Torso, Justice League, and the Russian Avengers

Confession time.  I hadn’t thought about this in years, decades really, but it came up recently in a Twitter conversation with friend and fellow Biff Bam Popper Tim Murr.  He’d just seen the 1973 pre-slasher era horror classic Torso and I’d mentioned I’d seen it in its initial run, when I was ten.  I wasn’t a bad kid really I wasn’t, but let’s face it, I was that night.

On what might seem like a dare, but was more like a don’t be a body part Trump thinks he can grab without permission, three other boys in my class and I sneaked out after nine during the summer and watched Torso at the drive-in with no sound from the woods near the screen.  My siblings are probably shocked right now, and my parents both passed would have kicked my butt majorly if they’d known, but yeah, I did it.

31 Days of Horror at Biff Bam Pop!

If you've been to the Biff Bam Pop! website, you know that other than the regular pop culture features, we're all big horror fans there. As always, special for the month of October, and culminating today on Halloween is 31 Days of Horror.

31 Days of Horror takes a look at the past and present in horror movies, television, horror television, horror comics, and even horror animation.

This year we had guest blogger Monica S. Kuebler write about Midnight Son; Loretta Sisco gave us a peek at her Halloween playlist, as well as her regular column, True Crime Corner, and her reviews of the television series Outlander; and Robin Renee gave us a tour of Halloween Haunt at Kings Dominion.

Newcomer to the site from over at the late great Popshifter, but terrific writer and whirlwind of terror, Tim Murr gave us looks at Red Christmas, Halloween III, the brilliant Psycho documentary 78/52, Pumpkinhead, Mike Thorn's Darkest Hours, and the latest album by Werewolves in Siberia, as well as his music column Let Us Now Praise Noise. Also from Popshifter, and a terrific comics reviewer, E.A. Henson brought us Alien Toilet Monsters and the seven essential Halloween specials you MUST WATCH this year.

As well as her awesome column Creations of Chaos, about animation and anime films, Sarah Hawkins-Miduski gave us her thoughts on Neil Gaiman's Coraline, Edgar Allan Poe's Mystery Dinner Party, and four creepy animated shorts. JP Fallavollita took us on a tour of the Tomb of Dracula, and also featured horror in ever October edition of his comics column The Wednesday Run. Jim Knipp gave us a look at the deadly dollies of horror films, and Marie Gilbert served up some Soylent Green for the Halloween holiday dinner.

Co-editor-in-chief and founder of Popshifter, the amazing Less Lee Moore gave us reviews of Alone in the Dark, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and The Asphyx, as well as her regular columns, Pump Up the Jam and Now Streaming on Shudder.

Founder and publisher Andy Burns provided insights on Stephen King and Owen King's recent appearance in Toronto, the Creepshow graphic novel and The Dark Tower: The Art of the Film, the games Resident Evil: Biohazard and Outlast Trinity, as well as his popular weekly Box Office Predictions and awesomely on-topiv column The Week in Horror.

Besides my regular reviews of the television series The Flash, and infusing the 31 Days of Horror theme into my comics review column Heroes and Villains, I got my grubby little hands in there too, writing about the classic rat movies Willard and Ben, fellow Biff Bam Popper Lucas Mangum's Engines of Ruin, The Car, Beware the Slenderman, and Halloween in the Marvel Animated Universe.

Don't forget about the other regular columns at Biff Bam Pop! like The Ten Percent by K. Dale Koontz and Ensley F. Guffey, and By the Book by Jim Knipp, and our other great staff writers like Luke Sneyd, Richard Kirwin, Mat Langford, and David Ward.

Clicky-clicky, come on by Biff Bam Pop! and check out 31 Days of Horror. It's the best way to celebrate Halloween!

Freaks of Nature

Freaks of Nature ~ You ever have one of those moments where you're watching a movie on cable you really like, it ends, and then as another movie starts you realize you can't find the TV remote? Yeah, that's how I found Freaks of Nature, and I'm kinda glad I did.

We're asked to accept a lot in this movie about the teenagers and citizens of the town of Dilford. Here, humans, vampires, and zombies semi-peacefully co-exist. That is until the aliens show up and paranoia turns them all against each other. The vampires are evil and manipulating, the zombies are brain-obsessed eating machines, and the teenagers are, well, teenagers.

At its core, Freaks of Nature is a good old fashioned 1980s teen sex comedy in the mode of Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Better Off Dead, more about the kids and high school than any of its supernatural and science fiction trappings. No matter what camp you fall into, it's all about fitting in and dealing with parents and growing up.

As the aliens make their demands known and the factions in this weird town must come together, things get even weirder, but it was cool.  I actually enjoyed this a lot more than I ever would have suspected. And the supporting cast is full of great comedic actors including Patton Oswalt, Keegan-Michael Key, Joan Cusack, and Denis Leary. Recommended, if you can catch it on cable (or if you lose your remote), check it out.

Strait-Jacket

Strait-Jacket ~ Like Santa Claus, this is one of those films that a fellow manager at my old video store used to run all the time, sometimes as punishment, sometimes for his own amusement. Just as Mommy Dearest was a video store favorite, and we knew all the lines (and some callbacks) just as well as some of us knew The Rocky Horror Picture Show, we also knew the real Joan Crawford films as well, and when I say 'real,' I mean real bad. And bad ranges from the unwatchable Trog to the height of mad horror What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, which is nearly as fun as the aforementioned Rocky.

Here in 1964's Strait-Jacket, directed by William Castle, Joan is just home from the asylum after serving twenty years time for taking an axe to her cheating husband. Now living with her daughter, played by Diane Baker, who introduced the film on the TCM Classic Cruise, when bodies start to pile up, guess who gets the blame? Crawford demanded that Baker play her daughter after the time they had together on The Best of Everything in 1959.

William Castle tackles this tight Robert Bloch story with apt terror and camp, with Joan Crawford dressing up like Mildred Pierce and trying to be a half-her-age seductress. It's fun and scary, with a wonderful plot that fits perfectly and shocks first time viewers. One can see Crawford's control freak hands on many parts of this film. In particular, I loved the big Pepsi advertisement on the table in one scene, a company she owned at the time.

Diane Baker is marvelous, a young George Kennedy is good too, and an even younger Lee Majors as Crawford's cheating husband disavows that he was ever in this movie, which just makes it even more priceless. I loved this, no longer a punishment, but a joy. As always, it is so fun to see these films, even these camp classics, up on the big screen, especially in a palatial theater like on board the Disney Fantasy.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1920)

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde ~ We saw this on last year's TCM Classic Cruise, which of course is the way to see any movie, in the company of passionate like-minded individuals, introduced by industry professionals, and in this case - of a classic silent film - accompanied by a live orchestra.

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is no stranger to this kind of stuff as their name might imply. They've produced soundtracks, and performed live similarly, for The General (I even bought the DVD with their score while on board), The Mark of Zorro, and one of my favorites, as well as one of the first, movie serials - Les Vampires.

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra compiles and performs the film music, called 'photoplay music' in the lost vernacular, just as it was done back in the day. Silent films never had official soundtracks as we know today. Each theater had a house band that had a repertoire of various types of music appropriate to each scene. Mont Alto continues the tradition.

I can't tell you all what an amazing experience it was to arrive early for the showing in the Walt Disney Theatre to get a good seat and see and hear them performing. Wonderful to both see and hear them before they recessed below the stage so the film could be seen. The music played came from an assortment of composers like Gabriel Marie, Gaston Borch, and Wilson Smith.

The music was seamless. The Bride noted at times she had forgotten there was a live orchestra performing because the film and the score interacting in concert was so involving. Of course the music merely set the background for perhaps one of the most thrilling and frightening of the silent horrors - Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde from 1920.

New York passes well for Victorian London, but then again, it had to. Shot around John Barrymore's schedule to accommodate his title role as Richard III and you can see the character in both his Jekyll and Hyde, as well as a hearty dose of overacting. The work schedule must have been crazy, wearing pounds of armor on stage every night and then filming this flick during the day with so much strenuous physical acting.

His transformations are wonderful and his Hyde with the scarily long fingers and his simian Yeti-like head is terrifying. Notably, each transformation was designed to make Hyde appear more dominant and monstrous, but that first transformation was all Barrymore - no make up, just him. Bad girl Nita Naldi is hotness embodied, for me at least, and good girl Martha Mansfield is suitably porcelain and unspoiled, for the moment at least.

It's not just that this is the 1920 silent version of the story, or that it's John Barrymore giving one of his greatest performances, this one showing on the TCM Classic Cruise on board the Disney Magic was special for another reason - its score was being performed by a live orchestra. This was not just a classic film, this was a once in a lifetime experience.

The Lost Universal Monster

Normally when one thinks of the Universal Monsters, there are five biggies one thinks of - Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Of course there are second tier monsters like the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula's Daughter, the Invisible Woman, and other derivatives.

But does anyone remember the lost Universal monster? Who knows the Gorilla Girl, a monster so popular in her time that her film spawned two sequels? 1943's Captive Wild Woman starred John Carradine, and introduced Acquanetta as the Gorilla Girl. Jungle Woman and The Jungle Captive quickly followed in 1944 and 1945, yet no one seems to remember the lost Universal monster.

The gist of the series is one of surgical terror and mad science. Would the transplanting of human glands into a gorilla create a more human gorilla or a half-human beast that would haunt your nightmares? Your guess is probably right. This precursor to theoretically Planet of the Apes is moody, atmospheric, campy, and a perfect fit into the Universal horror mythos.

Yet, no one remembers. Was it because she was a woman? Even in the horror world were women second-class citizens? Let's look at that list above again. The only females in the bunch are derivative of male major players. Perhaps the powers-that-be ignored the Gorilla Girl on purpose to keep women down.

You can still see these movies, and I suggest you check them out if you can. It's like finding a new Universal horror, and in a way, it really is.

Wes Craven and Fear the Walking Dead

We've lost one of the giants of the horror field this weekend, filmmaker Wes Craven. The writer/director/producer/actor passed away from complications of a long battle with brain cancer. He changed the game for horror, more than a few times, made us think about it differently, and in the process made some of the scariest movies there are. You can see more of my thoughts about the late Wes Craven and those of the staff at Biff Bam Pop! right here.

I found it ironic that I first heard of Wes Craven's passing while I was watching last night's airing of the second episode of "Fear the Walking Dead," mostly because one of the characters in the show, Tobias played by Lincoln A. Castellanos, reminded me of Craven's work. Castellanos is a young wunderkind on his own, a young actor who also writes, directs, produces, and dances - an amazing man both in front of and behind the camera, both on screen and stage. In the zombie spin-off he is Tobias, a high school student who is hip that the zombie apocalypse is coming.

Now despite the fact that the Z word does not exist in the Robert Kirkman Walking Dead universe, it doesn't take much to figure out by the second episode that the dead are coming back to life and biting on the living, continuing a cycle of infection that in turn kills and resurrects for ill intent. Tobias has it down, he knows, more than that, he is self aware of his universe. He knows what to do to survive in the zombie apocalypse. In other words, he's us.

And that's where Wes Craven comes into the equation. One of his more brilliant turns, and one that, pardon the pun, resurrected the horror genre, was Scream, a self-aware horror movie. Scream was a slasher flick inhabited by characters who were well versed in the horror genre, and knew the ins and outs of the slasher flick - just like Tobias leading the way in "Fear the Walking Dead." I like the kid, but odds are, just because of that fact, I predict his odds of survival are slim. After all, why use a knife, when you could have a sword?

Another aspect that I intimated in my last blog entry about "Fear the Walking Dead" was the Ferguson comparison. In the second episode, police brutality and protest play a huge part in the acceleration of the living turning into the walking dead. People see the police shooting citizens multiple times for apparently no reason angers the mob.

Let your inner conspiracy expert out, because the cops have special suits, are taking headshots, and are hoarding water. The powers that be know the crap is about to hit the fan, and they are prepping for it. This revelation adds a new dimension to the world we have seen in "The Walking Dead." Are the police and the military the majority of the survivors out there? We know Rick Grimes is a cop, but are all the other human monsters we've seen former authority… former good guys? That's the real horror.

And speaking of horror, rest in peace, Wes Craven, without whom, we wouldn't have much of the genre we have today. We have lost a visionary in the field. For a different view of the "Fear the Walking Dead" series, check out my friend and fellow writer Marie Gilbert's reviews over at Biff Bam Pop!.

Dust Devil

Dust Devil ~ The second mainstream film from writer/director Richard Stanley has suffered several times under a merciless editor's knife. From Netflix I watched an eighty-seven minute version that I am unsure is still Stanley's version. This tale, shot entirely in Namibia, and loosely based on a real serial killer, tells the story of a shape-shifting demon. Yep, and there you go.

Dust Devil is moody, creepy, atmospheric, and barely comprehensible. I'd be lying if I didn't say this film was visually stunning. Stanley does know how to catch the eye with even the most mundane or most horrific, but I really disliked this movie a lot.

The score, by the award-winning Simon Boswell, is perfect for the film. The narration works well, but the acting and dialogue are abysmal. After sitting through this, I know why so many cut it down. Dust Devil could have been a brilliant short, unfortunately, it's about an hour too long.

The Towns That Dreaded Sundown

Producer/director/actor Charles B. Pierce, perhaps best known for making Bigfoot famous in The Legend of Boggy Creek, took another 'true story' and mined it for this Sam Zarkoff American International movie that serves as the blueprint for the traditional slasher film. Written by Earl E. Smith, in 1976's The Town That Dreaded Sundown, we learn the tale of the Phantom Killer who terrorized young couples on lovers lanes in Texarkana in 1946.

The movie begins documentary style establishing the period, including narration by Vern Stierman who also did the job more than ably for Boggy Creek. His frequent voiceovers keep the film solidly in docudrama mode, which for the most part works.

Unlike the slasher flicks that would follow, this one views things from law enforcement as opposed to the kids. Veteran character actors Andrew Prine and Ben Johnson take point in the investigation with great chemistry, along with Bierce himself providing much needed comic relief as their sidekick. Also look for Dawn Wells, Mary Ann from "Gilligan's Island," late in the film.

The film looks very good, and the period is set well. I loved the music, the clothes, the cars, and even the language. Kudos go to Jaime Mendoza-Nava, an underrated composer of 1970s B-movies who deserves more credit than perhaps he's been given. He was good. The film gets all As for atmosphere. And it's not just a great period piece for the 1940s, but also 1970s cinema as well.

Stuntman and later stunt coordinator Bud Davis played the masked killer known as the Phantom. Except for the ridiculous trombone scene, he is actually pretty frightening. And his white bag mask conjures imagery of the Ku Klux Klan, which is scary enough, but notably it made me wonder what the movie was really about when I saw the video box before I ever saw it.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown was reimagined in 2014 by Ryan Murphy, the brains behind "Glee" and "Nip/Tuck," and his sometime collaborator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a big muckety-muck at Archie Comics, and whose credits also include The Stand comics for Marvel, HBO's "Big Love," and the 2013 remake of Carrie. It might seem like an odd fit, but it kinda works.

This is notably not a remake as much as it's a sequel, one in which the original movie is a movie based on the real events. Yeah, I know, it's a whole new level of meta. There are many

parallels, and the narration is a nice touch. With "Nip/Tuck" so many years ago, and more than a few seasons of "Glee" since then, it's easy to forget that Ryan Murphy has a very deft hand with suspense and horror.

Watching these two flicks back to back was an intense but entertaining evening of television, two generations of creators giving their take on a supposedly true story. They're both worth a look, more so for horror fans. And don't forget, it might have happened decades ago, but they never did catch the Phantom...

Tusk

Tusk ~ I haven't seen Red State yet, so this weird horror bent that Kevin Smith has been on of late is new to me. This, his second oddity in the field, is quite the eye opener. Twisted just doesn't seem to cover it.

The parts of Tusk that are recognizably Kevin Smith involve podcaster and former comedian Justin Long, who along with Haley Joel Osment does a podcast called The Not See Party. Sigh. Yeah, I know. The point of the podcast is for Long to interview folks and then later describe the experience to Osment, who 'doesn't see,' get it? They also mock the subjects mercilessly. Oh, it's bad, but it gets worse.

On a trip to the backwoods of Manitoba, an interview goes awry and Long must find a new subject. He goes to the home of Michael Parks, who claims to have been saved by a walrus. Once there, Parks drugs Long and amputates his leg, with plans to turn him into a walrus. No. I. Am. Not. Kidding. This is really effed up on a Human Centipede level, folks.

There is some brief humor, mostly at the expense of Canada, but once the transformation begins, this movie goes off the rails quickly and becomes unwatchable. Smith tries for horror but it falls apart when you realize what you're looking at. There's an almost O. Henry Freaks-like ending, but it doesn't take.

I was excited when I heard there was going to be a third Clerks movie, and even a Mallrats sequel, and now… after seeing Tusk, I'm not. Kevin, I love ya, but what the eff, man?

Death Bed - The Play

You all know what a fan of Patton Oswalt I am, and if you know the man's stand-up work, you've heard about one of the worst movies ever made - Death Bed. And just like Patton says, it's real.

If you have heard his routine about Death Bed, you know what an accomplishment it is. Now, Death Bed moves higher into the pinnacle of success, it's now a play. Written by Gwenyfer Rohler, and directed by Steve Vernon, "Death Bed: The Play" is for real.

This coming week, October 23 through November 2, Big Dawg Productions presents "Death Bed: The Play" at The Cape Far Play House during Big Dawg's Halloween Horror Theatre Festival. Check out the website for more information here.

The Strain

Currently airing on FX, "The Strain" is based on three novels by horror and fantasy writer/director Guillermo del Toro and crime author Chuck Hogan. Del Toro should be pleased as he originally envisioned the story as a TV series and so far it works well. His concept successfully blends the unusually diverse genres of biological terror and vampire horror with the usual del Toro spin.

My first thought when hearing del Toro was coming to the small screen was that TV would be too small for him. I was wrong. Downsizing the environment has only made the big horror that much more terrifying. The first two episodes have already aired and they were so tense and tight, I think in the future this might be a huge hit for binge watching. Each time the credits rolled, I wanted more.

I also have to give FX props for not structuring this series as an ongoing TV series, but as a close-ended story. For more on "The Strain," check out Biff Bam Pop!'s Marie Gilbert's reviews of the books here and here, and her recaps of episodes one and two. Check them out.

Rosemary's Baby 2014

Rosemary's Baby ~ My first thought when I had heard they were remaking Rosemary's Baby was why. It's almost a perfect film as it is, perhaps a bit dated now, but for its time, it was fabulous and changed the way we viewed horror. One could say that the original film, based on the Ira Levin novel, even created its own little subgenres of horror. It opened the door to several devil-related flicks, family-centric horror, and modern takes on old scare themes. The Stepford Wives, The Omen, even The Exorcist, they all owe a debt to Rosemary's Baby.

There are of course reasons to remake a movie, even one that was done right the first time. One reason would be to expand the original story, fill in details, complete connections, explain what was left unexplained. Another reason would be to update the film, as in a lot has changed since 1968 and now it's 2014. That means update the style of the filmmaking and storytelling, not just adding cellphones, the internet, and social media.

There is always the possibility that one has found a way to improve the original, to make it better, however in this case I doubt it. Some folks just want to do a remake as is, reproducing sets or shots, but with new actors or as above updated settings. Or it could simply be a bit of stunt casting, which does fit this case with Zoe Saldana in the Mia Farrow role.

I think the main reason I didn't want to see Rosemary's Baby remade was that it seems to be recent memory, and then I remember it's a relic of my childhood, and lastly as my mind shrivels a bit more I realize the original was made almost five decades ago. Damn, I feel old. It was a long time ago, and I even remember the ill-advised ABC Movie of the Week sequel Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby. Now that was a disaster, but at least it was a fun disaster. I don't think I can even call this remake fun.

Let's talk about the stunt casting of Zoe Saldana. Zoe is Uhura, she's Columbiana, she's Gamora. And it's not a matter of typecasting either she's better in those kinds of roles. This is not to say the woman doesn't have range, but she just doesn't pull it off here. I don't believe her for a second as naive, innocent, and demure Rosemary Woodhouse. There's a hint of the Zoe we all know and love in the beginning of the miniseries but she never surfaces again.

The other major change that director Agnieszka Holland made was the location move to Paris. This is disappointing as New York is very much a character in the original film. Holland is well known for a completely different kind of movie, the kind that would normally occur in France, but let's face it, this is Rosemary's Baby, and it's a miniseries for prime time American network television. What the hell were they thinking at NBC?

This new version of course add new details, as they do have double the time to fill being a four hour miniseries 'event' as opposed to just a two hour movie. That also means it drags everything out. Waiting and extended talky scenes do not a suspenseful story make. I love Zoe but she exudes as much (or as little) charisma here as the rest of her co-stars. The score by Antoni Lazarkiewicz is relentlessly uninteresting and pales in comparison with the stunning soundtrack of the original by Krzysztof Komeda.

This had the potential to be a refreshing and original take on the story but it fails both due to length and casting, and yes, even location. While the original presented tense subtle creeping horror, this version is boring, underwhelming, and overly and unnecessarily complex - and ultimately disappointing. Give this a pass. Read the book, see the original, hell, see the sequel, but give this 2014 remake a wide berth.

The Little Shop of Horrors

The Little Shop of Horrors ~ Not the brilliant musical of film or stage, I'm talking about the original 1960 movie here. This Roger Corman extravaganza was filmed in two days for a mere $30,000 on the set of A Bucket of Blood, and it shows, but it was done with love, humor, and sincerity.

The tale of the killer plant was thought to be derived from a 1930s short story called "Green Thoughts," but was officially written by screenwriter Charles B. Griffith, who also wrote the aforementioned Bucket as well as Death Race 2000 for Corman. Boy finds plant, tries to impress girl, plant eats everyone - an age old story.

Everyone who remembers this flick probably does because of the great quick sequence by Jack Nicholson as the masochistic dental patient. But it also prominently features one of the best character actors, in my opinion, Dick Miller, as a flower-eating customer.

The underrated movie is badly acted, poorly staged, and looks incredibly cheap, but still it's a brilliant little black comedy combining horror, farce, and Jewish humor. It's worth watching at least once, especially if you love the musical. You'll see where lines and songs come from, and find yourself singing along where the music should be. Try it.

Halloween at Biff Bam Pop!

All through October, Biff Bam Pop! has been celebrating 31 Days of Horror, special articles and reviews in the genre of horror.

Go on over to the Biff Bam Pop! website, your online home for comics, movies, music, television, video games, and more, and check it out. This month, you can check out articles about Carrie both old and new, John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, Nothing Left to Fear, Metallica: Through the Never, and even The Human Centipede.

This month there is also an interview with Slash, terrific guest blogs by Alyssa Lobit, Liisa Ladouceur, Robin Renee, Justin McConnell, Jim Knipp, and great horror themed comics reviews from JP Fallavollita and Jason Shayer. And don't forget the television reviews from Marie Gilbert of "American Horror Story: Coven," "Sleepy Hollow," NBC's new "Dracula," and "The Walking Dead."

Some guy named Glenn Walker even wrote a few things over there, like stuff about The Monsters of Doctor Who, The Atlas Comics Monsters, Solomon Kane, and The Bride of Frankenstein

Please check it out, and Happy Halloween!

Johnny Worthen's Beatrysel

This is the superb first novel from author Johnny Worthen, a man whose knowledge of the occult bleeds into his work, educating and illuminating.

It is also a tale of love and horror, refreshingly set against a modern day background of the American Northwest.

This is a horror romance that manages to inform as well as entertain, worth reading. You can buy the book here.

The Sentinel

The Sentinel ~ This 1977 horror, in the style of other urban 1970s horrors like Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, scared the hell out of me as a kid. No, strike that, not the movie, the ending of the movie scared me. The rest of the flick is pretty typical of the genre at the time, and fairly pedestrian.

Written and directed by Michael Winner, and based on the book of the same name by Jeffrey Konvitz (who also co-produced with Winner), The Sentinel is the story of a troubled flaky model, played by Cristina Raines, who wants her own place. She gets an apartment in a sectioned brownstone filled with equally neurotic neighbors, and a blind priest on the top floor who's always staring out the window.

The kicker is the neighbors are demons and the brownstone is a gateway to Hell. Burgess Meredith does a fine turn as the head demon, kindly and subtly sinister. On the other hand, Chris Sarandon demonstrates that none of his ex-wife's acting skills rubbed off onto him in this flat performance as Raines' boyfriend. Also look for early roles for Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Berenger, a very creepy Beverly D'Angelo, and a scary young Jerry Orbach.

The cat's birthday party is one of the more messed up scenes I've seen. It's comparative to the wedding reception in Freaks. Instead of "one of us," you'll have "black and white cat, black and white cake" ringing in your head.

The scene that scares the crap out of me is at the end, as I said. The priest guards the gate to Hell, but he's about to die, and a new guardian is needed - guess who's elected? I'm not really giving all that much away. Once you get to a certain point, it all becomes pretty obvious what's going on.

When the switch is made there's some overflow from Hell until the new guardian is installed. We see the denizens of Hell walking and crawling across the floor after Raines, and that's the part that gets me. Speaking of Freaks, this film did set off a bit of a controversy when it was revealed that, like that movie, real disfigured persons were used for the ending. To much effect.

I must admit, after seeing it for the first time again after almost three decades, it was more the anticipation of the ending that I remember scaring me than the ending itself. Still, not a bad flick for the genre of the time.

Prometheus

Prometheus ~ First things first, get any notion out of your head that this flick has anything to do with the Alien series. It may, but waiting for those bits that connect it, or even expecting them, will lessen your enjoyment of this otherwise fairly good scifi horror. It's Ridley Scott, it's terror in space, but Alien it is not.

Motivated by ancient cave drawings, a space mission in the future travels to a distant planet described in those drawings. The assumption is this is where to find the origin of man, our creators, who the scientists in charge call The Engineers. Yes, it's vague, and attempts are made to explain it along the way, but in the end it gets us to the planet, and starts the action moving.

The Prometheus and its crew land on the planet, explore an abandoned complex full of dead Engineers and one by one get picked off by various horrors from within and without in Alien-like suspense. Ghosts, monsters, mystery goo, infections, its all here. There is also the obligatory robot we don't know whether to trust or not. Paranoia is the name of the game, and Scott does it well.

Now for the cringeworthy spoiler alert and reason you might not want to see this flick. After being quite suddenly impregnated, Noomi Rapace (from the original, and superior, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), playing a character named Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (yeah, I couldn't get the Doctor Who reference out of my head either), gives herself an abortion. It is every bit as horrifying, and more so, as it sounds. Definitely one of the hardest things for me to watch in a movie in quite some time. Consider yourself warned.

There's a terrific ensemble cast including Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Wong, Guy Pearce, and the always terrific Idris Elba. Can that man do no wrong? There's also Sean Harris, who played the assassin Micheletto, the best thing about Showtime's "The Borgias." He is equally as good at scene stealing here too.

Worth seeing, but with several provisos, you have been warned.

James Herbert 1943-2013

Stephen King may have always been the king of horror since his emergence in the mid-seventies, but for a while at the same time, there was one man who outsold King in horror in the UK. I discovered James Herbert around 1980, and found him to be a suitable rival to King. Where King took his time, Herbert seemed to go right for the jugular. He was a similar writer but with a more canny sense of the horrific and the repulsive - a true master of the genre.

His books, The Fog (unrelated to the James Carpenter film), The Rats and its sequels, and especially The Dark were early influences on my writing just as much as King in that genre. He was extremely prolific, pumping out a book a year during the 1980s and slowing down as the years went on.

Author James Herbert passed away yesterday at the age of 69. The man will be missed, but his work will live on. If you're a fan of King, I urge you to seek out Herbert's books, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, and horrified.

Bates Motel

I've never been big on secret origins, except when they are shorter than a sentence or two or a minute or two. Just tell us what we need to know about the character or the situation and start the story. As a matter of fact, one writer rule states that you should always start in the middle of the story - beginnings are for suckers. Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 Psycho is a near perfect classic of the horror thriller genre, did we really need an ongoing prequel TV series? Why do we need A&E's "Bates Motel"?

While it might not be the first to do such, I do blame "Smallville." It's the story of Superman, before he was Superman. If you're a comics person, your first instinct is probably Superboy, and that's really the problem with "Smallville." All of the names are the same, but nothing else is. "Smallville" bears very little resemblance to Superboy. In the series, there is no Superboy, we see the looong journey of Clark Kent growing to manhood, and in the last moments of the last episode of the series, he finally becomes Superman. Over a decade later. Yeah, that long. And the whole time, all you really want from this show is to see him as Superman.

And that is why I hate secret origins, especially when they disguise themselves as ongoing TV series. I have to wonder, is that what "Bates Motel" will be like? Will we be waiting forever for our young protagonist Norman Bates to begin showing signs of the sociopath he is by the time the events of Psycho roll around? Will it take a decade?

The other obstacle (or perhaps it's a good thing, for the new show at least) is the many folks who are watching who have no point of reference for Norman Bates. I know it's hard to believe, but it's a factor. After all, believe it or not, there were teenagers watching "Smallville" who didn't get the Superman (or Superboy) references and thought it was just a cross between "The X-Files" and "Beverly Hills 90210." Certainly that worked. Half the audience was there for the soap opera, and half for the pseudo-superhero stuff. Perhaps "Bates Motel" might just work as a show about a gawky kid with a overbearing mother who run a creepy motel, period.

"Bates Motel" is set present day, we begin with Norman's dad dead, and Mom rushing them away to start over again, a habit she seems to have. The two are a little bit too close, and Vera Farmiga is just as overbearing as Norma Bates, as Freddie Highmore is creepy as young Norman. She's a bit too pretty for my tastes, even as a young Norma Bates, but her paranoid craziness fills out the rest of her character well.

On their latest 'start over,' they buy an old motel foreclosed on by the bank. When a even creepier neighbor starts to harass them because the motel and property had been in his family for decades, well, things escalate. He breaks in, rapes Norma, and Norman saves her, after which Mom finishes the job, killing the attacker. Don't call the police, we'll cover this up ourselves is Norma's battle cry. We kinda start to get the vibe maybe Dad's death wasn't quite what it seemed.

As creepy as the killer and the collaborator are, Nestor Carbonell is even scarier as Sheriff Alex Romero. If you locked me in a room with the three of them, he's the one I'd be most scared of. There are some genuinely chilling moments here, as well as some "90120" caliber teenage soap moments. There's also a cliffhanger that is very tempting to keep me watching, but I have to wonder, will this drag on forever and take a decade to get to the point, or will it surprise me. We'll just have to wait and see.

For a different view, be sure to check out my friend and fellow writer Marie Gilbert's review over at Biff Bam Pop!.