I was fortunate to be able to interview actor William Ragsdale on April 24th 2022, at the Cornwall and Area Pop Event (or CAPE). A most entertaining event each and every year, one of the highlights was a reunion of Ragsdale and Amanda Bearse – two of the stars of Tom Holland’s horror cult classic Fright Night (you can find their recollections of the film, as well as Ms. Bearse’s Star Pick interview here on Filmizon.com). It is also worth noting that Ragsdale returned for Fright Night’s sequel, and has continued working ever since... recently having a memorable three year stint on the excellent series Justified... while speaking of horror, he had a cool cameo in 2023's Renfield – back in the vampire realm once more. When our conversation turned to his favourite film, it did not take him long to highlight a horror classic – 1980's The Changeling, starring George C. Scott. This is what he had to say: “I love that movie [The Changeling]. When it came out I thought it was brilliant. It had strong performances from George C. Scott and Melvyn Douglas. For me, the shock stuff is not so great, I really love the ambience and how things are created... it is almost like how Guillermo del Toro builds his atmosphere. I really like feeling like this is a place I’m going into and hanging out. And, of course, that movie was all about that. If the setting is correct, I enjoy it – and The Changeling just had it.” It is also worth noting that he gave a shout-out to The Exorcist earlier in the interview as well.
Imagine being wakened by a bright light, not like that of some sort of alien abduction, but rather as if someone was snapping your photo, with the flash on, in the pitch black of your own bedroom. . . well, that is the concept of the 2015 short film Polaroid. Produced, directed, filmed and edited by Alex “Pressplay” Wohleber, it is a vignette of sheer terror. Waking from the bright light and distinct sound of a Polaroid picture being taken, our lead, simply known as Guy (Matt Halpern – also a producer), not only finds himself in a possible robbery situation, but also quickly learns that the electricity in his home isn’t working.
One of the weirdest mash-ups ever to grace the silver screen, 1975's Wolfguy: Enraged Lycanthrope fuses martial arts action, an investigative crime tale, political conspiracy, sci fi elements, and horror concepts within the box of a B movie exploitation piece. With a title like that, you can probably guess that it is a foreign film, translated to English from Japanese, in this case – these films are often labelled under J-horror. For those linguists out there, you will know that lycanthrope means a werewolf, and Akira Inugami (Shin'ichi “Sonny” Chiba) is the last survivor of a long line of these beasts – the rest of them hunted and killed by those afraid of anything outside of the norm. He uses his wolfish powers to investigate unusual crimes.
It is likely that this sounds familiar: a movie about a group of people who enter an unusual strip club that ends up being packed with vampires – I would fashion a guess that most film afficionado’s would immediately point to the now iconic Quentin Tarantino penned (and executive produced), Robert Rodriguez directed 1996 horror feature From Dusk Till Dawn. . . though this concept was actually first done a decade earlier in the 1986 horror comedy Vamp. Producer Donald P. Borchers came up with a simple idea, ‘vampire strippers’, and decided to take it to a young filmmaker with only one well respected short film to his name – Dracula Bites the Big Apple, Richard Wenk (now a well respected screenwriter who has penned such films as 16 Blocks, The Equalizer, the remake of The Magnificent Seven and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back), who expanded the idea and took on the role of director as well.
In 1942, RKO Pictures set up a horror unit under producer Val Lewton, a former journalist, novelist and poet who had gone on to become a story editor for David O. Selznick. It was his job to develop low budget horror pictures for under 150,000 dollars, with the studio providing the titles for the films. His first task, the strangely named Cat People, almost seems like a joke. A way for RKO to compete with the popular Universal horror films of the time, Lewton hired writer DeWitt Bodeen (I Remember Mama), director Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past), cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca (I kid you not, both Out of the Past and I Remember Mama), and composer Roy Webb (Notorious, Marty) – a quality ensemble. And, Lewton supervised everything, the type of producer who would do re-writes on scripts, aid with editing and be involved in every other minute detail of the production process. In a unique twist, the films Lewton created with RKO have become synonymous with him and his distinct style, rather than the directors’, a rare occurrence to be sure.
A wonderful feel-good story, Swedish director Davis F. Sandberg, now known for his 2016 full length feature debut Lights Out and the currently-in-theatres horror prequel Annabelle: Creation, started as an animator and documentary/short filmmaker. In a dangerous amount of debt back in 2013, he wrote and directed a short film titled, perhaps you’ve guessed it, Lights Out. Released at the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge Film Festival, it made it to the finals, and won Sandberg the Best Director award. Then, the power of the Internet kicked in, and Lights Out shot from thousands of views to millions – and Hollywood higher ups came scrambling. The man, formerly in financial difficulties, has now become a name to watch in this recent renaissance of the horror genre out of Tinseltown.
It’s funny how the brain works. As I sat waiting for Andy Muschietti’s It to project onto the screen, I thought of what a disappointment it would be for the crowd if they had misconstrued the title – in for an unwelcome surprise as “I.T.”, the story of an ordinary Information Technology guy who struggles with work on a daily basis, popped up onscreen instead. Thankfully, that was not the case. It is very much a two-pronged film; a coming of age dramedy and a horror flick, the former works extremely well, the latter falls more into the average range. Set in the late 1980s, the town of Derry, Maine (Port Hope, Ontario a perfect stand-in the for the quaint locale that holds multiple mysteries) has six times the national average when it comes to disappearances and murders.