We’ve got a fun mix of new & old this time around, beginning with “The Arborist” and “Diabolic,” both from 2025. Next, we’ll watch a really old one that surprised us with how graphic it was for being made in 1934: “Maniac.” We’ll round out the week with a pair of old sci-fi horrors, “Satellite in the Sky” and “World Without End,” both from 1956.
All this, as well as the latest issue of “Horror Monthly,” issue #55, is available! Check out all the back issues, as well as our other books, with one easy link:
Mainstream Films:
2025 The Arborist
Director: Andrew Mudge
Writers: Andrew Mudge
Stars: Lucy Walters, Hudson West, Will Lyman
Runtime: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
An arborist in mourning and her somewhat surly son land a wood trimming gig, hired by a recluse living in a big mansion on big land. But there’s some haunting going on along with big loads of guilt and grief, and it’s not just a simple job. It’s beautifully filmed with a strong cast of just a few main characters, but it didn’t really connect with either of us.
Spoilery Synopsis
We hear a woman shushing a baby as a large ball of woven vines rolls into the room. Credits roll.
Ellie gets up in the morning and runs the breast pump. She goes looking for her son Wyatt, but then finds something very wrong with the baby.
One year later, Ellie and Wyatt drive to a large estate where they have been promised work. She’s still grieving over the death of the baby. She meets Mr. Randolph, the owner of the house, and he mostly just wants her to cut firewood. Meanwhile, Wyatt finds a mysterious ball of woven vines near the truck that scares him enough that he hides from it. They move into the little gardener’s cottage.
Wyatt asks about the old man living all alone in that huge mansion. He gripes about her drinking and then plays videos of the baby, which annoys her.
In the morning, the two get to work. They find what looks like an old amphitheater in the woods and then argue over how to use a chainsaw.
As Ellie works, Wyatt goes canoeing and sees something not quite human on the bank. Ellie finds him passed out on the bank and has flashbacks to the baby.
Old man Randolph brings him a fishing pole to use, and Ellie asks him why hire an arborist when anyone with a chainsaw could do the work. Why those particular healthy trees?
Wyatt believes that some thing killed his little sister, but Ellie explains it was just SIDS. A bit later, Wyatt sees the monster under the canoe, repeating his mother’s words. He also sees the vine ball again, as well as some kind of demon. “What killed her? What killed Rachel?” it asks.
Ellie talks to Randolph about quitting, but she’s already been paid. The old man shows her that Wyatt has been inside the house for some reason. When confronted with the knife, Wyatt says he dropped it from the canoe. “It followed us here,” he complains. He’s clearly got some mental issues. He goes outside and talks to the creature in the trees, who says he is dying.
Ellie finds a locked box in a hidden room in the basement. Inside, she finds many old photos of children. Also, there’s a news report about seven children dying on the estate. Randolph, upstairs, finds wet footprints in his bedroom, and he’s suddenly terrified of Wyatt.
Ellie wants to pack the truck and leave, but Wyatt refuses and runs off into the woods. Randolph explains that his older brother, Victor, looked exactly like Wyatt. Ellie’s grandfather was Randolph’s cousin. Ellie and Wyatt are all that’s left of his family. He also explains about the tragedy; his brother Victor used the gas heater to kill a bunch of orphans who were there as a treat. Randolph killed Victor afterward by drowning him in the pond.
Wyatt starts channeling Victor, and it’s clear that there really is something going on here. Ellie sees the thing in the woods as well. Outside, the ghosts of the dead children surround Randolph; they believe Wyatt is Victor and want their revenge. Since Victor is now inside Wyatt, they’re aren’t really wrong.
Randolph explains that about a year ago, he started noticing things were weird in the area. This would have been around the same time Ellie’s baby died.
That night, Randolph grabs Wyatt and tries to drown him in the swimming pool, but Ellie jumps in and saves only one of them.
Later, Ellie finds the vine ball, and it’s got a baby inside. Wyatt-Victor stabs the baby and turns it into sticks. This leads Ellie to scream and melt the vine ball.
In a dreamscape of their home in town, Wyatt explains what happened the night the baby died. He accidentally fell asleep on top of the baby and killed her.
Some time later, Ellie and Wyatt return to the house, which has now been torn down. They’ve inherited what’s left from Randolph.
Brian’s Commentary
I figured from the credits that the vine ball was guilt. Also, from the way it was filmed, it seemed likely the baby’s killer was in the closet, and I assumed it was Wyatt. Turns out, that’s not the way it was going at all, which is good. Well, not completely the way it turned out.
It’s really long, and a lot of it doesn’t make sense to me.
Kevin’s Commentary
The paycheck Ellie and Wyatt get from Mr. Randolph is $3,500.00, and that’s a heck of a lot of work for two people for that amount.
When we pause, and Brian exclaims, “What?! It’s got another half hour to go!” That’s not a good sign for how entertained we are.
It turned out guilt and grief were the monsters all along. Sort of.
All the technical aspects, the cast, and the location are excellent. But it’s a long, drawn-out affair that I thought was on the dull side.
2025 Diabolic
Director: Daniel J. Phillips
Writers: Mike Harding, Ticia Madsen, and Daniel J. Phillips
Stars: John Kim, Elizabeth Cullen, and Mia Challis
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes
YouTube Trailer Link:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A woman goes back to her childhood area in the hopes of finding answers to problems she is having now and what happened in her forgotten youth. What she finds is religious extremism, a mystery, and some witchery. It builds slowly but pretty effectively, with a good cast, great cinematography, and excellent special effects. We both dug it.
Spoilery Synopsis
We get an on-screen summary of what the FLDS flavor of Mormonism is all about, focusing on the culty bits.
We then cut to what looks to be a very strange baptism as credits roll. It’s 2015, and the group is doing baptisms for the dead. The final name is called, and a demon possesses the baptized girl.
Ten years later, Elise and Adam talk about her paintings. Later, in the garden, she digs up a dead animal’s skeleton. When Adam gets home, he finds that she’s dug holes all over the entire yard and doesn’t remember why.
She brings the incident to the attention of her therapist. Also, she’s killed the neighbor’s little dog and feels bad about that. The episodes are getting longer and more violent, and he brings up the possibility of an institution. He knows that this is a not-uncommon trait of people who exited from the FLDS. He wants her to confront the healers from the church to face them.
Adam and Elise decide to go see the healers, and they take Gwen with them. She’ll chaperone them as they take some kind of weird drug to open up their minds.
Hyrum talks to his overbearing mother about their new “patient,” Elise. He knew her in her younger days and wants to help her. “Her kind will find no help here,” she insists.
Elise’s group shows up at the baptistry, the only building remaining in the town after a historical flood. She remembers the baptismal font, and it makes her uncomfortable. Elise talks about how they baptist the dead by proxy. Eise doesn’t remember much of what went on that night. She almost remembers Clara, her almost-girlfriend from those days.
As the trio sets up camp, Hyrum and his mother, Alma, arrive. She doesn’t remember him. She tells them about her blackouts, and Hyrum talks about the hallucinogenic drugs their group has always used. Hyrum mixes up some hallucinogenic soup for Elise and Adam to drink. Bottom’s up!
Hyrum tells them to “embrace the visions,” and they do. Elise remembers Clara, and their kisses. “She’s coming,” Clara warns. In the real world, Elise starts vomiting blood, and Alma writes bloody runes on her belly. The candles spring to life. “We must get it out of her now!” Alma pulls a long black worm out of Elise, who sits up, mostly recovered. She watches as the worm melts and re-forms into a person, but no one else sees that.
In the morning, Hyrum and Alma talk about the evil in this place and then leave. Adam and Gwen wonder if Elise is actually better now or not. Elise swears it feels like a weight has been lifted from her stomach and now feels great. When Elise talks about Clara, Adam takes offense to that because they have no sex life.
Elise finds an ancient altar in the woods and suddenly wants to have sex right on top of it; Adam doesn’t complain. Meanwhile, Gwen follows a stranger into the baptistry and gets locked in with a ghost. When they come back out, they find a bunch of dead animals impaled on poles. Also, the car battery is now inexplicably dead.
Hyrum, who has had a crush on Elise since they were kids, comes to jumpstart the car and tells Elise that Alma pulled a demon out of her, and it’s free now to do as it pleases. Meanwhile, Alma prays and then hangs herself.
Hyrum gets home and finds his mother, not dead but even weirder. She talks about Larue, the witch-spirit they released from Elise. “The bodies were never found; she consumed them!” Larue vowed with her dying breath to get revenge on the church, and it was her name who caused the crazy baptism in the opening scenes. Then, Alma dies.
Back at the baptistry, Elise catches Adam and Gwen kissing and runs off into the woods. We get a flashback to Elise arguing with her father about loving Clara. Her father disowned her and threatened to send her away to an orphanage in the morning.
Gwen sees Larue in her tent, freaks out, and steals Adam’s car. Elise uses that key she found to open a padlocked cellar and the doors fly open mysteriously. She finds Clara’s ghost down there, who tells her to “Dig.” Elise digs up Clara’s skeleton and remembers how she murdered Clara back in the day. Now, Clara’s not in the basement, but Larue is, and she ain’t pretty. “I remember you; you’ve been with me all along.” Larue appears to kill Elise.
Gwen, driving down the road, stops when she sees Larue in the middle of the street. Is it Larue or is it Elise now? Either way, it goes really badly for Gwen. Adam finds her in the baptistry as Hyrum arrives to help. The baptismal font fills with blood as the men watch. Elise drowns Hyrum in the blood. She then crushes Adam’s head with her hands.
Elise, now alone, makes the bloody pool burn and smiles evilly.
One month later, Elise leads the girls to the new church for baptisms…
Brian’s Commentary
The cast is good, and the way the mystery unfolds is interesting. The whole FLDS thing is rarely handled in horror movies, but it’s really the best part of this movie. I was totally expecting Hyrum and Alma to be the evil crazies, but they were completely genuine, which made a nice little twist.
Kevin’s Commentary
“The following is inspired by true events” lost me a little right off the bat. IMDB trivia says that it refers to co-writer Ticia Madsen’s real-life experiences in the Mormon church. I’m assuming there was less magic and a lower body count in real life.
It was very effective at keeping us guessing what was really going on until close to the end. Then things get revealed nicely. Sometimes the dragon wins as the saying goes.
1934 Maniac
Directed by: Dwain Esper
Written by: Hildagarde Stadie
Stars: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter, Ted Edwards
Run Time: 51 minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The poster from a 1983 rerelease touts “Sex…Drugs…Psychos” and “The First word in bad taste,” and that’s about right. It’s awful and fascinating at the same time, surprisingly gross and graphic for 1934. And it’s short at only 51 minutes, so give it a try if you’d like something historically interesting and pretty entertaining - more chuckles and eww moments than scares for sure.
Spoilery Synopsis
We get an opening scroll that talks about fear, faith, and unhealthy thought. All criminals suffer from some mental disease.
We cut to Dr. Meirschultz and Maxwell working in their lab. The old man wants to experiment on a dead body and needs Maxwell’s help to get one. He’s going to impersonate the coroner to steal the body. They enter the morgue and inject one of the bodies with the doctor’s serum. She soon begins to move, and they need to get her out of the morgue, past the guard and attendants.
The police start looking into the missing body, and Dr. Meirschultz’s name comes up right away. So does Maxwell’s name.
Back at the lab, Dr. Meirschultz wants another body that he can transplant a still-beating heart into. He doesn’t care where the next body comes from, so Maxwell breaks into the nearby undertaker’s place, but he’s run off by angry cats. After he reports failure to the old doctor, Meirschultz wants Maxwell to kill himself for the experiment. Instead, Maxwell shoots the old madman.
We then cut to another scroll about “Dementia Precox,” a very common form of insanity.
Maxwell gives himself a speech about the “spark of life” as he hallucinates the devil. One of the doctor’s patients shows up, and Maxwell makes himself look like Meirschultz using his makeup and acting skills. He then treats Mr. Buckley and gives him a shot of super-adrenaline by mistake. Mr. Buckley has… a reaction; oh-boy does he ever. He goes berserk and steals the undead woman from the morgue.
Mrs. Buckley finds the old doctor’s corpse and thinks it’s murder. As Maxwell and Mrs. Buckley talk about blackmail and murder, Mr. Buckley and the undead woman run off into the hillside. Meanwhile, Satan the cat eats the beating heart from the jar on the desk. Maxwell grabs the cat and pops his eye out and eats it.
Maxwell walls up the doctor’s corpse and the one-eyed cat behind the wall in the basement.
The police come to a man who owns thousands of cats for the skins. He’s got it all figured out.
We cut to Maxwell’s forgotten wife, Alice, who lives with three other women who don’t seem to own many clothes. They read that Maxwell has inherited a small fortune, but no one can find him to let him know. She goes to “Meirschiltz” and tells him about the inheritance. He figures she’s going to murder him for the money, so he talks Mrs. Buckley into killing Alice. When Alice shows up, he tells her about Mrs. Buckley as a double-cross.
As the two women fight in the basement, Maxwell cackles like a lunatic, causing the cat-obsessed neighbor to call the police. Everyone runs to the basement, where the police hear the one-eye-cat yowling from behind the wall.
We cut to Maxwell, in jail, who goes on and on about his need to be a great actor, but no one appreciates him.
Brian’s Commentary
The movie poster promises “Sex, Drugs, and Psychos.” We do, in fact, get all of those. It’s all pretty ridiculous, but then again, this was 1934, so this was pretty over-the-top and extreme for the time.
The acting is awful, the plot is thin, but it’s really interesting considering what they got away with at the time.
It’s… weird.
Kevin’s Commentary
This was my second viewing after recommending it to Brian for a review. It’s kind of awful, yet interesting at the same time. It’s pretty wild and graphic considering it’s a film from 1934.
The Phyllis Diller in this movie is not the comedian Phyllis Diller.
It’s a strange little movie that I enjoyed seeing.
1956 Satellite in the Sky
Directed by: Paul Dickson
Written by: John Mather, J.T. McIntosh, Edith Dell
Stars: Kieron Moore, Lois Maxwell, Donald Wolfit
Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes
Clip:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The British (in their first science fiction movie in color) launch the world’s first orbital vehicle, along with a big experimental bomb, and the mission doesn’t go smoothly. It’s sort of an alternate timeline of 1956, blending real technology with science more advanced than they had at the time. It’s a little draggy in places, but it was still interesting and low-key entertaining. Not on par with other classics of the era.
Spoilery Synopsis
We are told that apparently, Nostradamus predicted space flight, as the credits roll.
We cut to “modern” jet fighters zooming around in the sky, as one of them lands and Commander Michael Hayden gets out. There’s a press thing afterward to talk about Project Stardust, which will escape the Earth’s gravity for the first time, a height of about 1000 miles, where there probably isn’t any gravity to stop it.
Mike explains that the power and fuel are the real problems with the experiment. Kim asks what we’ll gain from all this; shouldn’t we fix our own world first? She’s very negative about the whole thing. There’s a test flight this afternoon. Professor Merrity hints that there’s a more secret aspect to the mission: the bomb. The test is successful, so Project Starlight can proceed tomorrow.
After the flight, Mike and Kim argue some more about the value of space flight. He gives her a tour of the facilities on the airbase. She also sees the rocketship that Mike will be flying in the morning. She thinks it looks… evil.
Larry, one of the scientists, is having trouble with his wife, Barbara, and his money, and they argue about the rocket. He promises to take her out, but he gets called back for more rocket work.
That night, Kim sneaks back into the airbase, and apparently, there’s no security whatsoever. Nothing is locked up, and she makes her way into the rocket unseen by anyone.
The professor explains that the flight tomorrow will carry the very first tritanium bomb to test. That’s really the whole point of the flight; Mike had no idea. The bomb is too powerful to explode on Earth, but it’ll just dissipate in space. Mike and Larry are told about this, but they’re not happy about it.
Meanwhile, Barbara goes to the party alone and meets Tony there. Jimmy breaks up his date with Ellen when she has to work on a fashion show. He ends up proposing to her– over the telephone. There’s lots of character drama.
The morning of the flight arrives, and they load the huge bomb aboard. Mike, Professor Merrity, Larry, Jimmy, and Lefty board as well, and they soon launch. The G-force is tremendous, and they all suffer, but soon it’s over and they are in space. Mike explains about the bomb to Lefty and Jimmy; that’s why Merrity had come along.
Merrity goes back to the cargo hold to check on the bomb and finds Kim hiding in the closet. They report her being a stowaway to the people on the ground. Soon, Kim is making coffee for the crew. She didn’t know anything about the T-1 bomb. Merrity explains that the bomb is so powerful that they’ll feel gale force winds on the surface. Kim thinks it’s a waste of resources, and for once, Mike agrees with her. “This could be the end of the world for all we know,” she points out.
They launch the bomb out the cargo door and watch as it jets away. Kim and Merrity argue about the bomb yet again. Suddenly, the bomb turns around and floats back to their ship with failed jets. If they start the rockets, the bomb may explode. They try anyway, and the bomb doesn’t explode, but it does stay magnetically attached to the ship.
Mike puts on a space suit and goes outside to release the bomb manually. They can’t possibly land with the bomb, as it’ll destroy a huge area of the Earth. If they don’t the bomb’s going off at nine o’clock either way. He pushes the bomb away, but it floats right back again.
The men on Earth debate what to do, since the bomb can’t be defused or deactivated. They decide the crew will just have to stay with the bomb when it blows up.
Aboard the ship, Professor Merrity goes berserk and tries to take over, but they get control of him pretty quickly.
The Americans have a new experimental jet that might be able to reach the ship, but time is tight. It’s not so tight that Mike and Kim can’t squeeze in a kiss.
Merrity and Lefty go back outside to fiddle with the bomb some more– without permission. They can’t disarm the bomb, but they grab the bomb and use their jetpacks to push the bomb far away, giving the others a chance to escape. They blast the rockets and head back down to Earth.
Up in orbit, the bomb explodes, and it’s a biggie. The end.
Brian’s Commentary
There are lots of shots of jet planes flying, landing, and taxiing around; this was all still new in the 50s, and it was interesting to audiences of the time, I guess. Surprisingly, it doesn’t feel like stock footage, which was pretty common for this kind of film. This was also Britain’s first color sci-fi film.
The sets are good, the acting is fine, and the special effects are decent for the 50s. There are both pro- and anti-science and war opinions given, and overall, there’s a lot of talk.
It’s a little dull, actually.
Kevin’s Commentary
The real technology of the time, combined with the science fiction tech, was pretty cool.
I never knew that before Miss Moneypenny worked for the secret service, she had a career as a reporter.
I wasn’t bored, but it did drag in places, and the pacing isn’t continuously lively. I don’t regret watching it, but it’s not a classic worth a repeat viewing.
1956 World Without End
Directed by: Edward Bernds
Written by: Edward Bernds
Stars: Hugh Marlowe, Nancy Gates, Nelson Leigh
Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes
Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
What starts out as a manned mission to orbit Mars takes an unexpected turn when the craft goes through a time warp and they’re propelled into the year 2508 where Earth is populated by mutants and very few normal humans. But it’s really science fiction, not much horror. For such a short film, they fit a lot into it as far as storytelling. The effects and so forth are very dated, but it’s fun and entertaining.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open with an atomic explosion and credits roll.
XRM has lost contact, and the men at the Pentagon are concerned. Henry Jaffe’s last report was cut off in mid-transmission, but we soon see him and the other men on their spaceship– they have lost contact as well. John, the captain, wishes they could land on Mars, but that’s not the mission. They set course to return to Earth after successfully orbiting Mars, and we watch as the ship accelerates. John, Henry, Doc, and Herb all sit up and watch Mars fade into the background– BOOM! Suddenly, there’s an explosion, and everything gets crazy.
Everyone passes out, and when they wake up, they’ve already landed. It’s clearly not Mars, and the gravity seems normal, so they go outside. The radiation level is three times what the Earth’s should be; they were at a crazy speed, so they could be anywhere. Hank has a family back home, and he’s whiny about getting back to them.
They find a cave with giant spiders inside– good thing they brought pistols. They’re surprised, but no one gets hurt. They move on and camp for the night. We see that they’re being watched by what appear to be cavemen. The one-eyed cyclopean cavemen attack in the night, but the pistols again come in handy.
Then they come to a graveyard with tombstones in English. Some of the dates end with 2188, so this is actually Earth in the future. Doc says that if you go fast enough, time slows down, so they seem to have proven that to be true. An atomic war in 2188 would account for the radiation levels. Those one-eyed monsters must be what remains of humanity. What other monsters might exist here?
The cavemen attack in numbers this time, and the four men hide in a cave. In the back of the cave is a super-hard metal door that opens to a clean-looking hallway. The group is taken to a council of humans led by Timmek. The people know all about space-time warps being possible, or at least they did before the big atomic war. Timmek explains that it’s 2508 AD now. Timmek’s daughter, Garnet, leads them to a nice dinner.
Garnet explains about Deena, the daughter of the mutants outside, but she wasn’t born deformed. She escaped, and the underground community took her in.
It soon becomes clear that these people are cowardly pacifists - or at least very complacent and content, afraid to go to the surface or reclaim the planet, even though they are technologically capable. Meanwhile, John gets cozy with Garnet. Mories, one of the leaders, likes Garnet and is jealous of John already. All the women seem to be really interested in the strong, virile men from the past.
Mories makes up some stories about the men from the past planning a coup and taking over, and Timmek falls for it. John asks Timmek to give them weapons and supplies to retake the surface, but Timmek suspects they have bad intentions. Timmek refuses to make them the weapons.
Mories takes the men’s pistols, kills James in the process, and hides them to frame the men for killing James. The four outsiders are taken into custody and put on trial. Timmek banishes them back to the surface. Deena knows the truth, but Mories attacks her, too. She tells Timmek about Mories before passing out. Mories runs outside, where he’s quickly killed by the Mutates.
Timmek realizes mistake and orders his people to assist the four men with retaking the surface. The weapons they make aren’t very good, so Hank comes up with the idea of making a bazooka.
The four men go outside, alone, armed with a single rocket launcher. The Mutates are terrified of the big noisy thing. Turns out, some of the people outside aren’t mutants, but normal people enslaved by the Mutates. Deena joins them to help translate, but in the next attack, Hank gets a spear in the back, but he’ll be okay. Naga, the mutant leader, threatens to kill his normal-hostages.
John challenges Naga to an axe-to-axe fight. John is smart and has two eyes, so he wins fairly easily. John is now the “chief” of the mutates and orders the release of the slaves and hostages.
Within a few months, the underground people come up to live with the human-looking ex-slaves, who are learning English. The underground children are thriving in the outdoors. Maybe the human race will survive after all!
Brian’s Commentary
The plot borrows a lot from “The Time Machine,” and was actually sued by the Estate of H.G. Wells for infringement. One of the cast, Rod Taylor, eventually starred in the film version of “The Time Machine” (1960). The time-traveling spaceship was a newer idea, as this film predates “The Planet of the Apes” book by several years. It was also an obvious visual influence for “Star Trek,” which was also several years off.
There’s not much horror here beyond oversized spiders and one-eyed mutants, but overall, it was pretty good.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s no Planet of the Apes, but the concept is the same. A group of astronauts end up on Earth of the future. There’s no doubt this influenced that story as well as Star Trek the original series and many other science fiction movies and shows of the late 1950s and 1960s. For only an hour and 20 minutes, a lot happens in it. And I learned a new word, “palavering.” I’d never seen this one before, and I’m glad I did. It was quite entertaining.
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