Category: Reviews

Directed by Edward L. Cahn [Other horror films: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), The She-Creature (1956), Voodoo Woman (1957), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959), Invisible Invaders (1959), Beauty and the Beast (1962)]

I’ve seen this late 50’s zombie movie once before, and while I remember enjoying it a bit more that first time around, I still think it’s a decent little movie. Nothing stellar, and nothing to upend what we all consider the pre-Night of the Living Dead zombie classics, but a perfectly fine film.

Zombies of Mora Tau follows a group of people going after diamonds, but these diamonds have some undead protectors. Naturally, many in this group are largely skeptical, and if there’s one thing in the movie that bothered me, it’s how long many of these people just disbelieved the claims of those who’ve lived in this area for years out of hand, even after experiencing astonishing events, such as a man being stabbed without showing any pain.

That type of disbelief isn’t uncommon in horror, but after a few experiences, you’d think that something would give. Here, though, even the granddaughter (or great-granddaughter, I forget) of an older woman who’s known of zombies most of her life doesn’t seem to take her great-grandmother’s words seriously until the very end. It’s slightly off-putting.

The aquatic zombies here (for the diamonds are on a coast in a shipwreck) are fun, though I have to say that none of the underwater scenes really thrilled me. To be sure, few of the scenes that took place on land thrilled me either, but we’re talking about a pretty old zombie movie, and one that doesn’t exactly move with a brisk pace.

Something also has to be said about how weak the zombies were. Sure, if they get their hands on you, you might be screwed (though if you’re underwater, evidence shows that you’ll survive 90% of the time), but all you need is an open flame or a flare gun, and you’ll be golden. These mothas move slowly, and they’re not exactly what I would label as threatening.

Both Gregg Palmer (The Creature Walks Among Us) and Autumn Russell were fine, if not generic. Speaking of generic, Allison Hayes (The Unearthly, The Hypnotic Eye, The Disembodied, The Undead) had that annoying trait of fainting whenever she was scared. I don’t blame Hayes’ for it, and she did get one of my favorite lines in the film (“You’re already dead, you just don’t have the decency to lie down”), but neither of the women in this movie have the chance to give it their all.

Well, young women, that is, because I really liked Marjorie Eaton (Monstrosity, The Attic, Night Tide) here. She was a feisty woman, and pretty much in the right about everything. I would have liked to see her have a bit more to do, but in a way, she’s like the oracle who warns people off a path, only to know that they’ll do exactly what she says they shouldn’t. Morris Ankrum (Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman, Giant from the Unknown, Beginning of the End, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Giant Claw) and Joel Ashley both appeared, Ankrum being the more interesting of the two, but neither one really stood out that well to me.

I mean, Zombies of Mora Tau can be a bit sluggish, and I don’t think any part of the film comes close to being as enchanting as portions of I Walked with a Zombie did, but it’s not a bad way to spend an hour and ten minutes. It’s a digestible zombie movie that follows the expected path, and if you want a taste of some pre-Romero zombies, giving this a go isn’t likely to ruin your life.

7/10

Directed by Joe Danford [Other horror films: N/A]

Okay, this is an interesting one.

Weekend of Fear has a pretty generic plot – a young woman (Mikki Malone), following an argument with her fiancé (Tory Alburn), finds that she’s being stalked by a mysterious man (Kenneth Washman). And that’s it – it’s a short film, running at about 65 minutes, and much of it is Malone’s character trying to hide from Washman’s, all the while wondering what the threatening man wants.

Based on that plot, Weekend of Fear doesn’t have much going for it, that is, unless it was overly suspenseful, and I hate to say it wasn’t. It’s the execution of that plot that makes the movie stand out more. It doesn’t make the movie good – it just makes it noteworthy.

What’s also noteworthy is the fact that this was a lost film for a long time. I watched what seemed to be a VHS rip on YouTube, so how this was released on VHS at one point, yet was lost for decades, is beyond me, but there you go. So lost was this film that, even now, after it’s been unearthed since June 11th, 2021 (the date of said YouTube video), it has only 22 votes on IMDb, and watched by only 19 members of Letterboxd.

So we have a previously-lost black-and-white film with a somewhat basic plot, and the way they chose to do the dialogue gives it an extra notable feature. See, most of the dialogue here is first-person narration, being the thoughts of the main character (Mikki Malone). A couple of other characters have their thoughts examined, but it’s 98% Malone’s.

What dialogue isn’t first-person thoughts is obviously dubbed afterwards, and it’s always awkwardly done. There’s a “conversation” at the end of the film that doesn’t feel remotely like a real conversation because of this.

It’s an odd, clearly lower-budget film. I appreciate that it has a regional feel, and seems to have been filmed in California, but that doesn’t make the film itself any better. Even at 65 minutes, it felt like it was dragging, and the suspense definitely felt muted, partially, perhaps, because of the way they went with audio (not that there was much in the way of dialogue, and without first-person narration, this could have been a silent film).

Even another thing worth noting – while I do think this can classify as a horror film, it’s also very much a psychological thriller. Technically, I know there are people out there who don’t think Psycho is horror, which I think is a stretch, but this movie is one that I could see that case being made with better justification. I think some of the sequence with the woman hiding from the man, and portions mostly in the latter half of the film, can move the needle a bit toward horror, but as always, it’s up to each individual viewers (and for what it’s worth, IMDb currently labels this ‘horror,’ whereas Letterboxd labels it ‘thriller/mystery.’

And speaking of which, the mystery behind why this man is stalking the main character is laughably ridiculous. We find out toward the end of the film exactly what’s going on in a lengthy monologue by a character we didn’t even know up to that point, which is always a good sign. It just felt goofy, and even goofier is that final sequence, and a quick camera zoom and freeze-frame to play us out.

Mikki Malone (in her sole role before a string of pornos in the 1990s) does okay here. She certainly looks frightened at times. Other times, though, she looks bored, and if I had to read the script for this one multiple times, I can understand that. I’ll give it to Kenneth Washman that he looks threatening with a knife. Ruth Trent did add some amusement toward the end, but that’s not to say it was a great performance.

Weekend of Fear is a fascinating little movie, but I don’t think it’s a good one. To be fair to the film, I don’t hold it against them that they didn’t want to film a traditional people-talking-to-each-other movie, and veered in another direction, but it’s also fair to say that I don’t know if that was a stylistic choice or a choice made for them by some sort of budgetary constraints.

It doesn’t really matter – Weekend of Fear, even at it’s short runtime, just drags too much. It’s not exactly terrible, but I think calling it an underwhelming experience is more than fair.

5.5/10

Directed by Richard Blackburn [Other horror films: N/A]

I’ve seen Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural before, and I didn’t care for it. The fact that I was a teenager probably had something to do with that, and I likely wasn’t in a place where I could appreciate a slower, more sensitive movie like this one.

Well, after revisiting it, I have to say that I still don’t particularly care for it. It’s true that I can at least admit that I appreciate what it was going for, and certainly, I know the movie has its fans and generally positive reception (insofar as much as I hear this one being brought up), but I can’t say that I had a good time with it, because I didn’t.

Honestly, while the movie’s interesting, and the basic idea of a young girl going to a creepy town filled with vampires and seduction is one potentially worth exploring, I find much of the film so damn tedious. I wasn’t exactly falling asleep or nodding off, but more than once, I felt myself trailing off. That may say more about me than it does the film, but either way, this just isn’t my vibe.

I do like the end, though. To clarify, by end, I mean the final two sequences. That random all-out battle between the vampires and the werewolf/vampire things done in almost flash-freeze style was off-putting to the extreme, but afterwards, for the final couple of minutes I thought the movie showed promise that I’d not seen much of up to that point.

To be fair, I do think that Cheryl Smith (Laserblast) does a good job as a naive, religious kid. I certainly don’t fault her performance for my dislike of the film. I didn’t entirely care for Lesley Gilb, but that has far more to do with her character than it does her performance. The only other moderately relevant performance is that of Richard Blackburn’s (also the director of this film), and I think they could have done a bit more with his character had they wanted to.

There’s no doubt that this movie would definitely appeal to some. It’s not exactly a coming-of-age film, at least not in my mind, but it definitely has elements of that, and portions of the film can be quite creepy. The whole movie, in fact, feels dream-like, and the atmosphere is generally on point.

Despite all that, I keep going back to the fact I was bored for a lot of the film, and dangerously close to becoming disinterested. I can definitely understand why I didn’t care for the film the first time I saw it, as it’s an acquired taste, and after revisiting it with fresh eyes, I can say that it’s a taste I’ve still not acquired.

5/10

Directed by Jack Weis [Other horror films: Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)]

I wanted to like Crypt of Dark Secrets, and aspects of it were decent, but large sections of the film were slow as all hell, and it was generally a bit of a slough to get through.

Here’s what I enjoyed, though, about the film: the setting, being the swamps of Louisiana, was great. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – swamps are underutilized in horror. I imagine filming in a swamp would be a nightmare, but boy howdy, what beauty. Much of the film here takes place on a haunted island in the middle of a swamp, and if that doesn’t scream stellar setting, nothing else could.

I also appreciate how the basics of this film can’t help but remind me of “The Legend of Wooley Swamp” by the Charlie Daniels Band. See, in that song, an ornery old man, who had a bunch of money, lived alone in a swamp and was killed. Here, we have a younger man (though still with 15 years experience in the military, serving in both Korea and Vietnam), and when three people hear about the money he has stored up there, they go to kill him and take his riches. I’d argue that the song is a hell of a lot more fun, though.

At this juncture, I did want to briefly talk about one of the main characters, played by Ronald Tanet. As the guy living on a haunted island with a decent chunk of money, I was consistently amused by how little emotion this guy showed throughout the film. I sort of get it – if you’ve been a soldier for almost twenty years, I can imagine not having the capacity to care much about anything once you’re out, but this guy was like a blank slate. It may well have been intentional, but having a focal character with absolutely zero emotion was impressive.

Things take a turn in the second half of the film, though, after the three ne’er-do-wells (played by Butch Benit, Harry Uher, and Barbara Hagerty) successfully get the money they sought, and things slow to crawl. To be fair, it had been sluggish before, in the way that some 70’s films suffered from, but once we get the origin of the snake-woman Damballa (played by Maureen Ridley) in a drawn-out eight minute sequence, I was outtie.

Certainly some elements past that point are fine, but I have to admit I was a lot less invested, and it didn’t help that on two different occasions, we had scenes of a nude, or nearly nude, woman dancing for minutes on end. One of the final scenes was a three minute dance sequence, and I just didn’t really think that was necessary. I was painfully reminded of Snake People, and Snake People is a movie I try to think about as little as possible.

Wayne Mack was the closest thing to a traditional main character here, and I don’t really think he classifies. Still, his performance as a folksy police lieutenant was solid. I’ve already spoken a bit about Ronald Tanet; his performance was void of emotion, but that’s not all bad. I wasn’t wild about Maureen Ridley, but she could dance in the nude with the best of them. Really, the only other performance worth mentioning is that of Harry Uher’s, and it’s possible that Uher stood out solely for the fact that he’s Cajun, and had that Cajun accent I rarely hear in horror films.

It can also be fairly said that along with the movie being slow and occasionally torturous to get through, there’s not a ton of horror. There’s a lot of potential, of course – anytime you have a woman that can turn into a snake on a haunted island in the middle of a swamp, that’s called potential – but I don’t think the movie lived up to it at all, which was disappointing. There was some suspense toward the end, but much of the film seemed like conversation after conversation, and perhaps the best sequence was the literal blood money that briefly haunted the three punk bitches.

In summary, Crypt of Dark Secrets (which didn’t have a crypt in it, nor am I aware of what the dark secrets were, or who was keeping them) was a slow and tedious time with a handful of decent scenes. I do tend to think it’s better than Weis’ later film, Mardi Gras Massacre, but given the set-up, this is one that I wish I liked a lot more.

5.5/10

Directed by Mick Garris [Other horror films: Critters 2 (1988), Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), Sleepwalkers (1992), The Nightmare Begins Again (1993), The Stand (1994), Quicksilver Highway (1997), Riding the Bullet (2004), Desperation (2006), Bag of Bones (2011), Nightmare Cinema (2018, segments ‘The Projectionist’ & ‘Dead’)]

Ah, the smell of fresh anger in the air.

I’ve never cared for the 1980 rendition of the classic Stephen King novel. Sure, it’s one of the most well-known and highly-rated movies in the genre, but I never felt strongly about it. I don’t hate it, but if I were told I had to pick 500 horror movies to bring with me to a desert island, I’m not remotely joking when I say that Kubrick’s The Shining wouldn’t make the list.

This 1997 television mini-series perhaps would, though. Spread over three episodes (each one about an hour and a half, coming in at a total runtime of four hours and 32 minutes), The Shining is a story that takes it’s time to breath. It takes its time to work through the story, and touches on many of the elements that make the book a solid read.

I’m not going to harp on the 1980 movie – much like The Haunting, this isn’t a remake of the 1980 film, but another adaptation (and one that actually had the involvement of Mr. King). Comparing the two adaptations is pointless, and even a tad mean-spirted, and not something I have any interest in doing.

I also want to add that at the time I first saw the 1980 film, I had not read the novel. In fact, I’d seen the movie multiple times before I read the book, and the one time I’ve seen this mini-series was also before I read the book. And you know what? Even before reading the novel, I preferred this mini-series. It’s a better adaptation of the source material, no doubt, but the bigger point is that I have more fun with it, point blank.

Given that this is a mini-series that lasts over four hours, The Shining takes its time setting the characters and ideas up. Much of the action doesn’t really start until the second and third episodes, but I think that works out fine. Plenty of other Stephen King-based mini-series (Storm of the Century, The Stand) had similar routes, and I appreciate that they didn’t try to cram too much in, and didn’t rush things.

I thought Steven Weber (Crawlspace, Farm House, Desperation) did great in his role, as did Rebecca De Mornay (The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Mother’s Day). Surprisingly, even Courtland Mead did well, and I don’t generally care for child actors. My favorite performance might be that of Melvin Van Peebles (Jaws: The Revenge), though – not only is his portrayal of Hallorann great, but he comes across as so likable.

Other small performances did well too – Wil Horneff (Ghost in the Machine) often had an ethereal feel to him, and it worked well, along with Pat Hingle (Sweet, Sweet Rachel, Not of This World), despite just having two scenes of note, also making a good impression. Stanley Anderson had some good portions toward the end, and we even randomly got Shawnee Smith (The Blob, I Saw What You Did, Saw) popping up as a waitress. In fact, I was so surprised to see her that I didn’t immediately realize who it was – it was only as the credits ran that I realized, and then rewound the film to confirm.

It’s true that not everything’s amazing. Some of the CGI can look a bit off, such as those topiary animals. The first sequence, with Jack, wasn’t bad, because it was subtle, but once we actually see them on the prowl, the effects are questionable. Portions of the wasp nest sequence had the same feel. Hell, early on, we even see a boom mic in a window’s reflection, which is something I was surprised to see make it through.

None of that really impacts the mini-series much, though. The heavy focus on Jack’s alcoholism and his slowly deteriorating mindstate is far more important to me than the CGI flaws here and there. I’m just happy that there’s a version of this story that I actually enjoy, because – and this may surprise some – I’m not even a big fan of the novel. After watching this one again, though, perhaps I’m in due for a re-read.

I know that it’s an unpopular opinion, but it’s how I truly feel. I thoroughly enjoy this adaptation of the story more than the 1980 movie, and if you’re someone who just wants to see a solid mini-series, then I think this is well-worth checking out.

8/10