"A man described as a homicidal maniac has escaped from the hospital for the criminally insane."

I suppose it was inevitable. As its merchandise gradually surrounded and swallowed up your Halloween displays in the stores, you tried to ignore it. When families got up from their Thanksgiving meals and rushed out to camp in front of their favorite big box monstrosities of retail commerce, you stayed at the table and refused to shop, because you take one holiday at a time. But your candy bag is empty and the dishes have been put away. Christmas is here in all its loud, gaudy enthusiasm for glad tidings of joy, peace on earth and goodwill toward men, and shopping. Mostly shopping. 

Despair not, mortal. Just because J.C.'s birthday is coming up doesn't mean you have to live without violent, trashy cinema in your own home. Let the ignorant jackals converge on Wal-Mart and tear each other apart over flat-screen TVs. Bolt the door and hunker down on the couch with a cup of cheer to celebrate a holiday tradition I can get behind -- movies about Santa Claus murdering people.  

People always seem interested to know where their holiday traditions come from, so I'll tell you a little about this one. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Tales from the Crypt. 

This 1972 Amicus anthology by director Freddie Francis is, to my memory, the first film to feature a killer Kringle. 

Five people get lost on their guided tour of a catacomb where a bunch of religious nuts are buried, and come face to face with Crypt Keeper. Fans of the HBO series won't find their favorite skeleton puppet in this early film adaption of EC Comics stories by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein and Johnny Craig. Instead, the Crypt Keeper is actor Ralph Richardson in a hooded robe. He tells each of the lost souls how they will die.

 

If you're an impatient sort, don't worry. Psycho Psanta shows up in the first segment, "And All Through the House." Joan Collins plays Joanne Clayton, who has just murdered her husband for the insurance money. As she's cleaning up the mess and making sure her daughter stays in bed, a bulletin comes over the radio, interrupting the stodgy, English Christmas Carols, to warn listeners to be on the lookout for an escaped lunatic in a Santa suit. Sure enough, he's right their in her window. Joanne starts to phone the police, but remembers her husband's corpse is still lying their bleeding all over the carpet. She gets the mess arranged, then realizes her daughter is not in her room!

It's a pretty simple story. 

Of course there are four other stories that aren't bad either. In particular, Peter Cushing makes a pretty gnarly zombie. 

Tales from the Crypt streams on YouTube. 

If you're looking for other Christmas stories, maybe something to read on your Kindle, check out Santa Claus meets Frankenstein by Todd Merriman.

"Burn, witch! Burn, witch! Burn! Burn! Burn!"

Another Thanksgiving is upon us, mortals, and you've no doubt heard again, the story of the pilgrims who left England in pursuit of religious freedom in the New World. They loaded up the Mayflower with their faith and agricultural ignorance and sailed across the Atlantic, nearly starved, and got bailed out by the natives.

Of course, the buckle-hatted sociopaths' ideals of religious freedom didn't extend to people who worship me. Life in the puritan colonies could be especially hard on witches.

This week's Thursday Thrillers is City of the Dead.

This 1960 John Moxey film opens up with a good, old-fashioned, New England witch-burning, in which some angry pilgrims in Whitewood, Mass., set their torches to a lady named Elizabeth Selwyn (Patricia Jessel). Selwyn's last utterance is to call on Lucifer and put a curse on the town. Flash forward to a university classroom where Professor Alan Driscoll (Christopher Lee) tells the story to students in his History of Witchcraft class. One particularly enterprising student, Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) stays after to pick the prof's brain about how she can learn more. Driscoll suggests she go to Whitewood and stay at the Raven's Inn.

Nan's boyfriend Bill (Tom Naylor) and brother Dick (Dennis Lotis) are scientists who don't cotton to Driscoll's flaky passion for the humanities. They try to talk Nan out of the trip, to no avail. Nan drives alone to the especially foggy town of Whitewood and checks in to the Raven's Inn, where we discover the proprietor looks identical to Elizabeth Selwyn, and that Nan has pretty underwear.

Nan finds Whitewood to be most intellectually stimulating to research, as it is full of mysterious strangers, vanishing hitchhikers, and hotel rooms with trap doors in the floor. After a month goes by and she doesn't return home, Bill and skeptical Dick go looking for her with the help of a Whitewood resident named Patricia (Betta St. John). I don't want to give too much away, but the whole thing ends in black-robed figures on fire.

City of the Dead is safe enough for family viewing so you don't have to wait for your holiday guests to leave to turn it on or anything. It streams on YouTube.

"What have you in your bowels?"

I cannot help but wonder, mortals, what obstacles you're willing to overcome for entertainment. I understand that some of you are willing to miss out on a gruesome Japanese flick just because you're put off by subtitles, while others will accept the sound of crying babies in the background just to watch in the comfort of your own home the latest cinematic release that someone shot on their phone in a movie theater in Beijing. I understand how little things can detract from your viewing experience while you can overlook others.

I dug deep on YouTube this past week to find a movie for you mortals. I spent hours poring over renders of dubious quality and even more questionable legality. I watched Vincent Price in Cry of the Banshee with Greek subtitles. I tried to enjoy Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out with dialogue overdubbed in Russian. I'm not ruling these movies out for future review, but I'm going to hold out until more palatable presentations are available.

I see no reason to hesitate in suggesting the movie I want to talk about, though, because its present format, ripped from a VHS tape with Spanish subtitles, complete with anti-piracy notice up front, is the perfect context in which to enjoy this film.

This week's Thursday Thriller is The Brotherhood of Satan. 

Strother Martin stars in this 1971 Bernard McEveety film. It's about a couple, Ben (Charles Bateman) and Nicky (Ahna Capri), who are trying to take Ben's daughter K.T. (Geri Reischl) for a birthday visit to grandma's. Grandma apparently lives on the ass end of nowhere, and en route they happen upon a horrific crash and rush into the town of Hillsboro to report it to the sheriff (L.Q. Jones) who appears to have a piece of taxidermy attached to his head. The family is then attacked by a mob and have to burn rubber out of town to escape. Once clear of the pitchfork-wielding rubes, they swerve to miss a child standing in the middle of the highway and have to hike back to town for help.

They soon find a whole family smothered to death with plastic bags on their heads and have to talk to the sheriff again. As the plot unravels, we find that a cult of old people have been abducting Hillsboro's children to raise them as devil worshippers.

I'll be honest: this movie is all over the place. A car gets crushed by a tank in the first scene. An old lady gets ripped apart by her fellow cult members. Nicky has a balls-trippy nightmare. K.T. is the guest of honor at a Satanic birthday party. It's never very clear what exactly is going on, but it is a heaping helping of "what the fuck did I just watch?" which is my favorite genre of film lately. Plus, if you're paying close attention to the subtitles, you can brush up on your Spanish.

The Brotherhood of Satan streams on YouTube, as "la hermandad de satan."

"There's only one way to remove Byron's hallucinations."

Mortals, this week I am inspired by a renewed interest in mental health in America to tell you about a movie that takes place in a psychiatric hospital. 

This week's Thursday Thriller is Asylum.

This 1972 Amicus anthology was directed by Roy Ward Baker. It's about a young psychiatrist named Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) who arrives at the titular institution for about a job. Dr. Rutherford (Patrick Magee) informs him that the Dr. Starr he's come to talk to has himself gone bonkers and left Rutherford wheelchair bound. Starr has developed a new persona, but if Martin can go upstairs, talk to four patients, and figure out which one used to be Starr, Rutherford will give him the job. 

On his tour, Martin hears the stories of four patients: Bonnie (Barbara Parkins), who believes she was attacked by the dismembered corpse of her lover's wife; Bruno (Barry Morse), a tailor who says he made a magic suit for Peter Cushing so he could bring his son back to life; Barbara (Charlotte Rampling), a pill head who swears her imaginary friend Britt Ekland went on a murder spree and not her; and Byron (Herbert Lom), a former neurosurgeon who makes little robot dolls with lifelike human faces. 

The special effects may look a little silly today, but I think they just add to the film's charm.

Asylum comprises four quick stories you don't have to think too hard about to enjoy. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube. 

"Listen to them. The children of the night, what music they make."

Well mortals, another Halloween has come and gone, and you're now one All Saints Day closer to the grave. I don't know about you, but my ears are still ringing with the screams of Louisville's haunted house fans after unleashing hellish fury at The Devil's Attic for the past month and a half.

My head is pounding. I need something quiet to watch.

This week's Thursday Thrillers is Dracula.

Tod Browning directed this iconic 1931 film based on the novel by Bram Stoker, but if you try to base your book report on it, you will flunk. Bela Lugosi stars in the title role, but keep your eye on Dwight Frye as Renfield, a legal apprentice enslaved by Dracula to assist in moving the vampire from Transylvania to England, where he intends to establish new hunting grounds. Seems the Transylvania locals have caught wise about the mysterious goings-on at the Borgo Pass, and they tell everyone, even Renfield, to steer clear. Renfield doesn't listen, and he spends the rest of the movie alternating between lucidity and madness.

Dracula is a good movie for your Halloween hangover. It's quiet and familiar enough that if you doze off, which is my plan, it's no big deal. Dracula streams on Shudder.