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The Babysitter is a 1980 TV movie thriller directed by Peter Medak who also directed The Changeling and The Krays. It stars Patty Duke, William Shatner and Stephanie Zimbalist.
Dr.Jeff Benedict(Shatner) lives with his wife Liz(Duke) and daughter Tara in a large house.Jeff suggests that Liz needs some help around the house. Tara is playing outside when she spots a young woman who runs away. Tara chases her and they start to chat. The young woman is called Joanna Redwine(Zimbalist) and she is eighteen years of age. She is in the middle of the road when Liz is driving along and causes her to crash her car. She helps her and gets a doctor for Liz. Liz is grateful and finds out that Joanna was a live in housekeeper for another family. She decides to hire her. Jeff isn't so sure that Joanna is the best person for the job at first. He comes around when he sees how efficient she is. She gets along very well with Tara and she seems to fit into their family very well.
Their neighbour, Dr.Lindquist(John Houseman) is suspicious of Joanna. He thinks that she is not who she says she is. He thinks that there is something strange about her stories of looking after another family and he tries to find out all he can about her. She senses that he does not trust her and she tries to make him think that she isn't dodgy but he sees through her facade. Meanwhile, Liz seems to breaking down. It turns out that she is an alcoholic and that Jeff moved her and Tara to this house to help her get over her
last battle with alcohol. She is not happy and Joanna encourages her drinking. She becomes her confidant and she tries to come between Jeff and Liz. Liz begins to act strangely and she becomes drunk a lot. This makes Jeff angry and they fight all the time. Joanna tries to come on to Jeff, but he isn't interested in her.
Dr. Lindquist finds someone who knew Joanna and he finds out that she is dangerous. He tells Jeff and Liz about it, but Liz doesn't believe him. Joanna begins to turn on Tara too and Tara sees a nasty side to her former friend. Joanna encourages Liz to leave Jeff for a few days to teach him a lesson after he argues with her again. Joanna tries to take over the role of Liz and Tara is upset. She and Joanna go out with a friend and Tara sees Joanna cause him to have an accident and die. Liz returns home worse than ever. Jeff and Joanna chat about Liz and her condition. They share a kiss. Dr. Lindquist tries to tell the cops about Joanna but they won't help him. Joanna keeps Liz sedated and everyone just thinks that she is tired because of her drinking. Jeff turns on Joanna and tells her to get out. Dr. Lindquist finds the house of the family that Joanna was taking care of before and they have all been murdered. Joanna attacks Jeff and knocks him out. She tries to kill Liz and Tara. Dr. Lindquist has called the police and they catch her.
She breaks down and she is taken away by the cops.
This was a decent TV thriller. It is entertaining and the cast is pretty good. I would recommend it. It is definitely worth a watch. I am giving it a 6/10.
This episode begins with an unknown person putting down fresh meat to lure the walkers. Cut to the two prisoners who Rick and company left in a section of the prison. They can't stand being inside there any longer and they want to join Rick's group. Rick and the others don't want them. Meanwhile, Michonne is having a look at the army jeep that the Governor and his crew brought back after they murdered the army guys last week. She notices that there are bullet holes in it and she realises that the walkers might not be the only killers around.She talks to the Governor and he has an excuse for everything.
In the prison Hershel is able to get up and walk around. He goes outside to see the others. In the other camp, Michonne and Andrea talk about leaving. Michonne wants to get out of there as she thinks that there is something funny going on. Back at the prison, Lori, Hershel and Carl are ambushed by walkers and they have to get away. The others run to help them. They go back inside but T-Dog is bitten on the shoulder by a walker. It turns out that someone has opened the gates and let the walkers in to the prison. Who was it? Rick assumes it was the two prisoners.Someone has also set off the siren and the walkers are coming from everywhere. At this time, Lori is with Maggie and Carl and she tells them that the baby is coming.
In the other camp, Merle and Andrea chat about Daryl and she tells him all she knows. He goes to talk to the Governor about it and he tells him that he wants to go and find his brother. The Governor tells him that he needs him at the camp and he doesn't want him to leave. Lori, meanwhile,is about the give birth.
T-Dog sacrifices himself to save Carol in the prison and he gets eaten by walkers. One of the prisoners inside attacks Rick and tries to kill him, but the other one saves his life. Lori tells Maggie that she will have to perform a c-section on her and this will mean operating. Maggie doesn't want to do it, but Lori tells her that the baby needs to survive. She does so and Lori says a tearful goodbye to Carl. She dies of blood loss but Carl has to put a bullet in her to make sure that she will not return as a walker. The baby is fine and Maggie takes it away. She and Carl go outside where Rick and the and the others are and he realises what has happened.
A very good episode with loads happening. It was sad when Lori died,but her character annoyed me so much that I was glad to see the back of her. T-Dog was a good character and it was a pity for him to die, but it does move the story along so that is good!
The Strange and Deadly Occurrence is a 1974 TV movie directed by John Llewellyn Moxley and starring Robert Stack(Unsolved Mysteries) and Vera Miles(Psycho).
The movie opens with the Rhodes family who have moved into a house in the country after leaving the city. They are having some small problems in the house. The power cuts out and their horses are acting very strangely. Someone is watching the house.Michael (Stack) is the father and Chrissie(Miles) is the mother. Their daughter is Melissa(Margaret Willock) and she screams in the middle of the night when she thinks that someone has been in her room. Her parents tell her that it was just her imagination. They find out that the last owner died in mysterious circumstances. A weird guy called Dr. Gillgreen(Ted Gehring) comes around and he wants to buy the house from them. They don't want to sell.
Their house becomes overrun with gophers and they call an exterminator. Melissa has another scare as she thinks she sees someone in her room. They bring in the local police but the cops seem to think that they are just city slickers and they don't help much. Dr. Gillgreen comes back again and he wants to buy the house. Michael tells him no way. They find their guard dog dead and Michael wonders if it is Gillgreen who is doing all of the strange things around the house to get them to sell. He tells this to the cops,but gets no satisfaction. He buys a hand gun. Michael runs a check on the doctor and finds out that he was working as a doctor in a prison. Meanwhile, Chrissie nearly dies in the steam room when someone locks her in. The cops still think that they are imagining all of it.
That night, Dr Gillgreen is outside the house when he is attacked by someone. The lights go out inside and Michael, Melissa and Chrissie are in the bedroom. Michael gets his gun and he is going to go outside to confront whoever it is but Chrissie won't let him. They try the phone, but that is cut off. They hear moaning outside and the sounds of someone in pain. They wait until the next morning and when they go outside, they find the body of Dr. Gillgreen in their swimming pool. The cops come and they agree that it was probably him who was terrorizing them. They think that it is all over, but they are wrong. Michael finds out that Gillgreen was working in prison and he talked to a prisoner who told him that he had buried a lot of money in the yard of the house. Unfortunately, Melissa and Chrissie come face to face with another criminal who knows about the money and he takes them hostage. Michael arrives back and he meets the guy who is called Pratt(Bill McKinney). He wants them to dig for the money. He holds a gun on them. Chrissie manages to hit him and he falls then Michael fights with him. Chrissie grabs his gun when it falls and she shoots him dead. The movie ends with the exterminator finding the gopher nest and inside it is the eaten remnants of the buried cash!
This was an entertaining TV movies with some creepy scenes. I enjoyed it and it was a surprise as I had never heard much about it. It's not full of gore or that scary but it is worth a watch anyway. I am giving it
6/10.
This week begins with a helicopter flying through the air. Someone shoots at it and brings it down. It crashes in the woods. Andrea and Michonne are there to see it. They are hiding in the bushes and they see jeeps driving to the scene and men get out. They look over the scene and take the wounded pilot with them. They realise that Michonne and Andrea are there and they take them with them also. They are with someone who is very familiar to Andrea. Merle(Daryl's brother) is in the group of men and they blindfold the women and bring them to a community. Andrea gets medical help. Andrea tells Merle all that has happened to Rick etc and how she got separated from the group and met Michonne. She tells Merle that Daryl was fine the last time she saw him but she doesn't know what happened to him.
They meet the leader of the community and he is called The Governor(David Morrissey) and he seems
like a reasonable person. He has their weapons and he tells them that they can leave tomorrow. The community is called Woodbury and it has everything that someone could want. The town is well guarded and the people seem to have plenty of weapons. The Governor shows them to a room where they can sleep for the night. He tells them that there are 73 people living there. Andrea likes him and he seems to like her too. She seems very impressed with the town. The Governor talks to the pilot of the helicopter and asks him what happened. He tells him that he was with other army guys and they got ambushed by walkers. There are still some guys waiting for them to return.
The Governor wants Merle to get more information about Rick and company. He is interested in the group of survivors. Andrea decides that she wants to stay but Michonne is not so sure. She is wary of The Governor and for a good reason. He takes his men out and they find the army guys who are waiting for the helicopter and they kill them all. It seems that The Governor is not so good after all. He goes back to his base and he has a room full of heads in containers. Just what is he up to???
Episode two begins with Bloody Face chasing the girl in the old asylum. He kills her husband and he is coming for her...Cut back to 1964 and Lana's girlfriend Lois is feeling bad about giving Sr. Jude the go ahead to put Lana in the asylum. She is going to try and get her out when she is killed by Bloody Face.
Sr Jude goes to Dr.Arden and she tells him that she wants him to perform shock therapy on Lana. Lana is given it and she has to write things down to remember them. A psychiatrist called Dr.Thredson(Zachary Quinto) comes into the asylum to meet Kit. Kit tells him about the alien abduction of his wife and the doctor thinks that he is insane. Kit wants to escape the asylum. Dr. Thredson is appalled at the mistreatment of the patients and he mentions it to Sr. Jude who puts him in his place.
A couple come into the asylum with their son who seems to be acting very strangely. It seems as if he is possessed and Sr. Jude calls in some priests to perform an exorcism. They want Dr. Thredson to help them and he does, but with reservations as he does not believe in possession. Lana asks Grace to help her escape. Grace wants Kit to come with them, but Lana will not allow it. Dr. Arden has a prostitute at his house and it turns out that he is a complete weirdo. Sr Jude gets caught in the room with the possessed Jed and he knows her past. It turns out that she was a loose woman before becoming a nun and she killed a girl when she was drunk driving.
The lights start turning on and off and the cell doors open in the asylum. All of the patients come out of their cells. Lana and Grace see this as an excuse to escape. They are making their way when Kit wants to come along. Lana won't go with him and she tells the wardens that he is trying to escape, ruining Grace's escape too. The possessed boy dies but the evil seems to transfer into someone else. Sr Jude is happy that Lana has stopped Grace and Kit from leaving.She brings them in and she hits them with her cane as Lana watches. They both hate Lana now.
Last episode,the group were in the prison and they met some humans who were there. Cut to this week and Rick and company talk to them to find out that they are survivors who were inmates of the prison.
They have been hiding out in the prison, unaware of the chaos outside. More walkers are coming and the group need to move Hersel somewhere safe. The prisoners follow them and they end up arguing over territory. They eventually come to an agreement. Rick tells them he will help them to move to another cell block in exchange for food supplies.
The prisoners seem clueless about killing walkers. Rick and the group have to show them how. Carl manages to get medical supplies. The prisoners get some practice in killing the walkers, but one of their own gets bitten and they have to kill him. Meanwhile, Carol needs a female walker to experiment on. She wants to know how to give a c-section as she will probably have to perform one for Lori.Another two of the prisoners get killed. Rick is going to kill the final two of them, but changes his mind. He leaves them to fend for themselves in one of the prison blocks. Hershel wakes up and he is still alive. Carol performs her experiment on a dead walker. Someone is watching her.....
A good episode with loads of action. This series has started very well and I like that there is a change of scenery. Rick has stepped up finally and he is showing some leadership skills!
It's that time of year again and we here at Jigsaws Lair are getting ready for a night of horror! Great horror movies will be watched and lots of scares are mandatory! So, whatever way you are spending your Halloween, enjoy it and make sure that you get at least one good scare!!!
Another season of American Horror story has started and this time it is set in an asylum. Some of the actors from the first series have returned as different characters. Jessica Lange, Zachary Quinto and Evan Peters are back in different guises.
The series begins with a couple going into an old asylum in the present day. They are on their honeymoon and they are exploring supposedly haunted places. The asylum has a long history and it was a place of misery in the past and people who were sent there rarely came out. They are wandering around when the husband gets attacked by something. Cut to 1964 and Kit Walker(Peters) is working in a gas station. He is married to a black woman and they are hiding it from the locals as they would not approve.
He and his wife get abducted by aliens and he is taken onto their ship. Cut to Lana Winters(Sarah Paulson) who is a journalist looking for a big story. She comes to an asylum called Briarcliff with an idea of uncovering what it is really like to be in there but she pretends that she wants to do a story on their bakery. She meets the nun in charge,Sister Jude(Lange). Sister Jude sees through her facade and doesn't think that she should be there.
A serial killer called Bloody Face is going to be admitted to the asylum. It is none other than Kit Walker who has been accused of being Bloody Face after his wife was killed. He tries to protest his innocence.
He meets a girl called Grace(Lizzie Brochere) who was accused of murdering her family. She seems sane and they talk. There is a crazy doctor there called Dr. Arden(James Cromwell) who is performing experiments on the patients. Patients are disappearing and Sister Jude is not happy. She talks to the Monsignor (Joseph Fiennes) about it but he won't listen. She has fantasies about him. Another nun called Sister Mary Eunice(Lily Rabe) is helping out the doctor with his experiments. She meets Lana who is snooping around the asylum trying to expose the mistreatment of the patients, but she ends up getting committed herself. Cut to present day and the couple are trying to escape from the house but they end up meeting Bloody Face.
A good start to the next series. There is a lot going on so you would have to follow this from the first episode, but it is very good and the actors are good in it too. I am interested to see what is going to happen next!
Last season on The Walking Dead, we saw the group on the road near a prison. Rick had taken control of the group and got some balls at last!
Episode 1 begins with the group on the road. They are killing the zombies as they go but they are tired and Lori is almost ready to give birth. They are out of food and they need a place to go and regroup.
Rick decides that they need to get into the prison. It is surrounded by zombies outside, but they have no choice but to try and get in. They go in as a group with some of them distracting the zombies while others slip inside. They battle their way through the zombies and manage to get into the prison itself.
There are plenty more zombies around. They kill most of them in their little area and they can rest for a while.
Lori and Rick are not on the best of terms after the death of Shane. Rick is concentrating on keeping them all alive. Meanwhile, Michonne and Andrea are together and Andrea is very sick. They are holed up somewhere, but Andrea tells her that she will die if they don't get on the road. They decide to go and find a more secure place to stay. Rick and the others look around the prison and find themselves swamped by zombies. They have to retreat but Hershel manages to get his leg bitten by a walker and Rick has to chop it off. He is bleeding heavily. They suddenly see what they think are more walkers, but they are human!!!!
A good start to the third series. There was loads of action and it was very entertaining...I'm looking forward to the next episode!
Child's Play is a 1988 horror movie directed by Tom Holland(Fright Night,The Langoliers) and starring
Catherine Hicks(Seventh Heaven), Brad Dourif(Deadwood,Halloween) and Chris Sarandon(Fright Night,The Princess Bride).
Serial killer Charles Lee Ray(Brad Dourif) is being chased by cop Mike Norris(Sarandon). They are shooting at each other and they end up in a toy store. Ray gets shot and his evil spirit goes into a doll called a Good Guy. Ray knows voodoo and he transfers his evil into the doll. Cut to youngster Andy(Alex Vincent) who lives with his mother Karen(Hicks). He really wants a Good Guy doll but his mother can't afford it. While she is at work, she discovers a dodgy guy selling them at a reduced cost in an alley behind the store. She buys one from him. The dolls name happens to be Chucky! She gives it to Andy and he loves it. They become inseparable. But Chucky is no ordinary doll. He just happens to be the reincarnation of Charles Lee Ray and he is hellbent on getting out of the plastic doll body!
Chucky begins to kill people. The first one is a friend of Karen's.She had been babysitting Andy at the time and Chucky made her fall out of the window. Andy is upset and so is Karen when she comes home.
Cop Mike Norris is on the case. They find small footprints in the house and Norris thinks that Andy might have had something to do with it. The next day, Chucky tells Andy to cut school and he takes him on a journey to an old house. Chucky goes inside and he finds his old pal Eddie who ran off and left him to face the cops. He kills him.Andy figures out that Chucky is alive and dangerous and he tries to tell people but he ends up in a hospital as everyone thinks that he has problems. Karen looks at Chucky and realises that he is talking but there are no batteries in him! Chucky attacks her. He escapes and she tries to tell Norris about it, but he thinks that she is crazy!
Chucky attacks Mike and Mike realises that Karen wasn't crazy after all. Chucky gets Andy and he tries to put his evil spirit into the boy. Mike and Karen race to get to him before he can do more damage. They try to kill him and eventually they do. Somehow you know that Chucky will be back!! This film is great fun and it comes across as more of a comedy than horror. Brad Dourif does well as the voice of Chucky and the movie is very entertaining. If you are looking for a good comedy/horror, then this is for you.I am giving it an 8/10.
House of Fears is a 2007 horror movie directed by Ryan Little and starring Corri English,Sandra McCoy and Corey Sevier.
The movie begins with a woman buying an ancient relic in Africa. It it cursed. She takes it back to America. Cut to two girls,Hailey(Sandra McCoy) and her stepsister Samantha(English) who are going to a party together. Samantha is the quieter of the two and Hailey resents her because of her mother marrying Hailey's father. They go to the party and a group of their friends decide to go to a place called The House of Fears. It is a haunted house type of place and one of them has a key. They go inside and look around. There are different doors in the place and each of them have different fears behind them.
All of the group have different fears and they think that it is just a bit of fun.
As they wander around inside the house, it becomes apparent that the fun is over. They begin to die one by one and they get killed in the way that they had feared. They realise that it might have something to do with a weird little statue that they had found earlier. Hailey and Samantha are left inside the house and they need to escape before their fears kill them too. They are chased by killers and they have to break the statue to break the spell that it holds. Sam smashes it into pieces and they escape the house, but while they are free, the pieces of the statue are coming back together again...
A mediocre horror movie. I liked the way that the characters' fears were used to kill them. That was interesting but other than that, it wasn't anything special. It was worth a watch, but I won't be watching it again. It gets a 5/10.
Chained is a 2012 thriller/horror written and directed by Jennifer Lynch(yes, daughter of David Lynch) and starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Eamon Farren.
Sarah Fittler(Julia Ormond in a very small role) and her son, Tim(Evan Bird) are spending the day together and they decide to take a taxi home. They soon realise that the driver of the cab has missed their turn and they scream at him, but he ignores them. He drives them out to the middle of nowhere where his house is and he takes the mother away as the kid screams. He comes back later, bloody and he tells the kid that his mother won't be coming back. He tells the kid that he will call him Rabbit and that he will be his servant. He trains him to do everything for him and he has him attached to a chain when he tries to escape. It turns out that the killer is Bob(D'Onofrio) and he is a serial killer. He uses his cab to pick up victims. Rabbit becomes an unwilling participant in cleaning up after the kills.
Cut to years later and Rabbit is older now and played by Eamon Farren. Rabbit is still serving Bob and living on a chain. Bob tells him that he wants him to read up about the human body and learn things.
He wants him to follow in his footsteps and start killing too. Rabbit is not interested. Bob brings back a girl for him to get laid, but Rabbit won't do anything. Bob kills her anyway. He has a high school yearbook and he makes Rabbit choose a girl from that so that he can have his first sexual experience.
Rabbit is amazed when the girl is brought back and he is expected to have sex with her. He doesn't want to. He pretends to kill her and he takes her down to the basement where he tells her to wait until she can escape. Bob finds out and they fight. Rabbit kills Bob and he frees the girl(or does he?). Rabbit goes to visit his father who has since remarried and had another kid. He tells his dad that he knows that Bob was his uncle who took him in when Rabbit's dad paid Bob to kill his wife Sara and son Tim.
It turns out that Tim's dad is a bully too and as he attacks his wife when she tries to intervene between them, Tim kills him. The wife tells him to get out and she will pretend that a burglar broke in and killed her husband.Tim returns to the house where he was kept for so many years and we hear him getting into the cab at the end of the movie. Is he going to become a serial killer like his captor?? This movie was very slow in parts and some of the actions of the kid didn't make sense. He had chance after chance to kill Bob, but he didn't. He could have tried to escape many times, but chose not to. He found a knife on one of the victims, but it was never seen again.I know that he might have been traumatised but it just didn't ring true. The ending was a little silly too. He just killed his dad and the wife covered for him. That just seemed weird to me. The fact that Bob was his uncle was not a huge twist, it was more like a groan.All in all, D'Onofrio was very good in this as he always is in films and he carried this movie. If he hadn't been in it, I would have turned it off. Some good parts, but slow in others, this is getting a 5/10.
The Victim is a 2011 straight to DVD movie written, directed and starring Michael Biehn (Terminator,Aliens) and his wife Jennifer Blanc(Party of Five,Dark Angel). This is a grindhouse movie and it was shot in only 11 days which explains a lot!
The action begins with a woman running through the woods, obviously being chased by someone. She arrives at the cabin of Kyle(Biehn) begging for help. He lets her inside and he asks her what happened to her. She tells him that she and her friend,Mary(Danielle Harris) were with two men having fun when it all turned into a nightmare. Mary was murdered by one of them. The woman's name is Annie(Blanc) and she tells Kyle that she realised what had happened to her pal and she was afraid that they would kill her next so she ran.They are called Cooger(Denny Kirkwood) and Harrison(Ryan Honey) who is a cop.
Kyle is a bit taken aback by all of this and he tells her that he will take her into town. Harrison and Cooger show up at the cabin looking for Annie. They tell him that she is wanted.Kyle pretends that he hasn't seen her. They leave and Annie tries to convince Kyle that she isn't a troublemaker. She tells him that she will take him to see the body. They drive off to find it. They reach the spot, but Mary isn't there. In the middle of all this, Annie and Kyle have sex. Kyle goes outside and Harrison breaks in and finds Annie.
He takes her hostage and waits for Kyle. He and Kyle fight and Kyle knocks him out. He ties him up and asks him some questions. Harrison tries to bargain with Kyle and tells him that Annie is not who she seems. They take Harrison out to find the body but he can't.
Cooger shows up with a gun and Harrison has the upper hand. He beats Kyle up and he wants to kill him and Annie and burn the cabin. Cooger doesn't want to do it. Annie manages to get the gun from Cooger and she shoots him. She helps Kyle and he manages to kill Harrison. He buries the bodies and he and Annie talk about serial killers and she begins to realise that Kyle is not all that he seems....
This is an entertaining thriller and it is the directorial debut of Biehn so you have to give him credit as it is obvious that he had little money to make this. It isn't going to blow you away with special effects or great acting, but it is definitely worth a watch. Biehn obviously put a lot of work into this, so see it if you can....I'll be nice and give it a 5/10.
Pumpkinhead is a 1988 horror movie directed by Stan Winston and starring Lance Henriksen and John D'Aquino.
In 1957, some creature is chasing a man through the woods. The locals won't help him and they lock their doors and the man gets killed by whatever it is. Cut to present day and a man called Ed Harley(Henriksen) has a little shop in the countryside. He lives with his son, Billy and he brings him with him to the store. A group of young people are on their way to a cabin to stay when they stop at the store for some supplies. They have some dirt bikes with them and one of the group, Joel, decides to ride it around. Billy's dog chases after it and Billy follows. Joel knocks Billy down and kills him.Ed had gone home for a few minutes and when he arrives back, there is only one person left, Steve, who tries to explain what happened. The others have gone on to the cabin. Ed is very angry and he wants revenge.
Ed goes to an old witch and he tells her what happened. She can't bring Billy back from the dead, but she can summon a horrible creature from Hell called Pumpkinhead. He does as she says and digs its corpse up and brings it back to her shack. She performs a spell on it and it comes alive. Ed buries Billy and then Pumpkinhead goes on his murderous revenge spree. He finds the youngsters and he begins to kill them one by one. Ed has a change of heart and he decides that killing them isn't the way to feel better so he tries to kill Pumpkinhead. He can't so he gets the remaining youngsters and he takes them back to his house. Pumpkinhead discovers them and there is a showdown. Ed realises that if he shoots himself, then Pumpkinhead will die too. He shoots himself and when he dies, Pumpkinhead dies too. The old woman finds his body and buries it in Pumpkinheads grave, ready for the next time...
This was a good movie, I liked Henriksen in it. It is well worth a watch. I know that there is plenty of sequels, so I am going to dig those up and watch them too. I am giving this a 6/10.
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