Alien Escape (1997)

There is something comfortable and almost innocent about the straight to home video science fiction flicks of the mid to late nineties. I mean if anything that focuses on getting as many lovely ladies topless while connecting those scenes with a paper thin alien invasion story can be innocent. More on that later.

Things open with a naked lady in a shower. I did sort of warn you… Something is outside spying on her. She gets out of the shower and eventually is attacked by a black glove with I’m guessing someone attached to it. Then we see three ladies in a convertible. After trying to convince us that one of them is a lawyer they stop because you know girls have to pee in the woods. Hey man I’m sure that happens! Eventually they arrive at a resort aka. the house they rented to shoot the movie and find that the person they were expecting, Janet is missing. Yeah, she was the naked lady from earlier. But they do find another naked lady named Laticia who talks to them.

Later two of the girls get naked and get into a bathtub to soap each other up. Hey, I did tell you what to expect a couple of times already! The third, Cindy, goes for a walk. In the dark woods all alone. Then a lady hiker shows up… after getting naked in the stream to take a bath… and asks for a glass of water. The lawyer lady’s boss shows up and acts like a creep. He and the lady hiker get killed by the same black glove. Then Cindy finds a spaceship, shows the other girls. A car explodes they meet Matt, who is an alien, and the girls with Cindy get killed. Then Cindy gets naked with Matt, and they fight the bad alien that was killing everyone. The end.

This isn’t a good movie, but I was entertained. When I was younger all the ladies would have been the reason I liked Alien Escape, but an older and much more jaded (thanks internet) me had to find other reasons to like this flick. Luckily, this is the sort of movie that embraces the silliness and piles on a lot of laughs. While the plot is thin and the dialogue rough there are a lot of pop culture references and intentionally (I think) lines that had me giggling.

The best example of this is legendary no budget filmmakers Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski showing up in acting roles as a couple of locals working road construction. They go all redneck when the “city folk” are around but then shift back to wine sipping intellectuals who discuss art as soon as they are out of earshot. Silly? Yes, but I think that the filmmakers were playing with the prototypical stereotypes present in the more serious attempts to tell stories like this. There is also a much less funny bit with some government agents tracking the aliens, but I will give them an “A” for effort.

For a movie with little to no budget they do a decent job with the alien. Sure, it is a guy wearing a suite topped off with a cheesy rubber mask, but it works fine. We also get some movie magic where characters climb into the “hatch” of the ship in the woods to clearly be climbing down a ladder in some industrial location located elsewhere. But that kind of movie “magic” is what low budget filmmakers must use to make things happen. And it wasn’t too bad. The kills are tame and well that is about all I have to say.

Alien Escape isn’t a good movie. I’ll freely admit that. It may also seem weird that I describe a flick that uses nudity and titillation as a selling point innocent. But when I watch a flick like this one, I get very nostalgic for the days of renting crap at my local video store. Despite watching a digital copy I swear I could hear my VCR chugging along. If you have the same sort of memories or are looking for something silly, then check this one out. I think you might get a kick out of it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Haunted (1995)

The movie starts off in the early nineteen hundreds with a little boy and girl, twins, running and playing on a large English estate. They are having fun, but the little girl hits her head and falls into a pond. Her brother tries to save her but is unsuccessful. That little brother grows up to be a professor of psychology who investigates psychic phenomenon. He mostly does this to expose fakers. After seeing him bust a séance we follow as he goes to an isolated estate at the behest of Nanny Webb.

He is picked up by a beautiful woman named Christina who drives him to the rambling old house. There he meets Nanny Webb as well as Christina’s brothers Robert and Simon. There is an odd dynamic between the siblings as they are overly affectionate with each other. Like to creepy levels. Nanny claims that she is being haunted, though not without a lot of prompting from the professor. That night spooky stuff starts to happen and David, the professor, is convinced that one of the brothers is responsible for it. Things ramp up and Nanny Webb becomes very disturbed, which leads to the family calling in Doctor Doyle. She doesn’t like that much at all.

After arriving we also see that David begins seeing what appears to be the ghost of his sister in the distance. As if she was trying to lead him to something but can’t quite communicate with him. Is Nanny Webb crazy? Did David catch her crazy? Or is someone messing with both of them? In the end all is explained and we are given some closure… with a twist!  

I’m trying to keep this review as spoiler free as possible because I really liked Haunted and don’t want to ruin it for anyone. The movie is paced decently, though at times is a slow burn. But if you pay attention there are clues and all sorts of spooky shit happening. I could give examples but then I would be giving hints that might spoil things for you. Trust me though that you will want to pay close attention to enjoy the movie. Not only because of the clues but also the things that are happening. The movie is packed with lots of visual tricks mostly in camera. Again, you really need to pay attention to Haunted to get the most out of it. If you only half watch it, then you might as well skip it altogether.

The decision to introduce the house to both the audience as well as the professor in the daylight was a cool choice. In a way it makes the later scenes in the dark all that much spookier and more surreal since we have some idea of how things are. There aren’t any real jump scares as the story leans more heavily into creeping you out with odd noises, doors that seem to open by themselves, and shadows that seem to have things moving in them. Like I said you really need to keep your eyes on the screen with this one.

When I was doing my research on this movie I found a lot of folks talking about Kate Beckinsale and how naked she is in it. Before you go off Googling for images I have bad news, it was all a body double. One that isn’t even close to her appearance in other scenes. Same goes for Aidan Quinn. It seems as if either they had no nudity clauses, or the producers went back afterwards to spice things up. Funny thing is you keep seeing their faces so clearly not them. That said both Quinn (playing the professor) and Beckinsale are great in their roles. They have some actual chemistry, and their relationship drives the ending of the movie. Can’t say much more than that. Spoiler free, remember?

While I did guess at the big twist I still was interested in Haunted until the very end. To be honest it was a guess and they kept it vague enough that I wasn’t sure I was right. It wasn’t until after the movie was over that I realized it was based on a novel from James Herbert, who wrote some very cool horror stories. Not sure if it follows his book closely but having read may of his other books (I’ve reviewed The Fog and The Spear here at the site) it doesn’t surprise me that the plot was so engaging and fun. I recommend tracking down a copy of Haunted and giving it a watch.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Lair (2022)

Director Neil Marshall is back with a new monster movie. When this hit Shudder I couldn’t wait to check it out and I wasn’t disappointed. Things kick off with a British pilot, Kate Sinclair, and her back seater getting shot down in Afghanistan. They parachute safely to he ground but the insurgents who downed their aircraft are on them immediately. They end up in a firefight where Sinclair is the only survivor. She heads off but enemy reinforcements arrive, and she is forced to take shelter in an abandoned Russian bunker. Here is where things get interesting.

It seems that the Russians were experimenting with a downed alien spacecraft or more specifically the passenger! They have created some alien/human hybrids that are bloodthirsty but safely locked up. That is until the gunbattle in the lab frees them. Sinclair is again the only survivor and is picked up by an American patrol. But the critters are loose and end up attacking the base. Soon the survivors are forced to either wait to die or go back to the lab and destroy the nest. This leads to more firefights with insurgents and some neat monster gore and violence.

I enjoyed the heck out of The Lair. Marshall has always been good for some military versus creature action (Dog Soldiers) as well as creepy claustrophobic horror (The Descent) and I thought he pulled off both nicely here. The soldier characters are developed enough that fans of the genre will know what archetype they fall into. There is the angry leader who won’t end well but is likeable. The screw up that runs away… dude you died on a toilet! Some general badasses who talk shit to each other. These are just a few examples of what you get. There is even the local who starts off as an enemy but obviously due to backstory has an axe to grind with the creatures and becomes an ally.

The Setting is great... very spooky!

I suppose that in many ways these characters and how the story plays out in such a predictable way is why this movie is getting savaged by so many fans. Yeah, I read the reviews before I watched and honestly didn’t care. But as I’ve stated in the past some movies can just be comfortable fun and don’t need to be “art”. When did making an ultra-violent fast paced action creature feature with characters dropping funny one-liners become unacceptable? Neither the director nor the cast are taking things too seriously and are just trying to entertain the audience and I think they succeeded marvelously.

We get dozens of kills, many of which are of the standard getting shot variety. But there is also some gut-munching (a favorite here at the site), face ripped off, jaw ripped off, head off, a fist thru the face, a double grenade while holding them monster dispatching, and a flare to the chest. But my personal favorite was half a head getting munched off in one bite… sadly off screen but the post chomp scene lingers enough to be enjoyable. This is a very violent and bloody movie and was just the sort of thing that I wanted when I saw the trailer and heard the plot synopsis. And I almost forgot the alien autopsy by skill saw! 

Tentacle time

If that doesn’t get you then let me tell you about the creature design. They are humanoid but very alien looking at the same time. Giant gaping maws filled with sharp teeth are scary, but then they also spring some mouth tentacles that just don’t grab you but sort of caress the victims in an uncomfortable way that only adds to the horror. Marshall also sets much of the action, basically anything not the night attack on the base, in the underground lab. As I’ve already mentioned the man knows how to make you feel claustrophobic and creeped out in such a location.

The Lair checks all the expected boxes with a gleeful and maniacal energy that I just couldn’t help but love it. Currently the movie is streaming on Shudder, and I highly recommend you check it out. I know that the year is still young, but this is the best thing I’ve watched so far.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Craze (1974)

Friendly antique dealer Neal Mottram has a secret in his basement. A statue to the great God Chuku, whom he and his coven worship. We see a ceremony with some dancing and a bit of bloodletting to appease Chuku. Afterwards a former member of the coven shows up and tries to take the statue back but gets killed in the process. Mottram prays to Chuku and gives her soul over to him in exchange for favors. Wouldn’t you know it the very next day a fortuitous hidden drawer and some gold fixes all his financial woes.

This leads Mottram down the wormhole of killing ladies in the name of Chuku in exchange for more and more favors. One by one he plans his crimes and then dumps the bodies. But soon the police are onto him and start to follow his movements. He is eventually seen by a victim’s roommate and cornered in the basement where there is one final sacrifice to Chuku. Of course it wasn’t going to end well for him!

Craze is a lot of fun. The story is a bit goofy and the statue of Chuku must be seen to be believed. But despite all this there are also some mean spirited bits as well. We get some fun murders with faces being burnt off, necks stabbed, old ladies scared to death and a non-fatal belly slashing that is the most in your face. None of these are overly gross or gory but it does give us enough to support the story. The pacing is brisk for the most part with us jumping right into the action with a bit of a lull in the middle before picking back up for the finale. This is the sort of movie where something is always happening to keep a viewer’s interest. I had a lot of fun with it.

The Great God Chuku

When I saw this sitting in stack of movies that I hadn’t watched yet two things jumped out to me. First was the star. Jack Palance plays our lead character, Mottram. He chews up the scenery in that very special way only he could. Not ever overacting but getting close to it. Some of my favorite parts of his performance are the times he is working his romantic magic on the ladies. Apparently, all the groovy ladies of London were unable to resist his smooth game. Between that and his vigorous praying to Chuku every scene he is in has something going for it. And he is in most of them!

The other item of note was the director, Freddie Francis, who is best known for movies like Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, The Skull, The Deadly Bees, and Tales from the Crypt. The guy worked with both Amicus as well as Hammer and made some killer movies. Way more than I just listed. Here every shot, scene, and setup move the story along or give us some bloody payoff. He normally is always good for an entertaining flick and Craze is no different.

I’ve been digging into old horror movies that I’ve not seen before. That has led me down a lot of horrible paths… I’m talking to you Ghosts That Still Walk! Though discovering a movie like Craze makes sitting thru the bad worth it. I had a blast and think you will too. It is worth checking out for just Palance’s performance. I highly recommend it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Ghosts That Still Walk (1977)

Heads up. This is a terrible movie! Just in case you were going to be annoyed spending your valuable time reading the review. I know the ninety minutes that I spent watching wasn’t worth it. Then again at least I get to write a review and get some of the frustration out here.

Mark, a fifteen year old boy, is getting an MRI. He has been getting headaches, seizures, and generally feels lousy. He is all smiles and jokes until it starts. Then he freaks out which transitions to him talking to the doctor. Mark, along with his grandmother, is told that they can’t find anything wrong with him. The doctor suggests that it might be all of the recent tragedy in his life. His grandfather had a heart attack, and his mom went nuts and was locked up. So he sends him to see a psychiatrist named Dr. Stills.

Dr. Stills decides it is important to hypnotize both Mark and his grandmother. And she also wants to read Mark’s mothers’ journals as she was working on a book when she lost her marbles. This is an excuse for flashbacks, which is how most of Ghosts That Still Walk tells the story. We get to see Mark’s grandparents have a bad time in their RV. Then we see Mark’s mother had been messing with astral projection and an Indian mummy, finally there is a bit where Mark is possessed by the spirit of the mummy. So that is the ghost that still walks… around in Mark’s body. Some stuff happens and then the ghost is destroyed. The end.

In my years tracking down oddball regional drive-in movies I’ve seen a lot of trainwrecks. But in many of those there was still something to enjoy. Inept direction and/or acting can be entertaining so normally they are good for a few laughs. Though on occasion we get a movie that is so tedious that there is nothing redeeming about it. Ghosts That Still Walk falls directly into that category.

The star of the movie...

This movie is basically three shorts with a wrap around to connect them and even with only needed to setup and execute a cohesive plot for maybe thirty minutes at a time it fails. We get an extended RV driving in the desert bit with some rocks rolling at them while grandma is trying to cook supper in the kitchen. It goes on and on, stopping for them to eat before continuing. I’m not kidding. All of this is to setup that grandpa had a heart attack, which they already established in dialogue.

Then we see the mother starring at a mummy that is just laying there in her home office. She does some voiceovers that don’t explain much of anything. Then she sees Mark and the mummy sort of swap and then goes nuts never to be seen again. Finally, it comes to Mark being freaked out about the mummy in the house and having nightmares before screaming a lot. It all wraps up with him now in a wheelchair (I guess that happened) and on a picnic with grandma and Dr. Stills. She forces the Indian possessing him to come to terms with being dead and then it is all over.

Does that sound thrilling to you? Because it isn’t. These stories are filled with padding, in fact they are mostly padding. Nothing much happens other then the viewer losing ninety minutes of their lives. The performances are rough with awful line delivery that is barely audible with the subpar sound. Toss in some camerawork that has most scenes so dark that it is hard to see what is happening on the screen. I don’t have a positive thing that I can find to talk about so I’m just going to stop. Don’t watch Ghosts That Still Walk. Just don’t do it.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Island of the Burning Damned (aka. Night of the Big Heat) (1967)

It is winter in England… well except if you live on the small island of Fara. There the temperature has hit the high nineties with so stop in sight. To that end we meet the locals. Jeff is a writer who also runs the local pub with his wife Frankie. There is also the island’s M.D. Dr. Stone and a cranky mysterious man named Hanson. As we see folks complaining about the heat Jeff’s new secretary Angela shows up to start her job. She wears a bikini, which is quite the thing. What is odd is that no one seems terribly concerned that the island is cooking while it is freezing right across on the mainland. We also know that everyone is aware of it because of radio reports.

What is up? Turns out that Hanson is a scientist that has come to investigate Fara. He has tried to convince the authorities that aliens have followed a radio signal back to the observatory and are testing Earth out for colonization. They apparently need things to be hot so cue the heat wave. Despite the obvious strange weather no one is coming to help them, so they must try and stop the invasion themselves. Nothing works and pretty much everyone is dead before the last three minutes happen. In those three minutes we hear thunder, it rains, and all the aliens die… probably because they cooled off. The end.

The Drama... The Scandal!

Island of the Burning Damned had all the ingredients for a cool movie. Isolated island setting, alien invasion, mysterious deaths, and a great cast, more on that later. So, what the hell happened? First up the story is painfully slow. We get so much walking around and people talking about the heat that there is never any momentum. We spend more time watching Hanson setup a camera trap then we do with them discussing the aliens! This is even worse with the introduction of a major subplot involving Jeff and his new secretary Angela. They had an affair in London, and she has pursued him to the island to try and continue things while he wants to leave peacefully with his wife. Sweet… forget the aliens I want the drama of an affair. Not really. The movie feels like they didn’t really have much of a plot and threw a bunch of random plotlines in to pad things out. I still can’t get over the abrupt and silly ending. I mean advanced spacefaring aliens didn’t know it was going to rain! Really?

I was especially disappointed with this because it wasted direction from Terence Fisher, and performances from both Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. That is some legendary British horror both in front of and behind the camera. All three are hamstrung with a script that goes nowhere and other characters that don’t deserve the screentime they get. I wanted more Lee and Cushing and less girl drama! Damn asshole script killed them off and left the girl alive… stupid movie.

Yinz gonna move... ever?

The aliens in this alien invasion movie are saved until the very end. For most of the movie they are a portrayed as a spotlight on the victim while a loud sound plays. When we do see them, they are at best a Horta (classic Trek reference… hope you get it) looking rubber blob that I don’t believe ever actually moves on camera. You know real scary stuff. Other than that we get nothing. Despite them telling us “something landed” we never see a ship or anything. Not even a crappy cardboard set! Very disappointing.

I can’t recommend spending your time on Island of the Burning Damned. It just isn’t a good movie. If you want to see a very similar and much better executed flick check out Island of Terror also starring Peter Cushing and directed by Terence Fisher. It is even from the same year!

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Warning Sign (1985)

This is an interesting subgenre from the eighties that I don’t think I’ve ever covered for the site. Warning Sign is an outbreak/virus/disaster movie without the horror tropes that we are used to. It is more China Syndrome than it is Crazies. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We get introduced to some characters that work at a small biotech company in middle America. Our main characters are the Sheriff, Cal, and his wife Joanie, who is the security guard at the facility. When there is an accident, and a nasty bug is released the lab gets locked down. Seems that they weren’t working on a better strain of corn but rather a bit of bio warfare. The government shows up and sets up a perimeter before sending a team in. That goes poorly (more on that later) and they lock it down. All those trapped inside are to be sacrificed as it just needs to run its course. That includes Cal’s wife, which isn’t going to work for him.

Here we meet our other main character, Dr. Fairchild. He is a former employee of the biotech company and had left due to his ethics. Basically, he didn’t like building bioweapons. It also turns out he is responsible for the cure, or at least the inoculation that is supposed to protect folks. While we know it didn’t work, he is the only person that has a chance to figure out why and how to fix it. He and Cal end up sneaking into the facility to save Joanie and possibly the world. For an added bit of fun we also find out that the people who died didn’t totally die. They wake back up as homicidal maniacs who kill everyone they meet. That is what happened to the team that went inside and is why the government wants to let everyone die inside.

Despite what I just mentioned about the infected becoming killers I don’t want to give the impression that this is some sort of outbreak movie like 28 Days Later. It plays much differently than that. You get far more of the paranoid “I don’t want to get sick” vibe than the horror that many would expect with the plot synopsis. This is very hard for me to explain other than to refer to my initial comment about it being more China Syndrome than it is Crazies. It has that technology and/or our own hubris going to do us in seventies and eighties feeling to it.

I found the story to be interesting from beginning to end. And unlike many other movies that tell stories like this the government folks aren’t portrayed as bad people. When Major Connolly decides they must abandon everyone inside to their fate it seems to pain him. He knows these people and is doing what must be done. To me that is an example of how well the story is written. Plus, it feels cheap to just write it off as the government doing bad things, when it is more of a question about how human beings will do things because they can rather than thinking if they should. Mad scientist stuff you know.

The cast is a filled with familiar faces. Sam Waterston is Cal and Kathleen Quinlan is his wife, Joanie. We also get Jeffrey DeMunn, Richard Dysart, Jerry Hardin, and G.W. Bailey as scientists. DeMunn gets lots of screentime as Dr. Fairchild which was nice to see. The guy is always good in whatever role he is given, though far too often it is a smaller supporting role. Yaphet Kotto is Major Connolly and is equally excellent.

I’m not sure how I missed this one. It feels like a movie that should have been all over cable back in the day. I would have loved Warning Sign and watched it again and again. But then I was a bit of a nihilist in my teenage years. As an adult I still appreciate this sort of story and think that it is worth checking it out. Not sure where you can find it but if you can check out Warning Sign.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer