I just got back from New Orleans and boy is my liver tired! Hence, this brief reminder that today is Horror Stars day on TCM, and today's star is Christopher Lee. Here's the line-up:
Today's offering is J.D.'s Revenge, airing late tonight at 12:30AM on Comet. It's a blaxploitation/horror movie about a college student who is possessed by the spirit of a 1930s gangster. Glynn Turman and Louis Gossett star.
Interestingly, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (my bible) claims Prince sings a song in it, but that's a mistake. Someone named Robert Prince does the soundtrack, and he sure as hell ain't Prince Rogers Nelson.
That said, trailer makes it look like a hoot and a holler.
Keep walking backwards slowly and you'll outpace him soon enough.
Sundays in October on TCM are devoted to the mummy, perhaps the most boring of all the classic monsters.
OK, that's not entirely fare. Mummy movies have their archeological charms. I just tend to find slow-moving, silent, bandage-covered monsters a tad on the tame side.
Here's today's line-up. All times PST
5:00 PM - The Mummy's Hand (1940)
6:30 PM - The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
7:45 PM - The Mummy's Curse (1944)
There aren't a lot of remakes that are better, or at least just as good as the originals, but I think John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing and the 1951 Howard Hawks produced The Thing From Another World are the rare exception to this rule. They're both terrific. (I'm going to pretend the dumb 2011 remake, that was also somehow a prequel, doesn't exist.)
You can watch the 1951 version at 1:15PM, PST on TCM.
Yesterday I brought up the topic of movies we return to every Halloween or so, and Night of the Living Dead is definitely one of them. I've called it the It's a Wonderful Life of horror movies before, and I stand by that assessment! It's also a movie that, because of its casting, and its resolution, has a lot of metaphoric power these days.
It's on Movies! tonight at 5PM, PST. Or you can just watch a nice HD version of it right here, right now!
What are the horror movies you turn to every Halloween?
I've got a pretty solid list, and while I don't watch all of them every single year, I definitely enjoy revisiting them every couple of Halloweens.
This week I've got a hankering for a You're Nextre-watch, mainly because I love how insanely kick-ass its heroine is. It's been a tough week for women, so watching one who is more than capable of defending herself--like, overly capable--gives me all the needed feels right now. I want a sequel!
It's available to stream via most services, including YouTube, for a fee.
All of the above feature amazing performances from Chaney, but I'm going to single out The Unknown as the one to watch just because its bizarro plot about a circus performer (Joan Crawford) who hates to be touched by men falling in love with an armless knife thrower (Lon Chaney) is ripe for a remake just about now...
When you pick up the phone to call someone and they're sitting right next you.
I saw a lot of horror movies in the 1980s, especially during the year 1982, which brought us Poltergeist, Cat People, The Thing, Halloween III, and Creepshow, to name a few faves.
But one I didn't see, and hadn't heard of until now, is The House Where Evil Dwells, which is airing very late tonight on Comet at 2AM PST.
Granted, from the trailer it looks kind of terrible, but the premise, about an American family who moves to Japan and are haunted by the ghosts of a samurai murder, almost sounds ahead of its time.
Let's start out this countdown with some grand dames, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in the original "psycho biddy" horror movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? which is airing on the Movies! channel at 5PM, PST.
If you can, be sure to pair a viewing of Baby Jane with a marathon of last year's F/X miniseries Feud, a somewhat fictionalized account of the making of the movie, and the life of its feuding stars. If the show did nothing else, it at least introduced me to the film's theme song, as "sung" by star Bette Davis, and a television performance that's recreated in the series itself. (For the record, the real Bette's dress is much nicer.)
