Halloween Fest, Pt. 4

Zombie

While this movie was originally marketed as a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, it was not. It was an Italian-made film (as noticed in some of the actors having to be dubbed) that nevertheless would have made a fine sequel to Romero’s zombie original. The plot is pretty standard for a zombie film – there are zombies and they want to eat people. That’s pretty much it. This film does an excellent job, though, of ratcheting up the tension throughout the film leading to the big zombie attack climax. It does this by parceling out the zombie appearances in small but very impactful ways – the two most memorable scenes involve a zombie attacking a shark(!) and a zombie attack on a woman that involves some sharp pieces of wood and an eyeball. Added to this is a classic 70’s synth soundtrack which is exactly the type of music I think of when I see a slow-moving mindless zombie on the attack. The gore factor is pretty good in this one too. I recommend this if you are a fan of zombie films to see how they can be done well without just bombarding you with zombies.

Halloween Movie Fest, Pt. 3

Blood Sucking Freaks

This movie was completely not what I was expecting. I had heard of this movie before but I didn’t know anything about it other than the title. Also, I apparently read the Netflix description but didn’t REALLY read it, because the description is pretty accurate. This movie isn’t really about any blood sucking freaks at all (according to Wikipedia, that wasn’t the original title, so that explains that). It really is a combination of an old-school version of Hostel and a soft-core porn. I don’t think more than 2 minutes passed at any time without someone being naked onscreen. Like most of the current crop of the so-called “torture porn” movies out there (like Hostel, Saw, etc.), Blood Sucking Freaks doesn’t really set out to scare you – it just wants to disturb and revolt the hell out of you. Most films try and do that by turning up the gore factor and seeing how grossed out they can make you. Not this one. There was not a whole lot of blood used. Instead, this flick attempts to disturb you by abusing women and treating them like objects (literally, as in one scene the main antagonist uses a woman as a foot stool), while at the same time weaving a black humor throughout that instead of being funny, really adds to the depravity. Movies involving abuse and torture are disturbing enough on their own, but, by throwing in attempts at humor, this movie seems to be saying “Sure, we just cut that woman’s fingers off, but look! We are using them to bet at backgammon. Isn’t that funny? Torturing women is fun!” That, at least for me, made the movie all that more creepy (and not in the way that I normally look for in a horror movie) and uncomfortable.


The Old Dark House

This is a classic horror film from the original Universal horror heyday. It was the next release by the same team that made Frankenstein. That includes Boris Karloff (I love Karloff, but I can’t ever hear his name now without thinking of this great line by Bela Lugosi in “Ed Wood” – “Karloff? Sidekick? FUCK YOU! Karloff did not deserve to smell my shit! That limey cocksucker can rot in Hell for all I care!”) as a hulking, mute butler. The story involves some travelers who, while searching for a place to escape the storm, come across a creepy old mansion inhabited by a family that acts weird the whole time. That’s really about the extent of the plot. Reading that, you would think this was a boring movie, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is something about old black and white horror films, set in musty, ill-lit gothic mansions that can convey a sense of tension and foreboding that keeps you locked into the film no matter what is happing with the characters. Fortunately, the characters who reside in the house are odd and creepy enough that, even if they are just sitting around, talking and acting weird and suspicious, it adds to the overall atmosphere of the movie. This is the type of movie that couldn’t be made effectively today – our modern, slick way of filmmaking would just make this film boring.


13 Ghosts

This is one of those types of movies to which Popcorn (from my last post) was paying tribute. During its original release, moviegoers were given special glasses which allowed them to see the ghosts in color (the film was black and white) if they looked through 1 lens or not see the ghosts at all if they looked through the other lens. Maybe if it was 1960 again, and I saw the movie with that gimmick, maybe I would have liked it more (although probably not). It just sort of fell flat with me. The story is about a down on his luck family man who inherits a house from his uncle that turns out to be haunted (and also his uncle hid money in the house somewhere). The film couldn’t decide whether it wanted to be spooky, somewhat campy, or (as I saw someone comment on IMDB) an episode of Scooby-Doo. Or maybe they tried to be all those things at once. I don’t know. All I know is that it resulted in a movie that was just there. I didn’t hate it, nor did I love it.

Halloween Movie Fest, Pt. 2

Drag Me to Hell

After Plan 9 From Outer Space (in the last installment of my Halloween Movie Marathon), I decided to go for something a little more recent. Drag Me To Hell was released this year and is Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre for the first time since the Evil Dead movies. If you have ever seen those movies (and if you haven’t FOR SHAME), then you know a little of what you are getting into with Drag Me To Hell – over the top gore, some black humor, and a pretty entertaining movie. It’s about a woman who is cursed by an old gypsy after denying her a loan. The curse involves being tormented by a demon for 2 days before the demon comes to drag you, body and soul, into Hell. Since only the main character can see how she is being tormented, of course everyone thinks she is crazy. There are a lot of fun things in this movie. The original attack by the gypsy woman was crazy and creepy (and very Evil Dead reminiscent), as was every other appearance by her – living or dead – throughout the rest of the movie. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of the gore (at least in the Unrated Version I watched) was over the top, but in a good “Ugh! I can’t believe they did that!” way (for example, check out what happens when the old lady attacks in the tool shed). While I didn’t find it really scary overall, there were a couple of good, innovative cheap frights (one involving a cell phone) that keep you on your toes. Drag Me To Hell is by no means a GREAT film, but it is pretty good.


Graduation Day

In my first blog entry about scary movies, I mentioned that I loved them all - campy, gory, suspenseful and even the bad ones. This movie definitely falls into that last category. Graduation Day was released in 1981 and was an obvious attempt to cash in on the slasher film craze of the late 70's-early 80's that was kicked off after the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th (and a cheap attempt at that). The plot involves a killer knocking off members of a high school track team the day before and of graduation. I know what I am getting into when I watch slasher films - I am not expecting No Country For Old Men. I usually only want a few things when I watch these movies: blood, cheesy 80's scary music, a few imaginative kills and some cheap attempts to scare the audience. That's really it. This movie hits some of those points, but not all. There really wasn't much blood. The methods the killer uses to dispatch the victims are, other than 2 examples (one involving a football/fencing sword combo and the other involving the landing area for pole vaulters) are pretty run of the mill. There really weren't any attempts to frighten you, either, as every kill is telegraphed for about 30 seconds before it happens. However, the main problem I had with the movie is that the scenes in-between the kill scenes were BORING. Mostly just lots and lots of talking. BORING talking. If there is one thing a "bad" horror movie can't be, it's boring. Many slasher films will keep the interest up between the actual kills by setting up fake kills in an effort to spook you. This movie doesn't do that - if it looks like someone is going to get killed at that moment, they are. This film could have used a few more cheap spooks and a little less dialog concerned with pointing you towards the wrong suspect. If you haven't seen it, I would pass on this film.

Popcorn

Popcorn is a tribute to those cheap horror films from the 50's that would set up gimmicks in the theater in order to scare the audience (like electro-shocks in the seats), since the films were really too cheesy to do it themselves. The plot involves a horror movie festival at an old theater involving those types of movies and a killer that is stalking the staff during the showing of the films. For this movie, rather than use existing films in the fake festival, they made their own. I thought they did a really good job capturing the right sense of style for these films - phony-looking creatures, white-bread characters and very cheap gimmicks (one of the films is enhanced by "Odor-Vision", where they release different smells into the theater to correspond with what is happening on the screen). They also did a good job of capturing that old-school horror feel in a modern (for the time, which was the early 90's) way. Popcorn is a little cheesy, but there is some good tension at times and the plot was just crazy enough to keep my interest throughout the whole movie (in addition to the film festival, it involves a crazed film maker who may have come back from the dead after committing a Manson-esque killing spree back in the 60's).

October

Overall, summer is my favorite time of the year. I love the hot weather, cookouts, sleeping with the windows open, long daylight hours, my birthday is in August, etc. However, my favorite month of the year is October. October has pro and college football, the baseball playoffs, the leaves changing and, most importantly of all… HALLOWEEN! (side note – I refuse to include that apostrophe between the two e’s that has been showing up more and more lately. This isn’t a case of reverting to the non-anglicized spelling of something in order to respect the culture of an existing people. Halloween is derived from a Celtic Pagan festival. Are there a lot of Celtic Pagans around these days embracing their cultural history? NO. So that apostrophe can suck it.)

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love everything about it – dressing up, passing out candy to trick ‘r’ treaters, carving pumpkins, haunted houses and scary movies. I LOVE scary movies; although they don’t scare me (the only time I was ever really scared by a movie was the Exorcist – watching that move when I was 12 by myself with no lights on wasn’t the brightest idea). I love all kinds of horror/scary movies – campy, gory, suspenseful and even the bad ones. I always take time off from work at Halloween to stage my own personal horror movie marathon (yes, I am 13). This year, Halloween falls on a Saturday, so college football will interfere with my laying on the couch and watching movies. As a result, I have decided to both designate the 30th (and probably the night before) as my movie day and also to try and watch movies throughout the month (I meant to start at the beginning, but it has been a busy month, which also is to blame for my lack of blog posts).

The first movie up is one that I have always wanted to see, but it has managed to elude me until now – Plan 9 From Outer Space. Yes, the film universally renowned as The Worst Movie Ever Made. And, oh my, does it live up to its reputation. The acting is terrible. I mean, terrible as in they could probably go get the cast of the local high school production of Our Town, they would look like the cast of Mad Men compared to the chumps in Plan 9. Even the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood would have a difficult time coming up with dialog that would sound natural being delivered by these hacks. Unfortunately (or I guess fortunately for fans of terrible-in-a-good way movies), those screenwriters are nowhere to be found for this flick. It is usually stated that voiceover narration or extended exposition in a movie are the signs of a lazy screenwriter. The first 10 minutes of this movie are ALL narration, and the last 15 minutes are almost all exposition, so that should give you some hint of what you are in for with this movie. However, if you love bad movies, you owe it to yourself to see this one. It was time well spent.

I will be posting blog posts on my other movie-watching experiences throughout the month…