Horns (2013)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Oct. 21, 2024
Someone who’s sorta fucked up wrote this movie — Keith Bunin, based on a novel by Joe Hill, who’s the son of Stephen King.
Daniel Radcliffe plays Ig Perrish, and Ig is adamant that he didn’t kill his girlfriend Merrin (Juno Temple), but everyone thinks he did it. The evidence is, he’s sprouting horns like the devil.
With that super-short synopsis, you might think this would be too similar to Guns Akimbo, where Daniel Radcliffe had guns bolted to his hands. But it’s a completely different deformity! What’s more interesting than the horns is that everyone seems compelled to tell Ig the honest unvarnished truth whenever he’s around.
Why the horns and why the honesty is either unexplained or I missed it, and the story’s quite cruel to Merrin, but it makes for a grand ride through a dusky corner of the amusement park of human psychology.
Someone who’s sorta fucked up watched this, and liked it — me.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Horror Express (1972)
Streaming free at YouTube
Horror icons Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are riding the Trans-Siberian Express, and Lee’s transporting a million-year-old fossil that apparently doesn’t like train rides.
None of this is particularly scary, and it’s not really filmed on a train, but it has some nice flourishes, and Lee and Cushing have a good time, and so did I. There’s also a kooky guy doing a Christ impression, or maybe it’s a Charles Manson impression.
“Well, I’ll make it simple. Supposing that creature, the one you killed, was capable of taking an idea directly from other people’s brains and transferring it to its own? Absorbed, through the eyes?”
Why, that would be plagiarism!
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Horrors of Malformed Men (1969)
Streaming free at Plex
There’s plenty of bizarre and haunting imagery, with some scares and jumps and jolts and hooters, in this widely-hailed classic from Japan.
It’s a nightmarish visit to an island of lost souls, malformed men and women with lots of ick, but as a story, the whole thing never quite got through to me.
Verdict: YES, for the visuals.
♦ ♦ ♦
Horrors of Spider Island (1960)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
A troupe of leggy showgirls is shipwrecked, and comes ashore on an island of giant spiders.
This is a bonkers low-budget catastrophe from Germany, mostly dubbed in English (poorly) but inexplicably switching to German with English subtitles for a few random scenes. It features bad dialogue, several meandering scenes that stretch upwards of 15 minutes while doing nothing for the plot, lousy and few effects, and lots of semi-clad cockamamy krauts in bikinis.
Primo schlock.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
Streaming free at Tubi
Scotland Yard, we’re told here, has a secret museum filled with the most vile weaponry used in past murders. Most people don’t even know the museum exists, but someone’s found it and removed several working displays, which are being used in a string of bloody murders.
The first, for example, is a pair of what appear to be ordinary binoculars, but holding them up for a look releases spring-loaded spikes into your eyeballs. Seems unpleasant, but the flick is British, so the screaming is brief and comes with a classy accent.
Familiar character actor Geoffrey Keen (Minister of Defence in several Bond movies) plays the inspector, but the fun part is Michael Gough (later best known as Batman’s butler Alfred) as a nosy, limping writer and critic of the cops, who always has plenty to say.
Jolly good, but you’ll never pick up your binoculars quite so quickly again.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦ … out of alphabetical order … ♦ ♦ ♦
Solar Crisis (1990)
Streaming free at YouTube
This starts with not one, but two separate ominous scrolling texts on screen, read ominously by an ominous narrator.
The sun is going supernova or sunspot crazy, creating uncomfortably warm days on Earth. Scientists have developed an anti-matter bombs, and some super-stud hero needs to fly the bomb into the sun.
Seems unlikely that bombing the sun solves solar flares, but in an emergency there’s no time for logic. The movie’s effects are major league, the cast has big names past their prime, and the script is nonsense, with long stretches of dialogue that’s nothing but gibbering gobbledygook.
It’s schlock, but it’s not the kind of schlock that’s enjoyable.
Verdict: NO.
♦ ♦ ♦
Actor Dennis Quaid comes out as batshit crazy
The slim but powerful movie career of Shelley Duvall
10/21/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
The Horse Soldiers (1959)
The Horse Whisperer (1998)
The Hospital (1970)
The Host (2006)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises …
— — —
Now accepting movie recommendations,
especially starting with the letter ‘I’.
Just add a comment, below.
— — —
Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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