October 22nd

The Walking Dead 3.11: "I Ain't a Judas" (2013) directed by Greg Nicotero

A filler episode consisting mostly of people talking.  The people in the prison talk about what to do about Woodbury.  The people in Woodbury talk about the prison.  Andrea talks to them both.  Carol talks to Andrea and tells her to sex up the Gov and then kill him.  We all know this isn't going to happen even before we see the scene were it doesn't happen.  TV Andrea is terrible that way.

Cut and Run (1985) directed by Ruggero Deodato

Supposedly, the last of Deodato's "Cannibal Trilogy," except, you know, there's no cannibals in this one.  Instead, it's a fairly typical '80s action movie (90% of which, including this one, involved the drug war) heightened with Italian-style gore.  Admittedly, the gore -- in the uncensored version on DVD -- is really good.  I've never seen decapitation done quite so well, and the scene in which a man is torn in half crotch-first was massively disturbing.

Outside of the that, the only other thing in the movie I really liked was Michael Berryman.  He plays some nameless henchman of main bad guy (though completely underused in the movie) Richard Lynch.  The cool part is that he appears to have super powers.  Multiple times, he jumps straight out of river 10 feet into the air to grab some poor slob.  Once, he jumped right through the solid wooden floorboards of a cabin to grab somebody.  He's also a master of hiding in trees, and commands an army of naked natives using just a bird call.  He's a shirtless, hairless, speechless ninja and he's easily the best character in the film.

Watched: DVD from Anchor Bay.

American Horror Story 2.06: "Asylum: The Origins of Monstrosity" (2012) directed by David Semel

You know, I can't say I ever expected to see a TV series that featured a slasher killer as a main character.  That's pretty interesting.  Can they sustain Thredson's menace throughout multiple episodes?  Jason is usually dispatched after just 90 minutes of stalking, after all.  I do love the way Quinto is playing Bloody Face.  He's doing a sort of Norman Bates, but a hundred times more awkward.  Thredson's interactions with Lana, now chained to a bed, are very intense and wouldn't be out of place in a real horror film.  I completely love how he noticed her perspiration and heart rate and deduced her escape attempt.  Someone that perceptive keeping you captive is very scary.

American Horror Story 2.07: "Asylum: Dark Cousin" (2012) directed by Michael Rymer

Frances Conroy -- the maid from season one -- returns as the Angel of Death.  She's perfect.  Her gentle voice, pale skin, and jet black garb make for a striking figure.  I could understand Grace and Miles accepting this entity's help in leaving this world.  I hope we see more of her, especially interacting with the possessed Sister Mary Eunice.

I dig also Sister Jude's current arc.  Over the past few episodes, Sister Mary has engineered her complete breakdown.  Now, in this episode exactly midway through the season, Jude re-finds her strength.  I'm expecting her to go into battle against the possessed nun before the year is over.  Hopefully it will come together and we avoid any sappiness as in season one.

October 21st

Cannibal Ferox (1981) directed by Umberto Lenzi

Better than Lenzi's forgettable Eaten Alive, and at least it contains all new footage.  Still, I'm not a fan of the whole white guilt spin that started with Cannibal Holocaust and continues here.  It gets even worse in this one.  Now the natives aren't even really cannibals at all and learn all of their violent ways by watching the sadistic Mike.  In the superior Last Cannibal World, falling prey to the cannibals is simply a matter of "wrong place, wrong time."  Naively wandering into a part of the world you know little about is dangerous, be it the jungle or rural Texas.  Would Texas Chain Saw Massacre be improved if Franklin had first tortured Leatherface's brother to death?

Also, I'm getting real tired of seeing real animals slaughtered in these things.  Do Italians really hate turtles and crocodiles that much?

Watched: DVD from Grindhouse Releasing.

American Horror Story 2.05: "Asylum: I Am Anne Frank, Part 2" (2012) directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Legless, mutated Shelley, at the bottom of an elementary school stairwell, scaring the ever-loving shit out of children.  For this alone, I'm glad I'm watching this season.  Plus, another alien abduction.  Plus, weird segments shot with a '60s TV camera.  Plus, Thredson -- not really surprisingly -- turns out to be serial killer Bloody Face and chains Lana up Saw-like in his torture basement.  Bundle all of this up into the show's consistently beautiful shooting and lighting and I find myself thoroughly entertained.


The Walking Dead 3.10: "Home" (2013) directed by Seith Mann
Well, that didn't take long for Daryl to wander back to the prison.  Just in time to help save the day, too.  Ugh.  Lotta lazy writing in the show this year.  Gotta love how everyone is a dead-eye, crack shot when it comes to putting bullets directly in the middle of zombie foreheads, but turn into Stormtroopers when real humans attack.  There had better be a bigger battle between the prison and Woodbury at the end of the season.  Maybe with that National Guard stuff the Gov stole?  If this was it, I'm pissed.

October 20th

Monster Cereal Week 5: Fruity Yummy Mummy.
The black sheep of the monster cereal family.
Also, apparently, slang for MILF in the UK.

The American Scream (2012) directed by Michael Stephenson

A part of my continuing quest to watch everything that starts with "American" this year, apparently.  But, really, I saw the trailer for this documentary last Halloween season and had been wanting to check it out since.  It follows three men in a small town in Massachusetts who have a passion for creating Halloween haunts in their yards for trick-or-treaters to go through

Made by the same guy who did Best Worst Movie, it's a relatively light feel-good piece.  At least it was for me.  I saw a lot of myself in these guys, who are even more obsessed with Halloween than I am.  Or, at least, they direct their Halloween enthusiasm into massively decorated their house and yard to bring joy to hundreds whereas I'm more of watchin' movies type of guy.  There's some tension between the men and their families -- especially as Halloween gets closer and the stress gets higher -- but nothing beyond the normal sort familial snippiness you get when people that live together get briefly annoyed.

The documentary does a little to mine for some depth, exploring main haunter Vincent's childhood.  He was raised as a Branch Davidian -- yes, like the David Koresh group -- who don't celebrate holidays or birthdays.  There's a small amount of armchair psychoanalysis going on, surmising that Vincent is now trying to make up for all of that lost fun, but this stuff is not really the focus of the documentary.  It's more interested in following the process: the increasing stress of the build, the fun and excitement when Halloween arrives.  At that, it does well.  I just wish they'd done full walkthroughs for each haunt so we could see exactly what it was they were creating for the past 90 minutes.

Watched: stream on Netflix.

American Horror Story 2.04: "Asylum: I Am Anne Frank, Part 1" (2012) directed by Michael Uppendahl

They're continuing to throw everything they can think of into this series, which I like.  Now we've got implications that Dr. Arden is a former Nazi scientist.  If they manage to squeeze in a werewolf riding a motorcycle and a black actor playing a Universal monster in a future episode, I think we could create just about every '70s exploitation movie ever made from the guts of this show.

October 19th

Flint Horror Con 2013
I spent my Saturday up in Flint at the 3rd annual Flint Horror Convention.  This is always a great time.  The convention is put together by a group of real good folks who craft a place for Michigan's horror geeks to gather for a day of fun.  It's a small convention, but that serves to make it feel intimate and comfortable.

The main floor.

One of my first stops this year was my pal Jason's freshly minted vendor table.  This is his first time on the other side of a table at one of these things.  It sounds like it went pretty well.  Me, I grabbed myself some of his colorful Universal Monster coasters, but I was really geeked about the (glittery!) Lament Configuration Kleenex box cover.  A great idea, and one I've never seen before.  It's now proudly covering a box of tissues in my movie room as I type this.

POP Tiles selling their wares.

Mondo Matt's Trailers
I was honored that the Flint Horror Con Drive-In kicked off its film schedule with my own contribution, a compilation of movie trailers, vintage intermission bits, and some other weird things.  Unlike last year, the theater was packed right from the start, so there was a big audience that I could watch react to my selections.  I love seeing people laugh at the obscure stuff I stick in these things.  I try to arrange the energy of these compilations so that they build and build, putting the most insane and fast-paced stuff last.  It was a bit of slow start, but I think this worked to get the audience into it.  By the end, I was tickled to see good responses to some of my favorites, like the Shasta ad with Frankenstein, the 1976 Woolworth Halloween sale ad, and the best edited of the various Phantom of the Paradise trailers.

The Torch
After my trailers, we jetted to a local restaurant for some lunch.  Hidden down a side street, buried in the middle of a row of buildings, The Torch is something of a Flint institution.  I'd eaten there a couple of years ago during the first FHC and had been drooling over the thought of eating another one of their excellent hamburgers.  It didn't disappoint.

Meat.Puppets
After lunch, we arrived back just in time to catch a showing of this short.  At conventions, you never know what you're in for when you sit down to watch a flick in the movie room.  Cons usually show a good mix of no-, low-, and high-budget stuff, any of which can be either horribly tedious and derivative... or surprisingly cool.  This short cleverly plays with these expectations, starting with what looks like a pointless slasher flick featuring a maniac torturing a trio of ladies in his basement.  You see these types of shorts at cons often.  They're made by people who are attracted to the violence of the genre, but don't know how to tell a story that uses that violence appropriately.  While there's not really a story in this one, it takes a twist in the middle that completely subverts your expectations on how the thing will end.  It's also hilarious.  Nice work.

The showing of Meat.Puppets.

John Amplas
The guest I was most looking forward to meeting a the con was John Amplas, who played one of cinema's greatest vampires in Romero's criminally overlooked Martin.  At his table, I got him to sign a great picture (see it at the bottom of this post).  He wrote, without me prompting, one of my favorite quotes from Martin: "There is no magic!"  Awesome.

Me and John.

Later, my pal Jack hosted the Q&A with him.  Amplas had lots to say on Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and even the obscure Toxic Zombies.  He was a lot of fun to listen to and Jack was well-prepared and expertly talked him through his entire career.

John Amplas Q&A.

Kid's Costume Contest
I managed to catch the tail end of the kid's costume contest this year, having missed it every other year.  One thing I think is special about the Flint Horror Con is that they insist on it being -- with the obvious exception of the movie room -- a family-friendly event.  Someday, maybe, if I can convince them the con really and truly isn't that scary of a thing, I might be able to get my own daughters to come with me to one of these.

The Shining twins in the kids' costume contest.

Dayplanner of the Dead
Our culture is absolutely glutted in zombies right now.  It's even worse in the low-budget short film arena, where getting your friends to stumble around with gray-painted faces is a cheap and easy way to get a horror movie going.  Color me absolutely surprised to find this short actually had a fresh take on the genre.  And it was well-made.  And it was funny.  Check this one out if you can.

Stella Buio
Somehow, these folks got scream queen Linnea Quigley to star in their short.  She plays a medium who summons a family's dead husband/dad... and he returns as a hungry zombie.  There were some pretty good gore effects, but that's probably the only nice thing I would say about it.

Everyone is Robert
AKA Tous les hommes s'appellent Robert / All Men Are Called Robert.  Like Meat.Puppets, not a story but a gag.  But, it's a funny one.  Check it out  in its entirety (NSFW!) here.

Adult Costume Contest
I snuck away from helping man the movie projector with my amigo Jack to catch the tail end of the adult costume contest.  There, the mummy below won first place, which seemed right.  That's a damned hard costume to pull off correctly and he did a great job with it.

The adult costume contest winners.

Petrifying Pin-Up Pageant
A bit after the costume contest was a first for the con: a pin-up pageant.  The rules of the contest were that you needed to successfully mix the look of a 1950s/60s pin-up with some sort of horror flavoring.  There was a great variety of entries -- mummies and a red riding hood and a spider girl -- with scream queen Debbie Rochon helping to judge.  My favorite was the female version of Ash (far left in the photo below), who I thought pulled the costume off great (and she used the boomstick line with her fake shotgun, which, how can you not love that?).  She came in third, with the winner being Vampira (far right), who, admittedly, did an incredible job with her make-up, outfit and appropriately Vampira-like posing on the stage.  A nice addition to the con's events.

Who will be the Bride of Flint Horror Con?

Torturous
Another well-made short and another horror-comedy.  This one's a take on the torture porn subgenre.  Check out its trailer here.

Detroit Ghostbusters
Slow in parts and could probably use a good trimming in the old editing machine.  Dug the goofy ghost they were fighting, though, which reminded me of the imp from Sorority Babes In The Slime Bowl-O-Rama.

With no more films to watch, no more events, and vendors beginning to pack up, the con began to wind down.  I had a great time this year.  Out of all of the fun to be had during the Six Weeks of Halloween, this is one of my favorites.  Thank you to the ghoul crew!  Looking forward to year 4!

Some of the stuff I picked up at the con.

October 18th

Tales from the Crypt 6.02: "Only Skin Deep" (1994) directed by William Malone
Distracted by Star Wars: The Card Game for too long, Casey and I only had time for one little episode after the pizza arrived.  But, it was a good one.  It starts at a seasonally appropriate Halloween party, in which an abusive jerk meets a mysterious woman wearing a bizarre mask.  She takes him back to her apartment for sex, but grows very cold afterwards.  The abusive jerk get angry, but runs into a fairly typical Crypt ending.  What makes the episode better than average, though, was the way it was shot.  More than your average amount of thought (for a TV series) went into shot placement and lighting, making the thing exciting to watch for that alone.  It felt very cinematic.

October 17th

The Walking Dead 3.09: "The Suicide King" (2013) directed by Lesli Linka Glatter
How's the cliffhanger from the mid-season finale resolved?  Pretty easily.  Rick and company shoot a few bullets, throw a few smoke grenades, and waltz easily out of Woodbury with Daryl and Merle.  Woodbury is not remotely a threat.  This is further emphasized in the episode when most of the population is clamoring to leave and freaking out over the Governor plugging a bitten zombie victim.  There is absolutely no tension in the idea that these folks may gather and attack the group at the prison.  They're all wimps, so who cares?

Andrea's speech to convince the population of Woodbury to stay was some of the laziest writing I've ever seen in this show.  Unbelievably cheezy stuff.  Rick going nuts at the end because he thinks he sees Laurie: a wee over the top, but amusing, at least.  I would've preferred to see that type of thing, maybe, after dealing with an attack from Woodbury.  Having just returned from a success rescue mission, it doesn't seem like the guy should've been quite that stressed out.

October 16th

In the Mouth of Madness (1994) directed by John Carpenter

Some say this is Carpenter's last good film.  Me, I like Vampires, but this is the last film of his to have that "Carpenter feel." No one else quite does it like John: his movies are filled with a deep sense of dread and there is never much chance that the heroes can defeat the enormous evil they face.  In this one, the enormous evil is about as big as they get and arrive in the form of Lovecraft's Old Ones.

I've always liked the idea that reality is a shared consensus (at least as a fictional conceit. In real life, I'm aligned with Philip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.").  My favorite take on this idea is in Sandman #18, "A Dream of a Thousand Cats."  In that story, we learn that cats used to be bigger than humans and hunted us for sport.  The humans gathered together and decided to simultaneously dream a new reality, in which they were the rulers of the world instead.  It worked.  Now a lone cat walks the Earth, trying to convince other cats to join his dream of bringing world back to the way it used to be.  Of course, this will never work, cats being cats.

It's not tools or language that separate us from animals; it's stories.  We alone are able to solidify our dreams and share them with each other.  And, the scale on which we're able to do this in the modern age is staggering.  The film touches on this quite a bit, opening with The Hobb's End Horror being mass-printed on an enormous maze of machinery and having Linda mention that Sutter Kane's novels are a billion dollar, global business.  Kane's stories occupy and become real in millions of minds.  This is powerful, even without considering its ability to warp the world.

You could also easily tie this back to Carpenter's prior film in his "apocalypse trilogy," Prince of Darkness.  In that one, the Catholic Church creates a false story ("Christianity") in order to protect humanity from the true horror of the universe.  Sutter Kane does the opposite.  Stories used as weapons of war, both protecting and damn us.  That's humanity's special power.  The cats don't know what they're missing.

Watched: blu-ray from WB.

October 15th

Monster Cereal Week 4: Frute Brute.
I wonder if Tarantino will still throw his vintage box in films now that it's back?
Or, is he a cereal hipster?  Time will tell.

Eaten Alive! (1980) directed by Umberto Lenzi

Lenzi jumps back into the cannibal subgenre he inadvertently started with Man from Deep River eight years prior.  This time, a woman hires a man -- played by Robert Kerman from Cannibal Holocaust -- to help find her sister in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.  Turns out the sister has joined a Jim Jones-ish cult lead by the similarly named Jonas.  Turns out that cult is surrounded by cannibals in the jungle, making escape difficult.  There's nothing surprising in in this one: some people get eaten and our heroes end up escaping back to civilization.

The movie's biggest problem is that it steals far too much from Man from Deep River.  It re-uses a lot of footage from that earlier movie -- including a lot of the real animal cruelty -- in badly editing sequences in which this movie's characters pretend to look at scenes from that other film.  It also rips off ideas from Man, including having a widow being raped over the ashes of her husband.  Combined with Kerman from Holocaust and Me Me Lai from just about every cannibal movie ever made, the whole thing feels like a crappy remix of a song you like.

Watched: DVD from Shriek Show.

The Real Ghostbusters 2.01: "Knock, Knock" (1987) directed by Marek Buchwald & Masakazu Higuchi
Ah, this is why I liked the show as a kid.  The deceptively dark nature of the show combined with the excitement of the Ghostbusters saving the day really captured my imagination in the '80s.  This episode has NYC subway workers accidentally opening a demonic door underground (even after the door itself warns them: "Do not open 'til doomsday").  Even though it's never explicitly stated in the show, this is a door to Hell, which is leaking "ghosts" / demons and slowly taking over the world.  It's up to the Ghostbusters to descend into Hell itself to save the day at the last moment.  Exciting!

October 14th

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) directed by Ruggero Deodato

Despite Cannibal Holocaust's enormous infamy, I think Deodato's earlier Last Cannibal World is the better film.  World felt rawer and more real.  Holocaust feels manufactured.  It might be due to their stories.  World is about a man captured by savages and fighting to escape.  It's intimate and simple.  We identify with his suffering and cheer when he escapes.  Holocaust clunkily tells two tales, one of an anthropologist searching for a lost documentary team, then another using the footage that lost team shot.

The first never feels particularly dangerous.  The anthropologist and his team never feel out of control among the natives in the jungle.  Its purpose seems to be to give us a tour of the aftermath of the documentary team's adventures in the jungle and raise a little mystery over the circumstances of their deaths.  It's goes on too long for what it is -- it's 45 minutes before the team returns to New York with the film -- and could've been chopped down a bit.

The second is filled with a strange amount of finger-wagging at the audience.  When the film is screened, we quickly learn that the young documentarians are a group of sociopaths, who think nothing of burning natives alive in order to create a story for their documentary.  After each scene of extreme violence -- either committed by or against the filmmakers -- the film cuts back to the anthropologist in the screening room with a sad look on his face.  "Hey, you in the audience, you're sick for watching this," Deodato seems to be saying.  Hey, I ain't the one who made it...

Suffice it to say, Cannibal Holocaust did not live up to its large reputation.

Watched: DVD from Grindhouse Releasing.

American Horror Story 2.03: "Asylum: Nor'easter" (2012) directed by Michael Uppendahl
So far, I'm liking the all-over-the-place goofiness of the show.  This episode features Sister Jude getting drunk, a possessed nun running around causing mischief, a short glimpse of a huge alien, a better glimpse of the monsters the doctor keeps feeding, and unnecessary amputation.  I feel like the showrunners discovered that they were incapable of making a serious horror show -- like the early episodes of season 1 were -- and are playing to their strengths now.  Still, something like this will easily fall apart into disappointment once they begin explaining things.

October 13th

Communion (1989) directed by Philippe Mora

I just finished reading both Communion and Transformation by Whitley Strieber and had an itch to re-watch this flick.  Watching the movie so soon after finishing the books that preceded it reveals how little the movie actually takes from Strieber's writing.  To be fair, the writing is about 80% Strieber's philosophical musings on the nature of the phenomenon he thinks he's experiencing.  He dives into everything from Celtic fairy stories to the affect of magnetic fields on humans to what might be the nature of the soul.  It's completely unfilmable as it is.  The solution: get Christopher Walken and have him crank up the crazy.

That works.  Walken is fun as all get-out to watch in this film.  He twitches and sings and one-liners his way through every scene.  He deliberately looks directly at the camera on many occasions.  His reactions to seeing the aliens are bizarre (when about to be anal probed: "Can we talk this over? It looks like you're going to sing White Christmas...").  What should make his performance into a joke is actually pretty effective.  Here's a weird dude having really weird experiences: enjoy.

That's the one thing the movie gets very right: the weirdness.  The reason I enjoy Strieber's books so much is mostly due to how odd the experiences he describes are.  If this stuff were really real -- if an alien intelligence were trying to talk to the smartest primates on this ball of dirt -- it would be an extremely strange thing for these two completely different creatures to meet.  The climax of the film has Walken walking into a ball of light after mysteriously leaving his New York apartment.  Inside, he high-fives a blue alien while the willowy gray aliens do a weird, floating samba in the background.  He then see himself dressed as a magician standing in front of a Christmas tree.  The magician seems to be there just to mess with him, making fun of his prior reactions to the aliens and telling him he will never understand what's going on.  It's weird as hell and I love it.

Watched: DVD from Elite.

October 12th

American Horror Story 2.02: "Asylum: Tricks and Treats" (2012) directed by Bradley Buecker
Every episode is going to start with a brief glance at Bloody Face's activities in the abandoned asylum in the present day, it seems like.  It'll be a like a mini-slasher movie when all done, maybe?  In 1964, the story mostly centers on an Exorcist rip-off in which an old priest is brought to the asylum to help with a possessed teen-aged boy.  Admittedly, this was a fun device to reveal more of Sister Jude's backstory, as the demon tries to rattle her by speaking of her past sins.  As is the case with this show, her pre-nun life is way over-the-top, and we discover she used to be a super-promiscuous, drunk-driving, child-running-over wreck of a person.  Also, nice to see Robin Weigert as the possessed boy's mother.  I miss Jane.


Tales from the Darkside 1.17: "The Madness Room" (1985) directed by John Hayes
Once you see the knowing glance between the wife and the husband's business associate, followed by the husband taking nitroglycerin pills for his chest pain, the entire plot is easily predicted.  A Tales from the Crypt-style story of getting just deserts.

October 11th

Today was my pal Jack's annual Halloween shindig.  Twelve folks, pizza, treats, movies & shorts, and a game made for some good times.

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

The greatest zombie movie ever made, re-edited by Dario Argento for Italian audiences.  It's a peppier cut, getting to the action faster.  There are some additional shots and lines of dialogue that are cool (a grim conversation in the helicopter should've been kept in the real version).  However, I didn't really like most of the changes.

The speed of this edit takes a lot away from what I like about this movie.  The pride and boredom the characters feel after claiming their new home is diminished.  There's barely any breathing room between Roger's death and the arrival of the motorcycle gang.  The humor is mostly removed, too, with a few pies thrown and that's about it.  The soundtrack is, not surprisingly, wall-to-wall Goblin music in this edit.  Some of the extra Goblin music just isn't very good and it replaces the goofy and iconic mall music, which is very disappointing.  I also feel like Frannie's character was gutted in this edit.  Dario seems to only use her scene when necessary and is comfortable cutting her out as much as possible.

Regardless, ain't we lucky that this exists on DVD and we can watch it?  Pre-Starz Anchor Bay was awesome.  RIP.

Watched: DVD from Anchor Bay.

Afterwards, we played some Cards Against Humanity.  We weren't sure how the game would work with such a large group, but it turned out fine.  We split into teams of two to cut down on the number of answer cards to read each round and the laughter started immediately.  It's funny watching people's faces as they tried to choose which answer card to play: you could often see the "this is horrible, but I want to win" thought process dance across their visage.  I love this game.

October 10th

It Came From The Local
Tonight was the Flint Horror Con's annual free pre-con short film night.  Homemade cookies, popcorn and some short films to watch from exotic places like Spain and Flint, Michigan: there's no better way to spend a few hours.  The line-up:

Mondo Matt's Trailers
Yeah, this is actually me.  I'm honored to get to put together a short trailer and intermission compilation for both It Came from the Local and the Flint Horror Con proper.  I think I dun good.  There was plenty of loud laughing at some of the ridiculous stuff I picked (god, I love the Trapped trailer) and lots of "that looks awesome! I need to see that movie!"  Can't ask for a better reaction than that.

Day 9 (2013) directed by Thomas Ryan
A no-budget zombie film shot in the writer/director's house, starring himself and and his wife.  I thought it had some really good camerawork and a decent story idea.  Its big issue was its editing.  The enemy of a horror film -- other than unintentional comedy -- is boredom.  A bunch of this movie could've been chopped out to make a more exciting experience.  As it is, it drags badly as the film counts up towards the title.

Scarriage Town (2012) directed by Paul Counelis
A documentary from local horror super-fan and Rue Morgue contributor Paul Counelis.  Every Halloween, Paul and his family make a haunted house experience in their yard for trick-r-treaters to walk through.  He narrates the process of putting the elaborate setup together (gotta love the mattresses on the ground to act as a distraction when suddenly walked upon) and shows footage of the screaming kids from last Halloween enjoying it.  Very cool.

The Suicide King (2012) directed by Ryan Blazic
Kind of a Tarantino-esque short about a man entering a poker game in order to earn enough money for his daughter's surgery.  The twist is that anyone who loses a showdown must play Russian roulette.  Not bad.

(a short film about a crazy girl and a scarecrow) directed by RT McRobertson (I think)
There was some extra time in the middle of things, so this off-schedule short was thrown into the mix.  I wish I could remember the title, as it was actually my favorite of the night.  Another no-budget short shot with friends and family, but very well made.  It stars a girl who forgets to take her medicine one Halloween morning and begins to hear and see things.  Great gore effects and use of flashbacks.

The Sweet Hand of the White Rose (2010) directed by Davide Melini
Ugh.  This is pretty much an extended "Don't Text and Drive, Kids!" PSA.  Imagine the ending of Jacob's Ladder, except higher in schmaltz and the aforementioned texting driver walking into the light with his innocent victim.

3 trailers for Beyond the Dark
From the little you could see in the trailers, it looks like it could be awesome:

Decapoda Shock (2011) directed by Javier Chillon
A favorite returning from last year, this is balls-out crazy fun from Spain.  A spaceman turns into a crab and fights the Satanic forces of evil.  Super-coolness.

The Giant Rubber Monster Movie (2011) directed by Thomas Berdinski
A favorite returning from two years ago.  This is pure psychotronic fun.  A boy from the year 25 million travels back in time to save humanity from a giant monster with an afro.  Own this one one DVD already I love it so much.

October 9th

Twixt (2011) directed by Francis Ford Coppola

There seems to be two reactions to this film out there in Internetland: "this is amazing and I loved it" and "Coppola has lost his damned mind!"  I can understand both.  The film is hard to follow, a tad slow at times, and ends abruptly.  It ain't for everyone.  It's also beautiful, hallucinatory, funny, and strange.  I dug it quite a bit.

I can't say that I've kept up with Coppola's work over the years, so I'm not sure what Tetro and Youth Without Youth were all about.  With Twixt, I'm seeing an aging artist playing with new ways of being creative, perhaps trying to re-capture that creative spark artists have in youth.  While the vampires and witches and murder mysteries and goofy small town characters are fun, I think this film is an exploration of the creative process and Coppola's current struggles with it.

At least, that's what I see the protagonist, Hall Baltimore, struggling with during his stay in the small town.  There for a book signing tour, his one and only fan in town happens to be the sheriff.  The sheriff excitedly mentions there's been a recent murder and that he has an idea for a novel based on it he wants to share.  Initially uninterested, Hall finds himself in a lucid dream involving the murdered girl and an abandoned hotel.  Upon awakening, he realizes the goofy sheriff is correct: there is a good story there.  More importantly to Hall, it's a potential break from writing the dull series of semi-successful novels about witches he's been contracted to create.

From herein, he researches the facts of the case while awake and weaves the story in his mind while asleep (or knocked out).  While dreaming, he is lead through his own unconscious by Edgar Allan Poe.  His Virgil, Poe guides Hall through the layers of his unconscious, unearthing the personal reason why this girl's death has affected him so much and how these emotions can be used in powerful storytelling.  It about the coolest illustration of the eternal question "where do your ideas come from?" that I've ever seen.

In the end, Hall has only succeeded in switching from witches to vampires for his new novel.  But, it's something new, he's faced his guilt over his daughter's accidental death, and he has discovered a new way to access that well of ideas lurking deep in our brains.  For anyone who's ever suffered writer's block, this is about as happy and ending as you can get for this sort of story.

Watched: blu-ray from Fox.

October 8th

Last Cannibal World (1977) directed by Ruggero Deodato

AKA Jungle Holocaust, this was originally intended as a sequel to Man from Deep River but bears little similarity that prior film.  This is a true horror picture.  I was thrilled throughout the entire film.  It's a simple story of a man captured by "stone age" cannibals in the Malaysian jungle who has to escape and find his airplane before they either eat him or use him as crocodile bait.

I was blown away by the sequence where the cannibals capture Robert.  Wow -- sometimes you need to be reminded about how badass '70s cinema could be.  Robert awakens in cave, surrounded by screaming cannibals and tied to a large boulder.  They begin poking and prodding him as he struggles against the ropes.  Soon, they begin tearing his clothes off and poking and prodding him in even more sensitive areas.  The imagery is intense: a nude made bound to a rock, surround by howling savages.  It's hard to imagine a worse position to find yourself in.

I also can't say I've ever seen a horror movie in which the male lead spends more than half the film completely naked.  Amazing work from Massimo Foschi, who gamely runs around a jungle completely nude just to make a movie.  The bug bites that poor guy must have suffered...

If I have a complaint, it's that Robert only battled a cannibal in combat once.  For all of the chasing around the jungle they did with him, he was only truly in trouble during that one time after his escape.  And, even there, he had the massive advantage of the venom-tipped spear.  A minor quibble, though, and barely worth bringing up.

Watched: DVD from Shriek Show.

The Walking Dead 3.08: "Made to Suffer" (2012) directed by Bill Gierhart

This episode is intense in spots, but suffers from pacing problems most of the rest of the time.  Which is probably the issue with the entire series, come to think of it.  Rick's group's attack on Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie is exciting and fun to watch, but it's continually broken up by cutting to the Governor and his bizarre preoccupation with preventing Andrea from finding out who the attackers are.  Why does he even care?  Plus, the confrontation between the Governor and Michonne -- which had absolutely no build-up -- was incredibly disappointing.  No fork or amputation, huh?

The mid-season cliffhanger of having the Dixon brothers surrounded by the Woodbury folks was rather tame.  Even if I wasn't already spoiled, I can't say I would've been concerned that the show's most popular character was in trouble.

American Horror Story 2.01: "Asylum: Welcome to Briarcliff" (2012) directed by Bradley Buecker

Like the first episode of the first season, this opener throws a whole helluva lot at the viewer.  Again, like that other episode, it was all pretty exciting.  There's an abandoned asylum -- the best horror setting possible -- a mad scientist, a takes-absolutely-no-shit nun with secret desires for her priest, a lesbian investigative journalist, wacky characters populating the asylum, an arm ripped off, and... aliens?  What the hell?  I was not expecting the abduction angle.  I was willing to brush it off as a cover memory in Kit's broken mind, but the scientist guy removes an implant from Kit's neck and watches it crawl away like a spider.  I know they dropped the ball pretty badly by the end of season one, but I'm already forgetting that in favor of wondering how the hell all of this stuff will come together.

October 7th

Man from Deep River (1972) directed by Umberto Lenzi

This Halloween, I decided I'd catch up on the most famous of the Italian cannibal movies.  I've never seen any of these things, though I'm certainly aware of the lore of Cannibal Holocaust.  To be honest, this particular horror subgenre doesn't really interest me all that much, but, hey, there's a hole in my horror education and I really should fill it.

Man from Deep River is always mentioned as the start of this subgenre, but it is not a cannibal movie.  It's not even a horror movie.  It tells the tell of a white guy who gets lost in the jungles of Thailand and is captured by a local tribe.  Eventually, he finds love and purpose there.

This film is more of an outgrowth of the mondo film subgenre.  It delights in showing us the shocking aspects of tribal life, most of which involve abusing animals.  Jesus, I've never seen a work of fiction with so much real animal torture in it.  We're forced to watch crocodiles and snakes chopped up alive, a mongoose forced to fight a cobra, a presumably real monkey getting its skull chopped off, cockfights, and a goat getting its throat gruesomely slit.  I'm no member of PETA and I've got no problem with hunting, but this nothing I want to see to create a fictional story.

There is one small cannibal scene in the film, which presumably was the seed that inspired the rest of the Italian cannibal film explosion.  A small group from the neighboring tribe discover a couple in the woods.  They kill the man, then proceed to rape and eat the woman.  It's disturbing, but it's really only a small section of a film that is mostly about the protagonist mooning over his native wife.  It must have been enough, though, to stick in peoples' minds so that they wanted more.

Watched: DVD from Shriek Show.

The Walking Dead 3.07: "When the Dead Come Knocking" (2012) directed by Daniel Sackheim
Mostly setup for the mid-season finale that's coming next.  Merle and the Governor torture, sort of, Glenn and Maggie to get them to reveal where Rick and company are hiding.  It's TV show torture and nothing compared to what the comic character would've done in the same situation (how cute and meta that the Governor threatens to cut off Glenn's hand!).  I suppose they wouldn't want to alienate the audience, though, what with the highest ratings of any cable show and all.

Later, Rick brings most of the group to the edge of Woodbury on a rescue mission while, at the same time the Governor sends a small group to scout out the prison.  Hopefully the dual front battle in the next episode is worth the build up.

October 6th

The Walking Dead 3.04: "Killer Within" (2012) directed by Guy Ferland
Lori and newborn baby Judith's deaths in the comic series was the second instance -- after Rick's Luke Skywalker moment -- where I felt like I was punched in the gut.  This happens at the climax of Woodbury's attack on the prison after a very tense conflict between the two groups spanning weeks.

Obviously, things are quite a bit different in the TV series.  I'm not sure why Lori was killed off so early in the series.  Typically, you save the main character deaths and baby births for either the finale or the episode before the mid-season break.  It may be a comment on the popularity -- or lack thereof, I should say -- of Lori with fans of the show.  However, it does set up an interesting dynamic that wasn't present in the comics.  Now we get so see the completely unstable Rick -- talking to himself on the phone and such -- go up against the calm and practical Governor.  That could be interesting.

Also, having Carl put his own mother down is pretty grim.  Not quite as grim as Rick seeing Lori and the newborn killed because he pissed off the wrong warlord, but pretty grim.  I'm glad they're not shying away with taking Carl down the same messed up route he's taking in the comics.


The Simpsons 25.02: "Treehouse of Horror XXIV" (2013) directed by Rob Oliver
Attention Fox: I paid money to stream this on Amazon.  I didn't have to.  I could've easily pirated it.  Shove more ads into the front of your streaming shows and that's just what I and many others will do.

Like everyone is saying, the opening sequence directed by Guillermo del Toro is the best part of the episode by a long shot.  Hell, it's the best part of any "Treehouse of Horror" for a solid decade and half.  The real stories in the episode are the typical weakly amusing fare of the modern Simpsons.  The best story -- and most Halloween-y -- was probably the Dr. Seuss rip-off, but even that grated on my nerves after listening to their tortured Seussian rhyming for so long.

Do yourself a favor and watch just the opening, if you haven't, and have fun picking out the infinity of horror references:

The Walking Dead 3.05: "Say the Word" (2012) directed by Greg Nicotero
The reveal of the Governor's zombie daughter was weak.  He's shown combing her hair, but even before a chunk of scalp falls out and we see her dead face, we hear her zombie grunting noises.  Nice was to waste a surprise.  Should've saved this for later, maybe for us to discover at the same time Andrea inevitably does.

I'm sure the show won't be chopping Rick's hand off and I'm sure the interaction between Michonne and the Governor will be toned down compared to the comic series, but, damn, the fate of Lori's body in the TV show was worthy of the comic series.  Grief-maddened Rick finds a puddle of blood and gore where Lori had died.  Nearby, he stumbles upon a satisfied zombie with a bloated belly resting against a wall.  Damn, man.  The show had me afraid, when Rick started stabbing the zombie's tummy, that he was going to dig all of the Lori-chow out of it in order to bury her.  They didn't go that far out, but, still, this is the best representation of how horrific it is that we are zombie food I've ever seen.


The Walking Dead 3.06: "Hounded" (2012) directed by Daniel Attias
I don't know if it's Laurie Holden's acting -- she always seems to have this dumb half-smile on her face -- or the writing or both, but I can see why fans turned on Andrea this season.  I hate to keep referencing the comic series -- they're two different mediums and changes are not only expected, but required -- but Andrea in the comic is such a awesome badass.  She's not a cartoon like ninja-Michonne, but a real person hardened by the fall of the world, physically scarred, and deadly with a sniper rifle.  After Rick, she's my favorite character in the comics.  In the show, the only thing she shares with her comic counterpart is her name.  TV Andrea is so wishy-washy, she's hard to watch.  I spent the last few episodes wishing Michonne would snap and punch her.

Sweet.  Merle captured Glenn and Maggie and brought them to Woodbury.  Now we can finally get rocking with the conflict between the two groups.  But, c'mon... did Merle teleport like Jason Vorhees seems to?  He leaves the Governor and then just happened to wander in exactly the right direction to find Glenn, Maggie, and Michonne at the same time?  Lucky guy.

October 5th

Monster Cereal Week 3: Boo Berry.
Buster Keaton's pork pie hat, Pee-Wee Herman's bow tie, and Peter Lorre's voice.
I could never tell if the ghost was supposed to look sleepy, disinterested, or stoned.

The Worst Witch (1986) directed by Robert Young

My pick for the yearly attempt to watch a Halloween movie with the daughters.  I think I picked well, as it was the first time my eldest actually made it through a whole Halloween movie (the youngest, lacking an attention span, wandered off midway through).  She fled briefly behind the couch when Mildred was having trouble flying -- she's still sensitive -- but recovered when the film didn't kill its main character in a grisly crash.

I'd have been the right age to watch this when it was first released, but I've never heard of it.  Researching for movies to watch with the girls, lots of people spoke fondly of this one, though.  I can see why.  It's a completly innocent Halloween movie set at a school for witches and full of silly adult characters hamming it up.  I especially like Charlotte "Mrs. Garrett" Rae as the scene-chewing evil witch Agatha.  Everyone appears to be having a ball in this show.

But the best thing in the movie -- maybe in any movie ever made? -- was Tim Curry's music video.  Curry plays the "Grand Wizard" (yes, really, that's what they called him) for the witch boarding school who visits on Halloween.  When he arrives, he smoothly segues into a song and dance number about how cool Halloween is, surrounded by cheezy '80s video effects. It. is. awesome.  Watch it now:

If you're feeling at all blue today, I guarantee a smile, at least, from the above.

Watched: DVD from BFS.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2009) directed by Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska

After watching the impressive American Mary, I immediately threw the Soska Twins' first movie in my Netflix queue.  It suffers from some typical first film issues, both technical and artistic.  I don't think they did any ADR, so some of the shot-on-location dialogue is hard to hear.  The cameraman has watched too much Battlestar Galactica, and puts far too much movement into his shots to the point of annoyance.  The tone was initially hard to figure out.  The title suggests you're in for some goofiness, but it's really a very black comedy.  I didn't get this until well into the movie when the Junkie had her arm knocked off by a semi truck, then sewn back on with fishing line.  I still had a hard time getting over the Geek twin having her eyeball knocked out, though she did not have the same issue after applying some tape to the damage.

Thanked in the credits are both Robert Rodriguez and Eli Roth, which is a pretty accurate indicator of the style they went for here.  There's Hostel-style torture and dismemberment mixed with Rodriguez-ish hyper-reality and violence mixed with a dark sense of humor.  Unfortunately, the story these things are thrown into isn't quite fully developed.  It ends up being about a serial killer who stalks hookers, but we don't actually find out anything about this until near there end.  There's a twist concerning the killer, but it wasn't exactly a surprise.  Mostly, the movie follows four friends driving around with hooker in their trunk, who get into a series of not particularly related wacky and violent adventures.  Good effort for a first movie filmed with no budget, but not something I'm going to be watching again.  I'm glad to see the Twins went onto greater things after this.

Watched: DVD from MPI.

October 4th

American Horror Story 1.09: "Spooky Little Girl" (2011) directed by John Scott
Hey, the Black Dahlia was killed in Murder House!  Meh, I don't care.  She seems to be there to illustrate how the fame-seekers who flock to Hollywood are so screwed up, they'd be happy if they are only famous for dying a grisly death.  It has no affect on the story of the Harmons at all and, I bet, is probably only here due to interest in the case from the writer.  More interesting, the psychic lady suggests that a baby born from a ghost and human will become the Antichrist.  Neat, I guess.  That gives the show a big, super-evil event to look forward to at the end.  There were lots of Omen and Rosemary's Baby references so far, so that makes sense.


American Horror Story 1.10: "Smoldering Children" (2011) directed by Michael Lehmann
I can't say I was too surprised to find out that Violet was already a ghost.  Her friend/enemy with the scratched face was abandoned from the show, as we never saw Violet outside of house after Violet's last hangout with her.  I'll admit, the appearance of the bloated flies emerging from the cracks in the floorboards, then Tate killing the exterminator after he freaks out over seeing something under the house, then Tate showing Violent her fly-eaten, bloated corpse was an effective horror sequence.


American Horror Story 1.11: "Birth" (2011) directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
Events lead to Vivian giving birth inside of the house, with Ben's baby stillborn and Tate's baby perfectly fine.  I love the way the birth scene was shot.  The frames were selectively blurred, canted angles were everywhere, and reality seemed fluid.  As much as I may find the writing weak in the show, the technical side of things has always been very strong.


American Horror Story 1.12: "Afterbirth" (2011) directed by Bradley Buecker
Bizarre.  Instead of exploring the problem that is the supposed Antichrist just born in the house, the show decides to end by pretending to be Beetlejuice.  Sure, it's a fun sequence when the Harmons pull a Maitland and scare the crap out of the new homeowners.  But, it feels like the showrunners had no idea how to end this thing.

The last we see of the Harmons -- now all dead and trapped in the house -- they are a super-happy ghost family celebrating Christmas.  Really?  Really?  They are trapped in a hell with no apparent way of escape.  Their children will never grow up.  Their stillborn baby will be screaming in the night for centuries, lacking a living brain to grow and change.  Violet will be a messed-up teenager for eternity.  They're forced to exist with an increasingly large number of other people who die in the house, many of whom are very bad entities.  Why is no one bringing this up?  Violet touched on some of this in a previous episode very briefly -- worried that her laptop will go out of date and Youtube will no longer work -- but that was it.  I would've never have guessed this family and the show would be given such a saccharine ending.

And, at the very end, we find out the 3-year-old Antichrist has killed his babysitter.  Woo.  I fear for the fate of the world.  Sigh, how disappointing this thing turned out to be.  At least next season is an entirely new story.

October 3rd

The Walking Dead 3.03: "Walk with Me" (2012) directed by Guy Ferland
I like the guy they cast as the Governor.  He's kind of a TV version of Liam Neeson, with enough gravitas in his voice to make you believe he could lead such a community.  I'm a little disappointed that his big evil-bad-guy reveal at the end was an aquarium full of zombie heads -- as cool as that was -- instead of his zombified daughter as it was in the comics.  Hopefully, she shows up later.

Andrea's been surviving the apocalypse for a year.  Why was she getting so upset about the Governor's men stabbing corpses in the head and stringing up destroyed zombies from trees?  She was travelling for eight months with a woman who kept two jawless zombies as pets.  I suppose the writers wanted to show that Andrea was a little skittish about this new place, but they just ended up making her look like an idiot.  Lazy.


American Horror Story 1.08: "Rubber Man" (2011) directed by Miguel Arteta
So, the house makes men think with their wieners and women with their wombs... or, at least, more than normal.  That seems to be what this series is boiling down to.  I'm guessing there's a dully obvious feminist reading of the series -- all of the men in the show so far are assholes -- but we'll see how it turns out.

I did find it amusing to see the ghosts interacting with each other in the house.  I can't say that I've ever seen two ghosts having sex before -- with a bonus brutal stabbing at the end -- so chalk that up as a win for this episode as far as I'm concerned.