Saturday Scream Queen: Jennifer Lawrence

In 2005, at the age of 14, Jennifer Lawrence gave what a casting director described as the best "cold reading" he'd ever seen, and her acting career and meteoric rise to fame, which includes her second Oscar nomination this year, was underway.

Best known for starring in "X-Men: First Class" (2011) and the "Hunger Games" series of movies (at least three of them, with the first one released in 2012), Lawrence has also appeared in horror films such as "The House at the End of the Street" and "The Devil You Know" (both in 2012) and "The Bill Engvall Show". (Okay... so that last one wasn't horror, but it might as well have been).

'Brothel' is a classy haunted house movie

Brothel (2008)
Starring: Serena Scott Thomas, Brett Cullen, Grace Zabriskie, Timothy V. Murphy, and Bruce Payne
Director: Amy Waddell
Stars: Seven of Ten Stars

After her clinically depressed lover commits suicide, Julianne (Thomas) carries on with their plans to convert a long-abandoned gold-rush era brothel in a small Arizona town into a bed-and-breakfast. But once she begins the restoration effort, she finds the building is still inhabited by the ghosts of prostitutes... and that she is being stalked by Death himself (Payne).

If you liked "Ghost Whisperer", I think you'll enjoy "Brothel". Julianne could just as easily have been Melinda if her husband had committed suicide, the the storyline here would be right at home in the second or third season of "Ghost Whisperer." The difference between Melinda and Julianne is that as Julianne tries to unlock the secrets that are preventing the ghosts in the brothel from "crossing over", she gradually loses touch with the world of the living, partly because she really doesn't want to be part of it anymore because the love of her life is gone.

"Brothel" is a great haunted house movie that is rich in atmosphere from beginning to end, yet almost entirely free of elements that are typically associated with the horror genre--jump-scares, bloody gore, and characters doing stupid things just so the plot can keep moving. If you accept that the main character can "see dead people" and could be angry enough at the death of her lover to challenge and subsequently draw the interest of Death itself, the rest of the film flows naturally and with steadily building tension as Julianne slips further and further into the realm of spirits. It's a beautiful, well-acted film that by itself is worth the purchase price of the "Midnight Horror Collection", which is where I came across it.

Saturday Scream Queen: Jessica Chastain

California-born Jessica Chastain began her career performing with Shakespearian companies all over California's Bay area while still in her early teens. While training at New York City's famous Julliard academy and developing her television and screen career, she continued to perform Shakespeare, and to this day she divides her time between Los Angeles and New York City, the screen and the stage,.

Chastain was nominated for the 2013 Best Actress Oscar award for her leading role in "Zero Dark Thirty," a film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. While that film was in theaters, however, she could also be seen starring in the offbeat monster film "Mama". (Also nominated this year is previous Saturday Scream Queen Naomi Watts.)

Chastain's other horror credits include the 2005 film remake of "Dark Shadows" (which was seen by virtually no one as it was only screened at conventions) and "Take Shelter" (2011). Her horror resume is a bit thin at this point, but she can be seen in many thrillers, some of which almost cross the border into darker territory, such as "Texas Killing Fields" (2011). Horror fans can only hope for her to appear in more films of the genre we love... and that she pairs her talent with worthy scripts.

Like a romance novel with a twist

Frozen in Fear (2000)
Starring: Catherine Oxenberg, Eric Roberts, Rod Steiger, Joan Benedict, Scott Plank, and Ellina McCormick
Director: Robin P. Murray
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

A Seattle art dealer (Oxenberg) travels to a remote mountain town to convince a talented but reclusive painter (Roberts) to sell his work through her gallery. She soon falls in love with the emotionally damaged man, but even as romance blooms, someone is creeping through the night and murdering women passing through the area. Is the killer the quirky sheriff (Plank), the much-feared town patriarch (Steiger), or the sensitive artist? And will our heroine become one of his victims?

"Frozen in Fear" is a made-for-TV movie that is as much a romantic chick-flick as it is a horror movie, complete with the fantasy of a woman healing a man's soul through the power of love. The cast of characters are basically off-the-shelf figures from gothic romances--and you'll quickly recognize each and every one of them as soon as they are introduced. And you'll eventually realize that none of these thinly written characters, whose actions are driven entirely by plot concerns whether there is any logic to them or not, will never rise above the status of stereotypical figures. The only thing that saves this film from being a total snooze fest is the horror aspect.

But even the presence of a mad killer can't save this film, because, even though there is a mildly clever twist surrounding his identity--at least if one views "Frozen in Fear" as a romance tale first and horror story second--he emerges as such a ludicrous figure that the horror is undermined almost from the outset. And as if the writers wanted to make sure the film remained on the level of trash they throw am ill-conceived "surprise twist ending" that tries to elevate our high mountain stalker to the level of a Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers. The lame ending alone drags this film down a Three Rating when it might otherwise could have been a Four or maybe even a low Five.

Saturday Scream Queen: Ginger Lynn Allen

In 1983, 21-year-old Ginger Lynn Allen answered an ad for figure models. Later that very day, she had secured her first layout in Penthouse Magazine. Roles in "adult movies" soon followed, and "Ginger Lynn" emerged as one of the leading porn actresses of the mid-1980s.

In 1986, Allen made the transition to more respectable genre pictures, having tired of the hectic pace with which adult films were made. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, she was featured in a wide variety of low-budget pictures and even landed small parts on television series. Her horror roles include "Satan's Storybook" (1989), "Buried Alive" (1990), "Evil Breed: The Legend of Samhain" (2003), and "The Devil's Rejects" (2005).

By the late 1990s, Allen had returned to the adult film industry. The majority of her output today consists of films in which she plays an older woman on the prowl for young flesh. 

Bad horror/fantasy in an anthology format

Satan's Storybook (1989)
Starring: Ray Robert, Lesile Deutsch, Ginger Lynn Allen, and Michael Daevid ("Satan's Queen"/framing segment), Steven K. Arthur and Leesa Roland ("Demon of Death" segment), Gary Brandner, Michael Rider, Francis Paul and Irwin Waterman ("Death Among Clowns" segment)
Director: Michael Rider
Rating: Two Stars

"Satan's Storybook" is a low-budget anthology film with costuming that would look great at a Halloween party but which is at the bottom end of what should be considered passable for a professional film production. The flat look of a film obviously shot on video makes it look even cheaper.

I broke this review down according to the segments of the film, assigning each one its own rating. The Two Stars I ultimately ended up assigning it is an average of those individual ratings.

Aside from its low budget and near-universally weak acting which is made to appear worse than it actually is by atrocious dialogue, the film hurt most by the sloppy and loose editing. Every time there's a cut or a change in camera angle, we get at least a second of dead air, so even during what should be heated exchanges between characters we get an overly stagey sense of performance as everyone seems to be politely waiting for the other actor to finish their line before delivering his. The actors and the film in general would have come off much better if there had been a talented editor involved in the production.

Like most anthology films, it consists of a framing tale that surrounds and links short stories. Here, the framing sequence involves the kidnapping of Satan's Bride (Leslie Deutsch) by her sister who has been raised to kill her (Ginger Lynn Allen). While Satan's minions tracks his bride and her kidnappers, he orders his court jester (Daevid) to tell him tales of evil on Earth to get his mind off the situation.

The framing story is a fantasy-oriented section of the film, with better-than-average swordplay for this level of filmmaking but the too-cheap costuming and the awful editing undermines the good parts. Ray Robert does a good job as Satan, but he's also undermined by a lack of technical ability on the part of the filmmakers, as his voice is distorted to give it a spooky, demon-like quality that makes it almost impossible to understand what he's saying. The framing story rates a 4/10 Stars. It's the best part of the film, which isn't saying much. And even though it's the best part, it still ended with me saying to myself, "Is that it? Did someone forget to end this movie?"

The first story told by the jester is "Demon of Death", a tale of a serial killer who picks his victims at random from a phone book (Steven K. Arthur), but whose luck runs out when he targets a young woman who is studying witchcraft (Leesa Roland).

"Demon of Death" had plenty of potential, but it evaporates under the harshness of bad writing (not just the dialogue but also the timing of events in the tale, such as the revelation that the killer's "Book of Death" is just a phone book), subpar acting by everyone appearing, and the aforementioned bad editing. It's also padded with about five mintues of useless scenes involving the police and badly staged news reports. It rates a 2/10 Stars.

The jester's second tale is "Death Among Clowns". Here, a washed-up, drunken circus clown (Gary Brandner) commits suicide after being fired by the owner of the sideshow attracion he's spent his adult life performing at (Paul), but tries to put up a fight when Mickey La Mort, the manifestation of Death who collects the spirits of clowns (Rider), appears.

Moreso than the other parts of this film, the bad editing makes "Death Among Clowns" feel stagey and causes the actors to come off worse than they actually are. The pauses between lines due to changes in angles during a scene drains all energy from interactions. Of course, the truly awful dialogue being delivered doesn't help matters, but the editing is really what kills things here. Oh yeah... and then there's the problem the story just sort of peeters out. It's as if writers Arthur and Rider had put themselves in a corner and then said to themselves, "Let's just put a "boo" scare here and call it good." This one earns a rating of 2/10 Stars.

Two of the actors appearing in this segment have not appeared in any other films, but I want to call their performances out nonetheless.

First, there's Gary Brandner, the novelist who wrote the novels from which some of the werewolf films in "The Howling" series are based, as well as the script for "Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf". He plays Charlie the Clown, and he does it with a very bad Christopher Walken impersonation.

Second, there's Francis Paul, who plays the sideshow attraction owner who's sick of giving Charlie slack. Paul gives the most energetic and natural performance of anyone in the film. With better lines and decent editing, he might have earned "Death Among Clowns" another star. I think it's a shame he didn't do any more movies, because I think he could have been excellent if supported by competent filmmakers.

"Satan's Storybook" is a film that even lovers of the anthology format like myself would be better off not bothering with.

Christmas Fear: My Name is Kris Kringle

Here's a horror short film to make your Christmas Eve just a little more chilling....

My Name is Kris Kringle (2010)
Starring: Bradley James, R.A. Mihailoff, Azure Parsons, and Donnie Jeffcoat
Director: Drew Daywalt
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Saturday Scream Queen: Mary Woronov

Mary Woronov got her start in show business as part of Andy Warhol's entourage, but it wasn't until she parted ways with Warhol (and drug addiction) that her career really began to take off.

Since her debut in 1966, Woronov has appeared in 90 or so movies, many of them horror films or black comedies. Among her best roles--even if the films aren't necessarily all that good-- are "Silent Night, Deadly Night" (1971), "Sugar Cookies" (1973), "Death Race 2000" (1975), "Hollywood Boulevard" (1976), "Eating Raul" (1982), "Blood-o-Rama" (1984). "TerrorVision" (1986), "The Halfway House" (2003), and "The House of the Devil" (2003).

In addition to her acting, Woronov is also an accomplished writer with three published books to her name.

Cancer research kills on the island of terror

Island of Terror (aka "Night of the Silicates) (1966)
Starring: Edward Judd, Peter Cushing, Carole Gray, Eddie Byrne and Sam Kydd
Director: Terence Fisher
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Bone specialist Dr. David West (Judd) and pathologist Dr. Brian Stanley (Cushing) travel to a remote island off the coast of England to help stem an outbreak of a strange disease that seems to be dissolving the very bones of animals and island residents. The soon discover that the island is about to be overrun by gigantic, mobile, mutated cells that survive by sucking calcium and other minerals from their victims. Will the scientists find a to destroy the seemingly indestructible, rapidly multiplying monsters before they kill everything on the island... and then spread to the rest of the world? More importantly, will the lovely Toni (Gray) slap Dr. Stanley for his heavy-handed flirtatious comments?


"Island of Terror" is a GREAT monster movie with a fabulous setting and a cast that deliver excellent performances. The movie starts creepy, builds tension steadily, and ends up with an exciting climax where survivors are crammed into a single building for a desperate last stand. It is a classic in every sense of the word, from the Golden Age of sci-fi in at the cinema.

I've heard this film compared to the original "Dr. Who" series, both in a favorable and a disparaging sense. I tend to think the comparison is accurate, particularly of the John Pertwee and Tom Baker years. The monsters bear some resemblance in design to many of those we saw on "Dr. Who" (and perhaps they may seem laughable to the "sophisticated" viewer in the 21st century) and the setting, nature, and development of the story is likewise similar to the stories featured on the TV show. However, "Island of Terror" is much better paced, far better acted, and far better filmed than any "Dr. Who" storyline. (I also suspect that a couple of people who have made such comments have had limited exposure to British sci-fi from the 50s and 60s... and so perhaps everything would remind them of "Dr. Who.")

If you like monster movies and classic sci-fi films, you owe it to yourself to check out "Island of Terror." Another reason to see it is Peter Cushing's performance. He gets to show off his comedy skills.

Saturday Scream Queen: Embeth Davidtz

American actress Embeth Davidtz grew up in South Africa where she began her acting career with the National Theatre Company. She soon moved onto film, however, with her first screen appearance being in the 1989 sci-fi horror flick "Mutator".

After making a few more films in South Africa,  Davidtz returned to the United States and settled in Los Angeles, CA. She has appeared in a range of moves and television series, but the bulk of her resume consists of thrillers and horror films, including such greats as "Army of Darkness" (1992), "Fallen" (1998), "The Hole" and "Thirteen Ghosts" (both in 2001), and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". (2011).

After she was was married in 2002, Davidtz output slowed slightly, as she has been tending to family and her two children. She continues to have leading roles in films and television series, and she recently completed work on "Paranoia", a thriller slated for release in 2013.

Worst documentary crew ever?

Ghost Attack on Sutton Street (2012)
Starring: Lee Roberts, Michelle Gant, Pete Cox, Matthew Davies, and Michelle Hare
Director: Philip Gardiner
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A documentary crew follows Haunted Events UK on an investigation of hauntings at the Sutton Street indoor market in this clumsy attempt at making a... well, to be honest, I'm not sure WHAT they were trying to accomplish.

"Ghost Attack on Sutton Street" is either a failed mockumentary, a failed at attempt at making a "ghosts are real" hoax film ala "The Last Exorcism", or a failed promotional film for Haunted Events UK. Whatever the intent, the end result doesn't make the future career prospects of any of the participants seem particularly rosey.

Let's set aside for a moment that the fact that Gardiner and his B-camera man are the worst documentary crew in the history of filmmaking, if this film was supposed to be a real documentary. No camera is EVER pointed where something is supposed to happen--even if the "ghost hunter" is saying, "Over there, something is going to happen with that toy car over there"--the cameras remain on the "ghost hunter" or some other equally uninteresting bit of scenery until someone shouts "Oh my God! Something DID happen over there!"

But, of course, by the time the camera turns to where an event is happening, it's already over--the ghost is done moving a toy car or knocking over a chair, or what have you.

And the supposed evidence of ghosts that Haunted Events UK presents in this film are so hackneyed or transparently clumsy that even the most game middle school girls would be unlikely to be terrified by them. They rank from medium tricks that were stale back when Arthur Conan Doyle was being duped by them, to clumsy hoaxes that a child would be able to see through.

The most lame way the Haunted Events UK tries to "prove" the existence of ghosts to the audience involves toy cars. Toy cares are left sitting on counters and if the car is later found to have been moved, a ghost has been by. Why do ghosts like to play with Matchbox Cars? Who knows. But the toy cars DO get moved... when no one is looking, of course. Or when the "paranormal expert" is looking at a toy car and the camera is conveniently filming something completely irrelevant. The car trick MIGHT be taken as a sign of ghostly activities, because the crew is supposedly the only people inside the building if not for the fact that the "paranormal expert" sends half the team away because it's getting too dangerous due to ghost activity about halfway through the movie. If Haunted Events UK is in the business of staging "haunted house" tours, then it's pretty clear who's moving the cars or rattling chains or what have you. Basically, anyone who rolls their eys at the "my Maglite is blinking, so a ghost must be trying to communicate!" nonsense from SyFy's "Ghosthunters".

I've touched twice on the awful cinematography in the film, but it pales in comparison to the omnipresent, nerve-grating score that does more to undermine the sense of reality that was most likely the goal of the film than the third-rate carnival acts of the Haunted Events UK crew could ever do. It's overblown, tedious, and consistently out of place.

My final take on "Ghost Attack on Sutton Street" is that it's a film that shouldn't be viewed by anyone, except maybe aspiring filmmakers who might benefit from a compact collection of every single thing you could do wrong when trying to make a hoax movie.

A horrible horror movie

Slaughtered (2008)
Starring: Chris Smith, Arlisha Fogle, Aschleigh Jensen, Rebecca McQuen, and Cheri Lynn
Director: Anthony Doublin
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

Harold (Smith) is a psychopath who murders nude models and posts gory images of his crimes on a pay/members-only website. As he goes about his business of booking small-time models and murdering them, the world's worst detective (Fogle) is hired to locate one of Harold's victims. But something else is closing in on Harold--the restless spirits of his victims. Is he truly being haunted, or are the ghosts just a figment of his deterioriating sanity?

"Slaughtered" is a movie so bad that the only good things I can say about it is that it's well-lit and the camera is in focus at all times. And I'd be appalled if those weren't quality, given that the writer/director of this should-have-been cinematic abortion is a well-established lighting technician and cameraman with several regular gigs on television series to his credit.

But as a director and a screen-writer, he is completely incompetent.

We have a central character--I can't bring myself to call him a protagonist--who is both loathsome and uninteresting, whose only defining characteristics is that he wears too much eye-liner and likes to kill women. Oh... and he's also a peeping tom who likes watching his models undress via a webcam before he... makes them undress and kills them. We never learn anything about Harold... who he is, why he is doing what he's doing, or any other stuff that might make him a little interesting. He never becomes more than a crazy goth in too much eye-liner.

We have a character who should be the hero, but who is so irrelevant to the plot that by the time she arrives at Harold's house, the movie's over... his last victim has freed herself and ghosts have exacted gory revenge on him. (Yeah, I just spoiled the movie. If you had watched it, you would have wished I had and saved you the misery.) She's also, as I mentioned in the teaser summary at the top of the review, the world's dumbest detective; while working on her missing person's case, she calls up the local police station and offers sexual favors in exchange for open missing persons cases. I've no doubt she's real popular around the squad room, since those sorts of things are not under lock and key... the police are trying to find those people. A Google search might have given her the same information as those files. And then there's the fact she spends much of the movie in her office (which looks like it might be a nook in her kitchen) trying to "hack" Harold's members-only snuff-port site. Why didn't get herself a pre-paid Mastercard, billed to her client, and just sign up for the site under a fictitious name?!

Of course, the police in the area of California where the film takes place--Santa Barbara? I think it was mentioned at some point, but my brain was starting to turn off by that point, so I'm not sure--aren't much smarter. Nude models are going missing... nude models who are contacted via their promotional web sites, via email... nude models who have computers and email accounts where correspondence is stored. It seems to me that it wouldn't take more than a couple of vanished women with emails from Harold in their inbox to make the police interested in him and his little web-venture. That and the fact that he disposes of their bodies, fully intact, in dumpsters. Neither Harold, nor the cops, have apparently watched even one episode of "CSI". Or "Quincy, M.E.". Or even "Columbo." Hell, the world's dumbest detective looked at the email account of one victim and zeroed in on Harold.

Some of the laziest writing I have ever seen in a film that was supposedly made by a professional is on display here. The cipherous nature of Harold. the idiocy and plot irrelevancy of the character who should be the hero, and the absence of any apparent thought devoted to how Harold can be getting away with his serial killing are only the worst sins among a multitude.

Moving onto the direction... words fail me. Either Doublin managed to make scenes of girls getting undressed boring, or I need to have my testosterone levels checked. We're treated to three scenes of girls getting undressed and then getting dressed (before undressing again and being murdered), and the next one is duller than the one that went before. Even the kill scenes are boring, with only the first one having even the slightest impact, possibly because it was a bit unexpected. Usually with films like this, I'm disgusted or irritated--I do not like movies whose central and only theme is the brutalization of women and other innocent victims--but with "Slaughtered", each murder brought a greater degree of indifference.

Perhaps it has something to do with the acting, which was almost as universally flat as the direction. The fact that Doublin is a seasoned professional probably helped him keep the "playing to the back row at the community theatre"-style performances that usually plague movies of this kind. The actors here all seemed comfortable in front of a camera and aware of how to play to it... but one can also easily understand why very few of the cast have credits beyond this picture, or other films directed by Doublin.

"Slaughtered" is lurking inside several multi-packs from Maxim Media's Pendulum Pictures imprint. Wherever you find it, save it for last... or, better yet, don't bother with it at all. The only reason to watch it is to gain a greater appreciation for Mario Bava's excellent "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" and Robert Hammer's "Don't Answer the Phone". Those films have many elements in common with Slaughtered... only they were made by directors who understand how to put a movie together.

Saturday Scream Queen: Shayla Beesley

Shayla Beesley is an emerging character actress who has had parts in a range of comedies, thrillers, and horror films, playing a variety of different teenaged girls. 

Beesley first starring role in a horror film came in "Perkins' 14" (2009) and she's been growing her horror resume ever since. She is currently filming two horror films slated for release in 2013 ("Spreading the Darkness" and "The Devil's Ink") and recently completed work on a third one ("MoniKa").

In addition to acting, Beesley is working toward a BA in Psychology.