Ghoulies & Ghoulies II (1984 & 1987)

Director(s): Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies)

Screenplays: Luca Bercovici and Jefery Levy (Ghoulies) / Charlie Dolan and Dennis Paoli (Ghoulies II)

Cast:

Ghoulies: Peter Liapis as Jonathan Graves, Lisa Pelikan as Rebecca, Scott Thomson as Mike, Ralph Seymour as Mark "Toad Boy", Mariska Hargitay as Donna, Keith Joe Dick as Dick, David Dayan as Eddie, Victoria Catlin as Anastasia, Charene Cathleen as Robin, Tamara De Treaux as Greedigut, Peter Risch as Grizzel, Michael Des Barres as Malcolm Graves, Jack Nance as Wolfgang

Ghoulies II: Damon Martin as Larry, Royal Dano as Uncle Ned, Phil Fondacaro as Sir Nigel Penneyweight, J. Downing as P. Hardin, Kerry Remsen as Nicole, Dale Wyatt as Dixie, Jon Pennell as Bobby, Sasha Jenson as Teddy, Starr Andreeff as Alice, William Butler as Merle, Donnie Jeffcoat as Eddie, Christopher Burton as Leo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I'm a magician you sons of bitches. You can't kill me!

I did not expect the Ghoulies franchise begins with a Satanic cult about to sacrifice a baby in the scene, but like so many horror franchises, they either deviate from their original premises in the later sequels, or in this case develop their selling point after time, What would become the titular centre point for these films took their jumping point from a script by co-writer/director Luca Bercovici, who would work on the first film, and afterwards leave with his work continued on with the other three films. It is not a surprise though that this is a Charles Band production, distributed by his Empire Pictures, from a man who has set forth many a franchise about tiny homicidal puppets.

The baby is thankfully saved, even if his mother takes his place, growing up to be Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis), inheriting the family home where this tale originates from with Wolfgang, a cult member who helped rescue him, as his sole family and an excuse to get David Lynch alumni Jack Nance in a nicely appreciated cameo with some plot importance. Cue a party with slasher film archetypes, goofballs obsessed with strip poker in a home full of occult literature, making the bad decision to perform an occult ritual whilst drunk. Even sober, this is a dumb idea, as Jonathan becomes obsessed, possessed even, to develop him magic skills and becomes overcome with them. That and summoning the titular Ghoulies, starting with a hairy weasel goblin that stands up to one's knees, which are going to be there to terrorise people.

It is strange that I come into this series always presumed to have a more comedic edge, and I only admit only seeing Ghoulies IV (1994) growing up with a less than stellar reaction, so that was not a good perspective for all this time to ever have had. The first film undeniably is trying to be more serious, which just happened to involved involve homicidal critters played with puppets, who feel like an afterthought here and whose comedic aspects would be ran with further in later films. If you accept they are razor toothed and have a thing for eating faces, they are cuter than menacing, even if it's my sick view of cuteness inspired by having Monsters in My Pocket toys as a kid, and sadly maligned. They are, for a film made when Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) exists, an arbitrary aspect to a plot more focused about a man being possessed by his satanic father from the grave, making this as a work that is indebted to the era's tropes in the Ghoulies' inclusion, to the point Gremlins' producers Warner Brothers sued this film for the similarities to Gremlins but lost¹. Despite this luck, the Ghoulies are never taken advantage of this selling point, and there was a sense for me, going through these films for the review, this was the least interesting of the ones so far. I will concede that this film had issues I have sympathy for, such as the fact the production ran out of budget midway through and required the filmmakers to find funding², and there are many aspects to how this film could have turned out which were rejected. One I admit might have made the film more my thing, that being Jeffrey Combs being in the cast, but this was also once meant to be a children's film, and was meant to be in 3D, so Ghoulies had a chaotic coarse to even get made I have to take into consideration¹.

There is certainly a whimsical charm to this, Charles Band produced films having a sense of love within themselves for their playfulness, film pulp for its own sake like lifting the clown puppet from Poltergeist (1982), or two dwarf actors playing mystic servants summoned by Jonathan, looking like cast members from a high fantasy film or from Knightmare, the 1980s British TV series which experimented with early green screen to send its contestants into said worlds. I will also say that Richard Band, Charles Band's brother, and Shirley Walker, a pioneer for being one of the first female film composers in Hollywood, also compose between them a score which feels like it is from a larger budget production and is great. Richard Band is an unsung hero for these genre films for his work, whilst Walker, with her work for DC Comic animated adaptations, like Batman: The Animated Series, to her work on the Final Destination series, would sadly pass in 2006.  Thankfully, in 2014 The American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) created the Shirley Walker Award in 2014 to honour the diversity of film and television music, to emphasis her importance in the industry.

Brutally however, this is just not a film for me. I will not say it is bad, which defeats the purpose of a review by saying films are just not for me, but it is true here. I like the attitude behind this film, but it does drift off into a plot I had no interest in. One legitimate criticism I have, regardless of my awareness of the production issues, is those titular ghouls who do immediately stand out - the green demon baby ones to the weasel goblin, when not eating its way out the chicken on the dining table, being a pervert hiding under your bed during an attempted occult sex ritual - are not really a part of the material. This film clearly realised this mistake as these creatures eventually became the central focus in later films, whilst this particular film is an acquired taste for me personally. An early film in his career, his first directorial production, Luca Bercovici would continue on to the likes of Rockula (1990), which seems more appealing for me for being about a vampire wanting to have a career in rock music with Susan Tyrrell and musician Bo Diddley among the cast.

Ghoulies II is a considerably more focused and interesting film for me, opening with Anthony Dawson, of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), in a cameo as a priest running away from Satanists with Ghoulies in a cloth sack. His attempt to dispose of them for the sake of humanity in a barrel of waste, conveniently marked as "Extremely Toxic" and left open to mist in a garage, ends up with him in said barrel and melting into a skeleton. The Ghoulies escape, five of them, and hitch a ride with travellers for a carnival who stopped at the garage, one of which is Royal Dano, already having been Abraham Lincoln's voice at the Hall of Presidents attraction at Disney's Magic Kingdom beforehand in his career alongside cinema, playing an alcoholic ex-magician who runs a haunted house named Satan's Den.

There are many improvements for what is a silly tale, the first being that needed focus on the Ghoulies themselves, legitimately evil critters who enjoy causing pain and mischief, one even knowing how to use a switchblade, which becomes more threatening. They are stuck in Satan's Den, and from here, this is significantly more interesting as a sequel for me, with the added caveat that I have a bias for carnival set films anyway, making this more tantalising. Dano is running the attraction, with the help of his nephew Larry (Damon Martin), which is one of the rides in danger of being closed by an evil eighties yuppie, an accountant who has plants to axe the attractions going in the red, Satan's Den likely to be replaced by ladies' mud wrestling by the end of the week only for the Ghoulies to accidentally bring more customers into the attraction that night. A worthy mention too, as he is a great inclusion, is Phil Fondacaro; whilst some of the lines in regards to him being an actor with dwarfism have not aged well, his character is awesome, a former Shakespearian actor and friend to Larry named Sir Nigel, a carnival employee who gets into the thick of the plot too.

It is perverse to think Satan's Den is not doing well but is far more elaborate than most real haunted houses I have been to, one I wish to go to, as this is a heightened movie version of the carnival with the production team (and real ride operators) deserving praise for this exaggerated setting. The film was fun to just watch for its production design in context of a goofy late eighties horror movie, in terms that everything is like the place of one's dreams, Satan's Den itself a vast building with elaborate practical attractions, like pop-up mummies, that emphasis the joy of the real ones you walk past in ordinary life if they had the production values of a small genre film, to the art design through the carnival like for the entrance of the "Arabian" exotic dancers. The score by Fuzzbee Morse, the awesomely named composer whose credits for musicians he has worked on is actually too long to pick from but least includes Frank Zappa to actor Harry Dean Stanton, is awesome to and adds to this with pure horror synth, and as much of the enjoyment comes from showing so many clichés of the era but in an enjoyable way. The ladies' mud wrestling reference is one of these, and it is to the point a child randomly has a shuriken throwing star on him, in the era of the ninja craze, to throw at rat creatures who puke green goo on them, because naturally kids have shuriken stars on them. They even went as far, for the metal head character who has to take his "tunes" with a boom box into the haunted house, the production got then notorious band W.A.S.P. to record a song exclusively for the production; before lead singer Blackie Lawless moved to more serious lyrics in the late eighties to early nineties albums, and then returned to his Christian faith, they were controversial for Tipper Gore angering songs like Animal (Fuck like a Beast) and him having a buzz saw codpiece, a perfect band for this era of heavy metal interlinking with heavy metal before the more serious and critically acclaimed albums took over for W.A.S.P. onwards.

Eventually bringing in a bigger-than-human size costume for the final, it has no pretence, already playing to humour further than the prequel even if with a sick streak, as the chaos in the carnival that ends this film evoking the influence of Gremlins, varying between overt slapstick pratfalls to a critter causing a ride cart to fly off and kill at least two people glibly. Also there is a fixation on toilets, the series trope from the prequel that followed from this, as the Ghoulie in a toilet moment from before is escalated in a painful way. Its director Albert Band, father of Charles Band, was clearly a safe pair of hands for this production, late into a career mostly as a producer but making films like I Bury the Living (1958) in the fifties, so the sense the film was able to be as entertaining and fun as it was comes with the sense of someone, as a producer for most of his career at this point, who thankfully knew what to shot to win the punters over. The next film, which took four years to appear, took this series further into comedy to the point it may put people off, whilst here, the balance between the humour and playful horror tone is perfect. After the sense that the first Ghoulies did not stand out for me at all, this was a nice change of pace. If you are a fan of the first film, I will not take away from your enjoyment of it, merely that I thankfully got the film I enjoyed within the second.

 

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1) 10 Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Ghoulies, written by Jake Dee and published for Screen Rant on October 31st 2019.

2) Interview with Luca Bercovici (Ghoulies), written and published for Love-it-Loud on June 28th 2018. Retrieved August 24th 2018 on the Web Archive.

Tokyo: The Last War (1989)

 

Director: Takashige Ichise

Screenplay: Kaizo Hayashi

Based on Teito Monogatari by Hiroshi Aramata

Cast: Masaya Katô as Yuko Nakamura, Takeshi Kusaka as Fumimaro Konoe, Brian Matt-Uhl as Wagner, Kaho Minami as Yukiko Tasumiya, Kyûsaku Shimada as Yasunori Kato, Tetsurô Tanba as Kanaami Kohou, Yoshio Tsuchiya as Dr. Mizuno

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

1945 Japan - after the 1988 adaptation Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis, adapting Hiroshi Aramata's multi-volume novel Teito Monogatari, we return to a later period, following after the main antagonist Yasunori Kato (Kyûsaku Shimada) having attempted to destroy Tokyo in the Meiji and Taishō era the final curtains for the Pacific War and Japan's defeat. In the final years in this story, Japan has a secret governmental group combining Buddhism and science by way of black magic to defeat the Allied forces. Contrasting this, there is the thousand years of accumulating dead, angry and vengeful, which resurrect Kato.

It is a fascinating production which strangely never came to the West, with Ngai Chai Lam as assistant director, the Hong Kong director of Riki-Oh (1991) and The Seventh Curse (1986), and Screaming Mad George on practical effects duty, all for a story which is more overtly horrific in content but is tackling a really difficult historical period. This has to find a balance between the issue that the deaths that happened in Japan for their populous was horrifying, but contrasted by the fact Japan's military did align themselves with the Nazis, the existential contrast even making Kato, despite wishing to just destroy here, almost a true anti-hero finally. A transmission tower is what the plan is, able to channel legendary actor Tetsurô Tanba's will to kill Churchill and Roosevelt with black magic, which General Hideki Tojo thinks is embarrassing and also leads to the question whether it would be enough to actually win a war Japan is in the sliding loss of. The last heir of the previous family who fought Kato, Yukiko (Kaho Minami), is a nurse we follow, and fully emphasises this film dealing with what is still a controversial part of Japanese history, as she is an innocent bystander, there trying to help those maimed in the combat of war, and it is befitting when, traumatised by the history of Kato, he looks like one of the Japanese military on the streets in the uniform as he begins to stalk her and stalks the plan to use the transmission tower.

There is also Yuko Nakamura (Masaya Katô), an assistant to Tanba's Kanaami Kohou who was experimented on as a child to fully cultivate his psychic powers, finding himself in the midst of a plan with the transmitter tower even other Buddhist monks find against their faith, and woefully underpowered against Kato, who could likely twist him like a towel as one unfortunate soldier endures. This is significantly more violent than the previous film - including the soldier unable to throw a grenade due to magic - and Screaming Mad George earns his pay check with skin peeling of the cheek, or a chest mid-operation opening the stitches by their own, or the nightmarish experiences Yukiko has of Miyo, a girl who lost her eyes and mother due to US fire bombings, having a bug body and a human head, or Kato headed children. In contrast however you have the film taking its subject seriously, in that whilst its leads are important, Yukiko the last member of the family who stopped Kato last time, and Nakamura risking his life to stop Kato, ultimately this entire story is about the acceptance of Japan losing the Pacific War.  It balances carefully between its more explicitly horror tone with the severity of its subject.

Yukiko for the most part is a nurse trying to help ordinary people harmed in fire bombed Japan, with Nakamura the result of a child being experimented on by the military against his will, a film really emphasising that it is not looking at Japan with a pro-military stance but stuck in its doomed outcome of the Pacific War, even nodding to the atomic bombs in reference. It says a lot that the comic relief squeaky voice nurse dies, and not in a cheap way but credible to the real conflict this is set in, so The Last War does manage to deal with history carefully. Hitler does make an appearance - which is apt as he was an occultist in real life, approving the killing of Allied leaders with black magic - and it is potent how the outcome even if it drastically changes history before Inglourious Basterds (2009) deals with him. [Major Spoiler] That, realising the doomed nature of the war, figures decide to try to end it quickly, force the curse on Hitler instead and kill him instead, even if real history sadly lead to Japan feeling the effect of two atomic bombs. [Spoilers End] With the hope that Japan, as it did into the fifties and sixties onwards, could rebuild itself from its past and destruction, the film does leave on a bitter sweet finale as a result.

In terms of Teito Monogatari, it does strip back a lot of the historical and occultist content, which may make it a disappointment, where Kato is literally a super powered juggernaut rather than a figure with a symbolic complexity to him. Nods thankfully still exist, such as an entire scene evoking Kwaidan (1964) of monks with text painted on their bodies and face to protect the main temple,  and by its end, the tonal change for Tokyo: The Last War allows it to deal with its subject matter well and stand out by itself. How this never found its way to the West, as it came under the guide of its producer Takashige Ichise directing the film, I cannot say barring pure bad luck, as next to Tokyo: The Last Megalopolis this would have been the more readily accessible of the pair you could get with greater ease. It is, together with its prequel, worthy of critical reassessment.

Children of the Stones (1977)

 

Created by Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray

Director: Peter Graham Scott

Screenplay: Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray

Cast: Gareth Thomas as Adam; Veronica Strong as Margaret; Peter Demin as Matthew; Ruth Dunning as Mrs. Crabtree; Iain Cuthbertson as Hendrick; Katharine Levy as Sandra; Freddie Jones as Dai

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows)

 

Make it a sherbet butty.

The main theme by music composer Sidney Sager - a breathless chorus of voices - is enough in its distinctness and unnerving form to signpost Children of the Stones, this unsettling ethereal theme to be heard as the main motif and the opening credits piece for all seven episodes of this West HTV Production. Sidney Sager - whose filmography is smaller than I would have presumed but does include episodes of The World About Us (1967-1987), a documentary series about geography, anthropology, and natural history subjects, befitting the tone of this series - did have an extensive career as a composer and conductor, so thankfully his work would have been appreciated in other mediums, here making his mark among many people here in Children of the Stones being a very rewarding dip into British supernatural television from the past.

For clarification, HTV Production is tied to ITV which, launched in 1955 as Independent Television, is a cultural landmark for television anyone from the United Kingdom. Everyone has grown up with unless born before 1955. ITV is the oldest commercial network in the UK, and wishing to let any non-British readers of this review have some context, they became for the early years of television the first big rival for the BBC. They were also a network of separate companies which provided regional television services and also shared programmes between each other to be shown on the entire network, which is where West HTV Production comes in. Eventually they became ITV Wales & West, until December 31st 2013, and thus afterwards being separated into ITV Cymru Wales for Wales and ITV West Country covering the both the West of England sub-region and South West England¹.

The broadcasting area was divided into two sub-regions, Wales and the West of England, which is apt as Children of the Stones, whilst set in the made up community of Milbury, is shot in Avebury, Wiltshire, one of the locations covered in their broadcasting at the time. This series would have been broadcast across the country beyond HTV Production, unleashing this unconventional mini-series that, whilst a fantasy story with sci-fi edges, is befittingly dread inducing like a horror story. The "stones" is a stone circle, fifty three, part of the small village of Milbury, where astrophysics professor Adam (Gareth Thomas) and his son Matthew (Peter Demin) are to stay there for three months, part of the father's research on this pagan formation. The stones are the Avebury stone circle, viewed to have been built between 2850 BC and 2200 BC, and seen in this mini-series in aerial shots as a huge circular stone circle which in turn encloses two smaller stone circles². Originally 100 stones², there is an argument it is a worship place, but exists in the same way as Stonehenge, a legendary location further in Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, as an ancient heritage site whose origins and reasons behind it are mysterious, befitting Children of the Stones' esoteric narrative flourishes. Since these incredible ancient monuments exist, why not use them onscreen too?

The entire plot stems from Matthew finding a painting of a stone circle involving a Pagan ritual and a light in the centre from the sky. The painting is enough to cause the elder female maid at the home they are living in to faint, but considering the landlord, and head of the village Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson), is encouraging both to stay longer, Milbury is an immediately suspicious place. When the term "happy one" and "unhappy one" are used by even by the kids, it is a sign this community is strange, clearly a village of aliens or brain washing with regular people the dwindling minority, where even the classrooms are divided into high level mathematics and forcing the "normals" and the farm boys with simpler sums. What it is, where the locals can just disappear on nights leaving the newcomers alone, is knee deep into the esoteric fortean culture popular at the time, alongside what would become "hauntology" decades after in British pop culture from this time having an uneasiness stemming from the combination of the urban and the rural in our island country. The centre of fifty three ley lines, it is a place of astrological connections, a supernova in the time before Christ documented in Milbury, with a black hole where it is and where the rocks are pointed. Here we are in Pagan versus modern cultural territory, a bear cult in the past around this place and psionic powers involved, which Matthew develops after a glancing touch of one of the stones.

Children of the Stones does evoke fear of conformity; specifically the notion of village life, where everyone knows everyone, as a virtue is undercut, instead posing the chilling idea of everyone being without their real selves, with the juxtaposition of the metropolises in the leads being outsiders against this rural place. The thing I have not mentioned until now is that this is a show made for children, whilst makes Children of the Stones even more interesting as, barring some dialogue and exposition which is heavy handed, this never talks down to its target audience and has all this eerie content which is just as distinct for a viewer of any age group. The creators and writers Jeremy Burnham and Trevor Ray deserve their credit as everyone on and off-screen do. Jeremy Burnham was as much a prolific actor in television and film as a writer, whilst Trevor Ray was more of an actor, with only three credits to his writing career - this, another ITV mini-series Raven (1977), another children's show dealing with Arthurian legends which he worked with Jeremy Burnham for, and an unaccredited hand in The Ambassadors of Death: Episode 1, a Doctor Who episode. It is hilarious that Morris dancing, the most innocuous of folk traditions, is held as a sign of being brainwashed, but for a children's show to scrutinise the notion of an idealised rural community life, the "good old days" concept, as being a sign of being docile and without emotion, is a sticking point for the better, knowing this is family entertainment offering the notion, when we learn the secret of the village, that removing all sadness and permanent happiness is itself controlling.

The smartness of the show, working around its style, is really rewarding. Like a lot of British television dramas from this time, there are stage set interior scenes but a lot of on-location exterior ones, having to work around some aged effects but mostly a dialogue driven show with a creepy edge. The cast is full of people who would have been prolific at the time in various mediums, which includes the delightful appearance of Freddie Jones as Dai, a poacher and one of the few "normals" who has stuck around for a long time in the village, Jones' legacy as much for the likes of David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) and it is the ITV soap opera Emmerdale.

The music from Sidney Sager, the one main theme, really does enough in itself to being discomforting, and there are plenty of macabre and openly odd touches to the story. People turn into stone and/or die, and you cannot leave Milbury because, not only does it exist within a protective barrier, but is revealed to exist in its own time zone. Some of the content which is of its era, proudly sticking itself into the fascination with esotericism from the time, may be eyebrow raising for some viewers, but alongside the matter-of-factness the show has for it, taking it serious, but this is in mind to the period it was made. That, being between the British and the North Americans, if not anywhere else, the seventies if rife with the occult and the unexplained as pop cultural fascinating, this screening on television at a time Uri Geller would have already been famous for the likes of bending spoons with his mind and already being challenge by the likes of James Randi, alongside a lot of strange films from the era in the occult and horror which helped created the future Hauntology interest. This fully embraces psychometric themes including psychic powers, which as it is told sincerely is more rewarding than cheesy.

It also has a rare example of a father and son relationship with the leads, and with actors Gareth Thomas and Peter Demin, it is a good one. Matthew, barring his eccentric humour in eating bizarre combinations of fillings for sandwiches, transgressing the savoury and sweet food lines, is a teenager who is as smart as his father, who is neither played as a dolt. This is a horror story where they manage to outsmart the villain with something actually clever - using science to manipulate the clocks in their favour - and this intelligence, or least the sense of letting the characters being alert and act sensibly in this increasingly perverse village, is a huge virtue to Children of the Stones. It is a good show, a sci-fi thriller which does touch horror in its own way, telling even its more unconventional aspects straight faced, as serious drama which never drags over its seven episodes less than thirty minutes each, succeeding as a result .

 

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1) ITV Cymru Wales news shake-up under new Ofcom licence, written by Huw Thomas for BBC.co.uk and published on July 23rd 2013

2) A small biography of Avebury for the English Heritage website.

Secret Rites (1971)

 

Director: Derek Ford

Screenplay: Derek Ford

Cast: Penny Beeching as Penny; Shirley Harmer as a Coven Member; Lee Peters as the Narrator; Alex Sanders as Himself; Jane Spearing as a Coven Member; Wendy Tomlinson as a Coven Member; Maxine Sanders as Herself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #248

 

The initial thing to address, in this documentary about a Wiccan initiation ritual and other rites performed at the coven of Alex Sanders, an English occultist, is that this definitely a fictionalised interpretation. We will get to the film's value as an artefact as we go, but just going off the main selling point of this micro-feature, Secret Rites' director Derek Ford is famous for work selling salacious content like The Swappers (1970), an anthology of wife swapping and swinging narratives. Penny Beeching, the young hairdresser wishing to join Sanders' coven, has a role in the television series Up Pompeii! (1970) with Frankie Howerd, and there were people not part of the coven hired as additional extras during that ritual scenes¹.

However, the interesting thing, as with any film, is that it still has legitimacy as a cultural document. More so as this does have a really funny and ultimately profound prologue, where you are introduced to a typical Hammer horror film conclusion as a parody. A nude Satanist orgy is taking place, with the oncoming virginal sacrifice of a young woman being talked of by the narrator, only for her fiancé John Goodfellow (wink) to rescue her with just a crucifix and the power of Christ. The film immediately cuts to Alex Sanders, a real practitioner of the occult, proclaiming this image to be rubbish, and later on even Dennis Wheatley, the author of the likes of The Devil Rides Out (1934) and other Satanic horror novels, is buried by his coven in the discussions. This immediately proclaims Secret Rites' virtue even if it is a fictionalised mondo documentary, that this is replacing the image of evil witchcraft stereotypes with Wiccans who, whilst still doing sky clad nude rituals, are ordinary people who pass the viewers on the street.

Even if Penny is a glamorised figure to enter this coven, the banality of her going from work at a hairdresser to the coven for her ritual is an image with profoundness, the occult and esoteric alternative religions seeping into ordinary British life. Even when her voice over talks of her family being slightly wary for her, no one is trying to stop her casually going to her induction ceremony as if a club. It is still of the time, with a lot of psychedelic music and m-o-o-g synthesiser sounds on the soundtrack, but for a document presenting the secret rituals of a community few have seen. This still has relevance in seeing how Secret Rites is trying to present the unordinary being of regular people. It is still sold for titillation - that whilst there is body positivity in varying shapes and equal opportunity full frontal nudity, this is sold on many nubile nude women. For whatever reason, alongside the more sombre documentary Legend of the Witches (1970)², this is rated for still being only suitable for eighteen year olds to see in modern British between them for BDSM nods, which is the only truly absurd content of the micro-feature too.

Even then, though it follows the trope of this type of feature of having to dampen the titillation for its audience with moralising, it is more progressive in this case as Sanders talks of people wishing to join his coven for nude orgies only to leave when learning you have to study a lot whilst you are there. There is more emphasis on very kitsch rituals here, with man in an elaborate goat's head doing nothing but lounge around the proceedings, but there is also talk of having to do lectures, reading and studying to be a coven member, which is a progressing thing to include. Rather than just nude frolics in occult circles, this is enforcing that these covens are more than scintillating acts of fornication but an alternative belief system with its beliefs, study and discussion. One of the most rewarding moments is seeing these people, with clothes on again post initiation ritual, talking about Penny's initiation afterwards in a discussion group.

The rituals themselves, for entertainment's sake, are kitsch in an amusing way. The rituals are likely as accurate as Alex Sanders wished them to be, bearing in mind Derek Ford clearly wanted to add some additional spice to sell the content. The final, forbidden ritual we the viewers finally see is clearly this fully. An Egyptian ritual of people who love each other to the point they believe they knew each other in past lives, and wish to union even their souls, it means a lot of homemade Egyptian iconography. Most of the rest of this content, including restaging the meeting between the goddess of rebirth and Death, obviously has to be taken into consideration of how Wiccan beliefs are relatively young, properly founded in the early 20th century, and where their sources on witchcraft belief came from, but they feel more accurate depictions in spite of the content around itself. Plus, and this would not be a surprise, Alex Sanders of the head of the coven with his wife (not  as prominent despite her importance in the conven) was probably taking any advantage to promote his beliefs even if spicing up his practices up for this little movie. Anything which feels more provocative, or has non-coven members involved, was likely a compromise for him to get more eyes onto his belief practices, whether right to do or not.

It is a fascinating piece, as much for these scenes in the darkened cavernous ritual area, of their era, but also as still a good document of how these movements were bubbling under the surface at this time, feeling as appropriately normal as anything else not taking place in a darkened cavernous ritual area. Certainly, for a purely pleasing sit, this is only forty seven minutes and you get to enjoy a psych-music scored piece of homemade occultism, which no one should find disappointing unless you are one of those awkward people wishing to call these nice ordinary people blasphemers. As they themselves point out, a lot of the lore on witchcraft, even kissing Satan's arse in nocturnal rituals, are misquoted or were weaponized, whether old pagan gods turned into Christian demons or that the ritual arse kissing is speculated to only be the case because the deity is taller than a person and that was the only place to show devotion to them. Maybe from the director Derek Ford this is a smuttier take on that important idea, but as a cultural artifact, we could have just had the evil witchcraft clichés but thankfully ended up with something attempting to be progressive. One where I can end a paragraph with that thought now buried in a reader's mind.

 

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1) A great source book which covers this film is The Bodies Beneath (2019) by William Fowler and Vic Pratt, covering the many strange and unique titles from British cinema and television, which throws a lot more speculation on what is real and possible reel filmmaking for selling something saucy.

2) The pair of films has been sold together on Blu-Ray and DVD from the British Film Institution as a compelling double bill in 2019, both including Alex Sanders and including perspectives on occultism at that time including its growing acceptance to some.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

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Director: Tommy Lee Wallace

Screenplay: Tommy Lee Wallace

Cast: Tom Atkins (as Daniel Challis); Stacey Nelkin (as Ellie Grimbridge); Dan O'Herlihy (as Conal Cochran); Michael Currie (as Rafferty); Ralph Strait (as Buddy Kupfer)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #61

After Halloween II (1981) was meant to close the story of Michael Myers - currently, whilst a new project is underway, its production hell not the final girl that can kill him off alongside Jason Vorheeves - John Carpenter and the late Debra Hill decided to turn the franchise into a series of episodic films based around the Halloween season with different stories. Ironically, this is what American Horror Story as a TV series is doing with such success now, but they immediately started it from second series onward, not after two films like the ill-fated Season of the Witch did. Season of the Witch, whilst it's given a boost in name recognition, shouldn't have been part of the Halloween franchise - it has had last laugh in its critical reappraisal within the last decade but being part of the franchise both lead to its bombing at the box office, as audiences were not surprisingly confused why Myers wasn't in it, and because it feels jarring to be named a Halloween film when it's completely alien in tone and ideas. Whilst it has Carpenter's guiding hands over it, his powerful music composed with Alan Howarth and Dean Cundey's incredible cinematography painted over it, it should've have left its connection to the franchise to just the in-joke of the original Halloween (1978) playing on TV in scenes.

Barring this, I adore Season of the Witch as a grim, unsettling take on Halloween as a seasonal holiday both in its symbology and as someone who adores the holiday like many do. The premise is simple and works as a strange and compelling short story chiller - after a patient is murdered in his hospital of work, Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) is pulled into a conspiracy with the victim’s daughter Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin) that involves a novelties and toy manufacture’s series of Halloween masks and the sinister intentions behind them. As someone who loves even the tacky decorations and sweets of the season - the plastic skeletons, the novelty foods and biscuits etc - Season of the Witch leads to a nasty point, based on a single extended monologue explain the truly horrifying intentions behind a set of masks being sold, referencing the history of the likes of Samhain but perversely turned into an evil act of ritual sacrifice that's seen as right to do for the sake of humanity. Even if the satire about consumerism is broad, it eventually leads to on having to think carefully about what Halloween means, at a time in the year said to be when the border between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, and how its macabre imagery is so codified against this nasty reality check shown in the film.

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A large factor to why this works is the subconscious influence of legendary British screenwriter Nigel Kneale. Kneale, famous for the Quatermass franchise, and famous British television horror and sci-fi stories, was a fan favourite for John Carpenter, who got Kneale to collaborate with him on the original story of Season of the Witch. This however lead to a disappointing fallout to take place, Kneale objecting incredibly to the level of violence that the film had - not surprisingly considering the final work is surprisingly brutal in this area, with someone even pulling another's head clean off with their bare hands with a giant blood squirt, a level of violence rarely found in any of the non-Rob Zombie versions for the whole franchise.

Despite taking his name off the final script, his fingerprints are still visible from his original work. Having now seen a lot of his work, the world of Silver Shamrock, a novelty mask and toy factory who have their own tiny rural town, evokes the sinister rural town of Quatermass II (1955 for the TV mini-series, 1957 for the Hammer feature film version) and how its nebulous nature, everyone within part of a conspiracy, are visible to any stranger who keeps their eyes open about their surroundings. Kneale is also someone who is able to deal with occult and supernatural ideas with far greater nuance even if he was to rationalise them through science and sci-fi concepts like aliens, to the point that the far better use of Samhain and pagan references in Season of the Witch over any of the other Halloween films is likely influenced by his ability to rationalise even the strangest of ideas with real weight. The other significant factor, which is a trope very common in British horror storytelling, is the importance of objects having magical properties, not merely being connected to an evil other but in themselves as cursed and maleficent, objects which can be used as part of something else but, as much constructions with their own histories and character to them. (I.e. a certain whistle found on a beach in a famous MR James short story, for an American example with a wider scope the Necronomicon in HP Lovecraft's fiction and how merely reading the book is inherently a dangerous act for the reader from its history). The three masks in the centre of the film - a witch, a skull, a Jack O'Lantern - are objects that are revealed as eventual catalysts to a horrifying mass outbreak of death, with many children who will immediately die as a result of those whose parents bought them, their constant appearance throughout the film invoking a greater sense of character and threat from their apparent innocuous nature. Even the Silver Shamrock theme on television,  which has become an ear worm for many viewers of the film, has a mantra like nature close to a magical incantation in how catchy it is (and especially with how a television sweepstake for the company will be the spark for the tragedy to start in connection with the masks directly).

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That this all involves Stonehenge will baffle some, but another factor to my love of the film that has grown on this viewing is that Season of the Witch is also a strange, strange sequel for any franchise to have regardless of it having any connection to the first two films or not. It's also a strange film just by itself, a baffling little oddity to throw at a mainstream horror audience. I like the weird in cinema but I also find upon revisiting this film that weird horror films are actually a lot of effecting and creepy for me, their irrational content leading a sense of unpredictability and greater threat. There is the Stonehenge plot line, which could easily bring to mind Spinal Tap for many, but also the clockwork robot minions of the main evil which could come off as silly; but they add to the creepiness of the final work, the latter particularly playing into the fear one has for nameless thugs, who are played by actors without masks but with their identical haircuts and suits have a menace particularly in how brutal their methods of killing people are.

And of course the final scene is one of the best for any horror film to end on, the sting in the tale that cements its qualities. In the middle of a franchise of slasher movies, it's position now I'm going through the films in near exact is more perplexing, a curveball that you would rarely find in most franchises from then on, meaning that my love for it has to now be in context that it should've been an entirely different project for Carpenter and Hill that merely existed amongst their regular collaborators. 

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The Devil's Rain (1975) [Mini-Review]

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Director: Robert Fuest

Screenplay: James Ashton, Gabe Essoe and Gerald Hopman

Cast: Ernest Borgnine (as Jonathan Corbis); Eddie Albert (as Dr. Sam Richards); William Shatner (as Mark Preston); Ida Lupino (as Emma Preston); Tom Skerritt (as Tom Preston); Joan Prather (as Julie Preston)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #60

On paper The Devil's Rain should be awesome, words which ultimately spell doom to the final results but let's stick to the image of the film inside my head first before I have to pop the imaginary bubble. The director of The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) making a Satanic panic film starring William Shatner against Ernest Borgnine as the leader of a cult able to turn people into soulless, eyeless followers who melt like wax when beaten. Add a small role from Ida Lupino, a great actress and a pioneering female director of such gems like The Hitch-Hiker (1953), and the founder of the Church of Satan himself, Anton laVey, as a consultant for the Satanic rituals on screen and it should've been fascinating.

In actuality it's an exceptionally dull film. How it manages to be so dull is incredible in a perverse way in how it has nothing to bring to the table, but a large part of the issue is its complete lack of tension, mood or even kitsch to play out the feature length, like a black hole of charisma in terms of what's left. Shatner is a supporting actor behind Tom Preston and Joan Prather as Tom and Julie Preston, a bland couple with little interest in them barring a completely unused reference to the paranormal obsession of the seventies, Julie able to go into psychokinetic trances where she can see events in another time zone. Lupino is only in for a cameo and only Borgnine has any semblance of screen time of any interest, unable to support the film even in his demonic goat face makeup but at least chewing the scenery with the intensity expected from such a well regarded character actor.

Possibly the biggest disappointment, considering the founder of Church of Satan was on hand to contribute advice, is how utterly bland the evil cult as an entity is barring some pretty and blasphemous set decoration. Admittedly the Church of Satan is not about worshipping the Christian Devil - it's an atheist religion about its followers thinking for themselves, the choice of name meant to rebel against conservative moralists on purpose - but while the aesthetic choices are significantly more distinct than other cult related horror films, it's a further testament to the squandered resources found in The Devil's Rain. After this director Fuest's career practically fell off a cliff, tragic but it's absolutely depressing, considering how imaginative The Abominable Dr. Phibes was, that he went on to something the complete opposite of that film in quality. 

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