Zombie Island Massacre (1984)

Oakland Tribune - October 27, 1985

On the lower right hand side of this ad, clipped from the Oakland Tribune, are the listings for the screenings in San Francisco. At the very top of the listings is the Electric Theater. That is where I saw Zombie Island Massacre.

It also marked my first of what would be many trips to an actual, honest-to-goodness grind-house movie theater. Each week offered a different triple bill. A mix of whatever current movie was about to end its theatrical run, some moldy oldie, and the occasional first run low-to-no budget exploitation flick. Zombie Island Massacre is a lackluster example of the kind of first run flicks that 'debuted' at the Electric.

I regret not staying for at least one of the other two films on the bill. If my memory serves me well, those might have been Terminal Island and The Howling. So it goes.

The Strange House, Volume 1 - Review

When an anomaly in the design of a detached house is noticed by a prospective buyer, he brings it to the attention of a freelance occult writer he knows. The writer, from whose perspective we are seeing this story play out, is intrigued about the anomaly, but doubtful there is anything occult about it.

The writer starts questioning her doubt after an architect friend looks at the plans. He notices that there are all manner of weird anomalies in the detached house's design. This gives rise to some strange and unsettling ideas and theories from him about how and why those anomalies are there...

When I started the first volume of The Strange House, I had no idea of what I was in for. The core concept of a house having a sealed room, one that has no windows or doors allowing for either ingress or egress, was vague and confounding enough to get me curious over whether there would be a natural or a supernatural explanation behind it.

Having finished that first volume, I still have no idea of what is or is not going on with, or in, that damn detached house. I just know that I have to read the second volume, so I can find out what, if anything, will happen next. 

Even though it is made very clear that there is something very wrong and very weird going on here, whether it has anything to with the house, or if it is just overactive imaginations gone wild, remains to be seen.

All I can share, for now, is that the first volume of The Strange House grabbed my attention and gave my nerves a wee-bit of rattling. I recommend it.

Alien Resurrection (1997) - Soundtrack

If you have ever wondered what The Poseidon Adventure might have been like if a xenomporh had happened to be on the ship, this movie provides the disappointing answer.

John Frizzell's score for the film is solid, but unexceptional. Nothing in it ever grabs or holds my attention. Which is why I chose to pass on an upgrade when an expanded edition of the score was released by La-La Land Records in 2010.

Alien (1979) - Trading Card #3

The Damnation Game by Clive Barker - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - May 10, 1987

While I do remember reading this book, I remember very little about it. Not surprising, since, as I type the words you are reading at this very moment, the time of reading would be some 37 years ago.

Alien 3 (1992) - Soundtrack

The Alien trilogy, back when it could qualify as one, paralleled Romero's Dead trilogy, back when it also could qualify as one, to a certain extent.

Night of the Living Dead and Alien were both commercial and artistic successes that had distinct influences on their respective genres. The same applies to their sequels, Dawn of the Dead and Aliens, which amped up the action and expanded the scope of the fictional worlds in which their stories took place.

Then came Day of the Dead and Alien 3. Both were dark and downbeat films that did not sit all that well with audiences or critics. While Day is my favorite of Romero's zombie films, Alien 3 is not my favorite Alien movie. While there are plenty of things I like about Alien 3, they do not come together to form a satisfying whole. The film is unfocused and clunky. The result of studio interference, no doubt.

Elliot Goldenthal's score is one of those things I like about the movie. Just not enough to switch out this original soundtrack album 1992 release for the expanded, remastered edition put out by La-La Lands Records in 2018. So it goes.

Stanley (1972) - Review

"People just don't understand friendly rattlesnakes."

Tim Ochopee (Chris Robinson) returns from Vietnam wanting little, if anything at all, to do with people. He keeps himself sequestered in an isolated shack buried deep inside the Florida everglades. His only company being the many snakes he has managed to befriend and now cares for. 

Enraged when his beloved snakes start being hunted and killed, or captured and exploited, Tim decides to have his pet rattlesnake Stanley do a little hunting and killing of his own.

The sole reason Stanley was able to slither its way into my movie collection was due to its disc being packaged with Horror High. Thus creating the kind of exploitation double-feature package one might have seen at the local drive-in, way back in the mid-1970s.

Stanley is the second of four killer snake movies I have childhood memories of. Number one, though, is 1973's Sssssss, which was a syndication staple. Then comes Stanley, because I remember being freaked out by one of its TV spots. Third is 1976's Rattlers, while fourth is 1981's Venom. This aside completes the memory lane portion of my review.

Coupling Stanley with Horror High does make sense, though. Both came out within a year of one another and both were distributed by Crown International. That means there was a better than average chance they played as an actual double-feature at some point.

Producer-director William Grefé, in the bonus features, shares how he was inspired to create Stanley after seeing the success of Willard. That the film's story came to him in a vivid dream. Maybe that story is true, maybe it is not. But the similarities between Stanley and Willard go beyond them just sharing a namesake title.

First is the antagonists all having a personal connection with protagonist's deceased father. Second is the tragic death of one the protagonist's beloved pets driving him over the edge. In Willard it was the white rat Socrates. In Stanley it is Stanley's mate Hazel and their children.

Wait... I'm no herpetologist, but I do know that reptiles are not known for being all that doting as mates or parents. But, it's just a movie... and a knock-off of Willard. So this makes the snake Stanley the reptile version of Willard's rat Ben, who just so happened to get his own namesake movie. Go figure.

Stanley could best be described as a film with an interesting character that is in dire need of a study. Star Chris Robinson does what he can with the paper thin material he has to work with, but there is precious little he is ever given to do. 

Although this movie predates Jaws by three years, think of the dramatic boost it could have gotten if Tim, after discovering Hazel and the children have been killed, pours his heart out to Stanley via an Indianapolis story-style monologue, connecting the slaughter with something he either did or witnessed in Vietnam.

Wait, there is a moment in the film that comes very close to doing that. It is when Tim shares the dinner table with Hazel and Stanley, feeding them mice while he has a vegetarian meal. He voices his wish that they could become vegetarians like him. That they would not have to kill another animal in order to eat. The opportunity was right there. So close. So. Very. Close. Too bad they missed it.

Which leaves us with the slaughtering of the antagonists. There is a great scene involving quicksand, one not so great bit involving a couple in a bed, and a laugh out loud moment where co-star Alex Rocco, while preparing to jump into a snake-infested swimming pool, looks around at everything but the pool he's about to jump into.

Then there's that freeze frame. That glorious and goofy freeze frame. Oh, and Alex Rocco was not acting in that pool. The poor man was terrified of snakes and Grefé did not pass on the opportunity to exploit that for bigger and louder screams from the actor.

Having given Stanley a quasi-reluctant revisit (I remember watching it once on Creature Features, when John Stanley was the host) I doubt I will be making another. So it goes.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) - Trading Card #5

Eileen Treacle

August 1825, one year after Blair was reborn as the town of Burkittsville. Eleven witnesses testified to seeing a pale woman's hand reach up and pull ten-year-old Eileen Treacle into the shallow waters of Tappy East Creek. Her body was never recovered. For thirteen days after the drowning, Tappy Creek was clogged with oily bundles of sticks and the water soon became fouled and unusable.

Front: A mid-19th century illustration of the Eileen Treacle incident.

Alien (1979) - Newspaper Ad

San Francisco Examiner - May 20, 1979

While I had to wait for what seemed like an eternity for Alien to open at a theater or drive-in near me in the East Bay in June, an exclusive San Francisco engagement rolled out in May. No fair!

Necroscope by Brian Lumley - Review

The very first thing I had to do after finishing Necroscope was listen to the theme to Lifeforce (1985). Why? Because there was no better way for me to ride the insane high that this novel's bonkers and breathtaking amount of chaos, carnage, and confounding metaphysical twists and turns had just gifted me with. 

Although this novel predates Tobe Hooper's delirious and over-the-top vampire opus by some three or so years, Lifeforce is far closer in style, tone, and approach to Lumley's pulpy joyride of a novel than it was to its credited source material, which was a cerebral science fiction novel by Colin Wilson with the pulp sounding title The Space Vampires.

Necroscope tells the stories of two very different men. One is a Soviet necromancer named Boris Dragosani, who has been given the power to yank and rip secrets out of the dead in exchange for helping awaken a long-imprisoned vampire. The other is Harry Keogh, a young man born with the ability to commune with the dead in a far kinder, gentler and constructive manner. Their powers will, in time, bring them face-to-face in a bloody conflict to decide whether the world will be saved or subjugated.

As much fun as it was for me to read, there were a couple of drawbacks to Necroscope I feel need pointing out. 

First, if a natural or realistic style of writing and storytelling is your thing, then Necroscope will not be for you. Brian Lumley cannonballs into the deepest end of the Romanticism literary pool and haves at it. You will either go with the theatrical fireworks, or you won't.

Because nobody, and I do mean nobody, in this book acts or sounds in anyway like a real human being. Even as far back as 1982, when the book was first published in the UK, and 1988, when it was first published in the United States, Lumley's prose would have read as melodramatic, over-the-top, and purple as all get out.

That is, admittedly, a highly subjective drawback.

Second, and far more damaging and not at all subjective, is the questionable sexual politics that are displayed in the book. The female characters throughout are either feisty, aggressive harlots or adoring, supportive mother figures. Which is... problematic, at best.

I am sure some might argue that Lumley was purposeful in using cartoonish embodiments of the Madonna-whore complex in Necroscope, but even that read is a troublesome one. Because, in the story, the female characters only exist to either support and nurture Harry Keogh or to tempt and torment Boris Dragosani.

So, yeah. That is a drawback that will be a contemptuous deal-breaker for quite a few readers. Yet I still managed to have fun reading what, at heart, is just James Bond vs. the Army of Darkness.