Thankful For: Rula Lenska

Published November 26, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

(Thanksgiving 2020 Performer Appreciation Post.)

While divas and acting icons such as Faye Dunaway, Cicely Tyson, Elke Sommar and Jane Alexander have shown up in smaller roles in recent horror projects, they rarely command focus for more than a scene or two. Thus, 2018’s Aura (AKA The Exorcism of Karen Walker) provides a truly nice exception to this trend by placing Rula Lenska, a British television and theatre mainstay, squarely in the middle of the film’s spook-laden trajectory.

With a simple and direct focus, Lenska, who gained a tabloid presence in the ‘70s when it was revealed that she was a member of Polish royalty, fills her character Ada with a brooding sense of purpose. A psychic, approached by a former colleague’s nephew for assistance, Ada soon finds herself more connected to the circumstances at hand than she imagined. As she fights to save a young woman from a years-long possession by a malevolent genie, Lenska resonates with both determination and fatigue here, giving the strange set-up a sense of realism here.

Lenska, who first gained fame as a female pop star in Rock Follies (and its follow-up Rock Follies ’77), also has a number of other genre credits to her name, including Queen Kong, a feministic take on the King Kong legend, and The Deadly Females, a sexy assassin epic. All these credits are proudly on display at http://www.rulalenska.co.uk/.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Lady Possessed (1952).

Published March 28, 2020 by biggayhorrorfan

1952’s Lady Possessed featured the distinguished pairing of the elegant James Mason and the always dramatic June Havoc. As veteran performers with such credits as A Star Is Born and Gentleman’s Agreement between them, they naturally imbued the supernatural melodramatics of the story here with an air of earnest believability.

After a traumatic miscarriage, Jean Wilson (Havoc) begins renting a country cottage, due to the insistent recommendation of her husband (Stephen Dunne), in order to recuperate. But rest is the last thing that occurs for our beleaguered heroine when the house’s former mistress begins to take over her personality. Jean is soon tracking down the dead woman’s husband (James Mason), a famous novelty pianist, and integrating herself into his life. A disastrous séance, moodily filmed by directors Roy Kellino and William Spier, a change in her hair color and bouts of sleepless, incredibly erratic behavior ultimately lead to a moodily gothic yet emotionally abrupt climax here.

Produced by Mason and based on a story-script by his wife Pamela, who also sharply enacts Havoc’s sassy best friend Sybil, this project is also notable for providing Havoc with the rare opportunity to play a lead in a film. Always memorable, she was often cast in the Sybil role in her projects, perfecting the art of playing the bright, smart talking companion to a variety of leading ladies including Alice Faye, Dorothy McGuire and Gene Tierney.

Interestingly, years later Mason and Havoc would also be connected through their appearances in two different projects based on Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Mason, of course, played the mysterious Straker in Tobe Hooper’s popular 1979 television adaptation of the book. Havoc, meanwhile, played the devoted yet bloodsucking Aunt Clara in Larry Cohen’s less successful A Return to Salem’s Lot in 1987.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Sharkbait Retro Village: Death at Love House

Published February 14, 2019 by biggayhorrorfan

Death Main

Mysterious houses have not been kind to the fragile male ego in horror films. James Brolin and Ryan Reynolds both succumbed to the madness of the Amityville house in different versions of The Amityville Horror while Jack Nicholson and Steven Webber spiraled into insanity, decades apart, while attending to The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. Similarly, novelist Joel Gregory in 1976’s Death at Love House finds himself transported to the brink of erotic hysteria by the lingering essence of a former movie queen in her long shuttered abode. Dorothy Death

Efficiently helmed by veteran television director EW Swackhamer, this telefilm is perhaps most notable for its use of such Golden Era greats as Joan Blondell, John Carradine, Dorothy Lamour and Sylvia Sidney. That they all play former rivals of or associates to the glamorous Lorna Love, a kind of Jean Harlow-Marilyn Monroe-Jayne Mansfield hybrid, makes this quick primetime horror a truly fun experience for those lovers of ‘30s and ‘40s cinema. Sidney, as Ciara Joseph, the mansion in question’s caretaker, definitely has the most interesting role, but one has to wonder how this frequently cantankerous presence felt about playing the film’s silly twist in the project’s final reels.

Joan Death Of course an argument could be made that DALH, piloted around the disintegration of Gregory’s marriage to his wife/collaborator Donna (Kate Jackson) as they work on a project about Love, truly comes alive when LaMour, as coffee commercial queen Denise Christian, reminisces about Love’s evil deeds. Blondell devotees are also sure to admire her hysterical break from reality during the heat of the film’s fiery climax. Whatever your preference, DALH is ultimately high on mysterious mood and thoroughbred nostalgia.

Dorothy Trio Death

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Review: The Vatican Tapes

Published July 30, 2015 by biggayhorrorfan

That Catholic upbringing never quite leaves you, does it? I’ve been a card carrying Agnostic for years now, but the thought of Satan still gives me the willies!

Thus, unlike a seeming majority of film critics, I truly enjoyed current theatrical release The Vatican Tapes. Revolving around the dissolution of the life of a young woman named Angela (a multileveled Olivia Dudley); TVT eventually promises the rise of a female Anti-Christ, a genre awesomeness that set my little red rebel heart tittering with joy.

Director Mark Neveldine and writer Christopher Borrelli, also, supply the necessary ingredients that every lover of The Omen series might, readily, expect. There is the presence of ominous ravens as Angela’s spiritual guides and plenty of physical mayhem occurs to anyone who might threaten her ascent. The film’s most sensational sequence involves a group of restless mental patients who are lured into homicidal activity by one of Angela’s ominously whispered chants. Kathleen Robertson (Scary Movie 2, Psycho Beach Party), also, compels as Angela’s psychiatrist, who is the chilling recipient of the otherworldly tortured woman’s prescient gifts. Best of all, this feature offers up a female horror figure that isn’t a wispy ghost (Darkness Falls, Insidious, Stay Alive, Woman in Black) but a complicated, flesh and blood anti-heroine.

Neveldine’s casting choices are, also, spot-on with character actors like Michael Pena, Dougray Scott, (B-movie King) Michael Pare, Djimon Hounsou and Gossip Girl’s John Patrick Amedori providing appropriate texture and Shakespearian gravitas to the proceedings.

Granted, it doesn’t break the waves into a superhumanly new form of cinema, but The Vatican Tapes does deliver exactly what everyone wants in a possession flick. It’s a well done, (fairly) standard operation that torch bears the way into spooky fun for anyone who is willing to take the ride.

Be sure to keep up with all the fiery levitating at https://www.facebook.com/TheVaticanTapes.

Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan

Review: Claudia Qui

Published August 2, 2014 by biggayhorrorfan

Reminiscent of such slow burning 70s pictures as John Hancock’s dreamy Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and (even) the Shirley MacLaine supernatural opus The Possession of Joel Delaney, writer-director Tonjia Atomic’s (55 minute) Claudia Qui is an intriguing, music laden adventure.

After discovering an ancient photo among her personal work files, photographer Claudia (a fine Barbara Burgio) soon begins to exhibit weird behavior. These occurrences are mild, at first, but soon begin to take over her life. As her concerned boyfriend (a very natural Don Ayers) fights to hold onto her, Claudia seems ready to dive, completely, into the characteristics of the mysterious persona that has been haunting her.

Filled with Josh Phenicie’s simple yet beautiful cinematography and some fine editing (including Derrick Carey’s opening and closing title sequences), Atomic allows us to amble through Claudia’s dreams (done with nice black and white photography) and somnambulant waking states. This, ultimately, creates an ending that surprises and compels viewers.

Imbued with an intimate knowledge of the arts scene and a meticulous background score of fine tunes, Claudia Qui is not a film for those who enthuse for the quick kill, but for those who like to dive into the psychological crevices of the very impressionable mind.

Be sure to keep up with all of Atomic’s vibrantly eclectic projects at http://www.tonjiaatomic.com.

Until the next time – SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

http://www.facebook.com/biggayhorrorfan