Tag: 1979

Directed by John Ballard [Other horror films: N/A]

Sometimes known as, and perhaps only known as, Friday the 13th: The Orphan, this low budget movie from the late 70’s has it’s place. I don’t quite know where that place is, but providing it exists, well, this movie belongs there. The Orphan isn’t a bad film – there are some strong emotional portions and nice use of flashbacks and nightmares – but it’s far more a dry drama than a straight horror, and it doesn’t pick up near enough toward the end to help things out.

As such, the basic story is sort of interesting. A young boy David (Mark Owens) loses his mother and father, and so his aunt on his mother’s side (Peggy Feury) comes to care for him. She’s a strict woman, and also likely quite racist. See, David’s father went to Africa a lot, and brought back plenty of little African things, along with an African friend named Akin (Afolabi Ajayi).

Well, over the course of the first hour of the film, his aunt refers to his father as “bringing him up around filthy things” (Akin was literally standing right there), gets rid of Akin, tries to raise David “properly” (not speaking out of turn, going to church, that tripe). When the cook Mary (Eleanor Stewart) tries to help David, she’s yelled at for not knowing her place, and she’s also fired. Oh, and for good measure, the aunt kills David’s dog (it might have been an accident, but it was also entirely inexcusable).

You might be able to tell that so much of the film is drama. It’s not disengaging, but it is drama, and while you could say that around an hour in, it’s properly built up to something, I don’t really think the finale is grand enough to excuse how long it took to get there.

For a younger actor, Mark Owens does okay. But let’s be honest brahs – very few people here do well. The only performance I actually liked was Afolabi Ajayi, and that’s because I thought his character was dope. Peggy Feury played an uptight and atrocious woman well, I guess, and Eleanor Stewart had her moments, but really, Ajayi is where it’s at.

When it got to more horror-centric stuff, The Orphan wasn’t bad. David had a nightmare in which he’s brought into a really horrible orphanage and has his tongue cut out. Quality. A woman is covered up with a blanket and stabbed, and another person is attacked by a monkey and shot with an elephant gun. All of this is to say when the film veered in that direction, it could be rather entertaining.

Also, I wanted to give kudos to one of the songs that pops up three times throughout the film, being ‘I Need to Live Alone Again’ by Janis Ian. I’m not the biggest Janis Ian fan (I only know a handful of her songs, such as ‘At Seventeen,’ ‘Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking),’ and ‘God & the FBI’), but she has a beautiful voice, and ‘I Need to Live Alone Again’ is a really peaceful song, perfect for a slow-moving drama as so much of The Orphan is.

I also want to add, though this has little relevance to anything, that I have seen The Orphan before, but under rather terrible circumstances. There was a video on YouTube of the film, but it was stuttering. It was like watching a flipbook moving quickly. Each image was still, and so movements were jerky. Truth be told, while I watched the whole thing, I got a terrible headache early on, and so remembered very little of it going into watching it this time around. It’s a good thing I didn’t remember, as it’s possible I would have waited longer to revisit this one.

And that might not be entirely fair, as The Orphan isn’t without it’s strong suits, but it really can be a dull film at times, and the finale isn’t near enough to make up for it. It’s worth seeing if you want to see a woman be racist and kill dogs (that was a harsh scene, on a side-note), but it’s not a film I could see myself watching again anytime soon.

5.5/10

Directed by Joseph Ellison [Other horror films: N/A]

This is a movie that I’ve now seen around four times. It’s consistently a decent watch, though always tends to hover around average. Likely worth a watch if you’re a fan of 70’s horror, Don’t Go in the House is a rather dark film, and while I never loved it, it’s not without it’s strong points.

Though this has somewhat of a reputation for being overly violent, anyone who has seen this movie can attest to the fact that, for the most part, it’s pretty tame. Of course it does deal with some heavy topics, such as child abuse and the mental instability that it could lead to, but the violence itself is pretty much restricted to a single scene, which is probably one of the stand-out moments of the movie.

Which isn’t to say, of course, that the rest of the movie wasn’t good. In fact, I think that this rewatch has given me a bit more appreciation for the film than I generally have. It’s not that I ever disliked this one, but as a kid, I will admit that I probably found segments of this one a bit dull. Even now, some scenes dealing with Grimaldi feel more uncomfortable than anything else, but the same could be said for Perkins in Psycho, which this movie seemed to be influenced by, so it’s not that big a deal. It’s just fair to say that, even though many of the non-action sequences possess some charm (such as that classy disco scene), this isn’t the most action-packed movie.

With a few exceptions, most of the cast members who stood out never did much else in movies. Of course Dan Grimaldi later went on to be in The Sopranos (a show that I’ve not personally seen, but generally have heard solid things about), and he does reasonably well here playing a socially awkward character. Energetically fun Robert Carnegie (who also apparently popped up in Mother’s Day a year later) was, as stated, fun. His character seemed a legitimately decent guy (infidelity aside), and I dug all of his scenes.

Others who deserve a quick mention include the priest, played by Ralph D. Bowman, a stylish salesman played by David McComb, a heavily intoxicated woman played by O’Mara Leary (her constant slurring cracked me up), and lastly, Johanna Brushay, who was the controversial death somewhat early on in the movie (and also the only one here to throw any nudity our way, for whatever that might be worth). None of these people had much of a career past this film, but they definitely add something here, especially Bowman, who’s character is one that, for some reason or another, has always stuck with me.

Special effects don’t really play that heavily into this one. Sure, we see someone set on fire, which at times looks okay, other times shoddy, and we get some pretty basic corpses, but nothing really stands out much in this department. Far more important, or at least more indicative of the time period, was the funky soundtrack.

Early on, Grimaldi’s character listens to some disco, and then some funk rock piece. Both of these were decent, but we get the best music during the disco sequence, which was just fun overall. Personally, I enjoy some Bee Gees and KC and the Sunshine Band (“I Betcha Didn’t Know That” just slaps), and the music here, with songs such as “Struck By Boogie Lightning” (L’Ectrique) and “Late Night Surrender” (Jeree Palmer) are pretty damn catchy. Legit adding some of these tracks to my iTunes.

That some of this can come across as a time capsule really does give this movie a bit of a boost. It doesn’t make the movie that good, in my view, but it does give us a little bit more than just a gritty, late 70’s outing. Don’t Go in the House isn’t one of those films I go out of my way to watch (evidenced, I’m sure, by the fact I’ve seen this only four times in 15 years), but it’s not a bad time. It just fails to stand out near as much as I’d hope.

7/10

Directed by Fred Walton [Other horror films: April Fool’s Day (1986), I Saw What You Did (1988), Trapped (1989), Homewrecker (1992), When a Stranger Calls Back (1993)]

This film is one of those classics that I think, especially in recent times, has been re-evaluated a bit. Not that When a Stranger Calls is a poor film, but that tonal shift it takes twenty minutes in can come across as complete 180, and I’m not sure if the film ever 100% recovers from that.

I do think the finale, let’s say the final 15 minutes, are pretty solid, and while not quite as suspenseful as the opening, still enjoyable in it’s own right (and not to mention, the ending possesses an extraordinarily effective scare, so kudos there). Of course, everyone pretty much knows how fantastic the beginning is, and it really sets the film up nicely with strong suspense and quality atmosphere.

When the film switches gears, though, and falls into an almost procedural crime-drama, following a private investigator’s (Charles Durning) attempts to find the escaped killer of the opening (Tony Beckley, in his final role before his death the following year). These sections aren’t without merit, but it doesn’t give much in the way of horror that you might expect following the stellar opening.

Durning is definitely solid in his role, though, and is an actor I’ve enjoyed in the past, having been in films such as Dark Night of the Scarecrow and Sisters (Sisters isn’t a movie I really care that much for, but I did find his performance in that film certainly a positive aspect). Here, you can really get the sense that his character wants revenge, and has some mildly amusing conversations with Ron O’Neil’s character about the nature of this justice.

Though only focused on in the opening and finale, Carol Kane gave a great performance, and I sort of wonder how she’d do if given more screen-time than she had. The aforementioned Beckley was pretty solid, though I do wish we learned a little bit more about why he is the way he is, but who’s to say the unknown causes aren’t more terrifying?

I think the film drags a bit once it takes a more detective/crime route, which I think is the moderately common consensus. It doesn’t devastatingly harm the film, but it is very noticeable, so while I’d definitely recommend checking out When a Stranger Calls, if you leave thinking the opening and finale far outshine the middle of the film, I wouldn’t be deeply shocked.

6.5/10

This is one of the films covered on Fight Evil’s podcast. If you’re curious as to what Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I think about When a Stranger Calls, listen below.

Directed by Murray Mintz [Other horror films: N/A]

What could have been a promising early slasher of the 1980’s was ultimately little more than a rather dull crime/drama flick with elements of horror sprinkled in far too sparingly.

Cardiac Arrest, what with it’s feel, had the sensibilities of a 70’s flick, and while I don’t have an issue with 70’s crime flicks (The Laughing Policeman and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three are both films I enjoyed), I can’t say that much of this wasn’t utterly dry. I liked the main detectives well enough, but that wasn’t enough to keep the story interesting.

As it was Garry Goodrow and Michael Paul Chan did fine as the two main detectives, and I sort of liked the way they worked together, but Cardiac Arrest was 80% crime, 15% drama, and 5% horror, and that might be generous. I found the story, for a crime movie, decent, but it was very far from engaging.

Unfortunately, the poster for the film foreshadows a lot more promise than what the film is ever able to deliver, because save one or two scenes, this barely counts as a horror film. It hurts more because this is one that I’ve been interesting in seeing for at least six years – truth be told, past a certain point, I wasn’t expecting much, but I was still somewhat disappointed.

The really sad thing is that, if this wasn’t put out there as a horror film, it would have probably made a decent television pilot, like The Streets of San Francisco’s hour-and-a-half pilot that dealt with Satanism. But as a movie that’s marketed toward horror fans, Cardiac Arrest was just way too dull and meandering.

5/10

This was covered on Fight Evil’s podcast, so if you want to listen to Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss Cardiac Arrest, by all means, enjoy.

Directed by John Frankenheimer [Other horror films: The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996)]

I knew next-to-nothing about this late 70’s ecological horror film before I started it. In fact, I didn’t even know it was ecological, so you know I was going in blind. I like a lot of stuff about this film, but a few factors keep it from being an overly solid movie, such as some special effects issues and the run-time.

Robert Foxworth (The Devil’s Daughter, It Happened at Lakewood Manor, Deathmoon, and Damien: Omen II) did great as the main character, and I rather liked most things about him. Talia Shire (Connie from The Godfather movies), playing his wife, rather humanized him at times, and also did well in some emotional scenes. Armand Assante was fun too, playing a Native American of strong conviction. Lastly, Richard Dysart was also solid, though his character wasn’t particularly likable.

There’s a lot going on in this one that needs to be unpacked a bit. A dying Native American community in Maine dealing with the racist attitudes of the management of a paper mill and, of course, the authorities who back the prominent businessmen as opposed to the minority community. Also, ecological damage done by the paper mill to cut the costs of operation, which happens every single day in the USA. This, along with the casual racism (and toward the beginning of the film, poor black communities in rat-infested tenements, and the racist, greedy landlords who owned them was taken aim at also) show this a movie of strong social conscience, which I deeply appreciated.

Problematically, the horror aspects weren’t all well-done. The design for the mutated bear didn’t do that much for me, but worse still was it’s overly jerky, fake movements. When it didn’t move, it was almost tolerable, but in action, I thought it looked rather ridiculous. Also, the movie, at about an hour and forty minutes, feels too long. I suspect some would say the beginning is boring, but I was pretty engrossed in all that went down (including the look into the paper mill, which I found rather interesting). It wasn’t until the horror really started up as the focus that I felt like it was dragging, as ironic as that sounds. If ten minutes were cut, and they shorted the somewhat disappointing conclusion, I think it would have ran a lot smoother.

Kudos to the scenes, though, in which the main characters are searching for clues at a murder scene in a heavy downfall of rain. I really liked that sequence, and though there was no horror present, it did feel rather suspenseful in it’s own way. That, and the paper mill sequence, felt pretty unique to this era of movies in my opinion.

There are a lot of things I find in Prophecy to enjoy, and overall, it’s definitely a film I could see myself watching again, but it doesn’t quite get to the level I wish it did. As the movie stands, I’d probably say that Prophecy is somewhere around average, but depending on your particular tastes, it may waver from below average to just above. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’d get much higher, but you never know.

7/10

Directed by David Schmoeller [Other horror films: Crawlspace (1986), Catacombs (1988), Puppet Master (1989), The Arrival (1991), Netherworld (1992), Possessed (2005), Little Monsters (2012), Puppet Master: Blitzkrieg Massacre (2018), Death Heads: Brain Drain (2018), Carnage Collection – Puppet Master: Trunk Full of Terror (2022)]

I’ve wanted to see this one for years, and while it certainly had that odd vibe I was sort of expecting, along with a really interesting story, ultimately, I didn’t end up loving it.

With little gore or nudity to add to the film, Tourist Trap got by on the unique feel of the story. There were some intense and creepy scenes throughout, though it’s not without dull moments from time-to-time. The atmosphere was solid also, but unfortunately it doesn’t make up for the drawbacks of the film.

These drawbacks come mainly from the acting and the antagonist. None of the performances here were particularly stellar – if I’d have to name the best, I’d probably give it to Chuck Connors (and given his vast IMDb filmography, especially compared to the others in the film, that’s probably not much a surprise). Jocelyn Jones didn’t do that poorly, and toward the end, gave off a “this situation is driving me crazy” Marilyn Burns feel, but her overacting rubbed me the wrong way. To be fair, Connors’ was a bit much at times also. Nobody else in the film really stood out one way or the other.

The antagonist was a bit of a surprise, but aspects of the character didn’t do it for me, mainly the voice. It’s beyond me to explain exactly what I didn’t like about it, but suffice it to say that while he looked creepy, his voice sort of ruined much of the effect for me. If he had just not spoken, been more the silent killer like Jason or Michael, I think he’d have been quite a bit more menacing.

Tourist Trap is an interesting movie, and certainly has its place as a cult classic. It’s not surreal or anything, but I did occasionally get a Phantasm vibe (which came out also in ’79) – that said, given how there’s nothing similar whatsoever in the plots or stories, that may just be me. The creepy vibe is solid, and the opening sequence pretty freaky, but overall, I don’t think this is one that I’d go out of my way to revisit. It’s not a bad film, just sort of ehh.

6/10

Directed by Don Coscarelli [Other horror films: Phantasm II (1988), Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994), Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), John Dies at the End (2012)]

In many ways, Phantasm comes across as a mess. There’s not much really explained, and the ending is pretty jarring and confusing. But what it might lack in comprehension, it makes up for in almost everything else. The upsides of Phantasm? Firstly, most of the actors do a great job. Angus Scrimm, as The Tall Man, just dominates every scene he’s in. A truly fantastic performance, despite not many previous roles. Still, there’s more than just Scrimm. The three protagonists, Michael, Jody, and Reggie (played by Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, and Reggie Bannister, respectfully) have a pretty compelling friendship, and specifically, Baldwin and Thornbury are decently believable as brothers. Even when annoyed with Michael’s antics, you can tell that Jody still loves him. And they both share the fear their parents were turned into dwarf zombies, so there’s that.

Which brings us to the creativity of this movie: a seemingly alien being turns corpses into zombie dwarfs and has flying metallic spheres is not something commonly seen, to say the least. So that’s fun. Need I mention the theme? It’s damn brilliant, and up there with the best themes of the genre (Halloween, The House by the Cemetery, and ANOES, for example). And the atmosphere? That dreamy, hazy, disjointed feeling? Nothing does it better than Phantasm. This might not sound like a great movie, but I’ve met very few horror fans who don’t adore it on varying levels. Not everything makes sense, but when the final product comes out this well, that hardly matters. A movie that stays fresh with each re-watch.

9/10