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!

October 27th

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) directed by Matthias Hoene

Surprisingly good, despite the horrible title.  I kind of thought of it as the movie that let us know what was happening on the another side of London while Shaun was having his adventures elsewhere.  It has the a bit of the same humor, except for a hundred times more jokes about Cockneys.  Which is sometimes a problem.  I'm sure there were a slew of jokes that flew over my head because I'm not English and don't know the first thing about the subcultures of London.

While not a mind-blowing zombie movie -- zombies arrive, people run and shoot at them, some die, the end -- this film had a bunch of great little ideas in it I haven't seen in any zombie movie before.  A zombie bites a guy, he blows its head off with a gun, but a part of the zombie's face remains biting into his arm.  He then has to carry this partial zombie face around for a few scenes.  That same guy has a metal plate in his skull from the war.  Guess what happens when his companions try to shoot him after he turns?

The best idea: old people vs. zombies.  The main characters' grandfather lives at an old folks home and rallies his fellow seniors to defend the place against the undead.  Awesome.  We get a machine gun taped to a walker, an old lady throwing a box of cereal at a zombie, an old man in a wheelchair killing a zombie in a wheelchair, the inability to flee due to too many hip replacements, and the best chase scene of any zombie movie ever when a slow pack of zombies pursue a slow old man with a walker.  In fact, they really should just rename the movie, if they bring it over here, to Seniors vs Zombies.  That'll get butts in seats.

Watched: bootleg.

The Company of Wolves (1984) directed by Neil Jordan

I love the movie more every time I see it.  I was describing it as the horror Labyrinth, but it's really much better than that.  Both are mainly about that confusing transition between girl- and womanhood.  Wolves, however, is filled with far more symbolism and has much more to say.  It's also not an easy movie to follow (particularly if you've just watched some silliness about old people killing zombies).

What I noticed this time out was the storytelling aspect of the film.  Or that, the movie is about our need for storytelling as it is anything else.  Stories helps us make sense of the world.  They don't even necessarily need to be true stories to be the "God's honest truth."  Granny's stories, in the best tradition of our old fairy tales, are thinly disguised morality plays intended to plant seeds in Rosaleen's mind that will grow as she does.  Puberty will soon have Rosaleen discover the "wolves with hair on the inside" and Granny's stories, she hopes, will protect the child.  And, because the stories are also entertaining, they're easy to remember and retell.  Most of Granny's stories in the film are actually told by Rosaleen.  Not only will this ensure she can pass these same lessons on to her own children, the repetition makes the lessons more immediate in her mind as well.    Now, whether she actually follows what the stories teach, that's an entirely different thing...

The other thing I noticed is that the entire movie is a fairy tale and its moral is this: don't wish to grow up so fast, kids.  Once you grow up and lose that innocence, you'll discover the terrible truth: being an adult is hard, confusing, and its only relief is inevitable death.

Watched: blu-ray from ITV.

A Cat in the Brain (1990) directed by Lucio Fulci

I've always wanted to see this because of the nuts trailer (below) and because Fulci plays himself in it.  In it, Fulci begins to see visions of the gore from his movies in everyday life.  As in, when he goes to a restaurant, the meat offered him only makes him think of the cannibal scene he just shot.  His visions get so bad, he seemingly can't take three steps in his own home without going into a trance and imagining a five minute gore scene (in reality, ripped off from other movies).  It's like horror epilepsy and a cheap way to pad the film.   So, he goes to a psychiatrist.  Unlucky for him, the shrink is not a nice guy and uses Fulci's problem to make Fulci think he is responsible for the shrink's murders.

It's not a great movie.  Still, I got a kick out of Fulci's starring role turn.  His acting is bizarre and low-key and kind of fun to watch.

Watched: bootleg.

SWH: Week 6 (thirty)

Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo (trailer)
The Shining (fake trailer)
The Simpsons: "Treehouse of Horror 05-1: The Shinning" (1994)

Tales from the Crypt: "Dead Wait" (1991)
Guinan, no! (7/10)
d. Tobe Hooper

Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare (1987)
The Intercessor vs. Beelzebub was the awesomest thing I've seen in a very long time. (8/10)
d. John Fasano

Igor and the Lunatics (trailer)
Bride of Frankenstein (trailer)
Looney Tunes: "Water, Water Every Hare" (1952)

Masters of Horror: "Sick Girl" (2005)
Kind of a lesbian version of The Fly, but fun and better than May. (7/10)
d. Lucky McKee

Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (trailer)
Zombi 3 (trailer)
Happy Tree Friends: "Remains to be Seen" (2004)

Zombi 2 (1979)
It's hard not to appreciate a flick that has a zombie wrestling a shark. (7/10)
d. Lucio Fulci

Watched with C and chowed on some Pizza House. By the time Zombi 2 arrived, he was out for the count. I made sure to clap my hands really loudly so that he woke up to see the shark and eyeball scenes. Employed the inflatable pumpkin cooler for the first time, which held beer and Dr Pepper quite nicely. Sweet Halloween cuppin' cakes were also enjoyed:

SWH: 2005 (28)

Halloweentown (1998)
Good kid show; wanted to see more of the actual town than anything else. (7/10)

The Wolf Man (1941)
Purer than Werewolf of London, and therefore more memorable. (8/10)

Monster by Moonlight: The Immortal Sage of the Wolf Man (1999)
Just fine, except it was hosted by John "Killer" Landis. (7/10)

The Real Ghostbusters,: "Citizen Ghost" (1986)
One of my favorites from childhood and I still think the ghost Ghostbusters look spooky. (8/10)

Tales from the Crypt: "The Switch" (1990)
It was directed by the Governator... good nuff. (7/10)

City of the Living Dead (1980)
Great thing to watch while sleepy; cool zombies. (7/10)

Rob Zombie: "Dragula" (1998)
Head-banging devils in the Munster's car = gold. (9/10)

Rob Zombie: "Living Dead Girl" (1999)
I'll take Sheri over Caesar any day. (8/10)

Rob Zombie: "Super Beast" (1999)
Sheri versus sci-fi ninja is too cool not to applaud. (8/10)

Rob Zombie: "Never Gonna Stop (The Red Red Kroovy)" (2001)
Was that Tom Towles as a guard? (8/10)

Rob Zombie: "Feel So Numb" (2001)
Band playing their instruments type, but the crowd has some interesting people in it. (7/10)

Rob Zombie: "Demonoid Phenomenon" (2003)
Great song, crappy video. (6/10)

Rob Zombie: "Return of the Phantom Stranger" (2003)
Band playing their instruments, but at least there's zombies. (7/10)

Rob Zombie: "Spookshow Baby" (2003)
Band playing their instruments some more, but cut with energy. (7/10)

Halloween (1978)
#7: Evil pervades even a small town, but is ignored until too late. (10/10)