The Friday Night Horror Movie: Twins of Evil (1971)

twins of evil

I suspect if you were to run some statistics on The Midnight Cafe, you’d find that I’ve reviewed more movies from Hammer Studios than any other one, and that Peter Cushing would be somewhere in the top in terms of actors I’ve written about. He is my seventh most watched actor, with some 37 of his films having been watched by me. I’ve written about eight of those films, most of which were Hammer Horror films. I’ve written about 24 different films from that studio.

That seems weird to me because Cushing isn’t one of my favorite actors. I mean, I do love him, but if I were to make a list of my favorites, he wouldn’t be on it. And I imagine if you took my ratings of all the Hammer films and averaged them out, the number you’d get wouldn’t be that high.

I don’t know what that means. I don’t know why I keep watching these films. That’s not true. I do love me some Hammer Horror even while I can admit they aren’t always the greatest of films. It is interesting to me that I keep turning to them and that it’s only been the last decade that I’ve become a fan.

Anyway, Twins of Evil is pretty great.

Cushing plays Gustav Weil, a stern Puritan who leads a gang of dudes who love burning pretty young women at the stake. I mean, sure, they declare them witches first, and there does seem to be quite a few folks getting horribly murdered, lending credibility to some kind of ungodly horror going on, but really it’s just fun to burn girls out in the forest.

Up on the hill in his castle overlooking the village, Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) dabbles in Satanism (and I absolutely love that all the summaries of the film use that language, “dabbles in Satanism.”) While doing a bit of pretty young woman sacrificing of his own, he accidentally awakens Countess Mircalla Karnstein (Katya Wyeth) from her grave. She immediately turns him into a vampire.

Meanwhile, two twin sisters, Freida Gellhorn (Mary Collinson) and Maria (Mary Collinson), arrive in the village due to their parents dying. They take up residence with the good Gustav, their uncle. Now Maria is a good girl who wants to please her uncle, but Freida is a bad girl. She likes to sneak out at night and get into trouble. When she meets the Count, she’s all over that stuff.

Because this is a Hammer film and one made in 1971, both girls love to show off their cleavage and spend a great deal of the movie in their nightgowns with strategically placed camera angles.

The girls are a pain in their uncle’s neck. He believes them to be evil (one might even say Twins of Evil, actually Gustav says exactly that at one point.) Slowly everyone realizes the Count is a vampire, and Gustav will finally use God’s name in the service of fighting actual evil.

As per usual with Hammer, the production design is impeccable. The sets and costumes look great; the lighting is gorgeous. Cushing is wonderful. Unlike a lot of characters in films like this, he isn’t driven by an insane need for power, but rather he is a true believer. He truly thinks Satan is out there destroying the world. That warped faith drives him to do mad things. One could probably say something about how his Puritanical sense of sex drives him to burn beautiful young women at the stake, but I’ll leave that be. The Collinson sisters are a delight. Madeline especially has a lot of fun as the wild Freida.

Also, as per usual with Hammer films, the script isn’t great. It introduces the vampire aspect but doesn’t do a lot with it. The vamps do recoil from crosses, but don’t seem to mind daylight. But the look of the film and the performances make it well worth watching.

Happy Cornell 1977 Day!

The Pusher Trilogy is the Pick of the Week

imgbox

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I’ve been working on some music projects. I’ve shared them with some of you, and I’ll share with more of you in time. I’m trying to work the kinks out and figure out how I want to do it, so be patient.

Also, I just haven’t felt like writing or posting, and I’ve decided that there is no need to push myself. I’ll write when I feel like it and won’t when I don’t. There are some things I’ll still try to do, like Picks of the Week and Friday Night Horror Movies, but otherwise I do what I want.

Anyway, this week’s pick is three films from Nicolas Winding Refn. He’s the guy who made Drive. I loved that film. It is a loose trilogy about some criminals in Denmark. I’ve only seen the first two but quite liked them and am anxious to see the third. You can read about this release and everything else that came out this week here.

I wrote this yesterday (Thursday) but then IMGBox, the site I use to host my images was down, so there was yet another delay in posting.

Wilco – Bentonville, AR (05/02/26)

image host

Wilco is one of my favorite bands. I’ve seen them more times in concert than any other artist by far. Not that this is a great accomplishment, I don’t actually go to that many concerts. But I catch Wilco every chance I can.

They seem to love playing at the Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. We’ve seen them (or Jeff Tweedy solo) there half a dozen times. When they announced their most recent tour a few months back, they did not list Tulsa as a stop, but they were playing Bentonville, which is only about a two-hour drive from where I live. I immediately bought tickets. Naturally, about two weeks later they announced they were playing Tulsa in July.

I looked at my wife and asked, “Are we going to see Wilco twice this summer?” We bought tickets. My sister and her husband will be in town then, flying in from South Korea, and we bought them tickets too.

The Bentonville show was an outdoor gig and general admission. There was a time when I’d show up to a show well before the doors opened, hoping to score those great seats. But I’m old now, and the idea of standing for two hours before a show and then another couple during the show is just too much for my back to take.

We left about five for a show that started at eight. I figured that would be plenty of time to get there and even have a bit to eat on our way. We arrived about 7:30 and found a great long line. That was annoying because we had three lawn chairs, just as many blankets, plus a pillow, and some other stuff. Security was nice, but they made us open up our lawn chairs and open up my wife’s purse.

Because everyone brought their own chairs, things were a little haphazard. Mostly people put them in straight lines, but there were large gaps and spaces everywhere. This meant we had to sit quite a ways into the back. We were maybe twenty yards behind the soundboard and off to the side. Behind us was a small hill, which meant there was a walkway between it and us. The rest of the venue was pretty flat, which made it hard to see the stage.The sound back that far wasn’t great. It was really kind of distant, making the show sound like it was taking place someplace else.

I set all that up to say that the crowd was kind of obnoxious. I understand people are going to talk at a concert. I mean, I don’t get it, I don’t know why anyone pays a lot of money to see a band and then acts like they are just background music for their stupid conversation. But I understand that’s just the way it is. But this show was out of hand.

There were two dudes behind us, sitting on that hill, that loudly talked through every song. One lady came in late and sat beside my daughter. She literally turned her seat away from the band so she could chat with her friend. A whole gang of folks gathered behind the soundboard, acting like they were at a bar, not a concert.

I do think the outdoor venue, the way we were all haphazardly positioned in our own chairs, and the poor sound quality at that contributed to all of this.

The music was good. The setlist was great. They opened with “Via Chicago” and then went into “Handshake Drugs.” The first set was a nice mix of newer songs and some old ones. Bassist John Stirratt even sang “It’s Just That Simple” off of their first album, AM. It ended with “California Stars”, one of my favorites.

I did my best to enjoy the music and not be annoyed by the talkers. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and just try to listen. It didn’t always work. I remember thinking this might be the worst concert I’ve ever been to. Which sucked, because, like I said, the music was good.

At the set break, my daughter went to the bathroom, bought a drink, and then looked at the merch. On our way back to our seats, we noticed some open spaces much closer to the stage. We grabbed our chairs, explained everything to my wife, and, like the Jeffersons, “moved on up.”

What a difference that made.

The sound was so much better. The audience was much more into it. There were still a few talkers, but the sound drowned them out. The band was on fire. The setlist was off the charts good. They played songs from just about every album they’ve made and concentrated on the older ones.

“Impossible Germany” was impossibly good. I’m a Nels Cline maniac. When we see them at Cain’s, I always stand on the Nels side of the stage. There is always a point where I turn to my wife and go, “Nels Fucking Cline!” On songs like “Impossible Germany” he tends to go crazy. He’ll launch into these frenzied solos where he just strums super fast and the band creates feedback behind him. I love it. But this time he played real solos. It reminded me a lot of the Jerry Garcia Band, where he was jamming, but it was still within the rhythm of the song. It was fantastic.

Jeff seemed in good spirits. He chatted amiably and even had some short convos with the crowd. The crowd was pretty laid-back. There wasn’t a lot of whooping and hollering. During “Kingpin” there is a section where the crowd usually screams in response to Jeff singing “How Can I?” but here they were silent. Jeff even joked with them about it, but it was a no go.

I suspect the cold had something to do with that. It was quite chilly, and most of us were huddled under blankets. And the crowd seemed like they were maybe not huge fans. The big songs off of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot got a lot of cheers, but the rest of the songs got claps, but nothing super enthusiastic.

But I was loving it. This show went from one of my least favorite concerts ever in the first set to one of my absolute favorite gigs in the second.

If you are a fan I highly recommend checking them out this tour.

Here’s the setlist:

Set 1:

Via Chicago
Handshake Drugs
If I Ever Was a Child
Cruel Country
Forget the Flowers
Evicted
Bird Without a Tail / Base of My Skull
I’m Always in Love
Everyone Hides
Hummingbird
It’s Just That Simple
You and I
War on War
Falling Apart (Right Now)
California Stars

Set 2:
Box Full of Letters
Annihilation
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
One Wing
Either Way
Love Is Everywhere (Beware)
Impossible Germany
Jesus, Etc.
The Universe
Hate It Here
Walken
Kingpin
Heavy Metal Drummer
I’m the Man Who Loves You

Encore:
The Late Greats
I Got You (At the End of the Century)
Outtasite (Outta Mind)

Mudtown

image host

My wife and I watch a lot of British television. We’re huge fans of what they call panel shows, which are basically game shows with comedians. But we also love a good British mystery or crime drama. We subscribe to BritBox, a British streaming service that provides loads of stuff. Some of it is good, some of it is garbage.

The difficulty is that I don’t see commercials for British television; I don’t know anyone or follow anyone on social media that regularly talks about British television. So I have no idea what’s good or what’s not.

Mudtown is pretty good.

Clare Lewis Jones (Erin Richards) is a volunteer magistrate in Newport, Wales. I don’t even know what that means. I guess they hear low-level court cases and make decisions like a judge, but maybe not on major crimes. English law is weird.

Anyway, she’s good at her job. But she’s got a dark past. When she was young, she ran around with a guy now known as ‘Saint Pete’ Burton (Tom Cullen), who saved her neck back then. Now he runs drugs and is an up-and-comer in the criminal community. She’s got a husband and two kids. The oldest, Beca (Lauren Morais), has started dating Sonny Higgins (Lloyd Meredith), who is Saint Pete’s right-hand man.

One night Beca is at a party with her high school chums at some old abandoned warehouse. Someone starts a fire that just so happens to burn up a bunch of Saint Pete’s money that he had stashed in the warehouse. Later, one of the kids finds himself shot.

Most of the show involves Saint Pete trying to find out who started the fire and Clare trying to keep Beca out of trouble. There is a lot of family drama (between Clare and her husband and daughter, and Saint Pete and his crew).

The acting is good, the cinematography is great, and the story mostly worked for me. We recently watched a couple of shows where the characters made absolutely stupid decisions, and I was thrilled that for most of this one they actually seemed relatively intelligent. It gets a little dumb by the final episode, but mostly this worked for me.

I especially appreciated how they played with the whole my kids in trouble trope. A lot of shows will put a kid into trouble, and they don’t actually care that much about the kid. It is just a plot point to drive our heroes into action. But here Beca is a real character, and they do some interesting things with her.

I’m definitely hoping for a season two.

The Movie Journal: April 2026

thief of bagdad

I watched 37 movies in April. 32 were new to me. Only eight of them were made before I was born. It was the Awesome 80s in April which explains why so many of them were not made before I was born. 18 of them were made in the 1980s.

It was a good month. I feel like I always say that. I guess there isn’t such a thing as a bad month watching movies. Unless you don’t get to watch any at all. But I did watch some good movies this month. There wasn’t anything particularly outstanding in the bunch, but there were a lot of very good ones.

imgbox

The top actors list is fleshing out nicely. Tom Baker has taken the top spot with seven films. I continue to watch him in Doctor Who, and that’s why his companion in that show, Lalla Ward, is now in the top ten. I’ve actually taken to Letterboxd and started looking at big lists of classic Who stories and then trying to watch the ones I’ve never seen before. Or at least the ones I haven’t logged on Letterboxd before.

imgbox

The director’s list hasn’t changed all that much. Spielberg has popped in, but nobody has challenged Yves Boisset with his four films, and most of the list is filled with just two film guys. I need to kick up my directing game, I guess.

Here’s the full list.

Dust Bunny (2025) ****
Die My Love (2025) ****
Sleeping Dogs (2024) ***
Doctor Who: Revenge of the Cybermen (1975) ***
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) ***
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) ****
Mrs. Pollifax — Spy (1971) **
Evil Dead Trap (1988) ***
Nightfall (1956) ****
Cherry 2000 (1987) **
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025) ****
Doctor Who: Colony in Space (1971) ***1/2
So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious… (1975) ***
Doctor Who: The Horns of Nimon (1980) ***1/2
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (2026) ***
Dead Bang (1989) ****
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) ****
Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) ***1/2
Confessions of a Police Captain (1971) ****
The Housemaid (2025) ***
To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) ****
Umamusume: Pretty Derby – Beginning of a New Era (2024) **
Poltergeist III (1988) ***
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) **1/2
Poltergeist (1982) ****
TerrorVision (1986) ***
Out of Control (1985) **
The Thief of Bagdad (1924) ****
Spy, Stand Up (1982) ***1/2
La Femme flic (1980) ***1/2
Mad Enough to Kill (1975) ***1/2
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) ***1/2
The Lego Batman Movie (2017) ****
Invitation to Hell (1984) ***
Angel’s Leap (1971) ***1/2
Death Ship (1980) ***
We Bury the Dead (2024) ***1/2

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Drop (2025)

image host

Drop is the sort of those high-concept, utterly ridiculous thrillers they used to make a lot of in the 1990s. It is all kinds of dumb but still a lot of fun to watch.

Violet Gates (Meghann Fahy) is just beginning to get over the death of her abusive husband. Oh, she’s not sad he’s dead, for he was an awful piece of…but she survived years of abuse and nearly let him kill her baby boy, and that’s hard to get over. Even if you are a therapist.

She’s been talking to a handsome photographer named Henry (Brandon Sklenar) through one of those online dating apps, and tonight she’s finally agreed to meet him face-to-face for a dinner date at one of those fancy restaurants that sits atop a skyscraper, giving panoramic views of Chicago.

She leaves her sister June (Violett Beane) in charge of the boy (and her wardrobe) and nervously goes on the date. Before they can even order hors d’oeuvres, she starts receiving these strange airdropped digital messages. At first they are just sort of annoying, and the couple play a little game as to who it could be, but soon enough they become threatening.

Look at the video footage from her at-home security cameras, it says. They show a masked man in her home. Do what I say, or your family will be killed, it says. Tell no one what is happening. Do not call the cops. Do not let your dinner date leave.

The tormentor seems to know everything she is doing. He’s somehow got access to the restaurant’s internal camera system. He’s also placed cameras inside the bathroom and next to her table. He’s cloned her phone.

I won’t spoil exactly what he asks her to do except that it has to do with destroying some evidence and causing harm to someone. It makes very little sense as it is a dumb way to get what they want, but you just have to roll with it.

Director Christopher Landon keeps the tension high, and writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach find clever ways for Violet to solve her problem. Because those digital drops have to be sent from someone close they have a lot of fun hinting it might be this person or that one. I guessed correctly pretty quickly so it isn’t really that hard to figure out. It ends in a climactic battle that’s all sort of ridiculous, but I had a good time with it.

Landon directed both Happy Death Day films and Freaky, and I wish he’d leaned a little more heavily into the ridiculousness of this situation and made it a little funnier. But it’s still an entertaining little film. Like I said, they used to make this sort of film a lot in the 1990s, and I kind of miss them. Sometimes you want something ridiculous and not so serious.

Small housekeeping note. We are in May, and that means we’re geared up for mysteries. Crime stories often blend mystery, thriller, and horror together, but it is always difficult to find one that leans that mix a little more toward horror for Friday nights. I thought this one would do the trick, but it really is much more of a thriller than a horror film, but it is late and this is what you get.

Mysteries In May: Down River (2025)

down river

Down River (2025)
Directed by Brian Barnard, Tommy Walton
Starring: Jody Thompson, Randy McDowell, and Ashley Sutton

Synopsis: A sheriff and deputy probe a crime at an abandoned farmhouse in West Virginia’s coal country. Their investigation uncovers dark secrets that endanger both the town and the sheriff’s grip on reality.

Rating: **1/2

There is something about this film that I really wanted to like. It starts off well. I’m a big fan of moody mysteries set in some mountainous backwater with a laconic sheriff who hunts a killer. Ronnie Long (Jodie Thompson, who also cowrote) fits that bill. He’s rugged and handsome. He’s got a past that haunts him.

Early on we’ll see him pull over his big old sheriff’s truck at that abandoned farmhouse. He finds a shovel that seems out of place and sneaks into the house. The tension builds. Something is about to happen. Then his partner and friend Shep Mills (Randy McDowell, who also cowrote) calls out. The tension drops, but now there is something strange happening. Ronnie shouldn’t be there. No crime seems to have been committed.

The above synopsis doesn’t really do the film justice. There isn’t much investigating in this movie. There is a twist about twenty minutes into it that I won’t spoil, and I really liked it, but it changes how we view everything that happened before. It changes the relationships the film was developing.

Sometime in the past, Ronnie suffered a tragedy that left him with a head wound. He’s turned to drinking. He started seeing things. Things that haven’t yet happened.

The film plays with time in strange ways. It is disjointed. It will flashback without warning or much in the way of indicating what it’s doing. There were several times I didn’t realize a scene was a flashback, and then I was confused about what was happening in the present. But then we’ll also see the things Ronnie is seeing in his visions. The way it jumps around between these things makes the plot difficult to get a handle on. Once the credits rolled and I had time to think about it, I was able to figure it all out, but it isn’t a good enough film to make me want to watch it again to see how the pieces fit together.

The cinematography is beautiful. The rolling hills and dense treelines are lovely to look at. I liked the story, but the jumbled way it was told was more confusing than interesting. Jodie Thompson is good when he’s being laconic, less so when he has to really emote. I didn’t particularly care for Randy McDowell’s performance at all. There is a side character, a jerk of a cop, that seemed out of place in this story, and they didn’t seem to know what to do with Ronnie’s mother. There is a scene with her late in the film that seems like it is leading to something, and then she just disappears.

Not a terrible film. Worth watching if you need a mystery fix. But not great either.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Tulsa, OK (04/29/26)

imgbox

I got to see Gillian Welch and David Rawlings last night. It was wonderful. I’d seen them before several years ago in Memphis. It was one of my favorite concert experiences ever. It was in a small auditorium. The crowd was reverent. Not a soul spoke a word. The music was transcendent.

Last night was a free outdoor concert at the Guthrie Green. That’s a nice patch of grass in the middle of downtown Tulsa. My guess was the crowd would be more rowdy. Free would bring random folks interested in a fun night out. Outdoors, mean people would feel more free to talk and play. Plus there would be all sorts of downtown, city noises.

It turned out to be mostly reserved. It was a nice-sized crowd, but not overflowing. I guess a midweek show kept some people away. Those who were there all seemed to come to hear Gillian and Dave. Periodically I’d hear people talking, and every now and again someone would stand in front of me to get a picture. For the first set there was a food truck, or maybe one of the local bars, playing some kind of bass-thumping music at high volume nearby. That was obnoxious, especially during the quieter songs. But Dave’s big guitar playing usually drowned it out, and it seemed to stop by the second set.

We got a good seat just off to the side of the soundboard with a clear view. The sound was good. The performance was resplendent.

They started with a beautiful rendition of “Elvis Presley Blues”. That was the first Gillian Welch song I ever heard. I still remember when I heard it. I was driving down from Bloomington, IN, to where my wife’s folks lived, about an hour south. It came on the local independent radio station, and I was absolutely struck by it. My wife was riding down in her car because she was staying longer than I was. When we arrived, we both got out and asked each other if we’d heard that song.

The first set mostly stuck to the new songs (from the wonderful Woodland album) and a lot of Dave Rawlings songs that I wasn’t ultra-familiar with (but were still great.)

At some point they brought out the banjo, and David quipped that the show had started properly then. But it was out of tune, so Gillian talked while David tuned. I say she talked, but she admitted she didn’t really have anything to say. That she wasn’t good with banter. It was very awkward and cute.

They had a break and came back with a vengeance for the second set. As a couple, Gillian and Dave make the most wonderful harmonies. Their voices blend together in that magical way that only comes from spending years together with a fierce admiration for each other. David Rawlings is an underrated and absolutely brilliant guitarist. “Revelator” is another one of my favorite songs, and David’s guitar work just roared.

They talked a little about how they visited both the Bob Dylan Center and the Woody Guthrie one. Dave joked that he had a hard time deciding which artist’s song he should play to honor them. He landed on Bob Dylan’s “Song for Woody Guthrie” which was both appropriate and awesome.

For the encore, they covered Doc Watson’s “Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor” and then launched into a brilliant version of “Look at Miss Ohio” to which the entire audience sang along.

Then they played the Old Crow Medicine Show’s “I Hear Them All” which rolled into Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” Guthrie was from Oklahoma, and the Center is located not two blocks from our setting, and the crowd went nuts. They closed with a delightful sing-along of the old gospel tune “I’ll Fly Away.”

It was a beautiful (if a bit chilly) night with clear skies and a big full moon rising just above the stage. The setting was perfect and the music was divine.

imgbox