Island Claws

Well, I'm horrified.
Horrified that I haven't posted anything here in over a year.

I'm going to change that in 2019, starting with the "it totally should be a classic, why isn't it?" Island Claws from 1980.

On a small Florida coastal island, bad things are happening.  First, there's been a leak at the local nuclear plant.  Then, the local crab population, the subject of a biological experiment, seems to be getting out of control.

The ominous massings of crabs, click-click-click click-click-click, are the first indicators.  The death of the town banjo playing idiot at the hands of a crab swarm let's us know they're not playing around.  To really raise the stakes, a pretty blonde girl is their next victim.

Just to cement the fact: the crabs then kill a dog and cause a small girl to lapse into a coma.

Evil, evil crabs.

Not until the third act do we get to see the kicker that'd been foreshadowed... a GIANT crab.  As fine a special effect as anything seen in a Roger Corman movie (see Attack of the Crab Monsters), Island Claws is  a fun romp that harkens back to the fifties nature-gone-wild, like Them! and The Deadly Mantis, with an ensemble cast including Nita Talbot (the Russian woman from Hogan's Heros), Barry Nelson (Mr Ullman from The Shining), and Robert Lansing (Gary Seven! from Star Trek).

What really surprised me about Island Claws, other than seeing Ricou Browning (Creature from the Black Lagoon) in the writing credits, was how subtle and timely some of the bits were and still are- yes, the Three Mile Island-ness of the local power plant was reminiscent of Fukushima and a subplot involving Haitian refugees echos some of the recent issues with Nicaraguan asylum seekers.

The House on Sorority Row

Tonight’s movie is The House on Sorority Row.  I’ve been watching the tv show “Scream Queens” and it’s more than inspired by the 1983 movie.

So if I’m going to properly appreciate the derivative work, I should be familiar with the original.  

Just after graduation, a group of sorority girls kills their housemother in a prank gone wrong.  Because they’re horrible people, they’re throwing a graduation for themselves while her corpse sits weighted at the bottom of their dirty, algae filled swimming pool.  When they’re killed off, one by one, the killer using the woman’s spike tipped walking stick, it’s not really a surprise.

They do a pretty good job obscuring the killer, several kills from the killers point of view, almost giallo style, while some of the deaths take place with a cut-away, one of the earlier ones is even done in silhouette, but there’s no shortage of red paint.

Because I’m doing this usually around 2 am, I miss some ideas until late in the game- like how this movie was influenced by the original 1974 Black Christmas,  with the sorority house setting and the attic based killer.  Which would mean Black Christmas would be an influence on Scream Queens as well.

I’m going to give Scream Queens a couple of more episodes to convince me, but I think the Glee + Slasher film mashup isn’t really working.  In the concept of humorous slasher stories, the genre savvy cast of Scream- both cinematic and television- is a better mix versus Mean Girls with a bodycount. 

Of course, both Scream Queens and Scream (the Series) don’t quite measure up when compared to Harper’s Island, a much more effective presentation of the slasher genre on television.  While all three have the structure of ensemble cast and kill of the week, Harper’s Island ups the ante by containing the cast in a limited range, an island(!), while honestly, someone from the other shows always has the option to leave town (yes, I know that NEVER works out, but they’ve got the option, still).

I may give the remake a try, just to see how badly they butcher it- I looked on IMDB and didn’t recognize any of the cast.  On the other hand, I’m probably going to give the remake of Black Christmas a view on the strength of the cast, including Kristen Cloke, Michelle Trachtenberg, Andrea Martin, and Oliver Hudson (who has a role on Scream Queens, so that brings this full circle for me.  Time for bed.)

Satan's School for Girls

Earlier this year, I was doing reasearch for something I was writing and it involved watching lots and lots of seventies movies, theatrical and televised.  Somehow I missed Satan's School for Girls (1973).

I'd seen it... or at least thought I'd seen it years ago.  Honestly, even while watching it, I'm not sure.  I dimly recall watching something girls school and occulty on RealPlayer back in the nineties or so (I vaguely remember watching Suspiria, which kind of pairs nicely with this, as well as this).

Elizabeth (Pamela Franklin) Sayer's sister kills herself and she goes to her sister's school to find out why.  Her classmates at the Salem Academy for Women are the future Charlie's Angels Kate Jackson and Cheryl Ladd.

Soon her classmates start dying, and she has her suspicions regarding the professor responsible.

This is a great example of the early seventies fascination with the occult, actually pre-The Exorcist talk of Satan- but that's the seventies for you, when even McMillan and Wife go up against a Satanic cult a month later on NBC.