It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

 

From the DVD case: This Halloween is very special for good ol’ Charlie Brown. He’s finally been invited to a party! Snoopy gets to join the fun, so look out, Red Baron! Linus will find out once and for all if the Great Pumpkin will rise up out of his pumpkin patch “with his bag of toys for all the good children.” (1966, color)

Special Note: The following isn’t so much a review as unabashed gushing praise for a Halloween favorite from my childhood. True fans of horror/science fiction may choose to skip this particular entry and wait for my next review. However, if you share my love of this cartoon, be sure to click on the words in bold to view images that would not fit within the confines of these meager paragraphs.

Mark says: I know what you’re thinking. What is a Peanuts cartoon doing on a site devoted to reviewing vintage sci-fi/horror films? Well just take a gander at the screen capture above and note how viciously (and gleefully!) Lucy chops into that pumpkin. This was years before slasher flicks like Halloween and Friday the 13^th became popular. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that those movies weren’t directly inspired by Lucy’s sadistic assault on that pumpkin. Not to mention that opening sequence where the Peanuts gang is chased by skeletons, ghosts, floating pumpkins, a black cat, and witches. If that isn’t the true essence of horror, I don’t know what is.

Eyes Of A Stranger (1981)

From the DVD case: A lovely blind and deaf teen reaches for a plate she just set aside. It’s gone. She reaches again and it’s back in its original place. Someone is playing a cruel game with her. That someone is the serial killer terrorizing Miami in this shocker from the production company behind the original Friday the 13th. Making memorable movie debuts are Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female) as the impaired but not helpless girl, and Lauren Tewes as her TV newscaster sister whose investigation inadvertently leads the killer to her home. (1981, color)

Mark says: The most frustrating element of Eyes of a Stranger is that it reminds me of at least a half dozen other movies that I like better. Most notably, it resembles the Hitchcock classic, Rear Window. I even think the killer, Stanley Herbert (played by John DiSanti) looks like Raymond Burr from the Hitchcock film.

Besides Rear Window, the film has elements of When A Stranger Calls, Black Christmas, Wait Until Dark, He Knows You’re Alone, and even bits of I Saw What You Did. There are a lot of clever ideas here, but most of them were done better in earlier movies.

Womaneater (1958)

From the DVD case r. James Moran (George Coulouris) returns from the Amazon jungles with a sacred tribal tree that can produce a sap which will reportedly restore life to the dead. Unfortunately, the tree can only live and grow by devouring beautiful young women! (1958, b&w)

Mark says:Womaneater (aka The Woman Eater) is a British film that drips with a 1950’s sexuality that just borders on full exploitation.Beautiful women with heaving breasts, always adorned in dresses that leave one shoulder bare, are sadistically fed to a “miracle-working juju” plant.The plant (which resembles a hairy tree with tentacles) devours the women as men stand by with looks of pure orgasmic joy on their faces.But don’t get too excited, this is 1958 after all, and the luridness is much more implied than shown.

Bill Warren, author and genre critic, writes in his book, Keep Watching the Skies:

Charles Saunders’ ponderous direction makes a slow story painfully halting, in a point-by-point plodding technique of showing all actions. It makes Womaneater one of the dullest science fiction-horror thrillers ever made, almost unbearable to sit through. It isn’t even campy.

When A Stranger Calls (1979)

From the DVD case: A terrified young babysitter, an incessantly ringing phone, and whispered threats set the stage for one of the most suspenseful filled chillers ever filmed. Carol Kane stars as the babysitter who is tormented by a series of ominous phone calls until a compulsive cop (Charles Durning) is brought on the scene to apprehend the psychotic killer. Seven years later, however, the nightmare begins again when the madman returns to mercilessly haunt Kane, now a wife and mother. No longer a naïve girl, though still terrified, but prepared – she moves boldly to thwart the maniac’s attack in scenes that culminate in a nerve-shattering conclusion. (1979, color)

Mark says: When a Stranger Calls (written by Steve Feke and Director Fred Walton) is based on an urban legend that has been around at least since the 1960s (see The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs). The story is told in three parts, with Carol Kane’s character serving as bookends to a detective drama played out in the midsection.

The opening sequence sets the tone immediately. A teenage Jill Johnson (Carol Kane, who’ll I’ll always affectionately remember as Latka’s bride, Simka, on TV’s Taxi) strolls with a stack of schoolbooks to a babysitting job. It’s an early misty evening, and streetlamps shine predominately in the eerily quiet suburban neighborhood. By the time Jill reaches her destination, the credits have rolled and her employers are giving her last minute instructions and updating her on the condition of the two children (both getting over colds and sleeping upstairs).

House Of The Damned (1963)

From the DVD case: Architect Scott Campbell (Ronald Foster) and his wife Nancy (Merry Anders) join another couple, Joseph and Loy Schiller (Richard Crane and Erika Peters), for what promises to be a pleasant stay at an empty castle set on a secluded California hillside. Soon, however, tension mounts as terrifying things begin happening: A group of ghoulish circus performers who once inhabited the castle become increasingly hostile towards their “guests,” turning their mini-vacation into a life-and-death challenge of wits! (1963, b&w)

Mark says: The premise of House of the Damned is not unique, but it did hold some promise. Lawyer Joseph Schiller (Richard Crane, The Alligator People) hires architect Scott Campbell and his wife, Nancy, played respectively by Ron Foster and Merry Anders (Women of the Prehistoric Planet) to survey the Rochester Castle, a piece of real estate saddled with a dubious past. Joseph and his wife, Loy (Erika Peters, undoubtedly thrown in for sex appeal), are to join the pair later in the week.

The Rochester Castle was built by a wealthy and eccentric woman, Priscilla Rochester (Georgia Schmidt, see image above), who was “put away” because of a scandal that embarrassed the family. We learn later that a bum ventured onto the property and she “blasted his head off.” Priscilla is a crafty old woman, though, and has been known to escape her sanitarium confines occasionally and return to the estate.