The long-running blog of American poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg: poetry, horror and cult movies, Rockford history, cryptids, art, humor, gaming, and cultural commentary.
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.
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.
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
Last week I watched Simon, King of the Witches twice. Loved it both times. I'll probably watch it again soon when I'm at the apartment.
The 1971 movie stars Andrew Prine, and yes, he is a cousin of folk legend John Prine, as a twenty-something layabout who lives in a sewer and makes magic charms and trinkets for cynical party goers. Except Simon is a magician. A real magician who practices ceremonial magic and aspires to become a demi-god. When Simon is arrested for vagrancy, and how didn't he see that coming, he is befriended by a young male prostitute named Turk (George Paulsin). Turk introduces Simon to his world of drugs, wild parties, and hysterical Wiccan rituals featuring a goat and Andy Warhol star Ultra Violet. Death and mayhem ensue, along with romance for Simon with the district attorney's daughter (Brenda Scott). The witchcraft and esoterica described in this movie is no mumbo jumbo, as Frank Langella's character says in The Ninth Gate. The screenwriter, Robert Phippeny, was well-versed in witchcraft, and the movie side-steps a lot of the cliches associated with the genre, while simultaneously satirizing several others rather ascerbically.
Near the end of the movie, Simon's plan to use sex magic to attain godlike power is thwarted when he must use his power instead to seek vengeance on "the man" who has been harassing his drug dealer and counter-culture friends. Things get trippy. The demon Moloch is invoked, and we all know what happens after that. But if you'd like to know, check out Simon, King of the Witches.
A couple of jabronis steal a bunch of VHS tapes from a video store and beat it to this chick's apartment, where she just conveniently happens to be taking a shower. Jabroni number 1 informs her they will be watching the purloined videos at her place, then raids her refrigerator for some chicken and Budweiser. All three sit down on the couch and he puts in the video tape, which goes right into story number one, which involves...
A henpecked children's entertainer who is bullied by everyone, including his punk-ass stepson and his gang of droogies, is pushed too far when they destroy the puppets he loves. It's hard not to hope he won't use his puppets to get revenge on the lot of them. Is he crushed by a garbage truck because he's kind of a ninny and gets bitch-slapped by his stepson's girlfriend? Probably.
Let's face it, the only thing you're going to remember from the second story is this woman's awful glasses. We all know why you're here, anyway. The garden gnome story. So, go ahead and fast forward through story number two, a snoozer about an apparition on a bicycle, and let's get to story number 3.
Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Gnomes! Don't mess with little old English ladies' garden gnomes, if you know what's good for you. Screamtime. An interesting aspect of this movie is the three shorts are all British, while the wrap-around story is shot in New York. Good ending. You won't hate me for recommending this if you're a horror fan. Pin It
Humongous is a 1982 horror film which receives a 3.3 star rating out of ten at IMDB. It's either completely deserving or undeserving of that rating based on how you feel about this photo...
Humongous begins on Labour Day 1946
A bad photo, you say? Nope. Not really. This is what most of the movie looks like. I can tell you something interesting and horrible occurs in the setting depicted in this picture, but if you watch Humongous, you're not going to see most of it. If soft focus and darkness doesn't bother you, let's proceed...
Humongous movie poster
Mostly accurate. Something is loose in this movie. I'll divulge this: Humongous is a movie in the forsaken, desolate, derelict places genre. If that is a genre at all. To me it is, and in that genre movies like The Shining and Session 9 are two of the best examples, but I've recently discovered lesser gnown gems like Ghostkeeper, Warlock Moon, and Screams Of a Winter Night. This movie has the added bonus derelict places features of...
Typical muddied shot from the movie
Being shot on an actual island, and an island in Canada. They could have shot it in the director's apartment for all you'll know because you can't see any of it, which will be simultaneously frustrating, but somewhat fascinating in the sense that you'll never come away from this place with a clear picture of what just happened. I actually kind of like that and think it adds something to a pretty interesting movie.
Gratuitous boobies...
Humongous Descending a Staircase. In sum, a unique movie (or else I wouldn't have bothered). Frustrating as hell to watch, but worth it for real horror fans.
I recently re-watched the 1970 classic of convolution, incredulity, and exhilerating car chases titled Scream and Scream Again. I had to watch it in ten episodes on You Tube because no matter how much money you are willing to pay Netflix these days they just seem to have less and less movies available. Here's all you need to know to get yourself motivated to watch this classic (in my mind, at least) piece of unfollowable schlock... it's one of the few movies that Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price all appear in. That's enough right there to send you to You Tube right now, but, wait, there's more. Wait a minute, let me backtrack. The movie begins when....
This jogger collapses, then wakes up to find his... well, let's just say something is missing.
Peter Cushing as Major Heinrick Benedek
Then it's revealed it's all taking place in some convoluted 1984/Nazis actually won World War II Rollerball evil corporation/government fascist (redundant, I know) state, then Peter Cushing gets the Vulcan nerve pinch from this guy who's apparently more than he appears and, well..
Michael Gothard as Keith
This effeminate, dandy looking David Bowie type guy is going around stalking chicks in discos and he's really... (well, I'll let the story tell itself)
This guy is a copper who is on the case. I think he gets Vulcan nerve pinched, too.
This guy is in it. He's some affable gwat I suppose he's the hero but I haven't seen the ending yet.
Vincent Price as Dr. Browning
Vinnie the P is in it I think he's a mad scientist. After the first half hour you won't be able to keep track of anything that's happening anyway so just relax and enjoy...
One helluva car chase shot with some amazing low angles that happens about thirty minutes in, followed by a foot chase and an iconic scene where the dandy serial killer guy with amazing strength and flexibility manages to escape handcuffs by...
well, you'll see.
Then it looks like Vincent Price ends up in an acid bath but I haven't watched the ending yet and I can't remember from seeing it twenty-five years ago probably on Elvira's Movie Macabre if the sinister fascists are foiled.
Here's the English quad poster saying something about stuff. I guess all that could have happened in the movie, not sure.
Christopher Lee as Fremont
Oh, ya, Christopher Lee is in it. He probably gets nerve pinched eventually. Watch Scream and Scream Again it makes no sense and so what?
March 29, 2013: Almost all of the movies on Elvira's Movie Macabre are considered classics by me.
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