The Beast Within (1982) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 11, 1982

I had torn through, and enjoyed, Edward Levy's fast paced source novel, so I walked into a 1983 screening of The Beast Within with some degree of high expectations. I also knew/recognized actor-turned Poe scholar Paul Clemens from his reoccurring role on Quincy, M.E., where he effectively (at least as I recall it) played a young man that suffering from the misunderstand and misrepresented condition known as Tourette's Syndrome. Which just so happened to have captured the attention of both online discourse and, inevitably, outrage from reasons that have nothing to do with the condition and everything to do with the spectacle.

Actor turned screenwriter Tom Holland, who would go on to pen the better than it has any right being Psycho II, as well as writing and directing Fright Night, among others, struggles to craft a coherent and understandable cinematic story from Levy's multi-viewpoint and multi-generation novel. It almost works, and might have worked, if director Philippe Mora had handled the material with a more serious attitude and less tongue in cheek contempt.

Although it falls short of being impactful as a straight horror film, it still has an energetic and atmospheric vibe that will keep the more forgiving viewer(s) entertained and somewhat engaged.

It also has a terrific score by the late, great Les Baxter.

Fright Flicks - Trading Cards #44

Fright Night (1985)

Evil Ed living his best vampiric life, albeit for only a night or so. Maybe...?

Isle of the Dead (1945) / Zombies on Broadway (1945) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - March 10, 1946

RKO double-bill featuring Boris Karloff headlining another fine offering from producer Val Lewton, Isle of the Dead. Bela Lugosi is the selling point of the second feature, which, despite the blurbs shouting EERIE! and SCAREY!, was actually of comedy featuring the duo of Brown and Carney. A pair of Abbott and Costello wannabes that never quite made it. So it goes.

Isle of the Dead was directed by Mark Robson, who I know best for directing Earthquake (1974). Zombies on Broadway was directed by Gordon Douglas, a journeyman workhorse who would go on to helm the better received, and far more fondly remembered, giant ant feature THEM! (1954).

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #8

Datalog: Approx. 0:200 Hours, Day 2

An Alien grows inside a living organism, then explodes from its chest - a chestburster. If it was gestating inside Newt or Hicks, then this would be the end of the species. But if an Alien somehow got inside someone or something else...

In the theatrical cut the 'something else' is a dog, in the assembly cut I think it might have been a cow. Or maybe it was still the dog. I don't remember...

But, man, they offed a kid and a dog in this movie? No wonder audiences turned on this supposed 'final' entry.

Demon [God Told Me To (1976)] - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 9, 1977

While I think The Stuff might be my favorite Larry Cohen movie, apologies to both Q: The Winged Serpent and It's Alive, it is God Told Me To that gets my vote for his absolute best. Although it is sporting its alternate title of Demon here. This movie is smart, challenging, and abrasively, almost shoddily, off-kilter as only writer-directer-producer Larry Cohen at the very top of his game could be. 

A series of mass killing events plagues New York City. Although the perpetrators do not know one another, each and every one share the same calm, cool, and almost serene demeanor during and after their killing spree. They also give the same reason for what made them decide to start killing people... "God told me to."

One can understand why the distributor opted for a title change.

Tony Lo Bianco is the deeply religious cop on the case and what he learns is, well, earth shattering. The calm ambiguity of the film's final line of dialogue and fade out image might sooth one viewer's nerves every bit as much as it will shatter another's.

Yeah, God Told Me To is Cohen at his absolute best, I think.

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #43

Poltergeist (1982)

Co-written and produced by Steven Spielberg, DIRECTED by Tobe Hooper.

The Godsend (1980) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 6, 1980

While I do remember seeing the paperback edition of the novel by Bernard Taylor this film is based on, this is another that I have to see. Might get around to it at some point, but have no idea when that point will occur.

Alien 3 (1992) - Trading Card #7

Datalog: Approx. 0:1200 Hours, Day 1

The bodies of Newt and Hicks had to be cremated. I insisted on it. Andrews, Clemens and the others reluctantly went along with my demand. They conducted a makeshift funeral service on the catwalk over the prison's huge furnace. And when the bodies were dumped into it... I lost my composure.

Again, points for so thoroughly committing to Newt and Hicks being dead.

Deranged (1974) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - March 5, 1974

Although there is a great deal to interest me about this fictionalized dramatization of the Ed Gein story, I have yet to see it. Scuttlebutt about the film is that it hews pretty darn close to the facts of the actual case. The same cannot be said of a more recent, and therefore somewhat controversial, one.

Screenwriter and co-director Alan Ormsby, who was coming off of Children Shouldn't Play With Death Things, would go one to have a pretty successful career as a screenwriter. Penning the scripts for Bob Clark's films Dead of Night (also 1974) and Porky's II: The Next Day (1983). In addition to those, he would also write My Bodyguard (1980), the remake of Cat People (1982), and The Substitute (1996).

I know Roberts Blossom, who played the Gein inspired character of Ezra Cobb, best for his brief and quite memorable appearance in John Carpenter's Christine. "And there'll be no bringing her back here, cause I'm sellin' this shit to buy me a condo." Oh, and he was also in some pretentious arthouse flick called Home Alone (1990).

This was also an early project for future special make-up effect legend Tom Savini.

Fright Flicks - Trading Card #42

Day of the Dead (1985)

Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty), having gutted a specimen like a fish, demonstrates to Sarah (Lori Cardille) how the reanimated dead's insatiable desire to consume 'living' human flesh looks to be fueled by primitive neurological instinct, rather than by any kind of hunger or nutritional need.

"It's working on instinct. On deep, dark, primordial instinct!"