DEADTIME STORIES (1986)

 

(a.k.a. FREAKY FAIRY TALES; a.k.a. DEADTIME; director/co-screenwriter: Jeffrey Delman, who cameos as “Strangling Man” in “The Boy Who Cried Monster” segment. Co-screenwriters: J. Edward Kiernan and Charles F. Shelton.)

 

Review

Plot: This four-microtale, fairy tale-themed anthology revolves around a sleepless boy, murderous witches, a jogger stalked by a werewolf, and four psychos inhabiting the same house.

In the first story, DEADTIME’s wrap-around work (“The Boy Who Cried Monster”), a sleepless boy (“Little Brian”) won’t go to sleep, forcing his impatient Uncle Mike to tell him off-the-cuff and oft-pervy-version fairy tales. “Boy” is a solid, fun envelope-work, one that provides a not-surprising but well-executed finish for the film.

 

Uncle Mike’s first fairy tale, “Peter and the Witches,” revolves around a young slave (Peter, played by Scott Valentine), who’s torn between his duty to two witches (who seek to resurrect their dead sister) and a beautiful young woman (Miranda) they must kill to achieve that.

Like “Boy” this is a well-edited and shot microwork, with good acting (especially Anne Redfern and Phyllis Craig, in their only cinematic roles, as witches Florinda and Hanagohl).  Lisa Cain, stuntwoman for many films including WOLFEN, 1981, played “Living Magoga,” Hanagohl and Florinda’s resurrected sibling.

 

“Little Red Runninghood,” the second tale, is less focused than its preceding segments. In it, a beautiful young woman (Rachel) is accidentally given the wrong meds for her grandmother at a pharmacy, meds meant for Willie (a lycanthrope who uses them to prevent him from werewolfing out). This leads to an inevitable “Red Riding Hood” crisis for all involved.

While sometimes funny, clever, and effectively twisty, its overlong sex scenes between Rachel and her boyfriend─which flesh out DEADTIME to feature-length, but also undercut “Runninghood”’s overall humor and pacing do the rest of DEADTIME an injustice. It doesn’t ruin the movie but it’s a glaring lag in this otherwise worthwhile flick.

Matt Mitler (BASKET CASE 2, 1990) played Willie.

 

In “Goldi Lox and the Three Baers,” three fugitives from the law─two of them escapees from Saints Preserve Us Home for the Hopelessy Insane─and their driver flee to their old Amityville house and discover that a virginity-obsessed and equally murderous telepath (Goldi Lox) has taken up residence there.

“Goldi” is a ridiculously funny, fresh take on the “Three Bears” fairy tale, one that’s not quite iconic, but─like most of DEADTIME─clever, knowing, with a wink-at-the-audience, genre-true sense of humor. The dialogue, editing and over-acting are spot-on, transcending DEADTIME’s limited budget.

Melissa Leo (RED STATE, 2011) played Judith “MaMa” Baer. Kevin Hannon played Beresford “Papa” Baer. Timothy Rule (LURKERS, 1987) played Wilmont “Baby” Bear. Cathryn de Prume (TRUE BLOOD: “F**k the Pain Away,” 2013) played Goldi Lox.

Overall, DEADTIME is worth watching, provided you like 1980s cheese and humor, aren’t a fairy tale purist, are okay with “Runninghood”’s sex scenes-lag and enjoy watching non-professional actors (many of the players only have a film or three to their respective credits) and are in a silly mood. The filmmakers clearly knew how to effectively guerilla shoot, getting the most onscreen bang for their limited cash─that, at least for this viewer, impressed me. Just don’t expect it to win any awards.

THEM (2006)

 

(a.k.a. ILS; directors/screenwriters: David Moreau and Xavier Palud).

Review

Plot: Creep-about sadists toy with a couple in their isolated country home.

Based on real-life Romanian murders (a couple was stalked and killed by three teenagers), THEM is a promising French thriller that goes quickly awry. The lead actors’ performances are great, even real reactions sometimes (actress Olivia Bonamy, claustrophobic in real life, crawled through narrow tunnels). The set-up pre-terror scenes are well-written, there’s palpable sense of isolation and unease throughout the film, but the all-flight-little-fight characters are dumb, even for a stalk-torture-kill film. At several points, they could’ve easily finished off a killer or two after knocking them down, but what do they do? They run. After the second time, I stopped caring about the characters, knowing how this was likely to go. More than an overlong hour later, it finally happens. . . all style, little substance, with a great, bleakly hilarious end-shot of one of the main characters.

DON’T LISTEN (2020)

 

(a.k.a. VOCES; streaming/Netflix movie; director/co-story source: Àngel Gómez Hernández. Co-screenwriter: Santiago Díaz. Co-story source: Victor Gado.)

Review

LISTEN is an overlong and mostly by-the-numbers Spanish spook house-possession film. A couple (Daniel and Ruth), with their nine-year-old son Eric, move into a house to renovate and sell it. When Eric starts hearing voices and drawing disturbing pictures, his parents become concerned. They hire a child psychologist, kicking off a number of unnatural deaths. This prompts Daniel and Ruth to hire two paranormal specialists, an old man (Germán) and his daughter (Sara) who have their own tragic pasts they’re dealing with.

LISTEN is a decent flick if you’re not looking for anything original, with laid-on-thick drama, spooky camera shots, solid acting, bold-not-shocking-deaths, and one effective twist near the end that may floor those not paying attention to what’s going on. It also helps if you don’t mind a film with lots of lag scenes, story-effective pacing sacrificed for the sake of atmosphere. If you’re not sick of this movie by its finish, stick around to the end of its credits for the crappy-looking sequel it leaves an opening for.

LAKE OF THE DEAD (1958)

 

(a.k.a LAKE OF THE DAMNED; director/screenwriter: Kåre Bergstrøm)

Review

In August 1958, a group of longtime friends head to a lakeside cabin to visit another friend, Bjørn Werner, who’s disappeared. Bjørn’s sister (Liljan), in this group, fears something has happened to him. Others, whose professions range from psychoanalyst to lawyer, dismiss Liljan’s fears.

When they arrive at the lake and cabin, Bjørn and his dog (Spot) are nowhere to be seen. The cabin door seems to open as if of its own accord, but the friends shake it off. With them is a local constable (Bråten), who helps them investigate Bjørn’s disappearance. Bråten tells them about the legend of the lake, cabin and the cabin’s former occupants, a hundred years ago─Tore Gråvik, a man with a wooden left leg, lusted after his sister, and when she took up with another man, he killed them before drowning himself in the lake. Since then, the story goes that whoever stays in the cabin will become possessed by Gråvik’s malevolent spirit.

The friends debate what to do next, each of them representing and stating their professional outlooks and making accusations, even as further weirdness occurs, e.g., a recurring, distinctive footprint around the lake and several characters’ efforts, some sleepwalking, others hypnotized, to drown themselves in the lake.

Is someone puppet mastering the situation to hide something about Bjørn’s disappearance? Or is the lake (whose idyllic shots are paired with Gunnar Sønstevold’s melancholic, restrained soundtrack) and its surrounding area haunted by Gråvik and others?

This seventy-seven-minute, black and white Norwegian film, based on André Bjerke’s 1942 mystery-horror novel (he wrote it under the name Bernhard Borge), is a visually striking, excellent work, with sharp, moody cinematography (courtesy of Ragnar Sørenson) and equally sharp editing (Olav Engebretsen). Arne Holm’s well-timed sound effects further LAKE’s effectiveness. Its use of well-acted characters-as-avatars-for-debate-points helps elevate LAKE to greatness, placing it next to spook house films like Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1963) and John Hough’s THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973), as does Bergstrøm’s screenplay and direction.

LAKE’s players include source-novel author André Bjerke as magazine editor Gabriel Mørk.

LAKE is worth your time if you appreciate black and white films that ably mix atmospheric, lots-of-talking mystery punctuated with spooky events and elements, striking visuals, and offbeat endings. You might figure out what’s going on─it’s not difficult to do─but there are enough red herrings that, with a changed scene or two, it could’ve logically gone other ways as well. This is one of my all-time favorite spook house films. Director/screenwriter Nini Bull Robsahm’s remake was released in 2019.

CUB (2014)

 

(a.k.a. WELP; director/co-screenwriter: Jonas Govaerts. Co-screenwriter: Roel Mondelaers.)

Review

In this above-average Dutch/Flemish film, a boy scout troop, shepherded by two scout masters (Kris and Peter) and one of the scoutmasters’ girlfriends (Jasmijn, played by Evelien Bosmans), head into the woods for a weekend trip. When the site they’d reserved, located near a town (Casselroque, an homage Stephen King’s fictional Castle Rock), is made unavailable because of two go-kart-riding thugs (Marc and Vincent), the scout troop goes deeper into the forest.

One of the scouts is a twelve-year-old boy named Sam with a “traumatic and violent past.” Peter, Jasmijn’s boyfriend, and a sadistic scoutmaster with vicious bull terrier (Zoltan), mocks Sam. Peter is not the only threat to Sam; there’s also two bullies, enabled by Peter’s attitude, who pick on Sam.

Watching all this from within the darkness of the trees are a feral boy (whom Sam names “Kai,” after a local werewolf); and his hulking, poacher father (Stropper), who wastes no time in killing those who cross his path.

Small, unsettling incidents start. Eventually, the scout troops figure out they’re being stalked by Kai and Stropper, via clever traps and blunt-force violence, even as Sam and Kai form an amiable bond.

CUB works on most levels. The theme, tone and color palate complement each other, most of the key characters are well-sketched and -acted, the action and situations are well-paced, the kill scenes and traps are creative and often cruel, and the ending rings true, even if I hoped for more character background (Stropper, Kai) and a less bleak finish. Fans of Rob Schmidt and Alan B. McElroy’s WRONG TURN (2003) and the don’t-go-in-the-woods subgenre might well enjoy this one as well.

MADHOUSE (1974)

 

(Director: Jim Clark. Screenwriters: Ken Levison and Greg Morrison. Additional dialogue and text provided by an uncredited Robert Quarry, who plays Oliver Quayle in the film.)

 

Review

Based on Angus Hall’s 1969 novel DEVILDAY, this PG-rated American International Pictures [AIP] flick stars Vincent Price as Paul Toombes, a horror actor largely known for playing an iconic, five-film villain, Dr. Death. When Toombes’s fiancée is murdered at a Hollywood party, he loses his mind and spends twelve years in a mental asylum. Leaving the asylum, Toombes heads to London, England, when Dr. Death creator Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, 1974) invites him there. Flay is in the employ of Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry), an ex-porn producer producing a Dr. Death television series─whose lead role Toombes will hopefully resume. That Quayle knew Toombes’s murdered fiancée and attended the party where she died rankles Toombes but, professional that he is, he deals with it.

Almost immediately, a murderer, dressed like Dr. Death, begins killing people around Toombes. It isn’t difficult to figure out the killer’s identity, but the screenwriters throw a lot of red herrings in the mix. MADHOUSE likely doesn't do anything you haven’t seen before (if you’re familiar with the horror genre), but the solid writing and pacing, the over-the-top acting and murder scenes and everything else make this an entertaining film, worth your time.

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Filmic deep(ish) dive – got this from MADHOUSE’s IMDb “Trivia” page

MADHOUSE features scenes from other AIP films: TALES OF TERROR (1962, starring Price and Basil Rathbone, who died in 1967); and THE RAVEN (1963, starring Price and Boris Karloff, who died in 1969). The Dr. Death clip shown near the start of the film is AIP’s THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963, also starring Price), with voices dubbed in to add the Dr. Death element. Later in the film, at Oliver’s house, scenes from Price’s 1961 film THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM are shown during a party.

MADHOUSE was Price’s final movie with AIP. He started working with them in 1960.

During one of the costume party scenes, Robert Quarry wears his outfit from COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970). Also: Peter Cushing, who played Van Helsing on several occasions, wears a Dracula costume.