I won't let KISS bandmembers tarnish my memories

This entry is not about horror fims. But many horror fans I know are also fans of KISS, so I figure this is as good a place as any to get this off my chest.
KISS — the band — is finally going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The band members, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Peter Criss and Paul Stanley — have done everything they can to screw it up for everybody.
Between social media, That Metal Show, radio call-ins, press releases, books and Rolling Stone, we fans — many of us fans for decades — have gotten a new look inside the band we love.
And we hate it.
We now see how the sausage is made in this band. And we don't like what we see, because it is not what we remember or believe in.
We're nostalgic for our own childhoods and wanted to relive them one more time at the induction ceremony.
We wanted our fire breathing, blood spitting, smoking guitars, smashing guitars and rising drum kits — and the men behind them — to be the same as what we saw when we opened the gatefold of Alive II. When we were 12-14 years old (or in my case, 6) we thought the characters and the men playing them were one in the same on the same mission. And maybe they were on the same mission at one time. But they aren't anymore.
We're not going to get that trip down memory lane because behind these characters, these personas that we all believed in as kids, are flawed human beings.
The Spaceman, with his rocket-shooting, smoking guitars and blistering solos will always be my guitar hero.
The real Ace Frehley is a spaced out ex-coke fiend who thinks aliens abducted him.
The Demon that was plastered on my bedroom wall (briefly, until my mom made me take it down) with blood dripping down his chin and breathing fire will always scare the crap out of me.
The real Gene Simmons is an admitted friendless, greedy jerk.
The Starchild with that big mane of hair and the mirrored guitar will always stand tall in the pantheon of cool, with the Fonz, James Bond and Dirty Harry.
In real life, Paul Stanley is the Man Behind the Curtain, a string-puller who seemingly can't stand any of the people he's worked with, but tolerates them to keep the rock and roll money and fame machine moving forward.
The Catman will always live in a thunderous, never-ending drum solo showered in smoke and confetti.
The real Peter Criss may be the only one who is close to a genuine person, and it's sad that he isn't going to get one last hurrah. I, too, was moved by his speech on That Metal Show. But he is also the guy who hung Ace out to dry in his book and is so paranoid he is afraid to answer his own door.
And whatever they appear to be to us, they apparently appear 1,000 time worse to each other:
— Sweet guy Peter didn't merit a phone call from his bandmates when he had cancer?
— Reality star Gene can't get his "brother" Paul to stay at his house for more than a few minutes because Paul thinks Gene lives a "fake" life?
— Paul is so ruthless he'll "cut your throat?" And says people who don't realize who the real boss of KISS is "don't know the band"?
— Ace says Peter was his best friend in the band but then voted him out? (Or didn't, depending on what day you ask him.)
These guys are goofballs. Idiots. Assholes. Between the four of them they have maybe two brains and half a heart.
But the four of them together circa 1977 — or 2000 — reach a level of awesome that's rarely been achieved by any of my other childhood idols. I've seen KISS in various lineups a half dozen times. I've seen the original four together once, and that show still blows away any other. Because those four together, in makeup, on stage, create something special.
So that's how I'm going to remember them — on stage. On my turntable. On my bedroom wall. I don't want to hear about, read about or otherwise discuss them, the Hall of Fame or any of their off-stage drama any more. Because I don't need those four guys. I don't need to be a part of their lives. I don't need them.
But I do need KISS. Sometimes I need to be a kid again. Sometimes I need to rock-and-roll my troubles away. And as long as I can put on a KISS record I can do that. Listening to the music is a must.
Listening to the nonsense is optional.
Some said KISS stood for Knights in Satan's Service. Others said it was the old adage Keep It Simple, Stupid.
For me, from now on, it will be Keep It Separate, Stupid — love the music, love the nostalgia, and the hell with the rest of it.

Galaxy of Terror - or Alien 1.5

You know those movies where someone says it's this movie meets that movie or if this movie and that movie had a baby? Well, if Alien was molested by Attack of The Crab Monsters while the crab monster used one claw to touch Star Wars inappropriately and an episode of Happy Days was playing in the background, you'd get Galaxy of Terror.

This Roger Corman-produced sci-fi/horror schlockfest from 1981 apparently has a cult following, and now I know why.

First, get a load of the cast: Devil's Reject Sid Haig and Freddy Kruger himself, Robert Englund. Then add a slumming Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian, Mr. Hand from Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and Joanie - pre loving Chachie, Erin Moran. Throw in a faux Tom Skeritt and a cantankerous ersatz Ripley from Alien and you're all set to rip off some blockbusters.

But not so fast. Sure, the first 10 minutes of this film are so cringe-inducing you'll want to turn it off. Sure, it steals blatantly from Alien and Star Wars (and later Empire Strikes Back and Forbidden Planet.) And sure, some of the acting is so bad from Erin Moran and Grace Zabriskie (trying for half Ripley and half Han Solo but failing miserably) that you can't wait for their characters to die. But, if you hang in there, you get a nice little reward.

The film starts with this old sage woman, who looks like Grand-MaMa from The Addams Family, talking to this mysterious Master, who is informed that a ship, the Remus - as in Uncle - has not been heard from. A crew is sent to investigate, their ship is pulled to the planet via some unknown force (I used the word force there on purpose), they start to investigate, people start dying, and you can guess where it should go from there.

However, there's a twist to this little pseudo-Alien ripoff. Things are not as they seem on Planet Morganthus, and the crew will find themselves not just stalked by slimy aliens but at the center of a very warped game.

And if Galaxy of Terror steals liberally from Alien, it also foreshadows Aliens. Why?

Because a guy you may have heard of who directed Aliens was the production designer on this film. James Cameron's fingerprints are all over Galaxy of Terror. The set design and the special effects in particular will remind you of Aliens.

And speaking of the effects, gore lovers will get their fill in Galaxy of Terror. Dismemberment, disemboweling, burnt faces, wriggling maggots - a little something for everyone. And three of the death scenes are of the kind that make horror fans stand up and cheer: One for originality, one for killing off an annoying character in a spectacular way, and one that is primarily responsible for the film's cult status and its original X rating. I won't spoil it, but it has to do with a hot blonde and a very gross creature. You'll just have to see it.

As for performances, Haig and Englund are acceptable, Walston is fine but looks like he's mad that he's in the movie most of the time, Zabriskie is pitiful and Moran is clearly uncomfortable being such a long way from the set of Happy Days. Her lines are throwaway and her character, Alluma, who is a Deanna Troi from Next Generation type, is useless.

The version I watched was on Netflix streaming and was a terrible transfer, presumably made from a VHS since it was in standard 4:3 screen ratio. A Blu-ray version exists, but the cruddy, grindhouse look of the streamer sort of added to the experience for me. It clocks in at a quick 81 minutes, and you know how we love short movies here at Fright Film Spectacular. It may have taken me longer to write the review than to watch the film.

Finally, I purposefully did not post the trailer because it gives too much away. But if you just have to watch it to see if you're interested, close your eyes anytime you see Sid Haig or a naked woman. You don't want those moments ruined when you watch the actual movie. Which you should do.

3 out of 5 stars.

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.