Nancy Drew

"Nancy Drew" (2007) is a mystery / thriller that brings back everyone's favorite teenage sleuth, Nancy Drew.  It stars: Emma Roberts, Max Thieriot, Tate Donovan and Josh Flitter.

Nancy Drew is known by all in her small hometown of River Heights for her ability to solve mysteries.  When her father, Carson Drew has a three month long business trip in L.A., Nancy picks the house they will stay in, a house that belonged to a Hollywood starlet from the past named Dehlia Draycott.   Carson makes Nancy promise that while in Los Angeles, she will refrain from sleuthing as it keeps getting her into dangerous situations.  Being that she had already picked the house that has a mystery behind the actress' disappearance, that promise will be hard to keep.

Nancy is a smart and intelligent sixteen year old who would rather read books and solve mysteries instead of the things the kids in L.A. want to do.  Wearing her old fashioned clothing also makes her stick out from the crowd and she has a hard time fitting in at her new school.  She gets the attention of a precocious 12 year old named Corky who becomes her new best friend and helps her with the mystery.  When her "boyfriend" Ned comes to join them, he is annoyed by Corky's attentions toward Nancy.

While trying to fit in with her classmates, she gains unwelcome attention from some thugs that don't want her to discover the truth behind the disappearance of Dehlia Draycott and they will do anything to keep her from finding Dehlia's long lost daughter and the original will.

This is a great family movie with an intelligent and fun girl as its main character.  She does her own thing and doesn't care much what others think of her.  Nancy pieces together a long forgotten mystery and does good for others as her father always taught her.  If you loved Nancy Drew stories when you were a kid, you'll love this modern rendition of the character.

The Cat Creature

"The Cat Creature"is a TV movie that aired in 1972 as an ABC Movie of the Week, starring: Meredith Baxter, David Hedison and Gale Sondergaard and directed by Curtis Harrington.  An ancient Egyptian cat creature is let loose on LA.

An ancient gold amulet is stolen off an Egyptian mummy's neck in a dead California collector's house.  The man who is making an inventory of the house if found dead with scratch marks all over him.  This starts the police investigation who seeks out college professor Roger Edmonds (Hedison) to help them find out more about the Egyptian amulet.

The investigation takes them to the curious local shop called The Sorcerer's Shop run by Hester Black (Sondergaard).  She admits the thief tried to sell her the amulet but she passed on it because she suspected it must be stolen.

Meanwhile, Hester's shopkeeper is followed home by a cat which turns out to be the cat creature and which hypnotizes her into jumping out her apartment window.

A couple days later, Rena Carter (Baxter) drops in the shop to fill in the newly open shopkeeper position.  As the investigation continues, the professor gets to know Rena more and in his research discovers exactly why that amulet should have stayed around the mummy's neck.

This is another great example of the type of TV movie from the 70s that I love.  There's an interesting story.  Great atmosphere and the use of shadows to show the cat before you actually see the creature adds to the suspense and eeriness.  The acting is even top notch for made for TV fare and Gale Sondergaard shines as the mysterious Hester Black.  Catch this movie for a great chiller from the past!

Moon of the Wolf

"Moon of the Wolf" is a made for TV movie that aired as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1972, starring: David Janssen, Barbara Rush, Bradford Dillman.  A werewolf is wreaking havoc on the citizens of the rural town of Marsh Island in Louisiana.

A local woman is found dead and chewed up on the large Rodanthe estate and the locals think its a pack of feral dogs that got her.  The Rodanthe's are the founding family of the island and town and live in a large southern plantation style mansion.  The Andrew runs the Rodanthe estate and sister Louise has just returned to town after being away in the big city.

Sheriff Aaron Whitaker is investigating the death and he soon discovers it was no accident - something sinister is loose in the community and the killings soon escalate. In the sheriff's investigation, he soon discovers all kinds of secrets about the people he thought he knew.  He also finds out more about the Rodanthe's as he befriends Louise who he went to school with.

A dying man who lives near the swamps says it's a werewolf who killed his daughter.  The sheriff starts to believe that and has to put aside his disbelief in the supernatural to find the killer.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  I had been putting off watching it but finally did and I loved it.  The rural Southern Louisiana setting is lush and beautiful and at the same time mysterious and somewhat sinister with its swamps and its somewhat peculiar denizens.  The music adds to the mood and atmosphere and all together it creates an atmosphere filled with suspense. 

Room 237

"Room 237" (2012) is a documentary exploring the hidden subtexts, meanings and conspiracies within Stanley Kubrick's horror movie "The Shining".

Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980) is a visual masterpiece.  The hotel's interior is filled with different patterns and puzzles in which many an obsessive fan has looked for meaning.  This documentary, showing scenes from the movie and from other movies while off screen fans talk about the hidden meanings within the movie. For those of you that don't remember, room 237 refers to the room in the film's Overlook Hotel that had the naked corpse woman in the bathtub that attacked Danny and tried to seduce Jack.

These fans and conspiracy theorists see vastly different things in Stanley Kubrick's film.  One sees the director commenting on the white man's genocide and displacement of Native Americans as proven by the fact that the hotel is supposed to be built on Indian burial grounds and because of the prominent placement of cans of baking soda that have an Indian's head on them.  There's also the theory that Kubrick was commenting on the Holocaust and genocide of the Jews.  One theorist believes Kubrick has left clues that he was involved in the US Government's conspiracy to fake the moon landing in 1969 and that the filmmaker filmed the moon landing footage on a movie stage.

Watching this documentary and listening to the people that have invested so much time into the study of this film you are bound to be interested in what they are thinking and some of the hidden "clues" do seem to make sense in the context of what they believe but they could also mean many other things or be nothing more than something the set designer had available and placed on set.  Who knew there was so much thought put into the hidden meanings of the film?  It's too bad the director is no longer with us to confirm or deny these hidden meanings but I guess that would take all the excitement out of solving the unsolvable.

Watch on Amazon.com

 

The Shining

"The Shining" (1980) directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers is one of my all time favorite horror movies.

Jack Torrance (Nicholson) is hired to be the Overlook Hotel's caretaker for the off season. The hotel is a large hotel in the mountains of Colorado and it is isolated from the rest of the world during the snow season. Wife, Wendy (Duvall) and son Danny (Lloyd) join him to live as the hotel's "only" occupants for the 6 months it is closed. The hotel has a violent history of one of the past caretakers succumbing to cabin fever and killing his family. It is also said to be built on Indian burial grounds.

When the family arrives on closing day, they are shown around the hotel and introduced to some of its staff that will be leaving that day. They meet Dick Hallorann (Crothers), the chef, who tells little Danny that they both have what his grandmother calls "the shining", the power to communicate without speaking and to see things that others can't. Danny's shining is often manifested through his imaginary friend Tony who lives in Danny's mouth and talks out of his finger and Tony has already shown him some disturbing visions of the Overlook hotel and room 237 which Dick tells Danny to stay out of.

The Torrance family settles in for the winter in to the enormous hotel. Jack tries to write his long anticipated novel, Wendy cares for the family and increasingly picks up the hotel chores that Jack was hired to do and Danny explores and plays in the hotel. Increasingly sinister things start to happen though. Danny encounters twin girls who stand and watch him before he suddenly sees them surrounded by blood. While driving his Big Wheel through the hotel's corridors, he stops in front of room 237 and is drawn by something inside. Jack, a recovering alcoholic, begins talking to a bartender that isn't really there in the hotel's Gold Room and meets the caretaker, Grady, who killed his family. Wendy feels more and more isolated as her husband becomes more remote and erratic and she is left to care for the family and the hotel.

The movie is one of the most visually stunning horror movies ever made. The picturesque hotel in the mountains turns sinister and cold once the snows envelop it. The interiors of the hotel are immense and add to the mystery of the place. The patterns Kubrick uses in the interior designs add to the puzzle that is the hotel. The film is shot at angles and in ways that add to the tension that builds throughout the movie. What could be more creepy than a family of three living in a huge hotel, isolated from the rest of the world and suddenly finding there are supernatural things happening in different rooms and in random corridors. The evolution of Jack's madness creeps up on the family and the viewer. Every time I watch "The Shining" I am thrilled by the claustrophobic world it creates and the scary feeling it invokes. This is a must see movie if you haven't seen it and a favorite to enjoy over and over again.

A Stranger Waits

"A Stranger Waits" (1987) is a made for TV thriller starring Suzanne Pleshette, Justin Deas, Tom Atkins, and Paul Benjamin.

 

Kate Bennington (Pleshette) is returning to town after an extended stay out of state while mourning the death of her rich husband.  She returns to town to first take care of the family business and then she is going to stay at their seaside house called 'The Cliffs' in the Pacific Northwest.

Before her arrival, the estate's caretaker is murdered by a man we catch a glimpse of during a thunderstorm.  We later see that same man bump into Kate at the airport and he later shows up on her doorstep bringing her diamond earrings that she had neglected to pick up after they bumped into each other.  That man's name is Mike Webber.  Kate is so taken with him and his honesty that she hires him as replacement caretaker against the objections of Cooper, her butler.

Slowly but surely Mike worms his way into Kate's affections and into a much bigger role in the household.  However, we know Mike isn't what he seems and we know he has something sinister planned for Kate.

This is a suspenseful TV thriller that has some good twists and turns as well as being filmed in some great locations.   

The Attic Door

"The Attic Door" (2009) is psychological thriller starring Jake Johnson, Madison Davenport, Kay D'Arcy and Tom Fitzpatrick set in the 19th century American West.

Brother and sister Darrell and Caroline live on an isolated farm in Utah.  There is nothing but desert, canyons and mountains as far as the eye can see. The parents left a note for the children saying they had to leave for a few days to go to the doctor to deliver their new brother or sister.  They left instructions that they should not go far from the house because it is too dangerous and that Caroline is in charge.  The viewer doesn't know how much time has elapsed since they left but from the worry we see in the children's faces, it appears to be a long time.

Caroline and Darrell do their best to run the farm and take care of themselves in this lonely and isolated setting.  They spend their days doing chores, reading, going to the stream to get water and even playing a little like any other children their ages.  At night though, there are sounds in the house and the children keep looking at the boarded up attic door with dread. There is something or someone in there and as time goes on, it gets closer to getting out.  What secrets are behind the attic door?

From the very beginning of the film with its sweeping views of the grand landscape, you see just how small the house and children are compared to the natural setting around them.  The scenes of the Utah landscape with a very haunting and lonely musical score adds to the loneliness the pervades the film.  That loneliness also haunts the two children  but their bond keeps them from getting lost in this landscape of solitude and loneliness. In addition to the loneliness the film is also filled with hope and perseverance.  The film is not action packed but instead focuses on the lives of these children and builds to a surprising conclusion.

Available for rental on Amazon

Dead of Night

 

 "Dead of Night" (1977) is a made for TV movie from director Dan Curtis ("Dark Shadows", "Burnt Offerings", etc.) that has three stories written by Richard Matheson.

"Second Chance" stars Ed Begley Jr. who plays Frank, a man who loves restoring old cars.  He starts by completely restoring a 1920s car which he decides to drive into town using the old country highway.  On his way there, he ends up traveling back into time to his town in the 20s.  Is there a reason he was sent to that time and then back home?

"No Such Thing as a Vampire" stars Patrick Macnee as Dr. Gheria that takes place in the late 1800s.  The doctor and his wife live in a large mansion but his wife is visited each night by what appears to be a vampire.  Most of the household staff leave in fear, the entire town is in terror of what is happening and a family friend comes to try to help discover why a vampire is targeting this couple.

"Bobby" starring Joan Hackett and Lee Montgomery will be familiar to those that saw Dan Curtis' later movie "Trilogy of Terror II" which has this same story in its third slot.  A mother who is devastated by the accidental drowning of her young son just outside their oceanfront house, turns to the dark arts to try to resurrect her son while her husband is out of town on business.  Bobby returns to her on the dark and stormy night but Bobby is a bit off to say the least.  He wants to play deadly games with his mother.  Lots of spooky atmosphere and the creepy child's voice tormenting his mother.

For those familiar with other Dan Curtis movies, you'll feel right at home with the music and spookiness he likes to create.