Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 10: You Won't Be Alone (2022)

You Won't Be Alone is like a Terrence Malick movie meets the 2015 film The VVwitch, which is to say, it's probably not for everyone. But I was really entranced by its meditative approach to folky horror.

Set in 19th century Macedonia (director Goran Stolevski is Macedonian and Australian), the film follows a young woman who was cursed as a baby to live her adult life with the old "Wolf-Eateress," a witch who haunts the countryside and can shape-shift into animals or other people. The young girl is forced to learn how to survive on her own, and eventually takes on the identities of different villagers, ultimately learning what being human means. (In short, it means a lot of pain and heartbreak, especially if you are a woman.)

The majority of the dialogue in the movie comes in the form of voiceover from the young witch as she learns about the world. That, and the camera's lovingly lingering on the natural world, is what gives it that Malick feel. But don't go into it thinking there aren't some horrible moments, because there are (just how the witches are able to shapeshift is nothing short of disgusting). But at its heart I think You Won't Be Alone is a really interesting metaphorical take on gender roles and gender identity.

I watched You Won't Be Alone on Peacock.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown- Day 9: Eaten Alive (1976)

Eaten Alive was Tobe Hooper's follow-up to 1974's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so I figured, as a horror fan, I should probably watch it. 

I was wrong.

I know there are some people who can't really deal with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre because it's too grimy, and cheap, and...unpleasant. Eaten Alive has helped me understand where they're coming from, because it is all of those things, but the one thing it does not have in common with Chainsaw is....it's not very good.

Chainsaw is definitely not a pleasant viewing experience, but it's so well-crafted, with a truly intriguing villain and a heroine you want to see through to the end if only because her survival seems so unlikely after all she goes through. But Eaten Alive really has none of that.

Set in the Louisiana bayou, though clearly filmed entirely on a sound stage, the basic set-up is a crazy hotel proprietor (Neville Brand) keeps a crocodile in the swamp behind his hotel, feeding it animals and guests, depending on his mood, which is usually batshit crazy.

Truth be told, I had to turn the movie off about 15 minutes into it after the third shot of a clearly dying monkey in a cage, and I kind of wish I'd never come back to it because what follows is the chomping of a puppy, which traumatizes the puppy's owner, a little girl wearing a polio brace. She basically spends half the movie trying to get away from both the crocodile and the crazy. And when I mean crazy, I don't just mean hotel owner Judd. Turns out her father is also a certifiable loon, and her mother (played by Chainsaw's sole survivor, Marilyn Burns) isn't much better.

Also, why in the world are Mel Ferrer and Carolyn Jones in this? And why does Jones look like she's wearing one of Leatherface's leftover masks in all of her scenes? Why does Marilyn Burns wear a wig for the first ten minutes of her screen time? Why do people even agree to stay at the Starlight Hotel the second they meet the owner and he starts talking about his pet crocodile? And where is that insane red light that permeates every scene coming from?

It's kind of astounding Tobe Hooper was able to come out of the gate with something as good as Texas Chainsaw because I really doubt Eaten Alive would have ever gotten him a second picture deal.

I watched Eaten Alive on Shudder.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 8: No One Will Save You (2023)

No One Will Save You starts like a movie tailor-made for me. A young woman in a vintage chenille robe chooses which 1940's day dress to wear for her day of sewing mid-century dresses in her remote home filled with miniatures. Is this a period piece? What's up with this chick and can I be her friend?

Pretty soon it becomes clear that this young woman lives in the now, but her existence is a lonely and sheltered one. Her neighbors turn away from her with seeming disgust when they see her, and she actively avoids interactions with people in town. Something obviously happened in her past, and that means when the aliens arrive, she's got to deal with them on her own.

Yes, this is an alien invasion movie, but it's an unusual one. The world may be under attack, but the story feels intimate and small. There are only two lines of dialogue in the entire film, but thankfully Kaitlyn Dever is the star, and she is more than up to that challenge. It also has one of the more unique endings to any alien invasion story I've ever seen. (It would make an excellent double feature with Nope.) I was pleasantly surprised by this one!

No One Will Save You is currently streaming on Hulu.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 7: Alone In the Dark (1982)

The 1982 slasher flick Alone In the Dark didn't hit my radar until recently, and I can kind of understand why. The year 1982 was a huge year for a lot of movies (it was such a pivotal year for me as a movie fan that I started a whole blog centered on rewatching every movie I had watched in 1982), but it was not really a huge year for slasher movies. Science fiction and supernatural flicks were the bigger hits that year, with Friday the 13th Part III and Slumber Party Massacre really the only slasher movies that made any lasting mark.

Alone In the Dark's biggest selling point is its cast, which is filled with some genre movie legends including Donald Pleasence as, once again, a psychiatrist who may be as loony as his patients. Those patients are played by Martin Landau, Jack Palance, and Erland Van Lidth (who is probably best known for playing the gang leader Terror in The Wanderers).

While the movie follows your basic slasher/home invasion horror plotline, it has some good twists, and an appearance by a punk rock band called the Sic F*cks. So really, what more could you want?

I watched Alone In the Dark on Blu-Ray as it is not currently available to rent or stream online.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 6: I Trapped the Devil (2019)

I decided to watch I Trapped the Devil because some of its actors (A.J. Bowen and Jocelin Donahue) have been in indie horror movies I've loved, including You're Next and House of the Devil. But this one was just too much of a slow burn and I fell asleep probably three times as I was watching it. So, even though it's under 90 minutes long, it took me over two hours to finish it.

A man and his wife decide to drop in on his brother during the holidays. The brother is none too happy to see them, but reluctantly lets them stay. Slowly it is revealed that the brother has a man locked up in his basement, and he's convinced he's captured the devil himself.

I will give the movie this: It uses its Christmastime setting effectively, with colored lights casting an eerie glow on the proceedings. It got me wondering if I may have liked this a bit more had I watched it later in the year.

Of note: Fans of the TV show This Is Us will probably recognize the voice of the man in the basement. And if the plot sounds familiar it's because it's basically the same plot as a season two episode of The Twilight Zone called "The Howling Man."

I watched I Trapped the Devil on Tubi.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 5: I Saw What You Did (1965)

William Castle's I Saw What You Did didn't have one of his more famous gimmicks when it was released, aside from a few theaters that installed seatbelts to prevent people from getting scared out of their seats. Good thing they didn't invest a lot in that gimmick as there's nothing remotely scary in this movie. But I found it fun and kind of charming nonetheless!

Two teenage girls spend their evening making crank calls, usually saying ominously, "I saw what you did, and I know who you are." One of those calls ends up being to a man (John Ireland) who has just murdered his wife. CRANK CALLS ARE DANGEROUS! 

This was Joan Crawford's second film with William Castle (Strait-Jacket came out the year before), and let me tell you, I was mighty confused by her character's introduction in the film. At first I thought she was the murderer's mother, but then they end up making out. Yikes! No, she's just a neighbor who's in love with him, and she has maybe five minutes of total screen time in the whole thing. 

Strait-Jacket is probably the better Crawford and Castle collaboration, but I Saw What You Did is more fun. It reminded me a little bit of Halloween (there are some moments in Halloween that seem to be directly inspired by I Saw), and, with its two teenage leads, a little bit of The World of Henry Orient, one of my all-time fave movies. Just imagine that one, but with Henry Orient turning out to be a murderous psycho.

I watched I Saw What You Did on Scream Factory's 2016 Blu-ray release, which is a great print. Here's a tip: if you're looking for movies that aren't currently streaming anywhere (which this one is not) try your local library. I've found San Francisco's library system to be chock full of DVDs and Blu-rays, and it has definitely come in handy this month!

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 4: The Resident (2011)

I stumbled upon The Resident when I was looking up Hammer horror movies, and it was a title I'd never heard of. When I saw the director's name was Antti Jokinen, I knew, good or bad, I had to check it out.

And, alas, it is bad. Hilary Swank stars as an ER doctor looking for a new place to live (the dual meaning of the "resident" in the title may be the only clever thing about this movie). She finds a huge Brookyln apartment at the amazing price of $3,800 (!!) a month, and even though it all seems too good to be true, she moves in, instantly starts flirting with the building's owner, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, then almost as instantly regrets that decision. On the one hand: good decision, because he's a total psycho. On the other hand, bad decision, because he's a total psycho.

What follows is a pretty standard stalker story, with some seriously cringe-inducing and gross moments. It's a shame it ended up being Christopher Lee's last association with Hammer studios, though his role as the psycho's (possibly just as psycho) grandfather is only slightly above cameo level. 

By the time she made this movie, Hilary Swank had won two Oscars. It always astounds me how often winning Academy Awards doesn't seem to preclude actors from choosing to star in really terrible films as their careers go on...

I watched The Resident on Prime Video.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 3: Beyond the Door (1974)

As I've mentioned previously, I will watch almost any movie set in San Francisco, no matter how bad, and Beyond the Door is bad. But for almost all of its running time, it's the good kind of bad.

The plot is basically Rosemary's Baby meets The Exorcist, and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than that, right down to the weird fact that one of the kids in the movie is always drinking Campbell's pea soup straight out of the can with a straw. (He also has a poster of the can on his wall.)

Juliet Mills stars as the mother of two who finds herself pregnant with a fetus that's growing unusually fast. Also unusual? Her spinning head and green vomit, though I guess none of that would be too unusual to anyone who had seen The Exorcist a year earlier.

While the movie is categorically bad, there are some good moments. One really good scene starts out with her two kids talking about whether or not toys come alive when you aren't looking, basically predicting the plot of Toy Story, and it then turns into a really creepy moment that's totally out of Poltergeist, which wouldn't come out for another eight years.

There's also an insane scene where the husband is walking down the streets of Berkeley while being harassed by a group of street musicians, one of whom is playing a flute with his nose. This scene goes on for a long...long time.

Since it was an Italian production, all of the dialogue was dubbed in post. Star Juliet Mills handles that ask pretty well, but everyone else...does not. Particularly nutty is the pre-teen daughter's voice, which sounds like it's coming from a foul-mouthed college student.

As for the aforementioned San Francisco setting, this is one of the rare movies that is set in the City and was actually filmed in the City; lots of good footage of the Embarcadero, Ghirardelli Square, and the Cannery.

Oh, also? I don't know just what door the title is talking about, so couldn't begin to tell you what's beyond it.

I watched Beyond the Door on Shudder, and it is also streaming on YouTube.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 2: Slotherhouse (2023)

The minute I saw the poster for Slotherhouse in a movie theater lobby, I knew I had to see it, even if it could never live up to that poster and title. And indeed, the movie really doesn't, but I'd still say it's worth seeing for the moments of complete insanity it does manage to work into an otherwise standard horror movie plot.

Most of the movie takes place in a sorority house, where two girls are running for sorority president. Emily adopts (well, steals) a three-toed sloth thinking the cute creature will up her votes. But turns out the sloth has a bit of a murderous streak since she was so cruelly stolen from her jungle home by a poacher, and Emily soon finds herself on Alpha the sloth's hit list.

This movie is ridiculous, with the sloth (no CGI here; she's clearly a puppet, which is definitely the movie's biggest selling point) quickly learning how to Google, take selfies, and drive a car. But somehow it's not quite ridiculous enough. And the fact that her murderous rampage seems to go unnoticed for weeks just seems like lazy screenwriting. 

Still, this is a movie about a killer sloth played by a puppet! Perhaps I was being naive to expect something at the level of Gremlins. And maybe if we get a Slotherhouse Part II, it'll make it there.

I watched Slotherhouse via an online screener prior to its release, but it is now available to rent via most VOD platforms.

Musty TV's Maniacal Movie Countdown - Day 1: Killer's Delight (1978)

I'll watch almost any movie that is even partially filmed in San Francisco, with a particular fondness for those shot in the seventies. Killer's Delight (also released as The Sport Killer and The Dark Ride) checks both those boxes, at least for a little while.

The story is basically a fictionalized telling of the Ted Bundy murders, and its opening includes some good aerial shots of the City, as well as a body dumping in view of the Golden Gate Bridge. There are also some good scenes of North Beach, but the majority of the movie was shot in Los Angeles.

It feels a lot like a made for TV movie, but was actually a theatrical release and was rated R. The two leads look like B-movie versions of Al Pacino and John Saxon (although I guess John Saxon is already the B-movie version of John Saxon!) and a lot of the movie's dialogue was dubbed in post.

It's weird that I had never even heard of this film until it popped up on an Instagram account I follow called BayAreaMovies, and there's not a lot about it online. Weirdest of all, it's not listed in either of the Psychotronic books by Michael Weldon, which I always have handy during the month of October. It's not a great film by any means, but it's still kind of fun finding these hidden...non-gems every now and then.

I watched Killer's Delight on Tubi, which has a great print (if you aren't annoyed by commercials). It's also streaming on YouTube.