We waited under the cover of night for the Goose Lord and his gang to make a move at the Monroe Harbour Marina. Since Edwige, Revenging Manta, and I were all dead-dog tired, we had Albert Simmons stand watch and wake us when anything unusual happened. I dozed off and woke up about half past two. Edwige and Manta were still sleeping, but Albert Simmons was nowhere to be found. And then I heard a dog howl.

— To be continued.

Tonight’s movie is 1980’s Macabre, from director Lamberto Bava. I have respect for those in the arts, especially those who craft cinematic wonders, but sometimes these artists need someone in the idea room to just say no. Just let it pour out like this: “No, that’s a bad idea.” And no, you can’t throw a bunch of bad ingredients into the mix and expect a Hershey bar to come out. Sometimes you just get crap.

Our story begins with a claim that this is based on true events that happened in New Orleans. I know this has to be a lie, but we’ll go ahead and take Bava’s word for it. Our movie begins with a bored housewife named Jane (Bernice Stegers) having a torrid affair with a man named Fred in a rented room in the house of an old woman and her blind son, Robert (Stanko Molnar). Jane’s pre-adolescent daughter is wise to her mother’s betrayal of the family and gets back at her by drowning her younger brother in the bathtub.

When Jane gets a call that her son is dead, she urges Fred to rush her home, but on the way, a canoe flies from the roof of the car in front of them and decapitates Fred. That escalated quickly. We’re not even past the ten-minute mark.

I guess it’s about a year later, and Jane stops by Robert’s place to get her old room back, as she’s now divorced from her husband. I’m not sure if that was due to her torrid affair or her son’s drowning. Robert is a bit infatuated with Jane, hoping she’ll go all Mrs. Robinson on him, but Jane has other ideas. She builds a shrine to Fred in her bedroom and sounds like she’s experiencing rapturous lovemaking in the middle of the night even though it’s just her and Robert in the house, and Robert is all hot and bothered in his pathetic twin-sized bed.

While investigating Jane’s room, Robert finds a severed human ear under one of the pillows. It’s around this time that I wonder why Robert doesn’t go to the police, but I suppose with him being blind, he can’t truly confirm what he picked up. Maybe he thought it could be a peeled grape. People shove those under their pillows in New Orleans, from what I hear.

Eventually, Robert figures out that Jane’s been keeping the head of her dead lover, Fred, in the freezer and taking it out for nightly lovemaking sessions. Later on, Jane drowns her own daughter and has a fight with Robert, who manages to toss her head-first into an oven. And then the severed head of Fred leaps up and bites Robert right in the Adam’s apple. But those aren’t the most terrifying scenes in this movie. At one point, Jane replaces a pillowcase with the tag side facing out. Just horrible.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, episode 645, episode 670, episode 686, episode 687, 689) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.