October 16th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)