31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 12: THE INNOCENTS (1961)

The new governess and her two cherubic charges. Our central characters.

 

Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) is hired as a governess by the affluent bachelor uncle of young Miles (Martin Stephens, best known as the leader of the alien children in 1960's classic VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED)) and Flora (Pamela Stevens), with the strict stipulation that she take full responsibility for the children in all matters, and that she is not to bother him with any of their goings-on. He simply values his freedom and ability to travel far more than fostering any sort of familial connection with the children, stating in no uncertain terms that he has "no room, mentally or emotionally" for the kids.  Upon arriving at the uncle's labyrinthine mansion, the governess meets young Flora and the pair immediately become friendly. Miles is away at boarding school but soon comes home after being expelled for being a danger to the other boys, information imparted via a letter that Giddens keeps to herself, sharing it only with the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (Meg Jenkins). As The governess gets to know the brother and sister, it soon becomes quite apparent that the pair are as creepy as all get-out, with Miles displaying a preternaturally mature way of expressing himself, as well as revealing a disturbingly sadistic side. 

 

 

 

 Flora and Miles.

 

As the weirdness percolates, Giddens comes to believe that the mansion and its grounds are haunted by the ghosts of the uncle's Valet, Quint (Peter Wyngard), and Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop), whose apparitions she begins to regularly see. The pair had been engaged in an illicit relationship, and now Giddens is convinced that their ghosts have possessed the children in order to pick up their affair from where they left off. But are the children actually in the thrall of un-restful spirits, or is Giddens descending down a spiral of paranoia and outright madness? And if she's right, how can she save Miles and Flora?

 

 

 Is the governess losing her mind, or are the children haunted?

 

THE INNOCENTS was among the first of the serious "adult" ghost story films and was adapted from Henry James's 1898 novella the turn of the screw, which I have not read, so I cannot speak for the film's fidelity to the source material. That said, the film's tone is very much aimed at grownups, and the plot is rather a slow burn that wallows in its own ambiguity. It is never made clear if this is a case of genuine ghostly possession or the governess simply descending into madness, and while I applaud the film for having the balls to be so vague when it comes to concrete answers, I would have liked to have an explanation, one way or another. Nonetheless, THE INNOCENTS is well-crafted and engaging, as we witness the weirdness of the children and the apparent ghosts of the illicit couple, and it stands enshrined as one of the ghostly sub-genre's masterpieces. It has a hallowed reputation and will likely be greatly enjoyed by those who favor ghost stories, but I freely admit that ghosts and hauntings are my least favorite sub-genre of horror, so I found it quite staid and tepid. It is not bad by any means, but it's just not my kind of thing. Your mileage may vary.

 

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DYAS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 11: I LIKE BATS (1985)

Izabela (Katarzyna Walter). Not Ingrid Pitt, but I ain't complaining.

In a 1980's Polish city, beautiful blonde day-walikng vampire Izabela (Katarzyna Walter) is nagged by her aunt and the ghost of her grandfather, both of whom want her to find a man and settle down, thus putting an end to her perceived empty life. When not feeding local bats at night, Izabela hunts obnoxious men who harass her in various ways, even resorting to disguise while cruising discotechs. She's quite content with her lifestyle until a handsome man comes to her aunt's curio shop and she falls in love at first sight. The man is Professor Rudlof Jung (Marek Barbasiewicz), who operates an expensive psychiatric facility in a chateau, so Izabela checks in as a patient, being up front her vampirism (which no one believes) and expressing a desire to be cured of her condition. Hoping to bewitch him, Izabela basically throws herself at Jung, but he's too much of a professional to mess around with a patient, especially one he considers delusional, but ass the narrative progresses and the bodies pile up, the psychiatrist must face the facts, no matter how paranormal they are. In the end, love conquers all, though vampirism is apparently transmissible via genetics...

 

I LIKE BATS is a well-crafted little comedy-shocker that wears its mid-1980's flavor on its sleeve and serves as welcome relief from the era's glut of slasher bloodbaths. The gore in minimal — at best you get a bit of what Hammer called "Kensington gore" — though there is occasional full-frontal female nudity that clashes with the overall tone/feel of the film, but I chalk that up to the film being the product of foreign sensibilities. That said, maybe it's just me, but I found the whole thing rather tepid and predictable, with Walter's gorgeous undead suckface distractingly resembling Blodie's Deborah Harry. There's plenty of Euroslease atmosphere to be had, bringing to mind 1971's CAGED VIRGINS, though that film was infinitely more in-your-face sleazy. For me, the movie's dreamlike atmosphere is compounded by its leisurely (some would say "dull") pace, and when it was over, all I was left with was a pretty vampire, a love story I did not care about, mediocre comedy, no scares, and a silly "shock" ending. It's not terrible, but I would recommend it solely for the most diehard of vampire enthusiasts.

 Poster from the Polish theatrical release.

 Poster from the Polish theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 10: TEENAGE MONSTER (1957)

"And the sign said 'Long-haired freaky people/Need not apply...'"

In 1880, somewhere in the Southwestern United States, an unexplained meteor crashes near a mine where young Charlie Cannon's gold prospector father works. Charlie's father is killed instantly, and Charlie, who was stopping by to visit, ends up exposed to the radiation from the meteor, which has the effect of horribly mutating him and causing him to age and grow alarmingly fast. Charlie's mother convinces the town that her son is dead, raising him in secret for the next seven years, during which time her late husband's mine has yielded a considerable windfall of gold. She buys a house in town and hopes to keep Charlie's existence quiet, but Charlie is now roughly 17 or 18 years old and stalks the local countryside, terrorizing or outright murdering locals. Judging by the evidence on display, Charlie either never matured past the mental level he had reached when irradiated/mutated or was rendered severely mentally ill by the event, as he communicates in semi-intelligible gibberish (which gets annoying really quick) and can be reasoned with and even commanded, but his murderous urges are too strong and it's only a matter of time before the shit hit hits the fan for the childlike titular creature. During one of his day-for-night rampages, Charlie kills the abusive gambler boyfriend of Kathy, a pretty local whom he first scares the living shit out of but soon takes quite a shine to. (More in a puppy dog infatuation way rather than any grow-up lusty urges.) His mother pays Kathy to keep silent about Charlie's existence, as well as hiring the girl to act as a companion for Charlie and be nice to him. What Charlie's mother did not count on was that beneath her sweet girl-next-door veneer, Kathy is in actually a heartless blackmailing manipulator who soon has control over Charlie,  whom she freely deploys as her personal one-man hit squad. Kathy not only uses Charlie for nefarious purposes, she also extorts cash from Charlie's mom in order to fund her dreams of moving away and living the high life in a glamorous big city. In short, poor Charlie is a victim of baleful urges that he cannot control, is easily manipulated by seeming kindness and a pretty face, and inevitably meets his fate when he finally twigs to Kathy true vile nature.

Though heavily steeped in trashy, cheap B-and-Z-grade horror flicks since I was in diapers, somehow I had never heard of TEENAGE MONSTER until I stumbled upon it for free online the other day. I added it to this year's roster, and what I got was a film that was the very definition of scare-free mediocrity that was also very much a product of its era in mid-20th Century American pop culture. It was released in the late 1950's, when movies and television were absolutely dominated by westerns, so what we have here is an ultra-low-budget western cross-pollinated with a "teen" horror flick along the lines of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, only bearing none of the fun nor the entry level scares of those two superior efforts. As horror goes, this one's a tepid dud, wearing its western trapping very prominantly on its sleeve, but even by the standards of the most lackluster television westerns of the era (and there were far too many to attempt to count), TEENAGE MONSTER is about as tepid as it gets, with the sole interesting element in the narrative being when Kathy turns out to be a villain of the foulest order. I was raised in. a western-loving household during the ass-end of the genre's dominance on TV, by which time dozens of the classic idiot box oaters had been put out to pasture in syndication, thus ensuring that kids my age got to see them, so with that experience in mind, TEENAGE MONSTER played to me like a forgettable episode of damned near any 1950's-era frontier drama, only with a "monster" that looked like Charles Manson and Larry Talbot had an illicit tryst behind a dumpster at a local Piggly Wiggly and Charlie was the resulting crotch fruit.

To make things perfectly clear, I only watched this one because I had never heard of it. I did not expect to get a dull western disguised as a delinquency-era monster movie, and what I got can kindly be deemed instantly forgettable. If you skip this one, you miss nothing.

                                                         The very misleading poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 9: THE TOUCH OF SATAN (1971)

Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered: a diabolical love story.

It's 1971 and Jodie (Michael Berry) embarks on a self-searching road trip into rural California, trying to figure out if he wants to become a lawyer like his dad. While stopped near a pond to enjoy lunch, Jodie encounters Melissa (Emby Mellay), a pretty and rather eerie young woman who lives on a nearby walnut farm with two older people who appear to be her parents, along with an ancient crone who periodically commits murders that the family covers up. Melissa aggressively puts the moves on Jodie, blatantly attempting to lure him into staying forever, which her "parents" do not seem at all thrilled about, and as he sticks around foir a few days, Jodie slowly notes just how weird the family is, and how the town's locals openly fear and shun Melissa because they all know she is a witch. When a disbelieving Jodie asks why they think she's a witch, Melissa nonchalantly responds with "Because I am." 

Melissa (Emby Mellay), a Californian witch for the ass-end of the hippie era.

At first skeptical, Jodie soon comes to believe Melissa's assertion, especially after experiencing a flashback outlining how her older sister was going to be burned at the stake by torch-wielding locals until Melissa made a pact with the Devil to save her sister. That was over a century ago, and now Melissa is 127 years old, but not looking a day over her mid/late 20's, while her sister is cursed with being an insane crone with homicidal tendencies who is impossibly old and decrepit, but cannot die. The only way for Melissa to be freed from her bargain with darkness is to have sex with Jodie, but once the beast with two backs is inevitably made, Melissa physically accelerates to her true age, and with no other way to save her, Jodie makes the ultimate sacrifice...

When you can't resist her witchy ways.

Like many others, I had never heard of THE TOUCH OF SATAN until it aired as fodder for MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 mockery, but as I watched it in that showcase, I added it to my short list of films that did not deserve that treatment. Sure, it's slow-moving, suffers from wooden performances by unknowns, offers only the most meager displays of witchery, features ludicrous and poorly-delivered dialogue, and features not even two seconds of scares, but the overall concept was solid and would have benefited from a larger budget, more assured direction that didn't look like a bland run-of-the-mill made-for-TV movie (despite the cinematographer later going on to shoot BLADE RUNNER). 

From the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 version: an example of the awful dialogue.

It came out three years after the success of ROSEMARY'S BABY and two years before THE EXORCIST opened an international floodgate of "devil junk" cash-ins, so its conceptual merits stood no chance of being remembered in the in-between space separating the tale of a woman facing the ultimate betrayal and being used as Satan's broodmare and the matter-of-fact super-graphic depiction of a 12-year-old girl's degradation and transgressions while possessed by a nasty Assyrian demon. It has a certain. amount of heart and originality, but there's no real spark here or any moment in which it indelibly burns itself into the viewer's memory. That said, it's definitely worth a look as a mild satanic curiosity.

Poster from the theatrical release. 

 

Poster featuring an alternate title,

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 8: SHIVER ME TIMBERS (2025)

Yet another 2025 attempt at cashing in on Popeye's recent transition to the public domain.

I made it through POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN and POPEYE'S REVENGE, so I had to watch SHIVER ME TIMBERS, a third Popeye-related slasher movie released in 2025. SHIVER ME TIMBERS is far and away the worst of the lot, as a whole lot of nothing happens during the first half, and despite some so-so gore, most of the rest of the film is a study in uninteresting padding, and it again trots out a "plot" virtually identical to the two that preceded it. There's even toxic waste involved in the mayhem, but this one includes a memorably ludicrous homemade chainsaw named "Bernice," in a nod to the magical whiffle hen character from the classic Popeye comics by E.C. Segar.

 

The modern iteration of Bernice. 

Of the three Popeye slashers, the only one that I can recommend in good faith as at least a fun waste of time is POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN. The rest are optional, with SHIVER ME TIMBERS being a complete and utter waste of time that should be avoided. Don't even give this turd a chance. 

 Poster for the (thankfully) limited theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 7: POPEYE'S REVENGE (2025)

2025 is truly the year of gory schlock adaptations of Popeye. 

After sitting through POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN, I found out there are at least two more Popeye-as-slasher movies out there, in an attempt to cash in on the character having recently crossed over into the public domain, where anyone can make a film using him and his world. Being the cinematic masochist that I am, I sat through POPEYE'S REVENGE (2025), and I was amazed to find that other than it being British of origin, it was virtually identical to POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN, beat for beat and almost right down to every last detail. As noted with POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN, POPEYE'S REVENGE is basically yet another tired adherent to the FRIDAY THE 13thj template, only with Popeye standing in for Jason Voorhees. There's zero suspense and it barely makes it over the line into amusing territory. That said, It was instantly forgettable, though there was some decent gore and general savagery. 

Poster for the streaming release. 

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 6: POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN (2025)

That's all he can stands, an' he can't stands no more.

POPEYE THE SLAYER MAN (2025) is competently made, but it's an incredibly lazy example of taking a nearly century-old IP that's recently crossed into the public domain and milking it with little or no imagination or creativity. 

The story (such as it is) basically dusts off the rote FRIDAY THE 13th formula, crosses out the word "Jason" and swaps in "Popeye," shifts the location from Camp Crystal Lake to an abandoned spinach cannery, on the docks, and has the implacable sailor (now mutated after decades of consuming canned spinach that's contaminated with mutagenic toxic waste) graphically murdering those who encroach on his home. 

 

Well, blow me down. 

Damned near every beat is straight out of any random FRIDAY THE 13th flick, plus the documentary aspect of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT shoehorned in for some added spice (albeit to a lesser degree), and about halfway through, I called the plot's big reveal, largely because I am deeply steeped in Popeye lore after a lifetime of being a fan of the character and his world (when they are handled well). Yes, there's a lot of cannon fodder wandering around the dark, labyrinthine cannery before they meet their brutal demises, but I have definitely seen far worse. It's a trifle that will likely be forgotten a day or two after seeing it, but at least it's not dull. That said, this is not the only Popeye public domain cash-in out there. Up next: POPEYE'S REVENGE (2025). 

  Ad for the initial release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 5: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 5: THE TOY MAKER (1991)

 

"Joe Petto." (*snicker*) 

It was Friday the 13th in December of 2024, and I was looking for a Christmas horror movie, so I went on Amazon Prime and watched SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 5: THE TOYMAKER (1991). I’ll give it this much… It was NOT what I was expecting, which is not to say that it was good. In fact, it’s fucking ridiculous. I was curious about it because when the first in the series came out. Mickey Rooney acted as a voice of old, wholesome Hollywood in loudly condemning it, but come the 5th entry, he’s in it as the titular character. For an entry in a series that made its name for being a gory affront to Christmas and Santa, this one does almost nothing to earn its R-rating, and its plot is just ludicrous.

It’s two weeks before Christmas and a little boy receives an anonymous Christmas present on his front porch at night. His dad sees the kid opening the gift but he stops the boy and scolds him for opening the door at night, then orders him out of the room. Dad then opens the gift, which was moving, and he’s attacked by the toy inside, eventually stumbling toward the fireplace and fatally impaling himself through the eye with a poker. Two weeks later and there’s no mention of an investigation into the circumstances of the death, while the boy has been traumatized into a state of silence. His harried mother does her best to cope, but things get weird when toy maker Joe Petto (Mickey Rooney) enters the picture, and we meet his weird son, Pino. There’s also a mysterious man who seems to be stalking the mother and boy, and more deadly toys start turning up with dire results.

The gore is minimal for this sort of thing, which was a disappointment, and there’s no proper slasher per se, but when all is revealed at the end, it’s like something out of GOOSEBUMPS, but for adults. Not scary worth a damn, but perfect fodder for having friends over and watching it while engaging in one’s intoxicant of choice. And though it’s quite tepid, do stick with it for the last reel…

 

Promo poster for the video release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 4: SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT (1989)

The return of Ricky.

In the wake of the events of SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT PART 2, Ricky Caldwell has lain in a coma for six years, after being filled with so much lead he could use his dick as a pencil. The facility where he's being cared for also does experiments on psychics, one of whom is a blind woman who sees visions of the future, as well as receiving visions from Ricky's scientifically-regenerated mind. As the psychic and her bohunk brother journey to their grandmother's house for Christmas, accompanied by the brother's air hostess girlfriend, Ricky escapes and of course launches on a rampage, despite wandering out of the hospital clad in a medical gown and having his brain exposed beneath a steel-rimmed plastic dome. (When encountered by soon-to-be victims, none of Ricky's targets notice anything odd about him until it's too late, which is frankly ridiculous. He lurches about like Karloff doing Frankenstein's monster.) With psychiatrist Richard Beymer (Tony in the 1961 version of WEST SIDE STORY) and detective Robert Culp (I SPY) in pursuit, it's only a matter of time until all paths converge for a Christmas to remember.

 

A stultifying bore, this direct-to-video would have resulted in irate audiences nationwide had it played theatrically. I can picture a grindhouse audience that had come for blood and boobs yelling at the screen during sequences like when the detective and the psychiatrist drive to the grandmother's house end discuss the detective's car phone and its plan. There's minimal gore and nudity, and the film again resorts to clips from the first film to pad things out, though not as egregiously as seen in the previous entry. In short, with not one single scary moment to be had from it, this one is entirely skippable.

 

Promo poster for the video release. 

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 -Day 3: RACE WITH THE DEVIL (1975)

Not your average back-road barbecue.

Two married couples embark on a getaway in a tricked-out camper and while parked across the lake from what appears to be hippie revelers, the husbands witness a full-blown satanic ritual, including nude participants and the sacrifice of a nubile young woman. The cultists notice that they have been observed, and it's off to the titular races, with intent as lethal as the witnessed human sacrifice.

When affluent mid-1970's white people encounter satanists, all hell breaks loose.

RACE WITH THE DEVIL is one of the more original examples of the fallout from THE EXORCIST two years prior, and believe me there was a deluge of "devil junk" from all over the world in its wake. This one's a serviceable little thriller-cum-car chase actioner with a supernatural angle, fronted by Peter Fonda, my man Warren Oates, and Loretta Swit (in what be her most prominent role outside of the long-running M.A.S.H teevee series), but despite the clear and present menace of the satanists (and damned near everyone that the heroes encounter after being seen by the coven), it's tepid enough to be indistinguishable from several of the made-for-TV horror flicks of that era, and nowhere near as scary as some of the stronger examples. (For instance TRILOGY OF TERROR, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, and of course THE NIGHT STALKER.) It's worth a look, and once it's clear that our protagonists are facing a no-win situation, the ending thankfully does not cop out. Bottom line: it's a strong concept that only halfway lives up to its considerable potential. This one cries out for an R-rated remake.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 2: WOLF MAN (2025)

The extreme and inevitable results of generational trauma.

As they are my favorite classical monster, I will always give werewolf movies a chance, and more often than not I get burned. Such was case with Blumhouse's attempt at revivifying the Universal Wolf man template for modern audiences in much the same way that they succeeded with 2020's take on the Invisible Man. Instead of a straight werewolf yarn, what we get is an examination of generational family trauma and how it affects its adult survivors, and also the damage done to their children. 

Raised by a super-strict survivalist dad deep in the woods of Oregon and deeply impacted by their harsh relationship, Blake Lovell (Christopher Abbott) finds his adult life marked by a strained marriage, but he does his best to be the best father that he can be for his daughter. When his father dies, Blake takes his family on what's meant to be a trip to settle his father's estate, but that will also serve to help strengthen the family bond. What no one expects is the presence of a creature that stalks the deep woods, a creature that Blake's dad's harsh parenting prepared him for with little or no explanation. Local Native American legens mention a disease that renders the infected feral and savagely carnivorous, and while driving to his dad's estate, Blake becomes infected and slowly loses his humanity while trying to protect his wife and daughter from the creature that inflicted its curse upon him. There is no cure, and it's only a matter of time before the beast wins out, and mother and daughter are stranded in the deep woods, god knows how many miles from anything even resembling help.

The premise is interesting and the depiction of Blake's slow transformation is a study in tragic agony, but if you are looking for a werewolf story along the lines of THE HOWLING, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, DOG SOLDIERS, LATE PHASES, or even the classic genre-defining 1941 THE WOLF MAN, you are shit out of luck. This WOLF MAN strives to be a study of the aforementioned trauma, as well as watching a loved one succumb to an incurable disease. It's not particularly scary, is rather dull, and in the end it's quite a disappointment and a squandered opportunity. I don;t even recommend this for werewolf purists. And, let's face it, the titular creature is simply not an actual lycanthrope. It's a person suffering from an infection. Instead, go for a re-watch of any of the aforementioned far better werewolf flicks.

 

                                                             Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2025 - Day 1: NOSFERATU (2024)

Nothing like the love of an undead suckface.

So, a remake of the 1922 vampire classic NOSFERATU, from. the director of the superb THE WITCH (2015).

Basically Bram Stoker's DRACULA with character names changed, you know the basic story, so I won't bore you with a recap. What you need to know is that it's well-crafted and thick with eerie, dreamlike atmosphere, but it's also glacially slow and dull. The performances are all strong and that they kept the vampire a revolting monster instead of yet another rote sexy undead suckface seducer was a welcome bit of trope defiance, but I feel the same way about it as I felt about the 2010 remake of THE WOLFMAN. It came off to me like a particularly turgid and overlong installment of MASTERPIECE THEATER in Hammer drag, but Hammer's films generally moved briskly, were lavishly colorful, especially when it came to its signature bright red "Kensington gore," and I found myself connecting with the characters far more than I did with almost anyone in this remake. Yes, there are moments of genuine creepiness and eeriness, and some of the set pieces are outstanding — the squirming throngs of plague-infested rats are especially douche chill-inducing — and the sequences featuring the vampire absolutely deliver, but there's too little of him and far too much of the boring human characters, though there were standouts among them, with Lily Rose Depp being the MVP.

As for the fear factor, I personally found none of it scary, but it is undeniably eerie, so there's that at least. It's a very slow burn, with it taking far too long for the vampire to enter the narrative. In fact, it's a good half hour before he shows up at all, and the first half hour could have been excised entirely. The film could have been much tighter if it simply opened with the solicitor rendezvousing with Orlock's carriage and filled the audience in from there.

Orlock's scenes are great monster stuff — the way Count Orlock feeds is original and chilling, very beastlike — and when we finally get a decent look at him, he's a hulking presence that resembles what we got for the titular creature in KRAMPUS (2015), only minus the horns, beard, and Santa gear. This vampire is a predatory embodiment of disease, a living plague, if you will, and he exudes a malevolence that few cinematic vampires have wielded over the past four decades, so that was a plus. His decimation of several characters over a three-night period is quite nasty, including the unflinching depiction of him feeding on two adorable little girls. (Fuck spoilers. It's a monster movie, and monsters are gonna monster, provided that the filmmaker isn't a pussy, which Eggers certainly is not.) I just wish we had more of him instead of all the other Merchant Ivory costume drama.

Overall, I found this iteration of NOSFERATU to be an unnecessarily overlong slog, but I’m glad I saw it so I can join the discussion and write about it. That said, I won’t be revisiting it. The original silent version from 102 years ago is far superior, and I had a hell of a lot more fun with the vampire mayhem in 2024's ABIGAIL. Totally different flavor of vampire, to be sure, but I came to be entertained, not offered a Gothic soporific.

 Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROIR 2025-Intro

Another year, another 31 scary items to discuss.

If I may be candid, it has been one hell of a year. I survived a cardiac arterial bypass graft procedure, I've been bearing witness to my 92-year-old cancer-ridden mother's slow fading away, and a bunch of other shit, so being able to retreat into daily doses of spooky stuff will be a tonic for my soul. This year will be the usual hodgepodge of the good, the bad, and the fucking ridiculous, so saddle up and get ready for the ride!

 -Yer Bunche 

 

NINE DAYS AFTER MY CARDIAC TRIPLE BYPASS

GETTING MY DUCKS IN A ROW

This is going to be a loaded week. After a long and informative chat with a close friend who's a doctor, I am heeding her advice and will draft up a document designating a medical proxy, and I will also have a long think ahead of sitting down and writing up a living will. I will never forget the nightmare Mildred went through when her mother died without leaving a will, and I will not inflict such misery upon my family. Instead, I will inflict upon them a clearly-delineated and fair distribution of my earthly treasures and meager assets.

I have a good attitude ahead of the bypass surgery, but I want to have my ducks in a row should the Valkyries come to claim me. Some of you will be consulted as I figure out who I would like to handle my estate in the event of my departure for Sto'Vo'Kor. (I would also accept accommodation in Valhalla.) Anyway, I have much to think about.

A SERIOUS REALITY CHECK.

 Two weeks ago, I was out walking around my neighborhood and I began experiencing chest pains, especially when walking the incline up President Street from 4th Avenue. I have been ultra-stressed-out due to five years of ongoing dialysis coupled with concern over my 92-year-old cancerous mother's declining health and mental acuity, most of which I kept bottled up while I soldiered on, so I suppose something had to give. Anyway, heeding the warnings of my body, I immediately checked in with my cardiologist. He gave me an EKG and a genral examination, and he ordered me to report to Mount Sinai's Morningside hospital's cardiac facility for a more thorough evaluation. I went the very next day and underwent a cath scan, and when all was said and done. I was told I would need a cardiac bypass. I was then given the basic information on what to expect and prep for going forward, and I was given an appointment for a consultation with the surgeon who would be performing the procedure. That appointment happened today, so I arranged for my Wednesday dialysis to be moved to Thursday, which means I will be doing two days of dialysis back-to-back. I just got back from my consultation with my cardiac surgeon and his fellow, so here's the skinny:

Three of my coronary arteries are calcifying, largely due to my kidney disease, and also because my stents simply can't handle the accelerating calcification anymore. In fact, the major stent is almost completely blocked, specifically for the artery called "the Widowmaker," so me heeding my body and going in to get checked out a couple of weeks back was definitely the right move. We are talking a triple bypass and, yes, it is open heart. The admission info is documented below, so keep it hand if needed.

 

I will be admitted on August 6th at 10am, with dialysis being performed at Morningside either on the 6th or the 7th, and with testing being done on the 7th. The surgery will occur on the 8th and the procedure will take around four hours, after which I will remain intubated and sedated for six hours in the ICU. Once that's done, I will be taken to a private room, where I will remain for 5-8 days. During my post-op recuperation, I will receive physical therapy, and if all goes well I will be released. If not, I will be sent to a rehab facility, so I'm going to warrior up and give my physical therapy my all. (To bolster the warrior frame of mind, I am looking into obtaining either a horned helmet or a winged helmet to be worn during my convalescence.)

 

Once back at home, they will assign me a nurse who will periodically drop by to make sure I am okay and doing everything right with my post-op care. And I'm looking at about a month of recovery with soreness, so I hope they hook me up with some bitchin' painkillers. 

 

So, that's what's going on. I will keep you informed as things progress, and if I accept any visitors, they will be my closest circle only. As previously stated, I do not like visitors during a hospital stay, as visitors make me feel like I am obligated to entertain, while my focus is on healing and getting the fuck out of there. I will have my phone and my laptop and I will be in a private room, so communications will be open once I am out of surgery and after I am extubated and weaned off of the anesthetic. 

 

Your support is appreciated more than I can express, but now is the time for warrioring up, and subsequent focus on the healing.

 

 

My marching orders.

TODAY I AM 60

Yer Bunche, circa 1965.

 

Despite decades of hardcore drunken carousing, smoking as much weed as Cheech & Chong, eating lots of food that's bad for me, surviving multiple stents being placed in my ticker due to congestive heart failure, years of torturous atopic dermatitis (now cured thanks to Dupixent), and enduring late stage kidney failure and thrice-weekly ongoing dialysis for the past five years, Yer Bunche has somehow made it to age 60. I have to spend my birthday enduring yet another dialysis session, but at least I still live to spread my madness. "HOKUTO SHINKEN WA MUTEKIDA!!!" 

 

Yer Bunche today.

 

"RUN AWAY!!!" Celebrating 50 Years of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975)

I just attended Fathom Events' 50th anniversary screening of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (1975), the film I have seen countless times since discovering it at age ten. I went With dear old friend Matt Snow, whom I met nearly a half century ago, and one of the many things our adolescent sensibilities bonded over was our love of all things Monty Python. Some things you never outgrow.

Me representing as Tim the Enchanter, and Matt, wielding the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

If I had to guesstimate, it was an audience of perhaps thirty people, many of whom were under-16s who had been brought by parents.I wonder how they processed the film, and Python in general, because Python's bizarre style has been well-absorbed into the global language of comedy over the past 55 years, so does their flavor have the same kind of seismic impact on today's youth as it did on my generation? I kinda doubt it, and it saddens me to think that works such as this may now reside in the "you had to be there" category. Nonetheless, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL remains my personal pick as the funniest film ever made. Definitely not for all tastes, but its utter absurdity has always resonated with me.

Representing with a female Sir Bedevere cosplayer, Note her bag: a duck. If you know the movie, you get it.

RECOGNIZE!!!

When I returned from Tuesday afternoon's screening of SINNERS, I crossed 5th Avenue and was about to enter the Associated supermarket, when I saw a scruffy, hipster-looking dude who was perhaps in his early thirties, sporting the above t-shirt. I waved at him and exclaimed "Yeah! Fuckin' GG!!!", at which he stopped and smiled, and he then noted his appreciation of my Hardcore Devo tee. We chatted briefly at the corner of 5th Avenue and Union Street, sharing anecdotes about each of us having met GG Allin and his Hitler-mustached brother Merle, and when we both had to leave, we smiled and bade each other a friendly farewell. It was a lovely moment, and proof that music brings people together. Even the music of a guy with (non-) hits such as "Kill the Children, Save the Food" (GG's answer to USA for Africa), "I Wanna Piss On You," "I Wanna Rape You," and that timeless family favorite, "Expose Yourself to Kids," in his catalog.

LIKE A SEX MACHINE

This morning the van that transports me to dialysis arrived over a half hour early, and when I went downstairs I noticed and open case containing what looked like a dis-assembled mic stand or something, but I could not investigate because the van was there and ready to roll. The mysterious case was still there when I got home from treatment, but I ignored it as I staggered up the front steps.

Then, just ten minutes ago, my down-the-hall neighbor, Ruth, texted me freaking out. She had just gotten home with a friend and the two of them encountered the case, so, curious, they investigated and sent me a video of them trying to figure out what it was. Ruth noted a brand logo on one of the bulkier components, so she did an Amazon search when she came upstairs and here's what has been laying next to our stoop since sometime late last night. 

 

Who just leaves an expensive sex toy up for grabs on the sidewalk? Did it belong to someone in the building? All of the residents know each other, so Ruth and I demand answers!

A LONG-OVERDUE CONNECTION

While preparing dinner, I listened to a YouTube piece on forgotten one-hit wonders of 1977, and for the first time since the late 1970's I heard a snippet of the song "Heaven on the 7th Floor" by Paul Nicholas, a hit that was never a favorite of mine, but it was certainly memorable. When Nicholas's name was mentioned, it rang a bell in my memory, and upon mulling it over I went "Nooooo..." and ran to the internet to check on what was jogging my brain. 

The films of director Ken Russell are among my favorites for their sheer madness, and my search revealed that my memory of Nicholas's name was correct. He has prominent roles in two of my favorite Russell films, specifically TOMMY and LISZTOMANIA (both 1975). I saw TOMMY in during its theatrical run with my parents — notably, TOMMY was the final film we saw together as a family unit — but that was two years before "Heaven on the 7th Floor," and I did not see LISZTOMANIA until I obtained a VHS copy during the late 1980's, and when viewing both of those for the first time, I did not not any of the actors' names, as situation that changed once I had both films on home video and went on to study them in depth over the next three decades.

 

Paul Nicolas has a brief-but-unforgettable role in TOMMY as the gleefully sadistic Cousin Kevin, complete with his own musical number that drags the audience along as Kevin spends a day torturing the deaf/dumb/blind titular character. 

 

Tormenting Roger Daltrey in TOMMY (1975).

 

But my favorite of his Russell performances is in LISZTOMANIA, where he has an ogoing and significant part throughout the film as composer/German nationalist Richard Wagner. It's an incredibly loopy and cartoonish portrayal that finds Wagner undergoing numerous visual changes to indicate his growing fascistic nationalism, among which are him becoming a vampire to leech off of composer Franz Liszt's music, only to be reborn in the 20th Century as a literal chimera of Frankenstein's monster and Adolph Hitler. 

 

 As Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler in LISZTOMANIA (1975).

 

The insane sight of a Frankenstein/Wagner/Hitler leading female children clad in cheesy Superman costumes (symbolizing the indoctrination of the German youth into the ideology of the Aryan superman) as he stiffly marches through a town, blasting fleeing orthodox Jews with an electric guitar machine gun made my jaw hit the floor when I first saw the film, and that image's audacity and sheer lunacy cracks me up to this day.

 

So, yeah, that was the guy who sang "Heaven on the 7th Floor."