Halloween Bargains

[lemming13]

I've always loved Halloween (not trick or treating, which I regard as a deeply irritating intrusion, but the whole festival of ghosts and witches bit, banefires and apple bobbing and all), but this year I'm particularly pleased; our nearest Poundland, which occasionally does stock some very good books and the odd dvd, has just provided me with a collection of classic schlock movies at a pound a go. The Wasp Woman, The Giant Leeches, Fiend Without a Face, King of the Zombies, White Zombie, and best of all, The Terror.

[lemming13]

And now they provide me with The Children and Little Erin Merryweather. Sadly, The Children utterly fails to live up to the hype, imo; for starters I can buy a virus making kids psycho, but not it increasing their intelligence quotient a thousand percent. And for another thing, the characters are such a repellent bunch of overprivileged goits I really have no sense of tension about their impending demise. Nor are they foul enough for me to enjoy the prospect as I did with Long Time Dead (whose cast took far too long to get reamed, in my book). Or is it just me being snidey?

[Thana Niveau]

I've never thought to look in Poundland for DVDs - thanks for the tip!

We actually quite enjoyed The Children, mostly *because* of the "overprivileged goits". They annoyed us straight off, so we enjoyed the picking-off process immensely. ;D

Incidentally, trick-or-treating seems to be a rather more sinister affair in this country. In the States it was simply part of the fun of Halloween. If you didn't want to give out treats to kids you simply left your porch light off or didn't answer the door. There were no nasty repercussions. Of course, I always loved it, and my house was always kitted out in the most gruesome way I could manage. I stuffed some of my dad's old clothes with newspaper and stitched the thing together, made a noose and hung it from a tree in the front yard. My dad also rigged up a loudspeaker system one year so that creaky doors and screams and the usual cheesy haunted house sounds were projected out into the street. We'd answer the door in any number of freaky get-ups to scare the kids too. I loved it!

[Dr Strange]

"Trick or treat" might be an American import, but it's actually a bit of a mish-mash of two aspects of Halloween that are very much part of the traditions of Scotland (and Northern England) and which were shipped out there by us lot:

In "guizing" the kids go around the neighbours "in disguise" and expect to be given stuff, but there's no "or else"... I loved that when I was a kid, and I'd never heard of "trick or treat" (we are talking 40 years ago when I started - but it goes back at least a few hundred years).

On the other hand, the night before Halloween is also traditionally the time for playing tricks... I lived in a rural area, so typical tricks were things like removing gates, hiding farm machinery, that sort of stuff. If you were a bit more daring you might climb up on someone's roof and block their chimney with a lump of turf or something (at that time, many people still had peat fires... they'd be smoked out in minutes). Later on, jacking cars up and putting little blocks under the axle that only just held the wheels off the ground was a good one... next day the owner would get in, and rev away going nowhere. Occasionally though someone would decide to turn the table on the tricksters... A very good friend of mine told me that he was doing some minor mischief at this old farmer's house when the bedroom window suddenly went up, out came a shotgun and he was blasted! Turned out the farmer had replaced the shot in the cartridges with salt. Probably couldn't get away with any of this these days...

[cw67q]

Where I grew up guisers were expected to provide some form of information in return for their treats (in the old days an apple, some nuts etc). Usually the kids would tell a joke or sing a song or recite a poem etc. There would also be parties with games such as dookin' (that's bobbing to some folks) for apple or eating treaclke coated scones hung from string with the hands tied behind the back etc.

There has always been a strong halloween tradition in Scotland, and as I understand it Ireland and parts of northern England. I really hate the way the US version has gradually colonised the older local tradition. Not that there is anything wrong with the US version, just its usurpation of the orignal thanks to all those American tv shows and movies.

- chris

[cw67q]

BTW guisers were expected to enter the house and provide entertainment, not remain outside, which might be another minor, but important difference.

Also see traditions like the Wren Boys on St Stephen's day (boxing day) which have survived strongly in parts of ireland. I beleive this trdaition was once widespread in much of europe. Here is a link to some interesting personal recollections of wren boys from the childhood of the (frankly bonkers) irish flute player Seamus Tansey:

www.folkworld.de/20/e/seamus.html

- chris

[Dr Strange]

You're right Chris - we were always invited in, and we were also expected to provide some sort of entertainment for the "treats". And neighbours would always pretend that they couldn't work out who you were - no matter how crap the "disguise".

The night before Halloween thing seems to have just as long a history, and I know it was a big thing in parts of northern England at one time, but it then seemed to die out in a lot of places. Where I grew up (far north of Scotland), it was very much the "adult" part of Halloween, as a prelude to the kids going out guizing on the next night. We also had bonfires and fireworks on Halloween night, and didn't bother with Guy Fawkes at all - I think I was about 9 or 10 years old before I realised that "guizing" had nothing to do with "Guy" Fawkes.

[franklinmarsh]

Sept 24, 2010 22:14:44 GMT lemming13 said:

I've always loved Halloween (not trick or treating, which I regard as a deeply irritating intrusion, but the whole festival of ghosts and witches bit, banefires and apple bobbing and all), but this year I'm particularly pleased; our nearest Poundland, which occasionally does stock some very good books and the odd dvd, has just provided me with a collection of classic schlock movies at a pound a go. The Wasp Woman, The Giant Leeches, Fiend Without a Face, King of the Zombies, White Zombie, and best of all, The Terror.

Was a bit surprised when the Mrs came home from shopping the other day and fished two DVDs out of one of her Poundland bags and said 'You like horror. Cop these.'
Neither was one I'd have gone for, but I was in for a pleasant surprise.

*MEGA-SPOILERS*

The Wasp Woman

I didn't really get to see much early Roger Corman (who recently received an honorary oscar, probably for not being dead) starting with his Edgar Allan Poe films. I have seen The Little Shop Of Horrors and a mega-crackle Bucket Of Blood, but most of the 'think of a lurid title then make the film with no money' types had passed me by.
The film opens with what appears to be a swarm of bees standing in for wasps. Mad old Doctor Zinthrop has blagged his way into a beekeeping business and is siphoning off cash to experiment with wasp enzymes. When one of the bee company execs questions his motives and spending, Doc Z shows him a fully grown Doberman Pinscher and a puppy and claims that they're the same age but the little 'un has been fed his enzyme. Unimpressed with this rubbish, the Doc is sent off with a flea in his ear, and wanders toward the big city (stock footage of New York.)
Janice Starlin's cosmetic firm is in trouble. She used to advertise her own products but is no spring chicken any more and ad man Bill Lane is convinced that the public have lost faith in the company because there's no Janice in the ads.
Zinthorp somehow catches on to to this crisis and gets an interview-

Janice - I can give you five minutes

Zinthorp - I can give you fifteen, twenty years!

Bill, secretary Mary and Coop (bow tie and pipe) start to get concerned with their boss taking on this unknown and then appearing younger and younger.

Zinthorp gets run over, Janice gets desperate for her wasp enzyme fix, eventually turning into a monster (with the aid of a balaclava, glitter ping pong balls and heavy duty pipe cleaners).

It's taken fifty minutes of a seventy minute film to get to where the mutated Janice starts vampirising her staff in a most unwasplike fashion, and then we're hurtling towards the denouement.

*more to come*

[franklinmarsh]

The Brain That Wouldn't Die

If The Wasp Woman was good fun, in a crackpot undemanding way, then TBTWD (which I'd never heard of) is an outrageous classic.

Starting off in a tiny and overcrowded operating theatre, two surgeons (one old, one young) are having problems, and it looks like the oldster has lost the patient. The younger pipes up 'Open the chest, massage the heart, and I'll take care of the brain.' After a bizarre shot of an exposed brain (in glorious monochrome) the patient revives, and the young doc becomes even more smug. The older doc turns out to be his dad and, despite the miracle, has serious misgivings about his son's behaviour, especially the pilfering of limbs from the morgue. Son is developing some wonder serum (huzzah!) and exhibiting the first hints of meglomania.
Dad is packed off to a medical conference in Denver, and the son meets up with his fiance, Jan. Their smooching is interrupted - the young doc needs to get up to the country house where Kurt needs him. Doc invites fiance along but his hysterical speeding (in a car larger than the ground floor of my house) and flashes of signs reading 'Curve ' and 'Winding Road' lead to the inevitable off-screen smash.
The doc manages to save his fiance's decapitated head and with the noggin wrapped in his jacket takes what seems
like an hour to stagger to the country house. Kurt (with an ugly withered arm - result of an earlier gone wrong experiment) helps him set up the head (with bandages and make up) on a table in the huge but ill-equipped lab, and the doc begins to ponder about obtaining a body...
After his dad's comments about his body part snaffling, I expected the doc to head to the local morgue or at least go back to the hospital but we find him drooling over life size cardboard cut-outs of scantily-clad dames outside dodgy club Moulin Rouge (as painted on the floor).
One marvellous result of this is I have noticed Poundland advertise these as 'Family Fun For Hallowe'en!' I wonder what the average family would make of the 12 certificate sleaze they're about to be bombarded with?)
The doc goes inside to be confronted by a young woman dancing with fans, and squeezed into a two piece costume, augmented by a body stocking that would keep her warm in the Arctic.
With no joy here he resorts to kerb crawling in an even bigger car. (NB Horror fans - we keep cutting back to the lab where Jan's head has come to life in a filthy temper, swearing revenge on her former beau, communicating with Something Nasty In The Closet (another failed experiment) and putting the wind up Kurt. However, I'm far more interested in the Doc's Perve Odyssey)
The third young woman the leering doc drives past turns, and I hoped would punch him in the face, but it turns out she's an old school friend. She hops in the car with another young lady who simply appears, and they invite the doc to a body beautiful bathing suit contest. I'm not making this up.
On another minimalist set a nervous MC introduces the five swimwear lovelies. We only get to see four as No. 4 (presumably a 'friend' of the producer) virtually bursts out of the screen, causing the doc's friend to gasp 'That's the second most beautiful body I've ever seen!'
The doc (not missing a beat) enquires 'What was the first?'
'You remember Doris, from school, who had that terrible accident? She just stays at home in her studio flat, posing for photographers and artists.'

Quicker than you can say Thebrainthatwouldn'tdie the doc's easing himself into said studio flat where Doris is cavorting in high heels and leopard-skin bikini in front of some sweaty shutterbugs.

She throws them out (including the seedy moustache who invites her for a drink and asks if she's interested in a private session). The doc reminds her of their past, she shows him her terrible scars (you have to see the film), he explains that he and his dad can sort that out and whisks her to the country house where terrible things are happening.

Whew! From nil expectations to sheer brilliance in 70 minutes. Surfing the net it transpires that there's an uncut version of this masterpiece, featuring more strippers (two of them fighting oo-er!) and a gore soaked finale. (For it's time.)

We have two Poundlands near us. There's no sign of Fiend Without A Face (sob) or Attack Of The Crab Monsters, but I have lashed out on The Terror and The Thing From Another World, and am seriously considering Attack Of The Giant Leeches.

[dem bones]

great stuff, FM. jeez, but i've got to find a poundland around here. we used to have one and the best find i made in there was this triple header.

The reproduction of The Terror is seriously appalling, like someone filmed it from the TV with a handheld, but the copy of City Of The Dead is dead clean. i think we had a thread about this stuff at the old place but it looks like it's one that got wiped when everything started to wrong with the host. City Of The Dead aka Horror Hotel is one of my all-time favourite Subotsky productions. i'm sure i read some place that Hammer rejected Milton for his tendency to drown every visual in dry ice so this was his revenge! i particularly love the (totally unexpected) scenes where the Satanists sacrifice the heroine and the climax involving the inevitable Maitland character, who, cross memorial in hand, lurches through the cemetery with a knife in his back.

[Thana Niveau]

Oct 5, 2010 11:49:02 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Whew! From nil expectations to sheer brilliance in 70 minutes. Surfing the net it transpires that there's an uncut version of this masterpiece, featuring more strippers (two of them fighting oo-er!) and a gore soaked finale. (For it's time.)

Oh dear, naughty Poundlands selling the cut version! That's not fair. At least I'm forewarned, as I was going to snap up Fiend Without a Face. The Criterion DVD is on my Amazon wish list so I'll just be patient and see if it appears in my Christmas stocking instead.

But back to The Brain That Wouldn't Die. I saw it on TV as a very young child and the image of "Jan in the pan" stuck with me forever. So I recently bought the uncut US DVD from Amazon...

www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Wouldnt-Die/dp/B0001GH7M2

...and there was much joy that night at Probert Towers. That operatic dialogue!

"There is a horror beyond yours, and it’s in there, locked behind that door! Paths of experimentation twist and turn through mountains of miscalculation, and often lose themselves in error and darkness."

It does indeed have a very cheesy catfight and the "gore soaked finale" certainly raised our eyebrows. The whole film is really unbelievably sleazy for its time. Apparently it was made in 1959 but languished for 3 years before finding a distributor.

[franklinmarsh]

Oct 5, 2010 13:17:14 GMT Thana Niveau said:

[Oh dear, naughty Poundlands selling the cut version! That's not fair.

Yes m'Lady - but it's only a pound!

Dem I have Horror Hotel - bought for a pound in a London Post Office. Dreadful print, short version, but still marvellously compelling. Burn, Witch, BURN WITCH!!!

One of the Poundland fillums is Plan 9 From Outer Space by the way.

[lordfroggy]

I've picked up a couple of these too.... and there's extra copies in the local Poundland if anyone is desperate!

Attack of the Crab Monster
Fiend Without a Face
Screaming Skull
White Zombie

Also got a film called Lucky about a talking dog that incites murder and an Asian movie about a Lizard Woman!

Will more than likely pick up a few more before the month is out.

[franklinmarsh]

After thrilling to top Radio 1 DJ Mike Raven in Crucible Of Terror (he's far better than that Blackburn fellow Dem keeps on wittering about) it was back to the Poundland Season with (Attack Of) The Giant Leeches. The B-Movie ambience was complemented by an incredibly murky almost out of focus print that made it seem our telly was fogging up with the fetid atmos of the swamps near Cape Canaveral. The leeches themselves weren't exactly impressive appearing to be men in binbags with giant Cheerios stuck on them, and there's only two of them - a practice repeated in such gems as Night Of The Big Heat. There's an amazingly sweaty Southern Fried feel to much of this, most provided by sultry Yvette Vickers who pops up early on in a ridiculously short kimono (eerily prescient of Crucible Of Terror...) barely covering her undies as she foams at the mouth (she's cleaning her teeth). As usual it's these minor characters that provide the interest as the eco-friendly leads are exceptionally dull. At a humoungous 62 minutes this barely has a welcome to outstay. Terribly enjoyable if you're in a forgiving mood.

[Johnlprobert]

I'm waiting for Severin's re-release of Crucible of Terror. One review called it 'a messed up British giallo' which I guess it kind of is. That one has the kind of weird, weird cast that only movies like Psychomania can match for jaw-dropping surprise. Not just the rather odd Mike Raven but Mary Maude from The House that Screamed, Me Me Lay from The Last Cannibal World, Ronald Lacey from Raiders of the Lost Ark and....James Bolam!!!!

I've never seen 'Attack of the Giant Leeches' but I do remember Yvette Vickers being the more interesting one in 'Attack of the 50 Foot Woman'