Chadwick H. Saxelid's Blog: Ghoulies, Ghosties, and Long-Leggedy Beasties

Na Pali Coast on Kaua'i - A 1000 piece puzzle by Lantern Press

My YouTube channel has undergone a minor change, to better represent the diverse videos I have been making. It is no longer Chadzilla Assembles. Now it is Chadwick's Channel of Stuff. Which why I am moving my channel videos to a Chadwick's Channel of Stuff label and not Chadzilla Assembles.
Because my brain will not allow for that to happen. So it goes.

V/H/S/Halloween (2025) - Review

I have sat through far worse ways to kick off the month of October than V/H/S Halloween, but I have also sat through better. The strongest opinion I can give for this anthology of six ghoulish yarns taking place on or around Halloween is, "It was all right."

Not the most enthusiastic of endorsements, I know.

Diet Phantasma serves as the film's wraparound 'story' and shows the makers of a new kind of diet soda struggling to curtail the horrifying side effects of their product, so that it can be in stores in time for Halloween. Paper thin and more than a bit repetitive, the reveal in the faux commercial that interrupts the end credits got me to crack a small smile, at least.

Coochie Coochie Coo. Lacie (Samantha Cochran) and Kaliegh (Natalia Montgomery) will be going to different schools, so they plan to milk their last Halloween night as a duo for all the mischievous fun and candy they can get. Until they go to one house too many, that is...

While there were a few creepy images in Coochie Coochie Coo that sent a chill up my spine, as well as an impressive and grody set design that made it far too easy to imagine the stench of the house Lacie and Kaliegh have dared to venture inside, I thought this starter story dragged on for far too long and was in dire need of some narrative tightening.

Ut Supra Sic Infra ['As Above So Below']: Faced with a baffling crime scene that defies explanation, the police have the soul survivor of a Halloween night massacre walk through the site of the slaughter, to try and understand what happened...

This gets my vote for best segment. It is well acted, well paced, and delivers a jaw dropper of a finale. I loved it.

Fun Size: Four drunk friends decide to do a little trick or treating. It is all fun and games, until one of the group takes more than one candy from a bucket underneath a large 'One Per Customer' sign. Bad idea...

Whether intentional or not, this segment contained a few too many story beats that were in Coochie Coochie Coo, making it feel and play as more of the same. Nonetheless its manages to overcome those shortcomings by being far better paced than Coochie Coochie Coo and enlivened by a dash of delicious black comedy that would make it suitable for Tales from the Crypt.

Kidprint: An eccentric, albeit well-intentioned, electronics store manager makes video recordings of local children for any and all concerned parents. Seems that kids of all ages have been disappearing, only to turn up dead...

This segment took me back to 1989, or so, when I worked at Blockbuster Video. They had partnered with America's Most Wanted to make video cassette recordings of children for their paranoid parents. Yep, that really was a thing.

Buried deep inside this uneven and awkward hodgepodge of footage are elements of a truly dark and twisted yarn. One that might have worked better if done with a traditional narrative structure. As it plays out here, though, I felt it did not hit quite as hard, or cut as deep, as it could have. Kidprint pretty much ties with Coochie Coochie Coo in the battle to be the weakest and least interesting segment of the film.

Home Haunt: All Keith (Jeff Harms) wants is to create the scariest homemade haunted attraction possible. A purloined Halloween sound effects record just might help him succeed in scaring the life out of any and all who dare to enter Dr. Mortis' House of Horrors...

V/H/S Halloween's closer brought to mind the charming 2012 documentary The American Scream, albeit with a far nastier edge. I thought it an entertaining and lively examination of the old truism of always being careful of whatever it is you wish for, as you just might get it.

Home Haunt ended the anthology on an energetic note that, coupled with the Diet Phantasma commercial, did not leave me feeling sorry for wasting two hours of my ever-shortening life watching this movie. I may have seen better, but I have also seen a hell of a lot worse...

Alligator (1980) - Promo

San Francisco Examiner - October 3, 1983
Promo for a screening of Alligator (1980) at the Red Victorian Movie House in San Francisco. That would have been fun, I am sure.

Lady Death: Dark Alliance - Trading Card #28

Sacred and Profane
But which is which? Drawn to the cries of children in trouble, Ernie investigates, only to find a priest harming them. The priest never knew the meaning of the word damned - until now.

While I have read various Lady Death and Purgatori comic books, Evil Ernie is one I have yet to give a try. So it goes. 

Terror Train (1980) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - October 2, 1980
I saw this at the Southshore in Alameda, on a double-bill with The Children (1980). 

This would be the third horror movie released in 1980 featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, following The Fog and Prom Night. It would also serve as the directing debut of Roger Spottiswoode, who would go on to make far better movies than this. Top billed Ben Johnson had already been in quite a few better films than Terror Train, such as Mighty Joe Young (1949) and The Wild Bunch (1969), but he had also been in far worse, most notably the debacle that was Irwin Allen's Production of The Swarm (1978).

While I do have a pretty decent recall of this film, I doubt that I have watched it more than twice, at most. Once on the big screen and, maybe, once more on either HBO or home video. Maybe.

Alien (1979) - Sticker #13

 

The Changeling (1980) - Soundtrack

Three separate composers worked on The Changeling. Howard Blake composed the Music Box Theme, which serves as an integral part of the film's storyline. Ken Wannberg was hired to compose the score, while Rick Wilkins was hired as a Canadian front in order for the production to qualify for some tax credits.

Although most of the score used in the film was composed by Wannberg, Wilkins did compose the underscore for the film's unnerving seance sequence.

"We needed a scary score," says Wannberg in Randall Larson's liner notes. "But not one that was pure scary." Wannberg and Wilkins achieved this by excising the trumpets and trombones from the orchestra, which created a somewhat off-kilter tonality within the music. The overall effect of their score is both soft and unnerving. The eschewing of aggressive jolts and jump scare stingers makes for a listening experience that is equal parts pleasant and spooky.

I consider the soundtrack for The Changeling to be one of the highpoints of my collection.

Night Gallery - Promo

San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle - October 1, 1972
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes, the second episode of Night Gallery's third and final season, graces the cover of the Examiner/Chronicle's TV Week supplement. Which is rather appropriate, considering the episode's story and themes.

This was an adaptation of a Fritz Leiber story and directed by John Badham, who helmed the far superior second season segment Camera Obscura.

Lady Death: Dark Alliance - Trading Card #27

Be Good
Run across Chastity's bad side, and you'll end up like the head in her hand. Stick to her good side though, and you'll find all new worlds of excitement. 

Trog (1970) / Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) - Newspaper Ad

Oakland Tribune - September 30, 1970
I know I have seen Trog, but all I remember is the scene involving Trog getting caught pilfering a handful of some fruit or veggie from a display bin by an unfortunate grocer. Nothing else. So it goes.

Yet I do remember the first time I saw Taste the Blood of Dracula. That was when it was aired on the CBS Late Movie - on Friday, September 11, 1981 - as the follow-up to another beloved (by me, at least) rerun of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

The episode was The Sentry, which was the short-lived series final episode and one of the few I managed to see during its original primetime run.

Taste the Blood of Dracula would be the last Hammer Film Dracula with direct continuity to Horror of Dracula (1958). Taste starts where Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968) ended, which had picked up where Dracula Prince of Darkness (1966) had ended, which picked up a decade or so after the conclusion of Horror.

Prince, Grave, and Taste, be they intentional or not, are a pretty solid trilogy of Dracula sequels well worth the time and effort to watch.