New month, new horror recommendations from Deep Cuts Rising. This installment features five selections reflecting the month of October 2024. Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown. This month’s offerings include a Frankenstein anime adaptation, a K-Pop ghost story, and a […]
New month, new horror recommendations from Deep Cuts Rising. This installment features five selections reflecting the month of October 2024.
Regardless of how they came to be here, or what they’re about, these past movies can generally be considered overlooked, forgotten or unknown.
This month’s offerings include a Frankenstein anime adaptation, a K-Pop ghost story, and a pioneer of screenlife horror.
Pigs (1973)
Pictured: Pigs (1973)
Directed by Marc Lawrence.
It would be wrong to say ‘ complicated release history is more interesting than the movie itself. Just don’t go into the movie expecting a simple story of sinister swine getting their fill of human flesh. Adjust your expectations as you watch for Hog Out Month.
Instead of pure hog horror, Pigs (also known as The 13th Pig, Daddy’s Deadly Darling, and The Secret of Lynn Hart) is far more concerned with the troubled interiority of its protagonist Lynn (Toni Lawrence). Something from her haunted past is making her uneasy. And the longer she stays with diner owner Zambrini (Marc Lawrence), a man who supposedly feeds fresh human corpses to his pigs, the more this woman’s unspoken trauma starts to manifest.
For Blu-ray, Vinegar Syndrome has restored Pigs to a closer semblance of what the director intended. In addition, the movie is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
The Monster of Frankenstein (1981)
Pictured: Kaiki! Frankenstein (1981)
Directed by Toyoo Ashida and Yūgo Serikawa.
Back in the ’80s, Toei Animation co-produced two anime TV-movies based on horror-themed Marvel Comics series: The Tomb of Dracula and The Monster of Frankenstein (later The Frankenstein Monster). Kyōfu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein (translation: Horror Legend Mystery! Frankenstein) is, to some degree, a adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. In this jumble of source materials, Victor Frankenstein hunts his creation down before it can take more lives. In the meantime, Victor fears being exposed by his former assistant and arrested by the police.
The Monster of Frankenstein is a solid reworking of the well-known Frankenstein story. It’s mature and, on occasion, quite violent. The animation is crude by today’s standards, yet it’s also charming.
The English dub of The Monster of Frankenstein can be easily found on YouTube. It’s definitely something to watch on Frankenstein Friday (October 25).
The Clairvoyant (1982)
Pictured: The Clairvoyant (1982)
Directed by Armand Mastroianni.
The director of He Knows You’re Alone delivered this leftover of trendy ’70s parapsychological horror, such as Eyes of Laura Mars. In fact, The Clairvoyant(also known as The Killing Hour) has a similar premise; a woman has visions of a killer’s crimes. However, this movie is darker in both tone and content.
October 23 is TV Talk Show Host day, and The Clairvoyant makes for perfect viewing. Perry King (The Possession of Joel Delaney) plays opposite the psychic protagonist (Elizabeth Kemp); he’s a controversial TV personality who uses the city’s recent murder spree for ratings. And he gets close to the young artist whose premonitions will be the deciding factor in the killer’s capture.
As Halloween approaches, the usual movies will be watched and enjoyed. Yet for something less obvious, The Collingswood Storyalso ends up telling its own spooky story on the last day of October. This very early example of screenlife horror will look absolutely strange to anyone who didn’t grow up in this era of the internet, but for those who did, it may be nostalgic. The Collingswood Story seems outmoded by today’s standards, however, it was actually ahead of the curve.
Through her long-distance video chats with boyfriend Johnny (Johnny Burton) and an online psychic named Vera Madeline (Diane Behrens), Rebecca (Stephanie Dees) learns of her new house’s dark history.
The Collingswood Story will be leaving AMC+ very soon, but it’s still available for rent on Amazon Prime Video. The movie was also released on Blu-ray by Cauldron Films.
White: Melody of Death (2011)
Pictured: White – Melody of Death (2011)
Directed by Kim Gok and Kim Sun.
South Korean pop music (or K-Pop) is a global phenomenon, and for International Music Day (October 1), fans might want to check out White: Melody of Death (or White: Melody of the Curse). This scathing intersection of music and horror has a lot to say about this grueling business.
In the movie, a struggling female pop group finds a “lost” song while training. And as anticipated, there are karmic consequences to re-recording the track (which is really catchy, by the way). This brutal tale of ghostly revenge has plenty of style to make up for its somewhat generic concept.
No genre is as prolific as horror, so it’s understandable that movies fall through the cracks all the time. That is where this recurring column, Deep Cuts Rising, comes in. Each installment of this series will spotlight several unsung or obscure movies from the past — some from way back when, and others from not so long ago — that could use more attention.
