Psycho (1960)

Hi I'm Guy Strange, its time to dust of the old copy of the Hitchcock classic starring Anthony Perkins and his adams apple...PSYCHO!

So whats it about Guy Strange?

I would love to see Psycho for the first time again...not knowing what is coming and letting it lead me around in circles.
Janet Leigh is Marion Crane who spends her lunch time bumping uglies with the guy from the hardware store. Trouble is he has an ex wife, debts to pay and she wants to marry. However until he pays his debt, wins the lottery or Marion steals money from one of her companies rich clients then she never will.

What can she do?

So she goes back to work, meets some sleazy old man who is despositing $40k in hard cash and Marion is assigned to take care of it.
Cooly Marion tells her boss she has a headache and does a runner with the money. With intent to take the money to pay off her lovers debt and get married.

So she sets off but not before the boss sees her in her car when she should be at home resting! She all kinds of thoughts are going through her head as she drives to Arizona to meet her man.

Its pissing down

After sleeping in the car, a run in with a harsh looking cop and buying a new car she drives into the night and the rain comes crashing down..she can't see a thing..she'll have to stop..

Erm.. second thoughts I might sleep in the car

Ah yes..hindsight is a wonderful thing.

So out of the rain she sees a lady's shadow in the master bedroom of the old house on the hill behind the motel, and down comes a gangly young man with a large adams apple and a winning warm smile. His name is Norman Bates and he runs the motel with his mother.

So Norman checks Marion in, then checks her out, invites her for some lunch.. just sandwiches and milk nothing fancy and Marion kindly agrees.


So Norman goes back to the house and gets the grub ready. Marion hears another argument from the house, basically the old woman calls her a whore! Anyway sheepishly Norman comes back with the food and they converse.

Norman throws some lines out to Marion such as 'you eat like a bird' - 'my hobby is stuffing things!' hubba hubba - Marion is not fazed though, she pecks at her sandwich and talks about regrets and trapping yourself in situations. Norman feels the same and discusses his mothers 'illness' and they seem to bond, Marion wishes him goodnight as she has internally decided to do the right thing, drive back and give in the remainder of the money.

Norman decides not to the do right thing by perving at Marion through a hole in the wall as she gets undressed to take a shower.
Norman now wanders back to the house and sits in the kitchen thinking about Marion in the shower I would wager.

So Marion is having a shower, when behind the shower curtain the figure of a woman dressed in black enters the room, pulls the curtain back and stabs Marion to death.

Norman comes screaming down the hill and finds the body and disposes of it rather neatly. So the woman we have spent the first half of the film getting to know has been taken away from us.. what now?

Enter Lila Crane, Marions sister played by the fiesty Vera Miles. She drops in on Marion's bloke at his hardware store.

They both search for the missing Marion with the help of a Private Dick who traces her back to the Bates Motel, he calls Lila and Sam to let them know he finally got a trace of her.
After grilling Norman, sending his adams apple into overdrive the Private Dick known as Arbogast decides to interview Normans mother, against his wishes as she is 'sick'.

Unfettered Arbo goes into the house and is murdered by the woman in black.

Back at base having not heard from Arbogast, stoic Sam and fiesty Lila go looking, Sam eventually goes to the police after visiting the motel only to see a woman in the window but not answer his calls.

The police find it strange he sees a woman in the window as Normans mother has been dead for years ... who is she then?

All is revealed in a tense finale as Sam and Lila decide to go to the motel and see for themselves!

The ending may not be shocking today but I imagine audiences back in 1960 would have shit a brick.

So Guy, is it a classic?

Of course, its excellently made. Anthony Perkins is sheer perfection as Norman Bates as is Janet Leigh who holds the first half of the film up herself.
The music by Bernard Herrmann is moody and chilling and the murders are quite shocking with excellent use of tension and build up, sound effects and music rather than just graphic violence.

Psycho was very clever in having its star name murdered half way through the film. Without the spoilers we have now audiences were not only shocked by the twist at the end, but had a shock halfway through when Janet Leigh, the star name of the film is (quite brutally for the time) stabbed to death in the shower.

Although I don't have a hard on for Hitchcock some people do, I do appreciate he was one of the very best.

The Fog (1980)

Hi I'm Guy Strange and when it gets foggy out, I find myself transported back to a simpler time, when all I did all day was colour books in, play conkers and by night watch John Carpenters The Fog.

Yes I was a strange child, but it has had no effect on me whatsoever, everyone I talk to in the asylum speaks very highly of me.

So what happens Guy Strange?

Well first old Mr Machen tells us a ghost story about the men at the bottom of the sea who were betrayed by the township during a foggy night, their boat redirected to the rocks and killed.

The video below is the opening story in full: 

...this guy knows how to tell a fucking story.

But its only the start.

The town happens to be 100 years old and celebrating, little do they know Blake and the boys are back in town with meat hooks and knives to crash the party.

So weird things start happening in the town...car alarms go off, windows explode, a preacher finds gold and his ancestors diary in a wall and strangest of all Tom Atkins pulls Jamie Lee Curtis!!

Three men pissed up on a boat are murdered by Blake and the gang, the first of six as there were six conspirators that were involved in the initial betrayal 100 years before.

Not something he ate..

However, for me, the highlight of this movie is Adrienne Barbeau as Stevie Wayne. Great voice, hot, feisty but has a poor record collection.

Stevie Wayne runs the lighthouse, which doubles as the local radio station playing music from the fucking 50s by the sounds of it.

Don't think I have any Vanilla Ice..

Stevie has a son, Andy who finds what he thinks is a gold coin, but then turns into a plank of wood with 'Dane' on it.

Andy take the plank back to Stevie, who for some reason decides to take it to work, where something strange happens, when she hears a funny voice coming out of the radio doing his best Barry White impression, and Stevie notices the wood does not say 'Dane' but for a split second say 'Six Must Die!'
That gets Stevie thinking 'something strange is going on here...'

So the night of the 100 year anniversary arrives, Father Malone has been reading the diary he found in that wall, as he'd already worn out his copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, in which his ancestor confesses to the lie the town was built on.
It turns out the men at the bottom of the sea in the opening ghost story, were led by a man named Blake and were a leper colony. Naturally the town wanted rid but the lepers had something the town wanted...GOLD!

So being human beings, the town ship killed two birds with one stone by betraying Blake and his men by leading them to their deaths on a foggy night, as the clipper ship Elizabeth Dane crashed into the rocks off Spivey Point and the town was built off this stolen gold.

So no S&M or whips and chains in this book Father. Might be a grower though.

Next up, the boat where the three winos were killed on has been found by Nick Castle and his new screw Elizabeth, only one of the dead blokes decides to go for a walk only to fall over dead again, but not before scaring poor Jamie Lee Curtis half to death and being able to carve the number 3 into the floor to remind everyone there are still 3 left out of the 6 to kill.

Its safe to say that not all is normal around Antonio Bay.

Time to get the fuck out of dodge? Not Nick Castle and his side kick the foxy Jamie Lee, he is on the best shag of his life and he ain't going anywhere till the mystery is solved!

So Stevie Wayne is in the lighthouse, bored to tears with the shitty music, had noticed the fog doing weird things too, glowing, moving against the wind etc...and calls her 'potential' beau Dan Dan the Weather man...

However Dan doesn't take her serious, and as the Fog arrives outside his door, promptly gets a knock at the door and a meat hook in the neck for his troubles.

Next up for the chop is the poor old dear who is babysitting for Andy, Stevie Wayne's son. By this time Stevie is on the radio, having heard Dan being murdered over the phone, and is warning people about the Fog and begging someone to rescue her son as she can see the Fog heading to her house....

Somehow the Fog becomes aware of her warnings to the town and turns and heads for the light house! Stevie shits herself and locks the doors.

Meanwhile Nick and Liz turn up at Stevie Wayne's house in time to rescue Andy and head for the only part of town not covered by the Fog, the Church.

So we have Stevie trapped in the light house and a motley crew of people trapped in the church being attacked from all sides by the zombies, its a thrilling ending.

Then Blake turns up ...the man himself

Blake

Father Malone finally parts with the church bling and offers Blake his gold back...which he promptly takes and Blake and the Fog disappear.

Everyone relaxes, phew!

Father Malone starting thinking...hang on..something wrong here. Only five were killed, why not six Blake why not...erm...Father...behind you..!

Did I leave the oven on again...

Experience:

Like I said, I grew up with this movie thanks to my older brother who is the original movie geek, I can't remember when I first saw it but always thought it had so much atmosphere and creepy music.

Its my favourite horror movie, it has the balance right between what is shown/what is not shown, it has an excellent score, and drips with atmosphere.

I truly believe this is so underrated and a lot of my friends had never seen it until I would thrust a copy into their hands and say by god man, put that copy of Saw aside and watch this! ONLY then can we resume our bromance. I will forget this ever happened!

So the important stuff Guy, the flange?

Well this is really tough, you have the scream queen herself Jamie Lee Curtis in one corner, and the milf Adrienne Barbeau.

Its close but in this movie...Barbeau gets the fish

She looks this good first thing in the morning..

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Hi I'm Guy Strange, and what horror movie collection is not complete without this once banned video nasty, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?

So what happens Guy Strange?

Well funny you should ask...

A van load of friends are out on a road trip across Texas to try and find a house belonging to a relative of Sally, our large breasted and very screamy heroine, played whole heartedly by Marilyn Burns.
Sally's brother is Franklin, who is in a wheel chair and rolls down a hill in the opening scene much to everyones amusement. Now this guy is certain chain saw fodder if ever there was one.

Making up the rest of the friends are Kirk and Pam, the young lovers. Kirk looks like a bit of a hero and Pam is reading star charts that indicate something bad on the horizon. No shit Pam :)

Jerry is the driver, who kind of has a bit of flirting going on with Sally, and had this been a romantic comedy I would have loved to see those crazy kids get it together, however Jerry is hit in the head with a mallet about 50 minutes into the movie, so sorry to those Notting Hill fans but no romance here.

So after picking up a strange hitchhiker, who they promptly dump when he turns out to be a complete lunatic they stop off at a gas station that has no gas... before finding the broken down old house.

After hearing about a local water spot, Kirk and Pam wander off to their doom. Kirk decides to bother the local farmhouse to see if there is any gas. Pam waits outside.

Kirk wanders in as the door is unlocked, hears a wierd pig screeching sound and decides to go in anyway. Stumbles and out of no where comes Leatherface to smash him over the head with a large hammer.
Pam is next, as she follows Kirk into the most disgusting house you have ever seen, I mean green wallpaper - what were they thinking!?!
Anyway Leatherface dumps Pam on a meathook and decides to get to work dismantling her boyfriend with a chainsaw.

So yep, pretty gruesome stuff. Meanwhile back at base, Jerry decides to go find Kirk and Pam. Wanders to the house..and well as I mentioned Leatherface does his thing again.

Its now dark. Sally and Franklin are left and as they are making their way through some woodland poor old Franklin is next as Leatherface now uses his chain saw and legs poor old Sally for what seems like an age, through the house, back outside and back to the gas station.

This is where we meet the other brother played brilliantly by Jim Siedow and his twisted maniac face.

I'd like to say he and Sally really hit it off and he takes her for dinner and a show, but instead he gags her and takes her back to a family dinner, served by Leatherface, now dressed as a woman and eating her friends to add to the glamour.

They wheel out their poor old grandpa, the greatest killer there ever was but fortunately grandpa is half dead and pretty much fucking useless now and she gets away by throwing herself out of a window. Running into the new days dawn and thankfully just in time to stop some passing trucks.

The film ends iconically with Leatherface, now pissed off as Sally big boobs got away, swinging his (live) chainsaw around like a spoilt child and almost hitting the camera man a couple of times.

Experience

I saw TCM for the first time in the cinema when the stuffy British film board classification dudes decided I was in my right mind to finally watch mindless violence.
There were two people in the audience that day, me and my then girlfriend and it was brilliant. No I didn't get a hand job off her, it was purely the raw intensity of the movie. I'd never felt that terror since Salems Lot all them years ago and it was a strange experience.

The moment

It has to be the moment Kirk stumbles on the boards in the house and Leatherface appears and smashes him. Kirk wriggles on the floor in shock as Leatherface drags him into his room and slams the metal door. I was knocked for six.

It then cuts to Pam waiting outside, she gets up and walks to the house. Honestly I was thinking DONT GO IN THERE! I mean what was wrong with me? this is a fucking horror film, of course she has to go in, but I admit I was a little rattled at that point.
My GF leans over and says she is scared, 'yeah its good' I managed to squeek out as manly as possible, shaken to my bones.

I've seen it several times since and it does not have the effect it had on the cinema, I feel truly lucky to have caught it. I'm not a fanny really you know :)

Final thoughts

Well its a stone wall classic. It has great visuals, its grimy, its horrific without needing to show everything, it has a great soundtrack. For me its up there with the best if not thee best. I am bias however as I saw it on the big screen and it blew me away.

So any ass?

Well apart from Leatherface dressed as a woman, it has to be Marilyn Burns and the smuggled peanuts.

Salem's Lot (1979)

Hello, I'm Guy Strange and what you are about to read is an account of the mad and macabre..no I won't do all that but instead have a butchers hook of this review of Salems Lot..... Tobe Hoopers foray into the world of TV horror and what a job he did.

Why did you watch it:

I may as well confess. I had to deal with basic primal fear when watching Salems Lot, the kind of illogical fear of something you can only experience as a child. And in Salems Lot, I discovered my first experience of screen terror.

My babysitter, instead of letting me see her boobs, let me watch this on TV as a child of eight, nice of her.

I will never forget the moment the youngest Glick brother floats outside the window, eyes dead, with a manic grin on his face. Ben Mears would have said he was 'sweating scared' I would say I was more shit scared.

I was a big baby really, I had to get up during the night and watch Return of the Jedi with my dad till I calmed down. The comforting feeling you get when teddy bears take down a Galactic Empire...phew! Feel better now.

Salem's Lot really has my respect as the first film/TV show to scare the living shite out of me so becomes my first entry in the Macabre Review.

The teeth:

Ben Mears arrives in the town of Jerusalem's Lot as it is inspiration for his new novel. He lived in the town as a child and had creepy experience. No, nothing to do with PE teachers, just seeing the dead Hubie Marsden hanging by his neck in his house overlooking the town.

Anyway Ben Mears left town and became a famous writer, although I've never come across any of his stuff.

Things start brightly for Ben, he looks like David Soul, he is famous, has great hair, cops off with some pretty girl and catches up with his old teacher. Then the Vampires come and bugger everything up.

Thankfully when I say Vampires, I don't mean Robert Pattinson, or any of the cast of Vampire Diaries or Tru Blood. These Vampires don't have sex as they are fucking dead for a kick off, are 'creatures of the night' in the best sense in that they are mindless parasites feeding off the living (usually their family members) and spreading like a plague across the town.

Only Ben Mears can stop them! Good job he came to town then.

All these events seem to tie in with the arrival of Ben and a new owner of the Marsden House, the strange Straker played by the stiff James Mason. Although Mr Straker is strange you want to see his partner Mr Barlow, not one to piss off for sure.

As the towns numbers begin to dwindle, Ben teams up with Horror buff Mark Petrie and his new shag to defeat the bloodsucking fiends!

It all leads to a tense showdown in...yep you guessed it ..THE MARSDEN HOUSE!

Does it Suck? 

Although its dated, Salems Lot still packs a punch, the vampires are creepy, maybe even my favourite incarnation of the vampire creature. Heck maybe I'm just a nostalgic old fart who longs to shit my pants and stick Return of the Jedi on.

In short, see it. Its fang-tastic ...

No wait! What about the talent?

Ok..ok If i had to choose it would have to be Julie Cobb. Crazy hair, crazy 70s nightwear but still sexy as hell! If I was a vamp, I'd be nibbling on Julie.