The long-running blog of American poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg: poetry, horror and cult movies, Rockford history, cryptids, art, humor, gaming, and cultural commentary.
So began Season 3 Episode 6 of Elvira's Movie Macabre, Island of the Doomed, on the evening of November 20, 1983. Was I watching? I don't think so, because I don't remember seeing this movie, but I'm going to live watch it tonight at ShoutFactory and comment. If you were asleep in Botany 101, you will learn early in this movie, if you're still awake, that carnivorous plants obtain Nitrogen from their victims, not the soil.
This is a nerdy Botany professor from the University of Michigan. He seems very curious about the Baron's flora. My guess is he's not going to be in the movie much longer. Yes, the picture quality is this grainy. "It's like a cucumber, but it tastes like meat."
During her second segment at twenty minutes, Elvira muses that while she was watching a cucumber that tastes like a steak she was busy coming up with a hamburger that tastes like a banana. But nobody wants to buy them, because "they don't have appeal."
"Anybody for a little Frisbee? Mine are enormous." After a rather dry segment where the Baron explains about his porcupine plant Elvira returns with her Frisbee. It's a welcome diversion from the poor picture quality of this movie. How about that eye makeup? Looks a little bit like Piston Honda in Mike Tyson's Punch Out when he gets stunned by a punch. Alright, everyone is in bed now, so time to eat my Cherry Garcia ice cream and finish this sucker. I read ahead a little bit and am of the understanding there is an intense finish.
Cameron Mitchell plays the Baron von Weser admirably in this movie. I have seen him in a great many movies and tv shows, including Night Gallery, and he often plays an over the top tough guy type, but here his performance is a little reserved. I'm actually watching this scene as I write. Here he is explaining to a woman who has broken away from the group to come and have sex with him that he is never lonely because he has his plants. I think it's about to go badly for her. Yep, she was about to touch his giant gardenias, and was rebuffed, only to retreat in frustration.
"In a movie about a man-eating plant, I would keep my eye on a man named Moss."
Two dudes fighting it out with axes underneath a bloodsucking tree? Typical Friday night in Hydra, pronounced Heed-ra.
Director Mel Welles was known for his killer flora movies, including playing flower shop owner Gravis Mushnick in Little Shop of Horrors, because of course he did. And I see looking at his IMDB credits that he played Dr. Hinkle in Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype, another Movie Macabre feature I finished watching earlier today.
"Tonight's movie is Legacy of Blood. Legacy is an Italian word. Like, this is my leg yacee? And this is my other leg yacee?"
Movie Macabre intro to Legacy of Blood. April 10, 1982 I'm very excited because this is the first time since I saw any of the original episodes in the early 80's as a teenager that I will be watching one of the original broadcasts as it aired then, with Elvira's intro to the movie and pop-up comments (hopefully). So far all of the reviews I have done of Movie Macabre episodes have been of the movies themselves, without the intro or Elvira's segments. I found a handful of the episodes at ShoutFactory. I have never been able to find a complete episode of Elvira's Movie Macabre anywhere else before this. I wonder if they all exist somewhere. This movie, Legacy of Blood, also known as Will To Die, aired originally on April 10, 1982, and was episode 28 of season 1. The show had already become a runaway hit by this point. I know Legacy of Blood primarily because it was included in the horror compilation Drive-In Movie Classics. Legacy of Blood begins with the most cliche of premises: the children of a wealthy man assemble to hear the reading of the will, which (of course) stipulates they must stay at the estate for at least a week or get nothing, and if one of them dies, the remaining portion of the 136 million dollars shall be divided among the survivors. If all the children dies, his faithful three servants get the dough. I wonder what will happen next. Reading IMDB reviews as I try to slog through the film one more time, I find that I disagree with most of the reviews. I enjoy this film. true, I watched several times at a time in my life when I had nothing else to watch, but I like it.
This guy is in the movie. His name is Igor. I'd have to say he's an obvious cypher as the killer. Maybe he is. I honestly don't remember.
This is also something that apparently happens in the movie, but I don't recall this either. I think it happens when they come downstairs late at night to make a roast beef sandwich and this guy's head is in the fancy platter. I think there's also an electrocution and the dog bites it and someone gets poisoned and at the end someone is going to get the money even though they just killed seven people and no one is ever supposed to investigate that. All of that improbability taken into account, I'm a sucker for the house and the estate this is filmed on. They have a really nice pool table, and twenty minutes in Elvira hasn't said anything yet.
"Sheesh. Just give a guy an inch..." 23:35
At about 1:04:30 mark Elvira says "This is getting a little heavy. Time for a musical interlude," then there is about a sixty second montage synched up to the Elvira theme. Then, unfortunately, more movie.
One more break at 1:12:48 to lament her life as a horror movie host, then back for the gripping finish to Will To Die, err, Legacy of Blood.
At 1:23:00 Elvira is back to read letters from ladies and their bad dating experiences. "I don't trust a man who let's his dog eat cabbage." "I don't trust a man who sleeps with his socks on." "I don't trust a man who likes to sit on his umbrella (triple rim shot)." etc then she ends the segment by being hit with rotten vegetables.
I think at the end of the movie it even turns out that John Carradine is alive. Maybe.
Elvira returns one last time for the post mortem to rightfully point out that the movie is both dumb and the ending is one of the biggest cliches in movie history. "I get paid for watching this garbage, but what's your excuse?"
I don't think it's a good idea if I answer that question.
Unpleasant dreams.
Executive producer Dick Johnson? Of course he is.
Only two things could have made this more fun: if I were fourteen again, and if my six year old weren't somewhere behind me the whole time.
Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype appeared on Elvira's Movie Macabre March 17th, 1984, exactly one week after Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, and you better believe I was watching. It was season 3 episode 13. At the time I had no awareness of who Oliver Reed was or exactly what it was about this goofy horror comedy that I would still remember 32 years later when I just saw it again for the second time, but there's definitely something about it that is memorable.
Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype is a completely original story never told before about an ugly podiatrist who really like this very attractive blond woman he sees at the bus stop every morning on the way to work. She's not interested because she only dates ears, nose, and throat men. But unbeknownst to Dr. Heckyl, his colleague, Dr. Vince Hinkle is working on a potion that will turn overweight women into stunning blondes. Does Dr. Heckyl take the serum and transform into a dashing, albeit bloodthirsty ladies' man who becomes homicidal whenever he believes his appearance has been slighted in any way? Duh. Is this a really dumb movie and perhaps one of the most pointless and idiotic adaptations of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel? Doi.
Don't ever let them convince you that everything exists on the internet, because I'm unable to find a picture of Mr. Hype's first kill, and the scene I remember most vividly from first seeing the movie in 1983, where let's just say he uses a lamp in a very creative way. Foot fetishists will be especially drawn to Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype, but what comes to mind for me is the epic bender I read about Oliver Reed going on in Spain before he died. Downing rounds and rounds of drinks with sailors, and ending the night polishing off three bottles of rum. But back to the movie.
It's perfectly stupid and semi-sweet at times, and the violence is mostly comical. There's not much like it. I'll probably even go and finish watching it now.
Update: I decided to finish watching the movie this afternoon, and as I watched my six year old create a very elaborate drawing of the video he was watching it occurred to me that I, too, didn't have to rely o the internet to furnish pictures of these movies I am reviewing, especially of the particular scenes I want to remember and highlight.
This is the particular scene that emblazened this movie onto my memory. Dr. Heckyl has just taken the serum his colleague concocted, and discovers he is handsome, His first visit is to his downstairs neighbor. Things are going swimmingly, because he's Oliver Reed, until he feel she has insulted his face. What happens next I must advise you occurs in strobe lights, so the screen grab is insufficient. I guess my whole family was home when we watched this because I remember we laughed and laughed. It just seemed like the funniest thing that ever happened.
The third and final, and by far the best movie of the night is Beware! The Blob, directed by Larry Hagman of Dallas and I Dream of Jeannie fame. It is once again a much maligned film due to the fact that it has almost nothing to do with the original The Blob, and is a vast departure in both tone and content. Which is what makes it so fun. Beware! The Blob is actually a Hippie romp with an all star cast and a surprise soundtrack by Mort Garson. This was my first encounter with the Moog synthesizer work of Garson, and I am already on Ebay bidding on this gem...
Black Mass Lucifer by Mort Garson
As for the movie itself, I'm fifty minutes through, and it's just a romp. Makes no damn sense, and doesn't care to. There is a red blob in the movie that has escaped and is showing up randomly devouring people, but that doesn't seem to putting a damper on the party.
I have just gotten to the part of the movie where I suspect the Blob is about to consume Burgess Meredith and Larry Hagman, who are portraying bums. Then I believe it will head on to terrorize the party guests at this rager that broke out.
No real graphic violence in this movie so far, but there was a very depressing scene where they ran over a bunch of cases of Miller High Life. I thought that was gratuitous and uncalled for.
Or don't it's really not going to matter.
Oh, I forgot, and I know since I read ahead that the Blob makes a detour and eats a pack of Boy Scouts led by Dick Van Patten. Also, that actor named Gerrit Graham, who you might remember as Bud the CHUD and a bout a million other appearances plays a douche dressed in a gorilla costume. I'll let you know if he gets eaten. Wait a minute, wait a minute, now the Blob is going to a bowling alley.
I started early tonight with what Jenny and I refer to as the "crummy movies" because I'd like to get in as many as possible. The movie is actually one I'll be finishing from last night titled The Keeper. The Keeper is a low budget horror film released in 1976 and shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is one of those films that is not remembered kindly by those who bother to remember it, and I think one of the primary reasons for that is that for reasons no one can explain (probably cash), Christopher Lee stars in the movie. Not just a quick cameo, but he's actually in the movie. He plays The Keeper, the keeper of an asylum where family members of wealthy families are kept, and meet nefarious ends at the hands of the maniacal Keeper, who sits at his mysterious console and and doles out punishment via mind control and hypnotism to the inmates, and really anyone who comes to save them.
Christopher Lee at his console of terror in the 1976 movie The Keeper
Like I said, if you want a bad review of The Keeper, you can find it easily somewhere else. It's altogether an off kilter production from a crew that hadn't done much before, and didn't do a whole lot after. I watched it mostly as I was doing other things and cleaning the apartment. I like how the console is built into what looks like a roll top desk, so thumbs up from me.
Roy Ward Baker directed many movies, and R Chetwynd Hayes wrote many books, but The Monster Club is the movie where the talent of these two British horror meisters intersected. Although maligned for a long time as cheesy and not scary at all, The Monster Club has in past years begun to receive the credit it deserves as a fun and well-crafted entry into the horror anthology genre. The Monster Club, based on the book of short stories of the same name by Hayes, weaves three stories of semi-gruesome horror around performances by contemporary British bands in a subterranean club being attended by Vincent Price and John Carradine. Carradine, Price, Pleasance, Chetwynd Hayes and Roy Ward Baker. Critics of this movie were always off base. If the criticism is it wasn't scary the proper response is so what. It was meant for a broad television audience. It most definitely is PG13 at worst and in my opinion appropriate to watch with your family at Halloween. Cheesy? So what? If you're not familiar enough with Vincent Price's work enough to know that 99% of his performances were cheesy then you shouldn't be offering an opinion in the first place. Most American audiences who hadn't rented it on video saw The Monster Club for the first time on Elvira's Movie Macabre on the evening of Feb 6, 1983. It was episode 66. That's when I saw it. We all learned a lot about monsterdom from this movie. We learned that there are the primate monsters, vampires, ghouls, and werewolves, but we also learned that these primate monsters interbreed, creating hybrid monsters, and that these hybrids also interbreed with the primate monsters, other hybrids, and even humans. Price says "The results are almost always disastrous, but they will do it." "What do they do?" Carradine rejoins, and Price launches into the setup for the first story, about a lonely creature called a Shadmock that isn't scary in any real way except one...
Shadmocks, Mocks, and Humghouls from The Monster Club
Two of the three stories involve Shadmock and Humghouls, two of the lowest creatures in the monster hierarchy. Humghouls seem to have even less powers than a Shadmock. None in fact according to the third story. Perhaps they enjoy a little human flesh once in a while, but they get that from the ghoul side of the family.
All three stories in The Monster Club are entertaining, but what is even more entertaining about this movie is the music, the set up interludes where Price and Carradine speak, and the soundtrack. With the success of the Netflix show Stranger Things, and a resurgence in interest in electronic music, fans of this musical genre will want to check out Alan Hawkshaw's songs here, including Ghoul's Galore.
Those who have bad-wrapped The Monster Club in the past should give it another chance, and all fans of horror should definitely give it a first chance.
2026 update: I had a humghoul moment last week at the post office. No one was there when I arrived but a few moments after I started trying to send a package through customs I turned and there were like ten of them.
The Human Duplicators is on Ebay for the first time in the four years that I have collected Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I have never seen the movie, and it's unlikely I'll watch it on this tape as the bidding is already at $76.00 with an entire week left in the auction.
The box design of the Human Duplicators is one of twoI know of that differ from the other 21 boxes in the series. The other is Natas:The Reflection.
The back of the box isn't much different from the other videos in the series. This copy, the only one I've ever seen, appears to be in good shape. The movie is about an alien from a distant galaxy who comes to Earth to take over by creating an army of zombies shaped like pottery. I guess that description sounds kind of interesting, but I doubt I'll rush out and try to find a way to watch it after this. The movie was released in 1965, and I see Hugh Beaumont is in the cast. How awesome is that? Probably not 150-250 dollars worth, which is what I estimate this video will go for.
The Human Duplicators on VHS
Between VHS and Beta versions, I have 21 of the 46 movies released on Thriller Video and hosted by Elvira. My favorites are The Monster Club and The Silent Scream. Many of them come from episodes of Hammer House of Horrors, which was a one hour television series, so they had to pad those with additional footage. The Silent Scream was actually one of those episodes, as well as The Thirteenth Reunion and Guardian of the Abyss. These are generally high quality stories and well-written and acted.
Almost all the movies in this series are PG13 or tamer, and Elvira refused to host any movies that had graphic violence or animal cruelty, but as I type that I realize the topic of The Silent Scream was animal cruelty. Nonetheless, the movies are all rather harmless and good fun. The Monster Club is no doubt the most fun movie in the series. I'll write an update about this video in seven days.
I resisted the urge to buy a VHS copy of the original MCA Rainbow release of Halloween III and the 1987 re-release. It was a nice deal, and I'd really like these tapes, but they fall into an odd category as far as collecting or just having to watch. They're not collectible grade, per se, but they're too expensive to feel good about putting into a VCR I bought for $4.99 at Goodwill.
Halloween 3, the only good Halloween movie.
Also, I'm never sure why anyone who talks about Halloween III has to explain that Michael Myers is not in the movie. For me it's the best Halloween movie of the series. Actually, it's the only one I've ever seen, or will see, because slasher movies don't appeal to me in the least. This afternoon I'm trying to do a self-install of my ATT equipment so I can switch my internet over from Comcast, which I am ambivalent about because Comcast is one of the few services in my life that actually works for me, but they insist on charging me too much, and trying to creep that charge up to nearly $100/month every time I take my eyes off them. Still waiting for the lights to go green on my ATT router. Jenny gave me a cone-shaped vacuum, and when I look at it charging it looks like a witch's hat. I have two different brands of computers, and they have the delete button in different places, which causes me more trouble than it should any rational person who is able to adjust to his surroundings. I have watched The Beast Must Die over twenty times in September, and I still can't tell you who the werewolf is. Last night I watched All the Colors of the Dark and Daughters of Satan and found both entertaining with the sound off. I organized all my outsider poems for the next book last week. It turns out I've only written about 75 poems in ten years. Most of them I didn't consider very good. Several of my wide receivers in fantasy football have turned up lame this week. You never have enough wide receivers in fantasy football these days. I went with the wide receivers in early rounds strategy, and still they are dropping like flies and I get beaten by Marvin Jones. That's the way it is.
MTV debuted on August 1st 1981. USA Network's overnight video and music show Night Flight debuted June 5th 1981, featuring not only a healthy dose of videos from alternative bands, but B movies, interviews with artists and cultural figures, cult movies, short videos, cartoons, and stand up comedy. It was a lifeline to those of us living in small towns where there was little to no access to anything alternative or weird. In fact, in the town I lived in MTV was banned until 1985, but since they couldn't ban an entire network I looked forward to Friday and Saturday nights and Night Flight.
The show began at 10 p.m. Central time, and lasted four hours. It was then reshown at 2 a.m., and the rising sun often found me sitting there watching that second showing in its entirety even though I had also watched the earlier showing.
There was no "host" in the early years, just the voice of Pat Prescott doing an introduction to the individual pieces. It was the first place I encountered the Church of the Sub-Genius in the segment Love That Bob, and most likely the first time I saw the Devo video for "Whip It." other segments included New Wave Theater, featuring punk and New Wave bands, Atomic TV, featuring Cold War era videos, The Video Artist, and Tales From Tomorrow. No doubt about 99% of it was going right over my head at 13 years old, but I knew I liked it and longed for a world that was more like Night Flight than the small town reality of conformity and Revenge of the Nerds type bullies I existed in. The 80's really were a lot like the high school John Hughes' type movies about cool kids and jocks and freaks and geeks. Despite current fashion standards that geek is sheik, and being a nerd is cook, it sure wasn't in 1983. And that's what made Night Flight such a lifeline to geeks like me who were so outnumbered and so isolated in small towns across America.
Night of the Living Dead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dementia 13, Eraserhead, and The Terror were shown in their entirety on Night Flight. There was nothing like it. MTV was nothing like it. Nothing like it existed before, during, or after its original run from 1981-1988. I guess you had to be there and know what it's like to live in a world without 24 hour access to every cool and new and interesting thing, and social media blasting out and sharing it all so we all virtually instantaneously can share in every new zeitgeist to understand what it meant to have just that one source of connection to someplace out there that contained people who thought and believed and created the way you did, and weren't punished or ostracized for it, they were revered.
By the time Night Flight left the air in 1988 the era of grunge was about to sweep out the long national nightmare of Reagan, hair metal, and blind conformity. By 1990, everyone in America was cool, and Night Flight was just one of dozens of ways one could access what was cool and hip and new. It was there for those who needed it at a time where there was almost no alternative.
Sort of a bummer of a night compared to expectations. Duke winning another NCAA championship is like the jockos winning in every 80's movie. Then I was slightly disappointed in the season finale of Better Call Saul. To make things worse, I lost out on an Ebay auction for the only copy of Thriller Video The Human Duplicators I've seen available in over a year. I actually came in just two seconds too early because I thought $105 would be enough to buy a VHS tape of a movie no one has ever seen or cared about. It wasn't. But it's not much fun even if you do win one of those auctions when you have to pay top of the line prices. Most of the fun of assembling my Thriller Video collection is the hunt, and I know I'll see this tape again, and probably not have to pay $105. Anyway, as soon as I lost that auction I had a feeling if I looked immediately I would find a previously unseen Thriller Video for sale. And I did. I found a copy of NATAS: The Reflection, a Thriller Video I haven't seen up for auction at all in the year I've been looking. The seller's pictures and description were vague, but it was only $18, and I knew if I didn't press the buy it now button immediately I'd regret it. So I took a chance at $18 without any real pictures or description that this could be a solid copy of...
Natas: The Reflection
It's one of two of the 24 Thriller Videos hosted by Elvira that don't have her prominently featured on the cover. The other one, ironically, is...
The Human Duplicators
So, maybe in a week or so when I get NATAS: The Reflection, I'll be pleasantly surprised that I scooped up one of the rarest Thriller Videos for a great price, but I don't expect that. Either way, I can use it as a placeholder until I get a stellar copy. Eventually, my ridiculous plan to collect all 24 Thriller Videos in both Beta and VHS will come to fruition, then I'll have to come up with some other idiotic way to waste my money and time.
I'll post a picture of NATAS: The Reflection when I get it.
Thriller Video ad circa 1985
April 23, 2015: It turns out the tape was a later release by Avid Video. Completely worthless, but in very nice condition. Mostly because no one has ever actually watched this movie. The hunt continues.
I spent the first three hours of my birthday watching Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day on VHS. Had a few Tab Colas, and a sleeve of snack-size Milky Way bars. It's hard for me to understand why these two movies have been relegated to the cultural dustbin of sleezy teenage comedies that became such a category in the 1980's. These might have been early examples of that supposed genre, but they certainly aren't encapsulated by it, and anyone who dismisses them as such is doing the movies, and themselves as a viewer, an injustice. Granted, the raunch flows freely, and is done deftly in these movies. But it's never the central focus of what is happening. These are movies about a time (the late 50's) and a place (Southern Florida) that the writers grew up in and knew very well. There's nothing generic, unlike most teenage sex comedies, about the place, the time, or the characters. These are teenagers who talk and think about sex because, that's what teenagers do. But they do other things. They encounter serious issues such as racism, anti-Semitic rednecks, sexism, and censorship in a place that was very much pre-civil rights. The language is salty and authentic. They say in what my opinion teenagers might have said at that time in that place. So, to see the movie dismissed by so many reviewers and remembered by many others for a few scenes that are funny, and iconic, but not representative of the movies altogether. I love these two movies.
Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day on splendid VHS
Pull up any reviews for either of Peter Carpenter's 1970/1971 movies Blood Mania and Point of Terror, and you'll see the same rote review. Carpenter was a bad Tom Jones impersonator, the music was bad, the stories were incomprehensible, the women were hot. What's the point if you're just writing the same idiotic blog fifty other people have already cut and pasted from the central hive? First of all, of course the movies were bad. Rumor is Carpenter had to hustle just to put together the money to keep the productions afloat. But to say Peter Carpenter was untalented, or didn't have enough sex appeal to carry a production is foolish. No, he didn't leading man talent, but he sure as hell had more than sufficient sex appeal to make an independent about a guy who was handy with the ladies. I didn't doubt for a moment in either one of these movies that Carpenter couldn't have bedded these women on, or off screen. The songs in Point of Terror are bad? No shit, Sherlock. But they're not much worse than any song I would hear if I turned on the radio right now. The three original songs Carpenter supposedly performs in the movie are titled "This is...," "Drifter of the Heart," and my favorite, "Lifebeat." I enjoy all three songs, and if Carpenter performed them he's better than 90% of the standard fare out there. Let me know when you write, produce, star, and sing the songs in your first movie. Carpenter was reportedly a jazz dancer in Las Vegas in his earlier years, and as far as recognizing that his act was semi-ridiculous and campy, co-star Dyanne Thorne stated that everyone was aware of that on set and playing it up. Let me get this straight: though. Peter Carpenter was talented and driven enough to write, produce, star in, sing in, and generally carry two entire movies in a twelve month period, but for every other writer on the internet that deserves mockery, not a "hell ya!." ???? Almost nothing is written about Peter Carpenter's life, career, or death. If IMDB is to be believed, he died in December 1971 in Malibu, California, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, although co-star Leslie Simms states in an interview she remembers him dying in the late 70's or early 80's of pneumonia. What an odd enigma Carpenter is. No clear record of either his birth or death. How is it possible he might have made these movies back to back for Crown International, then disappeared altogether for up to a decade before his death? With the advent of the internet we assume all the information in the world is right here at our fingertips. It's strange, and I must confess somewhat exhilarating, that there are still some mysteries out there. Lounge singer Tony Trelos (Peter Carpenter, BLOOD MANIA, VIXEN!) spends his evenings performing at the Lobster House, waiting for his big break to crack the Billboard's Top 10. He has a chance meeting with the beautiful older Andrea (Dyanne Thorne, ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS, ILSA HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHIEKS) who happens to be the wife of a powerful record producer. She takes Tony under her wings, offering him opportunities and success in his singing career. However, things take a deadly turn as Tony is soon enveloped in a twisted web of murder and adultery. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to get what you wish for! Featuring Carpenter singing his big hits "This Is...", "Lifebeat", and "Drifter of the Heart", POINT OF TERROR is an exercise in suspense in which there may be no escape! - If you want more of Peter Carpenter you're almost out of luck. He had a role in Russ Meyer's Vixen, and starred in one other movie, "Love Me Like I Do," which is out of print. So, if you're one of those with an odd fascination about Carpenter, Blood Mania and Point of Terror are your only road maps.
It's possible the marketing of Blood Mania and Point of Terror helped to elicit the vitriolic response by some reviewers and fans of horror. You see, neither is what we would strictly classify as a horror movie. They're more accurately described as soft porn soap operas with some action and horror. The movie posters and trailers didn't help matters by promising "the outer limit of fear." Rhino didn't do anything to allay the confusion when they included "Point of Terror" in their Horrible Horrors collection. Nonetheless, if you go ahead and pull up any one of the other blogs about Point of Terror or Blood Mania on the interwebs, the second sentence will be an angry declaration that these are not horror movies. No shit, huh, Sherlock?
But I am far from being Peter Carpenter's biographer. I have more questions than answers. The main one being if Carpenter did not die in 1971 why didn't he make any more movies? What happened to him. I'm curious why almost nothing is written about him.
Actor/dancer/writer/singer/producer Peter Carpenter circa 1971, on the shoot of his movie Point of Terror. After the movie was released there is no clear record of what happened to Carpenter. He never appeared on film again.
Satan's Children, Just your typical early 70's tract about Satan, queers, and Molly Hatchet. Here's how it breaks down.
Same old story: Bobby Douglas, not the Bears' quarterback, is a teen in Florida, living with his step- dad and step- sister, presumably after his mother has died. He's not really welcome in the home anymore, and is used primarily as a servant. His step-sister especially likes to torment him, like in this scene where she taunts him about his small penis, then later spills the beans about Bobby's secret marijuana stash at the dinner table, prompting Bobby to snap and run away from home.
He dejectedly wanders the streets as sappy music lets us know this is sad wandering time. He enters a diner and gets hit on by an old queer. It is here we start to learn someone really has a bad feeling about gays. He is saved by a young macho dude just in time, taken for an exhilarating motorcycle ride, and invited back to his place to crash. It seems like a godsend. Maybe this guy will show Bobby the ropes and make an upstanding citizen out of him. For sure it's better than going down the trail of queerdom, right?
Wrong. Here's Bobby being gang queer-raped by the members of Molly Hatchet, three years before the release of their self-titled debut album. They decide after an evening of Flirting With Disaster that they're done with Bobby, and roll him out of the car at about forty miles an hour, where he fortunately ends up...
In a Satanic Hippie cult's backyard. These twat cannons like doing things like burying people in sand and covering them in syrup for the ants to enjoy, and hanging whoever it seems is out of vogue with satan this week. These are jerkoffs, but one thing everyone can agree on is gays are bad, especially satan. I never knew this, butsatan hates homosexuality, and Bobby is not welcome at the commune, even though one of the girls has taken a shine to him. She's the one buried here. There's a whiz bang finish here. Lots of action. Bobby gets even. I won't ruin the fun by detailing the gruesome events. His sister does apparently find out what his penis size really is.
Then everything ends on a real happy note as the cult members revel in this extended crucifixion scene of someone who has engaged in no injurious behavior to them or satan. The story of the making of the movie is rather interesting in itself. Back in the fall of 1973, longtime WTVT director Joe Wiezycki decided to return to his dream of directing an honest-to-gosh low-budget feature, shot entirely in the Tampa Bay area, using local cast and crew. His first effort five years earlier was called "Willy's Gone." It ended badly when the film failed to gain adequate distribution. Making matters worse, the film's investors were all Channel 13 employees...each contributing $1,000. But Joe was determined to prevail and become the Alfred Hitchcock of Tampa Bay. - from Making of satan'schildren Long story short, he made the movie. I'm watching it right now. It's entertaining as hell, but the homophobia is a bit offputting, and Satanists always seem to make jackasses out of themselves when portrayed in cinema. Go ahead and give this pig a ride. You'll probably like it. Pin It
