Lionsgate Home Entertainment released Prey on DVD on 30 January 2007. It premiered a couple of months earlier at the American Film Market. Otherwise, it had no theatrical release in the US.

People hate this film! But it isn’t for the usual nonsense reasons. Overall, critics found it pat. It tells the story of a family visiting South Africa. Dad has to work so the rest of the family go on a wildlife tour and things go horribly wrong. It’s kind of like Cujo.

I think the film is fine. But the critics are not wrong. The screenplay is shockingly generic. It could have been made in the 1930s without changing anything. But is this a problem?

I love when a script surprises me. The reveal at the end of The Power of the Dog blew me away. But this is rare. I learned one thing from my misspent youth. I guess plots very well. As a result, I don’t expect clever plots. And I’ve come to the conclusion that audiences don’t need them as much as they think they do in order to enjoy a film.

I wrote about this recently, Scanners and Great Movie Endings. There just aren’t many great plot ideas. We enjoy the journey, not the destination.

Each year, Hollywood releases roughly 500 films into US movie theaters. If you consider the world and all venues, the number jumps close to 10,000. And this is in an environment in which there are roughly half a million films ever made! We would all have more than enough filmed entertainment for the rest of our lives with no new films.

I’m not saying Prey is a great film. It isn’t even a particularly good film. I especially hate the angry daughter trope. But it tells a compelling story. It is engaging. Many people would enjoy it if critics didn’t tell them they wouldn’t.

Prey (2007) poster via Wikpedia under Fair Use.

Channel 4 first presented Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace on UK TV in 29 January 2004. They released it on the internet the day before to US viewers.

Garth Marenghi (Matthew Holness) is a highly successful horror writer of titles such as Juggers, Afterbirth, and, of course, the Slicer series. According to him, “I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who’s written more books than they’ve read.” He is very ignorant but he makes up for it by being even more arrogant. In the 1980s, Channel 4 paid for this TV series about a hospital where horrific things happen. But Channel 4 didn’t air it owing to how “dangerous” it was. Two decades later, TV was “suffering through the worst artistic drought in broadcast history.” So the channel came crawling back.

Garth stars in the show. He is joined by his publisher, Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade). He is loyal but even more of an idiot than Garth. The series also includes Todd Rivers (Matt Berry) and Madeleine Wool (Alice Lowe). Of course, those are the names of the actors. They have different names in the series.

It is a parody of 1980s horror TV. This includes the kind of ridiculous special effects we all love from shows like Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) and Chuck E Cheese in the Galaxy 5000 (1999). The show is very funny. But it would probably be more funny if it weren’t so true to its conceit. Holness and Ayoade co-wrote it with the latter directing all six episodes.

All the principals are of note for psychotronic fans:

• Matthew Holness: In general, he’s a comedian. But he wrote and directed the exceptional horror film Possum.
• Richard Ayoade: He’s hard to miss. As an actor, he was in The Watch and The IT Crowd. Darkplace was the first time he directed but he’s done it a lot since then.
• Matt Berry: He seems to be everywhere these days. He too was in The IT Crowd. And most recently, he was in What We Do in the Shadows.
• Alice Lowe: She probably works more than the others. And starting with the excellent Prevenge, she has been writing and directing.

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is great from top to bottom. Here are all the episodes via Archive:

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace front cover via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

Jack Hill turns 93 today. He was born on 28 January 1933.

He was an incredibly successful exploitation filmmaker from the late 1960s into the early 1980s. Also, he worked on the side as a screenwriter for films like City on Fire and Death Ship.

Today, he is probably best known for writing and directing Spider Baby: or, the Maddest Story Ever Told. But I don’t want to talk about it. It’s a favorite of mine. But I’ve watched it dozens of times. And I wrote an article about star Jill Banner, which is the most popular page on this site.

Hill directed almost a dozen films — most well worth watching. And as I think about it now, I should probably do a complete article on all of them, as I have for Bert I Gordon, Christopher R Mihm, and JR Bookwalter. It would be a good time! And since he hasn’t made any films since 1982, it would be complete.

One very interesting Jack Hill film is Blood Bath. It’s a pretty strange film that owes a lot to Mystery of the Wax Museum and A Bucket of Blood. But even stranger is the film’s production history. It all started with a Yugoslavian spy thriller, Portrait in Terror. Roger Corman hired Hill to use the footage to create a new, more commercial film. So Hill turned it into a horror film. Corman didn’t like it either. So he hired Stephanie Rothman to use Hill’s footage. Thus a film was born after only 3 years with as many directors!

In the early 1970s, he wrote and directed two blaxploitation films, Coffy and Foxy Brown. Pam Grier starred in both. Hill cast her in his previous two “women in cages” films. I think Coffy is the better of these. But you really can’t miss with any of Jack Hill’s films.

Image cropped from Jack Hill in 1968 by The Los Angeles Times via UCLA Archive under CC BY 4.0.

Sci Fi Channel first showed Blood Monkey on 27 January 2007.

Today is not a good day for psychotronic film. I planned to highlight Joe Bob Briggs. But I saw the trailer for Blood Monkey and it looked great. Frankly, I’d rather highlight films than people anyway. And we’ve had some great ones. This month we featured Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and Monster from Bikini Beach. So I made a bet.

An hour and a half later, I thought Joe Bob Briggs was looking mighty good! This film is beyond tedious. When most people say a film is bad, what they mean is that it is unprofessional. That’s not me, of course. As the two films listed above illustrate, I find much to delight me in low- and micro-budget features. This film is different.

It is very professional. F Murray Abraham leads a good cast. Overall, the production is fine. And the special effects work well enough. The problem is an absolutely awful screenplay, despite Gary Dauberman co-writing it. There’s lots of fake conflict but nothing more. If it had been directed better, it might have worked. After all, director Robert Young has done good things. And he seems to be trying very hard to make this work. But the shaky cam and overuse of close-ups only make things worse.

Finally, the monsters are hidden throughout the film. And when it shows up, it looks like King Kong. It is the most boring reveal I’ve ever seen on film.

There is one idea in the film that is genuinely clever. The characters are all in their tents for the night. It starts raining. Or so we think. But it stinks. The monkeys are peeing on the tents! The problem is this scene is rendered in such a casual way with only an establishing shot that it doesn’t work at all. As a viewer, I thought, “That’s… Wait… Is that?! Oh, the monkeys are peeing on them.” But what are you gonna do when you can’t show the monkeys until the end?!

Many filmmakers delight us with a bit of creativity and pocket change. But Blood Monkey is as creative as a corporate merger. Doubt me? I dare you to watch it!

Blood Monkey (2007) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

Rank Film Distributors released Kiss of the Vampire in the UK on 26 January 1964. Strangely, Universal Pictures released it earlier in the US. But I’m going with the UK release since it is a UK production.

The film has an interesting history. Hammer wanted it to be the third in its Dracula series. So that makes sense. The Brides of Dracula was the second film. And it is notable as the only film in the series that does not include Dracula. But that wasn’t a problem. I still consider it the second best of the nine-film series.

Kiss of the Vampire is excellent. I would rank it as highly as Brides. Both films show that you don’t need Dracula. Indeed, I find the character annoying. All you need is some rich bloodsucker and you are fine. Dracula comes with so much baggage. It limits what you can do. At the same time, the character just isn’t that interesting.

The plot is pretty well-known at this point. A young couple runs out of fuel in a remote area. They stay with a nobleman who is a vampire. The vampires abduct the woman. And the man fights to get her back. Gérard Brach stole the basic idea for Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers. I like Kiss a lot more — to a large extent because it doesn’t try to be funny.

On its release, the film got pretty much universal praise. Even stodgy film critic Leslie Halliwell wrote, “[It is] handled in lively fashion, with a splendid climax in which assorted white-robed vampires are destroyed by bats.” And psychotronic lover Michael Weldon wrote, “A superior vampire thriller set in Bavaria of 1910… [I]t’s one of the best…”

I highly recommend Kiss of the Vampire. And this is an excellent print. So enjoy!

Kiss of the Vampire (1963) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.

Tobe Hooper was born on 25 January 1943.

Hooper is one of the Big Five horror directors, along with Wes Craven, George Romero, John Carpenter, and David Cronenberg. (Yes! It is all North America. Sometimes people substitute Dario Argento for Cronenberg.)

I love Tobe Hooper. He is the American Lucio Fulci. And that’s not entirely good. Hooper’s highs were very high. But his lows are pretty bad. For example, Night Terrors is an incomprehensible mess. But I think Hooper was just trying to make a living. He did manage to work almost exclusively in horror and science fiction. But that could be because no one imagined he could do anything else.

Regardless, I don’t like the way most people see his career. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre colored everything he did. It is a great film. See my discussion of the meathook scene. But the film is more a miracle of production than direction. And I am so tired of it — especially given his many other great films!

Hooper worked a lot in TV. He made notable TV movies like Salem’s Lot and Body Bags. But mostly, he directed TV episodes. And I’ll admit, I’ve never seen any of those. Maybe someday, I will write a thorough analysis of his work.

My favorite Tobe Hooper films are The Funhouse, Lifeforce, and Spontaneous Combustion. Critics didn’t much like any of them. But by the last of them, most critics didn’t even bother reviewing his films. That’s what critics are for: adding to the advertising budgets of already well-advertised films!

But since even Tobe Hooper fans tend to dismiss Spontaneous Combustion, let’s watch it! It is a trashy film. But that’s what it’s supposed to be. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Also, it is so demented from start to finish that I never get bored with it!

Image cropped from Tobe Hooper by Lionel Allorge licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Ernest Borgnine was born on 24 January 1917.

The man won a Best Actor Academy Award for Marty. How can he be psychotronic?! Well, he worked a lot! He has 210 acting credits on IMDb — and one of those credits is 138 episodes of McHale’s Navy! He was in a number of psychotronic films.

Let me present one in particular: Willard. Borgnine plays the evil Al Martin. I cheer every time he dies! But Roger Ebert wrote something about this that I think is rather good. Ebert was a terrible film “critic.” But he was often an amusing writer:

“What is it in this film that touches some deep-buried nerve in the public psyche? Why does wholesome family entertainment fade away, while rats make millions? I’ve thought long and deeply on this subject, believe me, and I’ve reached a conclusion at last. People have waited a long time to see Ernest Borgnine eaten alive by rats, and now that they have their chance they aren’t going to blow it.”

This is, of course, a pretty standard catty comment by a film “critic.” I don’t think Ebert had a problem with Borgnine. It was just something funny to say. But it is clear that what Ebert wanted to see him in is not what I did. For example, I’m really not that fond of Marty. It’s fine. But it’s hard for me to understand what the big deal was.

Obviously, all psychotronic fans should watch Willard. But there are others. You have to see him as a Satanic cult leader in The Devil’s Rain. And he’s great as Dutch in The Wild Bunch. He plays a different religious leader in Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing. And, of course, he was the best thing in John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. He was also in a few international films including two Italian ones: Super Fuzz (1980) and Code Name: Wild Geese (1984).

I started this figuring I would highlight Willard. But I’m just not in the mood for watching Ernest Borgnine eaten by rats. So let’s watch The Wild Bunch instead!

Ernest Borgnine via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Rutger Hauer was born on 23 January 1944.

Hauer is one of those actors who I really like but don’t think much of. He’s a great professional actor. But he was an actor of limited breadth. I don’t think it matters too much. Especially for a leading man, there are more than enough roles.

I only recall one film where he gave a poor performance. That was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I don’t blame him. It seems he was brought in for a very short period of time. The editing shows there was not enough coverage. And the final fight scene is pathetic.

Most people know Hauer from Blade Runner. And he is especially great in an extremely demanding role. He manages to go from a psychopath torturing Deckard to an empath who saves him. It seems natural the way he plays it.

But I’m highlighting Hauer for different reasons. The man worked a lot! And he was in a lot of psychotronic films. A good example is Omega Doom. It is a post-apocalyptic Yojimbo (Or A Firstful of Dollars, if you prefer). Other psychotronic delights include The Blood of Heroes, Split Second, and Hobo with a Shotgun. Critics hated all these films (except Hobo, which they tolerated).

But I want to highlight a Rutger Hauer film that few have seen, Blind Fury. Critics also disliked it. He plays an American soldier in Vietnam who is blinded in a battle. The locals save him. They also teach him to be a samurai badass. He returns to the US and helps the son of an army buddy. It is a very fun film despite involving a kid.

Image cropped from Rutger Hauer and Monique van de Ven by Rob Mieremet / Anefo via Nationaal Archief 925-6530 under CC BY-SA 3.0 nl.

Bill Bixby was born on 22 January 1934. He died at the age of 59 from prostate cancer. But you’d never know it based on the amount of work he left.

Like many actors, Bixby started his career making industrial film. From there, he broke into TV. And he worked in TV almost exclusively, although there are a handful of notable exceptions.

We know him primarily from four TV series:

1. My Favorite Martian (1963-1966 — 107 episodes): A great example of the amazing being that the world cannot know about. Other examples are Mr Ed, Small Wonder, ALF, Harry and the Hendersons. Of course, Ray Walston gets all the best lines.
2. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1969-1972 — 73 episodes): This is a sweet comedy that I liked a lot as a child. Everyone loves the openings with father and son talking. I’m a total sucker for father-son stories!
3. The Magician (1973-1974 — 22 episodes): During the first half of the series, he lived in a converted (and working) jet airplane. The hour-long mysteries aren’t bad. Bixby gets to do a little magic now and then.
4. The Incredible Hulk (1977-1982 — 82 episodes): This is a surprisingly compelling story. It’s basically the same as Kung Fu: a peaceful man on a mission who has to go badass two times per episode. “The Lonely Man” theme song is perfect for it. It’s a more serious show than you’d think.

And, of course, he starred in three Hulk films from 1988 through 1990.

One thing I only just learned is that Bill Bixby was a very successful TV director. I could make a case that I might highlight him here simply as a director and producer. It wouldn’t be terribly strong. He did direct a lot of psychotronic TV. But it is mostly piecemeal. Still, he did far more as a director than I would normally think possible given his productivity as an actor.

There is so much we could watch to celebrate Bill Bixby’s birthday. Most of it can easly be found online. But let’s watch the pilot for The Incredible Hulk.

Bill Bixby vis Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.

Oren Peli was born on 21 January 1970 in Israel. He moved to the United States in his teens.

Everyone knows Peli for Paranormal Activity. He wrote, directed, and co-produced the film. But since then, he has been a successful producer. He co-produced Insidious and The Lords of Salem. He also co-created the short-lived but well-loved TV series The River.

On the negative side, Oren is also responsible for us having 7 Paranormal Activity and 6 Insidious films.

Until today, I had never seen Paranormal Activity. I had one experience with the film. I was on the bus. And this older gentleman was speaking animatedly to two young women. He explained that while The Blair Witch Project was obviously fake, Paranormal Activity was the real thing. I rolled my eyes and continued doing Sudoku.

That is the main appeal of these films. Some faction of the audience believe it is real and want to talk about it. And much of the rest find it amusing to argue about.

Let me set the record straight. The film ends with, “Micah’s body was discovered…” And then we get, “The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious.”

But there is no doubt that this film feels real. And this is part of the power of found footage films. It is also a big part of their problems. Much of the film is tedious — the way real life usually is.

But for all this, the film is remarkably effective — even going in two decades later. And the last 15 minutes are fabulous. In this film and others, Oren Peli shows himself to be an unassuming expert at creating supernatural horror. That doesn’t mean you should watch everything he’s done. As I’ve noted, neither Salem nor Insidious are worth seeking out.

But I think all psychotronic fans should watch Paranormal Activity. It’s an effective film and it shows what filmmakers can do with almost no resources.

Paranormal Activity (2007) poster via Wikipedia under Fair Use.