Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

This gem is endowed with evil powers. The force that has seized your daughter’s mind is now using her as a medium for its own dark and wicked malefactions.  What do you mean? The power within this gem can open the infernal gate of time and space and work miracles of evil beyond all arcane dimensions. That’s impossible. Is it really? This dialogue is just…to me, it’s pure gold. To others, pure cheese. Pure camp. == This is just one of those divisive films for Fulci fans. Most feel it is clueless, dull, and perplexing. But you do have those like me who find all of this fascinating. Do I understand any of this? Mostly, no. There’s a blue-jeweled amulet given to the daughter of a Manhattan archeologist unwisely descending into bowels of a cursed Egyptian pyramid who is blinded by blue lasers fired out of a jewel he eyes after falling down a trap shaft that leaves his assistant impaled on a bed of spikes (of course, this poor guy’s eyeballs stab the spikes in gory fashion). This jewel is pa

I LOVE how ugly this film is. Cohen just cuts out any fat. He wasn't looking to give you stylistic craft or wow you with epic grandeur. Cohen knew exactly the kind of film he was making. I am just captivated with 70s and 80s New York City, and Cohen was very similar to Ferrera to me in capturing it in all different ways. Cohen's style, how his films are edited, and the zig-zag scene to scene transitions are going to be jarring for some folks. I envision lots of potshots and heckling at the claymation stop motion effects. When claymation police victims are chomped or captured and thrown to their doom from the Chrysler Building while firing off their machine guns at Quetzalcoatl, it's obvious, and I JUST DO NOT CARE. But that's because Harryhausen is a legend to me, and we got some cool animation effects artists (among others) inspired by him. There are some gem scenes that really hit a homerun with me that others might be like: yeah, so what? Like when Jimmy Quinn lets t

This is the full review cut into parts on my Letterboxd account. The butler actually did it! That alone popped me. A button pulled from a coat, caught in the death grip of a victim strangled via barbwire garrotte…this, you just know, will be the gotcha to call out the killer. Naschy sort takes a “stepdown” role as the driver of the widow (Patty Shepard) gathering thirteen “associates of or adjacently associated with” at a vast idyllic Spanish estate she believes could have tied (or actually responsible) to her husband’s plane crash into the English Channel while on his way to London. If you are someone reluctant to watch a film flagged with giallo as a tag, this particular film does have some violence but no nudity. While watching this, I did feel this has been edited and whatever was cut out is no longer available. There were sharp cuts as nudity was about to happen (stripping) and the gore (ax to the head, knife stab to the torso, needle stab to the torso, aforementioned wire garrott

The Fear  I do admit that I did a little cheating on this particular batch of episodes. I woke up to the end of A World of Own on New Year's Day, 2023, so I needed to finish it at 2:20 in the morning on the 2nd, Monday. I was able to soldier through From Agnes With Love , slept through Queen of the Nile and Come Wander With Me , and woke up to the end of The Fear , watching Death Ship and The Little People before I started up New Year's Eve episodes posted earlier on the blog. 11:30am – A World of His Own Gregory West keeps bringing back Mary while dealing with Victoria, ready to send her husband off to the mental hospital so she can get the money and property. All Victoria wants to do is get the key out of his study so she can send him away. Gregory kept trying to deal with Victoria, but with Mary conjured time and again, and his attempts to persuade her to stay (and stop threatening to have him committed) failing, the playwright "finds no other alternative" than

Meredith and Weaver in The Obsolete Man New Year's Day, January 1st, 2023 4:00am – An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge I typically don't include this in with my Twilight Zone list of overall episodes, but every year Syfy includes it, I find myself mesmerized by this Cannes winner in short film 1962. It deserves an official review someday. An execution that seems to be rescued by rope break might or might not be an illusion. Does the swim and run to his wife exist in his own mind as a fantasy or will he make it home? Shot to make the wildlife and environment so inviting and worthy of awe as guns go off and the snap of the rope, not to mention, the procedure before the execution horrifying...this is really special and I see why Serling was find of it. 4:30am – What’s in the Box I just find this more and more appalling with each and every viewing. Demarest and Blondell as bickering married couple right before they have this astonishingly violent confrontation at the end where a punc

 Episodes include: January 1, 2023 12:00am – Long Distance Call 12:30am – The Mind and the Matter 1:00am – Prove 7, Over and Out Long Distance Call was actually 11:00 pm here Central time, but 12 elsewhere, so I thought I would kick off my next marathon of episodes starting with it. Billy Mumy makes an appearance as the little boy a dead grandmother talks to across a toy telephone. Eventually the boy attempts to kill himself in the outside pool leaving his parents in hysterics, the father appealing across that toy phone to his mother to allow his son to live. Never one of my personal favorites, the episode nonetheless seems to have resonated with some fans over the years. The quality of the videotaped studio demand, often a bitch and gripe I have contributed to throughout the years, deprives this as it did the other episodes stuck with that look and feel of what the Twilight Zone often thrived on...the power of what fantasy can in film is lost. Twilight Zone can't look like a soap

  Serling introduces The Long Morrow These were the first episodes of Syfy's New Year's Marathon of 2022, December 31st. I hate that I missed out on this but life has a way of interfering with a big kickoff to a three day marathon. I like that these were the first episodes to start, since most of them aren't perhaps envisioned as the "major league" episodes. But what makes this show so wonderful is that what many might consider "minor league" episodes, others consider their favorites. A Nice Place to Visit I think I have probably said this three or four times in the past on the blog, but never more do I feel this way than after tonight's viewing: I think I can safely say that I never have to watch this first season episode again. Blyden nails the part of Valentine because each and every time I have watched the episode, I detest the very sight of him. He's incorrigible which was the intent. When he continues to call angel, Cabot, "fats"

  Five Characters in Search of an Exit So, I didn't get to see any Twilight Zone during New Year's Eve since I was with my mother and family all day Saturday, having missed Christmas Eve last year due to my mom getting COVID. While I would have loved plenty of Twilight Zone to cap off 2022, which was a lot of suck for a lot of people, I'm still going to get my fill, you betcha! Yes, Siree! I got home about 12:30 January 1st, 2023, and this episode of Twilight Zone was on. Poor William Windom as the tormented Brigadier just wanting out of his barrel, while his fellow trapped discarded prisoners hope to get their new home eventually. I still imagine this might be a worst case scenario nightmares for those who are claustrophobic! And were there ever Hobo dolls?! Nothing in the Dark You know no matter how many times I watch this episode that monologue from Gladys Cooper, where she talks about once being young, pretty, loving the outdoors and the sun, but willing to remain in th