee worst offering in there, but hey, I've still got like 15 movies to go. Chin up, kids, this could very well just be the worst Chilling Classics Cthursday so far!