Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

I had planned to just write an imdb review for this (I will just truncate this into something manageable), because it really isn't very good (in fact, it's pretty awful), but for whatever reason my review just kept going on and on. This is basic rambling about the movie.  * “I saw your devil and he’s planning something…for you.” This is one damned frustrating, oddball film. It really shouldn’t have ever been made. A regular film based after a found footage film. The Order of the Right Hand Path is her only hope, the girl, now flowering into a woman, has little support that is functional enough to rescue her from “him”. Abalom, the demon that possessed and controlled her during the found footage The Last Exorcism, has been temporarily (I guess; but the film questions whether he ever has really left) disposed of from her. He loves, cherishes, and adores Nell and wants to have her mind, body, and soul all to himself. This demon is too powerful to put an end to witho...

One of the best (if not the best) viewing experiences of last October (2014 will go down as one of my most disappointing years of the 2000s regarding Halloween month viewing) was the Legend of Hell House from 1973. In terms of the overall mood, the use of psychic ability and science clashing to discover what thrives within it and “erase it” from the residence, the tortured faces of the small group gathered together to uncover its corruption and cleanse it, the effects and toll on the group, the atmospheric spook show that derives from the way the location is presented (the photography and shrouding fog give the residence a sinister appearance I found pleasing to the eye and thrilling as a horror fan who desires the aesthetics of a haunted location) and what evil lies within its walls, its rooms, its halls, and structure, and the actors congregated for this motion picture, The Legend of Hell House was quite a rewarding late night viewing for me personally during a Turner Classics Haunte...

Nothing against Joseph Cotten, but I can't help but wonder how much more aware horror fans would be of Mario Bava's Baron Blood (1972) had Vincent Price been able to fulfill the role of the titular villain. Bava and Price on the cover of the movie poster sure is quite a seller. I guess the film might be considered too old fashioned for the 70s and Bava's output suffered as attentions in Italy seemed to turn towards gialli which were modern day focused, with special attention devoted to urban/suburban elite classes and the fashion industry (a genre Bava helped to give birth to). Still as latter day Bava, the film does infuse the "modern opposite historical" clashing as the Baron, resurrected by a specific parchment containing a witch's incantation cursing him to revival brought to his old castle (about to be turned into a tourist attraction/bed'n'breakfast) by an ancestor, Peter (Antonio Cantafora). The past and present converge and the Baron still h...

A lot of times I have a number of images I just can't use for a full length review. After a while it just goes on so long that I feel it tends to get a little absurd. Still I wanted to do something with some of the images I have extracted from the film and thought they were neat enough to give a blog post to.

Will she listen to Franco who is warning her to stay away from Soledad Miranda? Of course not....they never do.

*** I remember the talk of David Arquette directing a horror film a few years ago, and it was on the tongues of horror fans. Slasher movies, once all the rage in the 80s, resurging in the 90s/early 2000s, have fallen prey to stagnation. For those who hate them, this is welcome, but I’m a fan of the genre so it has been kind of a bummer for me, truthfully. But, really, there isn’t a lot left in the tank it appears. The zombie and reality horror genres have flourished, however, and so if I can find a gem every now and then (or at least something entertaining) it is cool.   It is hard to believe, to me, that this was made eleven years ago! I would love to read top ten slasher movie lists just to see if a person can put together one for the 2000s, especially the 2010s. The Tripper (2006) brings together the 60s and 2000s, with broad swipes regarding “tree hugging”, “free love”, “hippies”, obsessive love, redneck disgust with outsiders, and political angst between the right and ...

Take a Bite out of the Darkside

Let’s just be honest, many of the films from the 80s perhaps aren’t as good or substantial as we once felt as kids or teenagers. However, regardless of how less-than-remarkable they might be, there’s a value that rises above perhaps the quality in writing or special effects. For instance, I feel every time I watch Cat’s Eye (a movie anthology based on Stephen King works), it diminishes a little less and less in terms of its overall excellence as a horror omnibus to me. That will never change what it means to me as a film of special stature due to its relevance in nostalgia and presence over and over in my childhood. I think why the film has diminished with each viewing rests almost solely on the final story. The little creature about the size of a fist wanting to harm a little girl (Drew Barrymore; her iconic image as a child has continued to give films in the 80s memorable posters and will provide future memes to further draw audiences to Firestarter, ET, and Cat’s Eye) while...

Looking back at the late nineties with fondness, it is cool to watch little movies that feature actors who were the next crop of stars to make their mark in the film industry for years to come. To think that the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Vince Vaughn co-starring in this rural psycho-thriller with black humor are big stars today is no surprise. But I particularly find this young portion of Vaughn's career fascinating. Now he's one of comedy's elite. Ben Stiller, Vaughn, and Owen Wilson have carved quite a career for themselves. However, I often like the lesser recognized stuff. For instance, I dig Wilson's little crime comedy, The Big Bounce, which isn't all that heralded. Certainly, 1998's Clay Pigeons isn't. This was the same year a great batch of late 90s actors were corralled into the universally despised Van Sant "reimagining" of Hitchcock's Psycho. Of that batch, Vince Vaughn plays another psychopath (who is far more confident and ...

A witch curses the locals of Devonsville for burning her alive in The Devonsville Terror (1983) So Susanna Love will probably be best remembered as the victim of an invisible rapist in a scene that enraged Siskel and Ebert in the 80s called The Boogeyman, one of the most well liked of Ulli Lommel’s mostly mediocre-to-bad career. I’m an absolute fan of The Boogeyman (this will definitely get the Darkside treatment one of these days), and The Devonsville Terror is often paired with it basically because of when they were released. While not a good-or-great film by any stretch, compared to the shit Lommel has made over the last decade, Devonsville is a masterpiece. The Commonwealth of Devonsville, as the film opens, has sadists using the guise of spiritual sanctity just to fulfill their bloodlust, used God as a template to massacre liberal women considered witches or consorters with the “incubus”. So they could feed a victim to pigs and salivate (I laughed my ass ...