Halloween Hangover 2026

 This Halloween was a blur. On top of my aggressive posting schedule, I was working a lot, too.

So let's see what I accomplished this past month.

October Horror Movie Marathon

My theme this month was "Small town horror," focusing on movies between 1985 and 1986. I expanded it to 1983 to 1987 to cover my high school years, and again to cover 1980 to 1989. The theme I discovered was "Horror Comes Home." I dealt with movies where the horror was largely local. You no longer went to some strange land to see horror; it came home to you, or, more often, it was already there waiting for you.

The main takeaway for me is that small towns make good horror settings because they feel familiar and safe, yet that same familiarity carries a history of secrets and old grudges, stories everyone knows but few take seriously. 

Jackson, Sunny Valley, and Carbon Vale for NIGHT SHIFT are set in just such territory. The supernatural is at its most effective when it is paired with the everyday, where one can have a Friday night football game and school on Monday while something impossible is going on three streets over.

I was also reminded of how willing 1980s horror was to be weird. These movies mixed horror with comedy, science fiction, heavy metal, teen drama, fantasy, and whatever else they could get away with. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it absolutely did not. But even the failures could be fun. That willingness to experiment is part of what made this month enjoyable, and apparently, forty years later, I am still not done exploring it.

I am torn on my next theme. I kinda want to do a Chicago-based one, but also I want to do one where I just cover movies I have already seen and talk about here but have never given a proper October Horror Movie Marathon presence. 

ETA: I started building a list of all the horror movies I have seen that I have not reviewed here, and I am already at 50+, and I am barely out of the 1970s. 

Follow Timothy's board October Horror Movie Challenge on Pinterest.

Mirror Mondays

I wrapped up the Mirror Mondays series I started earlier this year. I am pretty pleased with the themes I explored, and the playing that took place to get to the place to explore them.

Now comes the harder part. Putting it all together into my two big projects.

Coven 13

Having put four issues of Coven 13 behind me, I would say what I like best is not any particular story or author or piece of occult lore. Rather, I like the magazine’s readiness to put all of that in one world. Witches and ghosts, werewolves and vampires, old gods, folk magic, demons, sorcerers, science fiction and Sword & Sorcery are allowed to rub shoulders here with no one making a fuss over which shelf they should be on. 

In a historical sense it puts Coven 13 in an interesting position. One has Weird Tales, Unknown Worlds, Robert E. Howard and the older pulp traditions Landis so plainly respected in its history. Before it lies the occult revival of the 70s, modern supernatural horror, and, a few years later, Dungeons & Dragons. I will not go so far as to say Coven 13 had an influence on D&D; there is no evidence for it. What these four issues make plain is that a good many of the ingredients we link to fantasy gaming were already being mixed in the same cultural stew.

Coven 13 may not have influenced D&D, but plenty suggests both were part of the same cultural zeitgeist. 

What matters more to me is that Landis returns time and again to the idea that the supernatural has a place in the modern world. The old magic did not vanish with the construction of highways, office buildings, universities and subdivisions. A ghost can take up residence in a suburban home. Your neighbor may be a witch. An old god is still under the ground. And the grimoire works even when the crossroads it refers to is now occupied by a gas station.

I suppose that is why so much of this was right away useful for Jackson and Sunny Valley. I have no desire for the supernatural to be walled off in another world. It should exist beside this one and from time to time intrude upon it. Let there be a mundane map, and one the witches know. Family stories ought to be true and folk remedies effective for reasons long forgotten. Monsters should have a history, not just Hit Dice.

Four issues is hardly a run, but they sufficed.

Coven 13 had a good idea of the supernatural world it wanted: strange and messy, modern and old, frightening and funny, and unwilling to stay in its assigned genre.

Yeah. I can use that.

When I get around to rounding up the rest of the Witchcraft & Sorcery issues, we shall see where that current leads.

• Coven 13, Issue #1
• Coven 13, Issue #2
• Coven 13, Issue #3
• Coven 13, Issue #4

Fantasy Fridays

Again this year I did "Urban Fantasy Fridays" and investigated how my Jackson kids look like in other games. I had such a blast with it, and learned a lot about the characters and the setting that I want to keep it going. I might expand it to "Universal" games like GURPS or BRP. Plus I have few more that would have fit if October had been 7-8 weeks.

So that's it for my October!

See you all here next year!

October Horror Movie Challenge: Prime Evil (1988)

Here we are at the end of it all. 

Prime Evil (1988)

Prime Evil is directed by Roberta Findlay and concerns an ancient sect of Satan-worshipping monks who have survived into modern-day New York through a bargain involving human sacrifice. There is an undercover nun, an upcoming sacrifice, a lot of talk about Satan, and enough low-budget occult weirdness to make sure nobody mistakes this for subtle horror.

The plot details don't hold my interest as much as the movie’s place in the decade. It is as near to pure late-1980s Satanic Panic horror as one can get. The Devil is no metaphor here, and the cultists are not some misunderstood lot of occultists; they are in fact worshipping Satan and putting into practice centuries-old traditions of sacrifice. And yet this ancient evil is at work in contemporary New York. In that respect, Prime Evil is one more instance of the theme I have been coming across all month: horror comes home. Sure, NYC is not a small town, but it is someone's hometown; in fact, 8.6 million someones.

That is probably my biggest takeaway from this year's October marathon. I set out to find some small-town horror from 1985 to 1986 and found something of a wider scope. Time and again the horror has come home, making its way into the houses, schools, malls, hospitals, and neighborhoods. At times it has been there for generations; at other times it was let in by accident. Or, as in Prime Evil, an age-old evil has just taken root in the modern world.

I also appreciate how completely sincere movies like this could be about their supernatural premises. There is no point in trying to offer a psychological reading of Satanism or make of the cult a complex social metaphor. The monks made a deal with the Devil, and that is the end of it.

Is Prime Evil any good? Not really. It is cheap and uneven and at times confusing without being as wild as you might expect from the premise. The pacing, the performances and the story have drawn their share of criticism in reviews both then and now. But it has a certain 1980s low-budget earnestness I have grown to like in the course of this marathon. Someone had a tale of immortal Satanic monks in New York and thought that was reason enough to put a film together.

And really, that is part of what I have enjoyed about revisiting this decade.

The 1980s were not afraid to be ridiculous.

They were not afraid to mix old folklore, religious horror, slashers, science fiction, teenage drama, heavy metal, and whatever else happened to be lying around.

Sometimes the results were classics, some were terrible, and some, many in fact, were pure 80s fun.

Either way, I had a lot of fun.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 47
First Time Views: 33

October Horror Movie Challenge: Witch Story (1989)

I am getting to the end of this, and I am running out of movies for my theme.

Witch Story (1989)

Witch Story, aka Streghe, is a 1989 Italian horror movie directed by Alessandro Capone, but most of it was shot in Florida. That combination actually fits the movie pretty well because the basic story feels much more European than American.  

A brother and sister have come into possession of an old farmhouse and with some friends in tow they find that the place is haunted by Helena, a woman put to the torch as a witch half a century ago. One will also find demons, possession, a priest with a past and no end of bloody supernatural retribution.

I like the premise. An inherited piece of family land with a buried history, a curse that has made its way to the present and some witchcraft is my kind of thing. The setup is nearly Gothic despite the location. But the film does not hold up in the middle; it drags, and the characters are not great, nor are the actors. Ian Bannen carries some of the weight as Father Matthew, the most familiar face in the cast.

The lead is listed as Amy Adams in the role of Susan. She is not the one you would see in Enchanted or Arrival, but a credit like that makes you double-check. None of the actors here went on to much more. This is not atypical of horror movies.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

As for my 1980s "Horror Comes Home" theme, this is right up my alley. There is no quest for a far-off castle here. The terror is in the house you have been left with, in an old family tale, and in what the locals did decades back. The past has been biding its time for someone to return.

It fits well with Sunny Valley and its older history, though there is nothing here I couldn't do in any of my three settings. I can always use the "50 years ago" idea from this movie, but 1939 is already a crowded year in Jackson!

It has a good premise and some entertaining supernatural mayhem. Only too much dead space in the center. I would have liked it better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 46
First Time Views: 32

October Horror Movie Challenge: Vicious Lips (1986)

Vicious Lips is not a great movie, nor does it fit well with my theme this month, but I had fun with it.

Vicious Lips (1986)

Directed by Albert Pyun, the premise follows an all-female rock band traveling across space for an important gig. In the course of their journey, they crash on a desert planet and have to deal with a killer alien, while spending much of their time in neon-lit sets looking as though MTV has exploded on them. 

It is an all-female Streets of Fire, but with a Heavy Metal sequence, then run through the mid-1980s MTV filter. I like that description better than the movie itself, but it explains why I enjoyed it. 

Style is what does the heavy lifting here. The hair is enormous, the wardrobes are louder than the music, and the sets are awash in a neon glow; it is as if someone set about making a science-fiction universe from a nightclub, a music video and the left-overs of the Empire Pictures warehouse. The band's new lead singer is called Judy Jetson. Subtlety was never on the agenda.

It gets off to an energetic start but once the band has crash-landed the film loses much of its steam. The middle section is overlong with the band tramping around the ship and the desert when I would have preferred more of the space-rock craziness. There is a Venusian beast and other ghoulish oddities, but the film could have used more aliens. 

A lot more.

There is no call for restraint when making a picture of a glam-rock girl band going intergalactic. That is the lesson. If you are going to go full speed, go warp 9.9.

The 1980s Were Not Afraid to Mix Things Up

In watching these movies all month long, I am reminded of how open the 1980s were to mashing genres. Vicious Lips is at once science fiction, horror, rock musical, comedy, creature feature, and music video. It does not seem to care whether the parts fit. They are put on screen, and the audience is expected to follow along.

They do not always fit. Which is part of the appeal.

You have your killer creature and spaceships, your rock concerts and futuristic nightclubs, some horror imagery and scenes that seem to have come from another production altogether. Pyun pushes the visuals even when the story isn't moving and, as some have pointed out, the neon and editing are far more memorable than the plot.

I miss that kind of genre mixing. Modern films are boxed in before the cameras roll. Horror is horror, sci-fi is sci-fi. 

The 80s would ask "What if the girl band has a spaceship?" or "What if there is a serial killer on board? An alien monster too?" and just go with it. Then throw in some sexy, half-naked sand sirens and call it a wrap.

That doesn't necessarily make for a good movie; Vicious Lips shows us that. The acting is inconsistent, the story gets lost, and the pacing falls apart at times. At times, the movie seems to forget its purpose. Where were they going? I forgot at points.

But it is never shy about being strange. And that is worth something.

Final Thoughts

This doesn't really fit my hometown-horror theme for the month, but it does fit what I have been rediscovering about the 1980s. These filmmakers were willing to take a chance. Some of it was great. Some of it was Vicious Lips.

I had my fun with it.

Give me the neon and the big hair, a girl band in space and a killer alien, a film that thinks *Streets of Fire*, *Heavy Metal* and MTV can exist in the same world.

Only put in a few more aliens next time.

NIGHT SHIFT, Jackson, and Thirteen Parsecs

No. I am not about to send my Jackson kids into space à la "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space."  Certainly, I should remember that unrelenting horror is just torture without some fun. 

This could work as a crazy "Space Truckers" adventure. Instead of hauling space-beer to the outer colonies, you are hauling the latest girl band. Trouble is there is a price on their head!

Or something. 

If we learn anything from Vicious Lips, it is that don't be afraid to mix it up a bit.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 45
First Time Views: 31

October Horror Movie Challenge: Spookies (1986)

Last night's movie was Spookies from 1986, and crimony, what an absolute mess. Normally I write these up as I am watching them and then a little time at the end to cover some more. But I needed time to read up on this mess, so I am posting it tonight, early. I might need another movie to work this one out of my system.

Spookies (1986)

A group of people wander into an old mansion and start getting picked off by an astonishing collection of monsters. Normally I would describe the characters a little more carefully, but this is one of the strangest collections of supposed friends I have seen in a horror movie, and that is saying something. We get a couple who seem to have wandered in from a 1960s greaser movie, a buttoned-down yuppie, some idiot with a puppet, an Englishwoman for reasons I never quite understood, and a woman saddled with the unfortunate name Meegan. Not Megan. Meegan. The credits and closed captioning confirm it. There is a sorcerer, his dead wife, a kid who makes me long for the intellectual discourse we got from Gamera's Kenny, and a weird-ass spider woman who is inexplicably the best actress of the lot. 

The acting is terrible, and the story barely holds together. Characters appear, disappear, and occasionally seem to be participating in entirely different movies.

Turns out they are.

Spookies began as a movie called Twisted Souls, written by Frank Farel, Brendan Faulkner, and Thomas Doran and directed by Faulkner and Doran. They shot it in 1984, primarily at the Jay Estate in Rye, New York. After a falling out with financial backer Michael Lee, the original filmmakers lost control of the production. Lee subsequently brought in Eugenie "Genie" Joseph, who shot a substantial amount of completely new material with different actors and storylines. The filmmakers then edited the footage from the two productions into Spookies.

Suddenly the movie makes perfect sense.

Well, no. Not really. It still makes absolutely no sense.

But at least now I understand why it makes no sense.

The partygoers wandering around the mansion and encountering monster after monster are largely from the original Twisted Souls. The sorcerer Kreon, his imprisoned bride Isabelle, the kid wandering around, the werecat, and several other pieces came from the later material. Genie Joseph herself described being hired to rescue what she saw as an unsellable rough cut and rewrite, reshoot, and re-edit it into something releasable.

The seams are not merely visible. They are basically load-bearing walls.

What saves Spookies, at least somewhat and why I didn't turn it off the moment the idiots from Twisted Souls opened their mouths, are the monster effects. There are muck creatures, zombies, a spider woman, demons, a Grim Reaper, and all sorts of other rubbery horrors. The original filmmakers were clearly more interested in creating monsters than coherent characters, and honestly, I can respect that. The creature work involved effects artists like Gabe Bartalos and others who went on to work in practical effects.

There are several moments where I found myself thinking, "That is actually a pretty good monster." And a lot of them were good as far as the effects go. The Muck Men, the makeup, especially that Spider Woman. 

Then someone starts talking again and reminded me that yes, as bad as this movie is, the original Twisted Souls was likely a lot worse. I know. That is a bold statement given how bad this one actually is. 

Still, there is something almost endearing about a movie willing to throw this many creatures at the screen. If Spookies had a coherent story, halfway competent acting, and characters who seemed like they had actually met one another before arriving at the mansion, it might have been a fun little monster movie. Maybe.

Instead, it is cinematic taxidermy. Two dead movies stitched together and propped up in the hope nobody notices the seams. 

Everybody notices the seams. 

The Maria Pechukas Rabbit Hole

Then Spookies sent me somewhere completely unexpected.

Maria Pechukas plays Isabelle, Kreon's imprisoned wife, and naturally I looked her up afterward. Pechukas apparently had a very small filmography after Spookies, but that led me into an extremely obscure corner of shot-on-video horror.

She later worked repeatedly with filmmaker Jay Lind, whom she was also married to for several years. It immediately made me think of the relationship between Lina Romay and Jesús Franco (and not Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon Zombie).  Her credits include Blood Dreams (also known as Sangre Songes), Valerie, Do You Like Women?, Night of the Cat, and finally Carmilla in 1998.

I initially thought I had stumbled onto a whole series of no-budget Carmilla knockoffs. It is not quite that neat, but it is close enough to be fascinating.

Blood Dreams was a 40-minute lesbian vampire film made in 1991 with Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, and Amy Lynn Baxter, reportedly intended to attract financing for a feature-length version. Valerie again paired Pechukas and Rochon in another lesbian vampire story. Do You Like Women? veered sideways into an erotic horror-comedy about a society of female cannibals, while Night of the Cat involved a woman transforming into a murderous cat creature. Then Lind finally made an actual adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in 1998, with Pechukas herself playing Carmilla in modern-day Long Island.

This is exactly the sort of obscurity that makes me lose an hour on the Internet and not get to bed until very late.

Unfortunately, finding information about these movies is much easier than finding the movies themselves. Most appear to have had tiny VHS releases and essentially no modern distribution. I found one DVD listing for over $130, which is more than I am willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity about an obscure lesbian vampire movie shot on video thirty-five years ago. Not to mention I am not even sure it is the right one. 

SIDE NOTE: Actress Lili Reinhart has been all over social media (well, at least mine) talking about how she wants to do "Carmilla" as a movie and Hollywood is too afraid to do it. Seriously? I found one, maybe two, new versions of this tale that I have never seen before, and I have covered this tale a LOT here. Message to Lili Reinhart: Read my blog; you can learn what has worked and what hasn't for Carmilla. 

So, somewhere out there, though, is an entire little ecosystem of early-1990s microbudget horror starring Maria Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, Amy Lynn Baxter, and others. And now I know it exists.

This is how these things start.

You watch Spookies. Then you look up one actress. Three hours later you are trying to locate a 40-minute lesbian vampire movie from 1991 that may only exist on somebody's deteriorating VHS tape.

The October Horror Movie Challenge is working exactly as intended. This is why I haven't gotten out of the 70s and 80s for horror, too many side quests!

Jackson Connection

Oh. Shit. Yeah, I am supposed to talk about what I can use from this movie for my settings...Uh. I got nuthin'.

Well. That's not 100% true, but the ideas I do have have been better executed in other movies. So let tonight's movie be a cautionary tale about researching movies late at night, and about how all my Peach Tea Monster Energy drinks (my current drink of choice these days) are down in my office, not here next to me when I needed them most. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 44
First Time Views: 30

October Horror Movie Challenge: Gamera (1965)

 Tonight is my oldest son's birthday, and he wanted to watch a Kaiju movie. We have seen all the Godzilla movies and wanted to see something from the same era. To our mutual surprise, we had never seen the first Gamera movie. So tonight it is giant, flying atomic turtles! 

Gamera (1965)

Some airplanes carrying atomic weapons fly over the Arctic. One crashes, explodes, and awakens Gamera, "The Devil's Envoy."

And we are off.

There is no question that Gamera owes a lot, ok everything, to Godzilla. Atomic weapons awaken a giant prehistoric monster, conventional weapons are useless, and Japan once again finds itself being stomped by something enormous. But Gamera quickly establishes his own personality. He breathes fire, feeds on energy, and, most importantly, can pull his limbs into his shell and fly like a gigantic spinning UFO.

That alone was worth the price of admission.

The practical effects are a lot of fun. Miniature cities, tanks, jets, explosions, and plenty of buildings wait to be smashed. Some effects work better than others, but I have always had a soft spot for this kind of physical monster filmmaking. Gamera feels like he is actually there because, in a very literal sense, something really is standing in those miniature streets knocking things over.

It's silly. It doesn't always work. But I love it all the same. 

Another key difference from Godzilla is Toshio/Kenny, the turtle-loving boy who becomes convinced Gamera isn't really evil. Gamera even saves him at one point, planting the seeds for the much more child-friendly direction the series would take later. In this first movie, though, Gamera is still dangerous. People die, buildings burn, and nobody really knows what to do with him.

I would be lying if I didn't admit that Tetsuya "Tetsu" Hayashida wasn't based on the "annoying" kid from all these Kaiju movies.  

Eventually humanity comes up with Plan Z, which is basically: if we cannot kill the giant flying turtle, shoot him into space.

Sure. Why not?

I enjoyed this more than I expected. It is not as polished or as ominous as the original Godzilla, but it has its own weird charm. The moment Gamera pulls everything into his shell and spins off through the sky, you know exactly what kind of movie you are watching.

My son wanted giant monsters for his birthday.

Gamera delivered.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Ah...yeah. Maybe not this time. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 43
First Time Views: 29

October Horror Movie Challenge: Teen Wolf (1985)

 Ok. So. I was talking with my wife over the weekend while doing yard cleanup (it was 70 this past weekend in Chicago!) and I was talking about how I am trying to figure out what species could be found in Jackson Public High School. I have humans, half-demons, and even some ghosts. I was considering some were-creatures like werewolves. She liked the werewolf idea, but she likes werewolves. So I thought I'd go with the movie at the intersection of high school, werewolves, and the 1980s. 1985's "Teen Wolf."

Teen Wolf (1985)

So yeah, this is a rewatch. I saw this in theatres when it first came out. Michael J. Fox plays Scott Howard, a fairly ordinary high school kid who discovers lycanthropy runs in the family. Instead of becoming a ravening monster, he becomes better at basketball, more confident, more popular, and a lot hairier.

What interests me now is how completely Teen Wolf removes werewolves from traditional horror. There is no curse to break, no silver bullet, no tragic transformation under a full moon, and almost no fear of becoming the wolf. Scott's father is also a werewolf and treats the whole thing as an inherited family condition. The real conflict is not "am I becoming a monster?" but "what kind of person am I when everyone suddenly thinks I am special?"

That is a very useful idea for Jackson.

Werewolves in Jackson

I don't think every werewolf in Jackson has to be a cursed killer. I prefer to think of lycanthropy as something that can take many forms. For some, it's an inheritance; for others, it's the result of a bite or curse. Some have more command over it than others. In any case, it gives the werewolf more range than the simple routine of waiting for a full moon.

The inherited kind is particularly to my liking. A Jackson teenager could find out one side of the family has always been "different," and no one else needs to know. When the kid makes his first change, Dad is not beside himself with horror. He sighs and lays down the rules. It is still a frightening business, but it can also be awkward, funny, and quite ordinary.

Teen Wolf would have it that the transformation does away with the person less so than it amplifies what was there to begin with. Scott becomes more athletic and sure of himself, yet he also gets arrogant because everyone is happy to give him credit for being the Wolf. With Jackson, I see lycanthropy ratcheting up aggression, appetite, protectiveness, and territorial instincts without necessarily making him evil.

So more "Bitten" and less "The Wolfman." 

It is a more compelling teenage werewolf. The risk is not so much that the wolf will get the upper hand, but that being the wolf is very gratifying.

Then there is the very Jackson in that the whole town is in on it. An old family may have been turning out werewolves for ages. The principal is aware of it, as is the football coach. Some teachers recall the father’s own episode twenty years back. No one is phoning the police; this is Jackson, and there are ways of handling such matters.

Trouble comes when the kid stops following the rules.

That is the lesson from Teen Wolf. Werewolves need not be Gothic monsters. In a small town, they are your neighbors and farm kids and the family down the road, or the athlete in class. The horror sets in when what has long been under control isn't anymore.

Or at least that is one idea. It is late, and I am tired. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 42
First Time Views: 28

October Horror Movie Challenge: Sukkubus (1989)

Sukkubus, also known as "Sukkubus - den Teufel im Leib" or "Succubus the Devil Inside (in the flesh)" is a German film that has been on my list for a bit. I finally found a copy.  The plot, indeed the entire story, is basically the same as Sennentuntschi (2010).

Sukkubus (1989) 

The film is in German, but you almost don't need to know any to follow the movie. Two shepherds and a boy are up in the Alps tending their flock. They are a bad combination of cruel, horny, and overly religious. One night they decide to add drinking to the mix, and the two shepherds make an artificial woman out of the old rags they have lying around. 

The doll comes to life the next day as a succubus, played by Pamela Prati, who is pretty much only wearing colored contacts. The shepherds, in their fear, alternate between assaulting her and trying to kill her. Unlike Sennentuntschi, there is no doubt about the maliciousness of the succubus. She wants them dead as well. 

But who is the monster here?

The movie identifies the created woman explicitly as a succubus and leans much harder into the supernatural than Sennentuntschi does.

That is where the comparison gets interesting.

When I watched Sennentuntschi in 2021, the question I kept coming back to was whether the woman was a demon, a witch, or simply an abused woman onto whom everyone else was projecting their fear. The film deliberately complicates the old legend. The men create the doll, but what follows becomes tangled up with rape, murder, religious hypocrisy, and decades of violence against women. By the end, the supernatural explanation is almost less horrifying than the human one.

Sukkubus is much closer to the legend in its raw form. The men are isolated, sexually frustrated, drunk, and foolish enough to make themselves a woman. Then the fantasy becomes real and punishes them.

There is something almost fairy-tale simple about that.

Be careful what you make.

Especially when what you are trying to make is another human being for your own use.

The 1989 movie is also much more direct about sexuality. The title itself tells us what sort of creature we are dealing with, and Pamela Prati is presented as an explicitly erotic supernatural presence. That puts the movie squarely into the territory where sexploitation and folk horror overlap. The men want a woman reduced to an object of desire, and then that object becomes a subject with desires, power, and violence of her own.

That is probably the strongest connection between the two movies.

Both begin with men constructing an imaginary woman.

In one version, she becomes a demon.

In the other, the real horror is what the men do to the woman once she exists.

NIGHT SHIFT and Sunny Valley Connections

For NIGHT SHIFT, Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi take me straight to Sunny Valley, not Jackson.

Sunny Valley is where the old stories aren't quaint folklore. They are survival instructions. The mountains are full of things that were there before the town, before the settlers, maybe before humanity itself, and people learn quickly that some traditions exist because someone once ignored them.

That is where The Ragwife fits.

The Ragwife is Sunny Valley’s version of the same basic "made woman" story behind Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi. She is assembled by lonely, cruel, or foolish men from whatever they have at hand: feed sacks, corn silk, quilt scraps, broom straw, flour paste, coal dust, stolen hair, even a church dress. The men make something shaped like a woman because what they really want is a woman without will, without demands, and without the ability to say no.

Then the Hall’er gives her life.

That is the part that makes her very Sunny Valley.

The men think they are performing the act. They think they are making her. In truth, they have only built the invitation.

Something older notices.

The Ragwife is not necessarily a succubus, demon, ghost, or witch. Sunny Valley has plenty of things that do not fit comfortably into those categories, and I am perfectly happy keeping such categorizations vague. She exists because the men tried to reduce a woman to something they could own, and whatever lives in the mountains answers that act by giving their creation exactly what they tried to deny her.

A soul.

A will.

And anger.

The local version of the story probably comes down to one warning:

"A man makes a Ragwife when he wants a woman without a soul. The Hall’er always gives her one anyway."

That makes her closer to the moral machinery of Sennentuntschi than the straightforward demon of Sukkubus, even though she can still function as a supernatural monster. Her violence is not random. She responds to ownership, coercion, shame, and abuse, and her revenge has a symbolic quality to it. The men who tried to make a woman into an object discover that the object can remake them in return.

For a NIGHT SHIFT adventure, I would not explain exactly what she is.

The characters might find three different versions of the story. One old woman insists the Ragwife is a demon. A preacher says she is punishment for lust. Someone else says the Hall’er simply reminds people who forget that living things cannot be owned. 

All three explanations may be wrong.

All three may be dangerously right.

That is how Sunny Valley works.

Jackson has monsters with histories, grudges, motives, and names. Sunny Valley has things that feel more like parts of the landscape. You don't necessarily defeat them by learning their Vitality and Defense and finding the right weapon.

You learn the rule.

You figure out who broke it.

And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is put things back the way they were and leave the mountain alone.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 41
First Time Views: 28

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Gate (1987) and The Gate II (1990)

Heading into the last week! The double feature for tonight is 1987’s The Gate and the follow-up The Gate II. The sequel was made in 1990 but did not see a U.S. theatrical release until 1992. While both are about teenagers opening doors they ought to leave alone, they have very different ideas about how to handle the demons that come through them. I enjoyed The Gate. The Gate II does not quite measure up, but I can appreciate what it set out to do.

The Gate fits my theme, so I figure adding the sequel was okay.

The Gate (1987)

It has a wonderfully simple premise. After a tree comes down in Glen’s (a very young Stephen Dorff in his first movie) backyard, he and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) find a geode in the hole it leaves behind.  Through a combination of blood, strange writing that appears on one of those "magic-slate" tablets. 

Of course, Terry has a heavy metal album from the band "Scarifyce," whose lyrics hold the key to what they have let loose. It is not long before the boys comprehend they have made a gateway for demons called "The Old Ones". 

The whole thing is very much 1987. One can feel the Satanic Panic in the air, yet the film has some fun with it. Terry has the metal records and the occult knowledge to tell when things are going wrong. The heavy metal album in question is more useful than corrupting. The boys have called forth demons, all right, but the music isn't the evil.

I also enjoyed the practical effects quite a bit. Randall William Cook oversaw a combination of miniatures, matte work, forced perspective, and other visual effects, and the movie is all the better for it. The little minions are particularly creepy because they feel like physical entities in the room with the kids as they crawl and swarm.

What I liked the most is the model rocket. When the climax comes around, Glen figures the rocket is a symbol of "love, light, and purity" and can be turned on the demon. He launches it into the creature to shut the gate. It is a fine idea. Most horror films would have the characters cast a spell or hold a relic or weapon. Here they take something of Glen's, something from his family and youth, and make it the means of destruction. The film isn't cynical about it. Love and light have their place. If the story is pushed hard enough, a kid’s model rocket can end an ancient demon. I like that. The symbolism is what is important.

Then there is the matter of the heroes being real kids. They are not twenty-something actors playing at being teens. Glen and Terry are young enough that the situation is truly overwhelming, so it is more satisfying to see them fight back. A modest horror movie, for sure, but it knows what it is and, for the most part, does it well.

The Gate II (1990)

Also known as "The Gate II: Trespassers." The sequel gets off to a good start with Louis Tripp returning as Terry, or Terrence as he is now called. Glen and his family are gone, and Terrence is older and lonelier, with a home life to match. His mother is dead, and his father is an alcoholic. He makes a point of returning to where the first Gate was because he thinks the demonic power there can set things right.

Its a good idea for a sequel. The first film had the children opening the gate by accident; this one has one of them doing it on purpose once he is older. Terrence understands the danger and does it anyway. That puts a darker cast on the proceedings. There is no curiosity here, only desperation.

They have also altered the demon. Instead of a horde of faceless minions, Terrence calls up a single entity to grant wishes. They are appealing at first but are bound to go bad or become repulsive. The filmmakers wanted this one to be a trickster of sorts, not the swarming type in the original. Very good thinking.

Only the execution is an issue. Even with a more ambitious premise, the film is slower and less imaginative, and it has lost some of its charm. The wish-fulfillment side of things ought to open up all sorts of possibilities for the movie, but in too many ways it comes off as smaller and flatter than the original. But I like what they set out to do, though.

In truth, the sequel has more horror than The Gate was. There is a greater focus on the cost of having your way, on desperation, addiction, and corruption. Terrence’s father seems to work a miracle in getting sober and his life back, but we are left in no doubt that anything from the Gate will require payment. That is the film at its best. Terrence has no designs on power, he just wants his dad to get his life back. 

It recycles the notion of pitting light and love against the dark, this time via Terrence’s mother's jewelry box. Its a good enough thematic carry-over even if it does not have the same impact as the model rocket.

So, yeah, The Gate II is not as good. I respect it nonetheless. 

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

You could put either of them in NIGHT SHIFT without much trouble. The first provides the sort of occult mishap that would happen in Jackson. Two kids find something odd in the yard, read what they shouldn't, add some blood and a measure of incomplete knowledge, and before you know it, there is a hole in the Veil. It almost writes itself!

I like how The Gate uses the heavy metal record; in Jackson, the parents would be quick to point the finger at the music and D&D as the source of any demons. They would be wrong for the most part. The record isn't evil; the kids have simply stumbled onto something real that everyone else took for fantasy. That is a more serviceable form of Satanic Panic for NIGHT SHIFT. The adults blame the music out of ignorance of the mechanics, while the kids know enough to compound the problem. Terry would be right at home with the occult kids in Jackson.

But the sequel offers me something I like even better: the kid who grows up and figures out that the power that nearly put him under can still be useful. Very NIGHT SHIFT really. One of the Jackson survivors returns after his life has gone to pieces, remembering the demon or ritual that was his undoing and what it was capable of. This time it is not an accident; he opens the gate by choice. Much darker. That's how I want the supernatural in Jackson to be. Magic is hazardous but not without value. If it didn't deliver, nobody would be drawn to it. The finest kind of temptation is one that works. For a while anyway.

In fact, Terry is a bit like my Darren Vale. In his first adventure ("Am I Evil?"), he is just a little jerk who happens on some real magic. In his next adventure, "Land of Confusion," he has made better use of his power and trapped all the PCs (and a lot of NPCs) in his own world. 

Final Thoughts

I have had more fun with The Gate than with some of the movies I have put in front of me lately. The practical effects hold up well, the kids are likable, and the heavy-metal occultism is entertaining. I am fond of the straightforwardness of putting down an old demon with a model rocket of love and purity.

The Gate II is a step down, but I admire the ambition. Bringing Terry back and having him put himself in the path of the Gate, rather than stumbling into it again, is a far better concept. The first is the more enjoyable movie. The second is the darker one and perhaps the superior horror idea. But it is not the better film.

Still. I have spent worse than three and a half hours. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 40
First Time Views: 27

October Horror Movie Challenge: Midnight Triple Feature

 It's the weekend, so I figure a TRIPLE feature is in order. These movies are not going to be accused of being classics. No. But they all put me in mind of what has been on my mind this month: 1980s small-town horror with a side of witches. Plus two of these have some great casts.

There is The Midnight Hour (1985), Midnight Offerings (1981), and The Dark Side of Midnight (1984). One will have its share of witches, vampires, zombies and Halloween; another puts teenage witches in suburbia; the third has a serial killer making trouble for a small town. Three films but they are all asking the same thing: what when the horror is not over there? What if it is in your town?

The Midnight Hour (1985)

This made-for-TV Halloween affair concerns some teenagers in the New England town of Pitchford who put their hands on some old costumes and artifacts from the local museum. In the course of a prank they inadvertently bring back Lucinda Cavender, a witch put to death centuries ago, and an assortment of monsters including vampires and zombies. A Halloween party runs amok.

It is not a very good movie, but it has a peculiar charm. It knows exactly what it is: television Halloween horror with its requisite teenagers, graveyards, curses, and a soundtrack yearning for a bit of Thriller magic, with some of the same special-effects people.

And then there is that cast.

Shari Belafonte is Melissa Cavender, the original witch’s descendant. LeVar Burton (Star Trek:TNG) plays Vinnie, Peter DeLuise (21 Jump Street) plays Mitch, Dedee Pfeiffer plays Mary, and Cindy Morgan (Tron) plays Vicky. Dick Van Patten and Kurtwood Smith as parents, Kevin McCarthy (at his Kevin McCarthyist!) is Judge Crandall (he even gets a 'those damn kids and their loud music!'), and Wolfman Jack as a radio DJ. Macaulay Culkin is here in his first role, uncredited, as a kid for Halloween. I mean seriously? Did they all have contract obligations to ABC?

Then Shari Belafonte as a witch? OR at least witch-adjacent. 

I had a massive crush on her then. Seeing her as a witch felt like she was reading my letters to Santa.

What I like best about the small-town horror in The Midnight Hour is Pitchford. The whole town has a history regarded as civic trivia until it isn't. The old witch is legend, the museum has the artifacts, and everyone knows the stories but doesn't believe them. Then comes Halloween and the dead come home.

That is the kind of small-town horror I prefer. There are always tales of the old cemetery or the house left to rot or the woman said to be a witch or the road one should not be on after midnight. They are just stories. Unless they are not.

If there is one gem in this movie, it was Jonna Lee as the undead cheerleader Sandy Matthews. She feels like she walked straight out of Jackson for me. I would do the same for Keely, but in truth I can't bring myself to do that to her. 

The movie isn't good, but it does have charm. It also has a great soundtrack.

Yes, that was The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" playing when Sheri Belafonte's character talked to her witch-turned-vampire ancestor. See, this movie does have some redeeming value!  

Midnight Offerings (1981)

I reviewed this in 2019, and I still have a soft spot for it. Another made-for-TV piece on teenage witches from the early 80s is precisely what I am in the mood for.

Melissa Sue Anderson (Little House on the Prairie) plays Vivian Sotherland, a young witch with no qualms about using her powers to harm or kill anyone who stands in her way. The new girl in town, Robin Prentiss, played by Mary Beth McDonough, discovers she has magic too. Patrick Cassidy plays David, the boyfriend caught in the middle. And you have Marion Ross, Gordon Jump, and Cathryn Damon in a cast that makes you think someone went through the 1981 TV listings and called every name they could think of. 

My 2019 review described the plot as simple and, to some extent, weak, but very entertaining. I would stand by that assessment today. Juanita Bartlett is intent on putting in nearly every well-worn notion of witchcraft she can into a television movie, and for the most part it works.

What I find more to my liking these days is the normality of everything surrounding the witchcraft. Vivian is not ensconced in a dilapidated mansion at the town’s edge. She is a teenager with a boyfriend, parents, teachers, and classmates to deal with, along with the standard high-school troubles. She just has a way of resolving them with witchcraft.

A fine model for small-town horror. The supernatural need not be sequestered in a distant Gothic setting; it can be beside you in chemistry. Jackson no doubt sees the appeal.

The Dark Side of Midnight (1984)

The Dark Side of Midnight is a different matter altogether.

With an estimated price tag of $10,000, this one has a detective on the trail of "The Creeper," a serial killer making short work of people in a small town. You will not find any witches, psychic youths, or zombies here (I didn't know that when I started it). Only a killer and a community slowly realizing danger is among them.

It is regional filmmaking on a shoestring, and you can tell. The acting is unrefined, the pacing worse for wear. At times, the film feels less like a finished feature and more like someone put down a camera and some friends in a town willing to be filmed.

I appreciate that sort of thing. We did a fair share of that back in the 1980s ourselves. 

Would not go so far as to say it is a good movie. In fact, it is fairly bad, but it has its moments. 

Slicker productions often lose what regional horror has as an advantage. The streets are real, the houses look lived in, and the police station doesn't have the air of a set because it wasn't one. That ordinariness makes a small-town killer all the more effective, since it blurs the line between horror and daily life.

I can forgive the movie for any shortcomings with this layer of authenticity. Plus it is a Troma movie, so that has to count for something. 

Small-Town Horror and the 1980s

Put the three together and they are three takes on the same 1980s premise.

In The Midnight Hour the town’s old supernatural past is something no one remembers to be afraid of. In Midnight Offerings it is part and parcel of a teenager’s existence. The Dark Side of Midnight requires no such things. The town affords the isolation and false sense of security needed for the horror to take hold.

That comes back during this marathon. Small towns feel safe because everyone knows each other.

Horror inverts it.

Everyone knows where you live, which means the monster does too. Everyone knows your car, the road you take home, and when your parents are away. And in a town of some age there is an old story nobody puts much stock in anymore. Hell. Growing up, we memorized everyone's license plates so we could recognize them. Something my kids have never done. That is small-town logic.

This is Jackson.

It is not a cursed hamlet cut off from the rest of the world that is scary. It is the fact that it is utterly ordinary: the schools and diners and churches, the record stores and football games and old homes and the local legends and the people who have been around for years.

And then the impossible occurs.

Good small-town horror doesn't obliterate that normality; it shows what was there to begin with. All three of these movies get that, even if they aren't all that good on their own.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 38
First Time Views: 25

October Horror Movie Challenge: A Slumber Party Massacre Double Feature

The grindhouse classic deserves a double feature. So for tonight’s viewing I have queued a double feature of the 1982 The Slumber Party Massacre and its 1987 follow up, Slumber Party Massacre II. They are good examples of the slasher genre, maybe even some of the best, but I am watching them more to gather ideas for my West End Girls adventure.

The first film has an interesting pedigree. Rita Mae Brown (the author and feminist activist) wrote it, and Amy Holden put it on screen; a slasher flick originally made by women. Fairly progressive for the 1980s. One could be excused for not figuring that out with all the long, lingering shots of naked young ladies on display. Brown's screenplay was meant as a parody of the genre, but Roger Corman, the producer, had other ideas and wanted a straight horror movie. The result is a film that falls between those two poles. I mean, Corman has a reputation to live up to. Though I would have liked to have seen Brown's original treatment, Sleepless Nights, before it got "Cormanized."

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

The premise is as simple as it gets. Trish, a high schooler (though we do hear she is 18), throws a slumber party while her parents are away. And there is Russ Thorn, an escaped murderer, making his way through the neighborhood with a huge power drill. 

I will leave you to imagine the rest. Don't tax yourself; you'll do more work than the movie does.

Ok. So, in practice, the movie is better than it sounds. It is quicker than your average early eighties slasher and has a good deal of humor. The girls are convincing as friends and not just a roster of victims biding their time. It has some self-awareness without tipping into full parody. Then there's the drill as a weapon, hardly subtle.

It has all the worst of the genre too, the nudity and the voyeurism, which makes the fact that Brown and Jones were behind it all the more of an oddity. They do not so much subvert the formula as work within it, giving the exploitation market what it wants while having a word or two with its assumptions.

You will see some familiar faces in the cast. Robin Stille is Valerie, Debra De Liso is Kim, and Brinke Stevens is one of the party guests. Stille, in particular, would make a name for herself as a scream queen in films like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, which, oddly enough is not on my list of movies to watch.

Valerie is one of the better characters. For most of the running time, she stays away from the main party, but when the killing starts, she becomes much more central. I like that the girls are not left to wait for rescue.

It is a cheap, at times ridiculous movie, very much of its era, but also efficient. Russ Thorn is an escaped killer with a drill, no need for any complicated mythology. The peril is in how fast a night out with a group of ordinary girls can become a nightmare. That is why it works.

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

By the time the sequel comes around five years later, subtlety is seen as unnecessary. This movie was also unnecessary, but here we are. We also lost the "The" somewhere. 

Valerie’s younger sister Courtney Bates is now a teenager and still reeling from what befell her sister. She has nightmares of a rockabilly type in leather who has an electric guitar with a huge drill on it.

Yes, it is what it is.

Crystal Bernard (before her run on Wings) plays Courtney (replacing Jennifer Meyers from the first film), and Deborah Brock wrote and directed. The film takes the original concept and heads straight for A Nightmare on Elm Street country, muddling dreams, trauma, and reality until you can hardly tell where one ends and the next begins. Atanas Ilitch is the Driller Killer, and he is nothing like Russ Thorn. He will sing, dance, and put the boot in to Courtney like someone who's part rockabilly frontman, part Freddy Krueger, and has been given a guitar of no practical use whatsoever.

It is all rather absurd. I cannot say it is good, but it is memorable enough.

Courtney is what makes it work. The trauma has not left her even if she was spared the first movie’s events by dint of her sister. Her friends dismiss her visions as nightmares until the impossible shows up. In that way, the sequel is less an exercise in the escaped-murderer genre and more about the dread of something from your past coming back for you.

The Los Angeles Times made the same observation in their review of the day, drawing a line to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and asking whether Courtney is seeing things or in the grip of a hallucination. I find that more useful than the guitar drill.

Jackson Connections and West End Girls

I get some mileage out of both these films for my West End Girls adventure, if not quite what they set out to give.

From the first I take the closeness of young women in a space where they ought to be secure. It matters, since I have no wish for the victims in West End Girls to be just another name on Edwin Harrow's (my slasher) tally. They are college freshmen with their friends and routines, their jokes and summer plans and the odd complaint. Some share a room; others share a wardrobe. There is always one studying while the rest want to go out.

When the killings come, the ordinariness of it before then only heightens the intrusion.

The Slumber Party Massacre gets this right on its own. The girls go about their business, and the horror comes anyway.

Slumber Party Massacre II offers a different thing: the reiteration of trauma. That is nearer to the supernatural heart of West End Girls. What happens in 1985 is not some other killer emulating Edwin Harrow. It is the same horror from 50 years ago.

Edwin was fixated on Marian Ashcroft and Clara Deane, but his anger reached out to other freshman women he though were laughing at him. From May 25 to 30, 1935 the original murders ran their course. Marian lived to tell of it, some did not.

Now history haunts the present.

I want the adventure to read as a haunting in a slasher's outfit. At first, the characters spot the usual: a girl alone at night, a tail, a body left on the emptying campus. All the signs of a slasher-killer.

Then it does not add up. A man is seen in clothes from another era. A victim says she can hear music from 1935. A dorm room seems older for a moment. One has a dream of a stranger and finds her picture in the yearbook.

The past isn't recalled so much as attempted again.

These two movies make that clear to me. The Slumber Party Massacre has the social world of the young women. Slumber Party Massacre II suggests that one can survive a horror and still not be free of it; trauma can become something of a supernatural affair.

The trick with West End Girls is to put those together and keep the women as people and not mere victims. 

Edwin had no such qualms, viewing them as objects for his resentment. The adventure must do better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 35
First Time Views: 23

October Horror Movie Challenge: A Sorority House Double Feature

Heading into the homestretch here, and I like doing more double features. Just like being at the old 67 Drive-in! For tonight’s double feature I am going back to my college days with a pair of slashers set in sorority houses, namely 1982’s The House on Sorority Row and the 1986's Sorority House Massacre.

They are not subtle films by any means; honestly, they are just excuses to have college girls run around in various stages of undress, but both have ideas I can get behind, especially for my own West End Girls adventure for Jackson.

The House on Sorority Row (1982)

Mark Rosman directs this one, with Kate McNeil as Katey and Eileen Davidson as Vicki, and Janis Ward, Robin Meloy, Harley Jane Kozak, Jodi Draigie, and Ellen Dorsher playing the rest of the sorority. The film opens on seven sisters getting ready for graduation under the thumb of their house mother, the imperious Mrs. Slater. When a mean-spirited prank turns deadly and appears to have killed her, the girls put the body out of sight so the graduation party can go ahead.

Then someone starts killing them off.

What makes it a better-than-average early-eighties slasher is that there is more to it than a killer in a room full of young women. The crisis is of the girls’ own making. They do something terrible, then panic and compound the problem in an effort to cover it up. The murders have some consequence to them instead of being random. In trying to hold onto the secret and the party, they only open themselves up to more trouble. It is a trope I have seen many times, but it works.

There is history to the house as well, which gains in importance over the course of the movie. It is not just the apparent death of Mrs. Slater that is the horror, but the older secret tied to the place and its inhabitants. That is what holds my interest. A sorority house is a location with memory, not just where the characters reside. By the final act, the girls are not being made to pay for a prank so much as having come across a story that was underway long before they got there. Very effective horror.

This movie is also a great example of the Generational Horror that I really want to achieve in Jackson. The sins of the past are not necessarily revisited by the younger generation, but most often it is the younger generation that has to pick up the bill. This one also has that empty college campus I am looking for in West End Girls.

Sorority House Massacre (1986)

Four years on we have another bunch of college women in a house with a past. Beth comes to the sorority following the passing of the aunt who brought her up and at once has nightmares and déjà vu about the building. At the same time, Bobby, a murderer in a mental institution, feels that she is back at the house and gets out.

Beth/Laura is a psych major, but she also has a lot of visions and/or memories. Could be both given the bad psychology in this one. But it's a horror movie and not my PSYCH 212 lecture I used to give. 

He has his reasons. Bobby is Beth's brother. He killed the rest of the family some years back and went after her too. She lived and was raised somewhere else, repressing the memory to the point where she does not know the sorority is her old home. Yeah. We have seen this plot device as well.

Then, of course, all the girls stay the night in the house he killed everyone in.

Carol Frank wrote and directed the film for Roger Corman's New Concorde. Having done The Slumber Party Massacre with Amy Holden Jones, Frank's hand is evident. One can also see Halloween all over it. Bobby is your typical escaped killer coming home to put things right and Beth has her psychic warnings and dreams. I find the psychic side of it the most compelling. Beth has no conscious recollection of Bobby. Her mind does, however. She will have dreams of the murders before she can put any meaning to them. The house is what brings back the memories she has put away, and Bobby in some fashion is aware of her from miles off.

Once more, the building has the memory before the person. In that way, the sorority house is something more than mere scenery. It is almost a character in its own right.

West End Girls

These two films have me thinking about West End Girls right away.

The setting for that one is set during Memorial Day week in 1985 by which time the students at Illinois Beecher and MacAlister Colleges have for the most part vacated their dorms. A nearly deserted campus is what makes it work. The buildings are there, and the few students left are in them, but the college’s ordinary social life has run its course. It is not unlike the sorority houses in the other movies, only you do not need a sorority for it. The women’s dorms turn into isolated communities where all are privy to each other's routines, yet there are not many witnesses on hand should anything come to pass.

Then there is the buried history.

With The House on Sorority Row, the violence is set off when present day students let an old family secret tied to the house get in the way of them. In Sorority House Massacre, Beth goes back to the scene of her family’s murder without really knowing she is doing so.

West End Girls covers the same ground, if on a bigger scale. I still need to detail more of the adventure, but it is based on a rumor that used to float around my hometown. In some ways this is the Ur-Adventure of Jackson.  Some fifty years back, Edwin Harrow killed five freshman women and Clara Deane in an attempt on Marian Ashcroft. The colleges did their part to cover up the truth, putting Edwin down as one of the victims instead of the killer.

In 1985, that kind of violence starts to happen again.

It is the notion I find with these college slashers. From a student’s vantage point, the place is transitory; you live there for a while, get a degree, and leave. The building endures and with it the stories.

The girls in West End Girls are not targeted because they were unwise or went into the wrong house. They have come to a spot where something awful was done and never properly put to rest. There is a difference. They are living in the wrong place and it is up to the player characters to stop it.

Edwin is not just another slasher after college girls. He is what remains of a wound the institutions refused to acknowledge, half a century ago. It lends the piece more of a ghost-story air than your average slasher, even though I want it to start like one.

Again. If I am waxing political in the adventure, well, no one lives in a vacuum. 

The opening death(s) should be of a type we are very familiar with. A young woman by herself in a largely vacant dorm at night. A figure at the end of the hall. A door that ought to have been locked.

After that, the PCs try to find out that the pattern predates them, and the adventure takes a turn. This isn't a slasher movie. This is a ghost story.

For the most part, the girls in these two films are hemmed in by someone else’s secret. With West End Girls, my girls will try to get to the bottom of it and put an end to the role history has for them. That is how they are not like the ones Edwin put to death long ago.

The old tale has five young women dying. But not the West End Girls.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 33
First Time Views: 21

October Movie Challenge: Poltergeist II & III (1986, 1988)

 I wanted to do these two movies back-to-back since they are more connected to each other than they are to the first movie. The original Poltergeist is not just a great horror movie; it is a great movie, full stop. Spielberg shows the promise here that will earn him the accolades he gets with ET and Shindler's list. 

Sadly, Poltergeist directors Brian Gibson (II) and Gary Sherman (III) don't quite live up to the bar Spielberg set, but then again, who can? But if you ignore the first movie and take these two on their own merits...well, they still don't live up, but there is a perfectly serviceable horror movie here.

Niether of these re first time views.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

"They're baaack."

I can't say with 100% certainty that the title of this movie didn't have a roundabout way of influencing the name of this blog. The name of my blog comes from an older website of mine, which in turn came from a newspaper column about weirdness I used to write for my high school newspaper. Though I am pretty sure I started that in 1985. In any case, the movie and the blog both take their name from the same sources.

In another bizarre connection. I guess I connection I used to talk to my dead grandmother on my play telephone too. But in my defense, I was only 2 at the time. 

The Freeling family has moved from their haunted house, now a hole in the ground, to live with Diane's mother. Missing and unexplained is older daughter Dana. The script for the movie has her at college, but that sequence was cut from the final shooting script due to the murder of Dominique Dunne, the actress who had played Dana. I have to admit that bothered me a lot at the time.

A dig at the former site of their home reveals a burial pit under the graveyard already there. Yes, it is an extra graveyard! BUT this becomes the key feature of this and the next film, introducing Rev. Henry Kane (played by Julian Beck), one of the creepiest horror movie villains in a long time. So the movie is redeemed by this alone.

We get a Magical Native American, Taylor (Will Sampson), to help the Freelings against Kane. This would be the last film roles for both Sampson and Beck.

What follows is fairly predictable, but not unenjoyable. This film has an uphill battle afterall. There are some great special effects. The "Worm" stands out, but the "Spielberginess" of the movie is gone.

Poltergeist III (1988)

In some ways, I enjoyed this one more. This movie only has Carlo Anne (a sadly very sick Heather O'Rourke) and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons, as in the previous two movies. Henry Kane is back, played by Nathan Davis, with voice-overs by Corey Burton. The setting switches to Chicago, a place I was already in love with, so there was that.

Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are out as the Freeling parents as Carold Anne is sent to live with her aunt Patricia (Nancy Allen) and her new husband, Bruce (Tom Skerritt). I like both Nancy Allen and Tom Skerritt, so I was fine with this, and if the plot contrivance was to send Carol Anne to a special school, well that is fine, though I did have concerns about parents sending their child away after two traumatic experiences.  

We do learn from Tangina that there have been no incidents since the last movie and they only start now because Carol Anne's psychiatrist, Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire) dredges it all up again via hypnosis. 

This movie also features an early outing for Lara Flynn Boyle as Bruce's teenage daughter Donna Gardner. 

This moves the action from haunted houses built over graveyards to the modern John Hancock Center in Chicago. A good example of my "Horror Comes Home" theme. 

The Poltergeist Tragedies

I do at least want to acknowledge the various deaths that took place. Dominique Dunne was just 22 when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Her death really bothered me at the time. Later on, both Will Sampson and Julian Beck would die soon after the second movie, and of course the most famous was Heather O'Rourke, age 12, who died in February of 1988 after filming, but before the movie was released in June.

Poltergeist 2015

I wanted to watch the 2015 Poltergeist with Sam Rockwell, but honestly I am a bit tired now. This was a lot easier to do 15 years ago.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Both NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson, IL can draw on ideas from both Poltergeist II and III, though for different things. And honestly this is why I picked these two for tonight even though I have already seen them both.

With Poltergeist II it is the notion that one can get away from the supernatural and not have escaped it for good. The Freelings in Cuesta Verde have left town to put their lives back together, doing as much as anyone would in their position to leave it all behind. It does not keep Reverend Kane from putting in an appearance. I think of this with Jackson. Put down a haunting, and you are not guaranteed a clean ending. Some things have a memory of those who hurt them, some places hold on to former residents, and a family can be tied to something that will follow them anywhere.

I want room in NIGHT SHIFT for such stories. A bunch of characters can put an end to an artifact or a terrible encounter and go home to finish school and grow up. But come five or ten years, and something happens that makes them realize the experience has left its mark. They thought the matter was settled years ago, but then they have to consider they may never have understood what went on. In Poltergeist II at least, getting out alive and leaving something in your past are not the same.

Poltergeist III is in some respects more interesting to work with. The move to Chicago alters the whole mood. Carol Anne is older and with relatives in a high-rise. The supernatural is to be found in the elevators and mirrors and parking garages rather than another suburban house. That is along the lines of what I have in mind for my Chicago 1992 campaign.

By 1992, the Jackson kids have put some distance between themselves and their former home. They are at college or at work, sharing an apartment, having relationships, and paying bills. They have obligations and have let some of their old friends go. This is significant because in Jackson they had a support system. If something odd happened, there were people around who knew what it was, and even if the adults didn’t believe them, they had each other.

In Chicago, none of that applies. Old friends are hundreds of miles off, and no one at work or in college has any idea what transpired in Jackson. It is hard to tell someone who has never seen anything supernatural why you are afraid of a certain sound or reflection. The characters are more capable, but their support system is gone.

The city also puts the horror in a different light. In Jackson, I see it in the woods or an abandoned house outside of town. Chicago has its share of forgotten spots, but there is something about having the supernatural in the heart of a crowded city. An apartment building can have hundreds of people who don’t know one another. You might hear screaming through the wall and be told to mind your own business. The elevator could stop on a floor where a tenant is not remembered. There is a reflection in an empty hallway. You can be in the company of others all day and find nobody to put stock in what is happening to you.

That is the horror I am after in Chicago 1992.

There is a contrast too between the supernatural and the demands of being an adult. As a teen, a haunting might mean missing school or lying to your parents. At twenty-two, you still have to be at work in the morning, and the landlord wants his rent. Your classes do not stand down because you saw a dead woman in the lift, and your partner may well think you are losing it for not looking in the bathroom mirror. Those pressures put a different spin on the story. The characters have more freedom but also responsibilities they cannot shirk.

And that is how Jackson and Chicago differ. In Jackson, the kids are coming to realize that the world is stranger and more perilous than the adults say. They are young enough to hope an older head has the answers. By the time we get to Chicago 1992, they are the adults. They have to make the calls and make sure everyone is alright when things go sideways. There is no parent or teacher standing by with the solution.

Poltergeist III stays with me for that reason. I have no desire to rework Reverend Kane, the film’s mirror tricks, or Carol Anne’s tale. I want to see what happens when the supernatural tags along from childhood into adulthood.

The Jackson kids have made their way and put down new roots. But the trouble they ran into back home may have done the same.

Now I am in the mood to do a Chicago-based horror movie marathon. I bet there are enough movies. According to IMDb, there are 152 movies tagged "Horror" and "Chicago, Illinois." I might have next year's theme! Though I do want to do psychic movies sometime as well.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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