31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 25: ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)

Not to go on All-Fours; that is the Law. Are we not men?
Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not men?
Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not men?
Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not men?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not men?

—“The Law,” from “The Island of Doctor Moreau” (1896) by H.G.Wells

After several years of having no choice but to enjoy its lurid charms via a "gray market" DVD of a print of it culled from Turner Classic Movies, one of my all-time favorite flicks, 1932’s (or 1933’s, depending on your source of info) ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, is finally available on legitimate DVD from those loving preservationists over at Criterion, and I pre-ordered it the second I heard of its imminent release.

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS is a fantastically sick and twisted little movie that got in there just before the infamous Hayes Code was instituted and took away all the really nasty sex, violence and evil shit that made moviegoing worthwhile in the early days of Tinseltown.

Will H. Hayes: the human douche nozzle who ruined old school Hollywood.

After the Hayes Code was in place, Hollywood cleaned up its act considerably, under threat of serious penalties, and didn’t really get its balls back until the 1950’s, a shot in the arm that led to the freer expression of the Sixties and Seventies (and then, for the most part, films pussied-out again bigtime, but that’s a subject for another post).

Anyway, I first saw ISLAND OF LOST SOULS during my formative years but I was too little to fully grasp exactly why it had been banned in the United Kingdom for some twenty-five years after its release. It was a black & white flick about some queeny guy with a mustache and a white suit who lived on a remote island and made really lame-looking human/animal hybrids. There was no graphic violence, no cussing, and certainly no naked ladies, so what was the big deal?

Oh, the wisdom that comes with growing up and seeing the same movie through eyes that had gone on to witness films such as DAS CAVIAR DINNER and BARNYARD BANG...(Don't ask.)

For those not in the know, the movie’s based the 1896 novel quoted at the start of this post, and it centers around a guy who gets unwillingly stuck on the island of one Doctor Moreau (Charles Laughton, utterly burning down the house with a spectacular display of major league gayness and questionable sanity), a medical genius who has somehow managed to create a horde of grotesque and disturbing “men” from a variety of wild animals.

Doctor Moreau (Charles Laughton) and friend.

The products of apparently anesthesia-free radical surgery and ray treatments, Moreau’s creations are rather a sorry lot who have been conditioned to live by a series of laws intended to curb their innate animal behaviors and mold them into regular Joes. Don’t ask me what the purpose of such experimentation is; I guess simply to be able to say that he was able to do it? To fulfill some crazed need to play God? Fuck if I know, but one thing becomes clear very early on: Moreau is barking mad, his cultured exterior masking a whip-wielding psychotic who appears to get off on the suffering of his “children.”

Just another fun-filled day on the Island of Doctor Moreau. NOTE: the dude with the serious sideburns is none other than Bela "Pull the string!" Lugosi as the Speaker of the Law. Yowza!

Being stuck on Moreau’s creepy, vine-tangled and fog-enshrouded island is bad enough, but our uninteresting castaway is set to be married to an equally uninteresting fiancée (who of course sets out to find him), so Moreau decides to give his most successful creation a field test. The Doc unveils Lota (Kathleen Burke), a sultry brunette in a pre-Dorothy Lamour “exotic” island girl getup (this was back in the days when hot, non-Caucasian chicks were considered exotic) who has never seen a fully human male other than the Doc and his assistant (actually a big deal; those two seem like an obvious couple to me, and as this was a pre-ccode film, they very well could have been), and hopes sparks ignite between Lota and the stranded cipher. Kathleen Burke as Lota, the Panther Woman: say hello to your grandpappy's stroke-material.

As the viewers figure out before our boring hero does, Lota is revealed to have been altered from a panther into a prime piece of surfer-boy’s masturbation fantasy — no "pussy" jokes, please — but her shy and tentative attempts at “making friends” with the castaway go straight down the toilet once he notices her hands are reverting to their original clawed configuration and is understandably freaked the fuck out. Moreau orders poor, terrified Lota back to “the House of Pain” for a surgical touch-up, and awaits the arrival of the fiancée so he can turn one of his male hybrids loose on her. So not only do we get crazed punishment with a bullwhip and twisted medical experiments, we are also treated to Moreau’s intention to see if regular humans can successfully mate and possibly reproduce with his semi-human creatures, many of whom resemble a bunch of hairy, shirtless skells of the type that staff many restaurants in parts of Brooklyn and Queens. And when you think about it, the castaway would have gotten off (pun intended) relatively easy in the bargain since Lota is a bit of a looker (though the scratches would suck), while his virginal fiancée would have been relegated to savage rape by a literal man-gorilla (or something; it’s not made fully clear just what the guy is). It’s just plain sick, offensive, and gross.

And I love it.

Can you imagine being in the theater in 1932 and having your sensibilities offended by sadism, unholy “scientific” delvings, and intimations of bestiality and rape? That stuff’s still heavy nearly eighty years on, so seeing ISLAND OF LOST SOULS in those days must have been a serious brain-melter. Even the Doc’s well-earned and horrifying fate comes off as weak in comparison (thematically, anyway; being vivisected sans anaesthesia by a bunch of clumsy manimals would really bite the big one).

Lesson to be learned: be kind to animals!

So, whydid it take so long for this dark and sleazy classic to be released on DVD? Today’s youth needs to see that it wasn’t all Busby Berkeley creating a religion for show tunes devotees or the Our Gang kids putting a positive spin on juvenile truancy, and that when their elders piss and moan about how today’s cinema is leading to moral turpitude they’re talking out of their asses. I’d love to see a contemporary director even attempt to go where this dusty old hairball did and not be publicly executed by watchdogs for decency in film. Good luck with that one, bucko. And any movie that serves to inspire some of Devo's classic work — specifically "Jocko Homo" and the title of their first album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! — is automatically okay by me, but this movie earned its place in my heart on its own very twisted merits.

"Us not that smart but us read VAULT OF BUNCHENESS!"

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 -Day 24: THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The things we do for love...

Sure, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE is a classic example of a bad movie, but what a fucking great bad movie it is! If you appreciate the sleazy in the same way I do, especially sleaze with a distinctly 1950's flavor, there's a lot to savor in this classic of epic bad taste. It's become something of a born-again cult classic since it was lampooned on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 twenty years ago and the treatment it got there was indeed hilarious, but I argue that the film should be experienced on its own merits. It's like the cinematic equivalent of a lurid, ultra-trashy pulp novel found in a filthy bus depot at Jesus o'clock in the morning, only with the added bonus of the horror angle thrown in alongside the lascivious content.

Dr. Bill Cortner (Jason Evers) is a brilliant but unorthodox surgeon who gets into an horrific car accident while out driving with his fiancee, Jan (Virginia Leith). Cortner survives relatively unscathed but Jan is decapitated, so Cortner bundles up her noggin and takes it home to his lab, where he promptly places Jan's severed head in a tray of life-giving fluids and hooks her up to some nifty wires and tubes. Aided by his malformed assistant (Leslie Daniels), the doctor keeps Jan's head alive — and she's somehow able to speak, despite intact vocal chords or lungs with which to produce breath — despite her frequent entreaties to be allowed to die, and in no time he hits the streets of the nearby inner city to find a new body for his love. So what if some innocent woman has to die so he can bring Jan back?

Jan in the pan.

And not just any female body will do for Cortner's sinister purpose. He cruises shady areas and strip joints, prowling for a stacked figure right out of the classic 1950's Jayne Mansfield mold, and he's quite thorough in his search. (It's beyond morally reprehensible, but I can see where's coming from.)

Dr. Cortner does some window shopping.

After striking out with a street pickup and two strippers (who get into a ludicrously gratuitous cat fight), Cortner sets his sights on a raven-haired lovely (Adele Lamont) who poses as a model for an Irving Klaw-style camera club, creepily worming his way into her trust by promising to fix her scarred visage with his miraculous plastic surgery skills. (She hides the scarring by draping her long hair over the left side of her face.) Desperate to look normal, the model accepts Cortner's offer and ends up drugged and bound for his basement operating table.

From girlie-shot model to unwilling replacement body for a severed head.

But while all of this is going on, Cortner's selfish obsession allows him to completely ignore Jan's growing hatred for her fiancee because he won't hear her pleas to be humanely put out of her unnatural misery. While Cortner's away prowling the street for nubile flesh, Jan plots vengeance while learning to telepathically communicate with the cobbled-together monstrosity that Cortner keeps locked up behind a thick door in the basement, which sets in motion the narrative's satisfyingly gory climax.

On the set.

Shot in 1959, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE — titled THE HEAD THAT WOULDN'T DIE in some prints — didn't see release until 1962. I have no idea why, but I like thinking that it was simply just too damned sleazy to be unleashed onto the screen at the ass-end of the 1950's. Not only is the presentation of the story's material a bit more extreme than usual for its era, the movie also notably possesses a vibe that evokes sweat, greasiness, the choking miasma of stale cigarettes in a closed back room poker game, and the feeling that one is watching the proceedings through the haze of a three-day bender fueled by the cheapest of tequilas. The ending also delivers like few other American-made horror flicks of its vintage, and I'm intentionally not telling you what happens so you can marvel at it like I did when first seeing it at age nine. THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE is, in my humble opinion, the perfect gene-splicing of Fifties-era exploitation and E.C. Comics-style horror, and as such it is a nasty little treasure.

Poster from the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 23: HARD CANDY (2005)

The start of an unforgettable date.

After getting to know 14-year-old Hayley Stark (Ellen Page) during three weeks of flirtation on an internet chat room, 30-year-old photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson) takes her back to his house, where the girl makes them screwdrivers. After a few drinks, Hayley suggests that Jeff take sexy pictures of her and she begins to dance suggestively on his couch. As Jeff breaks out his camera, he begins to feel woozy and soon keels over unconscious. Upon coming to, Jeff finds that he's securely tied to a chair and Hayley's innocent and precocious demeanor is cast aside to reveal a cold and vicious sociopath with an agenda.

To give away more would be grossly unfair to curious viewers, so I won't go any further with the plot particulars. What I will say is that as the story unfolds, the audience is taken along on a journey into every man's very worst nightmare. Is Hayley insane? What is her motivation? Is Jeff actually a predator of underage girls? 

HARD CANDY is a nail-bitingly intense psychological battle wherein the seemingly weaker opponent wields several clear and very strong advantages, so Jeff's situation is a steady descent into hopelessness. Basically a two-character study (though three other characters make very brief appearances), the film is a tour de force of performances from the leads, both of whom are utterly believable in their roles, but Page's Hayley comes from out of nowhere to join the short list of cinema's all-time most terrifying psychos, and she only gets more fear-inducing with each passing moment. She's brilliant, methodical, and veers between overwrought adolescent histrionics and icy coldness as she torments her captive and plays with his mind and body in the most cruel of ways.

Believe it or not, this is the relative calm before the storm...

Psychological horror is far less easy to pull off than narratives showcasing rapacious monsters or implacable slashers, and HARD CANDY succeeds at its horrific flavor in every possible way. It's a true make-you-squirm thriller, especially for males, and if there is any justice it will eventually be rightly recognized as the classic that it is. This is a movie with very, very sharp teeth and you had better believe me when I tell you it is not afraid to go there. HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 22: THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)

No-bullshit old school vampirism, from back when vampires were figures of raw terror.

After being ditched in a rustic Transylvanian (where else?) village by a shady coachman, Marianne Danielle (Yvonne Monlaur), a pretty French student schoolteacher, finds herself stranded among clearly terrified locals. Luckily (?) for her, the sinister Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt) rolls up and, hearing of her plight, offers the girl accommodation for the evening at her family's castle (a location whose immediate visual leaves no doubt that diabolical things will occur there.

 

Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur): Hijacked into a waking nightmare.

 

While settling into her guest room, Marianne goes to the balcony and surveys the outside of the castle, noticing a young man on the balcony across from her. Over supper, the Baroness explains that the man her guest witnessed was her son, whom she claims to be "ill" after he fell under the influence of a certain bad "wicked" associate — alluded to be have been Count Dracula — and whose presence she hides from the locals, having convinced them that he died some time earlier. Later that night, concerned for his well-being and catching a glimpse of the young man seemingly about to hurl himself to his death, Marianne calls out to him, admonishes him not to jump,  and swiftly sneaks out of her room in the middle of the night to confront him. Upon entering his rooms, Marianne meets the handsome young man, who reveals himself as the Baron Meinster (David Peel), a bitter prisoner in his own castle who is prevented from escaping by a shackle attached to his left ankle. 

 

Moved by his plight, Marianne agrees to steal the key  to the shackle from the Baroness's room and free the Baron, and when she obtains it she  throws the key to him on his balcony. He eagerly unlocks the cuff and tells Marianne to get dressed and meet him downstairs, but the Baroness realizes the key has been stolen and confronts Marianne. The Baroness, clearly beside herself with terror, tells Marianne that she has no idea what she has done, at which Marianne flees to meet the Baron. With the Baroness in hot pursuit, Marianne rushes into the arms of the Baron, who is now dressed in a cape and ready to leave, and he orders Marianne to get dressed, as his mother can no longer hurt her. As Marianne heads off to get dressed, the Baron commands his mother to follow him. As she readies to leave, Marianne hears the Baroness's housekeeper wailing in horror that "He's free! HE'S FREE!!!" and when she goes to investigate, the now utterly mad housekeeper shows the foolish, well-intentioned teacher the now-exsanguinated corpse of the Baroness, noting that the Baron has fled into the night (which is announced with the presence of bats being noted and the ominous howling of a wolf). Still unsure of why all of this is going on, Marianne runs off into the night while the housekeeper states to herself that the young Baron must return before the cock crows. Return to his coffin, that is...

The next morning, an unconscious Marianne is found in the woods by a passing coach. It's vampire-slaying expert Dr. Van Helsing (a returning Peter Cushing), who revives the girl and takes her with him back to the tavern where her misadventure began. the good doctor's timing could not have been better, as a local's daughter was killed during the night and now her wake is being performed, so the doctor examines her and discovers — you guessed it — she bears the signature neck wounds of a vampire attack. Van Helsing happened to be on his way to give a lecture on "the cult of the undead" and how it must be stamped out, so, immediately after she has filled him in on every aspect of her story, Van Helsing drops  the young idiot off at the girl's academy that she was on her way to in the first place, establishes himself with the school's director as an authority not to be trifled with, and, with undead suckface ass-kicking kit in hand, heads off to Chateu Meinster. As we all know, a vampire's victims can rise from the dead not long after they are interred, so in no time there are a number blood-imbibers running around for van Helsing to contend with, and let us not forget that there is a conveniently-located academy full of nubile young girls for the Baron to prey upon...

Risen from the grave to join the party...

 

The first of many sequels to the game-changing HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), THE BRIDES OF DRACULA could have been just another followup cranked out from the cinematic sausage factory to appease lovers of the newfound permissiveness of British horror in the wake of the studio's previous groundbreaking horror entries (the aforementioned Dracula effort and 1957's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN), but this was made during the period when the soon-to-be-iconic Hammer brand was finding its footing and fired on all cylinders. Despite the absence of Christopher Lee's towering evil as Count Dracula, thanks to the character having been quite decisively killed (yeah, right) in the previous installment, director Terence Fisher crafts what is pretty much Hammer's finest vampire outing outside of the Dracula franchise, ranking alongside THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1963) as the best and most fun of their undead suckface yarns that did not feature Christopher Lee. 

 

As always, Peter Cushing is a study in cool under pressure as Van Helsing takes the fight to the undead with a crusader's gusto and conviction, and he certainly has a lot to deal with in Baron Meinster and his minions. Meinster in an interesting against-type vampire, being blonde and somewhat fey in an era where such figures sported dark hair and a sense of superiority that one imagines an apex predator feels in comparison to its prey. He's almost baby-faced, and one can see how his initially pleasant looks and manner would sway an impressionable young lady. Such is definitely the case with Marianne, who has to be the most brain-dead heroine in a Hammer film up to this point. Her interference in family matters that do not concern her leads to the deaths of the Baroness, a local peasant girl, a stable hand, and one of the academy's students, and she remains about as sharp as a bag of wet mice, even after she is made fully aware of what's going on around her.

 

 "Une moment, Monsieur Baron... You are ze vampire or something, no?" (Poirrot she is not.)

 

To sum up, THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is a hoot and a half. It's a textbook vampire story across the board and is in every way a lesson in how to do a sequel right. It does not rehash the previous film to diminishing returns, and it offers the audience old school vampire thrills of the type that pretty much died out on the silver screen by the mid-1970's. Gothic to the core and replete with the signature look and feel of classic Hammer, this one is a must-see, both for Hammer enthusiasts and vampire junkies alike.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 21: OFFSPRING (2009)

When unexpected guests drop in for dinner.

In the isolated shore side community of Dead River, Maine, an innocent family's cozy world is shattered when they are targeted by a nomadic clan of feral cannibals who invade their house and immediately get down to killing and butchering. The family's husband is attacked and hauled onto the kitchen table, where he is unceremoniously disemboweled alive. The wife, who was nursing a babe in arms, is brutalized but spared for more sinister purposes, which allows her best friend to scoop up the baby and the young son and flee out of a second-story window. From there it's a harrowing fight for survival against a ravenous horde who, though primitive, are very, very skilled at what they do.

Operating in similar territory to THE HILLS HAVE EYES (original and remake) and evoking the legend of Scotland's 16th century Sawney Bean and his 45-person family of cannibal raiders, OFFSPRING thrusts the audience into the flesh-eating terror almost from the get-go, and once the madness starts it does not let up. It's revealed early on that the cannibals are a dread lineage that's been marauding up and down the the Eastern Seaboard since the mid-1800's, hiding out in forests and caves, butchering and eating unsuspecting people, and stealing women and babies to increase their numbers. They exist at a level akin to cavemen and communicate in grunts and unintelligible spurts of warped English that we can only understand thanks to kindly-provided subtitles. The clan is led by a nameless woman (Pollyanna McIntosh) who shows zero mercy, and the rest of her crew follow her example with gusto, which is extra-disturbing when one considers that most of the cannibals are children ranging from approximately eight years old to sixteen or so. They are all stone-cold heartless killers, more animal than human, and murder for them is a reflexive as breathing.

When going into this movie cold, I did not expect it to be as vicious, violent, and gory as it is, and all of that, coupled with a relentless intensity, added up to one hell of a horrifying ride that I thoroughly enjoyed. Some may say they found it impossible to care about the innocent victims because they receive a minimum of script attention that would flesh them out into more three-dimensional people, but I disagree. The abrupt ignition of the mayhem is like being there for it, totally unprepared for the utter savagery in what should be the safety of the nuclear homestead, so full back stories on the characters are unnecessary. All we need to know is that the wife's friend is fleeing her abusive alcoholic husband with her son in tow, and that said asshole husband is heading up to Maine from Connecticut "just to talk." (Needless to say, he gets caught up in the mishegoss.)

So, yeah, I really dug OFFSPRING, and I heartily recommend it to those who can take its up-close-and-personal carnage and cruelty.

Promotional image.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 20: SHIVERS (1975)

"I had a very disturbing dream last night. In this dream I found myself making love to a strange man. Only I'm having trouble you see, because he's old... and dying... and he smells bad, and I find him repulsive. But then he tells me that everything is erotic, that everything is sexual. You know what I mean? He tells me that even old flesh is erotic flesh. That disease is the love of two alien kinds of creatures for each other. That even dying is an act of eroticism. That talking is sexual. That breathing is sexual. That even to physically exist is sexual. And I believe him, and we make love beautifully."

The Starliner, a luxury apartment complex on an island near Montreal, is overrun by caustic parasites that amplify the host's sexual desires, thus leading to the creatures spreading via any available human orifice. Transmitted through intimate contact and at other times getting around independent of a host and attacking at random, the phallic slug-like creatures reproduce rapidly. The creation of a doctor at a local research facility with the intent that they be medically useful as, once implanted, they search out failing organs, dissolve them, and replace them with full function. But the apparently insane doctor also intended them as "a combination of aphrodisiac and venereal disease that will hopefully turn the world into one beautiful, mindless orgy." So when he implanted a 19-year-old female student with some parasites (a girl with whom he he'd been having an affair since she was a minor), she went all horny and got down to business with a number of the complex's male residents, and then it was off to the races for the nasty little wigglies. Literally overnight, the situation escalates to a proliferation akin to George Romero-style proportions, with the infected behaving like swarming zombies, only this time around the zombies are sentient and will sexually assault you, resulting in a mindless, writhing euphoric dog pile of orgiastic couplings. 

 

A self-contained horny apocalypse.

Young or old, regardless of sexual orientation and even direct familial connection, no one is exempt from this horrific invasion, so how does one keep up with them, much less stop them altogether? The complex's on-premises all-purpose physician, Dr Roger St. Luc (Paul Hampton), investigates and attempts to navigate through this hell of the horny but it soon becomes apparent that there is no escape...

A couple who who just moved in goes to the building complex manager's office to complain about the sounds of what they think is the other tenants having an out of control party, only to enter the office and immediately get violated by six of the sexed-up parasitically-infected.

SHIVERS, released in the U.S. as THEY CAME FROM WITHIN, is the debut theatrical feature by Canadian master of "body horror" David Cronenberg, and his clinical approach to the body gone wrong is apparent from the word "go." The parasites are an obvious metaphor for STDs in the post-hippie era, and perhaps even a snarky commentary on the ludicrous setups in '70's porn where people just walk into a room and start fucking with barely so much as a "How do you do?" Everybody in this movie gets jumped and infected, and I do mean everybody, including children, with the most disturbing example of this being an infected father/daughter pair who attempt to entice Dr. St. Luc into joining them for a threesome. (I let out a loud "Eurgh" at that one.)

But while the parasites invade and proliferate through sexual assault, the end result is indeed their creator's intended utopia of a mindless orgy in which all are embraced and apparently happy (if quite crazed). One of the threads in this prurient tapestry is that of Janine Tudor (Susan Petrie), wife of Nick (Alan Migicovsky). Unbeknownst to Janine, Nick has been cheating on her with 19-year-old parasite Patient Zero and is infected with the wigglies, so he has grown distant from his wife. Janine worries for him because she thinks his illness might be cancer or something equally dire, but once the parasites gain full control over Nick, he attempts to rape Janine by way of spreading the parasites. Understandably terrified, Janine flees their apartment and makes her way to the flat of her best friend, Betts (horror and exploitation film legend Barbara Steele). They are seen interacting a couple of times earlier in the film, and it is made clear that Betts is single and independent, and there are hints of potential for something more than simple friendship intimacy between the two women. What the audience is aware of but Janine is not is that earlier that evening, Betts was vaginally invaded by a parasite while she enjoyed a hot bath and a glass of wine, so Janine is seeking comfort and support from one of the infected. 

Horror and exploitation film legend Barbara Steele as the unfortunate Betts, receiving an bathtime unwanted visitor up the cooter. 

But unlike the ravening rapists infesting the rest of the Starliner complex, Betts is kind to Janine, and offers tender seduction in lieu of violent assault. The neglected and mistreated Janine responds, thus unwittingly and painlessly joining the ranks of the infected. There is no violence in the women's coupling, and if not for the parasitic element, it would be beautiful. 

A dark romantic interlude: sapphic desire is given free rein with the help of a parasite. 

As the entire complex swiftly falls to the parasites, there is a twisted joy evident in all involved, so even though the creatures spread via sexual assault, the victims shortly come to exist in a state of what appears to be joyfully mindless sexual insatiability, a thronging hive mind of febrile pussy and cock, if you will, so is the end result really all that bad? Cronenberg does not answer that question and instead opts to leave things open-ended, but for all intents and purposes the events ignited at the Starliner could mean the end of the world as we knew it. It's like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS or a zombie apocalypse narrative where the individual is subsumed into a faceless, mindless horde, only this time everybody gets laid. 

SHIVERS presents a majorly fucked-up scenario when one stops to examine its ramifications, and I very much doubt a film like this could be gotten away with today without seriously toning down the concept and content. It's quite hellish, and the fact that something so very physical/carnal and utterly bleak is what Cronenberg brought us in his initial effort serves as a harbinger of a fascinating and intellectually challenging filmography marked with uncomfortable explorations of the body and its potential to lapse into that which is grossly un-human. Not perfect and in places clearly the work of a filmmaker who was learning his craft by the seat of his pants, SHIVERS is nonetheless compelling stuff right out of the gate.

I've been a Cronenberg junkie since seeing SCANNERS (1981) during its original release when I was sixteen, but I somehow missed seeing this first film from the director until watching it for this year's round of essays. Finally discovering it at age 58 was a real treat, and I strongly recommend it.  One of my favorites from this year's screenings, and now one of my favorite works from Cronenberg.

Poster for the Canadian release.

 

Poster for the U.S. release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 -Day 19: NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (2026)

"Everybody's got somethin' ta do...Everybody but YOU!!!"

While growing up in southern Connecticut, I spent a lot of time haunting the area's grindhouses in search of cheap and sleazy celluloid thrills, and more often than not such diversion meant horror movies while seated in a theater full of rowdy drunks and junkies. Many was the night I spent being thoroughly entertained by the head-on collision of a crappy movie and the hilarious and profane antics of my fellow moviegoers. It was the ass-end of a golden period in which trashy, zero-budget exploitation flicks were dumped into run-down theaters where they played for a week before vanishing into the ether and one's fond memories. VHS was in full flower at the time and a lot of those shitty movies did make it to home video, but the at-home experience simply could not compare to being at Ground Zero for the big screen release of the latest gore/nudity/profanity-laden attraction that was sure to bring the never-boring dregs of humanity to the theater. Those reprobates managed to liven up even the the least entertaining of time-wasters, so it was an extra-special event when the forces of drunken moviegoerdom collided with a bad movie of undeniable watchability and utter shameless, slapdash cruddiness. Such was the case on the May night in 1985 when I hauled my ass to Wilton Cinema to see NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR. 

 

Wilton Cinema was a weird theater whose programming often defied comprehension, thanks to it running quality mainstream releases one week, and random pieces of cheap exploitation garbage the next, and sometimes they would inexplicably pair respectable pictures with R-rated ultra-violent fare as inappropriate double-features. (For example: ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING paired with the sneak preview screening of ROBOCOP, an event I quite happily was present to witness.) By the mid-1980's, the theater circuit's programmers finally gave up altogether and the theater morphed into one of Fairfield County's most reliable showcases for garbage cinema and insane audiences, and on the night when I experienced NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR, the evening was punctuated by a thick haze of other-than-nicotinal smoke, the chime-and-crash of dropped 40-oz. malt liquor bottles hitting the sticky floor, and the merry audience hurling endless rejoinders at the action unfolding onscreen. On this specific night the audience was in rare form, and their wit was given a target worthy of their skills once the night train began its journey.

The film immediately gets into the audience's face with a so-bad-it's-awesome musical number in which a bunch of obnoxious faux-MTV types dance around at a party held on a speeding train. Led by a blonde, would-be-cool pretty boy who sings an inane dance tune, the group subjects us to feeble choreography and even some appalling white boy breakdancing as the singer admonishes the viewer with "Everybody's got somethin' ta do...EVERYBODY BUT YOU!!!"

One cannot help but admire the sheer nerve of not only foisting this "so '80's it's ridiculous" mess of a dance number upon an unsuspecting general public, but also for the film knowing exactly what kind of movie it is and directly calling out the viewer for having nothing better to do with their time than watch this piece of shit. Well played, NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR. Well played. (respectful clapping)

This hilarious number pops up a few times during the film and I defy you not to fall in love with its sheer awfulness and sing along every time the chorus tells us that "Everybody's got somethin' ta do...EVERYBODY BUT YOU!!!" (The smashed audience at Wilton Cinema sure did, and it was like an enthusiastic revival meeting.)

At this point, the audience had no idea what to expect from the film, since there had been no trailers leading up to it in the months before its release, nor were there any commercials on television, and the poster gave away absolutely nothing, seeing as it was simply an image of a bloody butcher knife embedded on a train track. That led one to believe that it was going to be yet another in the era's long line of cookie-cutter cheapo slasher flicks, so imagine our surprise when the movie turned out to be a horror anthology culled together from three pre-existing films (one unfinished), hung upon a framing device in which God  and Satan ride in a private car on the train as, unbeknownst to the dancing revelers, it hurtles toward its pre-ordained doom at dawn. God (Ferdy Mayne, familiar from THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, WHERE EAGLES DARE, BARRY LYNDON, THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, HAWK THE SLAYER, and many, many more) and Satan (Tony Giorgio, best known from MAGNUM FORCE, FOXY BROWN, and as Bruno Tattaglia in THE GODFATHER; yes, a cast member from THE GODFATHER is in this movie) review the individual cases of assorted people and decide on whether their actions will relegate those hapless mortals to Heaven or eternal damnation. Each of these cases plays out in segments edited from the aforementioned pre-existing films.

Cool! We get to watch TV with God and Satan!

"The Case of Harry Billings"

Otto's grim harvest.

Newlywed Harry Billings (BARBARELLA's John Phillip Law) survives a terrible car accident that kills his wife. Rescued from the crash by some of the most unscrupulous doctors in history and immediately drugged and brainwashed into becoming their personal errand boy,  Harry is dispatched to drug and kidnap busty women. Once they are drugged, the guy hauls his victims back to the creepy sanitarium that serves as the doctors' base of insidious operations, and the women are stripped to a state of gratuitous nudity before being molested/raped and eventually dismembered alive by Otto (NIGHT COURT's Richard Moll), a tall and incredibly creepy orderly, so that their components can be sold to medical schools around the world. (The sequences of the victims meeting their fates are quite nasty, with the dismemberments taking place offscreen while horrific screaming is heard, and the camera pans to a room that can only be called a human slaughterhouse, filled as it is with gory dismembered body segments on display and being packaged for shipping.) Harry is also pressed into sexual service for the pleasure of Dr. Fargo (Sharon Ratcliff), who drugs and lobotomizes her partner, Dr. Brewer (Arthur M. Braham), in order to take over the operation and reap all of the profits for herself.

Dr. Brewer, betrayed by his partner in evil.

As his usefulness nears its end, Otto prepares a jar in which to store Harry's soon-to-be-removed head, but Harry breaks free of the mind-control and sets out to liberate the living female prisoners after cold-cocking Fargo and strapping her to an operating table. Fargo meets a just and horrifying end as the lobotomized Dr. Brewer finds her and, with the help of another lobotomized staffer, decides to "open her up" without anesthetic. Harry fights Otto to the death and (rather unbelievably) wins, after which he walks into the operating room as the strapped-down and topless Dr. Fargo has her throat slit with a scalpel wielded by a barely-functional madman.

Bye-bye, Otto.

 By far the anthology's most visceral, nasty, and gory segment, this was originally shot as SCREAM YOUR HEAD OFF in 1981, but that film was never finished. As such, the re-purposing of footage as used here works quite well.

 "The Case of Gretta Connors"

When young love takes a detour into the very, VERY bizarre...

Pretty musician Gretta Connors (Meredith Haze) supports herself by selling popcorn at a carnival, where she meets sugar daddy George Youngmeyer (J. Martin Sellers), who scoops her up as his live-in lover and kept woman. Youngmeyer promises to make her a star and Gretta falls under his spell, finding herself starring in cheap porno reels shown at frat parties. (What we see of one of those efforts features Gretta in the most low-budget "squaw" costume ever, roughly consisting of a poncho and a headband with a feather in it, as she finds herself on the receiving end of the lecherous attentions of a "pioneer" in an equally pitiful getup.) College student Glenn Marshall (Rick Barnes) sees one of Gretta's tenderloin opuses and instantly becomes obsessed with her. He somehow tracks her to Youngmeyer's Manhattan nightclub where she works as the house pianist (and we un-ironically see that her musical skills are barely up to those of a lazy grade-schooler) and the two become passionate lovers, which does not sit at all well with Youngmeyer. So, rather than simply accept that he's been supplanted by a younger man or simply hire someone to kick the shit out of Glenn, Youngmeyer instead invites the pair to the "death club," a cabal run by Youngmeyer in which the death-obsessed members regularly convene and expose themselves to novel forms of being killed. Each new possible demise results in a member dying horribly, and Youngmeyer intends for his former paramour and her lover to go out in that fashion. The methods of doom include death by rare stinging insect (actually a tatty stop-motion puppet), electrocution, and being crushed by a wrecking ball, all of which are cheesily depicted for our viewing pleasure.

How to lose the electrocution game.

Confusingly, the segment comes to an abrupt end, with no shown climax, and instead we cut back to God and Satan, where the train's porter states that "Gretta went off with the nice young man and lived happily ever after," with no mention whatsoever as to the fate of Youngmeyer. ???

"The Case of Gretta Connors" was edited from segments of the completely out of its mind DEATH WISH CLUB (1983), which is one of the most bizarre and insane movies it has ever been my pleasure to sit through. I found it on VHS in the dollar bin of an odd-lot closeout store in Manhattan in the early 1990's, knowing full well that it was the source of a segment in NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR, but that foreknowledge in no way prepared me for just how crazy the unadulterated DEATH WISH CLUB was. The truncated version actually renders the madness into coherent form, but one notices in one of the sequences in NIGHT RAIN TO TERROR that Gretta's long hair suddenly switches to a rather butch short style with zero explanation, then back to her long-haired look for the rest of the story, and I remember noting that and being confused when seeing it in the theater. However, it is fully explained in DEATH WISH CLUB as Gretta, for no apparent reason, suddenly snapping and deciding from out of the blue that she is a man. At that point, she and Glenn are forced to participate in the death games at gunpoint and Gretta has clearly gone off the deep end into majorly unstable territory. My VHS copy of DEATH WISH CLUB is long gone, but I wish that film would get a DVD release. It's a unique work in the annals of bad cinema and it needs to be rescued from undeserved obscurity immediately.

Cover art from the VHS release of the delirious DEATH WISH CLUB (1983).

"The Case of Claire Hansen"

An undying evil.

A demonic entity — who's implied to be the son of the Devil — named Olivier (Robert Bristol) has been around throughout human history and seeks to wipe out mankind. First seen in the narrative as a high-ranking Nazi official during WWII, Olivier turns up again in the 1980's and his existence is now provable thanks to the advent of photography. His efforts are opposed by a grungy monk (Maurice Grandmason) and who recruit skilled surgeon and devout Catholic, Dr. Claire Hansen (Faith Clift), the latter of whom ends up tasked by the Church with killing Olivier by cutting out his living heart. A number of Satanic obstacles hinder our heroes on the way to the completion of their mission, including a charming stop-motion demon.

Bargain basement Harryhausen or "Gumby Goes to Hell?" YOU decide!

Cribbed from CATACLYSM (1980), which I saw in its entirety on VHS under the title THE NIGHTMARE NEVER STOPS, the final segment is by far the most coherent and best-realized. And while it's fun in this abbreviated iteration, I urge you to seek out the full-length CATACLYSM and check that out. It's a good minor effort and deserves better than to languish in cinematic obscurity.

Once the final segment reaches its climax, we shift back to the train as God and Satan await the moment when the vehicles crashes (for no apparent reason) and kills all on board, save for our two cosmic entities. But after the fatal disaster happens, the train is restored and all are brought back to life, apparently to live out the scenario endlessly.

The titular conveyance heads forward to meet its fate, presumably on endless loop.

Bottom line: NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR is world-class idiocy and is one the prime recommendations for when throwing a movie party in which you and your friends get your drink and your snark on. Out of the uncountable legions of bad movies, this is one of the most flat-out entertaining of the lot, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 18: WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976)

You know you're in for a rough ride when a film opens with over seven minutes of real-life footage of the effects of war upon children, showcasing among other examples the less than kid-friendly events at Auschwitz.

WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? boasts the simplest of TWILIGHT ZONE-ish setups: A married British couple take one last vacation before the woman gives birth to what will be their third little one (she looks to be nearing her third trimester) and end up on Almanzora, a remote island off the coast of Spain. Upon arrival, the couple notice plenty of local children but not one adult in immediate sight, so where have all the grownups gone? The children they encounter become increasingly creepy and bizarre, either scowling sternly or giggling like they're on nitrous oxide, and it soon becomes apparent that the kids are homicidal little fucks, a conclusion reached when the husband witnesses a young girl beating an old man to death with his cane, after which he finds a group of kids merrily employing the poor old codger's body as a gruesome piñata. (Yeah, good luck beating candy out of that.)

Trust me, you really don't want to think about this...

The couple eventually finds a sole injured grownup survivor who informs them that two nights before their arrival, all of the island's children awoke and began laughing as if they all shared some private joke, and then moved from house-to-house, savagely murdering every adult and using clubs and knives to do the job. But the adults did nothing to stop them because, as the title so pointedly asks, who can kill a child?

Oh, HELL no.

Sorry for the brevity of this review, but from there things get incredibly fucking dire and it would be unkind of me to spoil things any further. Let it suffice to say that this story ends on a believable bleak note and leaves things wide open, but little explanation is given as to the "why" of what spurred the savage awakening of the kids. Kinda like Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (1963), only with kids. (There are hints that there's some malevolent disembodied presence at work, but it is never explained. I choose to think it's something along the lines of John Wyndham's THE MIDWICH COCKOOS, aka VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, only minus the fuckless pregnancies.) What I will say up front is that, much like the superb DAGON (2001) — which I already covered as part of this month-long project, so you'll get the details when the review posts — WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? milks its remote off-coastal Spanish location to great effect, and once on Almanzora the audience finds itself just as stranded and helpless as the film's protagonists. A truly great work of involving the audience in what's going on onscreen.

The bottom line here is that this is a film that could never be made now, especially not in the United States, and for that reason alone it is a must-see for horror fans. There are certainly better films, but this one is unique and should not be missed.

Packaging art for the DVD release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2026 - Day 17: "MANOS" THE HANDS OF FATE (1966)

A road trip takes a nasty turn when a family makes its way down a lonesome Texas highway and encounters a creepy house (that's not supposed to exist) populated by what's apparently some sort of polygamous satanic cult led by an undead sorcerer. Sounds simple, right? Oh, it's simple, but the finished film is a cinematic train wreck of epic proportions.

Made on a $19,000 budget by Harold P. Warren, an insurance and fertilizer salesman operating out of El Paso, Texas, the film came about as the result of Warren accepting a bet to make a horror movie. What resulted is unarguably one of the most incompetent works of cinema in history, and those who incorrectly cite PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) as the alleged "worst film ever made" would do well to see it for themselves so they can truly understand just how bad a movie can be, in literally every possible way. I shit you not, there is literally nothing in the entire running time of MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE that could be considered worthwhile, and that is precisely what makes it an object of fascination for me and its legion of gobsmacked fans.

The film  stars absolutely no one of note and every performance is about on par with what one could expect from a live junior high school theater production if the cast had recently discovered the joys of Percodan and red wine cocktails. Harold P. Warren heads the players as Michael, the father in the hapless family of vacationers, and to call his thespic chops "wooden" would be to insult all trees everywhere. Diane Mahree as Margaret and young Jackie Neyman fill out the mother and daughter roles, but they are simply there to be present and put in the way of the script's meager threats, and they consequently barely register as anything other than manikins. 

A gathering of thespic titans.

Anyway, upon arriving at the remote house that isn't supposed to be there, the family encounters Torgo (John Reynolds), the place's creepy concierge (or something) who speaks haltingly and staggers around on what appear to be satyr-like goat legs. (At least I think that's what they're supposed to be; the actual effect makes it look as though the actor has stuffed full rolls of paper towels down his pants to serve as exaggerated thigh muscles.) 

The immortal John Reynolds as Torgo, a performance for the ages.

To put it as kindly as possible, Torgo is one creepy motherfucker, and he informs the family that they are not welcome because "the Master is away," but he almost immediately changes his tune and states "the Master likes you." Understandably weirded out by all of this, the family opts to settle in for the night, but first they simply stand around doing nothing in the lodge's living room while admiring a portrait of the aforementioned Master. Oh, and the Master is also apparently dead, but not, so go figure. (It's never explained.)

Portrait of the Master (and friend).

As the night progresses, Torgo majorly pervs on the wife in a sequence that induces the douche-chills in all who witness it

and before things can get actually rapey, the Master (Tom Neyman) arrives from wherever the hell he was and decides he wants to add the wife and daughter to his harem of apparently undead wives and servants of the undefined-but-demonic entity, Manos.

The Master (Tom Neyman).

As the movie lurches toward its climax, the family dog is killed by something in the nearby desert, the Master's wives argue amongst themselves and engage in a catfight over whether or not to accept the wife and daughter into their ranks,

Hawt polygamous cultist action!

and Torgo gets called out for the pervy shenanigans he perpetrated upon the wives while they lay dormant, so the Master rips off and burns one of Torgo's hands before either banishing him or killing him. It's not really made clear.

The judgment of Torgo.

When all is said and done, the wife and daughter become brides of the Master (and, by association, Manos), Torgo is gone, and the hapless dad replaces Torgo as the lodge's concierge when two unsuspecting young women drive up to the place. THE END?

What you've just read is MANOS in a nutshell, and my review in no way begins to communicate just what a jaw-dropping complete and utter failure of a film it is. I left out describing the filler material involving a pair of highway cops who repeatedly harass a pair of teenagers who are perpetually caught necking in a sports car, and also did not go into how there are long stretches in which the cast just stands around looking confused while the soundtrack's madness-inducing music punctuates the absolute nothing that goes on. And speaking of the soundtrack, the film's audio was apparently lost or not recorded at all during filming, so the entire dialogue track is overdubbed, thus lending the movie the feel of a poorly-dubbed foreign import. It seems like time has either come to a standstill or is running backwards as the audience attempts to process what it is witnessing, and at the end one feels like they've just survived a three-day bender in a basement somewhere in Tijuana, fueled by homemade tequila, a few cases of expired Tecate, and several bottles of industrial-strength Mexican cough syrup.  No lie, it is awful, awful, AW-FUL, but once seen it can never be forgotten. 

And it must be pointed out that John Reynolds' performance as Torgo has to be seen to be believed. He's weird beyond words and his bizarre, halting delivery is reportedly due to the actor being seriously dosed out of his mind on LSD during shooting, and I, for one, absolutely believe it. Tragically, Reynold's committed suicide at age 25 via a shotgun blast to the head a month before the film's release.  If he had not taken his own life and had lived to see how the movie became a cult favorite upon being re-discovered after its now-legendary airing on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 in 1993, he'd have been hailed as bad movie royalty and would have made a fortune on the convention autograph circuit until the day he died. Anyway, MANOS is a must-see piece of cinematic detritus that only the most hardcore of bad movie enthusiasts tend to make it all the way through. Are you one of that hardy breed? Attempt the film for yourself and find out...

Poster for the American theatrical release.

 

 Yer Bunche, channeling the Master.