Mod Horror Watch: Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (1962)

Watched:  10/11/2026

Format:  YouTube (watch it here)

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Hill

Usually the way Halloween-time spooky-movie-watching occurs is I pitch a few movies and Jamie picks one based on how well one of them suits her mood.  But this time I said "your challenge is to pick a Halloween or horror movie without any input from me".  

Not too very much longer after, she said "Spider Baby".  And I said "beg pardon?"  For I had never heard of Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told (1962).  

Jamie put on a trailer for the movie, and I groaned when I saw Lon Chaney Jr.  But, still, it wasn't Glenn Strange, so we take what we can get.  But then, Jamie said "it has an 88% critics rating on RT, and a 75% audience rating", so we fired it up.

This movie was a delight.  It made me think of JeniferSF repeatedly.  She'd enjoy this one.

It's a sort of riff on the Old Dark House motif, of a house full of weirdos is living their lives in a ramshackle place, unsuspecting travelers drop in, and things get crazy.  

Here, the people in the house carry an affliction that, at age 10, makes them start reversing course in intellect.  The occupants are a mix of three young adults who act like young children and then some aunts and uncles in the basement who are basically feral.  

With the passing of their father, the children are left in the care of the family chauffer, Long Chaney Jr, who takes his duties very seriously.  And then some distant cousins come to collect what they believe to be their inheritance.  And things go sideways.

The movie is an interesting indie feature, written and directed by Jack Hill who would did Pit Stop, which we've covered here before.  He also did Foxy Brown and Coffy, which I watched for Pam Grier-reasons in the past.  

Hill used Sid Haig in Pit Stop and Beverly Washburn as well.  It has Mary Mitchel and Karl Schanzer, who I just saw in Dementia 13.  Carol Ohmart I know from House on Haunted Hill as Vincent Price's venomous wife.  

It's called Spider Baby because one of the girls who is really regressing has a fascination with spiders and associates herself with them, including "playing spider", which means wrapping up her prey before "stinging' them.

Anyway, it is *fun*, and darker and funnier than I was expecting.  Worth it for Sid Haig's wardrobe change alone.

Horror Watch: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 - Freddy's Revenge (1985) / Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2020)

Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge 

Watched:  10/09/2026

Format:  HBO

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Sholder

Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street

Watched: 10/10/2026

Format:  YouTube (link here)

Viewing:  First

Directors:  Roman Chimienti and Tyler Jensen

My guess is that because A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985) is kind of interesting and tries to do character stuff, the fans hate it. 

I'm first to confess, I really don't know the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.  I've seen the first one a few times now, and the third one once.  But I just wasn't terribly interested in horror growing up.  At the time kids are getting into it, I was like "gimme Dracula or I have no time for your tomfoolery".  And then, when I was 14 and finally rented The Exorcist and The Shining, was like "Hey, THIS is horror?  These movies are great".  

My tastes have shifted, and I've come around on some of this stuff.  

Crampton Watch: Fraternity Vacation (1985)

if the poster gives you a sinking feeling, that is the right reaction

Watched:  10/08/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  James Frawley

This movie is bad.  

You go into it knowing it's bad.  But then it's very bad, and there you are.  But you were the one who hit play on the movie, so you have to just sit with who you are and what you're doing with your life.

Fraternity Vacation (1985) is part of the horned-up young adults having wacky misadventures films of the 1980's.  But it comes along at a point where there were so many of these dumb things, there's a punchlist of things that need to happen more than there needs to be a plot.  

Crampton Watch: Dead Night (2017)

Watched:  10/07/2026

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Brad Baruh

Someday I should go to Fantastic Fest here in Austin.  JAL does it every year, and it's a whole scene.  I guess a decade ago Dead Night (2017) was included, and co-star Barbara Crampton was actually there with some of the rest of the cast.  That would be great.

Dead Night seems like a movie that made sense on paper, and would work great as a horror comic book.  As a movie, it has some structural issues that maybe keep it from knocking it out of the park, because it's well acted, had a good location/set, and - in the end - the overall concept is something I liked.

But I didn't think much of the movie for maybe the first thirty minutes.  As we made the turn into the last ten minutes or so I thought "well, that was kind of clever".  It didn't knock my socks off, but I was impressed with the notion of the movie.  

Horror Watch: Backrooms (2026)

Watched:  10/04/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Kane Parsons

During lockdown, I went down a lot of YouTube holes.  One of the ways I wasted my hours was watching "urban exploration" - videos of people going into facilities and structures which have been abandoned.  

These videos cover everything from empty hospitals with equipment collecting dust to prisons with rotting bars to defunct mega-construction projects in China.  Some folks hit old forts and underground military bunkers left over from the Cold War.  And houses - often mansions, that have simply been left to rot.

The videos are always marginally disturbing.  Buildings are *designed*.  They have purpose where form meets function.   You can see the massive expense for these places, from the labor needed to build them to the equipment and furnishings.  And then... something happened and everyone went away.

The buildings, tunnels, etc.. are left to decay.  America's former malls are a wild thing to behold.  Nature reclaims what it can, rain comes through ceilings, vines and mold grow in odd places.  a layer of dust a half inch thick may have formed in the older examples.

Horror Watch: Weapons (2025)

Watched: 10/03/2026

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Director:  Zach Creggar

Y'all, I did not think Weapons (2025) was a good movie, so if you love it, you might as well either close this post or leap to the comments to tell me I didn't get it.

Weapons was a big f'ing deal when it came out.  Horror fiends lauded it, and it's still tracking at an 81 on Metacritic.  So, I know that much like Taylor Swift, it's me.  I'm the problem.

Horror Watch: Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Watched:  10/02/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert Hiltzik

So, all I knew about Sleepaway Camp (1983) was this image:

And that 43 years later, it seems like this movie still has an enthusiastic cult following.  

I also saw it was part of Prime, so... why not?

Well, the "why not?" is probably good taste and better judgement, but this is The Signal Watch, and we're in short supply on both.  

Totter Western Watch: The Vanishing American (1955)

Watched:  10/01/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joseph Kane

The Vanishing American (1955) is based on a Zane Grey novel that is supposed to be pretty good.  The novel is about a Navajo kid taken from home, raised by White folks, sent to college and the collision of his worlds.

This movie uses a tad of that as background for why it's male hero is more relatable to our female lead (Audrey Totter) but focuses on... the hot blonde and her land dispute.  Because it's 1955, people, and we don't want to make the audience feel things when we could just be having a rollicking adventure.

Horror Catch-Up Watch: Obsession (2025)

Watched:  09/28/2026

Format:  Peacock

Viewing:  First

Director:  Curry Barker

I only knew a few things before going into Obsession (2025):

• It made an insane amount of money (~$520 million) on a modest indie-horror budget
• I knew Inde Navarrette from the excellent Superman & Lois where she played the daughter of Lana Lang

I guess I also knew that Navarrette's character, Nikki, was obsessed with some guy and magic was involved.  And the audience was primarily young people and a few older horror-heads who wanted to see what the fuss is about.

Obsession (2025) isn't just a young person's movie, it's a young person's movie of the modern age of young people.  

Crampton Watch: Poison (2001)

Watched:  09/27/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jim Wynorski

Always a good sign when a movie has been given multiple names.  This one is listed as Poison (2001) on IMDB, but is also listed as Thy Neighbor's Wife, but I found it - for free - on Amazon as Midnight Vendetta.  

Why did I find it?  I was thinking "man, it's been a while since I watched a Barbara Crampton movie."  And while I am not gearing up to see *every* Barbara Crampton movie, stranger things have happened.  

Youth Watch: Untamed Youth (1957)

Watched:  09/26/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First, I believe

Director:  Howard W. Koch

This movie exists to accidentally stumble through two important social issues, but was mostly there so we could watch Mamie Van Doren shake it in various states of (un)dress.

It's a movie capitalizing on the rising issues of juvenile delinquency and the exploitation of agricultural workers.  In this case, those workers are delinquent young adults (not teens) who get pinched by the local law for breaking minor infractions or all-together made up infractions.  Then they are pressed into service as indentured servants.

Bug Watch: Tarantula (1955)

Watched:  09/25/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Arnold

The only issue with this movie is John Agar.  

I mean, there's the general issue of John Agar being John Agar and I'm still mad about how he was to Shirley Temple.  But he's also a terrible actor.  He has  exactly one line delivery, whether he's inappropriately abandoning his medical practice to hit on Mara Corday or a tarantula the size of a battleship is walking toward him.

And it's a shame, because the movie has a few other actors - Leo G. Carroll who is dialing it in, and is still acting circles around him - and Mara Corday, who is doing her best to get Agar to do something other than just stare straight ahead and speak in a clipped, 1950's manly voice.

Stanwyck Watch: Jeopardy (1953)

Watched:  09/23/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Sturges

I don't know how you can't be blown away by Barbara Stanwyck.  Just an incredible talent.  I might be a fan of, say, Marie Windsor, but I know when someone got Stanwyck, she was going to deliver in a way maybe only 1 or 2 of her contemporaries could.*

It's not like our preferred mode of horror and thrillers these days isn't "nice suburban people suddenly confronted with someone who will kill them".  And Jeopardy (1953) is absolutely in that mode.  

Anyway, this isn't a deep drama.  It's a fast-moving noirish thriller with a small cast, life or death stakes, and proof that kids are just bent on self-destruction, and keeping them safe is probably more trouble than it's worth.

Stanwyck co-stars with first Barry Sullivan, who plays her husband.  They're on a roadtrip from southern California into Mexico to go fishing with their young son, do some camping in a remote spot Sullivan found long ago.  

SPOILERS

Kubrick Watch: Barry Lyndon (1975)

Watched:  09/21/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Stanley Kubrick

Somehow I'd never seen Barry Lyndon (1975).  I assume some part of my brain would look at the film and say "it won't be fun, and it's 3 hours" and would tap out before I could hit play.

In the past 20 years or so, the common wisdom I received in the 1990's - that the movie was dull or not Kubrick's best - seems to have evaporated and the film has received serious reconsideration.  But aside from "people in ruffles cavort in what looks like the second half of the 18th Century", I had no idea what the film was about.  That said, every film student knew that Kubrick's movie was shot with very special lenses, using only candlelight in many scenes -something unheard of in film production.  And I knew Barry Lyndon was supposed to be one of the most visually stunning movie ever produced, which... I mean, Kubrick.   You get that as part of the package.

Doc Watch: Film Geek (2023)

Watched:   09/15/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Richard Shepard

It's always weird to watch a documentary about someone talking about themselves and their family.  In this way, the recent award winning doc by Mariska Hargitay My Mom Jayne absolutely works.  As her mother Jayne Mansfield passed when she was so very young, it's really about her learning about her own mother decades after the fact.  She just happens to have the best possible access to Mansfield's history.  But she also is clear eyed about remaining objective and talking about it when she isn't and what it means to live with that legacy.

Film Geek (2023) tosses anything like objectivity out the window in the first minute of the film, and you're just along for the ride as film maker Richard Shepard recounts his youth in 1970's and 1980's Manhattan, which was a whirlwind of movie mania and NY-based Gen-X childhood.  This is paired with our director/narrator trying to unpack how movies tied him to a father he wants to present as a romantic rogue and bon vivant and his mother as a saint.

Catch-Up Watch: Polite Society (2023)

Watched:  09/11/2026

Format:  Peacock 

Viewing:  First

Director:  Nida Manzoor

I'd seen a trailer for Polite Society (2023) when it was coming out, but theatrical windows are short, and I missed it.  Since then, I believe it was Stuart who rec'd it, and I'd had it loosely in the back of my head to watch, meanwhile forgetting why I wanted to see it or what it was about.

Well, whatever I thought it was about, the movie kind of defies genre or expectations at multiple points, and I mean that in the best way.  It's like someone took good ideas and stitched them together into exactly the movie they wanted to make (no, I don't know who Nida Manzoor is exactly, but she also did the series We Are Lady Parts in England, which got good notices).  

Pirate Watch: The Sea Hawk (1940)

Watched:  09/10/2026

Format:  TCM on DVR

Viewing:  First

Director:  Michael Curtiz

Look, names of directors get forgotten, but Michael Curtiz was one of the best to get behind a lens, making some of my very favorite films - and they may be your favorites, too.  Casablanca, Mildred Pierce, Adventures of Robin Hood, White Christmas, Flamingo Road, and another Errol Flynn pirate movie - Captain Blood.  

And, man, I still am unclear how they filmed these things, with their huge ships, falling masts, flashing sabers and swashing buckles.  The Sea Hawk (1940) merges the scale of Captain Blood and Robin Hood - two prior Curtiz/ Flynn productions with palace sets, huge galleons and more.  

Pat Boone Noir Watch: The Yellow Canary (1963)

Watched:  09/08/2026

Format:  TCM Noir Alley

Viewing:  First

Director:  Buzz Kulik

All I knew was that The Yellow Canary (1963) starred Pat Boone and Barbara Eden, two people I could not imagine paired, let alone in a noir film.

From the intro and outro, my takeaway was that Eddie Muller had gotten involved with preserving this movie because it seemed so unlikely.  Famously squeaky-clean singer and sometimes actor Pat Boone had agreed to play a philandering, jack-ass pop star (a Bizarro-world version of himself) who is married to Barbara Eden and somehow (against all imaginable odds, and my basic understanding of the world) finds that boring.  

Windsor Watch: Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955)

Watched:  09/06/2026

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Charles Lamont

Confession time:  I haven't really enjoyed Bud & Lou since I was a kid.  I remember we'd check out 8mm projectors and film from the library and watch their movies and have a good laugh.  I was six.

Subsequent attempts to watch the classic comedy duo have gone less well.  

But, of the main ingrendients, I do like two other things:  classic movie monsters and Marie Windsor.  And, I figure - two out of three things in this movie?  That ain't bad.

Our plot:  Bud & Lou are semi-stranded in Egypt and get involved with a cult, an ancient mummy, a murder and shady characters looking to make some money.  

I dunno.

Dolly Watch: Straight Talk (1992)

Watched:  09/06/2026

Format:  Amazon?

Viewing:  First

Director:  Barnet Kellman

I kind of remember a spate of these sorts of sweet, fluffy, cotton candy movies coming out for a minute.  I think a lot of this sort of thing has made its way to TV or streaming, and that's cool.  

The draw of Straight Talk in 1992 was "want to see Dolly Parton be nice for 90 minutes?" and in 1992, if it didn't have a robot, Wesley Snipes, a serial killer or an alien in it, no, I did not want to see your movie all that bad.  High school me didn't think about Dolly Parton one way or another, so high-school me took a pass.  And that's too bad.  My mom would love this movie, and we never agreed of movies then or now.  I think I'll call and recommend it to her later today.