October 15th

Night of the Living Dead (1990) directed by Tom Savini

Though this feels like a step backwards, after Dawn and Day, for the Romero zombie universe, this remake somehow works, anyway.  Though the film keeps the same premise -- people stuck in a farmhouse during a zombie uprising -- it changes up enough of the details to make it interesting.

The largest change is completely reversing Barbara's personality.  This was a near-necessity.  I think the useless, catatonic Barbara from the original would've driven '90s audiences nuts.  I also like that she ends up, more or less, the hero of the piece.  I think it's implied in the original that, even though he seems to be the hero, Ben is actually not handling the situation very well.  The remake makes this very clear, with Barbara's idea to take off running past the slow zombies ending far better than either hiding in a basement or boarding up windows.

The animosity between Ben and Cooper has been amped up quite a bit in this one, so much so that they end up having a full-on gun battle inside the house.  I'm not sure how much I like this.  The stress of such a situation would be intense, but the movie may be pushing things too far.

Both of these changes make Ben a less noble character, which I think was a smart direction to go.  Though he has the most forceful personality of the people stuck in the house, that doesn't necessarily mean he's making the right choices.  You can see the doubt in his eyes when Barbara suggests running off, but I think his personality clash with the other alpha male in the house convinces him to double-down on his initial idea of staying in the house.  Sometimes your gut instinct is wrong.

Watched: blu-ray from Twilight Time.

The Walking Dead 2.02: "Bloodletting" (2011) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson
Rick brings the shot Carl to Hershel's farm, where Hershel attempts to save the boy's life.  Hey, we're back in the comic book storyline!  Awesome: the comic usually knows what it's doing better than the TV screenwriters.  Except, I don't remember Carl being in such peril in the comic.  This does make for some good drama and makes sense as an addition to the story.  We end with Otis and Shane running off to the high school to grab a respirator for Carl's needed surgery, the pair trapped by zombies and Carl running out of time.  Not a bad cliffhanger.


The Walking Dead 2.03: "Save the Last One" (2011) directed by Phil Abraham
One of the best episodes of the series so far.  Otis and Shane's adventures in the high school, chased by hordes of zombies, are incredibly tense and well-shot.  A great, oft-overlooked, detail is their complete exhaustion.  How often do you see people in zombie movies who've run from zombies for so long they're about to collapse?  It makes the high school scenes feel so much more desperate.  I also love the arc the plot gives Shane.  Up until the end, I was starting to actually like the guy.  He seemed to be so completely wrecked by Carl's accident and losing Otis at the high school.  I'd still rather have Tyrese from the comics, but at least Shane's extended life is making things interesting.

October 14th

Casper (1995) directed by Brad Silberling

We made it through just 20 minutes of Spooky Buddies yesterday before my oldest freaked out and left the room.  A Disney movie starring talking golden retriever puppies and featuring goofball Harland Williams as the bad guy was too much stress for the poor 4-year-old.  So, I wasn't expecting to make it very far into this one today, either.  Surprisingly, outside of some swearing I wish wasn't there, this one's pretty harmless and the girls got a kick out of it.

As an adult, I thought it was definitely a step above the aforementioned Buddies movie.  The Looney Tunes-like ghosts were pretty funny and the cameos kept me entertained.  I love Father Guido Sarducci -- what ever happened to him? -- popping up as an exorcist and Dan Aykroyd appearing for 5 seconds as Ray Stanz.  Plus, Clint Eastwood, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Gibson and the Cryptkeeper showing up in a mirror when the ghostly uncles possess Bill Pullman was unexpectedly cool (and weird as hell).  Not a bad kids' Halloween movie.

Watched: bootleg (if it were available to stream, I would've rented it.  You lose, Universal).

Day of the Dead (1985) directed by George A. Romero

Always my least favorite of the original dead trilogy.  Partially, this is because of the setting.  The underground shelter built into a mine, especially when compared to a mall, is pretty boring.  It's not a place I can relate to.  I've been in small farmhouses and malls; I can imagine the challenges of being barricaded in those.  Underground facilities: not so much.  The story doesn't have too much going for it, either.  The film ends with the zombies taking over the facility, the asshole army guys eaten, and some of the good guy civilians escaping.  You can more or less predict this all happening after the first time we meet the not-so-nice military guys underground.  But: Bub, Dr. Logan and Tom Savini.  Two fictional characters and a special effects guy make the movie entertaining for me.

When I think of "zombie," Bub is the face that comes to mind.  Sherman Howard does a great job giving Bub personality and manages to make the undead killing machine sympathetic.  Also, a lot of his movements look ape-like; I swear I've seen a nature special in which a gorilla plays with a phone in the same way that Bub does.  I wonder if he was doing this on purpose?  It's a great fit with the idea of trying to civilize / evolve the zombies.

Speaking of, you've gotta love nutty Dr. Logan and his wacky experiments.  I don't think it's necessary to explain anything about how the zombies work in these films -- they aren't, or at least shouldn't be, the point of the story -- but I can't deny it's some fun stuff.  You've got a zombie with everything in his head gone except for a still-living brain, a zombie with all of his internal organs disconnected who still wants to eat, a severed head that still blinks, and a zombie baby submerged in water.  Also, though it's not remotely subtle, I like the fact that the only thing civilizing Bub really accomplished was to give him the ability to kill people with a gun instead of his teeth.

In Day, Savini is at the top of his game when it comes to the gore.  Some of stuff at the end, in which the zombies are tearing the army guys to pieces, even had me wincing a little.  Dr. Logan's experiments are beautifully accomplished.  When the zombie sits up and all of his internal organs spill onto the floor... now that's horror poetry.  Even the traditional zombie neck bites are done extremely well, with the zombies somehow looking like they've bitten a chunk out of the actor's neck.

A sometimes fun zombie movie, but not at all in the same class as Night or Dawn.

Watched: blu-ray from Anchor Bay.

The Walking Dead 2.01: "What Lies Ahead" (2011) directed by Ernest R. Dickerson & Gwyneth Horder-Payton
Not having cable, I'm always going to be a year behind with this series as I catch it streaming on Netflix every October.  That's fine with me; I'm in no rush.  This first episode of season two picks up with the gang on the road after the disaster at the CDC in the final episode of season one.  This is more of what I thought the later parts of season one might be like: traveling in the camper and running into trouble on the road.  Quests to scientific facilities happened way too early.

Watching this right after Day of the Dead, I was bothered more than usual by the CGI gore in the show.  I hate computer-generated blood and guts.  It always looks like a cartoon and it's never animated right.  I get that it's a huge time- and money-saver, but it still makes this part of the show look worse than a low-budget movie from 1985.  On the other hand, I can't fault the zombie make-up jobs the crew is doing.  The zombies look great and would not look out of place in a real zombie film.  I particularly liked the horribly thin actor they cast as the zombie who terrorizes Andrea in the camper.

I don't think this episode needed to be extra-long -- it kind of dragged a bit -- and parts of the show are too soap opera-y for my taste, but I'm still curious to see where they take things next.

October 13th

Hatchet II (2010) directed by Adam Green

I blind-bought this disc earlier in the year partially because I liked the first movie, partially because it was super-cheap on Amazon, and partially because of the controversy.  Regarding the controversy -- having seen it now -- I think it's pretty safe to say this was another case of the MPAA coming down harder on an independent studio than it would with the majors.  Sure, the gore is over-the-top and there's likely never been a movie to use more fake blood than this one, but it's all done with a crooked smile.  There's nothing at all serious about the violence in a film that features a gas-powered belt sander and multiple shots of trees with buckets of blood thrown on them.  Yet, this one was slapped with an NC-17 while Miramax got an R for a geyser of sperm shot at a woman in Scary Movie.

As for the film itself, I love the last third of it.  The last third is the balls-to-the-wall slasher fun you'd expect after seeing the original.  There's the world's biggest chainsaw (capable of sawing two groins at once), Tony Todd getting yanked out of his skin by his severed spine, lots of smushed faces, a boat prop used as a food processor, and a guy decapitated by his own intestines.  It sits somewhere between '80s slashers and Troma's craziness.  As a fan of both of those things, that works for me.

To get to this point, though, takes a long time.  Victor Crowley doesn't appear properly in the movie -- not counting flashbacks and the brief continuation of part 1 at the beginning -- until 53 minutes in.  Those first 53 minutes are spent with Mary Beth and Rev. Zombie assembling a posse to go back into the swamp, and with some flashbacks that expand upon Crowley's back story.  Hey, have you ever wanted to see Kane Hodder cry?  Do you wish there was a supernatural element to Crowley's existence rather than him just being a backwoods mutant?  Well, these are the flashbacks for you!

In its defense, at least they expanded on the first film without trampling it.  You have to do something different with a horror sequel's story to keep things interesting, else it's far to easy to simply repeat everything that worked the first time.  I'd say they could do a lot worse taking a page from Saw's notebook and continuing to grow the story out of the small seed planted in the original.

Watched: blu-ray from Dark Sky.

The Simpsons 24.02: "Treehouse of Horror XXIII" (2012) directed by Steven Dean Moore
Every time I check out modern Simpsons, I'm always disappointed.  Count me in with the camp that thinks the show has sucked this entire century.  Color me surprised, then, when this year's Halloween special turned out to be pretty good.  My favorite segment was "UNNormal Activity," a amusingly accurate parody of Paranormal Activity.  It feels like classic "Treehouse," sort of a mix between "Bad Dream House" and "The Devil and Homer Simpson."  Also, overall, the animation in the episode was loads better than I remember seeing in the show before.  The first-person, faux-camcorder stuff in "UNNormal Activity," the way the black hole warps things in "The Greatest Story Ever Holed," and the sharp animation of the Mayan intro were all impressive.  Nice work.


Chillerama (2011) directed by Adam Green & Joe Lynch & Bear McCreary & Adam Rifkin & Tim Sullivan

Adam Rifkin's "Wadzilla" tells the tale of a man who has a bad reaction to an experimental sperm drug.  Instead of making his little guys more active, it makes them humongous.  This short is the best of the trio and is filled with lots of funny moments, most of which involve Rifkin's facial expressions as the giant sperm in his sack causes him to double over in pain.

Tim Sullivan's "I Was a Teenage Werebear" is the most tedious segment.  It's a gay, musical parody of Twilight, except the vampires have been replaced by bears.  Not bears the animal, but bears as in the slang term.  Like Twilight, I'm not really the intended audience for this story, plus I'm not a big fan of musicals.  There's some funny stuff in here, no doubt -- I loved the girlfriend after her car accident -- but it's a bit of chore to sit through.

Adam Green's "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein" is also a bit tedious.  I will give him props for 1) shooting the entire thing in German and 2) attempting to make Hitler funny.  Casting goofball Joel David Moore for #2 was a step in the right direction, but the segment still fell flat for me.  Hitler makes a Jewish Frankenstein's monster -- because that's the scariest thing he can think of -- and the monster predictably goes apeshit and kills Nazis (who are dressed like the French Foreign Legion for some reason).  It was OK, but I'm not going to be clamoring to watch it again any time soon.

Joe Lynch's wraparound segments, collectively called "Zom-B-Movie," were the best of the lot for my money.  This might be because they got more running time than the other parts, so they were able to take the time to establish some characters you actually cared about.  Plus, I love the drive-in movie setting.  Also: horny zombies that can only be defeated by shooting them -- not in the head -- in the groin.  I can't say I've ever liked the wraparound more than the actual story segments in an anthology film before, but here I am.

Watched: stream on Netflix.

October 12th

Dawn of the Dead (1978) directed by George A. Romero

Watching this again after many years, I am reminded why this is my favorite zombie movie.  What more is there to say on the zombie apocalypse that isn't covered in this film?  Hell, even the first act accomplishes more than most other zombies movies.  In that, we watch both a TV station broadcasting emergency information and a SWAT team's assault on a housing project.  It's humanity at its best and worst amid the panic and confusion.  There's the racist, bloodthirsty SWAT officer contrasted with Roger's calm compassion.  There's the station manager's pursuit of ratings using outdated information versus Francine's steadfast refusal to endanger viewers.  There's the useless bickering being broadcast that seems especially poignant right now, less than a month before the presidential election.

Beyond this, though, I think the most important idea Dawn of the Dead presents concerns the ability to quickly accept change.  Throughout the film, only those characters who survive are those who are able to switch their mode of thinking in time.  After his terrible experience in the housing project, Roger mentions to Peter that he's thinking of leaving.  At the same time, Stephen insists that Francine leave the TV station with him in his helicopter even though she wishes to continue to work.  Roger and Stephen both understand quicker than those around them and that there's no use in pretending civilization is OK at this point.  It no longer makes sense -- it's downright silly -- to continue to do your job and take orders from a boss if there are dead people walking around.

This is no small thing.  It would take a huge mental leap to accept that society has broken so badly that your normal life is no longer ever going to be possible.  Many would simply not be able to do this and would stumble through the shambles of their old lives as best as they could... you might say in a zombie-like fashion.  To strike out in a helicopter, unsure of where to go and what will happen to the world and leaving behind everything you ever knew, would be a hard and scary undertaking indeed.

And, even after making this giant change of thinking, there's no guarantee that you will be able to do so again if required.  When the biker gang attacks the mall, Stephen finds himself unable to adapt to this new reality.  After their months of hard work, he just cannot accept the loss of the mall.  He should have known all along that the island of tranquility they'd created was never going to last forever, but he fell into the trap that its temporary comfort provided.  So, he snaps and begins shooting at the biker gang, eventually ensuring his own death.

What this all means to me: despite the disaster policy I electronically agree to every year -- sorry -- I ain't showing up at work should I see a dead person waltzing down the street.  That's a change I'm damn sure going to adapt to really fast given all of the horror movies I've seen.

Watched: blu-ray from Anchor Bay.

October 11th

H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer (2004) directed by John Borowski

A brief documentary on a psychopath and scam artist who lived and died in the late 19th century.  I'd never heard of this "Monster of 63rd Street" before, but his story was interesting.  Narrated by Tony Jay, the man who had the best horror voice since Vincent Price, this documentary presents all of its reenactment footage in a faux silent film style set to a particularly spooky violin score.  It's all quite effective and gives the whole affair a very grim feeling.  Talking head interviews are kept to a minimum and most of the information presented apparently comes from Holmes' own account of his crimes written while he was in prison.  While I'm not sure this makes for the most factually accurate crime documentary of all time, I can't fault the presentation.

Most fascinating to me is that I've been walking by this man's photograph nearly every day of my life for more than a decade and didn't know it.  Here he is, #38:

Watched: stream on Hulu.

It Came From The Local - Presented by the Flint Horror Con
Later in the day, it was time for a drive up to Flint to catch some cool shorts on the big screen.  Sort of an appetizer before the main event of the Flint Horror Con next week, It Came From The Local was an intimate gathering at a local club around the corner from were the Con will be held.  In addition to the shorts, there were horror trivia questions (with prizes!), a huge box of homemade cookies, and even a for-real concession stand with snacks.  Though not nearly the amount of people showed up that clicked "Going" on the Facebook posting, there was good group in attendance who seemed to get a kick out of things.  There, we watched:

Sherome
Klagger
Oracle
Living Deadhead
Flesh-Eating Fog
Zombie Apocalypse: Chronicles - Raider Recon
cathARTic
Love Bug
Decapoda Shock
Refugio 115
"Hey---you ever heard of Rob Zombie?"---a true story

Easily the best of the list was Decapoda Shock, which, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be up at Youtube or Vimeo.  There's a trailer here that will give you the flavor of the piece, though.  Shot in Spain, it tells the tale of an astronaut who, after being clawed by a space-crab, turns into a crab-man.  Except, he's a crab-man who requires revenge, never takes off his astronaut suit, and is an expert horseman.  Very funny and very stylish, in a kind of 2001 meets '60s James Bond meets Johnny Quest sort of way.

I also enjoyed cathARTic (brutal, beautiful), Living Deadhead (zombie/stoner fun), Oracle (well-drawn characters), Love Bug (rage virus meets a blind date) and Rob Zombie (just a guy telling a story to the camera, but purely entertaining) quite a bit.  I have to admit, I was surprised at the quality of the shorts they'd gathered.  Usually at these things, you expect to suffer through loads of amateur-hour efforts, all filled with crappy shooting and even worse acting.  Of this lot, Flesh-Eating Fog was really the only one landing in that territory, and even that one I can't complain about too much given the 110% they put into the fun gore effects (giant arm-stumps for the win!).

A damn fine way to spend a Thursday evening.  I hope there are more of these in the future.

October 10th

Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) directed by Anthony Hickox

Silly as all get out.  Despite the title, there's no waxwork in this film.  Rather, Hickox has discovered an even better method of jumping from setting to setting: a mystical-magical necklace that points the way to invisible doorways connected to other worlds.  In effect, he gets to have his characters wander a series of movie parodies without worrying too much about the thin plot line driving them.  It sounds like a recipe for creating pure z-grade garbage, but I found the movie pretty funny.

Without a doubt, the best bit is the Haunting parody starring Bruce Campbell.  Inspired, I think, by Bruce's presence, they go all Evil Dead with the segment.  Campbell's character John ends up tied to a cross with an exposed rib cage.  John is calm despite his predicament... that is, until main character Mark releases the wrong rope and drops him directly on his chest.  After that, it's a Three Stooges-like parade of calamity on the poor guy: Mark picking chunks of floor out of the ribs, a possessed girl throwing hammers and boxes at his head, a bag labeled "bag of salt" being thrown into his chest, and Mark accidentally grabbing a bottle of vinegar to wash the salt away.  All the while, Bruce is giving each blow his broad Ash-like expressions of pain.  It's all very goofy and both Jack and I were cracking up loudly.

The movie slows considerably when they get stuck in the medieval period.  There, the evil black magician guy wants to impersonate the king and take his place.  He also wants to marry his own sister for some reason.  Compared the rest of the film, this section isn't anywhere near as fun and much of it is played rather seriously.  Mark decides to become a standard movie hero here, freeing prisoners, sword dueling, and saving the king.  I liked it better when he was accidentally torturing an exposed rib cage.

I can see why some people were disappointed with this sequel to the original -- it's way over the line into I-don't-care-how-silly-this-is territory -- but I had a lot of fun with it.

Watched: DVD from Artisan.

Tales from the Crypt 5.11: "Oil's Well That Ends Well" (1993) directed by Paul Abascal
Notable because it's the first and only time John Kassir, the voice of the Cryptkeeper, played a character in the story.  He's hilarious in this episode and full of manic energy.  The plot is a standard "scammer gets her just desserts" deal, but it's populated by enough entertaining characters  -- also including Alan Ruck and Priscilla Presley -- to make it entertaining.

October 9th

Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989) directed by Anthony Hickox

A fun Western/vampire movie.  In it, the world's vampires decide to all move into a small desert town where they vow to drink artificial blood.  But, not all of the town's bloodsuckers are happy with never being able to sink their teeth into tender, human flesh again...

My mind wandered a bit during the movie and I started to wonder about the diet of vampires.  So, these creatures can only survive on human blood.  I think it's generally thought that they drink the blood of one person per night (I could be wrong here).  A person has about 5 liters of blood in them and each 500 mL has about 450 calories, so vampires are consuming 4500 calories per night.  That seems reasonable: it's more calories than a human needs to eat per day, with all that extra energy going towards their super-strength, speed, healing factor, bat-changing ability, etc.

But, they're killing a person per day!  That's a horrific murder rate for any city in the country.  My town is about 100,000 people and has about 1 murder per year.  A single vampire moving here would skyrocket that rate to 366 per 100,000.  The murder capital of the US is New Orleans, with a murder rate of 49 per 100,000.  Just one vampire would make my city 7.5 times more dangerous than the most dangerous city in the country.  People would be going bonkers trying to find this guy.  No vampire would be safe anywhere with this kind of bump in violent crime.  Yeah, sure, some of his victims wouldn't be found and would be counted as disappearances, but 365 people disappearing per year wouldn't go unnoticed or un-panicked either.

And that's just one vampire.  A clan, like in Near Dark, would be eating 35 people per week.  It would take them a mere two and half years to fully consume the small town I was raised in.  A nearby largish cemetery recently said they have room for 17,000 more bodies and they expect that to last 200 to 300 years.  With the five vampires from Near Dark moving to town, that plot space would be eaten up in just over 9 years.  There simply couldn't be very many vampires in the world without them starting some kind of large-scale human farming operations.  Hmm.  How about a film about a vampire farmer?

But, anyway, this a fun film.

Watched: DVD from Lionsgate.

Tales from the Darkside 1.11: "All a Clone by the Telephone" (1985) directed by Frank De Palma

Ah, ubiquitous '80s comedian Harry Anderson.  Where did you go?  Back in 1985, he found himself the owner of a sentient answering machine that liked to call people using his voice.  The answering machine claimed to be him from a parallel universe, but it really just seemed to be a possessed electronic device to me.  At any rate, it makes his life miserable until the machine offers something he can't refuse.  A decent episode, but still not dark.

October 8th

Funny Games (1997) directed by Michael Haneke

A big ol' middle finger to the audience.  A film that declares that if you continue to watch it until the end, you're a degenerate who is partially responsible for the characters' suffering.  A film made by a director who understands only enough about the horror genre to subvert its common tropes in order to attempt to make the people watching feel guilty.

A part of me admires this.  I love seeing people trying to break the "rules" of a genre and I love seeing filmmakers trying to piss people off by making films that are challenging.  There's so much safe stuff being pumped out every year in Hollywood, a film like this is a refreshing slap in the face.  It reminds us that stories don't necessarily have to follow the age-old patterns, that sometimes they don't have happy or satisfying ends, that maybe we shouldn't always get what we want, and that maybe there are things we shouldn't want out of story.

On the other hand, I utterly reject Haneke's point of view here.  Sorry, I'm not going to feel guilty watching pretend things happen to people pretending, no matter how many times a character in the film breaks the fourth wall and winks at me.  After all, it is Haneke who is creating this tale and not me.  He might have more of an argument were this a video game, but still, those are just pixels and not real people.  You know what movie I really do feel guilty about watching?  Twilight Zone: The Movie.  Real children were killed making that one.

I think Haneke's counterargument might be that society demands these violent images in our entertainment and that perhaps we should think about this a bit.  The discussion Peter and Paul have at the end of film, in which they talk about a man who left reality to live in fiction, seems to suggest that Haneke worries that violence in the media is a cause of violence in real life; that adults watching horror films are really just children, unable to tell the difference between film and reality.  Me, I've already staked out my position on such things when writing about The Cabin in the Woods.  I think we need violence in our media as a safe outlet for the dark side everyone keeps buried inside.  I think denying this side of ourselves is the real danger.

I'm actually not at all sure what the world Haneke is proposing looks like.  I think he completely fails to understand human nature if he thinks it's possible we will all grow to his level and no longer find depictions of violence entertaining.  Haneke even admonishes the pleasure we get upon seeing one of the bad guys killed violently. When this happens, the character of Paul reverses the film and prevents it from happening again.  But, the desire for revenge is natural.  If you don't feel even a twinge of satisfaction when a bad person meets a bad end, that means there's something wrong with you as a human.  This is just the way we are, biologically, for good or ill.

Speaking of, Funny Games really is kind of the anti-Cabin in the Woods, isn't it?  They're both self-aware examinations of the horror genre that speak directly to the audience and challenge our assumptions and expectations.  But, while I see Cabin as a love letter to horror, Games absolutely hates the genre.  Which, I have to admit, is pretty interesting in and of itself.  I can't say I've ever seen a movie like this and it was fascinating to view something with such a strong opinion, even if I don't agree.

Watched: stream on Netflix.

Funny Games (2007) directed by Michael Haneke

My friend Jack warned me that watching both versions of Funny Games would be pointless.  He was right.  I was hoping Haneke would have something slightly different to say in the American remake.  There's a lot of potential given the change in location to violent, Hollywood-obsessed America.  But, no, this is a shot-for-shot remake with a near-direct translation of the dialogue.  Almost nothing has changed.  In fact, Haneke was so obsessed with duplicating the original film, he has the interior of the house set up with exactly the same floor plan, furniture, decorations, etc.  There's even a dead clock in the kitchen in exactly the same spot with its hands stopped at exactly the same position (1:50).  Weirder, he duplicates some of the odder choices from the original.  For example, he has Naomi Watts put on the same bizarre sweater with the enormous arm holes that Susanne Lothar did.  What the hell was the point of bringing that back?

So, I suppose Haneke felt that he did everything perfectly in the original -- it said everything he wanted to say in the way he wanted to say it -- and there was no need to change anything except the language in order to reach a wider audience.  Fair enough.  Still, he had no new ideas in ten years that he wanted to throw into this version?

Watched: DVD from Warner Bros.

October 7th

The Munsters 2.10: "A Man for Marilyn" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
Time for some more '60s TV with the daughters.  Worried that Marilyn will never find a man who doesn't run away screaming the second she brings him home, Grandpa and Herman set about to create one for her in the lab.  Best bit: the two cops who convince themselves the Munsters are actually frat boys with masks on doing an initiation.


The Munsters 2.11: "Herman's Driving Test" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
Herman gets promoted at the parlor to hearse driver, only to discover his license expired 20 years ago.  Hijinx, naturally, ensue as he tries to renew his license.  Best bit: the look of horror on Herman and Grandpa's faces when the near-sighted small town clerk thinks they've come for a marriage license.


The Munsters 2.12: "Will Success Spoil Herman Munster?" (1965) directed by Ezra Stone
A recording of Herman singing of a cover of "Dem Bones" makes its way to a radio station and he becomes an instant hit.  Rather cruelly, the rest of the family sabotages his shot at stardom out of the fear he'll turn into a giant a-hole if successful.  Best bit: the dream sequence below in which Herman dresses like a leather daddy and boogies on stage with a pair of go-go girls.  Holy cow.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) directed by George A. Romero

The film that launched a thousand zombie tales.  With our culture still in the middle of zombie-mania right now, it's sometimes hard to realize how influential this little movie was 44 years ago.  Before Romero there were, of course, stories of the dead getting up and walking around.  There were tales of monsters eating human flesh, like ghouls.  There were even things called zombies, which were mostly associated with voodoo rituals in Haiti (as in 1932's White Zombie).  However, this film was the first time all of this stuff got put together and given an apocalyptic spin.

The apocalypse, I think, is the key to the popularity of zombies.  While there's a lot to be said about the zombie as a monster -- they are our disgust without our own bodies, or the fear of the unwashed masses, or humanity stripped down to its basest qualities -- the end of the world is really the star of the show in these films.  This is one reason many consider, for example, 28 Days Later to be a zombie movie even though the infected are not and never were dead.  It's not so much the monster as it is the destruction of society they cause.

In Night of the Living Dead, much time is spent watching the characters listen to the radio or watch TV.  This is no mere time-filler.  The TV and radio broadcasts are some of the scariest things in this film, even so for the characters in the house.  They learn that not only are the dead walking around and eating people in the middle-of-nowhere, PA, but they're doing do so all over the eastern United States.   Worse, no one in authority knows what the cause is and, other than setting up shelters in hospitals and schools, no one knows what the hell to do about it.  That comforting lie that most of us live with -- the "people in charge are taking care of things, don't worry" -- is destroyed by these broadcasts.

What if, in the event of a major disaster, we're really on our own?  What if no one know what's they're doing, even those running the entire country?  These are fears in the backs of everyone's minds, I think.  They are also very fun fears to ponder.  How would I handle such a thing?  What would I do first?  How would I protect those I love?  How would it all turn out?

I think it's clear how Romero sees such things shaking out.  In the end, authority fractures in to much smaller pieces controlled by violent men.  Ben with his rifle inside the farmhouse exerts control on that space.  Though ostensibly the hero of the show, he does end up shooting Cooper -- while an asshole, he was not posing a threat at the time -- in cold blood.  Similarly, outside of the house, the roving band of hunters exert their violent control of the countryside.  They have so much power, they appear to be shooting anything on two legs that they come across without bothering to check to see if they are human or zombie.  Zombies or armed men drunk on power: I think George is staying we're screwed either way.

Watched: DVD from Elite.

October 6th

Near Dark (1987) directed by Kathryn Bigelow

I was woken up early Saturday morning by a co-worker.  A server broke at the hospital.  Badly.  A kind of important one.  For more or less the next 15 hours after that, I was stuck on a conference call, staring at my laptop.  Not fun.  A wee stressful, you might say.

After the thing was finally fixed at 11:30 P.M., I still needed to get in my horror movie for the day.  There wasn't much of a decision-making process needed: I required horror comfort food.  I needed a movie to bundle myself up in and relax.  I think '80s slashers are often a good choice for such a thing, but I'd just watched Hatchet yesterday and that was pretty close.  So: Near Dark.

My favorite vampire movie.  I unashamedly love every second of it.  Logically, I can see problems with the film: the actress playing young Sarah isn't very good, some of dialogue might sound a little awkward, the score may strike some as '80s-synth-cheezy, the transfusion cure might be seen as a cop-out.  Doesn't matter.  This isn't a movie to watch with a clinical eye; it's an emotional experience, a mood, a series of feelings.  Watching Near Dark, for me, is like taking a walk on a cool night and listening to the wind blow through the leaves.  Better, because of Tangerine Dream's dark and mysterious score, which sets such an incredible tone throughout the film.

I always notice or focus on something different every time I watch this film (five times now in ten Six Weeks).  This time, I picked up on the loneliness of the characters.  Vampire or human -- but especially vampire -- the characters' true motivation, in the end, is to avoid being lonely.  It's the reason the vampires form their make-shift family, the reason Caleb approaches Mae, the reason Mae bites Caleb, and the reason Homer grabs Sarah.  One of the more chilling lines in the film is when Mae tells Caleb that she'll "still be here when the light from that star gets down here to earth in a billion years."  Eternal life is a terrifying idea.  Eternal life with no one to share it with, even worse.

Watched: blu-ray from Lionsgate.

October 5th

Humongous trailer (1982)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch trailer (1982)
The United Monster Talent Agency (2010)


Possession (1981) directed by Andrzej Zulawski

As Joe Spinell wanders around Cannes in The Last Horror Film, you can see the cool poster pictured to the right hanging around town.  What is this movie?  I'd never heard of it, but the poster sure is neat.  Well, tonight, Jack brought a copy over and I found out just what the film was.  Holy shit.

I can't say I would consider this a horror movie, unless you want to label it "mind horror" in the same way that early Cronenberg films were "body horror."  The movie's about as impenetrable as Eraserhead, but I think what this is a heightened and highly symbolic representation of a tumultuous marriage.

When Mark discovers that Anna has been cheating on him, their relationship explodes in fury and craziness and passion.  About 50% of the movie are these two characters yelling at each other and repeatedly trashing their apartment.  But, that description doesn't capture how weird the film is.  Mark and Anna are quite nuts, and often wander off into speeches that are extremely hard to follow.  They tend to act in strange ways, standing too close and stroking other people when they hold conversations with them, using meat grinders for no reason, stuffing corpses in clear garment bags.  I won't even spoil Anna's cronenbergian secret she hides in her other apartment.

In the end, I think Zulawski is saying that the craziness is the price you pay for the passion and that the alternative is to become an emotionless green-eyed pod-person.  But, I don't know.

Watched: bootleg DVD.

Nightbreed trailer (1990)
The Centerfold Girls trailer (1974)
Jack-Chop! (2009)


Hatchet (2006) directed by Adam Green

Like me, Adam Green loves slasher movies.  Better, he understands what makes them work. You need a cool monster with an interesting back story.  You need a good mix of characters, some we can't wait to see slaughtered and others we root for.  Finally, you need inventive kills and gory -- practical! -- special effects.  Hatchet delivers these things seemingly effortlessly, placing itself beside the classics of the '80s slasher boom.

Which all might be the film's biggest flaw.  I think the movie works only as well as your love and familiarity with '80s slashers take you.  If you see "Kane Hodder as Victor Crowley" in the beginning credits and don't smile or, worse, don't know who that is, this movie probably ain't going to work for you.  Hatchet is for people who wished there were more Friday the 13ths after part 4 featuring backwoods Jason.  As one of those people, I have no complaints about Hatchet: it's a big ol' ball of fun for a slasher geek like me.

Watched: blu-ray from Anchor Bay.

October 4th

Pet Sematary (1989) directed by Mary Lambert

I can't think of any major Hollywood production that had a lead actor quite as bad as Dale Midkiff was in this film.  He stumbles through the movie with a blank expression on his face, putting in the barest minimum effort possible to say his lines and stand on the correct marks.  Occasionally emotion will erupt out of him when the scene really, really requires it, but it's never quite believable.  There's a deadness in the man's eyes that never goes away.  I half suspect that, like her male counterparts who sometimes cast hot-but-horrible actresses, Mary Lambert might have not been entirely rational in casting this part.

I think the other big issue with the film is that it's a story that's nearly impossible to film.  They say this about a lot of novels -- Naked Lunch, Perfume, Watchmen -- but they all tend to turn out pretty well as movies, anyway.  This one, though, is different: one of its monsters is a two-year-old boy.  Having a two-year-old daughter at the moment, I'm pretty familiar with this type of human: they're barely coherent when speaking, like to ignore instructions, and have attention spans that measure in seconds.  None of these qualities make for a great actor.

That said, Miko Hughes is probably cinema's all-time greatest two-year-old actor.  The kid can speak clearly, make relatively appropriate faces for the scene he's in, and is cute as a button to boot.  But, still, it's a two-year-old being carefully coached.  The majority of the shots he's in last for mere seconds.  Because you can't sit a toddler in a makeup chair for hours, he sports just a little purple line on his forehead to indicate the damage he sustained from his accident with a semi.  Towards the end of the story where he begins killing people,  he's often replaced by dummies and little people.  But, what are you gonna do?  It's really the best effort possible for creating this character on film, but it still doesn't work very well.

And, all that said, I absolutely love both Fred Gwynne as kindly neighbor Jud and Brad Greenquist as Pascow.  Gwynne has -- to my outsider eyes, anyway -- the New England accent and demeanor down pat.  He's the only character -- well, besides Gage the first time -- who I cared about when he died.  He made me wish I had an old man across the street to have a beer and jaw with.

Greenquist, as the ghost Pascow, steals the entire show, in my opinion.  Brain exposed and milky-eyed, the poor ghost just wants to help the Creed family avoid more suffering.  His earnestness and kindness are incredibly endearing, and his method of gently suggesting ideas to the living to get them to do what he wants is great.  Screw the stupid Edward Furlong sequel; I want a spin-off featuring just Pascow.

Watched: blu-ray from Paramount.

October 3rd

Waxwork (1988) directed by Anthony Hickox

After half an hour of deliberation, Jack and I settled on this little '80s gem.  I'd forgotten how much I liked this movie.  It's kind of the Cabin in the Woods of its time.  People are sacrificed to a great evil and the end of the world is threatened, but really it's an excuse to let loose every cool monster possible and have them go nuts.  I've got no problem with that.

I don't know what it is about waxworks, but they're one of my favorite horror movie settings.  I guess it's the uncanny valley-ness of the wax dummies combined with the funhouse-like setup of the place that works so well.  They're also great for movies as they give you an easy excuse to include a bunch of characters who normally wouldn't be in the same film together.  Want Dracula, a werewolf, a mummy, the Marquis de Sade, zombies and a rip-off of Audrey II in the same story?  No problem: make 'em wax dummies who come to life.

Besides the monster mania, I like this film quite a bit due to some of the really memorable scenes it contains.  Burned into my head from when I watched this as a kid is the scene with the vampire victim chained to a table.  His eaten leg, tibia and fibula exposed and raw muscle hanging out of his thigh, remains one of the grossest things I can remember seeing in a horror movie.  I also love: the werewolf ripping a guy in half from skull to groin, the police inspector digging into the wax China's face and finding wax muscle and tendon underneath (truly disturbing), Sarah's ecstasy when de Sade tortures her, and the end in which the monsters fight an army of old men (including butler Jenkins!).  Just a film full of great fun and great gross-outs.

Watched: DVD from Artisan.

Tales from the Crypt 5.10: "Came the Dawn" (1993) directed by Uli Edel
A decent episode with the old villain fake-out.  A bit of a Psycho rip-off in that way, but it creates a nice atmosphere with some tension as to what form the inevitable violence that ends the episode will take. I was disappointed that Michael J. Pollard didn't have a bigger roll.  I was expecting him to show up as the cross-dressing wife or something equally funny.

October 2nd

Donovan's Brain (1953) directed by Felix E. Feist

I think the 1950s were probably the horror movie's weakest decade.  The '20s kicked things off with the classics of German Expressionism, Universal's monsters ruled the world in the '30s and '40s, Hammer and Hitchcock spooked the '60s, and then the rules were thrown out the window in the 1970s and anything became possible after that.  When I think of the conservative 1950s, however, all that comes to mind are goofy rubber-suited monsters and giant bugs.  Serious sci-fi flicks were relatively easy to find at this time -- think The Day the Earth Stood Still and When Worlds Collide -- but I can't think of anything of that caliber in the horror genre.

While not a great film, Donovan's Brain takes itself seriously and, despite featuring a giant, pulsating brain in an aquarium, manages to pull it off.  This success can be laid square on the shoulders of Lew Ayres.  He plays Dr. Corey, a not-that-mad scientist who, when he fails to save a man injured in a plane crash, decides to yank the corpse's still-sort-of-alive brain out for an experiment.  Turns out he's perfected a method of keeping a brain alive indefinitely.  There's one problem: this disembodied brain, formerly belonging to a not-so-nice millionaire, figures out it can take control of Corey's body remotely.  Donovan's brain proceeds to puppet the doctor around town, reacquiring his fortune, threatening public officials and disowning his children.

Ayres does an excellent job with the transitions from the serious-though-pleasant Corey to asshole-of-the-year Donovan.  You're never quite sure which personality is speaking until Ayres slowly lets the mystery slip through body language or vocal inflection.  It's a great performance.  The rest of the film isn't quite up to that standard, though I did get a kick out seeing the former first lady as Corey's wife.

Watched: stream on Netflix.

October 1st

1408: Extended Director's Cut (2007) directed by Mikael Håfström

A Stephen King story about a writer going crazy in a haunted hotel?  Hmm.  Comparisons to The Shining are going to be inevitable given the author and setting, and, not surprisingly, this newer tale is not nearly as good.  Still, I liked the film far more than I was expecting.

Beyond the superficial similarities to The Shining, 1408 comes across as more of a horror version of Groundhog Day than anything else.  Once Mike is trapped in 1408, he goes on an emotional journey, learns some things about himself and briefly becomes a happier person.  Then the room threatens to do it all over again to him.  Hell, there's even a clock radio that keeps playing the same song over and over ("We've Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters in this case).  This being a horror movie, though, he doesn't waltz out of his prison with the girl in his arms and a spring in his step at the end.  Rather, he definitely burns the room and himself only to discover that his ghost remains stuck in the room, anyway.

I can't say I'm the biggest John Cusack fan in the world, but the guy is playing his A game here, no doubt.  He has to carry almost the entire movie by himself, showing skeptical Mike slowing going insane from the tortures 1408 puts him through.  When Mike is reunited with his daughter, only to have her die in his arms... I'd have to say that one of the most powerfully sad scenes I've seen in a horror film recently thanks to Cusack's convincing performance.

I'm glad I grabbed the director's cut from Netflix.  Reading about the theatrical cut, it sounds like the typical result of listening to the dipshits in test audiences too closely.  A happy ending where everything is A-OK in the end?  So the super-evil hotel room was really just a method of making Mike a better man?  Gee whiz.  Maybe we should start sentencing prisoners to stay in that room then, since the ghosts just want to better humanity?

Watched: DVD from The Weinstein Company.

September 30th

Halloweentown (1998) directed by Duwayne Dunham

Well, I jumped the gun on this one.  I already knew this was a cute kids' show, having watched it seven years ago, and I was thinking it'd be great to watch with my daughters for Halloweentime.  It will be... just not yet.  The near-three-year-old, lacking a nap today, almost immediately fell asleep.  The near-five-year-old was fine and even got a kick out of the kooky monsters that lived in Halloweentown... until the real bad guy showed up.  From there, she made a series of strategic moves: to behind the couch, to just outside the door, to all the way upstairs.  It's really not that scary, but she has a low tolerance for creepy-looking characters acting mean to pleasant characters.  Even with less than 10 minutes of bad guy-ness in the whole show, well, that was beyond her limits.

It really is a charming little made-for-TV movie from Disney.  Debbie Reynolds has a ball and hams it up as the family's grandma and Halloweentown's most powerful witch.  The town itself is really fun, with a werewolf hairdresser and a giant jack-o-lantern in the square and a zombie Elvis broom salesman.  This also the only really girl-centric Halloween special I can think of, focusing on a 13-year-old girl's discovery that she's destined to be a great witch like her mom and grandma.  Ah well, maybe I'll give it another shot with the daughters in 2015 or so...

Watched: DVD from Disney.

Tales from the Darkside 1.10: "Djinn, No Chaser" (1985) directed by Shelley Levinson
Another goofy Darkside, this time with a pair of married goofballs acquiring a magic lamp.  In the realm of genies-played-by-basketball-players stories, this is easily the best.  Sorry Shaq, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has got you here.  He plays a genie who's so grumpy about being tramped in a tiny lamp for 10,000 years, he refuses to grant wishes.  Instead, he drives the married couple crazy.  He conjures lions in the hallway to trap them, makes the walls ooze slime, and won't stop yelling in a really loud voice.  Overall, the guy is pretty annoying.  Once they find the key to his release, though, all is well.  Not a story I'd imagine coming from a darkside, but funny and full of energy.