Sharknado 4: The Fourth Awakens, the sequel to the sequel to the sequel to Sharknado, premiered on the SyFy Channel July 31, 2016. Ian Ziering and Tara Reid reprise their roles for the fourth time. In this movie, the sharknado strikes Las Vegas.
It stars David Hasselhoff, Tommy Davidson, Cheryl Tiegs, Al Roker (again), Garey Busey, Susan Anton, Wayne Newton, Dog the Bounty Hunter, and plenty of beefcake Chippendales dancers.
Sharknado 4 was nominated for a BloodGuts UK Horror Award for Best Prequel/Sequel/Remake
Sharknado 2: The Second One, the long-awaited sequel to Sharknado, premiered on the Syfy Channel July 30, 2014. This time the apocalyptic storm strikes New York City. It starred Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, and Vivica A. Fox (who has a birthday today!). It featured cameos by Judd Hirsch, Billy Ray Cyrus, Robert Hays, Matt Lauer, Al Roker, Michael Strahan, and the Naked Cowboy.
It referenced other movies such as Airplane! and Star Wars, and the Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.
The Ritual, a British horror film released in October 2017, premiered on Netflix, February 9, 2018. It stars Robert James-Collier from Downton Abby fame. The movie follows four friends who travel to the Swedish countryside to perform a ritual, in memory of their friend, murdered during a store robbery. When one of the group twists his ankle, they decide to take a short cut through a dark forest to their destination. They soon realize they are being stalked by a supernatural being.
I really enjoyed this movie. It has a creepy Blair Witch vibe to it when the friends try to find shelter at night in the dark forest during torrential rain. I admit the film lost some of its horror when the monster is finally revealed, but it's still an exciting, scary movie.
Best known for being notoriously bad, Robot Monster was released in theaters across the US June 25, 1953. Produced on a miniscule budget, the movie follows a monster in a gorilla suit and a TV set with antenna, who has eliminated everybody on Earth, except for one family. It seems the Robot Monster had feelings for the family's teenaged daughter.
It has been included on many of the 'worst movie' lists, but has gained a cult following.
Teenagers from Outer Space (or perhaps Attack of the Giant Lobster Silhouette) was inflicted upon US theaters June 3, 1959. It is considered to be one of the "Z-grade" sci-fi films from the 1950s.
Written and directed by Tom Graeff, the story follows a young alien played by David Love as a part of a scouting invasion searching for food sources for their giant lobster overlords. He falls in love with a teenage Earth girl and they work together to prevent his cohorts from carrying out their evil plans.
When Teenagers from Outer Space was released, it was met with negative, but not scathing, reviews. The silhouette of the giant lobster was described as the least-convincing special effect of the 1950s, but other reviews said "flashes of astonishing sensitivity" "actually quite touching" "the show finds its own humble level of dramatic integrity".
It was riffed by Joel and the bots on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in June 1992.
Walt Disney Studios' unusually dark horror fantasy movie Something This Way Comes premiered in US theatres April 29, 1983. Based on a Ray Bradbury story of the same name, the story follows a strange carnival with its spooky ring master Mr. Dark, played by Jonathan Pryce, that arrives in a small town in the early 1900s. The carnival grants wishes but at a serious cost.
It also stars Jason Robards, Diane Ladd, Pam Grier, and James Stacy.
It opened to to mixed reviews, but mostly negative. It was a box-office failure, grossing $8.4M on its $20M budget. It did win two Saturn Awards, one for Best Fantasy Film, and Best Writing for Ray Bradbury, who wrote the screenplay as well. Jonathan Pryce was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. James Horner was nominated for Best Music. It was nominated for Best Costumes for Ruth Myers, Best Make-up for Gary Liddiard and James Scribner, and Special Effects for Lee Dyer.
Mirror Image, the twenty-first episode of the first season of The Twilight Zone aired February 26, 1960. It starred Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes, waiting at a bus stop for the bus to Cortland, but due to bad weather, it is half an hour late.
When she asks the station clerk about when it will arrive, he scolds her for constantly asking him, even though she thinks it's the first time she's asked him. When she goes into the ladies' room, the cleaning woman suggests she was just in there. She sees a bag that resembles hers behind the counter. The gripey clerk insists she just checked it, but when she turns around her back isn't there.
Creepy things continue to happen. Then a man, played by Martin Milner, tries to help her figure out what's going on. Until strange things start happening to him.
Camp Cold Brook, a horror film directed by Andy Palmer, was released February 14, 2018. The movie is about a group of paranormal investigators who set out to check out Camp Cold Brook in Oklahoma, where a mass murder occurred a few decades prior. Joe Dante was its executive producer and it starred Chad Michael Murphy.
Camp Cold Brook won Best Horror Feature at the Shriekfest. Joe Dante won the Best Feature award at the Horrorhound Film Festival.
I enjoyed the movie but found it to be a little light on the horror. And the trope of an abandoned campground, haunted by a decades old crime is rather tired. To me, it was mainly a suspense thriller, because most of the paranormal activity was witnessed by the audience and not the characters. For example, when a girl escapes the shower imagining the room is filled with spiders, the ghost appears behind her. She never sees it. Another time, a character passes a wooden sign and fingers curl around the edge after the character walks past.
La Maison ensorcelee (The House of Ghosts or The Witch House), released February 9, 1906 in Denmark, is one of the first haunted house movies. Directed by Segundo de Chomon, it uses stop-motion animation and superimposition photography to ramp up the spooky activity.
Two men and a woman take refuge in a small house in the woods and experience paranormal activity such as disappearing furniture, a knife cuts food by itself, and a ghost.
Tentacles, one of the first of many knock-offs of Jaws, was released in US theaters June 15, 1977. It focuses on another deep-sea creature run amok. In the fashion of It Came from Beneath the Sea, a giant octopus rises from the depths to terrorize a California seaside town.
It was an Italian production which starred Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda, and Claude Akins. Although it was a box office success at the time, grossing $3,000,000, but critics were not kind. It received a 0% rating from Rotten Tomatoes.
In another movie in a rash of "radioactivity creates a monstrosity" films, Monster from the Ocean Floor was released into theaters May 21, 1954. It was the first time Roger Corman produced a film. He would go on to produce almost 500 movies over his career. Director Wyott Ordung went on to produce only one more film in 1956.
It's a slow moving film like Monster from Green Hell, with only a few scenes that were intended to be scary. All deaths happen off screen so there is virtually no gore or jump scares. The actors are mostly unknowns. Ordung and Corman each have a role in the movie.
Monster from the Ocean Floor was released to mixed reviews, mostly negative, with a rating of 3.8 on imdb.com.
It isn't a movie to watch for horror or science fiction fans, but it can be enjoyable if you're into the B&W 1950s B-movies.
Another "radiation-created-giant-monster" and "big bug" movie, Monster From Green Hell, following Godzilla (1954), Them! (1954), and Tarantula (1955), was released in the US, May 17, 1957. It starred Jim Davis, who would go on to find bigger fame as Jock Ewing in Dallas in the 1970s and 1980s, and directed by Kenneth Crane.
The film tells of the creation of giant wasps in the African wilderness by a atomic satellite, launched from the US and crashed into Africa. Most of the film is stock footage from Stanley and Livingstone from 1939. In fact, the confrontation with the giant wasps takes place only ten minutes from the end of the movie. A very slow build-up with little suspense.
It was not received warmly by critics or audiences.
Although this movie screams Roger Corman or Bert I. Gordon, The Beast of Yucca Flats was brought to us by Coleman Francis, who wrote and directed. But like Corman and Gordon, his movies ended up being riffed on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Released May 2, 1961, The Beast of Yucca Flats tells the story of a Russian scientist, played by Tor Johnson, who is transformed into a monster after being exposed to an atomic blast. It could or could not be the inspiration for the Incredible Hulk.
The movie opens with a nude woman (in some cases, the bare breasts have been censored) being strangled by what we are to believe is the Beast. Yet, the movie follows the Beast's movements after his exposure, and the scene with the naked woman is never included or explained.
Another problem is Coleman Francis filmed the entire movie without sound, and added dialogue and narration in post-production, which becomes hilariously obvious in many places.
With a whopping 1.9 rating on imdb.com, it is considered one of the worst movies ever made.
Marvel Comics' supernatural hero, Ghost Rider, came to the silver screen February 16, 2007. Stunt motorcycle rider Johnny Blaze (played by Nicholas Cage) sells his soul save his father, and becomes the Ghost Rider.
I enjoyed the movie, even though it didn't receive many positive reviews and Cage was nominated for a Razzie for Worst Actor. However, it was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Film by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.
It is one of the few Marvel movies in which Stan Lee did not have a cameo, since he was not involved in creating the character of Ghost Rider.
I'm always looking for horror-comedies, so the sixth episode of the sixth season of the X-FilesHow the Ghosts Stole Christmas is a treat. It aired December 13, 1998. Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) explore a haunted house. Apparently, two lovers killed each other in a lovers' pact some 81 years before, but it seems they still reside there.
Lily Tomlin had previously mentioned her interest in appearing in an episode and Ed Asner was also on board for the episode. Scares and laughs abound. It is a great episode and I look forward to watching it again.
Stephen Graham Jones, born January 22, 1972 in Midland, Texas, is a Blackfoot Native American author of horror, crime fiction, and science fiction. He earned a BA from Texas Tech University and then earned his Master of Arts degree in English from the University of North Texas in 1996. He completed his Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1998.
He wrote The Fast Red Road as his dissertation and it was published in 2000 as his debut novel. He's won the Jesse Jones Award for Fiction in 2005, and the Bram Stoker Award for Long fiction in 20217.
He contributed an X-Men story to Marvel Comic's Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1.
I've included hm since my co-author Max Griffin have used him as the inspiration for our character, Montana Psionic Officer Graham Keller, who will be featured in the upcoming novel, Out of the Ashes.
The first movie adaption of Mary Shelley's classic 1818 Victorian horror novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, opened across US theaters November 21, 1931. Boris Karloff played the titular character after Bela Lugosi had turned it down. Colin Clive appeared as Henry (not Victor) Frankenstein, and James Whale directed.
It was considered a commercial success upon its release and was well-received by critics and audiences. It has spawned numerous sequels. The movie takes some creative liberties from Shelley's original novel but it continues to scare.
In 1991, Frankenstein was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
One of my favorite horror films, The Woman in Black, was released in the US February 3, 2012. It stars Daniel Radcliffe as a lawyer in London in the early 1900s. He is sent to a large, abandoned, spooky manor in a remote village where a woman in black has been seen. Whenever she is spotted, a child dies. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Susan Hill, published in 1983.
I liked it mainly because of its lack of gore and the suspense and intrigue without the violence. I also liked seeing Radcliffe in a non-Harry Potter role. The incredibly versatile actor Ciaran Hinds appears in a supporting role.
The movie earned $20M in its opening weekend. It made almost $128M world-wide and is the biggest British horror movie in 20 years. What was the biggest one before it?
The Creeping Terror, released November 20, 1964, has been dubbed the second worse movie ever, after Plan 9 from Outer Space. But Plan 9 had a coherent plot, albeit a campy one. Vic Savage directed, produced, and starred in the movie. It follows an alien, resembling a shag carpet, that eats people, terrorizing a small rural town.
According to wikipedia.com, the special effects creator was not paid for his work, so he stole the original costume for the alien monster the day before shooting started so Savage and his crew had to throw together a poor recreation of the costume.
Savage experienced difficulty securing funding so even though filming started in 1962, it wasn't finished until 1963. The movie is almost completely narrated, with very little dialogue. There are several theories on why there was so little speaking.
Savage was sued several times prior to the film's release and disappeared, never to be seen again. It is rumored that he died of liver failure in 1975.
William Thourlby, who played Dr. Bradford, was the face of the Marlboro Man advertising campaign in the 1950s.
The Creeping Terror was featured in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1994.
Alien 3, released May 22, 1992, is the third installment of the Alien franchise, and just might be the worst of them, IMHO. It was featured on a youtube.com channel as one of the top 10 movies that pissed off their audiences in the first scene.
Sigourney Weaver reprises her role as Ellen Ripley, and the movie takes place only days or weeks after the events Aliens. A malfunction aboard the military ship causes the life pods containing Ripley, Hicks and Newt, to be ejected. They crash-land on a prison colony planet. And the aliens arrive on the same escape pod and begin to wreak havoc.
Michael Biehn (Corporal Hicks) found of that his character was written out of the third movie and so he refused to have anything to do with the film, even not allowing them to use his image. Carrie Henn (Newt) probably could not have recreated her role, since there were six years between movies, but only weeks between the events in the movies.
Alien 3 was nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Visual Effects.
