Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 17: Monster In the Closet (1986)

Monster In the Closet is another horror movie partially set in San Francisco, though the majority takes place in a fictional town that is clearly Los Angeles. I will give the movie props for its finale, which does indeed take place on the streets of San Francisco, in and around North Beach and the Transamerica building.

I'll be blunt and tell you that Monster In the Closet is a really stupid movie, but intentionally so. It was distributed by Troma Entertainment, definitely not a company known for hits highbrow taste, and it is literally about a monster (a pretty well designed one, for how cheap the movie is), that hides in closets, attacking and killing people, and somehow its lone existence is enough to set the entire planet into a panic over the end of the world.

But for such a stupid movie, it has an insanely stacked cast full of basically a who's who of 1970's and 1980's character actors, including Henry Gibson, Paul Dooley, Donald Moffat, Claude Atkins, John Carradine, and (a topless!) Stella Stevens. 

Horror comedies can be pretty bleak, and Monster In the Closet is no exception. But! I did laugh a handful of times, and the ending is just so silly, I couldn't help but kinda love this dumb movie.

It's streaming free on various platforms, and I'm pretty sure all the copies are crappy VHS transfers. When are we getting a remastered Blu-ray release??

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 16: Starve Acre (2023)

Starve Acre is an intriguing bit of British folk horror that's also a bit of a downer, as it centers on the death of a child, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark star as a couple living on the moors in what appears to be the late 1960's or early 1970's. They have a young, asthmatic son who says he has been hearing the voice of someone named Jack Grey when he sleeps. After he's involved in a violent incident at a local fair, his parents take him to a psychiatrist who runs tests, and finds nothing unusual. Then tragedy strikes. 

Gradually the husband's work as an archeology professor begins to meld with scary folk tales from his past, and when a mysterious hare makes its way into their home, things get really weird.

I do have a soft spot for folky horror, and liked a lot of this. The hare is both cute and creepy (though I wish they'd made its eyes more realistic), and there are a few surprising developments near the end. But it's also a pretty slow burn, and I did find my mind wandering a few times. So, not a crowd pleaser, but definitely interesting.

Starve Acre is streaming on Shudder. 

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 15: Night School (1980)

I think the only reason I thought Night School might be worth a watch is because it was the film debut of Rachel Ward, an actress I always liked back in the 1980's, primarily in the miniseries The Thorn Birds, but also in the movies Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and Against All Odds. And for a first film, she does give a pretty good performance, even if the movie isn't that great. And gosh, just look at her. Is she pretty or what?

Night School is basically a slasher film, though it could be argued it's actually a giallo, especially since one of the film's other stars is Leonard Mann, who appeared in a few Italian giallos (and spaghetti westerns). He plays the detective on the hunt for a black leather-clad, motorcycle-helmeted killer who decapitates victims and then submerges their heads in water, to be discovered later. When it turns out two of the victims were students of the same anthropology professor at a local all girls college, suspicion falls on him. His being a serial philanderer doesn't help his case with the police, or the latest research assistant he's having an affair with (played by Ward).

Having the detective be the center of the story also makes it sound like a giallo, and some of the kills - or at least, discovery of those kills, especially a morbidly hilarious discovery in a restaurant - are lurid. But a sex scene involving red paint in a shower (!) is the most colorful thing in the movie, and the ultimate whodunit reveal is not nearly convoluted enough by giallo standards. So it probably falls more accurately into the realm of mediocre 80's slashers.

Night School is available to rent online, but I watched it on a Blu-ray from my local library. 

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 14: Mother of Flies (2025)

The latest movie by the Adams family of filmmakers came out earlier this year, but I decided to put off watching it until this countdown because it's been a bit of a tradition to try and include their films each year. (You can see past entries here, here, here, and here.)

Mother of Flies is a bit more of a return to the stories and style of movie they started out making, after last year's period piece Where the Devil Roams, and 2024's bigger budgeted and effects heavy Hell Hole. And I think they really do their best work when they're working on these simpler tales, closer to home, as I like this one a lot more than those last two.

The story, about a teenage girl with terminal cancer (Zelda Adams), who decides to see a witch (Toby Poser), as a last ditch effort at healing, and her skeptical father (John Adams), who does his best to support this plan, also hits close to home, as both Toby Poser and John Adams have dealt with their own cancer diagnoses in the past, and Zelda is dealing with the genetic implications of that.

And while I am not sure I entirely understand how the story ultimately plays out (the ending is a tad confusing), I really thought the cinematography was beautifully shot, and could feel the more personal aspects of the story play out in the dialogue and performances. 

I don't always love the movies the Adams family makes, but I will always absolutely love that they continue to make them. 

Mother of Flies is streaming on Shudder. 

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.