HALLOWEEN!

Tales from the Darkside 2.05: "Halloween Candy" (1985) directed by Tom Savini
Another Savini episode, and, bonus, one that is specifically about Halloween. Not a bad kick-off for the day. If only the episode were more interesting than it was. A grumpy old man refuses to give out candy on Halloween and is visited by a pissed off troll. It's slow and predictable. It's not even a very good example of Savini's F/X work, with the corpse of the old man looking very fake (the TV lighting on it did not help).


Tales from the Darkside 2.06: "The Satanic Piano" (1985) directed by John Harrison
More interesting than the previous episode, a musician runs into some writer's block when composing a new album. A nutball with a fancy synth that can read the creative bits of your mind offers his help. But, yep, he's a satanic priest and it's all an evil plot. The musician's burned hand at the end has got to be one of the goriest things ever broadcast on network TV in the 1980s.


Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives (1986) directed by Tom McLoughlin

I always want to watch something comfortable and familiar on Halloween day itself, and that most often leads me to the horror films in the '80s. I hadn't watched a hockey mask Jason movie in quite a while and I could not remember a thing about this one outside of the scene in the cemetery, so it seemed like a great choice to pop in.

And it was. Jason 6 is a completely fun film, mixing just the right amount of goofiness with the always serious threat that Jason poses. I love the hammy cemetery caretaker. The lightning bolt bringing the very decayed Jason back to life is really cool. The otherwise pointless scene with the idiot paintballers always make me laugh, especially when the nerdy one shoots Jason in the chest. I think the shot of Jason underwater, floating vertically and chained by the neck to a rock, is my favorite image in the entire series.

My only real complaint is that the effects of the MPAA on this movie are very apparent. Most of the kill scenes demurely cut away, showing very little of the actual violence Jason visits on the teens. It gets to be a little annoying.

The Real Ghostbusters 2.15: "Ghost Busted" directed by Marek Buchwald & Masakazu Higuchi
I convinced daughters to watch my favorite '80s cartoon with me when they got home from daycare and school. This turned out to be a nicely gentle introduction to the show, with nothing too scary. Having busted all of NYC's ghosts, the Ghostbusters become the Crimebusters and begin to capture criminals instead. Yeah, I'm not so sure about the legal implications of this either...


The Real Ghostbusters 2.16: "Beneath These Streets" directed by Marek Buchwald & Masakazu Higuchi
A more traditional episode, it which something weird and supernatural threatens NYC. The characterization of Ray is great in this episode. He's geeking out about everything -- hoping there's a water ghost to fight, wondering if a new demon is the cause of the troubles, exploring the sewers by himself. Fun.

Trick 'r Treating

Betrayal at House on the Hill (2004) designed by Rob Daviau & Bruce Glassco & Bill McQuillan & Mike Selinker &  Teeuwynn Woodruff
Friends Jack, Casey, and Brent came over to help celebrate the day and we plopped this board game on the table. In Betrayal, you take turns moving through a spooky house, drawing new room tiles as you walk about in order to expand it. Some of the tiles have you draw cards, which can be useful items, events, or omen cards. Collect enough omen cards and the probability of a dice roll causing "the haunt" goes way up. When the haunt is activated, you look in the instruction book to determine which of 50 different scenarios you have activated. One player then become the betrayer and reads his evil scheme in his own scenario book while the rest of the players read the good guy scenario in the other book.

We activated haunt 45, and Brent became a mad bomber who bombs at midnight. He had somehow strapped bombs the the three of us. We had to disable those bombs and attempt to kill Brent before he finished building the big bomb that would blow up the entire house. It was challenging. The game is very random, and the haunts have secrets in them. I painfully discovered that if Brent rolled an 8, the person to his left -- me -- would instantly blow up. With me out of the game, it was up to Jack and Casey to take him out. They got close, but eventually Brent rolled well enough to kill them as well.

Better for storytelling fun than as a strategic game, I think.


Tales from the Crypt 6.07: "The Pit" (1994) directed by John Harrison
Coincidentally directed by the same man who directed "The Satanic Piano" episode of Darkside I watched. Not really a horror episode, as it's about two pit fighters whose wives really, really hate each other. Amusing, but that's about it.


The Beyond (1981) directed by Lucio Fulci

Being sleepy is always a great state to be in when watching an Italian horror movie. This Fulci classic is no different. I don't think I'd be able to relate the plot with any sort of detail. It's something about a hotel sitting on a doorway to hell, zombies, and lots and lots of close-ups of bad things happening to people's faces.

But, you don't tend to watch these things for the plot. I'm interested in the beautiful images, the over-the-top gore, and the weirdness that Fulci can show me. The Beyond delivers.

Halloween (1978) directed by John Carpenter

For the 16th year in a row: Halloween. You know what struck me as really weird this time out? Michael Myers tooling around Haddonfield in a station wagon. Generally, in the post-Halloween slasher films, you don't see slasher villains driving. In fact, their stereotypical mode of transport is a slow and determined walk. Freddy does drive a bus in Part 2 (and I guess is the car at the end of Part 1), but that's just a part of a scheme to trick kids in a nightmare. Even Myers abandons his driving passion in all of the follow-ups. I think that once you establish the villain as a supernatural entity -- as the very end of this film does -- it's then impossible to show them doing such a mundane tasks as driving in a car in the middle of the afternoon. That would be truly odd.

The Simpsons 26.04: "Treehouse of Horror XXV" (2014) directed by Matthew Faughnan
This was the best "Treehouse" in many years. "School is Hell" was full of creative demon designs and amusing Hell puns. "A Clockwork Yellow" tickled my inner Kubrick fan (Comic Book Guy: it was Barry Lyndon!). "The Others" was a fascinating nod to the old Simpsons of the Tracey Ullman Show with the cast deftly doing both their old and modern voices for the their characters. A fun close to my Halloween celebration.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

September 25th

Happy Birthday to Me (1980) directed by J. Lee Thompson

My ongoing quest to catch up with all of the films spawned out of the early '80s slasher boom has lead me to the pleasant surprise that was Happy Birthday to Me. I didn't know anything about it going in and, boy, am I glad that was the case. The film is an expertly constructed whodunit with slasher-style killings.

Starring Little House on the Prairie's Melissa Sue Anderson as Virginia, the film follows a group of 10 friends at a private school. Virginia's the newbie, having returned to school after experimental brain surgery following an accident. Soon, one by one, a black glove-wearing psycho begins picking off her friends, while Virginia begins to remember more and more about the circumstances of her accident.

I was impressed at how well constructed to the story was. Nearly every character is made to look like a suspect at one point. I was delighted as my guesses on who the killer was kept changing every 10 minutes as I tried to puzzle out the new information the movie slowly feeds the audience. The climax probably has more twists per minute than any other movie I've seen. Yeah, it gets to be a little silly -- apparently, this was the fault of the producers wanting to spice things up -- but I bought it. And, the twists give the film an even darker ending that it was original intended to have.

While not a great slasher movie -- unlike its cousin film My Bloody Valentine, there's no iconic masked killer -- it is one of the better mystery-horror films I've seen.

Tales from the Darkside 1.18: "If the Shoes Fit..." (1985) directed by Armand Mastroianni
A mischievous hotel or its mischievous bellboy decide to drive a politician crazy for no good reason. We get a fun performance out of character actor Dick Shawn, but it feels mostly like a tantrum over the 1984 election than anything else.


Tales from the Darkside 1.19: "Levitation" (1985) directed by John Harrison
This is a little more like what I want from Darkside. Based on a short story by horror master Joseph Payne Brennan, it's a simple tale of two men who go to a carnival in order to see a magician perform his most famous trick. It's got a good build up and a satisfying twist ending.

6WH: October 25th

The final week of Halloween begins. Man, time flies when it's your favorite season.

Tales from the Darkside: "I'll Give You a Million" (1984) directed by John Harrison
A couple of evil businessmen make a deal that one will buy the other's soul for $1 million. Turns out, the devil loves collecting the souls of evil business men. When the seller dies, he grabs the seller's soul before the buyer collects. The shock of witnessing this gives the buyer a fatal heart attack and the devil grabs his soul as well. It's an all right EC comics-style episode. (6/10)


The Stepfather (1987) directed by Joseph Ruben
I love horror remakes. Not because I like to watch them -- most of them are wastes of time -- but because they almost always herald a special edition DVD/BD release of the original movie. It's even better when, like The Stepfather, the movie's never been released at all. It's been years since I've watched this one on VHS back in high school. It must have made some kind of impression on me, as I bought the new DVD without a thought.

I think the impression made came mostly from Terry O'Quinn, who turns in an excellent performance. O'Quinn as Blake actually only kills two people onscreen. Much more interesting is watching Blake struggle to contain his insanity/anger as his new family falls short of the '50s TV family ideal in his head. Some of the subtle things he does will his facial expressions nail the character of a sociopath. (7/10)

6WH: October 10th

Week 3 ends with Mrs. K and I venturing to the theater. Later, we'd watch a film with my mother... always hard to pick a horror movie when that happens.

Zombieland (2009) directed by Ruben Fleisher
A bucket of fun. More of a comedy than a zombie film (whereas I might say the opposite about Shaun of the Dead). Sure, the story, when you boil it down, is pretty Hollywood-standard: lost souls wind up together by accident, dislike each other at first and then end up as a happy family. I know, I'm aware that amusement park rides require an operator and don't just go on their own once they sense someone sitting in them. Yeah, a certain actor in a cameo isn't really as rich as they made him out to be. Doesn't matter. This stuff is in the film to drive the fun, not to make sense.

There are lot of good bits stuffed into the picture. I loved Tallahassee's quest for a Twinkie and Columbus' quest to simply push stray hair behind a girl's ear. The zombies were of the fast type, but this okay due to both the awesome slo-mo shots of them chasing food (especially the stripper zombie) and so that Columbus could have his amusing cardio rule. The scene in which the four main characters have a blast trashing a highway tourist shop struck me as unique. In these zombie apocalypse films, I can't recall anyone ever just having fun with the situation (at least, without the scene ending in someone getting bitten or eaten). That was nice. That's one thing I would do myself if zombies were everywhere.

It's not exactly a deep reflection on the end of the world, but it is one of the funniest horror-comedies I've seen. (8/10)




Creepshow (1982) trailer
The Shining (1980) fake trailer
Michael Jackson: "Thriller" (1983)


Bubba Ho-tep (2002) directed by Don Coscarelli
I hadn't seen this in while and it seemed like something mom might possibly get a kick out of. Of course, I'd forgotten how much Elvis talks about his pecker throughout. Ostensibly about a mummy who eats the souls of old people in a rest home, this really isn't much of a monster movie. It's more of a comedic mediation on old age. Most of the movie has little to do with the title character; it's Elvis ruminating on what it means to have lived so long you're about to die of old age. As such, it's not exactly the most exciting mummy movie ever made. You have to be a certain frame of mind to enjoy this one, I think. I suppose this is the frame of mind that finds the idea of a mummy writing dirty graffiti on the wall of a toilet stall while taking a dump amusing. Afterward, mom expressed disbelief such a thing was ever shown in real theaters, stating "that was a weird movie." (7/10)




Book of Blood (2008) directed by John Harrison
After everyone was asleep, I popped in this Netflix acquisition. I read the short stories this was based on so long ago, I had no idea what it was going to be about. It was sort of Clive Barker's version of Poltergeist, in a way. Very much in line with Barker's style, it mixed horror, sexuality and metaphysics as it told the story of a college professor investigating a haunted house. Turns out the house exists at an intersection of a ghost highway, where their realm and ours mix. Turns out also that the ghosts are really sensitive to people messing with them, going so far as to rip the faces off of teenage girls performing seances. It's a bit slow-paced in the middle when the ghosts aren't doing any real harm to people, but I dug this one. (7/10)

Pumpkin Guarding the Steps