Six Weeks of Halloween

Closed - See You Next Halloween!

2011-11-11T08:39:00.001-05:00

Closed

See You Next Halloween!

October 31st - HALLOWEEN

2011-10-31T23:59:00.001-04:00

Let Me In (2010) directed by Matt Reeves
I know it's never a hip thing to say, but I think I like this American remake as much as the Swedish original. I watched the original a couple of years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but the movies seem to be very, very similar. The differences are small but affect the tones of the films quite a bit. The largest difference between the two that strikes me is that the American movie is pretty clearly a romance. In the Swedish version, I liked to think of Eli as a manipulator: an ancient soul using her youthful appearance to ensnare a new helper when her former helper grew too old to be of any use. The brief shot of her with an old woman's face seemed to reinforce this. There is no such shot in this film. Instead, Reeves has Owen reading Romeo and Juliet for school and Abby sentimentally keeps an old photo of her and Håkan (unnamed in this film) from when Håkan was a child.

A few of the scenes I felt were done better than the original. Towards the end, I liked that Owen actually closed the door on the policeman while Abby was eating him. It gave him more of an active roll in his first experience at helping Abby feed. A greater special FX budget likely accounts for a more intense version of the scene in the pool at the end of the movie. We watch from underwater as the bullies are dragged upside-down through the water while body parts float past Owen in a red storm. It's beautiful. Also beautiful was an entirely new scene of Håkan's final kill. In it, he hides in the backseat of a car. Unfortunately for him, the driver stops to pick up a friend and get gas. Suffice it to say, when Håkan decides in a panic to try to steal the car, things don't work out well. He gets into the most brilliant POV car crash shot I've ever seen, with a Slurpee-obscured windshield only giving us a hint of the violence going on outside of the vehicle.

Though I prefer the vampire in this tale to be an soulless schemer as she was in the original, the remake has a lot of other good things going for it to make up for that loss. (7/10)

The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXII" (2011) directed by Matthew Faughnan
Ugh. Every once in a while, I'll watch a random Simpsons episode on Hulu just to see if the show has gotten any better. It never has. This remains sadly true for the once-beloved Halloween episodes as well. In this one, there's a joke about the ill-fated Spider-Man musical and a parody of Avatar, which only serve to remind me of how slow the show is in comparison to South Park. Also, 10-year-old Bart -- in a alien body -- loses his virginity to an alien and gets her pregnant. C'mon, man, I don't want hear about it.

Ghoulies (1985) directed by Luca Bercovici
Here's another one of those '80s movies with tiny, toothy creatures in it that I've always meant to watch but never got around to. I had no idea what it was about, so I was thinking it'd be like Critters and feature creatures running around biting people (probably on the butt as they used the toilet, as the poster seems to suggest). Nope. Turns out this is a pre-Full Moon Charles Band production, so the ghoulies are pretty much just like the toys in Puppet Master, running around a mansion killing guests at the behest of their dead master.

It's still kind of fun in a bad movie way. By far the best part is when the ever-lovable Jack Nance pops out of nowhere dressed in a wizard's outfit and proceeds to do magic-battle with the main bad guy. They grab each other around the necks and then take turns shooting lightning bolt/lasers out of their eyes while Nance cackles madly. It's pretty awesome. The rest of the movie... not so much. (5/10)

Cemetery Man (1994) directed by Michele Soavi
AKA Dellamorte Dellamore. This was quite an interesting Italian zombie flick, completely different from a Fulci or Bava film. Hard to pin down, Cemetery Man swings from zombie horror to romance to black comedy to fairytale. Francesco is a caretaker at a cemetery in which the dead seem to return to life. Unable to get anyone in town to believe him or to convince the mayor to investigate, Francesco simply finds it easier to shoot the zombies as they pop up. When he loses the love of his life -- the widow of one of his clients -- to his own eagerness to shoot zombies, Francesco begins to leave reality behind. Soon he's seeing visions of the Grim Reaper, attempting to get his penis surgically removed and shooting nuns through the eye. It's a wild ride. I'm going to need to watch this one again soon to absorb more of it. (7/10)

The X-Files: "Home" (1996) directed by Kim Manners
Often called the most horrific of The X-Files' horror episodes, I hadn't seen this one since it originally aired. It's essentially the story of everyone's favorite federal agents encountering The Hills Have Eyes family in a small town. For horror veterans, this is nothing particularly shocking; we see inbred rednecks cast as monsters all the time. But, I can imagine why the more normal sci-fi audience for this show found it disturbing. I have to admit, the image of the limbless mother being pulled out from under a bed screaming is pretty powerful.

The Exorcist (1973) directed by William Friedkin
I'd been itching to watch my new blu-ray of this classic and Halloween seemed to be the perfect night to do so. I'd forgotten how intense this picture is. It builds nice and slow, like movies used to, showing us Regan's normal life before her troubles and Karras' troubled life before his sacrifice. By the time we get to the actual exorcism, we've earned it. We've seen how utterly horrible Regan has become and we've completely exhausted every rational explanation for her predicament and every excuse not to try the Catholic rite. Also, holy cow, Jason Miller as Karras is absolutely amazing. I'd probably go out on a limb and declare his performance in this film as the best in any horror movie ever made. Haunted and skeptical and guilty and tired and angry, Karras finds unlikely meaning in his life when tasked with helping Regan.

If I have any complaint at all, it's that I can't figure out how these events were described to Lt. Kinderman in a way that didn't make him immediately throw someone in jail. Two people died on the steps outside of Regan's window and one person died in her bedroom. Regan has cuts all over her body and bruises from being tied up. Her bed is padded and covered in vomit. From the outside, it's looking like the butler or maid went insane and terrorized the family. I don't know. Maybe Kinderman was Catholic? (9/10)

Halloween (1978) directed by John Carpenter
My 13th Halloween watching Halloween. In recent years -- I suppose ever since Scream -- it's been hip to analyze slasher movies in terms of conservative values asserting themselves against rebellious youth. We all know the score: the kids who smoke pot and have sex are the ones to die at the hands of the monster. The virginal innocent is the one to defeat the monster and survive to the end. Halloween is often pointed to as the originator of this theme, but I really don't see it in this film.

It is true that Michael seems to have a problem with sex. He began his career as a murderer by killing his post-coital sister and continued 15 years later by killing Lynda, Bob and Annie after or right before they had sex. However, Michael is also fixated on the non-sexual Laurie just as much (let's not get into the long lost sister BS from the sequels). Laurie, we should remember, is not quite so innocent. Right before going to the Doyle house to babysit Tommy, she shares a joint with Annie. Babysitting stoned would be a death sentence in an '80s slasher, but not quite so here. Not-so-innocent final girl Laurie also does not defeat Michael. All she does is manage to hide from him long enough for Loomis to shoot him. She does stab him a couple of times, but this doesn't slow him down. Nor do Loomis' bullets. In Carpenter's universe, morality has nothing to do with it: evil exists, it will always be here, and it'll come for you whether you've gotten laid or not. (9/10)

The Real Ghostbusters: "Halloween II 1/2" (1987) directed by Masakazu Higuchi & Richard Raynis

I ended the night and the Six Weeks by popping in a childhood favorite. The Real Ghostbusters is one of those things that helped form me into a horror fan. This episode was the sequel to the popular "When Halloween Was Forever" episode that introduced Samhain, the pumpkin-headed spirit of the holiday. While this one is not as good, it's still some fun with dozens of goofy ghosts gathering at the transformed firehouse to help Samhain on his quest to make every day Halloween. Can the Real Ghostbusters, Slimer and the Junior Ghostbusters defeat him and return things to normal?

I had a good Six Weeks. I watched 61 1/3 movies and 27 TV episodes this year, not a bad effort. I got to go to two different horror cons and had a blast at each. I got to take both of my daughters out for some major trick 'r treating this year. There was pumpkin pie and apple cider and Halloween cupcakes to eat. My Freddy sweater kept me warm at work. It was a good Six Weeks.

Squirrels chewed my eyes!

October 30th

2011-10-30T23:59:00.000-04:00

Trick 'r Treat (2007) directed by Michael Dougherty
My third Halloween season in a row watching this one. One thing that struck me this time out is that the film is quite hard on its kids. We start with one of them getting poisoned and killed by a serial killer and then watch as that killer beats more of them to death with a shovel in his backyard grave. Later, we flashback to some kids being killed when a schoolbus is driven off a cliff, then see those kids come back as zombies to kill some other children. I wonder if this was part of the reason WB sat on the film for so long before releasing it direct-to-video? As a parent, I have to admit the scene in the backyard grave makes me wince.

On the other hand, it also makes me think of Grimm's fairy tales. In those stories, children are never safe. There are witches who want to bake and eat children, evil stepmothers who try to have their step-daughters killed, and ugly step-sisters who cut off their own toes in order to fit into glass slippers. It's a cruel world out there, even on kids, and this used to be reflected in our stories all the time.

One of these Halloweens, I'm going to have to try to watch this film in chronological order. I suspect it'll hold-up, as this third time around I kept noticing even more tiny little details that connected all of the stories together. (8/10)

Trick 'r Treat: The Lore and Legends of Halloween (2009)
This was the documentary on the Trick 'r Treat blu-ray. It's half promotional video for the film and half a history of the origins of some Halloween traditions. Though I'm clearly a huge Halloween nut, I haven't really read into the origins of the holiday since I was a kid. It's fascinating to think that the whole "trick 'r treat" thing is such a recent invention. Apparently, it was invented in the 1940s as a way to keep unruly kids from causing trouble on Halloween. Clever, but I think the kids were even more clever when they moved their mischief to Devil's Night instead.

October 29th

2011-10-29T23:59:00.000-04:00

Flint Horror Con
I'll admit, I wasn't sure how this thing was going to turn out. It's the first horror convention -- probably the first geek convention of any kind -- outside of Metro Detroit in Michigan. Growing up an hour north of Flint, I never knew any other horror nerds. Though I'd subject my classmates to films like Hellraiser II on occasion, I remained the only one who knew all of the different ways to kill a vampire. Would there be enough people in the area that would even want to come to a horror con? The answer seems to have been: damn right there was.

Taking place in Flint's Masonic Temple, the first floor was pleasantly packed with vendor tables. As someone who's been to five (!) of these things this year, I was happy to find most of the vendor tables new to me. You tend to see a lot of the same folks at cons in the Midwest. Going to so many of these things in a year means that there starts to be little new for me to check out at the tables. Not true here. I think this was probably because many of the vendors were local, which I dug. I grabbed me some DVDs from local filmmakers, some cool art and couple of creepy stuffed dolls for the daughters.

In addition to the tables, the con had raffle and a costume contest. Actually, it wasn't just one raffle; it seemed to be a whole bunch of them wisely spread out through the day. Hell, I even won one of these things for the first time in my life: I got a T-shirt and a zombie postcard pack. Similarly, the costume contest was actually three contests: one for kids, one for most original costume and one for the scariest costume. The scariest costume contest was handily won by my pal Eric, dressed as Count Chocola. You could tell he was a shoe-in for the contest when he walked into the con and was mobbed by people laughing and asking for picture. You gotta give it to him: the dude really does look like that famous cereal vampire. Anyway, for a small con in its first year, there were an impressive amount of prizes flying all over the place. It made things fun.

Count Chocula says: "Blah!"

After the costume contest, it was time to jet upstairs and catch some of the horror movies playing in the theater on the third floor:

Under the Scares (2010) directed by Steve Villeneuve
I only managed to catch the last half of this documentary, but I liked what I saw. It's a series of interviews with independent horror film directors, convention organizers, established horror directors, scream queens and other industry insiders all giving advise on how to get your independent horror movie out there. The picture they paint ain't pretty: it seems like the best you can hope for is to get screwed by a distributor and earn zero dollars... but, hey, at least you've gotten a little publicity. I liked the realistic advice the folks in the film offer. No one's spouting the cupcakes-n-rainbows line of "you just need to believe in yourself to succeed." Believe all you want; the film industry is hard and cruel and not many manage to earn a living in it.

After the documentary, there was a series of shorts to watch:

Cosmos Locos (2011)
Project Swan: "The $400 Kiss" (2011)
Project Swan: "Sugar Plum (2011)
Project Swan: "Among Thieves" (2011)

Cosmos Locos was marred by some technical issues -- the sound kept going out -- but this actually served to make the experience special. The poor director was in the theater with us, so whenever the movie lost sound, he would shout out all of the characters' lines along with snarky commentary like "this scene was really noisy, anyway." It ended up being hilarious.

When Project Swan ended, there was just enough time pop over to the "Exploring the Paranormal" panel hosted by John E.L. Tenney. Now, I can't say that I'm a believer in such things, but I still find the subject fascinating. I have a bookshelf full of "true" ghost stories and alien encounters and Bigfoot sightings. John was a completely engaging speaker and enthralled the small group with tales from his 25 years of paranormal investigations. He told of exorcisms, phantom restaurants, weird coincidences and alien pancakes. I liked his take on these things. Rather than categorically declare any of these experiences as "ghosts" or "aliens" or whatever, he just liked saying "what a weird place the world is!"

Next up was Ken Sagoes' panel, who played Kincaid in Elm Street 3. I have to say, it was bit weird at start. After John Tenney's panel, everyone left except for me and my buddy Jason. Though we're both Elm Street fans, neither of us introverts really had any questions for Ken. Luckily, the moderator got the ball rolling and, slowly, more folks started walking in until we had a nice little group. Ken was great and told some funny stories about his experiences in Hollywood (hanging up on Garry Marshall because he thought his friend was pranking him, how his bad day before the audition helped him get the part of Kincaid). A really nice guy, he also revealed that all of the profits from his autograph signings for the day were going towards his charity, the Giving Back Corporation. He left by saying some warm things about the con and how much he enjoyed it. Good people, that Ken.

And the final panel was for the three Evil Dead guests of the con: Tom Sullivan, Josh Becker and Hal Delrich. Becker and Sullivan are both complete characters, so they kept things rolling well with stories and jokes. However, I particularly liked Delrich's favorite memory of Evil Dead. Growing up, he'd been a big fan of horror movies and read all of the magazines at the time (I'm guessing Famous Monsters of Filmland). One of the articles he liked was on I Was a Teenage Werewolf and featured a picture of Michael Landon in the make-up chair framed in one of those mirrors with lights around them. Upon seeing himself in the same kind of mirror in a make-up chair on the ED set, he was in horror heaven.

And then the con starting winding down. As we sat on the stage, waiting for the group to be ready to grab a drink at Churchill's, John Tenney wandered over and entertained us with more stories. He spoke of hidden necklaces and pineal glands and the fact that so many people have died since humanity began, every place on Earth has an equal potential of being haunted no matter how creepy or not the building may be. Whatever I may think of the paranormal, the guy is an expert storyteller and it's easy to see how he was given a TV show to host.

All in all, I had a great time at the con. This was a helluva good start to things and I'm looking forward to next year already.

Horrors, bought and sold here.

October 28th

2011-10-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

Three Corpse Circus shorts:

Bloody Bunny
Bedfellows
Nursery Crimes
There's No Such Thing
Adventure Girls III
The Ghost and Us
Barbee Butcher
Beautiful As You Are
Don't Lose Heart
Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day
Snake Pit
Together
Doppelganger
Bon Appetit: Three Short Films about Food
Modern Grim
A Noiva
The Many Doors of Albert Whale
Tub

Stake Land (2010) directed by Jim Mickle
I enjoyed Mickle's first film Mulberry Street quite a bit and I was looking forward to his follow-up. It doesn't disappoint. Instead of zombies, vampires are the cause of the post-apocalypse in Stake Land. It's a nice change. I think we, as a society, are about at peak zombie right now. Though, admittedly, these vampires are mostly animal-like and not terribly unlike a zombie in effect. However, sunlight will still kill them, so humans have free reign during the day. It's a neat difference. Being used to so many zombie apocalypse films and TV shows, a vampire apocalypse almost doesn't seem that bad. Given their free time during daylight hours, people have formed little bubbles of civilization in small towns all over northern North America. As our travelers go from town to town, the movie feels like a Western with the (purposefully, I'm sure) unnamed Mister playing the Clint Eastwood part (played excellently by Nick Damici). I love Western-influenced horror movies.

Though, I have to say, it stands in the shadow of The Road. You can feel that this film sort of wants to be the vampire version of that prior film, with its desolate locations (seriously: the location scout for Stake Land needs an award of some kind) and grey skies and threat of cannibals. But, Stake Land just can't touch the utter despair found in The Road. The Road has sort of ruined post-apocalyptic movies for me in general. Anything that isn't as bad as the world in that film -- which is all worlds, everywhere -- seems like a paradise in comparison.

Still, Stake Land was well worth a watch and I'll be picking up the Blu-ray soon. (7/10)

You Can't Rent Here Anymore (2010) directed by Ryan Meade
A local film, shot at Thomas Video & DVD in Royal Oak, Michigan. I think Heavy Mental is safe as the coolest recent horror movie from the area. This one is more of "friends having fun making a movie" more so than "something you'd really want to watch." A crazy guy accidentally returns a video of himself killing a woman to a video store. The clerks watch it, freak out, and then the man comes back to the store to retrieve it. Hijinks ensue.

Gotta love the fact that despite the story ending at the 55-minutes mark, the movie is 75 minutes long. I'm guessing there was a festival requirement somewhere that a full-length movie had to be 75 minutes minimum. Boy, they just scraped by. Using "where are they now" title cards and blooper-credits and a stinger at the end a really slow credit crawl, they just edged by to the mark they needed. If anything, this film excels as an achievement in padding. (5/10)

October 27th

2011-10-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

Critters (1986) directed by Stephen Herek
Here's an '80s horror movie I'd been meaning to watch for years. Tribbles with teeth escape an asteroid prison and head to Earth for some food. A couple of shape-shifting bounty hunters find them in a small town in Kansas and some shit hits a fan or two. It's kind of fun, with goofy-looking critters rolling around and growling at people with their teeth-stuffed mouths. One of the bounty hunters takes the shape of an '80s hair metal rocker, though he isn't recognized enough in town to make this terribly funny.

I think that my issue with the movie is its tameness. The critters could be pretty scary, but they've found themselves in a PG-13 movie. Consequently, they do a lot of non-lethal biting on shoulders and inexplicable dragging of people to other places without harming them. In fact, the nine critters in the movie only manage to eat two people the entire time they're causing havoc. I guess this was sort of an answer to Gremlins, so things were kept at a '80s kid level of violence. Still, I can imagine an awesome Critters remake in my head with the critters taking huge and horrific bites of people. Think Jaws on land with furry aliens. (6/10)

October 26th

2011-10-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) directed by Víctor García
Better than I was expecting. Like Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, this is a cinematic ashcan, made quickly and cheaply only so that Dimension wouldn't lose the rights. As such, production values are low and the overall feel of the film is only slightly more professional than a fanfilm.

Still, much to my surprise, its heart is in the right place. I credit this squarely to writer Gary J. Tunnicliffe, who has also been the special FX guy for the past five films. The script reaches way, way back and takes us into the Hellraiser universe we saw in part I and in the novella The Hellbound Heart. Finally, once again, the Cenobites are bent not on world domination or mental trickery, but on delivering physical sensations "beyond the limits." Finally, we get to see what the Cenobites do with people in Hell. Finally, the pleasure part of the "pain and pleasure, indivisible" thing is glimpsed. Just like the book, there's a tolling of a great bell when the box is being solved. Pinhead nailing bits of flesh to Cenobite Stephen's head reminded me of the great Epic comic series from the '90s. After two decades of wandering completely off the map Barker had drawn, we're finally back.

But, this is all really just lipstick on a pig. The new Pinhead is awful. Stephen Smith Collins spends much of his time as Pinhead with a sort of angry frown on his face. He just doesn't look right, all puffy-headed and out of proportion with a costume that appears to have giant shoulder pads sewn into it. I've seen plenty of fan costumes that were closer to Bradley's appearance than this. His voice, re-dubbed by Fred Tatasciore, is laughably bad, sounding like a teenager attempting to sound grown-up. Now, I'm not opposed to recasting classic monsters. If we want these characters to survive, this is necessary. Doug Bradley is human and cannot play the character forever. However, I think they could've chosen better. I had no complaints about Jackie Earle Haley in the new Elm Street and I'm sure they could've done better with Pinhead had they cared.

The other major problem with the movie is the script. As much as I enjoy the fact that it takes us back to part I, it's a wee too dependent on that movie. Many lines from the original film are reused verbatim. Many parts of the general plot are lifted wholesale from that film as well. A hedonist solves the box, is taken to Hell, and escapes using blood. A person who loves him kills more people to resurrect him. The hedonist then steals a skin and impersonates that person. Pinhead returns to claim the escapee. It's hard to see why the next movie needs to be a remake when this film already did it.

Despite being only 75 minutes long, there are some slow spots where it feels like the filmmakers didn't know what to do. Particularly, when Niko returns home wearing Stephen's skin, there's a lot of dead time with the family as we wait for interesting things to happen. And, c'mon: giving the two families the last names Bradley and Craven, and then giving them all bad ends? Very respectful, guys. And what the hell does Wes have to do with Hellraiser, anyway?

I will say that the acting is generally pretty good in the film and I kind of like the flashback structure as device to slowly reveal what happened to the two kids in Mexico. It's also very vicious in a way quite appropriate to the Hellraiser universe: Niko is implied to have killed a baby, Niko's dad gets his face savagely ripped up by the derelict/puzzle guardian and Stephen's innocent mom is taken to an eternity of torment in Niko's place. As far as Hollywood movies go, it didn't pull any punches.

However, the ending feels like a cheat. Suddenly, Pinhead is claiming that Emma has such dark desires in her that she will one day seek out the box on her own. That's fine, but we're never really shown any evidence of this. She spends most of the film being the horror damsel in distress, screaming and cowering. There's one scene in which she makes out with her brother... but it really wasn't her brother. It was her boyfriend, wearing her brother's skin. You could argue that she sensed this and didn't really have a perverse incest attraction going on. Regardless, the film really needed to develop Emma a lot more in order for us to buy the ending.

Had this spent more time in development and had a little bit bigger budget, this could've easily been the best sequel since II. I was so geeked to see the mythology return to its roots. Too bad this return to form was packaged in a such a hastily-made write-off. (5/10)

October 25th

2011-10-26T09:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) directed by Rick Bota
Hellraiser III is a masterpiece in comparison to this abortion. Holy mother of Leviathan, this was painful to sit through. A group of dipshit teenagers are really into Hellworld, an online videogame based on the Hellraiser universe. In this film, Hellraiser is just a movie series (and, despite years of direct-to-video sequels, inexplicably really popular). One of the friends is so obsessed with the game, he kills himself over it for some reason never explained. By playing the game really well, the surviving kids all win tickets to a special Hellworld party hosted by Lance Henriksen. As in every single Hellraiser since V, things start to get weird and the kids can't tell what is real and what is not. Turns out, Lance is the dad of their dead friend and wants revenge on the kids for not preventing his son's suicide. Obviously, the best way to go about this is to study up on the Hellraiser mythology, amass a huge Hellraiser collection, convince the owners of the videogame to offer the invite to its players, setup an elaborate party in a huge mansion, acquire a hallucinogen, dose the kids you want to torture, bury them alive with cellphones and talk to them to scare them to death. Simple, really. Oh, and, surprise, surprise: Pinhead is really for real and really kills Lance at the end. Shocking.

I met Lance at a con recently and he's a super-nice guy, so I say this with lots of love: "Dude, why did you agree to be in this?" Lance is far too good for this garbage. Speaking of casting, I love all of the pretty people who happen to be both huge Hellraiser nerds and videogame geeks. Right. I'm a horror nerd, so feel like I can say this: we're not a good-looking people. In real life, you wouldn't really want to attend a Hellraiser party in which people are walking around topless and having sex on couches. It wouldn't be a pretty sight.

Horrible acting, a plot that makes no sense and a ghost that dials 911: Hellworld should've been the nail in Hellraiser's coffin. Sadly, it looks like I'm in for an even worse sequel tomorrow night. (3/10)

The Walking Dead: "TS-19" (2010) directed by Guy Ferland
This CDC business happened way, way too early in the series. Inside, they get a nice break, with real food and hot showers and safety from the dead. We haven't seen them go through enough hardship for this to really mean anything. Hell, Rick just had a hot shower five episodes ago. And, until the zombie, attack, they were perfectly comfortable at their campsite for quite a while. This break should've been the prison, as in the comics, which comes after weeks and weeks of really hard living on the road and tons of hard work to secure the place.

I'm also not of fan of the plague exposition in this episode. Using super-technology, the remaining doctor at the CDC shows everyone a magically impossible scan of the neural activity in a person's brain as they die and turn. He then claims to not know what the root cause is -- viral, bacterial, fungal, etc. -- yet forces everyone to take a blood test. What the hell was he looking for in the blood if it doesn't know the cause? Ugh. Keep the plague a mystery. After 8 whole years of comics, we still don't know as much as they just learned in episode 6 of the show.

I'm crossing my fingers for season 2 to improve from here. What they really need next is an extended period of hard living on the road to really drive home how crappy the world has become.

October 24th

2011-10-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser: Deader (2005) directed by Rick Bota
After reading on Wikipedia that this movie didn't start life as a Hellraiser movie (same as V and VI), things make a little more sense. No wonder the Cenobite stuff feels tacked on in these sequels... it was. Even ignoring the Hellraiser bits, I can't say I really understand what the hell was going on in this movie. There's a cult in Romania who believe their flesh isn't really what they are. To prove this, they kill themselves and their leader, Winter, somehow resurrects them with a deep kiss. For some reason, the cult thinks reporter Amy Klein is "the chosen one" and gets her to come to Romania so that she might join them. Apparently, she has the ability to both solve the box and kill herself for the cult. Why that is special, I'm not sure. There's a vague mention that Winter is fighting with Pinhead over the box (Winter, apparently, being John Merchant's brother from part IV) and having Amy do these things will somehow help, but it's never made very clear what exactly the goal is.

As a former Sliders watcher, I can't say I am a Kari Wuhrer fan due to the stuff that went down behind the scenes on that show. Even so, I have to give her props here. Even though she's stuck in Pinhead, Part 7, she gives the role all of her energy. She's probably the series' best protagonist since Kirsty, I'd have to admit (though, frankly, that ain't saying much). I particularly liked the scene where she wakes up with a giant knife stuck in her back. Her freaking out over the situation -- especially since she's feeling no pain from the wound -- was great, as was her solution for getting the knife out (wedging it in a cabinet door and pulling).

There are some other nice moments in the movie as well. While searching for Winter, Amy walks into a basement hallway that keeps getting narrower and narrower. When she's about stuck, barely able to inch forward in the small space, a hooded man with a knife starts approaching from behind. It's quite an effective and claustrophobic scene. I also thought the Cenobites appearing in a blaze of blue lighting was a nice updating of the cartoony effects seen in the first film.

Despite this stuff, the movie's still a mess. It's barely coherent and we're still doing the "protagonist can't tell what is real anymore" shtick started in V. I'm getting sick of this approach to Hellraiser. (6/10)

The Walking Dead: "Wildfire" (2010) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
This episode is mainly focused on how the group decides to deal with death. Daryl wants to shoot the bitten Jim before he's even dead. Rick stops him and declares that they aren't killers. Glenn insists that the dead members of the group be buried instead of burned. Carol applies a pickax to her dead, abusive husband's skull with a little too much gusto. Andrea stays with her sister until she awakens as zombie, first apologizing to her and then blowing her brains out. I especially liked the scene with Andrea. They really get up close to the process of a dead body waking up as a zombie, forcing you to really think about it. Watching such a thing happen to a loved one would be horrible. As you struggle to get used to the huge hole in your life their death means to you, you suddenly see them take a couple of ragged breaths and open their eyes. It'd be very tempting to imagine that they're really going to be OK after all. I suspect this is how a lot of the plague spread; being bitten by those you love.

The CDC stopover was not in the comic series, but it really does make sense. It's located in Atlanta, anyway, so might as well stop there just in case. What I don't really understand was everyone's objections to going there with Rick. What was the downside? Do they have anything better to do than go to the one place in the entire world that might have the cure? It seemed like some false tension was generated for the drama.

October 23rd

2011-10-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) directed by Alan Rafkin
Browsing Netflix, a good ol' Don Knotts comedy seemed like a better choice to watch with the little one rather than a Carebears Halloween special. Knotts is a typesetter at the local newspaper who dreams of being a reporter. With the egging on of the paper's janitor, he modifies an article on the anniversary of a suicide-murder to make it a little more exciting. The small town he lives in loves it and the paper concocts a plan to have scaredy-cat Luther spend the night in the supposedly haunted house where the crime took place. Luther's second article about the ghostly goings on there is hugely successful and makes him the toast of the town. In reality, this is just a Scooby-Doo story with Don Knotts in the role of Shaggy and the owner of the house playing the "I would've gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you kids" guy.

The movie was actually pretty funny. Luther gets some really goofy groupees who are part of a local paranormal club. They chant silly mystical phrases at him and constantly try to touch him to get some of the supernatural energy they think he has. Don Knotts, of course, is perfect at playing the acts-tough-but-really-isn't role ("My body is a deadly weapon!"). "Attaboy, Luther!" The unseen guy who kept yelling this during the movie cracked me up every time. I love that this became a thing to do after the movie came out.

A decently fun film, and good for youngins. (6/10)

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) directed by Rick Bota

Ashley Laurence returns as Kirsty in the first of three of these sequels directed by Bota. Just like Inferno, a man finds himself in Hell but doesn't realize it because it's just a weird version of his normal life. Is this what Hellraiser is now? Is it just a series of weak ripoffs of Jacob's Ladder with asshole protagonists? I love Jacob's Ladder, but there's not a chance in hell these direct-to-video sequels are going to touch the creepiness of that film. Only Silent Hill 2 can claim that mantle.

In its defense, the film works fairly well outside of the Cenobite stuff. Main character Trevor is suffering from migraines and amnesia due to a head injury in a crash. He seems to be having trouble telling what is real and what is not. As the audience, we're experiencing exactly the same confusion as we try to figure out what the real story is behind Trevor and his missing wife. I'd completely forgotten the details of this movie, so I had no idea where it was headed and was assuming Trevor was really the killer. Without the Hellraiser parts, this could've been a pretty cool movie about a brain damaged man being framed for murder by his wife.

Kirsty's reunion with Pinhead is tremendously disappointing. Twice she's escaped him and here she is, improbably, fifteen years later after having willingly solved the box again. If I were Pinhead, the chains would be flying immediately before she had a chance to argue. Instead, Kirsty offers Pinhead yet another bargin and he, improbably, accepts it. What the hell? Fifteen years ago, apon encountering her for a second time, he said "No more deals child, it is your flesh we want to experience, not your skill at bargaining." I guess that Pinhead died in II. We now have a Pinhead who merely lets people run around Hell in crappy versions of their regular lives. And he collects "souls" like Lucifer. Where'd this come from? He's supposed to deal with the flesh, not the spirit. Arg.

As for Kirsty's turn to the dark side, I don't have too much of a problem with that. Recall that after her experience with dad-skin-wearing Uncle Frank, she woke up in a mental institution with no memory of how she got there. She's been permanently broken from her experiences in the first two films, I think. Trevor just had the bad luck of cheating on a psycho. (6/10)

The Walking Dead: "Vatos" (2010) directed by Johan Renck

I'm not really sure what the point of the encounter with the Vatos was. "Don't judge a book by its cover"? Well, thanks there, mom. The idea that so many people are able to survive in the middle of city that should have millions of zombies in it seems a wee unlikely. Then again, Atlanta seems strangely devoid of zombies. They grab the guns and walk out of town with absolutely no issues. And, upon finding the truck gone, why did the group walk back to the camp? There were literally thousands of cars on the expressway right next to them. Disappointing.

Finally, at the end of the episodes, zombies attack the camp. Good stuff. The survivors had become far to complacent in their hillside campsite. It's about time the reality of the world intruded. Part of the theme of the comic is that there is no rest and no normalcy. They're always moving, always looking for a place they can settle down in and never finding it. Always walking, you might say. Hopefully, this attack will get them on the move.

October 22nd

2011-10-22T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) directed by Scott Derrickson
A definite improvement over III and IV. In Inferno, Pinhead's no longer trying to take over the world, or put us to sleep with speeches, or wants to kill everyone he meets. Hell, he's only in the movie for a few minutes. Impressive. Maybe IV's failure taught the execs to keep their hands off? Instead, the film focuses on Detective Thorne (played by Nightbreed vet Craig Sheffer), who's investigating a case involving a mysterious gold box, some chains, and the messy remains of a person. One things leads to another and he ends up solving the box shortly after screwing a hooker. From that point onward, though we're not told explicitly until the end, he's in a Hell that closely resembles his life.

Suspiciously like Jacob's Ladder, he begins to see demons and other weird things out of the corner of his eye. Soon, his life seems to get worse and worse, culminating in the deaths of his wife and daughter. Then the cycle restarts, and he's right back to the hotel room where he'd solved the box to do it all over again. Once he knows that he's no longer living in reality, it's hard to see how repeating the cycle would count as torture. Who cares if pretend versions of his family are killed? Why even go through the motions of real life if it isn't real? I guess he does shoot himself during cycle #2, only to wake up again like he's trapped in Groundhog Day, so that method of defiance doesn't work. Still, it seems like this torture idea would be worn out quickly.

My big problem with the movie is that Hell is again depicted in the traditional sense. While there are no flames or pitchforks, Pinhead seems to be punishing Thorne because he was a crappy person. Or, he's punishing himself due to his guilty conscious. Either way, I'm not seeing how this is in any way "exploring the further limits." I suppose it's slightly clever that the filmmakers are having Thorne torn apart emotionally instead of physically, as we've seen in other Hellraisers, but the judgmental part of it simply doesn't belong in the series. Perhaps some of the blame lies with Peter Atkins, writer of II, who invented Frank's personal Hell of a mental torture. This small idea has seemingly de-Barkered Hell for everything that followed.

I do dig the Cenobites in this one. The Wire Twins are the first sexual female Cenobites we've seen and their under-skin massage of Thorne's chest is probably the only Barker-style Hellraiser scene in the whole film. Torso is a disturbing version of Chatterer without a lower half who makes for an effective vision of horror when seen in brief glimpses.

Unforgivably, the movie ends with Thorns looking upwards and yelling, Darth Vader-style, "Noooooooooooooo!" at the top of his lungs. I wanted to do the same thing. The film starts strong, but really falls apart as we learn where it's taking us. (6/10)

The Walking Dead: "Tell It to the Frogs" (2010) directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton

This episode is pretty talky and lacking in zombie action, but this didn't bother me too much. I liked the character interactions well enough and I'm hoping this is simply a lull before another zombie storm (something the comics do all the time). This episode spends most of its time at the camp, where Rick is reunited with his family at last. Here, we get a glimpse of the dynamics of the camp and meet more of the people living there. Traditional divisions of labor have emerged -- men fixing cars and hunting, with women washing clothes -- and the women aren't happy. Lori gives former lover Shane the very cold shoulder. Ed is shown to be a wife-beater. Squirrels make good food.

Despite his joy at finding his family, Rick, true to his counterpart in the comics, decides he can't morally let Merle die on the roof. Along with Merle's brother, T-Dawg, and Glenn, Rick ventures back to the department store roof, only to find Merle's amputated hand and nothing else. I'm guessing budgetary reasons prevented us from seeing the zombie hordes in Atlanta again, so we're disappointingly left to imagine how it was that the group made it back to the department store. Still, they have to find their way out again in the next episode, so there's that.

October 21st

2011-10-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1974) trailer
Rock 'n' Roll Frankenstein (1999) trailer
Frankenstein (1910)

Q (1982) directed by Larry Cohen
I love Michael Moriarty. He's a complete nut in real life and it tends to show through in his performances. In Q, he's about at his very best. Check out when he auditions to be a bar piano player. That's Moriarty making up a goofy scat song on the spot. He has similarly goofy verbal quirks in the film, often rambling semi-coherently about whatever he's supposed to be talking about. I suspect the script only vaguely matches what he ended up saying onscreen. He's just a ball of fun to watch in the film.

I dig how the end is a reversal of the end of King Kong. Instead of the monster hanging off the building with airplanes shooting him, it's the monster that's flying and the people that are hanging. I like stop-motion effects, so I thought that Q itself was really cool. It gets to chomp people and toss them down into the city in ways Harryhausen monsters never were allowed to. The reveal of the second Q egg at the end is predictable as anything, but, really, how else would a movie like this end?

A good ol', gritty New York City film with fun characters and a cool monster. (7/10)

Night of the Demon (1980) trailer
Father's Day (2011) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IX: Hell Toupée" (1998)

Dead Alive (1992) directed by Peter Jackson
What needs to be said about Dead Alive? This is the apex of splatter-comedy; there is none higher. Zombie baby. Pus in custard. "I kick ass for the lord!" Random Nazi vet. Zookeeper waving a permit in front of the natives' faces. Mum flying through the store window onto Lionel. Lionel flying into the church on top of his mother's body. Lionel's rebirth out of monster Mum's womb. The nurse's head constantly flipping back. The woman who's face became a lamp. The best use of a lawnmower in the history of cinema. It's all a symphony of goo and slapstick shot with a megaton of energy. (9/10)

Chalk is a difficult medium to work in and why do we not have regular white chalk in the house?

October 20th

2011-10-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

Red State (2011) directed by Kevin Smith
I don't like Kevin Smith movies. I think he's a crappy director and most of his characters talk in this sort of hyper-geek speak that I find incredibly grating. But, I keep up with all of his films (yep, even Jersey Girl). I kinda wish I liked his stuff. They seem like they should be lots of fun and I am a geek like he is, after all. I do enjoy the guy's Q&As. I've seen all four of those and can easily watch him babble on for 3.5 hours, answering only one question in the process. Well, with Red State, I think Smith's finally improving on this whole moviemaking hobby he has.

Red State isn't a standard horror movie, which is something I found refreshing. It was made by someone I wouldn't call a "horror movie guy." Smith tends to geek out over Star Wars and Batman and Stan Lee; I don't recall any references to horror movie geekery in his films or Q&As. So, Red State starts off being a fairly normal horror film about teenagers being kidnapped and murdered by a crazy cult, and then sort of wanders off in its own direction, never to return to horror. In a way, it reminds me of The Shining. Not that this film is anywhere near as good as Kubrick's, but that both were made people people who were only interested in the conventions of the genre in order to be sure to ignore them and do their own thing.

Michael Parks as the head preacher Abin Cooper is wonderful. At the start of the movie, he gives a fire-and-brimstone sermon that eats up a good 15 minutes of the film's run time, but I was enthralled with his performance. He has the bible-beating, charismatic preacher character down absolutely perfectly. I also like that his character is morally consistent. Usually with these religious nut characters, the filmmakers will be sure to show us that they're really hypocrites or cowardly. For example, I was expecting Abin to use one of his kids as a shield when the firefight with the ATF started, or to be shown secretly looking at gay porn. Nope, Abin truly believes his own bullshit. It makes him less of a caricature and harder to completely hate him. He's just a profoundly disturbed man, not an evil huckster.

Even though Cop Out was mediocre crap, it seems to have taught Smith about filming shootouts. The battle between the ATF and the cult is intense. Bullets whiz about loudly, exploding chunks out of the compound or people's faces. People die with sudden fury. The way this violence ends, though, is a bit week. A deus ex machina (nearly a literal one, except they didn't have the budget for it) stops the shooting and then the end is just a couple of long speeches by John Goodman's ATF character. Luckily, Goodman's great and I'll watch anything he does.

Still, I dug it. Now I'm kind of disappointed Smith claims to be retiring after his next film. (7/10)

Spirits of the Dead: "Toby Dammit" (1968) directed by Federico Fellini

We had some time to kill before going to see Steel Panther (death to all but metal!), so my friend Jack popped in the last section of a movie he'd been watching. Supposedly based on the Poe story "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," it really only shares its final scene with that tale. I can't tell if Toby is a transcendentalist, as in the story, or an existentialist. Is he seeking to free himself from the tedious business of the flesh so he can move into the spiritual, or is he just looking for a way out the ridiculousness that we call existence? Either way, the film is an absolute trip. Terence Stamp is great as the world-famous Shakespearean actor Toby. He walks around in a technicolor semi-future in which people are constantly approaching him due to his celebrity to him pitch projects, to take his photo, to get his thoughts, to give him awards, to offer him marriage. He couldn't care less and no matter what his responses to these things are -- sticking his tongue out, snark, sleeping -- the people surrounding him only seem to love him more. Perhaps he is trapped in Hell? Why, then, does his vision of the devil (a little girl with a white ball) help to free him?

The film is filled with amazing visuals, precise sound design and hilarious characters. I loved it. I'm ashamed to admit -- and I even got halfway through a film degree in college -- that I've never seen a Fellini film before this. I've gotta change that; I've gotta see more.

October 19th

2011-10-19T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) directed by Kevin Yagher & Joe Chappelle (as Alan Smithee)

"Needs more Pinhead!" declared the Miramax execs. And their word was made reality. The script was rewritten, Yagher quit the film in disgust and Chappelle shot the rest. What resulted was a mess that doomed the Hellraiser series to an eternity of direct-to-video crappiness.

I hate that Angelique is just a regular demon, summoned using regular old black magic. Hellraiser's Hell is supposed to special. Your Sunday school classes were wrong. Hell isn't about fire and pitchforks; it's about exploring the limits. Pinhead's the same as he was in III: overly chatty and bizarrely bent on taking over the world. The filmmakers seemed to realize these were flaws when Merchant pops up a picture of Earth on a screen, which causes Pinhead to yap so long Merchant can escape. Pinhead is also fooled by a hologram at the end of the film. Horrible. The Cenobites on the space station do nothing but murder people Jason-style, which, again, is utterly not what they're about.

It's not all bad. Angelique is probably the second best Cenobite design of all time after Pinhead. Too bad she's barely in the film in this form. I think the Chatterer Beast is pretty cool, even though the idea of Pinhead having a pet doggie is idiotic. Mickey Cottrell is awesomely hammy as the powdered wig-wearing magician D'Isle. Too bad many of his scenes were cut. The idea of having a robot solve the box in order to protect yourself is clever. I appreciate that continuity with part III was kept, with the Lament Configuration-inspired building and the box buried in concrete.

Other than that, the film's a mess that continues the downward slide started in III. (5/10)

The Walking Dead: "Guts" (2010) directed by Michelle MacLaren

Though not quite as apocalyptic as the first episode, this one was still quite good. Rick escapes the tank with the help of Glenn and meets up with a group hunting for supplies in the city. All the noise they've stirred up has attracted a lot of zombies and they end up trapped in a department store. Their ultimate solution is for Rick and Glenn to cover themselves with zombie guts and walk among the dead to escape. The scene is played very well, with gore and tension and fast driving. It was surprisingly gory, actually, for a non-pay channel TV show, with Rick chopping up a dead zombie with an axe. And, after it begins to rain and the guts start to wash off, Rick and Glenn have to fight tooth-and-nail in order to reach the truck they're aiming for. It's nice to see some solid zombie action involving axes and shovels, especially since everyone seems to be a deadeye shot with their guns, dropping zombies with ease from a distance. All in all, I liked it better than the equivalent scene in the comic series.

I'm a bit worried about the other survivors at the camp, though. Their scenes are very soap opera-esque. And, their camp layout is bugging me. It's spread out all over the place. It should be tight, so they can quickly gather and fend off any attacks. And Lori also wanders into the woods without a weapon to get water, which is horrendously stupid in this world. Then again, the zombie apocalypse just happened and maybe they don't know any better yet. We'll see how it goes when the two groups join up...

October 18th

2011-10-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

Stag Night (2008) directed by Peter A. Dowling
I don't know why, but this movie worked for me. It shouldn't. It's a shaky-cam version of The Hills Have Eyes set in the New York subway featuring even stupider cannibals and a half-dozen annoying twenty-somethings as their fodder. But, I got into it. Though terribly annoying, the shaky-cam enhanced the frenzy of the twenty-somethings' fleeing and fighting. It made things feel more desperate and panicy, headache-inducing or no. The cannibals look like Alan Moore and can only grunt, but this seems to make them scarier; they're wildmen with crazy eyes and gnashing teeth. The setting is also really cool: the abandoned tunnels under New York, filled with all kinds of dark things.

My one major objection is the surprise ending. Mike defeats all of the adult cannibals and finally finds an exit out of the subway. As he stumbles towards sunlight, the forgotten kid cannibal jumps at him with blades drawn. No fair. Mike had proven his marriage worth by beating his foes on his stag night (named after, says this movie, the practice of having to kill a stag before getting married to prove yourself). Having a kid kill him at the end is cheap. C'mon, the dude is a worthy warrior; the filmmakers just felt like they needed to tack on a shocker ending.

And that's it for the two Ghost House Underground movies for this year. At this rate -- 8 in 2009, 4 in 2010 and 2 in 2011 -- it seems like I'll only have one of these for next year. That's too bad, as I feel like GHU is the best of these horrorfest series, generally having slightly more watchable movies than the others. (7/10)

Hannibal Rising (2007) directed by Peter Webber
Better than I expected. I was thinking this would be about Hannibal's career as a serial killer before Graham caught him -- probably peppered with flashbacks to abusive parents -- which would've been completely pointless. We already know that story from the bits and pieces in Silence and Red Dragon. Instead, we see an 8-year-old Hannibal traumatized in the aftermath of WWII when bandits kill and eat his sister. Years later, he seeks revenge on those bandits. As a period revenge story, it's pretty good. I'm partial to revenge tales and enjoy seeing the wicked punished harshly, which Hannibal certainly does. Post-war Lithuania and France are both fascinating settings, neither of which I believe I've seen in film before. The acting and direction in the film are both spot-on.

But, Hannibal's not really Hannibal here; there's a large disconnect between this character and the older version from prior films. Hannibal here carries a katana, samurai-style. He's in love with his dead uncle's wife and seems to possess the emotions that true psychopaths do not. Glossed over is Hannibal's medical career and the development of his love of high culture. Left unexplained is his transformation into a cannibal. Was it because the bandits tricked him into eating part of his sister so many years ago? I can't say that such an event would make me want to eat the cheeks of her killers, personally. Ignoring the cheek-eating, Hannibal here is the hero of the film. He slaughters racists and war criminals only. I can't imagine this same character killing random college girls to use as dinner supplies 30 years later. I guess it feels like there's something missing from Hannibal's characterization in this film. The childhood trauma damaged him, yes, but it doesn't seem like it damaged him enough to turn him into the killer Graham caught. (6/10)

October 17th

2011-10-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

Psych:9 (2010) directed by Andrew Shortell
Suspiciously similar to Session 9. Shut down hospital. Doing tedious work there while strange things are afoot. Uncovering the history of a former mental patient. Mysterious murders. The worker is a crazy person responsible for the deaths. There's an attempt to make this another "is she crazy or is the ghost really killing people?" movie, but I don't think it's left at all ambiguous. We're explicitly shown that Roslyn is talking to herself during her conversations with the dead doctor. Though we don't see her actually kill anyone, that's seems to be the only reasonably explanation given her mental state.

And, holy crap, what was up with the digital color correction? Every scene was tinted so far into yellow territory, everyone looked like they had a really bad case of jaundice. I found it very distracting. Similarly, Lionsgate seems to have screwed up the transfer, with the black level being more of a gray level. Nice work.

All in all, the first of two Ghost House Underground movies for this year is derivative and poorly put together. (4/10)

October 16th

2011-10-16T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Munsters: "Herman, Coach of the Year" (1965) directed by Norman Abbott
L'il K was refusing to eat her lunch, so I suggested we head downstairs with lunch and watch some Munsters. That did the trick. I'm not exactly sure what she sees in this show, but she seems to love it. This one had her cracking up over Herman's pathetic attempts to train Eddie in track. It's a bit of weird episode, in that Grandpa whips up some drugs (he calls them magic pills) that give Eddie super track-and-field powers. Though it turns out in the end that Eddie wasn't even taking the pills, it's not really a message you'd see in a sitcom these days.

The Munsters: "Happy 100th Anniversary" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
Herman and Lily decide to secretly buy each other a present for their 100th wedding anniversary. They each think the other has forgotten the day and comedy ensues. What stuck me is that they each decide to spend $1000 on the present. According to the inflation calculator, that's $6800 in today's money. Wow! Hmm... look at this: on Wikipedia, there wedding anniversary chart does indeed go to 100 years (?) and they say that's supposed to be a 10-carat diamond gift. According to Wikianswers, a 10-carat diamond ring costs between $250k and $1.1m. So, I guess they really weren't spending enough, then...

The Munsters: "Operation Herman" (1965) directed by Norman Abbott
Eddie has to get his tonsils out. Guess what happens when Herman goes to the hospital to visit him? Yep, they think he's an accident victim who needs surgery. Best part is Fred Gwynne acting drunk after Herman is given nitrous oxide at the hospital.

The Munsters: "Lily's Star Boarder" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
Over Herman's objections, the family posts an ad to rent their spare bedroom. A policeman takes the room in order to conduct surveillance on the criminal operation going on in the house across the street. What crime are they committing? They're selling stolen furs. That's right, there's a suburban house filled with grim-faced, sharply-dressed mobsters, all stuffing furs into garment boxes in the manliest way possible. Crime was different back then, I guess.

Taken by L'il K using a Fisher Price camera.
Modern art museums: call me. We have dozens of these things.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) directed by Anthony Hickox
I hadn't seen this one in many years and now I remember why. Pinhead just won't shut the hell up in this movie. He has seemingly endless speeches about pain, flesh, desire, etc. There's also the laughing. Pinhead is constantly cackling like a typical horror movie monster, sounding a helluva lot like Freddy when he does so. At best, Pinhead should only chuckle dismissively, as he does in Hellbound when Kirsty tells him she's come for her father. And then there's the killing. Why does Pinhead massacre an entire club full of people? Isn't he supposed to be an "explorer in the further regions of experience"? Shouldn't he have chained them all up for later play time? In short, the character's just completely wrong. Yeah, yeah, he's been separated from both Hell's rules and his human side... whatever. He's still acting like a typical slasher villain and a parody of his former self.

Also: CD Cenobite. Enough said. (5/10)

Clive Barker: The Art of Horror (1992) directed by Christopher Holland
Paramount was thoughtful enough to throw this on the Hell on Earth DVD. Back in the day, you could buy a VHS two-pack with both movies together. Basically, it's Barker talking about his philosophy of art for half an hour. I found it pretty interesting, particularly his thoughts on the tedium of being trapped in flesh.

The Walking Dead: "Days Gone By" (2010) directed by Frank Darabont
Though The Walking Dead comic series is my favorite zombie story of all time, I waited an entire year to start watching the show. Why? Well, I don't have cable and it seemed like Halloweentime would be the time to watch such a show instead of last November. It was worth the wait. This a tremendous first episode and probably the best piece of made-for-TV horror ever.

One thing they've gotten really, really right is the emotional aspect of the story. Rick collapses in pain on the floor of his house upon finding it empty and realizing the gravity of the situation he's woken up into. I love the tears in his eyes as he speaks to the half zombie crawling in the field before shooting her. If the show follows the arc of the comic, it was quite important to see where Rick's reaction to killing starts off at. Lennie James, in particular, does a helluva job as Morgan. The scene in which he tries and fails to shoot his zombie wife was astoundingly good.

The introduction to the zombies was also perfect. These are Romero-style slow walkers. At the start of the episode, we only see one or two at a time. They're annoying, but not a problem. But, damn, when Rick turns a corner on that street in Atlanta and sees hundreds of the things, that's when you realize the full extent of their threat. And then when he hides under the tank, with zombies crawling towards him from all side... wow, great suspense.

I'm hoping the TV series has the iron balls that the comic series does. In the comic, anything could happen to anyone at anytime. That is one of the things that is so special about it. No other series has shocked me as much as Walking Dead. Rick is the only character who will never be killed off, and even that doesn't help him much. The introductory scene of this episode, in which Rick is forced to kill a poor zombie child, seems like a good sign that they won't be holding back at all. At any rate, I'm crossing my fingers that the level of quality seen in this episode somehow continues.

October 15th

2011-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

Smash Cut (2009) trailer (RIP David Hess)
Heavy Mental: A Rock-n-Roll Blood Bath (2009) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror: Hungry Are the Damned" (1990)

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) directed by Tony Randel
As a younger man, this was my favorite horror movie. This was the horror movie I'd bring along to friends' houses to try to talk them into watching with me. There's nothing like seeing a non-horror fan's reaction to the Browning scene ("get them off me!"). I don't think the track team appreciated seeing the film too much, I have to admit.

I love the hell out of Kenneth Cranham's understated performance as Dr. Channard. His look of only mild horror when Julia emerges from the mattress and eats Browning is priceless. He's also batshit nuts as the Channard Cenobite, talking through his teeth and barely opening his eyes as he delivers corny lines in a modulated growl. I love the stop motion effects used for Channard's tentacles, having them grow flowers and knives and eyeballs and fingers. I wish horror movies would still do this; it looks so much neater to me than the equivalent CGI effect. Skinless Julia is even more beautiful than skinless Frank from the first film. I could watch an entire movie with just her. The set dressing in Channard's home is amazing; it's filled with little details that are fun to pick out (a small photo of Aleister Crowley, what appears to be a plasticized corpse in a glass case). Oliver Smith, who also played skinless Frank, is fantastic as the mental disturbed Browning.

I will say the sequel's sloppier than the original, likely due to both a script that kept undergoing last minute changes and a lack of Barker's keen eye for detail behind the lens. For example, when Kirsty puts on Julia's skin to trick Channard, Clare Higgins still has her blue eyes instead of Ashley Laurence's brown ones. Barker did not make this mistake when brown-eyed Frank puts on blue-eyed Larry's skin. There's also a painful number of shots in which we see Hell's supposedly stone walls bounce around when people lean on then. Ugh. Hell itself is pretty boring. I would've like to have seen the Cenobites doing whatever it is that they do normally in hell. We get a small glimpse of this when Channard peaks through a window and sees three people writhing in ecstasy with chains hooked into their backs. Otherwise, it's a lot of long, gray hallways and Dantean "personal hells" that don't seem to have anything to do with taking people "beyond the limits," as Frank says in part 1.

And, some things in the movie just don't make any sense unless you're a Hellraiser nerd. Why did Chatterer suddenly get a different face? He was given a make-over in a deleted scene. Why did Channard kill the other Cenobites? Leviathan was pissed about Frank escaping or the Cenobites realizing their true pasts or something, so it created a new Cenobite to decommission the screw-ups. What was the penis-tentacle connected to Channard for? It was direct connection to Leviathan, so it could have more control over its new Cenobite. Why did Channard die? He had the bad luck of getting his tentacles stuck in the ground at the same time Tiffany solved the puzzle in a way that shut down Leviathan. What's the deal with the pillar coming out of the mattress at the end? I have no clue. Normally, I'd say having all of these plot points completely unexplained would be a huge flaw. Here, though, I think it works. What you end up seeing is a bunch of bizarre Cenobite goings-on that you have no explanation for. It makes the movie even weirder. (8/10)

Puzzled (2010)

Blood Car (2007) directed by Alex Orr

My friend Jack bought this for a buck at a closing video store. I don't know how he could've not, given the title. Strangely, the titular vehicle of this movie is very similar to that of Road Kill. Both feature vehicles the run only on human blood and both have grinders in the back to help facilitate this. Beyond that, they're completely different. Blood Car is a pretty silly horror-comedy about a vegan who's trying to invent an engine that runs on wheatgrass. When he accidentally cuts himself and bleeds in the engine, things go from there. The ability to drive in a society where gas is $36/gallon makes him very attractive to the girl at the meat store. His desire for her leads him to start killing folks for fuel. Again, strangely, it's a bit similar to Hellraiser, in that Archie starts killing people in order to get laid, just like Julia.

It's all in good fun -- with grandmas and gangsters and feds and babies and disabled vets turned into fuel -- and very darkly silly. (6/10)

It's pumpkin season.

October 14th

2011-10-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Munsters: "Herman's Child Psychology" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone

At the end of this episode, Herman runs into an escaped circus bear. The bear is really just an actor in a horrible bear costume, but it still freaked my little one out. "I don't want to watch this," she told me. Kids are awesome. They see the world in such a completely different way, that a weird-looking fake bear is even more disturbing than a real bear. We continued to watch, anyway, and I think she smiled when silly Herman began to waltz with the creature.

The Munsters: "Herman, the Master Spy" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone

Herman goes scuba diving and is picked up by a Russian fishing boat by accident. There, he charms the socks off of the crew while Moscow and the Pentagon try to figure out if he's a spy. Ah, the Cold War. If my little one were older and able to ask me what this episode was about, I think it would take me a good 20 minutes to explain the history. We're so far from this point now, it almost feels like watching an episode about the War of 1812.

The Munsters: "Bronco-Bustin' Munster" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone

Once again, Eddie signs Herman up for a task he's not at all prepared for. This time, Herman is to ride a bucking bronco at the local rodeo. Grandpa changes himself into a horse in an attempt to give Herman an easy ride, but, of course, there's a switcheroo and Herman ends up riding the meanest horse there. The weirdest past about this episode is the stunt double who actually rides the bucking bronco. He's a really short fellow with a huge, puffy Herman shirt on. It looks like a marshmallow riding a horse.

The Munsters: "Herman Munster, Shutter Bug" (1965) directed by Earl Bellamy

Herman accidentally takes a picture of a bank robbery in progress. The robbers then take the Munsters hostage and hide out in their mansion. The best part is when the robbers improbably allow the Munsters to go about their usual routine. We get to see them freak at Lily tarnishing the brass, Eddie practicing funeral dirges on the organ, Grandpa playing poker with the Invisible Man, etc. Classic.

The Task (2010) directed by Alex Orwell

I guess the base idea here isn't bad. To update the classic "spend a night in a haunted mansion to win a prize/inheritance" story, they make it a reality show about a haunted prison. Unfortunately, they also decided to make the film tremendously boring. The reality show we're forced to watch for the first 90% of the movie is idiotic. The contestants are forced to do such "scary" things as walk around in the dark, sit in a gas chamber chair and -- gasp -- eat cooked meat. Plus, inexplicably, they make the lone black character lie in a hole filled with shit for pretty much the entire film, a task far worse than anyone else has to do. I'll just leave it there and not explore any potential biases the filmmakers may or may not have. When the movie is nearly done, the real ghost of the sadistic prison warden finally gets down to really killing the cast and producers. But, by then it was hard to care (or stay awake).

And that's the last of the After Dark Originals for this year. There were only 7 films instead of the usual 8 due to Re-Kill being yanked from the lineup for reasons not explained. What wretched crop. Instead of the usual two films that I like from a batch of these, there was only one. Although I do enjoy the mystery of popping in a movie from one of theses fests with no knowledge of what I'm in for, the reward-to-punishment ratio is getting pretty harsh. I won't weep if this is After Dark's final year. (4/10)

October 13th

2011-10-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

Prowl (2010) directed by Patrik Syversen
Finally, an After Dark movie that I actually liked. That was quite unexpected... not only because this year's crop of films is particularly dismal, but because this film features the 30 Days of Night-style vampires that I usually loathe. A group of kids break down on the way to Chicago and convince a truck driver to let them ride in his trailer. Too bad of them, the truck driver happens to be a food delivery service for a vampires. He takes them to an incredibly gothic abandoned slaughterhouse as a treat for his vampires masters to feast on. And then things go bad from there.

I found the build-up to the appearance of the vampires to be very well put together. The kids start out by partying in the trailer and acting like typical Hollywood horror movie teenagers. Soon, things begin to feel not right. The driver mysteriously answers their friend's cellphone and sounds odd. They discover the shipment in the truck is blood. They see nothing but graffiti-coated cement walls out of the small holes in the side of the trailer. Eventually, the back of the trailer flies open and reveals a large, dark, empty warehouse. They slowly explore the warehouse, looking for an exit, when suddenly the vampires begin their ferocious attack. It's a good build.

I also found the kids reactions to all of this to be pretty realistic. At first, some of them think they're on a hidden camera show. When it becomes clear the driver isn't going to stop the truck for them, they don't screw around and immediately attempt to call 911 (only to be knocked off the phone by a sharp turn). When they creep into the warehouse, they all bunch closely together as you would in real life, afraid to venture far from the group. Even with stock characters -- the jock, the nerd, the rich boy, etc. -- I found them to be fairly well-written.

What really sold me on the movie, though, was a small moment when Amber pins a little vampire to the ground and threatens him with a knife. He immediately changes from a snarling animal into a scared teenager. His whimpering performance is great and you begin to feel sorry for the little guy as he lies helpless under the heroine. It made me see these animal-like vampires in a new light. They're just acting that way because they think that's what they're supposed to do. In reality, they're just scared creatures who need to eat and breath like the rest of us.

The movie ends after just 77 minutes and rather abruptly, but I liked it enough not to let this bother me. (7/10)

Seconds Apart (2011) directed by Antonio Negret

Twins with the same power as the guy in the "Pusher" episode of The X-Files terrorize a town, except they need to hold hands Wonder Twins-style in order for the power to really work. They're classic psychopaths, but really want to be able to feel some kind of emotion like normal people. So, they use their super powers to make people hurt or kill themselves while filming the fun. They then watch the film at home in an attempt to generate some kind of emotional response to the images. It never works.

As with Dead Ringers, one twin is more sensitive and the other is more aggressive. Just like Dead Ringers, one finds a girlfriend and the other begins to get jealous. Just like Dead Ringers, they both end up dead in their home by the time the credits roll. The arc of the story is not at all surprising, though it is at times stupid. Why did Detective Lampkin so easily make the huge leap into the idea that the boys had magic mental powers? What would possess him to even think in that direction? It seems like a contrivance just to enable that character to pursue the twins. Why the massive killing spree after causing four kids to kill themselves? The twins were too smart not to realize the need to lay low, especially with an unusually keen detective on their tails. After causing their parents to mutilate and paralyze themselves, how did the twins survive? They appeared to be about two when this happened. Did their magic powers feed them and change their diapers, too? Ugh. Not a lot of effort was put into this story, I don't think. (5/10)

October 12th

2011-10-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

Blood Beach (1980) directed by Jeffrey Bloom
Well, that was disappointing. I thought the trailer looked pretty cool, so I downloaded it (this being the only way to see the movie due to its lack of a DVD release). I should've known better after the Evilspeak trailer debacle.

An unknown creatures that lives under the sand of a particular L.A. beach begins to eat people. While that sounds neat in theory, what actually happens is that people sink into the sand and simply disappear. With the exception of a rapist getting his weener et off, it's all very boring and bloodless. Though, I will admit, when the creature finally makes its appearance at the very end of the movie, it looks pretty cool. It's sort of like the flower part of the Thing from The Thing.

I think I should sue over the misleading trailer, like a fellow Michigan woman recently did. Trailers: the landmines of the film world. Decades after they've served their purpose, they lie in wait, ready to spring on unsuspecting nerds like myself with their manipulative editing and voice-overs. (5/10)

October 11th

2011-10-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

Scream of the Banshee (2011) directed by Steven C. Miller
Fade in: "SyFy Presents." "Dammit, this is gonna suck," I thought to myself. I wasn't wrong. I'm not sure what it is about these Siffy movies that stink so badly. I think it's just a general "not giving too much of a shit" by most everyone that works on the movie. Well, I take that back. I think the crew is probably performing their job professionally. Shots are in focus, the lighting seems to be fine and I didn't read about anyone getting accidentally electrocuted by improperly secure cables on the set. Those responsible for the artistic side of things on these movies, I can't speak as highly of. I'm almost certain these Siffy scripts are written using a computer connected to TV Tropes, which probably automatically assembles scripts cynically designed to attract less discerning audiences by using well-worn plot devices and stock characters. This wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if the movie wasn't further constrained by the puritan limits of U.S. television. What you end up with is a film in which horrible actors spout crappy dialogue whilst being chased by a ridiculous looking banshee-monster for 90 minutes. (4/10)

October 10th

2011-10-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Husk (2011) directed by Brett Simmons
Twenty-somethings crash their car in the middle of nowhere. The only thing around is a farmhouse in the middle of an enormous cornfield. Turns out the scarecrows in this field have a habit of killing these kids and turning them into more scarecrows. It's not a horrible horror movie, but it just didn't grab me for some reason. I like the idea of the killer scarecrows being unable to exit the cornfield. It makes for an interesting prison for the kids as they try to figure out how they can possible make it through the huge cornfield without being attacked. The story explaining this, though, is either underdeveloped or just not the right tale. In the past, one son of the original owner of the farmhouse kills his brother, dresses him as a scarecrow and hangs him up. This is apparently enough to have the dead brother return to kill again, but why he wants to do this, I have no idea. It might've been better to have no explanation at all rather than one that doesn't make too much sense. (6/10)

Fear Itself: "Skin and Bones" (2008) directed by Larry Fessenden
And now I'm in my third year of trying to get through this 13-episode series. When Grady returns from a hunting trip after being lost for a week in the mountains, he's changed. He doesn't want to eat any food and his hunting companions are missing. Guess what? Yep, he's a cannibal! Oh, and as the stereotypical wise Indian character tells us, he's also possessed by the Wendigo (the director seems a bit stuck on this supernatural creature). Hellboy's Doug Jones does a great job as the super-thin, toothy Grady, but I can't recommend much else about this unoriginal tale.

October 9th

2011-10-09T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Munsters: "Herman's Happy Valley" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
More "The Monsters" with the elder daughter. Herman buys 10 acres of what appears to be a ghost town set from a Western TV show. It's supposed to be a scam but, of course, the Munsters love the place. I love the image of Herman with toy six-shooters on his hips and a tiny cowboy hat atop his flat head.

The Munsters: "Hot Rod Herman" (1965) directed by Norman Abbott
Ah, finally, the famous Drag-u-la makes its appearance. After Herman loses the Munster Coach in a drag race, Grandpa constructs a real drag racer out of a coffin and Herman kicks ass with it. C'mon... it's a Frankenstein driving a race car made out of a coffin built by a Dracula... pure Halloween gold. I also love that Rob Zombie managed to create a radio hit with an ode to this machine 33 years later.

The Munsters: "Herman's Raise" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
The good: John Carradine as Herman's boss at the funeral parlor. The bad: white guy doing a bad Asian stereotype as Herman's boss at the Chinese laundry. The weird: a 7-foot-tall, green monster can get a new job every morning for a week. The 1960s were strange.

The Munsters: "Yes, Galen, There Is a Herman" (1965) directed by Norman Abbott
I remember watching this one when I was a kid. Herman finds a boy with his head trapped in a wrought iron fence. He frees him and tells the boy to call him "Uncle Herman." Later, they hold hands as they walk to the Munster Mansion, where Herman takes the boy into the basement dungeon to watch Munster home movies. Ah, the irony-free era. Except for the racist shit (see above), it might be nice to live in such a time where snark and double entendre weren't at the forefront of everyone's thoughts. Though, I can say that one of the benefits of becoming a parent is being able to appreciate these types of things through their innocent eyes.

Fertile Ground (2011) directed by Adam Gierasch
From the director of Horrorfest 2009's mediocre Autopsy, Gierasch's followup shows some improvement. Mainly, he's learned restraint. There are no organs hanging from tubes in this film or mad scientists chasing twenty-somethings through a hospital. This is a slow-builder about a couple who move to the country after the wife's devastating miscarriage. They find a 150-year-old skeleton buried in their yard and learn of the dark history of their home. Soon, the wife starts seeing ghosts in the house and begins to see a pattern in the house's history of murder.

Or so she thinks. Exactly like The Innocents, there's a question as to whether she's really seeing ghosts or if she's insane. In fact, this situation is so similar to The Innocents -- with the ghosts that only the woman can see and the hidden secret behind their appearances she's figured out -- I've gotta think Gierasch is a fan and this is an homage. Inevitably, though, this film is going to suffer in comparison to that excellent movie. While Leisha Hailey does a fantastic job in the role of the wife, everything else is not quite elevated above standard horror movie ghost story fare to make it interesting. (6/10)

Red Dragon (2002) directed by Brett Ratner

Try as I might, I couldn't not think of Manhunter as I watched this. While Red Dragon is closer to the novel, I still prefer the earlier film to the newer. I don't think this is solely because I'm used to Manhunter. I think -- no, I know -- Brett Ratner is a worse director than Michael Mann and you can see this in a comparison of the two movies.

An example that struck me tonight was the scene in which they find a note from Dolarhyde in Lecter's cell. There's a rush to take the note to the FBI, run all kinds of forensics tests on it and then hide it back in Lecter's cell before too much time has passed and he become suspicious. In the earlier film, there's a wonderful sense of urgency as they fly the note to the FBI and carefully examine it with the clock ticking. Characters keep asking for how much time they have left and the scenes are shot with lots of energy. I felt none of this tension in Red Dragon. Here, they even fake a power outage to give themselves even more time. Then, the note is flown to the FBI, where people causally examine it in relatively static shots and no one seems to care how much time has passed. And, while the note is returned in time, Red Dragon makes a point to show us that Lecter knows what has happened anyway. Why? There's no story reason for this. It's purely because Hopkins' Lecter is a cartoony supervillain and cannot be shown to be anything other than omniscient. There's a similar lack of energy and worship of Lecter throughout this film. (6/10)

October 8th

2011-10-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Munsters: "Munster the Magnificent" (1965) directed by Norman Abbott
I popped this in and Li'l K immediately ran from the room. "I don't want to watch this show," she told me, probably thinking Herman was going to be as scary as the real Frankenstein. But, I knew better. I let the show run and she slowly crept back into the room, her curiosity outweighing her fear. She positioned herself behind the couch in order to hide if needed and peaked at the antics of the funny monsters onscreen. Once she saw Herman trying and failing to perform corny magic tricks, I think she got it. At the end of the episode, Li'l K gave The Munsters her personal thumbs up: "Can we watch one more?"

The Munsters: "Lily Munster - Girl Model" (1965) directed by Earl Bellamy
So we did. In this one, Lily Munster is bored being a housewife and decides to get a job, much to Herman and Grandpa's consternation. She improbably finds one as a model for fashion designer Laszlo (played by Harry Mudd himself, Roger C. Carmel) and we're treated to seeing Lily actually wear different clothes for once. Though, I have to say it's weird to have her parade around in go-go boots and a leopard print top. Figuring Lily would be getting all kinds of male attention with her new job, Herman and Grandpa scheme to make her jealous. So, clearly, the only thing to do is to transform Grandpa into a hot girl to pretend to be Herman's girlfriend at a fashion show. It's all incredibly messed up, but worth watching to see the pretty lady talk with Al Lewis' voice.

Hannibal (2001) directed by Ridley Scott
Weird. My first thought is that this was an amusing punch to the gut to the non-horror fans who loved the "psychological thriller" that was The Silence of the Lambs, despite it being a movie about two serial killers. Scott and Harris seem to be saying: "You like this Hannibal the Cannibal character? Here, watch him eat someone's brain while they're still alive." I imagine many people walked out of the movie at this point in disgust. For that alone, I kind of like the film.

But, I'm not sure how necessary this film was. In order to reunite Starling and Lecter, it seems they had to invent more of a relationship for them than I think was ever suggested in Silence. Here, Lecter is a sort of protective stalker of Starling. When her career is threaten, he comes running back into the United States, despite his face being elevated into the FBI's 10 most wanted list again and having a rich survivor of his past cruelty hunting him. It's a bit pathetic, actually. Here's this cold, calculating monster, but watch as he risks it all to save the girl he loves. Weird. I don't really see where this love story is coming from, though it's suggested in this film that Lecter admires her incorruptibility, something I imagine he sees in himself as well. At least the film deviates from the idiotic ending of the novel, in which Lecter and Starling run off to Argentina together as lovers.

This has got to be one of the oddest Hollywood sequels of all time. I'm impressed with the final product in a bizarre way, even if I don't like the specifics of the story. (7/10)

October 7th

2011-10-07T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Raven (2011) trailer
Frankenhooker (1990) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror II: The Monkey's Paw" (1991)

The Innocents (1961) directed by Jack Clayton
Miss Giddens accepts a job as a governess to two orphaned children and moves into a huge country estate. Slowly, things begin to seem off. She hears weird noises at night, she learns that the previous governess drown in the nearby lake and the former valet froze to death outside, and the children sometimes act peculiar. She also begins to see the spirits, she believes, of the dead governess and dead valet. Connecting the spirits with the children's behavior, she thinks she can fix things...

Quite an interesting movie. It's very well shot, with beautiful compositions and lighting. Martin Stephens as Miles is the best child actor I've ever seen in a film. He's utterly believable as a slightly off, spoiled little boy with secrets behind his eyes. Though a bit slow and talky at times, there's a good amount of creepiness in the film. Particularly effective is the first time Miss Giddens sees the ghost of the valet, who appears out of the darkness outside of a window, slowly moves towards the glass, and then recedes into darkness again.

I blind-bought this DVD based on comments from guests at Flashback Weekend a few months ago. When asked what some of their favorite horror movies were, both Robert Englund and Doug Bradley (at separate panels, mind you) mentioned this film. Helluva recommendation. And, they were right. It's pretty damned good.

Like many great horror films, the story is ambiguous. Were the ghosts real or was Miss Giddens insane? I'm leaning towards insanity, myself, though I can't explain Miles' sudden death. Looking at it that way, it's a horrifying picture of what happens when an otherwise normal person begins to lose track of reality. (8/10)

R.A. The Rugged Man: "I Should'a Never..." (2004)
John Dies at the End (2011) trailer
The Growth (2009)

Antfarm Dickhole (2011) directed by Bill Zebub
And then we watched this, partially just to complete the most unlikely double feature in the entire history of cinema. I now want to invent a time machine just so I can go back to 1961 to tell people about this and make them weep in despair for their future. This was a featured movie at Wasteland and as soon as I saw the title, I told my friends "I don't care what you guys do, I'm seeing this." Well, I didn't, because it ended up overlapping with the much more important Henenlotter panel. Instead, splitting the $10 cost evenly, my friend and I bought the DVD from Bill Zebub himself. He always has a table at these things, selling a mix of his own movies (other titles he's made: Assmonster, Jesus Christ: Serial Rapist, Forgive Me for Raping You) and regular horror movies. He also let me pick out a free Antfarm Dickhole mini-poster, all of which featured a naked woman (I chose the naked lady covered in ants).

Shockingly, it was well worth my $5 cut. It's absolutely Z-grade in every way, but packed with enough weird line deliveries, strange character moments (many from Zebub himself, who plays a neurotic grammar nazi), hilarious visuals and unnecessary female nudity to make it quite entertaining. As the story goes, a thirty-something man is beaten up by bullies in the park, lands face down in the dirt and army ants decide to nest in his weener. Lucky for him, the army ants fight to defend their nest, and start killing people that bug him. He uses this to his advantage, and can be seen at various points in the movie raping both a car and a house to kill the people inside with his dick-ants. Meanwhile, Zebub continual cuts to scantily-clad or nude woman, ostensibly playing a role of "scientist" or "antomologist" who spew genuinely funny and odd exposition, while the camera glides mostly around their naughty bits. It's pure, distilled exploitation filmmaking and I loved it. (7/10)

Hiya.

October 6th

2011-10-06T23:59:00.000-04:00

Road Kill (2010) directed by Dean Francis
Two couples go camping in the middle of nowhere in the Australian Outback. As they drive, a road train approaches from behind and eventually causes them to crash. They survive, but see the giant truck waiting for them in the distance. It's gonna be Australian rednecks, right? We're looking at a Wolf Creek situation, right? Nope. In a refreshing turn, there ain't a redneck in the entire film. It's actually a whole lot weirder than that.

The couples find the truck empty and decide to drive it to the next town to get help. They don't make it quite that far; they all mysteriously fall asleep, including the driver, and end up stuck on an access road at an abandoned mine. The truck has other plans, you see. Turns out, it's a cousin of Christine. Instead of cargo in its back trailers, it has a really cool looking human grinding machine. It uses ground people for fuel ("soylent gas is people!") and proximity to the truck tends to make people insane enough to want to help find more bodies for the grinder. Maybe it's a little silly, but I thought it was a breath of fresh air in the field of "20-somethings stuck in the middle of nowhere" horror.

And that's it for the 8 Fangoria Frightfest movies. As is typical with these 8 movie fests, only two of them were any good (this one and Pig Hunt). So, by that pathetic metric, I guess the fest was successful. Though, Fangoria seems to have not released any of these things for this year, so I'm thinking this crop was the last we'll see. With Ghost House Underground only releasing 2 movies this year and After Dark dropping the "Horrorfest" from its name, I wonder if this fest phenomenon is dying out? (7/10)

October 5th

2011-10-05T23:59:00.000-04:00

51 (2011) directed by Jason Connery
As soon as I saw the SyFy logo, I knew I was in trouble. This first After Dark Originals film looks exactly like any of the other crappy original movies on the former Sci-Fi Channel. Hell, it even has fade-to-black spots for commercial breaks. I feel sorry for the folks that actually paid to see this in the movie theater, not knowing they were only going to be watching a made-for-TV movie on a larger-than-normal screen.

While some journalists visit, the aliens held in the basement of Area 51 escape and start wrecking havoc. You know, just a regular Saturday afternoon at that base, according to the dozens of movies on the subject. Can the plucky journalists and flawed-but-lovable airmen defeat the aliens and escape before the self-destruct goes off? (Hint: yes)

Here's an example of the idiocy of the script. At one point, a leader hands one of his subordinates what looks like a penlight. He doesn't tell her what it does or why he's giving it to her. He simply says something like "for an emergency," gives her dramatic look, then takes off. What he didn't tell her: it's a highly effective alien repellent. This might've been nice to know while the alien was busy eating people, but the person carrying the device doesn't figure this out until too late. Nice. (3/10)

The Tomb (2009) directed by Michael Staininger

If I didn't know that splatterpunk author John Shirley wrote this (vaguely based on a Poe story), I'd've guessed that a Hot Topic employee somehow won a contest to get her script made into a for-real movie. The movie is about as gothic as that store, but really strives to be as cool as "The Perfect Drug" video. There's willowy, raven-haired, black-dress-wearing women and absinthe drinking and castles and 19th century poetry quoting and macabre experiments involving the soul and a twisted romance. Done right, I do dig all of these things in a film. They're not done right here. Character motivations don't seem well thought out, people are drinking absinthe for no real reason other than it's gothic-cool, and what the hell is Eric Roberts doing with that bad accent? It's a mess of film. (5/10)

October 4th

2011-10-04T23:59:00.000-04:00

Pig Hunt (2008) directed by James Isaac
I liked it. It's not Shakespeare, but it's a fairly fun horror flick. The movie features a redneck clan, a hippie commune (complete with topless girls bathing), a chubby comic relief character, a gas station attendant who very nearly says "you're all doomed" and, of course, a 3000 lbs pig. That's a decent recipe for some horror and about what to expect from the director of the (enjoyable, I think) Jason X.

Can't say I've ever seen a pig as the monster in a horror movie before, so points for them mixing in some originality into the standard "city slickers go into the country and have a bad ol' time" plot. Hell, even the rednecks were a little bit better developed than you'd typically see in these films. Ricky, in particular, has an interesting shared history with former redneck / current city slicker John. And, though he seems like an asshole most of the time, Ricky's also kind to loser Quincy and chastises the wannabe hunters when they fail to take war seriously. He kind of felt like real rednecks I've known, rather than a movie stereotype.

Finally, a Fangoria Frightfest movie that didn't put me to sleep! (7/10)

October 3rd

2011-10-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hunger (2009) directed by Steven Hentges
I suppose you'd call this a Saw clone, with a mad scientist type capturing five people for an experiment. Once upon a time, the scientist was trapped in a car wreck with his dead mother and ended up eating part of her to stay alive. Now he wants to push people into the same choice. He throws them in a sealed up cave, gives them plenty of water and a knife, and waits.

The movie unfolds about as you'd expect, with the people holding out for weeks before some of them snap and start the eatin'. Though mostly lacking in surprises, it has a fairly nice build-up of tension. My biggest issue with the movie is the starvation aspect of it. After 30 days without food, these folks are really energetic. They fight and run and break locks of doors. The final girl even climbs up a 30-foot rope ladder after 36 days of no eating. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief that much (especially considering the actors looked the same weight as they did at the beginning of the film). Then again, maybe you can pull that energy out of yourself even without eating for that long? I dunno. (6/10)

October 2nd

2011-10-02T23:59:00.000-04:00

Cinema Wasteland
Sunday at Wasteland is more reserved. As we did last time, we checked out the short film festival. I love shorts. You get a good taste of a whole bunch of people's talents (or lack thereof) in a short amount of time. The shorts shown were:

Mondo Schlocko (2010)
Never a Bride (2011)
Hell Week (2011)
Monster of Mad Mooney's Lake (2011)
The Last Broadcast (2011)
Swirlee (2000)

Of those, Hell Week was well-made, Monster was pretty fun and Swirlee was excellent. Swirlee was directed by and starred James Lorinz, who plays a man with a soft-serve ice cream cone for a head.

One more circuit around the dealer room to pick up a couple DVDs and prints and then we were done. It's always disappointing going back to the real world -- where very few people walk around with Pinhead on their T-shirt -- when these cons are over. Sigh.

The Haunting (2009) directed by Elio Quiroga
No, not that The Haunting, this is a Spanish movie originally called No-Do that's a part of the Fangoria Frightfest series. Basically, mix in some The Sixth Sense with a bit of The Exorcist and, yes, The Haunting and you'll get something like this film. Though not terribly original, at least it also mixes in some local flavor with the use of old "No-Do" films. These were newsreels created by the Franco dictatorship as propaganda. Those shown in this film center around a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary three children see. Half a century later, postpartum-depressed Francesca and her family move into the house where the Virgin appeared and things begin to go bump in the night.

As with all of these ghost story movies, the haunting get progressively worse, dark secrets from the past are revealed, and then the monster is defeated at the end. There's nothing shocking here, other than the fact that the family doesn't move the hell out of the house at the first sign of spookiness. (5/10)

October 1st

2011-10-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Cinema Wasteland
It's Cinema Wasteland day! Wasteland is a small convention held twice a year near Cleveland. It's put on by a movie geek by the name of Ken Kish and focuses mostly on horror, but with a smattering of good ol' exploitation and grindhouse. They generally gets guests like John Saxon, Michael Berryman or Gunnar Hansen; folks 99% of the normal people out in the real world wouldn't recognize. And, this is a wild one... let's just say that there are many trashcans full of empties after each night and the local police like to visit on occasion.

The the vendor & guest room

Horror cons are pure fun. There's nothing like hanging out with hundreds of fellow horror geeks. What's normally a little club where only you and a few friends can share in the geekery turns into a hall full of people, each of whom knows that Friday the 13th V had fake-Jason and giallo is not an icy desert. I find the environment strangely relaxing. Horror fans also tend to be a great bunch: generally nice, very tolerant of all types of people and decorated with all kinds of fascinating tattoos.

Just like I wanted, I shook Frank Henenlotter's hand and told him that Brain Damage was one of my favorite movies. Of course, I had him sign a picture of Aylmer on which he wrote: "You fuckin' named him Elmer?!" Awesome. Later, we attended the non-Basket Case Henenlotter panel (the Basket Case one being yesterday), where he was joined by James Lorinz, Charlotte Helmkamp, Beverly Bonner, Gabe Bartalos and Anthony Sneed. Henenlotter was hilarious and had lots of stories to tell about filmmaking (his ire directed towards the MPAA was the best).

Frank and Me

Other fun stuff: drinking a beer at the bar, a guy walks up next to me and asks me to grab him a cup. I turn around and there's James Lorinz. "Now fill it up with beer," he joked when I handed it to him. My friend Jack and I complimented him on Frankenhooker and Street Trash and shook his hand. Nice guy. Beverly Bonner opened up the traditional A. Ghastlee Ghoul's Saturday night show with some of her stand-up. She was pretty funny, but it helped that she was horror kin. Later in the show, a couple of very drunk young ladies flashed their boobies... also a tradition at this thing, it seems. At the vendor tables, I picked up a Frankenstein soap (for my daughter), an early release of Frankenhooker on BD, a shorts DVD with the hilarious The Giant Rubber Monster Movie on it, and a really good three-piece drawing of Julie from Return of the Living Dead III. Damn, it's hard not to spend money at these things.

Willard (1971) directed by Daniel Mann
At midnight, we sat down to watch the original Willard in 16mm. As someone who's never been afraid of rats, rat movies really don't do too much for me. I know there's a certain segment of the population that can't stand the little buggers, but I'm more like Willard: I'd keep one in my pocket at work if I could.

Willard trains his rats to follow his commands and they breed and multiple. It's a slow build, though, and he only uses the things to kill one person -- his boss -- near the end. Having done this, this being a forty-year-old movie, he is then killed by his own rats for this crime. Me, I would've like to have seen him unpunished at the end. Maybe, the final shot is a clearly insane Willard completely coated in rats and cackling madly. I don't know. A wee bit too reserved with an animal I'm not scared of for my tastes. (6/10)

September 30th

2011-09-30T23:59:00.000-04:00

Demons (1985) directed by Lamberto Bava
I was pretty sleepy watching this one, slipping into dream-thinking constantly. Which, I think, is not a bad way to watch these Italian horror movies. They tend to be heavy on imagery and lighter on the plot, so following the story doesn't matter as much as enjoying what hits your eyeballs. My impression of this film was that it was a very cool combination of Argento's visual style and Fulci's gore. I liked it. I'll have to watch this one again when I'm awake someday. (?/10)

September 29th

2011-09-29T23:59:00.000-04:00

Basket Case 3 (1992) directed by Frank Henenlotter
Did I miss it? For some reason, I'm bizarrely worried that no one seems to have mourned the death of Baby Belial #12. He's the one that got smushed by the sheriff's daughter after she took a shotgun blast to the chest and sat on him. Did Belial even find out about that? I was a bit sleepy watching this one, but I don't remember that he did. Duane saw it (and said, in not-too-worried voice, "Oh, no."), so I suppose the telepathically-linked Belial would've know as well. Still.

Maybe it's an easy detail to overlook with all of the other weird stuff going on. Belial's wife Eve gives birth in an explosion of goo, all of the freaks sing "Personality" together on a school bus and Belial ends up with a robot body to better seek revenge. You know, standard Henenlotter weirdness. Duane was also a little more like his goofy old self from part 1, with a dollop of insanity on top to make it interesting.

Still, this one doesn't work quite as well as Henenlotter's other movies. I think because there wasn't much of a story, really. The freaks drive to Georgia to get birthing help for Eve, local law enforcement kill her and steal her babies, and then the freaks get revenge. There's not quite enough here to chew on even with the weirdness. (6/10)

Bad Biology (2008) directed by Frank Henenlotter
Yeah, this is about what I would expect from Henenlotter after a sixteen-year absence from directing. No longer hidden in penis-shaped Aylmers and panty-stealing Belials, the sexual nature of his work comes out into full view. Jennifer has 7 clits, an insatiable sex drive and the ability to bear children in a couple of hours. Batz has a giant, drug-addicted penis with a mind of its own. Will this star-crossed couple ever meet?

Charlee Danielson is great as the hyper-sexed Jennifer. She gives the role so much energy, she's completely entertaining to watch. Perhaps for this reason, the movie focuses mostly on her and her quest to figure out God's purpose for her unique anatomy. I was so happy so see Beverly Bonner in another cameo, giving her a role in every Henenlotter movie. I was also happy to see a lack of CGI in the film: everything is Karo syrup and latex rubber, from Jennifer's mutant babies to Batz' mutant weener. The way it should be.

A decent body horror / schlock / exploitation film with bucket-loads of nudity, mutations and vagina masks. (7/10)

September 28th

2011-09-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

Basket Case 2 (1990) directed by Frank Henenlotter
What happened to Duane? He used to be such a nice kid, if you ignored the whole "helping his brother murder people" thing. In this movie, he's a kind of a douche. Missing is that weird disconnect from normal life he had in the first movie. Here, he keeps expressing a desire to live a normal life. I don't think the Duane from part 1 would even know what that meant. But, it is a story mover. Duane gets to learn a hard lesson about what happens when he ignores his freak heritage and is silly enough to be grossed out by his girlfriend's tummy-snake.

The other freaks in the movie are very, very cartoony. I'm tempted to love them -- the designs on many are really cool (my favorite is the dude with huge teeth jutting out) -- but I also miss the slightly more realistic world of the first movie. Then again, how can I complain when Henenlotter decides to do some crazy shit on screen? I love that the guy'll try this type of thing, even if it doesn't work out 100% of time. I'd admire both his creativity and his guts.

I've gotta say I do like the ending, though. Duane snapping and sewing poor Belial back onto his side is great. I hope they walk around still connected in part 3 for a while. (7/10)

Frankenhooker (1990) directed by Frank Henenlotter

More Henenlotter insanity. Jeffrey is an electrician who dabbles in self-taught surgery. One day his fiancee, Elizabeth, is run over by a remote-controlled lawnmower. He decides to fix her himself, saving her head and a few other body parts in a vat of pink goo while he sketches out plans for an electrical-charged replacement body. Ah, but where to get the replacement body? Hookers, obviously. Wacky hijinks then ensue.

No, seriously: they are wacky. How about a room full of hookers exploding like firecrackers after going crazy smoking some "super crack" Jeffrey whipped up in his garage? How about the resurrected Elizabeth sexing up a john, the john exploding from her electricity, and his flying head talking about about what a good time he had? Yeah, that happens. And, then, at the end, with Jeffrey's new body...

I hadn't seen this one before, but I love it nearly as much as Brain Damage now. Damn, what a good time. (8/10)

September 27th

2011-09-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

Basket Case (1982) directed by Frank Henenlotter

The Basket Case blu-ray arrived in the mail and Cinema Wasteland is imminent; I think it's Henenlotter marathon time! Man, I love any movie set in '70s / early '80s New York City, I don't care what it's about. The gritty side of the city that always shows up in movies from this era is a character unto itself. Duane in this film moves into a decrepit hotel and watches a porno movie on 42nd Street, which is coated in sex shops and hustlers as far as the eye can see.

Siamese twins are out for revenge on those who separated them. One of the twins happens to be a hideous and violent mutant who can conveniently fit in a basket. Not a tremendously surprising horror movie plot, but it's the details that elevate this movie above other grindhouse examples. The wacky cast of characters living in Hotel Broslin are fun to watch, especially the barely contained ball of sensuality that is Beverly Bonner. The completely fake-looking Belial puppet has a bizarre charm to him... I think his particularly creepy eyes help. Kevin Van Hentenryck plays Duane perfectly. While he's a wide-eyed, naive kid from upstate, he's also completely on-board with Belial's mission to murder those who cut them apart and goes about this task with a disturbing casualness.

What's in the basket? Good ol' exploitation fun, that's what. (7/10)

Brain Damage (1988) directed by Frank Henenlotter

Completely bugnuts and I dig every second of it. I love the pure creativity of the premise: a centuries-old blue worm-type creature likes to poke a tongue-needle into people's brains to drug them so he can find other people whose brains he will eat. Oh, and the creature is named Aylmer and he speaks in down-home, friendly manner (voiced by famed horror host Zacherle) and he has a penchant for singing. Oh, and he has cute little eyes and tons of teeth:

Brian meets Aylmer and becomes completely addicted to the blue goo Aylmer shoots into his brain. It's something of a super-hallucinogen, causing him to see awesome lights coming from everywhere and to not know what the hell he's doing. He spends about a quarter of the movie high as kite, laughing hysterically at nothing, seeing meatballs turn into pasta, and carrying Aylmer to his next brain dinner. Next thing you know, his girlfriend's dead and he's shot the top of his skull off. Except, he doesn't die. He's so extremely high during his suicide attempt, all that comes out of his brain is bright light. Awesome.

Probably a far better anti-drug film than anything the DARE program puts out. (8/10)

September 26th

2011-09-26T23:59:00.000-04:00

Grimm Love (2006) directed by Martin Weisz
"How are they going to make a whole movie out of that German cannibal case?" I wondered as the movie began. "Shoehorn Keri Russell into it as a college student investigating the incident in order to pad the movie" seems to have been the answer. The cannibals' portion of the movie is actually pretty good. It's a very twisted romance between two very broken men. Unfortunately, the movie grinds to a halt every time we switch from the cannibals to Russell. There's no reason to care about anything she does; she's looking at the locations these events happened in far after the fact.

I suspect, in addition to the padding it offers, the Russell story was added to "de-gay" the movie as much as possible. I bet the producers were worried about trying to sell a movie that's not only about cannibalism, but features two gay main characters. I can think of no other reason that we're shown Russell in both swimming and bathtub scenes, as neither were necessary to the plot. It's a shame. With some editing, I think this could be transformed into a great short. As it stands, it's just not effective. (5/10)

September 25th

2011-09-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

Hellraiser (1987) directed by Clive Barker
Grandpa had signed me up on his Family Video account as being able to rent R-rated movies. Mom had no idea. One bright summer afternoon while she was out, some friends and I decided to have a horror movie marathon. We picked up The Gate, another movie I can't remember, and Hellraiser. I had been dying to see Hellraiser ever since catching the TV spots for Hellbound a few years prior. The tag line "time to play" uttered by a monster with nails precisely pounded into his head had me insanely curious as to what such a creature meant by "playing."

I wasn't disappointed. Hellraiser introduces some entirely new horror monsters. The Cenobites aren't out for revenge, or crazy or even bloodthirsty. They are merely "explorers in the further regions of experience" and can be "demons to some, angels to others." They provide an "experience beyond the limits: pain and pleasure, indivisible." Should you call them, they will manipulate your body with a precision far beyond any human surgeon. They will make your nerve endings sing an opera of extreme sensation. Fascinating stuff.

There's much to like in this film. The Cenobites, of course. Clare Higgens is brilliant as Julia, the true monster of this horror film. We watch as lust transforms her from housewife to timid killer to cool murderess. Christopher Young's majestic music is one of the best horror movie scores ever committed to film. Barker's visuals, particularly when shooting Frank, are beautiful. I love the shots of skinless Frank against the opaque windows in the attic room. Frank himself is beautiful and his resurrection scene -- backed with that majestic score -- is a highlight in '80s horror. Some of the low budget shows through in the obviously latex skin being torn and the less-than-realistic Engineer puppet, but the film is mostly effective at what's it's attempting.

During our horror marathon that summer twenty years ago, Mom came home earlier than I'd planned. She walked into the living room right as Julia let out a loud moan, Frank thrusting on top of her. We were both embarrassed, but she said nothing and left us to our movies. Once my friends had left, told me she didn't want me watching such things. I argued back, attempting to explain how far behind I felt and how many horror movies I still needed to see just to catch up with the rest of the world. I doubt she understood, but I was already hooked; a life-long horror fan had been born. (8/10)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) directed by Jonathan Demme
The only horror movie to ever win a Best Picture Oscar, though you can certainly argue this isn't a horror movie. Me, I typically cast a broad net and count serial killer pictures as horror movies, mainly because they aren't a whole lot different from a Michael or a Jason, except for their lack of immortality.

I haven't watched this film in years. I hadn't noticed the sexism subplot with Clarice until this time through. Whether it's her boss using faux sexism to put local law enforcement at ease or the psych prisoner Miggs discussing the aroma of her vagina, we're constantly reminded that Clarice is a woman in a mostly man's world. Even her first meeting with Lecter is a result of her gender, her boss (correctly) thinking that sending a pretty woman might convince Lecter to open up. Clarice, for her part, does what she must: she takes these affronts professionally, but makes sure to call out both her boss and Lecter on their incivility. I can't think of any other serial killer movie in which we're watching events from a woman's perspective. Typically, they are the victims and nothing more. I'm thinking this is one of the secrets to this film's immense popularity; it speaks to more than 50% of the population.

As for my pondering a few days ago as to which Lecter is best, I'm still thinking Brian Cox. I know Hopkins won an Oscar for his performance in this film, but his Lecter feels like he's trying too hard to be creepy. He's a borderline comic book villain at times, handing out clues like the Riddler and monologing his insights as only fictional characters can. He's a really neat character, don't misunderstand, but I feel like he doesn't match the realistic tone of the rest of the film.

Man, I bet the FBI got tons of applicants in the early '90s. Between this, Twin Peaks and The X-Files, being a special agent looked like about the coolest job in the world. I wonder how disappointed those applicants were to find out there were no giants, vampires or engaging serial killers to talk to once they got the job? (8/10)

September 24th

2011-09-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

Frankenstein (1931) directed by James Whale
We made it through 49 minutes before having to stop. I thought the 80-year-old Frankenstein might be a tame enough movie to watch with my nearly 4-year-old daughter, but it was just too scary. She was fine with the brains in the jars and the doctor's experiment, but as soon as Fritz started teasing the monster with the torch, she was done. I got her to watch a bit more, but every appearance of the monster was scarier than the last. Wisely, I stopped it right before the monster decides to throw Maria in the lake, leaving it with "see, she's teaching Frankenstein how to be nice and sharing her flowers." Ah well. I'm just happy she watched a slow, black & white movie and her only complaint was the scariness.

Seeing my daughter react to Frankenstein got me thinking about the movie in a way I really haven't before. What is scary in it? As an adult in the era of Saw 3D, it's difficult to see the film as anything other than quaint. However, if you've never, ever seen a horror movie before... the monster is something special. Jack Pierce's makeup is really good, as is Karloff's performance. There's a reason this particular take on Frankenstein has endured. If you're unused to seeing such things, I can understand the monster being frightening: a big, lumbering, disfigured guy who seems to only groan or strangle. But, it's hard to get into that mindset as an adult

Hmm... maybe we'll try to watch Bride of Frankenstein next year. (7/10)

Tales from the Darkside: "Inside the Closet" (1984) directed by Tom Savini

Finally, an episode that really is from the "darkside." And, Tom Savini's first directing gig at that. A college girl rents a room in a professor's house and begins hearing weird noises from a locked closet. Turns out -- and too bad for her -- it's a hungry little imp-thing in there. This is a mostly decent episode with a pretty good build of tension. Unfortunately, the imp-thing just doesn't look good. In fact, it looks pretty much like a toothy, naked Furby. The bad puppet pretty much ruins the episode. I think the problem was that the director was also the head of the SFX department responsible for building the thing. Instead of cloaking the puppet in shadows to both mask its flaws and make it scarier, he wanted to show it off. Didn't work out so well...

Fangoria Blood Drive II shorts

We All Fall Down (2005)

The Gibbering Horror of Howard Ghormley (2005)

Means to an End (2005)

Mainstream (2005)

Disposer (2005)

The Journal of Edmond Deyers (2005)

Sawbones (2005)

Working Stiff (2005)

Dark House (2009) directed by Darin Scott

The first Fangoria Frightfest movie of the season and -- surprise, surprise -- the first crappy movie of the season. Horror has a serious technology problem. Cellphones, for example, are a huge thorn in horror's side. It takes much more effort to isolate your characters when you've got to deal with everyone carrying a pocket communicator. Computers, also, are trouble. They seem to temp horror screenwriters into ridiculous plot ideas. In this movie, a haunted house attraction creator somehow has the equivalent of holodeck technology. Instead of, I don't know, making trillions of dollars licensing this tech to everyone on the planet, he decides to install it in a Victorian house so he can scare people. Like every holodeck story, the holograms go nuts and start killing people (actually, a ghost haunts the computer and infects it like a computer virus(!). We know this because we're shown a computer screen running the Matrix screensaver with the words "Virus Detected" superimposed on it along with an angry ghost video. Yeah, really).

There's an attempt at the end of the movie to explain the killings in more natural ways -- the protagonist went nuts and did it herself -- but it doesn't remotely stand up to scrutiny (holograms or no, the other people in the house are going to notice her killing people). Regardless, I couldn't get past the stupidity of the technology in the movie to enjoy it. Call it the Exorcist II problem. (4/10)

Fragile (2005) directed by Jaume Balagueró

I think the vengeful ghost story is my least favorite horror subgenre. Someone gets wronged and killed, they haunt a place and hurt people, the protagonist takes ninety minutes or so to figure things out, the end: it's the same story over and over. This one finds Calista Flockhart on the Isle of Wight, taking the night shift as a nurse at a children's hospital. A nurse who died 50 years ago doesn't want the place shut down, so she starts breaking the legs of the kids and shoving people out of windows. I'm not sure how this makes much sense, but maybe ghosts don't operate using people logic.

I'll admit the movie is well written and shot and paced. Flockhart is excellent as Amy, the nurse who figures things out. But, I just didn't care for the story. (6/10)

September 23rd

2011-09-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

Dollman vs. Demonic Toys (1993) trailer
Monster Brawl (2011) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror: Bad Dream House" (1990)

The Ward (2010) directed by John Carpenter
I really wanted to like this more than I did. This is the first new Carpenter movie in a decade, after the awful Ghost of Mars. I was rooting for one of my all-time favorite directors to come back with a the apocalyptic spirit I loved in The Thing, Prince of Darkness or They Live. Sadly, The Ward doesn't reach the heights of Carpenter's classics.

Not that this is a bad film. It's well made and acted. If you want a tough chick in your horror movie, Zombieland's Amber Heard is the way to go. Susanna Burney as Nurse Lundt is the best bitch-nurse since Nurse Ratched. Carpenter's use of Ghost Alice is absolutely expert. Until her final appearance, we never get a good look at her entirely. Carpenter shows us her rotted hands (crawling with under-skin CGI worms, which was actually very effective) as they choke, or we get a glimpse of her face from just the eyes up, or she appears mostly cloaked in shadows behind someone. The guy knows what he's doing with this stuff.

I think the main problem isn't with Carpenter, but with the script. It's just not very special. The twist towards the end isn't terribly surprising or original. About half of the movie seems to be comprised of Kristen's escape attempts. Also, the mental institution isn't very scary. Though it looks vaguely like one of those incredibly creepy Kirkbride buildings (think Session 9), inside it's what I would expect a normal '60s institution to look like. Sure, they're performing electroshock there, but we still do that today. Sure, they've got a morgue there, but why wouldn't they? Sure, they have lobotomy tools in the basement, but it's the '60s and they didn't know any better.

It's an alright film. I hope it inspires Carpenter to pick up the camera again sooner than later. And, hey, at least it has a classic Carpenter ending. It just wouldn't be the same without one of those. (7/10)

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) trailer

Die You Zombie Bastards! (2005) trailer

Dinner Date (2008)

Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010) directed by Eli Craig

Welp, this one's going down as a classic of horror comedy. That's an easy call to make. Twenty years from now, people will be asking: "Do you want to watch Tucker & Dale, Shaun of the Dead or Evil Dead 2 tonight?" Some scenes in this redneck-horror-turned-on-it's-head movie had me crying I was laughing so hard.

Yeah, the romance in the movie is a bit Hollywood predictable. Yeah, there's a bit of a lull in the fun when the college kids abduct Tucker and the accidental deaths stop for a while. There's so much other good stuff in the movie, I don't care.

My biggest complaint isn't with the movie, but with the marketing. If you've watched the trailers, you've seen just about every really funny scene in the movie already. The scenes -- extended in the movie -- are still funny, but not surprising like they should be. But, what were they going to do? They needed to let people know how funny the movie was, and creating a trailer like they did was really effective. I watched the trailer a year ago and wanted to see it so badly I paid $11 to rent the thing on PSN today.

As much as horror fans may whine -- remakes suck, Twilight sucks, the old school directors have lost their touch -- there are always new classics being created. Ain't we lucky? (8/10)

An unsettling view from a local hospital room

September 22nd

2011-09-22T23:59:00.000-04:00

Manhunter (1986) directed by Michael Mann
Hannibal Lecter (Lecktor?) movie numero uno. I think I'll try to watch 'em all this Halloween season (I've never seen any of the post-Silence films). Manhunter's a psychological police procedural rather than the scary serial killer movie I'd normally watch this time of year; it sits far closer to Insomnia than to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

I don't think I've ever noticed how beautifully shot this film is. Mann composes each frame like a painting, arranging the objects on screen precisely. His use of color is also excellent: the stark white of Lecktor's prison, the cool blue of Graham's beach house, the muted colors of Dollarhyde's house. Check it out:

I love Brian Cox as Lecktor. I may even like him better than Hopkins, but I'll have to re-watch Silence to know for sure. Though Cox only has probably ten minutes of screentime, he's incredibly memorable. He comes across as relaxed, unshakable and completely in control despite his imprisonment. No slouch, either, is Tom Noonan, who's Dollarhyde is a man who can barely function in normal society due to his murderous insanity.

Yeah, it's got a cheezy '80s synth score and maybe the jump cuts during the climax are goofy and perhaps Graham jumping through Dollarhyde's window in dramatic slo-mo doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense, but it's a fine detective movie otherwise. (7/10)

September 21st

2011-09-21T11:59:00.000-04:00

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) directed by Scott Glosserman
Part mockumentary, part real slasher flick. Not unlike Scream, it's a winking love letter to slasher fans. In this film, a documentary crew follows a slasher killer as he meticulously plans his killing spree. Rather than relying on supernatural powers, slashers are really just good planners in excellent physical condition. It's an amusing and strangely satisfying way of explaining the more unbelievable aspects of slasher films. How do they survive being shot? Bulletproof vests. How do they make sure the victims flee where they want them to flee? Months and months of planning. How do they keep up with the fleeing victims? Lots of cardio. Why is there always a final girl left surviving? The slasher really just wants to make her a better, stronger person.

It's a little bit jarring, and maybe a little disappointing, when the film switches from mockumentary to straight slasher film. Partially, this means Leslie Vernon transforms from an engaging psychopath into a silent killer. Nathan Baesel does such a great job with the role, it's sad to see him don the mask and stop talking to the documentary crew. However, it's a necessary part of the movie. We need to see everything Leslie's been explaining put into action to make sense of it all. We also need to see that even if you already know what his plan is, changing it in the confusion of the night might not be so easy. Now I kind of feel bad for all of the times I've yelled at the screen because the victims in a slasher film were making poor choices.

I'm not sure why it took me five years to get around to seeing this, but a nice treat for day two of Halloween. (8/10)

Tales from the Darkside: "Mookie and Pookie" (1984) directed by Timna Ranon
There's an entire subgenre of movies and TV episodes on this subject: you're loved one isn't really dead... he's in the computer now! It's a ridiculous idea now and it's even worse in a 27-year-old show featuring what looks like a 286. Now, if Mookie had transferred himself into his computer and met Tron in there, maybe I'd like the episode a bit more. As it is, it's a pointless bit of fluff that's more of a rejected Twilight Zone script that anything with a "darkside" to it.

Tales from the Darkside: "Slippage" (1984) directed by Michael Gornick
The always entertaining David Patrick Kelly plays a man who is so unimportant, the universe decides to slowly erase him from existence one day. Or, maybe, he realizes his existence impedes the happiness of those around him and subconsciously decides to do a George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life being directly mentioned in the show). I don't know. There's not much to this episode; it's more like the third act of a bigger story.

September 20th

2011-09-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

Dead & Buried (1981) directed by Gary Sherman
My favorite part of these annual horror marathons is finding good movies I've overlooked. Sadly, this is a rare occurrence. Not only have I already seen a great many horror movies in my time, but -- let's be honest -- the awesome-to-wretched ratio for the genre ain't that great. Dead & Buried is an early '80s gem with a completely unique take on the zombie genre. It's so unique, I didn't even realize I was watching a zombie movie until about the halfway point.

I was sold on the movie right from the beginning sequence. The film starts with a photographer meeting a pretty girl on a beach in New England. Prompted by the girl, they exchange increasingly flirty banter until it looks like the photographer is about to get lucky. Just as he moves in for a kiss, a group of the townsfolk -- including the girl -- descend on him in a flurry violence. The violence comes absolutely out of nowhere and the contrast between the amorous flirting and the surprisingly brutal beating is shocking.

Coming from the writing team behind Alien, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find the story very well constructed. James Farentino as Sheriff Gillis attempts to unravel the mystery behind a spate of killings in his small town. As he gets deeper into the case, he keeps unburying information that, perhaps, he'd rather not know; about the fellow his hit with his car, about his wife, about the town mortician and about himself. As his world falls apart, so does he mentally and physically.

Farentino's amazing performance -- watch his agony as he complies with his wife's request to bury her -- a great script and a unique premise overcome a few bad SFX and music cues to make an excellent start to my Halloween celebration. (8/10)

Fangoria Blood Drive shorts

Hitch (2004)

A Man and His Finger (2004)

Inside (2004)

Shadows of the Dead (2004)

Mr. Eryams (2004)

Disturbances (2004)

Song of the Dead (2004)

Six Weeks of Halloween 2011

2011-09-20T00:00:00.000-04:00

Frank's Lament

September
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25 26 27 28 29 30

October
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02 03 04 05 06 07 08
09 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31

Movies Watched		Episodes Watched
Antfarm Dickhole (2011) Bad Biology (2008) Basket Case (1982) Basket Case 2 (1990) Basket Case 3 (1992) Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) Blood Beach (1980) Blood Car (2007) Brain Damage (1988) Cemetery Man (1994) Critters (1986) Dark House (2009) Dead & Buried (1981) Dead Alive (1992) Demons (1985) The Exorcist (1973) Fertile Ground (2011) 51 (2011) Fragile (2005) Frankenhooker (1990) Frankenstein (1931) The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) Ghoulies (1985) Grimm Love (2006) Halloween (1978) Hannibal (2001) Hannibal Rising (2007) The Haunting (2009) Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988) Hellraiser (1987) Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992) Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996) Hellraiser: Deader (2005) Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002) Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005) Hellraiser: Inferno (2000) Hellraiser: Revelations (2011) Hunger (2009) Husk (2011) The Innocents (1961) Let Me In (2010) Manhunter (1986) Pig Hunt (2008) The Prowl (2010) Psych:9 (2010) Q (1982) Red Dragon (2002) Red State (2011) Road Kill (2010) Scream of the Banshee (2011) Seconds Apart (2011) The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Spirits of the Dead: "Toby Dammit" (1968) Stag Night (2008) Stake Land (2010) The Task (2010) The Tomb (2009) Trick 'r Treat (2007) Tucker & Dale vs Evil (2010) The Ward (2010) Willard (1971) You Can't Rent Here Anymore (2010)		Fear Itself: "Skin and Bones" (2008) The Munsters: "Bronco-Bustin' Munster"(1965) The Munsters: "Happy 100th Anniversary" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman's Child Psychology" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman's Happy Valley" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman's Raise" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman, the Master Spy" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman, Coach of the Year" (1965) The Munsters: "Herman Munster, Shutter Bug" (1965) The Munsters: "Hot Rod Herman" (1965) The Munsters: "Lily's Star Boarder" (1965) The Munsters: "Lily Munster - Girl Model" (1965) The Munsters: "Munster the Magnificent" (1965) The Munsters: "Operation Herman" (1965) The Munsters: "Yes, Galen, There Is a Herman" (1965) The Real Ghostbusters: "Halloween II 1/2" (1987) The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror XXII" (2011) Tales from the Darkside: "Inside the Closet" (1984) Tales from the Darkside: "Mookie and Pookie" (1984) Tales from the Darkside: "Slippage" (1984) The Walking Dead: "Days Gone By" (2010) The Walking Dead: "Guts" (2010) The Walking Dead: "Tell It to the Frogs" (2010) The Walking Dead: "TS-19" (2010) The Walking Dead: "Vatos" (2010) The Walking Dead: "Wildfire" (2010) The X-Files: "Home" (1996)

Halloweentime is my favorite six weeks of the year. The skittering of dead leaves on the ground, the scent of mulled cider cooking on the stove and the appearance of plastic, severed heads at the local grocery store all contribute to a season like no other.

Here, I'll write about the flicks I watch throughout my forty-two day fest. My goal is to watch at least one movie a day... if not more. To that end, I've got a metric ton of horror front-loaded in my Netflix queue and more sitting on my shelves and hard drives.

My viewing plans include keeping up with this year's crop of Horrorfest movies, now dubbed the After Dark Originals, and the two new Ghost House Underground offerings. Likewise, I've got to catch up with last year's Fangoria Frightfest films. I'm also looking forward to checking out The Ward, Stake Land, I Saw the Devil, and Let Me In. And, as per tradition, I've got to watch both Trick 'r Treat and the original Halloween.

Outside of the film-watchin', I'll be attending two horror conventions this season. I love the hell out of these things. There's nothing quite like being surrounded by hundreds of fellow horror nuts (it's black T-shirts as far as the eye can see). On October 1st, it's Cinema Wasteland. There, I need to shake Frank Henenlotter's hand and thank him for the wondrous insanity of Brain Damage. On October 29th, it'll be the first annual Flint Horror Con, where I've got to buy more of Steve Jencks' awesome horror movie poster interpretations.

So, feel free to stop on by from time to time and leave a comment. And, if you've got movie recommendations, leave those here too.

Let Six Weeks of Halloween IX Begin!

Closed - See You Next Halloween!

2010-11-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

Closed

See You Next Halloween!

HorrorHound Weekend was a blast.

October 31st - HALLOWEEN

2010-10-31T23:59:00.000-04:00

Chauffeured trick-or-treating.

Thus ends the 8th annual Six Weeks of Halloween celebration. I watched 80 full-length horror movies this year, slaughtering previous records by a great deal. I had six excellently fun Saturday nights with friends. I drank lots o' beer and ate lots o' pizza and candy. And, best of all, I got to take my eldest daughter out trick-or-treating for the very first time. It was a good Six Weeks.

Friday the 13th (2009) directed by Marcus Nispel
Since I watched the Elm Street remake a while back, I thought I should probably catch up on Jason's remake as well. Well, more of a re-imagining than a remake. There's a handful of small elements lifted from the first three of the original series (namely: Pamela's decapitation, Jason keeping her head in a shrine and Jason switching from a sack mask to a hockey mask), but it's an original story, otherwise. I'm not a fan of what they did with Jason here. Kind of like the original Part 2, he's pretty much just a deformed redneck, but this Jason is smart enough to hook up tripwire alarms and dig an underground hideout under his mom's house. Jason shouldn't be that smart. He's like a force of nature. Giving him these engineering abilities is like watching a bear drive a car.

Outside of that, it's just Jason killing people again like he always does. I like Jason movies, but I was bored out of my mind with this for some reason. Mostly, he seems to kill people with his machete. Very uninteresting. I miss the old Jason who would pick up a sleeping bag and slam it against a tree or use hedge clippers for impromptu eye surgery. Something just didn't feel right about the old guy in this one. Even Cyber-Jason in X felt more Jason-ish to me. I dunno. Maybe I'm just a grumpy child of the '80s who's sick of these remakes. (5/10)

The Last Horror Film (1982) directed by David Winters
With J over to help me celebrate the holiday, we picked a movie neither of us had seen. We've seen Maniac, but this other "Joe Spinell is crazy" movie's been in both of our Netflix queues for a while. It didn't disappoint in the crazy department. Spinell plays a cabbie obsessed with a horror movie actress. He's so obsessed, he travels to all the way to Cannes to try to get her to act in a movie he's written. And by try to get her to act, I mean he starts stalking her and seemingly films himself murdering the people around her. Needless to say, she doesn't warm up to the idea of being in his movie immediately.

Joe's mother in the film is played by his real-life mom and she is absolutely precious. She's always trying to talk sense into her nutty son by offering him baked macaroni. Aww. She also has the best final line in a movie ever for an old lady: "Vinny! You got a joint?" (6/10)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) directed by Dwight H. Little
This sequel sort of ties in with Zombie's Part 2 that J and I watched a few weeks ago, so I popped it in. I've always thought Halloween 4 was a pretty solid slasher movie. I like that everyone in town immediately takes the threat of Michael Myers seriously. We completely skip the "convince people the monster is real" stage of the typical horror movie and dive right into the "barricade the house" part. Also atypical: the redneck lynch mob that chases after Myers with pickup trucks and shotguns -- though they do shoot someone accidentally first -- actually finds and kills Myers successfully. Sure, he survives because there is a Part 5, but, had this been the final movie in the series, we'd have to assume The Evil that Loomis fears so much is now living in Jamie instead. I dig it. It's a nice slasher to pull out every few Halloweens. (7/10)

The Funhouse (1981) directed by Tobe Hooper
Also a nice slasher to watch every once-in-a-while and another movie J'd never seen before. I love showing people cool, forgotten movies they haven't caught yet.. Plus, carnivals are inherently scary, so it's never a bad idea to set a horror movie at one. It's true, hiding in the carnival's dark ride to try to spend the night in it may seem like a good idea -- especially when you're smoking the doobies and having premarital sex -- but, generally, you're probably going to discover there's a mutant freak living beneath it who's pissed off because he just got charged $100 for a handjob from an old fortune teller. Happens all the time.

What is it with '80s horror movies having little brothers trying to see their older sisters naked? If I recall, the same thing happened at the beginning of Night of the Demons, too. I'm thinking Kevin Tenney and Tobe Hooper share some issues they should really work out... (7/10)

Phantasm II (1988) directed by Don Coscarelli
J had to depart due to increasing cat allergies -- damn you, Poe the Cat -- so I was on my own for the rest of the night. Straight to horror comfort food went I. If I could live in any horror movie universe -- and living underwater with Dagon was out of the question -- I'd be sitting with Reg and Mike in a 'cuda, hunting the Tall Man. (8/10)

Halloween (1978) directed by John Carpenter
The perfect slasher film. This was the 12th Halloween in a row that I've watched this film. It was a particular treat watching the Blu-ray using my projector and screen this year. It's fun noticing all of the little details that were lost on my tiny 32" LCD in years prior. For example, Laurie watches some kids trick-or-treating at one point and I'd never noticed one of the kids is wearing the same Superman costume I had when I was little. Then, the angle reverses and Laurie watches another group of kids... but they're the same kids with the same costumes. Heh, the seams of Carpenter's shoestring budget start to show the more you blow it up. (9/10)

Halloween is over. Thanksgiving looms.

October 30th

2010-10-30T23:59:00.178-04:00

The traditional bucket of corn syrup.

Saw 3D (2010) directed by Kevin Greutert
Hey, my predications after watching VI weren't too far off, except for the Jill part. And the dead fetus thing. I got say that for most of the movie, I was kind of disappointed while watching it. The main person caught in a trap is yet another guy who pissed off Jigsaw, like the insurance guy in V. If he weren't dead, I'd warn Jigsaw that people are going to start thinking his lessons are garbage and that he's really just out for revenge. And I'm still not clear on why Hoffman keeps engineering these things for Jigsaw so long after his death. I guess he's a sadist and Jigsaw's (presumably) detailed plans make it easy to just do what Jigsaw wanted for the time being.

Speaking of, Jigsaw is relegated to just three cameos in this film: two in flashbacks and one on video. Sure, that man is dead, but he's still my favorite character (or only character I like, really) in the series. Though I know full-well there's no room for more Jigsaw backstory, it would've been nice if Tobin Bell had gotten more screen time somehow.

I do like the ending of the movie. I'm reading on messageboards that the Saw fans are pissed off for a variety of reasons, but I think it brings things full circle in a satisfying way. I don't even mind that, yet again, they've found a way to shove one more Jigsaw accomplice into the background of all of the previous movies. But, this time, it really does make sense. I was wondering during the last movie how Hoffman was able to surgically implant a key into the insurance guy's side without, you know, nicking an artery and accidentally mucking up the game.

As for the 3D: this and Avatar are the only modern 3D movies I've seen so far. I've really got no use for it. I think it adds very little to a movie. Though, there were two instances in Saw 3D where the 3D really added to the experience. In the first, a man is trying to reach for a lever to pull. In the second, a man is balancing on boards high above the floor. In 3D, we're allowed to see just how far from the lever and floor these men are, which adds to the tension. Outside of that, it's just an occasional body part flying towards your face and nothing much else of use. That, and it always gives me an eyestrain headache.

Individually, I'm not really a huge fan of the Saw movies. Mostly, I don't care a wit about the characters trapped in the games and later movies feel like they're struggling to think of new things to do. However, I admire the hell out of the continuity in these seven films. Whatever I think of the movies themselves, the series is a notable achievement in horror. We've seen horror series generate unending annual sequels before, but never have they required so much of the viewer. You really do need to have at least the previous installment fresh in your mind to make sense of the current film (and even better if the entire series is in mind). A sequel could refer to any part of any number of the previous movies, revealing more about the story and answering dangling questions from years prior. I love this part of the series: a seven-year-long soap opera for horror geeks. (6/10)

Phantasm II (1988) trailer
Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IV: The Devil and Homer Simpson" (1993)

Tales from the Crypt: "Well Cooked Hams" (1993) directed by Elliot Silverstein
Stars Billy Zane, in a role that must have convinced the producers to cast him the movie a couple of years later. He plays a magician who likes to steal tricks from other magicians and who receives a predictable punishment for such acts. Worth watching just to see Martin Sheen ham it up to 11 in three different roles with three different fake beards.

Igor and the Lunatics (1985) trailer
Frankenpimp (2000) fake trailer
Murder Baby (2010)

Alien (1979) directed by Ridley Scott
For "best sci-fi-horror movie ever" it's either this or The Thing, no question. Me, I tend towards The Thing, but Alien is no slouch. I love that it is essentially a monster chasing people around a gothic castle... but in space. Giger's beautiful designs still hold up 31 years later. The intentional sexual undertones to the creature are as fun to pick apart as they are disturbing (how about this one: the alien's inner mouth becomes erect and leaks clear fluid when it's excited). The space truckers are all realistically drawn and sound like working-class folks just doing their job. Jerry Goldsmith's score is haunting and perfect. There's not a lot to complain about in this film (the unnecessary Sigourney Weaver buttcrack, probably) as it's near-perfect. (9/10)

Cat in the Brain (1990) trailer
Vampire Wars: Battle for the Universe (2005) trailer
Rob Zombie: "American Witch (animated)" (2006)

Dagon (2001) directed by Stuart Gordon
I love this film unabashedly and I'll never understand why it's not more well-known out there in horror land. I love the contrast between the washed-out blue of Imboca and the bright orange of Paul's Miskatonic sweatshirt. Visually, we can tell he's a fish out of water, so to speak, right off. Paul's is one of my favorite horror movie heroes. What I like is, ignoring the rich investor thing, he's a true everyman. In the hotel, when he hears the villagers making weird noises and coming towards his room en masse, he still calls out a "can I help you?" when they rattle his doorknob. It's true: it would be hard to switch gears from what you would do in normal civilization to dropping the civilities and realizing they don't matter when things are strange. He uses his swiss army knife and cellphone as a pathetic weapons, as they are the only thing he has in his pocket. He tries and fails to hotwire a car -- I sure as hell don't know how to do that, either.

For the record: yes, I would live forever with the tentacle-legged woman underwater. Absolutely. (9/10)

A tree in the house?

October 29th

2010-10-29T23:59:00.072-04:00

Altered (2006) directed by Eduardo Sánchez
Rednecks get revenge on their alien abductor. It sounds silly, but Sánchez turns it into a serious horror movie. The movie subscribes to the theory that alien abductions are the human equivalent of tranquillizing and tagging bears in the woods. Unlike bears, though, humans can seek revenge. After fifteen years of staking out the field where they were abducted, the rednecks finally bag themselves an alien. They haul it back to the house of a fellow abductee deep in the woods. The twist: the fellow abductee -- wiser in these matters than his friends -- explains they can't kill the thing. As we'd put down a dog that bit a person, these critters will scourge the planet if we kill even one of them. Naturally, the alien gets loose and causes havoc and disease and possession and death.

I liked how we never saw the original abduction of these men; we're just witness to the PTSD fifteen years later. We have to piece together their trauma and understand how hard it is for them to not torture the alien they've captured. Not a bad follow-up to Blair Witch for Sánchez. And, hey, no skaky-cam! (7/10)

Young Frankenstein (1974) directed by Mel Brooks
Never much of a laugh-out-loud movie for me. It's more one of those comedies that involves a lot of the almost-laugh: the sharp exhale of air out the nostrils that indicates you recognize what is one the screen is amusing, but don't feel the urge to give it a full-on laugh. It'd probably work better watching it in a group. That often helps grow the laughs.

Not that I don't like the movie. I think the characters and the actors who play them are great. The dialog is witty. There are plenty of amusing sight-gags to pick up on during multiple viewings. It's just that, if I feel like a horror comedy, Ghostbusters is gonna make me laugh 10 times harder, is all.

As it is, it's a brilliant, dead-on parody/homage to the Universal horror movies of the 1930s. So much so, I'd say you're not gonna get much out of the film if you haven't seen Bride of, Son of and the original Frankenstein first. (7/10)

October 28th

2010-10-28T23:59:00.065-04:00

[REC] (2007) directed by Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza
Oh man, I had to stop watching this a couple of times to quiet my stomach. Cloverfield didn't bother me at all, but the shaky-cam in this movie was abusive. I even watched the thing on a tiny laptop screen and I still got motion sick. I understand this filming technique greatly added to the impact of the movie, but, geez, it's hard to watch sometimes.

The plot of the movie -- at least until the last 15 minutes -- is pretty standard stuff. It's a zombie movie of the "super-rabies" type, like 28 Days Later. What it has going for it is that it takes place in a very small apartment complex and is shot with a handheld camera. Both of these things make the movie feel very claustrophobic and tense. That, and the movie rarely takes a break. It almost feels like one, unbroken shot of people running around screaming for 78 minutes.

I loved the ending with what appeared to be Rubber Johnny's mom. At first, I was not really happy with the sudden left turn into the occult when they got to the penthouse. But, the more I think of it, the more I like it. What else were they going to do? Find one more zombie up there? Get sniped through the windows by the police? Instead, they give us a vague explanation for the zombie outbreak, and one that's completely unique as far as I know. From what I was able to gather in the chaos, it sounds like a doctor was trying to cure a girl possessed by a demon with medical science. The cure he develops doesn't work at all and instead causes the outbreak. Logically, he decides to lock the possessed girl in his penthouse and gets the hell out of Dodge. He must have told the police about it, though. I'm not sure how else they would've known so fast that they needed to quarantine the apartment building. I suppose [REC2] might explain more. (8/10)

Seventh Moon (2008) directed by Eduardo Sánchez
I've seen a lot of backwoods horror movies, but never one set in China. It's a great idea to dive into the superstitions of rural China in order to scare the crap out of an American and her Chinese-American husband who can't speak Cantonese very well. Turns out, in this part of China, they need to offer sacrifices during the full moon of the seventh lunar month, else bad stuff will happen. Namely: quite creepy, naked, pale moon demons will take you away and kill you.

This was another shaky-cam movie, though not all the way through. The shaky-cam parts were a little annoying, though, as they was mostly just a technique to make it hard to see the moon demons clearly. This was not unexpected, though, coming from the director of Blair Witch. And, I'll grudgingly admit this technique worked. Never being able to see the moon demons clearly (until the end) greatly increases their scariness. The blurry, pale, humanoid shapes coming after the characters in the dark are straight out of a nightmare.

I think this movie works for me because it's easy to imagine being hopelessly lost in the middle of a foreign country and not being able to speak the language. With nothing familiar to grasp onto, it's easy for fear to take over (even without moon demons). (7/10)

And that's it for the 12 Ghost House Underground movies. They faired a little bit better than your average Horrorfest run: I liked 5/12 of them (42%), which beats the hell out of Horrorfest's current record of 9/35 (26%) for me. Dance of the Dead and The Children are the clear winners from both GHU sets. I also dug Dark Floors, The Substitute and today's Seventh Moon. Looks like I'll be saving Fangoria's Fright Fest films for next year, as I'm all out of time. The Six Weeks are nearly over!

October 27th

2010-10-28T09:49:00.000-04:00

Thaw (2009) directed by Mark A. Lewis
Predictable infection horror. This time, it's a plague of bugs thawed out of a mammoth carcass in northern Canada. You know the routine: amputating infected limbs, locking suspected infected people away, realizing how serious it is and killing infected people, one survivor escapes, and the infection spreads to the rest of the world despite the hero's best efforts.

The angle here is that global warming was responsible for thawing these critters out and an ecologist tries to intentionally infect the world as a wake-up call. Of course, he does it in the stupidest way imaginable. Though the disease caused by the bug seemingly kills its host rapidly -- after hours of debilitating sickness -- he decides to infect himself out in the middle of nowhere with the idea of catching a helicopter ride into town at a later time. Even if his daughter hadn't shot his helicopter out of the sky, I'm guessing the pilot and copilot might've noticed him bursting with bugs before they landed. Here's an idea: throw a bunch of bugs in a plastic bag and carry them that way.

Why make the bugs vertebrates? It seems to not affect anything, and just makes me wonder how there's a vertebrate species with 6-8 limbs, segmented bodies and little feelers on their heads. And why cast an actress who refuses to do nudity if there's a good "strip and check for bugs" scene in the middle? And why make a guy have a bug phobia if all of his actions are better explained by plain old fear of infection? A frustrating movie. (5/10)

Saw VI (2009) directed by Kevin Greutert
Maybe the second-best one after Saw II, but that's not saying too much in this series. As I imagined, it's getting a little bit ridiculous that Jigsaw is still planning these traps three movies after he died. If they don't magically bring him back to life for VII, it's going to be completely silly. And his expectations for his wife and Hoffman are pretty high: "Hoffman, you will need to acquire 100 gallons of hydrofluoric acid." Dude... where's a police detective supposed to get that much acid? And, when does Hoffman sleep with a full-time job, zillions of people to kidnap, traps to build, and shopping trips that include merry-go-rounds and gallons of acid? Busy guy. And the flashbacks are also getting a little ridiculous. Now we're inserting Jill and Amanda into more places in previous movies. I think it's safe to assume that every character in all six movies was in all locations at all times, somehow.

It's kind of preachy, but I liked that the victims in this movie were predatory lenders and health insurance company employees. I don't mind horror movies getting a bit political or timely, even if it's in a shallow manner like here. I think the next, logical step is for Jigsaw to start working on politicians. In fact, if he only ever trapped people from those three groups, I'm guessing the public would be holding annual Jigsaw parades.

I have no idea what the point of the post-credits tag was. Amanda tells the little girl kidnapped in III not to trust the man who rescues her. Yeah, we already know that and so does almost everyone else... Another question for VII to answer, I guess.

Not having read anything about Saw 3D (except for watching the trailer), here are my predictions for the final movie: Hoffman will die (not a tough call there), though I'd rather see the guy thrown in prison for a change. Ol' one-foot Dr. Gordon will finally show up (I'm confident we see Jill putting a VHS tape into the mail slot of his office in this movie). Jill will end up set up for life on a tropical island or something (Jigsaw said he'd give her a way out and I don't think he'd do anything bad to her). And, let's see, the twist ending is that Dr. Gordon will start playing games with his patients to teach them how important their life is. Post-credit tag scene: Billy the Puppet actually contains the corpse of Gideon, the miscarried fetus. We'll see how close I am this weekend... (6/10)

Nightmare House shorts from Fewdio:

Creep (2009)
Curse (2009)
Door 17 (2009)
Anniversary (2009)
The Tale of Haunted Mike! (2009)
Breach (2009)
Marie (2009)
The Collector (2009)
The Feed (2009)
Smoke (2009)
Cleansed (2009)
The Easter Bunny Is Eating My Candy (2009)
The Tap (2009)

October 26th

2010-10-26T23:59:00.125-04:00

Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008) directed by Robert Hiltzik
The original director and some of the original cast come back 25 years later to do it over again. I dig that. Most of the movie is spent observing the campers torturing the overweight Alan. I thought this part was fairly realistic. Alan is that typical kid who's eager to belong to the group but just doesn't have the social awareness to manage it. He seems oblivious to the fact that, for example, wearing the same, smelly shirt everyday just makes the other kids want to pick on him even more. I remember kids like that in school. It seems like they don't have a chance, but it's hard to be completely sympathetic to their plight when they act like little a-holes (as Alan often does here).

It must have been hard, in the shadow of the ending of the first film, to figure out what to do with this one. They probably went the only way they could, given that Angela had to return in some fashion. I can't say I was shocked when she/he was revealed to be the suspiciously petite, badly-bearded Sheriff, though. Given this reveal was no surprise, the ending is pretty unsatisfying. Angela kills a bunch of people, she takes her disguise off, Ricky screams like a girl and Angela cackles. No one really stopped her... she just sort of quit killing. That's not really in keeping with slasher traditions. (6/10)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) directed by Samuel Bayer
Not quite as horrible as I was expecting. I think the only reason I say that is because I liked Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. He's meaner and move perverted than than Englund's Freddy ever was; you wouldn't see this new Freddy made into a talking doll or a squirt ball, I don't think. I'm fine with the make-up. Freddy's face has always changed for each movie. I think the visible tendons in his cheek make it much grosser when he gets his face near another character's. I think "Why are you screaming? I haven't even cut ya yet." is one of the best Freddy lines of all time.

Everything surrounding Freddy, I didn't care for as much. I think the film's largest issue is its near-complete lack of character development. Who are these teens we're watching? I kinda get that Nancy's a bit of a loner-geek, but why and what do the other kids think of that? Why does Rod -- er -- Jesse run to Nancy's house after seeing Tina -- sorry-- Kris die? Were they sort of friends? I have no idea. In the original, we had the four main teens gather at Tina's house. We got to see them interact and watch them happy before anyone died. That was important and is completely absent here.

I also think all of the scenes that were present in the original were done worse. The CGI Freddy stretching through Nancy's wall looks ridiculous compared to the realistic-looking rubber wall of the original. Tina's death was actually much more brutal, I thought, in the original than Kris's. I think the shot in the original of Freddy on top of Tina under the covers makes it so. The bathtub scene lacked the cool part where Freddy pulls Nancy deep down into the water.

One exception to this was the death of Nancy's mother at the end, which I liked in this one better than the rubber doll in the original. And, I liked the Freddy backstory in this film as well. Seeing the flashbacks of him interacting with the characters when they were children really drove home how evil the guy is.

They kind of shot their wad in this film as far as sequels go. Nancy and Quentin were the only two kids from the preschool left alive by the end of the movie. In the original series, Freddy had a seemingly unending supply of Elm street kids to pick off. He didn't have to move on to every child in town until part 6. Speaking of, where was Elm street? Was it the street Nancy lived on? Did all four of the main teens live on that street? I have no idea. Maybe the preschool was on Elm street? How about a shot of a street sign, guys? Remember the title of the film? (6/10)

Due to WB delaying their releases on Netflix for 4 weeks now and my desire to watch this during the Six Weeks, I rented this movie from the PlayStation Network. That's the first and last time I'll ever do that. I paid $6 for the HD version, which I got to keep for 14 days (but only 24 hours after playing it once). It's a complete rip-off. The movie was a paltry 720p with stereo sound. The bitrate looked to average 6 or 7 mbps for an AVC encode, which translates to visible compression artifacts all over the place. This is in no way a replacement for watching a movie on blu-ray, for sure. I'm sure it's fine on a small screen, but blown up by a projector, it's unacceptable. Long live physical media.

October 25th

2010-10-25T23:59:00.028-04:00

Trackman (2007) directed by Igor Shavlak
Tremendously boring. Obviously inspired by My Bloody Valentine, this film follows some bank robbers and hostages in an abandoned mine. Unfortunately for them, the miner from MBV happens to live there and likes to collect eyeballs. Though the movie is only 80 minutes long, it feels like twice that. It doesn't take too long for the characters to flee into the mine, in which there's nothing terribly exciting going on most of the time. There are minutes upon endless minutes of people walking down dank, dusty tracks. The movie's more than halfway over with by the time the Trackman starts doing anything interesting. Granted, the only thing he does is a Michael Myers impression, but at least that spices up the unending walking. Plus, the characters he stalks are so underdeveloped and unlikable, you can't help but root for the guy.

I will say that making the killer a mutant from Chernobyl was a great idea. I've never see any other movie use that concept, though you'd think it would be common in Russian horror. The only other nice thing I have to say is that at least the DP did a nice job shooting in the low light of the tunnels. Otherwise, I nearly fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon watching this. (3/10)

The Children (2008) directed by Tom Shankland
It's been a long time since a movie actually made me feel nervous. I'm pretty sure that me being a parent has everything to do with how effective this film was on me. I can hear my daughter crying in her room at the opposite end of the house and one floor up while watching a movie at full volume. You get super-hearing, but only for children's cries, when you become a dad. Consequently, the screaming of the kids in this film was like nails on a chalkboard to me. It sort of plugs into a primitive part of your brain and says: "offspring in trouble! quick!" Hence, one reason for the nervousness. The other reason, of course, is that the horror of the film is a parent having to quickly decide whether to kill her own children in order to save herself and her older daughter. When she does this, first by accident and later on purpose, I found it very jarring. After becoming a parent, my #1 fear of amputation was easily replaced by the fear accidentally killing my own child. This movie is pretty much my worst nightmare.

The film is also put together really well. It's constructed in perfect horror rollercoaster style, with periods of intensity broken by increasingly shorter and shorter lulls. The cinematography is great; they kept finding really interesting shots. I particularly liked the extreme close-up of the flakes of snow stuck to Elaine's lips as she lay stunned in the snow. The ending isn't terribly surprising, but I don't think I'd want it to end any other way. A great slice of horror from England. (8/10)

Offspring (2009) directed by Andrew van den Houten
Well, now I'm not terribly motivated to read the book. A group of cannibals, who look like they split off of the Hills Have Eyes clan, descend on a coastal Maine town and start making steaks out of the locals. It's kind of a neat idea to think about a hunting party straight out of the stone age doing their thing on people in cars instead of mammoths. But, wild kids slamming hatchets into folks can only get you so far in a horror movie. Unfortunately, there's not much else here. There's some kidnapped women in trouble. There's an asshole ex-husband. There's a baby hidden in the woods so the cannibals can't find it. All of this turns out pretty much the way you'd expect (the women escape, the asshole is killed, the baby is saved) after less than 80 minutes of runtime.

At the end, we're shown a shot of the lone cannibal survivor: a baby. I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. That the cannibals will be back in 10-20 years after it grows up? I don't think that baby will survive being abandoned in a cave the police couldn't even find. I can't think of any other reason, though, unless it's just that the producers wanted to reassure us that the hero-lady didn't really kill a baby trying to escape.

I was completely confused when a movie supposedly taking place in Maine had a police car with the distinctive state of Michigan painted on it. Turns out this is one of those movies that was shot in my home state through the new Michigan Film Office. I vaguely remember some controversy, but it seems that's over the proposed sequel. Looks like the Michigan Film Office doesn't want to give van den Houten the 42% tax credit for the follow-up, seemingly because they're uncomfortable having a cannibal movie represent the state. Ah, horror, always the red-headed stepchild of the genres. (4/10)

October 24th

2010-10-24T23:59:00.063-04:00

Room 205 (2007) directed by Martin Barnewitz
A ghost story from Denmark. I think maybe the only way to make ghosts actually threatening in a movie is to give them the power to hurt people. Ghosts, as they are described by believers, are just a projections of strong emotions on a place. Being scared of such a thing would be like being scared of a rainbow. So, movies often give the ghosts the power to harm or kill people (or take them into a TV), as is the case here. I will admit that when the ghost appears, accompanied by a really loud musical sting, it's often surprising. But, after that, it's just a lady with bad cataracts making faces at people (and smushing them in elevators). It doesn't do anything for me. If there's a killer ghost haunting your dorm... move the hell out. Problem solved. I'm pretty sure this is the first Danish movie I've ever watched, so there's that. (5/10)

The Substitute (2007) directed by Ole Bornedal
And another Danish movie from Ghost House Underground. They must have gotten a deal or something from a production company over there. This one's much more enjoyable that the other, but it's not much of a horror movie. Like The Faculty, it's the body-snatcher scenario in a school. This time, it's only one snatcher and she is ostensibly here just to learn about love. Her species completely lacks empathy and is constantly at war with each other. Humanity's unique ability to care about each other seems like something that might help them with that problem. She takes the guise of the titular substitute in order to study empathy in children. Eventually, the kids figure out what she really is and try to convince their parents. The parents, as is always the case in these films, refuse to believe the kids. Lacking in empathy, the substitute isn't really a nice entity and plans to snatch the kids to her planet for further study. She is stopped at the last minute by one of her students and all is right in the world.

Paprika Steen does an excellent job as the alien teacher. She has lots of fun controlling her facial expressions in the film, all smiley-happy when talking to parents and scary-emotionless when speaking to the kids. She's sort of reminds me Terri Garr, both physically and in the way that she acts.

Other than the afore-surmised deal, I'm not sure why Ghost House bought this for their horror line. Outside of the alien eating a miniaturized guidance counselor, there's nothing really horrible in the movie. I suppose the whole "my teacher is an alien who wants to kidnap us" is scary, though. This'll be a good one to watch with a 10-year-old in the future, I bet. (7/10)

October 23rd

2010-10-23T23:59:00.162-04:00

They craft crazy things at daycare.

J & C return for week 5's Saturday o' fun. Pizza and beer and candy and Chicago-style hotdogs were enjoyed by all as we spun up some more horror. It was C's first visit since I got the new projector, so there was some intense discussion as to which blu-ray we should pick. Ultimately, it wasn't a choice with the best transfer in the world, but, ah well, it looked better than the videotape-mangled Crypt episode, anyway.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974) trailer
House (1985) trailer
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror IV: Bart Simpson's Dracula" (1993)

Tales from the Crypt: "House of Horror" (1993) directed by Bob Gale
Kind of a meh episode about a frat initiation gone wrong. It was amusing to see Wil Wheaton crawling around in his tighty-whities (I suggested that this would be prime for a screencap to take to an autograph signing). Other than that, it's a story that takes entirely too long to get to the point. The point, as is the case in most of these, is for the asshole to get what's coming to him. I will say Kevin Dillon -- who looks a eerily like his brother -- plays the asshole to perfection here.

Tentacles (1977) TV spot
The Worm Eaters (1977) trailer
Happy Tree Friends: "Boo Do You Think You Are?" (2003)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) directed by Francis Ford Coppola
I'm not sure Stoker would recognize the story in this movie -- his demon of disease made sympathetic -- but I suppose they needed to alter the title in some way to differentiate it from all of the other Dracula adaptations out there. What stuck me, watching this tonight, was how different it is from most vampire movies of the past, say, 30 years. Modern vampires movies seem to be desperate to cast vampirism in a scientific light. Vampires are just people infected with a disease. Their aversion to silver and garlic and sunlight are merely severe allergies. There's undoubtedly an injection out there that will cure them. It's refreshing to watch a vampire movie that takes it old school In this world, all of our old legends are true. Dracula walks the earth neither dead or alive because he cursed God. He can change into a wolf or a bat or rats or mist. Why? Because those things scared our ancestors and Dracula is scary. He can control the weather and the creepy-crawly creatures of the night because he is a force of nature and a creature of the night himself. He enjoys a psychic connection with Mina because she is his soul mate. If you need any further explanation than that, too bad. It's sometimes hard to drop a logical analysis of what you see on-screen -- I had that trouble with Paranormal Activity -- but it's enjoyable just to dive into superstition and the supernatural once-in-a-while.

Coppola's clearly enjoying the hell out of himself with this movie. You can tell he always wanted to make a Universal horror movie. I love his use of shadow in this movie. Easy to make fun of, sure -- see the Simpons episode above -- but fun to watch, nevertheless. (8/10)

Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973) trailer
Rubber (2010) trailer
The Wildflower (2007)

The Lair of the White Worm (1988) directed by Ken Russell
It turned into an unofficial Bram Stoker night purely by coincidence. I've never read the story this was based on, so I don't know how far off the movie is. I'm going to guess there's quite a bit of difference. I can't see Stoker having the snake-lady's venom providing acid trips that have the affected person imaging Christ being attacked by a giant snake. That is the type of thing I want to see in a Ken Russell movie, though. I can't help but love his wild abandon: he's going to insert large chunks of purely symbolic imagery into his movies and to hell with anyone not down with that type of thing. In fact, I think these trips into id save the film from being just a typical monster movie. Without them, we just have the heroes chasing a snake-lady and her pet giant snake. And the ending is kind of cheezy too, with the snakebite-infected Angus agreeing to "have a bite to eat" with unsuspecting Lord D'Ampton. Then again, I don't think we're supposed to take the film so seriously as to not enjoy the puns in it. (7/10)

Stripe makes sure no foo' steals my Ernest Goes to Jail.

October 22nd

2010-10-22T23:59:00.111-04:00

Tonight was J's horror movie night at his place, complete with expertly crafted intermission material for the between-movie times. Sweet Dagon, that Beyond Re-animator video was awful! Seven full-fledged horror movie geeks tore into these gems:

House (1977) directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi
Or, How-Soo, as we like to say it. One of the most insane horror movies ever made. The director based it on ideas his 7-year-old daughter had. Awesome. Essentially, it's a haunted house / body count movie in which a bunch of teen girls are killed. There's lots of those, right? Yeah, but probably not a lot with a piano that eats a girl, but then the girl's body parts continue to play the piano anyway. Doubtful there are any at all with a cannibalistic ghost who uses her fridge as a shortcut to the rafters, or a naked schoolgirl swimming in a enormous pool of blood, or a girl getting killed by pillows or a man turning into a pile of bananas. Colorful, unique and entertaining as hell. (8/10)

Trick 'r Treat (2007) directed by Michael Dougherty
My second Halloween watching this movie. I think it's definitely on the "must watch every year" list now and I really like Sam as a mascot for the season. I'm still not a fan of the comic book transitions, for which I can see no real point. This time around, I noticed that it cleverly covers every age group's celebration of the season. We've got kids trick 'r treating (and scaring each other), teenagers drinking and partying (and eating each other), middle-agers retiring early (and failing to have sex with each other) and an old person being grumpy about the entire day. It's neat that every way people generally celebrate the day gets some representation, though they were missing the movie geeks doing a horror movie marathon (my people).

But, damn, I wish I lived in a town that had such an insane Halloween parade in the streets. Seriously, what town does this? I want to move... (8/10)

The Dark Side of Midnight (1984) directed by Wes Olsen

There was a call for something silly for the last movie of the night. Luckily, I never go anywhere without my TDSoM DVD easily accessible. Written, directed, produced and starring Wes Olsen, a self-described "sex maniac" and "regular Don Juan." Watching a truly horrible movie with a bunch of people is always fun. There always seems to be one little thing in a bad movie that cracks everyone up and becomes a long-lasting joke. Tonight's: the word "crawlhole." For some reason, this is how one of the characters describes the hole in the ceiling that leads to the attic. I think he might have meant crawlspace, but who knows? Anyway, it got a huge laugh and everyone was using the word "crawlhole" at every possible opportunity ("How many people can they fit in that crawlhole?", "Always check your crawlhole for creepers," etc.). Also amusing: the preponderance of mustaches in the movies. We determined that a drinking game based on seeing a mustache in the movie would shortly result in death.

Kinda draggy after they decide early on not to try any more gore effects, but bad movie gold for a group to riff on. (6/10)

October 21st

2010-10-21T23:59:00.094-04:00

The Prowler (1981) directed by Joseph Zito
I got a handful of slasher suggestions from the Going to Pieces documentary, including The Prowler. It seems like I've missed seeing a few of the semi-classics from that era. This one fits the slasher formula to an absolute T. You've got a masked killer, teens partying and being killed for their immorality, the slasher jumps up after seemingly dying, the virginal girl kills the slasher for good and there's an extra jump-scare at the very end. Actually, I'm confident the producers looked at the success of the previous year's Friday the 13th and said to the writer: "copy that." It's pretty much a rip-off of that movie with the names and locations changed. It also bears a lot of similarity to My Bloody Valentine, which came out the same year. Heh, someone should make a "Slasher Family" tree (like people have been doing for game controllers lately) and trace out how the elements of slasher movies evolved. Anyway, it's by no means a classic horror movie, but it's fun little slasher picture. (7/10)

No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker (2008) directed by Dave Payne
If you've seen the original, there's really no reason to watch this sequel. It's pretty much exactly the same story with the same twist. The only thing extra you're getting is the backstory of the Reeker. Which, you know, I'm not sure we really needed. And this one lacks the original's Michael Ironside, so there's another strike. There are some neat bits in the show. The jerky way the Reeker moves about is cool-looking. The guys who looses half his head and still walks around was neat for the brief amount of time we got to see it. Eh, watch this one or the original, but not both. (6/10)

Saw V (2008) directed by David Hackl
I think we're scraping the bottom of the barrel, here. Just like in III, a good chunk of the story is a flashback detailing how Jigsaw's secret assistant helped him with the traps in all of the previous movies. We already did that with Amanda, so it just feels tiresome. How much more can be retconned into the previous movies? The seams are about to burst, I should think.

Beyond that, I don't think I like Hoffman (or Jigsaw Jr., as I think of him). He's got this arrogant, smarminess about him that I hate. Unlike with the coldly logical Jigsaw, I don't find myself secretly rooting for Hoffman. And, what's his motivation? Why would he continue Jigsaw's work after Jigsaw's death? Unlike Amanda, we never really see him grateful for Jigsaw's lesson or caring about Jigsaw as he died. It just seems like Hoffman was the filmmakers' only idea for continuing the series after stupidly killing everyone in III.

And, maybe I missed something, but it seems like the people caught in the traps have nothing to do with the rest of the movie. That's a first, as always before the people in the traps had some kind of connection to Jigsaw or the police pursuing him. That gives us less of a reason to care about the people trapped. They have nothing to do with anything, so who cares which ones die?

I did enjoy the trap Strahm found himself in. Classic. We generally don't get to see the walls close in all the way in movie, as it's usually the hero trapped inside who inevitably finds a release switch.

I hear VI is supposed to be a return to form. I hope so, as I'm starting get tired of these movies. (5/10)

October 20th

2010-10-20T23:59:00.063-04:00

Halloween II: Unrated Director's Cut (2009) directed by Rob Zombie
Picks up right where part 1 left off, with characters dealing with the direct aftermath of Michael's first rampage. I thought this introductory section of the film was a great idea on Zombie's part. He shows us in sickening detail the results of Myer's violence. We see Laurie and Annie having their cuts stitched up, being intubated, and having their bones set as they scream in pain on the hospital gurney. I don't recall a slasher sequel ever quite going this far in showing us the real damage the survivors of a masked killer suffer in these types of films. This also, of course, invites comparisons to the original Halloween II, in which Laurie merely has a few scraps and a sprained ankle taken care of at the hospital. Overall, a clever beginning to the film.

The rest, I'm not so keen on. I hate what became of Loomis. In the original series, Loomis is my favorite character by far. He's a man with an unstoppable missing to stop an unstoppable monster. Here, he's turned into a completely unlikable asshole. It's hard to imagine the Loomis of II ever caring enough about people to have been a psychiatrist in I. Like most people, I also don't care for Myers imagining that he sees his mother and younger self. I'm not so offended by the idea, I suppose, but I just don't want to know what's on Myers' mind. I prefer him as a blank slate... a boogeyman, if you will. With his crazy visions of mom and bitchin' hobo beard, Myers in this film just seems like a really tall and violent vagrant. He's not a monster, he's just a nutball.

Again, I love Zombie's casting. For geeks, he puts together great casts for all of his movies. I particularly liked seeing Margot Kidder getting some work again. We also get Duane Whitaker, Howard Hesseman, Richard Riehle, Dayton Callie and Weird Al (!). Obviously, the returning Malcolm McDowell, Brad Dourif and Danielle Harris are great, too.

I'm glad to have read the Zombie has pulled out of The Blob remake. I want more Devil's Rejects and less re-imagined classics, please. (6/10)

October 19th

2010-10-19T23:59:00.147-04:00

The Stepfather (2009) directed by Nelson McCormick
Dylan Walsh makes for a really bland Terry O'Quinn. You never get a sense that he's as insane as O'Quinn. Sure, he does the thing where he paces the floor and mutters to himself when he's upset -- my favorite from the original -- but he does it so quietly and with such reserve, it really doesn't look that crazy. The entire movie is similarly bland. There's a lot of swimming in the pool and dropping the kids off and speeches about family. The director also seems to take great interest in Amber Heard's bikini-clad body and inserts her into every scene he can. It's a long, 100-minute wait for the eldest stepson to put the puzzle together in order to have an inevitable battle with the stepfather.

And, like Stepfather II, the killer isn't even a stepfather. The entire movie takes place before the wedding. What a rip. (4/10)

Just Take One (2010)
United Monster Talent Agency (2010)

Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006)
Great documentary covering the slasher era from 1978 to the late '80s. Many major -- and some minor -- figures are interviewed. I discovered that Betty Palmer is an absolute treasure. I remember hearing that she was embarrassed by her F13 roots, but she must've gotten over it. She's a hoot in this documentary. Felissa Rose and Amy Holden Jones are similarly great in their interviews. And, I can always listen to the scholarly Wes Craven talk about horror. Carpenter, too.

The end of the documentary implies that films like Hostel and Saw are taking the mantle of the slasher film in this era. This is something I've been pondering, myself. Is this true? Is the so-called torture porn genre the successor to the slasher genre? While I might agree that we're in the middle of a torture porn cycle right now -- similar to how we were in a slasher cycle in the '80s -- I don't really think the two sub-genres share very much in common. At its base level, the evil captures people in torture porn and slowly harms them. The captured only escape the evil through great personal (normally physical) sacrifice. In a slasher film, the evil chases and kills a group of people until their pluckiest (normally female) member defeats it. Maybe even more generally, it's mean-spirited torture vs. just-for-fun inventive murders by people in silly masks. Could be a generational thing, but give me a slasher over some torture any day. (7/10)

Dark Floors (2008) directed by Pete Riski
Here I was, expecting a complete crapstorm for the remaining six Ghost House Underground movies I need to watch and this one reminds me never to take reviews too seriously. I liked it. I thought it was cool. The 4.6 rating on IMDb seems ridiculously low to me. Perhaps the IMDb raters are upset that nothing is ever explained by the end of the movie. And that the reset button is pushed so that nearly everything we've seen doesn't really matter. I suppose those are valid reasons to hate on it, though they don't bother me so much.

The movie takes place in a hospital, when a group of folks step off an elevator and discover it deserted. There are causality loops and banshees and heavy metal album cover monsters and zombies and a really Scandinavian-looking Satan. And, hey, it's William Hope! I haven't seen him in since he was pathetically killed by Julia in Hellraiser II twenty-two years ago. Dude needs more work. He's great in the Walter Peck/Carter Burke/Craig Toomey asshole role. Anyway, I enjoyed the heck out of the movie, even if I'm not sure what was really going on. (7/10)

The Last House in the Woods (2006) directed by Gabriele Albanesi
Speaking of crapstorms, here's a real brown one. Everyone seems to think they can make their own Texas Chain Saw Massacre. They can't. Italians, if this movie is any indication, are particularly bad at the redneck cannibal family sub-genre. It's not even worth writing about. The movie's a mass of bad acting, badly aped moments from TCM and characters making dumb choices. (3/10)