World War Zzzzz...

Hi, horror fans. After an extended hiatus to deal with a LOT of shit (you don't even want to know) Fright Film Spectacular has returned. It'll be a brief return, as brain surgery is on the horizon (no joke - whoever invented the Fuck My Life hashtag ought to cruise around in my size 13s for a little while and then reassess).
But anyway, until they drill a hole in my head, I'd like to get a few more posts up, so let's begin.

Our lesson for today: how to take what could have been a great zombie movie and make it mediocre.

I have not read World War Z, so I don't know how faithful the film is to the novel. But I do know the things it did wrong in the zombie film genre, which made for an underwhelming experience.

Now let's be clear: It wasn't a bad film. It had its exciting moments. It had its scares. But it could've been so much more.

First and foremost: Where was the gore? Movies can be scary without blood and guts, but a zombie flick without it is like a comedy without laughs. Bagels without cream cheese. Chips without dip. You get the idea. And horror fans demand some rotting teeth and gelatinous flesh peeling off the faces of their zombies. Yes, that one doctor zombie with the snapping teeth was pretty cool. But that was it. The rest were just crazy people running around. I can see that at the mall on Black Friday.

And the answer to the question: The gore was left out to keep the precious PG-13 rating.

Now, for some other problems, in no particular order:

• Stupid-fast zombies have been done before - perfectly - in 28 Days Later. 
• We never learn what caused the plague, yet they somehow figure out a cure based on making people sick? That's pretty thin. If that was in the novel, the film makers should've taken some creative license and improved on it.
• I never really bought Brad Pitt as the government-fixer-type, perhaps because he spent so much time thinking and whispering. He had one good moment in the plane, when he was prepping the scientist for the Korean landing. I thought, OK, he's ramping it up now. But sadly, no. The rest of the time we get more moments of quiet reflection. If you hire a badass for your movie, he should play a badass in the movie.
• Speaking of whispering, I'm really getting tired of dramatic scenes with super-low talkers that Superman couldn't hear mixed with action scenes louder than a jet engine. Turning the volume way up to hear people talk (and it seemed particularly bad here) and then racing to turn it down so you don't wake the neighbors when action happens is super annoying. I tested this disc on two different TV/player combinations in my house and it seemed pretty consistent. I know that's not exactly the scientific method, but it leads me to believe it's the disc. So, again I ask you Hollywood to hire professional sound engineers who understand that hearing dialogue is as important as having explosions shake your seat.
• We never find out what India knew that led Israel to make its preparations. And how Israel would ever know that much about something without its allies knowing is also perplexing. We find out nothing else about the president's death. The wall breach in Israel was super-cool, but the Israeli military would've stopped it in about five minutes. The narrative from the intelligence, diplomatic, geopolitical and military points of view just had too many holes.
• Don't even get me started on the whole setting off a hand grenade in an airplane thing.

I could go on, but here's the gist of what happened with this movie: The film makers tried to make a big-budget action flick with a certified movie star in the lead role - Jurassic Park, but with zombies. Get the coveted PG-13 rating to draw in as many teenagers as possible, use standard Hollywood devices and cliches to tell a nice, safe story that sets up the sequel and rake in as much cash as possible.

Mission accomplished.

World War Z has its moments, and will be quite enjoyable for the average movie goer. Horror fans have seen it all before and will be left wondering why, with such a big budget, it wasn't better than it was.

2.75 stars.

Lifeforce: Big fun with soul-sucking space vampires

We've all had that person in our lives at one time or another, the one whose presence just drains the energy from your body, who saps your happiness, your enthusiasm and your very will to live.

They are called emotional or psychic vampires. I don't know if those are clinical or colloquial terms, but they're accurate. People exist who suck out your life force and leave you an empty rotten husk. Which brings us to our latest entry on Fright Film Spectacular.

Psychic vampires are the villains in the 1985 film Lifeforce, which is an adaptation of a novel called The Space Vampires. Lifeforce is quite a movie. I'll stop short of calling it a classic. But it's different. And the horror genre can always use different.

The story is fairly simple: A joint British-American space mission discovers humanoids in stasis on a giant spaceship hidden in the coma of Halley's Comet. The crew returns the humanoids to their own ship, which is later discovered with said crew all burned up on it. The humanoids are, of course, mysteriously alive and intact, despite everyone else on the ship being horribly burned. The discoverers then bring the creatures to Earth. This, of course, turns out to be a huge mistake. By the time we reach the end, we've been treated to spaceships, spacewalks, giant bat aliens, vampires being turned to dust, fires, explosions, a zombie-vampire horde of Londoners, a Ghostbusters-esque funnel cloud of human souls being sucked up into the alien mothership and whole lot of nudity (more on that in a minute). How can all that not be entertaining?

As far as a scifi-horror film, it's pretty good. It's written by Dan O'Bannon, who wrote Alien and Return of the Living Dead and worked on Star Wars, so he knows his way around both genres. Director Tobe Hooper had, among other films, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist under his belt by the time he made Lifeforce, so he was a heavy hitter by then, too. (I know about the controversy, that a lot of people believe it was actually Steven Spielberg who did the bulk of the directing on Poltergeist, and I personally believe it was probably a joint effort, but either way, Hooper worked on it.) It's gory, and the effects are pretty good and hold up fairly well -- most of them anyway. And while the film makers were aiming for epic in scope, Henry Mancini's score makes it feel like a bigger movie than it is.

The acting is a little bombastic at times. The hero, Steve Railsback as Carlsen, reminded me of a 1950s B movie leading man. Still two years from becoming Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: Next Generation, Patrick Stewart puts in a decent performance as Dr. Armstrong.

But it's the overall theme I really enjoyed. And I'll be honest: I'm not one to look for a lot of metaphors and subtleties in film. For one thing, a lot of horror movies don't go for subtle. And some might have underlying themes, but I don't tend to care. What I wanted to do was create a commentary on the human condition, blah, blah, blah ...

No. You made a scary, gory movie that kept me entertained for an hour and a half. I'm not normally looking for anything any deeper. But in the case of Lifeforce I made an exception, mainly because I couldn't help it.

I don't know which of the film makers was involved with a real-life psychic vampire of a woman, but someone was. And she was the kind of girl this someone loved to hate, hated to love and had as much fun fighting with as he did making sweet love to.

You know how I know? The aforementioned nudity.

The super-hot Mathilda May, who is credited only as Space Girl, plays the main vampire and spends probably 95 percent of her on-screen time totally nude. And she's on the screen a lot. Now I've got nothing against super-hot women walking around buck naked, but it can't help but be a distraction, and after awhile you begin to wonder, "What does this alien have against pants and shirts?" I mean, I get it from a Hollywood point of view -- sex sells and all that. But from a storytelling point of view, you start to ask, how does this chick being nude in every scene move the narrative along or develop the theme?

The answer didn't dawn on me until after the film was over. It was to show the temptation. Our hero, Carlsen, knows her evil intent, and yet he is drawn to her, not just sexually and romantically, but in an emotional, molecular way. He has an addiction that is primal, animalistic. He knows he must destroy her to save the Earth, but it's nearly impossible. He even asks her aloud: why can't I break away from you? She tells him: Because you're just like me.

Translation: Yeah, I know she's a soul-sucking psychopath who makes me crazy and makes me do stupid things, and I think I'm happy with her when I'm really miserable, but I don't care because holy shit, just look at her!

And of course, a relationship like that can only end in destruction, but to find out just how, you'll have to watch the movie, which I highly recommend. It's available on DVD from Netflix, and has recently been released on Blu-ray from Scream Factory. If you follow the link, it will take you to a trailer.

4 stars

The Mummy's Hand and October recap

It's been a few days since Halloween. Fright Film Spectacular had to take a break after watching 22 horror movies in 31 days. Even though that's a few less than last year's total, it's still a lot of mayhem for the ol' brain to absorb. So after giving my mind a rest, it's time for a quick recap of this year's Fright Film Spectacular.

After three decades of watching the original Halloween nearly every Halloween night, I decided to break with tradition. I've seen the movie so many times I nearly have it memorized, plus I caught the end of it on AMC one night a couple of weeks ago. Add to that I had really intense night at work on Halloween night and I decided I needed something that didn't require a lot of brain power or effort.

The final decision was to go with The Mummy's Hand, a Universal pseudo-sequel, or perhaps re-imagining is more accurate. The Mummy's Hand came out in 1940 and concerns an archaeologist and his assistant who team up with a magician to search for a lost mummy's tomb. The mummy is guarded by an ancient Egyptian society, whose head honcho passes the torch to another scientist, who tries to stop the expedition at any cost. Of course, the mummy is eventually released and mayhem ensues. It was a fair-to-middling offering from Universal that dragged in places and mixed in a little too much humor. I gave it 2.5 stars.

It was a mediocre ending to a marathon that paled slightly to last year. But to be fair, I watched a lot of classics and bests last year while going with a few more off-beat choices this year. The final list for October with ratings, in chronological order:

Piranha 3.5
Black Sunday 5
Rodan 3
Phantom of the Opera 3
Eyes Without A Face 4
Attack of the Crab Monsters 1
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell 3.5
Dear God No 0
The Raven 3.75
Outpost 3.25
Creepozoids 3
Vampyr 3.5
Frankenstein's Army 4
Day of the Dead (2008) 1.5
Dracula (1931) 5
My Amityville Horror 2.5
House on Haunted Hill 5
Psychomania 2.5
Hellraiser 4
House of Seven Corpses 2.25
Dead of Night 2.75
The Mummy's Hand 2.5

The average rating is 3.11. I don't have last year's average at my fingertips, but when I find it I'll add that information. My favorites of the movies I'd never seen were Black Sunday, Eyes Without A Face and Frankenstein's Army, though I'm still a little disappointed that the last one was a found-footage film. I also enjoyed The Raven, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell and Vampyr. The worst, by far, was Dear God No, a complete and utter disaster of a movie that would've probably gotten a little leeway from me had it not suddenly decided to take itself seriously after an hour of utter camp and cheese.

Other highlights: Gained two celebrity followers, Return of the Living Dead's Beverly Randolph and scream queen Linnea Quigley. In addition to transferring Fright Film Spectacular from Twitter to Blogger, Fright Film now has its own Twitter account and the blog will now be year-round. I'll aim for one or two entries a week. And a podcast is a possibility if Fright Film Spectacular gains enough of a following. The Twitter archive from last year is being compiled and should be up shortly.

See you soon.

Dead of Night: Boo! Pip, pip, cheerio! and all that!

Rooiight! 'et's geht ohn wit it, then.

OK, never mind that. Writing that way would get old quick. Just imagine the rest of this being told to you in Graham Chapman's voice on Monty Python.

On the next to last night before Halloween, I felt like I needed something really good. Also, I don't have any entries this month for the 1940s. Enter Dead of Night.

Dead of Night is a British horror anthology film that has a whopping 96 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It lands on a lot of lists of scariest and influential horror films. And it was released in 1945. Perfect.

Then I started watching it. Uh oh.

The film consists of five separate stories, wound together by a common tale. The first is about premonitions, the second a third-rate ghost story. The third was somewhat better. It was about a haunted mirror.

I found myself not paying attention, checking my phone, and wondering how in the hell Martin Scorsese could possibly find this to be the 11th scariest film of all time.

The fourth tale is a humorous one about one golfer haunting another. Not getting better.

The last one, about a ventriloquist and his dummy, was definitely the best. And then, of course, at the very end we see how all the tales and the linking story tie together. And it was cool twist. But not cool enough.

This movie is not scary. The stories were probably original in 1945, but by 2013, you've probably heard at least one around a campfire. It is very British. (The golfers call each other "old man" and use words like "cad.") All in all, it's a decent film, but it's just not the classic it's made out to be. I was disappointed, and thus, didn't feel like writing a lot about it.

If you want to see a horror anthology, watch Creepshow.

2.75 stars.

I couldn't find a trailer, so here is a clip from the ventriloquist story:

Hellraiser, and why demons are so scary

Today's entry is 1987's Hellraiser, Clive Barker's gory and disturbing immorality play about masochism and why you shouldn't get involved with demons. Barker's version of demons - the Cenobites - are truly disturbing creatures. But they are far from anyone's first exposure to devils.

Barker is a fantastic writer. I've read many of his short stories in The Books of Blood, and The Damnation Game - his twist on Faust - goes beyond pop horror and into fine literature. At some point in my life I read The Hellbound Heart, the story that begat Hellraiser, but I honestly don't remember much of it.

But what I do remember from way before I saw this film in the theater is being afraid of demons. And there's a very straightforward reason why: I was raised in a religious household. I think that's something that holds true for most people, which is why we're so petrified of these abominations.

Think about it: Most of the films recognized as the scariest are related in some way to demons or malevolent spirits. The Exorcist, The Amityville Horror, The Omen films, Sinister, The Conjuring, Paranormal Activity -- all concern demons or the devil himself.  And there's just nothing more terrifying, at least for those who had a religious upbringing, which includes most of us. Our nation may be moving away from that, but we're still overwhelmingly a religious society.

That religious influence sticks with you, even if you move away from the church or form doubts. The power of religion is in its staying power. It's so firmly ingrained, because who teaches it to you? Your parents, usually, and at a very young age. Who do you trust more as a kid than your parents? If they tell you there's a God and a Devil, you believe them. And if they take you to a hellfire and brimstone church (I grew up Baptist) where the preachers get frighteningly red in the face while they scream about forgiveness and love, then the more real Hell and the devil become.

For the most part, horror films are escapism, 90-minute roller-coaster rides about seemingly preposterous things. But the effective ones make you say, "that could really happen." Because situations that can really happen are the moments in film that go beyond simple jump scares and into your psyche.

For some, this means people and animals - the nonsupernatural - are going to be the scariest things that can be on film. (Prime example: A friend of mine doesn't think The Exorcist is scary. But Texas Chainsaw Massacre disturbed her greatly. I told her the same thing I'm writing now: If you'd grown up Baptist, you'd be scared by both of them.)

But for those of us who grew up Baptist or Catholic or Holy Roller, it doesn't get any more real than the devil and his minions. And so nothing is scarier than being in the same room with a 12-year-old girl with the devil inside her (OK, purists, I know it's really the demon Pazuzu, but you know what I mean) or a little boy who is the anti-Christ, or having a demon attach itself to you and follow you wherever you go. Nothing. Not even a maniac with a chainsaw, and that's pretty damn scary.

The older I get, the more I wonder about who or what might be in charge of this universe and if someone is, if they even care, given the state of the world. But I know this: if there is a God, then there is a devil, and if there is a devil, then I'm still scared of him and his demons. I haven't darkened the door of a church in a long time, but that part of my religious upbringing still holds true.

And that's why movies like Hellraiser scare us, so much that apparently a new generation is ready for its version, because Hellraiser is next on the remake list.

Barker's original is pretty damn scary though. Maybe even for those with no religious background.

4 stars.

Reconsidering Halloween III

Halloween is my favorite horror movie. I've probably seen it 25 times. Its innovative camera work, eerie score and terrifying he's-always-watching theme has kept me a fan since I first saw an edited version on TV when I was a kid.

By association then, I'm a Michael Myers fan. I've seen every movie in the franchise (with the exception of the Rob Zombie remake of Halloween II, which I plan to watch soon). And as bizarre and preposterous as the story got toward the end of the run, I remained a fan of the franchise and its star character.

I can not say the same for Halloween III: Season of the Witch. For years, I have told people to steer clear of the non-Michael entry in the Halloween story.

When I was a kid, it was because I just didn't get it. I couldn't figure out how it even qualified as a Halloween movie without Michael Myers, who'd presumably been blown to bits in Halloween II along with Dr. Loomis, who'd sacrificed himself to rid the world of "The Evil."

And then about a year ago I read a quite informative article in Rue Morgue about Halloween III. It revealed some of the thinking behind that entry and also described how the film had become somewhat of a cult hit, gaining a following among a certain segment of Halloween fans who had decided it wasn't all that bad.

And so I decided to revisit Halloween III. I quickly found two things: 1) Despite having seen it a couple of times as a kid, I remembered very little about it, and 2) It's not that bad.

Now don't get me wrong -- it's not that good either. But it isn't the utter failure it was made out to be when it debuted in 1982.

The plot is pretty simple: Evil corporate tycoon Cochran plans to kill America's children in a high-tech Celtic sacrifice via the Silver Shamrock chips embedded in their Halloween masks. The pair who've stumbled onto the secret are out to stop him, but Cochran's soldiers stand in the way.

As for the non-Michael Myers aspect, the movie was intended to launch a new direction in the franchise, whereby a different story would be told each Halloween, with the producers envisioning a near-endless string of movies. But the failure of Halloween III put the franchise into a coma for the next six years, and when it was resurrected, the sure thing -- Michael Myers -- was resurrected with it.

But Halloween III: Season of the Witch deserves a look from fans of the genre and the franchise. It's an entertaining entry, and you can't help but to be left wondering what direction the franchise might have gone if HIII had made more money.

And here are a few more reasons why I like Halloween III:

1) I like Tom Atkins. The star of HIII had been in other horror films and done a lot of TV. And I always liked him in whatever he was in.

2) I love Alan Howarth. The longtime John Carpenter collaborator made a lot of 80s movies. His funky, synth-tone grooves add something special to many horror and sci-fi movies.

3) The kills are cool. There aren't many, but the ones you see are original and gory.

4) Halloween III: Season of the Witch came out in 1982, which might be my favorite year of all the ones I've lived so far. Lots of awesome music and movies came out that year. The Thing, Poltergiest, E.T. and Star Trek II, just to name a few films. And it was an incredible year for horror's musical brother, heavy metal music. Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast, Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance, Anvil's Metal on Metal, Scorpions Blackout -- the list of headbanging goodness goes on and on. And TV! Cheers, Knight Rider, Family Ties, Magnum P.I. -- it's hard to beat 1982 for pop culture. So how can you not like the Halloween entry for that year?

Give Halloween III another look, especially if you haven't seen it in a long time. You, too, might revise your opinion.

3.5 stars.

The House of Seven Corpses (1973)

A movie about witchcraft being shot in a house of horrors. References to ancient evil texts. A misty old graveyard with a hidden passage under one of the tombs. John Carradine. It should all add up to a good film. But the interesting parts of this movie have little to do with the plot.

In The House of Seven Corpses, director Eric Hartman (played by John Ireland) is shooting a horror movie in an old mansion where many people have been killed or committed suicide. His washed up leading lady (Faith Domergue) would rather be just about anywhere else. Her co-star Christopher (Charles Macaulay), who looks like a poor man's Robert Goulet, likes his whiskey flask as much as he likes quoting Shakespeare. House caretaker Edgar Price (John Carradine) doesn't care much for any of them.

This should be the part where I write about how mysterious things start happening during the filming of the movie. But aside from a cat being chopped in half and left in the yard, nothing scary really happens for a good hour. In fact, I found myself wanting to see the fictional movie they were filming more than the actual one.

Ireland, who was in everything from blockbuster Westerns like Red River and My Darling Clementine to B movie cheese like Fast and Furious, does a great job as the cantankerous director trying to finish his movie on time and on budget. Domergue (who is known for once being involved with Howard Hughes and then writing a book about it) is adequate as the disgruntled actress with her glory days behind her, mainly because she acts like she might have felt that way about her role in the actual movie.

Beyond that, it's seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff of movie-making which is interesting, and in fact, about the only thing that makes the film watchable until near the end, when somehow a chant from the Tibetan Book of the Dead raises some ghoul from the grave. Said ghoul then goes and does what corpses risen from the grave normally do and bodies start piling up, leading up to an ending that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, but at least stuff is happening. 

This is for super fans of the genre who feel like they need to see every horror film ever made. It's available on Blu-ray, for some reason. A marginal 2.25 stars.

Psychomania: Crazy British undead bikers

Caught this one on Turner Classic Movies. Psychomania is early 1970s British horror camp about a motorcycle gang that figures out how to cheat death. And when bikers think they can't die, you know mayhem is going to ensue.

I didn't love this movie, but I didn't hate it either. It tried to be scarier than it was, but it was hard to get past the British accents and flawless biker clothes. Think Austin Powers if he were the leader of an undead biker gang. But all in all, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes. 2.5 stars.

And now, five fun facts:

• Psychomania is apparently a cult hit for many British residents of the area where it was filmed. They enjoy watching it to see all the old neighborhoods and a shopping center that has since been torn down.
• The film stars Nicky Henson as the leader of the biker gang who with the help of his mother and butler Shadwell (yes, a biker with a butler) learns how to come back from death. Henson has enjoyed a long career. One of his recent roles was in Syriana with Matt Damon and George Clooney.
• The role of Shadwell is played by another British stalwart, George Sanders. It was one of his last roles before he committed suicide.
• Sanders was married to two of the Gabor sisters (Zsa Zsa and Magda.)
• Between Zsa Zsa, Magda and Eva (of Green Acres fame), the Gabor sisters were married 20 times. Zsa Zsa has had the most husbands, with nine.

Vincent Price: The Master Remembered

One of horror's great icons, Vincent Price, passed away from lung cancer 20 years ago today. In his honor, our film today is William Castle's House on Haunted Hill, and we offers a bit of Vincent Price trivia.

House on Haunted Hill is a favorite here at Fright Film Spectacular. Back before the days of all-night infomercials, you could usually catch a good horror flick in the wee hours on channel 17. I used to stay up or set my alarm to get up, so I could sneak out to the den to watch classics from the 30s, 40s and 50s, often starring the late, great Vincent Price. Movies like Haunted Hill, The Fly and House of Wax gave me nightmares when I was a kid, but I watched them anyway.

House on Haunted Hill packed a lot of scares into an hour and 15 minutes. Creepy old crones, hangings, shootings, floating skeletons, a huge vat of acid and a lot of screams, the movie was a hit when it came out in 1959, which was a big year for Price. He starred in six movies that year, including other horror classics like The Bat, The Tingler and The Return of the Fly.

In House on Haunted Hill, Price stars as a millionaire who challenges five people to spend the night in the house. Survivors will be paid $10,000. But the most dangerous things in the house may not be ghosts. It is a five-star classic.

And now, some trivia:

• Castle was known for theatrical gimmicks. In House on Haunted Hill, he rigged some theaters to have a skeleton emerge and float over the crowd during a key scene in the film.
• He and Price didn't stop there. In The Tingler, a movie about feeling a tingling sensation when in the grips of a parasite that feeds on fear, Castle rigged movie seats to deliver a buzzing shock to scare movie-goers.
• In addition to Castle, Price worked extensively with Roger Corman. The duo made quite a few films together based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe, including House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Mask of the Red Death.
• Price also starred in the vampire movie Last Man on Earth, based on the Richard Matheson book I Am Legend. It was remade in 2007 starring Will Smith.
• Price was born into a wealthy family,and studied at Yale and in London. But despite his distinctive accent, he was an American, born in St. Louis.
• Price also made many TV appearances. He played the villain Egghead on Batman, and made a guest appearance on The Brady Bunch on the Hawaiian episode.
• Music fans may recognize Price's voice and maniacal laughter on the Michael Jackson song Thriller.
• Price's last film appearance was in Edward Scissorhands.

We miss you, Vincent Price. Thanks for all the entertainment.

My Amityville Horror: Case closed

The legend of the house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, Long Island, New York, has enjoyed a long life. Going on its 40th year, it continues to frighten audiences and present questions as to just what - if anything - ever happened in what might be the most famous haunted house in America.

I've read Jay Anson's book. I've seen the original movie (which I consider one of the scariest ever) numerous times. I've seen the remake, some sequels and the cable TV documentaries, and all left me with that creeping sense that something must've happened in that house. (I had an opportunity to go see the house in 1999, but we chose to go to Times Square instead. I was always kind of relieved.) But it wasn't until I watched My Amityville Horror, the documentary presenting the story of Daniel Lutz, that I finally concluded that the whole thing was a hoax.

If you haven't seen The Amityville Horror (the original with James Brolin and Margot Kidder), please rectify that soon. In the meantime, here's the story in a nutshell: In 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his mother, father, two sisters and two brothers in the house with a rifle. A little more than a year later, the Lutz family moved in. They fled the house 28 days later in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on their backs, saying they were terrified of paranormal happenings in the home. The story of chairs that rocked themselves, neverending cold spots, spontaneously appearing flies, walls that bled, glowing red eyes and more was investigated by local media and written about in Anson's book which was eventually turned into the movie.

Over the years since, the story has been spun and re-spun and examined by believers and doubters. It was also kept alive by Lutz family patriarch George, who, among other things, trademarked the phrase Amityville Horror.

Daniel Lutz, now in his 40s, was a boy when his family moved into the Amityville house. After decades of listening to others tell the story, he tells his in My Amityville Horror.

Sort of.

The documentary is more of a study of a troubled man than a tell-all of the 28 days in the house. We're treated to face-the-camera rants from Lutz, a revisiting of the story with a local newswoman, a trip to the home of Ed and Lorraine Warren (of The Conjuring fame) and interviews with other journalists, both of the legitimate kind and paranormal. We also get to see Lutz visit with a new psychiatrist.

 Daniel obviously had serious emotional issues as a boy that still plague him. He had a vicious hatred for his stepfather George, and his horror story is more about that than any ghosts or demons. He ran away numerous times, claims he lived in the desert for awhile, spent years in therapy, and takes a deep satisfaction in the fact that George is now dead. And yet his anger seems not to have dissipated.

In fact, it manifests itself in spades when he is asked on camera if he'll take a lie-detector test. The question catches him off-guard, and he immediately turns on the film makers, telling them "we're going to have words" and not to do that to him. He finally raises his voice and proclaims he'd take a lie detector if he thought he needed to, but what's a machine going to tell us that he can't?

It's moments like that that finally convinced me it's all bullshit.

The trip to see Lorraine Warren was another one. Warren was the "psychic" who investigated the Amityville house. She also happened to investigate the house from the recent hit The Conjuring. She comes across as sweet at first, but then transforms into a sort of self-righteous loon, at one point presenting a crucifix she claims holds wood from the "true cross" on which Jesus was crucified. Lutz seems enamored with her, and she of him. And both seem delusional.

I recently interviewed a similar person. When you sit on someone's couch and listen to them confirm by their words and actions what you already believe to be true - that they're unstable - you learn to recognize the hallmarks. I saw them in the scene at Warrens' homes.

There are other moments, some suggestive, others very telling. One psychologist presents the idea that Lutz is simply repeating stories from the book and movies because he's come to believe them. Lutz continuously blames George for attracting these dark forces in the first place. His siblings, who could easily corroborate these stories, refused to appear. None of the local TV and print journalists who've been in the house (including one reporter who spent the night) nor any of the families that have lived in the house since have ever reported anything out of the ordinary.

And Lutz never tells a straight start-to-finish story. He gives passionate accounts. Sometimes he's vague, sometimes detailed, but he never offers the narrative I was hoping for. The only physical evidence he presents is a crooked finger he claims is the result of a window being slammed down on his hands by an unseen force. Most of his stories are about how hard it has been to be him and how much he hated George.

Lutz lives a peaceful life as a UPS driver. He works on hot rods and he is one hell of a guitar player. But I think the only thing he is haunted by is the memory of a man who Lutz sees as having stolen his family from his birth father, and thus stolen his life.

As for The Amityville Horror itself, this is my theory: George Lutz saw an opportunity in that murder house. He moved his family into it, and between his own actions and the backing of so-called paranormal investigators like the Warrens, he convinced the world he'd lived a nightmare.

One that keeps making someone a lot of money.

If you want a real mystery from that house, ask yourself this question: How did Ronald DeFeo Jr. - by himself - kill six people in the middle of the night with a high-powered rifle with no silencer without waking up anyone? I own the same model of rifle as the one he used, just in a slightly differently caliber. A Marlin 336C is loud. How did DeFeo kill people who slept in the same room with no one waking up? Eight shots (he shot both parents twice), from a gun the report of which can be heard a mile away. And no one woke up. No one in the house. No neighbors. No one. That's a question that's creepy and deserves to be answered.

My Amityville Horror gets 2.5 stars.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!

Today (or yesterday depending on if you're on Eastern time or Google server time) is Bela Lugosi's birthday (October 20). In his honor, tonight's movie is one of the granddaddies of horror, the Universal Monster masterpiece, 1931's Dracula.

Now there is no real reason to review a film that is 82 years old, so tonight's entry is more along the lines of fun facts and trivia.

Dracula was a savior of sorts for Universal studios. Two years into the Great Depression, producer Carl Laemmle, Jr.'s gamble was such a success that the studio would continue to make horror movies for decades, including such classics as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolfman and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

And now some trivia:

• The film was based more on a New York stage play than on Bram Stoker's novel.
• Lugosi was not being considered for the lead, despite having played it on Broadway. He had to lobby for the role.
• The first lines of dialogue uttered in a talkie horror are heard in the opening scene of Dracula and are spoken by Carla Laemmle, the niece of studio founder Carl Laemmle, Sr. Carla lived on the studio lot at the time. She also had a part in the earlier, silent Universal horror movie, 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney. Finally, she shares the same birthday as Lugosi, and is still alive. Happy 104th birthday Carla!
• Dwight Frye, who played Renfield, also had parts in several other Universal monster movies, most notably as the assistant Fritz in Frankenstein.
• Director Tod Browning also directed the most famous lost film, London After Midnight, which starred Lon Chaney. The only known print of that film was destroyed in a studio fire.
• There was also a Spanish version of Dracula shot at night on the same sets with Carlos Villarias playing Dracula. Some fans say they prefer the Spanish version, but I've never seen it.
• Dracula, of course, is from Transylvania. Lugosi was Bulgarian.
• Lugosi also appeared in what is almost universally regarded as the worst movie ever made, Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space. Lugosi's scenes are test footage of him in his Dracula cape, shot right before his death.
• Speaking of his Dracula cape, Lugosi was buried in one. 
• My wedding anniversary is also October 20, Lugosi's birthday. This was not on purpose, although it is kind of cool. Southern newspaper columnist Lewis Grizzard's birthday is also Oct. 20. I met Grizzard when I was 12, and he is the reason I'm a newspaper columnist.
• Also born on Oct. 20: Tom Petty, Mickey Mantle, Viggo Mortensen and Snoop Dogg.
• There have been dozens of adaptations of the Dracula story and just as many featuring the character. Universal made numerous movies in the 1930s and 40s, and London's Hammer Studios picked up in the 1950s, offering up quite a few films with Christopher Lee in the title role. Many also starred Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.
• Some of the other actors who've played Dracula: John Carradine, Jack Palance, Leslie Nielsen, Frank Langella, Denholm Elliot (Marcus from Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Gary Oldman.

But none played Dracula better than you, master! (In my best Renfield voice.)

Happy 131st Birthday, Bela Lugosi. Your Children of the Night, what music they still make.

Dracula, of course, gets 5 stars from Fright Film Spectacular.

Someone Should Kill This Film: Day of the Dead (2008)

It's sad to see failed potential.

Starring Ving Rhames and Mena Suvari, the girl who was in this splendid picture:

(and the American Pie films) and directed by Steve Miner (Friday the 13th parts 2 and 3, Halloween H20), Day of the Dead should've been a decent movie. 

It was not.

First: It's not a remake of George Romero's 1985 film of the same name, which I wish I'd watched instead. This is a wholly different film, and that in itself is stupid. Why use the name if it's not a remake or reimagining? It says it's "based on" Romero's film, but other than a couple of vague references to the original (missile silo, one sympathetic zombie), it bears little resemblance.

In fact, the plot is basically a slumming version of 28 Days Later that reminds you of a Syfy channel ripoff. Virus turns people into stupid-fast zombies. The army is there, but they're not really helping, and blah, blah, blah. 

For everything 28 Days Later did right, Day of the Dead does wrong. For the first 20 minutes or so, Miner thinks he's directing another slasher flick. He has some teens making out, a couple stumbling off to explore the shadows of a spooky old building and teases us with the reveal of the McGuffins, and when it finally happens, it's just not scary. Or fun. And zombie movies have to be one of the two. 

Rhames' presence is just flat-out confusing, plot-wise. It makes you think you're watching a sequel to the Dawn of the Dead remake, a fine film that Rhames was in. But it is implied at the end of that movie that his character died. So by the time you figure out Rhames' real purpose - to collect a paycheck while putting a big name on the marquee - you're already mad at the film makers.

And it just gets worse. Nick Cannon shows up, acting like a poor man's Eddie Murphy, throwing out lines like, "That's what I'm talkin' 'bout! Run they ass over!" That wise-cracking, part-angry-black-man, part ultra-cool playa character-type wore out its welcome a long time ago.

To her credit, Suvari tries, and there's a British radio DJ who's a tiny bit interesting, but those two are just not enough to overcome the silly dialogue and tired cliches. The effects are decent and the gore plentiful, but no kills are particularly cool.- save for some done with fire, which are mildly entertaining, but also perplexing. (Fire apparently immediately turns the zombies to cinders.) The film also brings up certain questions about Suvari's character that are never answered. That's just sloppy. 

If you want to see Rhames' good zombie film, watch the Dawn of the Dead remake. If you just have to watch one called Day of the Dead, watch Romero's from 1985.

1.5 stars. 

Drafted into Frankenstein's Army

It's hard to believe the Frankenstein story is nearly 200 years old. Mary Shelley's novel was first published in 1818, when she was just 21. How someone so young dreamed up the idea of a mad doctor playing God by trying to reanimate the bodies of the dead is a question even the author herself ruminated on later in life. But she couldn't possibly have conceived of where her idea would be taken 195 years later in Frankenstein's Army.

This twist on the tale follows a Russian army unit in the last days of World War II that stumbles onto a secret Nazi laboratory run by a descendant of Dr. Frankenstein. And that's all you really need to know about the plot.

Frankenstein's Army starts slow, which is usually not a good thing, especially in a film that's less than an hour and a half long. But once things start happening we step right off into the deep end of a ghoulish assault by creatures straight out of Josef Mengele's nightmares. And it's those monsters that make this movie.

They're original and genuinely horrifying, part dead Nazis and part steam-punk machines from Hell. There's a monster named Razor Teeth, one that's half-Nazi, half giant mosquito, a guy with huge pincers for hands, and the rest you'll just have to see for yourself. Multiple times in the hour and 24 minutes I found myself asking, "Oh, what the hell is that?!" 

This is also not for the squeamish. It's a gore-fest. We're talking a pile of burned up nuns. Bins full of body parts, helmets crushed onto heads, sawed-off skull tops, eviscerations, decapitations, and a scene with a kid in the Hitler Youth that's certain to make even hardened horror veterans say, "Wow. I can't believe they did that." 

Don't look for great performances or a lot of plot because this is more of a showcase for Frankenstein's experiments than it is a well-crafted tale. It's like spending an hour and a half in the most demented, twisted haunted house attraction imaginable, run by a seriously depraved mad scientist. It is great horror fun.

For all its greatness, though, Frankenstein's Army has one incredible snag: It's a found-footage film.

Let me take this moment to tell the entire movie-making world something that fans are in universal agreement on: We hate the found-footage technique. It's a shaky, dizzy annoyance. And sooner or later the film makers always have to come up with some contrived situation to keep the camera going and filming the action. Someone has to set a camera on a shelf or hand it to a friend, and of course, they film everything, because who doesn't film trips to the bathroom or while they're lumbering around in a mostly dark room? Who wouldn't keep the camera on the monster while it chases them? 

The makers of this movie admit in the making-of documentary that doing single-camera presented a seriously complicated challenge. Well, no kidding. When you can't use multiple angles, have to go from zooms to wide angle by having the character carrying the camera change lenses, etc. it makes it hard to tell your story sometimes.

There are a couple of moments when it worked: When the soldiers are confronted in the tunnels by the Zombots (the name in the credits for Frankenstein's creations.) During those scenes I was reminded of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Resident Evil or some other horror video game. You are totally immersed.

But other times I begged for traditional camera shots. Several scenes would've been so much better had the film makers not hamstrung our point of view.

The bottom line is this: You will either become so fascinated with the monsters and action that you will ignore the shaky, single-camera crap - like I did - or you won't be able to get over it and it will ruin an otherwise fine horror movie for you. But you should at least try to ignore it and give the movie a chance.

I give it four stars, and it would've been higher if not for the found-footage aspect. It's available on DVD (with extras) from Netflix and for sale online and in retail stores.

The Blog Lives!

Well, I finally did it. I started a blog for Fright Film Spectacular. Because that's what the world needed: more electronic information pumped into it.

But I had to do it. Twitter just could not contain the awesomeness of Fright Film Spectacular anymore. Fright Film Spectacular wants to breathe, to live, to grow, to expand and absorb everything in its path. Like this:

which starred this guy:

Yes, that's Steve McQueen. And that girl is Helen Crump (real name Aneta Corsaut) from The Andy Griffith Show. (First of many random fun facts: My Aunt Beth rode on Steve McQueen's motorcycle once. With him driving. Aunt Beth is cooler than all of us.)

Anyway, change the B (the second one) in Blob to a G, and voila! Fright Film Spectacular, The Blog, lives!

Fright Film Spectacular is something I started in 2012 just to entertain myself. I had the idea of watching as many horror movies (of which I'm a huge fan) in the month of October as possible, leading up to the viewing of my all-time favorite, Halloween, on the big screen, on Halloween. And then I thought, "Why not share that experience on Twitter? I can rate and review the movies, provide trivia, live-tweet some of them — it'll be great fun. Probably interesting to no one but me, but great fun nonetheless."

And so I did. And a weird thing happened: People enjoyed it.

I gained a few followers. People asked me questions, asked for suggestions of films to watch. Fright Film Spectacular had become interesting.

And so I decided to do it again this year. And it got even cooler.

For one thing, I picked up more Twitter followers, including a certified scream queen, Linnea Quigley. Quigley has been in dozens of horror movies but is best remembered for playing Trash, the punk rock chick in Return of the Living Dead who strips in the cemetery only to be, well, I won't spoil it if you haven't seen it.

But this, you must understand, is Big News in the world of Fright Film Spectacular. I watched that movie in the theater in 1985. Then I rented it. I bought a bootleg copy of it just so I could watch Joe Bob Briggs interview Linnea Quigley on TNT's old show Monstervision. If you'd told me back in 1985 that "the actress from that movie will not only follow you on Twitter one day, but she will actually talk and interact with you," I'd have said two things: 1) What's Twitter? and 2) You're full of shit.

Big News part 2: Just today, Beverly Randolph started following me on Twitter. Randolph played Tina in Return of the Living Dead. And she was in a movie with Jimmy Stewart. She was a baby at the time, but he was still Jimmy effing Stewart.

So, we have the interest and fun from 2012, plus Big News part 1 and Big News part 2. Then these facts: 1) Live-tweeting movies after midnight when no one else is watching makes no sense. Some friends last year wanted to join in by synching up on Netflix streaming. Hard to do when you work nights and do most of your movie watching after midnight when normal people are asleep. 2) I tend to know a lot about horror movies and sometimes I want to share trivia when I review them for Fright Film Spectacular. Doling out a couple of quick facts works on Twitter, but telling a longer story does not. 3) Trying to watch 30 or so horror movies in a month is doable, but it can be challenging when you're a grownup with kids and a career, etc. Why not spread the fun over time? Because 4) this is fun for me. And I need more fun in my life.

And so, Fright Film Spectacular, The Blog! has been born.

This blog's mission is simple: To watch, review and offer trivia about horror movies. I use a five-star system to rate them as horror movies, not as compared to other films, (though I reserve the right to do so if need be.) A film I give 3 stars as a horror movie might be a one-star if you put it up against a classic like The Great Escape or Papillon. But then again, Rosemary's Baby is a five-star classic no matter which movie you compare it to.

I mention The Great Escape and Papillon on purpose. Both are classics and both starred Steve McQueen — who made his film debut in The Blob. Without The Blob, we don't get The Great Escape. The point is, horror movies are more important and have a lot more to offer than many people believe. Fright Film Spectacular looks to change that perception, even if only just a little.

Since in real life I'm a journalist, I hope that if Fright Film Spectacular can gain a following, maybe later on interviews with writers, actors, directors, etc. can become a reality. So tell your friends!

Finally, I'm working on getting the Twitter archive of Fright Film Spectacular on here as a post, so you can read what's been written so far. Here are the films and ratings from 2012:
Halloween (5)
Rosemary's Baby (5)
Night of the Living Dead (5)
The Cabin in the Woods (5)
The Omen (5)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (5)
The Exorcist (5)
Bride of Frankenstein (4.5)
Return of the Living Dead (4.5)
The Bad Seed (4)
Island of Lost Souls (4)
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (4)
Army of Darkness (4)
Omen 2 (4)
Sinister (4)
Tales of Terror (3.75)
Invisible Invaders (3.5)
It! The Terror From Beyond Space (3.5)
Trick or Treat (3.5)
Ghost Town (2.75)
The Car (2.5)
Haunted Hotel (2.5)
Roadgames (2.25)
The Keep (2)
King of the Zombies (.5)

and so far for 2013:
Black Sunday (5)
Eyes Without A Face (4)
The Raven (3.75)
Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell (3.5)
Piranha (3.5)
Vampyr (3.5)
Outpost (3.25)
Creepozoids (3)
Rodan (3)
Phantom of the Opera (3)
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1)
Dear God No (0)

So there you have it: I have created a monster. I hope you like it.