Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 13: The Children (1980)

I think I've mentioned before how I wish Letterboxd had some kind of note or tag you could easily add to a film when you add it to your watchlist, because a lot of the time I have no idea why the hell I felt like a movie ever deserved to be added.

So, I really have no idea how or why The Children ended up on my list. But I'm not mad about it! This movie is nuts! A school bus drives through a toxic cloud, turning the kids into zombies with black fingernails. The kids wander around with their arms outstretched, looking for hugs, but lo, pity the fool who falls into their toxic embrace, as they will surely meet their doom.

I think the movie is trying to make some kind of commentary on irresponsible parenting since it's filled with parents getting stoned during the day, smoking while pregnant, or just generally ignoring their kids. Though really, wasn't that just standard parenting in the 1970's??

It's extremely low budget (though it stars Martin Shaker, an actor probably best known for his role as John Travolta's brother the priest in Saturday Night Fever), but was released on Blu-ray in 2018 by Vinegar Syndrome. I assume the print I watched on Prime is that print, but it's weird how some of the scenes look very faded and rough, while other scenes look absolutely pristine. 

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 12: Infested (2023)

Infested is a French flick you definitely shouldn't see if you have a thing about spiders. Because if it had me - someone who's not particularly scared of them - cringing, squirming, and occasionally screaming, it just may kill you.

Set primarily in a Paris apartment building, it plays a bit like a virus horror film, with the characters being told not to leave the building, as they desperately try to avoid an infection, although this time the infection is actually an infestation.

Black market sneakers dealer Kaleb (Théo Christine) purchases an exotic spider, brings it back to his apartment, and soon finds it's gotten loose. Of course that spider was no ordinary creepy as hell spider. The breed is deadly, multiples seemingly instantaneously, and can grow up to 100 times its original size.

There are a lot of scenes of the characters having to traverse dark hallways and enter creepy rooms, as the building quickly fills with webs and giant spiders. So while there's nothing particularly original about that set-up, it's done well, and kept me pretty squirmy the while time.

Infested is available to rent online, and is also streaming on Shudder.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 11: Asylum (1972)

Asylum is the fourth Amicus Productions anthology film I've included in my countdown over the years (you can find the others here, here, and here). Amicus produced seven in total, but of the three I haven't yet included in this countdown, there are only two I haven't already seen (I watched Tales From the Crypt last Christmas). So those final two will definitely find their way onto this countdown eventually.

Like The House That Dripped Blood, Asylum's screenplay was penned by Robert Bloch, based on four of his own stories. The set-up involves a doctor arriving at his new post in an asylum for the "incurably insane." As he meets various patients, they explain what led to their asylum stays, and those stories make up the anthology. 

The first, "Frozen Fear," is a fairly typical tale of murder, and revenge from the beyond the grave, but the special effects are kind of unique, so I liked it despite it feeling a tad cliched and ultimately not making a whole lot of sense.

"The Weird Tailor" features Peter Cushing, but the story itself, involving a tailor in dire need of money and a man with very specific tailoring needs, is fairly predictable and ultimately pretty silly.

"Lucy Comes to Stay" is also very predictable, but it stars Charlotte Rampling and Britt Eckland at the height of their beauty, so it's at least visually appealing.

The final story (aside from the story that ties it all together in the end) is "Mannequins of Horror," starring Herbert Lom as a doctor turned patient who is convinced he can bring his handmade dolls to life. This story is so kooky, and the dolls are so endearingly silly looking (they have detailed life-like heads, and robot bodies, and walk around like windup toys), but it seems to be played completely straight, so it had me a bit confused. Ultimately it was probably my favorite despite its silliness. Or maybe because of it! (Also, the maniacal laugh at the end has to be heard to be believed.) 

Asylum is available to stream on multiple services. I watched it on Hoopla, to avoid ads. 

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 10: Lucky (2020)

Lucky is an exceedingly frustrating film, but at least it's a short, exceedingly frustrating film.

Brea Grant, who also wrote the screenplay, stars as May, a self-help book writer who finds herself pursued daily by a masked man who enters her house and tries to kill her. Her live in boyfriend reacts to this scenario nonchalantly, and then disappears, leaving her to deal with the potential killer on her own. Which she does, day after day and night after night. The police are also unhelpful, reacting to her situation without much concern. The expectation seems to be that this is just a situation she'll have to continue to deal with on her own.

I kept waiting for the movie to mean more than what it so very obviously means, but it never does, down to its very heavy handed and on-the-nose ending. It is well directed by Natasha Kermani, and Brea Grant gives a good performance, but I think it's ultimately so disappointing because in the beginning it is genuinely intriguing. But it just never pays off.

Lucky is streaming on Shudder.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 9: The Shadow of the Cat (1961)

Seems I can't get enough of cat-centered horror. This time we have The Shadow of the Cat, a Hammer production about the murder of an elderly rich woman by her husband and two servants, and the cat who witnesses the murder and seeks revenge.

So it's not really a horror movie in the classic sense, and it's not really a murder mystery since there's no mystery about who committed the murder. What it is, is a delight, because every time Tabitha the cat gets her revenge on the bad guys - seen from her POV - it had me gleefully laughing.

Of course there's always a bit of apprehension watching older movies that feature animals in prominent roles because we know there was a lot less attention paid to the animals' safety and comfort back then. For instance, there's an uncomfortable moment when Tabitha is held by her neck scruff that I really did not enjoy watching.

I do think editing did a lot of the heavy lifting, but it's also true that the shoot utilized a lot of cats because so many would just bolt from the scene and never come back. The excellent blog Cinema Cats has a good article about the film shoot and its troubles. So I do recommend the movie, but with the caveat (catveat?) that perhaps the cats didn't have the best time making it.

The Shadow of the Cat is available to rent online. I watched it on a Blu-ray borrowed from my library. 

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 8: Smoking Causes Coughing (2022)

 

I've included films by French director Quentin Dupieux in this countdown three other times (Deerskin; Mandibles; Rubber), but it's been a few years since he's made the list. I figured he was due back for inclusion, so I watched Smoking Causes Coughing, which once again, like the other Dupieux films featured in this countdown, isn't strictly a horror movie, but definitely includes some pretty horrible moments weaved into his usual absurd and surreal humor.

Essentially, this is a Power Rangers parody meets Tales From the Crypt. The "Power Rangers" are "Tobacco Force," and when they cannot defeat their enemies using brute force, they use the combined toxic elements found in cigarettes to destroy them. Their leader, Chief Didier, a giant rat who is constantly drooling green sludge from his mouth ("It could be detergent. It could be acid. We don't know!"), is also a ladies' man who two of the Rangers are in love with. Oh, and he's played by a puppet.

Didier sends the Tobacco Force on a team-building retreat where they, and other people/things, end up spending most of their time telling each other scary stories, which are then depicted, horror movie anthology style, as stories within the story. If this all sounds exceedingly stupid, you're right. But it also made me laugh, a lot. In all, its combination of extreme gore and absurdity reminded me of both Monty Python and Sam Raimi, which is a pretty strong combination.

As of this writing, Smoking Causes Coughing is available to stream free on Kanopy and Hoopla.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 7: The Uncanny (1977)

At first glance you may assume, as I did, that the anthology horror film The Uncanny, starring Peter Cushing, is an Amicus production. But while it shares a producer with several of those films, it's actually a Canadian and British production from "The Rank Organisation," perhaps the worst name for a production company ever.

And to be sure, it's not as good as an Amicus production - it's got some terrible effects and egregious dubbing - but it makes up for this in having stories that are all centered on cats. And at times, it's pretty funny.

Cushing plays an author trying to get a book about the evils of cats published. He visits his publisher, played by Ray Milland, and regales him with three "true" stories about evil cats. In the first story, a rich woman intends to will everything to her many cats, and is murdered. In the second, an orphaned girl and her cat are tortured by the bratty cousin she is forced to live with. And in the final story, an actor (Donald Pleasance) and his mistress (Samantha Egger) murder his wife and then have to deal with the dead wife's spooky cat.

In all three, the people are much more evil than the cats, even if the cats do get their revenge. So it's a little odd that the Cushing character is so fixated on the cats and not, you know, the actual villains in these stories. But then again, I've always found people with cat phobias to be pretty irrational.

A good copy is currently streaming on Tubi.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 6: Until Dawn (2025)

I saw Until Dawn after seeing the new Resident Evil. Both films are based on video games, but Resident Evil has raised the video game movie bar so high, I couldn't help but make comparisons in my head as I was watching it. And Until Dawn just pales in comparison.

Resident Evil somehow managed to fit so many aspects of game play into the film without it feeling like you were watching a video game. Things like the character talking to himself as he explores new scenarios, or finding a gun in one room, but then having to figure out where the bullets are, or being dumb and tossing aside a tool that will definitely come in handy later.

But the main conceit of Until Dawn is straight up video game play. All of the characters keep dying over and over again until they can figure out how to make it through the night and kill the big bad. And sure, that concept doesn't immediately mean it's going to feel boring and repetitive. But it felt boring and repetitive. It didn't help that none of the characters is very interesting, so I was never invested in their survival.

There was one night in their long series of nights that I did find genuinely surprising and grossly hilarious, and another night that cleverly turns the movie into a found footage film, but the movie just did not have enough of that ingenuity for me to feel fully engaged.

Until Dawn is streaming in Netflix.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 5: Circus of Horrors (1960)

Circus of Horrors is another movie that I watched because it's on my shower curtain. (Previous shower curtain watches can be found here and here.) It's a lurid British film, somewhat along the lines of Peeping Tom, which came out the same year, thought it's not nearly as good as that one. 

Describing the plot makes it sound insane: A plastic surgeon botches a surgery and goes on the run, changing his name, but then he performs a successful facial surgery on the disfigured young daughter of the owner of a circus but when that owner is mauled to death by a bear, the surgeon takes over the circus, filling it with formerly disfigured women he is able to turn beautiful, but only if they agree to become performers in his circus, and when they eventually get tired of that life he kills them.

Like I said, pretty insane. 

While the film has some good visuals and costumes, I wish it was as entertaining as the plot makes it sound. Alas, I found it to be pretty boring, and it took me two days to finish it because I kept getting distracted by other things, like my phone. Or the sun setting. Or sleep.

I watched it on Tubi, which seems to have two versions, one is a really good print, and one is terrible. Choose wisely. Or choose differently, as it's probably not actually worth watching.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 4: Depraved (2019)

I haven't watched a lot of Larry Fessenden's movies - and to be sure, there are a lot of them - but my dad's a big fan, and recommended Depraved, Fessenden's modern take on the Frankenstein story, so figured I'd dive in for this countdown.

Dr. Frankenstein this time around is Henry (David Call) a war veteran with untreated PTSD who deals with his trauma by creating life in his Brooklyn loft-turned-laboratory. He names his creation Adam (Alex Breaux), and Adam is quick to learn the basics of bodily coordination, though mastering the subtleties of human interactions are harder to instill. 

There are a lot of parallels to the two classic Universal films, such as a version of the Pretorious character, called Polidori (played by Josh Leonard of The Blair Witch Project) and Adam's desperate yearning for a bride, which comes to equally disastrous ends. 

It's a low budget movie, so it gets creative with some of the special effects, including some groovy "monster vision," as we see though Adam's eyes at times, and it's a pretty psychedelic view.  

But the best thing about Depraved is probably Alex Breaux's performance as Adam. Like the best of Frankenstein's monsters, he is both pathetic and scary, and he carries the entire picture on his patched-together shoulders.

I watched Depraved on Shudder.