Hell of the Living Dead (1980) A Nostalgic Mess

Hell of the Living Dead.

Night of The Zombies.

Virus.

Zombie Inferno.

Zombi 4.

These are just some of the titles this wild mess has gone under, like a sneaky con-man sliding from alias to alias.  I can almost envision this movie sitting in a dark corner, cackling over its latest grift, looking all disheveled and wild-eyed.  It not only lifted things like incidental music - which I'll get to later - and documentary footage, but it may also steal your soul.

And yet there's an odd, nostalgic feeling to this strange movie.  As funny-awful as this movie is, there is a sense of carefree abandon about the experience.  At the time, it was certainly the goriest picture I had ever seen in my then-sixteen years.  My summers in the 80's were usually pretty fun and free-wheeling, what with no Internet and massive video games to keep me inside all the time.  Time spent indoors was either with reading, watching baseball, or watching movies I rented or borrowed.  I can remember friends of mine lending Hell of the Living Dead to me in 1984, recorded on VHS off of a movie channel which I couldn't get living in the woods.  I recall thinking to myself that I was ever quizzed on what the plot was, I'd be stumped.  But one could get extra credit in the "gratuitous cheesy gore" section of the test.

Ah, enough metaphors.

You want to know a clue that this movie is up to something?  It's co-written and co-directed by Claudio Fragasso.  You may remember him from my reviews of Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie as the director and co-writer of that vegetarian goblin cult classic.  When you see Troll 2 and you listen to his rants in Best Worst Movie, then things fall into place about Hell of the Living Dead.  It all makes sense.  Well, sort of.

Rrrrgh - I want my ICE CREAM!

Hell of the Living Dead seemed doomed from the start.  Like now, zombies were a hot commodity back in the 70's, with George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (released as Zombi in Italy under Dario Argento) and Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 splattering screens in the latter part of that decade.  Italy became a breeding ground for quick, inexpensive zombie flicks, and Hell of the Living Dead was barely given a budget.  Not to mention, much of the footage shot by director Bruno Mattei (credited as Vincent Dawn) was apparently not up to snuff, so they pieced together a mish-mash of already-shot footage and clips from a documentary about native rituals.  Then there's the issue with the music.  When you pop in Hell of the Living Dead, you may see that the soundtrack is by none other than Goblin, the same group that provided the now-legendary score to the original Dawn of the Dead.  After a few minutes, you'll soon realize that not only is Goblin doing the music...it's the exact same soundtrack as Dawn of the Dead.  They didn't even bother to get new music.  Hell, Goblin apparently didn't even allow it, but hey, what's a little legal trouble to a juggernaut like this movie?

Despite what I said before, there is a plot.  An accident at a chemical plant in New Guinea lets loose a contagion that causes living things to become sadistic, flesh-eating automatons.  It also causes their faces to take on a weird shade, but that's neither here nor there.  After foiling a terrorist takeover of an embassy, a crack military unit is sent to New Guinea to find out why communications with the chemical plant have been lost.  The unit is comprised of stock characters:  the hunky hero guy, the almost-hunky guy, the crazy guy, and the goofy guy.  They meet up in a seemingly-abandoned settlement with some people trying to escape the land:  the half-tough/half-screamy woman reporter, her half-brave/half-nauseous cameraman, and a family of three with a sick child.  The settlement is a wash, as the family is slaughtered by an infected priest and their now-bitey child.  The other six take off further into the jungle, offering the reporter an excuse to suddenly remove her shirt and claim she can communicate with the indigenous people.  The dead rise at the village, so the crew must bug out again, finally stopping at a plantation in the middle of nowhere.

Why, oh, why did I wander near a window?

The plantation offers very little in the way of answers, but a whole lot in the way of infected, gore-hungry former residents.  The team's Goofy Guy is killed - wearing a dress, no less - and the team fights their way out, finally heading for the chemical plant.  Once there, they discover that the chemical was meant to be used as Third World population control, but it got out of hand.  Cameraman, Almost-Hunky Guy, and Crazy Guy are all killed before Reporter Girl and Hunky Guy meet their grisly fate in the bowels of the plant.  The epilogue shows a young couple on the toothy end of some zombies in a metropolitan city.  Dun-dun-DUUUN!

Wow, what a journey.

The expression that says, "Dude, I told you."

Let's see:  the acting is fairly average to over-the-top, thanks to the Crazy Guy.  The dubbing is tremendously awful, and the movie is such a scattershot affair that your brain will stop trying to figure it out after about ten minutes.  Possibly sooner than that.  There are plenty of chuckles and winces whenever you see the gore, and there is a lot of it.  Lacking the gritty realism of Tom Savini's special effects work, it appears as though they effects team had a ton of raw meat and, by the power of Greyskull, they were going to use it.  The ending gore is so blatantly insane, it's laughable yet memorable.  Tongue!  Eyes!  Everything!

I also love the lack of basic reasoning that takes place in the film.  Once the team figures out that to stop the creatures, they must be shot in the head, they continue to waste ammo by spraying them in every area below the head.  "They just won't stop!"

Hell of the Living Dead is just not a good movie.  And yet, somehow I've seen it four or five times.  It's like I forget how painful it is, rent it, and say to myself, "oh, yeah, now I remember."  A cult film?  One could argue that it is.  There are plenty of people who do like it.  I'm nostalgic about how I first saw it - that lazy, sunny summer day back in '84 - but beyond that, I don't think I could ever own it, ever see it being the beloved center of attention like Troll 2.

If you don't mind a meandering film with plot holes the size of Florida sinkholes that's worthy of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 or RiffTrax treatment, this is your film.  Don't take it seriously, and you may be able to have some fun with it.  It will never go down as a serious classic of the genre, yet it somehow gets noticed.  In a roundabout way, it did that one thing - getting noticed - right.

Until next time, dear readers, beware of chemical leaks. They might cause bad movies.

Inferno (1980) Don't Touch That Book

Watching a good Dario Argento horror movie is like a big colorful funhouse. Some of the images thrown at you are ridiculous and scary at the same time in a way that is entirely unique and never boring. A lot of people hold Argento in high regard, and it's no surprise he's one of the fathers of modern suspense and horror - well, the good parts of it, anyway.

Starting with 1977's Suspiria, Argento set out to tell the story of The Three Mothers, three immensely powerful witches hidden throughout the world, manipulating reality. He would begin with the aforementioned Suspiria and finish it with 2007's Mother of Tears. Bridging the gap would be 1980's Inferno. Where Suspiria introduced the Mother of Sighs, Inferno brought us the Mother of Darkness and despite all the darkness in the film - nearly the entire film takes place at night - there are rich palettes of color throughout, something I always find to be a treat in Argento's films.

Photobomb!

The story finds an old book, The Three Mothers, falling into the hands of Rose, who thinks she may be living in one of the witches' houses as described in the book by an architect named Varelli. Rose sends a letter about it to her brother, Mark, then descends into the basement to investigate. She finds a hidden underwater room containing a portrait titled "Mater Tenebrarum" (Mother of Darkness) and is startled by the surprise howdy-do by a rotting corpse. She escapes, but already, the eyes of evil are upon her - somebody's watching the girl. In Rome, Mark reads the letter from his sister, then is distracted by a smokin' fellow student holding a cat and practicing a silent charm like Snape in the first Harry Potter movie:

Hubba-hubba. Wait...did you just curse me?

The woman - who is quite possibly the third Mother, the Mother of Tears - disappears and Mark wanders off to search for her, leaving the letter behind. Inquisitive friend Sara reads the letter and stops off at a local library to further her research of The Three Mothers. She gets lost in the bizarre basement of the library before escaping back to her apartment, where she asks a fellow tenant to stick around and keep her company. He's thinking, "Sweet. Score!" until right about the time he gets a knife through his neck. Sara doesn't get too far before she's murdered as well.

Mark starts putting pieces together and attempts to get a hold of his sister, but neither he nor Rose can hear each other on the phone. Rose is then pursued by some mysterious figures and gets repeated shots of a glass panel against the throat for her troubles. Seriously, that book...just steer clear of it.

Mark arrives and finds that Rose has disappeared. In the meantime, he meets several of Rose's neighbors, including elderly Professor Arnold and his nurse, the Countess Elise, and the book store owner who sold Rose the book in the first place, the detestable Kazanian (the guy likes to drown cats, so yeah, detestable). Mark gets all fainty when he finds some blood spots and is set upon by a shrouded figure, which turns its attention to Elise, who is watching from a window. Elise runs, but is attacked by SUDDEN CATS* before she's stabbed.

The nurse and the building's caretaker take care of Mark until he decides he's with-it enough to ask Kazanian some questions. The book proprietor remains tight-lipped about Rose and Mark gets nothing. Later that night, during one of his gleeful cat-drowning sessions, Kazanian is attacked by rats and a possessed hot dog vendor in the park. At this point, I began to wonder if the evil was truly evil for offing the sadistic Kazanian.

People continue to drop like flies as a butler is terminated, and the caretaker inadvertently causes a fire and falls to her death. Mark, much like Suzy in Suspiria, explores deep into the bowels of the building where he uncovers some shocking truths about the building and about the tenants he meets. I won't spoil it here, but it's safe to say he meets Mater Tenebrarum.

Like many of Argento's movies, Inferno is beautifully shot and framed with meticulous care. Angles and colors play important parts; the way the blues and the reds stand out, as well as how a hallway or a sidewalk scene is shot. I don't know if I'm the only one who feels this way, but I'm going to take a stab - no pun intended - in the dark here. Inferno has a "claustrophobia in open spaces" feeling to me. I don't really mean "agoraphobic," I mean it manages to create a weight even in scenes shot in large rooms or outside. This bizarre world crushes down on Mark, and in turn, us. There's no escape for anyone who's even remotely associated with The Three Mothers. I don't know...I just got that sense of every angle of every area as unforgiving or heavy. I liked it. Just goes hand-in-hand with how Argento conducts a movie.

So that's two of the three "Three Mothers" movies down, one to go in Mother of Tears. We'll get to that crazy bridge when we get to it. Until then, survivors, if you see that accursed book in your local antique book store, run like the wind, I tell you. Run. Wind.

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*It's actually a sudden swarm of angry cats, but SUDDEN CATS is more fun to say.

Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead (1980) Dunwich Seems Like A Happenin' Town

After watching The Beyond, I fell into a Lucio Fulci kind of mood, so I moved City Of The Living Dead up on the ol' Netflix queue. I expected gore, surreal imagery, and bleakness. Yes, yes, and yes. Fulci never disappoints in that. While I didn't enjoy it as much as The Beyond, it was still a trippy, blood-and-guts-filled ride. Fulci crafted dark, forboding horror films that were part David Lynch, part Herschell Gordon Lewis. The plots aren't hard to follow, no matter how non-linear he gets with them, but they are filled with images and events that cause me to say "What the what?" And sometimes, I like being a little puzzled.

City of the Living Dead was part of a loose trilogy of movies (along with The Beyond and The House By The Cemetery) that dealt with supernatural death and the gates of Hell being manifested on Earth. Where The Beyond featured the gate in one house, City of the Living Dead is just that: a city. Or town, really, as in the town of Dunwich.

Do NOT steal from his collection plate.

The prologue sets up by introducing the wonderfully creepy (if not slightly derivative) music of Fabio Frizzi. I'm really going to have to find some of his soundtracks - I absolutely enjoy the atmospheric, John Carpenter-meets-Goblin of his music. We're privy to a seance at the beginning, where a few psychics, including Mary (Catronia MacColl), have visions of a morose priest, Father Thomas (Fabrizio Jovine) methodically hanging himself. Mary goes into screaming fits and apparently dies of fright. At the graveyard, she suddenly awakens inside the coffin and engages in the appropriate response: blood-curdling screams and frantic pounding. Lucky for her, newspaper reporter Peter (Christopher George) hears her and uses a pick axe to open up the casket.

Once she's calmed down and recovered a little, Mary explains that something horrible is happening in a small town named Dunwich. The Night of the Dead is coming on All Saint's Day, and the gates of Hell that have been opened by the priest's suicide, and that will lead to the dead rising from their graves possessing demonic powers.

And some towns just have a fair.

Back in Dunwich, the townsfolk are noticing some strange things. Bob, the local ne'er-do-well who's mostly harmless, discovers the rotting corpse of an infant in an old house, just as he was about to deflower a random blow-up doll. I'm not joking. Three local yokels are spooked by a mysteriously shattering mirror at the town watering hole. While treating his patient Sandra (Janet Agren), psychiatrist Gerry (Carlo De Mejo) witnesses Sandra's pet cat go a little bonkers and scratch her out of fear of something. Yeah, there's a bit of a stink of evil in Dunwich. That happens when you're sitting on top of a gate of Hell.

Emily, Gerry's young girlfriend and assistant, heads out to meet Bob, who she sees as a lost soul in need of some help instead of the constant persecution he gets in Dunwich. When she finds him in a rundown garage, he's spooked by some weird noises and dashes off. Emily is attacked by the late Father Thomas, who shoves a handful of wormy, maggoty dirt in her face.

Oh, but Father Thomas isn't done yet. Making out in a car is fun. Making out in a car in a town that's burping up undead priests with superpowers is just asking for trouble. Father Thomas harasses two lovers in a car first by appearing to them as his hanged self - which is brilliantly spooky on its own - then by showing off his new ill-obtained telekinetic magic powers. While he stares at the girl, she begins bleeding from the eyes and then - in the most infamous scene of the movie - literally puking up her guts. Keep in mind, Fulci didn't care if you were offended, so he's not going to turn that camera away. It's easily one of the most disgusting scenes you might see, but if you rented his movie, then you know what to expect. Father Thomas apparently then has a pressing appointment elsewhere, so he just squeezes the brains out of the back of the hapless guy's head and bounces.

Emily's body is later found, apparently dead of fright. The townspeople are quick to blame poor Bob, who's really just been running scared from place to place. Meanwhile, Mary and Peter travel to Dunwich, hoping to stop the infestation of undead before Dunwich becomes...that's right, a city of the living dead. It's getting down to the wire, though, as more strange things happen: Bob sees an apparition of Father Thomas, an undead Emily appears in her little brother's window, bodies blink in and out of rooms, a mortician is bitten by the corpse of an old lady. Well, he was trying to steal her necklace, so that one was fair.

And poor Bob. He hides in a garage but is discovered by the daughter of the family there. As he tries to explain his fears, the father rushes in and brutally attacks Bob. The handy dad then starts up a drill press and - you guessed it - runs it through Bob's head in a fit of rage. It isn't quick and clean, I'll tell you that.

Finally, Mary and Peter arrive in Dunwich, and while searching for Father Thomas' grave, they meet Dr. Gerry and Sandra. After exchanging information, they settle for a good old-fashioned team-up to remedy the pesky undead problem. They even endure a blast of maggots through a window.

That problem is getting worse, though. Emily's little brother reveals his parents have been killed. There's been a slaughter at the local bar. Sandra has her brains squeezed out of the back of her head by a now-evil undead Emily. Wow, even in death, she didn't like anyone messing around with her man.

With the undead now roaming the streets, Peter, Mary, and Gerry find Father Thomas' tomb and discover a ladder leading into deep caverns. Things are getting hairy as it's noted that All Saint's Day has begun. Time may be running short, and evil isn't known for playing fair. Sandra returns to the party, but now she's evil, too. Instead of a friendly greeting, she plays Squeeze The Brain with Peter's head before getting impaled by a distraught Gerry.

Now the last line of defense, Gerry and Mary meet the elusive Father Thomas in his hellish hideaway. Father Thomas tries the Jedi Eye Bleed Gut Puking Trick on Mary, but Gerry's not taking any more of these shenanigans, and rams an old wooden cross through the priest's midsection. The advancing undead burst into flames as Gerry and Mary escape back to the surface.

Now, the ending's a little sketchy to me. They emerge from the tomb to see the little kid, John-John, running happily towards them from the protective arms of the police. As the kid runs closer, Gerry and Mary's smiles turn to grimaces of terror. Mary screams and...that's it. There is no indication as to what may have happened. It could be said that the horror wasn't over, but we were given more of an indication that it had. Maybe something grabbed the kid, but an establishing shot would've made all the difference there.

I enjoyed The Beyond more simply because of its wackiness, and it just seemed like a movie with ...if you'll excuse the term...more life. City of the Living Dead didn't have many characters I could really feel for - instead, I saw them as somewhat likable characters waltzing their way through ultra-creepy scenes of undead brain squeezing. Still, it was pretty fun. Any scene with Father Thomas is worth the price of admission. Creepy dude, especially when he's shown hanging from random places.

To balance out the gore, here's a picture of a sorry puppy.

Well, until next time, fellow shelter residents, be careful out there and be thankful the living dead we deal with don't have superpowers.

Yet.

Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1981) This Movie Just Hates Eyes

In honor of the city of New Orleans and their NFL championship team The Saints, I bring you this tale of gory wackiness from famed Italian director Lucio Fulci. Actually, it was just a coincidence since I had watched this the Saturday before the Super Bowl and would have reviewed it anyway.

You've got to love Lucio Fulci. The late director is still considered one of the forerunners of gory filmmaking and he never shied away from thrusting bloody images into your eye-space. Speaking of eyes, everyone, no matter how tough, is vulnerable in the organs through which we see. They're squishy, usually moist, and absolutely vital to the senses. A gore master is always going to go straight for the eyes, and Fulci doesn't disappoint in The Beyond. In fact, seriously, this movie hates eyes.

The movie's prologue starts in 1927 as a lynch mob closes in on Schweik, an artist accused of being a warlock. They smack him up with chains, crucify him against a wall with spikes, and douse him with limestone acid. A young lady elsewhere in the hotel reads from The Book of Eibon, then bursts into flame. Seems it might be possible this hotel was built on one of the seven gates of Hell. Forboding...you know things might not end well, and Fulci will make sure you know the hell out of that fact.

Jump ahead to 1981, and we're introduced to Liza, a young lady who has inherited the hotel, and Martin, her architect friend. It doesn't take long for strange things to start happening. One of the handymen sees a white-eyed figure through a window and falls off a scaffold. Joe the Plumber (no, not that one) arrives, meets creepy caretaker Martha, and sets about his work. Doesn't take long before something emerges from the wall, grabbing Joe by the face and squeezing his eyes out. I mean, literally squeezing his eyes out. Later, Martha finds the poor guy along with what turns out the be the corpse of Schweik.

Meanwhile, Liza meets an unusual woman named Emily, who seems to be the woman who burst into flames in the prologue. Emily sports mysterious cataracts in her eyes and depends on a sweet German shepherd to get around. She seems to know Liza and after taking her back to her New Orleans home, tells her to get out while she can.

Cut to the hospital and Dr. John McCabe, who treated the handyman earlier, is performing the autopsy on poor old Joe. After he and his excitable assistant Harris leave, a machine in the morgue picks up possible signs of life coming from Schweik's corpse. Right about this time, Joe's wife and daughter, Jill, show up to see Joe's body. Mrs. the Plumber goes inside, leaving skittish Jill in the hallway. While tending to her husband's body, Mrs. Joe is spooked by something off-screen and somehow ends up under a gentle drip of powerful acid, which eats away her face in unwavering, bloody detail. It's like Fulci grabbed the back of our collective heads and said, "look at it, damn you, look at it! her head is melting!" Jill investigates but is reasonably freaked out by the sight of not only her dead mutilated father, but her dead acid-soaked mother and the advancing puddle of blood and goo. She tries to get away, only to run into a room full of dead bodies. Well, it is a morgue, after all.

When the funeral for Joe and Mrs. Joe occurs a few scenes later, we are privy to the fact that Jill now has those milky eyes. Eyes! See?

Emily tries to tell the story of Schweik to Liza, but the self-professed city girl doesn't buy it. Emily runs out after finding out that touching a Schweik painting causes hand bleeding. Despite the warnings, Liza goes to room 36 anyway just to see if Emily was telling the truth. Liza finds her opinion shifting when she not only finds the Book of Eidon, but sees a vision of the crucified artist hanging on the wall. She runs out into the arms of our rugged Dr. John, who helps her investigate. Sure, the spikes are still in the wall, but no body. Oh, and the book is gone.

Later, in New Orleans, Liza and Martin walk the streets, discussing how to renovate the hotel. Liza spies the Book of Eidon in an antique book store and rushes in to snag it, only to find it's somehow changed in those few seconds into another book. According to the creepy, giggling store owner, it was always the book she picked up and not what she thought.

Meanwhile, Martin arrives at City Hall to inspect the records of the hotel. He uncovers the secret of the hotel, but a lightning flash startles him off the ladder and he crashes to the floor. Now, I know some of you get the heebie-jeebies from certain things, and Fulci introduces one common cause right here: an army of tarantulas. They converge on Martin...well, more like on his face...biting everywhere, even that little bit of skin that separates the nostrils. Face-eating spiders. Don't blame me for the nightmares.

Catching up with Dr. John, we find that he intends to confront Emily so he goes to her house, which as it happens is abandoned, and has been for a while. On the upside, he does find the Book of Eidon.

Back at the hotel, Martha tries to clean a tub in room 36, but finds that somehow, Joe's body is there. It rises and attacks her, shoving her head against one of the spikes in the wall. What part of the face do you think is the spike's exit wound? That's correct: the friggin' EYE!

What's happened to Emily? Well, she's visited by the corpses of everyone killed so far but she's not willing to meet her fate with any kind of resignation. She's been under Schweik's employ the whole time, but isn't quite ready to die again apparently. Commanding her dog to attack, she cowers until it's silent and the dog returns to her...now one of the undead. The faithful canine rips her throat out in glorious Italian horror film color.

Liza tries to investigate the hotel basement, but is attacked by the corpse of the other handyman, Arthur. She runs into Dr. John again, who tells her that Emily was probably a figment of her imagination. Liza starts to doubt her own sanity, but the pair go into the basement to check it out again anyway.

I've said it before: never actually say anything about being in one of the seven gates of Hell while standing ass-deep in it. The hotel bugs out while the two escape, and if the shadows drifting by the windows are any indication, Hell is puking up the undead at an alarming rate.

To the hospital they go, only to find the dead have risen and are everywhere. In the ensuing melee, they get separated. Dr. John runs into good ol' Harris, who's alive and afraid. Liza finds Jill cowering in the morgue, but doesn't see her creepy, milky eyes. They rejoin and attempt an escape, but an exploding glass door sends shards of glass into Harris' face, killing him. Well, back to the morgue for the other three. From one flying pan into another frying pan.

Cornered in the morgue, a door opens and Schweik finally RSVP's his own party. Jill suddenly shows her true undead colors and attacks Liza, but Dr. John manages to ventilate the zombie girl's brainpan with a well-placed shot.


Nowhere else to go, Dr. John and Liza enter the door Schweik arrived through and find themselves suddenly back in the hotel basement. They shimmy through a portal and are transported to a desolate, corpse-filled world. Hell? Purgatory? Safe haven while the real world is decimated? Fulci leaves that your imagination. Dr. John and Liza could only stare while their eyes turn a milky white as the movie ends.

What a party.

The gore is unflinching. When Fulci dares you to look at something, he doesn't give you a chance to hide your eyes. And yes, hide your EYES! Like I said, this movie hates eyes. It's a creepy movie, to be sure. A couple flinch moments aside, it isn't really jump-start scary, but that's okay. The atmosphere is quite enough to satisfy. And you know, I laughed quite a bit, but not at it being silly or stupid. See the simile above: what a party. I could see this movie being a comfort horror film for someone in my horror fan family.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the outstanding, atmospheric soundtrack by Fabio Frizzi: creepy, delicate, choral, and forboding all at once. Perfect compliment for what was shown on the screen.

Have some fun with this one. Watch it late at night, or with another Fulci feature like you're in your own personal grindhouse cinema. If you take it too seriously, you'll miss the fun. Just kick back and enjoy the sickness.

Speaking of sickness, the undead outside my own walls are getting loud, so I'm going to turn up some music and get ready to turn in. Remember to think of happy places when you hear the groaning. It's been known to drive the steadiest person batty.

Until next time!

The Changeling (1980)

Even though I have a deep love for the horror genre, it's very rare when something actually reaches below my skin and gives me genuine chills. It's not because what I see is bad - well, sometimes it can be, but we won't worry about that - I've seen some movies, read some books, and subscribe to one comic that is a monthly punch in the gut (Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrow's Crossed). It may be because certain primal images deliver the blow straight to the subconscious fear center and causes the brain to make with the heebie-jeebies.

Welcome to "The Changeling," directed by Peter Medak. This offering from 1980 (the year the Phillies won their first World Series¹) features George C. Scott as John Russell, a composer and university professor who, in the beginning of the film loses his family. They don't just leave. No, they are brutally taken from him in a horrible automobile accident that he witnesses just mere feet away. The movie starts with that. It kicks you in your solar plexus, then backs off to say "I'll wait until you catch your breath."

Eat your heart out, Don Draper.

Without going into too much revealing detail, we get to know John a little better as he slowly recovers from mourning his wife and daughter. He's having trouble, and who wouldn't? He takes a job teaching at the university while he composes music. Living quarters? Well, there's the rub. He rents a house suggested to him by a nice lady, Claire (Trish Van Devere, Scott's real-life wife), from the historical society. Seems like a nice place. I'd live there.

Things start happening, though. A strange, rhythmic banging sound echoes through the house. Water taps turn on by themselves. John sees the image of a young boy in the water of the tub. An attic window spits glass at John outside. He gets disturbed, but also curious. Seems to be strange, especially the laughter. The attic itself is hidden behind boards, and when he opens it, it appears to have been left in its state since 1909. There's a wheelchair, a music box, a journal and oodles of cobwebs.

Needs just a bit of Pledge.

But when the little red ball that once belonged to his daughter rolls down the stairs not once, but twice (and believe me, the second time's the charm)...well, that's when the movie asks you "recovered from that kick yet, because I'm warming up my foot."

Aw, shiii...

From here, it turns into a mystery rolled up with the creepy aspect, as John and Claire try to solve the mystery of who this ghost is, how and why he died, and what he wants. There's a seance, and you know some good will come of that. Oh, it does. But it was the post-seance that gave me the biggest chills, as John listens to the tape made of the seance. Readers, turn your TV's up for this entire movie. The sound is incredible, and is a character all in itself. Sometimes the noise is slamming into your ear, at others it's not quite there, like you heard it in your imagination. And I'm telling you, when John hears what he hears on that tape...

Not an unreasonable reaction.

As characters in a horror/suspense movie, John and Claire displayed traits that really endeared them to me, such as intelligence and curiosity. Not dumb curiosity of the "let's go into Stabyerguts Woods and find firewood" sort. When John finds evidence of an extra room boarded up, he tears it down. I'd have done the exact same thing. He's not petrified with fear, though he has every right. He's curious and he wants to help find justice for this spirit. I hoped Claire wouldn't be the less smart of the duo, and I was pleased when she showed the same depth and brains that John had. The acting by Scott and Van Devere was top-notch.

You want dumb? Try police detective De Witt (John Colicos - the supervillain Mikko Cassadine on General Hospital in the 80's...don't ask how I know that). On the payroll of the movie's antagonist, Senator Joseph Carmichael (Melvyn Douglas), De Witt makes threats and demands in a GRAND SHAKESPEAREAN VOICE that made me wish he was in the film for longer. Threats against a man trying to help solve a mystery about a ghost? Eh, not a good idea.

Gone to that Globe Theater in the sky.

Looking for something creepy, atmospheric, well-acted, and well-made with believable characters and truly chilling moments? Find a way to get this movie, pop it in your DVD player or whatever the looters didn't take after the zombie apocalypse, and turn the lights off. You won't be disappointed.

Oh, yeah, and you might want to remove all little plastic red balls from your home.

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¹As a lifelong Phillies fan, I am contractually obligated to add this every time the year 1980 is mentioned.