TERROR IN THE AISLES

At the absolute apex of the slasher barrage in the early to mid 80's, a hollywood studio compilation was released, hosted and narrated by Nancy Allen (Dressed to Kill, Carrie) and Donald Pleasence (Halloween, Prince of Darkness) that brought you the best elements of horror and suspense from the current and most recent film runs, to classics going back to Hitchcock, arguably the master of suspense as it's obvious Carpenter and DePalma were striving to give the audience the jibes and apprehensions that Alfred created.


The film was released in 1984 as "Terror in the Aisles", but due to what apparently are legal rights issues from the obvious plethora of film clips being used from multiple studios, putting out a proper issue of this movie on DVD would probably be more costly than it would be worth. The Japanese have released it under the title "This is Shock". I'm sure it's available on Amazon or Ebay. Original copies of the American release on VHS I'm quite sure are easily acquireable.

But good luck, it may cost you a few bucks. More recent horror docs, such as "Going to Pieces", "American Nightmare", among others do give you the nice historical perspective, but not the class of having Pleasence and Allen, with their horror pedigrees as your hosts and guides through classic moments of shock.



It's getting near Halloween, it's that time of year, and this film is perfect. Good Luck.

THE CAR

http://www.hulu.com/the-car



It was long before James Brolin became Mr. Streisand. It was long before he put on his overacting clinic in "The Amityville Horror". It was years before the novel, "Christine" by Stephen King and the John Carpenter masterpiece adaptation that followed.

It was "The Car".

For some reason a very large vehicle that is of a rather nondescript and unidentifiable design is possessed by the devil. Why? You got me there.

It is "The Car"

It hangs around peoples houses and revs it's satanic engine and honks it's rather unintimidating devil-horn. It's future victims walk around in the dark and appear shocked, make stupid phone calls, and for some reason, when it's headlights, accompanied by a synthesizer "sting" explode into brightness get frightened beyond all help.

Because it's "The Car".

It waits outside metal graveyard fencing for the innocents hiding inside to come out, for it cannot enter hallowed ground. It's metal. It can wait.

It is "The Car."

At the end, the car falls off a cliff and blows up, and a devilish face can be seen in the rising conflagration emanating from it's detanation.

It is "The Car".

And I stayed up late for it.

And slept like a baby.

FOOD OF THE GODS

It's been a while, but my current foray into "Movies I Stayed Up Late For" is the 1976 drive-in late night TV staple, "The Food of the Gods".

It's an absolute Godawful piece of claptrap that did nothing upon it's cinematic release but induce projectile vomiting and groans of disdain. It starred former child-evangelist (you read that right) Marjoe Gortner. He was being ballyhooed in the early 70's as "the embodiment of cinematic masculinity" (!) but never amounted to much more than a B-movie semi-icon.

This cinematic achievement was a quaint little story about chemical corruption. It seems there's these jars labelled "FOTG" sitting on the shelves of some elderly farmer's barns. (elderly farmers barns in 70's movies, always seem to have great things hiding inside them) Some animals and insects start to eat some of the mystery juice that was accidentally spilled causing them to grow awful damn huge, develop nasty dispositions and wreak general havoc all over the rural area. (You know, eating people and stuff).

The movie was forgettable (and regrettable) beyond this great cliffhanger ending: The final shots show some of the dumped compound running off into a river. Through snappy editing, the river flows downstream (where else does a river flow, Rob?) and (gasp) some cows drink from the river. The next shots are composed in a dairy, then show a child (hold on to your butts!) drinking from a milk carton in her school lunch. Oh My God! Wait a tic, what's gonna happen? Is she gonna be an NBA player or what? Not to mention they forgot to take the scientific theory of dilution into consideration. How effective would the substance be when broken down into parts per million, and several miles of riverflow? Not well thought out, boys, but yet again, how well thought out was the concept of this movie?

Wait a minute, I'm the guy who stayed up late for it. Heh, I was a kid, right?......right?


ADDENDUM: In 1988, I remember breezing through the daily information colossus known to those "in the know" as THE WAUSAU DAILY HERALD, and seeing the cineplex (if it could be called that) down by the mall showing (probably on the screen downstairs that's no bigger than my living room TV where I saw "Good Morning, Vietnam" in it's 347th week of release) "Food of the Gods 2", a Canadian opus trying to cha-ching in on the 12 year old success of the original.

Wait a minute, the first did nothing. This makes no sense. How did the theatre manager get horranged into carrying this stupid movie anyway? Did the distributor offer him a "Food of the Gods 2" hat? These filmmakers tried to pull of the cinematic equivalent of a sequel to oh, say, "Swept Away", Madonna's movie a few years back that made something like 65000 clams in it's opening weekend despite the star's marquee name. Go figure. I should fund and release a sequel to "Satan's Cheerleaders". It would be as intelligent.