Terror Eyes (1989)

Directed by:
Eric Parkinson
Michael Rissi
Steve Sommers

Due to a writer's strike in Hollywood, advertising executive Eva Adams (co-writer and co-producer Vivian Schilling) has been given the task of writing her first horror screenplay. Her ideas - and the nightmares caused by her ideas - are then visualized for us. The first is "Book of Life," which centers around unhappily married couple Troy Floyd (Lance August) and his frustrated wife Starla (Schilling). He's so lazy he refuses to shower so they can go out for dinner and would rather sit at home watching demolition derbies on TV and playing poker with a stuffed animal (?!) She whines, nags and treats him like a child. Mysterious Clark Rogers (Daniel Roebuck) shows up at their door, announces he's from the Book of Life Club and then hands them a monogrammed book before disappearing. Starla begins reading and is shocked to discover it's filled with personal details about their entire life, including private bits about their wedding and revelations about his infidelities. Even more surprisingly, the book also details what's going on today... like right now... and even predicts he'll die by his own hand. The book proves to be indestructible: pages cannot be ripped out, it won't burn and it even survives an acid bath. When they attempt to throw it in the dumpster it miraculously appears on their coffee table again and eventually their home fills with smoke, red and blue lights flash and Troy starts melting down.

Eva awakens from her dream, goes back to sleep and then has another nightmare about someone chasing her through corridors. She and her hubby Richard (Roebuck again) then round up two other couples; Mannie (Dan Bell) and April (Becky McGovern) and Scott (August again) and Julie (Gina Hightower) and everyone heads out to the woods for a weekend camping trip. There, we get more smoke machine, more red and blue lights, more POV camera-work and eventually some rubber ghoul smoking a cigarette. Richard begins behaving strangely and obnoxiously and then Mannie decides to tell a horror story drawing from his own life that he thinks may give Eva inspiration for her script.

A long time ago, Mannie had a gambling problem and owed thug Mike (Christopher Roland) 800 bucks (that's it?!). To relieve the debt, he agrees to rob Mike's estranged wife's (Elinor Baggett) safe. He sets himself up an alibi by going to a theater showing "Once a Loser" and then sneaks out to perform the robbery but when he arrives he finds the wife already dead. Somehow, he's then able to relive the same day over and over again (like in Groundhog Day) and eventually goes to the apartment a little early to find out what really happened to the wife. Fox Harris (from Repo Man and numerous Fred Olen Ray movies) has a small role here as a ticket taker.

Julie sets up our third story about her sister Alex (Diana James), "the first female champion chess player." After winning her title, Alex decides to use her celebrity to boycott a company making violent and misogynistic video games like "Wife Beater," "Dumb Blonde" and "Slasher," where you get points for the amount of murders and rapes you commit. She's kidnapped and taken off to a mansion owned by Martin Rubinstein (Phil Lowey), the creator of the games. There, she's forced to play "The Snake Eyes Game" and hop from room to room surviving various death traps along the way centered around such things as poison gas, a rabid dog and the floor dropping out from under her. Things eventually settle into a Most Dangerous Game-style situation where Martin attempts to hunt her down in an abandoned Old West desert town. This is the best idea for all the segments, and perhaps overall the best of the bunch, but they don't quite take it far enough and this may have worked better as a feature and not a short. It is however somewhat prophetic in its criticism of violent video games marketed toward children, which would become a hot news topic years later.

Daniel Roebuck interview in Psychotronic #27 (scan credit: happyotter666)

All three of the stories were made by USC students and, while none are great, all three are at least show some imagination at work. As is customary for such a low budget outing, the editing, sound recording, photography (parts were shot on film and video) and acting all have their bumps along the way. "Book of Life" and the wraparound were done by Eric Parkinson. Story #2 ("Perfect Alibi") was made by Steve Sommers, who doesn't appear to have made anything else. Our concluding tale "Snake Eyes" was made by Michael Rissi, who'd team up with Parkinson and Schilling again for Soultaker (1990), which ended up getting (somewhat unfairly) mocked on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Both were released on VHS by AIP.

★★

Shining, The (1980)

...aka: Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'

Directed by:

Stanley Kubrick

Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is a struggling writer who takes a job as caretaker at the massive Overlook Hotel, and temporarily moves his well-meaning but annoying wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and troubled young son Danny (Danny Lloyd) there for the winter closing season. It doesn't take long for Jack to go over the edge; his already unstable mental make-up mixing with the cold, isolation and overall bad aura of the hotel's sordid past, eventually drive him to head after his loved ones with an axe. The title refers to the son's psychic abilities, and Kubrick's creepy, surrealist touches of the boy's disturbing visions (blood gushing from the elevators, those creepy twin sisters...) are unsettling highlights of the film. The camerawork and photography are both exceptional, including some memorably eerie aerial photography (though you can see the shadow of a helicopter several times), and the hotel interiors (actually all sets) and an intricate hedge maze outside are both pretty amazing.

.

Still, I don't think this movie is quite the masterpiece some others do. Diehard fans have fun analyzing every last detail of it, trying to find patterns in numbers and matching them to the film's run-time, working out all the enigmatic imagery in their heads, trying to decide just why Jack's image can be seen in a photograph dated 1921 at the film's end, etc. I've seen people claim the film is about Satan or selling one's soul to the devil. I've read it's about the apocalypse. I've read it's about an evil place exerting control over the weak and emotionally frail. I've read it's about ghosts, possession and/or just plaing old going bonkers. But you'll have that kind of treatment awarded a director as acclaimed as Kubrick. Some people may want to see more than what is actually there, or more than what was intended. Taking this film at face value is another story altogether. Kubrick doesn't manage to sustain the eerie atmospherics for the entire length of the film, which goes on for a grueling 2 1/2 hours, and it gets rather repetitive at times. The end is basically a mess. And most distressingly, he seems out of touch with his actors. Duvall's Wendy ("Hi hun!") is so weak, irritating and stupid you pray she gets an axe planted in her skull. Of course this could be intentional (though behind-the-scenes footage seems to tell a different tale), but I'd be lying if I didn't say that she still got on my last damn nerve. Nicholson's Jack, at first, is brilliantly malicious with his creepy facial expressions, but then goes way over the top and delivers a sorely inappropriate camp performance in service of a character we don't get to know very well, anyway.

.

Toward the end, there are moments that will leave most viewers scratching their heads. Jack eventually comes into contact with ghosts in the hotel's ballroom. Or does he? Both Jack and Danny come into contact with a ghostly woman in one of the rooms, who transforms from a beautiful young woman to an old withered hag. OK, so one is crazy and the other is psychic, so I guess that could happen... But then at the end, Wendy even starts seeing things that shouldn't be there, such as a guy in a animal costume (?) "servicing" another guy. Since she's neither bonkers or gifted with ESP, I guess that means the hotel is haunted, right? And so then Jack is possessed? Or maybe Wendy's temporary hysteria over her husband trying to kill her is making her envision all this, too? Hell if I know. In film, there is reasonable ambiguity that invites us to use our imaginations, and then there's being weird and random for the sake of being weird and random. I'm not sure what this qualifies as.

.

Based on the best-seller by Stephen King. Many things have been changed from the book and King himself didn't like the finished product. The supporting cast includes Scatman Crothers (as a man who works at the hotel and shares Danny's gift), Barry Nelson, Philip Stone, Joe Turkel, Anne Nelson and Tony Burton. It was remade for TV in 1997.

.

★★★