THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936)

 

(Director: an uncredited Tod Browning. Screenplay by Garrett Fort, Guy Endore and Eric von Stroheim based on Tod Browning’s story, which is based on Abraham Merritt’s 1932 novel Burn, Witch, Burn!.)

 

Review

Two Devil’s Island prisoners—Marcel, a scientist concerned with human overpopulation (played by Henry B.Walthall), and Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore, MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, 1935), a now-hateful man wrongly convicted of theft and murder—escape. They make their way to Marcel’s house where Marcel’s wife, Malita (Rafaela Ottiano) has been continuing her husband’s experiments to shrink people to doll size to reduce consumption of the world’s resources. After a tired, wounded Marcel dies, Paul, with Malita’s help, begins using Marcel and Malita’s experimental science to get revenge on those who put him set him up seventeen years prior—he does this by returning to Paris and dressing up as an old woman who sells the criminal, shrunken dolls out of a shop. Paul now goes by the name Madame Madeline.

Paul also reconnects (as an old woman) with his beloved adult and life-beleaguered daughter, Lorraine Lavond (Maureen O’Sullivan, THE THIN MAN, 1932), making him question his murderous goals.

DEVIL-DOLL is a great hour-and-eighteen-minute revenge flick, with its tight script, good FX and atmosphere, strong acting (Barymore, Ottiano, etc.) and waste-no-time pacing. I love that a lot is left to the imagination, that there is no visible blood spilled, making it more effective. Beyond that, there’s not a lot to say about DEVIL-DOLL that hasn’t been said before, except that it’s one of my favorite living manikin-based horror films.

TRILOGY OF TERROR (1975)

 

(TV/ABC movie, aired on March 4, 1975. Director/producer: Dan Curtis. Teleplay writers: William F. Nolan and Richard Matheson, based on Matheson’s stories.)

Storylines

Karen Black plays four different women in this three-unrelated-stories anthology movie.

 

Review

TRILOGY is a standout made-for-television flick.

In “Julie,” a college professor (Julie Eldridge, played by Karen Black) is roofied and blackmailed by a crass college student, Chad (Robert Burton) who has a twisted crush on her. Things change for him when she warms to his attention. Fans of Dan Curtis and Richard Matheson’s work might recognize the drive-in film Julie and Chad go to see: THE NIGHT STALKER, a 1972 television film written by Matheson, produced by Curtis, and scored by the prolific Bob Cobert, who also composed TRILOGY’s soundtrack as well as Curtis’s DARK SHADOWS (1967-71).

 

“Millicent and Therese” are twin sisters, both played by Black. A vicious sibling rivalry plays out between Millicent (prudish, Coke-bottle glasses, unattractive) and Therese (no glasses, pretty, long blond hair). Scenes cut back and forth between Millicent and Therese─who are never seen in the same room. At different points, two men, concerned about her, visit. Thomas Amman (John Karlen, billed as John Karlin) is one of these men. Dr. Chester Ramsey (George Gaynes), Millicent and Therese’s family physician is the other. Voodoo and dark family non-secrets are mentioned in the course of the tale. Genre-familiar viewers may spot the end-twist, but the performances and voodoo element add freshness to the story.

 

“Amelia,” based on Matheson’s 1969 story “Prey,” is about a woman who brings home a fierce-looking and terrifying Zuni fetish doll and regrets making the purchase. This is perhaps one of the most iconic, suspenseful anthological horror stories to air on American television.

TRILOGY is one of my all-time favorite television films of any genre, running a brisk, short seventy-two minutes. Nolan adapted “Julie” and “Millicent” from Matheson’s stories; Matheson wrote the teleplay for “Amelia.”

Many of TRILOGY’s actors shine (especially Black, who imbues her characters with their own distinctive quirks and neuroses). John Karlen, famous for playing Willie Loomis in DARK SHADOWS (1967-71), played Thomas Amman in “Millicent.” George Gaynes (POLICE ACADEMY franchise, 1984-94) played Dr. Chester Ramsey in the same segment.

Given the massive talent involved in this tight, sometimes suspenseful television film, this is worth your time. A sequel, TRILOGY OF TERROR II, aired on ABC on October 30, 1996.

DEATHBED (2002)

 

(Director: Danny Draven. Screenplay by John Strysik, based on George Barry’s 1977 film DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS.)

 

Review

A young couple─children’s book artist Karen (Tanya Dempsey, SHRIEKER, 1988) and photographer Jerry (Brave Matthews, AMERICAN ZOMBIELAND, 2020)─move into a Los Angeles, California flat, unaware that it has a murder-haunted bed in its upstairs room. They find it and begin sleeping on the quaint-looking, metal-framed bed on which the deaths took place. The couple experience waking and sleeping nightmares about the 1920-30s psychosexual killings (shown in black and white flashbacks) of “Ghost Man” (Michael Sonye, billed as Dukey Flyswatter, HOLLYWOOD CHAINSAW HOOKERS, 1988) strangling two of seven women (including Louise Astor, played by Meagan Mangum) with silk neck ties.

The effect of Jerry and Karen’s nightmares bleed into their work and relationships─particularly their dealings with their on-site landlord, Art (Joe Estevez, SOULTAKER, 1990).

Produced by Stuart Gordon, Charles Band (Full Moon Pictures founder) and others, DEATHBED is a loose remake of George Barry’s way-different 1977 flick DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS PEOPLE. This remake is a good, makes-great-use-of-its-low-budget work. The production design/art direction (courtesy of Johnny R. Long and others) is mood-consistent with its spare-but-effective soundtrack (composer: James T. Sale, THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY, 2008) and relatively restrained gory special effects (Mark Bautista, MANK, 2020). The direction, Hollywood(land)-centric story (which slyly references H.P. Lovecraft) and flow of the movie is tight as can be, given its mostly well-acted characters and their personalities/histories.

Sonye/Flyswatter, an actor, screenwriter, and lyricist/lead singer of several horror punk/metal bands, primarily Haunted Garage and Penis Flytrap, is fun and ghoulish as “Ghost Man,” the spectral creep/killer whose crimes and spirit continue on well beyond his death. Film nerds may appreciate the brief appearance of Constance Estevez,  billed as Constance Anderson, as a “Maternal Model”─according to IMDb, in 2004 she married Joe Estevez, Martin Sheen’s younger and equally prolific brother.

DEATHBED is a worthwhile movie if you don’t mind its solid-for-its-limited-budget effects, occasional lapses into questionable acting (by supporting players) and its overall low budget. The filmmakers achieve what they set out to do─create a solid, tightly shot and edited minimally funded film─and that's all any reasonable viewer can expect, given the filmmakers' resources.

DEATH BED: THE BED THAT EATS (1977)

 

(Director/screenwriter: George Barry)

DEATH, whose idea came to director/screenwriter George Barry in a dream, is appropriately surrealistic and unique. In it, a demon possesses a four-poster bed after his true love dies on it. He continues eating people (via the bed’s hellish ability to transform from a regular bed to a bed-framed, yellow-lit vat of digestive acid). Various people break into the abandoned mansion where the bed is and most of them are consumed by the bed. These devourings are punctuated, sometimes narrated by, The Artist, whose spirit is trapped within/behind a painting, tells viewers about the bed’s history, intermingled with his. DEATH is broken into four segments: Breakfast; Lunch; Dinner; and The Just Desert.

After one of the victims, Sharon, becomes a meal for the demon, "Sharon's Brother" (William Russ, billed as Rusty Russ) comes looking for her. One of the most hilarious scenes of this low-budget, dark-humored and slow-moving film involves the brother and skeletal hands.

DEATH is not a good movie by most standards: its narration takes the viewer out of the movie, as do the interior monologues of several characters; there are padded scenes, lots of lag time.

What makes DEATH worthwhile (for intriguing bad flick enthusiasts) is how Barry makes the most of his limited budget, creating an out-there, artsy work (especially during the intensely yellow-bright scenes where the bed dissolves its victims).  What also works is Barry’s intuitive jump cut edits, which add to the natural, odd feel of this standout cult classic, which was started in 1972, but not widely released until 2003 on DVD.

According to IMDb, DEATH was mostly filmed in “Gar Wood mansion on Keelson Island in Detroit[, Michigan].” This setting is gloomy and Gothic, furthering the mood of the flick which mostly eschews a soundtrack. Love it or hate it, you're not likely to forget it. Danny Draven's loose remake, DEATHBED, was released direct-to-DVD on September 24, 2002.

WILLY’S WONDERLAND (2021)

 

(Director: Kevin Lewis. Screenwriter: G.O. Parsons.)

Storyline

A stranded-for-the-night drifter is tricked into doing janitorial work in a shuttered Chuck E. Cheese-style pizzeria where its animatronic mascots eat the janitors.

 

Review

A mostly silent drifter─billed as “The Janitor” (Nicolas Cage, COLOR OUT OF SPACE, 2019)─is tricked into working a one-night janitorial gig in a shut-down pizzeria, Willy’s Wonderland. The Janitor is not told his task will involve more than cleaning.

While this happens, a teenage girl, Liv (Emily Tosta), plots to torch Willy’s. As a younger girl, she witnessed her parents being killed by the eatery’s supernatural animatronic mascots, led by Willy Weasel. In the now, Liv’s guardian, Sheriff Lund (Beth Grant, CHILD’S PLAY 2, 1990), handcuffs Liv to a pipe to keep her from following through on her fiery intentions.

The Janitor─locked in the building by the restaurant’s owner (Tex Macadoo)─cleans the semi-trashed building. Time passes, the animal- and fairy tale-themed mascots come after The Janitor, who does not seem too surprised. Meanwhile, Liv─with help from friends─escapes her cuffs. They make their way to Willy’s to rescue the energy drink-swilling Janitor (a stranger to them) and burn Willy’s down.

WILLY’S is good up until this point. Once the kids find themselves stuck in the Chuck E Cheese-style fatty food palace, the movie goes to s**t. While The Janitor proves himself a worthy adversary for the possessed mascots, the kids─even the initially spunky and smart Liv─are mostly useless as they try to find a way out, plot conveniently forgetting about the barely boarded-over windows they could bust through, or how they could help The Janitor kill the remaining satanic threats (especially the seductive, ultra-creepy Siren Sara). Twenty-plus minutes bloat the film to its mandatory ninety-minute mark with the kids running around and getting picked off while The Janitor hunts and fights the monsters.

WILLY, with a few minor plot and character tweaks, could have been an excellent future cult classic─all of the ingredients are inherent in the film’s barebones set-up and its characters. Its cinematography (courtesy of David Newbert), production design (Molly Coffee) and its makeup/FX crew make this feel like a goofy, gory 1980s video flick. The early-on stage-setting and editing are top-notch. Perhaps one of the more egregious failings of WILLY’S is that the filmmakers did not make a movie that matched the loopy, masterful weirdness of Cage’s performance as a wordless, bad-ass Janitor (Cage wanted to play him like a silent actor would), whose quirks sometimes border on bewildering.

The rest of the actors are good, but this is Cage’s show. Even though I felt let down as a viewer (due to WILLY’S flaccid last third, dumb teenage characters and bad CGI at the end), this still has its fun moments, and Cage works his quirkiness in fresh ways here. I wouldn’t recommend it for most people, but if you’re hardcore about Cage, you should check it out at least once─for free, if possible.

AMITYVILLE 1992: IT’S ABOUT TIME (1992)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE: IT’S ABOUT TIME. Director: Tony Randel. Screenplay by Christopher DeFaria and Antonio Toro, based on John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, AMITYVILLE: THE EVIL ESCAPES.)

Storyline

An architect brings home an antique mantle clock he bought during his business travels, unaware that it’s an evil, time-and-space-warping machine.

Review

Burlwood, California. Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, GRAVEYARD SHIFT, 1990), an architect and intense person, returns to his suburban house from a business trip during which he picked up an antique clock. Unaware or dismissive of the history of the notorious house it came from, he’s excited to place on it on the mantle above their fireplace.

His teenage children, Lisa (Megan Ward, TRANCERS II, 1991) and Rusty (Damon Martin, GHOULIES II, 1987), are happy to see him, as is his ex-girlfriend and art student Andrea Livingston (Shawn Weatherly, SHADOWZONE, 1990), who watched the kids while Jacob was gone.

Jacob convinces Andrea─in spite of her new boyfriend─to spend the night with him. Rusty─spirited, good-hearted, and sensitive─senses something weird about the clock, but he’s not sure what it is. One of the neighbors’ dogs (Peaches) also knows something’s wrong, and barks outside the Sterlings’ backdoor late at night, running away when Rusty opens the door to let the dog in.

The next day, Peaches, normally a peaceable canine, attacks Jacob while he goes on his morning run. Jacob, seriously wounded, survives the attack. The wound extends Andrea’s stay with the Sterlings, delighting Jacob─he wants her back. Weird stuff happens, like brief time-and-space shifts for those living within the house, and Jacob’s go-getter personality becomes darker, verging on violent─he refuses to have his bandages changed, despite his festering wounds.

After a spate of mean-spirited neighborhood vandalism, dark personality changes, and bizarre deaths of those near the Sterlings, the situation comes to a head, and Jacob goes full-psycho, with his clock-dominated house as a reality-shifting accomplice.

The clever dovetail ending is relatively happy and good, a creative breath of fresh air in a genre that too often favors unnecessary darkness in its filmic wrap-ups. (Shock or the-evil-survived finishes need not bash viewers over the head with obviousness, and such endings should do more than further a franchise’s financial profitability or be used to hide the fact that the filmmakers are creatively spent, producer-pushed or lazy.)

TIME is a good, low-budget, and slick B-flick, its storyline a mix of WAXWORK (1988) and a metaphor for toxic relationships. TIME is better than the two previous AMITYVILLE outings (AMITYVILLE 3-D, 1983, and AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES, 1989), building on the loosely linked storyline of ESCAPES.

Randel’s direction and DeFaria and Toro’s screenplay keeps the relatively goreless TIME moving along at a mostly solid, entertaining pace (even if I did wonder why Andrea stuck around the Sterlings’ disturbing household), with an effective object backstory that adds depth to this film and (possibly) the AMITYVILLE franchise, with all its disparate works.

TIME’s cast, ranging from good to great, is effective as well, with Macht nailing Jacob’s increasingly menacing attitude, Weatherly capably embodying Andrea’s flaws, struggles and overall good nature as she tries to save the Sterlings, and Nina Talbot (PUPPET MASTER II, 1990) as Iris Wheeler, Rusty’s afterschool chess-playing partner and occult-savvy neighbor. Fans of screen legend Dick Miller (PIRANHA, 1978) might be delighted to see his brief turn here as Mr. Anderson, who helps put out a yard fire.

TIME, a mostly fun, low-budget time-space-horror flick, is worth your time if you keep your expectations realistic about its budget, its era (the slick-flick 1980s-1990s), and don’t mind a few eye-rolling tropes (e.g., Andrea and Jacob’s sex scene) during its run-time.

AMITYVILLE HORROR: THE EVIL ESCAPES (1989)

 

(a.k.a. AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES. TV/NBC movie, aired on May 12, 1989. Director: Sandor Stern. Teleplay by Sandor Stern, based on an unpublished AMITYVILLE story─not co-producer John G. Jones’s 1988 advertised-as-fiction book, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, whose title Jones allowed the filmmakers to use.)

Storyline

The demon-haunted house is cleansed by six priests and its furniture is sold at a yard sale. One of the items, a lamp within which the demon hid, is shipped to a California home, where the horror begins anew.

Review

This fourth, made-for-television AMITYVILLE entry aired on NBC on May 12,1989. When it was released on video, additional footage was shot, most of it brief instances of bright red blood that wouldn’t have been allowed in the NBC broadcast─director and teleplay writer Sandor Stern has said he doesn’t know who shot the additional footage. An R rating was slapped on the video version though it’s a safe-for-television flick.

EVIL takes place before the events of AMITYVILLE 3-D (1983), opening with six priests going into the Amityville house to cleanse it. One of the priests, Father Kibbler, is attacked by the house’s three-hundred-year-old demon who has transmigrated into a standing, twisted tree-like lamp. Kibbler, unconscious, is brought to hospital while his fellow priests declare the house “clean.”

A few days later, Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) buys the lamp from a yard sale and sends it to her sister, Alice Leacock (Jane Wyatt) in California.

Alice’s widowed daughter, Nancy Evans (Patty Duke, THE SWARM, 1978) shows up at Alice’s house shortly after the lamp. Nancy arrives with three children in tow: adolescent Amanda (Zoe Trilling, NIGHT OF THE DEMONS 2, 1994); tween Brian (Aron Eisenberg, PUPPET MASTER III: TOULON’S REVENGE, 1991); and pre-tween Jessica (Brandy Gold), who talks to her dead, imagined father.

The lamp talks to Jessica, pretending to be her father. She falls under its dark sway and acts uncharacteristically moody. A doctor (Warren Munson, FRIDAY THE 13^th PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, 1989) says she needs rest.

Strange things happen in the brightly lit house─there are few dark shots in EVIL. The lights flicker a lot. Bad things happen to people, including Gabe, a plumber (Gary Davies, SHOCKER, 1989), and Peggy, Alice’s maid (Lou Hancock, EVIL DEAD 2, 1987). When Father Kibbler shows up, Alice and their family realize what’s happening─now, if they can exorcise the lamp. . .

EVIL is not a scary flick. The mounting tension between the characters does not get nasty like the Lutzes’ and the Monticellis’. EVIL is also more entertaining (in a white-washed, silly way) than AMITYVILLE 3-D, especially when certain actors ham it up during their terror scenes. Near the end, there’s a farewell-to-a-priest scene that’s directly lifted from THE EXORCIST (1973).

Film geeks like myself might recognize Robert  Allan Browne (PSYCHO II, 1983), who plays Donald McTear, and one of the priests (John DeBello, billed as John Debello, who appears in the 1989 film NIGHT LIFE).

EVIL is a Golden Turkey made-for-television flick, worthwhile if you’re looking for something silly.